Qt is exactly like my other example, readline. You can write terminal-based apps without readline, just like you can write Linux GUI apps that run under KDE without Qt. However, in both cases their functionality is considerably reduced. That's a deliberate tradeoff you have to make if you want to make your software closed source. KDE at least gives you the option of paying money to get the benefits of the library without having to give people the freedoms they want.
And there are lots of companies who feel they can't develop for Linux because they can't ship a Linux kernel with proprietary binary drivers installed and then refuse people the source. So the kernel isn't as different as you seem to think.
I'm reluctant to "give away" my code under a license that takes away (or at least reserves for me) rights from other people that may want to use it...
The GPL does not take away or reserve any rights whatsoever.
Rather, the GPL grants people rights that they would not otherwise have, subject to specific conditions.
It's true that it doesn't grant them as many rights as (say) the BSD license, and has different strings attached, but it's misleading to talk of it taking away rights. Just say that you don't like the conditions attached to the GPL's granting of rights, we'll know what you're talking about and respect your honesty in not misrepresenting the GPL.
GPL is by far the biggest problem with KDE. It's impossible to develop non-GPL applications using the KDE stuff without paying a crapload of money to Trolltech.
You call it a bug, I call it a feature. People make the same complaint about the Linux kernel, GNU readline, and so on. If you want a proprietary-friendly OS, go use Windows or OS X.
Though it would have been nice if the effort expended on GNOME had instead been expended on a BSD-licensed Qt replacement... Or improving OpenStep... or pretty much anything except developing a third desktop environment and stuffing it with Microsoft patented technology.
I don't get it. I run KDE 3.5 on Kubuntu. I just went to System Settings -> Appearance -> Fonts and checked the box marked "Use anti-aliasing for fonts". Hey presto, anti-aliased fonts just like Windows.
What version of KDE are you complaining about? Something from the 90s?
I use Firefox, which puts extra thin space after the period when the font supports it. If your browser is broken or your font lacks kerning information, complain to the responsible parties.
Domainkeys don't need support in the MUA -- the MTA can discard messages failing a domainkey check before it even gets to the user.
The MTA can also drop messages failing an S/MIME signature check. As an added benefit, S/MIME is already supported in every major MUA anyway. So why do we need yet another "standard"?
> Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!
That happened some time in the mid 80s when computers got proportional fonts. Try reading The PC Is Not A Typewriter or a basic intro to graphic design and typography.
For quite some time now I've thought the shortage was deliberate to help them liquidate their stock of GameCube titles.
I don't buy it, for the simple reason that the Wii can run all those GameCube titles too. With the relatively small number of upcoming Wii releases, I'm expecting to work my way through the GameCube back catalog to fill in the gaps.
No, as a GameCube owner I can tell you that Nintendo has always had distribution problems. They just can't keep stuff in stores for whatever reason. Even high profile well-reviewed 'Cube games like Burnout 2 are difficult to find in stores and often go for a premium on eBay.
Basically, I don't see how you can have a business model that involves selling things to people who are happy to take them for free, if there's another way (despite it being illegal).
Example #1: Starbucks. Lots of companies provide free coffee, including the IBM office I worked at in Cambridge MA. Did that stop hundreds of people walking across the street to Starbucks after lunch? Hell no. And there are plenty of small local coffee places in my neighborhood that sell better coffee, cheaper; but Starbucks stays in business. Part of it is that they offer a predictable experience and guarantee a certain level of quality.
Example #2: Bottled water. In most parts of the western world you can get water that's just as good from the faucet in your kitchen, so cheap that it's basically free. If you live somewhere where it tastes bad, a cheap filter will fix that. But people still buy bottled water. They even buy big gallon-size containers of it and keep them in the refrigerator. Why? Even I don't understand that one.
If I could buy good quality LAME-encoded MP3s from the iTunes Music Store for 25 cents each or $5 an album, would I waste time trying to find free copies? Would you?
While it's true that nothing is stopping someone from making a hardware Java bytecode running solution, the fact that it's possible doesn't make Java a non-interpreted language, any more than the fact that it's theoretically possible to create a hardware BASIC solution makes BASIC a non-interpreted language.
Hardware CPUs that run Java bytecode directly alreadyexist and have done for years.
So Java is no more "interpreted" than C, which was designed for a specific architecture (the PDP), and is also available in interpreted forms and used to compile code which is run as bytecode. You can even compile C to Java bytecode.
