You didn't say what platform you were on, but if you're on Linux, you might try EasyTag. It comes with my distro (SuSE); it may already be on yours. Don't let the cheesy web site fool you. It's a great little program. It can backfill id3 tags from filenames, or rename files according to id3 tags. It can do whole trees of files at once (like to label the artist). It has a neat feature which will autonumber a whole directory of files to track numbers. I've been using all of these features to clean up my own ogg collection from all the different ways I've ripped my own stuff over the years.
I've used both, SFU more extensively than Cygwin, though. SFU's NFS stuff is flaky. That's just the bottom line. I would much rather export shares to Windows clients with Samba than NFS. (I suppose it doesn't help that I'm not a big fan of NFS, either, but that's just full disclosure. It's the only thing I've seen that can reliably lock up a *nix machine. Now, of course, there are circumstances where you want this, but usually not.) Also, if you want all the features of their command line, you'll have to switch your Windows machine into a case-sensitive mode. It made me nervous to change something so fundamental to Windows. Maybe they'll fix that in this upcoming version; I dunno. On the other hand, using Cygwin is nice, but it's like a big tease. Most of it works like you want. It's just that if you're used to using Linux and ALL of it's tools, you're going to hit the wall pretty quick. (I just ran into this a couple weeks ago, and I've already forgotten what it was I was wanting.)
I work for a Fortune 250 company. We started an Oracle ERP implementation project. Nice Sun 4000 box loaded with processors for a dev box, and a half-loaded E10K for the production and testing domains, all on an EMC Symmetrix array. I am the newly-appointed "Unix" guy at the data center, as this is the first Unix they had there. I'm am trying desparately to work well with the DBA's who work in another state. Got the picture?
Part of the project plan called for layering Veritas foundation suite on the EMC disks. Notice that we already have Solaris and its native VM, JNI fiber controller drivers, and EMC PowerPath running on the stack, and now I'm going to add Veritas File System and Volume Manager. I'm just sayin'. On top of an E10K, it's a lot of stuff.
I read the docs over about 2 days. I prepare all the scripts over another half. I am supposed to be doing about half the data disks in the first pass. Easy, right? You just specify those LUN's in a special file, and it keeps them from being touched by any commands you throw at EMC's PowerPath software. (Wait for it...) I stare at my navel for a awhile, then throw the switch... and convert ALL the disks, including the stuff they were currently using, to the new file system.
After all I had done to prepare, it totally escaped my attention that I would be touching the disks with Veritas software, NOT EMC software, so the exclusion file was moot. I was scared witless. I'm sure that those of us who've been through something like this can commiserate with this almost indescribable sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Amazingly enough, the "live" data disks I wiped out were all due to be cleaned off anyway, with the exception of a couple, and the DBA team lead just considered it a good chance to put their data restoration skills to the test. Talk about a nice group of people!
Here's another. I've left that group due to... financial issues... and taken up with my old group to do custom programming for the engineering department. Everything's great. Now that I don't need to run EMC's Windows-only managment software, I'm back to running Linux as much as I can.
The need arises to setup a SQL Server box for some engineers to develop some other apps on. No problem. I get it all setup. But then, I check up on it after a break, and I see TONS of specialized User Account Policies. My first thought is that someone with a normal account -- with a login script that calls SMS setup stuff -- has logged in, and the "domain" has taken over the whole machine. So I angrily start undoing these changes. Problem? By default, User Manager looks at the domain. I'm a domain admin. It lets me delete something like a hundred entries.
I'm down to the last few when I realize what I've actually been doing. Yeah. Screwing up batch files and service account privileges across our entire multi-national domain with thousands of accounts. Me? I start sorting my stuff from my company's stuff in my office. I know what has to happen; I'd do the same thing.
I make the call to a good friend who's heavily involved in the domain administration back at the aforementioned data center, and sit on pins and needles. I can scarcely believe it when he tells me that it's no big deal, and he can get one of his guys to repair these permissions in a few minutes, from memory! (Turns out that this might not be the first time that someone has done serious damage to these settings.) WHEW! But, boy, was my face red.
I think it's a positive testamony about the company that I get to do things that stretch my abilities and not get the axe for the occasional mistake. Even over and above folks overlooking these blunders, I'm incredibly lucky to have this job. It's a fantastic place to work.
