The poster didn't ask about embedded distros -- i.e. the Linux distro running on an embedded target. He wants to know what developers have on their desktops, which is probably something completely different.
I would recommend shipping a live CD with your tools pre-installed. It would be straightforward for you to master a Debian-based CD based on Morphix and/or TROM. This allows your less sophisticated users to get off the ground quickly developing with your SDK. It's also good for evaluations, as people will want to make sure they can at least talk to their embedded development boards first.
For most developers, providing a src.tar.gz and an RPM is adequate. I recommend RPM's because most people too dumb to build a source tarball are probably using RedHat/Fedora. Bonus points for.deb but it's really not necessary to provide multiple packaging formats.
Apparently Pooh was invented well before 1930, and would have been in public domain for years now where Disney could use the characters for free, except for the retroactive copyright extension from N years after publication to M years after death.
If Pooh were in the public domain, Disney wouldn't have to pay for the merchandising rights, but neither would anybody else. So this would hardly be a win for them.
Jonathan Schwartz (Sun CTO) had it right when he noted that that was as silly as them shipping Open Sparc boxes.
I assume you mean it's silly because IBM is the only source for POWER, so it's not very open. Schwartz wrote as much in his blog entry on OpenPower. His main gripe is that the box doesn't run AIX (that's a bad thing?!). So the real question is, does POWER's awesome integer (read database) performance justify double or treble the hardware cost of an x86 server?
that successfully administers Superfund, yes. Who else should do it, Martians?
As corrupt and incompetent as government surely is, it's the only institution with any power that even pretends to represent public interest. You're taking a very cheap shot.
Capitalism only works when costs are internalized; meaning, if you make a mess you clean it up. When taxpayers (or future generations) are burdened with the cleanup costs, they are forced to subsidize these irresponsible manufacturers. If it's not worth the cost to make it AND dispose of it, don't make it.
The government should step in and create the equivalent of Superfund for electronics. They could outsource the work to such fine organizations as Freegeek and Freegeek Penn, which already recycle computers on a volunteer basis -- and install Linux on them to boot.
And yes this is a serious issue; look at the problem of discarded cell phones in Europe.
Put PHRACK in the schools
on
PHRACK Final
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It's easy to laugh at maladjusted PHRACK kiddies now, but it was
partly thanks to its technical articles that I discovered my career path in
the early 90's. I was at an age when many young males feel trapped by
society and develop an undeniable desire to effect their will on the
universe, often through such crude means as vandalism, setting fires,
or blowing things up. Through a bundle of floppy disks full of PHRACK
text files I became engrossed in learning the inner workings of the
telephone infrastructure: trunks, LEC's and other mysteries behind
the mundane.
It was in this way that I came to an understaning that technology is not read-only; not simply a malevolent behemoth controlled by presidents and CEO's to manipulate a passive citizenry; but is in fact waiting to be
created and tinkered with by such inquiring minds as my (former) self. Although
my initial motives may have been anti-social I have since been able to
contribute to society in a way that is, on balance, positive. I hope
PHRACK continues to inspire others in the same way.
That and Steven Levy's Hackers probably saved
me from a destiny as an ineffectual philosophy professor or some other
brand of malcontent fat-assed intellectual.
the brain's cortex handles a variety of sophisticated tasks, and sarcasm could be on the list.
Great, so it's "pinpointed" to that whole area which "handles a variety of sophisticated tasks." It's somewhere, anywhere in the prefrontal brain, with a possible correlation to the "ventromedial" region -- which itself is involved in everything from feeling full after a meal to female copulatory behavior. Gee, Mr. Wizard, you've nailed this one right on the head. You really got sarcasm's home phone number. Obviously our work here is done. We know ever so much more about this sarcasm phenomenon than before. Thank you Neuroscience and God bless Slashdot.
Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole
or street lamp.
Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a policeman's tie.
In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle
a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order
to get her attention.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of
Urbana, Illinois.
