And yet, that doesn't mean that they have accepted those terms in any fashion, and that could be the clincher in such a lawsuit. Unless they make a positive show of acceptance in some fashion, they could claim they never even noticed the license beyond the "free software" statement.
That's what has me worried. I would think that something printed at startup, requiring the user to accept these terms, would be the way to go. It's annoying, yes, but without it, what protection does the author have?
I've been bothered by one thing for a while about the GPL, and I think I might have a solution (or, maybe, this is a non-problem).
It seems that a major concern of the GPL is that if you just USE a program, you do not have to accept the terms of the GPL. By refusing to accept the terms of the GPL, you are also refusing not to hold the authors of the software liable for any failures, leaving the authors open to potential lawsuit.
Solution? Maybe a particular license, in the same fashion as the closed source houses do, disclaiming liability in the event of failure, which must be accepted before the user may begin using the program. This would be in addition to the GPL, which also does the same thing.
Of course, I may be talking about a non-issue, but this seemed like as good a time as any to ask the question.
(Yeah, I forgot that StarOffice isn't exactly open-source, as much so as others, but it's a good example of non-MS software.)
Maybe you should check out Open Office, the next version of Star Office? Since it's under the GPL, you might find it quite nice for the Free Software side of you, and it really is nicer than Star Office.
You are completely wrong, this is why you PAY for an education, this is why you PAY for software, newspapers, etc.
Actually, consider what you are paying for in each of your examples.
Education: You are paying someone to spend time (a VERY scarce commodity) with you, to make sure you understand the material being presented.
Software: Depends on the type of software. If it does require payment, you are paying for as many as two things: The time to develop it, and/or the packaging it comes in. Time is very scare, and the packaging is a physical material, which by definition of being physical, has a limit on how much can be made. That limit creates a scarcity.
Newspapers: Again, time. The time for people to research their stories, for editors to edit them, publishers to print them. And don't forget the material cost of printing the paper.
As you can see, you are not paying for information, but for two commodities which are in short supply: Time and materials. Information? How much would you like? In fairly short order, we could generate a few dozen terrabytes of it for you. Time? Well, good luck getting any more of it.
KIllustrator, if anything, is closer to CorelDraw than anything else. Evidently, you've never used the program.
Neither have I. However, due to the name, and having known the name Adobe Illustrator (though not having used it), I assumed that the two were very similar in function and form. This, to me, seems to be the very purpose behind trademark law, to prevent confusion.
No, I wasn't confused, because I'm also familiar with KDE and Linux. However, would somebody not familiar with those two topics be confused by the names?
Either that, or a simple script which will open up as many connections as possible,send the data, and then each of those connections does a near simultaneous hit of the 'submit' button (or rather, the equivalent of doing so). Simple trick, doesn't require a lot of bandwidth, and would probably get past the race condition that's been found and is being more than slightly abused.
I've been using the Linux client for a few days lately, and it's really nice in terms of HOW it works, but the UI and installation procedures kinda suck.
First off, you have to get the accounts.txt file right, and that was rather tricky to do for me (for some reason). Probably had to do with failure to read the text file which says how to do it:)
Secondly, you have to know that their servers are perpetually overloaded, it seems. The end result is that, even though I'm downloading (and can see the file size change), the server will consistently report that my satellite is offline at almost any time I try and use it.
That having been said, it's a great service, and I recommend it. Just pay close attention to the docs, as it's easy to get tripped up.
Ya know, I've been puzzling over this, and I think I may have a way for things to work. It all centers around paypal, actually, though a similar system geared for this would be even better. Anyway, here's the basic idea: set up a plugin (which really needs to be cross platform). The plugin is set up so that, with a single mouse click, you can donate (to choose an arbitrary number) $0.25 to the person who wrote the page. It wouldn't have to be large or obtrusive. When you click, the plugin logs in to paypal, sends off the money, and logs out. Short, sweet, simple. Oh, and it turns off ad banners for a month, to give people a reason to send the money in.
