Yep, no surprise you didn't find anything! There were 3 of us, the standard naming method gave us the name but really we were just "Linux Support" and the full name was never (to my knowledge) actually used anywhere anyone could see it (I wonder why). Just because something isn't online does not mean it is a lie!
Ok for the sake of full disclosure I run Debian everywhere and have done for about 2-3 years and I used to work in Corel Linux International Technical Support (check THAT acronym hehe). There is a serious justification for debian based meta-distributions because while Debian will always be a horse for nearly all courses it's flexibility means that it is not targetted to most users. Corel Linux was/is a desktop OS and by making that choice Corel could configure a Debian box for an intended use. For 90% of computer users Corel Linux kicked Debian's ass simply because they would never have been able to work on a Debian system (what do you mean "edit/etc/samba/smb.conf to suit my windows network", "what do you mean man 5 smb.conf"?). Similarly we now have demudi which is another targetted Debian distro, but this time for an entirely different market (multimedia production). Debian could never really try to catch niches, all it does is produce a stably packaged distribution which can be configured and adapted easily. Corel and demudi could never really try to produce a quality OS from scratch nor keep it up to date. Instead of both sides giving up, the work, aims and ideas of Free software which Debian embodies so well (they want meta-distros) leads to a two tiered system where Debian brings the pieces together and the distros tweak it. Both sides push their knowledge at each other (though either side can ignore the other) and the base system which all are using is strengthened. The alternative is just Debian, and while I would continue to use it, I think it's "market share" would be much lower that way. Never forget that everyone using a non-Debian Debian-based distro is that much closer to just changing their apt sources and leaving the commercial (or redistributor) behind and becoming a member of the Debian community.
No Gatesian DRM tech or spyware will ever be capable of corrupting or leaking data stored on an unpowered hard drive that's been physically disconnected from your machine.
Well if this is the "Gatesian" DRMOS then it will probably require a DMR Bios which will corrupt your HDD when you insert it (unauthorised hardware, format in progress... done!)
While I know it is a joke, it's humour is quite close to the bone! But first should it not read "Microsoft buys.net TLD from ICANN for 4.5 Billion"? And does anyone know if their is anything to prevent ICANN from selling a tld it controls, i.e. letting MS buy.net so it can do what it pleases with it (probably selling domains to.net distributed e-commerce redundant application protocol platform ecoculture sculptors)?
I hate to break it to you, but I would NOT expect any reasonable sort of ADSL (Always Delayed Slightly Longer) before 2003 in Ireland! If you want economic ADSL try 2004 or later! Currently Ireland is an Internet backwater (and the politicians are far from understanding this). Errorcom^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hircom announced an October 2nd launch of their ADSL service simply to squash any other broadband providers AND to delay the rollout of ADSL as long as possible (if you were supplying 99% of the pots and isdn lines AND 90%+ of the leased lines would you want to launch an ADSL service?). By announcing their intention to launch (and alleged pricing structures) they have forced the Office of the Department of Telecommunications Regulators and their main competitor into legal wranglings to prevent the launch of the service. The basic stumbling block is that the ODTR will not allow Errorcom (fsck them, they seem to be squashing mirrors , the latest casualty which had extra info and links to mirrors is now in googles cache alone, of the already taken down errorcom.com site) to launch the service until the wholesale pricing is agreed (so errorcom can't jump the market thanks to their public funded monopoly). Unfortunatley over 3 months since this debacle there has been no progress and a lengthy war in court is expected. Even if the wholesale prices are agreed tomorrow and both companies launch their services the minimum 30 days later you should not expect the prices to drop, Irish telecoms operators (and in particular errorcom and es(h)at) have a terrible history of pricing by errorcom charging the most ridiculous amount conceivable (you've seen the proposed prices) and then the "competitors" knock maybe 10% off the price to have a slightly less ridiculous extortianate service.
Basically you should be resigned to modem or very expensive ISDN for the next year in Ireland:-(
This is exactly what I have been saying here . It is all well and good to cry about the price, availability or quality of service, but at least most of the complainers have the option to move within their own country (even state) to get broadband, in Ireland we have no such choice, all thanks to the idiot politicians we all know and love! Just to point out one fact regarding the parent post, the price is really like USD200 for a 1024/256 connection with static IP and no download limit (though slower than modem speeds have been rumoured at peak times so maybe you can only get 3GIG a month down anyway). The above mentioned 3GIG limited account costs about USD30/GIG after the limit. The only broadband users in Ireland are on Leased Lines (how sad am I that I had to leave my 4Megabit browsing in a former employer who decided to leave Ireland).
