If the Linux version of SmartSuite is anything like the OS/2 version, then trust me - you DON'T want it. Granted, the OS/2 version uses Open32 so the Linux version would probably use Wine, but I don't expect Lotus to do anything that intelligent.
Sorry, no EULA on Apple machines. Not that I mind - I'd rather use MacOS than Linux anyway.
-- Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
My letter to David Card and Stephen Shankland
on
AOL Considers Linux?
·
· Score: 2
To whom it may concern:
On http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,35463,00.html?st .ne.fd.gif.d, Mr. Card is quoted as saying:
"Linux is simply too muscular for that space, and even without the Windows licensing fee, a hardware company would still have to pay the relatively high prices for Intel chips."
Mr. Card really shouldn't be allowed to talk to the press, because he just made himself and your company look like complete idiots.
Linux runs very well on many non-Intel chips. For one thing, it runs on chips from AMD, which are much cheaper than Intel's chips. Second, since Linux is so fast, it can run better on low-end chips than other operating systems (like Windows) on higher-end chips. Third, Linux has been ported to other architectures, such as StrongARM and PowerPC.
I suppose the real blunder was made by the author of the article, Stephen Shankland, who should have known better than to quote someone completely unqualified to comment on the subject. It would have been smart if Mr. Shankland had actually verified the statements of the people he was interviewing. Nothing makes a journalist look more stupid than when he quotes someone who is completely wrong without pointing out the error.
-- Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
Ok, so now it's a flaw with Open Source
on
APSL 1.1 Released
·
· Score: 1
This is not any more encouraging.
To promote a type of license which doesn't provide sufficient protection for the licensor (licenser?) is bad, IMHO. Anyone who promotes the GPL over the APSL is basically saying, "I'll take your source code, but I want you to bear the brunt of any legal action." That's plain unfair. If you're going to take my source code, the least you can do is agree to help me if I get in legal trouble because of it.
-- Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
It's a flaw in the GPL, not the APSL
on
APSL 1.1 Released
·
· Score: 2
I'm sorry, but I think the real problem is that the GPL does NOT have such a clause.
Say I write some code and release it under the GPL. Hundreds of people download it, modify it, and release their versions. Then, I'm informed that some lines of my code infringe on a patent. That's where the problem starts.
I'm no lawyer, but I believe that the patent holder could sue me, and the lawsuit could be stronger (for lack of a better word) because I allowed other people to use this patent-infringing code without any way for the patent holder to know who they are. With the APSL, I could then tell the patent holder, "Hey, it's not such a big deal, I know everyone who's using the code and I can tell them to wait."
If I ever release any code as "open source", I will definitely use the APSL instead of the GPL, because the APSL will protect me more in a legal battle.
I think most of the anti-Apple people have just filtered out the Apple articles. Much like how I've filtered out the Linux articles (and the Star Wars articles, the MP3 articles, the GNU articles, the Debian articles,.........)
-- Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
Someone will be a FAQ version of the license
on
APSL 1.1 Released
·
· Score: 1
Given time, someone with legal experience will make a FAQ out of this license, just as there's a FAQ for the GPL. I also suspect that someone will also do a "diff" between the GPL and APSL, so that people who are familiar with the GPL can easily understand the APSL.
Remember those two losers who prided themselves because they pirated software? Now that they have fancy jobs and make tons of money, I bet they're going to spend a lot of it on drugs. After all, they couldn't afford it before, and they have no problem being criminals.
Before anyone gets all excited (I live in Austin), the conference costs $595. Ironic that a conference about free software costs so much. I suppose that since OSS advocates want programmers to work for free, the money needs to come from somewhere, right?
MD+F Synapse is a collection of tools that give you port mapping, high-speed file transfers, and encrypted communication. For instance, you can telnet to another machine with Synapse, and your communications will be encrypted. The URL is http://www.marauder3.com/synapse.html. It's available for Windows, Solaris, Linux, and (most importanly) OS/2. Source code is not available, but it's free for home use.
I know these reporters are only supposed to report the news and not comment on it, but by simply echoing what these losers (Gates) say, it makes it sound as if there's truth in it!!!
Let's take this article apart:
Addressing an audience of information technology professionals in Houston, Gates said there was clearly a market for free software but this was mainly confined to relatively simple applications such as word processing and spreadsheets.
Like Office 97, which costs more than Windows 98 and is MS's cash cow? It sounds to me like MS thinks that Windows' best applications don't come from Microsoft!