A slight variation on the scheme would be a setup wherein the money is collected in a central location, and then sent to the page owners once a month (kind of like what fairtunes is/was doing, if I remember correctly).
The difference, though, is that is a general purpose setup. Anybody can offer up anything, and post this tip jar online. A user clicking on it makes a monthly payment (and a very small one at that) for content, and gets rid of banners to boot, and it's all controlled by a single click (or two). What do you think? Is it worth pursuing?
Good luck. I searched for "report bug" and "report StarOffice bug" and didn't find anything.
Ahhh, wait a minnit. Many people refer to Star Office, and ignore Open Office, which according to Sun is the next official version of Star Office. Noticeable changes, including a bug reporting page. Now, I admit that Star Office 5.2 does have issues. Might I recommend trying out what is actually the next official revision of it? I've had ever better success with it than with 5.2.
All depends on the vendor. In my experience most commercial software vendors are pretty good at fixing major bugs reported by their customers. OTOH, lots of open source developers complain about their fixes for open source bugs being stonewalled -- there have been some notable/. threads on the subject.
Agreed. Major bugs do tend to get fixed quickly. I think this happens in all environments though. However, special case bugs (in both open and closed source) tend to have the hardest time getting put in, since it's usually viewed as not a real issue. At least, that's been what I've seen. Unless you're paying somebody to fix the bug, a minor issue will be ignored for as long as possible. The difference I was trying to point out is the possibility to fix the bug yourself. While it might not be easy to do, it is possible, which is more than can be said for any closed source vendor.
Sorry for the shortness of the reply, and how long it took to do. Had some problems reaching here for the past two days. Anyway, it's late and I'm tired, so I'll ask this: Are we really arguing, or are we simply pointing out that the coin has both heads and tails?
Aside from being slow, incompatible, and nonconforming to platform UI standards you mean? Well, I just downloaded it (had to work through a bug on Sun's download web page to do that) and launched the installer. "Program Error: so-5_2-ga-bin-w.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows." An installer crash is about as broken as you can get.
Agreed. So, what's the bug number for the report you filed with them, so that they can fix it? I'd like to try it again after the fix is done, and to do that, I need to track the bug's progress through Sun.
Brilliant TCO analysis! It's very applicable to the case of a single-programmer team who uses the software exactly once. I'm sure that's the most common case. Remind you to include you if we do a CFO search.
Very good turn back! I'm impressed. You took what was described as the startup time, replied to as the startup time, and compared it to TCO, thus turning me into the fool. I AM impressed.
Even starting to fix a single bug in a big project like the Linux kernel, GCC, or Mozilla will take weeks of startup time familiarizing yourself with the idiosyncracies of the source. If you haven't been on the chat rooms or mailing lists with the core team for months, they won't even look at your bug fixes. The supposed ease of fixing bugs in open source software is one of the community's Big Lies.
Depends on the nature and severity of the bug, plus the design of the code base. Some bugs are non-trivial, some are trivial. Most trivial ones have been found and fixed already, to be sure. Nice redirect, too. I didn't comment on the ease of fixing the bugs, only the possibility. Where I did comment on the ease was in how easy it was to have it happen, period. Dealing with a commercial, closed source vendor, you don't have any leverage (unless you've got deep pockets) to get any particular bug fixed. Dealing with an open source vendor, it doesn't matter. You have the code, you can fix it (or at least try to). An option which is not available with the closed source guys (like, say, CodeWarrior).
Try anything by Deborah J. Mayhew.
Thank you, I will. It's always good to have more resources, and I do appreciate it.
My point exactly. Good user experience design takes money.
Well, something we do agree on, at least. Well, to some degree. The other thing usability design takes, which you neglect to mention, is users. More importantly, users who will tell you why your design sucks or is great. Those are in even shorter supply than money for the OS community (heck, from the money aspect, we've got IBM, Sun, HP, etc, trying to help out). But users who will provide feedback about the interface? Go find me five of them, and I'll be shocked.
