I got my powerbook the week the new ones were released. Now, there wasn't anything official, that I am aware of, with respect to software updates. Everything I read suggested that computers purchased two weeks prior to a software upgrade would be given free upgrades (more or less). Even though this might not have been the official policy, it seemed to be, and currently seems to be, the de facto policy.
Since I'm a student, $129 is a bit for me. However, being a student, I'll be getting Tiger free from the school.
This depends on your institution. Here at the University of Pittsburgh they were free. You goto the computing services people, show them your ID, and they gave you a copy. However, we had to wait a little while after the initial release for the install media to become available.
Say my visa company is broken into and my personal info (ssn, mothers madien name, etc.) is copied by the perps in say India. Now, a year or so later, some dork in Easter Europe is using my personal information to get credit cards, home loans, whatever. How do I know that the personal information compromised through my visa company was used to assume my identity? It could have just as easily been someone who patiently taped together my shreaded documents or some other company with my personal information that was compromised.
Because so many people have my, and other peoples personal information, the burden of proof for many of these cases is pretty high. In many (most?) cases, it's prohibitively high.
I think that is a fair question given what you said.
Sure you can download free versons, but those come with no support, no updates of any kind, at it will be atleast a year behind the computer times.
Debian and Gentoo both are:
downloaded for free
available in releases which have software that is much more recent than the 1 year you speak of
updated frequently in a timely fashion
With respect to the support issue. I cannot think of a time when you could ever get free support --- other than local interest groups like Linux linux users groups. So, I dont see how you can say that Linux isn't free anymore, and list this as a reason because the support mechanisms that were in place when you considered Linux free before are still in place today.
Now if you want to pay for support, it's easy to find unix sysadmins who can support most common Linux distros. If you are looking for one, email me and I can forward your request to some friends of mine who... get this: are paid to support linux.
You were modded as a troll because what you said was inflammatory and incorrect.
I could be wrong but I don't ever recall slashdot claiming to be an objective news source. Its "news for nerds. stuff that matters" It's biased almost by definition.
Not to mention that when slashdot posts a story and link to, say another OSDN affiliate, slashdot mentions that they are also owned by OSDN. I dont know if the Yankee Group mentions how much consulting money they got from Microsoft in the previous year, how much they think they will get this year, etc.
If everyone on the internet started using TMDA, then the email would stop functioning completely. It is an interesting solution, but all it ends up doing is placing the burden of SPAM on someone else.
TMDA will send a request back to the sender and we all know that spammers don't use their own reply to address. So if everyone used TMDA, then all you are doing is 'Joe Jobbing' some poor shmuck that the spammers happen to be using as a from address.
Actually if everyone was using TMDA, the poor schmuck that recieved the reply by my TMDA system wouldn't actually recieve it. His TMDA system would see the loop and drop the message.
Also, you are doubling the negative effect of SPAM on the internet by responding to SPAM messages so at least two messages are sent for every SPAM.
This might be true initiallly. However, when more people begin using systems such as this, the effectiveness of spam will drop. There will then be less and less spam.
You're focusing on the transient effects. Things that will happen during and shortly after implementation. I'm focusing on the final outcome/long term benefits.
I hate spam as much as the next fellow, but I prefer technical solutions to legislative ones. I'd prefer it if the web mail people (gmail, hotmail, etc.) and major isp's started offering options like the tagged message delivery agent ( TMDA) to their users. The end result I see with this spam law stuff is a bunch of us citizens going to jail while spamming is outsourced to countries beyond our jurisdiction.
I got a powerbook after they were updated in Feburary. I was all set to wipe OS X and install Debian on it. In fact I did, and afterwords I couldn't, for the life of me, get the the mouse to work. This is my original post to the debian powerpc list:
It turns out they changed their touchpad significantly for the newest versions of the powerbook. I eventually gave up and started using OS X. I'm pretty happy with it, but it's still a little different.
So if you have a newer powerbook (bought since Febuary), I'd look in to the mouse problem before I considered installing linux (yellow dog or otherwise).
If you're caught misusing the GPL, your only remedy is to release the source to your product which beheads your ability to profit based on sales.
Actually, I believe an alternative is to remove the gpl'ed code and replace it with your own. There is of course the possiblity that the gpl'ed code is too important to just "remove". In this case there is another alternative: contact the authors of the gpl'ed code and ask them to license it to you under a different license. If you can get all of the authors to do this, then it is perfectly legal.
In the instance that you cannot remove the gpl'ed source and you cannot get the authors to relicense it to you, then you can either stop distributing it or you must release the source code.
