The choice to use only 2 digits on PC BIOSes was IMHO a combination of lazyness and stupidity. Those 2 extra digits would not have made any difference indeed. But the (real) Y2K problem was not like this single occurence: it had to do with extremely large datasets. Imagine running a bank in the early 70s. Imagine 10^6 transactions a day. Imagine keeping these records 5 years. 2 or 4 digits for the year would mean a difference of more than 3,500,000,000 bytes (BCD). That is >3gig of data. In the early 70s that is enormous.
Adding to the SQL example; I recall COBOL using BCD as well; managers did not understand powers of two.
There was one other lie. That the using 2 years to store the date was done to save space. If the space was that much of an issue, then the programmers wouldn't have stored the date using BCD.
Why is he wacky? Because he has believes and stands up for them?
Would you work for a company that is using child labour? Would you work for a company that uses slave labour? I certainly would not; child labour and slavery is anti-social IMHO.
RMS thinks and feels that not-free software is anti-social. You might start a debate on that (and against RMS, well, I would put my money on him), but please refrain calling someone who 'fights'/works for freedom of other people wacky.
RMS is one of the few extremists in this world that actually make this world a better place.
Cool, if that's the way, then I'll do as you suggested: I won't be using it.
That's fine with me: you are free to choose the software that suites you, just like you are free to say you prefer a dictatorship over a democracy. I will not be bombarding you with advertisements, nor do I lie about my stuff or wrap it up so that it works on your subconscious and makes you buy it. I just wrote stuff and you are free to use it.
We'll just keep using the commercial software that we happen to like...
Commercial software can be free software, just look at Red Hat, Mandrake, MySQL: all commercial entities, all selling free software and services for it.
(...) you'll keep bashing us for being such ignorant people.
I am not bashing you or any others for using closed source software. I will point out that someone is ignorant if he/she thinks only a Microsoft OS will run on a x86 based PC, or that only non-free software (closed source) can be of high quality. Being 'ignorant' does not equal being 'stupid' in my book, ignorancy can be driven out by education and information.
Is that the way this is supposed to work?
Yes. A free market (capitalism) is supposed to give you that choice. I choose free software for almost all of my needs because it is better for me. And I write free software so that others can enjoy the fruits of my labour. That way they do not have to all the stuff I have already done. If they do no like what I have written, they can either create something themselves, or look for it elsewhere, be it free or non-free software.
Point by point:
1. Willing to help fix != write code. While there are only very few people doing the "no help, no complain" line, it is IMHO a very fair line of reasoning. "X sucks" or "Y does it better" is not helping at all. If one does not like a product, one should either not use it or help improving it. This improvement can be as simple as taking part in a well-informed discussion.
2. It does not *matter* if you do it or not. A lot of people in democratic countries do not vote, yet think democracy is probably the best political system we have. The point is that anyone *can* get under the hood, not that anyone *must* do it.
3. Free != gratis, free == freedom (in the FSF domain).
4. There is no such thing as 'better' without a context. From some contexts, all free software is better than all non-free software, just ask RMS. Without supplying a context, this argument is moot.
5. Absolutely no point here. If you don't like a free s/w project, then do not use it. No one is forcing you. If you do not like what I have written, bad luck for you. If you do like it, feel free to use it and even improve on it if you like.
6. He seems to state that choice is good, but too much choice is not. He fails to draw the line, probably because it all depends on the point of view of the end-user. He also fails to mention that *anyone* can fork/start another distibution with 'less choice'. Again a moot point.
7. This is not a new point, but simply a rehash of all above.
The article is nothing more than it states: "Thoughts on some frequently-stated dogma promoted by the Open Source community", and that is all it is: thoughts. Not good particularly accurate thoughts though.
Have you seen this?
Why is there no name on entry 3? If it is unknown, then what is the difference to entry 10? And why do jan through march 2004 contain no info on browser types at all? I would not exactly call these 'good browser stats'.
