I've tried it. KDE, just about every version since 1.1 (still have my "Learning KDE 1.1 in 24 hours" book, in fact, which started me off). Mac OS, from System 6.0.8 through 10.2.8. And Windows from 3.1 on up.
KDE significantly lags behind OS X in integration, ease-of-use, and utility, IMO. It falls behind most versions of Windows for integration, although I think it works better overall as a UI and in my experience is way more stable, even when just considering KDE vs. Windows and not Linux as a whole vs. Windows. In my ever-so-unhumble opinion, OS X is light-years ahead of KDE, GNOME, and Windows in all important respects.
Sure... your code is open source, and any capable and willing Tom, Dick, or Jane can hack it and support themselves. You wrote it, so you (in theory, anyway) know how it works, how it fits together, and besides, selling and renewing support contracts is a much smarter way to make money than selling software. Work the support angle and try to get some marketing wonk to give you some marketing-speak to back it up.
I'll echo the veracity of the basic truth in the parent post... my late grandfather taught himself the computer, and video editing, including things like AppleScript so he could have the computer do a lot of the tedious stuff he was always complaining about... i think anyone can learn to do just about anything if they are truly interested in it. Speaking of which... AppleScript is a good place to learn some basics, too... haven't read down enough to see if it's been mentioned already. Obviously, this only applies if she has (access to) a mac. But it's a very simple way to get started IMO.
If memory serves, that was not true originally. It took a lawsuit, or a threat of one, for Microsoft to properly attribute UCB for their copyrighted code. As I recall, the same TCP stack is in NT and Window 2000, and neither of those OSes credit UCB.
... no. To be guilty of any kind of homicide or manslaughter, your act has to have been the proximate cause of a person's death. The writer(s) of the Sasser worm might have prevented the Coast Guard from rescuing someone in danger, but the fact that that person was in danger in the first place was not the fault of the virus writer, which would prevent even an involuntary manslaughter charge. Unless the worm caused, say, a malfuntion in the boat's bilge system, which caused the boat to take on too much water and capsize...
With that, are they off the hook? No way. If they are caught, there are lots of laws they could be charged with, some of which are felonies. Murder, or even manslaughter, are not among them, however. At least, not under this limited hypothetical.
It seems to me that the generation that is now in its 30s and late 20s is the generation that the phrase "video gaming, once almost exclusively associated with teenagers" used to describe. All that happened is that while the media wasn't paying any attention, the home console video game generation grew up. Or, at least, grew older. Does this really surprise anyone?
... get a lawyer. Seriously. Even if a lawyer posts on slashdot, he or she will be sure to caveat their advice in terms that will make their advice essentially useless. I have a very close friend dealing with ADA issues at work, and without qualified legal advice, you can't move forward. For pro bono law advice, you might contact your state AG, who might be able to help you at least get a grip on your options. Also, get into contact with local law schools, they will probably have a list of local firms or organizations who will do pro bono work. You could go pro se, and since the ADA is relatively new, there's just not twelve tons of case law surrounding it, so you might have a chance. But why risk it?
Maybe you're not familar with the history of Bungie. Let me 'splain it to you.
Bungie software was formed in 1991 by Alex Seropian. Late in 1991, Alex hooked up with Jason Jones, who was apparently a Comp Sci major at U Chicago, a classmate of Alex's. Alex convinced Jason to come on board Bungie, and from the mouths of these babes (and a host of others) came Pathways into Darkness, Marathon, Marathon 2:Durandal, and Marathon Infinity. Myth was released in 1997, and Myth II in 1999. Bungie software was making money making games for both the Macintosh and Windows platforms, simultaneously releasing on both platforms.
Apparently, it wasn't enough to make the greatest games. Halo was announced, previewed (by Steve Jobs, no less) at MacWorld, and was going to be a simultaneous release for Macintosh and Windows, as both Myth and Myth II had. That was enough for the Borg Collective's Hive Mind, Bill Gates.
Microsoft enticed Bungie with stories of untold riches, and by all accounts has delivered. The simultaneous release of Halo, announced at MacWorld, became the slave's response of "we were just kidding. We may never deliver Halo for the Mac or the PC"... which, eventually, was handeled by outsiders. Three years later.
So, I ask you: how is that not selling out? Bungie Software was making great games (and still is making a great game, by all accounts), and making more money than anyone in Bungie had ever dreamed of. Making enough money to buy themselves new cars, give away computers at trade shows, living what amounts to the pre-IPO/dotcom startup dream. Then, with one whiff of freshly-minted greenbacks, turned their backs on the very customers who had paid all that money for their success.
That, my fellow slashdotter, is how they sold out.
