If SCO wins this, they would get an addition to their warchest with which to make trouble for legitimate open source software developers and users.
Notice that SCO hasn't addressed the cries of people who want to contribute things to people through the goodness of their hearts. For people who want to give something to people for free, SCO is saying "Eat your heart out."
And I suppose foreign intelligence agencies with malicious intent and under the guise of respectable software development companies can't introduce backdoors into military contracted closed-source software that the US military has no easy way of figuring out because of the fact that it IS CLOSED SOURCE.
Does anyone know why RH is restating their financial performance? Could they not have predicted the possible repercussions of their CFO leaving and now this and done something about it? Or did they understimate how people would overreact (if overreact they did)?
In my case, what few problems I had with RH9 was fixed in FC1. There was a bug I had with FC1 that got fixed in an update and didn't reappear in FC2.
Using FC2 on 3 of my machines at home and 4 at work. Installed them on one of the workstations at work and now linux is starting to get accepted there. Fedora Core has been great for me and the various installs I've done.
I don't mind paying for commercial software (even closed sourced ones) so long as they're worth it. There are times when the the free and opensource alternatives either don't exist or have developers who don't think like users (and therefore their interface and/or documentation suck).
Oh... in my case, however, I'd only pay if it ran on Linux (ie. paid for 2 copies of NWN for Linux and its expansion packs).
Isn't Firefox with its plugins system also susceptible to malware? How secure is the area in which plugins can play? It would be interesting if someone would take up the challenge of writing a similar piece of software as a plugin for Firefox and see if they can insinuate it in the Plugins repository.
It's not that I wish such a thing on people, but I'd like to know how secure the repositories are and what kind of damage we're looking at if it isn't.
I'm sure a huge percentage of people out there won't/can't/too-lazy-to download any of the alternatives. It's nice so long as they don't affect other people when malware like this hits. But there've been cases where software have been used to effect a DoS.
Nothing to do but keep informing people as we meet them.
I had heard that the Barbie(TM) doll from Mattel had been modified to suit the Japanese market years ago. If I remember correctly, she was made a little shorter. Never did confirm it.
That's no excuse. Even with the basest of features (taskbar, panel, desktop background, launch apps, copy & paste) Gnome nowadays is painfully slower compared to Windows 95... and yet the features that people have been asking for are in both DEs. I've run XWindows using Windowmaker and Win98SE on an Intel PII-400 with 128MB RAM and it still ran faster and snappier than Gnome 2.6 via FC2 on a Celeron 600 with 128MB RAM. The two hardware systems are comparable and the "features that people ask for" are in both, yet the older desktops ran much more smoothly.
It is true, and there's no denying it. People complain because it's true. Even with the zealots out of the equation, I've taken an unbiased look at the difference.
Just remember to compare the features that are in Gnome to those of older DEs, then compare how they run on similar platforms and you'll see why people complain it's gotten slower.
Re:They should stick with C
on
The GNOME Roadmap
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I have to agree that the language for development should change. In the same way that OSes aren't written in assembly language anymore, desktop applications should be written in languages that make sense for them.
I'm used to coding in C, Java, PHP, Perl, etc. I have to admit it would be much easier to write apps in higher level languages than C. Not to mention getting rid of nasty bugs which one could accidentally stumble on while programming in C (like memory management) that's inconvenient to work around with with macros and functions.
Instead, consider the high level language for ease-of-development, maintainability, flexibility and performance in implementation. As much as I love Java and abhor C#, it's beginning to look a lot like Mono might be the better route. Java VM is just too slow (I've used it from developing Hello World programs to embedded apps, commandline apps and full-blown desktops apps). Even the HelloWorld app is slow in all the JVMs I've tried (IBM, Sun, Blackdown) on the various platforms (Windows, linux).
What about the coveted SMB users? Of course data loss is not something anyone would want. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Are saying that FC2 has a problem causing data loss? Or that it doesn't and is one of the reasons that FC2 would be good for SMBs.
