Generally you're right to point to router security, but I don't think it's relevant here. Router software package installation -- where you might think you want tls to fetch the package safely -- should be using package signatures rather than relying on tls.
Article writer Dan Goodin missed this point in his first draft. He thought he had a story, and failed at the fact-checking stage.
Would you rely on X.509 for a vpn? The implementation is irrelevant.
ATMs, no. Web banking really does have a problem, and it's much bigger than bugs in tls.
I think David Jao and others are right, and this is not news.
"Freenet is what the web was..." -- Freenet isn't anything yet. I've tried it. Have you?
"Well worth donating to." -- What would we be donating to? Another few years of revisions of a non-functioning implementation using a non-free language?
The web is simple and it works. It started with a simple protocol and a simple markup language. From where I stand, Freenet looks a bit like Ted Nelson's Xanadu -- lots of good ideas, lots of complexity, and no real result.
What legal analysis? The assertion you took issue with -- whig's "GPL software
is freer than public domain..." -- is not about law. Legal analysis doesn't answer it. Legal analysis might determine whether the GPL is
enforceable, but that is assumed in whig's assertion.
It's also not about books. The effects of licensing, use, modification and redistribution are very different with books. How often is The Wind in the Willows patched? How many critical security holes does it have? Could the
valuable manuscripts on my desk become corrupted if those holes in my copy of the book are not closed? How long is the wish list? How soon after
development on the book stops do you expect it to become obsolete?
whig is using geeky shorthand here, and I think you have misunderstood. A
single version of a program, dead and frozen for all time and released into the public domain, is less encumbered than it would have
been if it had been released under the GPL. But software distributed under the GPL evolves while staying free. What popular public
domain software do you know of that does the same? And what software do you know of that doesn't need to evolve?
Perhaps we're getting to why you started talking about a book. I don't think there are any good examples.
Releasing a work like The Wind in the Willows under the GPL is rare. You might be
surprised to learn that in Kenneth Grahame's time (1859-1932) it was practically unheard-of.
You see, the GPL is largely about programs and source code.
Releasing programs -- not books -- under the GPL promotes freedom in the use and modification of software -- not
including The Wind in the Willows, which is conventionally regarded as a book.
This is from Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams. Get it from somewhere other than Amazon. The story submitter and I both forgot to mention the name of the author, and not quite all slashdot readers will immediately know what we're talking about.
I detect moderatorial controversy. It's rather a large quote. Or is it more of an unauthorized extract?
Please don't forget the fourth and most important factor in fair use.
30% Funny
30% Overrated
20% Insightful
And I thought I was just aiming for "Informative". Shame about the attribution. Even after 259 comments here, there is still only one mention of the name "Adams".
`No,' said [Vann Harl, editor-in-chief]. `You will do the restaurant
column.'
He tossed a piece of plastic onto the desk in front of
him. Ford did not move to pick it up.
`You what?' said Ford.
[...]
[Harl] `Every possible position of every possible electron balloons out
into billions of probabilities! Billions and billions of shining,
gleaming futures! You know what that means?'
[Ford Prefect] `You're dribbling down your chin.'
[...]
[Harl]`Excuse me,' he said, `but this gets me so excited.' Ford handed
him his towel. `This is the most radical, dynamic and thrusting
business venture in the entire multidimensional infinity of
space/time/probability ever.'
`And you want me to be its restaurant critic,' said Ford.
`We would value your input.'
`Kill!' shouted Ford. He shouted it at his towel.
The towel leapt up out of Harl's hands.
This was not because it had any motive force of its own, but because
Harl was so startled at the idea that it might. The next thing that
startled him was the sight of Ford Prefect hurtling across the desk at
him fists first. In fact Ford was just lunging for the credit card, but
you don't get to occupy the sort of position that Harl occupied in the
sort of organisation in which Harl occupied it without developing a
healthily paranoid view of life. He took the sensible precaution of
hurling himself backwards, and striking his head a sharp blow on the
rocket-proof glass, then subsided into a series of worrying and highly
personal dreams.
