Before the end of 2005, Sun will very largely _not_ be a proprietary software vendor.
Hey, if they go all out Open Source, then good for them. But don't take offense if I decide on a "wait and see" approach. After all, before the end of 2005, Duke Nukem Forever could be released too.
Yes, the GPL does harm open source. After all, look at how Linux lingers in relative obscurity while the three BSDs are the darling of mass media.
After all, I was just watching a repeat of The Dave Chappelle Show last night on which there was a bit called "PopCopy" about a Kinko's-like copy store and how to be uncooperative to customers. In the bit, he mentions BSD, right? Oh, wait, no...he says Linux. Why? Because Linux is mainstream and it wouldn't have gotten where it is today without the GPL.
I think saying the GPL hurts open source is ridiculous. On a case-by-case basis, you might be able to effectively demonstrate where another license would be better and thankfully, there are other licenses available in those instances. But the GPL is a vital part of the success of Open Source software.
What harms Open Source is Microsoft embedding the BSD TCP/IP stack but how many end users ever heard of BSD? And Apple half-assing their cooperation with Open Source to make OS X. How many end users running OS X ever heard of BSD even though their very OS is based upon it? But the chances they've heard of Linux is much higher. Appple, Microsoft, and the BSD license they've taken advantage of to take other people's work without compensation has arguably harmed Open Source. But, hey, the people who put that stuff out there under the BSD license did that of their own free will and more power to them. If it weren't for that, we might not have a standardized TCP/IP stack today...God knows if Microsoft had to write their own they'd have probably fucked it up entirely.
You know this guy understands the GPL. You just KNOW it. The problem is exactly as the submitter says, the GPL levels the playing field. That's Schwartz' real problem with it. It's the same thing that scares the bejesus out of most proprietary software vendors. Not that they'll ever come right out and just admit the real problem: but, your honor, it's devastating to my business model!
It always amazes me when they bitch and moan about the way things should be when commercial software manufacturers make up only a small fraction of the software development world. Most people developing software are doing so for internal I.T. departments for internal projects. They benefit the most from Open Source.
But vendors like Sun and Microsoft want us to remain in the dark ages suckling on their poisoned teat when the world can now ween itself of that sour milk and move on to the glory of free beer.
Oh, wait...I'm mixing metaphors...mmm, beer...what was I on about?
OK, this picture you mention...this is why I hate high res photos. I will never understand why people want to see high res images of people like her.
I mean, come on, folks. Most famous "beautiful" people are like impressionist paintings. From a distance they're mesmerizing...but up close they're just all messed up.
Seems to me that MIT is actually doing something to help people in situations like this. All they need is Internet access and they can go to MIT, sort of. They'll earn no degree, but they could still get an education.
Some website reports that KEYGEN.EXE can be used to infect IE on Windows. By running a malicious KEYGEN with Windows, a user can infect their install of Internet Explorer. Other alternative cracks may expose the same vulnerability. The article quotes the CTO of Obvious, Inc. as saying that '[j]ust switching away from IE does not give adequate projection. Now that BitTorrent and other alternative file-sharing tools have a toehold in the market the hacking community will get busy exploiting the vulnerabilities that exist in any feeble mind.'" Killmenow's report points out that this vulnerability can (only) affect Windows users who are morons.
XP, whist MS crap, doesn't realy require one bit of tweaking.
Who's kidding who here? Everybody I know who uses XP had to do some initial setup and tweaking to get it working to their liking...corporate users, home users, and mobile users alike. Many of the home users have had their systems completely fscked at least once just by plugging it into a cable modem. Oh, yes, I know...SP2 fixes all that, doesn't it?
Try explaining module installations or drive mounting orcode compiling to a regular user and you will get blank stares.
If you are using a distro that requires users to know how to manually install modules, mount a drive, or compile code, you're using the wrong distro. There are plenty that require no such thing. Most, nowadays, in fact.
Fedora Core 3, for instance, auto mounts USB storage and CDs upon insertion. Nice little desktop icon appears. And even FC3 isn't the most user-friendly distro out there.
If you need to run programs through emulators I'm not entirely sure Linux is ready for the desktop...
(sigh)... My point is largely that there is no such thing as "ready for the desktop" at all. It's a meaningless phrase. My point about VMWare and WINE (which, by the way, is not an emulator) is simply that there are options... quite easy ones in fact... that people who think they can only run an app in Windows can use to still have access to that app, if they so desire.
