Well the landlords in the several pubs I frequent disagree with you. They tell me that mixed drinks must be sold in approved quantities, amongst which you don't find the pint measure. Draught beer is a special exception in the regulations, but shandy is not since it's mixed with lemonade and is therefore a mixed drink.
Here's a quote from the John Dell, Divisional Director of Worcester Weights and measures department:
Mr Dell said they want to work with businesses but they also have to enforce the regulations. He said that they had never prosecuted publicans for selling "pints" of shandy, which were illegal. He said that the law was somewhat "tedious".
I suspect he's talking about the kind of thing that makes it a *criminal offence* to sell a pint of shandy in a pub. Note that that's not some kind of civil offence with corresponding penalties, but an offence that gives you a criminal record.
The petty issues like that piss some people off to the point of near-incandescence. Hence a strong grass-roots hatred of interference from an undemocratic and corrupt* body that now has sovereignty over many of our laws.
[*Corrupt? The auditors have refused to sign their accounts for seven straight years. Whe the whistle was blown on the extent of fraud and corruption, the whistle-blower was sacked and harrassed by the same unelected officials.]
A common argument is that you keep the Monarchy because of the power that it denies to others. Not that I have a lot of time for the Monarchy, but I'd rather that they had it, warts and all, than some tinpot tosser of an elected politician. I moderately dislike the Monarchy but I DESPISE the f***ing politicians.
I am genuinely mystified by the common practise of citing recnet rail crashes as, so far as I can tell, evidence of systemic failure in the railway system. The rail crashes and loss of life are naturally terrible events and wherever possible strenuous efforts should be made to eliminate the causes of them BUT BUT BUT - on average six people die every day on British roads.
It's a bad YEAR when six die on the rails. Even if it has deteriorated somewhat in recent years (and should therefore be given urgent attention), it's in a different league from the risks associated with road travel.
Yet you wait in vain to hear calls for public enquiries into the deadly state of the road transport system. Why is that? I'm not making a political point here, I'm genuinely amazed that these two situations exist: a dangerous transport system alongside one that is very much better with the latter attracting the 'we must make it safer' publicity.
I don't normally rise to this kind of bait, but suggesting that the computer is a US and German innovation, first used by the military is to say the least, controversial.
Those in search of more light on the debate might care to look into the work done on cracking the Enigma and other cyphers by Alan Turing and others at Bletchley Park with firstly mechanical and then electronic computing devices.
Who you think created the first computer depends to some extent on how you define a computer of course, so the debate will never have a 'final' resolution.
I used to drive a Ford Prefect, it was bought for me by my parents in 1970 to get me off a motorbike that they hated (a Velocette Viper).
The worst part of the car was the vacuum wipers, driven by the manifold pressure. This meant that when you lifted off the accelerator they went berserk, but flat-out they stopped altogether. A piece of design genius that should be more widely celebrated.
The bottom of the bodyshell finally rotted through a couple of years later and I had it scrapped.
The engine was a sidevalve model, none of that fancy overhead-cam stuff.
I think you will find that the Canadian licence/license (noun/verb) distinction is the same as the standard British English one, at least that's what they taught me at school some 30-odd years ago.
I was waiting for a meeting so didn't investigate the bus-effect further (and with the temperatures in London so high I'd rather walk around town than take the bus/tube thanks, since neither is air-conditioned).
But it is part of the area where the stops show which bus is coming next. Kismet didn't appear to show any interesting packets but then I didn't look hard, there were other things on my mind at the time. All I could spot was beacon packets.
I'm amazed how many unprotected networks there are in London. One day someone will have a nasty shock as a result of all that!
I have found plenty of wireless hotspots, though admittedly not official. A very pleasant place to sit and read email is in the Pret a Manger cafe at the north end of Carnaby street in London. There are several unencrypted networks accessible there that will happily hand out a DHCP lease.
Interestingly, running Kismet I was initally confused by the networks that kept popping up only to disappear again, till I realised that they are the London buses broadcasting their location and the route that they are on, or at least as far as I can tell that's what it is. Anyone know any better what stuff like "xxxWESTBOURNE PARKyyy" is?