Ford lay on the desk, surprised at how swimmingly everything had gone.
He glanced quickly at the piece of plastic he now held in his hand --
it was a Dine-O-Charge credit card with his name already embossed on
it, and an expiry date two years from now, and was possibly the single
most exciting thing Ford had ever seen in his life -- then he clambered
over the desk to see to Harl.
He was breathing fairly easily. It occurred to Ford that he might
breathe more easily yet without the weight of his wallet bearing down
on his chest, so he slipped it out of Harl's breast pocket and flipped
through it. Fair amount of cash. Credit tokens. Ultragolf club
membership. Other club memberships. Photos of someone's wife and family
-- presumably Harl's, but it was hard to be sure these days. Busy
executives often didn't have time for a full-time wife and family and
would just rent them for weekends.
Ha!
He couldn't believe what he'd just found.
He slowly drew out from the wallet a single and insanely exciting piece
of plastic that was nestling amongst a bunch of receipts.
It wasn't insanely exciting to look at. It was rather dull in fact. It
was smaller and a little thicker than a credit card and
semi-transparent. If you held it up to the light you could see a lot of
holographically encoded information and images buried pseudo-inches
deep beneath its surface.
It was an Ident-i-Eeze, and was a very
naughty and silly thing for Harl to have lying around in his wallet,
though it was perfectly understandable. There were so many different
ways in which you were required to provide absolute proof of your
identity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome
just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential problems
of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an
epistemologically ambiguous physical universe. Just look at cash point
machines, for instance. Queues of people standing around waiting to
have their fingerprints read, their retinas scanned, bits of skin
scraped from the nape of the neck and undergoing instant (or nearly
instant -- a good six or seven seconds in tedious reality) genetic
analysis, then having to answer trick questions about members of their
family they didn't even remember they had, and about their recorded
preferences for tablecloth colours. And that was just to get a bit of
spare cash for the w
Show us what you have so that we know what sort of thing you're looking for, and so that we can avoid duplication of effort. Put your draft document on the web. Perhaps pick a license.
People of the sort who can provide the most useful information on this subject will tend to want to see you do that basic and minimal work first. I think they will also agree that a good place for a "multimedia project" is the web.
The joyful message you're spreading is that if we use free software, we'll have to labour for hours correcting it and extending it before it will work adequately.
Own up -- you're really preaching for the Other Side.
Why not place a cheap item explaining the problem and giving useful information for potential buyers? Tell them where to download the software and where to order it on disk.
The author might do this and collect an occasional payment of a few dollars to cover the cost of placing items. Organizations like the FSF could try it.
It's a simple matter of spreading information where it's needed. Is it really necessary to turn to the law?
The voice ruins it. I heard it on the radio a week or two ago, and that ridiculous voice compelled me switch it off. It's as if the programme came under the influence of a children's television producer from the 80s.
-- if you're serious. The moderators seem to think so.
It will sometimes make sense to use multiple serial connections
between two points, but that is fundamentally different from a
parallel connection.
Two serial links would not have to be mutually synchronized, and
they would be redundant. Two lines of a parallel link, in the usual
sense of the term, are always synchronized, and if one fails, the link
fails. At today's speeds, parallel transmission makes sense only over
short distances.
In any case, when you need more speed (and not more reliability) it
will generally make sense to upgrade to a faster type of serial
connection rather than to double up. Of course I'm
talking about storage devices in the forseeable future. If in 50 years
typical modular storage devices are the size of pollen grains, who
knows?
I think GNOME needs something like Sawfish -- something with useful features rather than just a Microsoft clone. If the GNOME people have
gone off Sawfish, that's a shame, because there's nothing else like
it.
In my experience Sawfish versions 1.2 and 2.0 are not even ready
for beta testing. They crash readily and badly. Don't try them unless
you're interested in development.
