"working computer", eh? Did Apple finally come out with one of those? If I could have still afforded a Windows machine after dropping $1300 on the iMac and all the assorted overpriced USB peripherals and then realizing what a dog system I had, I would've done it. Thank Sol for Yellow Dog Linux is all I can say. My near-antique iMac with YDL is still a nicer machine than my much newer Wintel box at work.
Nice troll. But if you ever go to the trouble to actually compile Gnome or KDE you will be astounded by how many libraries they have in common. And *DUH* once you get to the widget level and above they have no decent commonalities. Qt and gtk+ are different. And they are written in different languages.
And you have to be kidding. If the device runs Linux, there are a *ton* of applications that run on that platform. People have been writing Unix apps for about 30 years-- many of which compile on Linux. Not to mention that it would allow us to run scripting languages like Perl on our PDAs, or to program in C for the platform without having to learn new OS calls and get proprietary SDKs. That amounts to an infinite number of potential applications-- all without further licensing or expense constraints.
So my question is, why design and build the Lamborghini, when you will only be able to sell it to a few rich folks? Could it be because the revenues generated are expected to exceed the costs to produce? And isn't that, by definition, a measure of success for business?
Well I wouldn't go changing the name without a reason, personally. But I can think of many instances where it is not only desirable, but legally necessary to do so. How often do you really want to go forking code like that though?
Except that now, Apple itself doesn't offer any real choice. Frankly I prefer a plain metal box to an off-shape plastic doodad. Probably a lot of people do. I think that's part of why Apple still hasn't gotten much more than 5-10% market share (most of which is squarely centered on the education and graphic design niches).
I already have YDL loaded on my Rev A iMac. I'm not going to spend $1400 on a new iMac just to replace the preinstalled OS (assuming YDL supports this new machine fully) any more than I am going to go to Best Buy and pay the Windows tax if I'm planning to install Debian GNU/Linux when I get the machine home. For the price of the new iMac, I'm reasonably sure I can build or buy as a complete package a similar x86 running Linux, just not in a cute little blob of a container (although there are some pretty compact and attractive ATX cases available).
And I'm not saying OS X is a slouch. I'm saying that as far as I can tell it offers almost no user freedom in the way that Gnome/Sawfish or KDE or many other Unix/Linux window managers and desktop environements do. If I can't do simple things like replace those little colored dots with sensible images that indicate the function of the button, or move them to a location where I am more accustomed to finding window controls, then I am basically being told that I shouldn't be able to control my work environment.
This might be nice for consistency in places where computers are shared frequently, but in the privacy of my own home, why shouldn't a lot of this be highly scriptable and configurable (and at the very least theme-capable beyond the simple color scheme I'm familiar with from Mac OS 8.x).
If I am wrong, and it is highly configurable then please accept my retraction and apologies. But the only way I've ever seen to configure a Mac was to use shareware (which I tried and abandoned since my crash rates went way up).
How would changing the name violate copyright? If the program is GPL, I see no reason the name or anything else has to remain static, with the exception of the license itself and the copyright notices and the other notices stipulated by the license (essentially, there must be a copy of the GPL and what amounts to a copyright and changes history in all modified GPL packages).
In fact, the right to change the name is of paramount importance. If the original name is a trademark (think Linux), then I can't fork the product without violating trademark rules *unless* I can change the name.
I dunno. Looks a lot like the iPaq on steroids if you ask me. Frankly, I wish Apple would concentrate on making user choice an option. I mean, with this product the only choice I have is what kind of drive I want installed. No choice of colors. No choice to have a keyboard or mouse that aren't hideous to look at (plus, I want my scroll wheel, sorry). No choice to get one that's a pyramid, or a shape that doesn't look like it will tip over easily.
Ditto the OS itself. Nothing I've seen indicates any sort of real customization is possible. After using either Gnome or KDE, you get *real* spoiled in that area.
Why bother when you can just film the computer from behind? Besides, if you show the screen, then the screen has to have something relevant on it. More work.
