Did you miss the part of my post where I talked about the fact that Office is the leading productivity software product for reasons that have nothing to do with Microsoft's monopoly
Repeating a falsehood doesn't make it true -- Office is the leading suite for reasons that have everything to do with MS's abuse of their monopoly in OSes. Ever hear the phrase, "Windows ain't done till Lotus won't run"? WordPefect, Corel, AmiPro, Lotus, and Borland all had products that were higher quality and better selling, at one time, than MS's offerings, and all of them got screwed by MS's games with secret APIs and MS's ability to browbeat hardware vendors.
Office is the most popular productivity product because it's good.
What a load! Office is the most popular because MS held back information on Windows internals that would have allowed its competition (WordPerfect and another formerly very popular word processor whose name I can't even remember now) to match the performance of Word. Thus, WP and whazzit were late to the Windows platform, and slow when they got there. And suddenly WP lost its first place position, and whazzit disappeared completely. A clear case of MS leveraging its monopoly in OSes to take over the word processor market. (Analogous things happened with spreadsheets too.)
If MS has the best office suite now (which Corel/WP users might still argue -- in fact, the ones I know would strongly disagree with this assertion), it's because they cheated. If they'd been competing on level ground, there's no way in hell that WP would have lost its former dominance of the word processor market.
Seems a bit of a paradox there -- he's just an actor, as you say, so why were you so interested in "the way he thinks and feels". Of course, I agree with you that the interesting ones are the writers, but then I grew up in SF fandom, and many well-known SF authors are old family friends. I actually like Shatner more because he doesn't pretend to have great insight into the issues brought up by the writers whose lines he merely mouthed.
GNOME 2 [...] utterly refuses to work if your $HOME is NFS-mounted
No, it refuses to work if your $HOME doesn't support locking (i.e. you use a really old, broken version of NFS). Believe you me, Sun, who invented NFS, has an implementation of NFS that supports locking just fine. They won't have a problem.
Of course, I know from experience that NFS has problems with lots of locks held simultaneously, which may be an issue unless these locks are only held briefly. But surely Sun (who invented NFS) is aware of that, and has looked at the issue. They're not usually that stupid.
I do like Farscape, but it was starting to drag a bit recently, IMO. I've been thinking about it, and if the SciFi channel only has a limited amount of funds for original productions, I'd rather see them work on a few *really* good movies or miniseries, rather than dragging Farscape out even further.
They did an excellent job with Dune (much better than that David Lynch abomination with -- gah -- Sting). And the recent miniseries version of Mists of Avalon was excellent, too. (Ok, it was done by another network -- but it proves that there are people out there who can do good screen adaptations of good SF/Fantasy works. If only they had the money.)
Granted, most of the recent SciFi channel original production movies have sucked -- but then, they've been pouring money into Farscape....:)
There's a lot of good F&SF out there that could be adapted. I'd love to see a miniseries based on Amber or Ringworld or the Vorkosigan series. If it was even halfway decently done, I'd much prefer it to yet another recycled plot in yet another episode of Farscape.
If you're talking about the classic "evolution violates Newton's third law" argument, the answer is that Newton's third only applies to closed systems (like the universe). The Earth is not a closed system; it happens to be right next to a powerful energy source: our sun. The "something from nothing" is actually "something from solar energy". (And probably geothermal energy.)
A system which isn't directed towards any goal teleologically goes nowhere.
Or everywhere. An expanding system goes in all directions if it's not directed. And evolution isn't directed. However it is constrained by natural selection. Thus harmful mutations are weeded out by the simple fact that those with harmful mutations die (or, more to the point, fail to reproduce).
And I pick a competent web designer, which clearly excludes you.
To code for other browsers as well would take at least 2-3 times as long.
What a load of crap! I can only hope that making such an idiotic claim leads you to a job more suited to your talents, such as one that involves asking your clients, "would you like fries with that?"
It seems they're just a source of funds for smaller entities that do something.
