It's free as in beer, which is still what the majority of the English-speaking world think of when you talk about "free software". Whether that's good or bad depends on your point of view, but it is a fact.
As for "something that eats at GPL programs and does not follow GPL" - would you care to back that accusation up, please?
Actually it's not an accepted spelling - if you used it in prose, as opposed to a product name, you would almost certainly place it in quotes: 'the new "lite" version of Mozilla' rather than 'the new lite version'. It's a common unword used in product names, and that's the only place it's ever used. And, like most such terms (EZ is the one I really hate, mainly because "Eezed" doesn't mean anything anyway), it's an abomination.
Now think about how microsoft names its products. Office, Word, Windows, etc. . . . The best name for software indicates what the software is for right in the name.
You're right, Microsoft never picks semantically opaque names. Except for things like Powerpoint, Access, Excel, Outlook, Visual Studio, and Bob, of course, but presumably you don't count those?
Yet some idiot always declares the latest massmailing worm as the "worst virus ever". Sheesh.
Different definition of "worst". Today's viruses may not do as much damage as some of the more twisted creations of yore, but they do spread much further and much faster.
Yes, I remember the bad old days when a virus could literally wreck a computer, but only from the stories - I never saw it happen. Meanwhile my/dev/null is so full of MyDoom now that it's oozing out of the case and all over the carpet.
Virtual desktops are still not shiped with windows (despite being a feature of X11 window mangers since I first saw it back in 1993...), and handy to have. Nor is my favorite: focus follows mouse available.
Virtual desktops may not be shipped with Windows, but they're included in Windows XP Powertoys, which is the first thing any power user installs.
As for "focus follows mouse", that's been in Powertoys since the first version for Windows 95.
Sure, you have to go and download and install stuff to get those features, but surely Linux users of all people are used to downloading and installing stuff to enhance their desktop experience?
Re:Language/tools are secondary
on
How C# Was Made
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
A higher level language does not make a program much saver or of better quality if the programmer is an idiot.
So because a language might not prevent every stupid mistake a programmer might ever make, there's no point trying to help any programmer ever avoid any mistake?
That makes no sense.
Of course it's always possible to break a program. The point of higher level languages is that they make it harder to break programs. This is not so they can serve as a crutch for incompetent programmers - it's so that they can make competent programmers more productive. Sure, a good programmer isn't going to make many mistakes with pointers, but if the language they use provides ways to do things without using pointers at all, then they aren't going to make any mistakes with pointers.
(Now, it's nice if the language also provides the pointers so they can use those where it's useful, but most of the things pointers are used for in C - array traversal, say - can be done just as efficiently with higher level constructs.)
Want an analogy? Someone really skilled, with a really sharp eye and a really steady hand, could probably draw a perfectly straight line with pencil and paper. But professional draftsmen use rulers. I wonder why that is?
even with a buggy/trojan program being run, a good OS would not allow it to reak havic on much of the system, let alone crash the entire computer.
Ultimately there is no defense against a privileged idiot typing "cd/; sudo rm -rf *".
Oh, sure, if the user doesn't have any administrative privileges, that sort of thing basically prevented, but most of the Windows installations that catch all these email trojans are home setups, not big corporations. I would seriously like to hear someone tell me how a home Linux installation can be made idiot-proof, short of some clueful person giving up a lot of their spare time to do administrative stuff.
All it would take to bring down Fred "The guy in Walmart said Linux was cheaper" would be *one* fake email saying "you have a DEADLY VIRUS; to remove it open a Konsole and type the following [evil] commands, entering your root password when prompted"...
I have every sympathy for you, but if you RTFA you'll find out that that has absolutely nothing to do with HP.
That badly designed anti-counterfeiting algorithm may well cause serious problems with perfectly legitimate uses, it doesn't follow that all anti-counterfeiting algorithms are bad.
I don't have any recent HP hardware, so I can't comment from experience, but from the article it sounds like they're trying pretty hard to make sure their algorithms don't interfere with legitimate uses. After all, nobody's forcing you to print your greetings cards in banknote green...