First of all, comparing contract software development to music is not useful. With the exception of Microsoft, there are no players in the software realm who even remotely approach the stranglehold that the key large media companies hold on the music industry. And even Microsoft provides tools (and therefore jobs) for programmers-- someone has to code all those VB apps and custom ASP scripts.
But I agree that musicians should reject large label contracts as insufficient, even though they are unlikely to get a better deal elsewhere (from a label with the same capabilities that is). The labels essentially have an oligopoly. It is up to musicians and their allies to fix this. This is how many independent labels start... but the people involved in independent labels almost never make a lot of money or do sell out stadium shows. So it has to be about more than greed for everyone involved.
As to the greedy RIAA and their sell-out bands, the problem isn't that they exist. I can easily ignore them. The problem is that they are passing laws to make it difficult, if not illegal, for anyone else to exist.
You really do have to wonder exactly why people do so much research into this.
It is important in cryptography, because the algorithms need to be strong enough to withstand brute force attacks for a very long time and the key inputs to such a determination are rate of change in computations per second and the expected life of the planet.
While you should be able to do most of your build from a user account, how many people actually do? On most Linux distros you will need to be root to run 'make install' to/usr/local. I did see an example somewhere else in this discussion where someone pointed out their security policy there is to set up a 'staff' user and use that ID to build all local software to/usr/local. Sounds like the best suggestion I've seen in a long time. This keeps the build process walled off from most of the system as a writer-- however, it doesn't prevent a trojaned source file from getting at other/usr/local stuff-- but presumably you could prevent a lot of hanky-panky by chmod'ing stuff to 555 or 544 or whatever once it's installed. Did I miss anything?
I think it would be easier to secure the room than the computer hardware if we're going to be this paranoid. The keylogger only works because it is sneaky. If they can't get into the room without alerting you to the fact that someone got into the room, then you have defeated the sneaky part and will know better than to type your password before doing a security audit.
It was an example. And frankly, using the "that budget is so small" argument is flawed because most of the budgets that one might consider are small when taken as distinct entities. And the constituents who benefit from those budgets will always scream about priorities. But the fact remains that we can't simply accept the mantra "sell stuff or raise taxes". It's not true. We can also examine the existing spending, priority rank the programs (heck a simple computer program could help create a dependency based prioritization system), add any new proposoals or adjust priorities to fit situational need, then adjust spending accordingly.
FWIW, I don't want new taxes. In fact, if my tax money is being used to fund research that I don't benefit from freely, then I am being overtaxed and I want my money back.
I agree. Plus, if you make a mistake, you have the opportunity to actually respond with an apology or correction, which means that your response is visible to the person who responded to you.
Either way, this new system rocks. Removing sigs, score, and weighting the options makes the whole thing a much better read. Thanks!
Other options would include eliminating government spending for things like faulty missile defense systems or the NEA and using the savings to spend on education instead.
Anyway, if anyone is challenged by this in court, let me know. I'm sure I can dig out all sorts of documentation that predates the filing dates of the patents in question.
Hello, McFly? F*cking Hallmark has been in court over this issue for some time now, and we are reading this article because they settled the case to avoid further legal entanglement. Maybe you should contact them, I bet their lawyers would be appreciative-- if indeed what you've done qualifies as prior art and you can prove it. Not only that, it might invalidate one or more stupid patents.
Just US patents? How about that patent on hyperlinks, wasn't that a British patent? And don't most of these US patents have force in other countries stemming from treaty agreements and similar laws in those countries?
Awesome post-- especially the link to the FAQ. I will definitely keep trying to compile gnome-libs and gnome-base. Right now I'm stuck on some BS in gnome-libs where it's telling me I don't have the right db compatibility option available even though I know full well I do because I just compiled BerkeleyDB with that exact option enabled. Back to the terminal window I guess.:)
Um. Last time I checked, my UCE was no different than my legitimate list traffic and personal email, except that the return address was usually invalid and the content utterly pointless.
This means that really UCE is no different than junk mail I get in the mailbox. Both are equally annoying. I have to look at both to determine whether or not this is a valid correspondence and then I have to put the invalid correspondence in the trash. In fact, UCE is less harmful than unsolicited mail, since I only have to hit 'd' on the email, but some of the postal mail I get really ought to be shredded since it contains offers for credit and a bit too much information for safety.