Sho' they got to have it against the law. Shoot, ever'body git high,
they wouldn't be nobody git up and feed the chickens. Hee-hee. -- Terry Southern
In five years, I will be surprised if the DVD-by-mail model is still viable. Hopefully FttP or WiMax or some other high-bandwidth protocol will make video downloading more attractive.
Netflix ought to replace their snail-mail distribution centers with Video LAN servers all over the country. That would spare the Internet from the congestion of transcontinental video traffic, and the Video LAN servers could still be updated with all the latest DVD's by mail (never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes).
I'm going to ask because no one else will. How do you know they're usability experts? Who's doing the vetting?
Each member has an "OpenUsability Peer Rating" (borrowed from Advogato) and a Skills Profile. Not every member takes advantage of this but it seems like a good framework.
If I want to improve the man page for sort, I don't need to create a new distro, I can just contribute my diffs and have a positive impact on one of the existing distros.
Maybe your patch would have a positive impact; maybe not. Maybe it would break something completely. The only way to tell is lengthy testing and QA. Some people won't want to use your patch until all the dust has settled, while others will want to try it out right away. Grumpy Groundhog is for the second group.
Forks are not always bad when you have two sets of users with totally different needs.
exact phenomenon in an interesting piece earlier this year, arguing that Blizzard and others should not hesitate to stop this sort of game-gaming.
"Normally, this newspaper's devotion to free trade is unwavering. Yet curbing the trade of in-game items is defensible, since game economies are run to maximise fun, not efficiency."
We choose the axioms on which the proof is based. To paraphrase Bill Klem...
The joke goes, three umpires are discussing balls and strikes. The first, an empiricist, says, "I call 'em as I see 'em." The second, a rationalist, replies, "I call 'em as they are." The third umpire, a constructivist of the Schroedinger school, spits on the ground and announces, "They ain't nothin' till I call 'em."
And any guesses how they even found this bug??
It was a human, not another buggy computer, that had to verify the data.
Any guesses who was responsible for this bug? It was a stupid human who forgot to enter five values in the Pentium's lookup table (Matlab Digest).
All computer errors can be traced to human errors, unless you think there are errors in nature. So if computer verification doesn't count because computers can make errors, then neither does human verification.
The author is absolutely right. Open source is great for many
reasons, but any misconception that will dissolve the modern corporate
hegemony is naive. If closed-source licensing disappeared tomorrow,
money and power would still reside in the hands of the rich and
powerful.
Part of the beauty of open source is that it works in many
different economic contexts: from state-funded research and
infrastructure, to industry cartels like IBM/Novell/OSDL, to small
consultancies. "Free software" does not mean "anti-corporate", and it
is right to point out that the current behemoths may be the biggest
winners.
Some people here seem to reason that "because Open Source is
Good, all of its consequences must necessarily be positive". Better
to analyze the actual market effects without prejudice, and pass moral
judgement afterwards.
gentoo sucks, or maybe you dont know how to use it
on
Gentoo 2005.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
there's no one block of text that says "IMPORTANT STUFF CHANGED".
True, this is why the good Lord gave us scripts. You'll find enotice on the front page of the Gentoo script repository. Other posters have suggested alternatives to etc-update. You may not have known there is a nice Apache2 HOWTO for Gentoo. And I bet if you ask nicely on Gentoo Forums, someone will tell you how to protect your bind.conf.
I often see people fuming "$DISTRO sucks 'cause it doesn't do $x!" when maybe they should ask "How can I do $x with $DISTRO?"
PS, Putting ~x86 in make.conf on a production server means you really are a masochist and get off on this kind of thing anyway:)
According the the IDC overview, this survey only includes servers, PC's, and "packaged software". What is the size of the embedded market, considering Linux is now the number one embedded OS in Asia?
It would be great if anybody who has tried one of these games could post something to give us an idea about it. "Luminous Horizons" is the only one I found with a README; it's a superhero adventure done in comic book style.
http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/compe tition2004/glulx/eas3/eas3info.txt
My personal favorite from the IF Archive is Christminster, a quirky Pynchon-esque conspiracy puzzle. Reviews for this game (and more) are in Baf's Guide to the IF Archive:
http://wurb.com/if/
I don't want to place my company at risk of being forced to release code that we do not want to release
Good news: this can never happen.
