It is, at least in Linux and OSX - you just install each in a different place (e.g. make two new folders in OSX' Applications directory and stick each copy in each new directory - not sure if the prefs will intermingle or not, though).
This doesn't guarantee that it would even be possible in Windows (yay for the jackass who invented the Windows Registry!), but it is possible, at least in other OSes (I remember doing something similar in Linux w/ FF 1.5 and 2.0 on Fedora Core a long-arsed time ago).
Indeed... why? My developers' Fedora Core boxen wouldn't know what to do with *.msi;)
Okay, all kidding aside, I grok what you're getting at, but most competent 'doze admins I know can build their own *.msi package and push that, instead of relying on a vendor to do it for them.
According to the 'About Mozilla Firefox' menu on my Ubuntu-borne copy of FF (the very one I'm using to type this missive), it says 3.0, and AdBlock Plus works just fine on it.
Actually, while the term "pedagogical theory" sounds like bullshit (and in most contexts it often is), there is a place for it. There are, believe it or not, valid studies that do show how children (and their minds) develop, and these can be used to create lessons (and whole curricula) that actually work.
The trick -- and I think OLPC neglected this -- is that there are wide chasms in both culture and language that have to be accounted for. There was apparently none of that. I'm not even sure if they differentiated the things by age group, or if they simply assumed that humans from 5 to 75 would all just magically pick it up and run with it. I's not as if these are a bunch of union-loyal ass-heavy bureaucratic semi-retired grant-eaters sitting around suckling on the public teat and whining about not having a say-so... some of these folks actually know what they're talking about.
Any fool can teach (and I worked among more than a few during my six-year stint as an educator) - but how many can teach effectively and well? How many teachers can spark interest, once the "ooh, shiny!" look passes from the kids' eyes? Most importantly, how many can drive the point home, enough so that the concepts you want the kids to learn are actually internalized and put to use?
Simply saying that the provision of a networkable computer would magically create education and wealth is ludicrous - akin to saying that if you hand a poor country a Space Shuttle, complete with all the parts and equipment (but no instructions), they'd magically become a regular space-faring nation.
Technology by itself is worthless unless you have the means of teaching the recipient of it how the thing works - not just tell them to read the instructions and leave them be.
(okay, partial rant... and yeah, there's a quorum of lazy asshats in the education system... but there is some validity to the idea of knowing how to teach, and to do it in a manner that doesn't leave everything to random chance).
Actually, it does bode well - I would much rather have a court who has a balance of pro and con (yes, even in this decision, there are meritorious arguments made by the other side, even if you yourself refuse to see them).
It is far preferable to have a court who can see both sides of an argument. Far, far preferable than any ideologically uniform court that rubber-stamps whatever agrees with its own outlook(s), and rejects anything that does not.
Believe it or not, the court had to square existing policy with law and constitution. This doesn't exactly mean that each decision (especially including this one) is a simple choice of kittens versus cannonfire. There is no such thing as simple when you make a decision here - knowing that said decision is damned-near permanent, and will have reverberations that you can't even hope to contemplate.
Given all of this, the split decision is IMHO a sign of at least one branch of government being very healthy and sane.
Can't say the same for the other two, unfortunately...
I knew someone would get angry about it... but seriously, the point is simple: if KDE went under tomorrow morning at 9am sharp, GNOME could stand in its place as far as the vast majority of Linux users are concerned.
Now note that this comes from a guy who loves using Qt, and would rather masturbate with a fistful of glass shards than ever have to code strictly for GNOME.
No worries - in the context you present, you're right - KDE can't simply drop its core language and choose another. The good news is, they don't have to - at least on any short-term timescale.:)
I've done quite a bit of Qt banging-about ( on this guy ), and I gotta say, I love using the language - it's clean, simple, and removes a lot of the grunt-work. Dealing with Trolltech OTOH can be a screaming bitch if the app/project is non-GPL, but that's a decision made by the folks I had worked for at the time, so I figure that's their bucket to carry.