Just take a look at this page or even this. Basically the company Eircom who is Ireland's primary telecomms company (see my previous post for more of an explanation) intimidated offline a parody website called errorcom.com (not linking as it points elsewhere now). As anyone who had seen it thought it was absolutley brilliant it is now permanently stored online all over the place.
Not too long ago we had another story on these lines and I posted my opinion. When I reached the first argument raised by dalke against public code my repost was straight to fingers so here I am.
By restricting redistribution rights my company can receive additional revenue
Prove it! Especially from a public funded university venture! As always money can buy money (advertising buys income) but generating real revenue from software is extremely tricky (.bomb). If he specified an exact license and copy-protection scheme he may have had an argument, but only if his product has a unique quality that is quite globally beneficial within a field.
I want to experiment with a modification to the DSSP algorithm
In case I need explain my argument here, he should have tried to get away with I want to experiment with a modification to the algorithm used for working with databases of the secondary structure of proteins (if thats what it is, he never said) and DSSP is the only database/tool used then he could have an argument, but ONLY if you accept that non-free Open Source is as good as Free software.
Does it really help the public to have people spend another decade rewriting existing software solely so it can be released with an open source license?
Yep, it most certainly does! The result of the work would be a public built and understood system (however long it takes) which can be used by anyone, anywhere and they can offer their work back into it. Take his Secondary Proteins. Could the algorithm not be examined as an entity instead of as a piece of DSSP? Could you not objectify it out? Could that work be used by others to start building a free replacement? Could he just have written it for a hypothetical system and ported out the information he needed to fill the gaps from DSSP for any demo/testing (as the first Free compiler must have been compiled by a non-free compiler unless they were mad:-) If you build it, they will come! Is it better to "risk" the good enough license strategy and maybe find public funded work hijacked in some way OR to start from scratch and build the system (if the incumbant is so good it will take a long time to displace them, in the meantime development of both will probably spurt due to funding interests etc.). Isn't the point that companies (or even any entity that wants to prevent someone else from taking up their work) should not gain public money for their research and training to strengthen their position, isn't his argument simply "well the carts before the horse and theirs nothing we can do about it"?
This is the nub of the argument, I say that public money should not be used to buy private money but used to fund the social purpose of learning, dalke says if it could make money it should be allowed. This is a truly american atitude (not to say it does not exist elsewhere, but it is an american creation) in that while most other societies would have seen the choice as public or private, now a choice for surrupticiously funding your economy by subsidising private ventures is quite acceptable, why? Allowing the university to sell itself is fine, but allowing it to fund what it sells with public money AND stop people from distributing it serves purely capitalistic purposes and not the greater good (and if you want to believe that capitalism is more important than greater good thats your bag not mine).
Here in Ireland we have no consumer broadband. If I want to connect to the Internet I can:
Dialup at up to 56k for $0.6 - $2 per hour + $15 per month line rental
ISDN 64k for $0.6 - $2 per hour + $35 per month line rental
ISDN 128K for $1.2 - $4 per hour + $35 per month line rental + $25 per month IP connection
Leased Line (about $10k per annum for 128k)
It's so bad the incumbent monolpoly telco launched it's Hi-Speed Internet service about 2 years ago... ISDN (with a reduced installation charge)!! Then they annouced I-Stream (ADSL) with a launch of October 2nd 2001... HOWEVER they knew full well they would not actually be allowed to launch at that time, and simply announced the date (and pricing, but NO conditions and STILL no conditions) so as to ensure the service would be stopped and dragged through litigation by it's competitors and the regulators. In the meantime the jokers are raking in the cash while soiling the market for any other potential competitors (the main candidate being ntl who paid (at the time) the highest price per subscriber ever worldwide for the largest Irish cable tv network (which was semi-state at the time and had hyped it's price by talking about cable modem trials which were very small) and who are completly cash strapped having rolled out (allegedly) maybe a POTENTIAL couple of thousand nodes for cable modems (I have yet to find a single person I know who could actually avail of it).
