How is this any different than the current Windows scenario? While I agree with you that some times you just have to cut the cord and say "no applications which haven't been recompiled will work with this release of the FOO platform," users expect that their old applications will continue to work.
You weren't paying attention. Your QT 2 apps will continue to work because of versioned libraries: they continue to use the QT 2 libraries, while QT 3 apps use the QT 3 libraries. This is a fundamental capability that Windows lacks. Windows tries to implement versioned interfaces and the result is a disaster because all previous versions of an interface have to be supported in a single DLL. Aside from bloating up the DLL, messing up the interfaces, this introduces a substantial risk that some vendor will ship a DLL that implements some earlier interface incorrectly, breaking other applications, or that two vendors will ship mutually incompatible DLL's. Ever seen that happen?
Whatever their real reasons for withdrawing support, I have a feeling that the backlash a lot of people on/. expressed helped change their minds.
No, that had very little to do with it. Here on Slashdot you're preaching to the choir. You're going to have absolutely zip, none, nada, no effect on anybody's policy unless you get off your ass, get outside Slashdot, and communicate in the forum's where it matters. In this case, the main effects were caused by people who posted to the W3C's patentpolicy-comment list.
Don't get the idea that sitting on Slashdot and bleating actually does anything other than make you feel better. Come back here and tell us what you've done.
Re:Is this the same publication
on
LWN in Trouble
·
· Score: 2
that was involved in a fake posting snafu not too long ago, or have I got them confused with someone else ?
You are indeed confused.
Please note the "No score +1 button" on the posting form.
I say subscription. It's clear as water : I want your service, you ask me X money: if I value the service enough, I pay. Otherwise, I don't.
I've always felt strange when I have to hand a tip. It's less streightforward.
Some people tip, some don't. It's those who do tip that matter.
There are only a small number of web publications that have been able to survive on a subscription model: Wall Street Journal, some financial services, some stock quote services, and... ??? LWN does not have the resources of a Wall Street Journal, and it does not have a profitable paper edition to get itself through such an experiment. It might instead see its readership decimated, the subscription revenue not even able to make up for the decreased advertising revenue.
One more question: do you feel strange when you tip in a restaurant?
Consider this comparison of tipping services. Would you donate? How much? How often? Which is the best tipping service, does anybody have experience with these? What's better, subscription or tipping?
This is known as the Iterative Fractal System, or IFS, and is actually patented.
Iterated function system. Compression by this method is covered by US patent 4,941,193 issued 1990. This is a clearcut example of how a potentially useful mathematical technique has been largely ignored because of its patent encumbrance. Just one more example of how patents are good for lawyers and bad for everybody else. I seriously doubt Barnsley has made any money from the patent, I suspect the book produced more revenue. In any event, whatever usefulness the technique might have is lost to us until the patent runs out in another 8 years or so.
This refusal to hear a case means absolutely nothing at this time.
You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you? It means your whole "Mommy! He called me names!" defense goes out the window.
Re:All the interesting positions in Linux are take
on
Tridge Speaks Out
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· Score: 2
Take a look at Matra's Open Cascade. There's still a lot of work to do on it, it's really more a library at this point. But when it does have an interface it will be as much advanced beyond AutoCAD as IBM's Catia is. In other words, no more tricycle, it's a real high-end CAD system. The license isn't GPL but looks completely ok and open to me. [license]
If any project deserves developers, it's this one.
You are reading way too much into it. It's pretty much a non issue, and the most important thing happening is the negotiations at the appeals level.
Instead of taking your word for it, I'll go see what my favorite news site has to say about it:
Their decision at this stage is hardly unexpected, but knocks the stuffing out of the legal arguments Microsoft's lawyers have been hammering since Jackson put on his black cap. The Appeals Court caned Jackson for blabbing to the press, and threw him off the case, but decided that despite his (in their view) deplorable conduct his verdict hadn't been tainted by bias. Microsoft however embarked on a tortuous process of arguing that even the appearance of possible bias meant that the whole thing ought to be slung out, and that the merry dance should be started again.
That will not now happen.
Aw, too bad. My question for you is: does it hurt?
I don't know the specifics of the DMCA, but I don't believe any form of encryption was broken into. I don't believe that reverse engineering a protocol through trial and error is illegal. However, circumventing a security / encryption mechanism is.
If that's true, then AOL just has to encrypt their protocol to get anti-circumvention protection under the DCMA.
Disclaimer: I'm not implying this is a good thing.
Despite the common cry of "free as in beer", as heard throughout Slashdot, people do need to make money.
I suppose it's only fair to let the Microsoft astroturfers have their say too, though it would show a shred of moral integrity if you declared your affiliation.
By the time these questions have been answered the public comment period will have closed (Oct 11).
Originally, the comment period was extended by 11 days because 90% of the comments were submitted on the last day. It seems there wasn't much public advertising of the original public comment period, or the importance of the proposed changes. By luck, Adam Warner noticed what was going on and sounded the alarm on the 3rd-to-last day. There was no time to do any deep research. Most people just said NO with varying degrees of eloquence. Now we're 3 days away from the end of the newly extended period and still, very few people have been able to take the time to really do their research, let alone engage in any kind of constructive dialog.
