Whoops. I just re-read the article and I realized I missed that part. Pretty slimy, but hey, even if Intel and AMD get in the game there's still Apple, IBM, and Sun to mess with. I know that IBM and Sun won't go easily, and considering the popularity of their hardware and software on the server side I think that Microsoft may end up castrating itself, especially in the corporate arena where Linux and open source software are gaining momentum. And who can say what will be in place in 5 years, when the system is complete? Hell 5 years ago nobody knew what Linux was. If current trends continue (both in terms of software improvement and adoption), Microsoft is either going to have to make concessions for GPL stuff or just give it up.
It's similar to a couple of movies that were made some time back, Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.. In both, "prison" was an isolated society without rules. Persons convicted of certain crimes were dropped in the middle and left to make it on their own. If you don't want to live with the lawful, live with the lawless.
So yes, in a way, we do sort of condone it, but it's not like prison guards are supposed to let it happen if they see it. It's one of those things that we hope will make people think twice about breaking the law, since prison itself isn't such a great deterrent. Realistically, we can't eliminate it, so we capitalize on it. 6 months in prison isn't so bad; 6 months in prison with the possibility of being sodomized, however, is something to think about, especially if you are some soft corporate executive.
So? How does this affect you? Honestly, Microsoft can never "kill" open source because it's open. It's always there for you to use, modify, and redistribute. So what are you all worried about?
Keep coding, use what you want to (that's the great thing about open source), and let the rest of the world be.
This isn't a pissing contest. It's subversive passive aggression.
And it's not like we change the features just for the hell of it. We might decide that a set of features logically belongs under a different heading, or that it's more efficient to group feature sets by sybsystem and use common backend routines to render/handle them. I've found that with my own software design (and with that of others), changing things generally results in an overall efficiency boost, whether it be in ease of use or overall performance (execution speed).
Change happens for a reason, and you either invest a little time up front to improve your processes or you get left behind 3 versions later. That's what creates the techie/user dichotomy--the respective embrace and fear of change.
Ask a user to think about what they were doing 5 years ago (hell even 2 years ago) and then ask them if they would want to go back. They may bitch about learning new things, but they'll have no problem using them once they get the hang of it.
Yeah, but Keenspace is down 2-3 days out of the week due to what I can only assume to be server issues. $3-$5/mo is not too much (IMO) to support decent bandwidth.
The way I see it, the comics can (and probably will) be marketted in multiple ways. On the artists' own sites and as part of the compilation, for instance. Some people would pay for that kind of convenience and reliability. Throw in some articles, interviews, editorials, and tutorials and I think most people would consider buying it.
Better yet, instead of a monthly recurring charge, offer a slightly more expensive "newstand" price for access to a single "issue." Forget the New Economy; just give people an easier way to access the old one.
As a form of serialization, web comics do okay if they are done well. Witness Megatokyo, Penny Arcade, PvP, and I guess to some extend Mac Hall, although I've only been reading the last for a few months.
The business model for these comics is interesting. The comic itself has no value; with so much competition in free entertainment there is no way they could make people pay for it. But they can sell merchandise and they can solicit fan endorsement. Kurtz sells comic books that are along the lines of the webcomic but not quite. Mac Hall and Megatokyo sell merchandise ala Cafe Press. Penny Arcade...well...I'm not exactly sure what they do, but it has something to do with wallpapers and Paypal.
And let's not forget ads.
What I would like to see, as a consumer, is a lot of these comics brought together under one web publication. In Japan, manga is distributed in a big monthly magazine containing works by many authors. The magazine sells, the ads sell, and the publication passes some of that along to the artists (I would hope). If something like this appeared online, say like Keenspot but more organized, more selective, and with much much much higher bandwidth, I would definitely pay for it, ads and all, simply for the convenience of a daily/weekly/monthly strip on a high availability server.
I would like to agree with you, but when companies start losing business I don't think it is clear to them what it is that causes their customers to leave. I see postage-paid comment cards everywhere, but I can't say I have ever filled one out. Have you?
