When housewives in Scottsdale see the grass in their yards dying off because of mandatory water restrictions, the current allocations will be changed in the blink of an eye.
Not quite, becuase those water allocations are a "right" and not a matter of political twiddling. The farming interests would have to be bought out, and that can be quite expensive.
Unlike LILO and GRUB, I've never had a single problem configuring the Windows Boot Manager -- and I've installed NT on some pretty weird systems over the years.
Sure, sometimes you have to enter the "ARC Path", but the Win Boot Loader ALWAYS seems to have the same view of your hardware that the OS does, which can't be said for Linux boot manglers.
> RMS shouldn't be blamed for encouraging people to say GNU/Linux
RMS defenders always like to put the soft-spin on this thing. The fact is that RMS isn't just encouraging people to say "GNU/Linux", he is actively boycotting anyone who does not.
Of course, Stallman is just denying himself many outlets for his message. Problem is, there's a lot of people who believe in RMS's ideals and would like to give him the opportunity to preach them. But he's too busy telling them to buzz off because they're a "LUG" and not a "GLUG" or whatever. So, rather than the Prophet of Free Software, he comes off as an embittered crank to the very people who hold him in esteem.
> Wanting people to put GNU into the name of Linux is not trying to remember RMS. It's remembering GNU.
Other than Stallman, is there any GNU programmer with any prominence whatsoever? He's always been the undisputed Dear Leader of the GNU project.
This would only work if you distributed the two parts seperately. Because once LGPL code is combined with GPL, the LGPL part gets promoted to GPL and you are back where you started.
If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program,
Which is GNU-code for "we want to believe this despite what our lawyers may have told us".
Regardless, if the main GPL program (Firefox) and the Plugin (Macromedia Flash) are distributed seperately and combined on the end-user's machine, there is simply just not a copyright violation to be found.
That someone chose the GPL does not limit my freedom to "form a single program" with whatever the hell I want, on my own computer.
All that really means is that companies that want people to support their mainframes need to offer contracts that guarantee employment for some fixed period (presumably the better part of a career),
Which of course won't happen because the high cost of mainframe installations make them an ongoing target for replacement with cheaper UNIX (etc) systems. (And there certainly are a lot of frames which are there to run legacy code and not because of the high-end features.)
offer a sufficiently good salary that the employee doesn't care.
Well, that's the bottom line here. Mainframe pay generally isn't competitive with other markets, especially when you consider the plug might be pulled any second.
> The development of the P4 was a technical failure,
Keep in mind that the P4 beat the Athlon K7 by almost every metric -- it was nearly always faster, it sold much better than the PIII, and it was much more cheaper to build and therefore more profitable. It wasn't until the K8 came out that P4 started looking bad.
Sure it wasn't a run-away success like the P6 design, but considering P4/Netburst had to fill the gap caused by Itanium's nearly total failure, it did well enough.
Thanks for the link... we're using a simplier version of this hack (essentially an extra SWF loaded for each call) we found on a blog. I would still prefer that Apple support LiveConnect.
What OS are you using that has such a problem with plug-ins,
MacOS X.
Neither Safari nor IE support the "LiveConnect" API, which allows for plugins and webpages to communicate with each other. Normally one can do "AJAX" style applications using Flash instead of XmlHttpRequest... except on Macs. (Which is currently a big problem for me.)
Anybody who's likely to buy a $400 video card is probably going to buy a high-end tower to put it into.
You mean anybody who is buying a Mac, because they don't have a choice.
A "Gamer" PC System can be quite low-spec and cheap, except for the video card. You can do quite well for $500 plus the card. For the most part, gamers don't purchase dual-proc systems, for example, but with Apple that's the only route.
With Mac's running on Intel we may see the poor performance of Windows' OpenGL performance highlighted.
Trolltastic. Go read the rationales for why Doom3 runs so slowly on Macs. A big reason is Apple's poor OpenGL performance.
If OSX is ported to Intel as-is, it will be completely slaughtered by ATI and NVidia's highly optimized Windows drivers. Hopefully Apple can convince them to them to port their game-specific optimizations to OS X.
I'd say the peak was back farther than that. Probably the best period for Mac gaming was 1984-1988, when many Apple II devs ported their games. (Alas, most of these games were hardcoded to the 9" screen and broke when the MacII came out.)
In the late-80s/early-90s, the common knock against the Mac by PC users was that it was "cartoony". Apple wanted to promote a professional image, and actually discouraged Mac Game Development and made sure that the default Mac desktop was gray and boring.
By the peak era of DOS gaming in 93-94, the Mac platform was already totally secondary, despite the fact it's marketshare was higher than ever. Windows gaming didn't really take off until 1996 or 97.
Both AGP and USB are Intel-developed standards that are licenced royalty free to anyone who wants them. Obviously, Intel had PC-compatibles in mind when they were designing these standards.
And do you honestly believe MS would let OS X be included on the computers those companies shipped.
Since then, Microsoft has been sued for monopolitic activity by everyone one in the industry, so yes I do believe that MS would "let" Apple OEM their OS. Futhermore, OS X is unlike BeOS in that it's arguably something consumers want.
