Now RIAA has finally gotten it, and focuses on eliminating the old and useless rule "innocent until proven guilty".
We all know that this is only a burden on modern society, and damaging to those that produce creative content.
So RIAA wants to approve every song available? Will I have to register with RIAA, and have them check that my music is indeed not copyrighted? As free (and legal) music may make people choose this music instead of buying CDs, what is to stop RIAA from just taking VERY long to approve free tracks, so that the only music being distributed is through their channels?
If they get this one, they might try to extend this opt-in system for ALL distribution of creative content.
Ooh.. happy, happy, joy, joy.
Actually. Why isn't it written in hex in the first place? Just because average Joe mostly uses decimal numbers, doesn't make hexadecimal any less of a number This leaves the fact that the ONLY thing that makes this decss, is gunzip'ing it. Which also means that as the number itself may not be illegal, and gunzip predates CSS by several years. Neither gunzip or the number may be illegal. Can the ACT of gunzipping it be illegal, knowing that the result is DeCSS? Can TELLING people that the number is DeCSS be illegal? It's not in my country anyway...
A certain entity known as "Microsoft" is making it a zero-sum game.
Why?
Because of Bill Gates "Windows on all computers"-vision, which Microsoft plays really aggressive on.
What good is a Linux server, if it cannot show the content that all the users of Microsoft Internet Explorer have become used to?
It IS possible for Microsoft to use their power in the desktop-arena to PUSH through to the server-side.
Why does it bother me? Because if they are successful, the applications for Linux both on the server and on the client side, will diminish, and it will lock me into ME ALSO using windows, if I want all the new stuff everybody else is using.
I agree that having a single "one size fits all" may not be the best solution, but right now it is our best bet. Show me ANY free OS that has come as far as Linux has today.
Of course, this is the choice of the distribution, I would personally like to see a distribution that totally breaks with the server side of things, and TOTALLY focus on the client.
It is probably the worst analogy I've seen.
If someone came into my house and started yelling loudly, and woke me up from my nap, I would be in my full right to shove the bastard outside.
It is _excactly_ the same here.
If someone is so rude as to talk loudly, or answer calls during a movie in MY movie theater, I would be right in throwing them out.
I could demand that people surrender cell-phones into my custody for their duration on MY property.
If they don't agree, then they cannot visit my property. Jamming cell-phones is just a more convinient way, both for the property-owner, and the visitors.
Of course, they should ADVERTISE that they jam cell-phones, so that people who really need to be available, can avoid visiting such places.
"The sort of person who installs an OS purely because of the games available for the platform is just the sort of person that Linux should be shunning now as it always has in the past."
This means that I should be shunned, as I keep Windows just to play games. I would like to be able to ditch it though.
Windows is a games-platform, but business users does NOT ignore it (though on servers, perhaps they should).
Image is all about marketing. Having games DOES NOT mean that Linux will be marketed solely as a "gaming platform". Businesses have heard about Linux, they know it is Unix-like. Unix is serious. This will not change just because there are some games available.
The only viable argument AGAINST games, would have to be that this would make the platform more widespread among newbies, and thus making virus-spreading easier.
Amiga was killed because of lousy marketing, and weak focus on the business-users.
I find it amusing that you use Amiga and Atari as PROOF, without even mentioning Windows and MacOS, which are both alive.
Why I appreciate apt-get as an excellent update tool two things strike me as odd with this article:
1. Everyone already know this
2. "Lets all standardise around MY choice".
He may very well be right about the superiority of apt-get, but this seems like an obvious flame to me.
Besides, apt-get != deb. apt-get is an excellent tool that was created for Debian packages, but it IS being ported to RPM.
I find it rather offensive, that someone would call me and my fellow students something like intellectually challenged.
If anything, IT-students in my country (Norway) are MORE intelligent than a lot of IT-workers, as quite a few IT-workers are uneducated and perform quite repetitive tasks.
If you actually were thinking about experience, then I apologize, and you are right.
Education is of course not always a sign of intelligence, but it is almost NEVER a sign of stupidity.
I'm also not saying that being uneducated is a sign of stupidity.
