Actually almost all "touch screens" is a
monitor with a touch sensitive panel added after
production. And it's the touch sensitive panel
that is prohibitively expensive compared to a
keyboard.
I actually spent a lot of time last year
working on the specs for the Freepad, and
one of the hardest tasks we faced was finding a cheap touch sensitive panel and cheap LCD screens -
finding cheap supplies of the other components was
trivial in comparison.
I think the question is "what money?". Do you have
any indication as to how much the Brazilian government is spending on it? Are you sure they
are spending anything at all? After all the device
is being sold, not given away. And it's quite possible that it would actually break even given
the cost and the extremely limited specs.
Well, it would have been a better start if you
paid attention during geography lessons. Especially
when covering what languages are spoken... Brazils
official language is Portuguese, not Spanish.
What money? Do you have any numbers on what this
would cost the government? As far as I understood
the governments costs here is the development of
the reference platform, and maybe some incentives
to get a manufacturer to sign up.
If you want to make it cheaper, then adding a
touch panel to replace the keyboard is certainly
not a good idea... Do you have any idea of the
cost of a decent touch panel? Especially if you
want one durable enough to use near a public phone,
as you suggested...
Exactly. This is what needs to be addressed in McCain's campaign finance reform bill. I applaud the Libertarian and Constitution parties for their stand on not accepting matching funds. The gov't is forcing all of us to finance the promotion of ideals we don't agree with, and that's wrong.
I must disagree with you. Taxpayer funding of a wide range of parties is important to secure the
diversity in politics. So much so, that if anything, I'd prefer the political parties to
be government funded, and donations to the
parties outside a small membership due, outlawed.
What you see in countries like the US, and UK, is
that the large parties get a hegemony because they
get almost all the public exposure, and because
they are the ones with an apparatus big enough to
secure solid campaign funding, and most government
funding is based to heavily on their election
numbers.
To further promote diversity, I'd like to see a
government funding scheme for parties that give
the smaller parties significantly more per member
or vote than the larger parties. Of course, if as
a result of that the smaller parties get hugely
successfuly, then their funding per member or
vote would drop as a result.
Hopefully that would mean that the ideologies
and policies of the parties would start accounting
for more than their fundraising skills and their
current economic foundation.
They will be likely to do that only as long as
their Linux customer base is smaller.
How many applications intended for the Windows
NT market is written to the Posix API, for instance? Even though that would make it trivial
to port to Unix/Linux/BSD etc.?
Practically none. Because the native APIs are better supported, and give the look and feel and functionality that your users expect.
I think it's much more likely that as Wine progresses, it will help people switch to Linux.
And as people switch because Wine lets them use
their favorite games or applications, they'll also
start buying native applications now and then.
And they'll see the difference. And they'll either
vote with their money, or start asking support
why app X doesn't support function Y when they're
running it under Linux.
If enough people switch, eventually companies will
start hearing the word "Linux" from enough customers.
How many games have you seen install their own
version of libc?
I've seen none.
As for the applications offered, Wine is changing
that rapidly. And if you're using Wine, recovery
of whatever Windows setup you choose to do can
easily be reduced to a simple script using rm
and cp to clean it out and install a new copy
from another directory.
It's not a "bribe us to release our new source"
model, it's a "if you help us pay our rent, so
we can write open source code, you get to be
part of the decision about what we write" model.
I imagine they'll have enough of a problem getting
decent salaries out of it themselves.
If they somehow get rich out of it it would be nice
if they contributed some money to the rest of the
Wine developers, but keep in mind that they are already contributing code which you'll get access
to whether or not you are among the contributors.
The thing is, a lot of people aren't getting away
from Windows as long as their favorite apps, or
apps they have to use at work, doesn't run under
Linux. With Wine, many of them do, and people who
would otherwise be stuck with Windows can get rid
of it.
Whether that's true or not, the other restrictions
listed for it is still restrictions far beyond
what is normally given with copyright, so Lessigs
point still stands.
At least in Mozilla all you have to do is to
press control '-' to reduce font size (and similarly control '+' to increase it again).
