Nvidia's advantage over ATI has been that ati has generally had inferior drivers regardless of what platform you were using, since AMD took over ATI has been improving their driver situation significantly both with respect to their proprietary drivers and their recent release of specs for the open source version. Meanwhile Nvidia seems to have been doing everything they can to trash the reputation of their drivers over the last year both with their awful Vista drivers and their buggy/sloppy control panel that they have forced on everyone. while this is good for linux, are they making similar improvements in the windows arena, I may be biased but i always preferred nvidia drivers to to ati ones. If ati sort out there drivers then they will be able to cash in on the market that needs these chips, which also happens to be the one where the money is, laptops.
My only problem with AMD, is that their CPUs dont seam to scale as low as intel ones, my current 2.0ghz only drops to 800mhz, but my intel one would drop fro 1.6ghz to 200mhz, not sure how this reflects in powerusage though. Thinking of power usage, is anybody working on moving wireless on to CPUs or save power on wifi in other ways?, because the although nice graphics are welcome, its battery life that laptop users really want, if getting AMD or Intel on a laptop is going to result in having an extra hour, i dont really care which has the better graphics chip.
Where have you been? Java source code has been available for a long time but after years of people complaining that it wasn't "free enough", Sun fully released Java under a GPL 2 years ago.
"As of May 2007, in compliance with the specifications of the Java Community Process, Sun made available most of their Java technologies as free software under the GNU General Public License." Not all of it has been released.
OpenOffice not really GPL
O.K. so it's LGPL So what, so is Gtk, most of GNOME and probably 80% of what you and joe-sixpack considers to be "opensource" in "Linux". GPL is just one license. GPL was never fully tested in court and doesn't provide patent indemnity as CDDL does. I'd be happier if Java, OpenOffice and MySQL were CDDL but there would be too much gnashing of teeth from the Linux creationists.
"However, OpenOffice.org requires a copyright assignment for contributions to the main code base; this allows Sun to create proprietary versions of the software (notably StarOffice). NeoOffice chooses not to assign their code to Sun; this prevents NeoOffice code from being used in official OpenOffice.org versions. Instead, NeoOffice is released only under the GPL (this is allowed by the LGPL), which ensures that any software based on it remains free." Sounds like open office are happy to release a product aslong as they can then add closed source stuff to it and re-release it.
OpenSolaris i dont know enough about
OpenSolaris is licensed under CDDL. Look here for an FAQ which explains in simple terms why CDDL is superior to GPL.
"We needed an open source license that allowed files released under the license to be linked with files released under other licenses. While a license like LGPL would allow this for dynamically-linked code, we also needed to be able to release software that statically links source files available under different licenses. In addition, we wanted to allow others to add externsions to OpenSolaris with different license terms." Sounds like the same trick, we'll open source it but we might want to add closed stuff latter. They also deliberately chose a GPL incompatible license!
yes but this isnt for homes, this is for offices, no (normal person's) home has a 100MB internet. I think the limit for broadband will simply be when you can download a film in 5 minutes over BT, which basically depends on how fast the average is not just your connection.
user-friendly... Gentoo, can i get some of whatever your smoking?:P
The trick is that your average user can't install *any* OS. yes and no, id say a lot of users can, many windows users reinstall windows everytime it slows down. On the other hand they wont switch because thats the part that takes some knowledge/effort.
If it all came down to marketing, then linux is fscked. The fact that for years nearly nobody has chosen to use windows, while people have chosen linux, does help linux. But if the microsoft OEM stranglehold was smashed, as is happening, then microsoft could start putting millions into marketing and the OSS community just cant afford. On the other hand if the OEMs that get out of bed with MS dont see anything in return, they'll slowly and quietly drop their linux products. How to get around this? Well i think Novell and canonical have taken a trick from apple, fan boys, build up a legion of geeks that promote your product for you. This is a great trick, if you dont keep far ahead of the competition then your fan boys get board and find something else to be a fan of, will it work? Only time will tell, but i think it will as long as the fans dont fight each other too much.
