1 - It is very common for insurance companies to buy re-insurance from other insurance companies and spread the risk that way. I don't think it is a problem that these guys have only one line.
Agreed. There are a number of specialty insurance firms that work this way.
2 - We all know that this insurance is unnecessary. It isn't for us. It is for risk averse PHBs. It seems as much like a PR stunt as a viable business. The FUDmeisters dared the Linux community to indemnify the end users. A couple of companies rose to the challenge and here is yet another response. Having said that, if they can make a buck well, good for them.
While what you say is not untrue, I think the more important point is that any enterprise considering a new venture that is dependent on Linux for success now has a means of demonstrating to investors that they are protecting themselves from suits-- including "nuisance" suits that can still be crippling. Especially in the tender period before the new venture begins to show a profit.
As a thousand others have observed: check the Windows EULA.
Very good point. Maybe OSRM will eventually expand to offer some of the "normally expected" protections that are deliberately excluded in MS EULAs. Or maybe not... that might require a multi billion dollar cash reserve...
If the guy had seemed receptive to hearing it, I might have pointed out that he had no need of Linux because his institution was protecting him from the risks inherent in running Windows. And that if his circumstances were somewhat different, Linux might be the better way for him to go.
Alternately, do a low level reformat of hdc, install WindowsME, then download the very small and simple clue.bat from MSN.
This won't enable/dev/mnt/clue but it will provide you with a monopoly approved alternative. While clue.bat isn't as powerful as the/dev/mnt/clue approach, it is available for use to anyone, irrespective of whether they know anything at all.
The traditional open source languages such as Perl, Python, and Ruby are significantly different from Java and C# (while Java and C# are very close, as the existence of IKVM implies). Parrot tries to get these languages running on a common runtime.
My view, which will doubtless get me flamed, is that these languages aren't really the right thing for writing large desktop apps such as GNOME or OO.org, though they are nice for a lot of other purposes.
Unfortunately, Havoc says nothing about why he thinks the Parrot will not be the right thing: he merely asserts his opinion. My impression is that Parrot and Perl 6 development are both moving forward satisfactorily and offer the underpinnings needed for major projects. And of course are right in the center of open source development.
So what am I missing? Are there inherent structural flaws in these languages or the Parrot? Or do others share my personal opinion that Perl, Python, and Ruby are mostly out of favor because they aren't 133t enough to separate programmers from lusers?
(I thought this thread was sort of cold but perhaps throwing this gasoline on it will create some heat and maybe even some light.)
When Pluto was discovered it was found to be too small to account for the irregularity in Uranus's orbit. When they went back and checked, they found there had been a mistake and there wasn't any irregularity to start with. The discovery of Pluto was an accident.
Above statement adds confusion to a complicated history. The second sentence is flat out wrong.
Pluto was found in a deliberate search for a nineth planet that would account for the pertubations of Neptune and Uranus. It was found fairly close to where the predictions said it should be.
But Pluto has neither the mass nor the orbital characteristics the predictions called for. (This was confirmed with the discovery of Charon and observations of the interactions of Pluto and Charon.) In a sense Pluto's discovery was accidental for its real orbit matches the predicted orbit for only a little while: it was fortunate that people were looking for it during those decades.
The second statement in quote from parent is false: there are significant pertubations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, and also in Pluto's orbit. All three of these consistently fail to be where their ephemerides predict they should be. The irregularities (pertubations) are definitely there. Something else is out there. Perhaps a lot of small stuff in a lumpy distribution; perhaps a few pieces approaching planetary size.
Quoth grandparent: Pluto should be labeled an asteroid since it's smaller than even our own moon.
Quoth parent: Frankly, I don't understand this line of reasoning. Why does it matter, with regards to whether something is a "planet" or not, whether that thing is bigger than, for example, our moon?
I agree with parent that in this case size really doesn't matter: it's all in how you use what you got.
Historically, Neptune was discovered because it was perturbing Uranus' orbit: its existence was theorized long before it was directly observed. Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity. While Pluto isn't very big, its size and orbit are such that it definitely affects the other planets.
