Spokesperson for *IAA's overheard saying: "Try route around that damage, Ha!"
While it's too early to call it a Pyhrric victory, that is what will happen. Remember when Napster was like THE service? So what if they kill the Pirate Bay, they're still fucked more ways to Sunday than there are positions in the Kama Sutra. I'm guessing some very light distributed torrent file/tracker replacement just to get things going then torrents with host exchange as usual. Not to mention the tons and tons of private torrent sites that aren't TPB or Mininova or whatever everyone has heard of.
Plus, their HD is only 720p and DRM encumbered. If I knew that they'd come out with iTunes Movies Plus in two years, offering to upgrade my movies to 1080p and drop DRM for a couple dollars, I might consider it.
It might only be 720p, but the quality is excellent. It's superior to 720p and 1080p encodes of TV broadcasts, only raw captures really compare but they're also many times larger. You might want to make a comparison to a BluRay and see if you can tell a difference at all, it's definately there if you go up close but real tough to see from a distance. If so it doesn't matter they'll release it in 2160p, and unless there's some magic involved non-3D shows will never become 3D. And as usual the DRM is only a problem for buying customers, which I can't be anyway because they're not selling it here. I agree, iTunes Movies Plus - at least the DRM part but I won't say no to 1080p - and make it available in Norway.
Scumbags. (...) They don't want to open source it because they don't believe in open source. It's that simple. Hopefully this will kill the last of the NVIDIA apologists.
Oh, STFU and volunteer yourself to go write open source AMD drivers. They've been running an open source strategy now for 2+ years and they're still short on manpower even though there's plenty specs out there and AMD is actively leading the development on top of the hours they've spent getting the documentation through legal review. There's plenty evidence to suggest the open source drivers would drop dead if AMD wasn't carrying them every step of the way, you think nVidia is impressed? The alleged army of open source coders waiting for specs is more like a handful, that's not a claim it's a fact. By all means they're making great progress and all that but they're way, way behind the blobs still.
Any dialog box that has 'OK' instead of a meaningful verb as a button title is an automatic usability fail
No, it's perfectly valid in many dialogs, particularly confirmation dialogs and warning dialogs. "Warning: This operation can not be undone. [OK][Cancel]" is perfectly fine. "Continue" is too weak, sounds like an info screen. "Agree" or "Accept" sounds like you actually have a choice or that you're positively agreeing with it which you don't. "Ok" is intentionally netural, like "objection noted, but I'm still going forward with this". Granted, OK could have been used a lot less compared to useful verbs like "Save", "Connect", "Create" and so on but it's not that useless.
Check jaunty-backports first, if not there's probably a PPA. Of course wtih a PPA it's essentially unverified and not security patch supported. I really wish there was more of a "auto-backports" service for the most popular distros - basically like doing a nightly build of upstream except it's a package. And of course untested and unsupported in every way.
As much as I'd like to agree, some people have an absurd tendency to point you to papers that are way too theoretical, way too academic and dealing with proving something rather than doing something. Often you end up fiddling and solving it yourself, and in the process learning how you could handle even more advanced uses, but you *still* don't understand fuck of the paper they gave you. With free help you often get what you pay for, but keeping it somewhat within reason would be nice.
It takes a certain level of analytics and tech interest to be a software developer, that makes people wierd. On the other hand, I've seen very few that were the kind of irrational crazy not-connecting-the-dots people as software developers. Just like you see very few introvert people working in sales and marketing. Some differences just come with the job description, but there's infinite variations on crazy and plenty left for everyone.
I'd much rather have a comment tell me something is a WTF and is clearly violating some assumption the developer had rather than lyric comments. Work is work and play is play, I might end up making doodles on meeting notes during PHB moments but not on the final writeup I send out. Somehow I suspect the lyric comments were instead of, not in addition to the comments that ought ot have been there. Take five, grab a cup of coffee and chill out with whatever rather than stuff that kind of things into the product.
