You may want to pay for low-cost net, cable, phone access for people that live in the rural areas, but I don't appreciate it. It is a noble idea that I believe in, but, BUT, once you give the OK to tax for a limited time so the telco/cableco can recoup costs for equipment the tax NEVER goes away. My home phone bill still has universal access surcharges and when I had a cell phone there was one there too.
There is a story going around talk radio recently that the original tax on phones was to pay for the Spanish-American War. I'm sure that debt has been paid for a long time, but the tax is still there, just repurposed. The other thing I remember from a high school history class is that the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) got money from phone users to fund social programs in rural Tenn. Last time I looked there are phone lines running to rural US, current billing should reflect actual cost.
I like to help out other people just like the next guy, but people have to realize that they lose certain things when they move far from the city and one of those is cheap high-speed access. I'm sick of paying the bill for someone else's bad decisions.
Emmett is now my favorite story poster. With this gem and the library filtering stories Slashdot is enjoyable again. This is the kind of uplifting story we all need to hear while the regular media plays up the 6-yr old killer in Michigan. Mentoring children is always a good cause and especially so when those children are bright and need a challenge to prevent them from being destructive.
I think we all wish our Public School experience had been this way. My teachers were nice and helpful, but busy with the lowest quarter of the class. The bright students were at least grouped together and allowed to excell on their own. I was in an advanced spelling group in elementary school and we chose our own words from the dictionary, an advanced reading group that was allowed to work into the next several grade levels, math groups that went into Algebra early, and a gifted student program where we met a couple of times a week to study other languages and science topics. This sort of stopped in high school, the special treatment that is, I just took math and science classes a year or two ahead of my peer group. My high school did have programs for people in their senior year to take college Calculus, Physics, History and English though.
I'm glad that my school district didn't hold us back with everyone else, but we didn't much supervision either. We did most of this on our own. The one area I wish they would have done better on was in computers. The teachers for programming Basic and using apps were learning at the same time and most people couldn't afford their own home PC or couldn't justify the expense as an educational tool. So now I'm teaching myself networking and troubleshooting hardware at 28 while married w/ 2 kids and changing careers to be a Sys Admin.
I'll end my rant as it probably won't get read, but Kudos to Emmett and the Beacon School. And to the young people out there who may read this, NEVER, EVER GIVE UP!!! I can't say that enough. Read everything you can get your hands on. If you are not being taught to, then teach yourself. Knowledge is power, it's cool, and it's out there for the taking.
Man, I'm going to have to start a program like this in a local school when I get a chance.
Look, some jerk-weed put a brand right on his chest. He looks like he's owned like a horse or cow, instead of the free-wheeling, herring-eating flightless bird I once knew. At least they got a better web designer for their new page. It doesn't look like a 5 yr old designed it anymore.
Man that's way over my head. It did induce a good nap though. Now I just have to wipe up the drool puddle and make up an excuse for the thud my head made on the desk. I need to read stuff like this in the a.m. when I'm fresh.
These guys keep talking about playing DVDs like they can do this on Linux. Does that mean soon for everyone else? On another note, I like their pricing scheme of $500-1000 to start out for the webpad. It's not freakin crippled like the WebTV and some of the other internet appliances of late, you can actually use productivity apps too. They didn't exactly state though how upgrades and loading software could be done. I recall the bearded speaker saying that there is no hard drive on the webpad device, but one could be added. Can you upgrade the kernel? If so it would be a custom kernel from Transmeta.Now maybe when I get a laptop it won't SUCK. I'm giddy with excitement.
My HTML postings have never been garbled like that before. Thanks Jan. Wish I knew what I did wrong. Anyway, I thought it was worth sharing. I would love to have a PADD with native Linux support. DaVinci, the hackers PADD (note: I hate PDA, I think the acronym should reflect the Star Trek origins).
I would just settle for some luke-warm fusion at this point. Or maybe some uncomfortably warm fusion. Or even unseasonably-hot fusion, since our Sun has to do it at something like 3 million degrees or so.
