Linux distros have had YEARS to become viable desktops. Barring the lack of missing apps like Photoshop and Illustrator, the desktop experience itself could use some improvement on Linux.
To be fair, I place a good chunk of the blame on the renegade nature of PC hardware. OS-X doesn't have to support the entire fickle world of PCs so its easier to make it do what it needs to do.
A few examples of issues that still plague the Linux desktop experience:
- Printer setup. CUPS has potential, but I've fought with it enough times on both the client end and the server end to suspect that CUPS integration in Linux is spooky magic that nobody to date has mastered.
- Techie terminology. I know Linux/UNIX terminology and you know Linux/UNIX terminology. A whole helluva lot of good that's going to do for the executive admin who thinks a computer is a "Windows" and a hard drive is "memory" or "C drive".
- Driver support. No, this is not the same as hardware support. By driver support, I am refering to a scheme by which drivers can EASILLY be installed without patching, compiling, etc. I'm sure some distros have done work in this area.
This is one area where Macs have always excelled above and beyond any other system (OS + hardware) that I've used. Here's a recent example:
A few months ago I purchased an ancient, beaten up Epson Stylus Color 740 printer ($20). It didn't come with any driver disks. I brought it home, plugged it in (USB), turned it on, and tried to print a web page with the expectation that I'd be prompted for a driver. Needless to say I was surprised when the Print dialog appeared, and after clicking "Continue" (no extra configuration steps taken) the web page printed in full photo-quality color. I can't begin to imagine how much I would have had to do to get that far on a different OS, even Windows. I spent probably 20 seconds of time between turning it on and printing, most of which was spent waiting for the printer to stop initializing. ESC printer owners will know what I'm talking about...
Am I complaining? Nope, so don't say "you dislike this stuff so much? The source code is there, fix it!" I'm merely comparing different desktop experiences. Linux will always be a viable desktop offering IMHO, but sorry, I don't see it EVER equalling a Mac desktop experience, especially for a UNIX-based OS. The UNIX-ish stuff is hidden so well, I can use a Mac and never know or care that a flavor of BSD is running behind the scenes (I still spend a lot of time playing around in xterms, though, just because that's how I was raised). Linux desktops have their place, though.
1) I didn't hear of anyone "hugging" Darl. However, I wasn't there so it's possible it did happen.
2) Had you viewed the video posted on the protest site you would have seen that protesters were actually talking with folks stopped at stoplights, I assume answering questions. Perhaps you're confusing the Darl encounter with the protest at the busy intersection near I-15. I seriously doubt the two took place near each other.
3) I keep hearing stuff about the protesters not making their point. Exactly how would you propose they make this point more effectively? Clearly you know more about this than the rest of us do...
4) Define "visibly protesting".
5) Who are you to say that folks were there so grandma could see them on TV? Everyone that showed up for the protest felt strongly about the SCO lawsuit. Don't diminish their effort just because you're ticked off.
Actually, I think you're the one misunderstanding the point of a protest.
Let's face a simple fact right up front: SCO isn't going to kill a lawsuit because 50+ people picketted behind their building for 2 hours. I hope nobody has any confusion over this.
Protests are done to draw public attention to an opinion, be it for or against a certain issue. Judging by the actions of the protesters in Utah I have to say they understood perfectly well what they were doing. They notified the press before the protest, they picketted in back of SCO's building which just so happens to be the only side that fronts on a public road, and not long before 4:00pm the protesters LEFT THE AREA to go protest near the entrance/exit to I-15. If they were there to piss off SCO's upper management, they probably would have figured out a way to protest in front of the building where all the offices were (the front of the building faces a parking lot and is not visible from any public road. It would have been an intimate, easilly swept under the carpet show placed for a few SCO employees and that's it. Talk about a waste of time).
They made themselves and their opinions very visible in very public areas. In doing this, they made their protest successful. They got print coverage in a few local papers (Deseret News is actually fairly big in Utah), and rumor has it that a TV crew got some shots (I didn't see them arrive or leave, but I wasn't there the whole time).
The lawsuit seems to still be moving forward, but is that really a surprise?
