I agree. I think the "AT&T is doing it on purpose" tone of this article isn't terribly logical. I really wish assumptions that big companies will do illogical things just to be evil attitude would settle down. It's like everybody's trying to guess what the next scheme will be. It's like listening to Art Bell.
Erm, there is nothing illogical about it, and this is not new, not even for AT&T. If they can keep the customer stcuck with their service for awhile, they can continue to bill them. This means they make money. The customer was on the way out, so screw 'em. As for the customers coming to AT&T they are probably getting screwed by their current provider. Utilities are inherently evil companies because they esentially have an attitude of sending you a bill as though it were a tax. Any service you get is incidental to that.
There was a whole article recently (I think it was mentioned on slashdot or salon) about companies like utilities, and specifically the cell phone carriers, making so many crzy mistakes like this that it essentially slashdots the individual customer, who if they are willing to try and go through the pain will be trying and failing repeatedly to get through a slashdotted complaints system.
Most cell carriers are the worst on this, btw. If you want to pay your bill, there are 600 ways to do it and you will be connected immediately to an automated system or a person. If you want to report a problem, get your bill explained, or something like that, you have to wait. If you want to complain, you get sent to mr dead queue. Wanna switch? Go ahead. See how you get treated by the next guy.
The phone carriers fought this portability system tooth and nail and lost. Now they are going the same route they did with the implementation of the telecommunications bill of 1996 which they hated and still have yet to follow. Remember that? Free competition of local and long distance companies? Stiiiiill going. It's the damn energizer bunny of compliance avoidance!
Even where the competition is opened up, they use "good old boy network" tactics to make it less than equal. For instance, I was recently talking to a Sprint technician who was commisserating with an AT&T technician over how when they go to access SBC equipment in certain multifloor facilities, they are made to use the back door through and alley and climb several flights of rickety stairs with their equipment, despite the availability of several elevators and easily accessable doors. Yes there are security considerations, but that does not obligate SBC to be an asshole in this case. Of course I cannot help but wonder whether the favour is returned when SBC goes to the other companies' facilities.
It all adds up to the fact that for these types of businesses, making things unpleasant for customers, partners, and competitors in like manner is a way of life. This is how they do business. Banks are the same way. Basically it has to do with the fact that they provide convenience services, and therefore alreday know you are avoiding inconvenience. So they have enormous power to inconvenience you. They also have the fact that this is an industry-wide phenomenon on their side. Dealing with the Utility company, the car salesman, the Government, or the bank is just going to suck. The barrier to entry is high enough that a hungry business is less likely to come up and take over with sterling customer service.
Wrong... Microsoft usually releases a patch months BEFORE any attack, yet it still happens because nobody bothers to patch. (i.e., code red, sql slammer). So, who has the lower tunaround time? Microsoft at -3 months or Gentoo at +1 day after you have been rooted?
OSS/Free software usually tries not to mess up in the first place. They also fix problems in the code before exploits. But everyone is human and shit happens. The fact is slashdot has reported on patches for vulnerabilities on many platforms which were released before there were any known exploits. This was a case where a known exploit does not exist, but someone did exploit the vulnerability. The story is big news only because of that. Developers fix problems like this every day.
As for SQL Slammer and Code Red, I know there was a patch for SQL Slammer 6 months before the worm went crazy, but by all accounts the patch did not work and in fact broke people's boxes. The patch which properly worked was roughly contemporaneous with the worm (either a wekk before or a week after, give or take some days, I forget). I am not so sure that the code red patch predated the worm, but I do know there was a new patch after the worm that fixed the problem exploited by the worm. But windowsupdate.com was infected by the worm and that made it pretty hard to patch.
sco staff - so they don't spend their workday surfing workopolis
They would be surfing a canadian job board? I guess they probbaly *do* need to leave the country, though I would have figured Nigeria in this case;).
Based on your sig, I am thinking I would be cruising that site as well if I were you. Always be ready to have another job. That is the lesson of the.com crash. There is no loyalty to the worker anymore, so fuck 'em.
People who lie on resumes amuse me. What do they do when they get the job and then can't perform their tasks? My old roommate did that for a job fair. He tried to lie to Microsoft and IBM about his java experience (zero). They were actually asking technical questions at the fair so he was sol. If someone needs to lie about their experience to get a job, why don't they just go get that experience?
Usually people have to claim some experience in order to get the job where they actually get experience. Basically where your friend messed up was not doing his homework. Don't claim knowlege you do not have. If you say you know Java, be ready to answer the questions and do the work.
My take on this is, on your resume say what you can do. When you get the job you better damn well be able to do it. But just because your current boss is holding you back and not giving you the responsibilities and job tasks you could do does not mean you should stay stuck. Put that you can do that job on your resume and then do that job somewhere else.
Back the fact that by saying that you say "I lie for money" forms paradox on your words because you just told the truth.
Unless of course you wrote the comment in your spare time or was on a break.;)
Oh the retorts the retorts...
"I lie for money" is a recursive algorithm in this case.
Maybe s/he lied about being on his lunch break.