What CPUReview does include is enough info to make a decision on distro. You can ignore his numbered rating system. Actually the best way to decide which distro to use is to read about them yourself and decide or talk to people who are actually using it. Go to a local Linux Users Group. Look at linux.org and linux.com and redhat.com for the meeting places and contact info for the Linux Users Groups.
Didn't know we needed a Latin class to be here huh. Actually it's a common term, Let the Buyer Beware, but shorter. You will find this at the bottom of Ebay's pages.
Looks to be $200 cheaper than a similar model direct from Cobalt, but with a larger hard drive (10GB instead of 6.4GB). Gateway however, may have used cheaper drives. Caveat Emptor. I suspect that Gateway's deal with Cobalt was to be able to use the same form factor as the Cube as well as the software setup. This to avoid a suit ala the Apple iMac v. eMachines eOne fiasco. Viva la choice however.
As usual, I'm late to the Big discussion, but here goes.Scientists are usually wrapped up in the how to of a problem rather than the implications of the solution. Famous statement:"We always concern ourselves more with the question of whether we can do a thing than if we should." No, I don't remember who said that, I just remember it and it is a large statement for Ethics in science. Yes, we should learn to describe our existence (i.e. DNA). This leads to understanding and learning, always Good Things (TM). Yes, some horses asses will abuse it (companies trying to make a buck), but we should see a quality of life increase in the long term.Yes, Gattaca and Brave New World were perfect examples of the extreme abuse of this technology, but also consider Anthem, by Ayn Rand. In the perfectly engineered society, ego and the lust for variety (spice of life?) win out. This could be equated to the community of all females in Jurassic Park, where some end up reverting to male due to use of frog DNA. Our sense of control in the long run, could turn on us.What is my point in all this rant? I'm not sure. Maybe that if we lull ourselves into a false sense of control over the human genome, CHAOS can come back and bite us in the ass, big time. We may accidentally create a virus strain that will wipe out everybody or create a bunch of psychopaths or sociopaths. We must be careful what we do with the info once we have it. P.S. Katz, get a fsking Dictionary, a Thesaurus, a spell checker and take a damn English class. Your abuse of the language is hideous. At least try to do a better job.
About six months ago I downloaded a trial version of the New Deal OS and tools. They had a functional web browser, Dial-up networking, text editor, spreadsheet, window manager, games, and other apps. All this in ASM and as a 30 day demo. It only cost about 25-50 bucks and was intended to bring life back to 286s and 386s. Something like a couple of megs with all the software, maybe smaller. It had a Windows look to it but worked great. The really neat thing was the developer community at the site. Lots of gratis software, like some apps for the Palm. e.g."Check out this neat app I coded and tell me what you think, and you can keep it free." Check it out at New Deal Inc.
If you don't want better software then, fine, don't contribute. My idea is to give users some voice and see the source. Programmers in school and entering the industry need to look at well thought out programs that will be more useful than 'Hello World'. The idea of submitting bug fixes and reports is to thank the companies for being Open Source. I was just trying to think of a way a company could do so and still make money. Later
That's why I put in the faky looking TM. Besides, IDG and the rest of those Dummies can BITE ME! I personally would feel embarrassed buying one of those yellow covered advertisements that you're a moron, unless of course is were something like Quantum String Theory for Dummies or Plotting the Human Genome for Dummies. Cliff Notes (TM) should sue them for taking their idea of the yellow cover. Later, Ripcrd
I agree with some of what you say, however, I was speaking of a general commercial vendor Open Source license. The intent of my posting was to elicit work on a licence that could fit a variety of situations without adding confusion.My intent was to make the vendor the maintainer of the code (Duh) and to retain ownership, that could later be placed under the GPL as the product ages and has paid for its development costs and profit, but sales have dropped. Maybe a statement that the purchaser or user could reuse the code for personal use only or improve upon it for specific application (i.e. clustering kernel adaptation). But I would like to see bug reports and fixes submitted to the company for approval for inclusion in next distribution. This way the they could adjust the fix to adhere to internal coding standards. Some stuff people write is too confusing to maintain. If the fix doesn't make the next distro, then it would go to the website or ftp.The purchaser would have to keep ownership of the original source of the product (i.e. it can't be taken away), since for special applications or uses it is necessary to keep a copy on file. I can give specific examples if this is not clear.I'm not entirely sure how derivitive works should be handled, but that's why the pros need to meet. Derivitive ideas should be allowed as you can't control thought and we shouldn't stifle innovation. That would be treated different than reusing the actual code snippets. Maybe say that parts of the code may be reused, but not in a product competing in the same area as the exact same application unless it is to maintain standards with LSB, W3C, ISO, ANSI, etc.I don't claim to have all the answers, but I wonder just how far apart the existing commercial open source licenses are.
