Of course you are allowed to sell Free software. If you weren't, it wouldn't be Free. The thing that prevents overpricing is the fact that other people are allowed to sell the same thing as you, cheaper than you.
One of the things wrong with capitalism is the way that the sellers of goods are allowed to determine the selling price. This enables a player with sufficient reserves of money to enter a market and bankrupt their competitors, by selling a similar product cheaper than anyone else at a slight net loss. No-one can compete with this and they have to withdraw from the market. The major player then raises their price and begins recouping the losses they incurred with a vengeance.
In the Free Software marketplace, the barrier to entry is very low; all that you need to set up in business is a computer with a CD recorder and some Free software. You don't need masses of materials and you don't need an idea -- you don't even have to pay for someone else's idea. While someone could be selling Firefox CDs for £100 apiece, you could be selling equivalent CDs for £10 or even £5 apiece. You could even sell them for 20p each, though you would probably bankrupt yourself. The Market will work out a fair price which does not overburden vendors or purchasers.
Even if a piece of Free software is available from only one source for an extortionate cost, a group of people could still pool their resources, buy just one copy and then be permitted to distribute as many copies as they like, as cheap as they like.
Oh, the Japanese would probably love that..... visions of some sort of Oriental warrior swinging a kettle lead with a UK plug like a weapon
Seriously, our mains plugs aren't that much bigger than our continental cousins' unfused earthed ones. And the cable exits, via a strain relief, at 90 degrees to the pins; so pulling the cable will never loosen the plug in the socket. I'd suggest you read BS1363. Unfortunately, the BSI expect you to pay to find out how to abide by the Law of the Land and so I can't just provide a link to an online version.
One consequence of the shape of our mains plugs is that they can lie on the floor, pins uppermost, waiting to surprise the unwary and unshod.
If they really wanted to cut down on electrical fires, then they could start using a sensible mains voltage. At 230V, you need fewer amperes to get the same number of watts; in the UK our outlets {all earthed, individually switched and non-reversible: the live is always on the right as you look into the socket} are good for up to 13A, giving 3kW. Even a 2kW kettle {we also like our tea.....} is only drawing just under 10A. And every plug has a fuse; so no appliance flexible cable has to withstand more current than enough to blow the plug fuse {as opposed to the distribution board fuse}.
Originally a Philips DVDR-70; replaced that with a Daewoo DVQ-1000R when it gave up the ghost. Interestingly the drive mechanism on the Philips is not a standard IDE unit but has a custom interface. The motherboard has space for a 40-pin IDE connector and features a Philips-made RISC processor. I haven't opened the Daewoo, but it obviously uses Philips internals too; aside from some obvious similarities in the menus, if you do strings/dev/scd1 |grep -i philips with one of its recorded discs in your computer {change the device to suit if it's not the second SCSI CD/DVD drive}, you will see the word "Philips" appear several times.
The recorder has two fully wired SCARTs, one with RGB in for a satellite RX and one with RGB out for the TV. There are also front-panel camcorder sockets including S-VHS. That's the minimum amount of connectivity I would touch nowadays. I haven't got a 5.1 channel amplifier; I still prefer my 2-channel amp which dates from the days when transistors still had something to prove.
If I was buying again now, I would probably choose another Philips or Daewoo, because many of the cheaper machines that use the "plus" format seem to be brands I've never heard of. Some of the latest generation of machines seem to be able to use both "plus" and "minus" discs {perhaps for recording things you don't want to watch ever again?} I would definitely pick one with an internal HDD this time around. I would also get a 3- or maybe 5-year extended warranty; if the store wouldn't even offer that, then I would steer clear as they obviously lack confidence that it will last any longer than that.
No SCART socket? Then what do you use to connect the RGB output {almost straight to the electron guns, no loss of quality as you might experience through a Y-C or Y-U-V matrix} from your DVD player or games console to your TV?
Christian..... as in "christian rock music". Characterised by the absence of what is usually considered to be the defining element of a kind of thing, and therefore acceptable only to one who is utterly deluded.
