I've been waiting for Sarge for a couple months now. I don't know why they can't freeze it, give people 2 weeks to fix bugs or get cut, then release what's available.
For a long time the release was waiting on the new installer. The i386 installer has been working for quite a while now but other architectures have come along slowly. My understanding is that the installer problems have all been worked out at this point.
After the installer, the major issue was setting up security support for Sarge. Woody will be supported for a year or so beyond the release of Sarge, so the two stable releases will need side-by-side security infastructure. The last message on Debian-Devel-Announce that referenced this (8 August 2004) said that it wasn't ready.
After security support comes bug squashing, package sanity testing (do 2 packages contain the same file, etc), and finally release testing.
There was also heated discussion about including AMD64 in the next stable release (and further delaying the release as a result.) AFAIK the decision was to not include AMD64 in the list of supported architectures for Sarge.
Getting the RC bug count down to 0 would be a nice step towards releasing Sarge but it's not the only step required.
We decided to go with Sarge (testing), as we where expecting a final release with security-fixes soon, and didn't wanted to have woody installed and becoming obsolete within a couple of weeks.
For anyone else considering the same route... If you want a Stable server OS, install Debian Stable. Regardless of when Sarge is finally released, Woody will be supported for an additional year or so. In fact, if you have a Debian stable box and don't want to get pulled into Sarge before you're ready, change your/etc/apt/sources.list file to pull packages from Woody rather than Stable. Let other folks debug the upgrade process on their experimental boxes before you upgrade your production boxes.
You can do a bit better buying a complete system without OS off of pricewatch.
And if you want a system with monitor, keyboard and mouse you can pick up a used Apple G3 All-in-One on eBay for under $100. If you only want one cheap computer, this is the best way to go. The G3 AIO runs Debian at a reasonable clip, costs nothing and looks good sitting on a desktop.
Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ
on
A Dual Monitor Experiment
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Just because you can turn your head instead of activating a "switch virtual desktop" command doesn't make it any less of a switch of attention.
Very true, but the difference between noticing a state change out of the corner of your eye and noticing a state changes after a few key presses is dramatic to me. The multi-desktop paging idea that Gnome and KDE are trying to sell would work if the preview windows into the background desktops were large enough to notice when something changes in those desktops. I could almost see working with a multi-desktop system where one of the two monitors I'm using is filled with four 1/4 scale preview windows looking into the other desktops. I'd still want the option of having one of those desktops fill the second screen when it's preferrable to have two full screens. When I want to use IDE and Browser for instance. YMMV. Choice is a beautiful thing.
Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ
on
A Dual Monitor Experiment
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Seriously though, I would rather have a multi-desktop window manager than two big monitors taking up my whole desk any day of the week, at least until I can afford a gigantomondo plasma TV that I can hang on the wall instead.
Multi-desktops don't do a thing for me. What is the use of a graphical application running in a window I can't see? Multi-desktops with a useable preview window might be worthwhile, but the way it's done in KDE/Gnome right now is worthless.
Multiple monitors...that's a different story. Put your IDE in one monitor and your web browser (for documentation) on the other. Leave Kontact running in one monitor while you're screwing around on Slashdot in the other. GTK-Gnutella or Pan in one monitor while you're watching a movie on the second. Once you've been using a multi-monitor desktop for a while, you'll find it annoying to work on a system with a single monitor.
Basically, the judge said that the 1-click system Amazon implemented does not infringe the '055 patent. Whether and what Amazon has a patent on one-click doesn't matter.
But as a nice bonus, anyone using a 1 click ordering system can expect to be sued by two companies now. Keep up the good work USPTO.
Oh, lets be honest... the jobs paying minimum wage can't be sent over seas. They tend to be service industry jobs that need to be done on site (Walmart greeter, hamburger flipper, mailroom clerk, etc).
And the people earning minimum wage don't hoard their wealth in tax-free IRAs or tax-free municipal bonds. They buy stuff. Poor people spend, they don't save. That creates new demand, which creates new business opportunities, which creates new jobs.