Sigh. The word "freely" means that you DON'T CHARGE for it. Is English not your native language? YOU CAN FREELY -- AS IN, NOT TAKE MONEY FOR -- DISTRIBUTE SUSE LINUX DISTRIBUTION DISCS. I don't know about the rest. I wasn't talking about the rest, and neither were you originally.
Again, sigh. Apparently, I have been trolled, but for those following along at home, I hope the point is now clear.
Exactly. Read the license. To wit, from/usr/share/doc/packages/COPYRIGHT.english on my SuSE 8.2 workstation...
3. Dissemination
It is forbidden to reproduce or distribute data carriers which have
been reproduced without authorisation for payment without the prior
written consent of SuSE Linux AG or SuSE Linux. Distribution of
the YaST 2 programme, its sources, whether amended or unamended in full
or in part thereof, and the works derived thereof for a charge require
the prior written consent of SuSE Linux AG.
All programmes derived from YaST 2, and all works derived thereof as a
whole or parts thereof may only be disseminated with the amended
sources and this licence in accordance with 2b). Making YaST 2 or
works derived thereof available free of charge together with SuSE
Linux on FTP Servers and mailboxes is permitted if the licences on the
software are observed.
I really don't give a flying rip what gnu.org or opensource.org have to say about it. You took umbrage with SuSE that their discs could not be copied:
Unlike Suse, they never used any gimmicks like shipping a closed source admin tool to keep the iso's from being copied.
My point also still stands: you canfreely redistribute unmodified SuSE disks.
I take umbrage at your use of the term "closed source." It most certainly is NOT "closed." It's open source. It may or may not be free software, but that's a separate matter.
Unlike Suse, they never used any gimmicks like shipping a closed source admin tool to keep the iso's from being copied.
Argh! How many times is this FUD going to be repeated on slashdot? YaST is NOT CLOSED SOURCE! It simply has the same sort of license agreement as RHEL, i.e. you cannot redistribute it -- FOR MONEY -- with the SuSE branding left in place. So you can still copy any number of disks for your buddies, but you can't sell them.
The only problem with your analysis is that it still renders further development on my undoubtably future favorite, Fallout 3, in limbo. Interplay owns all the copyrights. Reading through some of the online chatter about the process at NMA showed that several of the people at BIS were really fired up about it, whereas management was not. Maybe people like me, who were looking forward to that game, could setup a fund drive. I wonder how much money it would take to buy the source materials that have been put into Fallout 3 so far, and turn that over to the people who still want to work on it? I wonder how many units would need to be sold to pay for those people to finish it? In this day and age of the internet, all this could be calculated and put online. If the target amount wasn't reached, perhaps the money could simply be paid to those developers anyway as a small way of getting them over the hump.
key components of SuSE have been proprietary since the beginning
You're probably talking about YaST, which is NOT proprietary. It's open source. You just can't redistribute it -- for money -- and leave SuSE's name in place. It's the same thing for Red Hat's distro. It's freely redistributable; you just can't call it "Red Hat."
And, while I'm at it, YaST is pretty cool. I've seen a lot of setup tools on Linux, and most just get in the way. YaST takes care of everything, and you don't have to clean up after it.
At least for me... Dia. What is especially nice was that I was using it to diagram a database I had designed, and I found a Perl script that would suck the schema out of a PostgreSQL database and make a Dia file out of it. I had to clean it up, but all the tables had been created and the links made.
A large portion of ISP's get their IP addresses from even larger ISP's, such that reverse lookups from the small ISP's netblock would show the large ISP's domain name. Hence, a lot of legitimate email will get blocked if you turn this on.
Your post really gives me insight into the differences in the problems that the MPAA and the RIAA face. With a movie, you sit down and _watch_ it. It's an experience. This is what the MPAA is selling, and, for a good movie, it's compelling. The RIAA, on the other hand, is selling background noise, for the most part. Seriously, music is the stuff that we put on to enhance what's _really_ happening, whether that's driving, coding, or having sex or whatever. (SELF-AGGRANDIZING JERKS INSERT JOKE HERE.) The thing about the way we enjoy music is that we want it to be _convenient_, not _dramatic_. When the RIAA finally realizes that their product is NOT fundamentally the same as the MPAA's, and accepts the premise by which we wish to use it, I think their profits will reach levels even they have only dreamed about. ("I don't know, kid. I can _imagine_ an awful lot.")
