Dude, I like Athlon chips. All my machines are Athlon powered. And I bought Athlons exactly because they're better than Pentiums at lower clock speeds. But I will *not* tolerate for AMD to just hide the "RPM" factor from me, no matter how irrelevant they think it is. They could have found a way to educate their public *without* pissing me (and others like me) off.
You're damn right Apple was unwilling to do something stupid like this. At least they've got some sanity left. Excuse me, but I won't buy anything from a company that obscures one of their product's basic operating parameters from me. It's like buying a car from a manufacturer that won't tell me how many hp the car puts out.
Why on earth would I buy that car? Because it says "comparable to Ford Explorer 2000 in benchmarks" on the windshield? No thanks.
Most probably, yes. All the companies I worked for did it. Everyone on Wall Street does it. So why not government agencies? It's a logical solution, and it works. With this approach, you have complete control over the software you use: it will be made to do exactly what you want it to do, you will be free to distribute it at no charge to whoever you want (think "online taxes" - wouldn't it be nice to fill in your tax form electronically using a Free program paid for from your own tax money, instead of being forced to line the pockets of the makers of "TurboTax 2001 1/2"?), AND it will be developed by your own employees, bringing the ultimate control over the project to your fingertips. What more could you ask?
the attitude here is that if I purchased (not 'licensed', Western-style EULAs not withstanding) a Windows CD, it's mine to do with as I wish -- including installing it on every machine in the office
Even when there are no IP laws to worry about, pirating windows is STILL not enough, especially for institutions with specialized needs, like government entities. How are you going to modify windows to suit your needs? You can't, because there's no source code. That's why Free software is the perfect choice for governments: you can pretty much alter it for your needs to any degree with minimal costs, AND you can make damn sure there are no nasty backdoors for those American imperialist agents to spy on you.
Well, I personally share your point of view. I always use the Free alternative, and when there is no Free alternative I don't buy (download) the product. It's not like I'm gonna die or anything just because I won't see a stupid movie trailer. But apparently there are people who *do* feel like they're gonna die if they won't see the stupid movie trailer, or people who feel that they should imitate everything under the sun in order to "make the migration path easier for users of other platforms", and they write stuff like this. I see nothing wrong with that. I get what I want, they get what they want, everybody's happy. It's not like anyone is opressed, on the contrary: when a Free alternative to something proprietary is released, it means less oppression, because there's more choice available. Unless, of course, the one who wrote the Free alternative gets thrown in jail over it.:-(
Well then, you'd better stop now before it's too late. If you don't stop watching TV immediately, you will become another touchy-feely, politically corect, tree-hugging do-gooder, and you don't want that, do you?:)
Why, I am pretentious. I'm also arrogant, self-righteous, antisocial and elitist. And *your* problem is?
Re:Sybase and the financial community
on
NYSE Goes To Linux
·
· Score: 1
From what I understand, Wall Street companies lean more towards Sybase than Oracle. No "real" reason, it's more like a tradition thing. Most of them have always used Sybase and as long as it's working well for them, they see no real reason to switch. Besides, for some unknown reason they associate Oracle with the dotcom bust, and everyone knows what *that* meant for the financial world.:) It's probably just stupid superstition, but Oracle is bad news on Wall Street, at least from what I hear.
"A" big company? I'm currently doing some work for a recruiting company mostly dealing with Wall Street giants, and every job description I've seen from them for tech jobs has Linux as a requirement (along with Perl/Java/Sybase etc.). They're all happily using Linux for their non-mission critical needs (which makes sense, since they have one UNIX or another running on the mission critical equipment), but, as someone once pointed out in a Slashdot article, they don't make a big fuss over it because they consider it a "competitive advantage".
Well, yes, but if you set up a wireless connection for your laptop, which is totally within the provisions in your contract, who's to blame if your neighbor happens to point *his* wireless ethernet card at your access point? That's where a law would be needed: to make sure it's *your* fault and to give them grounds to cut off your connection.