The bill would not affect people who are trying to safeguard their privacy because it only makes it a crime to submit false registration data when it is done to help commit a crime, said Mark Bohannon, senior vice president for public policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, which supports the bill.
In that case, what's the point? The only time they could prosecute you under a law like that would be when you're already in trouble for another crime (so, like, you're already heading for jail), and your attempt to avoid being caught by falsifying your information didn't work. So why have a special new law to punish criminals for being incompetent?
it's not at all clear that Mono will be allowed to finish/distribute a complete cross-platform.Net implementation
While the immaturity of Mono is the reason I'm looking into Java rather more seriously than.Net at the moment, I would like to point out that it's also not at all clear that there's anything Microsoft can do to stop Mono.
Remember that the only potential legal threat to Mono is Microsoft's patent portfolio. But even if Mono is infringing on something - and I haven't seen any evidence that it is - Microsoft do not have an extensive record of using patents aggressively. Their basic tactic has always been "embrace, extend, extinguish" - not "steal, sue, squash".
So the main threat to Mono is that the target will keep moving, not that Microsoft will try to crush them. But Microsoft will not be able to break.Net in too many incompatible ways without alienating their customers. And unlike SCO, Microsoft's business model relies on keeping their customers happy.
Note for BBC readers, and Mr Evans in particular: the post to which I am replying has been moderated FUNNY. This is because it is a JOKE. The "Linux community" (whatever that may be) is NOT ADVOCATING ATTACKING THE BBC.
I guess we can all argue about a nebulous word like "intuitive," but I'll bet you $5 I can teach a classroom full of Kindegardners to read a simple LCD watch faster than they can learn to read a Rolex.
You can probably teach them to speak the numbers they see on a digital display faster than you can teach them to convert the analogue display into numbers, but I'm not so convinced that they'll learn the meaning of the display so quickly from a digital watch.
"The big hand is halfway round the circle, so it's half past" is rather more intuitive than "there are sixty minutes in an hour, so 30 means it's half past".
Outside the USA we call them cafetieres, saving the need to rename them Freedom Presses every time there's a war.
Anyway, quite apart from your crazy suggestion of boiling water in the microwave (don't you have a kettle at work?), a filter cone is the way to go. Electric percolators, as you say, cost a lot of money, take ages to filter, and stew the coffee; cafetieres are fragile and always, always end up filling your mug with coffee grounds. A filter cone with disposable papers is cheap, tough, and makes perfect coffee every time - and you can do a single mug in about half a minute, so it's almost as quick as instant!
While he claims that . . . all 40 million email addresses were opt-in
They were - by his definition of "opt-in", which appears to be "they haven't actually physically provided a set of stone tablets, carved in triplicate and signed in blood, stating in seventeen languages that under no circumstances whatsoever will they ever be in the slightest bit interested in receiving email from anyone at all, along with sufficient evidence that they are indeed the person who is claiming not to want spam to convince a jury of their deadliest enemies".
Language and culture go hand in hand. Language is powerful. Not everything is translatable.
While it's true that not everything is translatable, it's less true than some people like to think. Anyone who tells you that their language is the only one that can describe their culture, or the only one which can explain their philosophy, or the only one which can capture the fundamental truth of the universe, is wrong.
Jokes don't usually translate very well, but the fate of the world rarely rests upon a joke being understood. Any serious statement can be translated between any pair of languages; one may have to adopt new words in the process, but there is nothing inherent in the language which is stopping the idea from being expressed.
I can tell them all apart quite easily, although I admit that l and | are slightly too close for comfort; it helps that most of the time I have syntax highlighting turning that | green.
The font? MS Gothic, 11 pt, 100 dpi.
I don't use BV Sans Mono because it doesn't fall back to clean pixels at low point sizes; I like antialiasing on headings and so forth, but I want clean pixels for the fonts I use for programming in, I find them easier on the eyes.
I also don't like the dotted zero; MS Gothic handles it by having 0 be much squarer than O, and 25% narrower, which is sufficiently visually distinct for me.
