To quote from the article: "[Planetary Resources] want to make sure there are available resources in place to ensure a permanent future in space." Our future, eventually, is in space. Whether from global warming, resource exhaustion, or nuclear war, Earth will eventually not be enough. When that day comes, we will be glad some billionaires chose to spend their money on space expansion, instead of building/buying shiny new toys, or hookers and blow.
If we eff up this world we don't deserve to get off. At some point we have to to take a hard look in the mirror and fix ourselves rather than just spreading our misery across the galaxy.
Their web property is just the worst, mail riddled with spam, the whole thing riddled with adds, a hairball of a UI that can't manage to prioritise the three things I did there over the 90 things they are are trying to rape my eye-sockets with.
I left my IT job of running a small non-profit doing video production, creating web apps , pretty much whatever we could come up with to assist small manufacturers compete in the govt. procurement supply chains.
It was a *great* IT job, but I chose to leave it to rehab/restore/remodel older homes and pursue carpentry.
Honestly, it gives me a satisfaction I just wasn't getting in IT. My families reaction was, are you fsking daft??
I redid a first floor full bath for some friends and since then, every morning when they wake up they step out of their second story bedroom, pass by the master bath right across the hall and go downstairs to the bathroom I made to do their morning routine and get ready for their day.
*Nothing* I have done in IT *ever*, has given anyone that much enjoyment.
"The simple truth is that poor people breed like rats, and they're going to drag down the rest of the world."
An even simpler truth is that the average "westerner" consumes an order of magnitude more food (meat diet) and resources (disposable consumer lifestyle) than a whole family or small village from a third world country. source
I don't think the FUD was intended to scare off adoption, they and SCO have been FUD'ing for years; adoption continues to accelerate.
I don't think the FUD is even intended to drive businesses to Novell or collect some (frankly nominal compared to their products profit margins) royalty on GNU/Linux.
I think the FUD is intended to cause enterprise customers to put pressure on Redhat to make a patent agreement.
I think MS is all about dividing the community, "approved" from "unapproved", "hobbyist" from "professional, "authorized" from "infringing"
I think they want to break the FOSS virtuous cycle.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
1991 Bill Gates, Microsoft
The quote above is the primer to what Microsoft is about. It is about "excluding future competitors", plain and simple. Let me make my case for why.
Let's assume FOSS developers do _not_ want to violate the law. As there is not a _single_ instance of _any_ FOSS project being charged (I think we can all agree SCO doesn't count) much less found guilty of violating either copyright or patent, the previous assumption seems valid by any reasonable metric. Certainly the numerous calls to simply point out what might be considered a violation from many quarters would reinforce that assumption, as would the open nature of development. You simply can not expect to succeed with an intentional violation when that violation will exist open to the scrutiny of the entire world.
Now lets go over some hypotheticals.
1) Microsoft's patents are valid. 2) They successfully prosecute someone with deep pockets, let's say IBM. 2) they are awarded the maximum damages possible. 4) There is no counter action.
What could the hypothetical consequences be of those hypotheticals?
1) IBM has (wildly, astronomically high) a charge of 4 billion to pay out, huge bite but they will go on. 2) All offending code has to be adjusted to deal with the patents, lets say it takes a year (again wildly inflated for our hypothetical).
This is an ideal set of hypotheticals and would seem to satisfy the stated desire and requirement of Microsoft toward their fiduciary shareholder responsibility and business 101.
Now for any other company 4 billion would be the lottery but for MS it a quarters proffit. While shipping reduced functionality software would be a blow to FOSS until they deal with rewrites, it won't be a killer. It could stall adoption, it could send some to Novell, it could even eat into the install base. But the truth is it's FOSS, even if all the paid programmers leave, it will continue. In all the countries that haven't yet introduced sw patents, among all the poorer countries that face the choice of reduced functionality software or the increasing difficulty of pirating it will go on.
Microsoft suing and wining doesn't change the rules of the game, it doesn't get them what they want. So what do they want?
MS has a monopoly of some 90% on desktops, market share of some 60% in servers, what about 95% of office suites. This is the bulk of their revenue. Their first directive is to not lose revenue, their second directive is to increase revenue.
There are three primary ways MS can increase revenue (not withstanding the marginal increases to be had from increased efficiencies)
1) Derive more revenue from their current market share. 2) Increase their market share. 3) Successfully enter new markets.
Yea, I know much of this is elementary, bear with me.
