Spanish hate us? Damn I've never noticed. Not the Italians either. Most italians I've met (I used to live near the Italian border) usually spoke better French than English. Very few French people speak Italian, on the contrary (they really suck at foreign languages, usually, though not as much as Americans). English do hate us. I mean, at least that's what the Sun says. We hate Germans. We make fun of Belgians, so they must hate us somewhat, at some point. But the Spanish and Italians? Well you must be trolling Mr Coward, I've never had any clue of this.
The article from LawNewsNetwork clearly shows how arrogant and greedy those fucking lawyers are. Basically, what they're saying is that patent law is the business of lawyers and not of technology experts. How fucked up is that??? The Law is voted by the parliament, which is supposed to represent the people. The people, not the fucking lawyers! I had never read an article before this one that showed that clearly how american lawyers are so full of themselves. Hey, lighten up, you job is to help apply the law, not to tell *us* what it should be! We, the citizens (I'm talking about the democratic world in general, not the US only obviously), are entitled to decide what should go into the law.
Damn, how DARE THEY claim to know better than O'Reilly, Bezos and Stallman how the law should be? Their business is not about WHAT the law is, it's about how it applies, as it is written.
More costly, but so much simpler to implement and to interface, and so much independent of the medium. The main problem with complex systems like Corba and such, is that most developpers (esp. the code drones in closed source software companies) don't read the specs, RFC, etc. They copy and paste some code, or look at the file, et voila. That works. Some times. Take for example SMTP. It's simple. It's been here for ages. Yet there's a significant portion of the MUA and MTA which don't respect it fully. XML, on the other, being human readable and having some built-in checks, will make interoparability easier.
Stick to the point of the conversation, please. You remark about the "rationality" of Mathematics, while cleverly casuistic, is completely off-topic. Unless you could describe a way whereby a dictator could base a violent system on Maths? Das Nazional Party des Fourier Transformazion?
A simple idea, a really simple one, without risk of any kind, that would'nt change their revenue model at all, and that would enable them to sell MORE...
Here's the starting point: you've heard about a product, you want to get a grip of it. In the proprietary software business, 99% of the time, they allow you to download a crippled (functionality or time-bomb) version of the software. You want to try it, you download it, or request a demo CD. It's a good idea, it's respectful of the customer, and it fits extremely well in the proprietary software business model.
Now, s/software/music/, s/product/song/. You've heard about that band, or you've heard it briefly... and you want to hear more of it. Why don't they just offer a crippled, low bandwidth, freely redistributable version of the tunes they sell? Say, they encode it at 32kbps. It gives you an idea of it, you can somewhat enjoy it, but if you like it at least a little, you'll feel compelled to buy the high quality version without a doubt!
And it's so simple to implement. And they would get benefits from people passing their files along to friends.
BUT THEY DON'T DO IT! Because they don't get it. Instead, when they offer files on their websites, it's 10sec long excerpts, low quality, unsaveable real audio files. And they expressely repress you from distributing/copying it! (As if there was any kind of worth in them).
Instead of trying to get the best out of the MP3+Internet medium, they fight it. They will lose. Good riddance.
XFree86, FreeBSD, Wine, Perl, Python, etc... etc... are all Free Software, they are not GPLed, you can make a closed, proprietary package out of them... and last time I checked they were doing well.
linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu -- It's free. They reply quicker than any tech support I've ever dealt with. Plus you don't have to hear the cheesy muzzak for hours. I've asked 2 very technical points lately, instant reply. (Please, don't bother them with user-land issues)
... at the Linux Expo in Paris. LOL. Last time I tried to install that crap (3 years ago?) the install crashed with an informative error message: "Error #6956. Please contact SCO Technical Services."
So what do you want from Mandrake? That they differentiate themselves as much as possible from RedHat and produce something completely incompatible? What a waste of time! I'm intalling Mandrake from now on, and I've found that I can even just install its RPMs on top of a stock RedHat install without problem. Mandrake is also often more up to date than RedHat, which is quite useful. RedHat's RPM sometimes lag by months or more compared to the source releases.
