What the hell does a PASSENGER jet have to have a swarm of attack UAVs for?
Oh, wait. The original article had NOTHING TO DO with PASSENGER jets. This is military technology folks, not something you're going to see on the next Boeing or Airbus being flown out of Heathrow.
Bioware's NWN was excellent, but I'm not holding out much hope for Atari's NWN2.
I *am* holding out hope for id's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. id has a history or providing downloadable Linux versions once the retail PC version is out. Buy the box, download the Linux binaries and you're good to go.
Of course, I'll have to shell out another $400 or so to upgrade my system the play it right... Oh the sacrifices I'll make in the name of fragging alien scum.:-)
By "It just works", are you referring to hardware and drivers or software?
If software, will it run without Aqua? I mean, can you get something like iTunes or GarageBand to run under X?
If hardware, well...you should have just run Linux. I mean, if you want "It just works" then just buy known-supported hardware. The reason "It just works" on Mac is because Apple controls the hardware. You won't have to fiddle with driver one if you do some homework on what is supported under Linux, first.
My last couple of machines I purchases/built had no issues what-so-ever with hardware and drivers. It all just worked.
Actually, I was in a resale store the other day and there was a stack of Windows 3.11 floppies sitting next to a stack of WordPerfect 5.1 floppies. I was sort of in shock, seeing those.:-)
On the other hand, you could have used FreeDOS. I'm not sure about the WP, though. Hell, at least he wasn't used to WordStar.
Sorry, I have a Jeep. All the windows except for the front windscreen and front door windows are plastic and can get removed/rolled up. The front doors themselves can (and frequently are) removed. The front windscreen can (though doesn't often) fold down.
Of course, my Jeep isn't capable of topping about 75 MPH, so I'm not really in much danger of speeding tickets...
* * *
In the real world, I wonder how well radar and lasers reflect of the front and rear windows considering their angle. I figured the would reflect most of the beam up and not back, depending on the model of car.
The FSF is the Free Software Foundation, and the owner of the majority of the copyrights on GNU software and the stuff in lots of Linux distributions. It isn't some nebulous movement.
Yes, Novell can do all they want with the OLD code as long as they respect the copyrights. Novell does not have the resources to maintain GPLv2 versions of everything that moves to v3. The point of GNU/Linux is that the community does a lot of the work, not just one company. Novell can't replace that and if they tried, would rapidly fall behind and into the dustbin.
Why spend all that money when a monkey and a dartboard can outperform most analysts already? Surely you can get a monkey and a good set of darts for less than what they were going to spend?
The bigger the corporation, the more lawyers work for it. Novell, while just a shadow of what they once were, still thinks like a big corporation. Threat or not, they knew that many of their corporate customers -- you know, the paying ones -- had their own lawyers whispering in their ear. It was worth a certain amount of money to them to not have to put the effort into figuring out if they were violating patents or not. The perception was there and that money now gives the perception of safety.
What the suits didn't understand is that while Linux is moving more and more into the corporate space, at its core it is still a community driven project. They drastically underestimated that community's dislike and distrust of Microsoft.
Sorry, buddy, but I've done it in a manufacturing environment using Linux terminals.
No, not 200, 84. I ran a trial with 3 systems for 30 days before presenting it to management. Another 60 days to work up the roll-out plan, get the paperwork submitted to procurement, plan end-user training, management buy-in, etc. The actual roll-out took place over a weekend, with shift training the following Monday and follow-up training over the next couple of weeks.
If you don't need fast 3D graphics, terminals are the way to go and would have been perfect for a library.
Since we re-used a lot of existing equipment, total cost was under $75,000 U.S. including training. Training was handled in-house, just like the 90% of the rest of our training. This was back in 2002, so it would actually be easier and possibly cheaper today but for a 200 unit system I'd expect a final cost of $500 - $1000 per system, depending on equipment reuse.
Of course, I would also expect a slightly longer time frame for a government as opposed to a private corporation with management buy-in.