I'm genuinely curious - doesn't the RIAA risk facing sanctions or worse? If not from the courts, there has got to be something from the Bar Association that prevents unethical behavior like this... and if not, then maybe all you geeks out there need to see about lobbying state/provincial legislators to have some sort of stronger enforcement against unethical behavior put into place. It seems a bit too loose from my POV.
I don't just mean the RIAA, either. SCO v IBM stands out as another really big example where lawyers get to screw directly with the things that we in geekdom make a daily living from (e.g. the RIAA spewing mistruths about how the Internet works, corps claiming rights they do not have over code, etc).
As a bonus, maybe keeping the less scrupulous lawyers among us honest will at least make things a little easier for all of us.
Even coordinating a letter-writing campaign couldn't hurt, y'know?
that's a lot of work to rewrite KDE3 and 4 without it.
Wouldn't have to - IIRC it uses the GPL version(s) - Can't close what's already open, y'know? The only real effort would be in forking what you've already got.
(besides, GNOME is the default in many distros these days anyhoo, even the newbie-friendly ones. It is very, very capable of taking KDE's place).
Actually, not necessarily. Veritas Netbackup (as a typical commercial solution) and Bacula (as a pure GPL solution) can run on Windows or Linux as the server(or in Bacula's case, IIRC even on OSX).
(Did you see the movie Colossus? When the American and Russian machine begin to synchronize to each other, develop their own common language and soon outsmart their creators?)
Oh hell yes! (I'm a bit of a b-grade sci-fi movie freak). IIRC, the combined machinery simply told humans that from now on they'd be directed and controlled according to common needs, and used the threat of nuclear warfare (both computers controlled their respective country's ICBM fleet) to back it up, correct?
I agree that there is equal (perhaps greater?) potential for good to come of it than evil, but having seen how most envelope-pushing engineering endeavors have gone, I wouldn't bet the farm on it:) (then again, we might get lucky.)
OTOH, what's to say that an equally third outcome - apathy - might happen? Say, the AI decides to get the hell off of this rock and go find entities that are more mentally capable (and less dirty, ugly, whiny, sloppy, etc) than the humans who built it...:)
Dunno how to tell you this, but the GP has a point.
If Windows is harder to buy at dirt-cheap or free prices (stuff gotten under-the-table at a geek-shop), and getting it P2P is unpalatable (getting an OS that way is begging for a high-hard reaming via pre-installed trojans anyway)... what other options will there be?
Not that its likely that such a scenario would ever happen, but if MSFT had to compete on full retail (or even an actual-charged-for-OS OEM) playing field, Windows would have been seriously struggling by now. Thanks for free copies, 'promotions' and 'discounts', most people perceive (and get) Windows that is at no cost to them.
Dude... listing a quorum of humanity as basis for saying they're a pretty cool species? That would get kind of tedious, you know? I mean, yeah most folks don't RTFA as it is, but do we really want to encourage the act of not R'ing TFA?
I think a monumental list of "enough finest people on Earth to satisfy every skeptic alive that People Are Basically Admirable" would be a bit of a buzzkill (and probably bring out the worst in some people...)
Actually, it's quite documented... I can print it all out and ship it along with the tax forms. Not that it generates enough to be noteworthy, but I have a particular distaste for the IRS as it is without having them going after my wallet with lust in their eyes.
...as long as they don't reach our level of emotional frailties, or reach conclusions that are detrimental to continued human existence.
I know, I know... Asimov's laws, etc etc. But... for a being to be sentient and at the same time reach the same level of thinking that we enjoy, you must given them the freedom to think, without any restrictions... as humans (ostensibly) do. This requires a level of both bravery and of careful planning that is far greater than we as humans are capable of today.
I'm not predicting some sort of evolutionary re-match of Cro-Magnon v. Neanderthal (where this time the robots are the new Cro-Magnon), but it does require a lot of careful thought, in every conceivable (and non-conceivable) direction. When it comes to building anything complex, it's always the things you didn't think of (or couldn't conceivably think of given the level of technology you had when designing) that come back to bite you in the arse (see also every great engineering disaster since the dawn of history).
Best bet would be to --if ever possible-- give said robot the tools to be sentient, but don't even think of giving them any power to actually do more than talk (verbal soundwaves, not data distribution) and think.
