The GPL is about free of proprietary components, it has nothing to do with cost
Sort of. The GPL is about the freedom to do with the code as you please. Specifically that means that you can modify it and/or redistribute it to your heart's content, with certain restrictions:
1) If you distribute the binaries you must make the source available 2) You cannot place any restrictions on those you distribute to 3) You cannot change the licence - the code and any derivatives must be GPLed
The intention is to prevent you from denying those you distribute the stuff to having the freedoms that you enjoyed. The upshot is that the cost of GPLed software tends to be driven right down to the cost of reproduction, as even if I do sell it, I can't stop you from buying it from me and undercutting me.
The GPL may not be specifically about cost, but I do not believe that the side effect of tending to drive down cost was unitended. That's just my opinion, of course.
I completely agree. Personall, I think that sort of name-calling is petty and immature, and only serves to make the entire community look stupid.
Like it or not people, you are judged by what you say and how you say it. If people come here, to "the open source community website", and see people acting like immature teenagers, then that's the impression they'll get of the community as a whole. People don't want to be associated with that sort of attitude. In the corporate world, appearance is as important as actual results (more so sometimes), and given the choice people will go with an inferior, but more professionally-presented product every time.
Bottom line Linux fanboys - if you want Linux to continue to gain acceptance in the corporate world, cut out the name calling. Similarly to the Microsoft fanboys, unless you want your platform of choice becoming a has-been, keep it professional.
Well, I don't know for sure, but from the sounds of it the OP meant single-user as in Win9x, not as in "single user on the machine at a time". That is, I believe that what was meant was that it only supports a single user account *on the machine*. So, no file permissions, no concept of individual preferences, no login screen, etc.
That was ok 10-15 years ago, but even home users want to keep their files separated these days. Hell, the first thing my parents did when they got their PC was to create a separate user account for each member of the family (even me, and I hardly ever see them these days)
You won't see the Mozilla foundation complaining about how.NET just broke all their code in Windows Vista, but you can bet you'll see it on the blogs of less experienced coders.
I seem to remember an awful lot of stuff breaking when the Linux world moved from libc5 to glibc2. I seem to remember a lot of complaints a while back when RedHat moved to a new version of gcc (3.1.something?) and broke compatibility.
Oh sure, everyone could use a different distro (potentially a huge pain in the arse) or recompile their code, but then everyone who develops against.NET 1.x and whose stuff breaks against 2.0 can just recompile their code too. Besides which, one of the complaints I hear most often about MS and Windows is that there's a shitload of cruft in there for backwards compatibility. What makes you think that.NET 1.x apps won't work just fine on 2.0 runtimes?
I have software that won't run on Win95. Give it a couple of years after Vista is released, and I'm sure you'll see software that requires at least Win2k, if not XP.
No, no software manufacturer is going to support only the latest version of an OS for a product that they hope to be of mainstream appeal, but not supporting OSes that are no longer supported by the original producer seems reasonable.
For that matter, how the hell is your post a troll? Someone trying to mod-bomb TripMasterMonkey and anyone who supports him? Hint: it doesn't work when you only have 5 mod points...
I completely agree, except that it's not your arse that'll thank you for the decent chair, it's your back. Your backside might get a bit numb, but I've never heard of anyone damaging theirs just by sitting.
On the other hand, back pain is the single biggest cause of chronic pain in adults. I had a nasty little spell of it a few years ago when I wasn't sitting right, and at one point I had trouble just walking - I was literally hobbling. My fiancée has a very bad back, and occasionally it goes - then she's in intense pain for a couple of days until it eases, then merely a lot of pain for a week or two.
Seriously - look after your back. Your eyes are important, but you can wear glasses if you must; your hands are important, but you can dictate (or design/manage) if you must. Your back is irreplacable.
Re:JUnit and the people who don't use it...
on
An Early Look at JUnit 4
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The point, dummy, is that it's next to impossible to use Junit to test servlet code, and downright impossible* to use it to test JSPs. Unfortunately, other than things like HTTPUnit (which last time I looked was almost useless) and WinRunner (which costs and only runs on Windows) there isn't a lot available for proper interface testing of web pages. Not just screen scraping, "do I get the expected data?", but proper "all of the formatting is correct, images in the right place, etc" testing.
