"Only if they give a damn about US copyright law. Which is probably not the case for at least one of the aforementioned parties."
Why should any country other than the US have to give a damn about US copyright laws ?
Do they care about our (i.e. other countries') copyright laws ?
Re:Good news for Mandrake users.
on
Mandrake 9.2 RC1
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"Looked like it would be nice and simple for people who were just starting out with Linux.....but unfortunately all that only gets in the way when you're actually trying to do something meaningful with your installation."
Eh?
You're not compelled to use all of Mandrake's GUI and command-line tools all the time. If you find the GUI tools restrictive, then use the normal vi/emacs/iptables/ifconfig/whatever...... provided in exactly the same manner as on every other Linux distribution.
Mandrake's tools are provided in addition to the standard unix/GNU/Linux utilities - not instead of them.
"recently BBC changed even its teletext format to prevent users who receive spill-over broadcast (like myself in Belgium) to fully access teletext information; I have my doubts on their willingness to make something available for free outside of Little England"
Rather a snide remark from some-one who used to get something for free that people in "Little England" have to pay for.
You still get all their web content for free, don't you ?
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that some of the Linux code was copied from that which is "owned" by SCO.
If it was common practice at SCO to remove the copyright notices from source code, then whoever copied that code into Linux might have copied code which had no copyright notice applied to it. Hence they would be unaware that they were copying code which was not free to copy.
This seems an important weakness in the one SCO argument against Linux that seems remotely viable (if the contract dispute with IBM is taken to be a separate matter).
"Nobody can really predict the direction the computer industry is moving in the next 5 years."
"Prediction over such a long time range are rubbish."
"The only thing we can predict for the next 5 years is crackpot MBA doing academic, oops non-academic of course (we can't insult academics), circle-jerks and spewing out rubbish predictions."
"Sometimes when people say "The U.S. doesn't have any chemical or biological weapons", there's a guy who will snort and say "Oh yeah, they do, they just want you to THINK they don't!""
Didn't that "weapons-grade" anthrax come from some sort of US-government research lab ?
"1) That would be a pretty massive freaking conspiracy, don't you think?"
One of the reasons I can think for whoever sent that anthrax would be to publicise the fact that the US government and military has actually developed useable "weapons-grade" biological material.
It's not part of the main distro, but there is a kernel-multimedia-2.4.21.0.16mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm in Mandrake contribs. Check it out if you want a more responsive kernel.
"Well, not really, gentoo has had the option since 2.6.0-test1 came out."
Yes, but all Gentoo does with a kernel is download the source and install it into/usr/src/linux, leaving you to configure it, build it and install it.
Anyone who can download a file and use 'tar' can do the same thing, quite easily.
And when you install a new kernel, Portage doesn't even tell you which ebuilds need to be re-installed (nvidia-kernel, i2c, lm-sensors, etc).
Not knocking Gentoo (I run Gentoo and Mandrake), but the binary distributions do more of the hard work for you. To some people that is their strength, to others it is their weakness.
Even as someone who prefers the GPL to the BSD-type licence, what you're saying makes no sense.
How can commercial companies "steal and bury" code which you have explicitly given them the permission to use by your choice of a BSD-type licence ?
Personally, I prefer a GPL-type licence, but others should be free to use BSD licences if they prefer them - and many do. It's a choice people are free to make.
Dude, read what I wrote. "Inherited" diseases often affect the genetic make-up of organs such as kidneys, which causes them to stop working as well as they should after a while. Many diseases affect just a single (type of) organ. These are different to immune-system diseases where the human immune system attacks its own body. Hence, the donor organs don't suffer from the same problems as that person's natural organs.
You can have diseases like this, and not know about them until the symptoms slowly start to become apparent - and that can happen at any age - 20's, 30's, whatever. If it happens to a friend of yours, decide then whether you want to "put them out of their misery".
Transplant recipients can live for years - and have a very good quality of life too, in many cases.
"Artificial extension of life isn't a needed function and has little intrinsic benefits."
I bet you'll still take drugs if a doctor tells you you're seriously ill. Do you carry a little card around with you that says "In case of accident that leaves me half dead, do not treat me" ?
I hope you don't get to find out the hard way how stupid your beliefs really are.
What about those people who have inherited diseases which slowly destroy organs such as kidneys ?
There may not be much point in them being donors if their kidneys (for example) are slowly destroying themselves anyway - doctors may not consider them to be suitable donors at all.
But do they get pushed to the back of the list for kidney transplantation ?
