I don't see the problem. Money is the necessary evil in this case (just as in almost all cases). If Namesys can get the money, then good for them. If I were them, as long money was not becoming a huge problem, I would rather spend my time worrying about the technology side of things as opposed to the business side of things. So someone gets screwed out of a few thousand dollars, who cares? As long as the code gets written, nothing else matters.
Actually, no, the 32-bit limit is here and now, mostly with multimedia people. A 2GB high-quality video is probably only, what, half an hour long or so? Yea, so, especially with DVDs now, there are a lot of people that really hate that damned 2GB limit.
ReiserFS is by far the most mature of the three (well, four if you count JFS, which you missed). XFS probably won't see the light of day (or the light of night when dealing with kernel hackers, I suppose) until 2.5; someone might kinda sorta get ready to start considering how to start thinking about looking at ext3 by 2.7 or so; and I haven't a clue how JFS is doing.
So that leaves ReiserFS. It's not extraordinarily stable yet (and from what I hear, it's not even ordinarily stable, relatively speaking), but it does the job for a lot of people. Somewhere along 2.4, it'll get stable enough that it becomes the Cool Thing To Do (kind of like Linux itself), and everyone and their dog will be running ReiserFS.
Since ReiserFS offers no glaring technical deficiencies when compared to the other three, it will probably be the most popular until the end of time (or at least until something new comes along). Not to say that ext3, JFS and XFS won't be popular, but I would guess that they'll never be as popular as ReiserFS with Linux users.
There's a very good reason why game developers do not make self-booting games: they remember DOS. DOS was, effectively, exactly the same as having no operating system. This was bad enough when you only had four configurations: VGA and no sound, VGA and GUS, VGA and SB Pro, VGA and Adlib; but things have got a bit more complicated since then, and I don't think game developers would be too keen on going back to that.
There is the idea of having DirectX by itself (with no operating system), which would be interesting, but in order to do it well, you'd have to have the co-operation of Microsoft, which seems unlikely. OpenGL + OpenAL + GII or something like that might be more practical.
I believe that their Internet connectivity was done through satellite or microwaves or something, which obviously means that there is no physical connection. So if the ISP in London (which they're currently planning on using, I believe) decides that they don't like them, they should be able to get an ISP elsewhere in London, or in Leeds, or in Paris, or in Moscow, or in Tokyo, or in Canberra, or anywhere else in the world that will agree to connect them.
Once they've got a connection somewhere (even if the US tried to pressure people not to deal with them, there will be at least *one* country who will do it, even if just for spite), then they should be able to connect to the Internet at large (unless the political wars start heating up, and the Internet splits in two). They might lose their precious 3 millisecond latency, though.
Note that C now has a "restrict" type qualifier, specific to pointers, which addresses the very optimisation problem you describe. If a pointer is restrict-qualified, it is a hint to the compiler that the objects pointed to by that pointer cannot and will not be referenced by any other pointer.
Well a language like C (OK, I'm C-biased) would be multiplatform IMO, since it has a compiler written for every platform I've ever seen (though admittedly there will be a platform somewhere without a C compiler, which is annoying). Multiplatform != binary multiplatform.
Indeed. I don't know if that was sarcasm are not, but MNG *is* much much better than GIF in terms of animation. It supports sprites, which cuts the file sizes down tremendously for many types of animation.
Umm, hey braniac, most browsers actually do threshhold PNG transparency. Even if they don't, it would be just as easy (if not easier) to do threshhold transparency in PNG as compared to GIF (since you'd have to do table lookups with GIF). Mozilla has supported threshhold PNG transparency since Jesus walked the earth. What people want is *real* transparency. What we have now is better than GIF, but not by much.
Scenario 1: "Apple technical support, what is your root password?... Sorry, we can't help you then." *click*
Scenario 2: "Welcome to the wonderful world of Mac OS X! Our engineers have taken the initiative of installing some backdoors on your system, and we will be monitoring you for the rest of your life."
And neither one is very attractive. Of course, oh I don't know, hm, people could try learning how to use their computer? Of course if people want to buy a $2000 present for Apple technical support, that's fine with me, but I suspect most people will actually want to own the stuff they buy.
Or a static web server or an FTP server or an NFS server or an SMB server.
Guesstimating some values (though stemming from real values, and rounded down on the conservative side), it seem that using boa, hftpd and standard NFS and Samba, you should be able to serve up at least 200 requests per second on a 486 DX4/100. So it shouldn't be useless, assuming you're just serving up static content (or very simple and/or cacheable dynamic content).
Well they're not mutually exclusive. The infrastructure (railway lines in this case) are already existent, so the costs hear are near zero. The people are presumably the ones who are going to pay for their Internet access, so I don't see how giving them a choice is a Bad Thing.
I think you're confusing money with evil. While the FSF does write software purely for social reasons, they are not anti-money or anti-corporation by any stretch of the imagination. The egcs project would not have been possible without at least a little bit of cooperation from the FSF.
Actually, no it is not an emulator. It is a replacement for the Win32 API. It is no more "emulated" on X than "GTK+" is emulated on X.
