I'll add my 'me too'. Look forward to the closed binary NVidia drivers breaking several times this year, due to internal kernel changes in locking etc which will be transparent for any driver provided in source. Hopefully NVidia will get a clue at some point. In the meantime I will support Trident if they get anywhere near the 80% performance they aim at, so long as they publish their register-level specs.
It would be nice if the Trident part doesn't need its own fan.
Re:Slashdot being astroturfed? (offtopic)
on
More MS EULA Fun
·
· Score: 1
At 6:28 am an article is posted about the negative aspects of the new Microsoft EULA. At 6:31 am an Anonymous Coward posts a well-written, generally grammatically-correct response that explains the need for it.
The response is 383 words. That's over 127 words per minute.
Oh, it goes on all right, astroturfing is one of the standard tactics from Microsoft's playbook. Remember the grassroots letters in support of Microsoft's, written by dead people?
The fact is, Microsoft's astroturfing helps Slashdot generate hits, and it exposes ridiculous arguments to what they deserve: ridicule.
I've noticed the level of astroturfing has dropped off considerably in the last few months though. Morale problems? Defections even?
Yep, sorry: saw 'Lycoris', though 'Xandros'. Then I agree, unless there's a really simple way to add in the missing tools this would be a real pain for professional use. On the other hand, for Windows refugees... well, the presentation looks very slick.
If they have a clue, they'll use the rpm version of apt-get.
My only gripe was that so much software I'm used to finding on a unix-like OS was simply missing. Unless you knew better, you ended up after the initial install with out a compiler or make or anything to roll your own software. This of course became a hastle when wanted to install new software later.
Lycoris is Debian-based, which means you have apt-get, which means you have no-fuss, no-muss ability to install anything that didn't come with the default install, just apt-get install <package>.
The only thing is, you may have to use a Lycoris-specific sources.list, which isn't such a bad thing, it's much like the way Redhat users upgrade through red carpet.
Though I personally prefer the real thing - straight up Debian - I see a lot of value in the extra integration work done by distributions like Lycoris, which saves an infinite amount of time and frustration for beginner.
currently Xandros is taking it a bit farther. Even farther than Mandrake with its "switch screen" features. It allows the user to log on another screen without logging off the first one. And then, of course, switching back and forth between users.
if you want to do it the other way. I'm sure Xandros has put a nice slick interface on this, but it's always been something you can do with X. I do it all the time, in fact I'm running with xfce + KDE right now.
The freedom to write GPLed versions of software - which can then become available for anyone's free use - is exactly what he wants to encourage. Your inability to write software that denies others their freedom to use it doesn't matter to him.
Hi Victor,
What he would like to encourage and what the license says are different things. The GPL states quite plainly: "we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all." No qualifications. In particular, nothing remotely like "for everybody's free use so long as all the software they use is GPL".
If not, then aren't they distributing GPL code written by others as a part of an assemblage that does not grant to others the right to freely modify and redistribute it?
Perhaps they think that they can freely give the right to modify and redistribute the software, while imposing restrictions on the right to use it. Come to think of it, there's very little said in the GPL about the use of a program, versus distribution of it. Perhaps distribution means 'distribution for use', but I don't see that clearly stated.
(Further to my previous post) Quoting from the preamble of the GPL:
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
Now you think that would be pretty clearcut, wouldn't you? Nonetheless, in the case of RTLinux, RMS did publicly state the patent holder could enforce his patent against users of non-GPL applications running under a modified Linux system containing code subject to the patent, without violating the GPL. Go figure. That doesn't sound like 'everyone's free use'.
In the case of the RTLinux patent, luckily a workaround was found, which is even superior to the patented method, so the question of whether the patent holder really was violating the GPL became moot. But, not too surprisingly, here is almost the same thing come up again. RMS needs to take a position.
