"Yes, you do get more from supporting Red Hat. Red Hat pays quite a few of the kernel devs, they are also mounting a big push to get Linux in large companies."
It depends upon whether you're interested in the desktop or the server space. I'm not very interested in more server configuration tools, so my money is better spent on Mandrake.
Mandrake is in a short-term cash crunch. They are approaching profitability, but they won't get there without additional funding. Kind of like the marathon runner who collapses dead within strides of the finish line.
Mandrake's plea is directed at people who have downloaded Mandrake's products for free and liked them. Clearly, not everyone belongs in that category. But, it's OK for Mandrake to ask people to give back something for the wonderful stuff which Mandrake has done for us.
Yes, Mandrake recently screwed up people's preorders badly, including mine. That's because they were forced to lay off a lot of people, in order to shrink their losses. They have a chance to be profitable, but they need a little help.
How this is different than LWN.net asking for help is beyond me (although I'm sure there are plenty of smart-alecks waiting in line to tell me). Mandrake provides free goods and services, and all they're asking for is that people who have benefited from them will consider giving something back. After Mandrake is gone, then SuSE will be the next one to go under. Then, we can all rejoice and run Red Hat.
Even Red Hat has only JUST NOW broken even, and they are the ones with the inside track to all the enterprise installations.
Why not give Mandrake a little help, so they can make it to the break-even point? If you haven't checked out the new Mandrake Club, it's worth a look. The multi-language support is truly extraordinary. I compare it to slashdot, in terms of a paradigm shift.
I'm a standard club member, and I purchased the DVD for the last release, so I think I've done my part to support my favorite distribution. Have you?
What's the deal with requiring a specific browser? Are they being arbitrary or does their DRM require IE, in order to make use of ActiveX or some other technology?
Any site which requires IE immediately loses me as a customer. You might say I'm a "browser bigot", but I call it a "personal choice".;-)
This isn't about licenses. It's about the government creating an overreaching law which says it's illegal to decrypt data you have purchased, even when you're planning to use the data in an otherwise completely legal way.
It's equivalent to outlawing alcohol, because someone might drink and drive.
The DMCA was written in order to prevent illegal distribution of copyrighted material, but it is so broad that it makes illegal an entire class of activities which harms nobody.
It's especially galling, because you don't have to decrypt DVD's to distribute them illegally.
I'm not sure what Reagan's war refers to, but I have a few pet peeves about Reagan:
1) He saddled this country with trillions in debt. So-called "conservatives" should be ashamed, rather than treating him like some kind of pop-star. Yes, Reagan strengthened the military, but his entire military build-up was never paid for. It was all done on credit. This is very upsetting when you stop and think about it, which very few people actually do.
2) He should have left office, when he wasn't capable of running the government. His last years in office were completely embarrassing to anyone who was awake.
That said, Reagan made Americans proud again. He called it like it was. But, fiscally, the man was a disaster we still haven't recovered from.
Some might say that it was worth it. The Soviet Union was defeated. I would argue that the "missile gap" was baloney. We could have coasted on the warheads we had after Carter left office. The nuclear build-up had absolutely no effect on either deterrence or the Soviet collapse. The conventional weapons build-up, on the other hand, may have had something to do with it.
Reagan was a very simple man who fell for the "supply side" argument hook, line, and sinker. We have yet to pay the bill for that mistake. I guess we can leave it for the next generation.:-(
I will never buy a QUE book. They publish a lot of "me too" crap, so they can jump on the bandwagon and make money off of whatever is the hot new thing. New Riders and Wrox, on the other hand, have a number of valuable titles on programming. I've bought a few, including: "Beginning Java" (WROX), "Beginning Linux Programming" (WROX), "Advanced Linux Programming" (New Riders), "VI Improved - VIM" (New Riders). These are all very high quality books (especially the VIM book - absolutely outstanding!!!). Well organized and easy to follow. I've noticed that QUE books have the appearance of containing a lot of information, but are disorganized when you sit down to read the material, and they just don't do a good thorough job of covering the topic.