It isn't mentioned on the Livid-site (they mention support for dxr2, but not dxr3), but there IS an OMS-plugin for RealMagic Hollywood and Creative dxr3 -cards here.
Don't know why the OMS-site doesn't seem to know about it though.
X has support, that is why Gnome and KDE now have support.
The bravado is because for Gnome to have antialias, X needs to have support and Gtk+ needs to have support.
Support in X was finished just recently (in XFree86 4.0.2), and support in Gtk+ is now available (as stated in this article).
You COULD have Gtk+ do this on it's own, but it'll probably be software based and slow. Nautilus already does this the hard way, and that isn't excactly racing.
Simply for porting data, we have the Internet, and 8MB really isn't that much more than 1.44MB.
In addition it's more expensive.
Imagine however it being used as a key to control a laptop. The laptop not functioning AT ALL without it. It could store a pretty long key.
If you lost the key, you would just buy a new one, and download your key from your main computer into the the USB-module.
Simple, easy securing of Laptops.
... would be to look at the league system.
There is a finite amount of points available, and for someone to gain points, someone else has to drop them.
Soccer, in the european stage, is even worse in this respect.
This is because matches ending in a draw, actually makes BOTH loose.
This is because it is 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw.
The reasons are obvious for anyone having watched soccer. It is to prevent teams from playing very defensively to secure a draw.
However. Both these sports are positive sum on another level, because they create entertainment and income for lots of parties.. not only for the successful ones.
I'm sorry, but you can already write GTK+ programs in object oriented languages. There are bindings for c++, Python and even for Java now.
And slow? Gnome using a proper theme engine instead of Pixmap, is pretty snappy, and it definitely not worth using sentences like "Lord good gravy gnome is slow" over.
While the "Drag and Drop" argument might be valid (not all Gnome applications are created with enough concern over D&D), the rest of this comment is a troll. It does not deserve "insightful".
When writing notes in math/physics classes at the University, writing by hand is _much_ faster than using a keyboard, because writing formulas is next to impossible to do quickly on a laptop.
I would welcome this, as it would make it possible to create a more professional report afterwards, without typing things twice.
As I posted my last response, something dawned on me.
The important question is not "who will switch?", but "who will start?".
The reason is that _existing_ users will always be a finite amount (and a small one at that), which is for obvious reasons decreasing (age, death, etc).
Will anyone start using LinuxPPC with their shiny new PowerMac with OSX?
Not many I suspect. There are frankly _less_ reasons to start using LinuxPPC now than before, because of the added power and functionality in MacOSX.
Linux is probably still more Unixlike than MacOSX in it's core and a more natural environment for Gnome/KDE than MacOSX, and this might be the saviour. A lot of platforms will start shipping Gnome as default interface, and Gnome-desktop along with PowerPC-hardware does at least in theory sound nice. But is Darwin a better choice for a X/Gnome -platform?
Most people who want to run Linux, buys x86-hardware because of the price and availability.
This roughly means the LinuxPPC caters for two groups of people:
1. The ones that had a PowerPC, and got tired of MacOS.
2. People who really like PowerPC-hardware and wants to run Linux.
Of the two, I suspect 1. is the largest, because LinuxPPC from what I've heard is a lot less mature than x86-Linux.
I don't think most people in group 2. will switch, because they actually got a Mac to run Linux on it in the first place.
Most of group 1 will switch I think, because of the much increased power behind MacOSX.
However a lot of people really dislike Aqua, and for them there probably isn't _any_ big reasons to switch.
First; Loki does not create their own games, they port them, and thus are not able to GPL them, even if they wanted to.
But GPL-gaming is an interesting subject:
While the GPL works good for applications, games are of a totally different nature.
Sure, some good GPL-games exists, but no opensource project could _possibly_ afford all the work that goes into most top-10 games.
One of the reasons is that a game, unlike an application normally has a very short lifespan. Once you've finished it, theres not much more to it, and thus interest fades.
Games need to sell A LOT on a short period for it to be successful, and getting revenue from support or services is not that much of an option.
That said, there might be exceptions:
1. Multiplayer games may have a long enough lifespan for it to work, and if they use an existing game-engine, it might be feasible.
