I've heard that too and I think it's busted now. From what I recall, the porn industry went to HD DVD over Blu-ray due to the Blu-ray Disc Association (or, more likely, Sony) not being very receptive to the idea of Blu-ray being used for porn. Didn't seem to make much of a difference though, HD DVD still bombed.
Why the hell are you posting this in response to me? I copied and pasted that in order to show the original "GPL is no better than closed source!" thing was total bullshit.
FWIW, I think the description has some truth to it. The GPL may not have been referred to as that by the Free Software Foundation, but it is mostly accurate. The question is really about which is considered more important. I think the GPL is good and necessary, especially in this case, but others disagree. I don't mind that they do, I just hate it when they get all hysterical and start going on about software being GPLed as if it's the worst thing that could possibly happen.
Yeah, but if you recall, this was about whether the GPL is better than the software being entirely closed source, so let's expand that:
BSD == Freedom for the Coder.
GPL == Freedom for the Code.
Proprietary == Freedom for No One.
In this case, I think the hardware manufacturers wouldn't like people legally using their code in closed source products without them even getting anything in return, so they're not going to use BSD-style licenses. If they use the GPL or similar, we get the code and freedom to poke around in it, and they get the ability to stop people using that code in closed source products without paying for some sort of commercial license. It's the best compromise we're going to get.
Really? Being able to see the innards of a working driver plus (if it's GPL3) getting an irrevocable patent license is as bad as it being closed source?
The BSD crowd do have some good arguments, but trying to equivocate GPLed software with proprietary software just makes you all look like idiots.
and WTF is with "if it was open source", how does this make any difference unless you are a hardcode programmer and are dieing to contribute to the codebase? Frankly, I've given up using any other excuse and just take the rms angle. I believe proprietary software to generally be unethical. Mock me if you like, but that's one of the criteria I consider when looking at what software to use.
You could just install Firefox 3 to a different directory and keep Firefox 2 where it is. Firefox 3 should find and use all of the the same settings (i.e. everything you listed) that Firefox 2 did. I operated the two in parallel for a while with no problems, though I got a problem recently where Firefox 3 ended up messing up a Firefox 2 install. Not sure what happened there.
The GPLv3 itself gives software patents (more than a few of which are ridiculous) a level of legitimacy, by implying that they are a threat to free software and aren't going anywhere any time soon. As much as I'd like to, we can't just ignore patent trolls. They have to be dealt with in some manner, whether that's by challenging the patent or by paying them enough to get acceptable licensing terms.
If you really want to solve the problem once and for all, there's only one way to do it. Get the patent system reformed so it's more difficult to make such patents. The only way that's going to start is with grassroots action, so get to it.
1988? Where the hell do you live? In 1988, the 8086/8088, 80186, and 80286 had already been on the market for years. The 80386 was the CPU to have and the 80486 was only a year away.
Ah yes, this computer is missing most of the web feeds (where I'd usually find The Burning Edge) I used to have with my old PC. I'm hoping I'll have those back by next week, my Mozilla feeds included.
So then you can complain about a rough feature that wasn't polished up enough in the rushed betas or a critical bug that wasn't fixed during the rushed release candidates? No thanks.
Gecko 1.9 (the basis of Firefox 3) is likely to be with us for a while. In fact, Gecko 2.0 is so far away that a Gecko 1.9.1 is planned to fix bugs that affected projects other than Firefox and make it a generally stable platform to work with until Gecko 2.0 is finally with us. Any rushing here and we'll be regretting it for a while.
Argh. DISREGARD, that's the same bloody page that's in the article.
Well, it's a release candidate anyway so there's not going to be any new features. It'll be critical bugfixes only, which is probably why there's no dedicated release notes, they'll arrive for the final version. I'm guessing you could search Bugzilla to find recent fixes of critical or blocker bugs, but it's running pretty slowly now and I wouldn't know how to make such a search, so I'm leaving now.
I'd ask the same thing. I used XP Home for a full four years and can't recall a single instance where I ended up missing something I would've had in XP Pro. So why the hell does everyone talk about XP Home like it's some unusable pile of shit?
I was actually confusing two different issues there. Having a PC for over a year that had no sound and poor video under Linux (a situation that has barely improved since 2006) has left me somewhat angry, mainly because there was no specific reason why it didn't work, it just didn't. I've since given up on it. My parents can use it instead, they have lesser needs.
Now I've got a Sound Blaster X-Fi, which I can probably make work, but will require some rather complex and esoteric procedures.
My lesson from this is that when Linux is good, it's very good. But when it's bad, you won't even want to be near it.
Is your tricked-out Honda Civic as good as that BMW down the street too?