Close. They're not so much a source of funds as a holding pen for funds, as well as for trademarks and other things that need some sort of legal entity to exist in the "real world" (the world of banks and tax collectors and whatnot). They're a non-profit, so donations to the member projects can be tax-deductable.
Basically, SPI is the creation of the Debian project, to give themselves a legal existance. But instead of making it specific to Debian, they decided to create an open-ended organization that could provide similar services to other projects.
And those other entities aren't smaller (except insofar as they're all part of SPI). No, SPI doesn't do much, but it doesn't really need to do much. Debian and Gnome mostly run themselves. But if SPI didn't exist, then we (and by "we," I mean Debian) would have had to invent them. Oh wait, we did!:)
Google is indeed your friend, but its silly to use Google in a case like this when you could just "apt-get install units" (or whatever the equivalent is for your system).
A C++ compiler cannot call itself a C++ compiler if it only has half-ass support for a nearly 5 year old standard!
Which leaves us with the EDG compiler as the only acceptable option? If you're operating under the delusion that g++ meets ISO definitions, you're sadly mistaken. Nobody but EDG has even attempted to implement "export" yet, and g++ still has issues with complex templates.
VC++ 7 is getting better, and the 7.1 beta is supposed to be quite good
I don't know anything about MS compilers except what I read on comp.std.c++ and in the C/C++ Users Journal, but the same thing is true of g++: 3.x is getting better (2.x was really pathetic in terms of C++ standards compliance), but is not there yet. Interestingly, I gather that MS has the lead in library comformance (they get their libraries from P.J. Plauger's company, Dinkumware, rather than attempting to write their own, which probably explains this oddness), but g++ has the lead in compiler conformance. However, both still fall short in their support for this "nearly 5 year old standard".
> MS: OpenSource Bad > OS: Microsoft Bad > Japan: Why?
> MS&OS: Shit good question.
Actually, I think the OS response would be: see here (the open letter from the Peruvian Congressman). And MS will probably have some dubious claims about how untrained monkeys can't necessarily administer linux/bsd boxes.
But I agree that it's a good thing that Japan is allowing all interested parties into the debate.
what would you have said if the headline was the American state of Arkansas, has opted to switch to Linux from Microsoft?
I'd stand up and cheer. Just like I did when the city of Largo announced they were switching to Linux. Sure, it'd be even nicer if it were the whole country of India, but this is still a step in the right direction. The fact is that each one of these small victories adds credibility to this funky free software stuff and makes it that much more likely that the next small group pondering what I'm pondering will go ahead and make the switch to freedom.
Essentially you're saying that you're okay with the monopoly but they shouldn't abuse it.
Yes, that's the whole point. There's nothing wrong with a monopoly, per se. In fact, in many cases, it can be a big advantage (to customers) when a monopoly exists, as it eliminates subtle (and sometimes blatant) differences between different vendors' products. Cisco has been investigated several times by the SEC, and they definitely have a monopoly, but they don't abuse it. Their prices are still reasonable, they don't use tricks to lock out potential competitors, or give themselves an unfair advantage in new markets; they run an open, clean business, and they still provide a quality product at a fair price.
why do you think we buy stuff on the internet? Cheap prices, and no tax!
Uh, no, the factors for most of us, I suspect, are: cheap prices and convenience. No tax is only a factor insofar as it may help cause cheap prices. But on-line merchants have plenty of other ways to keep their prices low and remain competitive.
If we have to pay shipping and tax I will never buy anything online ever again!
So, in order to avoid paying taxes, you're going to shop in ways that require you to pay taxes? (I.e. "brick-and-mortar" stores and catalogs?) You're not even going to bother to see if you can find a better deal on-line when you shop? Then you are, to quote Red Foreman, a dumbass! And you deserve to pay more. Sheesh!
Anway, you probably should visit your local "brick-and-mortar" stores more often. It's good for your local economy.
I'm not going to argue with you, because I mostly agree with you, but it's irrelevent to the point I'm trying to make. Free/Libre/OS software is not some hippie orgy where anyone who whips out their dick can get it wet.
