If there was even a shred of indication they would turn into another MS, you would have seen it by now. This is the company that's so pro-GPL that they won't ship anything not covered by it or another equally Free license. I have a lot of trouble believing that they're going to turn around and start releasing proprietary licenses on major components of their distribution (like some other popular Linux distributors).
If you want to bash RedHat because you don't like their distro, do it. If you want to insult them because you and Mosfet don't like what they did with KDE, do it. But, please - this company has been as hard-core about supporting free software as possible, and they don't deserve bashing and insults for being successful. Strong proponent of the GPL and successful - RedHat is exactly the kind of Linux company we should be rooting for.
Opie/X11 (I think, ultimately, it will become the standard for Familiar) is still a little too much of a moving target for HP to start supporting it. I agree, this is a shame, but software development takes time, especially when it's free. There's no denying, of course, that Familiar is one hell of a platform, and has the potential to own the market.
After using PocketPC 2002 for a month, I'm decidedly unimpressed. I don't want to say "it feels crippled", but it does not feel amazingly intuitive, to say the least. Microsoft's strategy of using RAM to store stuff seems smart until you run out of power, in which case you lose everything. About the only good thing that can be said is that they have a nice system for inputting stuff (auto-completion), but I can't imagine it would be all that much work to implement in GTK+ or QT.
So, yes, HP, I want to see Familiar 1.0 shipping with my new iPAQ H9000.
Definitely true. I was waiting for someone to say it.
My girlfriend is not a sci-fi geek, doesn't play videogames, isn't interested in fantasy at all. She was easily able to grasp the FF plot, and thought it was really quite good. The critics might not have gotten the plot, but if you tried to put it in a Japanese context, it made a lot of sense. Gaia, life force, spirits - not Western concepts, but if you know of them, the story made lots of sense.
I own the DVD, and it is one of our favorites. I don't regret the buy at all.
Ironically, if MS gets what they want, and the XBox2 is a roaring success, there's no reason that we won't finally see the long proclaimed death of PC gaming, or at least the marginalization of it. Consoles need a little work, too, but nothing's stopping them from getting a keyboard and mouse needed to finish the control paradigm from where it stands now.
If no one's putting out games for the PC, why not just buy a console and then wipe Windows off your box? That's a good question, and Microsoft might just show us the answer soon. It's sure as hell more economical than running the infamous PC upgrade treadmill.
So if I make a photocopy of some art you were planning on selling and distribute it throughout the net, I haven't stolen from you?
I daresay, you would be justifiably less than thrilled no matter how you define stealing. Inane semantics are not what this is about - it's about protection of intellectual property. Intellectual property has worth - by reducing that worth by taking it without permission is something our society has deemed illegal and wrong. It hinders innovation, and innovation is something society thrives on.
How hard is this for you to understand? What's mine is mine, not what's mine is yours, both physically and intellectually. We tried the latter with communism - it fails miserably. Humans are in their essence self-interested beings - we don't like to share what we've earned, and we like to profit from hard work.
No one knows "how much property rights" we really need, which is why we live in a democracy and vote on it. For all the BS about the RIAA/MPAA/MS controlling the government, they can't do jack without voters electing politicians to do it. You don't like what's going on, tell your Congress critter to change his stance or lose your vote. Maybe individually you don't matter, but you and a hundred thousand of your closest geek friends can cost someone an election. You do vote, right?
Your allegation that "society is breaking down" is patently untrue. When the civilian government is disbanded and we're ruled by a military junta who enforces a 7:00PM curfew in the streets (get off or be shot!), that's when I'll say "society is breaking down (or rather, has broken down)". It's pretty obvious that it's not right now - our government is still elected by the people, and that is that. If we get more fools who do whatever the hell they want under the premise of "I think society is breaking down, loot, rape, and pillage!", then we'll start seeing it break down.
Mob justice is the first step towards anarchy. What's the power of law when you yourself disregard it? Why should the RIAA/MPAA obey the new law even if it's passed - perhaps they feel it's wrong, too!
