I've run quite alot of old PC games in Linux. Either with DosBox or WINE.
Newer PC games may be more troublesome, though I tend to play more games on a console than on the computer, but WINE keeps getting better I hear.
I won't go into the Blender vs 3ds vs maya, or GIMP vs photoshop, etc. crap as I don't have any real experience in that area. I only use GIMP for relatively basic stuff and know that certain features just aren't there for some of the pro work that photoshop is used for.
I even have to use Windows occasionally myself, even though Linux is perfectly fine for the majority of what I do. So you're right, Windows will still be the only option in particular cases for quite some time to come.
Hey, me too. Running my test algorithm for the Netflix prize bogged down the CPU's on all my machines for days along with filling up all my drive space with the dataset processing.
There still aren't any candidates for the Grand prize and I think I've got a winner even though it would take months to run my algorithm through their dataset on anything but a decent cluster.
I was (wrongly) thinking that the toll booth belonged to Maryland. The giant toll money machine in Delaware is the Newark Toll Plaza across the mainline of I-95 (Delaware Turnpike) just inside the Maryland state line.
Come to think of it I believe the plaza is NOT actually just inside Maryland as the above quote above from some article states, but is located within Delaware, being about a mile from the state line.
The only reason I-95 in Delaware has a toll is because JFK and the Delaware Governor of the time didn't get along. Therefore the feds wouldn't pay for construction of 95 between exit 5 and MD state line. (Apparently a similar story for the stretch in Maryland). That is why 95 was allowed to have a toll in that area. Of course, the original highway bonds were paid off long ago. It's just one big cash cow for DelDOT now... - http://www.aaroads.com/delaware/i-095.htm
But it can still all be blamed on Maryland... or Canada:)
The toll issue though is all Maryland's fault. AFAIK, the only toll that Delaware has is at the DE Memorial Bridge coming into DE from NJ.
The toll at the MD/DE line is where Maryland hit's motorists both ways and backs up traffic for miles to do so. Relatively easy to avoid by using 279, a couple back roads (or rt 2/4)and 896. Of course there's still the abyssmal screwup in engineering/design of DE I-95 in the marsh area that brings traffic to a standstill at rush hours.
In other news, MD's unofficial motto of "The Free State" has changed to "Leave your Money with Us" or as I've seen elsewhere "If you can dream it, We can tax it."
Who is paying to build the windfarm?
Who gets to keep the profit from the windfarm? I'm not sure of the answer to these questions and I live close enough to the region to have heard the smear campaign Delmarva Power (the local power monopoly) was running against Bluewater on the radio. Their radio ad went into how it would cost customer's so much more money, yadda, yadda, FUD, blah, blah, FUD. From my limited knowledge on it, I believe Delmarva had a more lucrative deal in the works with some onshore wind farms and my guess is that Delmarva viewed Bluewater as being a real threat to their profits.
Apparently Delmarva has come to a contract agreement with Bluewater now. There's a bunch of related news links available here, which I haven't bothered to read.
You would think the PETA, Greenpeace, et.al. people would be all over this. Just think of all the whales, dolphins and other marine life that will have their privacy invaded by this seemingly innocent "monitoring the oceans" nonsense.
The oceans are their home and it's not like water is opaque or anything. Sure the octopus, squid and their relatives can squirt ink to gain a little privacy, but what about the whales? Where can they really go to be free of this kind of intrusion?
To a certain extent I can agree. Average Joe User isn't going to care about the source code, much less know what to do with it particularly in the case of an embedded device. However, to someone like myself that actually develops software which runs on embedded devices, the issue of refusing to release GPL covered source I would likely consider eroding the advancement of society rather than augmenting it. If GPL source code that I wrote ended up being used on an appliance distributed by some company, I might be interested in how the code I wrote was being used (eg. Is it used to fulfill the function for which I had originally wrote it? Have they used it to do something I hadn't even thought of? What, if any changes did they make to it?, etc.)
I may be wrong, but part of the point of releasing software under GPL is for advancing society by making sure the source code doesn't disappear into a basement somewhere on tape archive or the like. Which in the case of embedded devices could mean that otherwise useful hardware may be completely useless if the company that produced it were no longer. There are at least a couple not too far-fetched scenarios in which this could be a possibility.
According to GPLv3 "To 'convey' a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy is not conveying." This is essentially the same meaning of "distribute" under GPLv2. However, v3 also states "If you convey an object code work under this section [6. Conveying Non-Source Forms] in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has been installed in ROM)." As I understand it, the Affero GPL goes further by including the requirement to "offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source".
