Moot point. console games far outsell PC games. Eventually I'll predict that *almost* everyone will switch to console game stations of some type. I don't care what API's my playstation uses. I just play the game.
Now.. with computers, that's different. I *do* care what OS my computer runs since I have to live with it and interact with it every day.
If windows and D3D end up being the absolute best gaming console platform and become the clear leader (I'm not holding my breath, tho), then I'll buy $LEADING_GAME_CONSOLE and play $BEST_CONSOLE_GAMES and I really won't give a darn whether it uses OpenGL or not.
Ultimately, the money is in the gameplay and mass markets.
I dunno... a cool case and fast graphics card... is that enough of a business plan to keep them afloat in the yet-another-intel-box-running-whatever-OS-you-want market?
The stock price of some random linux-focused company has no relationship to the quality of Opensource code or the vibrance of the opensource community.
every time I visit this site, I swear to never return.
Their site has so much unnecessary formatting and takes so long to load. Obviously they're not interested in attracting unix sysadmins, or mobile users using a mobile browser.
I recommend http://packetstorm.securify.com - they still have a medium amt. of html fluff, but at least it works in lynx.
My major beef with staroffice and using it on a large NFS server shared by thousands of machines is that star office is just plain dumb about multi-user-ness.
1- "setup/net" - when is a unix install not multiuser? When in unix do you use a "/" for an option flag?
2- what good app requires user to run setup after sysadmin has installed it? This is a complaint of mine with WindowMaker as well. Here's how it should work: user runs soffice, it notices that ~/$OFFICEDIR doesn't exist. It creates it. It populates it with default info taken from $PREFIX/etc/$DEFAULT.cfg
3- no console-only install script or method. I can't say it enough. GUI-only installs are inflexible, inefficient, screen-monopolizing, unwanted, slow... give me a "sh install" or similar text-based script. PLEASE!!!
4- change staroffice user directory to.staroffice . Versioned app directories are lame. app directories without a dot in front of them are even lamer.
Here's my list of things I'd like to see invigorated with new developers so that they compile again or gain functionality.
xfishtank -- just try to compile it on solaris! Should be a lot cooler with more and better fish. Should have an OpenGL fistank
enscript -- need I say more than 1.6.2?
gnuchess -- what happened in 5.0??
aalib -- the 1.3X stuff needs lots of work. If for nothing more than hack value, aalib should continue to be enhanced.
Xaos -- such a cool fractal viewer. Now id doesn't compile anymore for me.
wget -- how long since we had a new relase? Why can't wget handle imap, nntp, ldap...
** anything that uses xmkmf instead of gnu autoconf ** -- ick, ick, ick -- imakefiles just are messy, especially if you want to change defaults.
TeX -- maybe the most impossible to build, install, and configure software package that exists.
I'm sure there are more that I'll think of, but those ones immediately jumped to mind.
Re:so bring on IE5.5 for linux, then!
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Netscape 6
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· Score: 2
I'm tired of the Micros~1 trolls stating that IE has already won the browser war when it doesn't run on linux.
Hey, I like IE 5.5. I hate windows, but if IE 5.5 were available for linux, (and didn't take up as much memory and run as slowly as IE on solaris....), I'd probably use it. A number of other slashdotters who hate having netscape coredumps take their mail/browser down would probably also use it.
So... Micros~1, please either just go ahead and release your port of IE for linux, or stop trying to tout your browser as being better than Netscape/mozilla.
You'll never get me to switch back to a Micros~1 OS, but you might get me to use a Micros~1 browser or mail client on linux if it was the best product available.
I'm sure that IE on linux would also advance the mozilla project and the net result would be better browsers for all.
c'mon -- I'd be willing to bet that IE for linux has existed for a long time internal to MS (it's just another port from win32 src with mainwin, after all... how hard is that?). How come daily builds of Windows 2001 are for sale on street corners in Asia, but nobody's leaked MSOffice for linux or IE for linux?
If 500 new TLD's were added, you can bet that Coke would want coke.sex coke.vacation coke.stock coke.servicebureau coke.doctor coke.art coke.singles
Next thing you know, companies will complain about their names being used in subdomains.. Would coke mind if slashdot served all of it's images from coke.slashdot.org? Would Coca-cola mind if pepsi had a site called coke.pepsi.com. Would they have **LEGAL CLAIM** to the site or to stop it's usage?
what about coke.addict.org ??? Could they sue for slander/libel?
