To be perfectly honest, I don't understand why they're suing Sony and not IBM. I suppose it's probably tactical, especially since Sony is actually selling the chips as opposed to IBM who's mostly talking about them at this point. Easy, trolls are stupid, which of course does not make them any less evil. This one perceives Sony as more likely than IBM to pay up just to buy some peace and quiet. Slight flaw in reasoning there, because IBM will perceive any attack on Cell as a direct attack on IBM. The Nazgul must already be in flight.
Office is expensive, but OpenOffice doesn't look as good, doesn't work as well and feels cobbled together. Funny, I feel the same way about MS Office. I suppose it just comes down to what you use most, I only ran MS Office about half a dozen times in the last three years while running OO thousands of times. No question, OO is good enough for me, and it keeps getting better at a steady rate. New updates just arrive automatically along with my regular apt-get upgrades and I have never once seen a regression. It's hard to overstate the importances of no regressions. It would be just intensely painful to have to go find an ancient version of the office suite in order to load some old document that dropped off the far end of the compatibility window. That particular pain is something I left behind long ago when I dropped MS Office in favor of OO.
You have to wonder why thunderbird doesn't compete as well in the email marketspace as firefox does in the browser market space. I suspect its because thunderbird doesn't really offer anything more than its competitors and because it has few must-have extensions. But it could also be the prevalence of web mail. So what would make a killer email client? Thunderbird is just plain clumsy to use. To see this, just try the file open dialogue, it is excruciatingly painful. In particular, try to type in the name of a file rather than navigating with the mouse. Try the filter setup, compare to kmail. See how much work it is to set up a filter for, say, a mailing list, compared to kmail. Hundreds of little fit and finish things, for example, after you set up a new filter, it is not selected by default for running, this takes an extra click. Restarting Thunderbird with imap folders after a crash is slllloowwww, it seems to cache next to nothing and downloads imap headers at a snails pace. Thunderbird is forever failing to start because it left a lock file or two hanging around after a crash, and there are plenty of crashes (e.g., failing to handle EACCESS).
That said, I use Thunderbird every day at work. Only because I have a big investment in filters. I appreciate the fact that this mail client is relatively full featured, costs nothing and is open source. But hopefully it will get a lot better in the future and fall below my pain point. As it is, as soon as I get around to coding a script to convert my filters I will defect to kmail, which is a great example of how to do an email client right.
That's part of the reason why Linux will never really hit it big on the desktop. That's ridiculous, millions of desktop Linux users say that Linux has already hit it big on the desktop. Roughly the same share of the desktop market as Apple now, or are you going to say that Apple has not "hit it big?".
His point is that the kernels are optimized for servers. That is, focus on throughput, performance, but not latency or responsiveness. Actually, the poor interactive performance of the Linux scheduler was due to a combination of a server-oriented performance hack (O(1) scheduler) and an ineffective attempt to propagate the notion of "interactivity" between processes. So in this case, both a server hack and a desktop hack contributed to the problem.
Thankfully fixed now, due to Con figuring out how to satisfy both efficiency and latency objectives with a single scheduler, and Ingo rudely but efficiently pushing his own interpretation of Con's work into mainline. Moral of the story: sometimes the process is bumpy and feelings get hurt, but the code doesn't care, it just keeps getting better.
I found that rather funny. Blaming Microsoft for your own lack of creativity and ingenuity. What lack of creativity and ingenuity? I blame Microsoft for setting back the general progress of software technology by a number of years, the only question is how many year, not whether it happened.
By the way, please keep a lid on the logical fallacies. Yours is a vile mix of ad hominem and straw man.
The article mentions a problem that I have had with Shuttle systems all along: Noise. Even though it's water cooled, they found noise to still be a problem.
If I could be choosy, this is what I want in my typical SFF system:
- One full size x16 PCI express slot for my big graphics card (that should fit and be adequately cooled) - Space for two hard drives in the chassis, along with one optical drive - Near silence except when doing something intense, like gaming or encoding - Of course, small.