Now in the case of say a router where there is essentially no user interface which would be considered "interaction" for anyone other than the owner/maintainer of the device, the distribution issue can get confusing/cloudy. Going further, if the hardware in question is practically impossible to reflash or otherwise modify for the end user, what good is the source code other than for academic study?
Providing a proprietary hardware device that runs an embedded GNU/Linux system I would argue is providing binaries. This is a semantical argument sure, but those binaries are part of the package and are required for the device to work as provided. I would think that complying with GPL is not much different as far as difficulty for a company than complying with say the license requirements of WinCE or VxWorks.
Generally speaking, if you already have on-site utility power, that's going to be cheaper over the long run than solar cells....And even having done that, solar cells are generally not considered "cheaper" than utility power, even over the long-term. It will cost very close to what 30 years of utility bills would have totaled. What you get with a whole-house setup is--you're basically paying your 30 years of utility bills "up front", and you aren't dependent upon the utility company's reliability. [or lack thereof:)] Generally speaking maybe. However, many cases I've seen for a whole house system are closer to a 10 year breakeven figure.
There's a house near me in Delaware (far from the desert and its associated solar insolation) that the owner spent somewhere around $10-20k on panels and related equipment. This house is tied to the grid and more often than not is putting (selling) more power going into the grid than it uses. Although the house, built in 1981, was actually designed for solar even though the panels weren't added until sometime later (around 5 years ago I believe) since the cost/efficiency didn't make much sense about 20 years ago.
For some people, not having to rely on the utility company to fix whatever caused an outage and having a generally cleaner power signal is worth quite a bit.
When I eventually move to the desert, I'd like to play with using some solar panels to run an air-cooling setup. Using solar power to run air conditioning in the desert just makes sense, and I don't know what else I'd run every day. Will probably try Peltiers first; I know their poor efficiency but the mechanical and electrical simplicity makes them attractive for a stand-alone setup, and easy to try on a small scale. In particular--they can be run basically straight off a battery, and need no invertor. The 3-phase invertor and the amount of solar panels you'd need to run a good-sized room air conditioner would cost six or seven thousand dollars, at least.
~ Why would one waste the electricity generated from solar panels on running an air conditioner when there are much better and less wasteful alternatives (design features, evaporative cooling, earth tubes, etc.) for space cooling? In the desert you typically don't have to deal with the humidity issue which A/C is relatively good at reducing, so evap actually makes more sense and also uses less electricity.
He's saying Microsoft doesn't have servers for its Instant Messenger or Email services inside China, not that there are no Windows servers inside China.
The point being that your data won't be snarfed, at least in the absence of a court order from the government.
Yes of course, I did actually read that. My point was one of taking his words out of context for humor value.:p
Brittany's little sister, apparently. I had to use google so I don't know whether parent should have been modded funny or insightful. Though based on the average/. audience I'd have to guess that insightful is correct.
I would consider solar, wind, etc. as the best option personally. It's certainly possible for practically every single family home to have it's electricty needs met by using such renewable sources. But such a thing typically involves lifestyle changes to be possible and not every home is suitably designed to match this possibility of having its own power sources.
That being said, and the fact that renewable technologies (even ones that haven't significantly changed in the last how many decades?) are still rather high dollar for whatever reason nuclear is likely the best source for mass consumption.
But what this has to do with the Executive branch of the Federal Government and why a Presidential Candidate is making such statements is beyond me. IIRC, there is no part of the Constitution that gives fed.gov such authority, much less the President. Granted Congress probably has authority to reasonable regulation of 'public utilities' which involve interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause though. But enforcing that there be X number of power plants of type Y I do not see as being part of the function of Washington, DC. This would fall under Amendment 10.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The software may not be in a form for easy building and consumption. Think about dependency hell and configuration issues. A lot of shops have a golden "build machine" that does the right thing. This poor practice is less common today, but was du rigeur in a lot of shops where I worked in the 90s -- scrambling to get product out. Often, there is a desire to not publicize the "lack of polish". I haven't studied the GPL recently (though I should take the time for a refresher since most development work I do is and/or includes GPL source) but I don't believe that the source necessarily be in a form for easy build and consumption. Hell, there's a fair amount of original OSS that's a real PITA to build, much less get to run, on my Slackware machines. That's even without making a trip into dependency hell.
The "golden build machine" be doesn't need to be included as long as it meets the definition of "general-purpose tools or generally available free programs which are used unmodified in performing those activities but which are not part of the work" according to GPLv3 (v2 has similar language).
There may be enough of a grey area though to make your statements a valid point of concern.
Furthermore, there might not be a budget to support an internet-facing server if you don't already have one. Often, the "web presense" is managed by a different department than the engineering group. Again, less of an issue than it used to be, but still a problem. One place I worked (which was not exactly known for it's support of free software, and a large presence in Redmond, WA) would have to "internally lease" a server from the department that did this, and get billed $10k/month for the privilege. Sourceforge and I'm sure other sites provide this type of service at no charge.
