Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
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· Score: 1
If I write a GPL'd app for myself I don't have to give anyone the changes if I choose not to. But if I copy/distribute a binary to a co-worker (as would be my job as an in-house coder)-- in my understanding of the GPL that co-worker can demand access to the source code. And if that company becomes disgruntled they could then distribute the code to anyone under the terms of the GPL again.
Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
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· Score: -1, Troll
And that in a nutshell is why companies that expect to sell to enterprises are selecting Gnome by default (Sun, RedHat, UserLinux), and why Novell will almost certainly use Gnome as a default for their distro that they will aim at enterprises. It's a hard enough step to convince corps to adopt Linux on the desktop, asking them to GPL everything they create in-house for that desktop is stupid.
Of course Novell/Xandros/etc shipping KDE could bundle QT licenses or expect enterprise customers to develop GTK apps while using a QT environment... but that seems a losing strategy to me in the long run. KDE on the home user desktop is just fine (except for how ugly KDE looks but that is a matter of opinion of course) -- but a company targeting enterprise customers and uses QT is Just Plain Suicidal(TM).
What you have described seems to be how the US copyright system was designed. Copyrights exist for a limited amount of time so the author gets paid and encourage new materials to be written, and then public domain after a short period of time. The problem was that the copyright period kept getting extended thanks to the influence of powerful media megacorps. But since the USA exports a hell of a lot of crap that depends on these expanded copyright laws, I don't think they'll be returning copyright laws to their its anytime soon.
When will people learn? When they break their installation and complain on slashdot and read the replies that explain what they did wrong? Worked for me!;-)
New enough for you, perhaps. Is xfce4 in yet? KDE3.1.4? I read that Gnome 2.4 has hit now, finally... but after a very long time.
Since the concept of apt-get has spread to every distro out there, the only apolitical advantage to debian that I can think of offhand is the vast number of packages in unstable. Now, I like the politics of Debian and I would (and do) use it, but sometimes you want a modern system without breaking your desktop, and thus I've joined the dark side (aka Fedora) for my desktop usage. Sad but true.
Yesterday "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" fully broke Sid's Gnome on my desktop, prompting me to reluctantly replace it with Fedora. I don't think that Debian on the desktop is growing or even going to grow anytime soon if ever. The long release schedules for stable and constantly breaking unstable and the infrequency in adding important packages to testing means that it's nearly impossible to have a modern working desktop with Debian unless your interest is more in getting it to work rather than getting other things done.
On the server side, I'm one of the people representing the statistics showing a decline in RedHat users late last year at the expense of Debian. The very same long release schedules that frustrate desktop usage translate into very secure and stable servers, and I'm very happy to call my self a satisified user of Debian as a server. The netcraft and slashdot headlines are very misleading, but they are probably accurate of server usage instead of overall Linux usage.
If you read closer, I said "deal with" does not have to mean "produce software for". Releasing the specs openly would qualify for dealing with Linux, though they would probably also want to produce drivers themselves in order to have a product that is useful when it ships instead of waiting for 3rd party developers to build the drivers and get them introduced into the distributions.
The most useful thing of course would be for the manufacturers to do both -- develop their own drivers for the most popular consumer-oriented distros out there -- Fedora and SuSE, and then release the specs so that communitity-oriented distros like Gentoo and Debian can use it also.
... because many important peripherals do not work by default. For example, getting 802.11x is still a pita in linux unless you plan ahead by making certain that your hardware works with it. And most people won't care about saving a few hundred bucks if they can't get a scanner or camera or mp3 player or PDA or $whatever to interface with their PC. I could not pretend that an average user should use Linux at this point, unless they are interesting in having PC maintenance as a new hobby.
This is not a problem with the linux kernel, but instead a typical problem of market share in a marketplace dominated by a player with a high degree of monopoly power. Put more simply, the problem is not that Linux sucks, it just needs to have larger market share before hardware manufacturers pay attention and bother with the hassle of trying to deal with Linux (multiple distros, multiple DEs, etc).
However, 2004 will probably be the year where corporations start to move some of their enterprise desktops to Linux. With Novell and Sun both pushing Linux/GNOME solutions, and the less varied peripheral requirements of Linux in the corporate environment... things seem to be pointing in that direction. I would predict that "Year of the Desktop" makes more sense for 2005, when Linux will be building market share thanks to the corps, and hardware manufacturers start to pay more attention to getting things to work.
