If people out there take serious issue with Source Forge's turn to the proprietary, then take the last release of open source code and start your own Source Forge. I mean isn't that supposed to be one of the magical things about open source, that folks who want to go proprietary cannot because the community will hijack it.
Everyone is focusing on the closing of the SourceForge source. I believe the bigger issue in the article (doesn't seem like many people bothered to read it) is that VA was engaging in some rather questionable activity in terms of trying to get people who assumed their SF contributions would remain Free to assign copyright over to them without being forthcoming about the reasons. It sure sounds sleazy to me.
Other issues are that SourceForge seems to be taking steps to make it more difficult to migrate your project off of their server. Who wants to deal with such lock-in, even if the company has previously been a friend of Open Source?
Unless the FSF is going to fund an open alternative to Source Forge they should get off their high horse.
I guess you didn't read the article before ranting? Otherwise you'd have seen the part where they mention Savannah.
Time to face facts, VA is a sinking ship. Its not a matter of if but when. They aren't making any money and who would fund them in this climate?
I do acknowledge that VA has done some good for the OSS community, but everyone with projects on SourceForge should really be working on a backup plan if they aren't already. No sense hoping the situation will go away.
You are glossing over the fact that with the GPL your customers can take your source code and resell it themselves (or give it away free, in binary or source form) as long as they also distribute any changes they make. So while in theory you could sell the software, in practice it doesnt work.
Generally it is the subset that hasn't really produced much of value in the past few years...gcc, emacs, linux kernel, all great, but when the stakes got high and RMS's politics got even kookier, most of the useful work in OSS has been non-GPL using Apache, BSD, Artistic or MIT licenses.
I think you're ignoring the people who do just this and make money.
Perhaps I am, can you name any names? Who makes money writing Free Software FROM the software? Not from support, speaking engagements, writing books, but from sales of the software?
You're also ignoring the fact that most development is done for in-house projects, which has no business reason for being closed. 90% of programmers are employed in this fashion.
I'm not ignoring that. If you reread my post, I mention OSS is useful in some projects, primarily back-end type systems. I'm talking about OSS becoming mainsteam and desktop-oriented. That's the area I see OSS as failing in until people are willing to accept the fact that commercial software has a place.
Re:CmdrTaco's new project?
on
New AIBO Demo'd
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Like most OSS zealots, CmdrTaco's programming ability is limited to 5 line Perl scripts.
RMS has always accepted that commercial products have a place -- he is not a communist. However he believes that these commercial products should embrace the same development methods and openness that the Free Software community does.
The problem with RMS's view of embracing the same development methods and openess that FS does is that with such a method you can not make money on software. If you have to give the source code away for free to others, how can you make money from it in a practical sense?
The only known ways are service and support. Service and support is fine for large enterprise software or webservers, the kind of thing OSS is good at now, but its not so good for desktop applications which should just work without being supported or serviced. This is the fundamental problem holding OSS back from the desktop, and the reason why Linux will never be a mainstream desktop OS unless there is some major shift in attitude by its users/developers.
The fact of the matter is most software developers just can't afford to develop software that will be given away. I think the recent economic downturn is both good and bad for OSS, its good in that companies are more likely to adopt existing OSS software to reduce costs, its bad in that a large number of developers won't have time to further develop OSS because they'll be losing (or already have lost) their cushy day jobs which supported their efforts.
It seems pretty likely RMS will be voted in. He's a huge "name" in the Open Source community (for good reason).
However, I still think in the long run having him on the board will be bad for GNOME. He's way too anti-commercial-software, totally unwilling to compromise, and not really at all good in political situations since he just always says what he means. These are may be good traits in a technical project leader, but IMO not-so-great for people on boards of OSS projects.
While OSS has made great strides thus far, its not quite at a point where it can live in a vacuum. If RMS scares off all the commercial entities, I can easily see KDE coming in and sweeping up, gaining more developers (commercial developers with vested interest in products but willing to share code back to main trees are very valuable), and just stomping GNOME.
Well, first of all, 'Art' is completely subjective. One person's junk is another person's art, whether the medium be video games, movies, paintings, sculpture, performance art, whatever.
