Just another expression of how the US legal system has departed from reality.
Hack an Internet business, cost them a million bucks, get set to prison for life. Defraud shareholders of a couple of billion, lose your right to server on the board of directors of a US company.
The Internet today is great proof that ad sponsered anything is not possible.
Besides, if it was oss why wouldn't someone just start a new project, sans ads?
Re:Installation vs. Usage - Mac 10 Windows 7, Linu
on
Coursey on Palladium
·
· Score: 1
The cron thing was if you want the computer to upgrade all of your software for you without ANY intervention.
How does the new software package get onto your mac's desktop? I am assuming you have to use a web browser or some other app to get it there? Am I right, or does the Mac read your brainwaves or something, and know what software you are about to install on your machine?
Well, think of red carpet as a web brower, but instead of having to go to each developer's site and navigate through their Mac inspired flash based intros to the download button, red carpet gives a simple list of almost all software available for your platform, regardless of vendor. Then you click the ones you want, they get downloaded, verified and installed.
Either way I don't think anyone can contend that software installation on Linux is fundamentally easier OR LESS EASY than on a Mac, or a win32 for that matter. There are ALL easy enough for my parents to handle and that's what counts.
Re:Installation vs. Usage - Mac 10 Windows 7, Linu
on
Coursey on Palladium
·
· Score: 1
Again, until you have tried Ximian's red-carpet, you shouldn't go on about Linux being too difficult.
Yes, red-carpet will supply you with open-office and place a handy icon in your programs menu.
I would venture to say that Linux "can be" easier to install/maintain software with than any other OS. With Linux, I don't have to buy a cardboard box, pull out a plastic disk, get that shrink-wrap crap off of it, get it into the cdrom drive and click through some installer I have never used before.
Instead I can choose a channel like "open-office" or "Loki-Games" or "Red Hat" or "CodeWeavers Wine" or "Ximain Gnome" or... click on the piece of software I want and then have a beer while it is downloaded and installed for me. What could be easier than that?
Re:Installation vs. Usage - Mac 10 Windows 7, Linu
on
Coursey on Palladium
·
· Score: 1
This is no different than software install/update with Ximian red-carpet which goes:
check next to desired software
click on "ok"
or just stick this in your cron and forget about it:
up2date -u
Non-tech project tracking droids are ok, but if the duties go beyond keeping track of the timelines and budget, things can get messed up.
People without technical knowledge have no business envisioning new features, or running IT business units.
How many flight operations managers do you think have no experience in aviation? How many deans of Physics have no understanding of physics? How many school principals have no experience with education? How many petroleum plant managers know zero about petroleum production?
Why then is it that we think an accountant is a good choice for an IT manager? Is a programmer a good choice to head up the accounting department? Maybe the reason that IT projects are often over budget is that the are, by and large, being managed by people who don't understand the business.
The ideal IT manager, should possess BOTH technical know-how and management know-how.
The origin of some computer ideas: text editor - tech dancing paperclip - non-tech html/http - tech zero info intro web pages - non-tech xml - tech enormous unusable dtd's - non-tech cdr - tech easy to crack cd copy protection - non-tech
1.ability to block popups 2.ability to block ads 3.ability to turn off javascript
MSIE used to have the ability to turn off javascript. Why was this feature removed?
Answer: The same reason MSIE will never contain the other two features. Because it would destroy the financial basis of the MS internet properties, MSN, Hotmail, etc. which are all ad based.
Just because MSIE is "given" to the consumer, doesn't mean that it is free.
Mozilla, on the other hand, is free, free from a commercial adjenda, in addition to free of cost, and free to use, distribute, modify, all the goodies of Gnu. It gives the user the ultimate freedom the decision of which internet properties to support, which ads to view.
My prediction is that, if Linux every gets going on the desktop, MS will give away their OS. They will do this because they know that they will make more money by controlling the users computer, where a user shops, how they pay, etc. than they will make if they sell the product and lose market share. The only reason they are still selling the OS is because people are still willing pay for the priviledge of letting MS dictate their online and general computer xperience.
Isn't he the inventor of the tag? Now, if the tag is his idea of the future of web browsers, why should I care about his views?
Three reasons why Mozilla, (not Netscape) will gain market share.
1. Security (MS could theoretically compete on this point) 2. Ability to turn off popups. 3. right-ckick "block images from this server"
In other words, Mozilla gives back control of the user's computer to that user. I am betting that once people see this they will choose Mozilla every time.