If you would rather work for an ``enlightened'' company than a successful and profitable one, then by all means, get out. If you're a decent employee, I will happily consider re-hiring you in six months when you find that you can't put your kids through college working on your highly principled, highly enlightened, not-for-profit, eco-friendly, neo-collectivist software kibbutz.
Indeed, I am now sure that you are nothing more than a Microsoft astroturfer, since you are simply spouting from the Microsoft 'how to FUD' playbook.
I stand by 'dust off your resume' for your coworkers.
For the same reason we get religious about freedom of speech. But you wouldn't understand that. I refer back to my advice that your co-workers need to dust off their resumes, there are more enlightened places to work.
But looking at the install requirements of Subversion is very intimidating!
I did:
sudo apt-get install subversion
Voila! Installed, configured. It's just a little older than today's alpha (.13) but I don't mind. It will automatically update to the latest version in a few days.
We spent a good chunk of change-- not millions, but several thousand bucks-- getting our trouble ticket application written and debugged. We have the option of either contracting with the vendor to open up that application and make the changes necessary to make it work properly with Mozilla 1.0, for a few thousand more bucks, or use IE instead of Mozilla, at no cost at all. Which do you think we chose?
You made your mistake much earlier in the process: paying money to somebody to develop content that doesn't conform to W3C standards. You should have paid the same money to somebody with a clue, and you would not ever have to worry about that problem.
Next time you pay to develop web content, show your contractor this website.
-1, Flamebait'' moderations... were applied to the parent, in which I said that browsers that fail to render pages the same way IE does should be considered broken.
You're right, but only because -1, Just Plain Wrong isn't available as a moderation option. Obviously, a browser that fails to render a page in some broken IE way is not necessarily broken: it comes down to standards, as in W3C standards. Whichever browser does not correctly implement the standard is the broken one.
If you read a little more closely, I was asking if OpenOffice has PDF generation built in or if it uses an external application.
I believe it uses ghostview, an external application.
That's a very important question, because I need to know whether I can generate PDFs within OpenOffice by itself, or whether I'll have to make sure some external software is installed first.
With open source software it's not really an important question, since there's no new license to pay for. In fact, you *want* things to be properly modular wherever possible, so that each component can do the job it does best, and not fill your hard drive up with redundant code etc.
Anyway, OpenOffice is designed to let you install components whenever you want. you can go ahead and do an initial install no matter which components you already have, then add bits and pieces later if needed. I don't know about you, but I like that attitude a lot.
According to the article, JPEG 2000 has had extensive work done to obtain royalty-free licensing.
Contrast with the MPEG L(icensing)A(uthority), which is working overtime to ensure that the proposed MPEG4 standard is encumbered with royalties, both for encoders and players.
The encoding of the letters and numbers in Morse seems wasteful, but it can't be done by five bits in one byte the way Alan Cox suggested, since not all Morse characters are 5 symbols long. There would be space in a byte to store all of this information though if the remaining bits were used to store the number of encoded bits.
Maybe Alan didn't come up with the optimal scheme this time, but you are way wrong about what's possible. In fact, a variable length string of up to 7 bits can be stored unambiguously in a single byte. See my post, which explains how the code works. Not my idea by the way, but once somebody points it out to you, it's obvious.
How to read patent claims
on
Ogg Vorbis 1.0
·
· Score: 2
Reading and Understanding Patent Claims How to infringe a patent and get away with it Patent Claim Interpretation
It's amazing how SGI was short-sighted when they sold lots of their patents regarding 3D to Microsoft.
It's not as bad as all that. Microsoft is in a precarious position with respect to enforcement; Microsoft is, in a legal sense, a monopoly, and the patents constitute a further, legally granted monopoly, which they have purchased. Translation: Microsoft buys its way into an extended monopoly position. Imagine how well that will fly if there is any attempt to enforce.