Who cares if it becomes popular? That adds eyeballs, bug reports, etc. It forces software companies to listen to users and create games and apps for Linux. Is this a Bad Thing? If all the voulunteers take off it may change, but companies like Red Hat can take up the slack or hire them.Unless you make all your income from Win95 support then it would be a Good Thing for the "Unwashed Masses" to be using it. They may use Linux for Dummies (TM), or something with a standard GUI frontend (how about Linux LSB Distro)but it would still be something that you could get under the hood and fix or give them the keys to once they learned what the hell they were doing. "Will this happen?" It already is. Amen, brother.
First off, IANAL, but how about calling it the COSL (see subject) or just CPL (Commercial Public License. COSL is probably most accurate. Now get reps from several companies (IBM, Sun, Troll, Redhat, etc.) that are interested in doing Open Source work and allow one Contract law lawyer each in a room with ESR, Bruce Perens, and the GPL lawyers. Let them hash out the items that they feel a company needs in order to release a product with the source code available! Don't make it mandatory that the license be used for every product, but if they want the Open Source seal of approval or whatever then the source MUST be available! The software the license applies to could be shareware, demo, free (gratis), or regular off- the-shelf-pay-me-fifty-bucks software, but the source must be available as well as a method for submitting Bug reports publicly and public request for feature improvements/changes. I'm not saying the company would have to accept each and every bug fix to include in the next release, but they should consider them and use their programming standards to fix the problem in a reasonable amount of time. And test that it doesn't break something else. (Hello, Microsoft products.) My idea about feature changes/requests is that if the users have a hard time getting to or using a feature that is used all the time, then this would improve useablity. Kind of like Ergonomics, also if the company mistakenly moves a feature around in the menus from one release to the next without improving useablity I want to be able to let them know. (In IE 4.0 the internet options are in one place and in a different one in IE 5.0. Hello MS are you listening, didn't think so. They also change the name of features for no reason.) Basically I want the software companies to act differently than MS. Big surprise! Now, make the license available on the net for peer review and later for use by any Commercial company that wants to do Open Source software. They can just place their companies name and the name of the software in a blank in the contract. Just like the generic standard mortgage contracts. Well, that's my two cents, I'll crawl back in my cave now.
So, will this tasty new edition to Vulcan Ventures be called Vulcan TV, "All Vulcans, All the Time" or Pual TV in a fit of extreme egotism? Enquiring minds want to know. How about a 24hr technology and Star Trek channel?
Installing the MS patch will start a string of error messages and BSODs that will make you pull your hair out! I had to uninstall IE 5 and my antivirus prog to exsize the evil patch, then reload both to get back to normal. Believe me if I could get away from using Win/Lose 95 and 98 at work I would! I am stuck however with this loser device that breaks on a regular basis anyway. I should have learned my lesson the last time that a MS patch broke the damn thing. Rule number one, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I have never had a problem w/ viruses using windows because I don't open the attachments.
Slashdot Mirror
You may want to pay for low-cost net, cable, phone access for people that live in the rural areas, but I don't appreciate it. It is a noble idea that I believe in, but, BUT, once you give the OK to tax for a limited time so the telco/cableco can recoup costs for equipment the tax NEVER goes away. My home phone bill still has universal access surcharges and when I had a cell phone there was one there too.
