Are you sure? No chance of them pulling out of the market because it is no longer economically viable, or of them nailing their flags to XFree86 and saying to RH et al if you want our drivers then use XFree86, if you want to leave our drivers go right ahead and don't blame us! Until statements come from NVidia and ATI to the effect that they will follow distributions i would regard it as far from a certainty however logical it might seem at first glance.
And to be even fairer to David Dawes, he is acting as the voice for the Officials, he is not necessarily saying what he believes all the time but he is representing the views of the organisation. Also he is still submitting patches to Debian despite their opinions on the liscensing change. That being said I still think the XFree86 deserves to be forked to death for the closed development model they've stuck to, the change in license for 4.4 simply being the line in the sand that called time.
The following is shamelessly lifted from Daniel Stone's blog which is aggregated on planet.freedesktop.org.
Daniel Stone: the various x trees: an explanation
OK, listen up kids, 'cause I'm only going to say this once. I think.
DIX: Driver-Indepdent X. Anything that isn't server-specific
(extensions, core functions/structures, et al), goes in here.
DDX: Device-Dependent X; the inverse of the above.
XFree86: They still exist. They just released 4.4. The XFree86
distribution contains a DIX, a DDX, X libraries, X apps, fonts, and docs.
X.Org: They have a tree forked from XFree86 that contains all
the same stuff, and still uses imake. They're working on a release. They're open
and stuff now.
xserver: The freedesktop.org xserver project has a DIX and
three DDXes - KDrive, Xizzle, and XWin. That's it.
KDrive: 'Keith's Driver', formerly known as TinyX. A completely
separate DDX to XFree86 - very small, used as a testbed for stuff like RandR,
Composite, Damage and Fixes. Good for embedded machines.
Xizzle: A fork of the XFree86 DDX, built with autotools, et al.
Only just starting to link an actual binary, doesn't work yet, but is moving
very, very quickly. Also, the binary is half the size of XFree86's. Pronounced
'shizzle'; mea culpa.
XWin: Cygwin's server for Windows.
freedesktop.org: We have xserver for the server, xlibs for the
libs, and xapps for the applications. Everything's modular: the release schedule
of the ATI driver is no longer tied to that of the X wire protocol, or some
random fonts. Word.
What's interesting to note is that Daniel Stone is the person who did a lot of the work on XFree86 4.3 for Debian and became co-developer of XFree86 for Debian. He is now very active on fdo (seemingly focusing on Xizzle) and also Keith Packard is becoming a Debian Developer. So if Fedora is looking like it's going for X.Org, it looks like Debian might be going to fdo! Truly I think everyone will remain on a forked XFree86 (possibly X.Org) until fdo is "ready", the question being what will the binary driver developers do?
Hell NO! I like/love Knoppix BUT when I recently decided to install a Debian based desktop for someone else, I tried both types of knoppix installs and a pure debian install from beta2. Beta2 won hands down, because afterwards I could figure out how to get my packages into order, updating them and getting what I wanted. With Knoppix you end up with a hodge-podge of sources that don't really sync up that well together and lots of setup stuff that can make it more ackward to go and adjust things. This debian-installer is great and seems to be developing very nicely (i.e. the developers seem to be able to do things within the framework without going insane), I wouldn't be surprised if Knoppix bases their next installer rewrite on it (if they have another rewrite). I admit I'm not Bob User, but I hate to think what would probably have happened to Bob User when security updates came around, or anything else got them into apt.
Actually Debian is probably going to eventually get a nice new graphical installer courtesy of debian-installer, the very installer this article is about! It may not have a graphical front-end as of yet, but it is designed to have one! First things first is getting debian-installer working for most definitions of working, and having some stability in it. Judging from the Beta 1,2,3 progression I would say that this is pretty much achieved (there now up around 6 ports that are at least worthy of investigation and i386 seems basically solid). The fun part will be to see who builds the graphical installers and how they get built, we could yet see a mini-explosion of (un)official debian installers, all simply frontends to debian-installer.
It seemed to me like Anaconda wasn't getting much of a look from the developers because of the work required to port it, there just aren't (many) people out there writing OS installers for 11 platforms so Debian probably just does have to d.i.y. or have different installers for every platform.
