One thing I've noticed within the past year or so is the huge increase in the number of competitors for office suites in the open source/Linux community.
While competition may spur innovation in most cases, I don't believe it to be true when taken to this degree for open source software. The main reason behind this belief is simply the fact that the reason most people don't adopt secondary office suites is because of the different standards. People use MS Office because they know sending a co-worker a PowerPoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet will not cause any compatibility issues, because it is a fair assumption that this person also has MS Office. What the Linux community really needs is a single office suite standard, eliminating the compatibility issues. Then we can work on competition.
One thing I've noticed within the past year or so is the huge increase in the number of competitors for operating systems in the computer industry.
While competition may spur innovation in most cases, I don't believe it to be true when taken to this degree for operating systems. The main reason behind this belief is simply the fact that the reason most people don't adopt secondary operating systems is because of the different standards. People use MS Windows because they know installing new hardware and software will not cause any compatibility issues, because it is a fair assumption that all hardware and software are compatible with Windows. What the marketplace really needs is a operating system standard, eliminating the compatibility issues. Then we can work on competition.
OK, options, Load/Save. Looks just like Word. Autosave every minute, create backup (oh yes). Oh, default save format? "SOT Office 6.0 Text Document"? A quick save reveals that this is a binary format, not anything sane like XML. So, no, I don't bloody well think so. Word 97/2000/XP, please. "This may cause data loss.". I'll take that risk. If I can't use this to reliably read/write Word 97.doc binary formats, it's no use to me (sorry, but it isn't).
If it uses the same format as OpenOffice, then the file format is a set of XML files that are zipped (as in PKZIP format)
Branding makes you money in the "real" world, as opposed to on the Internet, though. The site itself doesn't directly generate any revenue** but rather it contributes to the branding which in turn generates revenue.
**Technically speaking, an Internet site used for branding can generate revenue, but tracking it is what's difficult. Customer surveys are useful here, but they're no panacea. Most customer surveys are biased to begin with due to the elective nature of them...even if you use incentives to get people to fill them out, then primarily only the people interested in your particular incentives will fill them out...
If I were you, I'd read this page. There are methods of blocking parts of a site, yes, but robots.txt isn't one of them, at least as far as Google is concerned.
Sure...this is basically a form of subscriptions, except that it would allow users who wanted to view one page of a site without having to shell out money for a whole month, or whatever... kinda like Slashdot's model, but not really.
Unfortunately, the infrastructure you speak of doesn't exist yet...I was referring to what is viable TODAY.:)
Either of those methods will cause Gamespot's entire Website to not be listed in a Google search at all...that has both positive and negative effects for Gamespot.
Without being indexed by a search engine, they will certainly have less new visitors. This may actually be what they want, but it may actually NOT be what they want.
The way I see it, there are only 3 viable Internet business models. They are:
1. Advertising. Advertising works only if there are enough advertisers paying you to advertise on your site vs. what your costs are in bandwidth, colocs, etc. With a decline in advertising spending across the board for ALL media, Internet advertising has taken a hit, especially with the dot.com bust.
2. Subscriptions. Obviously, charge your users for the use of the bandwidth and server storage. You have to charge enough to cover your costs plus profit, but not too much that the market won't bear it. A year or two ago, the answer to what the market would bear would have been close to zero. It's starting to change now... people are realizing that yes, you have to pay for certain kinds of content, or it simply won't be available at all...
3. Sell stuff on your site. You basically use the info on your site as a means to entice your users to buy your products. For a site like Gamespot or Slashdot, it would be very hard to maintain objectivity and credibility in their journalism, since they'd basically be representing a product.
And really...that's it... in the end, I'd rather PAY for a service rather than have the site sell a product and hurt the integrity of their information.
Are you sure it spontaneously rebooted, or was it being remotely controlled perhaps? Remember to change anything deeper than the wallpaper, you have to reboot...:)
Currently, the biggest challenge for Linux is making the installation painless. The problem is not that Linux developers don't want to--its just as I'm sure they can tell you, getting the hardware and drivers they need is really difficult. I'm not sure how we, as a community, can help that. Maybe mass-buy a new graphics card if the company produces a Linux driver off the bat?
On certain hardware configurations the installation could be quite painless if the installers weren't so damned buggy.:)
Look at Mandrake, for instance, which clearly has one of the best installers, DrakX.
If everything goes right, and you have supported hardware, the installation will be painless. DrakX has a nice graphical interface and installation is mostly automatic, including driver detection, if you accept the defaults. Unfortunately, DrakX has some nasty bugs.