The GPL licensing terms are very strict and dangerous in terms of source code-ownership
It is an oft-repeated misconception, but there is zero risk of losing ownership of your code or the IP inside; you can only risk your right to distribute a module for Linux. If as you suggest, using a Linux kernel to run your module were a "derivitive" use, you would be obliged to distribute your module only under terms agreed to by the kernel copyright holders, or not at all -- as is the case with any other copyrighted work. If you fail to reach terms (e.g., GPL), you must stop distributing your kernel module. On no legal ground that I am aware of could you be forced to relinquish ownership of your code (I am not a lawyer). I've never heard mandatory code re-licensing. As you say, the long-term viability of binary kernel modules under the GPL is not clear, but the worst-case scenario is just moving to another OS, not the loss of your code or IP.
There is no special "viral" property to the GPL, such that someone else's ownership can magically extend into your code. That would be beyond the power of copyright. For example, if I wrote a screenplay set in the Star Wars universe, George Lucas could stop me from distributing it. But he wouldn't own my screenplay; he couldn't just decide to make my story into his next Star Wars movie without my OK, or force me to license my characters for breakfast cereals and Saturday morning cartoons.
Re:If people would just stop stealing...
on
European DRM News
·
· Score: 1
What is the fair value when the supply is for all practical purpose instantaneous and infintely repeatable?
Don't forget, the total cost of supply includes the time invested by those who make the album, in addition to the per-item cost of album distribution (which we agree is effectively zero). That time must be paid for by somebody.
Some feel that the artist should just pay for the time out of his own opportunity cost -- on the assumption that the creative work will be a "loss leader" by means of selling other services. Or that the artist receives other indirect benefits that are sufficient incentive. This sometimes works, but I believe not generally enough; to encourage content development we should have a way to fund content development per se.
I don't care for the current idea of selling individual CD's either, because it unneccesarily retards consumption (by financially penalizing music ownership), and because it introduces an onerous regime of control for enforcement. I expect we are left with the need for a kind of tax or "rent", whereby consumers collectively pay into an agency which funds recording. I'd like to see how such an agency could be structured to promote more and better music development than the record labels we have today (and how the public could be convinced to pay into it).
Although there were many great hackers at OSCON this year, I was personally most inspired by Brewster Kahle, the man behind the Internet Archive repository of public domain media content. He pointed out that there's no use in blaming The Corporations for trying to get as rich as possible; it's the job of society and government to channel that greed with an appropriate legal regime (e.g. copyright reform). There was a good parallel with the destructive railroad monopolies of the 19th century, finally curbed by the Sherman Act. He also praised the VLC media player and called for an open-source SMIL-based "video browser"; perhaps something like AMBULANT.
Some Portland kids called Feel(This)Films followed me around a bit and are hoping to release a short under a Creative Commons license; feel free to contact them if you have anything from the con to contribute.
Slashdot Mirror
The poster didn't ask about embedded distros -- i.e. the Linux distro running on an embedded target. He wants to know what developers have on their desktops, which is probably something completely different.
.deb but it's really not necessary to provide multiple packaging formats.
I would recommend shipping a live CD with your tools pre-installed. It would be straightforward for you to master a Debian-based CD based on Morphix and/or TROM. This allows your less sophisticated users to get off the ground quickly developing with your SDK. It's also good for evaluations, as people will want to make sure they can at least talk to their embedded development boards first.
For most developers, providing a src.tar.gz and an RPM is adequate. I recommend RPM's because most people too dumb to build a source tarball are probably using RedHat/Fedora. Bonus points for
If Pooh were in the public domain, Disney wouldn't have to pay for the merchandising rights, but neither would anybody else. So this would hardly be a win for them.