Then again, the poster is posting to slashdot, so technically it is a break whenever they do so. However, it may have been on company time, which is lying, which then means they were working... ABEND
Certainly the GPL is dependent on copyright. But you can't seriously tell me that the FSF -- and moreso the EFF -- is staking out an increasingly infringement-friendly position.
Which is it? The GPL and music are both protected by copyright, or neither are?
Slashdot (or more pedantically random slashdotters) != FSF or EFF
If you pay attention to what the FSF has said, and read RMS's bio, you will understand that RMS preferes to use products unencumbered by IP concerns. This includes his taste in music, which seems to be restricted primarily to folk songs, classical music, and original works in a similar vein that are freely distributed.
The EFF has opposed the DMCA's abuse which has included punishment of the innocent as well as punishment of people who are probably not so innocent without due process. They have also opposed the erosion of fair use rights which are granted by original copyright law. They have never taken the indefensible position that copyright holders do not deserve compensation for their work, and neither have the FSF. In fact both vehemently defend this. The RIAA et al are actually fighting against due compensation for content creators and in some cases copyright holders.
The FSF and EFF stand to promote Free software and Electronic Freedom. They do not support software patents because patents are, by their very nature, a restriction on freedom. A patent is a limited time state-mandated monopoly for the inventor(s). That does not mean that the EFF or FSF seek to devalue patents - merely that they do not support them.
To be fair, they do agree with the usefulness of patents. They disagree with software patents because of their inherent problems. However, the GPL does allow for software patents. They simply require that a perpetual royalty-free license be granted to GPL'ed software containing patented code.
Dude, you're too YOUNG to remember when Apple ruled the world...;-) Oh the good old days, when Archie was king and gopher ruled the web...
The latter was the case up until the mid 1990's. The former was true at least through the 80's, though even in 1994 I remember how the PowerPC was going to blow everything else out of the water according to CNN. Of course, CNN tried to make it sound like the PowerPC would, of itself, run x86, 68k, and PPC code seamlessly. Obviously this turned out not to be true.
Turns out, Robert Smith is the singer for 'The Cure', and Morrissey (didn't actually use a first name, kinda like Madonna) was the singer from 'The Smiths'.
Good you looked that up for me. Since the poster linked them with ice cream I was thinking that they were Ben and Jerry's real names.
That's why you always took a wide black magic marker and made a diagonal stripe across the top of the cards! They taught us that in CS242 (370 Assembler)
Man! It took until 242 to teach you that? I bet you were pissed when you thought of all the man-years wasted in 101-241 dropping cards!:)
Not all that old. For the logest time you didn't even need an ID to post. I didn't sign up for an ID until slashboxes were available.
I signed up for an id in order to change the preferences when they made the defaults suck. Before that the default display for the site just happened to be what I wanted anyway.
"Didn't FAT come with the very first DOS, which was in fact QDOS and not designed by Microsoft? True they did buy all rights to it, but still."
The patents relate to the mechanisms used to implement extended file names.
Then they should be challenged and invalidated imediately. A cursory look at the publicly available documents and press at the time will show that this was NOT an innnovation on the part of Microsoft. It was a reaction to the fact that extended file name sizes were available in every other OS at the time including other desktop OSs like the MacOS. Besides, you don't get a patent cookie for changing
There is a difference between reading FAT and using FAT. As I understand it, MS is charging licensing fees to people who's products are built on top of FAT. Just because something like OSS reads FAT, doesn't mean it has to pay fees.
But OSS can create FAT file systems. Commercial OSs can, too, so it is annoying to them as well, though in those cases it means a few less prostitutes for the CEO. In OSS it means the end of OSS because every distributor has to pay. Everyone who gives a cd to someone else is a distributor. Everyone who adds to an OSS project in any way is a distributor.
Also, any license other than royalty-free carte blanche license is incompatable with the GPL. It says so right in the GPL. Microsoft knows this, that is why they are doing what they are doing.
Ahhhh... so you're another one of those annoying people that decided we didn't need to only hear one side of the conversation while you stood in line to buy that crappy version of Tony Hawk for the N-Gage (only person in line I might add.... for the entire christmas season), but needed to hear BOTH sides of the conversation.
No, I am one of those annoying people who thinks that when you have a meeting it makes sense to hear everyone present. Otherwise why make them sit through the damn meeting just to further insult them by not caring about their input?! Speakerphones are for conferences/meetings, I use the headphones most of the time. I try to be conscientious about those around me (thus the comment about not bothering those around me). Besides, with the quality of the microphone, you will probably not hear my side of the conversation unless you are on the other end of the line. I can pretty much whisper and be heard by the person I am speaking to.
BTW. All those open standards... here's a clue: Other cell phones use them too, and they do it better.
The open standards bit was a bit of a sop to slashdot. But I do like that aspect of the phone. I do know other phones do it, too; all new Nokia phones do this. I don't understand what you mean by "do it better." I don't see any deficiencies in the way the Ngage supports the standards I mentioned or any other useful standards it could support. The midi in particular is better supported than pretty much any other phone by dint of the superior sound hardware.
