What would really be nice is some sort of way to fake RPM into thinking that the new tarball you just compiled and installed was something installed through RPM. Perhaps some sort of file list that comes with the tarball that could be sent to the rpm command. In other words, a way to tell rpm "I just installed this myself, here's what it looks like".
It is really nice having a nice rpmized version installed because you don't have to remember things like what files make up the program.
Re:It's all in the ROM
on
Linux on Palm
·
· Score: 1
That's what EPROMs are for. EPROM burners aren't all that expensive.
You could also build a replacement for the PALM ROM that contained a smaller loader ROM that did nothing more than talk to the PC and a larger amount of RAM to hold the new OS.
This isn't a particularly new concept. In the old Apple ][+, you could load a new OS into a RAM card that replaced the original OS installed in the ROM that came with the system. This didn't work exactly like what I mention above, but you get the idea...
Sometimes business comes down to personalities. Ellison would do anything to get at Gates, and if he sees Linux as the way to do that, you can bet that he'll back Linux with pretty much anything at his disposal.
Remember that the relationship with Sun came out of the whole Java/Network Computer idea, the goal of which was, of course, to break the Wintel monopoly.
My thoughts exactly. My chief problem with WindowsCE was that they were trying to cram too much "big OS" stuff in a little box that didn't really need it. Is this really any different?
Still, I'm enough of a geek that I'll probably load it.
You miss the point. The "western world" does not feed china or india. They feed themselves using techniques invented this century. This is in direct contradiction to the implication of the original post, which stated that the "western world" only advanced at the expense of the third world. This is definitely not true. Both india and china are better off today then they were 100 years ago, and the prime problem in both countries is not loss of resources to the west but overpopulation, which is hardly the west's fault.
Very few people outside of MS have actually seen MS code.
This isn't entirely true. You do get some source code with Visual Studio. Specifically, you get the source to the C Runtime libraries and MFC. Also, they have become big on template libraries, and since C++ templates require source code availability, you get the source to the Active Template Library, and the OLE-DB Templates.
There does seem to be an interesting coding style at Microsoft. They are big on Hungarian notation (which I personally can't stand). There are also some widely held style beliefs that they ignore. (They seem to absolutely love macro functions, for instance.)
One interesting side note is that their implementation of the Standard Template Library was written outside the company by P. L. Plauger, and as you'd expect uses a completely different coding style.
It is the part of the free software foundation that produces code. See Here. The original idea was to develop a completely free Unix. Some Finnish guy came along and created his own free kernel, though, before they finished. He used his kernel, and the add-on tools they developed, to create a complete, free Unix (or Unix-like) system. (He also used their development tools to build the kernel.) This is what most people call Linux. As they say on their website: "though these systems are often referred to as ``Linux'', they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems."
(Personally, I don't think that this rolls off the tounge well enough to ever catch on, but it is a shame that the GNU people don't get as much public credit as they deserve.)
All parties except for one. If a negative judgement is in the offing (and given Friday's ruling, it seems likely) then it is in Microsoft's best interest to stall things as long as possible.
For us consumers, though, you are right. It would be best to get this resolved, one way or another.
I recently worked for a large retailer who also did a lot of catalog business, and they did (and certainly still do) quite a bit to collect info on their customers. I just figured I'd throw out some of the whys so that people could see it from their point of view. This isn't about anything online, but I'm sure that the same rules apply.
They send out a huge number of catalogs every year, and those catalogs cost them a fair amount to produce. At least $1 a pop. So obviously it is in their best interest to only send catalogs to those who actually want them. And in a very real sense, if they were able to do this perfectly, it would be good for the consumer as well. No one would be bothered with junk mail they didn't want. In theory, it would be a win-win situation.
But to go about this requires collecting a lot of data, some of it that would bother a privacy expert, and likely even a normal customer. For example, they want to track whether or not you go to the store after receiving a catalog. This tells them that, even though you didn't order through the catalog, it still brought you to the store and therefore wasn't a wasted mailing. Of course, to do this, they have to somehow get your address when you buy from the store.