The parent comment fairly accurately sums up what I believe to be the situation. Whether it was a lobbying group or the EU commission directly that solicited Open Forum's opinion I can't say at this point as I don't have access to all the documents this late on a Saturday night.
All that I know about the process was that the question was something like "if we (the world at large) were to have patents, how would Open Forum wish to see the interests of Open Source protected". Open Forum has never claimed to speak for developers so the comments were from the limited perspective of how it might affect *users* of the software; hence Open Forum's comments about ensuring that protocols for interworking should not be patentable, among other things.
Hopefully the politicians will listen to all of the representations that they receive. Open Forum's response will be one of many that they get and can hardly be said to be pro-patent.
You can their statement here:
here.
Though I'm not an expert on the film business I recollect just a few months back seeing a section on 'The Money Program' on BBC about the film distribution industry in Britain.
From what I remember one US-based distributor (Vista? or a name something like that) controls something like 80% of film distribution in Europe. Even the films that are locally financed in the UK have to use them for distribution as they have a stanglehold on the cinemas.
That will be why Easy are talking about legal action - it IS effectively a monopoly on supply.
Re:Anyone interested in extending this concept?
on
Geocoding All Content
·
· Score: 1
At present the querying is hilariously simple and certainly wouldn't scale, nor would it translate to worldwide without work. On the other hand, a lot of that is 'just programming' and the people I was talking to started muttering about neighbour lists (whatever they are) alleging that it IS possible to scale-up spatial searching, especially if you enjoy doing a lot of pre-computation, swapping space for time. I can't vouch for that, but with the present ten thousand or so locally-constrained datapoints it isn't an issue.
Anyone interested in extending this concept?
on
Geocoding All Content
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, (this may be a bad plan, posting this on Slashdot), if anyone thinks it is worthwhile, I will add a 'blog' category to somewherenear.com to extend the idea for much of the mainland UK.
On a more important note - whilst I don't have a problem with open-sourcing the code for that site, which is a mishmash of C++ and php, who knows anything about attempts to come up with a concept of open source datasets? Somewherenear has a useful collection of data relating to bars, restaurants and accommodation in the UK, but it seems to me that just as a form of GPL for software benefits most users, so would an open dataset licence so that the kind of information stored there. The more geolocated information the world has, the more useful it becomes.
I've heard this claim before but would be interested to see research or evidence to back it up. I've worked with unrepresentative small groups who have migrated to Linux from Windows with just about zero effort. My own organisation does quite a lot of training for people who are mostly Windows users but we put Linux desktops in front of them - they seem to adapt very rapidly.
Now it could be that they aren't the regular Windows user, or it could be that the received wisdom that 'windows users will find it hard to switch' is just plain wrong.
So I'd LOVE to see some hard evidence on this one, not simply assertions that it is so based on gut feel instead of research.
I've been listening to DAB radio here in the UK for over a year. The old band II TV stations (around 2/300 MHz) were kicked off the air to make room for digital sound broadcasting. Receivers are still expensive but some good stuff is coming along now at slightly lower cost (e.g. combined DAB/MP3 portable player for around $300 US.).
I have to say that I'm a fan. You can argue about the sound quality but for overall listening experience, for me, it beats FM hands down. I live in a marginal reception area for most VHF/UHF broadcasts (can't really get digital terrestrial TV) but the DAB radio is 100% solid.
It's not about price in the main. I have several consultancy clients I have worked with (household name companies here in Britain). Those who are migrating to open source / free software, call it what you will, are not mostly motivated by price, but by regaining control. They are incensed by being forced to upgrade when they don't need to and having their IT planning hijacked to meed the needs of someone else's cashflow. They know that by choosing a different route they can regain control and plan for themselves.
That surprised me too - when I first started working with them I used to argue the cost side more, now I have realised that control is the number one argument, the fact that it typically costs less is a bonus. Many of them are uncomfortable that they can't pay for the software and feel MUCH happier with Star Office than Open Office simply because they *are* paying for it.