Pre-installed Windows will cost you about £20 or something ridiculously small, you do have a point about MS works / office, but you can install OpenOffice on windows. Cost may be a good enough reason for somebody who is building their own PC, but if your building a pc your already enough of a geek to run Linux or just crack windows.
I suppose we could try and get those geeks that crack windows to switch but they'll probably get whatever your selling for free anyway, so they're is no money in it.
For the webcam thing, this is an area that doesn't affect enterprise and so gets little attention from people like novell and so really sucks. The thing is the unix was of doing things would actually really suit webcams. If a major company got behind v4l2, stuck it into all the major im programs, then the drivers would come, or they could use theyre money to buy the webcams make the drivers and then the programs would start supporting v4l2.
But as canonical dont do much in the way of actual development, and you dont get webcams in offices, well it looks like were stuck.
The entire bug report is fairly epic:
I didn't try a lot of videos, but I couldn't find a single one that actually worked. And what's the internet without the rick-roll?
Expected results:Rick Astley in all his glory! Surprised he on any distro as hes probably systematically slagged them all of but i suppose that's the way flame wars go.
True, id say its ready for the masses on supported hardware. Its ready for power users on most hardware but you still need true- geeks on the odd peripherals
but nobody below a power user is going to want to change what came on their PC anyway.
Open source isn't about users being able to modify it and use it, its about being able to see the source. Im a strong believer that tivoisation is GOOD, if Tivo wrote anything useful then mythTV, etc can use that code, if somebody writes an amazing app for the iPhone, then ofc apple want some control over what runs on their hardware, but at the same time that code can go on to help a gPhone port.
"For example, the GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want."
Chances are Apple will allow GPLv2 aps, if not You could easily use BSD to make a program with a shim of BSD code that you dont release to link to the API, thus being safe from NDAs.
The reason were using Linux instead of Hurd, is because Linus is more worried about letting people try stuff out with the code and then if it works using that code, but Stalman is far too busy designing and restricted the use of his code. The reason we dont use BSD is simply that your not forced to help out the BSD guys, so the few that do have to make the whole thing themselves (this has some advantages too)
BSD, code may/may not be released, credit must be given (something how tech works,friendly to business) [defiantly use able on iPhone] GPL2, code is released (something like how science works)[maybe/probably possible] GPL3, code is released but is limited in what it can do [not possible] MPL, dont know much about it [yeah right they're gunna let firefox complete with safari] *Other licenses are available
Not sure why you'd bring your laptop with you while shopping. Its not much use when shopping, but I dont fancy, going to uni, going home dropping the laptop off, going shopping, then going home. I generally put all my stuff in my bag at the beginning of a day, then dont get home till the evening. Another situation is having to go home to leave the laptop, before going to the union for a night out.
As far as your subway woes, it doesn't sound like the laptop is the problem The subway problem is more that the laptop is hard and can be damaged, but my books, papers, notes or change of clothes (lab coat, etc), while space filling/heavy dont need me to be careful with the bag.
Lets not forget that that's also an example of what the US think about property laws, "STFU you ain't getting it back, were bigger than you!" "Fine but you do realise it just makes things more ironic when you talk about human rights abuses in Cuba" *Smack*
Im dont really know much about healthcare im still a student in the UK so im covered for pretty much anything. But doesn't company healthcare tie you to being employed, Id be much less likely to leave a job i hated i have to pay loads of money if I get injured/ill. By giving workers more freedom to move around, dont you guarantee better conditions for most. For example my dad was fed up of the admin crap in teaching so he took a year out retrained as an MS certified adult teacher or something, for the year we lived of my mums part-time teaching (a family of 4) (he had bought mortgage insurance so he didn't have to pay for a year of unemployment, which i suppose really helped lol)
Also as has been pointed out in the UK you get amazing private healthcare on top of your all ways there public healthcare.
