Right tool for the job is what I always say. Weather he likes it or not, X is extremely versitial, that's why it's been around for so long. And if he thinks X is bloated, then he hasn't installed a copy of Windows 9[5,8] in a damn long time... Try and run what he's asking for with Win32 on a 50MB HDD... Nevermind a floppy. I could have everything I need for linux in 50MB...
The proof of his wayward ways is that he's looking for things like a "graphical text editor." Why? Linux isn't about doing everything the way Windows does it, or how MacOS does it, just with a different name. Why waste your time trying to figgure out what all those toolbar icons mean. What this guy wants ISN'T UNIX. THat's fine for him. But he shouldn't be trying to get UNIX to change for him.
There are many programs that are GPLd plus an extention to the GPL. You could use an addendum that fits your purposes. There are even drivers in the linux kernel that include GPL addendums (that say something like "If you base your driver on this, not only does it have to be GPLd as well, but it has to include the following message at the top of the source file...") The GPL can't possibly be the ideal free software license for everything, you need to pick the proper licence for your case. It sounds like for you a modified GPL is just the ticket.
underlining of misspelled words (why others don't copy this feature is beyond my understanding)
Dude, even emacs can do this... Everyone has this capability. Last I checked, however, Word was the only word processor that fucking autocorrects, so that I have to jump through hoops to type in things like people names that aren't in the dictionary without them being changed to obsenities...
Also, you should try to create a large (50-60 page) document with embedded graphics.. Then try to revise the document once a week... Don't forget to make a backup:)
Use emacs to edit and the 'ddd' frontend to gdb to debug.
I spent over a year working on a large commercial product (Lotus Domino) with MSVisual Studio and was almost convinced that Visual Studio was a better place to develop then linux because of the debugger. THen I discovered ddd. First of all, it supports all that "IntelliSence" shit, and it has the <B>Best</B> data display capabilities i've seen anywhere. You have to try it to believe it.
Emacs has more features that are better integrated then the Visual studio editor anyway.I wonder why such excelent solutions aren't more widely used.
What you propose is giving people (users) power without knowledge. When is the last time you saw somebody driving down the road in a car that is not so old, but obviously a jalopy due to lack of regular maintnence? Cars have been made "user-friendly" in the sence that the average joe can use a car without knowing how it works. What I ask you is this: Is this acceptable? We have to live in the same community as someone who doesn't maintain their car due to ignorance, and this causes problems on networks of roadways. Requiring a small amount of knowledge about how cars work before you could drive one would solve this problem. Now, lets make the connection to how this relates to computers. Computers form a network of information be it through the internet, a LAN or the floppy disks in the station waggon method. The concequences of being able to use this power without knowledge have already begun to appear. For example, the ILOVEYOU worm was spread across the entre internet by users who knew nothing about what, exactly, they were doing. This had a negative effect on the responsible computer users of the world who took the small about of time required to learn the basics of what goes on "under the hood." These are not complicated concepts for people to learn, and you don't need to have a high IQ or anything to learn them. People who write software don't like to make these interfaces that enable power without knowledge because they have the knowledge already. The indirect effect of this is that only responsible users (ones who take the time to learn what is going on) can use the software. Perhaps this is the real reason why things like the ILOVEYOU bug only stem form Microsoftesque software.
Anyway, back to the point, for all of these reasons it is a waste of effort to make these simplistic interfaces because the only thing that allows for is irresponsible use of technology. If you responsible enough to learn what is going on then you will understand how to use the average geek-designed interface. That effort would be better directed at the education of the users that don't already understand the concepts. If people are not willing to learn then they are causing their own problem.
The point of this is so that when someone tosses you a tennis ball, and it smells like grass, you'll know who made it. I don't understand why some of the other posters are so concerned about this. I'm just worried that companies will be encouraged to make stuff that smells now... That would suck.
It seems to me that they should split up into Workstation/Desktop OS, Server/NT OS, applications, media, other.... Actually the only important part I see is getting the server OS group away from the Workstation OS group. The rest of the company would be fine to leave alone. Not having the OS and Server OSs together would disable the company from leverageing their monopoly, and force them to develop standards based technology. Why do none of the ideas include a desktop/server split?
