That's actually okay. I have almost exclusively a Linux background. Yet I am every bit as marketable as a MCSE. I actually have real experience in various technologies themselves, like LDAP, SQL, etc, not just experience in one MS implementation of said technologies. Employers who can't recognize the broader background will continue to higher MCSEs, which is fine by me. But my current employer recognizes that because I came from a Linux background, the depth and breadth of my underlying skills are much greater. Moving to support and administer windows users, or even doing Windows system programming (yes such things are possible on Windows) is much much easier for me than for someone who's exclusively windows-based to reach out and administer or program for Linux.
So no. Exposing students to Linux will not create a monoculture. They won't have any problems using MS Excel in the workplace. Or composing a memo in MS Word. They'll be able to pick up Visual Studio and run with it, having learned programming on Linux. Some potential employers may think as you do, but that can and must be changed over time.
Compare two people. One used Windows exclusively his entire life. The other had windows at home, Linux at school. The latter user goes on to discover even more cool OSes out there, like FreeBSD. Or MacOSX. All because of his linux exposure. He learns about Python. Learns Java. He learns about C# on Mono, and C++. Whereas the first person knows only Visual Studio--he doesn't actually know how to code anything in any language from scratch. In essence he doesn't truly know any language beyond the scope of Visual Studio. Who is the most diverse and valuable to an employer? If employers still see things wrong, then we definitely could use a real education campaign.
There's another possibility. One that I can certainly say is happening to me. I am now less and less able to discern, say, voice over other forms of noise. I can hear just fine. I can hear that someone is speaking, but I can't make it out over other forms of ambient noise, such as fans, other people chattering, etc. This seems to me to be more a problem in the mind than the actual ears. Perhaps I've become so ADD with the wash of all the happenings of life that I can't pay attention. Maybe our society is getting so busy and noisy that we're losing our ability (or skill) to properly pick out one sound amongst all the others. Certainly we are awash constantly with noise pollution. The absolute still, quiet is hard to come by these days.
I watched an old twilight zone episode where a man was being hung on the gallows back in the mid 1800s. When he was suddenly and mysteriously (and in the nick of time too, he though) transported to the future, he found he couldn't cope at all with the constant noise of cars, televisions, people, airplanes, etc. He ended up committing suicide, if I recall correctly.
This is more the realm of philosophy than science, though. But certainly band compression on our recordings has really made our recorded music awfully poor. I love Scorpions and the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra, for example, but the band compression is so much that the strings get completely lost in the distortion. It's really bad. I wish they'd go back and re-master the album, treating it more like a piece of classical orchestral music so we can actually hear the finer subtleties of the orchestral parts.
If all you ever listen to is contemporary music, I doubt you'd notice the band compression. But if you like classical music, and ever attend a live performance, you'll appreciate and understand it much better. Unless, of course, you're already deaf.
I am off by a ways, but not as far as you say. There's no way you can get a $1500 20" iMac that's the equivalent of the Dell. Our prices on Dell vary, but we can get a Core 2 Duo, 2 GB Ram, 250 GB disk, ATI X1300, and 20 or 22" (same price) WFP for under $1300. That includes a full 3-year warranty, which we buy on all our machines. To get this on Apple, the price is $1800-$2000, depending on if you choose to go with 3rd party RAM. Even with our negotiated price with Apple, we still pay quite a premium (more than we are budgeted for on each machine).
So no. the iMac does not fill the niche of which I speak. Apple most definitely has a huge hole in their lineup, as far as our general workstation uses are concerned.
While Apple laptops are very competitive across the board, they certainly aren't in the deskop arena. We have the low-end Mac mini, then the mid-high iMac (price-wise), and then the way up there Mac Pro. There's nothing that would compete in a corporate or education range with, say, a Dell GX745. A complete desktop system is about 1200 (20" screen). All Apple has in this area is the iMac, which for this size of screen comes in close to $2000 or $2200. There's just a huge hole in the Apple lineup. If I want just a tower case, I have no choices at all between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. For a lot of people that would want to get into video production, for example, there's nothing to choose from on Apple. My brother, for example, wants at least a Core 2 Duo, 2-4 hard drive bays, and room for 4-8 GB of ram. Dell can provide this for under $1000. Apple's only choice is the Mac Pro which will start him at $1500, going on up into the stratosphere from there.
Tivo *is* (re)distributing software under the terms of the GPL. Whether they want to or not, they are a distributor, despite the "box" being their sole game. They comply with the strict requirements by providing the source code for the kernel and other parts that are GPL. They are in compliance with the letter of the GPLv2. They knew from the beginning that they weren't in compliance with the spirit and intent of the GPL, but up until now that didn't matter. But Tivo isn't the one who holds the copyright on the code, although they have a perpetual license on the code they currently do use under the GPLv2. Now, though, it all suddenly may matter if they want to continue getting the free lunch. Given Tivo's intentions, I believe they did make a huge mistake to take the free lunch rather than develop their own stuff or license under more favorable terms something else. Tivo proved that the GPLv2 could be used in just as proprietary of circumstances as code under any other licenses.
The intent of the GPL has always been to make sure that the end users have certain freedoms. If IBM can make a lot of money by using this as a tool, so be it. In the end, I as a developer, or even end user, who uses the GPL, is far better off from IBM's actions than I am from Tivo's. IBM takes, extends, makes money, and releases. Tivo just takes and makes money. Only companies who fail to understand how the free software movement works lose. Many small companies, such as RedHat, are clear winners because of IBM's actions. IBM may not love these companies, and may compete with them into the ground with their service strategy, but nevertheless, the GPL significantly levels the playing field and the barriers to entry, if the rules are understood.