For instance, if an installation CD has a smudge on it, it is highly probable that after cleaning it, you'll have to start the install all over, because DrakX will get confused and lose its list of files to be installed. This is true in Mandrake 8.1 and earlier, I have NOT tested this on 8.2.
In some cases, even though it was selected, the 8.0 installer didn't install the kernel sources for some reason. (Actually, I don't think you can elect to have the installer NOT install the kernel sources).
Nasty little bugs like this are the ones that the Linux Janitors, as you say, need to fix.
But I don't think that the installation is nearly as awful as it once was. Most people who think installation is painful either have A) the latest and greatest hardware (least likely to get a driver for) or B) run Slackware.:-P
While it is certainly commendable that nVIDIA constantly releases new drivers for their cards on Linux, I'll take specs over closed source drivers any day of the week.
Here's why:
If you're always updating your hardware and you keep updating to the latest and greatest video cards, and you don't update your operating system too much, and you don't mess with experimental or drivers for other hardwre in your system (which means that you follow the same basic pattern as a gamer), then great, nVIDIA's development model probably works for you.
However, what if you're still using the GeForce 2 card and plan on using it for at least a couple of years, but you want to keep trying out new Linux distributions and versions, and maybe even experimental kernels? And what if nVIDIA suddenly stops developing new versions of the geForce 2 driver, because they discontinue the card and then have no funding to work on drivers for discontinued cards?
Well, as we all know, older video drivers may or may not work with new versions of XFree, new kernel versions, etc. without being recompiled. If the source isn't available for recompiling, and nVIDIA isn't doing it, who is? No one. So now you're stuck with a piece of hardware that won't take you through to the next version of the OS. You can either A) get another card, or B) not upgrade your OS.
In the Open Source model, at least you have a reasaonable assurance that if the developers of the driver drop it, someone will pick it up, even if that someone ends up being you.:)
Not everyone constantly upgrades their hardware. I know this may sound like an alien concept to the gamers out there, but its true.:)
Charging for something has nothing to do with copyright law. If I copy the latest Celine Dion album, for instance, its illegal for me to do that, whether I charge for it or not.
Okay, more technically speaking, you probably could modify the program if it weren't licensed, but you can't distribute the modified program. You *could* distribute diffs, though.
This is technically referred to as the right to make derivative works. Modifying the source code to a copyrighted program that does not specifically license the right to create derivative works, but not distributing the changes is more or less a gray area...for instance, what constitutes distribution?
Well, you could say as long as I, working as an agent for my company, modify it and then don't distribute the changes outside my company, that's allowed. But what constitutes 'my company' or 'my organization'? Say I work for General Motors. Can I distribute the work to my wholly-owned subsidiary, GMAC (GM's finance and mortgage company)? What about Hughes Satellite (of DirectTV, DirectPC, OnStar, etc. fame), which is also wholly-owned by GM? What if I allege the entire world is a member of my organization?
There's some gray area as to what falls into 'fair use' exemption and what doesn't. Personal use is definitely fair use, but beyond that it's a gray area until you get into out-and-out distribution of the work.
Are you going to financially back a lawsuit if one is filed?
Someone ought to. Seriously. We need court precedents to say that search engines are not liable for linking to sites...a search tool is just that... a tool to find stuff. Nobody should be help liable if the search engine turns up stuff that someone doesn't agree with.
It is indeed a great quote, and a very, very clever one. I would just *love* to see a challenge to this in court:-)
Even without this statement appearing in the license... even if RMS had NEVER written that in, that statement STILL applies.
NOTHING grants you the right to copy, distribute or modify a copyrighted work, other than a license, outside of fair use, which only applies to the right to make backup copies (of software only), or to timeshift, etc. If it weren't for the GPL, as stated in the article, you couldn't copy or modify a GPLed program. Period. That's what copyright law IS.
Me too...I'm a professional AIX administrator (also Solaris, Irix and (ick) Win2K.) I love smitty. Wanna setup a site on Sourceforge and get started?:-P
Apparently, in some States, one person can legally train a camera through the open window of another person's home. In others you can not. Sounds fair enough to me. I close the shades when I do not want others to see what is in my apartment and do not need a law to alleviate me of my responsibility.
Actually, my understanding is that the main purpose of this law is to go after people who are using cameras for stuff like "upskirting" or placing cameras in public bathrooms, etc. Voyeur cams for the Internet...that's what they want to stop.
Not that I agree or disagree... I'm with you, I think there are enough laws on the books to deal with this one, IMHO.
Hard drives cannot decide to use other devices' IRQ numbers. It is the IDE controller that uses the IRQ, not the drive. Most IRQ controllers are hard-coded to use IRQ 14 for IDE 0 and IRQ 5 for IDE.