(BTW, your claim about graphics is wrong, the game does not support the equivalent framerates, resolution or texture quality of the PS1)
I'll admit I have not done a side-by-side comparison of the technical claims of the two systems. I have however done a side by side comparison of the quality of identical games for both platforms. The graphical quality of Tomb Raider, for instance on PS1 was abysmal. I honestly never understood why people even bothered playing it, because gameplay sucked, the camera was retarded and on crack, and the main premise seemed to be looking at a very blocky Lara Croft for the duration of the game. There are still problems in the ngage version, but the graphics are better (there are better curves) and the game seems more fun to play to me.
After boycotting Tomb Raider for the duration of its existence over a seeming unwillingness on the part of the developers to fix the above, I bought it for Ngage because it looked better on the Ngage when I saw coworkers playing it. I'll admit I would probably have gotten Red Faction instead if it had been available, and Tony Hawk if I had noticed the multiplayer options. My choices were, for the record, Pandemonium, Sonic, and Tomb Raider. Two of those are available for PS1 and both look better (TO ME) on the Ngage.
I have not seen any problems in framerate, either. I have played Sonic through about half the game, and in Tomb Raider I have had Lara run/swim/jump around as fast as she can go, and I have never had a single hangup, never have frames skipped, and if anything it seems to run smoother than the PS1. I have not noticed any texture quality problems, but then the games that I have seen so far never used a lot of textures no matter what system they were on. Besides, the screen is pretty small, so it would be hard to provide too much detail (we only have so many pixels to work with, man!).
Microsoft never charged for the mere use of FAT filesystems. Also, what patent lasts over 20 years? NONE that is how many. They have no basis for this.
Besides, FAT is essentially designed using well-known concepts of filesystem design, and very poorly. It does not contain novel concepts and was never meant to be anything more than just, well, a filesystem, as opposed to a well-designed novel filesystem.
$250K is not an unreasonable amount for a license to what appears to be five pretty robust patents to a technology that Microsoft did in fact design. You have to make a million units to pay that fee.
Didn't FAT come with the very first DOS, which was in fact QDOS and not designed by Microsoft? True they did buy all rights to it, but still.
It is not a robust technology at all. FAT is one of the worst filesystems ever designed and was lightyears BEHIND contemporary filesystem designs. There was nothing novel about its design and it is very basic as filesystems go. Unfortunately it is ubiquitous because of Microsoft's monopoly in the desktop computer market.
This license fee means that OSS will not be able to read FAT anymore. It's not about designing a new spec. OSS has far superior filesystems available than any commercial offerings, period. But unfortunately we do want to be able to read our data from usb drives and other flash media, floppies, etc. This means reading FAT.
Honestly, who actually wants an N-gage. Even if it could emulate a GBA and SNES to perfection I wouldn't go 10 feet near it. Who the hell wants to talk into a taco? Worst design... EVER.
I understand what you mean, but I rarely use it as a taco-phone. I use the earphones which are included and which include a microphone. They are very small and yet very effective. Usually I am playing games or listening to music on it, anyway, and use the earphones because you can hear the sounds better and it does not disturb anyone around you. Last but not least, it is the best speakerphone I have ever used, and that includes some of those $600-$3000 conference phones.
The Ngage is a radio, an MP3 player, a portable console whose graphics are better than the PS1, a pda (sans handwriting recognition) and a portable hard drive. It uses open standards (midi, mp3, jpg, GSM, Java, MMC) and is all in all pretty spiffy. I havent tried to connect it to the PC yet so I am not sure of it's Linux abilities, though I am told it does work and it should in all honesty.
There are a lot of misconceptions about the ngage. I have found that actually using one dispells many of them.
For some reason I had thought it was the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. Also, this is one program we will not be able to use for corporate Linux for HR/diversity reasons. Whoever thought it was cute to give an awesome program like GIMP a name like GIMP gave it the kiss of death. I have to excise all references to it in any desktop shots I use for training in a corporate environment because of that. What's next? The KDE Income Kollection Environment for a money management program? Sheesh!
Whoa, hold on there, pardner! We're on the same side here:).
Synaptic sounds very cool and I would like to give it a try. I was just thinking that grandma will have trouble with apt-get. However, another problem is the "creative" names we give OSS/LibreS projects. Grandma need to know what tool to use for what job. Don't give her crazy names like sylpheed, GIMP, GNU/This, and Kthat to remember. Give her SoftwareToTypeLetters and SoftwareToTypeEmail and SoftwareToLookAtPicturesofGrandkids and SoftwareToFixPicturesofGrandkids. I don't mean we have to change the name, I just mean we need to have a repository of software that makes it clear to the user what the software does, and easy for the user to find the software they need.
I do not think the Windows way is best. I do think it is easier in some ways for normal users. Some of that is familiarity. I mean apt-get foo and cast foo seem pretty darn easy to me, and vi is downright intuitive. But I am not thinking it will be for everyone. Pretty pictures and non-forced, non-railroaded wizards are helpful, as is, well, help. And when you tell users to RTFM, how about providing one for god's sake? Don't provide a man page with some switches with no explanations or examples and call it documentation!