Interestingly, you can read online the full versions of the New Riders books I mentioned here.
(If you have trouble with that link, go through the New Riders home page and search for the titles.)
Who cares about local radio? Except for public radio, it's mostly junk in southern California. XM Radio has some potential, since it is commercial free, hence more customer-driven.
Although XM Radio already does have a AAA station (Adult Album Alternative), I doubt it is as good as Radio Paradise.
Paradise is similar in some respects to a radio station we had in southern California, KSCA 101.9 FM (LA's Finest Rock!), which was for a time the only place where you could listen to good new music. It was bought and replaced with a Spanish station. Another AAA station came out of the ashes, but it too was bought and converted to Spanish-language format. Now, the southern California radio market is a vast musical wasteland, with the exception of KMZT 105.1 classical, and the KPRW 89.9 public radio station (which is good but very eclectic).
Which all goes to show why I would be willing to fork over $10/month if I could get Paradise in my car. One would think the recording industry would have a clue. I haven't bought a single CD since the last AAA station went off the air in southern California, years ago. After listening to Radio Paradise for a few weeks, I've already targeted 5 CDs which I'll be buying shortly.
Incidentally, my list is:
Aimee Mann - Bachelor #2 Pat Metheny - Works Coldplay - Parachutes Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble - The Real Deal: Greatest Hits 2
Radio Paradise is struggling to pay the new webcaster royalties, which are completely stupid. The recording industry won't be happy until they've squashed every outlet for new and interesting music, and they wonder why CD sales are down!!:-(
Winex got Warcraft 3 to work in a matter of weeks. Go ahead and scream your brains out at Blizzard and see if you can persuade them to target Linux. Rant all you want. They could care less about Linux users.
If you're right that Transgaming sucks, where are the brilliant alternatives waiting in the wings? Personally, I'd like to play games which are recent, not two years old, like Loki's ports.
What will make the Linux gaming platform legitimate is getting gamers over to Linux. When people are playing games on Linux to a significant degree, Winex or whatever, then the game companies will bother to expend a little effort to make sure their stuff works on Linux. Gamers won't come to Linux, until they can play *recent* games on Linux.
AFAIK, Transgaming is the only thing out there right now which can make that happen. I'd love for WINE to do it, but that's highly unlikely to happen, and I don't really care if someone makes money for providing a worthwhile service. Transgaming can't exactly become a monopoly by emulating DirectX!
It's easy to criticize. It's harder to offer solutions. You're welcome to go ahead and play your games on Windows. I'll be playing Warcraft 3 on Winex.
What the heck. I went ahead and bought the original version. It was only $20, no big deal. I'll probably get around to trying it out sometime towards the end of the year.
It comes in RPM, DEB, and TGZ format. The TGZ format is currently unavailable, as they haven't posted it yet. There is a PDF manual and a readme.txt file, but the text file is unavailable as well. I'm going to post these problems on the Transgaming discussion forum. I'm sure they'll be straightened out post-haste.
I saved the HTML page with my confirmation #, in case I have any problems. I'm going to burn the files to CDROM, so I don't lose them.
The Winex download for Kohan is about 4 MB. The Kohan download itself is 146 MB. The pdf is 647 kB.
I'm wondering if I could just have installed the Windows version on top of Winex, but it's important to me that this sale get racked up as a Linux sale, not a Windows sale.
I am a Transgaming subscriber, but it's hard to justify paying for one of these games, when I have the Loki version of KIS, Starcraft (still haven't finished it), and Warcraft 3 to keep me busy.
I'm tempted to chip in for one of these games anyway, just to encourage a future port of Kohan II (when it is released next year) as well as due to the outstanding reviews Kohan has received.
Mandrake drakFont makes adding truetype fonts to KDE almost trivial. However, GNOME/GTK+ apps are another thing entirely. In Mandrake 8.2, it is possible to add truetype fonts to GNOME, but it requires a little work, and it isn't recommended or supported by Mandrake. With the arrival of GNOME 2.0, I'm hopeful that drakFont will soon support adding truetype fonts to GNOME.