However, in my specific _opinion_, videogames are much like modern movies -- very many of them are created solely for economic reasons and driven by "suits" that just want more of the same. However, once in a while, a game comes along that is clearly art: the product of one person's (or a very small number of like-minded individuals) vision that both looks fantastic (and by fantastic I don't mean it uses the latest and greatest technology, just that the artwork is clearly inspired and consistent) and plays like a dream. Usually such games are the product of small-time garage developers before hitting it big and getting sucked up into the 'studio' system. Once in a while, someone within the system can sneak something really good by the suits, but as with Hollywood, its pretty rare these days.
And to clarify above, don't get me wrong, I know that modern games are often worked on by many people putting in tons of effort, but even in such situations to reach the level of art you generally need one person with a strong vision making the ultimate decisions.
The articles here on Slashdot seem to get more and more meaningless each day.
The real story here has nothing to do with Transmeta. The only thing to note here is that Intel's compiler is better at optimizing for ia32 CPUs (and by extention, though certainly unintentional, CPUs that emulate them) than gcc is.
Considering its Intel and their compiler is focused on one chip family(as opposed to gcc which has historically been a lot more about platform portability) this is no surprise at all.
When it comes to self-proclaimed "audiophiles" I'm one of the first to call them out on being totally full of shit about a great many things and laugh as they buy extremely high-end equipment to improve the dynamic range of music by a half of a percent that they will never hear... However, I must admit that while 128kpbs is fine for most music (assuming you use a good encoder, of course, which can make a huge difference in relative quality even at the same bitrates) some music falls apart at that rate and I do notice distortion to a level that annoys me.
However, I've yet to see any proof that going above 192kpbs does anything for the vast majority (99.999999999% of the planet) who aren't blessed with perfect ears.
The real problem is that many Slashdotters seem to have double standards when it comes to the whole IP issue.
Its OK to steal (IP) from the RIAA because they rip off their artists. However the minute anyone breaks GPL terms, even if it was unintentional (and the company is really trying to embrace the GPL, though bungling a bit!), they are up in arms and talking about the oncoming lawsuit of justice that will destroy the company.
Having such a double standard on display is pretty negative for the whole Open Source movement... It really makes it look like the point, once you scrub away all the rhetoric, is that Open Source supporters just want everything for free (as in beer).
So, Musiccity are being a little ingenious when they say no central servers. That is how it started, but if their servers were taken away there would be no Morpheus.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC aren't the servers run by a different organization than MusicCity? Somewhere in Europe I believe? (Sweden?). So while the system may suffer from the central servers going down, the loss of MusicCity wouldn't bring that about. Of course the RIAA can always sue the other company, and may be (they seem to be suing everyone these days so I've lost track of who is on the list) but it would probably be a tougher suit in a non-US country.
It really really sucks. Don't go looking for it with high hopes.
I played it at the GameWorks in Las Vegas a year ago. The moves you make don't really translate to moves on the screen except in a very generic way (high moves make the guy punch, low ones make him kick) to do special moves you need to kick and punch simultanously, which pretty much makes you look like a complete ass. The motion detection is extremely sketchy.
Sorry, but that's incorrect. In any case you'll see when the movie is out. Essentially all of the plot has been leaked, and that includes the information about Jango Fett, Boba Fett (he's the first clone, and given as a gift to Jango for his help in destroying the Jedi), etc.
The Slave 1 is in the trailer, but keep in mind that the 'special design' stuff is not canon, its taken from somewhere else (books? RPG?) and Lucas has never promised that the films will be consistent with the 'Expanded Universe' stuff from other media. In fact, if you remember back to the time of the original trilogy, much of plot of 'Splinter of the Minds Eye' (a book released pre-ESB) was inconsistent with what occured in ESB.
I'm quite sure of the Jango/Boba Fett information.
Take a look at some of the star wars fan sites like www.theforce.net for confirmation, or even look at the official site which makes numerous mentions of Jango Fett in Episode 2.
Something must be wrong with your computer if it takes 5 minutes for intellisense to pop up, and you notice any lag whatsoever when typing in Word. I've used both Visual C++ and Word plenty, including on not-so-hot low-end P2s and I've never seen anything like that.
