itunes is pretty slick, I admit, but the only MP3s I have are the ones that came loaded on my iBook. My own music collection (too many CDs, an addiction I seem to have conquered) I am slowly converting to.ogg, and iTunes (not to mention hardware devices, the iPod among them) does not do.ogg, while my Mandrake sustem plays them without thinking much about it:)
If I had more of my music converted to a nice Fair Use format, I would care more about automatic indexing, adding to playlists, etc. I'm pretty pedestrian in my musical habits, though -- I generally like to listen to complete albums from single artists, so I don't notice playlist features etc. very much.
The application whose polish I *do* wish for actively under Linux is iMovie. Broadcast2000 looked cool for a while, and Trinity was promising, but both of those seem to have faded. Attention developers, I would love to pay you $200 for a freely licensed open source video-editing application with the features of as-of-early-2002 iMovie!:)
KDE already has kioslaves for a lot of devices (I think there are some 'homebrewed' ones for fireware cams, if not official ones), but once that video is important, there's not much to do with it right now...
the increasing use of kioslaves as an underlying KDE technology is great -- even if KDE developers don't use the word, it sounds to me just like Apple's lately hyped vision of computer as "digital lifestyle hub" (or however they phrase it).
If the KDE stuff continues at current pace, it won't be lnog until anything with a USB or firewire jack (or any other port that my computer has or will sprout next year) should plug in and be recognized, transparently and as a regular-looking ("hey, there's a file!") entry in directories...
Any typical Linux distro comes with superior art tools already (GIMP, Kontour -- superior to anything that comes as part of a Windows or Mac OS install per se, though Photoshop is good for certain things that GIMP Is not), and with lots of tools for converting and listening to digital music. So music and 2-D art I think are pretty much down -- not finished or perfect or static, but already a compelling arguments for the family who wants to create pictures, edit digital photos, and stream music to baby's room.
The big drawbacks now when it comes to the digital hub lifestyle thing to any free system I'm aware of is that both Windows and Apple have available superior codecs for video, and both now come with video editing software. (At least, that's what the silly XP commercials imply; is that true?).
This really isn't a GNOME or KDE thing per se (hey, both are good, differences are wildly exaggerated, and they both live happily on the same machines), but kioslaves are impressive and tantalizing -- just wish there were video apps so I could one day open a window called "FIREWIRE VIDEO CAMERA" and be able to do the things that iMovie on a Mac provides.
it's because the reviewer didn't include one;) -- and it's (intended) to be based on what the reviewer seems to think about the book.
However, it's an oversight to have not mailed you on that one -- usually, this has happened only when reviewers submit a review lacking a valid email address. Many reviewers send in reviews that lack (nearly) all of the information in the table at the top of the review. (Not Wrinkled, though!:))
Admittedly, the numbers are somewhat subjective (even though they're *numbers* and people therefore try to assign them sometimes a great deal of objectivity), and obviously different reviewers have different takes on what a "5" means, or a "9"... very few reviewers give "10" ratings, for instance. That's probably because it's like calling a restaurant "perfect" and thereby inviting greater scrutiny than if you'd simply callled it "very good" or even "superb."
If anyone would like to come up with a perfectly fair way to assign ratings, I'd add it to the book review guidelines, too;)
Remember, Slashdot book reviews are submitted by people who read the books and jotted down their thoughts.
It's true that most Slashdot book reviews fill the 7-9 range, but that shouldn't be *that* surprising -- how many people *bother* with the time and hassle of finishing a book they think is awful (or just well below par) in order to write a review of it? Paid reviewers on a contract, assigned books whether they like 'em or not, Yes -- but that's not how we do it:) Instead, we rely mostly on self-selection; hopefully this means that people distill their good and their bad book experiences, but since people (rationally) try to minimize their bad experiences anyhow, it's natural that they instead choose to finish, enjoy and pass on ones they like.
We may decline book review submissions that are hard to read, abusive, don't fit our book review guidelines well enough, etc, but never for a low rating. That rating is up to the reviewer.
which card does xfree86 love most?
on
Xfree86 4.2.0 Out
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That is, what video card(s) could I buy that are absolutely, unconditionally, all-features-but-the-hamster, no-problems, all dancing 3D-whizbands supported by XFree86? No recompilation, no binary-only drivers, no unexpected visits from Dr. Murphy...
That is, what card to choose for setting up a system that it would take a concerted effort not to get right just by installing, say, Mandrake 8.1, that will run GLTron and Tuxracer without hiccoughing, that will never call attention to itself, at least in the bad way?
dcorbin, I agree with you almost, with the inevitable *but*...
