Any open source VM can be embraced and extended by Microsoft, unless it has strong trademark protection, backed up by a serious threat of lawsuits.
But for me that isn't really the issue. The real issues are:
Will MS patent essential extensions to.NET and hinder open source implementations from implementing them?
Will MS leave essential parts of.NET insufficiently documented in future, thus hindering open source implementations? (see how much difficulty WINE has had, if you don't believe this could happen!)
Given the examples of WINE and Samba (corresponding to Win32 and SMB respectively, both not openly documented fully), I wouldn't trust MS further than I can throw them. As another perceptive slashdotter noted, if MS lets.NET succeed on Linux, people will no longer need Windows on the average slim client (because it'll be accessing.NET services through a browser) or on the server (because it'll be running *NIX). So are MS trying to shoot themselves in the foot?
There's got to be some factor missing here - and I believe that factor is that MS is bound to play a bait-and-switch. Cross platform my arse.
GNU info is an abomination. The interface to it is just totally unusable and unwieldy. The interface should be more like links.
Fortunately, pinfo provides a good lynx-like interface to both info and man pages. I always use pinfo now when I want to view man or info pages (except when I hit one of its small number of bugs, like not being able to open certain info pages).
Huh, you must be a high school student! Don't you know that the kernel itself can be compromised? What, do you think it's got some kind of "magic wall" around it that makes it invulnerable?
(And no, Virginia, memory protection != invulnerable.)
Buy an ACM digital library subscription, or visit your nearest university library and search the catalog for proceedings of POPL (Principles of Programming Languages?)
What people will/should do is just "install mozilla". That 20 other packages are needed by mozilla should be completely invisible by the user.
You've fallen prey to one of the famous "fallacies of distributed computing". Network bandwidth is not infinite! The fact that it will take even longer to download mozilla (or any other project) if you haven't got the required dependencies, shouldn't be concealed by default. That way, the user can choose whether to use a modem or ask their neighbour to download it at work or burn a CD for them.
Separating out dependencies is good because it means you can download things faster if you've already got some of them. It's a feature, not a bug. People who are scared of dependencies are just scared of what they're not used to.
Now the other point which is often brought up: dependency resolution should be automatic, if the user wants that. I've no dispute with this! There should be an interactive package manager with a dialog box something like (off the top of my head):
"Mozilla needs 10 other packages to be installed/upgraded. Download and install them now? You must do this to install mozilla [Yes] [Cancel] [Install later] [X] Don't ask me again"
and if you clicked Yes it would find them, download them and install them automatically. OK that's not the best dialog box in the world, but you get the general idea. It would also have safeguards to avoid clobbering say libstdc++ without understanding the full implications (however, this should no longer be a problem after distributions containing gcc 3.2 with the new binary ABI are used, in theory).
Basically the same definition used by copyright law, or by a typical software license. Distribution within an organisation doesn't tend to count as "distribution" from the point of view of copyright law, but practically everything else does.
since it would put the DoD on possible shaky ground if an employee did release the software (it would be the rights the GPL gives you versus the NDA or other constricting contract).
No it wouldn't. The GPL itself already explains what happens here. If any other contract conflicts with the GPL, you may not distribute the software at all.
I think that OSS developers *should* be responsible for illegal and immoral uses of their software, also.
As an OSS developer, I'm genuinely concerned about the responsibility of releasing software without conditions on its use. But what do you (or anyone else) suggest I do? Use a non-open-source license which prohibits use for certain purposes? That's a very slippery slope. I think I could cut off my code from being used and improved and reused by a lot of people, and I don't like that idea at all.
AOL hosts the main mozilla servers - and they already have tons of bandwidth.
Some of the mirrors are at educational institutions. For example, http://mirror.ac.uk actually reduces costs for its funding source. Traffic over the UK academic network JANET is nominally free-of-charge IIRC, so it actually saves money by avoiding lots of expensive 700Mb ISO downloads from the States.
What, do you kick pets that meow/bark/etc. for attention as well?
Of course not! I am careful to be always kind to animals. That's a completely bogus analogy.