Whether the GPLv2 or GPLv3 makes business sense for you, or for Tivo, or for company XY, is none of my concern. For me, I'd have to choose to license software under the most favorable terms I could, whether that be BSD, Microsoft's various licenses, the LGPL, or the GPLv3, depending on my needs. As for my own software, I tend to license it under GPLv2 (sometimes "or newer"). If a business wants my code bad enough, I can negotiate any license arrangement I want.
The meaning of "freedom" as embodied by the GPL is clearly spelled out in the license. For me the GPL is there to protect my code from exploitation. I want my code to stay free and useful to folks. If Tivo wants to use my code in a non-GPL way, they can license it from me for a fee.
There's no problem embedding GPL'd software. Just abide by the license when developing and distributing such software. How hard is that?
You talk as if Linux somehow has to become the same as the competition or the enemy to succeed. What's your big deal anyway? Why would the GPL (any version) automatically be good or bad for business? For those that understand the GPL, it's intention, and spirit, the GPL is just another business tool that serves a number of companies very well. For those that don't, like Tivo, it can bite them. That is not the fault of the GPL nor should it be changed. Software of all kinds *is* ideological to a point.
Your last point clearly shows your position. You don't understand free software in particular, or maybe even open source software, at all. Either that or you do and you're purposely spreading this ignorance. This is almost a direct parrot of Microsoft's party line on the GPL. Unbelievable. Anyway. Anyone who wants to is welcome to leave GPL'd code alone. There are lots of alternatives that will be glad to take one's money. No one ever has the excuse, we didn't understand the implications of the GPL, regardless of version.
Your EULA argument is bogus and does not address the other person's post who talked about producing code based on Microsoft's licensing agreements. THE GPL IS NOT A EULA! You can use GPL'd software indefinitely without agreeing to anything. At least until the moment you decide to distribute the software, which is only possibly under the GPL if you don't negotiate a specific arrangement with the copyright holders. And that software you use under the terms of the GPL can be used indefinitely under those terms. There's no need of a sunset agreement because there never is a sunset.
As for newer programs switching to the GPLv3, I'd urge you to review how Microsoft has continually changed the licensing that comes with the various tools and runtime libraries of Visual Studio (which is more directly applicable to the discussion, not the EULA for windows itself). Just as in Linux were different versions of a program could be released under different source code licenses, so does Microsoft.
No one is pulling the metaphorical rug out from under the feet of unsuspecting companies. Tivo, like many others, used linux for only 2 reasons. One is that they perceived it was free (it is about freedom, not no cost). They could freeload off the community and make a lot of money, which they have. The other reason is that they felt there was a loophole in the GPL that would allow them to abide by the strict terms of the license, but not actually have to grant any of the freedoms of the GPL to their customers. They knew what they were doing. They purposely chose to see the GPL (with their loophole) as if it were the public domain, or even BSD. Look, the only reason companies get in trouble with the GPL is when they forget that it is a normal copyright license. It's about freedom, but with obligation. Tivo has *not* been shafted. Sorry.
No, the GPL is not viral. It does not magically force your code to be open-sourced just because you have some GPL code in the system. But if you choose to license others' code under the terms of the GPL, it is about granting the same freedoms (modify, extend, redistribute, etc) that allowed you to use the code to others, which Tivo does not. If Tivo was mistaken about the terms of the GPL, or feels that the are the victim in this case, they should have hired better lawyers when they first decided to license GPL code. Note that Tivo's proprietary codecs, encryption, UI, and other pieces of software they themselves wrote would remain their own despite the core OS and libraries being GPLv3.
So the fact that they are crying means either that a) they are worried someone will find evidence of a real GPL violation if they can get access to the hardware and tweak things, or b) they are worried that hacking the hardware will somehow harm their business. The latter is more likely. Part of it may be MPAA pressure, but I think the bigger part is that Tivo's hold on the market is tenuous and once one starts hacking the hardware, Tivo's core moneymaking services (the subscription part) disappears in an instant. But they made the bed; they can lie in it.
Back to the GPLv3. If you want to use someone's code, you have to license it. That's just the way it works; copyright law has no other provisions. You can choose to abide by the GPL, or license someone else's code. It's that simple. If Tivo wants to use GPLv3 code, they'll have to abide by it's license, which has now been expanded to make sure that artificial hardware locks around the code cannot be used to limit freedoms on the code itself (the code that belongs to others, or the code that Tivo extended that was GPL). Up until now Tivo has essentially been exploiting a weak GPL. Now they are crying that their free lunch got taken away. Apparently they have forgotten that the GPL is about freedom, but not necessarily cost.
Your prediction is pretty silly too. The *only* reason that IBM has invested in Linux in the first place is because of the GPL. The GPLv3 just makes more solid the reasons that IBM is already involved in Linux. Ubuntu forking GPLv2 software? Uh huh. Honestly, it's only the proprietary embedded hardware makers that are going to cry about this. They are welcome to fork GPLv2 stuff. At that point, though, they lose all the advantage of their previous free lunch anyway.
Honestly, when I read comments like this that so obviously miss the point and distort the issues, I wonder how the open source community can survive with so much internal ignorance. Microsoft hasn't much to worry about when we spread their FUD for them.
