Well, because I don't have a 3dfx card and we can all hope that the G200/TNT drivers will mature in a reasonable amount of time (getting more impressive with every cvs commit). There are hardware OpenGL drivers (through glx), just not the DRI. But if they don't have the version now, I'm a little skeptical that they might not have the OpenGL version ever, though they might surprise me.
Wait, so does this mean there is no OpenGL implementation? I realize it's not very useful for anyone besides 3dfx owners at the moment, until DRI is finished, but still! Humph.
Yeah, but that's really hard to establish in this case. Take the Celeron example. They aren't selling them below cost, teechically. They're probably making a decent per-unit profit. But that doesn't take into account R&D. They'll still living off of the PPro R&D, and almost no research went into creating the Celeron (relative to other chips). A good portion of the cost of the chip is the research that went into it, and in this case, they might actually get away with "dumping" (I doubt it, though). You can't say, "Hey, it cost you more to develop that than you're selling it for!" because they might be able to milk it for another 5 years (PPro), though I doubt it. The only way they'd get caught for dumping is if they sold below the per-unit cost.
Also recommended reading: Havoc's (sorry, forgot his last name!) weekly GNOME updates (availible from gnome.org). They paint a nice warm and fuzzy picture of GNOME and KDE getting along great, and they're pretty interesting. So both sides admit it; it's gotta be true!
Though I would recommend not reading the gnome-kde mailing list (also availible at gnome.org) unless it relates to you. There is of course disagreement on the issues as they come up. I tried reading it, got scared, and am now happy with having my news filtered through GNOME weekly news. I lose details, but I can still be a Pollyana.
What I'm wondering about is the translucent blue 4-port hub (not making this up). Who is this supposed to appeal to? The average consumer doesn't know what a hub is. Most people who do aren't going to be impressed by the translucent nature.
Shaver, Just wanted to say that I (and I'm sure others) appreciate your taking the time to explain all this and all the work you've done. It's been very informative, and Mozilla is a very impressive project. The code's still a bit daunting, but I'm testing the waters of bug-reporting.
Thanks (didn't want it to seem like everyone's against you)
Are you sure about that? In Article I it says something to the effect (looked it up yesterday; too lazy now) "Congress has the power to regulate commerce with different nations, among the several states, and with the various Indian nations." The 10th Amendment says if it doesn't say the federal gov't can do it, the states get that power (thus intrastate is their domain only). Where does it say the states can't regulate interstate commerce?
And that would be why I put "free" in quotes. It doesn't come close to being free like Apache, but it's close enough for the purposes of this article. The author was assuming that Microsoft would give away the server. He made no mention of giving away the OS (which they probably will never do). Thus, for the purposes of this article, IIS and PWS are "free" to anyone who would use them anyway.
After a rather lengthy discussion about this on Linuxtoday (the original article had some serious flaws, such as assuming IIS costs money), the author revised it. I still don't think it cuts it. For one thing, people don't need web servers on their desktop machines. A couple of people would set them up, but they'd still be pretty useless to them. Until Microsoft starts giving away domain names, dynamic IP addresses are going to make this too confusing for the common user. I don't know of many people that run Linux as their desktop OS because of Apache (sure it's cool, but it's a minor concern). Thus adding this to Windoows 9* isn't going to deter anyone from going to Linux.
So here we have a hypothetical web server from Microsoft, easier to use than IIS but more featue-filled than PWS. It is "free", just like those two, but it is worse than IIS. This will be the same web server used on Windows2000? I can't tell about this part from the essay. Frankly, I don't see the motivation for using this. If you're going to set up a stupid website, PWS should suffice. If you're going to set up a real website that you actually need to have up, you're going to use Apache or IIS. And there's no way you'd run it under Win9*. If people are that gullible, PWS will suffice for them too.
So the way I see it Microsoft could improved PWS or make IIS work on Win9* (does it?) and this would have the desired effect. But why bother? They're losing to Linux in the server market, not the desktop. They don't have to beef up Win9* at all. People will take it as it is. I seriously doubt they're actually concerned about the desktop market yet. They need to beef up WinNT, which they seem to be doing with Office2000. That's where the real new dependence seems to be coming from.
Also, the entire quote from Ballmer talked about how Apache was better at multiple hosting on a single machine, not in general.
