I thought it would be nice for a person with some technical knowledge to be able to do something useful.
A person with "some" technical knowledge should be able to do very useful things. Amongst those things are not included are configuring system level services that very well may introduce a significant number of security issues involving a database.
At the unixODBC web site you'll see a "User's" manual online. Upon installing this application there is also an "Administrators" manual. These are two very different audiences.
Once a competent administrator has performed the installation, which isn't even a third as bad as the article makes it out to be, the user side of things looks exactly like the ODBC configuration for Windows.
For the record, I just installed this on FreeBSD after reading through the article. I wanted to see how tough it was, and it sounded rather interesting. It wasn't a Joe SixPack installation, but it is running very nicely from OpenOffice's screen.
Furthermore, I wouldn't want Joe SixPack doing a config like this on Windows either.
Moreover, my experiences (as an end user, not developer) with Java have been misreable. It's performance sucks and is typically intolerable for daily usage.
I had rather the same impressions, as an end user, of Java apps. Then I went and got all hooked on using JEdit a little while back. I wasn't looking for a Java app, I was looking for a feature rich text editor.
Aside from a cool app, JEdit was the first glimpse I'd ever seen of the promise of Java. Here was something that I could actually use on darn near any platform (FreeBSD in this case). Essentially you could have several people on whatever flavor of OS they prefer all utilizing the same tool. Although the original author developed this app on Linux, the cross platform nature of it has brought the far larger audience of Windows and Mac users into the mix, developing plug-ins and syntax schemas. Similar projects, such as Kate or NEdit may never enjoy such a large or diverse development community being locked into essentially a Unix only environment.
That was always supposed to be the promise of Java as a platform to develop on.
More end user kinds of applications like this built on Java would certainly do more to advocate the language than any big dollar advertising campaign.
In all fairness though, it does take a considerable startup time versus a C based editor. I tend to use NEdit when I need an editor up quick, then use JEdit when I'm working on larger projects.
...the public would still say it was alien crop circles made to prove that NASA faked the moon landings
You gullible fool. Those of us who went to see "Signs" know full well what their up to! Oh sure, they can manage faster than light travel to get here, and navigate to this tiny spec of a planet we reside on, but unless they have crop circles in place they'll never be able to find Toledo to launch the invading force!
Our only hope is to make road atlases top secrect information. And you just sit there and laugh... Hah!
They may just. What they don't do is refer to the product they are trying to sell as being "viral" in nature.
The GPL is replicating itself like a virus, pure and simple.
Pure and simply it isn't. Replication is a means by which individual cels manage to grow by simply duplicating themselves.
Eegads, more metaphors a coming here. Kids, don't try this at home.
Development of GPL software is more akin to reproduction where multiple hosts come together to create an offspring. The new offspring is not simply a duplicate of the original, but a new living host.
Aside from the metaphor tossing, the following is the webster definition of a virus. Is this something that you'd want to use to describe a product that you wish to advocate?
Virus \Vi"rus\, n. [L., a slimy liquid, a poisonous liquid, poison, stench; akin to Gr. ? poison, Skr. visha. Cf. Wizen, v. i.]
(Med.)
Contagious or poisonous matter, as of specific ulcers, the bite of snakes, etc.; -- applied to organic poisons.
The special contagion, inappreciable to the senses and acting in exceedingly minute quantities, by which a disease is introduced into the organism and maintained there.
Note: The specific virus of diseases is now regarded as a microscopic living vegetable organism which multiplies within the body, and, either by its own action or by the associated development of a chemical poison, causes the phenomena of the special disease.
Fig.: Any morbid corrupting quality in intellectual or moral conditions; something that poisons the mind or the soul; as, the virus of obscene books.
Viral in this instance is meant only to mean contagious and infectious, but without the negative side effects, as odd as that may seem. That something that we want linux and the GPL to be.
I still take issue with this notion. GPL software is not contagious nor is it infectious. Both terms refer to something that is parasitic in nature to a larger host.
A program released under the GPL is the host. It's the armor that prevents parasitic proprietary code from tearing bits and pieces from it to profit the few by the efforts of the many. More correctly, it could better be described as anti-viral. It's basic nature cannot be altered by infectious influences. Something that protects the host from viral infection is closer to an antibiotic than any virus.
The point that should be stressed by any and all OSS advocates is that GPL is the cure, where proprietary lock in is the disease that has infected our industry for so long that we've numbed ourselves to the pain.
Oh boy, diving deep into metaphor land here. I do believe the distinction of wording is critically important, as these words create a visualisation of what a thing is. Like a writer describing a setting, the combination of words and metaphors create a mental picture of a thing or place unseen. We really do not wish to propogate the notion that the GPL is viral. Regardless of who first attributed the metaphor, the image created is far too harmful to the on going public debate.
Now is not the time to toss a slow pitch across Microsoft's plate.
Who cares who first described the GPL as "viral"? The fact of the matter is it IS viral, and was designed to be viral, regardless of whether or not you think that is a good thing.
I know what you're trying to say, but the metaphor is lacking in a number of key points. First off, the very word "viral" brings to mind illness, disease, and a variety of other unpleasentries. This is why MS decided to describe the GPL in this way. Welcome to marketing 101.
A virus is some foriegn invader to a system that lives off the host, and thus weakening it. Rarely is a virus invited in, as it's method for propogating is to be hidden in some other form unrecognized by the host.
Software that exists under the GPL does not hide what it is. It can't find its way into proprietary code unless it is specifically invited into it. It is its own host, not requiring another for its survival. Certainly the code is trapped within the license once placed there, but so is proprietary licensed code. The primary difference is that one is trapped in the public domain, the other in the corporate.
I don't have a better metaphor to contradict the whole "viral" thing. I do know that the GPL does not in any way exhibit what we would think of as viral though. Just like with proprietary software, if you want to utilize it within your own code there is a cost attached. To use Microsoft software, you'd pay a licensing fee. With the GPL you pay with providing your efforts back to the community you got it from.