(Just FYI, firewalls don't usually have much to do with viruses. Firewalls are mostly about DoS and intrusion prevention.)
You are, of course, right. But I was only illustrating that you can get people to listen, not what would be technically correct. Unless, of course, you count that at least some DDoS tools have been distributed as virii.
So, I await word on how your non-programmer, non-admin father (or wife) got along with the Linux Router configuration.
My dad? He got me to install it. But he knew he needed one. My wife? Won't go near the computer anymore, hates it because I use it too much.
I'm sorry, but I feel a need to jump in with a few questions here, ones that you have skillfully avoided, but to which I'd greatly appreciate the answers.
Yes, it is. If I buy Microsoft Office, I am buying software that works. If I download StarOffice, I am getting software that doesn't work. If I download some random utility from FreshMeat, I am downloading something that is almost guaranteed not to work and to be held together with hooks and bailing wire. Denial about the flakiness of open source software is one of the most serious problems in the community.
What's wrong with Star Office? How is it broken? Yes, I'm asking seriously. The times that I've used it, it's worked quite well. Normally, I don't use it, as I find other tools do what I need (vi being the prime example). Other people, though, report great success with it, and tools like it. So, how is it broken?
As for software flakiness, yes, it does exist. I won't pretend it doesn't. Again, though, the tools which I need and use daily work better in their Linux versions than in their Windows versions. Which means that, for me, the Windows stuff has more flakiness than the Linux stuff.
thirty seconds with CodeWarrior rather than five minutes with GCC for "free" can't do simple math. Thousands of dollars would be wasted every week by the "free" solution.
Lessee the math here... Average developer: $60/hour (prolly less, but this makes it easier). $1/minute. With CodeWarrior, you claim 30 seconds to go, and gcc, 5 minutes to go. That's great! You've just saved me $4.50/developer! So, lessee, licensing of CodeWarrior: $200+/seat. Licensing of GCC: $0/seat. Oh, shit, there just went $195.50/developer. Now, how do I get bugs fixed? CodeWarrior: Submit the bug to them, hope they fix it, pay for upgrade. GCC: Grab the source, find the bug, fix it, and start using it. Give it back to the steering committee while I'm at it, since that's probably a requirement (if I'm distributing it).
What the hell, I'll stick with CodeWarrior. After all, it's a superior environment. Now, I need the AIX version, since we're developing a product on AIX. How much is that? Oh, wait, it's not available? Damn, there goes that option.
Yep, CodeWarrior is the best option. Much rather have a product which costs a lot, gives me zero portability, and takes control of fixes away from me.
No, user friendliness is not a "small hurdle." It's a paradigm shift that requires an entirely different development model. The problem is well studied and I could recommend you some books if I thought you'd actually read them. It is a shift that free software has not made. Due to the insistence on programmers designing their own interfaces, it is a shift that the free software community can not make.
Perhaps you could pass along some of those titles? I'd actually like to read them, and think they could be useful. Skip 'The Humane Interface' and 'About Face' by Alan Cooper. Got them, read them, and they're good books.
Personally, I hate designing interfaces. I know that what I want in one is nothing like what everybody else wants in one (not even other developers). Find for me a user interface expert who can help me design a better one, and will work for the same terms I do when developing Open Source: Free. They're in kinda short supply, if you know what I mean?
What's wrong with this statement? "I'm not a tinkerer. I needed a stable router/firewall." You are not a software consumer -- you are a system administrator.
Hmmm, how about that. My dad is a system administrator. He'd be surprised to know that, since he works as an RN on the 3rd floor of the local hospital, and couldn't tell you most of anything about firewalls. But, he does know that he needs one to protect his machine from getting hacked, and he knows it's better to have it be external.
As for non-geek social affairs, I'm married to one (soon enough to be divorced at the rate I'm going). Your example is a poor one. How would I do it? You heard about the latest virus which will hit your machine from the internet and wipe out your drives? I guarantee that most of the people in the room will be asking how to stop it, and I can mention the firewall/router then.