Yes, it helps if you can politic and schmooze -- we are talking about humans here -- but if your code is crap, all the politicking and schmoozing in the world is unlikely to get your code into the "official" tree. This is still NOT a democracy.
Isn't having one person in charge of the official tree against the whole idea of open-source?
No. Almost all open source projects have one person or a small group in charge. Why would this be "against the whole idea"? You're just as free to make your own changes on your own darned computer, no matter how many people are in charge of however many "official" trees. The so-called "official" trees exist merely for the convenience of those who don't want to bother to roll their own each day, and the people in charge of those "official" trees are only in charge because they've earned the trust of those who use their trees.
Shouldn't everyone have input of equal value?
No. This is a meritocracy, not a democracy. The people in charge end up in charge because they've proven themselves by the quality of their work. Remember, an "official tree" only remains "official" as long as people are willing to call it that and treat it as that. "Official tree" in open-source terms is a de-facto label, not a de-jure one.
Or to put it another way, only input of high value is valued highly.
5.submit bug to displayed email address. 6 wait for a few days, get response saying "cannot reproduce, what version are you running, and where did you get it?" 7. send email naming your vendor 8. wait a few more days, get a response saying "vendor must have broken something, talk to them, not us" 9. feel sad at how much time you wasted. 10. contact vendor like you should have done in the first place.
Ex-squeeze me, but what does Opera have to do with a discussion about bug reports for free/libre/OSS projects? If Opera were OSS, then you'd have some options. If the original developers ignore you, you could beg or pay someone else to fix the problem, or take some programming classes and learn to fix it yourself. As it is, you're the one that chose the proprietary solution, so you're stuck, and I hope you weren't expecting any sympathy around here!:)
This is EXTREMELY bad advice! Unless you know for a fact that the bug was not introduced by a vendor patch, there's an excellent chance that the only result will be an annoyed developer who has wasted a bunch of time on a bug that has nothing to do with him, who has just classified you as a clueless twit and who has now added you to his killfile/spamfilter.
ALWAYS start with the vendor, and go to the developer only if a) the vendor advises you to do so, or b) you get no useful response from the vendor (and in the latter case, make sure you mention this fact to the developer, so that he's aware that the bug may not exist in his code).
The only exception is if you've audited the code, and you KNOW the problem is in the developer's code, not the vendor's patches, and even in that case, you should notify the vendor TOO, so that they are aware of the problem, and can take appropriate steps.
That was different: the guy who was reselling Adobe software had not installed it, and had therefore never come under the terms of the EULA. If he had, it might have been a much different story.
K-Mart, OTOH, entered into a contract with MS, and, like it or not, they may be forced to abide by the terms of that contract.
Rather it would be more like the Dept. of Defense selecting a subset from among Debian's not proven-as-unsafe packages, pounding on them till they're proven safe and recontributing the safe packages.
Sort of like the NSA did with the Linux kernel to give us SELinux? That would be nice, but I think it goes far beyond the bounds of what's being discussed here. (Although I can't tell for sure, since the site is slashdotted.) They seem to want a list of what they should be willing to use now. And Debian is not the right place for them to start on compiling such a list.
I think you're missing the Generally part of "Generally Recognized As Safe". Most of the stuff that's GRAS is going to be included in most distributions, simply because it is generally recognized as safe. So, again, they don't have much to win by going with Debian. (Aside from Debian's usual advantages of maintainability and reliability.)
I'm actually quite relieved to see that they don't include csh. I think that's just good sense. As for pdksh, I doubt if even BSDers use it very often, so it probably fails the widely-used test. I actually know of more people that use ash (recently renamed dash), which is originally from NetBSD, but is now found on many other systems (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.)