Now don't get uppity with me about how stupid they are if they like to pay money for what they can pretty much get for free - instead listen, learn and get a dose of what real live business customers care about:)
Mike
Re:Trespass
on
Wartrapping?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Mind the legal language folks. I seem to recollect that US law is based in part on British law, but it's likely that it has diverged.
AFAIK (IANAL): in England and Wales, trespass is not a *crime*. There is a big distinction between crimes which are tried in criminal courts and other actions (torts) for which there is only a civil remedy. If someone comes onto your land you don't in general have much comeback against them unless they do some harm or damage - they haven't committed a crime. If they do damage, then you may be able to claim recompense in civil courts, but it's still probably not a crime.
However, if they are armed, then it's armed trespass, which IS a crime and you can call the cops straight away. In cases of ordinary trespass the police will be very disinterested because their responsibility is basically criminal not civil law.
BINGO! You have just discovered why most of the rest of the commercial suppliers of Linux lined up behind United Linux. Not because it's better or worse or whatever, but because apps developers in the real world, those that have to make a living and provide support, want a single target that they can certify their software for. I'm not involved in it in any way, but I sure can understand their motivation.
A sudden change in crop growing patterns would be very, very destabilising to international security. It's bothered me for some time that the WTO and free-trade politicians in general believe that food is just another commodity. And yet they are elected (one of the fundamental underpinnings of democracy) to provide security. That doesn't just mean hi-tech armed forces in my book, it means ensuring consistency of supply of the basics needed for survival - amongst those are the crucial elements of water, food, shelter and fuel.
The politicos seem to 'get' the argument about physical security, but where is the discussion of security of food supply? Living in the UK - as I do - it alarms me to see that the only argument about agricultural subsidy is one based on trade. So before long we could easily be in a position where to feed the population there is total dependency on shipping the staple part of the diet over thousands of miles. What happens if there is a huge oil price shock? Or some similar catastrophe that disrupts the supply and which can't easily be fixed.
Seems to me that there is a fundamental duty of care amongst the elected elite that famine should be guarded *very* carefully against. It's not that long since significant starvation occurred in Europe, but I don't hear voices clamouring to ensure it doesn't again.
And before flaming me about ignoring the poor souls in the rest of the world who are starving already, or telling me it doesn't matter 'cos you live somewhere else, that's not what my post was about:)
A friend of mine who's heavily into E-M-E ham radio (Earth-Moon-Earth) pushes around 2KW into a 20dB gain antenna and managed to kill a tree at the bottom of his garden with it - some 20 yards from the antenna array.
On the other hand, ordinary DBS satellite downlinks don't transmit any significant power and are entirely safe.
If you also have to provide an uplink (like the one in this article had to do) then they do transmit. Although the power levels are much lower than my dangerous friend, they still should be treated with caution. I personally wouldn't want to be much less than about ten yards from the direct beam of the uplink, and even then I would try to avoid standing directly in the beam at any times other than the minimum essential.
Eh? 802.11b close in frequency to satellite TV? Not in Wales it isn't. The satellite (DBS) channels used are in the Ku band (10-18Ghz) while 802.11b is on 2.4 GHz ISM band. Not even close, really.
I consult most of my time with large corporates on how to adopt Linux. They love the `obvious' stuff like Samba, Squid (kinda - but better content filtering tools would be nice) and the fact that there is the glimmerings of a 3rd-party software market. Examples of the latter are virus checkers, the towering presence of Oracle in the market and so on.
For them, Open Source is less a religion than a hard-headed business decision. They actually *like* paying money for software, it makes them feel comfortable. The fact that United Linux isn't free is actually a PLUS POINT for them. You can argue that they are crazy or whatever you want, but that's they way they react.
Now, what they really want is low risk. They want to be sure that the anti-virus software they purchase will install and run without problems. If they are running Oracle, it's crucial that it works properly - no downtime, no data loss.
So they are sceptical unless the software vendor certifies that the product concerened has been tested and deployed and is supported on the release of Linux that they have chosen.
