Watcom was excellent for working multiple platforms (last two employers had OS/2 on the enterprise with a little DOS stuck in; say what you want but to date OS/2 has been far more stable than anything Microsoft has offered). I think it would be majorly cool if the multiplatform support was extended to Linux. I have used a couple of IDEs for Linux as well as GCC on the command line and frankly there is no good reason for a compiler to be as beastly to use as that. Watcom sports a basic IDE with basic project support as well as making fast and small executables. The Linux world could do far worse that porting Watcom to Linux.
Just another vote for the Mavica; we have tried a number of digital cameras since they first came out and while the quality is not what you would want for 100% of your picture-taking needs, it suffices for about 80-90% and the ability to save the pics directly to diskette so that nearly any computer anytime anyhwere can immediately use them is a most excellent bonus.
Here is another thought that came today while ordering my copyleft DeCSS t-shirts (one for everyone in my family. I teased my wife by telling her that I was surprising her with something that she could (maybe someday) get arrested for wearing in public;)...
Anyways, What if we wrapped the DeCSS code in an encrypted executable and slapped a EULA on the program itself. Don't flame me yet, this has the potential to be cool. Anyways, we (very carefully) word the EULA so that if they agree, they are saying that the output of the program (DeCSS source) will only be used for *playing* DVDs on Linux and any other use of the program output is forbidden and illegal (such as forcing someone to close a website like they are now)...
Now, like almost every other poster here IANAL so maybe the EULA would need to be worded by someone with legal experience but I think the idea might be workable. This way the source can go as far and wide as we want without causing anyone who is supporting this movement any problems (other than the MPAA, those rat-bastards). This is not a finished idea but something I am throwing up to the/. crowd for perusal...whaddya think?
Excuse me, I must have missed it but what part of your flame was either clever or creative? I am not attempting to assess the comedic value of your flames because humor is subjective at best. 'Clever' indicates that some thought went into the message. 'Creative' would seem to mean that there was something original in the post. I found neither. I have seen the flamers use the same language and diction for the past 15 years; prior to the Internet, BBSs were where the flamers lived; see how far we as a community have evolved? Same flame, different kid. You talk about Jon Katz's 'journalistic integrity' but that begs the question: Where does journalistic integrity fit into opinion editorials? Simple answer is that it doesn't. It is just that, an opinion just like yours. Perhaps Jon Katz isn't an UberGeek like you with the ability to leap whole distros in a single bound. Conversely, you have amply demonstrated your own short-comings by way of your postings.
Eric, eric, eric... Although I am an American, I have lived in both the US and in Europe and I can tell you that there is no perfect place to live, idealism aside. Have you lived in Europe? There is a lot to recommend it although I prefer to live here (US). There are pluses and minuses on both sides of the pond and I have no doubt that were things reversed (DVD action taking place in Europe instead of here, hypothetically speaking) you would be posting something similar. So please just chill. Martin, not all Americans have the myopic view of the world that Eric does. Ignore him.
Re:The Good, The Bad, and Microsoft.
on
FreeBSD at COMDEX
·
· Score: 1
A couple of points here... 1. In a way it was good for the Linux Expo to be a seperate event since that way actual interest in Linux and open source could be metered, and metered it was with almost every trade rag running headlines that the LBE was the hit of the show.. 2. I saw first-hand what Brett Glass was talking about...in the main Microsoft Partner area (OK fine, so I was trolling a bit) the Sony Vaio (does anyone really know how to pronounce that?) people pretend to optionally not know anything about Linux, refuse to even utter the word out loud or when pressed, will admit that Linux will run on the machine but they refuse to support it (an old, old song)...and just a few hundred feet away in the LBE, the Slashdot crew had a whole slew of the Sony machines running Linux..the one thing that made my foray into the Windows side of the show worth it was the look of pain/fear as the poor Sony booth worker finally admitted that their machines *could* run Linux... Bottom line is that there was a level of enthusiam and excitement on the Linux side of the show that was noticeably absent in the rest of the show...even my Mac-centric boss noticed that....and seperate venues made this all that much more obvious...
Hey AC: Take your own advice and study Microsoft's own history: The MSDN (A pathetic excuse of developer documentation if I have ever seen one). There you will find a LOT of code and a LOT of docs but most of the code will no longer compile or run as expected. Why: They have changed the API so many times that they cannot even stay compatible with themselves...I am forced to use this development system on a daily basis to earn a living and can say from first-hand knowledge that there is so much inconsistency it is amazing that anyone can get much of anything to compile. That said, even if the bug is in Lotus' code, it is probably there due to using MS development products.
I am afraid that I have to agree more with the first poster; it has been my experience that regardless of the government someone is blessed with, a geek is a geek the world around...I have many friends in communist and former communist block countries that I have met thru the interenet and programming and while they may have other challenges, we are truly all cut from the same bit of cloth and we all seem to count in binary...;)
I did not know that there was a statute of limitations on anti-competitive behaviour. The bottom line is that Microsoft gets away with far more heinous acts than they will ever be brought to trial for. Any form of justice and/or retribution is just fine by me and I suspect a lot of other people as well.
I did use DR-DOS and it was far superior to what Microsoft was offering at the time. Just another casualty of MS dirty tricks left on the information highway....
If you *have* to use Windows, then Litestep is a great way to go. Admittedly I am using an older version (.23e) but I have been able to "baby-proof" computers with it and it will actually make windows more stable than without it (faster too...I was given a Win98 machine at work and I noticed nearly a %100 performance gain after installing Litestep, mostly to do with that #@$#%^ active desktop crap)...