So now we have Ireland Offline trying to act as the voice of reason our politically appointed department of Telecommunications Regulations should be, but neither have any real teeth. Just to top it all off, after NTL bought Cablelink (cableTV) the next government sale came up, Telecom Eireann which was floated to the public with guaranteed share availability to each member of the public, and everyone encouraged (banks throwing money at them) to buy at the government set price. So Eircom was launched (of course they had to rebrand it) and proceeded to lose most of the country some of their hard earned cash (but not the country's "vice prime minister" who was/is on the board who claimed at the first agm/lynching after the floatation that "he had no money to buy with" HAHAHA (insider trading cough cough) HAHA). So after a failed floatition that lost most of their customers potential loyalty (most people even had to deal with a share split as the mobile division was sold off, so they ended up with some vodafone shares) the company went through an incredilby public bidding war resulting in the purchase of the fixed line division by a private group which now has a £2billion+ loan to cover.... so they are going to launch a cheaper service for anything.... I think not... they will unbundle the local loop now (only 1 year after the EU deadline) and risk losing some analogue call revenue... NO
To anyone in this thread who has complained in any way about price, quality of service or availability of service I suggest you thank your lucky stars you aren't stuck with 56k (I'm actually extremely lucky that I availed of an offer a few years ago to get unlimited free off-peak net access for $25 per month from one of their competitors who no longer allow people to sign up AND who kicked of many users for over using the unlimited service!) and go search google for errorcom to see just how popular eircom are! I think GPRS will be my first "broadband" connection.... Go 2002!!!
There is also a genetic company called Microsort who let you choose the sex of your baby! Not quite a direct market connection HOWEVER with the rate MS is extending it's monopoly how long could it be (well how long before they start releasing genetic processing software anyway). Unfortunatley/. refused my story post of "Microsort chooses your sex" all those months ago when I first discovered it, I was aghast at the concept until I discovered the name of the country and then I pissed myself:-)
I hate to disagree but I cannot see any reason for a "pre-registration" process. NSI^H^H^HNetSol^H^H^H^H^H^HVerisign should simply be forced to release domain names on a known schedule (i.e. 0/5 days after expiration, preferably at the original time of registration). Then everyone can jump in and try to buy it first:-) As long as their is no systemic preference for who will get any domain (like people who pay the extra to go through the worst registrar should not be able to purchase first) this system would be fine.
As for having a standard process across all TLDs, you are living in a wildly optimistic dreamland, but that's ok with me, I'd rather let some TLDs make their own bizarre rules than have one set of rules created by one global devil.
It alway's seemed to me that the proposed changes aren't really for any release, they are changes which will evolve the way the project exists! Think of it this way, since testing has existed it has slowly filled up to reasonable proportions. Soon it will become a full new distro by going through a final freeze. Throughout the entire freeze process (less time than testing has existed) new packages will appear in unstable, and some will make it into testing. After woody is released, their will be three complete Debian distros. Stable will be the current woody (which will be a freeze length out of date). Testing will be those nearly bleeding edge packages which appear to be ok, and unstable will still be bang up to date. The key is that the testing process is about ensuring that a stable release from now on will be only a freeze length out of date, and that the freeze cycle can become a continuous process (instead of an arbitrary affair). After woody (the next stable release) new stable releases will form nearly instantly and be frozen out leading to a great development AND user environment for both guru's and grannies. Testing is about evolution, and I for one cannot wait to see how the Debian devlopment process will benefit from it (I think projects like DeMuDi will find it helps them to fork and freeze out trees for specific applications).
I _KNOW_ rtf can handle embedded pictures, just not very nicely. A former boss of mine wanted to save his wrist signing a 500+ copy mail merge but Word (97) at the time couldn't do it sanely so I ended up having to hack it together (scaling was screwy). But rtf can handle images for sure.
So, if I send you a Word97 doc and you have Word2002 (is that what it's called?) do you think it will look the same? If I send you my Standard A4 formatted document and you print it on your Standard Letter printer do you think it will look the same (or even appear the same on screen) even IF you have the same version of word? Within a corporate network Word docs are fine as you are going to be able to sort it out simply, once it leaves your own network you are trying to force your software choices on another and in the process generating more revenue for MS (how many unopenable Word2002 docs will it take before your Word2000 gets upgraded?). Using Word as a data exchange fprmat is INSANE! Use pdf/ps/jpeg if formating matters, use html or text if it doesn't.