The nightlies are really coming along great now
too...
Re:Oh for the love of....
on
Freshmeat II
·
· Score: 1
Do you read their features? They all center around
Freshmeats common theme: Software.
I rarely read them myself, but it doesn't bother
me to see them linked. In fact I'd like to see
more articles specifically about software and
software development linked from Freshmeat. Perhaps
add a new category for them.
And IIRC, one of the new things with the new Freshmeat design is that if you register you're able to filter what's shown on the front page in
much the same way as with Slashdot, so it shouldn't
hinder those who aren't interested.
Re:Yay, even more pre-pre-pre-alpha software!
on
Freshmeat II
·
· Score: 1
But it's still not following ANSI-C. You've omitted
the return type and argument specification, and
forgotten to return a value from a non-void function...:-)
If you're going to indicate that Linux software
is crash-prone it sorts of doesn't look good to
write crappy code that anyone can find flaws in...
It's trivial to create and maintain an index file
for the IMAP/POP3 servers. My company, Nameplanet,
does that, and we handle more than a million users
with maildir. It's true that straight maildir without caching can be heavy for IMAP, or for POP3
clients that downloads message headers first.
What we did was that we maintain a cache that is
updated each time the IMAP servers enters a folder
and finds new messages, or status flags changes.
This is trivial to implement, as you just needs to
read whatever is in the new/ directory in a folder,
and it gave us a tenfold increase of speed for some
operations, while maintaining the simplicity and
security of maildir (if the cache file is deleted, it's simply recreated the next time the user logs in, so we don't need to care about it).
That Lucent have invested in them doesn't say
much. Lucent are investing in, and/or signing
partnerships with lots of bleeding edge technology
companies which may or may not pay out, but where
the payoff if the manage to reach the storage goals set will be too large to be ignored.
Linux does follow the "release early, release often". The whole point is that you release
your development work too, not just the "stable"
versions. In this case, the entire 2.3.* series
is there only for the purpose of letting people
follow the development closely.
And no, there's no conflict between release early,
release often, and "It's ready when it's ready".
Actually, Linux is a good example here: Development
snapshots are released often through the entire
process, and even during the stable series, patches
are published, and Alan Cox even put together his
"ac" patches. New versions are released often.
On the other hand, there's no strict timetable for
when to officially designate a release "stable".
Linus tried doing that with 2.4 - indicating that
he wanted a short release cycle. Instead it indeed
ended up being a case of "it's ready when it's ready": 2.4 got delayed by months because Linus
and others wanted to make sure that it actually
worked well, instead of sticking to the indicated
schedule.
Huh? Can you point us at where the "linux community as a whole" critize MS for putting out regular
patches and upgrades?
If anything, what I've seen most of is that they
are critizised for being too slow to issue
patches and upgrades, and also for releasing products that are claimed to be stable even when
theres tons of outstanding bugs.
And 2.3 got up a lot higher than 12 or 13, but 2.3
is a development kernel - it's was not intended
for normal use - all Linux releases 2.x.y with
odd "x" are development kernels.
Even though I despise Windows, I'd be happy if MS
did follow Linux' model and released patches more
often, and didn't try to take their customers
money for buggy crap while claiming it to be a
"stable" version.
It's getting quite annoying with trolls like you
who try to present the "hypocrisy" of the linux
community, while presenting opinions that are by
no means prevalent as if they were the opinions
of the whole community.
For the same reasons it's considered bad practice to use crypto that hasn't been publicly scrutinized: Security through obscurity
doesn't work. If your software is insecure, someone
will find it.
The question is: Will it be found by someone willing to tell you about it, or someone who wants
to exploit it.
If you don't allow the public to scrutinize your
system, the likelyhood is that the only people
looking at it will be your overworked little
development team, and a horde of crackers that
don't care that they aren't allowed to "test" your
system.
Whether it's safe or not to use open source software for critical stuff depends a lot more on
how you do it.
First of all, you shouldn't release a banking
system and run on the same version of the code until you've let a lot of people look at it.