Certainly Parallels is ahead in the feature set. But how does memory usage compare? Parallels 2.0 seems to commmit all the memory you allocated in preferences, whereas VMWare uses only as much memory as its vms need. This can have some pretty important performance implications. In fact it is the number one reason why I use vmware fusion. Features like coherence and the integration things in Parallels 3.0 are killer, though. I've wanted coherence-style vm operation for many years.
What a silly statement. In the case of either distribution, it's a matter of having a good repository. Ubuntu is not somehow magically free from dependency hell. It's just that Ubuntu happens to have very good and very extensive repositories. Likewise, Fedora has a large number of third-party repository that covers a wide range of software needs, including MythTV. The only time I've ever really gotten into dependency hell was some years ago with Debian itself. Honestly there are lots of arguments you could make against Fedora, but this is just not one of them.
If you want a legitimate criticism, and one that's been answered in Fedora 7, adding third-party repositories has never been trivial for Fedora newbies.
But to think that one distro is magically better as far as dependency problems is concerned, is absurd.
Not necessarily. Cygwin's shell just provides their development environment. Even if cygwin is required (which would be kind of slow), all that you need is cygwin1.dll.
Re:External combustion engines
on
Driving on Starch
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Burning != Bad. Let's not forget that. Anything that's carbon-neutral can be burned cleanly, without any environmental impact. We know how to clean up NOx emissions. We know how to clean up particulates. Once you do that, CO2 is harmless.
Beiging is not burning carbon-neutral fuels. Nor are they filtering emissions. Don't confuse the issue here.
Anyone who automatically things combustion is bad needs to start with themselves first. We burn sugar all day long.
If we can find a way to produce carbon-neutral, high-density, combustible molecules (renewable), that is the only way to go. Combustion (reaction with oxygen) is still the best form of energy production. In the meantime, burning bio-organic materials that are normally just going to waste, we need to be capturing that waste. Burn the materials. Burn the methane.
Except for Server, OS X defaults to no, zero, nadda, ports open by default. That means there's zero chance of a remote root exploit. The only chance of remote exploit is really by exploiting something like safari or Mac Mail. However, such an exploit would be dramatically limited in scope as compare to, for example, Windows XP. Vista has made things a lot better, but UAC's effectiveness is not proved. A root exploit is highly unlikely, although you can argue a local user exploit is as destructive--after all that's where your data is.
I think I'll still be trusting my OS X machine over Windows still. Viruses and spyware are very difficult to make viable on OS X (and Linux also).
I'm reminded of song by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie called "Every OS Sucks."
Such things already exist. You can already set up your own NNTP server that doesn't allow posts from unknown users. You miss out on the global nature of usenet this way, but usenet was dead years ago anyway.
There's no need to create yet another UI and client program when perfectly good news readers already work well, such as Pan, or even Thunderbird.
I don't believe so. I'd rather have e-mail than an RSS feed. What good is a spam-choked RSS feed? With e-mail I can at least delete messages I want to delete. Discussion boards suck, to be honest. They are horrible substitutes for the NNTP discussion groups of days of yore. I got so fed up with the usability of a board I frequent that I wrote a python script to screen-scrape it, and offer the entire thing as an nntp newsgroup. It worked rather well, although it wasn't that efficient, bandwidth-wise.
Here are my gripes with discussion boards: - way too slow. I have to wait for page loads just to switch from thread to thread - threads fall rapidly off the first page - There is no threading on most discussion boards. You heard me right. Most discussion boards do *not* allow threading. You can reply to what they call a thread, but there's no logical linking of one post to another. It's just a bunch of linear threads that "reply" to the topic opener. Thus they all have the same subject line, but they aren't threaded in the nntp sense (which made my nntp screenscraper problematic). - By allowing existing posts to be edited, information is lost. A blessing and a curse
Give me an nntp or e-mail interface anyday. Lately I've given up on NNTP in general because Usenet was killed years ago by spammers. Now they are trying to ruin e-mail. Exclusive, moderated discussion boards are an attempt to form a bastion against spammers, but so far they just aren't as useful as e-mail.
No, but it is getting more problematic
on
Is Email 'Bankrupt'?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I receive somewhere around 500 e-mails a day, mostly on various technical mailing lists. Currently my spam rate is about 2-3 messages per day. I don't don't take any particular care to hide my e-mail address on the web. The reason my spam rate is so low is largely a technical one. Greylisting currently kills 90% of any spam heading for my e-mail address, right at the server before any spam message is even transmitted.
However, this cannot last forever. Spam has slowly increased after greylisting from none to 2-3 a day, as the spammers zombie hosts start acting more like normal RFC-compliant hosts. Spam stocks make it through after dutifully waiting out the 20 minute delay.
In short it is an arms race. E-mail is getting less and less useful, even with the technological solutions like greylisting, filtering on expressions, etc.
You're confused about the OP. You're also confused about the way Russian copyright law has worked up until now. You're further confused about the mention of RIAA broadcast fees, which are currently being proposed on free radio (which had no license fees up until now), no matter that the music is copyright RIAA members or not. The irony is that the RIAA wants to do exactly the thing that they are so incensed about with regards to allofmp3.com and their operating under a "broadcast" license. The problem is that just as no artist gets the fees allofmp3.com pays (regardless of whether they are "broadcasting" or not), under the RIAA's righteousness the same thing happens here.
If basic needs aren't being met, then yes, technology is useless. But everyone who's worked with Africa knows that education is the key to lifting Africans out of their desperate circumstances. Africans are some of the brightest, most intelligent people in the world. Most Africans' dreams are to get educated, and use that education to help their people. Throwing technology at a problem isn't the answer. But if you look at what the OLPC is, it's about education, not the technology itself. The OLPC is right on track, compared to the Intel laptop.