The Microsoft chairman noted, for example, that early Internet browsers had been distributed for free, but said that modern browsers were far more sophisticated and could no longer be developed in a noncommercial environment.
So what's Mozilla, then? It sounds like he's saying that Mozilla doesn't count as a "modern browser". Oh wait, didn't he mean to say "browsing technology"!?!?
``Today the browsers have gotten rich enough that it's not the kind of software that you can develop and test in a university-type of environment,'' he said.
He's trying to make people think that Open Source software is written only by college students. What a crock.
Gates said Microsoft took Linux seriously but felt that most customers would continue to favor Windows because it was a more homogenous product than Linux, development of which is in the hands of a diffuse band of programmers.
Ha! As if MS's own programmers were any less diffuse. Since when has a corporation's programmers had any direct accountability to the users? Say you find a printing bug in Excel. Can you call the developer who wrote that code at Microsoft and ask him why he screwed up? Of course not! Besides, John Dvorak wrote that a lot of ex-MS programmers have said that the build environment for Windows is so confusing that there isn't any one person in charge of it all.
Gates said, for example, that there were five different windowing systems that run on Linux.
And every version of Windows has a different look to it! I wonder how much money those corporations spent on retraining their employees when they switched from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95.
``The fact that you don't have a central testing point to control ultimately how to build these things probably means that the impact will be fairly limited,'' Gates said.
Testing!?!?!? Did I just hear Bill Gates tout the testing of Windows 98 as an advantage?!?! If those people really tested their software, would it be as buggy as it is?
``People really do want something that's been tested against all the different applications, so that they know exactly what is out there,'' he said.
The only time MS tests with other vendor's applications is when they want to find a way to break them.
This has led some industry observers to suggest that the system, originally created by a Finnish college student, could one day challenge the supremacy of Microsoft's Windows.
I don't use Linux since OS/2 is my OS of choice, but I think Linux is already challenging Windows. That sentence should read "could one day defeat the supremacy of Microsoft's Windows."
This is just another example of poor parenting. There are millions of children who play these games every day, and none of them are influenced to commit physical harm to anyone or anything else. Sure they can get you wired up, but caffeine can do that too, and I've never heard of anyone suing Maxwell House.
I bet the reason why the parents of the victims are not suing the parents of the shooter is because they have no money! It has nothing to do with right wrongs, it just makes them look greedy.
I wonder how long until this lawsuit gets dismissed.
First, I still don't believe there's any justification for committing a crime, I don't care how poor you are. But these two go beyond that. They are proud that their illegal activities have been extolled in a major magazine. That speaks poorly on them, the magazine, and the author. If I was in a situation like that, where I had to commit crimes on a regular basis just so I could move out, I would be ashamed of myself.
It's not just Jon Katz articles post by Rob. It's also articles about gaming on Linux, for example. I filter out Linux articles, but I don't filter out articles on games. What's happens? Most of the gaming articles are about Linux games!!!! Argh!!!
Give me a freakin' break! These two are the white trash of the computer world (and probably other worlds, too). First off, I sure hope they aren't using their real names, because they have admitted in publich to commiting numerous crimes, including forgery and piracy. I hope they get arrested. The average person is going to read this article and think that all geeks are like this.
Let me pick some juicy quotations:
"The Internet has guided and shaped much of their lives -- how they think, what they do, what kind of future they will have. It is the only thing in the world they trust."
That's really scary, because the Internet is not something I trust at all. If anything, the Internet is the one thing you CAN'T trust, because you have no idea who it is you're talking to at any point. And unless you use encryption on everything, people can monitor what you're doing.
"'For me, the Net isn't a substitute for life,' he says. 'It is life.' Jesse likes to say that the life he and Eric live is the real Real World."
That's pathetic. I don't think I need to comment on this - the words speak for themselves.
Referring to someone whose parents paid for his education: "Jesse shakes his head. 'I'll have been working for five or six years when he gets out.'
And that's supposed to mean what? That a nobody from some hick town with 5 years experience selling fake ID's is supposed to have an advantage over someone who's been studying for 4 years to get a college degree?!?!? HAHAHAHA!!!!
"'Can't say I've paid for any of them. Or for any game or piece of software I've ever used, either.'"
Just lovely - this article glamorizes theft. Somehow, we're supposed to feel sorry for this guy and let him steal software and music?
"Jesse has a thriving social life, but not in the sense that most people traditionally use the term. It exists almost totally in his head"
That's not my definition of a social life, it's my definition of a LACK of a social life.
"His friendships are characterized by a stream of gifts - games, music, software. It would never occur to him to tell a friend that he was happy or sad."
