Re:What, no editorial?
on
Red Hat Recap
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· Score: 1
> Does Oracle support whitebox? The last I heard, they didn't.
Of course they won't support whitebox, and I don't have a problem with that. The underlying OS is just an annoyance to Oracle, one they want to minimize the problems with to the maximum extent possible. So they want to have it 100% RHEL so any problems that pop up can be worked out by someone else, that someone else being RH. And RH won't support anything that isn't 100% their official package set. Can you really expect them to support any other setup?
Clue: If you are writing the check for Oracle and the bitchkitty machine to run it on, the pricetag for RHEL's support isn't too much to ask.
I built WhiteBox for those of us in that middle area between RHEL and Fedora, not as a replacement for either. For people who grew up on RHL, need a stable long lived distro that Fedora isn't intended to be, yet aren't doing the sort of mission critical work that would justify a support contract for RHEL.
A popular misconception debunked
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Red Hat Recap
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· Score: 1
> which contain licensed tools which RedHat could not publish as freeware
RHEL does not contain any such software. Their extras CD contains non-redistributable items (like a JDK) but they have been including non-free software on clearly marked and seperate media for years now.
If you want proof of my statement, go to my webpage at whiteboxlinux.org and download a set of ISO images of EVERY LAST PACKAGE included in RedHat's _Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0_ product, rebuilt and respun and distributed for several months now with the full knowledge of RedHat Inc. and their apparent approval, based on interviews with employees in a position to speak with some authority on the subject. Or try looking at CentOS, Lineox, etc., all of which are doing pretty similar projects.
Bottom line, RedHat IS one of the good guys, they DO both understand and believe in Free Software and don't deserve 99% of the BS they get here on slashdot. They are trying to find the magic formula that turns their work on Free Software into a viable revenue stream, but they are doing it by playing the game by the rules as written by RMS, ESR and even Debian's Social Contract.
> DOn't think there's DRM on your beloved ShoutCast stations-- get a clue.
Actually I know for a fact that Shoutcast has no DRM. Because with a little command line hackery I can use mpg123 to tune them in. Shoutcast is a good idea, it just will never scale to serious numbers of listeners.
> It isn't for everyone, but to see an announcement like this be > universally derided is a sad reflection on the Slashdot community-
We laugh because we understand what is wrong with the idea instantly:
1. It will be cracked within a week. If the files only played back on Janus equiped hardware players it would be much harder to crack, but if Windows can access the content, perfect rips to unencumbered WMA will be trivial.
2. Who wants to encourage Microsoft to gain another monopoly, tied to the existing Windows monopoly?
3. What people WANT is unencumbered MP3 that will playback on those $40 CD/MP3 players on the pegs at Walmart and the indash CD player in their new pickup truck, not some new & improved half assed scheme that will require all new hardware.
> Are you asserting that no politician in either major party has ever > acted against your stereotypes?
Oh course there are a few exceptions (Sen. Miller and Sen. McCain come to mind) on both sides. But nothing like enough to count when it comes to voting. Because when the chips are down there only a couple of major schools of political thought and to be effective you have to pick one and stick with it, at least on the major votes.
> The attitude of previous administration towards anti-trust was worlds > away from what we've got now.
Really. Did you really believe the DOJ under Reno was actually going to break up Microsoft? Do you really believe the end settlement would have been different enough to break the signal to noise ratio? More importantly, would it have been severe enough to get above the pain threshold Cringley is talking about, where it is less painful to actually obey the law instead of just pay any fines and pay lipservice to the law? Because I certainly was never prone to any such delusion.
Doesn't matter though, the DOJ did all they could realisticly do, keep M$ occupied and off balance long enough for the Penguin Legions to get onto the battlefield, and that has now happened.
> Instead, go out and elect a President who will appoint an Attorney > General who thinks that anti-trust laws need penalities that actually > hurt.
