Re:Nice for expatriated Mac users
on
ROX Desktop Update
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· Score: 2, Insightful
What you've identified as a "physical feeling for files" is caused by precisely one overriding principle throughout the old MacOS's -- careful attention to spatial memory. All pre-X MacOS's left everything exactly where you put it, so next time you open a browser window, it would open to the same place and everything would be where you left it. TOG talks about this in one of his famous essays about Fits' Law, and lambasts OS X for basically doing away with it in favor of cutesy things that bounce all over the screen. (sorry, no URL handy, hopefully someone else can supply it..)
I haven't touched uIP myself, but we're using lwIP (its big brother) in
KallistiOS, the DC hobbyist OS project. Adam sent this to me pretty recently and I thought it kicked ass beyond belief:
We've got a US X-Box here and we just tried playing the MGS2 trailer DVD from Japan. It came up with the message "Invalid DVD region" and wouldn't play it. (Me and my roomates == We) We are hypothesizing that perhaps the DVD dongle they make you buy actually has a region encoded into it? That way they can offload the cost of region coding onto you, the consumer. Would be a typical MS move. Anyone have multiple region dongles and want to try it?
2) A Standard C Library (libc) is standard for every Unix and Unix-like operating system. For 99 systems out of 100, this libc will NOT come from GNU. If you write a program that makes use of glibc extensions, your program will not be portable. It will only make you look stupid.
I don't mean this as flamebait at all, but I'd like to point out that the reverse is absolutely true as well. Having used both systems quite a bit, I'd say there are as many or more features in the BSD libc that are oh-so-good and oh-so-tempting to use, and many BSD authors do in fact use them, making their programs unportable (making themselves look stupid? =). Now then, it's pretty easy to pull a part of the BSD libc and include it in your program for portability so this is less of an issue than pulling part of glibc and potentially tainting your licenses. Still, it's a concern for any Unix-like system.
Yeah, he's been off doing some other projects (including moving to get ready for school) but he's planning to pick up devel of it again soon. I guess he's one of the minimalist people and likes it ok the way it is so there hasn't been a whole lot of impetus to change it just yet. Plans include things like a better menus plugin... also one of the best features of Golem is that it has pretty much the most complete support for multi-monitor I've seen yet in a window manager. WindowMaker in its recent versions is just starting to catch up with Golem in that respect.
One of the promising window managers that's (IMHO) up and coming is
Golem, being developed by a friend of mine. It's very simple but all of its features are provided by fast plugins. This is kinda like Sawfish, but without the overhead of a Lisp interpreter. Anyone looking for a new WindowManager to try out (and develop on) ought to check it out!
So, how about OSTAKAS (Open Secure Telnet Also Known As SSH).
I've got an even better idea! How about OSTFKAS (Open Secure Telnet Formerly Known As SSH)? Or perhaps they should just name it after the symbol of the blowfish? ^_-
Where I worked a year or so ago, we had a nice dilemma: we had one available PC machine, and they needed an NT server. So the choice was to go back to using an NT server for our "workgroup" or find a new machine to use as the workgroup server and put NT on the PC box anyway. The choice was obvious. We took a G3 we had laying around and I put LinuxPPC on it. As far as using it as a graphical user machine, it was not the swiftest thing in the world. There was not really any gfx card support to speak of (can you say frame buffer?) and we had a lot of trouble getting it onto the machine, but once that was done it performed like a champ. In fact it performed better than a champ. Once we got that done, we were all happy we had switched the box, NT or no. The G3 was a better performer for what we were using and a PC was freed up for its castra.... I mean new OS.;-) At this point I'd really like to get myself a G3, I think it would still outperform a lot of the newer machines. That said though, for the price and compatability perspective, the Athlon is looking a lot more attractive. Although there is something funny about the idea of running LinuxPPC on a G3, running something like SheepShaver on Linux, and then running VirualPC under that for everything else =)
I haven't released it because I haven't felt like it's "done", but I've had one of these for years now. It's gone through two revisions and the current one does the following:
- Kernel patch switches to KD_GRAPHICS mode on the console and puts up a bitmap
- Program runs from init to show a BlueSteel-themed window with a cute anime girl saying "System Ok"
- A few moments later the splash screen happens, where a big swarm of dots fly around the screen and it kind of morphs on "Welcome to Anime Linux", while playing the Dreamcast sound
- During the boot process I modified my init scripts to print info about what service it is starting, and the console monitor program uses these codes (my own little ANSI codes;-) to put up service info ala Mac OSX. The fonts are done using FreeType.