If it's the former, I am not aware of this problem. Not even the now-infamous dual-boot problem with WinXP has caused an dataloss.
If it's the latter, I'd have to agree. I've used FC1 for over a year now (and RHL before that) and FC2 since it was released and I've never had any problems resulting in dataloss. I should mention that I use it on different platforms including branded names like HP and custommade boxes using Athlon processors and Asus mobos. I also use FC2 for different purposes: as a webserver (with somewhat heavy usage), PostgreSQL database server, software development platform (C and Java development), computation linguistics workhorse, and gaming rig (Neverwinter Nights, UT2K4, Quake 3, etc.) It's great for SMBs if only for the no dataloss track record I've had with it.
I had the same problem with my laptop (a Dell C600) which was fixed by installing the Synaptics touchpad driver. Here's the URL I used: http://w1.894.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/.. I understand there's another driver for it here: http://cag.lcs.mit.edu/~cananian/Synaptics/
The nice thing now is that I can scroll up and down and sideways using the right and bottom edges of the touchpad. I'm glad I discovered it after the FC2 initial problems with it.
Personally, I'm getting sick and tired of rant pieces which pass theirselves off as a proper review. The reviewer uses a lot of harsh adjectives to describe the product they're reviewing even before he presents his arguments painting an ugly color of the product even before he gets to the gist.
He calls Gnome 2.6 and "abomination" and calls FC2 "Fedora Project's second litter of pups unsuitable for any use other than as laboratory animals" without even clarifying why or who his intended audience are. Not to mention his use of puppies in use a lab animals is sickening.
Fedora Core 2, as is Gnome 2.6, has an intended audience. These are first-time users of Linux in Enterprise settings. The aim is to present desktop computing in an easy-to-use fashion without a steep learning curve. Fedora does this well by presenting only the most commonly needed features. Does this mean Fedora or Gnome 2.6 are featureless? Not at all. Most of these features are just underneath the surface, something any geek or tech would be able to find out by RTFM or asking around.
Take his example of the new FileChooser: he says one can't type the file name, but one can just by pressing l, similar to how it is with almost all browsers. You can even do tab-completion with it.
Or take the case of Nautilus spatial browser. I think using it as default is genius! New users don't have folders 5 kilometers deep nor $HOME directories 4 kilometers wide. Most users will just want a place to store documents, pictures and audio/video files. When the time comes that they need to see the folder hierarchy, they can switch to explorer view.
The reviewer's problem is he has a bias for some other distribution and against Fedora (or possibly RedHat), in particular, and continues to paint his review accordingly. Let's leave shoddy journalism like that to Ken Brown.
Then there's the problem of breaking dual-booting when using WinXP. This problem isn't particular to Fedora and, in fact, the Fedora community have already come up with solutions to said problem.
Another issue is Fedora breaking things by introducing technology. Unfortunately, new technology can and most often do break old stuff. If it weren't for RedHat, the widespread use of gcc 2.95 and gcc 3 would've taken months longer.
NVidia is aware of the changes made to the Fedora kernel and are even now in the process of developing new video drivers. Fedora kernel hackers do things for a reason. If people insist on criticizing their choices, at the very least have some technical arguments to back up your case. They (FC devs) don't do things to make life harder for people, you know.
For enterprise users, I think FC2 is a great candidate. It's stable (for all 5 of the different platforms I've put it on including HP Vectras and eVectras which are common in enterprises), feature-complete and simple and easy enough to learn. For technical people (like me), I have to say I like it! I like the way configs are stored in/etc/sysconfig. I like the use of Python (a great scripting language which works well with modifying text files like config files). It's got the latest and greatest features which make sense for me. And these new features don't mean unstable, either.
would write a script to let their system for patch submission automatically add the required line. In marketspeak, a highly-customizable, integrated subsystem for tracking submission versions and is totally compatible with the DCO protocol.
my bittorrent download of the leak a few days ago kept going up and down. Sometimes I'd kill -9 the python process. I'm just wondering if there's a chance I might have corrupted my copy in this way (it's still downloading so i can't MD5SUM it). Also, if one of the machines on the bittorrent network have a corrupted copy, how will this affect others downloading it? Are there partial checksums?
