They could always claim the physical cost of distribution was $50 - after all, there's the handling charge!
But, if this went to court, no reasonable jury would believe an argument that it costs $50 to make and ship a CD. I mean, AOL does it for pennies, SveaSoft can do it for $10. It is SveaSoft's decision to decide how they want to distribute the source, though, so them not putting it up for download is fair game.
However, it seems to me that the bigger problem is that they're supposedly tagging the binaries they distribute. Unless SveaSoft is distributing the code to generate the tags as well, _that_ is absolutely against the GPL, as far as I can tell. The GPL specifies that you need to release all the source to the binaries.
There is a peripheral issue that SveaSoft is yanking subscriptions from people who distribute the binaries, but this is actually OK according to the GPL (so says the FSF). It _is_ against the spirit of the GPL.
So, the two real legal issues I see: 1. Tagging code, or lack thereof. 2. Outrageous source distribution charge.
The 6800 DDL is just a 6800 that supports the new ADC. Apple releases the drivers, don't bitch at us if you don't like the drivers. No, we're not going to tell you about our contract with Apple. The X800 sucks.
I found the article blurb to be obnoxious as hell. How about just showing us the link, briefly saying (in a non-biased way) what it says, and then letting _us_ make the decision on how to view it?
Don't editorialize in the blurb. If you have a fucking editorial, submit it to your local paper. I care about the news, not your political views.
I have a friend who's a manager at Verizon. He mentioned that Verizon has to treat their competitors better than their customers because of regulation:).
That's why you can order DSL with Covad, and they'll be totally on the ball getting it hooked up, and Verizon would just twiddle its thumbs in the same situation.
The other is that most of the P2P sharing going on on campus is using DirectConnect anyways, and thus there's no difference bandwidth-wise. Additionally, RUNNING the server requires support time from OIT, which costs money.
The fact remains that their option was going to actually cost us money, if not in bandwidth, then in support (and possibly hardware).
"Sad to see they went with Napster instead of, say, iTunes or something better."
It's because Apple isn't offering the schools anything. If you think Napster's taking advantage of them, you should see Apple's offer:
"Let us advertise on your campus and you can bear our bandwidth costs with an on-campus server! FREE!"
I was _at_ the meeting with Apple when they were talking to our school. The non-techies at the meeting had a similar opinion of the proposed offer. If you think Napster2 is screwing schools, you've never seen what Apple is pushing - something that gives them free advertising, costs the school money, and has zero chance of doing anything about the overall problem.
You've got it precisely right on the XD side, actually.
When a SuSE/Novell rep came to my university to try to pitch his wares to our Linux admin group, he said quite clearly that Ximian Desktop's going to be a Novell exclusive. That doesn't mean they're going to suddenly pull their source tree, but if you liked XD (and it's not bad!), you're going to need to move to SuSE. He also said they wouldn't be releasing a general Netware client program, but implementing it into SuSE. I'm assuming it'll be open-source, though, so there's nothing stopping Red Hat, Mandrake, GNOME, or KDE from simply integrating it themselves.
This change might be painful for Debian and some other distros, but Red Hat and Mandrake are rolling their own Evolution RPMs anyways, so it's not likely to affect them much.
As the parent points out, XD was largely superfluous for FC1 anyways, since it had most of the graphical config tools anyways. I can see why it would be a lot more important for Debian, though...
Uh, the article _I_ read said it was still vastly overpriced - it's just that this downturn was not really based on any fundamentals. Red Hat is still making money selling support, and financial rewrites don't change that.
Ask anybody in my LUG - I'm the biggest Red Hat supporter in the world. But that _does not_ mean their stock is worth buying.
"and the longer kids aren't trusted with responsability, the less they will be responsable"
I'm not sure I agree with that one. It ignores the vastly different cultures and the effects they have on people. The Japanese live in a rather different society than you or I.
As the article blurb pointed out, the real question is more "when will they ship?"