Microsoft's ability to increase revenue from current market share comes from two quarters, price increases and reducing piracy levels. The primary constraint on price increases comes from Linux, without it they are once again the lowest price offering (granted OSX as a broken out item is less than XP but as a system it is generally higher). While they have historically drastically undercut UNIX much of the current server market can't support UNIX pricing levels, the point being that for the current installed base there are modest limits to what they can achieve through price increases. Piracy is another matter. If we assume an average global piracy rate of 50% we are talking about real money. To take advantage of tha
Wikipedias's strength is *not* as a collection of authoritative sources but as as an introductory point to a topic, a *starting* point.
For a school to block it is *absurd*, pick just about anything and do a look up on Wikipedia and Google. Which is a better starting point? with Wikipedia you have an outline of the item, generally a presentation of multiple POVs, links for more / other *sources*.
FTFA: MySQL has today refined its licensing scheme from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv2 only", in order to make it an option, not an obligation for the company to move to GPLv3.
FTFA: MySQL has today refined its licensing scheme from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv2 only", in order to make it an option, not an obligation for the company to {allow you to} move to GPLv3.
Gentlemen, I find the continued lack of support for or *even mention* of Linux to be reaching a crisis point with me and others. For a company that built itself on FOSS software this is insulting in the extreme. Your GooglePack FAQ doesn't even *mention* Linux support much less actually provide it.
Gentlemen I am an IT consultant, and I have always steered friends and customers to your services and software, but GNU/Linux is now the primary platform I recommend and unfortunately you all are, through your unwillingness to see beyond the Windows platform, on the verge of of ending up on my very vocal "vendors to avoid" list.
Gentlemen they say you are known by the company you keep, by existing only the Windows platform you are choosing your company.
My hope is that your company will go beyond it's "don't be evil" slogan and actually strive to do good.
The place to start is returning the favor FOSS gave to you, the software that you built your company upon, port your software to the Linux platform.
What the world is thirsty for is not just companies that don't do evil, but companies that do good.
Democracy, freedom, self governance, what ever you want to call it was advanced today. The defeat of EU sw patents was only the secondary victory. The primary victory was the will of individuals and SME's winning out over narrow special interests.
The real struggle isn't whether "we the people" can keep the "powers that be" from screwing us, it's whether we can take control of the governing process and force it to serve it's primary constituents, the majority, "we the people".
And as far as that struggle goes, today was a resounding sucsess.
I had to repost this, why has the patent office done a 180 on patent system reform? Now we can expect it by Christmas, I don't think this present is going to help the elves.
Folks this proposed change has nothing to do with "fixing" the patent system, this would be a whole sale intelectual property land grab.
"The head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has endorsed some key reforms that Congress is scheduled to consider this year."
"Patent Office chief Jon Dudas said Monday that federal law should be changed to award a patent to the first person to file a claim and to permit review of a patent after it is granted. Currently patents are awarded to the first person who concocted the invention, a timeframe that can be difficult to prove."
I love how the "rightfull inventor" has been recast to "first person who concocted the invention", so much for patents being about "protecting inventors", now it seems it will be about protecting "Software Publishers".
No more pesky prior art to slow down the corporate patent factories. It's now going to be about how fast can you file.
These folks won't be satisfied untill independent coders are as bottled up and stripped clean as artists in the music industry. Watch, with MS enthusiasticly onboard patent reform, this will be a pretext to further tilt the process toward large entities, all the while claiming this *is* the much needed reform everyone has been calling for.
"Monday's hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee kicked off a process that's expected to end in new legislation being drafted by the end of the year."
And it's gonna be another bullet-train
"Other legislative possibilities include lengthening the duration of a patent, currently 20 years. "I've begun to wonder whether the time for the patent is an adequate time," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif."
I spent a couple of years as the support for our (small) video dept.
We were running dual proc raided white boxes with a Pinnacle dc 1000/2000 capture card & NT4/2000 Premeire (v.5>6) stack. They were *incredibly* fragile in all combinations.
We ended up hiring a local local VAR Pinnacle support rep. (he was hired for video production not support). He and I had developed a close relationship before he came on board trying to keep these boxes stable, and our close relationship only continued:)
If you go with a windows solution, *read all you can* about the chipset/capture card/editing software combination you are considering. There are some combinations that will work fairly relibly, and others that will make your life hell/ simply not work.
We followed independent Pinnacle (there product support is ABYSMAL) sites, Premier sites, pretty much any site that was devoted to technical issues related to low end video editing on Win.
Bluescreening 6 hours into a 12 hour render does not creat happiness.
My recommendation in order:
1)check out Linux/the links above that I have posted. (I wish the current Linux offerings were avaiable back then)
2)Check out Apple (you will pay more). you can run X-windows & Linux apps on PPC.
3)Thouroghly investigate any windows solution stack you are considering.
