To be really frank... these problems are all driven by money. As long as your computing interests and operating system are in the hands of a for-profit company, there is a good chance that at some point they will make choices which are better for their bottom line, rather than for providing you the best internet/desktop experience. Annoying advertisements, DRM restrictions, etc.
GNU/Linux and Free Software put the ultimate control in the hands of the people. We allow the vendors like RedHat to set our experience, but only for so long as they don't do anything we don't like, else we all leave for some new vendor, taking our software with us. With Mac OS X, you have no such freedoms, should things someday go sour.
All I cared about was, I lost a deal with a large retailer to Microsoft for the first time about 12 or 18 months ago. It was going to be an all-Linux deal, and I lost it because they were unduly influenced, in my opinion, to be fearful of these [IP and indemnity issues]. From my point of view that was really too bad, because Linux lost. Then I watched it happen three more times.
I don't believe for a second that Microsoft wasn't acutely aware of exactly that! They understand very well that they win deals due to FUD about Linux IP and indemnity issues, and that is exactly why they entered into this agreement.
This deal is serving as a major catalyst to make that very problem worse, not better!
I tried to keep it short and to the point, my email to them read:
Subject: Linux Wireless Firmware Distribution
I was very happy to hear that Intel is working with the community to ensure that G965 graphics will work out of the box under Linux.
I am very sad to hear that Intel isn't doing the same for their wireless products WRT freely distributable firmware.
I am a developer in the Computing Services department at a 30 thousand plus student university. Community enabled Linux support is a huge factor in the purchasing decisions of our department.
I was dissapointed that this review didn't include any G965 reviews.
If you want the new Linux XGL/AIGLX/Compiz functionality to work out of the box with no binary drivers, a G965 board may very well be what you are looking for.
The G965 chipset includes the new GMA X3000 graphics core, which is the only DX10 feature level graphics solution with FLOSS Linux drivers: http://intellinuxgraphics.org/
The new C2 stepping is rumoured to solve many of the performance problems of the first stepping, and although probably still not suitable for FPS gaming under Linux, other less demanding games and desktop users needs could be well met.
IMHO, Gnu/Linux on the desktop still kinda sucks right now, but it is advancing rapidly. This makes me want to upgrade my distribution to get the latest and greatest, because it fixes features I really want (multimedia these days). We are quickly getting to a place where most the needs of average users will be well met. Then I won't mind if Debian is a little behind. It's like Windows XP being good enough that most people don't really care about upgrading to Vista. I can't wait until we are in that place, and I hope that then, the impedus to move forward so rapidly is lightened enough to relieve some of the stress on the Debian devs, allowing them more time to work through some of these issues.
Yeah, so...here in Western Canada, I have my choice of 2 broadband ISP's (the two major players bought up all smaller competitors)... the cable company (Shaw) or the phone company (Telus).
I had a cable modem, but they overloaded the segment in my apt building and my FPS ping times went to hell (120+ms min, unplayable at all peak hours).
So, I switched to using DSL from the phone company.
So, in a case like this, if my ISP does such a think, and where I really don't like being monitored, my choice is to ?
The barrier to entry into such markets is *far* too high for any smaller competitors to get established.
Some time ago, I read an article by Tim Berners-Lee which starts off with a description of a technology (semantic web) aided lifestyle where your car will automatically book itself for an oil change with your mechanic, and that type of thing. The thing is, we have all the knowledge and technology to make that kind of stuff happen *today*, yet I still don't think we will see it will happen any time soon.
The problem is that to take things to the next level like that, we need *extensive* ongoing cooperation between hundreds and thousands of people, organizations, and companies - where such cooperation might not have any short term payoff, or the long term payoff might not be in the best financial interest of those involved (ie, Microsoft realizing a universal platform neutral programming language like Java would mean people don't need Windows). I mean, hell, we can't even get broad agreement on a single XML Word Processing format.
Our problems now are more systemic than technologic. We aren't leveraging what we have.
Heh... if they really want it to be realistic, they should have the prof (financer) come in three quarters of the way through the students final exam project and cancel it if it won't sell enough copies (and maybe just cancel some arbitrarily). The students could then try to get on with another groups project in the class, or they get a failing grade for the course (cuz being layed off in the real world is no more fair than that).
If you could get hired on by an international consulting firm, and maybe do something for them in Europe first, then ask for an internal posting overseas, that would be easiest. They have the resources to move people around, deal with Visa's, etc.
I have been using Linux on my desktop since 94, so I can relate to this feeling.
I tried to rip a music CD on my Fedora Core 4 system the other day...