The stuff SCO is allegedly protecting is much more theoretical than a book or a music composition. To relate the SCO suit with a "you copied my work" lawsuit filed by an author or musician, SCO's actions would be the same as suing over someone's use of a Wang word processor to write a book, or the use of a guitar in a recorded song. Your examples describe something much more concrete and obvious and, in my view, much more justified as causes for lawsuits.
Take the lawsuit against George Harrison for using the music from "He's So Fine" in his song "My Sweet Lord". Good grief, the only thing different between the songs is the lyrics; the music, melody, etc. are almost identical. In that case, he deserved to be sued. What SCO's trying to protect is much less clear.
... don't you think it would be wise to NOT look at the "ancient UNIX source code"? I don't care if SCO used to give it away. They used to do lots of things differently. If it was safe to look at it would still be available through a sco.com machine.
For all the kudos folks are giving the guy who wrote the 2000 LinuxToday prophecy, it amazes me how few of you are heeding his warning.
Leave the sources alone. There's nothing you can find there that defendants of SCO's legal actions won't find themselves, and besides, reading code is boring. Go outside or something.
No jokin'... Why bother forming your own opinion about anything if Michael is around to tell you how to think? Thank God for Michael... Without him, we'd all be thinking for ourselves, and you KNOW that can't be a good thing.
Actually, the project became "Caldera Network Desktop" and was built on a (almost) stock Red Hat 2.1 distro. The most that I can think of that was tweaked in the OS was whatever the Netware client for Linux needed -- an "nkfs" kernel module, maybe some enhancements to the IPX support -- and perhaps some enhancements to the management utilities, RPM being one of them (yes, Caldera funded the early development of RPM).
I don't recall any of this coming from proprietary UNIX code, though, unless the Netware client was ported from the UNIX client sources (which is perfectly legal because Novell owned those sources and Caldera had a license from Novell to create a client for Linux). Red Hat was used mostly to launch the rest of the goodies like WordPerfect, ZMail, Xess, the Netware client, etc.
Of course, I started work there in 1996 so I could have missed a few details.
If I had to guess, I'd say most of the conspiracy theories that are posted here are nothing more than that: conspiracy theories.
Let's think a bit about Caldera's history and how it relates to Microsoft. When Caldera bought DR-DOS from Novell, it also bought an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft. This lawsuit ended with Microsoft settling for an undisclosed amount of money. Unless I'm mistaken, any and all dealings with any IP that Caldera ever owned (alleged or otherwise) would be high on Microsoft's do-not-touch list. MS has lots of money, but I'm sure they'd prefer to keep it rather than give it out in more settlements.
Fast forward to a few years back when Caldera purchased selected assets from SCO (engineers, IP, sales channel, etc.). Now, in addition to DOS stuff, Microsoft has to be careful about UNIX stuff. This comes at a time when Microsoft is desperately trying to make Windows more appealing to UNIX folks with their UNIX interoperability toolkit (as well as UNIX-ish internals to their OSes for all I know).
IBM is a big fish, but it's only one big fish out of a handful of other big fish. Microsoft -- who didn't fare well the last time they were sued by Caldera -- has probably weighed the benefits of of purchasing a UNIX IP license against the cost of a potential lawsuit and decided to get a license.
That said, there is one conspiracy theory that I've read here that I think may hold some water: by purchasing an IP license from SCO, Microsoft may think they're solidifying SCO's claims against Linux. I doubt that this would be more important to them than avoiding another lawsuit, but I'm sure the potential "benefits" of their actions have crossed their minds.
Caldera is not SCO, SCO is not Caldera. I've worked for both (now I work for neither). SCO is a different company with a different direction, different management, different employees, different products, different everything.
Saying SCO is Caldera is like saying Red Hat is the ACC Bookstore, or whatever it was called before the name was changed to Red Hat, Inc.
Perhaps Utah still sells overpriced CDs, but I think out of the last 10 CDs I've purchased maybe one of them has been under $10. Most are closer to $15.
Of all the things you listed as factors in commercially produced CDs, the only items you are not getting from Apple's store are physical materials and the cost of manufacturing. Add them up and you'll probably come up to about $1.25. Apple still has to pay for servers and bandwidth, marketing, accounting for the store, admin/maintenance, VISA/MC/AMEX/whatever charges, a percentage that goes back to each record label and/or artist, and probably lots of other charges that I can't think of at the moment.
