I think for the average hacker however RHEL3 and White Box are not going to appeal that much, because they are older software - that people are sure works or know the limits of - and not the latest and greatest. No SVG themed gnome 2.6, no current KDE, no 2.6 kernel...
You can get the current KDE (3.2.2) for RHEL/Whitebox/CentOS/Tao at the same place you would get KDE for Red Hat 9: kde-redhat. Use the "3.0" release for RHEL.
"The for-pay WSJ makes its editorial content available for free at opinionjournal.com, because nobody would pay to read editorials..."
That's not quite right. OpinionJournal has articles not found on the WSJ and vice versa. If you go to OpinionJournal and click on the "also on the WSJ" link, you will find editorial links to articles for WSJ subscribers only.
I for one find the WSJ editorials one of its most valuable sections -- with a lot of Pulitzers under its belt -- as do many subscribers I know. It is really a matter of personal ideology, you see. Non-conservatives will not want to throw any money at a conservative editorial page. So while conservatives might find the WSJ's editorials worth subscribing to, if conservatives want to reach non-conservatives they will want to provide free content. Hence WSJ vs Opinion Journal.
The print edition's paid subscription number has held steady, compared to other papers like the NYT that have seen their paid subscriptions decline. While the online edition's numbers have soared, it was not at the expense of the print edition. This is because a lot of dead-tree subscribers are happy to have both as they complement each other.
Overall, the WSJ's total paid subscriptions -- online + print -- have increased. This number (2,091,062) excludes deep discounted subscriptions (under 25% of paper edition's cost) and only counts once those who subscribe to both. Numbers here.
The WSJ's online publishing has been a major success. I think only Consumer Reports has had comparable success with paid online subscriptions. I can't remember their numbers off the top of my head though.
Any form of argument in which the conclusion occurs as one of the premisses, or a chain of arguments in which the final conclusion is a premiss of one of the earlier arguments in the chain. (...)
The phrase "begs the question" has come to be used to mean "raises the question" or "suggests the question" (...) This is a confusing usage which is apparently based upon a literal misreading of the phrase "begs the question". It should be avoided, and must be distinguished from its use to refer to the fallacy.
I've set up Verizon DSL twice, for both personal and business. What I said was that you cannot set up an account without Windows. Once you have established a PPPOE user ID and password, you can use that account under any platform capable of PPPOE authentication. I suppose if they're feeling real generous they can set up a new user ID and password for you, but the normal routine is that you have to run their registration software. And heaven help you if you need tech support, such as when your line goes dead: they expect you to be running Windows or Mac. Unlike cable companies, Verizon tech have no access to your line/account status (IP address etc) and no ability to diagnose your situation real time.
A great resource I would like to see is something on how to set up a DSL account and get tech support without Windows/Mac. Most advice I've seen consist of "boot into Windows and set up your account there".
There are some reasons some people absolutely need some version of Windows handy, even if on a separate boot partition. For one thing, you cannot set up a Verizon DSL account -- absolutely the most affordable broadband around -- without running their custom Windows or Mac software.
Continued security updates for... 8 years? You will be lucky get 8 months from Fedora. Somebody please point me to a Linux distribution that offers that duration of support at any price. Wow.
In some ways, it's better. The Debian social contract makes no time commitments on updates. It could be that Debian's support is so long because it takes them so long to get a new stable release out. On the other hand, Mandrake explicitly commits to 18 months of base updates. That's a solid commitment for those of us who want to put off upgrade hell.
This is a major difference. Red Hat did not announce EOL for their 7.x and 8 versions until well after they were released. In other words, those installing 7.x when new really did not know when support would end. Many of us ASSuMEd that they would follow historical patterns and continue to receive updates for at least 2 years. The EOL announcements came as a shock: Red Hat 8, 7.3, 7.2 and 7.1 support all end simultaneously. That should give you a clue that something changed drastically. This should also concern SUSE users: while they informally maintain a 2 year support cycle, SUSE could theoretically "do a Red Hat" and shorten their support.
