Presumably this is done using Wine? Their home page is slash-dotted so I can't check. This page mentions DirectX so maybe they have some deal with TransGaming and are using WineX?
At the moment most games are first person shooters which might or might not have some weak plot to explain why it is necessery to shoot everything that moves. The primitive economies in most of these online games are really basic and aren't going to influence anyones voting patterns in real life. Wake me up in 5 years.
>I raise an eyebrow at Andreesen for thinking this.
You seem to be raising your eye brow at the wrong person. Andreesen didn't say *he* used FOSS for that reason, just that it will help and in some places it will.
I'd say it is suit compatible but not t-shirt compatible. It looks pretty ugly; I think most people would prefer to have it hidden and just pull up their sleeve to use it.
It/must/ be the name that is harming adoption, that HTML thing never really caught on either did it?. Actually speed-read sounds kind of catchy and gives the uninitiated a good idea of what it does so ignore me...
Have you been bitten by the/dev/psaux change? (Excuse me if you know about this and you have a different problem).
Unless your kernel is compiled to specifically support the old/dev/psaux device, you'll need to change all references to it your X11 config file (stored in/etc/X11/) to its replacement:/dev/input/mice
Well I'm not sure about official but you can see what fraction of Google hits come from each browser at the Google Zeitgeist. For some reason they don't have browser figures in there year end summary so for the moment the latest figures are for November. The numbers for gecko based engines are depressing.
The point is that Firefox is NOT supposed to be mozilla-lite or Mozilla-Jnr; it may replace Mozilla in the long term (although the suite has a stay of execution for now). It's supposed to be a powerful browser, not what would be implied by your (already discussed) Mozilla-lite tag.
People in America have quoted statistics like your "six times more likely.." one, when I've been over there. Your source sounds a bit loony to me when I read it but hey it's probably true, I understand NY has seriously been cutting it's crime recently.
Despite that, your Average American is still 7 times more likely to get murdered than me (a Brit) and 60 (yes, 60) times more likely to get shot.
I'm not enough of a tin-foil hat to worry about the cameras; they're only in public places. If the cameras aren't working then I guess they should go. I'm sure I've heard statistics (how anecdotal;) that say they've done a good job. If not I guess I have no more objection to them going away than I did to having them arrive, although I do feel safer if I know they are about.
That's the book that was described by one researcher as: "A rare blend of monster raving egomania and utter batshit insanity" which when I first read it made me laugh out loud. I haven't read the book so I don't know how accurate it is.
Re:Being English, I have to ask...
on
Superbowling
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Scottish people are British! (The word you were looking for was English - I think). Although I'm not quite sure why you think English people would be embarrased by excitement.
This might be interesting if you are currently writing to your local MP (or equivalent for EU countries other than the UK) as the FFII are imploring you to do if you don't want the EU to pass bad software patent law. It might be an idea to mention this article in your letter as it gives an easily readable summary of what if wrong with the American system that is written by a "respected" source.
Let's hope we get the law as the EU parliament framed it....
As has been already pointed out by people much more qualified to comment than myself, the ammendemts are pretty good from the point of the FFII.
Can an editor/please/ update the story so that people no long worry about moving to Mars or about the EU becoming the US.
The changing seem pretty good e.g.from the justifications:
Unlimited patent protection for software could make it illegal under patent law to engage in reverse engineering practices employed by software developers to achieve interoperability as currently permitted under the exceptions in the Software Copyright Directive. Therefore future EU-legislation related to software patents must include an explicit exception to patent rights in order to ensure that developers of software can continue to engage in the same acts to achieve interoperability under patent law as they are allowed to today within the limits of copyright law."
and:
"It is essential to monitor the impact of the patentability of computer-implemented inventions on small and medium-sized undertakings.
"
and:
This recital makes it clear that it is not enough to specify the use of a computer (i.e. of technical means) to make a computer-implemented invention patentable. The invention as a whole must make a technical contribution. Ordinary data processing is not enough.
and finally:
It is essential to make it clear that this Directive is not revolutionary and will not change the status quo as regards the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. It will, however, make for legal certainty and set clear limits as to what is patentable in this area.
As someone who wrote to their MEP, I'm pretty pleased with the changes, looks like we made a difference!
Basically no new features will be added to 2.2 but if there is a security vulnerabilty then a new version would be released (the version number would be 2.2.x where x is 1 more than the current revision, that's why there's a third part to the version number!)
Patches can land on the current stable branch too (2.4.x) but normally only to fix bugs or add things that are very low risk.
As you surmised most new development happens in the latest version 2.5.x which is currently in the process of becoming the next stable branch: 2.6.x
The problem is that Real/Quicktime would have to be much *better*, not just equivalent to WMP in order to gain any market share.
In the next couple of years big money is going to be made selling content over the internet and companies such as Disney who don't have a real vested interest in one technology over another are going to distribute content in (DRM-enabled?) Windows Media Player format because they can safely assume everyone has it on their computer.
