an all Linux workstation environment is one that has Free software on it. The person who snuck in Windows 2000 probably has done so in violation of their license agreement.
The W2K license agreement does not prohibit interoperation with free software. I am aware of no software that has such a provision. This is pure FUD and you know it. But apparently you're not secure enough with your own choices and have to disparage the choices of others to make up for it. I prefer to raise up free software instead of tearing down the rest.
They always have to mark their territory and demonstrate that the computer I use is their property to do with what they want.
Prepare for a perceptions-shattering revelation: those computers are their responsibility! If you bring in your own box and keep it off of the company network, then go ahead and do whatever you want. But until then don't treat someone else's property as if it were your own.
They are the enemy for anyone trying to get work done.
No, they're the ones who enable stuff to get done. You think the people in accounting and HR know how to configure a network? Hah!
As a programmer I need to install programs all the time. Programs the IT monkey can't even grasp what they are. So he'll say no.
Then segment your network. But all programmers on their own net and let them configure away! Then when you take down the network you only have your peers pissing on you, and not the people who sign your checks.
but in a programming environment, the programmers can usually run the network better in their spare time.
Hee, hee! That's the silliest thing I've ever heard. Please don't remain anonymous. Let us know who you are, so when you get canned by IT we don't hire you by mistake...
If you've ever had to build a GUI in C/C++, you know it is not portable.
A GUI interface should not be a part of a programming language, any more than a GUI shell should be a part of an operating system. That's what libraries are for. Should there be GUI standards? Of course! But that's not the point. The machines themselves don't have standard GUIs, so why should a their translators have them?
Java not only solves this problem, but does it nicely. Pluggable look and feel's. A well designed framework -- better than some of the other frameworks I've used.
'Tis true! If your only concern is portability, then Java (or C console) is the way to go. But there are other concerns for other people.
But not only a portable GUI toolkit, but portable everything else with it. e.g. Collections/containers/algorithms that aren't the abomination that is STL.
The STL is hardly an abomination. Perhaps you haven't grokked it yet. It is a completely different paradigm than functional or object oriented programming. It's *generic* programming instead. But even if you stick to the tried and true OO paradigm, the STL is till simple, robust and fast.
It has everything else going for it. Type safe. No unhecked runtime errors. RTTI. Garbage collection.
RTTI should not be counted as a major benefit. In all languages that have it, including Java, it's a hack to get around encapsulation. There are sometimes instances where you need it, but always keep it in the bottom of your toolbox under lock and key.
This second system should produce far better software than the first company. Someone who's doing something as a hobby should be more involved than someone who's working merely for money.
Merely for money! You make it sound as if earning a living were a bad thing. Of course, the best job in the world is one where you get paid for doing what you would do anyway, but that's no reason to disparage those who hire out their development skills.
The results of hobbyist development are due more to the fact that hobbyists don't have timetables, can choose their projects, concentrate on the features they like, etc. It has nothing to do with the fact they are more involved. Many commercial developers are equally involved, and dearly love the projects they are working on.
If there is a problem with hobbyist development, it is because there is a dearth of hobbyist tech writers and hobbyist quality assurance.
With more people getting involved with writing OSS software, individual applications result without people willing to contribute to other people's work.
The number of people involved has nothing to do with it. Certainly there are some now that release their works as OSS/FS simply because they think they are supposed to, rather than because they want to, but the typical OSS/FS developer has not changed since day one. Who cares of joe and nedit developers are working on each others' projects? I don't recall vi and emacs developers cross contributing much years ago.
They seem to want to write everything themselves from scratch. This is how software development works on the commercial level, which is exactly the opposite of what the OSS movement is trying to accomplish.
How do you know what OSS is trying to accomplish? I'll let you in on a clue... There is no OSS or FS you can point to. All you can find are individuals with indvidual goals and ideals. We are cats! Don't try to herd us! Don't tell me that my project isn't true OSS because I'm not meeting your goals.