This looks like great software; I am definitely trying it out. Thought it looks like it could put half my techie friends out of work :)
I assume you mean it's silly because IBM is the only source for POWER, so it's not very open. Schwartz wrote as much in his blog entry on OpenPower. His main gripe is that the box doesn't run AIX (that's a bad thing?!). So the real question is, does POWER's awesome integer (read database) performance justify double or treble the hardware cost of an x86 server?
That sounds like dispute to me.
No it isn't. It's just a contradiction.
that successfully administers Superfund, yes. Who else should do it, Martians?
As corrupt and incompetent as government surely is, it's the only institution with any power that even pretends to represent public interest. You're taking a very cheap shot.
The government should step in and create the equivalent of Superfund for electronics. They could outsource the work to such fine organizations as Freegeek and Freegeek Penn, which already recycle computers on a volunteer basis -- and install Linux on them to boot.
And yes this is a serious issue; look at the problem of discarded cell phones in Europe.
It was in this way that I came to an understaning that technology is not read-only; not simply a malevolent behemoth controlled by presidents and CEO's to manipulate a passive citizenry; but is in fact waiting to be created and tinkered with by such inquiring minds as my (former) self. Although my initial motives may have been anti-social I have since been able to contribute to society in a way that is, on balance, positive. I hope PHRACK continues to inspire others in the same way.
That and Steven Levy's Hackers probably saved me from a destiny as an ineffectual philosophy professor or some other brand of malcontent fat-assed intellectual.
Great, so it's "pinpointed" to that whole area which "handles a variety of sophisticated tasks." It's somewhere, anywhere in the prefrontal brain, with a possible correlation to the "ventromedial" region -- which itself is involved in everything from feeling full after a meal to female copulatory behavior. Gee, Mr. Wizard, you've nailed this one right on the head. You really got sarcasm's home phone number. Obviously our work here is done. We know ever so much more about this sarcasm phenomenon than before. Thank you Neuroscience and God bless Slashdot.
Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp.
Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a policeman's tie.
In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order to get her attention.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer.
It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of Urbana, Illinois.
Sho' they got to have it against the law. Shoot, ever'body git high, they wouldn't be nobody git up and feed the chickens. Hee-hee. -- Terry Southern
In five years, I will be surprised if the DVD-by-mail model is still viable. Hopefully FttP or WiMax or some other high-bandwidth protocol will make video downloading more attractive.
Netflix ought to replace their snail-mail distribution centers with Video LAN servers all over the country. That would spare the Internet from the congestion of transcontinental video traffic, and the Video LAN servers could still be updated with all the latest DVD's by mail (never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes).
Now if only there weren't so many lawyers...
The ones that sometimes decide stay there forever even after you move the mouse, until you bring up another tooltip? What's up with that?
Each member has an "OpenUsability Peer Rating" (borrowed from Advogato) and a Skills Profile. Not every member takes advantage of this but it seems like a good framework.
Maybe your patch would have a positive impact; maybe not. Maybe it would break something completely. The only way to tell is lengthy testing and QA. Some people won't want to use your patch until all the dust has settled, while others will want to try it out right away. Grumpy Groundhog is for the second group.
Forks are not always bad when you have two sets of users with totally different needs.
"Normally, this newspaper's devotion to free trade is unwavering. Yet curbing the trade of in-game items is defensible, since game economies are run to maximise fun, not efficiency."
A model economy: Should links between real and virtual economies be encouraged or banned?
The joke goes, three umpires are discussing balls and strikes. The first, an empiricist, says, "I call 'em as I see 'em." The second, a rationalist, replies, "I call 'em as they are." The third umpire, a constructivist of the Schroedinger school, spits on the ground and announces, "They ain't nothin' till I call 'em."
Any guesses who was responsible for this bug? It was a stupid human who forgot to enter five values in the Pentium's lookup table (Matlab Digest). All computer errors can be traced to human errors, unless you think there are errors in nature. So if computer verification doesn't count because computers can make errors, then neither does human verification.