In the short term, Apple keeps their hardware. But in 3-5 years, we're looking at $200 computers with a margin of maybe 20 bucks (or maybe $100 for "expensive" Macs). Then Apple has little choice but to go software-only and leave the PC distribution to the companies with a good supply or retail chain (Dell & HP).
I think it's pretty clear that Netburst was supposed to be a "diversionary tactic" for Itanium, not P-M. Especially when you consider the gimped performance of the early P4s.
Sorta, but more complicated, and enforced on a deeper level. The Linux version is called SELinux, but as of yet it doesn't work with X, so it's not useful for Firefox (etc).
> What you are suggesting is effectively commoditisation of the software industry
Yup, that's Stallmanomics in a nutshell.
> It might be innovation in new proprietary hardware,
And that too. The philosophy dates from the "mainframe in the basement" era, when expensive proprietary hardware subsidized free software. Whether this works in the era of $50 settop boxes remains to be seen.
Although the "innovation" approach works somewhat even in the free software world -- consider RedHat, who makes large investments in Linux and therefore reaps the rewards instead of the "stagnant" Debian et al.
Just as an FYI, here's how the game is played -- HP wants to get rid of HPUX. Therefore, they will slowly and continually ratchet-up the costs of HP9000 (etc) systems until that $300K starts looking like a cheap option. If you are still holding out, they will eventually just discontinue the platform.
I'm not saying you made a bad choice by purchasing more 9000 hardware, just that sooner or later you will either pay $300K to port the app or you will abandon it. And in the meanwhile you are paying HP a lot of money.
In order to use something targetted to Java 1.5 on a Mac one needs to (A) be running Tiger and (B) download a huge installation file buried on Apple's site. Admittedly Apple makes it easier by preinstalling old JVMs, but I don't think you know what you are talking about.
I just don't understand why incompatible JVM implementations are any different from incompatible browsers and incompatible implementations of Javascript.
Because 98% of your users have IE6 or Firefox, and only 5% have $WHATEVER_30MB_JVM you are targetting.
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Yup, Xenix was too good for IBM, so it had to be replaced with OS/2.
When housewives in Scottsdale see the grass in their yards dying off because of mandatory water restrictions, the current allocations will be changed in the blink of an eye.
Not quite, becuase those water allocations are a "right" and not a matter of political twiddling. The farming interests would have to be bought out, and that can be quite expensive.
Unlike LILO and GRUB, I've never had a single problem configuring the Windows Boot Manager -- and I've installed NT on some pretty weird systems over the years.
Sure, sometimes you have to enter the "ARC Path", but the Win Boot Loader ALWAYS seems to have the same view of your hardware that the OS does, which can't be said for Linux boot manglers.
> RMS shouldn't be blamed for encouraging people to say GNU/Linux
RMS defenders always like to put the soft-spin on this thing. The fact is that RMS isn't just encouraging people to say "GNU/Linux", he is actively boycotting anyone who does not.
Of course, Stallman is just denying himself many outlets for his message. Problem is, there's a lot of people who believe in RMS's ideals and would like to give him the opportunity to preach them. But he's too busy telling them to buzz off because they're a "LUG" and not a "GLUG" or whatever. So, rather than the Prophet of Free Software, he comes off as an embittered crank to the very people who hold him in esteem.
> Wanting people to put GNU into the name of Linux is not trying to remember RMS. It's remembering GNU.
Other than Stallman, is there any GNU programmer with any prominence whatsoever? He's always been the undisputed Dear Leader of the GNU project.
This would only work if you distributed the two parts seperately. Because once LGPL code is combined with GPL, the LGPL part gets promoted to GPL and you are back where you started.
Actually what they say:
If the program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single program,
Which is GNU-code for "we want to believe this despite what our lawyers may have told us".
Regardless, if the main GPL program (Firefox) and the Plugin (Macromedia Flash) are distributed seperately and combined on the end-user's machine, there is simply just not a copyright violation to be found.
That someone chose the GPL does not limit my freedom to "form a single program" with whatever the hell I want, on my own computer.
All that really means is that companies that want people to support their mainframes need to offer contracts that guarantee employment for some fixed period (presumably the better part of a career),
Which of course won't happen because the high cost of mainframe installations make them an ongoing target for replacement with cheaper UNIX (etc) systems. (And there certainly are a lot of frames which are there to run legacy code and not because of the high-end features.)
offer a sufficiently good salary that the employee doesn't care.
Well, that's the bottom line here. Mainframe pay generally isn't competitive with other markets, especially when you consider the plug might be pulled any second.
> The development of the P4 was a technical failure,
Keep in mind that the P4 beat the Athlon K7 by almost every metric -- it was nearly always faster, it sold much better than the PIII, and it was much more cheaper to build and therefore more profitable. It wasn't until the K8 came out that P4 started looking bad.
Sure it wasn't a run-away success like the P6 design, but considering P4/Netburst had to fill the gap caused by Itanium's nearly total failure, it did well enough.