Oh, and there's the little matter of BV Sans Mono only handling ISO 8559-1, too... call me again when it can do mathematical symbols.
Now tell me if having to pay for postage has cut down on the level of unsoliceted mail arriving in you snailmail mailbox.
Answer: we don't know.
Paying for snail mail was implemented long before the advent of unsolicited commercial mailing. We cannot say that postage fees have cut down the level of snailmail spam, because we do not have any data on what the levels would be if there were no postage charge. Of course, it cuts both ways: we also can't say that they haven't.
My guess? If we implement postage charges for email, we'll see a huge rise in phishing, with spammers using stolen credit cards to pay for their e-stamps. And spam will drop by 10% at best.
As a footnote: I wish someone who really knew windows would set up a Windows 2k3 and Windows 2k Server/Desktop machines, just to see how they compare.
Depending on the benchmarks, that might be tricky. They don't appear to be letting on what these benchmarks will be, but it's quite probable that some of the software they choose will not be available on Windows, or only via Cygwin (which introduces a not inconsiderable overhead).
And, of course, including Windows would only encourage the trolls on both sides of the fence. It's going to be bad enough with binary-based Linux, Gentoo, and BSD going head to head...
While it's true that EA didn't "go after them", your summary is likewise incorrect. What actually happened is that they tried to get explicit permission from EA for the project, and failed to get any response at all; in the absence of any clear legal status they opted to use the engine for an original game. The timeframe is slightly confused, but their story, at least, is that the decision to go commercial was subsequent to that.
Slashdot Mirror
It's free as in beer, which is still what the majority of the English-speaking world think of when you talk about "free software". Whether that's good or bad depends on your point of view, but it is a fact.
As for "something that eats at GPL programs and does not follow GPL" - would you care to back that accusation up, please?
Actually it's not an accepted spelling - if you used it in prose, as opposed to a product name, you would almost certainly place it in quotes: 'the new "lite" version of Mozilla' rather than 'the new lite version'. It's a common unword used in product names, and that's the only place it's ever used. And, like most such terms (EZ is the one I really hate, mainly because "Eezed" doesn't mean anything anyway), it's an abomination.
Now think about how microsoft names its products. Office, Word, Windows, etc.
. . . The best name for software indicates what the software is for right in the name.
You're right, Microsoft never picks semantically opaque names. Except for things like Powerpoint, Access, Excel, Outlook, Visual Studio, and Bob, of course, but presumably you don't count those?
Yet some idiot always declares the latest massmailing worm as the "worst virus ever". Sheesh.
/dev/null is so full of MyDoom now that it's oozing out of the case and all over the carpet.
Different definition of "worst". Today's viruses may not do as much damage as some of the more twisted creations of yore, but they do spread much further and much faster.
Yes, I remember the bad old days when a virus could literally wreck a computer, but only from the stories - I never saw it happen. Meanwhile my
Virtual desktops are still not shiped with windows (despite being a feature of X11 window mangers since I first saw it back in 1993...), and handy to have. Nor is my favorite: focus follows mouse available.
Virtual desktops may not be shipped with Windows, but they're included in Windows XP Powertoys, which is the first thing any power user installs.
As for "focus follows mouse", that's been in Powertoys since the first version for Windows 95.
Sure, you have to go and download and install stuff to get those features, but surely Linux users of all people are used to downloading and installing stuff to enhance their desktop experience?
A higher level language does not make a program much saver or of better quality if the programmer is an idiot.
So because a language might not prevent every stupid mistake a programmer might ever make, there's no point trying to help any programmer ever avoid any mistake?
That makes no sense.
Of course it's always possible to break a program. The point of higher level languages is that they make it harder to break programs. This is not so they can serve as a crutch for incompetent programmers - it's so that they can make competent programmers more productive. Sure, a good programmer isn't going to make many mistakes with pointers, but if the language they use provides ways to do things without using pointers at all, then they aren't going to make any mistakes with pointers.
