Yea. Here in the UK I get taxed on 25% of the fisrt 19K of income, the 40% on the rest above that. Then if I buy a new car with whats left, I pay 1) The cost of the car 2) A new car tax (5% i think) 3) VAT (Sales tax) at` 17.5% on 1 AND 2 Then when I fill it with petrol I pay 400% tax on the fuel.
Perhaps a more ironic way to for us to get back is to mount a campaign to get the word 'Kipling' brought into general use as a euphemism for something - perhaps some foul sexual act: "I was going to hire him yesterday, but then I caught him kipling with a sheep in the yard..."
I would imagine it would be easy to get it in common usage.. just tell a few braindead media types that its official "hacker jargon".!
I can get by without M$ Office. I use Applixware Office on my SuSE PC and can read any MS Office doc that I get sent. It whinges a bit if it was saved as a 'quick-save' document, but I've never yet received a document I couldn't read, or that required more than cosmetic editing.
MS Office = £400+ UK Applixware = £40 UK - No contest
The only thing applixware doesn't have is a 'access' equivalent, but then again with a choice of real databases like MySQL, Ingres, Oracle, Informix etc I'm not all that bothered.
I don't think that the issue is survival = I think the point is that we need to sell to the suits to give 'market share' to Linux so that numb-brain hardware vendors start to provide proper support for their products in Linux/BSD etc. Todays $$$ corporate toys are tomorrows el-cheapo geek toys. How many individuals would be able to afford CD writers if the manufacturers hadn't paid off their research costs selling to suits ?
Frankly, what affects the speed of display most is eliminating swapping by having enough memory and using a graphics card that has fully supported accelleration. My cheapo $30 Cirrus 5465 AGP card flies with the windoze drivers (provided by the manufacturer) but the X86 driver is partly broken, and I can only use it in unaccelerated mode, so its a bit sluggish. You'd probably get more bang-for-buck by spending on heaps of memory and a decent graphics card. Only consider SMP when you run out of room for memory. If you're considering it, you could always buy a dual board and just one processor, and add the second one later, but with the speed things are changing these days I would buy for now and forget upgradability - by the time you want to upgrade 4 slot PIII mobo's will be $20 and memory will be free in cereal packets...
As far as your comments on NFS, NFS security is pretty good if you spend a little time setting it up. Put 2 ethernet cards in your server, use it as a firewall too, and use unroutable IP addresses on the private side of your network. Then configure NFS to only allow access to NFS exports for your private subnet, and no-ones going to get in. If you're spending money on a high-speed link, its worth spending a little time&money on learning about security. I have found that a properly configured Linux box is as secure as any other OS (and in most cases MORE secure), it's just that few people can be bothered to set it up. Most distro's come configured with everything switched on, which reduces setup problems but can leave you wide open. There are many excellent books on this subject.
P.S. Yes, I am about to replace my graphics card! The irritating thing is I have been given a *new* card by someone, but its *so* new its not supported by ANY X86 driver (Sigh...).
To register your idea as 'prior art' just write about it and get it published (heck, you might even get PAID for the letter about the idea!). Even the letters page would be OK. Then if you think your idea is being wrongly exploited you can point to the publication and say 'its prior art'. You only need to pay for a patent if you want to restrain people from competing with you while you develop a product. Personally, I feel you should be able to challenge a patent if it is clear that the holder is making no effort to exploit the patent other than trying to make money by sueing infringers. I don't think it is in the spirit of the patent system to allow people to squat on good ideas just because they thought of them first (or bought them from someone who did) if they are making no attempt to bring them to market. That is no better than racketeering.
I think we should all be thankful that SCO's deal with micros~1 means that they can never enter the Unix market.. I mean, can you imagine the damage if they did??
Loading Micronix..... SEGMENTATION VIOLATION Core dumped. Press any to reboot. (Twice).
