... and the subsequent and inevitable lawsuits brought about by people convinced that the wireless power technology is giving them cancer would probably get a little tiresome.
I was, in fact, equating the kernel with the distro -- which is flat-out wrong. Sloppy thinking on my part. Obviously anything that is GPL v2 right now that is not the kernel can, if the respective authors choose, be re-released as GPL v3. That said, I don't believe they can do this retroactively -- anything that was released under GPLv2 remains under that license.
Linux can't be distributed under anything other than the modified GPL license that it is distributed under. Red Hat is a Linux distribution. I may not fully understand what you're saying, but I don't see Red Hat forking its own distribution any time soon (though you might argue that Fedora is such a fork.)
The only legitimate "end run" around the GPL -- the only one that I know of, anyway -- is to customize it and not distribute it. This is what companies like Google and Amazon do. In that case, they have already forked Linux, and any further development (in order to get their special pieces to do what they want) is their responsibility to begin with.
... when it comes to how he chooses to preserve the fruits of the revolution he created, but this is a hit-piece. It is possible to respect the man and disagree with his methods.
There *are* problems with GPLv3, in my opinion, and it's possible that GPLv3 contradicts some of Richard Stallman's "freedom of use" ideology, but there's no way it is going to "endanger Linux" because -- and I'm not entirely sure why the press doesn't get this -- GPL V3 DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY REPLACE GPL V2. This isn't a EULA, it can't be udpated and replaced at any time at the whim of Richard Stallman, the license you get when you get free software is the license you get, and that's that. If the person who created the software decides that the next version will be GPLv3, you are free to fork the old one and develop it yourself.
Honestly, 90% of the media who covers the technology beat are the biggest pack of crybabies in the world. I'm pretty sure the reason so many of them hate Free Software is because they like being in a position where companies give them comp versions of software to play with. In the free software world, that's the only kind of software there is.
that information gathered by private citizens is admissible evidence -- the laws requiring a warrant etc. apply only to government agencies.
Of course, this is not true if there are specific statutes that apply (i.e., laws concerning the recording of conversations) -- but as far as the Constitution goes, if a private citizen found evidence that police couldn't get without a warrant and turned it over to police, I think it can be used.
It wasn't their most successful product, it was the first distribution based on Debian that I could figure out how to install, and it taught me how freaking cool apt-get really was.
Also, you could play tetris while you were installing the operating system. I wish Xandros would put that back in...
When I was running Warp 3 (back in 95 or 96), I managed to get infected with a DOS virus (because Warp Blue had Dos and Windows 3.1 preinstalled). I never noticed until I ran an antivirus program on a lark, because the virus couldn't adversely affect the system -- the multitasking and multithreading just let OS/2 work around everything the virus was trying to do.
I miss OS/2. Workplace Shell is a thing of beauty. I hope Voyager works out.
As someone who was burned by Robertson's "vision" of MP3.com -- a vision that changed abpruptly when he decided he could make more money abandoning that vision and the people who supported it -- I was TERRIFIED when I learned he was entering the Windows market. People using Linspire are going to wake up one day and find the smoking ruin of THAT company as soon as Robertson finds a better deal somewhere else.
My last laptop died because the gel that separated the processor from the heat sink baked and flaked away, frying the processor beyond recovery. It was a sad thing.
I mean, yes that was very cool (and windows and KDE and Gnome *still* don't do that) but also printing. How many times did I drag a document over the windows printer icon and have the damn word processor open and load the document before it printed? That didn't happen in OS/2. You could change the way folders worked, to the point of setting them up as individual, unique workspaces -- a poor man's virtual desktop, really. You could associate files with programs on the fly with greater precision than is possible today (to the point where I could set it up so that a specific gif defaulted to loading one program while all other gifs defaulted to loading another program).
There was the famous "drag web pages off of your browser and store them in a folder on your desktop" trick. That might be possible with other OS's now, I dunno.
Shadows of icons would automatically maintain their links to actual programs, even if you dragged the program folder to another directory.
I really can't do it justice -- I never understood the technology well enough to do it justice -- but essentially the workplace shell was a huge folder that opened up, and everything in the UI was a subclass of that folder, and they all "knew" how to work together depending on what you did with them.
Sure, it's probably not going to happen, for all the reasons you list. But there's technology in OS/2 that has yet to be duplicated in other operating systems. And like most IBM inventions, it's going to fade into history, forgotten and unused. I'd really like to see what free software developers could do if the workplace shell landed in their lap.
That even *some* of the code -- specifically the workplace shell -- can't be released as open source. The workplace shell was one of the most elegant and powerful user interfaces I've ever worked with. It wasn't always the most *attractive* interface -- not by default, at any rate -- but it was the only one I've ever used that ever "felt right" to me. I miss that. The phrase "drag and drop" simply didn't do it justice.
Anyway, I signed, but I'm afraid that 1) there's too much proprietary licensed code for the entire thing to be released, and 2) IBM has neither the patience nor the interest in doing the work necessary to separate what can be released from what can't be released. Which is a pity.
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We've already got a government that needs frequent rebooting.
... there might be health issues -- but I suspect there will be lawsuits whether there are health issues or not.
... and the subsequent and inevitable lawsuits brought about by people convinced that the wireless power technology is giving them cancer would probably get a little tiresome.
I use XP without antivirus software, too.
... ...
Of course, the only thing I do with it is play computer games... I use Kubuntu for everything else.
His 7 year old son uses Kubuntu!
... if that were the case, it would change nothing they are using now. All that code would still be licensed under GPLv2.