Though, for knowledgeable people who are willing to go through the hassle of getting devices to work with Linux, the Year of the Desktop was really 2003... at least for me it was. DVD, ALSA, OOo, MozillaFirebird.... these things help make the Linux desktop possible and they are here long before 2004 started.
"But it's no more violent than "Boyz in The Hood", or "Goodfellas", or most any other "R"-rated movie."
In fact, I would suggest that a game like GTA3 Vice City is far less violent than the movies that you quoted... the graphics are more cartoonish and the plot more rediculous, which reduces the violent intensity of the game. The problem is not that GTA3 and Vice City are more violent than other games, that argument is foolish because there are many other games that consist solely of violence.
What makes the Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City games unique is the degree of freedom that they permit the gamer to do whatever they please. Even when compared to similar styled games like 'The Getaway' or 'True Crime: Streets of LA', the GTA franchise is alone in the degree to which the operater can cause mayhem of wide variety and of spectacular consequence.
I've listened to whiners complain about violent video games and called bullshit each time. But this time I'm not so certain that the game had no role in making kids more violent. I know that at least for myself I can attest to GTA3 influencing my thought patterns after playing a long stretch of the game. I think it's foolhardy to assume that these immersive games that allow such a wide degree of freedom not to have an effect on our behaviour.
Does that mean that Take Two is fully responsible for those two dumbass kids that shot the trucker? No, and I'm not suggesting that. What I'm saying is that there is *something* going on there, and it's no more accurate to say that GTA3 doesn't affect behaviour any more than to say that Take Two is the work of the devil. Someone more qualified than I (and I suspect you also) could probably quanitify the effect though, I would be quite interested in seeing the results of a study based on that.
From here and here: "XFree86 I helped create it, along with David Dawes, Jim Tsillas, and Glenn Lai. I haven't done any work on XFree86 in about five years, but I'm still on the Core Team, and on the Board of Directors, and I kibitz a lot. " and "...but I'm a Windows user, not an Open Source user (hence why this page is built with FrontPage)"
Whoa Keanu... that link you posted clears up the news release for me quite a bit. I can forgive anyone for choosing to run Windows if they need/prefer to... everyone has different values and goals. But if a core team member has disavowed Open Source altogether and builds his simple website in Windows and Frontpage... perhaps a shakeup of the core team was more required than an outsider like myself could ever guess.
Well, you could be right... I don't really know. In BC anyways I've seen harded Tories looking at how little difference there is between the fiscal aspects of Paul Martin and the Conservative party, and are wondering why they should fight our new PM. The vitriol directed at Cretien seems absent, at least for now...
If Mr. Martin is as smart as I expect him to be, he will push through a couple of pro-West policies before calling the election to indicate he is serious about his pro-Western policies. But that is just a prediction, if he doesn't do anything he might be just seen as another Liberal... but I wouldn't count on it. We'll see.
If Van East goes to the Tories I'll eat my pants. If you know what Van East means you would make the same bet. We have the only legal heroin injection site in the entire continent, and have many of the poorest and most destitute people in the country living here. You think they'll vote for the Tories who have been boxed into the far right wing by Mr. Martin (again, this will only last until Martin is judged by his record and not expectations)
Anyhow, I'm understand fully well that you don't like him, but the fact remains that Paul Martin is by far the most popular politician in Canada. The fact that you have different priorities than the majority of Canadians does not mean that Jack Layton has a hope in hell of winning the next election. And I like Mr. Layton! I just know that he can't win, at least not until Mr. Martin is judged on his own record.
If the NDP want to make a positive contribution to the next election, they should stress concrete and simple policy changes that are popular with Canadians. You just watch, and Martin will adopt them in the same way that Trudeau adopted Tommy Douglas's universal health care. I say this because I predict that Mr. Martin, like Mr. Trudeau, is clever enough to steal good ideas from rival parties. The way that the NDP is currently harping on corporate tax breaks (the xmas present to corporations they keep referring to) is *exactly* what they need to continue doing, and they will continue to have increased popularity and achieve policy goals at the same time.
That might not be the same as winning the next election, but face it, it's already over before it starts. If you care about policy and not power you will understand what I mean by this. In the short term the NDP have a positive role to play in Canadian politics and I predict that they will form the official opposition (though it will probably be tight).