The one and only (and totally acceptable) True Way to register laughter on slashdot is to rate posts "+1 Funny". Anything else is punishable by immediate karma hits!
What a ludicrous idea. Nanotech has a solid theoretical grounding, but no-one has the faintest idea how to go about building a truth machine. That makes the idea ultrasoft SF, or science fantasy. The concept is flawed anyway because people can lie to themselves, and statements can be ambiguous, context-dependent or partly true.
From an Amazon customer review the author sounds like some kind of naive, reactionary, elitist snob.
Have you read Nanosystems - Drexler's extended PhD thesis? If not, I don't think you're in any position to comment on his scientific credibility. If so, why do you dismiss it?
Engines of Creation was a popular book and therefore intended to popularise nanotech, not to rigorously defend his technoscientific theories.
Re:It has more benefits than drawbacks...
on
Don't Stymie Nanotech
·
· Score: 1, Troll
That's the last straw. Did we really need to know the destination of your oral fluids???
I'm now officially declaring a JIHAD on those spawns of satan, Joke Congratulation Posts.
Jokes? Fine. I've no problem with them. A lot of jokes on slashdot are at least a good attempt at being amusing. But joke congratulation posts? Whether satirical or straight, they just blow goats.
I'm sorry. I'm now going on a one-man crusade to mark all joke congratulation posts, irrespective of their origin, as -1 Overrated. You may call me sad and pathetic, you may call me strange - but I retort that those who post Joke Congratulation Posts are even sadder!
Great way of measuring intelligence. Wealth == intelligence. Gee, maybe we should just dispense with exams altogether and just let people buy exam grades. It would be so much more efficient, if wealth is indeed a strong predictor of intelligence!
You're some shlub posting on/. when you should be working. Where does that leave YOU on the scale of intelligence?
Ah, so disobeying your corporate masters is a sign of lack of intelligence. Sure, that makes logical sense! Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to?
2) Using the word "resistance" to describe it is self-aggrandizing to the point of obscenity and mocks real sacrifice and courage.
You only think that way because you are thinking in macho, masculine terms: resistance must involve great, even awe-inspiring, "sacrifice" and "courage". But simply standing up and saying "No, there is a better way, you are lying when you tell us that there is no alternative to ever-increasing economic growth and resource consumption", is also resistance.
Doesn't that all seem a bit pompous and self-congratulatory for bravely not buying stuff you don't need for a single freaking day?
No. It's not about bravery at all, of course. It's about waking up to the reality of unsustainable and unhealthy consumption.
But of course, somewhere in the world someone is being tortured so that makes those anticonsumerist concerns "trivial". Uh, no. If we took that attitude, almost everything would be "overblown".
VMWare and Win4Lin both allow you to run Windows on top of Linux. I haven't tried Win4Lin, but VMWare (which is about 3 times the price) lets you save a good working configuration and almost instantly restore back to it - which should help with the crashing and rebooting problems. So your kids can use Linux some of the time, and then quickly boot into Windows from withing Linux when they want to play their Windows only games.
Wine really isn't mature enough for general use (it's not at 1.0 yet), unless you buy the prepackaged, stable versions sold by CodeWeavers (Crossover Plugin and Crossover Office).
Slashdot Mirror
But for me that isn't really the issue. The real issues are:
- Will MS patent essential extensions to
.NET and hinder open source implementations from implementing them?
- Will MS leave essential parts of
.NET insufficiently documented in future, thus hindering open source implementations? (see how much difficulty WINE has had, if you don't believe this could happen!)
Given the examples of WINE and Samba (corresponding to Win32 and SMB respectively, both not openly documented fully), I wouldn't trust MS further than I can throw them. As another perceptive slashdotter noted, if MS letsThere's got to be some factor missing here - and I believe that factor is that MS is bound to play a bait-and-switch. Cross platform my arse.
Fortunately, pinfo provides a good lynx-like interface to both info and man pages. I always use pinfo now when I want to view man or info pages (except when I hit one of its small number of bugs, like not being able to open certain info pages).
(And no, Virginia, memory protection != invulnerable.)
Long answer (a completely uneducated guess): because XFree86 is a hard-to-extend system?