From the article: Sharing a cable modem or a DSL line might annoy some folks [broadband providers], but it's probably legal[...]
Something tells me it won't stay legal for a very long time. Wait till there's enough of those guys to seriously annoy the big providers, and the watch them buy up some more laws...
Sure, you have to know some things and have an interest in technical stuff, but it doesn't take all that much know-how to write code
You mean, it doesn't take all that much know-how to write bad code. That, I can agree with, having had to clean up after too many of those so-called "programmers" who think they automatically become coders after reading a "for dummies" book. And don't even get me started about the notorious MCSE's we all know and love...
American teachers already make *a lot* compared to other places I've seen. I have my own experience of going through school in a communist (and very poor) country, about 12 years ago. Teachers were severely underpaid and equipment was very scarce. Today, there's more equipment and teachers are paid a little better. Still, the average student then was by far better educated than the average student graduating today from the same school system.
The reason? Respect. Back then teachers were seen like very important members of society; parents treated them with utmost respect, and children looked up to them and wanted to be like them. And they did a terrific job. Nowadays all everyone can think about is money, and the respect of the masses has shifted towards more money-oriented professions. Teachers are treated like dirt by pretty much everybody, no one wants to become a teacher anymore, and the education level has declined sharply. It's not always about the money...
While demanding a refund may seem a little off, I'd have to admit that if I was a subscriber to a program such as
this one, offered by my provider, and got "protected" by having my port 80 shut off, I'd be asking for a refund too.
Except for those of us who already have ReiserFS on all our partitions. But that's OK. Even though ReiserFS has worked perfectly for me (no problems at all, even with power failures and everything) I'm willing to give ext3 a chance. I'll probably have one of my partitions reformatted to ext3 and and see how each of them performs. And when I have the winner, I'll convert the machines at work (which are still running on good ole' ext2) to it. IMO, the more choices you have, the better.
If music, videos, games are pirated all the time, at some time there will be no more music, videos or games. We all know that.
Gee, I wonder how has mankind been able to survive without copyright for so many centuries. Didn't anyone tell Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Seneca, Diogenes, Epicur and all the other writers and philosophers that there can be no art without copyright? I guess not, since they somehow did manage to live and create without a publishing industry to "manage" and "protect" their precious "rights" for them...
I don't know about other Linux users, but I am a big spender. I do spend quite a lot on games, on console games because I don't care about playing games in Linux (I don't care about playing games on the PC actually, since Linux is the only thing I'm running on it). I also spend a fair amount on movies, on European and indy movies because I don't care about Hollywood crap. I regularly buy indy music, technical books and all sorts of gadgets. You're right, however, a Linux player for Hollywood PPVs won't make much of a difference for me. But not because I'm not a big spender...
Heh. You have no idea what you're talking about, but you're calling names left and right. Typical, I might say. You're making the gross mistake of trying to put current Linux distributions on par with win95, which is 5 years old. It won't work. Those of us who ran Linux even before Win95 came out remember the Slackware distro (which was pretty much the only game in town) that took a few days to set up for someone new to Linux, but it ran X windows and Apache just fine on a 486 w/ 8MB RAM. That is what someone who is not completely clueless would compare win95 with. Or you can try putting the latest Win2k Service Pack 13248.832 on a 486, see if that does you any good (since Microsoft has stopped selling and supporting Windiws 95 a long time ago, so you're not really supposed to use it anymore). OR, if you're still bitching, I could point you at a current Linux distro that runs just fine on a MIPS/66MHz w/ 8M RAM and 16M flash, X Windows and all.
So am I being hypocritical? Nah, not really. Linux has many faces other than your standard hand-holding, pretty-looking newbie-ready Mandrake/Redhat/SuSe/whatever. Am I being an asshole? Of course. Elitist? You betcha. And not only technologically. Socially as well. And your problem is?