Wrong tactic. No Democrat will give a rats rear about it unless they think they can tap a vein to suck revenue out of for thier immoral income redistribution schemes, and then they won't be dumb enough to actually kill such a cash cow.
No Republican will act to harm business. A position I tend to agree with, btw as a good libertarian.
The only hope is to get a Republican to remember that, according to the founding lights of capitalist thought, monopolies are BAD for business. Also, monopolies are almost always a result of government interferrence with the free market so eliminating them IS in perfect harmony with conservative principles. While Microsoft might be piling up more money than the Pope, they are causing great harm to the economy as a whole. It probably wouldn't be hard to prove at least a 1% drag on US GDP due to their monopoly sustaining actions when one combines the harm to all of the other IT companies and the wasted productivity that comes from an unhealthy dependence on Exchange and Outlook/Outlook Express.
Why don't we just call them what they really are..... GAME SHOWS. Find me one so called 'reality show' that isn't just a game show where a bunch of idiots aren't competing for a cash prize. Oh wow, now they have to eat bugs instead of knowing how much Tide sells for over on the reruns of Price is Right on the Game Show Network.
> Mozilla and OpenOffice.org already use their own toolkits which get > implemented differentl depending on the platform.
It can get into some really murky legal waters in some cases especially on the Mac since OO.o is using X11 instead of Cocoa on the Mac. And there is the even bigger problem with cross platform packages like GIMP and XChat which are GTK apps on both X11 and Win32. Nice GPL apps that couldn't exist in a Win32 port had they been Qt apps.
Nope, don't even argue that last point until you go READ the TrollTech FAQ. An app is either GPL and links to the GPL licensed Qt libs (X11 only) or it is commercial and links to the commercial Qt. That means no GPL apps on Windows or Mac using Qt, period and end of story.
RMS and the Free Software zealots aren't concerned with this problem, but those of us actually interested in seeing the world eventually freed understand that sending Free Software over to the Windows victims is a good way to entice them to leave the Dark Side. Many seem to have forgotten that the GNU tools first became popular on closed source machines and their demonstrated superiority to the proprietary tools went a long way to paving the way for widespread acceptance of a completely Free platform, namely Linux/GNU/XFree86.
> If you don't want it, just stick to plain old GPL'ed Qt.
Unless you would like to write a cross platform app. Then each developer must possess a license. Which is why Mozilla, OO.o, etc, will never use Qt. So we either resign ourselves to keeping two sets of bloated libs resident or standardize on a toolkit without fatal flaws in the license.
> Ironic, that a GPL'ed toolkit should be considered inappropriate for > basic foundations of Linux software..
But that is the reality. Core libraries should be LGPL to prevent no end of problems. Imagine trying to get Mozilla or OO.o up and running in a world where Qt was the only suitable toolkit. Either the Windows & Mac ports would have to be dropped or each and every developer would need to possess a license for the commercial version of Qt.
> The problem with Qt is, that the current license costs basically locks > out single developers who dont want to go the GPL route.
Personally I agree with the other posts on this topic, if you are developing closed apps you obviously BELIEVE IN CLOSED SOFTWARE so pull your panties up and pay TrollTech the same way you expect your own customers to pay you.
On the other hand, the inability to port GPL apps written against the Qt libs to Windows/Mac is a fatal limitation. Where would Mozilla or OO.o be if they couldn't port to Windows/Mac? More important is the next question. Where will the Linux desktop be if everyone defaults to Qt/KDE for their desktop? Do we accept Moz and the other A list cross platform apps remaining GTK and looking alien or try to reinvent a LOT of really big wheels? Because you CAN'T port Moz and friends to Qt unless you either abandon Windows/Mac or every developer buys a Qt license. And that my friends is a fatal problem.
You can ignore the problem with the QT licensing issues like the original KDE people ignored the original closed source license problem and keep dumping resources into KDE/Qt or realize further development there is a dead end.