(* No, nothing is impossible - but using junit to test JSPs is the next best thing, especially when you actually have a deadline to meet)
JUnit is a woderful tool for testing plain old Java objects, but is utterly unsuitable for end to end testing in a web (or other GUI) environment.
Ok, I'll tell you how it works. People tend to remember only those things that support their initial prejudices. Hence the OP will have read something like "Vista, like any other OS or device, will require a trusted monitor in order to display HDCP content". They will remember "Vista will require a trusted monitor", which will reinforce their preconception that Vista, like all MS products, is/will be a bag of shite.
It's not even really his fault; it's just human nature. When people feel strongly about something the things that support their position tend to be the things that stick in their minds.
And what company would want you to spend $200 with them, when you could spend $2000?
What is the financial incentive to Apple to open up their OS in that way? They're a hardware company, not a software company. OS X exists to get people to buy Apple computers, period.
That's not ScuttleMonkey's comment - everything in italics is written by the original submitter. If that's not the case, then the posting editor is putting words in the original submitter's mouth, and we all know that none of them would ever do that. The editor's comments appear in normal text, generally after the submitter's (apart from the "So-and-so writes..." bit, obviously).
As for the comment itself, it's FUD, pure and simple. Yes, it certainly out performs XP in terms of real-time response. XP is not and never will be a real-time OS, and MS has never claimed that it is. More importantly though, it is extremely unlikely that the submitter has any data to back up that supposition, whether it relate to required latencies for multi-media operations or to XP's real-time capabilities and latencies.
In #4, "Hacking is Cool", he obviously means "cracker."
There's little point fighting battles that you can't win, unless you mean to make an example in your loss. In this case, you can't possibly win and there's no example to make (except perhaps that language evolves - big deal); I'd suggest saving your effort for something you *can* make a difference to.
No it isn't. The question was "why can't I just buy Word and Excel without having to buy the whole of Office", the answer is "you can - look". The fact that it doesn't save you very much money is irrelevant, the point is you can do it if you want.
If there are feature differences that matter to the applications (such as games or normal productivity apps) everyone will ignore crippled versions - bye bye starter ed. Dunno why MS can't figure this out.
Monopoly or not, you don't get to be one of the biggest companies in the world by making stupid decisions. MS has a reason for everything it does. Sure, it makes mistakes, but when it comes to business it doesn't make them very often or more than once.
If there's anyone who doesn't "get" why MS is releasing crippled versions of its OSes, it's you, not them.
I guess MS has gotten addicted to the mothly income it gathers from XBox Live subscribers.
Two words: recurring revenue. There isn't a compnany in existence that wouldn't love to increase its recurring revenue. Selling a product once is great. Selling a subscription to something is much better - that gives you a nice dependable monthly/quarterly/yearly income.
the 'Must have best version' crowd that previously cackled and downloaded warez versions of such gems as Win2003 Advanced Server for their home PCs so they could have the 'best' Windows
Word has it that, suitably configured, Win2003 AS is actually an excellent desktop OS, capable of doing anything a user would want (including multi-media stuff and games) and very stable too. Of course you'd know that, as you wouldn't be denigrating a group of people just for the hell of it with no hard information to base your opinions on. (And no, I'm running XP Pro, before you ask)
Thats not entirely true - scientists have held their hands up and said "we got it wrong" since people started doing science. Likewise, there have always been people who - for whatever reason - have not done so, even when presented with evidence proving it.
Often it's because it's incredibly hard to admit even to yourself that the thing you've spent most of your working life on so far is wrong, that you've "wasted" all that time. Also, don't forget that there have been times when theory Y has replaced theory X, only for it to turn out that theory X is *also* right (I'm thinking especially of wave/particle duality - for a long time we "knew" that light was made of particles, then we "knew" that it was actually made of waves, now we "know" better)
If security centre is popping up that message regularly, that would seem to indicate that he is not keeping his system well secured.
The only time I ever see that is if AVG hasn't had a chance to update itself for a couple of days (eg the machine just hasn't been on at the appropriate time, I've been away, etc) and warns me about it.
but in the Java world (where I work), about half of memory typically contains pointers
Ok, I know you put "typically" in there, but it really depends on what you're doing. If you have multi-megabyte data structures (eg in a large cache to reduce db traffic) then I'd be very surprised if you had that many pointers relative to actual data. Of course, it depends on the structure of your data structures...
it's probably easier for them to prereq 2GB of ram than 1.4GB.
