It's a good idea, but why not just search freshmeat by license? Their new interface makes this very easy to do.
My main impression is that the site looks very unprofessional -- poor grammar, and weird random placement of paragraphs, but beyond that, the "Why we are not Freshmeat" section isn't an explaination, but looks like an IRC log where someone just bursts in on an adminstrative discussion and without explaining what they're looking for starts asking random annoying questions.
Also, LinuxHardware.net seems to mostly consist of 1) a list of drivers for hardware (as opposed to the hardware itself) and 2) a bunch of user-submissions quickly listing the stuff they have in their machines. I'm not knocking the site or anything; it's just a different focus.
ZDNet's hardware database is badly out of date, incomplete, and doesn't provide much information, especially in terms of Free software compliance.
And, they're advertising-based revenue model leads some to suspect their objectivity.
SuSE and RedHat's lists are useful, but they're vendor and release specific, tend to focus on "supported by us" rather than "works well", and again not necessarily neutral.
PCfE is a good place (I get stuff there too), and I appreciate that they check things out for linux support, but "Linux-OK" hardly tells the full story.
LinuxHardware.net I hadn't seen before. It looks okay, but is far from comprehensive. It's a bit hard to find specific information on the site (try, for example, to find information on ATI products), and entries once found tend to be very terse. And, it doesn't have the focus on Free software that the Spindl3top database will.
Did you figure in shipping and handling? Each of those things is going to have a shipping charge of $8-12 from random pricewatch vendors. And of course more for big items like the case. (Not to mention that the lowest-priced listings from pricewatch are often suspect.) And, figure at least couple of hours for assembly and testing. I'd say it sounds reasonable to me.
But beyond that, the point of all this is not necessarily to provide the best deal possible. It's to provide a computer guaranteed to work with Linux (aka GNU/Linux) and to provide some financial support for the hardware database project. Look at the FSF's pricelist -- that's certainly more than you'd pay for the same stuff elsewhere. This is the same deal (or more accurately, will be once the non-profit is fully set up).
The actual systems aren't the main point of Spindl3top. The main "product" is going to be a good non-commercial database of hardware that works well with Free software. You can buy systems pre-built with hardware from that list, and the price you pay over cost will effectively be a contribution to the project.
Spindl3top may also work on setting up a Linux certification and some other educational stuff; I think that's further out.
Join the discussion lists or follow activity at the web site. If you did this, it's completely clear that all of "spiers"'s concerns are eventually going to be addressed. These things aren't easy to start up.
If you have doubts, don't buy anything now; wait a little while until the non-profit is set up completely. As the slashdot story says, the proceeds from these initial for-profit sales will be used to fund the formation of the non-profit.
Actually, the original poster mentioned getting a "comparable" product for free. All other things being "comparable", wouldn't you take the free one?
I hope that you're right and that people take external factors (ethics, better world, etc.) into account when they make purchases -- I definitely agree with your point about voting with one's money.
(Time for a slightly off-topic plug... If you're concerned about this sort of thing in the world beyond computer software, check out the International Federation for Alternative Trade and Ten Thousand Villages. It might take a slight leap to apply the same issues to software, but given the increasing rise of corporate feudalism, I don't think it's too much of stretch.)
What user of *any* OS pays for something when they can get a comparable thing for free?
One of the cool things about Linux (and BSD, etc) is that there tend to be a lot of actually comparable free things available, so of course we use those. That doesn't mean we're *necessarily* any more cheap than anyone else.
I agree. They don't really mean "computer science", they mean "computer-science". (That is, not CS per se, but rather that science dependent on computers.) A lot of non-geeks don't really understand what CS actually is.
That said, the article _does_ imply that because of this need, science-based companies like Celera are beginning to invest in the actual field of computer science.
If "insightful" means "trying to use psychic powers of sight to guess what the article says", then sure, this deserves +100.
In fact, what the article says is that all sciences are becoming computer-dependent -- not "computer science" the field, but "computer-science" (as in, science done with computers), thus leading companies and researchers in other sciences to invest in computer science (the field).
The above link contains id information in the URL and so isn't useful for new signatures. Instead, go to the front http://www.tuxgames.com/ page and follow the petitions link there -- that way you'll get your own id and the vote will actually be counted.