Part of the beauty of open source is that it works in many different economic contexts: from state-funded research and infrastructure, to industry cartels like IBM/Novell/OSDL, to small consultancies. "Free software" does not mean "anti-corporate", and it is right to point out that the current behemoths may be the biggest winners.
Some people here seem to reason that "because Open Source is Good, all of its consequences must necessarily be positive". Better to analyze the actual market effects without prejudice, and pass moral judgement afterwards.
True, this is why the good Lord gave us scripts. You'll find enotice on the front page of the Gentoo script repository. Other posters have suggested alternatives to etc-update. You may not have known there is a nice Apache2 HOWTO for Gentoo. And I bet if you ask nicely on Gentoo Forums, someone will tell you how to protect your bind.conf.
I often see people fuming "$DISTRO sucks 'cause it doesn't do $x!" when maybe they should ask "How can I do $x with $DISTRO?"
PS, Putting ~x86 in make.conf on a production server means you really are a masochist and get off on this kind of thing anyway :)
According the the IDC overview, this survey only includes servers, PC's, and "packaged software". What is the size of the embedded market, considering Linux is now the number one embedded OS in Asia?
Referring to High protein peanut butter and jelly sandwich and method of making the same, I see nothing which is non-obvious to "a person skilled in the art" of sandwich-making. I encourage folks to take direct action by handing out free home-made crustless PBJ's, especially if you can get to the corporate headquarters in Ohio.
It would be great if anybody who has tried one of these games could post something to give us an idea about it. "Luminous Horizons" is the only one I found with a README; it's a superhero adventure done in comic book style. http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/compe tition2004/glulx/eas3/eas3info.txt
My personal favorite from the IF Archive is Christminster, a quirky Pynchon-esque conspiracy puzzle. Reviews for this game (and more) are in Baf's Guide to the IF Archive:
http://wurb.com/if/
Good news: this can never happen.
The GPL licensing terms are very strict and dangerous in terms of source code-ownership
It is an oft-repeated misconception, but there is zero risk of losing ownership of your code or the IP inside; you can only risk your right to distribute a module for Linux. If as you suggest, using a Linux kernel to run your module were a "derivitive" use, you would be obliged to distribute your module only under terms agreed to by the kernel copyright holders, or not at all -- as is the case with any other copyrighted work. If you fail to reach terms (e.g., GPL), you must stop distributing your kernel module. On no legal ground that I am aware of could you be forced to relinquish ownership of your code (I am not a lawyer). I've never heard mandatory code re-licensing. As you say, the long-term viability of binary kernel modules under the GPL is not clear, but the worst-case scenario is just moving to another OS, not the loss of your code or IP.
There is no special "viral" property to the GPL, such that someone else's ownership can magically extend into your code. That would be beyond the power of copyright. For example, if I wrote a screenplay set in the Star Wars universe, George Lucas could stop me from distributing it. But he wouldn't own my screenplay; he couldn't just decide to make my story into his next Star Wars movie without my OK, or force me to license my characters for breakfast cereals and Saturday morning cartoons.
Don't forget, the total cost of supply includes the time invested by those who make the album, in addition to the per-item cost of album distribution (which we agree is effectively zero). That time must be paid for by somebody.
Some feel that the artist should just pay for the time out of his own opportunity cost -- on the assumption that the creative work will be a "loss leader" by means of selling other services. Or that the artist receives other indirect benefits that are sufficient incentive. This sometimes works, but I believe not generally enough; to encourage content development we should have a way to fund content development per se.
I don't care for the current idea of selling individual CD's either, because it unneccesarily retards consumption (by financially penalizing music ownership), and because it introduces an onerous regime of control for enforcement. I expect we are left with the need for a kind of tax or "rent", whereby consumers collectively pay into an agency which funds recording. I'd like to see how such an agency could be structured to promote more and better music development than the record labels we have today (and how the public could be convinced to pay into it).
Some Portland kids called Feel(This)Films followed me around a bit and are hoping to release a short under a Creative Commons license; feel free to contact them if you have anything from the con to contribute.