When is anyone going to realize that the current system just doesn't work anymore, and that "FAIR USE" and uniqueness on the internet need new definitions.
What about c0ke.ch ?? spelled with a zero, not O -- it's a unique ASCII string. Does their trademark cover that? What about cokes.ch? what about coke-soda.com what about cokefan.com what about betterthancoke.com, what about cokedexhaustvalve.com (referring to the carbon called "coke")
see the problem???? even if you can have 60+ character domainnames, you're going to be including something/word that's someone's trademark and they're going to sue you to change your name!
... and by the way, what's wrong with domain squatting??? If someone staked out the prime real-esatate and bought it when it was cheap, people would call that person shrewd. I think everyone now just has sour grapes syndrome 'cause they didn't think of registering simple words.
I think the slashdot crowd is pretty lame for condemning people who registered interesting domains. Slashdot users are usually for "free everything", "release your source", "too bad it's not free", "we need a free replacement". But on domainnames, they seem to just kowtow to big busienss and US law and say, "Shame on you for trying to cross big business!".
Oh wait, I get it... Slashdot users are against anyone making a profit. If you register coke.ch and use it for opensource software, that's okay and we'll stand behind you, but if you try to sell it to Coca-cola, you're a slimy demon that we all hate?
actually, it's more likely to see freshmeat get assimilated by sourceforge, and freshmeat eventually become a redirect to the what's new link on sourceforge with a user-config layout option to emulate freshmeat formatting.
You're totally wrong.... and the moderators who moderated you up and wrong too. Please moderate this down!
I would have, but then I couldn't post.
Hardware RAID is always going to be better than host-based (software) RAID.
software raid may be neat to play with on your PC, but if you were planning a PRODUCTION server to run your business off of, you'd want a real hardware RAID box.
Also, you can dual attach a hardware RAID box, you can swap the server out from under your hardware raid box and still see the volumes.
IDE RAID is a bad idea for a number of reasons that I'm not qualified to go into, but I've heard the arguments. Can a real RAID guru post them?
I don't know about the rest of you, but even though times are good for unix gurus and even though I like my job and salary...
I'd like to retire as soon as possible and maintain my current lifestyle or better
I don't want to work 16 hour days 5 days a week when I have kids in highschool. I don't think I can.
People don't complain about the high salaries that sports figures make, so I think **GOOD** IT people are *STILL* seriously undervalued. (NOTE: underqualified lackeys are IMHO currently waay OVERPAID)
when I can afford to retire (which is the GOAL), I won't be working on computers anymore... I'll be doing what I choose to do.. I'll have an Aquarium shop that breeds endangered fish. I'll be racing cars at the local racetrack. I'll be diving in Palau.
Computers are nice, but at some point, I'm going to want my life back!
VMWare emulates all of the standard hardware that is "there" on a PC. The remaining limitations -- IMHO, are pretty trivial
2) don't have Microsoft Certification..
It's a virtual machine! It's not an emulator. If Micros~1 software ever was intended to work on Intel hardware as implemented by VMWare, then it *is* by definition certified on VMware (or else VMWare implemented it wrong).
I look at VMWare as a great reference platform for OS testing. Every VM you create on any system is essentially using the same hardware. Try to get that level of consistency from your local PC dealer.
glibc2.0 is not obsolete: RedHat - UPDATE GLIBC2.0
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Mozilla Status Update
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· Score: 2
Sorry to break the news, but glibc2.0 will be around for a long, long time.
Tell me, how many years has Sun been trying to kill of SunOS 4.1.3? Doesn't Netscape still release binaries for it?
The moral of this story is: Now that linux is no longer a FRINGE OS, the old versions of it WILL live on and WILL need to be supported. It's no longer acceptable to release code for software that is expected to be used by everyone and design it so that it won't work on anything but the latest distribution of Linux that was released last month!
What we really need is for RedHat/Cygnus to update the GLIBC 2.0 code, fix the problems, release new RPMS, and get on with GLIBC2.2!
China's still the most populous nation in the world until India takes over ~2030.