Mentioning Wine and VMWare was illustrative, not substantive. I don't actually use Wine. I do actually use VMWare on my Fedora box because I develop software and I like to test it out on multiple platforms. (VMWare is a godsend of an app for cross-platform developers.) I don't use it so I can run Office. There is not a single application that I need to run that is not available natively in Linux. And that statement holds true for thousands upon thousands of people. I'd say it's up to them whether Linux is ready for their desktop or not.
Linux is quite appropriate for many a desktop upon reasonable reflection. There are distros tailored to corporate desktops, home desktops, mobile desktops, as well as servers, embedded systems, etc.
So, while you and whomever else argue over whether Linux is "ready for the desktop" or not, I and thousands (if not millions) of others will be using it every day trying to get it through all of your heads that you're arguing over colored bubbles.
Now, now, while Linux is definitly not "ready for the desktop" no matter how many of the zealots tell you it is...
While I usually agree with your posts, garcia, I have to take issue with this. My new laptop has been running Fedora Core since I got it in October. Wiped XP and never used it again. "Ready for the desktop" depends significantly on "whose desktop" we're discussing.
It's been ready for mine for some time. Anything I might "need" Windows for (with the sole exception of certain games) runs fine through Wine and/or VMWare.
I realize your comment was an overall defense of Linux usability...but I get just as tired of hearing "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" as I assume you do of "Linux is teh r0x0r!"
For most basic day to day use (e-mail, web browsing, typing up a letter and printing it) Linux is a fine desktop environment needing little tweaking (or at least no more than XP) and has next to zero learning curve as many environments are specifically designed to mimic Windows as faithfully as possible (unfortunately, as some would argue). For many desktop environments (mine in particular) it's superior. For others, it's sub-optimal to be kind.
The simple fact is, "ready for the desktop" is a misnomer and is no more meaningful than any other ridiculous invented memes foisted onto our consciousness by people (usually pundits, analysts, and journalists) who have little, if any, idea what they're talking about.
How you got modded Insightful is beyond me. Are you a troll? Did you RTFA? I didn't read it all either. But I read enough to catch this much: LINUX does support ALL of the cards in this review. Two of them (the Promise and RaidCore cards) come only in binary packages but the rest have Linux source available.
I, personally, would completely avoid any card manufactured by Promise or Highpoint as I've had crap luck with them in the past. They're just not very good cards, imho. And I'm not talking about their performance in Linux. I'm talking their performance in general. They're crap by my estimation regardless of platform. After losing data on my Windows 2000 box becuase of a crappy Highpoint card, I'll never buy another.
Anyway, your assertions are not even germaine. You point to the problem with "trick-BIOS" software RAID cards, which have been around for years and are not exclusive to SATA-RAID. They are shit cards, period...have been from the day they were made. Most of the cards in this review, however, are true hardware based SATA-RAID cards.
And, again, they all are supported on Linux. 3Ware, for example, has been a bastion of Linux support for ages.
As for the whole winmodem issue, who cares? What has it to do with a freaking troll blathering incorrectly about Linux not supporting SATA-RAID cards? Besides, the fact is, winmodems are NOT real modems. They're telecom interfaces, but not modems. You need software to make them modems. And I'm not talking about driver software to give access to the cards' functions. I'm talking software that has to implement the modem functionality itself...because the modem functionality doesn't exist on the "winmodem"...because it's not really a modem. Just because we now have linmodems.org and such to provide that software, it doesn't automagically make them "real" modems.
The average compensation payment was £2,200 each, with one person paying £4,500.
Oh. Guess I should try RingTFA sometimes. Well, it seems less of a big deal when put that way, but still...2,200 pounds would be close to 5,000 US dollars. And you can't buy a CD?
Seems to me the record industry has found a nice way to supplement for sales lost in a bad economy: shakedowns.
...but claiming that the settlement money is going to go to artists seems disingenuous.
You're missing the key point of the statement. restate it so you can get what they're really trying to say: "...make them compensate the [snip] labels they are stealing from."
I'm not sure why you brought the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) into this.
Anyway, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) doesn't go after GPL violations when they don't own the copyright, and rightly so. All GPL violations the FSF get involved with are ones where the copyright was either theirs to begin with or where it was assigned to them.
Just because they wrote the GPL, it doesn't mean they are its sole enforcers or the ones responsible for dealing with GPL violators. Just like any copyright violation, the person (or entity) who needs to deal with it is the copyright holder.
I was going to make two points here...but of course you'll probably be modded into oblivion so nobody will read my other point...but I'll make it anyway.
£50,000 to settle
Who the hell has fifty thousand pounds sitting around to settle and still won't buy a freaking CD?
