I don't think the criticism about pricing is valid, because when one buys a distro, especially on a server, one isn't buying it because it could run on all the hardware in the world you might toss at it -- generally people make some effort to make sure that they're using compatible hardware (and, on the server, often that they're using 'industrial-grade' stuff). Further, as Unices have several areas where things are better than Windows, it really is a crapshoot as to which is a better value (or, more accurately, it depends on what specific features you/your IT folk want). On the other hand, he does post some letters he recieved that are quite likely knee-jerk responses, especially the person who suggests that people who like playing mp3s shouldn't use Linux. Further, it is a point that, depending on the hardware available, Linux might not work, or not work well on some systems. My present laptop, for example, has built-in wireless that was dead to me until the driverloader compatibility layer was written, and so I was using a PCMCIA wireless card until then. Still, for me using windows wasn't an option -- I'm just not comfortable on non-Unix systems because, so long as hardware support is acceptable, the other advantages far outweigh graphics/sound/whatever not being as fast/capable. Even now, I could download vendor drivers for some of my hardware (Dell Inspiron 8500), and maybe get a few extra features or a bit more speed, but I just don't care enough.
It might not be too hard to write a bit of perl to coerce the export format of livejournal into Postgres. It's a good idea to automate that though, so perhaps I'll put some time into that. Thanks for the idea
If you like the idea of a mod_perl/Postgres-based BLOG, check out http://blog.dachte.org, and if you like what you see, drop me a note and we'll get it installed on your system. I'll start to regularly make public packages soon..
Wikipedia is getting new knowledge all the time. If you really want to find out what's new, just visit here. I don't understand why new Wikipedia entries are meaningful stories for slashdot.
When self-regulation happens out of fear of government action, it's little different than actual government action. Imagine, for example, that Cuba were to 'lean' on Internet Cafes, telling them that unless they self-regulate out all possible anti-Castro sentiment from the internet effectively, they'll come in and establish strong laws. Is this really any better? Is this really any less censorship? When the industry acts to avoid a not-so-veiled threat of government intervention, the resulting acts are still, effectively, government intervention.
I think you're mistaking evenhanded for noncontroversial, or making small claims. If the correlation is true and as strong as said, it's good to know, even if it appears to be saying something really strong. On the other hand, if it's wrong, then that's also good to know. The pure fact that it's a bold claim doesn't make it a bad thing to present, nor does it speak to its truth content. In sum, don't bemoan it's boldness.
When I was young, my parents experimented with putting stuff on my nails to stop me from biting them. It tasted terrible. Perhaps the same could be applied to cables in your apartment?
So let me get this straight.. You have a post that has one sentence of content and several times that amount telling why it shouldn't be modded down for being off-topic.. Sorry dude, that's off-topic. On the upside, it's also very funny the *way* it's off-topic:)
Interesting... and all this time, we were using iWMA (inferior-WMA). I had a hunch Microsoft could do better than what we see from them today.. Microsoft finally got off their Duff, and released the sWMA format. w00t! Where can we find sWMA players and media?;)
I used to be able to do that, and actually skipped a lot of meals with little more than dizziness and physical weakness.. but as I've gotten older (I'm 25 now, but it started when I was about 21), the dizziness/weakness started being supplemented with hunger headaches and other unpleasantness. I guess there's a lot of stuff one can pull with a young body that fades quickly as one ages.. *sigh*
While we're at it then, we'd better mandate that of twins and triplets, only one can be allowed to survive -- otherwise, it'd screw up the ability to use their DNA to prove crimes!
Again, your restaurant analogy misses the point. Cooking foods as a favour to friends occasionally is very different from providing a service, involving no effort to continue doing so, in a continual manner to the extent that people and businesses rely on it. The whole point, like the GIF issue, is that noone could've predicted that they would, or indeed could, lay a claim to the thing, and the entire fact that it became a de facto standard because people thought it would remain libre and unbothersome forever is why it's popular.
Your cooking friend's continual effort to provide food make it very clear there wasn't a reasonable expectation of that going on forever, and people don't typically build industries or get locked-in to visiting particular restaurants. A better analogue would be if Esperanto took off, and became the new Lingua Franca, and 30 years later, one of the linguists involved filed a patent for a language feature it had and 10 years after that wanted $5 for every book published in it. Not acceptable.
The examples and argument you post completely miss the point. It wouldn't be problematic if they had charged for it from the start, or made it clear that they were going to at some point. However, what they have done has led to most of the world, reasonably, to believe that using FAT was unproblematic, especially seeing that noone has ever attempted to charge for something like this before.
