Oh yeah, there's thousands of operating systems listed on Freshmeat. In fact there's so many it's difficult to find user level apps there.......... The 'on crack' moderators are the ones who mark the original post up after your protest....
It seems to me that the rampant mirroring some people are suggesting isn't going to be particularly effective, in the long term at least.
These specifications are 'in various stages of development' and the folks working on this stuff would probably like to keep up with these developments, not be stuck with what was freely available yesterday.
This needs to be sorted out sensibly and diplomatically, hijacking accounts and mirroring (potentially superceded) documentation is going to win us no friends nor be of much long term use. What it will do is make us look like a bunch of petulant children.
You're forgetting all the extra money they make from rereleasing the same old office suite with a slightly shinier skin and an incompatible file format.
There are several problems with following a Microsoft 'standard'. The main problem with chasing Windows Media Player is that it isn't a single format, but an interface to all sorts of largely proprietary codecs, codecs that can be added to at any time. If you try and access something you don't have a codec for Media Player just pops off to codecs.microsoft.com to get it.
The question that needs to be answered is 'Why are websites choosing Microsoft media streaming products over freely available alternatives?'. If we get the answer to that, perhaps we'll be someway to fixing the problem.
Running a processor at 100% capacity 24/7 is not going to 'burn' the processor, that is what they are designed to do. Those processors will be consigned to the rubbish bin well before they stop working.
You could perhaps argue on power consumption, but as long as the clients don't stop disks spinning down and monitors going to sleep there's not much of a case there.
The university isn't getting any less of a return on investment on the processor because it is being used more and in fact they may even get something out of it, even if it's just publicity.
In fact I'd suggest that a large group of computers that otherwise spend a fair amount of time idling but need to be on for easy access are perfect for adding to a distributed computing effort such as d.net or seti@home.
Indeed, sites like that are no friends of the legitimate users of DeCSS. If they've been actively promoting DeCSS as a tool to aid piracy then they've lost their case.
(And DeCSS can be used in such a way. There is a special part on a DVD which is not normally readable/writable that contains the CSS information. With DeCSS you can presumably write a DVD without getting/altering DVD equipment to allow you to read/write to those areas)
I for one won't be sorry to see them 'sent down'. However what we (via online discussion and articles in tech-friendly and even mainstream media etc) need to do is make clear that the vast majority of DeCSS users (and would be users like myself) simply want to use it to play DVDs on our systems, which amounts to noting more or less than interoperability reasons.
We must make clear that the targets of the recent cases to do not characterise the general DeCSS using (and would be using) community.
We must make it clear that a win in these cases means nothing to the larger DeCSS community. It's just a win against a few individuals whose crime was to abuse, or promote the abuse of DecSS for illegitmiate means.
We must show that there is a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate use of DeCSS, and that the legitimate users far outnumber the illegitimate users, thus the primary purpose for DeCSS is indeed for interoperability.
These cases are much more sensible than the previous one. The specific targets of these cases (as opposed to the DeCSS 'community' as a whole) seem to have specifically promoted DeCSS as a means/aid to copying DVDs.
If this is so then they are no friends of the legitimate users of DeCSS. What is at risk here is that all DeCSS users/distributors are tarred with the same brush, and what needs to be decided is how can we avoid this?
Do we turn up mob handed at court supporting people who perhaps do not deserve our support? It certainly seems difficult to defend them by saying that DeCSS has a legitimate use if they were openly promoting an illegitimate one.
Do we distance ourselves from them, stating loudly that while there may be illegitimate uses of DeCSS, for many people there are very legitimate and completely legal uses?
Whatever happens, it must be made very clear that the people targetted by this case are not 'typical' DeCSS users/distributers and that a loss for the defendants in these cases does not set a precedant for all DeCSS users/distributors.
a)Selling information to the enemy b)Selling information to your 'alies'. c)Publishing a book with a couple of national secrets thrown in so you get free publicity from having your book banned in the U.K.
The 24k is just to tide you over until you get yourself sorted out.
You say that the browser war has been won by MS, but the fact is that the browser war is not over and is never likely to be.
The simple truth is that in the software world no matter how much of a lead you may have, that doesn't mean that it's easy to keep. Netscape could take another year to release their next browser, and when it arrives it'll appear on every magazine cover CD, for every platform under the sun and people will try it. If the browser is good then people will use it and the fact that Netscape didn't have a decent product for years and years will mean less and less.