Officially even now Red Hat has no exact product lifetime cycle for their non-enterprise line. Red Hat Linux no longer exists: it's only Fedora now. What is Fedora's support lifetime? "Updates will be available for two to three months after the release of the subsequent version". How often will we see new versions? "Approximately 2-3 times per year". So Red Hat fuzzily commits to a supported lifetime of 6-9 months. That is a ridiculously short (in the worst case) support cycle, especially if you like to wait a while for a new release to work out its bugs. Not only is it short, but it has a 50% fuzziness margin. I would not call that an obvious product lifetime. (I know about the Fedora Legacy people -- still getting organized -- and Progeny, but those are independent efforts and not a Red Hat commitment).
Mandrake, on the other hand, commits to 18 months of base updates. The lifetime of its desktop updates is only 12 months, but base updates (servers, kernel) is 18 months. No ifs, buts or maybes: 18 months. You have a hard number. Moreover, it's double Red Hat's best case.
It's funny that one would exclude the top C++ GUI toolkit for commercial development for the purpose of making the distribution friendly for commercial development.
The article mentions (or rather, an interviewee mentions) that the H1B visa is often abused, often blatantly. There is no lack of people who criticize the H1B visa. Why isn't there talk about how existing law can be enforced?
The fall? Maybe you can see it in the demographics. Or you can see it in the stories and artwork. Comics today are "edgier", more "grownup", meaning there is a lot more sex. Female bodies are drawn more sexy, even in nonsexual situations. It's a sort of a porn form. Gore is more gory (I'm thinking Sandman, Swamp Thing). Previously, comics tried to cater to a wider demographic.
So?
This means that the comics industry is chasing an aging demographic. They are looking for the veterans who browse the specialty stores. Old-time comics readers have now grown up, want comics to be "respectable" and "grown-up", and are a ready market for the porn 'n gore genre. They are selling to comic readers who have always been comic readers. Younger readers? New blood? Those dependent on parental income? Screw them. (figuratively). They are not looking to recruit children: many of them would not be suitable for the supermarket magazine aisles. Many parents would not feel comfortable buying these comics for their kids.
As I said, it's all about where you stick the microphones. YOU would not be listening in on the battle: you'd die in space. There are no real microphones in a scifi alternate reality. The view we get is a hypothetical: what if we could observe the scene somehow? What if we had magic eyes that could observe space combat spread out over a vast battlefield that no real life inhabitant of that reality ever could see? Sound is possible in an atmosphere. What if we could stick microphones in each and every atmosphere-equipped ship to hear sounds within their cabins (engines, weapons)? What if we stick a mic near a ship as it explodes, and record the sound as its onboard atmosphere dissipates? And what if we took all those recordings, process them to compensate for distortion, and mix all those sounds in an n-channel sound soundtrack?
JMS, the creator of Babylon 5, got sick of the you-cannot-hear-sounds-in-space complaint and posted a response. The gist of his argument -- apart from artistic issues -- is that space is not all empty all the time. He asked some experts, apparently, and decided that sounds were possible.
An exploding manned (soon to be unmanned) spacecraft would carry a breathable atmosphere and other gases/particles to carry sound. Weapon zaps and engine whines would be audible from within these crafts and over their comm-links. It's all a question of where you stick your microphone. Nobody is telling you where the mic is or how it works.
I agree that Red Hat is licensing support. The license I quoted is for the support service. But that makes no practical difference. Red Hat will not sell RHEL without a support subscription. The support subscription forces me to buy a subscription for every RHEL installation I make. It's that simple: RH's restriction is on their support, but you can't get RHEL without support.
The only way to get RHEL without support is to build and assemble all the individual packages from source. But that is the equivalent of rolling my own distribution. And without Red Hat's stream of security patches (which comes only with support: you can't get the RPMs from their web site) the distribution is all but useless.
The license is quite clear. Once again: "If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat...". I wish it was otherwise, but that appears to be the case. I have seen no other interpretation of what I quoted. No other interpretation seems plausible. You have not offered one. I would love to hear otherwise.
