PCs don't need to be upgraded. This myth has no basis in fact or logic.
My 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System is the same system it was when I bought it. My Sears Video Computer System is the same as when my parents bought it for me. My 286-20 (after all the upgrade parts were built into a separate 386) is again the same 286-20 it was when I bought it. My Cyrix 6x86 150+ is still identical to the way it was bought. All of these systems play the same games now as they did then, and just as well.
What you can't do with a PC is use a five year old PC to play a game which requires the features of a brand new PC. But guess what... you can't play a game for a brand new console on a five year old console either!
What you can do with the PC, if you choose, is sometimes find parts from an older system still worthwhile to use in a new system or to upgrade one part at a time so you don't have to pay for the whole thing again with each generation of games.
Don't tell me you can play Playstation 2 games on a PSOne, or that you can play Nintendo 64 games or Gamecube games on an NES or a SuperNintendo. You can, however, slap a new (not necessarily top-of-the-line sometimes) video card or processor in a lot of motherboards and play a lot of games you couldn't before.
Depending on the particular hardware, you may or may not be able to upgrade a PC to the newest processor or the fastest video card. Most games these days don't really need either, even when the game is brand new. OF course, both do help with the majority of new games.
Also, you can't base the value of a PC on the value of a console unless you use the PC for nothing but games. Have you ever typed a report, designed a web page, done serious photo editing, or balanced your checkbook on your Xbox or Playstation?
Amen. The people who need to see it in this case are the court and IBM. That will be sufficient to splinter Darl's sick dreams of being Bill Gate's lovable sidekick into sagans of slivers.
So if there's a terrorist attack, a school hostage situation, a 60-car pileup, or a fertilizer truck hits headon with a diesel fuel truck, the power necessarily goes out?
I know that it's a pain for the Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, et cetera speaking people in the world to use systems mainly built by and for people who speak English, French, and German.
It's a little scary, though, that the east Asian countries are developing their own track of OSes with which we in the west may have to learn to deal. It's also a scary thought that having a group of OSes for one set of people and another set of OSes for another set of people may slow or even reverse the growing commonality of international communication.
Of course, this is coming from an American spoiled by the fact that most of the world is willing to learn my native language. I know enough of two other languages to make do, and enough of a fourth to find a taxi, hospital, restaurant, toilet, and hotel -- enough to travel in a pinch I guess. So I'm not the average Anglophonic snob. But still, it's a bit scary.
Hopefully all the multi-byte character support and such built into the systems such as this can improve the same on other OSes. It' be a shame if we were to be separated by both language and platform from a substantial part of the world.
If I have to admin the security from the console, apply the security fixes from the console, and have to go to the console to even check to see if there's a break-in, then having a hard time controlling a machine remotely helps me in terms of security how?
Not to mention that Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Terminal Services Edition, Windows 2000 Small Business Edition, and Windows 2000 Embedded all come from Winbdows NT 4. NT 4 was already split into Server and Desktop. They both come from Windows NT 3.51. Before Windows NT, there was Windows and there was OS/2, which was supposed to be the next Windows from a joint MS/IBM team -- until Windows 95 came along to replace OS/2 and trampled on IBM's part of the effort.
Currently, the Windows 9x branch and the Windows NT branch are reunited, but then split again into Home, Professional, Media Center Edition, and Embedded (possibly among others, I've lost track). Then there's also Windows 2003. And XP and 2003 are both going to have 32 bit and 64 bit versions separately, if I'm not mistaken. And the 64-bit versions are rumored to be released as different releases for Itanium and for AMD64.
So what's that again about proprietary projects not forking?
Are you noit still free to put a PCI SVGA card in your Linux box and use the GPLed driver for standard VGA or for SVGA?
I don't see the binary-only drivers for the top current cards (nVidia and ATI) as giving us fewer choices. I see them giving us more choices, although some of the choices are somewhat tainted by being closed source.
No, I'm not a new Linux user. I've had to compile the Linux kernel on DOS and use loadlin myself in the past. I've used Yggdrasil, SoftLanding, and a few more distributions that haven't been around in years. These were a great step forward in getting Linux in wider use. Better distributions (Slackware, Debian, RedHat, Mandrake) than those have helped more since then.