I'm in the market for a new console, since my bastard apartment mate took the common DVD player when he left for the summer. That, and I'm getting married in the near future, and neither my fiance nor I own a stand-alone DVD player.
We're planning on buying an HDTV of some sort, but we're unsure what console we should get. We're DDR fans, but that doesn't really separate the pack, since both consoles have DDR. I _am_ a big RPG fan, though, and Final Fantasy is definitely a consideration. Therefore, I'm leaning towards a PS2, but if X-Box is amazingly better at playing DVDs or has better HDTV support, I might go for that instead.
Obviously, GC is off the table since it doesn't play DVDs.
Any opinions from people who have owned _and_ used both?
Another question: are there any rumored release dates for PS3 that seem remotely believable?
Your "progressive, secular" Iraq got into a war with Iran that cost a million lives. The only thing "stable" about Iraq was that it wasn't going to chuck its dictator without some outside help. That is not to say the US should have invaded, but please don't hold Iraq up as some kind of shining beacon for the rest of the Middle East.
Sorry, but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I still don't understand how you think a full-blown civil war and a petty dictatorship are the same thing, though. Iraq is in _no way whatsoever_ experiencing a full-blown civil war.
Sudan is experiencing a civil war. The situation is totally different than Iraq's. It is unlikely _any_ amount of military or political pressure could change what's going on over there.
And, every government turns a blind eye to Africa, because, well, no one cares about them outside of a strictly humanitarian ideal (an ideal which never seems to get much funding). The countries there are not strategically important to anyone, and the underlying problems are often caused by culture and corruption - how do you fix those with a political _or_ a military solution?
So, no, I disagree with your thesis entirely, because Iraq is fixable now, and Sudan is not. My opinion, anyways.
I doubt it, because the EU of today is too heavily dominated by national interests. That's not to say the "original" US was not dominated by state interests, but we implemented a system that was relatively fair to the individual states (the Senate), yet democratic population-wise (the House). The resulting system was pretty damn good. A state couldn't argue that it was getting screwed, because it did get its two senators, the same as everyone else. At least from my own understanding of it, the EU voting structure is almost entirely based on population demographics, except for the (mostly symbolic) presidency.
To my viewing, that makes the EU too heavily influenced by large individual states, and dominated by the Franco-German bloc. It seems like every day, Germany or France tries to keep the "old EU" in power while screwing the "new EU" members. That kind of thing either needs to stop (unlikely), or the EU is going to break apart when its smaller members realize they're getting a bum rap.
Summary: the EU will not last a hundred years without serious reorganization and reform (such as more protections for the smaller member states). That's not the same as "Europe will have another great internal war", though. I guess that's possible, but it seems unlikely from the current culture over there.
However, I could be entirely wrong - that is only how I see the situation.
Sony's history of executing in the console industry comes to _two consoles_. And one of them wasn't _really_ a smash hit compared to all its competitors (N64 gave PS1 some good competition).
It is quite possible that Sony could totally screw up the PS3. Things do not always continue as they have in the past. A bad execution by Sony and a decent one by Microsoft could _easily_ put X-Box 2 ahead of the PS3. Hell, even a decent execution by Sony could get hammered by X-Box 2 if Microsoft pulls a few good developers exclusively (like, say, Square Enix).
Just ask Sega if a good console intro and excellent hardware are enough to succeed:).
Then again, the opposite could happen. I haven't learned to read tea leaves yet, so I have no idea which one will be reality.
But for 900 million bucks, you'd expect they could do just a little better than 90 days:). In all seriousness, though, good news for NASA, and it might raise morale in the organization while they try to re-organize to become a bit more effective. Re-orgs always hurt morale - at least they're standing a little higher when they take the hit.
This is the first of many such outstanding successes, I hope:).
I agree - the V-Chip was originally panned as horrible censorship, but dammit, I think it would be an excellent solution. The TV manufacturers just need to work out some way to make it very difficult to disable it by children. Maybe physical keys - turn it to the left, and the V-Chip's enabled, and it ain't becoming _enabled_ until you use that same key to turn it to the right. Mommy and daddy carry the keys. Easy!