So, as China industrializes, why should China let non-Chinese owned RedHat or TurboLinux own their HUGE market for new OS installs?
realistically, China needs a free OS. There are just too many people who will need low cost access, and too many government organizations that can't afford to license all of their illegal copies of Commercial software and apps.
It all fits. China will support linux, but only the version that is developed, branded, and offically supported by the CHinese government.
There are six billion people in the world that all want one of maybe 100,000 "good".com domain names. Face it, everyone in the world wants $NAME.com , not $NAME.kr or $NAME.BIZ or $NAME.WHATEVER
What's going to happen? Maybe 10,000+ people are all sad about not getting a SINGLE domain name.
Think of how *FEW* people can _own_ $LASTNAME.com... only *ONE* per last name.
TIP TO DOMAIN NAME REGISTRARS: Register your name outside of the US, and claim that NSI rules aren't enforceable in your country of incorporation.
When will people finally realize that $100 domain names was like the US land grant? It's almost over. Domain names will *Never* be $100 again. If you're upset AT YOURSELF for not registering names for $100, don't expect NSI to step in and MAKE RULES that somehow allow you to have "your" domainname for only $100!
Brand name is definiteky LEGO Piece of plastic with holes and dimples: a LEGO piece or ONE LEGO?
If you open a LEGO box and dump it in a bowl, which of the following would you say.
a) the bowl contains MUCH lego. b) the bowl contains many legos.
IF LEGO can be counted, then it is a countable noun. Regardless of the brand name, I say that LEGO pieces can be counted. Witness the guides that show how MANY LEGO PIECES you need of each type in each step.
So, the real issue is not wheter LEGO peices can be counted, but wheter it's more correct to say "I have 6 lego pieces" or "I have 6 LEGOs"
Personally, I think that common usage wins out for LEGOs.
there weren't _that_ many items at that link
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Java Success Stories
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· Score: 2
If the story would have been about PERL success stories and that's all they came up with, I'd be disappointed.
anyway... I think the most impressive java app I've used is NetBeans (now owned by Sun). That was the first java app that made me really believe that significant java apps were on the way.
Here's a list of related topics I'd like more slashdot stories on:
ZOPE success stories
comparison of slashdot-alike web-based discussion apps like squishdot, etc.
compare and contrast of OPENSOURCE application servers
heard a story before about a place in asia where radioactive material got into the rebar factory and was used in the building of a number of apartment houses.
Instead of tearing them down, the government compensated the occupants by not requiring them to pay any income tax.
so I have no way to get any proof. Maybe it's not true, but would *you* raise your family in a radioactive house just to escape paying taxes?
Ever eat a fish that was mutated by radiation? Ever go scuba diving next to a nuclear reactor outlet? PEOPLE DO:(
-- radioactive waste - it's not just for breakfast anymore
Thanks for the correction. I suppose I should have said that our current x-based applications haven't implemented any or haven't implemented a consistent method for dealing with multinational input methods and most distributions still lack a number of international fonts.
We really need to have a standard low level IME like windows has, where users can change input methods to ANY language from a single location and not need to run all sorts of different input method programs. That way developers could add an IME plugin instead of recoding the who darn language or input method from scratch in every application or input method program.
English programmers didn't really care so much about internationalization -- it's a lot more work to implement proper internationalized date sorts based on other calendars, and alphanumeric sorts based on different alphabets (with >26 characters or multiple ways to sort the characters)
No offense to the x developers intended. I was primarily referring to X intenationalization WRT the major apps in use today and the fragmented efforts for various non-compatible input method servers that run on top of X.
I'm no expert on Linux with Chinese I speak, read, and write Chinese and I've used Chinese Windows, Chinese Turbolinux.
* perhaps there are a million ways to input Chinese, but 3 will cover 99.999% of needs. WRONG! So Wrong. Foreigners will probably use PinYin, Taiwanese will start out using BoPoMoFo, Speed typers might want to use ChiangJie (sp?), Cantonese speakers will use another imput method based on different romanizations, data entry operator with a keypad would use other methods. 3 isn't enough.
* it is absolutely untrue that there are at least 3 completely different chinese character sets I mean encodings.... and it's quite common that Chinese text will not have any sort of text or encoding tag to indicate what encoding is used. So, if you get a text message written in Chinese, it's virtually impossible to have a program guess which encoding is used. You have to do it visually by switching encodings.