A quick read thru the article reveals not a problem with Linux, but with the idiots trying to manage the deployment without knowing what they were doing.
I feel sorry for Birmingham. Not so much for having to use Windows, but for having to live with an IT staff like that one.
And Microsoft already does do this; last time I checked I couldn't recompile XP to run on my PPC PowerMac. None of Microsoft's licenses are even close to open source, while a number of Apple's key technology are.
That's because Microsoft is honest about their position towards FOSS and Apple isn't. At least you know where you stand with Microsoft, but with Apple, they do the bare minimum with FOSS -- just enough to let the Apple fanboys use the argument "Apple DOES do Open Source! What it isn't open ENOUGH for you? Fanatic."
Seeing teenagers download my favorite OS for free, or seeing the experience cheapened in the eyes of others because its running on unsupported hardware bothers me.
Seeing your precious OS-X running on Dell bothers you? The experience is cheapened by not being on Apple-branded hardware? I know this is Slashdot and all, but you really need to get a life. It is software for Christ's sake, not your little sister.
Stick a human in there to punch to calculator buttons (or keyboard buttons) that few million times and you WILL have a noticeable error rate.
We aren't talking X==X++ here, there are several steps other than a simple increment where things can go wrong. PEBKAC is a huge variable that you are ignoring.
Many precincts are too small for generators to be practical, and UPS units also have a failure rate. What if, even though it was tested the week before, the generator fails on the day of the election? There is also the cost associated. Who is gonna pay for it all.
My main argument is this: there are acceptable error rates with non-electronic voting, why the hell are we so adamant that because they are "computer" based they should magically be 100% accurate and reliable? Hell, in all my years of experience with computers, that is the LAST thing I would expect. Yes, they can be minimized but this is the reason the big telecom equipment makers advertise 99.999% uptime and NOT 100% update. (Unpredictable] Shit happens.
Unless there is a power glitch, or any one of a number of other statistically small possibilities. In this case, I'd accept that the system is flawed, unless they could demonstrate it was voter error. While they say "electronic voting machine", that is rather ambiguous and could mean any one of a number of things.
As far as "not one single vote", that isn't going to happen. There are just too many little things that could go wrong, and some of them eventually will.
The law [Vol 1. Section 3.2.1] states a test of 1 in 500,000 "ballot positions", per processing step is acceptable. They do not measure voters, but rather ballot positions. A ballot position is the number of candidates and the number of other votable issues on a ballot. Steps include things like the electronic recording; the paper trail; transferring data to jurisdiction HQ; etc.
For example, if there are 3 people running for mayor, that is 3 ballot positions per voter -- assuming no other races. If there were 7 bond issues (yes and no spaces), that is another 14 ballot positions. Add in things like other races, referendums, etc. and what looks like a small election can have 30-50 "ballot positions" per ballot. Multiple that times the number of voters then the number of steps and it adds up fast.
To be fair, the target is 1 in 10,000,000 and in an election this small, they should have gotten it right.
It doesn't matter if it changed the fucking outcome! The point is that VOTES WERE NOT COUNTED!
What point? Votes are not counted all the time, and it is normal.
Let me make it REAL clear -- it is statistically IMPOSSIBLE to have a 100% accurate vote, 100% of the time. It WILL NOT EVER HAPPEN. You need to get over it and come back to reality.
We need to find ways to minimize inaccuracy, and understand what is "normal".
Keep in mind, as long as the accuracies are evenly distributed, they have minimal impact on the outcome. "Errors" are normal, and can be handled by the system. What needs to be watched is manipulation.
CAD on Linux has nothing to do with Microsoft at all. Cadence, Pro/Engineer, MicroStation, Mentor Graphics and others all run on Linux as native tools. All serious CAD runs on Unix and Unix-like OSes. AutoCAD is the only major exception, and hell, they don't even have a 64-bit version out, yet. However, a bunch of Autodesk's other products, like Maya, run Linux just fine.
You'll never get those games to run on Linux decently because they are based off of DirectX and not something platform neutral, like OpenGL or SDL. Do you expect Microsoft to give up DirectX, because it would never be a first class product for Linux. Never. It would always be a bastard step-child.