I put it in and ran Sound Juicer... it saw the CD and loaded all the track info for it. So far, so good.
I wanted to set it to rip me an OGG at quality 6, the same as all my other ones I ripped in windows. It would let me choose between OGG and FLAC (no MP3), but there was no quality setting. An audio ripper with no quality setting?!? Impossible I thought...
I looked in the help file, and it said nothing. Though the help file mentioned if you wanted MP3, you could use something called 'gnome-audio-profiles-properties'. There was no link to run this in the program, and I can't find it in my Gnome menus, so, being the guru I am, I ran it from the command line...
This is a GUI which has a text field to type in a GStreamer pipeline!
Like anyone (especially grandma) is gonna know how to fill in that!
Anyhow, me being the guru I am, I fish through it and see the quality setting... I want OGG quality 6... so what does "0.5" mean in OGG terms? Well, let's look in the help file...
*clicks help button*.... *application promptly dissapears*
No "this help file does not exist" dialog, no stack trace, nothing. *Poof* Gone.
This is why Linux still isn't really ready for my desktop.
The law's memetic function is not to end discussions, but to make participants in a discussion more aware of whether a comparison to Nazis or Hitler is appropriate, or is simply a rhetorical overreach.
Well, the question then becomes, in this case, which was it?
One common objection to the invocation of Godwin's law is that sometimes using Hitler or the Nazis is a perfectly apt way of making a point.
As I have stated, I do believe it was an apt comparison. So, I think in my case that I agree with this common objection.
It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that hyperbolic overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided. Avoiding such hyperbole, he argues, is a way of ensuring that when valid comparisons to Hitler or Nazis are made, such comparisons have the appropriate semantic impact.
Godwin himself states that it may be appropriate, thus a discussion invocing this analogy is NOT automatically flamebait.
I will admit that this may be a case of "rhetorical overreach" on my part, and that I'm lazy and all the connotations associated with the Nazis made the analogy the easiest way to make my point. The post was made somewhat tongue in cheek, and intended to be somewhat humorous in it's use of this over-the-top analogy. Will uses such as mine lead to 'semantic dilution'? Perhaps. Unlike Godwin, I don't think it worries me though, because by the time that happens we will have long since replaced Hitler and the Nazis with Osama and Al Queda:)
The point wasn't at all to compare SCO to Nazi's, it was to state that in *any* scenario, you can't just ignore the bigger picture of what you are contributing to. It could be working for SCO, buying shoes made in a sweatshop, or at the extreme end, pulling the lever for a gas chamber.
In my opinion, all employees share some (perhaps small) fraction of responsibility for the actions of the company. Just like if you were the Nazi pulling the lever, I won't absolve you of all responsibility just because it was your job.
The fact that the benign fact-based statements which comprise the content of the parent post make you feel that way betrays your lack of self-esteem. There was no affront to you, yet, due to whatever baggage you have, you seem to interpret it that way. It must be sad to live in a world where your need for acceptance ("better liked") overrides all your thinking - making you a slave to your peer group, and unable to stand on your own to express any independent thought. I bet you were the kid that needed mommy to buy you the 'right' brand of shoes for school so you could get that all-valuable acceptance from your peers. Sheep. Now you take weak jabs at people online while hiding behind anonymity. Coward. Perhaps if you were more clever you would be able to come out of anonymity and formulate a rebuttal to the opinions I expressed, rather than relying on an anonymous personal attack.
If a post makes it point too effectively, it's modded as flamebait? Whoever moderated that needs to get a clue...
The Nazi analogy, albeit at the extreme end of the spectrum, is a perfectly valid one - and serves to really hammer home the point I was tyring to make: that you can't just blindly follow orders with no regard for how your actions impact the bigger picture. Whether you write code for SCO, or pull the gas chamber lever, you need to examine how your actions support the greater organization and it's agenda.
Re:Is the whole company evil, or just the top exec
on
MySQL and SCO Join Forces
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
"Man, my job is just to pull the lever on this here gas chamber, I don't really care what they are putting in there, or what the politics of the top exec of this Nazi organization are. I just show up to work and try to do my job as good and efficiently as I can."
Increasing programming complexity is becoming an issue developers must tackle regardless of platform. With the move to dual core chips, software is going to have to move to be pervasively multithreaded in the future. I know it took me some time to learn how to program (and think/design) in a threaded fashion - and to quit making stupid synchornization mistakes, race conditions, etc. If anything, as a programmer I welcome these new requirements, as it helps me differentiate myself from less skilled programmers. Like everyone else, these game developers are going to have to learn to cope.