My point exactly. If you want something to run on a 486 Netscape 3.0 is there. If you want to run a modern browser, however, expect the system requirements to go up a notch. Being a developer myself, I can relate. I develop, test and optimize my software on whatever commodity hardware I can afford at the moment, and there's only so far I'm willing to go for a performance/time compromise. At some point during development I simply can't afford to spend more time on optimizations. It's sad, but as a developer you're never given enough time to things the way you want. And the fact that the standard libraries keep getting larger and larger (due in part to the same reasons) is not exactly helping, performance-wise.
If RealPlayer can somehow override that, hats off to the hackers who wrote it. Otherwise, every Linux user should know better than running untrusted binaries as root.
I don't consider myself a "rabid RMS fan", but if it weren't for this megalomaniac, I wouldn't have a means now to thumb my nose at proprietary software and live my life Microsoft-free. I deeply respect him for that, and I'm willing to cut him some slack on occasion, especially since nobody (including this Drepper guy - his story looks more like a rant than anything else) has particularly compelling evidence to support their "RMS is a raving lunatic megalomaniac" claims. Now don't get me wrong, I will be as dissappointed as the next guy if it turns out that RMS is really losing it, but I won't deny the obvious, WHEN it becomes obvious. Call me conservative, but right now, Ulrich Drepper looks more like a raving lunatic to me for venting off like that in an official release document.
Besides, RMS can't really harm free software anyway, his own license would prevent him.:-)
First, I am not "people". I am me. Second, how old is "old" for graphics-intensive desktop software like web browsers? Would you expect a web browser to work on a 486? On a 386SX? On an XT? I have a current incarnation of Linux/KDE/Staroffice with all the bells and whistles running resonably well on my old laptop (P2/300 + 64M RAM). I'd say that's good enough, considering that I run the same thing on my desktop machine, which is an Athlon/1GHz + 512M RAM.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, I like Athlon chips. All my machines are Athlon powered. And I bought Athlons exactly because they're better than Pentiums at lower clock speeds. But I will *not* tolerate for AMD to just hide the "RPM" factor from me, no matter how irrelevant they think it is. They could have found a way to educate their public *without* pissing me (and others like me) off.
Insulted?! Shit, that ain't the half of it. How the fsck am I supposed to overclock my next Athlon, if I don't know its basic clock speed?
You're damn right Apple was unwilling to do something stupid like this. At least they've got some sanity left. Excuse me, but I won't buy anything from a company that obscures one of their product's basic operating parameters from me. It's like buying a car from a manufacturer that won't tell me how many hp the car puts out. Why on earth would I buy that car? Because it says "comparable to Ford Explorer 2000 in benchmarks" on the windshield? No thanks.
Most probably, yes. All the companies I worked for did it. Everyone on Wall Street does it. So why not government agencies? It's a logical solution, and it works. With this approach, you have complete control over the software you use: it will be made to do exactly what you want it to do, you will be free to distribute it at no charge to whoever you want (think "online taxes" - wouldn't it be nice to fill in your tax form electronically using a Free program paid for from your own tax money, instead of being forced to line the pockets of the makers of "TurboTax 2001 1/2"?), AND it will be developed by your own employees, bringing the ultimate control over the project to your fingertips. What more could you ask?
the attitude here is that if I purchased (not 'licensed', Western-style EULAs not withstanding) a Windows CD, it's mine to do with as I wish -- including installing it on every machine in the office
Even when there are no IP laws to worry about, pirating windows is STILL not enough, especially for institutions with specialized needs, like government entities. How are you going to modify windows to suit your needs? You can't, because there's no source code. That's why Free software is the perfect choice for governments: you can pretty much alter it for your needs to any degree with minimal costs, AND you can make damn sure there are no nasty backdoors for those American imperialist agents to spy on you.
