I'm a gamer, and a movie fan, and I love reading. Every medium has it's points, all have gotten ahold of the emotional strings at one point or another. (First fiction cry goes to "Where the Red Fern Grows", worst cry goes to "Jurassic Bark")
Here is just a personal anecdote:
The game was Black and White, you're a God, with incarnate consciousnesses, created by some villagers in a desperate cry for help. From there you progress through the game by winning the faith of other peoples. Your choice in actions defines your good/evil alignment. In retrospect, it was a set up, if you didn't go into the game intending to be a certain alignment, you would almost certainly be good, it was natural, you wanted to be kind.
I was at the beginning of a map many levels in, I had many powers and the little angel spoke frequently, the little devil was gone. My tower was ivory and my voice angelic. On this map, the second village was a particularly difficult convertion. I slaved over them, did everything I could to show them my benevolent worth, I aided them in every endeavor, and through hours of painstaking effort I won them over. It was a stunning relief to finally convert them, the worst hurdle overcome. A few moments later the enemy God retaliated, sending a pack of wolves to punish the villagers. I destroyed many of the wolves, but I don't think they were really stoppable. The village turned on me, setting me back to a condition far worse than I had started the map.
I sat there, staring at the screen in disbelief. I was angry beyond reason. At which point, a little evil voice, no animation, just a soft voice of evil said: "Go on boss, do it, do the bad thing." (It sounds cheesy, but it was the kicker for my already trembling hand.)
By the end, I had created an ever-burning pit into which I cast those who denied me. I took the land in a display of brutal rage, right down to destroying my enemy while listening to his pleas for mercy. I was the God of fire and brimstone. I drifted back toward the light after passing beyond that map, but it wasn't the same, I wasn't the same. I was a darker, more vengeful God from there on.
It was an emotional event, it was like stepping into Lucifers shoes, just before the fall. It was a lesson about absolute power and corruption. It was awesome. It's left an impression. It was art.
Lack of complete narrative control doesn't preclude success, much as possessing narrative control doe not ensure it.
In a video game, when they have achieved a level high art, you have to be willing and/or lucky enough, to be led where they are trying to take you. That is certainly true of music, movies, painting, photography, and other artistic mediums I have experienced. (Joshua Bell performed in a busy Metro station, to minimal acclaim, it was not the art that was lacking.)
A Ph.D. means you are qualified to do real research. If you can not be trusted to do research then you are not qualified. Frankly, this sort of thing needs to happen *more*. When someone betrays the priniciples and trusts of society it needs to be acted on. When a scientist is making up data, they are no longer doing science.
If you have a burning need to make stuff up, start writing fiction. Ambition, deadlines, etc.. does not change that you can no longer be trusted.
Because people don't think like that. Just about nobody works out the maximum cost they'll be willing to pay for an item, and then decides to buy something if it costs less.
Yeah, well I work like that.
I look at the item, decide how much I am willing to pay for it, up the number by a few odd cents in case someone happens to agree with me exactly and bid first. Then I program that number into a bid sniper and let it run. I don't feel bad about it when I loose, they were willing to pay more. I don't loose often.
1 - The sniper keeps my bid from being nickled and dimed up by people who have no idea what they want to spend. You may like playing bidwars but I'm here to do buisness.
2 - I can put the snipe in well in advance, and if I find a better item or price before the auction is up I just cancel the snipe, no commitment until the last possible moment.
3 - If there are 0 bids on an item, most people just pass it by. If theres a bid on it then theres a ton of people who just have to take a shot at it. Its the sellers job to attract people, the buyers job to find good deals, and I'm not going to play spotter for lazy shoppers.
Think I'm evil yet? Well, let me add one more for you. If I see a Buy It Now auction I intend to snipe down the road, I put in the minimum bid to kill the buy now option.
Plenty of Windows apps can stomp on each other, and since the permissions are by user, not application, nothing protects them there either. Linux DBs would likely have the same problem.
