This makes a couple of (IMO) invalid assumptions:
1. News is intended to inform. It isn't; it's intended to get advertising. In the case of magazines such as Jane's, the best way of doing this is to have the best, most-informed articles. This is demonstrably not the case for newspapers, and don't get me started about TV news.
Not always to get advertising - sometimes the aim is still to sell copies at a profit. Most newspapers will combine the two, that's why we measure both 'sales' and 'readership'. And not all newspapers are complete trash - there is a finely graduated scale. I find the Financial Times to be pretty well focussed on well-informed articles, although I couldn't tell you whether this is to get more eyeballs for advertisements, or to shift more expensive copies. TV news is, in general, worse than newspapers, but it's not uniformly dreadful (the BBC is usually tolerable).
In the UK, there is a debit card run by the Visa network, branded as 'Visa / Delta'. There is also Switch which I believe is run by Mastercard. Bookmakers accept Delta and Switch but not ordinary Visa / Mastercard, presumably for just this reason. They must have some way of checking, when somebody makes a bet over the phone, whether the card number they give is a Visa / Delta debit card or just plain Visa credit card.
Maybe there is a similar 'product' in America - if not, it's going to be needed pretty soon, unless casinos in California don't mind not being allowed to accept plastic.
New World Order: Nowadays, companies like SCO and Sun just invest in Linux (or open source parts of their software) out of mere survival. THey're afraid that if they don't hitch themselves to the rising star that is Linux, they'll just go out of business.
I"m not saying I resent their investment,and I'm not saying it's a bad idea. But I AM saying that it's no longer impressive or newsworthy.
No, the 'New World Order' itself is what is newsworthy. The fact that companies feel obliged to support Linux is amazing when you consider the situation three years ago.
When IBM decided to launch the Aptiva PCs (trying to compete with Dell) they had more than 1200 people--and Aptiva lasted less than 2 years.
Don't you mean Ambra, the IBM-owned clonebuilder launched in 1993? I think they sank without trace.
As for Aptiva, yes, what the hell did happen with Aptiva? I'd heard that the early ones were rehashed PS/1s or something strange like that. Certainly they had icky proprietary hardware like soundcards.
I don't think they'll be launching any shuttles with this. The acceleration involved would squish any human into goo.
I don't think it would be hard to reduce the acceleration for a final version. Making things go faster is hard, but making them go slower is usually easy.
http://rio.dhs.org/penguin.html has a version of Tux done in kernel source.
But it won't actually compile, because they've removed all the spaces. It would be cooler to take some of the kernel source (perhaps the smallest subset of 1.0.9 that compiles to a working kernel), somehow combine the files into a single C / asm source file, and make that into a picture. Like some of the entries in the Obfuscated C Contest.
Why is it that a 16 MB machine can run Win95, IE, and Word97 at the same time, while a 24 MB Linux box bogs down with KDE, Netscape, and kedit!?
Well, that certainly hasn't been my experience, especially not with IE4 / IE5. AFAIK 32MB is recommended for Office 97.
But if what you want is a simple, locked-down environment, you don't need to bother with KDE. You could use a small, fast window manager like icewm with a Win95-style look-and-feel. (But avoid fvwm95 like the plague.) KDE is more useful for the users on the next rung of the ladder, who want to open file manager windows, drag things around, configure their own screensaver and so on. You can run KDE applications without having the whole KDE environment running. You could also try editing the 'startkde' script (or whatever) to stop loading the root window manager, sound server and other unneeded stuff. (Mine just loads kfm, kcontrol -init, kpanel and kwm.)
Also, remember that KDE comes with its own web browser (integrated into the file manager in a very Redmondian kind of way), so you might not need Netscape.
Finally, to improve performance in general, try using a 2.2 kernel and a distribution like Stampede or (IIRC) Mandrake which is Pentium-optimized. (You are using 586es, right?)
Re:Ho hum, but try it if you haven't.
on
QNX OS on a floppy
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· Score: 1
[about the HURD]
um... what about it? QNX, Linux, NT and, apparently, OS/9 are actual, working OSes.
I think that the HURD is an actual, working OS - not vapourware. At least, that's what the GNU people claim:
The Hurd is real software that works Right Now. It is not a research project or a proposal. You don't have to wait at all before you can start using and developing it.
But despite this, they have it in 'projects' rather than 'software'. So maybe you are right that it isn't finished yet - or at least, not fully tested and debugged yet. But clearly, QNX is not the 'only' fully modular OS.