BS! It definitely *is* as simple as "don't use it." I won't, and Hollywood can do without my money. It's no skin off my teeth. I have a hard time just renting a few films in a year, and buying more than one or two indie CD's. If push comes to shove, I'll just do without all of it.
I think what the past several years in the desktop business has shown us is that most people don't want to change those things. Have you ever looked at the average user's desktop? Perhaps they've changed the background picture. That's about it. How many Windows users do you know who have actually gone so far as to use WindowBlinds or even LightStep? Corporate users are even more conservative. They just want to "get their work done."
Frankly, gaming on _either_ platform leaves a little to be desired. I'm starting to think that I ought to just go buy a console rather than deal with Linux's lack of polish _or_ Windows' lack of stability. It would be nice to be able to sit down, pop in a disc, and just PLAY, for cryin' out loud. Instead, I find myself wrangling drivers revisions and patches in order to deal with and a continual flow of performance glitches and crashes.
I was really looking forward to HL2. I had the date marked on my calendar and everything. However, with this news, I doubt I'll buy it at all. I've avoided buying Windows XP because of the whole issue, and continue to run Windows 2000 to play games. To me, the "upgrade" wasn't worth letting someone else tell me that I was "allowed" to run it, even after I've already paid for it because of a hardware change. What if I lose my internet connection after the change? I'm stuck until I make a call? I'm sorry. That's just ridiculous -- to me -- that I would have to fool with that, again, after I've paid for it, free and clear. Unfortunately, I've just tried this new "Steam" product, and I thought, "Hey, this will be great! All these games for free! It will even be perfect for LAN parties because we'll finally be able to play Counter-Strike even though not everyone has bought it." Then I realize that for one thing, there are ads every time you launch a game. Not big ones, but ads. "Fine," I thought, "this is a free product. I get what I pay for." On top of this, the other thing that bugs me is that it's "phoning home" every time I launch a game. Again, it's free, and I guess that's part of the deal, but if we don't have an internet connection at the next LAN party (and sometimes we don't), then we can't play Counter-Strike for free. The bottom line is that I like to install my games both at work and at home, so I can play on my own time at lunch, and occasionally after work. I take my saved games back and forth while I beat a new game to death. If Valve tells me that I can't do that without paying for two copies, that's their perogative, of course, but it's also my perogative to not buy it. It seems ridiculous to me that I can't treat a video game like a book, and take it "where I want to go today." Product activation "like Microsoft" indeed. It looks like Valve will inherit my Microsoft buying habits, and I don't buy anything from Microsoft any more.
Just an aside, but you might want to check out the new OpenGroupware.org. It's a recently open-sourced collaboration application. I downloaded TUTOS, but while reading up on all the commercial and non-commercial options, I stumbled upon it. The setup isn't for beginners, but it's working really good now that I've got it running.
I just took a long, hard look at this from every angle. Red Hat changed everything recently with their reorganization of their product line. The end result? You can have the "rolling beta" for free, or you can pony up hundreds of dollars per box for an updated, stable OS. SuSE's latest version is everything I've thought Red Hat was for the past 5 years, and it's still available for a boxed-set price. It's stable, and I haven't found any bugs in it, unlike Red Hat 9, where I personally logged a couple bugs, and got tired of waiting for someone to fix them. SuSE's distros are also free to keep updated, unlike Red Hat's, and the updates are available for two years, not just one. I'm doing this a big disservice by not going into all the gory deatils, but that's the short story. If you like Red Hat, then SuSE 8.2 is the "Red Hat" that 9 should have been. And, yeah, I think this sort of attitude crosses over into the SLES and RHES products. Red Hat wants to lock people into their Red Hat Network service, and you'll violate your contract for those updates if you install on more than one machine. SuSE is still open, albeit for the price of one boxed set. I'm sticking with SuSE until they pull a "Red Hat." After that, I guess there's Gentoo for the desktops and Debian for the servers...
Re:The ACLU is about mechanism, not policy.
on
Joining the ACLU?
·
· Score: 1
Because the stuff that you can find on the shelf in the library HAS ALREADY BEEN FILTERED. Librarians don't put hardcore porn on the shelf right next to legitimate sex eduacation. They've put the censoring in right there and then. So you need to reverse your question and ask why AREN'T the libraries supposed to be filtering?