More and more content on the web is being stored in databases with interfaces that are poor at best. By poor I mean that there is no way you can see all of the information on the site by following links. To see the information the site has to offer you need to intelligently enter keywords or phrases into text fields, or chose the appropriate combintaion of items from drop down lists. To further complicate the problem, you don't necissarily WANT to index the information on all such sites.
The next generation web search tool needs advanced AI to decide weather to index database driven sites, and what input is intelegent to get appropriate output from such sites.
I hope that the scope of this problem is not too great for what you were asking. Good luck.
I understand that it is important for you to miss the point in order to feel good about yourself, but perhaps you should think about what you're saying before you trust everything to blind faith. Just because you unconditionally believe in a "God" doesn't mean you can get away with unconditional belief of how you think american society works. For example, you say
This shows itself in the US's love affair with the gun - USians view the right to take other's life with ease as being an integral part of the culture, and fight viciously any attempts to take this "right" away. Despite the highest murder rate in the Western world, and any number of high school massacres, USians still seem to think that the owning of guns, a tool used only for violence, is something that is required for civilisation.
But that assumes that americans cherish the right to own guns because they glorify the distruction of life. This is simply not the case. Americans cherish the right to own guns because this is a young country whose citizens remember governmental oppression, and the right to own guns is a symbolic representation of the fact that americans will not allow their freedom to be taken from them again. Don't allow blind faith to rule your life. Try reading a newspaper rather then just the bible. Open your eyes!
I don't want to have to remove anything and bring it in to the house to add tracks, I don't want a moving part that can break and be expensive to replace... I just want to burn some tracks onto a CD, and pop it in. I don't even care if this thing goes in my dashboard... (Actually, if it did go in my dashboard It would have to include a radio, which I don't think this one does. I need to be able to hear Ass Whippin' Wednesday on AAF in Boston!) Ideally this could act as a CD changer, and be controlled by a standard changer control.
Why doesn't somebody make something like this? I've explored doing this on my own, but the cost is too high to build just one unit. Anyone out there want in on something like this? The price for an MP3 decoder/IDE bus/soundcard on a board probably would be affordable if ~30 people were interested...
Oh, and another gripe... The EMPEG has a friggin SA-100 Processor in it! WTF! You can get MP3 decoder chips for cheap.. Why the overkill?
My guess here is that the bad english is faked so that it would be more difficult to find holes in this guy's theory. What he says doesn't make any real sense anyway. Check this out:
It is easier to throw away a bullet of 100 gram, than a canonball of 100 kilogram. So I asked myself... Is there a relation between mass and the maximum speed?
How does he make a link between these two statements? Of course it's easier to throw something that is lighter. There is less mass, so it takes less energy to give the object acceleration.
F=MA, so A=F/M i.e. less mass, Higher acceleration.
Since there is more energy and momentum lost during 1000 seconds (a ballistic rocket), than in the case of 0.001 second (a bullet), and since the laws of physics are the same, i.e. the conservation of energy and momentum, the current maximum velocity of a rocket is LESS than the current maximum velocity of a bullet in an airless tube.
Ok, on a less serious side, this guy got a ballistic rocket in an airless tube?
On a more serious note, where's the substance here? I'll give him that a rocket may have 100,000 times the mass of a bullet, but you can't do a simple linear comparison between the two. A bullet is given an initial thrust, where a rocket has continuous thrust. Also, a bullet has a constant mass, where the mass of a liquid fueled rocket is constantly decreasing. Furthermore, as the rocket reaches higher altitudes, the effects of gravity are less. I may not understand this guy's english, but he seems to be trying to prove that he can't throw a rocket fast enough to enter orbit. Neither can I.
I also don't have any idea how he came up with some of the numbers he has there, but I'm no physicist, I'm a programmer. He's an idiot.
What am I doing even paying attention to this offtopic troll? Someone slap me.