The benefits of this law are two and two alone: valid return address and opt-out procedures. Personally, I've had a lot more trouble with idiots using MS Outlook for email sending me documents for my advice than I've ever had with UCE.
Okay, but that isn't what I heard you say before. Personally I don't have the energy to test AOL's software for them, nor do I have any legitimate reason to want to subvert it. So the only reason I can think of to study their protocol is to build open source alternatives to closed source clients. And for that your links are quite informative.:)
Why wouldn't I just pay cash, or get a shill buyer, or steal the damn media if it was actually being tracked that way? But the only "oppressive regime" involved here seems to be the country masquerading as the land of civilized freedom.
The problem with all of this is that there really is nowhere to go. Sure you can live in a sod hut in Montana or Somalia and not have writable CDs, but barring that you basically get to play this game. And why? 'Cuz the average citizen doesn't give a rats ass about their freedom as long as they are entertained and have plenty of snack foods handy. "Bread and circuses" hasn't changed a bit in over 2000 years.
Galeon depends on Mozilla to build. That is a serious problem, imho-- since it requires the building of the monster in the first place. And yes, I realize that even some geeks these days don't go to the extreme measure of compiling as much of their systems as possible from scratch. *grin* Maybe Galeon developers can figure out a way to lift the relevant shared library code from Mozilla so we can build Galeon without Mozilla.
I have liked Galeon when I've used it, but I didn't try it for some of my more important tasks that Konq handles quite well-- things like page-specific decisions on cookies and scripting, lying to online financial institutions about the user agent so that I can access my accounts, etc. Can it handle this stuff? And does it have tabs?
Even without the expired copyright, without the source code to Word, how would any of us know if said convicted criminals had *already* incorporated code from Free Software projects into their applications?
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"working computer", eh? Did Apple finally come out with one of those? If I could have still afforded a Windows machine after dropping $1300 on the iMac and all the assorted overpriced USB peripherals and then realizing what a dog system I had, I would've done it. Thank Sol for Yellow Dog Linux is all I can say. My near-antique iMac with YDL is still a nicer machine than my much newer Wintel box at work.
Nice troll. But if you ever go to the trouble to actually compile Gnome or KDE you will be astounded by how many libraries they have in common. And *DUH* once you get to the widget level and above they have no decent commonalities. Qt and gtk+ are different. And they are written in different languages.
And you have to be kidding. If the device runs Linux, there are a *ton* of applications that run on that platform. People have been writing Unix apps for about 30 years-- many of which compile on Linux. Not to mention that it would allow us to run scripting languages like Perl on our PDAs, or to program in C for the platform without having to learn new OS calls and get proprietary SDKs. That amounts to an infinite number of potential applications-- all without further licensing or expense constraints.
So my question is, why design and build the Lamborghini, when you will only be able to sell it to a few rich folks? Could it be because the revenues generated are expected to exceed the costs to produce? And isn't that, by definition, a measure of success for business?
Well I wouldn't go changing the name without a reason, personally. But I can think of many instances where it is not only desirable, but legally necessary to do so. How often do you really want to go forking code like that though?
Except that now, Apple itself doesn't offer any real choice. Frankly I prefer a plain metal box to an off-shape plastic doodad. Probably a lot of people do. I think that's part of why Apple still hasn't gotten much more than 5-10% market share (most of which is squarely centered on the education and graphic design niches).
I already have YDL loaded on my Rev A iMac. I'm not going to spend $1400 on a new iMac just to replace the preinstalled OS (assuming YDL supports this new machine fully) any more than I am going to go to Best Buy and pay the Windows tax if I'm planning to install Debian GNU/Linux when I get the machine home. For the price of the new iMac, I'm reasonably sure I can build or buy as a complete package a similar x86 running Linux, just not in a cute little blob of a container (although there are some pretty compact and attractive ATX cases available).