I think this service is a good deal, especially for folks like me who are sick and tired of buying expensive CDs only to find out that two songs are good and the rest suck. I can buy exactly what I want and leave the tripe behind. Coming at it from that angle, this store is one of the best legal bargains on the market today.
I originally tried Netbeans but switched to Eclipse for a really lame reason: I think Eclipse looks less clogged. When running Netbeans I felt like too much was happening in one window, and I also felt like I needed a magnifying glass just to see all the buttons and such.
Since the switch, I have checked out a number of the plugins (there seem to be many more plugins for Eclipse than for Netbeans) and I must say I'm very impressed. Lomboz is way cool for building/deploying/running/debugging apps within Tomcat, DBEdit is great for dinking with SQL, XMLBuddy works well for XML editing, on and on... The Sunbow stuff for working with Cocoon needs help, and some plugins (Grand Rapid -- which gives you a web browser that you can use in a "view" -- immediately comes to mind) seem broken as hell, but still there's so much you can do with Eclipse you can waste days just exploring.
I'm sold... The pricetag is right too.
(Oh, one more complaint about Netbeans... On my Mac, I had to dink with all kinds of stuff just to get it installed, and even then things like code assist wouldn't work. Eclipse is self-contained; extract it into a directory and go. Gotta love that.)
I just nabbed this DVD from davidlynch.com not too long ago. Yep, it's $40. It's beautifully restored, though, and it sounds great (the one time I saw it before the DVD was from a beaten up VHS. What a difference...).
The "extras" consist of the original movie trailer and a very long interview with David where he tells basically the whole story behind the making of the movie. There are even "behind the scenes" video sequences taken from a really bad video camera (David looks like he's about 15. At one point he even peels a brain, I guess to get pieces to build "the baby". Nothing grosses that guy out). And the story behind the DVD menu cat (you'll know what I mean if you watch it) will probably make you gerb, or at least dry wretch a few times. I don't even want to think what his parents were like... The guy's a film god, though, so I'll forgive him for his eccentricities.
Anyway, I highly recommend it for anyone who loves David's movies. Definitely underappreciated, severely bizarre, and distinctively memorable.
(To the list, I'll add "Mulholland Drive" and one non-Lynch movie, "Scotland, PA". Both wild rides.)
I only read the top part of the patent application, but the "advertisement" stuff actually sounds more like a typical eBay auction page (complete with the ability to take bids) than a banner ad.
...and the ensuing flamewar that could potentially follow spam, if I'm reading the details of the patent correctly (don't just read the top portion of the document). What a hoot! I guess they're out to shave some change from the millions that go into spammers' pockets every year?
Perhaps... But when I plunked down a couple grand for my brand spankin' new iMac, I did so because I wanted to get away from that stuff. If I wanted a fast computer that ran KDE or GNOME, I would have stuck with my dual 1GHz PIII system with Linux on it.
Quite frankly, KDE, GNOME, and even Linux bore the hell out of me now (I started with Linux back in '91. It was fun back then. It's not fun anymore). I'm having a better time with this goofy iMac than I've had with any computer or OS in years. Why ruin it?
BSD code is BSD licensed. Anyone can take it, use it, even make proprietary products out of it. This is not only fair, it's encouraged. Why do you think Apple chose BSD over, say, Linux?
I think you're mixing up BSD licensing and GPL licensing. The two are definitely not the same. Apple is in violation of nothing, not even simple courtesy. If folks object to their BSD-licensed code being used in proprietary products, they should consider not using the BSD license.
(By the way, the base for their operating system is "Darwin". It's freely available for anyone who wants it: http://developer.apple.com/darwin)
As far as I know Monterey never came to fruition. Like most of the other 64bit projects from a few years back it seems to have been shelved. I would have to guess that the libraries would have been included in the Monterey deal if it actually became a real product. This is all just one big guess, of course.
As for enforcing IP rights... I don't know that SCO is enforcing _patents_. These are licensing fees for software they developed (and other people are selling, I might add). As they said in the article (you read it, right?), "SCO pays royalties on software, and we're asking companies/customers to do the same."
