If the US outlaws open source (although I'm having a really hard time thinking how that would hold up in court) development would just shift elsewhere. Open source stuff doesn't have to be written in the US. And if they outlaw USE of open source software in the US, I'm outta here. Canada isn't that cold. Either way, the uproar over the DVD thing would be NOTHING compared to the response if they tried to kill the open source community.
Yeah, but biological systems are really tough to control. Plan and result aren't always the same thing. Whenever we monkey with something, there are unintended consequences. That's what I'm afraid of here.
Great as long as it stays within the plant. Complicated systems are unpredictable and EXTREMELY difficult to contain. If you concentrate large amounts of this bacteria, and an accident occurs and some get out, the problem is difficult to fix. It's great in theory, but I don't trust anybody's ability to maintain a system like that indefinitely. (Think a certain power plant in Russia... and a mistake here wouldn't be so easy to detect) Biological systems can be worse than nuclear power - they keep reproducing. And you don't have to engineer a bacteria in order for it to cause trouble - accidently introducing a large number of natural bacteria can also cause trouble. Especially if the larger numbers means the odds for mutation go up dramatically.
The critique is not of the theory, but the virtual impossibility of safe implimentation. Sorry, I wasn't terribly clear before. In this game, good theory and safe implimentation are both needed for an idea to be worth serious consideration. If it can be done, I'm all for it. It is a clever idea.
Any such artificial attempt to restore equilibrium in a natural system runs the risk of overcorrecting and causing more trouble than originally existed. In any complex system such as the atmosphere, the law of unintended consequences is pretty much guaranteed to rear it's ugly head. The proper course of action with regards to greenhouse gas is to lower our emissions and let nature clean out the excesses through natural processes. Unfortunately, that's a long term approach that requires our inconvenience, and therefore not possible until crisis occurs.
Actually, I don't think the gnome project was responsible for the Gimp or GnuCash. Sawfish, as far as I know, was an independant project initially that worked out REAL well. (Feel free to correct me on that last point - it's based on what I remember from way back when it was starting out as Sawmill.) However, your overall point is good. I will quite happily use either, usually mixing applications between the two.
Such services are great. They are convenient, help us find info faster, and provide services. But if they ever grow too limited or hostile to certain segments of the internet, we are not bound by them. They have no legal claim on the internet. A new service would form, without the limitations. I don't tend to worry about any such company - they can only ever be one component of the internet, and not THE internet. There is no possibility of full control - too many countries, too many people, and too much individuality. Also, the law, while often as much a hinderance as a help, can in some cases prove to be a useful weapon against corporate tatics. Microsoft is being hurt more by the ongoing court case than it ever would be by a breakup of OS and applications. So don't worry, just retain the independant instinct and avoid what you dislike. That's the beauty of internet. There is no one door, and even if AOL trys to become the eight hundred pound monster the way Microsoft has in OS there will always be alternatives. Seek them out and encourage them. Competition is the ultimate weapon and security.
denemo.sourceforge.net is the location of the most advanced GUI for Lilypond. It's good, but development seems to have stalled a little of late. Anyway, even at 0.5 or whatever, it will almost certainly help with the job of note typesetting. Complex formating will need to be done by hand. Denemo is designed with that editing model in mind - rough it out in the GUI, then go in and apply the finishing touches by hand.
First, there have to be a lot more submissions and it has to be very clear where they came from and that they are legal. CHECK, CHECK, CHECK to make sure that is true. Then, check again. Remember if this actually starts to hurt a company's business the lawyers will swarm like sharks.
Second, once the project has matured, the word needs to be put out to schools. They will gain the most immediate benefit, and be the most worthwhile talent pool to develop. Students may eventually contribute original work to the project, so lets get the name out! Of course, the hard part is reaching people without having the project dismissed as a scam. Hmmm. I suppose some teachers union can be notified, and have them spread the word. Anyway, that's important, but for the future. Right now, lets find those unedited sheets and typeset some music!