In practice then, what we have actually used to distinguish a planet like Pluto from a large body that is not a planet, like Chiron (roughly as big, discovered 1977), is whether the object interacts in a measurable way with known planets. If it does, then accord it planet status because it is clearly part of the planetary system.
In view of this, the new discovery is probably not a planet, unless it has a weird orbit like Pluto and would account for some of the remaining difference between planetary observations and expectations.
It would certailny seem that agencies like NASA that are so concerned with being precise in other areas could could come up with a more precise classification system.
Uh, well, it's not really NASA's fault.
The messiness is really Mama's work. Not only is she perpetually younger than any of us kids, she was even younger than that back when she did that part of her Creatrix thing. And like all young girls, she sometimes colored outside the lines.
The thing is, she is still doing it, and I think she always will be. Contemplate the value of pi for a moment, and if you think about it a certain way, you'll hear her giggle.
You did get me wondering, so I looked at "XFree86 XXX" again. The first 45 entries were all about Linux or the X windowing system. No suggestion of pr0n at all-- very boring workaday stuff.
Combined with the adult content warning for "XFree86", I find that there is only one possible conclusion that can be drawn from the data: Someone at Microsoft thinks that XFree86 is very, very sexy
The real question is, how much of the content is even worth existing?
One way of answering this is to look at the costs vs the benefits. The internet has reduced the costs of worldwide publishing to nearly zero for a lot of people. So even if the benefits of publishing one's stuff are also so near to zero as to make no difference, it is often still worth doing.
If you are going to write a journal or put together a photo album anyway, the cost of pubishing the results on the web is insignificant compared to the work you are already putting into your project. Which means it can be worth the small extra effort to publish even if the benefits also seem insignificant. After all, we are talking about a cost equivalent to the effort a butterfly puts into a single flap of its wings... who knows what might come of it?
It is true that the internet has changed what was once thought to be a natural law, that
Eighty percent of everything published is b_llsh!t.
This has now become
More than ninety-nine and forty-four hundredths percent of everything published is b_llsh!t [see note on statistcs below]
So what?
As long as there is Google, Yahoo and other good search engines out there, does it make a difference whether I'm ignoring 99.99% of the web, or 99.9999% of the web? As a web user, the cost to me is the same no matter how much dross is out there.
And of course what is b_llsh!t for a billion people might spark an enlightening insight in someone else.
[note on statistics] 97.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot-- A. Woodhull, PH.D.
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher.
on
Comic Book Physics
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· Score: 1
To be honest, the only real question is why he decided to fly rather than say, teleport. Another option might be turning the floor to sponge like in the training leap. The only answers I can come up with are:
"It generates more tension in the film."
"Neo is an idiot and never considered the idea."
Oh, I can answer that one.
The interesting thing about the matrix is that while none of it is real and Neo can change any of the rules at any time, he is still bound by his habitual thought patterns. He can only do what he thinks he can do. Although there is no spoon, the habit of spooniness remains in his head, and he can bend the thing but he can't fork it.
IceWM is very lightweight and easy to modify through its config file (or icepref). I use it often when setting up underpowered machines for others.
"Lightweight and easy"... excellent news! Just what I would like!
Your other comments about Mandrake are appreciated. But I'm getting involved with a group who are developing a custom distro based on Debian, so I feel obligated to switch as soon as I've got enough Linux smarts to manage a Debian install. (I'll find out this weekend if I'm there yet). My experience as a clueless n00be with Mandrake has been favorable and there is much to like in the v9.2 package.
Re:There appears to be a typographical error in #5
on
SCOoby Snacks
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Visicalc(*) folks had the guts to form a company that only produced software without any accompanying hardware, software was largely produced in the domain of shared (scientific?) research, and they should continue to look at it that way, as opposed to some sort of ridiculous anti-capitalistic anarchist movement.
You are safe in asserting that Visicalc was the first big software house success. IIRC, its success, and the way it affected the Apple ][ sales, is what got IBM interested in the emerging PC market. PCs were not just for hobbyists anymore: accountants were buying Apple ][s so they could do electronic spreadsheets. But that was 25 or 26 years ago and I'm relying on organic memory that is prone to distortions over long periods of time (for larger values of "long"-- the occasional retraining I require after a coffee break appears to be another phenomenon entirely).