It's not really a big deal for Debian, it might be a slightly bigger deal for firefox. The software is certainly DFSG free, even if it needs artwork, the question is can anyone be bothered to put together artwork which meets the DFSG (I suspect someone would if no-one else has already). Now the problem for firefox is Debian (and hence all the derived distros) would have just left firefox official behind and could even change the name (mozilla-*-ng perhaps) so brand awareness will be diluted. I see the problem for the firefox developers though, they want to make sure any old bod can't dilute their "brand" by releasing bad binaries that look just like the real thing!
Eventually people will get the message and either build/buy propretary solutions or adhere to the licenses of the Free Software they choose. Someone should have known that putting a statically compiled in wireless driver into a commercial product means one of two things, yank as a mistake on sight and say sorry, or release the source. If you build a product on Free Software, you should understand what you are doing and if you are not planning on releasing everything you do you had better be real careful you don't contaminate what you want to "keep"! I see it as a good thing, as it reinforces the "community" element of Free Software and reassurres people who might put serious work into Free Software that it won't be hijacked by others who won't follow the rules (well don't know what would happen with GPL violations/violators in China, for example, at present).
BTW I only want Linux to gain widespread acceptance if it is still Free, the video card market is where this battle is really being fought at present though with Daniel Stone's announcment that XFree86 has been forked (I submitted a first story to slashdot about this 9 days ago and it's still pending), not once but twice (by X.org and freedesktop.org) perhaps a shake-up is coming.
You'ld think someone would have at least found a copy of the script or book for Empire Strikes Back (Film, 1980) where they say "They can't have disappeared. No ship that small has a cloaking device." Someone must still have a copy of that book or script around in print (don't know where mine went)!
For me the word Morph is a name, and the name of that Aardman creation. I'm not from the UK but from Ireland where we also get BBC. 1980 sure outdates 1991 and Morph certainly did morph, just not digitally! I definetly think the date on the record should be 1980. Is it sci-fi, I'd say so, just way after it's time and for kids! And because a is worth 1000 clicks, http://www.aardman.com/showcase/amazing.html.
Well if I understand it correctly a TV is digital, even the oldest ones. The screens are made up of lines which I have also understood are made up of dots so VHS and DVD are both lesser than film would be my argument! Now that is only true is both are prefectly produced and presented but neither ever have that. This is where digital starts to win for the reasons you describe, but I for one hope that I will always have a cinema nearby where I can go and watch a film reel be projected, and that there will still be producers willing to go the extra mile to get the look of film or even just because they like it (like authors writing on typewriters or pen and ink). I'm still fascinated by finalscratch which is seeing even the most extreme of djs leaving vinyl for digital audio, I think books are safe for a little while longer yet though (but that mad paper/screen stuff...).
I ask them what they want it for. If they say "games" I'll talk, if they say some sort of multimedia production (video, audio, 3d reallY) I'll talk. Pretty much everything else and I'll just say "it doesn't matter, the cheapest, but throw in some extra ram". If these people ever discover what they really need some piece of hardware for and buy it then they'll spend a hell of a lot less in the long run.
There is an advantage to the bttv style tuners, latency. In fairness this isn't going to effect many situations, but if you want to put a console through it it would be an issue, same if you wanted to listen to a live radio broadcast of what you are watching instead of the live tv audio. I'm sure people can come up with other examples, but whether it's a big deal in general... probably not.
Also you can run Linux on this thing. There are reports of successful use with MythTV so you can run more than windows on it.
The article seems to have two different main points. Firstly that the entire networking model (7 layers) is inappropriate for "reliable" networks. Secondly they suggest that the entire model for building computers is wrong, and that somehow they need to use hardware to isloate programs.
The issues they address in the first point were issues which I felt were meant to be addressed by IP6, has/will it fail? I always understood IP6 as being designed to (optionally) have secure connections, qos and an ip address structure to allow for floating nodes. Would IP6 not stand up to delivering messages in network time for the entire US military structure?
The second issue seems simple to me, yes it will be much more reliable if you use a seperate computer for each task and allow them to communicate, but can you tolerate the lack of flexibility and is it even possible to do anything meaningful without adding lots of parts and weight (the more parts, the less reliable). I can imagine building a chip which actually contains 8 386s and 32M or ram split into 4M per 386, then have the disk controller map the device in an 8 way split so they can't touch each others data, a network chip could act as a switch to all the information, providing qos etc. buses to expansion could be mapped to cpus, but is it worth it or are you better off building two different but functionally identical systems so if one fails the other shouldn't? Also it's still one machine, as soon as you actually split it out into a meaningful number of machines weight, size and handling all become a problem. It would be lovely if you could sew tiny bluetooth enabled cpus w/mem into all the army gear and then they cluster together into a super cpu which reads the soldiers thumbprinted data device to figure out what to do, but would that actually require any sort of fundamental shift in how computers are made to achieve?