Are you sure about that? Tell ya what, I'll believe you if you will go find for me the source code, under a non-SCSL type license, for Solaris 2.5.1 or 2.6. I'd really enjoy the opportunity to hack away at it, personally.
Heck, tell ya what, find me the source to any largely successful program which was built from anything BSD licensed, which is not in NetBSD, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD. I'd love to see it.
I, for one, would love to see any evidence of this community on Windows. However, every time I've gone looking for a Windows app, it's been (at best) shareware. With one exception, every time I've gone looking for a Linux app, it's been open source. Oh, and the Windows guys have only once offered source. Not exactly what I would call an open source community on Windows.
Re:why do you even need X any more let alone motif
on
The Superior Motif?
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· Score: 1
I'm sorry, really I am. VNC is a great program, and I use it daily. However, it doesn't stack up against the way X does it's thing. It is possible for me to start a program on machine A, putting the windows which are opened on machine B, while I'm still sitting at machine C. And yes, this is useful, as it lets me help out people who are having issues with starting programs at all (and believe me, they ARE there, I work with them).
VNC is wonderful. It doesn't provide all this same functionality, and as such, it's not got the usefulness of the basic X protocols. And that matters to me.
Please re-read the GPL. You see, if you use my GPL'ed code in your program, your entire program must then be licensed under the GPL. Kind of a neat bit of legal skullduggery, I think.
Relevant is, in this case, irrelevant. GPL says that if you link your code with mine (which I've released under the GPL), all your code must then be released under the GPL. If you only want to release my code,and not yours, you had better hope I chose the LGPL (or BSD, or...), which will let you do that. Otherwise, you're SOL. All your code is out, or you don't use my code.
TTYL. Gotta reboot a TLA server now (hate these long nights!:)
Ahem. Debian has a menu-management system which makes it insanely easy to get the icons and clickies ready to roll. Speaking as someone who's rolled up a few.debs for personal (mine and my Dad's) use, it really was quite easy.
I'm sorry, but after reading this, I've got to hope you're a troll. A virus causing a meltdown? Let me guess, the last piece of electronics you touched was a Commodore Pet, and you finally found the magic POKE sequence which could damage it.Because I gotta tell ya, there have been no consumer level PCs since then which would allow that. In fact, without a means for non-volatile storage, it would be impossible for a virus to do anymore than annoy the piss out of you by causing your web browser to crash.
Damage the console? Please. I'm so glad I didn't have anything to drink before reading your post. The liquid could have damaged my keyboard after coming out my nose.
Well, I read it. I was 9 when Mt. st. Helens erupted, so I don't remember it well. Add to that my being across the country in Arkansas, and you can imagine that it had no impact on me directly. Not until I atleast saw the pictures of the distruction did I appreciate the magnitude of it, and even then not very well. It must have been a sight to see, definitely.
Actually, I, personally, am dog slow with writing of any sort, and always have been. Typing is the only way I can keep up, which is why I bought palm pilot keyboard (one of the stowaway folding keyboards:)
And, some ever helpful links:Turbo Vision For Unix and Turbo Vision. Two different ports. Judging by their freshmeat entries, I'd go with the second one.
Ah, the old damages are everything tactic. Instead of assuming that monetary damages (which are suppsedly non-existant) are the only option, take some other tactics:
Don't take 'em to court for money (yes, your honor, I'm giving t away, but I want them to pay), take 'em to court and require that they follow licensing. In other words, you are suing to make it a legal requirement that they follow the licensing which you have set forth. And since you'll be able to show license violations (in numerous ways, since they almost have to help you do it), you should be able to win. You get your license followed. Oh, and make sure you include as punitive damages enough to cover some very high quality attorneys.
Another tactic to take is that they HAVE done monetary damage to you. After all, haven't they made money without recompense to you, based on your work? I think that's called derivative work in copyright law, and many courts are telling us that this is bad. Nail 'em for it.