By the way, there *are* TWO different Chinese character sets as well, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan, HongKong, Malaysia, and to a lesser degree, China. Simplified Chinese is used mostly in China. The Character sets a similar, but they definitely are DIFFERENT.
* perhaps unicode has a very limited set of Chinese character, but they are enough for all practical purposes. Depends on what you consider practical. Granted, unicode contains most characters, but how would you feel if Unicode left out one of the characters in your Name? How would you feel if you couldn't type the name of a Temple because Unicode didn't have the right character?
There are far too many "web programmers" who just graduated from a Macromedia course, just installed Frontpage 2000, or just purchased Javascript for dummies that are working on high profile sites. Sometimes I like flash and flair, but when done right it should not hinder non-graphical browsing of a site. IT CAN BE DONE - you just need to know more about text and graphic html rendering and know when to NOT add yet another spinning whirlygig and when not to use javascript or java
If the site doesn't work under lynx, there's a problem. The main page should at least properly autodetect browser type or offer different content options.
Better yet, don't use features that would require a particular browser version, or at least don't use feature that only work in the latest verison on $BROWSER with latest version of $PLUGIN
There's going to be significantly less flash, flair, and graphics on sites in the upcoming future to support mobile users using WAP on PDAs to access the internet wirelessly over low speed connections and displaying on small screens.
Developing nations *can* afford klunky M$ products. Pirated CDs with MS software cost the same as linux cds. I do not endorse piracy, but there *are* thousands of shops that sell pirated software in Asia and they do it publicly.
So, price isn't an issue. Maybe copyright compliance is, but not price.
The biggest problem I can see to increasing linux use in Asia is internationalization. I'm willing to bet that many millions of people would rather use windows in their own language than linux in english.
I know, for european languages, you can set LC_ALL , and I know that there are localized version of linux in Thai, Japanese, Chinese, but until we have a single distribution of linux that can imput and display all the major languages in every app, we're not finished.
There's more to it than meet the eye.
Do you have any idea how many different ways there are to type chinese? (at least 18 different imput methods if memory serves me)
Do you have any idea how many different and incompatible character sets there are for Chinese? (at least 3 completely different ones)
Do you have any idea how few of the total chinese characters are even represented in a complete UNICODE font? (I think unicode font includes about 20,000 Chinese, Japanese, Korean glyphs while Chinese has over 80,000 characters)
add on a batch of other languages with accents above, below, or on either side of character, and then start thinking about right to left text input. (arabic, hebrew,...)
sadly, X wasn't designed with these in mind. The GNOME folks are working on pango to address these issues... seems redhat is putting a lot of work into internationalizaion...
There's a fundamental problem here... what about every website that's run OUTSIDE OF THE USA?
I predict we'll see more and more of this internet regulation as government agencies slowly realize that they are unable to control or collect revenue from online business under the traditional, over-complicated, time-consuming, labor-intesive process.
How can you impose import restrictions, trade bans, tarrifs, sales tax, etc when you're dealing with encrypted transactions over the internet.
Most online business today chooses to voluntarily comply with various regulations, like what products ebay chooses to not auction, but if ebay chose to allow others to auction prescription or illegal drugs *and* it were located outside the US, what could be done?
Governments can make the rules, but can the rules REALLY be inforced? I bet that once governments start trying to enforce these rules, you'll see businesses move to small countries with the most free business environments.
If your entire business consists of 2 72" racks in a datacenter, and a local sysadmin, it's pretty easy to move your company to any country about as fast as you can propagate a DNS change.
The cold hard reality is that online businesses can use encryption and change location faster than government can figure out how to deciper what's going on and find a way to collect money or regulate.
Attempts to tax and regulate the internet will only end up driving out businesses from opressive countries. The interesting thing is that your company HQ can be anywhere, and your employees can be anywhere else.
Laws and regulations will divide into two types: those that are enforcable in the physical world, and those that are enforcable in the online world.
Have you ever tried to get X86 Solaris to work on a laptop and use the best graphic modes? If so, then you'll appreciate XiG drivers.
There's money to be made in supporting graphics cards and writing x-servers for intel unix platforms where business is done. Maybe not so many linux developers or gamers are interested in buying non-free x servers, but you can bet that there are enough people interested to keep them profitable.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some bundling agreements like redhat had with metro-X a while back...
