There's exactly the issue...CAL-free. Paying per-user for email is the big issue for me...paying is not the problem, I'd gladly pay (a reasonable price) for the software...as long as I don't have to guess how many users I'm going to need now or in 6 months, or pay only for Outlook users, etc...
What is really needed is a GPL'd Outlook MAPI connector that can talk to one of these servers, which provides seamless and interoperable calendaring as well as email. For example, with Samsung Contact, the web access and the Outlook client see different calendars, last time I checked. It's somewhat similar for Kolab+Toltec, or nearly all of the others...the point of the web-access should be to allow remote access to Outlook - both email and calendar. That's basic. If it doesn't, it's not a true "Exchange Replacement".
If "end" is being used as a verb, as in "even rainbows end," then no, there should not be an apostrophe in "rainbows". However if "end" is used as a noun, as in "at the rainbow's end," then yes, since we are referring to the end of the rainbow, the possessive form using the apostrophe is correct.
Damn. And I never thought I'd care that I paid attention in grammar class!
Sigh. Well, I wish we'd catch up with the rest of the world then!! But here in the US, "charge what the market will bear" is the rule, and I guess the market still bears it...mainly because there's no other option...
Huh? Almost every cell phone company (in the US, at least) charges by the minute, whether the call was outgoing or incoming. Some may still offer first-minute free on incoming, but I think most of them have stopped doing even that.
I am considering refusing to take work calls or text messages on my personal cell phone
What? You mean you were taking work calls in the first place on your personal cell phone??
I have a personal cell phone - but it's personal, ie I pay the bill for it. I do not give out the number to anyone at work. I will sometimes use it to make work-related calls, but that's for my convenience, not theirs. If they wanted me to use it for receiving work calls...well, they'd have to pay the bill instead of me.
Use your cell phone for your convenience, not your employer's.
Don't kill me for saying this, but I want to put it out to answer your point: people who create software for free are fools, because they give away something that they could instead sell.
So, men or women who have sex for free are fools, because they could get paid for it?
Or, a more practical example, a doctor who volunteers some time at a community health center is a fool, because he could be getting paid for giving health-care instead? Of course not - the doctor does get paid for being a doctor at say, his hospital practice, but he might *also* volunteer, *in addition* to his regular time. And that is how most free software gets written - by a programmer who does get paid for writing software as his "day job", but *also* creates free software.
No mention of whether James Earl Jones does the voice of Vader in any of the new/touched-up scenes. I get that it's Hayden in the un-masked scene...just as it wasn't James Earl Jones. But what about other scenes?
And...does James Earl Jones do the (masked) voice of Darth Vader in Ep III? Or will we not see Vader (as we see him in Ep IV) in Ep III? Perhaps just a mangled Anakin, or an early version of the Darth Vader mask.
Hmm..I remember reading long ago, either in a fan magazine or something (maybe the book version of Star Wars?) that Anakin became disfigured, requiring the mask & prostheses, when Obi Wan threw him into a volcano. I hope Lucas remembered that (if it was in the book or in any way "official").
My main gripe about Ep I-II was the lack of continuity with Ep IV-VI -- like Lucas had forgotten the "vision" he'd come up with originally (supposedly he'd sketched out ALL NINE episodes before filming Star Wars). I guess he's fixing it now by modifying Ep IV, V, and VI. Sigh. Better than nothing I suppose...
Yes, the claim to copyright of Unix based on Amendment 2 is murky, but it may take teams of lawyers fighting it out to clear up. The Asset Purchase Agreement states that SCO is buying the assets listed in Schedule 1.1 (a), excluding the assets listed in Schedule 1.1 (b). Later Schedule 1.1 (b) was amended by "Amendment 2".
The gray areas are that Schedule 1.1(a) includes "all rights and ownership of UNIX and UnixWare", then Schedule 1.1(b) excludes "All copyrights and trademarks, except for the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare". They'll fight over whether "all rights" includes "copyrights" - and which takes precedence.