Dont know if its the same in the US, but in the UK were swamped with outlets (Trains, offices, coffee shops, pubs ), unless you understand ultra portable to mean take it with you as you climb a mountain your pretty safe. I think the main appeal is that you can take it about you on a normal day, and I doubt on a normal day your going to spend more than 2 hours in an unchargeable place.
In their defence (god I never thought id defend America), taking a laptop to work/uni etc isnt that bad, but if you start going about a normal day, shopping, going to a mates houses, etc. And the size is a real winner, I for one have to carry a whole load of other crap about with me, and I have to carry it on the tube at rush-hour.
That said, I've not got one and Im not going to die from caring the standard laptop either. This model is capable of being a good replacement to a laptop, but with such a small screen i think ill keep my crappy laptop.
Its easy to figure out which one hes from, which of the following is most likely to get thrown around your office: a) Nothing man, we just chill in the hammocks out back b) Bars of gold c) Sharks with lazes on their heads d) The latest harry potter book e) Children's play chairs (doubles up for Microsoft on bring your kid to work days)
I dont get how people think that the government should have a right to tell you what you can/cant eat/drink, and I dont even do drugs! Its ridiculous that people think a government has a right to stop you hurting yourself, if I smoke a joint / take magic mushrooms / take ecstasy / dont wear a seatbelt (in a front seat at least), nobody is going to get hurt but me, why should the government care let alone ban it.
The government's job is to stop people hurting each other, this includes stopping companies hurting customers, maybe if they didn't spend all day reclassifying cannabis, they'd actually step up and defend the intertubes!
Most I know, the secretaries read it, print it and then file the copies. Its when they start trying to click the links, that you worry who's running your company!
Not if you mess around with the files, an image can fail almost all comparisons short of AI, but still be the same image. And once your trying to do picture recognistion with AI there are plenty of problems, especially overtraining. As long as the picture sets are kept similar any AI will start picking up similarities in the set that arnt there in the species, meaning as soon they crack all the pictures of cats on rainy days, you ad pictures of cats on sunny days, and they have to start over. It could easily take a year to crack a set, which simply isn't worth it when all your progress is lost as soon as the server changes its picture set.
The main problem with this is the maths 4x4 cat-grid with 8 cats, will be hit randomly once every 12870 [ncr(16;8)] tries (even if you set it to have a random number of cats its still only 65536 [2^16], assuming you dont let the bot know how many cats there are) ( The article suggest using a 3x3, but did the maths for a 4x4 ) for comparison this is about the same as 3 letter CAPATCHA I think most people would be annoyed if they got a grid of 25 pictures (3,355,4432 cominations), which is still only as strong as a 4 character strong CAPATCHA.
The best use for this is alongside CAPATCHAs so that an automated CAPATCHA will take 512 (3x3) or 65536 (4x4) as much computational power to crack, while the user doesnt get too much more hassle.
Not that any of this helps with googles problem of humans cracking them, but not much can be done against humans while letting humans through.
OFC the simplist solution is to start adding complex characters but then you have to explain to users how to use the keys like æ which would probably set the bots back a year or so. While the best solution is to use pictures and get the user to type in what it is, but then again thats limited to however many instantly recognisable objects there are, but i suspect a row of 5/6 easy to recognise objects would be enough as long as there are over 20 things to choose from.
Isn't that what gimpshop is for? Given that both tools require a significant amount of effort to learn, I think that while standardising keyboard shortcuts would be nice, it could actually be counter productive as the two programs do the same thing in different ways.
While his slashdot using customers leaving would probably not make that much of a difference, you who non-slashdot readers ask for advice when they want "fix their internets". At the start of the year, my friends had a choice between virgin & B, I recommended B due to NTL being fairly crappy since virgin took over. Unfortunately as I did have any real proof or facts and wasn't that bothered, they chose virgin as it was 1 bill to pay instead of 2, but in the future: I care more, I got stuck with Virgin media in my flat too, and they're a terrible ISP They cant use torrents http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs They're not net neutral The fact they made it difficult to set up a direct debit (then charged them for not using a direct debit)
This means pretty much anybody that asks me for advice, will defiantly be told in no uncertain terms to not go with Virgin. In addition to this, my dad is still on NTL (part of Virgin), but if they ever try and charge him more, ill get of my arse and set him up a decent provider.