That said, there is a program that comes along with it called "wine" which allows you to execute Windows binaries. There is no bytecode emulation taking place, though.
I don't disagree, but I'm wondering where you're getting the RMS hostility. RMS has made it very clear that he (and, by extension, RMS freaks) absolutely adores the Wine project. It's almost identical in nature is the Lesstif project.
Yes the whole hacker/cracker debate is getting a little old. It seems akin to happy people getting upset because the media refers to homosexuals as being "gay". IIRC, the term "hacker" (as used in the iron age) was originally a bit derogatory, or at least tongue-in-cheek, so I don't see why people are so keen on having it.
Yes but there's nothing to uphold your belief that copyright infringement is somehow taking property. Copyright infringment is not called stealing in any legal jurisdiction I'm aware of; it is copyright infringment.
All I have to say is that it takes a really weak individual to fear the false opinions of the mass media. If you're in high school, the mass media probably already thinks you're sexually deviant and have no respect for the rest of society.
Frankly I don't see how it matters one way or the other what any journalists think of you or me or free software as a whole. This seems to be along the same lines as this underlying and unspoken rule that Linux needs to have huge market share. The reasoning behind the inherant need for Linux to be popular (especially in the desktop market??!@?#$) were never explained to me.
Would it really be too much to ask for you to refer to it by its proper name. The term is "copyright infringement", not sharing, not stealing, not piracy, not rape or jaywalking or treason (any of which would make as much sense as "piracy" in this context).
You didn't really offer anything to back up your argument. Period. Even the US legal system (IINM) would not call it stealing, but rather copyright infringement. Period. Also, how would opinions change when the US changes their copyright laws? Question mark.
FWIW, there was a "debate" (or rather, a time-filler between commercials) on CNN (yesterday?) between the lawyer for Dr. Dre and Metallica, Chuck D, a new, unsigned artist, and some lady who works for a magazine or something. Period. Anyway, they were discussing Napster and the lawsuits it's facing. Period. They had an on-line poll (which I'm sure must be about as accurate as Slashdot polls) and something like 89% of respondants said they considered "Napster" (they didn't explain what part of Napster) to be "Sharing", whereas 11% considered it to be "Stealing" (a well thought-out poll, no doubt). Period. It's at least interesting, considering the US considers itself to be similar to a democracy. Period.
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I don't see the problem. Money is the necessary evil in this case (just as in almost all cases). If Namesys can get the money, then good for them. If I were them, as long money was not becoming a huge problem, I would rather spend my time worrying about the technology side of things as opposed to the business side of things. So someone gets screwed out of a few thousand dollars, who cares? As long as the code gets written, nothing else matters.
Actually, no, the 32-bit limit is here and now, mostly with multimedia people. A 2GB high-quality video is probably only, what, half an hour long or so? Yea, so, especially with DVDs now, there are a lot of people that really hate that damned 2GB limit.
Do you have a link for this? I find it interesting.
ReiserFS is by far the most mature of the three (well, four if you count JFS, which you missed). XFS probably won't see the light of day (or the light of night when dealing with kernel hackers, I suppose) until 2.5; someone might kinda sorta get ready to start considering how to start thinking about looking at ext3 by 2.7 or so; and I haven't a clue how JFS is doing.
So that leaves ReiserFS. It's not extraordinarily stable yet (and from what I hear, it's not even ordinarily stable, relatively speaking), but it does the job for a lot of people. Somewhere along 2.4, it'll get stable enough that it becomes the Cool Thing To Do (kind of like Linux itself), and everyone and their dog will be running ReiserFS.
Since ReiserFS offers no glaring technical deficiencies when compared to the other three, it will probably be the most popular until the end of time (or at least until something new comes along). Not to say that ext3, JFS and XFS won't be popular, but I would guess that they'll never be as popular as ReiserFS with Linux users.
There's a very good reason why game developers do not make self-booting games: they remember DOS. DOS was, effectively, exactly the same as having no operating system. This was bad enough when you only had four configurations: VGA and no sound, VGA and GUS, VGA and SB Pro, VGA and Adlib; but things have got a bit more complicated since then, and I don't think game developers would be too keen on going back to that.
There is the idea of having DirectX by itself (with no operating system), which would be interesting, but in order to do it well, you'd have to have the co-operation of Microsoft, which seems unlikely. OpenGL + OpenAL + GII or something like that might be more practical.
You answered your own question. A malicious piece of code disguised as an attractive piece of code is called a trojan.
I believe that their Internet connectivity was done through satellite or microwaves or something, which obviously means that there is no physical connection. So if the ISP in London (which they're currently planning on using, I believe) decides that they don't like them, they should be able to get an ISP elsewhere in London, or in Leeds, or in Paris, or in Moscow, or in Tokyo, or in Canberra, or anywhere else in the world that will agree to connect them.
Once they've got a connection somewhere (even if the US tried to pressure people not to deal with them, there will be at least *one* country who will do it, even if just for spite), then they should be able to connect to the Internet at large (unless the political wars start heating up, and the Internet splits in two). They might lose their precious 3 millisecond latency, though.
