I'd be more concerned about trojan horses in closed-source, proprietary programs, because for the most part they are not subject to the same amount of peer-review as their open-source counterparts.
I wouldn't say never. Here's where it will start. Some bible-thumping baptist group in the deep south will boycott their cable company because its users can download porn over the net. The cable company of course will bow to the pressure and start blocking questionable material (believe me they already have the capability of blocking out sites by content).
IT WILL HAPPEN. The only question is when, and will there be alternative providers by that time?
This is off-topic, but I kind of have a problem with your argument. Is what _you personally_ call "bigoted hate speech" any more of a flaim-bait than any other trolls we get here? Why does "bigoted hate speech" deserve a -50 where "Linux Sucks" deserves a -1? The moderation is here to clean up the trash a bit, but there is no section in the guidelines that specifies a larger penalty for political incorrectness...
These guys ought to put their exceptional talents to use on the WINE project, rather than re-inventing the wheel yet again. There's already an alternate Win32 implementation out there, and it's already open-source.
Basically, they are saying, "We supply this database, but it is illegal for anyone to use it." Of course none of this will stand up in court, but it sure lines the lawyers' pockets!
Only a small part of the source was released... the bit required for add-on authors to write add-ons. The full source is not available legally unless you cough up 500k USD.
Recompiling your kernel is more like changing the oil in your car. It only takes about 15 minutes, and you can easily learn how to do it by reading directions.
Unfortunately many older people don't like to read directions, because they perceive written directions as a threat to their intellect and experience. That's why three quarters of VCR's in the world have flashing 12:00 on them.
The author claims that Palms are hazardous to companies' IT departments. What?! Does he expect us to believe that if one person uses a notebook to jot down notes, and another person uses a Palm, that somehow that second person is annoying the other techies?
Why are Americans so fixated on sex? There's a lot of stuff on the net a lot worse than sex that they can ban. Of course the best case would be not to ban anything and let people decide for themselves what is bad, but really... all you hear coming out of congress is sex!
My point is that even though it might take a majority of users to influence a giant like MS to move, there no number of mere users that can influence a free software effort like Linux.
With most open-source projects, the users are also developers: Whether they are actually coding, or writing documentation, or giving feedback/bug reports, this "users as developers" paradigm is what has kept Linux feature-rich. If you want a feature, you don't have to "influence a giant company," you just write it yourself. And if you can't write it yourself, find a package that does almost what you want, and suggest the feature to that package's author and offer to test it. I guess in a way non-tech users are at the implementer's mercy, but even today with Redhat getting popular, I'd say most users are capable of contributing to the software they use.
Why? Not a difficult question to answer. Same reason why 3dfx bought STB... Chip manufacturers want more control over the final product. When you only make chips, it's up to the whim of the board manufacturer what size/type of memory to use, what clock speed, what features, etc. S3 must be realizing they can put out a better total package if they have control over the entire path from the chip to the monitor plug.
It will be interesting to see how these new "uber-companies" compete with companies like ATI, Matrox, etc. who already do the chips and boards by themselves.
If these board company buyups prove to be successful, watch for other chip-only companies like nVidia, etc. to follow the lead.
XFree's licence is not specific about this case, but I know for a fact that you can compile microcode into the Linux kernel which we do not have the source for, for devices like sound cards and scsi controllers which run proprietary microcode.
This is a grey area which hasn't specifically been addressed by the various "open-source" licenses.
You can't write a fully-functional 3D driver from "just a marketing ploy". Matrox is one of the few companies willing to compromise with the Linux community on what they consider highly-confidential stuff! Besides, knowledge of the WARP will not buy the current driver anything, since triangle setup is not a bottleneck.
Also, just a minor correction, the nVidia drivers are not GPL'ed.
Anyone notice that they are booting off of a flash memory module? Is this hardware available to the Joe Public? I'd like to stick my kernel and a few tools onto an 8mb flash module for quick bootups as well?
I think you would need a flash module with an IDE or SCSI interface, so it just looked like another disc drive to the rest of the system. Anyone know someone who sells something like this?
The point needs to be made somehow. You are arguing the elitists' case for us: "They're not educated by their IT department on the dangers of opening attachments." What better a way to educate them then to expose their ignorance--maybe both user and sysadmin will learn from the experience.
It's not okay for mechanics to start kicking windows out (unless they are MS Windows) but it shouldn't take more than one break-down on the interstate to teach people to maintain their vehicles properly.
Viruses are not always totally evil and harmful--if it takes a virus outbreak to educate people, then these "viruses" serve an important purpose.
So what did we learn from this little prank?
1. If you value your documents, don't store them on a machine with a Microsoft operating system installed.
2. If you value your documents, don't open attachments, even if they are from people you know.
3. If you value your documents, grit your teeth and LEARN A LITTLE BIT about that $1500 machine in front of you!
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I'd be more concerned about trojan horses in closed-source, proprietary programs, because for the most part they are not subject to the same amount of peer-review as their open-source counterparts.
I wouldn't say never. Here's where it will start. Some bible-thumping baptist group in the deep south will boycott their cable company because its users can download porn over the net. The cable company of course will bow to the pressure and start blocking questionable material (believe me they already have the capability of blocking out sites by content).
IT WILL HAPPEN. The only question is when, and will there be alternative providers by that time?
What makes one word dirty and another one not? I'd love for someone to logically and reasonably explain that one for me...