Do you forsee Sun having their own OS in 10 years time or do you forsee Sun selling hardware with their own optimsed version of another OS? If Yes, are we likely to see such an evolution climbing up your chain from the small workstations up to the big iron OR will we see a new OS for all boxes at once? Will Sun ever make an offer like IBM's offer for AIX with Solaris i.e. "You can have anything you want from our OS"?
Not too long ago I read a dead-tree interview with Richard in one of the UK Linux magazines and it was very bizarre! I finished the interview thinking that perhaps the guy was having some form of nervous breakdown from the pressue of having to deal with his success. Well I think that the way he has handled his success will ensure that it will be 5 minutes of fame (and perhaps this slashdot story really will be the highlight). What cracked me up though was the incredible arrogance of the guy ("we have nnn,000 users and we know cause we get every smoothie to phone home" but what does that mean for the classic installed for two hours and rejected machines! do they actually have 1000 live systems even?). The other amazing thing about this guy was that he picked up XXX XXX Linux and created a modified GPL distro on top of it, thought nothing of it until a magazine (PC Plus) sent it out on their cover disc and then when he suddenly gathered thousands of people installing the system he saw dollar signs and hassle! He could have been polite and explained that the usage had exploded and that unless people sent him money he wouldn't be able to deal with their requests (but he'd keep the FAQ up to date) and been just like 90% of Free software projects but instead he went "fuck off and don't annoy me, you must pay us, we're closing the GPL project (to all intents and purposes though obviously the code as was can be forked) and don't forget that anyone using our work has to pay us or their scum freeloaders" (carefully forgetting all the money he obviously owes Linus and every other kernel hacker, compiler hacker, documentation writer etc. etc.). I just wish this moron had used BSD and then at least we could all ignore him much more easily (no one would think license violations and breaking the spirit of the enterprise). Does anyone defend this guy?
MPAA's Attaway said during the panel discussion. "We think the best thing is to develop something along the lines of the Copyright Scrambling System that was worked out by various players in the marketplace."
So it looks like they want to create another weak slap-on encryption scheme that allows them to control the hardware and software capable of playing their content! The question is how can you come up with something which will remain even after an analogue broadcast? The only way I can imagine an analogue broadcast could be in any way protected is by dropping the quality so no one would bother capturing it, but I guess lot's of people wouldn't bother watching it or paying for a service (on way to get people to shift when a digital service is launched). Let's face it, as long as analogue broadcast remains the signal can be captured and recreated at will, when everyone is on digital broadcasting we will however be screwed unless we ensure that NOT ALL hardware and software respects this. At present with DVD technology we find all forms of circumvention techniques (not least of which you could copy the encrypted stream) so let's hope that the United Corps of America's power does not increase any further in their influence over far-eastern manufacturers.
Well seeing as though you can find 4.4 on cheapbytes I'd be quite sure anyone could sell them. I guess the idea is that these are Official CDs from the originators and hence spending the extra $27.01 will get you the happy feeling of knowing you have substantially supported the FreeBSD project.
Back on 3rd Oct a post was made to the Irish Linux Users Groups Social Mailing list supplying simply the URL errorcom.com. Unfortunatley within about 48 hours the site was gone. A bit of digging discovered that the site was created by a minor and one phonecall to the person whose credit card purchased the domain from Irelands former/still monopolistic telco who it was parodying had the site taken down:-( Now luckily there are lots of people in Ireland who care about the state of our telecommunications industry so mirrors sprang up nearly instantly, but alas the domain is gone. You can see the site at here as it was mirrored right/left and center within minutes of going down, because every Irish telecoms user can see the humour! If you want to see some more of it yourself you may also want to look at Eircom themselves and maybe Irish Director of Telecommunications Regulations.