Doesn't a Java vm do the same thing as their patented "technology" ?
A Java vm is stongly type checked to prevent buffer overruns. The use of a vm also enforces a security policy, commonly used to prevent applets from writing to disk etc., but can be fine tuned to disallow almost any system resource. In this way code that executes in the vm is isolated from the OS.
Seems to me that there is plenty of prior art here.
BTW, I believe that there is some code in the Solaris kernel that also trys to prevent buffer overruns.
I use only Gnu/Linux on my desktop so I will really be interested in a Linux version of Doom 3.
Thanks for making a Linux version. Id is taking a leadership role in supporting Linux, and I am sure that the community won't forget this.
When Linux increases its desktop share, as it surely must, given the many initives, world-wide, to consider OSS, Id will find itself established in a market niche with few competitors.
About all of the effort that goes into protecting your credit card number when you shop online, and yet, when you go to a resturant, they collect a bunch of numbers, put them in an envelope and shove them in an unlocked filing cabinet.
Properly run corporations have a responsibility that goes beyond their share holders. Its just a current, short sighted, fashion that makes many of today's corporations act as though they didn't.
Microsoft should understand that it is in the best interests of everyone to have open standards and public domain software. At present, it might be in their best financial interests to snub OSS and keep every MS format a secret, but that does not absolve them of the corporate responsibility of doing what is right for their community.
Microsoft should understand that software will be better if there is competition on every level. Their employees will work harder and produce better, if they had to face some competition. Microsoft is in a better position to produce excellent software than any other company. They can compete successfully on a level playing field. Why not endorse open standards for file formats and network interoperability, and then produce better implementations than everyone else?
Resorting to text is rediculous, you would lose all of the non-text content, images, graphics, table of contents... I use Open Office. It does a VERY good job of importing MS word docs.
I also use Gnumeric, which brings in excel just fine. and Open Office also brings in power point. Abiword is good for a quick peek at word docs but doesn't do a good job on the import, yet. Open Office also reads excel but Gnumeric does such a good job I rarely use OO for this.
I know, you think I am exagerating. Well download Open Office (onto your win 32 machine if you must) and open the most complex word doc you have.
www.openoffice.org
I think the reason that corps don't use linux on the desk is that $1000 per worker for productivity software is not all that much. Getting them all to switch to different software (even if its better) would cause a lot of problems. Small companies might be more inclined to use Gnu since they don't get volume licensing and they don't have heaps of cash.
And another thing, anyone crazy enough to chuck a good Solaris database server for a Linux one needs to have their head examined (IMHO).
Haven't you been keeping up? Star Wars is the greatest Epic ever told. More riviting than "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", more witty than "Don Quixote", more intricate than anything by Raymond Chandler ever wrote, more sweeping than "War and Peace".
Yup, I'll wager a copy of windows 98 that in 100 years the Star Wars story will be seen as the seminal work of modern man.
Anyone that would imply otherwise is, frankly, insane.
And the best way to get it is to support the ideals of the free software foundation.
When nt4 came out, everyone said it was better, more secure, easier to use, yada yada. Of course this was all marketing BS, but the people who sign the cheques believed it.
All of the major unix vendors ran about like proverbial chickens announcing that they were dumping unix and introducing intel/nt systems. Everyone except for Sun, anyway.
Then came the unix is dead in 5 years crap. As a technical person, I was astounded that people would ditch unix for nt4.
Which brings me to my point, Linux Torvalds and RMS are BOTH correct. People must be able to choose software based on a technical basis. But, only free software, ala GNU, ensures that good software will remain despite the multi-billion dollar marketing efforts by people that would have us choose software based on hype, FUD and other forms of BS.
Why is it that people can write kiddie porn essays and not get charged, but when a programmer writes De-CSS, etc, he is thrown in the slammer?
AC is 100% correct, the writing of the code does not break copyright law, only using the tool in certain ways is criminal.
The DMCA == censorship at best, at worst it is an attack on a minority group, developers, as big money attempts to control what they can't buy.
Its astounding to me that a person in the US can buy a 9mm Glock, a weapon made specifically for killing other people, but if they distribute certain censored works, like De-CSS, its into the slammer.
What's next? Illegal Mathematical formulae?
