To satisfy your fiscally conservative side, why not backup your current Win7/8 system, do the free upgrade so you get your free Win10 license, and then restore back to Win7/8? That way, if you decide you really want Win10 in the future, you'll at least have acquired the license while it was free.
There is seemingly more innovation in the Chinese smartphone market right now though certainly there is a lot of copying and catch-up, too. But some of these Chinese manufacturers release new models many times per year instead of just on an annual refresh cycle. They have been trying things like multiple displays, cameras with changing orientations, dedicated hardware buttons for instant photo snapping, huge batteries, etc. Overall quality is picking up, too, but for sure, there is still a way to go. But nonetheless, these companies are probably more agile and willing to take some risks vs. Apple, Samsung, etc. LG at least seems willing to try something new once in a while.
This is so true--I really want to use open source software, but it simply doesn't cut it for some things. This is painfully obvious with some packages more than others, for example, LO Calc is just ridiculously clunky and slow compared to MS Excel. I use Excel almost every day of my working life to look at data sets, usually as scatter plots. Even with several thousand data points to plot up, when you click Ok, Excel basically displays your plot immediately. In turn, LO Calc can take many seconds up to minutes to display a plot, and this is with even small sets of just a couple hundred data points. Every time there was a new major or even minor release, I'd go back to OO or LO hoping that they would have this under control, but no dice. I had to stop holding my breath for this a while ago.
I've been doing quite a bit of traveling lately, and every time when confronted with one of these machines, I've chosen the alternative pat-down (it's your right, you can request this). Why? I simply don't trust them for the radiation exposure despite the claims that they are safe. I have NEVER seen them allow an infant through these systems--they just wave the mother/father around the device with the infant in their arms (and with no alternative pat-down for the parent...). If the TSA will not allow infants through the system, obviously they don't think the exposure levels are completely safe.
So anyway, sure, the alternative pat-down is super-invasive, but at least you avoid accumulated exposure. I only travel 5-6 time/year max., but for folks that might travel several times per month, I can imagine the accumulated exposure over many years will not be completely benign.
A side effect of requesting an alternative pat-down is that it seems to throw the system into convulsions. They start radio'ing around about needing somebody to deal with the "refuser", and waiting for someone to arrive can be either fast/immediate or slow (like 5+ minutes). For being a "refuser", besides the pat-down, you seem to obligatorily get swabbed/analyzed for explosive residue.
All in all, if just one person every few minutes were to request such an alternative pat-down, it would overwhelm the system. The problem with this is that they then just start waving people through to avoid clogging the pipes. So these people get a metal detector only--not a pat-down nor the full-body scan. If they just let people through like this, well, what is the whole purpose of this anyways???
Apple could certainly take the high road, and actually allow Flash, but not in the default configuration. Thus, end users would have to get it from the App Store knowingly. If it turned out to really be as bad as Apple claims, end users would be quickly saying, "hey, why the heck has my machine slowed to a crawl, and the battery life dropped to two hours?" Apple could put a prominent FAQ on it's website or make it the first scripted answer from support--"If you are experiencing sluggishness and reduced battery life, and have installed Flash via the App Store, please remove it, and check if your problem is solved before complaining more." Word on the street would be "Hey, don't install Flash because it cripples your iDevice." This would clearly shift the burden to Adobe--or they pick up the ball and run with it (i.e. engineer Flash from being a cpu/battery hog and security risk), or they loose brainshare/marketshare because they cannot do so (as Apple claims). Apple's actions are far from the high road even though they present them as that...
The fact of Global Warming isn't really in question.
Let me applaud you on getting this correct because some still deny it is even occurring.
There is extremely good evidence that the process is substantially if not entirely natural.
But I won't let you get away with this because it is simply incorrect. The vast majority of the scientific community that has studied this has reached the conclusion that it is related to human activity. Even George W. Bush finally admitted before the start of the G8 summit last year that global warming was linked to human activity.
Science, not just climate science, is overall a very conservative discipline. For the majority of the scientific community to have arrived at the conclusion that our planet is warming related to anthropogenic activity is not simply because a couple of scientists or even hundreds or thousands of scientists have said so. It is because an overwhelming amount of evidence from every corner of the globe has led them to this conclusion.