Again, this is not a definition of friends, it's a definition of lack of friends. True friends care about your feelings. These people obviously don't.
"A week or two ago, he went hiking along the Boise River on a bright day and landed in the hospital emergency room with second-degree burns on his legs."
All that time on the Internet, and he doesn't even know what sunscreen is for.
"but engaging in a conversation that he does not control tires him out"
Oh yeah, great social skills indeed.
There's more, but I think I've made my point. Granted, I feel sorry about their dysfunctional families. Obviously, that makes their situation more bleak, and they've been scarred by it. But glamorizing them like this is a crime, IMHO.
I don't understand the part about the computer running both Linux and Win98. I seriously doubt they dual-boot, so does it mean that the whole thing works whether you use Linux or Win98, but you don't need to use both?
By releasing the programming information, your competitors have the same information that driver programmers have. This allows them to more easily create hardware that's compatible. Your competitor's product can then use the same drivers yours does (they then don't need to pay for driver development like you do) and can include extra features to make it better than yours. The development community then has to decide whether to support your extensions (when you come out with version 2 of your hardware) or your competitors'.
I personally do not know a single individual who thinks that Microsoft is not a monopoly. I read stuff from people like you who think they are not, but among the people I know and consider my friends or acquaintances, not ONE disagrees with me.
Just because there are alternatives does NOT mean that they are not a monopoly. Look at the law! There have been cases where a company with only 70% of the market were judged as a monopoly. It's not as black and white as you think.
And the way the DOJ/MS case is going, I expect our courts to agree with me as well.
Jini is Java-based technology for networking your appliances together. From their web site:
Jini connection technology makes computers and devices able to quickly form impromptu systems unified by a network. Such a system is a federation of devices, including computers, that are simply connected. Within a federation, devices are instant on--no one needs to install them. The network is resilient--you simply disconnect devices when you don't need them.
And since it's Java-based, it can already work with personal computers, and it doesn't need anything from Microsoft.
-- Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
Only 53% of developers favor of open source?
on
Linux Based Router
·
· Score: 0
That's only half the programmers out there. Of course, such a survey is open to interpretation. Did they ask, "Would you like to work for free?" or did they ask, "Would you want your employer to still pay you while you make your source code available for free?".
-- Timur Tabi Remove "nospam_" from email address
But USB is for external devices
on
IBM and Mp3
·
· Score: 1
I don't want to have a chain of boxes on my desk when I can have them all inside. Sure, a modem should be outside so that you can see the LED's, but my point is that USB is not a replacement for ISA.
I paid $50 for my word processor (DeScribe 5.0 for OS/2) many years ago. I used it to write my 80-page Master's Thesis. I use it to write letters. I use it to make labels on those Avery laser label things. The company has gone out of business, but I still use the product. If I had to pay per use, It'd cost me thousands of dollars.
That's the reason I pay the $20 for unlimited local phone calls. Do I make more than 100 calls a month? No, or course not. But the peace-of-mind that I get knowing that it doesn't matter if I make the phone is worth the extra $10/month.
Slashdot Mirror
If the Linux version of SmartSuite is anything like the OS/2 version, then trust me - you DON'T want it. Granted, the OS/2 version uses Open32 so the Linux version would probably use Wine, but I don't expect Lotus to do anything that intelligent.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Sorry, no EULA on Apple machines. Not that I mind - I'd rather use MacOS than Linux anyway.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
On http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,35463,00.html?st .ne.fd.gif.d, Mr. Card is quoted as saying:
"Linux is simply too muscular for that space, and even without the Windows licensing fee, a hardware company would still have to pay the relatively high prices for Intel chips."
Mr. Card really shouldn't be allowed to talk to the press, because he just made himself and your company look like complete idiots.
Linux runs very well on many non-Intel chips. For one thing, it runs on chips from AMD, which are much cheaper than Intel's chips. Second, since Linux is so fast, it can run better on low-end chips than other operating systems (like Windows) on higher-end chips. Third, Linux has been ported to other architectures, such as StrongARM and PowerPC.
I suppose the real blunder was made by the author of the article, Stephen Shankland, who should have known better than to quote someone completely unqualified to comment on the subject. It would have been smart if Mr. Shankland had actually verified the statements of the people he was interviewing. Nothing makes a journalist look more stupid than when he quotes someone who is completely wrong without pointing out the error.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
To promote a type of license which doesn't provide sufficient protection for the licensor (licenser?) is bad, IMHO. Anyone who promotes the GPL over the APSL is basically saying, "I'll take your source code, but I want you to bear the brunt of any legal action." That's plain unfair. If you're going to take my source code, the least you can do is agree to help me if I get in legal trouble because of it.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Say I write some code and release it under the GPL. Hundreds of people download it, modify it, and release their versions. Then, I'm informed that some lines of my code infringe on a patent. That's where the problem starts.