The only purpose behind calling the GPL a "viral license" is to attempt to put a negative spin on it. The term is but one salvo from the MS marketing arsenal designed to attack that which makes us strong. Allowing the term to stick to any OSS license would be suicidal from a public relations standpoint.
Generally the 'penalty' for not having a warrant is that evidence is disallowed in a case.
Unfortunately, you are all too correct here. The officer isn't dealt with as a law breaker, and a quite possibly guilty individual could be set free.
In a slightly more perfect world, an officer committing trespass without a warrant would be treated as any other citizen doing so. Along similar lines, incriminating evidence that truly does show that someone is guilty shouldn't be thrown out due to illegal search procedure.
You are quite right though. We don't live in a slightly more perfect world. To the detriment of both civil liberties and successful prosecution of the guilty, police officers enjoy a certain level of immunity in regards to matters of trespass.
Wrong. You missed the whole point. Policemen are agents appointed to investigate and enforce the law.
Wrong back atcha. A law enforcement official is subject to the same laws of trespass as any other citizen. That's kinda why they need a warrant to search someone's private property.
There are exceptions to this, involving blanket warrants in the case of emergency or if the possibility exists that someone's life is in danger. Other then the few exceptions, the police have no more right to your private property than a journalist has. What's worse is that evidence taken from a private residence without a warrant, no matter how guilty someone might be, will be thrown out in court.
This IS the point of the actions taken. To point out the fact that the police are over stepping the consititutionally established boundaries of the 4th amendment. Allowing unwarranted search and seizure to go unchecked weakens civil liberties as well as the successful prosecution of those that really should see time behind bars. There's no win here for anyone.
Geesh, I feel like I'm stalking Bruce here. Not really meaning to, but there's points being brought up that I feel need addressed. Nothing personal.
If a consequence of joining is that any and all of their patents that are used in a standard will become free for any use whatsoever, they will not join,
The patent only becomes free for any type of use if it is submitted as a standard. It only becomes a standard if accepted by the primary body recognized as responsible for making standards. Today this is the W3C.
If a company is concerned with IP protections, the technology should not be submitted as a standard in the first place. They should take their patent and produce a product to compete in an open playing field with other patented technologies. Establishing an artificial monopoly with a major standards body backing it is by its very nature an unfair advantage being handed out by the W3C. This goes beyond simply conflicting with the GPL.
and they will instead make their standards in an organization that lets them charge royalties for use within the standard. We will have lost.
A company looking to try to establish patented technologies to some other paid for standards body isn't relevant. It's only relevant when accepted by the primary standards body. Once wedged into the recognized standard, oh boy does it every become relevant.
Once patented technologies are adopted as standards, we really will have lost.
...is that I don't necessarily own all the IP that I need to address a problem.
Then the problem isn't addressed.
The notion of patents hasn't slowed down Macromedia from making Flash a defacto standard on the web. It addresses a number of problems without being a W3C standard or recommendation.
The issue isn't whether or not patented technologies get used, or even permitted under a limited royalty system. We're talking about whether or not these technologies are allowed to be included into what is agreed industry wide to be the standard for web technology. This is what is at issue here.
If a company owns a patent they wish to exercise at some later time, great! They spent the money for the R&D and the patent process. They should most certainly be allowed to benefit from this effort if the USPO approved it. That does not mean that it should be allowed in as an industry standard which inhibits a truly open playing field.
If you apply the FSF "logic" you would have to stop distributing gzip because someone could modify it so that it infringed the Unisys LZ patents.
No. If you apply FSF logic here, you would have to stop distributing gzip if someone did infringe on the Unisys patents.
I would think that the history of LZ within GIF would be a pretty good indicator of where this patent business is heading with the W3C members so concerned about it.
Patent holders won't continue their membership in W3C if that membership forces them to give up their patent rights for non-standards-related applications.
What patent rights is anyone looking to give up at this point? Do we today have patented technologies that make up any part of the W3C recommendation? If not, then this can only be about providing a means for inserting patented technologies as royalty free for the web, with a backside charge for any use not directly involving a web browser.
I'm not seeing how this is a win for Free software.
They will instead move their standards-making activities to other organizations that allow them to charge patent royalties on the standards. And we will have lost.
Who are "they" here? Only companies I can think of that could pull this kind of weight in the W3C is Microsoft or AOL. Purely an assumption based on the notion that these two folks pretty much own the two primary means for viewing web pages out there. I'm sorry, but this sounds like nothing more than an attempt to strong arm their way into essentially owning what up until now has been an open environment for anyone to play in. Even so much as a foothold by either of these companies is a frightening prospect, no matter how much work when into compromise.
The patent holders want the W3C brand on their standards, and will give up something for that.
If anyone complies with the W3C recommendations wouldn't they by default be able to brand their products as such? That being the idea behind having standards that no one company owns. It would even allow a company to brand a patented technology as being compliant with a standard. How does introducing patents into the standards themselves make this better for anyone?
I also take issue with the notion that any patent holder is "giving" something up. Tying a patented technology with a limited use royalty agreement is nothing more than a marketing tactic. Not all that different then Netscape and Microsoft giving away their browsers to gain market share. These are business decisions, not generosity.
Thus, I'd like you to write that email now. It's very important that W3C see support for the draft policy, or we'll be back to the old, bad policy again.
Perhaps. As much as you may wish and pray for software patents to suddenly disappear, we all know that this isn't going to happen in our lifetimes no matter how loud we yell at any government. The only thing we can reasonably expect in the way of keeping the Internet open and free is to insure that the basic infrastructure remains as such. Given the choice between the US government and the W3C to deal with this, the W3C is our only real chance.
Then again, the really scary part is that you may be right. This may be the only compromise possible between the various members. It's like watching the oncoming Microsoft train approach the Internet strapped to the tracks.
Many issued US software patents have significant prior art that should invalidate them
To this point and the others mentioned you run into a single monstrous problem. In order to invalidate these silly patents that have been granted they need to be challenged. Challenging these individually, or even in bite size groups, would be impossibly costly for even the US Government itself to foot the legal bill. It just ain't gonna happen.
