Yeah, but the difference is that Candada also has almost universally available block heater electrical outlets at all public/private parking lots, which are pretty much essential for diesel engines in severe cold (of course in Canada you need them even for gas engines). The winters in England don't get as cold as in the US, so although many people with diesel engines may have their own heaters at home, it's not the requirement that it would be in the Northern US.
Well CPU speed and memory sizes may have taken away a lot of the challenge, but you can still choose to work on fundamentally hard problems like image recognition and AI.
Really? I've been following this on lkml and up to yesterday it seemed people are still reporting VM problems under heavy swap.
Admittedly the last one I've tried personally was 2.4.4-ac8, which started killing pieces of KDE when I was simulataneously recompiling the kernel and Qt!
I imagine they were prepared to go either way - to use it as a bargaining chip to keep AOL on the desktop, or to attempt to make AOL/Netscape the desktop for internet appliances.
Since AOL is the money maker, not netscape, it does of course make a lot of sense.
Of course logically they will need to maintain Netscape as a viable threat in order not to get expunged from the Windows desktop at some point in the future.
FYI that first "UTICA online" link you gave has a "myths" section that claims a lot of Stallman's concerns are invalid.
Among other things it says that UTITA wouldn't change existing reverse engineering law, and says that free software shouldn't be concerned about shrinkwrap licences beacuse a) it's OK to have a non-shrinkwrap licence/warrantee, and b) it's OK to have no warantee at all, like most free software.
I don't know the truth of any of this - just pointing out what the web site says.
Actually, there already is Ximian GNOME for Solaris. In fact I think I've still got it installed on the box I'm using here (not that I'm using it - it installs as a choice from the graphical login). The version I have here though is pretty old - they didn't/don't keep it very up-to-date wrt the x84 build.
Actually Solaris is used pretty heavily as a development platform especially within the telecom and financial industries.
I use Netscape 4.73 at work under Solaris (same at home under Linux), but there's also a Netscape 6.0 build for Solaris available from Sun, not to mention Mozilla or you can even build Konqueror for Solaris without much effort.
I don't know the licensing specifics of the kernel/glibc interface, but given that it's a GNU library I'm sure it's been blessed by Stallman as being squeaky clean!
I thought patents apply to implementations, not ideas? That's why something like the MP3 or MPEG-2 patents are so tricky (impossible?) to get around - because they're so general as to include any possible *way* of implementing the ideas they want to protect.
BTW, who's Vergil Bushnell? No disrespect intended, but should I have heard of him?
Actually, if he had the resources to fight Microsoft he might have won. I'm not sure what law prevents you from reverse engineering a file format!
That's the trouble with the law, and probably what Vidomi were relying on - that the guy with more money often wins regardless of the merits. I guess they wern't expecting the FSF themselves to get involved.
The LGPL is the correct choice only if you want to allow your code to be used in commercial programs (such as Ogg Vorbis have chosen), which Avery Lee doesn't. The GPL was the right choice for him, and hopefully the courts will recognise the difference between the GPL and LGPL.
I'd agree that the derivative work part is key. Vidmoi are trying to finesse the GPL by moving the GPL'd code into DLLs, but luckily that packaging reshuffle doesn't change the issue of the degree to which Vidomi's product is derivative of it.
If DLLs defeated the GPL than any GPL program could be trivially modifed to be a DLL and called from a six line commercial application, or more importantly a 50/50 mix like Vidomi's.
I've had my/usr and/home partitions on ReiserFS for a long time, and had zero trouble with them (Mandrake 7.1 came with ReiserFS integrated into the 2.2 kernel).
I don't think I'd call the situation is Russia a recession (which would imply a cylic retreat) - it's more just economic turmoil from the transition to a market economy. There's just so much economic infrastructure that needs to be built, as well as the current general lawlessness that makes doing legitimate business there pretty hard.
I spent a couple of years doing heavy duty Motif development, and can assure you it's the most bug ridden piece of crap you can imagine. It's also got a lame widget set.
I downloaded Qt, and from knowing nothing about it was up and writing my own widgets in a few hours - it's an excellent API and widget set, not to mention QtDesigner vs things like the Motif designer UIM/X which was expensive as hell and followed in Motif's tradition of bugginess.