Instead of contributing to existing applications lacking a particular feature or with a certain bug, we're getting hundreds of coders starting brand new projects that differ only slightly from existing ones.
I think this is great! It's a sign that the coders are free people, that they have the liberty of choosing their own projects rather than being forced into one by some self-appointed potentate. It seems that nary a week goes by that someone here on Slashdot urges either KDE or GNOME to abandon their project and go work on the other. These guys have no clue to what the freedom they claim to espouse even means.
What would you do? Lobby Algor or Dubya into appointing you OSS Czar so you could have the authority of armies and navies to force people to work on the project you want them to work on? And what would you do when you found some renegade writing Yet Another Text Editor? Lock them away? Shoot them if they resist?
Currently at freshmeat.net, there are 179 console-based text editing utilities. How many do we really need?
We need each and every one of them dammit!
I've personally had a few such experiences where I've submitted diffs for a program that someone else has written. A response comes back form the lead developer saying something along the lines of, "Thanks, but I've been planning on implementing these features on my own in a few months."
So, you're telling me that you submitted diffs for *features* without also submitting plans on how these features fit into the overall architecture of the project, and without taking into account any plans of the project members? I'm hardly surprised that the diffs were rejected.
People who think they are superior to others, aren't.
I once took a class taught by David Brin, and I can say from experience that he considers himself superior to others. It doesn't take much to make a brilliant man into an elitist, and from there it's just a hop, skip and a jump into becoming a full-blown tyrant.
If you employ anybody, you benefit from state sponsored education.
Last time I hired someone, they had been homeschooled and received a degree from a private university.
Maybe you are a selfish g-dammned lout of a parent, but every other parent that I know of has their children's education as their Number One Priority. They WILL NOT forgo their child's education if the state ceases it's redistribution of wealth from the child-less to the child-blessed. Maybe that's what you would do, but it's insulting to say that others would do the same.
Now, it *is* desirable for society if every one is educated, just as it is desirable for everyone to be well fed. But just as the government does not mandate that all children be fed from state-run grocery stores, neither do children need to be educated in state-run schools. For those that need assistant, there are other avenues for help. Those who can't afford food can receive food stamps. Those that can't afford an education could get educational assistance.
It's amazing that even with food vastly more vital than education, no one is clamouring for a state monopoly on grocery stores.
I don't want you subsidizing my kids! Reread the post!!! As it stands right now, your property taxes are going to subsidize those who have children of school age. Get the government out of schools and you only have to pay for it if you send a child to school (or donate to an education charity, scholarship, etc).
The solution is simple. You just have to know what the real problem is. The problem is *not* censorware. If you deny me the right to create, distribute and market censorware, then you are 100% opposed to liberty, freedom, sharing, and all the rest that slashdotters are supposedly for.
Instead, the problem is the government monopoly over education. We don't need autarchs forcing parents to send their children to state run political indoctrination centers. Privatize the schools and libraries. I want more from freedom than just free software. I want the freedom to choose my own school, and not to be taxed for a school I did not choose. Then I can choose a school based on my needs, wants and beliefs, instead having my needs, wants and beliefs determined for me by majority vote.
I could choose a school that didn't have censorware. Or if I wanted, I could choose one that did. But the choice should be mine, since it's my life, and my child's life, and not Algor's or Dubya's.
You obviously did not read the article, or if you did, failed to understand it. They only claimed that the development model was *different*, not better. The listed numerous problems with the model. In fact, they even had a large sidebar from Theo stating that OpenBSD had a better model because it had a "benevolent dictator" form.
The BSD rules say that you must have committed at least once in the twelve months previous to the election.
Committers don't meet face to face. No will know your gender unless you tell them. Demonstrate that your code is good and worthwhile and you'll get to be a committers. Commit at least once a year and you'll get to vote.