I would still view TV with my children, seeing as my own morality is not exactly the same as society's.
The truth is, though, networks aren't _really_ going to start showing crazy porn just because the V-Chip is required, because their viewer demographic would still be pissed off. The market iself, in other words, is the one asking for the regulation of content - and, hey, that's how the free market is supposed to work, right?
I wasn't aware the US had banned any form of political speech, including in spam. Can't say the same for quite a bit of Europe.
In fact, CAN-SPAM specifically gave exceptions to political mailings, IIRC. So, if you want to whine about how those (dirty, worthless) Jews always get special exceptions, at least pick a topic where it's true.
Spread the blame where it belongs, good sir. British and French colonialism have ruined more lives and caused so much conflict that the US pales in comparison.
The biggest problem for this trick is going to be storage. A single floppy disk isn't really large enough to hold the Linux kernel anymore (in these days of 2.6.x). The most important part is going to be shoving the USB drivers straight in the kernel (or the initrd?) so that your memory stick as is picked up in time for your kernel to finish booting off it.
That said, there should really be no reason why you couldn't boot from a floppy and tell it to use the USB mem stick as/. Just a couple kernel parameters, I think.
That said, everyone else is right, and you should just spring for a new hard drive or laptop. Memory sticks are slow, and they're not designed for the kind of heavy usage your primary drive is.
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They could always claim the physical cost of distribution was $50 - after all, there's the handling charge!
But, if this went to court, no reasonable jury would believe an argument that it costs $50 to make and ship a CD. I mean, AOL does it for pennies, SveaSoft can do it for $10. It is SveaSoft's decision to decide how they want to distribute the source, though, so them not putting it up for download is fair game.
However, it seems to me that the bigger problem is that they're supposedly tagging the binaries they distribute. Unless SveaSoft is distributing the code to generate the tags as well, _that_ is absolutely against the GPL, as far as I can tell. The GPL specifies that you need to release all the source to the binaries.
There is a peripheral issue that SveaSoft is yanking subscriptions from people who distribute the binaries, but this is actually OK according to the GPL (so says the FSF). It _is_ against the spirit of the GPL.
So, the two real legal issues I see:
1. Tagging code, or lack thereof.
2. Outrageous source distribution charge.
-Erwos
That would be trademark law - and it's defend, not sue.
-Erwos
The 6800 DDL is just a 6800 that supports the new ADC. Apple releases the drivers, don't bitch at us if you don't like the drivers. No, we're not going to tell you about our contract with Apple. The X800 sucks.
Much faster to read, no PR speak to deal with.
-Erwos
I found the article blurb to be obnoxious as hell. How about just showing us the link, briefly saying (in a non-biased way) what it says, and then letting _us_ make the decision on how to view it?
Don't editorialize in the blurb. If you have a fucking editorial, submit it to your local paper. I care about the news, not your political views.
-Erwos
Interesting you should mention this.
:).
I have a friend who's a manager at Verizon. He mentioned that Verizon has to treat their competitors better than their customers because of regulation
That's why you can order DSL with Covad, and they'll be totally on the ball getting it hooked up, and Verizon would just twiddle its thumbs in the same situation.
-Erwos
That's one way to look at it.
The other is that most of the P2P sharing going on on campus is using DirectConnect anyways, and thus there's no difference bandwidth-wise. Additionally, RUNNING the server requires support time from OIT, which costs money.
The fact remains that their option was going to actually cost us money, if not in bandwidth, then in support (and possibly hardware).
-Erwos
"Sad to see they went with Napster instead of, say, iTunes or something better."
It's because Apple isn't offering the schools anything. If you think Napster's taking advantage of them, you should see Apple's offer:
"Let us advertise on your campus and you can bear our bandwidth costs with an on-campus server! FREE!"
