"What does it say about an organization that releases a flagshhip product that has thousands of full time programmers doing supposedly quality work and that still manages to contain various anoying bugs and failures?"
Debian uses a piecemeal upgrade process so it is hard to compare directly to Red Hat. I'm sure Debian has a huge bug tracking database like Red Hat. However, Debian is always in development and can use the excuse that bugs should be expected in development.
Intel may have lots of little patents some of which are needed to make crusoe compatible with the x86 architecture. But Intel may have cross licensed with IBM on these so if Transmeta uses IBM, they will be safe.
BTW, as an aside, I used to work for a few years in the semiconductor manufacturing equipment industry and it was a very cuthroat business. People would patent the most trivial details left and right because the most seemingly insignificant details can win you the edge over your competitor and win you millions of dollars in repeat business because your technology is just a little bit better. Often these patents are used as wild cards in lawsuits where they sue you for patent infringement so you sue them back with yours and in the end cross-license and shake hands.
GNU Hurd is supposed to be going that direction from what little I have read. Program are stored in a directory structure of their own and then the kernel does a merged view of the structure to make it look like somewhat of a standard Unix filesystem structure.
"That picture begs the question of how the user interacts with the watch. It looks like there's a microphone there (or maybe it's a speaker so that ^G's work) - maybe it uses voice-recognition?"
I doubt it is voice recognition because that would require hefty computing power to work reasonably. In reality it seems to be much cruder according to an article I read. The round thing to the right side is a scrolling wheel like that on some mouses so you probably scroll your way through various keystrokes. But that is probably better and faster than using tiny keys.
So are there going to be web sites poping up everywhere boasting how they overclocked their calculator to 133Mhz so they can do their calculus homework faster!
I happen to use a browser based administration tool called Webmin (www.webmin.com) which is written in Perl/CGI and thus it happens to run of a great many platforms. It certainly doesn't do every possible configuration task but it does make lot of the common tasks easy. It is also very modular and you can customize it to the small portion that interests you. You can also delegate certain capabilities to other users.
What really irks me about editing text configuration files is that they can have a steep learning curve where you have to read quite a few pieces of documentation. Take the filesystem mounting tool. I have a good idea of how the configuration file is arranged but don't know every option by heart. If I want to use a feature I never used before, I have to read the man page again on what order to enter the parameters, what valid values there are, etc. And heaven forbid you make a typo, add an extra space, etc and can't reboot the system anymore. A good gui based configuration tool presents the much easier to use interface which can list all valid values and parameters and prevent you from making a gross blunder. Take an example from real life... I was setting up NFS exports on a Linux machine and ended up putting a space between a hostname and its permission in/etc/exports. This totally changed the meaning of the NFS export and made it read only instead of read/write. I spent a week troubleshooting what was wrong. Sure I learned a bit or two from this experience but I also lost a lot of time for more productive things.
It takes close to a whopping 500 pages to describe a vector file format. And to top it off, one probably needs to understand the XML format, which will be another 500 pages or so. And then there is a few hundred more for HTML. I know they are trying to fix some of the deficiencies of HTML of past but isn't this going overboard? The Internet RFCs of past were of reasonable length and interesting to read but I don't think I even have enough hours in the day to read all this even if just for curiosity.
While a file manager is useful to a newbie, I always find that I can get work done faster using a cli to a good shell like bash. A file manager is to a cli as a first grade primer is to a novel. One can be lot more expressive with text that with pictures. Sure, a picture is equal to a thousand words but the only problem is 'which one?!'
That being said, the one thing about a file manager is that it can save a bit of typing. For example, in KDE, you can drag a file or directory from the file manager to a kterminal and it will automatically paste the name or cd to the directory. This is particularly with a group of files. I'm sure this feature is implemented in Gnome but then I don't use Gnome much...
"Is it just me or does the Caldera logo look a lot like some kind of Disney internet logo? I mean, look at the mouse ear there... is there something I don't know about?"
No, both you and Caldera look like some kind of Disney internet logo.
"There's got to be more to this story. Else why reassure us that Ransom Love will "remain CEO"? I mean, duh, he is buying (part of) another company--why WOULDN'T he remain CEO?"
I think because the board of directors of those two companies decide who will be the CEO. Sometimes, the company which is bought has a CEO with a better track record.
Emulators are not illegal. Sony went to court again Connectix and Bleem and didn't succeed in prevently the sale of the Play station emulators. Okay maybe the copying of roms is illegal but I think whoever owns the rights to many of these games should really think of selling large cdrom collections of them at a reasonable price and people will snatch it up.
"Well, Mr. Gore (the reviewer) says that the mouse even works on the palm of one's hand. But I know my palm, at least, is not a flat surface. So clearly the mouse works even if the sensor is not right up against whatever surface you are using."