Good, commercial games CAN run on Linux. Take Neverwinter Nights, Doom 1, 2 & 3, Quake 3, Descent 2 and America's Army. The only thing stopping the manufacturers from making Linux versions is perceived market share. Why develop for a paltry 5% (or less) of the market when you can develop for the other 95%? Simple math, and having MS back a version of Linux won't help that at all.
Microsoft does NOT want Linux to become a first-class citizen of the desktop, because that would put it in direct competition with Windows. Windows, I may remind you, is a big profit center for MS.
Vista and Office at the same time? Someone in the sales dept. is smoking crack and dreaming of an annual bonus. Hell, why not upgrade all the servers to 2003, Exchange, etc.!
How about changing one thing at a time and seeing how it works, first?
Actually they are, otherwise they wouldn't have made the threat. The problem with Linux being free is that it massively reduces the value of the OS as a commodity item. This is a tactic to force people into an expensive alternative to push value back into that portion of the market.
I don't think they are, really. I think they think about and plan for Linux, but aren't worried about it.
Look at Vista. The entire OS can be looked at from the perspective of "we don't care WHO we fuck over, because they have no options. We own their asses." I mean DRM, hardware requirements, WGA, locking out the security vendors, the price, etc. All of that points to "we are not worried about anyone".
This has been presented before, and debunked before. This study shows that while ice is thinning in some parts of the arctic, it is thickening in others and the temperature change isn't uniform.
It also shows that the majority of polar bear populations are steady, with an equal number on the increase and decrease.
That shipping lane has been there before, and guess what -- there were polar bears around back then. Amazingly enough, polar bears aren't the hot-house flowers these people are making them out to be.
The climate is changing, that is for certain. The only thing more certain is that politicos and people who want gov't grants are going to exaggerate and hype every little anomaly beyond belief in order to garner attention and eventually money. What they hell ever happened to science for the sake of actual knowledge?
57% of $8,000,000 is $4,560,000. Assuming a 35% tax bracket, that leaves just shy of $3,000,000. Their investment was a couple years time and normal operating expenses. In surrenduring the patent they're giving up the plan, so they're probably just breaking even.
Accepting that settlement was the equivalent of throwing thee towel and calling it quits.
$8 million is plenty to sneeze at, considering it is a small fraction of what they were asking and had a 43% contingency deal with their lawyers.
You forgot the best part, which tells why we won't be hearing from them again anytime soon:
JPEG PATENT CLAIM SURRENDERED: Forgent Networks Ends Assertion of Patent Challenged by PUBPAT
NEW YORK -- November 2, 2006 -- The Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT") announced today that Forgent Networks (Nasdaq: FORG) has stopped asserting its patent against the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) international standard for the electronic sharing of photo-quality images. PUBPAT successfully initiated a challenge to the patent last year and this week Forgent dropped all of its pending cases asserting the patent and stated that it would not file any other infringement claims based on the patent.
Forgent Networks acquired the '672 Patent through the purchase of Compression Labs, Inc. in 1997 and began aggressively asserting it against the JPEG standard through lawsuits and the media in 2004. PUBPAT filed its challenge to the patent in November 2005 and the Patent Office rejected the patent's broadest claims in May of this year.
"By completely ending its assertion of the '672 patent, Forgent has now finally admitted that the patent has no valid claim over the JPEG standard," said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT's Executive Director. "This utter capitulation by Forgent is long overdue, but a cause for public relief nonetheless."
More information about the Forgent Networks patent formerly asserted against the JPEG standard, including a copy of the Patent Office's Office Action rejecting its broadest claims, can be found at http://www.pubpat.org/forgentjpeg.htm.
Slashdot Mirror
What the hell does a PASSENGER jet have to have a swarm of attack UAVs for?
Oh, wait. The original article had NOTHING TO DO with PASSENGER jets. This is military technology folks, not something you're going to see on the next Boeing or Airbus being flown out of Heathrow.