I'm betting that the NDP will pick up a bunch of seats in Vancouver, Toronto, Vancouver Island, Manitoba/Sask, and maybe a few other ridings in urban or impoverished areas in ontario and the atlantic provinces. Also betting that they will outdo the Tories who won't do very well anywhere outside of Alberta and rural BC (and maybe a few in NS if Lord is the new leader). And that the BQ will be beaten into near-oblivion, with the Liberals cleaning the floor.
You are like all the Libarals/Tories I've ever met.
ass u me.
Ask and see what he says. I'm sure it will be very diplomatic and polished... not the kind of response you would expect from someone being truly candid.
Look, one of us is imagining things... I don't pretend that Paul Martin isn't a very polished diplomat who waffles on issues like GST, Iraq, and corporate taxes. Because uh, he is exactly that. It's not my fault that he's massively popular and is going to win every province except for Alberta (and might even come close there).
That is the fault of reality, and that is who you seem to have an argument with. Paul Martin is going to win, not because the people of Canada are stupid, but because the people of Canada give Mr. Martin the credit for the economic progress of the 90s, while they blame Mr. Cretien for all of the bad things the Liberals did during his tenure.
He has also been very clever in presenting himself as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, something that many Canadians can identify with. I know people on the right and the left that expect him to be a good PM, this is why he is popular and why he will win. This is reality, like it or not.
Because of his reputation and the expectations of Canadians Mr. Martin will get into power with huge support across the country. And no, it's not fair because he has got all of the credit and none of the blame for the Liberal record. But that doesn't change the fact that Canadians have identified this with him. He will be judged by his record in his second election, when he can be judged by his own record instead of an imagined one.
And yes, I'm planning to vote for Mr. Martin, but my district will likely go to the NDP anyhow...
You see? The leader is why people vote for the party, so in a sense, Paul Martin is unelected because nobody thought about him on E Day.
Your argument would make sense if any of the following points where true:
* If Paul Martin was terribly unpopular (instead he is massively popular) * If Mr. Martin had not been the overwhelmingly likely candidate to replace Jean Chretien (instead people were shocked he was not already the Liberal candidate the last election) * If this was some sort of new precedent that the Liberals set (instead the Tories did the same exact thing when they were last in power)
So uh, he's a very popular politician who is most likely going to win the next election by a wide margin, and came to power under a system with precedent to the surprise of no one. Your problem is not that Paul Martin wasn't elected, your problem is that you don't like him -- these are very different things.
When the inevitable spring election arrives and Martin takes every province except Alberta, you will have to find a new way to whinge, I suggest you start working on it now so you work the kinks out before you need it.
* The characters feel similar to those in Cryptonomicon (another crazy Shaftoe, Daniel Waterhouse is akin to the main character from Crypto).
Close, but not strong enough. Apparently Stephenson was bored with the creative process and couldn't be assed to imagine new characters... so let's reissue a new Shaftoe and a new Waterhouse in a new era. Oh, and in case it wasn't clear enough that we are reusing the same characters lets bring back Enoch Root!
But of course there need to be characters that weren't in previous novels... how can Neal accomplish this without excerting any creative effort? Simple, just throw in a bunch of historical characters and make them do silly things. Dull moment in the plot? Hey look, Issac Newton's at the door. Getting bored are we? Let's chill with Ben Franklin! It's not interesting to read because there is nothing new here... it seems like he's competely given up on the creative process altogether.
* One of the hardest things to do right when there are parallel plotlines is connect them in a flowing and lucid manner. Cryptonomicon did an excellent job of weaving the past and present together. In Quicksilver, we get large chunks of uninterrupted narration, but there's very little context switching. This left me a little bored at times.
The problem with this style is not the style itself, but with how Stephenson executes it in this case. In Cryptonomicon I actually cared enough to keep reading the next page, but in this case it was tedious slogging through the pages. I'd put it down and pick it up again a few days later and it would keep jumping around and didn't ever allow me to build any sort of context. This in turn made me care even less which increased the time before I would try picking it up again, which made the context jumping even more painful, etc etc.
As you might be able to tell, I didn't finish the first volume, nor am I remotely interested in the next two. I'm just hoping that after he's done with this stupid "epic" he'll go back to writing books that are readable and interesting and contain characters who aren't simply reruns and references to historical figures. Because I really really liked his work in the past, and I'm bitter now.