Okay, I spoke too quick. Although I recall Miguel dissing KDE at the recent LWCE, I cannot distinctly recall it. I may possibly be confused with someone else. I retract my comments about Miguel.
I would wait until the ports get updated. Should be only a couple of days at the most. This instant gratification stuff is only for the wussies. Believe me, the KDE and Qt maintainers will have no sleep tonight. You are using cvsup to keep up to date on ports, aren't you?
It should have had feature freeze and most of the bad bugs fixed.
It's been in feature freeze for quite a while now. No new features. During the freeze all commits (besides art) were to be bug fixes. RC1 had no known serious bugs. But some were found so now there is a second RC. If serious bugs are again found, expect a third.
For every bug fixed, expect three new ones to be introduced. So only the showstoppers get fixed in the release candidates. The less serious bugs and annoyances have to wait for 2.0.1
Can somone more knowledgable than I (can't be hard) post a summary of "why you should upgrade?"
I can speak about upgrading from 1.1.2, but not GNOME, since I haven't used that for quite a while. konqueror is a replacement for kfm. It is now a full fledged web browser. It ROX. Component based so you can trim off the stuff you don't want to run. A lot of the stuff have been put on a high-protein, low-fat diet. DCOP/kparts. Themable widgets, including GTK themes. KOffice. The first 100% free (as in RMS) and open (as in ESR) integrated office suite. Most of the core applications, such as kmail, have been revamped for increased functionality and usability.
It's like KDE-1 was a caterpillar, and for the last year or so was stuck in a chrysalis. Now it's hatching into what it was meant to be. "Look at me! I'm a butterfly!"
And finally, but not least, Shisen-Go now has gravity mode! Woohoo!
Remember the announcement of the Gnome foundation?
Let's see. I was there. I distinctly remember talks that KDE was dead. All the media picked up on it. Reporters were going up to KDE folk and asking them what project they would now be moving to. Even though he denies it, I distinctly recall Miguel announcing the imminent demise of KDE, as he has done since the first day he took the reigns of the GNOME project.
The "rants and flames" you mention were merely loud reminders that KDE was alive and well, and no announcements from TGF could do anything to stop it. If the KDE core developers made a public announcement, complete with press releases to all the media, the GNOME was one of the walking dead, don't you think the GNOME users would rant and rave as well?
I believe that if you turn off exception support, then use exceptions in your code, you will get a compile-time error. So if Qt compiles with -fno-exceptions, then it's okay. Qt is a cross-platform toolkit, and some compilers (including older g++) don't do exceptions.
You could have exceptions in your own code and still use exception-less Qt. I like exceptions. It gives you clarity of code with robust error handling. With a decent compiler, it won't cause any more bloat than other error handling methods.
You can compile in GIF support for your own use, no problemo. But FreeBSD didn't want to take the risk of shipping GIF enabled code. The way I look at it, I personally am not dealing with any Unisys owned information, Trolltech is. I'm certain that they already have an arrangement with Unisys, so I have no worries.
The fix is easy. For Qt, just set the unisys license environment variable (look in the Makefile to see what it is) and "make install". This is what I did and it works fine.
Also, I know that Mandrake ships QT with GIF support, does this mean that they paid Unisys, or that they are breaking the law?
I don't believe that they paid Unisys, but they are not breaking the law. Unisys is just too jealous in its IP, and often oversteps its bounds. If Unisys came after Mandrake they would be making the PR disaster of the decade, and they would lose the case.
but before I put it up on my website I wanted to make sure that I (as a Canadian citizen) am not going to get into trouble.
I wouldn't. I think as a Canadian citizen you are in the clear, but IANAL. It's easy enough to post the "fixed" port, and let the users automatically build it themselves.
Hah! Something like this happened to a friend and I several years ago. We went to a store that built and sold their own brand of computers. This computer was for my friend. The salesman went down the checklist: harddrive, memory, modem, etc. Then he came to OS. We said we didn't need that, and he proceeded to list the benefits (and good ones at that) for having the store install the OS for us.
