Slashback: Kororaa GPL, ICANN .XXX, BellSouth NSA 216
Kororaa denies GPL violations. AlanS2002 writes "Chris Smart, of the Kororaa Project, has written an update about the accusation that the Kororaa XGL LiveCD is in violation of the GPL. According to Chris, he has been shown no evidence that the nVidia/ATI drivers are derived from any code in the Linux Kernel or that the drivers link to the Kernel. From the best information he has it appears that the drivers make system calls to public interfaces of the Kernel, in the same way that a web browser makes calls to public interfaces of a web server but are not considered to be linked to the web server (they do not link to private functions of the web server). However the Kororaa project has decided to let end users download and install the drivers themselves if need be, which defeats the purpose of continuing to develop their Live CD. As such their will be no Kororaa XGL LiveCD 0.3, however they will continue to make Kororaa XGL LiveCD 0.2 available."
BellSouth demands retraction to NSA story. An anonymous reader writes "CNN reports that BellSouth has moved from strongly denying participation in providing the NSA with calling records to requesting a retraction of the article from USA Today." From the article: "The telecommunications giant sent a letter to USA Today on Thursday asking it to retract last week's story that BellSouth and two other companies helped the NSA compile a massive database of records on domestic phone calls."
South Korea rejects Microsft antitrust appeal. mikesd81 writes "According to MSNBC, the Korean Fair Trade Commission has turned down Microsoft's appeal to separate it's Window's OS and it's media service. The February ruling also included a 34 million dollar fine. Apparently, The commission began investigating Microsoft after a local Internet portal, Daum Communications Corp., filed a complaint with the commission in 2001."
Tim Berners Lee continues net neutrality fight. Kortec writes "As reported by The BCC, Sir Tim Berners Lee has spoken out against the current US bias towards the destruction of network neutrality at the Edinburgh WWW2006 conference. The man behind it all is quoted as saying the two tier system proposed recently on the floor of Congress is not 'part of the internet model,' and that 'the web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it in to different services.'"
ICANN possibly pressured to nix .XXX domain. mobiux writes "Fox News reporting that the US Government allegedly pressured ICANN into denying the .XXX domain, despite orders not to do so. ICM Registry says the e-mails show how the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce, was subjected to intense pressure to intervene on behalf of the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, two socially conservative lobbying organizations."
Another side to Vista Beta2 reviews. lordgreg writes to tell us that while Slashdot already talked about Vista Beta 2 Major Problems, which Gary Krakow addressed in his review. DotProject claims to have the other side of Vista Beta2's Major Problems, the users themselves.
Vonage IPO shaping up to be the worst tech IPO in 2 years. fistfullast33l writes "Vonage went public to great fanfare and poor results today, with it's stock price falling 11% by closing time. Analysts have cited the fact that Vonage has yet to post a profit and increasing competition for the lack of interest. 'It's a wildly unprofitable company still selling at a very high valuation,' said Tom Taulli of Newport Coast, California, an IPO analyst. BusinessWeek also discusses growth barriers listed in Vonage's filings, including 'finding enough customer-support staffers and long delays in getting traditional phone companies to let customers take their existing phone numbers [to Vonage].'"
Uh huh (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when can anyone "pressure" ICANN? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Intense pressure?" Big guys named Guido and Luigi showed up at the reception desk and asked politely that they pressure ICANN? Concerned mothers sent them very sternly worded letters with comments like "I would send you to bed without dinner"?
The US Government does whatever the hell it wants to, generally. Especially branches nobody's ever heard about, unless someone threatens their budget. We generally term that "extortion", and that's certainly not very family-friendly. Nevermind that it seems absurd that some goofy little branch of the department of Commerce holds -any- sway over ICANN whatsoever; they're also fantastically good at ignoring people and doing whatever the hell they please.
Re:Since when can anyone "pressure" ICANN? (Score:4, Insightful)
The entire
Re:Since when can anyone "pressure" ICANN? (Score:2)
Pretty please?