I was in the unfortunate position of doing some of the programming at the front end, and it bothered me because we quite literally were doing things behind our customer's backs. For instance, store personel would ask for a customer's zip-code "for marketting purposes". Now, I'm sure nearly everyone thinks this is for some sort of demographic info. It is not. Instead, they take the zip code, and your name, and use the combination to figure out your entire address. In other words, they say, "Aha, this credit card number belongs to the John Smith at zipcode 12345. Since there is only one, this means that he's the one that lives at 555, mockingbird lane. let's send him a catalog".
We used check readers for similar purposes. Customers assume that their checks are being authorized. They are not. Instead, the bank account number is captured, and then sent to a nice little service that returns a name and address when given a bank account number.
But again, this is all just to figure out who to send catalogs to. Which creates an interesting situation. The company ends up with all this data on you, your name, credit card number, bank account. Data that I'm sure makes everyone here a little (or a lot) queasy to see in someone's hands. Yet it isn't captured for any real nefarious purpose. It is, at least in theory, captured to help you, at least from the company's point of view.
This is why companies can act so schizophrenic about privacy. They truly do what they do to help "serve you better". Unfortunately, the end result is not necessarily in your best interest.
I completely understand the whole situation at "Real". I'm sure that the people who invaded the privacy of all of their users truly believed that they were doing what they were doing to help serve their customers better. That is what makes the corporate invasion of privacy so insidious. The people who do it don't think they are doing anything to hurt anyone. And they really aren't, in their own little world. But the net effect of a thousand companies "better serving" their customers is a complete and utter destruction of any notion of privacy.
It would make more sense if you returned them back to the manufacturer for reloading. Perhaps they could give five bucks off of a new phone if you return the old one, or somesuch.
I only picked this because it was something that personally caused me great pain. Believe me, I could sit here and come up with many, many more.
Besides, you still miss the point which was that a) OS/2 started out as a joint Microsoft product and b) the split was Microsoft's idea. Basically, Microsoft screwed those of us who did exactly what Microsoft had originally told us we should be doing, that is, develop for OS/2.
will I violate your copyright? (That's not a dig, just an interesting question.)
Unfortunately, I don't think copyright law works real well in the context of a conferencing system. On the one hand, it doesn't seem right that a third party ought to be able to steal your words without citing them. On the other hand, the idea that a two-line post is "copyrighted" seems a little odd as well. I'm willing to bet that whoever used that quote just assumed "fair use" (if they thought of it at all) as normally a one line quote is fair use. But then, normally a one line quote is not 50% of the original "document".
The above mentioned difficulty happened in 1988. Before then, OS/2 was a joint Microsoft/IBM project. When they had their little tiff, and Microsoft bailed, they dropped their OS/2 support. This was quite problematic being that the prior version of their compiler was the "official" OS/2 compiler, and the only one available.
IBM did eventually support it, but they didn't get their compiler out for a year or so. Not surprising since the Microsoft compiler was originally the "Official" one. Now this would have been ok, had Microsoft not dropped all support for the prior version of the compiler, leaving those consumers, like my former company, who had been following the Microsoft line by using the OS that they said was the future (OS/2), totally out in the cold.
This was not about "Supporting a competitor's product". This is about refusing to support your own product for marketting reasons.
Who is next on your interview list, Satan himself?
I don't know, that could be interesting, don't you think? I'd personally like to ask him what his plans are now that the Justice department appears to be about to restrain his biggest competition.
One of the biggest problems with the mainstream press is its habit of analysing everything to death the instant anything interesting happens. Those analyses invariably look silly a month or a year later, because they are always made too quickly, before things really settle. That's exactly what is happening here.
It is far, far too early to call this a "Post-Microsoft Era", either in referring to the trial or the effects of Linux. In regards to the trial, the true effects won't really be known for years, or even decades. It is silly to try to pretend that we know what this will mean for the future. We can't. We can just sit along and watch, and perhaps nudge our little part of it in the direction we want it to go.
