Sorry to correct you, but this is not true on the following counts:
A German engineer (forgot his name) designed his first jet engine around the same time as Whittle. It is generally accepted to be an example of simultaneous discovery.
The V1 engine is definitely a jet engine. Technically it is called a ramjet, meaning it doesn't use a turbine to compress the air before igniting, but relies instead on its velocity to compress the air in the inlet channel to the combustion chamber. The difference between a jet and a rocket is that a jet needs an outside oxidant (atmospheric oxygen in this case) for ignition, while a rocket carries its own oxidant. By that definition, a ramjet is a jet, not a rocket.
The worlds first operational jet fighter was the Messerschmitt Me262 'Schwalbe', which is definitely German.
And if a major movie studio invests $100 million in a summer blockbuster, but when the DVD comes out it's promptly pirated and P2P'ed all over the internet for free, then video rentals go down the toilet. And ultimately (here's the conceptual leap) the studio stops making movies because there's no way to be a profitable studio if you take home video out of the equation. Period
The answer of course is laughably easy: If the studio is certain that it can't recoup a $100 million investment, it will set a lower budget for the movie. If this happens industrywide this will lower the demand for expensive actors, and undertalented people finally stop being able to charge pornographic amounts of money for their services.
It gets better and better: this practice is actually illegal in the European Union. Trust me on this, I work for a bank and I have seen the law (wet Bescherming Persoonsgegevens, aka the Personal Data Protection Act here in.nl) enforced, and it ain't pretty
And you know what? About a year ago, under pressure from US corporations, the US government actually threatened a trade war over this with the EU. The EU didn't cave in for a change, and I am mightily glad they did.
A network device reads stuff from the Net and puts it in its buffer.
The kernel copies this buffer to the buffer of the userspace application that initiated the transfer.
The kernel transfers control to the application, which can now read its buffer
Now zero copy networking basically skips step 2. This doesn't sound spectacular, but if you're doing something bandwidth intensive, say downloading a kernel, this repeated memory copy operation starts cutting into your efficiency.
Any actual kernel hackers feel free to flame me into oblivion for getting it wrong:)
And what if your distribution hasn't got/usr/src/linux by default? I'm talking Debian here, in which/usr/src was unpopulated when I installed it first.
Of course at the moment I just make a symlink/usr/src/linux ->/usr/local/src/linux-<current-running-version> . It works fine, it's just that I generally have to recompile third-party modules (nVidia, yech!) when I install a new kernel.
Any more people out there with this kind of situation, i.e. no/usr/src/linux by default? And how do you fix it?
A word of warning on the NICs: use kernel 2.2.19 or a 2.4 kernel if you want to use 905Cs. 3com updated some hardware, which led to timing issues in older drivers. I know, I have one of the newer 905Cs and it didn't work until now (works great now though).
Ah yes, and I presume you are American are you? How bloody typical that you seemingly believe explicitly whatever an American newsservice says about an American law enforcement agency, but as soon as someone points out the obvious bias you start blasting his language?
Why is it that the average US citizen reacts with vitriolic nationalism whenever someone outside the US of holy A dares to criticize them? And why would those reading Slashdot, who are presumably rational enough to judge the criticism on it's merits, not be free of this same ugly behaviour?
Ok, I was under the impression that quite a few of the core designers/developers worked for Trolltech. This appears not to be as true as I thought. Thanks for enlightening me.
It may be easier to bitch about Qt than to port it to Windows, I grant you that. However, as something in their favour, the most 'vocal' critics of KDE shut up and started refining Gtk, which also runs on both platforms. I believe those people had and have the right to criticize KDE for their choices. Thankfully, as I perceive it, these are the most pragmatic people, and the ones now working the hardest on interoperability.
As I said, I have the highest respect for the KDE developers, and I am impressed with their obvious skills, I happen to prefer Gnome though, but that's personal.
BTW, I specifically referred to Qt/Linux, because I didn't know if the GPL is specific to Free Operating Systems, or that proprietary Unix vendors (eg Sun) can use Qt under the GPL as well. I understand from your words that this is the case?
That's an easy one. Most of the core KDE team is employed by Trolltech nowadays, so KDE is being massively funded on the sale of proprietary software (Qt/Windows and Qt/Embedded).
