If they couldn't sue Google per se, could they pursue some sort of injunction against them to stop using what SCO claims is "their" technology? That would definitely screw Google over to a huge extent- they'd have to either pay up to SCO for a "license", or port their entire operation to some non-infringing OS.
I look forward to them getting that injunction - we'll finally see SCO's secret evidence out in the open (I assume it would be public record once filed in the lawsuit).
Assuming SCO wins, the "linux tax" due from Google would a fair bit of pocket change ($7 million for their 10000 Linux servers), but the judge may force them to charge a more reasonable amount. Or Google could just tell SCO "OK, here's your IP back, we're moving to BSD"
The post by 'Beatles Forum' is correct: Revelation is about things that have taken place after 70AD, things that are still going on today, and things that are yet to come. For eg: Revelation mentioned an army of 200 million soldiers - there weren't 200 millions *humans* at the time Revelation was written.
Revelation is backed-up by the New Testament - for eg: in the gospels Jesus promises a second coming that will be visible around the world, in the letters of Paul, Paul talks about the anti-christ. The references to 7-hills, Rome, etc. in Revelation are correct - they map to Catholicism (whose headquarters is in Rome). Before you dismiss this out of hand, not that the Catholics have their own corresponding prophecy (made in the 11th century) of Rome being destroyed. From the Catholic Encyclopaedia (see third paragraph from the end): "The last of these prophecies concerns the end of the world and is as follows: "In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The End.". IIRC, we are now at the second-last pope according to the Catholic prophecy.
[Note, I'm not condoning Catholicism - in Revelation God specifically asks his followers to "come out of" "Rome" so they don't "partake of her sins" (remember the massacres in the Inquisitions and the crusades?). If you want to know God, deal direct:) - read the Bible, tell God you're serious, love your fellow man... ]
Ewww, yuck! I do not want to have to guess whether I'm really looking at nn.com, or whether this is slashdt.org. It's bad enough already with some of the typo-grabbing pr0n sites, etc.
There's a sore need for browsers to start displaying the DNS name in the address bar using *only* the logged-in user's default character set. Hopefully, this would show "nn.com" as "?nn.com".
To the poster who suggested TLS - do you mean X.509 server certificates? They won't help - the person running show "nn.com" would simply have a certificate for "nn.com" (as indeed, he has a right to have).
So it comes down to what you see on the browser address bar.
I've done it several times on VIA EPIA mini-ITX mainboards
Hi -- do you mind putting some details about your experience? The LinuxBIOS site is a bit short on specifics on how to configure their software for the Mini-ITX and flash the BIOS.
An open architecture doesn't mean it isn't proprietary: Firewire, 802.11b, PDF, and Java all have licensors, patents, and other restrictions around them, but unlike Microsoft's toys, you *can* license, implement, and use them. Microsoft won't let you license the Office formats, won't let you license or implement the DirectX interfaces, they don't give you access to the core source of their OS or web browser or web server, much less any of their tools...
BTW, Microsoft licenses it's Windows Media codecs for Unix platforms. It seems to be encouraging Mono (don't know how true that is) and has openly documented some Office formats (IIRC: Office 97, and just recently, the XML schema for Office 2003). IE has probably the best Javascript support in modern browsers (not sure if mozilla is better now).
Apple has proprietary hardware. Apple refused to licensed out their hardware to other manufacturers, then did so, only to later pull the rug from under those manufacturer's feet.
Earlier, when they started getting badly beat by the Wintel platforms, they also started adopting "PC technologies" (eg. their adoption of PCI) to try and leverage the PC juggernaut (which has worked out pretty well for them - PCI, PCMCIA, USB (an Intel-created standard, royalty-free as opposed to Firewire), AGP/graphics cards, Ethernet, IDE/ATA(not sure?),...) However, their hardware platform itself is still proprietary, though mostly the product of their partner's innovation (eg: IBM -> Power4, AMD -> Hypertransport). Apple's innovations seem to occur in software, and in non-PC hardware (with Firewire being a recent exception).
Like Microsoft, Apple too has proprietary software: I don't know of Apple licensing Quartz out, for example. Do you know if their presentation app (Keynote?) has a documented file format?