Very few scientists will ever state anything as an absolute certainty, especially when there isn't much experimental evidence to back them up, and any who would do so about such a complex and little understood system as the climate problem are likely oversteping their bounds.
I'll give you an example from physics. Time, over most of history, was considered absolute in it's rate of passage, regardless of circumstances or measurement conditions. Wrong! Bad assumption. We can actually make experiments using precise atomic clocks which show that time rates are slower in moving planes relative to the ground. (Not by much, but enough.) Assumption, however "obvious," didn't hold up. Ask any physics professor or read about it in reference books if you don't buy it.
That's why most scientists will neither confirm or deny global warming. They honestly don't know! It is easy for the public to demand answers, but sometimes we just do not know. The intelligent thing to do is reduce our waste output where possible, strive to be more efficient, and keep learning. That's where hope and answers lie.
"For all practical purposes we have Quick books on Linux now. There is no longer much of a financial incentive for a Linux port."
There's not an incentive regardless. A port is a major, expensive effort, and maintaining multiple versions on multiple platforms is even more so. In order for this to happen, there have to be enough paying users to support the effort. Linux doesn't have that many users. Even if it did, there's always the chance of an open source project springing up and grabing away market share and making the port one expensive liability with little hope of profit. There are going to have to be a LOT more Linux users, of a different and less geeky caliber, before any industry trends begin to shift. It's the classic chicken-egg problem; it's just going to take time.
As for the Hurd, it's time will come. When hardware is sufficiently fast so that no one cares about the communication overhead of the microkernal idea, it should make things a lot easier to manage, as well as offer some potentially amazing abilities. V6 works fine for some things, but there's a reason the V8 exists. In any case, we have no business being anything but supportive. It's free software, it's open source, and no one ever guaranteed anything - we can afford to be patient. If new technology is not encouraged, there could come a time when we will find ourselves where OS/2 is now. It's like science - yes, the research may look useless now, but in 20 someone finds a way to use it, and it changes the world. (See the history of of the laser, or feedback in electronic circuits for a really good example - the patent office thought the guy was insane.)
PLEASE don't merge it into Staroffice/OpenOffice. That code is superbloated. Recommendations:
Create a GUI from scratch (or borrowing code whenever appropriate or useful) designed specifically for this type of document creation. Unless the GUI works well for the job, you won't convince people to use it. This is another reason to avoide merging with OpenOffice - that interface is designed for a different job. (And is still SLOW.)
If possible, write the GUI code so it can be compiled against multiple toolkits. I know this is difficult, and if it proves to be too much trouble then don't give it priority, but that way people can have a KDE version, GTK version, etc. Personally, if you had to pick one toolkit, I would choose something like the Fast Light Tool Kit. Speed of interface is a Good Thing.
Of course, this is just me talking. Do it however you want to - that's the beauty of open source. In any case, good luck and lets give all the support we can!
That could be a great start for linux to enable Optical Character Recognition in it's scanning programs. If you think about it, if you can recognize handwriting, why not text?
That is a major lack in Linux, and it would IMHO be a really cool thing to offer for free by default with all linux scanning software.
Maybe slashdot should warn sites before listing
on
3Dwm Updates
·
· Score: 1
It looks like the site is ALREADY slashdotted. Out of mercy, maybe we should warn sites that they are about to be buried under a mud slide of hits so they can make sure they don't lose important stuff when their machines die.
This is an excellent effort, but unfortunately technology moves too rapidly for specific legislation to make any significant long term impact. Granted, most information gathering takes place without the knowledge of the user, and this may help stop that. But if companies really want this information (and they almost certainly do) they will find a way. They will rename their collection methods, maybe or maybe not inform customers of what they are collecting (really, how many of us would know, first hand, that our info is going into a database unless someone told us "x site collects y information" and how they do it?) The only way to prevent this kind of data collection is to stay off the internet. And yes, that's possible. If that's not acceptable, then reject cookies, tighten security restrictions, and don't depend on the law to stop this kind of thing. Depend on youself. It works better.