Whether something is compiled or interpreted is not a function of the language, nor is it defined based on which CPU instruction set happens to be most popular at the moment.
Yes, Bob The Builder paved the way for such classics as The Cheeky Girls' "Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)" and The Fast Food Rockers' anthemic "Fast Food Song".
People who think US chart music sucks have no idea how much worse it could be.
I knew Bush would win as soon as Al Gore was chosen. I knew he'd win again as soon as Kerry was chosen. If Hillary is picked, we'll get another Republican president.
PS3 Linux runs inside a hypervisor, and it is deliberately denied direct access to the GPU. Graphics are done via virtual framebuffer, with no 3D acceleration.
Yes, we're talking about volunteers, but still--a bug in the core login system that can lock you out of your remote server permanently is pretty severe to be leaving lying around for a year. If you do a search on Google, there are plenty of other people who were bitten by it; e.g. http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/pam-list/20 06-02/0006.html
I didn't report the X.org bug, but as I say, it was apparently specific to FireGL T2, which is probably why you didn't see it. A search for "X.org FireGL T2" picks up a bunch of other people who had the problem. (That one was also in Ubuntu, granted.)
Actually, Debian is pretty bad at listening to developers too. That's why Ruby in Debian is so broken. As a Debian user contributing to Ruby, I tried to bring the two sides together, but the Debian folks just weren't interested in any kind of compromise.
I think one opportunity that Debian continuously fails to see is to make very clear that Testing is always uptodate and always usable.
It isn't, though.
PAM in Testing was broken for months, and X in testing was broken for a while after the changeover to X.org. That's what led me to give up on Debian: 'stable' was too out-of-date, 'testing' was too unstable. By cherry-picking from 'testing', Ubuntu seems to be able to find a happy medium.
Slashdot Mirror
Qt is exactly like my other example, readline. You can write terminal-based apps without readline, just like you can write Linux GUI apps that run under KDE without Qt. However, in both cases their functionality is considerably reduced. That's a deliberate tradeoff you have to make if you want to make your software closed source. KDE at least gives you the option of paying money to get the benefits of the library without having to give people the freedoms they want.
And there are lots of companies who feel they can't develop for Linux because they can't ship a Linux kernel with proprietary binary drivers installed and then refuse people the source. So the kernel isn't as different as you seem to think.
The GPL does not take away or reserve any rights whatsoever.
Rather, the GPL grants people rights that they would not otherwise have, subject to specific conditions.
It's true that it doesn't grant them as many rights as (say) the BSD license, and has different strings attached, but it's misleading to talk of it taking away rights. Just say that you don't like the conditions attached to the GPL's granting of rights, we'll know what you're talking about and respect your honesty in not misrepresenting the GPL.
You call it a bug, I call it a feature. People make the same complaint about the Linux kernel, GNU readline, and so on. If you want a proprietary-friendly OS, go use Windows or OS X.
Though it would have been nice if the effort expended on GNOME had instead been expended on a BSD-licensed Qt replacement... Or improving OpenStep... or pretty much anything except developing a third desktop environment and stuffing it with Microsoft patented technology.
I don't get it. I run KDE 3.5 on Kubuntu. I just went to System Settings -> Appearance -> Fonts and checked the box marked "Use anti-aliasing for fonts". Hey presto, anti-aliased fonts just like Windows.
What version of KDE are you complaining about? Something from the 90s?
I use Firefox, which puts extra thin space after the period when the font supports it. If your browser is broken or your font lacks kerning information, complain to the responsible parties.
The MTA can also drop messages failing an S/MIME signature check. As an added benefit, S/MIME is already supported in every major MUA anyway. So why do we need yet another "standard"?
> Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!
That happened some time in the mid 80s when computers got proportional fonts. Try reading The PC Is Not A Typewriter or a basic intro to graphic design and typography.
I don't buy it, for the simple reason that the Wii can run all those GameCube titles too. With the relatively small number of upcoming Wii releases, I'm expecting to work my way through the GameCube back catalog to fill in the gaps.
No, as a GameCube owner I can tell you that Nintendo has always had distribution problems. They just can't keep stuff in stores for whatever reason. Even high profile well-reviewed 'Cube games like Burnout 2 are difficult to find in stores and often go for a premium on eBay.
Yeah, 'cause it's not like you can compile other languages like Ruby to Java bytecode.