Keep in mind that with all the CG and related work increasingly done on Linux at all the major CG houses, Linux will probably improve as a media creation platform faster than Apple or Windows (my 2 cents), and the fact that there is an increasingly mature suite of FOSS tools is added gravy.
"Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. Produce your own CD's. Mix video soundtracks. Experiment with new ideas about music and sound. Generate sound installations for 12 speaker gallery shows. Have Fun.
Ardour capabilities include: multichannel recording, non-linear, non-destructive region based editing with unlimited undo/redo, full automation support, a mixer whose capabilities rival high end hardware consoles, lots of plugins to warp, shift and shape your music, and controllable from hardware control surfaces at the same time as it syncs to timecode. If you've been looking for a tool similar to ProTools, Nuendo, Cubase SX or Sequoia, you might have found it."
"You don't need to install anything, you don't even need an harddisk to run a whole free software operating system running out of the box on your PC! Download the ISO-image, burn your own CD, reboot your machine and you'll get back true love;^)
dyne:bolic is shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and creatives as a practical tool for multimedia production: you can manipulate and broadcast both sound and video with tools to record, edit, encode and stream, having automatically recognized most device and peripherals: audio, video, TV, network cards, firewire, usb and more; all using only free software!
...
Some interesting features:
* user friendly, intuitive and funky desktop interface
* full of creative tools for audio/video multimedia production
* no need to install, partition or change data on harddisk
* it will work even if you have Micro$oft Winblows
* automatic hardware recognition and configuration:
network cards, sound cards, BTTV video cards, firewire, USB devices and more...
* all harddisks are mounted and fully accessible
* works on old pentium1 as well on XBOX game console
* can save your data and settings in one encrypted file
on your harddisk or usb storage device (nesting)
* does automatic clustering with other dyne:bolic on the
net, to join the CPU power of multiple computers
* handcrafted by experienced software artisans making their own applications since years: dyne:bolic is not based on any other distribution, is unique!
Applications included
The graphical environment is XFree86 with WindowMaker which offers a fresh level of interaction which distincts dyne:bolic from other common graphical environments.
Dyne:bolic includes lots of software, result of the great work being done by the GNU/Linux free software community thru the past 15 years. To mention just a few of them:
Mp4Live, lets you stream mpeg4 audio and video on darwin server | FreeJ, to perform on video livesets as a freejay | MuSE, to mix and stream your voice and sound files live on the net HasciiCam, to have a cool (h)ascii webcam, also on low bandwidth | TerminatorX, GDam, SoundTracker and PD, to perform with live audio | Kino, Cinelerra and LiVES, to edit video and publish clips | Audacity and ReZound, to edit audio and add effects on it | Gimp, the GNU image manipulation software to edit your pictures | Blender, one of the most powerful 3d modeling and rendering tools | AbiWord and Ted, to read edit and save any kind of word files | Bluefish, to generate and edit your html webpages | Sylpheed and Gpa, to send and receive mails, with full encryption | Lopster, which lets you do filesharing over winmx and gnutella | Samba, to easily exchange data over shared directories in LANs | XChat, linphone and other messaging softwares for fast comunication | VNC and RDesktop to remotely access any Win or Unix desktop | Lots of network tools, for analysis and poweruser access to the net | Xfe, an intuitive local file browser recognizing all file types | GCombust, to easily burn data on CDs on machines with a cd-burner | XRmap, to easily browse the world geography and the CIA factbook | And, last but not least, lots of great games also to be played in multiplayer mode, online with your friends running dyne:bolic!"
Folks this is not about controlling crime! This is about controlling period! This is about achieving the high levels of profit that can only come when choice is removed, this is about controlling the incredibly powerfull tools that are the computer and the internet. Major companies want to ensure that it is their base that translates into these new mediums and even more importantly that all new tech developments can be controlled and funneled through themselves. And the advances they don't like can be blocked from getting out, certainly blocked from giving rise to new competition.
As far as most companies are concerned "we the people" are no more than disposable labor and the income source, "we the people" should be compensated as little as possible and charged as much as we can bear. This serves the purpose of not only "maximizing profit" but also preventing the formation of new capital pools, which can reduce the need of the individual on the employer and give rise to new collective ventures not controlled by existing players.
This is about removing the "free" from the "free flow of information".
As a solution to the Free/Need Money dilema why not release new code as proprietary for a period of time, say one, two, three years, after which it converts to GPL? Hardwire the change clause in the liscence. Not unlike a Patent. Yes I generally think the state of patents in this contry is abysmal.
The issue that I am sure is bothering Bruce Perens is one of infringment.