If you want to be able to "move an Image from my File Manager to my Word Processor and Move a chart from Excel" why not use Applixware like I do ? I bought SuSE Linux Office Suite 99 on CD which installed without any "downloading, compiling and tweaking", and all for about £50 UK (compared to £400+ for Microsoft Office). That leaves me £350 for games, more RAM, new sound card and a meal at a restaurant. I'll admit that getting X to work was a bit of a fiddle, but then I was using an undocumented monitor and an no-name video card. However, SuSE's X installer ('SaX') guessed some settings that gave me 800x600 in 8 Bit color, whereas the best Win98 could manage was 640x480 in 16 colors until I installed new video drivers. It is a desktop operating system - I use it on my desktop. Fact. I use NT at work and usually reboot 2-3 times a day. Fact. (And yes, I am a sad git, I do work on my computer for 5-7 hours a night at least 3 nights a week, so both machines get a pounding.)
In any case, 500 days is a LONG time to go without reboots.... Mind you, I have 1 (Linux) Box thats been running for 16 Months without a reboot (Unless I had a power failure & never noticed...). Perhaps I should shut it down and add that extra disk I've been promising it....
I remember once when I worked at a software house and used to get stick from my manager for never wearing ties. So I bought this disgustingly wide kipper tie in flourescent green/orange/yellow and red, wore it to work for a few days, and funnily enough he never hassled me about it again...
Yea, I used to buy GW2K PC's for a company that I worked for (.. well, employed me. I don't remember doing too much work..) and I found the build quality was excellent, the cost wasn't too bad, but they kept changing the spec (in fact, in one case we had 5 'identical' PCs ordered and they arrived as 3 different hardware configurations!!). Also, if anything went wrong the helpdesk was useless and you had to pay to ship back any faulty hardware to Eire with only a vague promise of a refund. Get someone to come onsite ? No chance. Still, perhaps they have changed since then....
When will you guys SHUT UP. I've already had to wade thru 1,000 KDE/GNOME/GPL/QPL/LGPL/... messages that are unrelated to the topic. Open your ears & listen -- We're talking about COREL giving FREE HELP to the Wine team so that it can be COMPLETED IN 6-9 MONTHS!!! Why aren't you excited about this ? It's the kind of boost that Linux needs right now. I could be running my older (irreplacable) apps under linux and get back the 4GB of disk holding windoze on my PC. You guys are like those old farts you meet on the train that can turn any subject into talking about there ilnesses... "Nice day, isn't it ?" "Yes, but I don't enjoy it now my piles are so bad. And don't *mention* my gammy leg!" "I didn't, but..." "KDE Sucks! Gnome R00lz!... Or is it the other way around ?"
............ad nausium.
The big news here is that MOST windows licences are held by CORPORATIONS who have a huge investment in Windows apps developed in-house at HUGE expense, and who CANT move over to Linux/BSD/etc, even though in some cases they really WANT to. If they have a reliable means of dumping Windoze that gives them a more reliable platform with reduced costs, they'll JUMP at the chance.
Brooktree do 2 (or more) "families" of TV card. The Bt848, Bt848a, Bt849, Bt878, Bt879 chips are variations on a theme and all work with the bttv driver. The ATI cards use the Bt819/829 chips that are very different - and presumably ATI have undocumented hardware on the cards since the specs for the Bt819/829 are available.
I think that a website that offers information on "O/S Compatibility issues" would be good psycology - This would give the impression that the products of these rogue companies are somehow defective. Perhaps even list a competitors product that do the same thing, where the competitor has been open with documentation!! This will encourage companies to be open, if they can get a mention and an opportunity to get one over on their rivals!
I think that we should can the AC's altogether. People who can't be bothered to create an account or cannot remember a password are not likely to be able to make a positive contribution anyway.. If people are concerned about privacy, it only takes a few minutes to set up a hotmail account, or similar. At least then I would be able to work out which AC is actually the same AC that made a previous remark... Anonimity gives people too much scope to be obnoxious. Freedom is one thing, but with freedom comes responsibiity; It is everyone's responsibility to behave in a social fashion, to give everyone the same respect. If someone is talking junk, then that is self evident and usually it requires no comment, or at least a polite debunking. It is rarely appropriate to be offensive, and people that do are usually covering up for their own shortcomings. I think anyone should have the right so submit any kind of artical to slashdot, if you don't like what you read, stop reading. It's as easy as that. Even better, write another artical yourself to state your point of view - if your thoughts can be stretched out that long. As far as censorship is concerned, frankly this is Rob's forum provided at the expense of his own time, and if he doesn't like what is said it is his perogative to remove it, just like you would kick out some offensive jerk from your house if you wanted to. It would be a shame if he got so pissed with the whole shebang that he closed it down. Remember, if people had been acting responsibly then the whole issue of censorship would not arise.
