Ignore the OSI, as they will approve just about anything - including licenses with pretty concerning terms (e.g. the Plan9 license). Debian and the FSF are better.
If you are selling, or distributing modified versions of software you should read or understand the license yourself (or have a lawyer do it for you). Many licenses have appalling traps in them.
I suspect that it is due to a lack of documentation from the hardware vendors rather than IP issues.After all - DRI wouldn't *implement* the vertex/shader programs, just expose the functionality that the hardware already has.
Unfortunately, no-one on the DRI mailing list responded the last few times I asked there...
The people who complain about Blenders UI wouldn't manage with any 3d application.
Not so. I was able to pick up Maya, 3DS Max and Lightwave and start editing meshes pretty quickly just by playing with the interface. I have read a couple of Blender tutorials and it still seems like too much work.
Also, you omitted the overriding reason for the invasion of Tibet: Mao needed to divert the attention of his subjects from his incompetence in agricultural policy, which was killing millions of chinese through starvation.
Heaven help us if our governments start unnecessary wars to distract us from domestic issues!
No, slashdot shouldn't "ape" to silly journalistic traditions like conditions of relevance or unbiased reporting. Shovelling in tidbits of flamebait to boost page impressions is where it's at.
I love Australia. We manage to get organised about insipid and vexacious cases about software but are apathetic about real issues: the copyright amendment act (DMCA), anti-terrorist leglislation (PATRIOT), the continual incarceration of asylum seekers in desert gulags, etc, etc. Maybe it is because we have a chance against SCO whereas our governments (state and federal, both sides of politics) are utterly unresponsive.
Amidst all the self-congratulation, few people seem to be noticing that, at the end of the day, it was German local government purchasing a product (SuSE Linux) from a German company.
I am sure that German hospitals prefer Siemens over GE MRI scanners, that more German fleet cars are BMW than Honda, and the German military prefer HK firearms over Colt. That government spending fosters local industry is often an important factor(*) in deciding where the money goes.
(*) except in countries like Australia, where stupidity and nepotism rule supreme.
I remember my chemistry teacher shorting the two terminals of a car battery with a coat hanger. After a few seconds the coat hanger was glowing bright read, before 15 seconds were up the metal was burning and throwing off sparks. He pulled it off when it started to melt (<40 seconds).
Car batteries are designed to source a kilowatt or more for the starter motor (moving all that metal takes a fair bit of energy), so this shouldn't be too suprising.
That's very nice, but do you define a nanosecond...
(I suppose one could do it by basing on how long excited atoms of some particular isotope take to decay back to ground state)
The IETF has been increasingly willing to standardise patented technologies. Examples involve Cisco's HSRP/VRRP patent and IPsec NAT traversal (with a semi-free waiver). I'm sure there are many more.
It is wonderful that the w3c is willing to keep data formats and the higher protocol levels unencumbered (this is a real victory to all the people who made their opinions known), but the infrastructure is even more important.
It's starting to slowly get better, and some options can still be set with the gconf editor, but some are just completely missing...
That is the most annoying thing about GNOME2 - they have this decent, supposedly self-documenting configuration system but they don't use it. All sorts of configuration items could be placed in there for the tweakers to play with[1], but in their quest to eliminate UI clutter the developers have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
A good counterexample would be Mozilla/Phoenix - limited configurability on the surface, but you can do lots by playing with the configuration files. Even Windows have more under-the-hood configurability than GNOME2.
[1] Hopefully including a way to disable Metacity's idiotic click/raise behaviour, which makes it totally useless in focus follows mouse mode.
The bigger problem is that the principle of least privilege is not adhered to in world of Unix. Programmers will always write bugs and applications will always have vulnerabilities that can be manipulated. Manipulation of services should only effect the service being manipulated, not the whole system. For example, services should have NO access to anything by default.
That is very much the approach that OpenBSD is taking - e.g. with privilege separated OpenSSH. If you exploit OpenSSH before authentication, you are unprivileged in a chroot that you can't write too. While this is not invulnerable (you may still abuse kernel bugs to escalate your privilege), it is a good deal better than before. OpenBSD also provides you tools with which you may further protect yourself: systrace - a system call policy checker.
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Ignore the OSI, as they will approve just about anything - including licenses with pretty concerning terms (e.g. the Plan9 license). Debian and the FSF are better.
If you are selling, or distributing modified versions of software you should read or understand the license yourself (or have a lawyer do it for you). Many licenses have appalling traps in them.
Yes, but it is not the DRI that _implements_ these - the patents would have to be licensed by the hardware vendor.