- During this whole thing an MP3 is playing that matches the picture put up, and cherry blossoms are falling in the background.
- Yes, I am an anime freak. =P
- During this time you can also hit ENTER and everything stops and you get a little console message window.
- If anything fails, the gfx monitor quits and you get a normal console again
- When it's all done, the monitor unloads and things go back to normal.
At the risk of sounding like a compulsive liar;-) I haven't posted any code or screen shots of this (it's a little difficult to take screen shots of =P). So if enough people email me at my address (remove "fear-no-spam.") I'll make some and post them somewhere. Or maybe even post the code.
All I have to say can be summed up in one sentence: what is wrong with you people??
Currently I'm working with some others to produce a free development kit for the Dreamcast. It doesn't sound like much, but the big issue here is that we're scared to release anything for fear of Sega coming down on us, whether we did anything wrong or not. Barring that, every Dreamcast disc is forced to display "Licensed by Sega Enterprises", which even if you disclaim it, is an open invitation to "get rid" of anyone they don't like.
You might be sitting there smug going "heh heh, stupid game consoles, who gives a shit" but the fact is that a lot of companies are heading this way. What happens when all widely available PCs come with a thing like that that makes it next to impossible to install a free OS? Or even worse, like RMS's scenerio, where the computer will not allow a new OS to be installed without some kind of encryption keys? They are already actively developing monitors with encryption in the cable so that you can't copy movies. Forget the logisitcal problems -- there is a possibility that we'll have things like video cards and other hardware that need special encryption keys to unlock usage of them.
The Suck guys were right, the people here at Slashdot have a bad tendancy to just assume that things will always be the same and never get worse. I'm not saying that they'll keep getting worse and worse and there won't be a backlash.. but some laws and precedents are being laid down right now that provide the foundation for things like he describes.
Cross platform is not even an issue,because even under OpenGL, Windows still kicks the ass of Linux, BSD, and BeOS (until this fall that is!)
Having just gotten OpenGL to work with 4.0.1 with my Matrox G200, I have to disagree, for Quake 3 at least. It runs considerably smoother than under Windows, with the drivers from Matrox. The mouse control is a little odd but the 3D is definitely faster.
I'm a developer who has been in their developer program from pretty much the earliest stages -- I remember them coming to my school to demo the BeBox and the BeOS and hearing the initial OOs and AAHs since we hadn't seen anything quite this cool in an OS. And then the fun started:
- No, we won't drop support for the BeBox. - What the heck? No we aren't considering an Intel port. - We'd never drop support for PowerPC. - We're committed to being the Media OS.
And last but not least so far,
- No, we're going to keep our desktop OS!
Anyone want to put bets on how long it takes? ^_^;
Hmm... _actually_ no on the first sentence.. (who's the social outcast posting as AC?) no on the second sentence.. no on the third sentence..
The purpose of this beast would be to provide an open gaming platform where anyone and everyone could make games targeted at the thing. No, putting X on it in its current form would be folly, just like putting WinCE on all Dreamcast games would be folly. Perhaps I am a social outcast with no life since I know that the DreamCast can run WinCE.. oh woe is me. BUT you could have a web browsing disk, like DreamCast, and it would boot up X for that.. and you'd have other games that just loaded and ran with some form of FBCon or SVGALIB. Another choice would be to let you integrate your game in a userland-like kernel space for extra speed and hardware control. No, the idea is that anyone could get in on it unlike the current consoles that often require a $10000 license for one developer station and game manufacturer approval. I know, I've looked into it seriously.
I also never said it had to run Linux, a BSD-based gaming system would also be very cool. Just so happens this article was about Linux gaming.. or didn't you notice?
So I was wondering if anyone else gets turned on by the idea of an X-Box style system running embedded Linux, and running games ported by Loki, or more specifically, designed for the LinuX-Box to begin with. Wouldn't that be lovely? A console based on embedded Linux. Not terribly far out either really.