Re:Since when can anyone "pressure" ICANN? (Score:3, Funny)
Well, given the history and reputation of the fundie militias, it was probably more of a "weasely little guys in camo with burnt cork rubbed on their faces and sniper rifles" kind of thing...
Re:Since when can anyone "pressure" ICANN? (Score:2)
If nothing else, talk to journalists. Since W's DOJ allowed for news media accumulation, the press has a lot of pressure being put on them to stay in-line.
Re:Since when can anyone "pressure" ICANN? (Score:3, Informative)
Company affiliations notwithstanding, they're lawyers, not engineers. The ones that don't have big company affiliation are lobbyists from the industry.
Re:Since when can anyone "pressure" ICANN? (Score:2)
Legally it works out like this: icann was formed with oversight by DoC/NTIA. Congress has natural oversight over this.
The US government is a monolith. Bits and pieces of it can't just do what they want. Oh they do, but that's why there's oversight.
None the less I don't expect anything to happen to
Re:Since when can anyone "pressure" ICANN? (Score:3, Insightful)
How can we believe a single thing (Score:5, Informative)
FYI (Score:5, Informative)
FYI, both organizations are founded/run by James Dobson. I would not necessarily refer to them as seperate entities rather than appendages of the same one. James Dobson, you know, the guy of Spongebob Squarepants is a conspiracy to turn kids gay fame.
Edit the wikipedia! (Score:2)
wikipedia entry. [wikipedia.org]
Re:FYI (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:FYI (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually that is old news to the Tolkien folk. If you search around you will find that His works have always been well recieved by the greater christian community, Compare that to any Harry Potter book, universally reviled as witchcraft, satanist, and evil. Good or bad the original Tolkien books were loved by the christian orthodoxy. It has been said that the acceptance
Re:FYI (Score:2)
What are you talking about? A few people (mostly nut cases) have claimed Harry Potter books are evil yes. To claim that makes them "universally reviled" is ridiculous. Plenty of CHristians like Harry Potter.
As for Tolkien, interpreting his books as Christian allegory is fairly natural given that he was a Christian and he was a friend and colleague of CS Lewis who is best known as a writer of Christian allegory.
Re:FYI (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree Dobson's generally an incoherent idiot, Lord of the Rings very definitely isn't allegory--but it's very definitely Christian. As Tolkien himself wrote [christianitytoday.com], "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first but consciously in the revision." There's a great deal of scholarly work out there on the Christian them
Re:FYI (Score:2)
Gandalf: Jesus Christ
Saruman: Hitler
Sauron: Satan
The Hobbits: The British
The Elves: The French
The Men: The Americans
The Uruk-Hai: The German "Master Race"
Re-read the books with those ideas in mind. It's basically World War II seen through an apocalyptic prism.
Re:FYI (Score:2)
Re:FYI (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FYI (Score:2, Informative)
The more people like you make stuff up like this, the less people will believe you when you decide to say something truthful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dobson [wikipedia.org]
Re:FYI (Score:2, Informative)
Why is Dr. Dobson objecting to a video featuring characters such as SpongeBob? [custhelp.com]
From his own website.
"From the outset, let's be clear that this issue is not about objections to any specific cartoon characters. Instead, Dr. Dobson is concerned that these popular animated personalities are being exploited by an organization that's determined to promote the acceptance of homosexuality among our nation's youth."
It reads that a cartoon charactor is being
Programmers Should Stick To Programming. (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux has more copyright owners (Score:2, Informative)
If someone doesn't like you linking X component with Y component, the very first thing you should ask them is: are you the copyright holder of X component or Y component?