It's a matter of time before we see PC software that comes on a bootable cd running linux that autodetects the hardware and just runs without the need to install or configure. I'd bet that a game developer trying to use this model would want to have the best/fastest drivers for graphics and would be interested in striking a deal with XiG.
Slashdot Mirror
Moot point. console games far outsell PC games. Eventually I'll predict that *almost* everyone will switch to console game stations of some type. I don't care what API's my playstation uses. I just play the game.
Now.. with computers, that's different. I *do* care what OS my computer runs since I have to live with it and interact with it every day.
If windows and D3D end up being the absolute best gaming console platform and become the clear leader (I'm not holding my breath, tho), then I'll buy $LEADING_GAME_CONSOLE and play $BEST_CONSOLE_GAMES and I really won't give a darn whether it uses OpenGL or not.
Ultimately, the money is in the gameplay and mass markets.
I dunno... a cool case and fast graphics card... is that enough of a business plan to keep them afloat in the yet-another-intel-box-running-whatever-OS-you-want market?
Why not use MAC address for inventory tracking uniqueness like the rest of the world?
The stock price of some random linux-focused company has no relationship to the quality of Opensource code or the vibrance of the opensource community.
every time I visit this site, I swear to never return.
Their site has so much unnecessary formatting and takes so long to load. Obviously they're not interested in attracting unix sysadmins, or mobile users using a mobile browser.
I recommend http://packetstorm.securify.com - they still have a medium amt. of html fluff, but at least it works in lynx.
My major beef with staroffice and using it on a large NFS server shared by thousands of machines is that star office is just plain dumb about multi-user-ness.
/net" - when is a unix install not multiuser? When in unix do you use a "/" for an option flag?
.staroffice . Versioned app directories are lame. app directories without a dot in front of them are even lamer.
1- "setup
2- what good app requires user to run setup after sysadmin has installed it? This is a complaint of mine with WindowMaker as well. Here's how it should work: user runs soffice, it notices that ~/$OFFICEDIR doesn't exist. It creates it. It populates it with default info taken from $PREFIX/etc/$DEFAULT.cfg
3- no console-only install script or method. I can't say it enough. GUI-only installs are inflexible, inefficient, screen-monopolizing, unwanted, slow... give me a "sh install" or similar text-based script. PLEASE!!!
4- change staroffice user directory to
Here's my list of things I'd like to see invigorated with new developers so that they compile again or gain functionality.
xfishtank -- just try to compile it on solaris! Should be a lot cooler with more and better fish. Should have an OpenGL fistank
enscript -- need I say more than 1.6.2?
gnuchess -- what happened in 5.0??
aalib -- the 1.3X stuff needs lots of work. If for nothing more than hack value, aalib should continue to be enhanced.
Xaos -- such a cool fractal viewer. Now id doesn't compile anymore for me.
wget -- how long since we had a new relase? Why can't wget handle imap, nntp, ldap...
** anything that uses xmkmf instead of gnu autoconf ** -- ick, ick, ick -- imakefiles just are messy, especially if you want to change defaults.
TeX -- maybe the most impossible to build, install, and configure software package that exists.
I'm sure there are more that I'll think of, but those ones immediately jumped to mind.
I'm tired of the Micros~1 trolls stating that IE has already won the browser war when it doesn't run on linux.
Hey, I like IE 5.5. I hate windows, but if IE 5.5 were available for linux, (and didn't take up as much memory and run as slowly as IE on solaris....), I'd probably use it. A number of other slashdotters who hate having netscape coredumps take their mail/browser down would probably also use it.
So... Micros~1, please either just go ahead and release your port of IE for linux, or stop trying to tout your browser as being better than Netscape/mozilla.
You'll never get me to switch back to a Micros~1 OS, but you might get me to use a Micros~1 browser or mail client on linux if it was the best product available.
I'm sure that IE on linux would also advance the mozilla project and the net result would be better browsers for all.
c'mon -- I'd be willing to bet that IE for linux has existed for a long time internal to MS (it's just another port from win32 src with mainwin, after all... how hard is that?). How come daily builds of Windows 2001 are for sale on street corners in Asia, but nobody's leaked MSOffice for linux or IE for linux?