If the creator of Tetris had wanted to protect his copyright he should have done so long ago. Even if he couldn't afford to sue anyone, he should have protested anyway. By not doing so he gave people no reason to suspect that he was interested in the copyright of the game.
Although IANAL, I would have thought that the copyright on the Tetris concept would have been diluted too much - Tetris appeared about 15 years ago, and to start trying to enforce copyright now is just too late. I know that the courts in the UK would throw this out without hesitation!
Perhaps these developers should club together and get a restraining order placed against the Tetris company for threatening behaviour...
I must agree with this post. When Chistopher Cockerell invented the first hovercraft in 1957 I'm sure people thought that a guy connecting bean tins to his vacuum cleaner was pretty weird, but now hovercraft are pretty cool. All new technologies are discovered by people trying things that 'pointless' - I bet not many people banged rocks together until they found out you could make fire.....
... And "Git who can't be bothered to get a Nick" would be too long.
I wish the flamers who jump on Jon everytime he posts to slashdot would get a life and go somewhere else. We all know Jon, If you don't like his style then don't read his articals!! Noone is compelled to do so. If people can't make constructive critisism then they should say nothing. Personally I wouldn't be at all surprised if Jon is deliberately stringing out his account of his "adventure" just to wind up the testosterone crazed infants on/. It sure seems to be working.....
I just ran Cat.5 under the floorboards when I re- wired the house. Neat little wallports on the wall look just like phone jacks - very neat, and don't aggrevate the YL.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea. Here in the UK I get taxed on 25% of the fisrt 19K of income, the 40% on the rest above that. Then if I buy a new car with whats left, I pay
1) The cost of the car
2) A new car tax (5% i think)
3) VAT (Sales tax) at` 17.5% on 1 AND 2
Then when I fill it with petrol I pay 400% tax on the fuel.
To use the favorite phrase, Govenment SUX.
Perhaps a more ironic way to for us to get back is to mount a campaign to get the word 'Kipling' brought into general use as a euphemism for something - perhaps some foul sexual act:
"I was going to hire him yesterday, but then I caught him kipling with a sheep in the yard..."
I would imagine it would be easy to get it in common usage.. just tell a few braindead media types that its official "hacker jargon".!
I can get by without M$ Office. I use Applixware Office on my SuSE PC and can read any MS Office doc that I get sent. It whinges a bit if it was saved as a 'quick-save' document, but I've never yet received a document I couldn't read, or that required more than cosmetic editing.
MS Office = £400+ UK
Applixware = £40 UK - No contest
The only thing applixware doesn't have is a 'access' equivalent, but then again with a choice of real databases like MySQL, Ingres, Oracle, Informix etc I'm not all that bothered.
I don't think that the issue is survival = I think the point is that we need to sell to the suits to give 'market share' to Linux so that numb-brain hardware vendors start to provide proper support for their products in Linux/BSD etc. Todays $$$ corporate toys are tomorrows el-cheapo geek toys. How many individuals would be able to afford CD writers if the manufacturers hadn't paid off their research costs selling to suits ?
Frankly, what affects the speed of display most is eliminating swapping by having enough memory and using a graphics card that has fully supported accelleration. My cheapo $30 Cirrus 5465 AGP card flies with the windoze drivers (provided by the manufacturer) but the X86 driver is partly broken, and I can only use it in unaccelerated mode, so its a bit sluggish. You'd probably get more bang-for-buck by spending on heaps of memory and a decent graphics card. Only consider SMP when you run out of room for memory. If you're considering it, you could always buy a dual board and just one processor, and add the second one later, but with the speed things are changing these days I would buy for now and forget upgradability - by the time you want to upgrade 4 slot PIII mobo's will be $20 and memory will be free in cereal packets...