Possibly, but it's also easier and more purchaser-friendly to say 1.5GB rather than 2GB.
Bottom line though is that I simply don't believe the requirements. XP32 runs fine in 128MB of RAM. Sure, you wouldn't want to run Doom 3 on that, but the OS is fine. I refuse to believe that Vista64 is going to require 16x the RAM. If nothing else, the PC market simply isn't ready for home machines that are that close to maxing out their RAM.
(Typical "32bit motherboards" support up to around 3-4GB of RAM; I don't know about ones for 64bit CPUs, but at this end of the market I can't see it being much higher)
No it isn't. A job offer goes something like this:
"We'd like to offer you a job with us in the position of XXXXX"
or possibly
"Hey, come work for us! Please?!"
A request for an interview is a request for an interview, whether you're Jo Unknown or the Lord God Almighty. If you're going to make an offer regardless, why waste everyone's time with an interview?
The problem with that approach is that someone will still apply for the patent and have it granted, and then (if they sue) you have to go to court to prove that the prior art existed.
In theory the USPTO would find the prior art at patent application time and refuse it on those grounds, but in practice that doesn't appear to happen.
Re:Waiting for apps isn't annoying, focus stealing
on
GNOME 2.12 Released
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· Score: 1
Then again, all (or at least the ones I know of) OS:es and managers do this,
Well, so far I've seen replies indicating that OS X, KDE and even Gnome itself no longer do that. To that I can add Windows, which hasn't done that since XP was released.
I can only conclude that you don't update your OS very often;-)
Why would a cash injection stop them from releasing stuff for free? Surely they'd be more likely to go completely pay-for if they were running out of money...
Slashdot Mirror
The GPL is about free of proprietary components, it has nothing to do with cost
Sort of. The GPL is about the freedom to do with the code as you please. Specifically that means that you can modify it and/or redistribute it to your heart's content, with certain restrictions:
1) If you distribute the binaries you must make the source available
2) You cannot place any restrictions on those you distribute to
3) You cannot change the licence - the code and any derivatives must be GPLed
The intention is to prevent you from denying those you distribute the stuff to having the freedoms that you enjoyed. The upshot is that the cost of GPLed software tends to be driven right down to the cost of reproduction, as even if I do sell it, I can't stop you from buying it from me and undercutting me.
The GPL may not be specifically about cost, but I do not believe that the side effect of tending to drive down cost was unitended. That's just my opinion, of course.
I completely agree. Personall, I think that sort of name-calling is petty and immature, and only serves to make the entire community look stupid.
Like it or not people, you are judged by what you say and how you say it. If people come here, to "the open source community website", and see people acting like immature teenagers, then that's the impression they'll get of the community as a whole. People don't want to be associated with that sort of attitude. In the corporate world, appearance is as important as actual results (more so sometimes), and given the choice people will go with an inferior, but more professionally-presented product every time.
Bottom line Linux fanboys - if you want Linux to continue to gain acceptance in the corporate world, cut out the name calling. Similarly to the Microsoft fanboys, unless you want your platform of choice becoming a has-been, keep it professional.
Well, I don't know for sure, but from the sounds of it the OP meant single-user as in Win9x, not as in "single user on the machine at a time". That is, I believe that what was meant was that it only supports a single user account *on the machine*. So, no file permissions, no concept of individual preferences, no login screen, etc.
That was ok 10-15 years ago, but even home users want to keep their files separated these days. Hell, the first thing my parents did when they got their PC was to create a separate user account for each member of the family (even me, and I hardly ever see them these days)
You won't see the Mozilla foundation complaining about how .NET just broke all their code in Windows Vista, but you can bet you'll see it on the blogs of less experienced coders.
.NET 1.x and whose stuff breaks against 2.0 can just recompile their code too. Besides which, one of the complaints I hear most often about MS and Windows is that there's a shitload of cruft in there for backwards compatibility. What makes you think that .NET 1.x apps won't work just fine on 2.0 runtimes?
I seem to remember an awful lot of stuff breaking when the Linux world moved from libc5 to glibc2. I seem to remember a lot of complaints a while back when RedHat moved to a new version of gcc (3.1.something?) and broke compatibility.