50,000 pounds is almost (US) $100,000. If you can afford a $100,000 settlement, just buy the freaking music.
Seems to me the FSF ought to write a new patent license along the lines of the GPL.
We could have the GNU General Public License (GPL), the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) for copyright licensing, and the GNU General Public Patent License (GPPL)...and maybe even a GNU Lesser General Public Patent License (LGPPL) for patent licensing.
Then, whenever a company wanted to license its patents to the free software community, they could just use a patent license most people in that community would already trust.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, the GPL does harm open source. After all, look at how Linux lingers in relative obscurity while the three BSDs are the darling of mass media.
After all, I was just watching a repeat of The Dave Chappelle Show last night on which there was a bit called "PopCopy" about a Kinko's-like copy store and how to be uncooperative to customers. In the bit, he mentions BSD, right? Oh, wait, no...he says Linux. Why? Because Linux is mainstream and it wouldn't have gotten where it is today without the GPL.
I think saying the GPL hurts open source is ridiculous. On a case-by-case basis, you might be able to effectively demonstrate where another license would be better and thankfully, there are other licenses available in those instances. But the GPL is a vital part of the success of Open Source software.
What harms Open Source is Microsoft embedding the BSD TCP/IP stack but how many end users ever heard of BSD? And Apple half-assing their cooperation with Open Source to make OS X. How many end users running OS X ever heard of BSD even though their very OS is based upon it? But the chances they've heard of Linux is much higher. Appple, Microsoft, and the BSD license they've taken advantage of to take other people's work without compensation has arguably harmed Open Source. But, hey, the people who put that stuff out there under the BSD license did that of their own free will and more power to them. If it weren't for that, we might not have a standardized TCP/IP stack today...God knows if Microsoft had to write their own they'd have probably fucked it up entirely.
(imho)
You know this guy understands the GPL. You just KNOW it. The problem is exactly as the submitter says, the GPL levels the playing field. That's Schwartz' real problem with it. It's the same thing that scares the bejesus out of most proprietary software vendors. Not that they'll ever come right out and just admit the real problem: but, your honor, it's devastating to my business model!
It always amazes me when they bitch and moan about the way things should be when commercial software manufacturers make up only a small fraction of the software development world. Most people developing software are doing so for internal I.T. departments for internal projects. They benefit the most from Open Source.
But vendors like Sun and Microsoft want us to remain in the dark ages suckling on their poisoned teat when the world can now ween itself of that sour milk and move on to the glory of free beer.
Oh, wait...I'm mixing metaphors...mmm, beer...what was I on about?
OK, this picture you mention...this is why I hate high res photos. I will never understand why people want to see high res images of people like her.
I mean, come on, folks. Most famous "beautiful" people are like impressionist paintings. From a distance they're mesmerizing...but up close they're just all messed up.
Me too. I find myself swearing at my computer a lot during everyday use...usually while waiting for horribly slow web pages to load.
I was going to pontificate about usefulness of data and a bunch of crap like that until I realized how simple the answer to this question really is:
42
Now I understand your username, TrollBridge.
Seems to me that MIT is actually doing something to help people in situations like this. All they need is Internet access and they can go to MIT, sort of. They'll earn no degree, but they could still get an education.
Yeah, and Gene Hackman was fired for that loss too.
IE Vulnerable to Cross-Application Spyware Attack
Some website reports that KEYGEN.EXE can be used to infect IE on Windows. By running a malicious KEYGEN with Windows, a user can infect their install of Internet Explorer. Other alternative cracks may expose the same vulnerability. The article quotes the CTO of Obvious, Inc. as saying that '[j]ust switching away from IE does not give adequate projection. Now that BitTorrent and other alternative file-sharing tools have a toehold in the market the hacking community will get busy exploiting the vulnerabilities that exist in any feeble mind.'" Killmenow's report points out that this vulnerability can (only) affect Windows users who are morons.
Fedora Core 3, for instance, auto mounts USB storage and CDs upon insertion. Nice little desktop icon appears. And even FC3 isn't the most user-friendly distro out there.
Try MEPIS for a test drive.
Mentioning Wine and VMWare was illustrative, not substantive. I don't actually use Wine. I do actually use VMWare on my Fedora box because I develop software and I like to test it out on multiple platforms. (VMWare is a godsend of an app for cross-platform developers.) I don't use it so I can run Office. There is not a single application that I need to run that is not available natively in Linux. And that statement holds true for thousands upon thousands of people. I'd say it's up to them whether Linux is ready for their desktop or not.