The Linux® brand kernel uses a distributed copyright ownership model, in stark contrast to the copyright-assignment practices that GNU® brand software follows. If I write a patch to Linux, and a kernel maintainer accepts it, then I am an owner of copyright in Linux. I would wager that even FSF, the owner of copyright in GNU so
Re:Linux has more copyright owners (Score:2)
Re:Linux has more copyright owners (Score:2)
Re:Linux has more copyright owners (Score:2)
Re:Programmers Should Stick To Programming. (Score:2, Insightful)
Now SUSE 10.1 is supposed to have the same feature. I have it installed exclusively on one of the hard drives, and this featu
Re:Programmers Should Stick To Programming. (Score:2)
Re:Programmers Should Stick To Programming. (Score:2)
BTW - if you reply to this post with "but no-one charges money for drivers" I will track you down and kill you ok?
Re:Programmers Should Stick To Programming. (Score:2)
Re:Programmers Should Stick To Programming. (Score:2)
Re:Programmers Should Stick To Programming. (Score:3, Informative)
Vonage IPO far too late (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Vonage IPO far too late (Score:2)
Some economist-geek explain it to me... (Score:2)
First of all, as I understand it, most IPOs have a requirement that buyers not sell for anywhere up to 90 days. How does the stock price do anything worse than remain flat in that time?
Second - Conceptually, let's say I like Vonage and manage to get in on the IPO. I buy 100 shares, which initially dip. Now I've taken a small loss on something I expect to shoot way up within the next few days... Would I sell? Hell no! Now, at around a 10% dip I might get rather worried,
Re:Some economist-geek explain it to me... (Score:3, Informative)
Then they IPO, and only 50 shares are bought. There value would decrease because there is no interest.
"Now I've taken a small loss on something I expect to shoot way up within the next few days... Would I sell? Hell no! "
you might if there was no interest.
Now if all 100 shares were sold, you would expect the price to go up do to heavy interest, but if an IPO doesn't sparl a lot of interest, there isn't
Re:Some economist-geek explain it to me... (Score:3, Informative)
Not only would you not see a fall, you wouldn't see any movement in the stock for 90 days if trading were suspended (buyers not being able to sell would result in no transactions). This is clearly not true if you look at any IPO. In fact, the possibility to have a run up in the stock price early
Re:Some economist-geek explain it to me... (Score:2)
You really need to pay more attention to how this is supposed to work: buy low, sell high. It's really not that complex.
Economist-geek here... (Score:3, Informative)
Point 2 - Depends on your strategy. Bear in mind that most stock trades are institutional, not mom and dad buying for
Re:Some economist-geek explain it to me... (Score:2)
Kororaa GPL (Score:4, Insightful)
This sentence was a little confusing the first seven times I read it. So I did what I hardly ever do, go to the source, read the article and gain a fuller understanding of the situation... instead of just posting here about how the summary was confusing.
My misunderstanding stemmed from my thinking that the Kororaa project was just the Live CD. So I was thinking: if they decided to script the downloading and compiling of the nvidia modules why would they then go and decide to cancel the Live CD development? The key here is that they also have a non-live CD version called Kororaa 2005, and soon to be 2006. They are still continuing this distribution, which will prompt the user to download the modules manually as other distros do.
The author's reasoning was kind of strange though, he leads us on a very logical path towards concluding that the Kororaa Live CD does *not* violate the GPL in its current form. He even says For me, with the information at hand, I cannot see how the drivers constitute a GPL violation. Yet he still decides to discontinue the live CD. He also makes a good case about why he doesn't want to have the user download and compile the drivers themselves on boot.
I can't blame him though. He's clearly a supporter of the GPL. He's striving to adhere to the letter and spirit of the license. Oh well, maybe I should check out the standard Kororaa distribution.
Re:Kororaa GPL (Score:2)
dear lord, please let this be the start of a trend.
Re:Kororaa GPL (Score:2)
I didn't read any further, and thought I should complain that even if there was a God, It's not listening if your palms aren't pressed together (as that activates the transmitter).
Re:Kororaa GPL (Score:2)
Re:Kororaa GPL (Score:2)
Vonage Reliabitility and IPO (Score:2)
Re:Vonage Reliabitility and IPO (Score:2)
Thats pure speculation, but it's the only reason I can think of..well that and coincidence.
