SCO: GPL is constitutional after all
Groklaw reports that SCO has retracted its claim that the GNU GPL is unconstitutional, unpatriotic, and violates export control laws:
DROPPED: "The GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, together with copyright, antitrust and export control laws, and IBM's claims based thereon, or related thereto, are barred."
Well, that's a relief. The US constitution permits copyright holders to publish their work under a licence? How remarkable.
PJ writes:
This is the happy day that SCO acknowledges by its actions -- although it failed to put out a press release -- that the GPL isn't unconstitutional after all. A little smear here, a little smear there, and then, poof. All gone. "Sorry for having questioned your legality and trying to make people think you are subversive and unconstitutional and all. Our mistake." Of course, they didn't actually apologize. I'm just horsing around and pretending to apologize in their voice. You wouldn't want to hold your breath waiting for them to say they are sorry.
They are probably too embarrassed to do anything but quietly drop it and then skulk away. They do still claim the GPL is void or voidable, that it is unenforceable, and that the FSF selectively enforces it, so not all the silliness is gone. But they have tucked tail and begun to back down. They are getting their PhD in the GPL, and in time it will gradually dawn on them that they are wrong about all the rest too. Then they will completely throw in the towel, with a snarl, I have no doubt, and then we will have a party, an international celebration, which I will attend in a red dress. [...]
Humorously, SCO says the following allegations by IBM are "wholly irrelevant":
58. SCO submitted an Amended Complaint on July 22, 2003 and a Second Amended Complaint on February 27, 2004.
59. In its succession of complaints, SCO has asserted legal theories that are meritless , such as that SCO has ownership rights with respect to all of the code in AIX and Dynix . SCO has also sought relief to which it is plainly not entitled, such as a permanent injunction terminating IBM's ability to possess and use the software products it licensed from AT&T Technologies, Inc., notwithstanding the fact that those rights are expressly "irrevocable" and "perpetual".
60. SCO further persisted in maintaining for nearly a year the unsound claim that IBM had misappropriated its trade secrets. Yet when pressed to identify a single trade secret that IBM allegedly misappropriated, SCO could not, even after being ordered to do so by the Court. SCO finally (and properly) abandoned this claim, upon which SCO's entire lawsuit was initially premised, in its Second Amended Complaint.
73. At the December 5, 2003 hearing concerning discovery issues, SCO further represented to the Court that SCO would be filing a copyright infringement action against IBM "within the coming few days or no less than a week."
posted Fri 30 Apr 2004 in /issues/sco-vs-linux | link
Java, the Chicken of Tomorrow
The rant I was referring to the other day was from Java, the Chicken of Tomorrow by Miles Nordin:
Sure, there is some association between the imaginary JavaCPU and the Java language. But there is also some association between the real MIPS CPU and the C++ language: modern CPUs are overtly designed with the foreknowledge that they will be judged based on how fast they execute algorithms written in C++. Is the nonexistant Java CPU really uniquely adept at running Java programs, like a Symbolics `Ivory'' CPU is uniquely adept at running Lisp programs? No.
This observation makes me wonder if we wouldn't be better off throwing out Java and writing programs in C, then cross-compiling them for the VAX CPU. Instead of a JRE, we could simply write a VAX emulator for all interesting architectures, and put virtual-VAX sandboxes inside web browsers. VAX insns would become the Language Of The Web. We could standardize a crippled miniature virtual VMS called WebVMS for building into web browsers, to give all these VAXlets access to the network, the local filesystem, a GUI toolkit. We would have VAX-compatible smartcards. There is no reason a VAX emulator can't translate VAX instructions into native-CPU instructions just like a JRE's JIT does. This can be done quite well---like I said, the VAX emulator for the Alpha is faster than any physical VAX CPU. I suspect VAX machine-code would also be similarly compact to Java bytecode, since machine-code-compactness was the biggest priority when the VAX was designed. There is no missing piece to invent or design: we simply agree that, henceforth, all applications will be VAX applications so as to be equally inconvenient for everyone. Voila! Portability!
And when he hits his stride
The most important feature of the Java CPU is that it doesn't exist yet, but it could. Part of Sun's plan to make money from giving away Java was to build Java CPUs. This was a stated plan of theirs, not my speculation. The following is much more speculative.
