No, it's not. The Volt has an all-electric drivetrain, 100% of the time. The gas engine is only used to re-charge the batteries. The gas engine does NOT drive the vehicle, ever.
The article says over $9,000,000 was stolen using only 100 cards in 49 cities in a 30 minute period. That, boys and girls, is $90,000 per card. The article says the limits on the cards were overridden, using them to make withdrawals in multiple increments of $500 or so. $90,000 / $500 is 180 withdrawals in a 30 minute period, or 6 withdrawals per minute.
This article doesn't pass the basic sniff test. It reeks of either disinformation or seriously bad math.
Yes, but it doesn't say how many copies of each card they made.
"I still can't believe there will be a 32-bit version."
I still can't believe people's obsession with Long Mode.
Well, actually, I can, simply because 64 is larger than 32, and thus 64-bit equates to "better" in the eyes of lots of people. But lots of people are fools, too.
But seriously, the majority of computer users have absolutely no need for Long Mode. They do things like browse the web, forward email, watch YouTube, and look at porn. You barely need Protected Mode for that.
The scenarios benefiting from Long Mode would be:
Servers
IT lab/admin types who want to run multiple concurrent VMs with large memories
Engineering workstation users who actually need to work with datasets larger than 2^32 bytes (4 GiB)
That's about it, really.
Most people are concerned solely with the amount of memory Windows reports in the System Properties dialog, and get their panties in a bunch over 700 MB or so of "missing" RAM. While I can understand wanting one's OS to be able to use all the RAM one paid for, most of these people aren't actually ever going to use that much of RAM. They just want their number to be bigger, because that obviously reflects on the size of their testicles. That's why they bought 4 GiB of RAM in the first place.
But even then, Long Mode is not needed to win the penis-length contests. Proper support for PAE would solve the problems. Just about any Intel-compatible CPU made in the past ten years supports PAE. With PAE, the processor can directly address up to 64 GiB of RAM in i386 Protected Mode, even though each user task (process) is still limited to a 4 GiB virtual address space. But it's very rare for a single task to actually need that much.
Of course, on Win i386, it's a little worse than that. Processes are limited to 2 GiB of user address space (with the kernel having the same 2 GiB in every process). But even 2 GiB is a lot of memory. Even Firefox only needs half a gig or so.;-)
Win i386 actually uses PAE, sort-of. It needs to obtain the NX (No Execute) bit in page tables, for "DEP" (Data Execution Prevention). But Win i386 still limits physical addresses to under 4 GiB to keep crappy drivers from crashing the system. Since Microsoft's all about driver signing these days, they could just add an flag to the driver signature indicating it's qualified to work above 4 GiB, and have an OS boot option or something which allowed all memory to be used. Refuse to load PAE unqualified drivers in that mode.
Meanwhile, Long Mode is not without drawbacks. Long Mode, for those who don't know, is the processor mode AMD introduced which enables native 64-bit virtual addressing. But when in Long Mode, the processor can't do 16-bit Virtual Mode at all. There's still a lot of Win16 code floating around in the Windows world, sadly. Long Mode also means potential compatibility issues with crappy 32-bit code. Sure, it's crappy code, but I've found most code is crappy code. There can be performance costs, too (64-bit everywhere means more stuff than 32-bit most places), although they're minor and may be offset by equally possible performance gains (instruction architecture improvements such as more general-purpose registers).
Since this is Slashdot, I have to mention that Linux i386 supports PAE just fine, and has no problem working with more than 4 GiB of RAM, making Linux x86-64 even less interesting than Win x86-64. Linux also doesn't manage memory the same way as Windows, so the user/kernel split doesn't apply. So Linux x86-64 has all the compatibility problems of Long Mode, with even fewer benefits.
Wow, this is the most uninformed, ignorant drivel I've ever read on Slashdot (and that's a feat).
You must've missed just a few things while reading, because you're not even close to being correct in anything you just said.
In fact, anyone here who read this shit is now stupider for having read it.
There is no good answer, but I would say that it should be a much more open process, and as a condition you should have to actually develop your idea, or partner with a commercial firm that will (i.e. have a sponsor).
Eliminating patent examiners, as they are now, would also be a great start. Have people volunteer from various fields of expertise, and when reviewing a patent, pick 12 randomly to review the application and vote on whether to approve or deny the patent. This would eliminate stuff like "smartphones" being patented, even though they've been in production for years, and talked about for decades before that.