I'm not about to hold my breath waiting for legislative action to deal with this either. Consider the audience. The issue is extremely complex in nature involving an in depth understanding of both the technology and the law. This does not describe the electorate at large. It does describe the companies making the noticeable campaign contributions that enable these politicians to run for office in the first place.
Nobody is going to sue the situation into a fix. No group of politicians are going to weaken financial interestes. The only thing left to us is to make it abundantly clear to those filing for the silly patents that their efforts will not return a profit. The only way this can be accomplished in this matter is to not allow a patented technology roam free within the realms of established standards being endorsed by the W3C.
To do otherwise hoping that the poor application of patent law just corrects itself will open the door for companies like Microsoft to do what they have been waiting for years to get. The ability to buy the Internet.
Er... any OS can be written to connect to the web, has nothing to do with open source.
{blinking} {jaw agape}
What Internet do you use? The very fact that ANY operating system can connect to the Internet has EVERYTHING to do with open source. If the Internet was based on proprietary closed source technologies you'd still be dialing your modem into a 1990's Compuserve at $5/hour.
Patent free technologies built on open source software is the very reason you're able to post your comment to this web site in the first place.
And OSS can still get patented - hell, Amazon works on a version of Apache and they still have patents.
Okay, time to bring out the clue-by-4 on this one. First off, I'm sure the entirety of the Slashdot community would love to see one of these OSS patents you're referring to.
As to the Amazon patents, they involve a business practice. What web server they happen to be using at the time has absolutely no impact on this. They didn't patent a web server, the patented a methodology for making a purchase.
Oh God, I just caught myself feeding a troll. Ack!
Point to Point connections rather than master/slave setups, hot-swap and the new connectors make these drives usable in servers
What I'm left wondering about is how the controllers work. The big downside to IDE versus SCSI is that IDE requires more CPU time to get the same amount of work done. I would expect a P2P type connection to take a lot of load off the CPU. Especially if we're looking at up to 16 devices on the same bus.
This benchmark over at Tom's would seem to suggest that at least in their test setup that there aren't any CPU utilization benefits. This is critical stuff for servers, or any real kind of RAID configuration.
Does anyone have any further info on this? Would SATA become more efficient had more drives been involved perhaps?
All the benchmarks I've seen thus far were focused on throughput and bus speed, which is only a small portion of the story.
My personal experience with non-geek types has been just the opposite. In fact, I believe it's actually easier for folks to grasp multiple desktops than the whole minimize thing. Well, from what I've seen of users anyway. YMMV.
Um. Im not sure what that means exactly.
What I mean by server class networking is that it doesn't come brain damaged by default. Every workstation class OS from MS (9x, NTWS, XP, 2kPro) will refuse any more than 10 connections. Many network services are not possible to install at all without a server version. Linux and the BSD's come with no such restrictions to their capabilities.
Here's the challenge part. Show me front line Linux applications that rival...
Let's see what I can do with your list here.
QuarkXpress: As I recall there was a project that was attempting to address this. Heck, I bet OSX users would love to have Quark going too!:) The sad fact is, the professional print market is too much of a niche for a lot of interest in the Free software community to get hopping on. I'm not saying it won't happen, it's just not as high a priority as a functional office suite was. Adobe is the one company that could turn the tide here.
Macromedia Director: Proprietary editor for a proprietary file format that utilizes a proprietary plug-in. I wouldn't hold my breath on this one.
Painter: Gimp is more than a match for this one. Maybe if you were talking Photoshop 7.0 a better argument could be made.
Quickbooks: There are a number of accounting packages up on Freshmeat, as well as professional packages built for Unix. I would agree that none of these really address the core market that Quickbooks is hitting. I highly suspect that financial software is going to be a very high focus in the next year or so.
Chief Architect: There's a stack of CAD apps for Unix. So far as any that do the bulk of the work for you, not too many out there. Probably the most notable of the free CAD apps is QCad.
Dragon Dictate: Never seen this work right in Windows. It sortta works, so long as you don't start into a conversational tone of voice. Voice recognition has a long way to go on every platform.
Hallmark Greeting Card Maker: You won't see fun little grandma made a XMas card kinda things for a while yet I suspect. Like with Windows, the corporate desktop needs to be won over first.
Streets and Trips & Encarta: Of course you won't see this hitting the Free software arena. The information gathering and subsequent publishing involves bucks. Both of these kinds of apps can be got on the web, either for free or via a subscription. Encarta is available to you now if you wish to subscribe.
AfterFX: Film Gimp. Used at the professional level today. Heck, developed by studio folks!
Learn to Speak Spanish: KDE has been working on a KDE Education package now for a little while. Today it includes a fair stack of items, such as a typing tutor, star chart, a French spelling helper, as well as other stuff. It doesn't yet include any foriegn language tutorials, but there is work moving in that direction.
Personally, I haven't really ever had a need for any of the applications mentioned on your list. At the office, only Quark is used, and it's run on Macs.
The one app that really needs to get addressed this year is Quickbooks though. This is a critical one for small businesses, which should be a target desktop market for Linux at this point. There's a LOT of folks who put this to use to keep track of their business.
If we see an effort put forth like what was generated for Mozilla or OpenOffice on this, I believe a lot of the rest of your list starts to fall in place. We have to have market share before vendors will start porting!
Someone would have to go out on a limb and write proprietary s/w for a retail market that doesn't exist. So you can't build Linux momentum that way.
You can if the software is run from the server.
Aside from the OS side of things, there's a lot of momentum also building around the Free database apps. Those databases are going to need the business logic worked into them, and preferrably all at the server side of things. This is the kind of thing that businesses would pay serious cash for, and still be off cheaper than an MS solution.
Mind you, I'm thinking US customers with Indian vendors. The interesting tid bit here is the ability to drive thin clients so effectively. Nothing else does this as well as Unix OS's. US companies are hitting a point where they're sick of both dealing with MS and upgrading indvidual PC's. If this does prove to be a way out from both of these traps, these folks are going to need customized stuff.