Sun reasoned that if they could construct computers that ran Java bytecode natively, everyone else would suddenly realize that their JREs were CPU emulators for the computers Sun was selling. I suspect the fastest JavaCPUs would always be emulators, just as the fastest VAXen are emulators running on Alphas, but perhaps Sun could make some slow computers out of physical JavaCPUs that cost less to make than competing emulators of similar speed. The JavaCPU is thus extremely simple, so as to be implementable with minimal silicon and minimal research. Compared to a modern architecture like the Alpha, the JavaCPU looks like something an undergrad dreamed up in the men's room based on the mathematical elegance of two urinal cakes, one stacked upon the other. The JavaCPU idea gives Sun a brief window for a hit-and-run industrial subversion. If Sun can open hundreds of these tiny windows-of-opportunistic-slack, maybe a few of them will pay off. Something like the Alpha matures slowly, with many years of compiler research and successive core revisions abstracted by PALcode: the Alpha is not hit-and-run, and indeed it looks like Digital didn't survive long enough to finish cashing in on the Alpha. A low-end infantile design like the Java bytecode makes business sense in an industry where everyone with a big plan or a big research investment eventually gets screwed over by speculative neck-tie damage and goes bankrupt.
It's an interesting essay/rant. (Incidentally, Stephane has a copy of the original The Chicken of Tomorrow which is also very amusing.)
posted Thu 29 Apr 2004 in /software/languages/java | link
hp an FSF corporate sponsor
hp is apparently now a corporate sponsor of the Free Software Foundation. That's pretty cool.
posted Thu 29 Apr 2004 in /software/fsf | link
Labour saving device
An advertising flyer for the Economist quotes Larry Ellison (net worth somewhere over $20bn):
I used to think. Now I just read the Economist.
posted Thu 29 Apr 2004 in /software/industry | link
Colin likes D; the real universal virtual machine
Colin Walters writes that he likes D, the latest installment in what tridge calls the Tool of the Month Club. (Send no money now!) I have to say I like the elevator pitch, but I haven't tried it and I am a bit skeptical whether there is enough of a niche there for it to survive. We shall see.
One interesting thing is that D is not based on a virtual machine, which is a core feature of Java. (I guess you can compile Java to native code using something like gcj, but this is not a very common scenario at the moment.)
[These are kind of sketchy; it's a blog; don't shoot.]
There is already a standard virtual bytecode format; we don't need Java to introduce another. It's called x86 machine code. In fact people have already developed very efficient hardware implementations...
I'm wondering if most of the arguments for using a platform-neutral bytecode could still be achieved if that bytecode is x86: security is mostly about whether code can have access to system resources (files, other processes, the network). So block what system calls it can make. Running untrusted native code under SELinux is safe because it enforces security on the boundary. I'm sure more work can be done here in allowing something like a native applet.
Crusoe is something like a JIT for x86, and there are others for ia64, Alpha and other platforms. Perhaps a higher-level intermediate language makes it easier...
Perhaps garbage collection is something that should be done at a lower level than the compiler output.
You can mix languages in a single program to some extent with JVM or common intermediate language. On the other hand you can do that too with C and Python, Perl, Scheme, etc, and use this to good effect to implement alternate hard and soft layers. More complex systems might be better off running as separate communicating services than being jammed into a single program.
There is a good essay that discusses this idea, but I can't find it anymore amongst all the other good Java rants out there.
posted Wed 28 Apr 2004 in /software/languages/D | link
"We'll be waiting"
From a slashdot story about drobbins quitting Gentoo:
More Gentoo Instability (Score:1)
by Anonymous Coward on 10:04 AM April 27th, 2004 (#8978297)
When you get fed up, we'll be here [debian.org].
Re:More Gentoo Instability (Score:4, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward on 10:10 AM April 27th, 2004 (#8978331)
In roughly the same place we were three years ago. :-)
Also, +4 offtopic erotica.
posted Tue 27 Apr 2004 in /software/debian | link
mouse tricks
I like to run oneko (chases the cursor) and unclutter (hides the cursor) at the same time and let them fight it out.
posted Tue 27 Apr 2004 in /random | link
The monoculture furphy
Marcus J Ranum debunks the monoculture security idea.