- *but* there are government bodies currently producing code. Better that they should dry up and blow away (the ones not contributing to my defense, increasing my liberty, etc, and I figure that will take care of 90% at least...), but let's say that's not going to happen this evening.
I'd rather they *at least* in the meantime have to turn over the work done under contract to the sponsors (taxpayers / the general public)...
At that's a strong "at least":) I'd also like to see a big red pen start slashing through the various acronyms which misspend our money, corrupt the country, subvert the Constitution, etc.. .
it's that the entire fonts system on *nix machines is esoteric enough that all the fiddling with suitcases etc on the Mac (as of several years ago at least -- I really haven't played with the fonts on my iBook) is nothing in comparison.
The fonts available to AbiWord are not the same ones available to the GIMP, for instance, and I'm not sure -- though I haven't pursued -- how to change this. (KWord seems to find the same fonts as the GIMP, though.)
If I could earmark money toward a useability project for either or both (or any, depending on who's counting) of the Big Desktops, it would be a prettier / friendlier / easier font-control mechanism. Drag and drop, dammit!:) It's nice that both KDE and GNOME now have antialiasing, but I really wish there was a single spot I could drag a downloaded font and know it would then be available to every application which uses fonts...
The *next* thing I'd like to earmark money for is an easy to use and freely licensed font-creation tool:) Even if it could be used mostly to create ugly fonts, as long as the capability to creat new / better / improved ones existed, I bet a few nice ones would soon float to the top...
Perhaps there really is a nice free font-creation program under Linux / UNIX, I just don't know about it if so.
Many of the objections I've read in the comments so far are along these lines:
1) It's OK to require source-release for some software, but not for the software used to do sensitive seekrit military / spy things
or
2) A lot of government-related software is only partly or ambiguously publically funded -- a project that's primarily private shouldn't have to expose all its secrets.
or
3) The GPL (and some other licenses) are horrible because they place restrictions on future use.
One thing that seems to make sense to me on all three of these things is that in the case of required source release (for instance, if a state or federal agency requires it of all in-house-developed software), the rules could specify a time by which the source must be public, rather than saying it must be immediately open.
To each one, though --
1) Nope. Public funds should mean public disclosure. If data is secret, that's one thing, but the software that operates on the data, that's another. There is no unlimted right for the government to use spy software, especiallly on its own citizens. In the US at least, precisely the opposite is supposed to be true.
2) With exceptions, "Too bad." Accepting government money is a deal with the devil on several levels; if they take the money (even a smidgeon), they should have to follow rules designed specifically and well to benefit their new patrons (the public). So don't take government (public) money if you don't like the rules. Excellent.
3) Public domain does seem to be the most universal option here, though the BSD license would be smart, too.
Combining a time-delay (6 months? 18 months? 36 months?) with point #3 there I think leaves little excuse to companies who say it would "rob them of intellectual property." If your public-funded code of (again, arbitrary) 18 months ago can't be released without jeopardizing your current work, are you using the public's money well, or just resting?
Another point -- rather than thinking of it as "requiring the release of source code" (which sounds burdensome on the producers, and in fact, could be, if they're not set up to do that), think of it as "requiring full disclosure." If your state Office of Budget and Management (or fill in your favorite bureaucracy) spent millions of dollars on faulty software, how would you know? You might wait for the right branch of the right legislature to convene an investigation, hire consultants, hope neither investigators nor consultants are bribed or otherwise tainted, and a few years down the road, the bad code might become part of the public record anyhow. If code is public by law, there's at least potentially a much more direct accountability to the public by the people who wrote the code as well as those who hired them to do it. Is it a potential burden? Sure -- but it's one that we should demand of anyone spending public funds.
a little over a year ago, I bought a external CD-RW drive as a backup device -- an HP 8100 (or is is 8200?) series external model. I chose it because it was by HP and USB; I figured that with those two factors, it should be a pretty cross-platform device, so I could get everything off my unstable win2K laptop onto CDs, and when I got a Mac (as I planned at that point, and later did), could use it on the Mac. Google searches found plenty of people who were using it under Linux, and since the laptop at that point dual-booted...
At any rate, my reasoning was bad, and I should have researched more. Did it work under Windows? Yes. The included software I find pretty ugly, but Yes, it works. Does it work under Linux? Yes, when set up by a smart person (not me) who did a bunch of fiddling, but now works great. But the Mac? Nope. The HP site has one of those great non-responsive responses in the FAQ, too. Something like...
"Q: Does my 8200e work with the Mac OS?
A: We understand that many people would like to use their 8200e with a computer running the Mac OS. Have a nice day."