There is a story going around talk radio recently that the original tax on phones was to pay for the Spanish-American War. I'm sure that debt has been paid for a long time, but the tax is still there, just repurposed. The other thing I remember from a high school history class is that the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) got money from phone users to fund social programs in rural Tenn. Last time I looked there are phone lines running to rural US, current billing should reflect actual cost.
I like to help out other people just like the next guy, but people have to realize that they lose certain things when they move far from the city and one of those is cheap high-speed access. I'm sick of paying the bill for someone else's bad decisions.
Emmett is now my favorite story poster. With this gem and the library filtering stories Slashdot is enjoyable again. This is the kind of uplifting story we all need to hear while the regular media plays up the 6-yr old killer in Michigan. Mentoring children is always a good cause and especially so when those children are bright and need a challenge to prevent them from being destructive.
I think we all wish our Public School experience had been this way. My teachers were nice and helpful, but busy with the lowest quarter of the class. The bright students were at least grouped together and allowed to excell on their own. I was in an advanced spelling group in elementary school and we chose our own words from the dictionary, an advanced reading group that was allowed to work into the next several grade levels, math groups that went into Algebra early, and a gifted student program where we met a couple of times a week to study other languages and science topics. This sort of stopped in high school, the special treatment that is, I just took math and science classes a year or two ahead of my peer group. My high school did have programs for people in their senior year to take college Calculus, Physics, History and English though.
I'm glad that my school district didn't hold us back with everyone else, but we didn't much supervision either. We did most of this on our own. The one area I wish they would have done better on was in computers. The teachers for programming Basic and using apps were learning at the same time and most people couldn't afford their own home PC or couldn't justify the expense as an educational tool. So now I'm teaching myself networking and troubleshooting hardware at 28 while married w/ 2 kids and changing careers to be a Sys Admin.
I'll end my rant as it probably won't get read, but Kudos to Emmett and the Beacon School. And to the young people out there who may read this, NEVER, EVER GIVE UP!!! I can't say that enough. Read everything you can get your hands on. If you are not being taught to, then teach yourself. Knowledge is power, it's cool, and it's out there for the taking.
Man, I'm going to have to start a program like this in a local school when I get a chance.
I got a Toshiba laptop ad recently in the mail that had one of these. I kept it because it had Quicktime 4.0 on it.
Look, some jerk-weed put a brand right on his chest. He looks like he's owned like a horse or cow, instead of the free-wheeling, herring-eating flightless bird I once knew.
At least they got a better web designer for their new page. It doesn't look like a 5 yr old designed it anymore.
Man that's way over my head. It did induce a good nap though. Now I just have to wipe up the drool puddle and make up an excuse for the thud my head made on the desk. I need to read stuff like this in the a.m. when I'm fresh.
These guys keep talking about playing DVDs like they can do this on Linux. Does that mean soon for everyone else?
On another note, I like their pricing scheme of $500-1000 to start out for the webpad. It's not freakin crippled like the WebTV and some of the other internet appliances of late, you can actually use productivity apps too. They didn't exactly state though how upgrades and loading software could be done. I recall the bearded speaker saying that there is no hard drive on the webpad device, but one could be added. Can you upgrade the kernel? If so it would be a custom kernel from Transmeta.Now maybe when I get a laptop it won't SUCK. I'm giddy with excitement.
Does this have anything to do with the previous article on monkey cloning? I had to ask.
My HTML postings have never been garbled like that before. Thanks Jan. Wish I knew what I did wrong. Anyway, I thought it was worth sharing. I would love to have a PADD with native Linux support. DaVinci, the hackers PADD (note: I hate PDA, I think the acronym should reflect the Star Trek origins).
Check out this exchange from the middle of last year between handheld hackers re: uCLinux
Discussion
i THINK DOWN NEEDS TO BE THE TREND HERE.
I would just settle for some luke-warm fusion at this point. Or maybe some uncomfortably warm fusion. Or even unseasonably-hot fusion, since our Sun has to do it at something like 3 million degrees or so.
