Great show, great premise, nice twist on typical plotlines, great writing, great "settings", great girls er actors and actresses. I quite agree with you. I have completely given up on the typical network show, and refuse to ever watch a "sitcom". Fox is obviously targeting the lowest common denominator... I have also watched the 2 unaired episodes (available on the internet), and all I will say is - a very intriguing, dark conspiracy theme was being developed, building up to a hair-raising cliff-hanger. I can hardly wait for the movie!
yeah, sure, I don't believe in software patents either, but what's to stop a monopoly from just stealing all the software out there? This damage award represents (I'm NOT saying "equates to") the revenue M$ made by stealing one company's software. Add up the 300+ other companies they've destroyed, and you could probably take out that company all together. I count $110+B assets.
sad how many people here don't get it. Ian succeeded in describing what is different about this "linux thing", and one of its major strengths, and many posters here dismiss it with "market-speak". No, sorry, it's much more. Right now we are going thru a new product analysis (hint: initials are BMC) and while I was initially excited that it would run on linux, we find it is only supported for RH7.2 or RH AS2.1. So lame. Instead of this wonderful free, open platform I can modify and optimize, the server turns into just another black box with an expensive (min. $1500) yearly license. Of course at my company, "not supported" is verboten. Very disappointing, and hard to even relate to said company why they shouldn't try to lock it down like every other proprietary platform. These days, we business users are just unpaid (in fact, we pay dearly for it) QC for all the companies we buy broken software from, so locking it down is also preventing us from contributing fixes and improvements. Thanks again, Ian.
I just had to say, after reading the article, that I don't know why they had a problem with those things. Gaim has always worked for me. Mozilla has always let me cut and paste. And, I have no problem using windows NT, 2K, XP shares/resources reading or writing or printing. Yes, I'm a unix sys admin, but once the system is set up, anyone could use it. One thing I hope gets more attention and development is the "uri" plugins for konqueror. An uri like http:, ftp:, nfs:,smb: , man:, info:, webdav:, and dozens more, where the protocol prefixs the location, is enough for konqueror to render anything.
What we need most are methods to reverse engineer device drivers.
Let's say for example, a certain manufacturer of popular media cards actually has linux drivers for their hardware, running on an ARM in a setup box, but refuses to release these drivers, open or closed, to pc users. If I had said drivers in hand, could I port them to i386?
So tired of this ignorance... You're comparing freakin' toy pdas to a real computer. There are over 1000 app's now specifically for the Zaurus ( see Zaurus Software Index ), but I can run just about any app on the Debian Arm distribution, and any other linux app with source code is a simple re-compile away, or a not so difficult port to qtopia pe.
Maybe if you'd been around long enough you'd realize how silly it is to say "never" in the computer industry, like someone saying the pc will never make it because of the HUGE program base on mainframes...
Sad that such a topic shows up on Slashdot without mentioning open source solutions which are cheap to free. Check out Digital Room Correction and BruteFIR for instance.
Just kidding. But seriously, the clip reminds me of the adventure game Syberia which had marvelous art - graphics, music, and style. It was a major effort by a large group of developers and artists in France. Kinda sad that creativity has to happen overseas nowadays...
I can 't believe no one in this entire thread mentioned this. The role of good science fiction is to demonstrate the relevence of science to human life. That's why we scientists are so annoyed by the painful science blunders in most -so-called- science fiction. Science journalism is a hopeless basket case, and it 's just going to get worse as science gets more complex, and people don't give a d.... And why should they if it seems so irrelevent to their lives. An example of an entertaining and equally provocative, informative movie was Minority Report. Lots of issues were raised which are quite likely to come to pass.
I've installed gnome programs that provide their own mime-types, and everything works automatically on the desktop. I suggest the developers are hesitant to do so lest they end up in the typical file association wars you have on windows.
I think you've nailed what the poster's main problem is: ambiguous support. I've been a professional IS person 23 years now, and have come to the overwhelming truth that commercial "support" is a joke. Open Source plainly provides a vastly broader array of choices in fitting solutions to technical problems, and if one software solution doesn't work you are free to change it or find another, without the lock-in of expensive, proprietary, strait-jacket commercial solutions.
Just one example: my company picked the usual expensive proprietary data conversion software for 1 function (hundreds of thousands of dollars) where every modification was a minimum 2 months/$15000. In 2 weeks I had duplicated the entire process in perl, and the same kind of changes took about 2 minutes (all free marginal cost)
It is really hard not to be outraged by even the poster's suggestion that support costs are comparable, as every day for years I have seen how much better and cheaper open source solutions would be.
Talk in the community is this has been unreliable and slow. (I haven't heard if it's gotten any better). It's easier and cheaper connecting with a cellular phone for now, because in a few months we'll have a choice of several higher bandwidth alternatives (Sprint Vision with a compact flash card soon, for example). We already have several bluetooth devices too, just waiting for coverage.
OK no one's mentioned this, but I jumped on XCard and quickly found not 1 frelling divx/mpeg4 file I downloaded from the web would work. It wasn't till I encoded my own file with their MPEG4 codec that I actually saw it working. Does this mean that the stolen codec made it into hardware?
This state of affairs really nauseates me. Oh, the Ignorance. The internet broadcasters should be PAID for providing publicity of the music - it's already cost them time, infrastructure, and bandwidth. And what has it really cost the RIAA and musicians to provide this music? That's right - The Big Zero. Digital copies cost infinitessimily little. These basic economics will eventually prevail. It is just as silly, and short-sighted, to pass price-fixing laws.
I predict the open-source model will extend to all media. You can see it coming with the explosive growth of electronic music. The barriers to entry are falling away.
Slashdot Mirror
thank you! very well put. I was so disgusted by Mr. Punk's ignorance that I would have just flamed him.