The home user is not really relevant with respect to corporate linux. Userlinux is taking aim at the corporate environment.
Personally, I don't think linux is ready for the desktop of the home user. I'd rather see windows have that market for a few more years until the software and hardware support on linux is mature enough to take it on in a head to head competition.
In the corporate environment you need essentially three things: reasonably low cost, ease of administration, and 3rd party vendor support (read: oracle).
Also, you quite rightly point out most home users receive a pre-installed system. I fully expect one day users will receive a pre-installed linux system. Users should NOT have to do OS installation themselves. It's not possible to make it easy enough to work for someone who doesn't understand what a computer is, and powerful enough for someone who does, at the same time.
You are right that the corporate desktop is an easier target and that it should be our first target for desktop Linux. However, most of what I said applies to the corporate environment as well if not moreso.
Corporate desktops are usually installed and set up by IT. Most corporate desktop users are the very home users I was talking about. Their primary job function is something else, not IT, and they know enough to get the mouse around and maybe install some software. They know the applications they work with daily to the extent that they use them. That is generally all they do know, and this is what we are working with.
If all we needed for the corporate desktop were the things you mentioned, we would already be there. Clearly there have been implementations in which corporate desktops were switched to Linux in order to avoid the Microsoft Mafia, and successfully. But for widespread adoption there is more that has to be done.
If we continue to make the mistake of thinking we can ignore home use just because "Linux is not ready" and get corporate users, we will fail utterly. Microsoft started in the home and worked their way into the corporation from there because they understand human nature and what the personal computer is about very well. People will use what is easy to use and familiar to them.
We also cannot make the mistake of thinking that all corporate users are computer savvy like IT. IT people alreday use Linux on the desktop. I know a lot of people who have used LInux exclusively or almost exclusively for years, and they are all IT people. So we already have them. It is time to make Linux ready for grandma and the pointy haired boss, and I think this is what Bruce Perens is hoping to do and wish him the best of luck.
I respectfully disagree with the choice of Debian as a base unless it is completely revamped, mainly because of the way the debian project approaches software versions. I think the way of the future is in distributions which use up to date, yet stable and secure, versions of software. I know that is a hell of a lot harder to actually do than to think about or type into slashdot, but this is what we must do on the back end. The idea of allowing the newest when it is known to be unstable or else giving the choice of stable-but-out-of-date is not going to work for a desktop environment. apt-get is nifty and should not be thrown out with the bathwater. Clean filesystem and init/configuration system design are also good points that should be kept.
As for your assertion that it is not possible to make a computer easy enough to work for someone who does not know what a computer is and powerful enough for someone who does, I think you shodul check out the Macintosh. I think they had this right with the old Mac OS and are getting there fitfully with Mac OS X.
Giving people options does not make configuration hard as long as you keep the advanced options where they belong. For instance, give people a GUI for common options but let me break out vi and ed
It would help if you could tell me specificaly what you think is wrong with the apt + front-end combination as far as user friendliness is concerned. Try answering these: 1. What don't you like about all existing front-ends. This is not to say that any of them would work for grandma, but it helps to understand why. 2. Why do you feel that the front-end + back-end arrangement is fundamentaly flawed?
Personally, I think that at minimum we need to get to a state where, like most commercial desktop OSs, you download a file which appears as an icon and double-click that to install it on your computer.
I also think it would be better if we did not have to go that far to install software. Perhaps when we reach the point where through a web interface on a site a user could signal his/her intent to use a piece of software (perhaps by clicking a link) and that software would then be downloaded, installed, and launched. It should also be easy to go back to an older version or get rid of the software cleanly.
But the most important thing about installers is that they are run once. People base entire distribution reviews on the installer, which is just stupid.
I think what you are going for is that using the system is more important than installing the system. But honestly, OS installers are very important, especially when evaluating for the home user. Most home users have never installed an OS, they got one with their computer. Besides, ease of use with Linux is usually less a function of the distribution itself and more a function of the environment (eg GNOME, KDE, etc.) which are essentially the same for all distros.
Package management is a problem which, IMHO, still needs solving. There are several package management schemes but only debian and the source based distros appear to have mostly killed the dependency monster (it still rears its ugly head in various ways). Both are fairly simple to use, but still not ready for Grandma.
I think that a user linux system should strive to be easier to use and administer than the current crop of commercial operating systems. I think that installation of the system itself and the software are going to be lynchpins in this process. Most users spend more time doing these things than performing any other administration task. Existing technologies will probably provide a good framework for this, but the key to usability is interface interface interface. I think all OSs have a long way to go in this area, quite frankly, not just Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I think the "AT&T is doing it on purpose" tone of this article isn't terribly logical. I really wish assumptions that big companies will do illogical things just to be evil attitude would settle down. It's like everybody's trying to guess what the next scheme will be. It's like listening to Art Bell.