So in respect to funding KDE is no better than Gnome. In fact some of the more fanatic anti-KDE crowd may have a point in continuously bringing up Qt's licensing issues (although the real pain is past now, with Qt/Linux being GPL).
A personal note, I like KDE, and would definitely recommend it to a newbie. The only reason I don't use it regularly is because I happen to dislike some of their UI defaults
"...You just don't get it, do you?" - Bob Metcalfe
Let's just go through this again in the hope that someone gets a clue: The Internet is a communications medium, not a storefront. It might be a marketplace, but it definitely is not a mall.
Neither the WWW nor the Internet at large was designed for e-commerce, they were designed so that people could exchange information easily. It so happens that doing business consists mostly of exchanging information, so the internet facilitates that. However, the model by which the dot-com craze was financed was the outdated TV model, which is dependent not on an exchange of information between equals, but on good old one-to-many mass-marketing. That just doesn't work
So, the glitzy services go under. Those remaining that have value to customers will survive, either by offering an online service so good, people are willing to pay, or by adding value to an offline product, thus being good advertising in and of themselves (and thus staying free).
The one thing apt can't do is downgrade. If you try what you say (ie point sources.list at stable and use apt to downgrade) expect to spend a lot of time learning the various command-line switches to dpkg (especially the --force options).
Trust me on this. I failed three upgrades to unstable before I finally got it right, and according to the friendly folks at linux.debian.user, at the moment the only easy downgrade is a total reinstall.
As William III was both King of England and Steward of the Netherlands, as a Dutchman with an interest in history I have some interest in this. Allow me to answer: FTP means "Fuck The Pope" and is used as a rallying cry by Unionists, especially those that like to obfuscate the fact that the Troubles in Northern Ireland are political in nature, not religious.
Disclaimer for UK and Irish readers: I thoroughly deplore all atrocities committed by both sides and refuse to side with any of them. Take this as objective historical fact please, and if I make any mistakes, refute them as such (I'm human after all).
First off, let me apologize for the late posting, but I spent last night fooling around on my PC and only noticed this today at work
From the points listed in the parent post, I identify it as American. I wholeheartedly agree that in principle absolute freedom of speech is a good thing, and censorship is a Bad Thing(tm).
BUT! Reality is a different beast than principle. We always run into paradoxes like should we allow freedom to those that advocate taking away that very freedom? Historically, the US has chosen to say yes.
This leads me to the final irony: The German Federal Republic was allowed to come into existence by the Allied Powers (primarily the US) who were very influential in shaping the German constitution. In fact, it was the US that was the primary advocate, during the occupation of Germany, for the total repression of everything to do with Nazism.
So once again we see the paradox: those that value free speech the most have used (and maybe will have to use) repressive power, ie censorship, to defend free speech. Pointing fingers from simplified positions is not the answer to this problem, unfortunately. Show me someone who thinks simple answers are possible, and I'll show you either a fool or a hypocrite.
Sorry for the long and rambling post, just had to get this of my chest.
The most disappointing part of HailStorm is how technically backward it is. Big server-based things and single point validation ?
Funny thing is, Microsoft has always been harping on Sun: "Sun wants to move you back to the Stone Age of computing, with a single server and only dumb terminals". Anyone spot the contradiction with their current policy?
I know I'm a bit nit-picky here, but the Maybach engines used in the PzIII and PzIV (Rommel's main battle tanks) ran on gasoline, not diesel IIRC. This sounds like urban (desert?) myth to me.
This was also one of the reasons the Russian T-34 was superior over these German tanks, being diesel-powered it could operate at lower temperatures than the gasoline-powered tanks used by the Wehrmacht
You mean they actually use unvalidated input in crucial program logic? What kind of moron built this app....Oh. I see..... Never mind the dumb question. I'll get my coat.
And don't forget IceWM please! As a touch-typist I really enjoy IceWM's commitment to as much keyboard shortcuts as possible. Whenever I find myself using Sawfish, I start reconfiguring like hell to get my keybindings back.
IceWM used to be 100% Gnome-compliant, though it seems that with Gnome 1.4 some things are broken, since both Nautilus and gmc don't manage the root window right with IceWM running (hmm, maybe I should start filing bug reports).
But please try Ice if you haven't before, it really is very nice indeed.