So they break up their customer base into target audiences and go with the stereotypical whims of the largest percentage. And who is that? Probably not someone who knows or cares what an FTP server is. Granted, these same people can and probably do use peer-to-peer file sharing services (sometimes without knowing it), but when that stops working they will just chalk it up to that bad computer voodoo.
I would say that the best thing you could do (realistically) is call and complain. The squeeky wheel really does get the grease. If you don't get the answers you want or the satisfaction you feel you deserve, ask to speak to a manager. Get the issue escalated until you get what you want or you decide to cancel your service. At least when you cancel they will know why, and several people within the company will have been involved.
As with politics, voting alone is not enough. You have to voice your opinions and be persistent. To most people, it's just not worth their time to do so, and so the minority suffers, if you can truly call it suffering.
I think he was speaking more along the lines of a service provided by a music label, i.e. the late Napster. And even if he wasn't, it's something to think about. Bandwidth has got to be cheaper than pressing and shipping CDs. Promotional costs have got to be less as well, if every one of your patrons has to come to the same place to get their music (and thus be assaulted by ads). It would also no longer be necessary to hire artists to produce album covers--hell you wouldn't even have to wait for a whole album to be produced! Imagine, having instant access to experimental tracks and B-sides without having to wait for the descent of the artist's career.
But anyway yeah, I'm on board with the whole live music bit. There's plenty of business out there if they want to solicit it. Here in Pensacola we get like 5-10 decent concerts a year, and they sell out no matter who is playing. If more of these bands could be troubled to play more than 20 cities every 5 years then I'm sure they could match their current revenue.
It does too discriminate (or can). You can disable all popups or only "unrequested" (for instance, onLoad) popups. You can also diable moving or resizing windows (take that hollywood.com!). It's granular and configurable, as the C|Net reviewer would have discovered had he done his job.
I've been trying like hell this weekend to get some of my divx files to play on my new iBook. By and large the most prevalent problem is seeing a correctly timed video stream, but having the audio cut off a few seconds in. I think this is because the audio stream is encoded using veriable bit rate MP3, which QT can't handle. The best solution I've found is to run the divx files through DivX Doctor (available at VersionTracker) and using the 3ivx codec (also available at VersionTracker) to play them. You can set up DivX doctor to be the default application for running, say,.divx or.avi files and have it automatically play them in QuickTime when it's done doing it's magic. Works pretty well, other than the 30 second processing time up front.
I came up with them after a lot of thought. These are the 4 things that a federal government should and must concern itself with to ensure national security (a very Republican/Libertarian viewpoint). These are the things that are provided for in the Constitution itself, and given a strict interpretation this is all the rights the framers of the constitution gave our government. A liberal interpretation would view these as rights and protections of the the government, not the people, giving the government the right to make new laws and restrict personal freedoms in a way they see fit.
No, that is the police department's self-appointed duty/motto. Government does 4 things:
1) Controls national currency 2) Protects its borders from invasion 3) Handles foreign policy 4) Protects my right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness
Number 4 can be interpreted in any number of ways, and your position on it probably depends largely on your party affiliation. To me, it means to create laws guaranteeing my personal freedoms, and restricting others from meddling with those fundamental freedoms. It does not permit the government to hand me a set of ideals and force me to comply.
SuSE is fully LSB compliant and has been for several versions. I think for the most part Debian is as well, but I don't know for sure, and I'm not going to make half-assed assumptions.
Red Hat is not even close.
As for the SuSE/IBM thing, SuSE's distributions feature a plethora of IBM products, including Lotus Domino, DB2, and the IBM Java compiler and virtual machine. SuSE also has versions of Linux geared specifically to run on IBMs z series mainframes. This is a partnership that runs deeper than a few million in stock.
I'd just like to point out that I said "YaST2 enabled" distribution. You can, of course, install via FTP, but you get YaST1, which makes my want to pry out my teeth with a fork.