2. For a massive online-game, it may be possible that the service of being connected may provide enough revenue. But of course, nothing is stopping others from creating lots of competing online-games.
The possibility IMHO exists in reusing GPL'd game-engines. A lot of work in the corporate world seems wasted because most games are written from scratch.
I'm sorry, but clock-rating is not everything when it comes to CPUs, and the G4's are very fast clock for clock compared to Intel CPUs, and the P4 is the opposite, sacrificing performance per clock for a high clockspeed.
It doesn't mean that the P4 is bad compared to the G4, it just means that you can't compare them by looking at the MHz/GHz-rating.
They have taken different routes to high performance, but people seem to automatically assume that higher MHz == higher speed. It is often speculated that _this_ is the reason for Intels sacrifice on the Pentium 4 (something I find rather believable).
The problem with the system in the US is that it requires that everyone pay for their own service, using either cash, or a personally or company-paid insurance policy.
What if you are unemployed, and do not have the money to pay for an ensurance policy?
In most of the EU (and EØS), the goverment pays for the service. Some countries have privately owned hostitals, with the goverment paying for the service. The individual can choose a hospital, and the ones that provide the best service, gets the patients and thus the money.
This is a system that I would feel is the best possible. You always have the option of having your own insurance policy on the side.
As I normally recommend one of the RPM-based distributions for newbies, I will base this on them:
1. The distros generally ship a GUI package-manager: Yast, Gnorpm, RPMdrake or Kpackage (or others). Most of these let you install packages from another server as well. Packages can be installed by command-line ("rpm -Uvh package.rpm"), or by using a filemanager. The rpm-packages is mostly associated with a package-manager, which lets you start one by double-clicking on a package.
2. The runlevel-folders and rc.local. The normal GUI-runlevel is 5 (for Red Hat and Mandrake at least). For a full and nice-looking init, put a symlink to a startup-script under/etc/rcX.d or/etc/rc.d/rcX.d (where X is your runlevel).
If you just want to start something, and don't have a fancy startup-script or doesn't know how to create one, just put it in/etc/rc.local or/etc/rc.d/rc.local
Look at the way the symlinks in the runleveldirs are named. S75httpd means that the webserver (apache) starts later than S10network (A K in front means kill, S means start).
3. Most distros ship a program for this, easily found under your system-menu. Either Red Hat dialup, Kppp, MandrakeConf.
4. Mandrake has a nice GUI-program called HardDrake. Don't know if Red Hat has this, but it should be possible to install for other distros.
Cannot answer for SuSE or Caldera, but under Red Hat, you're mostly on your own. Look at tools like scanpci, insmod, modprobe, the file "/etc/modules.conf" etc...
5. If installed it normally has configuration under/etc/httpd/conf/*. I don't know of any good GUI-tools. It can be started by symlinking (explore the command "ln", ex. "ln -s") the startupscript/etc/init.d/httpd to the relevant runlevel-directory.
As long as 2.4 is not released, it is an achknowledgement from Linus that it isn't quite ready for prime time.
Although it is available, it is quite like a beta test for users.
When 2.4 is released this will change, but we will have to put up with someone calling it vapourware.
All the people here seem to respond to the "remote GUI login" with the fact that Windows 2000 terminal server has it.
What about Unix and Linux?
As far as I know neither is dead, there are even plenty of companies and people around trying to achieve "Total World Domination" for Linux;-).
Besides, an operating system achieving something 20 years after another is sort of like the comment the author of the article had about "preemptive multitasking".
1. BeOS and Linux made more compatible and make them able to run each others binaries.
2. The focus of Linuxdevelopment is moved to serverapplications, while BeOS takes over as the GNU desktop-OS. Also try to move them towards a common Windowing-system, common tools etc.
Market the two as two sides of the same thing. GNU/Be (Try to pronounce it), the desktopOS and GNU/Linux the serverOS.
Kind of like Win98 vs. WinNT, only both much more stable.
I do believe in Linux as a desktop-OS, but we don't have the best foundation available.