Slashdot Mirror
Only police and the military should be able to bring laptops across the border.
Citizens have no reason to be transporting laptops.
I've run quite alot of old PC games in Linux. Either with DosBox or WINE.
Newer PC games may be more troublesome, though I tend to play more games on a console than on the computer, but WINE keeps getting better I hear.
I won't go into the Blender vs 3ds vs maya, or GIMP vs photoshop, etc. crap as I don't have any real experience in that area. I only use GIMP for relatively basic stuff and know that certain features just aren't there for some of the pro work that photoshop is used for.
I even have to use Windows occasionally myself, even though Linux is perfectly fine for the majority of what I do. So you're right, Windows will still be the only option in particular cases for quite some time to come.
In other news, Windows 8 will be released by the second quarter of 2012 just in time for Genetic Control.
Hey, me too. Running my test algorithm for the Netflix prize bogged down the CPU's on all my machines for days along with filling up all my drive space with the dataset processing.
There still aren't any candidates for the Grand prize and I think I've got a winner even though it would take months to run my algorithm through their dataset on anything but a decent cluster.
I was (wrongly) thinking that the toll booth belonged to Maryland.
:)
The giant toll money machine in Delaware is the Newark Toll Plaza across the mainline of I-95 (Delaware Turnpike) just inside the Maryland state line.
Come to think of it I believe the plaza is NOT actually just inside Maryland as the above quote above from some article states, but is located within Delaware, being about a mile from the state line.
The only reason I-95 in Delaware has a toll is because JFK and the Delaware Governor of the time didn't get along. Therefore the feds wouldn't pay for construction of 95 between exit 5 and MD state line. (Apparently a similar story for the stretch in Maryland). That is why 95 was allowed to have a toll in that area. Of course, the original highway bonds were paid off long ago. It's just one big cash cow for DelDOT now... - http://www.aaroads.com/delaware/i-095.htm
But it can still all be blamed on Maryland... or Canada
The toll issue though is all Maryland's fault. AFAIK, the only toll that Delaware has is at the DE Memorial Bridge coming into DE from NJ.
The toll at the MD/DE line is where Maryland hit's motorists both ways and backs up traffic for miles to do so. Relatively easy to avoid by using 279, a couple back roads (or rt 2/4)and 896. Of course there's still the abyssmal screwup in engineering/design of DE I-95 in the marsh area that brings traffic to a standstill at rush hours.
In other news, MD's unofficial motto of "The Free State" has changed to "Leave your Money with Us" or as I've seen elsewhere "If you can dream it, We can tax it."
Who gets to keep the profit from the windfarm? I'm not sure of the answer to these questions and I live close enough to the region to have heard the smear campaign Delmarva Power (the local power monopoly) was running against Bluewater on the radio. Their radio ad went into how it would cost customer's so much more money, yadda, yadda, FUD, blah, blah, FUD. From my limited knowledge on it, I believe Delmarva had a more lucrative deal in the works with some onshore wind farms and my guess is that Delmarva viewed Bluewater as being a real threat to their profits.
Apparently Delmarva has come to a contract agreement with Bluewater now. There's a bunch of related news links available here, which I haven't bothered to read.
Damn, my other uid is still 6 digits, even though it's about a million < this one. Oh well. :)
I am /. user #1306739's LISP processing overlord, you insensitive clods!
I'll second that! Would that make the second'ing exponential?
You would think the PETA, Greenpeace, et.al. people would be all over this. Just think of all the whales, dolphins and other marine life that will have their privacy invaded by this seemingly innocent "monitoring the oceans" nonsense.
The oceans are their home and it's not like water is opaque or anything. Sure the octopus, squid and their relatives can squirt ink to gain a little privacy, but what about the whales? Where can they really go to be free of this kind of intrusion?
Have they figured out what flavor it is and can they get it back here without it melting so I can sell it in my new Mars Water Ice stores!?!?
To a certain extent I can agree. Average Joe User isn't going to care about the source code, much less know what to do with it particularly in the case of an embedded device. However, to someone like myself that actually develops software which runs on embedded devices, the issue of refusing to release GPL covered source I would likely consider eroding the advancement of society rather than augmenting it. If GPL source code that I wrote ended up being used on an appliance distributed by some company, I might be interested in how the code I wrote was being used (eg. Is it used to fulfill the function for which I had originally wrote it? Have they used it to do something I hadn't even thought of? What, if any changes did they make to it?, etc.)