The key here is that one phonecall which stated the site was "very offensive" and threatened to take further action and this fair satire dissappeared in a puff of smoke. To prove how important this site was, please find the I-Stream which was set to Launch at the Beginning of November (amidst publicity, freephone publicity numbers +3531800512128. Unfortunatley as Eircom knew would happen the ODTR prevented the launch as Eircom had not agreed wholesale prices for the I-Stream Service. As Errorcom carefully informs you, I-Stream is a Eircom brand name for the broadband technology commonly known as Always Delayed Slightly Longer. At the current time the service is still not open for business, and will not be for at least one month after the agreement of wholesale structures by Eircom and the ODTR (so it is back to at least 8th February but more likely 6-12 months time).
It's time lawyers were employed by the courts, this sort of legal posturing and bullying based not on the law but how it can be used is wrong.
The size of the response, even if it was technology enabled (ie, bot generated) does cross the line
Forgetting the exact specifics of this case, if I send 1 e-mail to a mailing list for the entire company is that too big? If I put up a site and then e-mail by entire address-book to tell them it is up is that too big? If this person can be done for spam then do them for spam, if they can be done for libel or slander then do them for that, there is no need to extend the laws to make former employers have special rights!
OK, GPL was the wrong term to use (as it is false, Oooops), so how about I just say that it is in Debian (and not in non-US or non-free) and hence as a user you can have power over it. As for "freer" license, a question: After one distributional generation which is freer BSD or GPL?
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, no surprise you didn't find anything! There were 3 of us, the standard naming method gave us the name but really we were just "Linux Support" and the full name was never (to my knowledge) actually used anywhere anyone could see it (I wonder why). Just because something isn't online does not mean it is a lie!
Ok for the sake of full disclosure I run Debian everywhere and have done for about 2-3 years and I used to work in Corel Linux International Technical Support (check THAT acronym hehe). There is a serious justification for debian based meta-distributions because while Debian will always be a horse for nearly all courses it's flexibility means that it is not targetted to most users. Corel Linux was/is a desktop OS and by making that choice Corel could configure a Debian box for an intended use. For 90% of computer users Corel Linux kicked Debian's ass simply because they would never have been able to work on a Debian system (what do you mean "edit /etc/samba/smb.conf to suit my windows network", "what do you mean man 5 smb.conf"?). Similarly we now have demudi which is another targetted Debian distro, but this time for an entirely different market (multimedia production). Debian could never really try to catch niches, all it does is produce a stably packaged distribution which can be configured and adapted easily. Corel and demudi could never really try to produce a quality OS from scratch nor keep it up to date. Instead of both sides giving up, the work, aims and ideas of Free software which Debian embodies so well (they want meta-distros) leads to a two tiered system where Debian brings the pieces together and the distros tweak it. Both sides push their knowledge at each other (though either side can ignore the other) and the base system which all are using is strengthened. The alternative is just Debian, and while I would continue to use it, I think it's "market share" would be much lower that way. Never forget that everyone using a non-Debian Debian-based distro is that much closer to just changing their apt sources and leaving the commercial (or redistributor) behind and becoming a member of the Debian community.
While I know it is a joke, it's humour is quite close to the bone! But first should it not read "Microsoft buys .net TLD from ICANN for 4.5 Billion"? And does anyone know if their is anything to prevent ICANN from selling a tld it controls, i.e. letting MS buy .net so it can do what it pleases with it (probably selling domains to .net distributed e-commerce redundant application protocol platform ecoculture sculptors)?
I hate to break it to you, but I would NOT expect any reasonable sort of ADSL (Always Delayed Slightly Longer) before 2003 in Ireland! If you want economic ADSL try 2004 or later! Currently Ireland is an Internet backwater (and the politicians are far from understanding this). Errorcom^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hircom announced an October 2nd launch of their ADSL service simply to squash any other broadband providers AND to delay the rollout of ADSL as long as possible (if you were supplying 99% of the pots and isdn lines AND 90%+ of the leased lines would you want to launch an ADSL service?). By announcing their intention to launch (and alleged pricing structures) they have forced the Office of the Department of Telecommunications Regulators and their main competitor into legal wranglings to prevent the launch of the service. The basic stumbling block is that the ODTR will not allow Errorcom (fsck them, they seem to be squashing mirrors , the latest casualty which had extra info and links to mirrors is now in googles cache alone, of the already taken down errorcom.com site) to launch the service until the wholesale pricing is agreed (so errorcom can't jump the market thanks to their public funded monopoly). Unfortunatley over 3 months since this debacle there has been no progress and a lengthy war in court is expected. Even if the wholesale prices are agreed tomorrow and both companies launch their services the minimum 30 days later you should not expect the prices to drop, Irish telecoms operators (and in particular errorcom and es(h)at) have a terrible history of pricing by errorcom charging the most ridiculous amount conceivable (you've seen the proposed prices) and then the "competitors" knock maybe 10% off the price to have a slightly less ridiculous extortianate service.