Imagine if u voluntarily wrote some code, some "free and open" code, and some one came along and used your code in a derivitive work and then released it as a proprietary product? Would that violate the letter of the law? It depends on the agreements in place; pehaps, and if so that conduct would be actionable (sueable). Would it violate the "spirtit" of rightness (which is what existing and future laws seek to codify), that is to be determined by the damaged party(ies).
Who are the damaged parties here? Bruce Perens, all minors wishing to "freely acquire" the Corel Linux distribution, perhaps Debian as a whole, many in the Linux Community, and perhaps the GPL itself.
Have these parties been damaged in the letter of the law, excerpts of the GPL seem to indicate yes. More importantly these parties indicate that the "spirit of rightness" HAS been violated.
And here is the issue, and the need, and the danger.
The issue is Freedom. Freedom is the cornerstone of GNU/Linux, the GPL, the Community, and Debian, the primary principle that permeates the entire existence or all these entities. Corel's inclusion of the "no minors" clause is a fundamental violation of this principle. An entire segment of the population is having their "right" denied, for the benefit of Corel (whatever Corel might determine those benifits to be).
Bruce Perens has seen the need and responded. The need to uphold the principle of Freedom, the principle of Debian, GNU/Linux, the GPL, and his own sense of rightness, (my sense or rightness as well). Corel, a relative newcommer to the Community, a desperate benificary of the Community, has violated the guiding principle of the Community. If he does not speak up, if I do not, if U do not speak up then the Community and its freedom begin to be altered, reduced. It is up to each of us and all of us to stand up for both the letter and the spirit of our freedom, lest it be lost.
Corel is one of the first "outside" companies to join the Community, soon there will be tens of thousands. I am one of the "new users", soon there will be BILLIONS. The danger is that all these companies and all these users.flowing into the Community will remake the Community in their image and that image is one of division, competition, controll, and restriction. The danger is that the principles and ethics of the Community will be drowned. The danger is that the Spirit will be lost.
While the loss of freedom in this case seems to be limited to "minors" "downloading" a particular distribution of the Community's software, in the truest sense the greatest loss is that of self-determination. A single company is dictating the rights that the Community may posess. According to Corel our children no longer have the right to "freely acquire" what the Community itself has developed, and we no longer have the right to allow them this freedom.
Wheather or not the letter or the GPL has been violated,the spirit of the Community has, and that is the infringement.
I expect Red Hat's share price in twelve months time, and the number of linux systems deployed in all segments of the field will suffice as editorial to that column.
I will just keep learning and sharing and supporting GNU/Linux and the ideals and institutions of the Community and reality will take care of that silliness.
"If a man spits at the face of the Sun, what effect upon the Sun?"
I expect Red Hat's share price in twelve months time, and the number of linux systems deployed in all segments of the field will suffice as editorial to that column.
I will just keep learning and sharing and supporting GNU/Linux and the ideals and institutions of the Community and reality will take care of that sillyness.
"If a man spits at the face of the Sun, what effect upon the Sun?"
"Metrowerks validated and QAed the first version of CodeWarrior for Linux GNU Edition against the RedHat distro. Metrowerks is also currently validating against other distros such as SuSe and Caldera as additional supported distros. Nothing in any of our agreements with RedHat preclude us from validating and distributing against other distros, rather this is a question of resource allocation to get the validation and distribution tasks into gear.
We'll remedy this in the near future.
Best regards,
-GregG"
A thoughtful and sensible reply.
I think there is validity to a couple of the arguments here. It IS good that Red Hat and MetroWerks have collaborated to bring a valuable programming IDE to a great platform (Linux). As long as this is a positive FIRST step, and not a collusive agreement that would ultimately cause harm to the Linux Community in general and individual vendors in particular. I believe it is our responsibility to simply and politely let Vendors and Distributors know that we are a part of a community and that we will support ONLY entities that are also "open" and supportive of the larger Community in which they exist. If we just do this and strengthen the constuctive dialog among ourselves and our organizations we will win through as a community, rather than being reduced to isolated "customers" which many of us have revolted against.
Slashdot Mirror
To quote from the article: "[Planetary Resources] want to make sure there are available resources in place to ensure a permanent future in space." Our future, eventually, is in space. Whether from global warming, resource exhaustion, or nuclear war, Earth will eventually not be enough. When that day comes, we will be glad some billionaires chose to spend their money on space expansion, instead of building/buying shiny new toys, or hookers and blow.
If we eff up this world we don't deserve to get off. At some point we have to to take a hard look in the mirror and fix ourselves rather than just spreading our misery across the galaxy.