Hmm. I'd have to say we should appreciate the Windows administrators tomorrow - they have such a difficult and frustrating job compared with unix administrators. Let's hear it for those who are in the worst areas of the front line trenches!
Up until now the vast majority of the internet community was able to ignore the court battle - as long as Napster was not actually shut down they could afford not to care. Public opinion is about to make itself known in a big way for the first time, as everyone is deprived of their music source. I'm predicting two things: 1. Napster will never come out of this alive, unless there are so many restrictions imposed on it that it no longer is the Napster we know. 2. The free alternatives are about to get a big boost in user numbers and probably in developer interest. The part I'm afraid of is that they will start censoring traffic at the server level. What I wish they would do is stop selling CDs in the stupid way they have so far. Why are most of us interested in Napster, despite the lower sound quality of MP3? Because we don't want to pay $18+ for one or two songs we like off of an album. If the music industry were to get their act togeather and create a site where you could create your own CD containing ANY 60 minutes of music you wished, from whatever author, I think at least some of the demand for Napster would fade. Certainly a lot of the legitimate use would. Plus, they'd make more money. I think most of us would be willing to pay $3-$4 per song if we knew we were getting songs we liked. Yet I've never heard of them doing that. Is is power, or wanting to maintain an image, or what? If they let us sample songs from such a website, and then let us order a CD of exactly what we want, I think everyone would be better off. But then, that's just me.
Free vs. Nonfree, with relatively few sacrifices of features. If I were a betting man I'd say sell Corel stock. If StarOffice can be made to run well on lower powered machines my last reason for keeping Wordperfect around will vanish.
KOffice is kicking butt. From it's looks now, they will be in good shape to go when KDE2 makes waves in September, and I'm betting that free software on the desktop is going to get a major boost. If StarOffice goes GPL, their filters are going to become a hot commodity and may solve many of the remaining issues with communication between Office suites.
ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pub/linux/redhat/powert ools/6.2/i386/i386/ look for R-cclust-0.6.R3-3.i386.rpm and R-cluster-1.2.R2-2.i386.rpm as the ones with obvious connection to clustering - anyone know if these involved with this clustering solution?
People evolve. Civilization evolves. And frankly, I think that's the way it should be. A static world, while preventing new flaws and dangers, does not correct the old mistakes. We live, and learn. We try new things. What's left for us to do, else? Yes, people don't like change. They never do. But they like it even less if nothing ever changes. It's too bad if someone don't like change, but not wanting it won't stop it. If you don't like the lack of privacy involved with computers, don't get on the internet! Problem solved. As for genetic engineering or economic growth, try explaining a position against those things to someone dying of cancer, or people dependant on the vibrant economy for survival. It's never as simple as wishing things wouldn't change. Though I think we all have sometimes wished.
The real danger here is not so much that commerical companies steal GPL code for commercial applications. Yes, we don't like it, but I doubt that would kill free software or give commercial companies a big edge. The real danger, in my mind, is not that companies are quietly violating the GPL but that companies might find some way to declare the GPL invalid, or some other exploit which allows them to OPENLY use GPL code. Even more dangerous, in my opinion, would be people bringing lawsuits against free software developers trying to collect for lack of quality or merchantability (say, they used some app in a spot it wasn't designed for, or a beta version) in spite of common sense. I don't see how that could work, but there are a lot of things I don't understand about the legal system. Has it ever been established in law that you have to pay someone money in order to be able to hold them accountable for quality of software? I don't know, and IANAL, but I would be surprised if that point has been established. And even the bringing of the lawsuit would hurt developers who have no revenue to fight such dirty ploys. I think that is our real concern - not that companies snitch a little code, but that they try to litigate the open source movement out of existance!
