So they are gonna hook customers up right before the prices go up? I thought prices would go down as time marches on? What about all that "dark fiber"?
Reading the article I took it to mean that cheap broadband IP telephony products would be unviable in 5 years time, not broadband internet per se.
I'm actually in a similar situation right now, and found that expaining myself through email really useful. Unfortunately the guy I'm working with never seems to reply to my emails, he always calls to answer my questions, and explain things he's done. Its actually pretty frustrating, because my notes of a phone call can never cover everything that's been said.
Have you ever tried to do this step without the help of another person?
No I haven't, but I'm pretty sure that unless I'm actually having to explain to someone else I'll take mental shortcuts, which would mean that I don't get the insight.
Although that does remind of someone I used to work with, who suggested that every programmer should work with a lifesize cardboard cut-out of the technical consultant behind them.
With code I always find that if I try to show a colleague a problem, I almost always solve it, often while I'm showing them and before they've even had chance to think about it. I guess this works in the same way as taking a break, because it allows you to think about it in a different way. When you demonstrate the bug to someone else, your concious mind isn't focusing on the problem and that moment of insight seems to happen.
On the contrary. I believe most would find the ring tone to be most annoying.
The funny thing is that they have done a controlled study, and you haven't. No matter what you believe until you actually do a controlled study you're opinion would seem to be wrong.
I really can't see how linus can claim copyright to the distribution of any source which happens to run with the linux kernel - but does not contain any part of it. And the enduser is free to compile and link this sources against the kernel, as the GPL allows modifications for own use without any restriction.
If someone is distributing source that the user then compiles themselves against the kernel, that would be fine under the terms of the GPL, as you say.
But this discussion is about binary ony modules, which do contain part of the linux kernel. The header files. These are linked against and the modules are distributed binary only, against the terms of the GPL.
Out of curiosity, would you say that something like "i kan spel beter than u!" is also "not wrong"?
I don't believe that spelling is consistently used as the normal spelling within any English dialect.
But virii is being used consistenly by a group, as part of dialect if you will. This isn't a regional dialect in the traditional sense though, it is almost an internet dialect.
The issue is really about communicate, does it affect the effectiveness of the communication? No, we all understand virii, viri, viruses as being synonyms, so why be pedantic about something that evolves any way.
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.
With a UserLinux system this could be done. The file you download from the applications web site could simply be a meta-package which instructs apt which package to install. Gives users a familiar method of installation, without compromising the model.
The first thing that should be pointed out is that they have regional dialects. These dialects can effect everything from spelling to pronunciation, usage, and even grammer. For example take the simple English word colour. I'm English, therefore my spelling is based on British English, in the USA of course the spelling is color. The reason for the difference is regional, based on the way the language evolved on different sides of the atlantic.
The point I'm making is that virii is may not officially be part of the English language now, but that doesn't make its usage unacceptable or even wrong. It is a word that has evolved from its usage by a particular group of people and it is understood outside of that group of people. It may not be the plural of virus, but, 'computer virii' could well become a plural of 'computer virus'.
Please tell me any plausable reason why the mistake is easier to see in the second case than the first:
if (foo = 0) {...}
if (foo = x) {...}
I think he meant...
if (0 == foo) {...}
and
if (0 = foo) {...}
the second won't compile.
Besides, the digital divide really is too big! Even within the Western World, let alone when you consider international communication! I'm sure there'd be some pretty pissed off people if they couldn't get a letter/postcard from their friends/family in some of the less priveleged parts of the world, where the postal service is slow but the only real means of communication.
Personally, I still use real letters for the personal touch, and I love to recieve a really nice letter from someone I don't see very often. There's jst something special about a letter, its something people take time over and put a bit of effort into. Emails are just too easy, people reel them off all the time!
Relative to the months of creative work and irreplacable personal data that can be lost, getting the local geek to spend a few hours reinstalling software is indeed trivial.
Anything this important to the user should be backed up, nevermind the risks from trojans and virii, what about file system corruption, disk crashes and the like?
IMO, if you trust your computer to keep your precious data safe you deserve to lose it, just so you might learn to backup.