Now that is sweet justice!
What CPUReview does include is enough info to make a decision on distro. You can ignore his numbered rating system. Actually the best way to decide which distro to use is to read about them yourself and decide or talk to people who are actually using it. Go to a local Linux Users Group. Look at linux.org and linux.com and redhat.com for the meeting places and contact info for the Linux Users Groups.
Didn't know we needed a Latin class to be here huh. Actually it's a common term, Let the Buyer Beware, but shorter. You will find this at the bottom of Ebay's pages.
...see CPU Review. This guy actually uses the distro and reviews the differences in a comprehensive manner. Just my 2 centavos.
Looks to be $200 cheaper than a similar model direct from Cobalt, but with a larger hard drive (10GB instead of 6.4GB). Gateway however, may have used cheaper drives. Caveat Emptor. I suspect that Gateway's deal with Cobalt was to be able to use the same form factor as the Cube as well as the software setup. This to avoid a suit ala the Apple iMac v. eMachines eOne fiasco. Viva la choice however.
As usual, I'm late to the Big discussion, but here goes.Scientists are usually wrapped up in the how to of a problem rather than the implications of the solution. Famous statement:"We always concern ourselves more with the question of whether we can do a thing than if we should." No, I don't remember who said that, I just remember it and it is a large statement for Ethics in science. Yes, we should learn to describe our existence (i.e. DNA). This leads to understanding and learning, always Good Things (TM). Yes, some horses asses will abuse it (companies trying to make a buck), but we should see a quality of life increase in the long term.Yes, Gattaca and Brave New World were perfect examples of the extreme abuse of this technology, but also consider Anthem, by Ayn Rand. In the perfectly engineered society, ego and the lust for variety (spice of life?) win out. This could be equated to the community of all females in Jurassic Park, where some end up reverting to male due to use of frog DNA. Our sense of control in the long run, could turn on us.What is my point in all this rant? I'm not sure. Maybe that if we lull ourselves into a false sense of control over the human genome, CHAOS can come back and bite us in the ass, big time. We may accidentally create a virus strain that will wipe out everybody or create a bunch of psychopaths or sociopaths. We must be careful what we do with the info once we have it.
P.S. Katz, get a fsking Dictionary, a Thesaurus, a spell checker and take a damn English class. Your abuse of the language is hideous. At least try to do a better job.
About six months ago I downloaded a trial version of the New Deal OS and tools. They had a functional web browser, Dial-up networking, text editor, spreadsheet, window manager, games, and other apps. All this in ASM and as a 30 day demo. It only cost about 25-50 bucks and was intended to bring life back to 286s and 386s. Something like a couple of megs with all the software, maybe smaller. It had a Windows look to it but worked great. The really neat thing was the developer community at the site. Lots of gratis software, like some apps for the Palm. e.g."Check out this neat app I coded and tell me what you think, and you can keep it free." Check it out at New Deal Inc.
If you don't want better software then, fine, don't contribute. My idea is to give users some voice and see the source. Programmers in school and entering the industry need to look at well thought out programs that will be more useful than 'Hello World'.
The idea of submitting bug fixes and reports is to thank the companies for being Open Source. I was just trying to think of a way a company could do so and still make money.
Later
That's why I put in the faky looking TM. Besides, IDG and the rest of those Dummies can BITE ME! I personally would feel embarrassed buying one of those yellow covered advertisements that you're a moron, unless of course is were something like Quantum String Theory for Dummies or Plotting the Human Genome for Dummies. Cliff Notes (TM) should sue them for taking their idea of the yellow cover.