Using a distribution involves making choices between control and ease. The FSF isn't always thrilled about the Linux kernel, but a hell of a lot more people use GNU utilities with Linux than with the Horde. Embracing Linux as part of the GNU system is about taking what's available and widely popular in place of having the extra control they have over the Horde kernel.
So you have every right to write your own nVidia drivers (although the tech info for the cards not being released does make this much harder), you have the right to use the black box driver instead, you have the right to use another card and driver, and you have the right to use the black box driver and feel uneasy about it until something better comes along. I'd recommend the last of these options if you can't find an acceptably performing card with an open driver, but of course many of us are willing to accept less performance because the driver is open. This is of course especially the case for machines that don't do much with 3d or even fast 2d graphics.
I want the damages due me from SCO. They have stolen many, many lines of code from me.
Here are a few of them:
1. #include 2. int main( int argc,char *argv[] ) { 3. for (1) { 4. } 5. int x; 6. printf('Hello, World!\n');
These lines or permutations of them including respacing, string literal changes, or variable renaming all littered throughout SCO's source. They are parts of my copyrighted works, and I want my money!
Actually, in the U.S., the prosecution can sometimes get a new trial after a mistrial. It's even possible sometimes for new, separate charges to be brought in regards to the same acts if there is sufficient new evidence. That's not double jeopardy, because it's not the same charges. The standards which allow an appeal by the prosecution are bound to vary from country to country, and differe from U.S. state to U.S. state in regards to state trials.
Also, it's not considered double jeopardy to be tried by more than one level of government in the U.S., so a state can try and sentence omeone on state charges for the same acts which the U.S. federal government tries and sentences someone. The federal government can't retry the same charges, and the state can't retry the same charges. But they can both try separate charges arising from the same event.
Also, an appeal in the U.S., whether brought by prosecution or defense, is not a new trial. An appeal can overturn a verdict based on procedure of the government, but it is often only a step to allow a new trial in which the defense can get a fairer trial or present new evidence or new testimony. An appeals court in the U.S. doesn't hear the original evidence of the original case in any manner -- only about the manner in which the original case may not have been sufficiently fair and just.
Watcom, Borland, Microsoft, Symantec, Intel, and many other vendors rolled out C compilers with fee-based licenses and minor to major incompatibilities in some of the features not too terribly long ago (late 80s, so yes, I guess it was a long time ago in computer years).
Then along came the standardization process, and they became much more alike, using mostly the best features / behaviors from each. ANSI C / ISO C made inroads specifically because there had been competing products to prove the worth of the features. Otherwise, C would still be K&R C.
GCC came along and was able to become so successful because the standard had been worked out. UnitedLinux, Carrier Grade Linux, and other working groups / associations are building on the work of differing entities and incorporating the solutions which have been shown to work the best. There's little difference in how this is done, except that since the source is available among the entire group, the solutions can be integrated more easily with one another.
Duplication of effort is not always a bad idea. Cooperation has its place. So does competition, even within the Free Software and Open Source worlds. If we didn't scrat5ch the same itch once in a while and only had one solution for every problem, then we'd never know if there's a better way to do things. One of the reasons that OSS / FS is so successful is that multiple paths are taken, things get reevaluated, and the course is corrected. Sometimes this means that projects converge and use the best from each part, and sometimes it means that yet another project starts in the same area.
Linux isn't the only Free Software OS, and there are plenty of Open Source OSes on top of those. Off the top of my head, there are at least somewhat working prototypes up to completely working OSes for GNU/Linux, MINIX, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, PicoBSD, PaulOS, Plan 9, ReactOS, OpenVMS, FreeVMS, FreeDOS, Darwin (BSD kernel), GNU/Horde, VisOpSys, MMURTL, B-Free, V2, eCOS, UZIX, and Contiki. A few of these might not have OSI approved licenses, but I'm certain that almost all do.
I'm sure there are others that do which I can't list from memory. Do all these being around negatively affect one another? Since many ideas and much code is shared back and forth among many of these projects, do they help one another? Heck, having three different free BSD systems seems to have helped BSD as a whole in some ways and hurt it in others.