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If ati sort out there drivers then they will be able to cash in on the market that needs these chips, which also happens to be the one where the money is, laptops.
My only problem with AMD, is that their CPUs dont seam to scale as low as intel ones, my current 2.0ghz only drops to 800mhz, but my intel one would drop fro 1.6ghz to 200mhz, not sure how this reflects in powerusage though. Thinking of power usage, is anybody working on moving wireless on to CPUs or save power on wifi in other ways?, because the although nice graphics are welcome, its battery life that laptop users really want, if getting AMD or Intel on a laptop is going to result in having an extra hour, i dont really care which has the better graphics chip.
"As of May 2007, in compliance with the specifications of the Java Community Process, Sun made available most of their Java technologies as free software under the GNU General Public License."Where have you been? Java source code has been available for a long time but after years of people complaining that it wasn't "free enough", Sun fully released Java under a GPL 2 years ago.
Not all of it has been released. OpenOffice not really GPL
"However, OpenOffice.org requires a copyright assignment for contributions to the main code base; this allows Sun to create proprietary versions of the software (notably StarOffice). NeoOffice chooses not to assign their code to Sun; this prevents NeoOffice code from being used in official OpenOffice.org versions. Instead, NeoOffice is released only under the GPL (this is allowed by the LGPL), which ensures that any software based on it remains free."O.K. so it's LGPL So what, so is Gtk, most of GNOME and probably 80% of what you and joe-sixpack considers to be "opensource" in "Linux". GPL is just one license. GPL was never fully tested in court and doesn't provide patent indemnity as CDDL does. I'd be happier if Java, OpenOffice and MySQL were CDDL but there would be too much gnashing of teeth from the Linux creationists.
Sounds like open office are happy to release a product aslong as they can then add closed source stuff to it and re-release it. OpenSolaris i dont know enough about
OpenSolaris is licensed under CDDL. Look here for an FAQ which explains in simple terms why CDDL is superior to GPL.
"We needed an open source license that allowed files released under the license to be linked with files released under other licenses. While a license like LGPL would allow this for dynamically-linked code, we also needed to be able to release software that statically links source files available under different licenses. In addition, we wanted to allow others to add externsions to OpenSolaris with different license terms."Sounds like the same trick, we'll open source it but we might want to add closed stuff latter. They also deliberately chose a GPL incompatible license!
yes but this isnt for homes, this is for offices, no (normal person's) home has a 100MB internet. I think the limit for broadband will simply be when you can download a film in 5 minutes over BT, which basically depends on how fast the average is not just your connection.
If it all came down to marketing, then linux is fscked. The fact that for years nearly nobody has chosen to use windows, while people have chosen linux, does help linux. But if the microsoft OEM stranglehold was smashed, as is happening, then microsoft could start putting millions into marketing and the OSS community just cant afford. On the other hand if the OEMs that get out of bed with MS dont see anything in return, they'll slowly and quietly drop their linux products. How to get around this? Well i think Novell and canonical have taken a trick from apple, fan boys, build up a legion of geeks that promote your product for you. This is a great trick, if you dont keep far ahead of the competition then your fan boys get board and find something else to be a fan of, will it work? Only time will tell, but i think it will as long as the fans dont fight each other too much.
Pre-installed Windows will cost you about £20 or something ridiculously small, you do have a point about MS works / office, but you can install OpenOffice on windows. Cost may be a good enough reason for somebody who is building their own PC, but if your building a pc your already enough of a geek to run Linux or just crack windows.
I suppose we could try and get those geeks that crack windows to switch but they'll probably get whatever your selling for free anyway, so they're is no money in it.
