Actually, Apple once had a "copy protected" flag in the early Mac OS.
I remember someone who managed to somehow set that flag on all the files on his disk. The problem was that the OS never provided a user-accessable method of altering the flag, and no one had used the thing for years. He ended up having a fun time trying to rescue his documents.:-)
...by its very method, the field of physics will always lead toward truth...
And the philosophers cry out that we have no grounds for believing that pragmatic methods like Ockham's Razor and the scientific method lead toward truth.:-)
How about requiring government-purchased software to use only open protocols and formats? That would reduce vendor lock-in, and would make it possible for Microsoft to make a bid (they'd just have to open.doc).
The authors names are still intact, but KDE programs only have an "about this program" menu entry, as GNOME programs do, not an "about this program" entry *and* an "about KDE" entry.
The problem is one of themes, not modified about boxes.
I don't know who started the rumor about altering about boxes -- happened sometime in the last submission about this.
The problem is that there's been a lot of bullshit going around about this, and it's been trumped up a lot, and I hate to say it, but I honestly think that some of the people at companies that compete with RH might be stooping to somewhat dirty tactics.
(physics types, please excuse my flaky terminology...I should probably use "impulse" and whatnot, but I'm not a physicist)
People are squishy. A strong force for a very short period of time (hitting a chair), doesn't actually have that strong of a force/time ratio -- the "squish" spreads out the impact time. So if the time is quadrupled by the "squish", your brain experiences 2.5 Gs.
If you keep a strong force going for longer, you cannot spread out the force -- your brain is already squished down into the bottom of your skull. There's no way for your body to compensate more, to spread out the impact time. So you "really" experience those 10Gs.
I thought that astronaut training only went up to something like 7Gs sustained, and much above that you could start blacking out? Perhaps I'm wrong...
Anyway, we evolved to deal well with short, sharp impacts like jumping from rock to rock and banging our head, but not with being centrifuged or similar.
The primary purpose of a human is not as a circumvention device, so the DMCA is cool with it.
The problem is that "primary purpose" is a little ill-defined. Is the "primary purpose" of Napster distributing music from free artists? Is the "primary purpose" of glue remover to get at CDs?
You're right...I should have put the ellipsis. However, there was no ill will on my part -- the quotes are the same from a point of view of what I'm trying to argue. The point is, here is the way I read it:
"I hope Red Hat successfully forces both GNOME and KDE to become compatible with one another. This would result in the creation of a single desktop."
There are a couple of problems.
First is that the user is implying by the use of the word "successfully" that Red Hat is actually trying to "force" KDE/GNOME to do something. I don't see any grounds whatsoever for saying that, and that has a tendancy to piss off people that see RH as becoming too overwhelming in the Linux world.
Second is the claim that compatibility between GNOME and KDE -- often longed for by developers from both parties -- would result in the "creation of a single desktop". This is bogus, and the only reason for putting this in is to inflame die-hard GNOME or KDE supporters. KDE and GNOME working together doesn't destroy their existence as separate desktops any more than C and Common Lisp being able to interchange data makes them a single language.
Finally, this whole string of stories has been incredibly aimed at blowing up what Red Hat has done -- choosing a similar *default theme* -- into an attack on Choice, GNOME and/or KDE, WindowMaker, or whatever.
The anonymous submitter wrote "RedHat successfully forces both GNOME and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop."
Where did he manage to get this idea caught in his head? Merging the desktops? RH is just trying to make the two interoperate as best they can in their own release from a UI standpoint.
If RH don't like this then why don't they just drop the one(s) they don't want people to use?
You still *can* pick KDE/GNOME/whatever. RH chose a *theme* that makes them look alike. A *theme*! God, where did everyone lose sight of that? Ximian chooses a different theme than the GNOME default as well...are *they* evil, sadistic bastards too?
I still can't figure out why this is news. It wasn't back when the story was first posted, and nobody cared except for about four people on the KDE forums (mostly the ever-vocal Mosfet).
My guess is that publicizing this is a UnitedLinux initiative to make RH look bad, since I can't figure out a single other person who has anything else to gain by blowing this as out of proportion as it's gotten. Who *cares* about RH's default theme? Change your theme! Use WindowMaker if you want! This has no impact whatsoever on you!
Of course, the fact that it's extremely difficult (if not impossible) to make it fully automatic for the users has nothing to do with it
Actually, while the setup is still not idiot-proof, actually using gpg in mutt is really, really easy, and works exactly the way I like. I automatically sign everything I send. mutt caches my password in memory so I don't have to type it over and over when sending a quick succession of emails. I automatically verify incoming signed emails, and download their keys if I don't have them from the keyservers automatically. Mutt gives me a status on whether the web of trust includes the key signing a letter. Dunno about encryption, since I can't find anyone else using pgp/gpg with encryption to find out with....
