On the face of it what you say seems quite reasonable.
However, I can't help feel it's missing the point. If Mandrake want to try and survive by simply selling boxed CDs of Free software, good luck to them. Most other vendors (SuSE, RH et al) have long since come to the conclusion that that's a mug's game. The money is in support, customisation, extension, integration (and buzzword implementation in general). I'm sure Mandrake's an excellent distro (though from what I've read on 9.2 so far doesn't appeal to me, but that's by the bye), but it's out there, and it's Free. If MandrakeSoft go bellyup (which wouldn't be a total shock, let's be honest), everything they've done, all that work, is still there and you're welcome to take it and build on it.
Personally, I see this as a giant step forward. P2P distribution has the potential to release companies from the shackles of maintaining in-house distros, and releasing that responsibility back to the community. There are already some genuinely successful noncommercial distros out there; room for more, I would say. This releases companies to do what they do to make money, rather than inefficiently maintaining distros, a task best done by communities.
He quite obviously still doesn't get it, does he? I don't know, I can barely hack together two lines of Python, but it doesn't seem that difficult to me.
What in the name of goodness do you do with these idiots?
Every quality musician I know who went into busking ended up making more money on the street then they ever did performing 'professionally'. This is in Britain, but I can't imagine gig rates are so wildly different in the US.
I find this letter a bit odd. Both Alan and Linus are far better writers of English than this, and Linus in particular is *very* good at laying down his shots in simple language.
I wonder if this is a very good troll, to be honest.
Actually, it's not that bad an analogy. Spain freely hands over Gibralter to the Brits; some years later they change their mind and demand it back. Britain implies that they can go play with themselves, and Spain attempts to take it back, and get sent packing back to Madrid. Meanwhile, the rest of the world didn't give a damn.
Oh no, the felons couldn't vote. Whatever shall we do? Jeebus, I think I know the case in question, and the "some apparently in error" were 2 people with repeatedly rejected appeals. Not pending appeals mind you, flat-out rejections for appeal -- though apparently the felons claimed that was unfair. this is not the sort of election hacking that worries me.
It wasn't a couple of felons. Read a book called 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy' by Greg Palast. The upshot is that a private company was hired to remove felons from the rolls. They ended up removing (with state sanction) some 52,000 people who should not have been, mostly Black Democratic voters. How many votes did Gore lose by again?
As the law in the UK and the US stands, if you discover a new gene, you can get a patent on it. This is what a number of biotech companies have been doing, simply discovering and patenting genes as fast as they can, hoping that it will pay off big time when someone else discovers they're sitting on the next big thing.
If you have a problem with that I suggest you post a sign on your front lawn saying that you refuse to own guns if you think that will make the world a safer place.
Frankly, if it means the burglars are less likely to come prowling in with their gun out in front of them, I'm all for it. OTOH, I live in Britain, so it's a moot point anyway. We jail people who shoot burglars, and quite rightly. I can't even begin to imagine living in a society where you have to convince every police officer you come accross that you're nbot a dangerous threat. Ugh.
Maybe we're less free over here, but we're less dead, too.
Usually it's more subtle than wholesale botching. They'll introduce a little kink in a river, or something like that. Something that you would never find unless you were standing staring at the ground with the map in front of you.
This happened in the UK a year or two ago; the AA (a motoring organisation) was caught with its pants down stealing mapping data from the Ordnance Survey's published maps. They were caught on the basis of several of these little wiggles.
It depends. No, it's not strictly neccesary (I had a Creative Jukebox which did it all on the one processor), but it has real advantages. The most obvious is power consumption. My Jukebox lasts about four hours on a full charge; recent hard disk players with seperate DSP chips last more like twenty. Another is responsiveness; when playing a 256k MP3, my Jukebox was as responsive as a turtle in treacle. DSP based players can continue to serve the UI in real time, even when playing or encoding.