Also, at that time I believe the bulk of software development was not occuring in science but in two other realms. IBM, Honeywell, and others were churning out lots of OS and application code, that was tied to the sales of their systems. And on the underside, there was a lot of backroom blackmarket code development going on, where customer IT departments were rewriting what their corporations had bought to make it actually workable, and trading chunks of this amongst themselves (usually in violation of the vendor licenses). I think either of these activities produced more working code (by any reasonable measure of "more") than the scientific/academic communities were producing during those years.
Maybe one of the legal beagles here can answer this for me...
SCO asserts that Linux is tainted by copyright infringements, and thus "legally encumbered", though the assertion is not yet proven in court. Novell asserts that SCO does not own the copyrights that SCO claims are theirs, and this, too, is being contested in the courts. In light of what appears to be a strong parallel between these two situations, how the hell can Linux be "legally encumbered" without SCO Unix being also "legally encumbered"?
Can someone in Utah report this to the Better Business Bureau as maliciously false advertising?
One of my bigger prospective clients is using IceWM, so I'll probably see if I can live with what that provides. I think the GUI enhancements I'm looking for are probably simple enough that any of the window managers would provide them. Ideally, I'll find that I've got enough resources in this box to support several different front ends, and I'll be able to move between them without much fuss-- but perhaps that is an unrealistic dream?
I am pretty certain that the get-apt structure in Debian will work better for me over the long haul than RPM or its descendants.
In any event, I'm finding the Linux experience is rejuvenating my enthusiasm for the work. I probably should have done this a long time ago, but it would have meant leaving a cushy situation in a Windows-only environment.
I would say that Linux has just as much gee-whiz factor as Windows, if not more. Just look at some screenshots of people that have spent a few months messing with Windowmaker and Enlightenment and stuff just to make a slick screenshot.
Point well made! When I think about it, I've done quite a bit of tweaking to my Windows systems over the years, and it's unfair to compare KDE out of the box to a Windows install that I've customized to my liking. Which is what I was doing.
I'm going to be trying to move from Mandrake, which I went with because it was a snap to set up, to Debian and Gnome, which I think is technically a better long term solution for me. So for now I'm gritting my teeth at a KDE Panel that won't get out of my way and a mouse that doesn't accelerate worth a darn. It isn't worth the effort to tweak them, if I move to Debian this weekend or next.
I expect to be in dual boot mode for a long time. I've a flatbed scanner, a digital camera, and a photorealistic printer that don't have Linux drivers. Other than those specialty needs, Linux seems able to do everything I need and want.
How long will it take LUNIX kids to stop using infantile terms like M$ and stop affecting empty faux-superiority?
Well, I'm about 2 months into the dual booting stage of migrating from Windows to Linux. I've had occasion to use both OS today (danged if I'm going to spend time learning the GIMP right now, when I've got PSP a reboot away).
There is nothing "faux" about Linux superiority. Windows has a slicker presentation and more gee-whiz factor, but Linux is more stable, more secure, fast enough in all respects for my purposes, and excluding some oneshot self-retraining costs, it is overall less expensive to operate.
OTOH, after 15 years of being victimized by Micro$oft's upgrading strategies, I truly think that Micro$loth has earned its "$".
However, I'm not a cracker, nor am I any longer a kid-- I'm a 55 yo guy with gray hair whose been using SOHO software to earn his living for the last 20 years. So maybe you were talking to somebody else?
I still think the better name would have been "Browser Without A NAme" (case is significant). That would acknowledge an important aspect of the Phoenix/Fire* history, but it would also certainly avoid any further name hassles.
And it would support interesting conversations like this:
[Alice] How did you find this info?
[Bob] Well, first I googled on this keyword, and then I told Bwana where to go.
-- If you're just surfing the web, any newer browser will do. But if you want to maximize the efficiency and enjoyment of your surfing safaris, then go with Bwana.
GnuCash isn't suited for business because it does not really use true double-accounting....Because of that, compared to Quicken it sucks and is totally unusuable for a business.
