This is terrible. How did this even make it past the/. editors/censors?
My friend, I have one word for you - "google".
Support for PalmOS based units is ROCK SOLID on Linux, especially the USB based units. And it has been for years. I am a PalmPilot user from the 1990s, and while I admit that there were issues in the first few years, today they simply dont exist, not with stuff like Jpilot around. The guys who run the Pilot Link project have been doing fantastic work over the years making sure that things work, and there must be a zillion Linux users out there who benefit daily from their work.
A totally elementary Google search would have brought up EVERYTHING you would need to get things going.
On a tangent - why was this post allowed through in first place? It now sits on the front page of Slashdot, and gives all those guys who never RTFA or read comments more misguidance, leaving them with the impression that what is written in that post is actually true.
And it will poison search engines for a long time, so that anyone who ACTUALLY does a google search before posting gets this post thrown up before any real information.
The sad part is: India didnt reject swpats because it thought it was the right thing to do - it rejected them because not doing so would have caused the left to get difficult, which would have caused the bill to stall.
In short, it wasn't because the government was convinced that swpats were bad, but because they found that the remaining stuff that they needed to push through was more important to them.
Sadly, despite all the good press, the mentality remains unchanged, and I am certain there will be more attempts very soon.
If Paramount were to accept the Canada offer, it would have, for the first time, let someone other than Paramount produce a ST product. What if it turned out to be a success? Can you imagine the finger pointing at the current ST overlords?
ST is a valuable Paramount property. No way anyone is going to get his grubby fingers on that!:)
I wonder how much of IE's "stability" is because of good code and good parsing, and how much of it is due to the fact that IE didn't *know* it's eggs were scrambled?
It wouldn't be the first time that a program went on "running", only to *eventually* go out to lunch and not come back.
At least the others *noticed* that something was wrong - and died.
Not only do they offer just about any DNS-related service you can think of (including dynamic DNS, using standard clients for any OS), but also provide fall-back mail spooling, great management tools, convenient and honest domain registration and EXCELLENT customer service.
I have been using their services since 1999, and can honestly say that despite EasyDNS not being priced quite as low as some other services, I prefer the convenience, great service, features and peace of mind to saving a few bucks.
And if they are basing their work on OSS, then arent they legally bound to make the resulting system open for publish as well?
Did he say anywhere that they wouldn't publish? Besides, if you read the GPL, it simply says that you must pass on the benefits of GPL'd software to the person you are giving the software to - i.e. the recepient (in this case the armed forces) should have access to the source code of the software they use.
He hasnt exactly thought out through and through in this scenario, I believe he was just setting the goal and expected everyone else to play catchup.
I agree and disagree.
I agree with the contention that he is setting goals and expects people to reach them. This is the correct way of doing it.
I disagree with the contention that he hasn't thought this through. His entire career as a scientist has been based on the very principles that he is now talking about. And very clearly, he has results to show to prove that his methods work. Does that sound like someone who hasn't thought things through?
Though the second link does not say 2004, I'm sure it was earlier this year, and a Google search should help you confirm that. Also the URL is dated 20040201.
Actually, if you look closely at the top of the page, it says "Sunday, Feb 01, 2004".
Prez Kalam was heavily into FOSS long before this. During a meeting the Government of India (Ministry of Communication and Information technology) had with the IT industry and FOSS community on December 26th, 2002, the president's stand was clearly conveyed to us.
While a number of people have pointed out that the post of President in India is not an "active" one like in the USA, he wears many hats - and the second hat of his (as a scientist) is probably far more influential than the first one. Remember, this is the man who made India a nuclear power - not by policy, but by *action*.
As *President*, he can *reach* people, and he does. Industry and community are sitting up and lending a careful ear to what he is saying.
Even more important - this is a president the people *know*, *like* and *trust*.
Knowing my president, he definitely does not see "unique" as "closed". So let's not mis-interprete his words. He probably meant "not based on tainted imported technology", i.e. an encouragement to innovate, rather than copy.
I have watched him take on this issue for years now (in his roles as both president of India, and as a highly respected scientist), and I can tell you that you are dealing with someone who is majorly savvy about open systems. He could probably teach quite a few people here on Slashdot about such things - he certainly taught Bill Gates a few things.
If RMS was in a receptive state of mind during his meeting with President Kalam, I am sure he would have learnt a few things himself.
Fedora Core 1 was essentially RHL 9.1. RHL 9 was the height of stability (that crown goes to RHL 7.3), but FC1 was basically bug fixes for RHL 9, and produced a good, solid distro.
FC2 is is the first "mainstream" Linux 2.6 distro, but even the other distros that went 2.6 show similar problems (the XP booting issue isn't a distro issue but a kernel issue, and the problem was created by MS, not Linus).