If your friend had a problem with IRQs, then he most likely had either a faulty controller or a faulty BIOS or both.
PS I realize we're talking about a private company, in a country without all of the free speech protections of the US.
Sounds pretty clear from this slashdotter's comments that Germany does have much the same free speech protections as the US, at least in terms of their Constitution.
the fact that it is against the law reduces your population of violaters to a small percentage, IFF the law is well balenced and fair to everyone.
You still haven't answered my question. If you make software that enables one to download copyrighted MP3s illegal, how do you get around the fact that any program in existence that does file transfer would have to be made illegal if the law is to be enforceable? Doing so would be a violation of First Amendment protections. A law that is unenforceable because of the First Amendment is therefore illegal.
even making it illegal to download copyrighted MP3s, explicitly, would make it less of a thing to do, since most folks out there right now do not see a problem with it, or even know it is illegal.
Most folks don't know it's illegal? Oh, c'mon now. Don't be ridiculous. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if I'm copying something from someone else that normally costs money, I'm breaking the law.
Besides, why would we need a law specifically makeing it illegal to download copyrighted MP3s? It's already illegal.
I would support a law that outlawed apps that have a function that allows the downloading of MP3s illegal MP3s. that is short enough in scope to not hurt any application, and keep functions like looking for porn films still viable on kazaa
Um, no, it's not. How would you technically do such a thing? You can't check the file extension, because that's easily changeable. What about scanning the file contents? Well, then people might start zipping first. Or using encryption. Or whatever.
So the only way you could outlaw such a thing would be to outlaw any programs that do file transfers. That means FTP servers (like ProFTPd), Web servers (Like Apache), file servers (like Samba), terminal programs that do Z-Modem or something similar, IM clients that do file transfers (like AIM, gAIM, ICQ, etc.), and quite possibly all removable media in existence.
Don't be in favor of laws when you don't know the repercussions of those laws or understand the consequences of said law being taken to the extreme.
Slashdot Mirror
One thing I've noticed within the past year or so is the huge increase in the number of competitors for office suites in the open source/Linux community.
While competition may spur innovation in most cases, I don't believe it to be true when taken to this degree for open source software.
The main reason behind this belief is simply the fact that the reason most people don't adopt secondary office suites is because of the different standards. People use MS Office because they know sending a co-worker a PowerPoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet will not cause any compatibility issues, because it is a fair assumption that this person also has MS Office. What the Linux community really needs is a single office suite standard, eliminating the compatibility issues. Then we can work on competition.
One thing I've noticed within the past year or so is the huge increase in the number of competitors for operating systems in the computer industry.
While competition may spur innovation in most cases, I don't believe it to be true when taken to this degree for operating systems.
The main reason behind this belief is simply the fact that the reason most people don't adopt secondary operating systems is because of the different standards. People use MS Windows because they know installing new hardware and software will not cause any compatibility issues, because it is a fair assumption that all hardware and software are compatible with Windows. What the marketplace really needs is a operating system standard, eliminating the compatibility issues. Then we can work on competition.
(I'm demonstrating the absurd by being absurd.
OK, options, Load/Save. Looks just like Word. Autosave every minute, create backup (oh yes). Oh, default save format? "SOT Office 6.0 Text Document"? A quick save reveals that this is a binary format, not anything sane like XML. So, no, I don't bloody well think so. Word 97/2000/XP, please. "This may cause data loss.". I'll take that risk. If I can't use this to reliably read/write Word 97 .doc binary formats, it's no use to me (sorry, but it isn't).
If it uses the same format as OpenOffice, then the file format is a set of XML files that are zipped (as in PKZIP format)
Good point. I hadn't thought of that one.
Branding makes you money in the "real" world, as opposed to on the Internet, though. The site itself doesn't directly generate any revenue** but rather it contributes to the branding which in turn generates revenue.
**Technically speaking, an Internet site used for branding can generate revenue, but tracking it is what's difficult. Customer surveys are useful here, but they're no panacea. Most customer surveys are biased to begin with due to the elective nature of them...even if you use incentives to get people to fill them out, then primarily only the people interested in your particular incentives will fill them out...
If I were you, I'd read this page. There are methods of blocking parts of a site, yes, but robots.txt isn't one of them, at least as far as Google is concerned.
Sure...this is basically a form of subscriptions, except that it would allow users who wanted to view one page of a site without having to shell out money for a whole month, or whatever... kinda like Slashdot's model, but not really.
:)
Unfortunately, the infrastructure you speak of doesn't exist yet...I was referring to what is viable TODAY.