Basically you should be resigned to modem or very expensive ISDN for the next year in Ireland :-(
This is exactly what I have been saying here . It is all well and good to cry about the price, availability or quality of service, but at least most of the complainers have the option to move within their own country (even state) to get broadband, in Ireland we have no such choice, all thanks to the idiot politicians we all know and love! Just to point out one fact regarding the parent post, the price is really like USD200 for a 1024/256 connection with static IP and no download limit (though slower than modem speeds have been rumoured at peak times so maybe you can only get 3GIG a month down anyway). The above mentioned 3GIG limited account costs about USD30/GIG after the limit. The only broadband users in Ireland are on Leased Lines (how sad am I that I had to leave my 4Megabit browsing in a former employer who decided to leave Ireland).
Just take a look at this page or even this. Basically the company Eircom who is Ireland's primary telecomms company (see my previous post for more of an explanation) intimidated offline a parody website called errorcom.com (not linking as it points elsewhere now). As anyone who had seen it thought it was absolutley brilliant it is now permanently stored online all over the place.
Not too long ago we had another story on these lines and I posted my opinion. When I reached the first argument raised by dalke against public code my repost was straight to fingers so here I am.
Prove it! Especially from a public funded university venture! As always money can buy money (advertising buys income) but generating real revenue from software is extremely tricky (.bomb). If he specified an exact license and copy-protection scheme he may have had an argument, but only if his product has a unique quality that is quite globally beneficial within a field. In case I need explain my argument here, he should have tried to get away with I want to experiment with a modification to the algorithm used for working with databases of the secondary structure of proteins (if thats what it is, he never said) and DSSP is the only database/tool used then he could have an argument, but ONLY if you accept that non-free Open Source is as good as Free software. Yep, it most certainly does! The result of the work would be a public built and understood system (however long it takes) which can be used by anyone, anywhere and they can offer their work back into it. Take his Secondary Proteins. Could the algorithm not be examined as an entity instead of as a piece of DSSP? Could you not objectify it out? Could that work be used by others to start building a free replacement? Could he just have written it for a hypothetical system and ported out the information he needed to fill the gaps from DSSP for any demo/testing (as the first Free compiler must have been compiled by a non-free compiler unless they were madThis is the nub of the argument, I say that public money should not be used to buy private money but used to fund the social purpose of learning, dalke says if it could make money it should be allowed. This is a truly american atitude (not to say it does not exist elsewhere, but it is an american creation) in that while most other societies would have seen the choice as public or private, now a choice for surrupticiously funding your economy by subsidising private ventures is quite acceptable, why? Allowing the university to sell itself is fine, but allowing it to fund what it sells with public money AND stop people from distributing it serves purely capitalistic purposes and not the greater good (and if you want to believe that capitalism is more important than greater good thats your bag not mine).
Here in Ireland we have no consumer broadband. If I want to connect to the Internet I can:
- Dialup at up to 56k for $0.6 - $2 per hour + $15 per month line rental
- ISDN 64k for $0.6 - $2 per hour + $35 per month line rental
- ISDN 128K for $1.2 - $4 per hour + $35 per month line rental + $25 per month IP connection
- Leased Line (about $10k per annum for 128k)
It's so bad the incumbent monolpoly telco launched it's Hi-Speed Internet service about 2 years agoSo now we have Ireland Offline trying to act as the voice of reason our politically appointed department of Telecommunications Regulations should be, but neither have any real teeth. Just to top it all off, after NTL bought Cablelink (cableTV) the next government sale came up, Telecom Eireann which was floated to the public with guaranteed share availability to each member of the public, and everyone encouraged (banks throwing money at them) to buy at the government set price. So Eircom was launched (of course they had to rebrand it) and proceeded to lose most of the country some of their hard earned cash (but not the country's "vice prime minister" who was/is on the board who claimed at the first agm/lynching after the floatation that "he had no money to buy with" HAHAHA (insider trading cough cough) HAHA). So after a failed floatition that lost most of their customers potential loyalty (most people even had to deal with a share split as the mobile division was sold off, so they ended up with some vodafone shares) the company went through an incredilby public bidding war resulting in the purchase of the fixed line division by a private group which now has a £2billion+ loan to cover .... so they are going to launch a cheaper service for anything .... I think not ... they will unbundle the local loop now (only 1 year after the EU deadline) and risk losing some analogue call revenue ... NO
To anyone in this thread who has complained in any way about price, quality of service or availability of service I suggest you thank your lucky stars you aren't stuck with 56k (I'm actually extremely lucky that I availed of an offer a few years ago to get unlimited free off-peak net access for $25 per month from one of their competitors who no longer allow people to sign up AND who kicked of many users for over using the unlimited service!) and go search google for errorcom to see just how popular eircom are! I think GPRS will be my first "broadband" connection .... Go 2002!!!