It reminds me of an old short story, where a highly-advanced future human race finally created a sentient device out of massive resources, linked from across every corner of humanity. They asked it one question to test it: "Is there a God?" The computer replied: "There is... now."
I use Paypal to receive money with (it is hella convenient for some folks I do work for on the side to pay me that way).
OTOH, the down side is that they extract fees that would make a bank or credit union blush for every transaction. Also, someone governmental needs to take a serious look at forcing them to be regulated and to follow the same rules as a real bank.
Well, if you had a backup, what would be the point? I mean, yeah, I grok the research aspects of it and all, but if someone comes calling for help, they generally just want their computer restored, not for me to tinker with the encrypted contents of it. Sorta obviates the whole thing. Further, if all that gets lost is a day or two of work at the most, it would take less time and effort to simply re-create the lost data than to have a go at cracking the encrypted files that didn't make it to backup.
'course, I understand that it would be useful, but in most cases it would be academic at most.
Twitter - as someone who helps do backups for (insert huge corp here) there's no other way to say this, but... you're an idiot. For the newer folks among us, I'll happily explain why.
Enterprise-level backup apps are almost always 3rd-party, not "some kind of unreliable M$ thing". Any serious solution also has a means to restore to bare metal, so in effect you need no OS at all to do this.
(and when was the last time anybody kept any current work on a floppy? Cripes - 1992 called and they want their backup devices back).
True. If you selectively censor data and do so discriminately, you're now responsible for all of it.
Now I don't see the RIAA/MPAA naming ISP's as co-defendants anytime soon, but I could see lawyers happily trying to, and given a shotgun approach to doing so, a plaintiff might even win one (or more), which in turn sets a nasty precedent for ISP's everywhere (depending on a ton of factors yeah, but then...)
They never had (IIRC) Common Carrier status in the legal sense. OTOH, they can be held liable if they filter content for any reason outside of the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions (or other, similar bits and bobs, I believe...)
ISP's don;t have common-carrier. They do have things like DMCA safe-harbor, and other pseudo-protections, but not actual common-carrier. If they had common-carrier, they'd be required to actually check themselves as to how they behave with their own customers to avoid revocation of that status.
IOW, if your innocent website gets on such a blacklist, you certainly can sue them AND the blacklist-keeping organization for libel, provided the ISP(s) doesn't take steps (or takes way too long) to remove you from it.
'course, can't guarantee that you'd win, but you certainly could sue them and stand at least a snowball's chance in hell.
Depends on the ISP. For instance, I suspect for the likes of Comcast and Verizon, their first false-positives will include any direct competitor accidentally. Something like...
"oops! Netflix got on there!? And you say you can't reach Vonage-dot-com either!? Oh, we're terribly sorry! We don't know how that happened! we'll clear it from the blacklists immediately... It may take awhile for it to clear completely, so how about checking out our pay-per-view offerings as a workaround?" [...two weeks pass...] "oops! Now how did that get back in there!? Oh you can bet that we'll investigate this one!"
...but of course it'll be done as subtly as is required to fend off lawsuits and FTC investigations.
I dunno... this policy works out beautifully if someone you don't like online uses such an ISP, and you happen to know his or her usual IP addy.
Fake the victim's addy on eMule (change as the victim's IP changes to account for DHCP, etc)
go out of your way to get three C&D's issued from the media oligopoly against that IP
Profit!!!
(as a bonus, you get some free music and movies out of the deal, and if you really hate the person you don't like, you get to gleefully see them get slammed for copyright infringement).
And yes, I do believe that the MPAA/RIAA really are stupid enough to inadvertently help you out in such a manner. (see also MediaDefender, et al).
(note that the above is purely a hypothetical and not recommended at all. That said, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see someone do it. Given the laughable tech-illiteracy of the media types? You'd likely never get caught doing it if you tried).
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This doesn't guarantee that it would even be possible in Windows (yay for the jackass who invented the Windows Registry!), but it is possible, at least in other OSes (I remember doing something similar in Linux w/ FF 1.5 and 2.0 on Fedora Core a long-arsed time ago).
