Ringtones - now there is a scam. Most of the European operators charge something like 4 so you can download a lousy.mid file onto your phone. Same for wallpaper too. It is no surprise that they bury the actual cost in smallprint or try to bullshit about one-off subscriptions to ringtone clubs.
How do they keep their prices so low and still make a profit?
Mac OS X is a subscription model in all but name. Every year and a half or so Apple produce a new version with minor updates, and shitcan the version but one behind. Unless you have all the software you ever need for your machine, you *have* to upgrade if you ever want to be able to use the latest peripherals or software. It'll be 10.2's neck on the block next.
The perverse thing is that if MS tried that model there would be riots in the streets.
Which is great but my undertanding of DeCSS when it was released was that they said once they cracked one of the keys they could have gone on to crack them all. If this thing is CSS on steroids then what's to stop someone doing a concerted attack to grab one key, cracking a whole bunch of them from major manufacturers. Are they really going to risk the wrath of millions of consumers who discover their players don't work any more?
At the end of the day, the disc data is encrypted once and the disc must have a multiply encrypted key where every model can grab the read the contents. Cracking that first key might be tough, but there are plenty of distributed efforts that do just kind of thing already.
Besides most pirate DVDs I see have been recompressed anyway. Even if the crypto proves uncrackable, people will simply resample the disc contents and release them without any crypto.
I remember when I needed slots for a graphics card, modem, network card, sound card and an IDE controller. I'd be worrying if I had less than 5 slots on the board to fit everything in. Nowadays all this stuff is built into the mainboard and you have a dedicated AGP for graphics or PCI-e. I'm seriously thinking of giving up on midi-tower PCs because there is little point any more - something with a single slot like a Shuttle should suffice. The only reason I see left for a larger case is for sticking in second drives and DVD / CDs. But even that is not necessary when Firewire (or USB2) means it makes little or no odds if the device is internal or not.
You say it "nothing more than a reader", but I bet you that shares substantial amounts of source code with other Adobe products. For example Adobe have a cross-platform development platform, and no doubt the reader shares significant chunks of code with other products in the Acrobat family.
In fact, just glancing through my Distiller / Reader bin directories just shows that to be the case. Substantial DLLs named agm, bib, opp, and cooltype appear in both.
You don't need to reverse engineer PDF because Adobe publish the specifications on their website. Which is probably why there already open source readers and creators - for example OpenOffice. Presumably companies pay that hefty chunk of change because the commercial variants are better suited to whatever workflow they're being used for.
If you want open source, use Ghostscript. I assume (and they probably do too) that to open source part of one of their most lucrative product lines would commercial suicide. It's not like the file format is closed because it isn't.
Sigh, I give up. I tell you dynamic views suck, you say they don't if we have our branches set up (we do), and then you ask me why on earth I'd do that. The answer is I wouldn't. Dynamic views suck. Idiot.
The Linux kernel, a leading open source project is using a closed source, source control system. Why? Because it happens to be most suited to the way Linus likes to work. Sadly, the terms for said source control system have become increasingly odious over time and hosting of open source projects has become uncertain so that even Linus wants to jump ship.
They certainly can happen elsewhere. But the chances of humanity being obliterated are substantially less if the population is spread out across different planets.
SCO / Sun use something similar called lxrun. It runs ELF / a.out Linux programs, trapping certain system calls and translating them to the native equivalent. Combined with the same base libraries as Linux (i.e. glibc) and you have a Linux compatibility layer. Apparently the performance hit is fairly small.
Maybe this system uses lxrun or something like it.
As an aside I suppose in theory you could do the reverse. Wouldn't it piss off SCO no end if someone produced a scorun app?
The latency for static views is awful too but fortunately you pick a time when to update the view so it's not quite so bad.
It doesn't sound like your team is taking advantage of the strengths of the tool. You really shouldn't be having this problem if you've set your branches up properly. I think IBM ships a "best practices" book which you might want to take a look at.