It costs software companies a lot of money to do the appropriate testing, train helpdesk staff and do the documentation for each slightly different release of Linux. Even if my-favourite-distro is a byte by byte copy of Redhat 7.x, Oracle will simply say it's not supported because it didn't come with Redhat's logo on it. They will laugh in my face if I ask them to check that my distro is compatible, they will more likely ask me for a huge sum of cash to provide me with certification. They can afford to call the shots.
That's the real reason behind United Linux. To get 3rd party accreditation and reduce the apparent fragmentation of distributions. So that large companies can say "Oh, yeah, ok, your software is certified to run on the system I use" and then not have to think any more. They don't want to waste time checking that my distro IS Redhat, they just want to see the logo and get the support contract in from the software vendor.
The final accident report found the Dutch Pilot entirely to blame. Ten seconds with google will find plenty of links, but if you are too lazy (grin), here's a short summary.
I loathe, hate, despise, abhor and revile the scummy crew that is now Verisign. I rarely feel moved to violence but they get me close to it. WHAT a foul and awful outfit they are.
Having got that off my chest, I want to say something nice. The people who handle the UK domain registrations are, in my experience, an object lesson in what can be done (I don't want to get into the current WHOIS argument that they have stirred up). It's been a pleasure to deal with them at every level so far.
AND they manage to provide instant turnaround of domain registration for the hefty price of GBP 5 per two years, or about US $8. Based on that, they make an embarrassing amount of money - as they are a not-for-profit business. I don't know how they do it. I have no financial interest in what they do - but am hugely grateful to be working mostly with them and not the ratshit raggle of scumsuckers at Verisign.
> I'm fed up with my software core dumping, memory leaking... [etc.]
Uh? C does that, unless you code REALLY carefully. C++ - unless you choose to use it simply as a C compiler - gives you the tools to eliminate precisely those irritating errors. Well-designed classes give you the ability to move to a higher level of abstraction so that stuff isn't even on the agenda. Even cursory knowledge of strings, vectors and maps/hashes allows you (in my own experience) to get at least one order of magnitude more reliability into your software and with exception handling, provides the mechanism for dealing with the errors when they do occur.
If you choose to use a C++ compiler to compile C, then there is little point. Moving up to what (IMHO) C++ was intended to provide puts you somewhere different altogether. But the idioms are different entirely; idiomatic C++ is a *very* different language from C. It's not perfect (it's far too big) but if you need a C-like tool and care about reliability and freedom from overruns, memory leaks and the like, it's a very good tool for the job. And it's a lot easier to get stuff right up at that abstraction level too. You get the airbags and ABS braking:)
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a quote from the John Dell, Divisional Director of Worcester Weights and measures department:
The full quote is here: bwmaonline.comDo you still wish to insist that I am a liar? That's strong language from someone who apparently didn't plug 'pint shandy illegal' into Google.
I suspect he's talking about the kind of thing that makes it a *criminal offence* to sell a pint of shandy in a pub. Note that that's not some kind of civil offence with corresponding penalties, but an offence that gives you a criminal record.
The petty issues like that piss some people off to the point of near-incandescence. Hence a strong grass-roots hatred of interference from an undemocratic and corrupt* body that now has sovereignty over many of our laws.
[*Corrupt? The auditors have refused to sign their accounts for seven straight years. Whe the whistle was blown on the extent of fraud and corruption, the whistle-blower was sacked and harrassed by the same unelected officials.]
A common argument is that you keep the Monarchy because of the power that it denies to others. Not that I have a lot of time for the Monarchy, but I'd rather that they had it, warts and all, than some tinpot tosser of an elected politician. I moderately dislike the Monarchy but I DESPISE the f***ing politicians.
I am genuinely mystified by the common practise of citing recnet rail crashes as, so far as I can tell, evidence of systemic failure in the railway system. The rail crashes and loss of life are naturally terrible events and wherever possible strenuous efforts should be made to eliminate the causes of them BUT BUT BUT - on average six people die every day on British roads.
It's a bad YEAR when six die on the rails. Even if it has deteriorated somewhat in recent years (and should therefore be given urgent attention), it's in a different league from the risks associated with road travel.