Yes. The Civic is cheap, fuel-efficient, probably more reliable than the BMW these days, and gets me from A to B without making a fuss about it. Why would I want the more expensive BMW? For a few extra toys? Fuck that.
Of course in this analogy the Civic is Linux and the BMW is Windows (though I believe everything I said is true about Hondas and BMWs too). I do have a real-life anecdote though to make this post more meaningful.
The Linux desktop experience today in 2008 has the appeal, driver support, and aesthetics of Windows 98. Oh wait, Win98 did have driver support.
I got two pieces of new hardware recently. A Kodak EasyShare P850 digital camera and an Epson Stylus E66 printer. Neither is exactly new, but the Kodak is still available first-hand.
The Kodak was an easy one. The instructions for Windows entailed installing the software FIRST (bad things can happen if you plug it in first apparently) and then doing stuff with the camera. Under Linux, installation involved plugging in the camera. Kubuntu detected the camera, and offered to start up digiKam for me so I could get the pictures. Worked first time.
The printer was a slightly more involved issue. My mum and the seller (both Windows people) were fussing about drivers. They knew the CD only included Windows drivers, but I ended up with an e-mail linking me to the website, where one or both thought I may find Linux drivers. As I expected, nothing was present (only Windows drivers, not even Mac OS X drivers, shame on Epson). So I plugged it in, went through drivers in KControl, found the printer, selected Epson Stylus E66 drivers, gave the printer a name, and found that it now worked.
The lesson I've learned with all this is that Linux either works with your hardware, or it doesn't. There's no driver installation or anything. It it works, it works right away. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work and won't work until it's in the kernel. So it's either perfect usability, or no usability at all. My idea of hell being forever made to try and get non-kernel supported hardware working with Linux. It's that bad.
The sound does not work on Realtek AC888. I've had problems with RealTek sound as well. My experience is that it just wouldn't work with ALSA. Setting the system to OSS made it work for some reason, but that killed sound mixing. I'd assume installing OSS4 would work better. I'll probably have to do that to make my new X-Fi work (the ALSA team are working on it apparently, but I don't have even a rough timescale as to when support will be implemented).
There is a huge bug in Dolphin as well which makes an error window pop up when using the mouse curser. Works for me, though I prefer Konqueror for file browsing. Have you filed a bug report?
I'd rate this release as a C. It's not production quality. The only reason it's not D or F is because the install works great and for the most part it's functional, but it's just not ready for a serious user. My experience differs. I've seen good and bad releases (I thought 6.10 was a pretty bad one) but I'd rate 8.04 pretty highly. I hope 8.10 will be good as well.
Open source drivers would be nice, but I fail to see how this distro does anything to further that goal.
Well it would if a lot of people started using it. Now, you may say that's almost certainly not going to happen, and I'd agree with you on that (for the short-to-medium term at least). But it definitely wouldn't happen if it hadn't been made.
He reveals that Windows 7 will be a further evolution of Vista, and will lose the rumored MinWin kernel.
So that's 'further evolution' as in "we're dropping loads of cool new features". Microsoft really have lost the plot in the last few years, and Canonical for one are willing to capitalize on any weakness on Microsoft's part. They may still have the market share to impress, but Microsoft are going to have to make Windows 7 count in order to regain the sort of mind share they've lost as of late.
There have been so many great UI innovations in the last decade, this seems pretty niche to me...
Better that than copying Windows 3.1. Seriously, this may have been meant as humorous but I'm starting to get frustrated. Windows 95 is one of the very few times that Microsoft got things indisputably right. Yet despite that, it seems that everyone is determined to redesign this classic formula in an attempt to making things more usable, only I haven't seen anyone actually get it right. I'm using KDE right now, since it seems they're the ones least infected with this "Let's change everything for the sake of seeming fresh and original!" virus (seems to have startedwithMicrosoft and spread out from there), but I'm sceptical about KDE 4. I know I'll probably use it someday, but I'm scared that they're going to fuck it up and the best desktop environment will end up losing a lot of its lead.
I'm sure there's a user interface revolution on the scale of Windows 95 out there somewhere, I'm just hoping we don't have to wade through too much more crap before someone finds it.
It was in contrast to mainframes and mini-computers of the day, this one could be placed on a desk and used.
On top of a desk is actually a pretty silly place to put a computer. I guess I always knew this, but it took until December 2007 for me to fully realize it. My bedroom was being redecorated, I left my PC on the desk while it was happening, my dad got clumsy as usual... BANG! Three foot fall on to a thin carpet on top of sturdy floorboards with no underlay. Poor San never stood a chance.
My new PC sits quite safely in a purpose-made cupboard on the lower left-hand side of my new desk. It's a bit quieter as well.