In the meantime, if you care about Africa and want to help, the things they are in most desperate need of are paper and pencils for their schools. The OLPC fits right into this but reducing the need for paper, giving students instead a virtual notebook with many more possibilities.
The RIAA is trying to stop allofmp3.com (operating under certain Russian copyright licensing laws) for doing the exact same thing that they are pushing to be allowed to do right here in the US. The RIAA wants to collect fees (sell if you will) for music played on radio stations (regular radio stations) regardless of whether or not the music is actually copyrighted by any of their members. This means that if a public radio station plays a few RIAA songs, but the majority are indie labels or any music not owned by the RIAA members, the RIAA gets a cut as if it was.
One can certainly argue against the moral rightness of the way the Russian copyright licensing laws work, since no American artist will ever see any of the fees that the Russian copyright organization collects. But certainly the RIAA is clearly acting morally wrong as well.
This is off-topic as far as telecommuting goes, but hey. This is slashdot.
The fix for urban sprawl is to clean up our cities. Put in clean, esthetically pleasing higher-density housing in the downtowns, increase public transportation to make it more appealing to live in such locations. Better planning in putting in green spaces (central park) very well could make higher-density housing areas much less the concrete jungle and more homey. But that's never going to happen until all our available land-mass is covered with subdivisions and the oceans are dried up.
As far as MPG goes, our engines today are now more powerful and much more efficient than they were in the 70s, all while consuming about the same amount of gas. However our vehicles are now larger and much heavier than they were in the 70s. We have, in fact, returned to the gas-guzzling boats of the 60s in terms of size and weight. The reason our cars are heavier and bigger is because we want the illusion of safety. If our neighbor is going to drive his his SUV with a high bumper, we want to make sure we never end up underneath it, so we buy a tall SUV too. We want the power to race out of danger. And so on. If we all drove smaller cars, and had sane safety regulations concerning bumper height and so forth, we would all be driving sub-compacts that got 50+ MPG. And we'd be a lot safer on the road too.
Sometimes I think we take freedom and rights way too far. We like the freedom to lift our SUVs way up and put on big tires. We like the freedom to drive 80 mph down the freeway. Never mind the fact that our actions put others at mortal risk. So it's a trade-off. Do we enact laws to curb such behavior? How do we change behavior in a positive way? It's interesting that we as humans will, in a heart-beat, trade our long-term well-being for something that will bring us only a brief moment of satisfaction. In other words, we'll place more importance on the cost of something today, than the long-term cost over our lifetime. Thus I'm not sure we can actually change public opinion with regards to our driving habits unless we allow gas prices to continually rise. Sadly high gas prices affect primary good producers first, often driving them out of business. Tis a sticky situation.
Kieth was well-known in the Linux world before he went to work for Intel. He's largely responsible for the composite X extension, and even the Xorg fork. I also believe he had some influence on the technology responsible for making compiz work. I remember using an early version of his experimental, fancy rendering X server. Also, notably, he created the kdrive mini x server for embedded environments. So he's got a lot of low-level linux experience.
Getting 7 hours of battery life is indeed impressive. Does anyone know what the Panasonic R4 gets when running windows?
Maybe Apple will take some of this work and apply it to their OS. MacBook and MacBook Pro battery life is dismal compared to your average Dell business laptop running Windows.
e-ink requires a backlight? I always thought the point was to eventually have a display that's paper-like. Completely reflective. Do no most e-ink applications layer the e-ink against a paper-white background?
It's impossible to write any software these days without infringing on some patent. While Microsoft can probably afford to license a good number of patents, I wonder how many thousands of software patents Microsoft's products infringe on. Seems to me like this is pandora's box here. The FOSS community won't take this lying down. Although we lack money and resources, we are willing to make a fuss. Once a fuss starts to be made, I wonder how long it will be before we get 100 Eolas's suing Microsoft? I think having Microsoft go after infringers in a big way will be great. It will finally draw attention to the real issues of the absurdity of most software patents. Hopefully along the way we'll get most of them dismissed. It will be long and costly, though. I don't think Microsoft thinks they can ultimately win at the patent infringement idea, but if they can just make RedHat bleed long enough, they will accomplished their goals. The wild card in the mix is IBM, though. IBM holds more patents than any other entity in the world. Microsoft has likely licensed many of them. But IBM is also committed to the Linux (despite AIX), and I wonder if they will use their patents in defense of Linux or not. They are a big, evil company, true. Will they help us or hurt us?
Anyway, Microsoft's true colors are coming out. They don't feel they can compete on merits alone any longer. So I'm concerned, but still hopeful.
Nope. Short of nuclear (which isn't actually that efficient), combustion is one of our best sources of energy and hydrocarbon molecules are some of the more efficient energy transporters (batteries, if you will) that we have. Remember, combustion and burning != bad. If combustion and CO2 emissions are inherently bad, then I suggest you go remove yourself from the gene pool. Our bodies combust sugar and oxygen 24 hours a day, releasing CO2. CO2 is a naturally occurring gas. The problem is when we increase the net CO2 in the environment, which burning fossil fuels definitely does. The goal needs to be to replace fossil fuels with carbon-neutral fuels. As we do this, our existing infrastructure (as the other poster has said) continues to give us value. Having more efficient internal combustion engines just makes things that much better. More efficient burning, and extracting use from, of carbon-neutral fuels is clearly a good thing, just as in the short term is more efficient use of fossil fuels.