Indeed... why? My developers' Fedora Core boxen wouldn't know what to do with *.msi
Okay, all kidding aside, I grok what you're getting at, but most competent 'doze admins I know can build their own *.msi package and push that, instead of relying on a vendor to do it for them.
HTH,
The trick -- and I think OLPC neglected this -- is that there are wide chasms in both culture and language that have to be accounted for. There was apparently none of that. I'm not even sure if they differentiated the things by age group, or if they simply assumed that humans from 5 to 75 would all just magically pick it up and run with it. I's not as if these are a bunch of union-loyal ass-heavy bureaucratic semi-retired grant-eaters sitting around suckling on the public teat and whining about not having a say-so... some of these folks actually know what they're talking about.
Any fool can teach (and I worked among more than a few during my six-year stint as an educator) - but how many can teach effectively and well? How many teachers can spark interest, once the "ooh, shiny!" look passes from the kids' eyes? Most importantly, how many can drive the point home, enough so that the concepts you want the kids to learn are actually internalized and put to use?
Simply saying that the provision of a networkable computer would magically create education and wealth is ludicrous - akin to saying that if you hand a poor country a Space Shuttle, complete with all the parts and equipment (but no instructions), they'd magically become a regular space-faring nation.
Technology by itself is worthless unless you have the means of teaching the recipient of it how the thing works - not just tell them to read the instructions and leave them be.
(okay, partial rant... and yeah, there's a quorum of lazy asshats in the education system... but there is some validity to the idea of knowing how to teach, and to do it in a manner that doesn't leave everything to random chance).
It is far preferable to have a court who can see both sides of an argument. Far, far preferable than any ideologically uniform court that rubber-stamps whatever agrees with its own outlook(s), and rejects anything that does not.
Believe it or not, the court had to square existing policy with law and constitution. This doesn't exactly mean that each decision (especially including this one) is a simple choice of kittens versus cannonfire. There is no such thing as simple when you make a decision here - knowing that said decision is damned-near permanent, and will have reverberations that you can't even hope to contemplate.
Given all of this, the split decision is IMHO a sign of at least one branch of government being very healthy and sane.
Can't say the same for the other two, unfortunately...
Now note that this comes from a guy who loves using Qt, and would rather masturbate with a fistful of glass shards than ever have to code strictly for GNOME.
I've done quite a bit of Qt banging-about ( on this guy ), and I gotta say, I love using the language - it's clean, simple, and removes a lot of the grunt-work. Dealing with Trolltech OTOH can be a screaming bitch if the app/project is non-GPL, but that's a decision made by the folks I had worked for at the time, so I figure that's their bucket to carry.
I don't just mean the RIAA, either. SCO v IBM stands out as another really big example where lawyers get to screw directly with the things that we in geekdom make a daily living from (e.g. the RIAA spewing mistruths about how the Internet works, corps claiming rights they do not have over code, etc).
As a bonus, maybe keeping the less scrupulous lawyers among us honest will at least make things a little easier for all of us.
Even coordinating a letter-writing campaign couldn't hurt, y'know?
Wouldn't have to - IIRC it uses the GPL version(s) - Can't close what's already open, y'know? The only real effort would be in forking what you've already got.
(besides, GNOME is the default in many distros these days anyhoo, even the newbie-friendly ones. It is very, very capable of taking KDE's place).
Actually, not necessarily. Veritas Netbackup (as a typical commercial solution) and Bacula (as a pure GPL solution) can run on Windows or Linux as the server(or in Bacula's case, IIRC even on OSX).
Oh hell yes! (I'm a bit of a b-grade sci-fi movie freak). IIRC, the combined machinery simply told humans that from now on they'd be directed and controlled according to common needs, and used the threat of nuclear warfare (both computers controlled their respective country's ICBM fleet) to back it up, correct?
I agree that there is equal (perhaps greater?) potential for good to come of it than evil, but having seen how most envelope-pushing engineering endeavors have gone, I wouldn't bet the farm on it
OTOH, what's to say that an equally third outcome - apathy - might happen? Say, the AI decides to get the hell off of this rock and go find entities that are more mentally capable (and less dirty, ugly, whiny, sloppy, etc) than the humans who built it...