So, yes, I hope they lose any legal challenges that come up, and hope that people ignore their attempt to charge until then (and if they win, in spite of it)
It's dishonest and unacceptable for them to attempt to start charging after so many years, for something noone has ever charged for before, after it has become something which has become a de facto standard, often implemented in hardware. Like GIFs were, their patent should be ignored, and more ideally, legally shot down.
Was FAT really innovative anyway? The patents just cover modern issues probably not even implemented on 95% of the FAT-handling devices (e.g. my digital camera). From what I remember of CP/M's filesystem, FAT didn't seem to be markedly different.
On another node, as IBM and Microsoft had cross-licensing for most of their early DOS-related stuff (remember PC-DOS?), should their claim not be invalidated, could they simply grant the world an open license for it?
Is standing up really that bad on your knees? I didn't notice any unusual strain from Segway riding.. and if the mere act of standing is giving you knee pain, well.. sitting on your duff is the last thing you need to do;)
I wonder if this is related to the roboceptionist booth they're building in Newell-Simon Hall, or if that's an unrelated project in robotics.. For other CMUers who haven't seen the posters, some RI/Drama folks put this together: http://roboceptionist.com/
Why should it be different? It's an unjust law, and because of that, of course we're going to willfully violate it. As for the business concerns, that's not a sufficient reason for me to think that it's ok to place such limits on people. Information shall be free.
You run a website, it's your job to figure out the funding. Those of us who dislike ads (probably 98% of the planet) will do our best not to see them, and the more technically inclined among us WILL block your ad, and the business-savvy subset of those will sell that setup, in some form, to the rest. If websites can't live without it, tough. If they find another way to get funds, wonderful, but your funding is, to me, a black box that we shouldn't need to think about. I'm perfectly happy spending some time fiddling with Internet Junkbuster or Privoxy to cut out web ads, and tweaking my mail filters to remove advertisements from yahoo mailing lists if I get good results.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think the criticism about pricing is valid, because when one buys a distro, especially on a server, one isn't buying it because it could run on all the hardware in the world you might toss at it -- generally people make some effort to make sure that they're using compatible hardware (and, on the server, often that they're using 'industrial-grade' stuff). Further, as Unices have several areas where things are better than Windows, it really is a crapshoot as to which is a better value (or, more accurately, it depends on what specific features you/your IT folk want). On the other hand, he does post some letters he recieved that are quite likely knee-jerk responses, especially the person who suggests that people who like playing mp3s shouldn't use Linux.
Further, it is a point that, depending on the hardware available, Linux might not work, or not work well on some systems. My present laptop, for example, has built-in wireless that was dead to me until the driverloader compatibility layer was written, and so I was using a PCMCIA wireless card until then. Still, for me using windows wasn't an option -- I'm just not comfortable on non-Unix systems because, so long as hardware support is acceptable, the other advantages far outweigh graphics/sound/whatever not being as fast/capable.
Even now, I could download vendor drivers for some of my hardware (Dell Inspiron 8500), and maybe get a few extra features or a bit more speed, but I just don't care enough.
It might not be too hard to write a bit of perl
to coerce the export format of livejournal into
Postgres. It's a good idea to automate that though, so perhaps I'll put some time into that. Thanks for the idea
If you like the idea of a mod_perl/Postgres-based BLOG, check out http://blog.dachte.org, and if you like what you see, drop me a note and we'll get it installed on your system. I'll start to regularly make public packages soon..
Wikipedia is getting new knowledge all the time. If you really want to find out what's new, just visit here. I don't understand why new Wikipedia entries are meaningful stories for slashdot.
When self-regulation happens out of fear of government action, it's little different than actual government action. Imagine, for example, that Cuba were to 'lean' on Internet Cafes, telling them that unless they self-regulate out all possible anti-Castro sentiment from the internet effectively, they'll come in and establish strong laws. Is this really any better? Is this really any less censorship? When the industry acts to avoid a not-so-veiled threat of government intervention, the resulting acts are still, effectively, government intervention.
I think you're mistaking evenhanded for
noncontroversial, or making small claims. If the
correlation is true and as strong as said, it's good to know, even if it appears to be saying something really strong. On the other hand, if it's wrong, then that's also good to know. The pure fact that it's a bold claim doesn't make it a bad thing to present, nor does it speak to its truth content. In sum, don't bemoan it's boldness.
When I was young, my parents experimented with
putting stuff on my nails to stop me from biting
them. It tasted terrible. Perhaps the same could
be applied to cables in your apartment?
So let me get this straight.. :)
You have a post that has one sentence of content
and several times that amount telling why it
shouldn't be modded down for being off-topic..