..... Which is why I make a point, anytime I am forced to buy software I will not be using, of "deregistering" my purchase. I send a letter to the vendor stating in no uncertain terms that I do NOT accept the EULA offered with the software and that I will consider my rights violated, with the Usual Consequences, if I am counted amongst its registered users.
Congratulations on building a MythTV system! I was going to do likewise, but I chickened out and bought a stand-alone, "under-the-set" DVD recorder which uses +R and +RW discs. {And it's at this point that we begin to drift off-topic.}
I have a numbered re-recordable disc for every day of the month, which I simply rotate between. {I figured that anything I haven't watched after a month, I'm never going to watch.} When I get a real "keeper", I can copy an entire disc from +RW to +R very easily using K3B {the first time -- I would just type the growisofs command shown in the debugging output into an xterm, if I wanted to make another copy!}. However, this means I sometimes end up with just 1 or 2 hours of recording on a disc which will hold 4 hours {or 6 with some noticeable quality loss.} Do you know if there is some way to copy individual shows from the +RW disc to HDD or +R disc? With the recorder, each programme you record goes into its own title, with a chapter mark every 5 mins or as you press the "edit" key on the remote; but the files you see when doing ls on the disc do not seem to correspond to recorded shows.
BTW, I'm running Debian Etch, with the odd package compiled from Sarge or Sid sources.
The very concept of "intellectual property" is a direct threat to our freedom and must be brought to an end by any means necessary.
In the 1990s, the slogan of the Direct Action movement was "Do no harm to life, only property". In the 21st century, a new Direct Action movement is arising under the slogan "Do no harm to life or tangible property, only false 'intellectual property'". It's not a case of the end justifying the means;
all means to the same end are equally valid, and the corollary is: means which are not equally valid serve different ends.
Ultimately, every one of us has a choice. If you're a film star and you don't like the idea of acting in a film and not getting paid every single time somebody watches it, then don't act in films! When you're earning more in a year than some people will see in a lifetime, you have no right to complain that it could be more. It could be less. Be thankful for what you've got.
The poor will never get richer unless the rich first get a little poorer.
There's a problem: Macrovision. They deliberately put high-voltage pulses in the vertical retrace interval of some frames to confuse the automatic gain control in the recorder. The AGC sees the spike, winds the gain down and you get a dim picture for several frames. Then it goes bright again. Then they put in another spike and it goes dim. As far as protection schemes go, this one is totally christian. You will just need a DVD player with the option to disable Macrovision; a VCR with RGB inputs; an RGB to composite encoder {NB; must be the appropriate video standard, PAL, SECAM or NTSC, for your region}; a timebase corrector; or an image stabiliser.
One very simplistic way to defeat Macrovision is to build a simple level-limiter circuit, so the extraordinarily high voltage pulses sent in the vertical retrace interval will be clamped to peak white level {1V} before they reach the VCR. This is really nothing more than a DC-coupled, non-inverting, high-bandwidth version of a guitar distortion pedal.
To build a more sophisticated timebase corrector, use a 1881 sync separator to get the timing signals, and some sort of bilateral switch {a 4016/4066 will sort of just about do, but look at the Maxim web site for some higher-bandwidth, lower-on-resistance ones} to switch between the existing video signal, and a locally-generated "black" signal {about 0.3 volts}. The 1881 has a composite sync output which should be used to add "clean" timing to the artificial black {just force it down to 0V when the timing signal goes low}. Be sure to use op-amps with a decent slew rate, not 358's! You will also need either a bunch of TTL ICs {if you're hard} or a microcontroller. At the beginning of each frame, switch to "artificial black" for about the first 20 lines of picture, then switch to the real picture for all but the last 20 or so lines, which should be replaced by more artificial black. You may need to experiment with the number of lines you strip out. If you are 500p3r l33t, you might even care to insert your own locally-generated Teletext information in the newly-created vertical retrace interval; but don't expect this to come out right on a VHS recorder.