Patents are a drastical way of influencing the free market, and governments should have a very good reason to interfere in a free market. This is something you need to get inside your thinking: patents are far from natural because they interfere in the 'natural' process of the kapitalistic economy.
Do some reading about the history of patents and you will see that patents were introduced to make sure inventions were not kept secret and would disappear from society when the inventor died. Granting the patentor a monopoly on his invention was a way to get all facts about the invention in the public domain.
For years the 'software industry' has thrived (even in the US) without any need for patents! You 'invent' something, put it on the market and profit. And believe me, a lot of profit has been made and the s/w industry has grown at an almost unbelievable rate. All this without s/w patentability. Also, since s/w can be reverse engineered, it is impossible to keep an 'invention' to onesself.
The need to make sure that inventors can have a temporary monopoly on their inventions is not a goal, it is a means to reach the goal of advancing society. Since the incentive of profit is doing just fine in stimulating people to come up with new/better products, there should be no interfering in the free economy.
Normally I vote D66 (the 'asshole' ministers party). On the EU elections I voted SP, for a large part because of their very concrete stance against s/w patents.
I also wrote to D66 telling I had voted for SP and why. I also asked why minister Brinkhorst was being very undemocratic. Basically I got no answer to that last question.
I could have discussed Mandrake's rpmDrake instead, in which case I would have criticized the way it's buried four menus deep (will any new user even think to look under the "Packaging" sub-menu?)
In Mandrake (gnome) there is an icon for mcc ('Configure your computer, system configuration') on the same panel that contains the 'Applications' button; it is the third icon from the 'Actions' button. Clicking it opens a window which has a 'Software Management' option. If a new user cannot find this, I seriously question his/her ability to use a computer at all. Yes, it is different than windows, just as my Peogeot 206 is different from the Fiat Panda I had before.
Installing stuff on my Mandrake box is quite simple. There is a 'configure your computer' icon which starts Mandrake Control Center. From mcc you click on 'Software Management' which gives you 'Install', 'Remove', 'Update' and 'Media Manager' icons. You can add/remove RPM repository locations and install software from them, all with automatic dependency fixing.
I cannot see how any serious reviewer could miss this.
Both the PVR 250 and 350 come with on board MPEG2 (and MPEG1) encoder (350 has h/w MPEG2 decoder also), and can record full PAL and/or NTSC resolutions at a quality better than what Discovery Channel uses for some broadcasts (can see artifacts) with a max. of 12 megabit / sec.
The ivtv project has a working driver in alpha afaik.
Well, right now the US has a president who wanted to remove a man (who hurt his daddy) from government, from the day he got into the white house. He said something about having a lot of evidence and invaded a country to remove that man from office.
Turns out there was no evidence, all was made-up. Instead of being thrown out of office because of lying to the public, he still sits in his oval office.
Sad point of this story: a US president does need to figure out where "they" are, nor does he have to explain afterwards.
If you ever find a case of someone recording a film in a cinema with the express intention of *only* watching it themselves at home, do inform me so i can join the rally to get the person involved released.
But you _should_ join the rally! I am almost sure that that kid had bad intentions, but that is not the point. Lawmakers are crossing lines here: in cases like this the _intention_ should not be punishable. Copying a book in a library is not punishable. Setting up your own print shop and illegally distributing copies of that book is and should be punishable. Copying a book, even with the intent of selling illegal copies, is not and should not ever be illegal.
Since both of us are not in the US (from your hilarious example I take it you are from the UK) this does not directly apply to us, but politicians on this side of the atlantic might get the same ideas, just like with software patents. We need to keep our eyes and ears open for nonsense, newspeak and FUD. The entertainment biz is a business and as such does everything it thinks will maximize profits, including lobbying politicians to write bad laws.
Yes, it is illegal, in that it is against the law. But that law is rediculous. Making that one copy does no harm. _Selling_ copies of that copy to others _does_ harm. Why can someone be put in jail for causing no harm?