If Windows is harder to buy at dirt-cheap or free prices (stuff gotten under-the-table at a geek-shop), and getting it P2P is unpalatable (getting an OS that way is begging for a high-hard reaming via pre-installed trojans anyway)... what other options will there be?
Not that its likely that such a scenario would ever happen, but if MSFT had to compete on full retail (or even an actual-charged-for-OS OEM) playing field, Windows would have been seriously struggling by now. Thanks for free copies, 'promotions' and 'discounts', most people perceive (and get) Windows that is at no cost to them.
I think a monumental list of "enough finest people on Earth to satisfy every skeptic alive that People Are Basically Admirable" would be a bit of a buzzkill (and probably bring out the worst in some people...)
Actually, it's quite documented... I can print it all out and ship it along with the tax forms. Not that it generates enough to be noteworthy, but I have a particular distaste for the IRS as it is without having them going after my wallet with lust in their eyes.
I know, I know... Asimov's laws, etc etc. But... for a being to be sentient and at the same time reach the same level of thinking that we enjoy, you must given them the freedom to think, without any restrictions... as humans (ostensibly) do. This requires a level of both bravery and of careful planning that is far greater than we as humans are capable of today.
I'm not predicting some sort of evolutionary re-match of Cro-Magnon v. Neanderthal (where this time the robots are the new Cro-Magnon), but it does require a lot of careful thought, in every conceivable (and non-conceivable) direction. When it comes to building anything complex, it's always the things you didn't think of (or couldn't conceivably think of given the level of technology you had when designing) that come back to bite you in the arse (see also every great engineering disaster since the dawn of history).
Best bet would be to --if ever possible-- give said robot the tools to be sentient, but don't even think of giving them any power to actually do more than talk (verbal soundwaves, not data distribution) and think.
It reminds me of an old short story, where a highly-advanced future human race finally created a sentient device out of massive resources, linked from across every corner of humanity. They asked it one question to test it: "Is there a God?" The computer replied: "There is... now."
OTOH, the down side is that they extract fees that would make a bank or credit union blush for every transaction. Also, someone governmental needs to take a serious look at forcing them to be regulated and to follow the same rules as a real bank.
'course, I understand that it would be useful, but in most cases it would be academic at most.
Enterprise-level backup apps are almost always 3rd-party, not "some kind of unreliable M$ thing". Any serious solution also has a means to restore to bare metal, so in effect you need no OS at all to do this.
(and when was the last time anybody kept any current work on a floppy? Cripes - 1992 called and they want their backup devices back).
Now I don't see the RIAA/MPAA naming ISP's as co-defendants anytime soon, but I could see lawyers happily trying to, and given a shotgun approach to doing so, a plaintiff might even win one (or more), which in turn sets a nasty precedent for ISP's everywhere (depending on a ton of factors yeah, but then...)
No.
They.
Are Not.
Some corps can have it both ways (e.g. Verizon, which has full CC protection/responsibility for its voice networks, but nothing like that for it's data networks). this ought to explain the diffs, and why, in layman's terms
IOW, if your innocent website gets on such a blacklist, you certainly can sue them AND the blacklist-keeping organization for libel, provided the ISP(s) doesn't take steps (or takes way too long) to remove you from it.
'course, can't guarantee that you'd win, but you certainly could sue them and stand at least a snowball's chance in hell.
"oops! Netflix got on there!? And you say you can't reach Vonage-dot-com either!? Oh, we're terribly sorry! We don't know how that happened! we'll clear it from the blacklists immediately... It may take awhile for it to clear completely, so how about checking out our pay-per-view offerings as a workaround?" [...two weeks pass...] "oops! Now how did that get back in there!? Oh you can bet that we'll investigate this one!"
(as a bonus, you get some free music and movies out of the deal, and if you really hate the person you don't like, you get to gleefully see them get slammed for copyright infringement).
And yes, I do believe that the MPAA/RIAA really are stupid enough to inadvertently help you out in such a manner. (see also MediaDefender, et al).
(note that the above is purely a hypothetical and not recommended at all. That said, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see someone do it. Given the laughable tech-illiteracy of the media types? You'd likely never get caught doing it if you tried).