To me this article simply states that they haven't managed to build a good enough network yet, and want some cash to do it, and that they haven't managed to build a reliable os/app combination to deal with their needs yet either! Just the talk of "One of the limitations inherent in this approach is that when an application malfunctions, it can affect other programs" made me think they need to look harder at their OS. I will be surprised if the end result isn't IP6 (perhaps a modified army version) but you never know! I wonder what OS they'll go with though?
The Space Elevator idea is quite safe from becoming a joke until someone announces "I have a material strong enough to build a space elevator". Then you will see the put or or shut-up moment for it's proponents but up until then it is theoretical. I think it is important for research to continue into the logistics of space elevators but until we have a potential material it's an aspiration. I just hope that if/when we find a meterial we can find the techniques to turn it into a space elevator. Of course it is possible that someone will figure out a way to build a space elevator that doesn't require as strong a material but I think at present it all hangs on the material researchers. When they solve their problems the engineers will have to come in and see if they can turn a theoretical idea with a plauible material into an actual workable installation plan (just cause you can make a material in a lab doesn't mean you can produce the quantities required on site).
The good Digital SLR will outperform 35mm film up to 13x19 inches not in terms of quality (allegedly comparable) but overall convenience. Even your linked piece has to acknowledge that it is about money, the more you spend the better the quality, and you can spend more and get more out of analog. I am saying analog is better then digital in black and white terms for representing analog information. Take audio, sound is analog for all practical purposes and any digital representation will have lost some of the originals quality. Same with imagery, be it still or film the world is analog, and an analog system can try to capture it to a limitless extent (it won't/can't succeed) whereas digital is always limiting it's attempt to a fixed amount of information. If someone comes along and tells me that film 35mm film is chemically limited to 50 MegaPixels or less then perhaps analog may see its day (don't forget large film could go 1000 MegaPixels + at that sort of dpi).
My real point is that the people with money can create better media and at a higher quality (I'm not saying LawnMower Man 2 is better then Clerks) and if they really want to try and keep their market structures that is how they should concentrate on doing it rather than battling hard where they have already lost, in part because they delayed DVD to get their fabulous CSS on to it, otherwise they'd already have 2 more years of DVD sales under their belt to help them go to SDVD which people would really struggle to have the bandwidth to push around.
(Note that if analog did have infinite resolution, then the old joke about using a copying machine to look at a benzene atom by successively enlarging the image wouldn't be a joke.)
The problem is the introduction of noise with each copy and the size of the particles used to build up the copy images (including the original photo/frame in the case of film). I don't know realistically what resolutions the particles sizes on film dictate but I would be stunned in digital techniques are anywhere close (and wonder if they ever could be)?
Are you suggesting newspapers aren't printed with dots? A newspaper photo proves nothing in this case. Can anyone comment on the physical resolution limits of the chemicals involved in film? Are you really telling me I won't get a better photo using a lens to blow up a section of film rather than plucking a section from a 20 megapixel image? Of course it's analog, so making perfect copies is impossible and trying to do it is an expensive quest and hence digital has it's advantages, but the generalisation that digital is better quality is definetley wrong, it's just black and white, no shades of gray.
I'll admit I've never quite figured out just how films are now finally put toghether. Is the original analog film actual used to create the final cut (either physically or be analog copying) or is the entire process digitised (forgetting the people who to me are idiots that decide to "film" in digital)? Assuming that only the digitally generated content is actually going to be digitised then no digital format can ever have the quality of the analog film! Project a dvd onto your wall and look at it, then think about cinema. Ok, project hd footage, still noticing the problem? No matter what resolution you rise to, you will always be short of analog. Reminds me of a recent visit to Amsterdam where Canon have a little building displaying photos and selling posters all seemingly to promote their digital equipment. Problem was they also had the building surrounded by about 30 of the pictures in giant format (1.5mx1m at a guess, maybe bigger) so people could walk around and look at them. From anything over about 3m the photos looked nice, but as you moved in... Worst of all inside they had another giant picture with a caption like "Can you tell it's digital?" which had 4 of us rolling around the place laughing!
