When I worked at a computer repair store, the laptops with which we had the best results were (in no particular order): IBM, Dell, Toshiba. IBMs are the most expensive of the three. All three are quite capable.
You are probably correct that the ThinkPads are the hardest to damage, but that is part of the reason why they are the most expensive. In normal use (i.e. not standing on them), all three are quite durable.
I wonder if he ever asked them to make a change prior to filing the suit. If he did not, I would say that his goose is cooked. Otoh, if he did, it is quite possible that a judge/jury would rule that they should have made a change to make the snippet more accurately reflect what actually happened.
It's the same idea as a web forum being forced to remove a libelous post.
I think that it's relevant in this case that the service is one that you can't find in brick and mortar stores. There are stores for auto parts (e.g. AutoZone), so if someone wants to ask questions, they will go into the store and do it. Not a big market for brick and mortar stores that sell web hosting.
Another recent article pointed out that SCO has authorized itself to purchase shares from employees. T.f. it is likely that these purchases are being made by *SCO* from insiders.
A side effect of this is that it means that the SCO insiders are still able to dump their stock.
Putting on my tinfoil hat, I wonder if this is also why they are suing the feds. This seems dangerously close to illegal stock manipulation to me. I wonder if they plan on claiming that the only reason that they are being prosecuted is to quash their law suit.
Have you tried setting up SPF records ( http://spf.pobox.com ) for your domain? I thought I saw that AOL was going to start using SPF records to block prior to receipt (rather than after, as bounces--that server is a bounce sender as posted in other posts). SPF records would catch if your domain is being joe jobbed.
"Now, if only my webhost would have a way to prevent people from forging email to appears as if it originated from my domain"
Not that it affects this situation (it's not the email address that triggers the blocking, but the links in the email), but your host does have a way to prevent domain forging (joe jobs): publishing SPF records ( http://spf.pobox.com ) for your domain. Didn't I see that AOL was thinking about using SPF records to check incoming mail? It was one of the big ones.
"There was an link on Fark a week ago to an article about some guy that actually looks forwards to receiving spam, and had bought a lot of things from spam mails."
Go back and read the discussion. That guy was a scammer. He may or may not have actually bought stuff from spam, but he was *definitely* involved in a MLM like scam on his web site. He also had sent spam in the past.
The fact that people sometimes buy things advertised in spam does not validate what spammers do. Spam is like making a collect phone call that always goes through to pitch their wares. Regardless of whether the product does what it says or not, this is not how I want to be contacted. If you really want to receive such things, get yourself an 800 line.
That said, there are legitimate reasons why people might like reading advertising in their email. Those people should be able to do so. This can be done now, although it puts some burden on the senders to continually validate themselves to the receiving ISP (for the big ones like Yahoo, they accept mailing list traffic but struggle over it being solicited vs. unsolicited; sign up for a yahoo mail account and label a legitimate mail as junk and see what happens).
Does present an interesting idea though. What about a spam friendly email server that allows people to receive as much spam as they want? It could support VRFY, publish an email directory, allow posting to *all* addresses on the server at once, etc. Maybe I'll pitch that at work.
Your numbers are off, Even put together, China and India have less than 10 times the population of the US. However, that's not the problem with your argument.
Have you ever seen a want ad that said something like "local candidates only?" There are significant advantages to hiring someone who is local or who can at least move to your location. Some jobs are only meaningful locally (e.g. network admin, hardware repair, installer, etc.).
People forget how the outsourcing trend started. In the 90s, there was a significant shortage of tech workers. As a result, the US outsourced a large number of tech jobs. When the tech bubble burst, this caused layoffs on both sides of the Pacific. As a result, there was a large number of available and trained workers in India. Companies that were under cost pressures could relieve these by shifting commodity jobs from the high wage US to low wage India.
This is already reversing in individual situations. Companies for whom tech support is important (as opposed to those who just want to show good statistics) are realizing that outsourcing to people who don't natively speak the language is a bad idea. Managers are realizing that it is hard for them to manage workers who are on the far side of the globe.
Yes, the trend will level off. Further, the US tech market will grow again. While some of this will benefit those overseas, a number of jobs will open up in the US as well.