Most of Apple's open-source efforts have been in BSD-licensed software (which allow Apple to close-source any changes they make). Yes, they seem more favorably disposed to "open-source" (eg: thier contributions to Konqueror v/s little or nothing coming out from MS), but it could just be the underdog effect. At the end of the day, they're a company selling you well-designed products at a price. My advice is not to be too starry eyed about them.
India does not permit foreign workers to immigrate to India to take tech jobs.
Foreigners can take up tech jobs in India if they get a work visa. An American boss of mine worked in Pune, India in the late 90s (for Cap-Gemini, I think)
In a computer market that is growing and has choice (like the one we currently have), the "top 10 personal computers of all time" are......the top 10 currently selling.
You're right - setting it up would be difficult for non-technies, but with a DSL/Cable connection, the ISP could offer this functionality very easily.
The ISP could run multiple in-memory XSessions with OpenOffice + Mozilla + Mail on a cluster of powerful servers. The subscriber buys a $200 basic machine, and gets an AOL-type setup CD from the ISP. This CD sets up an XServer on the subscribers machine (this connects to the ISPs servers), and installs icons for email, office, etc. etc. on their taskbar.
The moment the subscriber clicks on, say, the email icon, a connection is made to their cached XSession on the ISP's cluster, a local window opens, and they are reading emails 200 milliseconds after their mouseclick. Because the XSession is cached in-memory on the ISPs server, and the subscriber's emails are *also* on the ISPs server, this would be faster than an email app running from local disk (provided the network is OK:). The ISP could provide SAMBA shares to save files locally. Also, there would be no bandwidth charges between the ISP and the customer, so they could use the off-peak time to download large files.
So the subscriber gets: 1. A properly configured environment 2. *Speed* (no delays fetching mail, no rendering delays, no "slow-OpenOffice-startup" delays 3. Back-ups of all documents, all emails 4. Ability to access this setup from net cafes (using Java applets + VNC) 5. Working in a familiar home environment (Windows, Linux, OSX... whatever supports an XServer).
The ISP gets: 1. Lower bandwidth utilization (because the ISP controls the browser, they can optimize it with caching proxies) 2. Possible media-plays (since the ISP *partially* controls the subscribers machine - because their software runs on it - they could, say, schedule downloads of say, news programs that are tailored to the subscribers interests) 3. Fewer tech support hassles ("Just put the CD in your CD-drive and press 'OK' Ma'am") 4. Happier customers 5. More "stickiness" with the customer
If the system wasn't wholly corrupt and owned by corporate interests...
It isn't - there are many good and decent things left in the "system". Yes, there is corruption, and yes, many people dishonestly buy and sell influence, but you think things are worse than they actually are. Don't do that - it is cannot justify your own wrongs.
From the thread... I've found a few Mini-ITX motherboards with LVDS controllers. For those not familiar with Mini-ITX, it's a small form factor type of motherbaord. They are very quiet, and use very little power. CPU, Graphics, Audio, and LAN are all integrated.
The cheapest one with an LVDS controller is $200. It's a 600mhz board, wich is decent enough for playing DVDs and most Mpg-4, and since the board has a PCI slot a TV card could be installed. For $230 you can geta 1ghz board. Anyone know anything about the controller or what type of screen could be used? This could make for a great all-in-one media PC.
'Mr. Resistor' could have confused "Linux-based", with "Wallflower's display management application has been GPL-ed". So the person asking whether there was an open-source version of that app had a fair question.
You're right that 'Mr. Resistor' isn't a troll - at worst, they should have moderated his comment 'Overrated'.
As some posters correctly pointed out, you need an LCD controller interface to drive an LCD panel. It's possible you could get the correct controller for your panel from this page, which has a very good listing of LCD controllers (thank you, whoever put it up). The controllers that have prices seem a bit expensive though - around $200 each.
I read somewhere that VIA was going to introduce Mini-ITX motherboards with an LVDS (low voltage differential signalling) LCD interface - so it could directly drive an LCD panel. I think some non-VIA Mini-ITX manufacturers already offer such motherboards. So that might be a better option.