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Watcom was excellent for working multiple platforms (last two employers had OS/2 on the enterprise with a little DOS stuck in; say what you want but to date OS/2 has been far more stable than anything Microsoft has offered). I think it would be majorly cool if the multiplatform support was extended to Linux. I have used a couple of IDEs for Linux as well as GCC on the command line and frankly there is no good reason for a compiler to be as beastly to use as that. Watcom sports a basic IDE with basic project support as well as making fast and small executables. The Linux world could do far worse that porting Watcom to Linux.
Just another vote for the Mavica; we have tried a number of digital cameras since they first came out and while the quality is not what you would want for 100% of your picture-taking needs, it suffices for about 80-90% and the ability to save the pics directly to diskette so that nearly any computer anytime anyhwere can immediately use them is a most excellent bonus.
Hey, it let me watch the Transmeta announcement;->
Here is another thought that came today while ordering my copyleft DeCSS t-shirts (one for everyone in my family. I teased my wife by telling her that I was surprising her with something that she could (maybe someday) get arrested for wearing in public ;)...
/. crowd for perusal...whaddya think?
Anyways, What if we wrapped the DeCSS code in an encrypted executable and slapped a EULA on the program itself. Don't flame me yet, this has the potential to be cool. Anyways, we (very carefully) word the EULA so that if they agree, they are saying that the output of the program (DeCSS source) will only be used for *playing* DVDs on Linux and any other use of the program output is forbidden and illegal (such as forcing someone to close a website like they are now)...
Now, like almost every other poster here IANAL so maybe the EULA would need to be worded by someone with legal experience but I think the idea might be workable. This way the source can go as far and wide as we want without causing anyone who is supporting this movement any problems (other than the MPAA, those rat-bastards). This is not a finished idea but something I am throwing up to the
Excuse me, I must have missed it but what part of your flame was either clever or creative? I am not attempting to assess the comedic value of your flames because humor is subjective at best. 'Clever' indicates that some thought went into the message. 'Creative' would seem to mean that there was something original in the post. I found neither. I have seen the flamers use the same language and diction for the past 15 years; prior to the Internet, BBSs were where the flamers lived; see how far we as a community have evolved? Same flame, different kid. You talk about Jon Katz's 'journalistic integrity' but that begs the question: Where does journalistic integrity fit into opinion editorials? Simple answer is that it doesn't. It is just that, an opinion just like yours. Perhaps Jon Katz isn't an UberGeek like you with the ability to leap whole distros in a single bound. Conversely, you have amply demonstrated your own short-comings by way of your postings.
Eric, eric, eric... Although I am an American, I have lived in both the US and in Europe and I can tell you that there is no perfect place to live, idealism aside. Have you lived in Europe? There is a lot to recommend it although I prefer to live here (US). There are pluses and minuses on both sides of the pond and I have no doubt that were things reversed (DVD action taking place in Europe instead of here, hypothetically speaking) you would be posting something similar. So please just chill. Martin, not all Americans have the myopic view of the world that Eric does. Ignore him.
A couple of points here... 1. In a way it was good for the Linux Expo to be a seperate event since that way actual interest in Linux and open source could be metered, and metered it was with almost every trade rag running headlines that the LBE was the hit of the show.. 2. I saw first-hand what Brett Glass was talking about...in the main Microsoft Partner area (OK fine, so I was trolling a bit) the Sony Vaio (does anyone really know how to pronounce that?) people pretend to optionally not know anything about Linux, refuse to even utter the word out loud or when pressed, will admit that Linux will run on the machine but they refuse to support it (an old, old song)...and just a few hundred feet away in the LBE, the Slashdot crew had a whole slew of the Sony machines running Linux..the one thing that made my foray into the Windows side of the show worth it was the look of pain/fear as the poor Sony booth worker finally admitted that their machines *could* run Linux... Bottom line is that there was a level of enthusiam and excitement on the Linux side of the show that was noticeably absent in the rest of the show...even my Mac-centric boss noticed that....and seperate venues made this all that much more obvious...
Hey AC: Take your own advice and study Microsoft's own history: The MSDN (A pathetic excuse of developer documentation if I have ever seen one). There you will find a LOT of code and a LOT of docs but most of the code will no longer compile or run as expected. Why: They have changed the API so many times that they cannot even stay compatible with themselves...I am forced to use this development system on a daily basis to earn a living and can say from first-hand knowledge that there is so much inconsistency it is amazing that anyone can get much of anything to compile. That said, even if the bug is in Lotus' code, it is probably there due to using MS development products.
I am afraid that I have to agree more with the first poster; it has been my experience that regardless of the government someone is blessed with, a geek is a geek the world around...I have many friends in communist and former communist block countries that I have met thru the interenet and programming and while they may have other challenges, we are truly all cut from the same bit of cloth and we all seem to count in binary...;)
Anonymous Coward (how very appropriate):
I did not know that there was a statute of limitations on anti-competitive behaviour. The bottom line is that Microsoft gets away with far more heinous acts than they will ever be brought to trial for. Any form of justice and/or retribution is just fine by me and I suspect a lot of other people as well.
I did use DR-DOS and it was far superior to what Microsoft was offering at the time. Just another casualty of MS dirty tricks left on the information highway....
If you *have* to use Windows, then Litestep is a great way to go. Admittedly I am using an older version (.23e) but I have been able to "baby-proof" computers with it and it will actually make windows more stable than without it (faster too...I was given a Win98 machine at work and I noticed nearly a %100 performance gain after installing Litestep, mostly to do with that #@$#%^ active desktop crap)...