SuSE already has a partnership with IBM, and has specialized database and E-mail distributions that feature DB2 and Lotus Domino. And all their distributions feature IBMs JVM/compiler. As long as IBM succeeds in the Linux arena, I don't think SuSE is going anywhere.
Of course, if SuSE does run into problems, there's always the possibility that they will be acquired by Big Blue. That'd put them well above Sun and RedHat in terms of industry footing. And then there's the whole IBM/Sun thing. I dunno, it'll be interesting.
Why would RedHat be considered evil? Aren't they doing what we want them to (i.e. release a free (as in beer and speech) operating system based on the tools we love)?
How can that be considered evil? Because they take a loss on every ISO download? SuSE would probably have more market share if they gave away their YaST2 enabled distribution, but it's not in their business plan. In the copycat IT industry it's refreshing to see someone take a different approach.
Personally I think there are better distributions than RedHat (Mandrake and SuSE come to mind), but RedHat has more exposure, marketability, and history. They were in the game first, and they're on the tip of every newbie tongue. And apparently they're doing something right on the business side, or they wouldn't be viable.
If other distributions are to survive they are going to have to provide something new and different, create strategic partnerships, and establish credibility. In other words, compete. There's little intellectual property disputes, and everyone has the same resources to pull from. This is the free market, and it's far from evil.
Unfortunately, once you start looking at installing stuff that *didn't* come with the distro, it gets ver ugly very fast. Apparently, they've got a non-standard layout that many./configure scripts choke on.
SuSE follows the Linux Standard Base (LSB) specification, which is an impartial specification that outlines where certain binaries and libraries should be put. If the./configure scripts don't work, it's because they were created with some kind of dependency on a nonstandard (non LSB) platform such as RedHat.
Granted, automake and autoconf really shouldn't be subject to this. The only other explanation is that the libraries aren't misplaced, they are missing (not installed). Personally I've never had a problem compiling stuff on SuSE. mplayer, xine, gnupg, and gaim all compiled without much ado.
And they can't outlaw equipment that is already in use, and TV capture technology hasn't really changed much. So anyone with an existing card is free to encode to his heart's delight.
This reminds me of cable descrambling. Yes, it's illegal. Yes, I can get a descrambler from some guy on the street for $50.00 cash, and no one is the wiser. This will just create a black market for encoding hardware...a simple inline analog watermark stripper that can then be fed into a capture device.
Re:Their planning to release with a big bug still
on
Mozilla RC3 Released
·
· Score: 2
I've been wondering about this bug since RC1...it has happened on both my Windows and Linux machines. In my opinion it's a fairly major bug, since it you have to restart the browser to correct it (and if you have quicklaunch open you have to close that as well). It's bitten me in the ass numerous times (down to the wire eBay bidding being the most annoying and costly) and I would love to see it fixed.
Javadoc is a godsend. If you do object-oriented code correctly, all of your methods will be a manageable size and shouldn't need a lot of documentation. And unless you're actually modifying a class, all you really need to know are what methods are available, what their arguments are, and what their return values mean. Javadoc handles this wonderfully.
The biggest problem I see, however, is with procedural programming. When people do things like use complicated loop logic to avoid recursive algorithms it can be a pain to decipher. But if things are properly broken out into modules and given meaningful names I have found that I can usually handle it.
Re:Uhh... This isn't for this crowd.
on
USB Remote Control
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Are you insane? I have been waiting for this since I got my first VCR. At home if I want to watch a DVD I have to flip on the TV, change to channel 3, flip on the VCR, change to aux input 1, flip on the receiver, set the surround sound mode, then flip on the DVD player and stick in the disc.
All for "watch DVD." Now if I could buy an integrated system from, say, Sony or Phillips that did all of this with one button, I'd get it in a heartbeat. This remote seems like a godsend.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoops. I just re-read the article and I realized I missed that part. Pretty slimy, but hey, even if Intel and AMD get in the game there's still Apple, IBM, and Sun to mess with. I know that IBM and Sun won't go easily, and considering the popularity of their hardware and software on the server side I think that Microsoft may end up castrating itself, especially in the corporate arena where Linux and open source software are gaining momentum. And who can say what will be in place in 5 years, when the system is complete? Hell 5 years ago nobody knew what Linux was. If current trends continue (both in terms of software improvement and adoption), Microsoft is either going to have to make concessions for GPL stuff or just give it up.