Slashdot Mirror
Did you miss the part of my post where I talked about the fact that Office is the leading productivity software product for reasons that have nothing to do with Microsoft's monopoly
Repeating a falsehood doesn't make it true -- Office is the leading suite for reasons that have everything to do with MS's abuse of their monopoly in OSes. Ever hear the phrase, "Windows ain't done till Lotus won't run"? WordPefect, Corel, AmiPro, Lotus, and Borland all had products that were higher quality and better selling, at one time, than MS's offerings, and all of them got screwed by MS's games with secret APIs and MS's ability to browbeat hardware vendors.
Office is the most popular productivity product because it's good.
What a load! Office is the most popular because MS held back information on Windows internals that would have allowed its competition (WordPerfect and another formerly very popular word processor whose name I can't even remember now) to match the performance of Word. Thus, WP and whazzit were late to the Windows platform, and slow when they got there. And suddenly WP lost its first place position, and whazzit disappeared completely. A clear case of MS leveraging its monopoly in OSes to take over the word processor market. (Analogous things happened with spreadsheets too.)
If MS has the best office suite now (which Corel/WP users might still argue -- in fact, the ones I know would strongly disagree with this assertion), it's because they cheated. If they'd been competing on level ground, there's no way in hell that WP would have lost its former dominance of the word processor market.
Seems a bit of a paradox there -- he's just an actor, as you say, so why were you so interested in "the way he thinks and feels". Of course, I agree with you that the interesting ones are the writers, but then I grew up in SF fandom, and many well-known SF authors are old family friends. I actually like Shatner more because he doesn't pretend to have great insight into the issues brought up by the writers whose lines he merely mouthed.
GNOME 2 [...] utterly refuses to work if your $HOME is NFS-mounted
No, it refuses to work if your $HOME doesn't support locking (i.e. you use a really old, broken version of NFS). Believe you me, Sun, who invented NFS, has an implementation of NFS that supports locking just fine. They won't have a problem.
Of course, I know from experience that NFS has problems with lots of locks held simultaneously, which may be an issue unless these locks are only held briefly. But surely Sun (who invented NFS) is aware of that, and has looked at the issue. They're not usually that stupid.
I do like Farscape, but it was starting to drag a bit recently, IMO. I've been thinking about it, and if the SciFi channel only has a limited amount of funds for original productions, I'd rather see them work on a few *really* good movies or miniseries, rather than dragging Farscape out even further.
:)
They did an excellent job with Dune (much better than that David Lynch abomination with -- gah -- Sting). And the recent miniseries version of Mists of Avalon was excellent, too. (Ok, it was done by another network -- but it proves that there are people out there who can do good screen adaptations of good SF/Fantasy works. If only they had the money.)
Granted, most of the recent SciFi channel original production movies have sucked -- but then, they've been pouring money into Farscape....
There's a lot of good F&SF out there that could be adapted. I'd love to see a miniseries based on Amber or Ringworld or the Vorkosigan series. If it was even halfway decently done, I'd much prefer it to yet another recycled plot in yet another episode of Farscape.
Where does new genetic information come from?
From random mutations.
If you're talking about the classic "evolution violates Newton's third law" argument, the answer is that Newton's third only applies to closed systems (like the universe). The Earth is not a closed system; it happens to be right next to a powerful energy source: our sun. The "something from nothing" is actually "something from solar energy". (And probably geothermal energy.)
A system which isn't directed towards any goal teleologically goes nowhere.
Or everywhere. An expanding system goes in all directions if it's not directed. And evolution isn't directed. However it is constrained by natural selection. Thus harmful mutations are weeded out by the simple fact that those with harmful mutations die (or, more to the point, fail to reproduce).
And I pick a competent web designer, which clearly excludes you.
To code for other browsers as well would take at least 2-3 times as long.
What a load of crap! I can only hope that making such an idiotic claim leads you to a job more suited to your talents, such as one that involves asking your clients, "would you like fries with that?"
It seems they're just a source of funds for smaller entities that do something.
:)
Close. They're not so much a source of funds as a holding pen for funds, as well as for trademarks and other things that need some sort of legal entity to exist in the "real world" (the world of banks and tax collectors and whatnot). They're a non-profit, so donations to the member projects can be tax-deductable.