Because C/C++, despite their widespread use, are not all that great choices for application languages. The biggest thing they have going for them is that they're fast and have lots of libraries available. OTOH, they aren't the quickest language in the world to debug, they have a pretty weak type system, there are a lot of minor incompatibilities in compilers...
Perl/PHP are fine...but as you said, for web apps (or perl for scripts). Not well suited for general app dev.
A lot of people don't like python, and python is not what you'd call blazing fast.
Javascript is a joke. It's for annoying web page junk.
Java is the closest thing to a modern application language -- it's compiled, it does bounds checking and whatnot, but it has a few severe flaws. It's very memory-hungry. Despite years of improvements and promises, it's still awfully slow compared to C/C++. It puts too much emphasis (IMHO) on architecture/design, like OO and interface design, which is awfully overwhelming to new CS students.
We need an applications language. It can't be hideously slow (like most of these proposed C/C++ replacements), so at most it could do RTTI and array bounds checking at runtime. If you have a really expressive language, your compiler can go gonzo optimizing, a la Eiffel or SML or Ocaml.
It'd be nice if it had a somewhat less foreign interface -- SML and Ocaml are a bit much to swallow if you're used to C.
C# -- dunno about performance implications, but it's gotten grudging approval from some language people I know -- seems like it might do a good job of filling the gap that Java tried to fill.
Of course, I'd much rather a non-MS language become big...
Slashdot Mirror
As for the MOB the mob exists to make money any way possible.
The Mob is a more competent version of the RIAA?
Actually, Apple once had a "copy protected" flag in the early Mac OS.
:-)
I remember someone who managed to somehow set that flag on all the files on his disk. The problem was that the OS never provided a user-accessable method of altering the flag, and no one had used the thing for years. He ended up having a fun time trying to rescue his documents.
Come to think about it, my sig is kind of ironic when making posts like this.
...by its very method, the field of physics will always lead toward truth...
:-)
And the philosophers cry out that we have no grounds for believing that pragmatic methods like Ockham's Razor and the scientific method lead toward truth.
Offtopic=1, Flamebait=7, Troll=1, Insightful=6, Interesting=3, Funny=1, Overrated=3, Underrated=2, Total=24
Are there any categories that someone *hasn't* dropped this into?
...It's worked for MS for years.
How about requiring government-purchased software to use only open protocols and formats? That would reduce vendor lock-in, and would make it possible for Microsoft to make a bid (they'd just have to open .doc).
...if the DOC file got infected with a macro virus.
But I suppose everyone would rather use browsers that "support web site enhancing features" like screwing around with your browsing environment.
What you said would probably not make an economist agree.
If you have open standards and interoperability, you lower the barrier to changing products. That tends to *help* superior products come out on top.
Usually other news sites have the same thing, and don't require registration.
And had I read my own link, I'd have found out.
The authors names are still intact, but KDE programs only have an "about this program" menu entry, as GNOME programs do, not an "about this program" entry *and* an "about KDE" entry.
These screenshots of null don't lack developers' names.
The problem is one of themes, not modified about boxes.
I don't know who started the rumor about altering about boxes -- happened sometime in the last submission about this.
The problem is that there's been a lot of bullshit going around about this, and it's been trumped up a lot, and I hate to say it, but I honestly think that some of the people at companies that compete with RH might be stooping to somewhat dirty tactics.
(physics types, please excuse my flaky terminology...I should probably use "impulse" and whatnot, but I'm not a physicist)
People are squishy. A strong force for a very short period of time (hitting a chair), doesn't actually have that strong of a force/time ratio -- the "squish" spreads out the impact time. So if the time is quadrupled by the "squish", your brain experiences 2.5 Gs.
If you keep a strong force going for longer, you cannot spread out the force -- your brain is already squished down into the bottom of your skull. There's no way for your body to compensate more, to spread out the impact time. So you "really" experience those 10Gs.
I thought that astronaut training only went up to something like 7Gs sustained, and much above that you could start blacking out? Perhaps I'm wrong...
Anyway, we evolved to deal well with short, sharp impacts like jumping from rock to rock and banging our head, but not with being centrifuged or similar.
The primary purpose of a human is not as a circumvention device, so the DMCA is cool with it.
The problem is that "primary purpose" is a little ill-defined. Is the "primary purpose" of Napster distributing music from free artists? Is the "primary purpose" of glue remover to get at CDs?
Was it Snow Crash that talked about kid's toys and pajamas being either flameproof or non-carcinogenic but not both at the same time?