Yeah, they have. In exchange for signing a 3 year contract with MSN at $20/month, which comes out to $720 to MSN. Consumer loses $320. And with it being a contract, it means that you will pay unless you go bankrupt. They're making their money.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what has me worried. I would think that something printed at startup, requiring the user to accept these terms, would be the way to go. It's annoying, yes, but without it, what protection does the author have?
It seems that a major concern of the GPL is that if you just USE a program, you do not have to accept the terms of the GPL. By refusing to accept the terms of the GPL, you are also refusing not to hold the authors of the software liable for any failures, leaving the authors open to potential lawsuit.
Solution? Maybe a particular license, in the same fashion as the closed source houses do, disclaiming liability in the event of failure, which must be accepted before the user may begin using the program. This would be in addition to the GPL, which also does the same thing.
Of course, I may be talking about a non-issue, but this seemed like as good a time as any to ask the question.
Maybe you should check out Open Office, the next version of Star Office? Since it's under the GPL, you might find it quite nice for the Free Software side of you, and it really is nicer than Star Office.
Actually, consider what you are paying for in each of your examples.
- Education: You are paying someone to spend time (a VERY scarce commodity) with you, to make sure you understand the material being presented.
- Software: Depends on the type of software. If it does require payment, you are paying for as many as two things: The time to develop it, and/or the packaging it comes in. Time is very scare, and the packaging is a physical material, which by definition of being physical, has a limit on how much can be made. That limit creates a scarcity.
- Newspapers: Again, time. The time for people to research their stories, for editors to edit them, publishers to print them. And don't forget the material cost of printing the paper.
As you can see, you are not paying for information, but for two commodities which are in short supply: Time and materials. Information? How much would you like? In fairly short order, we could generate a few dozen terrabytes of it for you. Time? Well, good luck getting any more of it.Just to say: I loved your sig. C64's and C128's still are my favorite older machines. Thanks for bringing back the memory.
KIllustrator, if anything, is closer to CorelDraw than anything else. Evidently, you've never used the program.
Neither have I. However, due to the name, and having known the name Adobe Illustrator (though not having used it), I assumed that the two were very similar in function and form. This, to me, seems to be the very purpose behind trademark law, to prevent confusion.
No, I wasn't confused, because I'm also familiar with KDE and Linux. However, would somebody not familiar with those two topics be confused by the names?
Either that, or a simple script which will open up as many connections as possible,send the data, and then each of those connections does a near simultaneous hit of the 'submit' button (or rather, the equivalent of doing so). Simple trick, doesn't require a lot of bandwidth, and would probably get past the race condition that's been found and is being more than slightly abused.
First off, you have to get the accounts.txt file right, and that was rather tricky to do for me (for some reason). Probably had to do with failure to read the text file which says how to do it
Secondly, you have to know that their servers are perpetually overloaded, it seems. The end result is that, even though I'm downloading (and can see the file size change), the server will consistently report that my satellite is offline at almost any time I try and use it.
That having been said, it's a great service, and I recommend it. Just pay close attention to the docs, as it's easy to get tripped up.
A slight variation on the scheme would be a setup wherein the money is collected in a central location, and then sent to the page owners once a month (kind of like what fairtunes is/was doing, if I remember correctly).
The difference, though, is that is a general purpose setup. Anybody can offer up anything, and post this tip jar online. A user clicking on it makes a monthly payment (and a very small one at that) for content, and gets rid of banners to boot, and it's all controlled by a single click (or two). What do you think? Is it worth pursuing?
Might I request your posting a paypal account wherein we could contribute to a legal defense fund? I'd gladly chip in what I can for that.
Ahhh, wait a minnit. Many people refer to Star Office, and ignore Open Office, which according to Sun is the next official version of Star Office. Noticeable changes, including a bug reporting page. Now, I admit that Star Office 5.2 does have issues. Might I recommend trying out what is actually the next official revision of it? I've had ever better success with it than with 5.2.