I was _at_ the meeting with Apple when they were talking to our school. The non-techies at the meeting had a similar opinion of the proposed offer. If you think Napster2 is screwing schools, you've never seen what Apple is pushing - something that gives them free advertising, costs the school money, and has zero chance of doing anything about the overall problem.
-Erwos
You've got it precisely right on the XD side, actually.
When a SuSE/Novell rep came to my university to try to pitch his wares to our Linux admin group, he said quite clearly that Ximian Desktop's going to be a Novell exclusive. That doesn't mean they're going to suddenly pull their source tree, but if you liked XD (and it's not bad!), you're going to need to move to SuSE. He also said they wouldn't be releasing a general Netware client program, but implementing it into SuSE. I'm assuming it'll be open-source, though, so there's nothing stopping Red Hat, Mandrake, GNOME, or KDE from simply integrating it themselves.
This change might be painful for Debian and some other distros, but Red Hat and Mandrake are rolling their own Evolution RPMs anyways, so it's not likely to affect them much.
As the parent points out, XD was largely superfluous for FC1 anyways, since it had most of the graphical config tools anyways. I can see why it would be a lot more important for Debian, though...
-Erwos
Uh, the article _I_ read said it was still vastly overpriced - it's just that this downturn was not really based on any fundamentals. Red Hat is still making money selling support, and financial rewrites don't change that.
Ask anybody in my LUG - I'm the biggest Red Hat supporter in the world. But that _does not_ mean their stock is worth buying.
-Erwos
"and the longer kids aren't trusted with responsability, the less they will be responsable"
I'm not sure I agree with that one. It ignores the vastly different cultures and the effects they have on people. The Japanese live in a rather different society than you or I.
-Erwos
Senator McCarthy rises from the grave to bring us his Internet blacklist!
I don't see this going anywhere useful, that's all.
-Erwos
It shipped without Firewire because IEEE-1394 is busted in 2.6 right now.
-Erwos
As the article blurb pointed out, the real question is more "when will they ship?"
I'm in the market for a new console, since my bastard apartment mate took the common DVD player when he left for the summer. That, and I'm getting married in the near future, and neither my fiance nor I own a stand-alone DVD player.
We're planning on buying an HDTV of some sort, but we're unsure what console we should get. We're DDR fans, but that doesn't really separate the pack, since both consoles have DDR. I _am_ a big RPG fan, though, and Final Fantasy is definitely a consideration. Therefore, I'm leaning towards a PS2, but if X-Box is amazingly better at playing DVDs or has better HDTV support, I might go for that instead.
Obviously, GC is off the table since it doesn't play DVDs.
Any opinions from people who have owned _and_ used both?
Another question: are there any rumored release dates for PS3 that seem remotely believable?
-Erwos
Your "progressive, secular" Iraq got into a war with Iran that cost a million lives. The only thing "stable" about Iraq was that it wasn't going to chuck its dictator without some outside help. That is not to say the US should have invaded, but please don't hold Iraq up as some kind of shining beacon for the rest of the Middle East.
-Erwos
Sorry, but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I still don't understand how you think a full-blown civil war and a petty dictatorship are the same thing, though. Iraq is in _no way whatsoever_ experiencing a full-blown civil war.
-Erwos
"It's really sad that Canada, whose government bans many books, is now more of a free society than the US. Maybe I'll join my friend."
That's your perception, anyways. Don't confuse opinion with fact.
-Erwos
Sudan is experiencing a civil war. The situation is totally different than Iraq's. It is unlikely _any_ amount of military or political pressure could change what's going on over there.
And, every government turns a blind eye to Africa, because, well, no one cares about them outside of a strictly humanitarian ideal (an ideal which never seems to get much funding). The countries there are not strategically important to anyone, and the underlying problems are often caused by culture and corruption - how do you fix those with a political _or_ a military solution?
So, no, I disagree with your thesis entirely, because Iraq is fixable now, and Sudan is not. My opinion, anyways.