Granted, there won't be a switch flipped to suddenly make this happen. It's slowly working its way forward, like a train coming out of the station. When that train gets up to speed, the programming market in India will take notice. It won't matter how many pirated Windows apps litter the streets. Demand is the only thing that can cause the shift.
I use my computer to work. I don't have a lot of time to explore and fool around.
You could say the same of any tool used to complete a task. Any new tool requires time to work through how to make the most of it. It's not fooling around, it's learning.
But, if my biggest bottlenecks right now are with the apps I use and not the OS, then Linux does me absolutely no good.
Greatly depends on the apps in question. As I found over time, there's apps out there that really do replace their Window's equivalent quite nicely, but they aren't always obvious as to which apps they are. Some time spent on Freshmeat, IRC, or even browsing through mailing lists can sometimes clue you into the apps you never knew existed. One of the downsides of not being inundated with marketing.
No need to be insulting.
Duely retracted, and my apologies given. In reading my post over again that did come off worse than I had intended.
But if Windows loaded with confusing buttons...
Windows Explorer. Object Packager. Hyperterminal. Just a couple of names off the top of my head that related to functionality not described by their name. I distinctly recall looking all over the place for File Manager after upgrading to 95. Today we sort of take these things for granted, because we learned what in the heck they were.
Since most the of distros seem to dink up KDE's default presentation, it's hard to say what you saw the first time in. By default, KDE places a plain description next to the cute KName of all the applications within the KMenu.
Most things are still pretty obvious as to what they do. KCalc for example. Others are so far gone as to be silly. Who would ever guess that Korn was a mail checker? Overall, I would agree with the naming convention being a long term problem. I have a couple of posts up in the KDE Usability mailing list nagging on this very thing.
If your distro up and turned off the descriptive text in the KMenu, you can get all that back on with...
Control Center > Look & Feel > Panel > Menus
In there you'll see a checkbox for "Detailed menu entries". At least this is true in 3.0.5 of KDE.
Unless Linux gives me something I don't have in Windows, then I just don't have the time to muck with it.
It sounds like what you're looking for is the hard sales pitch. Not sure if you're going to find that in Free software land.
You will find desktop environments that allow for seemless use of multiple desktops, server class networking, and front line applications that do a pretty fine job rivaling their rather expensive counterparts. All without having to troll the WareZ groups for hours on end.
The advantages of a Unix desktop aren't immediate though. You won't have a paper clip come flying out to show you around. It takes some time and curiosity to see for yourself why there are those of us who left Windows behind. The really rough part here is that it's not something I can describe adequately to you here. Oh, I could probably list off a stack of features that Windows simply can't do, but it wouldn't mean anything to you. It only has value or meaning when you get there yourself.
All that's assuming you can get past the app naming conventions. You can, can't you?
...then you don't know the Indian software retail market
Perhaps I don't. It was my understanding that a great deal of the programming business going to India was for custom applications for specific clients and consultants. If that is the case, I would think that a world wide move to Linux would be a huge boom market for India.
On the other hand, if the bulk of the product is in shrink wrap sales, then in the immediate future this wouldn't be as profitable. Even still, a Free operating system does not mean all Free software. It is still quite possible to make a buck selling closed source apps for Linux, FreeBSD, or any other flavor of Unix.
A software company looking to work on a Unix product need not follow the exact business model of a Linux distro. An application based company has a different set of goals and would require a different business model.
Actually, it can be easier than you think. Automation is the key to safety here...
Automating safety requires a "human" to consider every possible thing that could go wrong and develop a software and mechanical solution for. Nobody is that good. N-o-b-o-d-y.
Automated saftey also requires that every sensor on a device, be it a plane or a car, is working 100% all of the time. A computer simply cannot look at a stuck altimeter and feel that the plane is nose diving.
Heck, even though we've had automatic transmissions in cars for decades there is still the means to override this to go into a lower gear. Decades of technology fed into these cars still can't determine as well as a human what kind of slope or speed is optimal for the conditions the car is driving in. Sure, 90% of the time the automatic gear selection works fine. 10% of the time it can't.
You can utilize automation to assist in safety. For example, in a military fighter jet the computer will prevent the pilot from ripping the wings off an aircraft, or turning himself into cockpit salsa. ILS assists bringing in an aircraft on the proper flight path, allowing for the pilot to focus on issues such as weather, cross winds, or even cross traffic.
I dunno, but I think they'd accept anything in exchange for the cheaper flights it will bring when you don't have to employ pilots anymore.
I "do" know that I would rather shell out a few extra bucks rather than entirely replace an experienced pilot at the helm of a vehicle 30,000 feet above the ground flying through a nearly infinite range of weather conditions.
You think they're going to find it funny that you rent a pron video of animal action once a month? They're not even going to care...
It's not that it's funny to them. This kind of information would never get used to actually prosecute someone. When you have ready access to potentially embarrassing information, these are political tools used to coerce and solidify authority.
J. Edgar Hoover provided us all a lesson in how information can be used to extend power. If ever there was a man above the law, it was this guy. Presidents lived in fear of him. Nobody was beyond his reach, and this was using far simpler technology with even less information.
The real fear isn't how this administration will use the information it gets provided. Nor is it a concern of how the next one will. Look ahead 5 or 6 presidents into the future and consider how they might make political use of the tools created for a 2002 problem in 2032.
Having information accessible to governments is not a problem unless you're naughty.
Certainly the surest sign that a thread has fallen off the edge, but the parallel is just too close. This perfectly sums up the approach Nazi Germany took in collecting information. You have nothing to fear from your neighbor so long as you're not doing anything that opposes the standing government. Only naughty people have something to worry about. It's a falsehood that is as old as government, yet all "right" thinking people continue to fall for it.
If you don't trust those people who'll be working with the information, do something about it - lobby for better selection procedures, vote for someone else.
You can never, ever, trust people to enforce a bad law. It doesn't matter how you select them. Bad law extends well past the lifetime of possibly trustworthy people.
If you think harassing somebody who rightly thinks it's a good anti-crime system is a good way of preventing the system occuring, ask yourself - who's it going to help?