If you don't like what the RIAA/MPAA is doing, you've got power - it's called the vote. Call a Congressional candidate, tell them how you feel, and then tell them how they should vote. Your vote puts these people into office - for all the money these associations give politicians, the record/movie companies are utterly unable to elect them into office on their own. Take advantage of that.
It's immoral to steal because without property rights, society will break down. Taking whatever the hell you want sounds great, until you realize that people will start defending it with deadly force and stop making things that can be taken. This will be bad for everyone - hence, stealing is immoral.
And if you're into that sort of thing, I can't think of a single religion that says stealing's OK except under dire circumstances.
Two good reasons. And, honestly, if you can't think of any more on your own, you're an idiot.
Could you inform us all of what exactly "bad sales figures" are in Loki's case (ie, provide us with the exact number of copies sold of each game they made), and then give us figures from a similar company to compare against?
If you read about Loki's demise in detail, you'd understand that their upper management was raiding the company's coffers while they were trying to desperately keep afloat. There's no indication that they could not have pulled themselves out of the hole - the staff certainly seemed willing to go through with everything until the bitter end.
Don't get me wrong - the lack of huge numbers of sales also contributed, but to say that was the only reason, or even the primary reason, is just not true. This was a real case of bad management.
They made that sort of thing for Macs back in the 680X0 days. I have no idea if they were popular or worked well - probably not, since they seem to be gone now. Essentially, they were as you described - a PC motherboard on a PCI card. But by the same token, couldn't you do the same thing with the G3 or G4 for the PC?
I see a few issues doing this now, though: 1. Powering it would be tough nowadays. Not only would cooling be tricky, but the power consumption would require a huge power supply. Possible to get by it with a passively-cooled chip like the C3. 2. Bandwidth - PCI is bandwidth limited, only 512mb a second IIRC, and that's got to be shared with all peripherals. If you made an AGP version, that might work, but where would you put your graphics card? 3. Size - mobos are big things, and there's only so far you can cut them to. We'd probably be talking a single DIMM slot, a CPU socket, and a couple SATA channels onboard the card, along with VGA-out and maybe some sort of sound pass-through. This is probably acceptable for the most part, but it's not going to make for much of a PC or Mac. 4. Hardware - Mac and PC hardware is becoming more and more compatible, but sharing peripherals between two operating systems simultaneously is going to be extremely tricky.
So, yes, the idea is good and has been done before, but I'm not sure how feasible it is this very moment.
"Requires"? RedHat has been doing quite well in the USA without _requiring) proprietary packages to prevent CD sharing. The _only_ one I can think of is the "RedHat trademark artwork" (NOT Bluecurve!) RPM, which can be replaced pretty easily by someone who knows what they're doing. Mandrake hit bankruptcy using such proprietary packaging technique - apparently doing it doesn't work as well as you thought.
"Sure, it's OSS, but sometimes you still need some protection for your work." OSS licenses are supposed to be providing the protection, not you stealing people's hard work and then not even handing it back to them for free.
RedHat might or might not be the best distro, but I do appreciate that they are not taking wholesale from the community and then having the audacity to force people to buy it back. Yes, you can't just grab their AW/AS/ES ISOs and install them off the web - but you can grab the sources off the net and do it without too much hassle. This is appropriate protection, IMHO.
But, seriously, I understand that my CS degree isn't going to get me into the places by itself. I've started taking hard-core economics courses, and am working extremely hard at developing skills in writing proper documentation. The more I diversify myself, the better the chance I have of finding a job after I graduate.
Documentation may be unsexy, but G-d only knows we need more of it.
I gotta say, what's cheaper? 1. $600 for WinXP 2. Putting Linux on all the machines, configuring them to work interoperably with the Windows machines, and retraining everyone?
No idea which really is cheaper, but I wouldn't automatically say "Linux is cheaper". Training costs money. Interoperability work costs money.