"Great," my friend said. "I want OS/2."
It's also interesting that you brought up partitioning. Even if the customer wants Win98/NT, they probably don't want one huge massive 16Gig primary partition.
You mean like the Slashdot announcements on the main page for *every* minor release of Debian and Redhat, and the frequent announcements for new versions of Slackware, SuSE, Corel, Caldera, TurboLinux, ad nauseum.
The BSD camp is far *less* balkanized than the Linux camps. Put NetBSD and OpenBSD users in the same small room with locked door and there will be peace, understanding and camaradarie. Put Debian and Redhat users in the same small room and there will be acrimony, accusation and virtual bloodshed.
if there was any doubt we have a federal government run by corporations this should end it.
Oooh! You get an F in logic and rationality. If no corporations paid taxes, while everyone else did, then you would merely have a piece of circumstantial evidence. But you don't even have this!
Why do you claim that corporations run the federal government because they took advantage of tax writeoffs, shelters and loopholes, yet ignore the thousands, maybe millions, of individuals that do the same?
My previous employer paid no taxes. But it was an unincorporated three man operation with revenues (not profits) of only $250,000 a year (a very small business). A few years ago my Mom did not pay taxes because of Amway (of all things).
I find it especially ironic that CmdrTaco is an employee of the OSDN corporation. I wonder what federal agency he gets to be in charge of for being their faithful lapdog? Or does he get a cabinet post?
Why do people persist in this fallacious argument, that without copyright, artists would cease to create?
No one is saying that they will cease to exist. But they will be fewer in number. If you have an artistic talent you have the choice of earning a living by your talent full time, or taking a job outside of your talent (waiting tables) and only getting to create on the weekends. If artists are allowed to own their own works they will be encouraged to produce more.
And before some numbskull announces that artists don't own their works, the RIAA does, remember that there are thousands of independant artists out there despite the existance of copyright.
Interesting that Bach, Beethoven and Brahms all had to acquire the patronage of the ruling aristocracy before they were able to produce their music full time. Shakespeare had to earn his living for quite some time by producing performances of his works. His earnings from the works themselves were next to nil. If he were not a producer as well as artist...
Hmmm, instead of adding to the pile of regulations, perhaps we could get rid of some that are already there and solve the problem. Bell Atlantic and GTE customers (as well as I, a Pacific Bell customer) have no choice as to their local telephone provider. This isn't because these companies are big, but because the law forbids any competition with them.
Remove the regulations that prohibit entry into the local telco market and the problem is solved. It will quicly become a nightmare house of cards if regulations keep getting imposed in an effort to solve the problems of prior regulations. Food is a much more vital commodity than telephone lines, yet I am allowed the liberty to choose my grocer, but I cannot choose my local telephone service.
AT&T was not a monopoly because they were big. They were a monopoly because the government (a combination of local, state and national) had regulations that prevented anyone else from getting into the industry.
But like radio, the corporations cannot rule the net without government power. So as long as it is not regulated by the state "for the good of society" then no one can gain control.
The typical knee-jerk libertarian response to any critisism of a company's practices. Why must I blaisely accept any company's have the right to kick and scream and try to get others to be so outraged that they not only boycott the product; but, they also write to the publisher and bitch and moan to them directly in the hopes that they drop the practice.
My "knee-jerk" reaction was not to anyone's complaint. Complain all you want, and complain loudly! I hope they do stop the practice. However, there were several posts advocating legal restrictions upon publishers and authors (anti-free-speech). It was to these posters that I was addressing my post.
How about misrepresentation of the product? Was it clearly stated before he paid for the book that an essential part of it was on CD?
I don't know. I haven't seen the book. However most complainers did not mention that, they mentioned the restrictions on their liberty and that the practice regardless of respresentation should be banned.
