Right on! Not only should Microsoft be forced to include Java, they should also include Python, Haskell and Tcl/Tk. Make them ship with Navigator AND Mozilla. But icons for both MSOffice and OpenOffice on the desktop. Heck, throw in a loopback distro of Linux while you're at it.
After all, if Sun cannot compete because Windows doesn't ship with Java, then neither can anyone else who doesn't have their software shipped with Windows.
Hee, hee. Since Microsoft has been declared an illegal monopoly, they're fair game. Make them do whatever we want. Make them give away MSOffice for free! Make them give all of us a rebate whether or not we've even used their stuff! Make them replace their desktop with GNOME! They're evil so anything the government does to them is justified...
The only reason Dvorak thinks Linux is too much like Windows is because he really doesn't know what an operating system is.
I run Slackware and FreeBSD. No one in their right minds would consider these two systems to be similar to Windows. But this is Dvorak. His purpose in life is to troll for fish using inanities as bait.
There is no magical 'Free Market Fairy' that is going to come along and restore health to the industry.
You're right, in the face of monopoly, only the ultimate monopoly can save us. After all, Linux didn't appear out of thin air, it was the government that created it! Linus Torvalds was sitting at home whining about DOS before the all powerful state stepped in and wrote an OS for him...
Clearly any code that either statically or dynamically links to GPL code falls under this statement
Dependency is not derivation. Static linkage constitutes derivation, since it actually includes the original work. But this is not the case with dynamic linkage.
Do not confuse derivation in the copyright sense with derivation in the coding. They are two entirely different things.
Darwin is not free software, because the APSL is not consistent with the free software definition.
Oh but it is! Don't you guys ever read the bible you say you believe in?
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Which of these four freedoms does the APSL violate? Don't quote some RMS speech, just tell us which one. Up or down. No ranting.
I don't like the APSL deployment clause. But my like or dislike has nothing to do with its compliance with the Free Software Definition.
GNU/Darwin is not a GNU project. The OS it runs on is not GNU. RMS has not requested that they call it GNU. There is no rationale to use the name GNU. But they do so anyway.
The GNU/Darwin folk have been off in their own little world for quite some time now.
What's with their name? They aren't affiliated with GNU, the underlying OS is not GNU, and RMS never requested that they change the name.
The GPL does not prohibit linkage to proprietary libraries if they are part of the system, not even in spirit. There is nothing that is comparable to the core OSX GUI toolkits, not even GNUstep, so there's no moral (in the GNU sense) rationale for forbidding their use.
Imagine the OpenCD project banned software that linked to win32 or gdi. This is what GNU/Darwin has done. It's silly, spiteful and will ultimately harm only themselves.
They could just sneak their code in, but it's still going to be hard with a decent source control system and procedures.
There are several ways to tighten up your checkin security, but I will mention but one: the source repository isn't hidden, so do an automatic nightly audit of checkins to see if they match the authorized checkins, and compare the build to the installation. If you find something that doesn't match, then someone's been tampering.
Are you advocating a line-by-line code/config review of -everything- every single time a change is made, and do you realize how impractical that is
Departments do this all the time, with much more complex code. Those departments are collectively called "Software Engineering". It may be impossible to grasp by IT departments, but it is possible, and desired, to review every line of code making its way into the system.
To be fair though, IT has different requirements. When the system is down, you don't have time for a review. But that's no reason not to do a post-fix review.
My one response to Brin's article would be that it is possible to take pleasure in archetypical fantasies like LotR without it indicating a regressive Romantic yearning.
This is something that David Brin should know all too well. He was one of the primary contributors to the Midkemia world, and a member of the "Friday Nighters". For him to be bashing romanticist tolkienesque fantasy is bizarre.
if you setup linux in ~40 hours (for shared use) you are pretty fast.
I sure hope Linux isn't that horrible. I spent 20 hours setting up a FreeBSD box securely for shared use. 15 of those hours had nothing to do with configuration or security, but were peripheral tasks like writing site-specific admin and user manuals, testing, etc.
I'll second your comment. I've never tried to lock down a Windows machine, but from what I've heard, it takes considerably more knowledge then what you learned in "Be An MCSE in 24 Hours".