(Now, it's nice if the language also provides the pointers so they can use those where it's useful, but most of the things pointers are used for in C - array traversal, say - can be done just as efficiently with higher level constructs.)
Want an analogy? Someone really skilled, with a really sharp eye and a really steady hand, could probably draw a perfectly straight line with pencil and paper. But professional draftsmen use rulers. I wonder why that is?
even with a buggy/trojan program being run, a good OS would not allow it to reak havic on much of the system, let alone crash the entire computer.
/; sudo rm -rf *".
Ultimately there is no defense against a privileged idiot typing "cd
Oh, sure, if the user doesn't have any administrative privileges, that sort of thing basically prevented, but most of the Windows installations that catch all these email trojans are home setups, not big corporations. I would seriously like to hear someone tell me how a home Linux installation can be made idiot-proof, short of some clueful person giving up a lot of their spare time to do administrative stuff.
All it would take to bring down Fred "The guy in Walmart said Linux was cheaper" would be *one* fake email saying "you have a DEADLY VIRUS; to remove it open a Konsole and type the following [evil] commands, entering your root password when prompted"...
IBM giving an asset away isn't poetic. I'd call it heart-stoppingly unimaginable.
So how did JFS get into the Linux kernel, then?
I have every sympathy for you, but if you RTFA you'll find out that that has absolutely nothing to do with HP.
That badly designed anti-counterfeiting algorithm may well cause serious problems with perfectly legitimate uses, it doesn't follow that all anti-counterfeiting algorithms are bad.
I don't have any recent HP hardware, so I can't comment from experience, but from the article it sounds like they're trying pretty hard to make sure their algorithms don't interfere with legitimate uses. After all, nobody's forcing you to print your greetings cards in banknote green...
They've got the guns, we've got the numbers.
Going by the inevitable flame wars that break out every time someone mentions gun control on Slashdot, we've got the guns too...
The bill would not affect people who are trying to safeguard their privacy because it only makes it a crime to submit false registration data when it is done to help commit a crime, said Mark Bohannon, senior vice president for public policy at the Software & Information Industry Association, which supports the bill.
In that case, what's the point? The only time they could prosecute you under a law like that would be when you're already in trouble for another crime (so, like, you're already heading for jail), and your attempt to avoid being caught by falsifying your information didn't work. So why have a special new law to punish criminals for being incompetent?
it's not at all clear that Mono will be allowed to finish/distribute a complete cross-platform .Net implementation
.Net at the moment, I would like to point out that it's also not at all clear that there's anything Microsoft can do to stop Mono.
.Net in too many incompatible ways without alienating their customers. And unlike SCO, Microsoft's business model relies on keeping their customers happy.
While the immaturity of Mono is the reason I'm looking into Java rather more seriously than
Remember that the only potential legal threat to Mono is Microsoft's patent portfolio. But even if Mono is infringing on something - and I haven't seen any evidence that it is - Microsoft do not have an extensive record of using patents aggressively. Their basic tactic has always been "embrace, extend, extinguish" - not "steal, sue, squash".
So the main threat to Mono is that the target will keep moving, not that Microsoft will try to crush them. But Microsoft will not be able to break
Note for BBC readers, and Mr Evans in particular: the post to which I am replying has been moderated FUNNY. This is because it is a JOKE. The "Linux community" (whatever that may be) is NOT ADVOCATING ATTACKING THE BBC.
I guess we can all argue about a nebulous word like "intuitive," but I'll bet you $5 I can teach a classroom full of Kindegardners to read a simple LCD watch faster than they can learn to read a Rolex.
You can probably teach them to speak the numbers they see on a digital display faster than you can teach them to convert the analogue display into numbers, but I'm not so convinced that they'll learn the meaning of the display so quickly from a digital watch.
"The big hand is halfway round the circle, so it's half past" is rather more intuitive than "there are sixty minutes in an hour, so 30 means it's half past".
Outside the USA we call them cafetieres, saving the need to rename them Freedom Presses every time there's a war.