Slashdot Mirror
That's actually okay. I have almost exclusively a Linux background. Yet I am every bit as marketable as a MCSE. I actually have real experience in various technologies themselves, like LDAP, SQL, etc, not just experience in one MS implementation of said technologies. Employers who can't recognize the broader background will continue to higher MCSEs, which is fine by me. But my current employer recognizes that because I came from a Linux background, the depth and breadth of my underlying skills are much greater. Moving to support and administer windows users, or even doing Windows system programming (yes such things are possible on Windows) is much much easier for me than for someone who's exclusively windows-based to reach out and administer or program for Linux.
So no. Exposing students to Linux will not create a monoculture. They won't have any problems using MS Excel in the workplace. Or composing a memo in MS Word. They'll be able to pick up Visual Studio and run with it, having learned programming on Linux. Some potential employers may think as you do, but that can and must be changed over time.
Compare two people. One used Windows exclusively his entire life. The other had windows at home, Linux at school. The latter user goes on to discover even more cool OSes out there, like FreeBSD. Or MacOSX. All because of his linux exposure. He learns about Python. Learns Java. He learns about C# on Mono, and C++. Whereas the first person knows only Visual Studio--he doesn't actually know how to code anything in any language from scratch. In essence he doesn't truly know any language beyond the scope of Visual Studio. Who is the most diverse and valuable to an employer? If employers still see things wrong, then we definitely could use a real education campaign.
There's another possibility. One that I can certainly say is happening to me. I am now less and less able to discern, say, voice over other forms of noise. I can hear just fine. I can hear that someone is speaking, but I can't make it out over other forms of ambient noise, such as fans, other people chattering, etc. This seems to me to be more a problem in the mind than the actual ears. Perhaps I've become so ADD with the wash of all the happenings of life that I can't pay attention. Maybe our society is getting so busy and noisy that we're losing our ability (or skill) to properly pick out one sound amongst all the others. Certainly we are awash constantly with noise pollution. The absolute still, quiet is hard to come by these days.
I watched an old twilight zone episode where a man was being hung on the gallows back in the mid 1800s. When he was suddenly and mysteriously (and in the nick of time too, he though) transported to the future, he found he couldn't cope at all with the constant noise of cars, televisions, people, airplanes, etc. He ended up committing suicide, if I recall correctly.
This is more the realm of philosophy than science, though. But certainly band compression on our recordings has really made our recorded music awfully poor. I love Scorpions and the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra, for example, but the band compression is so much that the strings get completely lost in the distortion. It's really bad. I wish they'd go back and re-master the album, treating it more like a piece of classical orchestral music so we can actually hear the finer subtleties of the orchestral parts.
If all you ever listen to is contemporary music, I doubt you'd notice the band compression. But if you like classical music, and ever attend a live performance, you'll appreciate and understand it much better. Unless, of course, you're already deaf.
I am off by a ways, but not as far as you say. There's no way you can get a $1500 20" iMac that's the equivalent of the Dell. Our prices on Dell vary, but we can get a Core 2 Duo, 2 GB Ram, 250 GB disk, ATI X1300, and 20 or 22" (same price) WFP for under $1300. That includes a full 3-year warranty, which we buy on all our machines. To get this on Apple, the price is $1800-$2000, depending on if you choose to go with 3rd party RAM. Even with our negotiated price with Apple, we still pay quite a premium (more than we are budgeted for on each machine).
So no. the iMac does not fill the niche of which I speak. Apple most definitely has a huge hole in their lineup, as far as our general workstation uses are concerned.
While Apple laptops are very competitive across the board, they certainly aren't in the deskop arena. We have the low-end Mac mini, then the mid-high iMac (price-wise), and then the way up there Mac Pro. There's nothing that would compete in a corporate or education range with, say, a Dell GX745. A complete desktop system is about 1200 (20" screen). All Apple has in this area is the iMac, which for this size of screen comes in close to $2000 or $2200. There's just a huge hole in the Apple lineup. If I want just a tower case, I have no choices at all between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. For a lot of people that would want to get into video production, for example, there's nothing to choose from on Apple. My brother, for example, wants at least a Core 2 Duo, 2-4 hard drive bays, and room for 4-8 GB of ram. Dell can provide this for under $1000. Apple's only choice is the Mac Pro which will start him at $1500, going on up into the stratosphere from there.
Tivo *is* (re)distributing software under the terms of the GPL. Whether they want to or not, they are a distributor, despite the "box" being their sole game. They comply with the strict requirements by providing the source code for the kernel and other parts that are GPL. They are in compliance with the letter of the GPLv2. They knew from the beginning that they weren't in compliance with the spirit and intent of the GPL, but up until now that didn't matter. But Tivo isn't the one who holds the copyright on the code, although they have a perpetual license on the code they currently do use under the GPLv2. Now, though, it all suddenly may matter if they want to continue getting the free lunch. Given Tivo's intentions, I believe they did make a huge mistake to take the free lunch rather than develop their own stuff or license under more favorable terms something else. Tivo proved that the GPLv2 could be used in just as proprietary of circumstances as code under any other licenses.
The intent of the GPL has always been to make sure that the end users have certain freedoms. If IBM can make a lot of money by using this as a tool, so be it. In the end, I as a developer, or even end user, who uses the GPL, is far better off from IBM's actions than I am from Tivo's. IBM takes, extends, makes money, and releases. Tivo just takes and makes money. Only companies who fail to understand how the free software movement works lose. Many small companies, such as RedHat, are clear winners because of IBM's actions. IBM may not love these companies, and may compete with them into the ground with their service strategy, but nevertheless, the GPL significantly levels the playing field and the barriers to entry, if the rules are understood.