In fact, if SuSE would this opportunity to jump ship from UnitedLinux and form a partnership with RedHat instead, we could see a major revolution in Linux corporate use.
RedHat has tons of corporate experience, is great with GNOME, and has the US market pretty firmly. SuSE is great with KDE, has a goodly amount of corporate experience, and does a good job on the European market. Both are open-source friendly (although Yast is not open-source and SuSE CDs are not available for free download, IIRC, so SuSE might need to open up a bit). If RedHat and SuSE were to combine their experience, pool their technical resources, and start a combined marketing blitz, I think it would be highly effective at jump-starting widespread corporate acceptance of Linux.
Mandrake would have also made a suitable partner, but unfortunately, their current financial troubles make me think they'll be hitting the ground hard soon. A shame - I've head good things about them.
This will only strengthen SDL as a competitor to DirectX. SDL's backend can be written in whatever API it wishes... including DirectX. You can get DirectX _and_ cross-platform support.
I remember when Windows XP first came out (or was it in beta?), I was home from college, and talking to my family about the product activation scheme. We buy all the upgrades and such to Windows - our computers are running quite legally for the most part (you can never be sure, can you?). But it was midway through my explanation that I realized something that totally changed the way I thought about things:
It is _never_ going to get better. Microsoft is going to treat me like a criminal forever. It's time to get out of this upgrade cycle. They are going to continually put out trash like WinME and then laugh their way to their porsche, bought with my money.
After dinner, I went downstairs, burned myself some RedHat CDs, and installed them onto a second hard drive. I've never looked back since, and am considering wiping the Windows partition off for good.
What I'm trying to say is, sometimes, losing a little bit of functionality for now is probably worth it to break out of the endless loop of paying money to Microsoft and getting shafted in return.
Perhaps I missed something, but I've not had any problems with my GNOME2 desktop except for: 1. The file picker dialogue. Yes, I agree, it sucks. I've heard it's being overhauled, so I can wait on it. It's not _that_ bad. 2. Menu editing. This should be much, much easier than it currently is. I pray that GNOME 2.2 fixes this, because it's the biggest complaint I've heard so far in my LUG.
As for this "lack of configurability", I use metacity, and I think it's fine. What exactly am I supposed to be changing to seriously enhance my productivity that I can't already do now? A few more options (window placement!) would be great, yes, but seeing as I'm paying $0 for metacity, I can wait.
The article was a troll. I've got no problem with KDE, and use it sometimes, but I personally prefer GNOME. I think that trying to claim either one is horrible or even significantly better than the other is just stupid. Both have strengths and weaknesses.
The problem is more one of how a license with "moral clauses" could be interpreted. How do I know what's a moral use of software? If I advocate violence against Americans because I think they're horrible warmongers who all deserve to die, I certainly think it's moral, but would other people? What if I put up a page saying how we shouldn't blame Israelis for whacking a few Palestinian civilians in the streets by accident? How do I know if the author thinks that's moral?
This sort of license is only trying to impose someone else's political views on other people. The GPL is political enough - we don't need this. We certainly don't need something which opens up the possibility of a lawsuit with minimal justification.
I can't take anything Mosfet says seriously after his inane rant against RedHat's "crippled" version of KDE. The article linked to does not improve my opinion of him. "I think KDE is better than GNOME." Thank you for your unbiased opinion, Mr. KDE Developer.
KDE has lots of configurability and hides some of it to not scare people. Is this really worthy of an article? Does he really think he's found some new principle of design that he needs to share with everyone?
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If there was even a shred of indication they would turn into another MS, you would have seen it by now. This is the company that's so pro-GPL that they won't ship anything not covered by it or another equally Free license. I have a lot of trouble believing that they're going to turn around and start releasing proprietary licenses on major components of their distribution (like some other popular Linux distributors).
If you want to bash RedHat because you don't like their distro, do it. If you want to insult them because you and Mosfet don't like what they did with KDE, do it. But, please - this company has been as hard-core about supporting free software as possible, and they don't deserve bashing and insults for being successful. Strong proponent of the GPL and successful - RedHat is exactly the kind of Linux company we should be rooting for.