Microsoft management is no doubt keenly aware of this little problem, and so we'll see that the real use they will make of these patents is for FUD, and to slow down the completion/deployment of the OpenGL 2 standard. But this too is a risky strategy, and not only in a legal sense; we're already beginning to see the public backlash. If Microsoft tries to use its position on the OpenGL ARB to slow down the process of working around their newly acquired IP, the shit will really hit the fan. It was one thing when Microsoft used its power to marginalize OpenGL on the Windows platform (thanks kindly to John Carmack for preventing that strategy from succeeding completely); it's quite another if Microsoft decides to attempt this on non-Windows platforms as well. Stay tuned.
However what annoys me most is some GUI features of linux. I'd really like to help improving that. Now the problem is that I doen't speak C++, and I don't want to spend years learning it.
Many gui-using projects have a bug database; don't be shy about entering usability bugs in the database. Your opinions do matter; you may well have more taste in interface design than many of the coders on the project, even if you aren't able to express your ideas in code. Of course, be sure you understand the issues well before posting, and state clearly what the usability bug is, not just how you think it should be fixed. I.e, "It requires 6 mouse clicks to turn off Javascript" (it really does, in Mozilla) not just "let me have an option to put a button on the toolbar to turn Javascript on and off".
To be allowed to enter the US after being rejected on an incorrect visa, he needs to go through some long bureaucratic process which may or may not result in the ban being lifted.
That's exactly true, starting with the fact that the u.s. immigration service won't even talk to anybody who'd not a u.s. citizen. You Americans have no idea what a bad impression your representatives are making at the border, if you did you'd demand changes.
Hell, Linus Torvalds could learn a lot from this guy.
Heh, very true, especially as Linus was at least partly wrong in the first of those tirades: buffers couldn't handle buffers bigger than page size then, and still can't, even today.
The trouble is, the audience tends to love this mudslinging, and that just encourages the behaviour.
Last time, we won, because we cared, we posted, we let the world know what we think. No RAND-encumbered Web Standards. Only Royalty Free will do.
Oh, before you post, read at least some of the most recent patentpolicy-comment archives. No swearing, no telling people they're stupid. Just them them "no!".
Slashdot Mirror
Anybody know what the status of Apple's firewire patents are? Particularly, expiry dates?
I'll add my 'me too'. Look forward to the closed binary NVidia drivers breaking several times this year, due to internal kernel changes in locking etc which will be transparent for any driver provided in source. Hopefully NVidia will get a clue at some point. In the meantime I will support Trident if they get anywhere near the 80% performance they aim at, so long as they publish their register-level specs.
It would be nice if the Trident part doesn't need its own fan.
At 6:28 am an article is posted about the negative aspects of the new Microsoft EULA. At 6:31 am an Anonymous Coward posts a well-written, generally grammatically-correct response that explains the need for it.
The response is 383 words. That's over 127 words per minute.
Oh, it goes on all right, astroturfing is one of the standard tactics from Microsoft's playbook. Remember the grassroots letters in support of Microsoft's, written by dead people?
The fact is, Microsoft's astroturfing helps Slashdot generate hits, and it exposes ridiculous arguments to what they deserve: ridicule.
I've noticed the level of astroturfing has dropped off considerably in the last few months though. Morale problems? Defections even?
Lycoris is based on Caldera
Yep, sorry: saw 'Lycoris', though 'Xandros'. Then I agree, unless there's a really simple way to add in the missing tools this would be a real pain for professional use. On the other hand, for Windows refugees... well, the presentation looks very slick.
If they have a clue, they'll use the rpm version of apt-get.
My only gripe was that so much software I'm used to finding on a unix-like OS was simply missing. Unless you knew better, you ended up after the initial install with out a compiler or make or anything to roll your own software. This of course became a hastle when wanted to install new software later.
Lycoris is Debian-based, which means you have apt-get, which means you have no-fuss, no-muss ability to install anything that didn't come with the default install, just apt-get install <package>.
The only thing is, you may have to use a Lycoris-specific sources.list, which isn't such a bad thing, it's much like the way Redhat users upgrade through red carpet.