4. You make a character that fits the role you want to play. Unless you really look like an ogre, that is.
Also, uncustomizable characters really only go with an uncustomizable story. If you can be anyone from Conan the Barbarian to Conan the Librarian it makes no sense. Most MMORPGs or even RPGs are rather open-ended, you choose your skils and classes and party members and whatnot, even in games like Neverwinter Nights or Oblivion. Having an uncustomizable character is really only good for a linear game like Tales of Monkey Island - you're always Guybrush Threepwood, but it's a comical character in a comical game, it's not supposed to be you. There it works well, but most other places I'd like an avatar.
...until one of the copyright holders (you know, the ones with standing to sue) send a C&D and threaten to file for an injunction stopping all HTC Hero sales. The source code will be ready for download about 0.2 seconds later.
The more I deal with IT insanity, the more I realize it comes in infinite supply. No matter how much you make monkey work they'll just try doing 10x as advanced and/or stupid things with IT...
...we let go of the harakiri you're supposed to commit if you ever go out of cell phone range? I mean, surely we can outfit an expedition that doesn't need 24/7 babysitting from mission control, It's not like Columbus had queen Isabella call him up every night to ask "Are you there yet? Food supply ok? Your blood sugar values are low, you should eat more."
Oh, sorry you were talking about getting help. I was talking about whether I'd rather pay taxes for some dude that needs a heart surgery or investment bank CEOs that need a bailout.
No open source licence of any kind has ever put restrictions on the output of a program or of code.
Unless the application's code becomes part of the output, like for example the GCC runtime license exception. If it's being used as a tool ON the work to change image placement, then the final placement isn't covered. But if he's distributing a derived version OF the image placement code in his latex code, I would consider that a derivative.
The AGPL can clearly be unreasonable when the external contact is very superficial. But the threat with networks and Internet is that companies can substitute what would traditionally be a distribution with "leased software" or some other construct where they essentially offer an application, but claim not to distribute it - you can make it sales-like with a huge one time cost and a 1$/year upkeep. It would certainly hollow out the intention of the GPL, which is to make the source available to the end user. Under the GPL, if you must "buy" a hosted application then they can use GPL code at will without paying any attention to the GPL requirements. Clearly RMS can not be happy with that, and has a license that fixes it. It's just that he's shooting at shadows with the big guns, it doesn't seem to be much of a practical threat.
That is a lost cause, even though I've heard some fancy legal theories on how they could relicense Linux without getting either approval or ripping out that code from those not actively approving. Even though they might possibly work in a few jurisdictions I doubt they work in all or even most countries of the world, it'd make Linux a copyright minefield.
If you just take a GPL project, add a new UI skin and sell it in binary form, judge will make you release the source notwithstanding the license ambiguities.
No, a judge will never do that. It might be part or whole of a settlement before or during trial, particularly since it's all the FSF ask for though they're not the copyright holder of all things GPL. The judge can only rule on copyright law, that means liabilities in cash and injunctions against further infringement. Companies just don't ever end up there because it's much better for them to settle.
But until the libertarian dream is realized (at least as much wishful thinking as marxist socialism) I'll take public welfare over corporate welfare any day:)
Having said that, I don't really see the need for 100 Mbps internet access for everyone - it's expensive to provide, and what very important services does it provide that 1 Mbps won't?
I think of it this way, even with substantial degrees of FAIL most people will at least have some megabits to play with.
I'm not going to try reading Finnish, but I'm guessing this is like many other regulations that granted monopolies have to deal with in European countries. For example here in Norway to get digital TV broadcast rights they had to increase coverage to almost everyone, even if you decided to hide between two mountains. You don't pay the full cost of delivering electricity and phone lines to a remotely located home. Same with mobile broadband, to get the 3G license they had to commit to offering to some areas that couldn't get broadband, I know because it happened near a relative's cabin - there's a few residential houses there and they were setting up mobile broadband for regulation compliance, no way in hell that was profitable.