I can understand the business decision to go with one DE over the others... this makes good sense. What I *don't* understand is why Perens refuses to include the KDE libs by default. Including the libs and a few choice applications to fill the gaps where kde apps outperform what gnome offers (k3b and others) would do a lot for improving the total package of UserLinux and keep some of the critics at bay.
If I can put on my tinfoil hat for a second here, the best reason I can think of for not including the KDE libs is to stir up the traditional KDE/GNOME debate and get more coverage on slashdot and other sites. Trolling for media coverage, it's the wave of the future!
"kermit is far more robust, can interoperate with various different systems of different character encoding, had adaptive retransmission, and can perform just as well as kermit under the right circumstances."
I would be pretty concerned if it didn't perform as well as itself...
I think the resources would be a tradeoff. Certainly it would be more of a strain on the core developmental resources, but if Evolution were available on Windows it would enable a more mature and well-known set of plugins. I think projects like MozillaFirebird have benefited greatly from Plugin developers that work on non-Linux platform, which helps make it a better product for Linux people too.
For example: I want to sync my bluetooth phone with a contact manager on my laptop. The phone manual suggests that it only works with Microsoft Outlook, ignoring the great work that the MultiSync project has done for providing that same functionality for Linux. If the same functionality was present on Windows there would be a much higher chance that the phone manual writers would include it as a potential option for synching contacts, gaining more exposure to the Evolution project and helping make it a better program.
There are other reasons for Evolution to support Windows, especially now that it is owned by Novell. If corporations could adopt Evolution cross-platform it would be a great advertising boon for their Linux offerings and reduce the costs of switching platforms which again benefits Novell. As well, a Windows client would generate revenue via the Exchange connector because Windows is a much larger installed base and they have a product should be interesting to any corporation trying to maintain outlook compatibility without shelling out hundreds of dollars for MSOffice if they only need the Email functionality for some of their employees.
Not only would they not have to install hardware or software, but it would be quite beneficial for the users to not be able to run the spyware/virus/crap filled programs that users tend to install from the internet despite IT policy. While Windows can be locked down in theory, in practice many applications aren't written with multiple users in mind and the required security methods can't be implemented so every user runs as root. That is not true of UNIX applications, of course.
It doesn't matter if you are ignorant or just trolling, but you have a point about how out of date Woody is for modern desktop installations. There really needs to be official support for application backports. Hopefully when Sarge goes stable that will be basically what the commercial debian-based distros (Xandros, Lindows et al) will be actually doing.
I like this approach, though. It's an individual, saying "I have a fund this large, and am willing to pay this much for these things to get done". Much better than some big corporate bid match-up service that falls flat on its face like some notables over the last few years...
I hear you, but it would still be nice to have a central clearinghouse where all of the bounties are listed. I suspect that these types of funds will grow more common as open source moves towards the mainstream desktop market, and having them all in disparate places would be annoying. It would by nice for, say, a Python coder to go to one website and see all (or at least many) of the bounties that have been put up by people requesting code for Python-based projects.
Of course, for something like that to work there need to be a lot of bounties out there, and right now that just isn't possible. I suspect that it will be in the future, however.
I would see your point if the slashdot article title was "Google to be sued by SCO". But at the time of me writing this the title was instead " Could Google Be SCO's Next Big Target?" which clearly acknowledges that the whole point of the linked article is speculation. Clear to me, anyhow.
This speculation seems in line with SCO's pump-n-dump strategy: suing Google would boost their media profile again and keep them in the news to satisfy their investors by prolonging the time when the stock price is artificially inflated by these seemingly bogus lawsuits. That makes it easier for investors that need to hold onto their stock for a minimum period enough time to get out at the pumped-up price. SCO's tactics aren't all that unusual if you have ever followed the behaviour of penny stocks... lots of tiny mining and pharmaceutical "companies" that don't really exist beyond PR spin.
Since the speculation seems reasonable and interesting, why the hell can't slashdot post it? So long as they mark it as fiction instead of fact, which they did in this case, I think your editorial complaints aren't quite valid.
I would suggest following the instructions on the debian/kde wiki for installing 3.1.X on Sid -- you have to install one package manually and then the rest go like clockwork.
I imagine that there are a lot of people out there like me... I watched the show a few times on FOX when it first came out, and thought it was crude and stupid and never gave it a second thought. But after seeing a bunch of the reruns on cable I've grown to be a huge fan of the show.