In regards to Linux, there are a number of huge hurdles to overcome before it can really be a threat to Windows in the desktop market. (And most of them are not technical.) This ruling probably helps, but who can really say at this point?
I sure as hell know that I benefited when they removed the OS/2 support from their C compiler and simultaneously refused to support all older versions of their C compiler.
I know that it certainly benefited my company in its quest to maintain a suite of OS/2 applications to be suddenly left with only an unsupported compiler, with no warning.
I'd continue on to describe the benefits I've personally felt as a consumer, but I don't the time...
This just doesn't fly. If you look at the "Forbes 400" list, Micheal Dell is right up there, just a couple notches down from Gates. Yet you don't see any long rants about the evils of Dell computers.
There are plenty of successful companies that don't get the negative attention that Microsoft does. There's a reason for that.
I think you've hit on the exact reason that this legal stuff is just an interesting side-show. A few years back, I was beginning to think that legal action was the only thing that was going to rein Microsoft in. Now, I'm returning to my libertarian roots. The free market is handling the monopoly. I think they're pretty much at the crest, and are going to go the way of IBM. They'll always be powerful, and even dominant in some industries, but I think the time is coming soon where Microsoft will become one of the "old guard".
Slashdot Mirror
Just to be pedantic, I think you've got to buy office to get that damn paper clip.
It does come with its own simple word processor, though. (Wordpad, which is under appreciated, as it deals Word documents with Word's bloat.)
4) APIs that shift like quick-sand
I've seen the future, and it is CoInitializeExExExExEx();
However, to muddy the waters even further: Microsoft has been shoving graphics functions into kernel mode for a while now.
What would really be nice is some sort of way to fake RPM into thinking that the new tarball you just compiled and installed was something installed through RPM. Perhaps some sort of file list that comes with the tarball that could be sent to the rpm command. In other words, a way to tell rpm "I just installed this myself, here's what it looks like".
It is really nice having a nice rpmized version installed because you don't have to remember things like what files make up the program.
That's what EPROMs are for. EPROM burners aren't all that expensive.
You could also build a replacement for the PALM ROM that contained a smaller loader ROM that did nothing more than talk to the PC and a larger amount of RAM to hold the new OS.
This isn't a particularly new concept. In the old Apple ][+, you could load a new OS into a RAM card that replaced the original OS installed in the ROM that came with the system. This didn't work exactly like what I mention above, but you get the idea...
Seems kind of silly to talk about "Competition for CE" as WindowsCE is currently getting its ass kicked by the OS that ships with the Palm.
Yes, and there is one simple reason why:
Ellison hates Gates.
Sometimes business comes down to personalities. Ellison would do anything to get at Gates, and if he sees Linux as the way to do that, you can bet that he'll back Linux with pretty much anything at his disposal.
Remember that the relationship with Sun came out of the whole Java/Network Computer idea, the goal of which was, of course, to break the Wintel monopoly.
My thoughts exactly. My chief problem with WindowsCE was that they were trying to cram too much "big OS" stuff in a little box that didn't really need it. Is this really any different?
Still, I'm enough of a geek that I'll probably load it.
You miss the point. The "western world" does not feed china or india. They feed themselves using techniques invented this century. This is in direct contradiction to the implication of the original post, which stated that the "western world" only advanced at the expense of the third world. This is definitely not true. Both india and china are better off today then they were 100 years ago, and the prime problem in both countries is not loss of resources to the west but overpopulation, which is hardly the west's fault.
400 hundred years ago, neither China nor India could feed 250 million people, much less the one billion people they feed now.
400 hundred years ago, the population of Africa was 100 million. Now its 700 million.
What do you suppose the reason for that is?
Because we raped their environment?
Very few people outside of MS have actually seen MS code.