Their web property is just the worst, mail riddled with spam, the whole thing riddled with adds, a hairball of a UI that can't manage to prioritise the three things I did there over the 90 things they are are trying to rape my eye-sockets with.
just a friggin mess...
"But if as it is, I agree the decision was stupid, but non-obviously so."
Man, step back a minute and think about that.
Strip searching a 13 year old is "non-obviously" stupid. How did we get here? How has it come to this?
This is dangerously stupid, obviously dangerously stupid.
The decision making flow chart should have gone something like this...
---
Are we seeking...
A) a weapon (with or without a dead body in study hall)
or
B) a *dangerous* & *illegal* substance
If yes...
a) call Parents
and
b) call police
Are we seeking...
A) anything else
If yes...
a) call Parents
---
Strip searching does not *belong* in this flow chart. Ever. Full stop.
Anything other than a normal day at school should involve the parents, always. If necessary the police, but never the school stripping a child.
I left my IT job of running a small non-profit doing video production, creating web apps , pretty much whatever we could come up with to assist small manufacturers compete in the govt. procurement supply chains.
It was a *great* IT job, but I chose to leave it to rehab/restore/remodel older homes and pursue carpentry.
Honestly, it gives me a satisfaction I just wasn't getting in IT. My families reaction was, are you fsking daft??
I redid a first floor full bath for some friends and since then, every morning when they wake up they step out of their second story bedroom, pass by the master bath right across the hall and go downstairs to the bathroom I made to do their morning routine and get ready for their day.
*Nothing* I have done in IT *ever*, has given anyone that much enjoyment.
You could check this out...
http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/09/minds-meet-to-mull-linux-marketing.html
We are the ones doing the dragging.
I don't think the FUD was intended to scare off adoption, they and SCO have been FUD'ing for years; adoption continues to accelerate.
I don't think the FUD is even intended to drive businesses to Novell or collect some (frankly nominal compared to their products profit margins) royalty on GNU/Linux.
I think the FUD is intended to cause enterprise customers to put pressure on Redhat to make a patent agreement.
I think MS is all about dividing the community, "approved" from "unapproved", "hobbyist" from "professional, "authorized" from "infringing"
I think they want to break the FOSS virtuous cycle.
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today. ... The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
1991 Bill Gates, Microsoft
The quote above is the primer to what Microsoft is about. It is about "excluding future competitors", plain and simple. Let me make my case for why.
Let's assume FOSS developers do _not_ want to violate the law. As there is not a _single_ instance of _any_ FOSS project being charged (I think we can all agree SCO doesn't count) much less found guilty of violating either copyright or patent, the previous assumption seems valid by any reasonable metric. Certainly the numerous calls to simply point out what might be considered a violation from many quarters would reinforce that assumption, as would the open nature of development. You simply can not expect to succeed with an intentional violation when that violation will exist open to the scrutiny of the entire world.
Now lets go over some hypotheticals.
1) Microsoft's patents are valid.
2) They successfully prosecute someone with deep pockets, let's say IBM.
2) they are awarded the maximum damages possible.
4) There is no counter action.
What could the hypothetical consequences be of those hypotheticals?
1) IBM has (wildly, astronomically high) a charge of 4 billion to pay out, huge bite but they will go on.
2) All offending code has to be adjusted to deal with the patents, lets say it takes a year (again wildly inflated for our hypothetical).
This is an ideal set of hypotheticals and would seem to satisfy the stated desire and requirement of Microsoft toward their fiduciary shareholder responsibility and business 101.
Now for any other company 4 billion would be the lottery but for MS it a quarters proffit. While shipping reduced functionality software would be a blow to FOSS until they deal with rewrites, it won't be a killer. It could stall adoption, it could send some to Novell, it could even eat into the install base. But the truth is it's FOSS, even if all the paid programmers leave, it will continue. In all the countries that haven't yet introduced sw patents, among all the poorer countries that face the choice of reduced functionality software or the increasing difficulty of pirating it will go on.
Microsoft suing and wining doesn't change the rules of the game, it doesn't get them what they want. So what do they want?
MS has a monopoly of some 90% on desktops, market share of some 60% in servers, what about 95% of office suites. This is the bulk of their revenue. Their first directive is to not lose revenue, their second directive is to increase revenue.
There are three primary ways MS can increase revenue (not withstanding the marginal increases to be had from increased efficiencies)
1) Derive more revenue from their current market share.
2) Increase their market share.
3) Successfully enter new markets.
Yea, I know much of this is elementary, bear with me.