Slashdot Mirror
If the US outlaws open source (although I'm having a really hard time thinking how that would hold up in court) development would just shift elsewhere. Open source stuff doesn't have to be written in the US. And if they outlaw USE of open source software in the US, I'm outta here. Canada isn't that cold. Either way, the uproar over the DVD thing would be NOTHING compared to the response if they tried to kill the open source community.
Yeah, but biological systems are really tough to control. Plan and result aren't always the same thing. Whenever we monkey with something, there are unintended consequences. That's what I'm afraid of here.
Great as long as it stays within the plant. Complicated systems are unpredictable and EXTREMELY difficult to contain. If you concentrate large amounts of this bacteria, and an accident occurs and some get out, the problem is difficult to fix. It's great in theory, but I don't trust anybody's ability to maintain a system like that indefinitely. (Think a certain power plant in Russia... and a mistake here wouldn't be so easy to detect) Biological systems can be worse than nuclear power - they keep reproducing. And you don't have to engineer a bacteria in order for it to cause trouble - accidently introducing a large number of natural bacteria can also cause trouble. Especially if the larger numbers means the odds for mutation go up dramatically.
The critique is not of the theory, but the virtual impossibility of safe implimentation. Sorry, I wasn't terribly clear before. In this game, good theory and safe implimentation are both needed for an idea to be worth serious consideration. If it can be done, I'm all for it. It is a clever idea.
Any such artificial attempt to restore equilibrium in a natural system runs the risk of overcorrecting and causing more trouble than originally existed. In any complex system such as the atmosphere, the law of unintended consequences is pretty much guaranteed to rear it's ugly head. The proper course of action with regards to greenhouse gas is to lower our emissions and let nature clean out the excesses through natural processes. Unfortunately, that's a long term approach that requires our inconvenience, and therefore not possible until crisis occurs.
Actually, I don't think the gnome project was responsible for the Gimp or GnuCash. Sawfish, as far as I know, was an independant project initially that worked out REAL well. (Feel free to correct me on that last point - it's based on what I remember from way back when it was starting out as Sawmill.) However, your overall point is good. I will quite happily use either, usually mixing applications between the two.
I'm hoping that that option shows up soon. It would make it a great deal easier to use ReiserFS
Such services are great. They are convenient, help us find info faster, and provide services. But if they ever grow too limited or hostile to certain segments of the internet, we are not bound by them. They have no legal claim on the internet. A new service would form, without the limitations. I don't tend to worry about any such company - they can only ever be one component of the internet, and not THE internet. There is no possibility of full control - too many countries, too many people, and too much individuality. Also, the law, while often as much a hinderance as a help, can in some cases prove to be a useful weapon against corporate tatics. Microsoft is being hurt more by the ongoing court case than it ever would be by a breakup of OS and applications. So don't worry, just retain the independant instinct and avoid what you dislike. That's the beauty of internet. There is no one door, and even if AOL trys to become the eight hundred pound monster the way Microsoft has in OS there will always be alternatives. Seek them out and encourage them. Competition is the ultimate weapon and security.
denemo.sourceforge.net is the location of the most advanced GUI for Lilypond. It's good, but development seems to have stalled a little of late. Anyway, even at 0.5 or whatever, it will almost certainly help with the job of note typesetting. Complex formating will need to be done by hand. Denemo is designed with that editing model in mind - rough it out in the GUI, then go in and apply the finishing touches by hand.
Take a look at denemo.sourceforge.net. Still in earlier stages, but should take at least some of the bit out of composing.
Two things are clear here.
First, there have to be a lot more submissions and it has to be very clear where they came from and that they are legal. CHECK, CHECK, CHECK to make sure that is true. Then, check again. Remember if this actually starts to hurt a company's business the lawyers will swarm like sharks.
Second, once the project has matured, the word needs to be put out to schools. They will gain the most immediate benefit, and be the most worthwhile talent pool to develop. Students may eventually contribute original work to the project, so lets get the name out! Of course, the hard part is reaching people without having the project dismissed as a scam. Hmmm. I suppose some teachers union can be notified, and have them spread the word. Anyway, that's important, but for the future. Right now, lets find those unedited sheets and typeset some music!