In the RHL timeline, this is the rough equivalent of 10.0, though in terms of new tech, it is probably the equivalent of RHL 5.0 (which broke everything, but forced the world to move on from all that legacy kruft that distros were accumulating).
FC2 is the first step out of the shadow of legacy for this distro. Everything under the hood is shiny and new - and yes, it has bugs. It's a.0 release, so give it a break.
The guy(s) doing this are working without documentation, just capabilities, and are producing a driver that works. Reverse engineering, to protect Intel's IP.
Nothing new about that, except maybe that they are doing it within the same company.
SCO may be as crazy as a coot with this whole campaign of theirs, but they will never sell a single license for Linux.
The reason is simple - no matter what they may win or lose in this campaign to drive up their share prices (which is really all that their campaign is about), they cannot risk selling even one license until they are ABSOLUTELY sure that that they will never be sued (and lose) for selling a license for someone else's work.
A single license sold will *instantly* open them up to a class action case - the number of legitimate copyright-holding authors involved would make any class action lawyer drool helplessly.
Which is probably why most of the open source authors (who have rightful copyright claims on the stuff SCO is threatening to license) are sitting quiet, waiting for the first verifiable license to be issued.
That probably includes Linus and more importantly Alan Cox (which explains his persuit of an MBA);-)
Reverse Engineering (which is completely legal) is not the same as Cloning.
Anyone with half a brain would know that cloning something like CIFS isn't very practical given that that would require cloning windows DLLS and stuff - which don't work under Linux/*BSD/etc.
Problem is - we know that, but the people who take decisions do not. And even if they *would* know *about* it, they wouldn't act on it. They aren't paid to act on *knowledge* - they are paid to act on *recommendations*.
Why? Because if they acted on their own knoweledge, and if something went wrong, they would carry the blame. If they act on a "recommendation" by a consulting firm, they can blame the consulting firm.
And that's where Gartner & Co come in. They can make "recommendations" that will affect the industry in positive and negative ways, and get away with it because that is what their business model is - professional scapegoats, if you can call it that.
It is a win-win situation for consulting firms like Gartner, Forrester and their ilk, as well as their clients. If one looks closely at their "predictions" and "recommendations" over the years, you will find a balanced mix of bombs and hits - as long as that ratio is maintained, they own the keys to the mint.
Don't believe that? Then have a look at these two "recommendations":
They are both by the same company, in fact by the same person (George Weiss). Yet they indicate two opposing lines of thought, to the point that Gartner clearly says in the first one:
"Gartner believes SCO made a strategic error when it chose to defend Unix on Intel over Linux, against market trends. SCO is building a new Web services framework on the upcoming Unix System V v.6, and wants to steer OpenServer, UnixWare and SCO Linux customers to an expanded Web application programming interface. To support its legal claims against the Linux industry, SCO had to withdraw its Linux distribution from the market. But SCO damaged its own credibility and cut off the one potential avenue of high growth for its framework."
Compare that to the tone of their most recent "recommendation".
The problem with this is, of course, that the PHBs may be acting on tainted information, which could cost their companies heavily.
Quick Q&A:
Q:Do they care?
A:No. They aren't paid to care.
Q:Doesn't the whole world laugh at them?
A:Yes, but they don't care, because they aren't paid to care.
Q:Aren't they afraid that their companies will suffer if they act on tianted information?
A:No. They don't own the companies - they are employed by them. If the company folds, they will move on.
Q:Shouldn't they be reading Slashdot to get the real picture?
A:$deity forbid! If they would, they might get a clue, and then slashdotters would have nothing to rant about, which would mean the end of Slashdot!;-)
Q:Does this mean that this is the end of Linux?
A:Remember the British and their "Salt Tax" in India? Try to tax something that is free and an indespensable part of nature, and bad things happen.
Slashdot Mirror
This is terrible. How did this even make it past the /. editors/censors?
My friend, I have one word for you - "google".
Support for PalmOS based units is ROCK SOLID on Linux, especially the USB based units. And it has been for years. I am a PalmPilot user from the 1990s, and while I admit that there were issues in the first few years, today they simply dont exist, not with stuff like Jpilot around. The guys who run the Pilot Link project have been doing fantastic work over the years making sure that things work, and there must be a zillion Linux users out there who benefit daily from their work.
A totally elementary Google search would have brought up EVERYTHING you would need to get things going.
On a tangent - why was this post allowed through in first place? It now sits on the front page of Slashdot, and gives all those guys who never RTFA or read comments more misguidance, leaving them with the impression that what is written in that post is actually true.
And it will poison search engines for a long time, so that anyone who ACTUALLY does a google search before posting gets this post thrown up before any real information.