Sawfish 1.0.1 is fairly solid, and no other free window manager I
have heard of comes close in features. It makes it easy to work
efficiently. For example, if you maximize, restore and close windows
a lot, you can put "Maximize window toggle" and "Delete window safely"
on keys easily. You can do the same with about 251 other functions
including XMMS controls.
John Harper commits some
user interface howlers like the fixed-size "Edit binding" window, but
you'll find that sort of thing in all software. Refreshingly, he
doesn't readily make assumptions about what features users
don't need. Don't want 251 other functions? Don't use them. If you
want a particular window manager feature, try Sawfish 1.0.1
first. It's more likely to be there than in any other window manager,
and it will probably be easy to use.
The original developer of Sawfish has moved on to other things, and he
isn't working on it at all.
Most of it is written in the
author's own personal lisp dialect. One language per developer is
a bad principle, but in this case it helped Sawfish become very useful
quickly. You seem to suggest that Lisp is the problem. Does it make
software hard to maintain?
Metacity is good for Windows users. It's a better default than
Sawfish was with that ugly Crux theme and the settings it came with in
the old gnome defaults. But it's a shame that there's no longer a
modern, sophisticated and efficient window manager in the project.
Slashdot Mirror
Generally you're right to point to router security, but I don't think it's relevant here. Router software package installation -- where you might think you want tls to fetch the package safely -- should be using package signatures rather than relying on tls.
Article writer Dan Goodin missed this point in his first draft. He thought he had a story, and failed at the fact-checking stage.
Would you rely on X.509 for a vpn? The implementation is irrelevant.
ATMs, no. Web banking really does have a problem, and it's much bigger than bugs in tls.
I think David Jao and others are right, and this is not news.
"Freenet is what the web was..." -- Freenet isn't anything yet. I've tried it. Have you?
"Well worth donating to." -- What would we be donating to? Another few years of revisions of a non-functioning implementation using a non-free language?
The web is simple and it works. It started with a simple protocol and a simple markup language. From where I stand, Freenet looks a bit like Ted Nelson's Xanadu -- lots of good ideas, lots of complexity, and no real result.
Freenet stumbled on step 2. The language is non-free and has other problems which seem to have caused a lot of trouble in steps 3 and 4.
I have tried Freenet several times. The basic problems that were obvious the first time have never been fixed.
If they would admit the mistake and do it right from the start, I would be tempted to contribute. Anyone else feel this way?
LWN's list of 56 CD-based distributions
This is a section in a list of distributions of various types with short descriptions.
What legal analysis? The assertion you took issue with -- whig's "GPL software is freer than public domain..." -- is not about law. Legal analysis doesn't answer it. Legal analysis might determine whether the GPL is enforceable, but that is assumed in whig's assertion.
It's also not about books. The effects of licensing, use, modification and redistribution are very different with books. How often is The Wind in the Willows patched? How many critical security holes does it have? Could the valuable manuscripts on my desk become corrupted if those holes in my copy of the book are not closed? How long is the wish list? How soon after development on the book stops do you expect it to become obsolete?
whig is using geeky shorthand here, and I think you have misunderstood. A single version of a program, dead and frozen for all time and released into the public domain, is less encumbered than it would have been if it had been released under the GPL. But software distributed under the GPL evolves while staying free. What popular public domain software do you know of that does the same? And what software do you know of that doesn't need to evolve?
Perhaps we're getting to why you started talking about a book. I don't think there are any good examples.
No recursive edit is in progress. Never mind. Here's a command for people like you.
(shell-command "kedit" nil)
Releasing a work like The Wind in the Willows under the GPL is rare. You might be surprised to learn that in Kenneth Grahame's time (1859-1932) it was practically unheard-of.
You see, the GPL is largely about programs and source code.
Releasing programs -- not books -- under the GPL promotes freedom in the use and modification of software -- not including The Wind in the Willows, which is conventionally regarded as a book.
