One thing casual players find hard (and quite unfun) is the process required to get your first mount. With profession training and learning new skills, the first mount is quite difficult for players @ 40 to aquire; it took me several weeks of doing nothing but doing sm every day and selling all the goods before I was able to get my mount.
I know several people who just bought gold for the mount, and I can't say I blame them. Sure you dont have to have a mount, but the quests seem to be less and less clustered as time goes on, so it really saves you a lot of work. Of course, there's the other situation too: pvp. Your opponents will have top tier gear through purchased gold, so to some extent you need it too -- particularly if you play a gear dependent class like a warrior.
I meant frontend in a specific gcc sense (as in, something that parses the language and outputs rtl which can be consumed by gcc backends), not as a generic intermediate step that will eventually be compiled via gcc (or whatever), as that's generally true of most things that output c or c++ code these days, yeah?
Portability. Besides, why not leverage the decent optimization that already exists in the gnu compiler collection? I guess for me, a better question might be, why not a python frontend to gcc.
They do so, within reason. They've been quite cooperative with freebsd, in passing back relevant changes. This, of course, is unrelated to opendarwin not being rebuildable.
Why does it matter if apple paid for it or not? Apple is doing far in excess than what is required of them. They don't have to release any code at all, they can just use the bsd and mach licensed code, if they fulfill the other requirements of the license. They have been quite good about releasing code, and even providing an opensource base.
There's nothing in the license that requires opendarwin to exist, so the fact that it exists at all is very nice to the community. Now, I can make some strong arguments as to how it helps apple, and i'd like to see them unbreak darwin, but they don't owe anything to the community.
Apple is making extensive use of the bsd code which is, near as I can tell, exactly what those who choose a bsd license want. Again, closing the source is phrasology the gpl fanboys use to intentionally deceive you -- what they really mean is you dont have any rights to what I created, unless I opensource them as you did. This isnt closing the source (i just tried, i can still access freebsd.org's cvsup servers) it is merely neglecting to provide you with that which they created.
You're right, I stand corrected. Although, a fairly dilegent search did not turn this up, when I was looking for it. Certainly not as well publicised as anoncvs and cvsup options for freebsd, netbsd, openbsd and dragonflybsd.
Even today, linux lacks the transparency of the bsds. I can't just pull down the current source tree as far as I know. I have to wait for a prerelease or an official release.
If you work in a state with at-will employment, you can be fired for pretty much any reason, or no reason at all. The only exceptions are things that are legally protected (legally protected discrimination of various sorts, if you are the right race or gender or whatever).
No, you are not required to accept the GPL to use GPLed software. You are, however, required to accept it in order to distribute or modify GPLed software.
Relevant GPL section:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
The article does say that, but as far as I know, it is in error. tmobile certainly has edge available in some parts of their network unless they are calling edge 2.5g (but afaik, cingular is edge too).
It's very different; a hardware maker's entire reason to exist is to sell hardware. It costs them nothing to provide information about how the hardware works, so people can use it. It's not like software where there's a large cost associated with supporting multiple platforms.
It's like if amd sold youa microprocessor, and told you if you wanted to develop programs, you should buy their 5000$ compiler, and refused to tell you the instruction set so you could write your own compiler, have one written for you, or use someone elses compiler. It's the same thing, with the same set of associated problems.
Apparently, linux users really are free... free to run closed source proprietary blobs (but im sure their closed source proprietary blobs are vastly superior to the windows closed source proprietary blobs they complain about).
NetBSD, OpenBSD, anything nonx86 derived, plan9, unixos, just about any research based os. Add to that the fact that it's my damned hardware, I shouldn't need nvidia's driver writing charity to use it.
The problem with nvidia and ati is NOT that they dont provide source, it's that nvidia (and ati too, i believe) does the following:
1: Refuses to document their hardware 2: Provides binary drivers to platforms they bless 3: Prohibits reverse engineering via their license
This means that if you happen to be unlucky enough to not be on the blessed platform list, you simply can't use your hardware. That's right, you bought it, you paid good money for it, BUT YOU CANT USE IT.
Releasing documentation is the correct solution to the problem, not opening the source (although that'd be acceptable too). Heck, even removing the prohibition on reverse engineering the driver would be a step in the right direction (it wouldnt be a huge step, though, since in many countries you can ignore that restriction if you reverse engineer for interoperability (uk and au, i believe).
Some shared source licenses are also open source licenses. Certainly there's nothing wrong with the Microsoft Permissive License or the Microsoft Community License from an opensource perspective. The microsoft reference license, on the other hand, is not quite so free or useful (you can use it to understand, but cant modify it or redistribute it).
That's just not the case, cp/m did not have subdirectories at all (neither did msdos till ver 2.x or so). Okay, sure you can make the argument that users are subdirectories, but they didnt have a / and users were always at the top level (you can have up to 16 users, the default one being user 0 and going up to user 15).