DSP chips are mostly manufactured to proprietary designs, and upgrading them means shelling out $$$ to the manufacturers/designers. This is why Rockbox, the open firmware for the Archos Jukebox, although theoretically capable of playing vorbis files, will never do so, because no-one can afford the proprietary information on the DSP. OTOH, using an open format like they are here (not that I RTFA) means it is possible.
I can't really belive that the servers would be that badly configured.
I believe the NHS's IT is run by Crapita. an extremely poor provider of ITC "solutions". Private Eye has been banging on about them since time began, but the upshot is I can very easily believe they were that badly configured.
The story goes that JFK left an executive order which still stands, stating that under no circumstances would America attempt to take part in a war of mutually assured destruction. He preferred leaving the planet to the Russkies than to the cockroaches.
And if you're in the UK, try it out at www.shazam.com
They managed to identify one of John Renbourn's early music albums, so they're pretty impressive in terms of how much music they've got in the database - they're fast too.
Main drawback is they can only cope with recorded music, so no figuring out who originally did that number your local pub-rock band is blasting out. Still, it's impressive (well, more like black magic for the techno-phobes:)
Yep, similar approach. The forums at Creative's site (at least the European ones) are (or were, it's a while since I frequented them) quite helpful, and Creative turn a blind eye to this kind of discussion, beyond pointing out what nasty things it does to your warranty (pah). See also Nomadness.net for more.
I assume that the battery is a proprietary size and shape, manufactured specifically for the model (yeah, it *is* a dumb approach - but it stops you buying the bastard batteries from anyone else). So when the manufacturer stops supporting it a couple of years down the line, you can't get a new battery, no matter how l33t your dismantling skills are.
Going right off-topic, has anyone seen or used the XClef players? There's only one place in the UK selling them, but the price is excellent and they seem to be reasonably well supported. Very little info on the web, though.
No, European rollout is supposed to be about August/September this year.
Personally, I can't wait. I used the Creative Jukebox for about a year, but it's become so buggy it's essentially unusable any more.
What I'd really like is a small portable stereo, w/ built-in speakers and a nice big hard-drive. It should be cheaper to make, as it wouldn't require woowoo miniatiurised batteries and amazing low-power dongles. Anyone know of something like this? I'm not after the hard drive hi-fi seperates, I want something entirely self contained.
errm...they say, "Hi, I've been travelling rounbd the world for the last six months. I have about 400 films here, which I'd appreciate you not X-raying?"
A few years ago, in mid-January, my mother received a Christmas card - a bit late, but given that the only thing written on the envelope was her name, we forgave them.
I suppose it helps that only a dozen people in the UK have our surname, but even so, it must be tempting to just chuck such items away.
Slashdot Mirror
However, I can't help feel it's missing the point. If Mandrake want to try and survive by simply selling boxed CDs of Free software, good luck to them. Most other vendors (SuSE, RH et al) have long since come to the conclusion that that's a mug's game. The money is in support, customisation, extension, integration (and buzzword implementation in general). I'm sure Mandrake's an excellent distro (though from what I've read on 9.2 so far doesn't appeal to me, but that's by the bye), but it's out there, and it's Free. If MandrakeSoft go bellyup (which wouldn't be a total shock, let's be honest), everything they've done, all that work, is still there and you're welcome to take it and build on it.
Personally, I see this as a giant step forward. P2P distribution has the potential to release companies from the shackles of maintaining in-house distros, and releasing that responsibility back to the community. There are already some genuinely successful noncommercial distros out there; room for more, I would say. This releases companies to do what they do to make money, rather than inefficiently maintaining distros, a task best done by communities.
What in the name of goodness do you do with these idiots?
Every quality musician I know who went into busking ended up making more money on the street then they ever did performing 'professionally'. This is in Britain, but I can't imagine gig rates are so wildly different in the US.
The best approach is to seperate all the colours and get yourself a range of flavoured vodkas. Fun, and potentially lethal :)
About a week ago, rec.music.makers.bagpipe disappeared completely from Google...it reappeared 24 hours later. Odd.
