Reading your post, I laughed out loud. Your list of problems accurately describes my experience with MS Access. This is why people develop their own software:)
Poor documentation: Haven't really seen any for Access. Buggy and/or half-working menus/programs.: Several months ago, we were using MS Access to track customer information. One of the columns had a maximum length of 255 characters. All the same, an employee entering data was allowed to put in more than 255 characters of information into this field and corrupted the database. Any attempt to open the database complained that the data in that field was too long. The repair tool could't fix the file, either. We had to restore from a backup, and reenter all the data from the last two days. No support if something goes wrong... This sounds almost EXACTLY like what happened to us. We called Microsoft and were charged full support rate to complain about a program error that I would expect of a first year CS student in their very expensive software. They were totally unhelpful, had never seen the problem, had no solution to the problem, and ended up refunding our money.
You're wrong. I hate to start a post that way, but if you think you have your facts correct, then post a URL to either a Microsoft or Intel web page (or any other manufacturer) that states that you are correct. Plugging a PS/2 peripheral, keyboard or mouse, while the system is running may cause the motherboard to stop responding. The OS you run doesn't even enter into it. My friend, Justin, has also fried his motherboard's PS/2 controller by plugging in a PS/2 mouse that had become loose. The MSI motherboard and Logitech mouse both bear the Windows 9x logo.
Mozilla is too heavily threaded to work properly with anything less than glibc 2.1. The way I understand it is that the dynamic loader in older versions of libc wasn't thread safe. There are _no_ builds for glibc 2.0 or libc5 on linux.
I've got a few ideas. I throw a lot of them out. One of them that I've sorta liked was structural flexibility. Right now in most functional languages, you specify a function with arguments like so:
strcpy( dest, src );
I like the idea that a proper parser can extract parameters from any place in a function call. Consider:
copy( src )to( dest );
Now, your function is called "copyto". There are a few more characters to type, but isn't the purpose of the function much more apparent? And since your function calls can be written in a more natural grammer, you don't have to remember the order in which a bunch of parameters are given. (I for one still look at man pages for an awful lot of simple C functions).
Maybe someone will extend C in such a way, and call it "Natural C". (?? C Natural ??)
The Athlon core is designed to be SMP capable, yes. According to AMD, however, there will never be a motherboard/chipset that supports SMP with Slot A processors. Only after the Socket A Mustang family is available, will SMP be available.
Ever think about how much space it would take to do SMP with Slot A processors and 4" fans?
What ZDNet didn't mention is that the Mustang based processors will be SMP capable. The north bridge used for these processors will provide two separate host processor busses giving each processor full bandwidth to the bridge (as opposed to shared bandwidth, as with Intel) but limiting SMP to two processor configurations.
The day you realized that atoms, too, had subparticles, that was an epiphany. The day you realized that splitting an atom would release megatonage of energy, that was an epiphany. The day you realize that it would take over 25 years to simulate one second of the blast in a computer, that was an epiphany. It's a new kind of physics, you need a new kind of software.
Not to cast dispersions upon fellow slashdot readers, but it seems that many of us don't read beyond the headline. WTF!? There's almost a hundred posts to this story, and like 5 that actually understand why this will be useful. Slow down, and try to understand what's going on.
As I see it, replacing HTTP is probably not going to be the first application of the BXXP protocol. In order to see the beauty of BXXP, you must consider the plethora of existing protocols (SMTP, HTTP, FTP, AOL-IM, ICQ...) none of which would be seriously hurt by a minor increase in overhead. Using a common language means that you don't have to write an RFC822 (or other RFC) parser for every application that wants to send mail, or request a file, or send an informational message/status update. You can parse the XML, and get the relevant info with much less effort using common code. You could share common headers between email and instant messanger clients. They're similar enough to speak IM to IM, or IM to mail server... Share libraries == less programming. Shared libraries == fewer bugs (theoretically).
I speak from experience. I'm working on a client/server framework for a project that I've been doing for too long, and I've reached the end of my original communication protocol's useful life. I've switched over to an XML based format, and I'm happy with it. If I'd had BXXP to start out, I could have avoided writing two different communications protocols, and spent that time working on better things.
Hrm, KFloppy is released under the GPL. So...what's the problem? Do you see KFloppy in Debian? It suffers the same problems that KDE does in linking to QT.
using this argument, you can argue that Netscape Communicator for Linux is illegal, since at some point they'd have to use kernel includes. No, you cannot. The linux kernel license has a specific exception that allows software to interface with the kernel as "normal use" and not a derived work. Look for yourself. It's at the very top of the file/usr/src/linux/COPYING on most any available Linux box. Note that this is exactly what KDE needs, but in order to get it, all of the developers whose code is in KDE must agree to insert said license modification. This is the reason that it hasn't been done.