Please mod parent down into oblivion.
GnuCash is a double entry accounting system.
Quickbooks is a double entry accounting system.
Quicken, though, is a glorified checkbook register program, not an accounting system.
Has anyone here tried GnuCash? [Raises hand] I don't have accounting complicated enough make it worthwhile using accounting software, but I do wonder how it stacks up compared to Quicken
GnuCash is hands down better for a business than Quicken. IMO, it looks much better for business work than Quicken's big brother, QuickBooks. I have some experience setting up QuickBooks and Peachtree accounting systems for mom & pop businesses, and I've run my personal accounting on one version or another of Quickbooks for about 10 years now. I've just changed over to GnuCash at the beginning of the year, as I'm migrating to Linux.
GnuCash is a full-fledged double-entry accounting system with good audit capability (burn a standard General Ledger to CD every end of month, etc), good report features, and by reputation good A/R, A/P, tax, and payroll capabilities (It pleases me that I don't have to explore those myself.) Also by reputation, its customer and vendor tracking is pretty thorough. It also has very good support for online banking and highly regarded multi-currency handling. And since it is GPL, if extensions are needed you could hire a tame programmer to do them (and use the world to beta test his product).
I'd suggest thoroughly exploring GnuCash and using it as a standard to measure other possible accounting systems against. I think it likely that you'd end up choosing GnuCash when all is said and done.
You'd need another database for the non-financial aspects of tending your customers. There are advantages in keeping technical support history, etc, separate from the financial history. At a WAG, I'd bet that one of the Help Desk packages would handle all of the most important parts of this for a VoIP provider. I haven't explored OS Help Desk databases, but I would think there would be some good ones available now.
I think OOo, GnuCash, and some GPL'd Help Desk database would cover most of your software needs. And in Linux, to boot. That will carve your potential licensing and support costs down quite a bit.
It is interesting that you want to apply the same standards of journalism and good taste to the BBC and to a public bulletin board where a large percentage of the posters are juveniles.
My expectation is that the BBC should be held accountable to a higher standard. But you are saying that this is not so?
Thanks for providing a link to the form. Here is what I just sent:
Doubtless you are getting a lot of complaints about Stephen Evans' "Linux cyber-battle turns nasty". This is yet another.
I am not a Linux zealot. After 14 years of making my living selling my skills with MS DOS and MS Windows OSs, I am just beginning to learn Linux. Why? To quote someone else: "It's free. It works. Doh." As I hope to continue to make my living with my computer skills, it is simply time for me to learn the OS that will dominate the next decade.
Linux advocates as a group have no need to get aggressive against SCO or any of those who choose to regard Linux as their enemy. The faith in the Open Software paradigm is strong. Those who work with Linux know that if there is indeed any tainted code in it, it would only be a matter of rewriting the affected components. There is a strong desire to see SCO actually say what the code is that they think they bought rights of ownership to.
I am very disappointed that BBC has been manipulated into spreading this FUD. I had higher expectations of its editorial judgment.
Yeah, the change from fixed to proportional strikes me as the significant thing.
It means that government employees who have to use a word processor are now going to have to learn how to do tab stops. And (Horrors!) maybe even tables. Many of these astute public servants-- secretaries to heads of departments and so forth-- have been abusing the spacebar for 10+ years.
This is going to disrupt the work of a lot of staff. They'll be spending their time learning about left justified tabs, right justified tabs, and the strange behaviors of the mysterious decimal point tab. And some will be forced to learn how to insert rows and columns in tables, and even perhaps how to merge adjacent cells in a table. This is going to be very stressfull in some areas, and will cause some early retirements and probably some medical retirements. I ain't kidding. I've worked with a goodly cross section of these astute public servants, and I know about the limitations that are behind the bright smiles.
The March Monthly Report On The SW Antarctic Penguin Census And Pollen Count will have to be rewritten from scratch rather than simply copying last month's file and changing the numbers. All businesses that rely on such reports from the US State Department should be advised that these may be late, due to unexpected technical problems with the computers.
