On the other hand, if you have no business plan, free software won't help you. HINT: "make a file manager and give it away" is not a complete business plan. Even if it becomes popular, if you lose money for every copy you give away, even if you lose less money per copy if you give away more copies, you still won't be a viable business.
That wasn't their business plan. The plan was to develop and give away the file manager as a loss leader and then sell subscriptions to services that attach to that file manager. The problem was the services and file manager took far too long to come together. Nautilus is just finally getting somewhat usable, which means they would've STILL needed to implement the services.
Their biggest mistake was jumping the gun in calling themselves a business. If they wanted to succeed, it would've been better to develop it as a side project until it was almost usable, and then to announce the formation of such a company when all the pieces were in place.
No, RedHat 7.1 uses ipchains as it's built-in automatic firewall system. lokkit in RH7.1 isn't yet updated to generate iptables rules instead of ipchains rules, so it just uses the ipchains.o compatibilty module from the 2.4 kernel. It does, however support disabling the built-in rules, and switching over to iptables if you so desire.
The hype of NT 4 or 5 years ago was that someone like joe consumer who needed a fileserver but is not a technical guy could just walk down to comp-usa, buy the NT sofware stick it in the box and in a weekend set it up.
Ironically, the error of that hype is becoming evident these days -- the proliferation of compromised NT (and Linux) machines set up by people who were either incompetent or unqualified for their job. It should be clear at this point that any server directly connected to the internet or serving more than 10-15 people needs to have a qualified administrator handle maintainance of the server. Many of us complain about "script kiddies" that give people who legitimately can be called hackers a bad name, but make little issue with "admin kiddies" who give legitimate network administrators a bad name. Virtually any machine can be made secure, whether it be NT, Linux, OpenBSD, or Netware, the only is in who does the security.
Actually, "Open Source" software is copyrighted just as much as proprietary software is. The draconian parts are the facts that things like UCITA help companies with customer "lock-in", which basically makes it nearly impossible to switch to another vendors products. On the other hand, it makes warrantee clauses a requirement, which is fine for the average proprietary software developer, but it could open up small "Open Source" developers to crippling lawsuits. Very few projects would manage to survive even one such suit.
I don't think their customer base will be that tolerant, however. They want DVDs to become widespread so they can pull the same kind of stunt the music industry pulled with CDs -- cheaper to produce, higher price to the consumers. Customers, however, will not tolerate a DVD player that must be "upgraded" every year or so. Set-top electronics are not the personal computer world, people use 10 year old components with ease and expect them to continue working for decades before finally dying.
The public isn't pissed off with them yet because due to the wonders of media conglomeration, they've managed to keep all the negative press out of the mainstream media. You won't hear about how bad the RIAA or MPAA is on the news on your TV, you won't read about it in your newspaper, and you won't see it in your magazines. The only place where people are getting pissed off is on the internet where any third party with an axe to grind can stand on thier soapbox and preach.
Don't expect things to change until the public in general is notified of it. The only thing the public is against the RIAA is for the insane prices they've fixed on audio CDs due to their stranglehold on the market. The average consumer probably doesn't realize the amazing price difference there is between pressing a CD (which is no more than a couple cents per disc) and recording a cassette (which is considerably more).
Reasonable people know not to interfere with things in their daily lives that they don't understand, but suddenly when it comes to computers we're expected to forgive them for screwing around with things in irresponsible ways? I don't think so.
As much as I hate to defend these people. The average person wouldn't open their computer and start pulling out random parts. Few will even open the case on their computer (can't say I'd blame them, either -- some cases are notoriously hard to open and close without breaking something). The problem arrises because most people don't understand that poking "under the hood" in the software area is exactly the same as poking around the physical area (hardware). This is part of the reason Microsofts products are getting more and more agressive with protecting things like the C:\WINDOWS and C:\PROGRA~1 directories, and poping up scary messages about the ills that will occur if you turn off the protection services. Design a fool-proof product that refuses all types of invalid data, and some ingenius fool will find a new way to feed it invalid data.
Incidentally, I've had one customer install things in ways deliberately contrary to the installation guide. After several weeks and numerous calls (including telephone, email and tracking system entries), they were still trying to futz around doing things that were in breach of that section, trying to do things that I suppose could, in bizzaro world, be thought of on a certain level as satisfying the request. They plainly knew they weren't satisfying my literal instructions, but instead of doing exactly what I said, getting it working and then seeing what they could get away with by increments, they were trying to see if they could take minor increments from their existing (and blatantly incorrect as pointed out to them)position, then telling me they'd done what I asked and saying the problem was still there.