ReiserFS is the filesystem we recommend by default for all non-boot partitions.
Now, I'm a little surprised at the strength of this statement, and the various Linux filesystems all seem to have their strengths and weaknesses in different scenarios. But who do I trust most - the people who created Gentoo Linux, or an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot ?
"I use "EU" here basically to mean both the EU and the UK"
Well that's good, because the UK is part of the EU.
"all their FUD (I'm sorry, that's what it is when you say "We don't know what effect this might have, but it could be catastrophic," by definition)"
We in the UK didn't know what effect feeding cattle with the brains and spinal cords of other cattle (in an effort to save money) would have. But as a result, dozens of people have died of BSE (and it is, by all accounts, a truly horrible way to die). The disease has a long-term gestation period, and hundreds or thousands may end up dying from it. But hey, let's take that risk again, in an effort to make more money (errr, I mean, feed the starving millions in Africa) !
And after all, there's nothing to fear, because someone on Slashdot says that it's FUD when "we don't know what effect something might have, but it could be catastrophic". Come to think of it, why do we test drugs before approving them for use ? Maybe you should have a word with the FDA, telling them not to bother ensuring new drugs have been properly tested. After all, it's just FUD to say "we don't know what effect these new drugs might have, but it could be catastrophic". That Thalidomide business was all made up, right ?
"So European farmers, who would normally be driven out of business in a free market economy, get to stay alive."
Hmmmmm.......so GM food is more efficient, right ? So it's cheaper to produce, right ? So why not sell that GM food to everywhere in the world except the EU ? After all, it's more efficient and cheaper to produce, so the EU are only making their food more expensive, more difficult to sell, and pricing themselves out of the world food market. And if the EU won't buy your GM food, surely there's much, much more of it to sell to the starving millions in Africa.
Or is it all about money ?
"This is a serious issue, because the anti-GM types dominate most of the world organizations, like the UN."
So if most of the world believes one thing, then the few that believe something else (or who stand to make money from it) must be right ? Nice concept of democracy you've got there.
"The regulations all restrict our ability to provide food"
What UN regulations ? As if the USA is going to let the UN tell it what it can and can't sell to who. Just like the UN prevented the USA from invading Iraq, right ?
"You mean like cracking open a phone book and looking under "Schools?" Or did you mean picking up a local tourism brochure and flipping to the "Playgrounds" section? Perhaps even something as evil and insidious as looking up daycare centers on the Internet using YellowPages.com?"
That's completely different from what I was getting at, and you know it.
You split my first paragraph, whose sentences are related, so you can criticise the first sentence, just to make a smart comment about it being easy to find large groups of children in controlled, supervised groups. My second sentence said "maybe he can find a child on their own, somewhere quiet". I'm obviously not talking about the ease of finding children in places like schools.
""Hey, there's one by itself (boy or girl?) in the trees near Seattle. If I catch the 7:00 commuter flight out of San Diego and make the connection in Chicago, I can be there by... " Sure."
"Hey, there's one by itself (boy or girl, does it really matter to this sort of sicko ?) down by the river, just down the road from here". Good job I haven't had to hang around there for the past few weeks - I'm sure many people would have noticed me hanging around, looking suspicious - maybe some of them would have been able to describe what I look like.
Those "fears" are nothing more than irrational, uneducated, paranoid FUD. The Internet is a far safer place to exercise your credit card than virtually all physical retail outlets."
You know that, I know that. But millions of people out there don't, which is why those fears exist.
I can't imagine much that will make your children hate you more than treating older teenagers like this. Not to mention the amount of teasing and bullying by other kids you will be setting them up for.
Please, let any kids you ever have live some sort of decent childhood.
Consider this: What if a paedophile managed to hack into the system, and then had instant access to the exact locations of thousands of children ? Maybe he can find one on their own, somewhere quiet.
Given the level of fear over people using their credit card numbers on computers connected to the internet, I can't see people being happy with a device that broadcasts their child's exact location on any sort of public network, "encrypted" or otherwise.
If I had children, I certainly wouldn't. And I would also want my children to have some sort of life, and the chance to enjoy the freedoms I did as a child.
Slashdot Mirror
"Signatories to the Bern Convention do."
That would be Bern, Switzerland ?
It's an internation treaty that signatories to it must comply with, not "US copyright law".
"Only if they give a damn about US copyright law. Which is probably not the case for at least one of the aforementioned parties."
Why should any country other than the US have to give a damn about US copyright laws ?
Do they care about our (i.e. other countries') copyright laws ?
