I would hope everyone keeps teaching at least one Morse code: SOS. It's a rarely recognizable international signal and symbol not tied (at least not anymore) to a specific language or culture.
Desktop version of SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 will cost you $50/year (or $125/3yr), while the server version will wring out $350/1yr or $873/3yr. RH is more expensive.
The only free (as in beer) distribution today that gets close (but still not quite there yet in polish) is Ubuntu, but how many users have heard of Ubuntu vs Novell and RedHat?
Linux is now mostly free, but the greatest thing that can happen to it (acceptance in corporate environments) tends to make it expensive.
And it's not a bad thing. For example, you don't often hear OSX users complain about the price ($130). Even most Windows users are not complaining about the price. What they ARE complaining about is lack of support, buggy software and bad drivers. Makes you think...
So did you base your FUD-laden statement on the certain knowledge that BSD does everything in a way that couldn't possibly infringe any of their patents (even though you don't know which patents he is talking about)? Or do you simply think that nobody gives enough of a fuck about BSD to try and stop it?
You couldn't twist what I said into something bad except by being deliberate about it. My point is: THERE'S ALWAYS AN ALTERNATIVE.
And for the record since you've brought it up: BSD's are pretty much free from lawsuits in the domain of their "unixicity" - MS or anyone else (SCO) cannot bring up some 20 year old code and say: we did it first. Since I didn't RTFA I didn't know that it also deals with Samba, etc. - that part really is unavoidable, but it's not "Linux"
Since we're exploring the space of possibilities of parranoia here, who's to say the slow reaction to Katrina wasn't deliberate, so this law could be passed later (i.e. now)?
It's a bit strange - Bush will not be a president for much longer (unless he does something really radical), so could it be he actually means well? If not, THEN it becomes scary, for either he's planning something stupid, or he's setting the stage for somebody else...
Because a Katrina-class disaster is much harder to stage than a bunch of thungs paid to wear turbans and do something nasty in public. In other words, I'll tend to agree that it's good to have something bypassing the red tape in case of natural emergencies, but not "social" ones (including terrorism).
Of course, the real problem is why people keep electing untrustworthy leaders.
Aren't situations like this like a dream come true for journalists? I can't really imagine why there's no a big nation-wide show (in any nation, not just the US) when a power change is about to happen that reviews the current goverment's promises and results. Something like "before president X there was no war, now there is - what has changed?" and "president X used rethoric Y to get in power and it proved to be a lie - why should we believe candidate Z when he does the same?" should be very popular debate points, especially if the journalist is cynical enough. It's a pity journalists don't read Slashdot:)
On the other hand, isn't there a law in US that prohibits saying "the president sucks" under threat of imprisonment as a terrorist?
You would be right if the new law specified exactly to what emargencies it applies. Since the site is down, I can't say if it does. Something like "a natural disaster" needs to be spelled out in the text of the law so it doesn't end up applying to "the president's imaginary enemy".
I hope people remember this thread a few years from now. People who don't contribute to Java now (and they can, the development process is open enough) will certainly not contribute when few words in the license is changed, and if they do, it's likely Java will get fragmented because of it (see Firefox/Iceweasel debacle - who wants applications that run only on Debian's "distribution" of Java?).
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Would you keep IP resulting from an assignmen given to you on jour job?
You know why IBM is the world's largest owner of patents? It's because every "inventor" there signes that everything he produces will be owned by the company. And it's the same in every large hi-tech company (e.g. Intel). The justification of that is that today no single engineer or inventor could ever produce something new in those fields because the research requires such expensive equipment that only huge corporations can afford it. So, work produced using unversity resources is the same - it belongs to the university.
Against what seems the popular opinion on/., there's rarely any bad feelings about this. If a professor "steels" the work of his students, it doesn't do him much good because he'll sooner or later have to defend it or present it to someone else (maybe some for-profit company, maybe in a process of peer-review), so it's much better to be on good terms with smart students and work *together*.
(hmm, but wouldn't that injure the person in front of the laptop? Maybe something like a steel plate on the back of the laptop will be needed, so it doesn't shrapnel or melt.
let me get this straight, I am paying them to take my rights away.
No, your're paying them to educate you, and the things that you create during that process, you create solely from instructions given to you by professors and other teaching staff. It's actually quite common requirement, and upto this thread on/. I was under the impression that it was active absolutely everywhere.
This is only valid for the work you create for and because of your courses. Anything else you produce, without it being given to you as an assignment is, of couse, yours alone.
Shouldn't all this exploding-laptop trend really lead to producing more durable cases for portable devices? Like, if a "laptop" really exploded like this while on someone's lap, the person could be seriously injured. If it [the laptop] had a harder casing, possibly made of titanium, the risk of injury would be much less.