BAH!
The best pictures are in the PDF.
The sad part is: India didnt reject swpats because it thought it was the right thing to do - it rejected them because not doing so would have caused the left to get difficult, which would have caused the bill to stall.
In short, it wasn't because the government was convinced that swpats were bad, but because they found that the remaining stuff that they needed to push through was more important to them.
Sadly, despite all the good press, the mentality remains unchanged, and I am certain there will be more attempts very soon.
One word - syndicated reruns.
:)
;)
OK, that's two words
Point is, even now, Paramount will make more money on Enterprise reruns in syndication that it has in the first run.
Why pay for production when you can make more money off reruns and syndication of what has been produced so far?
In case you havent noticed - the ST franchise is self-sustaining.
I guess that's an easy one.
:)
If Paramount were to accept the Canada offer, it would have, for the first time, let someone other than Paramount produce a ST product. What if it turned out to be a success? Can you imagine the finger pointing at the current ST overlords?
ST is a valuable Paramount property. No way anyone is going to get his grubby fingers on that!
I wonder how much of IE's "stability" is because of good code and good parsing, and how much of it is due to the fact that IE didn't *know* it's eggs were scrambled?
It wouldn't be the first time that a program went on "running", only to *eventually* go out to lunch and not come back.
At least the others *noticed* that something was wrong - and died.
Prosco?
Sounds like something you should seek treatment for.
I have had excellent experiences with http://easydns.com/.
Not only do they offer just about any DNS-related service you can think of (including dynamic DNS, using standard clients for any OS), but also provide fall-back mail spooling, great management tools, convenient and honest domain registration and EXCELLENT customer service.
I have been using their services since 1999, and can honestly say that despite EasyDNS not being priced quite as low as some other services, I prefer the convenience, great service, features and peace of mind to saving a few bucks.
The question is not whether one can inspect the code for security flaws.
The question is whether one can fix them when one finds them.
Alphasmart Dana
Alphasmart Dana Wireless
Virtually indestructable, designed for people who tend to beat it, drop it, dunk it or slam it - i.e. for my teenage daughter, and me.
And has a great keyboard.
'nuff said.
This appeared months ago!
Slow news day?
I answered your question here.
And if they are basing their work on OSS, then arent they legally bound to make the resulting system open for publish as well?
Did he say anywhere that they wouldn't publish? Besides, if you read the GPL, it simply says that you must pass on the benefits of GPL'd software to the person you are giving the software to - i.e. the recepient (in this case the armed forces) should have access to the source code of the software they use.
He hasnt exactly thought out through and through in this scenario, I believe he was just setting the goal and expected everyone else to play catchup.
I agree and disagree.
I agree with the contention that he is setting goals and expects people to reach them. This is the correct way of doing it.
I disagree with the contention that he hasn't thought this through. His entire career as a scientist has been based on the very principles that he is now talking about. And very clearly, he has results to show to prove that his methods work. Does that sound like someone who hasn't thought things through?
Though the second link does not say 2004, I'm sure it was earlier this year, and a Google search should help you confirm that. Also the URL is dated 20040201.
Actually, if you look closely at the top of the page, it says "Sunday, Feb 01, 2004".
Prez Kalam was heavily into FOSS long before this. During a meeting the Government of India (Ministry of Communication and Information technology) had with the IT industry and FOSS community on December 26th, 2002, the president's stand was clearly conveyed to us.
While a number of people have pointed out that the post of President in India is not an "active" one like in the USA, he wears many hats - and the second hat of his (as a scientist) is probably far more influential than the first one. Remember, this is the man who made India a nuclear power - not by policy, but by *action*.
As *President*, he can *reach* people, and he does. Industry and community are sitting up and lending a careful ear to what he is saying.
Even more important - this is a president the people *know*, *like* and *trust*.
Knowing my president, he definitely does not see "unique" as "closed". So let's not mis-interprete his words. He probably meant "not based on tainted imported technology", i.e. an encouragement to innovate, rather than copy.
I have watched him take on this issue for years now (in his roles as both president of India, and as a highly respected scientist), and I can tell you that you are dealing with someone who is majorly savvy about open systems. He could probably teach quite a few people here on Slashdot about such things - he certainly taught Bill Gates a few things.
If RMS was in a receptive state of mind during his meeting with President Kalam, I am sure he would have learnt a few things himself.
With that kind of vocabulary, that dog should apply for the job of CEO at SCO - far better qualified than Darl.
Oops!
"RHL 9 was the height of stability"
That should have been
"RHL 9 was NOT the height of stability"
Fedora Core 1 was essentially RHL 9.1. RHL 9 was the height of stability (that crown goes to RHL 7.3), but FC1 was basically bug fixes for RHL 9, and produced a good, solid distro.
