Unfortunately, the FSF has no legal standing to bring suit because they are not the copyright holders. I hate to say it, but in this case the bully just chased XVID off the playground, and kept their ball. If the XVID guys won't stand up to the bullies, the bullies win.
This also means that you will have to emulate most advanced features yourself (which can DRASTICALLY complicate your project.)
It sounds to me like he's asking for a library that already does this advanced feature emulation: "I'm looking for a product that looks like DirectX, but for databases (DirectX emulates features in software if no hardware acceleration is present.)"
I'm hoping someone can recommend one, because it would simplify my life, too.
Where I've worked The Man believes that IT can always shrink but never needs to expand. Lay off 10% of the workforce, including IT, and surplus 10% of the computers. Hire back those "real workers" you laid off; buy 10% more computers for them, but don't hire any more IT people.
Oh, did I mention that they surplus the bottom 10% of the computers, so we have to re-assign machines during the layoffs? And when they hire again, they don't want the new workers to have the newest computers, so we have to re-assign again, with fewer IT staff, all without disrupting anyone's schedules?
Who do they think we are? If we were frick'n magicians we wouldn't work here, we'd be making the big bucks in Vegas with Penn and Teller!
This is nothing new. I've been in this busines for years, at several companies, and the question we have to answer to get funding always comes down to, "Who are you going to lay off to pay for this?" In Fortune 500 companies the general idea has been and always will be that if your pet IT project is going to save so damn much money, where's the savings? Literally, what jobs will this project eliminate? Because that's the only way to save money in Big Business (unless you can use IT to save raw materials, or electricity, or some other hard cash outlay). If you can improve productivity, great -- but the question is never, "How much more will our workforce produce?" It's always, "How many can we lay off and maintain current production?"
That's because there is no enforcement mechanism. For example, you are not required to give the telephone company your SSN, but by the same token they are not required to do business with you if you refuse to give them your SSN. They're free to ask, you're free to go elsewhere.
You're free to keep your privacy by remaining a hermit. You're not free to engage in society while remaining anonymous. If you don't like it, move. If you can find somewhere to move where you have the right to anonymity, let the rest of us know!
Hey, someone writing a book has to make these choices. If you don't like them, write your own book based on your preferences. You prefer php to perl? Then don't buy this book!
That's how it was at the last Unix shop I worked at. We were lucky to have one each of the various machines we had to support (IBM, HP, Sun, etc.), let alone three each. Here's how we did it:
I did alpha testing, and there was a script called "alpha" (others had similar scripts for their roles; I also used the "beta" script because I coordinated the beta tests). If I wanted to run program foo, I just typed "foo" (which, in turn, was just a script that ran the real foo, which might be fooC05). If I wanted to run the alpha version of foo (which might be fooC06) I typed "alpha foo" and alpha knew to look in the proper directory for the alpha version of the script foo, which in turn set up the environment as needed and called the appropriate foo executable. These scripts were all part of the source code and maintained with SCCS. We kept everything in SCCS, including my test scripts and test data files -- some of which had to be UU encoded to use SCCS, but it worked.
Personally, I trust last year's Cornell study -- which showed that ethanol production is an energy loss -- over this new USDA study. Why? Because Cornell is a neutral party, with nothing to gain either way, while the USDA is beholden to both the President (who wants a cheap fix for those pesky enviornmental rules, and ethanol offers his oil buddies just such a cheap fix) and the farmers, who absolutely love a new market for their crops. This is the fox talking, folks! When do we hear the hen's side of the story?
This is the same USDA that says we don't need labels on genetically modified food, too! Oh, yeah, I trust this study -- as far as I can flush it.
Even if M$ could take all of its employees off the Office, X-Box, and every other project, and put them to work on a new OS, it would be months before it could be released, and more months before there were any applications for it.