Well, it certainly isn't going to hurt me. From what I understand of reading the bill, it applies to unsolicited bulk commercial email (these terms are defined in the bill; check before complaining) and means that I can sue a spammer and they'll have to pay my court costs as well as any damages (which are likely to be negligable anyway). That's probably a bit more effective than emailing their ISP. And though this certainly is interstate commerce, is there anything prohibiting states from doing this? From what I read in the Constitution, it seems that it's just the Federal gov't that's prohibited from messing with intrastate commerce, not the other way around.
Hmm, maybe I should remove the "remove" from my address.
So is it legal for me to use BladeEnc in the US or is that still a violation of the patents? How about LAME (a very interesting use of source, I must say)?
Or maybe I'll just wait until the bladeenc page gets updated with the information on patents.
It's not that I like software patents (I don't); I just try to obey laws.
I know I'm not the only one who thought that post was a joke when first reading it. Then it set in that it was serious. Then I was depressed. But then I finished reading. Great job!!!! I'm happy for you guys! Faster Slashdot loading! Hiring other people to do the crap CmdrTaco and Hemos don't want to do!!
But wasn't Andover.net the place that we completely flamed for the really wrong story about Red Hat (I didn't; don't worry!)? You guys managed to get this deal despite that?
They're just different. I doubt Slashdot would be as lively as it is if it had 40+ posts per day. It wouldn't be as worthwhile as a news filter either. And they post a lot more of the "Linux is stupid; no one would write free programs" stories on Linuxtoday. If all those got posted here . . .
A lot of people say stuff like this, and it doesn't seem to make any difference. I doubt the people who sent the flames actually read this entire piece. Or maybe they did and thought "That's not me" or "That's stupid". So, did anyone here send one of the nasty emails to Mindcraft or the guy at Andover news? Anyone want to fess up to it? Have you changed your mind?
Somehow it all just seems like preaching to the choir.
Hmmm, according to this line of reasoning, @Home might actually be BETTER off if they let AOL onto the network. You know over 99% of AOL users don't know what a server is, let alone how to run one.
1. They may not be entirely about being fair, but they at least try. If they were just about collecting money, there wouldn't be as many tax credits around.
2. I know. I thought I mentioned earlier (I may not have) that this should be the federal government, not the state. Of course, everyone has their own opinions on whether or not this is justified too.
3. But you can look at it from the other side too. Any moron with a few bucks can open up a store and compete with WalMart (poorly, though). It takes some brains and knowhow(not much, I'll admit!) to compete with Amazon and buy.com. The problem is that not only can the little guy sell directly, but the big corporation can do that too. Bye-bye boutiques. Bye-bye independent bookstores.
And I really think mailorder should be taxed too (subject to previous disclaimer!)
In case anyone is still reading this and is about ready to flame me, let me clarify. Taxes are not my friend. I would rather not have a higher tax rate. That's not what I meant. My point was that there needs to be some parity between brick-and-mortar and online retailers with regards to tax. If that can somehow be magically accomplished by eliminating all taxes, that would be better, but that isn't going to happen. Personally, I think we would all be better off if they taxed them all at the same rate. Some people don't agree with that. It seems that should be the point of disagreement, not whether taxes are in and of themselves evil.
Well, obviously it's usually state/local. The only thing the federal government can tax is interstate commerce (and whatever they pass a constitutional amendment for), and they're not doing much of that by ignoring the Internet and mailorder.
But, as I've said elsewhere, I don't agree with the every-taxation-must-have-a-purpose-that-directly-b enefits-the-taxee theory, so any examples that try to fit that theory that I come up with are going to be lame. I shouldn't have tried to play that game.
Amazing! Someone on slashdot who's never bought anything online!
As I said earlier, our disagreement is probably more fundamental than can be argued out. I don't think taxes need to have a specific justification (though I certainly see the problems this creates!)
And you're probably right about those examples; they (especially the internet one) weren't that great.
But I have a question: Does UPS have to pay any kind of transactional tax that would justify it's use of the Interstates in the hypothetical pay-for-what-you-get taxation system? (i.e. something besides a corporate income tax) I can't really remember.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, because I don't have a 3dfx card and we can all hope that the G200/TNT drivers will mature in a reasonable amount of time (getting more impressive with every cvs commit). There are hardware OpenGL drivers (through glx), just not the DRI. But if they don't have the version now, I'm a little skeptical that they might not have the OpenGL version ever, though they might surprise me.