ALL sex ed is a joke. The liberal educators of this country have had an agenda for the past 30 years to make deviant sexual practices the social norm. Even a cursory glance at the statistics shows that condoms are hardly the way to have "safe" sex. They fail the VAST majority of the time to stop both pregnancy AND STD's. Yet this is the repeated message by all major media and educational institutions: that using a condom cures all ills. Yes, absolutely, before you say it, it is also true that the VAST majority of condom use is improper, but doesn't that just underscore my point that ALL sex ed is a joke from the wild-and-free online sources all the way to the hallowed halls of academia.
The fundamental problem with this problem is NOT technical. It's not even about free speech and freedoms. It's about morals. There are things talked about freely in public and on TV that were unmentionable 50, 40, 30, even just 20 years ago. Is this progress? Look at the crime statistics. Look at the welfare statistics. Look at the mental health statistics. Can anyone honestly say that we, as a _society_ as a whole, are better off today than we were 50 years ago? Sure, we may be more _prosperous_, but at what cost?
Yeah, I know, I know. I live in a cave. I'm sheltering my family. I'm a neandrathal and I'm raising neanderthals. Fine. But, by God, I'm going to retire with an intact family that all love one another. I, for one, will stand up against the influx of garbage, because that's all it is. Attempts to dress it up as valid sources of information are red herrings. There is only one source to learn about sexuality, as a subset of morality as a whole: the Bible as taught by your family and church.
Call me anything you want, but the facts are PLAINLY in evidence. It's the only system of values that endures the test of time.
Re:The ACLU is about mechanism, not policy.
on
Joining the ACLU?
·
· Score: 1
Consider the Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act.... if you're 15, and wondering if having sex with your boyfriend can get you pregnant the first time, now you can't get information about it.
This is the biggest red herring of the internet age. Every school has some form of "sex ed" these days, and they'll have presented it by the time someone is 15. Furthermore, if you want to go to the library to research information on how NOT to get pregnant, LOOK UP A BOOK IN THE CARD CATALOG AND CHECK IT OUT! There will be plenty of information about any number of important subjects at a library, without needing a computer.
If you think Loki went out of business because there was no money to be made doing native Linux game ports, you need to read this. It may have been a problem, but it certainly wasn't the biggest one.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are living under the same bad assumption as the parent. Maybe someone else will take another crack at this, and do it right next time.
*If* they continue to release Evolution under the GPL, and *if* they use its code in GroupWise, then GroupWise would become GPL as well. If they fork the Evolution code into a proprietary license, *then* the Evolution project takes a big hit.
I use Evolution as my email client of choice. I seriously hope it continues as it has been started. I *think* that Novell "gets it," and I interpret what's been said to mean that they will be merging the products into one GPL'ed suite.
Slashdot Mirror
Right. Now would anyone like to talk about the imbalance of trade between China and the US -- in China's favor -- and why it exists?
You didn't say what platform you were on, but if you're on Linux, you might try EasyTag. It comes with my distro (SuSE); it may already be on yours. Don't let the cheesy web site fool you. It's a great little program. It can backfill id3 tags from filenames, or rename files according to id3 tags. It can do whole trees of files at once (like to label the artist). It has a neat feature which will autonumber a whole directory of files to track numbers. I've been using all of these features to clean up my own ogg collection from all the different ways I've ripped my own stuff over the years.
I've used both, SFU more extensively than Cygwin, though. SFU's NFS stuff is flaky. That's just the bottom line. I would much rather export shares to Windows clients with Samba than NFS. (I suppose it doesn't help that I'm not a big fan of NFS, either, but that's just full disclosure. It's the only thing I've seen that can reliably lock up a *nix machine. Now, of course, there are circumstances where you want this, but usually not.) Also, if you want all the features of their command line, you'll have to switch your Windows machine into a case-sensitive mode. It made me nervous to change something so fundamental to Windows. Maybe they'll fix that in this upcoming version; I dunno. On the other hand, using Cygwin is nice, but it's like a big tease. Most of it works like you want. It's just that if you're used to using Linux and ALL of it's tools, you're going to hit the wall pretty quick. (I just ran into this a couple weeks ago, and I've already forgotten what it was I was wanting.)
Wow. My head hurts. I forgot to wear my tinfoil hat.