Well, I personally share your point of view. I always use the Free alternative, and when there is no Free alternative I don't buy (download) the product. It's not like I'm gonna die or anything just because I won't see a stupid movie trailer. But apparently there are people who *do* feel like they're gonna die if they won't see the stupid movie trailer, or people who feel that they should imitate everything under the sun in order to "make the migration path easier for users of other platforms", and they write stuff like this. I see nothing wrong with that. I get what I want, they get what they want, everybody's happy. It's not like anyone is opressed, on the contrary: when a Free alternative to something proprietary is released, it means less oppression, because there's more choice available. Unless, of course, the one who wrote the Free alternative gets thrown in jail over it. :-(
Well then, you'd better stop now before it's too late. If you don't stop watching TV immediately, you will become another touchy-feely, politically corect, tree-hugging do-gooder, and you don't want that, do you? :)
Why, I am pretentious. I'm also arrogant, self-righteous, antisocial and elitist. And *your* problem is?
From what I understand, Wall Street companies lean more towards Sybase than Oracle. No "real" reason, it's more like a tradition thing. Most of them have always used Sybase and as long as it's working well for them, they see no real reason to switch. Besides, for some unknown reason they associate Oracle with the dotcom bust, and everyone knows what *that* meant for the financial world. :) It's probably just stupid superstition, but Oracle is bad news on Wall Street, at least from what I hear.
"A" big company? I'm currently doing some work for a recruiting company mostly dealing with Wall Street giants, and every job description I've seen from them for tech jobs has Linux as a requirement (along with Perl/Java/Sybase etc.). They're all happily using Linux for their non-mission critical needs (which makes sense, since they have one UNIX or another running on the mission critical equipment), but, as someone once pointed out in a Slashdot article, they don't make a big fuss over it because they consider it a "competitive advantage".
Well, yes, but if you set up a wireless connection for your laptop, which is totally within the provisions in your contract, who's to blame if your neighbor happens to point *his* wireless ethernet card at your access point? That's where a law would be needed: to make sure it's *your* fault and to give them grounds to cut off your connection.
From the article: Sharing a cable modem or a DSL line might annoy some folks [broadband providers], but it's probably legal[...]
Something tells me it won't stay legal for a very long time. Wait till there's enough of those guys to seriously annoy the big providers, and the watch them buy up some more laws...
Ask Slashdot: IBM Creates 1st Single Molecule Computer Circuit
Erm, what was the question again?
Sure, you have to know some things and have an interest in technical stuff, but it doesn't take all that much know-how to write code
You mean, it doesn't take all that much know-how to write bad code. That, I can agree with, having had to clean up after too many of those so-called "programmers" who think they automatically become coders after reading a "for dummies" book. And don't even get me started about the notorious MCSE's we all know and love...
American teachers already make *a lot* compared to other places I've seen. I have my own experience of going through school in a communist (and very poor) country, about 12 years ago. Teachers were severely underpaid and equipment was very scarce. Today, there's more equipment and teachers are paid a little better. Still, the average student then was by far better educated than the average student graduating today from the same school system.
The reason? Respect. Back then teachers were seen like very important members of society; parents treated them with utmost respect, and children looked up to them and wanted to be like them. And they did a terrific job. Nowadays all everyone can think about is money, and the respect of the masses has shifted towards more money-oriented professions. Teachers are treated like dirt by pretty much everybody, no one wants to become a teacher anymore, and the education level has declined sharply. It's not always about the money...
While demanding a refund may seem a little off, I'd have to admit that if I was a subscriber to a program such as this one, offered by my provider, and got "protected" by having my port 80 shut off, I'd be asking for a refund too.
Except for those of us who already have ReiserFS on all our partitions. But that's OK. Even though ReiserFS has worked perfectly for me (no problems at all, even with power failures and everything) I'm willing to give ext3 a chance. I'll probably have one of my partitions reformatted to ext3 and and see how each of them performs. And when I have the winner, I'll convert the machines at work (which are still running on good ole' ext2) to it. IMO, the more choices you have, the better.
If music, videos, games are pirated all the time, at some time there will be no more music, videos or games. We all know that.