Noted in passing: IIRC, both Courier New and Times New Roman were introduced at the same time, as two of the three core fonts of TrueType, about 1991, as part of Widows 3.1 (maybe another geezer can confirm this). Both are native Windows fonts. (The third core font was Arial.)
There is nothing particularly newer or more modern about TNR vs CN. Both are computer implementations of fonts that were developed to meet limitations of earlier technologies. Courier is a very open font that does not gum up quickly on the electric typewriters of the 1960s. Times is a complex font designed to retain readability at small sizes with newsprint stock and linotype machines, where smearing, dropouts, and voids frequently damaged the letterforms.
It is always good to see that the US government is improving itself, and moving ahead with the Times.
</rant>
Slashdot Mirror
1 - It is very common for insurance companies to buy re-insurance from other insurance companies and spread the risk that way. I don't think it is a problem that these guys have only one line.
Agreed. There are a number of specialty insurance firms that work this way.
2 - We all know that this insurance is unnecessary. It isn't for us. It is for risk averse PHBs. It seems as much like a PR stunt as a viable business. The FUDmeisters dared the Linux community to indemnify the end users. A couple of companies rose to the challenge and here is yet another response. Having said that, if they can make a buck well, good for them.
While what you say is not untrue, I think the more important point is that any enterprise considering a new venture that is dependent on Linux for success now has a means of demonstrating to investors that they are protecting themselves from suits-- including "nuisance" suits that can still be crippling. Especially in the tender period before the new venture begins to show a profit.
As a thousand others have observed: check the Windows EULA.
Very good point. Maybe OSRM will eventually expand to offer some of the "normally expected" protections that are deliberately excluded in MS EULAs. Or maybe not... that might require a multi billion dollar cash reserve...
This is excellent! Well, almost...
If the guy had seemed receptive to hearing it, I might have pointed out that he had no need of Linux because his institution was protecting him from the risks inherent in running Windows. And that if his circumstances were somewhat different, Linux might be the better way for him to go.
Life without typos would be much less interesting...
Alternately, do a low level reformat of hdc, install WindowsME, then download the very small and simple clue.bat from MSN.
This won't enable /dev/mnt/clue but it will provide you with a monopoly approved alternative. While clue.bat isn't as powerful as the /dev/mnt/clue approach, it is available for use to anyone, irrespective of whether they know anything at all.
Quoting from Havoc's blog:
Unfortunately, Havoc says nothing about why he thinks the Parrot will not be the right thing: he merely asserts his opinion. My impression is that Parrot and Perl 6 development are both moving forward satisfactorily and offer the underpinnings needed for major projects. And of course are right in the center of open source development.
So what am I missing? Are there inherent structural flaws in these languages or the Parrot? Or do others share my personal opinion that Perl, Python, and Ruby are mostly out of favor because they aren't 133t enough to separate programmers from lusers?
(I thought this thread was sort of cold but perhaps throwing this gasoline on it will create some heat and maybe even some light.)
When Pluto was discovered it was found to be too small to account for the irregularity in Uranus's orbit. When they went back and checked, they found there had been a mistake and there wasn't any irregularity to start with. The discovery of Pluto was an accident.
Above statement adds confusion to a complicated history. The second sentence is flat out wrong.
Pluto was found in a deliberate search for a nineth planet that would account for the pertubations of Neptune and Uranus. It was found fairly close to where the predictions said it should be.
But Pluto has neither the mass nor the orbital characteristics the predictions called for. (This was confirmed with the discovery of Charon and observations of the interactions of Pluto and Charon.) In a sense Pluto's discovery was accidental for its real orbit matches the predicted orbit for only a little while: it was fortunate that people were looking for it during those decades.
The second statement in quote from parent is false: there are significant pertubations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, and also in Pluto's orbit. All three of these consistently fail to be where their ephemerides predict they should be. The irregularities (pertubations) are definitely there. Something else is out there. Perhaps a lot of small stuff in a lumpy distribution; perhaps a few pieces approaching planetary size.
I agree with parent that in this case size really doesn't matter: it's all in how you use what you got.