Microsoft isn't stupid. Even they know the best way to kill a project is to put too many people on it. The solution to your supposed problem (it's not as bad as everyone here hopes, and does not require Microsoft to write a new OS from scratch) would be to put together a cross-functional team to develop a new OS architecture, then spec the new APIs for that new OS. Then you bring in the Office guys, and have them write a version of Office for the new APIs, while you have the Windows guys (or whoever) write the new OS. But it'll never happen, because there's no need to do it.
a 5400rpm 80GB drive with 4 20GB platters will be slower than a 5400rpm drive with 1 80GB platter.
Really? I'd have thought that writing the data four times faster would more than make up the difference (they do write all eight heads at once, don't they?).
You support my postion! By my definition, you claim the backup is Easy As Pie ("Based on these 2 simple operations, you can easily restore to any given point in time"). Buy you also support my position that it's worthless (well, worth little), because you can only restore up to the point of the last "Nightly backup of archive logs". Anything after that is lost, as binaryDigit pointed out.
This gets to the heart of DB backups. What good are they? If your business is running 24/7 and you back up once a day, you could lose a day's work/(sales/etc.)! If that's OK, then why not let the OS do a backup of your mirrored server (you do run mirrored servers, right?) -- oh, but then isn't your mirrored server your backup? See my point? I don't get DB backups; either they're easy as pie because you do constant backups, or they're worthless.
Shakespeare's stuff is not free. You've got to spend around $500 for a computer and about $20/month for an ISP before you can download any of the dude's stuff. You can go to Barnes & Noble or Walden Books and ask if they'll give you a copy of one of his books, but I'll bet they'll want to charge you for it - not as much as the ISP wants, but still not free.
Why is it that I trust Nielsen when they say, "This software would be used only by Nielsen Media Research to retrieve data from sample households, and only with permission from the household, as is the case with all homes in our samples," but if this news came from TiVo I'd scream for help ripping the code out of my box?
i used to work at a bio research facility, and i can tell you right now the shit they spray on the plants that you eat is waaay worse than anything they're trying to put straight into the plant.
and if you think that 2 second rinse job you gave that fruit or veggie before you ate it cleared it all off, you're delusional.
I know that rinsing my fruits and veggies for 2 seconds won't wash off the pesticides, fertilizers, etc. However, you must still wash off GM foods, and no ammount of scrubbing GM foods will wash out the Bt or fix whatever "colateral" damage was done to the Frankenfood. No, I can't cite studies that show any colateral damage, because we both know that such studies have never been done; Monsanto and the others refuse to do them, and the FDA refuses to require them. What really scares me is the suspicion that Monsanto and the others have done the studies, but the results were not what they want the public to hear. Think about it -- if the news was good they'd shout it from the rooftops, right? So no news is bad news. I prefer to know what I'm eating, and it really pisses me off that the FDA refuse to require labeling laws that would inform me of the crap we're being force fed.
I was going to post a similar comment! You stole my subject!
Seriously, though, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Once you set a legal precident that every user must click-through and agree to the license agreement, then you're setting a precident that ignorance of the law is an excuse. Anyone could then claim they were "obviously" free to copy something if the copyright holder did not inform them of their license terms.
That, of course, is utter nonsense. The law used to require a simple copyright notice, period. That was sufficient to inform you that you may not copy the work, period. Now the copyright holder doesn't even need that. The law now says you must assume everything is copyrighted and you cannot copy it unless specifically told otherwise. It is in your interest to read any license that grants you rights beyond the legal default "none". Microsoft et.al. have established a precident here where they treat their customers like idiots who must be constantly reminded that copyright infringement is wrong; there's no reason for the Open Source community to join the madness.
Under those terms I can see a lot wrong with this proposal. How far will the nonsense go? Click-through on installation is one thing, click-through on use ("their assent is necessary to access the software") is something else entirely.
What would happen in this example: Let's say someone builds a web site using Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Let's say each of these require a click-through license agreement. Now, does only the site developer have to click through and agree to the licenses, or will each visitor to the web site have to agree to them all (including, presumably, a license for the web site itself)?