Of course add to all this the simple fact that very few digital media files are lossless copies of the original, most are re-encoded at least once which most certainly does degrade the copy!
As and from today the Debian unstable has been renamed from sid (breaks toys) to maggie (falls over). Further names for forthcoming releases to be decided, but not expected to run out in the next millenium!
Well a quick check of the article time and the first comments suggests that this story appeared 3h48m late! Not too much point mentioning the stories on the homepage seeing as though I've customised mine but it definetly fell into a glitch in the matrix somewhere, I didn't see it with my own eyes:-) Always the good stories go awol!
People have different values of free, that is really the point. If you relinquish all control over something is it still free or will it remain free? If you place any restrictions on something can it still be free, even if the restrictions are solely to ensure that it never becomes any less free? The GPL is about making software GPL-free and ensuring it always remains so, the BSD license(s) is about setting something free and doing nothing to ensure it's future freedom.
To try and make a useful analogy, drawing from slavery as an example, if I set a slave free under a BSD Licence, they can still be bought by someone else but if I set them free under a GPL licence they are off the market and can never be enslaved again. BSD supporters have no problem with their software being enslaved, GPL supporters do! So how do you view software slavery? As software is not a single piece of property you may have no problem with it, but you still may not want to see the "fruit of your loins" enslaved when your intention was to set it free!
If the aim of the BSD licences was to make it's software as free as possible why does it place any restrictions on it's redistribution? Because that is the BSD value of free, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Just don't forget, your position and personal value of free is what decides how free a license is, but there is no freedom for you when you get a binary only BSD licensed release though the person distributing it has used the freedom of the license to deny your freedom.
Now are you saying that unless there is no government or law you cannot be free? If a law is there to control something, say murder, does that mean people under the law are free? Depends if you mean free to live or free to kill. Depends if the law is there to promote freedom or to deny it (i.e. murder promotes your freedom to live above your freedom to kill). I prefer to live in GPL country but if others want to live in BSD country thats fine by me, we both just have to respect each others laws when we go on holiday!
SD/MIT-style licences are inherently libertarian: they maximize individual liberty, and leave it up to the individual to decide whether or not to contribute their work to the public commons.
Which individuals liberty?
The user of a binary fork?
The author of an original work?
The contributor to the project?
I know the answer, but wanted to point out some other answers which might make your claim about the BSD/MIT licence maximizing social liberty seem a lot more shaky.
It isn't actually the exact licences themselves which matter, but the desires of the community of developers around it. Some developers are disgusted at the idea of having their work used by someone else in a binary product where they can't see any changes which were made to it, others couldn't care less what happens to their code!
It is one thing to say "take this code, I don't care what you do with it" and another to say "take this code and its source and use it as you like, but if you give it to anyone else these rules must apply to them".
You are right though that the GPL places a greater emphasis on a society collaborating to develop code, while BSD/MIT are more about an individual (group) giving away code.
Well you do need quite a lot of shelving to store the cds, but you also have to store machines for playing them on! A board game lasts forever (for a given value of forever) whereas most computer games will do well to last 10 years unless you keep around the neccessary other hardware (and software) to run them. If the Playstation (and maybe XBox) line can continue to retain backwards compatibility maybe this will change. As it is I have lots of CDs of games I can't get running, at least without a lot of effort! On the other hand our copy of Monopoly is at least as old as me (1970s) and offers an interesting insight into the history of my own city, and gives me great amusement when I go to someone else's house and see a new board which is substantially different.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure? No chance of them pulling out of the market because it is no longer economically viable, or of them nailing their flags to XFree86 and saying to RH et al if you want our drivers then use XFree86, if you want to leave our drivers go right ahead and don't blame us! Until statements come from NVidia and ATI to the effect that they will follow distributions i would regard it as far from a certainty however logical it might seem at first glance.
And to be even fairer to David Dawes, he is acting as the voice for the Officials, he is not necessarily saying what he believes all the time but he is representing the views of the organisation. Also he is still submitting patches to Debian despite their opinions on the liscensing change. That being said I still think the XFree86 deserves to be forked to death for the closed development model they've stuck to, the change in license for 4.4 simply being the line in the sand that called time.