Historically, Neptune was discovered because it was perturbing Uranus' orbit: its existence was theorized long before it was directly observed. Similarly, Pluto was discovered because it was found that Neptune alone was not sufficient to account for all of Uranus' irregularity. While Pluto isn't very big, its size and orbit are such that it definitely affects the other planets.
In practice then, what we have actually used to distinguish a planet like Pluto from a large body that is not a planet, like Chiron (roughly as big, discovered 1977), is whether the object interacts in a measurable way with known planets. If it does, then accord it planet status because it is clearly part of the planetary system.
In view of this, the new discovery is probably not a planet, unless it has a weird orbit like Pluto and would account for some of the remaining difference between planetary observations and expectations.
But what do I know? IANAA.
It would certailny seem that agencies like NASA that are so concerned with being precise in other areas could could come up with a more precise classification system.
Uh, well, it's not really NASA's fault.
The messiness is really Mama's work. Not only is she perpetually younger than any of us kids, she was even younger than that back when she did that part of her Creatrix thing. And like all young girls, she sometimes colored outside the lines.
The thing is, she is still doing it, and I think she always will be. Contemplate the value of pi for a moment, and if you think about it a certain way, you'll hear her giggle.
You did get me wondering, so I looked at "XFree86 XXX" again. The first 45 entries were all about Linux or the X windowing system. No suggestion of pr0n at all-- very boring workaday stuff.
Combined with the adult content warning for "XFree86", I find that there is only one possible conclusion that can be drawn from the data:
Someone at Microsoft thinks that XFree86 is very, very sexy
I just tried "XFree86 XXX" and guess what? No porn warning and the first 15 of about 4768 links to domains like sourceforge.net, gnomedesktop.org...
The inner workings of corporate MS are truly beyond human comprehension.
The real question is, how much of the content is even worth existing?
One way of answering this is to look at the costs vs the benefits. The internet has reduced the costs of worldwide publishing to nearly zero for a lot of people. So even if the benefits of publishing one's stuff are also so near to zero as to make no difference, it is often still worth doing.
If you are going to write a journal or put together a photo album anyway, the cost of pubishing the results on the web is insignificant compared to the work you are already putting into your project. Which means it can be worth the small extra effort to publish even if the benefits also seem insignificant. After all, we are talking about a cost equivalent to the effort a butterfly puts into a single flap of its wings... who knows what might come of it?
It is true that the internet has changed what was once thought to be a natural law, that
This has now become
So what?
As long as there is Google, Yahoo and other good search engines out there, does it make a difference whether I'm ignoring 99.99% of the web, or 99.9999% of the web? As a web user, the cost to me is the same no matter how much dross is out there.
And of course what is b_llsh!t for a billion people might spark an enlightening insight in someone else.
[note on statistics] 97.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot-- A. Woodhull, PH.D.
To be honest, the only real question is why he decided to fly rather than say, teleport. Another option might be turning the floor to sponge like in the training leap. The only answers I can come up with are:
"It generates more tension in the film."
"Neo is an idiot and never considered the idea."
Oh, I can answer that one.
The interesting thing about the matrix is that while none of it is real and Neo can change any of the rules at any time, he is still bound by his habitual thought patterns. He can only do what he thinks he can do. Although there is no spoon, the habit of spooniness remains in his head, and he can bend the thing but he can't fork it.
IceWM is very lightweight and easy to modify through its config file (or icepref). I use it often when setting up underpowered machines for others.
"Lightweight and easy"... excellent news! Just what I would like! Your other comments about Mandrake are appreciated. But I'm getting involved with a group who are developing a custom distro based on Debian, so I feel obligated to switch as soon as I've got enough Linux smarts to manage a Debian install. (I'll find out this weekend if I'm there yet). My experience as a clueless n00be with Mandrake has been favorable and there is much to like in the v9.2 package.
Visicalc(*) folks had the guts to form a company that only produced software without any accompanying hardware, software was largely produced in the domain of shared (scientific?) research, and they should continue to look at it that way, as opposed to some sort of ridiculous anti-capitalistic anarchist movement.