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Re:Multi Processors under Win9x
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Emergence of SMT
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SOAP is already a cross-platform standard. So what is this SOUP thing actually? The only clue in the C|Net article is where it says "Ximian is creating a tool that will allow Web services written for Linux to be compiled for SOAP. De Icaza said the compiler could be available to developers within two months."
Ah. So it's a tool of some sort, not a protocol. A google search on "Ximian SOUP" only turns up this message, which isn't that helpful (the "synapse" server it refers to is maybe https://synapse.ximian.com/, which isn't publicly accessible. Anyone actually know what this thing IS?
Your words bely an apparent unfamiliary with the history of CDDB (now Gracenote). At its inception, the CDDB software and database were under the GPL. Thus, it was quite reasonable for submitters to infer that their submissions would remain free.
Not only that, before the commercialization, the *servers* were run by volunteers who provided disk space and bandwidth for free. This is what allowed the project to grow so large and valuable, at which point the author sold out. All of the volunteers were sent a message saying that we were no longer necessary, and that we should give them our snail mail addresses so the new company could send us a nice gift. Never even got that, dammit.:)
The reporter claims that this will "probably mean the end of pay phones". Yeesh, I hope not -- pay phones are wonderful for when you forget to bring your phone. Unless these things come with magic pills for ending absent-mindedness, I hope the good old quarter-eating things stay around for a good long time.
What I see is: Perl users going "huh, Python, that's nice", and then Python users going "Python is way better than Perl! Perl is awful! No one should use legacy scripting languages like Perl", and then the Perl people being annoyed.
Personally, I don't find the Perl/Python comparison a useful one. Perl is very good at string handling and regular expressions; with Python, to do regexes, one makes a library call just like one would in C. So if I want to make a quick script to parse something, Perl is great. If I were to make a larger project, I might decide between Python or C/C++.
In general, Perl is like English, and Python is like Esperanto. The former is a complicated, flexible mess with which one can be very expressive. The latter is a carefully engineered language, with a logical straightforward grammar that's easy for anyone to learn and understand. Any concept can be expressed in either one, and they both have their uses.
Not so. It's just that most people accused of "domain squatting" have a completely legitimate right to the domain. Registering a trademark does not remove that word from the rest of our vocabulary! Every letter of the Roman alphabet is someone's trademark, as is almost every common English word. Just because someone has trademarked 'foo' doesn't mean they blindly have any right to 'foo.com'.
On the other hand, if the owner of 'foo.com' is clearly exploiting someone else's 'foo' trademark, I doubt you'll find much sympathy even here. Trademark law is in theory a good idea -- it protects consumers from confusion and makes sure that what you're buying is actually the product you think it is. If someone is violating that, then sure, they should be stopped. But that doesn't mean "cyber squatting" applies when there is no legit chance of confusion.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a good idea, but why not just search freshmeat by license? Their new interface makes this very easy to do.
My main impression is that the site looks very unprofessional -- poor grammar, and weird random placement of paragraphs, but beyond that, the "Why we are not Freshmeat" section isn't an explaination, but looks like an IRC log where someone just bursts in on an adminstrative discussion and without explaining what they're looking for starts asking random annoying questions.
Costs money (lawyers and such) to set up a non-profit org., since it has to be done right so as to not upset the IRS and so on.
Also, LinuxHardware.net seems to mostly consist of 1) a list of drivers for hardware (as opposed to the hardware itself) and 2) a bunch of user-submissions quickly listing the stuff they have in their machines. I'm not knocking the site or anything; it's just a different focus.
ZDNet's hardware database is badly out of date, incomplete, and doesn't provide much information, especially in terms of Free software compliance.
And, they're advertising-based revenue model leads some to suspect their objectivity.
SuSE and RedHat's lists are useful, but they're vendor and release specific, tend to focus on "supported by us" rather than "works well", and again not necessarily neutral.
PCfE is a good place (I get stuff there too), and I appreciate that they check things out for linux support, but "Linux-OK" hardly tells the full story.
LinuxHardware.net I hadn't seen before. It looks okay, but is far from comprehensive. It's a bit hard to find specific information on the site (try, for example, to find information on ATI products), and entries once found tend to be very terse. And, it doesn't have the focus on Free software that the Spindl3top database will.
I think there's definitely a place for this.