A record playing car! Behold!
Nitpickers of the world unite! (and if I hadn't just run out of mod points, +several insightful)
I wonder if this is a very good troll, to be honest.
Actually, it's not that bad an analogy. Spain freely hands over Gibralter to the Brits; some years later they change their mind and demand it back. Britain implies that they can go play with themselves, and Spain attempts to take it back, and get sent packing back to Madrid. Meanwhile, the rest of the world didn't give a damn.
Yep...I've had my own domain for six months now, and I've had exactly one piece of whois spam, and absolutely no other spam at all. Bliss :)
Are you at all familiar with the origins of the first World War?
It wasn't a couple of felons. Read a book called 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy' by Greg Palast. The upshot is that a private company was hired to remove felons from the rolls. They ended up removing (with state sanction) some 52,000 people who should not have been, mostly Black Democratic voters. How many votes did Gore lose by again?
As the law in the UK and the US stands, if you discover a new gene, you can get a patent on it. This is what a number of biotech companies have been doing, simply discovering and patenting genes as fast as they can, hoping that it will pay off big time when someone else discovers they're sitting on the next big thing.
Frankly, if it means the burglars are less likely to come prowling in with their gun out in front of them, I'm all for it. OTOH, I live in Britain, so it's a moot point anyway. We jail people who shoot burglars, and quite rightly. I can't even begin to imagine living in a society where you have to convince every police officer you come accross that you're nbot a dangerous threat. Ugh.
Maybe we're less free over here, but we're less dead, too.
This happened in the UK a year or two ago; the AA (a motoring organisation) was caught with its pants down stealing mapping data from the Ordnance Survey's published maps. They were caught on the basis of several of these little wiggles.
DSP chips are mostly manufactured to proprietary designs, and upgrading them means shelling out $$$ to the manufacturers/designers. This is why Rockbox, the open firmware for the Archos Jukebox, although theoretically capable of playing vorbis files, will never do so, because no-one can afford the proprietary information on the DSP. OTOH, using an open format like they are here (not that I RTFA) means it is possible.
I believe the NHS's IT is run by Crapita. an extremely poor provider of ITC "solutions". Private Eye has been banging on about them since time began, but the upshot is I can very easily believe they were that badly configured.
True? Maybe. Maybe not. But worth thinking about.
They managed to identify one of John Renbourn's early music albums, so they're pretty impressive in terms of how much music they've got in the database - they're fast too.
Main drawback is they can only cope with recorded music, so no figuring out who originally did that number your local pub-rock band is blasting out. Still, it's impressive (well, more like black magic for the techno-phobes :)
Yep, similar approach. The forums at Creative's site (at least the European ones) are (or were, it's a while since I frequented them) quite helpful, and Creative turn a blind eye to this kind of discussion, beyond pointing out what nasty things it does to your warranty (pah). See also Nomadness.net for more.
I assume that the battery is a proprietary size and shape, manufactured specifically for the model (yeah, it *is* a dumb approach - but it stops you buying the bastard batteries from anyone else). So when the manufacturer stops supporting it a couple of years down the line, you can't get a new battery, no matter how l33t your dismantling skills are. Going right off-topic, has anyone seen or used the XClef players? There's only one place in the UK selling them, but the price is excellent and they seem to be reasonably well supported. Very little info on the web, though.
Personally, I can't wait. I used the Creative Jukebox for about a year, but it's become so buggy it's essentially unusable any more.
What I'd really like is a small portable stereo, w/ built-in speakers and a nice big hard-drive. It should be cheaper to make, as it wouldn't require woowoo miniatiurised batteries and amazing low-power dongles. Anyone know of something like this? I'm not after the hard drive hi-fi seperates, I want something entirely self contained.
Nah nah, now I get to look at porn all day. It's my job. Same as before 'cept I get paid...woohoo!
Did I get it right?
Bingo.
I suppose it helps that only a dozen people in the UK have our surname, but even so, it must be tempting to just chuck such items away.