All depends on the vendor. In my experience most commercial software vendors are pretty good at fixing major bugs reported by their customers. OTOH, lots of open source developers complain about their fixes for open source bugs being stonewalled -- there have been some notable
Agreed. Major bugs do tend to get fixed quickly. I think this happens in all environments though. However, special case bugs (in both open and closed source) tend to have the hardest time getting put in, since it's usually viewed as not a real issue. At least, that's been what I've seen. Unless you're paying somebody to fix the bug, a minor issue will be ignored for as long as possible. The difference I was trying to point out is the possibility to fix the bug yourself. While it might not be easy to do, it is possible, which is more than can be said for any closed source vendor.
Sorry for the shortness of the reply, and how long it took to do. Had some problems reaching here for the past two days. Anyway, it's late and I'm tired, so I'll ask this: Are we really arguing, or are we simply pointing out that the coin has both heads and tails?
Agreed. So, what's the bug number for the report you filed with them, so that they can fix it? I'd like to try it again after the fix is done, and to do that, I need to track the bug's progress through Sun.
Brilliant TCO analysis! It's very applicable to the case of a single-programmer team who uses the software exactly once. I'm sure that's the most common case. Remind you to include you if we do a CFO search.
Very good turn back! I'm impressed. You took what was described as the startup time, replied to as the startup time, and compared it to TCO, thus turning me into the fool. I AM impressed.
Even starting to fix a single bug in a big project like the Linux kernel, GCC, or Mozilla will take weeks of startup time familiarizing yourself with the idiosyncracies of the source. If you haven't been on the chat rooms or mailing lists with the core team for months, they won't even look at your bug fixes. The supposed ease of fixing bugs in open source software is one of the community's Big Lies.
Depends on the nature and severity of the bug, plus the design of the code base. Some bugs are non-trivial, some are trivial. Most trivial ones have been found and fixed already, to be sure. Nice redirect, too. I didn't comment on the ease of fixing the bugs, only the possibility. Where I did comment on the ease was in how easy it was to have it happen, period. Dealing with a commercial, closed source vendor, you don't have any leverage (unless you've got deep pockets) to get any particular bug fixed. Dealing with an open source vendor, it doesn't matter. You have the code, you can fix it (or at least try to). An option which is not available with the closed source guys (like, say, CodeWarrior).
Try anything by Deborah J. Mayhew.
Thank you, I will. It's always good to have more resources, and I do appreciate it.
My point exactly. Good user experience design takes money.
Well, something we do agree on, at least. Well, to some degree. The other thing usability design takes, which you neglect to mention, is users. More importantly, users who will tell you why your design sucks or is great. Those are in even shorter supply than money for the OS community (heck, from the money aspect, we've got IBM, Sun, HP, etc, trying to help out). But users who will provide feedback about the interface? Go find me five of them, and I'll be shocked.
(Just FYI, firewalls don't usually have much to do with viruses. Firewalls are mostly about DoS and intrusion prevention.)
You are, of course, right. But I was only illustrating that you can get people to listen, not what would be technically correct. Unless, of course, you count that at least some DDoS tools have been distributed as virii.
So, I await word on how your non-programmer, non-admin father (or wife) got along with the Linux Router configuration.
My dad? He got me to install it. But he knew he needed one. My wife? Won't go near the computer anymore, hates it because I use it too much.
Yes, it is. If I buy Microsoft Office, I am buying software that works. If I download StarOffice, I am getting software that doesn't work. If I download some random utility from FreshMeat, I am downloading something that is almost guaranteed not to work and to be held together with hooks and bailing wire. Denial about the flakiness of open source software is one of the most serious problems in the community.
thirty seconds with CodeWarrior rather than five minutes with GCC for "free" can't do simple math. Thousands of dollars would be wasted every week by the "free" solution.