Yup. Li'l Crips pajamas. Snow Crash is great.
You're right...I should have put the ellipsis. However, there was no ill will on my part -- the quotes are the same from a point of view of what I'm trying to argue. The point is, here is the way I read it:
"I hope Red Hat successfully forces both GNOME and KDE to become compatible with one another. This would result in the creation of a single desktop."
There are a couple of problems.
First is that the user is implying by the use of the word "successfully" that Red Hat is actually trying to "force" KDE/GNOME to do something. I don't see any grounds whatsoever for saying that, and that has a tendancy to piss off people that see RH as becoming too overwhelming in the Linux world.
Second is the claim that compatibility between GNOME and KDE -- often longed for by developers from both parties -- would result in the "creation of a single desktop". This is bogus, and the only reason for putting this in is to inflame die-hard GNOME or KDE supporters. KDE and GNOME working together doesn't destroy their existence as separate desktops any more than C and Common Lisp being able to interchange data makes them a single language.
Finally, this whole string of stories has been incredibly aimed at blowing up what Red Hat has done -- choosing a similar *default theme* -- into an attack on Choice, GNOME and/or KDE, WindowMaker, or whatever.
The anonymous submitter wrote "RedHat successfully forces both GNOME and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop."
Where did he manage to get this idea caught in his head? Merging the desktops? RH is just trying to make the two interoperate as best they can in their own release from a UI standpoint.
If RH don't like this then why don't they just drop the one(s) they don't want people to use?
You still *can* pick KDE/GNOME/whatever. RH chose a *theme* that makes them look alike. A *theme*! God, where did everyone lose sight of that? Ximian chooses a different theme than the GNOME default as well...are *they* evil, sadistic bastards too?
I still can't figure out why this is news. It wasn't back when the story was first posted, and nobody cared except for about four people on the KDE forums (mostly the ever-vocal Mosfet).
My guess is that publicizing this is a UnitedLinux initiative to make RH look bad, since I can't figure out a single other person who has anything else to gain by blowing this as out of proportion as it's gotten. Who *cares* about RH's default theme? Change your theme! Use WindowMaker if you want! This has no impact whatsoever on you!
A student takes X credits a semester.
I'm not saying they're removing an option -- they're making it so that some *other* elective that would have been taken isn't.
This site kicks *ass*. Hurry up and finish mirroring it...it's already awfully slow!
...sales of Red Hat's up2date service agreements have doubled.
You sure they don't have imaps or some sort of ssl tunnel?
Is the shell host near the mail host, or the same one? You could ssh-tunnel to the shell host and then log in to the mail host from there.
You may like Gentoo, but it sure isn't a major distro.
Of course, the fact that it's extremely difficult (if not impossible) to make it fully automatic for the users has nothing to do with it
Actually, while the setup is still not idiot-proof, actually using gpg in mutt is really, really easy, and works exactly the way I like. I automatically sign everything I send. mutt caches my password in memory so I don't have to type it over and over when sending a quick succession of emails. I automatically verify incoming signed emails, and download their keys if I don't have them from the keyservers automatically. Mutt gives me a status on whether the web of trust includes the key signing a letter. Dunno about encryption, since I can't find anyone else using pgp/gpg with encryption to find out with....
Because C/C++, despite their widespread use, are not all that great choices for application languages. The biggest thing they have going for them is that they're fast and have lots of libraries available. OTOH, they aren't the quickest language in the world to debug, they have a pretty weak type system, there are a lot of minor incompatibilities in compilers...
Perl/PHP are fine...but as you said, for web apps (or perl for scripts). Not well suited for general app dev.
A lot of people don't like python, and python is not what you'd call blazing fast.
Javascript is a joke. It's for annoying web page junk.
Java is the closest thing to a modern application language -- it's compiled, it does bounds checking and whatnot, but it has a few severe flaws. It's very memory-hungry. Despite years of improvements and promises, it's still awfully slow compared to C/C++. It puts too much emphasis (IMHO) on architecture/design, like OO and interface design, which is awfully overwhelming to new CS students.
We need an applications language. It can't be hideously slow (like most of these proposed C/C++ replacements), so at most it could do RTTI and array bounds checking at runtime. If you have a really expressive language, your compiler can go gonzo optimizing, a la Eiffel or SML or Ocaml.
It'd be nice if it had a somewhat less foreign interface -- SML and Ocaml are a bit much to swallow if you're used to C.
C# -- dunno about performance implications, but it's gotten grudging approval from some language people I know -- seems like it might do a good job of filling the gap that Java tried to fill.
Of course, I'd much rather a non-MS language become big...