That leaves the decision of whether GTK is a suitable toolkit. GTK/GNOME currently has the right license and bindings to a wide range of languages. On the other hand there is the fear that Miguel will be leading everyone down the path to a C# MONOculture and destruction at the hands of Microsoft's patent lawyers.
> That's about as insightful as an Ann Coulter rant.
Thank you, I love her column. She rants as cleverly as Dennis Miller but with a bit more focus on the political scene. The key is realizing that she knows she is merely a bomb thrower instead of a serious comentator, but that role was picked on purpose and that she enjoys doing it. It leaves her free to speak unspeakable truths that a 'serious comentator' would be banned from TV for the sin of uttering because most people (probably including you) write her off as just a bimbo who goes around saying outragous things. Hint: she ain't a bimbo, it's a ruse.
> BTW, who do you recommend for purchasing Linux laptops?
Go Big Blue. The religion hasn't worked it's way all the way through the organization, especially with Thinkpads, but you can get working hardware from them. They will default to the Centrino for wireless but offer two other choices, one of which is the Cisco. Their winmodems have readily available drivers and they are currently using ATI Radeons which the open source X server instantly identifies and works with in 2D & 3D. Even the firewire and CF card ports work with zero effort.
Add in the thinkpad utilities and you have easy access to a wealth of vital information such as docking status, lid state and presence of an external monitor which makes scripting profiles easy.
There is no longer an excuse for accepting hardware with questionable driver support from uncaring vendors. So long as you grumble yet still place the order, Dell won't change. Just how much effort would it take to add one more PCI id to the whitelist of acceptable MiniPCI cards? It is long since past time we put aside our Linux Zealot/enthusiast mindset where we didn't expect vendors to give us the time of day and started expecting vendors to treat us like CUSTOMERS.
Although I can't really say nice things about IBM's service..... the last two hardware failures were not resolved well at all.
I guess throwing money at a vendor and praying that someday it actually works is one way to buy hardware..... but it isn't the one I use. I'm a bit more of a hardass, I expect to be able to get it up and into production with a minimum of bother.
You see, we actually USE linux where I work, it isn't something I'm playing with at home. Telling the boss that her new laptop might work right by next year is the sort of thing that would be remembered come performance evaluation time. Same goes for my own work machine. I don't run Sid or Fedora on it, because it has to actually WORK; saying "Sorry, couldn't do that today, the latest GNOME beta has a key app hosed up right now." doesn't cut it. I do usually try to be the sacrificial animal when testing new products though, because even with careful research St. Murphy is still the patron saint of computers.
And yes I once did have to put a new laptop into the hands of an end user with a PCCard modem because of a unexpected change in winmodem chipsets. Point being that it was an unexpected exception that happened despite my best efforts to prevent it.
Perhaps, but I refuse to depend on closed software for anything important and there isn't much more important on a desktop system than reliable and stable video. Between my home desktop and work supplied laptop I have exactly ONE semi-closed driver, an slmodem that I rarely use and that is only because you can't buy a laptop with a truly supported winmodem from anywhere I'm aware of. There isn't much other closed software either except for a couple of games which aren't what I'd call important components.
Yes that did require specing a Cisco 350 miniPCI wireless instead of the default Centrino crap but unless you are planning to run the default OS as shipped it is always the buyers duty to run down the hardware compatibility details before issuing the purchase order. And yes that implies that any vendor who can't/won't supply the sort of details information needed for that analysis during the pre-sales phase shouldn't be on your list of vendors.
btw, you do have to dig a bit for the drivers for a Cisco 350, but there are 100% GPL drivers that support all features of the card, including proper recovery from suspend, output power control and iwconfig support. Dag Wier's excellent repository had a ready to build srpm for RHEL3 & clones, RH9, etc.
Looks like you didn't do your pre-sales research. I did, so I am running a Thinkpad X31 with a Cisco 350 miniPCI wireless card. EVERYTHING on this laptop is supported except hot dock/undock. There is a partially closed driver installed for the slmodem, but since I haven't actually used the modem outside of a quick test it isn't a critical issue. I also have to disable AGP video access when on battery power to avoid a problem with suspend, but it works fine when I'm docked.