Hell NO! I like/love Knoppix BUT when I recently decided to install a Debian based desktop for someone else, I tried both types of knoppix installs and a pure debian install from beta2. Beta2 won hands down, because afterwards I could figure out how to get my packages into order, updating them and getting what I wanted. With Knoppix you end up with a hodge-podge of sources that don't really sync up that well together and lots of setup stuff that can make it more ackward to go and adjust things. This debian-installer is great and seems to be developing very nicely (i.e. the developers seem to be able to do things within the framework without going insane), I wouldn't be surprised if Knoppix bases their next installer rewrite on it (if they have another rewrite). I admit I'm not Bob User, but I hate to think what would probably have happened to Bob User when security updates came around, or anything else got them into apt.
Actually Debian is probably going to eventually get a nice new graphical installer courtesy of debian-installer, the very installer this article is about! It may not have a graphical front-end as of yet, but it is designed to have one! First things first is getting debian-installer working for most definitions of working, and having some stability in it. Judging from the Beta 1,2,3 progression I would say that this is pretty much achieved (there now up around 6 ports that are at least worthy of investigation and i386 seems basically solid). The fun part will be to see who builds the graphical installers and how they get built, we could yet see a mini-explosion of (un)official debian installers, all simply frontends to debian-installer.
It seemed to me like Anaconda wasn't getting much of a look from the developers because of the work required to port it, there just aren't (many) people out there writing OS installers for 11 platforms so Debian probably just does have to d.i.y. or have different installers for every platform.
It's not really a big deal for Debian, it might be a slightly bigger deal for firefox. The software is certainly DFSG free, even if it needs artwork, the question is can anyone be bothered to put together artwork which meets the DFSG (I suspect someone would if no-one else has already). Now the problem for firefox is Debian (and hence all the derived distros) would have just left firefox official behind and could even change the name (mozilla-*-ng perhaps) so brand awareness will be diluted. I see the problem for the firefox developers though, they want to make sure any old bod can't dilute their "brand" by releasing bad binaries that look just like the real thing!
Eventually people will get the message and either build/buy propretary solutions or adhere to the licenses of the Free Software they choose. Someone should have known that putting a statically compiled in wireless driver into a commercial product means one of two things, yank as a mistake on sight and say sorry, or release the source. If you build a product on Free Software, you should understand what you are doing and if you are not planning on releasing everything you do you had better be real careful you don't contaminate what you want to "keep"! I see it as a good thing, as it reinforces the "community" element of Free Software and reassurres people who might put serious work into Free Software that it won't be hijacked by others who won't follow the rules (well don't know what would happen with GPL violations/violators in China, for example, at present).
BTW I only want Linux to gain widespread acceptance if it is still Free, the video card market is where this battle is really being fought at present though with Daniel Stone's announcment that XFree86 has been forked (I submitted a first story to slashdot about this 9 days ago and it's still pending), not once but twice (by X.org and freedesktop.org) perhaps a shake-up is coming.
You'ld think someone would have at least found a copy of the script or book for Empire Strikes Back (Film, 1980) where they say "They can't have disappeared. No ship that small has a cloaking device." Someone must still have a copy of that book or script around in print (don't know where mine went)!
For me the word Morph is a name, and the name of that Aardman creation. I'm not from the UK but from Ireland where we also get BBC. 1980 sure outdates 1991 and Morph certainly did morph, just not digitally! I definetly think the date on the record should be 1980. Is it sci-fi, I'd say so, just way after it's time and for kids! And because a is worth 1000 clicks, http://www.aardman.com/showcase/amazing.html.
Well if I understand it correctly a TV is digital, even the oldest ones. The screens are made up of lines which I have also understood are made up of dots so VHS and DVD are both lesser than film would be my argument! Now that is only true is both are prefectly produced and presented but neither ever have that. This is where digital starts to win for the reasons you describe, but I for one hope that I will always have a cinema nearby where I can go and watch a film reel be projected, and that there will still be producers willing to go the extra mile to get the look of film or even just because they like it (like authors writing on typewriters or pen and ink). I'm still fascinated by finalscratch which is seeing even the most extreme of djs leaving vinyl for digital audio, I think books are safe for a little while longer yet though (but that mad paper/screen stuff ...).
I ask them what they want it for. If they say "games" I'll talk, if they say some sort of multimedia production (video, audio, 3d reallY) I'll talk. Pretty much everything else and I'll just say "it doesn't matter, the cheapest, but throw in some extra ram". If these people ever discover what they really need some piece of hardware for and buy it then they'll spend a hell of a lot less in the long run.