Now.. BeOS will not be GPL'd anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Now RIAA has finally gotten it, and focuses on eliminating the old and useless rule "innocent until proven guilty". We all know that this is only a burden on modern society, and damaging to those that produce creative content. So RIAA wants to approve every song available? Will I have to register with RIAA, and have them check that my music is indeed not copyrighted? As free (and legal) music may make people choose this music instead of buying CDs, what is to stop RIAA from just taking VERY long to approve free tracks, so that the only music being distributed is through their channels? If they get this one, they might try to extend this opt-in system for ALL distribution of creative content. Ooh.. happy, happy, joy, joy.
Actually. Why isn't it written in hex in the first place? Just because average Joe mostly uses decimal numbers, doesn't make hexadecimal any less of a number This leaves the fact that the ONLY thing that makes this decss, is gunzip'ing it. Which also means that as the number itself may not be illegal, and gunzip predates CSS by several years. Neither gunzip or the number may be illegal. Can the ACT of gunzipping it be illegal, knowing that the result is DeCSS? Can TELLING people that the number is DeCSS be illegal? It's not in my country anyway...
A certain entity known as "Microsoft" is making it a zero-sum game.
Why?
Because of Bill Gates "Windows on all computers"-vision, which Microsoft plays really aggressive on.
What good is a Linux server, if it cannot show the content that all the users of Microsoft Internet Explorer have become used to?
It IS possible for Microsoft to use their power in the desktop-arena to PUSH through to the server-side.
Why does it bother me? Because if they are successful, the applications for Linux both on the server and on the client side, will diminish, and it will lock me into ME ALSO using windows, if I want all the new stuff everybody else is using.
I agree that having a single "one size fits all" may not be the best solution, but right now it is our best bet. Show me ANY free OS that has come as far as Linux has today.
Of course, this is the choice of the distribution, I would personally like to see a distribution that totally breaks with the server side of things, and TOTALLY focus on the client.
Gaute
It is probably the worst analogy I've seen.
If someone came into my house and started yelling loudly, and woke me up from my nap, I would be in my full right to shove the bastard outside.
It is _excactly_ the same here.
If someone is so rude as to talk loudly, or answer calls during a movie in MY movie theater, I would be right in throwing them out.
I could demand that people surrender cell-phones into my custody for their duration on MY property.
If they don't agree, then they cannot visit my property. Jamming cell-phones is just a more convinient way, both for the property-owner, and the visitors.
Of course, they should ADVERTISE that they jam cell-phones, so that people who really need to be available, can avoid visiting such places.
.. that don't understand the ".. are belong to us"-stuff.
Where is it from?
"The sort of person who installs an OS purely because of the games available for the platform is just the sort of person that Linux should be shunning now as it always has in the past."
This means that I should be shunned, as I keep Windows just to play games. I would like to be able to ditch it though.
Windows is a games-platform, but business users does NOT ignore it (though on servers, perhaps they should).
Image is all about marketing. Having games DOES NOT mean that Linux will be marketed solely as a "gaming platform". Businesses have heard about Linux, they know it is Unix-like. Unix is serious. This will not change just because there are some games available.
The only viable argument AGAINST games, would have to be that this would make the platform more widespread among newbies, and thus making virus-spreading easier.
Amiga was killed because of lousy marketing, and weak focus on the business-users.
I find it amusing that you use Amiga and Atari as PROOF, without even mentioning Windows and MacOS, which are both alive.
Why I appreciate apt-get as an excellent update tool two things strike me as odd with this article:
1. Everyone already know this
2. "Lets all standardise around MY choice".
He may very well be right about the superiority of apt-get, but this seems like an obvious flame to me.
Besides, apt-get != deb. apt-get is an excellent tool that was created for Debian packages, but it IS being ported to RPM.
I find it rather offensive, that someone would call me and my fellow students something like intellectually challenged.
If anything, IT-students in my country (Norway) are MORE intelligent than a lot of IT-workers, as quite a few IT-workers are uneducated and perform quite repetitive tasks.
If you actually were thinking about experience, then I apologize, and you are right.
Education is of course not always a sign of intelligence, but it is almost NEVER a sign of stupidity.
I'm also not saying that being uneducated is a sign of stupidity.
It isn't mentioned on the Livid-site (they mention support for dxr2, but not dxr3), but there IS an OMS-plugin for RealMagic Hollywood and Creative dxr3 -cards here. Don't know why the OMS-site doesn't seem to know about it though.