And yes I made damned sure the salesman knew that I did NOT want Centrino technology and I made sure they knew why. In the end that is the only thing Intel will understand.
> NVidia doesn't own all the code in their drivers
And their reason for not releasing their HARDWARE specs would be what exactly?
Could it be that they understand all too well that were they to tell us how their stuff works the X hackers would be beating their framerates within a year?
> Now if they cut prices in proportion to the channels lost,
$1 sounds about right for losing a couple of channels for a couple of days while a corporate pissing fight sorts itself out. In the end we all know Viacom will have to relent before the Playoffs start on CBS. And especially since it appears they switched ON a bunch of other channels for anyone not already on the max channel plan, it shouldn't be that much of a hardship.
What sort of fudged up consumer (I won't use the word citizen for such as you) anyway? A corporate entity gets a hint of a spine and actually goes to bat for their customers and you go and betray them over missing a rerun of South Park? Ok, maybe if it were later in the month when the new episodes were running, but now?
> You are attempting to access an image with an extremely high resolution.
They are correct. Hell, the 1/2 res version just formatted out to a very nice matted 11x14" image at 300dpi here and you rarely find a printer in the mortal world that can actually image better than that.
Oh and don't even bother mentioning the stated res on those consumer printers, those are marketing specs and besides you have to account for the two totally different imaging systems. Printers tend to be bi-color pixels vs the 8bit per color true color on a typical monitor. So printed images need a lot of extra res for the halftone pattern. (Dye sub printers excluded of course)
> Many computers and Web browsers will have difficulty viewing this image...
Yup, true again. Yes, most higher end PCs produced in the last year or so will have little problem VIEWING that image but older machines with only 128-256M of main memory will swap like mad. And even most current hardware will have trouble loading that hog into The GIMP.
Yeah Dish network for resisting Viacom's cash grab. Personally I think every one of the channels mentioned should be FREE to the cable and sat operators and anyone with a dish for that matter. They are commercial supported broadcasters, not pay channels. Somewhere along the line the rules changed and now we PAY to watch commercials. Screw that. HBO, no problem because viewer fees are the only way to have movies without commercials. But MTV and Comedy Central should be able to support themselves with the commercials the same way the traditional broadcasters manage to get along without collecting fees from the viewers.
> A lot of us depend on these kind of heads-up notices from Slashdot.
Except this one is from Feb 19 so it is old stale news. RedHat issued an srpm which I grabbed, built and distributed to my WBEL users way back on that date and it has the exact same CVE id number. If your system has been vulnerable all this time it is really your fault for not subscribing to your distributer's security mailing list. Slashdot really isn't the proper forum for you get be getting your security notices.
Yup, kinda sad to see someone who was once a great man, and a supporter of the space program, spend so much time in Congress he forgets all that and becomes just another political operative. Guess is a Democrat first and and an astronaut/space booster/etc second. All that matters is Bush proposed it so he now has to oppose it. Sad.
>... but I've taken enough chemistry to know that what comes out must > equal what goes in...
Well you had better go take a physics course if you wish to understand this topic because the proposition is that a non chemical process (fusion) is at work.
> What is this solvent?
Who cares at this early stage. If the process proves out the race will be on to find the ingredients/processes that produce the holy grail of fusion research; a net gain in energy. Until that happens it is only a labratory toy, even assuming fusion is actually occuring.
You mean top pack of clueless fucktards? If you can't express your ideas about a WEB HOSTING operation without cartoons you are a bunch of idiots. Ok, the Disney site probably uses Flash to advantage, but they are mostly pitching to children and because of TV (in large part because of Disney) most children have the attention span of a ferret. But not a site pitching web hosting services just tossing any browser that isn't the most recent IE/Netscape with the latest Flash to a dead end "FOAD" page.
