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Domain: worldzone.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to worldzone.net.
Stories · 2
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GCC Instability Problems With SuSE/AMD K6?
cmickelson asks: "I've been running SuSE Linux 6.x on my laptop for over a year now and everytime I would compile something I would have to run make several times because of errors during compiling. Now my laptop is very unstable, Windows is unusable because of constant crashes, but Linux generally runs well except for Netscape core dumps, and the compiling problems. Anyway I just assumed the errors were due the system's instablility. However, I recently assembled a new desktop computer and installed SuSE 6.4 on that and the same thing happened when I tried to compile Samba. I had to run make five times before the whole source tree was completed. Is this typical? I find it hard to believe that gcc/gpp could be that unstable, but why else would this happen with two different systems? Is this due to the AMD K6-2 processors (which both laptops have), or is SuSE the problem?" -
Legal Effect Of Patents On User Interface Elements?
cmickelson asks: "Adobe has filed a suit against Macromedia for infringement of Adobe's patent on 'tabbed palettes.' Details available here. What does the Slashdot community think of this? I'm especially concerned with the possible effects of UI patents as it relates to open source software. Is it possible that an open source project could be sued for violation of some company's obscure patent on UI elements? Are developers concerned about this? Should companies even be able to patent something as nebulous as a user interface?" Patenting a "look-and-feel" is about as trite as patenting an idea. Who cares that your UI "looks like" somebody else's. If UI "a" performs better than UI "b", well isn't that what competition is all about?