Huh? They couldn't have released a driver for a %$#@ external USB drive!? I expected to just pop on the HP site and download a driver, seemed reasonable enough. HP used to be a Mac-friendly company, but now I am wary about buying any HP product. Thanks, guys. Glad it works under Linux;) I hope that Mandrake 8.2 PPC will work it, too, but since that's not out yet, can't say.
... is that people get used to high bandwidth as customers. Even though they may technically be customers who are supposed to be buying an 'education,' the fact is that (typical, 4-year, residential) colleges / universities seem to provide professors and classrooms only to supplement their provision of high-speed, on-site-service, always-on, relatively unrestricted network access. This is one reason I regret not living in the dorms at Univ. of Texas, which it turns out grew some good-at-the-time ethernet ports while I was in school, and I bet are still good.
As someone who wants to be a customer for better internet access of all sorts (true all-continent roaming access for N. America at least would good... I'd pay $300/mo for the always-on mediumband available in rural Montana etc), I want there to be an increasing supply of college grads used to insane, insanely cheap bandwidth to help drive the market:)
Durian is one of the weirdest foods in the entire world. It's like an urban legend for a lot of people ("Yeah, there's this fruit which smells like garbage, and tastes sort of like a garlic pudding..."). Bad name for a child, just because of the smell factor. If not for that, would sound good for a son or daughter.
I've had it, once. I enjoyed the *experience* but don't exactly have a hankering for it as a result.
hawkfan, you wrote: "I use my Palm V regularly as a serial terminal for routers and headless machines. I've found, of all things, ed, to be the most usable editor in this environment."
This is a serious question:)
What do you use to input text?!
I know people use their Palms as serial terminals, which is neat just by itself. But... I hope you have one of the available keyboards or something. I can't imagine entering much text via Graffiti, at least for sysadmin work. I like Graffiti pretty well even, but it does have a lot of built-in tedium from backspacing due to misrecognized characters, at least for me.
If you're using Graffiti, how many characters at a time are you using it for?! I hope you're not writing long scripts that way:)
(and one of the reasons I said "a certain limited way"), but in truth, I don't begrudge MS or any other company money spent on marketing. Sure, a lot of that money is misspent, but if it *really* is marketing -- taken literally, not just what it's come to mean -- then it's complementary to the other functions of any given company, including Microsoft (and Red Hat, and Kraft, and Exxon, and Whole Foods, and Grucci's Fireworks... ).
MS can't hire smart people to work at MS Research if they don't make money; they can't make money if they don't sell *something* (software, cheap flowers, novelty pens), can't sell their something if they don't market it. In fact, I think in that context, "sell" and "market" are redundant -- all of marketing is sales, really, and all of advertising is marketing. (Professors in the few marketing and business classes I took never really agreed with me on that point, but hey, I think their semantics are outdated and myopic;))
If MS were a producer of free / Free software (and I think they *could* become one, even if that's an unlikely outcome), they'd perhaps have more of the same world-changing currency that groups like the Debian project do. Debian couldn't afford to "hire" all the smart people who work on Debian software, packaging, etc (and substitute in your favorite free sw project), at least on the terms of source-secret companies. With the incentive of changing the world in certain ways, overlapping with some (justified, IMO) revolutionary fervor, Debian doesn't have to put as large a percentage of the project's total lifeblood into low-content advertising, paying high salaries, etc. People working toward what they consider a greater good (and probably some MS employees consider their brand of software creation genuinely better, but certainly not all) probably work a lot harder per dollar paid, too.
I doubt the arguments for greater programming freedom and other forms of abstract niceness are ever going to open the same kind of doors that arguments emphasizing the stability and practical nature of non-secret code will, though. Government spenders had better be thinking of those practical reasons when they redistribute the loot they've taken from us, so as not to inspire mobs of angry citizens to relocate their jaws.
timothy
RFL (backed, one of the linked articles says, by the son of the president) provides Linux in Chinese. (At least, it allegedly does;) -- I've never seen anything besides a product shot of the box, and don't speak or read Chinese). Turbo Linux is supposedly very good in its Asian language support, too.
Do any of the BSDs have good Asian language support? Not saying they don't, I'm just not familiar with it if they do.
The U.S. Federal government is by far Microsoft's largest customer, and I believe that the assorted state governments as a group are 2nd, with 3rd place way behind. (Can anyone contradict that, or provide more concrete evidence?)