X has support, that is why Gnome and KDE now have support.
The bravado is because for Gnome to have antialias, X needs to have support and Gtk+ needs to have support.
Support in X was finished just recently (in XFree86 4.0.2), and support in Gtk+ is now available (as stated in this article).
You COULD have Gtk+ do this on it's own, but it'll probably be software based and slow. Nautilus already does this the hard way, and that isn't excactly racing.
Simply for porting data, we have the Internet, and 8MB really isn't that much more than 1.44MB.
In addition it's more expensive.
Imagine however it being used as a key to control a laptop. The laptop not functioning AT ALL without it. It could store a pretty long key.
If you lost the key, you would just buy a new one, and download your key from your main computer into the the USB-module.
Simple, easy securing of Laptops.
Not perfect, but probably good enough.
... would be to look at the league system.
There is a finite amount of points available, and for someone to gain points, someone else has to drop them.
Soccer, in the european stage, is even worse in this respect.
This is because matches ending in a draw, actually makes BOTH loose.
This is because it is 3 points for a win and 1 for a draw.
The reasons are obvious for anyone having watched soccer. It is to prevent teams from playing very defensively to secure a draw.
However. Both these sports are positive sum on another level, because they create entertainment and income for lots of parties.. not only for the successful ones.
I'm sorry, but you can already write GTK+ programs in object oriented languages. There are bindings for c++, Python and even for Java now.
And slow? Gnome using a proper theme engine instead of Pixmap, is pretty snappy, and it definitely not worth using sentences like "Lord good gravy gnome is slow" over.
While the "Drag and Drop" argument might be valid (not all Gnome applications are created with enough concern over D&D), the rest of this comment is a troll. It does not deserve "insightful".
When writing notes in math/physics classes at the University, writing by hand is _much_ faster than using a keyboard, because writing formulas is next to impossible to do quickly on a laptop.
I would welcome this, as it would make it possible to create a more professional report afterwards, without typing things twice.
As I posted my last response, something dawned on me.
The important question is not "who will switch?", but "who will start?".
The reason is that _existing_ users will always be a finite amount (and a small one at that), which is for obvious reasons decreasing (age, death, etc).
Will anyone start using LinuxPPC with their shiny new PowerMac with OSX?
Not many I suspect. There are frankly _less_ reasons to start using LinuxPPC now than before, because of the added power and functionality in MacOSX.
Linux is probably still more Unixlike than MacOSX in it's core and a more natural environment for Gnome/KDE than MacOSX, and this might be the saviour. A lot of platforms will start shipping Gnome as default interface, and Gnome-desktop along with PowerPC-hardware does at least in theory sound nice. But is Darwin a better choice for a X/Gnome -platform?
Most people who want to run Linux, buys x86-hardware because of the price and availability.
This roughly means the LinuxPPC caters for two groups of people:
1. The ones that had a PowerPC, and got tired of MacOS.
2. People who really like PowerPC-hardware and wants to run Linux.
Of the two, I suspect 1. is the largest, because LinuxPPC from what I've heard is a lot less mature than x86-Linux.
I don't think most people in group 2. will switch, because they actually got a Mac to run Linux on it in the first place.
Most of group 1 will switch I think, because of the much increased power behind MacOSX.
However a lot of people really dislike Aqua, and for them there probably isn't _any_ big reasons to switch.
First; Loki does not create their own games, they port them, and thus are not able to GPL them, even if they wanted to.
But GPL-gaming is an interesting subject:
While the GPL works good for applications, games are of a totally different nature.
Sure, some good GPL-games exists, but no opensource project could _possibly_ afford all the work that goes into most top-10 games.
One of the reasons is that a game, unlike an application normally has a very short lifespan. Once you've finished it, theres not much more to it, and thus interest fades.
Games need to sell A LOT on a short period for it to be successful, and getting revenue from support or services is not that much of an option.
That said, there might be exceptions:
1. Multiplayer games may have a long enough lifespan for it to work, and if they use an existing game-engine, it might be feasible.