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it would be nice for a person with some technical knowledge to be able to do something useful.
A person with "some" technical knowledge should be able to do very useful things. Amongst those things are not included are configuring system level services that very well may introduce a significant number of security issues involving a database.
At the unixODBC web site you'll see a "User's" manual online. Upon installing this application there is also an "Administrators" manual. These are two very different audiences.
Once a competent administrator has performed the installation, which isn't even a third as bad as the article makes it out to be, the user side of things looks exactly like the ODBC configuration for Windows.
For the record, I just installed this on FreeBSD after reading through the article. I wanted to see how tough it was, and it sounded rather interesting. It wasn't a Joe SixPack installation, but it is running very nicely from OpenOffice's screen.
Furthermore, I wouldn't want Joe SixPack doing a config like this on Windows either.
Moreover, my experiences (as an end user, not developer) with Java have been misreable. It's performance sucks and is typically intolerable for daily usage.
I had rather the same impressions, as an end user, of Java apps. Then I went and got all hooked on using JEdit a little while back. I wasn't looking for a Java app, I was looking for a feature rich text editor.
Aside from a cool app, JEdit was the first glimpse I'd ever seen of the promise of Java. Here was something that I could actually use on darn near any platform (FreeBSD in this case). Essentially you could have several people on whatever flavor of OS they prefer all utilizing the same tool. Although the original author developed this app on Linux, the cross platform nature of it has brought the far larger audience of Windows and Mac users into the mix, developing plug-ins and syntax schemas. Similar projects, such as Kate or NEdit may never enjoy such a large or diverse development community being locked into essentially a Unix only environment.
That was always supposed to be the promise of Java as a platform to develop on.
More end user kinds of applications like this built on Java would certainly do more to advocate the language than any big dollar advertising campaign.
In all fairness though, it does take a considerable startup time versus a C based editor. I tend to use NEdit when I need an editor up quick, then use JEdit when I'm working on larger projects.
If too much time on your hands were a criminal offense... 'nuff said.
...the public would still say it was alien crop circles made to prove that NASA faked the moon landings
You gullible fool. Those of us who went to see "Signs" know full well what their up to! Oh sure, they can manage faster than light travel to get here, and navigate to this tiny spec of a planet we reside on, but unless they have crop circles in place they'll never be able to find Toledo to launch the invading force!
Our only hope is to make road atlases top secrect information. And you just sit there and laugh... Hah!
I'm still working on "The OSX", "The BSD", and "The Solaris".
The BSD:
80 year old Bourbon.
Neat.
No fluff. No sweetening. Just pure unadulterated whiskey straight from it's origins and matured to perfection.
Enough of these in the evening will most certainly guarantee a visit by the little daemon fella himself in the morning.
all i need is man and other linux gurus on irc
Preferrably Linux gurus with $50 books near by.
Marketing people often talk of VIRAL MARKETING
They may just. What they don't do is refer to the product they are trying to sell as being "viral" in nature.
The GPL is replicating itself like a virus, pure and simple.
Pure and simply it isn't. Replication is a means by which individual cels manage to grow by simply duplicating themselves.
Eegads, more metaphors a coming here. Kids, don't try this at home.
Development of GPL software is more akin to reproduction where multiple hosts come together to create an offspring. The new offspring is not simply a duplicate of the original, but a new living host.
Aside from the metaphor tossing, the following is the webster definition of a virus. Is this something that you'd want to use to describe a product that you wish to advocate?
Viral in this instance is meant only to mean contagious and infectious, but without the negative side effects, as odd as that may seem. That something that we want linux and the GPL to be.
I still take issue with this notion. GPL software is not contagious nor is it infectious. Both terms refer to something that is parasitic in nature to a larger host.
A program released under the GPL is the host. It's the armor that prevents parasitic proprietary code from tearing bits and pieces from it to profit the few by the efforts of the many. More correctly, it could better be described as anti-viral. It's basic nature cannot be altered by infectious influences. Something that protects the host from viral infection is closer to an antibiotic than any virus.
The point that should be stressed by any and all OSS advocates is that GPL is the cure, where proprietary lock in is the disease that has infected our industry for so long that we've numbed ourselves to the pain.
Oh boy, diving deep into metaphor land here. I do believe the distinction of wording is critically important, as these words create a visualisation of what a thing is. Like a writer describing a setting, the combination of words and metaphors create a mental picture of a thing or place unseen. We really do not wish to propogate the notion that the GPL is viral. Regardless of who first attributed the metaphor, the image created is far too harmful to the on going public debate.
Now is not the time to toss a slow pitch across Microsoft's plate.
...why GPL is bad weren't too blurry to read.
That's okay, the logic was just as blurry.
Who cares who first described the GPL as "viral"? The fact of the matter is it IS viral, and was designed to be viral, regardless of whether or not you think that is a good thing.
I know what you're trying to say, but the metaphor is lacking in a number of key points. First off, the very word "viral" brings to mind illness, disease, and a variety of other unpleasentries. This is why MS decided to describe the GPL in this way. Welcome to marketing 101.
A virus is some foriegn invader to a system that lives off the host, and thus weakening it. Rarely is a virus invited in, as it's method for propogating is to be hidden in some other form unrecognized by the host.
Software that exists under the GPL does not hide what it is. It can't find its way into proprietary code unless it is specifically invited into it. It is its own host, not requiring another for its survival. Certainly the code is trapped within the license once placed there, but so is proprietary licensed code. The primary difference is that one is trapped in the public domain, the other in the corporate.
I don't have a better metaphor to contradict the whole "viral" thing. I do know that the GPL does not in any way exhibit what we would think of as viral though. Just like with proprietary software, if you want to utilize it within your own code there is a cost attached. To use Microsoft software, you'd pay a licensing fee. With the GPL you pay with providing your efforts back to the community you got it from.
The only purpose behind calling the GPL a "viral license" is to attempt to put a negative spin on it. The term is but one salvo from the MS marketing arsenal designed to attack that which makes us strong. Allowing the term to stick to any OSS license would be suicidal from a public relations standpoint.