This view works fine; a third store opens and they sell the same wrenches as the second store, the "open source" wrenches, except they sell them pre-assembled, but cheaper than the first store sells their "proprietary" wrenches. Now if the "proprietary" wrenches break, you _must_ return them to the 1st store for repair, their "license" prohibits you from making your own repairs, but if the "open source" wrenches break, you may either, repair them yourself, or return them to either the 1st or 2nd store for repair, depending on who offers the most cost effective repair service.
Ok, I understand that this is a hugely oversimplified vesrion of events, and doesn't take into account many things, but it does add another dimension to your original argument, albeit one that gives you my interperation of the FSFs position.
The main problem with your analogy, and my extension of that analogy is that it still treats software as physical property, what this is a much better analogy of is the open hardware IBM compatible PC vs. Proprietary Hardware (Apple Macintosh for e.g.).
Although I doubt anyone will get round to reading this as its fairly late in the discussion I'd still appreciate any comments.
I have to say I'm not overly impressed with this. Perhaps I'm biased because I can't see a major use for this, for me. But from reading the site it just seems like an overly marketed image viewer/m3 player. Ok it has online connectivity, but then its $599. That's a lot of money to transfer files from the office to home. I'd be more tempted to spend the cash on a year's *DSL connection.
Its online features seem a little too little. A mobile device, which lets you email mp3s and image files, wow! Oh and lets not forget the file sharing. For me if there's something I want to share online, I'll put it on server where the connection will be reliable, and the files will be available.
It doesn't seem to have many applications that I could use, and at $599 its too expenisve (for my pocket) to get as a toy. A bigger screen, some kind of useful input device, applications I can use productively and I'll buy it^h^h^h^h^h^hhave a laptop.
As far as I've seen all of the discussion so far has been Hardware evolution of the PDA.
To an extent I like the idea of a Bluetooth headphone for mobile ('cell') phone use. But what about when I head to a pub or club. I don't want to take my expensive PDA out on a night out, I just want my phone for calling taxi's, emergency, finding people etc.
But then I do want to be able to sync the address book in my phone and my pda, not just beaming individual numbers etc. proper syncing, mirroring all little changes.
Of course I want to sync both of these devices with the addressbook software on my desktop pc. Oh and the calendar as well (yes my cell phone has a calendar which I use). As well as my desktop pc there's the company groupware. When I'm in Hong Kong (for example) and I make an appointment for the 18th/Dec in Amsterdam, I don't want my secretary (heh, like i've got one) tomake me an appointment for the same day in New York. I want to sync my pda/phone with the company groupware wherever I am. I also want to be able to do this over the appropriate network for where I am, whether it be the cradle, bluetooth, serial (IrDA, PPP), ethernet whatever.
Of course it should also be said that if you have a machine which you can test the new kernel on, expose it to as much different hardware, to as many different systems as possible, and check for bugs that would be useful. Making sure any bugs you do find are emailed to the kernel mailing list. The more people using the new kernels on systems which they don't mind the odd crash on the better. More eyes find more bugs.
I agree there is a certain amount of difficulty in compiling a new kernel the first time, but a bit of digging and you can find some really useful info.
Compliling my kernel requires me to enter two lines.
# make menu_config
here you configure the kernel
# make dep clean; make bzImage; make modules; make modules_install; make install
ok now this build the kernel and the modules. Install's the modules. Create's all the new files in/boot including symlinks for vmlinuz, vmlinuz.old, System.map. It also asks if you want to run lilo, if lilo fails (or you say no) it'll offer to make a boot disk. So long as your/etc/lilo.conf is setup to use/boot/vmlinuz for default kernel/boot/vmlinuz.old for old kernel (i.e. your working kernel) and/boot/System.map you will probably never need to play with/boot or lilo.conf again, especially inexperienced users. How more automated could you want. The problem is none of the distributions seem to do this as standard, and its a shame.
Headlights must be on whenever a vehicle is being operated in order to distinguish it from parked cars.
In fact this is a safety law. It should be obvious to everybody that if a car has its headlights on you will spotit much earlier than a car without headlights on (except for on the brightest of days - and lets be honest you don't get many of those in Denmark). If you see somehing earlier you will have a greater period in which to react. The number of RTA's in Denmark decreased siginificantly after the introduction of this law... unfortunately I don't have any statistics to hand. The law was also introduced in Sweeden, which is why on all (European Models at least) Volvo's have their Headlights on all the time. --
Slashdot Mirror
So they are gonna hook customers up right before the prices go up? I thought prices would go down as time marches on? What about all that "dark fiber"?