Linux is quite appropriate for many a desktop upon reasonable reflection. There are distros tailored to corporate desktops, home desktops, mobile desktops, as well as servers, embedded systems, etc.
So, while you and whomever else argue over whether Linux is "ready for the desktop" or not, I and thousands (if not millions) of others will be using it every day trying to get it through all of your heads that you're arguing over colored bubbles.
OSX users need to run some programs through an emulator because they're only available for OS 9.
You just negated your entire post with that single sentence.
What? I merely acknowledge that certain games are incompatible with Linux and that negates my entire point? Are you purposefully being obtuse?
It's been ready for mine for some time. Anything I might "need" Windows for (with the sole exception of certain games) runs fine through Wine and/or VMWare.
I realize your comment was an overall defense of Linux usability...but I get just as tired of hearing "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" as I assume you do of "Linux is teh r0x0r!"
For most basic day to day use (e-mail, web browsing, typing up a letter and printing it) Linux is a fine desktop environment needing little tweaking (or at least no more than XP) and has next to zero learning curve as many environments are specifically designed to mimic Windows as faithfully as possible (unfortunately, as some would argue). For many desktop environments (mine in particular) it's superior. For others, it's sub-optimal to be kind.
The simple fact is, "ready for the desktop" is a misnomer and is no more meaningful than any other ridiculous invented memes foisted onto our consciousness by people (usually pundits, analysts, and journalists) who have little, if any, idea what they're talking about.
I, personally, would completely avoid any card manufactured by Promise or Highpoint as I've had crap luck with them in the past. They're just not very good cards, imho. And I'm not talking about their performance in Linux. I'm talking their performance in general. They're crap by my estimation regardless of platform. After losing data on my Windows 2000 box becuase of a crappy Highpoint card, I'll never buy another.
Anyway, your assertions are not even germaine. You point to the problem with "trick-BIOS" software RAID cards, which have been around for years and are not exclusive to SATA-RAID. They are shit cards, period...have been from the day they were made. Most of the cards in this review, however, are true hardware based SATA-RAID cards.
And, again, they all are supported on Linux. 3Ware, for example, has been a bastion of Linux support for ages.
As for the whole winmodem issue, who cares? What has it to do with a freaking troll blathering incorrectly about Linux not supporting SATA-RAID cards? Besides, the fact is, winmodems are NOT real modems. They're telecom interfaces, but not modems. You need software to make them modems. And I'm not talking about driver software to give access to the cards' functions. I'm talking software that has to implement the modem functionality itself...because the modem functionality doesn't exist on the "winmodem"...because it's not really a modem. Just because we now have linmodems.org and such to provide that software, it doesn't automagically make them "real" modems.
*cough* TROLL *cough*
Step 1: Determine hosting company
Step 2: Contact Lashkar-e-Toiba
Step 3: pwn3d!
Too bad I'm fresh out of mod points...that was good for a laugh.
The average compensation payment was £2,200 each, with one person paying £4,500.
Oh. Guess I should try RingTFA sometimes. Well, it seems less of a big deal when put that way, but still...2,200 pounds would be close to 5,000 US dollars. And you can't buy a CD?
Seems to me the record industry has found a nice way to supplement for sales lost in a bad economy: shakedowns.
...but claiming that the settlement money is going to go to artists seems disingenuous.
You're missing the key point of the statement. restate it so you can get what they're really trying to say: "...make them compensate the [snip] labels they are stealing from."
There. That's better.
I'm not sure why you brought the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) into this.
Anyway, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) doesn't go after GPL violations when they don't own the copyright, and rightly so. All GPL violations the FSF get involved with are ones where the copyright was either theirs to begin with or where it was assigned to them.
Just because they wrote the GPL, it doesn't mean they are its sole enforcers or the ones responsible for dealing with GPL violators. Just like any copyright violation, the person (or entity) who needs to deal with it is the copyright holder.
I was going to make two points here...but of course you'll probably be modded into oblivion so nobody will read my other point...but I'll make it anyway.
£50,000 to settle
Who the hell has fifty thousand pounds sitting around to settle and still won't buy a freaking CD?
50,000 pounds is almost (US) $100,000. If you can afford a $100,000 settlement, just buy the freaking music.
Seems to me the FSF ought to write a new patent license along the lines of the GPL.
We could have the GNU General Public License (GPL), the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) for copyright licensing, and the GNU General Public Patent License (GPPL)...and maybe even a GNU Lesser General Public Patent License (LGPPL) for patent licensing.
Then, whenever a company wanted to license its patents to the free software community, they could just use a patent license most people in that community would already trust.