Very few scientists will ever state anything as an absolute certainty, especially when there isn't much experimental evidence to back them up, and any who would do so about such a complex and little understood system as the climate problem are likely oversteping their bounds.
I'll give you an example from physics. Time, over most of history, was considered absolute in it's rate of passage, regardless of circumstances or measurement conditions. Wrong! Bad assumption. We can actually make experiments using precise atomic clocks which show that time rates are slower in moving planes relative to the ground. (Not by much, but enough.) Assumption, however "obvious," didn't hold up. Ask any physics professor or read about it in reference books if you don't buy it.
That's why most scientists will neither confirm or deny global warming. They honestly don't know! It is easy for the public to demand answers, but sometimes we just do not know. The intelligent thing to do is reduce our waste output where possible, strive to be more efficient, and keep learning. That's where hope and answers lie.
"For all practical purposes we have Quick books on Linux now. There is no longer much of a financial incentive for a Linux port."
There's not an incentive regardless. A port is a major, expensive effort, and maintaining multiple versions on multiple platforms is even more so. In order for this to happen, there have to be enough paying users to support the effort. Linux doesn't have that many users. Even if it did, there's always the chance of an open source project springing up and grabing away market share and making the port one expensive liability with little hope of profit. There are going to have to be a LOT more Linux users, of a different and less geeky caliber, before any industry trends begin to shift. It's the classic chicken-egg problem; it's just going to take time.
As for the Hurd, it's time will come. When hardware is sufficiently fast so that no one cares about the communication overhead of the microkernal idea, it should make things a lot easier to manage, as well as offer some potentially amazing abilities. V6 works fine for some things, but there's a reason the V8 exists. In any case, we have no business being anything but supportive. It's free software, it's open source, and no one ever guaranteed anything - we can afford to be patient. If new technology is not encouraged, there could come a time when we will find ourselves where OS/2 is now. It's like science - yes, the research may look useless now, but in 20 someone finds a way to use it, and it changes the world. (See the history of of the laser, or feedback in electronic circuits for a really good example - the patent office thought the guy was insane.)
PLEASE don't merge it into Staroffice/OpenOffice. That code is superbloated. Recommendations:
Create a GUI from scratch (or borrowing code whenever appropriate or useful) designed specifically for this type of document creation. Unless the GUI works well for the job, you won't convince people to use it. This is another reason to avoide merging with OpenOffice - that interface is designed for a different job. (And is still SLOW.)
If possible, write the GUI code so it can be compiled against multiple toolkits. I know this is difficult, and if it proves to be too much trouble then don't give it priority, but that way people can have a KDE version, GTK version, etc. Personally, if you had to pick one toolkit, I would choose something like the Fast Light Tool Kit. Speed of interface is a Good Thing.
Of course, this is just me talking. Do it however you want to - that's the beauty of open source. In any case, good luck and lets give all the support we can!
From what I've seen they have some cool stuff. What happens now?
That could be a great start for linux to enable Optical Character Recognition in it's scanning programs. If you think about it, if you can recognize handwriting, why not text?
That is a major lack in Linux, and it would IMHO be a really cool thing to offer for free by default with all linux scanning software.
It looks like the site is ALREADY slashdotted. Out of mercy, maybe we should warn sites that they are about to be buried under a mud slide of hits so they can make sure they don't lose important stuff when their machines die.
I think the full paper is here:l _report/html/3Winglee/3Winglee.html
http://peaches.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/fina
This is an excellent effort, but unfortunately technology moves too rapidly for specific legislation to make any significant long term impact. Granted, most information gathering takes place without the knowledge of the user, and this may help stop that. But if companies really want this information (and they almost certainly do) they will find a way. They will rename their collection methods, maybe or maybe not inform customers of what they are collecting (really, how many of us would know, first hand, that our info is going into a database unless someone told us "x site collects y information" and how they do it?) The only way to prevent this kind of data collection is to stay off the internet. And yes, that's possible. If that's not acceptable, then reject cookies, tighten security restrictions, and don't depend on the law to stop this kind of thing. Depend on youself. It works better.