I believe that the difference is that KDE cannot function without QT, while XMPS can function without the divx dll. AFAIK, optionally allowing xmps to interact with the divx dll is legal, while linking KDE against QT is not.
Yes, emacs and gcc are used on non-free systems, but not that the GPL specificly allows you to link GPL code agains non-GPL libraries *if they are system libraries* (and are distributed with the OS).
Can someone expand on KDE project's "constant violation of the GPL of other peoples software"? How is kisdn currently licensed? ("Shareware" is an ambiguous term) What's the violation in kfloppy? Are they using code from mtools?
This has already been moderated as flamebait, but I'm up for a small flame anyhow. Yes, the BSD license is "more free". It's failing, however, is in the fact that it does not _promote_ freedom. It does not guarantee that a piece of software will remain free. I don't like the idea that someone could take the code upon which I've spent a lot of time and effort, and make a proprietary system out of it. If you want to argue "more free", the I'll argue that software in the public domain is a hundred times more free than the BSD license. That doesn't sway me to put my code in public domain.
OOps. I stand corrected, the GPL does not apply to the whole thing, only to the ghostscript fonts. The license appears to be very similar, however, with few minor differences:
The fonts included with Plan 9 (not the ghostscript ones) are not open source. You may not redistribute them, except with Plan 9.
Plan 9 and derived works require a small copyright notice a'la the old BSD license.
Plan 9's license specifically allows a commercial distributor to make additional warranties as long as those warranties are held only to the commercial distributor.
Lucent may request that you provide them with any changes that you make to their software, regardless of whether or not you are distributing said changes, and incorporate those changes with Plan 9, a'la the QPL.
Aside from that, it looks an aweful lot like the GPL. Yes, there is a clause that states that Lucent may change the license at their discretion at any time, but that this change will only affect versions of their software downloaded after said change has been published.
Lucent grants to Licensee, a royalty-free, nonexclusive, non-transferable, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, execute, display, perform, distribute and sublicense, the Original Software (with or without Modifications) in Source Code form and/or Object Code form for commercial and/or non-commercial purposes
I think that you are wrong. It seems to clearly state that this software is available royalty-free for anyone, profit or non-profit.
I submitted this story, too, but I figured I wasn't first. I was hoping, however, that the person who posted the story would note that the source is available under the GPL.
I was curious about the "open source" license used. Reading the license, I was very pleased to find that it was very much like the GPL. Then I got to "Exhibit A", which was the GPL itself.
Yes, I favor the GPL over the BSD license. Insert mandatory license flame war here : )
Have you considered winelib? Part of the Wine project's goal is to be able to re-compile Win32 code on UNIX machines. This produces a native application that does not require the "wine" application to run, just winelib.so (that's actually changing about. the wine guys are separating some stuff into smaller.so's) Try it out, see how it works for you.
Sorry if I was unclear, but my point was that you can get more assistance with calculus from a calculator than with programming from a "Wizard". The impression that I'd had from some of my friends was that their leeto TI-92's were damn handy during calculus. (Plus, my friends know enough to program some pretty good stuff) Of course, you won't get ANYWHERE in either field if you know nothing about it.
First, I think that the spread of open source encourages people to learn a bit about code, and provides them the means to do to (I learned more reading code than reading any book). Computers are also becoming more affordable, which is bringing them into the hands (and homes) of more proto-geeks. I'm sure that these will increase the total number of programmers "out there".
However, I recognise that there will always be a lot of programmers that aren't *good*. They code as a hobby, without really producing anything reliable or useful. Just as calculus spread to high school (I've not seen it in middle school myself), programming will, too. However, I think that most languages are more complex than calculus, and plenty of people fail calculus. Calculus can be done with a calculator, but I don't know of any "Wizards" that can get you through a complex programming problem. If you plan to write code, you have to know what you're doing.
Programming might someday be less "elite", but not much.
Some people are asking about SMP, and since I recently attended an AMD partners conference, I thought that I would share.