You are safe in asserting that Visicalc was the first big software house success. IIRC, its success, and the way it affected the Apple ][ sales, is what got IBM interested in the emerging PC market. PCs were not just for hobbyists anymore: accountants were buying Apple ][s so they could do electronic spreadsheets. But that was 25 or 26 years ago and I'm relying on organic memory that is prone to distortions over long periods of time (for larger values of "long"-- the occasional retraining I require after a coffee break appears to be another phenomenon entirely).
Also, at that time I believe the bulk of software development was not occuring in science but in two other realms. IBM, Honeywell, and others were churning out lots of OS and application code, that was tied to the sales of their systems. And on the underside, there was a lot of backroom blackmarket code development going on, where customer IT departments were rewriting what their corporations had bought to make it actually workable, and trading chunks of this amongst themselves (usually in violation of the vendor licenses). I think either of these activities produced more working code (by any reasonable measure of "more") than the scientific/academic communities were producing during those years.
Maybe one of the legal beagles here can answer this for me...
SCO asserts that Linux is tainted by copyright infringements, and thus "legally encumbered", though the assertion is not yet proven in court. Novell asserts that SCO does not own the copyrights that SCO claims are theirs, and this, too, is being contested in the courts. In light of what appears to be a strong parallel between these two situations, how the hell can Linux be "legally encumbered" without SCO Unix being also "legally encumbered"?
Can someone in Utah report this to the Better Business Bureau as maliciously false advertising?
Thanks for this info.
One of my bigger prospective clients is using IceWM, so I'll probably see if I can live with what that provides. I think the GUI enhancements I'm looking for are probably simple enough that any of the window managers would provide them. Ideally, I'll find that I've got enough resources in this box to support several different front ends, and I'll be able to move between them without much fuss-- but perhaps that is an unrealistic dream?
I am pretty certain that the get-apt structure in Debian will work better for me over the long haul than RPM or its descendants.
In any event, I'm finding the Linux experience is rejuvenating my enthusiasm for the work. I probably should have done this a long time ago, but it would have meant leaving a cushy situation in a Windows-only environment.
I would say that Linux has just as much gee-whiz factor as Windows, if not more. Just look at some screenshots of people that have spent a few months messing with Windowmaker and Enlightenment and stuff just to make a slick screenshot.
Point well made! When I think about it, I've done quite a bit of tweaking to my Windows systems over the years, and it's unfair to compare KDE out of the box to a Windows install that I've customized to my liking. Which is what I was doing.
I'm going to be trying to move from Mandrake, which I went with because it was a snap to set up, to Debian and Gnome, which I think is technically a better long term solution for me. So for now I'm gritting my teeth at a KDE Panel that won't get out of my way and a mouse that doesn't accelerate worth a darn. It isn't worth the effort to tweak them, if I move to Debian this weekend or next.
I expect to be in dual boot mode for a long time. I've a flatbed scanner, a digital camera, and a photorealistic printer that don't have Linux drivers. Other than those specialty needs, Linux seems able to do everything I need and want.
How long will it take LUNIX kids to stop using infantile terms like M$ and stop affecting empty faux-superiority?
Well, I'm about 2 months into the dual booting stage of migrating from Windows to Linux. I've had occasion to use both OS today (danged if I'm going to spend time learning the GIMP right now, when I've got PSP a reboot away).
There is nothing "faux" about Linux superiority. Windows has a slicker presentation and more gee-whiz factor, but Linux is more stable, more secure, fast enough in all respects for my purposes, and excluding some oneshot self-retraining costs, it is overall less expensive to operate.
OTOH, after 15 years of being victimized by Micro$oft's upgrading strategies, I truly think that Micro$loth has earned its "$".
However, I'm not a cracker, nor am I any longer a kid-- I'm a 55 yo guy with gray hair whose been using SOHO software to earn his living for the last 20 years. So maybe you were talking to somebody else?
I still think the better name would have been "Browser Without A NAme" (case is significant). That would acknowledge an important aspect of the Phoenix/Fire* history, but it would also certainly avoid any further name hassles.
And it would support interesting conversations like this:
--
If you're just surfing the web, any newer browser will do. But if you want to maximize the efficiency and enjoyment of your surfing safaris, then go with Bwana.