Firstly, just use a fully-wired SCART cable and plug it into the first AV input on the telly. That will get neatly around the NTSC/PAL issue; since the red, green, blue and timing signals are carried on separate wires. The timing is close enough {625 lines @ 25 fps = 15625 lines/sec; 525 lines @ 30 fps = 15750 lines/sec} that any set modern enough to have SCART sockets will sync straight to it. As for the mains voltage and frequency issue, most modern electronic devices have switched mode power supplies that will work quite happily off anything from about 90 to 300V, DC to 200Hz.
I honestly don't know why anybody would pay MySQL for a commercial licence, when they can get a full-featured {well, as full-featured as MySQL ever gets} MySQL for next to nothing under the GPL. I can only think of support as a reason for buying a non-GPL version; but then, there is plenty of independent support out there in the Community, and you don't have to look particularly hard to find it.
Most of the features missing from MySQL have already had to be emulated in the application layer by cunning programmers, and could be ported through to the database engine layer if demand exists. Beside which, I'm not even certain that there's a big market for the really esoteric stuff -- people are already buying vastly over-specced software for their needs. There's a lot of under-speccing going on too, of course. I think this is an inevitable consequence of pret-a-courir software -- one size fits almost nobody. Nobody is complaining about this now, because they aren't aware that any alternative exists. So they might start out using a spreadsheet as a kind of poor man's database; then outgrow that, and end up buying a heavyweight database server with features they are never going to use. Yet an OS, web server, database server and scripting language, which can be had as a set for the taking, plus a few hours of programmer time and a retiring desktop PC, will deliver the required functionality across the entire corporate LAN, not just on one desktop.
There's an emerging market right now for competent people to advise business users who may be about to get {or have already had} their fingers burned, whether by vendor lock-in or licencing costs, on the benefits of Free Software and how to achieve the most painless migration. This will lead to greater use of Free Software; it will eventually become the norm, with the closed-source days regarded as a kind of "dark ages" in the history of computing. And we won't be able to believe we could ever have been so stupid as to allow it.
"Surround sound" is bollocks. You have only two ears. There is always an ambiguity when locating the source of a sound, since there are always at least two points from which it might have originated {and many more for continuous tones where there is no timing information.}
On the other hand, people do like very big speakers, and they also like very small speakers. That is an instinct to which manufacturers and salespeople can appeal. There is also a psychological phenomenon whereby expensive hi-fi equipment always sounds better to the person who paid for it.
As long as there is at least one country in the world where software is legally unpatentable, then software patents are not a problem anywhere else in the world.
Right. However, the best option for them is to simply sit on the products. Don't do anything - except maybe raise licensing fees. They'll be able to do that very soon now for innodb.
InnoDB is available under the GPL, and that means it's not going anywhere. Last I checked, you didn't have to pay any "licencing fees" to use it. As long as just one person outside Oracle has a copy of the source code, Oracle can't control its distribution. That person is entitled, under the permissions granted by the GPL, to supply it to anybody. They may charge a fee for the distribution -- but anyone who acquires a copy also has distribution rights, and may charge a lesser fee for distribution. That is called "free market capitalism" -- where the value of goods is determined by the price the market can withstand.
This seems to apply even whether the copy was had by fair means or foul, since the licence comes from the copyright holder and not the downstream distributor. If Slippery Joe the Hacker managed to break into Oracle's inner sanctum server and download some GPL source code, paragraph 6 of the GPL says he would be allowed by the copyright holder to distribute it. And if Joe went on to exceed his authority under the GPL, paragraph 4 says that nobody who had already received a copy from him would be affected by the resulting automatic revocation of his licence.
In the meanwhile, MySQL needs innodb to support advanced database features if it is going to be more competitive with Oracle - partitioning, encryption, online maintenance, etc. And if Oracle just refuses to add any of these new features then MySQL really has no where to turn. They're effectively *stopped*. For at least a few years anyway.
If Oracle won't add the features you mention to InnoDB, then somebody else will -- and they will almost certainly licence them under the GPL. That will mean the genie will be well and truly out of the bottle; Oracle cannot control what happens to software that has already been released under the GPL.
Of course there are existing standards for VoIP. Try IAX, SIP and H323 for starters..... and there are also corresponding encrypted bastardisations which may well become the norm, since they ought to be immune to wiretapping.