What bugs me is your apparent lack of good judgment at picking a scenario to defend. First of all, do you think without patenting, these ideas that people create won't come up? That the guarantee of protection somehow inspires people to invent and innovate? While it certainly guards people's rights, I highly doubt people think about patents then get inspired to be creative.
As for my reaction towards your choice of cases to defend: I'm sure you'll agree that you can't patent anything and any process under the sun (ie. 1,001 ways to make hors d'ouvres, best way to plant a tree, etc.) The reason a lot of people find patents a liability more than a boon is the fact that it's more often applied to spurious claims. In this case, we're talking about translucent windows! OMG! If this could be applied to the other definition of a window, companies could get sued for making stained glass windows, or tinted ones. Possibly even sunglasses.
The only person who benefits from patents are the patent holders, not the consumers. There are people who invent things because they want to help humanity. If two people were to come up with the same idea around near the same time but with one wanting to patent and one wanting to contribute to the commons, I'd wish to God it was the humanitarian one.
While I applaud Ximian/Novell for releasing Connector, I would dearly wish they would also mention (even as a one-liner) a method by which Connector can be downloaded without using the proprietary Redcarpet mechanism. I understand the need to push their own product and technology, but most open companies provide a means and instructions by which things can be done in a more open fashion (in this case, FTP or HTTP and tar.gz or RPM package format).
If there are instructions for downloading using FTP, HTTP, Bittorrent somewhere, i couldn't find it from the Connector product page.
Seems they lost $10 in the conversion process (and potentially a lot more if they can't sell their remaining share at $13.50 or better). What did RBC gain in this process? They lost me as a client (I used to bank mainly with RBC but have sinced moved to Scotiabank) and, I'm sure, a lot more because we thought it a moral obligation. Does this kind of thing happen often to banking insitutions like RBC?
When is a project forked? And when is it a branch? With the way forking is played in newssites nowadays, it seems to connote a difference of opinions and therefore the need to go separate ways. Most of the time, however, code is just branched in order to perform some development on a particular feature with the intent to merge the two branches together eventually.
The question in my mind is: what were the circumstances for the creation of the new source tree? Was it a branch (in which case the term amicable shouldn't even be used as that's what branches normally are without the need to SENSATIONALIZE it)?
I'm surprised that someone from an opensource-supporting company would sling FUD like that. This statement sounds something an old-school business practitioner would say to sell their product and discredit their competition.
First of all, forking is not a bad thing per se. In fact, it sometimes leads to better code. In this case, Red Hat is not doing anything divisive. They're merely maintaining their old code.
As for interfering with standardization, RedHat has done nothing but push for standardizing on the latest stable code to come out. They pushed gcc 3 back when people were bullish about it. They pushed for kernel 2.4 when people were saying nothing's wrong with 2.2. Even now in their Fedora product, they're pushing 2.6 early in the game.
If anything, they're bringing the 2.4 crowd slowly into the 2.6 world by backporting features.
Who is this CTO of SuSE? Sounds old-school to me.
That said, I also noticed that there were no quotes in the article from Juergen Geck. I've become wary of news articles that try to capitalize on sensationalizing news stories. Perhaps this is just the author's interpration, eh?
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If SCO wins this, they would get an addition to their warchest with which to make trouble for legitimate open source software developers and users.
Notice that SCO hasn't addressed the cries of people who want to contribute things to people through the goodness of their hearts. For people who want to give something to people for free, SCO is saying "Eat your heart out."
Did they make record copies of the games? I understand the data can be captured for replay, right? I'd like to ghost around and watch the matches.