Yep, when their next commercial devlopment is the beautifully landscaped planned LisneyWorld, Disney are just going to be fine with that!
There is also a genetic company called Microsort who let you choose the sex of your baby! Not quite a direct market connection HOWEVER with the rate MS is extending it's monopoly how long could it be (well how long before they start releasing genetic processing software anyway). Unfortunatley /. refused my story post of "Microsort chooses your sex" all those months ago when I first discovered it, I was aghast at the concept until I discovered the name of the country and then I pissed myself:-)
I hate to disagree but I cannot see any reason for a "pre-registration" process. NSI^H^H^HNetSol^H^H^H^H^H^HVerisign should simply be forced to release domain names on a known schedule (i.e. 0/5 days after expiration, preferably at the original time of registration). Then everyone can jump in and try to buy it first :-) As long as their is no systemic preference for who will get any domain (like people who pay the extra to go through the worst registrar should not be able to purchase first) this system would be fine.
As for having a standard process across all TLDs, you are living in a wildly optimistic dreamland, but that's ok with me, I'd rather let some TLDs make their own bizarre rules than have one set of rules created by one global devil.
It alway's seemed to me that the proposed changes aren't really for any release, they are changes which will evolve the way the project exists! Think of it this way, since testing has existed it has slowly filled up to reasonable proportions. Soon it will become a full new distro by going through a final freeze. Throughout the entire freeze process (less time than testing has existed) new packages will appear in unstable, and some will make it into testing. After woody is released, their will be three complete Debian distros. Stable will be the current woody (which will be a freeze length out of date). Testing will be those nearly bleeding edge packages which appear to be ok, and unstable will still be bang up to date. The key is that the testing process is about ensuring that a stable release from now on will be only a freeze length out of date, and that the freeze cycle can become a continuous process (instead of an arbitrary affair). After woody (the next stable release) new stable releases will form nearly instantly and be frozen out leading to a great development AND user environment for both guru's and grannies. Testing is about evolution, and I for one cannot wait to see how the Debian devlopment process will benefit from it (I think projects like DeMuDi will find it helps them to fork and freeze out trees for specific applications).
Or you can go and grab ghostscript and not give Adobe your money and then you can print your word sessions to pdf.
I _KNOW_ rtf can handle embedded pictures, just not very nicely. A former boss of mine wanted to save his wrist signing a 500+ copy mail merge but Word (97) at the time couldn't do it sanely so I ended up having to hack it together (scaling was screwy). But rtf can handle images for sure.
<font style='0010101' size='man' kern='385420' content='00101110101000111000000010100101010100'/
</style>
I can't wait
Which version of .doc is a standard? Word95/97/2000/2002 (never minds the earlier ones)
So, if I send you a Word97 doc and you have Word2002 (is that what it's called?) do you think it will look the same? If I send you my Standard A4 formatted document and you print it on your Standard Letter printer do you think it will look the same (or even appear the same on screen) even IF you have the same version of word? Within a corporate network Word docs are fine as you are going to be able to sort it out simply, once it leaves your own network you are trying to force your software choices on another and in the process generating more revenue for MS (how many unopenable Word2002 docs will it take before your Word2000 gets upgraded?). Using Word as a data exchange fprmat is INSANE! Use pdf/ps/jpeg if formating matters, use html or text if it doesn't.