Not that the idea is bad, just that there seems to be an implication that the Windows registry has it, which I do not beleive to be the case.
I dislike the registry for the following reasons:
1) It makes it to where software must be installed on the machine it is to be used on. I prefer to have light loads on the clients and store the apps on a central server. MS supports such a config to, but you have to do a light install process on each client, that usually binds it to the specific server making it difficult to rearrange you back end. An NFS mount point and configuration data stored in the directory with the app is far preferable to me.
2) I've never seen comments about settings in the registry.
3) When things are broken it's a lot harder to rescue the registry, also when the registry goes you loose the settings for everything. And if you reinstall the OS, you loose all app settings. And it's hard to migrate configs from machine to machine.
Now, could linux use a standard config database system? I'd say it wouldn't hurt, but I also see no reason to make it binary as that would hurt portability between architectures, granted, we could define the int sizes, endianess, and all that but that would make changing feild widths and such between application versions harder, text transfers with little effort. Also, a human can usually extract every last bit of useful remaining information from a damaged text file. I'd also want the databases seperated, so that when we loose one, we don't loose them all, and so that remote apps don't suddenly need local installs.
Which would leave us right where we are now. Individual text config files. Perhaps a single standard text config parsing library would do the trick for making things easier, and perhaps our config files need to be broken up better to allow apps to not have to worry about not stomping on each other. If you look at RedHat vs Solaris, you'll see that they've been doing just that to allow packages to add and remove from the various config files without fear of stomping on anything.
(Hence,/etc/sysconfig/etc/http/conf.d/etc/profile.d etc...)
The text config is dead, Long live the text config.
-- Res
Well, I see two points in your post and will engage in a little interpreting here.
1) Why are we spending money looking for life out yonder when there are better uses for it?
2) Is this the best way to spend money looking for like out yonder?
I broke it into those two because I see no way to call looking for life in space anything other than a "maybe". Perhaps I am mis interpreting here.
In answer to 1, I think looking for life is one of the more interesting space sciences available, and that anything driving us into space is a good thing. It would take me a while to develop my gut instinct into a thought out opinion, but I feel that the things we do on Earth there are vast areas of potentially useful technologies that are not being developed much. In the harsh conditions of space we have to really flex some engineering skills. There are areas of technology coming along fine via terrestrial applications (driven by things like medical needs, or warfare) but are we really working much on autonomous self-repairing robotics, or atmospheric recycling? After all, we can fix things here, but in space we need droids. Here we have few size contraints on treatment plants, etc... Maybe the investment isn't worth it in comparison to other investments we could make locally, we just need a hard problem to push against in my opinion, well, that or a competition.. both is better still, and with a China-U.S.A. space race looking like it might flare up, I think we are apt to get both.
Now on to my bias in the answer, I have an intrinsic belief that trying to understand and, when possible, control the universe shold be the goal of humanity. I'd like to hope that our destiny is to occupy the stars, even if we never manage to travel between them as individuals. Failing that, perhaps machine intelligences can someday pick up where we failed.
Question 2 is easier to answer, our scientists are looking for the best ways, if you have a better idea, offer it up. We need ideas.
If I had a kid, I'd make sure whatever I did, that he didn't do the things I did. (Not because they were that bad but because I'm lucky I still have all my fingers.) On with the deranged kid games.