Are you running the system off a floppy drive or what?
For the record, I've been a computer programmer since the C64 days. But I really dislike this "people who don't know how to use *real* computers are sheep" attitude.
Computers are no different than anything else: Cars, VCRs, whatever. Yet hardcore tech guys tend to think people are stupid for not learning how to "use" computers, often snickering at those who have never used a CLI. The simple fact of the matter is many people don't WANT to learn the in-depth operation of a computer just like most don't want to learn the exact details of how a car, tv, vcr or whatever works. They just want an extremely simple, fairly standard UI. They have lives to lead that include many things other than computer use and aren't willing to spend 1000s of hours learning the ins and outs of computer use just to type letters and surf the web -- and they shouldn't have to.
Actually the more likely reason Nintendo is avoiding DVDs (as they avoided CD-ROMS previously) is to make it more difficult to pirate GameCube games.
History has shown that any console system that uses standard media is easily hacked and pirate games can be distributed. While its true that non-standard formats like Dreamcast's GDROM and Nintendo's own cartridge formats are also piratable, the amount of knowledge and/or effort required to do so is generally much higher.
This won't hurt Nintendo's sales at all. They licensed rights to produce GameCube compatible HARDWARE, not software. All official GameCube games still must be distributed through Nintendo..
And when it comes to hardware, Nintendo LOSES money on every sale of the GameCube, which is completely standard for the console business. They make up the losses (and then some) on the cut of software sales they take from every game (even the 3rd party games).
Slashdot Mirror
How embarassing! I only got third post!!
Oh well. Please mod me down!! My karma is capped at 50 and I need some incentive to say something worth reading!!!
Pizzigity Pizzost!
Bow down!
Bow down!
+1 Bonus on my first post!
for them to survivie they have to thread carefully nowdays
It is always good to thread carefully! Otherwise you might run into deadlocks or other problems.
If people out there take serious issue with Source Forge's turn to the proprietary, then take the last release of open source code and start your own Source Forge. I mean isn't that supposed to be one of the magical things about open source, that folks who want to go proprietary cannot because the community will hijack it.
Everyone is focusing on the closing of the SourceForge source. I believe the bigger issue in the article (doesn't seem like many people bothered to read it) is that VA was engaging in some rather questionable activity in terms of trying to get people who assumed their SF contributions would remain Free to assign copyright over to them without being forthcoming about the reasons. It sure sounds sleazy to me.
Other issues are that SourceForge seems to be taking steps to make it more difficult to migrate your project off of their server. Who wants to deal with such lock-in, even if the company has previously been a friend of Open Source?
Unless the FSF is going to fund an open alternative to Source Forge they should get off their high horse.
I guess you didn't read the article before ranting? Otherwise you'd have seen the part where they mention Savannah.
Time to face facts, VA is a sinking ship. Its not a matter of if but when. They aren't making any money and who would fund them in this climate?
I do acknowledge that VA has done some good for the OSS community, but everyone with projects on SourceForge should really be working on a backup plan if they aren't already. No sense hoping the situation will go away.
You are glossing over the fact that with the GPL your customers can take your source code and resell it themselves (or give it away free, in binary or source form) as long as they also distribute any changes they make. So while in theory you could sell the software, in practice it doesnt work.
Well, Free Software is a subset of OSS.
Generally it is the subset that hasn't really produced much of value in the past few years...gcc, emacs, linux kernel, all great, but when the stakes got high and RMS's politics got even kookier, most of the useful work in OSS has been non-GPL using Apache, BSD, Artistic or MIT licenses.
I think you're ignoring the people who do just this and make money.
Perhaps I am, can you name any names? Who makes money writing Free Software FROM the software? Not from support, speaking engagements, writing books, but from sales of the software?
You're also ignoring the fact that most development is done for in-house projects, which has no business reason for being closed. 90% of programmers are employed in this fashion.
I'm not ignoring that. If you reread my post, I mention OSS is useful in some projects, primarily back-end type systems. I'm talking about OSS becoming mainsteam and desktop-oriented. That's the area I see OSS as failing in until people are willing to accept the fact that commercial software has a place.