I know most Americans get mental anguish just thinking about it, but it's not so bad as it sounds. The businesses usually has some form of compensation agreement, or consider it part of paying the license fee except in labor not cash. It's basically the state subsidizing private build-out to areas that otherwise wouldn't get served. Of course that's a redistribution issue, but then you have to look at it along with every other tax, some hitting rural areas more than urban areas and vice versa. The whole angle of considering this some sort of legal right is a bit fishy though, yeah it's an economic requirement to provide service but there's still lots of reasons they can kick you off like non-payment, violating the terms of service or whatever. But it's still a pretty big step.
It's not that people couldn't. Hell, quite many seem to figure out a Mac alright even though it's not Windows. even less so than most Linux distros. Where they get you is that it's not about picking one application over the other, it's whether you want to learn one application or two. You say OpenOffice is used in business, I say I've yet to see it at any of my customers as a consultant. You and me, we have no problems using two applications that are almost the same. Most people get confused, they go "wasn't there a button to do that?" and start looking for whatever was in the other application. I've been called an excel wiz simply because I knew how to use $ signs to fix cell locations and drag the formula out to all cells on the line. Just getting some decent formatting on a letter is complicated for some people, I don't know how but I imagine it's the same guys making web pages full of 1x1 gifs.
So we'll have to wait another 75 years before management lets us focus on application efficiency instead of throwing hardware at the performance problems? Sigh...
No, you still won't be doing performance optimizations if that's not what makes the most money...
But why they even bother trying to rig benchmarks like this is beyond me. No one who's serious about graphics performance would use Intel's built-in video.
No, but there are a lot of 3D games that aren't FPS junkie, the-sky-is-the-limit craving games. For example, I liked King's Bounty which has minimum requirements of "Videocard nVidia GeForce 6600 with 128 Mb or equivalent ATI". Tales of Monkey Island says: "Video: 64MB DirectX 8.1-compliant video card (128MB rec.)". You won't find any of these in the latest AMD/nVidia review, but just pretending to have a little 3D performance can make a difference between "no 3D games at all" and "some non-intensive 3D games". Outside the hardcore gaming market it might matter.
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Spokesperson for *IAA's overheard saying: "Try route around that damage, Ha!"
While it's too early to call it a Pyhrric victory, that is what will happen. Remember when Napster was like THE service? So what if they kill the Pirate Bay, they're still fucked more ways to Sunday than there are positions in the Kama Sutra. I'm guessing some very light distributed torrent file/tracker replacement just to get things going then torrents with host exchange as usual. Not to mention the tons and tons of private torrent sites that aren't TPB or Mininova or whatever everyone has heard of.
Plus, their HD is only 720p and DRM encumbered. If I knew that they'd come out with iTunes Movies Plus in two years, offering to upgrade my movies to 1080p and drop DRM for a couple dollars, I might consider it.
It might only be 720p, but the quality is excellent. It's superior to 720p and 1080p encodes of TV broadcasts, only raw captures really compare but they're also many times larger. You might want to make a comparison to a BluRay and see if you can tell a difference at all, it's definately there if you go up close but real tough to see from a distance. If so it doesn't matter they'll release it in 2160p, and unless there's some magic involved non-3D shows will never become 3D. And as usual the DRM is only a problem for buying customers, which I can't be anyway because they're not selling it here. I agree, iTunes Movies Plus - at least the DRM part but I won't say no to 1080p - and make it available in Norway.
Scumbags. (...) They don't want to open source it because they don't believe in open source. It's that simple. Hopefully this will kill the last of the NVIDIA apologists.
Oh, STFU and volunteer yourself to go write open source AMD drivers. They've been running an open source strategy now for 2+ years and they're still short on manpower even though there's plenty specs out there and AMD is actively leading the development on top of the hours they've spent getting the documentation through legal review. There's plenty evidence to suggest the open source drivers would drop dead if AMD wasn't carrying them every step of the way, you think nVidia is impressed? The alleged army of open source coders waiting for specs is more like a handful, that's not a claim it's a fact. By all means they're making great progress and all that but they're way, way behind the blobs still.
