You must be new here. This is Slashdot. Nobody proof reads summaries, or bothers to read the articles before launching into commenting, bickering, flaming, and trolling.
stealing ideas from the community and patenting them? IMO that's more damaging than their crappy extruder and other quality problems, and is something they need to publicly address.
I read this article a couple months ago when my issue of Linux Journal arrived. I had a couple questions about it then, guess this is a good time to ask them.:)
As I see it, half the point of LinuxBIOS is to provide a fast, open-sourced BIOS for x86 machines. It gets extra cool points for being Linux.
But I have to ask, why not just use OpenFirmware? Or at least, give LinuxBIOS some of the features of OpenFirmware. As far as I know, there is no such thing as OpenFirmware for the x86. It's got lots of neat benefits, like booting your machine off of another one on your network, or debugging a non-bootable machine remotely. Serial console, anyone? It has other benefits as well, that I can't remember; my brain is shot for the week.
For those of you that haven't heard of OpenFirmware, it's basically the "BIOS" on Macs.
Sounds like my girlfriend.. I had two of them once, but it was too much hassle. Although they have these "love buttons" that they just love to have pressed, and one of them even "scrolled both ways", if you catch my drift. Now if only she had a third nipple, she'd be the best girlfriend ever.
Let me just point out that there's no reason you HAVE to "survive" the compile. Gentoo's install comes in three stages. You can compile everything from scratch (as I did, which is stage 1), or you can download binaries and immediately have a usable barebones system, and compile everything else (stage 2), or you can just download binaries for everything (Stage 3). Even once Gentoo is installed, you don't have to compile everything from source. Just use "emerge --usepkg kde" instead of "emerge kde" to download and install available binaries. The auto-dependency stuff is nice, too. RPM support is in there, but not by default. If you really want/need it, just go ahead and emerge it in. Really doesn't take all that long, you know.
Actually, for those of you living in the US, EULAs may be completely invalid in your state. For instance, here in Kansas the law states that if you are not able to see the complete contract (EULA) before paying for the software, a sale takes place and you are free to do whatever you want with the software. However, if you are able to read the EULA before the exchange of money, you are licensing the software and are bound by the restrictions of the EULA. Click-through agreements seem to be bound by this law as well, as long as the above conditions are met.
I live in Kansas City, Kansas, and was able to get Sprint ION. I did sign up for their $100 a month package which to me was a very good deal. You would get 1 phone line with local calling, voice mail, caller id, and call waiting as well as 200 minutes of long distance (with anything over that at 7c a minute) and UP TO 8mb downstream/1mb upstream. I believe that is the technical limits of DSL, but I could be wrong. The whole idea of things was great, but the TOS sucked. Sprint reserved the right to sell your email address and browsing habits, and servers of any kind where strictly prohibited. I remember the TOS hinting that they patrol their network for illegal servers, as well as a friend that worked for Sprint (and now laid off, hrm) telling me that's what they did. Needless to say, once I found that out, I cancelled my order. The bandwidth would have been great, though.
First, I'll admit I haven't read the patent yet, or any of the links, so I'm just going by some of the other comments on here.
How would this affect things like MS Win2K's remote registry, XP's remote desktop (you can give friend/computer guy access to your PC from across the net and watch him fix/fuck things on your PC), or even Microsoft's Windows Update? Sorry for the MS-centric post, but these are the first possible ideas that popped up in my head.
Other services that may be affected by this (after I read some of the patent) seem to be Red Hat Network and even apt-get.
All these services seem to do pretty much what McAfee has patented, and we all they've been around since before December 8th, 1998. Getting this patent overturned shouldn't be too hard.
While a PC Lemon law is exactly what is needed, I'd just like to point out that many major electronics stores offer extended warranties/service plans that not only include and extend the manufacturer's warranty, but are more comprehensive as well. Best Buy, for example, offers what they call a Performance Service Plan for an extra $200 or so on a computer package (monitor & tower). This PSP thing not only offers free in-store service, but includes a no-lemon policy. That is, if the computer needs 3 repairs, Best Buy will replace your computer. If your model isn't made anymore (or simply out of stock), it'll be replaced with the next highest model, or your model's replacement, whichever is the case. Overall, it's a nice little deal, if you don't like to chance things. Although it'd be much nicer to have this sort of thing be law, and not cost an extra $200.
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You must be new here. This is Slashdot. Nobody proof reads summaries, or bothers to read the articles before launching into commenting, bickering, flaming, and trolling.
stealing ideas from the community and patenting them? IMO that's more damaging than their crappy extruder and other quality problems, and is something they need to publicly address.