You know, "Open Source" and "Making money" are not mutually exclusive.
Just to clarify number 5, Matrox has released a _detailed_ spec, just not a complete one.
This is off-topic, but I kind of have a problem with your argument. Is what _you personally_ call "bigoted hate speech" any more of a flaim-bait than any other trolls we get here? Why does "bigoted hate speech" deserve a -50 where "Linux Sucks" deserves a -1? The moderation is here to clean up the trash a bit, but there is no section in the guidelines that specifies a larger penalty for political incorrectness...
These guys ought to put their exceptional talents to use on the WINE project, rather than re-inventing the wheel yet again. There's already an alternate Win32 implementation out there, and it's already open-source.
Basically, they are saying, "We supply this database, but it is illegal for anyone to use it." Of course none of this will stand up in court, but it sure lines the lawyers' pockets!
Windowmaker has a fast, usable, and _consistant_ interface. Which is more than I can say for some of the more recently developed window managers.
Only a small part of the source was released... the bit required for add-on authors to write add-ons. The full source is not available legally unless you cough up 500k USD.
I dont remember who said it, but I just love this quote:
"The only truly intuitive user interface is the nipple. Everything else has to be learned."
Recompiling your kernel is more like changing the oil in your car. It only takes about 15 minutes, and you can easily learn how to do it by reading directions.
Unfortunately many older people don't like to read directions, because they perceive written directions as a threat to their intellect and experience. That's why three quarters of VCR's in the world have flashing 12:00 on them.
The author claims that Palms are hazardous to companies' IT departments. What?! Does he expect us to believe that if one person uses a notebook to jot down notes, and another person uses a Palm, that somehow that second person is annoying the other techies?
Why are Americans so fixated on sex? There's a lot of stuff on the net a lot worse than sex that they can ban. Of course the best case would be not to ban anything and let people decide for themselves what is bad, but really... all you hear coming out of congress is sex!
I used Bladeenc to rip and encode my entire CD collection (150+ cd's). It's great to hear that the source is going to be available!
Just curious, if the author is reading this, what made you release it under the LGPL rather than the GPL?
Not to be critical, but that screenshot looks like an artist on crack just blew his nose and sprayed paint all over your desktop.
Talk about non-functional eye candy...
Oh man, I was reading that just after I took a sip of soda and I sprayed it all over my monitor. LOL!
My point is that even though it might take a majority of users to influence a giant like MS to move, there no number of mere users that can influence a free software effort like Linux.
With most open-source projects, the users are also developers: Whether they are actually coding, or writing documentation, or giving feedback/bug reports, this "users as developers" paradigm is what has kept Linux feature-rich. If you want a feature, you don't have to "influence a giant company," you just write it yourself. And if you can't write it yourself, find a package that does almost what you want, and suggest the feature to that package's author and offer to test it. I guess in a way non-tech users are at the implementer's mercy, but even today with Redhat getting popular, I'd say most users are capable of contributing to the software they use.
Why? Not a difficult question to answer. Same reason why 3dfx bought STB... Chip manufacturers want more control over the final product. When you only make chips, it's up to the whim of the board manufacturer what size/type of memory to use, what clock speed, what features, etc. S3 must be realizing they can put out a better total package if they have control over the entire path from the chip to the monitor plug.
It will be interesting to see how these new "uber-companies" compete with companies like ATI, Matrox, etc. who already do the chips and boards by themselves.
If these board company buyups prove to be successful, watch for other chip-only companies like nVidia, etc. to follow the lead.
XFree's licence is not specific about this case, but I know for a fact that you can compile microcode into the Linux kernel which we do not have the source for, for devices like sound cards and scsi controllers which run proprietary microcode.
This is a grey area which hasn't specifically been addressed by the various "open-source" licenses.
You can't write a fully-functional 3D driver from "just a marketing ploy". Matrox is one of the few companies willing to compromise with the Linux community on what they consider highly-confidential stuff! Besides, knowledge of the WARP will not buy the current driver anything, since triangle setup is not a bottleneck.
Also, just a minor correction, the nVidia drivers are not GPL'ed.
This means that there will be fewer "experimental" changes in each major release, much to the pleasure of us joe users.
Anyone notice that they are booting off of a flash memory module? Is this hardware available to the Joe Public? I'd like to stick my kernel and a few tools onto an 8mb flash module for quick bootups as well?
I think you would need a flash module with an IDE or SCSI interface, so it just looked like another disc drive to the rest of the system. Anyone know someone who sells something like this?
Bar none the best episode. It was so dark and gloomy!
The point needs to be made somehow. You are arguing the elitists' case for us: "They're not educated by their IT department on the dangers of opening attachments." What better a way to educate them then to expose their ignorance--maybe both user and sysadmin will learn from the experience.
It's not okay for mechanics to start kicking windows out (unless they are MS Windows) but it shouldn't take more than one break-down on the interstate to teach people to maintain their vehicles properly.
Viruses are not always totally evil and harmful--if it takes a virus outbreak to educate people, then these "viruses" serve an important purpose.
So what did we learn from this little prank?
1. If you value your documents, don't store them on a machine with a Microsoft operating system installed.
2. If you value your documents, don't open attachments, even if they are from people you know.
3. If you value your documents, grit your teeth and LEARN A LITTLE BIT about that $1500 machine in front of you!