Obviously this is a very complex issue, with many interested parties, and a lot of egos to stroke. But if something doesn't get done about it soon, there's going to be some serious ramifications both in the courts and to the bottom lines of many companies.
"Is he an employee with Intel or Microsoft? Does he have a connection with serial infringers? I think that would color what he has to say."
This is douchebag lawyer speak for "companies that spend money researching, developing and selling products." Unlike his clients who think up obvious ideas and rush to file a patent, without ever doing a bit of work. It's scumbags like this that exacerbate the terrible state of our patent system. I for one can't wait until there's real reform and this guy's out of business.
All lithium-ion batteries are highly flammable, not just these. It's just that Shentech batteries are apparently more prone to spontaneous ignition than others.
Yeah, that and they're stamping IBM's name on them and selling them to customers who think they're getting genuine IBM replacement batteries.
Second, you may not have noticed, but none of the current big operating systems are actually written in C++. The Windows, Linux, BSD and OSX kernels are all written in straight C. You can use C++ in the kernel, but there are lots of drawbacks, google "kernel c++" for details. Now, you said "operating systems", but the kernel is the only part that's relevant here; userspace tools can be written in any language so long as there's a compiler for it.
The main reason that the kernels themselves are written in C is twofold. Firstly, C++ has a lot of unusual side effects that are highly undesirable in a kernel because you need to be able to understand 100% of what is happening at any given time. Secondly, C++ requires significantly more runtime support than C. Kernels in C++ are not unheard of, it's just that most people don't go through the trouble, since as you've pointed out, C is elegant and mostly cruft-free. The best practice for kernels, even now, is to write the core in C, and provide C++ bindings and interfaces for application developers.
SOX was designed to prevent another Enron-style meltdown, but look what's happening in the subprime mortgage market. Billions wiped out, but 'nobody is to blame'...
When it all goes to shit, who's to blame? The supplier, or the customer? In my opinion - BOTH!
Well, you hit the nail on the head at the end. It's not that 'nobody's to blame' in the subprime debacle. It's that EVERYONE is to blame. From the homeowner's that wanted/needed the loans, to the brokers that wanted to make money off those borrowers, to the lenders that wanted to underwrite those loans so they could in turn sell them to the institutional investors as securities who wanted to make a fortune off of them. The whole system is to blame.
Oh, and just watch... These same people are STILL going to make a killing in the subprime mortgage market. Now those 14% default rate securities aren't worth shit on the open market because no one wants to buy them. But someone will buy them, and that someone will make a stinking fortune on them. All this is is money changing hands from one conglomerate investor to another with the real loser being the small guy on the street with his 401(k) or mutual funds. All the hype over the subprime crash (which in and of itself represents less than 10% of the entire mortgage market) is nothing more than a chicken little scam, and Americans are eating it up and preparing for a big loss.
I agree that if you're running serious RAID you'll need a hardware controller, which would pretty much make the onboard SATA ports junk anyway. But, don't think that higher-end cards are exclusive to PCI-X. As a matter of fact, I was recently researching a new server using Areca cards which are all PCIe x8 based, with up to 24 sata ports, with support for up to 2GB DDR2 ECC memory and amazingly fast Intel cpus. The market is rapidly moving toward commodity SATA drives using PCIe slots, and I for one welcome the change. Sure, you may drop $2k for a RAID board and memory, but it will absolutely destroy most of what's on the market using 10k Raptors, especially what's available in the enthusiast segment (save the highest-end U320 SCSI w/15k drives).
I still think my 64-bit/66Mhz PCI Adaptec 2410SA w/64MB ram with 4 10k (36G 1st generation) Raptors blows any of my "integrated" RAID controllers out of the water, and it's over three years old.
No. I am not a troll and have excellent karma (despite my two posts being -1 here today). I was just being pissy, and am so sick and tired of seeing grammar nazis troll the boards. It just irks me to no end when I read a post, understand someone's point and it adds to the overall discussion in a positive way, only to have to read two or three "correction" posts and the pissy argument that inevitably ensues. I know I was guilty of much the same, but it's just one of those things that after 5 years on/. have begun to annoy me to no end.