As much as I hate Bungie (well, Alex Seropian and Jason Jones) for selling out, they have always released their software when they were ready. I am assuming that Bungie is still doing Halo, of course... but with Marathon, they tried releasing it before it was ready (when it was still just Pathways into Darkness II), and it got slammed at MacWorld. I think they learned their lesson. I'm glad to see that some of Bungie's ass-kick-ness is still left.
The Arizona/Sonoran desert looks nothing like that. Even in the deep desert, there are plants all over the place. There are stretches of the Mohave desert that do look like that, but even the Mohave has abundant plant life. The only place I've ever seen with desert that lifeless, yet rocky, is small stretches of the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. There are a few deserts worldwide with that kind of a lack of plant life, but they are not rocky deserts, they are sand deserts (there are some sand dunes out by Yuma, but they are sandy, not rocky. Not a rock in sight for thousands of feet, much of the time).
Open source is the answer. If the source is available, you can 1) write your own drivers, or repair problems that appear with the OS after official support ends; 2) pay another person to provide you with support; or 3) a combination of the two. Without the source, you can do none of the above, and must upgrade if you want support. The fact that any given scanner and webcam don't work with the OS is a minor impediment, at best, as is evidenced by the thousands of drivers available for hardware in Linux, for example, that do not have official drivers for Linux. Winmodems, for crying out loud, many of them anyway, have drivers for Linux. This is a direct consequence of open source.
Microsoft addicted those users to Windows 98, and is responsible for their care and feeding. If they don't feel they can do it profitably, then they should release the source for the OS so that others can provide them with support that Microsoft won't. Ford may not officially support repairs on the '65 Mustang anymore, but the open nature of vehicles generally makes a huge, huge after-market economy possible. Hell, even if Microsoft doesn't open the source via any FSF-compatible license, they could easily both make a ton of extra money, and foster a huge after-market profit source for a new sector of the tech economy by making the source available. Whatever way you look at it, it's a mistake, and there are better ways for Microsoft to handle it.
Except that, Red Hat's source is open. If you have a computer that runs Red Hat 6, you can support yourself indefinitely. You cannot do that with WIndows 98. You will be required to upgrade to have support with Microsoft's OS. You should think about what I said before you mouth off like an idiot.
Anyone who is happy with Windows 98 should not be required to upgrade just because Microsoft can't be bothered to support a product they created and sold to end users. God forbid that the needs of these consumers, for whome Win98 is just fine, should be paramount.
Either that, or Microsoft should give these users the opportunity to support themselves. They are obviously not going to make any more money from Windows 98, they should open the source so that people who don't need to upgrade can support themselves... or, be supported by someone else. That's probably about as likely as a spontaneous mutation in Bill Gate's eyeball creating a separate human species which lives on tears and speaks only Esperanto.
Additionally, I have a problem accepting that jets would scramble fast enough to be able to do so...
You'd be surprised, then, at how quickly on-the-ground alert aircraft can be scrambled. Perhaps more to the point, however, is that according to CNN and other public news sources many of the no-fly zones in the US now have random aircraft patrolling. A 767 might be capable of just-subsonic flight, but has no chance to get from the edge of a nfz to an interesting target against an F-15E that's already in the air. That doesn't even consider the speed of Sparrow, AMMRAM, Sidewinder, and other aircraft-mounted anti-aircraft missiles.
I, too, was using a free bag from WWDC (2000), and it was actually a very well-made bag (converted from shoulder-slung to backpack, and very solid construction), but had to finally put it down (there was an issue with it getting rained on, I think). Now, I carry a bag from Leeds (this model, although I didn't get it from this site), which has proven to be very well-made, as well. I've used it to carry my entire O'Reilly web development book set (Programming PHP, PHP Cookbook, Web Database Applications with PHP & mySQL, Managing and Using mySQL, and the mySQL Cookbook), along with my 12" iBook, Palm, cell phone, sync cable, power adapter, and assorted things. It hasn't shown any signs of stress on the shoulder strap stitching, nor do the side seams or zippers show any signs of stress. I don't carry that much all the time, but I do frequently, and I've been using this bag for going on 18 months now.
I think it does have to be the IBM case, and it's because they are alleging that the copyright infringment that gives them the right to call the Linux kernel version 2.4 or later a derivative of their copyrighted code is because of IBM's infringement. If they want to pursue a copyright violation against, say, Google, they would either have to win the IBM case, or prove that Google performed some other, heretofore un-alleged, copyright infringement; proving that copyright infringement wouldn't have any effect on the IBM case.