If 500 new TLD's were added, you can bet that Coke would want coke.sex coke.vacation coke.stock coke.servicebureau coke.doctor coke.art coke.singles
Next thing you know, companies will complain about their names being used in subdomains.. Would coke mind if slashdot served all of it's images from coke.slashdot.org? Would Coca-cola mind if pepsi had a site called coke.pepsi.com. Would they have **LEGAL CLAIM** to the site or to stop it's usage?
what about coke.addict.org ??? Could they sue for slander/libel?
When is anyone going to realize that the current system just doesn't work anymore, and that "FAIR USE" and uniqueness on the internet need new definitions.
What about c0ke.ch ?? spelled with a zero, not O -- it's a unique ASCII string. Does their trademark cover that? What about cokes.ch? what about coke-soda.com what about cokefan.com what about betterthancoke.com, what about cokedexhaustvalve.com (referring to the carbon called "coke")
see the problem???? even if you can have 60+ character domainnames, you're going to be including something/word that's someone's trademark and they're going to sue you to change your name!
... and by the way, what's wrong with domain squatting??? If someone staked out the prime real-esatate and bought it when it was cheap, people would call that person shrewd. I think everyone now just has sour grapes syndrome 'cause they didn't think of registering simple words.
I think the slashdot crowd is pretty lame for condemning people who registered interesting domains. Slashdot users are usually for "free everything", "release your source", "too bad it's not free", "we need a free replacement". But on domainnames, they seem to just kowtow to big busienss and US law and say, "Shame on you for trying to cross big business!".
Oh wait, I get it... Slashdot users are against anyone making a profit. If you register coke.ch and use it for opensource software, that's okay and we'll stand behind you, but if you try to sell it to Coca-cola, you're a slimy demon that we all hate?
Yeah, right.
actually, it's more likely to see freshmeat get assimilated by sourceforge, and freshmeat eventually become a redirect to the what's new link on sourceforge with a user-config layout option to emulate freshmeat formatting.
You're totally wrong. ... and the moderators who moderated you up and wrong too. Please moderate this down!
I would have, but then I couldn't post.
Hardware RAID is always going to be better than host-based (software) RAID.
software raid may be neat to play with on your PC, but if you were planning a PRODUCTION server to run your business off of, you'd want a real hardware RAID box.
Also, you can dual attach a hardware RAID box, you can swap the server out from under your hardware raid box and still see the volumes.
IDE RAID is a bad idea for a number of reasons that I'm not qualified to go into, but I've heard the arguments. Can a real RAID guru post them?
I don't know about the rest of you, but even though times are good for unix gurus and even though I like my job and salary...
I'd like to retire as soon as possible and maintain my current lifestyle or better
I don't want to work 16 hour days 5 days a week when I have kids in highschool. I don't think I can.
People don't complain about the high salaries that sports figures make, so I think **GOOD** IT people are *STILL* seriously undervalued. (NOTE: underqualified lackeys are IMHO currently waay OVERPAID)
when I can afford to retire (which is the GOAL), I won't be working on computers anymore... I'll be doing what I choose to do.. I'll have an Aquarium shop that breeds endangered fish. I'll be racing cars at the local racetrack. I'll be diving in Palau.
Computers are nice, but at some point, I'm going to want my life back!
I take issue with your comments about VMWare:
..
1) aren't completely there yet
VMWare emulates all of the standard hardware that is "there" on a PC. The remaining limitations -- IMHO, are pretty trivial
2) don't have Microsoft Certification
It's a virtual machine! It's not an emulator. If Micros~1 software ever was intended to work on Intel hardware as implemented by VMWare, then it *is* by definition certified on VMware (or else VMWare implemented it wrong).
I look at VMWare as a great reference platform for OS testing. Every VM you create on any system is essentially using the same hardware. Try to get that level of consistency from your local PC dealer.
Sorry to break the news, but glibc2.0 will be around for a long, long time.
Tell me, how many years has Sun been trying to kill of SunOS 4.1.3? Doesn't Netscape still release binaries for it?
The moral of this story is: Now that linux is no longer a FRINGE OS, the old versions of it WILL live on and WILL need to be supported. It's no longer acceptable to release code for software that is expected to be used by everyone and design it so that it won't work on anything but the latest distribution of Linux that was released last month!