Their install is their main selling point, and I can understand that you don't give a fuck about an X based install (I could do without it, that's for sure), but man! their partitioning utility is AWESOME. RedHat's disk druid sucks, as it reacts weirdly (if you hit return sometimes the GUI logic makes it so that what you have just typed gets cancelled, I don't remember how this happens this bites me everytime I install RedHat). Mandrake's DiskDrake is very good in terms of user interface, it offers sane default entries for mount points for example (/home,/var,/usr etc...), it labels the DOS partitions automagically, it shows the disk partitioning graphically AND interactively (read: you can click on a partition to edit it). It seems to be hard to fuck something up by mistake because the warnings make sense and don't just pop up all the time. You are allowed to change your mind and roll back at any time.
Also their install handles very well non-linear situations (you can skip a few steps and then come back and forth w/o problem).
It's not perfect still. The package selection management, even though it's fairly functional, gets really painful to use when in expert mode and it lists thousands of package. Esp. since the package hierarchy does not make sense.
You can't compare TiVO to Beta and Laserdiscs, as in this case negative feedback does'nt apply: i.e., whether TiVO sells 50k units or 10 millions, it won't make a difference in terms of the service it provides to those who have bought it. Whereas if you have Beta VCR, or a Laserdisc, you'll be in deep trouble if you want to use it for watching rented movies.
I guess that would depend largely on the software run, however I believe that SMP will be useful on the nodes; simple SMP systems are dirt cheap nowadays, and they cost actually less than two UP boxes (1 powser supply, 1 MB, 1 bus, 1 Network interface, etc...)
Someone would have found a way to override the fucking copy protection scheme, and you would have had to pay less to 'buy' a movie... LOL... well I'm not even kidding, that's what would have happened!
Monty, why don't you accept the investor's money while Linux/Open-Source is hot on the stock market, spin off MySQL, Inc., and run away with the money? Damn it, everybody would profit from this.
There is a really funky and huuuge Unreal Tournament map (world?) where you start in a Lego world, you're about one cm high, and you kill the other dudes in a lego world... and actually you can get out of it and you end up in a giant... well normal sized house, it's huuuuuge and funky and it's so oh-cool to drive the redeemer around it. Damn it, what's the name of this map again? Last time I played it I fragged the hell of the losers connected there. This map is even funnier than DM-Bathroom.
To carry on the Off-Topic post, when is StarCraft for Linux due? It works well in single player under Wine, but crashes way too often in networked games.
Linux kernel development is VERY open. You just subscribe to the mailing list or read the archive, you can even post witouht being subscribed. Just yesterday I asked question about 2.2.x's responsiveness under heavy loads -- and got a dozen responses from the usual gurus: Alan Cox et Andrea Arcangelli, etc... They're coding stuff to correct the problems I'm experiencing. They have answered my question. I will have sligthly influenced the development of Linux this way (it's not an achievement at all, just a consequence of me asking a simple question to begin with). Compare that to XFree: you have absolutely no idea how they're doing their stuff. It seems to work ok for them, but they miss a lot of benefits of the free software movement IMO.
I repost the appropriate, learnèd and interesting post from our fellow A.C. I'll probably get moderated down, but anyway.
A Hint:
It is obviously a multiply interleaved boustrophe donic text. If you don't know what that means, you have no hope of solving it. I could probably solve the problem given a week or so of hard work, its fairly obvious just from looking at the typesetting as to how it should be solved. But alas, I don't have the time at the moment. The solution is fairly trivial.
Slashdot Mirror
Spanish hate us? Damn I've never noticed. Not the Italians either. Most italians I've met (I used to live near the Italian border) usually spoke better French than English. Very few French people speak Italian, on the contrary (they really suck at foreign languages, usually, though not as much as Americans). English do hate us. I mean, at least that's what the Sun says. We hate Germans. We make fun of Belgians, so they must hate us somewhat, at some point. But the Spanish and Italians? Well you must be trolling Mr Coward, I've never had any clue of this.