If the Onion had an IT section, this would be in it: Gartner Echoes Concerns in visionary "me too!" report.
...
I think there is a problem, but it's more about monopoly than monoculture. (As Ranum says: well, duh.) Microsoft's massive customer lock-in means that there has been not much real and sustainable competition in many areas of software.
Suppose you like distcc, but you think Linux security sucks. Well, recompile it for OpenBSD or Trusted Solaris or whatever floats your goat. Even if distcc were proprietary you could probably persuade me to port to OpenBSD because the costs of doing so are pretty low.
None of that would be possible if it were locked in to the Microsoft API: if you want the application, then you have to take the security you're given. And there are flow-on effects: it means that almost all the other code you use will be in C++, which has effects on security. Most of the hardware you buy will have been shaped by Windows Logo requirements.
posted Tue 27 Apr 2004 in /issues/security | link
Copping an earn
The 7:30 report asks whether money has an undue influence on professional sport.
This seems a bit like asking whether money has an undue influence on banking.
posted Tue 27 Apr 2004 in /issues/politics | link
Brownlist
I'd like to see an IP blacklist of machines with stupid antivirus software that replies to viruses with forged From addresses. I propose to call this a babypoobrownlist. Sadly it seems even RAV Antivirus can be configured to be this stupid:
From: RAV AntiVirus <ravms@mail1.utlonline.co.ug>
Subject: RAV AntiVirus scan results
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 16:28:57 +0300
To: aicmbarara@utlonline.co.ug
[50 addresses deleted]
This e-mail is generated by the mail1.utlonline.co.ug mail server to warn you that the e-mail sent by aicmbarara@utlonline.co.ug to robert@aquabotanic.com, paulio629@aol.com, not@thisaddress.com, tommyboy@hotmail.com, news@ftscotland.co.uk, ifraigun@aol.com, steve@tropheus.demon.co.uk, 47@msn.com, c.durand@comcast.net, fornguse@shaw.ca, campaigns@votenader.org, indigomoon@bonbon.net, n.sandberg@comcast.net, thomaswinters@cablespeed.com, bleahcim49@frontiernet.net, the-big-dog@comcast.net,
If you are the sender:
-------------------
The scanned e-mail has your address in the
header field. Either your computer is infected or someone's computer having your e-mail address in the address book has been infected.
(Please note that some viruses are sending e-mails directly from your computer. Our advise is to check your computer using an up-to-date antivirus product).
If you are the receiver:
---------------------
Please contact the sender: most likely he/she doesn't know he/she has a computer virus.
I mean really, what incredibly moronic advice. What am I supposed to do about some random person who has me in their address book? The last thing I want is email from some benighted windows user telling me I have a computer virus.
posted Tue 27 Apr 2004 in /issues/virus | link
BMW Driver Training
Buckets of fun.
posted Mon 26 Apr 2004 in /cars | link
Various blog changes
Brad Marshall kindly pointed out how to fix RSS in my Blosxom installation. It seems to work for me now on liferea and planet humbug. (Cue German laughter.)
I also updated the visual style a little. I think using <table>s for layout is not politically correct anymore, but it just works so well. In the venerable tradition of the web, there is now a picture of a cat on my homepage.
posted Mon 26 Apr 2004 in /meta | link
500,000 search engines
Name of company replaced.
I have visited sourcefrog.net and noticed that your website is not listed on some search engines. I am sure that through our service the number of20 people who visit your website will definitely increase. $MONKEYTURDS is a unique technology that instantly submits your website to over 500,000 search engines and directories -- a really low-cost and effective way to advertise your site. For more details please go to MONKEYTURDS.net.
Do you suppose there really are 5e5 search engines? Does it matter?
posted Fri 23 Apr 2004 in /issues/spam | link
poor listproc
13 N Apr 23 robertl@gmrs.de ( 24) Listproc, Exotic sex is urgently necessary for you!
Poor listproc, never gets any sweet lovin.
posted Fri 23 Apr 2004 in /issues/spam | link
Anodyne
From design guidelines for Microsoft Aero, on how to present messages about security:
Incorporate a reassuring tone that leads with a description of how the user's data is being protected. For example, list your third-party certifications and endorsements.