Not sure why I felt the need to tell that story here, just wanted to save some other fool the anguish of a very dead PC I guess.
I'm reminded of that infamous bug amongst webcomic creators where alt text on images wouldn't go to a new line when it needed to.
FYI, that bug affected the title text (which is supposed to be displayed in addition to the element it's attached to), not the alt text (which is meant to be displayed instead of the element it's attached to). xkcd is frequently cited as a good example of this bug in action, you can examine the page source to see where the title and alt attributes are used.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard that too and I think it's busted now. From what I recall, the porn industry went to HD DVD over Blu-ray due to the Blu-ray Disc Association (or, more likely, Sony) not being very receptive to the idea of Blu-ray being used for porn. Didn't seem to make much of a difference though, HD DVD still bombed.
Why the hell are you posting this in response to me? I copied and pasted that in order to show the original "GPL is no better than closed source!" thing was total bullshit.
FWIW, I think the description has some truth to it. The GPL may not have been referred to as that by the Free Software Foundation, but it is mostly accurate. The question is really about which is considered more important. I think the GPL is good and necessary, especially in this case, but others disagree. I don't mind that they do, I just hate it when they get all hysterical and start going on about software being GPLed as if it's the worst thing that could possibly happen.
Yeah, but if you recall, this was about whether the GPL is better than the software being entirely closed source, so let's expand that:
BSD == Freedom for the Coder.
GPL == Freedom for the Code.
Proprietary == Freedom for No One.
In this case, I think the hardware manufacturers wouldn't like people legally using their code in closed source products without them even getting anything in return, so they're not going to use BSD-style licenses. If they use the GPL or similar, we get the code and freedom to poke around in it, and they get the ability to stop people using that code in closed source products without paying for some sort of commercial license. It's the best compromise we're going to get.
Really? Being able to see the innards of a working driver plus (if it's GPL3) getting an irrevocable patent license is as bad as it being closed source?
The BSD crowd do have some good arguments, but trying to equivocate GPLed software with proprietary software just makes you all look like idiots.
No, no, Linux users can't get girlfriends. Please note this for future trolling.
You could just install Firefox 3 to a different directory and keep Firefox 2 where it is. Firefox 3 should find and use all of the the same settings (i.e. everything you listed) that Firefox 2 did. I operated the two in parallel for a while with no problems, though I got a problem recently where Firefox 3 ended up messing up a Firefox 2 install. Not sure what happened there.
Um, hello? Simple? Readable? Seemingly innocent? Does any current version of Windows manage to fulfil even one of these criteria?
The GPLv3 itself gives software patents (more than a few of which are ridiculous) a level of legitimacy, by implying that they are a threat to free software and aren't going anywhere any time soon. As much as I'd like to, we can't just ignore patent trolls. They have to be dealt with in some manner, whether that's by challenging the patent or by paying them enough to get acceptable licensing terms.
If you really want to solve the problem once and for all, there's only one way to do it. Get the patent system reformed so it's more difficult to make such patents. The only way that's going to start is with grassroots action, so get to it.
It's a series of tubes, you idiot!
1988? Where the hell do you live? In 1988, the 8086/8088, 80186, and 80286 had already been on the market for years. The 80386 was the CPU to have and the 80486 was only a year away.
We've been using it for 100% of mine. The 80386 was still shiny and new when I was born.
See, this is one the reasons I come to Slashdot. Other discussion boards make me feel so old because I remember using my old 486DX2/66.
Ah yes, this computer is missing most of the web feeds (where I'd usually find The Burning Edge) I used to have with my old PC. I'm hoping I'll have those back by next week, my Mozilla feeds included.
So then you can complain about a rough feature that wasn't polished up enough in the rushed betas or a critical bug that wasn't fixed during the rushed release candidates? No thanks.
Gecko 1.9 (the basis of Firefox 3) is likely to be with us for a while. In fact, Gecko 2.0 is so far away that a Gecko 1.9.1 is planned to fix bugs that affected projects other than Firefox and make it a generally stable platform to work with until Gecko 2.0 is finally with us. Any rushing here and we'll be regretting it for a while.
Argh. DISREGARD, that's the same bloody page that's in the article.
Well, it's a release candidate anyway so there's not going to be any new features. It'll be critical bugfixes only, which is probably why there's no dedicated release notes, they'll arrive for the final version. I'm guessing you could search Bugzilla to find recent fixes of critical or blocker bugs, but it's running pretty slowly now and I wouldn't know how to make such a search, so I'm leaving now.
Firefox 3 Release Candidate 2 Release Notes
I found it linked to on the Firefox 3 download page.