Oh sure, everyone could use a different distro (potentially a huge pain in the arse) or recompile their code, but then everyone who develops against
I have software that won't run on Win95. Give it a couple of years after Vista is released, and I'm sure you'll see software that requires at least Win2k, if not XP.
No, no software manufacturer is going to support only the latest version of an OS for a product that they hope to be of mainstream appeal, but not supporting OSes that are no longer supported by the original producer seems reasonable.
For that matter, how the hell is your post a troll? Someone trying to mod-bomb TripMasterMonkey and anyone who supports him? Hint: it doesn't work when you only have 5 mod points...
I completely agree, except that it's not your arse that'll thank you for the decent chair, it's your back. Your backside might get a bit numb, but I've never heard of anyone damaging theirs just by sitting.
On the other hand, back pain is the single biggest cause of chronic pain in adults. I had a nasty little spell of it a few years ago when I wasn't sitting right, and at one point I had trouble just walking - I was literally hobbling. My fiancée has a very bad back, and occasionally it goes - then she's in intense pain for a couple of days until it eases, then merely a lot of pain for a week or two.
Seriously - look after your back. Your eyes are important, but you can wear glasses if you must; your hands are important, but you can dictate (or design/manage) if you must. Your back is irreplacable.
The point, dummy, is that it's next to impossible to use Junit to test servlet code, and downright impossible* to use it to test JSPs. Unfortunately, other than things like HTTPUnit (which last time I looked was almost useless) and WinRunner (which costs and only runs on Windows) there isn't a lot available for proper interface testing of web pages. Not just screen scraping, "do I get the expected data?", but proper "all of the formatting is correct, images in the right place, etc" testing.
(* No, nothing is impossible - but using junit to test JSPs is the next best thing, especially when you actually have a deadline to meet)
JUnit is a woderful tool for testing plain old Java objects, but is utterly unsuitable for end to end testing in a web (or other GUI) environment.
I can see it now, Unix users typing www/slashdot/org and Windows users typing www\slashdot\org
Why would that happen? It's not like Windows users type in http:\\www.bbc.co.uk\weather\ under the current system.
WTF did that even come from?
Ok, I'll tell you how it works. People tend to remember only those things that support their initial prejudices. Hence the OP will have read something like "Vista, like any other OS or device, will require a trusted monitor in order to display HDCP content". They will remember "Vista will require a trusted monitor", which will reinforce their preconception that Vista, like all MS products, is/will be a bag of shite.
It's not even really his fault; it's just human nature. When people feel strongly about something the things that support their position tend to be the things that stick in their minds.
And what company would want you to spend $200 with them, when you could spend $2000?
What is the financial incentive to Apple to open up their OS in that way? They're a hardware company, not a software company. OS X exists to get people to buy Apple computers, period.
That's not ScuttleMonkey's comment - everything in italics is written by the original submitter. If that's not the case, then the posting editor is putting words in the original submitter's mouth, and we all know that none of them would ever do that. The editor's comments appear in normal text, generally after the submitter's (apart from the "So-and-so writes..." bit, obviously).
As for the comment itself, it's FUD, pure and simple. Yes, it certainly out performs XP in terms of real-time response. XP is not and never will be a real-time OS, and MS has never claimed that it is. More importantly though, it is extremely unlikely that the submitter has any data to back up that supposition, whether it relate to required latencies for multi-media operations or to XP's real-time capabilities and latencies.
In #4, "Hacking is Cool", he obviously means "cracker."
There's little point fighting battles that you can't win, unless you mean to make an example in your loss. In this case, you can't possibly win and there's no example to make (except perhaps that language evolves - big deal); I'd suggest saving your effort for something you *can* make a difference to.
No it isn't. The question was "why can't I just buy Word and Excel without having to buy the whole of Office", the answer is "you can - look". The fact that it doesn't save you very much money is irrelevant, the point is you can do it if you want.
If there are feature differences that matter to the applications (such as games or normal productivity apps) everyone will ignore crippled versions - bye bye starter ed. Dunno why MS can't figure this out.
Monopoly or not, you don't get to be one of the biggest companies in the world by making stupid decisions. MS has a reason for everything it does. Sure, it makes mistakes, but when it comes to business it doesn't make them very often or more than once.