As far as your comments on NFS, NFS security is pretty good if you spend a little time setting it up. Put 2 ethernet cards in your server, use it as a firewall too, and use unroutable IP addresses on the private side of your network. Then configure NFS to only allow access to NFS exports for your private subnet, and no-ones going to get in. If you're spending money on a high-speed link, its worth spending a little time&money on learning about security. I have found that a properly configured Linux box is as secure as any other OS (and in most cases MORE secure), it's just that few people can be bothered to set it up. Most distro's come configured with everything switched on, which reduces setup problems but can leave you wide open. There are many excellent books on this subject.
P.S. Yes, I am about to replace my graphics card! The irritating thing is I have been given a *new* card by someone, but its *so* new its not supported by ANY X86 driver (Sigh...).
To register your idea as 'prior art' just write about it and get it published (heck, you might even get PAID for the letter about the idea!). Even the letters page would be OK. Then if you think your idea is being wrongly exploited you can point to the publication and say 'its prior art'.
You only need to pay for a patent if you want to restrain people from competing with you while you develop a product.
Personally, I feel you should be able to challenge a patent if it is clear that the holder is making no effort to exploit the patent other than trying to make money by sueing infringers. I don't think it is in the spirit of the patent system to allow people to squat on good ideas just because they thought of them first (or bought them from someone who did) if they are making no attempt to bring them to market. That is no better than racketeering.
I think we should all be thankful that SCO's deal with micros~1 means that they can never enter the Unix market.. I mean, can you imagine the damage if they did??
Loading Micronix.....
SEGMENTATION VIOLATION
Core dumped. Press any to reboot.
(Twice).
To quote Shakespear,
"My ASS"
If you want to be able to "move an Image from my File Manager to my Word Processor and Move a chart from Excel" why not use Applixware like I do ? I bought SuSE Linux Office Suite 99 on CD which installed without any "downloading, compiling and tweaking", and all for about £50 UK (compared to £400+ for Microsoft Office). That leaves me £350 for games, more RAM, new sound card and a meal at a restaurant.
I'll admit that getting X to work was a bit of a fiddle, but then I was using an undocumented monitor and an no-name video card. However, SuSE's X installer ('SaX') guessed some settings that gave me 800x600 in 8 Bit color, whereas the best Win98 could manage was 640x480 in 16 colors until I installed new video drivers.
It is a desktop operating system - I use it on my desktop. Fact. I use NT at work and usually reboot 2-3 times a day. Fact. (And yes, I am a sad git, I do work on my computer for 5-7 hours a night at least 3 nights a week, so both machines get a pounding.)
Really ? Do you have a reference to that ?
In any case, 500 days is a LONG time to go without reboots.... Mind you, I have 1 (Linux) Box thats been running for 16 Months without a reboot (Unless I had a power failure & never noticed...).
Perhaps I should shut it down and add that extra disk I've been promising it....
1) Screwdriver
2) Plectrum (or Screwdriver, if you're brave!).
I remember once when I worked at a software house and used to get stick from my manager for never wearing ties. So I bought this disgustingly wide kipper tie in flourescent green/orange/yellow and red, wore it to work for a few days, and funnily enough he never hassled me about it again...
Yea, I used to buy GW2K PC's for a company that I worked for (.. well, employed me. I don't remember doing too much work..) and I found the build quality was excellent, the cost wasn't too bad, but they kept changing the spec (in fact, in one case we had 5 'identical' PCs ordered and they arrived as 3 different hardware configurations!!).
Also, if anything went wrong the helpdesk was useless and you had to pay to ship back any faulty hardware to Eire with only a vague promise of a refund. Get someone to come onsite ? No chance.
Still, perhaps they have changed since then....
I think that Gnome 1.0 can do 1.0 kind of things - Do you remember Microsoft Windows 1.0 ?
Even twm beats the crap out of that!!
Just a thought!
When will you guys SHUT UP. I've already had to wade thru 1,000 KDE/GNOME/GPL/QPL/LGPL/... messages that are unrelated to the topic. Open your ears & listen -- We're talking about COREL giving FREE HELP to the Wine team so that it can be COMPLETED IN 6-9 MONTHS!!!
Why aren't you excited about this ? It's the kind of boost that Linux needs right now. I could be running my older (irreplacable) apps under linux and get back the 4GB of disk holding windoze on my PC.
You guys are like those old farts you meet on the train that can turn any subject into talking about there ilnesses...
"Nice day, isn't it ?"