Wait... Please take offence. You shouldn't be a web designer. Remember the early 90s? When the web was about content and not about style?
You should spend your time making websites that are easy to navigate and are informative. DHTML is a hinderance to the web. Marketing people love it, but the frusterated users hate it... I hate when I'm at a windows box, and I have to watch shit slide around. Just show me the stuff!
Oh, and while you're at it, when you see a marketing guy, pull his hear out of his ass...
Wanting computer games to be ported to linux isn't quite the best of reasons to want linux to become more popular, but think about it this way:
How many quake addicts would boot to linux to play instead or running it in Windows if the could get even just 1 or 2 more frames per second?
How many gamers do you know who return a game if it requires more then 5-10 minutes of setup time to get started?
How many gamers do you know who *aren't* willing to reboot their computer to play a game?
That last reason is why few companies have started to switch to Linux, but could be a reason to have Linux games widely available in the future. Because linux is free, it can come with a game. Even a bootable system on a CD so that, in theory, a developer in the near future could have the option of shipping a game where you can put it in the drive of you computer (PC or Mac or Alpha or whatever) turn it on and play. Also, I don't know if you're a programmer, but if you were to try, you'd find it much more pleasant and easy to write a game for linux. Game programmers are idealists (as far as I've seen anyway) They'll code where they want to, and they'll come to linux in flocks as soon as Linux offers the gaming hardware support and gaming performance that windows offers. When the game companies come to linux, the gamers will follow. It'll never happen the other way around.
Why does everybody talk of forking like it's bad? Why do people think that the GPL discourages Forking? Why is there at least one story per month with a headline like "Linux kernel might fork!" and everybody panics?
NEWS FLASH! The linux kernel has forked! Many times even... That's how we got MkLinux, uClinux, and others... It's also how the first ports got started... Forks happen! Get over it.
Katz isn't contradicting himself or even saying much at all except that the idiots who are marketing this game are completely contradicting themselves. Sure he could have pointed out the irony in a few sentences, but he tends to be wordy. Just because it's long and not to the point doesn't mean it's wrong!
I fully agree that it's not you're problem, and it shouldn't be your place to care. I also agree that the government shouldn't force this on anyone, but right now the telco's business model is mostly dictated by the FCC. If you were the telco, and you weren't allowed to charge more to people who cost you more money, wouldn't your opinion be a little different.
As much as you don't want to pay any more (And you're right not to want to. You're even right to not care if they're getting dicked over.) they think they should be able to charge you for what you use. They can't get away with charging per minute for local calling, so this is the approach they are forced to take. The actual problem here though is that the buisness model of the ISPs is incompatible with how the telephone network was designed to work, and you've already mentioned one of the only solutions I know of to that... Cheap DSL.
Either way, you don't have to worry too much, because the FCC won't allow any of this untill the damage is readily noticeabe in those quarterlys you were mentioning.
Did it seem like at the end Bill Joy wanted to stamp his feet, shake his fist and wimper "I'm right dammit." It is understandable that Bill Joy will have some disagreement with RMS, afterall, Bill Joy makes money from his code. It didn't seem that he understood the arguments at all. Take this part for example:
Richard Brandt: bill--thanks for your thoughtful response. the issue to me seems to be this: i understand that you can benefit from your own innovations to java as long as they do not break compatibility. that is why i referred to "significant" changes being forbidden, and specifically defined those as changes that might break the compatibility. i noted that you can freely use enhancements that pass the compatibility tests.
Bill Joy Responds: this is wrong because under this definition there are essentially NO significant changes to java because we have a very strict rule against breaking compatibility with few exceptions (mostly bug fixes, when something is broken in a way that staying compatible with the bug is worse than fixing it).
Translation:
Richard Brandt[k]: I don't like your way because it doesn't allow this...
Bill Joy[k]: You're wrong. But what you said is exactly right.
I understand Sun's desire to make sure they retain control of their code, and that they want to make a profit from it no matter what, but if that's what they want to do to do then they shouldn't try to fool people into thinking that the SCSL exists to help the community in any significant way. The important part of what it does is enable the community to maintain Sun's code at no cost to sun.