Gaim is a highly general-purpose client for various protocols, including open ones; the closed ones were hacked under the doctrine of Fair Dealing. Gaim 3 probably will merge the voice and video fork back into the main source tree.
I know Slashdot users like to bash MySQL, so I will try not to put out any bait.
MySQL and all its components -- including innoDB and BerkeleyDB, which is the Sleepycat product -- are available under Open Source licences {GPL for InnoDB and BSD-like for BDB}. And they will continue to be available under those licences for as long as copyright subsists in any of the code; after which they become Public Domain.
Just because the makers have been bought out, does not mean that there is any threat to the Open Source nature of the code. Quite the reverse, in fact. If Oracle are trying to make the proprietary fork of MySQL more compatible with their own proprietary database, then they must be aware that there is no way they can prevent the open source fork also becoming compatible with their proprietary product.
Oracle have shot themselves in the foot here. There is already plenty of choice of Open Source database server applications; MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, SQLite, Ingres, and so on. This could be the beginning of the end of closed source software. We can only hope!
The thing is that unless this service is based upon open protocols and standards, it will be doomed to failure. How many electricity companies do you know who make money by selling you 72 volts, 16.6667Hz {well, that's what they say it is, but you aren't allowed to measure it} from weirdy sockets with different-shaped pins, and selling the special appliances to go with it possibly at a loss?
Telephones only took off because of compatibility. POTS networks are all similar enough that you can be fairly sure that a phone or modem will work anywhere in the world, if you can only find the correct plug to fit the weirdy sockets you are likely to encounter on your travels {hint: two crocodile clips and a multi-tool [please let's not start a Gerber v. Leatherman flame war here; the Gerber must be better, because all cheap knock-offs are based on the Leatherman] are as good as anything}.
A VoIP client is only any good if it is compatible with existing standards -- or if it can reasonably be reverse-engineered.
Depends what you're wanting, really. If your system draws no more than 299 watts continuously {measured on the low-tension side}, then a properly-built and specified power supply with an output of 300W should work just fine. {Get an AVO and remember, watts = volts * amps.} However, cheap power supplies tend to be rated by the maximum instantaneous power input {on the high-tension side} -- some of which {tending to vary inversely with price} gets turned into heat within the confines of the tin box. Very cheap power supplies are usually rated by a figure plucked out of someone's arsehole.
They know Windows if and only if they were brought up on Windows. The {admittedly few} people whom I have introduced to computing via Linux from the outset haven't had a problem with Linux. In fact, when they get onto Windows XP, they're often frustrated that there is only one desktop and the konsole has no apt-get.
That's what all the Microsoft paid shills are saying..... "choice", "right tool for the job" and so forth. Conveniently ignoring the fact that most of the time there is no choice.
When did anyone ever have a choice of what OS comes on a new PC? For instance, have you ever tried to buy a GNU/Linux notebook?
How often is it in the interests of an employer to offer employees a choice of operating systems? Only in a few, very specialised cases.
Also, "the right tool for the job" may well be something beautiful but expensive that requires a great effort to make locally, if part of "the job" specifically includes keeping money in the local economy rather than sending it to a foreign corporation. Remember, no matter how much you have to pay them, local programmers pay local taxes, drink in local pubs, spend their money in local stores, take their friends and family to visit local tourist attractions, and generally benefit the local economy.
That's right, training will be enormously expensive. GNU/Linux PCs have a totally different keyboard layout to Windows ones. When you want the cursor on a GNU/Linux PC to move up, you have to move the mouse sideways. In OpenOffice Writer, when you want to make text bold you have to select "underline" and if you want to underline text, you have to select "right align". In OpenOffice Calc, you can't use the numeric keypad; you have to spell out all your numbers in words, like "seven hundred and sixty four thousand, one hundred and fourteen".
Oh, wait a minute, that's bollocks. The keys are in the same place, the mouse moves in the same directions, the options all have similar names and things generally work fairly similar. Anyone who learns like an adult and sees the abstract concepts behind actions, rather than learning like a child and blindly parrotting actions, will have little trouble adjusting.
