You are correct about it being BSD based. However, there are no plans to Open Source the majority of OS X. Instead, there will be a server-ish thing called "Darwin" which will be basically BSD with some Apple-isms attached. OS X can basically be seen as a GUI layered on top of Darwin- but a very, very closed source GUI. ~luge
Umm... maybe if it didn't take 900 megs of free space and several hours to build, you might see more "evidence" of the type you are looking for. FYI, any program compiled with debug symbols (from the largest to the smallest) gets speeded up quite a bit when those are removed (300% is probably ridiculous, but a doubling isn't completely out of the question.) Learn a little bit about the subject at hand before you flame away... ~luge
What can they possibly make him do? Say VA machines are good? There really aren't any other conflicts of interest (that I can see), and even Linux.com (which had no independent history outside of VA) has remained completely free of bias (as far as I can tell.) Yeah, everybody likes to bitch about conglomerates, but complaints about this one seem to be completely unjustified- there is no evidence of prior control of their other sites, and they have always been OSS/free software fans, not johnny-come-latelies like so many other. ~luge(Disclaimer: This was written on an ass-kicking VA box!)
Andover always struck me as a company that saw Linux as a money-making opportunity, and Rob's comments about their occasional early attempt to influence his content only affirmed that. VA, on the other hand, has always done the right thing by the community, and since it has always been a Linux company (unlike Andover, who were a failing "tech" company before/.) I think it's commitment is much more genuine. I can't imagine that they'd burden Rob with anything he doesn't want or need- Larry Augustin used to post here, ages and ages ago- he knows what this site is about. ~luge
Frankly, I'd been occasionally worried about Andover's direction and commitment to free software, but I absolutely trust VA and their commitment, so in that sense I welcome VA's involvement. It also seems that since VA is getting so heavily into the media side of things themselves, this match makes a lot of sense and will reduce the squandering of resources by the movement as a whole. (server51 and sourceforge really just seemed like good ideas that didn't need to be competing against each other.) Good luck, Rob- I remember the days when I contemplated getting some CD's through your links so you'd get some spare change from CDNow. Glad to see things have changed for you all. ~luge
Umm, Dan, I hate to break it to you, but the average American corporation (particularly the lobbying/political arm) knows squat about computers. If they knew what they were doing, they'd scream bloody murder just as you describe. But clearly they don't understand the implications of the rules. If they understood, they'd already be screaming about it and it would be dead already. Instead, it has gotten this far without Corporate America noticing, and that means it has a very good chance of continuing to slip under the radar of a lot of companies. Now, once it actually passes, I don't think it'll last long. But given the current state of ignorance of large companies, it will pass unless things change drastically and quickly. ~luge
I read elsewhere that Fred had taken steps to ensure that the purchaser would be doing the right things by the community, as he ensured that linux.com went to VA. So, I think it is pretty much a good thing. Fred had the foresight to protect these, and while he has made a pretty good amount of money, he has taken the steps to make sure the community is still served. ~luge
Heh. It's only good if the savings created by cutting out the middlemen get passed on to consumers. If you think that's going to happen, I've got a stable MS OS I can sell you... ~luge
The author specifically discusses questions he asks that he could easily have answered himself, and posted as a constructive addition to the discussion. Instead of doing so, he whines that no one else did it for him. That is one of the many things wrong with his post. Sorry to have to clarify, but I thought it was clear enough. ~luge
I can't believe this flame has been moderated up as "insightful." Let's go down the list of reasons, shall we?
1) Whining and moaning about how much cooler your version of slashdot would be takes no intelligence or insight of any type. If you want to whine about the quality of/. news, go the route of advogato and have the balls to do it yourself. That would be insightful. 2) This issue has been re-hashed on slashdot for a long, long time. This is nothing that hasn't been posted literally a thousand times- it's not creative or new. It probably ranks right up near "first post" in the length of time and amount of times it's been said. 3) Are you contributing anything? Are you saying anything? No, you are whining that nothing insightful has been said instead of going to the source and finding out for yourself whether there are new features or fixed bugs. If someone posts the answers to those questions, then it should merit an insightful. But it doesn't. Sometimes I think moderation is a good thing. But then I see moderations like this and say "thank god for M2!" ~luge
I very much agree with everything you say about being paid to do OSS, but I do want to point out that if you think Corel's GUI stuff is OSS, you are sadly mistaken. AFAIK, though a backend was promised, none of their code has made their way back into the hands of the Debian people, and it was unfree enough that they had to get license exceptions written into a lot of the various debian utilities which were previously pure GPL. Just my rant for the day... ~luge
Well, I can't necessarily disagree with that. But that isn't RMS's fault, and doesn't change the fact that the original poster was confused as to RMS's actual position.