Here's the problem that shows that you don't understand. It's not enabled by default, there is nothing auto-mounted via LDAP. In order for a remote user to modify your crontab or your fstab, they'd have to already have access. The method detailed in the advisory requires that the client using DHCP have already enabled LDAP; this is not enabled by default in the non-Server versions of Mac OS X 10.2 or earlier. It might be by default on OS 10.3, but I don't have 10.3 yet. Approximately 99% of all non-Server versions of Mac OS X 10.2 and earlier are not vulnerable out of the box.
First, the average user 1) doesn't have a directory server to authenticate to and 2) doesn't mount anything that's not connected by either USB or Firewire. The average Macintosh user doesn't have Remote Login enabled, and lots of average Macintosh users don't have Personal File Sharing enabled (neither is enabled in the installation, by default).
As far as your understanding of the timeline goes, you should RTFA. He notified Apple, and they did respond. He is just unjustifiably impatient.
SCO's lawsuit will have to be "you have failed to pay a required license by continuing to use the Linux kernel version 2.4 in your servers." Since they have a lawsuit pending which will establish or deny some or all of their copyright claims, any suit against a party for failing to pay license fees for the copyrighted code will have to wait for the outcome of the other case. Until they actually file a lawsuit, against whomever, we can't know what the suit will actually entail; however, we can make some seemingly well-educated guesses about what it will cover:
[target company]'s failure to pay a license fee to SCO for SCO-owned code
Discovery of exactly how many infringing systems are in use at [target company]
Damages x3 for commercial use of software which violates SCO's copyrights
SCO will have to prove copyright, but unless they are trying to prove their copyright case before the suit against IBM goes to trial, it's the IBM suit which will establish or fail to establish those claims. If it is indeed Google, and indeed SCO claims "you violated our copyrights" then Google should probably ask for, and would probably get, a dismissal without prejudice based on SCO's involvement with IBM in that suit. If SCO were to successfully claim some copyright violations in their suit against IBM, and Google then continued infringing, they would be subject to a re-filing of the original suit.
Everything hinges on SCO's successful suit proving that IBM infringed SCO's copyrights by placing SCO owned-code into the Linux Kernel version 2.4. Until they have that in their hands, they will be barred from suing to collect license fees based on IBM's alleged copyright infringement. This, unless SCO intends to argue that Google also violated SCO's copyrights, separately from and seemingly co-incident with IBM's alleged violation.
... I was hoping this would happen, preferably to a major company with lots at stake. It was a bad idea from the outset, and I sincerely pray that it ripples all throughout the industry.
The district that I worked in is in the richest part of town (by per household income, average district household income > $100,000/year), and we averaged ten students suspended or expelled per year for bringing knives or guns on campus, or for verbally threatening teachers with grevious bodily harm, just at the high school. It is more typical than you think.
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I've tried it. KDE, just about every version since 1.1 (still have my "Learning KDE 1.1 in 24 hours" book, in fact, which started me off). Mac OS, from System 6.0.8 through 10.2.8. And Windows from 3.1 on up.
KDE significantly lags behind OS X in integration, ease-of-use, and utility, IMO. It falls behind most versions of Windows for integration, although I think it works better overall as a UI and in my experience is way more stable, even when just considering KDE vs. Windows and not Linux as a whole vs. Windows. In my ever-so-unhumble opinion, OS X is light-years ahead of KDE, GNOME, and Windows in all important respects.
YMM(and probably will)V.
this isn't, co-incidentally, the same amount of time we've been traking a growing hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, is it?
Sure ... your code is open source, and any capable and willing Tom, Dick, or Jane can hack it and support themselves. You wrote it, so you (in theory, anyway) know how it works, how it fits together, and besides, selling and renewing support contracts is a much smarter way to make money than selling software. Work the support angle and try to get some marketing wonk to give you some marketing-speak to back it up.
I'll echo the veracity of the basic truth in the parent post ... my late grandfather taught himself the computer, and video editing, including things like AppleScript so he could have the computer do a lot of the tedious stuff he was always complaining about ... i think anyone can learn to do just about anything if they are truly interested in it. Speaking of which ... AppleScript is a good place to learn some basics, too ... haven't read down enough to see if it's been mentioned already. Obviously, this only applies if she has (access to) a mac. But it's a very simple way to get started IMO.
If memory serves, that was not true originally. It took a lawsuit, or a threat of one, for Microsoft to properly attribute UCB for their copyrighted code. As I recall, the same TCP stack is in NT and Window 2000, and neither of those OSes credit UCB.
My memory might be wrong, however.
With that, are they off the hook? No way. If they are caught, there are lots of laws they could be charged with, some of which are felonies. Murder, or even manslaughter, are not among them, however. At least, not under this limited hypothetical.
