Commodore 64 machines were fun. Some of my favorite games were on the Commodore. Games like Jumpman, Racing Destruction Set, Skyfox, and Mail Order Monsters.
Man, those honestly were some great days. I wouldn't be a computer professional without those Commodore games.
So the release of a development kernel is headline news?
Updates to the stable tree, major improvements, security fixes, and such....well that I can understand.
This story is significant because this kernel is really the first tangible departure from the 2.4 branch. Initial USB 2, a very improved scheduler, and other improvements a changelog would do a better job than I of documenting.
Like it or not, these types of changes are significant. Things like schedulers and IO end up being the reason Big Iron companies choose OSes. If Linux is getting there, I personally want to know. If you don't, hey... just move on.;)
Well, except for the fact that it makes us look like incompetent computer users and annoys our clients who now have to take the extra time required to open up the document, save out as text, or paste the text directly into an e-mail message
Annoying, probably. Still, trying to save documents in a compatible Word document format without Word software is annoying as well. And for them to choose 'Save As -> Text' in word isn't asking for a large sacrifice.
I definitely don't agree with RMS's predefined responses. I think they are rude and lacking a little tact. Yet I have no trouble telling people "Could you resend that attachment as RTF? Thanks."
So how exactly is it different for someone to ask you to send them an email as a word document and you asking someone to send you an email as text?
Its really two situations. Both parties can read text while both parties may not be able to read.DOC files. Think of it as appealing to a lower common denominator, when the 'greater denominator' offers no way for you to join.
Maybe the effort should go into producing a good, free implementation of a document editor to produce.doc documents...
One of the reasons.DOC is a de facto standard is that we gladly try our best to reproduce it. *Ahem* StarOffice, Corel, Lotus.... Word-processor writers are bent on reinventing a wheel that they can't even see.
Letting people know that we can't view a document isn't a bad idea. Letting people know that they may not need a full-blown processor just to type a few notes isn't a bad idea either.
Most Word users, I expect, want to write letters to their mothers, not recompile the application.
You don't need email with Word attachments. The problem is having such a format be so widespead that it interferes with normal communication, like email. I am a UNIX network engineer that has been bitten *many* times by the 'please send a resume as a Word doc'. That is difficult if you don't run Windows at all.
Though I generally feel RMS isn't an effective speaker, he definitely has a point here. Honestly, do people really need Word for the majority of text documents? Is everyone sending emails with tabular, image-embedded documents? I think not.
I love Linux. It's my preferred operating system, but while the OS can do everything (and a whole lot more) than Windows OS, it can't run as many things.
Well, that issue applies to every PDA out there. Even if you have binary compatibility, you still have to deal with the hardware and peripheral limitations. The Palm machines of course were not as developed at launch as they are today. You need popularity to get apps (See chicken and egg.)
I have an Agenda Vr3. Though to some its already dead, app-wise it is amazing. I can telnet to it, run x11 apps on it or from it, and can program on its teeny-weenie bash prompt.
Linux is great for these things. Its not hard to put a little launcher on an x11 or framebuffer device that could start Mozilla, Balsa, Abiword, Gnome-PIM, or any other reasonable productivity app.
Its not like people choose Palm because it can run Ms Word in a true-color 1280x1024 display...
Bill Kendrik, the submitter, is quite amazing all by himself. If you have an Agenda Vr3 Linux handheld, you are quite familiar with his Aliens game, among others.
He kept on top of the Agenda like glue, and develops amazing apps and games for free. I know I am just pontificating, but its guys like this that make Linux so cool.
Pitch Black wasn't a very good film;) It was entirely predictable, and it was merely a rehash of the Alien movies. Oh come on, the dude from Fast and the Furious?
It's a sad world indeed if we expect everything to be high caliber
Why shouldn't we expect what we pay for to be high-calibre?
I do not see the benefits that this Linux-derived OS can bring, other than a little more publicity to our corner. Scott of Loki said that people who use Linux do so for the benefits Linux brings, and I agree.