Slashdot Mirror
an all Linux workstation environment is one that has Free software on it. The person who snuck in Windows 2000 probably has done so in violation of their license agreement.
The W2K license agreement does not prohibit interoperation with free software. I am aware of no software that has such a provision. This is pure FUD and you know it. But apparently you're not secure enough with your own choices and have to disparage the choices of others to make up for it. I prefer to raise up free software instead of tearing down the rest.
They always have to mark their territory and demonstrate that the computer I use is their property to do with what they want.
Prepare for a perceptions-shattering revelation: those computers are their responsibility! If you bring in your own box and keep it off of the company network, then go ahead and do whatever you want. But until then don't treat someone else's property as if it were your own.
They are the enemy for anyone trying to get work done.
No, they're the ones who enable stuff to get done. You think the people in accounting and HR know how to configure a network? Hah!
As a programmer I need to install programs all the time. Programs the IT monkey can't even grasp what they are. So he'll say no.
Then segment your network. But all programmers on their own net and let them configure away! Then when you take down the network you only have your peers pissing on you, and not the people who sign your checks.
but in a programming environment, the programmers can usually run the network better in their spare time.
Hee, hee! That's the silliest thing I've ever heard. Please don't remain anonymous. Let us know who you are, so when you get canned by IT we don't hire you by mistake...
If you've ever had to build a GUI in C/C++, you know it is not portable.
A GUI interface should not be a part of a programming language, any more than a GUI shell should be a part of an operating system. That's what libraries are for. Should there be GUI standards? Of course! But that's not the point. The machines themselves don't have standard GUIs, so why should a their translators have them?
Java not only solves this problem, but does it nicely. Pluggable look and feel's. A well designed framework -- better than some of the other frameworks I've used.
'Tis true! If your only concern is portability, then Java (or C console) is the way to go. But there are other concerns for other people.
But not only a portable GUI toolkit, but portable everything else with it. e.g. Collections/containers/algorithms that aren't the abomination that is STL.
The STL is hardly an abomination. Perhaps you haven't grokked it yet. It is a completely different paradigm than functional or object oriented programming. It's *generic* programming instead. But even if you stick to the tried and true OO paradigm, the STL is till simple, robust and fast.
It has everything else going for it. Type safe. No unhecked runtime errors. RTTI. Garbage collection.
RTTI should not be counted as a major benefit. In all languages that have it, including Java, it's a hack to get around encapsulation. There are sometimes instances where you need it, but always keep it in the bottom of your toolbox under lock and key.
This second system should produce far better software than the first company. Someone who's doing something as a hobby should be more involved than someone who's working merely for money.
Merely for money! You make it sound as if earning a living were a bad thing. Of course, the best job in the world is one where you get paid for doing what you would do anyway, but that's no reason to disparage those who hire out their development skills.
The results of hobbyist development are due more to the fact that hobbyists don't have timetables, can choose their projects, concentrate on the features they like, etc. It has nothing to do with the fact they are more involved. Many commercial developers are equally involved, and dearly love the projects they are working on.
If there is a problem with hobbyist development, it is because there is a dearth of hobbyist tech writers and hobbyist quality assurance.
With more people getting involved with writing OSS software, individual applications result without people willing to contribute to other people's work.
The number of people involved has nothing to do with it. Certainly there are some now that release their works as OSS/FS simply because they think they are supposed to, rather than because they want to, but the typical OSS/FS developer has not changed since day one. Who cares of joe and nedit developers are working on each others' projects? I don't recall vi and emacs developers cross contributing much years ago.
They seem to want to write everything themselves from scratch. This is how software development works on the commercial level, which is exactly the opposite of what the OSS movement is trying to accomplish.
How do you know what OSS is trying to accomplish? I'll let you in on a clue... There is no OSS or FS you can point to. All you can find are individuals with indvidual goals and ideals. We are cats! Don't try to herd us! Don't tell me that my project isn't true OSS because I'm not meeting your goals.