Yes, there are still some climate scientists, by far a small minority, that still claim that either global warming is not occurring, or if so, it is not related to human activity. That's ok, that's part of the scientific process, and everybody has a different understanding of reasonable doubt. But as evidence continues to pour in day after day from around the globe, I think eventually even that small majority will have a change of opinion.
Along the East Coast, most major cities are, in fact, on or very close to the ocean. Washington, D.C., NYC, Boston, etc. are all coastal.
Even though a hurricane quickly loses intensity over land, there are many factors at play. For example, Katrina was an absolute behemoth, and hurricane force winds extended something like 150-200 miles inland just because the storm was so large.
As to the relationship between global warming and hurricanes, there is none.
While at this time, there is perhaps no unequivocal evidence to relate the changing frequencies/intensities of hurricanes to global warming, they are undoubtedly linked as almost any physical model will predict. While simple physical models generally predict that as the earth warms, the frequency and intensity of these storms should increase as well, the climate system is a complex beast with many feedbacks that are not necessarily intuitive.
The real problem with linking global warming and hurricanes is that, well, we have very few long-term records of hurricane activity. "Reliable" records of hurricane activity based on meteorological observations, etc. only stretch back about 100 years. And before that we rely on historical observations. But a significant bias with the historical observations is that they generally only include land-falling hurricanes. Nowadays, we can see all the hurricanes and/or tropical depressions and storms that form thanks to satellite observations. This includes even those only that exist at sea--for example, the recent hurricanes Maria and Nate that never made landfalls. But prior to satellite observations, such systems would never have had the chance to be counted.
Sorry for the long discourse here, but my whole point was to suggest that while there is currently no definitive relationship between global warming and hurricanes, it is not probably because one does not exist, but simply because we do not yet have enough evidence.
Come on, even Mr. Bush has finally made a public declaration that the observed warming of our planet is related to anthropogenic forces. He made this (public) declaration a few weeks ago right before the beginning of the G8 summit.
Science, not just climate science, is overall a very conservative discipline. To have arrived at the conclusion that our planet is warming related to anthropogenic activity is not simply because a couple of scientists or even hundreds or thousands of scientists have said so. It is because day after day from almost every corner of the planet results from scientific analyses and studies have led us to this conclusion.
You mention your several friends in climatology, geology, and astronomy who shake their heads, etc. Believe me, they are certainly far from the mainstream of scientific thought about this.
Again, let me reiterate that science is generally conservative. That the majority of climate scientists agree that the warming is at least partly related to anthropogenic activity man means that tons and tons and tons of strong evidence has forced their conservative minds to this conclusion.
In the U.S., when a jury goes out to decide if a defendent has committed a crime, they should not convict the defendent if they find a *reasonable* doubt about the alleged crime. But some people have a hard time distinguishing the difference between *reasonable* doubt, and *any* doubt. Don't confuse *reasonable* with *any*.
That the mainstream scientific community has concluded that humans are at least partially responsible for the warming of our planet is because they understand the meaning and significance of *reasonable*. That a few climate scientists, by far a small minority, still claim that there is *reasonable* doubt is also fine. If those few scientists are good and true, the overwhelming evidence pouring in from around the globe essentially every day will eventually change their opinions. But for the majority of the scientific community, their is no more reasonable doubt--human activity, in particular, greenhouse gas emissions, is definitely linked with the observed warming of our planet.
Since you didn't reference what you were talking about, I was left to guess what dramatic "hateful things" you were referring to. The most incendiary thing about the article is its title which we know is false and misleading.
Instead, if you considered that somebody badmouthing Linux, and calling it "garbage" was the "hateful thing", sorry for my misinterpretation. But in this second case, I'd say that you are a bit sensitive, and moreover, I'd advise you to never use Windows because your feelings will be hurt a lot!
Just went to check out the MMG website at http://www.marketingmetrixgroup.com/, and saw it has been defaced with the following message:
"hey metrix! Ferror was here!
yeahh let's go!! hahaha fuck off our T0RRENTS. back off and die!!!!"