Hmm. I'd have to say we should appreciate the Windows administrators tomorrow - they have such a difficult and frustrating job compared with unix administrators. Let's hear it for those who are in the worst areas of the front line trenches!
Up until now the vast majority of the internet community was able to ignore the court battle - as long as Napster was not actually shut down they could afford not to care. Public opinion is about to make itself known in a big way for the first time, as everyone is deprived of their music source. I'm predicting two things: 1. Napster will never come out of this alive, unless there are so many restrictions imposed on it that it no longer is the Napster we know. 2. The free alternatives are about to get a big boost in user numbers and probably in developer interest. The part I'm afraid of is that they will start censoring traffic at the server level. What I wish they would do is stop selling CDs in the stupid way they have so far. Why are most of us interested in Napster, despite the lower sound quality of MP3? Because we don't want to pay $18+ for one or two songs we like off of an album. If the music industry were to get their act togeather and create a site where you could create your own CD containing ANY 60 minutes of music you wished, from whatever author, I think at least some of the demand for Napster would fade. Certainly a lot of the legitimate use would. Plus, they'd make more money. I think most of us would be willing to pay $3-$4 per song if we knew we were getting songs we liked. Yet I've never heard of them doing that. Is is power, or wanting to maintain an image, or what? If they let us sample songs from such a website, and then let us order a CD of exactly what we want, I think everyone would be better off. But then, that's just me.
Free vs. Nonfree, with relatively few sacrifices of features. If I were a betting man I'd say sell Corel stock. If StarOffice can be made to run well on lower powered machines my last reason for keeping Wordperfect around will vanish.
KOffice is kicking butt. From it's looks now, they will be in good shape to go when KDE2 makes waves in September, and I'm betting that free software on the desktop is going to get a major boost. If StarOffice goes GPL, their filters are going to become a hot commodity and may solve many of the remaining issues with communication between Office suites.
ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pub/linux/redhat/powert ools/6.2/i386/i386/ look for R-cclust-0.6.R3-3.i386.rpm and R-cluster-1.2.R2-2.i386.rpm as the ones with obvious connection to clustering - anyone know if these involved with this clustering solution?
People evolve. Civilization evolves. And frankly, I think that's the way it should be. A static world, while preventing new flaws and dangers, does not correct the old mistakes. We live, and learn. We try new things. What's left for us to do, else? Yes, people don't like change. They never do. But they like it even less if nothing ever changes. It's too bad if someone don't like change, but not wanting it won't stop it. If you don't like the lack of privacy involved with computers, don't get on the internet! Problem solved. As for genetic engineering or economic growth, try explaining a position against those things to someone dying of cancer, or people dependant on the vibrant economy for survival. It's never as simple as wishing things wouldn't change. Though I think we all have sometimes wished.
The real danger here is not so much that commerical companies steal GPL code for commercial applications. Yes, we don't like it, but I doubt that would kill free software or give commercial companies a big edge. The real danger, in my mind, is not that companies are quietly violating the GPL but that companies might find some way to declare the GPL invalid, or some other exploit which allows them to OPENLY use GPL code. Even more dangerous, in my opinion, would be people bringing lawsuits against free software developers trying to collect for lack of quality or merchantability (say, they used some app in a spot it wasn't designed for, or a beta version) in spite of common sense. I don't see how that could work, but there are a lot of things I don't understand about the legal system. Has it ever been established in law that you have to pay someone money in order to be able to hold them accountable for quality of software? I don't know, and IANAL, but I would be surprised if that point has been established. And even the bringing of the lawsuit would hurt developers who have no revenue to fight such dirty ploys. I think that is our real concern - not that companies snitch a little code, but that they try to litigate the open source movement out of existance!