By requiring another purchase of an OS that contains a lot of the old code that the previous version of the OS did, the authoring company extracts SECRECY RENT. And what you get for paying that secrecy rent is interestingly dubious; you get to run programs on top of an OS that you are powerless to recompile to fix because the code is secret -- so if the authoring company doesn't, you're screwed. Microsoft's real problem? Themselves.
>As long as XP continues to get security patches, I can't imagine bothering with "upgrading" >in the foreseeable future.
Distributions that are part of the Free Software Movement can upgraded monthly, weekly, even daily without having to needlessly pay secrecy rent -- and allow at least the possibility of fixing things yourself to boot.
The only real reason I can figure why Windows and other prorietary OS's exist is because of the Monetary System -- i.e. because of money. In a Resource based economy or any system that truly allows for a free society, proprietary OS's have no place.
OpenOffice 3.x is in the Debian Experimental branch. Generally I wouldn't recommend loading things from Experimental unless you specifically want to try the "bleeding edge" and don't mind if it causes you to bleed a bit. And in installing packages from Experimental there would naturally be dependencies that would be needed from Experimental or even Unstable, so your Debian Etch installation would end up being partially upgraded and having a "leg" in several Debian branches. Do it on a box you don't care about first, just in case.
Ugh. It's a preposterous idea to try to limit the number of applications you can run to three, because -- what's an "application"?
- The icon showing current network activity in the taskbar?
- The script you have running the background that needs to run at every startup?
- The uninvited Trojan that is popping up a question?
The clippy prompt could be even more humorous and frustrating. Microsoft naturally wouldn't actually list the maximum number of applications allowed -- because that *might* change, and we wouldn't want to be caught *informing* people...
Hi! It looks like you're trying to run more applications than is currently allowed.
Possible solutions:
- Close one of the running applications:
- Trojan.E
- Virus.B
- Shut down or remove one or more services
- Search help for more (useless) suggestions like "check the cable"
- Contact your system administrator
And that's only if Microsoft remembers to give Clippy an exception to the rule...
Having had a look at the three alternatives you're looking at, I like Fedora DS the most. Thing is, OpenDS and Apache Directory Server run on Java, and that would worry me. Fedora DS does multi-master replication, which is a big deal, and the major feature I really wish slapd/OpenLDAP had -- and Fedora DS is GPL code, too. Novel's eDirectory also does multi-master replication but has commercial licensing costs per client depending on what you're doing with it.
Okay, so there's no Debian package for it, but it appears to be installable via alien:
As someone who WANTED to buy a Lenovo T61 with Linux pre-installed and DIDN'T, I'll tell you my reason why -- the hardware options available for the T61 shipped with SuSE were different than with Windows Vista. For one thing, I really wanted an Nvidia videocard, and the T61 shipped with SuSE only came with integrated Intel video. Also I wanted the ThinkPad Dock, which was NOT an option with the T61 with SuSE -- even though it works JUST FINE with Linux. I ended up going with a T61p (which is now no longer sold) where Vista was the only OS option -- then I shrunk the NTFS partition and loaded Debian Sid on it as soon as it arrived.
Even though I normally use Linux on the Desktop 95% of the time, I had to buy Vista in order to get the hardware options I wanted. No, I didn't try to get a refund for it -- I actually have an occasional use for Windows, and I wanted to try Vista out to see what everyone was complaining about. Now that I have, I call Vista "The OS that stops you from working."
Auto makers generally operate on a 1% profit margin, so a major design flaw with the engine could bankrupt them (and several of them are pretty close to that as it is!). You are assuming that the engine could be modified after-the-fact to fix the theoretical issue...
Likewise on the other side of the coin, some silicon chips *can* be modified to a very limited extent after manufacture.
I read The Fine Article; a few comments on the author's article:
Iceweasel =-=-=-=-= One of the complaints is that he wants "real" Firefox rather than the renamed Iceweasel. Well, until the Mozilla Foundation says differently, that isn't possible. Mozilla withdrew their prior permission to ship Firefox with a replaced logo that fit the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and the only way to comply with both Mozilla and the DFSG was to rename the application. So if you want to complain about this, write to Mozilla. I think Debian totally made the right choice to rename.