Every time tax dollars go to buy a piece of Microsoft software, the money is funneled into software development / improvement for life on earth only in a certain limited way (because MS then can pay more programmers, hire researchers to make their SW better, do more QA, etc). In other words, sure, abstractly there's an eventual benefit, sort of, at least to MS customers, (and even more abstractly, there's benefit to competition that future MS software inspires). On the other hand, the more tax-dollar stewards (local school systems, say, or your local Department of Extortion) put the same money they normally would put toward MS software instead into non-secret-source* software, the results are instantly free for public consumption and improvement. That sounds to me like "promoting the general welfare." The government (remember, your government is spending your money) should never use a proprietary product when a freely available product can fill the same needs.
The right to free speech does not mean you have a right to commit harm through your speech; I am all in favor of penalties against fraud, and inevitably some of those need to soak up some of the slime where it slithered, into my / your / our email boxes.
There's no ideological banning of "certain types of speech" here -- they're the same things that are (legitimately) not allowed IRL already.
(You're allowed to send me an unsolicited invitation to a party, but you're not allowed to send it to me in the bottom of a paper bag of dogshit doused with gasoline and set aflame on my doorstep, then claim your rights to free speech are violated if I catch you at it and take appropriate action.)
Spammers are the dogshit-bag lighters of the online world.
but since I don't celebrate Christmas, it's not like I'm feeling terribly deprived!:) I still got to see some great relatives (some not seen in more than a decade) a few days ago, and hope to take some of my family to LotR tomorrow, and I'm happy to enjoy the fruits of enforced togetherness feelings that certain people have forged tangential to the actual religious roots of Christmas. (Pagan celebrations co-opted, blah blah blah, that may be true but it doesn't mean the origins aren't Christian...not something I care to argue about or dwell on!:) )
Last week, I even got to hang out with a nice subset of the incredibly smart people I know through work, and missed several others. All for it. People should get together more often to play games and converse, ones who work behind computers all day especially.
The more legitimately a holiday can be celebrated with a few joyous fireworks, though, the less inclined I am to miss it. This means that New Years I will surely see some pyrotechnics, and Hallowe'en, April Fool's, Guy Fawkes Day, Dia de los Muertos, Bastille Day, the 4th (of course) and a few others are on my list for not sitting behind my laptop while there are fuses to be lit. If I take up religion, perhaps I'll start a good (loud) Christmas tradition with which my (hyothetical) children can piss off the neighbors.
thanks for those links -- I spoke too soon. But LEDs are still IMO closer to direct application to laptop computers, despite the shortcomings other posters have pointed out wrt. brightness etc.
More LEDs (especially of the very high-output varieties, brandnames are slipping my mind right now... Lumilor? Lumilon? Lumilux?) I think would be able to math flourescents, and if it means slightly thicker notebook screens and an extra hundred or two dollars in initial hardware cost, I'll happily take that.
And if it turns out to be OLEDs instead, no complaints from me!
a) I used to think the same thing (for a glimmer of a speck of the thin side of a scanty moment), but changed my mind before the gel could set.
b) words acquire meaning through use. When people ("most people") say "MP3," they sure as heck aren't thinking "Layer 3 of a certain spec from the Motion Picture Experts Group." They're thinking "emm pee thrie -- three great sounds that sound great together." Or even "empythree." Which is to say, it's just a few syllables serving as a name, not the abbreviation it really is at heart. "doubleya emm eff" has no more cognitive strength except to a small number of people who know (but don't need to know, exactly)what those letters / sounds stand for.
c) As (not when) Ogg catches on, it will be catchier, "stickier" and more fun than some marketing department-style contrivance. ("SoundChunk"? "Earbit"? "AudiAll"?). Apple is a funny name for computers, but it's not just a "so what?" -- it's actually a strength of Apple. [Weak point, I know: "Apple" has a clean, interesting sound, food associations, as well as previous associations like Apple Records, intriguing religious / artistic connections, too... but at least part of this line of thought is valid, I think.]
d) Heh, "Ogg should change its name" and "No it shouldn't" have perhaps become one of the standard slashdot sub-plots for the ages, but I know I come down on the "Keep it, love it, revel in it" side.
Slashdot Mirror
What Stella used, I'm not sure, but it looks fine for me reading in Mozilla (under both Mac OS and Linux).
I don't use any MS editors, at least on my own machines.
timothy
itunes is pretty slick, I admit, but the only MP3s I have are the ones that came loaded on my iBook. My own music collection (too many CDs, an addiction I seem to have conquered) I am slowly converting to .ogg, and iTunes (not to mention hardware devices, the iPod among them) does not do .ogg, while my Mandrake sustem plays them without thinking much about it :)
:)
...
If I had more of my music converted to a nice Fair Use format, I would care more about automatic indexing, adding to playlists, etc. I'm pretty pedestrian in my musical habits, though -- I generally like to listen to complete albums from single artists, so I don't notice playlist features etc. very much.