In fact, the so-called legal docuement doesn't just try to forbid use of 'meta' tags. It tries to totally exclude certain phrases from the English language:
You may NOT use the PEZ® mark (or any other registered trademark belonging to Pez Candy, Inc. or its affiliates) on your website or your business in any way, shape or form. Usages such as THE PEZ STORE, THE PEZ MUSEUM, THE PEZ COLLECTOR, THE PEZ TRADER, THE PEZ FANATIC, THE PEZ CAR are specifically prohibited
IANAL, but I'm sure that this is unenforceable bullshit. You can mention any trademark, as long as you acknowledge the owner (eg, Pez is a trademark of Pez Corporation). You just can't make a similar product under the same name. (In the UK, you can't make a dissimilar product if consumers might be confused or it's thought that you're trading on the name - eg yesterday the Trade Marks Registry prohibited the sale of 'Visa' condoms.)
Given that they stick in a lot of rubbish about not mentioning their trademarks, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that their prohibition of 'meta' tags is also without legal weight. (Again, IANAL.)
Besides, you never signed that document - you don't have to abide by its terms.
But in this case, moderation and filtering is the best solution we have. There are many Slashdot readers who like having Anonymous Cowards, and many insightful AC posts. The current system lets you choose whether you want them or not.
In any case, I'd say that hiding the problem is the same thing as curing it in this case. If you never see the offensive messages, never even know that they exist, then for you, they might as well not be there. Unless you are advocating censorship, or 24-hour monitoring of what everyone says and types, I don't see that there is a better 'cure'.
One of the most frequent questions from alt.tv.simpsons newcomers is how to spell Homer's renowned expression. Although the generally accepted spelling is "D'oh!", many sources feature different versions, including closed captioning's own "D-oh!"
But the funniest part is, if you ever looked at a Simpsons script, all you would see are mentions of "annoyed grunts" over and over. When the series started, Matt and the boys let Dan Castellaneta choose an interpretation for the "(Annoyed Grunt)" indicator; since then, Homer's "D'oh!" has always been referred to in that fashion. (Though we know through 3F24 and 3G01 that the writers acknowledge the usual spelling.)
Re:Ho hum, but try it if you haven't.
on
QNX OS on a floppy
·
· Score: 1
QNX is the only totally modular OS that I know of. It's truly a microkernel OS -- all the kernel does is message passing, process creation, memory management, and timer control... drivers, filesystems, even the scheduler runs as separate processes.
Does 'not being tied to a single monopolist' also apply to Linux?
Indeed. You have Red Hat, Linuxcare, Caldera, SuSE and dozens of others all eager for your custom.
If what you mean is, 'we don't want to get stuck with a single piece of software', well, if you feel that Linus is doing a bad job, you can always fork your own version. If we were all using Solaris (for example), there wouldn't be that option.
'Open source' and 'Free source' are the same - as you said, Open source could be defined by the Debian guidelines, which were written to define 'free software'. Hence the two terms are equivalent.
So we're left with only three categories. I would call them:
- Open Source (eg GPL, BSD) - Closed Source (eg SCSL, MySQL licence) - No Source At All (eg Windows)
Surely any keyboard is 'switchable' between different layouts - just tell xmodmap or xkeyboard or keyb.com or the kernel or whatever to change the mapping.
I thought they were gonna make the worlds most expensive flavor of gum, one that could link into your brain and determine what flavor you want it to taste like, and then change its molecular patterns and be that flavor, and after time adapt to your needs, and predict what flavor you will want five seconds from now.
That might be like Better Than Life in Red Dwarf. But what if your subconscious, like Rimmer's, didn't want you to be happy? Would you subconsciously wish for cabbage-flavoured gum?
We must preserve the right to fork.
Is that the new GNU Manifesto or something?
No, but as a one-line summary, it describes the Debian Free Software Guidelines (aka Open Source Definition) quite well.
The whole 'Open Source' pitch is about not being tied to one supplier, and having competition - or the threat of competition, which is almost as good - making sure the customer gets a good deal. The 'right to fork' really means 'not being tied to a single monopolist'.
What all the posters seem to have missed is that this new licence is not necessary, given copyright law.
Fact is, for any major free software project, copyright assignment is necessary to cover everyone's behind against stupid lawsuits. That's why the FSF insists that copyright for GNU software is assigned to the FSF - you can make your own version, but the changes won't be merged in unless you sign legal papers. Cygnus does the same. I know that Linus doesn't insist on copyright assignment to him personally for everything, but nonetheless he has to be careful that none of the copyright holders will launch frivolous lawsuits, which means restricting copyright holders to a small number of trusted people.