It seems to me that the generation that is now in its 30s and late 20s is the generation that the phrase "video gaming, once almost exclusively associated with teenagers" used to describe. All that happened is that while the media wasn't paying any attention, the home console video game generation grew up. Or, at least, grew older. Does this really surprise anyone?
... get a lawyer. Seriously. Even if a lawyer posts on slashdot, he or she will be sure to caveat their advice in terms that will make their advice essentially useless. I have a very close friend dealing with ADA issues at work, and without qualified legal advice, you can't move forward. For pro bono law advice, you might contact your state AG, who might be able to help you at least get a grip on your options. Also, get into contact with local law schools, they will probably have a list of local firms or organizations who will do pro bono work. You could go pro se, and since the ADA is relatively new, there's just not twelve tons of case law surrounding it, so you might have a chance. But why risk it?
Yes, I am dense. I will shut up when you put your name on your post, you pansy.
Maybe you're not familar with the history of Bungie. Let me 'splain it to you.
... which, eventually, was handeled by outsiders. Three years later.
Bungie software was formed in 1991 by Alex Seropian. Late in 1991, Alex hooked up with Jason Jones, who was apparently a Comp Sci major at U Chicago, a classmate of Alex's. Alex convinced Jason to come on board Bungie, and from the mouths of these babes (and a host of others) came Pathways into Darkness, Marathon, Marathon 2:Durandal, and Marathon Infinity. Myth was released in 1997, and Myth II in 1999. Bungie software was making money making games for both the Macintosh and Windows platforms, simultaneously releasing on both platforms.
Apparently, it wasn't enough to make the greatest games. Halo was announced, previewed (by Steve Jobs, no less) at MacWorld, and was going to be a simultaneous release for Macintosh and Windows, as both Myth and Myth II had. That was enough for the Borg Collective's Hive Mind, Bill Gates.
Microsoft enticed Bungie with stories of untold riches, and by all accounts has delivered. The simultaneous release of Halo, announced at MacWorld, became the slave's response of "we were just kidding. We may never deliver Halo for the Mac or the PC"
So, I ask you: how is that not selling out? Bungie Software was making great games (and still is making a great game, by all accounts), and making more money than anyone in Bungie had ever dreamed of. Making enough money to buy themselves new cars, give away computers at trade shows, living what amounts to the pre-IPO/dotcom startup dream. Then, with one whiff of freshly-minted greenbacks, turned their backs on the very customers who had paid all that money for their success.
That, my fellow slashdotter, is how they sold out.
I'm sorry, Jason, did I hurt your feelings?
As much as I hate Bungie (well, Alex Seropian and Jason Jones) for selling out, they have always released their software when they were ready. I am assuming that Bungie is still doing Halo, of course ... but with Marathon, they tried releasing it before it was ready (when it was still just Pathways into Darkness II), and it got slammed at MacWorld. I think they learned their lesson. I'm glad to see that some of Bungie's ass-kick-ness is still left.
The Arizona/Sonoran desert looks nothing like that. Even in the deep desert, there are plants all over the place. There are stretches of the Mohave desert that do look like that, but even the Mohave has abundant plant life. The only place I've ever seen with desert that lifeless, yet rocky, is small stretches of the border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. There are a few deserts worldwide with that kind of a lack of plant life, but they are not rocky deserts, they are sand deserts (there are some sand dunes out by Yuma, but they are sandy, not rocky. Not a rock in sight for thousands of feet, much of the time).
Open source is the answer. If the source is available, you can 1) write your own drivers, or repair problems that appear with the OS after official support ends; 2) pay another person to provide you with support; or 3) a combination of the two. Without the source, you can do none of the above, and must upgrade if you want support. The fact that any given scanner and webcam don't work with the OS is a minor impediment, at best, as is evidenced by the thousands of drivers available for hardware in Linux, for example, that do not have official drivers for Linux. Winmodems, for crying out loud, many of them anyway, have drivers for Linux. This is a direct consequence of open source.
Microsoft addicted those users to Windows 98, and is responsible for their care and feeding. If they don't feel they can do it profitably, then they should release the source for the OS so that others can provide them with support that Microsoft won't. Ford may not officially support repairs on the '65 Mustang anymore, but the open nature of vehicles generally makes a huge, huge after-market economy possible. Hell, even if Microsoft doesn't open the source via any FSF-compatible license, they could easily both make a ton of extra money, and foster a huge after-market profit source for a new sector of the tech economy by making the source available. Whatever way you look at it, it's a mistake, and there are better ways for Microsoft to handle it.
