The US are indeed the greatest single nation exporting the most food, but if you take the EU countries together, the numbers look pretty small in comparison. Germany and France combined export more food than the US, for instance.
I didn't research the other claims in your post, but I'm quite sure they're wrong as well.
Also, although the military spending in the EU combined is less than that of the US, it's basically due to the fact that they're not directly involved in any war (NATO and UN duties aside). Most European nations have a fairly good national defense, but they're relying on diplomacy foremost to resolve conflicts. While in US movies, diplomacy is often laughed off as something unnecessary, in fact, it plays a big role in world politics. Except during WWII, and perhaps the Cold War, the US has done nothing noteworthy to assist security for Europe (and it's debatable if the US had a major influence in the outcome of the Cold War; truth is, there might be more problems now after the USSR has fallen apart).
Social welfare programmes are cut all across Europe all time in the name of capitalism, and this has been going on for decades. The fall of the USSR and the rise of China and the Tiger States have resulted in a vast increase of world wide competition, that corporations try to compensate by cutting costs and urging governments to do the same.
So, it's a myth that Europeans have better welfare because they don't need as much military spending. In fact, they have to spend more for the military now because the world has become more unstable.
Currently, the US banking crisis has a vast detrimental effect on Western economies.
Well, you're wrong. I've written 32-bit multitasking GUI applications already in 1986, long before Windows 3.1 was out. When I started programming on Windows 3.1 in 1993, I used Visual C++ 1.5, which already had a comprehensive API documentation. The Platform SDK and Windows SDK have always been free downloads, as long as I can remember. Microsoft even had and has a free (or low-cost) shipping service for CDs of those SDKs. The only API that costs money is the IFS Kit (installable file system kit, $1000 per license). The MSDN subscription is only necessary if you want CD/DVD sets of selected product media. BTW, since VC++ 2005, even the compilers are free downloads (Express editions). The ease of use of the Platform/Windows SDK documentation is unparalleled so far. Show me just one system API documentation that is better organized, and I'll jump ship gladly.
For Windows, there's a free download called "Windows SDK" (or, formerly, "Platform SDK"). It's free and contains a powerful documentation browser (along with the entire documentation) that kicks XCode's behind!
I tried to use the "browser approach" that you describe, but it was maddening to me. I don't want to spend ages scouring dozens of PDF files and digging through hundreds of misorganized web pages. Thanks, but no thanks.
When I want to look up something it has to be available immediately. And that's what Windows documentation browser, for instance, gives me. I simply type in the name of the function, and bam, it's there. Or, in Visual C++ 2008, it can display the documentation while I'm writing the function call.
You can say all you want about Windows, but it's far from being developer unfriendly. On UNIX systems there are some great tools now as well, and they're damn necessary for development. Apple is doing itself no favor with the current XCode version.
I didn't dispute that Windows has the majority of viruses. But I've received exploits for Mac and Linux in my inboxes as well. The Linux ones seem to attempt to attack automatic mail systems, since they contain shell script portions. It's outright false to claim that for Linux there are no viruses at all. The German government, for instance, will use custom-tailored (probably even automatically created) trojan viruses to spy on citizens under suspicion of serious crimes, and they're not limiting themselves to Windows. And that's just an example. IT experts everywhere can implement viruses for any operating system. There are BTW virus scanners for Linux already that search for Linux viruses, not just Windows viruses on Linux mail servers. Although the prime target for virus authors is still Windows, other platforms have been targeted for a long time already. I still remember the sendmail exploit craze in the mid-90ies, for instance. How can you write an efficient bot net if you don't target UNIX servers?
it's just a better OS to get shit done on. And obviously many other technically-skilled scientists agree. For users, it might be a great OS, but for developers, it's not. There's no easy-to-use documentation browser for developers, like they exist for Windows and GNOME / KDE. The documentation itself is often far better, but finding it can be a real pain. Apple's XCode IDE is a nightmare to use, because the text editor has a single pixel wide text cursor that cannot be customized, and the keyboard layout is non-standard, and cannot be customized either. I've bought a Mac once because I intended to start developing for it, but now I'm running OpenBSD on that box.
What I don't like about MacOS X is, that it is intentionally dumbed down for sake of user-friendliness for the computer-agnostic, but there's often no way to get customization if you do need it.