Note that C now has a "restrict" type qualifier, specific to pointers, which addresses the very optimisation problem you describe. If a pointer is restrict-qualified, it is a hint to the compiler that the objects pointed to by that pointer cannot and will not be referenced by any other pointer.
Well a language like C (OK, I'm C-biased) would be multiplatform IMO, since it has a compiler written for every platform I've ever seen (though admittedly there will be a platform somewhere without a C compiler, which is annoying). Multiplatform != binary multiplatform.
Indeed. I don't know if that was sarcasm are not, but MNG *is* much much better than GIF in terms of animation. It supports sprites, which cuts the file sizes down tremendously for many types of animation.
Umm, hey braniac, most browsers actually do threshhold PNG transparency. Even if they don't, it would be just as easy (if not easier) to do threshhold transparency in PNG as compared to GIF (since you'd have to do table lookups with GIF). Mozilla has supported threshhold PNG transparency since Jesus walked the earth. What people want is *real* transparency. What we have now is better than GIF, but not by much.
Hmm that would lead to one of two scenarios:
... Sorry, we can't help you then." *click*
Scenario 1:
"Apple technical support, what is your root password?
Scenario 2:
"Welcome to the wonderful world of Mac OS X! Our engineers have taken the initiative of installing some backdoors on your system, and we will be monitoring you for the rest of your life."
And neither one is very attractive. Of course, oh I don't know, hm, people could try learning how to use their computer? Of course if people want to buy a $2000 present for Apple technical support, that's fine with me, but I suspect most people will actually want to own the stuff they buy.
Well, you know what they say...thievery is next to godliness.
Guesstimating some values (though stemming from real values, and rounded down on the conservative side), it seem that using boa, hftpd and standard NFS and Samba, you should be able to serve up at least 200 requests per second on a 486 DX4/100. So it shouldn't be useless, assuming you're just serving up static content (or very simple and/or cacheable dynamic content).
Well they're not mutually exclusive. The infrastructure (railway lines in this case) are already existent, so the costs hear are near zero. The people are presumably the ones who are going to pay for their Internet access, so I don't see how giving them a choice is a Bad Thing.
I think you're confusing money with evil. While the FSF does write software purely for social reasons, they are not anti-money or anti-corporation by any stretch of the imagination. The egcs project would not have been possible without at least a little bit of cooperation from the FSF.
40AUS$/mo. is still incredibly unreasonable for a dial-up connection. Just because it's similar in the US, doesn't mean that it's at all reasonable.
Actually, no it is not an emulator. It is a replacement for the Win32 API. It is no more "emulated" on X than "GTK+" is emulated on X.
That said, there is a program that comes along with it called "wine" which allows you to execute Windows binaries. There is no bytecode emulation taking place, though.
No, the Beavis and Butthead laugh is spelled "huh huh" or maybe "huhuhuh" or something similar.
I don't disagree, but I'm wondering where you're getting the RMS hostility. RMS has made it very clear that he (and, by extension, RMS freaks) absolutely adores the Wine project. It's almost identical in nature is the Lesstif project.
So leave RMS out of this dammit.
Yes the whole hacker/cracker debate is getting a little old. It seems akin to happy people getting upset because the media refers to homosexuals as being "gay". IIRC, the term "hacker" (as used in the iron age) was originally a bit derogatory, or at least tongue-in-cheek, so I don't see why people are so keen on having it.
Yes but there's nothing to uphold your belief that copyright infringement is somehow taking property. Copyright infringment is not called stealing in any legal jurisdiction I'm aware of; it is copyright infringment.
All I have to say is that it takes a really weak individual to fear the false opinions of the mass media. If you're in high school, the mass media probably already thinks you're sexually deviant and have no respect for the rest of society.
Frankly I don't see how it matters one way or the other what any journalists think of you or me or free software as a whole. This seems to be along the same lines as this underlying and unspoken rule that Linux needs to have huge market share. The reasoning behind the inherant need for Linux to be popular (especially in the desktop market??!@?#$) were never explained to me.
Would it really be too much to ask for you to refer to it by its proper name. The term is "copyright infringement", not sharing, not stealing, not piracy, not rape or jaywalking or treason (any of which would make as much sense as "piracy" in this context).
You didn't really offer anything to back up your argument. Period. Even the US legal system (IINM) would not call it stealing, but rather copyright infringement. Period. Also, how would opinions change when the US changes their copyright laws? Question mark.
FWIW, there was a "debate" (or rather, a time-filler between commercials) on CNN (yesterday?) between the lawyer for Dr. Dre and Metallica, Chuck D, a new, unsigned artist, and some lady who works for a magazine or something. Period. Anyway, they were discussing Napster and the lawsuits it's facing. Period. They had an on-line poll (which I'm sure must be about as accurate as Slashdot polls) and something like 89% of respondants said they considered "Napster" (they didn't explain what part of Napster) to be "Sharing", whereas 11% considered it to be "Stealing" (a well thought-out poll, no doubt). Period. It's at least interesting, considering the US considers itself to be similar to a democracy. Period.