When will I get such a system!? Shuttle already offers it. The noisiest component in the SD11G5 is the hard disk, even if you go for the quietest on the market.
Unfortunately, Shuttle has not updated this amazing system so you will have to be satisfied with a pentium M processor.
It means that we won't have to pander to Word users any more, because they can be on an equal footing when it comes to document format support. This is much more important than getting rid of Word entirely. Sure, and now I have a fine response to anybody who sends me a doc file: Go here, download that, install, resave and resend. Thankyou.
Sun: if you are interested in distributing this plugin as widely as possible you will fix your web site silliness and just provide a simple url to the install file, you can save the license dance for install time.
If you ever read up on shipping containers which is interesting stuff. Some are build for blast freezing in compartments of ships for like off shore fishing. I belive they can go down to -60C Fish don't generate heat.
To be fair, Novell PAID MS a lot of money. However, MS PAID Novell a LOT more:) The word "sham" comes to mind, particularly with respect to the money Novell paid Microsoft. If you pay somebody to pay you money, did anything at all happen? How does throwing paper around without any real effect help Microsoft's story at all, I do not see that any fact is established.
Unfortunately, the reputation of a 800lb juggernaut which let others pioneer shallow waters and only comes cruising in where there's an established market to conquer isn't nearly as negative as you might think. You may want to remove those rose-colored goggles long enough to notice which way the Microsoft brand is heading.
The patent stuff is more of a red herring in this deal. It is basically there to ease the deal. The main idea is that Microsoft gets to sell more stuff to customers and Novell gets more revenue. It is a win/win deal for both of them. You are wrong. The patent stratagem is the prime purpose of the pact, as witness Steve Ballmer using the word "patent" more than a dozen times in the associated press release.
Novell did as promised and published details of its landmark November 2006 Linux partnership agreements with Microsoft Landmark? Eyesore, more like it.
The first Blu-ray Disc recorder was demonstrated by Sony on March 3, 2003, and was introduced to the Japanese market in April that year. On September 1, 2003, JVC announced Blu-ray Disc-based products at IFA in Berlin, Germany.
According to TFA, The patent was filed in April of 2004 and granted in March of 2006.
So provided these dates are correct, I have three questions: 1) did the patent troll break any laws? 2) if so, what punishment is sufficiently severe to deter this practice? and 3) if the patent troll did not break any laws, then is the law an ass?
And you're clinging to a legal definition that suits you, even if it happens to not be true in the real world Ahem. I was talking about the legal definition. It has nothing to do with what suits me and it has everything to do with what the courts of the land have determined. In spite of whatever misapprehensions it might please you to hold, the legal definition is the real world and a dictionary definition is little more than an excuse for endless content free argumentation from those too lazy to understand the legal principles involved.
I'd say that even in 1998, Microsoft was arguably not a monopoly. A monopoly means they have the only product on the market, in this case x86 operating systems.
Schäuble is the minister of the interior, which is exactly the person that should be involved in this (that is, the person holding that position). Sure he's a dick, but he is the minister of the interior. If you don't like his policies, just vote next time. I would say this is a kind of voting.
...it is well done. I'm sure they're not playing entirely fair, but still, it's their success, they built it, they earned the reward for it. And it does look nice. Let them have their reward. I'm a linux man myself. I doubt that will ever change. But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft. What if Microsoft intends to destroy Linux, would you be ok with that? And why do you conflate "competing with Microsoft" with "destroying Microsoft"?
Bill Gates is a smart guy who could have written the code right in the first place... Really? I seem to recall that GWBasic used a linked list for the lines of the program, so code at higher line numbers executed more slowly and one way to speed it up was to remove all the comments. Somebody might be able to provide a memory refresher on this. Anyway, personally I believe that Bill Gates is a hazard to good software, I have seen evidence enough of that.
Insightful perspective, except this is a little too glib:
That doesn't make him smarter than the rest of us (any more than Linus Torvalds or Tim Berners-Lee smarter than the rest of us. I know first-hand that Linus is a brilliant engineer, a legendary bug hunter and more skilled with the English language than I am. The last being a pretty good trick since English is not his first language, or second even. The thing I hope to see before the end of this Mordor-against-the-world story: a head to head debate between Billg and Linus, if Billg has the nerve. I know Linus does.