Offtopic? This is hilarious. What happened to the/. of Old? Oh yeah, we've got a bunch of pimple-faced vaginaphobes here. Talk to me in ten years.
Well, not you sitting in your parents' basement. You're hopeless. Your best chance at procreation is to master asexual reproduction in humans. With your beowulf cluster of linux boxes (not including the one Windows box you keep to play WoW) along with the Profit!! you make from Russians selling advertising to you, you should have it mastered in no time.
...the ",". It's pronounced "comma", and comes in very handy sometimes.
Yeah, and your momma called and she said save the drama for the comma because you're a douchebag loser. Ooooh.. I'm sooo smart that I can call out others' grammar, but I'm not smart enough to figure out what you're saying.
Learn to read a message board. I know that particular skill is a challenging one to master, but it'll save real folks like me from having to read your stupid ass grammar comments in the future. Seriously, doesn't anyone have an internal monologue anymore? Kackle to yourself and move on. If you actually waste the time to post something as assinine as this, you should question your worth to the human race.
And yes, this is the kind of guy that winds up with a mail order bride. Guess why? Well, studies have shown that possessing the personality of wet paper towel has absolutely nothing to do with it. I guess the greatest mystery in the universe will remain unsolved.
And yes I am aware of the fact that I took the time to respond. But at least my post was entertaining.
Right, but Quicken Loans is not owned by Intuit anymore. The gentleman that founded the company (originally Rock Financial), Dan Gilbert, bought the company back from Intuit (they may still hold a small stake) for $375 million a few years back. He also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Quicken Loans still does business as Rock Financial in Michigan, and is one of the largest sponsors of the Detroit Pistons.
Mr. Gilbert is also a graduate of my alma mater, Michigan State.
Young man, you can just f*ck right off (quoting Orgazmo here, so that should earn me some points). I run several production servers in all flavors. This is complete bunk crap. I tried finding regular, old, telnet the other day. On Vista, nonexistant. On cygwin, nonexistant. On FC6, nonexistant. How am I supposed to know it's in inetutils? I know. I shoud have known. I didn't. I find this all the time. When I see yum -i; or rpm -i; or whatever, you assume that people know what package things are a part of. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Someone needs to operate an associative database to make the uknown known.
Thanks for your time.
Well, apparently it isn't so much if Novell wants to share the documentation with Microsoft, they apparently have to share it with them (regardless of whether or not they decide to share it with the rest of the open source community).
Well, uh, those are the terms of the contract. It's not like Bill G held a gun to Novell's head and forced them to sign a contract. These are the terms of the deal, which I assume was negotiated in (mostly) good faith, and each side got something they wanted. It's called business. Deal with it.
You don't need to know what the difference is between/usr/local/bin and/usr/share/bin, because if there is anything useful there, it has been setup by an administrator who knows their stuff.
You just hit the nail right on the head. Because we all know people buying a $350 computer from Dell or Best Buy have an administrator set up their computer for them...
This is the reason Linux in its current incarnation will NEVER succeed on the desktop for the average user. The Linux kernel wrapped in another paradigm (non-*NIX) may succeed, but the way distros are put together today is not what customers want, so they speak with their wallet (and pay for something instead of taking the free/free product).
And I fear that all of the FUD surrounding Microsoft's investment in SCO was merely a "quicker-than-the-eye" trick. Remember, MS is bound to not distribute Unix as per agreements that predate Slashdot. But -- if they could prove that Linux isn't Unix (which we've all known for years)-- and I mean PROVE it, like SCO losing against IBM (remember, a precedent goes a long way), then they could legitimately create a Linux distribution without too much effort given their resources. Seriously, how much did MS invest in SCO? $50 million? Pales in comparison to (even to the Slashdot crowd) Eolas' $500M win for a shit-ass patent. Seems fairly logical to me. MS has seen the light, and they're going to jump on the Linux bandwagon. But don't think there won't be bloodshed (figuratively), and don't think more than a few of our beloved distros won't go down the drain. Is it losing a battle and winning a war? Who knows, but Bill and Co. are on the trail, and I really don't think their issue is destroying Linux. They're a public company, after all. Their goal is to earn money for their shareholders while simultaneously ensuring earnings for the future. How they plan to accomplish this is anyone's guess. But remember, MS, for all their faults, has been a victim of frivilous patent litigation more often than they've lashed out against others.