Doesn't this sound familiar to anyone? Remember the page on Nintendo's web site talking about how the only thing emulators are good for is "pirating" games, and how they have a purely negative effect on their industry? What do you think they'd say about a perfectly legal (until DMCA) device to make backups of your carts? Nothing new here, just standard good ol' corporate FUD if you ask me. Just wait for all the DMCA-based stuff though.. just think! All you have to do to really legally restrict fair copying of CDs and such is to put flimsy copy controls on them. =D
At my work place, I generally find that it's not uncommon for my coworkers to complain to me of 60, 70, even 80 hour work weeks some time. They are salaried and so they are getting paid for their 32.8 hours or whatever, and this is not "just part of the job". They're not happy about it but we keep getting the line "the company is growing, so we have to try to cope and work together". Well, I hate to tell you, but in this industry salaried == bent over. I'm working hourly for the company and do some long hours, because I get more money for it. People are in such demand now that if you are afraid to ask for a better hours/wage ratio then you're not playing the market right! A lot of these businesses are going to eat you for what you're worth, so consider doing the same!
I've seen this debate going around a lot, and I know that my opinion probably doesn't matter for much by itself, but I'll interject it anyway. I'm not a linguistic researcher, just someone who has done many years of people watching on this subject. I tend to find that while language doesn't enforce thought patterns, it does tend to heavily influence them. A lot of people I know do think strictly inside the paradigm of English, but I know many people who can think about things not expressable in English without a LOT of wordage (most programmers). And so as Tim Sweeney said, it's a practical consideration rather than a theoretical one.
All of you have missed something rather important (unless it hasn't gotten moderated and I don't see it yet) --
"If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."
I of course take the IANAL statement, but it seems like if your "employee contract" kept you from distributing a GPL'd program's source, then you simply couldn't distribute it at all. Besides, if the binaries left that "company" they'd then hit the GPL legal restrictions. So you'd have to be in the "company" to get even binaries. Why would you join such a club? What could they possibly offer you to lure you to the Dark Side(tm)?! =)
Yeah, that's one of the main reasons I like anime so much, along with a lot of other people -- it's generally aimed at a mature audience, not the Saturday morning cartoonies. Animated movies as a medium really haven't see much in the way of serious movies here in the U.S.
One other thing of note:
The fact that Gaiman, one of my favourite authors, did the translation is yet another reason to go see it.
Hmm... I guess one thing that I didn't really say very explicitly is that Neil Gaiman only did the dialogue adaptation. The other credit listed for the translation/adaptation (Jack Fletcher) is apparently the one who did most of the raw translation work. He translated the bulk of the text pretty literally, and then that was picked up by Neil Gaiman and made more natural sounding and such. Sorry for the ambiguity.
Nope, unlike basically all the other domestic anime releases so far (with a few exceptions in very limited areas, like Perfect Blue in Austin) this one is planned to go into the theaters. That's where it was shown here too. It's only going into 20 theaters at first, and then if it does well they'll distribute it nationally. There's the possibility of other things being brought to theaters too (Laputa/Castle in the Sky, etc).
I've been on the XFree86 developer's list for quite some time, and apparently this is nothing new.
Basically what's been said on the issue (since it's been brought up several times) is that the guy who started Xig (Thomas Roell I think it was?) is the one who wrote X386, which is the basis for XFree86 today. Apparently he is a bit miffed at the success of the project, and the apparent lack of success in getting ahead of it in his own project.
This generally tends to inflame people who are working on free software that is generally of higher quality than the corresponding commercial software, but they are bashed for their free work. XFree86 4.0 will be worlds above Accel-X in performance, modularity, and features. The thing is, XFree knows this, and so does Xig. The XFree policy is not to sling mud back, and not to post any kind of benchmarks (which often don't make sense anyway), but to simply let the consumer decide what they want to use. We're writing XFree86 for ourselves, and if other people get a good bit of use out of it, then we've more than served our purpose.
The main thing that companies like Xig and Metro-X have above XFree is that they can write proprietary drivers for cards where the manufacturers are too stingy with their specs to let the open source/free software people at it. At least Metro-X knows this, and they contribute code back and forth freely with XFree (including the new module loading system in XFree 4.0, which is pretty awesome).
Don't get all hyped up about this. It's nothing new. It's sad that it's happening in the way it's happening, but just wait for XFree86 4.0 to come out, and there won't be much mud left to sling except that tired old FUD that most people try to use in commercial vs free software. As Linus Torvalds said, "talk is cheap".
Sorry, I guess this is a little bit of a plug, but it lets you know what you can do with PHP.