Don't expect Sealand to defend your copyright.
on
HavenCo Doing Well
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"I'd post it online if I wasn't afraid of someone totally ripping it off."
Yeah, especially someone hosted by Sealand.;-)
"Sealand currently has no regulations regarding copyright, patents,..."
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't believe in God. Why should they have to feel like an outsider, because they don't feel comfortable expressing belief in God, in the state-sanctioned Pledge of Allegiance? OK, I know you think atheists are evil, drink human blood, and all that, but really atheists are people too.;-) They do exist. Really!:-)
Tell you what, why don't we change the Pledge of Allegiance so it includes a renunciation of God? How would you feel about that? Not too good, huh? Kind of goes against your personal beliefs, doesn't it? I hope you're starting to get the picture. This is why government should not be in the religion business.
I'm not sure I want to get into the whole debate about moral decay due to the movement away from religion. All I can say is - study history. How many wars had to take place and how many people had to die in the name of religion, including the Christian God?
The ideal solution is to invalidate software patents. However, in the interim the free software community needs to start obtaining software patents on enabling technologies and witholding them from companies which discriminate against free software. Additionally, there needs to be a central organization, which owns the patents, cannot be corrupted or taken over, and has the pooled money and resources to litigate the software patents.
It sounds like it's a little late, but why not follow the model of the Green Bay Packers?
http://www.packers.com/history/stockhistory.html
Issue voting, non-divident-paying shares, with no chance of stock appreciation. I would be willing to pay $100 for a share. The motive for us is the same as it was for the Packers - to save a cherished institution; buy Loki enough time to make their business model work.
It would be important to prevent any single entity from gaining control, just as it was important for the Packers, by limiting how many shares any individual or organization can possess.
I know, ideally we should have bought the games in the first place, but Mandrake only recently was able to autodetect NVidia cards and install 3D support automatically. I think manually setting up NVidia cards was the big stopper for a lot of people.
Slashdot Mirror
"Yes, you do get more from supporting Red Hat. Red Hat pays quite a few of the kernel devs, they are also mounting a big push to get Linux in large companies."
It depends upon whether you're interested in the desktop or the server space. I'm not very interested in more server configuration tools, so my money is better spent on Mandrake.
Mandrake is in a short-term cash crunch. They are approaching profitability, but they won't get there without additional funding. Kind of like the marathon runner who collapses dead within strides of the finish line.
Mandrake's plea is directed at people who have downloaded Mandrake's products for free and liked them. Clearly, not everyone belongs in that category. But, it's OK for Mandrake to ask people to give back something for the wonderful stuff which Mandrake has done for us.
Yes, Mandrake recently screwed up people's preorders badly, including mine. That's because they were forced to lay off a lot of people, in order to shrink their losses. They have a chance to be profitable, but they need a little help.
How this is different than LWN.net asking for help is beyond me (although I'm sure there are plenty of smart-alecks waiting in line to tell me). Mandrake provides free goods and services, and all they're asking for is that people who have benefited from them will consider giving something back. After Mandrake is gone, then SuSE will be the next one to go under. Then, we can all rejoice and run Red Hat.
Even Red Hat has only JUST NOW broken even, and they are the ones with the inside track to all the enterprise installations.
Why not give Mandrake a little help, so they can make it to the break-even point? If you haven't checked out the new Mandrake Club, it's worth a look. The multi-language support is truly extraordinary. I compare it to slashdot, in terms of a paradigm shift.
I'm a standard club member, and I purchased the DVD for the last release, so I think I've done my part to support my favorite distribution. Have you?
What's the deal with requiring a specific browser? Are they being arbitrary or does their DRM require IE, in order to make use of ActiveX or some other technology?
;-)
Any site which requires IE immediately loses me as a customer. You might say I'm a "browser bigot", but I call it a "personal choice".
This isn't about licenses. It's about the government creating an overreaching law which says it's illegal to decrypt data you have purchased, even when you're planning to use the data in an otherwise completely legal way.
It's equivalent to outlawing alcohol, because someone might drink and drive.