Says their terms of service, that's who: No servers. Period.
Videoconference, like they show on the commercials? What commercials? I've never seen an AT&T Broadband Internet commercial where they show a video conference. What market are you in? Here in Seattle they hardly run any commercials at all, certainly none that encourage violation of their terms of service. The ads here just talk in general terms about being faster than dialup.
And I can't help but wonder -- why is your wife uploading photos to Wal-Mart? Is she maintaining Wal-Mart web sites or something? Just likes the folks there and wants to share her vacation snapshots? What? I don't get it. Besides, when I email photos to my brother or whoever, I just hit the "send" button and go about my business -- I frankly don't notice how long it takes to upload the photos, because I use a multi-tasking operating system that lets me go do something else. Downloading, however, I notice, because I'm anxiously awaiting the completion of the download. Frankly, I'm amazed that the upload cap bothers you and yet the download cap doesn't.
First, you're not allowed to run a server, so the upstream cap should not be a problem. If you want to run a server, buy space on a server farm somewhere (I'm sure AT&T will take your business:-)
Second, I doubt you're the typical customer. The most I upload are occasional snapshots that I email to friends and family. I do not notice any upload limits, but when I grab the latest Red Hat ISO I sure notice the download cap!
Third, the terms of service are that you get what you pay for, although I suspect they intend these rates to be burst rate caps, not continuous use caps. In other words, if you download the occasional ISO file you're within their "typcial" model, but if you pull a steady 3 Mbps (video stream? whatever) you'll probably upset someone. If enough do it, they'll raise the rates or lower the limits, which is why they're doing both now.
Bottom line: Their business case was flawed. People used more than they expected, and if they upgraded the network they'd lose money, so they decided to downgrade the service instead. Can't or won't increase supply, so they limit demand.
Yeah, but I'm stuck using whatever my employer tells me to use. As it is, I have to go to the basement and bypass my firewall whenever I work from home (isolating the home network, so our personal PCs can't see the Internet), because the protocol they chose won't work with NAT. This also means my wife and I can't both work from home at the same time (her employer's VPN also won't work with NAT).
I had a solution to that with @Home: they gave me a static IP that I could "leak" through the firewall for work; I paid $5/month for a second (dynamic) IP for the home network to share. ATTBI only uses dynamic IPs, a decision that costs me a trip to the basement when I work from home, and that cost them $5/month because I have no further need for that second IP address. Their answer? They just raised our rates $5/month, so I'm now I'm getting one IP address for the price of two!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm hoping someone can recommend one, because it would simplify my life, too.
Oh, did I mention that they surplus the bottom 10% of the computers, so we have to re-assign machines during the layoffs? And when they hire again, they don't want the new workers to have the newest computers, so we have to re-assign again, with fewer IT staff, all without disrupting anyone's schedules?
Who do they think we are? If we were frick'n magicians we wouldn't work here, we'd be making the big bucks in Vegas with Penn and Teller!
You're free to keep your privacy by remaining a hermit. You're not free to engage in society while remaining anonymous. If you don't like it, move. If you can find somewhere to move where you have the right to anonymity, let the rest of us know!
Hey, someone writing a book has to make these choices. If you don't like them, write your own book based on your preferences. You prefer php to perl? Then don't buy this book!
I did alpha testing, and there was a script called "alpha" (others had similar scripts for their roles; I also used the "beta" script because I coordinated the beta tests). If I wanted to run program foo, I just typed "foo" (which, in turn, was just a script that ran the real foo, which might be fooC05). If I wanted to run the alpha version of foo (which might be fooC06) I typed "alpha foo" and alpha knew to look in the proper directory for the alpha version of the script foo, which in turn set up the environment as needed and called the appropriate foo executable. These scripts were all part of the source code and maintained with SCCS. We kept everything in SCCS, including my test scripts and test data files -- some of which had to be UU encoded to use SCCS, but it worked.