Compare to gun legislation in the US: it is very easy to legally get a gun. Guns can be used to shoot other people, in fact, for most guns that is their main purpose. Shooting at people is in most cases against the law. One may shoot in self defense, and that is the main reason you may carry a gun. Copyright law is also very specific about when you may make a copy: fair use rights.
One may carry a gun (does no harm), which could be used to kill other people (does harm).
One may not make a copy (does no harm), which could be used to make 'illegal' profit (does harm).
Don't you see how rediculous this law is? Making 1 copy and only looking at it yourself when you have already paid to see it does no harm and thus should not be punishable. Illegally distributing copies should be punishable.
I never said it was 'okay' to steal, but if I must choose between stealing a bread to feed my kids or watching them die, I will choose the first; I think most people will. This same point was raised by a Dutch bishop (or cardinal, don't rember exactly): he thought that in the eyes of the roman catholic deity it was criminal to let one suffer from such hunger, and stealing that bread for one's kids, while being in direct conflic with one of the commandments, would not be seen as a deadly sin. While I do not share the belief, I do share the line of reasoning.
The whole point I was trying to make is that the term 'criminal' is very subjective. Just making a law that says you cannot do X and calling people that do X criminals is newspeak to mislead the masses. All criminals should be in jail, right?
Slashdot Mirror
The choice to use only 2 digits on PC BIOSes was IMHO a combination of lazyness and stupidity. Those 2 extra digits would not have made any difference indeed. But the (real) Y2K problem was not like this single occurence: it had to do with extremely large datasets. Imagine running a bank in the early 70s. Imagine 10^6 transactions a day. Imagine keeping these records 5 years. 2 or 4 digits for the year would mean a difference of more than 3,500,000,000 bytes (BCD). That is >3gig of data. In the early 70s that is enormous.
Adding to the SQL example; I recall COBOL using BCD as well; managers did not understand powers of two.
There was one other lie. That the using 2 years to store the date was done to save space. If the space was that much of an issue, then the programmers wouldn't have stored the date using BCD.
CREATE TABLE item (desc varchar(30), idnum int(4))
The '4' in int(4) does no stand for 4 bits, it stands for 4 digits. int(2) takes up less space than int(4).
Some (legacy) systems require the use of BCD; even the x86 line of processors has instructions for working with BCD.
Why is he wacky? Because he has believes and stands up for them?
Would you work for a company that is using child labour? Would you work for a company that uses slave labour? I certainly would not; child labour and slavery is anti-social IMHO.
RMS thinks and feels that not-free software is anti-social. You might start a debate on that (and against RMS, well, I would put my money on him), but please refrain calling someone who 'fights'/works for freedom of other people wacky.
RMS is one of the few extremists in this world that actually make this world a better place.
The interesting question is: does it use some sort of windows, or does it use samba to access those shares?
If Linux isn't ready for the desktop, how did my otherwise computer illiterate ex-girlfriend start using it for web/email/AIM/wordproc?
And starting to use it is the reason she is now an ex?
*ducks*
Yet again the level of my former English teacher becomes painfully apparent...
An email has been sent to the administrator notifying them of the problem.
Sorry to reply to my own posting, but would this imply that the administrator is- suffering from a multiple personalities disorder
- a siamese twin
- undergoing a sex-change at this very moment
- a monarch
- God
?An email has been sent to the administrator notifying them of the problem. Please try again later.
Is this a direct effect of the slashddos plugin?
New system requirements?
Cool, if that's the way, then I'll do as you suggested: I won't be using it.
That's fine with me: you are free to choose the software that suites you, just like you are free to say you prefer a dictatorship over a democracy. I will not be bombarding you with advertisements, nor do I lie about my stuff or wrap it up so that it works on your subconscious and makes you buy it. I just wrote stuff and you are free to use it.
We'll just keep using the commercial software that we happen to like...
Commercial software can be free software, just look at Red Hat, Mandrake, MySQL: all commercial entities, all selling free software and services for it.