If the GPL is unenforceable on account of no one stepping up to the plate to catch transgressions, as open source software becomes more commonplace in the business world people will just begin walking all over the GPL.
This isn't only a problem for the gpl. The same could be said for any license. When considering copyright law, someone breaking the law and no one complaining doesn't make it legal --- the same cannot be said for trademark disputes. If company A flagrantly violates the gpl, there is a pretty good chance that they will be sued. People like the eff will represent individuals. If an individual was really concerned, but lacked the resources, all one would have to do is assign the fsf a copyright to the software. They will help enforce the licenseing requirements.
Perhaps Microsoft should include an option, like 'Prepare this computer for resale,' which utterly destroys all data."
Seriously, use strong encryption and require a passphrase or something better to access the data. However, I dont know how secure this would be on a computer that has five or six different pieces of spyware installed.
The article mentions that media folks (riaa/mpaa) take down sites hosting the torrents. Assuming the seeds themselves are hosted in countries disinterested in riaa and mpaa takedown notices or spread out across many individuals, what stops people from using p2p networks like kazaa to distribute the torrent files. It seems that this would be the next logical step. I'm not condoning this, I'm just curious why it isn't happening... yet.
I seem to remember people getting their third strikes from things like shoplifting. Of course I could be wrong, but if shoplifting is considered criminal perhaps other things should also receive the same classification.
So yes, I WILL demonize people accused of child abuse.
I heard that sgant likes to molest children. So now anyone can demonize him/her.
Really though. When I was 16 I was accused of molesting my sisters. The time when these sick things were to have occured, I wasn't even in the same state. It's fortunate that I was out of town. A friend of mine and I were taken into custody and questioned without our parents or an attorney present. We were asked questions like:
"Are you sure you and your friend didn't smoke a little weed and decide to have a good time?"
My mother was out of town that week on business and my father (whom I was visiting when the alleged acts occured) lives in another state.
It turns out the people in daycare got it in their heads that my sisters had been molested. My sisters were taken by the police and questioned. Medical exams, preformed on my sisters without the consent of or even informing my mother or their father, showed no such abuse.
During the questioning, they never asked me where I was when these acts were to have occured. This all came up later. In the absence of any physical evidence and going on the coerced word of 4 and 2 year olds, they turned to the only other man in the house. They then started accusing my mothers boyfriend (my sisters father). Now I have a pretty low opinion of the man, but he's not a child molester.
See none of these facts mattered. I had been accused of molsesting children in a small town. That was enough to demonize me in the eyes of some of the parents of my friends. One of which was a juvenal probation officer who believes to this day that I'm a child molester.
Laws prohibiting local governments from creating free wireless networks is not the same thing as porhibiting say a wireless cooperative. I must admit that I haven't read all of the proposed laws, but I dont think they can prevent individuals --- or groups of individuals --- from setting up wireless networks in the unregulated band. To me a wireless cooperative is ideal. This way the people using the service are the ones that pay for it.
Certin aspects of the java interface would crash. The version of gcc which shipped with fc3 would compile the mex functions. These are the first two to come to mind, but there were also other issues.
I moved the systems for which I am responsible to Debian. After expending the effort to figure out the the in's and out's of Debian, I wouldn't switch. I'm actually quite happy with debian. The new sarge installer works really well.
I'm in the same boat as you. I tried the redhat enterprise option and the software was a little on the old side. Naturally I tried fedora. Core 1 was pretty nice, but cores 2 and 3 broke a couple of the apps we use. Most notibly components in matlab we depend on. Now I've turned to Debian. We can use stable for the servers and testing for the workstations. Testing is new enough that it comes with firefox, but not so new that it breaks the stuff we need.
It was a shame really. I happily paid for the RHE download. I used redhat for seven years and I think they deserve some support. They are focusing on their corporate customers, and that is where they should go if it keeps them in business. They still support many free software developers and give back to the community.
The only things we have running redhat at school are some rack systems that are behind a firewall. I still have it installed on my desktop at home, but that computer is being replaced by my new powerbook. I still like them as a company, I'm just no longer their target audience.
Now check out how long after independence the US persisted with slavery, how long after that the US failed to extend civil rights to blacks, how long after 1950 it took for the civil rights movement to have an impact, what the current state of racial relations is in the major cities of the US, leave alone the rural south. Then come back and comment on India's Dalits.
I don't think you could make the same claims if India had garnered its independence at the same time US did.The world has changed alot in a couple hundred years, and to ignore this fact when drawing analogies is synical and dishonest.