I'll prefix this with a request not to be flamed by modem users across the US.
Local telephone calls are free in the US because the are not taxed per minute, and because the average person only uses the phone for X number of hours per month. Because of this the telephone companies only have to maintain Y number of circuits per customer (Where Y is significantly less then 1). (And because of regulations and such, but thos can change if phone companies stop making a profit; A likely outcome of having to maintain equipment that can handle continuous connections by every customer.) When you make a long distance charge, you pay a local network fee (Well, not really, but it gets passed on to you by the LD carrier) which is typically very small. ($0.01 or less) and a fee to the LD carrier.
This would be a senseable thing to transfer over to modem space for the following reasons:
The phone company doesn't want to/can't aford to (according to them) allow continuous local connections to the increasing number of internet users at the bargain price of their monthy phone bill. (It really is a bargain compaired to any other kind of dedicated connection, and it wastes a pais that could be used for DSL:))
The average home user uses less the 40 hours of internet time a month... Not a large cost considering the ISP is only charging $5-10/month for service
This will cause a transition to DSL/Cable for people who want to be connected longer then that, and will likely cause expansion in those networks providing high speed access to more people.
We may not want to pay this fee (Not a tax because it doesn't go to the government) because, lets face it, we'd like to not pay more then we have to ever. But this is a fair proposal that will probably work out well in the long run.
So, even if it were real, telneting to the machine that they claim is running Slirp for it proves nothing... Why don't you try to telnet to the proper port...
(you can get in, but it proves nothing...It could be a simple server proggy running on the alpha box, and bound to that port...)
Slashdot Mirror
Right tool for the job is what I always say. Weather he likes it or not, X is extremely versitial, that's why it's been around for so long. And if he thinks X is bloated, then he hasn't installed a copy of Windows 9[5,8] in a damn long time... Try and run what he's asking for with Win32 on a 50MB HDD... Nevermind a floppy. I could have everything I need for linux in 50MB...
The proof of his wayward ways is that he's looking for things like a "graphical text editor." Why? Linux isn't about doing everything the way Windows does it, or how MacOS does it, just with a different name. Why waste your time trying to figgure out what all those toolbar icons mean. What this guy wants ISN'T UNIX. THat's fine for him. But he shouldn't be trying to get UNIX to change for him.
There are many programs that are GPLd plus an extention to the GPL. You could use an addendum that fits your purposes. There are even drivers in the linux kernel that include GPL addendums (that say something like "If you base your driver on this, not only does it have to be GPLd as well, but it has to include the following message at the top of the source file...") The GPL can't possibly be the ideal free software license for everything, you need to pick the proper licence for your case. It sounds like for you a modified GPL is just the ticket.
Dude, even emacs can do this... Everyone has this capability. Last I checked, however, Word was the only word processor that fucking autocorrects, so that I have to jump through hoops to type in things like people names that aren't in the dictionary without them being changed to obsenities...
Also, you should try to create a large (50-60 page) document with embedded graphics.. Then try to revise the document once a week... Don't forget to make a backup :)
Use emacs to edit and the 'ddd' frontend to gdb to debug.
I spent over a year working on a large commercial product (Lotus Domino) with MSVisual Studio and was almost convinced that Visual Studio was a better place to develop then linux because of the debugger. THen I discovered ddd. First of all, it supports all that "IntelliSence" shit, and it has the <B>Best</B> data display capabilities i've seen anywhere. You have to try it to believe it.
Emacs has more features that are better integrated then the Visual studio editor anyway.I wonder why such excelent solutions aren't more widely used.
I think sony as a company expects landline telephones to become obsolete. They may be right.
You should have read some of these comments before posting this...
"A fantastic--maybe the best--compiler and GUI development system is coming to Linux and we should ignore it?"
No one said anything tike this but you. It seems like you were just looking to hate someone... I think it's time to rethink your view.