What non-Creative alternatives are there to Creative SBLive! that are answer the following:
* must run in Linux/x86
* have native support in OpenAL (for 3D positioning)
* optionally have good wavetable synthesis
If there are other perks I'm missing, please suggest those as well.
And I suppose foreign intelligence agencies with malicious intent and under the guise of respectable software development companies can't introduce backdoors into military contracted closed-source software that the US military has no easy way of figuring out because of the fact that it IS CLOSED SOURCE.
Well, seems Melanie Hollands has her analysis over at IT Manager's Journal: http://www.itmanagersjournal.com/article.pl?sid=04 /07/14/216221
Does anyone know why RH is restating their financial performance? Could they not have predicted the possible repercussions of their CFO leaving and now this and done something about it? Or did they understimate how people would overreact (if overreact they did)?
In my case, what few problems I had with RH9 was fixed in FC1. There was a bug I had with FC1 that got fixed in an update and didn't reappear in FC2.
Using FC2 on 3 of my machines at home and 4 at work. Installed them on one of the workstations at work and now linux is starting to get accepted there. Fedora Core has been great for me and the various installs I've done.
I don't mind paying for commercial software (even closed sourced ones) so long as they're worth it. There are times when the the free and opensource alternatives either don't exist or have developers who don't think like users (and therefore their interface and/or documentation suck).
... in my case, however, I'd only pay if it ran on Linux (ie. paid for 2 copies of NWN for Linux and its expansion packs).
Oh
Isn't Firefox with its plugins system also susceptible to malware? How secure is the area in which plugins can play? It would be interesting if someone would take up the challenge of writing a similar piece of software as a plugin for Firefox and see if they can insinuate it in the Plugins repository.
It's not that I wish such a thing on people, but I'd like to know how secure the repositories are and what kind of damage we're looking at if it isn't.
I'm sure a huge percentage of people out there won't/can't/too-lazy-to download any of the alternatives. It's nice so long as they don't affect other people when malware like this hits. But there've been cases where software have been used to effect a DoS.
Nothing to do but keep informing people as we meet them.
I had heard that the Barbie(TM) doll from Mattel had been modified to suit the Japanese market years ago. If I remember correctly, she was made a little shorter. Never did confirm it.
That's no excuse. Even with the basest of features (taskbar, panel, desktop background, launch apps, copy & paste) Gnome nowadays is painfully slower compared to Windows 95 ... and yet the features that people have been asking for are in both DEs. I've run XWindows using Windowmaker and Win98SE on an Intel PII-400 with 128MB RAM and it still ran faster and snappier than Gnome 2.6 via FC2 on a Celeron 600 with 128MB RAM. The two hardware systems are comparable and the "features that people ask for" are in both, yet the older desktops ran much more smoothly.
It is true, and there's no denying it. People complain because it's true. Even with the zealots out of the equation, I've taken an unbiased look at the difference.
Just remember to compare the features that are in Gnome to those of older DEs, then compare how they run on similar platforms and you'll see why people complain it's gotten slower.
I have to agree that the language for development should change. In the same way that OSes aren't written in assembly language anymore, desktop applications should be written in languages that make sense for them.
I'm used to coding in C, Java, PHP, Perl, etc. I have to admit it would be much easier to write apps in higher level languages than C. Not to mention getting rid of nasty bugs which one could accidentally stumble on while programming in C (like memory management) that's inconvenient to work around with with macros and functions.
Instead, consider the high level language for ease-of-development, maintainability, flexibility and performance in implementation. As much as I love Java and abhor C#, it's beginning to look a lot like Mono might be the better route. Java VM is just too slow (I've used it from developing Hello World programs to embedded apps, commandline apps and full-blown desktops apps). Even the HelloWorld app is slow in all the JVMs I've tried (IBM, Sun, Blackdown) on the various platforms (Windows, linux).