Now, while caste based descrimination has been outlawed in India, that doesn't mean it does not exist. While I haven't been to India as you have, I do have many friends from there. According to them, there is a lot of descrimination, even in the cities. They are also slightly resentful of the affirmative action like placement of people from lower castes into universities --- which wouldn't be necessary if there wasn't a systematic problem.
In the USA, the Universities get significantly more money from foreign students (they have to pay full tuition), and in addition, the foreign students are entirely dependent on staying in the good graces of their department and advisor in order to avoid being deported. Hence they are favored institutionally and professionally
In the USA, the Universities get significantly more money from foreign students (they have to pay full tuition), and in addition, the foreign students are entirely dependent on staying in the good graces of their department and advisor in order to avoid being deported. Hence they are favored institutionally and professionally.
I think this might depend more on the field of study. I'm a graduate student in chemical engineering. In my field US citizens are normally preferred. There is alot of funding which is only available to US citizens, and for some reason higher enrollment of US citizens is considered more prestigious.
Also, in chemical engineering, most students don't pay for higher degrees. Almost anyone accepted for study will get a fellowship of some kind. So while the university might want foreign students because they would have to pay higher tuition, the people who actually pay for the tuition (the Department/advisor) are also responsible for determining wether or not the students are accepted.
With the exception of Indian and European students, US citizens are also preferred because of language barriers. With all things equal, most advisors (again in my field) would prefer to deal with people who are native english speakers.
So why don't we have many US grad students? Most would rather get jobs. If a chemical engineer considers the money they are not making by staying in school, grad school becomes an economically costly option. This is true even if you consider the average earning potentials of someone who does and someone who does _not_ earn a higher degree in chemical engineering over a long period of time. The person who goes straight into industry after getting their BS will typically make more money.
I tend to agree with your overally point. However, there are a few exceptions. Clinton is the first to come to mind. He came from a broken white trash family in Arkansas. This isn't ment in a negative way --- I came from a broken white trash family in Arkansas;). He did have powerfully weathly people backing him though.
Slashdot Mirror
I got my powerbook the week the new ones were released. Now, there wasn't anything official, that I am aware of, with respect to software updates. Everything I read suggested that computers purchased two weeks prior to a software upgrade would be given free upgrades (more or less). Even though this might not have been the official policy, it seemed to be, and currently seems to be, the de facto policy.
Since I'm a student, $129 is a bit for me. However, being a student, I'll be getting Tiger free from the school.
This depends on your institution. Here at the University of Pittsburgh they were free. You goto the computing services people, show them your ID, and they gave you a copy. However, we had to wait a little while after the initial release for the install media to become available.
Say my visa company is broken into and my personal info (ssn, mothers madien name, etc.) is copied by the perps in say India. Now, a year or so later, some dork in Easter Europe is using my personal information to get credit cards, home loans, whatever. How do I know that the personal information compromised through my visa company was used to assume my identity? It could have just as easily been someone who patiently taped together my shreaded documents or some other company with my personal information that was compromised.
Because so many people have my, and other peoples personal information, the burden of proof for many of these cases is pretty high. In many (most?) cases, it's prohibitively high.
Sure you can download free versons, but those come with no support, no updates of any kind, at it will be atleast a year behind the computer times.
Debian and Gentoo both are:
With respect to the support issue. I cannot think of a time when you could ever get free support --- other than local interest groups like Linux linux users groups. So, I dont see how you can say that Linux isn't free anymore, and list this as a reason because the support mechanisms that were in place when you considered Linux free before are still in place today.
Now if you want to pay for support, it's easy to find unix sysadmins who can support most common Linux distros. If you are looking for one, email me and I can forward your request to some friends of mine who... get this: are paid to support linux.
You were modded as a troll because what you said was inflammatory and incorrect.
I could be wrong but I don't ever recall slashdot claiming to be an objective news source. Its "news for nerds. stuff that matters" It's biased almost by definition.
Not to mention that when slashdot posts a story and link to, say another OSDN affiliate, slashdot mentions that they are also owned by OSDN. I dont know if the Yankee Group mentions how much consulting money they got from Microsoft in the previous year, how much they think they will get this year, etc.
If everyone on the internet started using TMDA, then the email would stop functioning completely. It is an interesting solution, but all it ends up doing is placing the burden of SPAM on someone else.
TMDA will send a request back to the sender and we all know that spammers don't use their own reply to address. So if everyone used TMDA, then all you are doing is 'Joe Jobbing' some poor shmuck that the spammers happen to be using as a from address.