.0 release, so give it a break.
FC2 is is the first "mainstream" Linux 2.6 distro, but even the other distros that went 2.6 show similar problems (the XP booting issue isn't a distro issue but a kernel issue, and the problem was created by MS, not Linus).
In the RHL timeline, this is the rough equivalent of 10.0, though in terms of new tech, it is probably the equivalent of RHL 5.0 (which broke everything, but forced the world to move on from all that legacy kruft that distros were accumulating).
FC2 is the first step out of the shadow of legacy for this distro. Everything under the hood is shiny and new - and yes, it has bugs. It's a
If you need a Linux or Unix related job in India, feel free to check out this list:
Linux Bangalore Jobs List
It's a "clean room" effort, dude!
The guy(s) doing this are working without documentation, just capabilities, and are producing a driver that works. Reverse engineering, to protect Intel's IP.
Nothing new about that, except maybe that they are doing it within the same company.
It should be
Can Manned Spaceflight Save George Bush?
Well, transcripts of 96 talks are kind of difficult. The slides will be up as always after the event.
:)
And for free, of course
As in beer.
Check the schedules a couple of days after the event.
If you are interested, you can also check out the slides from LB/2002 and LB/2001.
SCO may be as crazy as a coot with this whole campaign of theirs, but they will never sell a single license for Linux.
;-)
The reason is simple - no matter what they may win or lose in this campaign to drive up their share prices (which is really all that their campaign is about), they cannot risk selling even one license until they are ABSOLUTELY sure that that they will never be sued (and lose) for selling a license for someone else's work.
A single license sold will *instantly* open them up to a class action case - the number of legitimate copyright-holding authors involved would make any class action lawyer drool helplessly.
Which is probably why most of the open source authors (who have rightful copyright claims on the stuff SCO is threatening to license) are sitting quiet, waiting for the first verifiable license to be issued.
That probably includes Linus and more importantly Alan Cox (which explains his persuit of an MBA)
Mr.Gates needs an update for his jargon file:
Reverse Engineering (which is completely legal) is not the same as Cloning.
Anyone with half a brain would know that cloning something like CIFS isn't very practical given that that would require cloning windows DLLS and stuff - which don't work under Linux/*BSD/etc.
Yes, the whole SCO issue is garbage.
;-)
Problem is - we know that, but the people who take decisions do not. And even if they *would* know *about* it, they wouldn't act on it. They aren't paid to act on *knowledge* - they are paid to act on *recommendations*.
Why? Because if they acted on their own knoweledge, and if something went wrong, they would carry the blame. If they act on a "recommendation" by a consulting firm, they can blame the consulting firm.
And that's where Gartner & Co come in. They can make "recommendations" that will affect the industry in positive and negative ways, and get away with it because that is what their business model is - professional scapegoats, if you can call it that.
It is a win-win situation for consulting firms like Gartner, Forrester and their ilk, as well as their clients. If one looks closely at their "predictions" and "recommendations" over the years, you will find a balanced mix of bombs and hits - as long as that ratio is maintained, they own the keys to the mint.
Don't believe that? Then have a look at these two "recommendations":
21 May 2003
23 July 2003
They are both by the same company, in fact by the same person (George Weiss). Yet they indicate two opposing lines of thought, to the point that Gartner clearly says in the first one:
"Gartner believes SCO made a strategic error when it chose to defend Unix on Intel over Linux, against market trends. SCO is building a new Web services framework on the upcoming Unix System V v.6, and wants to steer OpenServer, UnixWare and SCO Linux customers to an expanded Web application programming interface. To support its legal claims against the Linux industry, SCO had to withdraw its Linux distribution from the market. But SCO damaged its own credibility and cut off the one potential avenue of high growth for its framework."
Compare that to the tone of their most recent "recommendation".
The problem with this is, of course, that the PHBs may be acting on tainted information, which could cost their companies heavily.
Quick Q&A:
Q:Do they care?
A:No. They aren't paid to care.
Q:Doesn't the whole world laugh at them?
A:Yes, but they don't care, because they aren't paid to care.
Q:Aren't they afraid that their companies will suffer if they act on tianted information?
A:No. They don't own the companies - they are employed by them. If the company folds, they will move on.
Q:Shouldn't they be reading Slashdot to get the real picture?
A:$deity forbid! If they would, they might get a clue, and then slashdotters would have nothing to rant about, which would mean the end of Slashdot!
Q:Does this mean that this is the end of Linux?
A:Remember the British and their "Salt Tax" in India? Try to tax something that is free and an indespensable part of nature, and bad things happen.
Relax. Life will go on, as will Linux.