Though I personally prefer the real thing - straight up Debian - I see a lot of value in the extra integration work done by distributions like Lycoris, which saves an infinite amount of time and frustration for beginner.
Try this: Voila, two desktops running at the same time. Or: if you want to do it the other way. I'm sure Xandros has put a nice slick interface on this, but it's always been something you can do with X. I do it all the time, in fact I'm running with xfce + KDE right now.
The freedom to write GPLed versions of software - which can then become available for anyone's free use - is exactly what he wants to encourage. Your inability to write software that denies others their freedom to use it doesn't matter to him.
Hi Victor,
What he would like to encourage and what the license says are different things. The GPL states quite plainly: "we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all." No qualifications. In particular, nothing remotely like "for everybody's free use so long as all the software they use is GPL".
Did they write their whole distribution?
If not, then aren't they distributing GPL code written by others as a part of an assemblage that does not grant to others the right to freely modify and redistribute it?
Perhaps they think that they can freely give the right to modify and redistribute the software, while imposing restrictions on the right to use it. Come to think of it, there's very little said in the GPL about the use of a program, versus distribution of it. Perhaps distribution means 'distribution for use', but I don't see that clearly stated.
(Further to my previous post) Quoting from the preamble of the GPL:
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
Now you think that would be pretty clearcut, wouldn't you? Nonetheless, in the case of RTLinux, RMS did publicly state the patent holder could enforce his patent against users of non-GPL applications running under a modified Linux system containing code subject to the patent, without violating the GPL. Go figure. That doesn't sound like 'everyone's free use'.
In the case of the RTLinux patent, luckily a workaround was found, which is even superior to the patented method, so the question of whether the patent holder really was violating the GPL became moot. But, not too surprisingly, here is almost the same thing come up again. RMS needs to take a position.
8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.
If you would rather work for an ``enlightened'' company than a successful and profitable one, then by all means, get out. If you're a decent employee, I will happily consider re-hiring you in six months when you find that you can't put your kids through college working on your highly principled, highly enlightened, not-for-profit, eco-friendly, neo-collectivist software kibbutz.
Indeed, I am now sure that you are nothing more than a Microsoft astroturfer, since you are simply spouting from the Microsoft 'how to FUD' playbook.
I stand by 'dust off your resume' for your coworkers.
Why get religious about standards?
For the same reason we get religious about freedom of speech. But you wouldn't understand that. I refer back to my advice that your co-workers need to dust off their resumes, there are more enlightened places to work.
But looking at the install requirements of Subversion is very intimidating!
I did:
sudo apt-get install subversion
Voila! Installed, configured. It's just a little older than today's alpha (.13) but I don't mind. It will automatically update to the latest version in a few days.
We spent a good chunk of change-- not millions, but several thousand bucks-- getting our trouble ticket application written and debugged. We have the option of either contracting with the vendor to open up that application and make the changes necessary to make it work properly with Mozilla 1.0, for a few thousand more bucks, or use IE instead of Mozilla, at no cost at all. Which do you think we chose?
You made your mistake much earlier in the process: paying money to somebody to develop content that doesn't conform to W3C standards. You should have paid the same money to somebody with a clue, and you would not ever have to worry about that problem.
Next time you pay to develop web content, show your contractor this website.
You are being silly. "Vorbis" is neither more nor less silly than "Linux".
-1, Flamebait'' moderations ... were applied to the parent, in which I said that browsers that fail to render pages the same way IE does should be considered broken.
You're right, but only because -1, Just Plain Wrong isn't available as a moderation option. Obviously, a browser that fails to render a page in some broken IE way is not necessarily broken: it comes down to standards, as in W3C standards. Whichever browser does not correctly implement the standard is the broken one.
If you read a little more closely, I was asking if OpenOffice has PDF generation built in or if it uses an external application.
I believe it uses ghostview, an external application.
That's a very important question, because I need to know whether I can generate PDFs within OpenOffice by itself, or whether I'll have to make sure some external software is installed first.