Either of those methods will cause Gamespot's entire Website to not be listed in a Google search at all...that has both positive and negative effects for Gamespot.
Without being indexed by a search engine, they will certainly have less new visitors. This may actually be what they want, but it may actually NOT be what they want.
The way I see it, there are only 3 viable Internet business models. They are:
1. Advertising. Advertising works only if there are enough advertisers paying you to advertise on your site vs. what your costs are in bandwidth, colocs, etc. With a decline in advertising spending across the board for ALL media, Internet advertising has taken a hit, especially with the dot.com bust.
2. Subscriptions. Obviously, charge your users for the use of the bandwidth and server storage. You have to charge enough to cover your costs plus profit, but not too much that the market won't bear it. A year or two ago, the answer to what the market would bear would have been close to zero. It's starting to change now... people are realizing that yes, you have to pay for certain kinds of content, or it simply won't be available at all...
3. Sell stuff on your site. You basically use the info on your site as a means to entice your users to buy your products. For a site like Gamespot or Slashdot, it would be very hard to maintain objectivity and credibility in their journalism, since they'd basically be representing a product.
And really...that's it... in the end, I'd rather PAY for a service rather than have the site sell a product and hurt the integrity of their information.
The reviews will be available for 7 days for free. Google's cache lasts longer than that.
Are you sure it spontaneously rebooted, or was it being remotely controlled perhaps? Remember to change anything deeper than the wallpaper, you have to reboot... :)
Uhhh ... pretty much. Except when the player misses. :) Then the ball just comes back and bounces some more.
:)
/me still has pong somewhere but can't find it.
Currently, the biggest challenge for Linux is making the installation painless. The problem is not that Linux developers don't want to--its just as I'm sure they can tell you, getting the hardware and drivers they need is really difficult. I'm not sure how we, as a community, can help that. Maybe mass-buy a new graphics card if the company produces a Linux driver off the bat?
:)
:-P
On certain hardware configurations the installation could be quite painless if the installers weren't so damned buggy.
Look at Mandrake, for instance, which clearly has one of the best installers, DrakX.
If everything goes right, and you have supported hardware, the installation will be painless. DrakX has a nice graphical interface and installation is mostly automatic, including driver detection, if you accept the defaults. Unfortunately, DrakX has some nasty bugs.
For instance, if an installation CD has a smudge on it, it is highly probable that after cleaning it, you'll have to start the install all over, because DrakX will get confused and lose its list of files to be installed. This is true in Mandrake 8.1 and earlier, I have NOT tested this on 8.2.
In some cases, even though it was selected, the 8.0 installer didn't install the kernel sources for some reason. (Actually, I don't think you can elect to have the installer NOT install the kernel sources).
Nasty little bugs like this are the ones that the Linux Janitors, as you say, need to fix.
But I don't think that the installation is nearly as awful as it once was. Most people who think installation is painful either have A) the latest and greatest hardware (least likely to get a driver for) or B) run Slackware.
While it is certainly commendable that nVIDIA constantly releases new drivers for their cards on Linux, I'll take specs over closed source drivers any day of the week.
:)
:)
Here's why:
If you're always updating your hardware and you keep updating to the latest and greatest video cards, and you don't update your operating system too much, and you don't mess with experimental or drivers for other hardwre in your system (which means that you follow the same basic pattern as a gamer), then great, nVIDIA's development model probably works for you.
However, what if you're still using the GeForce 2 card and plan on using it for at least a couple of years, but you want to keep trying out new Linux distributions and versions, and maybe even experimental kernels? And what if nVIDIA suddenly stops developing new versions of the geForce 2 driver, because they discontinue the card and then have no funding to work on drivers for discontinued cards?
Well, as we all know, older video drivers may or may not work with new versions of XFree, new kernel versions, etc. without being recompiled. If the source isn't available for recompiling, and nVIDIA isn't doing it, who is? No one. So now you're stuck with a piece of hardware that won't take you through to the next version of the OS. You can either A) get another card, or B) not upgrade your OS.
In the Open Source model, at least you have a reasaonable assurance that if the developers of the driver drop it, someone will pick it up, even if that someone ends up being you.
Not everyone constantly upgrades their hardware. I know this may sound like an alien concept to the gamers out there, but its true.
Charging for something has nothing to do with copyright law. If I copy the latest Celine Dion album, for instance, its illegal for me to do that, whether I charge for it or not.
Slashdot isn't selling information... it's charging rent for bandwidth usage and server space.
Okay, more technically speaking, you probably could modify the program if it weren't licensed, but you can't distribute the modified program. You *could* distribute diffs, though.