I work for a company called eBlox that produces a PHP and ASP based product, webBlox. It is basically a mostly automated content management system interfaced to SQL. For example, I wrote a checkbook balancing program for myself in about an hour that tracks deposits, withdrawls, balancing, and whether checks have cleared; it includes a very spiffy looking interface. The webBlox libraries themselves run on both PHP3 and PHP4.0b2 (b1 didn't work), and total over 100k of PHP code. It includes a massive assortment of classes and funky dynamic binding stuff. In other words, it's a HUGE program -- and it works pretty well on PHP4. It's getting a bit sluggish on PHP3 these days though ^_^;;
We had a production server that was up for 497 days, 2 hours, and 27 seconds before crashing itself about a week ago. Apparently the version of the Linux kernel it was running wasn't able to handle the "jiffy roll" problem -- sort of a little mini Y2K where the jiffy timer counter in the kernel overflows its 32 bits. At that point, two processes (cron and some at job) started spawning violently and brought the load average up to about 15, when it promptly died from a disk controller problem;-).
Before that, we were afraid to reboot the thing because we didn't know if it would come back up right, and it's been up for so long that it's been up longer than I've been with the company. It still had an early version of Debian 2.0 with kernel 2.0.35 =). We were planning to run its UPS down to my car and plug it into a power inverter to get it somewhere without shutting it down, but alas, that isn't neccessary now. ='| =)
"As a special exception, if you link this library with files compiled with a GNU compiler to produce an executable, this does not cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License."
What this is saying is that if you link against the library when you've compiled a program using a GNU compiler, then your program is not forced into the GPL. This is to make sure that proprietary software can be produced using a GNU compiler without having to rewrite the whole libc. (Though I can see RMS rubbing his hands thoughtfully already. =) It specifically states that this does not invalidate any other conditions that would make your program automatically GPL, INCLUDING usage of this library with a program compiled using a NON-GNU compiler. Therefore, you can not use this library with a proprietary compiler unless the produced code is GPL'd.
If this turns out to be true, then Compaq will be forced to write their own libc; not only is that a Big Deal, it means that if you write a program with their compiler, you'd have to distribute their libc with it each time or link statically, and GNU's libc is included in every Linux distribution automatically. This makes it less and less advantageous to release such a compiler for Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
What you've identified as a "physical feeling for files" is caused by precisely one overriding principle throughout the old MacOS's -- careful attention to spatial memory. All pre-X MacOS's left everything exactly where you put it, so next time you open a browser window, it would open to the same place and everything would be where you left it. TOG talks about this in one of his famous essays about Fits' Law, and lambasts OS X for basically doing away with it in favor of cutesy things that bounce all over the screen. (sorry, no URL handy, hopefully someone else can supply it..)
No, this isn't a joke.. =)
I haven't touched uIP myself, but we're using lwIP (its big brother) in KallistiOS, the DC hobbyist OS project. Adam sent this to me pretty recently and I thought it kicked ass beyond belief:
lwIP will be used in the post-production of Lord of the Rings 2 and 3
-Dan Potter
Pak Chooie Unf
I am the patcher robot
Patching is the answer
Patching will protect you from the terrible secret of Linux
Pak Chooie Unf
We've got a US X-Box here and we just tried playing the MGS2 trailer DVD from Japan. It came up with the message "Invalid DVD region" and wouldn't play it. (Me and my roomates == We) We are hypothesizing that perhaps the DVD dongle they make you buy actually has a region encoded into it? That way they can offload the cost of region coding onto you, the consumer. Would be a typical MS move. Anyone have multiple region dongles and want to try it?
2) A Standard C Library (libc) is standard for every Unix and Unix-like operating system. For 99 systems out of 100, this libc will NOT come from GNU. If you write a program that makes use of glibc extensions, your program will not be portable. It will only make you look stupid.
I don't mean this as flamebait at all, but I'd like to point out that the reverse is absolutely true as well. Having used both systems quite a bit, I'd say there are as many or more features in the BSD libc that are oh-so-good and oh-so-tempting to use, and many BSD authors do in fact use them, making their programs unportable (making themselves look stupid? =). Now then, it's pretty easy to pull a part of the BSD libc and include it in your program for portability so this is less of an issue than pulling part of glibc and potentially tainting your licenses. Still, it's a concern for any Unix-like system.
Yeah, he's been off doing some other projects (including moving to get ready for school) but he's planning to pick up devel of it again soon. I guess he's one of the minimalist people and likes it ok the way it is so there hasn't been a whole lot of impetus to change it just yet. Plans include things like a better menus plugin... also one of the best features of Golem is that it has pretty much the most complete support for multi-monitor I've seen yet in a window manager. WindowMaker in its recent versions is just starting to catch up with Golem in that respect.