Bioware's NWN was excellent, but I'm not holding out much hope for Atari's NWN2.
:-)
I *am* holding out hope for id's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. id has a history or providing downloadable Linux versions once the retail PC version is out. Buy the box, download the Linux binaries and you're good to go.
Of course, I'll have to shell out another $400 or so to upgrade my system the play it right... Oh the sacrifices I'll make in the name of fragging alien scum.
Thanks id!
By "It just works", are you referring to hardware and drivers or software?
If software, will it run without Aqua? I mean, can you get something like iTunes or GarageBand to run under X?
If hardware, well...you should have just run Linux. I mean, if you want "It just works" then just buy known-supported hardware. The reason "It just works" on Mac is because Apple controls the hardware. You won't have to fiddle with driver one if you do some homework on what is supported under Linux, first.
My last couple of machines I purchases/built had no issues what-so-ever with hardware and drivers. It all just worked.
Charles
Actually, I was in a resale store the other day and there was a stack of Windows 3.11 floppies sitting next to a stack of WordPerfect 5.1 floppies. I was sort of in shock, seeing those. :-)
On the other hand, you could have used FreeDOS. I'm not sure about the WP, though. Hell, at least he wasn't used to WordStar.
Charles
Sorry, I have a Jeep. All the windows except for the front windscreen and front door windows are plastic and can get removed/rolled up. The front doors themselves can (and frequently are) removed. The front windscreen can (though doesn't often) fold down.
Of course, my Jeep isn't capable of topping about 75 MPH, so I'm not really in much danger of speeding tickets...
* * *
In the real world, I wonder how well radar and lasers reflect of the front and rear windows considering their angle. I figured the would reflect most of the beam up and not back, depending on the model of car.
Charles
Do your homework.
The FSF is the Free Software Foundation, and the owner of the majority of the copyrights on GNU software and the stuff in lots of Linux distributions. It isn't some nebulous movement.
Yes, Novell can do all they want with the OLD code as long as they respect the copyrights. Novell does not have the resources to maintain GPLv2 versions of everything that moves to v3. The point of GNU/Linux is that the community does a lot of the work, not just one company. Novell can't replace that and if they tried, would rapidly fall behind and into the dustbin.
Why spend all that money when a monkey and a dartboard can outperform most analysts already? Surely you can get a monkey and a good set of darts for less than what they were going to spend?
The treated metal absorbs all incoming radiation, such as microwaves and lasers.
Hint: Think "perfect stealth", not only for planes, but for your car as well. Make that cop toting the radar gun go insane.
The bigger the corporation, the more lawyers work for it. Novell, while just a shadow of what they once were, still thinks like a big corporation. Threat or not, they knew that many of their corporate customers -- you know, the paying ones -- had their own lawyers whispering in their ear. It was worth a certain amount of money to them to not have to put the effort into figuring out if they were violating patents or not. The perception was there and that money now gives the perception of safety.
What the suits didn't understand is that while Linux is moving more and more into the corporate space, at its core it is still a community driven project. They drastically underestimated that community's dislike and distrust of Microsoft.
Good luck to them trying to serve both masters.
Sorry, buddy, but I've done it in a manufacturing environment using Linux terminals.
No, not 200, 84. I ran a trial with 3 systems for 30 days before presenting it to management. Another 60 days to work up the roll-out plan, get the paperwork submitted to procurement, plan end-user training, management buy-in, etc. The actual roll-out took place over a weekend, with shift training the following Monday and follow-up training over the next couple of weeks.
If you don't need fast 3D graphics, terminals are the way to go and would have been perfect for a library.
Since we re-used a lot of existing equipment, total cost was under $75,000 U.S. including training. Training was handled in-house, just like the 90% of the rest of our training. This was back in 2002, so it would actually be easier and possibly cheaper today but for a 200 unit system I'd expect a final cost of $500 - $1000 per system, depending on equipment reuse.
Of course, I would also expect a slightly longer time frame for a government as opposed to a private corporation with management buy-in.
