At the university I went to you have to be a member of a student guild to enrol. Each year you have to pay a guild fee of around $200 for services the guild provides. The problem is the guild supports many things which many people don't use, and therefore don't think their money should go towards supporting. To rectify this problem the administration said you were free to choose to pay your guild fee, but if you elected not to you would be charged an "administration" fee of $210. Some people I know did this (even though it cost them more money) just on general principle. To all those in the Linux community who bitch that the price of these laptops is the same as the equivalent windows model, why can't you just be glad that M$ isn't getting it's filthy, monopolistic, "innovative" paws on your $20 (the price of an OEM version of windows, from what other posters have said). You should be glad that it doesn't cost MORE than the equivalent windows model. Putting out a linux laptop might be costing them a bit more than $20 per machine, especially at this early stage. Hopefully as Linux popularity increases prices will drop.
freedos isn't a dos emulator, it's a free implementation of dos. By your rationale no-one should be interested in Linux either, after all it's just a POSIX compliant free implementation of UNIX.
I think most programming tasks are fairly simple when you break them down into their most basic elements - yes, writing a function to handle a new date format may not be hard, but neither is drawing a triangle on a screen, or writing a function to calculate if two lines intersect. It is the size and complexity of a system that makes it hard.
I hope someone is remembering all this stuff so in 10 years time when they're making a "Pirates of Silicon Valley" style open-source expose the stuff about linuxone can be added for comic relief. They're incorporated in Nevada - to minimise the details of their business they have to disclose, they've taken someone else's product and re-packaged it poorly. They claim to have "A wide variety of drivers, enhanced networking capabilities, and user interface capabilities differentiate LinuxOne OS from other variants of the UNIX system." The guy who set them up also set up a company (NetUSA or USANet I think they're called) which listed a couple of years ago and who's share price has fallen in a spectacular fashion, and which now just spams people. Their web site also claimed they were porting "selected applications" from Windows to Linux! A couple of months ago there server was still running Redhat 6.1 (with most of the security features turned off!). No-one from the bay-area linux users group had ever heard of this guy before linuxone showed up. Wow! Something like this could only happen in real life because no-one would make stuff like this up. Perhaps I should start writing the script now for "Open-Source, the movie."
I can only speak for myself but I have no objection to inventors who make significant breakthroughs in any field patenting their work, and thus allowing them to profit from it. I believe that this is what patents are for. I do have an objection to opportunists who abuse the patent system by patenting incremental "breakthroughs", business models, things that already exist in prior art and things that are obvious (can you say "one-Click shopping").
I think it's the principle that counts - if people let some corporate lobby-group intimidate them and shut down their web-sites (and threaten to sue for just linking to a site with DeCSS information) you let corporations know that this is a tactic that works, next time you have to stand up to them it will be that little bit harder. It creates a dangerous precedent. If we're goint to have to stand up to them about this why not do it now?
I don't think I've heard about someone with such a sense of civic responsibility in a long time. Imagine - you're sitting at home/work trying to read your hotmail and it isn't working. Do you sit there on your @$$ and bitch about microsoft and the evil empire and how you can't rely on anything anymore...NO, you find out what the problem is and go and fix it, and I'm not talking about just flicking some switch here to re-activate hotmail so you and others can read their mail, you fork out cold hard cash (or was that plastic?) without any certainty that you will see that money again. Then a week or so later you get a cheque form some corporate fat-cats who's @$$ you saved by shelling out your money. Looks like the fat-cats didn't have any loose change because they've made out the check for $500! Do you sit there and think to yourself - "Sweet, looks like a nice new something for me", or "gee, now I can pay off all those parking fines." NO, you offer to auction the cheque off to charity, and then offer to cough up another $2,500 or so for said charity. Makes me feel kind of ashamed of myself, how about you?
Not changing your passwords and account names from the defaults (or not even having a password) on a live customer database connected to the internet! Lunacy. Seems like some e-commerce companies have never heard of security, aren't able to implement it at the most basic level, or simply think it's too hard. To all those who have posted saying that "even when you use your credit card at a restraunt you run a risk because the waiter could memorise your number and use it" think about this. a)the "waiter" couldn't rip 2500 people's card #'s in a matter of minutes. b) each time the "waiter" rips a card there is a tangible like between himself and the card - he is an employee at a place that the card was used, making the chances of cathing him reasonably high. When you get 2500 people's card details all that links you to them is a few TCP/IP packetts that flew across the internet. c) AFAIK your argument originally appeared in a dilbert cartoon (you know, the one where the waitress comes back wearing the fur coat).