I work for a Fortune 250 company. We started an Oracle ERP implementation project. Nice Sun 4000 box loaded with processors for a dev box, and a half-loaded E10K for the production and testing domains, all on an EMC Symmetrix array. I am the newly-appointed "Unix" guy at the data center, as this is the first Unix they had there. I'm am trying desparately to work well with the DBA's who work in another state. Got the picture?
Part of the project plan called for layering Veritas foundation suite on the EMC disks. Notice that we already have Solaris and its native VM, JNI fiber controller drivers, and EMC PowerPath running on the stack, and now I'm going to add Veritas File System and Volume Manager. I'm just sayin'. On top of an E10K, it's a lot of stuff.
I read the docs over about 2 days. I prepare all the scripts over another half. I am supposed to be doing about half the data disks in the first pass. Easy, right? You just specify those LUN's in a special file, and it keeps them from being touched by any commands you throw at EMC's PowerPath software. (Wait for it...) I stare at my navel for a awhile, then throw the switch... and convert ALL the disks, including the stuff they were currently using, to the new file system.
After all I had done to prepare, it totally escaped my attention that I would be touching the disks with Veritas software, NOT EMC software, so the exclusion file was moot. I was scared witless. I'm sure that those of us who've been through something like this can commiserate with this almost indescribable sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.
Amazingly enough, the "live" data disks I wiped out were all due to be cleaned off anyway, with the exception of a couple, and the DBA team lead just considered it a good chance to put their data restoration skills to the test. Talk about a nice group of people!
Here's another. I've left that group due to... financial issues... and taken up with my old group to do custom programming for the engineering department. Everything's great. Now that I don't need to run EMC's Windows-only managment software, I'm back to running Linux as much as I can.
The need arises to setup a SQL Server box for some engineers to develop some other apps on. No problem. I get it all setup. But then, I check up on it after a break, and I see TONS of specialized User Account Policies. My first thought is that someone with a normal account -- with a login script that calls SMS setup stuff -- has logged in, and the "domain" has taken over the whole machine. So I angrily start undoing these changes. Problem? By default, User Manager looks at the domain. I'm a domain admin. It lets me delete something like a hundred entries.
I'm down to the last few when I realize what I've actually been doing. Yeah. Screwing up batch files and service account privileges across our entire multi-national domain with thousands of accounts. Me? I start sorting my stuff from my company's stuff in my office. I know what has to happen; I'd do the same thing.
I make the call to a good friend who's heavily involved in the domain administration back at the aforementioned data center, and sit on pins and needles. I can scarcely believe it when he tells me that it's no big deal, and he can get one of his guys to repair these permissions in a few minutes, from memory! (Turns out that this might not be the first time that someone has done serious damage to these settings.) WHEW! But, boy, was my face red.
I think it's a positive testamony about the company that I get to do things that stretch my abilities and not get the axe for the occasional mistake. Even over and above folks overlooking these blunders, I'm incredibly lucky to have this job. It's a fantastic place to work.
Sigh. The word "freely" means that you DON'T CHARGE for it. Is English not your native language? YOU CAN FREELY -- AS IN, NOT TAKE MONEY FOR -- DISTRIBUTE SUSE LINUX DISTRIBUTION DISCS. I don't know about the rest. I wasn't talking about the rest, and neither were you originally.
Again, sigh. Apparently, I have been trolled, but for those following along at home, I hope the point is now clear.
I really don't give a flying rip what gnu.org or opensource.org have to say about it. You took umbrage with SuSE that their discs could not be copied:
My point also still stands: you can freely redistribute unmodified SuSE disks.
I take umbrage at your use of the term "closed source." It most certainly is NOT "closed." It's open source. It may or may not be free software, but that's a separate matter.
Argh! How many times is this FUD going to be repeated on slashdot? YaST is NOT CLOSED SOURCE! It simply has the same sort of license agreement as RHEL, i.e. you cannot redistribute it -- FOR MONEY -- with the SuSE branding left in place. So you can still copy any number of disks for your buddies, but you can't sell them.
Sheesh.
The only problem with your analysis is that it still renders further development on my undoubtably future favorite, Fallout 3, in limbo. Interplay owns all the copyrights. Reading through some of the online chatter about the process at NMA showed that several of the people at BIS were really fired up about it, whereas management was not. Maybe people like me, who were looking forward to that game, could setup a fund drive. I wonder how much money it would take to buy the source materials that have been put into Fallout 3 so far, and turn that over to the people who still want to work on it? I wonder how many units would need to be sold to pay for those people to finish it? In this day and age of the internet, all this could be calculated and put online. If the target amount wasn't reached, perhaps the money could simply be paid to those developers anyway as a small way of getting them over the hump.