Slashdot Mirror
If I write a GPL'd app for myself I don't have to give anyone the changes if I choose not to. But if I copy/distribute a binary to a co-worker (as would be my job as an in-house coder)-- in my understanding of the GPL that co-worker can demand access to the source code. And if that company becomes disgruntled they could then distribute the code to anyone under the terms of the GPL again.
And that in a nutshell is why companies that expect to sell to enterprises are selecting Gnome by default (Sun, RedHat, UserLinux), and why Novell will almost certainly use Gnome as a default for their distro that they will aim at enterprises. It's a hard enough step to convince corps to adopt Linux on the desktop, asking them to GPL everything they create in-house for that desktop is stupid.
Of course Novell/Xandros/etc shipping KDE could bundle QT licenses or expect enterprise customers to develop GTK apps while using a QT environment... but that seems a losing strategy to me in the long run. KDE on the home user desktop is just fine (except for how ugly KDE looks but that is a matter of opinion of course) -- but a company targeting enterprise customers and uses QT is Just Plain Suicidal(TM).
What you have described seems to be how the US copyright system was designed. Copyrights exist for a limited amount of time so the author gets paid and encourage new materials to be written, and then public domain after a short period of time. The problem was that the copyright period kept getting extended thanks to the influence of powerful media megacorps. But since the USA exports a hell of a lot of crap that depends on these expanded copyright laws, I don't think they'll be returning copyright laws to their its anytime soon.
It's a bit more like Debian than RedHat's model I think.
So we have to wait another 2 years before Mandrake 10.0 comes out?
When will people learn? ;-)
When they break their installation and complain on slashdot and read the replies that explain what they did wrong? Worked for me!
New enough for you, perhaps. Is xfce4 in yet? KDE3.1.4? I read that Gnome 2.4 has hit now, finally... but after a very long time.
Since the concept of apt-get has spread to every distro out there, the only apolitical advantage to debian that I can think of offhand is the vast number of packages in unstable. Now, I like the politics of Debian and I would (and do) use it, but sometimes you want a modern system without breaking your desktop, and thus I've joined the dark side (aka Fedora) for my desktop usage. Sad but true.
Yesterday "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade" fully broke Sid's Gnome on my desktop, prompting me to reluctantly replace it with Fedora. I don't think that Debian on the desktop is growing or even going to grow anytime soon if ever. The long release schedules for stable and constantly breaking unstable and the infrequency in adding important packages to testing means that it's nearly impossible to have a modern working desktop with Debian unless your interest is more in getting it to work rather than getting other things done.
On the server side, I'm one of the people representing the statistics showing a decline in RedHat users late last year at the expense of
Debian. The very same long release schedules that frustrate desktop usage translate into very secure and stable servers, and I'm very happy to call my self a satisified user of Debian as a server. The netcraft and slashdot headlines are very misleading, but they are probably accurate of server usage instead of overall Linux usage.
If you read closer, I said "deal with" does not have to mean "produce software for". Releasing the specs openly would qualify for dealing with Linux, though they would probably also want to produce drivers themselves in order to have a product that is useful when it ships instead of waiting for 3rd party developers to build the drivers and get them introduced into the distributions.
The most useful thing of course would be for the manufacturers to do both -- develop their own drivers for the most popular consumer-oriented distros out there -- Fedora and SuSE, and then release the specs so that communitity-oriented distros like Gentoo and Debian can use it also.
... because many important peripherals do not work by default. For example, getting 802.11x is still a pita in linux unless you plan ahead by making certain that your hardware works with it. And most people won't care about saving a few hundred bucks if they can't get a scanner or camera or mp3 player or PDA or $whatever to interface with their PC. I could not pretend that an average user should use Linux at this point, unless they are interesting in having PC maintenance as a new hobby.
This is not a problem with the linux kernel, but instead a typical problem of market share in a marketplace dominated by a player with a high degree of monopoly power. Put more simply, the problem is not that Linux sucks, it just needs to have larger market share before hardware manufacturers pay attention and bother with the hassle of trying to deal with Linux (multiple distros, multiple DEs, etc).
However, 2004 will probably be the year where corporations start to move some of their enterprise desktops to Linux. With Novell and Sun both pushing Linux/GNOME solutions, and the less varied peripheral requirements of Linux in the corporate environment... things seem to be pointing in that direction. I would predict that "Year of the Desktop" makes more sense for 2005, when Linux will be building market share thanks to the corps, and hardware manufacturers start to pay more attention to getting things to work.
