Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: BitKeeper, Maine, Novell
I thought Adam Smith was in favor of free markets and the exchange of ideas. mrjive writes "The plot thickens. In response to yesterday's story, it turns out that the attack on the free software movement was attached to the end of the letter in question by Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash, who happens to have Microsoft as his biggest beneficiary. The original authors of the letter have sent an angry response for essentially twisting its original purpose. Read the full scoop here."
For the even-fuller scoop, see Roblimo's article on NewsForge.
Not bottling it up inside of himself. An anonymous reader writes "Richard M. Stallman has responded to comments made a week ago in response to his own Linux kernel mailing list post about the BitKeeper controversy. 'A technical issue or project sometimes raises ethical issues,' Stallman began. He did not stop there. More on the (newly cached and therefore a little bit Slashdot-immune) Linux and Main . Be gentle."
Free knowledge for sale for free, etc. OverCode@work writes "The complete LaTeX source to Loki Software's game programming book, Programming Linux Games, is now available on the author's site. This book was reviewed here a while back. Mad props to the publisher for letting this happen."
Everybody'sSQL haggar writes "MySQL (commercial license) will be shipped as standard with NetWare according to this announcement. I consider it a follow-up to the Slashdot story about the PostgreSQL port for NetWare. Apparently, the options for NetWare users are widening, thanks to open-source products!"
An iBook in every (lobster)pot! Call Me Black Cloud writes "Some time ago Maine awarded a contract to Apple for laptops for school kids. MacCentral has an interview with Maine governor Angus King where he discusses the success of the program. Despite the Maine state legislature's attempts to kill the program, it continues on. Why? Well, a $1M grant from the Gates Foundation certainly helped. Over the summer Apple delivered 18,000 iBooks and installed 239 wireless networks in 239 schools."
So long as they're not mandatory. Polo writes "I noticed that the Garmin Rino 110 and 120 are shipping. If you don't remember, these are FRS/GMRS Radios with integrated GPS. You can transmit your position to other units so they can hear you and see where you are. Pretty cool. This is a follow-up to an older story"
What the market will bear. His Nastiness writes "Just a follow-up that I ran across that indicates that Steve Ballmer may have just been blowing hot air on not selling the XBox in Austrailia anymore. See the previous thread here."
The article says that the Gates Foundation kicked in a million dollar grant, and that the state of Maine thought, rightfully so, that Apple was a better product.
A quote, "The bids were roughly similar in price, but the iBook had a greater value than the other laptops".
I'm sure Gates will be a bit more careful in the future and add stuff like "Here's a million dollars worth of M$ stuff".
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
The don't communicate via satellite, they get their position from the gps satellites just like other gps receivers, then they can transmit their position to other users using the radio.
First read about them here: Gates Foundation
Here's a few highlights of the year ending 12/31/2001
Financial Position highlights
Amounts are in thousands of dollars.
Net assets: $32,751,466
(note: That's BILLIONS)
Grants Paid
Global Healthcare: $855,567
Education: $177,944
They are the largest private contributor fighting global health issues (and it is believed to be the largest driving force behind malaria eradication in the world)
There are very few real things in this world...this isn't one of them.
Their website has a lot of information on what it's done, and I must say, the foundation rocks. Click on the "Grants" link for a graph of grants given. $5.5B. That's a lot of mo... In 2001 (from the annual report), "...we gave over $1 billion in grants in support of more than 2,050 grantees." You may hate the company, but that monopoly is doing some good somewhere!
Here's more about the grant to Maine.
While I agree that the bicameral (two-house) system is quite efficient and is a good legislative solution, please remember that the Constitution has absolutely nothing to say about political parties.
This gets battered around a lot, but Microsoft has a very tiny interest in Apple. When someone tells you "I heard Apple was bailed out...blah blah..." they are probably more than a little confused.
Microsoft's supposed bail-out was an investment of $150 million dollars into a company that had over 4 billion in reserves at the time. Apple still has over 4 billion in "liquid" like investments.
--- I do not moderate.
No, we get stuck with a middle-of-the-road Liberal party in power becuase the other interests in the country can't get their act together and get them out. And thanks to the lack of term limits and anything resembling the power of the US house/senate, we get essentially a dictatorship that has been in power so long that they are corrupt.
At least you have change in government every now and again, and some way to oppose a decision taken by the president.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
GF might have simply chosen what computer would benefit students the most.
Not to stomp on the Gate's foundaton, but they didn't choose this technology. They dontated money for educational computers and Maine decided to go with Apple.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
I live in Maine, AND was one of the estimators involved with the laptop program. Our company was subcontracted by apple to do the physical installations (244 of them in all) in every school, and I have this to say: we spoke to many of the teachers; yes, many were against it to start. By the end of THEIR training, the vast majority of them were in love with the program. It comes down to this; you CANNOT overspend on education. That combination of words has no place in America; or shouldn't, at any rate. Yes, the laptops were expensive, and yes some kids may damage them; but the state was also given a (quite hefty) warranty program by Apple, and rules on whether they (the laptops) go home with the students or not are set individually by each school. It gives not only the schools a sense of independence and technological edge, but the students as well. They know that they are some of the only students in the world involved with a technology initiative this big. Also, it's well known that students who start using computers early and often are those people who don't need a dissertation on double-clicking in order to get "online" later in life :-).
I don't know why people have trouble with this. This isn't about the GPL, or Stallman per se. It's about the fact that you can't develop for both the Linux kernel and a source code control system (e.g., CVS) at the same time without paying for BitKeeper.
Obviously RMS has set himself up for flaming. People on any mailing list people tend to be very touchy about what they consider topical. :-) On the other hand, if you are a kernel developer using BitKeeper, then you can't work on CVS without paying money to BitKeeper.
-- Jessica
The mutant geek grrl from Hell.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that philanthropy is a wonderful tax write-off, especially as Gates can donate money to his own foundation, from which he receives money back via administrative and charitable expenses.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Even if working on Linux and working on Subversion are separate jobs, the restrictions of the Bitkeeper license apply to the person and thus cross from one job to the other
From my reading, it applied to the person or organisation the developer is working for; Larry and IBM negotiated a special exemption, for example.
So, by being a Subversion developer, it's possible for you to stop hundreds (or even thousands) of your fellow employees from being able to use the free version of Bitkeeper to work with the Linux kernel, even in their own private time at home. (And of course one cannot be a developer of a competing system and use the free version of Bitkeeper as a trivial case of this restriction.)
deus does not exist but if he does