Sorry dude, that's off-topic. On the upside, it's
also very funny the *way* it's off-topic
Interesting... and all this time, we were ;)
using iWMA (inferior-WMA). I had a hunch Microsoft
could do better than what we see from them today..
Microsoft finally got off their Duff, and released
the sWMA format. w00t! Where can we find sWMA
players and media?
Great news! .. Except.. what does "completly" mean?
I used to be able to do that, and actually skipped
a lot of meals with little more than dizziness and
physical weakness.. but as I've gotten older
(I'm 25 now, but it started when I was about 21),
the dizziness/weakness started being supplemented
with hunger headaches and other unpleasantness.
I guess there's a lot of stuff one can pull with
a young body that fades quickly as one ages.. *sigh*
Anyone seen the movie "Brazil"? Perhaps it's ;)
prophetic here...
While we're at it then, we'd better mandate that
of twins and triplets, only one can be allowed to
survive -- otherwise, it'd screw up the ability to
use their DNA to prove crimes!
Again, your restaurant analogy misses the point.
Cooking foods as a favour to friends occasionally
is very different from providing a service, involving
no effort to continue doing so, in a continual
manner to the extent that people and businesses
rely on it. The whole point, like the GIF issue,
is that noone could've predicted that they would,
or indeed could, lay a claim to the thing, and
the entire fact that it became a de facto standard
because people thought it would remain libre and
unbothersome forever is why it's popular.
Your cooking friend's continual effort to provide
food make it very clear there wasn't a reasonable
expectation of that going on forever, and people
don't typically build industries or get locked-in
to visiting particular restaurants. A better
analogue would be if Esperanto took off, and
became the new Lingua Franca, and 30 years later,
one of the linguists involved filed a patent for
a language feature it had and 10 years after that
wanted $5 for every book published in it. Not
acceptable.
The examples and argument you post completely miss
the point. It wouldn't be problematic if they had
charged for it from the start, or made it clear that
they were going to at some point. However, what they
have done has led to most of the world, reasonably,
to believe that using FAT was unproblematic,
especially seeing that noone has ever attempted to
charge for something like this before.
So, yes, I hope they lose any legal challenges that
come up, and hope that people ignore their
attempt to charge until then (and if they win,
in spite of it)
It's dishonest and unacceptable for them to attempt
to start charging after so many years, for something
noone has ever charged for before, after it has
become something which has become a de facto standard,
often implemented in hardware. Like GIFs were, their
patent should be ignored, and more ideally, legally
shot down.
Was FAT really innovative anyway? The patents just
cover modern issues probably not even implemented
on 95% of the FAT-handling devices (e.g. my
digital camera). From what I remember of CP/M's
filesystem, FAT didn't seem to be markedly
different.
On another node, as IBM and Microsoft had
cross-licensing for most of their early
DOS-related stuff (remember PC-DOS?), should
their claim not be invalidated, could they simply
grant the world an open license for it?
Hmmm.... :)
*LEAN*
(looking for the scenery to go by)
*LEAN*
(straining)
*WHUMP*
Ow!
Damn, that didn't work!
Is standing up really that bad on your knees? ;)
I didn't notice any unusual strain from Segway
riding.. and if the mere act of standing is
giving you knee pain, well.. sitting on your duff
is the last thing you need to do
Ahh, I have that maddox troll covered.
9 93 1.html
See
http://blog.dachte.org/live/entries/entry106745
Basically, the guy's a wannabe jwz without a clue.
I wonder if this is related to the roboceptionist
booth they're building in Newell-Simon Hall, or if
that's an unrelated project in robotics..
For other CMUers who haven't seen the posters,
some RI/Drama folks put this together:
http://roboceptionist.com/
Why should it be different? It's an unjust law,
and because of that, of course we're going to
willfully violate it. As for the business
concerns, that's not a sufficient reason for me
to think that it's ok to place such limits on
people. Information shall be free.
You run a website, it's your job to figure out the
funding. Those of us who dislike ads (probably 98% of the planet) will do our best not to see them,
and the more technically inclined among us WILL block your ad, and the business-savvy subset of
those will sell that setup, in some form, to the rest. If websites can't live without it, tough.
If they find another way to get funds, wonderful, but your funding is, to me, a black box that we shouldn't need to think about. I'm perfectly happy spending some time fiddling with Internet Junkbuster or Privoxy to cut out web ads, and tweaking my mail filters to remove advertisements from yahoo mailing lists if I get good results.
That's funny, I don't see any advertisements... .. Oh, yeah, filtering web proxy. :)
(looks around)
So easy to forget about this advertising thing
I love the imagery involved in this..
*VROOM* *VROOM* *put* *put* *put* *creeeeek* *thump* OW!
Heh