I like the idea of being able to see the articles that are in the queue to be posted. Would it be possible to put the articles in the queue and let readers vote on which ones they would like to see? This might save the/. crew time in deciding which articles to toss and which ones to post.
Personally the new year meant about as much to me this year as much as every new year means. NOTHING. I Kept hearing reporters saying things like "this is the beginning of the next thousand years." So is every new year. Every day is the beginning of the next 365 250 (ish) days. Every day is the beginning of the rest of your life. All the events which you alluded to (landing on the moon etc.) were real historical events were one could really feel that they were part of history. Landing on the moon was a momentous event in the history of the human race. The earth spinning on it's axis one more time hardly seems to qualify. I'm sorry that you didn't have the choice to spend your new years how you would have liked, but it was no big deal. I was in bed by 10 pm.
I personally would like to see the slashdot crew add the playboy bunny icon to the list of news icons, so slashdot readers can be informed more quickly of linux-related playboy news as it breaks.
In spite of what happened recently with high-tech stocks I'm sure this will pay off for sony, because the PII is going to kick ass the same way the first playstation did. Imagine if all the playstations out there could also surf the net? Well, when PII comes out you won't have to imagine much longer. Sony has all the right connections for this to suceed.
Re:No real information here - way too simplified
on
G4 vs. Athlon Review
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· Score: 1
Here Here. I like this response so much I think I'll save it for later use.
My Appologies to Yo-Yo Ma. The newspaper story I read said he was a she. I don't listen to that much clasical but I don't appreciate being called an Idiot and a peon by people who can't make any contribution except to nit-pick. It was a simple mistake and has nothing to do with the crux of what I said.
Did you really believe I was serious, or am I being foolish believing that you are? Yeah, Microsoft really is going to bribe a high profile judge with a prototype WebTV device to try and gain favour in the upcoming negotiations. It sounds more like a story you would read in The Onion.
I don't think the fact that the NYPD was called is such a big deal. About 3 months ago I read a story in the paper. Famous chellist Yo-Yo Ma left her 3000000 stradivarius chello in the back of a cab and the NYPD were called to help track it down. I think the value of the object lost/misplaced means the police can get involved.
The guy's name was Scott Posner and the WebTV was for his father (possibly one Richard Posner, the Judge in charge of mediating negotiations between Microsoft and the DoJ). Coincidence? I think not. Sounds like M$ are "innovating" their way into a sweeter deal.
In spite of all factual errors, and the repeated phrases I liked the article, and there's no doubt it was an improvement on the original. I was wondering though, why are some of you so obsessed about getting paid? Journalist X phones up John Q. Expert for his opinion on Y - does he get paid, NO. I think the fact that Janes thanked the slashdotters who contributed to the article, and devoted a few paragraphs on pointing out the difference between crackers and hackers was commendable. Also distinguishing between crackers who do it for fun, and those who set out to do damage/make a profit was good, since this is something that is never mentioned in most main stream articles.
ProEngineer is an excellent CAD package, probably overkill for what a lot of people do, but definately worth it. Isn't Pro/E also currently available on some flavour or unix? I worked with it on some sun workstations a couple of years ago. I know an NT version was also available then (which ran like a dog). I assume the unix version is still available, is it?
I was reading an article on ZDNet re OS &/. response to the M$ trial (I think there was a link in yesterday's/.) I was amazed at how one-eyed the whole coverage of the MS case was, but the/. article was something else. The "story" (which I can summarise for you in one line, but which took ZDNet a few pages to get across) was that slashdot contributors were pleased with Judge Jackson's ruleing, but disagreed (or should that be respectfully disagreed!) with him since they felt that Linux was a legitimate contender. Great. Big deal. The story itself was not the amazing part, it was the not-so-subtle way ZDNet attempted to marginalize and discredit/. that really stood out. References to Startrek to imply cultishness, thinly veiled allegations of/. selling out from hacks who did it long ago, the implication that all discussion on/. degenerates into flame bate, and the insinuation that people on/. are not prepared to post under their own name (yes slashdoters ususally post under pseudonyms, so what). If the insights of a few slashdotters are worth writing a story on then don't spend the rest of the article rubbishing/. Perhaps/. should insist that every time a quote from a/. post is used that the score that the post was given should also be published. You could easily pick through all the postings and print a select few and make/. look bad, but in my experience every slashdot posting with a score of 2 or more usually has more substance than any ZDNet article.