Could Vonage be DDOS'd? If so, would that meen all there users systems could become useless during the DDOSing?
Re:Vonage Reliabitility and IPO (Score:2)
Now, This isn't just unfair business practices once the company goes public. There are a host of other sec rules and laws to protect them. Also When stock holder finds that thier interests are being railroaded by competitors, It would be easy for one of them to launch a class action suite against say T
.XXX TLD (Score:5, Informative)
Re:.XXX TLD (Score:2)
The right to free speech is just that... a right to speak, not to be heard. Every other medium for distribution of pornography is subject to laws (in most countries) that help keep it out of the hands of minors unless their parents approve.
Why shouldn't pornography be censorable, say, by schools or libraries? Students and library patrons shouldn't really be looking up porn. Nor playing Flash games. Nor watching movies. A government saying porn (or almost anything
Re:.XXX TLD (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if voluntary,
Re:.XXX TLD (Score:2)
Agreed, nobody is going to move out of
Re:.XXX TLD (Score:2)
Even if voluntary,
Both of these are good points. My argument against it has been that:
* There will likely be a land-rush to register
The problem as always is - Who decides? (Score:3, Insightful)
It should be, but the problem is a
Other possible things that may not be viewable outside of a
Michelangelo's David
Artistic Nudes
Sites with graphic how-tos on breast exams.
It's all a roll of the dice as to what the
Re:The problem as always is - Who decides? (Score:2)
Even that not granular enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Either no-one forces sites into these domains, or it should not be at all.
Re:.XXX TLD (Score:2)
ian
Big Brother (Score:4, Interesting)
There was a protest today outside the SBC building on Folsom Street here in San Francisco, but it drew hardly any attention and there was no media around.
The building itself is pretty scary looking [google.com]. It's a huge brown rectangle with tinted windows that also somehow look brown. Compared with the nice architecture of the nearby buildings, it sure is an eyesore.
Anyhow, someone want to offer me any conspiracy theories on why nobody cares?
Re:Big Brother (Score:2)
Well, gee, that's obvious. It's the Soma they put in the water supply.
What were we talking about again?
Re:Big Brother (Score:4, Insightful)
Domestic wiretap abuse is ancient news. Been going on since there were wires to tap. Look at the COINTELPRO stuff from half a century back to see some real dirty tricks.
The immigration thing, on the other hand, got 'WAY big when congress decided a fair "compromise" solution would be to add maybe 60 million Mexicans to the 300 million population of the US over the next 20 years - giving them full citizenship (including the vote).
Adding one new voter for every five now present - when the two major parties are so evenly matched that the presidency gets decided by a few hundred votes - sounded to a lot of citizens like an invasion.
Then consider that the people in question grew up in a country where the government is totally corrupt and the laws deserving of contempt, most of them came here, stay here, and work in violation of OUR laws (while our own politicians refuse to enforce them and reward the immigrants for breaking them), and are being educated by a system that keeps them isolated from the general culture. So they started to worry about what will happen to respect for law over the next few decades.
They pushed the congress critters and got ignored. Then they got mad.
The immigration issue is a reboot of US politics on the banana repulic model. If you thought you've seen government corruption in the last couple decades you ain't seen NOTHING yet.
And if it continues in the same vein for even a couple more years it could, in the opinion of many, literally start an avalanche that will lead to the second civil war.
So, yes, it's significantly more "the in thing to discuss" than a little traffic analysis on phone calls by the NSA.
As one slashdotter pointed out a couple weeks ago, the NSA makes Nixon look like an amateur.
Compared to the NSA Nixon's plumbers WERE amateurs. Heck - compared to the NSA the KGB were a garage shop (and NOT the hi-tek startup kind, either.)
Re:Big Brother (Score:2)
That is more than half the entire Mexican population. (reference) [wikipedia.org] If you are not simply exaggerating, (ie. FUDing) could you please back up your numbers?
