I have seen many cases where vendors have refused to give out source code for exactly this reason. You'd be amazed how many organizations are out there who have one low-skilled teenager (or a secretary, or...) to manage their systems. Give that teenager a copy of VB in a nutshell, and he thinks he's a programmer. But, guaranteed, if there is a problem, the vendor will still be expected to support it. I used to work at a college whose administrative software was like this. It was UGLY. It hardly makes sense to open the source when you are going to have to provide continuing support for it on a flat-fee basis.
Even if I thought that MS had the right to do this, there are many better ways to do it.
Visualize a license key scheme, wherein you are given a MD5 hash key that matches the hardware in the system. Change the hardware, you have to call MS and get a new key. Having to call the vendor tends to put a BIG damper on illegal software use.
I have said for a long time that the only reason MS is so successful is that most people don't have to pay for Windows directly. I mean, if you pay for a product directly, you get really cranky when it doesn't work. On the other hand, if you got a copy from your cousin Fred, you will probably not complain nearly as much. Microsoft is maing a huge mistake here, and if they don't back down I think this could cost them the market.
My current theory: this is all an evil plot to make Linux be reinstalled every time Windows has to be. These OS recover CD's tend to wipe out EVERYTHING, including foreign partitions.
You complain about the fact that Python uses indentation for syntax. From this, I conclude that you are not a Python programmer, since I have NEVER heard someone who had actually written more than 50 lines of Python complain about the indentation.
From this page, I see that Guido's fiance is into verious martial arts. I just wonder if there's some kind of conspiracy going on with these northern european open source creators with wives who can kick butt...
Oh yeah: Python rocks! Finally, a read-write language!
Suggestion: start with John. Follow that up with Romans (Romans is, admittedly, preachy -- but I don't know of another book that gives as good of an introduction to "Life, the universe, and everything". After that, I would probably recommend the other gospels, followed by genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy, 1 + 2Judges, 1+2 Samuel, 1+2 Kings. Then, a coupl,e more epistles, including James and 1Peter. After that, probably Isaih, Daniel, and Revelation. At that point, you pretty much covered the whole thing:) Enjoy.
Sounds like you (and Homer) need to read it. The Bible, for the most part, is not preachy at all. Mostly, it's a bunch of stories. In fact, there are whole books that don't even mention God, Sin, or anything else we would call "religious".
Incidentally, that last throws the Fundies into a real snit. Which i think is good for them.
Geesh... Come up with your own title. The "Acts of the Apostles" was originally published about 54 A.D. From the review, it's hard to imagine what this book could possibly have in common with the "Acts of the Apostles".
Okay, as a Borland (and Linux) Zealot (Kylix I can't wait!), let me throw in my interpretation. This rests on the fact that a lot of people miss: C++ Builder is not just a compiler. It's a complete development environment, with extensive libraries and all kinds of features. It includes a compiler, but it is not just a compiler.
Borland C++ Builder (and Delphi for that matter) come with the source code for VCL, which is kind of an object wrapper environment that wraps around a whole slew of API's, including Win32, ODBC, etc. and provides a convenient interface to them. Using VCL, it is easy to do VB-style forms generation, databases, and whatever else. VCL is simply awesome.
Obviously, for your C++ Builder app to run, you have to have the VCL libraries installed as well -- just as, for VB, you have to have the VBx00.dll file installed. Borland gives you a license to redistribute VCL, royalty free. However, for obvious reasons, they have not to date wanted to distribute the source royalty free -- VCL is the biggest thing that makes C++ builder better than any other C++ compiler (the other big thing is the IDE, but it seems that VCL does most of the heavy lifting for the IDE).
Incidentally, Borland have tried to get MS to bundle the VCL libs with Windows, and Microsoft has refused (even though the MFC and I think the VB libs ARE bundeled).
The other possibile applicability is auto-generated source. In C++ Builder, there are many wizards to generate basic forms for you. Want a simple database form? Use the database wizard, point it to the database file, and 5 minutes later you have a database form that works.
