A good package system should ensure that the required components are installed automatically, when the novice user attempts to install KOffice (or the Gnome equivalent).
The Gnome and KDE groups are working together on common communication protocols, so presumably the applications will (eventually) work together.
However, I do think it would be nice if some of the office projects were combined into project with a single "core" with multiple GUI bindings.
No, but many have come up with compression techniques that are no worse than LZW. The reason the LZW patent is valuable isn't that it is particular good, became in widespread use in many protocols and file formats, because it was well documented and unenforced. When Unisys started enforcing it, alternative algorithms was quickly developed. However, the need to communicate through old LZW based protocols and file formats continues, and thus make the patent valuable.
Somehow, all the patents ends up being owned by companies large enough to afford their own patent lawyers, or companies specializing in patent portfolious. Patents basically allow a few large companies to control an industry with cross-licensing agreements, keeping everybody else out.
Patents doesn't exists because the inventer "deserves" anything, at least not in the US. They exists as an incentive for the inventor to share the invention with others, thus promoting science and art. The US constitution is quite clear about that.
Patents is a violation of peoples freedom (much more so than copyrights, since it also covers independent inventions), and can only be excused if the benefits to science and art are larger than its cost in individual freedom.
For some patents, this might be the case, allthough the period may be too long. But there were plenty of innovation in software before patents, so there are no excuse for those.
It's illegal in Denmark too. The idea is that the police should provent crimes from happening, not provoke crimes to happen. The counter-argument is that certain kind of criminals (drug dealers) are hard to catch without the use of provocateurs. It is one of the hottest political issues in the justice debate.
It boils down to a difference in how you view humans. Are there basically two kinds of people, good honest citizens who would never commit a crime, and evil criminals who will continue to do bad things until caught? Or is it a spectrum with people in between, who will not normally live an honest life, but may be provoked into doing crimes?
I don't know how much of this debate relates to the present case, there seems to be some evidence against the man, besides his conversation with the provocateur.
There is a similar case in Denmark. No verdict yet though. The lawyers persuing the case has always send threathening letters to participants on the Danish newsgroups, apparently based solely on keywords in the articles. One person who got the letter was simply responding to an offtopic article offering warez, asking the author to use the "forsale" groups instead.
Oh, and it is the same lawyers who in the C64 dayes would claim that a 14 year old boy who collected game warez had cost the software publishers $30.000 in lost profits (the combined value of all the games).
> I think, for example, that RMS was absolutely > clear on that one.
Can you give a reference to that claim? It is quite contrary to what he say in other occations, so if he made a cliam in that spirit to the court, it would be quite dishonest.
He was the most visible proponent for "form over content" in the early day, and probably to a large degree responsible for HTML turning into a poor substitute for PDF, and thus ultimately for the web being such a huge popular success.
Sometimes bugs in the code are only triggered when turning on optimization. Since the DEC compiler does much more optimization, it is possible that it triggered some latent bugs in the code.
> 1. Java execution speeds are now approaching > and in some cases exceeding those of compiled C > and C++.
It is a sad statement. Any properly implemented language will exceed C and C++ for programming idioms that are natural for that language, but not for C and C++. Evn AWK does so.
> If you don't believe it's possible, you don't > understand optimization.
The really sad thing is that some people insist that JIT compiled code in general will be able to compete with code compiled with an optimizer that can use as long time as it wants.
Of course, Java compiled to native code by batch compilers should do well.
> 4. Java has more in common with Smalltalk than > with C or C++. That's why serious object > developers use Java and not C++.
And C++ has more in common with Simula-67 than with Smalltalk, that is why serious object developers use C++ and not Smalltalk.
There is no "best choice" unless you are so narrow-minded that you believe one object paradigm (or programming paradigm) is superior independtly of the problem.
> Mozilla will be able to use AIM and ICQ due to > the fact that AOL owns Netscape. Would they > deny their own browser?
Maybe they will only be able in the "branded" Netscape browser. Remember, the MPL does not (by design) prevent anyone from releasing extended proprietary versions of the software.
I fear that would lead to moderation by revenge. "He moderated my post down. He's obviously a jerk, lets see if I can find a message from him who deserves to be moderated down."