Erm, there is nothing illogical about it, and this is not new, not even for AT&T. If they can keep the customer stcuck with their service for awhile, they can continue to bill them. This means they make money. The customer was on the way out, so screw 'em. As for the customers coming to AT&T they are probably getting screwed by their current provider. Utilities are inherently evil companies because they esentially have an attitude of sending you a bill as though it were a tax. Any service you get is incidental to that.
There was a whole article recently (I think it was mentioned on slashdot or salon) about companies like utilities, and specifically the cell phone carriers, making so many crzy mistakes like this that it essentially slashdots the individual customer, who if they are willing to try and go through the pain will be trying and failing repeatedly to get through a slashdotted complaints system.
Most cell carriers are the worst on this, btw. If you want to pay your bill, there are 600 ways to do it and you will be connected immediately to an automated system or a person. If you want to report a problem, get your bill explained, or something like that, you have to wait. If you want to complain, you get sent to mr dead queue. Wanna switch? Go ahead. See how you get treated by the next guy.
The phone carriers fought this portability system tooth and nail and lost. Now they are going the same route they did with the implementation of the telecommunications bill of 1996 which they hated and still have yet to follow. Remember that? Free competition of local and long distance companies? Stiiiiill going. It's the damn energizer bunny of compliance avoidance!
Even where the competition is opened up, they use "good old boy network" tactics to make it less than equal. For instance, I was recently talking to a Sprint technician who was commisserating with an AT&T technician over how when they go to access SBC equipment in certain multifloor facilities, they are made to use the back door through and alley and climb several flights of rickety stairs with their equipment, despite the availability of several elevators and easily accessable doors. Yes there are security considerations, but that does not obligate SBC to be an asshole in this case. Of course I cannot help but wonder whether the favour is returned when SBC goes to the other companies' facilities.
It all adds up to the fact that for these types of businesses, making things unpleasant for customers, partners, and competitors in like manner is a way of life. This is how they do business. Banks are the same way. Basically it has to do with the fact that they provide convenience services, and therefore alreday know you are avoiding inconvenience. So they have enormous power to inconvenience you. They also have the fact that this is an industry-wide phenomenon on their side. Dealing with the Utility company, the car salesman, the Government, or the bank is just going to suck. The barrier to entry is high enough that a hungry business is less likely to come up and take over with sterling customer service.
Wrong... Microsoft usually releases a patch months BEFORE any attack, yet it still happens because nobody bothers to patch. (i.e., code red, sql slammer). So, who has the lower tunaround time? Microsoft at -3 months or Gentoo at +1 day after you have been rooted?
OSS/Free software usually tries not to mess up in the first place. They also fix problems in the code before exploits. But everyone is human and shit happens. The fact is slashdot has reported on patches for vulnerabilities on many platforms which were released before there were any known exploits. This was a case where a known exploit does not exist, but someone did exploit the vulnerability. The story is big news only because of that. Developers fix problems like this every day.
As for SQL Slammer and Code Red, I know there was a patch for SQL Slammer 6 months before the worm went crazy, but by all accounts the patch did not work and in fact broke people's boxes. The patch which properly worked was roughly contemporaneous with the worm (either a wekk before or a week after, give or take some days, I forget). I am not so sure that the code red patch predated the worm, but I do know there was a new patch after the worm that fixed the problem exploited by the worm. But windowsupdate.com was infected by the worm and that made it pretty hard to patch.
sco staff - so they don't spend their workday surfing workopolis
They would be surfing a canadian job board? I guess they probbaly *do* need to leave the country, though I would have figured Nigeria in this case ;).
Based on your sig, I am thinking I would be cruising that site as well if I were you. Always be ready to have another job. That is the lesson of the .com crash. There is no loyalty to the worker anymore, so fuck 'em.
People who lie on resumes amuse me. What do they do when they get the job and then can't perform their tasks? My old roommate did that for a job fair. He tried to lie to Microsoft and IBM about his java experience (zero). They were actually asking technical questions at the fair so he was sol. If someone needs to lie about their experience to get a job, why don't they just go get that experience?
Usually people have to claim some experience in order to get the job where they actually get experience. Basically where your friend messed up was not doing his homework. Don't claim knowlege you do not have. If you say you know Java, be ready to answer the questions and do the work.
My take on this is, on your resume say what you can do. When you get the job you better damn well be able to do it. But just because your current boss is holding you back and not giving you the responsibilities and job tasks you could do does not mean you should stay stuck. Put that you can do that job on your resume and then do that job somewhere else.
Back the fact that by saying that you say "I lie for money" forms paradox on your words because you just told the truth.
Unless of course you wrote the comment in your spare time or was on a break. ;)
Oh the retorts the retorts...
"I lie for money" is a recursive algorithm in this case.
Maybe s/he lied about being on his lunch break.
Then again, the poster is posting to slashdot, so technically it is a break whenever they do so. However, it may have been on company time, which is lying, which then means they were working... ABEND
--Guru Meditation---
TILT
Certainly the GPL is dependent on copyright. But you can't seriously tell me that the FSF -- and moreso the EFF -- is staking out an increasingly infringement-friendly position.
Which is it? The GPL and music are both protected by copyright, or neither are?
