To get things right: I don't use Mandrake, I prefer Red Hat. But Mandrake users are not obliged to go into Mandrake Club to "support the company". They haven't stole anything, they just downloaded software that was free (in speech as in beer). If we should donate money, they should be to causes we believe (FSF, EFF, 3rd world hunger, etc).
People who for some reason want Mandrake to go on, or that want to download proprietary software like Star Office 6, should join the club. But it is not a "categorical imperative" for everyone that use Mandrake Linux.
Are you from Vanquish? I saw the $2 penalty in their website, and there's no mention of the 5c - talk about inside information! I work in the IT filed in Brazil and I am really interested in new technology regarding spam filters. I you like, drop me an e-mail at swpf-3tq3@dea.spamcon.org.
The company Vanquish is already trying to implement this idea, with limited results. According to their system, you have to pay something like US$ 2 to send an e-mail to someone. If the e-mail is used, the US$ 2 can be "recycled" - used to send an e-mail to other person. Acctually, your US$ 2 may never be used. If you are a spammer and want to send an e-mail to 2000 people, you would have to fork US$ 4. If half of these e-mails were rejected, the spammer would have lost US 2.000.
This system, though, may be "played" and "hacked". I don't see this becoming strong, because you would depend on a large number of initial subscribers for this to took off. As nobody seems in/. to have heard of Vanquish, I guess it is not very big.
The Lindows article that originated all the fuss
on
Linux Spurs MS Price Cuts
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The story about Microsoft giving discounts to OEMs that have started selling computers with Lindows first surfaced in a newsletter writen byt Michael Robertson, Lindows CEO. It can be found here.
Sorry, dowloading Ride The Lightening AFTER you have scratched it is not fair use. You bought the CD, it was lost/stolen/damaged, it's your problem. If you had a personal backup, you could listen to the previously recorded CD-R and exercise your fair use.
In fact, FreeBSD is Unix-like. Due to trademark protection, only products certified by the opengroup can bear the name "Unix". These include Solaris, SCO, Tru64, Irix and HP-UX. FreeBSD is based on the Unix BSD flavor and is a real Unix, but can't be named so.
It might not be the "best" choice, but certainly is a choice.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is building a supercomputer based on a Beowulf Cluster with 1024 nodes (2 processor in each node). You can read the story here or in this Slashdot thread.
But who's gone be pissed? Most music consumers don't care if their CDs have DRM or not. The fraction of geeks that will stop buying music CDs because of DRM is tiny. Most of them get music for free (as in beer) on newsgroups or Kazaa. I can see clearly who is going to win this fight.
If you don't like music CDs with DRM, dont't buy. Go spend your money on books, clothes or "open" CDs, that don't impose DRMs. A good online catalogue of artists that have accepted it, and thus should be boycotted, should be published.
Is is becoming obvious that Linus is losing his importance in the Linux to Alan Cox and Red Hat. Linux might still be a hobby for him, but it is serious business to many people.
Back when IBM tried to confront Microsoft in the desktop OS field, they tried to make OS/2 completely compatible with DOS. You could run (most) DOS and Windows applications with it.
The result? Software developers wrote programs only for DOS, as they would run in DOS and OS/2. If you wrote a program for OS/2, it would not run on DOS.
Windows emulation and Wine (Wine is not emulator) are cool, but shouldn't be a cornerstone for Linux distributions. They are good if you are in an enviroment where 90% of the programs are Linux native and there is only one Windows software that is stoping the company to migrate. But if Linux developers put too much effort on it, independent software developers won't have an incentive to write native Linux apps.
This discussion is starting to run in circles, so this should be my last remark. The broadband provider can charge whatever he wants for his service, and if he wants to do so, he can charge according to the use. If you use a lot because you download tons of music or because you have a personal webserver, it doesn't matter.
What doesn't makes sense is blocking ports before you actually use any bandwith. If you want to operate a server for a couple of days, just to learn how to do that, or to experiment something you wouldn't do on a production server, why shouldn't you do that on a ADSL conection?