For the webcam thing, this is an area that doesn't affect enterprise and so gets little attention from people like novell and so really sucks. The thing is the unix was of doing things would actually really suit webcams. If a major company got behind v4l2, stuck it into all the major im programs, then the drivers would come, or they could use theyre money to buy the webcams make the drivers and then the programs would start supporting v4l2.
But as canonical dont do much in the way of actual development, and you dont get webcams in offices, well it looks like were stuck.
amarok supports ipods tho, maybe not the iphone, but most stuff pre-touch
I'm sure the cops dont mind what route they take as long as they find some black people / Muslims to harass along the way!
worked. And what's the internet without the rick-roll? Expected results:Rick Astley in all his glory! Surprised he on any distro as hes probably systematically slagged them all of but i suppose that's the way flame wars go.
java not full open source
OpenOffice not really GPL
OpenSolaris i dont know enough about
Or simply d/l and compile it anyway, like centos vs redhat
True, id say its ready for the masses on supported hardware.
Its ready for power users on most hardware
but you still need true- geeks on the odd peripherals
but nobody below a power user is going to want to change what came on their PC anyway.
Open source isn't about users being able to modify it and use it, its about being able to see the source. Im a strong believer that tivoisation is GOOD, if Tivo wrote anything useful then mythTV, etc can use that code, if somebody writes an amazing app for the iPhone, then ofc apple want some control over what runs on their hardware, but at the same time that code can go on to help a gPhone port.
"For example, the GPLv2 in no way limits your use of the software. If you're a mad scientist, you can use GPLv2'd software for your evil plans to take over the world ("Sharks with lasers on their heads!!"), and the GPLv2 just says that you have to give source code back. And that's OK by me. I like sharks with lasers. I just want the mad scientists of the world to pay me back in kind. I made source code available to them, they have to make their changes to it available to me. After that, they can fry me with their shark-mounted lasers all they want."
Chances are Apple will allow GPLv2 aps, if not You could easily use BSD to make a program with a shim of BSD code that you dont release to link to the API, thus being safe from NDAs.
The reason were using Linux instead of Hurd, is because Linus is more worried about letting people try stuff out with the code and then if it works using that code, but Stalman is far too busy designing and restricted the use of his code. The reason we dont use BSD is simply that your not forced to help out the BSD guys, so the few that do have to make the whole thing themselves (this has some advantages too)
BSD, code may/may not be released, credit must be given (something how tech works,friendly to business) [defiantly use able on iPhone]
GPL2, code is released (something like how science works)[maybe/probably possible]
GPL3, code is released but is limited in what it can do [not possible]
MPL, dont know much about it [yeah right they're gunna let firefox complete with safari]
*Other licenses are available
Lets not forget that that's also an example of what the US think about property laws,
"STFU you ain't getting it back, were bigger than you!"
"Fine but you do realise it just makes things more ironic when you talk about human rights abuses in Cuba"
*Smack*
Im dont really know much about healthcare im still a student in the UK so im covered for pretty much anything.
But doesn't company healthcare tie you to being employed, Id be much less likely to leave a job i hated i have to pay loads of money if I get injured/ill. By giving workers more freedom to move around, dont you guarantee better conditions for most.
For example my dad was fed up of the admin crap in teaching so he took a year out retrained as an MS certified adult teacher or something, for the year we lived of my mums part-time teaching (a family of 4) (he had bought mortgage insurance so he didn't have to pay for a year of unemployment, which i suppose really helped lol)
Also as has been pointed out in the UK you get amazing private healthcare on top of your all ways there public healthcare.
Dont know if its the same in the US, but in the UK were swamped with outlets (Trains, offices, coffee shops, pubs ), unless you understand ultra portable to mean take it with you as you climb a mountain your pretty safe. I think the main appeal is that you can take it about you on a normal day, and I doubt on a normal day your going to spend more than 2 hours in an unchargeable place.
Im assuming he means something like http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4071 basically you put the battery in something thats not the eee to charge it.