Remember that only individual components are GPLed. The Red Hat aggregation, the binaries and the trademarks in it all belong to Red Hat. Their license clearly asserts the purchasing requirement. If you would like to contest that, feel free. But Red Hat is a significantly wealthier entity than my company, let alone my own net worth. Prudence suggests that I not fight this battle.
The individual components of the distribution are mostly GPL, it is true. Red Hat allows you to copy the individual pieces. But only the individual pieces. Firstly, the particular arrangement and aggregation of the various components belongs to Red Hat, and that is not GPL. Think about it. Ones and zeros are in the public domain, but that does not mean that I can rip off a binary representation of anything. Secondly, it is only RHAS if you retain Red Hat's particular arrangement and aggregation, such as by installing from their provided binaries. Oracle and friends will refuse to support anything short of an "official", supported RHAS. Third, Red Hat's non-GPL contributions include their trademarks, both images and text. There are trademark-based restrictions on what you can do with them, as Red Hat has stated.
You could assemble a Linux system by compiling the zillions of pieces from source and removing any Red Hat trademarks. You could copy that freely. But that is not RHAS with QA-ed binaries, official support status and recognition by ISVs. You can only get the binaries from Red Hat, and only with that subscription agreement. That agreement requires you to cough up the dough for each installation you make.
Red Hat does not impose the number of copies, but it can impose mandatory purchasing of support for each copy you do make. Read again the part I quoted. In addition, Red Hat Linux contains trademarked material -- images and stuff -- that you are not permitted to redistribute freely.
No, look at what you just quoted: The term "Installed Systems" means the number of Systems on which Customer installs the Software. You are bound by the agreement, including the part I quoted. Each installed system you have requires you to pay. The software may be "free", but you have to buy the support: it is mandatory and required by the license.
Unless you build everything from source, you would have to get the RHAS binaries by buying a subscription. Nobody is distributing the binaries nor the update RPMs for free. You can only get them from Red Hat. The license states:
4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System.
In other words, you agree to pay money for each installation you make. That license also gives Red Hat the right to audit your "facilities and records" for a year, but that's another topic.
The main issue for me personally is that Red Hat guarantees only 1 year of updates and fixes. With security updates constantly being posted, this is a major undertaking. Since I rarely install a new release the moment it hits the FTP sites this means that the effective lifecycle of a RH release is rather short. An upgrade every few months seems a bit much.
I thought I remember reading that SuSE's consumer edition provides 2 years of maintenance. This may not seem much but it would be double what Red Hat guarantees. Unfortunately, revisiting the subject recently, I can't find any such guarantee on SuSE's web site. Does anyone know what the situation is at SuSE? A Linux distribution that allows unlimited copies plus double the lifecycle of Red Hat's might be worth exploring.
They did have missiles: the Pegasus, remember? Blew up two enemy base ships. The Galactica itself had guns of comparable firepower which it used in another episode to blow up another of those base ships.
It is not that clear that nukes are that useful in space. In a vacuum, there is no material to push around, so you won't get the mushroom and shockwave. The intensity of the heat will drop off very rapidly with distance. A heavily armored ship might get a nice sun tan if a nuke detonated next to it, but perhaps not much more. So nukes will look comparatively wimpy in space.
In any case, I get your point. Weapons tend to be wimpy in SF. If weapons grow commensurately lethal with technology, the carnage would be such that you might not expect the main cast members to be alive long. Dramatic dogfights might not be possible. That would make lousy TV.
Why is Singapore included in the list? It's a tiny island-state: you can see the entire coastline from the air. I suppose IBM can buy the entire island to staff one of its minor divisions (I'm kidding!). It has first-world living standards, so that would be the last place I would look for cheap labor. Sure, they speak English, but so do most Americans. About the only advantage I can imagine is having a 12 hr timezone difference is handy for tech support call centers.