Im not sure that the world needs/wants a better Windows than Windows. I don't need to remind anyone of the success of *all* previous endeavours to accomplish the same feat.
You just summarized exactly the one aspect of the article left unsaid. That much of the argument is based off of the TCP/IP being 'free'. Im not sure anyone would have guessed the popularity of TCP/IP, so saying they should have charged for it would changed the entire debate.
I do think this is really cool, but I never saw mention of how well it handles shocks. I can remember the PS1s skipping or halting every time the room shook even briefly. I imagine that the normal shakes and movements of your hands while playing a game are probably enough to make this handheld unreliable. CDs just aren't that great for movement, hence 'hacks' on protable CD players that amount to merely reading data ahead.
Perhaps you should find someone else besides the kernel developers to judge, eh?
Um... I wasn't 'judging' anyone, let alone the kernel developers. I merely made an observation. If I were to make a judgement, I would do so against VIA. Their handling of their chipsets is an atrocity and it should not be left to volunteer/paid developers to clean up their mess.
I appreciate your remarks, but your aiming at the wrong person.
Yes, you always hear it and say "yea right", but I thought that 2.4.7 wasn't far behind 2.4.6. There were too many '-pre' releases too soon after the release, and the VIA changes seemed not to bode well for myself and fellow Athlon users. I had no reason to update, and I was certainly not going to while I heard the VIA drivers were shaky.
Anyway, glad to see another release. Seems like only yesterday that I was compiling 2.0.32...
Since it hasn't been tested, threatening GPL violations is still sorta at the bluff stage, or so it seems to me.
Well, the idea was never to have an army of lawyers threaten and coerce people. The idea was to have software remain what the original author intended. The fact that the GPL has existed for so long without a legal challenge gives truth to the notion that lawyers need not be involved. It is an option, but one that has not yet been explored. Programmers are generally a respectful bunch.
Aside from the pejorative remark, if Vidmoi uses code that an author releases under conditions Vidomi should abide by those conditions. It is only fair.
How true. MP3s may be available from a variety of sources, but Napster was the best I have used, and its a shame to see the RIAA win a battle. The war, however, is far from over.
So, in comparison Apple is being Big Brother Here, while Microsoft is just putting in a little check to try to save them a few bucks.
When it comes to my privacy, it does not matter which corporation decides to invade it. We have given up enough of our freedom already, so I am concerned with attitudes that show one invasion is a 'lesser evil' than another. Scott McNealy may have said that we should "get over" our privacy concerns but I will not, and I think the gradual decline of vigilance (read: corporations like Blockbuster selling credit card information) will hurt us in the long run.
I agree with you to the extent that we should hold all private information holders accountable, but if Microsoft is bad for exploiting trust, so is Apple, Blockbuster, Sun, and any other socially-irresonsible entity.
Not at all. Where this type of work really shines is in the embedded market. Hence, 'QT Embedded'. If you can get your applications working without the overhead of things like window mangers, windowing systems/servers, and abstraction layers, you gain speed and a much smaller footprint. For little PDAs and toasters, I don't really want to run an XFree86(*), Enlightenment(*), and Xlib(*) in addition to the applications I wanted to run in the first place.
(*) substitute with your preferred method.;)
Its not wise to ignore the rest of the world...
on
Microsoft and the GPL
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· Score: 1
All this bashing is making me sick. [...] I don't use MS, way I see it, out of sight out of mind, my opinion is let them be, they can self destruct on their own.
I will have to agree on the bashing. I do not see how bashing, and by bashing I mean using demeaning adjectives and words like 'Micro$oft', really accomplishes anything constructive. Show disagreement, but not immaturely.
Where I perhaps disagree is with the second half of the statement. Even though you and I choose not to use their software, we would be wise to keep an eye on the single company that controls > 90% of the desktop computing marketshare. It would not be hard for any powerful company to change the computer landscape for a comparatively smaller segment like Linux/BSD users. If we could argue that we are 'Microsoft-free', we could also argue that we must remain vigilant for that choice to always remain.