First off, SCO is asking for a fee for the use of a few old UNIX ABI libraries. Last time I checked, no Linux vendor (at a Red Hat level) shipped them. IBM does ship them, so IBM pays. If Red Hat decides to ship them, I'm sure Red Hat will pay. If SCO decides to waive the fee for its UnitedLinux partners, that's perfectly fine. Differing charges enable you to buy a Western Digital hard drive from one vendor for $50 less than another vendor. Don't argue; you benefit from this practice whether you want to believe it or not. If SCO wants to add an incentive to cozying up with UnitedLinux, more power to 'em.
(We'll forget about the fact that UnitedLinux based distros are extremely expensive already and don't need anything else to make them MORE expensive. Adding a SCO ABI library license fee to what you already have to pay for UnitedLinux distros does little more than make the system more expensive to buy.)
As for your second to the last comment, I have no earthly idea where you get that "Red Hat's Success" == "SCO Rapes Red Hat for License Fees". If Red Hat doesn't ship SCO's ABI libraries, exactly what do you think they're going to use to suck money out of Red Hat? The UNIX trademark? If you read the article (or knew any UNIX history) you'd know that Ray Noorda gave the UNIX trademark to the Open Group back when Novell owned UNIX. SCO doesn't own the trademark: they license it, as does everyone else who wants the word "UNIX" associated with their OS.
(Good grief, why do I bother responding to these posts?...)
I mean, is it really that vital to decrypt and reformat these files? What kinds of things are distributed in MS's proprietary format? Are they so special that this is an important contribution to the computing world?
I'm surrounded by folks who can't live without Windows either on their desktops or their PocketPCs. I can't think of any of them who have even mentioned MS Reader.
This may be yet another example of "because I can" engineering. It may be fun for the developer and it may make some anti-MS folks giggle a little, but I'm going to guess it'll be all but forgotten in a week.
Then, of course, we'll all be reminded of it (to the point of nausea) when MS tries to throw the developer in jail...
Here's my main dilemma with this whole program. Other than having some lawyer types on retainer, or on staff, or whatever; other than paying for a connection to the Internet (for all I know that's being sponsored by some large college, company, or other such organization); and other than authoring/maintaining some informative but kindergarten-complexity web pages (Savannah excluded), what exactly are the dollars paying for?
- The FSF doesn't pay for GNOME, or binutils, or the Linux kernel, or probably 99% of the code out there that's GPL'd.
- Having heard a lot more about EFF's legal efforts than those of the Digital Speech Project, I somehow doubt that legal fees are making too many FSF folks broke right now.
- Richard Stallman seems to be making lots of personal appearances at trade shows and such... But then again, unless I'm mistaken he's paid to do that by the folks who want him to make an appearance, not by the FSF.
- Do tapes of FSF code (you supply the tape, by the way) still cost somewhere around $200/each? Good God, that's about $500/hour for copying code to a tape!
Look, I'm sure the FSF does have expenses, and I'm not going to bemoan them for trying to raise cash. That's what non-profits do. However, before I give dime one to a non-profit I want to know EXACTLY what that money is for. Sorry, but I don't give to slush funds.
Learn from organizations like Linux Weekly News. When they went to a subscription model they offered details on how many folks are on staff, how many hours they're paid to work, what it costs to run the site, how many subscriptions it'll take just to break even, what their plans are for the future, etc. At the FSF, all I see is "hey, we have lots of cool stuff that's mostly done by volunteers and we've done wonders for the Free Software movement, so give us $120/year".
Sorry, but that just isn't enough. You want my money? Justify my contribution.
I'm starting to think the "???" part of their business plan is "beg for money". Clearly, charitable donations have become part of their business plan.
The little respect I had for them the first time they -- a friggin' for-profit BUSINESS -- begged for my money has completely dissipated. To me, MandrakeSoft has become nothing more than a corporate Linux gnat that won't leave me alone.
Take your coffee can and go beg somewhere else. Do it quickly before you give all legitimate Linux businesses a black eye.
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Linux distros have had YEARS to become viable desktops. Barring the lack of missing apps like Photoshop and Illustrator, the desktop experience itself could use some improvement on Linux.
To be fair, I place a good chunk of the blame on the renegade nature of PC hardware. OS-X doesn't have to support the entire fickle world of PCs so its easier to make it do what it needs to do.