About the PCI riser - thanks - I'd found nothing earlier, but I just googled again and found one - a special PCI riser that fits into one PCI slot, but runs two PCI cards simultaneously.
I used an IDE controller PCI card to get another available controller for the third drive.
Hmm... nice setup. I'd like to use my PCI slot for something else so I'm curious - why you didn't use 2 drives on one IDE channels? Was the performance sub-par? Also, I understand your data is striped across 3 drives, and you can afford to lose one - what RAID "version" is that? RAID 2?
Has anyone got an idea how to use 2 PCI cards with the Mini-ITX boards? The manual for the 533 Mhz Mini-ITX boards say it supports 2 PCI cards, even though it only has one PCI slot. The second card support is done using special pins on the motherboard, that the Via manual says require "proprietary" info from it to implement.
I've been impressed by Openoffice. Even though it's slow and resource-hungry, here are some of OpenOffice's abilities that may apply here:
Ability to save as non-cluttered HTML or XML
Ability to publish to PDF
Scriptability - to automate everything
Ease of document maintenance (see the two caveats below)
The other solutions presented so far suffer w.r.t # 4 - document maintenance. After all, if someone created their document in a visually rich editor like Word, it was probably because of ease of use and they will find it easiest to maintain it there. However, two conditions must be met for the system we're discussing:
(A) It should be possible to constrain all aspects of the document, so its has a defined, machine-comprehensible structure
(B) The maintenance application must integrate with a version-control and access-control system (a nice to have - so that document-maintenance is transparent)
Regarding (A) - it seems useful to emulate an ability from the new "Pro" version of Word 2003 - custom XML schemas that constrain document content. From what I've read about it, its like the old document field macros and templates, but more powerful and using XML Schemas for validation. I'm *guessing* (not sure - can someone with OpenOffice expertise chip in?) OpenOffice could be made to do the same thing. For example - could a 'document schema' be defined that the document is *forced* to have it's title in the middle of the first page, it's index auto-generated on the second, text in a particular style, chapter and subchapter headings in other per-selected styles, a list of figures and list of tables auto-generated as Appendices 1 and 2... ?
Regarding (B) - the scriptablity of OpenOffice should support invocation of CVS/Subversion clients.
Who gives a fig if drivers are 'creatively optimised' for real games, so long as the quality doesn't suffer?
And how would you check that quality hasn't suffered - would you actually buy two cards and run them up side by side on two monitors to check?
Benchmarking apps provide "the rest of us" a reliable way to compare cards. Any "secret optimizations" or other attempts to silently manipulate benchmarks or game performannce must be seen as the dishonest tactics they are.
...worried about Linus,...He'd be more likely to answer a question honestly, without recognizing the path down which the lawyer is trying to (mis)lead him.
That is the best way to answer a question - honestly! Friendly advocates (IBM's or his own) should be able to clear up any misunderstanding, and leave it up for the judge/jury to judge properly.
Linus seems independent and fair minded - that counts for a lot with a judge.
An armchair comparison of the SANDIA 'Red Storm' cluster (see short description) and the VT G5 cluster is quite interesting --
The Red Storm nodes are 2GHz Opterons - these CPUs have SPEC Int and FP scores in the 1200 range (both).
The G5s used in the VT Cluster are 2Ghz too - their SPEC Int and FP scores are both in the 800 range.
The Red Storm Opteron cluster has 10,000 CPUs. The VT G5 cluster has 2,200 CPUs.
The Red Storm cluster gets a LINPACK score of: 20 TFlops (fair bit more expected)/40 TFlops max
The VT G5 cluster gets a LINPACK score of: 11 TFlops (expected)/17 TFlops max
So the Red Storm cluster gets around twice the performance of the VT cluster, with 5 times the number of CPUs. This is quite interesting given the SPEC scores of the Opterons are higher, and Red Storm's number of nodes are higher too. (Network/topology issues?)
The Red Storm cluster uses around 2 MW for "total power and cooling", the VT cluster needs about 1.5 MW.
