Nah, we're all so polarized that half the moderators will cancel out the other half. Problem solved! Get ready for lots of (Score: 4, Flamebait) ratings!
More articulate and expressive is not equal to smarter. All they're really proving is what everyone's known for a long time - Mac has the corner on the artist market. Creative-minded people generally tend to be more expressive and articulate than your average person.
That doesn't equate intelligence. I've got salespeople that are wonderfully articulate and expressive, but are dumb as rocks when it comes to ethics, problem-solving, technology, or even common sense.
It will be. Remember, UserLinux is still "someday far away down the road" as well. They won't release without a stable support organization in place. And he already has money from corporate investors to ensure that becomes a reality.
Free also implies the support for your product is either non-existent or soon will be
You haven't read the white paper, have you? The centerpiece of this entire idea is to have a stable, industry-funded organization that provides long-term support for this distro.
Perens doesn't have the ability to dictate the direction of open source. But he does have the prerogative to make his own decisions for his own company ideas. If you don't like it - I fail to see why he should care.
The fact is, to gain widespread acceptance, he had to standardize. That means choosing one desktop - as many have said, there are very few casual users who care what a "desktop environment" is. They just want a computer. He chose GNOME. Had he chosen KDE, we would have seen just as much outrage from GNOME users.
You may not agree with the choices, but if his idea works, it will greatly increase the acceptance of desktop linux. And that will perhaps open doors for another user-oriented linux distro that is KDE-centric. In any case, it will benefit the entire community in the long run, so we would all do well to support his efforts.
-j
Disclaimer: I have no favorites. I use both GNOME and KDE daily.
To each and every corporate KDE user, UserLinux has become effectively worthless in one fell swoop.
Completely innaccurate. Read the white paper linked in the article. The thing is Debian-based, and there are KDE packages for Debian. Perens explicitly states that there is NOTHING preventing ISVs from providing distributions that are identical to UserLinux, except favoring KDE instead of GNOME.
That's the beauty of open source. You don't like it? Start your own company to include the stuff that you like, if you think it will be more widely accepted.
What it boils down to is that this is Perens' idea, Perens' opinion, and consequently Perens' prerogative to choose.
I believe that's their point. A judge is hardly technically qualified to determine whether something is a derivative work, much less analyze the lifeline of the code in question. Avoiding the technical experts gives them their only fighting chance.
"The second worst business decision a company can make is to sign a contract with Wal-Mart. The worst business decision? To NOT sign a contract with Wal-Mart."
They're an instant national market for your products. They provide exposure small companies can't get on their own. For a struggling small business, it's not as clear-cut as just saying "no".
Personally, I'd like them to stay out of applications completely and focus on providing the integration mechanisms that would allow Mozilla and OpenOffice and others to work together seamlessly.
Depends on your definition of slashdotted... the processor may be humming along just fine, but the available bandwidth will always be able to be overloaded.
That and every other MP3 player out there, unfortunately.
Real sucks ass, but man, they must have a phoenomenal sales department. I can't imagine it's easy to convince a hardware manufacturer to rely completely on your software, especially when a little informed research would reveal that virtually any technologically savvy user views Real software as a plague.
Are there any Bayesian filter libraries that can easily be used in a PHP or Perl application? That would seem to be the best way to eliminate this... spend a few weeks teaching it what spam posts look like, and it will be pretty hard to get past...
Heh. Screenshots of some new IE features strangely resemble features that Mozilla and others have had for a year or two. Pop-up blocking. Extension manager. Download manager. And dare I hope, full CSS support.
Innovative. I wonder if they'll have some actual improvements in it, instead of just playing catch-up.
Sarcasm aside, I genuinely hope the new IE is great - it will make my job easier. As a web developer, I'm just not looking forward to the prospect that IE6's CSS bugs won't be fixed for 3 years.
At least it will provide an opportunity for competition to take root in the browser market - something that has been difficult until now. Because most likely, within a year or two IE6 will be the new NN4. That's reason enough for me to hope that Longhorn comes quickly.
-j
p.s. If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, adding namespaces and supporting things like MathML and SVG would be a good call too...
Heh. I'm not even sure where to start critiquing this one. But I'll give it a shot.
First off, PHP is an interpreted language. JSP is compiled on the first request. It doesn't matter that the PHP interpreter is written in C, it's still interpreted. JSP classes, after compilation, run as native Java classes, which as another poster noted, are often compiled to machine code in modern JVMs. PHP has no advantage here, at least not based on your argument.
Your benchmark links are all broken, so I can't evaluate your claims on that front.
And of course Java is just another language. So is PHP. So is C. What makes Java so useful is the included libraries that make it incredibly simple to rapidly develop network-aware applications. They've all got their place. And it usually comes down to a matter of preference, not performance.
The development world would be a better place without opinions like yours. I'm a professional Java developer, but I choose to use PHP in my own side businesses. They both have their place, and I like them both. Performance is fast on both technologies, regardless of your ill-informed claims. I strongly suspect that you are basing your comments on your experience with only one of the two technologies you're trying to compare, supplemented by unsubstantiated claims you've heard about Java. Use both languages extensively for awhile and you won't be as uninformed.