-Erwos
I doubt it, because the EU of today is too heavily dominated by national interests. That's not to say the "original" US was not dominated by state interests, but we implemented a system that was relatively fair to the individual states (the Senate), yet democratic population-wise (the House). The resulting system was pretty damn good. A state couldn't argue that it was getting screwed, because it did get its two senators, the same as everyone else. At least from my own understanding of it, the EU voting structure is almost entirely based on population demographics, except for the (mostly symbolic) presidency.
To my viewing, that makes the EU too heavily influenced by large individual states, and dominated by the Franco-German bloc. It seems like every day, Germany or France tries to keep the "old EU" in power while screwing the "new EU" members. That kind of thing either needs to stop (unlikely), or the EU is going to break apart when its smaller members realize they're getting a bum rap.
Summary: the EU will not last a hundred years without serious reorganization and reform (such as more protections for the smaller member states). That's not the same as "Europe will have another great internal war", though. I guess that's possible, but it seems unlikely from the current culture over there.
However, I could be entirely wrong - that is only how I see the situation.
-Erwos
Sony's history of executing in the console industry comes to _two consoles_. And one of them wasn't _really_ a smash hit compared to all its competitors (N64 gave PS1 some good competition).
:).
It is quite possible that Sony could totally screw up the PS3. Things do not always continue as they have in the past. A bad execution by Sony and a decent one by Microsoft could _easily_ put X-Box 2 ahead of the PS3. Hell, even a decent execution by Sony could get hammered by X-Box 2 if Microsoft pulls a few good developers exclusively (like, say, Square Enix).
Just ask Sega if a good console intro and excellent hardware are enough to succeed
Then again, the opposite could happen. I haven't learned to read tea leaves yet, so I have no idea which one will be reality.
-Erwos
But for 900 million bucks, you'd expect they could do just a little better than 90 days :). In all seriousness, though, good news for NASA, and it might raise morale in the organization while they try to re-organize to become a bit more effective. Re-orgs always hurt morale - at least they're standing a little higher when they take the hit.
:).
This is the first of many such outstanding successes, I hope
-Erwos
I agree - the V-Chip was originally panned as horrible censorship, but dammit, I think it would be an excellent solution. The TV manufacturers just need to work out some way to make it very difficult to disable it by children. Maybe physical keys - turn it to the left, and the V-Chip's enabled, and it ain't becoming _enabled_ until you use that same key to turn it to the right. Mommy and daddy carry the keys. Easy!
I would still view TV with my children, seeing as my own morality is not exactly the same as society's.
The truth is, though, networks aren't _really_ going to start showing crazy porn just because the V-Chip is required, because their viewer demographic would still be pissed off. The market iself, in other words, is the one asking for the regulation of content - and, hey, that's how the free market is supposed to work, right?
-Erwos
I wasn't aware the US had banned any form of political speech, including in spam. Can't say the same for quite a bit of Europe.
In fact, CAN-SPAM specifically gave exceptions to political mailings, IIRC. So, if you want to whine about how those (dirty, worthless) Jews always get special exceptions, at least pick a topic where it's true.
-Erwos
Spread the blame where it belongs, good sir. British and French colonialism have ruined more lives and caused so much conflict that the US pales in comparison.
-Erwos
The biggest problem for this trick is going to be storage. A single floppy disk isn't really large enough to hold the Linux kernel anymore (in these days of 2.6.x). The most important part is going to be shoving the USB drivers straight in the kernel (or the initrd?) so that your memory stick as is picked up in time for your kernel to finish booting off it.
/. Just a couple kernel parameters, I think.
That said, there should really be no reason why you couldn't boot from a floppy and tell it to use the USB mem stick as
That said, everyone else is right, and you should just spring for a new hard drive or laptop. Memory sticks are slow, and they're not designed for the kind of heavy usage your primary drive is.
-Erwos
We'll see how long it takes the French to blow this one up, I suppose. :)
-Erwos