Second, firewalls are good. Knowledgable sys.admins that actually keep an eye both on the system, and
the buzz in the hacker community, a huge plus.
Conclusion? If your security is crappy anyway, you
certainly run added risks with open source, but if
you manage your security well (actually bother
to protect the perimiter to your system, and don't
run untested software for critical tasks), you'll
gain from having good guys looking at your code too, not just bad guys hammering on your system
until they accidentally find something (and they
will).
"That whole BIND thing" was discovered because the
source is there for anyone to see. Would you
rather that only crackers with nothing better to
do than disassembling and reverse engineering the
code should be the only one that has the time to
look for, and find, the security holes?
Tim Berners-Lee didn't write any "original proposal" for the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee is
the man behind the web, not the net.
The internet had been around for more than 20
years when he invented the web, and had it's
first connections outside the US for 18-19 years (UK and Norway were connected in 1973 if I remember correctly).
Slashdot Mirror
I actually spent a lot of time last year working on the specs for the Freepad, and one of the hardest tasks we faced was finding a cheap touch sensitive panel and cheap LCD screens - finding cheap supplies of the other components was trivial in comparison.
I think the question is "what money?". Do you have any indication as to how much the Brazilian government is spending on it? Are you sure they are spending anything at all? After all the device is being sold, not given away. And it's quite possible that it would actually break even given the cost and the extremely limited specs.
Read it again. An AMD K6-2 is old technology these days... :-)
Well, it would have been a better start if you paid attention during geography lessons. Especially when covering what languages are spoken... Brazils official language is Portuguese, not Spanish.
What money? Do you have any numbers on what this would cost the government? As far as I understood the governments costs here is the development of the reference platform, and maybe some incentives to get a manufacturer to sign up.
If you want to make it cheaper, then adding a touch panel to replace the keyboard is certainly not a good idea... Do you have any idea of the cost of a decent touch panel? Especially if you want one durable enough to use near a public phone, as you suggested...
I must disagree with you. Taxpayer funding of a wide range of parties is important to secure the diversity in politics. So much so, that if anything, I'd prefer the political parties to be government funded, and donations to the parties outside a small membership due, outlawed.
What you see in countries like the US, and UK, is that the large parties get a hegemony because they get almost all the public exposure, and because they are the ones with an apparatus big enough to secure solid campaign funding, and most government funding is based to heavily on their election numbers.
To further promote diversity, I'd like to see a government funding scheme for parties that give the smaller parties significantly more per member or vote than the larger parties. Of course, if as a result of that the smaller parties get hugely successfuly, then their funding per member or vote would drop as a result.
Hopefully that would mean that the ideologies and policies of the parties would start accounting for more than their fundraising skills and their current economic foundation.
The difference is that the curch run after school program is much more likely to try to brainwash the kids into believing.
How many applications intended for the Windows NT market is written to the Posix API, for instance? Even though that would make it trivial to port to Unix/Linux/BSD etc.?
Practically none. Because the native APIs are better supported, and give the look and feel and functionality that your users expect.
I think it's much more likely that as Wine progresses, it will help people switch to Linux. And as people switch because Wine lets them use their favorite games or applications, they'll also start buying native applications now and then. And they'll see the difference. And they'll either vote with their money, or start asking support why app X doesn't support function Y when they're running it under Linux.
If enough people switch, eventually companies will start hearing the word "Linux" from enough customers.
I've seen none.
As for the applications offered, Wine is changing that rapidly. And if you're using Wine, recovery of whatever Windows setup you choose to do can easily be reduced to a simple script using rm and cp to clean it out and install a new copy from another directory.
I imagine they'll have enough of a problem getting decent salaries out of it themselves.
If they somehow get rich out of it it would be nice if they contributed some money to the rest of the Wine developers, but keep in mind that they are already contributing code which you'll get access to whether or not you are among the contributors.
The thing is, a lot of people aren't getting away from Windows as long as their favorite apps, or apps they have to use at work, doesn't run under Linux. With Wine, many of them do, and people who would otherwise be stuck with Windows can get rid of it.