But then Amendment 2 adds to the exclusion clause about "all copyrights" the following: "except for the copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies". That gives SCO plenty of leeway to claim that they have to own the UNIX copyrights in order to make use of the UNIX technologies.
Like I said, very murky, room for SCO to press their case for copyright ownership. Unfortunately.
OTOH, since there has been a Change of Control of SCO since the agreement (hard to argue with - they're really Caldera, and bought SCO), Novell therefore now has "an unlimited royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license to the Licensed Technology" - as stated in section 1.6 of the APA, "License Back of Assets". Since Novell also owns the copyright, they could now give away Unix for free. Or at the least, the code from Unix that is in Linux, should it be proven that there is such code in Linux.
Just watched Red Planet again recently, and noted that the reason the ship had to leave soon (ie why the men on the planet had to hurry) was because the Captain had to quench the onboard fire by venting the ship through a port - and it shoved the ship into a decaying orbit. Without enough fuel left to correct it and still get home.
securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
What I would really like to see is a much stricter interpretation of this phrase...
- no transfer of copyright: only the original Author or Inventor holds copyright (hence, SCO is SOL, because they DID NOT WRITE UNIX). If the author/inventor dies, or the company goes out of business -- then the work becomes PUBLIC DOMAIN. I always thought the copyright was intended to increase the works in the public domain, not decrease it. That's "for the public good"
- limited time - this means somewhat less than the lifetime of the author, ok? This business of copyright extending 50 years beyond death, or being effectively indefinite by passing to family members or corporations, is ludicrous. Even a flat 50 years seems too long to me. And there should be some clause in the law that, once a work is not actively published or produced or available for some period of time (e.g 10-20 years), it may be freely copied.
Haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it fits the bill. Personally I just wish Google would open source what they use for their Catalogs site...but maybe DocMGR or something similar will do the trick...
Naahh, it's not slashdotted, it's just "ALL FLASH ALL THE TIME" with no link to a no-flash version. If you don't have Flash installed, you get a blank page. So I haven't read it yet either.
Although I often say pronounce MySQL as "My Sequel", I railed against saying "sequel" for a long time. I still say "Ess Que Ell Server" most often for the MS SQL Server. But I developed an alternative: instead of "sequel" for SQL, I say "squeal". Hence I sometimes say "My Squeal" for MySQL, and for PostgreSQL I most often use "Post Greh Squeal".
I have the Altec Lansing ADA-105, and it works great as a stereo speaker, and sometimes I do hear surround-sound effects - but it's not the same as a full set of speakers.
"Most interesting is the assertion that the decision by Red Hat to end support for its free distribution and Novell's aquisition of SUSE marks not only the death of free software, but actually is a validation of Microsoft's business model."
Bah. They seem to be equating the Red Hat move and the SuSE acquisition as impending signs that RedHat and SuSE will soon be non-free, commercial, proprietary software. But a) RedHat Ent. Linux is still free, or mostly-free - sure, I have to buy it, but once I do I can put it on as many computers as I want, and even if that's wrong and I can only put it on 1, it still wouldn't have per-user or per-connection licensing b) Novell is not very likely to try to make SuSE much different, and in any case it was already distributed almost as RHEL is - ie no download (at least for several versions). AND, SuSE already had several versions with connection/seat licensing (the ones w/proprietary software included).
Nevertheless, RHEL and SuSE are still *Linux*, and the source for the kernel and *most* if not all of the applications is available, free, and freely modifiable. Where's the source to the XP kernel, Microsoft? Can I make my own version, even if I *could* get the source code for free? Hah. No, neither the Red Hat move nor the SuSE acquisition validate your non-free, no-sharing, per-seat per-connection business model, Microsoft. Go soak your head.
Ok, this is a really silly, minor, nitpick gripe, but nevertheless it drives me crazy...and yes, keeps me using KDE instead of GNOME: in GNOME/GTK applications, the mouse pointer flops to the other direction (eg normally points to upper left, but changes to point to upper right) when you select menus. That drives me crazy - it's so different from any GUI I've used, or any GUI I currently use, that I could not ever get used to it. And there was no option I could find to change it. It's apparently part of the GTK library.