If you read the PDF on Red Storm that the parent post points to, it turns out they considered the Power4 CPU the G5 uses, but at the time (24 months ago?) it ran at 1.3 GHz.
Slashdot Mirror
If they couldn't sue Google per se, could they pursue some sort of injunction against them to stop using what SCO claims is "their" technology? That would definitely screw Google over to a huge extent- they'd have to either pay up to SCO for a "license", or port their entire operation to some non-infringing OS.
I look forward to them getting that injunction - we'll finally see SCO's secret evidence out in the open (I assume it would be public record once filed in the lawsuit).
Assuming SCO wins, the "linux tax" due from Google would a fair bit of pocket change ($7 million for their 10000 Linux servers), but the judge may force them to charge a more reasonable amount. Or Google could just tell SCO "OK, here's your IP back, we're moving to BSD"
Small correction: The last paragraph should have read:
God specifically asks his followers to "come out of" *her* so they don't "partake of her sins"...
("Rome" isn't mentioned by name in Revelation)
The post by 'Beatles Forum' is correct: Revelation is about things that have taken place after 70AD, things that are still going on today, and things that are yet to come. For eg: Revelation mentioned an army of 200 million soldiers - there weren't 200 millions *humans* at the time Revelation was written.
:) - read the Bible, tell God you're serious, love your fellow man... ]
Revelation is backed-up by the New Testament - for eg: in the gospels Jesus promises a second coming that will be visible around the world, in the letters of Paul, Paul talks about the anti-christ. The references to 7-hills, Rome, etc. in Revelation are correct - they map to Catholicism (whose headquarters is in Rome). Before you dismiss this out of hand, not that the Catholics have their own corresponding prophecy (made in the 11th century) of Rome being destroyed. From the Catholic Encyclopaedia (see third paragraph from the end):
"The last of these prophecies concerns the end of the world and is as follows: "In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman, who will feed his flock amid many tribulations, after which the seven-hilled city will be destroyed and the dreadful Judge will judge the people. The End.".
IIRC, we are now at the second-last pope according to the Catholic prophecy.
[Note, I'm not condoning Catholicism - in Revelation God specifically asks his followers to "come out of" "Rome" so they don't "partake of her sins" (remember the massacres in the Inquisitions and the crusades?). If you want to know God, deal direct
Sorry, the "nn.com" mentions above really should have been "nn.com"
Ewww, yuck! I do not want to have to guess whether I'm really looking at nn.com, or whether this is slashdt.org. It's bad enough already with some of the typo-grabbing pr0n sites, etc.
There's a sore need for browsers to start displaying the DNS name in the address bar using *only* the logged-in user's default character set. Hopefully, this would show "nn.com" as "?nn.com".
To the poster who suggested TLS - do you mean X.509 server certificates?
They won't help - the person running show "nn.com" would simply have a certificate for "nn.com" (as indeed, he has a right to have).
So it comes down to what you see on the browser address bar.
I've done it several times on VIA EPIA mini-ITX mainboards
Hi -- do you mind putting some details about your experience? The LinuxBIOS site is a bit short on specifics on how to configure their software for the Mini-ITX and flash the BIOS.
An open architecture doesn't mean it isn't proprietary: Firewire, 802.11b, PDF, and Java all have licensors, patents, and other restrictions around them, but unlike Microsoft's toys, you *can* license, implement, and use them. Microsoft won't let you license the Office formats, won't let you license or implement the DirectX interfaces, they don't give you access to the core source of their OS or web browser or web server, much less any of their tools...
...)
BTW, Microsoft licenses it's Windows Media codecs for Unix platforms. It seems to be encouraging Mono (don't know how true that is) and has openly documented some Office formats (IIRC: Office 97, and just recently, the XML schema for Office 2003). IE has probably the best Javascript support in modern browsers (not sure if mozilla is better now).
Apple has proprietary hardware. Apple refused to licensed out their hardware to other manufacturers, then did so, only to later pull the rug from under those manufacturer's feet.