I agree with you, but I think there's an even bigger problem. One which none of these services seems to address:
What happens when you get a new computer?
Apple's "loose" DRM is all well and good, but what happens when the computer I have is hopelessly outdated, has been upgraded as far as it can be, and needs to be replaced? I've yet to see a DRM solution that accounts for this. At best, your music library will now view your new primary computer as a "secondary" one with limited rights. And you can never get the rights back that the primary computer had.
Seriously, with the speed that technology becomes obsolete, and the long period of time that a lot of music stays relevant (Beatles? Beethoven?), it's ridiculous to tie a media library to a specific machine. It's inevitable... sooner or later, you're going to lose control of it.
But on the flip side, if they did provide a tool to transfer your songs to a new "primary" PC, it could easily be abused and render the DRM completely useless. So what other options are there?
That's why I refuse to buy DRM songs, and will not sign up for iTunes no matter how hyped it is. Not because of the limitations on it - I'm fine with only using it on three computers, and not being able to share it with others (Heck, I already do that). I won't use it because I know, at some point down the road, my library will become inaccesible to me, and I will have to start over again. And that's unacceptable.
I hope I'm missing something. I hope somebody's actually addressed this problem. But I've scoured the web, and I suspect I'm right - and that's bad for everyone. Bad for the consumer who just lost their music library, and bad for the music store who now has an extremely pissed off customer on their hands, after finding out they've wasted a lot of time and money building a media collection they can't take with them.
-j
P.S. Please don't suggest I burn them all to CDs and re-rip them on a new computer. When you have several thousand songs, that's neither acceptable nor feasible.
Nah. This is just for absentee ballots, via the Internet. It will be a loooooooong time before that replaces voting booths for non-absentee people.
Regardless, it was Accenture that got the contract for this. They just signed a deal with VeriSign to provide "key pieces". Given that VeriSign is a well-known encryption key provider, my guess is they'll be providing the public-key encryption methods to authenticate absentee voters.
Ok, I'm done, you can put your tinfoil hats back on now.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate to sound paranoid, but this could lead to some 'police state' kind of thought.
You must be new here.
Nah, we're all so polarized that half the moderators will cancel out the other half. Problem solved! Get ready for lots of (Score: 4, Flamebait) ratings!
More articulate and expressive is not equal to smarter. All they're really proving is what everyone's known for a long time - Mac has the corner on the artist market. Creative-minded people generally tend to be more expressive and articulate than your average person.
That doesn't equate intelligence. I've got salespeople that are wonderfully articulate and expressive, but are dumb as rocks when it comes to ethics, problem-solving, technology, or even common sense.
-j
This is pretty disgusting. Before getting my geek badge, I started off in English. This makes me seriously consider going into IT textbook writing.
-j
And I'm guessing that using company internet access to read Slashdot probably isn't getting you any brownie points.
-j
Depends who defines "illegal"
-j
It will be. Remember, UserLinux is still "someday far away down the road" as well. They won't release without a stable support organization in place. And he already has money from corporate investors to ensure that becomes a reality.
-j
Free also implies the support for your product is either non-existent or soon will be
You haven't read the white paper, have you? The centerpiece of this entire idea is to have a stable, industry-funded organization that provides long-term support for this distro.
I don't want to say RTFA... but, RTFA.
-j
And I'll never use RedHat. Ain't choice great?
Perens doesn't have the ability to dictate the direction of open source. But he does have the prerogative to make his own decisions for his own company ideas. If you don't like it - I fail to see why he should care.
The fact is, to gain widespread acceptance, he had to standardize. That means choosing one desktop - as many have said, there are very few casual users who care what a "desktop environment" is. They just want a computer. He chose GNOME. Had he chosen KDE, we would have seen just as much outrage from GNOME users.
You may not agree with the choices, but if his idea works, it will greatly increase the acceptance of desktop linux. And that will perhaps open doors for another user-oriented linux distro that is KDE-centric. In any case, it will benefit the entire community in the long run, so we would all do well to support his efforts.
-j
Disclaimer: I have no favorites. I use both GNOME and KDE daily.
Priceless... laughed my ass off at the "typical novice user session"...
-j
To each and every corporate KDE user, UserLinux has become effectively worthless in one fell swoop.
Completely innaccurate. Read the white paper linked in the article. The thing is Debian-based, and there are KDE packages for Debian. Perens explicitly states that there is NOTHING preventing ISVs from providing distributions that are identical to UserLinux, except favoring KDE instead of GNOME.
That's the beauty of open source. You don't like it? Start your own company to include the stuff that you like, if you think it will be more widely accepted.
What it boils down to is that this is Perens' idea, Perens' opinion, and consequently Perens' prerogative to choose.
-j
I believe that's their point. A judge is hardly technically qualified to determine whether something is a derivative work, much less analyze the lifeline of the code in question. Avoiding the technical experts gives them their only fighting chance.
-j
Sure, racism. That explains why consumer electronics from Japan had such a hard time gaining popularity here in the 80's, right?
-j
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Doesn't like liberals, and thinks money should buy influence... I can't imagine what political group you might be a part of?