Playing a DVD =-=-=-=-=-=-= The author wasn't able to test playing a DVD; normal movie DVDs that use encryption won't play out of the box. This is because Debian cannot ship libdvdcss2 as part of the main distribution for legal reasons, same as other distributions. There are other external repositories (outside of the US) that contain libdvdcss2 -- but it may not be legal to import the package into the US. You might find some choices if you put "Debian" and "multimedia" into Google and see what comes up.
Modem =-=-=-= Wow, the author set up the POTS modem. When is the last time you had to use one of those? Gotta give him credit for going through that effort.
_Maybe_ they've got an algorithm which compresses _random_ data by 100:1. The methodology, as I read it, sounds suspicious. They want to take seemingly 2-dimensional (serial, basically) data and encode it so it looks 3-dimensional, and somehow that helps compression.
Doesn't this encoding take some extra space? Seems to me as if there would have to be position data for this 2D stuff to become 3D stuff.
But honestly, the terminology aside, the mere fact that their website looks so fancy and "flashy" and that they've got as little technical detail as possible leads me to believe that this is not worth my time looking into. Anybody that puts this much effort into appearance has no substance to back it up, in my experience.
We'll know they went wrong once the SEC starts investigating for their wild claims. And if they've got the next compression method that beats all else, hey - cool. But I doubt it.
Try to define art.
Now try to define computer art.
What's the difference?
In my mind, art = art, and it doesn't matter what the "object" that was used to create the art. Sculpture, painting, computer screen, printout, file, etc. Whatever.
I have family from Arkansas, and the family we have that live there are technology limited due to lower availability of computers. So the fact that "computer art" is not taken seriously where computers are higher priced, or more rare, does not surprise me.
In addition, it always takes time for "human culture" to come up to speed with technology - or vice versa.
I think your thoughts and feelings are correct that something is wrong with being told that your computer artwork is not artwork. Keep doing what you enjoy and believe in.
- Chris
Slashdot Mirror
The killer app: FORCED OBSOLECENSE.
By requiring another purchase of an OS that contains a lot of the old code that the previous version of the OS did, the authoring company extracts SECRECY RENT. And what you get for paying that secrecy rent is interestingly dubious; you get to run programs on top of an OS that you are powerless to recompile to fix because the code is secret -- so if the authoring company doesn't, you're screwed. Microsoft's real problem? Themselves.
>As long as XP continues to get security patches, I can't imagine bothering with "upgrading"
>in the foreseeable future.
Distributions that are part of the Free Software Movement can upgraded monthly, weekly, even daily without having to needlessly pay secrecy rent -- and allow at least the possibility of fixing things yourself to boot.
The only real reason I can figure why Windows and other prorietary OS's exist is because of the Monetary System -- i.e. because of money. In a Resource based economy or any system that truly allows for a free society, proprietary OS's have no place.
OpenOffice 3.x is in the Debian Experimental branch. Generally I wouldn't recommend loading things from Experimental unless you specifically want to try the "bleeding edge" and don't mind if it causes you to bleed a bit. And in installing packages from Experimental there would naturally be dependencies that would be needed from Experimental or even Unstable, so your Debian Etch installation would end up being partially upgraded and having a "leg" in several Debian branches. Do it on a box you don't care about first, just in case.
Ugh. It's a preposterous idea to try to limit the number of applications you can run to three, because -- what's an "application"?
- The icon showing current network activity in the taskbar?
- The script you have running the background that needs to run at every startup?
- The uninvited Trojan that is popping up a question?
The clippy prompt could be even more humorous and frustrating. Microsoft naturally wouldn't actually list the maximum number of applications allowed -- because that *might* change, and we wouldn't want to be caught *informing* people...
Hi! It looks like you're trying to run more applications than is currently allowed.
Possible solutions:
- Close one of the running applications:
- Trojan.E
- Virus.B
- Shut down or remove one or more services
- Search help for more (useless) suggestions like "check the cable"
- Contact your system administrator
And that's only if Microsoft remembers to give Clippy an exception to the rule...