A quick read thru the article reveals not a problem with Linux, but with the idiots trying to manage the deployment without knowing what they were doing.
I feel sorry for Birmingham. Not so much for having to use Windows, but for having to live with an IT staff like that one.
Microsoft is not a monopoly...
They are in the United States. They were legally convicted of being such in a court of law.
All else stems from that -- the rules are different for a monopoly.
One of the many articles mentioned this. http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html
And Microsoft already does do this; last time I checked I couldn't recompile XP to run on my PPC PowerMac. None of Microsoft's licenses are even close to open source, while a number of Apple's key technology are.
That's because Microsoft is honest about their position towards FOSS and Apple isn't. At least you know where you stand with Microsoft, but with Apple, they do the bare minimum with FOSS -- just enough to let the Apple fanboys use the argument "Apple DOES do Open Source! What it isn't open ENOUGH for you? Fanatic."
Seeing teenagers download my favorite OS for free, or seeing the experience cheapened in the eyes of others because its running on unsupported hardware bothers me.
Seeing your precious OS-X running on Dell bothers you? The experience is cheapened by not being on Apple-branded hardware? I know this is Slashdot and all, but you really need to get a life. It is software for Christ's sake, not your little sister.
Stick a human in there to punch to calculator buttons (or keyboard buttons) that few million times and you WILL have a noticeable error rate.
We aren't talking X==X++ here, there are several steps other than a simple increment where things can go wrong. PEBKAC is a huge variable that you are ignoring.
Many precincts are too small for generators to be practical, and UPS units also have a failure rate. What if, even though it was tested the week before, the generator fails on the day of the election? There is also the cost associated. Who is gonna pay for it all.
My main argument is this: there are acceptable error rates with non-electronic voting, why the hell are we so adamant that because they are "computer" based they should magically be 100% accurate and reliable? Hell, in all my years of experience with computers, that is the LAST thing I would expect. Yes, they can be minimized but this is the reason the big telecom equipment makers advertise 99.999% uptime and NOT 100% update. (Unpredictable] Shit happens.
Unless there is a power glitch, or any one of a number of other statistically small possibilities. In this case, I'd accept that the system is flawed, unless they could demonstrate it was voter error. While they say "electronic voting machine", that is rather ambiguous and could mean any one of a number of things.
As far as "not one single vote", that isn't going to happen. There are just too many little things that could go wrong, and some of them eventually will.
The law [Vol 1. Section 3.2.1] states a test of 1 in 500,000 "ballot positions", per processing step is acceptable. They do not measure voters, but rather ballot positions. A ballot position is the number of candidates and the number of other votable issues on a ballot. Steps include things like the electronic recording; the paper trail; transferring data to jurisdiction HQ; etc.
For example, if there are 3 people running for mayor, that is 3 ballot positions per voter -- assuming no other races. If there were 7 bond issues (yes and no spaces), that is another 14 ballot positions. Add in things like other races, referendums, etc. and what looks like a small election can have 30-50 "ballot positions" per ballot. Multiple that times the number of voters then the number of steps and it adds up fast.
To be fair, the target is 1 in 10,000,000 and in an election this small, they should have gotten it right.
It doesn't matter if it changed the fucking outcome! The point is that VOTES WERE NOT COUNTED!
What point? Votes are not counted all the time, and it is normal.
Let me make it REAL clear -- it is statistically IMPOSSIBLE to have a 100% accurate vote, 100% of the time. It WILL NOT EVER HAPPEN. You need to get over it and come back to reality.
We need to find ways to minimize inaccuracy, and understand what is "normal".
Keep in mind, as long as the accuracies are evenly distributed, they have minimal impact on the outcome. "Errors" are normal, and can be handled by the system. What needs to be watched is manipulation.
CAD on Linux has nothing to do with Microsoft at all. Cadence, Pro/Engineer, MicroStation, Mentor Graphics and others all run on Linux as native tools. All serious CAD runs on Unix and Unix-like OSes. AutoCAD is the only major exception, and hell, they don't even have a 64-bit version out, yet. However, a bunch of Autodesk's other products, like Maya, run Linux just fine.
