But I get the feeling NVidia could release any damn source and say it was the video drivers and 90% of people who complain about the drivers not being open-source would be happy.
Well not quite. The problem is, without the sources, when the kernel API (or something else) changes, it won't compile anymore. Similarly, try to run the old Qseeme binary on modern Linux distros : you'll have the darndest time getting it to go (if you get it to go at all) because it's linked against libc5. If the sources for Qseeme had been released, someone would have adapted it to glibc for example.
This "oh, we love you NVIDIA, we'll buy your products even though you don't support Free Software at all" is counter-constructive to our ends.
But you don't understand : there's no question we don't like their binary-only releases, but they did make a step in our direction. To them, they think readable code gives away their hardware secrets. No need to be nasty to them (and given the level of OSS support for hi-perf video boards out there, we probably ought not to), I'm just saying it's more constructive to try to work *with* them rather than go against them.
They already show an interest for the Linux platform. We just need to lobby them and work out how they could understand that it's possible to make proprietary hardware full of secrets with open-source drivers. If we antagonize them, that won't do any good at all.
It's difficult to have a principle-based movement when you ignore your principles.
I don't disagree, I'm just saying that positive advocacy, proposing free GPL and open-source philosophy introductory meetings with company decision-makers, conducted by free-software figureheads, or just plain boycott with (polite and argumented) emails explaining why you prefer not to buy close-source products, would work better than nasty remarks.
I'm sure NVidia thinks they're doing us a great favor here : if we diss them at every turn, they'll just give up on Linux eventually. Different points of view you see.
here it is: #include "stdio.h" #define s 1 #define o 1 #define u 1 #define r 1 #define c 1 #define e printf("You won't get any source. Go away!\n -- signed: NVidia\n")
For those who've sold their GPL soul to use the binary drivers from NVIDIA (like me) you can get them now.
While I support the GPL and don't particularly like binary-only drivers, I reckon this little phrase has no place in this announcement. To NVidia's credit, they seem to be somewhat serious about supporting Linux in a somewhat timely manner. This sort of allusion won't be a great incentive for other hardware vendors to support Linux at all, they'll just think "whatever we do to be nice to them, those Linux folks will always have something to complain about".
When Linux has 80% marketshare and is a true force to be reckoned with, then perhaps the community will be able to afford sarcasm and get away with it, but in the meantime, there must be other, more constructive ways to entice vendors to embrace open-source.
You'd have to be naked for the 3d scanner to work.
Then perhaps get yourself scanned now and then at "authorized scanning" places, and give the data to the clothing stores in the form of a smartcard, or a CD or something.
Some of you may remember that cheezy 80s serie called Street Hawk (basically a motorcycle version of Knight Rider). I remember seeing in the pilot episode something really clever : the hero was hired to ride this super-duper motorcycle (secret mission and all) and, to make his bike outfit, was asked to step into a clear tube, then the tube filled up with some foam to take a "print" of his entire body, then 5 minutes later, some magic computer spewed out a custom bike clothe set for him.
Street Hawk's cheesiness aside, I've always thought that was really a clever idea : custom-made instant clothing. These days, technologies could allow a shop to have a 3D scanner where one would step in to have his body scanned, then the customer could select a model, and the model could be made on the spot by a high-speed sewing machine, or simply ordered with the custom fit data and shipped to the customer. If the piece of clothing was to be made on the spot, shops could simply carry fabric, buttons and accessories, and carry patterns in a computer that could make the piece of clothing automatically in, say, 20 minutes.
Personally, I'm a lot taller and heavier than the average person, and I've always had trouble finding pants. I would dearly love if clothes could be custom-made by a machine, as well as a tailor, but for cheap.
(Also, my advice to him, now that he's publicly admitted to be an 3v1l hax0r, is to shave his beard as soon as possible. Unfortunate mistakes can happen so quickly these days...)
True enough. But then if they had known about their own pages, they wouldn't have granted the patent, since they themselves infringe it. They could have to pay damages to the guy who got the patent granted;-)
a method for assigning URL's and e-mail addresses to members of a group comprising the steps of: assigning each member of said group a URL of the form name.subdomain.domain and assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form name@subdomain.domain.'
You know what's funny? the USPTO is supposed to do prior art research to grant patents. Well guess where you can find prior art for this method? at the USPTO itself. Here for example:
Their website doesn't work. At least link to article. After so many years we finally found way to destroy Microsoft.
No no, it's SCO redirecting port 80 of www.sco.com to www.microsoft.com to deflect the attack of the MyDoom virus. They still haven't quite figured out why their network load just doubled though...
All Windows vs Linux researches are meaningless because of one simple fact: Microsoft has billions available to throw at making Windows better, whereas the Linux community, even with RH and other prominent companies, is rather poor in funding in comparison.
If I was an IT manager, I would consider Linux to follow a "best effort" sort of approach, whereas Windows, being far less than free, should come with guarantees about stability and performance. However, at least in terms of stability and security, Linux certainly outperforms Windows, if not by much these days. And it probably isn't far from Windows in terms of raw speed.