First, the Duron and Thunderbird processors are going to integrate the L2 into the die. The AMD techs seemed excited about that since the Athlon is already outperforming the Coppermine. The move from the L2 on the module to L2 on the die should prove a massive boon to their already good performance. This also means that there is no longer a reason to use a slot. (With.25 micron process, you can't put the L2 on die, it'll produce too much heat. However, you can't access the L2 cache very quickly through a socket, there's too much resistance.) The Duron will use the new Socket A, and the Thunderbird will be available in both Socket A and Slot A configurations, so that all of the old motherboards aren't immediately obsoleted. Later processors will only be available in Socket A.
Second, SMP is coming, but not in the Duron or Thunderbird. Mustang will bring us SMP later this year, in Socket A configuration. The point that AMD stressed is that Intel processors use a shared bus to the North Bridge, whereas their Athlons will each have their own bus to the North Bridge. This will provide the processors a whole lot more bandwidth to their memory and peripherals.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it, Microsoft did NOT copyright the specification. The specification was previously copyrighted. Microsoft is holding that information as "trade secret", but possibly has failed to give said secret sufficient protection. I believe that slashdot is in the right here.
1. Can I use code protected by GPL on a web site that has advertising? Yes. Nothing in the GPL prevents you from using the software in a commercial application. It only states that you must release the source code to any entity to whom you distribute your software. 2. If I write a commercial program that uses a line from GPL protected code, do I have to make all my code GPL? I don't believe this is clearly defined in the license. I also don't think you could ever prove that the "one line" was actually from your GPL code. Generally, I hear people discuss contributions of 20 lines of code or more being considered enforceable. 3. Do I still own the copyright if I license something under GPL. Yes. So do all entities to whom you distribute your software, however. You are free to do whatever you want with the software, including forking a closed source, non free, version. All those who have a copy of the GPL version are still free to continue use and development of that software as well.
So far, I haven't seen md5sums or cksums on any of the mirrors. I've got the ISO's mirrored, but the i386 image didn't boot on my system.
Could anyone else run md5sum or cksum on their iso images and see if they match these: b7cb386ec426ae38a925bdd844b86f84 zoot-i386.iso 9fe617911acc104f8c89a0f8ea1b5917 zoot-srpms.iso 3132136560 671881216 zoot-i386.iso 1388524199 594044928 zoot-srpms.iso
Slashdot Mirror
Reading your post, I laughed out loud. Your list of problems accurately describes my experience with MS Access. This is why people develop their own software :)
Poor documentation: Haven't really seen any for Access.
Buggy and/or half-working menus/programs.: Several months ago, we were using MS Access to track customer information. One of the columns had a maximum length of 255 characters. All the same, an employee entering data was allowed to put in more than 255 characters of information into this field and corrupted the database. Any attempt to open the database complained that the data in that field was too long. The repair tool could't fix the file, either. We had to restore from a backup, and reenter all the data from the last two days.
No support if something goes wrong... This sounds almost EXACTLY like what happened to us. We called Microsoft and were charged full support rate to complain about a program error that I would expect of a first year CS student in their very expensive software. They were totally unhelpful, had never seen the problem, had no solution to the problem, and ended up refunding our money.
You're wrong. I hate to start a post that way, but if you think you have your facts correct, then post a URL to either a Microsoft or Intel web page (or any other manufacturer) that states that you are correct. Plugging a PS/2 peripheral, keyboard or mouse, while the system is running may cause the motherboard to stop responding. The OS you run doesn't even enter into it. My friend, Justin, has also fried his motherboard's PS/2 controller by plugging in a PS/2 mouse that had become loose. The MSI motherboard and Logitech mouse both bear the Windows 9x logo.
I think you're confused : )
Mozilla is too heavily threaded to work properly with anything less than glibc 2.1. The way I understand it is that the dynamic loader in older versions of libc wasn't thread safe. There are _no_ builds for glibc 2.0 or libc5 on linux.
I've got a few ideas. I throw a lot of them out. One of them that I've sorta liked was structural flexibility. Right now in most functional languages, you specify a function with arguments like so:
strcpy( dest, src );
I like the idea that a proper parser can extract parameters from any place in a function call. Consider:
copy( src )to( dest );
Now, your function is called "copyto". There are a few more characters to type, but isn't the purpose of the function much more apparent? And since your function calls can be written in a more natural grammer, you don't have to remember the order in which a bunch of parameters are given. (I for one still look at man pages for an awful lot of simple C functions).
Maybe someone will extend C in such a way, and call it "Natural C". (?? C Natural ??)
The Athlon core is designed to be SMP capable, yes. According to AMD, however, there will never be a motherboard/chipset that supports SMP with Slot A processors. Only after the Socket A Mustang family is available, will SMP be available.