If there's anyone who doesn't "get" why MS is releasing crippled versions of its OSes, it's you, not them.
I guess MS has gotten addicted to the mothly income it gathers from XBox Live subscribers.
Two words: recurring revenue. There isn't a compnany in existence that wouldn't love to increase its recurring revenue. Selling a product once is great. Selling a subscription to something is much better - that gives you a nice dependable monthly/quarterly/yearly income.
the 'Must have best version' crowd that previously cackled and downloaded warez versions of such gems as Win2003 Advanced Server for their home PCs so they could have the 'best' Windows
Word has it that, suitably configured, Win2003 AS is actually an excellent desktop OS, capable of doing anything a user would want (including multi-media stuff and games) and very stable too. Of course you'd know that, as you wouldn't be denigrating a group of people just for the hell of it with no hard information to base your opinions on. (And no, I'm running XP Pro, before you ask)
Thats not entirely true - scientists have held their hands up and said "we got it wrong" since people started doing science. Likewise, there have always been people who - for whatever reason - have not done so, even when presented with evidence proving it.
Often it's because it's incredibly hard to admit even to yourself that the thing you've spent most of your working life on so far is wrong, that you've "wasted" all that time. Also, don't forget that there have been times when theory Y has replaced theory X, only for it to turn out that theory X is *also* right (I'm thinking especially of wave/particle duality - for a long time we "knew" that light was made of particles, then we "knew" that it was actually made of waves, now we "know" better)
If security centre is popping up that message regularly, that would seem to indicate that he is not keeping his system well secured.
The only time I ever see that is if AVG hasn't had a chance to update itself for a couple of days (eg the machine just hasn't been on at the appropriate time, I've been away, etc) and warns me about it.
I'd put excellent odds on OSX-x86 being able to run Windows apps through some sort of VMWare-ish compatibility layer (possibly VMWare itself).
You do realise that all VMWare is is a virtual machine, and that it requires a full, licenced copy of the OS you wish to run within it, right?
The only way to use VMWare on Mac OS X on Intel to run Windows apps is to own a copy of Windows.
but in the Java world (where I work), about half of memory typically contains pointers
Ok, I know you put "typically" in there, but it really depends on what you're doing. If you have multi-megabyte data structures (eg in a large cache to reduce db traffic) then I'd be very surprised if you had that many pointers relative to actual data. Of course, it depends on the structure of your data structures...
it's probably easier for them to prereq 2GB of ram than 1.4GB.
Possibly, but it's also easier and more purchaser-friendly to say 1.5GB rather than 2GB.
Bottom line though is that I simply don't believe the requirements. XP32 runs fine in 128MB of RAM. Sure, you wouldn't want to run Doom 3 on that, but the OS is fine. I refuse to believe that Vista64 is going to require 16x the RAM. If nothing else, the PC market simply isn't ready for home machines that are that close to maxing out their RAM.
(Typical "32bit motherboards" support up to around 3-4GB of RAM; I don't know about ones for 64bit CPUs, but at this end of the market I can't see it being much higher)
Hang on.
However, since 64-bit is handling data chunks that are double the size, you'll need double the memory, hence the 2GB.
64bit data is double the size of 32bit data? Just installing a 64bit version of an OS doubles your RAM requirements compared to the 32bit version?
Since when?
No it isn't. A job offer goes something like this:
"We'd like to offer you a job with us in the position of XXXXX"
or possibly
"Hey, come work for us! Please?!"
A request for an interview is a request for an interview, whether you're Jo Unknown or the Lord God Almighty. If you're going to make an offer regardless, why waste everyone's time with an interview?
Apart from the bit where he refers to them being the anti-Christ...
The problem with that approach is that someone will still apply for the patent and have it granted, and then (if they sue) you have to go to court to prove that the prior art existed.
In theory the USPTO would find the prior art at patent application time and refuse it on those grounds, but in practice that doesn't appear to happen.
Then again, all (or at least the ones I know of) OS:es and managers do this,
;-)
Well, so far I've seen replies indicating that OS X, KDE and even Gnome itself no longer do that. To that I can add Windows, which hasn't done that since XP was released.
I can only conclude that you don't update your OS very often
Why would a cash injection stop them from releasing stuff for free? Surely they'd be more likely to go completely pay-for if they were running out of money...