This is great news for GTK+ on Win32, which has always suffered speed and look-and-feel problems on the win32 platform. When a big application like Evolution gets ported from one platform to another, the base libraries such as libgtk, pango, and the like can only benefit. I look forward to the speed improvements and bug fixes in the win32 versions of gtk. This should really bolster the cross-platform nature of gtk.
I don't believe that the 'level idea' is necessarily a bad one. How many of us have heard a conversation like this?:
Q: What kind of computer did you buy? A: Oh, I got a 512 and it has 80, too!
A lot of consumers don't really grasp the different categories of hardware on a computer. What a lot of people want is a simple performance indicator, perhaps marginally similar to a car identifier (Audi 2, 3, 4, 6, 8: Small, bigger, biggest, etc.).
The only disadvantage of this that I can see is the whole level thing degenerating into a meaningless figure that gets doubled every year. It could end up being like CD-ROM speed indicators, 'double-speed', 4x, 8x, 16x, 48x, etc, which can become meaningless after a while.
For me the situation with MySQL's licensing shenanigans is quite sad. For small commercial software development shops who have been loyal to MySQL over the past few years, it's sad to have to say goodbye.
It's fine that I have to pay money for a database server and all, but the GPL-licensed client library makes light usage of MySQL impossible for small software vendors. Even Microsoft SQL server has LGPL client libraries available (like freetds)! I can't see how MySQL can compete with other commerical software vendors that have less restrictive client-library licensing.
For the MySQL folks to claim that the GPL is binding through a regular socket connection is quite a strech at best, and a slap in the face to those of us who write [L]GPL-licensed software.
When I read this article, I immediately had two thoughts:
Thought 1: "You know, they're right" Current file systems are outdated and are not really serving the needs of modern applications. Take for example, Microsoft Outlook (and Outlook Express). The programming teams for these pieces of software were forced to implement a "filesystem within a file" in order to achieve their design goals (I believe the files are called DBX files). Or take for instance, the Windows Registry, or, even better, the Gnome registry, GConf. Why do programmers have to implement dozens of different abstract filesystems in order to achieve their design goals? Simple, the present filesystems are not sufficient.
Thought 2: "Another way of attacking the Free Software Movement." By creating a new filesystem, Microsoft achieves many goals. First, they make Linux filesystem developers start from scratch again. I mean, the NTFS driver isn't even done, and this means we would have to start over. It gets even worse: From the sound of this article, it seems that OFS would be fundamentally incompatible with our conception of a filesystem today (possibly including features such as resource branches, GUID tags, and other metadata forks, ad nauseum). This would make it difficult to write a usable Linux driver for OFS. And finally, to top it off, my gut tells me that the POSIX file access calls would _not_ be sufficient to access such a rich filesystem. The introduction of a new, richer file access API by Microsoft would make writing cross-platform software much more difficult.
I simply do not understand how this prevents the ripping or copying of CDs. Anyone who owns a CD player with a digital out (optical or SPDIF connector) and a high-quality external CD recorder can create an _identical_ digital copy (with correct track breaks). Since the copy of the original would not be copy-protected itself, it could then be used to mass-duplicate the original CD using any normal internal CD-ROM writer device. From there, MP3s would be produced and traded around the world.
By angering consumers who purchase these CDs with copy protection, the companies that promote technologies such as this are only shooting themselves in the foot. Consumers will only buy products that are usable everywhere.
It is simply impossible to prevent people from copying audio (or video, for that matter) content. If you can hear the sound coming out of speakers, it can be duplicated. Period.
Slashdot Mirror
This is great news for GTK+ on Win32, which has always suffered speed and look-and-feel problems on the win32 platform. When a big application like Evolution gets ported from one platform to another, the base libraries such as libgtk, pango, and the like can only benefit. I look forward to the speed improvements and bug fixes in the win32 versions of gtk. This should really bolster the cross-platform nature of gtk.
I don't believe that the 'level idea' is necessarily a bad one. How many of us have heard a conversation like this?:
Q: What kind of computer did you buy?
A: Oh, I got a 512 and it has 80, too!
A lot of consumers don't really grasp the different categories of hardware on a computer. What a lot of people want is a simple performance indicator, perhaps marginally similar to a car identifier (Audi 2, 3, 4, 6, 8: Small, bigger, biggest, etc.).
The only disadvantage of this that I can see is the whole level thing degenerating into a meaningless figure that gets doubled every year. It could end up being like CD-ROM speed indicators, 'double-speed', 4x, 8x, 16x, 48x, etc, which can become meaningless after a while.
For me the situation with MySQL's licensing shenanigans is quite sad. For small commercial software development shops who have been loyal to MySQL over the past few years, it's sad to have to say goodbye.
It's fine that I have to pay money for a database server and all, but the GPL-licensed client library makes light usage of MySQL impossible for small software vendors. Even Microsoft SQL server has LGPL client libraries available (like freetds)! I can't see how MySQL can compete with other commerical software vendors that have less restrictive client-library licensing.
For the MySQL folks to claim that the GPL is binding through a regular socket connection is quite a strech at best, and a slap in the face to those of us who write [L]GPL-licensed software.
When I read this article, I immediately had two thoughts:
Thought 1: "You know, they're right" Current file systems are outdated and are not really serving the needs of modern applications. Take for example, Microsoft Outlook (and Outlook Express). The programming teams for these pieces of software were forced to implement a "filesystem within a file" in order to achieve their design goals (I believe the files are called DBX files). Or take for instance, the Windows Registry, or, even better, the Gnome registry, GConf. Why do programmers have to implement dozens of different abstract filesystems in order to achieve their design goals? Simple, the present filesystems are not sufficient.
Thought 2: "Another way of attacking the Free Software Movement." By creating a new filesystem, Microsoft achieves many goals. First, they make Linux filesystem developers start from scratch again. I mean, the NTFS driver isn't even done, and this means we would have to start over. It gets even worse: From the sound of this article, it seems that OFS would be fundamentally incompatible with our conception of a filesystem today (possibly including features such as resource branches, GUID tags, and other metadata forks, ad nauseum). This would make it difficult to write a usable Linux driver for OFS. And finally, to top it off, my gut tells me that the POSIX file access calls would _not_ be sufficient to access such a rich filesystem. The introduction of a new, richer file access API by Microsoft would make writing cross-platform software much more difficult.
Microsoft can kill two birds with one stone here.
Ben
Here is a link that works.
Ben
I simply do not understand how this prevents the ripping or copying of CDs. Anyone who owns a CD player with a digital out (optical or SPDIF connector) and a high-quality external CD recorder can create an _identical_ digital copy (with correct track breaks). Since the copy of the original would not be copy-protected itself, it could then be used to mass-duplicate the original CD using any normal internal CD-ROM writer device. From there, MP3s would be produced and traded around the world.
By angering consumers who purchase these CDs with copy protection, the companies that promote technologies such as this are only shooting themselves in the foot. Consumers will only buy products that are usable everywhere.
It is simply impossible to prevent people from copying audio (or video, for that matter) content. If you can hear the sound coming out of speakers, it can be duplicated. Period.