Yet you wait in vain to hear calls for public enquiries into the deadly state of the road transport system. Why is that? I'm not making a political point here, I'm genuinely amazed that these two situations exist: a dangerous transport system alongside one that is very much better with the latter attracting the 'we must make it safer' publicity.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
Those in search of more light on the debate might care to look into the work done on cracking the Enigma and other cyphers by Alan Turing and others at Bletchley Park with firstly mechanical and then electronic computing devices.
Who you think created the first computer depends to some extent on how you define a computer of course, so the debate will never have a 'final' resolution.
I used to drive a Ford Prefect, it was bought for me by my parents in 1970 to get me off a motorbike that they hated (a Velocette Viper).
The worst part of the car was the vacuum wipers, driven by the manifold pressure. This meant that when you lifted off the accelerator they went berserk, but flat-out they stopped altogether. A piece of design genius that should be more widely celebrated.
The bottom of the bodyshell finally rotted through a couple of years later and I had it scrapped.
The engine was a sidevalve model, none of that fancy overhead-cam stuff.
I think you will find that the Canadian licence/license (noun/verb) distinction is the same as the standard British English one, at least that's what they taught me at school some 30-odd years ago.
I was waiting for a meeting so didn't investigate the bus-effect further (and with the temperatures in London so high I'd rather walk around town than take the bus/tube thanks, since neither is air-conditioned).
But it is part of the area where the stops show which bus is coming next. Kismet didn't appear to show any interesting packets but then I didn't look hard, there were other things on my mind at the time. All I could spot was beacon packets.
I'm amazed how many unprotected networks there are in London. One day someone will have a nasty shock as a result of all that!
I have found plenty of wireless hotspots, though admittedly not official. A very pleasant place to sit and read email is in the Pret a Manger cafe at the north end of Carnaby street in London. There are several unencrypted networks accessible there that will happily hand out a DHCP lease.
Interestingly, running Kismet I was initally confused by the networks that kept popping up only to disappear again, till I realised that they are the London buses broadcasting their location and the route that they are on, or at least as far as I can tell that's what it is. Anyone know any better what stuff like "xxxWESTBOURNE PARKyyy" is?
All that I know about the process was that the question was something like "if we (the world at large) were to have patents, how would Open Forum wish to see the interests of Open Source protected". Open Forum has never claimed to speak for developers so the comments were from the limited perspective of how it might affect *users* of the software; hence Open Forum's comments about ensuring that protocols for interworking should not be patentable, among other things.
Hopefully the politicians will listen to all of the representations that they receive. Open Forum's response will be one of many that they get and can hardly be said to be pro-patent. You can their statement here: here.
Mike Banahan
Though I'm not an expert on the film business I recollect just a few months back seeing a section on 'The Money Program' on BBC about the film distribution industry in Britain.
From what I remember one US-based distributor (Vista? or a name something like that) controls something like 80% of film distribution in Europe. Even the films that are locally financed in the UK have to use them for distribution as they have a stanglehold on the cinemas.
That will be why Easy are talking about legal action - it IS effectively a monopoly on supply.
At present the querying is hilariously simple and certainly wouldn't scale, nor would it translate to worldwide without work. On the other hand, a lot of that is 'just programming' and the people I was talking to started muttering about neighbour lists (whatever they are) alleging that it IS possible to scale-up spatial searching, especially if you enjoy doing a lot of pre-computation, swapping space for time. I can't vouch for that, but with the present ten thousand or so locally-constrained datapoints it isn't an issue.
On a more important note - whilst I don't have a problem with open-sourcing the code for that site, which is a mishmash of C++ and php, who knows anything about attempts to come up with a concept of open source datasets? Somewherenear has a useful collection of data relating to bars, restaurants and accommodation in the UK, but it seems to me that just as a form of GPL for software benefits most users, so would an open dataset licence so that the kind of information stored there. The more geolocated information the world has, the more useful it becomes.
"Most non techies cannot easily [switch]" ...
I've heard this claim before but would be interested to see research or evidence to back it up. I've worked with unrepresentative small groups who have migrated to Linux from Windows with just about zero effort. My own organisation does quite a lot of training for people who are mostly Windows users but we put Linux desktops in front of them - they seem to adapt very rapidly.