Personally I don't use Linux anymore so I don't really care, but I think it's a dumb move on Linus' part and here's why. Suppose you've just been hired as a sys admin in a company and have to recompile kernels across a couple dozen perhaps hundreds of Linux based servers... Suppose that company was crappy via way of having things documented.
I use a variety of operating systems including Linux and I disagree. In Linus' message he stated "So let's simply disallow versions, author information, and "good status"
messages, ok?". That doesn't mean you can't find out what hardware you were using or what happened at boot. Keeping dmesg free of advertisements and data that could be confusing is a good idea, and elimiates the redundency of having things like boot.log, messages, and syslog all saying exactly the same thing.
My analysis isn't that Linus is killing dmesg, but rather he is responding to advertisements and junk clogging up needed boot and debugging messages. I agree with this. Have you seen what an AOpen motherboard boot screen looks like? On some models there is a right frame with all sorts of advertisements for all sorts of products. That is insane.
Linus isn't killing boot information but rather not placing everything from URLs to copyright information in the same place where you find out if your networking interfaces are functioning properly.
I was fortunate enough to have one as a toy when I was employed by a telco. It was a dual PIII Katmai 500 with 1G of ram and a raid1 array.
I was lucky enough to use this 2U rackmount machine as my desktop and later as a Quake3 and Half-Life server;)
I later resigned and the CCNP guy took over the mahine. Those were the days...
I believe that eventually companies will resort to calling Free/Open software a serious threat, as opposed to making or adopting better technology. Most likely the attorneys in the likely-to-follow lawsuits will argue that Linux and code sharing are the causes of events like this.
I believe the entertainment industry has already recognized that it cannot trust users of "their" content. Anything that we hold cannot be restricted from us. The natural progression will be to adopt subscription-based models. Why the lawsuits now? I will bet it is more profitable to preserve the current distribution model for as long as possible before switching over.
Imagine paying $30 a month to listen to any song or watch any movie you wanted...
Slashdot Mirror
Thats: ,8,1
,1. Don't forget the ,1!
LOAD "*"
Commodore 64 machines were fun. Some of my favorite games were on the Commodore. Games like Jumpman, Racing Destruction Set, Skyfox, and Mail Order Monsters.
Man, those honestly were some great days. I wouldn't be a computer professional without those Commodore games.
This story is significant because this kernel is really the first tangible departure from the 2.4 branch. Initial USB 2, a very improved scheduler, and other improvements a changelog would do a better job than I of documenting.
Like it or not, these types of changes are significant. Things like schedulers and IO end up being the reason Big Iron companies choose OSes. If Linux is getting there, I personally want to know. If you don't, hey... just move on.
Annoying, probably. Still, trying to save documents in a compatible Word document format without Word software is annoying as well. And for them to choose 'Save As -> Text' in word isn't asking for a large sacrifice.
I definitely don't agree with RMS's predefined responses. I think they are rude and lacking a little tact. Yet I have no trouble telling people "Could you resend that attachment as RTF? Thanks."
Simple, effective, tactful.
Its really two situations. Both parties can read text while both parties may not be able to read
One of the reasons
Letting people know that we can't view a document isn't a bad idea. Letting people know that they may not need a full-blown processor just to type a few notes isn't a bad idea either.
You don't need email with Word attachments. The problem is having such a format be so widespead that it interferes with normal communication, like email. I am a UNIX network engineer that has been bitten *many* times by the 'please send a resume as a Word doc'. That is difficult if you don't run Windows at all.
Though I generally feel RMS isn't an effective speaker, he definitely has a point here. Honestly, do people really need Word for the majority of text documents? Is everyone sending emails with tabular, image-embedded documents? I think not.
Well, that issue applies to every PDA out there. Even if you have binary compatibility, you still have to deal with the hardware and peripheral limitations. The Palm machines of course were not as developed at launch as they are today. You need popularity to get apps (See chicken and egg.)
