What I want to know is: [...] What is the state of Linux use in Germany?
Germany is home to an awful lot of linux development. SuSE is from Germany, as an example. The government is also active, sponsoring the GnuPG pgp-like developement. Top government officials (like "secretary of state") opening the LinuxTag for 2 or 3 years in a row now.
There's a lot of debate currently on whether the Reichstag (the German parliament) should switch to linux. It's kinda funny, even people from the same party are disagreeing, one proclaiming the gospel of linux, the other (being half sponsored by Redmond) denouncing it as a threath to Germany's software industry as a whole:-)
The best tip is to look at heise. They also've got english news now. Look at what's going on there. That 'heise' publishes two of Europe's best-regarded computer magazines, one for home-use (c't), one for professional use (iX).
They are currently being bought by Invensys, a british firm. They own a shitload of compagnies, quite diverse in nature. Imagine Baan under the same umbrella as, say, Westinghouse Train Brakes:-)
Yes, one way is to solder an additional chip into your pilot, the other way is to make a small thingy to plug into your serial port (yes, the port's there!) and use a small software hack to mimick the behaviour of the internal solution.
I think mozilla will be important vor many other developements related to the internet. XML comes to mind here. When a good decent standards-compliant browser is freely available for all platforms, things can start rolling!
First, i'll try my newly downloaded mozilla, then I'll read your thoughts upon this subject.
a) to ensure privacy, the confession is immediately deleted afterwards, so if somebody should write a script to talk to/dev/null, the overall effect would be the same...
b) a spokesperson of the roman katholic church said in the daily telegraph that they disapproved of the stuff.
Staroffice works really nice for me. The whole student club I attend will enjoy 50 pages of staroffice-made official statutes for the next 10 years. Also I use the spreadsheet quite often in my study.
But: it's not open source, so it doesn't qualify. But still, I use it till better stuff arives (kde office keeps sounding wonderful!)
Slash 0.2 is used in quite a lot of places. Undoubtedly they had to modify quite a lot to get their own layout, adapt it to a different database, whatever.
The same will have to happen if somebody uses slash 0.4. Seen this way, a bit bugginess and a *load of loose ends doesn't hurt much. Besides: how many loose ends are there? Slashdot is working at the moment and has been for the past months. And splendidly! Ergo: 0.4 is ready for use.
For sure it isn't ready for a configure-make-make install cycle, but it works! And I dearly understand the 'put your deeds where your mouth is'-like utterings that spring to life all around this channel.
Some of the stories were propaganda for compagnies. But only some 3 or 4 out of 14 stories!
The large majority isn't firm-PR. But even the firm-PR is fun to read. And much about the Open Source-stuff is about making it all creditable for the business-like people, so dedicating 1/5 of the book for those guys isn't too bad.
You're right. It is important not only to look at the good things somebody has said, but also at the negative 'karma' he generated. But one has to remain honest here.
Most of those who shall remain unnamed did a awfull lot of good advocacy. The bad press they got and the riots they ignited were mostly internal. When RMS and ESR are discussed WE make a lot of fuss about it. WE flame eachother. WE make us seem like a bunch of anarchists. Are they wholly to be blamed for what WE do?
If you read it you get a very good impression of the whole open source project:
history (Berkeley unix, history of hackers, RMS)
mindset, philosophy (RMS, ESR, Larry Wall:-)
how a particular project works (apache, mozilla, linux
the company-stuff (netscape, cygnus, red hat)
All in all it makes for a very decent introduction. You get a good overview and you get a foundation of information on which to build your own mindset regarding open source. It filled in quite a few blanks for me, so I like to recommend it hearthily! greetings, Reinout
Ok. They're fast and lagging one generation, they are said to be affordable. Is it a recommended choice for someone only running linux? I mean, do I get twice the performance for the same overall price?
In any movement, this is one shitty problem. Just as many people can point out some linux morons who totally ruin the good name of linux, so can anybody quote religious organizations or leaders to put the movement in a bad light.
The poblem of many societies today is the drive towards total freedom and the denial of moral judgment to anybody. Just today a friend of mine took some beatings from a person with absolutely no moral borders or social correction or a sense of right or wrong. He was totally, legally right (a situation at a crossroads) and got chased two kilometers through the town and when he finally stopped he was given a severe verbal and bodily beating. In front of 20 witnessess.
I'd rather prefer an acknowledgement of a certain right of moral judgment. The moment you've got a judgment you aren't considered tolerant anymore (esp. in the Netherlands). And since "tolerant" means "the sole positive character trait"... Once you're honest and 've got an opinion you're redefined as a moron...