This is the same USDA that says we don't need labels on genetically modified food, too! Oh, yeah, I trust this study -- as far as I can flush it.
Some Windows apps are not secure. News at /.
You support my postion! By my definition, you claim the backup is Easy As Pie ("Based on these 2 simple operations, you can easily restore to any given point in time"). Buy you also support my position that it's worthless (well, worth little), because you can only restore up to the point of the last "Nightly backup of archive logs". Anything after that is lost, as binaryDigit pointed out.
This gets to the heart of DB backups. What good are they? If your business is running 24/7 and you back up once a day, you could lose a day's work/(sales/etc.)! If that's OK, then why not let the OS do a backup of your mirrored server (you do run mirrored servers, right?) -- oh, but then isn't your mirrored server your backup? See my point? I don't get DB backups; either they're easy as pie because you do constant backups, or they're worthless.
Seriously, though, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Once you set a legal precident that every user must click-through and agree to the license agreement, then you're setting a precident that ignorance of the law is an excuse. Anyone could then claim they were "obviously" free to copy something if the copyright holder did not inform them of their license terms.
That, of course, is utter nonsense. The law used to require a simple copyright notice, period. That was sufficient to inform you that you may not copy the work, period. Now the copyright holder doesn't even need that. The law now says you must assume everything is copyrighted and you cannot copy it unless specifically told otherwise. It is in your interest to read any license that grants you rights beyond the legal default "none". Microsoft et.al. have established a precident here where they treat their customers like idiots who must be constantly reminded that copyright infringement is wrong; there's no reason for the Open Source community to join the madness.
What would happen in this example: Let's say someone builds a web site using Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Let's say each of these require a click-through license agreement. Now, does only the site developer have to click through and agree to the licenses, or will each visitor to the web site have to agree to them all (including, presumably, a license for the web site itself)?
Videoconference, like they show on the commercials? What commercials? I've never seen an AT&T Broadband Internet commercial where they show a video conference. What market are you in? Here in Seattle they hardly run any commercials at all, certainly none that encourage violation of their terms of service. The ads here just talk in general terms about being faster than dialup.
And I can't help but wonder -- why is your wife uploading photos to Wal-Mart? Is she maintaining Wal-Mart web sites or something? Just likes the folks there and wants to share her vacation snapshots? What? I don't get it. Besides, when I email photos to my brother or whoever, I just hit the "send" button and go about my business -- I frankly don't notice how long it takes to upload the photos, because I use a multi-tasking operating system that lets me go do something else. Downloading, however, I notice, because I'm anxiously awaiting the completion of the download. Frankly, I'm amazed that the upload cap bothers you and yet the download cap doesn't.
Second, I doubt you're the typical customer. The most I upload are occasional snapshots that I email to friends and family. I do not notice any upload limits, but when I grab the latest Red Hat ISO I sure notice the download cap!
Third, the terms of service are that you get what you pay for, although I suspect they intend these rates to be burst rate caps, not continuous use caps. In other words, if you download the occasional ISO file you're within their "typcial" model, but if you pull a steady 3 Mbps (video stream? whatever) you'll probably upset someone. If enough do it, they'll raise the rates or lower the limits, which is why they're doing both now.
Bottom line: Their business case was flawed. People used more than they expected, and if they upgraded the network they'd lose money, so they decided to downgrade the service instead. Can't or won't increase supply, so they limit demand.
I had a solution to that with @Home: they gave me a static IP that I could "leak" through the firewall for work; I paid $5/month for a second (dynamic) IP for the home network to share. ATTBI only uses dynamic IPs, a decision that costs me a trip to the basement when I work from home, and that cost them $5/month because I have no further need for that second IP address. Their answer? They just raised our rates $5/month, so I'm now I'm getting one IP address for the price of two!