Did anyone ever stop to think about MS and Unix? It was my understanding that they're unable to distribute a Unix variant due to various past agreements. Therefore, they spend ~$50m to get SCO into a lawsuit with IBM over whether Linux is Unix. Then, with reams of court docs and precedents set that Linux is NOT Unix, all of the sudden they can distribute such a system again without fear of lawsuits. Seems to me that if this was their strategy all along, they got off pretty cheap.
Suppose you invent something and don't have the resources to build it. That's the prototypical argument for how patents protect the little guy, right? Guess what, you're a patent troll now. If someone with the necessary resources rips you off, you lose nothing, so you aren't awarded damages.
I think you're missing the point. No system is going to be perfect for everyone, but if you are an inventor, and you get a patent (which can cost over $15,000 to do right), then why would you not take the next logical step to market your invention? You obviously would know folks who would be interested, and you (should) be competent in the field.
Further, if you'd have bothered to read the article, you would have noticed that all they've done is clarified the conduct of the court with respect to granting permanent injunctions. For some time, it appears, when an entity is found to be infringing on a patent, then the patent holder automatically gets a permanent injunction against the infringer (and this is a biggie-- leverage in contract negotiations). So now the court must look at the equity involved. For instance if I get a patent as a garage inventor, then I find that GM is infringing on my patent, instead of lowly old me being able to stop the production lines (potentially costing billions of dollars for GM) as a method of imposing leverage on GM, the court might say "we think this case will be resolved, so there's no need to shut down the production line, just know GM, that you will be forced to pay for the entire time you are infringing." And to me, that seems very reasonable. No longer will companies whose sole purpose is to sue those who actually put the ideas to work be able to say "I can shut you down automatically because you're infringing," and be able to get away with it. Now in the more recent Creative v Apple case, there may very well be a reason for a court to grant Creative a permanent injunction, but it's not guaranteed, and this is the way it should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Judging from the EFI reference implementation source, I'd wager a hondo it's FreeBSD without pthreads, but that's just a wild guess.
He was my professor a couple of semesters ago. I can vouch for that!
Hell of a nice guy, and pretty talented to boot though.
No, it's not. The Volt has an all-electric drivetrain, 100% of the time. The gas engine is only used to re-charge the batteries. The gas engine does NOT drive the vehicle, ever.
The article says over $9,000,000 was stolen using only 100 cards in 49 cities in a 30 minute period. That, boys and girls, is $90,000 per card. The article says the limits on the cards were overridden, using them to make withdrawals in multiple increments of $500 or so. $90,000 / $500 is 180 withdrawals in a 30 minute period, or 6 withdrawals per minute.
This article doesn't pass the basic sniff test. It reeks of either disinformation or seriously bad math.
Yes, but it doesn't say how many copies of each card they made.
"I still can't believe there will be a 32-bit version."
I still can't believe people's obsession with Long Mode.
Well, actually, I can, simply because 64 is larger than 32, and thus 64-bit equates to "better" in the eyes of lots of people. But lots of people are fools, too.
But seriously, the majority of computer users have absolutely no need for Long Mode. They do things like browse the web, forward email, watch YouTube, and look at porn. You barely need Protected Mode for that.
The scenarios benefiting from Long Mode would be:
That's about it, really.
Most people are concerned solely with the amount of memory Windows reports in the System Properties dialog, and get their panties in a bunch over 700 MB or so of "missing" RAM. While I can understand wanting one's OS to be able to use all the RAM one paid for, most of these people aren't actually ever going to use that much of RAM. They just want their number to be bigger, because that obviously reflects on the size of their testicles. That's why they bought 4 GiB of RAM in the first place.
But even then, Long Mode is not needed to win the penis-length contests. Proper support for PAE would solve the problems. Just about any Intel-compatible CPU made in the past ten years supports PAE. With PAE, the processor can directly address up to 64 GiB of RAM in i386 Protected Mode, even though each user task (process) is still limited to a 4 GiB virtual address space. But it's very rare for a single task to actually need that much.