There are plenty of things Apple has "copied" from various OSes including Windows. How about the rumored two-button mouse Apple is working on--an independent innovation? Anybody remember the piss-poor supposed multi-tasking of OS9 and earlier? When decent multitasking finally appeared in OSX via its BSD base, all of a sudden many Mac folks who thought they actually had decent multi-tasking earlier on finally realized what it actually was. Here's a kicker--let's develop a tiny music player that doesn't have room for buttons nor an LCD screen, and we'll give it "shuffle" ability to play the songs in random order. Holy cow, Batman, similar "shuffle" or "random mix" ability has been present since the earliest CD players... Just because Apple comes out with a product does not mean it is innovative. Steve Jobs can declare all he wants that MS is copying Apple, but again, Apple has done plenty of copying itself.
I find it hard to believe that *not* including a Firewire cable really makes a big difference financially. I mean if you look around on the web, you can easily find Firewire cables for just a couple of bucks. If Apple is selling millions of iPods, and can therefore guarantee a supplier it will order millions of Firewire cables, it should be able to get them for just a dollar or so, or perhaps even less. I like the option of have two different packages--one with a Firewire cable, and the other with a USB2 cable. That way you pick what you want/need, and the "faithful" with old USB v1.1 Macs do not get screwed...
Jeez, it seems like every single hardware/software update that Apple produces gets a Slashdot posting. I know Apple is cool, but there are also plenty of other things happening in the techsphere/geeksphere...
Are story submissions to Slashdot so poor that we must resort to this??? Wait, wait--maybe I really don't want to know the answer to this question...
Since most Slashdot readers will not RTFA before commenting, let me clearly point out that this is *not* about wanting the companies involved to open up their source code for use by OSS. It is simply requesting that the existing firmware be freely distributable by OSS without onerous conditions.
For A.D.D. and no-RTFA Slashdot readers/commenters, let me repeat that this is simply about being able to freely distribute an already compiled (e.g. binary) version of the firmware. OpenBSD is *not* asking for the source code.
Loosely speaking, the firmware in question is already freely available--you just go to the website and download it. But that doesn't help when you are loading a distro. If you *only* have a wireless connection, this is a chicken-or-the-egg problem. You can't go to the website to download the firmware because your wireless NIC won't work without the firmware. Yeah, there are many possible workarounds, but by simply allowing the firmware to be freely distributable without onerous licensing terms, the wireless NIC can work right off the bat.
Unless your foresight is amazingly shallow, or simply a Theo-hater, note that this will benefit *all* OSS, and not just OpenBSD.
However, in the case of the firmware, I think several different issues come up
No, no, no--this whole argument is irrelevant because this is not what is being requested.
They are only requesting the ability to freely distribute the firmware with OpenBSD and other OSS. They are not asking that the hard-/firm-/software be opened for use by OSS.
Most hardware manufacturers allow Microsoft to freely distribute basic driver software for their products. Does it seem unreasonable that OSS should not be able to distribute they same type of stuff?
Does Microsoft require that hardware manufacturers open the code to them in order for it to be included in Windows? No. And this is the same with OpenBSD's request efforts. They are not requesting that the code be opened, they simply want to be able to distribute it so when you load their distro (or any OSS distro) your hardware will be functional immediately instead of having to go to a website to download it.
This would eliminate many chicken-or-the-egg first problems. For a user that only has wireless connectivity, how will they be able to get to a website to download software if their dumb wireless NIC is brain-dead on arrival because of this firmware load-on-the-fly technique? Yeah, of course there are many solutions, but the simplest one would be to have the firmware freely distributable so it could be included along with any distro.
Loosely speaking, the firmware in question is already freely available--you just go to the website and download it. So the request to simply include it (no reverse engineering, no open source code, etc.) along with an OSS distro doesn't seem outlandish at least to me.
For those who think this only affects OpenBSD, you have quite shallow foresight.
[radio static on]Hello RedLeg, are you there??? Come in, Redleg...[radio static off]
OpenBSD (and others) simply want to be able to freely distribute the firmware with OpenBSD (or other OSS) freely.
The request is *not* to open up the firmware like your message suggests. Again, since you missed it the first time, the request is *not* to open up the firmware like your message suggests.
Maybe the average slashdot reader does not have a long enough attention span to follow such logic through, but this is honestly important not to just OpenBSD, but all OSS in general.
Well, it's real easy to simply get rid of the Office Startup shortcut in the Startup group so Word won't be preloaded. Even then, it starts up much, much faster than OpenOffice. OO is ok, but ultralethargic to compared to the MS Office even for simple operations. It (OO) needs a ton more polishing to be quite frank.