Since the wizards work by cutting a snipping code that someone at Borland wrote, Borland might not want that code redistributed. However, I suspect that the intent of the language was not this, but VCL.
Should this language be corrected? Heck yes. But I don't think Borland means to stop open source software from using C++ Builder or VCL.
The secret to the PDF export is that, for some reason known only to Corel, it expects windows file semantics. If you give it `d:\whatever' instead of '~/whatever' it works like a champ for me every time. (Agreed that this is a ridiculous bug).
It has worked fine for me on Redhat and Mandrake. My only complain is that it's a bit slow. It's certainly better than StarOffice.
First: Woo hoo! I really don't think that Borland and Corel were really well suited to each other. Borland has a tradition of excellence. Corel... Well, Corel has just never managed to put out a product that made my jaw drop.
Second: I think this is a really good thing for the Linux community. Borland (I refuse to call them inprice) has a tradition of producing excellent development tools. I don't see how the merger with Corel could have done anything but drag them down. I think that Linux's great hope lies in a lot of different vendors, each of which are the best at what they do, not one huge Microsoft-esque vendor that provides everything. We don't need it: let's define standard formats and mechanisms for application interoperability, and let all the vendors (open source, closed source, whatever) duke it out for market share. Now THAT's innovation.
Hopefully, this announcement will not affect Borland's interest in developing for Linux.
If I'm not mistaken, your friend (who taped the video for you) breaks the law when he gives it to you. I forget the details of the ruling, but one of the key features is that you are free to record broadcast content for your own, personal, use. Redistribution is a very different animal.
No one would ever prosecute your friend -- but that's a matter of discretion and ignorance, not a matter of law.
Y'know... The complaint I've more generally heard is that Slashdot tends to not announce KDE news. Witness the repeated stories on Evolution, without one mention of Magellan.
Yes, I did submit it. And I've submitted magellan related stories several times. And I'm not the only one. Do a search through old comments sometime -- you'll see a lot of mention of Magellan.
You can find the KDE equivalent (Magellan) here. However, it is about as `alpha' as evolution. Of course, KDE apps seem to usually be alpha, alpha, alpha, until suddenly someday everything gels and they are near-production.
At risk of sounding like a jerk: this is about the third story on Evolution, without one story on Magellan. Possibly, this is because Evolution is a lot more hyped than magellan. But, possibly, it's because the Slashdot editors all seem to run Gnome.
As I recall, when the courts ruled in favor of the Rio, one of the ideas was that `fair use' entitled you to maintain a copy of the media. Furthermore, the judge in that case implied pretty strongly that you had a right to a copy even if you did not make it yourself.
In other words, what these fans did would seem to be illegal if and only if they did not own a legal copy of the media. I just remembered something from the CNN story this morning: apparently, according to Metallica `the straw that broke the camel's back' was that their newest song, which has not even been released on CD yet, was being pirated. Possible, the reason it broke the camel's back was that it was impossible for anyone to own a licensed copy of that song yet since they weren't selling it.
Possibly, this ruling is not as far reaching as we are being led to believe.
Am I missing something? Any lawyers out there (Hawk, you're the man)?
I know that, in our church bookstore (which I am partly responsible for) we are unable to discount CD's much at all because we don't get any significant discount on them. On Books, we get 40% off cover. On CD's, we get like 15%.
I guess I agree with your conclusion: record companies (including the `religious' labels) are a bunch of greedy bastards.