The reason microsoft used \ instead of / has to do with how dos and cpm (possibly borrowed from vms?) pass command line switches to programs, they used the / character, so to avoid confusion microsoft used \. I guess it could have been worse, they could have enclosed subdirs in a pair of braces like cd [mydir] and cd [-], but that's another story altogether.
The fact that users would willingly purchase hardware that they can not write software to interact with themselves amazes me. This is a little like buying a processor and the vendor refusing to disclose the instruction set.
I think many people would be happy if nvidia (and others) would do one of the following three things (in order of preference):
1: Opensource drivers
2: provide documentation
3: Release proprietary drivers with a license agreement that does not prohibit reverse engineering
Obviously, the first case lets the driver be incorporated directly, with no opensource developer effort (in theory, anyways). The second lets an opensource developer with very little effort produce a driver. The third allows a driver to be written with moderate effort, but it would atleast be legal.
Of course, nvidia currently has chosen to do none of those things. No documentation, proprietary driver, and a license which prohibits reverse engineering.
The fact that most oss users are willing to use drivers under these conditions says to me that maybe nvidia is right. This problem will only get worse as linux becomes more popular with users who are used to having far fewer rights than even draconian laws like the dmca allow.
I don't think that sort of logic holds very well. First you have to consider that people blocking ads probably dont want to see them, and/or are actively hostile to advertising, which means FORCING them to view ads is likely to either have a neutral affect (whereby there's no more likely to buy your product than they would be without having seen your advertising) or even a negative affect (where they are LESS likely to purchase your advertisement). Thus, this policy does not serve LJ's customer base (the advertisers) well at all.
Additionally, while it's true that it may be necessary to make sufficient ad revenue to support a 'free' service, users of that servers are not required to adjust their behavior to ensure LJ's business plan is successful. Maybe it's a bad business model to begin with? Maybe the value offered by the LJ service is not sufficient to put up with advertising, nor is it sufficient to pay rates LJ is selling the no-advertising service for.
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One thing casual players find hard (and quite unfun) is the process required to get your first mount. With profession training and learning new skills, the first mount is quite difficult for players @ 40 to aquire; it took me several weeks of doing nothing but doing sm every day and selling all the goods before I was able to get my mount.
I know several people who just bought gold for the mount, and I can't say I blame them. Sure you dont have to have a mount, but the quests seem to be less and less clustered as time goes on, so it really saves you a lot of work. Of course, there's the other situation too: pvp. Your opponents will have top tier gear through purchased gold, so to some extent you need it too -- particularly if you play a gear dependent class like a warrior.
I meant frontend in a specific gcc sense (as in, something that parses the language and outputs rtl which can be consumed by gcc backends), not as a generic intermediate step that will eventually be compiled via gcc (or whatever), as that's generally true of most things that output c or c++ code these days, yeah?
Portability. Besides, why not leverage the decent optimization that already exists in the gnu compiler collection? I guess for me, a better question might be, why not a python frontend to gcc.
Then you'd get into a situation where truly free software (public domain software) could not be called free, interesting indeed...
Copywritten software can never truly be free, true freedom exists only in the public domain.
They do so, within reason. They've been quite cooperative with freebsd, in passing back relevant changes. This, of course, is unrelated to opendarwin not being rebuildable.
Why does it matter if apple paid for it or not? Apple is doing far in excess than what is required of them. They don't have to release any code at all, they can just use the bsd and mach licensed code, if they fulfill the other requirements of the license. They have been quite good about releasing code, and even providing an opensource base.
There's nothing in the license that requires opendarwin to exist, so the fact that it exists at all is very nice to the community. Now, I can make some strong arguments as to how it helps apple, and i'd like to see them unbreak darwin, but they don't owe anything to the community.
Apple is making extensive use of the bsd code which is, near as I can tell, exactly what those who choose a bsd license want. Again, closing the source is phrasology the gpl fanboys use to intentionally deceive you -- what they really mean is you dont have any rights to what I created, unless I opensource them as you did. This isnt closing the source (i just tried, i can still access freebsd.org's cvsup servers) it is merely neglecting to provide you with that which they created.
You're right, I stand corrected. Although, a fairly dilegent search did not turn this up, when I was looking for it. Certainly not as well publicised as anoncvs and cvsup options for freebsd, netbsd, openbsd and dragonflybsd.
Mod parent up, grandparent down.
Even today, linux lacks the transparency of the bsds. I can't just pull down the current source tree as far as I know. I have to wait for a prerelease or an official release.
Also, the early c++ compilers compiled to c, not assembler (cfront).
Advertising clause? You mean the clause that was removed 7 years ago? THAT advertising clause? Yeah, that's gone.