Like most OSS zealots, CmdrTaco's programming ability is limited to 5 line Perl scripts.
RMS has always accepted that commercial products have a place -- he is not a communist. However he believes that these commercial products should embrace the same development methods and openness that the Free Software community does.
The problem with RMS's view of embracing the same development methods and openess that FS does is that with such a method you can not make money on software. If you have to give the source code away for free to others, how can you make money from it in a practical sense?
The only known ways are service and support. Service and support is fine for large enterprise software or webservers, the kind of thing OSS is good at now, but its not so good for desktop applications which should just work without being supported or serviced. This is the fundamental problem holding OSS back from the desktop, and the reason why Linux will never be a mainstream desktop OS unless there is some major shift in attitude by its users/developers.
The fact of the matter is most software developers just can't afford to develop software that will be given away. I think the recent economic downturn is both good and bad for OSS, its good in that companies are more likely to adopt existing OSS software to reduce costs, its bad in that a large number of developers won't have time to further develop OSS because they'll be losing (or already have lost) their cushy day jobs which supported their efforts.
It seems pretty likely RMS will be voted in. He's a huge "name" in the Open Source community (for good reason).
However, I still think in the long run having him on the board will be bad for GNOME. He's way too anti-commercial-software, totally unwilling to compromise, and not really at all good in political situations since he just always says what he means. These are may be good traits in a technical project leader, but IMO not-so-great for people on boards of OSS projects.
While OSS has made great strides thus far, its not quite at a point where it can live in a vacuum. If RMS scares off all the commercial entities, I can easily see KDE coming in and sweeping up, gaining more developers (commercial developers with vested interest in products but willing to share code back to main trees are very valuable), and just stomping GNOME.
Well, first of all, 'Art' is completely subjective. One person's junk is another person's art, whether the medium be video games, movies, paintings, sculpture, performance art, whatever.
However, in my specific _opinion_, videogames are much like modern movies -- very many of them are created solely for economic reasons and driven by "suits" that just want more of the same. However, once in a while, a game comes along that is clearly art: the product of one person's (or a very small number of like-minded individuals) vision that both looks fantastic (and by fantastic I don't mean it uses the latest and greatest technology, just that the artwork is clearly inspired and consistent) and plays like a dream. Usually such games are the product of small-time garage developers before hitting it big and getting sucked up into the 'studio' system. Once in a while, someone within the system can sneak something really good by the suits, but as with Hollywood, its pretty rare these days.
And to clarify above, don't get me wrong, I know that modern games are often worked on by many people putting in tons of effort, but even in such situations to reach the level of art you generally need one person with a strong vision making the ultimate decisions.
The articles here on Slashdot seem to get more and more meaningless each day.
The real story here has nothing to do with Transmeta. The only thing to note here is that Intel's compiler is better at optimizing for ia32 CPUs (and by extention, though certainly unintentional, CPUs that emulate them) than gcc is.
Considering its Intel and their compiler is focused on one chip family(as opposed to gcc which has historically been a lot more about platform portability) this is no surprise at all.
Why was this story posted?
How much time does the CPU spend running kernel code as opposed to user-land app code? Virtually none. Idiot.
When it comes to self-proclaimed "audiophiles" I'm one of the first to call them out on being totally full of shit about a great many things and laugh as they buy extremely high-end equipment to improve the dynamic range of music by a half of a percent that they will never hear... However, I must admit that while 128kpbs is fine for most music (assuming you use a good encoder, of course, which can make a huge difference in relative quality even at the same bitrates) some music falls apart at that rate and I do notice distortion to a level that annoys me.
However, I've yet to see any proof that going above 192kpbs does anything for the vast majority (99.999999999% of the planet) who aren't blessed with perfect ears.
The real problem is that many Slashdotters seem to have double standards when it comes to the whole IP issue.
Its OK to steal (IP) from the RIAA because they rip off their artists. However the minute anyone breaks GPL terms, even if it was unintentional (and the company is really trying to embrace the GPL, though bungling a bit!), they are up in arms and talking about the oncoming lawsuit of justice that will destroy the company.