Using a Mac is expensive, and I simply expect more from it than just a nice-looking user interface.
Why? Soldier bots like in the Terminator movies aren't that bad an idea. Better than real soldiers dying on the battlefield. And a good deterrent too. But in the wrong hands... yeah...
The terminator movies aren't that far fetched, after all. The right type of AI, robot planes, tanks, and soldiers, and mankind is no more...;-)
Then we can only hope that time travel is invented and someone gets sent back thru time to prevent that from happening.;-)
On BSD (incl. MacOS X) and Linux platforms, developers are fixing security holes all the time.
Because, With open-source software, all you need to do to write an exploit is to take a look at the source code.
Most applications that use a plain text protocol (like a web browser communicating via HTTP, for instance, a mailer using SMTP or POP3) report their version to the server. If the server is malicious or compromised, it can determine what exploit to apply to the client, and apply it automatically during the communication session.
Thinking you're safe because you're using OS XYZ is like leaving the barn door wide open.
What will Starbridge Systems think about that? Didn't they develop a dynamically reconfigurable computer that ran Windows NT as a test application on 10,000+ FPGAs back in the 90ies? IIRC, they also had a software framework able to automatically implement software fragments in hardware using FPGA auto-configuration.
Self-repairing computer systems for spacecraft have been in the discussion for decades, and every now and then we get hear about a new project. This project certainly is a good idea, hopefully it will work.
BTW, Motorola (now Freescale) developed self-repairing processors for military applications a couple of years ago.
On the other hand, there would be much less progress, if that wasn't the case. How to keep all those people busy? This way the market is never fully saturated. And we get things like ever-faster computers with ever less power consumption and for ever less money. Would you want to do business applications with a VIC-20 and a 120 KB floppy drive?;-)
expect an OS to not take advantage of current graphics technology Well, in fact, Microsoft had to hold back some of the features it had in store for Vista, chiefly because of expected market acceptance problems. I heard the Vista desktop was intentionally dumbed down graphic-wise to avoid creating too much 3D stuff. We'll definitely see more 3D in the Vista successor, I think.
But Vista's QA obviously sucks... there's a lot of things that don't work right, like system recovery. Try installing FreeBSD 7.0 alongside with Vista on the same machine, on a S-ATA drive with 160 GB. FreeBSD will break the partition table for Vista. And why? Because Vista uses non-standard partition tables.
Microsoft's way of communicating with the open-source community is inferior. No-one who wants to use UNIX and Windows is going to drop UNIX. They drop Windows, because it's lesser OS. Windows is still far inferior to UNIX systems, despite all the new APIs and frameworks in Vista.
Software developers cannot keep with that pace. I've seen companies still developing using Visual C++ 6.0 and Delphi 5!! They're still on NT 4.0 level. Why? Because Microsoft didn't assure seamless transition into the new OSes. Windows device drivers are not portable among Windows versions. So, Windows is costing the industry a lot of money. That'll pay off in massive customer loss sooner or later, methinks. Not just for Microsoft, but also for companies shipping Windows software that is not up-to-date. These problems are far worse than those found on Linux.
It's possible to write compilers for arbitrary languages that generate JVM code. Microsoft came up with VB.NET, Managed C++, C# and J# right from the beginning, because they knew this would be an issue. Blame Sun for not doing the same thing right away. A C++ compiler generating JVM code would be a neat thing. Problems implementing multiple inheritance and templates on the JVM could be easily ironed out by using aggregates and generics. I believe it's possible. If I had the time, I would certainly do it.
But Crysis wastes a lot of CPU power. It seems to be single-threaded, and if you don't have an NVIDIA 8800 card, you're stuck with medium settings (I used it on a ATI HD 3850 card and wasn't happy). Crysis sucks!!;-)
BTW, Vista breaks just as easily as XP. And the rescue mechanisms suck just as much.
There's a still a lot that Microsoft can learn from Linux.
A couple of days ago, a Vista installation of mine perished ungracefully, and I put Ubuntu 8.04 and FreeBSD 7.0 on that box, just to get my daily fix of UNIX for a while. I'm happy!:-)
Exchange comes to mind. Right, Exchange !! Ever heard about IBM Lotus Notes?;-)
Lotus Notes is available for many platforms, including Linux. It can do all the things that Exchange can't. In fact, it existed long before Exchange.
