Not doing business in the US is not the same as deciding never to step foot in it, ever.

Shachar

Seriously, bro? What a ridiculous retort, considering banks (in their modern form) are state creations. Good luck trying to build an empire on a fiat currency printing press without government.

Utter crap. Codenomicon are very friendly to FLOSS and FLOSS developers. They're also great guys. They have been providing free test services to the Samba project for many years now, and have helped us fix many many bugs.

In case you hadn't noticed, the code they're reporting on here is closed source proprietary code...

I think Linus should respect the community. Just because Linus thought a certain compromise was okay doesn't mean he is allowed to make that compromise in the name of the entire community.

Tridge owed Linus nothing, and Linus' entitled response was arrogant and out of place.

I have no idea why you brought the GPL into it. It doesn't matter which free software license the Linux revision control would be under, so long as it is free software. Going proprietary for such infrastructure opens the community up for precisely the sort of danger that actually did end up happening. You cannot yank your software if it's free, regardless of what license it's under.

Shachar

I don't. I'm guessing, based on the fact that I am doing something I'm presuming is similar, and based on the fact that, were I a student today, I'd be joining in.

Mind you, the anti-Israel crowed is similarly motivated. The people spewing party lines accusing Israel of everything and anything (can be seen here on Slashdot whenever the word "Israel" is mentioned) aren't given instructions or coordinated by some central entity. They are giving us their honest opinion, misguided though it is.

How about "freedom of speech"?

Someone suggested the word is "propaganda". This word has a severe negative context, because propaganda usually involves lies. At its core, however, the word merely means actively working to spread an idea (see definition no. 2). I definitely consider what I'm doing to match that narrow meaning.

Shachar

Yes. That's the one I mean.

Linus's decision to go with a proprietary solution for such a central free software project was wrong to begin with. Linus took a huge presumption, agreeing to a EULA on behalf of the entire community. As such, it was Linus's own mess he had to clean up. I think the passage of time only shows that more clearly.

Shachar

Not that discussion again....

Linus blowing up at Andrew Tridgdell for "reverse engineering" the bitkeeper protocol comes to mind.

I will agree that this time around, the complaints are grounded. It does, indeed, seem like a compiler bug. Whether that is a reason to be so critical of gcc 4.9.0, I don't know. It's obvious a serious problem for the kernel.

Shachar

This is not spam. They are doing, essentially, what I'm also doing (on a smaller scale). Essentially, find the misguided ignorant comments and try to enlighten them. Nothing there is automated, which automatically means this is not spam.

Shachar

It sounds like this transformer had its center tap grounded and was the path to ground on one side of a ground loop as the geomagnetic field moved under pressure from a CME, inducing a common-mode current in the long-distance power line. A gas pipeline in an area of poor ground conductivity in Russia was also destroyed, it is said, resulting in 500 deaths.

One can protect against this phenomenon by use of common-mode breakers and perhaps even overheat breakers. The system will not stay up but nor will it be destroyed. This is a high-current rather than high-voltage phenomenon and thus the various methods used to dissipate lightning currents might not be effective.

Yes, it is what I'm saying. However, I don't think even if the balance turned out to be positive on Akamai's side, even that would count as "asking ISP to pay for access".

Imagine a small ISP. Not a lot of hosted content. In order to boost local content, this ISP provides co-location services at lower than usual costs. Due to the same considerations, the ISP pays a lot of peering costs (mostly incoming traffic, not a lot of outgoing traffic).

And then this ISP has an idea: I'll contact Akamai. The Akamai network accounts for over 25% of web traffic. If I have a local Akamai presence, this will greatly reduce my peering costs. Akamai's sales people are aware of this equation, of course. As a result, the deal finally negotiated mean that the ISP is paying Akamai for the privilege of hosting Akamai servers!

And the ISP is ecstatic. Yes, they are hosting a commercial server for free AND paying for the privilege, but they are saving a bundle on their peering costs. This is a straight bandwidth for bandwidth money-equivalent transaction. If Akamai started asking for too much, the ISP could tell them to take a hike. Presumably, for that to happen Akamai would have to ask more than the bandwidth costs it is saving!

Should Akamai choose to play dirty (as far as I know, they never do), they would be in a stronger position than Netflix. After all, you can get Netflix content elsewhere. Conversely, you cannot get to, e.g., apple.com without going through an Akamai server. If Akamai isn't doing it, I don't think there is any danger of Netflix doing it.

Shachar

To be fair, Akamai does charge some ISPs for its service. At least according to someone who actually went over the financial reports, Akamai doesn't get actual money from this, but rather a reduction in the cost to co-locate the servers.

Still, this is not the same thing as TFA. The thing that Akamai charges ISPs for is the peering traffic saved, not access to the content. If an ISP says "no", then no local Akamai cache, and the service is as good as the ISP's bandwidth to other providers that do have an Akamai presence. Neither availability nor performance are hindered by refusing to do business with Akamai, except losing the obvious advantage of a local cache.

Disclaimer:
I (currently) works for Akamai. This post, however, is not affiliated with Akamai in any way or form. The opinions do not represent those of my employer, nor does the information employed come from any data not publicly available.

Shachar

I always wonder about people who say that. Can you, please, explain, if Israel is after genocide, how come there are so few Palestinian casualties? I mean, the number, while indeed extremely high for warfare, don't even begin to threaten even natural growth.

Either Israel is completely incompetent at performing genocide, or genocide was never the intention, and you (and your ilk) just made it up to make Israel sound bad.

Shachar

In March 1989 much of Quebec lost power for the same thing.

They lost power because the common-mode breakers tripped, not because their system was actually damaged.