If you think this is all a little unfair, you can let the W3C know, here.
You've got two more days, please do a little research.
This is a good thing, we don't want to have the same crap that Rambus pulled with RDRAM.
JEDEC also has requirements for disclosure in place. Rambus simply ignored them, or cheated their way around them. You'd think the government would be interested in this, but they have sat on their hands and still are sitting on their hands. The deck is so strongly stacked in favor of those who like to play the patent game it isn't funny.
I find it interesting that the W3C is saying "Why didn't we publisize this? We did, you just didn't hear it!"
Try searching for keywords in the Patent Policy Framework proposal, the original announcement and background and the Patent Policy FAQ, you won't find those documents. Why? My theory: they weren't on the web at the time W3C says they were. Corollary: enemy action.
At the San Jose kernel summit earlier this year Linus blessed the concept of a pluggable/configurable kernel security system for Linux. The exact form of this interface is still being hashed out, but it is going to happen, in the 2.5 timeframe.
With this new kernel interface you'll be able to set your system up to taste, with configurations running all the way from basic Unix security like we have now to the exotic super-security system flavor of the week.
Remember when Loki filed for Chapter 11? That day they had their best day of online sales ever. Together, we have the financial power to keep Loki alive.
Sorry -- as long as you have to do stuff like this, then it won't be an alternative to MacOS or Windows...
You don't have to, there are graphical init editors, more than one. But you don't seem to get it, quite. It's because of being able to do this kind of thing that Linux got as strong as it is.
Well, from what I understand (and feel free to prove me wrong), whenever you target multiple platforms, you sacrifice the performance you'd get if you focused and optimized for one platform.
Sure, that's why Linux runs so poorly on a dozen different platforms, right?:-P
Minus DirectSound, DirectInput, and all the other things which make DirectX a "good thing (tm)" for Windows (simple interoperability with hardware using standardized API's, simple driver writeups). For the time being I'll pass.
I suppose it's not your fault that some clueless moderator thought your post was insightful but I'm embarrassed for him;-)
OpenGL is the (free, open, clean and crossplatform) counterpart to Direct3D, not DirectX.
"Microsoft's situation is interesting, and perhaps a little sad. Their business model appears to have two cornerstones: Aggressive compound growth and fast, frequent shipment of incremental improvements focused on user perception."
Also they rely very much on their own share price. Wonder how they are doing right now.
They're tanking, even more so than others. Compare to Sun or even Red Hat.
I was waiting for Kapital to evolve a bit more for managing my finances, and for more games to become available for Linux, but now, I'm just gonna keep a Win98 partition around ONLY for the games. All my other important stuff is going onto a Linux run system from here on out...
Kind of like how it went for me. I dual-booted for most of a year because of certain apps I'd gotten used to on Windows, notably mirc, until I accidently toasted the Windows partition on my laptop and would have had to go through some kind of strip search by Microsoft to get the thing installed again (auth number and CD not in same place). So at that point I just put in the effort to learn replacement applications and never looked back. I also kept Windows partitions on a couple of desktops, then after a couple of years I noticed I *never* used them so one day I just moved all the interesting files off and reformatted the partition as Ext2.
Games. I used to play a lot but then I found myself actually doing some much interesting stuff with my computer that I didn't have time. Then recently I've found I've got more than enough first-string games on Linux to satisfy me if I ever do get back into it.
Well, they'll have to make a decision. Is Osama bin Laden and his henchmen worth the deaths of 24 million people to them? Somehow in their insane religious fundamentalist minds I think it does. So be it. I have no problems watching 24 million, or even 2 billion Muslim, starve to death at this point. They have shown they want nothing but to kill me and my family and would not think twice if they were in my position. I say fuck them. Let God sort out the atrocities in the end.
Hopefully you will fall off a chair and die, or shoot yourself while cleaning a loaded gun, because you are too stupid to reproduce.
Let me get this straight, you're willing to starve 24 million civilians to death to get one bad guy? Please lord, I didn't really read that, nobody could be that sick.
Can we capture the exact GPS coordinates of caves? Can we put a missle right into the mouth of a cave with a warhead that "smokes out" those inside (or does something more nasty)?
Sure, if you can see the cave. It looks like a crack in the rock. Yep, just like lots of other cracks.
Slashdot Mirror
You weren't paying attention. Your QT 2 apps will continue to work because of versioned libraries: they continue to use the QT 2 libraries, while QT 3 apps use the QT 3 libraries. This is a fundamental capability that Windows lacks. Windows tries to implement versioned interfaces and the result is a disaster because all previous versions of an interface have to be supported in a single DLL. Aside from bloating up the DLL, messing up the interfaces, this introduces a substantial risk that some vendor will ship a DLL that implements some earlier interface incorrectly, breaking other applications, or that two vendors will ship mutually incompatible DLL's. Ever seen that happen?
No, that had very little to do with it. Here on Slashdot you're preaching to the choir. You're going to have absolutely zip, none, nada, no effect on anybody's policy unless you get off your ass, get outside Slashdot, and communicate in the forum's where it matters. In this case, the main effects were caused by people who posted to the W3C's patentpolicy-comment list.