BTW, there's also a free Exchange client called Epiphany, which is included in most Linux and BSD distributions. Of course it can do much more than communicating with Exchange servers.;-)
Take a look at the new Ubuntu 8.04. OK, granted, it's still not as easy to use as Windows in some areas, but in most areas, it's even simpler to use than Windows. And administration is a lot simpler than on Windows. Ever configured.NET servers or deployed.NET applications? Me neither. Funny topic! I still remember the days when Windows was easier to administrate than Linux, but these days are most definitely over. I just have to take a look at Vista to be sure about that.;-)
As has already been mentioned in this thread, programming single core CPUs is not much different than programming multicore CPUs. Multithread-programming and thread-synchronization are the keywords here.
I've been writing multi-threaded applications since 1986 (back when I learned C on AmigaOS 1.1).
(and YES, AmigaOS had threads, called "tasks" and processes called "processes" and a fast, non-copying, message-based IPC mechanism).
The (perhaps unofficial) philosophy of C is to put everything not directly related to the language into a library. That's why you have to use libraries in C to create multi-threaded applications.
Properly written C or C++ applications have no trouble with multicore CPUs. If they're multithreaded, the OS automatically distributes the threads equally among the processors (unless the application specifies explicit CPUs for its threads).
Other languages, like Java, also enable programmers to write multi-threaded applications. It's not really a matter of the language (well, of course, unless there's really no facility for it).
I'm a long-time Windows user. For me, it started in 1991 with Windows 3.1, when I had to use MS-DOS and Windows at my first employer. I wasn't satisfied at all, being used to the power and comfort of AmigaOS on my Amiga computers at home. However, in 1994, I bought my first PC (because I was self-employed at that time) and my first Windows was Windows 95. I bought it around the days when it began selling, because I wanted to have a 32-bit Windows (and didn't think of NT at that time). Since then, I've purchased Windows 98, 2000 and XP (the latter two as System Builder editions which were much cheaper than the retail versions).
With XP, I had the problem that after a number of changes in my computer (like changing the mainboard or the hard drive for the umpteenth time because something didn't work), the Activation system directed me to the Phone Activation Service, where I was dependent on the leniency of operators to give me a valid activation code. After a couple of more XP crashes on that box -- until I found reliable hardware -- I decided not to use XP anymore on that and go looking for something else. At that point, I had already worked with Linux, and in office, with Solaris and AIX, and so I was open to that.
During this 2-year period, I tried almost every free OS there is, including various Linux distributions, FreeBSD and Solaris x86. Except perhaps Ubuntu Linux (which I removed to try out Solaris), none of the OSes including Solaris were stable enough to stay on my box for long. Sooner or later, they either self-destructed or were auto-destroyed by configure-script-based installers. I never expected such unreliability and instability from those UNIX-based systems.
Then my brother told me that with Windows Genuine Advantage, phone activation would no longer be required, and I gave it a go: I installed my old XP copy, Service Pack 2, and updated until Windows Genuine Advantage was installed and telling me I should activate my copy of Windows. I did that, and bam! Now I have XP on my box without the trouble of phone activation.
Microsoft has won me back as a customer. I definitely plan to get a system-builder edition of Windows Vista sometime in the future. The Vista upgrade advisor program from Microsoft says I can upgrade to Vista Business or Ultimate without much trouble. The system builder edition of Vista Ultimate is still $200, but that's only half the retail price (without the phone support, which I don't need anyway).
As a developer, I'm pleased that Microsoft now provides free copies of its Visual Studio 2005 Express editions, and I'm eager to learn C# and.NET programming (and perhaps Visual Basic -- I've been programming BASIC since I was a kid, but never tried out Visual Basic).
And about that new anti-piracy program: I like it; I think that office network security often hangs by a thin thread. Not only are there companies that don't license all their copies of Windows, but some people responsible for office networks don't really know what they're doing: Some forbid the use of Internet Explorer, which precludes the use of Windows Update to keep the system patched up. Some people think Windows Update would break their system. But in my experience, Windows Update used on all computers in the network, keeps the systems more stable, reliable, and safe. Together with up-to-date security systems like virus scanners, etc., this can have a significant impact on network security. And using only genuine software on all computers in the network can also contribute to network security.