This is from Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams. Get it from somewhere other than Amazon. The story submitter and I both forgot to mention the name of the author, and not quite all slashdot readers will immediately know what we're talking about.
It's a bleak book, as Douglas Adams admitted. It's also very funny in places.
I detect moderatorial controversy. It's rather a large quote. Or is it more of an unauthorized extract?
Please don't forget the fourth and most important factor in fair use.
And I thought I was just aiming for "Informative". Shame about the attribution. Even after 259 comments here, there is still only one mention of the name "Adams".
It's full of corny SF references.
And I don't mean my list of recent comments.
`I'll do the jokes,' snarled Ford.
`No,' said [Vann Harl, editor-in-chief]. `You will do the restaurant column.'
He tossed a piece of plastic onto the desk in front of him. Ford did not move to pick it up.
`You what?' said Ford.
[...]
.
[Harl] `Every possible position of every possible electron balloons out into billions of probabilities! Billions and billions of shining, gleaming futures! You know what that means?'
[Ford Prefect] `You're dribbling down your chin.'
[...]
[Harl]`Excuse me,' he said, `but this gets me so excited.' Ford handed him his towel. `This is the most radical, dynamic and thrusting business venture in the entire multidimensional infinity of space/time/probability ever.'
`And you want me to be its restaurant critic,' said Ford.
`We would value your input.'
`Kill!' shouted Ford. He shouted it at his towel.
The towel leapt up out of Harl's hands.
This was not because it had any motive force of its own, but because Harl was so startled at the idea that it might. The next thing that startled him was the sight of Ford Prefect hurtling across the desk at him fists first. In fact Ford was just lunging for the credit card, but you don't get to occupy the sort of position that Harl occupied in the sort of organisation in which Harl occupied it without developing a healthily paranoid view of life. He took the sensible precaution of hurling himself backwards, and striking his head a sharp blow on the rocket-proof glass, then subsided into a series of worrying and highly personal dreams.
Ford lay on the desk, surprised at how swimmingly everything had gone. He glanced quickly at the piece of plastic he now held in his hand -- it was a Dine-O-Charge credit card with his name already embossed on it, and an expiry date two years from now, and was possibly the single most exciting thing Ford had ever seen in his life -- then he clambered over the desk to see to Harl.
He was breathing fairly easily. It occurred to Ford that he might breathe more easily yet without the weight of his wallet bearing down on his chest, so he slipped it out of Harl's breast pocket and flipped through it. Fair amount of cash. Credit tokens. Ultragolf club membership. Other club memberships. Photos of someone's wife and family -- presumably Harl's, but it was hard to be sure these days. Busy executives often didn't have time for a full-time wife and family and would just rent them for weekends.
Ha!
He couldn't believe what he'd just found.
He slowly drew out from the wallet a single and insanely exciting piece of plastic that was nestling amongst a bunch of receipts.
It wasn't insanely exciting to look at. It was rather dull in fact. It was smaller and a little thicker than a credit card and semi-transparent. If you held it up to the light you could see a lot of holographically encoded information and images buried pseudo-inches deep beneath its surface
It was an Ident-i-Eeze, and was a very naughty and silly thing for Harl to have lying around in his wallet, though it was perfectly understandable. There were so many different ways in which you were required to provide absolute proof of your identity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an epistemologically ambiguous physical universe. Just look at cash point machines, for instance. Queues of people standing around waiting to have their fingerprints read, their retinas scanned, bits of skin scraped from the nape of the neck and undergoing instant (or nearly instant -- a good six or seven seconds in tedious reality) genetic analysis, then having to answer trick questions about members of their family they didn't even remember they had, and about their recorded preferences for tablecloth colours. And that was just to get a bit of spare cash for the w
So she's behind it it too. Remember how she used to use Linux but went off it a while ago?
But do you have to have a license for them?
