Definitly agree. I've spent a considerable amount of time trying to locate map data for Canada. Very little map data is available in Canada for free. (In any sense of the word). That data which is available for free cannot be redistributed unmodified. (as they want it to be retrieved from the original source... whatever).
And, the cost of full topographical maps for Canada at the highest resolution (1:50,000) is horrendous. Only some maps are even available at scales of 1:25,000. Very limited.
Off earth reception and astronomic study is the only long term solution, whether your talking about light or radio interference.
Re:A "Free" OS from a company that is croaking
on
BeOS For Linux!
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· Score: 1
I like BeOS.
It lacks some features I want. (I purchased 4.5x86 and have no regrets). I installed BeOS 5 on 3 machines in the last couple of days. It works fine on 2 of the machines, the other has an ATI card which they admit to having poor support for. (Works in safe mode ok).
The file system is quite good. It seems to be fast, fast enough I hardly even notice it on my system. The GUI is a clean design, with all the necesary features. I don't like the distributed nature of their configuration programs, but that isn't a big deal.
I love not having to reboot almost regardless of what I wish to change. (Drivers included).
It needs better networking support. A better browser. (Netpositive is decent now in 5, but it lacks a decent and flexable tool bar.).
It should support SMB. 4.5 had an experimental version. It looks like it was left out of the personal edition in its entirety. Hopefully it has not been dropped. Otherwise I would like a port of Samba.
I don't quite understand how you can complain about the size of Beos. It boots damn quick, and isn't all that big.
The file system is damn nice. Having indexable attributes is downright cool. Very usable.
BeOS needs a good scripting language to go with it. Something that is Be-Centric would be nice.
Be may be closed source, but for such a product it seems quite open and encourages development.
Be doesn't seem to have abandoned PPC support, it just isn't pervasive. A little hard to be since Apple doesn't want to release the necessary specifications. (May have with Darwin, but that is VERY recent).
I don't believe for a moment that Be wouldn't add freeware/GNU drivers if they were encourages to for speciatly hardware/support. They seem to be familiar with what open source can, and cannot do.
The kernel is closed source, beyond that they seem quite liberal with source code.
BeOS isn't perfect, but it is nicer than working with Linux at the desktop. I like Linux, i use it, but on a simple desktop BeOS is a good match.
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And, the cost of full topographical maps for Canada at the highest resolution (1:50,000) is horrendous. Only some maps are even available at scales of 1:25,000. Very limited.
Off earth reception and astronomic study is the only long term solution, whether your talking about light or radio interference.
I like BeOS.
It lacks some features I want. (I purchased 4.5x86 and have no regrets). I installed BeOS 5 on 3 machines in the last couple of days. It works fine on 2 of the machines, the other has an ATI card which they admit to having poor support for. (Works in safe mode ok).
The file system is quite good. It seems to be fast, fast enough I hardly even notice it on my system. The GUI is a clean design, with all the necesary features. I don't like the distributed nature of their configuration programs, but that isn't a big deal.
I love not having to reboot almost regardless of what I wish to change. (Drivers included).
It needs better networking support. A better browser. (Netpositive is decent now in 5, but it lacks a decent and flexable tool bar.).
It should support SMB. 4.5 had an experimental version. It looks like it was left out of the personal edition in its entirety. Hopefully it has not been dropped. Otherwise I would like a port of Samba.
I don't quite understand how you can complain about the size of Beos. It boots damn quick, and isn't all that big.
The file system is damn nice. Having indexable attributes is downright cool. Very usable.
BeOS needs a good scripting language to go with it. Something that is Be-Centric would be nice.
Be may be closed source, but for such a product it seems quite open and encourages development.
Be doesn't seem to have abandoned PPC support, it just isn't pervasive. A little hard to be since Apple doesn't want to release the necessary specifications. (May have with Darwin, but that is VERY recent).
I don't believe for a moment that Be wouldn't add freeware/GNU drivers if they were encourages to for speciatly hardware/support. They seem to be familiar with what open source can, and cannot do.
The kernel is closed source, beyond that they seem quite liberal with source code.
BeOS isn't perfect, but it is nicer than working with Linux at the desktop. I like Linux, i use it, but on a simple desktop BeOS is a good match.