Slashdot Mirror
> Does Oracle support whitebox? The last I heard, they didn't.
Of course they won't support whitebox, and I don't have a problem with that. The underlying OS is just an annoyance to Oracle, one they want to minimize the problems with to the maximum extent possible. So they want to have it 100% RHEL so any problems that pop up can be worked out by someone else, that someone else being RH. And RH won't support anything that isn't 100% their official package set. Can you really expect them to support any other setup?
Clue: If you are writing the check for Oracle and the bitchkitty machine to run it on, the pricetag for RHEL's support isn't too much to ask.
I built WhiteBox for those of us in that middle area between RHEL and Fedora, not as a replacement for either. For people who grew up on RHL, need a stable long lived distro that Fedora isn't intended to be, yet aren't doing the sort of mission critical work that would justify a support contract for RHEL.
> which contain licensed tools which RedHat could not publish as freeware
RHEL does not contain any such software. Their extras CD contains non-redistributable items (like a JDK) but they have been including non-free software on clearly marked and seperate media for years now.
If you want proof of my statement, go to my webpage at whiteboxlinux.org and download a set of ISO images of EVERY LAST PACKAGE included in RedHat's _Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0_ product, rebuilt and respun and distributed for several months now with the full knowledge of RedHat Inc. and their apparent approval, based on interviews with employees in a position to speak with some authority on the subject. Or try looking at CentOS, Lineox, etc., all of which are doing pretty similar projects.
Bottom line, RedHat IS one of the good guys, they DO both understand and believe in Free Software and don't deserve 99% of the BS they get here on slashdot. They are trying to find the magic formula that turns their work on Free Software into a viable revenue stream, but they are doing it by playing the game by the rules as written by RMS, ESR and even Debian's Social Contract.
> DOn't think there's DRM on your beloved ShoutCast stations-- get a clue.
Actually I know for a fact that Shoutcast has no DRM. Because with a little command line hackery I can use mpg123 to tune them in. Shoutcast is a good idea, it just will never scale to serious numbers of listeners.
> It isn't for everyone, but to see an announcement like this be
> universally derided is a sad reflection on the Slashdot community-
We laugh because we understand what is wrong with the idea instantly:
1. It will be cracked within a week. If the files only played back on Janus equiped hardware players it would be much harder to crack, but if Windows can access the content, perfect rips to unencumbered WMA will be trivial.
2. Who wants to encourage Microsoft to gain another monopoly, tied to the existing Windows monopoly?
3. What people WANT is unencumbered MP3 that will playback on those $40 CD/MP3 players on the pegs at Walmart and the indash CD player in their new pickup truck, not some new & improved half assed scheme that will require all new hardware.
> Are you asserting that no politician in either major party has ever
> acted against your stereotypes?
Oh course there are a few exceptions (Sen. Miller and Sen. McCain come to mind) on both sides. But nothing like enough to count when it comes to voting. Because when the chips are down there only a couple of major schools of political thought and to be effective you have to pick one and stick with it, at least on the major votes.
> The attitude of previous administration towards anti-trust was worlds
> away from what we've got now.
Really. Did you really believe the DOJ under Reno was actually going to break up Microsoft? Do you really believe the end settlement would have been different enough to break the signal to noise ratio? More importantly, would it have been severe enough to get above the pain threshold Cringley is talking about, where it is less painful to actually obey the law instead of just pay any fines and pay lipservice to the law? Because I certainly was never prone to any such delusion.
Doesn't matter though, the DOJ did all they could realisticly do, keep M$ occupied and off balance long enough for the Penguin Legions to get onto the battlefield, and that has now happened.
> Instead, go out and elect a President who will appoint an Attorney
> General who thinks that anti-trust laws need penalities that actually
> hurt.
Wrong tactic. No Democrat will give a rats rear about it unless they think they can tap a vein to suck revenue out of for thier immoral income redistribution schemes, and then they won't be dumb enough to actually kill such a cash cow.