Companies should be able to charge they way they wanted, and that was my original post. If you use broadband a lot, you can pay a lot. You you don't, Iti goes the same way.
But they haven't presented me a good reason to block ports other than castrating what you can do with your computer. Spam and hacker atacks are an issue, but could be resolved with a term of compromisse: "if you let spammers and hackers use your computer, we will block your ports".
It would be great if broadband wan't a monopoly, but where I live it is. I can not vote with my dolars and pick the best company. There is only one telephone company and one cable TV. Regulation might not be perfect, but sometimes it is the consummer last resource.
Telecommunications is not like other markets that you have plenty of sellers and buyers. Generally you have a lot of buyers and few (or even only one) seller. When you are not in an enviroment of free competition, the monopolistic company should obbey some regulations imposed by a democratic government. That's what happens in most of the telecommunications market in most countries, but when you start talking about internet and broadband, things are so recent that the legislation is very far behind.
For instance, I can buy broadband only from 2 companies (one offers ADSL and ISDN, the other is a cable TV company). Both block their ports. I don't have a choice. If I want to have a homebrew server, I shouldn't need to buy an expensive T1, that I wouldn't use anyway.
Linux is not only a low-price operating system. It is a Unix-like system, something very powerfull that previously was accessible only to big corporations. It is about empowering the citizen adn the small comapny in a digital age.
The article totally misses the point. If the cable operators want to adopt different pricing systems and charge their customers according to their usage, fine.
The problem is that some operators are trying to prevent users from using P2P applications, that effectively convert normal PCs into servers that can be accessed by other users. In other words, the cable user should be able to use his computer as something like a TV or a radio (to access information from other people) or like a TV or a radio station (spreading his message to anyone in the world).
People of the Free Software Foundation say that the computer is not an ordinary machine that can process software, it is a machine that can be used to make new software. In a broadband world, it can be a new medium, accessible to anyone with the technical expertise.
Many cable companies block the ports with firewalls to prevent their computers to act as servers, and that is what we should fight against. Managing a server is no sweet cake, it can be used as a platform to generate spam or a hacker attack. But, if the user signs some form of responsibility agreement, he should be able to use his broadband anyway he likes.
I live in Brazil, an and artist named "Lobao" has done just that. He was tired of being ripped off by record companies, that wouldn't pay him his copyright fees (as they control the retail channel and can underestimate the sellings), and started his own record company. His marketing strategy is based on his website, where you can buy his Cds, his shows and word-of-mouth - he was well-know before doing that.
He is not interested in fighting Napster or Kazaa, as most of the songs you find there are MP3s in the 128 bitrate area - real fans aren't satisfied with them. To win the piracy, he simply sets the price of his records to a half or a third of other companies. As people see this as a fair price, they are willing to pay for it and support the artist.
Now his label is promoting new artists, who wouldn't have a chance in the big, payola driven, record companies.
I have tested Mandrake 9 and Red Hat 8 and can say that, for a desktop, they are in a tie. However, we can see Red Hat has stronger foundations to make a good desktop, and their following releases should surpass Mandrake.
Red Hat has better usability, intuitive menus and Open Office integration. The Blue Curve theme is also great. The Red Hat Network, enabled at every boot, is a pain.
Mandrake does a better job when it is about integration with peripherals, like digital cameras an PDAs. And RPM Drake "just works", compared to RHN, that requires registration.
It is a good thing they are concentrating in improving Konqueror. Mozilla is great, but it drags on my desktop. Just like Galeon is much faster in Gnome than Mozilla.
It is kind funny, though, that KDE is integrating a browser with the desktop environment. Back when Microsoft did that with Internet Explorer and Windows, they received a lot of criticism.
Don't get me wrong there - the guys in Microsoft are guilty for their monopolistic efforts to demote Netscape. The deals with the OEM integrators are shameful. But integrating the browser with Windows was a right option made by the IT staff.
Wouldn't it be better for the community if you did not divide people with this request?