What about the coveted SMB users? Of course data loss is not something anyone would want. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Are saying that FC2 has a problem causing data loss? Or that it doesn't and is one of the reasons that FC2 would be good for SMBs.
If it's the former, I am not aware of this problem. Not even the now-infamous dual-boot problem with WinXP has caused an dataloss.
If it's the latter, I'd have to agree. I've used FC1 for over a year now (and RHL before that) and FC2 since it was released and I've never had any problems resulting in dataloss. I should mention that I use it on different platforms including branded names like HP and custommade boxes using Athlon processors and Asus mobos. I also use FC2 for different purposes: as a webserver (with somewhat heavy usage), PostgreSQL database server, software development platform (C and Java development), computation linguistics workhorse, and gaming rig (Neverwinter Nights, UT2K4, Quake 3, etc.) It's great for SMBs if only for the no dataloss track record I've had with it.
I had the same problem with my laptop (a Dell C600) which was fixed by installing the Synaptics touchpad driver. Here's the URL I used: http://w1.894.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/ .. I understand there's another driver for it here: http://cag.lcs.mit.edu/~cananian/Synaptics/
The nice thing now is that I can scroll up and down and sideways using the right and bottom edges of the touchpad. I'm glad I discovered it after the FC2 initial problems with it.
I meant to say "by pressing ctrl-l" (to open the type filename text box), but the text I used for the ctrl key got eaten up by some HTML filter.
Personally, I'm getting sick and tired of rant pieces which pass theirselves off as a proper review. The reviewer uses a lot of harsh adjectives to describe the product they're reviewing even before he presents his arguments painting an ugly color of the product even before he gets to the gist.
/etc/sysconfig. I like the use of Python (a great scripting language which works well with modifying text files like config files). It's got the latest and greatest features which make sense for me. And these new features don't mean unstable, either.
He calls Gnome 2.6 and "abomination" and calls FC2 "Fedora Project's second litter of pups unsuitable for any use other than as laboratory animals" without even clarifying why or who his intended audience are. Not to mention his use of puppies in use a lab animals is sickening.
Fedora Core 2, as is Gnome 2.6, has an intended audience. These are first-time users of Linux in Enterprise settings. The aim is to present desktop computing in an easy-to-use fashion without a steep learning curve. Fedora does this well by presenting only the most commonly needed features. Does this mean Fedora or Gnome 2.6 are featureless? Not at all. Most of these features are just underneath the surface, something any geek or tech would be able to find out by RTFM or asking around.
Take his example of the new FileChooser: he says one can't type the file name, but one can just by pressing l, similar to how it is with almost all browsers. You can even do tab-completion with it.
Or take the case of Nautilus spatial browser. I think using it as default is genius! New users don't have folders 5 kilometers deep nor $HOME directories 4 kilometers wide. Most users will just want a place to store documents, pictures and audio/video files. When the time comes that they need to see the folder hierarchy, they can switch to explorer view.
The reviewer's problem is he has a bias for some other distribution and against Fedora (or possibly RedHat), in particular, and continues to paint his review accordingly. Let's leave shoddy journalism like that to Ken Brown.
Then there's the problem of breaking dual-booting when using WinXP. This problem isn't particular to Fedora and, in fact, the Fedora community have already come up with solutions to said problem.
Another issue is Fedora breaking things by introducing technology. Unfortunately, new technology can and most often do break old stuff. If it weren't for RedHat, the widespread use of gcc 2.95 and gcc 3 would've taken months longer.
NVidia is aware of the changes made to the Fedora kernel and are even now in the process of developing new video drivers. Fedora kernel hackers do things for a reason. If people insist on criticizing their choices, at the very least have some technical arguments to back up your case. They (FC devs) don't do things to make life harder for people, you know.