-Erwos
Opie/X11 (I think, ultimately, it will become the standard for Familiar) is still a little too much of a moving target for HP to start supporting it. I agree, this is a shame, but software development takes time, especially when it's free. There's no denying, of course, that Familiar is one hell of a platform, and has the potential to own the market.
After using PocketPC 2002 for a month, I'm decidedly unimpressed. I don't want to say "it feels crippled", but it does not feel amazingly intuitive, to say the least. Microsoft's strategy of using RAM to store stuff seems smart until you run out of power, in which case you lose everything. About the only good thing that can be said is that they have a nice system for inputting stuff (auto-completion), but I can't imagine it would be all that much work to implement in GTK+ or QT.
So, yes, HP, I want to see Familiar 1.0 shipping with my new iPAQ H9000.
-Erwos
Definitely true. I was waiting for someone to say it.
My girlfriend is not a sci-fi geek, doesn't play videogames, isn't interested in fantasy at all. She was easily able to grasp the FF plot, and thought it was really quite good. The critics might not have gotten the plot, but if you tried to put it in a Japanese context, it made a lot of sense. Gaia, life force, spirits - not Western concepts, but if you know of them, the story made lots of sense.
I own the DVD, and it is one of our favorites. I don't regret the buy at all.
-Erwos
Ironically, if MS gets what they want, and the XBox2 is a roaring success, there's no reason that we won't finally see the long proclaimed death of PC gaming, or at least the marginalization of it. Consoles need a little work, too, but nothing's stopping them from getting a keyboard and mouse needed to finish the control paradigm from where it stands now.
If no one's putting out games for the PC, why not just buy a console and then wipe Windows off your box? That's a good question, and Microsoft might just show us the answer soon. It's sure as hell more economical than running the infamous PC upgrade treadmill.
-Erwos
Do you vote?
-Erwos
So if I make a photocopy of some art you were planning on selling and distribute it throughout the net, I haven't stolen from you?
I daresay, you would be justifiably less than thrilled no matter how you define stealing. Inane semantics are not what this is about - it's about protection of intellectual property. Intellectual property has worth - by reducing that worth by taking it without permission is something our society has deemed illegal and wrong. It hinders innovation, and innovation is something society thrives on.
-Erwos
There's nothing like a devil's advocate.
How hard is this for you to understand? What's mine is mine, not what's mine is yours, both physically and intellectually. We tried the latter with communism - it fails miserably. Humans are in their essence self-interested beings - we don't like to share what we've earned, and we like to profit from hard work.
No one knows "how much property rights" we really need, which is why we live in a democracy and vote on it. For all the BS about the RIAA/MPAA/MS controlling the government, they can't do jack without voters electing politicians to do it. You don't like what's going on, tell your Congress critter to change his stance or lose your vote. Maybe individually you don't matter, but you and a hundred thousand of your closest geek friends can cost someone an election. You do vote, right?
Your allegation that "society is breaking down" is patently untrue. When the civilian government is disbanded and we're ruled by a military junta who enforces a 7:00PM curfew in the streets (get off or be shot!), that's when I'll say "society is breaking down (or rather, has broken down)". It's pretty obvious that it's not right now - our government is still elected by the people, and that is that. If we get more fools who do whatever the hell they want under the premise of "I think society is breaking down, loot, rape, and pillage!", then we'll start seeing it break down.
-Erwos
Mob justice is the first step towards anarchy. What's the power of law when you yourself disregard it? Why should the RIAA/MPAA obey the new law even if it's passed - perhaps they feel it's wrong, too!
If you don't like what the RIAA/MPAA is doing, you've got power - it's called the vote. Call a Congressional candidate, tell them how you feel, and then tell them how they should vote. Your vote puts these people into office - for all the money these associations give politicians, the record/movie companies are utterly unable to elect them into office on their own. Take advantage of that.