This isn't entirely true. You do get some source code with Visual Studio. Specifically, you get the source to the C Runtime libraries and MFC. Also, they have become big on template libraries, and since C++ templates require source code availability, you get the source to the Active Template Library, and the OLE-DB Templates.
There does seem to be an interesting coding style at Microsoft. They are big on Hungarian notation (which I personally can't stand). There are also some widely held style beliefs that they ignore. (They seem to absolutely love macro functions, for instance.)
One interesting side note is that their implementation of the Standard Template Library was written outside the company by P. L. Plauger, and as you'd expect uses a completely different coding style.
It is the part of the free software foundation that produces code. See Here. The original idea was to develop a completely free Unix. Some Finnish guy came along and created his own free kernel, though, before they finished. He used his kernel, and the add-on tools they developed, to create a complete, free Unix (or Unix-like) system. (He also used their development tools to build the kernel.) This is what most people call Linux. As they say on their website: "though these systems are often referred to as ``Linux'', they are more accurately called GNU/Linux systems."
(Personally, I don't think that this rolls off the tounge well enough to ever catch on, but it is a shame that the GNU people don't get as much public credit as they deserve.)
All parties except for one. If a negative judgement is in the offing (and given Friday's ruling, it seems likely) then it is in Microsoft's best interest to stall things as long as possible.
For us consumers, though, you are right. It would be best to get this resolved, one way or another.
I recently worked for a large retailer who also did a lot of catalog business, and they did (and certainly still do) quite a bit to collect info on their customers. I just figured I'd throw out some of the whys so that people could see it from their point of view. This isn't about anything online, but I'm sure that the same rules apply.
They send out a huge number of catalogs every year, and those catalogs cost them a fair amount to produce. At least $1 a pop. So obviously it is in their best interest to only send catalogs to those who actually want them. And in a very real sense, if they were able to do this perfectly, it would be good for the consumer as well. No one would be bothered with junk mail they didn't want. In theory, it would be a win-win situation.
But to go about this requires collecting a lot of data, some of it that would bother a privacy expert, and likely even a normal customer. For example, they want to track whether or not you go to the store after receiving a catalog. This tells them that, even though you didn't order through the catalog, it still brought you to the store and therefore wasn't a wasted mailing. Of course, to do this, they have to somehow get your address when you buy from the store.
I was in the unfortunate position of doing some of the programming at the front end, and it bothered me because we quite literally were doing things behind our customer's backs. For instance, store personel would ask for a customer's zip-code "for marketting purposes". Now, I'm sure nearly everyone thinks this is for some sort of demographic info. It is not. Instead, they take the zip code, and your name, and use the combination to figure out your entire address. In other words, they say, "Aha, this credit card number belongs to the John Smith at zipcode 12345. Since there is only one, this means that he's the one that lives at 555, mockingbird lane. let's send him a catalog".
We used check readers for similar purposes. Customers assume that their checks are being authorized. They are not. Instead, the bank account number is captured, and then sent to a nice little service that returns a name and address when given a bank account number.
But again, this is all just to figure out who to send catalogs to. Which creates an interesting situation. The company ends up with all this data on you, your name, credit card number, bank account. Data that I'm sure makes everyone here a little (or a lot) queasy to see in someone's hands. Yet it isn't captured for any real nefarious purpose. It is, at least in theory, captured to help you, at least from the company's point of view.
This is why companies can act so schizophrenic about privacy. They truly do what they do to help "serve you better". Unfortunately, the end result is not necessarily in your best interest.
I completely understand the whole situation at "Real". I'm sure that the people who invaded the privacy of all of their users truly believed that they were doing what they were doing to help serve their customers better. That is what makes the corporate invasion of privacy so insidious. The people who do it don't think they are doing anything to hurt anyone. And they really aren't, in their own little world. But the net effect of a thousand companies "better serving" their customers is a complete and utter destruction of any notion of privacy.
It would make more sense if you returned them back to the manufacturer for reloading. Perhaps they could give five bucks off of a new phone if you return the old one, or somesuch.