Now it could be that they aren't the regular Windows user, or it could be that the received wisdom that 'windows users will find it hard to switch' is just plain wrong.
So I'd LOVE to see some hard evidence on this one, not simply assertions that it is so based on gut feel instead of research.
Anyone care to contribute?
I've been listening to DAB radio here in the UK for over a year. The old band II TV stations (around 2/300 MHz) were kicked off the air to make room for digital sound broadcasting. Receivers are still expensive but some good stuff is coming along now at slightly lower cost (e.g. combined DAB/MP3 portable player for around $300 US.).
I have to say that I'm a fan. You can argue about the sound quality but for overall listening experience, for me, it beats FM hands down. I live in a marginal reception area for most VHF/UHF broadcasts (can't really get digital terrestrial TV) but the DAB radio is 100% solid.
It's not about price in the main. I have several consultancy clients I have worked with (household name companies here in Britain). Those who are migrating to open source / free software, call it what you will, are not mostly motivated by price, but by regaining control. They are incensed by being forced to upgrade when they don't need to and having their IT planning hijacked to meed the needs of someone else's cashflow. They know that by choosing a different route they can regain control and plan for themselves.
:)
That surprised me too - when I first started working with them I used to argue the cost side more, now I have realised that control is the number one argument, the fact that it typically costs less is a bonus. Many of them are uncomfortable that they can't pay for the software and feel MUCH happier with Star Office than Open Office simply because they *are* paying for it.
Now don't get uppity with me about how stupid they are if they like to pay money for what they can pretty much get for free - instead listen, learn and get a dose of what real live business customers care about
Mike
Mind the legal language folks. I seem to recollect that US law is based in part on British law, but it's likely that it has diverged.
AFAIK (IANAL): in England and Wales, trespass is not a *crime*. There is a big distinction between crimes which are tried in criminal courts and other actions (torts) for which there is only a civil remedy. If someone comes onto your land you don't in general have much comeback against them unless they do some harm or damage - they haven't committed a crime. If they do damage, then you may be able to claim recompense in civil courts, but it's still probably not a crime.
However, if they are armed, then it's armed trespass, which IS a crime and you can call the cops straight away. In cases of ordinary trespass the police will be very disinterested because their responsibility is basically criminal not civil law.
BINGO! You have just discovered why most of the rest of the commercial suppliers of Linux lined up behind United Linux. Not because it's better or worse or whatever, but because apps developers in the real world, those that have to make a living and provide support, want a single target that they can certify their software for. I'm not involved in it in any way, but I sure can understand their motivation.
A sudden change in crop growing patterns would be very, very destabilising to international security. It's bothered me for some time that the WTO and free-trade politicians in general believe that food is just another commodity. And yet they are elected (one of the fundamental underpinnings of democracy) to provide security. That doesn't just mean hi-tech armed forces in my book, it means ensuring consistency of supply of the basics needed for survival - amongst those are the crucial elements of water, food, shelter and fuel.
:)
The politicos seem to 'get' the argument about physical security, but where is the discussion of security of food supply? Living in the UK - as I do - it alarms me to see that the only argument about agricultural subsidy is one based on trade. So before long we could easily be in a position where to feed the population there is total dependency on shipping the staple part of the diet over thousands of miles. What happens if there is a huge oil price shock? Or some similar catastrophe that disrupts the supply and which can't easily be fixed.
Seems to me that there is a fundamental duty of care amongst the elected elite that famine should be guarded *very* carefully against. It's not that long since significant starvation occurred in Europe, but I don't hear voices clamouring to ensure it doesn't again.
And before flaming me about ignoring the poor souls in the rest of the world who are starving already, or telling me it doesn't matter 'cos you live somewhere else, that's not what my post was about
A friend of mine who's heavily into E-M-E ham radio (Earth-Moon-Earth) pushes around 2KW into a 20dB gain antenna and managed to kill a tree at the bottom of his garden with it - some 20 yards from the antenna array.