Microsoft's ability to increase revenue from current market share comes from two quarters, price increases and reducing piracy levels. The primary constraint on price increases comes from Linux, without it they are once again the lowest price offering (granted OSX as a broken out item is less than XP but as a system it is generally higher). While they have historically drastically undercut UNIX much of the current server market can't support UNIX pricing levels, the point being that for the current installed base there are modest limits to what they can achieve through price increases. Piracy is another matter. If we assume an average global piracy rate of 50% we are talking about real money. To take advantage of tha
Wikipedias's strength is *not* as a collection of authoritative sources but as as an introductory point to a topic, a *starting* point.
For a school to block it is *absurd*, pick just about anything and do a look up on Wikipedia and Google. Which is a better starting point? with Wikipedia you have an outline of the item, generally a presentation of multiple POVs, links for more / other *sources*.
Wikipedia is a great *starting point*.
FTFA: MySQL has today refined its licensing scheme from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv2 only", in order to make it an option, not an obligation for the company to move to GPLv3.
FTFA: MySQL has today refined its licensing scheme from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv2 only", in order to make it an option, not an obligation for the company to {allow you to} move to GPLv3.
the un-spun version
...folks to spend $1000 per device, I like this option. ;)
Linux support verbal or otherwise
Gentlemen, I find the continued lack of support for or *even mention* of Linux to be reaching a crisis point with me and others. For a company that built itself on FOSS software this is insulting in the extreme. Your GooglePack FAQ doesn't even *mention* Linux support much less actually provide it.
Gentlemen I am an IT consultant, and I have always steered friends and customers to your services and software, but GNU/Linux is now the primary platform I recommend and unfortunately you all are, through your unwillingness to see beyond the Windows platform, on the verge of of ending up on my very vocal "vendors to avoid" list.
Gentlemen they say you are known by the company you keep, by existing only the Windows platform you are choosing your company.
My hope is that your company will go beyond it's "don't be evil" slogan and actually strive to do good.
The place to start is returning the favor FOSS gave to you, the software that you built your company upon, port your software to the Linux platform.
What the world is thirsty for is not just companies that don't do evil, but companies that do good.
It's time to do good.
Clifton Hyatt
Democracy, freedom, self governance, what ever you want to call it was advanced today. The defeat of EU sw patents was only the secondary victory. The primary victory was the will of individuals and SME's winning out over narrow special interests.
The real struggle isn't whether "we the people" can keep the "powers that be" from screwing us, it's whether we can take control of the governing process and force it to serve it's primary constituents, the majority, "we the people".
And as far as that struggle goes, today was a resounding sucsess.
I had to repost this, why has the patent office done a 180 on patent system reform? Now we can expect it by Christmas, I don't think this present is going to help the elves.
Folks this proposed change has nothing to do with "fixing" the patent system, this would be a whole sale intelectual property land grab.
"The head of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has endorsed some key reforms that Congress is scheduled to consider this year."
"Patent Office chief Jon Dudas said Monday that federal law should be changed to award a patent to the first person to file a claim and to permit review of a patent after it is granted. Currently patents are awarded to the first person who concocted the invention, a timeframe that can be difficult to prove."
I love how the "rightfull inventor" has been recast to "first person who concocted the invention", so much for patents being about "protecting inventors", now it seems it will be about protecting "Software Publishers".
No more pesky prior art to slow down the corporate patent factories. It's now going to be about how fast can you file.
These folks won't be satisfied untill independent coders are as bottled up and stripped clean as artists in the music industry. Watch, with MS enthusiasticly onboard patent reform, this will be a pretext to further tilt the process toward large entities, all the while claiming this *is* the much needed reform everyone has been calling for.
"Monday's hearing before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee kicked off a process that's expected to end in new legislation being drafted by the end of the year."
And it's gonna be another bullet-train
"Other legislative possibilities include lengthening the duration of a patent, currently 20 years. "I've begun to wonder whether the time for the patent is an adequate time," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif."
Yea, it *can* get worse.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5683954.html
I spent a couple of years as the support for our (small) video dept.
:)
We were running dual proc raided white boxes with a Pinnacle dc 1000/2000 capture card & NT4/2000 Premeire (v.5>6) stack. They were *incredibly* fragile in all combinations.
We ended up hiring a local local VAR Pinnacle support rep. (he was hired for video production not support). He and I had developed a close relationship before he came on board trying to keep these boxes stable, and our close relationship only continued
If you go with a windows solution, *read all you can* about the chipset/capture card/editing software combination you are considering. There are some combinations that will work fairly relibly, and others that will make your life hell/ simply not work.
We followed independent Pinnacle (there product support is ABYSMAL) sites, Premier sites, pretty much any site that was devoted to technical issues
related to low end video editing on Win.