No Republican will act to harm business. A position I tend to agree with, btw as a good libertarian.
The only hope is to get a Republican to remember that, according to the founding lights of capitalist thought, monopolies are BAD for business.
Also, monopolies are almost always a result of government interferrence with the free market so eliminating them IS in perfect harmony with conservative principles. While Microsoft might be piling up more money than the Pope, they are causing great harm to the economy as a whole. It probably wouldn't be hard to prove at least a 1% drag on US GDP due to their monopoly sustaining actions when one combines the harm to all of the other IT companies and the wasted productivity that comes from an unhealthy dependence on Exchange and Outlook/Outlook Express.
> Reality shows draw large audiences,
Why don't we just call them what they really are..... GAME SHOWS. Find me one so called 'reality show' that isn't just a game show where a bunch of idiots aren't competing for a cash prize. Oh wow, now they have to eat bugs instead of knowing how much Tide sells for over on the reruns of Price is Right on the Game Show Network.
> Mozilla and OpenOffice.org already use their own toolkits which get
> implemented differentl depending on the platform.
It can get into some really murky legal waters in some cases especially on the Mac since OO.o is using X11 instead of Cocoa on the Mac. And there is the even bigger problem with cross platform packages like GIMP and XChat which are GTK apps on both X11 and Win32. Nice GPL apps that couldn't exist in a Win32 port had they been Qt apps.
Nope, don't even argue that last point until you go READ the TrollTech FAQ. An app is either GPL and links to the GPL licensed Qt libs (X11 only) or it is commercial and links to the commercial Qt. That means no GPL apps on Windows or Mac using Qt, period and end of story.
RMS and the Free Software zealots aren't concerned with this problem, but those of us actually interested in seeing the world eventually freed understand that sending Free Software over to the Windows victims is a good way to entice them to leave the Dark Side. Many seem to have forgotten that the GNU tools first became popular on closed source machines and their demonstrated superiority to the proprietary tools went a long way to paving the way for widespread acceptance of a completely Free platform, namely Linux/GNU/XFree86.
> If you don't want it, just stick to plain old GPL'ed Qt.
Unless you would like to write a cross platform app. Then each developer must possess a license. Which is why Mozilla, OO.o, etc, will never use Qt. So we either resign ourselves to keeping two sets of bloated libs resident or standardize on a toolkit without fatal flaws in the license.
> Ironic, that a GPL'ed toolkit should be considered inappropriate for
> basic foundations of Linux software..
But that is the reality. Core libraries should be LGPL to prevent no end of problems. Imagine trying to get Mozilla or OO.o up and running in a world where Qt was the only suitable toolkit. Either the Windows & Mac ports would have to be dropped or each and every developer would need to possess a license for the commercial version of Qt.
> The problem with Qt is, that the current license costs basically locks
> out single developers who dont want to go the GPL route.
Personally I agree with the other posts on this topic, if you are developing closed apps you obviously BELIEVE IN CLOSED SOFTWARE so pull your panties up and pay TrollTech the same way you expect your own customers to pay you.
On the other hand, the inability to port GPL apps written against the Qt libs to Windows/Mac is a fatal limitation. Where would Mozilla or OO.o be if they couldn't port to Windows/Mac? More important is the next question. Where will the Linux desktop be if everyone defaults to Qt/KDE for their desktop? Do we accept Moz and the other A list cross platform apps remaining GTK and looking alien or try to reinvent a LOT of really big wheels? Because you CAN'T port Moz and friends to Qt unless you either abandon Windows/Mac or every developer buys a Qt license. And that my friends is a fatal problem.
You can ignore the problem with the QT licensing issues like the original KDE people ignored the original closed source license problem and keep dumping resources into KDE/Qt or realize further development there is a dead end.
That leaves the decision of whether GTK is a suitable toolkit. GTK/GNOME currently has the right license and bindings to a wide range of languages. On the other hand there is the fear that Miguel will be leading everyone down the path to a C# MONOculture and destruction at the hands of Microsoft's patent lawyers.
