P.S. I just looked at the article again, and it says they, "discounted the recent wave of worms, viruses and other attacks that have affected Windows systems worldwide"
LOL thats awesome! If you are to take that "other attacks" wording literally, it sounds like they're saying that even after they disregarded *all* the attacks on Windows, there were still exploited Windows systems. As though hackers targeting Linux managed to accidentally hack Windows in the process or something!
Debian default install puts in pretty much nothing, if I recall. To have all those things enabled, somebody had to install them. To be fair, that's pretty easy to do, since like I said, you get *nothing* to begin with, so the tendency is to start blindly installing things from dselect.
For the umpteenth time, the 'big deal' is that a *ton* of stuff already uses their code, at least in the form of linking to their libraries. A lot of that stuff is GPL, and so can no longer be linked with said libraries and distributed without violating either the GPL or the new XFree license. As a result, we either dump all this GPL code, or we dump XFree 4.4. XFree 4.3 still works well, and is covered by the old license, hence no dumping of GPL code. Which would you choose?
You may ask "what GPL code is so all-fire important?". Well, QT for one (and by extension all of KDE). I'm sure several key components of Gnome as well, though I dunno for sure if the new XFree and the LGPL clash. And once you've eliminated all the window managers (most are GPL), then why do you need XFree86 at all?
I'm not so sure a jury's going to be especially moved listening to the RIAA's "poor us" routine, which presumably factored into their thinking when they decided not to take these cases to court in the first place. Plus there's always the outside chance things don't go their way. If that happens, they'll be barraged by copycat suits in no time flat.
I suspect the chances are pretty high for a fork. My fear is that the chances are also pretty high for multiple forks. I can just imagine Debian making a fork under the GPL, and the FreeBSD or OpenBSD people not liking that one bit and creating their own, and hysteria ensues.
Incidentally, I just looked at the FAQ for freedesktop.org, and it seems they're thinking LGPL for libraries, which the BSDs may not like...
Oh come on! Thats just silly. Lets take all our data and put it in *volatile* storage! You said it yourself, "a backup power system will be required". What are you gonna do, put solar panels on everybody's monitor? Battery backups for all? What happens when the battery needs to be replaced? For all the failures of harddrives, you've never seen a dataloss apocalypse like what you're proposing.
Oh, and as far as bottlenecks go, when my internet pipe can bog down my harddrive, then I'll be concerned.
P.S. Anyone who tells you unemployment is dropping like a rock is lying or uninformed. As another poster said already, they stop counting people once their unemployment benefits run out. And a *lot* of people are losing their benefits these days. Not to mention all of us who don't qualify for unemployment, be we recent college grads or whatever.
Hey, don't bunch us all in with Taxachussetts! We, the people of NH don't believe in your "laws". I bet the Mainers, and maybe the Vermonters would have something to say as well, and thats most of NE land area-wise.
Why? Just put the harddrive in a known-good machine, mount it, grab your stuff, and be done with it. For that matter load Knoppix and copy to a fileshare somewhere. Unless your computer is the only one within several miles of you, there's no reason to waste time recovering a software install just for some datafiles. The only reasons you need backups are hard disk failure and random data corruption, neither of which are recoverable.
The reason there are more worms on win2k/XP than the 9x series is because the 9x series doesn't DO anything. Win98 doesn't have "UPNP" or "Remote registry", or "windows messaging" or any other fancy services to speak of. Usually its all that crap (which is on by default!) that becomes the portal for worms. 2k/XP are a more powerful OS than 9x, which makes them inherently more dangerous. And now that more and more people are moving that way, of *course* chaos was going to break out, just as countless people predicted 4 years ago.
Doesn't look that hard to me. Leastaways, lots of people are doing it. In fact, the Loki installer still seems to be quite popular for a number of proprietary pieces of software. Just include all the libraries your game needs with the game, and problems should be virtually nil.
But more importantly, I think you overstate the problem of compatibility with old programs. Yes, it exists to a degree, but I really don't think its much worse than windows, and its a whole hell of a lot better than the OS9->OSX deal. All my Loki games still run, if anecdotal evidence is worth anything, with kernel 2.6 and alsa and new hardware and the whole deal. Compatibility has been a real problem for proprietary driver developers for sure, and probably for a handful of games, but I think the fault lies just as much with the developers for a lack of research or interest into supporting their products.