Basically, SPI is the creation of the Debian project, to give themselves a legal existance. But instead of making it specific to Debian, they decided to create an open-ended organization that could provide similar services to other projects.
And those other entities aren't smaller (except insofar as they're all part of SPI). No, SPI doesn't do much, but it doesn't really need to do much. Debian and Gnome mostly run themselves. But if SPI didn't exist, then we (and by "we," I mean Debian) would have had to invent them. Oh wait, we did!
about 2,200 US pounds.
2204.6226 according to units(1).
Google is of course your friend
Google is indeed your friend, but its silly to use Google in a case like this when you could just "apt-get install units" (or whatever the equivalent is for your system).
A C++ compiler cannot call itself a C++ compiler if it only has half-ass support for a nearly 5 year old standard!
Which leaves us with the EDG compiler as the only acceptable option? If you're operating under the delusion that g++ meets ISO definitions, you're sadly mistaken. Nobody but EDG has even attempted to implement "export" yet, and g++ still has issues with complex templates.
VC++ 7 is getting better, and the 7.1 beta is supposed to be quite good
I don't know anything about MS compilers except what I read on comp.std.c++ and in the C/C++ Users Journal, but the same thing is true of g++: 3.x is getting better (2.x was really pathetic in terms of C++ standards compliance), but is not there yet. Interestingly, I gather that MS has the lead in library comformance (they get their libraries from P.J. Plauger's company, Dinkumware, rather than attempting to write their own, which probably explains this oddness), but g++ has the lead in compiler conformance. However, both still fall short in their support for this "nearly 5 year old standard".
Geeze, don't you know anything?! :)
> MS: OpenSource Bad
> OS: Microsoft Bad
> Japan: Why?
> MS&OS: Shit good question.
Actually, I think the OS response would be: see here (the open letter from the Peruvian Congressman). And MS will probably have some dubious claims about how untrained monkeys can't necessarily administer linux/bsd boxes.
But I agree that it's a good thing that Japan is allowing all interested parties into the debate.
what would you have said if the headline was the American state of Arkansas, has opted to switch to Linux from Microsoft?
I'd stand up and cheer. Just like I did when the city of Largo announced they were switching to Linux. Sure, it'd be even nicer if it were the whole country of India, but this is still a step in the right direction. The fact is that each one of these small victories adds credibility to this funky free software stuff and makes it that much more likely that the next small group pondering what I'm pondering will go ahead and make the switch to freedom.
Essentially you're saying that you're okay with the monopoly but they shouldn't abuse it.
Yes, that's the whole point. There's nothing wrong with a monopoly, per se. In fact, in many cases, it can be a big advantage (to customers) when a monopoly exists, as it eliminates subtle (and sometimes blatant) differences between different vendors' products. Cisco has been investigated several times by the SEC, and they definitely have a monopoly, but they don't abuse it. Their prices are still reasonable, they don't use tricks to lock out potential competitors, or give themselves an unfair advantage in new markets; they run an open, clean business, and they still provide a quality product at a fair price.
why do you think we buy stuff on the internet? Cheap prices, and no tax!
Uh, no, the factors for most of us, I suspect, are: cheap prices and convenience. No tax is only a factor insofar as it may help cause cheap prices. But on-line merchants have plenty of other ways to keep their prices low and remain competitive.
If we have to pay shipping and tax I will never buy anything online ever again!
So, in order to avoid paying taxes, you're going to shop in ways that require you to pay taxes? (I.e. "brick-and-mortar" stores and catalogs?) You're not even going to bother to see if you can find a better deal on-line when you shop? Then you are, to quote Red Foreman, a dumbass! And you deserve to pay more. Sheesh!
Anway, you probably should visit your local "brick-and-mortar" stores more often. It's good for your local economy.
I'm not going to argue with you, because I mostly agree with you, but it's irrelevent to the point I'm trying to make. Free/Libre/OS software is not some hippie orgy where anyone who whips out their dick can get it wet.