I loved making paper airplanes, first the traditional types then I moved on to much better looking (but wouldn't actually fly) oragami style ones. I'd sit down and fold up a whole fleet (maybe 120 at a time), make up little decals for each side of my coming conflict, make some special air carrier planes that could hold about 10 of the smallest ones, and some bomber plans with little hold doors on the bottom. Then I loaded those suckers to the hilt with snap-pops (little packs of an explosive, I think black power but have no idea, and some gravely stuff to detonate them when they hit the ground), and combine a bunch of little snaps into moster ones to serve as bombs. Broke out the lighter and it was time to party. I'd fly them around and have them shoot each other down by setting the edge of the wing of fire and letting it burn up to the snap pops where the first one would blow and I'd do a little crash landing for the plane... where a few seconds later it blew up. The carriers got some fire crackers in addition to the snap pops. Usually there would be an enemy air base and thats where I think things were getting a bit out of hand, prior to that burns from over useing the lighter and the firecrackers were the biggest risk, but I needed the base to blow up proper when bombed. Whatever fireworks I could get my hands on would do usually but frankly roman candles and chinese firepoppers were not satisfying, finally I got my hands on a few M80 firecrackers. After that base went up I decided it was maybe better to do without bases in the future, because when that sucker blew it sent the peice of wood I used as the air strip flying, blasted a hole in the ground, and made a boom like I couldn't have imagined. I nearly crapped myself on the spot, and hid in my room for like 3 hours waiting for the police to show up or something. Not much to do with hacking, the next part will be more on topic.
My next favorite childhood games memory was the room fan. Basically it was a desk fan on a stick. I took it apart and removed the fan shroud, removed the blades, and took a long string of interlinked rubber bands and attached them to the motor on one end and my door knob on the other. By changing the distance and adding/removing rubber bands from the sting you could tune it to produce various sin wave patterns which would change in cool ways as the rubbers bands would knot up and become more taunt. I found a disposable pie pan and cut it to mount in place of the rear fan shroud so I'd have a proper dish for my home made death ray. Many an autobot died (in my imagination, not actually destroyed) at the end of that funky green beam. A couple times the band snapped after drawing really taunt and would destroy something in the room pretty much at random. Did I think better of my game at that point? Nope, I tried to find a way to aim it. Before I did the motor burned out so I took it apart and played with the magnets.
Ironically, the most dangerous toys I had I treated with a great deal more respect, rockets. Thats where I really hacked things up, I'd buy little oven timers from radio shack, disassembe them and install them into the main tube with the buzzer output wired back to the igniter so I could have self launching rockets. (After the first one that launched itself across the parking lot I learned about magical devices called mecury switches.) I also wired the timers start buttons to slide switches that stuck out right below the guide straw so that it would start at launch, time down X seconds and then ignite the second stage. Then I tried to put cameras on some of them, and finally I found my way to national associations and high powered rocketry, truely awesome stuff there. Alas by then, it was time to go to college.
Now I'm old and work all day and play video games all night. Well.. actually
Cox locks us out of the SNMP interface on our own modems. Now I understand taking away write privs but I feel I should have the right to see exactly how my modem is configured. Little things, like exactly what is my cap set at? Is it seeing errors? Whats my power level and SNR?
As I own that hardware, I feel I have a right to see how well it's working. Many issues (Like signal loss) would likely be within my own home and something I could fix. This software would probably let me read this information, however, as I don't own one of the modable products I'll probably look for one with all the info I want on a web page rather than getting a hackable one.
> In addition, this modification may result in the payment to such law firm of up to $1,000,000 and
> the issuance of up to 400,000 shares of SCO's common stock.
Okay.. So, they are paying thier lawyers either 1) 20% of the settlement for what they beleive is their most valuble asset (The Unix IP), 2) 20% of the company value, *and* up to $1M + up to 400K stock shares.
Wouldn't it have been cheaper to buy a few law firms? That is a friggin ton of compensation. And for that (plus the small price of their reputations and soul) they get some really bad legal service.
With management making decisions like that it's no wonder the only asset the company really has anymore is stupid. But at least they have plenty.
Serious, last time I started watching TV? Firefly. Loved it. They cut it before it had a chance.
Before that? Enterprise.. 4 Episodes, I was hoping. Hopes were dashed.
Before that? Earth: Final Conflict, Loved it. First Season. They changed the team behind it and trashed the quality so bad the fan sites turned into hate sites.
Before that? Babylon 5. Love it. JMS spoiled me. The only time I can recall that I wasn't disappointed by a show, they didn't cancel it with all the ends loose and they didn't change it to be a Voyager clone.
Before that? MTV.. Liked it, When it played Music.