One possible solution is the general acceptance of a certain faith, because most of them include a certain higher power with, logically, the right to impose his moral on us. It's about the only *logical* way to get a certain basic set of rules into a society. This is a very technical train of thought, I know. But when we're all individuals who are a result of random fluctuations and are all up to ourselves (say, evolution combined with a lack of any god), the only logical result is total anarchy, nihilism and the right of the strongest.
But of course any religion has first and foremost to be examined *not* on it's leaders but on wether it's true or not. When (personally) proven truth, any resulting moral borders from that faith will most probably prove to be very healty.
My section at the university is developing most of it's stuff in java. A good, stable, widely-accepted version of java seems to me to be of extreme importance.
Could anyone give me some insight in the badness of this move by sun for the users of the language. Will IBM save us? Is the language doomed? Please tell me.
In the Netherlands we've got a political party which is (as a product of the late 60's) fond of abortion and euthanesia. They've (not them alone, but...) preached their gospel so ofthen that the legislation is quite liberal at that point at this moment. I'm sure many countries have this problem.
Quite scary, even the medical doctors changed their three thousand year old oath of hypotacres (what was his name?). At least in the Netherlands the phrase "to protect life" has been deleted and changed into something less.
And now, a few weeks ago a secretary of state (minister Borst, for the dutch folks) announced that she thought the age for self-decision about euthanesia could well be dropped from 18 to 12 (for those seriously ill). Great clamour arose, but she was confident those youngsters could make a perfectly good decision. The proposal was officially dropped "because there wasn't enough support". No condemnation or whatever. Sounds a lot like "not yet enough support".
Kind a creepy. Between 12 and 16 you aren't allowed to buy tobacco (special "no excuse will be accepted" stickers popping up all around), but you'll be perfectly capable of deciding about your own death. And they seriously think this...
Once the nazis started gassing mentally ill, they had to stop pretty soon once the germans found out what happened to their family members. Civilization has developed a long way after that...
Thanks for this reply, it puts things within normal perspective again!
With this added info that there ain't no *ban* on on teaching the evolution theory and that there ain't no *obligation* to teach creationism, I seriously wonder what this clamour is all about.
Hackers & many slashdot readers apperently love their freedom and freedom in general. So restrictive laws are bad. Isn't it a good thing then that you aren't being tied to one single theory? If the official theory had been creationism, the lifting of the only-creationism-is-correct-law would have been greeted with much enthousiasm. Do we not grant other people their freedom? Heck, their are a lot of scientists who think the evolution theory doesn't scale well from the smaller, proven, scale to the bigger, the-origen-of-all-live scale. Do you want to *make* them teach evolution? That is not freedom...
Is evolution too weak? Does it need to be protected by law? Do we need a law to root out creationism? Evolution=freedom? Freedom that needs to be protected by prohibiting the rest?
All freedom is equal. But some freedom is more equal then others. So: just calm down:-)
Reinout
p.s.: Since I am a christian I was quite *scared* by what I saw in many reactions on slashdot regarding this post. I found it the digital equivalent of a raging, bloud-thirsty mob crying out for the dimise of all christians. Calm down, there are christians out there you might actually like.
Thanks for this reply, it puts things within normal perspective again!
With this added info that there ain't no *ban* on on teaching the evolution theory and that there ain't no *obligation* to teach creationism, I seriously wonder what this clamour is all about.
Hackers & many slashdot readers apperently love their freedom and freedom in general. So restrictive laws are bad. Isn't it a good thing then that you aren't being tied to one single theory? If the official theory had been creationism, the lifting of the only-creationism-is-correct-law would have been greeted with much enthousiasm. Do we not grant other people their freedom? Heck, their are a lot of scientists who think the evolution theory doesn't scale well from the smaller, proven, scale to the bigger, the-origen-of-all-live scale. Do you want to *make* them teach evolution? That is not freedom...
Is evolution too weak? Does it need to be protected by law? Do we need a law to root out creationism? Evolution=freedom? Freedom that needs to be protected by prohibiting the rest?
All freedom is equal. But some freedom is more equal then others. So: just calm down:-)
Reinout
p.s.: Since I am a christian I was quite *scared* by what I saw in many reactions on slashdot regarding this post. I found it the digital equivalent of a raging, bloud-thirsty mob crying out for the dimise of all christians. Calm down, there are christians out there you might actually like.
Slashdot Mirror
What I want to know is: [...] What is the state of Linux use in Germany?
Germany is home to an awful lot of linux development. SuSE is from Germany, as an example. The government is also active, sponsoring the GnuPG pgp-like developement. Top government officials (like "secretary of state") opening the LinuxTag for 2 or 3 years in a row now.