Or the opposite. "He moderated my post up. Obviviously a person of good taste, lets see if I can find a good message from him so I can return the favour.".
Well, they are not going to open source it, so it can hardly be a true test of the open source concept. But maybe their "community license" is "close enough" to open source to get some of the benefits anyway.
I don't think we will see significant outside contributions unless they go all the way with open source, but they might see some minor fixes contributed by users.
The gist of the article was the opposite, getting rich wasn't that important, or really a meassure of success. I think it come from growing up in a Nordic country will a working wellfare system. When being poor isn't that bad (being poor doesn't mean you will starve at an old age, lack proper health care, or be unable to afford a good education for your kids), getting rich is no longer so all important.
Re:STUPID! -The survey was from a skewed populatio
on
Delphi for Linux
·
· Score: 2
> 50.9% of people use Delphi.
The pool didn't show that. It showed that 50.9% of the people who answered the pool use Delphi (or are liars).
What Borland (Inprise) can use the pool for, is
1) Get a vague idea of the interest from the absolute numbers.
2) Get an idea of what those people who are interested in both Borland and Linux would like to see most. These will be their "easiest" customers, so that is quite significant.
Porting Delphi first seems like the brigtest move for Borland. They have a lot of existing customers using that, and unlike Java and C++ they are the only provider.
Open Source is anything but central control. It means nobody can force a single vision on the market, anyone can branch out at any time. Control is totally given over to market forces (i.e. the users).
However, as long as the individual need of a majority of the users are better served by options in a single development tree, that is what most users will get. When the users are better served by divergent trees, that will become more widespread.
That is the difference between free software and proprietary systems. With free software, control is in the hand of the users. Including control over when to fork the project. With proprietary software, control is in the hand of the company owning the software.
I suspect suspect the smarter the technology press journalist follows/. closely. So memes originating here might end up in the press. Especially if your name is ESR.
> Just for the record, should I be giving up on > the idea that any female hackerz exist?
No, they do exist! I read an article about a female hacker in Weekly World News. It was in the issue that contained sightnings of both Elvis Presley and the Lock Ness monster.
> I wanted to ask the question: what did the move > of putting Linux under the GPL do for > attracting developers?
It did a lot, because it opened for commercial distributions, which both made Linux available to a lot more users, and directly could help pay developers.
Linux was originally distributed under a license that forbad commercial use, but a potential distributor (the man behind Yggdrasil?) managed to convince Linus that switching to the GPL (and thus allowing commercial use) would be a good thing.
Of course, the real question is what would have been different if Linus had used a BSD like license. Here we can only guess, but I don't think it would have made a great difference for Linux popularity. It would have helped some of the commercial OS'es (like BeOS) since they would then be able to reuse Linux code, it would have helped Hurd since some GPL purists might have insisted on that. It would have mixed influence on the BSDs. Some anti-GPL purists might support Linux instead of BSD, but the BSD's would be able to use Linux code.
More important was the fact the Bill Jolitz, who released the original 386BSD wasn't really well suited for running a Bazaar-style project. At times, his (rare) messages didn't seem sane, and his "press officier" Jesus, Jr, didn't made it better. This meant that the project was delayed until first the NetBSD and later the FreeBSD groups got fed up waiting for him to reelase a new version, and broke away.
The most important thing, in my opinion, was that the BSD developers were highly competent operating system engineers making great personal sacrifices for the cause, while the Linux developers were a bunch of enthusiastic kids having great fun doing what they wanted to do. At least, that was the impression one got from the BSD and Linux newsgroups. There is even some of it left today.
I suspect a lot of potential developers felt like me: I'd rather hang out with the kids who are learning and having fun, than the self-important professionels who are making sacrifices.
Slashdot Mirror
A good package system should ensure that the required components are installed automatically, when the novice user attempts to install KOffice (or the Gnome equivalent).
The Gnome and KDE groups are working together on common communication protocols, so presumably the applications will (eventually) work together.
However, I do think it would be nice if some of the office projects were combined into project with a single "core" with multiple GUI bindings.