Mystery of IBM's silence
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Maybe somebody could clear this up for me. Folks seem to think that SCO will not reveal the alleged violating code because there isn't any. SCO's silence is understandable. But they threatened IBM, presumably by telling IBM that it is misusing SCO code. So IBM would know what code is in question. Why doesn't IBM reveal even a hint of what the allegedly offending code might be or where it resides? I don't see any good incentive for IBM to keep quiet.
Quebec power is hardly a comparable example to most US power utilities. Canada is a sparsely populated country with plenty of hydro-potential. The simple issue is that most towns do not have the dam-potential -- or have already exhausted them -- to generate sufficient fuel-free power. If you don't need to buy fuel, electricity can be quite a bit cheaper. What can a flat town do: dam a puddle? No potential energy, no free power. Sure, governments can do pretty well if they do not need to buy their fuel -- Brunei is doing pretty well thank you -- but that is no measure of their efficiency.
Slashdot Mirror
You can get the current KDE (3.2.2) for RHEL/Whitebox/CentOS/Tao at the same place you would get KDE for Red Hat 9: kde-redhat. Use the "3.0" release for RHEL.
"The for-pay WSJ makes its editorial content available for free at opinionjournal.com, because nobody would pay to read editorials ..."
That's not quite right. OpinionJournal has articles not found on the WSJ and vice versa. If you go to OpinionJournal and click on the "also on the WSJ" link, you will find editorial links to articles for WSJ subscribers only.
I for one find the WSJ editorials one of its most valuable sections -- with a lot of Pulitzers under its belt -- as do many subscribers I know. It is really a matter of personal ideology, you see. Non-conservatives will not want to throw any money at a conservative editorial page. So while conservatives might find the WSJ's editorials worth subscribing to, if conservatives want to reach non-conservatives they will want to provide free content. Hence WSJ vs Opinion Journal.
Overall, the WSJ's total paid subscriptions -- online + print -- have increased. This number (2,091,062) excludes deep discounted subscriptions (under 25% of paper edition's cost) and only counts once those who subscribe to both. Numbers here.
The WSJ's online publishing has been a major success. I think only Consumer Reports has had comparable success with paid online subscriptions. I can't remember their numbers off the top of my head though.
No, begging the question is:
A great resource I would like to see is something on how to set up a DSL account and get tech support without Windows/Mac. Most advice I've seen consist of "boot into Windows and set up your account there".
There are some reasons some people absolutely need some version of Windows handy, even if on a separate boot partition. For one thing, you cannot set up a Verizon DSL account -- absolutely the most affordable broadband around -- without running their custom Windows or Mac software.
Continued security updates for ... 8 years? You will be lucky get 8 months from Fedora. Somebody please point me to a Linux distribution that offers that duration of support at any price. Wow.
In some ways, it's better. The Debian social contract makes no time commitments on updates. It could be that Debian's support is so long because it takes them so long to get a new stable release out. On the other hand, Mandrake explicitly commits to 18 months of base updates. That's a solid commitment for those of us who want to put off upgrade hell.
This is a major difference. Red Hat did not announce EOL for their 7.x and 8 versions until well after they were released. In other words, those installing 7.x when new really did not know when support would end. Many of us ASSuMEd that they would follow historical patterns and continue to receive updates for at least 2 years. The EOL announcements came as a shock: Red Hat 8, 7.3, 7.2 and 7.1 support all end simultaneously. That should give you a clue that something changed drastically. This should also concern SUSE users: while they informally maintain a 2 year support cycle, SUSE could theoretically "do a Red Hat" and shorten their support.
Officially even now Red Hat has no exact product lifetime cycle for their non-enterprise line. Red Hat Linux no longer exists: it's only Fedora now. What is Fedora's support lifetime? "Updates will be available for two to three months after the release of the subsequent version". How often will we see new versions? "Approximately 2-3 times per year". So Red Hat fuzzily commits to a supported lifetime of 6-9 months. That is a ridiculously short (in the worst case) support cycle, especially if you like to wait a while for a new release to work out its bugs. Not only is it short, but it has a 50% fuzziness margin. I would not call that an obvious product lifetime. (I know about the Fedora Legacy people -- still getting organized -- and Progeny, but those are independent efforts and not a Red Hat commitment).