Did Sun change that? *That* would be a way of making it more familiar to Windows users...
The PURGE command caught my eye - basically, the Novell Netware file system works in a similar manner - when a file is deleted or overwritten, it isn't lost; instead Netware keeps it around (unless disk space is needed) and it can be recovered via SALVAGE. PURGE will remove deleted files from the system.
The nice thing is, as many versions of the file as you have disk space are kept, until/unless you run out of disk space or explicitly purge them.
I remember there was a project bringing the NWFS to Linux a while back; I believe it's inactive now, but having the salvage/purge system would be nice to have in Linux (especially on a Samba server). So would the Netware in-place disk compression (inactive files are compressed, decompressed on access).
Give it up. Software alone cannot be your means of making a living. The act of *writing*
the software, sure, but the software by itself cannot support you. As you said, it will
be cloned, pirated or otherwise undermined as something you can sell to support yourself.
As for "intellectual property," there is no such thing. The very term is an oxymoron: nothing
'intellectual' can be property, to be traded or sold. Once you express an idea, it's
no longer just your idea. But you still have it...it's just that someone else also has it.
There's no loss involved, nothing 'stolen' -- to steal something is to take it away, deprive
someone of something such that they no longer have it. You just can't do that with ideas
and knowledge (short of a blow to head causing brain damage).
You cannot buy and sell ideas and intellectual knowledge, because you cannot take back an
idea, or knowledge, once you've communicated it to someone.
> We need companies to develop things. Things like > hardware. Things I can't develop in my own house (a chip fab > plan is a little over my household budget:-). I'm willing to > pay a fair price for others, companies or otherwise, to do > what I can't.
Yes, we need companies for things that are expensive to produce - but software is not expensive to produce - anyone with a PC can develop software for nothing but the cost of their own time. But the big companies want to put a stop to that - it's a threat to them. They would prefer software to be as expensive to produce as the hardware, so that only "big players" could do it, and thus there would not be as much competition for them.
Software patents are a tool to prevent the development of software at low cost, a way to make software as expensive to produce as hardware. Only those with the money to license and cross-license patents will be able to develop software. A professor wrote into PCWeek claiming patents were good, and actually helped spur innovation in software -- he's right, they do -- if you're a big company and can affort to pay for the licensing.
A license like Sun's is a way to close the door to the "upstart" free software developers. If this sort of licensing and the "too-general" software patenting continues, eventually the big players will have gotten their way and the only way to develop software will be to work for one of them (and of course, turn over all your rights to it to them).
It's a battle between big businesses and "the people". I think the people will eventually win, because software is just too easy to develop to squelch it out entirely. But things may get worse before they get better, and we (the people) must be vigilant to be sure they (the big companies) don't win.
Re: streaming audio/digital cable + save-to-file..
on
Easy MP3 Distribution
·
· Score: 2
Streaming audio over the net is still digital audio though. The bits still come into the computer. The only reason the RIAA doesn't go after those is that the clients for that don't let you save it to files...and/or the quality's just not as good. That's why the RIAA tolerates radio -- people will still buy CD's to get the better quality and be able to play the songs when they choose.
If there were streaming-audio sources that had the same quality as MP3, and someone wrote a program to capture the data to a file (say, in MP3 format...), then the RIAA would probably go after the streaming-audio folks as well.
But I want to see what they do about digital cable...which supposedly has CD quality sound, and it has plenty of music channels. And my digital cable box has an ethernet port, a USB port, an AC-3 port, and a port marked "data" on it...haven't tried hooking up to these yet, but I suspect it may be possible to rip the digital bits. Most certainly with something like the Hauppauge WinTV-D card.