Slashdot (or more pedantically random slashdotters) != FSF or EFF
If you pay attention to what the FSF has said, and read RMS's bio, you will understand that RMS preferes to use products unencumbered by IP concerns. This includes his taste in music, which seems to be restricted primarily to folk songs, classical music, and original works in a similar vein that are freely distributed.
The EFF has opposed the DMCA's abuse which has included punishment of the innocent as well as punishment of people who are probably not so innocent without due process. They have also opposed the erosion of fair use rights which are granted by original copyright law. They have never taken the indefensible position that copyright holders do not deserve compensation for their work, and neither have the FSF. In fact both vehemently defend this. The RIAA et al are actually fighting against due compensation for content creators and in some cases copyright holders.
The FSF and EFF stand to promote Free software and Electronic Freedom. They do not support software patents because patents are, by their very nature, a restriction on freedom. A patent is a limited time state-mandated monopoly for the inventor(s). That does not mean that the EFF or FSF seek to devalue patents - merely that they do not support them.
To be fair, they do agree with the usefulness of patents. They disagree with software patents because of their inherent problems. However, the GPL does allow for software patents. They simply require that a perpetual royalty-free license be granted to GPL'ed software containing patented code.
Dude, you're too YOUNG to remember when Apple ruled the world... ;-) Oh the good old days, when Archie was king and gopher ruled the web...
The latter was the case up until the mid 1990's. The former was true at least through the 80's, though even in 1994 I remember how the PowerPC was going to blow everything else out of the water according to CNN. Of course, CNN tried to make it sound like the PowerPC would, of itself, run x86, 68k, and PPC code seamlessly. Obviously this turned out not to be true.
Turns out, Robert Smith is the singer for 'The Cure', and Morrissey (didn't actually use a first name, kinda like Madonna) was the singer from 'The Smiths'.
Good you looked that up for me. Since the poster linked them with ice cream I was thinking that they were Ben and Jerry's real names.
next you'll tell us about your grey pubic hair.
You can probably see it on geezerse.cx! :P
That's why you always took a wide black magic marker and made a diagonal stripe across the top of the cards!
They taught us that in CS242 (370 Assembler)
Man! It took until 242 to teach you that? I bet you were pissed when you thought of all the man-years wasted in 101-241 dropping cards! :)
Not all that old. For the logest time you didn't even need an ID to post. I didn't sign up for an ID until slashboxes were available.
I signed up for an id in order to change the preferences when they made the defaults suck. Before that the default display for the site just happened to be what I wanted anyway.
Now how am I supposed to get my pubescent voyeurism kicks?
At one of the 5,000,000 other webcam sites, of course! Hmm I wonder if goatcamse.cx is taken... No it's available! get it while the grits are hot! :)
"Didn't FAT come with the very first DOS, which was in fact QDOS and not designed by Microsoft? True they did buy all rights to it, but still."
The patents relate to the mechanisms used to implement extended file names.
Then they should be challenged and invalidated imediately. A cursory look at the publicly available documents and press at the time will show that this was NOT an innnovation on the part of Microsoft. It was a reaction to the fact that extended file name sizes were available in every other OS at the time including other desktop OSs like the MacOS. Besides, you don't get a patent cookie for changing
char filename [ 12 ];
to
char filename [ 255 ];
That is just stupid.
There is a difference between reading FAT and using FAT. As I understand it, MS is charging licensing fees to people who's products are built on top of FAT. Just because something like OSS reads FAT, doesn't mean it has to pay fees.
But OSS can create FAT file systems. Commercial OSs can, too, so it is annoying to them as well, though in those cases it means a few less prostitutes for the CEO. In OSS it means the end of OSS because every distributor has to pay. Everyone who gives a cd to someone else is a distributor. Everyone who adds to an OSS project in any way is a distributor.
Also, any license other than royalty-free carte blanche license is incompatable with the GPL. It says so right in the GPL. Microsoft knows this, that is why they are doing what they are doing.
Ahhhh... so you're another one of those annoying people that decided we didn't need to only hear one side of the conversation while you stood in line to buy that crappy version of Tony Hawk for the N-Gage (only person in line I might add.... for the entire christmas season), but needed to hear BOTH sides of the conversation.
No, I am one of those annoying people who thinks that when you have a meeting it makes sense to hear everyone present. Otherwise why make them sit through the damn meeting just to further insult them by not caring about their input?! Speakerphones are for conferences/meetings, I use the headphones most of the time. I try to be conscientious about those around me (thus the comment about not bothering those around me). Besides, with the quality of the microphone, you will probably not hear my side of the conversation unless you are on the other end of the line. I can pretty much whisper and be heard by the person I am speaking to.
BTW. All those open standards... here's a clue:
Other cell phones use them too, and they do it better.
The open standards bit was a bit of a sop to slashdot. But I do like that aspect of the phone. I do know other phones do it, too; all new Nokia phones do this. I don't understand what you mean by "do it better." I don't see any deficiencies in the way the Ngage supports the standards I mentioned or any other useful standards it could support. The midi in particular is better supported than pretty much any other phone by dint of the superior sound hardware.
