But they won't. MS's prime directive remains to put Windows wherever they possibly can. My feeling is that this move will open up some subsystems like SMB, but only to any distributor that signs up to the agreement. I wonder how many patents Samba would fall foul of if Microsoft decided to enforce their patents?
LG have been one of the companies who slavishly follow the Microsoft line where computer hardware is concerned. They were one of the first companies to fab up for the Tablet PC and the one of the first to make UMPCs. Whatever it is that they've signed up for, it won't affect their relationship with Microsoft.
Don't worry, I can see Apple doing another 'exclusive' deal with Verizon, and another one with T-Mobile (apparently the European partner) in time. There's probably some loophole that will allow them to roll it out to other providers after six months or a year.
There is a difference between drivers for graphics cards and 'drivers' for synchronisation software. In the synchronisation world there is a standard, SyncML/OMA Data Synchronisation, which has been adopted by M$ and most of the major phone/PDA companies, but hasn't found its way into Evolution or other OS desktop systems yet to my knowledge, even though there is a server for it. This topic is talking about closed source hardware drivers though, and cable linked PDAs usually use some kind of serial port, so there's plenty of support for that.
I'm a Mac user and a fan of FOSS. I like OS X because it's easy to use but also because I can set up a MAMP server and have a fully functional portable development environment. I use NeoOffice, Gimpshop, Scribus and Inkscape because the price is right for what I use them for. I also use Transmit, Unison and TextMate because I haven't found FOSS software that's anywhere as good. I've also paid money for Rogue Amoeba's stuff because there's nothing in the FOSS world that touches it, and very little in the expensive world for that matter. How much are these apps? Transmit is $29.95 and Unison is $24.95, TextMate is EU39, AudioHijack, which is an amazing piece of software if you do stuff with audio, costs all of $32. There is an undeniable overhead in developing for the Mac because you have to use dedicated hardware, but it's not that much, and the quality of the software is very high, so I think it's worth my throwing my pocket change at them. That Coda sure looks purty too...
To be fair, there's a limit to what regular customer support can do in any country: they probably follow scripts (there's an ISP support system that works in exactly that way - I can't remember the name but a lot of ISPs use it) and won't do anything off the track. However, once upon a time there was such a thing as second line support, who would be able to analyse your packet loss problems (to an extent - obviously if it was on the inside of your router it would either be your problem or best endeavours, and I think generally a)). However, even those people have been offshored or globalised in recent years, and might be in Bratislava or Singapore, to think of a couple of places off the top of my head *coughAT&Tcough* and might not have the skills to trace down your problem. The size of the industry now means that power users don't get supported, to the benefit of those who have just been to Best Buy and can't get their Internets to work.
The rejoicing behind Dell's decision to provide machines preloaded with Ubuntu was the assumption that they will also provide software *and* hardware support. It doesn't matter whether everyone who buys a Dell laptop with Ubuntu on is a Linux power user or not, the point of buying Dell is that there's someone on the line if something goes wrong. These machines should have certified to work with Ubuntu, and the support people should be able to resolve common problems, whether hardware or software. What makes matters worse is that Dell continues to promote that expectation in order to take a couple of hundred dollars of a purchaser for hardware cover. One of the reasons to buy a well known name is that, to put it bluntly, a lot of people want someone to shout at if something goes wrong. It seems that there's going to be a lot of shouting if there's no useful response.
Like I said, it does what I want it to do. It doesn't exploit Chinese children or dump chemicals in the sea. It lets me tinker with images, and is long overdue a revision, but I've been using it for long enough to get around its foibles. I use the X11 Mac version by the way - it still does MWI. I haven't used the Windows version for a while, so YMMV.
yet another article fails like a big faily thing. There will be far more interesting things at Computex when it opens than half built PCs. Like... err... hmmm, give me a minute...
My guess is that it's just underpowered for Windows Mobile 6. Hmm, it takes a while to find information - HTC Atlas:
Microprocessor CPU: 32bit Texas Instruments OMAP 850 CPU Clock: 201 MHz Memory, Storage capacity ROM capacity: 128 MB (accessible: 41.42MB) RAM capacity: 64 MB (accessible: 43.8MB) Hard Disk capacity: Not supported Display Display Type: color transflective TFT , 65536 scales Display Resolution: 240 x 320 Display Diagonal: 2.8 "
That doesn't seem particularily powerful or have a great memory capacity. In fact I had a HTC Blue Angel (in its Orange MPV2000 guise) that was more powerful than that two years ago. I'm sure Windows Mobile adheres to Moore's Law in the same way as every other version of Windows does so it is going to be disappointing.