The one big thing that catches people out is that rebooting a GNU/Linux PC almost never cures it of a fault, because GNU/Linux applications don't very often go unstable for no reason; so if anything is wrong, it is likely to be deliberate {as far as the computer is concerned} and if you didn't actually change any settings, the problem will still be there next time around. That's what we call "repeatable behaviour".
Isn't recklesness mens rea anymore? A reasonable person should have been able to foresee the damage that might be inflicted by the use of such a rootkit. Sony used it anyway without regard to the consequences. That certainly sounds like recklessness.
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Of course you are allowed to sell Free software. If you weren't, it wouldn't be Free. The thing that prevents overpricing is the fact that other people are allowed to sell the same thing as you, cheaper than you.
One of the things wrong with capitalism is the way that the sellers of goods are allowed to determine the selling price. This enables a player with sufficient reserves of money to enter a market and bankrupt their competitors, by selling a similar product cheaper than anyone else at a slight net loss. No-one can compete with this and they have to withdraw from the market. The major player then raises their price and begins recouping the losses they incurred with a vengeance.
In the Free Software marketplace, the barrier to entry is very low; all that you need to set up in business is a computer with a CD recorder and some Free software. You don't need masses of materials and you don't need an idea -- you don't even have to pay for someone else's idea. While someone could be selling Firefox CDs for £100 apiece, you could be selling equivalent CDs for £10 or even £5 apiece. You could even sell them for 20p each, though you would probably bankrupt yourself. The Market will work out a fair price which does not overburden vendors or purchasers.
Even if a piece of Free software is available from only one source for an extortionate cost, a group of people could still pool their resources, buy just one copy and then be permitted to distribute as many copies as they like, as cheap as they like.
Oh, the Japanese would probably love that ..... visions of some sort of Oriental warrior swinging a kettle lead with a UK plug like a weapon
Seriously, our mains plugs aren't that much bigger than our continental cousins' unfused earthed ones. And the cable exits, via a strain relief, at 90 degrees to the pins; so pulling the cable will never loosen the plug in the socket. I'd suggest you read BS1363. Unfortunately, the BSI expect you to pay to find out how to abide by the Law of the Land and so I can't just provide a link to an online version.
One consequence of the shape of our mains plugs is that they can lie on the floor, pins uppermost, waiting to surprise the unwary and unshod.
If they really wanted to cut down on electrical fires, then they could start using a sensible mains voltage. At 230V, you need fewer amperes to get the same number of watts; in the UK our outlets {all earthed, individually switched and non-reversible: the live is always on the right as you look into the socket} are good for up to 13A, giving 3kW. Even a 2kW kettle {we also like our tea .....} is only drawing just under 10A. And every plug has a fuse; so no appliance flexible cable has to withstand more current than enough to blow the plug fuse {as opposed to the distribution board fuse}.
Originally a Philips DVDR-70; replaced that with a Daewoo DVQ-1000R when it gave up the ghost. Interestingly the drive mechanism on the Philips is not a standard IDE unit but has a custom interface. The motherboard has space for a 40-pin IDE connector and features a Philips-made RISC processor. I haven't opened the Daewoo, but it obviously uses Philips internals too; aside from some obvious similarities in the menus, if you do strings /dev/scd1 |grep -i philips with one of its recorded discs in your computer {change the device to suit if it's not the second SCSI CD/DVD drive}, you will see the word "Philips" appear several times.
The recorder has two fully wired SCARTs, one with RGB in for a satellite RX and one with RGB out for the TV. There are also front-panel camcorder sockets including S-VHS. That's the minimum amount of connectivity I would touch nowadays. I haven't got a 5.1 channel amplifier; I still prefer my 2-channel amp which dates from the days when transistors still had something to prove.
If I was buying again now, I would probably choose another Philips or Daewoo, because many of the cheaper machines that use the "plus" format seem to be brands I've never heard of. Some of the latest generation of machines seem to be able to use both "plus" and "minus" discs {perhaps for recording things you don't want to watch ever again?} I would definitely pick one with an internal HDD this time around. I would also get a 3- or maybe 5-year extended warranty; if the store wouldn't even offer that, then I would steer clear as they obviously lack confidence that it will last any longer than that.