Whether the GPLv2 or GPLv3 makes business sense for you, or for Tivo, or for company XY, is none of my concern. For me, I'd have to choose to license software under the most favorable terms I could, whether that be BSD, Microsoft's various licenses, the LGPL, or the GPLv3, depending on my needs. As for my own software, I tend to license it under GPLv2 (sometimes "or newer"). If a business wants my code bad enough, I can negotiate any license arrangement I want.
The meaning of "freedom" as embodied by the GPL is clearly spelled out in the license. For me the GPL is there to protect my code from exploitation. I want my code to stay free and useful to folks. If Tivo wants to use my code in a non-GPL way, they can license it from me for a fee.
There's no problem embedding GPL'd software. Just abide by the license when developing and distributing such software. How hard is that?
You talk as if Linux somehow has to become the same as the competition or the enemy to succeed. What's your big deal anyway? Why would the GPL (any version) automatically be good or bad for business? For those that understand the GPL, it's intention, and spirit, the GPL is just another business tool that serves a number of companies very well. For those that don't, like Tivo, it can bite them. That is not the fault of the GPL nor should it be changed. Software of all kinds *is* ideological to a point.
Your last point clearly shows your position. You don't understand free software in particular, or maybe even open source software, at all. Either that or you do and you're purposely spreading this ignorance. This is almost a direct parrot of Microsoft's party line on the GPL. Unbelievable. Anyway. Anyone who wants to is welcome to leave GPL'd code alone. There are lots of alternatives that will be glad to take one's money. No one ever has the excuse, we didn't understand the implications of the GPL, regardless of version.
Your EULA argument is bogus and does not address the other person's post who talked about producing code based on Microsoft's licensing agreements. THE GPL IS NOT A EULA! You can use GPL'd software indefinitely without agreeing to anything. At least until the moment you decide to distribute the software, which is only possibly under the GPL if you don't negotiate a specific arrangement with the copyright holders. And that software you use under the terms of the GPL can be used indefinitely under those terms. There's no need of a sunset agreement because there never is a sunset.
As for newer programs switching to the GPLv3, I'd urge you to review how Microsoft has continually changed the licensing that comes with the various tools and runtime libraries of Visual Studio (which is more directly applicable to the discussion, not the EULA for windows itself). Just as in Linux were different versions of a program could be released under different source code licenses, so does Microsoft.
You're argument is a fallacy.
No one is pulling the metaphorical rug out from under the feet of unsuspecting companies. Tivo, like many others, used linux for only 2 reasons. One is that they perceived it was free (it is about freedom, not no cost). They could freeload off the community and make a lot of money, which they have. The other reason is that they felt there was a loophole in the GPL that would allow them to abide by the strict terms of the license, but not actually have to grant any of the freedoms of the GPL to their customers. They knew what they were doing. They purposely chose to see the GPL (with their loophole) as if it were the public domain, or even BSD. Look, the only reason companies get in trouble with the GPL is when they forget that it is a normal copyright license. It's about freedom, but with obligation. Tivo has *not* been shafted. Sorry.
No, the GPL is not viral. It does not magically force your code to be open-sourced just because you have some GPL code in the system. But if you choose to license others' code under the terms of the GPL, it is about granting the same freedoms (modify, extend, redistribute, etc) that allowed you to use the code to others, which Tivo does not. If Tivo was mistaken about the terms of the GPL, or feels that the are the victim in this case, they should have hired better lawyers when they first decided to license GPL code. Note that Tivo's proprietary codecs, encryption, UI, and other pieces of software they themselves wrote would remain their own despite the core OS and libraries being GPLv3.
So the fact that they are crying means either that a) they are worried someone will find evidence of a real GPL violation if they can get access to the hardware and tweak things, or b) they are worried that hacking the hardware will somehow harm their business. The latter is more likely. Part of it may be MPAA pressure, but I think the bigger part is that Tivo's hold on the market is tenuous and once one starts hacking the hardware, Tivo's core moneymaking services (the subscription part) disappears in an instant. But they made the bed; they can lie in it.
Back to the GPLv3. If you want to use someone's code, you have to license it. That's just the way it works; copyright law has no other provisions. You can choose to abide by the GPL, or license someone else's code. It's that simple. If Tivo wants to use GPLv3 code, they'll have to abide by it's license, which has now been expanded to make sure that artificial hardware locks around the code cannot be used to limit freedoms on the code itself (the code that belongs to others, or the code that Tivo extended that was GPL). Up until now Tivo has essentially been exploiting a weak GPL. Now they are crying that their free lunch got taken away. Apparently they have forgotten that the GPL is about freedom, but not necessarily cost.
Your prediction is pretty silly too. The *only* reason that IBM has invested in Linux in the first place is because of the GPL. The GPLv3 just makes more solid the reasons that IBM is already involved in Linux. Ubuntu forking GPLv2 software? Uh huh. Honestly, it's only the proprietary embedded hardware makers that are going to cry about this. They are welcome to fork GPLv2 stuff. At that point, though, they lose all the advantage of their previous free lunch anyway.
Honestly, when I read comments like this that so obviously miss the point and distort the issues, I wonder how the open source community can survive with so much internal ignorance. Microsoft hasn't much to worry about when we spread their FUD for them.