So, basically, those studies compare apples and oranges. In the cycle racing world, if Joe Bike, with no funding, no top-level medical staff and a simple bike, was to finish a race second or third to Lance Armstrong, everybody would herald him as a great hero, and Lance Armstrong's team wouldn't put up a website pointing out Joe Bike's poor performances compared to Lance Armstrong. Fact is, Microsoft has much vaster resources than the Linux community, and only manages to perform marginally better than Linux at best. That's what the studies should show. Throw Microsoft's billions at Linux and Windows would instantly become a laughable joke.
Actually this is not that offtopic : I didn't reveal my identity in order not to be associated with the poor karma this post had gotten
Well let's see : you posted anonymously at 6:54AM, then replied to yourself non-anonymously at 7:06AM.
If the article is right then, I deduce you stopped being overweight in a mere 12 minutes. This is by far and away the best weight loss program I've ever heard of. Beat that Weight Watchers!!
For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight.
That may be true, but I think it's only a one-way logic. I doubt you can reverse-deduce the weight of people by asking them how much they'd pay to reveal it. The best proof is that these guys aren't necessarily all obese, and these guys definitely aren't on the skinny side.
In a bid to prevent fragmentation of the standard they have agreed to have their software support opening of the other's files. They have however not agreed to support a single standard. PKZip's encryption is RSA-based while Winzip use an AES
In other words, the standard is still fragmented, the new thing here is that both software now support both standard fragments, both double in size, and neither is more interesting for the end user than the other.
Slashdot Mirror
But I get the feeling NVidia could release any damn source and say it was the video drivers and 90% of people who complain about the drivers not being open-source would be happy.
Well not quite. The problem is, without the sources, when the kernel API (or something else) changes, it won't compile anymore. Similarly, try to run the old Qseeme binary on modern Linux distros : you'll have the darndest time getting it to go (if you get it to go at all) because it's linked against libc5. If the sources for Qseeme had been released, someone would have adapted it to glibc for example.
This "oh, we love you NVIDIA, we'll buy your products even though you don't support Free Software at all" is counter-constructive to our ends.
But you don't understand : there's no question we don't like their binary-only releases, but they did make a step in our direction. To them, they think readable code gives away their hardware secrets. No need to be nasty to them (and given the level of OSS support for hi-perf video boards out there, we probably ought not to), I'm just saying it's more constructive to try to work *with* them rather than go against them.
They already show an interest for the Linux platform. We just need to lobby them and work out how they could understand that it's possible to make proprietary hardware full of secrets with open-source drivers. If we antagonize them, that won't do any good at all.
It's difficult to have a principle-based movement when you ignore your principles.
I don't disagree, I'm just saying that positive advocacy, proposing free GPL and open-source philosophy introductory meetings with company decision-makers, conducted by free-software figureheads, or just plain boycott with (polite and argumented) emails explaining why you prefer not to buy close-source products, would work better than nasty remarks.
I'm sure NVidia thinks they're doing us a great favor here : if we diss them at every turn, they'll just give up on Linux eventually. Different points of view you see.
here it is:
#include "stdio.h"
#define s 1
#define o 1
#define u 1
#define r 1
#define c 1
#define e printf("You won't get any source. Go away!\n -- signed: NVidia\n")
main()
{
s - o - u - r - c - e - s;
}
Enjoy...
For those who've sold their GPL soul to use the binary drivers from NVIDIA (like me) you can get them now.
While I support the GPL and don't particularly like binary-only drivers, I reckon this little phrase has no place in this announcement. To NVidia's credit, they seem to be somewhat serious about supporting Linux in a somewhat timely manner. This sort of allusion won't be a great incentive for other hardware vendors to support Linux at all, they'll just think "whatever we do to be nice to them, those Linux folks will always have something to complain about".
When Linux has 80% marketshare and is a true force to be reckoned with, then perhaps the community will be able to afford sarcasm and get away with it, but in the meantime, there must be other, more constructive ways to entice vendors to embrace open-source.
You'd have to be naked for the 3d scanner to work.
Then perhaps get yourself scanned now and then at "authorized scanning" places, and give the data to the clothing stores in the form of a smartcard, or a CD or something.
Yeah. Must me a cousin of MyDoom (MyQuake? MyDukeNukem?) targetting /. ...
Some of you may remember that cheezy 80s serie called Street Hawk (basically a motorcycle version of Knight Rider). I remember seeing in the pilot episode something really clever : the hero was hired to ride this super-duper motorcycle (secret mission and all) and, to make his bike outfit, was asked to step into a clear tube, then the tube filled up with some foam to take a "print" of his entire body, then 5 minutes later, some magic computer spewed out a custom bike clothe set for him.
:-)
Street Hawk's cheesiness aside, I've always thought that was really a clever idea : custom-made instant clothing. These days, technologies could allow a shop to have a 3D scanner where one would step in to have his body scanned, then the customer could select a model, and the model could be made on the spot by a high-speed sewing machine, or simply ordered with the custom fit data and shipped to the customer. If the piece of clothing was to be made on the spot, shops could simply carry fabric, buttons and accessories, and carry patterns in a computer that could make the piece of clothing automatically in, say, 20 minutes.