Both Apache and IIS can be configured to only accept connections made with a particular name (or names). This is how multiple web sites can share the same IP.
PHP outputs web pages. If that's what you want, great. If not, then why use it? There are plenty of languages that just run and don't bother to produce output unless requested (*shell, Perl, C, Java, etc.).
I tried using PHP from the command line to do some database manipulation because I had never worked with the Perl MySQL libs. I played with it for a while and then took a day to figure out the Perl syntax instead. No extraneous output (e.g. <html><head>junk</head><body>mor e junk</body></html>) that way.
Why did HP buy Compaq? Computers are far less profitable than printers and other such accessories. Why did HP want to further dilute its company with marginally profitable computers?
Perhaps the biggest reason was that it funnelled more customers to the more profitable accessories businesses (if I buy a computer from HP, I might as well buy the printer from there as well). Also, the economies of scale in their parts business (both HP and Compaq sell highly proprietary parts which are only available from them--e.g. $300 motherboards for $500 PCs).
Microsoft has been consistently willing to lose money with MSN. If I am reading the article correctly (AOL profits are not separately available easily, since they are a subsidiary; probably available somewhere, but I'm not taking the time to try), AOL is at least currently profitable (albeit decreasingly so). Further, purchasing it more than triples their subscriber base. All the reasons for Microsoft to be in the ISP business at all (presumably to help funnel business back to their profitable OS and office suite lines) are reasons for them to want AOL.
No, I don't think that AOL has anything to teach Microsoft, but that has nothing to do with the potential aquisition. The biggest thing that Microsoft can gain is market share. Next biggest is content, but they will probably look to outsource most of that anyway (they might even leave the content part with Time Warner, as sharing content was the original purpose of their talks).
If I thought that an election was in the bag for a candidate, it would make me *more* likely to vote for a third party candidate. If it is a close election, then I will restrict my voting to the two major candidates. If I don't know if the race is close, then I stick with the two major candidates. Thus, only when an exit poll tells me that one of the major party candidates is going to win handily will I consider voting for a third party candidate.
There are a lot of reasons why the 2 party system is entrenched, but exit polls are not even a small part of this.
Which is almost exactly the system used in that county in Florida. Dimples, hanging chads, etc.
The optical system works perfectly fine *if* you have voters do a test score with standard settings after voting. Then they know how their ballots will be scored by the system. If this does not match their intended choices, they can fix it.
At least here the votes are still recorded. Much better than the electronic systems, which have no way of knowing if they lost info or not. As someone already posted, this is not an e-voting problem. E-voting (with paper trail) only gets mentioned as a better alternative to what they did. Of course, that misses the point that in this case, the paper trail exists (the actual ballots may be recounted).
The missing part is that voters need to be able to check how their ballot will be scored prior to final submission. Then the ballot could be destroyed and redone if errors exist. A visual inspection is not enough, as it leaves open the possibility of the machine scoring differently than the voter thought it would. The check/verification needs to be done with a machine with identical settings to those used in the actual count--preferably by the exact same machine.
The obvious answer is that you won't pay $700 to get something that big for that much money.
Microsoft will eventually realize this and cut the price to the $400-$500 range (or possibly further). Just like they cut XBox prices from $300 (about breaking even) to $200 (lose $100 per unit). Of course, they may not continue producing them after that, as I don't know that they get the same benefit from this that they do from the XBox (the unit loses money, but the games for it are profitable; do they sell any content for these fake iPods? I don't think that they make enough from their DRM licenses to support this).
I don't care if you do not pay for software. Your choice. There is quite a bit of software which I might get for free but would not pay to get: game demos come to mind.
What I protest is preaching to others not to pay for software and calling that the GNU philosophy. That is two *separate* things. I *especially* protest preaching to others not to pay for GNU software, as it weakens the system (other people paying Hans Reiser to work on ReiserFS helps me as it gives him more time/resources to use to develop ReiserFS).
Ok, die then. You obviously have no intention of living GNU. GNU is about free like speech should be, not free like people wish beer was. Yes, there are free beer versions of most open source software. However, these mostly come from pay software: Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, et. al. are all pay software primarily); ReiserFS (Hans collects enough from support and alternate licensing to live reasonably); MySQL; etc.