If you can make a reasonable claim (note: not proof, just a claim) that they are knowingly selling defective software, then I do believe you would be able to sue them in most EU jurisdictions. In Dutch law, the no-warranty provisions in the Microsoft EULA are a so-called 'unreasonably restrictive' (onnodig bezwarend, for those that know Dutch), and I believe this holds in most EU countries. Of course IANAL, but I did take 2 years of law school.
There might be light at the end of the tunnel: it appears that EU anti-trust prosecutors had a deal with the US DOJ not to launch independent investigations, but let the DOJ have preference. So if MS gets off (mostly) scott-free in the USA, expect pressure to ramp up overseas, probably including the above argument as a subsidiary charge.
A couple of days ago I snapped while moderating because of all this kind of whining, and I chewed out someone in a discussion (see my posting history for details).
I must say I do not quit agree with you, but my general attitude would be to mod the parent down and you up, mostly because there is a difference between a pointless rant and a well thought out argument.
Oh, and for the record, I hadn't used a PC in 10 years when I bought one last summer, and my first thought on seeing Win98 in action was: "Holy $DEITY, computing hasn't advanced at all!". Win9x was and is a piece of shit, and even NT costs a clueful admin a handful of work to keep it running smoothly, according to the admins I spoke to at work.
Last I knew cracking into another computer was still a crime in most industrialised nations. So someone is using your deliberately unsecured machine to crack another one. That would constitute criminal negligence on your part wouldn't it?
Try using your line of reasoning on the FBI agents (or whatever you have where you're coming from) that come knocking on your door soon, but don't bother us with it please.
Nope, sorry. Still exists. I have a UK version of Win98SE, and my ISP gave me a dutch version of IE5.5. I kept getting these kind of error messages too, and now half my desktop is in dutch, the other half in english.
Thank $DEITY that I haven't booted the bloody thing in 3 months now, and I am still considering throwing it off entirely, since there is no software on that partition that I actually need.
Illegal Alien by Robert J. Sawyer. Great book. First contact is made with an alien species only slightly more advanced, a human is killed, and one of the aliens is put on trial for it. I recommend it!.
That's the exact nature of EU regulations on GM crops. You are allowed to plant them (at least for experimental purposes, don't know about production), however the one planting the crop is responsible for containing the GM organism to their land, any contamination of non-GM neighbouring crops is a strict no-no.
Disclaimer: I haven't been following the GM debate for some time now, but this was the state of affairs about half a year ago AFAIK.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry to correct you, but this is not true on the following counts:
Hope this sets the record straight.
MartAnd if a major movie studio invests $100 million in a summer blockbuster, but when the DVD comes out it's promptly pirated and P2P'ed all over the internet for free, then video rentals go down the toilet. And ultimately (here's the conceptual leap) the studio stops making movies because there's no way to be a profitable studio if you take home video out of the equation. Period
The answer of course is laughably easy: If the studio is certain that it can't recoup a $100 million investment, it will set a lower budget for the movie. If this happens industrywide this will lower the demand for expensive actors, and undertalented people finally stop being able to charge pornographic amounts of money for their services.
Supply and demand. Problem solved. Film at 11
MartIt gets better and better: this practice is actually illegal in the European Union. Trust me on this, I work for a bank and I have seen the law (wet Bescherming Persoonsgegevens, aka the Personal Data Protection Act here in .nl) enforced, and it ain't pretty
And you know what? About a year ago, under pressure from US corporations, the US government actually threatened a trade war over this with the EU. The EU didn't cave in for a change, and I am mightily glad they did.
MartOk, the way I understood it is this:
Now zero copy networking basically skips step 2. This doesn't sound spectacular, but if you're doing something bandwidth intensive, say downloading a kernel, this repeated memory copy operation starts cutting into your efficiency.
Any actual kernel hackers feel free to flame me into oblivion for getting it wrong :)
MartAnd what if your distribution hasn't got /usr/src/linux by default? I'm talking Debian here, in which /usr/src was unpopulated when I installed it first.
Of course at the moment I just make a symlink /usr/src/linux -> /usr/local/src/linux-<current-running-version> . It works fine, it's just that I generally have to recompile third-party modules (nVidia, yech!) when I install a new kernel.
Any more people out there with this kind of situation, i.e. no /usr/src/linux by default? And how do you fix it?
MartA word of warning on the NICs: use kernel 2.2.19 or a 2.4 kernel if you want to use 905Cs. 3com updated some hardware, which led to timing issues in older drivers. I know, I have one of the newer 905Cs and it didn't work until now (works great now though).