It's the basis of Keynesian economics. I was fairly miffed that Kerry did so little to explain how increasing the minimum wage spurs the economy. We hear the supply-side view about the minimum wage killing jobs all the time, even though the same sorts of dire predicitions have been made for 70 years now without coming to pass.
That said, it's taken 100 years for colors to be brought into the international trademark framework, and very few sounds. I doubt smells will be included in our lifetime.
But the changes are very recent, and there's every indication that "IP Rights" will continue to be rapidly expanded in the near future.
However, until recently, United States courts were still divided over the issue of single color marks.[8] Finally, on March 28, 1995 the United States Supreme Court resolved unanimously that, "sometimes, a color will meet ordinary legal trademark requirements. And, when it does so, no special rule prevents color alone from serving as a trademark."[9] However, the Court held implicitly that single colors may not be inherently distinctive, but like descriptive marks or words, may only be protected when they have acquired a secondary meaning through use. The Court also found that the green-gold color at issue served no function other than as an identifier and the Court dismissed the "color depletion" problem raised by the plaintiffs.
...
Marks consisting of scents are the most problematic. In addition to the practical difficulties of describing such marks sufficiently to determine where conflicts may exist, there is little legislation or jurisprudence on the subject. A scent mark was first recognized in 1990 in the United States, where a scent, described as a high impact, fresh, floral fragrance reminiscent of plumeria blossoms, applied to sewing thread, was deemed a registrable trademark.
So it seems that we already have smells incorporated into trademarks in the US. The original assertion that a precise system of describing smell may cause the doors to swing wide open.
The FireGL 8800 is the fastest DRI compatible video card, but it has problems with projected textures (Descent3, HeavyGear2, Shogo) and there's a problem with UT2K3/UT2K4 that causes X to lock up when the shock rifle is fired.
As far as reliability goes, the Matrox G400Max and Voodoo 5 - 5500 seem to be the best options. You may have problems with AGP slot compatability with those though.
Another good option is the Radeon 9000 or 9200. They still have the projected textures problem, but UT2K3/4 doesn't lock up.
The DRI team seems to be closing in on a solution to the problems with projected textures on r200 cards. The shock rifle bug doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
I know... it's not like Clinton lied under oath or... oh, wait. That would be (a) lying, and (b) perjury. Not the same at all. Clinton's forgiven.
Right, because when G.W. was put under oath he only told the truth about Iraq. Oh, wait a second....he refused to be put under oath...what a complete surprise.
So... The president can be questioned under oath about the whereabouts of his pecker on a particular day, but not questioned under oath about his reasons for invading another country. Go figure.
The fact is that there is choice in today's market. If you want to point the finger, point it at the end user who is to damn lazy to install a new browser.
What about the end user who doesn't want to pay for IE. It's silly to pay for one browser and then use another one.
For one, they claim lack of support and give their own solution to it as well -- they don't have any technical linux staff. To switch over to linux without having anyone with the know-how to run linux seems naive, and is only asking for trouble.
The real question is...if they were already running Linux, why was their staff more comfortable with developing and administering MS solutions? It sounds like someone dropped the ball in hiring developers and admins appropriate for the tasks at hand.
The Army has no problem with a bad credit history. If you can't manage your own finances, your chain of command can garnish part of your wages and have the money direct deposited into a creditor's account.
One of the biggest draws to the US Military is debt elimination for college loans...being broke is a plus.
The nature of software in particular is such that any non-trivial program involves thousands of processes, any of which can be patented...
Which leads to:
3. The procedures and costs of the patent system favor corporations over individual inventors. Everyone comes up with reams of patentable ideas. Few have the resources to push these ideas through the USPTO.
It also has about 1.5 - 2 years between releases so you don't have to constantly play catchup.
I think your numbers are low. The current consensus seems to be that the old version of stable will be supported for one year after a new version of stable is released. If the release cycle stays the same, it's more like 3 to 4 years total.
Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there
on
More Microsoft Patents
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I think the problem is not that they don't have a dedicated group of industry experts -- it's that they don't have *enough* people to handle the huge deluge of patents.
Call it what it really is.
Patent Spamming
Throw enough crap at the USPTO, and they're bound to approve some of it.
I'd have to say from my own experience (former military officer talking here) that the percentage is probably higher than they think. I can count on one hand the number of real liberal democrats I encountered during all my years in the military.
Officers and enlisted are two very different demographics. In my experience, as a corporal in the mechanized infantry, the vast majority of the people I knew were Democrats. It may seem like the military is overwhelmingly Republican, but it's simply the result of 99% of the enlisted men and women not voting.
The real solution is providing the voter with a printed ballot showing who their vote will be counted for...
It's boggles the mind to imagine why any sane person would be against producing a paper trail.
When we buy something from the store we get a slip of paper to document the purchase. When we pull money out of an ATM we get a slip of paper to document the transaction. When a mom drops her child off at school late she give him or her a slip of paper to document what happened. If I go to the local library and pay 5 cents worth of late fees on a book, they'll give me a piece of paper saying my late fees have been paid. If I drive my car 40mph in a 30mph zone, a state trooper will give me a piece of paper to document my lawlessness.
So although you can theoretically charge money for GPLed binaries, it'll never work anything like a conventional paid or shareware business model*.
It doesn't need to. Blender is a great example of "charge whatever the market will bear." NaN sold one copy for $100,000 and users were glad to chip in for it.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been waiting for Sarge for a couple months now. I don't know why they can't freeze it, give people 2 weeks to fix bugs or get cut, then release what's available.
For a long time the release was waiting on the new installer. The i386 installer has been working for quite a while now but other architectures have come along slowly. My understanding is that the installer problems have all been worked out at this point.
After the installer, the major issue was setting up security support for Sarge. Woody will be supported for a year or so beyond the release of Sarge, so the two stable releases will need side-by-side security infastructure. The last message on Debian-Devel-Announce that referenced this (8 August 2004) said that it wasn't ready.
After security support comes bug squashing, package sanity testing (do 2 packages contain the same file, etc), and finally release testing.
There was also heated discussion about including AMD64 in the next stable release (and further delaying the release as a result.) AFAIK the decision was to not include AMD64 in the list of supported architectures for Sarge.
Getting the RC bug count down to 0 would be a nice step towards releasing Sarge but it's not the only step required.
We decided to go with Sarge (testing), as we where expecting a final release with security-fixes soon, and didn't wanted to have woody installed and becoming obsolete within a couple of weeks.
/etc/apt/sources.list file to pull packages from Woody rather than Stable. Let other folks debug the upgrade process on their experimental boxes before you upgrade your production boxes.
For anyone else considering the same route... If you want a Stable server OS, install Debian Stable. Regardless of when Sarge is finally released, Woody will be supported for an additional year or so. In fact, if you have a Debian stable box and don't want to get pulled into Sarge before you're ready, change your
You can do a bit better buying a complete system without OS off of pricewatch.
And if you want a system with monitor, keyboard and mouse you can pick up a used Apple G3 All-in-One on eBay for under $100. If you only want one cheap computer, this is the best way to go. The G3 AIO runs Debian at a reasonable clip, costs nothing and looks good sitting on a desktop.
Just because you can turn your head instead of activating a "switch virtual desktop" command doesn't make it any less of a switch of attention.
Very true, but the difference between noticing a state change out of the corner of your eye and noticing a state changes after a few key presses is dramatic to me. The multi-desktop paging idea that Gnome and KDE are trying to sell would work if the preview windows into the background desktops were large enough to notice when something changes in those desktops. I could almost see working with a multi-desktop system where one of the two monitors I'm using is filled with four 1/4 scale preview windows looking into the other desktops. I'd still want the option of having one of those desktops fill the second screen when it's preferrable to have two full screens. When I want to use IDE and Browser for instance. YMMV. Choice is a beautiful thing.