Promoting a refusal to pay for software has nothing to do with GNU or open source. Read http://www.tlug.jp/docs/rms.html to see Stallman take to task someone talking like you. The issue is not to get software without paying for it. The issue is to be free to modify the software afterwards. You can get binaries without paying for them, both legally (freeware) and illegally (warez). However, they will never be free software in the GNU sense of the word, as they are unmodifiable.
Living GNU means refusing to use software that you can't modify and redistribute. Refusing to pay for it? You are just leeching off the system. Money is the contribution of those who can't code. Money is also the way that those who can't code can influence development. Thus, paying for software makes it more inclusive by including non-coders in the process.
"(like how can his eyes still be authorized to the top secret area when he is most wanted)"
This is one of those things that may be hard to believe but is very realistic. The key to it is understanding that the top secret area was not connected to any of the rest of the systems and was essentially hard coded. The reason for this was to keep it from being compromised (compromising the exterior systems does not help compromise the interior systems).
It would have been very difficult to change that system to keep him from getting in, as it would have involved changing the hard coding. To make it worse, the person who would naturally have been in charge of seeing that that was done was him. Further, his replacement did *not* have authority to go into that area, much less change it.
This was actually very realistic. Separating the exterior and interior systems is the correct thing to do, but it also means that if one of the limited number of people authorized to change that system (the movie implies three people had access, including him; the precogs do not count, as they wouldn't have access to open the door) is compromised, one must make changes to that system as well as the exterior system. Easy to overlook.
The part of Minority Report that bothered me was the idea that if they couldn't send the people to jail, the system would fall apart. Who cares if they go to jail if they don't murder anyone? Particularly with the crimes of passion, like the guy with the scissors. The issue was subtly different in the short story, which I remember as being more realistic.
They also don't explain how they were going to expand the system with only three precogs with limited range.
Bugs aren't the issue with this insurance. IP claims are the issue. It doesn't insure against bugs; it insures against someone making a patent or copyright claim against you. It also agrees to fight the claim in court and to pay various damages from complying with a court order. One use would be anti-SCO insurance, but it seems that they are really more interested in being an anti-Eolas insurance (patent claim).
Even with the malpractice insurance that is mentioned by the/. headline (but is not the subject, just an incidental), buggy code is less of an issue than damages caused by buggy code. For example, if your buggy code deletes their customer database, then the malpractice insurance would pay to recreate it from hard copy.
Btw, even if you refused to code without insurance (which you are not forced to do; you are in no way required to get the malpractice insurance to code), it is normally a slow process to get insurance cancelled (not to mention that it normally takes more than one claim). You would generally have plenty of time to fix the software prior to losing the insurance.
I am fairly sure that Microsoft would prefer to release bug free code. However, for some reason, they have never done so. Bug free is a great (albeit unreachable) target, but it's not like not buying malpractice insurance will make software bug free. Otoh, having damage insurance can help a company weather a major bug that interferes with day to day operations.
What are you talking about? My cousin got his $11 (or whatever) from the record industry just a few months ago! It's almost enough to buy a whole CD! Maybe even get a couple extra songs with iTunes!/Move along, no serious thinking here
No, not *just* legacy games, but still *including* legacy games. If you have a choice between a platform that runs *all* your games (old and new) and a platform that runs *some* new games, which will you choose? I return to my original example of the Warcraft II expansion set. I like that game better than Warcraft III or its expansion set. UT, Quake, Half Life, etc. do nothing for me. Warcraft II (which runs under WineX) or a newer form of Civilization would.
Your view of classics seems limited to one or two genres (one person adventures and 3D shooters). My area of interest (Strategy) would be totally different (Half Life is the only game that you mention that I have actually played for any length of time; to me, the *craft and Civilization series are the classics). Someone else will come up with entirely different areas (Puzzle, Sports, etc.). Not just minor areas like stamp collecting, but many major areas.
Office apps are far more monolithic. A person uses *one* spreadsheet, one word processor, one web browser (Ok, I use two, but that is because some of my work is web design related.), and one email client. Someone may prefer one flavor to another, but they can usually get by with what's available. If you told me that I would have to play UT instead of Warcraft II, I would go nuts. However, I can switch between using Word/Excel at work and OpenOffice at home relatively easily.