HTH,
MartAh yes, and I presume you are American are you? How bloody typical that you seemingly believe explicitly whatever an American newsservice says about an American law enforcement agency, but as soon as someone points out the obvious bias you start blasting his language?
Why is it that the average US citizen reacts with vitriolic nationalism whenever someone outside the US of holy A dares to criticize them? And why would those reading Slashdot, who are presumably rational enough to judge the criticism on it's merits, not be free of this same ugly behaviour?
Regards,
MartOk, I was under the impression that quite a few of the core designers/developers worked for Trolltech. This appears not to be as true as I thought. Thanks for enlightening me.
It may be easier to bitch about Qt than to port it to Windows, I grant you that. However, as something in their favour, the most 'vocal' critics of KDE shut up and started refining Gtk, which also runs on both platforms. I believe those people had and have the right to criticize KDE for their choices. Thankfully, as I perceive it, these are the most pragmatic people, and the ones now working the hardest on interoperability.
As I said, I have the highest respect for the KDE developers, and I am impressed with their obvious skills, I happen to prefer Gnome though, but that's personal.
BTW, I specifically referred to Qt/Linux, because I didn't know if the GPL is specific to Free Operating Systems, or that proprietary Unix vendors (eg Sun) can use Qt under the GPL as well. I understand from your words that this is the case?
Thanks for a civil discussion all,
MartThat's an easy one. Most of the core KDE team is employed by Trolltech nowadays, so KDE is being massively funded on the sale of proprietary software (Qt/Windows and Qt/Embedded).
So in respect to funding KDE is no better than Gnome. In fact some of the more fanatic anti-KDE crowd may have a point in continuously bringing up Qt's licensing issues (although the real pain is past now, with Qt/Linux being GPL).
A personal note, I like KDE, and would definitely recommend it to a newbie. The only reason I don't use it regularly is because I happen to dislike some of their UI defaults
MartLet's just go through this again in the hope that someone gets a clue: The Internet is a communications medium, not a storefront. It might be a marketplace, but it definitely is not a mall.
Neither the WWW nor the Internet at large was designed for e-commerce, they were designed so that people could exchange information easily. It so happens that doing business consists mostly of exchanging information, so the internet facilitates that. However, the model by which the dot-com craze was financed was the outdated TV model, which is dependent not on an exchange of information between equals, but on good old one-to-many mass-marketing. That just doesn't work
So, the glitzy services go under. Those remaining that have value to customers will survive, either by offering an online service so good, people are willing to pay, or by adding value to an offline product, thus being good advertising in and of themselves (and thus staying free).
Death of the Internet predicted. Film at 11.
MartSigh. I don't know what's worse:
Idiot flamewars on Slashdot. Film at 11.
MartUh, actually, no.
The one thing apt can't do is downgrade. If you try what you say (ie point sources.list at stable and use apt to downgrade) expect to spend a lot of time learning the various command-line switches to dpkg (especially the --force options).
Trust me on this. I failed three upgrades to unstable before I finally got it right, and according to the friendly folks at linux.debian.user, at the moment the only easy downgrade is a total reinstall.
MartAs William III was both King of England and Steward of the Netherlands, as a Dutchman with an interest in history I have some interest in this. Allow me to answer: FTP means "Fuck The Pope" and is used as a rallying cry by Unionists, especially those that like to obfuscate the fact that the Troubles in Northern Ireland are political in nature, not religious.
Disclaimer for UK and Irish readers: I thoroughly deplore all atrocities committed by both sides and refuse to side with any of them. Take this as objective historical fact please, and if I make any mistakes, refute them as such (I'm human after all).
MartFirst off, let me apologize for the late posting, but I spent last night fooling around on my PC and only noticed this today at work
From the points listed in the parent post, I identify it as American. I wholeheartedly agree that in principle absolute freedom of speech is a good thing, and censorship is a Bad Thing(tm).
BUT! Reality is a different beast than principle. We always run into paradoxes like should we allow freedom to those that advocate taking away that very freedom? Historically, the US has chosen to say yes.
This leads me to the final irony: The German Federal Republic was allowed to come into existence by the Allied Powers (primarily the US) who were very influential in shaping the German constitution. In fact, it was the US that was the primary advocate, during the occupation of Germany, for the total repression of everything to do with Nazism.