Yes, it helps if you can politic and schmooze -- we are talking about humans here -- but if your code is crap, all the politicking and schmoozing in the world is unlikely to get your code into the "official" tree. This is still NOT a democracy.
Isn't having one person in charge of the official tree against the whole idea of open-source?
:)
No. Almost all open source projects have one person or a small group in charge. Why would this be "against the whole idea"? You're just as free to make your own changes on your own darned computer, no matter how many people are in charge of however many "official" trees. The so-called "official" trees exist merely for the convenience of those who don't want to bother to roll their own each day, and the people in charge of those "official" trees are only in charge because they've earned the trust of those who use their trees.
Shouldn't everyone have input of equal value?
No. This is a meritocracy, not a democracy. The people in charge end up in charge because they've proven themselves by the quality of their work. Remember, an "official tree" only remains "official" as long as people are willing to call it that and treat it as that. "Official tree" in open-source terms is a de-facto label, not a de-jure one.
Or to put it another way, only input of high value is valued highly.
Any more silly questions?
5.submit bug to displayed email address.
6 wait for a few days, get response saying "cannot reproduce, what version are you running, and where did you get it?"
7. send email naming your vendor
8. wait a few more days, get a response saying "vendor must have broken something, talk to them, not us"
9. feel sad at how much time you wasted.
10. contact vendor like you should have done in the first place.
Ex-squeeze me, but what does Opera have to do with a discussion about bug reports for free/libre/OSS projects? If Opera were OSS, then you'd have some options. If the original developers ignore you, you could beg or pay someone else to fix the problem, or take some programming classes and learn to fix it yourself. As it is, you're the one that chose the proprietary solution, so you're stuck, and I hope you weren't expecting any sympathy around here! :)
Try keeping tabs on the biggest information company in the world...
:)
What does IBM have to do with the Microsoft antitrust trial?
Always goto the developer.
This is EXTREMELY bad advice! Unless you know for a fact that the bug was not introduced by a vendor patch, there's an excellent chance that the only result will be an annoyed developer who has wasted a bunch of time on a bug that has nothing to do with him, who has just classified you as a clueless twit and who has now added you to his killfile/spamfilter.
ALWAYS start with the vendor, and go to the developer only if a) the vendor advises you to do so, or b) you get no useful response from the vendor (and in the latter case, make sure you mention this fact to the developer, so that he's aware that the bug may not exist in his code).
The only exception is if you've audited the code, and you KNOW the problem is in the developer's code, not the vendor's patches, and even in that case, you should notify the vendor TOO, so that they are aware of the problem, and can take appropriate steps.
That was different: the guy who was reselling Adobe software had not installed it, and had therefore never come under the terms of the EULA. If he had, it might have been a much different story.
K-Mart, OTOH, entered into a contract with MS, and, like it or not, they may be forced to abide by the terms of that contract.
Not unless the stock certificates come accompanied with the binaries in question. :)
Rather it would be more like the Dept. of Defense selecting a subset from among Debian's not proven-as-unsafe packages, pounding on them till they're proven safe and recontributing the safe packages.
Sort of like the NSA did with the Linux kernel to give us SELinux? That would be nice, but I think it goes far beyond the bounds of what's being discussed here. (Although I can't tell for sure, since the site is slashdotted.) They seem to want a list of what they should be willing to use now. And Debian is not the right place for them to start on compiling such a list.
I think you're missing the Generally part of "Generally Recognized As Safe". Most of the stuff that's GRAS is going to be included in most distributions, simply because it is generally recognized as safe. So, again, they don't have much to win by going with Debian. (Aside from Debian's usual advantages of maintainability and reliability.)
I'm actually quite relieved to see that they don't include csh. I think that's just good sense. As for pdksh, I doubt if even BSDers use it very often, so it probably fails the widely-used test. I actually know of more people that use ash (recently renamed dash), which is originally from NetBSD, but is now found on many other systems (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.)