I'm talking about a small team working on the same dynamic view. Working without treading on each others toes is impossible and the problems expand with each new member. Now I know what you mean by best practice - we could all go off and create individual branches, but that would introduce complications of its own such as the extra inconvenience of constantly merging. Besides, if everyone has a personal branch, there is no point to using a dynamic view unless you make a ruling that everything which is merged should be picked up by everyone. And that breaks as much as if you just let people check in to the same view since people often forget to checkin directories or new files.
It's simpler for everyone to use a snapshot and checkin / checkout in a disciplined fashion.
Actually I understand source control just fine. Now explain to me what the point of a dynamic view is if you say I have to work off an independent branch? If that's the case why not do a static view?
I'm having so much trouble because CC is so packet-happy that it's impossible to get acceptable performance when you have a built-in latency such as for VPN. It's not the bandwidth, but the lead-in time that kills performance. I have no idea what data its sending, but on a VPN it takes a good 3-4 seconds before it even knows if a file is checked out or not. If you gripe to the admins you point to you a IBM CC knowledge base article that says VPN / WAN connections are not supported because performance is so horrendous.
The result is you have to be on the same LAN or it is worthless. I believe they're producing some kind of remote client software but its too little too late.
Irrespective of bandwidth, dynamic views are evil simply because you have no idea what you're building against. You couldn be working away and everything is fine one moment and the next everything is hosed. Why is it hosed? It could be becaused your bug is intermittant or someone has gone and changed some other files that affect what you're looking at You might even discover your view is thoroughly broken because someone has checked in something on their view and gone home. I'd only use static views even if I were right next to the server - it's the only way to keep some control of your development environment.
Excuse me, but I do know it. Indeed if you'd bothered to read what I said you would have seen I mentioned both snapshot and dynamic views. It is impossible to use dynamic views over a WAN and snapshots are just barely tolerable and horribly slow.
Yes it is slow. Horribly slow. It's not just the hardware, but the amount of traffic it sends back and forth even for simple operations. It's almost impossible to use Clearcase if you are not physically situated on the same network as the server you're trying to talk to. I should know because I have to do work through a VPN frequently enough.
The issue isn't the traffic or the bandwidth but the latency caused by not being on the same network. Since it sends off a flurry of packets, the effect of even a modest latency (e.g. 100ms) is culmulative and the thing simply sucks. It is just a horribly designed system.
Rational's "solution" to this is to sell a multi-site version that replicates the same repository for each LAN you wish to use the source control from. But this does nothing for the VPN situation and it also means you must burden the enormous expense of replicating your your hardware, and administration for everywhere you want to use it.
It's not mission critical anything - it's an overengineered piece of crap. I truly expect that a sane source control system could get ten fold performance out of the same hardware simply because it's smart enough to figure out if a file is checked out without flooding the network with traffic.
I truly believe that Clearcase could be junked and replaced with Bitkeeper or even Subversion in 99% of cases and it would be a better fit.
Heh I know:) Sadly Clearcase is an attractive nuisance, a moneypit and a piece of shit all rolled into one. It's appallingly expensive, needs high end servers to support even a modest number of developers and is very admin intensive.
Unless you are on the same LAN as a Clearcase server, the thing is treacle slow because it sends dozens of packets flying back and forth just to figure out what items to put on a context menu. If you're using a VPN then creating a snapshot view can take many, many hours and even simple things like checkouts / checkins / diffs take minutes.
And because it works so badly over the WAN, if you have multiple sites you must replicate - more expensive servers, more admins and more licences.
It's not even a good source control system. It doesn't do anything aside from a dynamic view that can't be done by most other systems. Dynamic views are more trouble than they're worth anyway.
I truly pity companies who "bet the farm" on this junk. I pity IBM who had a perfectly usable source control system in CMVC who had to switch to this Rational junk.
For all its faults even CVS would be better. And with Subversion being available and UI frontends like TortoiseSVN, Subclipse etc. there really is no reason to be stuck with Clearcase.
Euro coins aren't too hard to feel out of your pocket either. In fact I regularly reach in and grab a bunch have the 2 EUR coins almost naturally sort themselves at one end.