One of the promising window managers that's (IMHO) up and coming is Golem, being developed by a friend of mine. It's very simple but all of its features are provided by fast plugins. This is kinda like Sawfish, but without the overhead of a Lisp interpreter. Anyone looking for a new WindowManager to try out (and develop on) ought to check it out!
So, how about OSTAKAS (Open Secure Telnet Also Known As SSH).
I've got an even better idea! How about OSTFKAS (Open Secure Telnet Formerly Known As SSH)? Or perhaps they should just name it after the symbol of the blowfish? ^_-
Where I worked a year or so ago, we had a nice dilemma: we had one available PC machine, and they needed an NT server. So the choice was to go back to using an NT server for our "workgroup" or find a new machine to use as the workgroup server and put NT on the PC box anyway. The choice was obvious. We took a G3 we had laying around and I put LinuxPPC on it. As far as using it as a graphical user machine, it was not the swiftest thing in the world. There was not really any gfx card support to speak of (can you say frame buffer?) and we had a lot of trouble getting it onto the machine, but once that was done it performed like a champ. In fact it performed better than a champ. Once we got that done, we were all happy we had switched the box, NT or no. The G3 was a better performer for what we were using and a PC was freed up for its castra.... I mean new OS. ;-) At this point I'd really like to get myself a G3, I think it would still outperform a lot of the newer machines. That said though, for the price and compatability perspective, the Athlon is looking a lot more attractive. Although there is something funny about the idea of running LinuxPPC on a G3, running something like SheepShaver on Linux, and then running VirualPC under that for everything else =)
I haven't released it because I haven't felt like it's "done", but I've had one of these for years now. It's gone through two revisions and the current one does the following:
;-) to put up service info ala Mac OSX. The fonts are done using FreeType.
;-) I haven't posted any code or screen shots of this (it's a little difficult to take screen shots of =P). So if enough people email me at my address (remove "fear-no-spam.") I'll make some and post them somewhere. Or maybe even post the code.
- Kernel patch switches to KD_GRAPHICS mode on the console and puts up a bitmap
- Program runs from init to show a BlueSteel-themed window with a cute anime girl saying "System Ok"
- A few moments later the splash screen happens, where a big swarm of dots fly around the screen and it kind of morphs on "Welcome to Anime Linux", while playing the Dreamcast sound
- During the boot process I modified my init scripts to print info about what service it is starting, and the console monitor program uses these codes (my own little ANSI codes
- During this whole thing an MP3 is playing that matches the picture put up, and cherry blossoms are falling in the background.
- Yes, I am an anime freak. =P
- During this time you can also hit ENTER and everything stops and you get a little console message window.
- If anything fails, the gfx monitor quits and you get a normal console again
- When it's all done, the monitor unloads and things go back to normal.
At the risk of sounding like a compulsive liar
All I have to say can be summed up in one sentence: what is wrong with you people??
Currently I'm working with some others to produce a free development kit for the Dreamcast. It doesn't sound like much, but the big issue here is that we're scared to release anything for fear of Sega coming down on us, whether we did anything wrong or not. Barring that, every Dreamcast disc is forced to display "Licensed by Sega Enterprises", which even if you disclaim it, is an open invitation to "get rid" of anyone they don't like.
You might be sitting there smug going "heh heh, stupid game consoles, who gives a shit" but the fact is that a lot of companies are heading this way. What happens when all widely available PCs come with a thing like that that makes it next to impossible to install a free OS? Or even worse, like RMS's scenerio, where the computer will not allow a new OS to be installed without some kind of encryption keys? They are already actively developing monitors with encryption in the cable so that you can't copy movies. Forget the logisitcal problems -- there is a possibility that we'll have things like video cards and other hardware that need special encryption keys to unlock usage of them.
The Suck guys were right, the people here at Slashdot have a bad tendancy to just assume that things will always be the same and never get worse. I'm not saying that they'll keep getting worse and worse and there won't be a backlash.. but some laws and precedents are being laid down right now that provide the foundation for things like he describes.
Cross platform is not even an issue,because even under OpenGL, Windows still kicks the ass of Linux, BSD, and BeOS (until this fall that is!)