This could certainly be done, and it is a good and worthwhile undertaking. If I were designing it, I would probably design a system around Coda for file sharing, LDAP for a directory service, and CUPS for printing. In other words, most of the work has already been done. What is needed is integration. In order to work well, there needs to be a standard, well-defined way to find resources. When a new print server comes online, it should automagically be added to the directory. Likewise with file services. What is a little more ticklish is that you will probably need to develop your own security paradigm that can cross the gap between Windoze and UNIX security models. This will probably require modifications to both the filesystem and the print server software to be complete. (I guess you could do something based on ACL's pretty simply). Now here's the BUT: is there really enough market for this to justify it? Maintaining the client for Windows is going to require a tremendous amount of work, especially since there are at least 10 different variants in common use now. The advantage of Samba and friends is that they push that work onto Microsoft. Unfortunately, there are not a whole lot of open source types who want to develop for Microsoft platforms. This is the kind of thing that screams for a commercial open source approach (a la Redhat). You develop the product as an integrated whole, then make money selling it. In any case, It's probably going to need some $$'s to make it happen.
Do you know why prisons in this country are traditionally called "penitentiaries"? Because the modern American prison system wasfounded on the Enlightenment idea that criminals could be reformed, if only you could make them penitent about their crimes. It was a great new idea that, instead of throwing people away when they "broke", you should try to "fix" them.
Jsut for the record, it wasn't an enlightenment ideal, but a Quaker ideal. The penitentiary concept didn't come around until the middle nineteenth century.
I am glad, however, to see you acknowledge its religious motivations. The enlightenment was much more concerned with science, and advocated a kind of sterling rationalism with an obsession on the "natural rights of man" rather than Christian compassion. How the englightenment got "natural rights" from their Deist, clockmaker god, is beyond me.
Pardon me for living, but wouldn't a PDA be much more convenient for this app than a laptop? Especially the Palm VII with the nifty wireless network. Why do people always assume that they need a full-blown desktop compatible system for everything?
I have to tell you that your friend will most likely return to alcohol.
I base this on two things: one your use of the word "recovered" and two the fact that he still drinks "socially". In my experience (I actually have a fair amount) anyone who thinks he's finally kicked an addiction is kidding himself. For my addictions, I live with the knowledge, each day, that I am still an addict (in my case smoking, but I've helped people with much more serious addictions), and could return at any point.
The second sad fact is that most addicts, if they partake of the substance they are addicted to even once will eventually return. There has to be a hard line between on the wagon and off the wagon. If your friend continues to drink socially, they will most likely fall off the wagon -- it's only a matter of time.
The statistics are frightening: something like 95% of all addicts return to disfunctional patterns on partaking of the substance just once.
My advice would be to try to get your friend to participate in a 12 step program of some kind. AA is very good, and very successful. Remember: the research indicates that there is simply no such thing as a "recovered alcoholic".
This brings up the whole subject of the history of UNIX. A really good book is A quarter century of UNIX. This thing blows away a lot of the myths, and is actually quite helpful in trying to undewrstand why things are the way they are. Highly recommended.
Slashdot Mirror
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Visualize a license key scheme, wherein you are given a MD5 hash key that matches the hardware in the system. Change the hardware, you have to call MS and get a new key. Having to call the vendor tends to put a BIG damper on illegal software use.
I have said for a long time that the only reason MS is so successful is that most people don't have to pay for Windows directly. I mean, if you pay for a product directly, you get really cranky when it doesn't work. On the other hand, if you got a copy from your cousin Fred, you will probably not complain nearly as much. Microsoft is maing a huge mistake here, and if they don't back down I think this could cost them the market.
My current theory: this is all an evil plot to make Linux be reinstalled every time Windows has to be. These OS recover CD's tend to wipe out EVERYTHING, including foreign partitions.
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It's not a bug, it's a feature.
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Oh yeah: Python rocks! Finally, a read-write language!
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Incidentally, that last throws the Fundies into a real snit. Which i think is good for them.
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Borland C++ Builder (and Delphi for that matter) come with the source code for VCL, which is kind of an object wrapper environment that wraps around a whole slew of API's, including Win32, ODBC, etc. and provides a convenient interface to them. Using VCL, it is easy to do VB-style forms generation, databases, and whatever else. VCL is simply awesome.
