Australian Defamation Laws are ridiculously powerful.
A failed restaurant recently successfully sued a major newspaper for a negative review in the Australian High Court. That's New South Wales defamation laws, not Australian. Each state is sovereign and laws are not (yet) fully consistent across the whole country.
Multiarch is currently under development, see http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/20/. If I understand correctly, it will not be ready for etch (4.0), but the following stable release seems likely to have it.
The increase in capacity of these new disks is not so impressive. They reach what, 25GB, 30GB? It's a reasonable increase over the old DVDs, but not a revolutionary one.
Besides, what will really kill them in this context are the new digital video recorders, with the way they record straight to hard drive.
What's a 30GB disk worth when compared to a 160GB recorder?
I had a look at Free World Dialup. I kept coming up with pages saying "This product will be offered soon!" They have a star system to rate FAQ questions, but you press on "No, this answer was not helpful", and the star rating goes up!
Not much bloody use if it ain't working. Vapourware.
There are a couple of "bugs" in the GFDL which can be cleared up readily enough, for instance the question of distributing free documentation on DRM'ed media. There are also some more fundamental questions of freedom, centred around the GFDL's "Invariant Sections", which prevent you adapting that part of the document according to your own needs.
You can read a bit more about the issues at http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_Statem ent.html Note that this is not an "official" statement, it's a draft which raises the concerns that some, not necessarily all, of the Debian developers have.
Negotiations continue, we hope we can reach the point where the GFDL documents can reside in Debian without protest or argument.
I recently bought a Sony DVD player. It reads my DVDs from Russia and my friend's DVDs from the USA perfectly fine.
I'm in Australia, so of course it reads local Australian DVDs too.
I've seen a few posts denigrating Sony for not removing the multi-zone restriction. Maybe that's true for Sony USA or elsewhere, but Sony Australia is perfectly supportive of the whole world's DVDs.
My vote will go to fixing these nit-picking social contract violations after sarge. After all, the social contract also says "4. Our priorities are our users (and free software)" (parentheses added).
It's probably worth mentioning that development of the new installer has been the chief technical obstacle to the release of a new version of Debian stable. So with debian-installer nearing completion, this means the next version of Debian stable is also nearing completion.
No, it won't fix the problem with mozilla in Debian. Mozilla (>M18) is being held up from official release in Debian because of policy issues mainly regarding encryption modules and U.S. law, not because of the program itself. Debian developers are currently discussing the meaning of current U.S. law and its implications for encryption software in the future (discussing whether the non-US section of Debian should be brought into main), but a final decision has not yet been released.
Unofficial debs of 0.8 have been available for some time (sorry, I don't have the links at hand) and I presume 0.9 will be packaged up in short time.
I don't get it. They are saying that the NT 4.0 certificates are going to expire in two years. Then what exactly is their meaning?
Seems to me you've either learnt how to administer NT 4.0, or you haven't. And if you have, that skill and knowledge is not going to disappear in two years, not if you've been actively maintaining NT 4.0 systems all that time.
So how can an "NT 4.0 qualified engineer" suddenly lose his qualification? That would be like my university cancelling my Bachelor degree because it was awarded to me too long ago.
The price of the DVD isn't the biggest issue, nor even the timing of its release for that matter.
So you live in the U.S. or in Australia, and you happen to speak French. The French put out a great new movie, and you want to watch it. Say it's not released in the English speaking countries - it's only of interest to French speakers. So the the only way you can get a copy of it is by ordering it from France.
But there, because of the bloody zoning restrictions, you're stuck. The DVD is made for the European zone, you live in the U.S. or in Australia or wherever, so you can't play the DVD, and you have no way of getting the DVD in your own zone.
The whole zoning thing stinks. It's enough to put me off buying a DVD. All the best of luck to Tesco! Good on them for taking a stand against this stupidity!
I've had to program in Fortran 77 for scientific work. Put plainly, it's depressing to use (although some of the objections have been fixed up in Fortran 90). One of the most irritating features is the column sensitivity. Continuation marks *must* be in column 6 (or was it column 5? or 7?), the line must be less than 70 characters long. I habitually have to set the compiler options to override the line length limitation. Fortunately fortran-mode in emacs deals adequately with the column position problem. But it remains a painful language to use, nevertheless.
I've only dabbled so far in both perl and python. Python seems more straight-forward to use, but the white-space sensitivity makes me very nervous. It's like Fortran all over again. Mind you don't inadvertently slip a space character between the tab and the code, or your program will fail, just as Fortran will fail if you put the continuation mark in the 5th (or was it 6th? 7th?) column by mistake.
Others have already mentioned this, and I give it my full support: make tab indentation optional (allow blocks to be defined by {} for instance) ! Let the programmer choose what the best method of indentation is for readability, not for syntax! Please!
I could be a lot more confident about using python if this misgiving were to be fixed up.
Referring to the idea of a pentium build, Wichert said:
it doesn't really help you: if you look at benchmarks you will see that only a relatively small number of programs benefit from this. So you do a whole lot of extra work and gain very little.
Which programs are those exactly which will benefit? I wouldn't mind putting some time into recompiling some key applications for my PII if it was going to help some.
p.s. I'm using Debian potato ("unstable") and it works just great!
Slashdot Mirror
better age match??
Türing was past 40 when he had the affair with the 20-something guy that led to his arrest and consequent suicide.
Leo's perfectly the right age for 40.
The summary says "A minister's defection may have effectively blocked any chance of implementation."
But that link refers to Senator Nick Xenophon. He is an independent senator, not a Minister in the government.
...ah, we had our own lunar eclipse last year thanks. America is only just catching up ;)
A failed restaurant recently successfully sued a major newspaper for a negative review in the Australian High Court. That's New South Wales defamation laws, not Australian. Each state is sovereign and laws are not (yet) fully consistent across the whole country.