(...) you'll keep bashing us for being such ignorant people.
I am not bashing you or any others for using closed source software. I will point out that someone is ignorant if he/she thinks only a Microsoft OS will run on a x86 based PC, or that only non-free software (closed source) can be of high quality. Being 'ignorant' does not equal being 'stupid' in my book, ignorancy can be driven out by education and information.
Is that the way this is supposed to work?
Yes. A free market (capitalism) is supposed to give you that choice. I choose free software for almost all of my needs because it is better for me. And I write free software so that others can enjoy the fruits of my labour. That way they do not have to all the stuff I have already done. If they do no like what I have written, they can either create something themselves, or look for it elsewhere, be it free or non-free software.
Point by point:
1. Willing to help fix != write code. While there are only very few people doing the "no help, no complain" line, it is IMHO a very fair line of reasoning. "X sucks" or "Y does it better" is not helping at all. If one does not like a product, one should either not use it or help improving it. This improvement can be as simple as taking part in a well-informed discussion.
2. It does not *matter* if you do it or not. A lot of people in democratic countries do not vote, yet think democracy is probably the best political system we have. The point is that anyone *can* get under the hood, not that anyone *must* do it.
3. Free != gratis, free == freedom (in the FSF domain).
4. There is no such thing as 'better' without a context. From some contexts, all free software is better than all non-free software, just ask RMS. Without supplying a context, this argument is moot.
5. Absolutely no point here. If you don't like a free s/w project, then do not use it. No one is forcing you. If you do not like what I have written, bad luck for you. If you do like it, feel free to use it and even improve on it if you like.
6. He seems to state that choice is good, but too much choice is not. He fails to draw the line, probably because it all depends on the point of view of the end-user. He also fails to mention that *anyone* can fork/start another distibution with 'less choice'. Again a moot point.
7. This is not a new point, but simply a rehash of all above.
The article is nothing more than it states: "Thoughts on some frequently-stated dogma promoted by the Open Source community", and that is all it is: thoughts. Not good particularly accurate thoughts though.
A falling plant was reported making a sound remarkably similar to the english sentence: "Oh no, not again."
Have you seen this? Why is there no name on entry 3? If it is unknown, then what is the difference to entry 10? And why do jan through march 2004 contain no info on browser types at all? I would not exactly call these 'good browser stats'.
Patents are a drastical way of influencing the free market, and governments should have a very good reason to interfere in a free market. This is something you need to get inside your thinking: patents are far from natural because they interfere in the 'natural' process of the kapitalistic economy.
Do some reading about the history of patents and you will see that patents were introduced to make sure inventions were not kept secret and would disappear from society when the inventor died. Granting the patentor a monopoly on his invention was a way to get all facts about the invention in the public domain.
For years the 'software industry' has thrived (even in the US) without any need for patents! You 'invent' something, put it on the market and profit. And believe me, a lot of profit has been made and the s/w industry has grown at an almost unbelievable rate. All this without s/w patentability. Also, since s/w can be reverse engineered, it is impossible to keep an 'invention' to onesself.
The need to make sure that inventors can have a temporary monopoly on their inventions is not a goal, it is a means to reach the goal of advancing society. Since the incentive of profit is doing just fine in stimulating people to come up with new/better products, there should be no interfering in the free economy.
Normally I vote D66 (the 'asshole' ministers party). On the EU elections I voted SP, for a large part because of their very concrete stance against s/w patents.
I also wrote to D66 telling I had voted for SP and why. I also asked why minister Brinkhorst was being very undemocratic. Basically I got no answer to that last question.
You can find 'magic' software servers the same way you can find a 'magic' url: search engines are your friend.
The games I have found until now either have no dependencies ('double clicking' the rpm installs just fine), or have their own binary installer.
I could have discussed Mandrake's rpmDrake instead, in which case I would have criticized the way it's buried four menus deep (will any new user even think to look under the "Packaging" sub-menu?)