This is technically referred to as the right to make derivative works. Modifying the source code to a copyrighted program that does not specifically license the right to create derivative works, but not distributing the changes is more or less a gray area...for instance, what constitutes distribution?
Well, you could say as long as I, working as an agent for my company, modify it and then don't distribute the changes outside my company, that's allowed. But what constitutes 'my company' or 'my organization'? Say I work for General Motors. Can I distribute the work to my wholly-owned subsidiary, GMAC (GM's finance and mortgage company)? What about Hughes Satellite (of DirectTV, DirectPC, OnStar, etc. fame), which is also wholly-owned by GM? What if I allege the entire world is a member of my organization?
There's some gray area as to what falls into 'fair use' exemption and what doesn't. Personal use is definitely fair use, but beyond that it's a gray area until you get into out-and-out distribution of the work.
Are you going to financially back a lawsuit if one is filed?
... a tool to find stuff. Nobody should be help liable if the search engine turns up stuff that someone doesn't agree with.
Someone ought to. Seriously. We need court precedents to say that search engines are not liable for linking to sites...a search tool is just that
Hello? EFF? CDT? CPSR? Are you guys listening???
It is indeed a great quote, and a very, very clever one. I would just *love* to see a challenge to this in court :-)
... even if RMS had NEVER written that in, that statement STILL applies.
Even without this statement appearing in the license
NOTHING grants you the right to copy, distribute or modify a copyrighted work, other than a license, outside of fair use, which only applies to the right to make backup copies (of software only), or to timeshift, etc. If it weren't for the GPL, as stated in the article, you couldn't copy or modify a GPLed program. Period. That's what copyright law IS.
Me too...I'm a professional AIX administrator (also Solaris, Irix and (ick) Win2K.) I love smitty. Wanna setup a site on Sourceforge and get started? :-P
All those interested, e-mail me.
Apparently, in some States, one person can legally train a camera through the open window of another person's home. In others you can not. Sounds fair enough to me. I close the shades when I do not want others to see what is in my apartment and do not need a law to alleviate me of my responsibility.
Actually, my understanding is that the main purpose of this law is to go after people who are using cameras for stuff like "upskirting" or placing cameras in public bathrooms, etc. Voyeur cams for the Internet...that's what they want to stop.
Not that I agree or disagree... I'm with you, I think there are enough laws on the books to deal with this one, IMHO.
That should be IRQ 15 for IDE 1. Shoulda hit preview. :)
Hard drives cannot decide to use other devices' IRQ numbers. It is the IDE controller that uses the IRQ, not the drive. Most IRQ controllers are hard-coded to use IRQ 14 for IDE 0 and IRQ 5 for IDE.
If your friend had a problem with IRQs, then he most likely had either a faulty controller or a faulty BIOS or both.
Don't ask me. I use Opera. The site looks fine to me. :)
PS I realize we're talking about a private company, in a country without all of the free speech protections of the US.
Sounds pretty clear from this slashdotter's comments that Germany does have much the same free speech protections as the US, at least in terms of their Constitution.
the fact that it is against the law reduces your population of violaters to a small percentage, IFF the law is well balenced and fair to everyone.
You still haven't answered my question. If you make software that enables one to download copyrighted MP3s illegal, how do you get around the fact that any program in existence that does file transfer would have to be made illegal if the law is to be enforceable? Doing so would be a violation of First Amendment protections. A law that is unenforceable because of the First Amendment is therefore illegal.
even making it illegal to download copyrighted MP3s, explicitly, would make it less of a thing to do, since most folks out there right now do not see a problem with it, or even know it is illegal.
Most folks don't know it's illegal? Oh, c'mon now. Don't be ridiculous. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if I'm copying something from someone else that normally costs money, I'm breaking the law.
Besides, why would we need a law specifically makeing it illegal to download copyrighted MP3s? It's already illegal.
I would support a law that outlawed apps that have a function that allows the downloading of MP3s illegal MP3s. that is short enough in scope to not hurt any application, and keep functions like looking for porn films still viable on kazaa
Um, no, it's not. How would you technically do such a thing? You can't check the file extension, because that's easily changeable. What about scanning the file contents? Well, then people might start zipping first. Or using encryption. Or whatever.
So the only way you could outlaw such a thing would be to outlaw any programs that do file transfers. That means FTP servers (like ProFTPd), Web servers (Like Apache), file servers (like Samba), terminal programs that do Z-Modem or something similar, IM clients that do file transfers (like AIM, gAIM, ICQ, etc.), and quite possibly all removable media in existence.
Don't be in favor of laws when you don't know the repercussions of those laws or understand the consequences of said law being taken to the extreme.