A few examples of issues that still plague the Linux desktop experience:
- Printer setup. CUPS has potential, but I've fought with it enough times on both the client end and the server end to suspect that CUPS integration in Linux is spooky magic that nobody to date has mastered.
- Techie terminology. I know Linux/UNIX terminology and you know Linux/UNIX terminology. A whole helluva lot of good that's going to do for the executive admin who thinks a computer is a "Windows" and a hard drive is "memory" or "C drive".
- Driver support. No, this is not the same as hardware support. By driver support, I am refering to a scheme by which drivers can EASILLY be installed without patching, compiling, etc. I'm sure some distros have done work in this area.
This is one area where Macs have always excelled above and beyond any other system (OS + hardware) that I've used. Here's a recent example:
A few months ago I purchased an ancient, beaten up Epson Stylus Color 740 printer ($20). It didn't come with any driver disks. I brought it home, plugged it in (USB), turned it on, and tried to print a web page with the expectation that I'd be prompted for a driver. Needless to say I was surprised when the Print dialog appeared, and after clicking "Continue" (no extra configuration steps taken) the web page printed in full photo-quality color. I can't begin to imagine how much I would have had to do to get that far on a different OS, even Windows. I spent probably 20 seconds of time between turning it on and printing, most of which was spent waiting for the printer to stop initializing. ESC printer owners will know what I'm talking about...
Am I complaining? Nope, so don't say "you dislike this stuff so much? The source code is there, fix it!" I'm merely comparing different desktop experiences. Linux will always be a viable desktop offering IMHO, but sorry, I don't see it EVER equalling a Mac desktop experience, especially for a UNIX-based OS. The UNIX-ish stuff is hidden so well, I can use a Mac and never know or care that a flavor of BSD is running behind the scenes (I still spend a lot of time playing around in xterms, though, just because that's how I was raised). Linux desktops have their place, though.
1) I didn't hear of anyone "hugging" Darl. However, I wasn't there so it's possible it did happen.
2) Had you viewed the video posted on the protest site you would have seen that protesters were actually talking with folks stopped at stoplights, I assume answering questions. Perhaps you're confusing the Darl encounter with the protest at the busy intersection near I-15. I seriously doubt the two took place near each other.
3) I keep hearing stuff about the protesters not making their point. Exactly how would you propose they make this point more effectively? Clearly you know more about this than the rest of us do...
4) Define "visibly protesting".
5) Who are you to say that folks were there so grandma could see them on TV? Everyone that showed up for the protest felt strongly about the SCO lawsuit. Don't diminish their effort just because you're ticked off.
Actually, I think you're the one misunderstanding the point of a protest.
Let's face a simple fact right up front: SCO isn't going to kill a lawsuit because 50+ people picketted behind their building for 2 hours. I hope nobody has any confusion over this.
Protests are done to draw public attention to an opinion, be it for or against a certain issue. Judging by the actions of the protesters in Utah I have to say they understood perfectly well what they were doing. They notified the press before the protest, they picketted in back of SCO's building which just so happens to be the only side that fronts on a public road, and not long before 4:00pm the protesters LEFT THE AREA to go protest near the entrance/exit to I-15. If they were there to piss off SCO's upper management, they probably would have figured out a way to protest in front of the building where all the offices were (the front of the building faces a parking lot and is not visible from any public road. It would have been an intimate, easilly swept under the carpet show placed for a few SCO employees and that's it. Talk about a waste of time).
They made themselves and their opinions very visible in very public areas. In doing this, they made their protest successful. They got print coverage in a few local papers (Deseret News is actually fairly big in Utah), and rumor has it that a TV crew got some shots (I didn't see them arrive or leave, but I wasn't there the whole time).
The lawsuit seems to still be moving forward, but is that really a surprise?
If only Michael were around. He's good at telling us how to think.
Perhaps he's our Oracle? Michael, what do we do?
The stuff SCO is allegedly protecting is much more theoretical than a book or a music composition. To relate the SCO suit with a "you copied my work" lawsuit filed by an author or musician, SCO's actions would be the same as suing over someone's use of a Wang word processor to write a book, or the use of a guitar in a recorded song. Your examples describe something much more concrete and obvious and, in my view, much more justified as causes for lawsuits.