I may be wrong, but part of the point of releasing software under GPL is for advancing society by making sure the source code doesn't disappear into a basement somewhere on tape archive or the like. Which in the case of embedded devices could mean that otherwise useful hardware may be completely useless if the company that produced it were no longer. There are at least a couple not too far-fetched scenarios in which this could be a possibility.
According to GPLv3 "To 'convey' a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy is not conveying." This is essentially the same meaning of "distribute" under GPLv2.
However, v3 also states "If you convey an object code work under this section [6. Conveying Non-Source Forms] in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has been installed in ROM)." As I understand it, the Affero GPL goes further by including the requirement to "offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source".
Now in the case of say a router where there is essentially no user interface which would be considered "interaction" for anyone other than the owner/maintainer of the device, the distribution issue can get confusing/cloudy. Going further, if the hardware in question is practically impossible to reflash or otherwise modify for the end user, what good is the source code other than for academic study?
Providing a proprietary hardware device that runs an embedded GNU/Linux system I would argue is providing binaries. This is a semantical argument sure, but those binaries are part of the package and are required for the device to work as provided.
I would think that complying with GPL is not much different as far as difficulty for a company than complying with say the license requirements of WinCE or VxWorks.
There's a house near me in Delaware (far from the desert and its associated solar insolation) that the owner spent somewhere around $10-20k on panels and related equipment. This house is tied to the grid and more often than not is putting (selling) more power going into the grid than it uses. Although the house, built in 1981, was actually designed for solar even though the panels weren't added until sometime later (around 5 years ago I believe) since the cost/efficiency didn't make much sense about 20 years ago.
For some people, not having to rely on the utility company to fix whatever caused an outage and having a generally cleaner power signal is worth quite a bit. When I eventually move to the desert, I'd like to play with using some solar panels to run an air-cooling setup. Using solar power to run air conditioning in the desert just makes sense, and I don't know what else I'd run every day. Will probably try Peltiers first; I know their poor efficiency but the mechanical and electrical simplicity makes them attractive for a stand-alone setup, and easy to try on a small scale. In particular--they can be run basically straight off a battery, and need no invertor. The 3-phase invertor and the amount of solar panels you'd need to run a good-sized room air conditioner would cost six or seven thousand dollars, at least. ~ Why would one waste the electricity generated from solar panels on running an air conditioner when there are much better and less wasteful alternatives (design features, evaporative cooling, earth tubes, etc.) for space cooling? In the desert you typically don't have to deal with the humidity issue which A/C is relatively good at reducing, so evap actually makes more sense and also uses less electricity.
I don't have a TV, you insensitive clod!
He's saying Microsoft doesn't have servers for its Instant Messenger or Email services inside China, not that there are no Windows servers inside China.
The point being that your data won't be snarfed, at least in the absence of a court order from the government.
Yes of course, I did actually read that. My point was one of taking his words out of context for humor value.Are you sure they weren't really a colony of Nazis that migrated from the moon?
What flavor is it? And can we get it back through re-entry and into stores without it melting?
Brittany's little sister, apparently. I had to use google so I don't know whether parent should have been modded funny or insightful. Though based on the average /. audience I'd have to guess that insightful is correct.
That being said, and the fact that renewable technologies (even ones that haven't significantly changed in the last how many decades?) are still rather high dollar for whatever reason nuclear is likely the best source for mass consumption.
But what this has to do with the Executive branch of the Federal Government and why a Presidential Candidate is making such statements is beyond me. IIRC, there is no part of the Constitution that gives fed.gov such authority, much less the President. Granted Congress probably has authority to reasonable regulation of 'public utilities' which involve interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause though. But enforcing that there be X number of power plants of type Y I do not see as being part of the function of Washington, DC. This would fall under Amendment 10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
All this study does is show that the methods being used are in fact working as part of The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.
The "golden build machine" be doesn't need to be included as long as it meets the definition of "general-purpose tools or generally available free programs which are used unmodified in performing those activities but which are not part of the work" according to GPLv3 (v2 has similar language).
There may be enough of a grey area though to make your statements a valid point of concern. Furthermore, there might not be a budget to support an internet-facing server if you don't already have one. Often, the "web presense" is managed by a different department than the engineering group. Again, less of an issue than it used to be, but still a problem. One place I worked (which was not exactly known for it's support of free software, and a large presence in Redmond, WA) would have to "internally lease" a server from the department that did this, and get billed $10k/month for the privilege. Sourceforge and I'm sure other sites provide this type of service at no charge.
Now I'm seriously concerned about a coffee trojan vulnerability.
I would hate to find out that my coffee had been maliciously replaced with decaf.
But.. but... remote management! so they don't have to drive into the datacenter in the wee hours. This has got to be the best thing since TCP/IP.