Those with a philosophical difference with one maintaining group starting a new distribution is not necessarily a bad thing. There's proof enough that FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD are all three necessary in that each of the three have proponents who evangelize the benefits over the other two. The similar debates of BSD vs. Linux or of Suse vs. RedHat are no better or worse.
How many here remember Yggdrasil or Soft Landing System? They were Linux distros before RedHat or Suse. They're gone because they were no longer relevant. As long as people have a preference for Debian, RedHat, Suse, Gentoo, Slackware, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc., then all of these projects will exist. When there are no users who prefer RedHat, RedHat will be gone. When there are no users who prefer NetBSD, it will be gone. I don't see either of these coming to pass anytime soon, if at all. The BSD license and the GPL at least make sure they don't just disappear if they are no longer developed. The source will be picked over for possible inclusion of tasty pieces in other projects long after individual distros die.
The same will be true of mail clients, mail servers, web servers, web browsers, desktop environments, text formatters, and every other project. The same principals work no matter the market, and no matter the nature of the licenses. Even car manufacturers borrow ideas from one another. The Open Source world makes this process easier (and in some cases more legal).
Sure, there are downsides to duplicated effort. There are upsides, too. If a problem is important enough that twenty groups attack it differently, then it's important enough that all those avenues are tried and the weaker ones be sifted out.
You're worried about runtime size and you're recommending Smalltalk? Furrfu! What about OCaml or Eiffel? Heck, even Perl has a smaller memory footprint in some instances than Smalltalk -- and you can do OO in Perl, although it doesn't force you to.
Slashdot Mirror
This may have been SCO's goal, but it seems they're playing a great deal of defense while picking on IBM, due to IBM's counterclaims.
So how about an extra file? file_id.diz, README, 00_index, et cetera are powerful tools. Playlists are stored as separate fiels. Why not track info?
PCs don't need to be upgraded. This myth has no basis in fact or logic.
My 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System is the same system it was when I bought it. My Sears Video Computer System is the same as when my parents bought it for me. My 286-20 (after all the upgrade parts were built into a separate 386) is again the same 286-20 it was when I bought it. My Cyrix 6x86 150+ is still identical to the way it was bought. All of these systems play the same games now as they did then, and just as well.
What you can't do with a PC is use a five year old PC to play a game which requires the features of a brand new PC. But guess what... you can't play a game for a brand new console on a five year old console either!
What you can do with the PC, if you choose, is sometimes find parts from an older system still worthwhile to use in a new system or to upgrade one part at a time so you don't have to pay for the whole thing again with each generation of games.
Don't tell me you can play Playstation 2 games on a PSOne, or that you can play Nintendo 64 games or Gamecube games on an NES or a SuperNintendo. You can, however, slap a new (not necessarily top-of-the-line sometimes) video card or processor in a lot of motherboards and play a lot of games you couldn't before.
Depending on the particular hardware, you may or may not be able to upgrade a PC to the newest processor or the fastest video card. Most games these days don't really need either, even when the game is brand new. OF course, both do help with the majority of new games.
Also, you can't base the value of a PC on the value of a console unless you use the PC for nothing but games. Have you ever typed a report, designed a web page, done serious photo editing, or balanced your checkbook on your Xbox or Playstation?
I think you mena they're moving towards Linux, not away.
Amen. The people who need to see it in this case are the court and IBM. That will be sufficient to splinter Darl's sick dreams of being Bill Gate's lovable sidekick into sagans of slivers.
So if there's a terrorist attack, a school hostage situation, a 60-car pileup, or a fertilizer truck hits headon with a diesel fuel truck, the power necessarily goes out?
I know that it's a pain for the Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, et cetera speaking people in the world to use systems mainly built by and for people who speak English, French, and German.
It's a little scary, though, that the east Asian countries are developing their own track of OSes with which we in the west may have to learn to deal. It's also a scary thought that having a group of OSes for one set of people and another set of OSes for another set of people may slow or even reverse the growing commonality of international communication.