There is an advantage to the bttv style tuners, latency. In fairness this isn't going to effect many situations, but if you want to put a console through it it would be an issue, same if you wanted to listen to a live radio broadcast of what you are watching instead of the live tv audio. I'm sure people can come up with other examples, but whether it's a big deal in general ... probably not.
Also you can run Linux on this thing. There are reports of successful use with MythTV so you can run more than windows on it.
The article seems to have two different main points. Firstly that the entire networking model (7 layers) is inappropriate for "reliable" networks. Secondly they suggest that the entire model for building computers is wrong, and that somehow they need to use hardware to isloate programs.
The issues they address in the first point were issues which I felt were meant to be addressed by IP6, has/will it fail? I always understood IP6 as being designed to (optionally) have secure connections, qos and an ip address structure to allow for floating nodes. Would IP6 not stand up to delivering messages in network time for the entire US military structure?
The second issue seems simple to me, yes it will be much more reliable if you use a seperate computer for each task and allow them to communicate, but can you tolerate the lack of flexibility and is it even possible to do anything meaningful without adding lots of parts and weight (the more parts, the less reliable). I can imagine building a chip which actually contains 8 386s and 32M or ram split into 4M per 386, then have the disk controller map the device in an 8 way split so they can't touch each others data, a network chip could act as a switch to all the information, providing qos etc. buses to expansion could be mapped to cpus, but is it worth it or are you better off building two different but functionally identical systems so if one fails the other shouldn't? Also it's still one machine, as soon as you actually split it out into a meaningful number of machines weight, size and handling all become a problem. It would be lovely if you could sew tiny bluetooth enabled cpus w/mem into all the army gear and then they cluster together into a super cpu which reads the soldiers thumbprinted data device to figure out what to do, but would that actually require any sort of fundamental shift in how computers are made to achieve?
To me this article simply states that they haven't managed to build a good enough network yet, and want some cash to do it, and that they haven't managed to build a reliable os/app combination to deal with their needs yet either! Just the talk of "One of the limitations inherent in this approach is that when an application malfunctions, it can affect other programs" made me think they need to look harder at their OS. I will be surprised if the end result isn't IP6 (perhaps a modified army version) but you never know! I wonder what OS they'll go with though?
The Space Elevator idea is quite safe from becoming a joke until someone announces "I have a material strong enough to build a space elevator". Then you will see the put or or shut-up moment for it's proponents but up until then it is theoretical. I think it is important for research to continue into the logistics of space elevators but until we have a potential material it's an aspiration. I just hope that if/when we find a meterial we can find the techniques to turn it into a space elevator. Of course it is possible that someone will figure out a way to build a space elevator that doesn't require as strong a material but I think at present it all hangs on the material researchers. When they solve their problems the engineers will have to come in and see if they can turn a theoretical idea with a plauible material into an actual workable installation plan (just cause you can make a material in a lab doesn't mean you can produce the quantities required on site).
The good Digital SLR will outperform 35mm film up to 13x19 inches not in terms of quality (allegedly comparable) but overall convenience. Even your linked piece has to acknowledge that it is about money, the more you spend the better the quality, and you can spend more and get more out of analog. I am saying analog is better then digital in black and white terms for representing analog information. Take audio, sound is analog for all practical purposes and any digital representation will have lost some of the originals quality. Same with imagery, be it still or film the world is analog, and an analog system can try to capture it to a limitless extent (it won't/can't succeed) whereas digital is always limiting it's attempt to a fixed amount of information. If someone comes along and tells me that film 35mm film is chemically limited to 50 MegaPixels or less then perhaps analog may see its day (don't forget large film could go 1000 MegaPixels + at that sort of dpi).
My real point is that the people with money can create better media and at a higher quality (I'm not saying LawnMower Man 2 is better then Clerks) and if they really want to try and keep their market structures that is how they should concentrate on doing it rather than battling hard where they have already lost, in part because they delayed DVD to get their fabulous CSS on to it, otherwise they'd already have 2 more years of DVD sales under their belt to help them go to SDVD which people would really struggle to have the bandwidth to push around.
Are you suggesting newspapers aren't printed with dots? A newspaper photo proves nothing in this case. Can anyone comment on the physical resolution limits of the chemicals involved in film? Are you really telling me I won't get a better photo using a lens to blow up a section of film rather than plucking a section from a 20 megapixel image? Of course it's analog, so making perfect copies is impossible and trying to do it is an expensive quest and hence digital has it's advantages, but the generalisation that digital is better quality is definetley wrong, it's just black and white, no shades of gray.
