"M$ has been ripping people of for year. Now they'll be the ones getting extorted."
No, they are not, it is simply competition in action. Linux and assorted Free Software is good enough for a large enough variety of task to become a competitor to MS that they cannot get rid of easily so MS needs to start competing on price, first step is different pricing for parts of their customer base (the one most likely to switch) and as Linux and co gets better the reduced pricing should slowly become the norm until we have a truly competitive market, which will also be good for MS customers.
That's MS's tactic using SCO to kill Free Software, have all the worker bees sting SCO and die from the resulting loss of their sting, then no more worker bees busy improving Free Software. And to be sure that as many bees attack as possible have an astroturfer propose it as a "good" plan, really machiavellian;)
Like other posters pointed out in a more convoluted form:
step 4) SCO distributes SCO Linux (still under GPL) with purported infringing code after starting lawsuit with IBM, at which point they had a firm belief that it contained some infringing code but still released it and thus are bound to the GPL or other relevant license for this code (unless they removed it from that version before shipping it), thus making their claim weaker.
oh, and let's not forget:
5) SCO refuses to specify which code is supposedly violating their copyright, thus making it impossible for other company to cease and desist their purported copyright infringement, thus making any claim that they tried in good faith to have these distributions comply with the law invalid should any further lawsuit with Linux vendors or users arise. It should also prevent them from claiming any damage for infringement occurring after the lawsuit since they didn't give an option of compliance to the distributions.
All in all, SCO has a very strange way to approach that suit but it makes for good entertainment;)
"You need to find a material that will weigh little, not deform under the given stress, and still have the necessary properties for use as a hard drive platter..."
Good post, however I disagree that Science is not all about abstraction, it is, or at least it is all about abstracting the world as we live it in words and formulaes that the mind can comprehend and in this quest all that is not an abstracting process is a fact discovering process (experiment) necessary to create new abstractions.
So the scientific method use other things than abstraction but it is all about obtaining abstractions, IMHO.
"I can run binaries for the PDP-11 and play old Atari and Commodore 64 games, and old Amiga tunes on XMMS. But all the geeks who have hours and hours of anime and TV shows and porn in DivX are going to be unable to port the DivX codec to whatever system were running in 20 years, and not even be able to run xine under a x86 emulator? I regard that as very unlikely."
Ever heard of Palladium or whatever it is now called (THCP?). If in 20 years there is no signed DivX player it may make that scenario possible.
"I've long been puzzled as to why a company should pay for improvements to a system, if they then have to make these available to their competitors."
True, but the GPL doesn't play that much of a role IMHO, after all, if Fujitsu has a similar arrangment with MS the public will not get the code but MS is most likely to use whatever improvement they did for them for other hardware.
The other reason I can think of right now is that whatever they might invest in this is not as much as what they would have to invest to create their own OS.
Another, thing is that when the code becomes GPL'd it doesn't benefit a single competing company but all of them, with the sponsoring company having a slight advantage (it is better tuned for their hardware at first) and it doesn't benefit only Redhat but also other Linux distributions so if they develop a bad relationship with Redhat it is easier to move to another distribution, whereas with Windows... oh, wait, there are not other companies than MS doing Windows.
"AMD is playing along too, so where are we going to turn?"
Of course, if you specifically want a Windows computer then you don't have much choice but otherwise given their current orientation there should still be Apple and with the combination of OSX and a ppc970 or two it should be sweet (of course Apple hasn't said they were going to use the 970 but I don't think they can afford not to).
And if you don't want to buy a Mac then a 970 non-mac mobo running Linux could be nice too.
I have recently installed Redhat 9 to a friend's computer whose windows ME was totally dead (blue screen at start up even in safe mode) because they didn't have the Windows CD (already installed on computer when they bought it, pirated of course although I don't think they were aware of that then) and I refused to install an illegitimate copy of Windows so I installed Linux for them to surf the web and use Open Office.
The problem is that their son is using Reason and knowing nothing about this domain I do not know if there is anything comparable on Linux and I haven't had the time yet to give it a hard try with Wine and WineX and was wondering if you may know of a Linux software similar to reason (or at least trying to do simething similar even if not cutting it, that would be a start).
If you have read any of the Null-A books by A.E. van Vogt you may have a vague idea of what general semantic is.