In my opinion, the only thing left to do for Microsoft to extinguish piracy is to give out free versions of their operating systems and office products that are feature-reduced but usable. This would make a big difference in countries like that of the former USSR, China, and other low-salary countries. People there can't simply afford a genuine Windows copy nowadays, and of course they should check out free and/or open source software, but
What I want to know is, where in the GPL those "viral" statements are that have been mentioned. What makes the NVIDIA installer GPL-encumbered? That's all I want to know, and no "it just is" please.
I get more and more the impression that people like you overestimate the scope of the GPL.
An isolated code module that the compiling environment decides on -- in most cases, the configure script which decides which libraries are used for source code inclusion and later linkage by the development linker or system linker -- does not, ever, imply a derivative of the surrounding environment. That's plain nonsense.
Well, first you should learn what a linker does and what a C compiler does.
To baby you a bit there:
- A C compiler is a program that translates a source code module written in the C programming language (.c) into a machine-readable form, most often a machine code object module that has external references to libraries (.o).
- A linker combines these object modules into an executable program with or without externel references to shared libraries (.so). A shared library might also be linked to at runtime.
Hence, source code has no linkage.
When a program is compiled, it becomes linked to whatever system environment that is used by the development system (i.e. compiler, linker, libraries).
Hence, a program in source code form cannot be a derived work of a library that it just envisions to use. In the source code form you do not necessarily know which environment there is for your program after compiling. A binary program having external references that link at load time therefore is not a derived work of its environment, because the environment is resolved at load time, and not at compile time. Furthermore, you can compile a program on one platform and move the binary to another.
Here, you display your agenda. What you really want is NVIDIA stopping driver development for Linux.
I hope you don't have any success breaking Linux for everyone.
There are many people who want to use Linux on desktops, and not just embedded systems or servers.
Also, if Intel drivers were the only ones available, then people were forced to purchase mainboards with onboard graphics. However, people like to have choices.
People like you make me want to spend 400 bucks on Windows Vista.
"Much like the license for the kernel specifically allows the creation of proprietary software that uses the syscall api to access the kernel."
Well then, where is this miraculous license that you're talking about? I only see GPL V2, and it doesn't mention the syscall API.
And if that's true what you're saying how is that compatible with the statement
"you're not going to use fair use to get away from being a derivative work."
So, what is it that makes the NVIDIA kernel module a derivative work of the kernel? Be more specific, otherwise it's hard to follow your train of thought.
Slashdot Mirror
UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Statistics Site (FAOSTAT/FAO)
The US are indeed the greatest single nation exporting the most food, but if you take the EU countries together, the numbers look pretty small in comparison. Germany and France combined export more food than the US, for instance.
I didn't research the other claims in your post, but I'm quite sure they're wrong as well.
Also, although the military spending in the EU combined is less than that of the US, it's basically due to the fact that they're not directly involved in any war (NATO and UN duties aside). Most European nations have a fairly good national defense, but they're relying on diplomacy foremost to resolve conflicts. While in US movies, diplomacy is often laughed off as something unnecessary, in fact, it plays a big role in world politics. Except during WWII, and perhaps the Cold War, the US has done nothing noteworthy to assist security for Europe (and it's debatable if the US had a major influence in the outcome of the Cold War; truth is, there might be more problems now after the USSR has fallen apart).
Social welfare programmes are cut all across Europe all time in the name of capitalism, and this has been going on for decades. The fall of the USSR and the rise of China and the Tiger States have resulted in a vast increase of world wide competition, that corporations try to compensate by cutting costs and urging governments to do the same.
So, it's a myth that Europeans have better welfare because they don't need as much military spending. In fact, they have to spend more for the military now because the world has become more unstable.
Currently, the US banking crisis has a vast detrimental effect on Western economies.