It's going to be the hard and fast defacto standard not because of any inherent quality of product but just because of bundling with their monopoly product. Not only is this bad for companies like Real who have an unfair playing field (they have to do/better/ than MS) but it'll be a problem for users of alternative OSs because we won't have the defacto player for all this new whizzo content and our players will all be playing catch up.
More power to the EU's elbow!
Java Problems on old linux distributions
on
Mozilla 1.4RC2 Released
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I linked to it in the story but the summary of the java problems on linux is:
You need to use a version of the java plugin that has been compiled with the same version of gcc that mozilla has been, the 1.4 latest branch mozilla build has been compiled with gcc3.2 and therefore you need to use the gcc3.2 plugin that ships in the latest betas of Sun's JRE (and there is also a suitable Blackdown java).
The kicker comes if you run an old linux distribution (e.g. Redhat 7.x), - you don't have the dynamic link libraries required to run gcc 3.2 code as they weren't available when RH7.x was released. Mozilla still runs as it includes all the relevant libraries statically linked inside it - the java plugin doesn't. You therefore either need to recompile Mozilla with an old version of gcc or install the libraries for gcc 3.2.
The release notes could do with a little tidying in order to make what java works where clear to users
.
If this isn't fixed in the release version it
would hint that Mozilla plan to phase out support for old distributions which would open to the door to things such as nice font rendering (via XFT) in the default builds, or do some other current distributions not come with XFT?
Yes, there are exceptions to VAT in order to ensure the poor have access to things like food and news and this is going to cause complications - like what online website is the equivalent of a newspaper but most non-physical things that are in the future both over the internet are (I guess) going to be non-essential items like MP3's and it makes sense (to me) to tax them - there will be teething troubles with rules being altered and precedents being set to work out exactly what gets taxed but as an optimist I reckon it'll all work out in the end;)
From a comment saying MP3's like most non-essential goods should be taxed which as well as providing uniformity to our tax system will provide extra money to schools and hospitals, you've launched into quite a tirade against not only the moderately socialist system employed in most Europan countries (which was alluded to) and against the intra-governmental structure of the EU.
The EU as a body is young and evolving gradually but already provides a guarentee of basic rights to citizens of member states and checks and balances on the powers of governments participating. There is an acknowleged democratic deficit but reform will fix it.
As for your attack on the state health care systems in Europe - they may be more expensive for upper-middle class people but it means that your access to health care is the same regardless of your income. Yes, the NHS in the UK has problems and isn't necessarily the best health system in Europe, but compared to the American system where many have no health insurance effectively meaning how long you live depends on how much money you make - I'm proud to be British and European and I'm sorry that you are ashamed of the heritage of our welfare state.
Slashdot Mirror
Presumably this is done using Wine? Their home page is slash-dotted so I can't check. This page mentions DirectX so maybe they have some deal with TransGaming and are using WineX?
All the computers the UK Coastguard use have beeen affected according to this BBC story
At the moment most games are first person shooters which might or might not have some weak plot to explain why it is necessery to shoot everything that moves. The primitive economies in most of these online games are really basic and aren't going to influence anyones voting patterns in real life. Wake me up in 5 years.
I don't think the software world is as black and white as you make out. Sun are the driving force behind OpenOffice, which I'm very grateful for.
I certainly don't intend to start boycotting them any time soon.
>I raise an eyebrow at Andreesen for thinking this. You seem to be raising your eye brow at the wrong person. Andreesen didn't say *he* used FOSS for that reason, just that it will help and in some places it will.
I'd say it is suit compatible but not t-shirt compatible. It looks pretty ugly; I think most people would prefer to have it hidden and just pull up their sleeve to use it.
I hadn't heard the joke about the second gotcha and was curious enough to google for it. You can read it here
It /must/ be the name that is harming adoption, that HTML thing never really caught on either did it?. Actually speed-read sounds kind of catchy and gives the uninitiated a good idea of what it does so ignore me...
Have you been bitten by the /dev/psaux change? (Excuse me if you know about this and you have a different problem).
Unless your kernel is compiled to specifically support the old /dev/psaux device, you'll need to change all references to it your X11 config file (stored in/etc/X11/) to its replacement: /dev/input/mice
Hope this helps.Well I'm not sure about official but you can see what fraction of Google hits come from each browser at the Google Zeitgeist. For some reason they don't have browser figures in there year end summary so for the moment the latest figures are for November. The numbers for gecko based engines are depressing.
The point is that Firefox is NOT supposed to be mozilla-lite or Mozilla-Jnr; it may replace Mozilla in the long term (although the suite has a stay of execution for now). It's supposed to be a powerful browser, not what would be implied by your (already discussed) Mozilla-lite tag.
Meant to include the link to back that up. Sorry
People in America have quoted statistics like your "six times more likely.." one, when I've been over there. Your source sounds a bit loony to me when I read it but hey it's probably true, I understand NY has seriously been cutting it's crime recently.
Despite that, your Average American is still 7 times more likely to get murdered than me (a Brit) and 60 (yes, 60) times more likely to get shot.
I think I'll still support our gun laws, thanks.