For enterprise users, I think FC2 is a great candidate. It's stable (for all 5 of the different platforms I've put it on including HP Vectras and eVectras which are common in enterprises), feature-complete and simple and easy enough to learn. For technical people (like me), I have to say I like it! I like the way configs are stored in
would write a script to let their system for patch submission automatically add the required line. In marketspeak, a highly-customizable, integrated subsystem for tracking submission versions and is totally compatible with the DCO protocol.
my bittorrent download of the leak a few days ago kept going up and down. Sometimes I'd kill -9 the python process. I'm just wondering if there's a chance I might have corrupted my copy in this way (it's still downloading so i can't MD5SUM it). Also, if one of the machines on the bittorrent network have a corrupted copy, how will this affect others downloading it? Are there partial checksums?
What bugs me is your apparent lack of good judgment at picking a scenario to defend. First of all, do you think without patenting, these ideas that people create won't come up? That the guarantee of protection somehow inspires people to invent and innovate? While it certainly guards people's rights, I highly doubt people think about patents then get inspired to be creative.
As for my reaction towards your choice of cases to defend: I'm sure you'll agree that you can't patent anything and any process under the sun (ie. 1,001 ways to make hors d'ouvres, best way to plant a tree, etc.) The reason a lot of people find patents a liability more than a boon is the fact that it's more often applied to spurious claims. In this case, we're talking about translucent windows! OMG! If this could be applied to the other definition of a window, companies could get sued for making stained glass windows, or tinted ones. Possibly even sunglasses.
The only person who benefits from patents are the patent holders, not the consumers. There are people who invent things because they want to help humanity. If two people were to come up with the same idea around near the same time but with one wanting to patent and one wanting to contribute to the commons, I'd wish to God it was the humanitarian one.
While I applaud Ximian/Novell for releasing Connector, I would dearly wish they would also mention (even as a one-liner) a method by which Connector can be downloaded without using the proprietary Redcarpet mechanism. I understand the need to push their own product and technology, but most open companies provide a means and instructions by which things can be done in a more open fashion (in this case, FTP or HTTP and tar.gz or RPM package format).
If there are instructions for downloading using FTP, HTTP, Bittorrent somewhere, i couldn't find it from the Connector product page.
Seems they lost $10 in the conversion process (and potentially a lot more if they can't sell their remaining share at $13.50 or better). What did RBC gain in this process? They lost me as a client (I used to bank mainly with RBC but have sinced moved to Scotiabank) and, I'm sure, a lot more because we thought it a moral obligation. Does this kind of thing happen often to banking insitutions like RBC?
When is a project forked? And when is it a branch? With the way forking is played in newssites nowadays, it seems to connote a difference of opinions and therefore the need to go separate ways. Most of the time, however, code is just branched in order to perform some development on a particular feature with the intent to merge the two branches together eventually.
The question in my mind is: what were the circumstances for the creation of the new source tree? Was it a branch (in which case the term amicable shouldn't even be used as that's what branches normally are without the need to SENSATIONALIZE it)?
Forget that last paragraph. Just re-read it and found some quotes at the bottom.
I'm surprised that someone from an opensource-supporting company would sling FUD like that. This statement sounds something an old-school business practitioner would say to sell their product and discredit their competition.
First of all, forking is not a bad thing per se. In fact, it sometimes leads to better code. In this case, Red Hat is not doing anything divisive. They're merely maintaining their old code.
As for interfering with standardization, RedHat has done nothing but push for standardizing on the latest stable code to come out. They pushed gcc 3 back when people were bullish about it. They pushed for kernel 2.4 when people were saying nothing's wrong with 2.2. Even now in their Fedora product, they're pushing 2.6 early in the game.
If anything, they're bringing the 2.4 crowd slowly into the 2.6 world by backporting features.
Who is this CTO of SuSE? Sounds old-school to me.
That said, I also noticed that there were no quotes in the article from Juergen Geck. I've become wary of news articles that try to capitalize on sensationalizing news stories. Perhaps this is just the author's interpration, eh?