Wait, so does this mean there is no OpenGL implementation? I realize it's not very useful for anyone besides 3dfx owners at the moment, until DRI is finished, but still! Humph.
Yeah, but that's really hard to establish in this case. Take the Celeron example. They aren't selling them below cost, teechically. They're probably making a decent per-unit profit. But that doesn't take into account R&D. They'll still living off of the PPro R&D, and almost no research went into creating the Celeron (relative to other chips). A good portion of the cost of the chip is the research that went into it, and in this case, they might actually get away with "dumping" (I doubt it, though). You can't say, "Hey, it cost you more to develop that than you're selling it for!" because they might be able to milk it for another 5 years (PPro), though I doubt it. The only way they'd get caught for dumping is if they sold below the per-unit cost.
Well, there are python bindings for GNOME (don't know about glade). That's getting pretty close.
Also recommended reading: Havoc's (sorry, forgot his last name!) weekly GNOME updates (availible from gnome.org). They paint a nice warm and fuzzy picture of GNOME and KDE getting along great, and they're pretty interesting. So both sides admit it; it's gotta be true!
Though I would recommend not reading the gnome-kde mailing list (also availible at gnome.org) unless it relates to you. There is of course disagreement on the issues as they come up. I tried reading it, got scared, and am now happy with having my news filtered through GNOME weekly news. I lose details, but I can still be a Pollyana.
What I'm wondering about is the translucent blue 4-port hub (not making this up). Who is this supposed to appeal to? The average consumer doesn't know what a hub is. Most people who do aren't going to be impressed by the translucent nature.
Shaver,
Just wanted to say that I (and I'm sure others) appreciate your taking the time to explain all this and all the work you've done. It's been very informative, and Mozilla is a very impressive project. The code's still a bit daunting, but I'm testing the waters of bug-reporting.
Thanks (didn't want it to seem like everyone's against you)
Are you sure about that? In Article I it says something to the effect (looked it up yesterday; too lazy now) "Congress has the power to regulate commerce with different nations, among the several states, and with the various Indian nations." The 10th Amendment says if it doesn't say the federal gov't can do it, the states get that power (thus intrastate is their domain only). Where does it say the states can't regulate interstate commerce?
And that would be why I put "free" in quotes. It doesn't come close to being free like Apache, but it's close enough for the purposes of this article. The author was assuming that Microsoft would give away the server. He made no mention of giving away the OS (which they probably will never do). Thus, for the purposes of this article, IIS and PWS are "free" to anyone who would use them anyway.
After a rather lengthy discussion about this on Linuxtoday (the original article had some serious flaws, such as assuming IIS costs money), the author revised it. I still don't think it cuts it. For one thing, people don't need web servers on their desktop machines. A couple of people would set them up, but they'd still be pretty useless to them. Until Microsoft starts giving away domain names, dynamic IP addresses are going to make this too confusing for the common user. I don't know of many people that run Linux as their desktop OS because of Apache (sure it's cool, but it's a minor concern). Thus adding this to Windoows 9* isn't going to deter anyone from going to Linux.
So here we have a hypothetical web server from Microsoft, easier to use than IIS but more featue-filled than PWS. It is "free", just like those two, but it is worse than IIS. This will be the same web server used on Windows2000? I can't tell about this part from the essay. Frankly, I don't see the motivation for using this. If you're going to set up a stupid website, PWS should suffice. If you're going to set up a real website that you actually need to have up, you're going to use Apache or IIS. And there's no way you'd run it under Win9*. If people are that gullible, PWS will suffice for them too.
So the way I see it Microsoft could improved PWS or make IIS work on Win9* (does it?) and this would have the desired effect. But why bother? They're losing to Linux in the server market, not the desktop. They don't have to beef up Win9* at all. People will take it as it is. I seriously doubt they're actually concerned about the desktop market yet. They need to beef up WinNT, which they seem to be doing with Office2000. That's where the real new dependence seems to be coming from.
Also, the entire quote from Ballmer talked about how Apache was better at multiple hosting on a single machine, not in general.