I'm no lawyer, but I believe that the patent holder could sue me, and the lawsuit could be stronger (for lack of a better word) because I allowed other people to use this patent-infringing code without any way for the patent holder to know who they are. With the APSL, I could then tell the patent holder, "Hey, it's not such a big deal, I know everyone who's using the code and I can tell them to wait."
If I ever release any code as "open source", I will definitely use the APSL instead of the GPL, because the APSL will protect me more in a legal battle.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
I think most of the anti-Apple people have just filtered out the Apple articles. Much like how I've filtered out the Linux articles (and the Star Wars articles, the MP3 articles, the GNU articles, the Debian articles, .........)
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Given time, someone with legal experience will make a FAQ out of this license, just as there's a FAQ for the GPL. I also suspect that someone will also do a "diff" between the GPL and APSL, so that people who are familiar with the GPL can easily understand the APSL.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Remember those two losers who prided themselves because they pirated software? Now that they have fancy jobs and make tons of money, I bet they're going to spend a lot of it on drugs. After all, they couldn't afford it before, and they have no problem being criminals.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Before anyone gets all excited (I live in Austin), the conference costs $595. Ironic that a conference about free software costs so much. I suppose that since OSS advocates want programmers to work for free, the money needs to come from somewhere, right?
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
MD+F Synapse is a collection of tools that give you port mapping, high-speed file transfers, and encrypted communication. For instance, you can telnet to another machine with Synapse, and your communications will be encrypted. The URL is http://www.marauder3.com/synapse.html. It's available for Windows, Solaris, Linux, and (most importanly) OS/2. Source code is not available, but it's free for home use.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Let's take this article apart:
Addressing an audience of information technology professionals in Houston, Gates said there was clearly a market for free software but this was mainly confined to relatively simple applications such as word processing and spreadsheets.
Like Office 97, which costs more than Windows 98 and is MS's cash cow? It sounds to me like MS thinks that Windows' best applications don't come from Microsoft!
The Microsoft chairman noted, for example, that early Internet browsers had been distributed for free, but said that modern browsers were far more sophisticated and could no longer be developed in a noncommercial environment.
So what's Mozilla, then? It sounds like he's saying that Mozilla doesn't count as a "modern browser". Oh wait, didn't he mean to say "browsing technology"!?!?
``Today the browsers have gotten rich enough that it's not the kind of software that you can develop and test in a university-type of environment,'' he said.
He's trying to make people think that Open Source software is written only by college students. What a crock.
Gates said Microsoft took Linux seriously but felt that most customers would continue to favor Windows because it was a more homogenous product than Linux, development of which is in the hands of a diffuse band of programmers.
Ha! As if MS's own programmers were any less diffuse. Since when has a corporation's programmers had any direct accountability to the users? Say you find a printing bug in Excel. Can you call the developer who wrote that code at Microsoft and ask him why he screwed up? Of course not! Besides, John Dvorak wrote that a lot of ex-MS programmers have said that the build environment for Windows is so confusing that there isn't any one person in charge of it all.
Gates said, for example, that there were five different windowing systems that run on Linux.
And every version of Windows has a different look to it! I wonder how much money those corporations spent on retraining their employees when they switched from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95.
``The fact that you don't have a central testing point to control ultimately how to build these things probably means that the impact will be fairly limited,'' Gates said.
Testing!?!?!? Did I just hear Bill Gates tout the testing of Windows 98 as an advantage?!?! If those people really tested their software, would it be as buggy as it is?
``People really do want something that's been tested against all the different applications, so that they know exactly what is out there,'' he said.
The only time MS tests with other vendor's applications is when they want to find a way to break them.
This has led some industry observers to suggest that the system, originally created by a Finnish college student, could one day challenge the supremacy of Microsoft's Windows.
I don't use Linux since OS/2 is my OS of choice, but I think Linux is already challenging Windows. That sentence should read "could one day defeat the supremacy of Microsoft's Windows."
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
I bet the reason why the parents of the victims are not suing the parents of the shooter is because they have no money! It has nothing to do with right wrongs, it just makes them look greedy.