Bluescreening 6 hours into a 12 hour render does not creat happiness.
My recommendation in order:
1)check out Linux/the links above that I have posted. (I wish the current Linux offerings were avaiable back then)
2)Check out Apple (you will pay more). you can run X-windows & Linux apps on PPC.
3)Thouroghly investigate any windows solution stack you are considering.
Keep in mind that with all the CG and related work increasingly done on Linux at all the major CG houses, Linux will probably improve as a media creation platform faster than Apple or Windows (my 2 cents), and the fact that there is an increasingly mature suite of FOSS tools is added gravy.
good luck.
"Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. Produce your own CD's. Mix video soundtracks. Experiment with new ideas about music and sound. Generate sound installations for 12 speaker gallery shows. Have Fun.
Ardour capabilities include: multichannel recording, non-linear, non-destructive region based editing with unlimited undo/redo, full automation support, a mixer whose capabilities rival high end hardware consoles, lots of plugins to warp, shift and shape your music, and controllable from hardware control surfaces at the same time as it syncs to timecode. If you've been looking for a tool similar to ProTools, Nuendo, Cubase SX or Sequoia, you might have found it."
source
"You don't need to install anything, you don't even need an harddisk to run a whole free software operating system running out of the box on your PC! Download the ISO-image, burn your own CD, reboot your machine and you'll get back true love ;^)
...
dyne:bolic is shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and creatives as a practical tool for multimedia production: you can manipulate and broadcast both sound and video with tools to record, edit, encode and stream, having automatically recognized most device and peripherals: audio, video, TV, network cards, firewire, usb and more; all using only free software!
Some interesting features:
* user friendly, intuitive and funky desktop interface
* full of creative tools for audio/video multimedia production
* no need to install, partition or change data on harddisk
* it will work even if you have Micro$oft Winblows
* automatic hardware recognition and configuration: network cards, sound cards, BTTV video cards, firewire, USB devices and more...
* all harddisks are mounted and fully accessible
* works on old pentium1 as well on XBOX game console
* can save your data and settings in one encrypted file on your harddisk or usb storage device (nesting)
* does automatic clustering with other dyne:bolic on the net, to join the CPU power of multiple computers
* handcrafted by experienced software artisans making their own applications since years: dyne:bolic is not based on any other distribution, is unique!
Applications included
The graphical environment is XFree86 with WindowMaker which offers a fresh level of interaction which distincts dyne:bolic from other common graphical environments.
Dyne:bolic includes lots of software, result of the great work being done by the GNU/Linux free software community thru the past 15 years. To mention just a few of them:
Mp4Live, lets you stream mpeg4 audio and video on darwin server | FreeJ, to perform on video livesets as a freejay | MuSE, to mix and stream your voice and sound files live on the net HasciiCam, to have a cool (h)ascii webcam, also on low bandwidth | TerminatorX, GDam, SoundTracker and PD, to perform with live audio | Kino, Cinelerra and LiVES, to edit video and publish clips | Audacity and ReZound, to edit audio and add effects on it | Gimp, the GNU image manipulation software to edit your pictures | Blender, one of the most powerful 3d modeling and rendering tools | AbiWord and Ted, to read edit and save any kind of word files | Bluefish, to generate and edit your html webpages | Sylpheed and Gpa, to send and receive mails, with full encryption | Lopster, which lets you do filesharing over winmx and gnutella | Samba, to easily exchange data over shared directories in LANs | XChat, linphone and other messaging softwares for fast comunication | VNC and RDesktop to remotely access any Win or Unix desktop | Lots of network tools, for analysis and poweruser access to the net | Xfe, an intuitive local file browser recognizing all file types | GCombust, to easily burn data on CDs on machines with a cd-burner | XRmap, to easily browse the world geography and the CIA factbook | And, last but not least, lots of great games also to be played in multiplayer mode, online with your friends running dyne:bolic!"
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Folks this is not about controlling crime! This is about controlling period!
This is about achieving the high levels of profit that can only come when choice is removed, this is about controlling the incredibly powerfull tools that are the computer and the internet. Major companies want to ensure that it is their base that translates into these new mediums and even more importantly that all new tech developments can be controlled and funneled through themselves. And the advances they don't like can be blocked from getting out, certainly blocked from giving rise to new competition.
As far as most companies are concerned "we the people" are no more than disposable labor and the income source, "we the people" should be compensated as little as possible and charged as much as we can bear. This serves the purpose of not only "maximizing profit" but also preventing the formation of new capital pools, which can reduce the need of the individual on the employer and give rise to new collective ventures not controlled by existing players.