Of course, this is coming from an American spoiled by the fact that most of the world is willing to learn my native language. I know enough of two other languages to make do, and enough of a fourth to find a taxi, hospital, restaurant, toilet, and hotel -- enough to travel in a pinch I guess. So I'm not the average Anglophonic snob. But still, it's a bit scary.
Hopefully all the multi-byte character support and such built into the systems such as this can improve the same on other OSes. It' be a shame if we were to be separated by both language and platform from a substantial part of the world.
Because where else are you going to change weapons in without taking your hands away from your fire or movement buttons?
Of course, a driver for the pedals on a driving or flying control set which use right pedal for forward and left pedal for backward would be cool...
Probably one of the best writers of science fiction.
Ever heard of Red Plant or Starship Troopers? Stranger in a Strange Land?
He won Hugo awards in 1956, 1959, 1961, and 1966. He's had other works nominated for the award. He was published for over 50 years.
He also has written quite a bit of nonfiction.
If I have to admin the security from the console, apply the security fixes from the console, and have to go to the console to even check to see if there's a break-in, then having a hard time controlling a machine remotely helps me in terms of security how?
Not to mention that Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Terminal Services Edition, Windows 2000 Small Business Edition, and Windows 2000 Embedded all come from Winbdows NT 4. NT 4 was already split into Server and Desktop. They both come from Windows NT 3.51. Before Windows NT, there was Windows and there was OS/2, which was supposed to be the next Windows from a joint MS/IBM team -- until Windows 95 came along to replace OS/2 and trampled on IBM's part of the effort.
Currently, the Windows 9x branch and the Windows NT branch are reunited, but then split again into Home, Professional, Media Center Edition, and Embedded (possibly among others, I've lost track). Then there's also Windows 2003. And XP and 2003 are both going to have 32 bit and 64 bit versions separately, if I'm not mistaken. And the 64-bit versions are rumored to be released as different releases for Itanium and for AMD64.
So what's that again about proprietary projects not forking?
Are you noit still free to put a PCI SVGA card in your Linux box and use the GPLed driver for standard VGA or for SVGA?
I don't see the binary-only drivers for the top current cards (nVidia and ATI) as giving us fewer choices. I see them giving us more choices, although some of the choices are somewhat tainted by being closed source.
No, I'm not a new Linux user. I've had to compile the Linux kernel on DOS and use loadlin myself in the past. I've used Yggdrasil, SoftLanding, and a few more distributions that haven't been around in years. These were a great step forward in getting Linux in wider use. Better distributions (Slackware, Debian, RedHat, Mandrake) than those have helped more since then.
Using a distribution involves making choices between control and ease. The FSF isn't always thrilled about the Linux kernel, but a hell of a lot more people use GNU utilities with Linux than with the Horde. Embracing Linux as part of the GNU system is about taking what's available and widely popular in place of having the extra control they have over the Horde kernel.
So you have every right to write your own nVidia drivers (although the tech info for the cards not being released does make this much harder), you have the right to use the black box driver instead, you have the right to use another card and driver, and you have the right to use the black box driver and feel uneasy about it until something better comes along. I'd recommend the last of these options if you can't find an acceptably performing card with an open driver, but of course many of us are willing to accept less performance because the driver is open. This is of course especially the case for machines that don't do much with 3d or even fast 2d graphics.
I want the damages due me from SCO. They have stolen many, many lines of code from me.
Here are a few of them:
1. #include
2. int main( int argc,char *argv[] ) {
3. for (1) {
4. }
5. int x;
6. printf('Hello, World!\n');
These lines or permutations of them including respacing, string literal changes, or variable renaming all littered throughout SCO's source. They are parts of my copyrighted works, and I want my money!
Actually, in the U.S., the prosecution can sometimes get a new trial after a mistrial. It's even possible sometimes for new, separate charges to be brought in regards to the same acts if there is sufficient new evidence. That's not double jeopardy, because it's not the same charges. The standards which allow an appeal by the prosecution are bound to vary from country to country, and differe from U.S. state to U.S. state in regards to state trials.