Slashdot Mirror
"CAL-free-groupware-with-Outlook-as-the-client"
There's exactly the issue...CAL-free. Paying per-user for email is the big issue for me...paying is not the problem, I'd gladly pay (a reasonable price) for the software...as long as I don't have to guess how many users I'm going to need now or in 6 months, or pay only for Outlook users, etc...
What is really needed is a GPL'd Outlook MAPI connector that can talk to one of these servers, which provides seamless and interoperable calendaring as well as email. For example, with Samsung Contact, the web access and the Outlook client see different calendars, last time I checked. It's somewhat similar for Kolab+Toltec, or nearly all of the others...the point of the web-access should be to allow remote access to Outlook - both email and calendar. That's basic. If it doesn't, it's not a true "Exchange Replacement".
If "end" is being used as a verb, as in "even rainbows end," then no, there should not be an apostrophe in "rainbows". However if "end" is used as a noun, as in "at the rainbow's end," then yes, since we are referring to the end of the rainbow, the possessive form using the apostrophe is correct.
Damn. And I never thought I'd care that I paid attention in grammar class!
I believe "syphoned" is shorthand for calling someone with SkYpe.
I guess they're transferring ticket revenues via Skype on a PDA in the studio exec's pockets.
Sigh. Well, I wish we'd catch up with the rest of the world then!! But here in the US, "charge what the market will bear" is the rule, and I guess the market still bears it...mainly because there's no other option...
Huh? Almost every cell phone company (in the US, at least) charges by the minute, whether the call was outgoing or incoming. Some may still offer first-minute free on incoming, but I think most of them have stopped doing even that.
I am considering refusing to take work calls or text messages on my personal cell phone
What? You mean you were taking work calls in the first place on your personal cell phone??
I have a personal cell phone - but it's personal, ie I pay the bill for it. I do not give out the number to anyone at work. I will sometimes use it to make work-related calls, but that's for my convenience, not theirs. If they wanted me to use it for receiving work calls...well, they'd have to pay the bill instead of me.
Use your cell phone for your convenience, not your employer's.
Don't kill me for saying this, but I want to put it out to answer your point: people who create software for free are fools, because they give away something that they could instead sell.
So, men or women who have sex for free are fools, because they could get paid for it?
Or, a more practical example, a doctor who volunteers some time at a community health center is a fool, because he could be getting paid for giving health-care instead? Of course not - the doctor does get paid for being a doctor at say, his hospital practice, but he might *also* volunteer, *in addition* to his regular time. And that is how most free software gets written - by a programmer who does get paid for writing software as his "day job", but *also* creates free software.
No mention of whether James Earl Jones does the voice of Vader in any of the new/touched-up scenes. I get that it's Hayden in the un-masked scene...just as it wasn't James Earl Jones. But what about other scenes?
And...does James Earl Jones do the (masked) voice of Darth Vader in Ep III? Or will we not see Vader (as we see him in Ep IV) in Ep III? Perhaps just a mangled Anakin, or an early version of the Darth Vader mask.
Hmm..I remember reading long ago, either in a fan magazine or something (maybe the book version of Star Wars?) that Anakin became disfigured, requiring the mask & prostheses, when Obi Wan threw him into a volcano. I hope Lucas remembered that (if it was in the book or in any way "official").
My main gripe about Ep I-II was the lack of continuity with Ep IV-VI -- like Lucas had forgotten the "vision" he'd come up with originally (supposedly he'd sketched out ALL NINE episodes before filming Star Wars). I guess he's fixing it now by modifying Ep IV, V, and VI. Sigh. Better than nothing I suppose...
Yes, the claim to copyright of Unix based on Amendment 2 is murky, but it may take teams of lawyers fighting it out to clear up. The Asset Purchase Agreement states that SCO is buying the assets listed in Schedule 1.1 (a), excluding the assets listed in Schedule 1.1 (b). Later Schedule 1.1 (b) was amended by "Amendment 2".