What you propose is giving people (users) power without knowledge. When is the last time you saw somebody driving down the road in a car that is not so old, but obviously a jalopy due to lack of regular maintnence? Cars have been made "user-friendly" in the sence that the average joe can use a car without knowing how it works. What I ask you is this: Is this acceptable? We have to live in the same community as someone who doesn't maintain their car due to ignorance, and this causes problems on networks of roadways. Requiring a small amount of knowledge about how cars work before you could drive one would solve this problem. Now, lets make the connection to how this relates to computers. Computers form a network of information be it through the internet, a LAN or the floppy disks in the station waggon method. The concequences of being able to use this power without knowledge have already begun to appear. For example, the ILOVEYOU worm was spread across the entre internet by users who knew nothing about what, exactly, they were doing. This had a negative effect on the responsible computer users of the world who took the small about of time required to learn the basics of what goes on "under the hood." These are not complicated concepts for people to learn, and you don't need to have a high IQ or anything to learn them. People who write software don't like to make these interfaces that enable power without knowledge because they have the knowledge already. The indirect effect of this is that only responsible users (ones who take the time to learn what is going on) can use the software. Perhaps this is the real reason why things like the ILOVEYOU bug only stem form Microsoftesque software.
Anyway, back to the point, for all of these reasons it is a waste of effort to make these simplistic interfaces because the only thing that allows for is irresponsible use of technology. If you responsible enough to learn what is going on then you will understand how to use the average geek-designed interface. That effort would be better directed at the education of the users that don't already understand the concepts. If people are not willing to learn then they are causing their own problem.
The point of this is so that when someone tosses you a tennis ball, and it smells like grass, you'll know who made it. I don't understand why some of the other posters are so concerned about this. I'm just worried that companies will be encouraged to make stuff that smells now... That would suck.
It seems to me that they should split up into Workstation/Desktop OS, Server/NT OS, applications, media, other.... Actually the only important part I see is getting the server OS group away from the Workstation OS group. The rest of the company would be fine to leave alone. Not having the OS and Server OSs together would disable the company from leverageing their monopoly, and force them to develop standards based technology. Why do none of the ideas include a desktop/server split?
More and more content on the web is being stored in databases with interfaces that are poor at best. By poor I mean that there is no way you can see all of the information on the site by following links. To see the information the site has to offer you need to intelligently enter keywords or phrases into text fields, or chose the appropriate combintaion of items from drop down lists. To further complicate the problem, you don't necissarily WANT to index the information on all such sites.
The next generation web search tool needs advanced AI to decide weather to index database driven sites, and what input is intelegent to get appropriate output from such sites.
I hope that the scope of this problem is not too great for what you were asking. Good luck.
I understand that it is important for you to miss the point in order to feel good about yourself, but perhaps you should think about what you're saying before you trust everything to blind faith. Just because you unconditionally believe in a "God" doesn't mean you can get away with unconditional belief of how you think american society works. For example, you say
This shows itself in the US's love affair with the gun - USians view the right to take other's life with ease as being an integral part of the culture, and fight viciously any attempts to take this "right" away. Despite the highest murder rate in the Western world, and any number of high school massacres, USians still seem to think that the owning of guns, a tool used only for violence, is something that is required for civilisation.
But that assumes that americans cherish the right to own guns because they glorify the distruction of life. This is simply not the case. Americans cherish the right to own guns because this is a young country whose citizens remember governmental oppression, and the right to own guns is a symbolic representation of the fact that americans will not allow their freedom to be taken from them again. Don't allow blind faith to rule your life. Try reading a newspaper rather then just the bible. Open your eyes!
I want one that reads from a CD-R.
/soundcard on a board probably would be affordable if ~30 people were interested...
I don't want to have to remove anything and bring it in to the house to add tracks, I don't want a moving part that can break and be expensive to replace... I just want to burn some tracks onto a CD, and pop it in. I don't even care if this thing goes in my dashboard... (Actually, if it did go in my dashboard It would have to include a radio, which I don't think this one does. I need to be able to hear Ass Whippin' Wednesday on AAF in Boston!) Ideally this could act as a CD changer, and be controlled by a standard changer control.