The application whose polish I *do* wish for actively under Linux is iMovie. Broadcast2000 looked cool for a while, and Trinity was promising, but both of those seem to have faded. Attention developers, I would love to pay you $200 for a freely licensed open source video-editing application with the features of as-of-early-2002 iMovie!
KDE already has kioslaves for a lot of devices (I think there are some 'homebrewed' ones for fireware cams, if not official ones), but once that video is important, there's not much to do with it right now
timothy
When will the Windows development model catch up to the superior models offered by Linux, FreeBSD and other projects?
;)
When will Windows be released with available, modifiable, redistributable source code?
Most importantly, when will we be able to play all our Windows-only Outlook-exploiting viruses on Evolution?!
I guess "condemn standards" was sort of a giveaway, but oh well
timothy
the increasing use of kioslaves as an underlying KDE technology is great -- even if KDE developers don't use the word, it sounds to me just like Apple's lately hyped vision of computer as "digital lifestyle hub" (or however they phrase it).
...
If the KDE stuff continues at current pace, it won't be lnog until anything with a USB or firewire jack (or any other port that my computer has or will sprout next year) should plug in and be recognized, transparently and as a regular-looking ("hey, there's a file!") entry in directories
Any typical Linux distro comes with superior art tools already (GIMP, Kontour -- superior to anything that comes as part of a Windows or Mac OS install per se, though Photoshop is good for certain things that GIMP Is not), and with lots of tools for converting and listening to digital music. So music and 2-D art I think are pretty much down -- not finished or perfect or static, but already a compelling arguments for the family who wants to create pictures, edit digital photos, and stream music to baby's room.
The big drawbacks now when it comes to the digital hub lifestyle thing to any free system I'm aware of is that both Windows and Apple have available superior codecs for video, and both now come with video editing software. (At least, that's what the silly XP commercials imply; is that true?).
This really isn't a GNOME or KDE thing per se (hey, both are good, differences are wildly exaggerated, and they both live happily on the same machines), but kioslaves are impressive and tantalizing -- just wish there were video apps so I could one day open a window called "FIREWIRE VIDEO CAMERA" and be able to do the things that iMovie on a Mac provides.
timothy
it's because the reviewer didn't include one ;) -- and it's (intended) to be based on what the reviewer seems to think about the book.
:))
... very few reviewers give "10" ratings, for instance. That's probably because it's like calling a restaurant "perfect" and thereby inviting greater scrutiny than if you'd simply callled it "very good" or even "superb."
;)
However, it's an oversight to have not mailed you on that one -- usually, this has happened only when reviewers submit a review lacking a valid email address. Many reviewers send in reviews that lack (nearly) all of the information in the table at the top of the review. (Not Wrinkled, though!
Admittedly, the numbers are somewhat subjective (even though they're *numbers* and people therefore try to assign them sometimes a great deal of objectivity), and obviously different reviewers have different takes on what a "5" means, or a "9"
If anyone would like to come up with a perfectly fair way to assign ratings, I'd add it to the book review guidelines, too
Remember, Slashdot book reviews are submitted by people who read the books and jotted down their thoughts.
:) Instead, we rely mostly on self-selection; hopefully this means that people distill their good and their bad book experiences, but since people (rationally) try to minimize their bad experiences anyhow, it's natural that they instead choose to finish, enjoy and pass on ones they like.
It's true that most Slashdot book reviews fill the 7-9 range, but that shouldn't be *that* surprising -- how many people *bother* with the time and hassle of finishing a book they think is awful (or just well below par) in order to write a review of it? Paid reviewers on a contract, assigned books whether they like 'em or not, Yes -- but that's not how we do it
We may decline book review submissions that are hard to read, abusive, don't fit our book review guidelines well enough, etc, but never for a low rating. That rating is up to the reviewer.
round is me.
:)
Sorry.
I wish Slashdot let me search by URL
timothy
That is, what video card(s) could I buy that are absolutely, unconditionally, all-features-but-the-hamster, no-problems, all dancing 3D-whizbands supported by XFree86? No recompilation, no binary-only drivers, no unexpected visits from Dr. Murphy ...
That is, what card to choose for setting up a system that it would take a concerted effort not to get right just by installing, say, Mandrake 8.1, that will run GLTron and Tuxracer without hiccoughing, that will never call attention to itself, at least in the bad way?
timothy
dcorbin, I agree with you almost, with the inevitable *but* ...
...), but let's say that's not going to happen this evening.
...
:) I'd also like to see a big red pen start slashing through the various acronyms which misspend our money, corrupt the country, subvert the Constitution, etc .. .