Re:Big Brother (Score:2)
- The number allowed by the proposed legislation
- The number of illegals estimated to be here now (about 12 million), assuming they bring in the same proportion of relatives that those legalized in the first amnesty did.
The US is estimated to have about 10% of the working-age population of Mexico and the same percentage of non-working dependents (which is what 12 million comes out to by that same set of Mexican population figures) alread
Whew (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, fortunately, my brain kicked in. Why, if the Vonage IPO was going to be a blockbuster, would they give away so many shares to the unwashed masses?
Unless they needed the unwashed masses to drum up demand.
These finance guys aren't typically stupid. Yeah, sure, it was theoretically possible that they were giving out so many shares out of the goodness of their heart, but my experience in life is that there ain't no free lunch.
I'm glad my suspicians were borne out. I'd have been REALLY pissed if it shot up 10x or something. :D
Re:Whew (Score:2)
Re:Whew (Score:3, Insightful)
The Red Hat precedent did occur to me, but that was a bit of a different deal. First, the pool of people who were contributors is much smaller than the (almost) entire Vonage customer base. Second, I think it was limited to much smaller than 5,000 shares (like 100 shares or something?). Third, contributors to Red Hat seems a bit more honest than any customer that
Re:Whew (Score:2)
I've been happy with the service, but the future doesn't look so bright.
Re:Whew (Score:2)
a) have REALLY annoying commercials and
b) telemarketed me.
Re:Whew (Score:3, Informative)
Unless they needed the unwashed masses to drum up demand.
Well, it seems to have worked, despite the price drop. I signed up for 100 shares, but was allocated none; so it's not as if they had to dump loads of stock on the customers.
Do Not Compute (Score:2)
Device drivers and the GPL (Score:3, Interesting)
Should a similar exemption not apply to device drivers compiled as kernel modules?
Re:Device drivers and the GPL (Score:2)
I don't understand. I really don't.
WTF is going on here.
Re:Device drivers and the GPL (Score:2)
Re:Device drivers and the GPL (Score:2)
Consider this please in the intended spirit. (Score:2)
Nearly every "pay for play" copy of Linux comes with nvidia and or ati commercial drivers included. It would seem that the bi
Re:Consider this please in the intended spirit. (Score:2)
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:4, Insightful)
It lets me make use of better graphics on my linux box. Thus, it is useful to me. Now I may not be the free software community, but I like to consider myself a friendly neighbor. I use what works.
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:5, Informative)
I call FUD. I have successfully tested XGL in kororaa with the Intel i810 chipset in my Dell Inspiron 510m laptop. I guess we don't "all know" after all.
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:2)
Download kororaa 0.2 cd. I used bittorrent, you're welcome to use another technique if it makes you happy. I hear RFC 1149 networking is all the rage these days.
Insert into CD drive. Turn on power.
Press the magic key (I think it was F12) that presents a boot-device menu. Select the CD.
Press ENTER at the prompt.
Wait a bit.
Enjoy the shiny spinny cubeness of it all.
QED. FOAD.
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:3, Informative)
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:2)
XGL definitely does NOT require blobware to work. It does, sadly, require blobware to work on Nvidia hardware. But that's not the same thing.
Speak for yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a rabid supporter of Free Software, and have been for many years. But I have no problem with closed source device drivers. Never have, never will.
Why? Because by their very nature, device drivers are not free to begin with, because you have to have possesion of that device to use them in the first place. Thus, "Freedom 0" as defined by the FSF is impossible. I guess RMS doesn't read his own manifestos?
Not to mention the fact that for both of these vendors, it is legally impossible to open their drivers because they license code from other 3rd party companies.
Don't agree with me? Fine, don't buy the hardware from these vendors, or contribute to the relevant projects to replace them. But don't go pushing your views on everyone else in the community - for a lot of us, drivers are a different class of software that do not neccessarily have to be free to be useful.