Ever try plotting a simple dataset in the OO spreadsheet proggie? It is excruciatingly slow. Using the exact same dataset, when I click to generate a graph of it in Excel, it appears essentially instantly. But in OO, the same type of plot using the exact same dataset can take 45 seconds to plot once you give it the ok! Yes, this has been confirmed on multiple computers, and by multiple users. Basically, it's unusable.
Again, I'm all for something like a free, totally functional office suite, but at this point OO is nowhere close to MS Office except for the most rudimentary tasks. If the average joe justs does rudimentary tasks, well, they are probably OK with OO. But I certainly find it frustratingly limiting and unpolished.
Oh, guess I should say I am still using Office 97...
I think it's impossible for my Slashdot-oriented brain to process "software" and "Utah" and "domination" all in the same sentence, and have it end up positive. I'm suing SCO, those bloody bastids!!!
Honestly, I have to say Ken is pretty unbelievable--he has an incredible breadth of knowledge. Seriously, some folks were saying he is just a good button presser. This is BS--even if does press the button with uncommon expertise (how hard can it be???), he damn near well knows something about everything from opera to history to literature to science to whatever! I don't usually watch Jeopardy, my wife does, but lately I've been watching every night just to follow Ken's progress. Gotta say that it has me hooked...
Idealism must mesh with reality at some point. I use Firefox, love it, and will probably never go back.
However, there are still websites that only render correctly within Internet Explorer. The Dell website is a great example--within some of their "Premier" stores, they have a series of nested menus that are built around ActiveX controls. Thus, they only work with Internet Explorer. Try it with another browser, and duh, um, um, um, I'm clicking, I'm clicking, but nothing is happening...
Yeah, I have actually written to Dell about this instead of just accepting it, and though I received an initial response back, I did not receive back a response when I requested they use a vendor-neutral technology like Javascript instead. Unfortunately, they would rather write a website that works for 95% of the population.
As an end user, there is pretty much nothing I can do about this. Yes, I did my part by writing them, but unless a significant portion of their customer base does the same thing, they will not change.
Slashdot Mirror
To satisfy your fiscally conservative side, why not backup your current Win7/8 system, do the free upgrade so you get your free Win10 license, and then restore back to Win7/8? That way, if you decide you really want Win10 in the future, you'll at least have acquired the license while it was free.
Very true, kind of like animated GIFs, which are the new rage for youngins, have actually been around forever...
There is seemingly more innovation in the Chinese smartphone market right now though certainly there is a lot of copying and catch-up, too. But some of these Chinese manufacturers release new models many times per year instead of just on an annual refresh cycle. They have been trying things like multiple displays, cameras with changing orientations, dedicated hardware buttons for instant photo snapping, huge batteries, etc. Overall quality is picking up, too, but for sure, there is still a way to go. But nonetheless, these companies are probably more agile and willing to take some risks vs. Apple, Samsung, etc. LG at least seems willing to try something new once in a while.
This is so true--I really want to use open source software, but it simply doesn't cut it for some things. This is painfully obvious with some packages more than others, for example, LO Calc is just ridiculously clunky and slow compared to MS Excel. I use Excel almost every day of my working life to look at data sets, usually as scatter plots. Even with several thousand data points to plot up, when you click Ok, Excel basically displays your plot immediately. In turn, LO Calc can take many seconds up to minutes to display a plot, and this is with even small sets of just a couple hundred data points. Every time there was a new major or even minor release, I'd go back to OO or LO hoping that they would have this under control, but no dice. I had to stop holding my breath for this a while ago.
I've been doing quite a bit of traveling lately, and every time when confronted with one of these machines, I've chosen the alternative pat-down (it's your right, you can request this). Why? I simply don't trust them for the radiation exposure despite the claims that they are safe. I have NEVER seen them allow an infant through these systems--they just wave the mother/father around the device with the infant in their arms (and with no alternative pat-down for the parent...). If the TSA will not allow infants through the system, obviously they don't think the exposure levels are completely safe. So anyway, sure, the alternative pat-down is super-invasive, but at least you avoid accumulated exposure. I only travel 5-6 time/year max., but for folks that might travel several times per month, I can imagine the accumulated exposure over many years will not be completely benign. A side effect of requesting an alternative pat-down is that it seems to throw the system into convulsions. They start radio'ing around about needing somebody to deal with the "refuser", and waiting for someone to arrive can be either fast/immediate or slow (like 5+ minutes). For being a "refuser", besides the pat-down, you seem to obligatorily get swabbed/analyzed for explosive residue. All in all, if just one person every few minutes were to request such an alternative pat-down, it would overwhelm the system. The problem with this is that they then just start waving people through to avoid clogging the pipes. So these people get a metal detector only--not a pat-down nor the full-body scan. If they just let people through like this, well, what is the whole purpose of this anyways???