Earlier, when they started getting badly beat by the Wintel platforms, they also started adopting "PC technologies" (eg. their adoption of PCI) to try and leverage the PC juggernaut (which has worked out pretty well for them - PCI, PCMCIA, USB (an Intel-created standard, royalty-free as opposed to Firewire), AGP/graphics cards, Ethernet, IDE/ATA(not sure?),
However, their hardware platform itself is still proprietary, though mostly the product of their partner's innovation (eg: IBM -> Power4, AMD -> Hypertransport). Apple's innovations seem to occur in software, and in non-PC hardware (with Firewire being a recent exception).
Like Microsoft, Apple too has proprietary software: I don't know of Apple licensing Quartz out, for example. Do you know if their presentation app (Keynote?) has a documented file format?
Most of Apple's open-source efforts have been in BSD-licensed software (which allow Apple to close-source any changes they make). Yes, they seem more favorably disposed to "open-source" (eg: thier contributions to Konqueror v/s little or nothing coming out from MS), but it could just be the underdog effect. At the end of the day, they're a company selling you well-designed products at a price. My advice is not to be too starry eyed about them.
They are not permitted to.
India does not permit foreign workers to immigrate to India to take tech jobs.
Foreigners can take up tech jobs in India if they get a work visa.
An American boss of mine worked in Pune, India in the late 90s (for Cap-Gemini, I think)
In a computer market that is growing and has choice (like the one we currently have), the "top 10 personal computers of all time" are... ...the top 10 currently selling.
You're right - setting it up would be difficult for non-technies, but with a DSL/Cable connection, the ISP could offer this functionality very easily.
:). The ISP could provide SAMBA shares to save files locally. Also, there would be no bandwidth charges between the ISP and the customer, so they could use the off-peak time to download large files.
The ISP could run multiple in-memory XSessions with OpenOffice + Mozilla + Mail on a cluster of powerful servers. The subscriber buys a $200 basic machine, and gets an AOL-type setup CD from the ISP. This CD sets up an XServer on the subscribers machine (this connects to the ISPs servers), and installs icons for email, office, etc. etc. on their taskbar.
The moment the subscriber clicks on, say, the email icon, a connection is made to their cached XSession on the ISP's cluster, a local window opens, and they are reading emails 200 milliseconds after their mouseclick. Because the XSession is cached in-memory on the ISPs server, and the subscriber's emails are *also* on the ISPs server, this would be faster than an email app running from local disk (provided the network is OK
So the subscriber gets:
1. A properly configured environment
2. *Speed* (no delays fetching mail, no rendering delays, no "slow-OpenOffice-startup" delays
3. Back-ups of all documents, all emails
4. Ability to access this setup from net cafes (using Java applets + VNC)
5. Working in a familiar home environment (Windows, Linux, OSX... whatever supports an XServer).
The ISP gets:
1. Lower bandwidth utilization (because the ISP controls the browser, they can optimize it with caching proxies)
2. Possible media-plays (since the ISP *partially* controls the subscribers machine - because their software runs on it - they could, say, schedule downloads of say, news programs that are tailored to the subscribers interests)
3. Fewer tech support hassles ("Just put the CD in your CD-drive and press 'OK' Ma'am")
4. Happier customers
5. More "stickiness" with the customer
6. Profit!!!
Bluntly, you are wrong; the poster you responded to is right.
Actually, what I'm saying here is already in countless books and studies.
Javascript (even Flash) have their uses, according to people who actually do these studies.
If the system wasn't wholly corrupt and owned by corporate interests...
It isn't - there are many good and decent things left in the "system". Yes, there is corruption, and yes, many people dishonestly buy and sell influence, but you think things are worse than they actually are. Don't do that - it is cannot justify your own wrongs.
A google query for "mini-itx lvds" shows this as the first link.
From the thread...
I've found a few Mini-ITX motherboards with LVDS controllers. For those not familiar with Mini-ITX, it's a small form factor type of motherbaord. They are very quiet, and use very little power. CPU, Graphics, Audio, and LAN are all integrated.
The cheapest one with an LVDS controller is $200. It's a 600mhz board, wich is decent enough for playing DVDs and most Mpg-4, and since the board has a PCI slot a TV card could be installed. For $230 you can geta 1ghz board. Anyone know anything about the controller or what type of screen could be used? This could make for a great all-in-one media PC.
chances are it is gpl'd
Chances are it's not.