I've seen people with broken CD-ROM drive trays (that had obviously been ripped out of the drive) try to claim they should get a warranty replacement, computers with dents in the sides that have obviously been kicked, connectors that have damaged by misuse and so on. The point is there's always a few losers out there that try to get something for nothing. The sad thing is, that if you try this with a small company, you can usually be singled out, and if you dare ever give them business again, they will make sure they're making back their profit on you. Back when I worked in a computer service department, I would regularily waive some of the labour fees for customers that were either very agreeable, good customers, or handled their problem very well. The customers who were cheap, pushy assholes, usually got to pay for every minute I spent even glancing at their computer.
Many people use car analogies to describe what's wrong with their computer today, so my usual response is that you bring your car in for an oil change, for tune-ups regularily, why not bring in your computer from time to time? Depending on the environment your computer is in, the physical components may been to be cleaned every six months to a year (more frequently for people who smoke at their computer). CPU and power supply fans fail a lot more often if not properly maintained, which often lead to other more dangerous problems (repeated CPU overheating, power fluxutations that can damage components, etc). Computers and cars have things in common -- they tend to be complex enough that the average person can't possibly know everything about them.
I work at a company that sold some power supplies that sucked air in through the power supply into the case. The end result was the power supply ended up heating the air it was taking in, and then blowing it on the CPU which was much more heat sensitive. This, of course, made the power supply much more efficient at the expense of system stability. Most case fans these days blow air out the back of the PSU because the PSU tends to fail less often when things heat up than other components inside the average system. The general rule is you exhaust out the back of the case and PSU, and intake from the front and/or sides.
It's all about capitalism, and unless you live in a backwards country like Canada, which is mainly socialist, then you'll know the appeal of money.
Why am I never surprised to hear an AMERICAN say something this stupid? Canada is not "mainly socialist" by any means. Our economy is primarily based on capitalism as it is in the United States. Yes, we have government run social programs, but last time I checked, the States have problems with career welfare people, too.
They'd be foolish to take it on in that setting -- far too many 'innocent' victims would be dragged into the suit. Hopefully they will take it on soon, before this law gets enough momentum that it becomes nearly impossible to stop.
I think that would be a bad idea. Every OS has different semantics on how it implements the user interface, and elements of the user interface. I doubt you want the programming language to dictate the user interface, just as you wouldn't want the language to dictate the operating system. In fact, I think that C++'s standard library is too big already. Looking at "The C++ Programming Language" by Bjarne Stroustrup, it weighs in at close to 1,000 pages, whereas something like The "C Programming Language" by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie is a mere 250 pages.
File system structure technology matured years ago, so it's quite easy to integrate such things into a standard library, but user interfaces are completely different -- many of them, including the Microsoft Windows user interface, are still rapidly evolving today. Any attempt to try to standardize them would more than likely backfire, since every UI would have different constraints and features. Who's to say which ones are correct and which ones are not?
I mean get real, you can't protect your kid anymore from NOT getting exposed to things, you, as a parent, don't want your kid to get exposed to. It's nearly impossible for mere mortal parents, more so for single parents and worst for single parents, who really can't take care anymore for their kids, because they are either themselves already "kaput" and drug addicted, or because they work so many hours at mimimal wage, that their kids are completely left alone. Fact is you talk endlessly about community and family here. That is a sure sign that BOTH are missing in real life.
I think that's at least part of the real problem here. Most parents are so worried about protecting their kids from the bad things out there that they forget to try and teach them about how to protect themselves. My favorite example of this is of a child that is about to touch something that's scalding hot that will burn them. Most parents will go out of their way to protect them from hurting themselves. But perhaps a better lesson would be to allow them to burn themselves once or twice so they learn to protect themselves from it rather than relying on someone else constantly. It's impossible to protect someone from the rest of the world -- it simply cannot be done. Sooner or later your children will be exposed to sex, drugs and violence, and how they deal with it is not dependant on how protected they were from it in childhood, but rather how prepared they are to do so -- what they've learned, and what they've been taught. If you just allow the Television and schooling system to do the teaching, chances are the results will be far less than adequate.
Perhaps we need to go back to the time when there was at least one parent (either one) who either didn't work, or worked very few hours so that they could care for the children, rather than having both parents with full time jobs, who are both too exhausted to deal with the child even when back from work.