And I'm not saying OS X is a slouch. I'm saying that as far as I can tell it offers almost no user freedom in the way that Gnome/Sawfish or KDE or many other Unix/Linux window managers and desktop environements do. If I can't do simple things like replace those little colored dots with sensible images that indicate the function of the button, or move them to a location where I am more accustomed to finding window controls, then I am basically being told that I shouldn't be able to control my work environment.
This might be nice for consistency in places where computers are shared frequently, but in the privacy of my own home, why shouldn't a lot of this be highly scriptable and configurable (and at the very least theme-capable beyond the simple color scheme I'm familiar with from Mac OS 8.x).
If I am wrong, and it is highly configurable then please accept my retraction and apologies. But the only way I've ever seen to configure a Mac was to use shareware (which I tried and abandoned since my crash rates went way up).
How would changing the name violate copyright? If the program is GPL, I see no reason the name or anything else has to remain static, with the exception of the license itself and the copyright notices and the other notices stipulated by the license (essentially, there must be a copy of the GPL and what amounts to a copyright and changes history in all modified GPL packages).
In fact, the right to change the name is of paramount importance. If the original name is a trademark (think Linux), then I can't fork the product without violating trademark rules *unless* I can change the name.
I dunno. Looks a lot like the iPaq on steroids if you ask me. Frankly, I wish Apple would concentrate on making user choice an option. I mean, with this product the only choice I have is what kind of drive I want installed. No choice of colors. No choice to have a keyboard or mouse that aren't hideous to look at (plus, I want my scroll wheel, sorry). No choice to get one that's a pyramid, or a shape that doesn't look like it will tip over easily.
Ditto the OS itself. Nothing I've seen indicates any sort of real customization is possible. After using either Gnome or KDE, you get *real* spoiled in that area.
Why bother when you can just film the computer from behind? Besides, if you show the screen, then the screen has to have something relevant on it. More work.
First of all, comparing contract software development to music is not useful. With the exception of Microsoft, there are no players in the software realm who even remotely approach the stranglehold that the key large media companies hold on the music industry. And even Microsoft provides tools (and therefore jobs) for programmers-- someone has to code all those VB apps and custom ASP scripts.
But I agree that musicians should reject large label contracts as insufficient, even though they are unlikely to get a better deal elsewhere (from a label with the same capabilities that is). The labels essentially have an oligopoly. It is up to musicians and their allies to fix this. This is how many independent labels start... but the people involved in independent labels almost never make a lot of money or do sell out stadium shows. So it has to be about more than greed for everyone involved.
As to the greedy RIAA and their sell-out bands, the problem isn't that they exist. I can easily ignore them. The problem is that they are passing laws to make it difficult, if not illegal, for anyone else to exist.
You really do have to wonder exactly why people do so much research into this.
It is important in cryptography, because the algorithms need to be strong enough to withstand brute force attacks for a very long time and the key inputs to such a determination are rate of change in computations per second and the expected life of the planet.
While you should be able to do most of your build from a user account, how many people actually do? On most Linux distros you will need to be root to run 'make install' to /usr/local. I did see an example somewhere else in this discussion where someone pointed out their security policy there is to set up a 'staff' user and use that ID to build all local software to /usr/local. Sounds like the best suggestion I've seen in a long time. This keeps the build process walled off from most of the system as a writer-- however, it doesn't prevent a trojaned source file from getting at other /usr/local stuff-- but presumably you could prevent a lot of hanky-panky by chmod'ing stuff to 555 or 544 or whatever once it's installed. Did I miss anything?
I think it would be easier to secure the room than the computer hardware if we're going to be this paranoid. The keylogger only works because it is sneaky. If they can't get into the room without alerting you to the fact that someone got into the room, then you have defeated the sneaky part and will know better than to type your password before doing a security audit.
It was an example. And frankly, using the "that budget is so small" argument is flawed because most of the budgets that one might consider are small when taken as distinct entities. And the constituents who benefit from those budgets will always scream about priorities. But the fact remains that we can't simply accept the mantra "sell stuff or raise taxes". It's not true. We can also examine the existing spending, priority rank the programs (heck a simple computer program could help create a dependency based prioritization system), add any new proposoals or adjust priorities to fit situational need, then adjust spending accordingly.