I suspect that it is due to a lack of documentation from the hardware vendors rather than IP issues.After all - DRI wouldn't *implement* the vertex/shader programs, just expose the functionality that the hardware already has.
Unfortunately, no-one on the DRI mailing list responded the last few times I asked there...
The people who complain about Blenders UI wouldn't manage with any 3d application.
Not so. I was able to pick up Maya, 3DS Max and Lightwave and start editing meshes pretty quickly just by playing with the interface. I have read a couple of Blender tutorials and it still seems like too much work.
Also, you omitted the overriding reason for the invasion of Tibet: Mao needed to divert the attention of his subjects from his incompetence in agricultural policy, which was killing millions of chinese through starvation.
Heaven help us if our governments start unnecessary wars to distract us from domestic issues!
News for nerds.
Idiot.
No, slashdot shouldn't "ape" to silly journalistic traditions like conditions of relevance or unbiased reporting. Shovelling in tidbits of flamebait to boost page impressions is where it's at.
DRI goes out of its way to validate the arguments to commands passed down to the kernel. The design is quite sane, actually.
I love Australia. We manage to get organised about insipid and vexacious cases about software but are apathetic about real issues: the copyright amendment act (DMCA), anti-terrorist leglislation (PATRIOT), the continual incarceration of asylum seekers in desert gulags, etc, etc. Maybe it is because we have a chance against SCO whereas our governments (state and federal, both sides of politics) are utterly unresponsive.
I'd say that asking hard questions about spending is exactly "keeping the bastards honest" and has nothing to do with "payback".
yes :)
Amidst all the self-congratulation, few people seem to be noticing that, at the end of the day, it was German local government purchasing a product (SuSE Linux) from a German company.
I am sure that German hospitals prefer Siemens over GE MRI scanners, that more German fleet cars are BMW than Honda, and the German military prefer HK firearms over Colt. That government spending fosters local industry is often an important factor(*) in deciding where the money goes.
(*) except in countries like Australia, where stupidity and nepotism rule supreme.
USB is far more available than Ethernet? Riiighht.
Only on Slashdot could such an uninformed fool be modded to +5 without a single "Funny" point. Truely sad.
You are obviously not married.
Anyone see the similarity between this an the savants in Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky"?
Scary.
I remember my chemistry teacher shorting the two terminals of a car battery with a coat hanger. After a few seconds the coat hanger was glowing bright read, before 15 seconds were up the metal was burning and throwing off sparks. He pulled it off when it started to melt (<40 seconds).
Car batteries are designed to source a kilowatt or more for the starter motor (moving all that metal takes a fair bit of energy), so this shouldn't be too suprising.
A multimeter?
Someone has been reading too much Kurt Vonnegut.
That's very nice, but do you define a nanosecond... (I suppose one could do it by basing on how long excited atoms of some particular isotope take to decay back to ground state)
The IETF has been increasingly willing to standardise patented technologies. Examples involve Cisco's HSRP/VRRP patent and IPsec NAT traversal (with a semi-free waiver). I'm sure there are many more.
It is wonderful that the w3c is willing to keep data formats and the higher protocol levels unencumbered (this is a real victory to all the people who made their opinions known), but the infrastructure is even more important.
It sure looks nice, but it also looks like DirectFB is Linux-only. It is a pity, because (IMO) any X replacement will need to be multi-platform.
Brazil
THX-1138
The first Star Trek Film ("Star Trek: The Motion Picture")
It's starting to slowly get better, and some options can still be set with the gconf editor, but some are just completely missing...
That is the most annoying thing about GNOME2 - they have this decent, supposedly self-documenting configuration system but they don't use it. All sorts of configuration items could be placed in there for the tweakers to play with[1], but in their quest to eliminate UI clutter the developers have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
A good counterexample would be Mozilla/Phoenix - limited configurability on the surface, but you can do lots by playing with the configuration files. Even Windows have more under-the-hood configurability than GNOME2.
[1] Hopefully including a way to disable Metacity's idiotic click/raise behaviour, which makes it totally useless in focus follows mouse mode.The bigger problem is that the principle of least privilege is not adhered to in world of Unix. Programmers will always write bugs and applications will always have vulnerabilities that can be manipulated. Manipulation of services should only effect the service being manipulated, not the whole system. For example, services should have NO access to anything by default.
That is very much the approach that OpenBSD is taking - e.g. with privilege separated OpenSSH. If you exploit OpenSSH before authentication, you are unprivileged in a chroot that you can't write too. While this is not invulnerable (you may still abuse kernel bugs to escalate your privilege), it is a good deal better than before. OpenBSD also provides you tools with which you may further protect yourself: systrace - a system call policy checker.