Mandrake, on the other hand, commits to 18 months of base updates. The lifetime of its desktop updates is only 12 months, but base updates (servers, kernel) is 18 months. No ifs, buts or maybes: 18 months. You have a hard number. Moreover, it's double Red Hat's best case.
It's funny that one would exclude the top C++ GUI toolkit for commercial development for the purpose of making the distribution friendly for commercial development.
The article mentions (or rather, an interviewee mentions) that the H1B visa is often abused, often blatantly. There is no lack of people who criticize the H1B visa. Why isn't there talk about how existing law can be enforced?
The fall? Maybe you can see it in the demographics. Or you can see it in the stories and artwork. Comics today are "edgier", more "grownup", meaning there is a lot more sex. Female bodies are drawn more sexy, even in nonsexual situations. It's a sort of a porn form. Gore is more gory (I'm thinking Sandman, Swamp Thing). Previously, comics tried to cater to a wider demographic.
So?
This means that the comics industry is chasing an aging demographic. They are looking for the veterans who browse the specialty stores. Old-time comics readers have now grown up, want comics to be "respectable" and "grown-up", and are a ready market for the porn 'n gore genre. They are selling to comic readers who have always been comic readers. Younger readers? New blood? Those dependent on parental income? Screw them. (figuratively). They are not looking to recruit children: many of them would not be suitable for the supermarket magazine aisles. Many parents would not feel comfortable buying these comics for their kids.
As I said, it's all about where you stick the microphones. YOU would not be listening in on the battle: you'd die in space. There are no real microphones in a scifi alternate reality. The view we get is a hypothetical: what if we could observe the scene somehow? What if we had magic eyes that could observe space combat spread out over a vast battlefield that no real life inhabitant of that reality ever could see? Sound is possible in an atmosphere. What if we could stick microphones in each and every atmosphere-equipped ship to hear sounds within their cabins (engines, weapons)? What if we stick a mic near a ship as it explodes, and record the sound as its onboard atmosphere dissipates? And what if we took all those recordings, process them to compensate for distortion, and mix all those sounds in an n-channel sound soundtrack?
JMS, the creator of Babylon 5, got sick of the you-cannot-hear-sounds-in-space complaint and posted a response. The gist of his argument -- apart from artistic issues -- is that space is not all empty all the time. He asked some experts, apparently, and decided that sounds were possible.
An exploding manned (soon to be unmanned) spacecraft would carry a breathable atmosphere and other gases/particles to carry sound. Weapon zaps and engine whines would be audible from within these crafts and over their comm-links. It's all a question of where you stick your microphone. Nobody is telling you where the mic is or how it works.
I agree that Red Hat is licensing support. The license I quoted is for the support service. But that makes no practical difference. Red Hat will not sell RHEL without a support subscription. The support subscription forces me to buy a subscription for every RHEL installation I make. It's that simple: RH's restriction is on their support, but you can't get RHEL without support.
The only way to get RHEL without support is to build and assemble all the individual packages from source. But that is the equivalent of rolling my own distribution. And without Red Hat's stream of security patches (which comes only with support: you can't get the RPMs from their web site) the distribution is all but useless.
The license is quite clear. Once again: "If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat ...". I wish it was otherwise, but that appears to be the case. I have seen no other interpretation of what I quoted. No other interpretation seems plausible. You have not offered one. I would love to hear otherwise.
Remember that only individual components are GPLed. The Red Hat aggregation, the binaries and the trademarks in it all belong to Red Hat. Their license clearly asserts the purchasing requirement. If you would like to contest that, feel free. But Red Hat is a significantly wealthier entity than my company, let alone my own net worth. Prudence suggests that I not fight this battle.