If the author fails to see Linux as a viable desktop OS then he's obviously at odds with all the people who disagree and are using it as such.
I use Linux at home primarily because it offers a software development environment far superior to Windows, and essentially identical to Solaris which I use at work. Sure I could run Solaris for free at home too, but Linux has much better support for the multimedia stuff I'm interested in.
Maybe Linux will replace Windows one day, maybe it won't. Who cares? The point is that for a very rapidly growing number of people it's a preferable alternative, and those people are the only ones that matter. Remember that Linux got to where it is based on volunteer efforts, not based on the contributions of the companies that are now trying to commercialize it. If no one ever makes a buck of Linux it won't matter one iota to the millions of people who still choose to use it and improve it.
If you want stability then why are you talking about bleeding edge kernels (RH 7.1 = kernel 2.4.3) and GNOME which for all it's rapid advances is still way behind KDE in terms of maturity.
Try a 2.2 kernel with KDE 2.1, KMail, Konqueror, KOffice and compare that to your 2.4/GNOME experience. If you don't like Konqueror then you've still got Netscape (which I chose to use even in Windows), Mozilla and Opera to chose from.
You seem to want to compare a hacker Linux desktop to a consumer Windows one, and the reults of such a comparison are obvious before you even bother to boot the PC they are installed on.
I think they'd be better off continuing to put out release candidates until they get one that - as is - they're happy enough to put out as the retail release (and final ISO download if they want to continue doing that).
I tried the "release" 8.0 download, and among other issues found that:
- the 2.4.3 kernel they install by default (it also comes with a 2.2 kernel) suffers from the VM failures that were still unfixed as of recent 2.4.4-ac versions. Symptom - under heavy swap conditions, the kernel will just kill processes (in my case parts of KDE) in a temporary hack attempt to keep going.
- the aic7xxx (Adaptec SCSI controll driver) they ship with is broken to the extend that you may or may not be able to install off a SCSI CD (at best it will take 3hr+ due to SCSI timeouts and retries). This is a known reported issue. I got around it by copying the CD to disk and doing a disk based install, then installing a newer kernel.
Unfortunately Mandrake's way of doing things is that they release the last release candidate plus bug fixes, so it's anbody's guess whether the retail version fixes any of the 8.0 "release" download issues.
You could submit your site, but unless it's a highly linked-to one it's not going to show up anyway (that's Google's basic priority scheme). They use 2,000 (or is it 4,000 - I forget) Linux based servers already, so they'd obviously have some pretty massive upgrades needed if they wanted to substantially increase their capacity.
One way to orgainize the information if they attempted closer to full web indexing would be to attempt to automatically classify web sites (maybe into multiple categories each), and then present a more structured view rather than just straight relevance ordered search results... perhaps show the top ranked sites then let you use those as jumping-off points into the related organized tree.
It'd not just the free FTP access, it's the cheapbytes sales too, from which Mandrake get nothing.
You never see people complaining about not being able to download SuSE ISO's, or about SuSE being $29.95 (official version) rather than Mandrake's $3.49 at cheapbytes.
Linux many be free software, and none of us need a distribution, but we all recognise the value of them and use them. It's a pretty odd business model for Mandrake to create a product that people clearly want and then give it away! Sure if they stop providing free downloads or allowing ISO distribution people will whine, but as long as they provide a product we want and do so at a reasonable price (they do - it's 29.95 same as SuSE), then we'll buy it.
Re:QT is the best gui toolkit out there
on
Qt for Mac
·
· Score: 2
Well I've never used it, but I think wxWindows may be fairly competetive.
Anyway, I agree - Qt rocks, as does QtDesigner, not to mention the Qt documentation.
It's pretty increadible that something of this quality is available free from a commercial company, or at all for that matter!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but the difference is that Candada also has almost universally available block heater electrical outlets at all public/private parking lots, which are pretty much essential for diesel engines in severe cold (of course in Canada you need them even for gas engines). The winters in England don't get as cold as in the US, so although many people with diesel engines may have their own heaters at home, it's not the requirement that it would be in the Northern US.