Instead of contributing to existing applications lacking a particular feature or with a certain bug, we're getting hundreds of coders starting brand new projects that differ only slightly from existing ones.
I think this is great! It's a sign that the coders are free people, that they have the liberty of choosing their own projects rather than being forced into one by some self-appointed potentate. It seems that nary a week goes by that someone here on Slashdot urges either KDE or GNOME to abandon their project and go work on the other. These guys have no clue to what the freedom they claim to espouse even means.
What would you do? Lobby Algor or Dubya into appointing you OSS Czar so you could have the authority of armies and navies to force people to work on the project you want them to work on? And what would you do when you found some renegade writing Yet Another Text Editor? Lock them away? Shoot them if they resist?
Currently at freshmeat.net, there are 179 console-based text editing utilities. How many do we really need?
We need each and every one of them dammit!
I've personally had a few such experiences where I've submitted diffs for a program that someone else has written. A response comes back form the lead developer saying something along the lines of, "Thanks, but I've been planning on implementing these features on my own in a few months."
So, you're telling me that you submitted diffs for *features* without also submitting plans on how these features fit into the overall architecture of the project, and without taking into account any plans of the project members? I'm hardly surprised that the diffs were rejected.
People who think they are superior to others, aren't.
I once took a class taught by David Brin, and I can say from experience that he considers himself superior to others. It doesn't take much to make a brilliant man into an elitist, and from there it's just a hop, skip and a jump into becoming a full-blown tyrant.
If you employ anybody, you benefit from state sponsored education.
Last time I hired someone, they had been homeschooled and received a degree from a private university.
Maybe you are a selfish g-dammned lout of a parent, but every other parent that I know of has their children's education as their Number One Priority. They WILL NOT forgo their child's education if the state ceases it's redistribution of wealth from the child-less to the child-blessed. Maybe that's what you would do, but it's insulting to say that others would do the same.
Now, it *is* desirable for society if every one is educated, just as it is desirable for everyone to be well fed. But just as the government does not mandate that all children be fed from state-run grocery stores, neither do children need to be educated in state-run schools. For those that need assistant, there are other avenues for help. Those who can't afford food can receive food stamps. Those that can't afford an education could get educational assistance.
It's amazing that even with food vastly more vital than education, no one is clamouring for a state monopoly on grocery stores.
I don't want you subsidizing my kids! Reread the post!!! As it stands right now, your property taxes are going to subsidize those who have children of school age. Get the government out of schools and you only have to pay for it if you send a child to school (or donate to an education charity, scholarship, etc).
The solution is simple. You just have to know what the real problem is. The problem is *not* censorware. If you deny me the right to create, distribute and market censorware, then you are 100% opposed to liberty, freedom, sharing, and all the rest that slashdotters are supposedly for.
Instead, the problem is the government monopoly over education. We don't need autarchs forcing parents to send their children to state run political indoctrination centers. Privatize the schools and libraries. I want more from freedom than just free software. I want the freedom to choose my own school, and not to be taxed for a school I did not choose. Then I can choose a school based on my needs, wants and beliefs, instead having my needs, wants and beliefs determined for me by majority vote.
I could choose a school that didn't have censorware. Or if I wanted, I could choose one that did. But the choice should be mine, since it's my life, and my child's life, and not Algor's or Dubya's.
You obviously did not read the article, or if you did, failed to understand it. They only claimed that the development model was *different*, not better. The listed numerous problems with the model. In fact, they even had a large sidebar from Theo stating that OpenBSD had a better model because it had a "benevolent dictator" form.
Define regular.
The BSD rules say that you must have committed at least once in the twelve months previous to the election.
Committers don't meet face to face. No will know your gender unless you tell them. Demonstrate that your code is good and worthwhile and you'll get to be a committers. Commit at least once a year and you'll get to vote.
Simple.