- It's Nicolas, without an h
- I'm French
- I don't take English classes
- Could you point out the mistakes
ThanksThe article from LawNewsNetwork clearly shows how arrogant and greedy those fucking lawyers are. Basically, what they're saying is that patent law is the business of lawyers and not of technology experts. How fucked up is that??? The Law is voted by the parliament, which is supposed to represent the people. The people, not the fucking lawyers! I had never read an article before this one that showed that clearly how american lawyers are so full of themselves. Hey, lighten up, you job is to help apply the law, not to tell *us* what it should be! We, the citizens (I'm talking about the democratic world in general, not the US only obviously), are entitled to decide what should go into the law.
Damn, how DARE THEY claim to know better than O'Reilly, Bezos and Stallman how the law should be? Their business is not about WHAT the law is, it's about how it applies, as it is written.
More costly, but so much simpler to implement and to interface, and so much independent of the medium. The main problem with complex systems like Corba and such, is that most developpers (esp. the code drones in closed source software companies) don't read the specs, RFC, etc. They copy and paste some code, or look at the file, et voila. That works. Some times. Take for example SMTP. It's simple. It's been here for ages. Yet there's a significant portion of the MUA and MTA which don't respect it fully. XML, on the other, being human readable and having some built-in checks, will make interoparability easier.
For the German government, embracing the open-source movement at this moment in time would be tantamount to suicide.
Whatever.
Stick to the point of the conversation, please. You remark about the "rationality" of Mathematics, while cleverly casuistic, is completely off-topic. Unless you could describe a way whereby a dictator could base a violent system on Maths? Das Nazional Party des Fourier Transformazion?
Isn't KDE moving towards XMLRPC?
A simple idea, a really simple one, without risk of any kind, that would'nt change their revenue model at all, and that would enable them to sell MORE ...
Here's the starting point: you've heard about a product, you want to get a grip of it. In the proprietary software business, 99% of the time, they allow you to download a crippled (functionality or time-bomb) version of the software. You want to try it, you download it, or request a demo CD. It's a good idea, it's respectful of the customer, and it fits extremely well in the proprietary software business model.
Now, s/software/music/, s/product/song/. You've heard about that band, or you've heard it briefly ... and you want to hear more of it. Why don't they just offer a crippled, low bandwidth, freely redistributable version of the tunes they sell? Say, they encode it at 32kbps. It gives you an idea of it, you can somewhat enjoy it, but if you like it at least a little, you'll feel compelled to buy the high quality version without a doubt!
And it's so simple to implement. And they would get benefits from people passing their files along to friends.
BUT THEY DON'T DO IT! Because they don't get it. Instead, when they offer files on their websites, it's 10sec long excerpts, low quality, unsaveable real audio files. And they expressely repress you from distributing/copying it! (As if there was any kind of worth in them).
Instead of trying to get the best out of the MP3+Internet medium, they fight it. They will lose. Good riddance.
XFree86, FreeBSD, Wine, Perl, Python, etc ... etc ... are all Free Software, they are not GPLed, you can make a closed, proprietary package out of them ... and last time I checked they were doing well.
linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu -- It's free. They reply quicker than any tech support I've ever dealt with. Plus you don't have to hear the cheesy muzzak for hours. I've asked 2 very technical points lately, instant reply. (Please, don't bother them with user-land issues)
... at the Linux Expo in Paris. LOL. Last time I tried to install that crap (3 years ago?) the install crashed with an informative error message: "Error #6956. Please contact SCO Technical Services."
So what do you want from Mandrake? That they differentiate themselves as much as possible from RedHat and produce something completely incompatible? What a waste of time! I'm intalling Mandrake from now on, and I've found that I can even just install its RPMs on top of a stock RedHat install without problem. Mandrake is also often more up to date than RedHat, which is quite useful. RedHat's RPM sometimes lag by months or more compared to the source releases.