"Looked like it would be nice and simple for people who were just starting out with Linux.....but unfortunately all that only gets in the way when you're actually trying to do something meaningful with your installation."
Eh?
You're not compelled to use all of Mandrake's GUI and command-line tools all the time. If you find the GUI tools restrictive, then use the normal vi/emacs/iptables/ifconfig/whatever...... provided in exactly the same manner as on every other Linux distribution.
Mandrake's tools are provided in addition to the standard unix/GNU/Linux utilities - not instead of them.
"recently BBC changed even its teletext format to prevent users who receive spill-over broadcast (like myself in Belgium) to fully access teletext information; I have my doubts on their willingness to make something available for free outside of Little England"
Rather a snide remark from some-one who used to get something for free that people in "Little England" have to pay for.
You still get all their web content for free, don't you ?
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that some of the Linux code was copied from that which is "owned" by SCO.
If it was common practice at SCO to remove the copyright notices from source code, then whoever copied that code into Linux might have copied code which had no copyright notice applied to it. Hence they would be unaware that they were copying code which was not free to copy.
This seems an important weakness in the one SCO argument against Linux that seems remotely viable (if the contract dispute with IBM is taken to be a separate matter).
If you think that's bad, try this Google query.
Yes, there really is a Siemens Staines office.
"Nobody can really predict the direction the computer industry is moving in the next 5 years."
"Prediction over such a long time range are rubbish."
"The only thing we can predict for the next 5 years is crackpot MBA doing academic, oops non-academic of course (we can't insult academics), circle-jerks and spewing out rubbish predictions."
What about Moore's law ?
"Sometimes when people say "The U.S. doesn't have any chemical or biological weapons", there's a guy who will snort and say "Oh yeah, they do, they just want you to THINK they don't!""
Didn't that "weapons-grade" anthrax come from some sort of US-government research lab ?
"1) That would be a pretty massive freaking conspiracy, don't you think?"
One of the reasons I can think for whoever sent that anthrax would be to publicise the fact that the US government and military has actually developed useable "weapons-grade" biological material.
Yeah, because we all know Linux needs more PACkage MANagement ;)
And what's wrong with making the world a better place ?
Governments exist to make the country they govern a better place. It could be argued that spending money on free software can help achieve this.
But they don't have to exclude making other countries better places, too.
He used to be called HilLarry (at weekends).
It's not part of the main distro, but there is a kernel-multimedia-2.4.21.0.16mdk-1-1mdk.i586.rpm in Mandrake contribs. Check it out if you want a more responsive kernel.
"emerge is faster than up2date. one character less to type."
Hehehe....and Mandrake's "urpmi" is one character shorter than that.....
"Well, not really, gentoo has had the option since 2.6.0-test1 came out."
/usr/src/linux, leaving you to configure it, build it and install it.
Yes, but all Gentoo does with a kernel is download the source and install it into
Anyone who can download a file and use 'tar' can do the same thing, quite easily.
And when you install a new kernel, Portage doesn't even tell you which ebuilds need to be re-installed (nvidia-kernel, i2c, lm-sensors, etc).
Not knocking Gentoo (I run Gentoo and Mandrake), but the binary distributions do more of the hard work for you. To some people that is their strength, to others it is their weakness.
Even as someone who prefers the GPL to the BSD-type licence, what you're saying makes no sense.
How can commercial companies "steal and bury" code which you have explicitly given them the permission to use by your choice of a BSD-type licence ?
Personally, I prefer a GPL-type licence, but others should be free to use BSD licences if they prefer them - and many do. It's a choice people are free to make.
Dude, read what I wrote. "Inherited" diseases often affect the genetic make-up of organs such as kidneys, which causes them to stop working as well as they should after a while. Many diseases affect just a single (type of) organ. These are different to immune-system diseases where the human immune system attacks its own body. Hence, the donor organs don't suffer from the same problems as that person's natural organs.
You can have diseases like this, and not know about them until the symptoms slowly start to become apparent - and that can happen at any age - 20's, 30's, whatever. If it happens to a friend of yours, decide then whether you want to "put them out of their misery".
Half-dead ?
Transplant recipients can live for years - and have a very good quality of life too, in many cases.
"Artificial extension of life isn't a needed function and has little intrinsic benefits."
I bet you'll still take drugs if a doctor tells you you're seriously ill. Do you carry a little card around with you that says "In case of accident that leaves me half dead, do not treat me" ?
I hope you don't get to find out the hard way how stupid your beliefs really are.