So, given that copyright assignment is legally necessary for any large project, you can do everything that the TGPL does using just the GPL - no need for another licence.
That is:
The 'GPL-with-copyright-assignment' is the same as the GPL, with two important exceptions:
The originator may combine distributed derived works produced by others and *where copyright has been assigned to the originator* with the originator's proprietary code and redistribute the result.
The producer of a derived work may elect to assign copyright back to the originator, or to hold the copyright and distribute under GPL, at their discretion.
This is exactly what Cygnus does with Cygwin. It's released under GPL. If you make a modification, you have the option of either assigning copyright to Cygnus - allowing it to be included in the 'professional' edition - or just releasing it under GPL, in which case Cygnus can't release it under a proprietary licence.
(N.B. in this case, 'proprietary' means 'offer an option to paying customers to link their software with Cygwin without having to GPL their software', since Cygwin is a library. I expect that it will always be offered under GPL as well as the paid-for licence.)
If the community decided that they no longer wanted to let Cygnus use their contributions in this way, people could just refuse to assign copyright.
The same model could easily be used for any other project. There is no need to add Yet Another Licence to do this.
Slashdot Mirror
Not always to get advertising - sometimes the aim is still to sell copies at a profit. Most newspapers will combine the two, that's why we measure both 'sales' and 'readership'. And not all newspapers are complete trash - there is a finely graduated scale. I find the Financial Times to be pretty well focussed on well-informed articles, although I couldn't tell you whether this is to get more eyeballs for advertisements, or to shift more expensive copies. TV news is, in general, worse than newspapers, but it's not uniformly dreadful (the BBC is usually tolerable).
In the UK, there is a debit card run by the Visa network, branded as 'Visa / Delta'. There is also Switch which I believe is run by Mastercard. Bookmakers accept Delta and Switch but not ordinary Visa / Mastercard, presumably for just this reason. They must have some way of checking, when somebody makes a bet over the phone, whether the card number they give is a Visa / Delta debit card or just plain Visa credit card.
Maybe there is a similar 'product' in America - if not, it's going to be needed pretty soon, unless casinos in California don't mind not being allowed to accept plastic.
This was Pepsi, and is believed to be true, see the alt.folklore.urban FAQ:
(although I would have thought that 'the choice for a new generation' is more likely to translate as 'reincarnation'.)
No, the 'New World Order' itself is what is newsworthy. The fact that companies feel obliged to support Linux is amazing when you consider the situation three years ago.
Don't you mean Ambra, the IBM-owned clonebuilder launched in 1993? I think they sank without trace.
As for Aptiva, yes, what the hell did happen with Aptiva? I'd heard that the early ones were rehashed PS/1s or something strange like that. Certainly they had icky proprietary hardware like soundcards.
I don't think it would be hard to reduce the acceleration for a final version. Making things go faster is hard, but making them go slower is usually easy.
I thought that Quake was written with DJGPP.
But it won't actually compile, because they've removed all the spaces. It would be cooler to take some of the kernel source (perhaps the smallest subset of 1.0.9 that compiles to a working kernel), somehow combine the files into a single C / asm source file, and make that into a picture. Like some of the entries in the Obfuscated C Contest.
Well, that certainly hasn't been my experience, especially not with IE4 / IE5. AFAIK 32MB is recommended for Office 97.
But if what you want is a simple, locked-down environment, you don't need to bother with KDE. You could use a small, fast window manager like icewm with a Win95-style look-and-feel. (But avoid fvwm95 like the plague.) KDE is more useful for the users on the next rung of the ladder, who want to open file manager windows, drag things around, configure their own screensaver and so on. You can run KDE applications without having the whole KDE environment running. You could also try editing the 'startkde' script (or whatever) to stop loading the root window manager, sound server and other unneeded stuff. (Mine just loads kfm, kcontrol -init, kpanel and kwm.)
Also, remember that KDE comes with its own web browser (integrated into the file manager in a very Redmondian kind of way), so you might not need Netscape.
Finally, to improve performance in general, try using a 2.2 kernel and a distribution like Stampede or (IIRC) Mandrake which is Pentium-optimized. (You are using 586es, right?)
I think that the HURD is an actual, working OS - not vapourware. At least, that's what the GNU people claim:
But despite this, they have it in 'projects' rather than 'software'. So maybe you are right that it isn't finished yet - or at least, not fully tested and debugged yet. But clearly, QNX is not the 'only' fully modular OS.