So once again we see the paradox: those that value free speech the most have used (and maybe will have to use) repressive power, ie censorship, to defend free speech. Pointing fingers from simplified positions is not the answer to this problem, unfortunately. Show me someone who thinks simple answers are possible, and I'll show you either a fool or a hypocrite.
Sorry for the long and rambling post, just had to get this of my chest.
MartFunny thing is, Microsoft has always been harping on Sun: "Sun wants to move you back to the Stone Age of computing, with a single server and only dumb terminals". Anyone spot the contradiction with their current policy?
MartI had the same warning in the manual of my bike (a Honda VT500). They provided an explanation as well: rubber tubing used in the engine would corrode.
I am not a mechanic, so mechanically inclined posters are free to elaborate.
MartI know I'm a bit nit-picky here, but the Maybach engines used in the PzIII and PzIV (Rommel's main battle tanks) ran on gasoline, not diesel IIRC. This sounds like urban (desert?) myth to me.
This was also one of the reasons the Russian T-34 was superior over these German tanks, being diesel-powered it could operate at lower temperatures than the gasoline-powered tanks used by the Wehrmacht
Mart (WWII history buff)You mean they actually use unvalidated input in crucial program logic? What kind of moron built this app....Oh. I see..... Never mind the dumb question. I'll get my coat.
MartAnd don't forget IceWM please! As a touch-typist I really enjoy IceWM's commitment to as much keyboard shortcuts as possible. Whenever I find myself using Sawfish, I start reconfiguring like hell to get my keybindings back.
IceWM used to be 100% Gnome-compliant, though it seems that with Gnome 1.4 some things are broken, since both Nautilus and gmc don't manage the root window right with IceWM running (hmm, maybe I should start filing bug reports).
But please try Ice if you haven't before, it really is very nice indeed.
MartIf you can make a reasonable claim (note: not proof, just a claim) that they are knowingly selling defective software, then I do believe you would be able to sue them in most EU jurisdictions. In Dutch law, the no-warranty provisions in the Microsoft EULA are a so-called 'unreasonably restrictive' (onnodig bezwarend, for those that know Dutch), and I believe this holds in most EU countries. Of course IANAL, but I did take 2 years of law school.
There might be light at the end of the tunnel: it appears that EU anti-trust prosecutors had a deal with the US DOJ not to launch independent investigations, but let the DOJ have preference. So if MS gets off (mostly) scott-free in the USA, expect pressure to ramp up overseas, probably including the above argument as a subsidiary charge.
MartWell,
A couple of days ago I snapped while moderating because of all this kind of whining, and I chewed out someone in a discussion (see my posting history for details).
I must say I do not quit agree with you, but my general attitude would be to mod the parent down and you up, mostly because there is a difference between a pointless rant and a well thought out argument.
Oh, and for the record, I hadn't used a PC in 10 years when I bought one last summer, and my first thought on seeing Win98 in action was: "Holy $DEITY, computing hasn't advanced at all!". Win9x was and is a piece of shit, and even NT costs a clueful admin a handful of work to keep it running smoothly, according to the admins I spoke to at work.
MartLast I knew cracking into another computer was still a crime in most industrialised nations. So someone is using your deliberately unsecured machine to crack another one. That would constitute criminal negligence on your part wouldn't it?
Try using your line of reasoning on the FBI agents (or whatever you have where you're coming from) that come knocking on your door soon, but don't bother us with it please.
MartNope, sorry. Still exists. I have a UK version of Win98SE, and my ISP gave me a dutch version of IE5.5. I kept getting these kind of error messages too, and now half my desktop is in dutch, the other half in english.
Thank $DEITY that I haven't booted the bloody thing in 3 months now, and I am still considering throwing it off entirely, since there is no software on that partition that I actually need.
MartIllegal Alien by Robert J. Sawyer. Great book. First contact is made with an alien species only slightly more advanced, a human is killed, and one of the aliens is put on trial for it. I recommend it!.
MartYep,
That's the exact nature of EU regulations on GM crops. You are allowed to plant them (at least for experimental purposes, don't know about production), however the one planting the crop is responsible for containing the GM organism to their land, any contamination of non-GM neighbouring crops is a strict no-no.
Disclaimer: I haven't been following the GM debate for some time now, but this was the state of affairs about half a year ago AFAIK.
And oh yeah: IANABiologist.
Mart