Don't get the idea that sitting on Slashdot and bleating actually does anything other than make you feel better. Come back here and tell us what you've done.
You are indeed confused. Please note the "No score +1 button" on the posting form.
Mod the parent down please. tim_maroney is a well-known Microsoft astroturfer.
I say subscription. It's clear as water : I want your service, you ask me X money: if I value the service enough, I pay. Otherwise, I don't.
I've always felt strange when I have to hand a tip. It's less streightforward.
Some people tip, some don't. It's those who do tip that matter.
There are only a small number of web publications that have been able to survive on a subscription model: Wall Street Journal, some financial services, some stock quote services, and... ??? LWN does not have the resources of a Wall Street Journal, and it does not have a profitable paper edition to get itself through such an experiment. It might instead see its readership decimated, the subscription revenue not even able to make up for the decreased advertising revenue.
One more question: do you feel strange when you tip in a restaurant?
Consider this comparison of tipping services. Would you donate? How much? How often? Which is the best tipping service, does anybody have experience with these? What's better, subscription or tipping?
Iterated function system. Compression by this method is covered by US patent 4,941,193 issued 1990. This is a clearcut example of how a potentially useful mathematical technique has been largely ignored because of its patent encumbrance. Just one more example of how patents are good for lawyers and bad for everybody else. I seriously doubt Barnsley has made any money from the patent, I suspect the book produced more revenue. In any event, whatever usefulness the technique might have is lost to us until the patent runs out in another 8 years or so.
The word "asshole" comes to mind.
You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you? It means your whole "Mommy! He called me names!" defense goes out the window.
If any project deserves developers, it's this one.
Instead of taking your word for it, I'll go see what my favorite news site has to say about it:
Aw, too bad. My question for you is: does it hurt?If that's true, then AOL just has to encrypt their protocol to get anti-circumvention protection under the DCMA.
Disclaimer: I'm not implying this is a good thing.
I suppose it's only fair to let the Microsoft astroturfers have their say too, though it would show a shred of moral integrity if you declared your affiliation.
Originally, the comment period was extended by 11 days because 90% of the comments were submitted on the last day. It seems there wasn't much public advertising of the original public comment period, or the importance of the proposed changes. By luck, Adam Warner noticed what was going on and sounded the alarm on the 3rd-to-last day. There was no time to do any deep research. Most people just said NO with varying degrees of eloquence. Now we're 3 days away from the end of the newly extended period and still, very few people have been able to take the time to really do their research, let alone engage in any kind of constructive dialog.
If you think this is all a little unfair, you can let the W3C know, here. You've got two more days, please do a little research.
You think so do you? Perhaps you're unaware that the SVG working group is is already incorporating RAND into the draft SVG standard?
This is a good thing, we don't want to have the same crap that Rambus pulled with RDRAM.
JEDEC also has requirements for disclosure in place. Rambus simply ignored them, or cheated their way around them. You'd think the government would be interested in this, but they have sat on their hands and still are sitting on their hands. The deck is so strongly stacked in favor of those who like to play the patent game it isn't funny.
Try searching for keywords in the Patent Policy Framework proposal, the original announcement and background and the Patent Policy FAQ, you won't find those documents. Why? My theory: they weren't on the web at the time W3C says they were. Corollary: enemy action.
With this new kernel interface you'll be able to set your system up to taste, with configurations running all the way from basic Unix security like we have now to the exotic super-security system flavor of the week.
Don't forget to buy a Loki game this month.
You don't have to, there are graphical init editors, more than one. But you don't seem to get it, quite. It's because of being able to do this kind of thing that Linux got as strong as it is.
Sure, that's why Linux runs so poorly on a dozen different platforms, right? :-P
I suppose it's not your fault that some clueless moderator thought your post was insightful but I'm embarrassed for him ;-)
OpenGL is the (free, open, clean and crossplatform) counterpart to Direct3D, not DirectX.
Also they rely very much on their own share price. Wonder how they are doing right now.
They're tanking, even more so than others. Compare to Sun or even Red Hat.
Kind of like how it went for me. I dual-booted for most of a year because of certain apps I'd gotten used to on Windows, notably mirc, until I accidently toasted the Windows partition on my laptop and would have had to go through some kind of strip search by Microsoft to get the thing installed again (auth number and CD not in same place). So at that point I just put in the effort to learn replacement applications and never looked back. I also kept Windows partitions on a couple of desktops, then after a couple of years I noticed I *never* used them so one day I just moved all the interesting files off and reformatted the partition as Ext2.
Games. I used to play a lot but then I found myself actually doing some much interesting stuff with my computer that I didn't have time. Then recently I've found I've got more than enough first-string games on Linux to satisfy me if I ever do get back into it.
Hopefully you will fall off a chair and die, or shoot yourself while cleaning a loaded gun, because you are too stupid to reproduce.
Let me get this straight, you're willing to starve 24 million civilians to death to get one bad guy? Please lord, I didn't really read that, nobody could be that sick.
Sure, if you can see the cave. It looks like a crack in the rock. Yep, just like lots of other cracks.