Example #1: Starbucks. Lots of companies provide free coffee, including the IBM office I worked at in Cambridge MA. Did that stop hundreds of people walking across the street to Starbucks after lunch? Hell no. And there are plenty of small local coffee places in my neighborhood that sell better coffee, cheaper; but Starbucks stays in business. Part of it is that they offer a predictable experience and guarantee a certain level of quality.
Example #2: Bottled water. In most parts of the western world you can get water that's just as good from the faucet in your kitchen, so cheap that it's basically free. If you live somewhere where it tastes bad, a cheap filter will fix that. But people still buy bottled water. They even buy big gallon-size containers of it and keep them in the refrigerator. Why? Even I don't understand that one.
If I could buy good quality LAME-encoded MP3s from the iTunes Music Store for 25 cents each or $5 an album, would I waste time trying to find free copies? Would you?
It also requires MySQL, and isn't compatible with any other SQL back end.
An "enterprise grade" monitoring system hacked onto MySQL? Yeah, right. That's like finding out it's written in PHP.
I've found that hibernate is more reliable when not using buggy closed-source video drivers.
Hardware CPUs that run Java bytecode directly already exist and have done for years.
So Java is no more "interpreted" than C, which was designed for a specific architecture (the PDP), and is also available in interpreted forms and used to compile code which is run as bytecode. You can even compile C to Java bytecode.
Whether something is compiled or interpreted is not a function of the language, nor is it defined based on which CPU instruction set happens to be most popular at the moment.
If your PC is so old that it doesn't have a hibernate option, you're in a minority. Most systems have been Energy Star compliant for years.
Yup, first thing I thought of when I read the writeup.
Put "SAMPLE" or something over every photo as a watermark. End of problem.
Try hard powering off Windows when it's half way through a service pack or security update, see how well Windows deals with it.
I very much doubt the Beatles will be forgotten in 50 years. My brother wasn't even born until 20 years after they split up, and he's a massive fan.
Yes, Bob The Builder paved the way for such classics as The Cheeky Girls' "Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)" and The Fast Food Rockers' anthemic "Fast Food Song".
People who think US chart music sucks have no idea how much worse it could be.
Yup, The Onion was absolutely spot on last week:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/59586/print/
I knew Bush would win as soon as Al Gore was chosen. I knew he'd win again as soon as Kerry was chosen. If Hillary is picked, we'll get another Republican president.
A quick session of Animal Crossing in bed is a good way to wind down.
The other night I took a bath and played New Super Mario Brothers.
Or perhaps you're cooking something and want to keep an eye on it, but could play a quick game of Hearts while doing so.
I didn't expect to play on the DS while at home, but it has worked out that way.
PS3 Linux runs inside a hypervisor, and it is deliberately denied direct access to the GPU. Graphics are done via virtual framebuffer, with no 3D acceleration.
/ LinuxKernelOverview.html
http://moss.csc.ncsu.edu/~mueller/cluster/ps3/doc
has a copy of the Sony docs spelling it out.
This makes the PS3 far less interesting as a Linux device, obviously.
Here's the Debian bug for PAM
3 35273
/ pam/pam_0.79-4/changelog
0 06-02/0006.html
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=
Basically, segfault if you used pam_tally, which was a security requirement where I work. Took a year to be fixed.
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/p
Yes, we're talking about volunteers, but still--a bug in the core login system that can lock you out of your remote server permanently is pretty severe to be leaving lying around for a year. If you do a search on Google, there are plenty of other people who were bitten by it; e.g. http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/pam-list/2
I didn't report the X.org bug, but as I say, it was apparently specific to FireGL T2, which is probably why you didn't see it. A search for "X.org FireGL T2" picks up a bunch of other people who had the problem. (That one was also in Ubuntu, granted.)
Actually, Debian is pretty bad at listening to developers too. That's why Ruby in Debian is so broken. As a Debian user contributing to Ruby, I tried to bring the two sides together, but the Debian folks just weren't interested in any kind of compromise.
It isn't, though.
PAM in Testing was broken for months, and X in testing was broken for a while after the changeover to X.org. That's what led me to give up on Debian: 'stable' was too out-of-date, 'testing' was too unstable. By cherry-picking from 'testing', Ubuntu seems to be able to find a happy medium.
Based around Core Duo.
Or perhaps a Linux tablet running on Antaur, if someone could come up with some decent HWR for Linux.