Slashdot Mirror
I was originally planning to sit on the fence regarding the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war until a dual format player was released.
And then I heard Sony was using their licensing agreements to prevent such a device.
Sony just refuses to do what is best for the consumer, be it root kits, memory card interoperability, or licensing rules like this.
I can certainly say that *my* image of them has tarnished over time, and I am now seriously thinking about buying HD-DVD just to spite them.
To be really frank... these problems are all driven by money. As long as your computing interests and operating system are in the hands of a for-profit company, there is a good chance that at some point they will make choices which are better for their bottom line, rather than for providing you the best internet/desktop experience. Annoying advertisements, DRM restrictions, etc.
GNU/Linux and Free Software put the ultimate control in the hands of the people. We allow the vendors like RedHat to set our experience, but only for so long as they don't do anything we don't like, else we all leave for some new vendor, taking our software with us. With Mac OS X, you have no such freedoms, should things someday go sour.
I don't believe for a second that Microsoft wasn't acutely aware of exactly that! They understand very well that they win deals due to FUD about Linux IP and indemnity issues, and that is exactly why they entered into this agreement.
This deal is serving as a major catalyst to make that very problem worse, not better!
The Sun rotates around the Earth.
;)
It's true.
(someone back me up on this
I tried to keep it short and to the point, my email to them read:
Subject: Linux Wireless Firmware Distribution
I was very happy to hear that Intel is working with the community to
ensure that G965 graphics will work out of the box under Linux.
I am very sad to hear that Intel isn't doing the same for their wireless
products WRT freely distributable firmware.
I am a developer in the Computing Services department at a 30 thousand
plus student university. Community enabled Linux support is a huge
factor in the purchasing decisions of our department.
I was dissapointed that this review didn't include any G965 reviews.
If you want the new Linux XGL/AIGLX/Compiz functionality to work out of the box with no binary drivers, a G965 board may very well be what you are looking for.
The G965 chipset includes the new GMA X3000 graphics core, which is the only DX10 feature level graphics solution with FLOSS Linux drivers: http://intellinuxgraphics.org/
The new C2 stepping is rumoured to solve many of the performance problems of the first stepping, and although probably still not suitable for FPS gaming under Linux, other less demanding games and desktop users needs could be well met.
IMHO, Gnu/Linux on the desktop still kinda sucks right now, but it is advancing rapidly. This makes me want to upgrade my distribution to get the latest and greatest, because it fixes features I really want (multimedia these days). We are quickly getting to a place where most the needs of average users will be well met. Then I won't mind if Debian is a little behind. It's like Windows XP being good enough that most people don't really care about upgrading to Vista. I can't wait until we are in that place, and I hope that then, the impedus to move forward so rapidly is lightened enough to relieve some of the stress on the Debian devs, allowing them more time to work through some of these issues.
Choose another ISP?
Yeah, so...here in Western Canada, I have my choice of 2 broadband ISP's (the two major players bought up all smaller competitors)... the cable company (Shaw) or the phone company (Telus).
I had a cable modem, but they overloaded the segment in my apt building and my FPS ping times went to hell (120+ms min, unplayable at all peak hours).
So, I switched to using DSL from the phone company.
So, in a case like this, if my ISP does such a think, and where I really don't like being monitored, my choice is to ?
The barrier to entry into such markets is *far* too high for any smaller competitors to get established.
That said, Mozilla/Firefox don't support SVG from CSS and don't support CSS intrinsic ratios for displaying SVG, making the SVG support pretty much useless for me.
Try disabling DMA on your CD drive for the install (add "ide=nodma" kernel param).
The problem isn't technology, it's cooperation.
Some time ago, I read an article by Tim Berners-Lee which starts off with a description of a technology (semantic web) aided lifestyle where your car will automatically book itself for an oil change with your mechanic, and that type of thing. The thing is, we have all the knowledge and technology to make that kind of stuff happen *today*, yet I still don't think we will see it will happen any time soon.
The problem is that to take things to the next level like that, we need *extensive* ongoing cooperation between hundreds and thousands of people, organizations, and companies - where such cooperation might not have any short term payoff, or the long term payoff might not be in the best financial interest of those involved (ie, Microsoft realizing a universal platform neutral programming language like Java would mean people don't need Windows). I mean, hell, we can't even get broad agreement on a single XML Word Processing format.
Our problems now are more systemic than technologic. We aren't leveraging what we have.
