Very interesting reference! Thank you! However, if you read it without any further knowledge the law you cite says nothing at all about that would require SHOUTING. Is there some common interpretation that justifies the use of ALL CAPS for clauses excluding implicit warranties? Because, from my own experience, I must say that I find it hard to read these sections of the EULAs, mainly because I can't stand the shouting.
No need to attack the site with a bot net if a good old-fashioned slashdotting will have the same effect;-) The site is already not responding anymore...
Contrary to popular belief the courts are not free to decide any old they want to. They are tied to the submissions of the parties. In this case the European Commission has ordered Mircosoft to unbundle Windows Media Player and to disclose parts of their protocols. This is the decision that Micosoft has appealed against. So this is the framework in which the court has to rule.
This is a very interesting argument. However, RAM prices tend to be quite volatile (just let another earthquake hit Taiwan like two years ago that would send RAM prices soaring). Moreover, sometimes upgrading RAM is not an option: think about Laptops or embedded systems. One of the greatest features of Linux is that it is possible to run modern software on hardware that is less than top notch. While performance will necessarily suffer it still remains possible. This is what sets Linux apart from the "You can't get there from here"-Attitude of the Windows world.
For instance I am running the latest OpenOffice on my Laptop with 32MB of RAM (plus 64MB of swap) once everything is loaded, the working speed is quite acceptable. This is only possible because I have enough VM, so that large programs like OpenOffice will even load.
When I read this post, I immediately ran to mozdev and installed it. This is really cool! Now you can browse in complete full-screen without having to rely on context menus. Using the keyboard shortcuts (as has been suggested) is not as easy because I usually surf using only the mouse and switching my attention back and forth between keyboard and screen is quite cumbersome. In short: this completely ROCKS!!!
The council of ministers are simply ministers of the various memberstates having a chat about policy and direction.
This is not true at all. Directives always include a time limit until when they have to be transformed into valid national legislation. If a member state misses that deadline, first it may be liable to pay a hefty fine and second the directive can be applied immediately anyway.
Until Linux drops the concept of memory overcommit, I'm afraid that the VM is going to continue to suck.
Overcommit has been made optional quite early in the 2.4.x series (2.4.4 IIRC) there is a/proc interface so you can switch it back on (default is off) just do a cat 0 >/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory to turn it off in case it is still enabled in your build.
I have to say that I have never had any serious VM problems in the 2.4.x series. Also the old VM system had worked fine in most cases after 2.4.8. The problem reports that appear on linux-kernel nowadays are from people having more than 1GB of RAM or such things.
I am really excited about trying out the new VM by Andrea Archangeli though, I have read great things about it.
You are probably right about everything you say, however you miss one small distinction: last time I checked, AOL had not been declared a monopolist by the courts. Only if you have a monopoly does bundling constitute anticompetitive behaviour because it allows you to use your power in one market to leverage your position in others.
Actually the rendering rate of the movie as seen in the theatres is 150K Frames / 6K seconds = 25 FPS! Therefore, applying Moore's law, we are only 3 - 4 years away to render it in real time.
Now, to get a more realistic experiment repeat the whole thing with 10,000 marbles thrown around randomly and see whether any two of them collide. The UN tracks about that amount of objects in the closer orbits of Earth. Anything from sattelites, bigger chunks of debris left from rocket launches and other garbage that civilization has literally blasted into orbit. And that only counts objects above a certain size! Scientists (and Lawyers) are getting seriously worried about the amount of debris flying around in the lower orbits.
Galeon also depends on a lot of GNOME bloat. If you want a truely lean and mean browser, give Skipstone a try. I have to admit, that it is not quite as feature rich as Galeon (I loved the automatic bookmarking) but it is really fast and works amazingly well even on RAM-challenged machines (I have 32MB which makes running Mozilla a pain but is more than plenty for Skippy).