This is why half of all games that get released these days seem to be from somebody else's engine. Its just cheaper for many developers than writing your own. Let Carmack, et al, deal with the fancy stuff, we'll just make models and so forth. And increasingly, these engines are becoming more and more cross-platform. As that happens, we *should* get the games. Its pretty useless waiting for a OSS engine I suspect, as a game engine is a tremendously complicated thing, and we all know how many OSS projects ever approach stability. Of course, there is a middleground, the Torque engine for example. Proprietary, but licenses for $100/developer, and is cross-platform.
What really gets me is that a lot of developers still don't get it. My personal pet peeve is with Call of Duty, which is a modification of RTCW, which is in turn based on Quake 3. Both previous games were available for Linux and Windows, but for some reason the CoD people were just too lazy to carry that on. And thats just stupid. The tools for making Linux/Windows/Mac games are out there in plenty, its just that so many of the current developers are too stupid to use them.
This is a pointless comment, but as much as I hate most of the stupid phone features they have now, I *really* want the polyphonic ringtones. Sounds sooo much better then the old monotone beep.
Maybe my legalese isn't up to snuff, or maybe you're paraphrasing, but the way I read that I don't see the problem.
XFree is not a derived work of GPL'd code. Now, if you create a derived work from XFree, you (the redistributor or creator) are not adding any restrictions. The restrictions were already there. And regardless, its *still* not a derived work of GPL'd code. As I read it, this clause prevents you from taking, say, Emacs, and adding your own clause that says 'everyone who uses this source must give me $10'. At worst, it looks pretty ambiguous on writing GPL code that uses libraries that have their own license criteria, which seems to me the only way this would ever matter. Though I guess you might want to consult a lawyer before you put the XFree server into Emacs.
Haha, thats the email?! If bogofilter didn't pick that up, I'd mark it spam before I'd finished reading the first line! Maybe I'm just jaded, but I think they should rework that some if they actually want members.
Oh I dunno about assholes... As a proud owner of a NForce2 board, yeah I'm frustrated as hell with their crappy sound drivers (well, tecnically I use the ALSA drivers, but they're based on the nvidia-released ones and still aren't any good). But I mean, they *did* give us the nforce agpgart stuff for free. I guess they were bitches about the nforce ethernet driver (which was trivially reverse-engineered), so feel free to be angry about that. However, on the sound front, from what I've heard SoundStorm is at least as full of proprietary badness as their video drivers, probably Dolby IP among others. And the unofficial word is that they *are* working on a binary driver, which is probably the best they can do.
What he means is its not in the default kernel, and (especially coming from Linux) its non-obvious how to get it in there. I've done the FreeBSD thing a few times, and that always trips me up for a few minutes. I'm not entirely sure its even mentioned in the handbook.
Ok, so how much time has he given? I'm betting not a lot. Just because you're so rich that you can give $20bil away and still have $20bil more doesn't make you a good person.
Bah, a rich man gave away a portion of his riches, and nowhere near enough that it affects his quality of life in any way. Its certainly not a heroic act, its mildly noble at best.
Furthermore, since so much of that money presumably was acquired through fairly illegal means (antitrust anyone?), I'm not sure if I respect his "donations" at all. Hell, some of thats probably from the last time *I* payed the Microsoft tax! To me, its not the dollar amount a person gives, but what they sacrifice, and Bill sure hasn't impressed me yet.
As for me, Model M all the way. Just wish I knew how to make the speaker mounted underneath do something. But the uber-long detachable (from the keyboard in addition to the computer) PS/2 cord is awesome. Wouldn't trade it for anything.
I think I have the same Intellimouse as the parent. Its a fantastic mouse, never had a problem, except for occasional crud buildup on the little rubber pads. I would like to be able to bind the extra buttons to do something useful in Linux though. By default they're the same as middle-click and right-click respectively.
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LOL thats awesome! If you are to take that "other attacks" wording literally, it sounds like they're saying that even after they disregarded *all* the attacks on Windows, there were still exploited Windows systems. As though hackers targeting Linux managed to accidentally hack Windows in the process or something!