> That's about as insightful as an Ann Coulter rant.
Thank you, I love her column. She rants as cleverly as Dennis Miller but with a bit more focus on the political scene. The key is realizing that she knows she is merely a bomb thrower instead of a serious comentator, but that role was picked on purpose and that she enjoys doing it. It leaves her free to speak unspeakable truths that a 'serious comentator' would be banned from TV for the sin of uttering because most people (probably including you) write her off as just a bimbo who goes around saying outragous things. Hint: she ain't a bimbo, it's a ruse.
> BTW, who do you recommend for purchasing Linux laptops?
Go Big Blue. The religion hasn't worked it's way all the way through the organization, especially with Thinkpads, but you can get working hardware from them. They will default to the Centrino for wireless but offer two other choices, one of which is the Cisco. Their winmodems have readily available drivers and they are currently using ATI Radeons which the open source X server instantly identifies and works with in 2D & 3D. Even the firewire and CF card ports work with zero effort.
Add in the thinkpad utilities and you have easy access to a wealth of vital information such as docking status, lid state and presence of an external monitor which makes scripting profiles easy.
There is no longer an excuse for accepting hardware with questionable driver support from uncaring vendors. So long as you grumble yet still place the order, Dell won't change. Just how much effort would it take to add one more PCI id to the whitelist of acceptable MiniPCI cards? It is long since past time we put aside our Linux Zealot/enthusiast mindset where we didn't expect vendors to give us the time of day and started expecting vendors to treat us like CUSTOMERS.
Although I can't really say nice things about IBM's service..... the last two hardware failures were not resolved well at all.
I guess throwing money at a vendor and praying that someday it actually works is one way to buy hardware..... but it isn't the one I use. I'm a bit more of a hardass, I expect to be able to get it up and into production with a minimum of bother.
You see, we actually USE linux where I work, it isn't something I'm playing with at home. Telling the boss that her new laptop might work right by next year is the sort of thing that would be remembered come performance evaluation time. Same goes for my own work machine. I don't run Sid or Fedora on it, because it has to actually WORK; saying "Sorry, couldn't do that today, the latest GNOME beta has a key app hosed up right now." doesn't cut it. I do usually try to be the sacrificial animal when testing new products though, because even with careful research St. Murphy is still the patron saint of computers.
And yes I once did have to put a new laptop into the hands of an end user with a PCCard modem because of a unexpected change in winmodem chipsets. Point being that it was an unexpected exception that happened despite my best efforts to prevent it.
Perhaps, but I refuse to depend on closed software for anything important and there isn't much more important on a desktop system than reliable and stable video. Between my home desktop and work supplied laptop I have exactly ONE semi-closed driver, an slmodem that I rarely use and that is only because you can't buy a laptop with a truly supported winmodem from anywhere I'm aware of. There isn't much other closed software either except for a couple of games which aren't what I'd call important components.
Yes that did require specing a Cisco 350 miniPCI wireless instead of the default Centrino crap but unless you are planning to run the default OS as shipped it is always the buyers duty to run down the hardware compatibility details before issuing the purchase order. And yes that implies that any vendor who can't/won't supply the sort of details information needed for that analysis during the pre-sales phase shouldn't be on your list of vendors.
btw, you do have to dig a bit for the drivers for a Cisco 350, but there are 100% GPL drivers that support all features of the card, including proper recovery from suspend, output power control and iwconfig support. Dag Wier's excellent repository had a ready to build srpm for RHEL3 & clones, RH9, etc.
Looks like you didn't do your pre-sales research. I did, so I am running a Thinkpad X31 with a Cisco 350 miniPCI wireless card. EVERYTHING on this laptop is supported except hot dock/undock. There is a partially closed driver installed for the slmodem, but since I haven't actually used the modem outside of a quick test it isn't a critical issue. I also have to disable AGP video access when on battery power to avoid a problem with suspend, but it works fine when I'm docked.