Any dialog box that has 'OK' instead of a meaningful verb as a button title is an automatic usability fail
No, it's perfectly valid in many dialogs, particularly confirmation dialogs and warning dialogs. "Warning: This operation can not be undone. [OK][Cancel]" is perfectly fine. "Continue" is too weak, sounds like an info screen. "Agree" or "Accept" sounds like you actually have a choice or that you're positively agreeing with it which you don't. "Ok" is intentionally netural, like "objection noted, but I'm still going forward with this". Granted, OK could have been used a lot less compared to useful verbs like "Save", "Connect", "Create" and so on but it's not that useless.
Check jaunty-backports first, if not there's probably a PPA. Of course wtih a PPA it's essentially unverified and not security patch supported. I really wish there was more of a "auto-backports" service for the most popular distros - basically like doing a nightly build of upstream except it's a package. And of course untested and unsupported in every way.
As much as I'd like to agree, some people have an absurd tendency to point you to papers that are way too theoretical, way too academic and dealing with proving something rather than doing something. Often you end up fiddling and solving it yourself, and in the process learning how you could handle even more advanced uses, but you *still* don't understand fuck of the paper they gave you. With free help you often get what you pay for, but keeping it somewhat within reason would be nice.
It takes a certain level of analytics and tech interest to be a software developer, that makes people wierd. On the other hand, I've seen very few that were the kind of irrational crazy not-connecting-the-dots people as software developers. Just like you see very few introvert people working in sales and marketing. Some differences just come with the job description, but there's infinite variations on crazy and plenty left for everyone.
I'd much rather have a comment tell me something is a WTF and is clearly violating some assumption the developer had rather than lyric comments. Work is work and play is play, I might end up making doodles on meeting notes during PHB moments but not on the final writeup I send out. Somehow I suspect the lyric comments were instead of, not in addition to the comments that ought ot have been there. Take five, grab a cup of coffee and chill out with whatever rather than stuff that kind of things into the product.
Somehow, I doubt people at the senior executive level don't have to worry too much about such things...
And some people have become millionaires on selling "How to become a millionaire" books.
4. You make a character that fits the role you want to play. Unless you really look like an ogre, that is.
Also, uncustomizable characters really only go with an uncustomizable story. If you can be anyone from Conan the Barbarian to Conan the Librarian it makes no sense. Most MMORPGs or even RPGs are rather open-ended, you choose your skils and classes and party members and whatnot, even in games like Neverwinter Nights or Oblivion. Having an uncustomizable character is really only good for a linear game like Tales of Monkey Island - you're always Guybrush Threepwood, but it's a comical character in a comical game, it's not supposed to be you. There it works well, but most other places I'd like an avatar.
...until one of the copyright holders (you know, the ones with standing to sue) send a C&D and threaten to file for an injunction stopping all HTC Hero sales. The source code will be ready for download about 0.2 seconds later.
The more I deal with IT insanity, the more I realize it comes in infinite supply. No matter how much you make monkey work they'll just try doing 10x as advanced and/or stupid things with IT...
...we let go of the harakiri you're supposed to commit if you ever go out of cell phone range? I mean, surely we can outfit an expedition that doesn't need 24/7 babysitting from mission control, It's not like Columbus had queen Isabella call him up every night to ask "Are you there yet? Food supply ok? Your blood sugar values are low, you should eat more."
Oh, sorry you were talking about getting help. I was talking about whether I'd rather pay taxes for some dude that needs a heart surgery or investment bank CEOs that need a bailout.
No open source licence of any kind has ever put restrictions on the output of a program or of code.
Unless the application's code becomes part of the output, like for example the GCC runtime license exception. If it's being used as a tool ON the work to change image placement, then the final placement isn't covered. But if he's distributing a derived version OF the image placement code in his latex code, I would consider that a derivative.
The AGPL can clearly be unreasonable when the external contact is very superficial. But the threat with networks and Internet is that companies can substitute what would traditionally be a distribution with "leased software" or some other construct where they essentially offer an application, but claim not to distribute it - you can make it sales-like with a huge one time cost and a 1$/year upkeep. It would certainly hollow out the intention of the GPL, which is to make the source available to the end user. Under the GPL, if you must "buy" a hosted application then they can use GPL code at will without paying any attention to the GPL requirements. Clearly RMS can not be happy with that, and has a license that fixes it. It's just that he's shooting at shadows with the big guns, it doesn't seem to be much of a practical threat.