Multiarch is currently under development, see http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/20/.
If I understand correctly, it will not be ready for etch (4.0), but the following stable release seems likely to have it.
The increase in capacity of these new disks is not so impressive. They reach what, 25GB, 30GB? It's a reasonable increase over the old DVDs, but not a revolutionary one.
Besides, what will really kill them in this context are the new digital video recorders, with the way they record straight to hard drive.
What's a 30GB disk worth when compared to a 160GB recorder?
I think they've added the driver to support the IR infrared port on IBM (Lenovo) thinkpads, at last!
I had a look at Free World Dialup. I kept coming up with pages saying "This product will be offered soon!" They have a star system to rate FAQ questions, but you press on "No, this answer was not helpful", and the star rating goes up!
Not much bloody use if it ain't working. Vapourware.
The Moscow Times presents a far better article. It's more likely related to shady business practices than his spamming practices.
h tml
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2005/07/26/003.
There are a couple of "bugs" in the GFDL which can be cleared up readily enough, for instance the question of distributing free documentation on DRM'ed media. There are also some more fundamental questions of freedom, centred around the GFDL's "Invariant Sections", which prevent you adapting that part of the document according to your own needs.
m ent.html
You can read a bit more about the issues at
http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/Position_State
Note that this is not an "official" statement, it's a draft which raises the concerns that some, not necessarily all, of the Debian developers have.
Negotiations continue, we hope we can reach the point where the GFDL documents can reside in Debian without protest or argument.
... puts a whole new meaning to the phrase "all seasons in one day".
The next release after sarge has already been named: etch.
And planning for it has already begun
Sorry, that should be http://www.ubuntulinux.org/favicon.ico
It's misleading to use the Debian image for an Ubuntu story. Ubuntu is not Debian, even though there is a relationship between the two.
You need to use a proper Ubuntu image, for example http://www.ubuntulinux.org/favicon.gif
I recently bought a Sony DVD player. It reads my DVDs from Russia and my friend's DVDs from the USA perfectly fine.
I'm in Australia, so of course it reads local Australian DVDs too.
I've seen a few posts denigrating Sony for not removing the multi-zone restriction. Maybe that's true for Sony USA or elsewhere, but Sony Australia is perfectly supportive of the whole world's DVDs.
Drew
Not forgetting, simply trying to inspire hope :)
My vote will go to fixing these nit-picking social contract violations after sarge. After all, the social contract also says "4. Our priorities are our users (and free software)" (parentheses added).
Drew
It's probably worth mentioning that development of the new installer has been the chief technical obstacle to the release of a new version of Debian stable. So with debian-installer nearing completion, this means the next version of Debian stable is also nearing completion.
Rizzer (Drew Parsons)
Xprint is one path to help smooth out the mess with using printers in application. See xprint.mozdev.org. I'll soon be uploading it to Debian.
Drew Parsons
No, it won't fix the problem with mozilla in Debian. Mozilla (>M18) is being held up from official release in Debian because of policy issues mainly regarding encryption modules and U.S. law, not because of the program itself. Debian developers are currently discussing the meaning of current U.S. law and its implications for encryption software in the future (discussing whether the non-US section of Debian should be brought into main), but a final decision has not yet been released.
Unofficial debs of 0.8 have been available for some time (sorry, I don't have the links at hand) and I presume 0.9 will be packaged up in short time.
grace (the successor to xmgr) is a great graphical plotting program, I use it all the time. And it uses lesstif.
ddd, a graphical interface to gdb, uses lesstif.
I don't get it. They are saying that the NT 4.0 certificates are going to expire in two years. Then what exactly is their meaning?
Seems to me you've either learnt how to administer NT 4.0, or you haven't. And if you have, that skill and knowledge is not going to disappear in two years, not if you've been actively maintaining NT 4.0 systems all that time.
So how can an "NT 4.0 qualified engineer" suddenly lose his qualification? That would be like my university cancelling my Bachelor degree because it was awarded to me too long ago.
Bizarre, bizzare.
Rizzer
The price of the DVD isn't the biggest issue, nor even the timing of its release for that matter.
So you live in the U.S. or in Australia, and you happen to speak French. The French put out a great new movie, and you want to watch it. Say it's not released in the English speaking countries - it's only of interest to French speakers. So the the only way you can get a copy of it is by ordering it from France.
But there, because of the bloody zoning restrictions, you're stuck. The DVD is made for the European zone, you live in the U.S. or in Australia or wherever, so you can't play the DVD, and you have no way of getting the DVD in your own zone.
The whole zoning thing stinks. It's enough to put me off buying a DVD. All the best of luck to Tesco! Good on them for taking a stand against this stupidity!
Rizzer
I've only dabbled so far in both perl and python. Python seems more straight-forward to use, but the white-space sensitivity makes me very nervous. It's like Fortran all over again. Mind you don't inadvertently slip a space character between the tab and the code, or your program will fail, just as Fortran will fail if you put the continuation mark in the 5th (or was it 6th? 7th?) column by mistake.
Others have already mentioned this, and I give it my full support: make tab indentation optional (allow blocks to be defined by {} for instance) ! Let the programmer choose what the best method of indentation is for readability, not for syntax! Please!
I could be a lot more confident about using python if this misgiving were to be fixed up.
Rizzer
it doesn't really help you: if you look at benchmarks you will see that only a relatively small number of programs benefit from this. So you do a whole lot of extra work and gain very little.
Which programs are those exactly which will benefit? I wouldn't mind putting some time into recompiling some key applications for my PII if it was going to help some.
p.s. I'm using Debian potato ("unstable") and it works just great!