It's not a myth. Linus himself says he's not going to support a binary standard. It might well be that some versions of the 2.6 kernel have change so little that binary compatibility is possible, but that is by accident, not design. If binary compatibility is to be achieved, it must be because the dist makers put a layer on top which smooths out any issue that occur between the module format and what the OEMs supply.
As for the community doing a pretty good job - yes they do. But only when the hardware is exceptionally well documented or very very old. It's a fact of life that is never going to change that the likes of NVidia are never going to release commercially sensitive info about their latest drivers. Either we pray they bother to release the drivers themselves, or we wait four years for the information to be worthless to them. I'd rather have the driver now to be honest.
Creationism, and religion is just a side effect of children unquestioningly believing everything their parents tell them. There is an obvious evolutionary benefit when a child stays put because the "monster will get them". There is not an obvious benefit in adult life for believing nonsense put about by someone else.
You say screw em, but it's us that are screwed. Linux is a miniscule fraction of the consumer market. There is absolutely no reason for any manufacturer, be it a Taiwanese OEM, or Intel / NVidia to open their source. And they've demonstrated they don't have to - either they simply ignore Linux or they ship binary drivers anyway. So such talk of threatening them with open source or nothing is utterly pointless and self-defeating.
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How do they keep their prices so low and still make a profit?
The perverse thing is that if MS tried that model there would be riots in the streets.
At the end of the day, the disc data is encrypted once and the disc must have a multiply encrypted key where every model can grab the read the contents. Cracking that first key might be tough, but there are plenty of distributed efforts that do just kind of thing already.
Besides most pirate DVDs I see have been recompressed anyway. Even if the crypto proves uncrackable, people will simply resample the disc contents and release them without any crypto.
I remember when I needed slots for a graphics card, modem, network card, sound card and an IDE controller. I'd be worrying if I had less than 5 slots on the board to fit everything in. Nowadays all this stuff is built into the mainboard and you have a dedicated AGP for graphics or PCI-e. I'm seriously thinking of giving up on midi-tower PCs because there is little point any more - something with a single slot like a Shuttle should suffice. The only reason I see left for a larger case is for sticking in second drives and DVD / CDs. But even that is not necessary when Firewire (or USB2) means it makes little or no odds if the device is internal or not.
In fact, just glancing through my Distiller / Reader bin directories just shows that to be the case. Substantial DLLs named agm, bib, opp, and cooltype appear in both.
You don't need to reverse engineer PDF because Adobe publish the specifications on their website. Which is probably why there already open source readers and creators - for example OpenOffice. Presumably companies pay that hefty chunk of change because the commercial variants are better suited to whatever workflow they're being used for.
If you want open source, use Ghostscript. I assume (and they probably do too) that to open source part of one of their most lucrative product lines would commercial suicide. It's not like the file format is closed because it isn't.
Heh, I work for one of those "top Wall St firms" and it sucks bigtime.
Sigh, I give up. I tell you dynamic views suck, you say they don't if we have our branches set up (we do), and then you ask me why on earth I'd do that. The answer is I wouldn't. Dynamic views suck. Idiot.
The Linux kernel, a leading open source project is using a closed source, source control system. Why? Because it happens to be most suited to the way Linus likes to work. Sadly, the terms for said source control system have become increasingly odious over time and hosting of open source projects has become uncertain so that even Linus wants to jump ship.
They certainly can happen elsewhere. But the chances of humanity being obliterated are substantially less if the population is spread out across different planets.
Maybe this system uses lxrun or something like it.
As an aside I suppose in theory you could do the reverse. Wouldn't it piss off SCO no end if someone produced a scorun app?
These "robots" will look curiously like small children wrapped in tinfoil...
I'm talking about a small team working on the same dynamic view. Working without treading on each others toes is impossible and the problems expand with each new member. Now I know what you mean by best practice - we could all go off and create individual branches, but that would introduce complications of its own such as the extra inconvenience of constantly merging. Besides, if everyone has a personal branch, there is no point to using a dynamic view unless you make a ruling that everything which is merged should be picked up by everyone. And that breaks as much as if you just let people check in to the same view since people often forget to checkin directories or new files.