Generally the 'penalty' for not having a warrant is that evidence is disallowed in a case.
Unfortunately, you are all too correct here. The officer isn't dealt with as a law breaker, and a quite possibly guilty individual could be set free.
In a slightly more perfect world, an officer committing trespass without a warrant would be treated as any other citizen doing so. Along similar lines, incriminating evidence that truly does show that someone is guilty shouldn't be thrown out due to illegal search procedure.
You are quite right though. We don't live in a slightly more perfect world. To the detriment of both civil liberties and successful prosecution of the guilty, police officers enjoy a certain level of immunity in regards to matters of trespass.
Wrong. You missed the whole point. Policemen are agents appointed to investigate and enforce the law.
Wrong back atcha. A law enforcement official is subject to the same laws of trespass as any other citizen. That's kinda why they need a warrant to search someone's private property.
There are exceptions to this, involving blanket warrants in the case of emergency or if the possibility exists that someone's life is in danger. Other then the few exceptions, the police have no more right to your private property than a journalist has. What's worse is that evidence taken from a private residence without a warrant, no matter how guilty someone might be, will be thrown out in court.
This IS the point of the actions taken. To point out the fact that the police are over stepping the consititutionally established boundaries of the 4th amendment. Allowing unwarranted search and seizure to go unchecked weakens civil liberties as well as the successful prosecution of those that really should see time behind bars. There's no win here for anyone.
Geesh, I feel like I'm stalking Bruce here. Not really meaning to, but there's points being brought up that I feel need addressed. Nothing personal.
If a consequence of joining is that any and all of their patents that are used in a standard will become free for any use whatsoever, they will not join,
The patent only becomes free for any type of use if it is submitted as a standard. It only becomes a standard if accepted by the primary body recognized as responsible for making standards. Today this is the W3C.
If a company is concerned with IP protections, the technology should not be submitted as a standard in the first place. They should take their patent and produce a product to compete in an open playing field with other patented technologies. Establishing an artificial monopoly with a major standards body backing it is by its very nature an unfair advantage being handed out by the W3C. This goes beyond simply conflicting with the GPL.
and they will instead make their standards in an organization that lets them charge royalties for use within the standard. We will have lost.
A company looking to try to establish patented technologies to some other paid for standards body isn't relevant. It's only relevant when accepted by the primary standards body. Once wedged into the recognized standard, oh boy does it every become relevant.
Once patented technologies are adopted as standards, we really will have lost.
...is that I don't necessarily own all the IP that I need to address a problem.
Then the problem isn't addressed.
The notion of patents hasn't slowed down Macromedia from making Flash a defacto standard on the web. It addresses a number of problems without being a W3C standard or recommendation.
The issue isn't whether or not patented technologies get used, or even permitted under a limited royalty system. We're talking about whether or not these technologies are allowed to be included into what is agreed industry wide to be the standard for web technology. This is what is at issue here.
If a company owns a patent they wish to exercise at some later time, great! They spent the money for the R&D and the patent process. They should most certainly be allowed to benefit from this effort if the USPO approved it. That does not mean that it should be allowed in as an industry standard which inhibits a truly open playing field.
If you apply the FSF "logic" you would have to stop distributing gzip because someone could modify it so that it infringed the Unisys LZ patents.
No. If you apply FSF logic here, you would have to stop distributing gzip if someone did infringe on the Unisys patents.
I would think that the history of LZ within GIF would be a pretty good indicator of where this patent business is heading with the W3C members so concerned about it.
I'm a little confused on a couple of points here.
Patent holders won't continue their membership in W3C if that membership forces them to give up their patent rights for non-standards-related applications.
What patent rights is anyone looking to give up at this point? Do we today have patented technologies that make up any part of the W3C recommendation? If not, then this can only be about providing a means for inserting patented technologies as royalty free for the web, with a backside charge for any use not directly involving a web browser.
I'm not seeing how this is a win for Free software.
They will instead move their standards-making activities to other organizations that allow them to charge patent royalties on the standards. And we will have lost.
Who are "they" here? Only companies I can think of that could pull this kind of weight in the W3C is Microsoft or AOL. Purely an assumption based on the notion that these two folks pretty much own the two primary means for viewing web pages out there. I'm sorry, but this sounds like nothing more than an attempt to strong arm their way into essentially owning what up until now has been an open environment for anyone to play in. Even so much as a foothold by either of these companies is a frightening prospect, no matter how much work when into compromise.
The patent holders want the W3C brand on their standards, and will give up something for that.
If anyone complies with the W3C recommendations wouldn't they by default be able to brand their products as such? That being the idea behind having standards that no one company owns. It would even allow a company to brand a patented technology as being compliant with a standard. How does introducing patents into the standards themselves make this better for anyone?
I also take issue with the notion that any patent holder is "giving" something up. Tying a patented technology with a limited use royalty agreement is nothing more than a marketing tactic. Not all that different then Netscape and Microsoft giving away their browsers to gain market share. These are business decisions, not generosity.
Thus, I'd like you to write that email now. It's very important that W3C see support for the draft policy, or we'll be back to the old, bad policy again.
Perhaps. As much as you may wish and pray for software patents to suddenly disappear, we all know that this isn't going to happen in our lifetimes no matter how loud we yell at any government. The only thing we can reasonably expect in the way of keeping the Internet open and free is to insure that the basic infrastructure remains as such. Given the choice between the US government and the W3C to deal with this, the W3C is our only real chance.
Then again, the really scary part is that you may be right. This may be the only compromise possible between the various members. It's like watching the oncoming Microsoft train approach the Internet strapped to the tracks.
Many issued US software patents have significant prior art that should invalidate them
To this point and the others mentioned you run into a single monstrous problem. In order to invalidate these silly patents that have been granted they need to be challenged. Challenging these individually, or even in bite size groups, would be impossibly costly for even the US Government itself to foot the legal bill. It just ain't gonna happen.