Do you forsee Sun having their own OS in 10 years time or do you forsee Sun selling hardware with their own optimsed version of another OS? If Yes, are we likely to see such an evolution climbing up your chain from the small workstations up to the big iron OR will we see a new OS for all boxes at once? Will Sun ever make an offer like IBM's offer for AIX with Solaris i.e. "You can have anything you want from our OS"?
Not too long ago I read a dead-tree interview with Richard in one of the UK Linux magazines and it was very bizarre! I finished the interview thinking that perhaps the guy was having some form of nervous breakdown from the pressue of having to deal with his success. Well I think that the way he has handled his success will ensure that it will be 5 minutes of fame (and perhaps this slashdot story really will be the highlight). What cracked me up though was the incredible arrogance of the guy ("we have nnn,000 users and we know cause we get every smoothie to phone home" but what does that mean for the classic installed for two hours and rejected machines! do they actually have 1000 live systems even?). The other amazing thing about this guy was that he picked up XXX XXX Linux and created a modified GPL distro on top of it, thought nothing of it until a magazine (PC Plus) sent it out on their cover disc and then when he suddenly gathered thousands of people installing the system he saw dollar signs and hassle! He could have been polite and explained that the usage had exploded and that unless people sent him money he wouldn't be able to deal with their requests (but he'd keep the FAQ up to date) and been just like 90% of Free software projects but instead he went "fuck off and don't annoy me, you must pay us, we're closing the GPL project (to all intents and purposes though obviously the code as was can be forked) and don't forget that anyone using our work has to pay us or their scum freeloaders" (carefully forgetting all the money he obviously owes Linus and every other kernel hacker, compiler hacker, documentation writer etc. etc.). I just wish this moron had used BSD and then at least we could all ignore him much more easily (no one would think license violations and breaking the spirit of the enterprise). Does anyone defend this guy?
Well seeing as though you can find 4.4 on cheapbytes I'd be quite sure anyone could sell them. I guess the idea is that these are Official CDs from the originators and hence spending the extra $27.01 will get you the happy feeling of knowing you have substantially supported the FreeBSD project.
Back on 3rd Oct a post was made to the Irish Linux Users Groups Social Mailing list supplying simply the URL errorcom.com. Unfortunatley within about 48 hours the site was gone. A bit of digging discovered that the site was created by a minor and one phonecall to the person whose credit card purchased the domain from Irelands former/still monopolistic telco who it was parodying had the site taken down :-( Now luckily there are lots of people in Ireland who care about the state of our telecommunications industry so mirrors sprang up nearly instantly, but alas the domain is gone. You can see the site at here as it was mirrored right/left and center within minutes of going down, because every Irish telecoms user can see the humour! If you want to see some more of it yourself you may also want to look at Eircom themselves and maybe Irish Director of Telecommunications Regulations.
The key here is that one phonecall which stated the site was "very offensive" and threatened to take further action and this fair satire dissappeared in a puff of smoke. To prove how important this site was, please find the I-Stream which was set to Launch at the Beginning of November (amidst publicity, freephone publicity numbers +3531800512128. Unfortunatley as Eircom knew would happen the ODTR prevented the launch as Eircom had not agreed wholesale prices for the I-Stream Service. As Errorcom carefully informs you, I-Stream is a Eircom brand name for the broadband technology commonly known as Always Delayed Slightly Longer. At the current time the service is still not open for business, and will not be for at least one month after the agreement of wholesale structures by Eircom and the ODTR (so it is back to at least 8th February but more likely 6-12 months time).
It's time lawyers were employed by the courts, this sort of legal posturing and bullying based not on the law but how it can be used is wrong.
Forgetting the exact specifics of this case, if I send 1 e-mail to a mailing list for the entire company is that too big? If I put up a site and then e-mail by entire address-book to tell them it is up is that too big? If this person can be done for spam then do them for spam, if they can be done for libel or slander then do them for that, there is no need to extend the laws to make former employers have special rights!
OK, GPL was the wrong term to use (as it is false, Oooops), so how about I just say that it is in Debian (and not in non-US or non-free) and hence as a user you can have power over it. As for "freer" license, a question: After one distributional generation which is freer BSD or GPL?