"As used by Tiger Woods!"
Somehow I am not reassured.
posted Wed 21 Apr 2004 in /issues/microsoft | link
python - 70MB/s
I did a simple test the other night of how fast Python can read/write data. A simple 'cat' in Python can pump data through at about 70MB/s on a Pentium M laptop. This is just with simple read() and write() into strings, without any special tricks. By contrast bzip2 on that machine is only about 300kB/s.
That's probably pretty slow compared to C, but faster than most network connections could sustain. It's an interesting data point for writing moderate-performance software in Python.
(Doing a lot of manipulation might well slow it down.)
posted Wed 21 Apr 2004 in /software/languages/python | link
More on pay-for-email; orkut categorizations
aj continues our discussion about email postage as a solution to spam/viruses, pointing out that “from someone whose Orkut profile lists him as a "libertarian", this seems odd”.
[digression] I don't see any category on Orkut I'm really happy with (so perhaps I should choose Other/None.) I'd rather be called a "liberal", perhaps, but that's not an option and anyhow the term has been degraded in different directions in both the US and Australia. Given that they had "Very Libertarian" I choose the weaker one as indicating just a leaning in that direction.
Spam is fraud and theft of service on an industrial scale, activities which are already illegal. I think it's completely consistent with moderate liberalism/libertarianism to want existing laws to be enforced either by the government or by civil suit. You have to go pretty far out on the scale of libertarianism to say that the government shouldn't take a role in preventing trespass, theft, fraud, etc.
posted Tue 20 Apr 2004 in /issues/spam | link
Quick quiz
Ken Silverman says that "sub eax, 128" -> "add eax, -128" is his favorite optimization. Why is it neat?
Also, John Carmack on what makes a good programmer.
posted Tue 20 Apr 2004 in /software/puzzles | link
Is an armed society more polite?
Some people like to quote Heinlein saying that “an armed society is a polite society”. The corrolary is supposed to be that encouraging citizens to bear arms might make them more polite, responsible, etc.
It occurred to me that this might be a testable hypothesis.
Suppose we took a control group of random citizens, gave them lethal weapons, and observed whether they became more polite, or less, or stayed the same.
In fact, we do this experiment every day when people drive automobiles that are capable of killing more people more quickly than a small to medium gun. I think people actually become less polite, quicker to anger, more likely to see malice in the actions of other drivers, etc. (See for example AAMI crash index 2003.)
(I don't really think this proves anything about guns. It just amused me. I can think of plenty of caveats in either direction.)
posted Sun 18 Apr 2004 in /issues/guns | link
Wiggle
Wiggle, a cool tool from NeilBrown:
Wiggle is a program for applying patches that 'patch' cannot apply due to conflicting changes in the original.
Wiggle will always apply all changes in the patch to the original. If it cannot find a way to cleanly apply a patch, it inserts it in the original in a manner similar to 'merge', and report an unresolvable conflict. Such a conflict will look like:
<<<<<<< Some text from the original file ||||||| Some text that the patch changes ======= Some text that is the result of the patch >>>>>>>with the meaning that the "text that the patch changes" was expected somewhere in the "text from the original file" and should be replaced with "the result of the patch".
wiggle analyses the file and the patch in terms of words rather than whole lines and so is able to find matches that patch is unable to find. If a patch changes a word at the end of a line, and a word at the start of that line has been modified since the patch was made, then wiggle will have no trouble applying the patch.
wiggle has proved very useful for back-porting patches that were generated for the development kernel, onto the stable kernel. Sometimes it does exactly the right thing with the patch. When it doesn't it reports a conflict which is easy to resolve with an understanding of what the code and the patch were trying to achieve.