No SCART socket? Then what do you use to connect the RGB output {almost straight to the electron guns, no loss of quality as you might experience through a Y-C or Y-U-V matrix} from your DVD player or games console to your TV?
Christian ..... as in "christian rock music". Characterised by the absence of what is usually considered to be the defining element of a kind of thing, and therefore acceptable only to one who is utterly deluded.
..... Which is why I make a point, anytime I am forced to buy software I will not be using, of "deregistering" my purchase. I send a letter to the vendor stating in no uncertain terms that I do NOT accept the EULA offered with the software and that I will consider my rights violated, with the Usual Consequences, if I am counted amongst its registered users.
Congratulations on building a MythTV system! I was going to do likewise, but I chickened out and bought a stand-alone, "under-the-set" DVD recorder which uses +R and +RW discs. {And it's at this point that we begin to drift off-topic.}
I have a numbered re-recordable disc for every day of the month, which I simply rotate between. {I figured that anything I haven't watched after a month, I'm never going to watch.} When I get a real "keeper", I can copy an entire disc from +RW to +R very easily using K3B {the first time -- I would just type the growisofs command shown in the debugging output into an xterm, if I wanted to make another copy!}. However, this means I sometimes end up with just 1 or 2 hours of recording on a disc which will hold 4 hours {or 6 with some noticeable quality loss.} Do you know if there is some way to copy individual shows from the +RW disc to HDD or +R disc? With the recorder, each programme you record goes into its own title, with a chapter mark every 5 mins or as you press the "edit" key on the remote; but the files you see when doing ls on the disc do not seem to correspond to recorded shows.
BTW, I'm running Debian Etch, with the odd package compiled from Sarge or Sid sources.
The very concept of "intellectual property" is a direct threat to our freedom and must be brought to an end by any means necessary.
In the 1990s, the slogan of the Direct Action movement was "Do no harm to life, only property". In the 21st century, a new Direct Action movement is arising under the slogan "Do no harm to life or tangible property, only false 'intellectual property'". It's not a case of the end justifying the means; all means to the same end are equally valid, and the corollary is: means which are not equally valid serve different ends.
Ultimately, every one of us has a choice. If you're a film star and you don't like the idea of acting in a film and not getting paid every single time somebody watches it, then don't act in films! When you're earning more in a year than some people will see in a lifetime, you have no right to complain that it could be more. It could be less. Be thankful for what you've got.
The poor will never get richer unless the rich first get a little poorer.
There's a problem: Macrovision. They deliberately put high-voltage pulses in the vertical retrace interval of some frames to confuse the automatic gain control in the recorder. The AGC sees the spike, winds the gain down and you get a dim picture for several frames. Then it goes bright again. Then they put in another spike and it goes dim. As far as protection schemes go, this one is totally christian. You will just need a DVD player with the option to disable Macrovision; a VCR with RGB inputs; an RGB to composite encoder {NB; must be the appropriate video standard, PAL, SECAM or NTSC, for your region}; a timebase corrector; or an image stabiliser.
One very simplistic way to defeat Macrovision is to build a simple level-limiter circuit, so the extraordinarily high voltage pulses sent in the vertical retrace interval will be clamped to peak white level {1V} before they reach the VCR. This is really nothing more than a DC-coupled, non-inverting, high-bandwidth version of a guitar distortion pedal.
To build a more sophisticated timebase corrector, use a 1881 sync separator to get the timing signals, and some sort of bilateral switch {a 4016/4066 will sort of just about do, but look at the Maxim web site for some higher-bandwidth, lower-on-resistance ones} to switch between the existing video signal, and a locally-generated "black" signal {about 0.3 volts}. The 1881 has a composite sync output which should be used to add "clean" timing to the artificial black {just force it down to 0V when the timing signal goes low}. Be sure to use op-amps with a decent slew rate, not 358's! You will also need either a bunch of TTL ICs {if you're hard} or a microcontroller. At the beginning of each frame, switch to "artificial black" for about the first 20 lines of picture, then switch to the real picture for all but the last 20 or so lines, which should be replaced by more artificial black. You may need to experiment with the number of lines you strip out. If you are 500p3r l33t, you might even care to insert your own locally-generated Teletext information in the newly-created vertical retrace interval; but don't expect this to come out right on a VHS recorder.