Except that, Red Hat's source is open. If you have a computer that runs Red Hat 6, you can support yourself indefinitely. You cannot do that with WIndows 98. You will be required to upgrade to have support with Microsoft's OS. You should think about what I said before you mouth off like an idiot.
Anyone who is happy with Windows 98 should not be required to upgrade just because Microsoft can't be bothered to support a product they created and sold to end users. God forbid that the needs of these consumers, for whome Win98 is just fine, should be paramount.
... or, be supported by someone else. That's probably about as likely as a spontaneous mutation in Bill Gate's eyeball creating a separate human species which lives on tears and speaks only Esperanto.
Either that, or Microsoft should give these users the opportunity to support themselves. They are obviously not going to make any more money from Windows 98, they should open the source so that people who don't need to upgrade can support themselves
Additionally, I have a problem accepting that jets would scramble fast enough to be able to do so...
You'd be surprised, then, at how quickly on-the-ground alert aircraft can be scrambled. Perhaps more to the point, however, is that according to CNN and other public news sources many of the no-fly zones in the US now have random aircraft patrolling. A 767 might be capable of just-subsonic flight, but has no chance to get from the edge of a nfz to an interesting target against an F-15E that's already in the air. That doesn't even consider the speed of Sparrow, AMMRAM, Sidewinder, and other aircraft-mounted anti-aircraft missiles.
I, too, was using a free bag from WWDC (2000), and it was actually a very well-made bag (converted from shoulder-slung to backpack, and very solid construction), but had to finally put it down (there was an issue with it getting rained on, I think). Now, I carry a bag from Leeds (this model, although I didn't get it from this site), which has proven to be very well-made, as well. I've used it to carry my entire O'Reilly web development book set (Programming PHP, PHP Cookbook, Web Database Applications with PHP & mySQL, Managing and Using mySQL, and the mySQL Cookbook), along with my 12" iBook, Palm, cell phone, sync cable, power adapter, and assorted things. It hasn't shown any signs of stress on the shoulder strap stitching, nor do the side seams or zippers show any signs of stress. I don't carry that much all the time, but I do frequently, and I've been using this bag for going on 18 months now.
I think it does have to be the IBM case, and it's because they are alleging that the copyright infringment that gives them the right to call the Linux kernel version 2.4 or later a derivative of their copyrighted code is because of IBM's infringement. If they want to pursue a copyright violation against, say, Google, they would either have to win the IBM case, or prove that Google performed some other, heretofore un-alleged, copyright infringement; proving that copyright infringement wouldn't have any effect on the IBM case.
Here's the problem that shows that you don't understand. It's not enabled by default, there is nothing auto-mounted via LDAP. In order for a remote user to modify your crontab or your fstab, they'd have to already have access. The method detailed in the advisory requires that the client using DHCP have already enabled LDAP; this is not enabled by default in the non-Server versions of Mac OS X 10.2 or earlier. It might be by default on OS 10.3, but I don't have 10.3 yet. Approximately 99% of all non-Server versions of Mac OS X 10.2 and earlier are not vulnerable out of the box.
First, the average user 1) doesn't have a directory server to authenticate to and 2) doesn't mount anything that's not connected by either USB or Firewire. The average Macintosh user doesn't have Remote Login enabled, and lots of average Macintosh users don't have Personal File Sharing enabled (neither is enabled in the installation, by default).
As far as your understanding of the timeline goes, you should RTFA. He notified Apple, and they did respond. He is just unjustifiably impatient.
SCO will have to prove copyright, but unless they are trying to prove their copyright case before the suit against IBM goes to trial, it's the IBM suit which will establish or fail to establish those claims. If it is indeed Google, and indeed SCO claims "you violated our copyrights" then Google should probably ask for, and would probably get, a dismissal without prejudice based on SCO's involvement with IBM in that suit. If SCO were to successfully claim some copyright violations in their suit against IBM, and Google then continued infringing, they would be subject to a re-filing of the original suit.
Everything hinges on SCO's successful suit proving that IBM infringed SCO's copyrights by placing SCO owned-code into the Linux Kernel version 2.4. Until they have that in their hands, they will be barred from suing to collect license fees based on IBM's alleged copyright infringement. This, unless SCO intends to argue that Google also violated SCO's copyrights, separately from and seemingly co-incident with IBM's alleged violation.
... I was hoping this would happen, preferably to a major company with lots at stake. It was a bad idea from the outset, and I sincerely pray that it ripples all throughout the industry.
The district that I worked in is in the richest part of town (by per household income, average district household income > $100,000/year), and we averaged ten students suspended or expelled per year for bringing knives or guns on campus, or for verbally threatening teachers with grevious bodily harm, just at the high school. It is more typical than you think.