Debian default install puts in pretty much nothing, if I recall. To have all those things enabled, somebody had to install them. To be fair, that's pretty easy to do, since like I said, you get *nothing* to begin with, so the tendency is to start blindly installing things from dselect.
For the umpteenth time, the 'big deal' is that a *ton* of stuff already uses their code, at least in the form of linking to their libraries. A lot of that stuff is GPL, and so can no longer be linked with said libraries and distributed without violating either the GPL or the new XFree license. As a result, we either dump all this GPL code, or we dump XFree 4.4. XFree 4.3 still works well, and is covered by the old license, hence no dumping of GPL code. Which would you choose?
You may ask "what GPL code is so all-fire important?". Well, QT for one (and by extension all of KDE). I'm sure several key components of Gnome as well, though I dunno for sure if the new XFree and the LGPL clash. And once you've eliminated all the window managers (most are GPL), then why do you need XFree86 at all?
Ouch, very subjective... and I'd disagree. My PC's modern enough and XFree86+XFCE smokes Win2k.
Carrying a RPG (or any other banned weapon) is a crime the second you pick it up. Nevertheless, we don't put metal detectors outside people's houses.
Shoplifting is a crime the second you walk out of the store. Grocery store clerks still can't pat you down on the way out.
This is just not the way a free society should enforce laws.
I'm not so sure a jury's going to be especially moved listening to the RIAA's "poor us" routine, which presumably factored into their thinking when they decided not to take these cases to court in the first place. Plus there's always the outside chance things don't go their way. If that happens, they'll be barraged by copycat suits in no time flat.
I suspect the chances are pretty high for a fork. My fear is that the chances are also pretty high for multiple forks. I can just imagine Debian making a fork under the GPL, and the FreeBSD or OpenBSD people not liking that one bit and creating their own, and hysteria ensues.
Incidentally, I just looked at the FAQ for freedesktop.org, and it seems they're thinking LGPL for libraries, which the BSDs may not like...
Oh come on! Thats just silly. Lets take all our data and put it in *volatile* storage! You said it yourself, "a backup power system will be required". What are you gonna do, put solar panels on everybody's monitor? Battery backups for all? What happens when the battery needs to be replaced? For all the failures of harddrives, you've never seen a dataloss apocalypse like what you're proposing.
Oh, and as far as bottlenecks go, when my internet pipe can bog down my harddrive, then I'll be concerned.
I never have modpoints when I need them...
P.S. Anyone who tells you unemployment is dropping like a rock is lying or uninformed. As another poster said already, they stop counting people once their unemployment benefits run out. And a *lot* of people are losing their benefits these days. Not to mention all of us who don't qualify for unemployment, be we recent college grads or whatever.
Hey, don't bunch us all in with Taxachussetts! We, the people of NH don't believe in your "laws". I bet the Mainers, and maybe the Vermonters would have something to say as well, and thats most of NE land area-wise.
Why? Just put the harddrive in a known-good machine, mount it, grab your stuff, and be done with it. For that matter load Knoppix and copy to a fileshare somewhere. Unless your computer is the only one within several miles of you, there's no reason to waste time recovering a software install just for some datafiles. The only reasons you need backups are hard disk failure and random data corruption, neither of which are recoverable.
Because all those languages are slow. C is fast. A better solution would be more like OpenBSD, with ProPolice and W^X built-in.
No, bah, way off...
The reason there are more worms on win2k/XP than the 9x series is because the 9x series doesn't DO anything. Win98 doesn't have "UPNP" or "Remote registry", or "windows messaging" or any other fancy services to speak of. Usually its all that crap (which is on by default!) that becomes the portal for worms. 2k/XP are a more powerful OS than 9x, which makes them inherently more dangerous. And now that more and more people are moving that way, of *course* chaos was going to break out, just as countless people predicted 4 years ago.
The FCC *should* have a fit. Will they? I dunno.
Doesn't look that hard to me. Leastaways, lots of people are doing it. In fact, the Loki installer still seems to be quite popular for a number of proprietary pieces of software. Just include all the libraries your game needs with the game, and problems should be virtually nil.