(Mentioned on the arch-users list.)
posted Fri 16 Apr 2004 in /software/vc | link
Subversion vs Perforce
Interesting thread about Subversion compared to Perforce.
posted Fri 16 Apr 2004 in /software/vc/subversion | link
UUCP over automobiles
From Ali over 0xdeadbeef:
I was reading IEEE computer magazine (January) and saw this article about a pretty cool project designed to bring internet access to the third world in places where it's too expensive to pull wire. The idea is clever, so I thought I'd share:
They put a wireless access point in each village (with a Linux system), and they put a linux box with an access point and an antenna in vehicles that drive through the villages (like a bus). The bus hardware is powered by a UPS wired to the electrical system. When the bus drives through town, it automatically exchanges data with the village. It's not real-time, but good enough for email and other basic things...
Think uucp, but using cars instead of modems...
posted Thu 8 Apr 2004 in /issues/access | link
svn: Berkeley DB error
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: Berkeley DB error while opening environment for filesystem /var/svn/hpsysfaultmgr/db:
DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
Very annoying.
posted Wed 7 Apr 2004 in /software/vc/subversion | link
Stroustrup on SCO
There is no shortage of credible voices pointing out that SCO is full of fertilizer. One more is added: Bjarne Stroustrup answers claims by Darl McBride that he "owns the C++ programming languages" (sic):
"But someone from SCO claimed that they own C++"; is that not so? It's complete rubbish. I saw that interview. The SCO guy clearly had no clue what C++ was, referreing to it as "the C++ languages". At most, SCO may own a 15-year old and seriously outdated version of Cfront - my original C++ compiler. I was careful not to patent or trademark anything to do with C++. That's one reason we write plain "C++" and not "C++(tm)". The C++ standard is unencumbered of patents - the committee carefully checked that also.
posted Wed 7 Apr 2004 in /issues/sco-vs-linux | link
Samba switches to Subversion
The Samba CIFS project has switched from CVS to Subversion. From tridge's announcement:
For those of you who weren't at the team meeting today, we decided to convert Samba development to subversion. We also decided to do it immediately, as the ideal time to convert was when most of the team was in the same room at the same time. I know this might cause some initial problems for some people, but I am sure this is going to be a worthwhile change in the long run.
We decided not to use the cvs2svn conversion tool as it just seems to have too many problems. Instead we decided to adopt the much simpler approach of starting from the current cvs code state (called "DAY_ZERO") and creating a fresh subversion repository based on an import of our current cvs branches. This means that when working with historical versions you will need to use cvs tools, and when working with diffs between dates that cross the "DAY_ZERO" boundary you will need to use 2 directories and traditional diff tools.
The current status is this:
- all cvs commits to the samba and samba4 repositories on samba.org are denied. cvs update and diff still works, but any attempt to commit will fail with an error message.
- svn over ssh is currently live. See below for brief instructions on usage
- the ~ftp/pub/unpacked/ directory has been converted to use svn, this gives us an anonymously accessible copy of the code via rsync
- cvsweb and anon cvs equivalents have not yet been completed. That is obviously a priority
- the build farm hosts should be operational with svn (they use the unpacked directory) but the "history" button on the web interface won't currently work for new svn commits. That should be fixed soon.
I think the DAY_ZERO approach is pretty sensible.
posted Wed 7 Apr 2004 in /software/vc/subversion | link
The lighter side of occupational health and safety
From S:
For your information: The next time a member of staff receives a radioactive injection prior to a bone scan or other medical procedure, please don't approach the safety officer to ask for a radiation detector and give the impression that there has been an accident. It has already been done!!! I must congratulate the organisers of this joke on it's success, whether it was intentional or not (and I don't think it was). If I was a cat I probably used up about seven of my lives this morning. It is just a shame that they were a day late; April Fool's Day was yesterday. - Andrew.
posted Tue 6 Apr 2004 in /random/humour | link
Great source filenames
From a source tarball I just received:
fm/src/cpp/fm/memprovider/test/HASStub/has/common/util/:wq!
(I think your fly is undone.)
posted Tue 6 Apr 2004 in /random/humour/nerdy | link
Wired: Bob Metcalf on Visionaries
posted Tue 6 Apr 2004 in /software/industry | link
Archives 2008: Apr Feb 2007: Jul May Feb Jan 2006: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun Jan 2005: Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan 2004: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan 2003: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Martin Pool.