Though, for knowledgeable people who are willing to go through the hassle of getting devices to work with Linux, the Year of the Desktop was really 2003... at least for me it was. DVD, ALSA, OOo, MozillaFirebird.... these things help make the Linux desktop possible and they are here long before 2004 started.
"But it's no more violent than "Boyz in The Hood", or "Goodfellas", or most any other "R"-rated movie."
In fact, I would suggest that a game like GTA3 Vice City is far less violent than the movies that you quoted... the graphics are more cartoonish and the plot more rediculous, which reduces the violent intensity of the game. The problem is not that GTA3 and Vice City are more violent than other games, that argument is foolish because there are many other games that consist solely of violence.
What makes the Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City games unique is the degree of freedom that they permit the gamer to do whatever they please. Even when compared to similar styled games like 'The Getaway' or 'True Crime: Streets of LA', the GTA franchise is alone in the degree to which the operater can cause mayhem of wide variety and of spectacular consequence.
I've listened to whiners complain about violent video games and called bullshit each time. But this time I'm not so certain that the game had no role in making kids more violent. I know that at least for myself I can attest to GTA3 influencing my thought patterns after playing a long stretch of the game. I think it's foolhardy to assume that these immersive games that allow such a wide degree of freedom not to have an effect on our behaviour.
Does that mean that Take Two is fully responsible for those two dumbass kids that shot the trucker? No, and I'm not suggesting that. What I'm saying is that there is *something* going on there, and it's no more accurate to say that GTA3 doesn't affect behaviour any more than to say that Take Two is the work of the devil. Someone more qualified than I (and I suspect you also) could probably quanitify the effect though, I would be quite interested in seeing the results of a study based on that.
From here and here:
"XFree86 I helped create it, along with David Dawes, Jim Tsillas, and Glenn Lai. I haven't done any work on XFree86 in about five years, but I'm still on the Core Team, and on the Board of Directors, and I kibitz a lot. " and "...but I'm a Windows user, not an Open Source user (hence why this page is built with FrontPage)"
Whoa Keanu... that link you posted clears up the news release for me quite a bit. I can forgive anyone for choosing to run Windows if they need/prefer to... everyone has different values and goals. But if a core team member has disavowed Open Source altogether and builds his simple website in Windows and Frontpage... perhaps a shakeup of the core team was more required than an outsider like myself could ever guess.
Well, you could be right... I don't really know. In BC anyways I've seen harded Tories looking at how little difference there is between the fiscal aspects of Paul Martin and the Conservative party, and are wondering why they should fight our new PM. The vitriol directed at Cretien seems absent, at least for now...
If Mr. Martin is as smart as I expect him to be, he will push through a couple of pro-West policies before calling the election to indicate he is serious about his pro-Western policies. But that is just a prediction, if he doesn't do anything he might be just seen as another Liberal... but I wouldn't count on it. We'll see.
If Van East goes to the Tories I'll eat my pants. If you know what Van East means you would make the same bet. We have the only legal heroin injection site in the entire continent, and have many of the poorest and most destitute people in the country living here. You think they'll vote for the Tories who have been boxed into the far right wing by Mr. Martin (again, this will only last until Martin is judged by his record and not expectations)
Anyhow, I'm understand fully well that you don't like him, but the fact remains that Paul Martin is by far the most popular politician in Canada. The fact that you have different priorities than the majority of Canadians does not mean that Jack Layton has a hope in hell of winning the next election. And I like Mr. Layton! I just know that he can't win, at least not until Mr. Martin is judged on his own record.
If the NDP want to make a positive contribution to the next election, they should stress concrete and simple policy changes that are popular with Canadians. You just watch, and Martin will adopt them in the same way that Trudeau adopted Tommy Douglas's universal health care. I say this because I predict that Mr. Martin, like Mr. Trudeau, is clever enough to steal good ideas from rival parties. The way that the NDP is currently harping on corporate tax breaks (the xmas present to corporations they keep referring to) is *exactly* what they need to continue doing, and they will continue to have increased popularity and achieve policy goals at the same time.