With open source software it's not really an important question, since there's no new license to pay for. In fact, you *want* things to be properly modular wherever possible, so that each component can do the job it does best, and not fill your hard drive up with redundant code etc.
Anyway, OpenOffice is designed to let you install components whenever you want. you can go ahead and do an initial install no matter which components you already have, then add bits and pieces later if needed. I don't know about you, but I like that attitude a lot.
According to the article, JPEG 2000 has had extensive work done to obtain royalty-free licensing.
Contrast with the MPEG L(icensing)A(uthority), which is working overtime to ensure that the proposed MPEG4 standard is encumbered with royalties, both for encoders and players.
Let's express this in simple terms:
JPEG: good
MPEG: evil
The encoding of the letters and numbers in Morse seems wasteful, but it can't be done by five bits in one byte the way Alan Cox suggested, since not all Morse characters are 5 symbols long. There would be space in a byte to store all of this information though if the remaining bits were used to store the number of encoded bits.
Maybe Alan didn't come up with the optimal scheme this time, but you are way wrong about what's possible. In fact, a variable length string of up to 7 bits can be stored unambiguously in a single byte. See my post, which explains how the code works. Not my idea by the way, but once somebody points it out to you, it's obvious.
Reading and Understanding Patent Claims
How to infringe a patent and get away with it
Patent Claim Interpretation
It's amazing how SGI was short-sighted when they sold lots of their patents regarding 3D to Microsoft.
It's not as bad as all that. Microsoft is in a precarious position with respect to enforcement; Microsoft is, in a legal sense, a monopoly, and the patents constitute a further, legally granted monopoly, which they have purchased. Translation: Microsoft buys its way into an extended monopoly position. Imagine how well that will fly if there is any attempt to enforce.
Microsoft management is no doubt keenly aware of this little problem, and so we'll see that the real use they will make of these patents is for FUD, and to slow down the completion/deployment of the OpenGL 2 standard. But this too is a risky strategy, and not only in a legal sense; we're already beginning to see the public backlash. If Microsoft tries to use its position on the OpenGL ARB to slow down the process of working around their newly acquired IP, the shit will really hit the fan. It was one thing when Microsoft used its power to marginalize OpenGL on the Windows platform (thanks kindly to John Carmack for preventing that strategy from succeeding completely); it's quite another if Microsoft decides to attempt this on non-Windows platforms as well. Stay tuned.
However what annoys me most is some GUI features of linux. I'd really like to help improving that. Now the problem is that I doen't speak C++, and I don't want to spend years learning it.
Many gui-using projects have a bug database; don't be shy about entering usability bugs in the database. Your opinions do matter; you may well have more taste in interface design than many of the coders on the project, even if you aren't able to express your ideas in code. Of course, be sure you understand the issues well before posting, and state clearly what the usability bug is, not just how you think it should be fixed. I.e, "It requires 6 mouse clicks to turn off Javascript" (it really does, in Mozilla) not just "let me have an option to put a button on the toolbar to turn Javascript on and off".
To be allowed to enter the US after being rejected on an incorrect visa, he needs to go through some long bureaucratic process which may or may not result in the ban being lifted.
That's exactly true, starting with the fact that the u.s. immigration service won't even talk to anybody who'd not a u.s. citizen. You Americans have no idea what a bad impression your representatives are making at the border, if you did you'd demand changes.
Hell, Linus Torvalds could learn a lot from this guy.
Heh, very true, especially as Linus was at least partly wrong in the first of those tirades: buffers couldn't handle buffers bigger than page size then, and still can't, even today.
The trouble is, the audience tends to love this mudslinging, and that just encourages the behaviour.
Say it here.
Last time, we won, because we cared, we posted, we let the world know what we think. No RAND-encumbered Web Standards. Only Royalty Free will do.
Oh, before you post, read at least some of the most recent patentpolicy-comment archives. No swearing, no telling people they're stupid. Just them them "no!".