The common theme here is that every show/channel I liked they took away or completely changed. They dropped Firefly so fast that I had only seen 2 episodes before they killed it. HINT: Once you've lost the viewer they won't sample all your new shows on premier night, give it some time to attract viewers *or* advertise it brutally and in places we'll see the ads.. Like Penny Arcade.
I got one 3 days ago in the 18-55mm Zoom kit. So far I've take around 50 photos using both the 18-55 and a 50/1.4. My film back is an EOS 3 and I have time in with several different Nikon CoolPix. So if you're looking for apples to apples fair comparisons you need to look elsewhere.
The 300D is my first exeriance with any of the Rebel line, and I have to say that the missing features annoy me. I want another command dial, custom functions, a better viewfinder, and better autofocus. Indeed, every time I use it I compare it unfavorably to the EOS 3. Then I dump the CF to hard drive and am happy as a pig in shit. I'm going to save the cost of the camera in development alone within a year. I could have afforded a 10D ($500 more w/no lens) however, the 10D doesn't do the EF-S lens and I really wanted this lens. It's performance is okay but the 18mm end makes wide angle shots possible with a DSLR. I can't afford wide enough glass to use a 10D, so features or not, this lens addresses a major issue for me. The Depth of Field preview is nearly useless to me, I just look at it in the LCD to see if it matches my intentions. On the plus side, being able to change the effective ISO rating on demand is awesome.
Compared to the CoolPix (older versions), I love the 300D. The coolpix feels like a toy and it's hard to use it while quickly adjusting Apeture/Exposure, and of course, no manual focus at all. These things may not matter to most. (and I imagine they don't.) I've been told most SLR owners have the lens that came in the kit and nothing else, kind of a waste if you don't want the interchangable lens.
I expect the 1.6 focal length multiplier is going to be great for wildlife photos and other long work. I'm *really* enjoying the camera.
This is not a problem with the GPL, this is not about Microsoft.
Companies need to know what they are getting in to. GPLed software is not about adoption, it's about freedom to make and distribute changes, it's about standing on the shoulders of other developers and letting them stand on yours. We don't want to encourage people to use GPLed software by giving up the freedoms that make it meaningful.
Heck with the spammers, the design method is the interesting stuff.
I've found some references to it's use in software testing, nothing yet about how one might use it to design internals but it certainly looks like it can help you focus in on user interface design and which parts to bulletproof the most. I have some research to do.
It's interesting to note that one article indicates it uses signal to noise as it's measure of robustness.... I'd
think slashdot was doomed.
(For the humor impaired: yes, I know that noise is defined to be uncontrolled variance, I'm trying to make a funny.)
One of the main problems you are having is that you are buying hardware that wasn't supported at the time. When buying hardware you want to run Linux on, check to see that it supports it. If you don't, you will have problems and the vendor (correctly in this case) sees that that lack of Linux support makes no difference to it's sales.
I know this doesn't sound ideal, but you're really in the same boat with any other OS, even Windows. (Some hardware works only with NT/2000 or 9x, not both, plus old hardware often loses support.) Buying hardware without checking driver status leads to pain.
I don't think Fedora can make this better, only the hardware vendors can.
As for documentation, try checking out the RedHat manuals. That and a good introduction to the Unix command line and vi/emacs should cover you.
The days of needing to code are over. Indeed, you need not try to invent things either. If you can guess any significant aspect of new buisnesses just patent it and wait.
How long before a few of these folks start pushing for patent extensions to match the copyright extentions?
---- Before there can be a proper information economy we're going to need a scarcity.
I think a lot of artists are quite aware that they would be making more money percentage wise per sale. But that won't make up the difference caused by people only buying the tracks they like. If I were them, I'd be nervous too. Even if people spend more money on music, the current top artists are likely to make less as consumers hunt for better music to spend their money on.
How they are naive, is that they think they can stop this. They are apparently buying the RIAA line that the only reason CD sales are declining is piracy. Let them try to stop single track sales, I beleive the market will quickly demonstrate exactly how much people value a CD with one or two good tracks on it.