That might not be the same as winning the next election, but face it, it's already over before it starts. If you care about policy and not power you will understand what I mean by this. In the short term the NDP have a positive role to play in Canadian politics and I predict that they will form the official opposition (though it will probably be tight).
I'm betting that the NDP will pick up a bunch of seats in Vancouver, Toronto, Vancouver Island, Manitoba/Sask, and maybe a few other ridings in urban or impoverished areas in ontario and the atlantic provinces. Also betting that they will outdo the Tories who won't do very well anywhere outside of Alberta and rural BC (and maybe a few in NS if Lord is the new leader). And that the BQ will be beaten into near-oblivion, with the Liberals cleaning the floor.
You are like all the Libarals/Tories I've ever met.
ass u me.
Ask and see what he says. I'm sure it will be very diplomatic and polished... not the kind of response you would expect from someone being truly candid.
Look, one of us is imagining things... I don't pretend that Paul Martin isn't a very polished diplomat who waffles on issues like GST, Iraq, and corporate taxes. Because uh, he is exactly that. It's not my fault that he's massively popular and is going to win every province except for Alberta (and might even come close there).
That is the fault of reality, and that is who you seem to have an argument with. Paul Martin is going to win, not because the people of Canada are stupid, but because the people of Canada give Mr. Martin the credit for the economic progress of the 90s, while they blame Mr. Cretien for all of the bad things the Liberals did during his tenure.
He has also been very clever in presenting himself as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, something that many Canadians can identify with. I know people on the right and the left that expect him to be a good PM, this is why he is popular and why he will win. This is reality, like it or not.
Because of his reputation and the expectations of Canadians Mr. Martin will get into power with huge support across the country. And no, it's not fair because he has got all of the credit and none of the blame for the Liberal record. But that doesn't change the fact that Canadians have identified this with him. He will be judged by his record in his second election, when he can be judged by his own record instead of an imagined one.
And yes, I'm planning to vote for Mr. Martin, but my district will likely go to the NDP anyhow...
You see? The leader is why people vote for the party, so in a sense, Paul Martin is unelected because nobody thought about him on E Day.
Your argument would make sense if any of the following points where true:
* If Paul Martin was terribly unpopular (instead he is massively popular)
* If Mr. Martin had not been the overwhelmingly likely candidate to replace Jean Chretien (instead people were shocked he was not already the Liberal candidate the last election)
* If this was some sort of new precedent that the Liberals set (instead the Tories did the same exact thing when they were last in power)
So uh, he's a very popular politician who is most likely going to win the next election by a wide margin, and came to power under a system with precedent to the surprise of no one. Your problem is not that Paul Martin wasn't elected, your problem is that you don't like him -- these are very different things.
When the inevitable spring election arrives and Martin takes every province except Alberta, you will have to find a new way to whinge, I suggest you start working on it now so you work the kinks out before you need it.
* The characters feel similar to those in Cryptonomicon (another crazy Shaftoe, Daniel Waterhouse is akin to the main character from Crypto).
Close, but not strong enough. Apparently Stephenson was bored with the creative process and couldn't be assed to imagine new characters... so let's reissue a new Shaftoe and a new Waterhouse in a new era. Oh, and in case it wasn't clear enough that we are reusing the same characters lets bring back Enoch Root!
But of course there need to be characters that weren't in previous novels... how can Neal accomplish this without excerting any creative effort? Simple, just throw in a bunch of historical characters and make them do silly things. Dull moment in the plot? Hey look, Issac Newton's at the door. Getting bored are we? Let's chill with Ben Franklin! It's not interesting to read because there is nothing new here... it seems like he's competely given up on the creative process altogether.
* One of the hardest things to do right when there are parallel plotlines is connect them in a flowing and lucid manner. Cryptonomicon did an excellent job of weaving the past and present together. In Quicksilver, we get large chunks of uninterrupted narration, but there's very little context switching. This left me a little bored at times.
The problem with this style is not the style itself, but with how Stephenson executes it in this case. In Cryptonomicon I actually cared enough to keep reading the next page, but in this case it was tedious slogging through the pages. I'd put it down and pick it up again a few days later and it would keep jumping around and didn't ever allow me to build any sort of context. This in turn made me care even less which increased the time before I would try picking it up again, which made the context jumping even more painful, etc etc.
As you might be able to tell, I didn't finish the first volume, nor am I remotely interested in the next two. I'm just hoping that after he's done with this stupid "epic" he'll go back to writing books that are readable and interesting and contain characters who aren't simply reruns and references to historical figures. Because I really really liked his work in the past, and I'm bitter now.