Comp Sci degree == bad code
on
Bitter Java
·
· Score: 1
I have run accross a disturbing trend in young coders. The only way I can explain it is that they are being taught strange ideas in university.
This trend is that they create structure for no reason at all. My belief is that, every time I split functionality into a new class, the application has to benefit from this split in some concrete way. If it doesn't then the code just ends up slow and difficult to maintain.
I had a guy working for me that had a cs degree and a couple years of software development experience. A bright guy, I gave him a small project to complete.
Eventually I had to maintain his code and what I found, chilled me to the bone. He had about 5 pages of code split up into 15 classes!
As you might imagine, it is pretty difficult to maintain something with more structure than code. I just gave up and rewrote the thing.
So what did all his attemts at ood create? What was the point of thinking like Bootch on this one? Not every project is "The Great Software System", most of the time its simple little hacks that run for a year and then need some attention.
Here, here... I tried to load 150 million records into mySQL on Linux. Bad idea, finally gave up and used Oracle, but it was still a hassle due to file size limits. If only clients would listen when you tell them that the easiest and cheapest thing would be to buy a used sparc.
Just because Einstein associated with a lot of socialists and communists does not establish that he believed in ALL of the tenants of these organizaions. Just as a person who votes Republican may be in favor of the "pro-choice" stance on abortion.
I have read some stuff written by Einstein and he was, I believe, merely scared to death that there was going to be a nuclear war. And he, as someone who could well imagine the implications, and as someone with a good moral compass, decided to use his celebrity status to try and save the world from destruction.
Its more srprising to me that after the slaughter of WW1 and WW2, that someone like Einstein, who was plainly looking for a novel solution to the problem or war, was under investigation by the government, instead of being supported by the government.
I think the root of this investigation is that governments like to have a ready pool of kids to send off to their death. Anyone that interferes with that ability touches on how government leaders define their power, and probably their manhood.
It is also interesting that 25 or so years later people would be practising what Einstein was proposing, to end the Vietnam vs. the USA war.
Slashdot Mirror
Just another expression of how the US legal system has departed from reality.
Hack an Internet business, cost them a million bucks, get set to prison for life. Defraud shareholders of a couple of billion, lose your right to server on the board of directors of a US company.
The Internet today is great proof that ad sponsered anything is not possible.
Besides, if it was oss why wouldn't someone just start a new project, sans ads?
The cron thing was if you want the computer to upgrade all of your software for you without ANY intervention.
How does the new software package get onto your mac's desktop? I am assuming you have to use a web browser or some other app to get it there? Am I right, or does the Mac read your brainwaves or something, and know what software you are about to install on your machine?
Well, think of red carpet as a web brower, but instead of having to go to each developer's site and navigate through their Mac inspired flash based intros to the download button, red carpet gives a simple list of almost all software available for your platform, regardless of vendor. Then you click the ones you want, they get downloaded, verified and installed.
Either way I don't think anyone can contend that software installation on Linux is fundamentally easier OR LESS EASY than on a Mac, or a win32 for that matter. There are ALL easy enough for my parents to handle and that's what counts.
Again, until you have tried Ximian's red-carpet, you shouldn't go on about Linux being too difficult.
Yes, red-carpet will supply you with open-office and place a handy icon in your programs menu.
I would venture to say that Linux "can be" easier to install/maintain software with than any other OS. With Linux, I don't have to buy a cardboard box, pull out a plastic disk, get that shrink-wrap crap off of it, get it into the cdrom drive and click through some installer I have never used before.
Instead I can choose a channel like "open-office" or "Loki-Games" or "Red Hat" or "CodeWeavers Wine" or "Ximain Gnome" or... click on the piece of software I want and then have a beer while it is downloaded and installed for me. What could be easier than that?
This is no different than software install/update with Ximian red-carpet which goes: check next to desired software click on "ok" or just stick this in your cron and forget about it: up2date -u
Non-tech project tracking droids are ok, but if the duties go beyond keeping track of the timelines and budget, things can get messed up.
People without technical knowledge have no business envisioning new features, or running IT business units.
How many flight operations managers do you think have no experience in aviation? How many deans of Physics have no understanding of physics? How many school principals have no experience with education? How many petroleum plant managers know zero about petroleum production?
Why then is it that we think an accountant is a good choice for an IT manager? Is a programmer a good choice to head up the accounting department? Maybe the reason that IT projects are often over budget is that the are, by and large, being managed by people who don't understand the business.