On the other hand, install a BSD or reasonable Linux distro, and you're done. For the paranoid (and you can never be paranoid enough), disable CDROM and floppy booting in the BIOS, password the BIOS, make everything but/var,/tmp and/home read only, and keep up to date on the security issues.
Only 45 seconds! You must have the patience of Job! At about the 30 second mark I would have already been in the store exchanging the card for something else.
The longest I have to wait for X to startup is on my home system which has an G450+. It took me five seconds. That was still too long, so I built the driver without the HAL, and it now takes half a second. At work it's an ATI Rage and X starts up in half a second as well.
p.s. These cards do not meet the "You Must Use This Card Or Resign Your Nerd Membership Now" requirements of the gaming community. If your goal is to be accepted as an Alpha Nerd of the gaming community, then by all means continue to use the GeForce until the video kingmakers decree the next must-have card.
I think you missed my point entirely. Property taxes, when used wisely, are sufficient for funding programs whose costs are dependent upon population (schools, fire, etc). Property tax revenues increase proportional to the increase in population.
Seriously, property tax revenues relate directly to the state population, and thus to the school funding needs. If the schools don't have enough to replace broken windows, then eliminate the waste instead of trying to shake down the renters for more every two years.
most people would rather deal with the cable company than the phone company.
If your phone company discovers you have two phones in your house, they won't violently remove your splitter than stomp off in a huff. Phone companies, despite their faults, realize that once the phone line enters your home, it's now your property.
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Right on! Not only should Microsoft be forced to include Java, they should also include Python, Haskell and Tcl/Tk. Make them ship with Navigator AND Mozilla. But icons for both MSOffice and OpenOffice on the desktop. Heck, throw in a loopback distro of Linux while you're at it.
After all, if Sun cannot compete because Windows doesn't ship with Java, then neither can anyone else who doesn't have their software shipped with Windows.
Hee, hee. Since Microsoft has been declared an illegal monopoly, they're fair game. Make them do whatever we want. Make them give away MSOffice for free! Make them give all of us a rebate whether or not we've even used their stuff! Make them replace their desktop with GNOME! They're evil so anything the government does to them is justified...
I would be the happiest man alive if debian would use the FreeBSD kernel.
But then they would have to call it "GNU/BSD", which would cause the universe to implode.
I don't know if it's still there or not, but if it is, it's only a problem with the boot loader. Use another instead, like LILO or Grub.
The only reason Dvorak thinks Linux is too much like Windows is because he really doesn't know what an operating system is.
I run Slackware and FreeBSD. No one in their right minds would consider these two systems to be similar to Windows. But this is Dvorak. His purpose in life is to troll for fish using inanities as bait.
We need a decent mechanism for charging for bandwidth. You don't want to eliminate the legitimate mailing lists along with the spammers.
There is no magical 'Free Market Fairy' that is going to come along and restore health to the industry.
You're right, in the face of monopoly, only the ultimate monopoly can save us. After all, Linux didn't appear out of thin air, it was the government that created it! Linus Torvalds was sitting at home whining about DOS before the all powerful state stepped in and wrote an OS for him...
Too bad GNU-Darwin doesn't feel the same way. Otherwise they would never have started using Darwin/OSX to begin with...
Let me be the first to defend GNU, since I have attacked them so often in the past...
GNU/Darwin is nota part of the GNU project. Any bizarre actions on the part of GNU/Darwin should not be placed at the feet of GNU.
but this does not mean that if sticking to your principles will make your life somewhat harder, you should just drop them
No it doesn't. But if life starts getting too hard because of them, you had damn well better be sure that your principles are valid.
Clearly any code that either statically or dynamically links to GPL code falls under this statement
Dependency is not derivation. Static linkage constitutes derivation, since it actually includes the original work. But this is not the case with dynamic linkage.
Do not confuse derivation in the copyright sense with derivation in the coding. They are two entirely different things.
Oh but it is! Don't you guys ever read the bible you say you believe in?
Which of these four freedoms does the APSL violate? Don't quote some RMS speech, just tell us which one. Up or down. No ranting.
I don't like the APSL deployment clause. But my like or dislike has nothing to do with its compliance with the Free Software Definition.
csh is the default scripting environment on OSX. That's why it's used.
Should something else be used instead? Probably, as long as it's small and standard. That leaves bash and ksh out.