FWIW, I don't want new taxes. In fact, if my tax money is being used to fund research that I don't benefit from freely, then I am being overtaxed and I want my money back.
What are you talking about? Outside of Adobe products, one of the biggest packages people want for Mac OS is MS Office.
Looks more to me like you have to prove that it's anything more than KDE with mockups of actual MS Office apps running in it.
I agree. Plus, if you make a mistake, you have the opportunity to actually respond with an apology or correction, which means that your response is visible to the person who responded to you.
Either way, this new system rocks. Removing sigs, score, and weighting the options makes the whole thing a much better read. Thanks!
either they can sell the code they have developed, or taxes can go up.
Bzzt! Logical argument violation code #4af1: 'False Dichotomy'.
Other options would include eliminating government spending for things like faulty missile defense systems or the NEA and using the savings to spend on education instead.
Anyway, if anyone is challenged by this in court, let me know. I'm sure I can dig out all sorts of documentation that predates the filing dates of the patents in question.
Hello, McFly? F*cking Hallmark has been in court over this issue for some time now, and we are reading this article because they settled the case to avoid further legal entanglement. Maybe you should contact them, I bet their lawyers would be appreciative-- if indeed what you've done qualifies as prior art and you can prove it. Not only that, it might invalidate one or more stupid patents.
Just US patents? How about that patent on hyperlinks, wasn't that a British patent? And don't most of these US patents have force in other countries stemming from treaty agreements and similar laws in those countries?
Awesome post-- especially the link to the FAQ. I will definitely keep trying to compile gnome-libs and gnome-base. Right now I'm stuck on some BS in gnome-libs where it's telling me I don't have the right db compatibility option available even though I know full well I do because I just compiled BerkeleyDB with that exact option enabled. Back to the terminal window I guess. :)
Um. Last time I checked, my UCE was no different than my legitimate list traffic and personal email, except that the return address was usually invalid and the content utterly pointless.
This means that really UCE is no different than junk mail I get in the mailbox. Both are equally annoying. I have to look at both to determine whether or not this is a valid correspondence and then I have to put the invalid correspondence in the trash. In fact, UCE is less harmful than unsolicited mail, since I only have to hit 'd' on the email, but some of the postal mail I get really ought to be shredded since it contains offers for credit and a bit too much information for safety.
The benefits of this law are two and two alone: valid return address and opt-out procedures. Personally, I've had a lot more trouble with idiots using MS Outlook for email sending me documents for my advice than I've ever had with UCE.
Okay, but that isn't what I heard you say before. Personally I don't have the energy to test AOL's software for them, nor do I have any legitimate reason to want to subvert it. So the only reason I can think of to study their protocol is to build open source alternatives to closed source clients. And for that your links are quite informative. :)
Why wouldn't I just pay cash, or get a shill buyer, or steal the damn media if it was actually being tracked that way? But the only "oppressive regime" involved here seems to be the country masquerading as the land of civilized freedom.
The problem with all of this is that there really is nowhere to go. Sure you can live in a sod hut in Montana or Somalia and not have writable CDs, but barring that you basically get to play this game. And why? 'Cuz the average citizen doesn't give a rats ass about their freedom as long as they are entertained and have plenty of snack foods handy. "Bread and circuses" hasn't changed a bit in over 2000 years.
Galeon depends on Mozilla to build. That is a serious problem, imho-- since it requires the building of the monster in the first place. And yes, I realize that even some geeks these days don't go to the extreme measure of compiling as much of their systems as possible from scratch. *grin* Maybe Galeon developers can figure out a way to lift the relevant shared library code from Mozilla so we can build Galeon without Mozilla.
I have liked Galeon when I've used it, but I didn't try it for some of my more important tasks that Konq handles quite well-- things like page-specific decisions on cookies and scripting, lying to online financial institutions about the user agent so that I can access my accounts, etc. Can it handle this stuff? And does it have tabs?
Even without the expired copyright, without the source code to Word, how would any of us know if said convicted criminals had *already* incorporated code from Free Software projects into their applications?