Well, it certainly isn't going to hurt me. From what I understand of reading the bill, it applies to unsolicited bulk commercial email (these terms are defined in the bill; check before complaining) and means that I can sue a spammer and they'll have to pay my court costs as well as any damages (which are likely to be negligable anyway). That's probably a bit more effective than emailing their ISP. And though this certainly is interstate commerce, is there anything prohibiting states from doing this? From what I read in the Constitution, it seems that it's just the Federal gov't that's prohibited from messing with intrastate commerce, not the other way around.
Hmm, maybe I should remove the "remove" from my address.
So is it legal for me to use BladeEnc in the US or is that still a violation of the patents? How about LAME (a very interesting use of source, I must say)?
Or maybe I'll just wait until the bladeenc page gets updated with the information on patents.
It's not that I like software patents (I don't); I just try to obey laws.
Yes, and I click on them every time I see them. If they're that stupid, they deserve to lose their money, especially to /.
So Slashdot has lost a reader who never saw banner ads and doesn't even have an account. How is this bad?
I know I'm not the only one who thought that post was a joke when first reading it. Then it set in that it was serious. Then I was depressed. But then I finished reading. Great job!!!! I'm happy for you guys! Faster Slashdot loading! Hiring other people to do the crap CmdrTaco and Hemos don't want to do!!
But wasn't Andover.net the place that we completely flamed for the really wrong story about Red Hat (I didn't; don't worry!)? You guys managed to get this deal despite that?
They're just different. I doubt Slashdot would be as lively as it is if it had 40+ posts per day. It wouldn't be as worthwhile as a news filter either. And they post a lot more of the "Linux is stupid; no one would write free programs" stories on Linuxtoday. If all those got posted here . . .
A lot of people say stuff like this, and it doesn't seem to make any difference. I doubt the people who sent the flames actually read this entire piece. Or maybe they did and thought "That's not me" or "That's stupid". So, did anyone here send one of the nasty emails to Mindcraft or the guy at Andover news? Anyone want to fess up to it? Have you changed your mind?
Somehow it all just seems like preaching to the choir.
Hmmm, according to this line of reasoning, @Home might actually be BETTER off if they let AOL onto the network. You know over 99% of AOL users don't know what a server is, let alone how to run one.
It's illegal and can only serve to get Slashdot in trouble. The least we can do is demote it.
No, it's actually worse than that. They're offering it for $8 per year!
1. They may not be entirely about being fair, but they at least try. If they were just about collecting money, there wouldn't be as many tax credits around.
2. I know. I thought I mentioned earlier (I may not have) that this should be the federal government, not the state. Of course, everyone has their own opinions on whether or not this is justified too.
3. But you can look at it from the other side too. Any moron with a few bucks can open up a store and compete with WalMart (poorly, though). It takes some brains and knowhow(not much, I'll admit!) to compete with Amazon and buy.com. The problem is that not only can the little guy sell directly, but the big corporation can do that too. Bye-bye boutiques. Bye-bye independent bookstores.
And I really think mailorder should be taxed too (subject to previous disclaimer!)
In case anyone is still reading this and is about ready to flame me, let me clarify. Taxes are not my friend. I would rather not have a higher tax rate. That's not what I meant. My point was that there needs to be some parity between brick-and-mortar and online retailers with regards to tax. If that can somehow be magically accomplished by eliminating all taxes, that would be better, but that isn't going to happen. Personally, I think we would all be better off if they taxed them all at the same rate. Some people don't agree with that. It seems that should be the point of disagreement, not whether taxes are in and of themselves evil.
License plates are state/county. That doesn't pay for the interstate highway system. But nevermind
Well, obviously it's usually state/local. The only thing the federal government can tax is interstate commerce (and whatever they pass a constitutional amendment for), and they're not doing much of that by ignoring the Internet and mailorder.
b enefits-the-taxee theory, so any examples that try to fit that theory that I come up with are going to be lame. I shouldn't have tried to play that game.
But, as I've said elsewhere, I don't agree with the every-taxation-must-have-a-purpose-that-directly-
Amazing! Someone on slashdot who's never bought anything online!
As I said earlier, our disagreement is probably more fundamental than can be argued out. I don't think taxes need to have a specific justification (though I certainly see the problems this creates!)
And you're probably right about those examples; they (especially the internet one) weren't that great.
But I have a question: Does UPS have to pay any kind of transactional tax that would justify it's use of the Interstates in the hypothetical pay-for-what-you-get taxation system? (i.e. something besides a corporate income tax) I can't really remember.