Hey, what what you say... this is the guy who invented the internet!
I don't know if many people know about the "Mosix" project at www.mosix.org. It transparently dispatches a process in the kernel level to a cluster of other computers in the network. I tried it on a group of computers at school and it is pretty amazing.
This project was actually covered on Slashdot a year or more back. There was a large noise made because it consisted of a kernel patch and a module which were not GPL. Naturally people had the right to complain and they resolved it by licensing it as GPL. Now the irony is that inspite of this, the Mosix folks can't seem to get any of the Mosix code to be folded into the mainstream kernel! As it stands now, there is a patch and module which must be applied to the kernel each and everytime you get a new revision. When I first tried it, it took a few tries to get it all working. The Mosix folks seemed to be genuinly interested in getting any portion, however small, to merge into the mainstream kernel because it makes their patch maintainence effort that much easier and more accessable to a larger user base. I think it would be great if someone with more involvement in the core Linux kernel development assisted them in this regard.
My monitor, while not old, is not of the highest quality. It happens to have a divergence between the red and blue color which is noticable in certain situations. If you have a span of black background with pure red and blue colors, the red text seems slightly raised above the blue text. It happens a lot with links which are usually colored red or blue. Kind of a 3d monitor of the cheap:-)
"So if it's open source (is the license close enough to consider this actually being open?) why couldn't the community just embrace and extend them back? Or at least use some of the code in other projects (Postgres,My)"
Disregarding the license issue, IMHO databases are very complicated pieces of code and you can't just lift chunks of code from one project to another. Besides, what would be the point?
Yes, you only have to provide the source code to the individual you provided the binary to. However, with the GPL, you cannot restrict the redistribution by this individual on their own accord.
MPL is basically BSD. QT is what he has a problem with, not MPL.
I don't think RMS has too much of an issue with the QPL from the email posts I have seen of him. This is given that the QPL is closer to the GPL than the LGPL is (to the GPL) and I think RMS prefers the GPL to the GPL.
I think I just put too many TLAs in this posting;-)
I want all these countries to start building their infrastructure to be not "dependent" on the United States in any way for the Internet. There should be a T1 line to every house. It is an injustice if done any other way. The more bandwidth the better.
Slashdot Mirror
100k is perfect for... p000rn in jpeg format. ;-)
"What does it say about an organization that releases a flagshhip product that has thousands of full time programmers doing supposedly quality work and that still manages to contain various anoying bugs and failures?"
Debian uses a piecemeal upgrade process so it is hard to compare directly to Red Hat. I'm sure Debian has a huge bug tracking database like Red Hat. However, Debian is always in development and can use the excuse that bugs should be expected in development."Lawsuits about what?
Intel may have lots of little patents some of which are needed to make crusoe compatible with the x86 architecture. But Intel may have cross licensed with IBM on these so if Transmeta uses IBM, they will be safe.
BTW, as an aside, I used to work for a few years in the semiconductor manufacturing equipment industry and it was a very cuthroat business. People would patent the most trivial details left and right because the most seemingly insignificant details can win you the edge over your competitor and win you millions of dollars in repeat business because your technology is just a little bit better. Often these patents are used as wild cards in lawsuits where they sue you for patent infringement so you sue them back with yours and in the end cross-license and shake hands.
GNU Hurd is supposed to be going that direction from what little I have read. Program are stored in a directory structure of their own and then the kernel does a merged view of the structure to make it look like somewhat of a standard Unix filesystem structure.
"That picture begs the question of how the user interacts with the watch. It looks like there's a microphone there (or maybe it's a speaker so that ^G's work) - maybe it uses voice-recognition?"
I doubt it is voice recognition because that would require hefty computing power to work reasonably. In reality it seems to be much cruder according to an article I read. The round thing to the right side is a scrolling wheel like that on some mouses so you probably scroll your way through various keystrokes. But that is probably better and faster than using tiny keys.
So are there going to be web sites poping up everywhere boasting how they overclocked their calculator to 133Mhz so they can do their calculus homework faster!
I happen to use a browser based administration tool called Webmin (www.webmin.com) which is written in Perl/CGI and thus it happens to run of a great many platforms. It certainly doesn't do every possible configuration task but it does make lot of the common tasks easy. It is also very modular and you can customize it to the small portion that interests you. You can also delegate certain capabilities to other users.
What really irks me about editing text configuration files is that they can have a steep learning curve where you have to read quite a few pieces of documentation. Take the filesystem mounting tool. I have a good idea of how the configuration file is arranged but don't know every option by heart. If I want to use a feature I never used before, I have to read the man page again on what order to enter the parameters, what valid values there are, etc. And heaven forbid you make a typo, add an extra space, etc and can't reboot the system anymore. A good gui based configuration tool presents the much easier to use interface which can list all valid values and parameters and prevent you from making a gross blunder. Take an example from real life... I was setting up NFS exports on a Linux machine and ended up putting a space between a hostname and its permission in /etc/exports. This totally changed the meaning of the NFS export and made it read only instead of read/write. I spent a week troubleshooting what was wrong. Sure I learned a bit or two from this experience but I also lost a lot of time for more productive things.