Umm, only if it's not GPL. If you are purely GPL, and distribute only GPL software, then he is all in your favor. It's not about money- it's about code freedom. I know that is hard for some people to grasp, but it's really not that difficult- money and code are completely separate in his eyes, and as long as you do the right thing in the one sphere you can do whatever in the other. ~luge
... but the stock market will, eventually. Does anyone else think that this "irrational exuberance" (to quote a certain Mr. Greenspan) has gotten ridiculously out of hand? I'm no market expert, but none of this current boom seems to actually be based on actual company value, but rather what people think stock is worth to others. As soon as there is a crisis in confidence (for whatever reason) the bottom will fall out of the market like crazy. I dread to see what happens on that day...
This is so completely OT that it is not even funny. But the story (though very old) is still a great one. Somehow, the new tag down at the bottom: [1999 update: Mel's last name is now known. The manual for the LGP-30 refers to "Mel Kaye of Royal McBee who did the bulk of the programming [...] of the ACT 1 system".] just takes out some of the glory of it, though... ~luge
21 now, and back down to 2 from 3. jeez. I wish I hadn't blown all my points this morning- I almost never ever mark anything as funny, but this deserves it big time. ~luge
That may have been the author's point, but that too is misguided- not only does AOL have no real interest in helping out MS, 97% of the mozilla code is cross-platform. For better or for worse, most of Redhat's money will end up helping out all users- Mac, Linux, and Winblows. ~luge
Repeat after me: Mozilla is Open Source. Open Source means infinitely customizable. Open Source means if you want to compile out the shop button, odds are someone with a brain (which clearly you aren't) will probably want to too, and take it out for you.
Seriously, people- the rantings and ravings about bloat and the like in Mozilla drive me nuts. If you want a "pure" browser, go use lynx or wc3. If you want a graphical browser that stands a snowballs chance in hell against IE, either put up with the bloat or go in and fix it. You can, you know... ~luge
Here, here. I guess it is sort of hard for them to search quickies, but if all of us remember this as already having been posted, certainly it can't be too hard for someone to do a check. And maybe the idea of a limit on the age of articles isn't too bad either... ~luge
I've read Mobile Robots (very good book!) but have not actually constructed anything in there. The big differences are going to be ease of use and flexibility. If you are handy with a soldering iron, then the Mobile Robots DIY approach shouldn't be too intimidating. (Don't know anything about Linux support on the SW side, though.) It is also far more flexible- the RCX limitations of three inputs and three outputs gets very chafing very quickly. OTOH, if soldering irons sound dangerous to you:) or you want to get results NOW, then RIS is for you. ~luge
I've heard of kids as young as four using the stuff, and I think it is perfectly appropriate in the 7-8 range (my half-siblings will be getting one for Xmas... don't think they read/. so the secret is safe:). You'll certainly have to help out with construction, but the visually oriented programming is pretty easy for kids to get used to. ~luge
The difference is purely software- the HW is identical (unless you buy a big package intended for large groups of students, but IIRC that is on the order of a thousand bucks.) And it is, of course, Windows-centric (don't recall if it runs on Mac or not.) If you want Linux, PBforth and legOS are the way to go. ~luge
Don't get fooled by the scout, either. Again, cheaper, but connectivity to the computer is limited at this point (though Lego appears to have hidden more than a few tricks in it's software.) If you can at all scrape up that extra hundred bucks, buy the "real" Mindstorms RIS instead. ~luge
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct about it being BSD based. However, there are no plans to Open Source the majority of OS X. Instead, there will be a server-ish thing called "Darwin" which will be basically BSD with some Apple-isms attached. OS X can basically be seen as a GUI layered on top of Darwin- but a very, very closed source GUI.