Later,
Ripcrd
I agree with some of what you say, however, I was speaking of a general commercial vendor Open Source license. The intent of my posting was to elicit work on a licence that could fit a variety of situations without adding confusion.My intent was to make the vendor the maintainer of the code (Duh) and to retain ownership, that could later be placed under the GPL as the product ages and has paid for its development costs and profit, but sales have dropped. Maybe a statement that the purchaser or user could reuse the code for personal use only or improve upon it for specific application (i.e. clustering kernel adaptation). But I would like to see bug reports and fixes submitted to the company for approval for inclusion in next distribution. This way the they could adjust the fix to adhere to internal coding standards. Some stuff people write is too confusing to maintain. If the fix doesn't make the next distro, then it would go to the website or ftp.The purchaser would have to keep ownership of the original source of the product (i.e. it can't be taken away), since for special applications or uses it is necessary to keep a copy on file. I can give specific examples if this is not clear.I'm not entirely sure how derivitive works should be handled, but that's why the pros need to meet. Derivitive ideas should be allowed as you can't control thought and we shouldn't stifle innovation. That would be treated different than reusing the actual code snippets. Maybe say that parts of the code may be reused, but not in a product competing in the same area as the exact same application unless it is to maintain standards with LSB, W3C, ISO, ANSI, etc.I don't claim to have all the answers, but I wonder just how far apart the existing commercial open source licenses are.
Free the Souce, the rest will follow.
Who cares if it becomes popular? That adds eyeballs, bug reports, etc. It forces software companies to listen to users and create games and apps for Linux. Is this a Bad Thing? If all the voulunteers take off it may change, but companies like Red Hat can take up the slack or hire them.Unless you make all your income from Win95 support then it would be a Good Thing for the "Unwashed Masses" to be using it. They may use Linux for Dummies (TM), or something with a standard GUI frontend (how about Linux LSB Distro)but it would still be something that you could get under the hood and fix or give them the keys to once they learned what the hell they were doing. "Will this happen?" It already is. Amen, brother.
First off, IANAL, but how about calling it the COSL (see subject) or just CPL (Commercial Public License. COSL is probably most accurate.
Now get reps from several companies (IBM, Sun, Troll, Redhat, etc.) that are interested in doing Open Source work and allow one Contract law lawyer each in a room with ESR, Bruce Perens, and the GPL lawyers. Let them hash out the items that they feel a company needs in order to release a product with the source code available! Don't make it mandatory that the license be used for every product, but if they want the Open Source seal of approval or whatever then the source MUST be available!
The software the license applies to could be shareware, demo, free (gratis), or regular off- the-shelf-pay-me-fifty-bucks software, but the source must be available as well as a method for submitting Bug reports publicly and public request for feature improvements/changes. I'm not saying the company would have to accept each and every bug fix to include in the next release, but they should consider them and use their programming standards to fix the problem in a reasonable amount of time. And test that it doesn't break something else. (Hello, Microsoft products.) My idea about feature changes/requests is that if the users have a hard time getting to or using a feature that is used all the time, then this would improve useablity. Kind of like Ergonomics, also if the company mistakenly moves a feature around in the menus from one release to the next without improving useablity I want to be able to let them know. (In IE 4.0 the internet options are in one place and in a different one in IE 5.0. Hello MS are you listening, didn't think so. They also change the name of features for no reason.) Basically I want the software companies to act differently than MS. Big surprise!
Now, make the license available on the net for peer review and later for use by any Commercial company that wants to do Open Source software. They can just place their companies name and the name of the software in a blank in the contract. Just like the generic standard mortgage contracts.
Well, that's my two cents, I'll crawl back in my cave now.
So, will this tasty new edition to Vulcan Ventures be called Vulcan TV, "All Vulcans, All the Time" or Pual TV in a fit of extreme egotism?
Enquiring minds want to know. How about a 24hr technology and Star Trek channel?
Installing the MS patch will start a string of error messages and BSODs that will make you pull your hair out! I had to uninstall IE 5 and my antivirus prog to exsize the evil patch, then reload both to get back to normal.
Believe me if I could get away from using Win/Lose 95 and 98 at work I would! I am stuck however with this loser device that breaks on a regular basis anyway. I should have learned my lesson the last time that a MS patch broke the damn thing.
Rule number one, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I have never had a problem w/ viruses using windows because I don't open the attachments.
Later
Y2k Flunky