In fact, the so-called legal docuement doesn't just try to forbid use of 'meta' tags. It tries to totally exclude certain phrases from the English language:
IANAL, but I'm sure that this is unenforceable bullshit. You can mention any trademark, as long as you acknowledge the owner (eg, Pez is a trademark of Pez Corporation). You just can't make a similar product under the same name. (In the UK, you can't make a dissimilar product if consumers might be confused or it's thought that you're trading on the name - eg yesterday the Trade Marks Registry prohibited the sale of 'Visa' condoms.)
Given that they stick in a lot of rubbish about not mentioning their trademarks, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that their prohibition of 'meta' tags is also without legal weight. (Again, IANAL.)
Besides, you never signed that document - you don't have to abide by its terms.
But in this case, moderation and filtering is the best solution we have. There are many Slashdot readers who like having Anonymous Cowards, and many insightful AC posts. The current system lets you choose whether you want them or not.
In any case, I'd say that hiding the problem is the same thing as curing it in this case. If you never see the offensive messages, never even know that they exist, then for you, they might as well not be there. Unless you are advocating censorship, or 24-hour monitoring of what everyone says and types, I don't see that there is a better 'cure'.
I thought that the '1.0 release' of NT was version 3.1. In any case, Netcraft says:
It's actually spelled '(Annoyed Grunt)', see the guide for Simpsons episode 3G03:
What about the HURD?
You should set your preferences to a threshold of +1, then you'll filter all AC postings, except those which have been moderated upwards.
Surely 'the Y-Files' would be the logical choice?
Does anyone else notice a pattern here?
Nominating companies or applications to match Hognose, Dodo, and Thargoid is left as an exercise to the reader.
Indeed. You have Red Hat, Linuxcare, Caldera, SuSE and dozens of others all eager for your custom.
If what you mean is, 'we don't want to get stuck with a single piece of software', well, if you feel that Linus is doing a bad job, you can always fork your own version. If we were all using Solaris (for example), there wouldn't be that option.
'Open source' and 'Free source' are the same - as you said, Open source could be defined by the Debian guidelines, which were written to define 'free software'. Hence the two terms are equivalent.
So we're left with only three categories. I would call them:
- Open Source (eg GPL, BSD)
- Closed Source (eg SCSL, MySQL licence)
- No Source At All (eg Windows)
Surely any keyboard is 'switchable' between different layouts - just tell xmodmap or xkeyboard or keyb.com or the kernel or whatever to change the mapping.
That might be like Better Than Life in Red Dwarf. But what if your subconscious, like Rimmer's, didn't want you to be happy? Would you subconsciously wish for cabbage-flavoured gum?
No, but as a one-line summary, it describes the Debian Free Software Guidelines (aka Open Source Definition) quite well.
The whole 'Open Source' pitch is about not being tied to one supplier, and having competition - or the threat of competition, which is almost as good - making sure the customer gets a good deal. The 'right to fork' really means 'not being tied to a single monopolist'.
What all the posters seem to have missed is that this new licence is not necessary, given copyright law.
Fact is, for any major free software project, copyright assignment is necessary to cover everyone's behind against stupid lawsuits. That's why the FSF insists that copyright for GNU software is assigned to the FSF - you can make your own version, but the changes won't be merged in unless you sign legal papers. Cygnus does the same. I know that Linus doesn't insist on copyright assignment to him personally for everything, but nonetheless he has to be careful that none of the copyright holders will launch frivolous lawsuits, which means restricting copyright holders to a small number of trusted people.
So, given that copyright assignment is legally necessary for any large project, you can do everything that the TGPL does using just the GPL - no need for another licence.
That is:
The 'GPL-with-copyright-assignment' is the same as the GPL, with two important exceptions:
The originator may combine distributed derived works produced by others and *where copyright has been assigned to the originator* with the originator's proprietary code and redistribute the result.
The producer of a derived work may elect to assign copyright back to the originator, or to hold the copyright and distribute under GPL, at their discretion.
This is exactly what Cygnus does with Cygwin. It's released under GPL. If you make a modification, you have the option of either assigning copyright to Cygnus - allowing it to be included in the 'professional' edition - or just releasing it under GPL, in which case Cygnus can't release it under a proprietary licence.
(N.B. in this case, 'proprietary' means 'offer an option to paying customers to link their software with Cygwin without having to GPL their software', since Cygwin is a library. I expect that it will always be offered under GPL as well as the paid-for licence.)
If the community decided that they no longer wanted to let Cygnus use their contributions in this way, people could just refuse to assign copyright.
The same model could easily be used for any other project. There is no need to add Yet Another Licence to do this.