BCE (owns canada's largest private network and biggest national newspaper along with satellite TV)
Actually, both BCE (which owns Sympatico internet service, the CTV television network, a mini-satellite network, and a bunch of newspapers), and CanWest Global (which owns the 'Global' television network, a dizzying number of newspapers (or just has major interest in some), movies and many other ventures) had been recently investigated by the CRTC as part of their license renewal because of the fact there is some concern that these companies hold far too much control over the media and this threatens both the depth of coverage of stories as well as the objectiveness of the journalists covering them.
All of us rely on journalists to tell us the objective truths, and I know it's more than a little disconcerting to see journalists write a 'story' that is nothing more than a parroting of a company's press release. There is simply just too much information and things happening out there for any one person to do their own research to find the events occurring. However, with the continued conglomeration of the media, honest journalistic practices are being replaced with nothing more than ratings grabbing, where a story that embarrasses a politician or other public feature gets a more thorough investigation and coverage than the things that will really affect all our lives.
The Register ran a story about the effort to build some interoperability between Gnome and KDE today. Take a look at www.freedesktop.org. Interoperability is an important issue to the KDE and Gnome people now (finally!). David Mason at RedHat outlines what he and others decided should be important factors at GUADEC II, and I would encourage anyone who cares about either KDE or Gnome to support their efforts. Only by interoperability with they ensure that BOTH desktop environments have a fighting chance to survive.
The list of immediate plans includes the simpler things to implement, including Menu/desktop files, MIME system, Themes (naming, pixmap engine), URI schemes, and Drag and Drop. There is a much larger list on the site, but those are the things to look for the next few releases of Gnome and KDE (there's already a draft stanard for the desktop entry system).
Re:A brief explanation of how libraries work
on
QT Mozilla Port
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· Score: 2
It will also choke because int void main(void) is not a valid way to declare the main procedure..
Besides, you CAN call C procedures in C++ (very easily -- extern "C"), and you CAN call C++ objects methods in C (although not very easily thanks to name mangling). Yes, you have to link in the appropriate library, but you'd have a hell of a time getting a C++ program to link without bringing in the standard C library (libc). It's simply all a matter of resolving all external symbols. The linker doesn't really care if you're linking C, C++, Pascal, Fortran or any other language modules together, as long as the binaries are compatible, it'll do as it's told.
You obviously didn't delve too far within their website... They have at least five different downloads on their website. Just because they're not using the CVS or download sections of sourceforge doesn't mean they're dormant.
In some ways it's worse than the DMCA, since it narrowly scopes fair use to schools and libraries only. Private citizens gain no right (or means) to fair use by that provision. Read the next paragraph of that page:
However, as far as private copying is concerned, the quality and quantity of private copying and the growth of electronic commerce all mean that there should be greater protection for rightholders in digital recording media (whereby unlimited numbers of perfect copies may be made rapidly). In certain limited cases, where rightholders have made the means available, private copying may be carried out.
Funny how they mention the 'means available' after saying the 'means' will only be required to be 'available' to schools and libraries. If you ask me, that measure wasn't placed to insure fair use, but rather to squelch the kind of support in the academic community against this bill in the EU that there is against the DMCA (which makes no such exemptions for schools and libraries) in the United States. It doesn't protect end users of the copyrighted material, it doesn't protect reporters which might want to use an exerpt of the copyrighted material, it doesn't protect anyone who would want to use portions of the copyrighted material to form a parody.
The DMCA didn't address any of these things (so they're still up to court interpretation, which is good), and allowed exemptions for interoperability (something the EU directive explicitly does not -- "rightholders have complete control over the manufacture, distribution etc. of devices designed to circumvent anti-copying devices").
Films are typically 24 FPS, and they are choppy for fast moving scenes. Rapid panning or motion sequences often end up looking very choppy. We all have just accepted this because it's the way it's always been, and may very well always be. Then again, the average person only has to compare it to the 525-scanline 60Hz interlaced television they have and suddenly the lower framerate at the movie theatre doesn't seem so bad.
If they start charging administrative fees, they're going to have some really pissed off legitimate users. For a gaming computer, the configuration might drastically change monthly as someone attempts to tweak the performance, or upgrade components. Then again, if you assume all your customers are criminals, they will not let you down.