- *but* there are government bodies currently producing code. Better that they should dry up and blow away (the ones not contributing to my defense, increasing my liberty, etc, and I figure that will take care of 90% at least
I'd rather they *at least* in the meantime have to turn over the work done under contract to the sponsors (taxpayers / the general public)
At that's a strong "at least"
timothy
it's that the entire fonts system on *nix machines is esoteric enough that all the fiddling with suitcases etc on the Mac (as of several years ago at least -- I really haven't played with the fonts on my iBook) is nothing in comparison.
:) It's nice that both KDE and GNOME now have antialiasing, but I really wish there was a single spot I could drag a downloaded font and know it would then be available to every application which uses fonts ...
:) Even if it could be used mostly to create ugly fonts, as long as the capability to creat new / better / improved ones existed, I bet a few nice ones would soon float to the top ...
The fonts available to AbiWord are not the same ones available to the GIMP, for instance, and I'm not sure -- though I haven't pursued -- how to change this. (KWord seems to find the same fonts as the GIMP, though.)
If I could earmark money toward a useability project for either or both (or any, depending on who's counting) of the Big Desktops, it would be a prettier / friendlier / easier font-control mechanism. Drag and drop, dammit!
The *next* thing I'd like to earmark money for is an easy to use and freely licensed font-creation tool
Perhaps there really is a nice free font-creation program under Linux / UNIX, I just don't know about it if so.
In short, I agree and then some!
timothy
Many of the objections I've read in the comments so far are along these lines:
1) It's OK to require source-release for some software, but not for the software used to do sensitive seekrit military / spy things
or
2) A lot of government-related software is only partly or ambiguously publically funded -- a project that's primarily private shouldn't have to expose all its secrets.
or
3) The GPL (and some other licenses) are horrible because they place restrictions on future use.
One thing that seems to make sense to me on all three of these things is that in the case of required source release (for instance, if a state or federal agency requires it of all in-house-developed software), the rules could specify a time by which the source must be public, rather than saying it must be immediately open.
To each one, though --
1) Nope. Public funds should mean public disclosure. If data is secret, that's one thing, but the software that operates on the data, that's another. There is no unlimted right for the government to use spy software, especiallly on its own citizens. In the US at least, precisely the opposite is supposed to be true.
2) With exceptions, "Too bad." Accepting government money is a deal with the devil on several levels; if they take the money (even a smidgeon), they should have to follow rules designed specifically and well to benefit their new patrons (the public). So don't take government (public) money if you don't like the rules. Excellent.
3) Public domain does seem to be the most universal option here, though the BSD license would be smart, too.
Combining a time-delay (6 months? 18 months? 36 months?) with point #3 there I think leaves little excuse to companies who say it would "rob them of intellectual property." If your public-funded code of (again, arbitrary) 18 months ago can't be released without jeopardizing your current work, are you using the public's money well, or just resting?
Another point -- rather than thinking of it as "requiring the release of source code" (which sounds burdensome on the producers, and in fact, could be, if they're not set up to do that), think of it as "requiring full disclosure." If your state Office of Budget and Management (or fill in your favorite bureaucracy) spent millions of dollars on faulty software, how would you know? You might wait for the right branch of the right legislature to convene an investigation, hire consultants, hope neither investigators nor consultants are bribed or otherwise tainted, and a few years down the road, the bad code might become part of the public record anyhow. If code is public by law, there's at least potentially a much more direct accountability to the public by the people who wrote the code as well as those who hired them to do it. Is it a potential burden? Sure -- but it's one that we should demand of anyone spending public funds.
Anyhow, them's my thoughts of the moment --
timothy
a little over a year ago, I bought a external CD-RW drive as a backup device -- an HP 8100 (or is is 8200?) series external model. I chose it because it was by HP and USB; I figured that with those two factors, it should be a pretty cross-platform device, so I could get everything off my unstable win2K laptop onto CDs, and when I got a Mac (as I planned at that point, and later did), could use it on the Mac. Google searches found plenty of people who were using it under Linux, and since the laptop at that point dual-booted ...
...
;) I hope that Mandrake 8.2 PPC will work it, too, but since that's not out yet, can't say.
At any rate, my reasoning was bad, and I should have researched more. Did it work under Windows? Yes. The included software I find pretty ugly, but Yes, it works. Does it work under Linux? Yes, when set up by a smart person (not me) who did a bunch of fiddling, but now works great. But the Mac? Nope. The HP site has one of those great non-responsive responses in the FAQ, too. Something like
"Q: Does my 8200e work with the Mac OS?
A: We understand that many people would like to use their 8200e with a computer running the Mac OS. Have a nice day."