Well, you're wrong. I've written 32-bit multitasking GUI applications already in 1986, long before Windows 3.1 was out. When I started programming on Windows 3.1 in 1993, I used Visual C++ 1.5, which already had a comprehensive API documentation. The Platform SDK and Windows SDK have always been free downloads, as long as I can remember. Microsoft even had and has a free (or low-cost) shipping service for CDs of those SDKs. The only API that costs money is the IFS Kit (installable file system kit, $1000 per license). The MSDN subscription is only necessary if you want CD/DVD sets of selected product media. BTW, since VC++ 2005, even the compilers are free downloads (Express editions). The ease of use of the Platform/Windows SDK documentation is unparalleled so far. Show me just one system API documentation that is better organized, and I'll jump ship gladly.
For Windows, there's a free download called "Windows SDK" (or, formerly, "Platform SDK"). It's free and contains a powerful documentation browser (along with the entire documentation) that kicks XCode's behind!
I tried to use the "browser approach" that you describe, but it was maddening to me. I don't want to spend ages scouring dozens of PDF files and digging through hundreds of misorganized web pages. Thanks, but no thanks.
When I want to look up something it has to be available immediately. And that's what Windows documentation browser, for instance, gives me. I simply type in the name of the function, and bam, it's there. Or, in Visual C++ 2008, it can display the documentation while I'm writing the function call.
You can say all you want about Windows, but it's far from being developer unfriendly. On UNIX systems there are some great tools now as well, and they're damn necessary for development. Apple is doing itself no favor with the current XCode version.
I didn't dispute that Windows has the majority of viruses. But I've received exploits for Mac and Linux in my inboxes as well. The Linux ones seem to attempt to attack automatic mail systems, since they contain shell script portions. It's outright false to claim that for Linux there are no viruses at all. The German government, for instance, will use custom-tailored (probably even automatically created) trojan viruses to spy on citizens under suspicion of serious crimes, and they're not limiting themselves to Windows. And that's just an example. IT experts everywhere can implement viruses for any operating system. There are BTW virus scanners for Linux already that search for Linux viruses, not just Windows viruses on Linux mail servers. Although the prime target for virus authors is still Windows, other platforms have been targeted for a long time already. I still remember the sendmail exploit craze in the mid-90ies, for instance. How can you write an efficient bot net if you don't target UNIX servers?
What I don't like about MacOS X is, that it is intentionally dumbed down for sake of user-friendliness for the computer-agnostic, but there's often no way to get customization if you do need it.
Using a Mac is expensive, and I simply expect more from it than just a nice-looking user interface.
Why? Soldier bots like in the Terminator movies aren't that bad an idea. Better than real soldiers dying on the battlefield. And a good deterrent too. But in the wrong hands ... yeah ...
... ;-)
;-)
The terminator movies aren't that far fetched, after all. The right type of AI, robot planes, tanks, and soldiers, and mankind is no more
Then we can only hope that time travel is invented and someone gets sent back thru time to prevent that from happening.
On BSD (incl. MacOS X) and Linux platforms, developers are fixing security holes all the time.
Because, With open-source software, all you need to do to write an exploit is to take a look at the source code.
Most applications that use a plain text protocol (like a web browser communicating via HTTP, for instance, a mailer using SMTP or POP3) report their version to the server. If the server is malicious or compromised, it can determine what exploit to apply to the client, and apply it automatically during the communication session.
Thinking you're safe because you're using OS XYZ is like leaving the barn door wide open.
I have a mailbox full of Mac exploits. Want some?? ;-))
They're easily identifiable by attachments with Mac file extensions.
What will Starbridge Systems think about that? Didn't they develop a dynamically reconfigurable computer that ran Windows NT as a test application on 10,000+ FPGAs back in the 90ies? IIRC, they also had a software framework able to automatically implement software fragments in hardware using FPGA auto-configuration.
Self-repairing computer systems for spacecraft have been in the discussion for decades, and every now and then we get hear about a new project. This project certainly is a good idea, hopefully it will work.
BTW, Motorola (now Freescale) developed self-repairing processors for military applications a couple of years ago.
On the other hand, there would be much less progress, if that wasn't the case. How to keep all those people busy? This way the market is never fully saturated. And we get things like ever-faster computers with ever less power consumption and for ever less money. Would you want to do business applications with a VIC-20 and a 120 KB floppy drive? ;-)
But Vista's QA obviously sucks
Microsoft's way of communicating with the open-source community is inferior. No-one who wants to use UNIX and Windows is going to drop UNIX. They drop Windows, because it's lesser OS. Windows is still far inferior to UNIX systems, despite all the new APIs and frameworks in Vista.