SuSE promises updates for two years from the introduction of every distro.
You're probably talking about YaST, which is NOT proprietary. It's open source. You just can't redistribute it -- for money -- and leave SuSE's name in place. It's the same thing for Red Hat's distro. It's freely redistributable; you just can't call it "Red Hat."
And, while I'm at it, YaST is pretty cool. I've seen a lot of setup tools on Linux, and most just get in the way. YaST takes care of everything, and you don't have to clean up after it.
At least for me... Dia. What is especially nice was that I was using it to diagram a database I had designed, and I found a Perl script that would suck the schema out of a PostgreSQL database and make a Dia file out of it. I had to clean it up, but all the tables had been created and the links made.
A large portion of ISP's get their IP addresses from even larger ISP's, such that reverse lookups from the small ISP's netblock would show the large ISP's domain name. Hence, a lot of legitimate email will get blocked if you turn this on.
Your post really gives me insight into the differences in the problems that the MPAA and the RIAA face. With a movie, you sit down and _watch_ it. It's an experience. This is what the MPAA is selling, and, for a good movie, it's compelling. The RIAA, on the other hand, is selling background noise, for the most part. Seriously, music is the stuff that we put on to enhance what's _really_ happening, whether that's driving, coding, or having sex or whatever. (SELF-AGGRANDIZING JERKS INSERT JOKE HERE.) The thing about the way we enjoy music is that we want it to be _convenient_, not _dramatic_. When the RIAA finally realizes that their product is NOT fundamentally the same as the MPAA's, and accepts the premise by which we wish to use it, I think their profits will reach levels even they have only dreamed about. ("I don't know, kid. I can _imagine_ an awful lot.")
Whose rights are we managing here, anyway?
BS! It definitely *is* as simple as "don't use it." I won't, and Hollywood can do without my money. It's no skin off my teeth. I have a hard time just renting a few films in a year, and buying more than one or two indie CD's. If push comes to shove, I'll just do without all of it.
I think what the past several years in the desktop business has shown us is that most people don't want to change those things. Have you ever looked at the average user's desktop? Perhaps they've changed the background picture. That's about it. How many Windows users do you know who have actually gone so far as to use WindowBlinds or even LightStep? Corporate users are even more conservative. They just want to "get their work done."
Frankly, gaming on _either_ platform leaves a little to be desired. I'm starting to think that I ought to just go buy a console rather than deal with Linux's lack of polish _or_ Windows' lack of stability. It would be nice to be able to sit down, pop in a disc, and just PLAY, for cryin' out loud. Instead, I find myself wrangling drivers revisions and patches in order to deal with and a continual flow of performance glitches and crashes.
I was really looking forward to HL2. I had the date marked on my calendar and everything. However, with this news, I doubt I'll buy it at all. I've avoided buying Windows XP because of the whole issue, and continue to run Windows 2000 to play games. To me, the "upgrade" wasn't worth letting someone else tell me that I was "allowed" to run it, even after I've already paid for it because of a hardware change. What if I lose my internet connection after the change? I'm stuck until I make a call? I'm sorry. That's just ridiculous -- to me -- that I would have to fool with that, again, after I've paid for it, free and clear. Unfortunately, I've just tried this new "Steam" product, and I thought, "Hey, this will be great! All these games for free! It will even be perfect for LAN parties because we'll finally be able to play Counter-Strike even though not everyone has bought it." Then I realize that for one thing, there are ads every time you launch a game. Not big ones, but ads. "Fine," I thought, "this is a free product. I get what I pay for." On top of this, the other thing that bugs me is that it's "phoning home" every time I launch a game. Again, it's free, and I guess that's part of the deal, but if we don't have an internet connection at the next LAN party (and sometimes we don't), then we can't play Counter-Strike for free. The bottom line is that I like to install my games both at work and at home, so I can play on my own time at lunch, and occasionally after work. I take my saved games back and forth while I beat a new game to death. If Valve tells me that I can't do that without paying for two copies, that's their perogative, of course, but it's also my perogative to not buy it. It seems ridiculous to me that I can't treat a video game like a book, and take it "where I want to go today." Product activation "like Microsoft" indeed. It looks like Valve will inherit my Microsoft buying habits, and I don't buy anything from Microsoft any more.