Also, it's not considered double jeopardy to be tried by more than one level of government in the U.S., so a state can try and sentence omeone on state charges for the same acts which the U.S. federal government tries and sentences someone. The federal government can't retry the same charges, and the state can't retry the same charges. But they can both try separate charges arising from the same event.
Also, an appeal in the U.S., whether brought by prosecution or defense, is not a new trial. An appeal can overturn a verdict based on procedure of the government, but it is often only a step to allow a new trial in which the defense can get a fairer trial or present new evidence or new testimony. An appeals court in the U.S. doesn't hear the original evidence of the original case in any manner -- only about the manner in which the original case may not have been sufficiently fair and just.
Watcom, Borland, Microsoft, Symantec, Intel, and many other vendors rolled out C compilers with fee-based licenses and minor to major incompatibilities in some of the features not too terribly long ago (late 80s, so yes, I guess it was a long time ago in computer years).
Then along came the standardization process, and they became much more alike, using mostly the best features / behaviors from each. ANSI C / ISO C made inroads specifically because there had been competing products to prove the worth of the features. Otherwise, C would still be K&R C.
GCC came along and was able to become so successful because the standard had been worked out. UnitedLinux, Carrier Grade Linux, and other working groups / associations are building on the work of differing entities and incorporating the solutions which have been shown to work the best. There's little difference in how this is done, except that since the source is available among the entire group, the solutions can be integrated more easily with one another.
Duplication of effort is not always a bad idea. Cooperation has its place. So does competition, even within the Free Software and Open Source worlds. If we didn't scrat5ch the same itch once in a while and only had one solution for every problem, then we'd never know if there's a better way to do things. One of the reasons that OSS / FS is so successful is that multiple paths are taken, things get reevaluated, and the course is corrected. Sometimes this means that projects converge and use the best from each part, and sometimes it means that yet another project starts in the same area.
Linux isn't the only Free Software OS, and there are plenty of Open Source OSes on top of those. Off the top of my head, there are at least somewhat working prototypes up to completely working OSes for GNU/Linux, MINIX, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, PicoBSD, PaulOS, Plan 9, ReactOS, OpenVMS, FreeVMS, FreeDOS, Darwin (BSD kernel), GNU/Horde, VisOpSys, MMURTL, B-Free, V2, eCOS, UZIX, and Contiki. A few of these might not have OSI approved licenses, but I'm certain that almost all do.
I'm sure there are others that do which I can't list from memory. Do all these being around negatively affect one another? Since many ideas and much code is shared back and forth among many of these projects, do they help one another? Heck, having three different free BSD systems seems to have helped BSD as a whole in some ways and hurt it in others.
Those with a philosophical difference with one maintaining group starting a new distribution is not necessarily a bad thing. There's proof enough that FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD are all three necessary in that each of the three have proponents who evangelize the benefits over the other two. The similar debates of BSD vs. Linux or of Suse vs. RedHat are no better or worse.
How many here remember Yggdrasil or Soft Landing System? They were Linux distros before RedHat or Suse. They're gone because they were no longer relevant. As long as people have a preference for Debian, RedHat, Suse, Gentoo, Slackware, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc., then all of these projects will exist. When there are no users who prefer RedHat, RedHat will be gone. When there are no users who prefer NetBSD, it will be gone. I don't see either of these coming to pass anytime soon, if at all. The BSD license and the GPL at least make sure they don't just disappear if they are no longer developed. The source will be picked over for possible inclusion of tasty pieces in other projects long after individual distros die.
The same will be true of mail clients, mail servers, web servers, web browsers, desktop environments, text formatters, and every other project. The same principals work no matter the market, and no matter the nature of the licenses. Even car manufacturers borrow ideas from one another. The Open Source world makes this process easier (and in some cases more legal).
Sure, there are downsides to duplicated effort. There are upsides, too. If a problem is important enough that twenty groups attack it differently, then it's important enough that all those avenues are tried and the weaker ones be sifted out.
You're worried about runtime size and you're recommending Smalltalk? Furrfu! What about OCaml or Eiffel? Heck, even Perl has a smaller memory footprint in some instances than Smalltalk -- and you can do OO in Perl, although it doesn't force you to.