Apple could certainly take the high road, and actually allow Flash, but not in the default configuration. Thus, end users would have to get it from the App Store knowingly. If it turned out to really be as bad as Apple claims, end users would be quickly saying, "hey, why the heck has my machine slowed to a crawl, and the battery life dropped to two hours?" Apple could put a prominent FAQ on it's website or make it the first scripted answer from support--"If you are experiencing sluggishness and reduced battery life, and have installed Flash via the App Store, please remove it, and check if your problem is solved before complaining more." Word on the street would be "Hey, don't install Flash because it cripples your iDevice." This would clearly shift the burden to Adobe--or they pick up the ball and run with it (i.e. engineer Flash from being a cpu/battery hog and security risk), or they loose brainshare/marketshare because they cannot do so (as Apple claims). Apple's actions are far from the high road even though they present them as that...
Science, not just climate science, is overall a very conservative discipline. For the majority of the scientific community to have arrived at the conclusion that our planet is warming related to anthropogenic activity is not simply because a couple of scientists or even hundreds or thousands of scientists have said so. It is because an overwhelming amount of evidence from every corner of the globe has led them to this conclusion.
Yes, there are still some climate scientists, by far a small minority, that still claim that either global warming is not occurring, or if so, it is not related to human activity. That's ok, that's part of the scientific process, and everybody has a different understanding of reasonable doubt. But as evidence continues to pour in day after day from around the globe, I think eventually even that small majority will have a change of opinion.
Along the East Coast, most major cities are, in fact, on or very close to the ocean. Washington, D.C., NYC, Boston, etc. are all coastal.
Even though a hurricane quickly loses intensity over land, there are many factors at play. For example, Katrina was an absolute behemoth, and hurricane force winds extended something like 150-200 miles inland just because the storm was so large.
While at this time, there is perhaps no unequivocal evidence to relate the changing frequencies/intensities of hurricanes to global warming, they are undoubtedly linked as almost any physical model will predict. While simple physical models generally predict that as the earth warms, the frequency and intensity of these storms should increase as well, the climate system is a complex beast with many feedbacks that are not necessarily intuitive.
The real problem with linking global warming and hurricanes is that, well, we have very few long-term records of hurricane activity. "Reliable" records of hurricane activity based on meteorological observations, etc. only stretch back about 100 years. And before that we rely on historical observations. But a significant bias with the historical observations is that they generally only include land-falling hurricanes. Nowadays, we can see all the hurricanes and/or tropical depressions and storms that form thanks to satellite observations. This includes even those only that exist at sea--for example, the recent hurricanes Maria and Nate that never made landfalls. But prior to satellite observations, such systems would never have had the chance to be counted.
Sorry for the long discourse here, but my whole point was to suggest that while there is currently no definitive relationship between global warming and hurricanes, it is not probably because one does not exist, but simply because we do not yet have enough evidence.
Come on, even Mr. Bush has finally made a public declaration that the observed warming of our planet is related to anthropogenic forces. He made this (public) declaration a few weeks ago right before the beginning of the G8 summit.
Science, not just climate science, is overall a very conservative discipline. To have arrived at the conclusion that our planet is warming related to anthropogenic activity is not simply because a couple of scientists or even hundreds or thousands of scientists have said so. It is because day after day from almost every corner of the planet results from scientific analyses and studies have led us to this conclusion.
You mention your several friends in climatology, geology, and astronomy who shake their heads, etc. Believe me, they are certainly far from the mainstream of scientific thought about this.
Again, let me reiterate that science is generally conservative. That the majority of climate scientists agree that the warming is at least partly related to anthropogenic activity man means that tons and tons and tons of strong evidence has forced their conservative minds to this conclusion.