Just an aside, but you might want to check out the new OpenGroupware.org. It's a recently open-sourced collaboration application. I downloaded TUTOS, but while reading up on all the commercial and non-commercial options, I stumbled upon it. The setup isn't for beginners, but it's working really good now that I've got it running.
I just took a long, hard look at this from every angle. Red Hat changed everything recently with their reorganization of their product line. The end result? You can have the "rolling beta" for free, or you can pony up hundreds of dollars per box for an updated, stable OS. SuSE's latest version is everything I've thought Red Hat was for the past 5 years, and it's still available for a boxed-set price. It's stable, and I haven't found any bugs in it, unlike Red Hat 9, where I personally logged a couple bugs, and got tired of waiting for someone to fix them. SuSE's distros are also free to keep updated, unlike Red Hat's, and the updates are available for two years, not just one. I'm doing this a big disservice by not going into all the gory deatils, but that's the short story. If you like Red Hat, then SuSE 8.2 is the "Red Hat" that 9 should have been. And, yeah, I think this sort of attitude crosses over into the SLES and RHES products. Red Hat wants to lock people into their Red Hat Network service, and you'll violate your contract for those updates if you install on more than one machine. SuSE is still open, albeit for the price of one boxed set. I'm sticking with SuSE until they pull a "Red Hat." After that, I guess there's Gentoo for the desktops and Debian for the servers...
Because the stuff that you can find on the shelf in the library HAS ALREADY BEEN FILTERED. Librarians don't put hardcore porn on the shelf right next to legitimate sex eduacation. They've put the censoring in right there and then. So you need to reverse your question and ask why AREN'T the libraries supposed to be filtering?
ALL sex ed is a joke. The liberal educators of this country have had an agenda for the past 30 years to make deviant sexual practices the social norm. Even a cursory glance at the statistics shows that condoms are hardly the way to have "safe" sex. They fail the VAST majority of the time to stop both pregnancy AND STD's. Yet this is the repeated message by all major media and educational institutions: that using a condom cures all ills. Yes, absolutely, before you say it, it is also true that the VAST majority of condom use is improper, but doesn't that just underscore my point that ALL sex ed is a joke from the wild-and-free online sources all the way to the hallowed halls of academia.
The fundamental problem with this problem is NOT technical. It's not even about free speech and freedoms. It's about morals. There are things talked about freely in public and on TV that were unmentionable 50, 40, 30, even just 20 years ago. Is this progress? Look at the crime statistics. Look at the welfare statistics. Look at the mental health statistics. Can anyone honestly say that we, as a _society_ as a whole, are better off today than we were 50 years ago? Sure, we may be more _prosperous_, but at what cost?
Yeah, I know, I know. I live in a cave. I'm sheltering my family. I'm a neandrathal and I'm raising neanderthals. Fine. But, by God, I'm going to retire with an intact family that all love one another. I, for one, will stand up against the influx of garbage, because that's all it is. Attempts to dress it up as valid sources of information are red herrings. There is only one source to learn about sexuality, as a subset of morality as a whole: the Bible as taught by your family and church.
Call me anything you want, but the facts are PLAINLY in evidence. It's the only system of values that endures the test of time.
This is the biggest red herring of the internet age. Every school has some form of "sex ed" these days, and they'll have presented it by the time someone is 15. Furthermore, if you want to go to the library to research information on how NOT to get pregnant, LOOK UP A BOOK IN THE CARD CATALOG AND CHECK IT OUT! There will be plenty of information about any number of important subjects at a library, without needing a computer.
Bzzt! Wrong answer.
If you think Loki went out of business because there was no money to be made doing native Linux game ports, you need to read this. It may have been a problem, but it certainly wasn't the biggest one.
Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are living under the same bad assumption as the parent. Maybe someone else will take another crack at this, and do it right next time.
*If* they continue to release Evolution under the GPL, and *if* they use its code in GroupWise, then GroupWise would become GPL as well. If they fork the Evolution code into a proprietary license, *then* the Evolution project takes a big hit.
I use Evolution as my email client of choice. I seriously hope it continues as it has been started. I *think* that Novell "gets it," and I interpret what's been said to mean that they will be merging the products into one GPL'ed suite.