And yes I made damned sure the salesman knew that I did NOT want Centrino technology and I made sure they knew why. In the end that is the only thing Intel will understand.
> NVidia doesn't own all the code in their drivers
And their reason for not releasing their HARDWARE specs would be what exactly?
Could it be that they understand all too well that were they to tell us how their stuff works the X hackers would be beating their framerates within a year?
> Now if they cut prices in proportion to the channels lost,
$1 sounds about right for losing a couple of channels for a couple of days while a corporate pissing fight sorts itself out. In the end we all know Viacom will have to relent before the Playoffs start on CBS. And especially since it appears they switched ON a bunch of other channels for anyone not already on the max channel plan, it shouldn't be that much of a hardship.
What sort of fudged up consumer (I won't use the word citizen for such as you) anyway? A corporate entity gets a hint of a spine and actually goes to bat for their customers and you go and betray them over missing a rerun of South Park? Ok, maybe if it were later in the month when the new episodes were running, but now?
> You are attempting to access an image with an extremely high resolution.
They are correct. Hell, the 1/2 res version just formatted out to a very nice matted 11x14" image at 300dpi here and you rarely find a printer in the mortal world that can actually image better than that.
Oh and don't even bother mentioning the stated res on those consumer printers, those are marketing specs and besides you have to account for the two totally different imaging systems. Printers tend to be bi-color pixels vs the 8bit per color true color on a typical monitor. So printed images need a lot of extra res for the halftone pattern. (Dye sub printers excluded of course)
> Many computers and Web browsers will have difficulty viewing this image...
Yup, true again. Yes, most higher end PCs produced in the last year or so will have little problem VIEWING that image but older machines with only 128-256M of main memory will swap like mad. And even most current hardware will have trouble loading that hog into The GIMP.
Yeah Dish network for resisting Viacom's cash grab. Personally I think every one of the channels mentioned should be FREE to the cable and sat operators and anyone with a dish for that matter. They are commercial supported broadcasters, not pay channels. Somewhere along the line the rules changed and now we PAY to watch commercials. Screw that. HBO, no problem because viewer fees are the only way to have movies without commercials. But MTV and Comedy Central should be able to support themselves with the commercials the same way the traditional broadcasters manage to get along without collecting fees from the viewers.
> A lot of us depend on these kind of heads-up notices from Slashdot.
Except this one is from Feb 19 so it is old stale news. RedHat issued an srpm which I grabbed, built and distributed to my WBEL users way back on that date and it has the exact same CVE id number. If your system has been vulnerable all this time it is really your fault for not subscribing to your distributer's security mailing list. Slashdot really isn't the proper forum for you get be getting your security notices.
Yup, kinda sad to see someone who was once a great man, and a supporter of the space program, spend so much time in Congress he forgets all that and becomes just another political operative. Guess is a Democrat first and and an astronaut/space booster/etc second. All that matters is Bush proposed it so he now has to oppose it. Sad.
> ... but I've taken enough chemistry to know that what comes out must
> equal what goes in...
Well you had better go take a physics course if you wish to understand this topic because the proposition is that a non chemical process (fusion) is at work.
> What is this solvent?
Who cares at this early stage. If the process proves out the race will be on to find the ingredients/processes that produce the holy grail of fusion research; a net gain in energy. Until that happens it is only a labratory toy, even assuming fusion is actually occuring.
You mean top pack of clueless fucktards? If you can't express your ideas about a WEB HOSTING operation without cartoons you are a bunch of idiots. Ok, the Disney site probably uses Flash to advantage, but they are mostly pitching to children and because of TV (in large part because of Disney) most children have the attention span of a ferret. But not a site pitching web hosting services just tossing any browser that isn't the most recent IE/Netscape with the latest Flash to a dead end "FOAD" page.
Dunno, they won't show me any of their content, just a page that sez "blah blah blah" and some links to download flash and other crap.