2. For a massive online-game, it may be possible that the service of being connected may provide enough revenue. But of course, nothing is stopping others from creating lots of competing online-games.
The possibility IMHO exists in reusing GPL'd game-engines. A lot of work in the corporate world seems wasted because most games are written from scratch.
Newbies like it, and if it is possible to turn it off, then why not?
I'm sorry, but clock-rating is not everything when it comes to CPUs, and the G4's are very fast clock for clock compared to Intel CPUs, and the P4 is the opposite, sacrificing performance per clock for a high clockspeed.
It doesn't mean that the P4 is bad compared to the G4, it just means that you can't compare them by looking at the MHz/GHz-rating.
They have taken different routes to high performance, but people seem to automatically assume that higher MHz == higher speed. It is often speculated that _this_ is the reason for Intels sacrifice on the Pentium 4 (something I find rather believable).
The problem with the system in the US is that it requires that everyone pay for their own service, using either cash, or a personally or company-paid insurance policy.
What if you are unemployed, and do not have the money to pay for an ensurance policy?
In most of the EU (and EØS), the goverment pays for the service. Some countries have privately owned hostitals, with the goverment paying for the service. The individual can choose a hospital, and the ones that provide the best service, gets the patients and thus the money.
This is a system that I would feel is the best possible. You always have the option of having your own insurance policy on the side.
Gaute
As I normally recommend one of the RPM-based distributions for newbies, I will base this on them:
/etc/rcX.d or /etc/rc.d/rcX.d (where X is your runlevel).
/etc/rc.local or /etc/rc.d/rc.local
/etc/httpd/conf/*. I don't know of any good GUI-tools. It can be started by symlinking (explore the command "ln", ex. "ln -s") the startupscript /etc/init.d/httpd to the relevant runlevel-directory.
1. The distros generally ship a GUI package-manager: Yast, Gnorpm, RPMdrake or Kpackage (or others). Most of these let you install packages from another server as well. Packages can be installed by command-line ("rpm -Uvh package.rpm"), or by using a filemanager. The rpm-packages is mostly associated with a package-manager, which lets you start one by double-clicking on a package.
2. The runlevel-folders and rc.local. The normal GUI-runlevel is 5 (for Red Hat and Mandrake at least). For a full and nice-looking init, put a symlink to a startup-script under
If you just want to start something, and don't have a fancy startup-script or doesn't know how to create one, just put it in
Look at the way the symlinks in the runleveldirs are named. S75httpd means that the webserver (apache) starts later than S10network (A K in front means kill, S means start).
3. Most distros ship a program for this, easily found under your system-menu. Either Red Hat dialup, Kppp, MandrakeConf.
4. Mandrake has a nice GUI-program called HardDrake. Don't know if Red Hat has this, but it should be possible to install for other distros.
Cannot answer for SuSE or Caldera, but under Red Hat, you're mostly on your own. Look at tools like scanpci, insmod, modprobe, the file "/etc/modules.conf" etc...
5. If installed it normally has configuration under
As long as 2.4 is not released, it is an achknowledgement from Linus that it isn't quite ready for prime time.
Although it is available, it is quite like a beta test for users.
When 2.4 is released this will change, but we will have to put up with someone calling it vapourware.
All the people here seem to respond to the "remote GUI login" with the fact that Windows 2000 terminal server has it. ;-).
What about Unix and Linux?
As far as I know neither is dead, there are even plenty of companies and people around trying to achieve "Total World Domination" for Linux
Besides, an operating system achieving something 20 years after another is sort of like the comment the author of the article had about "preemptive multitasking".
1. BeOS and Linux made more compatible and make them able to run each others binaries.
2. The focus of Linuxdevelopment is moved to serverapplications, while BeOS takes over as the GNU desktop-OS. Also try to move them towards a common Windowing-system, common tools etc.
Market the two as two sides of the same thing. GNU/Be (Try to pronounce it), the desktopOS and GNU/Linux the serverOS.
Kind of like Win98 vs. WinNT, only both much more stable.
I do believe in Linux as a desktop-OS, but we don't have the best foundation available.
Now.. BeOS will not be GPL'd anytime soon.
penguins live in the Antarctic, and this was the Arctic. North vs South pole.