Having such a double standard on display is pretty negative for the whole Open Source movement... It really makes it look like the point, once you scrub away all the rhetoric, is that Open Source supporters just want everything for free (as in beer).
So, Musiccity are being a little ingenious when they say no central servers. That is how it started, but if their servers were taken away there would be no Morpheus.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC aren't the servers run by a different organization than MusicCity? Somewhere in Europe I believe? (Sweden?). So while the system may suffer from the central servers going down, the loss of MusicCity wouldn't bring that about. Of course the RIAA can always sue the other company, and may be (they seem to be suing everyone these days so I've lost track of who is on the list) but it would probably be a tougher suit in a non-US country.
It really really sucks. Don't go looking for it with high hopes.
I played it at the GameWorks in Las Vegas a year ago. The moves you make don't really translate to moves on the screen except in a very generic way (high moves make the guy punch, low ones make him kick) to do special moves you need to kick and punch simultanously, which pretty much makes you look like a complete ass. The motion detection is extremely sketchy.
Warning: SPOILERS, Perhaps.
Sorry, but that's incorrect. In any case you'll see when the movie is out. Essentially all of the plot has been leaked, and that includes the information about Jango Fett, Boba Fett (he's the first clone, and given as a gift to Jango for his help in destroying the Jedi), etc.
The Slave 1 is in the trailer, but keep in mind that the 'special design' stuff is not canon, its taken from somewhere else (books? RPG?) and Lucas has never promised that the films will be consistent with the 'Expanded Universe' stuff from other media. In fact, if you remember back to the time of the original trilogy, much of plot of 'Splinter of the Minds Eye' (a book released pre-ESB) was inconsistent with what occured in ESB.
I'm quite sure of the Jango/Boba Fett information.
Take a look at some of the star wars fan sites like www.theforce.net for confirmation, or even look at the official site which makes numerous mentions of Jango Fett in Episode 2.
That's Jango Fett flying, Boba's dad.
Boba Fett is just a kid in this movie, and is shown in the trailer as one of the clone kids sitting in the room with the blue helmet-thingys on.
Something must be wrong with your computer if it takes 5 minutes for intellisense to pop up, and you notice any lag whatsoever when typing in Word. I've used both Visual C++ and Word plenty, including on not-so-hot low-end P2s and I've never seen anything like that.
Are you running the system off a floppy drive or what?
For the record, I've been a computer programmer since the C64 days. But I really dislike this "people who don't know how to use *real* computers are sheep" attitude.
Computers are no different than anything else: Cars, VCRs, whatever. Yet hardcore tech guys tend to think people are stupid for not learning how to "use" computers, often snickering at those who have never used a CLI. The simple fact of the matter is many people don't WANT to learn the in-depth operation of a computer just like most don't want to learn the exact details of how a car, tv, vcr or whatever works. They just want an extremely simple, fairly standard UI. They have lives to lead that include many things other than computer use and aren't willing to spend 1000s of hours learning the ins and outs of computer use just to type letters and surf the web -- and they shouldn't have to.
The big announcement:
The Amiga is still dead. Go on with your lives.
Both are similar to the old SGI cube logo. Just as Debian's logo is very similar to the Dreamcast's....
Logos tend to come and go in cyclical fads... One year its cubes, the next swirls, the next triangles....
No big deal.
Actually the more likely reason Nintendo is avoiding DVDs (as they avoided CD-ROMS previously) is to make it more difficult to pirate GameCube games.
History has shown that any console system that uses standard media is easily hacked and pirate games can be distributed. While its true that non-standard formats like Dreamcast's GDROM and Nintendo's own cartridge formats are also piratable, the amount of knowledge and/or effort required to do so is generally much higher.
This won't hurt Nintendo's sales at all. They licensed rights to produce GameCube compatible HARDWARE, not software. All official GameCube games still must be distributed through Nintendo..
And when it comes to hardware, Nintendo LOSES money on every sale of the GameCube, which is completely standard for the console business. They make up the losses (and then some) on the cut of software sales they take from every game (even the 3rd party games).