It's similar to a couple of movies that were made some time back, Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.. In both, "prison" was an isolated society without rules. Persons convicted of certain crimes were dropped in the middle and left to make it on their own. If you don't want to live with the lawful, live with the lawless.
So yes, in a way, we do sort of condone it, but it's not like prison guards are supposed to let it happen if they see it. It's one of those things that we hope will make people think twice about breaking the law, since prison itself isn't such a great deterrent. Realistically, we can't eliminate it, so we capitalize on it. 6 months in prison isn't so bad; 6 months in prison with the possibility of being sodomized, however, is something to think about, especially if you are some soft corporate executive.
So? How does this affect you? Honestly, Microsoft can never "kill" open source because it's open. It's always there for you to use, modify, and redistribute. So what are you all worried about?
Keep coding, use what you want to (that's the great thing about open source), and let the rest of the world be.
This isn't a pissing contest. It's subversive passive aggression.
And it's not like we change the features just for the hell of it. We might decide that a set of features logically belongs under a different heading, or that it's more efficient to group feature sets by sybsystem and use common backend routines to render/handle them. I've found that with my own software design (and with that of others), changing things generally results in an overall efficiency boost, whether it be in ease of use or overall performance (execution speed).
Change happens for a reason, and you either invest a little time up front to improve your processes or you get left behind 3 versions later. That's what creates the techie/user dichotomy--the respective embrace and fear of change.
Ask a user to think about what they were doing 5 years ago (hell even 2 years ago) and then ask them if they would want to go back. They may bitch about learning new things, but they'll have no problem using them once they get the hang of it.
Yeah, but Keenspace is down 2-3 days out of the week due to what I can only assume to be server issues. $3-$5/mo is not too much (IMO) to support decent bandwidth.
The way I see it, the comics can (and probably will) be marketted in multiple ways. On the artists' own sites and as part of the compilation, for instance. Some people would pay for that kind of convenience and reliability. Throw in some articles, interviews, editorials, and tutorials and I think most people would consider buying it.
Better yet, instead of a monthly recurring charge, offer a slightly more expensive "newstand" price for access to a single "issue." Forget the New Economy; just give people an easier way to access the old one.
Looking good, but I wonder...
1) Is that the default theme for Gnome 2.0?
and
2) What's up with the 2 (X) buttons on each window?
As a form of serialization, web comics do okay if they are done well. Witness Megatokyo, Penny Arcade, PvP, and I guess to some extend Mac Hall, although I've only been reading the last for a few months.
The business model for these comics is interesting. The comic itself has no value; with so much competition in free entertainment there is no way they could make people pay for it. But they can sell merchandise and they can solicit fan endorsement. Kurtz sells comic books that are along the lines of the webcomic but not quite. Mac Hall and Megatokyo sell merchandise ala Cafe Press. Penny Arcade...well...I'm not exactly sure what they do, but it has something to do with wallpapers and Paypal.
And let's not forget ads.
What I would like to see, as a consumer, is a lot of these comics brought together under one web publication. In Japan, manga is distributed in a big monthly magazine containing works by many authors. The magazine sells, the ads sell, and the publication passes some of that along to the artists (I would hope). If something like this appeared online, say like Keenspot but more organized, more selective, and with much much much higher bandwidth, I would definitely pay for it, ads and all, simply for the convenience of a daily/weekly/monthly strip on a high availability server.
I would like to agree with you, but when companies start losing business I don't think it is clear to them what it is that causes their customers to leave. I see postage-paid comment cards everywhere, but I can't say I have ever filled one out. Have you?