Of course, on Win i386, it's a little worse than that. Processes are limited to 2 GiB of user address space (with the kernel having the same 2 GiB in every process). But even 2 GiB is a lot of memory. Even Firefox only needs half a gig or so. ;-)
Win i386 actually uses PAE, sort-of. It needs to obtain the NX (No Execute) bit in page tables, for "DEP" (Data Execution Prevention). But Win i386 still limits physical addresses to under 4 GiB to keep crappy drivers from crashing the system. Since Microsoft's all about driver signing these days, they could just add an flag to the driver signature indicating it's qualified to work above 4 GiB, and have an OS boot option or something which allowed all memory to be used. Refuse to load PAE unqualified drivers in that mode.
Meanwhile, Long Mode is not without drawbacks. Long Mode, for those who don't know, is the processor mode AMD introduced which enables native 64-bit virtual addressing. But when in Long Mode, the processor can't do 16-bit Virtual Mode at all. There's still a lot of Win16 code floating around in the Windows world, sadly. Long Mode also means potential compatibility issues with crappy 32-bit code. Sure, it's crappy code, but I've found most code is crappy code. There can be performance costs, too (64-bit everywhere means more stuff than 32-bit most places), although they're minor and may be offset by equally possible performance gains (instruction architecture improvements such as more general-purpose registers).
Since this is Slashdot, I have to mention that Linux i386 supports PAE just fine, and has no problem working with more than 4 GiB of RAM, making Linux x86-64 even less interesting than Win x86-64. Linux also doesn't manage memory the same way as Windows, so the user/kernel split doesn't apply. So Linux x86-64 has all the compatibility problems of Long Mode, with even fewer benefits.
Wow, this is the most uninformed, ignorant drivel I've ever read on Slashdot (and that's a feat).
You must've missed just a few things while reading, because you're not even close to being correct in anything you just said.
In fact, anyone here who read this shit is now stupider for having read it.
Um, Ford Fiero?
Pontiac, anyone?
Well, I hate to break it to you, but Firefox did not gain inertia simply by being better. It gained marketshare because it wasn't Microsoft.
There is no good answer, but I would say that it should be a much more open process, and as a condition you should have to actually develop your idea, or partner with a commercial firm that will (i.e. have a sponsor).
Eliminating patent examiners, as they are now, would also be a great start. Have people volunteer from various fields of expertise, and when reviewing a patent, pick 12 randomly to review the application and vote on whether to approve or deny the patent. This would eliminate stuff like "smartphones" being patented, even though they've been in production for years, and talked about for decades before that.
Obviously this is a very complex issue, with many interested parties, and a lot of egos to stroke. But if something doesn't get done about it soon, there's going to be some serious ramifications both in the courts and to the bottom lines of many companies.
"Is he an employee with Intel or Microsoft? Does he have a connection with serial infringers? I think that would color what he has to say."
This is douchebag lawyer speak for "companies that spend money researching, developing and selling products." Unlike his clients who think up obvious ideas and rush to file a patent, without ever doing a bit of work. It's scumbags like this that exacerbate the terrible state of our patent system. I for one can't wait until there's real reform and this guy's out of business.
No. They're a university and have been for over 50 years. Land grant != college. Land Grant Colleges and Universities
All lithium-ion batteries are highly flammable, not just these. It's just that Shentech batteries are apparently more prone to spontaneous ignition than others.
Yeah, that and they're stamping IBM's name on them and selling them to customers who think they're getting genuine IBM replacement batteries.
Second, you may not have noticed, but none of the current big operating systems are actually written in C++. The Windows, Linux, BSD and OSX kernels are all written in straight C. You can use C++ in the kernel, but there are lots of drawbacks, google "kernel c++" for details. Now, you said "operating systems", but the kernel is the only part that's relevant here; userspace tools can be written in any language so long as there's a compiler for it.
The main reason that the kernels themselves are written in C is twofold. Firstly, C++ has a lot of unusual side effects that are highly undesirable in a kernel because you need to be able to understand 100% of what is happening at any given time. Secondly, C++ requires significantly more runtime support than C. Kernels in C++ are not unheard of, it's just that most people don't go through the trouble, since as you've pointed out, C is elegant and mostly cruft-free. The best practice for kernels, even now, is to write the core in C, and provide C++ bindings and interfaces for application developers.
SOX was designed to prevent another Enron-style meltdown, but look what's happening in the subprime mortgage market. Billions wiped out, but 'nobody is to blame'...
When it all goes to shit, who's to blame? The supplier, or the customer? In my opinion - BOTH!
