The problem is that consumers are willing to put up with crap because they buy marketing promises instead of software.
The problem is that software vendors get away with using the laughable disclaimer that "this product isn't warranted for any suitability or purpose."
I'm not even sure that the kind of disclaimer above should be legal without a more concise "NOT GUARANTEED TO WORK" stamped across the splash screen.
If a company isn't willing to guarantee that a program fucking does something, why do they keep coming back to it? Because it's got a Madonna song and fluffy clouds in the commercial?
If a company consistently provides unstable software, why do people run to upgrade instead of demanding more comprehensive patches for what they've already paid for? Is rushing toward flashy new features more important than stabilizing what you've already got?
Any time you want to find the Ancient Ones, look at the heart of any big and old company. Invariably you'll find a package or two which they're afraid to touch for fear of breaking some business fundamental, i.e. payroll or inventory.
And Computer Associates seems to have their name on that package every time. From what I can tell, CA seems to specialize in buying up ancient software and maintaining it.
When I was doing database consulting, I ran across a number of payroll packages which had been purchased by CA, always running on some mainframe that'd dim the lights when it ran, but which seemed to do nothing that a desktop PC couldn't.
CA's got a good deal. From what I've seen, they don't update the software, save for critical fixes (Y2K, etc). They merely collect annual license fees on top of support costs.
When I'd tell companies that I could take users off their green screens without moving away from the CA package, rather than replacing the CA package as every other contractor had wanted to do, I'd always have their ear. Typically, I'd make a mint by making form applications and data importers/exporters which usually took longer to spec out than to write.
Company motives and philosophical stances aside, if LGPL scares companies off, and it does, they'll use something else.
If they use something else, it's quite likely to be some form of hackery that's only available with Windows and/or SDMI support.
In the end, more accessibility is likely to come to free software by taking the approach that's less "free" on the surface. Take it with a grain of salt, but in my opinion this is one of those cases where the BSD license is more "free" than the GNU license.
[...] patents only being applicable to software that has a technical effect
Can someone tell me what this means? Is having a technical effect different from having a technical affect, for example?;)
In this word sense, effect is the correct word -- effect is a noun, and affect is a verb. You affect to create an outcome, and that outcome is the effect.
Affect does have a noun form, however it relates to feelings, not causal constructs.
I can't imagine using anything other than gnus. Yes, it's got a steep learning curve, and yes you've got to learn emacs to use it. But you can access not only nntp, but a number of web discussion boards, email, mailing lists, even RSS feeds, all with the same client.
gnus allows you to filter posts with a manually controlled (but complex) scoring system, or you can turn on a mode which just watches what you tend to read and ignore, and attempts to filter posts you're not likely to enjoy based on who posted it and "artificial stupidity" performed on keywords in the subject lines.
gnus supports color highlighting of different reply levels within a post, useful for tracking the fragments of a discussion by the time a post is 8 replies into a thread.
You can access it remotely with only a text interface (even in color with xemacs or emacs21), or you can access it locally and have a nice graphical interface. If you're on the road, there's no worry about resetting all your read markers as you go to and from.
gnus is written in elisp, which makes it easy to add features you may want. And there are mailing lists and a newsgroup full of fanatics who love making changes if you've got an interesting idea, but don't have the aptitude to implement it.
And of course, like most emacs components, you can customize the hell out of gnus. If there's anything you don't like, chances are someone's already made a configuration option to change its behavior.
I've been following all the kernel releses, and their bugs. I was just curious, what is the best way to tell which kernel is currently the most stable, without jumping immediately to the latest release? Obviously there is no way of knowing if it is, without it being out there for at least a couple of weeks.
First of all, unless you've got some very specific requirements only satisfied by a 2.4 series kernel, if you're worried about stability then you should be running a 2.2 series kernel.
That said, if you must track 2.4, then you're best off tracking the changelogs and only upgrading when you see a fix for a problem likely to affect you. If the problem is minor, consider giving the new version a little time. There are enough version whores and neozealots out there that other people with gladly rush out and do the mine stomping for you.
Also from the 16-days-between-submission-and-posting department.:)
I'm still looking around at various source control options. Perforce is the current favorite, owing to a combination of a good feature list and a number of my team's programmers having prior experience with it. The big things holding it back are the cost (over $500/seat/year) and migration time. It's really a different beast entirely, even compared to the Visual Studio CVS plugins.