When we ask people to say "GNU/Linux", we are not dividing people. We are asking them to give the GNU Project credit for the GNU operating system. This does not criticize anyone or push anyone away.
(skip)
It is very useful to start GNU/Linux User Groups, which call the system GNU/Linux and adopt the ideals of the GNU Project as a basis for their activities. If the Linux User Group in your area has the problems describe above, we suggest you either campaign within the group to change its orientation (and name) or start a new group. The people who focus on the more superficial goals have a right to their views, but don't let them drag you along!
That is exactly what is being discussed in Europe and Japan. People will only have to buy an inexpensive convertor, priced somewhere betweeen US$30 or US$100, to continue using their existing televisions with digital signals. It won't be HTV,though, just plain old low definition television.
The problem is: who will pay for that? The consumers will be forced to do that? The TV companies will provide it? The government will give it away?
The bes solution, however, is to avoid this conversors as long as possible. New TV sets should come ou of the factory with both analog and digital convertors. The majority of the TV sets are changed within 10 years of use, this way consumers get an easy upgrade path. Digital and analog signals will be on the air for a reasonable time.
The convertors will be used for those who can't afford a digital TV when analog signals are discontinued. The main slashdot post about this question is a bit alarmistic, and this is not the case.
Slashdot Mirror
The tutorial has more info, but as it has been slashdoted, you can read about another NES casemod here.
People who for some reason want Mandrake to go on, or that want to download proprietary software like Star Office 6, should join the club. But it is not a "categorical imperative" for everyone that use Mandrake Linux.
Are you from Vanquish? I saw the $2 penalty in their website, and there's no mention of the 5c - talk about inside information! I work in the IT filed in Brazil and I am really interested in new technology regarding spam filters. I you like, drop me an e-mail at swpf-3tq3@dea.spamcon.org.
This system, though, may be "played" and "hacked". I don't see this becoming strong, because you would depend on a large number of initial subscribers for this to took off. As nobody seems in /. to have heard of Vanquish, I guess it is not very big.
Sorry, dowloading Ride The Lightening AFTER you have scratched it is not fair use. You bought the CD, it was lost/stolen/damaged, it's your problem. If you had a personal backup, you could listen to the previously recorded CD-R and exercise your fair use.
Nope. The MP3s were in the users hard disks. Napster only provided a "catalog" that made file swaping easy.
In fact, FreeBSD is Unix-like. Due to trademark protection, only products certified by the opengroup can bear the name "Unix". These include Solaris, SCO, Tru64, Irix and HP-UX. FreeBSD is based on the Unix BSD flavor and is a real Unix, but can't be named so.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is building a supercomputer based on a Beowulf Cluster with 1024 nodes (2 processor in each node). You can read the story here or in this Slashdot thread.
But who's gone be pissed? Most music consumers don't care if their CDs have DRM or not. The fraction of geeks that will stop buying music CDs because of DRM is tiny. Most of them get music for free (as in beer) on newsgroups or Kazaa. I can see clearly who is going to win this fight.
If you don't like music CDs with DRM, dont't buy. Go spend your money on books, clothes or "open" CDs, that don't impose DRMs. A good online catalogue of artists that have accepted it, and thus should be boycotted, should be published.
AMD is also planing lay offs. They have to cut US$ 350 million in costs, and some of these will come from lost jobs.
Is is becoming obvious that Linus is losing his importance in the Linux to Alan Cox and Red Hat. Linux might still be a hobby for him, but it is serious business to many people.
The result? Software developers wrote programs only for DOS, as they would run in DOS and OS/2. If you wrote a program for OS/2, it would not run on DOS.
Windows emulation and Wine (Wine is not emulator) are cool, but shouldn't be a cornerstone for Linux distributions. They are good if you are in an enviroment where 90% of the programs are Linux native and there is only one Windows software that is stoping the company to migrate. But if Linux developers put too much effort on it, independent software developers won't have an incentive to write native Linux apps.