I agree with you completely, Bill Gates is bright, but more in a game playing sense than an engineering sense. But Bill doesn't know that, which is a great thing for us, and costs Microsoft billions. Even if I tell him, or he reads slashdot which I doubt, he will never believe that he is a lousy software engineer. But he is. Three words "gwbasic flood fill"". Bill just plain lacks the love of form and function that it takes to be a good, let alone great software architect. He is more like a shovelware artist, and if he can he will get somebody else to do the coding for him. That is where he is about as smart as it gets: at getting more than his share of the christmas cake.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, I use Thunderbird every day at work. Only because I have a big investment in filters. I appreciate the fact that this mail client is relatively full featured, costs nothing and is open source. But hopefully it will get a lot better in the future and fall below my pain point. As it is, as soon as I get around to coding a script to convert my filters I will defect to kmail, which is a great example of how to do an email client right.
Thankfully fixed now, due to Con figuring out how to satisfy both efficiency and latency objectives with a single scheduler, and Ingo rudely but efficiently pushing his own interpretation of Con's work into mainline. Moral of the story: sometimes the process is bumpy and feelings get hurt, but the code doesn't care, it just keeps getting better.
By the way, please keep a lid on the logical fallacies. Yours is a vile mix of ad hominem and straw man.
If I could be choosy, this is what I want in my typical SFF system:
- One full size x16 PCI express slot for my big graphics card (that should fit and be adequately cooled)
- Space for two hard drives in the chassis, along with one optical drive
- Near silence except when doing something intense, like gaming or encoding
- Of course, small.
When will I get such a system!? Shuttle already offers it. The noisiest component in the SD11G5 is the hard disk, even if you go for the quietest on the market.
Unfortunately, Shuttle has not updated this amazing system so you will have to be satisfied with a pentium M processor.
Sun: if you are interested in distributing this plugin as widely as possible you will fix your web site silliness and just provide a simple url to the install file, you can save the license dance for install time.
Partnership? Toady, more like it.
Did as promised? Spin doctoring, more like it.
Partnership agreements? Pact, more like it.
According to wikipedia:
The first Blu-ray Disc recorder was demonstrated by Sony on March 3, 2003, and was introduced to the Japanese market in April that year. On September 1, 2003, JVC announced Blu-ray Disc-based products at IFA in Berlin, Germany.
According to TFA, The patent was filed in April of 2004 and granted in March of 2006.
So provided these dates are correct, I have three questions: 1) did the patent troll break any laws? 2) if so, what punishment is sufficiently severe to deter this practice? and 3) if the patent troll did not break any laws, then is the law an ass?
I'd say that even in 1998, Microsoft was arguably not a monopoly. A monopoly means they have the only product on the market, in this case x86 operating systems.
You are making up your own definition of what is/is not a monopoly. Please educate yourself.
...it is well done. I'm sure they're not playing entirely fair, but still, it's their success, they built it, they earned the reward for it. And it does look nice. Let them have their reward. I'm a linux man myself. I doubt that will ever change. But I feel no need whatsoever to destroy microsoft. What if Microsoft intends to destroy Linux, would you be ok with that? And why do you conflate "competing with Microsoft" with "destroying Microsoft"?What they forgot to mention is, your phone will be running Linux.
I agree with you completely, Bill Gates is bright, but more in a game playing sense than an engineering sense. But Bill doesn't know that, which is a great thing for us, and costs Microsoft billions. Even if I tell him, or he reads slashdot which I doubt, he will never believe that he is a lousy software engineer. But he is. Three words "gwbasic flood fill"". Bill just plain lacks the love of form and function that it takes to be a good, let alone great software architect. He is more like a shovelware artist, and if he can he will get somebody else to do the coding for him. That is where he is about as smart as it gets: at getting more than his share of the christmas cake.