I can understand the business decision to go with one DE over the others... this makes good sense. What I *don't* understand is why Perens refuses to include the KDE libs by default. Including the libs and a few choice applications to fill the gaps where kde apps outperform what gnome offers (k3b and others) would do a lot for improving the total package of UserLinux and keep some of the critics at bay.
If I can put on my tinfoil hat for a second here, the best reason I can think of for not including the KDE libs is to stir up the traditional KDE/GNOME debate and get more coverage on slashdot and other sites. Trolling for media coverage, it's the wave of the future!
"kermit is far more robust, can interoperate with various different systems of different character encoding, had adaptive retransmission, and can perform just as well as kermit under the right circumstances."
I would be pretty concerned if it didn't perform as well as itself...
I think the resources would be a tradeoff. Certainly it would be more of a strain on the core developmental resources, but if Evolution were available on Windows it would enable a more mature and well-known set of plugins. I think projects like MozillaFirebird have benefited greatly from Plugin developers that work on non-Linux platform, which helps make it a better product for Linux people too.
For example: I want to sync my bluetooth phone with a contact manager on my laptop. The phone manual suggests that it only works with Microsoft Outlook, ignoring the great work that the MultiSync project has done for providing that same functionality for Linux. If the same functionality was present on Windows there would be a much higher chance that the phone manual writers would include it as a potential option for synching contacts, gaining more exposure to the Evolution project and helping make it a better program.
There are other reasons for Evolution to support Windows, especially now that it is owned by Novell. If corporations could adopt Evolution cross-platform it would be a great advertising boon for their Linux offerings and reduce the costs of switching platforms which again benefits Novell. As well, a Windows client would generate revenue via the Exchange connector because Windows is a much larger installed base and they have a product should be interesting to any corporation trying to maintain outlook compatibility without shelling out hundreds of dollars for MSOffice if they only need the Email functionality for some of their employees.
Not only would they not have to install hardware or software, but it would be quite beneficial for the users to not be able to run the spyware/virus/crap filled programs that users tend to install from the internet despite IT policy. While Windows can be locked down in theory, in practice many applications aren't written with multiple users in mind and the required security methods can't be implemented so every user runs as root. That is not true of UNIX applications, of course.
It doesn't matter if you are ignorant or just trolling, but you have a point about how out of date Woody is for modern desktop installations. There really needs to be official support for application backports. Hopefully when Sarge goes stable that will be basically what the commercial debian-based distros (Xandros, Lindows et al) will be actually doing.
I hear you, but it would still be nice to have a central clearinghouse where all of the bounties are listed. I suspect that these types of funds will grow more common as open source moves towards the mainstream desktop market, and having them all in disparate places would be annoying. It would by nice for, say, a Python coder to go to one website and see all (or at least many) of the bounties that have been put up by people requesting code for Python-based projects.
Of course, for something like that to work there need to be a lot of bounties out there, and right now that just isn't possible. I suspect that it will be in the future, however.
I would see your point if the slashdot article title was "Google to be sued by SCO". But at the time of me writing this the title was instead " Could Google Be SCO's Next Big Target?" which clearly acknowledges that the whole point of the linked article is speculation. Clear to me, anyhow.
This speculation seems in line with SCO's pump-n-dump strategy: suing Google would boost their media profile again and keep them in the news to satisfy their investors by prolonging the time when the stock price is artificially inflated by these seemingly bogus lawsuits. That makes it easier for investors that need to hold onto their stock for a minimum period enough time to get out at the pumped-up price. SCO's tactics aren't all that unusual if you have ever followed the behaviour of penny stocks... lots of tiny mining and pharmaceutical "companies" that don't really exist beyond PR spin.
Since the speculation seems reasonable and interesting, why the hell can't slashdot post it? So long as they mark it as fiction instead of fact, which they did in this case, I think your editorial complaints aren't quite valid.
I would suggest following the instructions on the debian/kde wiki for installing 3.1.X on Sid -- you have to install one package manually and then the rest go like clockwork.
I imagine that there are a lot of people out there like me... I watched the show a few times on FOX when it first came out, and thought it was crude and stupid and never gave it a second thought. But after seeing a bunch of the reruns on cable I've grown to be a huge fan of the show.