What we really need is for RedHat/Cygnus to update the GLIBC 2.0 code, fix the problems, release new RPMS, and get on with GLIBC2.2!
China's still the most populous nation in the world until India takes over ~2030.
So, as China industrializes, why should China let non-Chinese owned RedHat or TurboLinux own their HUGE market for new OS installs?
realistically, China needs a free OS. There are just too many people who will need low cost access, and too many government organizations that can't afford to license all of their illegal copies of Commercial software and apps.
It all fits. China will support linux, but only the version that is developed, branded, and offically supported by the CHinese government.
There are six billion people in the world that all want one of maybe 100,000 "good" .com domain names. Face it, everyone in the world wants $NAME.com , not $NAME.kr or $NAME.BIZ or $NAME.WHATEVER
... only *ONE* per last name.
What's going to happen? Maybe 10,000+ people are all sad about not getting a SINGLE domain name.
Think of how *FEW* people can _own_ $LASTNAME.com
TIP TO DOMAIN NAME REGISTRARS: Register your name outside of the US, and claim that NSI rules aren't enforceable in your country of incorporation.
When will people finally realize that $100 domain names was like the US land grant? It's almost over. Domain names will *Never* be $100 again. If you're upset AT YOURSELF for not registering names for $100, don't expect NSI to step in and MAKE RULES that somehow allow you to have "your" domainname for only $100!
okay english teacher in me coming out...
Brand name is definiteky LEGO
Piece of plastic with holes and dimples: a LEGO piece or ONE LEGO?
If you open a LEGO box and dump it in a bowl, which of the following would you say.
a) the bowl contains MUCH lego.
b) the bowl contains many legos.
IF LEGO can be counted, then it is a countable noun. Regardless of the brand name, I say that LEGO pieces can be counted. Witness the guides that show how MANY LEGO PIECES you need of each type in each step.
So, the real issue is not wheter LEGO peices can be counted, but wheter it's more correct to say "I have 6 lego pieces" or "I have 6 LEGOs"
Personally, I think that common usage wins out for LEGOs.
Searching FRESHMEAT for JAVA returns 378 links, and they're almost all GPL. That's more impressive to me
anyway... I think the most impressive java app I've used is NetBeans (now owned by Sun). That was the first java app that made me really believe that significant java apps were on the way.
Here's a list of related topics I'd like more slashdot stories on:
ZOPE success stories
comparison of slashdot-alike web-based discussion apps like squishdot, etc.
compare and contrast of OPENSOURCE application servers
heard a story before about a place in asia where radioactive material got into the rebar factory and was used in the building of a number of apartment houses.
:(
Instead of tearing them down, the government compensated the occupants by not requiring them to pay any income tax.
so I have no way to get any proof. Maybe it's not true, but would *you* raise your family in a radioactive house just to escape paying taxes?
Ever eat a fish that was mutated by radiation? Ever go scuba diving next to a nuclear reactor outlet? PEOPLE DO
--
radioactive waste - it's not just for breakfast anymore
Thanks for the correction. I suppose I should have said that our current x-based applications haven't implemented any or haven't implemented a consistent method for dealing with multinational input methods and most distributions still lack a number of international fonts.
We really need to have a standard low level IME like windows has, where users can change input methods to ANY language from a single location and not need to run all sorts of different input method programs. That way developers could add an IME plugin instead of recoding the who darn language or input method from scratch in every application or input method program.
English programmers didn't really care so much about internationalization -- it's a lot more work to implement proper internationalized date sorts based on other calendars, and alphanumeric sorts based on different alphabets (with >26 characters or multiple ways to sort the characters)
No offense to the x developers intended. I was primarily referring to X intenationalization WRT the major apps in use today and the fragmented efforts for various non-compatible input method servers that run on top of X.
I'm no expert on Linux with Chinese
... and it's quite common that Chinese text will not have any sort of text or encoding tag to indicate what encoding is used. So, if you get a text message written in Chinese, it's virtually impossible to have a program guess which encoding is used. You have to do it visually by switching encodings.
I speak, read, and write Chinese and I've used Chinese Windows, Chinese Turbolinux.
* perhaps there are a million ways to input Chinese, but 3 will cover 99.999% of needs.