Heh... if they really want it to be realistic, they should have the prof (financer) come in three quarters of the way through the students final exam project and cancel it if it won't sell enough copies (and maybe just cancel some arbitrarily). The students could then try to get on with another groups project in the class, or they get a failing grade for the course (cuz being layed off in the real world is no more fair than that).
I will take "Topics designed to start a geek flamewar" for $500 Alex! ;P
If you could get hired on by an international consulting firm, and maybe do something for them in Europe first, then ask for an internal posting overseas, that would be easiest. They have the resources to move people around, deal with Visa's, etc.
I have been using Linux on my desktop since 94, so I can relate to this feeling.
.... *application promptly dissapears*
I tried to rip a music CD on my Fedora Core 4 system the other day...
I put it in and ran Sound Juicer... it saw the CD and loaded all the track info for it. So far, so good.
I wanted to set it to rip me an OGG at quality 6, the same as all my other ones I ripped in windows. It would let me choose between OGG and FLAC (no MP3), but there was no quality setting. An audio ripper with no quality setting?!? Impossible I thought...
I looked in the help file, and it said nothing. Though the help file mentioned if you wanted MP3, you could use something called 'gnome-audio-profiles-properties'. There was no link to run this in the program, and I can't find it in my Gnome menus, so, being the guru I am, I ran it from the command line...
This is a GUI which has a text field to type in a GStreamer pipeline!
"audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! vorbisenc name=enc quality=0.5"
Like anyone (especially grandma) is gonna know how to fill in that!
Anyhow, me being the guru I am, I fish through it and see the quality setting... I want OGG quality 6... so what does "0.5" mean in OGG terms? Well, let's look in the help file...
*clicks help button*
No "this help file does not exist" dialog, no stack trace, nothing. *Poof* Gone.
This is why Linux still isn't really ready for my desktop.
Heh, I was just about to say... don't knock this effort too badly...
:P
12 meters still makes it the highest thing in the province
Yeah, but that's just what He wants you to think.
There are some enlightened among us who know the truth, that He created all of it with His Noodly Appendage
Maybe we should take donations to buy the Perl camel a bigger hump, so it doesn't run out of water waiting for a stable Parrot release! ;)
Well, the question then becomes, in this case, which was it?
As I have stated, I do believe it was an apt comparison. So, I think in my case that I agree with this common objection.
The point wasn't at all to compare SCO to Nazi's, it was to state that in *any* scenario, you can't just ignore the bigger picture of what you are contributing to. It could be working for SCO, buying shoes made in a sweatshop, or at the extreme end, pulling the lever for a gas chamber.
In my opinion, all employees share some (perhaps small) fraction of responsibility for the actions of the company. Just like if you were the Nazi pulling the lever, I won't absolve you of all responsibility just because it was your job.
The fact that the benign fact-based statements which comprise the content of the parent post make you feel that way betrays your lack of self-esteem. There was no affront to you, yet, due to whatever baggage you have, you seem to interpret it that way. It must be sad to live in a world where your need for acceptance ("better liked") overrides all your thinking - making you a slave to your peer group, and unable to stand on your own to express any independent thought. I bet you were the kid that needed mommy to buy you the 'right' brand of shoes for school so you could get that all-valuable acceptance from your peers. Sheep. Now you take weak jabs at people online while hiding behind anonymity. Coward. Perhaps if you were more clever you would be able to come out of anonymity and formulate a rebuttal to the opinions I expressed, rather than relying on an anonymous personal attack.
The parent is being moderated as flamebait?!?!
If a post makes it point too effectively, it's modded as flamebait? Whoever moderated that needs to get a clue...
The Nazi analogy, albeit at the extreme end of the spectrum, is a perfectly valid one - and serves to really hammer home the point I was tyring to make: that you can't just blindly follow orders with no regard for how your actions impact the bigger picture. Whether you write code for SCO, or pull the gas chamber lever, you need to examine how your actions support the greater organization and it's agenda.
"Man, my job is just to pull the lever on this here gas chamber, I don't really care what they are putting in there, or what the politics of the top exec of this Nazi organization are. I just show up to work and try to do my job as good and efficiently as I can."
Increasing programming complexity is becoming an issue developers must tackle regardless of platform. With the move to dual core chips, software is going to have to move to be pervasively multithreaded in the future. I know it took me some time to learn how to program (and think/design) in a threaded fashion - and to quit making stupid synchornization mistakes, race conditions, etc. If anything, as a programmer I welcome these new requirements, as it helps me differentiate myself from less skilled programmers. Like everyone else, these game developers are going to have to learn to cope.