I'm not enough of a tin-foil hat to worry about the cameras; they're only in public places. If the cameras aren't working then I guess they should go. I'm sure I've heard statistics (how anecdotal ;) that say they've done a good job. If not I guess I have no more objection to them going away than I did to having them arrive, although I do feel safer if I know they are about.
That's the book that was described by one researcher as: "A rare blend of monster raving egomania and utter batshit insanity" which when I first read it made me laugh out loud. I haven't read the book so I don't know how accurate it is.
Scottish people are British! (The word you were looking for was English - I think). Although I'm not quite sure why you think English people would be embarrased by excitement.
Let's hope we get the law as the EU parliament framed it....
As has been already pointed out by people much more qualified to comment than myself, the ammendemts are pretty good from the point of the FFII. /please/ update the story so that people no long worry about moving to Mars or about the EU becoming the US.
Can an editor
Unlimited patent protection for software could make it illegal under patent law to engage in reverse engineering practices employed by software developers to achieve interoperability as currently permitted under the exceptions in the Software Copyright Directive. Therefore future EU-legislation related to software patents must include an explicit exception to patent rights in order to ensure that developers of software can continue to engage in the same acts to achieve interoperability under patent law as they are allowed to today within the limits of copyright law."
and: "It is essential to monitor the impact of the patentability of computer-implemented inventions on small and medium-sized undertakings. "
and: This recital makes it clear that it is not enough to specify the use of a computer (i.e. of technical means) to make a computer-implemented invention patentable. The invention as a whole must make a technical contribution. Ordinary data processing is not enough.
and finally: It is essential to make it clear that this Directive is not revolutionary and will not change the status quo as regards the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. It will, however, make for legal certainty and set clear limits as to what is patentable in this area.
As someone who wrote to their MEP, I'm pretty pleased with the changes, looks like we made a difference!
Patches can land on the current stable branch too (2.4.x) but normally only to fix bugs or add things that are very low risk.
As you surmised most new development happens in the latest version 2.5.x which is currently in the process of becoming the next stable branch: 2.6.x
Sorry if I'm spelling it out too much :)
The problem is that Real/Quicktime would have to be much *better*, not just equivalent to WMP in order to gain any market share.
In the next couple of years big money is going to be made selling content over the internet and companies such as Disney who don't have a real vested interest in one technology over another are going to distribute content in (DRM-enabled?) Windows Media Player format because they can safely assume everyone has it on their computer.
It's going to be the hard and fast defacto standard not because of any inherent quality of product but just because of bundling with their monopoly product. Not only is this bad for companies like Real who have an unfair playing field (they have to do /better/ than MS) but it'll be a problem for users of alternative OSs because we won't have the defacto player for all this new whizzo content and our players will all be playing catch up.
More power to the EU's elbow!
I linked to it in the story but the summary of the java problems on linux is:
You need to use a version of the java plugin that has been compiled with the same version of gcc that mozilla has been, the 1.4 latest branch mozilla build has been compiled with gcc3.2 and therefore you need to use the gcc3.2 plugin that ships in the latest betas of Sun's JRE (and there is also a suitable Blackdown java).
The kicker comes if you run an old linux distribution (e.g. Redhat 7.x), - you don't have the dynamic link libraries required to run gcc 3.2 code as they weren't available when RH7.x was released. Mozilla still runs as it includes all the relevant libraries statically linked inside it - the java plugin doesn't. You therefore either need to recompile Mozilla with an old version of gcc or install the libraries for gcc 3.2.
The release notes could do with a little tidying in order to make what java works where clear to users
.If this isn't fixed in the release version it would hint that Mozilla plan to phase out support for old distributions which would open to the door to things such as nice font rendering (via XFT) in the default builds, or do some other current distributions not come with XFT?
By the time linux is commonly found on little coders computers, Gambas should be a nice solution as a visual, free basic.
Yes, there are exceptions to VAT in order to ensure the poor have access to things like food and news and this is going to cause complications - like what online website is the equivalent of a newspaper but most non-physical things that are in the future both over the internet are (I guess) going to be non-essential items like MP3's and it makes sense (to me) to tax them - there will be teething troubles with rules being altered and precedents being set to work out exactly what gets taxed but as an optimist I reckon it'll all work out in the end ;)
From a comment saying MP3's like most non-essential goods should be taxed which as well as providing uniformity to our tax system will provide extra money to schools and hospitals, you've launched into quite a tirade against not only the moderately socialist system employed in most Europan countries (which was alluded to) and against the intra-governmental structure of the EU.
The EU as a body is young and evolving gradually but already provides a guarentee of basic rights to citizens of member states and checks and balances on the powers of governments participating. There is an acknowleged democratic deficit but reform will fix it.
As for your attack on the state health care systems in Europe - they may be more expensive for upper-middle class people but it means that your access to health care is the same regardless of your income. Yes, the NHS in the UK has problems and isn't necessarily the best health system in Europe, but compared to the American system where many have no health insurance effectively meaning how long you live depends on how much money you make - I'm proud to be British and European and I'm sorry that you are ashamed of the heritage of our welfare state.