Lessee the math here... Average developer: $60/hour (prolly less, but this makes it easier). $1/minute. With CodeWarrior, you claim 30 seconds to go, and gcc, 5 minutes to go. That's great! You've just saved me $4.50/developer! So, lessee, licensing of CodeWarrior: $200+/seat. Licensing of GCC: $0/seat. Oh, shit, there just went $195.50/developer. Now, how do I get bugs fixed? CodeWarrior: Submit the bug to them, hope they fix it, pay for upgrade. GCC: Grab the source, find the bug, fix it, and start using it. Give it back to the steering committee while I'm at it, since that's probably a requirement (if I'm distributing it).
What the hell, I'll stick with CodeWarrior. After all, it's a superior environment. Now, I need the AIX version, since we're developing a product on AIX. How much is that? Oh, wait, it's not available? Damn, there goes that option.
Yep, CodeWarrior is the best option. Much rather have a product which costs a lot, gives me zero portability, and takes control of fixes away from me.
No, user friendliness is not a "small hurdle." It's a paradigm shift that requires an entirely different development model. The problem is well studied and I could recommend you some books if I thought you'd actually read them. It is a shift that free software has not made. Due to the insistence on programmers designing their own interfaces, it is a shift that the free software community can not make.
What's wrong with this statement? "I'm not a tinkerer. I needed a stable router/firewall." You are not a software consumer -- you are a system administrator.
Hmmm, how about that. My dad is a system administrator. He'd be surprised to know that, since he works as an RN on the 3rd floor of the local hospital, and couldn't tell you most of anything about firewalls. But, he does know that he needs one to protect his machine from getting hacked, and he knows it's better to have it be external.
As for non-geek social affairs, I'm married to one (soon enough to be divorced at the rate I'm going). Your example is a poor one. How would I do it? You heard about the latest virus which will hit your machine from the internet and wipe out your drives? I guarantee that most of the people in the room will be asking how to stop it, and I can mention the firewall/router then.
Heck, tell ya what, find me the source to any largely successful program which was built from anything BSD licensed, which is not in NetBSD, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD. I'd love to see it.
I, for one, would love to see any evidence of this community on Windows. However, every time I've gone looking for a Windows app, it's been (at best) shareware. With one exception, every time I've gone looking for a Linux app, it's been open source. Oh, and the Windows guys have only once offered source. Not exactly what I would call an open source community on Windows.
VNC is wonderful. It doesn't provide all this same functionality, and as such, it's not got the usefulness of the basic X protocols. And that matters to me.
Please re-read the GPL. You see, if you use my GPL'ed code in your program, your entire program must then be licensed under the GPL. Kind of a neat bit of legal skullduggery, I think.
TTYL. Gotta reboot a TLA server now (hate these long nights! :)
Ahem. Debian has a menu-management system which makes it insanely easy to get the icons and clickies ready to roll. Speaking as someone who's rolled up a few .debs for personal (mine and my Dad's) use, it really was quite easy.
Damage the console? Please. I'm so glad I didn't have anything to drink before reading your post. The liquid could have damaged my keyboard after coming out my nose.
Well, I read it. I was 9 when Mt. st. Helens erupted, so I don't remember it well. Add to that my being across the country in Arkansas, and you can imagine that it had no impact on me directly. Not until I atleast saw the pictures of the distruction did I appreciate the magnitude of it, and even then not very well. It must have been a sight to see, definitely.
Actually, I, personally, am dog slow with writing of any sort, and always have been. Typing is the only way I can keep up, which is why I bought palm pilot keyboard (one of the stowaway folding keyboards :)
And, some ever helpful links:Turbo Vision For Unix and Turbo Vision. Two different ports. Judging by their freshmeat entries, I'd go with the second one.
Just my two cents worth.
Yeah, they have. In exchange for signing a 3 year contract with MSN at $20/month, which comes out to $720 to MSN. Consumer loses $320. And with it being a contract, it means that you will pay unless you go bankrupt. They're making their money.