Reading the article I took it to mean that cheap broadband IP telephony products would be unviable in 5 years time, not broadband internet per se.
I'm actually in a similar situation right now, and found that expaining myself through email really useful. Unfortunately the guy I'm working with never seems to reply to my emails, he always calls to answer my questions, and explain things he's done. Its actually pretty frustrating, because my notes of a phone call can never cover everything that's been said.
Have you ever tried to do this step without the help of another person?
No I haven't, but I'm pretty sure that unless I'm actually having to explain to someone else I'll take mental shortcuts, which would mean that I don't get the insight.
Although that does remind of someone I used to work with, who suggested that every programmer should work with a lifesize cardboard cut-out of the technical consultant behind them.
With code I always find that if I try to show a colleague a problem, I almost always solve it, often while I'm showing them and before they've even had chance to think about it. I guess this works in the same way as taking a break, because it allows you to think about it in a different way. When you demonstrate the bug to someone else, your concious mind isn't focusing on the problem and that moment of insight seems to happen.
Its illegal to have a cell phone switched on in a gas station in the UK.
On the contrary. I believe most would find the ring tone to be most annoying.
The funny thing is that they have done a controlled study, and you haven't. No matter what you believe until you actually do a controlled study you're opinion would seem to be wrong.
It doesn't rot your brain, but the effect is the same.
There are a few reports on the mailing lists of success with that card :)
If you can dual boot for a while give it a go. The more people testing different laptop/card/distro combinations the better.
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
This is an open source implementation that allows linux users to load their windows drivers and use their WiFi cards.
Its still very new, but there has been some success with the centrino chipset, as well as Admtek, Atheros and Broadcom cards.
surely it would have been reasonable (and factually correct) to mod either the parent or the grandparent redundant.
I really can't see how linus can claim copyright to the distribution of any source which happens to run with the linux kernel - but does not contain any part of it. And the enduser is free to compile and link this sources against the kernel, as the GPL allows modifications for own use without any restriction. If someone is distributing source that the user then compiles themselves against the kernel, that would be fine under the terms of the GPL, as you say. But this discussion is about binary ony modules, which do contain part of the linux kernel. The header files. These are linked against and the modules are distributed binary only, against the terms of the GPL.
Out of curiosity, would you say that something like "i kan spel beter than u!" is also "not wrong"?
I don't believe that spelling is consistently used as the normal spelling within any English dialect.
But virii is being used consistenly by a group, as part of dialect if you will. This isn't a regional dialect in the traditional sense though, it is almost an internet dialect.
The issue is really about communicate, does it affect the effectiveness of the communication? No, we all understand virii, viri, viruses as being synonyms, so why be pedantic about something that evolves any way.
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.
With a UserLinux system this could be done. The file you download from the applications web site could simply be a meta-package which instructs apt which package to install. Gives users a familiar method of installation, without compromising the model.Languages are funny things.
The first thing that should be pointed out is that they have regional dialects. These dialects can effect everything from spelling to pronunciation, usage, and even grammer. For example take the simple English word colour. I'm English, therefore my spelling is based on British English, in the USA of course the spelling is color. The reason for the difference is regional, based on the way the language evolved on different sides of the atlantic.
The point I'm making is that virii is may not officially be part of the English language now, but that doesn't make its usage unacceptable or even wrong. It is a word that has evolved from its usage by a particular group of people and it is understood outside of that group of people. It may not be the plural of virus, but, 'computer virii' could well become a plural of 'computer virus'.
Please tell me any plausable reason why the mistake is easier to see in the second case than the first: if (foo = 0) {...} if (foo = x) {...} I think he meant... if (0 == foo) {...} and if (0 = foo) {...} the second won't compile.
Personally, I still use real letters for the personal touch, and I love to recieve a really nice letter from someone I don't see very often. There's jst something special about a letter, its something people take time over and put a bit of effort into. Emails are just too easy, people reel them off all the time!
Anything this important to the user should be backed up, nevermind the risks from trojans and virii, what about file system corruption, disk crashes and the like?