Well CPU speed and memory sizes may have taken away a lot of the challenge, but you can still choose to work on fundamentally hard problems like image recognition and AI.
Really? I've been following this on lkml and up to yesterday it seemed people are still reporting VM problems under heavy swap.
Admittedly the last one I've tried personally was 2.4.4-ac8, which started killing pieces of KDE when I was simulataneously recompiling the kernel and Qt!
900K vs 14M sure makes sense if you're on a modem as many of us still are, as well as not screwing kernel.org on their bandwidth costs.
Get kernel patches here: http://www.bzimage.org/
I imagine they were prepared to go either way - to use it as a bargaining chip to keep AOL on the desktop, or to attempt to make AOL/Netscape the desktop for internet appliances.
Since AOL is the money maker, not netscape, it does of course make a lot of sense.
Of course logically they will need to maintain Netscape as a viable threat in order not to get expunged from the Windows desktop at some point in the future.
FYI that first "UTICA online" link you gave has a "myths" section that claims a lot of Stallman's concerns are invalid.
Among other things it says that UTITA wouldn't change existing reverse engineering law, and says that free software shouldn't be concerned about shrinkwrap licences beacuse a) it's OK to have a non-shrinkwrap licence/warrantee, and b) it's OK to have no warantee at all, like most free software.
I don't know the truth of any of this - just pointing out what the web site says.
Actually, there already is Ximian GNOME for Solaris. In fact I think I've still got it installed on the box I'm using here (not that I'm using it - it installs as a choice from the graphical login). The version I have here though is pretty old - they didn't/don't keep it very up-to-date wrt the x84 build.
Actually Solaris is used pretty heavily as a development platform especially within the telecom and financial industries.
I use Netscape 4.73 at work under Solaris (same at home under Linux), but there's also a Netscape 6.0 build for Solaris available from Sun, not to mention Mozilla or you can even build Konqueror for Solaris without much effort.
I don't know the licensing specifics of the kernel/glibc interface, but given that it's a GNU library I'm sure it's been blessed by Stallman as being squeaky clean!
I thought patents apply to implementations, not ideas? That's why something like the MP3 or MPEG-2 patents are so tricky (impossible?) to get around - because they're so general as to include any possible *way* of implementing the ideas they want to protect.
BTW, who's Vergil Bushnell? No disrespect intended, but should I have heard of him?
Actually, if he had the resources to fight Microsoft he might have won. I'm not sure what law prevents you from reverse engineering a file format!
That's the trouble with the law, and probably what Vidomi were relying on - that the guy with more money often wins regardless of the merits. I guess they wern't expecting the FSF themselves to get involved.
The LGPL is the correct choice only if you want to allow your code to be used in commercial programs (such as Ogg Vorbis have chosen), which Avery Lee doesn't. The GPL was the right choice for him, and hopefully the courts will recognise the difference between the GPL and LGPL.
I'd agree that the derivative work part is key. Vidmoi are trying to finesse the GPL by moving the GPL'd code into DLLs, but luckily that packaging reshuffle doesn't change the issue of the degree to which Vidomi's product is derivative of it.
If DLLs defeated the GPL than any GPL program could be trivially modifed to be a DLL and called from a six line commercial application, or more importantly a 50/50 mix like Vidomi's.
Interesting... it also says that the word "crap" predates Mr. Crapper anyway.
Disregarding the facts, I imagine the toilet was in fact invented by the famous Japanese sanitation engineer Dr. Takhira Shita.
Other fine, albeit fabricated, news stories are available here:
http://www.denounce.com/
Don't forget the inventor of the modern toilet - Thomas Crapper (I kid you not!).
I've had my /usr and /home partitions on ReiserFS for a long time, and had zero trouble with them (Mandrake 7.1 came with ReiserFS integrated into the 2.2 kernel).
Yep. That's why Ariane, which mostly is putting up comms. satellites, launch from Africa.
I don't think I'd call the situation is Russia a recession (which would imply a cylic retreat) - it's more just economic turmoil from the transition to a market economy. There's just so much economic infrastructure that needs to be built, as well as the current general lawlessness that makes doing legitimate business there pretty hard.