No, but many have come up with compression techniques that are no worse than LZW. The reason the LZW patent is valuable isn't that it is particular good, became in widespread use in many protocols and file formats, because it was well documented and unenforced. When Unisys started enforcing it, alternative algorithms was quickly developed. However, the need to communicate through old LZW based protocols and file formats continues, and thus make the patent valuable.
Somehow, all the patents ends up being owned by companies large enough to afford their own patent lawyers, or companies specializing in patent portfolious. Patents basically allow a few large companies to control an industry with cross-licensing agreements, keeping everybody else out.
Patents doesn't exists because the inventer "deserves" anything, at least not in the US. They exists as an incentive for the inventor to share the invention with others, thus promoting science and art. The US constitution is quite clear about that.
Patents is a violation of peoples freedom (much more so than copyrights, since it also covers independent inventions), and can only be excused if the benefits to science and art are larger than its cost in individual freedom.
For some patents, this might be the case, allthough the period may be too long. But there were plenty of innovation in software before patents, so there are no excuse for those.
I suspect the point is that this might just as well help users make a transition from NT to Unix.
It's illegal in Denmark too. The idea is that the police should provent crimes from happening, not provoke crimes to happen. The counter-argument is that certain kind of criminals (drug dealers) are hard to catch without the use of provocateurs. It is one of the hottest political issues in the justice debate.
It boils down to a difference in how you view humans. Are there basically two kinds of people, good honest citizens who would never commit a crime, and evil criminals who will continue to do bad things until caught? Or is it a spectrum with people in between, who will not normally live an honest life, but may be provoked into doing crimes?
I don't know how much of this debate relates to the present case, there seems to be some evidence against the man, besides his conversation with the provocateur.
There is a similar case in Denmark. No verdict yet though. The lawyers persuing the case has always send threathening letters to participants on the Danish newsgroups, apparently based solely on keywords in the articles. One person who got the letter was simply responding to an offtopic article offering warez, asking the author to use the "forsale" groups instead.
Oh, and it is the same lawyers who in the C64 dayes would claim that a 14 year old boy who collected game warez had cost the software publishers $30.000 in lost profits (the combined value of all the games).
> I think, for example, that RMS was absolutely
> clear on that one.
Can you give a reference to that claim? It is quite contrary to what he say in other occations, so if he made a cliam in that spirit to the court, it would be quite dishonest.
Or are you trolling?
The cable "overview" channel at my former residence often showed an Amiga guru screen.
He was the most visible proponent for "form over content" in the early day, and probably to a large degree responsible for HTML turning into a poor substitute for PDF, and thus ultimately for the web being such a huge popular success.
Sometimes bugs in the code are only triggered when turning on optimization. Since the DEC compiler does much more optimization, it is possible that it triggered some latent bugs in the code.
> 1. Java execution speeds are now approaching
> and in some cases exceeding those of compiled C
> and C++.
It is a sad statement. Any properly implemented language will exceed C and C++ for programming idioms that are natural for that language, but not for C and C++. Evn AWK does so.
> If you don't believe it's possible, you don't
> understand optimization.
The really sad thing is that some people insist that JIT compiled code in general will be able to compete with code compiled with an optimizer that can use as long time as it wants.
Of course, Java compiled to native code by batch compilers should do well.
> 4. Java has more in common with Smalltalk than
> with C or C++. That's why serious object
> developers use Java and not C++.
And C++ has more in common with Simula-67 than with Smalltalk, that is why serious object developers use C++ and not Smalltalk.
There is no "best choice" unless you are so narrow-minded that you believe one object paradigm (or programming paradigm) is superior independtly of the problem.
> Mozilla will be able to use AIM and ICQ due to
> the fact that AOL owns Netscape. Would they
> deny their own browser?
Maybe they will only be able in the "branded" Netscape browser. Remember, the MPL does not (by design) prevent anyone from releasing extended proprietary versions of the software.
I fear that would lead to moderation by revenge. "He moderated my post down. He's obviously a jerk, lets see if I can find a message from him who deserves to be moderated down."
Or the opposite. "He moderated my post up. Obviviously a person of good taste, lets see if I can find a good message from him so I can return the favour.".