Whether that's true or not, the other restrictions listed for it is still restrictions far beyond what is normally given with copyright, so Lessigs point still stands.
At least in Mozilla all you have to do is to press control '-' to reduce font size (and similarly control '+' to increase it again). The nightlies are really coming along great now too...
I rarely read them myself, but it doesn't bother me to see them linked. In fact I'd like to see more articles specifically about software and software development linked from Freshmeat. Perhaps add a new category for them.
And IIRC, one of the new things with the new Freshmeat design is that if you register you're able to filter what's shown on the front page in much the same way as with Slashdot, so it shouldn't hinder those who aren't interested.
If you're going to indicate that Linux software is crash-prone it sorts of doesn't look good to write crappy code that anyone can find flaws in...
Kind of puts you in a bad light...
What we did was that we maintain a cache that is updated each time the IMAP servers enters a folder and finds new messages, or status flags changes. This is trivial to implement, as you just needs to read whatever is in the new/ directory in a folder, and it gave us a tenfold increase of speed for some operations, while maintaining the simplicity and security of maildir (if the cache file is deleted, it's simply recreated the next time the user logs in, so we don't need to care about it).
That Lucent have invested in them doesn't say much. Lucent are investing in, and/or signing partnerships with lots of bleeding edge technology companies which may or may not pay out, but where the payoff if the manage to reach the storage goals set will be too large to be ignored.
And no, there's no conflict between release early, release often, and "It's ready when it's ready". Actually, Linux is a good example here: Development snapshots are released often through the entire process, and even during the stable series, patches are published, and Alan Cox even put together his "ac" patches. New versions are released often.
On the other hand, there's no strict timetable for when to officially designate a release "stable".
Linus tried doing that with 2.4 - indicating that he wanted a short release cycle. Instead it indeed ended up being a case of "it's ready when it's ready": 2.4 got delayed by months because Linus and others wanted to make sure that it actually worked well, instead of sticking to the indicated schedule.
But luckily most of it is drivers, and additional features. The compiled image is still quite lean if you include only what you actually need.
If anything, what I've seen most of is that they are critizised for being too slow to issue patches and upgrades, and also for releasing products that are claimed to be stable even when theres tons of outstanding bugs.
And 2.3 got up a lot higher than 12 or 13, but 2.3 is a development kernel - it's was not intended for normal use - all Linux releases 2.x.y with odd "x" are development kernels.
Even though I despise Windows, I'd be happy if MS did follow Linux' model and released patches more often, and didn't try to take their customers money for buggy crap while claiming it to be a "stable" version.
It's getting quite annoying with trolls like you who try to present the "hypocrisy" of the linux community, while presenting opinions that are by no means prevalent as if they were the opinions of the whole community.
The question is: Will it be found by someone willing to tell you about it, or someone who wants to exploit it.
If you don't allow the public to scrutinize your system, the likelyhood is that the only people looking at it will be your overworked little development team, and a horde of crackers that don't care that they aren't allowed to "test" your system.
Whether it's safe or not to use open source software for critical stuff depends a lot more on how you do it.
First of all, you shouldn't release a banking system and run on the same version of the code until you've let a lot of people look at it.
Second, firewalls are good. Knowledgable sys.admins that actually keep an eye both on the system, and the buzz in the hacker community, a huge plus.
Conclusion? If your security is crappy anyway, you certainly run added risks with open source, but if you manage your security well (actually bother to protect the perimiter to your system, and don't run untested software for critical tasks), you'll gain from having good guys looking at your code too, not just bad guys hammering on your system until they accidentally find something (and they will).
"That whole BIND thing" was discovered because the source is there for anyone to see. Would you rather that only crackers with nothing better to do than disassembling and reverse engineering the code should be the only one that has the time to look for, and find, the security holes?
Veronica indexed gopher.
The internet had been around for more than 20 years when he invented the web, and had it's first connections outside the US for 18-19 years (UK and Norway were connected in 1973 if I remember correctly).