You do know that M$ used BSD-licenced code for their IP stack and Internet Explorer, don't you?
That's false, unfortunately. If it did things would have been much better for all.
Nitpick details: ftp.exe is not "IP stack". IE might use BSDL software like zlib & others, hardly an important design or security part. I used zlib as an example, don't stick to it.
Doesn't this story look like a Dilbert-ish situation - the companies themself don't even consider merging but because "the word is out" and "everybody knows they'll do it" it somehow becomes a reality?
Who are you to make a moral judgement on who should not be helped?
That is NOT a moral judgement, it's common sense (or if you'd prefer - impersonally technical). No conception -> something's biologically wrong, possibly something with body plan/genetics -> even if conception is forced, there's a nonignorable chance that the children will have the same problem. Do YOU want to inflict that problems upon the children?
It's not strictly related to TFA, but these days, it's hard to tell if corrective medicine is actually helping "us" in the long term. In ages past, children who were not tough enough would simply die and, while grieving, nobody thought it "wrong". Now, such technically less viable children can be saved, but for who's good? Its or its parents? It sounds eugenical, but it's true that it makes the rich/medically advanced societies less resistant in the long term.
Commercial distributions
Commercial distributions of Linux are available from IBM Linux Distribution Partners Red Hat, SUSE LINUX and Turbolinux.
Will the future of commercial Linux (i.e. the only one that counts) be that everyone has to support Linux in-house? Looking at the state of things today: more and more big corporations need to offer support for Linux themselves, instead of relying on what are supposed to be "Linux vendors". I'm not sure is this a good or bad thing, but it could lead to cutting out the middle man (e.g. RedHat) out of the loop and out of the market (thus costing geeks jobs, leading to more fragmentation, etc. etc.).
It's different than with other commercial systems for sure: nobody expects they'd have to provide their own support for MS Windows or Solaris - it's supposed to "just work" and if something brakes, call Microsoft or Sun to fix it.
One other thing: it could lead to a situation where there's a "Linux for everything" - in the sense that, if you want the best for your Oracle database, use this distribution, if you need it for SAP, use that one, etc. It's hard to predict how it will end, but it doesn't seem good.
Slashdot Mirror
I would hope everyone keeps teaching at least one Morse code: SOS. It's a rarely recognizable international signal and symbol not tied (at least not anymore) to a specific language or culture.
Desktop version of SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 will cost you $50/year (or $125/3yr), while the server version will wring out $350/1yr or $873/3yr. RH is more expensive.
The only free (as in beer) distribution today that gets close (but still not quite there yet in polish) is Ubuntu, but how many users have heard of Ubuntu vs Novell and RedHat?
Linux is now mostly free, but the greatest thing that can happen to it (acceptance in corporate environments) tends to make it expensive.
And it's not a bad thing. For example, you don't often hear OSX users complain about the price ($130). Even most Windows users are not complaining about the price. What they ARE complaining about is lack of support, buggy software and bad drivers. Makes you think...
No, but it might on Luna...
You couldn't twist what I said into something bad except by being deliberate about it. My point is: THERE'S ALWAYS AN ALTERNATIVE.
And for the record since you've brought it up: BSD's are pretty much free from lawsuits in the domain of their "unixicity" - MS or anyone else (SCO) cannot bring up some 20 year old code and say: we did it first. Since I didn't RTFA I didn't know that it also deals with Samba, etc. - that part really is unavoidable, but it's not "Linux"
If you believe him switch to BSD, if you don't, sit back and enjoy the popcorn.
Since we're exploring the space of possibilities of parranoia here, who's to say the slow reaction to Katrina wasn't deliberate, so this law could be passed later (i.e. now)?
It's a bit strange - Bush will not be a president for much longer (unless he does something really radical), so could it be he actually means well? If not, THEN it becomes scary, for either he's planning something stupid, or he's setting the stage for somebody else...
Because a Katrina-class disaster is much harder to stage than a bunch of thungs paid to wear turbans and do something nasty in public. In other words, I'll tend to agree that it's good to have something bypassing the red tape in case of natural emergencies, but not "social" ones (including terrorism).
Of course, the real problem is why people keep electing untrustworthy leaders.
Aren't situations like this like a dream come true for journalists? I can't really imagine why there's no a big nation-wide show (in any nation, not just the US) when a power change is about to happen that reviews the current goverment's promises and results. Something like "before president X there was no war, now there is - what has changed?" and "president X used rethoric Y to get in power and it proved to be a lie - why should we believe candidate Z when he does the same?" should be very popular debate points, especially if the journalist is cynical enough. It's a pity journalists don't read Slashdot :)
On the other hand, isn't there a law in US that prohibits saying "the president sucks" under threat of imprisonment as a terrorist?
