You do realize that everything you're talking about does not have anything to do with Linux? Linux is a kernel. It is also not characteristic of Unix - MacOS X (which you seem to love) is based on Unix. It's just the simple fact that KDE or Gnome should get off their ass, try to stop being everything to all people (platform-neutral - what's the damn point?) and try to integrate better with the underlying system.
The situation you described is just as it should be. Config files are in/etc. Programs are in/bin,/usr/bin,/usr/local/bin, etc. Do you want everything dumped in one directory? Why the fuck do programs need to be atomic? WHO gives a FUCK how the GUI presents it? The main problem with Linux is that nobody wants to do the mundane tasks - write docs, write config applets, make tools easy to use.
The projects you're talking about have no chance of success. With a couple of developers each and no users, they can not possibly become anything even remotely useful. The only reason Linux became a success is because it was built on an established foundation (GNU/Unix). If you would stop bitching and wasting your time with useless projects and actually do something useful (like write a KDE config applet) the Linux desktop could actually become better.
And don't give me the bullshit about Miguel de Icaza. Just because he is a GNOME developer does not make him a GUI expert. Given that Gnome is far worse than KDE or anything else from an end-user perspective, I wouldn't listen to him too much.
The DMCA prohibits systems that break COPY PROTECTION. I don't know what planet you live on, but on this one CDR drives don't have copy protection yet. What the fuck does the dmca have to do with them?
Right. YOU will be able to fix bugs in the driver that the developers can't fix. Of course. You are smarter than all of the Nvidia and ATI engineers, and have more expertise in the field of graphics card drivers than all of them combined. Yeah right.
Point #2 will give you a 0.01% improvement. Using open-source drivers that support half the card's features will give you a 40% disadvantage.
What the hell does the kernel have to do with video drivers? These are in XFree, not the kernel. There are some hooks in the kernel, but nobody says you can't give away the source for the module. That's what nvidia does.
When the card is discontinued, you'll probably throw it away. And if you will be the only person left using that card, drivers won't fix themselves even if they're open source. And I seriously doubt that you can maintain them, given that you probably don't even know how they work. Who in the world uses video cards so old that there aren't any drivers for them? For what?
The bsd people can very well run the drivers if the company makes them for bsd. Given that there are very few games or 3d apps on bsd, I don't think there's a market there. It's mostly used for servers, anyway.
If you're an embedded developer, I don't think you'll be integrating a PCI card into your "designs," much less tweaking drivers for it.
I'd rather have fast, stable, closed-source drivers that work than piece-of-shit reverse-engineered open source drivers developed and supported by amateurs. No company in their right mind will give away the complete specs, anyway. So we will be stuck with crappy slow drivers that can only take advantage of half the card's features. Just compare then Nvidia drivers on Linux (fast, stable, compatible with all cards) with alpha drivers for the ATI Radeon 8500 (that the WEATHER CHANNEL paid to develop, no less).
Wow, people still believe in solar power. Amazing.
Calculate how much solar cells cost. Then calculate how much energy they would produce in 15 years (typical lifetime). At the current rate, it is less than what they cost initially. You have to also factor in the cost of the batteries, inverters, land, and maintenance.
Solar power is extremely inefficient. Solar cells are expensive for a reason - it takes a lot of energy to produce them. Given how much land they occupy, the fact that they don't work unless you have direct sunlight, and the fact that a field of solar cells produces 10x less power than one of those locomotives, I seriously don't see how they are more efficient than nuclear power.
That's assuming you have an insecure network. You could have a network that relies on hashes, ratings, and popularity. It would be pretty hard to make it distributed, but it's possible. If the client is closed-source and uses heavy encryption on the executable and the protocol, it's going to be mighty tough to launch a DoS with it. Realtime firewalling is another idea: if a given host is pestering a server, just blackhole the thing and blacklist the ip across the entire network. Anyway, just some ideas... True, it will require a new system, but I'm pretty sure that one will appear if this actually gets through.
Be very careful with local stores, though. I wouldn't trust those people to put together a system. Some of these shops are good, but many hire completely incompetent people to put together the computers or cut corners whereever possible. Double check that everything is solid before you pay (enough fans, each hard drive/cdrom on its own IDE cable, power supply is >= 300W, decent case, etc).
That's bogus, if anything. I know, these clauses exist, but they would certainly not be held up in court. This looks a lot like product tying, and given the fact that you paid for the software, MS would be in a pretty hard position to defend them. IANAL, so check with one before assuming that's true, though.
Is that guy a moron or what? Why the fuck would you use an FPGA / PLD for that? Just hook a few normally closed switches up in series. That's what happens when a moron takes a digital electronics class. Soon, some "genius" will think up of a way to make a microprocessor-controlled power switch for their goddamn case. Wow, I never knew slashdot editors were THAT stupid.
Why the hell not just use line-of-sight laser? Radio at these frequencies has nearly the same properties as light. It would be absorbed by trees, buildings, the air, and nearly everything else. You would also need very high power output to keep it from being completely scattered. This means equipment will be expensive, and would have to be professionally installed.
Right. Software is more complex than anything else because you don't understand it. That's not true, unfortunately. For example, a car is much more complex to design, engineer, and manufacture than most pieces of software. Yet, car manufacturers are liable for the quality of their cars, especially if there is a design defect that causes them to be unsafe or unreliable. The car companies don't go out of business because:
- they hire competent engineers
- they perform strict quality assurance
- they use proven development methods
So how is software different?
You can't always limit liability. For example, you can't sell a car and say that you are not liable for design defects. You are, no matter how many EULAs you write. The same could apply to software.
Slashdot Mirror
Milling it eliminates the contamination problem. You can't plant milled corn. Duh...