This is about removing the "free" from the "free flow of information".
and that's "speach" as well as in "beer".
mowa
As a solution to the Free/Need Money dilema why not release new code as proprietary for a period of time, say one, two, three years, after which it converts to GPL? Hardwire the change clause in the liscence. Not unlike a Patent. Yes I generally think the state of patents in this contry is abysmal.
The issue that I am sure is bothering Bruce Perens is one of infringment.
Imagine if u voluntarily wrote some code, some "free and open" code, and some one came along and used your code in a derivitive work and then released it as a proprietary product? Would that violate the letter of the law? It depends on the agreements in place; pehaps, and if so that conduct would be actionable (sueable). Would it violate the "spirtit" of rightness (which is what existing and future laws seek to codify), that is to be determined by the damaged party(ies).
Who are the damaged parties here? Bruce Perens, all minors wishing to "freely acquire" the Corel Linux distribution, perhaps Debian as a whole, many in the Linux Community, and perhaps the GPL itself.
Have these parties been damaged in the letter of the law, excerpts of the GPL seem to indicate yes. More importantly these parties indicate that the "spirit of rightness" HAS been violated.
And here is the issue, and the need, and the danger.
The issue is Freedom. Freedom is the cornerstone of GNU/Linux, the GPL, the Community, and Debian, the primary principle that permeates the entire existence or all these entities. Corel's inclusion of the "no minors" clause is a fundamental violation of this principle. An entire segment of the population is having their "right" denied, for the benefit of Corel (whatever Corel might determine those benifits to be).
Bruce Perens has seen the need and responded. The need to uphold the principle of Freedom, the principle of Debian, GNU/Linux, the GPL, and his own sense of rightness, (my sense or rightness as well). Corel, a relative newcommer to the Community, a desperate benificary of the Community, has violated the guiding principle of the Community. If he does not speak up, if I do not, if U do not speak up then the Community and its freedom begin to be altered, reduced. It is up to each of us and all of us to stand up for both the letter and the spirit of our freedom, lest it be lost.
Corel is one of the first "outside" companies to join the Community, soon there will be tens of thousands. I am one of the "new users", soon there will be BILLIONS. The danger is that all these companies and all these users.flowing into the Community will remake the Community in their image and that image is one of division, competition, controll, and restriction. The danger is that the principles and ethics of the Community will be drowned. The danger is that the Spirit will be lost.
While the loss of freedom in this case seems to be limited to "minors" "downloading" a particular distribution of the Community's software, in the truest sense the greatest loss is that of self-determination. A single company is dictating the rights that the Community may posess. According to Corel our children no longer have the right to "freely acquire" what the Community itself has developed, and we no longer have the right to allow them this freedom.
Wheather or not the letter or the GPL has been violated,the spirit of the Community has, and that is the infringement.
The Freedom's The Thing.
mowa
I expect Red Hat's share price in twelve months time, and the number of linux systems deployed in all segments of the field will suffice as editorial to that column.
I will just keep learning and sharing and supporting GNU/Linux and the ideals and institutions of the Community and reality will take care of that silliness.
"If a man spits at the face of the Sun, what effect upon the Sun?"
I expect Red Hat's share price in twelve months time, and the number of linux systems deployed in all segments of the field will suffice as editorial to that column.
I will just keep learning and sharing and supporting GNU/Linux and the ideals and institutions of the Community and reality will take care of that sillyness.
"If a man spits at the face of the Sun, what effect upon the Sun?"
First from Metrowerks president himself:
"Metrowerks validated and QAed the first version of CodeWarrior for Linux
GNU Edition against the RedHat distro. Metrowerks is also currently
validating against other distros such as SuSe and Caldera as additional
supported distros. Nothing in any of our agreements with RedHat preclude us
from validating and distributing against other distros, rather this is a
question of resource allocation to get the validation and distribution tasks
into gear.
We'll remedy this in the near future.
Best regards,
-GregG"
A thoughtful and sensible reply.
I think there is validity to a couple of the arguments here. It IS good that Red Hat and MetroWerks have collaborated to bring a valuable programming IDE to a great platform (Linux). As long as this is a positive FIRST step, and not a collusive agreement that would ultimately cause harm to the Linux Community in general and individual vendors in particular.
I believe it is our responsibility to simply and politely let Vendors and Distributors know that we are a part of a community and that we will support ONLY entities that are also "open" and supportive of the larger Community in which they exist.
If we just do this and strengthen the constuctive dialog among ourselves and our organizations we will win through as a community, rather than being reduced to isolated "customers" which many of us have revolted against.
Peace,
mowa