Actually it is based on Mozilla 0.9.2 but a lot of the bugfixes that went into 0.9.3 are also in Netscape 6.1 as the netscape engineers worked on both branches parallely.
I think what the parent post discribes is already happening (albeit very slowly). We have read recently that a division of the US Department of Defense was switching to StarOffice. And now there is talk that Ford Europe is considering to switch to an "Open Source desktop".
I think I see a common theme here: finally, the PHB-types start to get a feeling that they are beeing trapped by Microsoft and there is enough talk about Linux and other free (speach and beer) alternatives to get them interested in trying to break free. With commodity brands like IBM and Kodak chiming in against the Microsoft monopoly this meme will get even more of a mindshare.
This could truely be the beginning of mainstream acceptance of a Open Source alternative to Windows.
Unfortunately, this option can only be offered to contributors located in the European Union due to regulatory issues. We are not allowed to solicit foreign individual investors without filing multiple papers. In particular, the SEC (US market regulators) assumes that US citizens do not have sufficient knowledge to invest in IPOs of European markets and therefore imposes complicated rules for them, so numerous US contributors won't be offered to invest in this 10% part. We will probably do something just after the IPO for people who live outside the European Union.
Hear hear! I was thinking about this too being impressed by the way the debian system I installed last night handled dependencies and having been bitten by Mandrake's overly zealous requests previously.
I think the one thing that RPM is missing is that packages can only recommend other packages and not just refuse to install without them. Maybe there could be different levels of recommendation:
Required (won't work without)
Strongly Recommended (serious hickups, but all basic functionality available)
Recommended (some less important functionality won't be available)
Suggest (if you install the other package additional functionality will be available)
I was actually quite scared when I read the section about billing. Did anybody else see this as the future of the Internet on earth? Or is it just me being a bit paranoid?
"Sorry Mister, but your packet's credit has expired, we will be cancelling all your other packets on the network..."
what's wrong with "recycling" licenses? [...] just because that's what the license says doesn't mean that it's right. back in 1776 it was legal to tax mercilessly without representation, but that didn't make it *right*
The difference being that by buying the software you have agreed to the terms of the license! Nobody forces you to enter any contract whatsoever, but as soon as you do, people might expect you to follow the terms of the contract. And IMNSHO this *is* right.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't figure out why the parent is modded funny. This guy is *so* right! I want my resistor outfit!!!
Very interesting reference! Thank you! However, if you read it without any further knowledge the law you cite says nothing at all about that would require SHOUTING. Is there some common interpretation that justifies the use of ALL CAPS for clauses excluding implicit warranties? Because, from my own experience, I must say that I find it hard to read these sections of the EULAs, mainly because I can't stand the shouting.
No need to attack the site with a bot net if a good old-fashioned slashdotting will have the same effect ;-) The site is already not responding anymore...
I would never have thought that I'd hear somebody call OOo "light and quick" :-) Watch out, guys there ought to be flying pigs around here...
Contrary to popular belief the courts are not free to decide any old they want to. They are tied to the submissions of the parties. In this case the European Commission has ordered Mircosoft to unbundle Windows Media Player and to disclose parts of their protocols. This is the decision that Micosoft has appealed against. So this is the framework in which the court has to rule.
Would that also help to get Telefax working over ISDN? If so, this would be seriously cool and a big win over any other platform I have seen.
This is a very interesting argument. However, RAM prices tend to be quite volatile (just let another earthquake hit Taiwan like two years ago that would send RAM prices soaring). Moreover, sometimes upgrading RAM is not an option: think about Laptops or embedded systems. One of the greatest features of Linux is that it is possible to run modern software on hardware that is less than top notch. While performance will necessarily suffer it still remains possible. This is what sets Linux apart from the "You can't get there from here"-Attitude of the Windows world.
For instance I am running the latest OpenOffice on my Laptop with 32MB of RAM (plus 64MB of swap) once everything is loaded, the working speed is quite acceptable. This is only possible because I have enough VM, so that large programs like OpenOffice will even load.