Anyway, perhaps it's a good thing that IE is dominating, with Microsoft broken into three bits and IE opensourced then Netscape-AOL-Time-Warner will be the big conglomerate boogie-man;D
A) It's not a beta, it isn't even really an alpha, it's more or less a snapshot. B} Opera don't want any feedback from this release, the Opera coders have more than enough to be getting on with. When they run out of bugs, they'll release a beta, then we can help. C)If you do need some help or have some generic feedback (SDI, cough cough), try the Opera.linux newsgroups. D) The previous/. story on this is here.
Name specific sites or cease and desist. As an employee of another "big" site, I can tell you we tossed the free server license NS gave us in the garbage, along with their crappy server.
So why don't you: A) Name specific sites B) Name the software you do use or simply take your own advice and keep quiet.
>Ebert seemed to think that a new $75,000 RAID >array neeed to be trucked to the theater for >each new show.
IIRC he explicitly discounted the cost of shipping them about as only being part of the demonstration. Anyway I'd suggest that $75000 per projector plus however many extras they'd need to cope with changing a projector to a different picture in a timely manner is far from inexpensive.
Well, I'd suggest that in general if someone is talking about 'the future' they mean 'the near future' as it scarcely makes any sense to talk about anything else.
I mean, direct sensory simulation of the brain is obviously 'the future', but that doesn't make me slag off people who say that digital projectors are 'the future';)
You could equally ridicule (for example, let's not get sidetracked) a suggestion that solar powered cars are the transport of the future, because obviously we'll be using cold fusion powered flying machines 'in the future'.
However, if you mean 'the near future' then from his description it sounds like this MaxiVision48 gear is pretty sweet and relatively inexpensive and worthy of promotion. I know I certainly don't want to be paying x times as much at the cinema just to see a little "Digital" logo at the beginning of the flick.
Physical film will obviously have it's limitations (scratching etc) and I agree that we will without a doubt see a decent digital solution as the expense of digital comes down. In the mean time though (10-15 years?) it sounds like I'll be more than happy to sit down in front of one of those MaxiVision48 systems and pay a reasonable price for the privaledge.
Don't go cuckoo over the word 'digital', digital technologies should have to earn their place like any other.
I read somewhere (a previous Slashdot Inprise/Java story?) that that is simply a description of the system they tested it with.
It seems insane for them to be saying that it 'requires' KDE. Why write something in Java for portability and then start 'requiring' a desktop environment?
They really really should rephrase their Linux 'minimum specs' as a 'recommended spec' or 'tested spec'.
IMHO Opera made a perfectly valid design decision in concentrating on creating a browser that made the user important again, rather than investing excessive amounts of time and money attempting to second guess dodgy authors and chasing problems caused by the 'big 2'.
Early Operas did have a problem that dodgy html could crash them, this was obviously unacceptable and has been fixed for quite some time. I think much of your comment is FUD (or at least based on old information), I use Opera 3.6 professionally every day of the week and I can't remember the last time Opera 'choked' on a page in a way that made it unusable.
Standards is the only way to go, we'd all love to see a web where it doesn't matter what browser you use, and the end user has the freedom to choose their browser based on the features it offers, not the bugs it supports. That Opera took a stand on this, and made a commercial success in doing so is, without a doubt, fantastic. It's fantastic for Opera users, it's fantastic for the many Open Source browser projects (particularly the smaller ones without the resources to chase bug for bug compatibility) and it's fantastic for all end users on the web. Perhaps it isn't fantastic for lazy html authors, but who cares?
Spending time and money on standards is a step forward, spending it on kludgy second guessing of authors is a step sideways, and quite probably one of the reasons that the Netscape codebase ended up in such a kludgy mess.
Opera isn't free as in beer, it isn't free as in speech but what it has always given me is the freedom to browse the way I want and IMHO that is a very important freedom that hasn't been granted to me by any other browser to date.
If Opera have put as much thought into version 4 as they obviously did for version 3 then I have no doubt that it will be a roaring success.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah, there's thousands of operating systems listed on Freshmeat. In fact there's so many it's difficult to find user level apps there..........
The 'on crack' moderators are the ones who mark the original post up after your protest....
It seems to me that the rampant mirroring some people are suggesting isn't going to be particularly effective, in the long term at least.