The DMCA was written in order to prevent illegal distribution of copyrighted material, but it is so broad that it makes illegal an entire class of activities which harms nobody.
It's especially galling, because you don't have to decrypt DVD's to distribute them illegally.
It just shows that those who blithely put all people, who put all Republicans into one stereotype, into one stereotype are undereducated.
I'm not sure what Reagan's war refers to, but I have a few pet peeves about Reagan:
:-(
1) He saddled this country with trillions in debt. So-called "conservatives" should be ashamed, rather than treating him like some kind of pop-star. Yes, Reagan strengthened the military, but his entire military build-up was never paid for. It was all done on credit. This is very upsetting when you stop and think about it, which very few people actually do.
2) He should have left office, when he wasn't capable of running the government. His last years in office were completely embarrassing to anyone who was awake.
That said, Reagan made Americans proud again. He called it like it was. But, fiscally, the man was a disaster we still haven't recovered from.
Some might say that it was worth it. The Soviet Union was defeated. I would argue that the "missile gap" was baloney. We could have coasted on the warheads we had after Carter left office. The nuclear build-up had absolutely no effect on either deterrence or the Soviet collapse. The conventional weapons build-up, on the other hand, may have had something to do with it.
Reagan was a very simple man who fell for the "supply side" argument hook, line, and sinker. We have yet to pay the bill for that mistake. I guess we can leave it for the next generation.
I will never buy a QUE book. They publish a lot of "me too" crap, so they can jump on the bandwagon and make money off of whatever is the hot new thing. New Riders and Wrox, on the other hand, have a number of valuable titles on programming. I've bought a few, including: "Beginning Java" (WROX), "Beginning Linux Programming" (WROX), "Advanced Linux Programming" (New Riders), "VI Improved - VIM" (New Riders). These are all very high quality books (especially the VIM book - absolutely outstanding!!!). Well organized and easy to follow. I've noticed that QUE books have the appearance of containing a lot of information, but are disorganized when you sit down to read the material, and they just don't do a good thorough job of covering the topic.
Interestingly, you can read online the full versions of the New Riders books I mentioned here.
(If you have trouble with that link, go through the New Riders home page and search for the titles.)
Who cares about local radio? Except for public radio, it's mostly junk in southern California. XM Radio has some potential, since it is commercial free, hence more customer-driven.
Of course, online there's always Radio Paradise.
Although XM Radio already does have a AAA station (Adult Album Alternative), I doubt it is as good as Radio Paradise.
:-(
Paradise is similar in some respects to a radio station we had in southern California, KSCA 101.9 FM (LA's Finest Rock!), which was for a time the only place where you could listen to good new music. It was bought and replaced with a Spanish station. Another AAA station came out of the ashes, but it too was bought and converted to Spanish-language format. Now, the southern California radio market is a vast musical wasteland, with the exception of KMZT 105.1 classical, and the KPRW 89.9 public radio station (which is good but very eclectic).
Which all goes to show why I would be willing to fork over $10/month if I could get Paradise in my car. One would think the recording industry would have a clue. I haven't bought a single CD since the last AAA station went off the air in southern California, years ago. After listening to Radio Paradise for a few weeks, I've already targeted 5 CDs which I'll be buying shortly.
Incidentally, my list is:
Aimee Mann - Bachelor #2
Pat Metheny - Works
Coldplay - Parachutes
Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session
Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble - The Real Deal: Greatest Hits 2
Radio Paradise is struggling to pay the new webcaster royalties, which are completely stupid. The recording industry won't be happy until they've squashed every outlet for new and interesting music, and they wonder why CD sales are down!!
Winex got Warcraft 3 to work in a matter of weeks. Go ahead and scream your brains out at Blizzard and see if you can persuade them to target Linux. Rant all you want. They could care less about Linux users.
If you're right that Transgaming sucks, where are the brilliant alternatives waiting in the wings? Personally, I'd like to play games which are recent, not two years old, like Loki's ports.
What will make the Linux gaming platform legitimate is getting gamers over to Linux. When people are playing games on Linux to a significant degree, Winex or whatever, then the game companies will bother to expend a little effort to make sure their stuff works on Linux. Gamers won't come to Linux, until they can play *recent* games on Linux.