Behold the power of slashdot. Maybe Taco should start featuring riaa.com more often.
You do realize that everything you're talking about does not have anything to do with Linux? Linux is a kernel. It is also not characteristic of Unix - MacOS X (which you seem to love) is based on Unix. It's just the simple fact that KDE or Gnome should get off their ass, try to stop being everything to all people (platform-neutral - what's the damn point?) and try to integrate better with the underlying system. The situation you described is just as it should be. Config files are in /etc. Programs are in /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, etc. Do you want everything dumped in one directory? Why the fuck do programs need to be atomic? WHO gives a FUCK how the GUI presents it? The main problem with Linux is that nobody wants to do the mundane tasks - write docs, write config applets, make tools easy to use.
The projects you're talking about have no chance of success. With a couple of developers each and no users, they can not possibly become anything even remotely useful. The only reason Linux became a success is because it was built on an established foundation (GNU/Unix). If you would stop bitching and wasting your time with useless projects and actually do something useful (like write a KDE config applet) the Linux desktop could actually become better.
And don't give me the bullshit about Miguel de Icaza. Just because he is a GNOME developer does not make him a GUI expert. Given that Gnome is far worse than KDE or anything else from an end-user perspective, I wouldn't listen to him too much.
The DMCA prohibits systems that break COPY PROTECTION. I don't know what planet you live on, but on this one CDR drives don't have copy protection yet. What the fuck does the dmca have to do with them?
Right. YOU will be able to fix bugs in the driver that the developers can't fix. Of course. You are smarter than all of the Nvidia and ATI engineers, and have more expertise in the field of graphics card drivers than all of them combined. Yeah right.
Point #2 will give you a 0.01% improvement. Using open-source drivers that support half the card's features will give you a 40% disadvantage.
What the hell does the kernel have to do with video drivers? These are in XFree, not the kernel. There are some hooks in the kernel, but nobody says you can't give away the source for the module. That's what nvidia does.
When the card is discontinued, you'll probably throw it away. And if you will be the only person left using that card, drivers won't fix themselves even if they're open source. And I seriously doubt that you can maintain them, given that you probably don't even know how they work. Who in the world uses video cards so old that there aren't any drivers for them? For what?
The bsd people can very well run the drivers if the company makes them for bsd. Given that there are very few games or 3d apps on bsd, I don't think there's a market there. It's mostly used for servers, anyway.
If you're an embedded developer, I don't think you'll be integrating a PCI card into your "designs," much less tweaking drivers for it.
I'd rather have fast, stable, closed-source drivers that work than piece-of-shit reverse-engineered open source drivers developed and supported by amateurs. No company in their right mind will give away the complete specs, anyway. So we will be stuck with crappy slow drivers that can only take advantage of half the card's features. Just compare then Nvidia drivers on Linux (fast, stable, compatible with all cards) with alpha drivers for the ATI Radeon 8500 (that the WEATHER CHANNEL paid to develop, no less).
Wow, people still believe in solar power. Amazing. Calculate how much solar cells cost. Then calculate how much energy they would produce in 15 years (typical lifetime). At the current rate, it is less than what they cost initially. You have to also factor in the cost of the batteries, inverters, land, and maintenance. Solar power is extremely inefficient. Solar cells are expensive for a reason - it takes a lot of energy to produce them. Given how much land they occupy, the fact that they don't work unless you have direct sunlight, and the fact that a field of solar cells produces 10x less power than one of those locomotives, I seriously don't see how they are more efficient than nuclear power.
That's assuming you have an insecure network. You could have a network that relies on hashes, ratings, and popularity. It would be pretty hard to make it distributed, but it's possible. If the client is closed-source and uses heavy encryption on the executable and the protocol, it's going to be mighty tough to launch a DoS with it. Realtime firewalling is another idea: if a given host is pestering a server, just blackhole the thing and blacklist the ip across the entire network. Anyway, just some ideas... True, it will require a new system, but I'm pretty sure that one will appear if this actually gets through.
Be very careful with local stores, though. I wouldn't trust those people to put together a system. Some of these shops are good, but many hire completely incompetent people to put together the computers or cut corners whereever possible. Double check that everything is solid before you pay (enough fans, each hard drive/cdrom on its own IDE cable, power supply is >= 300W, decent case, etc).
Yeah, but show me a $299 machine that can run it.
That's bogus, if anything. I know, these clauses exist, but they would certainly not be held up in court. This looks a lot like product tying, and given the fact that you paid for the software, MS would be in a pretty hard position to defend them. IANAL, so check with one before assuming that's true, though.
Is that guy a moron or what? Why the fuck would you use an FPGA / PLD for that? Just hook a few normally closed switches up in series. That's what happens when a moron takes a digital electronics class. Soon, some "genius" will think up of a way to make a microprocessor-controlled power switch for their goddamn case.
Wow, I never knew slashdot editors were THAT stupid.
Why the hell not just use line-of-sight laser? Radio at these frequencies has nearly the same properties as light. It would be absorbed by trees, buildings, the air, and nearly everything else. You would also need very high power output to keep it from being completely scattered. This means equipment will be expensive, and would have to be professionally installed.
Right. Software is more complex than anything else because you don't understand it. That's not true, unfortunately. For example, a car is much more complex to design, engineer, and manufacture than most pieces of software. Yet, car manufacturers are liable for the quality of their cars, especially if there is a design defect that causes them to be unsafe or unreliable. The car companies don't go out of business because: - they hire competent engineers - they perform strict quality assurance - they use proven development methods So how is software different?
You can't always limit liability. For example, you can't sell a car and say that you are not liable for design defects. You are, no matter how many EULAs you write. The same could apply to software.