These specifications are 'in various stages of development' and the folks working on this stuff would probably like to keep up with these developments, not be stuck with what was freely available yesterday.
This needs to be sorted out sensibly and diplomatically, hijacking accounts and mirroring (potentially superceded) documentation is going to win us no friends nor be of much long term use. What it will do is make us look like a bunch of petulant children.
You're forgetting all the extra money they make from rereleasing the same old office suite with a slightly shinier skin and an incompatible file format.
Sun need to ship a decent browser, and if they have to ship GTK/QT to accomplish that (even if it's statically linked) then they'll do so.
It's not just about the players. It's about the software used to create the streams. Real do have some free tools, but they charge for most of it.
There are several problems with following a Microsoft 'standard'. The main problem with chasing Windows Media Player is that it isn't a single format, but an interface to all sorts of largely proprietary codecs, codecs that can be added to at any time. If you try and access something you don't have a codec for Media Player just pops off to codecs.microsoft.com to get it.
The question that needs to be answered is 'Why are websites choosing Microsoft media streaming products over freely available alternatives?'. If we get the answer to that, perhaps we'll be someway to fixing the problem.
Why do I only notice after I've posted? (yes I do preview).
because it's something that simply can't be said enough.
You guy's rock!
You're wierd :)
Running a processor at 100% capacity 24/7 is not going to 'burn' the processor, that is what they are designed to do. Those processors will be consigned to the rubbish bin well before they stop working.
You could perhaps argue on power consumption, but as long as the clients don't stop disks spinning down and monitors going to sleep there's not much of a case there.
The university isn't getting any less of a return on investment on the processor because it is being used more and in fact they may even get something out of it, even if it's just publicity.
In fact I'd suggest that a large group of computers that otherwise spend a fair amount of time idling but need to be on for easy access are perfect for adding to a distributed computing effort such as d.net or seti@home.
Indeed, sites like that are no friends of the legitimate users of DeCSS. If they've been actively promoting DeCSS as a tool to aid piracy then they've lost their case.
(And DeCSS can be used in such a way. There is a special part on a DVD which is not normally readable/writable that contains the CSS information. With DeCSS you can presumably write a DVD without getting/altering DVD equipment to allow you to read/write to those areas)
I for one won't be sorry to see them 'sent down'. However what we (via online discussion and articles in tech-friendly and even mainstream media etc) need to do is make clear that the vast majority of DeCSS users (and would be users like myself) simply want to use it to play DVDs on our systems, which amounts to noting more or less than interoperability reasons.
We must make clear that the targets of the recent cases to do not characterise the general DeCSS using (and would be using) community.
We must make it clear that a win in these cases means nothing to the larger DeCSS community. It's just a win against a few individuals whose crime was to abuse, or promote the abuse of DecSS for illegitmiate means.
We must show that there is a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate use of DeCSS, and that the legitimate users far outnumber the illegitimate users, thus the primary purpose for DeCSS is indeed for interoperability.
These cases are much more sensible than the previous one. The specific targets of these cases (as opposed to the DeCSS 'community' as a whole) seem to have specifically promoted DeCSS as a means/aid to copying DVDs.
If this is so then they are no friends of the legitimate users of DeCSS. What is at risk here is that all DeCSS users/distributors are tarred with the same brush, and what needs to be decided is how can we avoid this?
Do we turn up mob handed at court supporting people who perhaps do not deserve our support? It certainly seems difficult to defend them by saying that DeCSS has a legitimate use if they were openly promoting an illegitimate one.
Do we distance ourselves from them, stating loudly that while there may be illegitimate uses of DeCSS, for many people there are very legitimate and completely legal uses?
Whatever happens, it must be made very clear that the people targetted by this case are not 'typical' DeCSS users/distributers and that a loss for the defendants in these cases does not set a precedant for all DeCSS users/distributors.
I wunder eef de abbility two spel is a prereckwisit?
a)Selling information to the enemy
b)Selling information to your 'alies'.
c)Publishing a book with a couple of national secrets thrown in so you get free publicity from having your book banned in the U.K.
The 24k is just to tide you over until you get yourself sorted out.
You say that the browser war has been won by MS, but the fact is that the browser war is not over and is never likely to be.