Nothing seems to handle both binary and source version control well. There are special tools for one and the other, but nothing that's strong on both. I'm a programmer, and I'm tempted to just take care of my own, moving code over to a new tool and leaving SourceSafe in place for the artists. That's not quite as mean as it sounds; artists don't do multiple checkouts, and all off-site access will be read only. Those seem to be the two big things that corrupt SourceSafe.
Another thing you should be aware of is that Igloo allows multiple people to edit a file at the same time, whereas Source Safe does not. (This is not a bug, it's a feature. Seriously, it's just because Source Safe can't handle merges of multiple edits, whereas CVS can.) This can cause problems if people are used to using Source Safe and just assume that a file is locked when they check it out. Of particular importance is the newline problem that I previously mentioned, which causes CVS to assume that every line has been changed, because if two people modify the same file and then check it in, CVS won't know how to merge it, and we have lost changes because of this.
This is incorrect.
Visual SourceSafe supports multiple checkouts; the feature is merely disabled in the default configuration.
Actually, you cannot use the non commercial version of Qt for non free internal applications:
Correct me if I'm wrong; I believe that Qt is dual-licensed. The TrollTech license is the one you quoted, but it's also under LGPL which doesn't permit the kind of restriciton you mention.
So for internal proprietary use, you're 100% clear, so long as you're using the LGPL version, not a straight download from TrollTech.
Re:licensing
on
GTK-- vs. QT
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Overall functionality, momentum for future growth, ease of use, licensing, and pretty much anything else is relevant to our decision.
To pick up your point on licensing, Qt is either GPL or pay. So if your application will also be GPL, it's free, if your application will not be GPL you will have to pay up for Qt. GTK is LGPL AFAIK (enough acronyms for you?;-) so that will not stand in the way of making your app non-free.
Just remember that you only need to give your source to any entity you give the binary to. Being GPL/LGPL doesn't mean you can't use it for business use; the license is entirely transparent for apps which will only be used internally.
Perhaps this is only borderline on-topic, but I can't think of a better time to ask...
When striping, what's a good size to use if the goal is speeding up random access, not overall throughput?
Suppose I'm wanting to speed up random access to thousands of files, mostly 30k or less, read from or written to in full each time they're accessed. Do I make my stripe size some multiple of that 30k? Is striping even the best solution?
What about striping to increase overall throughput on large streams? Do you go with some percentage of the drive's cache size? What gives the best performance on long contiguous streams? Again, is there a better solution than striping if performance is the concern, not redundancy?
I second this. I've had no problems with joker in the 2 years I've been using them. Changes are always completed promptly and new domains are up and running within 24 hours.
As for idiots blocking all joker registered domains, they are just that, idiots.
They're idiots with a lot less spam, too.
If they want to best serve their customers, Joker can and should make their AUP unfriendly to spammers, giving them a month to move it or lose it.
Yeah, by the time mozilla 1.5.* is out, IE should be in version 8 or.NET or whatever. Even Opera would be at least in version 7. At that time, I think no one will ever bother running Mozilla again
So, if I read you right, you're an advocate of taking a hint from AMD, perhaps going with QuantiVersion technology(tm)?
JumpDomain has been pretty amazing so far. They're not the cheapest, but they're under $20 a year with no premium on the first year, and commitments in one-year intervals, including a single year.
They've been really responsive when I've suggested features or had a question, typically responding in under an hour business days, and same day even on Sundays.
I don't know if they have an e-mail interface, but after NetSol, I sure as hell don't miss that. The web interface is nice, letting you apply changes to one or all domains at once, view domains sorted by expiry date, and there are no locks on company names like NetSol and all have or had.
I buy a few things online each week, and I create a different mail alias at my domain for each online retailer, and tack a random 'apartment' on as well, for example, if Slashdot had a store, I'd be "slash@mydomain", and I'd add "Apartment sdt" to my mailing address.
I always make it abundantly clear that I don't want my contact information shared. If there isn't policy on the site explicitly promising not to share my information if that's what I choose, I don't buy there.
More than a dozen times, I've gotten mail advertising the original store, followed by a flood of random spam to the same address. When I contact the store owner, they insist that they had an agreement with the 3rd party that they wouldn't use the list of addresses for anything else. "Then why am I getting mail to UglyShoes@mydomain when you're the only one who ever got that address?" They lose a customer, and I cancel a mail alias.