Well, you hit the nail on the head at the end. It's not that 'nobody's to blame' in the subprime debacle. It's that EVERYONE is to blame. From the homeowner's that wanted/needed the loans, to the brokers that wanted to make money off those borrowers, to the lenders that wanted to underwrite those loans so they could in turn sell them to the institutional investors as securities who wanted to make a fortune off of them. The whole system is to blame.
Oh, and just watch... These same people are STILL going to make a killing in the subprime mortgage market. Now those 14% default rate securities aren't worth shit on the open market because no one wants to buy them. But someone will buy them, and that someone will make a stinking fortune on them. All this is is money changing hands from one conglomerate investor to another with the real loser being the small guy on the street with his 401(k) or mutual funds. All the hype over the subprime crash (which in and of itself represents less than 10% of the entire mortgage market) is nothing more than a chicken little scam, and Americans are eating it up and preparing for a big loss.
Last I checked, OneCare did not run on Linux.
I agree that if you're running serious RAID you'll need a hardware controller, which would pretty much make the onboard SATA ports junk anyway. But, don't think that higher-end cards are exclusive to PCI-X. As a matter of fact, I was recently researching a new server using Areca cards which are all PCIe x8 based, with up to 24 sata ports, with support for up to 2GB DDR2 ECC memory and amazingly fast Intel cpus. The market is rapidly moving toward commodity SATA drives using PCIe slots, and I for one welcome the change. Sure, you may drop $2k for a RAID board and memory, but it will absolutely destroy most of what's on the market using 10k Raptors, especially what's available in the enthusiast segment (save the highest-end U320 SCSI w/15k drives). I still think my 64-bit/66Mhz PCI Adaptec 2410SA w/64MB ram with 4 10k (36G 1st generation) Raptors blows any of my "integrated" RAID controllers out of the water, and it's over three years old.
No. I am not a troll and have excellent karma (despite my two posts being -1 here today). I was just being pissy, and am so sick and tired of seeing grammar nazis troll the boards. It just irks me to no end when I read a post, understand someone's point and it adds to the overall discussion in a positive way, only to have to read two or three "correction" posts and the pissy argument that inevitably ensues. I know I was guilty of much the same, but it's just one of those things that after 5 years on /. have begun to annoy me to no end.
This is like sex, except im having it!
/. of Old? Oh yeah, we've got a bunch of pimple-faced vaginaphobes here. Talk to me in ten years.
Offtopic? This is hilarious. What happened to the
Well, not you sitting in your parents' basement. You're hopeless. Your best chance at procreation is to master asexual reproduction in humans. With your beowulf cluster of linux boxes (not including the one Windows box you keep to play WoW) along with the Profit!! you make from Russians selling advertising to you, you should have it mastered in no time.
...the ",". It's pronounced "comma", and comes in very handy sometimes.
Yeah, and your momma called and she said save the drama for the comma because you're a douchebag loser. Ooooh.. I'm sooo smart that I can call out others' grammar, but I'm not smart enough to figure out what you're saying.
Learn to read a message board. I know that particular skill is a challenging one to master, but it'll save real folks like me from having to read your stupid ass grammar comments in the future. Seriously, doesn't anyone have an internal monologue anymore? Kackle to yourself and move on. If you actually waste the time to post something as assinine as this, you should question your worth to the human race.
And yes, this is the kind of guy that winds up with a mail order bride. Guess why? Well, studies have shown that possessing the personality of wet paper towel has absolutely nothing to do with it. I guess the greatest mystery in the universe will remain unsolved.
And yes I am aware of the fact that I took the time to respond. But at least my post was entertaining.
Right, but Quicken Loans is not owned by Intuit anymore. The gentleman that founded the company (originally Rock Financial), Dan Gilbert, bought the company back from Intuit (they may still hold a small stake) for $375 million a few years back. He also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers. Quicken Loans still does business as Rock Financial in Michigan, and is one of the largest sponsors of the Detroit Pistons. Mr. Gilbert is also a graduate of my alma mater, Michigan State.
Young man, you can just f*ck right off (quoting Orgazmo here, so that should earn me some points). I run several production servers in all flavors. This is complete bunk crap. I tried finding regular, old, telnet the other day. On Vista, nonexistant. On cygwin, nonexistant. On FC6, nonexistant. How am I supposed to know it's in inetutils? I know. I shoud have known. I didn't. I find this all the time. When I see yum -i; or rpm -i; or whatever, you assume that people know what package things are a part of. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Someone needs to operate an associative database to make the uknown known. Thanks for your time.