There's a lot of debate currently on whether the Reichstag (the German parliament) should switch to linux. It's kinda funny, even people from the same party are disagreeing, one proclaiming the gospel of linux, the other (being half sponsored by Redmond) denouncing it as a threath to Germany's software industry as a whole :-)
The best tip is to look at heise. They also've got english news now. Look at what's going on there. That 'heise' publishes two of Europe's best-regarded computer magazines, one for home-use (c't), one for professional use (iX).
Reinout
updated link, thanks to the wonderful technology of ~~frames~~. Yugh.
They are currently being bought by Invensys, a british firm. They own a shitload of compagnies, quite diverse in nature. Imagine Baan under the same umbrella as, say, Westinghouse Train Brakes :-)
More details on this baan webpage
greetings,
Reinout
Yes, one way is to solder an additional chip into your pilot, the other way is to make a small thingy to plug into your serial port (yes, the port's there!) and use a small software hack to mimick the behaviour of the internal solution.
greetings,
Reinout
Hello all,
I think mozilla will be important vor many other developements related to the internet. XML comes to mind here. When a good decent standards-compliant browser is freely available for all platforms, things can start rolling!
First, i'll try my newly downloaded mozilla, then I'll read your thoughts upon this subject.
greetings,
Reinout
Two things about this:
/dev/null, the overall effect would be the same...
a) to ensure privacy, the confession is immediately deleted afterwards, so if somebody should write a script to talk to
b) a spokesperson of the roman katholic church said in the daily telegraph that they disapproved of the stuff.
greetings,
Reinout
Staroffice works really nice for me. The whole student club I attend will enjoy 50 pages of staroffice-made official statutes for the next 10 years. Also I use the spreadsheet quite often in my study.
But: it's not open source, so it doesn't qualify. But still, I use it till better stuff arives (kde office keeps sounding wonderful!)
greetings,
Reinout
Slash 0.2 is used in quite a lot of places. Undoubtedly they had to modify quite a lot to get their own layout, adapt it to a different database, whatever.
The same will have to happen if somebody uses slash 0.4. Seen this way, a bit bugginess and a *load of loose ends doesn't hurt much. Besides: how many loose ends are there? Slashdot is working at the moment and has been for the past months. And splendidly! Ergo: 0.4 is ready for use.
For sure it isn't ready for a configure-make-make install cycle, but it works! And I dearly understand the 'put your deeds where your mouth is'-like utterings that spring to life all around this channel.
greetings,
Reinout
Some of the stories were propaganda for compagnies. But only some 3 or 4 out of 14 stories!
The large majority isn't firm-PR. But even the firm-PR is fun to read. And much about the Open Source-stuff is about making it all creditable for the business-like people, so dedicating 1/5 of the book for those guys isn't too bad.
Bring out your dead!
Bring out your dead!
greetings,
Reinout
btw: i use emacs :-)
You're right. It is important not only to look at the good things somebody has said, but also at the negative 'karma' he generated. But one has to remain honest here.
Most of those who shall remain unnamed did a awfull lot of good advocacy. The bad press they got and the riots they ignited were mostly internal. When RMS and ESR are discussed WE make a lot of fuss about it. WE flame eachother. WE make us seem like a bunch of anarchists. Are they wholly to be blamed for what WE do?
just my 2 dutch cents
Reinout
My nominee is "open sources - voices from the open source revolution". It's a book, published by oreilly, with some 14 articles by open source heros.
If you read it you get a very good impression of the whole open source project:
All in all it makes for a very decent introduction. You get a good overview and you get a foundation of information on which to build your own mindset regarding open source. It filled in quite a few blanks for me, so I like to recommend it hearthily! greetings, Reinout
Ok. They're fast and lagging one generation, they are said to be affordable. Is it a recommended choice for someone only running linux? I mean, do I get twice the performance for the same overall price?
greetings,
Reinout
In any movement, this is one shitty problem. Just as many people can point out some linux morons who totally ruin the good name of linux, so can anybody quote religious organizations or leaders to put the movement in a bad light.
The poblem of many societies today is the drive towards total freedom and the denial of moral judgment to anybody. Just today a friend of mine took some beatings from a person with absolutely no moral borders or social correction or a sense of right or wrong. He was totally, legally right (a situation at a crossroads) and got chased two kilometers through the town and when he finally stopped he was given a severe verbal and bodily beating. In front of 20 witnessess.
I'd rather prefer an acknowledgement of a certain right of moral judgment. The moment you've got a judgment you aren't considered tolerant anymore (esp. in the Netherlands). And since "tolerant" means "the sole positive character trait"... Once you're honest and 've got an opinion you're redefined as a moron...