What about those people who have inherited diseases which slowly destroy organs such as kidneys ?
There may not be much point in them being donors if their kidneys (for example) are slowly destroying themselves anyway - doctors may not consider them to be suitable donors at all.
But do they get pushed to the back of the list for kidney transplantation ?
From the Gentoo Linux Installation Guide:
ReiserFS is the filesystem we recommend by default for all non-boot partitions.
Now, I'm a little surprised at the strength of this statement, and the various Linux filesystems all seem to have their strengths and weaknesses in different scenarios. But who do I trust most - the people who created Gentoo Linux, or an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot ?
....that software patents are just a bad idea.
"I use "EU" here basically to mean both the EU and the UK"
Well that's good, because the UK is part of the EU.
"all their FUD (I'm sorry, that's what it is when you say "We don't know what effect this might have, but it could be catastrophic," by definition)"
We in the UK didn't know what effect feeding cattle with the brains and spinal cords of other cattle (in an effort to save money) would have. But as a result, dozens of people have died of BSE (and it is, by all accounts, a truly horrible way to die). The disease has a long-term gestation period, and hundreds or thousands may end up dying from it. But hey, let's take that risk again, in an effort to make more money (errr, I mean, feed the starving millions in Africa) !
And after all, there's nothing to fear, because someone on Slashdot says that it's FUD when "we don't know what effect something might have, but it could be catastrophic". Come to think of it, why do we test drugs before approving them for use ? Maybe you should have a word with the FDA, telling them not to bother ensuring new drugs have been properly tested. After all, it's just FUD to say "we don't know what effect these new drugs might have, but it could be catastrophic". That Thalidomide business was all made up, right ?
"So European farmers, who would normally be driven out of business in a free market economy, get to stay alive."
Hmmmmm.......so GM food is more efficient, right ? So it's cheaper to produce, right ? So why not sell that GM food to everywhere in the world except the EU ? After all, it's more efficient and cheaper to produce, so the EU are only making their food more expensive, more difficult to sell, and pricing themselves out of the world food market. And if the EU won't buy your GM food, surely there's much, much more of it to sell to the starving millions in Africa.
Or is it all about money ?
"This is a serious issue, because the anti-GM types dominate most of the world organizations, like the UN."
So if most of the world believes one thing, then the few that believe something else (or who stand to make money from it) must be right ? Nice concept of democracy you've got there.
"The regulations all restrict our ability to provide food"
What UN regulations ? As if the USA is going to let the UN tell it what it can and can't sell to who. Just like the UN prevented the USA from invading Iraq, right ?
"You mean like cracking open a phone book and looking under "Schools?" Or did you mean picking up a local tourism brochure and flipping to the "Playgrounds" section? Perhaps even something as evil and insidious as looking up daycare centers on the Internet using YellowPages.com?"
... " Sure."
That's completely different from what I was getting at, and you know it.
You split my first paragraph, whose sentences are related, so you can criticise the first sentence, just to make a smart comment about it being easy to find large groups of children in controlled, supervised groups. My second sentence said "maybe he can find a child on their own, somewhere quiet". I'm obviously not talking about the ease of finding children in places like schools.
""Hey, there's one by itself (boy or girl?) in the trees near Seattle. If I catch the 7:00 commuter flight out of San Diego and make the connection in Chicago, I can be there by
"Hey, there's one by itself (boy or girl, does it really matter to this sort of sicko ?) down by the river, just down the road from here". Good job I haven't had to hang around there for the past few weeks - I'm sure many people would have noticed me hanging around, looking suspicious - maybe some of them would have been able to describe what I look like.
Those "fears" are nothing more than irrational, uneducated, paranoid FUD. The Internet is a far safer place to exercise your credit card than virtually all physical retail outlets."
You know that, I know that. But millions of people out there don't, which is why those fears exist.
I can't imagine much that will make your children hate you more than treating older teenagers like this. Not to mention the amount of teasing and bullying by other kids you will be setting them up for.
Please, let any kids you ever have live some sort of decent childhood.
Consider this: What if a paedophile managed to hack into the system, and then had instant access to the exact locations of thousands of children ? Maybe he can find one on their own, somewhere quiet.
Given the level of fear over people using their credit card numbers on computers connected to the internet, I can't see people being happy with a device that broadcasts their child's exact location on any sort of public network, "encrypted" or otherwise.
If I had children, I certainly wouldn't. And I would also want my children to have some sort of life, and the chance to enjoy the freedoms I did as a child.