...they can't call the thing GNU if ...
GNU/Darwin is not a GNU project. The OS it runs on is not GNU. RMS has not requested that they call it GNU. There is no rationale to use the name GNU. But they do so anyway.
The GNU/Darwin folk have been off in their own little world for quite some time now.
What's with their name? They aren't affiliated with GNU, the underlying OS is not GNU, and RMS never requested that they change the name.
The GPL does not prohibit linkage to proprietary libraries if they are part of the system, not even in spirit. There is nothing that is comparable to the core OSX GUI toolkits, not even GNUstep, so there's no moral (in the GNU sense) rationale for forbidding their use.
Imagine the OpenCD project banned software that linked to win32 or gdi. This is what GNU/Darwin has done. It's silly, spiteful and will ultimately harm only themselves.
Go Fink and DarwinPorts!
They could just sneak their code in, but it's still going to be hard with a decent source control system and procedures.
There are several ways to tighten up your checkin security, but I will mention but one: the source repository isn't hidden, so do an automatic nightly audit of checkins to see if they match the authorized checkins, and compare the build to the installation. If you find something that doesn't match, then someone's been tampering.
Are you advocating a line-by-line code/config review of -everything- every single time a change is made, and do you realize how impractical that is
Departments do this all the time, with much more complex code. Those departments are collectively called "Software Engineering". It may be impossible to grasp by IT departments, but it is possible, and desired, to review every line of code making its way into the system.
To be fair though, IT has different requirements. When the system is down, you don't have time for a review. But that's no reason not to do a post-fix review.
My one response to Brin's article would be that it is possible to take pleasure in archetypical fantasies like LotR without it indicating a regressive Romantic yearning.
This is something that David Brin should know all too well. He was one of the primary contributors to the Midkemia world, and a member of the "Friday Nighters". For him to be bashing romanticist tolkienesque fantasy is bizarre.
Maybe he's getting crotchety in his "old" age.
"Witness the most amazing accomplishment of NASA -- managing to turn the exploration of space into a huge snore."
Considering that David Brin washed out of astronaut training, perhaps he still has an axe to grind...
if you setup linux in ~40 hours (for shared use) you are pretty fast.
I sure hope Linux isn't that horrible. I spent 20 hours setting up a FreeBSD box securely for shared use. 15 of those hours had nothing to do with configuration or security, but were peripheral tasks like writing site-specific admin and user manuals, testing, etc.
I'll second your comment. I've never tried to lock down a Windows machine, but from what I've heard, it takes considerably more knowledge then what you learned in "Be An MCSE in 24 Hours".
/var, /tmp and /home read only, and keep up to date on the security issues.
On the other hand, install a BSD or reasonable Linux distro, and you're done. For the paranoid (and you can never be paranoid enough), disable CDROM and floppy booting in the BIOS, password the BIOS, make everything but
Only 45 seconds! You must have the patience of Job! At about the 30 second mark I would have already been in the store exchanging the card for something else.
The longest I have to wait for X to startup is on my home system which has an G450+. It took me five seconds. That was still too long, so I built the driver without the HAL, and it now takes half a second. At work it's an ATI Rage and X starts up in half a second as well.
p.s. These cards do not meet the "You Must Use This Card Or Resign Your Nerd Membership Now" requirements of the gaming community. If your goal is to be accepted as an Alpha Nerd of the gaming community, then by all means continue to use the GeForce until the video kingmakers decree the next must-have card.
I think you missed my point entirely. Property taxes, when used wisely, are sufficient for funding programs whose costs are dependent upon population (schools, fire, etc). Property tax revenues increase proportional to the increase in population.
I move back to the states and I'm the frickin' '3rd upper Molar on the right side' in some banal play about hygeine.
Which is why everyone is arguing that US schools need more funding. Do you know how much it costs to build a molar!
What you say? Raise taxes for great justice!
Seriously, property tax revenues relate directly to the state population, and thus to the school funding needs. If the schools don't have enough to replace broken windows, then eliminate the waste instead of trying to shake down the renters for more every two years.
most people would rather deal with the cable company than the phone company.
If your phone company discovers you have two phones in your house, they won't violently remove your splitter than stomp off in a huff. Phone companies, despite their faults, realize that once the phone line enters your home, it's now your property.