Recently I have started to read Science & Sanity, the first book introducing a general non-Aristotelonian system, as opposed to the restricted, non-Aristotelonian systems developed in different sciences (e.g. non-Euclidian geometry and non-Newtonian physics (quantum theory and relativity)).
The reason why this post is not totally off topic is because in a null-A system (null-A stands for non-Aristotelian) you reject the principle of excluded middle, which states that something is either true or false, black or white... without any possible value in between, like fuzzy logic in CS.
Rejecting it means that you have to look at the world with all its shades of grey and its absence of any absolute truth, you don't tend to see one side as being right and the other being all wrong, all good and all evil.
Another reason why null-A systems are relevant to the current discussion is the rejection of identification, that a word is not the object it designates, that even an object or a person is not the same from moment to moment. In an ever changing world, what may be true at one point may not be true at another point, so how could anoybody have any absolute truth?
Of course the problem is that terrorists are not teached to look at the world that way. Actually, the problem is that almost nobody is teached thus, making all of us more or less susceptible to go crazy and crash a plane in a building, kill those that criticize and oppose us or use our military might to invade a much smaller country and getting call to calling those that disagree with us traitors*.
Maybe null-A systems are not the answer (I am just starting to study it so I don't really know much yet) but there must be something better than the current way humans react with the world and each other than this and general semantics is a step in the direction of finding because it is at least looking for it; which makes it worth looking at in my opinion.
* And in case you don't get it I am not just talking about Saddam invading Kuwait here.
I don't know about the whole VMS team but MS did employ Dave Cutler, the lead architect of VMS also it would be logical for them to have hired more of them.
In any case, VMS is not connected to NT in way that the grandparent poster meant (I derive the meaning from the context) given that there is absolutely no way that VMS could have stolen some IP from an OS that was started 5/10 years after its heyday.
"A lot of people who have watched the Matrix would (unfortunately for them) snub something like "Ghost in the shell.""
Yeah, I know. The funny thing is that I lent GiTS to an American friend telling him that if he liked The Matrix he probably would like it as The Matrix was heavily influenced by this kind of anime and while he hadn't seen The Matrix he liked GiTS (and liked Matrix when I lent it to him later). On the other hand, I lent it to an English friend that saw and liked The Matrix but when he saw that it was "a cartoon" by the pictures on the box I was unable to convince him to even give it a try, sad isn't it? I just found it funny that an American (that generally have more bias against animated movies than Europeans) didn't have any problem with GiTS not being live action but a the European I tried to "sell it" to wouldn't even consider it even when said American said that it was a good movie.
Anyway, it's their loss for not seeing a good movie and the gain of whoever is not too narrow minded to a least give it a try.
"The printer can't tell when vertical is vertical and horizontal is horizontal. That requires a human. See, we're still good for something!;-)"
Yup, until every printer has a mini camera integrated to take a picture of what it just printed, analyse it and calibrate itself from the result of the analyse.
Yeah, I hate when a sequel mess up a cinematographic universe (Highlander 2 anyone) but in this case I don't have much apprehension about these sequel (well, a bit of course, but it's more a reflex of hearing the word sequel than real fear). Why is that? On top of my head I can think of these reasons:
I trust the Washowski brothers to stay fidel to the kind of movie they delivered with The Matrix, just watch the extras on the DVD's and you will understand how passionate about it they are.
The original Matrix was very strong in the FX department but it didn't prevent it from having a good story, it added to it and I don't see why it should be any different for the sequels with the bro. at the helm.
And, more importantly
The Washowski tried to sell it as a trilogy to the studios from the beginning but Warner took a wait and see how well the first movie sell before doing the other ones.
Of course, given the huge success of the first they got the green light to do the sequels and the necessary funding and they probably have more pressure on their shoulder in many ways (although given that they have shown their directing talent both in Bound and The Matrix the studio probably was less nervous about working with them) and of course there is a possibility that they will bite more than they can chew and it will suck but all in all I am much more confident in that sequel than in about any other sequel to a great movie with the exception maybe of LOTR (whose sequel, TTT, I found inferior to FOTR).
I sure can understand you wanting everything to be there already* but whatever the reason why you changed distribution you still changed distribution, ergo didn't stay loyal to the one you were with before.
Mind you I am not criticizing you in any way except in you strange way to define the word loyalty (in my view at least).