Actually if everyone was using TMDA, the poor schmuck that recieved the reply by my TMDA system wouldn't actually recieve it. His TMDA system would see the loop and drop the message.
Also, you are doubling the negative effect of SPAM on the internet by responding to SPAM messages so at least two messages are sent for every SPAM.
This might be true initiallly. However, when more people begin using systems such as this, the effectiveness of spam will drop. There will then be less and less spam.
You're focusing on the transient effects. Things that will happen during and shortly after implementation. I'm focusing on the final outcome/long term benefits.
I hate spam as much as the next fellow, but I prefer technical solutions to legislative ones. I'd prefer it if the web mail people (gmail, hotmail, etc.) and major isp's started offering options like the tagged message delivery agent ( TMDA) to their users. The end result I see with this spam law stuff is a bunch of us citizens going to jail while spamming is outsourced to countries beyond our jurisdiction.
I've helped a friend do this in the past. This posting more or less describes what to do:
a ry/039538.html
http://lists.svlug.org/pipermail/svlug/2002-Febru
From what I recally, it worked quite well.
I got a powerbook after they were updated in Feburary. I was all set to wipe OS X and install Debian on it. In fact I did, and afterwords I couldn't, for the life of me, get the the mouse to work. This is my original post to the debian powerpc list:
g 00180.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2005/02/ms
It turns out they changed their touchpad significantly for the newest versions of the powerbook. I eventually gave up and started using OS X. I'm pretty happy with it, but it's still a little different.
So if you have a newer powerbook (bought since Febuary), I'd look in to the mouse problem before I considered installing linux (yellow dog or otherwise).
If you're caught misusing the GPL, your only remedy is to release the source to your product which beheads your ability to profit based on sales.
Actually, I believe an alternative is to remove the gpl'ed code and replace it with your own. There is of course the possiblity that the gpl'ed code is too important to just "remove". In this case there is another alternative: contact the authors of the gpl'ed code and ask them to license it to you under a different license. If you can get all of the authors to do this, then it is perfectly legal.
In the instance that you cannot remove the gpl'ed source and you cannot get the authors to relicense it to you, then you can either stop distributing it or you must release the source code.
If the GPL is unenforceable on account of no one stepping up to the plate to catch transgressions, as open source software becomes more commonplace in the business world people will just begin walking all over the GPL.
This isn't only a problem for the gpl. The same could be said for any license. When considering copyright law, someone breaking the law and no one complaining doesn't make it legal --- the same cannot be said for trademark disputes. If company A flagrantly violates the gpl, there is a pretty good chance that they will be sued. People like the eff will represent individuals. If
an individual was really concerned, but lacked the resources, all one would have to do is assign the fsf a copyright to the software. They will help enforce the licenseing requirements.
Perhaps Microsoft should include an option, like 'Prepare this computer for resale,' which utterly destroys all data."
Seriously, use strong encryption and require a passphrase or something better to access the data. However, I dont know how secure this would be on a computer that has five or six different pieces of spyware installed.
the irony is that you will probably need a network connection to fix it.
The article mentions that media folks (riaa/mpaa) take down sites hosting the torrents. Assuming the seeds themselves are hosted in countries disinterested in riaa and mpaa takedown notices or spread out across many individuals, what stops people from using p2p networks like kazaa to distribute the torrent files. It seems that this would be the next logical step. I'm not condoning this, I'm just curious why it isn't happening... yet.
I seem to remember people getting their third strikes from things like shoplifting. Of course I could be wrong, but if shoplifting is considered criminal perhaps other things should also receive the same classification.
I'm not shure, but wouldn't the broadcast flag make it illegal for tivo to record shows that have the broadcast flag set? Can anyone comment on this?
So yes, I WILL demonize people accused of child abuse.
I heard that sgant likes to molest children. So now anyone can demonize him/her.
Really though. When I was 16 I was accused of molesting my sisters. The time when these sick things were to have occured, I wasn't even in the same state. It's fortunate that I was out of town. A friend of mine and I were taken into custody and questioned without our parents or an attorney present. We were asked questions like:
"Are you sure you and your friend didn't smoke a little weed and decide to have a good time?"
My mother was out of town that week on business and my father (whom I was visiting when the alleged acts occured) lives in another state.
It turns out the people in daycare got it in their heads that my sisters had been molested. My sisters were taken by the police and questioned. Medical exams, preformed on my sisters without the consent of or even informing my mother or their father, showed no such abuse.