Their install is their main selling point, and I can understand that you don't give a fuck about an X based install (I could do without it, that's for sure), but man! their partitioning utility is AWESOME. RedHat's disk druid sucks, as it reacts weirdly (if you hit return sometimes the GUI logic makes it so that what you have just typed gets cancelled, I don't remember how this happens this bites me everytime I install RedHat). Mandrake's DiskDrake is very good in terms of user interface, it offers sane default entries for mount points for example (/home, /var, /usr etc ...), it labels the DOS partitions automagically, it shows the disk partitioning graphically AND interactively (read: you can click on a partition to edit it). It seems to be hard to fuck something up by mistake because the warnings make sense and don't just pop up all the time. You are allowed to change your mind and roll back at any time.
Also their install handles very well non-linear situations (you can skip a few steps and then come back and forth w/o problem).
It's not perfect still. The package selection management, even though it's fairly functional, gets really painful to use when in expert mode and it lists thousands of package. Esp. since the package hierarchy does not make sense.
You can't compare TiVO to Beta and Laserdiscs, as in this case negative feedback does'nt apply: i.e., whether TiVO sells 50k units or 10 millions, it won't make a difference in terms of the service it provides to those who have bought it. Whereas if you have Beta VCR, or a Laserdisc, you'll be in deep trouble if you want to use it for watching rented movies.
I guess that would depend largely on the software run, however I believe that SMP will be useful on the nodes; simple SMP systems are dirt cheap nowadays, and they cost actually less than two UP boxes (1 powser supply, 1 MB, 1 bus, 1 Network interface, etc ...)
I beg to differ; they have been discovered in Malaysia as Petronastowerene.
Someone would have found a way to override the fucking copy protection scheme, and you would have had to pay less to 'buy' a movie ... LOL ... well I'm not even kidding, that's what would have happened!
Monty, why don't you accept the investor's money while Linux/Open-Source is hot on the stock market, spin off MySQL, Inc., and run away with the money? Damn it, everybody would profit from this.
Just my 2
Talk about share^H^H^H^H^Hcrippleware!!
There is a really funky and huuuge Unreal Tournament map (world?) where you start in a Lego world, you're about one cm high, and you kill the other dudes in a lego world ... and actually you can get out of it and you end up in a giant ... well normal sized house, it's huuuuuge and funky and it's so oh-cool to drive the redeemer around it. Damn it, what's the name of this map again? Last time I played it I fragged the hell of the losers connected there. This map is even funnier than DM-Bathroom.
To carry on the Off-Topic post, when is StarCraft for Linux due? It works well in single player under Wine, but crashes way too often in networked games.
I don't think X would easily fit in 16Meg. Now, you could just NFS mount /usr and get rolling ... that's cool indeed!
Just get an USB-Ethernet adapter. They will probably cost more than the machine though ...
Linux kernel development is VERY open. You just subscribe to the mailing list or read the archive, you can even post witouht being subscribed. Just yesterday I asked question about 2.2.x's responsiveness under heavy loads -- and got a dozen responses from the usual gurus: Alan Cox et Andrea Arcangelli, etc ... They're coding stuff to correct the problems I'm experiencing. They have answered my question. I will have sligthly influenced the development of Linux this way (it's not an achievement at all, just a consequence of me asking a simple question to begin with). Compare that to XFree: you have absolutely no idea how they're doing their stuff. It seems to work ok for them, but they miss a lot of benefits of the free software movement IMO.
It's Textmode Quake running on Ada Lovelace's mechanical computer! I remember reading on freshmeat last century that aalib had been ported to it!
I repost the appropriate, learnèd and interesting post from our fellow A.C. I'll probably get moderated down, but anyway.
A Hint:
It is obviously a multiply interleaved boustrophe donic text. If you don't know what that means, you have no hope of solving it. I could probably solve the problem given a week or so of hard work, its fairly obvious just from looking at the typesetting as to how it should be solved. But alas, I don't have the time at the moment. The solution is fairly trivial.
Since you haven't solved anything ... why don't YOU give some money to the OSS community?
At least, he who will solve it will deserve it ...