I'm not about to hold my breath waiting for legislative action to deal with this either. Consider the audience. The issue is extremely complex in nature involving an in depth understanding of both the technology and the law. This does not describe the electorate at large. It does describe the companies making the noticeable campaign contributions that enable these politicians to run for office in the first place.
Nobody is going to sue the situation into a fix. No group of politicians are going to weaken financial interestes. The only thing left to us is to make it abundantly clear to those filing for the silly patents that their efforts will not return a profit. The only way this can be accomplished in this matter is to not allow a patented technology roam free within the realms of established standards being endorsed by the W3C.
To do otherwise hoping that the poor application of patent law just corrects itself will open the door for companies like Microsoft to do what they have been waiting for years to get. The ability to buy the Internet.
Er... any OS can be written to connect to the web, has nothing to do with open source.
{blinking} {jaw agape}
What Internet do you use? The very fact that ANY operating system can connect to the Internet has EVERYTHING to do with open source. If the Internet was based on proprietary closed source technologies you'd still be dialing your modem into a 1990's Compuserve at $5/hour.
Patent free technologies built on open source software is the very reason you're able to post your comment to this web site in the first place.
And OSS can still get patented - hell, Amazon works on a version of Apache and they still have patents.
Okay, time to bring out the clue-by-4 on this one. First off, I'm sure the entirety of the Slashdot community would love to see one of these OSS patents you're referring to.
As to the Amazon patents, they involve a business practice. What web server they happen to be using at the time has absolutely no impact on this. They didn't patent a web server, the patented a methodology for making a purchase.
Oh God, I just caught myself feeding a troll. Ack!
Point to Point connections rather than master/slave setups, hot-swap and the new connectors make these drives usable in servers
What I'm left wondering about is how the controllers work. The big downside to IDE versus SCSI is that IDE requires more CPU time to get the same amount of work done. I would expect a P2P type connection to take a lot of load off the CPU. Especially if we're looking at up to 16 devices on the same bus.
This benchmark over at Tom's would seem to suggest that at least in their test setup that there aren't any CPU utilization benefits. This is critical stuff for servers, or any real kind of RAID configuration.
Does anyone have any further info on this? Would SATA become more efficient had more drives been involved perhaps?
All the benchmarks I've seen thus far were focused on throughput and bus speed, which is only a small portion of the story.
That is so totally a geek thing.
:) The sad fact is, the professional print market is too much of a niche for a lot of interest in the Free software community to get hopping on. I'm not saying it won't happen, it's just not as high a priority as a functional office suite was. Adobe is the one company that could turn the tide here.
My personal experience with non-geek types has been just the opposite. In fact, I believe it's actually easier for folks to grasp multiple desktops than the whole minimize thing. Well, from what I've seen of users anyway. YMMV.
Um. Im not sure what that means exactly.
What I mean by server class networking is that it doesn't come brain damaged by default. Every workstation class OS from MS (9x, NTWS, XP, 2kPro) will refuse any more than 10 connections. Many network services are not possible to install at all without a server version. Linux and the BSD's come with no such restrictions to their capabilities.
Here's the challenge part. Show me front line Linux applications that rival...
Let's see what I can do with your list here.
QuarkXpress: As I recall there was a project that was attempting to address this. Heck, I bet OSX users would love to have Quark going too!
Macromedia Director: Proprietary editor for a proprietary file format that utilizes a proprietary plug-in. I wouldn't hold my breath on this one.
Painter: Gimp is more than a match for this one. Maybe if you were talking Photoshop 7.0 a better argument could be made.
Quickbooks: There are a number of accounting packages up on Freshmeat, as well as professional packages built for Unix. I would agree that none of these really address the core market that Quickbooks is hitting. I highly suspect that financial software is going to be a very high focus in the next year or so.
Chief Architect: There's a stack of CAD apps for Unix. So far as any that do the bulk of the work for you, not too many out there. Probably the most notable of the free CAD apps is QCad.
Dragon Dictate: Never seen this work right in Windows. It sortta works, so long as you don't start into a conversational tone of voice. Voice recognition has a long way to go on every platform.
Hallmark Greeting Card Maker: You won't see fun little grandma made a XMas card kinda things for a while yet I suspect. Like with Windows, the corporate desktop needs to be won over first.
Streets and Trips & Encarta: Of course you won't see this hitting the Free software arena. The information gathering and subsequent publishing involves bucks. Both of these kinds of apps can be got on the web, either for free or via a subscription. Encarta is available to you now if you wish to subscribe.
AfterFX: Film Gimp. Used at the professional level today. Heck, developed by studio folks!
Learn to Speak Spanish: KDE has been working on a KDE Education package now for a little while. Today it includes a fair stack of items, such as a typing tutor, star chart, a French spelling helper, as well as other stuff. It doesn't yet include any foriegn language tutorials, but there is work moving in that direction.
Personally, I haven't really ever had a need for any of the applications mentioned on your list. At the office, only Quark is used, and it's run on Macs.
The one app that really needs to get addressed this year is Quickbooks though. This is a critical one for small businesses, which should be a target desktop market for Linux at this point. There's a LOT of folks who put this to use to keep track of their business.
If we see an effort put forth like what was generated for Mozilla or OpenOffice on this, I believe a lot of the rest of your list starts to fall in place. We have to have market share before vendors will start porting!
Someone would have to go out on a limb and write proprietary s/w for a retail market that doesn't exist. So you can't build Linux momentum that way.
You can if the software is run from the server.
Aside from the OS side of things, there's a lot of momentum also building around the Free database apps. Those databases are going to need the business logic worked into them, and preferrably all at the server side of things. This is the kind of thing that businesses would pay serious cash for, and still be off cheaper than an MS solution.
Mind you, I'm thinking US customers with Indian vendors. The interesting tid bit here is the ability to drive thin clients so effectively. Nothing else does this as well as Unix OS's. US companies are hitting a point where they're sick of both dealing with MS and upgrading indvidual PC's. If this does prove to be a way out from both of these traps, these folks are going to need customized stuff.