*especially now that I am trying to get a friend to move ot Linux just when Wine doesn't work properly with Redhat 9 and his hardware is not completely supported by Redhat 8 but I am just venting some anger in this sidenote and you don't give a damn so let's stop it there;)
"This story conflicts with this story by the same research company:
http://www.etforecasts.com/pr/pr0402.htm
'In 2001 the worldwide number of PCs-in-use topped 600M units. In the next six years this number will nearly double to over 1.15B PCs-in-use by year-end 2007-a compound annual growth of 11.4%.'
Trouble with market research firms is that they usually tend to tell the client what they want to hear."
One is talking about sales and the other (yours) is talking about installed base. Given that they predicted the installed base to grow by 600 million units in the next six years this make a base average of 100 millions PC units sold each year for the next six years, add a few millions to account for the new computers that will replace older ones (and thus are part of new sales but do not represent an increase in installed base) and you have a reasonable approximation of the 126 million units sold in 2002.
I agree that market research firms tend to tell the client what they want to hear, but at least in this case they are consistent between studies.
"I last used Red Hat when it was 6.0. Since then, I've been a loyal Slackware, and more recently, Mandrake user."
Ok, now I am confused. How can you have been loyal to Slackware and then "change allegiance" to Mandrake? Isn't it the definition of unloyalty (not that I care I just found the wording funny)?
"God(TM)'s lawyers just sent me a cease-and-desist letter regarding the unlawful proliferation of my genes."
"Isn't this otherwise known as a death certificate?"
Nah, it's otherwise known as prostate cancer (or ovarian cancer for women); no need to kill you to prevent you to reproduce, just neuter you or make you a geek;)
Slashdot Mirror
"I believe, however, that Munich is the capital..."
"Let me guess, you must be an American, right?"
"Let me guess, you must be a pompous ass, right?"
And they say germans don't have a sense of humour.
Being Freedom (oops, I mean French) maybe I should take it badly whenever I am called a surrender coward?
"M$ has been ripping people of for year. Now they'll be the ones getting extorted."
No, they are not, it is simply competition in action. Linux and assorted Free Software is good enough for a large enough variety of task to become a competitor to MS that they cannot get rid of easily so MS needs to start competing on price, first step is different pricing for parts of their customer base (the one most likely to switch) and as Linux and co gets better the reduced pricing should slowly become the norm until we have a truly competitive market, which will also be good for MS customers.
That's MS's tactic using SCO to kill Free Software, have all the worker bees sting SCO and die from the resulting loss of their sting, then no more worker bees busy improving Free Software. And to be sure that as many bees attack as possible have an astroturfer propose it as a "good" plan, really machiavellian
"Please wash those hands before you return to serving those french fries. :-)"
Don't you mean Freedom fries?
And don't flame me, I am Freedom, er French, myself.
Like other posters pointed out in a more convoluted form:
step 4) SCO distributes SCO Linux (still under GPL) with purported infringing code after starting lawsuit with IBM, at which point they had a firm belief that it contained some infringing code but still released it and thus are bound to the GPL or other relevant license for this code (unless they removed it from that version before shipping it), thus making their claim weaker.
oh, and let's not forget:
5) SCO refuses to specify which code is supposedly violating their copyright, thus making it impossible for other company to cease and desist their purported copyright infringement, thus making any claim that they tried in good faith to have these distributions comply with the law invalid should any further lawsuit with Linux vendors or users arise. It should also prevent them from claiming any damage for infringement occurring after the lawsuit since they didn't give an option of compliance to the distributions.
All in all, SCO has a very strange way to approach that suit but it makes for good entertainment
"I mean, you have to provide enough power to get several million light-emitters to work at the right wavelength."
I believe the power problem of LCD's has more to do with the need of a back/front-light consuming a lot of energy.
OLED doesn't have such energy requirements because it is emitting enough light itself.
"You need to find a material that will weigh little, not deform under the given stress, and still have the necessary properties for use as a hard drive platter..."
What about Scrith?
Good post, however I disagree that Science is not all about abstraction, it is, or at least it is all about abstracting the world as we live it in words and formulaes that the mind can comprehend and in this quest all that is not an abstracting process is a fact discovering process (experiment) necessary to create new abstractions.
So the scientific method use other things than abstraction but it is all about obtaining abstractions, IMHO.
Just my 2 cents.