I love Lego. When I was a [smaller] kid almost all I did was play Lego (now I'm a programmer, but I think Lego was more fun). My fiance and I have just recently had a baby boy so now I have an excuse to stock up again for when he is old enough to play with it (the cycle begins again). There are some really cool parts out there now, I wish they had been around when I was a youngster. The best thing about Lego is that your horizons aren't limited to some off-the-shelf toy that some adult designed, anything you can imagine can be built. When you think about it almost every aspect of Lego stimulates the mind. The colours of the blocks, the geometry of the pieces, the counting (of the little fastening lumps) etc. I can't think of a better (or more fun) "toy".
I'm a software developer and the whole area of software patents frightens me. I think the open source community should try to develop a portfolio of patents to protect its self from litigation by large software companies (to fight fire with fire). One of the most scary things (which the patent lawyers who have posted above have pointed out) is that even if a patent is invalid it is still very difficult and expensive to have it declared so in court. I would be glad to offer my services to search for prior art etc in any patent cases brought agains GNU developers, and to help in whatever way I can in the patenting of GNU software. (sorry for the duplicate posting but I guess I should include my contact details if I'm going to offer my help) MrBlack can be reached at J.Cooney@CPITT.uq.edu.au
I'm a software developer and the whole area of software patents frightens me. I think the open source community should try to develop a portfolio of patents to protect its self from litigation by large software companies (to fight fire with fire). One of the most scary things (which the patent lawyers who have posted above have pointed out) is that even if a patent is invalid it is still very difficult and expensive to have it declared so in court. I would be glad to offer my services to search for prior art etc in any patent cases brought agains GNU developers, and to help in whatever way I can in the patenting of GNU software.
Slashdot Mirror
At the university I went to you have to be a member of a student guild to enrol. Each year you have to pay a guild fee of around $200 for services the guild provides. The problem is the guild supports many things which many people don't use, and therefore don't think their money should go towards supporting. To rectify this problem the administration said you were free to choose to pay your guild fee, but if you elected not to you would be charged an "administration" fee of $210. Some people I know did this (even though it cost them more money) just on general principle. To all those in the Linux community who bitch that the price of these laptops is the same as the equivalent windows model, why can't you just be glad that M$ isn't getting it's filthy, monopolistic, "innovative" paws on your $20 (the price of an OEM version of windows, from what other posters have said). You should be glad that it doesn't cost MORE than the equivalent windows model. Putting out a linux laptop might be costing them a bit more than $20 per machine, especially at this early stage. Hopefully as Linux popularity increases prices will drop.
freedos isn't a dos emulator, it's a free implementation of dos. By your rationale no-one should be interested in Linux either, after all it's just a POSIX compliant free implementation of UNIX.
I think most programming tasks are fairly simple when you break them down into their most basic elements - yes, writing a function to handle a new date format may not be hard, but neither is drawing a triangle on a screen, or writing a function to calculate if two lines intersect. It is the size and complexity of a system that makes it hard.
I hope someone is remembering all this stuff so in 10 years time when they're making a "Pirates of Silicon Valley" style open-source expose the stuff about linuxone can be added for comic relief. They're incorporated in Nevada - to minimise the details of their business they have to disclose, they've taken someone else's product and re-packaged it poorly. They claim to have "A wide variety of drivers, enhanced networking capabilities, and user interface capabilities differentiate LinuxOne OS from other variants of the UNIX system." The guy who set them up also set up a company (NetUSA or USANet I think they're called) which listed a couple of years ago and who's share price has fallen in a spectacular fashion, and which now just spams people. Their web site also claimed they were porting "selected applications" from Windows to Linux! A couple of months ago there server was still running Redhat 6.1 (with most of the security features turned off!). No-one from the bay-area linux users group had ever heard of this guy before linuxone showed up. Wow! Something like this could only happen in real life because no-one would make stuff like this up. Perhaps I should start writing the script now for "Open-Source, the movie."