But more importantly, I think you overstate the problem of compatibility with old programs. Yes, it exists to a degree, but I really don't think its much worse than windows, and its a whole hell of a lot better than the OS9->OSX deal. All my Loki games still run, if anecdotal evidence is worth anything, with kernel 2.6 and alsa and new hardware and the whole deal. Compatibility has been a real problem for proprietary driver developers for sure, and probably for a handful of games, but I think the fault lies just as much with the developers for a lack of research or interest into supporting their products.
This is why half of all games that get released these days seem to be from somebody else's engine. Its just cheaper for many developers than writing your own. Let Carmack, et al, deal with the fancy stuff, we'll just make models and so forth. And increasingly, these engines are becoming more and more cross-platform. As that happens, we *should* get the games. Its pretty useless waiting for a OSS engine I suspect, as a game engine is a tremendously complicated thing, and we all know how many OSS projects ever approach stability. Of course, there is a middleground, the Torque engine for example. Proprietary, but licenses for $100/developer, and is cross-platform.
What really gets me is that a lot of developers still don't get it. My personal pet peeve is with Call of Duty, which is a modification of RTCW, which is in turn based on Quake 3. Both previous games were available for Linux and Windows, but for some reason the CoD people were just too lazy to carry that on. And thats just stupid. The tools for making Linux/Windows/Mac games are out there in plenty, its just that so many of the current developers are too stupid to use them.
This is a pointless comment, but as much as I hate most of the stupid phone features they have now, I *really* want the polyphonic ringtones. Sounds sooo much better then the old monotone beep.
Maybe my legalese isn't up to snuff, or maybe you're paraphrasing, but the way I read that I don't see the problem.
XFree is not a derived work of GPL'd code. Now, if you create a derived work from XFree, you (the redistributor or creator) are not adding any restrictions. The restrictions were already there. And regardless, its *still* not a derived work of GPL'd code. As I read it, this clause prevents you from taking, say, Emacs, and adding your own clause that says 'everyone who uses this source must give me $10'. At worst, it looks pretty ambiguous on writing GPL code that uses libraries that have their own license criteria, which seems to me the only way this would ever matter. Though I guess you might want to consult a lawyer before you put the XFree server into Emacs.
Haha, thats the email?! If bogofilter didn't pick that up, I'd mark it spam before I'd finished reading the first line! Maybe I'm just jaded, but I think they should rework that some if they actually want members.
Oh I dunno about assholes... As a proud owner of a NForce2 board, yeah I'm frustrated as hell with their crappy sound drivers (well, tecnically I use the ALSA drivers, but they're based on the nvidia-released ones and still aren't any good). But I mean, they *did* give us the nforce agpgart stuff for free. I guess they were bitches about the nforce ethernet driver (which was trivially reverse-engineered), so feel free to be angry about that. However, on the sound front, from what I've heard SoundStorm is at least as full of proprietary badness as their video drivers, probably Dolby IP among others. And the unofficial word is that they *are* working on a binary driver, which is probably the best they can do.
What he means is its not in the default kernel, and (especially coming from Linux) its non-obvious how to get it in there. I've done the FreeBSD thing a few times, and that always trips me up for a few minutes. I'm not entirely sure its even mentioned in the handbook.
Ok, so how much time has he given? I'm betting not a lot. Just because you're so rich that you can give $20bil away and still have $20bil more doesn't make you a good person.
Bah, a rich man gave away a portion of his riches, and nowhere near enough that it affects his quality of life in any way. Its certainly not a heroic act, its mildly noble at best.
Furthermore, since so much of that money presumably was acquired through fairly illegal means (antitrust anyone?), I'm not sure if I respect his "donations" at all. Hell, some of thats probably from the last time *I* payed the Microsoft tax! To me, its not the dollar amount a person gives, but what they sacrifice, and Bill sure hasn't impressed me yet.
Heh, way to cope with a crappy article...
As for me, Model M all the way. Just wish I knew how to make the speaker mounted underneath do something. But the uber-long detachable (from the keyboard in addition to the computer) PS/2 cord is awesome. Wouldn't trade it for anything.
I think I have the same Intellimouse as the parent. Its a fantastic mouse, never had a problem, except for occasional crud buildup on the little rubber pads. I would like to be able to bind the extra buttons to do something useful in Linux though. By default they're the same as middle-click and right-click respectively.
Blame everyone, its more consistent.