Well, they are not going to open source it, so it can hardly be a true test of the open source concept. But maybe their "community license" is "close enough" to open source to get some of the benefits anyway.
I don't think we will see significant outside contributions unless they go all the way with open source, but they might see some minor fixes contributed by users.
The gist of the article was the opposite, getting rich wasn't that important, or really a meassure of success. I think it come from growing up in a Nordic country will a working wellfare system. When being poor isn't that bad (being poor doesn't mean you will starve at an old age, lack proper health care, or be unable to afford a good education for your kids), getting rich is no longer so all important.
> 50.9% of people use Delphi.
The pool didn't show that. It showed that 50.9% of the people who answered the pool use Delphi (or are liars).
What Borland (Inprise) can use the pool for, is
1) Get a vague idea of the interest from the absolute numbers.
2) Get an idea of what those people who are interested in both Borland and Linux would like to see most. These will be their "easiest" customers, so that is quite significant.
Porting Delphi first seems like the brigtest move for Borland. They have a lot of existing customers using that, and unlike Java and C++ they are the only provider.
Open Source is anything but central control. It means nobody can force a single vision on the market, anyone can branch out at any time. Control is totally given over to market forces (i.e. the users).
However, as long as the individual need of a majority of the users are better served by options in a single development tree, that is what most users will get. When the users are better served by divergent trees, that will become more widespread.
That is the difference between free software and proprietary systems. With free software, control is in the hand of the users. Including control over when to fork the project. With proprietary software, control is in the hand of the company owning the software.
I suspect suspect the smarter the technology press journalist follows /. closely. So memes originating here might end up in the press. Especially if your name is ESR.
> Geek chicks are so few, that in my school, the
> girls get their pick of the hoardes of geek
> guys.
It reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon, where Dilbert is trying to explain the blessing of being an engineer to a high-school class. (from memory)
Dilbert: And since there are so few female engineers, they have the added advantage of being able to pick among a lot of male engineers for dating.
Girl from class: Would we *have* to date an engineer?
> Just for the record, should I be giving up on
> the idea that any female hackerz exist?
No, they do exist! I read an article about a female hacker in Weekly World News. It was in the issue that contained sightnings of both Elvis Presley and the Lock Ness monster.
CEO? CIO? COO?
Are nerds supposed to know these acronyms?
> 1)GNU yacc/bison thing(I don't know what
> exactly it is)
I strongly suspect it is a gnu.
> I wanted to ask the question: what did the move
> of putting Linux under the GPL do for
> attracting developers?
It did a lot, because it opened for commercial distributions, which both made Linux available to a lot more users, and directly could help pay developers.
Linux was originally distributed under a license that forbad commercial use, but a potential distributor (the man behind Yggdrasil?) managed to convince Linus that switching to the GPL (and thus allowing commercial use) would be a good thing.
Of course, the real question is what would have been different if Linus had used a BSD like license. Here we can only guess, but I don't think it would have made a great difference for Linux popularity. It would have helped some of the commercial OS'es (like BeOS) since they would then be able to reuse Linux code, it would have helped Hurd since some GPL purists might have insisted on that. It would have mixed influence on the BSDs. Some anti-GPL purists might support Linux instead of BSD, but the BSD's would be able to use Linux code.
I don't think the lawsuit was all that important.
More important was the fact the Bill Jolitz, who released the original 386BSD wasn't really well suited for running a Bazaar-style project. At times, his (rare) messages didn't seem sane, and his "press officier" Jesus, Jr, didn't made it better. This meant that the project was delayed until first the NetBSD and later the FreeBSD groups got fed up waiting for him to reelase a new version, and broke away.
The most important thing, in my opinion, was that the BSD developers were highly competent operating system engineers making great personal sacrifices for the cause, while the Linux developers were a bunch of enthusiastic kids having great fun doing what they wanted to do. At least, that was the impression one got from the BSD and Linux newsgroups. There is even some of it left today.
I suspect a lot of potential developers felt like me: I'd rather hang out with the kids who are learning and having fun, than the self-important professionels who are making sacrifices.