I can only speak for myself but I have no objection to inventors who make significant breakthroughs in any field patenting their work, and thus allowing them to profit from it. I believe that this is what patents are for. I do have an objection to opportunists who abuse the patent system by patenting incremental "breakthroughs", business models, things that already exist in prior art and things that are obvious (can you say "one-Click shopping").
I think it's the principle that counts - if people let some corporate lobby-group intimidate them and shut down their web-sites (and threaten to sue for just linking to a site with DeCSS information) you let corporations know that this is a tactic that works, next time you have to stand up to them it will be that little bit harder. It creates a dangerous precedent. If we're goint to have to stand up to them about this why not do it now?
I don't think I've heard about someone with such a sense of civic responsibility in a long time. Imagine - you're sitting at home/work trying to read your hotmail and it isn't working. Do you sit there on your @$$ and bitch about microsoft and the evil empire and how you can't rely on anything anymore...NO, you find out what the problem is and go and fix it, and I'm not talking about just flicking some switch here to re-activate hotmail so you and others can read their mail, you fork out cold hard cash (or was that plastic?) without any certainty that you will see that money again. Then a week or so later you get a cheque form some corporate fat-cats who's @$$ you saved by shelling out your money. Looks like the fat-cats didn't have any loose change because they've made out the check for $500! Do you sit there and think to yourself - "Sweet, looks like a nice new something for me", or "gee, now I can pay off all those parking fines." NO, you offer to auction the cheque off to charity, and then offer to cough up another $2,500 or so for said charity. Makes me feel kind of ashamed of myself, how about you?
Not changing your passwords and account names from the defaults (or not even having a password) on a live customer database connected to the internet! Lunacy. Seems like some e-commerce companies have never heard of security, aren't able to implement it at the most basic level, or simply think it's too hard. To all those who have posted saying that "even when you use your credit card at a restraunt you run a risk because the waiter could memorise your number and use it" think about this. a)the "waiter" couldn't rip 2500 people's card #'s in a matter of minutes. b) each time the "waiter" rips a card there is a tangible like between himself and the card - he is an employee at a place that the card was used, making the chances of cathing him reasonably high. When you get 2500 people's card details all that links you to them is a few TCP/IP packetts that flew across the internet. c) AFAIK your argument originally appeared in a dilbert cartoon (you know, the one where the waitress comes back wearing the fur coat).
I like the idea of being able to see the articles that are in the queue to be posted. Would it be possible to put the articles in the queue and let readers vote on which ones they would like to see? This might save the /. crew time in deciding which articles to toss and which ones to post.
Personally the new year meant about as much to me this year as much as every new year means. NOTHING. I Kept hearing reporters saying things like "this is the beginning of the next thousand years." So is every new year. Every day is the beginning of the next 365 250 (ish) days. Every day is the beginning of the rest of your life. All the events which you alluded to (landing on the moon etc.) were real historical events were one could really feel that they were part of history. Landing on the moon was a momentous event in the history of the human race. The earth spinning on it's axis one more time hardly seems to qualify. I'm sorry that you didn't have the choice to spend your new years how you would have liked, but it was no big deal. I was in bed by 10 pm.
I personally would like to see the slashdot crew add the playboy bunny icon to the list of news icons, so slashdot readers can be informed more quickly of linux-related playboy news as it breaks.
In spite of what happened recently with high-tech stocks I'm sure this will pay off for sony, because the PII is going to kick ass the same way the first playstation did. Imagine if all the playstations out there could also surf the net? Well, when PII comes out you won't have to imagine much longer. Sony has all the right connections for this to suceed.
Here Here. I like this response so much I think I'll save it for later use.
My Appologies to Yo-Yo Ma. The newspaper story I read said he was a she. I don't listen to that much clasical but I don't appreciate being called an Idiot and a peon by people who can't make any contribution except to nit-pick. It was a simple mistake and has nothing to do with the crux of what I said.
Did you really believe I was serious, or am I being foolish believing that you are? Yeah, Microsoft really is going to bribe a high profile judge with a prototype WebTV device to try and gain favour in the upcoming negotiations. It sounds more like a story you would read in The Onion.