Software developers cannot keep with that pace. I've seen companies still developing using Visual C++ 6.0 and Delphi 5!! They're still on NT 4.0 level. Why? Because Microsoft didn't assure seamless transition into the new OSes. Windows device drivers are not portable among Windows versions. So, Windows is costing the industry a lot of money. That'll pay off in massive customer loss sooner or later, methinks. Not just for Microsoft, but also for companies shipping Windows software that is not up-to-date. These problems are far worse than those found on Linux.
It's possible to write compilers for arbitrary languages that generate JVM code. Microsoft came up with VB .NET, Managed C++, C# and J# right from the beginning, because they knew this would be an issue. Blame Sun for not doing the same thing right away. A C++ compiler generating JVM code would be a neat thing. Problems implementing multiple inheritance and templates on the JVM could be easily ironed out by using aggregates and generics. I believe it's possible. If I had the time, I would certainly do it.
But Crysis wastes a lot of CPU power. It seems to be single-threaded, and if you don't have an NVIDIA 8800 card, you're stuck with medium settings (I used it on a ATI HD 3850 card and wasn't happy). Crysis sucks!! ;-)
BTW, Vista breaks just as easily as XP. And the rescue mechanisms suck just as much.
:-)
There's a still a lot that Microsoft can learn from Linux.
A couple of days ago, a Vista installation of mine perished ungracefully, and I put Ubuntu 8.04 and FreeBSD 7.0 on that box, just to get my daily fix of UNIX for a while. I'm happy!
Lotus Notes is available for many platforms, including Linux. It can do all the things that Exchange can't. In fact, it existed long before Exchange.
BTW, there's also a free Exchange client called Epiphany, which is included in most Linux and BSD distributions. Of course it can do much more than communicating with Exchange servers.
Take a look at the new Ubuntu 8.04. OK, granted, it's still not as easy to use as Windows in some areas, but in most areas, it's even simpler to use than Windows. And administration is a lot simpler than on Windows. Ever configured
As has already been mentioned in this thread, programming single core CPUs is not much different than programming multicore CPUs. Multithread-programming and thread-synchronization are the keywords here. I've been writing multi-threaded applications since 1986 (back when I learned C on AmigaOS 1.1). (and YES, AmigaOS had threads, called "tasks" and processes called "processes" and a fast, non-copying, message-based IPC mechanism). The (perhaps unofficial) philosophy of C is to put everything not directly related to the language into a library. That's why you have to use libraries in C to create multi-threaded applications. Properly written C or C++ applications have no trouble with multicore CPUs. If they're multithreaded, the OS automatically distributes the threads equally among the processors (unless the application specifies explicit CPUs for its threads). Other languages, like Java, also enable programmers to write multi-threaded applications. It's not really a matter of the language (well, of course, unless there's really no facility for it).
I'm a long-time Windows user. For me, it started in 1991 with Windows 3.1, when I had to use MS-DOS and Windows at my first employer. I wasn't satisfied at all, being used to the power and comfort of AmigaOS on my Amiga computers at home. However, in 1994, I bought my first PC (because I was self-employed at that time) and my first Windows was Windows 95. I bought it around the days when it began selling, because I wanted to have a 32-bit Windows (and didn't think of NT at that time). Since then, I've purchased Windows 98, 2000 and XP (the latter two as System Builder editions which were much cheaper than the retail versions).
.NET programming (and perhaps Visual Basic -- I've been programming BASIC since I was a kid, but never tried out Visual Basic).
With XP, I had the problem that after a number of changes in my computer (like changing the mainboard or the hard drive for the umpteenth time because something didn't work), the Activation system directed me to the Phone Activation Service, where I was dependent on the leniency of operators to give me a valid activation code. After a couple of more XP crashes on that box -- until I found reliable hardware -- I decided not to use XP anymore on that and go looking for something else. At that point, I had already worked with Linux, and in office, with Solaris and AIX, and so I was open to that.