Did you figure in shipping and handling? Each of those things is going to have a shipping charge of $8-12 from random pricewatch vendors. And of course more for big items like the case. (Not to mention that the lowest-priced listings from pricewatch are often suspect.) And, figure at least couple of hours for assembly and testing. I'd say it sounds reasonable to me.
But beyond that, the point of all this is not necessarily to provide the best deal possible. It's to provide a computer guaranteed to work with Linux (aka GNU/Linux) and to provide some financial support for the hardware database project. Look at the FSF's pricelist -- that's certainly more than you'd pay for the same stuff elsewhere. This is the same deal (or more accurately, will be once the non-profit is fully set up).
The actual systems aren't the main point of Spindl3top. The main "product" is going to be a good non-commercial database of hardware that works well with Free software. You can buy systems pre-built with hardware from that list, and the price you pay over cost will effectively be a contribution to the project.
Spindl3top may also work on setting up a Linux certification and some other educational stuff; I think that's further out.
Join the discussion lists or follow activity at the web site. If you did this, it's completely clear that all of "spiers"'s concerns are eventually going to be addressed. These things aren't easy to start up.
If you have doubts, don't buy anything now; wait a little while until the non-profit is set up completely. As the slashdot story says, the proceeds from these initial for-profit sales will be used to fund the formation of the non-profit.
Actually, the original poster mentioned getting a "comparable" product for free. All other things being "comparable", wouldn't you take the free one?
I hope that you're right and that people take external factors (ethics, better world, etc.) into account when they make purchases -- I definitely agree with your point about voting with one's money.
(Time for a slightly off-topic plug... If you're concerned about this sort of thing in the world beyond computer software, check out the International Federation for Alternative Trade and Ten Thousand Villages. It might take a slight leap to apply the same issues to software, but given the increasing rise of corporate feudalism, I don't think it's too much of stretch.)
What user of *any* OS pays for something when they can get a comparable thing for free?
One of the cool things about Linux (and BSD, etc) is that there tend to be a lot of actually comparable free things available, so of course we use those. That doesn't mean we're *necessarily* any more cheap than anyone else.
I agree. They don't really mean "computer science", they mean "computer-science". (That is, not CS per se, but rather that science dependent on computers.) A lot of non-geeks don't really understand what CS actually is.
That said, the article _does_ imply that because of this need, science-based companies like Celera are beginning to invest in the actual field of computer science.
If "insightful" means "trying to use psychic powers of sight to guess what the article says", then sure, this deserves +100.
In fact, what the article says is that all sciences are becoming computer-dependent -- not "computer science" the field, but "computer-science" (as in, science done with computers), thus leading companies and researchers in other sciences to invest in computer science (the field).
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SOAP is already a cross-platform standard. So what is this SOUP thing actually? The only clue in the C|Net article is where it says "Ximian is creating a tool that will allow Web services written for Linux to be compiled for SOAP. De Icaza said the compiler could be available to developers within two months."
Ah. So it's a tool of some sort, not a protocol. A google search on "Ximian SOUP" only turns up this message, which isn't that helpful (the "synapse" server it refers to is maybe https://synapse.ximian.com/, which isn't publicly accessible. Anyone actually know what this thing IS?
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Not only that, before the commercialization, the *servers* were run by volunteers who provided disk space and bandwidth for free. This is what allowed the project to grow so large and valuable, at which point the author sold out. All of the volunteers were sent a message saying that we were no longer necessary, and that we should give them our snail mail addresses so the new company could send us a nice gift. Never even got that, dammit.
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Personally, I don't find the Perl/Python comparison a useful one. Perl is very good at string handling and regular expressions; with Python, to do regexes, one makes a library call just like one would in C. So if I want to make a quick script to parse something, Perl is great. If I were to make a larger project, I might decide between Python or C/C++.
In general, Perl is like English, and Python is like Esperanto. The former is a complicated, flexible mess with which one can be very expressive. The latter is a carefully engineered language, with a logical straightforward grammar that's easy for anyone to learn and understand. Any concept can be expressed in either one, and they both have their uses.
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On the other hand, if the owner of 'foo.com' is clearly exploiting someone else's 'foo' trademark, I doubt you'll find much sympathy even here. Trademark law is in theory a good idea -- it protects consumers from confusion and makes sure that what you're buying is actually the product you think it is. If someone is violating that, then sure, they should be stopped. But that doesn't mean "cyber squatting" applies when there is no legit chance of confusion.
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