Re:Speak for yourself (Score:2)
I think that while chip and hardware designers are under no obligation to release open drivers, they ought not withhold the ISA in any way. If a piece of hardware cannot be documented for the purpose of creating drivers without revealing the
Re:Speak for yourself (Score:2)
Not everyone has a processor just as not everyone has the device that the driver intends to control. Just because the software works with some hardware does not prevent retransmission, reuse, modification, etc. Your claim that "a lot" of people believe that the need for free software has a special driver exception might be true, but the set of peo
Re:Drivers = Software (Score:3, Insightful)
You're mis-applying RMS's point (Score:4, Insightful)
The authors of Sun Java have no (current) intention of making it free, so it's non-free by design and thus quite rightly gets RMS's ire. As RMS suggests, every enhancement that Sun makes to Java just makes matters worse.
In contrast, Xgl is currently tied to nVidia or ATI hardware only because the authors haven't yet made it work with anything else, but it could do so, so it's just a question of manpower and not a matter of non-free intent. It would probably work with Mesa anyway, but excruciatingly slowly.
Xgl is dependent on OpenGL, and you'd better not be complaining about that because it's the standard 3D API for free and open-source software. It just so happens that nVidia and ATI have the most efficient and widely used implementations of OpenGL for consumer PCs, that's all. The fact that the FOSS community hasn't yet fully implemented any competing 3D-accelerated version of OpenGL isn't Xgl's fault, nor is it OpenGL's fault --- there is no non-free OpenGL license blocking such implementations as there is with Java. (You might not be able to call it "OpenGL" unless it's validated, but that's peripheral.)
So, you're confusing the non-freeness of Java with nothing more evil than the early state of Xgl and the lack of 3D-accelerated non-proprietary implementations of OpenGL. Well, it may have escaped your attention, but a collosal proportion of all free programs are incomplete or still being worked on, and that doesn't make them non-free.
You need to use some commonsense here. By all means complain about ATI and nVidia, but not about OpenGL or Xgl. Xgl is free software, and OpenGL is an open standard. Xgl just needs some more work, as does our free OpenGL clone. Work in progress.
Re:You're mis-applying RMS's point (Score:4, Insightful)
Java is just as open of a standard as OpenGL. Anyone can implement a version of it, if they have the resources. The issue, in BOTH cases, is that the free implementations are inadequate.
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to reserve the word "evil" for things that are, you know, evil. Like holding prisoners in secret prisons scattered around the world so you can torture them. Selling software without giving away source may not be the best way to produce and deliver software (or maybe it is, I don't know) but isn't "evil".
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:2)
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:2)
I've always seen "evil" used to describe bad companies, who coincidentally produce bad software. The software is bad, the company is evil. Other companies, who do not produce software, can be evil and do evil things too. Like gassing thousands of Indians with their chemical plant.
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:2)
"evil is as evil does."
Oh, wait...
That was just a bad movie.
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:2)
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:2)
Re:XGL and the Java Trap (Score:2)
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Re:What more can be said... (Score:2)
God, it only gets worse:
It really is odd that you flame Vista for your devices not working properly. As software architect, I would claim hardware developers for not taking care of drivers for upcoming operating systems. As it could be read from your article, you didn't had the time of your life downloading drivers from Lenovo's driver site. Then, reboot occur every 10 minutes, right?
1.) It really is - split infinitive
2.) claim - should be blame (proofreading, kthxbyebye)
3.) you didn't had? What the...? I
Re:What more can be said... (Score:2)
"It really is" actually may not be a split infinitive. Still, though. My high horse is an inch shorter, but my point remains the same.
Re:What more can be said... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What more can be said... (Score:2, Informative)
Er, no, it's not [wikipedia.org]. The infinitive form is the "to X" form; "to boldly split infinitives that no man has split before."
And there's really nothing wrong with splitting infinitives in English, that's a rule from Latin mistakenly carried over [bartleby.com].
I love irony.
Re:What more can be said... (Score:2)
Re:What more can be said... (Score:2)
Of the suggestions for "improoving," I definitely like "imbruting."