GnuCash isn't suited for business because it does not really use true double-accounting....Because of that, compared to Quicken it sucks and is totally unusuable for a business.
Please mod parent down into oblivion.
GnuCash is a double entry accounting system.
Quickbooks is a double entry accounting system.
Quicken, though, is a glorified checkbook register program, not an accounting system.
Has anyone here tried GnuCash?
[Raises hand]
I don't have accounting complicated enough make it worthwhile using accounting software, but I do wonder how it stacks up compared to Quicken
GnuCash is hands down better for a business than Quicken. IMO, it looks much better for business work than Quicken's big brother, QuickBooks. I have some experience setting up QuickBooks and Peachtree accounting systems for mom & pop businesses, and I've run my personal accounting on one version or another of Quickbooks for about 10 years now. I've just changed over to GnuCash at the beginning of the year, as I'm migrating to Linux.
GnuCash is a full-fledged double-entry accounting system with good audit capability (burn a standard General Ledger to CD every end of month, etc), good report features, and by reputation good A/R, A/P, tax, and payroll capabilities (It pleases me that I don't have to explore those myself.) Also by reputation, its customer and vendor tracking is pretty thorough. It also has very good support for online banking and highly regarded multi-currency handling. And since it is GPL, if extensions are needed you could hire a tame programmer to do them (and use the world to beta test his product).
I'd suggest thoroughly exploring GnuCash and using it as a standard to measure other possible accounting systems against. I think it likely that you'd end up choosing GnuCash when all is said and done.
You'd need another database for the non-financial aspects of tending your customers. There are advantages in keeping technical support history, etc, separate from the financial history. At a WAG, I'd bet that one of the Help Desk packages would handle all of the most important parts of this for a VoIP provider. I haven't explored OS Help Desk databases, but I would think there would be some good ones available now.
I think OOo, GnuCash, and some GPL'd Help Desk database would cover most of your software needs. And in Linux, to boot. That will carve your potential licensing and support costs down quite a bit.
It is interesting that you want to apply the same standards of journalism and good taste to the BBC and to a public bulletin board where a large percentage of the posters are juveniles.
My expectation is that the BBC should be held accountable to a higher standard. But you are saying that this is not so?
Thanks for providing a link to the form. Here is what I just sent:
dasmegabyte, you have a strange and subtle sense of humor.
I like it.
Yeah, the change from fixed to proportional strikes me as the significant thing.
It means that government employees who have to use a word processor are now going to have to learn how to do tab stops. And (Horrors!) maybe even tables. Many of these astute public servants-- secretaries to heads of departments and so forth-- have been abusing the spacebar for 10+ years.
This is going to disrupt the work of a lot of staff. They'll be spending their time learning about left justified tabs, right justified tabs, and the strange behaviors of the mysterious decimal point tab. And some will be forced to learn how to insert rows and columns in tables, and even perhaps how to merge adjacent cells in a table. This is going to be very stressfull in some areas, and will cause some early retirements and probably some medical retirements. I ain't kidding. I've worked with a goodly cross section of these astute public servants, and I know about the limitations that are behind the bright smiles.
The March Monthly Report On The SW Antarctic Penguin Census And Pollen Count will have to be rewritten from scratch rather than simply copying last month's file and changing the numbers. All businesses that rely on such reports from the US State Department should be advised that these may be late, due to unexpected technical problems with the computers.
Noted in passing: IIRC, both Courier New and Times New Roman were introduced at the same time, as two of the three core fonts of TrueType, about 1991, as part of Widows 3.1 (maybe another geezer can confirm this). Both are native Windows fonts. (The third core font was Arial.)
There is nothing particularly newer or more modern about TNR vs CN. Both are computer implementations of fonts that were developed to meet limitations of earlier technologies. Courier is a very open font that does not gum up quickly on the electric typewriters of the 1960s. Times is a complex font designed to retain readability at small sizes with newsprint stock and linotype machines, where smearing, dropouts, and voids frequently damaged the letterforms.
It is always good to see that the US government is improving itself, and moving ahead with the Times.
</rant>