Having just gotten OpenGL to work with 4.0.1 with my Matrox G200, I have to disagree, for Quake 3 at least. It runs considerably smoother than under Windows, with the drivers from Matrox. The mouse control is a little odd but the 3D is definitely faster.
I'm a developer who has been in their developer program from pretty much the earliest stages -- I remember them coming to my school to demo the BeBox and the BeOS and hearing the initial OOs and AAHs since we hadn't seen anything quite this cool in an OS. And then the fun started:
- No, we won't drop support for the BeBox.
- What the heck? No we aren't considering an Intel port.
- We'd never drop support for PowerPC.
- We're committed to being the Media OS.
And last but not least so far,
- No, we're going to keep our desktop OS!
Anyone want to put bets on how long it takes? ^_^;
- Dan the cynical
Hmm... _actually_ no on the first sentence.. (who's the social outcast posting as AC?) no on the second sentence.. no on the third sentence ..
The purpose of this beast would be to provide an open gaming platform where anyone and everyone could make games targeted at the thing. No, putting X on it in its current form would be folly, just like putting WinCE on all Dreamcast games would be folly. Perhaps I am a social outcast with no life since I know that the DreamCast can run WinCE.. oh woe is me. BUT you could have a web browsing disk, like DreamCast, and it would boot up X for that.. and you'd have other games that just loaded and ran with some form of FBCon or SVGALIB. Another choice would be to let you integrate your game in a userland-like kernel space for extra speed and hardware control. No, the idea is that anyone could get in on it unlike the current consoles that often require a $10000 license for one developer station and game manufacturer approval. I know, I've looked into it seriously.
I also never said it had to run Linux, a BSD-based gaming system would also be very cool. Just so happens this article was about Linux gaming.. or didn't you notice?
So I was wondering if anyone else gets turned on by the idea of an X-Box style system running embedded Linux, and running games ported by Loki, or more specifically, designed for the LinuX-Box to begin with. Wouldn't that be lovely? A console based on embedded Linux. Not terribly far out either really.
Doesn't this sound familiar to anyone? Remember the page on Nintendo's web site talking about how the only thing emulators are good for is "pirating" games, and how they have a purely negative effect on their industry? What do you think they'd say about a perfectly legal (until DMCA) device to make backups of your carts? Nothing new here, just standard good ol' corporate FUD if you ask me. Just wait for all the DMCA-based stuff though.. just think! All you have to do to really legally restrict fair copying of CDs and such is to put flimsy copy controls on them. =D
At my work place, I generally find that it's not uncommon for my coworkers to complain to me of 60, 70, even 80 hour work weeks some time. They are salaried and so they are getting paid for their 32.8 hours or whatever, and this is not "just part of the job". They're not happy about it but we keep getting the line "the company is growing, so we have to try to cope and work together". Well, I hate to tell you, but in this industry salaried == bent over. I'm working hourly for the company and do some long hours, because I get more money for it. People are in such demand now that if you are afraid to ask for a better hours/wage ratio then you're not playing the market right! A lot of these businesses are going to eat you for what you're worth, so consider doing the same!
I've seen this debate going around a lot, and I know that my opinion probably doesn't matter for much by itself, but I'll interject it anyway. I'm not a linguistic researcher, just someone who has done many years of people watching on this subject. I tend to find that while language doesn't enforce thought patterns, it does tend to heavily influence them. A lot of people I know do think strictly inside the paradigm of English, but I know many people who can think about things not expressable in English without a LOT of wordage (most programmers). And so as Tim Sweeney said, it's a practical consideration rather than a theoretical one.
Just food for thought...
All of you have missed something rather important (unless it hasn't gotten moderated and I don't see it yet) --
"If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all."I of course take the IANAL statement, but it seems like if your "employee contract" kept you from distributing a GPL'd program's source, then you simply couldn't distribute it at all. Besides, if the binaries left that "company" they'd then hit the GPL legal restrictions. So you'd have to be in the "company" to get even binaries. Why would you join such a club? What could they possibly offer you to lure you to the Dark Side(tm)?! =)
Yeah, that's one of the main reasons I like anime so much, along with a lot of other people -- it's generally aimed at a mature audience, not the Saturday morning cartoonies. Animated movies as a medium really haven't see much in the way of serious movies here in the U.S.
One other thing of note:
The fact that Gaiman, one of my favourite authors, did the translation is yet another reason to go see it.