It takes close to a whopping 500 pages to describe a vector file format. And to top it off, one probably needs to understand the XML format, which will be another 500 pages or so. And then there is a few hundred more for HTML. I know they are trying to fix some of the deficiencies of HTML of past but isn't this going overboard? The Internet RFCs of past were of reasonable length and interesting to read but I don't think I even have enough hours in the day to read all this even if just for curiosity.
While a file manager is useful to a newbie, I always find that I can get work done faster using a cli to a good shell like bash. A file manager is to a cli as a first grade primer is to a novel. One can be lot more expressive with text that with pictures. Sure, a picture is equal to a thousand words but the only problem is 'which one?!'
That being said, the one thing about a file manager is that it can save a bit of typing. For example, in KDE, you can drag a file or directory from the file manager to a kterminal and it will automatically paste the name or cd to the directory. This is particularly with a group of files. I'm sure this feature is implemented in Gnome but then I don't use Gnome much...
If aliens do contact us by radio signals, it will probably translate to "FIRST POST!!!"
"Is it just me or does the Caldera logo look a lot like some kind of Disney internet logo? I mean, look at the mouse ear there... is there something I don't know about?"
No, both you and Caldera look like some kind of Disney internet logo.
"There's got to be more to this story. Else why reassure us that Ransom Love will "remain CEO"? I mean, duh, he is buying (part of) another company--why WOULDN'T he remain CEO?"
I think because the board of directors of those two companies decide who will be the CEO. Sometimes, the company which is bought has a CEO with a better track record.
Emulators are not illegal. Sony went to court again Connectix and Bleem and didn't succeed in prevently the sale of the Play station emulators. Okay maybe the copying of roms is illegal but I think whoever owns the rights to many of these games should really think of selling large cdrom collections of them at a reasonable price and people will snatch it up.
The "Larabie fonts" that is included with Caldera are free although their quality is not the highest.
"Well, Mr. Gore (the reviewer) says that the mouse even works on the palm of one's hand. But I know my palm, at least, is not a flat surface. So clearly the mouse works even if the sensor is not right up against whatever surface you are using."
Hey, what what you say... this is the guy who invented the internet!Wear these goggles and a rubber suit and run around the street calling yourself cyclops...
I don't know if many people know about the "Mosix" project at www.mosix.org. It transparently dispatches a process in the kernel level to a cluster of other computers in the network. I tried it on a group of computers at school and it is pretty amazing.
This project was actually covered on Slashdot a year or more back. There was a large noise made because it consisted of a kernel patch and a module which were not GPL. Naturally people had the right to complain and they resolved it by licensing it as GPL. Now the irony is that inspite of this, the Mosix folks can't seem to get any of the Mosix code to be folded into the mainstream kernel! As it stands now, there is a patch and module which must be applied to the kernel each and everytime you get a new revision. When I first tried it, it took a few tries to get it all working. The Mosix folks seemed to be genuinly interested in getting any portion, however small, to merge into the mainstream kernel because it makes their patch maintainence effort that much easier and more accessable to a larger user base. I think it would be great if someone with more involvement in the core Linux kernel development assisted them in this regard.
My monitor, while not old, is not of the highest quality. It happens to have a divergence between the red and blue color which is noticable in certain situations. If you have a span of black background with pure red and blue colors, the red text seems slightly raised above the blue text. It happens a lot with links which are usually colored red or blue. Kind of a 3d monitor of the cheap :-)
that should have read: "...I think RMS prefers the GPL to the LGPL."
"So if it's open source (is the license close enough to consider this actually being open?) why couldn't the community just embrace and extend them back? Or at least use some of the code in other projects (Postgres,My)"
Disregarding the license issue, IMHO databases are very complicated pieces of code and you can't just lift chunks of code from one project to another. Besides, what would be the point?
Yes, you only have to provide the source code to the individual you provided the binary to. However, with the GPL, you cannot restrict the redistribution by this individual on their own accord.
MPL is basically BSD. QT is what he has a problem with, not MPL.
I don't think RMS has too much of an issue with the QPL from the email posts I have seen of him. This is given that the QPL is closer to the GPL than the LGPL is (to the GPL) and I think RMS prefers the GPL to the GPL.
I think I just put too many TLAs in this posting ;-)
I want all these countries to start building their infrastructure to be not "dependent" on the United States in any way for the Internet. There should be a T1 line to every house. It is an injustice if done any other way. The more bandwidth the better.