Heck, I've already started buying for the best bang/buck, asides from Nine Inch Nails (Who could sell me every last track at $0.99/each) I buy mostly movie sound tracks these days.
----
Slashdot Mirror
Here is just a personal anecdote:
The game was Black and White, you're a God, with incarnate consciousnesses, created by some villagers in a desperate cry for help. From there you progress through the game by winning the faith of other peoples. Your choice in actions defines your good/evil alignment. In retrospect, it was a set up, if you didn't go into the game intending to be a certain alignment, you would almost certainly be good, it was natural, you wanted to be kind.
I was at the beginning of a map many levels in, I had many powers and the little angel spoke frequently, the little devil was gone. My tower was ivory and my voice angelic. On this map, the second village was a particularly difficult convertion. I slaved over them, did everything I could to show them my benevolent worth, I aided them in every endeavor, and through hours of painstaking effort I won them over. It was a stunning relief to finally convert them, the worst hurdle overcome. A few moments later the enemy God retaliated, sending a pack of wolves to punish the villagers. I destroyed many of the wolves, but I don't think they were really stoppable. The village turned on me, setting me back to a condition far worse than I had started the map.
I sat there, staring at the screen in disbelief. I was angry beyond reason. At which point, a little evil voice, no animation, just a soft voice of evil said: "Go on boss, do it, do the bad thing." (It sounds cheesy, but it was the kicker for my already trembling hand.)
By the end, I had created an ever-burning pit into which I cast those who denied me. I took the land in a display of brutal rage, right down to destroying my enemy while listening to his pleas for mercy. I was the God of fire and brimstone. I drifted back toward the light after passing beyond that map, but it wasn't the same, I wasn't the same. I was a darker, more vengeful God from there on.
It was an emotional event, it was like stepping into Lucifers shoes, just before the fall. It was a lesson about absolute power and corruption. It was awesome. It's left an impression. It was art.
Lack of complete narrative control doesn't preclude success, much as possessing narrative control doe not ensure it.
In a video game, when they have achieved a level high art, you have to be willing and/or lucky enough, to be led where they are trying to take you. That is certainly true of music, movies, painting, photography, and other artistic mediums I have experienced. (Joshua Bell performed in a busy Metro station, to minimal acclaim, it was not the art that was lacking.)
-- Res
A Ph.D. means you are qualified to do real research. If you can not be trusted to do research then you are not qualified. Frankly, this sort of thing needs to happen *more*. When someone betrays the priniciples and trusts of society it needs to be acted on. When a scientist is making up data, they are no longer doing science. If you have a burning need to make stuff up, start writing fiction. Ambition, deadlines, etc.. does not change that you can no longer be trusted.
I look at the item, decide how much I am willing to pay for it, up the number by a few odd cents in case someone happens to agree with me exactly and bid first. Then I program that number into a bid sniper and let it run. I don't feel bad about it when I loose, they were willing to pay more. I don't loose often.
1 - The sniper keeps my bid from being nickled and dimed up by people who have no idea what they want to spend. You may like playing bidwars but I'm here to do buisness.
2 - I can put the snipe in well in advance, and if I find a better item or price before the auction is up I just cancel the snipe, no commitment until the last possible moment.
3 - If there are 0 bids on an item, most people just pass it by. If theres a bid on it then theres a ton of people who just have to take a shot at it. Its the sellers job to attract people, the buyers job to find good deals, and I'm not going to play spotter for lazy shoppers.
Think I'm evil yet? Well, let me add one more for you. If I see a Buy It Now auction I intend to snipe down the road, I put in the minimum bid to kill the buy now option.
Not that the idea is bad, just that there seems to be an implication that the Windows registry has it, which I do not beleive to be the case.
I dislike the registry for the following reasons:
1) It makes it to where software must be installed on the machine it is to be used on. I prefer to have light loads on the clients and store the apps on a central server. MS supports such a config to, but you have to do a light install process on each client, that usually binds it to the specific server making it difficult to rearrange you back end. An NFS mount point and configuration data stored in the directory with the app is far preferable to me.