What doesn't makes sense is blocking ports before you actually use any bandwith. If you want to operate a server for a couple of days, just to learn how to do that, or to experiment something you wouldn't do on a production server, why shouldn't you do that on a ADSL conection?
But they haven't presented me a good reason to block ports other than castrating what you can do with your computer. Spam and hacker atacks are an issue, but could be resolved with a term of compromisse: "if you let spammers and hackers use your computer, we will block your ports".
It would be great if broadband wan't a monopoly, but where I live it is. I can not vote with my dolars and pick the best company. There is only one telephone company and one cable TV. Regulation might not be perfect, but sometimes it is the consummer last resource.
For instance, I can buy broadband only from 2 companies (one offers ADSL and ISDN, the other is a cable TV company). Both block their ports. I don't have a choice. If I want to have a homebrew server, I shouldn't need to buy an expensive T1, that I wouldn't use anyway.
Linux is not only a low-price operating system. It is a Unix-like system, something very powerfull that previously was accessible only to big corporations. It is about empowering the citizen adn the small comapny in a digital age.
The problem is that some operators are trying to prevent users from using P2P applications, that effectively convert normal PCs into servers that can be accessed by other users. In other words, the cable user should be able to use his computer as something like a TV or a radio (to access information from other people) or like a TV or a radio station (spreading his message to anyone in the world).
People of the Free Software Foundation say that the computer is not an ordinary machine that can process software, it is a machine that can be used to make new software. In a broadband world, it can be a new medium, accessible to anyone with the technical expertise.
Many cable companies block the ports with firewalls to prevent their computers to act as servers, and that is what we should fight against. Managing a server is no sweet cake, it can be used as a platform to generate spam or a hacker attack. But, if the user signs some form of responsibility agreement, he should be able to use his broadband anyway he likes.
He is not interested in fighting Napster or Kazaa, as most of the songs you find there are MP3s in the 128 bitrate area - real fans aren't satisfied with them. To win the piracy, he simply sets the price of his records to a half or a third of other companies. As people see this as a fair price, they are willing to pay for it and support the artist.
Now his label is promoting new artists, who wouldn't have a chance in the big, payola driven, record companies.
Red Hat has better usability, intuitive menus and Open Office integration. The Blue Curve theme is also great. The Red Hat Network, enabled at every boot, is a pain.
Mandrake does a better job when it is about integration with peripherals, like digital cameras an PDAs. And RPM Drake "just works", compared to RHN, that requires registration.
It is kind funny, though, that KDE is integrating a browser with the desktop environment. Back when Microsoft did that with Internet Explorer and Windows, they received a lot of criticism.
Don't get me wrong there - the guys in Microsoft are guilty for their monopolistic efforts to demote Netscape. The deals with the OEM integrators are shameful. But integrating the browser with Windows was a right option made by the IT staff.
Wouldn't it be better for the community if you did not divide people with this request?
When we ask people to say "GNU/Linux", we are not dividing people. We are asking them to give the GNU Project credit for the GNU operating system. This does not criticize anyone or push anyone away.
(skip)
It is very useful to start GNU/Linux User Groups, which call the system GNU/Linux and adopt the ideals of the GNU Project as a basis for their activities. If the Linux User Group in your area has the problems describe above, we suggest you either campaign within the group to change its orientation (and name) or start a new group. The people who focus on the more superficial goals have a right to their views, but don't let them drag you along!
Can you see a contradiction there?
With this understanding, they [the users] can start to recognize Lindows and so-called "United Linux" as perverted, adulterated versions of GNU.
The problem is: who will pay for that? The consumers will be forced to do that? The TV companies will provide it? The government will give it away?
The bes solution, however, is to avoid this conversors as long as possible. New TV sets should come ou of the factory with both analog and digital convertors. The majority of the TV sets are changed within 10 years of use, this way consumers get an easy upgrade path. Digital and analog signals will be on the air for a reasonable time.
The convertors will be used for those who can't afford a digital TV when analog signals are discontinued. The main slashdot post about this question is a bit alarmistic, and this is not the case.