When I read this post, I immediately ran to mozdev and installed it. This is really cool! Now you can browse in complete full-screen without having to rely on context menus. Using the keyboard shortcuts (as has been suggested) is not as easy because I usually surf using only the mouse and switching my attention back and forth between keyboard and screen is quite cumbersome. In short: this completely ROCKS!!!
This is not true at all. Directives always include a time limit until when they have to be transformed into valid national legislation. If a member state misses that deadline, first it may be liable to pay a hefty fine and second the directive can be applied immediately anyway.
Overcommit has been made optional quite early in the 2.4.x series (2.4.4 IIRC) there is a /proc interface so you can switch it back on (default is off) just do a cat 0 >/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory to turn it off in case it is still enabled in your build.
I have to say that I have never had any serious VM problems in the 2.4.x series. Also the old VM system had worked fine in most cases after 2.4.8. The problem reports that appear on linux-kernel nowadays are from people having more than 1GB of RAM or such things.
I am really excited about trying out the new VM by Andrea Archangeli though, I have read great things about it.
You are probably right about everything you say, however you miss one small distinction: last time I checked, AOL had not been declared a monopolist by the courts. Only if you have a monopoly does bundling constitute anticompetitive behaviour because it allows you to use your power in one market to leverage your position in others.
Actually the rendering rate of the movie as seen in the theatres is 150K Frames / 6K seconds = 25 FPS! Therefore, applying Moore's law, we are only 3 - 4 years away to render it in real time.
Now, to get a more realistic experiment repeat the whole thing with 10,000 marbles thrown around randomly and see whether any two of them collide. The UN tracks about that amount of objects in the closer orbits of Earth. Anything from sattelites, bigger chunks of debris left from rocket launches and other garbage that civilization has literally blasted into orbit. And that only counts objects above a certain size! Scientists (and Lawyers) are getting seriously worried about the amount of debris flying around in the lower orbits.
Galeon also depends on a lot of GNOME bloat. If you want a truely lean and mean browser, give Skipstone a try. I have to admit, that it is not quite as feature rich as Galeon (I loved the automatic bookmarking) but it is really fast and works amazingly well even on RAM-challenged machines (I have 32MB which makes running Mozilla a pain but is more than plenty for Skippy).
Actually it is based on Mozilla 0.9.2 but a lot of the bugfixes that went into 0.9.3 are also in Netscape 6.1 as the netscape engineers worked on both branches parallely.
Growl! I only received one lousy SirCam-mail. (Spanish version) I can't but feel extremely unpopular, especially when I read things like 1.1 Gig!
Ughhhh! First this Worm and now they're hitting me with the slashdot effect!!!
I think I see a common theme here: finally, the PHB-types start to get a feeling that they are beeing trapped by Microsoft and there is enough talk about Linux and other free (speach and beer) alternatives to get them interested in trying to break free. With commodity brands like IBM and Kodak chiming in against the Microsoft monopoly this meme will get even more of a mindshare.
This could truely be the beginning of mainstream acceptance of a Open Source alternative to Windows.
I think the one thing that RPM is missing is that packages can only recommend other packages and not just refuse to install without them. Maybe there could be different levels of recommendation:
"Sorry Mister, but your packet's credit has expired, we will be cancelling all your other packets on the network..."
what's wrong with "recycling" licenses? [...] just because that's what the license says doesn't mean that it's right. back in 1776 it was legal to tax mercilessly without representation, but that didn't make it *right*
The difference being that by buying the software you have agreed to the terms of the license! Nobody forces you to enter any contract whatsoever, but as soon as you do, people might expect you to follow the terms of the contract. And IMNSHO this *is* right.
Like the subject says. I just downloaded 2.4.4 and TmpFS is now part of Linus' tree too. Must have been part of merging Alan into the tree :-)
The link should have pointed here instead.