Obviously, for your C++ Builder app to run, you have to have the VCL libraries installed as well -- just as, for VB, you have to have the VBx00.dll file installed. Borland gives you a license to redistribute VCL, royalty free. However, for obvious reasons, they have not to date wanted to distribute the source royalty free -- VCL is the biggest thing that makes C++ builder better than any other C++ compiler (the other big thing is the IDE, but it seems that VCL does most of the heavy lifting for the IDE).
Incidentally, Borland have tried to get MS to bundle the VCL libs with Windows, and Microsoft has refused (even though the MFC and I think the VB libs ARE bundeled).
The other possibile applicability is auto-generated source. In C++ Builder, there are many wizards to generate basic forms for you. Want a simple database form? Use the database wizard, point it to the database file, and 5 minutes later you have a database form that works.
Since the wizards work by cutting a snipping code that someone at Borland wrote, Borland might not want that code redistributed. However, I suspect that the intent of the language was not this, but VCL.
Should this language be corrected? Heck yes. But I don't think Borland means to stop open source software from using C++ Builder or VCL.
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Are you suggesting that VB is a better environment? If so, my experience is quite a bit different from yours apparently.
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It has worked fine for me on Redhat and Mandrake. My only complain is that it's a bit slow. It's certainly better than StarOffice.
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Second: I think this is a really good thing for the Linux community. Borland (I refuse to call them inprice) has a tradition of producing excellent development tools. I don't see how the merger with Corel could have done anything but drag them down. I think that Linux's great hope lies in a lot of different vendors, each of which are the best at what they do, not one huge Microsoft-esque vendor that provides everything. We don't need it: let's define standard formats and mechanisms for application interoperability, and let all the vendors (open source, closed source, whatever) duke it out for market share. Now THAT's innovation.
Hopefully, this announcement will not affect Borland's interest in developing for Linux.
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No one would ever prosecute your friend -- but that's a matter of discretion and ignorance, not a matter of law.
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At risk of sounding like a jerk: this is about the third story on Evolution, without one story on Magellan. Possibly, this is because Evolution is a lot more hyped than magellan. But, possibly, it's because the Slashdot editors all seem to run Gnome.
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In other words, what these fans did would seem to be illegal if and only if they did not own a legal copy of the media. I just remembered something from the CNN story this morning: apparently, according to Metallica `the straw that broke the camel's back' was that their newest song, which has not even been released on CD yet, was being pirated. Possible, the reason it broke the camel's back was that it was impossible for anyone to own a licensed copy of that song yet since they weren't selling it.
Possibly, this ruling is not as far reaching as we are being led to believe.
Am I missing something? Any lawyers out there (Hawk, you're the man)?
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I guess I agree with your conclusion: record companies (including the `religious' labels) are a bunch of greedy bastards.
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Your tact... errrr... could use some improvment.
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I am glad, however, to see you acknowledge its religious motivations. The enlightenment was much more concerned with science, and advocated a kind of sterling rationalism with an obsession on the "natural rights of man" rather than Christian compassion. How the englightenment got "natural rights" from their Deist, clockmaker god, is beyond me.
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I have to tell you that your friend will most likely return to alcohol.
I base this on two things: one your use of the word "recovered" and two the fact that he still drinks "socially". In my experience (I actually have a fair amount) anyone who thinks he's finally kicked an addiction is kidding himself. For my addictions, I live with the knowledge, each day, that I am still an addict (in my case smoking, but I've helped people with much more serious addictions), and could return at any point.
The second sad fact is that most addicts, if they partake of the substance they are addicted to even once will eventually return. There has to be a hard line between on the wagon and off the wagon. If your friend continues to drink socially, they will most likely fall off the wagon -- it's only a matter of time.
The statistics are frightening: something like 95% of all addicts return to disfunctional patterns on partaking of the substance just once.
My advice would be to try to get your friend to participate in a 12 step program of some kind. AA is very good, and very successful. Remember: the research indicates that there is simply no such thing as a "recovered alcoholic".
I hope that wasn't a troll.
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