Looking down the comments I suppose that this is horses for courses, but they've done what I need them for so far (web graphics, business cards, t-shirts). Sorry if this is a repeat, I'm sure it is by now:
Gimpshop - The Gimp with a more Photoshop-user friendly UI. www.gimpshop.com Inkscape - Vector graphics in an Illustrator stylee. I haven't done much with it but it generally does the job. - www.inkscape.org Scribus - very versatile DTP system. It does CMYK separations and can present finished artwork pretty much any way a print house wants it - www.scribus.net Kompozer - Windows based code fix for Nvu - Very good for rapid web prototyping, and creates far better HTML than FrontPage although as soon as I start getting clever with css the text editor comes out - www.kompozer.net
The other cool thing about this is that it's all open source and it's all available for Windows, OS X (X11 mostly, but hey) and Linux. Free's still good, isn't it?
Re:Danger of 'GPLv3 or later'
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The GPL is a legal document which recognises the FSF as its issuing authority (Clause 9), so if anyone else issued a licence called GPL which purported to succeed the current GPL, they would have a legal battle on their hands.
I'm reminded of the certification scheme that the UK Government implemented when it introduced online filing for income tax a few years ago. Apart from the fact that it only worked with Windows (which has been covered certainly by The Register and probably by Slashdot in the past) it was tied to your credit record as held by Equifax; when I applied, Equifax phoned me and asked me to confirm my bank account details and mortgage details. The truth is that there isn't really any other way of proving your identity in the UK, and in any country that doesn't have a formal ID card scheme. The plans for the UK's national ID database have been diluted to the collating of existing data such as driving licenses, passport data and other documents held by government agencies. Having said that, an identity that is vouched for would be more valuable than relying on a system built for an IT provider's bottom line. It creates an overhead, but if governments were serious about attempting to prevent terrorism and serious crime, a reputation layer supported by banks and employers and other trusted agencies would be a stronger level of proof.
Re:Above is a very old troll oft repeated
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 1
This is just a random Monday morning thought... I used to work for one of the major credit reference agencies. When I told people who I worked for, they would almost inevitably say 'oh, can you sort out my credit rating then?', and of course the answer was 'no, it's an immediate sacking offence to do anything with live data' and 'what the agency says about doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get a loan or a credit card or whatever. That decision is down to how the querying party chooses to interpret the data that the agency returns.' By then they had normally got bored and gone away.
It strikes me that reputation could also be a similar agglomeration of data, from which it would be down to a site or an individual to make a decision on how much to trust a poster/seller/relationship/whatever. Of course, the difficulty would be getting the key services such as Google, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, LiveJournal etc to provide data, and indeed give a metric by which to report (number of posts with more than 2 karma on Slashdot?). This would be presented as bit of XML/RSS (depending on how corporate the application needed to be) and would be then presented to a site's user either based on preset conditions, or on the user's own conditions. The user would not see the raw data. This type of system does add a level of complexity to web interaction but it's going to be essential soon, and far more than 'just for blogging'.
Re:The GPL: Intellectual Theft
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I smell screed here. If you couldn't modify the Windows kernel to meet your 'exacting standards' what did you do? How were you aware of Linux if you weren't aware of the culture and philosophy surrounding free and open source software? What changes did you make to the kernel that were so important that you couldn't release them? And why, in the name of God, are you still using Token Ring? What's to bet that if I put a sentence of this into Google, that I would find it word for word somewhere else?
Probably. It goes back at least to the difference between NT4 Workstation and Server, which was a single line in the registry plus verification from the running licence. If that line was removed, the OS would check to see if it had a server licence. If it didn't, it reinstated the line. Product distribution is dependent on the license rather than the binaries that are distributed.
There is a standards war of sorts going on with DAB. The far east and new adopters are moving to AAC/AAC+ for encoding whereas we have settled with MP2, but might have to roll out AAC for compatibility, which will make all existing digital radios obsolete. And of course, the US has hardly touched it at all.
MS likes to take common words, surely you've noticed? They haven't been able to copyright Windows, Word or Access because it was decreed that they were too common in the mid-90s. Similarily I remember Bill talking about the 'Digital Nervous System' or 'DNS' when he made the decision that MS's future was online back in 1995. Someone set him straight on that one pretty quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
You ain't been around these parts long...
And when we run out of cats and dogs, we can use naked women.
You do realise that in any conference, there is at least one fucking idiot? It's a rule of life.