(BTW, your claim about graphics is wrong, the game does not support the equivalent framerates, resolution or texture quality of the PS1)
I'll admit I have not done a side-by-side comparison of the technical claims of the two systems. I have however done a side by side comparison of the quality of identical games for both platforms. The graphical quality of Tomb Raider, for instance on PS1 was abysmal. I honestly never understood why people even bothered playing it, because gameplay sucked, the camera was retarded and on crack, and the main premise seemed to be looking at a very blocky Lara Croft for the duration of the game. There are still problems in the ngage version, but the graphics are better (there are better curves) and the game seems more fun to play to me.
After boycotting Tomb Raider for the duration of its existence over a seeming unwillingness on the part of the developers to fix the above, I bought it for Ngage because it looked better on the Ngage when I saw coworkers playing it. I'll admit I would probably have gotten Red Faction instead if it had been available, and Tony Hawk if I had noticed the multiplayer options. My choices were, for the record, Pandemonium, Sonic, and Tomb Raider. Two of those are available for PS1 and both look better (TO ME) on the Ngage.
I have not seen any problems in framerate, either. I have played Sonic through about half the game, and in Tomb Raider I have had Lara run/swim/jump around as fast as she can go, and I have never had a single hangup, never have frames skipped, and if anything it seems to run smoother than the PS1. I have not noticed any texture quality problems, but then the games that I have seen so far never used a lot of textures no matter what system they were on. Besides, the screen is pretty small, so it would be hard to provide too much detail (we only have so many pixels to work with, man!).
Microsoft never charged for the mere use of FAT filesystems. Also, what patent lasts over 20 years? NONE that is how many. They have no basis for this.
Besides, FAT is essentially designed using well-known concepts of filesystem design, and very poorly. It does not contain novel concepts and was never meant to be anything more than just, well, a filesystem, as opposed to a well-designed novel filesystem.
$250K is not an unreasonable amount for a license to what appears to be five pretty robust patents to a technology that Microsoft did in fact design. You have to make a million units to pay that fee.
Didn't FAT come with the very first DOS, which was in fact QDOS and not designed by Microsoft? True they did buy all rights to it, but still.
It is not a robust technology at all. FAT is one of the worst filesystems ever designed and was lightyears BEHIND contemporary filesystem designs. There was nothing novel about its design and it is very basic as filesystems go. Unfortunately it is ubiquitous because of Microsoft's monopoly in the desktop computer market.
This license fee means that OSS will not be able to read FAT anymore. It's not about designing a new spec. OSS has far superior filesystems available than any commercial offerings, period. But unfortunately we do want to be able to read our data from usb drives and other flash media, floppies, etc. This means reading FAT.
I'm sure Nokia is somehow behind this. I mean if they couldn't sell it with games, or discounts, why not push it for emulation?
Erm, they are selling it with games and discounts. At least they were very recently. $100 in-store rebate and 3 games. That is why I bought one.
Honestly, who actually wants an N-gage. Even if it could emulate a GBA and SNES to perfection I wouldn't go 10 feet near it. Who the hell wants to talk into a taco? Worst design ... EVER.
I understand what you mean, but I rarely use it as a taco-phone. I use the earphones which are included and which include a microphone. They are very small and yet very effective. Usually I am playing games or listening to music on it, anyway, and use the earphones because you can hear the sounds better and it does not disturb anyone around you. Last but not least, it is the best speakerphone I have ever used, and that includes some of those $600-$3000 conference phones.
The Ngage is a radio, an MP3 player, a portable console whose graphics are better than the PS1, a pda (sans handwriting recognition) and a portable hard drive. It uses open standards (midi, mp3, jpg, GSM, Java, MMC) and is all in all pretty spiffy. I havent tried to connect it to the PC yet so I am not sure of it's Linux abilities, though I am told it does work and it should in all honesty.
There are a lot of misconceptions about the ngage. I have found that actually using one dispells many of them.
"GIMP Graphical Image Manipulation Program"
For some reason I had thought it was the Gnu Image Manipulation Program. Also, this is one program we will not be able to use for corporate Linux for HR/diversity reasons. Whoever thought it was cute to give an awesome program like GIMP a name like GIMP gave it the kiss of death. I have to excise all references to it in any desktop shots I use for training in a corporate environment because of that. What's next? The KDE Income Kollection Environment for a money management program? Sheesh!
Whoa, hold on there, pardner! We're on the same side here :).
Synaptic sounds very cool and I would like to give it a try. I was just thinking that grandma will have trouble with apt-get. However, another problem is the "creative" names we give OSS/LibreS projects. Grandma need to know what tool to use for what job. Don't give her crazy names like sylpheed, GIMP, GNU/This, and Kthat to remember. Give her SoftwareToTypeLetters and SoftwareToTypeEmail and SoftwareToLookAtPicturesofGrandkids and SoftwareToFixPicturesofGrandkids. I don't mean we have to change the name, I just mean we need to have a repository of software that makes it clear to the user what the software does, and easy for the user to find the software they need.