IMO, if you trust your computer to keep your precious data safe you deserve to lose it, just so you might learn to backup.
Ooops s/1st and 2nd/2nd and 3rd/
This view works fine; a third store opens and they sell the same wrenches as the second store, the "open source" wrenches, except they sell them pre-assembled, but cheaper than the first store sells their "proprietary" wrenches. Now if the "proprietary" wrenches break, you _must_ return them to the 1st store for repair, their "license" prohibits you from making your own repairs, but if the "open source" wrenches break, you may either, repair them yourself, or return them to either the 1st or 2nd store for repair, depending on who offers the most cost effective repair service.
Ok, I understand that this is a hugely oversimplified vesrion of events, and doesn't take into account many things, but it does add another dimension to your original argument, albeit one that gives you my interperation of the FSFs position.
The main problem with your analogy, and my extension of that analogy is that it still treats software as physical property, what this is a much better analogy of is the open hardware IBM compatible PC vs. Proprietary Hardware (Apple Macintosh for e.g.).
Although I doubt anyone will get round to reading this as its fairly late in the discussion I'd still appreciate any comments.
Its online features seem a little too little. A mobile device, which lets you email mp3s and image files, wow! Oh and lets not forget the file sharing. For me if there's something I want to share online, I'll put it on server where the connection will be reliable, and the files will be available.
It doesn't seem to have many applications that I could use, and at $599 its too expenisve (for my pocket) to get as a toy. A bigger screen, some kind of useful input device, applications I can use productively and I'll buy it^h^h^h^h^h^hhave a laptop.
To an extent I like the idea of a Bluetooth headphone for mobile ('cell') phone use. But what about when I head to a pub or club. I don't want to take my expensive PDA out on a night out, I just want my phone for calling taxi's, emergency, finding people etc.
But then I do want to be able to sync the address book in my phone and my pda, not just beaming individual numbers etc. proper syncing, mirroring all little changes.
Of course I want to sync both of these devices with the addressbook software on my desktop pc. Oh and the calendar as well (yes my cell phone has a calendar which I use). As well as my desktop pc there's the company groupware. When I'm in Hong Kong (for example) and I make an appointment for the 18th/Dec in Amsterdam, I don't want my secretary (heh, like i've got one) tomake me an appointment for the same day in New York. I want to sync my pda/phone with the company groupware wherever I am. I also want to be able to do this over the appropriate network for where I am, whether it be the cradle, bluetooth, serial (IrDA, PPP), ethernet whatever.
Of course it should also be said that if you have a machine which you can test the new kernel on, expose it to as much different hardware, to as many different systems as possible, and check for bugs that would be useful. Making sure any bugs you do find are emailed to the kernel mailing list. The more people using the new kernels on systems which they don't mind the odd crash on the better. More eyes find more bugs.
ZDNet UK has a list of ISPs offering unmetered access in the UK... along with information about costs and current availability.
Compliling my kernel requires me to enter two lines.
# make menu_config
here you configure the kernel
# make dep clean; make bzImage; make modules; make modules_install; make install
ok now this build the kernel and the modules. Install's the modules. Create's all the new files in /boot including symlinks for vmlinuz, vmlinuz.old, System.map. It also asks if you want to run lilo, if lilo fails (or you say no) it'll offer to make a boot disk. So long as your /etc/lilo.conf is setup to use /boot/vmlinuz for default kernel /boot/vmlinuz.old for old kernel (i.e. your working kernel) and /boot/System.map you will probably never need to play with /boot or lilo.conf again, especially inexperienced users. How more automated could you want. The problem is none of the distributions seem to do this as standard, and its a shame.
--
"I was either onto something, or on something!"
In fact this is a safety law. It should be obvious to everybody that if a car has its headlights on you will spotit much earlier than a car without headlights on (except for on the brightest of days - and lets be honest you don't get many of those in Denmark). If you see somehing earlier you will have a greater period in which to react. The number of RTA's in Denmark decreased siginificantly after the introduction of this law... unfortunately I don't have any statistics to hand. The law was also introduced in Sweeden, which is why on all (European Models at least) Volvo's have their Headlights on all the time.
--
"I was either onto something, or on something!"