During the questioning, they never asked me where I was when these acts were to have occured. This all came up later. In the absence of any physical evidence and going on the coerced word of 4 and 2 year olds, they turned to the only other man in the house. They then started accusing my mothers boyfriend (my sisters father). Now I have a pretty low opinion of the man, but he's not a child molester.
See none of these facts mattered. I had been accused of molsesting children in a small town. That was enough to demonize me in the eyes of some of the parents of my friends. One of which was a juvenal probation officer who believes to this day that I'm a child molester.
Laws prohibiting local governments from creating free wireless networks is not the same thing as porhibiting say a wireless cooperative. I must admit that I haven't read all of the proposed laws, but I dont think they can prevent individuals --- or groups of individuals --- from setting up wireless networks in the unregulated band. To me a wireless cooperative is ideal. This way the people using the service are the ones that pay for it.
Most notibly components in matlab we depend on.
Certin aspects of the java interface would crash. The version of gcc which shipped with fc3 would compile the mex functions. These are the first two to come to mind, but there were also other issues.
I moved the systems for which I am responsible to Debian. After expending the effort to figure out the the in's and out's of Debian, I wouldn't switch. I'm actually quite happy with debian. The new sarge installer works really well.
I'm in the same boat as you. I tried the redhat enterprise option and the software was a little on the old side. Naturally I tried fedora. Core 1 was pretty nice, but cores 2 and 3 broke a couple of the apps we use. Most notibly components in matlab we depend on. Now I've turned to Debian. We can use stable for the servers and testing for the workstations. Testing is new enough that it comes with firefox, but not so new that it breaks the stuff we need.
It was a shame really. I happily paid for the RHE download. I used redhat for seven years and I think they deserve some support. They are focusing on their corporate customers, and that is where they should go if it keeps them in business. They still support many free software developers and give back to the community.
The only things we have running redhat at school are some rack systems that are behind a firewall. I still have it installed on my desktop at home, but that computer is being replaced by my new powerbook. I still like them as a company, I'm just no longer their target audience.
Now check out how long after independence the US persisted with slavery, how long after that the US failed to extend civil rights to blacks, how long after 1950 it took for the civil rights movement to have an impact, what the current state of racial relations is in the major cities of the US, leave alone the rural south. Then come back and comment on India's Dalits.
I don't think you could make the same claims if India had garnered its independence at the same time US did.The world has changed alot in a couple hundred years, and to ignore this fact when drawing analogies is synical and dishonest.
Now, while caste based descrimination has been outlawed in India, that doesn't mean it does not exist. While I haven't been to India as you have, I do have many friends from there. According to them, there is a lot of descrimination, even in the cities. They are also slightly resentful of the affirmative action like placement of people from lower castes into universities --- which wouldn't be necessary if there wasn't a systematic problem.
In the USA, the Universities get significantly more money from foreign students (they have to pay full tuition), and in addition, the foreign students are entirely dependent on staying in the good graces of their department and advisor in order to avoid being deported. Hence they are favored institutionally and professionally
In the USA, the Universities get significantly more money from foreign students (they have to pay full tuition), and in addition, the foreign students are entirely dependent on staying in the good graces of their department and advisor in order to avoid being deported. Hence they are favored institutionally and professionally.
I think this might depend more on the field of study. I'm a graduate student in chemical engineering. In my field US citizens are normally preferred. There is alot of funding which is only available to US citizens, and for some reason higher enrollment of US citizens is considered more prestigious.
Also, in chemical engineering, most students don't pay for higher degrees. Almost anyone accepted for study will get a fellowship of some kind. So while the university might want foreign students because they would have to pay higher tuition, the people who actually pay for the tuition (the Department/advisor) are also responsible for determining wether or not the students are accepted.
With the exception of Indian and European students, US citizens are also preferred because of language barriers. With all things equal, most advisors (again in my field) would prefer to deal with people who are native english speakers.
So why don't we have many US grad students? Most would rather get jobs. If a chemical engineer considers the money they are not making by staying in school, grad school becomes an economically costly option. This is true even if you consider the average earning potentials of someone who does and someone who does _not_ earn a higher degree in chemical engineering over a long period of time. The person who goes straight into industry after getting their BS will typically make more money.
I tend to agree with your overally point. However, there are a few exceptions. Clinton is the first to come to mind. He came from a broken white trash family in Arkansas. This isn't ment in a negative way --- I came from a broken white trash family in Arkansas ;). He did have powerfully weathly people backing him though.
...that is my arm.
Indeed it would be. I'm a fan of Heinlein --- 'There's no such thing as a free lunch' is engraved on the back of my ipod ;).