WRONG! So Wrong. Foreigners will probably use PinYin, Taiwanese will start out using BoPoMoFo, Speed typers might want to use ChiangJie (sp?), Cantonese speakers will use another imput method based on different romanizations, data entry operator with a keypad would use other methods. 3 isn't enough.
* it is absolutely untrue that there are at least 3 completely different chinese character sets
I mean encodings.
By the way, there *are* TWO different Chinese character sets as well, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese is used in Taiwan, HongKong, Malaysia, and to a lesser degree, China. Simplified Chinese is used mostly in China. The Character sets a similar, but they definitely are DIFFERENT.
* perhaps unicode has a very limited set of Chinese character, but they are enough for all practical purposes.
Depends on what you consider practical. Granted, unicode contains most characters, but how would you feel if Unicode left out one of the characters in your Name? How would you feel if you couldn't type the name of a Temple because Unicode didn't have the right character?
There are far too many "web programmers" who just graduated from a Macromedia course, just installed Frontpage 2000, or just purchased Javascript for dummies that are working on high profile sites. Sometimes I like flash and flair, but when done right it should not hinder non-graphical browsing of a site. IT CAN BE DONE - you just need to know more about text and graphic html rendering and know when to NOT add yet another spinning whirlygig and when not to use javascript or java
If the site doesn't work under lynx, there's a problem. The main page should at least properly autodetect browser type or offer different content options.
Better yet, don't use features that would require a particular browser version, or at least don't use feature that only work in the latest verison on $BROWSER with latest version of $PLUGIN
There's going to be significantly less flash, flair, and graphics on sites in the upcoming future to support mobile users using WAP on PDAs to access the internet wirelessly over low speed connections and displaying on small screens.
Render your non-portable html on that!
So, price isn't an issue. Maybe copyright compliance is, but not price.
The biggest problem I can see to increasing linux use in Asia is internationalization. I'm willing to bet that many millions of people would rather use windows in their own language than linux in english.
I know, for european languages, you can set LC_ALL , and I know that there are localized version of linux in Thai, Japanese, Chinese, but until we have a single distribution of linux that can imput and display all the major languages in every app, we're not finished.
There's more to it than meet the eye.
sadly, X wasn't designed with these in mind. The GNOME folks are working on pango to address these issues... seems redhat is putting a lot of work into internationalizaion...
Here's a link to gscript
Here's a gtk internationalization whitepaper
There's a fundamental problem here... what about every website that's run OUTSIDE OF THE USA?
I predict we'll see more and more of this internet regulation as government agencies slowly realize that they are unable to control or collect revenue from online business under the traditional, over-complicated, time-consuming, labor-intesive process.
How can you impose import restrictions, trade bans, tarrifs, sales tax, etc when you're dealing with encrypted transactions over the internet.
Most online business today chooses to voluntarily comply with various regulations, like what products ebay chooses to not auction, but if ebay chose to allow others to auction prescription or illegal drugs *and* it were located outside the US, what could be done?
Governments can make the rules, but can the rules REALLY be inforced? I bet that once governments start trying to enforce these rules, you'll see businesses move to small countries with the most free business environments.
If your entire business consists of 2 72" racks in a datacenter, and a local sysadmin, it's pretty easy to move your company to any country about as fast as you can propagate a DNS change.
The cold hard reality is that online businesses can use encryption and change location faster than government can figure out how to deciper what's going on and find a way to collect money or regulate.
Attempts to tax and regulate the internet will only end up driving out businesses from opressive countries. The interesting thing is that your company HQ can be anywhere, and your employees can be anywhere else.
Laws and regulations will divide into two types: those that are enforcable in the physical world, and those that are enforcable in the online world.
Have you ever tried to get X86 Solaris to work on a laptop and use the best graphic modes? If so, then you'll appreciate XiG drivers.
There's money to be made in supporting graphics cards and writing x-servers for intel unix platforms where business is done. Maybe not so many linux developers or gamers are interested in buying non-free x servers, but you can bet that there are enough people interested to keep them profitable.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some bundling agreements like redhat had with metro-X a while back...
It's a matter of time before we see PC software that comes on a bootable cd running linux that autodetects the hardware and just runs without the need to install or configure. I'd bet that a game developer trying to use this model would want to have the best/fastest drivers for graphics and would be interested in striking a deal with XiG.