Granted, there won't be a switch flipped to suddenly make this happen. It's slowly working its way forward, like a train coming out of the station. When that train gets up to speed, the programming market in India will take notice. It won't matter how many pirated Windows apps litter the streets. Demand is the only thing that can cause the shift.
I use my computer to work. I don't have a lot of time to explore and fool around.
You could say the same of any tool used to complete a task. Any new tool requires time to work through how to make the most of it. It's not fooling around, it's learning.
But, if my biggest bottlenecks right now are with the apps I use and not the OS, then Linux does me absolutely no good.
Greatly depends on the apps in question. As I found over time, there's apps out there that really do replace their Window's equivalent quite nicely, but they aren't always obvious as to which apps they are. Some time spent on Freshmeat, IRC, or even browsing through mailing lists can sometimes clue you into the apps you never knew existed. One of the downsides of not being inundated with marketing.
No need to be insulting.
Duely retracted, and my apologies given. In reading my post over again that did come off worse than I had intended.
But if Windows loaded with confusing buttons...
Windows Explorer. Object Packager. Hyperterminal. Just a couple of names off the top of my head that related to functionality not described by their name. I distinctly recall looking all over the place for File Manager after upgrading to 95. Today we sort of take these things for granted, because we learned what in the heck they were.
Since most the of distros seem to dink up KDE's default presentation, it's hard to say what you saw the first time in. By default, KDE places a plain description next to the cute KName of all the applications within the KMenu.
Most things are still pretty obvious as to what they do. KCalc for example. Others are so far gone as to be silly. Who would ever guess that Korn was a mail checker? Overall, I would agree with the naming convention being a long term problem. I have a couple of posts up in the KDE Usability mailing list nagging on this very thing.
If your distro up and turned off the descriptive text in the KMenu, you can get all that back on with...
Control Center > Look & Feel > Panel > Menus
In there you'll see a checkbox for "Detailed menu entries". At least this is true in 3.0.5 of KDE.
Unless Linux gives me something I don't have in Windows, then I just don't have the time to muck with it.
It sounds like what you're looking for is the hard sales pitch. Not sure if you're going to find that in Free software land.
You will find desktop environments that allow for seemless use of multiple desktops, server class networking, and front line applications that do a pretty fine job rivaling their rather expensive counterparts. All without having to troll the WareZ groups for hours on end.
The advantages of a Unix desktop aren't immediate though. You won't have a paper clip come flying out to show you around. It takes some time and curiosity to see for yourself why there are those of us who left Windows behind. The really rough part here is that it's not something I can describe adequately to you here. Oh, I could probably list off a stack of features that Windows simply can't do, but it wouldn't mean anything to you. It only has value or meaning when you get there yourself.
All that's assuming you can get past the app naming conventions. You can, can't you?
...then you don't know the Indian software retail market
Perhaps I don't. It was my understanding that a great deal of the programming business going to India was for custom applications for specific clients and consultants. If that is the case, I would think that a world wide move to Linux would be a huge boom market for India.
On the other hand, if the bulk of the product is in shrink wrap sales, then in the immediate future this wouldn't be as profitable. Even still, a Free operating system does not mean all Free software. It is still quite possible to make a buck selling closed source apps for Linux, FreeBSD, or any other flavor of Unix.
A software company looking to work on a Unix product need not follow the exact business model of a Linux distro. An application based company has a different set of goals and would require a different business model.
Actually, it can be easier than you think. Automation is the key to safety here...
Automating safety requires a "human" to consider every possible thing that could go wrong and develop a software and mechanical solution for. Nobody is that good. N-o-b-o-d-y.
Automated saftey also requires that every sensor on a device, be it a plane or a car, is working 100% all of the time. A computer simply cannot look at a stuck altimeter and feel that the plane is nose diving.
Heck, even though we've had automatic transmissions in cars for decades there is still the means to override this to go into a lower gear. Decades of technology fed into these cars still can't determine as well as a human what kind of slope or speed is optimal for the conditions the car is driving in. Sure, 90% of the time the automatic gear selection works fine. 10% of the time it can't.
You can utilize automation to assist in safety. For example, in a military fighter jet the computer will prevent the pilot from ripping the wings off an aircraft, or turning himself into cockpit salsa. ILS assists bringing in an aircraft on the proper flight path, allowing for the pilot to focus on issues such as weather, cross winds, or even cross traffic.
I dunno, but I think they'd accept anything in exchange for the cheaper flights it will bring when you don't have to employ pilots anymore.
I "do" know that I would rather shell out a few extra bucks rather than entirely replace an experienced pilot at the helm of a vehicle 30,000 feet above the ground flying through a nearly infinite range of weather conditions.
You think they're going to find it funny that you rent a pron video of animal action once a month? They're not even going to care...
It's not that it's funny to them. This kind of information would never get used to actually prosecute someone. When you have ready access to potentially embarrassing information, these are political tools used to coerce and solidify authority.
J. Edgar Hoover provided us all a lesson in how information can be used to extend power. If ever there was a man above the law, it was this guy. Presidents lived in fear of him. Nobody was beyond his reach, and this was using far simpler technology with even less information.
The real fear isn't how this administration will use the information it gets provided. Nor is it a concern of how the next one will. Look ahead 5 or 6 presidents into the future and consider how they might make political use of the tools created for a 2002 problem in 2032.
Having information accessible to governments is not a problem unless you're naughty.
Certainly the surest sign that a thread has fallen off the edge, but the parallel is just too close. This perfectly sums up the approach Nazi Germany took in collecting information. You have nothing to fear from your neighbor so long as you're not doing anything that opposes the standing government. Only naughty people have something to worry about. It's a falsehood that is as old as government, yet all "right" thinking people continue to fall for it.
If you don't trust those people who'll be working with the information, do something about it - lobby for better selection procedures, vote for someone else.
You can never, ever, trust people to enforce a bad law. It doesn't matter how you select them. Bad law extends well past the lifetime of possibly trustworthy people.
If you think harassing somebody who rightly thinks it's a good anti-crime system is a good way of preventing the system occuring, ask yourself - who's it going to help?
It's a silly concept known as "Liberty".