Well, apparently it isn't so much if Novell wants to share the documentation with Microsoft, they apparently have to share it with them (regardless of whether or not they decide to share it with the rest of the open source community).
Well, uh, those are the terms of the contract. It's not like Bill G held a gun to Novell's head and forced them to sign a contract. These are the terms of the deal, which I assume was negotiated in (mostly) good faith, and each side got something they wanted. It's called business. Deal with it.
You don't need to know what the difference is between /usr/local/bin and /usr/share/bin, because if there is anything useful there, it has been setup by an administrator who knows their stuff.
You just hit the nail right on the head. Because we all know people buying a $350 computer from Dell or Best Buy have an administrator set up their computer for them...
This is the reason Linux in its current incarnation will NEVER succeed on the desktop for the average user. The Linux kernel wrapped in another paradigm (non-*NIX) may succeed, but the way distros are put together today is not what customers want, so they speak with their wallet (and pay for something instead of taking the free/free product).
And I fear that all of the FUD surrounding Microsoft's investment in SCO was merely a "quicker-than-the-eye" trick. Remember, MS is bound to not distribute Unix as per agreements that predate Slashdot. But -- if they could prove that Linux isn't Unix (which we've all known for years)-- and I mean PROVE it, like SCO losing against IBM (remember, a precedent goes a long way), then they could legitimately create a Linux distribution without too much effort given their resources. Seriously, how much did MS invest in SCO? $50 million? Pales in comparison to (even to the Slashdot crowd) Eolas' $500M win for a shit-ass patent. Seems fairly logical to me. MS has seen the light, and they're going to jump on the Linux bandwagon. But don't think there won't be bloodshed (figuratively), and don't think more than a few of our beloved distros won't go down the drain. Is it losing a battle and winning a war? Who knows, but Bill and Co. are on the trail, and I really don't think their issue is destroying Linux. They're a public company, after all. Their goal is to earn money for their shareholders while simultaneously ensuring earnings for the future. How they plan to accomplish this is anyone's guess. But remember, MS, for all their faults, has been a victim of frivilous patent litigation more often than they've lashed out against others.
Did anyone ever stop to think about MS and Unix? It was my understanding that they're unable to distribute a Unix variant due to various past agreements. Therefore, they spend ~$50m to get SCO into a lawsuit with IBM over whether Linux is Unix. Then, with reams of court docs and precedents set that Linux is NOT Unix, all of the sudden they can distribute such a system again without fear of lawsuits. Seems to me that if this was their strategy all along, they got off pretty cheap.
Billy boy and Co. work in mysterious ways...
Suppose you invent something and don't have the resources to build it. That's the prototypical argument for how patents protect the little guy, right? Guess what, you're a patent troll now. If someone with the necessary resources rips you off, you lose nothing, so you aren't awarded damages.
I think you're missing the point. No system is going to be perfect for everyone, but if you are an inventor, and you get a patent (which can cost over $15,000 to do right), then why would you not take the next logical step to market your invention? You obviously would know folks who would be interested, and you (should) be competent in the field.
Further, if you'd have bothered to read the article, you would have noticed that all they've done is clarified the conduct of the court with respect to granting permanent injunctions. For some time, it appears, when an entity is found to be infringing on a patent, then the patent holder automatically gets a permanent injunction against the infringer (and this is a biggie-- leverage in contract negotiations). So now the court must look at the equity involved. For instance if I get a patent as a garage inventor, then I find that GM is infringing on my patent, instead of lowly old me being able to stop the production lines (potentially costing billions of dollars for GM) as a method of imposing leverage on GM, the court might say "we think this case will be resolved, so there's no need to shut down the production line, just know GM, that you will be forced to pay for the entire time you are infringing." And to me, that seems very reasonable. No longer will companies whose sole purpose is to sue those who actually put the ideas to work be able to say "I can shut you down automatically because you're infringing," and be able to get away with it. Now in the more recent Creative v Apple case, there may very well be a reason for a court to grant Creative a permanent injunction, but it's not guaranteed, and this is the way it should be.