That is a lost cause, even though I've heard some fancy legal theories on how they could relicense Linux without getting either approval or ripping out that code from those not actively approving. Even though they might possibly work in a few jurisdictions I doubt they work in all or even most countries of the world, it'd make Linux a copyright minefield.
If you just take a GPL project, add a new UI skin and sell it in binary form, judge will make you release the source notwithstanding the license ambiguities.
No, a judge will never do that. It might be part or whole of a settlement before or during trial, particularly since it's all the FSF ask for though they're not the copyright holder of all things GPL. The judge can only rule on copyright law, that means liabilities in cash and injunctions against further infringement. Companies just don't ever end up there because it's much better for them to settle.
But until the libertarian dream is realized (at least as much wishful thinking as marxist socialism) I'll take public welfare over corporate welfare any day :)
Having said that, I don't really see the need for 100 Mbps internet access for everyone - it's expensive to provide, and what very important services does it provide that 1 Mbps won't?
I think of it this way, even with substantial degrees of FAIL most people will at least have some megabits to play with.
I'm not going to try reading Finnish, but I'm guessing this is like many other regulations that granted monopolies have to deal with in European countries. For example here in Norway to get digital TV broadcast rights they had to increase coverage to almost everyone, even if you decided to hide between two mountains. You don't pay the full cost of delivering electricity and phone lines to a remotely located home. Same with mobile broadband, to get the 3G license they had to commit to offering to some areas that couldn't get broadband, I know because it happened near a relative's cabin - there's a few residential houses there and they were setting up mobile broadband for regulation compliance, no way in hell that was profitable.
I know most Americans get mental anguish just thinking about it, but it's not so bad as it sounds. The businesses usually has some form of compensation agreement, or consider it part of paying the license fee except in labor not cash. It's basically the state subsidizing private build-out to areas that otherwise wouldn't get served. Of course that's a redistribution issue, but then you have to look at it along with every other tax, some hitting rural areas more than urban areas and vice versa. The whole angle of considering this some sort of legal right is a bit fishy though, yeah it's an economic requirement to provide service but there's still lots of reasons they can kick you off like non-payment, violating the terms of service or whatever. But it's still a pretty big step.
It's not that people couldn't. Hell, quite many seem to figure out a Mac alright even though it's not Windows. even less so than most Linux distros. Where they get you is that it's not about picking one application over the other, it's whether you want to learn one application or two. You say OpenOffice is used in business, I say I've yet to see it at any of my customers as a consultant. You and me, we have no problems using two applications that are almost the same. Most people get confused, they go "wasn't there a button to do that?" and start looking for whatever was in the other application. I've been called an excel wiz simply because I knew how to use $ signs to fix cell locations and drag the formula out to all cells on the line. Just getting some decent formatting on a letter is complicated for some people, I don't know how but I imagine it's the same guys making web pages full of 1x1 gifs.
So we'll have to wait another 75 years before management lets us focus on application efficiency instead of throwing hardware at the performance problems? Sigh...
No, you still won't be doing performance optimizations if that's not what makes the most money...
But why they even bother trying to rig benchmarks like this is beyond me. No one who's serious about graphics performance would use Intel's built-in video.
No, but there are a lot of 3D games that aren't FPS junkie, the-sky-is-the-limit craving games. For example, I liked King's Bounty which has minimum requirements of "Videocard nVidia GeForce 6600 with 128 Mb or equivalent ATI". Tales of Monkey Island says: "Video: 64MB DirectX 8.1-compliant video card (128MB rec.)". You won't find any of these in the latest AMD/nVidia review, but just pretending to have a little 3D performance can make a difference between "no 3D games at all" and "some non-intensive 3D games". Outside the hardcore gaming market it might matter.