-Erwos
It's immoral to steal because without property rights, society will break down. Taking whatever the hell you want sounds great, until you realize that people will start defending it with deadly force and stop making things that can be taken. This will be bad for everyone - hence, stealing is immoral.
And if you're into that sort of thing, I can't think of a single religion that says stealing's OK except under dire circumstances.
Two good reasons. And, honestly, if you can't think of any more on your own, you're an idiot.
-Erwos
Could you inform us all of what exactly "bad sales figures" are in Loki's case (ie, provide us with the exact number of copies sold of each game they made), and then give us figures from a similar company to compare against?
-Erwos
Insightful? I think not. Ignorant, yes.
If you read about Loki's demise in detail, you'd understand that their upper management was raiding the company's coffers while they were trying to desperately keep afloat. There's no indication that they could not have pulled themselves out of the hole - the staff certainly seemed willing to go through with everything until the bitter end.
Don't get me wrong - the lack of huge numbers of sales also contributed, but to say that was the only reason, or even the primary reason, is just not true. This was a real case of bad management.
-Erwos
There already is a native Linux port, although I don't know if they've got the code for it.
-Erwos
They made that sort of thing for Macs back in the 680X0 days. I have no idea if they were popular or worked well - probably not, since they seem to be gone now. Essentially, they were as you described - a PC motherboard on a PCI card. But by the same token, couldn't you do the same thing with the G3 or G4 for the PC?
I see a few issues doing this now, though:
1. Powering it would be tough nowadays. Not only would cooling be tricky, but the power consumption would require a huge power supply. Possible to get by it with a passively-cooled chip like the C3.
2. Bandwidth - PCI is bandwidth limited, only 512mb a second IIRC, and that's got to be shared with all peripherals. If you made an AGP version, that might work, but where would you put your graphics card?
3. Size - mobos are big things, and there's only so far you can cut them to. We'd probably be talking a single DIMM slot, a CPU socket, and a couple SATA channels onboard the card, along with VGA-out and maybe some sort of sound pass-through. This is probably acceptable for the most part, but it's not going to make for much of a PC or Mac.
4. Hardware - Mac and PC hardware is becoming more and more compatible, but sharing peripherals between two operating systems simultaneously is going to be extremely tricky.
So, yes, the idea is good and has been done before, but I'm not sure how feasible it is this very moment.
-Erwos
"Requires"? RedHat has been doing quite well in the USA without _requiring) proprietary packages to prevent CD sharing. The _only_ one I can think of is the "RedHat trademark artwork" (NOT Bluecurve!) RPM, which can be replaced pretty easily by someone who knows what they're doing. Mandrake hit bankruptcy using such proprietary packaging technique - apparently doing it doesn't work as well as you thought.
"Sure, it's OSS, but sometimes you still need some protection for your work." OSS licenses are supposed to be providing the protection, not you stealing people's hard work and then not even handing it back to them for free.
RedHat might or might not be the best distro, but I do appreciate that they are not taking wholesale from the community and then having the audacity to force people to buy it back. Yes, you can't just grab their AW/AS/ES ISOs and install them off the web - but you can grab the sources off the net and do it without too much hassle. This is appropriate protection, IMHO.
-Erwos
Multisync is in the middle of adding Opie support. This should be relatively compatible with the Zaurus, or only a patch or two away from it.
-Erwos
Is someone really trying to imply that removing the one good source of income that poor Arab countries have is going to make them like us more?
Mark my words - a move to a hydrogen-based economy would make them hate us in a way that makes today look like a love-fest.
-Erwos
There's hope for me? Hooray!
But, seriously, I understand that my CS degree isn't going to get me into the places by itself. I've started taking hard-core economics courses, and am working extremely hard at developing skills in writing proper documentation. The more I diversify myself, the better the chance I have of finding a job after I graduate.
Documentation may be unsexy, but G-d only knows we need more of it.
-Erwos
I gotta say, what's cheaper?