Okay, I spoke too quick. Although I recall Miguel dissing KDE at the recent LWCE, I cannot distinctly recall it. I may possibly be confused with someone else. I retract my comments about Miguel.
I would wait until the ports get updated. Should be only a couple of days at the most. This instant gratification stuff is only for the wussies. Believe me, the KDE and Qt maintainers will have no sleep tonight. You are using cvsup to keep up to date on ports, aren't you?
It should have had feature freeze and most of the bad bugs fixed.
It's been in feature freeze for quite a while now. No new features. During the freeze all commits (besides art) were to be bug fixes. RC1 had no known serious bugs. But some were found so now there is a second RC. If serious bugs are again found, expect a third.
For every bug fixed, expect three new ones to be introduced. So only the showstoppers get fixed in the release candidates. The less serious bugs and annoyances have to wait for 2.0.1
Can somone more knowledgable than I (can't be hard) post a summary of "why you should upgrade?"
I can speak about upgrading from 1.1.2, but not GNOME, since I haven't used that for quite a while. konqueror is a replacement for kfm. It is now a full fledged web browser. It ROX. Component based so you can trim off the stuff you don't want to run. A lot of the stuff have been put on a high-protein, low-fat diet. DCOP/kparts. Themable widgets, including GTK themes. KOffice. The first 100% free (as in RMS) and open (as in ESR) integrated office suite. Most of the core applications, such as kmail, have been revamped for increased functionality and usability.
It's like KDE-1 was a caterpillar, and for the last year or so was stuck in a chrysalis. Now it's hatching into what it was meant to be. "Look at me! I'm a butterfly!"
And finally, but not least, Shisen-Go now has gravity mode! Woohoo!
Remember the announcement of the Gnome foundation?
Let's see. I was there. I distinctly remember talks that KDE was dead. All the media picked up on it. Reporters were going up to KDE folk and asking them what project they would now be moving to. Even though he denies it, I distinctly recall Miguel announcing the imminent demise of KDE, as he has done since the first day he took the reigns of the GNOME project.
The "rants and flames" you mention were merely loud reminders that KDE was alive and well, and no announcements from TGF could do anything to stop it. If the KDE core developers made a public announcement, complete with press releases to all the media, the GNOME was one of the walking dead, don't you think the GNOME users would rant and rave as well?
I believe that if you turn off exception support, then use exceptions in your code, you will get a compile-time error. So if Qt compiles with -fno-exceptions, then it's okay. Qt is a cross-platform toolkit, and some compilers (including older g++) don't do exceptions.
You could have exceptions in your own code and still use exception-less Qt. I like exceptions. It gives you clarity of code with robust error handling. With a decent compiler, it won't cause any more bloat than other error handling methods.
You can compile in GIF support for your own use, no problemo. But FreeBSD didn't want to take the risk of shipping GIF enabled code. The way I look at it, I personally am not dealing with any Unisys owned information, Trolltech is. I'm certain that they already have an arrangement with Unisys, so I have no worries.
The fix is easy. For Qt, just set the unisys license environment variable (look in the Makefile to see what it is) and "make install". This is what I did and it works fine.
Also, I know that Mandrake ships QT with GIF support, does this mean that they paid Unisys, or that they are breaking the law?
I don't believe that they paid Unisys, but they are not breaking the law. Unisys is just too jealous in its IP, and often oversteps its bounds. If Unisys came after Mandrake they would be making the PR disaster of the decade, and they would lose the case.
but before I put it up on my website I wanted to make sure that I (as a Canadian citizen) am not going to get into trouble.
I wouldn't. I think as a Canadian citizen you are in the clear, but IANAL. It's easy enough to post the "fixed" port, and let the users automatically build it themselves.
Hah! Something like this happened to a friend and I several years ago. We went to a store that built and sold their own brand of computers. This computer was for my friend. The salesman went down the checklist: harddrive, memory, modem, etc. Then he came to OS. We said we didn't need that, and he proceeded to list the benefits (and good ones at that) for having the store install the OS for us.