Great show, great premise, nice twist on typical plotlines, great writing, great "settings", great girls er actors and actresses.
I quite agree with you. I have completely given up on the typical network show, and refuse to ever watch a "sitcom". Fox is obviously targeting the lowest common denominator... I have also watched the 2 unaired episodes (available on the internet), and all I will say is - a very intriguing, dark conspiracy theme was being developed, building up to a hair-raising cliff-hanger. I can hardly wait for the movie!
...we need more heroes like this. What a topsy-turvy world we live in when the little boy is thrown in the jail for exposing the emperor's nudity.
funny sig! was that a reference to Demolition Man?
You're not going to read about this in the mass media.
yeah, sure, I don't believe in software patents either, but what's to stop a monopoly from just stealing all the software out there? This damage award represents (I'm NOT saying "equates to") the revenue M$ made by stealing one company's software. Add up the 300+ other companies they've destroyed, and you could probably take out that company all together. I count $110+B assets.
sad how many people here don't get it. Ian succeeded in describing what is different about this "linux thing", and one of its major strengths, and many posters here dismiss it with "market-speak". No, sorry, it's much more. Right now we are going thru a new product analysis (hint: initials are BMC) and while I was initially excited that it would run on linux, we find it is only supported for RH7.2 or RH AS2.1. So lame. Instead of this wonderful free, open platform I can modify and optimize, the server turns into just another black box with an expensive (min. $1500) yearly license. Of course at my company, "not supported" is verboten. Very disappointing, and hard to even relate to said company why they shouldn't try to lock it down like every other proprietary platform. These days, we business users are just unpaid (in fact, we pay dearly for it) QC for all the companies we buy broken software from, so locking it down is also preventing us from contributing fixes and improvements.
Thanks again, Ian.
I just had to say, after reading the article, that I don't know why they had a problem with those things. Gaim has always worked for me. Mozilla has always let me cut and paste. And, I have no problem using windows NT, 2K, XP shares/resources reading or writing or printing. Yes, I'm a unix sys admin, but once the system is set up, anyone could use it. ,smb: , man:, info:, webdav:, and dozens more, where the protocol prefixs the location, is enough for konqueror to render anything.
One thing I hope gets more attention and development is the "uri" plugins for konqueror. An uri like http:, ftp:, nfs:
no joke. I couldn't agree with you more. Over the past 20 years NPR has simply turned into another government PR office.
What we need most are methods to reverse engineer device drivers.
Let's say for example, a certain manufacturer of popular media cards actually has linux drivers for their hardware, running on an ARM in a setup box, but refuses to release these drivers, open or closed, to pc users. If I had said drivers in hand, could I port them to i386?
Maybe if you'd been around long enough you'd realize how silly it is to say "never" in the computer industry, like someone saying the pc will never make it because of the HUGE program base on mainframes...
Sad that such a topic shows up on Slashdot without mentioning open source solutions which are cheap to free. Check out Digital Room Correction and BruteFIR for instance.
Exactly, and the inevitable conclusion of that logic is a microsoft monopoly forever.
Just kidding. But seriously, the clip reminds me of the adventure game Syberia which had marvelous art - graphics, music, and style. It was a major effort by a large group of developers and artists in France. Kinda sad that creativity has to happen overseas nowadays...
Linux on NForce2 getting there.
I can 't believe no one in this entire thread mentioned this. The role of good science fiction is to demonstrate the relevence of science to human life. That's why we scientists are so annoyed by the painful science blunders in most -so-called- science fiction. Science journalism is a hopeless basket case, and it 's just going to get worse as science gets more complex, and people don't give a d.... And why should they if it seems so irrelevent to their lives. An example of an entertaining and equally provocative, informative movie was Minority Report. Lots of issues were raised which are quite likely to come to pass.
I've installed gnome programs that provide their own mime-types, and everything works automatically on the desktop. I suggest the developers are hesitant to do so lest they end up in the typical file association wars you have on windows.
when Indian programmers start dying of laughter after reading windows source code?
exactly. ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
...it's running a micro-bsd kernel!
Just one example: my company picked the usual expensive proprietary data conversion software for 1 function (hundreds of thousands of dollars) where every modification was a minimum 2 months/$15000. In 2 weeks I had duplicated the entire process in perl, and the same kind of changes took about 2 minutes (all free marginal cost)
It is really hard not to be outraged by even the poster's suggestion that support costs are comparable, as every day for years I have seen how much better and cheaper open source solutions would be.
Talk in the community is this has been unreliable and slow. (I haven't heard if it's gotten any better). It's easier and cheaper connecting with a cellular phone for now, because in a few months we'll have a choice of several higher bandwidth alternatives (Sprint Vision with a compact flash card soon, for example). We already have several bluetooth devices too, just waiting for coverage.
OK no one's mentioned this, but I jumped on XCard and quickly found not 1 frelling divx/mpeg4 file I downloaded from the web would work. It wasn't till I encoded my own file with their MPEG4 codec that I actually saw it working. Does this mean that the stolen codec made it into hardware?
john.schoen@msnbc.com
It'd be great if he was slashdotted by all us "ghosts". M$ has lost more money in this dot.com bust than all the linux companies put together.
This state of affairs really nauseates me. Oh, the Ignorance. The internet broadcasters should be PAID for providing publicity of the music - it's already cost them time, infrastructure, and bandwidth. And what has it really cost the RIAA and musicians to provide this music? That's right - The Big Zero. Digital copies cost infinitessimily little. These basic economics will eventually prevail. It is just as silly, and short-sighted, to pass price-fixing laws.
I predict the open-source model will extend to all media. You can see it coming with the explosive growth of electronic music. The barriers to entry are falling away.