2) I've never seen comments about settings in the registry.
3) When things are broken it's a lot harder to rescue the registry, also when the registry goes you loose the settings for everything. And if you reinstall the OS, you loose all app settings. And it's hard to migrate configs from machine to machine.
Now, could linux use a standard config database system? I'd say it wouldn't hurt, but I also see no reason to make it binary as that would hurt portability between architectures, granted, we could define the int sizes, endianess, and all that but that would make changing feild widths and such between application versions harder, text transfers with little effort. Also, a human can usually extract every last bit of useful remaining information from a damaged text file. I'd also want the databases seperated, so that when we loose one, we don't loose them all, and so that remote apps don't suddenly need local installs.
Which would leave us right where we are now. Individual text config files. Perhaps a single standard text config parsing library would do the trick for making things easier, and perhaps our config files need to be broken up better to allow apps to not have to worry about not stomping on each other. If you look at RedHat vs Solaris, you'll see that they've been doing just that to allow packages to add and remove from the various config files without fear of stomping on anything. (Hence, /etc/sysconfig /etc/http/conf.d /etc/profile.d etc...)
The text config is dead, Long live the text config. -- Res
Well, I see two points in your post and will engage in a little interpreting here.
1) Why are we spending money looking for life out yonder when there are better uses for it?
2) Is this the best way to spend money looking for like out yonder?
I broke it into those two because I see no way to call looking for life in space anything other than a "maybe". Perhaps I am mis interpreting here.
In answer to 1, I think looking for life is one of the more interesting space sciences available, and that anything driving us into space is a good thing. It would take me a while to develop my gut instinct into a thought out opinion, but I feel that the things we do on Earth there are vast areas of potentially useful technologies that are not being developed much. In the harsh conditions of space we have to really flex some engineering skills. There are areas of technology coming along fine via terrestrial applications (driven by things like medical needs, or warfare) but are we really working much on autonomous self-repairing robotics, or atmospheric recycling? After all, we can fix things here, but in space we need droids. Here we have few size contraints on treatment plants, etc... Maybe the investment isn't worth it in comparison to other investments we could make locally, we just need a hard problem to push against in my opinion, well, that or a competition.. both is better still, and with a China-U.S.A. space race looking like it might flare up, I think we are apt to get both.
Now on to my bias in the answer, I have an intrinsic belief that trying to understand and, when possible, control the universe shold be the goal of humanity. I'd like to hope that our destiny is to occupy the stars, even if we never manage to travel between them as individuals. Failing that, perhaps machine intelligences can someday pick up where we failed.
Question 2 is easier to answer, our scientists are looking for the best ways, if you have a better idea, offer it up. We need ideas.
Now I'm old and work all day and play video games all night. Well.. actually
As I own that hardware, I feel I have a right to see how well it's working. Many issues (Like signal loss) would likely be within my own home and something I could fix. This software would probably let me read this information, however, as I don't own one of the modable products I'll probably look for one with all the info I want on a web page rather than getting a hackable one.
> In addition, this modification may result in the payment to such law firm of up to $1,000,000 and
> the issuance of up to 400,000 shares of SCO's common stock.
Okay.. So, they are paying thier lawyers either 1) 20% of the settlement for what they beleive is their most valuble asset (The Unix IP), 2) 20% of the company value, *and* up to $1M + up to 400K stock shares.
Wouldn't it have been cheaper to buy a few law firms? That is a friggin ton of compensation. And for that (plus the small price of their reputations and soul) they get some really bad legal service.
With management making decisions like that it's no wonder the only asset the company really has anymore is stupid. But at least they have plenty.
Serious, last time I started watching TV? Firefly. Loved it. They cut it before it had a chance.
Before that? Enterprise.. 4 Episodes, I was hoping. Hopes were dashed.