~luge
Umm... maybe if it didn't take 900 megs of free space and several hours to build, you might see more "evidence" of the type you are looking for. FYI, any program compiled with debug symbols (from the largest to the smallest) gets speeded up quite a bit when those are removed (300% is probably ridiculous, but a doubling isn't completely out of the question.) Learn a little bit about the subject at hand before you flame away...
~luge
What can they possibly make him do? Say VA machines are good? There really aren't any other conflicts of interest (that I can see), and even Linux.com (which had no independent history outside of VA) has remained completely free of bias (as far as I can tell.) Yeah, everybody likes to bitch about conglomerates, but complaints about this one seem to be completely unjustified- there is no evidence of prior control of their other sites, and they have always been OSS/free software fans, not johnny-come-latelies like so many other.
~luge(Disclaimer: This was written on an ass-kicking VA box!)
Andover always struck me as a company that saw Linux as a money-making opportunity, and Rob's comments about their occasional early attempt to influence his content only affirmed that. /.) I think it's commitment is much more genuine. I can't imagine that they'd burden Rob with anything he doesn't want or need- Larry Augustin used to post here, ages and ages ago- he knows what this site is about.
VA, on the other hand, has always done the right thing by the community, and since it has always been a Linux company (unlike Andover, who were a failing "tech" company before
~luge
Frankly, I'd been occasionally worried about Andover's direction and commitment to free software, but I absolutely trust VA and their commitment, so in that sense I welcome VA's involvement. It also seems that since VA is getting so heavily into the media side of things themselves, this match makes a lot of sense and will reduce the squandering of resources by the movement as a whole. (server51 and sourceforge really just seemed like good ideas that didn't need to be competing against each other.)
Good luck, Rob- I remember the days when I contemplated getting some CD's through your links so you'd get some spare change from CDNow. Glad to see things have changed for you all.
~luge
Anyone who thinks that all the true geeks left /. long ago should take a look at this thread :)
~luge
Umm, Dan, I hate to break it to you, but the average American corporation (particularly the lobbying/political arm) knows squat about computers. If they knew what they were doing, they'd scream bloody murder just as you describe. But clearly they don't understand the implications of the rules. If they understood, they'd already be screaming about it and it would be dead already. Instead, it has gotten this far without Corporate America noticing, and that means it has a very good chance of continuing to slip under the radar of a lot of companies. Now, once it actually passes, I don't think it'll last long. But given the current state of ignorance of large companies, it will pass unless things change drastically and quickly.
~luge
I read elsewhere that Fred had taken steps to ensure that the purchaser would be doing the right things by the community, as he ensured that linux.com went to VA. So, I think it is pretty much a good thing. Fred had the foresight to protect these, and while he has made a pretty good amount of money, he has taken the steps to make sure the community is still served.
~luge
Heh. It's only good if the savings created by cutting out the middlemen get passed on to consumers. If you think that's going to happen, I've got a stable MS OS I can sell you...
~luge
The author specifically discusses questions he asks that he could easily have answered himself, and posted as a constructive addition to the discussion. Instead of doing so, he whines that no one else did it for him. That is one of the many things wrong with his post. Sorry to have to clarify, but I thought it was clear enough.
~luge
I can't believe this flame has been moderated up as "insightful." Let's go down the list of reasons, shall we?
/. news, go the route of advogato and have the balls to do it yourself. That would be insightful.
1) Whining and moaning about how much cooler your version of slashdot would be takes no intelligence or insight of any type. If you want to whine about the quality of
2) This issue has been re-hashed on slashdot for a long, long time. This is nothing that hasn't been posted literally a thousand times- it's not creative or new. It probably ranks right up near "first post" in the length of time and amount of times it's been said.
3) Are you contributing anything? Are you saying anything? No, you are whining that nothing insightful has been said instead of going to the source and finding out for yourself whether there are new features or fixed bugs. If someone posts the answers to those questions, then it should merit an insightful. But it doesn't.