The gray areas are that Schedule 1.1(a) includes "all rights and ownership of UNIX and UnixWare", then Schedule 1.1(b) excludes "All copyrights and trademarks, except for the trademarks UNIX and UnixWare". They'll fight over whether "all rights" includes "copyrights" - and which takes precedence.
But then Amendment 2 adds to the exclusion clause about "all copyrights" the following: "except for the copyrights and trademarks owned by Novell as of the date of the Agreement required for SCO to exercise its rights with respect to the acquisition of UNIX and UnixWare technologies". That gives SCO plenty of leeway to claim that they have to own the UNIX copyrights in order to make use of the UNIX technologies.
Like I said, very murky, room for SCO to press their case for copyright ownership. Unfortunately.
OTOH, since there has been a Change of Control of SCO since the agreement (hard to argue with - they're really Caldera, and bought SCO), Novell therefore now has "an unlimited royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license to the Licensed Technology" - as stated in section 1.6 of the APA, "License Back of Assets". Since Novell also owns the copyright, they could now give away Unix for free. Or at the least, the code from Unix that is in Linux, should it be proven that there is such code in Linux.
Just watched Red Planet again recently, and noted that the reason the ship had to leave soon (ie why the men on the planet had to hurry) was because the Captain had to quench the onboard fire by venting the ship through a port - and it shoved the ship into a decaying orbit. Without enough fuel left to correct it and still get home.
securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors
What I would really like to see is a much stricter interpretation of this phrase...
- no transfer of copyright: only the original Author or Inventor holds copyright (hence, SCO is SOL, because they DID NOT WRITE UNIX). If the author/inventor dies, or the company goes out of business -- then the work becomes PUBLIC DOMAIN. I always thought the copyright was intended to increase the works in the public domain, not decrease it. That's "for the public good"
- limited time - this means somewhat less than the lifetime of the author, ok? This business of copyright extending 50 years beyond death, or being effectively indefinite by passing to family members or corporations, is ludicrous. Even a flat 50 years seems too long to me. And there should be some clause in the law that, once a work is not actively published or produced or available for some period of time (e.g 10-20 years), it may be freely copied.
Haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it fits the bill. Personally I just wish Google would open source what they use for their Catalogs site...but maybe DocMGR or something similar will do the trick...
It's at http://docmgr.sourceforge.net/
Naahh, it's not slashdotted, it's just "ALL FLASH ALL THE TIME" with no link to a no-flash version. If you don't have Flash installed, you get a blank page. So I haven't read it yet either.
Although I often say pronounce MySQL as "My Sequel", I railed against saying "sequel" for a long time. I still say "Ess Que Ell Server" most often for the MS SQL Server. But I developed an alternative: instead of "sequel" for SQL, I say "squeal". Hence I sometimes say "My Squeal" for MySQL, and for PostgreSQL I most often use "Post Greh Squeal".
I have the Altec Lansing ADA-105, and it works great as a stereo speaker, and sometimes I do hear surround-sound effects - but it's not the same as a full set of speakers.
"Most interesting is the assertion that the decision by Red Hat to end support for its free distribution and Novell's aquisition of SUSE marks not only the death of free software, but actually is a validation of Microsoft's business model."
Bah. They seem to be equating the Red Hat move and the SuSE acquisition as impending signs that RedHat and SuSE will soon be non-free, commercial, proprietary software. But a) RedHat Ent. Linux is still free, or mostly-free - sure, I have to buy it, but once I do I can put it on as many computers as I want, and even if that's wrong and I can only put it on 1, it still wouldn't have per-user or per-connection licensing b) Novell is not very likely to try to make SuSE much different, and in any case it was already distributed almost as RHEL is - ie no download (at least for several versions). AND, SuSE already had several versions with connection/seat licensing (the ones w/proprietary software included).
Nevertheless, RHEL and SuSE are still *Linux*, and the source for the kernel and *most* if not all of the applications is available, free, and freely modifiable. Where's the source to the XP kernel, Microsoft? Can I make my own version, even if I *could* get the source code for free? Hah. No, neither the Red Hat move nor the SuSE acquisition validate your non-free, no-sharing, per-seat per-connection business model, Microsoft. Go soak your head.