I wonder how long until this lawsuit gets dismissed.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Looks like someone's been abusing the Slashdot moderation system.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
First, I still don't believe there's any justification for committing a crime, I don't care how poor you are. But these two go beyond that. They are proud that their illegal activities have been extolled in a major magazine. That speaks poorly on them, the magazine, and the author. If I was in a situation like that, where I had to commit crimes on a regular basis just so I could move out, I would be ashamed of myself.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
It's not just Jon Katz articles post by Rob. It's also articles about gaming on Linux, for example. I filter out Linux articles, but I don't filter out articles on games. What's happens? Most of the gaming articles are about Linux games!!!! Argh!!!
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Let me pick some juicy quotations:
"The Internet has guided and shaped much of their lives -- how they think, what they do, what kind of future they will have. It is the only thing in the world they trust."
That's really scary, because the Internet is not something I trust at all. If anything, the Internet is the one thing you CAN'T trust, because you have no idea who it is you're talking to at any point. And unless you use encryption on everything, people can monitor what you're doing.
"'For me, the Net isn't a substitute for life,' he says. 'It is life.' Jesse likes to say that the life he and Eric live is the real Real World."
That's pathetic. I don't think I need to comment on this - the words speak for themselves.
Referring to someone whose parents paid for his education: "Jesse shakes his head. 'I'll have been working for five or six years when he gets out.'
And that's supposed to mean what? That a nobody from some hick town with 5 years experience selling fake ID's is supposed to have an advantage over someone who's been studying for 4 years to get a college degree?!?!? HAHAHAHA!!!!
"'Can't say I've paid for any of them. Or for any game or piece of software I've ever used, either.'"
Just lovely - this article glamorizes theft. Somehow, we're supposed to feel sorry for this guy and let him steal software and music?
"Jesse has a thriving social life, but not in the sense that most people traditionally use the term. It exists almost totally in his head"
That's not my definition of a social life, it's my definition of a LACK of a social life.
"His friendships are characterized by a stream of gifts - games, music, software. It would never occur to him to tell a friend that he was happy or sad."
Again, this is not a definition of friends, it's a definition of lack of friends. True friends care about your feelings. These people obviously don't.
"A week or two ago, he went hiking along the Boise River on a bright day and landed in the hospital emergency room with second-degree burns on his legs."
All that time on the Internet, and he doesn't even know what sunscreen is for.
"but engaging in a conversation that he does not control tires him out"
Oh yeah, great social skills indeed.
There's more, but I think I've made my point. Granted, I feel sorry about their dysfunctional families. Obviously, that makes their situation more bleak, and they've been scarred by it. But glamorizing them like this is a crime, IMHO.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
I don't understand the part about the computer running both Linux and Win98. I seriously doubt they dual-boot, so does it mean that the whole thing works whether you use Linux or Win98, but you don't need to use both?
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
By releasing the programming information, your competitors have the same information that driver programmers have. This allows them to more easily create hardware that's compatible. Your competitor's product can then use the same drivers yours does (they then don't need to pay for driver development like you do) and can include extra features to make it better than yours. The development community then has to decide whether to support your extensions (when you come out with version 2 of your hardware) or your competitors'.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
If you want MetaStream for the Mac, go to http://www.metastream.com/plugins.html and click on "Mac plug-in".
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Just because there are alternatives does NOT mean that they are not a monopoly. Look at the law! There have been cases where a company with only 70% of the market were judged as a monopoly. It's not as black and white as you think.
And the way the DOJ/MS case is going, I expect our courts to agree with me as well.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
If you call and ask, they'll tell you about Linux pre-load options.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Jini is Java-based technology for networking your appliances together. From their web site:
Jini connection technology makes computers and devices able to quickly form impromptu systems unified by a network. Such a system is a federation of devices, including computers, that are simply connected. Within a federation, devices are instant on--no one needs to install them. The network is resilient--you simply disconnect devices when you don't need them.
And since it's Java-based, it can already work with personal computers, and it doesn't need anything from Microsoft.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
That's only half the programmers out there. Of course, such a survey is open to interpretation. Did they ask, "Would you like to work for free?" or did they ask, "Would you want your employer to still pay you while you make your source code available for free?".
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
I don't want to have a chain of boxes on my desk when I can have them all inside. Sure, a modem should be outside so that you can see the LED's, but my point is that USB is not a replacement for ISA.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
That's the reason I pay the $20 for unlimited local phone calls. Do I make more than 100 calls a month? No, or course not. But the peace-of-mind that I get knowing that it doesn't matter if I make the phone is worth the extra $10/month.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address