'Mr. Resistor' could have confused "Linux-based", with "Wallflower's display management application has been GPL-ed". So the person asking whether there was an open-source version of that app had a fair question.
You're right that 'Mr. Resistor' isn't a troll - at worst, they should have moderated his comment 'Overrated'.
As some posters correctly pointed out, you need an LCD controller interface to drive an LCD panel. It's possible you could get the correct controller for your panel from this page, which has a very good listing of LCD controllers (thank you, whoever put it up). The controllers that have prices seem a bit expensive though - around $200 each.
I read somewhere that VIA was going to introduce Mini-ITX motherboards with an LVDS (low voltage differential signalling) LCD interface - so it could directly drive an LCD panel. I think some non-VIA Mini-ITX manufacturers already offer such motherboards. So that might be a better option.
"when an IDE drive fails, it can confuse and hang the controller"
Thanks steveha - i didn't know that.
Cheers
Sonam
Thanks for the info Haakon.
About the PCI riser - thanks - I'd found nothing earlier, but I just googled again and found one - a special PCI riser that fits into one PCI slot, but runs two PCI cards simultaneously.
I used an IDE controller PCI card to get another available controller for the third drive.
Hmm... nice setup. I'd like to use my PCI slot for something else so I'm curious - why you didn't use 2 drives on one IDE channels? Was the performance sub-par? Also, I understand your data is striped across 3 drives, and you can afford to lose one - what RAID "version" is that? RAID 2?
Has anyone got an idea how to use 2 PCI cards with the Mini-ITX boards? The manual for the 533 Mhz Mini-ITX boards say it supports 2 PCI cards, even though it only has one PCI slot. The second card support is done using special pins on the motherboard, that the Via manual says require "proprietary" info from it to implement.
The other solutions presented so far suffer w.r.t # 4 - document maintenance. After all, if someone created their document in a visually rich editor like Word, it was probably because of ease of use and they will find it easiest to maintain it there. However, two conditions must be met for the system we're discussing:
(A) It should be possible to constrain all aspects of the document, so its has a defined, machine-comprehensible structure
(B) The maintenance application must integrate with a version-control and access-control system (a nice to have - so that document-maintenance is transparent)
Regarding (A) - it seems useful to emulate an ability from the new "Pro" version of Word 2003 - custom XML schemas that constrain document content. From what I've read about it, its like the old document field macros and templates, but more powerful and using XML Schemas for validation. I'm *guessing* (not sure - can someone with OpenOffice expertise chip in?) OpenOffice could be made to do the same thing. For example - could a 'document schema' be defined that the document is *forced* to have it's title in the middle of the first page, it's index auto-generated on the second, text in a particular style, chapter and subchapter headings in other per-selected styles, a list of figures and list of tables auto-generated as Appendices 1 and 2... ?
Regarding (B) - the scriptablity of OpenOffice should support invocation of CVS/Subversion clients.
Who gives a fig if drivers are 'creatively optimised' for real games, so long as the quality doesn't suffer?
And how would you check that quality hasn't suffered - would you actually buy two cards and run them up side by side on two monitors to check?
Benchmarking apps provide "the rest of us" a reliable way to compare cards. Any "secret optimizations" or other attempts to silently manipulate benchmarks or game performannce must be seen as the dishonest tactics they are.
...worried about Linus, ...He'd be more likely to answer a question honestly, without recognizing the path down which the lawyer is trying to (mis)lead him.
That is the best way to answer a question - honestly! Friendly advocates (IBM's or his own) should be able to clear up any misunderstanding, and leave it up for the judge/jury to judge properly.
Linus seems independent and fair minded - that counts for a lot with a judge.
Even x86 opcodes are translated to lower-level instructions inside modern CPUs.
> Limb: Astronomy. The circumferential edge of the apparent disk of a celestial body.
Thanks
> Ever been to google.com??
About 1,000 - 30,000 viewers will view this thread. You've just saved many of them a visit.
Thanks Phorm. Much appreciated!