Certainly Parallels is ahead in the feature set. But how does memory usage compare? Parallels 2.0 seems to commmit all the memory you allocated in preferences, whereas VMWare uses only as much memory as its vms need. This can have some pretty important performance implications. In fact it is the number one reason why I use vmware fusion. Features like coherence and the integration things in Parallels 3.0 are killer, though. I've wanted coherence-style vm operation for many years.
What a silly statement. In the case of either distribution, it's a matter of having a good repository. Ubuntu is not somehow magically free from dependency hell. It's just that Ubuntu happens to have very good and very extensive repositories. Likewise, Fedora has a large number of third-party repository that covers a wide range of software needs, including MythTV. The only time I've ever really gotten into dependency hell was some years ago with Debian itself. Honestly there are lots of arguments you could make against Fedora, but this is just not one of them.
If you want a legitimate criticism, and one that's been answered in Fedora 7, adding third-party repositories has never been trivial for Fedora newbies.
But to think that one distro is magically better as far as dependency problems is concerned, is absurd.
Right. Forgot about that. Version 2.0 doesn't help it, eh.
It's called abiword. http://www.abisource.com/
Not necessarily. Cygwin's shell just provides their development environment. Even if cygwin is required (which would be kind of slow), all that you need is cygwin1.dll.
Burning != Bad. Let's not forget that. Anything that's carbon-neutral can be burned cleanly, without any environmental impact. We know how to clean up NOx emissions. We know how to clean up particulates. Once you do that, CO2 is harmless.
Beiging is not burning carbon-neutral fuels. Nor are they filtering emissions. Don't confuse the issue here.
Anyone who automatically things combustion is bad needs to start with themselves first. We burn sugar all day long.
If we can find a way to produce carbon-neutral, high-density, combustible molecules (renewable), that is the only way to go. Combustion (reaction with oxygen) is still the best form of energy production. In the meantime, burning bio-organic materials that are normally just going to waste, we need to be capturing that waste. Burn the materials. Burn the methane.
Except for Server, OS X defaults to no, zero, nadda, ports open by default. That means there's zero chance of a remote root exploit. The only chance of remote exploit is really by exploiting something like safari or Mac Mail. However, such an exploit would be dramatically limited in scope as compare to, for example, Windows XP. Vista has made things a lot better, but UAC's effectiveness is not proved. A root exploit is highly unlikely, although you can argue a local user exploit is as destructive--after all that's where your data is.
I think I'll still be trusting my OS X machine over Windows still. Viruses and spyware are very difficult to make viable on OS X (and Linux also).
I'm reminded of song by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie called "Every OS Sucks."
Such things already exist. You can already set up your own NNTP server that doesn't allow posts from unknown users. You miss out on the global nature of usenet this way, but usenet was dead years ago anyway.
There's no need to create yet another UI and client program when perfectly good news readers already work well, such as Pan, or even Thunderbird.
I don't believe so. I'd rather have e-mail than an RSS feed. What good is a spam-choked RSS feed? With e-mail I can at least delete messages I want to delete. Discussion boards suck, to be honest. They are horrible substitutes for the NNTP discussion groups of days of yore. I got so fed up with the usability of a board I frequent that I wrote a python script to screen-scrape it, and offer the entire thing as an nntp newsgroup. It worked rather well, although it wasn't that efficient, bandwidth-wise.
Here are my gripes with discussion boards:
- way too slow. I have to wait for page loads just to switch from thread to thread
- threads fall rapidly off the first page
- There is no threading on most discussion boards. You heard me right. Most discussion boards do *not* allow threading. You can reply to what they call a thread, but there's no logical linking of one post to another. It's just a bunch of linear threads that "reply" to the topic opener. Thus they all have the same subject line, but they aren't threaded in the nntp sense (which made my nntp screenscraper problematic).
- By allowing existing posts to be edited, information is lost. A blessing and a curse
Give me an nntp or e-mail interface anyday. Lately I've given up on NNTP in general because Usenet was killed years ago by spammers. Now they are trying to ruin e-mail. Exclusive, moderated discussion boards are an attempt to form a bastion against spammers, but so far they just aren't as useful as e-mail.
I receive somewhere around 500 e-mails a day, mostly on various technical mailing lists. Currently my spam rate is about 2-3 messages per day. I don't don't take any particular care to hide my e-mail address on the web. The reason my spam rate is so low is largely a technical one. Greylisting currently kills 90% of any spam heading for my e-mail address, right at the server before any spam message is even transmitted.
However, this cannot last forever. Spam has slowly increased after greylisting from none to 2-3 a day, as the spammers zombie hosts start acting more like normal RFC-compliant hosts. Spam stocks make it through after dutifully waiting out the 20 minute delay.
In short it is an arms race. E-mail is getting less and less useful, even with the technological solutions like greylisting, filtering on expressions, etc.
You're confused about the OP. You're also confused about the way Russian copyright law has worked up until now. You're further confused about the mention of RIAA broadcast fees, which are currently being proposed on free radio (which had no license fees up until now), no matter that the music is copyright RIAA members or not. The irony is that the RIAA wants to do exactly the thing that they are so incensed about with regards to allofmp3.com and their operating under a "broadcast" license. The problem is that just as no artist gets the fees allofmp3.com pays (regardless of whether they are "broadcasting" or not), under the RIAA's righteousness the same thing happens here.
If basic needs aren't being met, then yes, technology is useless. But everyone who's worked with Africa knows that education is the key to lifting Africans out of their desperate circumstances. Africans are some of the brightest, most intelligent people in the world. Most Africans' dreams are to get educated, and use that education to help their people. Throwing technology at a problem isn't the answer. But if you look at what the OLPC is, it's about education, not the technology itself. The OLPC is right on track, compared to the Intel laptop.