Ever think about how much space it would take to do SMP with Slot A processors and 4" fans?
What ZDNet didn't mention is that the Mustang based processors will be SMP capable. The north bridge used for these processors will provide two separate host processor busses giving each processor full bandwidth to the bridge (as opposed to shared bandwidth, as with Intel) but limiting SMP to two processor configurations.
2 34&cid=194
See my earlier post at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/05/19/1822
The day you realized that atoms, too, had subparticles, that was an epiphany.
The day you realized that splitting an atom would release megatonage of energy, that was an epiphany.
The day you realize that it would take over 25 years to simulate one second of the blast in a computer, that was an epiphany.
It's a new kind of physics, you need a new kind of software.
Not to cast dispersions upon fellow slashdot readers, but it seems that many of us don't read beyond the headline. WTF!? There's almost a hundred posts to this story, and like 5 that actually understand why this will be useful. Slow down, and try to understand what's going on.
As I see it, replacing HTTP is probably not going to be the first application of the BXXP protocol. In order to see the beauty of BXXP, you must consider the plethora of existing protocols (SMTP, HTTP, FTP, AOL-IM, ICQ...) none of which would be seriously hurt by a minor increase in overhead. Using a common language means that you don't have to write an RFC822 (or other RFC) parser for every application that wants to send mail, or request a file, or send an informational message/status update. You can parse the XML, and get the relevant info with much less effort using common code. You could share common headers between email and instant messanger clients. They're similar enough to speak IM to IM, or IM to mail server... Share libraries == less programming. Shared libraries == fewer bugs (theoretically).
I speak from experience. I'm working on a client/server framework for a project that I've been doing for too long, and I've reached the end of my original communication protocol's useful life. I've switched over to an XML based format, and I'm happy with it. If I'd had BXXP to start out, I could have avoided writing two different communications protocols, and spent that time working on better things.
XFree86 only has hardware acceleration for ONE chipset. Of course they used 3.3.6.
Hrm, KFloppy is released under the GPL. So...what's the problem?
/usr/src/linux/COPYING on most any available Linux box. Note that this is exactly what KDE needs, but in order to get it, all of the developers whose code is in KDE must agree to insert said license modification. This is the reason that it hasn't been done.
Do you see KFloppy in Debian? It suffers the same problems that KDE does in linking to QT.
using this argument, you can argue that Netscape Communicator for Linux is illegal, since at some point they'd have to use kernel includes.
No, you cannot. The linux kernel license has a specific exception that allows software to interface with the kernel as "normal use" and not a derived work. Look for yourself. It's at the very top of the file
I believe that the difference is that KDE cannot function without QT, while XMPS can function without the divx dll. AFAIK, optionally allowing xmps to interact with the divx dll is legal, while linking KDE against QT is not.
Yes, emacs and gcc are used on non-free systems, but not that the GPL specificly allows you to link GPL code agains non-GPL libraries *if they are system libraries* (and are distributed with the OS).
Can someone expand on KDE project's "constant violation of the GPL of other peoples software"? How is kisdn currently licensed? ("Shareware" is an ambiguous term) What's the violation in kfloppy? Are they using code from mtools?
This has already been moderated as flamebait, but I'm up for a small flame anyhow. Yes, the BSD license is "more free". It's failing, however, is in the fact that it does not _promote_ freedom. It does not guarantee that a piece of software will remain free. I don't like the idea that someone could take the code upon which I've spent a lot of time and effort, and make a proprietary system out of it. If you want to argue "more free", the I'll argue that software in the public domain is a hundred times more free than the BSD license. That doesn't sway me to put my code in public domain.
- The fonts included with Plan 9 (not the ghostscript ones) are not open source. You may not redistribute them, except with Plan 9.
- Plan 9 and derived works require a small copyright notice a'la the old BSD license.
- Plan 9's license specifically allows a commercial distributor to make additional warranties as long as those warranties are held only to the commercial distributor.
- Lucent may request that you provide them with any changes that you make to their software, regardless of whether or not you are distributing said changes, and incorporate those changes with Plan 9, a'la the QPL.
Aside from that, it looks an aweful lot like the GPL. Yes, there is a clause that states that Lucent may change the license at their discretion at any time, but that this change will only affect versions of their software downloaded after said change has been published.Lucent grants to Licensee, a royalty-free, nonexclusive, non-transferable, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, execute, display, perform, distribute and sublicense, the Original Software (with or without Modifications) in Source Code form and/or Object Code form for commercial and/or non-commercial purposes
I think that you are wrong. It seems to clearly state that this software is available royalty-free for anyone, profit or non-profit.