During this 2-year period, I tried almost every free OS there is, including various Linux distributions, FreeBSD and Solaris x86. Except perhaps Ubuntu Linux (which I removed to try out Solaris), none of the OSes including Solaris were stable enough to stay on my box for long. Sooner or later, they either self-destructed or were auto-destroyed by configure-script-based installers. I never expected such unreliability and instability from those UNIX-based systems.
Then my brother told me that with Windows Genuine Advantage, phone activation would no longer be required, and I gave it a go: I installed my old XP copy, Service Pack 2, and updated until Windows Genuine Advantage was installed and telling me I should activate my copy of Windows. I did that, and bam! Now I have XP on my box without the trouble of phone activation.
Microsoft has won me back as a customer. I definitely plan to get a system-builder edition of Windows Vista sometime in the future. The Vista upgrade advisor program from Microsoft says I can upgrade to Vista Business or Ultimate without much trouble. The system builder edition of Vista Ultimate is still $200, but that's only half the retail price (without the phone support, which I don't need anyway).
As a developer, I'm pleased that Microsoft now provides free copies of its Visual Studio 2005 Express editions, and I'm eager to learn C# and
And about that new anti-piracy program: I like it; I think that office network security often hangs by a thin thread. Not only are there companies that don't license all their copies of Windows, but some people responsible for office networks don't really know what they're doing: Some forbid the use of Internet Explorer, which precludes the use of Windows Update to keep the system patched up. Some people think Windows Update would break their system. But in my experience, Windows Update used on all computers in the network, keeps the systems more stable, reliable, and safe. Together with up-to-date security systems like virus scanners, etc., this can have a significant impact on network security. And using only genuine software on all computers in the network can also contribute to network security.
In my opinion, the only thing left to do for Microsoft to extinguish piracy is to give out free versions of their operating systems and office products that are feature-reduced but usable. This would make a big difference in countries like that of the former USSR, China, and other low-salary countries. People there can't simply afford a genuine Windows copy nowadays, and of course they should check out free and/or open source software, but
Why, thank you!
I scrapped Linux on my machine and installed Solaris. No more GNU in the kernel, it's that simple!
What I want to know is, where in the GPL those "viral" statements are that have been mentioned. What makes the NVIDIA installer GPL-encumbered? That's all I want to know, and no "it just is" please.
I get more and more the impression that people like you overestimate the scope of the GPL. An isolated code module that the compiling environment decides on -- in most cases, the configure script which decides which libraries are used for source code inclusion and later linkage by the development linker or system linker -- does not, ever, imply a derivative of the surrounding environment. That's plain nonsense.
The source code of the driver sits there during compilation of the kernel module, it does not modify the kernel.
Well, first you should learn what a linker does and what a C compiler does. To baby you a bit there: - A C compiler is a program that translates a source code module written in the C programming language (.c) into a machine-readable form, most often a machine code object module that has external references to libraries (.o). - A linker combines these object modules into an executable program with or without externel references to shared libraries (.so). A shared library might also be linked to at runtime. Hence, source code has no linkage. When a program is compiled, it becomes linked to whatever system environment that is used by the development system (i.e. compiler, linker, libraries). Hence, a program in source code form cannot be a derived work of a library that it just envisions to use. In the source code form you do not necessarily know which environment there is for your program after compiling. A binary program having external references that link at load time therefore is not a derived work of its environment, because the environment is resolved at load time, and not at compile time. Furthermore, you can compile a program on one platform and move the binary to another.
Here, you display your agenda. What you really want is NVIDIA stopping driver development for Linux.
I hope you don't have any success breaking Linux for everyone.
There are many people who want to use Linux on desktops, and not just embedded systems or servers.
Also, if Intel drivers were the only ones available, then people were forced to purchase mainboards with onboard graphics. However, people like to have choices.
People like you make me want to spend 400 bucks on Windows Vista.
Ah, you're a troll. I didn't get that right away. I thought you were serious there for a moment.
"Much like the license for the kernel specifically allows the creation of proprietary software that uses the syscall api to access the kernel."
Well then, where is this miraculous license that you're talking about? I only see GPL V2, and it doesn't mention the syscall API.
And if that's true what you're saying how is that compatible with the statement
"you're not going to use fair use to get away from being a derivative work."
So, what is it that makes the NVIDIA kernel module a derivative work of the kernel? Be more specific, otherwise it's hard to follow your train of thought.