I have an Agenda Vr3. Though to some its already dead, app-wise it is amazing. I can telnet to it, run x11 apps on it or from it, and can program on its teeny-weenie bash prompt.
Linux is great for these things. Its not hard to put a little launcher on an x11 or framebuffer device that could start Mozilla, Balsa, Abiword, Gnome-PIM, or any other reasonable productivity app.
Its not like people choose Palm because it can run Ms Word in a true-color 1280x1024 display...
Bill Kendrik, the submitter, is quite amazing all by himself. If you have an Agenda Vr3 Linux handheld, you are quite familiar with his Aliens game, among others.
He kept on top of the Agenda like glue, and develops amazing apps and games for free. I know I am just pontificating, but its guys like this that make Linux so cool.
Why shouldn't we expect what we pay for to be high-calibre?
I do not see the benefits that this Linux-derived OS can bring, other than a little more publicity to our corner. Scott of Loki said that people who use Linux do so for the benefits Linux brings, and I agree.
Im not sure that the world needs/wants a better Windows than Windows. I don't need to remind anyone of the success of *all* previous endeavours to accomplish the same feat.
You just summarized exactly the one aspect of the article left unsaid. That much of the argument is based off of the TCP/IP being 'free'. Im not sure anyone would have guessed the popularity of TCP/IP, so saying they should have charged for it would changed the entire debate.
I do think this is really cool, but I never saw mention of how well it handles shocks. I can remember the PS1s skipping or halting every time the room shook even briefly. I imagine that the normal shakes and movements of your hands while playing a game are probably enough to make this handheld unreliable. CDs just aren't that great for movement, hence 'hacks' on protable CD players that amount to merely reading data ahead.
I appreciate your remarks, but your aiming at the wrong person.
Yes, you always hear it and say "yea right", but I thought that 2.4.7 wasn't far behind 2.4.6. There were too many '-pre' releases too soon after the release, and the VIA changes seemed not to bode well for myself and fellow Athlon users. I had no reason to update, and I was certainly not going to while I heard the VIA drivers were shaky.
Anyway, glad to see another release. Seems like only yesterday that I was compiling 2.0.32...
I agree with you to the extent that we should hold all private information holders accountable, but if Microsoft is bad for exploiting trust, so is Apple, Blockbuster, Sun, and any other socially-irresonsible entity.
(*) substitute with your preferred method.
Where I perhaps disagree is with the second half of the statement. Even though you and I choose not to use their software, we would be wise to keep an eye on the single company that controls > 90% of the desktop computing marketshare. It would not be hard for any powerful company to change the computer landscape for a comparatively smaller segment like Linux/BSD users. If we could argue that we are 'Microsoft-free', we could also argue that we must remain vigilant for that choice to always remain.
My analysis isn't that Linus is killing dmesg, but rather he is responding to advertisements and junk clogging up needed boot and debugging messages. I agree with this. Have you seen what an AOpen motherboard boot screen looks like? On some models there is a right frame with all sorts of advertisements for all sorts of products. That is insane.
Linus isn't killing boot information but rather not placing everything from URLs to copyright information in the same place where you find out if your networking interfaces are functioning properly.
I was fortunate enough to have one as a toy when I was employed by a telco. It was a dual PIII Katmai 500 with 1G of ram and a raid1 array. I was lucky enough to use this 2U rackmount machine as my desktop and later as a Quake3 and Half-Life server ;)
I later resigned and the CCNP guy took over the mahine. Those were the days...
I believe that eventually companies will resort to calling Free/Open software a serious threat, as opposed to making or adopting better technology. Most likely the attorneys in the likely-to-follow lawsuits will argue that Linux and code sharing are the causes of events like this.
I believe the entertainment industry has already recognized that it cannot trust users of "their" content. Anything that we hold cannot be restricted from us. The natural progression will be to adopt subscription-based models. Why the lawsuits now? I will bet it is more profitable to preserve the current distribution model for as long as possible before switching over.
Imagine paying $30 a month to listen to any song or watch any movie you wanted...