Seriously though, I would rather have a multi-desktop window manager than two big monitors taking up my whole desk any day of the week, at least until I can afford a gigantomondo plasma TV that I can hang on the wall instead.
Multi-desktops don't do a thing for me. What is the use of a graphical application running in a window I can't see? Multi-desktops with a useable preview window might be worthwhile, but the way it's done in KDE/Gnome right now is worthless.
Multiple monitors...that's a different story. Put your IDE in one monitor and your web browser (for documentation) on the other. Leave Kontact running in one monitor while you're screwing around on Slashdot in the other. GTK-Gnutella or Pan in one monitor while you're watching a movie on the second. Once you've been using a multi-monitor desktop for a while, you'll find it annoying to work on a system with a single monitor.
Basically, the judge said that the 1-click system Amazon implemented does not infringe the '055 patent. Whether and what Amazon has a patent on one-click doesn't matter.
But as a nice bonus, anyone using a 1 click ordering system can expect to be sued by two companies now. Keep up the good work USPTO.
1) Get Associate's Degree in nursing
2) Get nursing job that pays $50K/year + benefits + $10K signing bonus (Yup, I've seen them.)
3) Profit!!!
4) Replaced by cheaper H1-B visa worker. Take 3 steps back and try a different profession.
Oh, lets be honest... the jobs paying minimum wage can't be sent over seas. They tend to be service industry jobs that need to be done on site (Walmart greeter, hamburger flipper, mailroom clerk, etc).
And the people earning minimum wage don't hoard their wealth in tax-free IRAs or tax-free municipal bonds. They buy stuff. Poor people spend, they don't save. That creates new demand, which creates new business opportunities, which creates new jobs.
It's the basis of Keynesian economics. I was fairly miffed that Kerry did so little to explain how increasing the minimum wage spurs the economy. We hear the supply-side view about the minimum wage killing jobs all the time, even though the same sorts of dire predicitions have been made for 70 years now without coming to pass.
Don't forget the "War on Poverty"
All of my music is in OGG and MP3. I've had my Rio Karma for 10 months without any problems either.
That said, it's taken 100 years for colors to be brought into the international trademark framework, and very few sounds. I doubt smells will be included in our lifetime.
...
But the changes are very recent, and there's every indication that "IP Rights" will continue to be rapidly expanded in the near future.
From Ladas & Parry LLP an IP law firm.
However, until recently, United States courts were still divided over the issue of single color marks.[8] Finally, on March 28, 1995 the United States Supreme Court resolved unanimously that, "sometimes, a color will meet ordinary legal trademark requirements. And, when it does so, no special rule prevents color alone from serving as a trademark."[9] However, the Court held implicitly that single colors may not be inherently distinctive, but like descriptive marks or words, may only be protected when they have acquired a secondary meaning through use. The Court also found that the green-gold color at issue served no function other than as an identifier and the Court dismissed the "color depletion" problem raised by the plaintiffs.
Marks consisting of scents are the most problematic. In addition to the practical difficulties of describing such marks sufficiently to determine where conflicts may exist, there is little legislation or jurisprudence on the subject. A scent mark was first recognized in 1990 in the United States, where a scent, described as a high impact, fresh, floral fragrance reminiscent of plumeria blossoms, applied to sewing thread, was deemed a registrable trademark.
So it seems that we already have smells incorporated into trademarks in the US. The original assertion that a precise system of describing smell may cause the doors to swing wide open.
The FireGL 8800 is the fastest DRI compatible video card, but it has problems with projected textures (Descent3, HeavyGear2, Shogo) and there's a problem with UT2K3/UT2K4 that causes X to lock up when the shock rifle is fired.
As far as reliability goes, the Matrox G400Max and Voodoo 5 - 5500 seem to be the best options. You may have problems with AGP slot compatability with those though.
Another good option is the Radeon 9000 or 9200. They still have the projected textures problem, but UT2K3/4 doesn't lock up.