Gee, I wonder how has mankind been able to survive without copyright for so many centuries. Didn't anyone tell Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Seneca, Diogenes, Epicur and all the other writers and philosophers that there can be no art without copyright? I guess not, since they somehow did manage to live and create without a publishing industry to "manage" and "protect" their precious "rights" for them...
Yup. And I watch my movies on the same computer monitor. Linux is pretty good for video capture stuff, if you buy the right hardware.
I don't know about other Linux users, but I am a big spender. I do spend quite a lot on games, on console games because I don't care about playing games in Linux (I don't care about playing games on the PC actually, since Linux is the only thing I'm running on it). I also spend a fair amount on movies, on European and indy movies because I don't care about Hollywood crap. I regularly buy indy music, technical books and all sorts of gadgets. You're right, however, a Linux player for Hollywood PPVs won't make much of a difference for me. But not because I'm not a big spender...
Heh. You have no idea what you're talking about, but you're calling names left and right. Typical, I might say. You're making the gross mistake of trying to put current Linux distributions on par with win95, which is 5 years old. It won't work. Those of us who ran Linux even before Win95 came out remember the Slackware distro (which was pretty much the only game in town) that took a few days to set up for someone new to Linux, but it ran X windows and Apache just fine on a 486 w/ 8MB RAM. That is what someone who is not completely clueless would compare win95 with. Or you can try putting the latest Win2k Service Pack 13248.832 on a 486, see if that does you any good (since Microsoft has stopped selling and supporting Windiws 95 a long time ago, so you're not really supposed to use it anymore). OR, if you're still bitching, I could point you at a current Linux distro that runs just fine on a MIPS/66MHz w/ 8M RAM and 16M flash, X Windows and all.
So am I being hypocritical? Nah, not really. Linux has many faces other than your standard hand-holding, pretty-looking newbie-ready Mandrake/Redhat/SuSe/whatever. Am I being an asshole? Of course. Elitist? You betcha. And not only technologically. Socially as well. And your problem is?
My point exactly. If you want something to run on a 486 Netscape 3.0 is there. If you want to run a modern browser, however, expect the system requirements to go up a notch. Being a developer myself, I can relate. I develop, test and optimize my software on whatever commodity hardware I can afford at the moment, and there's only so far I'm willing to go for a performance/time compromise. At some point during development I simply can't afford to spend more time on optimizations. It's sad, but as a developer you're never given enough time to things the way you want. And the fact that the standard libraries keep getting larger and larger (due in part to the same reasons) is not exactly helping, performance-wise.
Hm, that would be something. Last time I looked, my /etc/mailcap looked like this:
/etc/mailcap
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9415 Jul 12 2000
If RealPlayer can somehow override that, hats off to the hackers who wrote it. Otherwise, every Linux user should know better than running untrusted binaries as root.
I don't consider myself a "rabid RMS fan", but if it weren't for this megalomaniac, I wouldn't have a means now to thumb my nose at proprietary software and live my life Microsoft-free. I deeply respect him for that, and I'm willing to cut him some slack on occasion, especially since nobody (including this Drepper guy - his story looks more like a rant than anything else) has particularly compelling evidence to support their "RMS is a raving lunatic megalomaniac" claims. Now don't get me wrong, I will be as dissappointed as the next guy if it turns out that RMS is really losing it, but I won't deny the obvious, WHEN it becomes obvious. Call me conservative, but right now, Ulrich Drepper looks more like a raving lunatic to me for venting off like that in an official release document.
:-)
Besides, RMS can't really harm free software anyway, his own license would prevent him.
First, I am not "people". I am me. Second, how old is "old" for graphics-intensive desktop software like web browsers? Would you expect a web browser to work on a 486? On a 386SX? On an XT? I have a current incarnation of Linux/KDE/Staroffice with all the bells and whistles running resonably well on my old laptop (P2/300 + 64M RAM). I'd say that's good enough, considering that I run the same thing on my desktop machine, which is an Athlon/1GHz + 512M RAM.