Thanks for the link ... we're using a simplier version of this hack (essentially an extra SWF loaded for each call) we found on a blog. I would still prefer that Apple support LiveConnect.
What OS are you using that has such a problem with plug-ins,
... except on Macs. (Which is currently a big problem for me.)
MacOS X.
Neither Safari nor IE support the "LiveConnect" API, which allows for plugins and webpages to communicate with each other. Normally one can do "AJAX" style applications using Flash instead of XmlHttpRequest
I just checked ebay, and 1 lucky guy got a used 1.8 G5 for $900. Otherwise pickings are pretty slim on such systems.
It was funnier back in 1993 when Windows 3.1 took over -- to the chargrin of the DOS/Novell Nuts.
Anybody who's likely to buy a $400 video card is probably going to buy a high-end tower to put it into.
You mean anybody who is buying a Mac, because they don't have a choice.
A "Gamer" PC System can be quite low-spec and cheap, except for the video card. You can do quite well for $500 plus the card. For the most part, gamers don't purchase dual-proc systems, for example, but with Apple that's the only route.
With Mac's running on Intel we may see the poor performance of Windows' OpenGL performance highlighted.
Trolltastic. Go read the rationales for why Doom3 runs so slowly on Macs. A big reason is Apple's poor OpenGL performance.
If OSX is ported to Intel as-is, it will be completely slaughtered by ATI and NVidia's highly optimized Windows drivers. Hopefully Apple can convince them to them to port their game-specific optimizations to OS X.
I'd say the peak was back farther than that. Probably the best period for Mac gaming was 1984-1988, when many Apple II devs ported their games. (Alas, most of these games were hardcoded to the 9" screen and broke when the MacII came out.)
In the late-80s/early-90s, the common knock against the Mac by PC users was that it was "cartoony". Apple wanted to promote a professional image, and actually discouraged Mac Game Development and made sure that the default Mac desktop was gray and boring.
By the peak era of DOS gaming in 93-94, the Mac platform was already totally secondary, despite the fact it's marketshare was higher than ever. Windows gaming didn't really take off until 1996 or 97.
AGP and USB are hardly PC standards.
Both AGP and USB are Intel-developed standards that are licenced royalty free to anyone who wants them. Obviously, Intel had PC-compatibles in mind when they were designing these standards.
And do you honestly believe MS would let OS X be included on the computers those companies shipped.
Since then, Microsoft has been sued for monopolitic activity by everyone one in the industry, so yes I do believe that MS would "let" Apple OEM their OS. Futhermore, OS X is unlike BeOS in that it's arguably something consumers want.
In the short term, Apple keeps their hardware. But in 3-5 years, we're looking at $200 computers with a margin of maybe 20 bucks (or maybe $100 for "expensive" Macs). Then Apple has little choice but to go software-only and leave the PC distribution to the companies with a good supply or retail chain (Dell & HP).
I think it's pretty clear that Netburst was supposed to be a "diversionary tactic" for Itanium, not P-M. Especially when you consider the gimped performance of the early P4s.
I would agree with #1 and especially #2 -- any technical advantage that RedHat has is pretty short lived, but that's enough to sell it.
RedHat of course also has a proprietary advantage, not in the OS itself, but in it's official support for Oracle and many closed-source drivers.
Sorta, but more complicated, and enforced on a deeper level. The Linux version is called SELinux, but as of yet it doesn't work with X, so it's not useful for Firefox (etc).
> You mean like Java ?
No, he doesn't know it, but he's talking about OS-level Mandatory Access Controls. More like Trusted Solaris.
Windows Vista will supposedly have this.
> What you are suggesting is effectively commoditisation of the software industry
Yup, that's Stallmanomics in a nutshell.
> It might be innovation in new proprietary hardware,
And that too. The philosophy dates from the "mainframe in the basement" era, when expensive proprietary hardware subsidized free software. Whether this works in the era of $50 settop boxes remains to be seen.
Although the "innovation" approach works somewhat even in the free software world -- consider RedHat, who makes large investments in Linux and therefore reaps the rewards instead of the "stagnant" Debian et al.
Just as an FYI, here's how the game is played -- HP wants to get rid of HPUX. Therefore, they will slowly and continually ratchet-up the costs of HP9000 (etc) systems until that $300K starts looking like a cheap option. If you are still holding out, they will eventually just discontinue the platform.
I'm not saying you made a bad choice by purchasing more 9000 hardware, just that sooner or later you will either pay $300K to port the app or you will abandon it. And in the meanwhile you are paying HP a lot of money.
In order to use something targetted to Java 1.5 on a Mac one needs to (A) be running Tiger and (B) download a huge installation file buried on Apple's site. Admittedly Apple makes it easier by preinstalling old JVMs, but I don't think you know what you are talking about.
I just don't understand why incompatible JVM implementations are any different from incompatible browsers and incompatible implementations of Javascript.
Because 98% of your users have IE6 or Firefox, and only 5% have $WHATEVER_30MB_JVM you are targetting.