Firstly, just use a fully-wired SCART cable and plug it into the first AV input on the telly. That will get neatly around the NTSC/PAL issue; since the red, green, blue and timing signals are carried on separate wires. The timing is close enough {625 lines @ 25 fps = 15625 lines/sec; 525 lines @ 30 fps = 15750 lines/sec} that any set modern enough to have SCART sockets will sync straight to it. As for the mains voltage and frequency issue, most modern electronic devices have switched mode power supplies that will work quite happily off anything from about 90 to 300V, DC to 200Hz.
I honestly don't know why anybody would pay MySQL for a commercial licence, when they can get a full-featured {well, as full-featured as MySQL ever gets} MySQL for next to nothing under the GPL. I can only think of support as a reason for buying a non-GPL version; but then, there is plenty of independent support out there in the Community, and you don't have to look particularly hard to find it.
Most of the features missing from MySQL have already had to be emulated in the application layer by cunning programmers, and could be ported through to the database engine layer if demand exists. Beside which, I'm not even certain that there's a big market for the really esoteric stuff -- people are already buying vastly over-specced software for their needs. There's a lot of under-speccing going on too, of course. I think this is an inevitable consequence of pret-a-courir software -- one size fits almost nobody. Nobody is complaining about this now, because they aren't aware that any alternative exists. So they might start out using a spreadsheet as a kind of poor man's database; then outgrow that, and end up buying a heavyweight database server with features they are never going to use. Yet an OS, web server, database server and scripting language, which can be had as a set for the taking, plus a few hours of programmer time and a retiring desktop PC, will deliver the required functionality across the entire corporate LAN, not just on one desktop.
There's an emerging market right now for competent people to advise business users who may be about to get {or have already had} their fingers burned, whether by vendor lock-in or licencing costs, on the benefits of Free Software and how to achieve the most painless migration. This will lead to greater use of Free Software; it will eventually become the norm, with the closed-source days regarded as a kind of "dark ages" in the history of computing. And we won't be able to believe we could ever have been so stupid as to allow it.
"Surround sound" is bollocks. You have only two ears. There is always an ambiguity when locating the source of a sound, since there are always at least two points from which it might have originated {and many more for continuous tones where there is no timing information.}
On the other hand, people do like very big speakers, and they also like very small speakers. That is an instinct to which manufacturers and salespeople can appeal. There is also a psychological phenomenon whereby expensive hi-fi equipment always sounds better to the person who paid for it.
As long as there is at least one country in the world where software is legally unpatentable, then software patents are not a problem anywhere else in the world.
This seems to apply even whether the copy was had by fair means or foul, since the licence comes from the copyright holder and not the downstream distributor. If Slippery Joe the Hacker managed to break into Oracle's inner sanctum server and download some GPL source code, paragraph 6 of the GPL says he would be allowed by the copyright holder to distribute it. And if Joe went on to exceed his authority under the GPL, paragraph 4 says that nobody who had already received a copy from him would be affected by the resulting automatic revocation of his licence. If Oracle won't add the features you mention to InnoDB, then somebody else will -- and they will almost certainly licence them under the GPL. That will mean the genie will be well and truly out of the bottle; Oracle cannot control what happens to software that has already been released under the GPL.
Of course there are existing standards for VoIP. Try IAX, SIP and H323 for starters ..... and there are also corresponding encrypted bastardisations which may well become the norm, since they ought to be immune to wiretapping.
Gaim is a highly general-purpose client for various protocols, including open ones; the closed ones were hacked under the doctrine of Fair Dealing. Gaim 3 probably will merge the voice and video fork back into the main source tree.
I know Slashdot users like to bash MySQL, so I will try not to put out any bait.
MySQL and all its components -- including innoDB and BerkeleyDB, which is the Sleepycat product -- are available under Open Source licences {GPL for InnoDB and BSD-like for BDB}. And they will continue to be available under those licences for as long as copyright subsists in any of the code; after which they become Public Domain.