Yeah, it's better because you get more picture at the top and the bottom of the frame
"I can run binaries for the PDP-11 and play old Atari and Commodore 64 games, and old Amiga tunes on XMMS. But all the geeks who have hours and hours of anime and TV shows and porn in DivX are going to be unable to port the DivX codec to whatever system were running in 20 years, and not even be able to run xine under a x86 emulator? I regard that as very unlikely."
Ever heard of Palladium or whatever it is now called (THCP?). If in 20 years there is no signed DivX player it may make that scenario possible.
"I've long been puzzled as to why a company should pay for improvements to a system, if they then have to make these available to their competitors."
True, but the GPL doesn't play that much of a role IMHO, after all, if Fujitsu has a similar arrangment with MS the public will not get the code but MS is most likely to use whatever improvement they did for them for other hardware.
The other reason I can think of right now is that whatever they might invest in this is not as much as what they would have to invest to create their own OS.
Another, thing is that when the code becomes GPL'd it doesn't benefit a single competing company but all of them, with the sponsoring company having a slight advantage (it is better tuned for their hardware at first) and it doesn't benefit only Redhat but also other Linux distributions so if they develop a bad relationship with Redhat it is easier to move to another distribution, whereas with Windows... oh, wait, there are not other companies than MS doing Windows.
"Also note that my machine tracks Debian "testing" and does an apt-get dist-upgrade nightly. I went from Potatoe to Sid without noticing."
Huh? Sid is Debian "unstable", not testing, don't you mean you went from potato to woody without noticing?
"Hmm.. this is true. Do I have the right to wear an eyepatch and parrot then? Methinks not, after all.."
Yes you do, and the wooden leg is complementary of the RIAA thugs.
"AMD is playing along too, so where are we going to turn?"
Of course, if you specifically want a Windows computer then you don't have much choice but otherwise given their current orientation there should still be Apple and with the combination of OSX and a ppc970 or two it should be sweet (of course Apple hasn't said they were going to use the 970 but I don't think they can afford not to).
And if you don't want to buy a Mac then a 970 non-mac mobo running Linux could be nice too.
I have recently installed Redhat 9 to a friend's computer whose windows ME was totally dead (blue screen at start up even in safe mode) because they didn't have the Windows CD (already installed on computer when they bought it, pirated of course although I don't think they were aware of that then) and I refused to install an illegitimate copy of Windows so I installed Linux for them to surf the web and use Open Office.
The problem is that their son is using Reason and knowing nothing about this domain I do not know if there is anything comparable on Linux and I haven't had the time yet to give it a hard try with Wine and WineX and was wondering if you may know of a Linux software similar to reason (or at least trying to do simething similar even if not cutting it, that would be a start).
Thanks .
If you have read any of the Null-A books by A.E. van Vogt you may have a vague idea of what general semantic is.
Recently I have started to read Science & Sanity, the first book introducing a general non-Aristotelonian system, as opposed to the restricted, non-Aristotelonian systems developed in different sciences (e.g. non-Euclidian geometry and non-Newtonian physics (quantum theory and relativity)).
The reason why this post is not totally off topic is because in a null-A system (null-A stands for non-Aristotelian) you reject the principle of excluded middle, which states that something is either true or false, black or white... without any possible value in between, like fuzzy logic in CS.
Rejecting it means that you have to look at the world with all its shades of grey and its absence of any absolute truth, you don't tend to see one side as being right and the other being all wrong, all good and all evil.
Another reason why null-A systems are relevant to the current discussion is the rejection of identification, that a word is not the object it designates, that even an object or a person is not the same from moment to moment. In an ever changing world, what may be true at one point may not be true at another point, so how could anoybody have any absolute truth?
Of course the problem is that terrorists are not teached to look at the world that way. Actually, the problem is that almost nobody is teached thus, making all of us more or less susceptible to go crazy and crash a plane in a building, kill those that criticize and oppose us or use our military might to invade a much smaller country and getting call to calling those that disagree with us traitors*.
Maybe null-A systems are not the answer (I am just starting to study it so I don't really know much yet) but there must be something better than the current way humans react with the world and each other than this and general semantics is a step in the direction of finding because it is at least looking for it; which makes it worth looking at in my opinion.
* And in case you don't get it I am not just talking about Saddam invading Kuwait here.
I don't know about the whole VMS team but MS did employ Dave Cutler, the lead architect of VMS also it would be logical for them to have hired more of them.