I'll admit I've never quite figured out just how films are now finally put toghether. Is the original analog film actual used to create the final cut (either physically or be analog copying) or is the entire process digitised (forgetting the people who to me are idiots that decide to "film" in digital)? Assuming that only the digitally generated content is actually going to be digitised then no digital format can ever have the quality of the analog film! Project a dvd onto your wall and look at it, then think about cinema. Ok, project hd footage, still noticing the problem? No matter what resolution you rise to, you will always be short of analog. Reminds me of a recent visit to Amsterdam where Canon have a little building displaying photos and selling posters all seemingly to promote their digital equipment. Problem was they also had the building surrounded by about 30 of the pictures in giant format (1.5mx1m at a guess, maybe bigger) so people could walk around and look at them. From anything over about 3m the photos looked nice, but as you moved in ... Worst of all inside they had another giant picture with a caption like "Can you tell it's digital?" which had 4 of us rolling around the place laughing!
Of course add to all this the simple fact that very few digital media files are lossless copies of the original, most are re-encoded at least once which most certainly does degrade the copy!
Try looking here and here and tell me Novell is down?
As and from today the Debian unstable has been renamed from sid (breaks toys) to maggie (falls over). Further names for forthcoming releases to be decided, but not expected to run out in the next millenium!
Well a quick check of the article time and the first comments suggests that this story appeared 3h48m late! Not too much point mentioning the stories on the homepage seeing as though I've customised mine but it definetly fell into a glitch in the matrix somewhere, I didn't see it with my own eyes :-) Always the good stories go awol!
People have different values of free, that is really the point. If you relinquish all control over something is it still free or will it remain free? If you place any restrictions on something can it still be free, even if the restrictions are solely to ensure that it never becomes any less free? The GPL is about making software GPL-free and ensuring it always remains so, the BSD license(s) is about setting something free and doing nothing to ensure it's future freedom.
To try and make a useful analogy, drawing from slavery as an example, if I set a slave free under a BSD Licence, they can still be bought by someone else but if I set them free under a GPL licence they are off the market and can never be enslaved again. BSD supporters have no problem with their software being enslaved, GPL supporters do! So how do you view software slavery? As software is not a single piece of property you may have no problem with it, but you still may not want to see the "fruit of your loins" enslaved when your intention was to set it free!
If the aim of the BSD licences was to make it's software as free as possible why does it place any restrictions on it's redistribution? Because that is the BSD value of free, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Just don't forget, your position and personal value of free is what decides how free a license is, but there is no freedom for you when you get a binary only BSD licensed release though the person distributing it has used the freedom of the license to deny your freedom.
Now are you saying that unless there is no government or law you cannot be free? If a law is there to control something, say murder, does that mean people under the law are free? Depends if you mean free to live or free to kill. Depends if the law is there to promote freedom or to deny it (i.e. murder promotes your freedom to live above your freedom to kill). I prefer to live in GPL country but if others want to live in BSD country thats fine by me, we both just have to respect each others laws when we go on holiday!
Which individuals liberty?
- The user of a binary fork?
- The author of an original work?
- The contributor to the project?
I know the answer, but wanted to point out some other answers which might make your claim about the BSD/MIT licence maximizing social liberty seem a lot more shaky.It isn't actually the exact licences themselves which matter, but the desires of the community of developers around it. Some developers are disgusted at the idea of having their work used by someone else in a binary product where they can't see any changes which were made to it, others couldn't care less what happens to their code!
It is one thing to say "take this code, I don't care what you do with it" and another to say "take this code and its source and use it as you like, but if you give it to anyone else these rules must apply to them".
You are right though that the GPL places a greater emphasis on a society collaborating to develop code, while BSD/MIT are more about an individual (group) giving away code.
Well you do need quite a lot of shelving to store the cds, but you also have to store machines for playing them on! A board game lasts forever (for a given value of forever) whereas most computer games will do well to last 10 years unless you keep around the neccessary other hardware (and software) to run them. If the Playstation (and maybe XBox) line can continue to retain backwards compatibility maybe this will change. As it is I have lots of CDs of games I can't get running, at least without a lot of effort! On the other hand our copy of Monopoly is at least as old as me (1970s) and offers an interesting insight into the history of my own city, and gives me great amusement when I go to someone else's house and see a new board which is substantially different.