Then again, not all retailers are honest either.... God forbid you share your name with Radio Shack.
Three years ago I bought a soldering iron at Radio Shack, the address including an "Apartment RSHK", again requesting no mailings or address sharing. Now, if I had a dollar for every shit mailing and magazine I'd been automatically subscribed to at "Apartment RSHK", I'd be a rich man by now.
Again, it doesn't seem to stop with Radio Shack sharing. I think many of the companies Radio Shack shared with turned around and sold my address as well, because it went from Radio Shack mailings to Columbia House to Playboy to Victoria's Secret to Lillian Vernon to Fingerhut to god knows what. Half my specifically targeted junk mail comes to "Apartment RSHK", and about half comes to "Apartment SN", from my long-ago subscription to Science News.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that software vendors get away with using the laughable disclaimer that "this product isn't warranted for any suitability or purpose."
I'm not even sure that the kind of disclaimer above should be legal without a more concise "NOT GUARANTEED TO WORK" stamped across the splash screen.
If a company isn't willing to guarantee that a program fucking does something, why do they keep coming back to it? Because it's got a Madonna song and fluffy clouds in the commercial?
If a company consistently provides unstable software, why do people run to upgrade instead of demanding more comprehensive patches for what they've already paid for? Is rushing toward flashy new features more important than stabilizing what you've already got?
Any time you want to find the Ancient Ones, look at the heart of any big and old company. Invariably you'll find a package or two which they're afraid to touch for fear of breaking some business fundamental, i.e. payroll or inventory.
And Computer Associates seems to have their name on that package every time. From what I can tell, CA seems to specialize in buying up ancient software and maintaining it.
When I was doing database consulting, I ran across a number of payroll packages which had been purchased by CA, always running on some mainframe that'd dim the lights when it ran, but which seemed to do nothing that a desktop PC couldn't.
CA's got a good deal. From what I've seen, they don't update the software, save for critical fixes (Y2K, etc). They merely collect annual license fees on top of support costs.
When I'd tell companies that I could take users off their green screens without moving away from the CA package, rather than replacing the CA package as every other contractor had wanted to do, I'd always have their ear. Typically, I'd make a mint by making form applications and data importers/exporters which usually took longer to spec out than to write.
I'm curious what you're using that's got an SH4 in it?
I played with the SH2 when programming the 32X and Saturn; it's a quirky and interesting chip. I'd love to play with later versions.
If they use something else, it's quite likely to be some form of hackery that's only available with Windows and/or SDMI support.
In the end, more accessibility is likely to come to free software by taking the approach that's less "free" on the surface. Take it with a grain of salt, but in my opinion this is one of those cases where the BSD license is more "free" than the GNU license.
In this word sense, effect is the correct word -- effect is a noun, and affect is a verb. You affect to create an outcome, and that outcome is the effect.
Affect does have a noun form, however it relates to feelings, not causal constructs.
gnus allows you to filter posts with a manually controlled (but complex) scoring system, or you can turn on a mode which just watches what you tend to read and ignore, and attempts to filter posts you're not likely to enjoy based on who posted it and "artificial stupidity" performed on keywords in the subject lines.
gnus supports color highlighting of different reply levels within a post, useful for tracking the fragments of a discussion by the time a post is 8 replies into a thread.
You can access it remotely with only a text interface (even in color with xemacs or emacs21), or you can access it locally and have a nice graphical interface. If you're on the road, there's no worry about resetting all your read markers as you go to and from.
gnus is written in elisp, which makes it easy to add features you may want. And there are mailing lists and a newsgroup full of fanatics who love making changes if you've got an interesting idea, but don't have the aptitude to implement it.
And of course, like most emacs components, you can customize the hell out of gnus. If there's anything you don't like, chances are someone's already made a configuration option to change its behavior.
This is getting less and less funny every day. :/
I'd at least get some cigarettes and whiskey in the deal.
If this had been a front page story, methinks Anonymous Coward might be retiring by now.
Some info here, which points to, ironically enough, here.
Alright. That's it!!! I'm sick of Apple's reckless behavior -- I finally have to agree that there's only one solution for all this!
First of all, unless you've got some very specific requirements only satisfied by a 2.4 series kernel, if you're worried about stability then you should be running a 2.2 series kernel.
That said, if you must track 2.4, then you're best off tracking the changelogs and only upgrading when you see a fix for a problem likely to affect you. If the problem is minor, consider giving the new version a little time. There are enough version whores and neozealots out there that other people with gladly rush out and do the mine stomping for you.