The ideal IT manager, should possess BOTH technical know-how and management know-how.
The origin of some computer ideas:
text editor - tech
dancing paperclip - non-tech
html/http - tech
zero info intro web pages - non-tech
xml - tech
enormous unusable dtd's - non-tech
cdr - tech
easy to crack cd copy protection - non-tech
1.ability to block popups
2.ability to block ads
3.ability to turn off javascript
MSIE used to have the ability to turn off javascript. Why was this feature removed?
Answer: The same reason MSIE will never contain the other two features. Because it would destroy the financial basis of the MS internet properties, MSN, Hotmail, etc. which are all ad based.
Just because MSIE is "given" to the consumer, doesn't mean that it is free.
Mozilla, on the other hand, is free, free from a commercial adjenda, in addition to free of cost, and free to use, distribute, modify, all the goodies of Gnu. It gives the user the ultimate freedom the decision of which internet properties to support, which ads to view.
My prediction is that, if Linux every gets going on the desktop, MS will give away their OS. They will do this because they know that they will make more money by controlling the users computer, where a user shops, how they pay, etc. than they will make if they sell the product and lose market share. The only reason they are still selling the OS is because people are still willing pay for the priviledge of letting MS dictate their online and general computer xperience.
Show him:
preferences:Advanced:Scripts & Windows:Open unrequested windows
Set this to off to remove unwanted popups.
Then right-click on a banner ad and select "block images from this server"
I share an office with a coworker, after showing him the above features, he loaded Mozilla and I haven't seen him use MSIE since. His OS is XP.
Google Zeitgeist reports "Top 10 Gaining Queries" for the week ending June 10, 2002. Number 5 = mozilla
So there!
Isn't he the inventor of the tag? Now, if the tag is his idea of the future of web browsers, why should I care about his views?
Three reasons why Mozilla, (not Netscape) will gain market share.
1. Security (MS could theoretically compete on this point)
2. Ability to turn off popups.
3. right-ckick "block images from this server"
In other words, Mozilla gives back control of the user's computer to that user. I am betting that once people see this they will choose Mozilla every time.
Doesn't a Java vm do the same thing as their patented "technology" ?
A Java vm is stongly type checked to prevent buffer overruns. The use of a vm also enforces a security policy, commonly used to prevent applets from writing to disk etc., but can be fine tuned to disallow almost any system resource. In this way code that executes in the vm is isolated from the OS.
Seems to me that there is plenty of prior art here.
BTW, I believe that there is some code in the Solaris kernel that also trys to prevent buffer overruns.
Why can't they do the same experiment using a space telescope and a pulsar?
I use only Gnu/Linux on my desktop so I will really be interested in a Linux version of Doom 3.
Thanks for making a Linux version. Id is taking a leadership role in supporting Linux, and I am sure that the community won't forget this.
When Linux increases its desktop share, as it surely must, given the many initives, world-wide, to consider OSS, Id will find itself established in a market niche with few competitors.
About all of the effort that goes into protecting your credit card number when you shop online, and yet, when you go to a resturant, they collect a bunch of numbers, put them in an envelope and shove them in an unlocked filing cabinet.
Properly run corporations have a responsibility that goes beyond their share holders. Its just a current, short sighted, fashion that makes many of today's corporations act as though they didn't.
Microsoft should understand that it is in the best interests of everyone to have open standards and public domain software. At present, it might be in their best financial interests to snub OSS and keep every MS format a secret, but that does not absolve them of the corporate responsibility of doing what is right for their community.
Microsoft should understand that software will be better if there is competition on every level. Their employees will work harder and produce better, if they had to face some competition. Microsoft is in a better position to produce excellent software than any other company. They can compete successfully on a level playing field. Why not endorse open standards for file formats and network interoperability, and then produce better implementations than everyone else?
Resorting to text is rediculous, you would lose all of the non-text content, images, graphics, table of contents... I use Open Office. It does a VERY good job of importing MS word docs.
I also use Gnumeric, which brings in excel just fine. and Open Office also brings in power point. Abiword is good for a quick peek at word docs but doesn't do a good job on the import, yet. Open Office also reads excel but Gnumeric does such a good job I rarely use OO for this.