I don't think the fact that the NYPD was called is such a big deal. About 3 months ago I read a story in the paper. Famous chellist Yo-Yo Ma left her 3000000 stradivarius chello in the back of a cab and the NYPD were called to help track it down. I think the value of the object lost/misplaced means the police can get involved.
The guy's name was Scott Posner and the WebTV was for his father (possibly one Richard Posner, the Judge in charge of mediating negotiations between Microsoft and the DoJ). Coincidence? I think not. Sounds like M$ are "innovating" their way into a sweeter deal.
In spite of all factual errors, and the repeated phrases I liked the article, and there's no doubt it was an improvement on the original. I was wondering though, why are some of you so obsessed about getting paid? Journalist X phones up John Q. Expert for his opinion on Y - does he get paid, NO. I think the fact that Janes thanked the slashdotters who contributed to the article, and devoted a few paragraphs on pointing out the difference between crackers and hackers was commendable. Also distinguishing between crackers who do it for fun, and those who set out to do damage/make a profit was good, since this is something that is never mentioned in most main stream articles.
ProEngineer is an excellent CAD package, probably overkill for what a lot of people do, but definately worth it. Isn't Pro/E also currently available on some flavour or unix? I worked with it on some sun workstations a couple of years ago. I know an NT version was also available then (which ran like a dog). I assume the unix version is still available, is it?
I was reading an article on ZDNet re OS & /. response to the M$ trial (I think there was a link in yesterday's /.) I was amazed at how one-eyed the whole coverage of the MS case was, but the /. article was something else. The "story" (which I can summarise for you in one line, but which took ZDNet a few pages to get across) was that slashdot contributors were pleased with Judge Jackson's ruleing, but disagreed (or should that be respectfully disagreed!) with him since they felt that Linux was a legitimate contender. Great. Big deal. The story itself was not the amazing part, it was the not-so-subtle way ZDNet attempted to marginalize and discredit /. that really stood out. References to Startrek to imply cultishness, thinly veiled allegations of /. selling out from hacks who did it long ago, the implication that all discussion on /. degenerates into flame bate, and the insinuation that people on /. are not prepared to post under their own name (yes slashdoters ususally post under pseudonyms, so what). If the insights of a few slashdotters are worth writing a story on then don't spend the rest of the article rubbishing /. Perhaps /. should insist that every time a quote from a /. post is used that the score that the post was given should also be published. You could easily pick through all the postings and print a select few and make /. look bad, but in my experience every slashdot posting with a score of 2 or more usually has more substance than any ZDNet article.
I love Lego. When I was a [smaller] kid almost all I did was play Lego (now I'm a programmer, but I think Lego was more fun). My fiance and I have just recently had a baby boy so now I have an excuse to stock up again for when he is old enough to play with it (the cycle begins again). There are some really cool parts out there now, I wish they had been around when I was a youngster. The best thing about Lego is that your horizons aren't limited to some off-the-shelf toy that some adult designed, anything you can imagine can be built. When you think about it almost every aspect of Lego stimulates the mind. The colours of the blocks, the geometry of the pieces, the counting (of the little fastening lumps) etc. I can't think of a better (or more fun) "toy".
I'm a software developer and the whole area of software patents frightens me. I think the open source community should try to develop a portfolio of patents to protect its self from litigation by large software companies (to fight fire with fire). One of the most scary things (which the patent lawyers who have posted above have pointed out) is that even if a patent is invalid it is still very difficult and expensive to have it declared so in court. I would be glad to offer my services to search for prior art etc in any patent cases brought agains GNU developers, and to help in whatever way I can in the patenting of GNU software. (sorry for the duplicate posting but I guess I should include my contact details if I'm going to offer my help) MrBlack can be reached at J.Cooney@CPITT.uq.edu.au
I'm a software developer and the whole area of software patents frightens me. I think the open source community should try to develop a portfolio of patents to protect its self from litigation by large software companies (to fight fire with fire). One of the most scary things (which the patent lawyers who have posted above have pointed out) is that even if a patent is invalid it is still very difficult and expensive to have it declared so in court. I would be glad to offer my services to search for prior art etc in any patent cases brought agains GNU developers, and to help in whatever way I can in the patenting of GNU software.