I spent a couple of years doing heavy duty Motif development, and can assure you it's the most bug ridden piece of crap you can imagine. It's also got a lame widget set.
I downloaded Qt, and from knowing nothing about it was up and writing my own widgets in a few hours - it's an excellent API and widget set, not to mention QtDesigner vs things like the Motif designer UIM/X which was expensive as hell and followed in Motif's tradition of bugginess.
Sorry - experience says it's no contest. Qt wins.
If the author fails to see Linux as a viable desktop OS then he's obviously at odds with all the people who disagree and are using it as such.
I use Linux at home primarily because it offers a software development environment far superior to Windows, and essentially identical to Solaris which I use at work. Sure I could run Solaris for free at home too, but Linux has much better support for the multimedia stuff I'm interested in.
Maybe Linux will replace Windows one day, maybe it won't. Who cares? The point is that for a very rapidly growing number of people it's a preferable alternative, and those people are the only ones that matter. Remember that Linux got to where it is based on volunteer efforts, not based on the contributions of the companies that are now trying to commercialize it. If no one ever makes a buck of Linux it won't matter one iota to the millions of people who still choose to use it and improve it.
If you want stability then why are you talking about bleeding edge kernels (RH 7.1 = kernel 2.4.3) and GNOME which for all it's rapid advances is still way behind KDE in terms of maturity.
Try a 2.2 kernel with KDE 2.1, KMail, Konqueror, KOffice and compare that to your 2.4/GNOME experience. If you don't like Konqueror then you've still got Netscape (which I chose to use even in Windows), Mozilla and Opera to chose from.
You seem to want to compare a hacker Linux desktop to a consumer Windows one, and the reults of such a comparison are obvious before you even bother to boot the PC they are installed on.
Well hopefully...
I think they'd be better off continuing to put out release candidates until they get one that - as is - they're happy enough to put out as the retail release (and final ISO download if they want to continue doing that).
I tried the "release" 8.0 download, and among other issues found that:
- the 2.4.3 kernel they install by default (it also comes with a 2.2 kernel) suffers from the VM failures that were still unfixed as of recent 2.4.4-ac versions. Symptom - under heavy swap conditions, the kernel will just kill processes (in my case parts of KDE) in a temporary hack attempt to keep going.
- the aic7xxx (Adaptec SCSI controll driver) they ship with is broken to the extend that you may or may not be able to install off a SCSI CD (at best it will take 3hr+ due to SCSI timeouts and retries). This is a known reported issue. I got around it by copying the CD to disk and doing a disk based install, then installing a newer kernel.
Unfortunately Mandrake's way of doing things is that they release the last release candidate plus bug fixes, so it's anbody's guess whether the retail version fixes any of the 8.0 "release" download issues.
You could submit your site, but unless it's a highly linked-to one it's not going to show up anyway (that's Google's basic priority scheme). They use 2,000 (or is it 4,000 - I forget) Linux based servers already, so they'd obviously have some pretty massive upgrades needed if they wanted to substantially increase their capacity.
One way to orgainize the information if they attempted closer to full web indexing would be to attempt to automatically classify web sites (maybe into multiple categories each), and then present a more structured view rather than just straight relevance ordered search results... perhaps show the top ranked sites then let you use those as jumping-off points into the related organized tree.
It'd not just the free FTP access, it's the cheapbytes sales too, from which Mandrake get nothing.
You never see people complaining about not being able to download SuSE ISO's, or about SuSE being $29.95 (official version) rather than Mandrake's $3.49 at cheapbytes.
Linux many be free software, and none of us need a distribution, but we all recognise the value of them and use them. It's a pretty odd business model for Mandrake to create a product that people clearly want and then give it away! Sure if they stop providing free downloads or allowing ISO distribution people will whine, but as long as they provide a product we want and do so at a reasonable price (they do - it's 29.95 same as SuSE), then we'll buy it.
Well I've never used it, but I think wxWindows may be fairly competetive.
Anyway, I agree - Qt rocks, as does QtDesigner, not to mention the Qt documentation.
It's pretty increadible that something of this quality is available free from a commercial company, or at all for that matter!