I know, you think I am exagerating. Well download Open Office (onto your win 32 machine if you must) and open the most complex word doc you have.
www.openoffice.org
I think the reason that corps don't use linux on the desk is that $1000 per worker for productivity software is not all that much. Getting them all to switch to different software (even if its better) would cause a lot of problems. Small companies might be more inclined to use Gnu since they don't get volume licensing and they don't have heaps of cash.
And another thing, anyone crazy enough to chuck a good Solaris database server for a Linux one needs to have their head examined (IMHO).
I think you can use secure nfs and the automounter to get your home dir to follow you around.
I do this regularly with normal nfs and automount on a lan, but I see no reason why this couldn't work in a secure fashion over a wider network.
Anyone?
Their ink jet printers seldom last for an entire ink cartrage and so there is no point including a full one.
Haven't you been keeping up? Star Wars is the greatest Epic ever told. More riviting than "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", more witty than "Don Quixote", more intricate than anything by Raymond Chandler ever wrote, more sweeping than "War and Peace".
:-)
Yup, I'll wager a copy of windows 98 that in 100 years the Star Wars story will be seen as the seminal work of modern man.
Anyone that would imply otherwise is, frankly, insane.
And the best way to get it is to support the ideals of the free software foundation.
When nt4 came out, everyone said it was better, more secure, easier to use, yada yada. Of course this was all marketing BS, but the people who sign the cheques believed it.
All of the major unix vendors ran about like proverbial chickens announcing that they were dumping unix and introducing intel/nt systems. Everyone except for Sun, anyway.
Then came the unix is dead in 5 years crap. As a technical person, I was astounded that people would ditch unix for nt4.
Which brings me to my point, Linux Torvalds and RMS are BOTH correct. People must be able to choose software based on a technical basis. But, only free software, ala GNU, ensures that good software will remain despite the multi-billion dollar marketing efforts by people that would have us choose software based on hype, FUD and other forms of BS.
Why is it that people can write kiddie porn essays and not get charged, but when a programmer writes De-CSS, etc, he is thrown in the slammer?
AC is 100% correct, the writing of the code does not break copyright law, only using the tool in certain ways is criminal.
The DMCA == censorship at best, at worst it is an attack on a minority group, developers, as big money attempts to control what they can't buy.
Its astounding to me that a person in the US can buy a 9mm Glock, a weapon made specifically for killing other people, but if they distribute certain censored works, like De-CSS, its into the slammer.
What's next? Illegal Mathematical formulae?
I have run accross a disturbing trend in young coders. The only way I can explain it is that they are being taught strange ideas in university.
This trend is that they create structure for no reason at all. My belief is that, every time I split functionality into a new class, the application has to benefit from this split in some concrete way. If it doesn't then the code just ends up slow and difficult to maintain.
I had a guy working for me that had a cs degree and a couple years of software development experience. A bright guy, I gave him a small project to complete.
Eventually I had to maintain his code and what I found, chilled me to the bone. He had about 5 pages of code split up into 15 classes!
As you might imagine, it is pretty difficult to maintain something with more structure than code. I just gave up and rewrote the thing.
So what did all his attemts at ood create? What was the point of thinking like Bootch on this one? Not every project is "The Great Software System", most of the time its simple little hacks that run for a year and then need some attention.
Maybe ood == unmaintainable?
Here, here... I tried to load 150 million records into mySQL on Linux. Bad idea, finally gave up and used Oracle, but it was still a hassle due to file size limits. If only clients would listen when you tell them that the easiest and cheapest thing would be to buy a used sparc.
Just because Einstein associated with a lot of socialists and communists does not establish that he believed in ALL of the tenants of these organizaions. Just as a person who votes Republican may be in favor of the "pro-choice" stance on abortion.
I have read some stuff written by Einstein and he was, I believe, merely scared to death that there was going to be a nuclear war. And he, as someone who could well imagine the implications, and as someone with a good moral compass, decided to use his celebrity status to try and save the world from destruction.
Its more srprising to me that after the slaughter of WW1 and WW2, that someone like Einstein, who was plainly looking for a novel solution to the problem or war, was under investigation by the government, instead of being supported by the government.
I think the root of this investigation is that governments like to have a ready pool of kids to send off to their death. Anyone that interferes with that ability touches on how government leaders define their power, and probably their manhood.
It is also interesting that 25 or so years later people would be practising what Einstein was proposing, to end the Vietnam vs. the USA war.
we had politicians like this in Canada... sigh.