On the other hand, ordinary DBS satellite downlinks don't transmit any significant power and are entirely safe.
If you also have to provide an uplink (like the one in this article had to do) then they do transmit. Although the power levels are much lower than my dangerous friend, they still should be treated with caution. I personally wouldn't want to be much less than about ten yards from the direct beam of the uplink, and even then I would try to avoid standing directly in the beam at any times other than the minimum essential.
Eh? 802.11b close in frequency to satellite TV? Not in Wales it isn't. The satellite (DBS) channels used are in the Ku band (10-18Ghz) while 802.11b is on 2.4 GHz ISM band. Not even close, really.
A pedant speaks! I think.
I consult most of my time with large corporates on how to adopt Linux. They love the `obvious' stuff like Samba, Squid (kinda - but better content filtering tools would be nice) and the fact that there is the glimmerings of a 3rd-party software market. Examples of the latter are virus checkers, the towering presence of Oracle in the market and so on.
For them, Open Source is less a religion than a hard-headed business decision. They actually *like* paying money for software, it makes them feel comfortable. The fact that United Linux isn't free is actually a PLUS POINT for them. You can argue that they are crazy or whatever you want, but that's they way they react.
Now, what they really want is low risk. They want to be sure that the anti-virus software they purchase will install and run without problems. If they are running Oracle, it's crucial that it works properly - no downtime, no data loss.
So they are sceptical unless the software vendor certifies that the product concerened has been tested and deployed and is supported on the release of Linux that they have chosen.
It costs software companies a lot of money to do the appropriate testing, train helpdesk staff and do the documentation for each slightly different release of Linux. Even if my-favourite-distro is a byte by byte copy of Redhat 7.x, Oracle will simply say it's not supported because it didn't come with Redhat's logo on it. They will laugh in my face if I ask them to check that my distro is compatible, they will more likely ask me for a huge sum of cash to provide me with certification. They can afford to call the shots.
That's the real reason behind United Linux. To get 3rd party accreditation and reduce the apparent fragmentation of distributions. So that large companies can say "Oh, yeah, ok, your software is certified to run on the system I use" and then not have to think any more. They don't want to waste time checking that my distro IS Redhat, they just want to see the logo and get the support contract in from the software vendor.
Mike
The final accident report found the Dutch Pilot entirely to blame. Ten seconds with google will find plenty of links, but if you are too lazy (grin), here's a short summary.
I loathe, hate, despise, abhor and revile the scummy crew that is now Verisign. I rarely feel moved to violence but they get me close to it. WHAT a foul and awful outfit they are.
Having got that off my chest, I want to say something nice. The people who handle the UK domain registrations are, in my experience, an object lesson in what can be done (I don't want to get into the current WHOIS argument that they have stirred up). It's been a pleasure to deal with them at every level so far.
AND they manage to provide instant turnaround of domain registration for the hefty price of GBP 5 per two years, or about US $8. Based on that, they make an embarrassing amount of money - as they are a not-for-profit business. I don't know how they do it. I have no financial interest in what they do - but am hugely grateful to be working mostly with them and not the ratshit raggle of scumsuckers at Verisign.
> I'm fed up with my software core dumping, memory leaking ... [etc.]
:)
Uh? C does that, unless you code REALLY carefully. C++ - unless you choose to use it simply as a C compiler - gives you the tools to eliminate precisely those irritating errors. Well-designed classes give you the ability to move to a higher level of abstraction so that stuff isn't even on the agenda. Even cursory knowledge of strings, vectors and maps/hashes allows you (in my own experience) to get at least one order of magnitude more reliability into your software and with exception handling, provides the mechanism for dealing with the errors when they do occur.
If you choose to use a C++ compiler to compile C, then there is little point. Moving up to what (IMHO) C++ was intended to provide puts you somewhere different altogether. But the idioms are different entirely; idiomatic C++ is a *very* different language from C. It's not perfect (it's far too big) but if you need a C-like tool and care about reliability and freedom from overruns, memory leaks and the like, it's a very good tool for the job. And it's a lot easier to get stuff right up at that abstraction level too. You get the airbags and ABS braking