"Yes, but I don't enjoy it now my piles are so bad. And don't *mention* my gammy leg!"
"I didn't, but..."
"KDE Sucks! Gnome R00lz!... Or is it the other way around ?"
............ad nausium.
The big news here is that MOST windows licences are held by CORPORATIONS who have a huge investment in Windows apps developed in-house at HUGE expense, and who CANT move over to Linux/BSD/etc, even though in some cases they really WANT to. If they have a reliable means of dumping Windoze that gives them a more reliable platform with reduced costs, they'll JUMP at the chance.
Look again, dude. Back here in the UK The real ale/commercial fizz pendulum has swung back; double diamond is dead, long live Theakstones!
Does anyone *really* miss Watneys Red Barrel ?
Brooktree do 2 (or more) "families" of TV card. The Bt848, Bt848a, Bt849, Bt878, Bt879 chips are variations on a theme and all work with the bttv driver. The ATI cards use the Bt819/829 chips that are very different - and presumably ATI have undocumented hardware on the cards since the specs for the Bt819/829 are available.
I think that a website that offers information on "O/S Compatibility issues" would be good psycology - This would give the impression that the products of these rogue companies are somehow defective. Perhaps even list a competitors product that do the same thing, where the competitor has been open with documentation!! This will encourage companies to be open, if they can get a mention and an opportunity to get one over on their rivals!
I think that we should can the AC's altogether. People who can't be bothered to create an account or cannot remember a password are not likely to be able to make a positive contribution anyway.. If people are concerned about privacy, it only takes a few minutes to set up a hotmail account, or similar. At least then I would be able to work out which AC is actually the same AC that made a previous remark...
Anonimity gives people too much scope to be obnoxious. Freedom is one thing, but with freedom comes responsibiity; It is everyone's responsibility to behave in a social fashion, to give everyone the same respect. If someone is talking junk, then that is self evident and usually it requires no comment, or at least a polite debunking. It is rarely appropriate to be offensive, and people that do are usually covering up for their own shortcomings. I think anyone should have the right so submit any kind of artical to slashdot, if you don't like what you read, stop reading. It's as easy as that. Even better, write another artical yourself to state your point of view - if your thoughts can be stretched out that long.
As far as censorship is concerned, frankly this is Rob's forum provided at the expense of his own time, and if he doesn't like what is said it is his perogative to remove it, just like you would kick out some offensive jerk from your house if you wanted to. It would be a shame if he got so pissed with the whole shebang that he closed it down. Remember, if people had been acting responsibly then the whole issue of censorship would not arise.
I think there time has passed.
If the creator of Tetris had wanted to protect his copyright he should have done so long ago. Even if he couldn't afford to sue anyone, he should have protested anyway. By not doing so he gave people no reason to suspect that he was interested in the copyright of the game.
Although IANAL, I would have thought that the copyright on the Tetris concept would have been diluted too much - Tetris appeared about 15 years ago, and to start trying to enforce copyright now is just too late. I know that the courts in the UK would throw this out without hesitation!
Perhaps these developers should club together and get a restraining order placed against the Tetris company for threatening behaviour...
Why not change your nick to 'Flamebait' or something...
:-)
Just a thought,
The average intelligence of the ./ poster is rapidly declining!
Or the average age....
I must agree with this post. When Chistopher Cockerell invented the first hovercraft in 1957 I'm sure people thought that a guy connecting bean tins to his vacuum cleaner was pretty weird, but now hovercraft are pretty cool. All new technologies are discovered by people trying things that 'pointless' - I bet not many people banged rocks together until they found out you could make fire.....
... And "Git who can't be bothered to get a Nick" would be too long.
/. It sure seems to be working.....
I wish the flamers who jump on Jon everytime he posts to slashdot would get a life and go somewhere else. We all know Jon, If you don't like his style then don't read his articals!! Noone is compelled to do so. If people can't make constructive critisism then they should say nothing. Personally I wouldn't be at all surprised if Jon is deliberately stringing out his account of his "adventure" just to wind up the testosterone crazed infants on
I just ran Cat.5 under the floorboards when I re-
wired the house. Neat little wallports on the
wall look just like phone jacks - very neat, and
don't aggrevate the YL.