In the meantime, if you care about Africa and want to help, the things they are in most desperate need of are paper and pencils for their schools. The OLPC fits right into this but reducing the need for paper, giving students instead a virtual notebook with many more possibilities.
The RIAA is trying to stop allofmp3.com (operating under certain Russian copyright licensing laws) for doing the exact same thing that they are pushing to be allowed to do right here in the US. The RIAA wants to collect fees (sell if you will) for music played on radio stations (regular radio stations) regardless of whether or not the music is actually copyrighted by any of their members. This means that if a public radio station plays a few RIAA songs, but the majority are indie labels or any music not owned by the RIAA members, the RIAA gets a cut as if it was.
One can certainly argue against the moral rightness of the way the Russian copyright licensing laws work, since no American artist will ever see any of the fees that the Russian copyright organization collects. But certainly the RIAA is clearly acting morally wrong as well.
This is off-topic as far as telecommuting goes, but hey. This is slashdot.
The fix for urban sprawl is to clean up our cities. Put in clean, esthetically pleasing higher-density housing in the downtowns, increase public transportation to make it more appealing to live in such locations. Better planning in putting in green spaces (central park) very well could make higher-density housing areas much less the concrete jungle and more homey. But that's never going to happen until all our available land-mass is covered with subdivisions and the oceans are dried up.
As far as MPG goes, our engines today are now more powerful and much more efficient than they were in the 70s, all while consuming about the same amount of gas. However our vehicles are now larger and much heavier than they were in the 70s. We have, in fact, returned to the gas-guzzling boats of the 60s in terms of size and weight. The reason our cars are heavier and bigger is because we want the illusion of safety. If our neighbor is going to drive his his SUV with a high bumper, we want to make sure we never end up underneath it, so we buy a tall SUV too. We want the power to race out of danger. And so on. If we all drove smaller cars, and had sane safety regulations concerning bumper height and so forth, we would all be driving sub-compacts that got 50+ MPG. And we'd be a lot safer on the road too.
Sometimes I think we take freedom and rights way too far. We like the freedom to lift our SUVs way up and put on big tires. We like the freedom to drive 80 mph down the freeway. Never mind the fact that our actions put others at mortal risk. So it's a trade-off. Do we enact laws to curb such behavior? How do we change behavior in a positive way? It's interesting that we as humans will, in a heart-beat, trade our long-term well-being for something that will bring us only a brief moment of satisfaction. In other words, we'll place more importance on the cost of something today, than the long-term cost over our lifetime. Thus I'm not sure we can actually change public opinion with regards to our driving habits unless we allow gas prices to continually rise. Sadly high gas prices affect primary good producers first, often driving them out of business. Tis a sticky situation.
Kieth was well-known in the Linux world before he went to work for Intel. He's largely responsible for the composite X extension, and even the Xorg fork. I also believe he had some influence on the technology responsible for making compiz work. I remember using an early version of his experimental, fancy rendering X server. Also, notably, he created the kdrive mini x server for embedded environments. So he's got a lot of low-level linux experience.
Getting 7 hours of battery life is indeed impressive. Does anyone know what the Panasonic R4 gets when running windows?
Maybe Apple will take some of this work and apply it to their OS. MacBook and MacBook Pro battery life is dismal compared to your average Dell business laptop running Windows.
e-ink requires a backlight? I always thought the point was to eventually have a display that's paper-like. Completely reflective. Do no most e-ink applications layer the e-ink against a paper-white background?
It's impossible to write any software these days without infringing on some patent. While Microsoft can probably afford to license a good number of patents, I wonder how many thousands of software patents Microsoft's products infringe on. Seems to me like this is pandora's box here. The FOSS community won't take this lying down. Although we lack money and resources, we are willing to make a fuss. Once a fuss starts to be made, I wonder how long it will be before we get 100 Eolas's suing Microsoft? I think having Microsoft go after infringers in a big way will be great. It will finally draw attention to the real issues of the absurdity of most software patents. Hopefully along the way we'll get most of them dismissed. It will be long and costly, though. I don't think Microsoft thinks they can ultimately win at the patent infringement idea, but if they can just make RedHat bleed long enough, they will accomplished their goals. The wild card in the mix is IBM, though. IBM holds more patents than any other entity in the world. Microsoft has likely licensed many of them. But IBM is also committed to the Linux (despite AIX), and I wonder if they will use their patents in defense of Linux or not. They are a big, evil company, true. Will they help us or hurt us?
Anyway, Microsoft's true colors are coming out. They don't feel they can compete on merits alone any longer. So I'm concerned, but still hopeful.
Nope. Short of nuclear (which isn't actually that efficient), combustion is one of our best sources of energy and hydrocarbon molecules are some of the more efficient energy transporters (batteries, if you will) that we have. Remember, combustion and burning != bad. If combustion and CO2 emissions are inherently bad, then I suggest you go remove yourself from the gene pool. Our bodies combust sugar and oxygen 24 hours a day, releasing CO2. CO2 is a naturally occurring gas. The problem is when we increase the net CO2 in the environment, which burning fossil fuels definitely does. The goal needs to be to replace fossil fuels with carbon-neutral fuels. As we do this, our existing infrastructure (as the other poster has said) continues to give us value. Having more efficient internal combustion engines just makes things that much better. More efficient burning, and extracting use from, of carbon-neutral fuels is clearly a good thing, just as in the short term is more efficient use of fossil fuels.