Take the lawsuit against George Harrison for using the music from "He's So Fine" in his song "My Sweet Lord". Good grief, the only thing different between the songs is the lyrics; the music, melody, etc. are almost identical. In that case, he deserved to be sued. What SCO's trying to protect is much less clear.
... don't you think it would be wise to NOT look at the "ancient UNIX source code"? I don't care if SCO used to give it away. They used to do lots of things differently. If it was safe to look at it would still be available through a sco.com machine.
For all the kudos folks are giving the guy who wrote the 2000 LinuxToday prophecy, it amazes me how few of you are heeding his warning.
Leave the sources alone. There's nothing you can find there that defendants of SCO's legal actions won't find themselves, and besides, reading code is boring. Go outside or something.
No jokin'... Why bother forming your own opinion about anything if Michael is around to tell you how to think? Thank God for Michael... Without him, we'd all be thinking for ourselves, and you KNOW that can't be a good thing.
How do I know that Microsoft didn't fare well the last time they were sued by Caldera?
(a) They settled, which in most circles means they didn't think continuing to fight was in the best interest of the company, and
(b) I used to work for Caldera.
No further info should be necessary (nor will I offer it).
Actually, the project became "Caldera Network Desktop" and was built on a (almost) stock Red Hat 2.1 distro. The most that I can think of that was tweaked in the OS was whatever the Netware client for Linux needed -- an "nkfs" kernel module, maybe some enhancements to the IPX support -- and perhaps some enhancements to the management utilities, RPM being one of them (yes, Caldera funded the early development of RPM).
I don't recall any of this coming from proprietary UNIX code, though, unless the Netware client was ported from the UNIX client sources (which is perfectly legal because Novell owned those sources and Caldera had a license from Novell to create a client for Linux). Red Hat was used mostly to launch the rest of the goodies like WordPerfect, ZMail, Xess, the Netware client, etc.
Of course, I started work there in 1996 so I could have missed a few details.
If I had to guess, I'd say most of the conspiracy theories that are posted here are nothing more than that: conspiracy theories.
Let's think a bit about Caldera's history and how it relates to Microsoft. When Caldera bought DR-DOS from Novell, it also bought an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft. This lawsuit ended with Microsoft settling for an undisclosed amount of money. Unless I'm mistaken, any and all dealings with any IP that Caldera ever owned (alleged or otherwise) would be high on Microsoft's do-not-touch list. MS has lots of money, but I'm sure they'd prefer to keep it rather than give it out in more settlements.
Fast forward to a few years back when Caldera purchased selected assets from SCO (engineers, IP, sales channel, etc.). Now, in addition to DOS stuff, Microsoft has to be careful about UNIX stuff. This comes at a time when Microsoft is desperately trying to make Windows more appealing to UNIX folks with their UNIX interoperability toolkit (as well as UNIX-ish internals to their OSes for all I know).
IBM is a big fish, but it's only one big fish out of a handful of other big fish. Microsoft -- who didn't fare well the last time they were sued by Caldera -- has probably weighed the benefits of of purchasing a UNIX IP license against the cost of a potential lawsuit and decided to get a license.
That said, there is one conspiracy theory that I've read here that I think may hold some water: by purchasing an IP license from SCO, Microsoft may think they're solidifying SCO's claims against Linux. I doubt that this would be more important to them than avoiding another lawsuit, but I'm sure the potential "benefits" of their actions have crossed their minds.
Caldera is not SCO, SCO is not Caldera. I've worked for both (now I work for neither). SCO is a different company with a different direction, different management, different employees, different products, different everything.
Saying SCO is Caldera is like saying Red Hat is the ACC Bookstore, or whatever it was called before the name was changed to Red Hat, Inc.
Perhaps Utah still sells overpriced CDs, but I think out of the last 10 CDs I've purchased maybe one of them has been under $10. Most are closer to $15.
Of all the things you listed as factors in commercially produced CDs, the only items you are not getting from Apple's store are physical materials and the cost of manufacturing. Add them up and you'll probably come up to about $1.25. Apple still has to pay for servers and bandwidth, marketing, accounting for the store, admin/maintenance, VISA/MC/AMEX/whatever charges, a percentage that goes back to each record label and/or artist, and probably lots of other charges that I can't think of at the moment.