In their defence (god I never thought id defend America), taking a laptop to work/uni etc isnt that bad, but if you start going about a normal day, shopping, going to a mates houses, etc.
And the size is a real winner, I for one have to carry a whole load of other crap about with me, and I have to carry it on the tube at rush-hour.
That said, I've not got one and Im not going to die from caring the standard laptop either. This model is capable of being a good replacement to a laptop, but with such a small screen i think ill keep my crappy laptop.
Its easy to figure out which one hes from, which of the following is most likely to get thrown around your office:
a) Nothing man, we just chill in the hammocks out back
b) Bars of gold
c) Sharks with lazes on their heads
d) The latest harry potter book
e) Children's play chairs (doubles up for Microsoft on bring your kid to work days)
I dont get how people think that the government should have a right to tell you what you can/cant eat/drink, and I dont even do drugs! Its ridiculous that people think a government has a right to stop you hurting yourself, if I smoke a joint / take magic mushrooms / take ecstasy / dont wear a seatbelt (in a front seat at least), nobody is going to get hurt but me, why should the government care let alone ban it.
The government's job is to stop people hurting each other, this includes stopping companies hurting customers, maybe if they didn't spend all day reclassifying cannabis, they'd actually step up and defend the intertubes!
Not if you mess around with the files, an image can fail almost all comparisons short of AI, but still be the same image. And once your trying to do picture recognistion with AI there are plenty of problems, especially overtraining. As long as the picture sets are kept similar any AI will start picking up similarities in the set that arnt there in the species, meaning as soon they crack all the pictures of cats on rainy days, you ad pictures of cats on sunny days, and they have to start over. It could easily take a year to crack a set, which simply isn't worth it when all your progress is lost as soon as the server changes its picture set.
The main problem with this is the maths 4x4 cat-grid with 8 cats, will be hit randomly once every 12870 [ncr(16;8)] tries (even if you set it to have a random number of cats its still only 65536 [2^16], assuming you dont let the bot know how many cats there are) ( The article suggest using a 3x3, but did the maths for a 4x4 ) for comparison this is about the same as 3 letter CAPATCHA
I think most people would be annoyed if they got a grid of 25 pictures (3,355,4432 cominations), which is still only as strong as a 4 character strong CAPATCHA.
The best use for this is alongside CAPATCHAs so that an automated CAPATCHA will take 512 (3x3) or 65536 (4x4) as much computational power to crack, while the user doesnt get too much more hassle.
Not that any of this helps with googles problem of humans cracking them, but not much can be done against humans while letting humans through.
OFC the simplist solution is to start adding complex characters but then you have to explain to users how to use the keys like æ which would probably set the bots back a year or so.
While the best solution is to use pictures and get the user to type in what it is, but then again thats limited to however many instantly recognisable objects there are, but i suspect a row of 5/6 easy to recognise objects would be enough as long as there are over 20 things to choose from.
Isn't that what gimpshop is for?
Given that both tools require a significant amount of effort to learn, I think that while standardising keyboard shortcuts would be nice, it could actually be counter productive as the two programs do the same thing in different ways.
While his slashdot using customers leaving would probably not make that much of a difference, you who non-slashdot readers ask for advice when they want "fix their internets".
At the start of the year, my friends had a choice between virgin & B, I recommended B due to NTL being fairly crappy since virgin took over. Unfortunately as I did have any real proof or facts and wasn't that bothered, they chose virgin as it was 1 bill to pay instead of 2, but in the future:
I care more, I got stuck with Virgin media in my flat too, and they're a terrible ISP
They cant use torrents http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs
They're not net neutral
The fact they made it difficult to set up a direct debit (then charged them for not using a direct debit)
This means pretty much anybody that asks me for advice, will defiantly be told in no uncertain terms to not go with Virgin. In addition to this, my dad is still on NTL (part of Virgin), but if they ever try and charge him more, ill get of my arse and set him up a decent provider.