The DRI team seems to be closing in on a solution to the problems with projected textures on r200 cards. The shock rifle bug doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
You can find my benchmarks of DRI compatible cards here. They're a first attempt at benchmarking DRI and still need some tweaking.
Eric Anholt's benchmarks of DRI on FreeBSD are here.
Roland Scheidegger's comparison of the three drivers available for the Radeon 9000 (DRI, FGLRX, XIG) is here.
It's a bit surprising that the Radeon 8500 series is completly absent from this comparison. The 8500 and FireGL 8800 are still remarkable video cards.
Don't forget you'll need some uranium ore to work with.
I know... it's not like Clinton lied under oath or... oh, wait. That would be (a) lying, and (b) perjury. Not the same at all. Clinton's forgiven.
Right, because when G.W. was put under oath he only told the truth about Iraq. Oh, wait a second....he refused to be put under oath...what a complete surprise.
So... The president can be questioned under oath about the whereabouts of his pecker on a particular day, but not questioned under oath about his reasons for invading another country. Go figure.
The fact is that there is choice in today's market. If you want to point the finger, point it at the end user who is to damn lazy to install a new browser.
What about the end user who doesn't want to pay for IE. It's silly to pay for one browser and then use another one.
For one, they claim lack of support and give their own solution to it as well -- they don't have any technical linux staff. To switch over to linux without having anyone with the know-how to run linux seems naive, and is only asking for trouble.
The real question is...if they were already running Linux, why was their staff more comfortable with developing and administering MS solutions? It sounds like someone dropped the ball in hiring developers and admins appropriate for the tasks at hand.
Keep in mind that there have been hoax blogs before. Did they really find the camera card?
Either (a) it's a hoax, or (b) the author doesn't realize this is a lawsuit waiting to happen.
The Army has no problem with a bad credit history. If you can't manage your own finances, your chain of command can garnish part of your wages and have the money direct deposited into a creditor's account.
One of the biggest draws to the US Military is debt elimination for college loans...being broke is a plus.
The nature of software in particular is such that any non-trivial program involves thousands of processes, any of which can be patented...
Which leads to:
3. The procedures and costs of the patent system favor corporations over individual inventors. Everyone comes up with reams of patentable ideas. Few have the resources to push these ideas through the USPTO.
It also has about 1.5 - 2 years between releases so you don't have to constantly play catchup.
I think your numbers are low. The current consensus seems to be that the old version of stable will be supported for one year after a new version of stable is released. If the release cycle stays the same, it's more like 3 to 4 years total.
I think the problem is not that they don't have a dedicated group of industry experts -- it's that they don't have *enough* people to handle the huge deluge of patents.
Call it what it really is.
Patent Spamming
Throw enough crap at the USPTO, and they're bound to approve some of it.
I'd have to say from my own experience (former military officer talking here) that the percentage is probably higher than they think. I can count on one hand the number of real liberal democrats I encountered during all my years in the military.
Officers and enlisted are two very different demographics. In my experience, as a corporal in the mechanized infantry, the vast majority of the people I knew were Democrats. It may seem like the military is overwhelmingly Republican, but it's simply the result of 99% of the enlisted men and women not voting.
The real solution is providing the voter with a printed ballot showing who their vote will be counted for...
It's boggles the mind to imagine why any sane person would be against producing a paper trail.
When we buy something from the store we get a slip of paper to document the purchase.
When we pull money out of an ATM we get a slip of paper to document the transaction.
When a mom drops her child off at school late she give him or her a slip of paper to document what happened.
If I go to the local library and pay 5 cents worth of late fees on a book, they'll give me a piece of paper saying my late fees have been paid.
If I drive my car 40mph in a 30mph zone, a state trooper will give me a piece of paper to document my lawlessness.
WTF is so bad about a paper trail?
So although you can theoretically charge money for GPLed binaries, it'll never work anything like a conventional paid or shareware business model*.
It doesn't need to. Blender is a great example of "charge whatever the market will bear." NaN sold one copy for $100,000 and users were glad to chip in for it.