Having had a look at the three alternatives you're looking at, I like Fedora DS the most. Thing is, OpenDS and Apache Directory Server run on Java, and that would worry me. Fedora DS does multi-master replication, which is a big deal, and the major feature I really wish slapd/OpenLDAP had -- and Fedora DS is GPL code, too. Novel's eDirectory also does multi-master replication but has commercial licensing costs per client depending on what you're doing with it.
Okay, so there's no Debian package for it, but it appears to be installable via alien:
http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:DebianEtch
As someone who WANTED to buy a Lenovo T61 with Linux pre-installed and DIDN'T, I'll tell you my reason why -- the hardware options available for the T61 shipped with SuSE were different than with Windows Vista. For one thing, I really wanted an Nvidia videocard, and the T61 shipped with SuSE only came with integrated Intel video. Also I wanted the ThinkPad Dock, which was NOT an option with the T61 with SuSE -- even though it works JUST FINE with Linux. I ended up going with a T61p (which is now no longer sold) where Vista was the only OS option -- then I shrunk the NTFS partition and loaded Debian Sid on it as soon as it arrived.
Even though I normally use Linux on the Desktop 95% of the time, I had to buy Vista in order to get the hardware options I wanted. No, I didn't try to get a refund for it -- I actually have an occasional use for Windows, and I wanted to try Vista out to see what everyone was complaining about. Now that I have, I call Vista "The OS that stops you from working."
Likewise on the other side of the coin, some silicon chips *can* be modified to a very limited extent after manufacture.
I read The Fine Article; a few comments on the author's article:
Iceweasel
=-=-=-=-=
One of the complaints is that he wants "real" Firefox rather than the renamed Iceweasel. Well, until the Mozilla Foundation says differently, that isn't possible. Mozilla withdrew their prior permission to ship Firefox with a replaced logo that fit the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and the only way to comply with both Mozilla and the DFSG was to rename the application. So if you want to complain about this, write to Mozilla. I think Debian totally made the right choice to rename.
Shorter explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_IceCat
Longer explanation:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=354622
Playing a DVD
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The author wasn't able to test playing a DVD; normal movie DVDs that use encryption won't play out of the box. This is because Debian cannot ship libdvdcss2 as part of the main distribution for legal reasons, same as other distributions. There are other external repositories (outside of the US) that contain libdvdcss2 -- but it may not be legal to import the package into the US. You might find some choices if you put "Debian" and "multimedia" into Google and see what comes up.
Modem
=-=-=-=
Wow, the author set up the POTS modem. When is the last time you had to use one of those? Gotta give him credit for going through that effort.
- Chris
_Maybe_ they've got an algorithm which compresses _random_ data by 100:1. The methodology, as I read it, sounds suspicious. They want to take seemingly 2-dimensional (serial, basically) data and encode it so it looks 3-dimensional, and somehow that helps compression.
Doesn't this encoding take some extra space? Seems to me as if there would have to be position data for this 2D stuff to become 3D stuff.
But honestly, the terminology aside, the mere fact that their website looks so fancy and "flashy" and that they've got as little technical detail as possible leads me to believe that this is not worth my time looking into. Anybody that puts this much effort into appearance has no substance to back it up, in my experience.
We'll know they went wrong once the SEC starts investigating for their wild claims. And if they've got the next compression method that beats all else, hey - cool. But I doubt it.
- Chris
Try to define art. Now try to define computer art. What's the difference? In my mind, art = art, and it doesn't matter what the "object" that was used to create the art. Sculpture, painting, computer screen, printout, file, etc. Whatever. I have family from Arkansas, and the family we have that live there are technology limited due to lower availability of computers. So the fact that "computer art" is not taken seriously where computers are higher priced, or more rare, does not surprise me. In addition, it always takes time for "human culture" to come up to speed with technology - or vice versa. I think your thoughts and feelings are correct that something is wrong with being told that your computer artwork is not artwork. Keep doing what you enjoy and believe in. - Chris