I do not think the Windows way is best. I do think it is easier in some ways for normal users. Some of that is familiarity. I mean apt-get foo and cast foo seem pretty darn easy to me, and vi is downright intuitive. But I am not thinking it will be for everyone. Pretty pictures and non-forced, non-railroaded wizards are helpful, as is, well, help. And when you tell users to RTFM, how about providing one for god's sake? Don't provide a man page with some switches with no explanations or examples and call it documentation!
The home user is not really relevant with respect to corporate linux. Userlinux is taking aim at the corporate environment.
Personally, I don't think linux is ready for the desktop of the home user. I'd rather see windows have that market for a few more years until the software and hardware support on linux is mature enough to take it on in a head to head competition.
In the corporate environment you need essentially three things: reasonably low cost, ease of administration, and 3rd party vendor support (read: oracle).
Also, you quite rightly point out most home users receive a pre-installed system. I fully expect one day users will receive a pre-installed linux system. Users should NOT have to do OS installation themselves. It's not possible to make it easy enough to work for someone who doesn't understand what a computer is, and powerful enough for someone who does, at the same time.
You are right that the corporate desktop is an easier target and that it should be our first target for desktop Linux. However, most of what I said applies to the corporate environment as well if not moreso.
Corporate desktops are usually installed and set up by IT. Most corporate desktop users are the very home users I was talking about. Their primary job function is something else, not IT, and they know enough to get the mouse around and maybe install some software. They know the applications they work with daily to the extent that they use them. That is generally all they do know, and this is what we are working with.
If all we needed for the corporate desktop were the things you mentioned, we would already be there. Clearly there have been implementations in which corporate desktops were switched to Linux in order to avoid the Microsoft Mafia, and successfully. But for widespread adoption there is more that has to be done.
If we continue to make the mistake of thinking we can ignore home use just because "Linux is not ready" and get corporate users, we will fail utterly. Microsoft started in the home and worked their way into the corporation from there because they understand human nature and what the personal computer is about very well. People will use what is easy to use and familiar to them.
We also cannot make the mistake of thinking that all corporate users are computer savvy like IT. IT people alreday use Linux on the desktop. I know a lot of people who have used LInux exclusively or almost exclusively for years, and they are all IT people. So we already have them. It is time to make Linux ready for grandma and the pointy haired boss, and I think this is what Bruce Perens is hoping to do and wish him the best of luck.
I respectfully disagree with the choice of Debian as a base unless it is completely revamped, mainly because of the way the debian project approaches software versions. I think the way of the future is in distributions which use up to date, yet stable and secure, versions of software. I know that is a hell of a lot harder to actually do than to think about or type into slashdot, but this is what we must do on the back end. The idea of allowing the newest when it is known to be unstable or else giving the choice of stable-but-out-of-date is not going to work for a desktop environment. apt-get is nifty and should not be thrown out with the bathwater. Clean filesystem and init/configuration system design are also good points that should be kept.
As for your assertion that it is not possible to make a computer easy enough to work for someone who does not know what a computer is and powerful enough for someone who does, I think you shodul check out the Macintosh. I think they had this right with the old Mac OS and are getting there fitfully with Mac OS X.
Giving people options does not make configuration hard as long as you keep the advanced options where they belong. For instance, give people a GUI for common options but let me break out vi and ed
It would help if you could tell me specificaly what you think is wrong with the apt + front-end combination as far as user friendliness is concerned. Try answering these: 1. What don't you like about all existing front-ends. This is not to say that any of them would work for grandma, but it helps to understand why. 2. Why do you feel that the front-end + back-end arrangement is fundamentaly flawed?
Personally, I think that at minimum we need to get to a state where, like most commercial desktop OSs, you download a file which appears as an icon and double-click that to install it on your computer.
I also think it would be better if we did not have to go that far to install software. Perhaps when we reach the point where through a web interface on a site a user could signal his/her intent to use a piece of software (perhaps by clicking a link) and that software would then be downloaded, installed, and launched. It should also be easy to go back to an older version or get rid of the software cleanly.
But the most important thing about installers is that they are run once. People base entire distribution reviews on the installer, which is just stupid.
I think what you are going for is that using the system is more important than installing the system. But honestly, OS installers are very important, especially when evaluating for the home user. Most home users have never installed an OS, they got one with their computer. Besides, ease of use with Linux is usually less a function of the distribution itself and more a function of the environment (eg GNOME, KDE, etc.) which are essentially the same for all distros.
Package management is a problem which, IMHO, still needs solving. There are several package management schemes but only debian and the source based distros appear to have mostly killed the dependency monster (it still rears its ugly head in various ways). Both are fairly simple to use, but still not ready for Grandma.
I think that a user linux system should strive to be easier to use and administer than the current crop of commercial operating systems. I think that installation of the system itself and the software are going to be lynchpins in this process. Most users spend more time doing these things than performing any other administration task. Existing technologies will probably provide a good framework for this, but the key to usability is interface interface interface. I think all OSs have a long way to go in this area, quite frankly, not just Linux.