You've fallen prey to one of the famous "fallacies of distributed computing". Network bandwidth is not infinite! The fact that it will take even longer to download mozilla (or any other project) if you haven't got the required dependencies, shouldn't be concealed by default. That way, the user can choose whether to use a modem or ask their neighbour to download it at work or burn a CD for them.
Separating out dependencies is good because it means you can download things faster if you've already got some of them. It's a feature, not a bug. People who are scared of dependencies are just scared of what they're not used to.
Now the other point which is often brought up: dependency resolution should be automatic, if the user wants that. I've no dispute with this! There should be an interactive package manager with a dialog box something like (off the top of my head):
"Mozilla needs 10 other packages to be installed/upgraded. Download and install them now? You must do this to install mozilla [Yes] [Cancel] [Install later] [X] Don't ask me again"
and if you clicked Yes it would find them, download them and install them automatically. OK that's not the best dialog box in the world, but you get the general idea. It would also have safeguards to avoid clobbering say libstdc++ without understanding the full implications (however, this should no longer be a problem after distributions containing gcc 3.2 with the new binary ABI are used, in theory).
No it wouldn't. The GPL itself already explains what happens here. If any other contract conflicts with the GPL, you may not distribute the software at all.
As an OSS developer, I'm genuinely concerned about the responsibility of releasing software without conditions on its use. But what do you (or anyone else) suggest I do? Use a non-open-source license which prohibits use for certain purposes? That's a very slippery slope. I think I could cut off my code from being used and improved and reused by a lot of people, and I don't like that idea at all.
Some of the mirrors are at educational institutions. For example, http://mirror.ac.uk actually reduces costs for its funding source. Traffic over the UK academic network JANET is nominally free-of-charge IIRC, so it actually saves money by avoiding lots of expensive 700Mb ISO downloads from the States.
That was Dare's point. They're bogus. Read the post more carefully.
It's stupid to never make backups.
Of course not! I am careful to be always kind to animals. That's a completely bogus analogy.
The one and only (and totally acceptable) True Way to register laughter on slashdot is to rate posts "+1 Funny". Anything else is punishable by immediate karma hits!
HAND,
--
The Slashdot Humour Police
From an Amazon customer review the author sounds like some kind of naive, reactionary, elitist snob.
Engines of Creation was a popular book and therefore intended to popularise nanotech, not to rigorously defend his technoscientific theories.
That's the last straw. Did we really need to know the destination of your oral fluids???
I'm now officially declaring a JIHAD on those spawns of satan, Joke Congratulation Posts.
Jokes? Fine. I've no problem with them. A lot of jokes on slashdot are at least a good attempt at being amusing. But joke congratulation posts? Whether satirical or straight, they just blow goats.
I'm sorry. I'm now going on a one-man crusade to mark all joke congratulation posts, irrespective of their origin, as -1 Overrated. You may call me sad and pathetic, you may call me strange - but I retort that those who post Joke Congratulation Posts are even sadder!
You're some shlub posting on /. when you should be working. Where does that leave YOU on the scale of intelligence?
Ah, so disobeying your corporate masters is a sign of lack of intelligence. Sure, that makes logical sense! Do you have a newsletter I could subscribe to?
Let me clue you in on something. Not everyone uses it to try to be humourous or cool. Some people use it to express their contempt of Microsoft.
So my question is this, does their "solution" actually patch the security hole?
You only think that way because you are thinking in macho, masculine terms: resistance must involve great, even awe-inspiring, "sacrifice" and "courage". But simply standing up and saying "No, there is a better way, you are lying when you tell us that there is no alternative to ever-increasing economic growth and resource consumption", is also resistance.
No. It's not about bravery at all, of course. It's about waking up to the reality of unsustainable and unhealthy consumption.
But of course, somewhere in the world someone is being tortured so that makes those anticonsumerist concerns "trivial". Uh, no. If we took that attitude, almost everything would be "overblown".
Wine really isn't mature enough for general use (it's not at 1.0 yet), unless you buy the prepackaged, stable versions sold by CodeWeavers (Crossover Plugin and Crossover Office).