In the U.S., when a jury goes out to decide if a defendent has committed a crime, they should not convict the defendent if they find a *reasonable* doubt about the alleged crime. But some people have a hard time distinguishing the difference between *reasonable* doubt, and *any* doubt. Don't confuse *reasonable* with *any*.
That the mainstream scientific community has concluded that humans are at least partially responsible for the warming of our planet is because they understand the meaning and significance of *reasonable*. That a few climate scientists, by far a small minority, still claim that there is *reasonable* doubt is also fine. If those few scientists are good and true, the overwhelming evidence pouring in from around the globe essentially every day will eventually change their opinions. But for the majority of the scientific community, their is no more reasonable doubt--human activity, in particular, greenhouse gas emissions, is definitely linked with the observed warming of our planet.
Jeez, so that I had to reread the summary five or six times, and still didn't come away with a clear picture now makes sense...
Since you didn't reference what you were talking about, I was left to guess what dramatic "hateful things" you were referring to. The most incendiary thing about the article is its title which we know is false and misleading.
Instead, if you considered that somebody badmouthing Linux, and calling it "garbage" was the "hateful thing", sorry for my misinterpretation. But in this second case, I'd say that you are a bit sensitive, and moreover, I'd advise you to never use Windows because your feelings will be hurt a lot!
Just went to check out the MMG website at http://www.marketingmetrixgroup.com/, and saw it has been defaced with the following message: "hey metrix! Ferror was here! yeahh let's go!! hahaha fuck off our T0RRENTS. back off and die!!!!"
Does an Apple hardware update really merit a Slashdot front page posting? Come on, there are plenty of other things to discuss...
There are plenty of things Apple has "copied" from various OSes including Windows. How about the rumored two-button mouse Apple is working on--an independent innovation? Anybody remember the piss-poor supposed multi-tasking of OS9 and earlier? When decent multitasking finally appeared in OSX via its BSD base, all of a sudden many Mac folks who thought they actually had decent multi-tasking earlier on finally realized what it actually was. Here's a kicker--let's develop a tiny music player that doesn't have room for buttons nor an LCD screen, and we'll give it "shuffle" ability to play the songs in random order. Holy cow, Batman, similar "shuffle" or "random mix" ability has been present since the earliest CD players... Just because Apple comes out with a product does not mean it is innovative. Steve Jobs can declare all he wants that MS is copying Apple, but again, Apple has done plenty of copying itself.
How can this amazing innovation really make the front page of a website. Oh yeah, this is slashdot...
--codguy
I find it hard to believe that *not* including a Firewire cable really makes a big difference financially. I mean if you look around on the web, you can easily find Firewire cables for just a couple of bucks. If Apple is selling millions of iPods, and can therefore guarantee a supplier it will order millions of Firewire cables, it should be able to get them for just a dollar or so, or perhaps even less. I like the option of have two different packages--one with a Firewire cable, and the other with a USB2 cable. That way you pick what you want/need, and the "faithful" with old USB v1.1 Macs do not get screwed...
--codguy
Jeez, it seems like every single hardware/software update that Apple produces gets a Slashdot posting. I know Apple is cool, but there are also plenty of other things happening in the techsphere/geeksphere...
Are story submissions to Slashdot so poor that we must resort to this??? Wait, wait--maybe I really don't want to know the answer to this question...
Since most Slashdot readers will not RTFA before commenting, let me clearly point out that this is *not* about wanting the companies involved to open up their source code for use by OSS. It is simply requesting that the existing firmware be freely distributable by OSS without onerous conditions.
For A.D.D. and no-RTFA Slashdot readers/commenters, let me repeat that this is simply about being able to freely distribute an already compiled (e.g. binary) version of the firmware. OpenBSD is *not* asking for the source code.
Loosely speaking, the firmware in question is already freely available--you just go to the website and download it. But that doesn't help when you are loading a distro. If you *only* have a wireless connection, this is a chicken-or-the-egg problem. You can't go to the website to download the firmware because your wireless NIC won't work without the firmware. Yeah, there are many possible workarounds, but by simply allowing the firmware to be freely distributable without onerous licensing terms, the wireless NIC can work right off the bat.