1. $600 for WinXP
2. Putting Linux on all the machines, configuring them to work interoperably with the Windows machines, and retraining everyone?
No idea which really is cheaper, but I wouldn't automatically say "Linux is cheaper". Training costs money. Interoperability work costs money.
-Erwos
In fact, if SuSE would this opportunity to jump ship from UnitedLinux and form a partnership with RedHat instead, we could see a major revolution in Linux corporate use.
RedHat has tons of corporate experience, is great with GNOME, and has the US market pretty firmly. SuSE is great with KDE, has a goodly amount of corporate experience, and does a good job on the European market. Both are open-source friendly (although Yast is not open-source and SuSE CDs are not available for free download, IIRC, so SuSE might need to open up a bit). If RedHat and SuSE were to combine their experience, pool their technical resources, and start a combined marketing blitz, I think it would be highly effective at jump-starting widespread corporate acceptance of Linux.
Mandrake would have also made a suitable partner, but unfortunately, their current financial troubles make me think they'll be hitting the ground hard soon. A shame - I've head good things about them.
-Erwos
Sure, it works with isync... But does it work with multisync?
http://multisync.sf.net
-Erwos
This will only strengthen SDL as a competitor to DirectX. SDL's backend can be written in whatever API it wishes... including DirectX. You can get DirectX _and_ cross-platform support.
-Erwos
I remember when Windows XP first came out (or was it in beta?), I was home from college, and talking to my family about the product activation scheme. We buy all the upgrades and such to Windows - our computers are running quite legally for the most part (you can never be sure, can you?). But it was midway through my explanation that I realized something that totally changed the way I thought about things:
It is _never_ going to get better. Microsoft is going to treat me like a criminal forever. It's time to get out of this upgrade cycle. They are going to continually put out trash like WinME and then laugh their way to their porsche, bought with my money.
After dinner, I went downstairs, burned myself some RedHat CDs, and installed them onto a second hard drive. I've never looked back since, and am considering wiping the Windows partition off for good.
What I'm trying to say is, sometimes, losing a little bit of functionality for now is probably worth it to break out of the endless loop of paying money to Microsoft and getting shafted in return.
-Erwos
Perhaps I missed something, but I've not had any problems with my GNOME2 desktop except for:
1. The file picker dialogue. Yes, I agree, it sucks. I've heard it's being overhauled, so I can wait on it. It's not _that_ bad.
2. Menu editing. This should be much, much easier than it currently is. I pray that GNOME 2.2 fixes this, because it's the biggest complaint I've heard so far in my LUG.
As for this "lack of configurability", I use metacity, and I think it's fine. What exactly am I supposed to be changing to seriously enhance my productivity that I can't already do now? A few more options (window placement!) would be great, yes, but seeing as I'm paying $0 for metacity, I can wait.
The article was a troll. I've got no problem with KDE, and use it sometimes, but I personally prefer GNOME. I think that trying to claim either one is horrible or even significantly better than the other is just stupid. Both have strengths and weaknesses.
-Erwos
The problem is more one of how a license with "moral clauses" could be interpreted. How do I know what's a moral use of software? If I advocate violence against Americans because I think they're horrible warmongers who all deserve to die, I certainly think it's moral, but would other people? What if I put up a page saying how we shouldn't blame Israelis for whacking a few Palestinian civilians in the streets by accident? How do I know if the author thinks that's moral?
This sort of license is only trying to impose someone else's political views on other people. The GPL is political enough - we don't need this. We certainly don't need something which opens up the possibility of a lawsuit with minimal justification.
-Erwos
I can't take anything Mosfet says seriously after his inane rant against RedHat's "crippled" version of KDE. The article linked to does not improve my opinion of him. "I think KDE is better than GNOME." Thank you for your unbiased opinion, Mr. KDE Developer.
KDE has lots of configurability and hides some of it to not scare people. Is this really worthy of an article? Does he really think he's found some new principle of design that he needs to share with everyone?
I rate his article:
0, Stupidly Obvious
-Erwos