I submitted this story, too, but I figured I wasn't first. I was hoping, however, that the person who posted the story would note that the source is available under the GPL.
I was curious about the "open source" license used. Reading the license, I was very pleased to find that it was very much like the GPL. Then I got to "Exhibit A", which was the GPL itself.
Yes, I favor the GPL over the BSD license. Insert mandatory license flame war here : )
Have you considered winelib? Part of the Wine project's goal is to be able to re-compile Win32 code on UNIX machines. This produces a native application that does not require the "wine" application to run, just winelib.so (that's actually changing about. the wine guys are separating some stuff into smaller .so's) Try it out, see how it works for you.
Sorry if I was unclear, but my point was that you can get more assistance with calculus from a calculator than with programming from a "Wizard". The impression that I'd had from some of my friends was that their leeto TI-92's were damn handy during calculus. (Plus, my friends know enough to program some pretty good stuff) Of course, you won't get ANYWHERE in either field if you know nothing about it.
I'm of two minds about this post.
First, I think that the spread of open source encourages people to learn a bit about code, and provides them the means to do to (I learned more reading code than reading any book). Computers are also becoming more affordable, which is bringing them into the hands (and homes) of more proto-geeks. I'm sure that these will increase the total number of programmers "out there".
However, I recognise that there will always be a lot of programmers that aren't *good*. They code as a hobby, without really producing anything reliable or useful. Just as calculus spread to high school (I've not seen it in middle school myself), programming will, too. However, I think that most languages are more complex than calculus, and plenty of people fail calculus. Calculus can be done with a calculator, but I don't know of any "Wizards" that can get you through a complex programming problem. If you plan to write code, you have to know what you're doing.
Programming might someday be less "elite", but not much.
Oh, I forgot that AMD's techs also told us about their new fab in Dresden, which will manufacture the Athlons (Mustang) using their copper process.
Some people are asking about SMP, and since I recently attended an AMD partners conference, I thought that I would share.
.25 micron process, you can't put the L2 on die, it'll produce too much heat. However, you can't access the L2 cache very quickly through a socket, there's too much resistance.) The Duron will use the new Socket A, and the Thunderbird will be available in both Socket A and Slot A configurations, so that all of the old motherboards aren't immediately obsoleted. Later processors will only be available in Socket A.
First, the Duron and Thunderbird processors are going to integrate the L2 into the die. The AMD techs seemed excited about that since the Athlon is already outperforming the Coppermine. The move from the L2 on the module to L2 on the die should prove a massive boon to their already good performance. This also means that there is no longer a reason to use a slot. (With
Second, SMP is coming, but not in the Duron or Thunderbird. Mustang will bring us SMP later this year, in Socket A configuration. The point that AMD stressed is that Intel processors use a shared bus to the North Bridge, whereas their Athlons will each have their own bus to the North Bridge. This will provide the processors a whole lot more bandwidth to their memory and peripherals.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it, Microsoft did NOT copyright the specification. The specification was previously copyrighted. Microsoft is holding that information as "trade secret", but possibly has failed to give said secret sufficient protection. I believe that slashdot is in the right here.
Your answers as I understand them:
1. Can I use code protected by GPL on a web site that has advertising?
Yes. Nothing in the GPL prevents you from using the software in a commercial application. It only states that you must release the source code to any entity to whom you distribute your software.
2. If I write a commercial program that uses a line from GPL protected code, do I have to make all my code GPL?
I don't believe this is clearly defined in the license. I also don't think you could ever prove that the "one line" was actually from your GPL code. Generally, I hear people discuss contributions of 20 lines of code or more being considered enforceable.
3. Do I still own the copyright if I license something under GPL.
Yes. So do all entities to whom you distribute your software, however. You are free to do whatever you want with the software, including forking a closed source, non free, version. All those who have a copy of the GPL version are still free to continue use and development of that software as well.
You know, I think the funniest part about that division is that no one is writing software.
I guess they'll have to continue buying their new products from someone else!! : )
So far, I haven't seen md5sums or cksums on any of the mirrors. I've got the ISO's mirrored, but the i386 image didn't boot on my system.
Could anyone else run md5sum or cksum on their iso images and see if they match these:
b7cb386ec426ae38a925bdd844b86f84 zoot-i386.iso
9fe617911acc104f8c89a0f8ea1b5917 zoot-srpms.iso
3132136560 671881216 zoot-i386.iso
1388524199 594044928 zoot-srpms.iso