Why doesn't somebody make something like this?
I've explored doing this on my own, but the cost is too high to build just one unit. Anyone out there want in on something like this? The price for an MP3 decoder/IDE bus
Oh, and another gripe... The EMPEG has a friggin SA-100 Processor in it! WTF! You can get MP3 decoder chips for cheap.. Why the overkill?
My guess here is that the bad english is faked so that it would be more difficult to find holes in this guy's theory. What he says doesn't make any real sense anyway. Check this out:
It is easier to throw away a bullet of 100 gram, than a canonball of 100 kilogram. So I asked myself... Is there a relation between mass and the maximum speed?
How does he make a link between these two statements? Of course it's easier to throw something that is lighter. There is less mass, so it takes less energy to give the object acceleration.
F=MA, so A=F/M i.e. less mass, Higher acceleration.
Since there is more energy and momentum lost during 1000 seconds (a ballistic rocket), than in the case of 0.001 second (a bullet), and since the laws of physics are the same, i.e. the conservation of energy and momentum, the current maximum velocity of a rocket is LESS than the current maximum velocity of a bullet in an airless tube.
Ok, on a less serious side, this guy got a ballistic rocket in an airless tube?
On a more serious note, where's the substance here? I'll give him that a rocket may have 100,000 times the mass of a bullet, but you can't do a simple linear comparison between the two. A bullet is given an initial thrust, where a rocket has continuous thrust. Also, a bullet has a constant mass, where the mass of a liquid fueled rocket is constantly decreasing. Furthermore, as the rocket reaches higher altitudes, the effects of gravity are less. I may not understand this guy's english, but he seems to be trying to prove that he can't throw a rocket fast enough to enter orbit. Neither can I.
I also don't have any idea how he came up with some of the numbers he has there, but I'm no physicist, I'm a programmer. He's an idiot.
What am I doing even paying attention to this offtopic troll? Someone slap me.
No offence or anything...
Wait... Please take offence. You shouldn't be a web designer. Remember the early 90s? When the web was about content and not about style?
You should spend your time making websites that are easy to navigate and are informative. DHTML is a hinderance to the web. Marketing people love it, but the frusterated users hate it... I hate when I'm at a windows box, and I have to watch shit slide around. Just show me the stuff!
Oh, and while you're at it, when you see a marketing guy, pull his hear out of his ass...
(Yeah, I know... Flamebait... Oh well...)
Wanting computer games to be ported to linux isn't quite the best of reasons to want linux to become more popular, but think about it this way:
How many quake addicts would boot to linux to play instead or running it in Windows if the could get even just 1 or 2 more frames per second?
How many gamers do you know who return a game if it requires more then 5-10 minutes of setup time to get started?
How many gamers do you know who *aren't* willing to reboot their computer to play a game?
That last reason is why few companies have started to switch to Linux, but could be a reason to have Linux games widely available in the future. Because linux is free, it can come with a game. Even a bootable system on a CD so that, in theory, a developer in the near future could have the option of shipping a game where you can put it in the drive of you computer (PC or Mac or Alpha or whatever) turn it on and play. Also, I don't know if you're a programmer, but if you were to try, you'd find it much more pleasant and easy to write a game for linux. Game programmers are idealists (as far as I've seen anyway) They'll code where they want to, and they'll come to linux in flocks as soon as Linux offers the gaming hardware support and gaming performance that windows offers. When the game companies come to linux, the gamers will follow. It'll never happen the other way around.
Why does everybody talk of forking like it's bad?
Why do people think that the GPL discourages Forking?
Why is there at least one story per month with a headline like "Linux kernel might fork!" and everybody panics?
NEWS FLASH! The linux kernel has forked! Many times even... That's how we got MkLinux, uClinux, and others... It's also how the first ports got started... Forks happen! Get over it.
Katz isn't contradicting himself or even saying much at all except that the idiots who are marketing this game are completely contradicting themselves. Sure he could have pointed out the irony in a few sentences, but he tends to be wordy. Just because it's long and not to the point doesn't mean it's wrong!