"Score:0, Troll"
jonadab is not a troll, and is clearly not trolling here.
"Lockheed Martin's plant in Littleton doesn't make weapons. It makes space launch vehicles for TV satellites."
"Moore didn't just walk in off the street and get a gun. The transaction was staged for cameras."
-- Daniel Lyons,"Bowl-o-Drama", Forbes
Michael Moore responds to the wacko attackos
Show us what you have so that we know what sort of thing you're looking for, and so that we can avoid duplication of effort. Put your draft document on the web. Perhaps pick a license.
People of the sort who can provide the most useful information on this subject will tend to want to see you do that basic and minimal work first. I think they will also agree that a good place for a "multimedia project" is the web.
This means many dial-up users can't get a complete file. It would be a very useful feature to add.
I agree with motown that Ogg Vorbis and Speex are worth a look. Ogg Vorbis is good at 48k mono, but is surprisingly bad at 32k.
The joyful message you're spreading is that if we use free software, we'll have to labour for hours correcting it and extending it before it will work adequately.
Own up -- you're really preaching for the Other Side.
Why not place a cheap item explaining the problem and giving useful information for potential buyers? Tell them where to download the software and where to order it on disk.
The author might do this and collect an occasional payment of a few dollars to cover the cost of placing items. Organizations like the FSF could try it.
It's a simple matter of spreading information where it's needed. Is it really necessary to turn to the law?
The voice ruins it. I heard it on the radio a week or two ago, and that ridiculous voice compelled me switch it off. It's as if the programme came under the influence of a children's television producer from the 80s.
Similarly, I find myself involuntarily transposing OpenIPMP into a form that is easier to pronounce.
- Fight for freedom;
- censor for peace;
- repeat.
What better way to keep people busy?-- if you're serious. The moderators seem to think so.
It will sometimes make sense to use multiple serial connections between two points, but that is fundamentally different from a parallel connection.
Two serial links would not have to be mutually synchronized, and they would be redundant. Two lines of a parallel link, in the usual sense of the term, are always synchronized, and if one fails, the link fails. At today's speeds, parallel transmission makes sense only over short distances.
In any case, when you need more speed (and not more reliability) it will generally make sense to upgrade to a faster type of serial connection rather than to double up. Of course I'm talking about storage devices in the forseeable future. If in 50 years typical modular storage devices are the size of pollen grains, who knows?
I think GNOME needs something like Sawfish -- something with useful features rather than just a Microsoft clone. If the GNOME people have gone off Sawfish, that's a shame, because there's nothing else like it.
In my experience Sawfish versions 1.2 and 2.0 are not even ready for beta testing. They crash readily and badly. Don't try them unless you're interested in development.
Sawfish 1.0.1 is fairly solid, and no other free window manager I have heard of comes close in features. It makes it easy to work efficiently. For example, if you maximize, restore and close windows a lot, you can put "Maximize window toggle" and "Delete window safely" on keys easily. You can do the same with about 251 other functions including XMMS controls.
John Harper commits some user interface howlers like the fixed-size "Edit binding" window, but you'll find that sort of thing in all software. Refreshingly, he doesn't readily make assumptions about what features users don't need. Don't want 251 other functions? Don't use them. If you want a particular window manager feature, try Sawfish 1.0.1 first. It's more likely to be there than in any other window manager, and it will probably be easy to use.
The Sawfish list is busy, John Harper is there, and development seems to be going on.
Most of it is written in the author's own personal lisp dialect. One language per developer is a bad principle, but in this case it helped Sawfish become very useful quickly. You seem to suggest that Lisp is the problem. Does it make software hard to maintain?
Metacity is good for Windows users. It's a better default than Sawfish was with that ugly Crux theme and the settings it came with in the old gnome defaults. But it's a shame that there's no longer a modern, sophisticated and efficient window manager in the project.
... and recognize Wil Wheaton by his slashdot nickname.