And sacrificing a goat to the SCSI gods wasn't obvious? I wish they would've taken some time to develop their April 1st jokes into one or two well done subtle jokes instead of eight or so unfunny ones.
The duration of the life of the known universe could be considered a 'limited' time, too. Unless governments stop bending everytime the corporate puppet WIPO wants it, we're clearly headed that way.
Well, Microsoft Authenticode was supposed to remedy the danger of running code from an unknown author. Now with the false granted certificates, it suddenly becomes far more difficult to determine who authored the product. Although with all fairness, Authenticode was a disaster, with very few vendors bothering to sign their own products with the possible exception of ActiveX control vendors.
The real question is will Microsoft patch it by including proper certificate revokation lists, or will they just patch it by disallowing those two certificates.
Slashdot Mirror
Their biggest mistake was jumping the gun in calling themselves a business. If they wanted to succeed, it would've been better to develop it as a side project until it was almost usable, and then to announce the formation of such a company when all the pieces were in place.
No, RedHat 7.1 uses ipchains as it's built-in automatic firewall system. lokkit in RH7.1 isn't yet updated to generate iptables rules instead of ipchains rules, so it just uses the ipchains.o compatibilty module from the 2.4 kernel. It does, however support disabling the built-in rules, and switching over to iptables if you so desire.
Actually, "Open Source" software is copyrighted just as much as proprietary software is. The draconian parts are the facts that things like UCITA help companies with customer "lock-in", which basically makes it nearly impossible to switch to another vendors products. On the other hand, it makes warrantee clauses a requirement, which is fine for the average proprietary software developer, but it could open up small "Open Source" developers to crippling lawsuits. Very few projects would manage to survive even one such suit.
I don't think their customer base will be that tolerant, however. They want DVDs to become widespread so they can pull the same kind of stunt the music industry pulled with CDs -- cheaper to produce, higher price to the consumers. Customers, however, will not tolerate a DVD player that must be "upgraded" every year or so. Set-top electronics are not the personal computer world, people use 10 year old components with ease and expect them to continue working for decades before finally dying.
Don't expect things to change until the public in general is notified of it. The only thing the public is against the RIAA is for the insane prices they've fixed on audio CDs due to their stranglehold on the market. The average consumer probably doesn't realize the amazing price difference there is between pressing a CD (which is no more than a couple cents per disc) and recording a cassette (which is considerably more).
As much as I hate to defend these people. The average person wouldn't open their computer and start pulling out random parts. Few will even open the case on their computer (can't say I'd blame them, either -- some cases are notoriously hard to open and close without breaking something). The problem arrises because most people don't understand that poking "under the hood" in the software area is exactly the same as poking around the physical area (hardware). This is part of the reason Microsofts products are getting more and more agressive with protecting things like the C:\WINDOWS and C:\PROGRA~1 directories, and poping up scary messages about the ills that will occur if you turn off the protection services. Design a fool-proof product that refuses all types of invalid data, and some ingenius fool will find a new way to feed it invalid data.
Incidentally, I've had one customer install things in ways deliberately contrary to the installation guide. After several weeks and numerous calls (including telephone, email and tracking system entries), they were still trying to futz around doing things that were in breach of that section, trying to do things that I suppose could, in bizzaro world, be thought of on a certain level as satisfying the request. They plainly knew they weren't satisfying my literal instructions, but instead of doing exactly what I said, getting it working and then seeing what they could get away with by increments, they were trying to see if they could take minor increments from their existing (and blatantly incorrect as pointed out to them)position, then telling me they'd done what I asked and saying the problem was still there.
I've seen people with broken CD-ROM drive trays (that had obviously been ripped out of the drive) try to claim they should get a warranty replacement, computers with dents in the sides that have obviously been kicked, connectors that have damaged by misuse and so on. The point is there's always a few losers out there that try to get something for nothing. The sad thing is, that if you try this with a small company, you can usually be singled out, and if you dare ever give them business again, they will make sure they're making back their profit on you. Back when I worked in a computer service department, I would regularily waive some of the labour fees for customers that were either very agreeable, good customers, or handled their problem very well. The customers who were cheap, pushy assholes, usually got to pay for every minute I spent even glancing at their computer.
Many people use car analogies to describe what's wrong with their computer today, so my usual response is that you bring your car in for an oil change, for tune-ups regularily, why not bring in your computer from time to time? Depending on the environment your computer is in, the physical components may been to be cleaned every six months to a year (more frequently for people who smoke at their computer). CPU and power supply fans fail a lot more often if not properly maintained, which often lead to other more dangerous problems (repeated CPU overheating, power fluxutations that can damage components, etc). Computers and cars have things in common -- they tend to be complex enough that the average person can't possibly know everything about them.