In any case, VMS is not connected to NT in way that the grandparent poster meant (I derive the meaning from the context) given that there is absolutely no way that VMS could have stolen some IP from an OS that was started 5/10 years after its heyday.
"A lot of people who have watched the Matrix would (unfortunately for them) snub something like "Ghost in the shell.""
Yeah, I know. The funny thing is that I lent GiTS to an American friend telling him that if he liked The Matrix he probably would like it as The Matrix was heavily influenced by this kind of anime and while he hadn't seen The Matrix he liked GiTS (and liked Matrix when I lent it to him later). On the other hand, I lent it to an English friend that saw and liked The Matrix but when he saw that it was "a cartoon" by the pictures on the box I was unable to convince him to even give it a try, sad isn't it? I just found it funny that an American (that generally have more bias against animated movies than Europeans) didn't have any problem with GiTS not being live action but a
the European I tried to "sell it" to wouldn't even consider it even when said American said that it was a good movie.
Anyway, it's their loss for not seeing a good movie and the gain of whoever is not too narrow minded to a least give it a try.
"The printer can't tell when vertical is vertical and horizontal is horizontal. That requires a human. See, we're still good for something!
Yup, until every printer has a mini camera integrated to take a picture of what it just printed, analyse it and calibrate itself from the result of the analyse.
I trust the Washowski brothers to stay fidel to the kind of movie they delivered with The Matrix, just watch the extras on the DVD's and you will understand how passionate about it they are.
The original Matrix was very strong in the FX department but it didn't prevent it from having a good story, it added to it and I don't see why it should be any different for the sequels with the bro. at the helm.
And, more importantly
The Washowski tried to sell it as a trilogy to the studios from the beginning but Warner took a wait and see how well the first movie sell before doing the other ones.
Of course, given the huge success of the first they got the green light to do the sequels and the necessary funding and they probably have more pressure on their shoulder in many ways (although given that they have shown their directing talent both in Bound and The Matrix the studio probably was less nervous about working with them) and of course there is a possibility that they will bite more than they can chew and it will suck but all in all I am much more confident in that sequel than in about any other sequel to a great movie with the exception maybe of LOTR (whose sequel, TTT, I found inferior to FOTR).
I sure can understand you wanting everything to be there already* but whatever the reason why you changed distribution you still changed distribution, ergo didn't stay loyal to the one you were with before.
Mind you I am not criticizing you in any way except in you strange way to define the word loyalty (in my view at least).
*especially now that I am trying to get a friend to move ot Linux just when Wine doesn't work properly with Redhat 9 and his hardware is not completely supported by Redhat 8 but I am just venting some anger in this sidenote and you don't give a damn so let's stop it there
"This story conflicts with this story by the same research company:
http://www.etforecasts.com/pr/pr0402.htm
'In 2001 the worldwide number of PCs-in-use topped 600M units. In the next six years this number will nearly double to over 1.15B PCs-in-use by year-end 2007-a compound annual growth of 11.4%.'
Trouble with market research firms is that they usually tend to tell the client what they want to hear."
One is talking about sales and the other (yours) is talking about installed base. Given that they predicted the installed base to grow by 600 million units in the next six years this make a base average of 100 millions PC units sold each year for the next six years, add a few millions to account for the new computers that will replace older ones (and thus are part of new sales but do not represent an increase in installed base) and you have a reasonable approximation of the 126 million units sold in 2002.
I agree that market research firms tend to tell the client what they want to hear, but at least in this case they are consistent between studies.
"I last used Red Hat when it was 6.0. Since then, I've been a loyal Slackware, and more recently, Mandrake user."
Ok, now I am confused. How can you have been loyal to Slackware and then "change allegiance" to Mandrake? Isn't it the definition of unloyalty (not that I care I just found the wording funny)?
"And no, it is not a violation of the DMCA to employ DeCSS to watch media you have purchased or rented on hardware that you own."
Unfortunately it is, which is one of the reason why the DMCA is such a bad law.
"God(TM)'s lawyers just sent me a cease-and-desist letter regarding the unlawful proliferation of my genes."
;)
"Isn't this otherwise known as a death certificate?"
Nah, it's otherwise known as prostate cancer (or ovarian cancer for women); no need to kill you to prevent you to reproduce, just neuter you or make you a geek