Ok, this is a really silly, minor, nitpick gripe, but nevertheless it drives me crazy...and yes, keeps me using KDE instead of GNOME: in GNOME/GTK applications, the mouse pointer flops to the other direction (eg normally points to upper left, but changes to point to upper right) when you select menus. That drives me crazy - it's so different from any GUI I've used, or any GUI I currently use, that I could not ever get used to it. And there was no option I could find to change it. It's apparently part of the GTK library.
Did Sun change that? *That* would be a way of making it more familiar to Windows users...
The PURGE command caught my eye - basically, the Novell Netware file system works in a similar manner - when a file is deleted or overwritten, it isn't lost; instead Netware keeps it around (unless disk space is needed) and it can be recovered via SALVAGE. PURGE will remove deleted files from the system.
The nice thing is, as many versions of the file as you have disk space are kept, until/unless you run out of disk space or explicitly purge them.
I remember there was a project bringing the NWFS to Linux a while back; I believe it's inactive now, but having the salvage/purge system would be nice to have in Linux (especially on a Samba server). So would the Netware in-place disk compression (inactive files are compressed, decompressed on access).
As for "intellectual property," there is no such thing. The very term is an oxymoron: nothing 'intellectual' can be property, to be traded or sold. Once you express an idea, it's no longer just your idea. But you still have it...it's just that someone else also has it. There's no loss involved, nothing 'stolen' -- to steal something is to take it away, deprive someone of something such that they no longer have it. You just can't do that with ideas and knowledge (short of a blow to head causing brain damage).
You cannot buy and sell ideas and intellectual knowledge, because you cannot take back an idea, or knowledge, once you've communicated it to someone.
> We need companies to develop things. Things like :-). I'm willing to
> hardware. Things I can't develop in my own house (a chip fab
> plan is a little over my household budget
> pay a fair price for others, companies or otherwise, to do
> what I can't.
Yes, we need companies for things that are expensive to produce - but
software is not expensive to produce - anyone with a PC can develop
software for nothing but the cost of their own time. But the big
companies want to put a stop to that - it's a threat to them. They
would prefer software to be as expensive to produce as the hardware,
so that only "big players" could do it, and thus there would not be
as much competition for them.
Software patents are a tool to prevent the development of software
at low cost, a way to make software as expensive to produce as hardware.
Only those with the money to license and cross-license patents will be
able to develop software. A professor wrote into PCWeek claiming patents
were good, and actually helped spur innovation in software -- he's right,
they do -- if you're a big company and can affort to pay for the licensing.
A license like Sun's is a way to close the door to the "upstart" free software
developers. If this sort of licensing and the "too-general" software patenting
continues, eventually the big players will have gotten their way and the only
way to develop software will be to work for one of them (and of course, turn over
all your rights to it to them).
It's a battle between big businesses and "the people". I think the people will
eventually win, because software is just too easy to develop to squelch it out
entirely. But things may get worse before they get better, and we (the people)
must be vigilant to be sure they (the big companies) don't win.
Streaming audio over the net is still digital audio though. The bits still come into the computer. The only reason the RIAA doesn't go after those is that the clients for that don't let you save it to files...and/or the quality's just not as good. That's why the RIAA tolerates radio -- people will still buy CD's to get the better quality and be able to play the songs when they choose.
If there were streaming-audio sources that had the same quality as MP3, and someone wrote a program to capture the data to a file (say, in MP3 format...), then the RIAA would probably go after the streaming-audio folks as well.
But I want to see what they do about digital cable...which supposedly has CD quality sound, and it has plenty of music channels. And my digital cable box has an ethernet port, a USB port, an AC-3 port, and a port marked "data" on it...haven't tried hooking up to these yet, but I suspect it may be possible to rip the digital bits. Most certainly with something like the Hauppauge WinTV-D card.