;D
The simple truth is that in the software world no matter how much of a lead you may have, that doesn't mean that it's easy to keep. Netscape could take another year to release their next browser, and when it arrives it'll appear on every magazine cover CD, for every platform under the sun and people will try it. If the browser is good then people will use it and the fact that Netscape didn't have a decent product for years and years will mean less and less.
Anyway, perhaps it's a good thing that IE is dominating, with Microsoft broken into three bits and IE opensourced then Netscape-AOL-Time-Warner will be the big conglomerate boogie-man
Use http instead!
A) It's not a beta, it isn't even really an alpha, it's more or less a snapshot. /. story on this is here.
B} Opera don't want any feedback from this release, the Opera coders have more than enough to be getting on with. When they run out of bugs, they'll release a beta, then we can help.
C)If you do need some help or have some generic feedback (SDI, cough cough), try the Opera.linux newsgroups.
D) The previous
A) Name specific sites
B) Name the software you do use
or simply take your own advice and keep quiet.
It's a 'technical preview', which seems more or less equivalent to a daily build from the looks of things.
>Ebert seemed to think that a new $75,000 RAID
>array neeed to be trucked to the theater for
>each new show.
IIRC he explicitly discounted the cost of shipping them about as only being part of the demonstration. Anyway I'd suggest that $75000 per projector plus however many extras they'd need to cope with changing a projector to a different picture in a timely manner is far from inexpensive.
Well, I'd suggest that in general if someone is talking about 'the future' they mean 'the near future' as it scarcely makes any sense to talk about anything else.
;)
I mean, direct sensory simulation of the brain is obviously 'the future', but that doesn't make me slag off people who say that digital projectors are 'the future'
> Mass storage today is still expensive.
:)
More or less by definition. If it's inexpensive then everyone will have it and it will be considered normal storage
You could equally ridicule (for example, let's not get sidetracked) a suggestion that solar powered cars are the transport of the future, because obviously we'll be using cold fusion powered flying machines 'in the future'.
However, if you mean 'the near future' then from his description it sounds like this MaxiVision48 gear is pretty sweet and relatively inexpensive and worthy of promotion. I know I certainly don't want to be paying x times as much at the cinema just to see a little "Digital" logo at the beginning of the flick.
Physical film will obviously have it's limitations (scratching etc) and I agree that we will without a doubt see a decent digital solution as the expense of digital comes down.
In the mean time though (10-15 years?) it sounds like I'll be more than happy to sit down in front of one of those MaxiVision48 systems and pay a reasonable price for the privaledge.
Don't go cuckoo over the word 'digital', digital technologies should have to earn their place like any other.
I read somewhere (a previous Slashdot Inprise/Java story?) that that is simply a description of the system they tested it with.
It seems insane for them to be saying that it 'requires' KDE. Why write something in Java for portability and then start 'requiring' a desktop environment?
They really really should rephrase their Linux 'minimum specs' as a 'recommended spec' or 'tested spec'.
IMHO Opera made a perfectly valid design decision in concentrating on creating a browser that made the user important again, rather than investing excessive amounts of time and money attempting to second guess dodgy authors and chasing problems caused by the 'big 2'.
Early Operas did have a problem that dodgy html could crash them, this was obviously unacceptable and has been fixed for quite some time. I think much of your comment is FUD (or at least based on old information), I use Opera 3.6 professionally every day of the week and I can't remember the last time Opera 'choked' on a page in a way that made it unusable.
Standards is the only way to go, we'd all love to see a web where it doesn't matter what browser you use, and the end user has the freedom to choose their browser based on the features it offers, not the bugs it supports. That Opera took a stand on this, and made a commercial success in doing so is, without a doubt, fantastic. It's fantastic for Opera users, it's fantastic for the many Open Source browser projects (particularly the smaller ones without the resources to chase bug for bug compatibility) and it's fantastic for all end users on the web. Perhaps it isn't fantastic for lazy html authors, but who cares?
Spending time and money on standards is a step forward, spending it on kludgy second guessing of authors is a step sideways, and quite probably one of the reasons that the Netscape codebase ended up in such a kludgy mess.
Opera isn't free as in beer, it isn't free as in speech but what it has always given me is the freedom to browse the way I want and IMHO that is a very important freedom that hasn't been granted to me by any other browser to date.
If Opera have put as much thought into version 4 as they obviously did for version 3 then I have no doubt that it will be a roaring success.