AFAIK, Transgaming is the only thing out there right now which can make that happen. I'd love for WINE to do it, but that's highly unlikely to happen, and I don't really care if someone makes money for providing a worthwhile service. Transgaming can't exactly become a monopoly by emulating DirectX!
It's easy to criticize. It's harder to offer solutions. You're welcome to go ahead and play your games on Windows. I'll be playing Warcraft 3 on Winex.
Competition will out. If someone can produce a non-Winex version of Kohan II, be my guest. May the best porting method win.
What the heck. I went ahead and bought the original version. It was only $20, no big deal. I'll probably get around to trying it out sometime towards the end of the year.
It comes in RPM, DEB, and TGZ format. The TGZ format is currently unavailable, as they haven't posted it yet. There is a PDF manual and a readme.txt file, but the text file is unavailable as well. I'm going to post these problems on the Transgaming discussion forum. I'm sure they'll be straightened out post-haste.
I saved the HTML page with my confirmation #, in case I have any problems. I'm going to burn the files to CDROM, so I don't lose them.
The Winex download for Kohan is about 4 MB. The Kohan download itself is 146 MB. The pdf is 647 kB.
I'm wondering if I could just have installed the Windows version on top of Winex, but it's important to me that this sale get racked up as a Linux sale, not a Windows sale.
I am a Transgaming subscriber, but it's hard to justify paying for one of these games, when I have the Loki version of KIS, Starcraft (still haven't finished it), and Warcraft 3 to keep me busy.
I'm tempted to chip in for one of these games anyway, just to encourage a future port of Kohan II (when it is released next year) as well as due to the outstanding reviews Kohan has received.
More reviews here.
Here is a very good laptop reference for Mandrake users.
Mandrake drakFont makes adding truetype fonts to KDE almost trivial. However, GNOME/GTK+ apps are another thing entirely. In Mandrake 8.2, it is possible to add truetype fonts to GNOME, but it requires a little work, and it isn't recommended or supported by Mandrake. With the arrival of GNOME 2.0, I'm hopeful that drakFont will soon support adding truetype fonts to GNOME.
"I'd post it online if I wasn't afraid of someone totally ripping it off."
;-)
..."
Yeah, especially someone hosted by Sealand.
"Sealand currently has no regulations regarding copyright, patents,
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't believe in God. Why should they have to feel like an outsider, because they don't feel comfortable expressing belief in God, in the state-sanctioned Pledge of Allegiance? OK, I know you think atheists are evil, drink human blood, and all that, but really atheists are people too. ;-) They do exist. Really! :-)
Tell you what, why don't we change the Pledge of Allegiance so it includes a renunciation of God? How would you feel about that? Not too good, huh? Kind of goes against your personal beliefs, doesn't it? I hope you're starting to get the picture. This is why government should not be in the religion business.
I'm not sure I want to get into the whole debate about moral decay due to the movement away from religion. All I can say is - study history. How many wars had to take place and how many people had to die in the name of religion, including the Christian God?
The ideal solution is to invalidate software patents. However, in the interim the free software community needs to start obtaining software patents on enabling technologies and witholding them from companies which discriminate against free software. Additionally, there needs to be a central organization, which owns the patents, cannot be corrupted or taken over, and has the pooled money and resources to litigate the software patents.
It sounds like it's a little late, but why not follow the model of the Green Bay Packers?
l
http://www.packers.com/history/stockhistory.htm
Issue voting, non-divident-paying shares, with no chance of stock appreciation. I would be willing to pay $100 for a share. The motive for us is the same as it was for the Packers - to save a cherished institution; buy Loki enough time to make their business model work.
It would be important to prevent any single entity from gaining control, just as it was important for the Packers, by limiting how many shares any individual or organization can possess.
I know, ideally we should have bought the games in the first place, but Mandrake only recently was able to autodetect NVidia cards and install 3D support automatically. I think manually setting up NVidia cards was the big stopper for a lot of people.