But they won't. MS's prime directive remains to put Windows wherever they possibly can. My feeling is that this move will open up some subsystems like SMB, but only to any distributor that signs up to the agreement. I wonder how many patents Samba would fall foul of if Microsoft decided to enforce their patents?
Or Winner Collects.
LG have been one of the companies who slavishly follow the Microsoft line where computer hardware is concerned. They were one of the first companies to fab up for the Tablet PC and the one of the first to make UMPCs. Whatever it is that they've signed up for, it won't affect their relationship with Microsoft.
Don't worry, I can see Apple doing another 'exclusive' deal with Verizon, and another one with T-Mobile (apparently the European partner) in time. There's probably some loophole that will allow them to roll it out to other providers after six months or a year.
There is a difference between drivers for graphics cards and 'drivers' for synchronisation software. In the synchronisation world there is a standard, SyncML/OMA Data Synchronisation, which has been adopted by M$ and most of the major phone/PDA companies, but hasn't found its way into Evolution or other OS desktop systems yet to my knowledge, even though there is a server for it. This topic is talking about closed source hardware drivers though, and cable linked PDAs usually use some kind of serial port, so there's plenty of support for that.
In the case of the Mac Mini, it's 'take it back to your dealer'. There's not a lot of space in that wee box.
I'm a Mac user and a fan of FOSS. I like OS X because it's easy to use but also because I can set up a MAMP server and have a fully functional portable development environment. I use NeoOffice, Gimpshop, Scribus and Inkscape because the price is right for what I use them for. I also use Transmit, Unison and TextMate because I haven't found FOSS software that's anywhere as good. I've also paid money for Rogue Amoeba's stuff because there's nothing in the FOSS world that touches it, and very little in the expensive world for that matter. How much are these apps? Transmit is $29.95 and Unison is $24.95, TextMate is EU39, AudioHijack, which is an amazing piece of software if you do stuff with audio, costs all of $32.
There is an undeniable overhead in developing for the Mac because you have to use dedicated hardware, but it's not that much, and the quality of the software is very high, so I think it's worth my throwing my pocket change at them. That Coda sure looks purty too...
To be fair, there's a limit to what regular customer support can do in any country: they probably follow scripts (there's an ISP support system that works in exactly that way - I can't remember the name but a lot of ISPs use it) and won't do anything off the track. However, once upon a time there was such a thing as second line support, who would be able to analyse your packet loss problems (to an extent - obviously if it was on the inside of your router it would either be your problem or best endeavours, and I think generally a)). However, even those people have been offshored or globalised in recent years, and might be in Bratislava or Singapore, to think of a couple of places off the top of my head *coughAT&Tcough* and might not have the skills to trace down your problem. The size of the industry now means that power users don't get supported, to the benefit of those who have just been to Best Buy and can't get their Internets to work.
The rejoicing behind Dell's decision to provide machines preloaded with Ubuntu was the assumption that they will also provide software *and* hardware support. It doesn't matter whether everyone who buys a Dell laptop with Ubuntu on is a Linux power user or not, the point of buying Dell is that there's someone on the line if something goes wrong. These machines should have certified to work with Ubuntu, and the support people should be able to resolve common problems, whether hardware or software. What makes matters worse is that Dell continues to promote that expectation in order to take a couple of hundred dollars of a purchaser for hardware cover. One of the reasons to buy a well known name is that, to put it bluntly, a lot of people want someone to shout at if something goes wrong. It seems that there's going to be a lot of shouting if there's no useful response.
Like I said, it does what I want it to do. It doesn't exploit Chinese children or dump chemicals in the sea. It lets me tinker with images, and is long overdue a revision, but I've been using it for long enough to get around its foibles. I use the X11 Mac version by the way - it still does MWI. I haven't used the Windows version for a while, so YMMV.
yet another article fails like a big faily thing. There will be far more interesting things at Computex when it opens than half built PCs. Like... err... hmmm, give me a minute...
M-x M-g: Creates a local backup of Google for search purposes.
My guess is that it's just underpowered for Windows Mobile 6. Hmm, it takes a while to find information - HTC Atlas:
Microprocessor
CPU: 32bit Texas Instruments OMAP 850
CPU Clock: 201 MHz
Memory, Storage capacity
ROM capacity: 128 MB (accessible: 41.42MB)
RAM capacity: 64 MB (accessible: 43.8MB)
Hard Disk capacity: Not supported
Display
Display Type: color transflective TFT , 65536 scales
Display Resolution: 240 x 320
Display Diagonal: 2.8 "
That doesn't seem particularily powerful or have a great memory capacity. In fact I had a HTC Blue Angel (in its Orange MPV2000 guise) that was more powerful than that two years ago. I'm sure Windows Mobile adheres to Moore's Law in the same way as every other version of Windows does so it is going to be disappointing.