"Great," my friend said. "I want OS/2."
It's also interesting that you brought up partitioning. Even if the customer wants Win98/NT, they probably don't want one huge massive 16Gig primary partition.
You mean like the Slashdot announcements on the main page for *every* minor release of Debian and Redhat, and the frequent announcements for new versions of Slackware, SuSE, Corel, Caldera, TurboLinux, ad nauseum.
The BSD camp is far *less* balkanized than the Linux camps. Put NetBSD and OpenBSD users in the same small room with locked door and there will be peace, understanding and camaradarie. Put Debian and Redhat users in the same small room and there will be acrimony, accusation and virtual bloodshed.
if there was any doubt we have a federal government run by corporations this should end it.
Oooh! You get an F in logic and rationality. If no corporations paid taxes, while everyone else did, then you would merely have a piece of circumstantial evidence. But you don't even have this!
Why do you claim that corporations run the federal government because they took advantage of tax writeoffs, shelters and loopholes, yet ignore the thousands, maybe millions, of individuals that do the same?
My previous employer paid no taxes. But it was an unincorporated three man operation with revenues (not profits) of only $250,000 a year (a very small business). A few years ago my Mom did not pay taxes because of Amway (of all things).
I find it especially ironic that CmdrTaco is an employee of the OSDN corporation. I wonder what federal agency he gets to be in charge of for being their faithful lapdog? Or does he get a cabinet post?
Why do people persist in this fallacious argument, that without copyright, artists would cease to create?
No one is saying that they will cease to exist. But they will be fewer in number. If you have an artistic talent you have the choice of earning a living by your talent full time, or taking a job outside of your talent (waiting tables) and only getting to create on the weekends. If artists are allowed to own their own works they will be encouraged to produce more.
And before some numbskull announces that artists don't own their works, the RIAA does, remember that there are thousands of independant artists out there despite the existance of copyright.
Interesting that Bach, Beethoven and Brahms all had to acquire the patronage of the ruling aristocracy before they were able to produce their music full time. Shakespeare had to earn his living for quite some time by producing performances of his works. His earnings from the works themselves were next to nil. If he were not a producer as well as artist...
What?!?! SysV is a descendant of BSD, and didn't come about until years after DARPA had chosen BSD.
Hmmm, instead of adding to the pile of regulations, perhaps we could get rid of some that are already there and solve the problem. Bell Atlantic and GTE customers (as well as I, a Pacific Bell customer) have no choice as to their local telephone provider. This isn't because these companies are big, but because the law forbids any competition with them.
Remove the regulations that prohibit entry into the local telco market and the problem is solved. It will quicly become a nightmare house of cards if regulations keep getting imposed in an effort to solve the problems of prior regulations. Food is a much more vital commodity than telephone lines, yet I am allowed the liberty to choose my grocer, but I cannot choose my local telephone service.
AT&T was not a monopoly because they were big. They were a monopoly because the government (a combination of local, state and national) had regulations that prevented anyone else from getting into the industry.
But like radio, the corporations cannot rule the net without government power. So as long as it is not regulated by the state "for the good of society" then no one can gain control.
The typical knee-jerk libertarian response to any critisism of a company's practices. Why must I blaisely accept any company's have the right to kick and scream and try to get others to be so outraged that they not only boycott the product; but, they also write to the publisher and bitch and moan to them directly in the hopes that they drop the practice.
My "knee-jerk" reaction was not to anyone's complaint. Complain all you want, and complain loudly! I hope they do stop the practice. However, there were several posts advocating legal restrictions upon publishers and authors (anti-free-speech). It was to these posters that I was addressing my post.
How about misrepresentation of the product? Was it clearly stated before he paid for the book that an essential part of it was on CD?
I don't know. I haven't seen the book. However most complainers did not mention that, they mentioned the restrictions on their liberty and that the practice regardless of respresentation should be banned.