One possible solution is the general acceptance of a certain faith, because most of them include a certain higher power with, logically, the right to impose his moral on us. It's about the only *logical* way to get a certain basic set of rules into a society. This is a very technical train of thought, I know. But when we're all individuals who are a result of random fluctuations and are all up to ourselves (say, evolution combined with a lack of any god), the only logical result is total anarchy, nihilism and the right of the strongest.
But of course any religion has first and foremost to be examined *not* on it's leaders but on wether it's true or not. When (personally) proven truth, any resulting moral borders from that faith will most probably prove to be very healty.
greetings,
Reinout
Hello all,
My section at the university is developing most of it's stuff in java. A good, stable, widely-accepted version of java seems to me to be of extreme importance.
Could anyone give me some insight in the badness of this move by sun for the users of the language. Will IBM save us? Is the language doomed? Please tell me.
Reinout
The ruling will be available as wordperfect 6 or in pdf format. Whatever the outcome, they didn't use microsoft word to tell us :-)
In the Netherlands we've got a political party which is (as a product of the late 60's) fond of abortion and euthanesia. They've (not them alone, but...) preached their gospel so ofthen that the legislation is quite liberal at that point at this moment. I'm sure many countries have this problem.
Quite scary, even the medical doctors changed their three thousand year old oath of hypotacres (what was his name?). At least in the Netherlands the phrase "to protect life" has been deleted and changed into something less.
And now, a few weeks ago a secretary of state (minister Borst, for the dutch folks) announced that she thought the age for self-decision about euthanesia could well be dropped from 18 to 12 (for those seriously ill). Great clamour arose, but she was confident those youngsters could make a perfectly good decision. The proposal was officially dropped "because there wasn't enough support". No condemnation or whatever. Sounds a lot like "not yet enough support".
Kind a creepy. Between 12 and 16 you aren't allowed to buy tobacco (special "no excuse will be accepted" stickers popping up all around), but you'll be perfectly capable of deciding about your own death. And they seriously think this...
Once the nazis started gassing mentally ill, they had to stop pretty soon once the germans found out what happened to their family members. Civilization has developed a long way after that...
Thanks for this reply, it puts things within normal perspective again!
:-)
With this added info that there ain't no *ban* on on teaching the evolution theory and that there ain't no *obligation* to teach creationism, I seriously wonder what this clamour is all about.
Hackers & many slashdot readers apperently love their freedom and freedom in general. So restrictive laws are bad. Isn't it a good thing then that you aren't being tied to one single theory? If the official theory had been creationism, the lifting of the only-creationism-is-correct-law would have been greeted with much enthousiasm. Do we not grant other people their freedom? Heck, their are a lot of scientists who think the evolution theory doesn't scale well from the smaller, proven, scale to the bigger, the-origen-of-all-live scale. Do you want to *make* them teach evolution? That is not freedom...
Is evolution too weak? Does it need to be protected by law? Do we need a law to root out creationism? Evolution=freedom? Freedom that needs to be protected by prohibiting the rest?
All freedom is equal. But some freedom is more equal then others. So: just calm down
Reinout
p.s.: Since I am a christian I was quite *scared* by what I saw in many reactions on slashdot regarding this post. I found it the digital equivalent of a raging, bloud-thirsty mob crying out for the dimise of all christians. Calm down, there are christians out there you might actually like.
Thanks for this reply, it puts things within normal perspective again!
:-)
With this added info that there ain't no *ban* on on teaching the evolution theory and that there ain't no *obligation* to teach creationism, I seriously wonder what this clamour is all about.
Hackers & many slashdot readers apperently love their freedom and freedom in general. So restrictive laws are bad. Isn't it a good thing then that you aren't being tied to one single theory? If the official theory had been creationism, the lifting of the only-creationism-is-correct-law would have been greeted with much enthousiasm. Do we not grant other people their freedom? Heck, their are a lot of scientists who think the evolution theory doesn't scale well from the smaller, proven, scale to the bigger, the-origen-of-all-live scale. Do you want to *make* them teach evolution? That is not freedom...
Is evolution too weak? Does it need to be protected by law? Do we need a law to root out creationism? Evolution=freedom? Freedom that needs to be protected by prohibiting the rest?
All freedom is equal. But some freedom is more equal then others. So: just calm down
Reinout
p.s.: Since I am a christian I was quite *scared* by what I saw in many reactions on slashdot regarding this post. I found it the digital equivalent of a raging, bloud-thirsty mob crying out for the dimise of all christians. Calm down, there are christians out there you might actually like.