Looking down the comments I suppose that this is horses for courses, but they've done what I need them for so far (web graphics, business cards, t-shirts). Sorry if this is a repeat, I'm sure it is by now:
Gimpshop - The Gimp with a more Photoshop-user friendly UI. www.gimpshop.com
Inkscape - Vector graphics in an Illustrator stylee. I haven't done much with it but it generally does the job. - www.inkscape.org
Scribus - very versatile DTP system. It does CMYK separations and can present finished artwork pretty much any way a print house wants it - www.scribus.net
Kompozer - Windows based code fix for Nvu - Very good for rapid web prototyping, and creates far better HTML than FrontPage although as soon as I start getting clever with css the text editor comes out - www.kompozer.net
The other cool thing about this is that it's all open source and it's all available for Windows, OS X (X11 mostly, but hey) and Linux. Free's still good, isn't it?
The GPL is a legal document which recognises the FSF as its issuing authority (Clause 9), so if anyone else issued a licence called GPL which purported to succeed the current GPL, they would have a legal battle on their hands.
I'm reminded of the certification scheme that the UK Government implemented when it introduced online filing for income tax a few years ago. Apart from the fact that it only worked with Windows (which has been covered certainly by The Register and probably by Slashdot in the past) it was tied to your credit record as held by Equifax; when I applied, Equifax phoned me and asked me to confirm my bank account details and mortgage details. The truth is that there isn't really any other way of proving your identity in the UK, and in any country that doesn't have a formal ID card scheme. The plans for the UK's national ID database have been diluted to the collating of existing data such as driving licenses, passport data and other documents held by government agencies. Having said that, an identity that is vouched for would be more valuable than relying on a system built for an IT provider's bottom line. It creates an overhead, but if governments were serious about attempting to prevent terrorism and serious crime, a reputation layer supported by banks and employers and other trusted agencies would be a stronger level of proof.
It's a case for using reputation more ;)
This is just a random Monday morning thought... I used to work for one of the major credit reference agencies. When I told people who I worked for, they would almost inevitably say 'oh, can you sort out my credit rating then?', and of course the answer was 'no, it's an immediate sacking offence to do anything with live data' and 'what the agency says about doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get a loan or a credit card or whatever. That decision is down to how the querying party chooses to interpret the data that the agency returns.' By then they had normally got bored and gone away.
It strikes me that reputation could also be a similar agglomeration of data, from which it would be down to a site or an individual to make a decision on how much to trust a poster/seller/relationship/whatever. Of course, the difficulty would be getting the key services such as Google, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, LiveJournal etc to provide data, and indeed give a metric by which to report (number of posts with more than 2 karma on Slashdot?). This would be presented as bit of XML/RSS (depending on how corporate the application needed to be) and would be then presented to a site's user either based on preset conditions, or on the user's own conditions. The user would not see the raw data. This type of system does add a level of complexity to web interaction but it's going to be essential soon, and far more than 'just for blogging'.
I smell screed here. If you couldn't modify the Windows kernel to meet your 'exacting standards' what did you do? How were you aware of Linux if you weren't aware of the culture and philosophy surrounding free and open source software? What changes did you make to the kernel that were so important that you couldn't release them? And why, in the name of God, are you still using Token Ring? What's to bet that if I put a sentence of this into Google, that I would find it word for word somewhere else?
Probably. It goes back at least to the difference between NT4 Workstation and Server, which was a single line in the registry plus verification from the running licence. If that line was removed, the OS would check to see if it had a server licence. If it didn't, it reinstated the line. Product distribution is dependent on the license rather than the binaries that are distributed.
There is a standards war of sorts going on with DAB. The far east and new adopters are moving to AAC/AAC+ for encoding whereas we have settled with MP2, but might have to roll out AAC for compatibility, which will make all existing digital radios obsolete. And of course, the US has hardly touched it at all.
oh.
MS likes to take common words, surely you've noticed? They haven't been able to copyright Windows, Word or Access because it was decreed that they were too common in the mid-90s. Similarily I remember Bill talking about the 'Digital Nervous System' or 'DNS' when he made the decision that MS's future was online back in 1995. Someone set him straight on that one pretty quickly.