Sorry, not quite:
$ echo bar > FOO.txt
$ cat foo.txt
cat: foo.txt: No such file or directory
$ ls *.txt
FOO.txt
$ cat FOO.txt
bar
And the disk utility reports my filesystem as Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
I read this article a couple months ago when my issue of Linux Journal arrived. I had a couple questions about it then, guess this is a good time to ask them. :)
As I see it, half the point of LinuxBIOS is to provide a fast, open-sourced BIOS for x86 machines. It gets extra cool points for being Linux.
But I have to ask, why not just use OpenFirmware? Or at least, give LinuxBIOS some of the features of OpenFirmware. As far as I know, there is no such thing as OpenFirmware for the x86. It's got lots of neat benefits, like booting your machine off of another one on your network, or debugging a non-bootable machine remotely. Serial console, anyone? It has other benefits as well, that I can't remember; my brain is shot for the week.
For those of you that haven't heard of OpenFirmware, it's basically the "BIOS" on Macs.
Sounds like my girlfriend.. I had two of them once, but it was too much hassle. Although they have these "love buttons" that they just love to have pressed, and one of them even "scrolled both ways", if you catch my drift. Now if only she had a third nipple, she'd be the best girlfriend ever.
A beowulf cluster of those laptops!
(Sorry, I couldn't let that one go.)
Let me just point out that there's no reason you HAVE to "survive" the compile. Gentoo's install comes in three stages. You can compile everything from scratch (as I did, which is stage 1), or you can download binaries and immediately have a usable barebones system, and compile everything else (stage 2), or you can just download binaries for everything (Stage 3). Even once Gentoo is installed, you don't have to compile everything from source. Just use "emerge --usepkg kde" instead of "emerge kde" to download and install available binaries. The auto-dependency stuff is nice, too. RPM support is in there, but not by default. If you really want/need it, just go ahead and emerge it in. Really doesn't take all that long, you know.
Actually, for those of you living in the US, EULAs may be completely invalid in your state. For instance, here in Kansas the law states that if you are not able to see the complete contract (EULA) before paying for the software, a sale takes place and you are free to do whatever you want with the software. However, if you are able to read the EULA before the exchange of money, you are licensing the software and are bound by the restrictions of the EULA. Click-through agreements seem to be bound by this law as well, as long as the above conditions are met.
I live in Kansas City, Kansas, and was able to get Sprint ION. I did sign up for their $100 a month package which to me was a very good deal. You would get 1 phone line with local calling, voice mail, caller id, and call waiting as well as 200 minutes of long distance (with anything over that at 7c a minute) and UP TO 8mb downstream/1mb upstream. I believe that is the technical limits of DSL, but I could be wrong. The whole idea of things was great, but the TOS sucked. Sprint reserved the right to sell your email address and browsing habits, and servers of any kind where strictly prohibited. I remember the TOS hinting that they patrol their network for illegal servers, as well as a friend that worked for Sprint (and now laid off, hrm) telling me that's what they did. Needless to say, once I found that out, I cancelled my order. The bandwidth would have been great, though.
First, I'll admit I haven't read the patent yet, or any of the links, so I'm just going by some of the other comments on here. How would this affect things like MS Win2K's remote registry, XP's remote desktop (you can give friend/computer guy access to your PC from across the net and watch him fix/fuck things on your PC), or even Microsoft's Windows Update? Sorry for the MS-centric post, but these are the first possible ideas that popped up in my head. Other services that may be affected by this (after I read some of the patent) seem to be Red Hat Network and even apt-get. All these services seem to do pretty much what McAfee has patented, and we all they've been around since before December 8th, 1998. Getting this patent overturned shouldn't be too hard.
While a PC Lemon law is exactly what is needed, I'd just like to point out that many major electronics stores offer extended warranties/service plans that not only include and extend the manufacturer's warranty, but are more comprehensive as well. Best Buy, for example, offers what they call a Performance Service Plan for an extra $200 or so on a computer package (monitor & tower). This PSP thing not only offers free in-store service, but includes a no-lemon policy. That is, if the computer needs 3 repairs, Best Buy will replace your computer. If your model isn't made anymore (or simply out of stock), it'll be replaced with the next highest model, or your model's replacement, whichever is the case. Overall, it's a nice little deal, if you don't like to chance things. Although it'd be much nicer to have this sort of thing be law, and not cost an extra $200.