Unless your foresight is amazingly shallow, or simply a Theo-hater, note that this will benefit *all* OSS, and not just OpenBSD.
--codguy
However, in the case of the firmware, I think several different issues come up
No, no, no--this whole argument is irrelevant because this is not what is being requested.
They are only requesting the ability to freely distribute the firmware with OpenBSD and other OSS. They are not asking that the hard-/firm-/software be opened for use by OSS.
Most hardware manufacturers allow Microsoft to freely distribute basic driver software for their products. Does it seem unreasonable that OSS should not be able to distribute they same type of stuff?
Does Microsoft require that hardware manufacturers open the code to them in order for it to be included in Windows? No. And this is the same with OpenBSD's request efforts. They are not requesting that the code be opened, they simply want to be able to distribute it so when you load their distro (or any OSS distro) your hardware will be functional immediately instead of having to go to a website to download it.
This would eliminate many chicken-or-the-egg first problems. For a user that only has wireless connectivity, how will they be able to get to a website to download software if their dumb wireless NIC is brain-dead on arrival because of this firmware load-on-the-fly technique? Yeah, of course there are many solutions, but the simplest one would be to have the firmware freely distributable so it could be included along with any distro.
Loosely speaking, the firmware in question is already freely available--you just go to the website and download it. So the request to simply include it (no reverse engineering, no open source code, etc.) along with an OSS distro doesn't seem outlandish at least to me.
For those who think this only affects OpenBSD, you have quite shallow foresight.
--codguy
[radio static on]Hello RedLeg, are you there??? Come in, Redleg...[radio static off]
OpenBSD (and others) simply want to be able to freely distribute the firmware with OpenBSD (or other OSS) freely.
The request is *not* to open up the firmware like your message suggests. Again, since you missed it the first time, the request is *not* to open up the firmware like your message suggests.
Maybe the average slashdot reader does not have a long enough attention span to follow such logic through, but this is honestly important not to just OpenBSD, but all OSS in general.
--codguy
Well, it's real easy to simply get rid of the Office Startup shortcut in the Startup group so Word won't be preloaded. Even then, it starts up much, much faster than OpenOffice. OO is ok, but ultralethargic to compared to the MS Office even for simple operations. It (OO) needs a ton more polishing to be quite frank.
Ever try plotting a simple dataset in the OO spreadsheet proggie? It is excruciatingly slow. Using the exact same dataset, when I click to generate a graph of it in Excel, it appears essentially instantly. But in OO, the same type of plot using the exact same dataset can take 45 seconds to plot once you give it the ok! Yes, this has been confirmed on multiple computers, and by multiple users. Basically, it's unusable.
Again, I'm all for something like a free, totally functional office suite, but at this point OO is nowhere close to MS Office except for the most rudimentary tasks. If the average joe justs does rudimentary tasks, well, they are probably OK with OO. But I certainly find it frustratingly limiting and unpolished.
Oh, guess I should say I am still using Office 97...
I think it's impossible for my Slashdot-oriented brain to process "software" and "Utah" and "domination" all in the same sentence, and have it end up positive. I'm suing SCO, those bloody bastids!!!
Honestly, I have to say Ken is pretty unbelievable--he has an incredible breadth of knowledge. Seriously, some folks were saying he is just a good button presser. This is BS--even if does press the button with uncommon expertise (how hard can it be???), he damn near well knows something about everything from opera to history to literature to science to whatever! I don't usually watch Jeopardy, my wife does, but lately I've been watching every night just to follow Ken's progress. Gotta say that it has me hooked...
codguy
Idealism must mesh with reality at some point. I use Firefox, love it, and will probably never go back.
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However, there are still websites that only render correctly within Internet Explorer. The Dell website is a great example--within some of their "Premier" stores, they have a series of nested menus that are built around ActiveX controls. Thus, they only work with Internet Explorer. Try it with another browser, and duh, um, um, um, I'm clicking, I'm clicking, but nothing is happening.
Yeah, I have actually written to Dell about this instead of just accepting it, and though I received an initial response back, I did not receive back a response when I requested they use a vendor-neutral technology like Javascript instead. Unfortunately, they would rather write a website that works for 95% of the population.
As an end user, there is pretty much nothing I can do about this. Yes, I did my part by writing them, but unless a significant portion of their customer base does the same thing, they will not change.