Just because the makers have been bought out, does not mean that there is any threat to the Open Source nature of the code. Quite the reverse, in fact. If Oracle are trying to make the proprietary fork of MySQL more compatible with their own proprietary database, then they must be aware that there is no way they can prevent the open source fork also becoming compatible with their proprietary product.
Oracle have shot themselves in the foot here. There is already plenty of choice of Open Source database server applications; MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, SQLite, Ingres, and so on. This could be the beginning of the end of closed source software. We can only hope!
The thing is that unless this service is based upon open protocols and standards, it will be doomed to failure. How many electricity companies do you know who make money by selling you 72 volts, 16.6667Hz {well, that's what they say it is, but you aren't allowed to measure it} from weirdy sockets with different-shaped pins, and selling the special appliances to go with it possibly at a loss?
Telephones only took off because of compatibility. POTS networks are all similar enough that you can be fairly sure that a phone or modem will work anywhere in the world, if you can only find the correct plug to fit the weirdy sockets you are likely to encounter on your travels {hint: two crocodile clips and a multi-tool [please let's not start a Gerber v. Leatherman flame war here; the Gerber must be better, because all cheap knock-offs are based on the Leatherman] are as good as anything}.
A VoIP client is only any good if it is compatible with existing standards -- or if it can reasonably be reverse-engineered.
Depends what you're wanting, really. If your system draws no more than 299 watts continuously {measured on the low-tension side}, then a properly-built and specified power supply with an output of 300W should work just fine. {Get an AVO and remember, watts = volts * amps.} However, cheap power supplies tend to be rated by the maximum instantaneous power input {on the high-tension side} -- some of which {tending to vary inversely with price} gets turned into heat within the confines of the tin box. Very cheap power supplies are usually rated by a figure plucked out of someone's arsehole.
They know Windows if and only if they were brought up on Windows. The {admittedly few} people whom I have introduced to computing via Linux from the outset haven't had a problem with Linux. In fact, when they get onto Windows XP, they're often frustrated that there is only one desktop and the konsole has no apt-get.
- When did anyone ever have a choice of what OS comes on a new PC? For instance, have you ever tried to buy a GNU/Linux notebook?
- How often is it in the interests of an employer to offer employees a choice of operating systems? Only in a few, very specialised cases.
Also, "the right tool for the job" may well be something beautiful but expensive that requires a great effort to make locally, if part of "the job" specifically includes keeping money in the local economy rather than sending it to a foreign corporation. Remember, no matter how much you have to pay them, local programmers pay local taxes, drink in local pubs, spend their money in local stores, take their friends and family to visit local tourist attractions, and generally benefit the local economy.That's right, training will be enormously expensive. GNU/Linux PCs have a totally different keyboard layout to Windows ones. When you want the cursor on a GNU/Linux PC to move up, you have to move the mouse sideways. In OpenOffice Writer, when you want to make text bold you have to select "underline" and if you want to underline text, you have to select "right align". In OpenOffice Calc, you can't use the numeric keypad; you have to spell out all your numbers in words, like "seven hundred and sixty four thousand, one hundred and fourteen".
Oh, wait a minute, that's bollocks. The keys are in the same place, the mouse moves in the same directions, the options all have similar names and things generally work fairly similar. Anyone who learns like an adult and sees the abstract concepts behind actions, rather than learning like a child and blindly parrotting actions, will have little trouble adjusting.
The one big thing that catches people out is that rebooting a GNU/Linux PC almost never cures it of a fault, because GNU/Linux applications don't very often go unstable for no reason; so if anything is wrong, it is likely to be deliberate {as far as the computer is concerned} and if you didn't actually change any settings, the problem will still be there next time around. That's what we call "repeatable behaviour".
In the UK, the Computer Misuse Act 1990 would apply. Sony committed offences under sections one, three and probably two.
Isn't recklesness mens rea anymore? A reasonable person should have been able to foresee the damage that might be inflicted by the use of such a rootkit. Sony used it anyway without regard to the consequences. That certainly sounds like recklessness.
You're talking bollocks. MacOS X does not have "DLL" files.