I think this service is a good deal, especially for folks like me who are sick and tired of buying expensive CDs only to find out that two songs are good and the rest suck. I can buy exactly what I want and leave the tripe behind. Coming at it from that angle, this store is one of the best legal bargains on the market today.
I originally tried Netbeans but switched to Eclipse for a really lame reason: I think Eclipse looks less clogged. When running Netbeans I felt like too much was happening in one window, and I also felt like I needed a magnifying glass just to see all the buttons and such.
Since the switch, I have checked out a number of the plugins (there seem to be many more plugins for Eclipse than for Netbeans) and I must say I'm very impressed. Lomboz is way cool for building/deploying/running/debugging apps within Tomcat, DBEdit is great for dinking with SQL, XMLBuddy works well for XML editing, on and on... The Sunbow stuff for working with Cocoon needs help, and some plugins (Grand Rapid -- which gives you a web browser that you can use in a "view" -- immediately comes to mind) seem broken as hell, but still there's so much you can do with Eclipse you can waste days just exploring.
I'm sold... The pricetag is right too.
(Oh, one more complaint about Netbeans... On my Mac, I had to dink with all kinds of stuff just to get it installed, and even then things like code assist wouldn't work. Eclipse is self-contained; extract it into a directory and go. Gotta love that.)
Fantastic, a slashdotter with taste!
I just nabbed this DVD from davidlynch.com not too long ago. Yep, it's $40. It's beautifully restored, though, and it sounds great (the one time I saw it before the DVD was from a beaten up VHS. What a difference...).
The "extras" consist of the original movie trailer and a very long interview with David where he tells basically the whole story behind the making of the movie. There are even "behind the scenes" video sequences taken from a really bad video camera (David looks like he's about 15. At one point he even peels a brain, I guess to get pieces to build "the baby". Nothing grosses that guy out). And the story behind the DVD menu cat (you'll know what I mean if you watch it) will probably make you gerb, or at least dry wretch a few times. I don't even want to think what his parents were like... The guy's a film god, though, so I'll forgive him for his eccentricities.
Anyway, I highly recommend it for anyone who loves David's movies. Definitely underappreciated, severely bizarre, and distinctively memorable.
(To the list, I'll add "Mulholland Drive" and one non-Lynch movie, "Scotland, PA". Both wild rides.)
I only read the top part of the patent application, but the "advertisement" stuff actually sounds more like a typical eBay auction page (complete with the ability to take bids) than a banner ad.
I could be wrong.
...and the ensuing flamewar that could potentially follow spam, if I'm reading the details of the patent correctly (don't just read the top portion of the document). What a hoot! I guess they're out to shave some change from the millions that go into spammers' pockets every year?
Perhaps... But when I plunked down a couple grand for my brand spankin' new iMac, I did so because I wanted to get away from that stuff. If I wanted a fast computer that ran KDE or GNOME, I would have stuck with my dual 1GHz PIII system with Linux on it.
Quite frankly, KDE, GNOME, and even Linux bore the hell out of me now (I started with Linux back in '91. It was fun back then. It's not fun anymore). I'm having a better time with this goofy iMac than I've had with any computer or OS in years. Why ruin it?
Just my $0.02...
BSD code is BSD licensed. Anyone can take it, use it, even make proprietary products out of it. This is not only fair, it's encouraged. Why do you think Apple chose BSD over, say, Linux?
I think you're mixing up BSD licensing and GPL licensing. The two are definitely not the same. Apple is in violation of nothing, not even simple courtesy. If folks object to their BSD-licensed code being used in proprietary products, they should consider not using the BSD license.
(By the way, the base for their operating system is "Darwin". It's freely available for anyone who wants it: http://developer.apple.com/darwin)
As far as I know Monterey never came to fruition. Like most of the other 64bit projects from a few years back it seems to have been shelved. I would have to guess that the libraries would have been included in the Monterey deal if it actually became a real product. This is all just one big guess, of course.
As for enforcing IP rights... I don't know that SCO is enforcing _patents_. These are licensing fees for software they developed (and other people are selling, I might add). As they said in the article (you read it, right?), "SCO pays royalties on software, and we're asking companies/customers to do the same."
I think that's fair, don't you?