In Mandrake (gnome) there is an icon for mcc ('Configure your computer, system configuration') on the same panel that contains the 'Applications' button; it is the third icon from the 'Actions' button. Clicking it opens a window which has a 'Software Management' option. If a new user cannot find this, I seriously question his/her ability to use a computer at all. Yes, it is different than windows, just as my Peogeot 206 is different from the Fiat Panda I had before.
Installing stuff on my Mandrake box is quite simple. There is a 'configure your computer' icon which starts Mandrake Control Center. From mcc you click on 'Software Management' which gives you 'Install', 'Remove', 'Update' and 'Media Manager' icons. You can add/remove RPM repository locations and install software from them, all with automatic dependency fixing.
I cannot see how any serious reviewer could miss this.
Both the PVR 250 and 350 come with on board MPEG2 (and MPEG1) encoder (350 has h/w MPEG2 decoder also), and can record full PAL and/or NTSC resolutions at a quality better than what Discovery Channel uses for some broadcasts (can see artifacts) with a max. of 12 megabit / sec.
The ivtv project has a working driver in alpha afaik.
Well, right now the US has a president who wanted to remove a man (who hurt his daddy) from government, from the day he got into the white house. He said something about having a lot of evidence and invaded a country to remove that man from office.
Turns out there was no evidence, all was made-up. Instead of being thrown out of office because of lying to the public, he still sits in his oval office.
Sad point of this story: a US president does need to figure out where "they" are, nor does he have to explain afterwards.
I expected the first hit to be something like this. This does not seem to be the Microsoft we all love to hate.
If you ever find a case of someone recording a film in a cinema with the express intention of *only* watching it themselves at home, do inform me so i can join the rally to get the person involved released.
But you _should_ join the rally! I am almost sure that that kid had bad intentions, but that is not the point. Lawmakers are crossing lines here: in cases like this the _intention_ should not be punishable. Copying a book in a library is not punishable. Setting up your own print shop and illegally distributing copies of that book is and should be punishable. Copying a book, even with the intent of selling illegal copies, is not and should not ever be illegal.
Since both of us are not in the US (from your hilarious example I take it you are from the UK) this does not directly apply to us, but politicians on this side of the atlantic might get the same ideas, just like with software patents. We need to keep our eyes and ears open for nonsense, newspeak and FUD. The entertainment biz is a business and as such does everything it thinks will maximize profits, including lobbying politicians to write bad laws.
Good point. I will refrain from using this, as you call it, fallacy.
Yes, it is illegal, in that it is against the law. But that law is rediculous. Making that one copy does no harm. _Selling_ copies of that copy to others _does_ harm. Why can someone be put in jail for causing no harm?
Compare to gun legislation in the US: it is very easy to legally get a gun. Guns can be used to shoot other people, in fact, for most guns that is their main purpose. Shooting at people is in most cases against the law. One may shoot in self defense, and that is the main reason you may carry a gun. Copyright law is also very specific about when you may make a copy: fair use rights.
One may carry a gun (does no harm), which could be used to kill other people (does harm).
One may not make a copy (does no harm), which could be used to make 'illegal' profit (does harm).
Don't you see how rediculous this law is? Making 1 copy and only looking at it yourself when you have already paid to see it does no harm and thus should not be punishable. Illegally distributing copies should be punishable.
I never said it was 'okay' to steal, but if I must choose between stealing a bread to feed my kids or watching them die, I will choose the first; I think most people will. This same point was raised by a Dutch bishop (or cardinal, don't rember exactly): he thought that in the eyes of the roman catholic deity it was criminal to let one suffer from such hunger, and stealing that bread for one's kids, while being in direct conflic with one of the commandments, would not be seen as a deadly sin. While I do not share the belief, I do share the line of reasoning.
The whole point I was trying to make is that the term 'criminal' is very subjective. Just making a law that says you cannot do X and calling people that do X criminals is newspeak to mislead the masses. All criminals should be in jail, right?