The individual components of the distribution are mostly GPL, it is true. Red Hat allows you to copy the individual pieces. But only the individual pieces. Firstly, the particular arrangement and aggregation of the various components belongs to Red Hat, and that is not GPL. Think about it. Ones and zeros are in the public domain, but that does not mean that I can rip off a binary representation of anything. Secondly, it is only RHAS if you retain Red Hat's particular arrangement and aggregation, such as by installing from their provided binaries. Oracle and friends will refuse to support anything short of an "official", supported RHAS. Third, Red Hat's non-GPL contributions include their trademarks, both images and text. There are trademark-based restrictions on what you can do with them, as Red Hat has stated.
You could assemble a Linux system by compiling the zillions of pieces from source and removing any Red Hat trademarks. You could copy that freely. But that is not RHAS with QA-ed binaries, official support status and recognition by ISVs. You can only get the binaries from Red Hat, and only with that subscription agreement. That agreement requires you to cough up the dough for each installation you make.
Red Hat does not impose the number of copies, but it can impose mandatory purchasing of support for each copy you do make. Read again the part I quoted. In addition, Red Hat Linux contains trademarked material -- images and stuff -- that you are not permitted to redistribute freely.
No, look at what you just quoted: The term "Installed Systems" means the number of Systems on which Customer installs the Software. You are bound by the agreement, including the part I quoted. Each installed system you have requires you to pay. The software may be "free", but you have to buy the support: it is mandatory and required by the license.
In other words, you agree to pay money for each installation you make. That license also gives Red Hat the right to audit your "facilities and records" for a year, but that's another topic.
The main issue for me personally is that Red Hat guarantees only 1 year of updates and fixes. With security updates constantly being posted, this is a major undertaking. Since I rarely install a new release the moment it hits the FTP sites this means that the effective lifecycle of a RH release is rather short. An upgrade every few months seems a bit much.
I thought I remember reading that SuSE's consumer edition provides 2 years of maintenance. This may not seem much but it would be double what Red Hat guarantees. Unfortunately, revisiting the subject recently, I can't find any such guarantee on SuSE's web site. Does anyone know what the situation is at SuSE? A Linux distribution that allows unlimited copies plus double the lifecycle of Red Hat's might be worth exploring.
They did have missiles: the Pegasus, remember? Blew up two enemy base ships. The Galactica itself had guns of comparable firepower which it used in another episode to blow up another of those base ships.
It is not that clear that nukes are that useful in space. In a vacuum, there is no material to push around, so you won't get the mushroom and shockwave. The intensity of the heat will drop off very rapidly with distance. A heavily armored ship might get a nice sun tan if a nuke detonated next to it, but perhaps not much more. So nukes will look comparatively wimpy in space.
In any case, I get your point. Weapons tend to be wimpy in SF. If weapons grow commensurately lethal with technology, the carnage would be such that you might not expect the main cast members to be alive long. Dramatic dogfights might not be possible. That would make lousy TV.
Why is Singapore included in the list? It's a tiny island-state: you can see the entire coastline from the air. I suppose IBM can buy the entire island to staff one of its minor divisions (I'm kidding!). It has first-world living standards, so that would be the last place I would look for cheap labor. Sure, they speak English, but so do most Americans. About the only advantage I can imagine is having a 12 hr timezone difference is handy for tech support call centers.
Maybe somebody could clear this up for me. Folks seem to think that SCO will not reveal the alleged violating code because there isn't any. SCO's silence is understandable. But they threatened IBM, presumably by telling IBM that it is misusing SCO code. So IBM would know what code is in question. Why doesn't IBM reveal even a hint of what the allegedly offending code might be or where it resides? I don't see any good incentive for IBM to keep quiet.
Quebec power is hardly a comparable example to most US power utilities. Canada is a sparsely populated country with plenty of hydro-potential. The simple issue is that most towns do not have the dam-potential -- or have already exhausted them -- to generate sufficient fuel-free power. If you don't need to buy fuel, electricity can be quite a bit cheaper. What can a flat town do: dam a puddle? No potential energy, no free power. Sure, governments can do pretty well if they do not need to buy their fuel -- Brunei is doing pretty well thank you -- but that is no measure of their efficiency.