Sometimes I think moderation is a good thing. But then I see moderations like this and say "thank god for M2!"
~luge
I very much agree with everything you say about being paid to do OSS, but I do want to point out that if you think Corel's GUI stuff is OSS, you are sadly mistaken. AFAIK, though a backend was promised, none of their code has made their way back into the hands of the Debian people, and it was unfree enough that they had to get license exceptions written into a lot of the various debian utilities which were previously pure GPL. Just my rant for the day...
~luge
Well, I can't necessarily disagree with that. But that isn't RMS's fault, and doesn't change the fact that the original poster was confused as to RMS's actual position.
Umm, only if it's not GPL. If you are purely GPL, and distribute only GPL software, then he is all in your favor. It's not about money- it's about code freedom. I know that is hard for some people to grasp, but it's really not that difficult- money and code are completely separate in his eyes, and as long as you do the right thing in the one sphere you can do whatever in the other.
~luge
... but the stock market will, eventually. Does anyone else think that this "irrational exuberance" (to quote a certain Mr. Greenspan) has gotten ridiculously out of hand? I'm no market expert, but none of this current boom seems to actually be based on actual company value, but rather what people think stock is worth to others. As soon as there is a crisis in confidence (for whatever reason) the bottom will fall out of the market like crazy. I dread to see what happens on that day...
It may be RT, but for x86? Who wants to run an OS like that (granted, such OS's are important and necessary) on that kind of chip?
~luge
This is so completely OT that it is not even funny. But the story (though very old) is still a great one. Somehow, the new tag down at the bottom: [1999 update: Mel's last name is now known. The manual for the LGP-30 refers to "Mel Kaye of Royal McBee who did the bulk of the programming [...] of the ACT 1 system".] just takes out some of the glory of it, though...
~luge
21 now, and back down to 2 from 3. jeez. I wish I hadn't blown all my points this morning- I almost never ever mark anything as funny, but this deserves it big time.
~luge
That may have been the author's point, but that too is misguided- not only does AOL have no real interest in helping out MS, 97% of the mozilla code is cross-platform. For better or for worse, most of Redhat's money will end up helping out all users- Mac, Linux, and Winblows.
~luge
Deep breath...
Repeat after me: Mozilla is Open Source. Open Source means infinitely customizable. Open Source means if you want to compile out the shop button, odds are someone with a brain (which clearly you aren't) will probably want to too, and take it out for you.
Seriously, people- the rantings and ravings about bloat and the like in Mozilla drive me nuts. If you want a "pure" browser, go use lynx or wc3. If you want a graphical browser that stands a snowballs chance in hell against IE, either put up with the bloat or go in and fix it. You can, you know...
~luge
Here, here. I guess it is sort of hard for them to search quickies, but if all of us remember this as already having been posted, certainly it can't be too hard for someone to do a check. And maybe the idea of a limit on the age of articles isn't too bad either...
~luge
I've read Mobile Robots (very good book!) but have not actually constructed anything in there. The big differences are going to be ease of use and flexibility. If you are handy with a soldering iron, then the Mobile Robots DIY approach shouldn't be too intimidating. (Don't know anything about Linux support on the SW side, though.) It is also far more flexible- the RCX limitations of three inputs and three outputs gets very chafing very quickly. OTOH, if soldering irons sound dangerous to you :) or you want to get results NOW, then RIS is for you.
~luge
I've heard of kids as young as four using the stuff, and I think it is perfectly appropriate in the 7-8 range (my half-siblings will be getting one for Xmas... don't think they read /. so the secret is safe :). You'll certainly have to help out with construction, but the visually oriented programming is pretty easy for kids to get used to.
~luge
The difference is purely software- the HW is identical (unless you buy a big package intended for large groups of students, but IIRC that is on the order of a thousand bucks.) And it is, of course, Windows-centric (don't recall if it runs on Mac or not.) If you want Linux, PBforth and legOS are the way to go.
~luge
Don't get fooled by the scout, either. Again, cheaper, but connectivity to the computer is limited at this point (though Lego appears to have hidden more than a few tricks in it's software.) If you can at all scrape up that extra hundred bucks, buy the "real" Mindstorms RIS instead.
~luge