If you work in a state with at-will employment, you can be fired for pretty much any reason, or no reason at all. The only exceptions are things that are legally protected (legally protected discrimination of various sorts, if you are the right race or gender or whatever).
Damn them ford drivers, damn them to hell!
Welcome to 'at-will' employment.
No, you are not required to accept the GPL to use GPLed software. You are, however, required to accept it in order to distribute or modify GPLed software.
Relevant GPL section:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
The article does say that, but as far as I know, it is in error. tmobile certainly has edge available in some parts of their network unless they are calling edge 2.5g (but afaik, cingular is edge too).
It's very different; a hardware maker's entire reason to exist is to sell hardware. It costs them nothing to provide information about how the hardware works, so people can use it. It's not like software where there's a large cost associated with supporting multiple platforms.
... free to run closed source proprietary blobs (but im sure their closed source proprietary blobs are vastly superior to the windows closed source proprietary blobs they complain about).
It's like if amd sold youa microprocessor, and told you if you wanted to develop programs, you should buy their 5000$ compiler, and refused to tell you the instruction set so you could write your own compiler, have one written for you, or use someone elses compiler. It's the same thing, with the same set of associated problems.
Apparently, linux users really are free
NetBSD, OpenBSD, anything nonx86 derived, plan9, unixos, just about any research based os. Add to that the fact that it's my damned hardware, I shouldn't need nvidia's driver writing charity to use it.
The problem with nvidia and ati is NOT that they dont provide source, it's that nvidia (and ati too, i believe) does the following:
1: Refuses to document their hardware
2: Provides binary drivers to platforms they bless
3: Prohibits reverse engineering via their license
This means that if you happen to be unlucky enough to not be on the blessed platform list, you simply can't use your hardware. That's right, you bought it, you paid good money for it, BUT YOU CANT USE IT.
Releasing documentation is the correct solution to the problem, not opening the source (although that'd be acceptable too). Heck, even removing the prohibition on reverse engineering the driver would be a step in the right direction (it wouldnt be a huge step, though, since in many countries you can ignore that restriction if you reverse engineer for interoperability (uk and au, i believe).
http://www.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/ desktops_n?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
Some shared source licenses are also open source licenses. Certainly there's nothing wrong with the Microsoft Permissive License or the Microsoft Community License from an opensource perspective. The microsoft reference license, on the other hand, is not quite so free or useful (you can use it to understand, but cant modify it or redistribute it).
i censingbasics/sharedsourcelicenses.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/l
main() returns int, not void!
That's just not the case, cp/m did not have subdirectories at all (neither did msdos till ver 2.x or so). Okay, sure you can make the argument that users are subdirectories, but they didnt have a / and users were always at the top level (you can have up to 16 users, the default one being user 0 and going up to user 15).
The reason microsoft used \ instead of / has to do with how dos and cpm (possibly borrowed from vms?) pass command line switches to programs, they used the / character, so to avoid confusion microsoft used \. I guess it could have been worse, they could have enclosed subdirs in a pair of braces like cd [mydir] and cd [-], but that's another story altogether.
The fact that users would willingly purchase hardware that they can not write software to interact with themselves amazes me. This is a little like buying a processor and the vendor refusing to disclose the instruction set.
Would this fly with anyone?
I think many people would be happy if nvidia (and others) would do one of the following three things (in order of preference):
1: Opensource drivers
2: provide documentation
3: Release proprietary drivers with a license agreement that does not prohibit reverse engineering
Obviously, the first case lets the driver be incorporated directly, with no opensource developer effort (in theory, anyways). The second lets an opensource developer with very little effort produce a driver. The third allows a driver to be written with moderate effort, but it would atleast be legal.
Of course, nvidia currently has chosen to do none of those things. No documentation, proprietary driver, and a license which prohibits reverse engineering.
The fact that most oss users are willing to use drivers under these conditions says to me that maybe nvidia is right. This problem will only get worse as linux becomes more popular with users who are used to having far fewer rights than even draconian laws like the dmca allow.
I don't think that sort of logic holds very well. First you have to consider that people blocking ads probably dont want to see them, and/or are actively hostile to advertising, which means FORCING them to view ads is likely to either have a neutral affect (whereby there's no more likely to buy your product than they would be without having seen your advertising) or even a negative affect (where they are LESS likely to purchase your advertisement). Thus, this policy does not serve LJ's customer base (the advertisers) well at all.
Additionally, while it's true that it may be necessary to make sufficient ad revenue to support a 'free' service, users of that servers are not required to adjust their behavior to ensure LJ's business plan is successful. Maybe it's a bad business model to begin with? Maybe the value offered by the LJ service is not sufficient to put up with advertising, nor is it sufficient to pay rates LJ is selling the no-advertising service for.