Hmm... I guess one thing that I didn't really say very explicitly is that Neil Gaiman only did the dialogue adaptation. The other credit listed for the translation/adaptation (Jack Fletcher) is apparently the one who did most of the raw translation work. He translated the bulk of the text pretty literally, and then that was picked up by Neil Gaiman and made more natural sounding and such. Sorry for the ambiguity.
Nope, unlike basically all the other domestic anime releases so far (with a few exceptions in very limited areas, like Perfect Blue in Austin) this one is planned to go into the theaters. That's where it was shown here too. It's only going into 20 theaters at first, and then if it does well they'll distribute it nationally. There's the possibility of other things being brought to theaters too (Laputa/Castle in the Sky, etc).
I've been on the XFree86 developer's list for quite some time, and apparently this is nothing new.
Basically what's been said on the issue (since it's been brought up several times) is that the guy who started Xig (Thomas Roell I think it was?) is the one who wrote X386, which is the basis for XFree86 today. Apparently he is a bit miffed at the success of the project, and the apparent lack of success in getting ahead of it in his own project.
This generally tends to inflame people who are working on free software that is generally of higher quality than the corresponding commercial software, but they are bashed for their free work. XFree86 4.0 will be worlds above Accel-X in performance, modularity, and features. The thing is, XFree knows this, and so does Xig. The XFree policy is not to sling mud back, and not to post any kind of benchmarks (which often don't make sense anyway), but to simply let the consumer decide what they want to use. We're writing XFree86 for ourselves, and if other people get a good bit of use out of it, then we've more than served our purpose.
The main thing that companies like Xig and Metro-X have above XFree is that they can write proprietary drivers for cards where the manufacturers are too stingy with their specs to let the open source/free software people at it. At least Metro-X knows this, and they contribute code back and forth freely with XFree (including the new module loading system in XFree 4.0, which is pretty awesome).
Don't get all hyped up about this. It's nothing new. It's sad that it's happening in the way it's happening, but just wait for XFree86 4.0 to come out, and there won't be much mud left to sling except that tired old FUD that most people try to use in commercial vs free software. As Linus Torvalds said, "talk is cheap".
Sorry, I guess this is a little bit of a plug, but it lets you know what you can do with PHP.
I work for a company called eBlox that produces a PHP and ASP based product, webBlox. It is basically a mostly automated content management system interfaced to SQL. For example, I wrote a checkbook balancing program for myself in about an hour that tracks deposits, withdrawls, balancing, and whether checks have cleared; it includes a very spiffy looking interface. The webBlox libraries themselves run on both PHP3 and PHP4.0b2 (b1 didn't work), and total over 100k of PHP code. It includes a massive assortment of classes and funky dynamic binding stuff. In other words, it's a HUGE program -- and it works pretty well on PHP4. It's getting a bit sluggish on PHP3 these days though ^_^;;
We had a production server that was up for 497 days, 2 hours, and 27 seconds before crashing itself about a week ago. Apparently the version of the Linux kernel it was running wasn't able to handle the "jiffy roll" problem -- sort of a little mini Y2K where the jiffy timer counter in the kernel overflows its 32 bits. At that point, two processes (cron and some at job) started spawning violently and brought the load average up to about 15, when it promptly died from a disk controller problem ;-).
Before that, we were afraid to reboot the thing because we didn't know if it would come back up right, and it's been up for so long that it's been up longer than I've been with the company. It still had an early version of Debian 2.0 with kernel 2.0.35 =). We were planning to run its UPS down to my car and plug it into a power inverter to get it somewhere without shutting it down, but alas, that isn't neccessary now. ='| =)
Let's give this thing one more go:
"As a special exception, if you link this library with files compiled with a GNU compiler to produce an executable, this does not cause the resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License. This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License."
What this is saying is that if you link against the library when you've compiled a program using a GNU compiler, then your program is not forced into the GPL. This is to make sure that proprietary software can be produced using a GNU compiler without having to rewrite the whole libc. (Though I can see RMS rubbing his hands thoughtfully already. =) It specifically states that this does not invalidate any other conditions that would make your program automatically GPL, INCLUDING usage of this library with a program compiled using a NON-GNU compiler. Therefore, you can not use this library with a proprietary compiler unless the produced code is GPL'd.
If this turns out to be true, then Compaq will be forced to write their own libc; not only is that a Big Deal, it means that if you write a program with their compiler, you'd have to distribute their libc with it each time or link statically, and GNU's libc is included in every Linux distribution automatically. This makes it less and less advantageous to release such a compiler for Linux.