First off, SCO is asking for a fee for the use of a few old UNIX ABI libraries. Last time I checked, no Linux vendor (at a Red Hat level) shipped them. IBM does ship them, so IBM pays. If Red Hat decides to ship them, I'm sure Red Hat will pay. If SCO decides to waive the fee for its UnitedLinux partners, that's perfectly fine. Differing charges enable you to buy a Western Digital hard drive from one vendor for $50 less than another vendor. Don't argue; you benefit from this practice whether you want to believe it or not. If SCO wants to add an incentive to cozying up with UnitedLinux, more power to 'em.
(We'll forget about the fact that UnitedLinux based distros are extremely expensive already and don't need anything else to make them MORE expensive. Adding a SCO ABI library license fee to what you already have to pay for UnitedLinux distros does little more than make the system more expensive to buy.)
As for your second to the last comment, I have no earthly idea where you get that "Red Hat's Success" == "SCO Rapes Red Hat for License Fees". If Red Hat doesn't ship SCO's ABI libraries, exactly what do you think they're going to use to suck money out of Red Hat? The UNIX trademark? If you read the article (or knew any UNIX history) you'd know that Ray Noorda gave the UNIX trademark to the Open Group back when Novell owned UNIX. SCO doesn't own the trademark: they license it, as does everyone else who wants the word "UNIX" associated with their OS.
(Good grief, why do I bother responding to these posts?...)
Bzzzzzzzzzt! You're wrong.
SCO does not own the UNIX trademark. Ray Noorda (back when he ran things at Novell) gave the trademark to the Open Group.
So, unless the Open Group wants to sue folks for making claims to be something like UNIX, what you describe above isn't going to happen.
I mean, is it really that vital to decrypt and reformat these files? What kinds of things are distributed in MS's proprietary format? Are they so special that this is an important contribution to the computing world?
I'm surrounded by folks who can't live without Windows either on their desktops or their PocketPCs. I can't think of any of them who have even mentioned MS Reader.
This may be yet another example of "because I can" engineering. It may be fun for the developer and it may make some anti-MS folks giggle a little, but I'm going to guess it'll be all but forgotten in a week.
Then, of course, we'll all be reminded of it (to the point of nausea) when MS tries to throw the developer in jail...
India...
Here's my main dilemma with this whole program. Other than having some lawyer types on retainer, or on staff, or whatever; other than paying for a connection to the Internet (for all I know that's being sponsored by some large college, company, or other such organization); and other than authoring/maintaining some informative but kindergarten-complexity web pages (Savannah excluded), what exactly are the dollars paying for?
- The FSF doesn't pay for GNOME, or binutils, or the Linux kernel, or probably 99% of the code out there that's GPL'd.
- Having heard a lot more about EFF's legal efforts than those of the Digital Speech Project, I somehow doubt that legal fees are making too many FSF folks broke right now.
- Richard Stallman seems to be making lots of personal appearances at trade shows and such... But then again, unless I'm mistaken he's paid to do that by the folks who want him to make an appearance, not by the FSF.
- Do tapes of FSF code (you supply the tape, by the way) still cost somewhere around $200/each? Good God, that's about $500/hour for copying code to a tape!
Look, I'm sure the FSF does have expenses, and I'm not going to bemoan them for trying to raise cash. That's what non-profits do. However, before I give dime one to a non-profit I want to know EXACTLY what that money is for. Sorry, but I don't give to slush funds.
Learn from organizations like Linux Weekly News. When they went to a subscription model they offered details on how many folks are on staff, how many hours they're paid to work, what it costs to run the site, how many subscriptions it'll take just to break even, what their plans are for the future, etc. At the FSF, all I see is "hey, we have lots of cool stuff that's mostly done by volunteers and we've done wonders for the Free Software movement, so give us $120/year".
Sorry, but that just isn't enough. You want my money? Justify my contribution.
I'm starting to think the "???" part of their business plan is "beg for money". Clearly, charitable donations have become part of their business plan.
The little respect I had for them the first time they -- a friggin' for-profit BUSINESS -- begged for my money has completely dissipated. To me, MandrakeSoft has become nothing more than a corporate Linux gnat that won't leave me alone.
Take your coffee can and go beg somewhere else. Do it quickly before you give all legitimate Linux businesses a black eye.