It's simpler for everyone to use a snapshot and checkin / checkout in a disciplined fashion.
Actually I understand source control just fine. Now explain to me what the point of a dynamic view is if you say I have to work off an independent branch? If that's the case why not do a static view?
The result is you have to be on the same LAN or it is worthless. I believe they're producing some kind of remote client software but its too little too late.
Irrespective of bandwidth, dynamic views are evil simply because you have no idea what you're building against. You couldn be working away and everything is fine one moment and the next everything is hosed. Why is it hosed? It could be becaused your bug is intermittant or someone has gone and changed some other files that affect what you're looking at You might even discover your view is thoroughly broken because someone has checked in something on their view and gone home. I'd only use static views even if I were right next to the server - it's the only way to keep some control of your development environment.
... for raping my memories.
Excuse me, but I do know it. Indeed if you'd bothered to read what I said you would have seen I mentioned both snapshot and dynamic views. It is impossible to use dynamic views over a WAN and snapshots are just barely tolerable and horribly slow.
The issue isn't the traffic or the bandwidth but the latency caused by not being on the same network. Since it sends off a flurry of packets, the effect of even a modest latency (e.g. 100ms) is culmulative and the thing simply sucks. It is just a horribly designed system.
Rational's "solution" to this is to sell a multi-site version that replicates the same repository for each LAN you wish to use the source control from. But this does nothing for the VPN situation and it also means you must burden the enormous expense of replicating your your hardware, and administration for everywhere you want to use it.
It's not mission critical anything - it's an overengineered piece of crap. I truly expect that a sane source control system could get ten fold performance out of the same hardware simply because it's smart enough to figure out if a file is checked out without flooding the network with traffic.
I truly believe that Clearcase could be junked and replaced with Bitkeeper or even Subversion in 99% of cases and it would be a better fit.
Unless you are on the same LAN as a Clearcase server, the thing is treacle slow because it sends dozens of packets flying back and forth just to figure out what items to put on a context menu. If you're using a VPN then creating a snapshot view can take many, many hours and even simple things like checkouts / checkins / diffs take minutes.
And because it works so badly over the WAN, if you have multiple sites you must replicate - more expensive servers, more admins and more licences.
It's not even a good source control system. It doesn't do anything aside from a dynamic view that can't be done by most other systems. Dynamic views are more trouble than they're worth anyway.
I truly pity companies who "bet the farm" on this junk. I pity IBM who had a perfectly usable source control system in CMVC who had to switch to this Rational junk.
For all its faults even CVS would be better. And with Subversion being available and UI frontends like TortoiseSVN, Subclipse etc. there really is no reason to be stuck with Clearcase.
Euro coins aren't too hard to feel out of your pocket either. In fact I regularly reach in and grab a bunch have the 2 EUR coins almost naturally sort themselves at one end.
As for the community doing a pretty good job - yes they do. But only when the hardware is exceptionally well documented or very very old. It's a fact of life that is never going to change that the likes of NVidia are never going to release commercially sensitive info about their latest drivers. Either we pray they bother to release the drivers themselves, or we wait four years for the information to be worthless to them. I'd rather have the driver now to be honest.
Creationism, and religion is just a side effect of children unquestioningly believing everything their parents tell them. There is an obvious evolutionary benefit when a child stays put because the "monster will get them". There is not an obvious benefit in adult life for believing nonsense put about by someone else.
I wouldn't duck. Creationists deserve to be laughed at and ignored in equal measure.
You say screw em, but it's us that are screwed. Linux is a miniscule fraction of the consumer market. There is absolutely no reason for any manufacturer, be it a Taiwanese OEM, or Intel / NVidia to open their source. And they've demonstrated they don't have to - either they simply ignore Linux or they ship binary drivers anyway. So such talk of threatening them with open source or nothing is utterly pointless and self-defeating.