I work at a company that sold some power supplies that sucked air in through the power supply into the case. The end result was the power supply ended up heating the air it was taking in, and then blowing it on the CPU which was much more heat sensitive. This, of course, made the power supply much more efficient at the expense of system stability. Most case fans these days blow air out the back of the PSU because the PSU tends to fail less often when things heat up than other components inside the average system. The general rule is you exhaust out the back of the case and PSU, and intake from the front and/or sides.
They'd be foolish to take it on in that setting -- far too many 'innocent' victims would be dragged into the suit. Hopefully they will take it on soon, before this law gets enough momentum that it becomes nearly impossible to stop.
File system structure technology matured years ago, so it's quite easy to integrate such things into a standard library, but user interfaces are completely different -- many of them, including the Microsoft Windows user interface, are still rapidly evolving today. Any attempt to try to standardize them would more than likely backfire, since every UI would have different constraints and features. Who's to say which ones are correct and which ones are not?
Perhaps we need to go back to the time when there was at least one parent (either one) who either didn't work, or worked very few hours so that they could care for the children, rather than having both parents with full time jobs, who are both too exhausted to deal with the child even when back from work.
All of us rely on journalists to tell us the objective truths, and I know it's more than a little disconcerting to see journalists write a 'story' that is nothing more than a parroting of a company's press release. There is simply just too much information and things happening out there for any one person to do their own research to find the events occurring. However, with the continued conglomeration of the media, honest journalistic practices are being replaced with nothing more than ratings grabbing, where a story that embarrasses a politician or other public feature gets a more thorough investigation and coverage than the things that will really affect all our lives.
Yes, and with 790 patents issued or pending, I'm sure Valence will sue their competition out of business!
#include >stdio.h<
int void main(void)
{
printf("Broken!\n");
}
# gcc temp.c
temp.c:3: two or more data types in declaration of `main'
#
The list of immediate plans includes the simpler things to implement, including Menu/desktop files, MIME system, Themes (naming, pixmap engine), URI schemes, and Drag and Drop. There is a much larger list on the site, but those are the things to look for the next few releases of Gnome and KDE (there's already a draft stanard for the desktop entry system).
Besides, you CAN call C procedures in C++ (very easily -- extern "C"), and you CAN call C++ objects methods in C (although not very easily thanks to name mangling). Yes, you have to link in the appropriate library, but you'd have a hell of a time getting a C++ program to link without bringing in the standard C library (libc). It's simply all a matter of resolving all external symbols. The linker doesn't really care if you're linking C, C++, Pascal, Fortran or any other language modules together, as long as the binaries are compatible, it'll do as it's told.
However, this is getting WAY off-topic.
You obviously didn't delve too far within their website... They have at least five different downloads on their website. Just because they're not using the CVS or download sections of sourceforge doesn't mean they're dormant.
The DMCA didn't address any of these things (so they're still up to court interpretation, which is good), and allowed exemptions for interoperability (something the EU directive explicitly does not -- "rightholders have complete control over the manufacture, distribution etc. of devices designed to circumvent anti-copying devices").
Films are typically 24 FPS, and they are choppy for fast moving scenes. Rapid panning or motion sequences often end up looking very choppy. We all have just accepted this because it's the way it's always been, and may very well always be. Then again, the average person only has to compare it to the 525-scanline 60Hz interlaced television they have and suddenly the lower framerate at the movie theatre doesn't seem so bad.
If they start charging administrative fees, they're going to have some really pissed off legitimate users. For a gaming computer, the configuration might drastically change monthly as someone attempts to tweak the performance, or upgrade components. Then again, if you assume all your customers are criminals, they will not let you down.
Well, if he had said daemon, then there would've been the stupid joke about 'killall -9 bitlossd'
And sacrificing a goat to the SCSI gods wasn't obvious? I wish they would've taken some time to develop their April 1st jokes into one or two well done subtle jokes instead of eight or so unfunny ones.
The duration of the life of the known universe could be considered a 'limited' time, too. Unless governments stop bending everytime the corporate puppet WIPO wants it, we're clearly headed that way.
The real question is will Microsoft patch it by including proper certificate revokation lists, or will they just patch it by disallowing those two certificates.