Personally, I'm a lot taller and heavier than the average person, and I've always had trouble finding pants. I would dearly love if clothes could be custom-made by a machine, as well as a tailor, but for cheap.
Dream on
You use cloths in your ass? ...
Interesting
This means that by as early as 2006, you will no longer have to contortion yourself in a minuscule fitting room.
...
And there goes the hidden cam live internet feed porn business
Doom wrecking havoc? just wait till Duke Nukem Forever comes out sometime in the next decade, we ain't seen nothing yet ...
Here you can see a photo of Seth Schoen receiving a letter from the MPAA lawyers after revealing he's the author of the DeCSS haiku:
...)
Clicky-clicky
(Also, my advice to him, now that he's publicly admitted to be an 3v1l hax0r, is to shave his beard as soon as possible. Unfortunate mistakes can happen so quickly these days
True enough. But then if they had known about their own pages, they wouldn't have granted the patent, since they themselves infringe it. They could have to pay damages to the guy who got the patent granted ;-)
a method for assigning URL's and e-mail addresses to members of a group comprising the steps of: assigning each member of said group a URL of the form name.subdomain.domain and assigning each member of said group an e-mail address of the form name@subdomain.domain.'
...
You know what's funny? the USPTO is supposed to do prior art research to grant patents. Well guess where you can find prior art for this method? at the USPTO itself. Here for example:
estta.uspto.gov is a live server, and
estta@uspto.gov is a valid email address at USPTO.
You gotta love these guys
Their website doesn't work. At least link to article. After so many years we finally found way to destroy Microsoft.
...
No no, it's SCO redirecting port 80 of www.sco.com to www.microsoft.com to deflect the attack of the MyDoom virus. They still haven't quite figured out why their network load just doubled though
The "get-the-facts" sub-website is part of M$'s campaign againts Linux. Like in every campaign, reasearches supporting it are quoted.
...
No? Really? That's dishonest! I honestly thought they were candid about the whole issue.
Would that be why RedHat doesn't have any pro-Windows study on their website? I wonder
All Windows vs Linux researches are meaningless because of one simple fact: Microsoft has billions available to throw at making Windows better, whereas the Linux community, even with RH and other prominent companies, is rather poor in funding in comparison.
If I was an IT manager, I would consider Linux to follow a "best effort" sort of approach, whereas Windows, being far less than free, should come with guarantees about stability and performance. However, at least in terms of stability and security, Linux certainly outperforms Windows, if not by much these days. And it probably isn't far from Windows in terms of raw speed.
So, basically, those studies compare apples and oranges. In the cycle racing world, if Joe Bike, with no funding, no top-level medical staff and a simple bike, was to finish a race second or third to Lance Armstrong, everybody would herald him as a great hero, and Lance Armstrong's team wouldn't put up a website pointing out Joe Bike's poor performances compared to Lance Armstrong. Fact is, Microsoft has much vaster resources than the Linux community, and only manages to perform marginally better than Linux at best. That's what the studies should show. Throw Microsoft's billions at Linux and Windows would instantly become a laughable joke.
I like to think of myself as the difinitive version of Adonais.
...
Obviously not the definite version of english scholar however
Actually this is not that offtopic : I didn't reveal my identity in order not to be associated with the poor karma this post had gotten
Well let's see : you posted anonymously at 6:54AM, then replied to yourself non-anonymously at 7:06AM.
If the article is right then, I deduce you stopped being overweight in a mere 12 minutes. This is by far and away the best weight loss program I've ever heard of. Beat that Weight Watchers!!
For example, those who think they are overweight ask a higher price to step on a scale in front of their peers, than those of average weight.
That may be true, but I think it's only a one-way logic. I doubt you can reverse-deduce the weight of people by asking them how much they'd pay to reveal it. The best proof is that these guys aren't necessarily all obese, and these guys definitely aren't on the skinny side.
Here's a brief history of Phil Katz
...
It's the wrong Katz that died : Phil Katz' death is a loss, while John Katz' death on the other hand wouldn't have made me cry
I think the ZIP standard is outdated and bloated.
...
As for me I'm happy with the RAR compression.
I'll second that : ZIP disks only contain 250M, while RAR disks contain up to 500M. Iomega really belongs to the past
I do not see why people even bother using (and paying for) either
When was the last time you payed for Winzip? They have this great feature call "evaluation period", with an endlessly renewable period.
In a bid to prevent fragmentation of the standard they have agreed to have their software support opening of the other's files. They have however not agreed to support a single standard. PKZip's encryption is RSA-based while Winzip use an AES
In other words, the standard is still fragmented, the new thing here is that both software now support both standard fragments, both double in size, and neither is more interesting for the end user than the other.
Go read up on mazwells equations. Mazwell's laws of EM waves will help even your tiny little brain
...
MaZwell's equations uh? I trust you haven't been too busy reading then yourself
As for his famous "laws of EM waves", it might be something to do with tinfoil and clever pointy hat folding.