You would be right if the new law specified exactly to what emargencies it applies. Since the site is down, I can't say if it does. Something like "a natural disaster" needs to be spelled out in the text of the law so it doesn't end up applying to "the president's imaginary enemy".
I hope people remember this thread a few years from now. People who don't contribute to Java now (and they can, the development process is open enough) will certainly not contribute when few words in the license is changed, and if they do, it's likely Java will get fragmented because of it (see Firefox/Iceweasel debacle - who wants applications that run only on Debian's "distribution" of Java?).
I think you're barking up the wrong tree. Would you keep IP resulting from an assignmen given to you on jour job?
You know why IBM is the world's largest owner of patents? It's because every "inventor" there signes that everything he produces will be owned by the company. And it's the same in every large hi-tech company (e.g. Intel). The justification of that is that today no single engineer or inventor could ever produce something new in those fields because the research requires such expensive equipment that only huge corporations can afford it. So, work produced using unversity resources is the same - it belongs to the university.
Against what seems the popular opinion on /., there's rarely any bad feelings about this. If a professor "steels" the work of his students, it doesn't do him much good because he'll sooner or later have to defend it or present it to someone else (maybe some for-profit company, maybe in a process of peer-review), so it's much better to be on good terms with smart students and work *together*.
Mod parent insightful :)
(hmm, but wouldn't that injure the person in front of the laptop? Maybe something like a steel plate on the back of the laptop will be needed, so it doesn't shrapnel or melt.
No, your're paying them to educate you, and the things that you create during that process, you create solely from instructions given to you by professors and other teaching staff. It's actually quite common requirement, and upto this thread on /. I was under the impression that it was active absolutely everywhere.
This is only valid for the work you create for and because of your courses. Anything else you produce, without it being given to you as an assignment is, of couse, yours alone.
Shouldn't all this exploding-laptop trend really lead to producing more durable cases for portable devices? Like, if a "laptop" really exploded like this while on someone's lap, the person could be seriously injured. If it [the laptop] had a harder casing, possibly made of titanium, the risk of injury would be much less.
What the world needs instead of Flash is "Animated SVG".
(Now go create it :) )
Um, Space - the final frontier? :)
That's false, unfortunately. If it did things would have been much better for all.
Nitpick details: ftp.exe is not "IP stack". IE might use BSDL software like zlib & others, hardly an important design or security part. I used zlib as an example, don't stick to it.
This is the best post in this whole thread. Look at BSDs for base system cohesion.
How about this: posting links to Autopackage (http://autopackage.org/) on Slashdot? :)
Doesn't this story look like a Dilbert-ish situation - the companies themself don't even consider merging but because "the word is out" and "everybody knows they'll do it" it somehow becomes a reality?
That is NOT a moral judgement, it's common sense (or if you'd prefer - impersonally technical). No conception -> something's biologically wrong, possibly something with body plan/genetics -> even if conception is forced, there's a nonignorable chance that the children will have the same problem. Do YOU want to inflict that problems upon the children?
It's not strictly related to TFA, but these days, it's hard to tell if corrective medicine is actually helping "us" in the long term. In ages past, children who were not tough enough would simply die and, while grieving, nobody thought it "wrong". Now, such technically less viable children can be saved, but for who's good? Its or its parents? It sounds eugenical, but it's true that it makes the rich/medically advanced societies less resistant in the long term.
You say that like it's a bad thing? :)
Good point.
Are IBM's RHEL techs certified by RedHat or IBM? If it's by RedHat, then RedHat still has some business/revenue from it...
Quote from IBM's site:
Will the future of commercial Linux (i.e. the only one that counts) be that everyone has to support Linux in-house? Looking at the state of things today: more and more big corporations need to offer support for Linux themselves, instead of relying on what are supposed to be "Linux vendors". I'm not sure is this a good or bad thing, but it could lead to cutting out the middle man (e.g. RedHat) out of the loop and out of the market (thus costing geeks jobs, leading to more fragmentation, etc. etc.).
It's different than with other commercial systems for sure: nobody expects they'd have to provide their own support for MS Windows or Solaris - it's supposed to "just work" and if something brakes, call Microsoft or Sun to fix it.
One other thing: it could lead to a situation where there's a "Linux for everything" - in the sense that, if you want the best for your Oracle database, use this distribution, if you need it for SAP, use that one, etc. It's hard to predict how it will end, but it doesn't seem good.