Before that? Earth: Final Conflict, Loved it. First Season. They changed the team behind it and trashed the quality so bad the fan sites turned into hate sites.
Before that? Babylon 5. Love it. JMS spoiled me. The only time I can recall that I wasn't disappointed by a show, they didn't cancel it with all the ends loose and they didn't change it to be a Voyager clone.
Before that? MTV.. Liked it, When it played Music.
The common theme here is that every show/channel I liked they took away or completely changed. They dropped Firefly so fast that I had only seen 2 episodes before they killed it. HINT: Once you've lost the viewer they won't sample all your new shows on premier night, give it some time to attract viewers *or* advertise it brutally and in places we'll see the ads.. Like Penny Arcade.
The 300D is my first exeriance with any of the Rebel line, and I have to say that the missing features annoy me. I want another command dial, custom functions, a better viewfinder, and better autofocus. Indeed, every time I use it I compare it unfavorably to the EOS 3. Then I dump the CF to hard drive and am happy as a pig in shit. I'm going to save the cost of the camera in development alone within a year. I could have afforded a 10D ($500 more w/no lens) however, the 10D doesn't do the EF-S lens and I really wanted this lens. It's performance is okay but the 18mm end makes wide angle shots possible with a DSLR. I can't afford wide enough glass to use a 10D, so features or not, this lens addresses a major issue for me. The Depth of Field preview is nearly useless to me, I just look at it in the LCD to see if it matches my intentions. On the plus side, being able to change the effective ISO rating on demand is awesome.
Compared to the CoolPix (older versions), I love the 300D. The coolpix feels like a toy and it's hard to use it while quickly adjusting Apeture/Exposure, and of course, no manual focus at all. These things may not matter to most. (and I imagine they don't.) I've been told most SLR owners have the lens that came in the kit and nothing else, kind of a waste if you don't want the interchangable lens.
I expect the 1.6 focal length multiplier is going to be great for wildlife photos and other long work. I'm *really* enjoying the camera.
-- Res
I got nothing at the link posted in the article, Heres a link to the conversation at another archive: http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0310 .1/0187.html
Companies need to know what they are getting in to. GPLed software is not about adoption, it's about freedom to make and distribute changes, it's about standing on the shoulders of other developers and letting them stand on yours. We don't want to encourage people to use GPLed software by giving up the freedoms that make it meaningful.
I've found some references to it's use in software testing, nothing yet about how one might use it to design internals but it certainly looks like it can help you focus in on user interface design and which parts to bulletproof the most. I have some research to do.
It's interesting to note that one article indicates it uses signal to noise as it's measure of robustness.... I'd think slashdot was doomed.
(For the humor impaired: yes, I know that noise is defined to be uncontrolled variance, I'm trying to make a funny.)
I know this doesn't sound ideal, but you're really in the same boat with any other OS, even Windows. (Some hardware works only with NT/2000 or 9x, not both, plus old hardware often loses support.) Buying hardware without checking driver status leads to pain.
I don't think Fedora can make this better, only the hardware vendors can.
As for documentation, try checking out the RedHat manuals. That and a good introduction to the Unix command line and vi/emacs should cover you.
If you can guess any significant aspect of new buisnesses just patent it and wait.
How long before a few of these folks start pushing for patent extensions to match the copyright extentions?
----
Before there can be a proper information economy we're going to need a scarcity.
I think a lot of artists are quite aware that they would be making more money percentage wise per sale. But that won't make up the difference caused by people only buying the tracks they like. If I were them, I'd be nervous too. Even if people spend more money on music, the current top artists are likely to make less as consumers hunt for better music to spend their money on.
How they are naive, is that they think they can stop this. They are apparently buying the RIAA line that the only reason CD sales are declining is piracy. Let them try to stop single track sales, I beleive the market will quickly demonstrate exactly how much people value a CD with one or two good tracks on it.
Heck, I've already started buying for the best bang/buck, asides from Nine Inch Nails (Who could sell me every last track at $0.99/each) I buy mostly movie sound tracks these days.
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