Huh? They couldn't have released a driver for a %$#@ external USB drive!? I expected to just pop on the HP site and download a driver, seemed reasonable enough. HP used to be a Mac-friendly company, but now I am wary about buying any HP product. Thanks, guys. Glad it works under Linux
timothy
As above poster mentions, before "Segway" (and I think before "Ginger") it was called "IT." That's also what I meant by "WHAT" ;)
Cheers,
timothy
'"Segway" is a proper noun as of a few weeks ago. Don't worry timothy, i suck at grammar too.'
;) Did I misuse it somewhere?
Huh? I didn't come up with that scooter's silly name
timothy
... is that people get used to high bandwidth as customers. Even though they may technically be customers who are supposed to be buying an 'education,' the fact is that (typical, 4-year, residential) colleges / universities seem to provide professors and classrooms only to supplement their provision of high-speed, on-site-service, always-on, relatively unrestricted network access. This is one reason I regret not living in the dorms at Univ. of Texas, which it turns out grew some good-at-the-time ethernet ports while I was in school, and I bet are still good.
... I'd pay $300/mo for the always-on mediumband available in rural Montana etc), I want there to be an increasing supply of college grads used to insane, insanely cheap bandwidth to help drive the market :)
As someone who wants to be a customer for better internet access of all sorts (true all-continent roaming access for N. America at least would good
timothy
Durian is one of the weirdest foods in the entire world. It's like an urban legend for a lot of people ("Yeah, there's this fruit which smells like garbage, and tastes sort of like a garlic pudding ..."). Bad name for a child, just because of the smell factor. If not for that, would sound good for a son or daughter.
I've had it, once. I enjoyed the *experience* but don't exactly have a hankering for it as a result.
timothy
hawkfan, you wrote: "I use my Palm V regularly as a serial terminal for routers and headless machines. I've found, of all things, ed, to be the most usable editor in this environment."
:)
... I hope you have one of the available keyboards or something. I can't imagine entering much text via Graffiti, at least for sysadmin work. I like Graffiti pretty well even, but it does have a lot of built-in tedium from backspacing due to misrecognized characters, at least for me.
:)
This is a serious question
What do you use to input text?!
I know people use their Palms as serial terminals, which is neat just by itself. But
If you're using Graffiti, how many characters at a time are you using it for?! I hope you're not writing long scripts that way
timothy
(and one of the reasons I said "a certain limited way"), but in truth, I don't begrudge MS or any other company money spent on marketing. Sure, a lot of that money is misspent, but if it *really* is marketing -- taken literally, not just what it's come to mean -- then it's complementary to the other functions of any given company, including Microsoft (and Red Hat, and Kraft, and Exxon, and Whole Foods, and Grucci's Fireworks ... ).
;))
...
MS can't hire smart people to work at MS Research if they don't make money; they can't make money if they don't sell *something* (software, cheap flowers, novelty pens), can't sell their something if they don't market it. In fact, I think in that context, "sell" and "market" are redundant -- all of marketing is sales, really, and all of advertising is marketing. (Professors in the few marketing and business classes I took never really agreed with me on that point, but hey, I think their semantics are outdated and myopic
If MS were a producer of free / Free software (and I think they *could* become one, even if that's an unlikely outcome), they'd perhaps have more of the same world-changing currency that groups like the Debian project do. Debian couldn't afford to "hire" all the smart people who work on Debian software, packaging, etc (and substitute in your favorite free sw project), at least on the terms of source-secret companies. With the incentive of changing the world in certain ways, overlapping with some (justified, IMO) revolutionary fervor, Debian doesn't have to put as large a percentage of the project's total lifeblood into low-content advertising, paying high salaries, etc. People working toward what they consider a greater good (and probably some MS employees consider their brand of software creation genuinely better, but certainly not all) probably work a lot harder per dollar paid, too.
I doubt the arguments for greater programming freedom and other forms of abstract niceness are ever going to open the same kind of doors that arguments emphasizing the stability and practical nature of non-secret code will, though. Government spenders had better be thinking of those practical reasons when they redistribute the loot they've taken from us, so as not to inspire mobs of angry citizens to relocate their jaws.
timothy
sorry for ramble, I have a fever
RFL (backed, one of the linked articles says, by the son of the president) provides Linux in Chinese. (At least, it allegedly does ;) -- I've never seen anything besides a product shot of the box, and don't speak or read Chinese). Turbo Linux is supposedly very good in its Asian language support, too.