Shoot. I wasn't supposed to reply, was I? My bad.
-j
Can't find the quote's source at the moment:
"The second worst business decision a company can make is to sign a contract with Wal-Mart. The worst business decision? To NOT sign a contract with Wal-Mart."
They're an instant national market for your products. They provide exposure small companies can't get on their own. For a struggling small business, it's not as clear-cut as just saying "no".
-j
Personally, I'd like them to stay out of applications completely and focus on providing the integration mechanisms that would allow Mozilla and OpenOffice and others to work together seamlessly.
-j
Depends on your definition of slashdotted... the processor may be humming along just fine, but the available bandwidth will always be able to be overloaded.
-j
Ha! I read right past that and missed it. Pretty damn funny.
-j
That and every other MP3 player out there, unfortunately.
Real sucks ass, but man, they must have a phoenomenal sales department. I can't imagine it's easy to convince a hardware manufacturer to rely completely on your software, especially when a little informed research would reveal that virtually any technologically savvy user views Real software as a plague.
-j
Are there any Bayesian filter libraries that can easily be used in a PHP or Perl application? That would seem to be the best way to eliminate this... spend a few weeks teaching it what spam posts look like, and it will be pretty hard to get past...
-j
Heh. Screenshots of some new IE features strangely resemble features that Mozilla and others have had for a year or two. Pop-up blocking. Extension manager. Download manager. And dare I hope, full CSS support.
Innovative. I wonder if they'll have some actual improvements in it, instead of just playing catch-up.
Sarcasm aside, I genuinely hope the new IE is great - it will make my job easier. As a web developer, I'm just not looking forward to the prospect that IE6's CSS bugs won't be fixed for 3 years.
At least it will provide an opportunity for competition to take root in the browser market - something that has been difficult until now. Because most likely, within a year or two IE6 will be the new NN4. That's reason enough for me to hope that Longhorn comes quickly.
-j
p.s. If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, adding namespaces and supporting things like MathML and SVG would be a good call too...
Mandrake 9.2 Beta for AMD64
Try Mandrake. Still my favorite distro.
-j
Heh. I'm not even sure where to start critiquing this one. But I'll give it a shot.
First off, PHP is an interpreted language. JSP is compiled on the first request. It doesn't matter that the PHP interpreter is written in C, it's still interpreted. JSP classes, after compilation, run as native Java classes, which as another poster noted, are often compiled to machine code in modern JVMs. PHP has no advantage here, at least not based on your argument.
Your benchmark links are all broken, so I can't evaluate your claims on that front.
And of course Java is just another language. So is PHP. So is C. What makes Java so useful is the included libraries that make it incredibly simple to rapidly develop network-aware applications. They've all got their place. And it usually comes down to a matter of preference, not performance.
The development world would be a better place without opinions like yours. I'm a professional Java developer, but I choose to use PHP in my own side businesses. They both have their place, and I like them both. Performance is fast on both technologies, regardless of your ill-informed claims. I strongly suspect that you are basing your comments on your experience with only one of the two technologies you're trying to compare, supplemented by unsubstantiated claims you've heard about Java. Use both languages extensively for awhile and you won't be as uninformed.
-j
I agree with you, but I think there's an even bigger problem. One which none of these services seems to address:
What happens when you get a new computer?
Apple's "loose" DRM is all well and good, but what happens when the computer I have is hopelessly outdated, has been upgraded as far as it can be, and needs to be replaced? I've yet to see a DRM solution that accounts for this. At best, your music library will now view your new primary computer as a "secondary" one with limited rights. And you can never get the rights back that the primary computer had.
Seriously, with the speed that technology becomes obsolete, and the long period of time that a lot of music stays relevant (Beatles? Beethoven?), it's ridiculous to tie a media library to a specific machine. It's inevitable... sooner or later, you're going to lose control of it.
But on the flip side, if they did provide a tool to transfer your songs to a new "primary" PC, it could easily be abused and render the DRM completely useless. So what other options are there?
That's why I refuse to buy DRM songs, and will not sign up for iTunes no matter how hyped it is. Not because of the limitations on it - I'm fine with only using it on three computers, and not being able to share it with others (Heck, I already do that). I won't use it because I know, at some point down the road, my library will become inaccesible to me, and I will have to start over again. And that's unacceptable.
I hope I'm missing something. I hope somebody's actually addressed this problem. But I've scoured the web, and I suspect I'm right - and that's bad for everyone. Bad for the consumer who just lost their music library, and bad for the music store who now has an extremely pissed off customer on their hands, after finding out they've wasted a lot of time and money building a media collection they can't take with them.
-j
P.S. Please don't suggest I burn them all to CDs and re-rip them on a new computer. When you have several thousand songs, that's neither acceptable nor feasible.
Nah. This is just for absentee ballots, via the Internet. It will be a loooooooong time before that replaces voting booths for non-absentee people.
Regardless, it was Accenture that got the contract for this. They just signed a deal with VeriSign to provide "key pieces". Given that VeriSign is a well-known encryption key provider, my guess is they'll be providing the public-key encryption methods to authenticate absentee voters.
Ok, I'm done, you can put your tinfoil hats back on now.
-j