Also from the 16-days-between-submission-and-posting department. :)
I'm still looking around at various source control options. Perforce is the current favorite, owing to a combination of a good feature list and a number of my team's programmers having prior experience with it. The big things holding it back are the cost (over $500/seat/year) and migration time. It's really a different beast entirely, even compared to the Visual Studio CVS plugins.
Nothing seems to handle both binary and source version control well. There are special tools for one and the other, but nothing that's strong on both. I'm a programmer, and I'm tempted to just take care of my own, moving code over to a new tool and leaving SourceSafe in place for the artists. That's not quite as mean as it sounds; artists don't do multiple checkouts, and all off-site access will be read only. Those seem to be the two big things that corrupt SourceSafe.
This is incorrect.
Visual SourceSafe supports multiple checkouts; the feature is merely disabled in the default configuration.
Correct me if I'm wrong; I believe that Qt is dual-licensed. The TrollTech license is the one you quoted, but it's also under LGPL which doesn't permit the kind of restriciton you mention.
So for internal proprietary use, you're 100% clear, so long as you're using the LGPL version, not a straight download from TrollTech.
Just remember that you only need to give your source to any entity you give the binary to. Being GPL/LGPL doesn't mean you can't use it for business use; the license is entirely transparent for apps which will only be used internally.
When striping, what's a good size to use if the goal is speeding up random access, not overall throughput?
Suppose I'm wanting to speed up random access to thousands of files, mostly 30k or less, read from or written to in full each time they're accessed. Do I make my stripe size some multiple of that 30k? Is striping even the best solution?
What about striping to increase overall throughput on large streams? Do you go with some percentage of the drive's cache size? What gives the best performance on long contiguous streams? Again, is there a better solution than striping if performance is the concern, not redundancy?
They're idiots with a lot less spam, too.
If they want to best serve their customers, Joker can and should make their AUP unfriendly to spammers, giving them a month to move it or lose it.
So, if I read you right, you're an advocate of taking a hint from AMD, perhaps going with QuantiVersion technology(tm)?
Anyone who likes 15,000 RPM drives, and a bus capable of 160 megabytes/second with 320 on the way.
Anyone who wants up to 15 devices operating simultaneously on the same bus instead of 2 operating one-at-a-time.
Anyone who wants hot-swapping that works.
Anyone who doesn't want to be limited to 24 to 36 inches of cable, preferring several meters instead.
So, basically, anyone who wants versatile and fast I/O uses SCSI.
They've been really responsive when I've suggested features or had a question, typically responding in under an hour business days, and same day even on Sundays.
I don't know if they have an e-mail interface, but after NetSol, I sure as hell don't miss that. The web interface is nice, letting you apply changes to one or all domains at once, view domains sorted by expiry date, and there are no locks on company names like NetSol and all have or had.
Narcissist! This wasn't about you!!!
:)
This is like the event horizon calling the kettle black, but good humor no less.
I wish one could filter for 5, 4, 3, and -1 posts and ignore all those dull 0, 1 and 2 posts, such as this one.
I always make it abundantly clear that I don't want my contact information shared. If there isn't policy on the site explicitly promising not to share my information if that's what I choose, I don't buy there.
More than a dozen times, I've gotten mail advertising the original store, followed by a flood of random spam to the same address. When I contact the store owner, they insist that they had an agreement with the 3rd party that they wouldn't use the list of addresses for anything else. "Then why am I getting mail to UglyShoes@mydomain when you're the only one who ever got that address?" They lose a customer, and I cancel a mail alias.
Then again, not all retailers are honest either.... God forbid you share your name with Radio Shack.
Three years ago I bought a soldering iron at Radio Shack, the address including an "Apartment RSHK", again requesting no mailings or address sharing. Now, if I had a dollar for every shit mailing and magazine I'd been automatically subscribed to at "Apartment RSHK", I'd be a rich man by now.
Again, it doesn't seem to stop with Radio Shack sharing. I think many of the companies Radio Shack shared with turned around and sold my address as well, because it went from Radio Shack mailings to Columbia House to Playboy to Victoria's Secret to Lillian Vernon to Fingerhut to god knows what. Half my specifically targeted junk mail comes to "Apartment RSHK", and about half comes to "Apartment SN", from my long-ago subscription to Science News.