I'd ask the same thing. I used XP Home for a full four years and can't recall a single instance where I ended up missing something I would've had in XP Pro. So why the hell does everyone talk about XP Home like it's some unusable pile of shit?
I was actually confusing two different issues there. Having a PC for over a year that had no sound and poor video under Linux (a situation that has barely improved since 2006) has left me somewhat angry, mainly because there was no specific reason why it didn't work, it just didn't. I've since given up on it. My parents can use it instead, they have lesser needs.
Now I've got a Sound Blaster X-Fi, which I can probably make work, but will require some rather complex and esoteric procedures.
My lesson from this is that when Linux is good, it's very good. But when it's bad, you won't even want to be near it.
Yes. The Civic is cheap, fuel-efficient, probably more reliable than the BMW these days, and gets me from A to B without making a fuss about it. Why would I want the more expensive BMW? For a few extra toys? Fuck that.
Of course in this analogy the Civic is Linux and the BMW is Windows (though I believe everything I said is true about Hondas and BMWs too). I do have a real-life anecdote though to make this post more meaningful.
The Linux desktop experience today in 2008 has the appeal, driver support, and aesthetics of Windows 98. Oh wait, Win98 did have driver support.I got two pieces of new hardware recently. A Kodak EasyShare P850 digital camera and an Epson Stylus E66 printer. Neither is exactly new, but the Kodak is still available first-hand.
The Kodak was an easy one. The instructions for Windows entailed installing the software FIRST (bad things can happen if you plug it in first apparently) and then doing stuff with the camera. Under Linux, installation involved plugging in the camera. Kubuntu detected the camera, and offered to start up digiKam for me so I could get the pictures. Worked first time.
The printer was a slightly more involved issue. My mum and the seller (both Windows people) were fussing about drivers. They knew the CD only included Windows drivers, but I ended up with an e-mail linking me to the website, where one or both thought I may find Linux drivers. As I expected, nothing was present (only Windows drivers, not even Mac OS X drivers, shame on Epson). So I plugged it in, went through drivers in KControl, found the printer, selected Epson Stylus E66 drivers, gave the printer a name, and found that it now worked.
The lesson I've learned with all this is that Linux either works with your hardware, or it doesn't. There's no driver installation or anything. It it works, it works right away. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work and won't work until it's in the kernel. So it's either perfect usability, or no usability at all. My idea of hell being forever made to try and get non-kernel supported hardware working with Linux. It's that bad.
Well it would if a lot of people started using it. Now, you may say that's almost certainly not going to happen, and I'd agree with you on that (for the short-to-medium term at least). But it definitely wouldn't happen if it hadn't been made.
So that's 'further evolution' as in "we're dropping loads of cool new features". Microsoft really have lost the plot in the last few years, and Canonical for one are willing to capitalize on any weakness on Microsoft's part. They may still have the market share to impress, but Microsoft are going to have to make Windows 7 count in order to regain the sort of mind share they've lost as of late.
There have been so many great UI innovations in the last decade, this seems pretty niche to me...
Better that than copying Windows 3.1. Seriously, this may have been meant as humorous but I'm starting to get frustrated. Windows 95 is one of the very few times that Microsoft got things indisputably right. Yet despite that, it seems that everyone is determined to redesign this classic formula in an attempt to making things more usable, only I haven't seen anyone actually get it right. I'm using KDE right now, since it seems they're the ones least infected with this "Let's change everything for the sake of seeming fresh and original!" virus (seems to have started with Microsoft and spread out from there), but I'm sceptical about KDE 4. I know I'll probably use it someday, but I'm scared that they're going to fuck it up and the best desktop environment will end up losing a lot of its lead.
I'm sure there's a user interface revolution on the scale of Windows 95 out there somewhere, I'm just hoping we don't have to wade through too much more crap before someone finds it.
On top of a desk is actually a pretty silly place to put a computer. I guess I always knew this, but it took until December 2007 for me to fully realize it. My bedroom was being redecorated, I left my PC on the desk while it was happening, my dad got clumsy as usual... BANG! Three foot fall on to a thin carpet on top of sturdy floorboards with no underlay. Poor San never stood a chance.
My new PC sits quite safely in a purpose-made cupboard on the lower left-hand side of my new desk. It's a bit quieter as well.
Not sure why I felt the need to tell that story here, just wanted to save some other fool the anguish of a very dead PC I guess.
FYI, that bug affected the title text (which is supposed to be displayed in addition to the element it's attached to), not the alt text (which is meant to be displayed instead of the element it's attached to). xkcd is frequently cited as a good example of this bug in action, you can examine the page source to see where the title and alt attributes are used.