You're right, what I should have said was "Bill Joy's company makes money from it's code."..
I fully agree that it's not you're problem, and it shouldn't be your place to care. I also agree that the government shouldn't force this on anyone, but right now the telco's business model is mostly dictated by the FCC. If you were the telco, and you weren't allowed to charge more to people who cost you more money, wouldn't your opinion be a little different.
As much as you don't want to pay any more (And you're right not to want to. You're even right to not care if they're getting dicked over.) they think they should be able to charge you for what you use. They can't get away with charging per minute for local calling, so this is the approach they are forced to take. The actual problem here though is that the buisness model of the ISPs is incompatible with how the telephone network was designed to work, and you've already mentioned one of the only solutions I know of to that... Cheap DSL.
Either way, you don't have to worry too much, because the FCC won't allow any of this untill the damage is readily noticeabe in those quarterlys you were mentioning.
Did it seem like at the end Bill Joy wanted to stamp his feet, shake his fist and wimper "I'm right dammit." It is understandable that Bill Joy will have some disagreement with RMS, afterall, Bill Joy makes money from his code. It didn't seem that he understood the arguments at all. Take this part for example:
Richard Brandt: bill--thanks for your thoughtful response. the issue to me seems to be this: i understand that you can benefit from your own innovations to java as long as they do not break compatibility. that is why i referred to "significant" changes being forbidden, and specifically defined those as changes that might break the compatibility. i noted that you can freely use enhancements that pass the compatibility tests.
Bill Joy Responds: this is wrong because under this definition there are essentially NO significant changes to java because we have a very strict rule against breaking compatibility with few exceptions (mostly bug fixes, when something is broken in a way that staying compatible with the bug is worse than fixing it).
Translation:
Richard Brandt[k]: I don't like your way because it doesn't allow this...
Bill Joy[k]: You're wrong. But what you said is exactly right.
I understand Sun's desire to make sure they retain control of their code, and that they want to make a profit from it no matter what, but if that's what they want to do to do then they shouldn't try to fool people into thinking that the SCSL exists to help the community in any significant way. The important part of what it does is enable the community to maintain Sun's code at no cost to sun.
Local telephone calls are free in the US because the are not taxed per minute, and because the average person only uses the phone for X number of hours per month. Because of this the telephone companies only have to maintain Y number of circuits per customer (Where Y is significantly less then 1). (And because of regulations and such, but thos can change if phone companies stop making a profit; A likely outcome of having to maintain equipment that can handle continuous connections by every customer.) When you make a long distance charge, you pay a local network fee (Well, not really, but it gets passed on to you by the LD carrier) which is typically very small. ($0.01 or less) and a fee to the LD carrier.
This would be a senseable thing to transfer over to modem space for the following reasons:
The phone company doesn't want to/can't aford to (according to them) allow continuous local connections to the increasing number of internet users at the bargain price of their monthy phone bill. (It really is a bargain compaired to any other kind of dedicated connection, and it wastes a pais that could be used for DSL :))
The average home user uses less the 40 hours of internet time a month... Not a large cost considering the ISP is only charging $5-10/month for service
This will cause a transition to DSL/Cable for people who want to be connected longer then that, and will likely cause expansion in those networks providing high speed access to more people.
We may not want to pay this fee (Not a tax because it doesn't go to the government) because, lets face it, we'd like to not pay more then we have to ever. But this is a fair proposal that will probably work out well in the long run.
...The master of shoplifting...
Temporary tatoo man!
(Insert Music)
...both being crushed like a brick by Sony's next mascotless console...
So, even if it were real, telneting to the machine that they claim is running Slirp for it proves nothing... Why don't you try to telnet to the proper port...
.It could be a simple server proggy running on the alpha box, and bound to that port...)
(you can get in, but it proves nothing..
Um.. I don't see this one anywhere in the old slashdot article you linked (unless it's in the comments, and that doesn't really count now, does it...)