I was, in fact, equating the kernel with the distro -- which is flat-out wrong. Sloppy thinking on my part. Obviously anything that is GPL v2 right now that is not the kernel can, if the respective authors choose, be re-released as GPL v3. That said, I don't believe they can do this retroactively -- anything that was released under GPLv2 remains under that license.
is that everyone else gets to eat the cake.
Linux can't be distributed under anything other than the modified GPL license that it is distributed under. Red Hat is a Linux distribution. I may not fully understand what you're saying, but I don't see Red Hat forking its own distribution any time soon (though you might argue that Fedora is such a fork.)
The only legitimate "end run" around the GPL -- the only one that I know of, anyway -- is to customize it and not distribute it. This is what companies like Google and Amazon do. In that case, they have already forked Linux, and any further development (in order to get their special pieces to do what they want) is their responsibility to begin with.
... when it comes to how he chooses to preserve the fruits of the revolution he created, but this is a hit-piece. It is possible to respect the man and disagree with his methods.
There *are* problems with GPLv3, in my opinion, and it's possible that GPLv3 contradicts some of Richard Stallman's "freedom of use" ideology, but there's no way it is going to "endanger Linux" because -- and I'm not entirely sure why the press doesn't get this -- GPL V3 DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY REPLACE GPL V2. This isn't a EULA, it can't be udpated and replaced at any time at the whim of Richard Stallman, the license you get when you get free software is the license you get, and that's that. If the person who created the software decides that the next version will be GPLv3, you are free to fork the old one and develop it yourself.
Honestly, 90% of the media who covers the technology beat are the biggest pack of crybabies in the world. I'm pretty sure the reason so many of them hate Free Software is because they like being in a position where companies give them comp versions of software to play with. In the free software world, that's the only kind of software there is.
... but can it run the flash 9 beta without crashing? I've had no luck so far.
Have you read ANY of Shakespeare's comedies?
all female characters will have the ability to pose as young men.
Which means male players will be playing female characters playing male characters.
that information gathered by private citizens is admissible evidence -- the laws requiring a warrant etc. apply only to government agencies.
Of course, this is not true if there are specific statutes that apply (i.e., laws concerning the recording of conversations) -- but as far as the Constitution goes, if a private citizen found evidence that police couldn't get without a warrant and turned it over to police, I think it can be used.
It wasn't their most successful product, it was the first distribution based on Debian that I could figure out how to install, and it taught me how freaking cool apt-get really was.
Also, you could play tetris while you were installing the operating system. I wish Xandros would put that back in...
When I was running Warp 3 (back in 95 or 96), I managed to get infected with a DOS virus (because Warp Blue had Dos and Windows 3.1 preinstalled). I never noticed until I ran an antivirus program on a lark, because the virus couldn't adversely affect the system -- the multitasking and multithreading just let OS/2 work around everything the virus was trying to do.
I miss OS/2. Workplace Shell is a thing of beauty. I hope Voyager works out.
Anyone remember how transparent it was to run Corel's wine-remixed WordPerfect Office?
Wine has come a long way since then, so I suppose it could be translucent.
... but he's still a git. ;-)
Which doesn't mean I don't want a powerbook. Because I do. Oh so very much.
Thank you!
As someone who was burned by Robertson's "vision" of MP3.com -- a vision that changed abpruptly when he decided he could make more money abandoning that vision and the people who supported it -- I was TERRIFIED when I learned he was entering the Windows market. People using Linspire are going to wake up one day and find the smoking ruin of THAT company as soon as Robertson finds a better deal somewhere else.
that iPods are mind-control devices that will someday be activated *through* iTunes in order to amass Steve Jobs' private army of hipsters.
Well played, Ms. Rosen... well played...
My last laptop died because the gel that separated the processor from the heat sink baked and flaked away, frying the processor beyond recovery. It was a sad thing.
... shouldn't it also reduce the heat produced by processors, therefore extending processor life?
:)
Or, for an overclocked machine, extending the amount of time it takes for the processor to die?
I mean, yes that was very cool (and windows and KDE and Gnome *still* don't do that) but also printing. How many times did I drag a document over the windows printer icon and have the damn word processor open and load the document before it printed? That didn't happen in OS/2. You could change the way folders worked, to the point of setting them up as individual, unique workspaces -- a poor man's virtual desktop, really. You could associate files with programs on the fly with greater precision than is possible today (to the point where I could set it up so that a specific gif defaulted to loading one program while all other gifs defaulted to loading another program).
There was the famous "drag web pages off of your browser and store them in a folder on your desktop" trick. That might be possible with other OS's now, I dunno.
Shadows of icons would automatically maintain their links to actual programs, even if you dragged the program folder to another directory.
I really can't do it justice -- I never understood the technology well enough to do it justice -- but essentially the workplace shell was a huge folder that opened up, and everything in the UI was a subclass of that folder, and they all "knew" how to work together depending on what you did with them.
Like I said, I really can't do it justice.
Sure, it's probably not going to happen, for all the reasons you list. But there's technology in OS/2 that has yet to be duplicated in other operating systems. And like most IBM inventions, it's going to fade into history, forgotten and unused. I'd really like to see what free software developers could do if the workplace shell landed in their lap.
That even *some* of the code -- specifically the workplace shell -- can't be released as open source. The workplace shell was one of the most elegant and powerful user interfaces I've ever worked with. It wasn't always the most *attractive* interface -- not by default, at any rate -- but it was the only one I've ever used that ever "felt right" to me. I miss that. The phrase "drag and drop" simply didn't do it justice.
Anyway, I signed, but I'm afraid that 1) there's too much proprietary licensed code for the entire thing to be released, and 2) IBM has neither the patience nor the interest in doing the work necessary to separate what can be released from what can't be released. Which is a pity.
There are plenty of places. Artistlaunch.com, for one.