Anyway, quite apart from your crazy suggestion of boiling water in the microwave (don't you have a kettle at work?), a filter cone is the way to go. Electric percolators, as you say, cost a lot of money, take ages to filter, and stew the coffee; cafetieres are fragile and always, always end up filling your mug with coffee grounds. A filter cone with disposable papers is cheap, tough, and makes perfect coffee every time - and you can do a single mug in about half a minute, so it's almost as quick as instant!
While he claims that . . . all 40 million email addresses were opt-in
They were - by his definition of "opt-in", which appears to be "they haven't actually physically provided a set of stone tablets, carved in triplicate and signed in blood, stating in seventeen languages that under no circumstances whatsoever will they ever be in the slightest bit interested in receiving email from anyone at all, along with sufficient evidence that they are indeed the person who is claiming not to want spam to convince a jury of their deadliest enemies".
you tell me why no one compiles anything to be statically linked.
They do.
Ever wondered what the "s" in "/sbin" stands for? Ooh, well done!
Language and culture go hand in hand. Language is powerful. Not everything is translatable.
While it's true that not everything is translatable, it's less true than some people like to think. Anyone who tells you that their language is the only one that can describe their culture, or the only one which can explain their philosophy, or the only one which can capture the fundamental truth of the universe, is wrong.
Jokes don't usually translate very well, but the fate of the world rarely rests upon a joke being understood. Any serious statement can be translated between any pair of languages; one may have to adopt new words in the process, but there is nothing inherent in the language which is stopping the idea from being expressed.
Linux as I see it doesn't have the exact font "Times New Roman" as part of the default install.
So install it then.
I can tell them all apart quite easily, although I admit that l and | are slightly too close for comfort; it helps that most of the time I have syntax highlighting turning that | green.
The font? MS Gothic, 11 pt, 100 dpi.
I don't use BV Sans Mono because it doesn't fall back to clean pixels at low point sizes; I like antialiasing on headings and so forth, but I want clean pixels for the fonts I use for programming in, I find them easier on the eyes.
I also don't like the dotted zero; MS Gothic handles it by having 0 be much squarer than O, and 25% narrower, which is sufficiently visually distinct for me.
Oh, and there's the little matter of BV Sans Mono only handling ISO 8559-1, too... call me again when it can do mathematical symbols.
Now tell me if having to pay for postage has cut down on the level of unsoliceted mail arriving in you snailmail mailbox.
Answer: we don't know.
Paying for snail mail was implemented long before the advent of unsolicited commercial mailing. We cannot say that postage fees have cut down the level of snailmail spam, because we do not have any data on what the levels would be if there were no postage charge. Of course, it cuts both ways: we also can't say that they haven't.
My guess? If we implement postage charges for email, we'll see a huge rise in phishing, with spammers using stolen credit cards to pay for their e-stamps. And spam will drop by 10% at best.
I love it when someone quotes an RFC, but doesn't realize that it has been superceded by a more recent RFC. (link to RFC 2396)
Ditto.
As a footnote: I wish someone who really knew windows would set up a Windows 2k3 and Windows 2k Server/Desktop machines, just to see how they compare.
Depending on the benchmarks, that might be tricky. They don't appear to be letting on what these benchmarks will be, but it's quite probable that some of the software they choose will not be available on Windows, or only via Cygwin (which introduces a not inconsiderable overhead).
And, of course, including Windows would only encourage the trolls on both sides of the fence. It's going to be bad enough with binary-based Linux, Gentoo, and BSD going head to head...
EA was not involved in this whole affair.
While it's true that EA didn't "go after them", your summary is likewise incorrect. What actually happened is that they tried to get explicit permission from EA for the project, and failed to get any response at all; in the absence of any clear legal status they opted to use the engine for an original game. The timeframe is slightly confused, but their story, at least, is that the decision to go commercial was subsequent to that.
AFAIK, every Ultima game but Ultima VIII is getting the remake treatment by someone.
I thought there was a project to remake Ultima VIII using Neverwinter Nights? Did that die?
And who's doing Ultima I, now that Peroxide switched to making an original RPG "inspired" by the Ultima games?