So they break up their customer base into target audiences and go with the stereotypical whims of the largest percentage. And who is that? Probably not someone who knows or cares what an FTP server is. Granted, these same people can and probably do use peer-to-peer file sharing services (sometimes without knowing it), but when that stops working they will just chalk it up to that bad computer voodoo.
I would say that the best thing you could do (realistically) is call and complain. The squeeky wheel really does get the grease. If you don't get the answers you want or the satisfaction you feel you deserve, ask to speak to a manager. Get the issue escalated until you get what you want or you decide to cancel your service. At least when you cancel they will know why, and several people within the company will have been involved.
As with politics, voting alone is not enough. You have to voice your opinions and be persistent. To most people, it's just not worth their time to do so, and so the minority suffers, if you can truly call it suffering.
And, ironically, it shows up fine in Mozilla.
I think he was speaking more along the lines of a service provided by a music label, i.e. the late Napster. And even if he wasn't, it's something to think about. Bandwidth has got to be cheaper than pressing and shipping CDs. Promotional costs have got to be less as well, if every one of your patrons has to come to the same place to get their music (and thus be assaulted by ads). It would also no longer be necessary to hire artists to produce album covers--hell you wouldn't even have to wait for a whole album to be produced! Imagine, having instant access to experimental tracks and B-sides without having to wait for the descent of the artist's career.
But anyway yeah, I'm on board with the whole live music bit. There's plenty of business out there if they want to solicit it. Here in Pensacola we get like 5-10 decent concerts a year, and they sell out no matter who is playing. If more of these bands could be troubled to play more than 20 cities every 5 years then I'm sure they could match their current revenue.
It does too discriminate (or can). You can disable all popups or only "unrequested" (for instance, onLoad) popups. You can also diable moving or resizing windows (take that hollywood.com!). It's granular and configurable, as the C|Net reviewer would have discovered had he done his job.
Oh, forgot to mention: QT6b doesn't work any better than QT5 did, so I'm back with DivX Doctor and 3ivx for now.
I've been trying like hell this weekend to get some of my divx files to play on my new iBook. By and large the most prevalent problem is seeing a correctly timed video stream, but having the audio cut off a few seconds in. I think this is because the audio stream is encoded using veriable bit rate MP3, which QT can't handle. The best solution I've found is to run the divx files through DivX Doctor (available at VersionTracker) and using the 3ivx codec (also available at VersionTracker) to play them. You can set up DivX doctor to be the default application for running, say, .divx or .avi files and have it automatically play them in QuickTime when it's done doing it's magic. Works pretty well, other than the 30 second processing time up front.
SuSE wrote the (first? only?) USB kernel drivers.
SuSE contributes heavily to ALSA.
SuSE wrote many XFree86 servers for some of the less popular cards from S3 and trident.
SuSE creates integrated E-mail server, collaboration, and database products that are more than just some slapped-together GPL code with an installer.
You talk about innovative? Free ride my ass. Do a little research.
I came up with them after a lot of thought. These are the 4 things that a federal government should and must concern itself with to ensure national security (a very Republican/Libertarian viewpoint). These are the things that are provided for in the Constitution itself, and given a strict interpretation this is all the rights the framers of the constitution gave our government. A liberal interpretation would view these as rights and protections of the the government, not the people, giving the government the right to make new laws and restrict personal freedoms in a way they see fit.
No, that is the police department's self-appointed duty/motto. Government does 4 things:
1) Controls national currency
2) Protects its borders from invasion
3) Handles foreign policy
4) Protects my right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness
Number 4 can be interpreted in any number of ways, and your position on it probably depends largely on your party affiliation. To me, it means to create laws guaranteeing my personal freedoms, and restricting others from meddling with those fundamental freedoms. It does not permit the government to hand me a set of ideals and force me to comply.
SuSE is fully LSB compliant and has been for several versions. I think for the most part Debian is as well, but I don't know for sure, and I'm not going to make half-assed assumptions.
Red Hat is not even close.