You'll never get those games to run on Linux decently because they are based off of DirectX and not something platform neutral, like OpenGL or SDL. Do you expect Microsoft to give up DirectX, because it would never be a first class product for Linux. Never. It would always be a bastard step-child.
Good, commercial games CAN run on Linux. Take Neverwinter Nights, Doom 1, 2 & 3, Quake 3, Descent 2 and America's Army. The only thing stopping the manufacturers from making Linux versions is perceived market share. Why develop for a paltry 5% (or less) of the market when you can develop for the other 95%? Simple math, and having MS back a version of Linux won't help that at all.
Microsoft does NOT want Linux to become a first-class citizen of the desktop, because that would put it in direct competition with Windows. Windows, I may remind you, is a big profit center for MS.
Vista and Office at the same time? Someone in the sales dept. is smoking crack and dreaming of an annual bonus. Hell, why not upgrade all the servers to 2003, Exchange, etc.!
How about changing one thing at a time and seeing how it works, first?
Actually they are, otherwise they wouldn't have made the threat. The problem with Linux being free is that it massively reduces the value of the OS as a commodity item. This is a tactic to force people into an expensive alternative to push value back into that portion of the market.
I don't think they are, really. I think they think about and plan for Linux, but aren't worried about it.
Look at Vista. The entire OS can be looked at from the perspective of "we don't care WHO we fuck over, because they have no options. We own their asses." I mean DRM, hardware requirements, WGA, locking out the security vendors, the price, etc. All of that points to "we are not worried about anyone".
On both sides.
This has been presented before, and debunked before. This study shows that while ice is thinning in some parts of the arctic, it is thickening in others and the temperature change isn't uniform.
It also shows that the majority of polar bear populations are steady, with an equal number on the increase and decrease.
That shipping lane has been there before, and guess what -- there were polar bears around back then. Amazingly enough, polar bears aren't the hot-house flowers these people are making them out to be.
The climate is changing, that is for certain. The only thing more certain is that politicos and people who want gov't grants are going to exaggerate and hype every little anomaly beyond belief in order to garner attention and eventually money. What they hell ever happened to science for the sake of actual knowledge?
57% of $8,000,000 is $4,560,000. Assuming a 35% tax bracket, that leaves just shy of $3,000,000. Their investment was a couple years time and normal operating expenses. In surrenduring the patent they're giving up the plan, so they're probably just breaking even.
Accepting that settlement was the equivalent of throwing thee towel and calling it quits.
$8 million is plenty to sneeze at, considering it is a small fraction of what they were asking and had a 43% contingency deal with their lawyers.
You forgot the best part, which tells why we won't be hearing from them again anytime soon:
JPEG PATENT CLAIM SURRENDERED:
Forgent Networks Ends Assertion of Patent Challenged by PUBPAT
NEW YORK -- November 2, 2006 -- The Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT") announced today that Forgent Networks (Nasdaq: FORG) has stopped asserting its patent against the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) international standard for the electronic sharing of photo-quality images. PUBPAT successfully initiated a challenge to the patent last year and this week Forgent dropped all of its pending cases asserting the patent and stated that it would not file any other infringement claims based on the patent.
Forgent Networks acquired the '672 Patent through the purchase of Compression Labs, Inc. in 1997 and began aggressively asserting it against the JPEG standard through lawsuits and the media in 2004. PUBPAT filed its challenge to the patent in November 2005 and the Patent Office rejected the patent's broadest claims in May of this year.
"By completely ending its assertion of the '672 patent, Forgent has now finally admitted that the patent has no valid claim over the JPEG standard," said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT's Executive Director. "This utter capitulation by Forgent is long overdue, but a cause for public relief nonetheless."
More information about the Forgent Networks patent formerly asserted against the JPEG standard, including a copy of the Patent Office's Office Action rejecting its broadest claims, can be found at http://www.pubpat.org/forgentjpeg.htm.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.