Do any of the BSDs have good Asian language support? Not saying they don't, I'm just not familiar with it if they do.
timothy
The U.S. Federal government is by far Microsoft's largest customer, and I believe that the assorted state governments as a group are 2nd, with 3rd place way behind. (Can anyone contradict that, or provide more concrete evidence?)
:)
Every time tax dollars go to buy a piece of Microsoft software, the money is funneled into software development / improvement for life on earth only in a certain limited way (because MS then can pay more programmers, hire researchers to make their SW better, do more QA, etc). In other words, sure, abstractly there's an eventual benefit, sort of, at least to MS customers, (and even more abstractly, there's benefit to competition that future MS software inspires). On the other hand, the more tax-dollar stewards (local school systems, say, or your local Department of Extortion) put the same money they normally would put toward MS software instead into non-secret-source* software, the results are instantly free for public consumption and improvement. That sounds to me like "promoting the general welfare." The government (remember, your government is spending your money) should never use a proprietary product when a freely available product can fill the same needs.
timothy
* Skipping Free vs. Open Source this time
The right to free speech does not mean you have a right to commit harm through your speech; I am all in favor of penalties against fraud, and inevitably some of those need to soak up some of the slime where it slithered, into my / your / our email boxes.
There's no ideological banning of "certain types of speech" here -- they're the same things that are (legitimately) not allowed IRL already.
(You're allowed to send me an unsolicited invitation to a party, but you're not allowed to send it to me in the bottom of a paper bag of dogshit doused with gasoline and set aflame on my doorstep, then claim your rights to free speech are violated if I catch you at it and take appropriate action.)
Spammers are the dogshit-bag lighters of the online world.
timothy
but since I don't celebrate Christmas, it's not like I'm feeling terribly deprived! :) I still got to see some great relatives (some not seen in more than a decade) a few days ago, and hope to take some of my family to LotR tomorrow, and I'm happy to enjoy the fruits of enforced togetherness feelings that certain people have forged tangential to the actual religious roots of Christmas. (Pagan celebrations co-opted, blah blah blah, that may be true but it doesn't mean the origins aren't Christian ...not something I care to argue about or dwell on! :) )
Last week, I even got to hang out with a nice subset of the incredibly smart people I know through work, and missed several others. All for it. People should get together more often to play games and converse, ones who work behind computers all day especially.
The more legitimately a holiday can be celebrated with a few joyous fireworks, though, the less inclined I am to miss it. This means that New Years I will surely see some pyrotechnics, and Hallowe'en, April Fool's, Guy Fawkes Day, Dia de los Muertos, Bastille Day, the 4th (of course) and a few others are on my list for not sitting behind my laptop while there are fuses to be lit. If I take up religion, perhaps I'll start a good (loud) Christmas tradition with which my (hyothetical) children can piss off the neighbors.
timothy
thanks for those links -- I spoke too soon. But LEDs are still IMO closer to direct application to laptop computers, despite the shortcomings other posters have pointed out wrt. brightness etc.
... Lumilor? Lumilon? Lumilux?) I think would be able to math flourescents, and if it means slightly thicker notebook screens and an extra hundred or two dollars in initial hardware cost, I'll happily take that.
More LEDs (especially of the very high-output varieties, brandnames are slipping my mind right now
And if it turns out to be OLEDs instead, no complaints from me!
Tim
a) I used to think the same thing (for a glimmer of a speck of the thin side of a scanty moment), but changed my mind before the gel could set.
... but at least part of this line of thought is valid, I think.]
b) words acquire meaning through use. When people ("most people") say "MP3," they sure as heck aren't thinking "Layer 3 of a certain spec from the Motion Picture Experts Group." They're thinking "emm pee thrie -- three great sounds that sound great together." Or even "empythree." Which is to say, it's just a few syllables serving as a name, not the abbreviation it really is at heart. "doubleya emm eff" has no more cognitive strength except to a small number of people who know (but don't need to know, exactly)what those letters / sounds stand for.
c) As (not when) Ogg catches on, it will be catchier, "stickier" and more fun than some marketing department-style contrivance. ("SoundChunk"? "Earbit"? "AudiAll"?). Apple is a funny name for computers, but it's not just a "so what?" -- it's actually a strength of Apple. [Weak point, I know: "Apple" has a clean, interesting sound, food associations, as well as previous associations like Apple Records, intriguing religious / artistic connections, too
d) Heh, "Ogg should change its name" and "No it shouldn't" have perhaps become one of the standard slashdot sub-plots for the ages, but I know I come down on the "Keep it, love it, revel in it" side.
Cheers,
timothy
that OLEDs are still a while out as far as I've read, while white LEDs are currently being used as backlights for LCD screens, albeit small ones only.
:)
OLEDS will be cool, when they get here
timothy