I only picked this because it was something that personally caused me great pain. Believe me, I could sit here and come up with many, many more.
Besides, you still miss the point which was that a) OS/2 started out as a joint Microsoft product and b) the split was Microsoft's idea. Basically, Microsoft screwed those of us who did exactly what Microsoft had originally told us we should be doing, that is, develop for OS/2.
So if I do this:
;o)
Actually, there already is one at the bottom of every page. And I quote, "All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-99 Andover.Net." (Quoted material Copyright Andover.Net
will I violate your copyright? (That's not a dig, just an interesting question.)
Unfortunately, I don't think copyright law works real well in the context of a conferencing system. On the one hand, it doesn't seem right that a third party ought to be able to steal your words without citing them. On the other hand, the idea that a two-line post is "copyrighted" seems a little odd as well. I'm willing to bet that whoever used that quote just assumed "fair use" (if they thought of it at all) as normally a one line quote is fair use. But then, normally a one line quote is not 50% of the original "document".
I suspect that you'd need to have had some sort of copyright notice in the post to have any case.
The above mentioned difficulty happened in 1988. Before then, OS/2 was a joint Microsoft/IBM project. When they had their little tiff, and Microsoft bailed, they dropped their OS/2 support. This was quite problematic being that the prior version of their compiler was the "official" OS/2 compiler, and the only one available.
IBM did eventually support it, but they didn't get their compiler out for a year or so. Not surprising since the Microsoft compiler was originally the "Official" one. Now this would have been ok, had Microsoft not dropped all support for the prior version of the compiler, leaving those consumers, like my former company, who had been following the Microsoft line by using the OS that they said was the future (OS/2), totally out in the cold.
This was not about "Supporting a competitor's product". This is about refusing to support your own product for marketting reasons.
Good for the consumer my ass.
The answer should be obvious:
The hottest PC that can be found, installed with nothing but GPL'd software.
Who is next on your interview list, Satan himself?
I don't know, that could be interesting, don't you think? I'd personally like to ask him what his plans are now that the Justice department appears to be about to restrain his biggest competition.
(That "Google" think had to have hurt...)
One of the biggest problems with the mainstream press is its habit of analysing everything to death the instant anything interesting happens. Those analyses invariably look silly a month or a year later, because they are always made too quickly, before things really settle. That's exactly what is happening here.
It is far, far too early to call this a "Post-Microsoft Era", either in referring to the trial or the effects of Linux. In regards to the trial, the true effects won't really be known for years, or even decades. It is silly to try to pretend that we know what this will mean for the future. We can't. We can just sit along and watch, and perhaps nudge our little part of it in the direction we want it to go.
In regards to Linux, there are a number of huge hurdles to overcome before it can really be a threat to Windows in the desktop market. (And most of them are not technical.) This ruling probably helps, but who can really say at this point?
I sure as hell know that I benefited when they removed the OS/2 support from their C compiler and simultaneously refused to support all older versions of their C compiler.
I know that it certainly benefited my company in its quest to maintain a suite of OS/2 applications to be suddenly left with only an unsupported compiler, with no warning.
I'd continue on to describe the benefits I've personally felt as a consumer, but I don't the time...
This just doesn't fly. If you look at the "Forbes 400" list, Micheal Dell is right up there, just a couple notches down from Gates. Yet you don't see any long rants about the evils of Dell computers.
There are plenty of successful companies that don't get the negative attention that Microsoft does. There's a reason for that.
I think you've hit on the exact reason that this legal stuff is just an interesting side-show. A few years back, I was beginning to think that legal action was the only thing that was going to rein Microsoft in. Now, I'm returning to my libertarian roots. The free market is handling the monopoly. I think they're pretty much at the crest, and are going to go the way of IBM. They'll always be powerful, and even dominant in some industries, but I think the time is coming soon where Microsoft will become one of the "old guard".
I wish they were just GUIs. Windows would be so much nicer to deal with if you could just kill the GUI when it misbehaved, like you can under Unix.