As for the SuSE/IBM thing, SuSE's distributions feature a plethora of IBM products, including Lotus Domino, DB2, and the IBM Java compiler and virtual machine. SuSE also has versions of Linux geared specifically to run on IBMs z series mainframes. This is a partnership that runs deeper than a few million in stock.
I'd just like to point out that I said "YaST2 enabled" distribution. You can, of course, install via FTP, but you get YaST1, which makes my want to pry out my teeth with a fork.
Not that I have anything against it.
SuSE already has a partnership with IBM, and has specialized database and E-mail distributions that feature DB2 and Lotus Domino. And all their distributions feature IBMs JVM/compiler. As long as IBM succeeds in the Linux arena, I don't think SuSE is going anywhere.
Of course, if SuSE does run into problems, there's always the possibility that they will be acquired by Big Blue. That'd put them well above Sun and RedHat in terms of industry footing. And then there's the whole IBM/Sun thing. I dunno, it'll be interesting.
Why would RedHat be considered evil? Aren't they doing what we want them to (i.e. release a free (as in beer and speech) operating system based on the tools we love)?
How can that be considered evil? Because they take a loss on every ISO download? SuSE would probably have more market share if they gave away their YaST2 enabled distribution, but it's not in their business plan. In the copycat IT industry it's refreshing to see someone take a different approach.
Personally I think there are better distributions than RedHat (Mandrake and SuSE come to mind), but RedHat has more exposure, marketability, and history. They were in the game first, and they're on the tip of every newbie tongue. And apparently they're doing something right on the business side, or they wouldn't be viable.
If other distributions are to survive they are going to have to provide something new and different, create strategic partnerships, and establish credibility. In other words, compete. There's little intellectual property disputes, and everyone has the same resources to pull from. This is the free market, and it's far from evil.
Unfortunately, once you start looking at installing stuff that *didn't* come with the distro, it gets ver ugly very fast. Apparently, they've got a non-standard layout that many ./configure scripts choke on.
./configure scripts don't work, it's because they were created with some kind of dependency on a nonstandard (non LSB) platform such as RedHat.
SuSE follows the Linux Standard Base (LSB) specification, which is an impartial specification that outlines where certain binaries and libraries should be put. If the
Granted, automake and autoconf really shouldn't be subject to this. The only other explanation is that the libraries aren't misplaced, they are missing (not installed). Personally I've never had a problem compiling stuff on SuSE. mplayer, xine, gnupg, and gaim all compiled without much ado.
And they can't outlaw equipment that is already in use, and TV capture technology hasn't really changed much. So anyone with an existing card is free to encode to his heart's delight.
This reminds me of cable descrambling. Yes, it's illegal. Yes, I can get a descrambler from some guy on the street for $50.00 cash, and no one is the wiser. This will just create a black market for encoding hardware...a simple inline analog watermark stripper that can then be fed into a capture device.
I've been wondering about this bug since RC1...it has happened on both my Windows and Linux machines. In my opinion it's a fairly major bug, since it you have to restart the browser to correct it (and if you have quicklaunch open you have to close that as well). It's bitten me in the ass numerous times (down to the wire eBay bidding being the most annoying and costly) and I would love to see it fixed.
Javadoc is a godsend. If you do object-oriented code correctly, all of your methods will be a manageable size and shouldn't need a lot of documentation. And unless you're actually modifying a class, all you really need to know are what methods are available, what their arguments are, and what their return values mean. Javadoc handles this wonderfully.
The biggest problem I see, however, is with procedural programming. When people do things like use complicated loop logic to avoid recursive algorithms it can be a pain to decipher. But if things are properly broken out into modules and given meaningful names I have found that I can usually handle it.
Are you insane? I have been waiting for this since I got my first VCR. At home if I want to watch a DVD I have to flip on the TV, change to channel 3, flip on the VCR, change to aux input 1, flip on the receiver, set the surround sound mode, then flip on the DVD player and stick in the disc.
All for "watch DVD." Now if I could buy an integrated system from, say, Sony or Phillips that did all of this with one button, I'd get it in a heartbeat. This remote seems like a godsend.