You mention four games just in your genre which you would need to move entirely to Linux. If I came up with four games, they would be entirely different. If my niece came up with four games, they would be different again. Her sister might come up with an entirely different list. Their mother would have another group.
Games will get ported to Linux when Linux market share supports it. For some games (UT, Id Software games), this has already happened. When Linux tops 5% (traditional Mac market share, although it is lower now), this will probably happen with most popular games.
Morphix ( www.morphix.org ) already does this (and Gentoo did). Two problems:
1. Hardware compatibility. Knoppix and Morphix are great at this, but not as good as Microsoft Windows. Yes, a good part of this is that hardware manufacturers support Microsoft more, but reasons do not matter; results do.
2. One has to reboot the computer to start or switch games.
As you note, consoles already do this. They have market penetration and pay for advertising to maintain it. Linux does not have market penetration and cannot (by its nature) pay for advertising.
Look at how much money Microsoft is spending to try to get into this market (XBox). Linux could never put this much money into a project. It's not just the development. The biggest problem is marketing. Linux is stuck with word of mouth and projects like sourceforge. Proprietary developers use proceeds from software sales. Games are horrid products from an open source perspective as they do not include any way to charge (beyond the initial sale; not of much use if only one in a hundred users actually gets it direct from the company).
Linux should stick to areas where its model does well: servers and workstations. Businesses will pay for support where individuals mostly won't. If some individuals get free rides as well, that's nice. However, that shouldn't be the focus IMO, as it is not sustainable.
The problem is that if someone has a game that they really like (the Warcraft 2 Expansion Set comes to mind for me), then they will want to be able to run that game on their PC. If they can't, it doesn't really matter if the PC runs newer games (which is what manufacturers will port) or not. If they can't run their existing favorite games, they can't run Linux full time.
For this reason, I consider a games distro to be one of the worst ideas to gain Linux converts. There are just too many games.
Concentrating on general (email, web browser, word processing, spreadsheet, etc.) and specific (CAD, web design: e.g. Dreamweaver) applications makes more sense. There the issues are more in terms of supporting a few apps that someone uses almost exclusively. File compatibility is the important part, not application compatibility (I don't need to run Microsoft Word if OpenOffice can load and save.doc format; Evolution can connect to my Microsoft Exchange server; etc.).
I especially like CAD as a Linux app, because CAD designers frequently run *only* their CAD software on their PC. Even if they can't run any other software on it, it doesn't matter. They wouldn't anyway. Further, CAD uses gobs of resources and is thus better suited for lean running Linux (system processes leave more room for CAD processes).
IMO, games should be one of the last areas of focus for Linux developers. There are just too many legacy games which will never get ported. Thus promoting hacks like WINE. Linux should concentrate on its own apps, not pretending to be Microsoft Windows.
In the meantime, consider looking at multi-platform game development engines like those provided by Garage Games: http://www.garagegames.com/pg/browse.php?type=deve lopment
Multi-platform engines enable game designers to get both markets easily. Ideally, they could develop on Linux (less system process bloat means faster compiling) and test the game on Microsoft Windows.
Btw, now that I have actually RTFA, I notice that the author is talking about something like bootable CDs with games on them. This already existed: that's exactly what Gentoo Games CDs were. The website ( www.gentoogames.com ) no longer seems to work, so I'm guessing that it never took off. Morphix also works on this (game specific live CD).
Another reason not to wait for games is the problem of too much of them being content rather than code. Modern games are frequently based on impressive 3D graphics (content) and movies (content) rather than spectacular game engines (code). Several of the big time multi-player games have already released Linux version (e.g. Id Software products). Until Linux has much more of a market share (at least 20%), we can't expect anyone to develop a Linux only game.
Look at how much money Microsoft is losing on XBox. Not a problem for them, since they have the money to lose. Linux doesn't have those kinds of resources. One game wouldn't do it. To really draw people would take ten or twenty.
I would contact the Free Software Foundation over this. It's their license; they should be able to give you an idea of how defensible it is. They might even be willing to take up the case if it is stark enough (i.e. an obvious violation that sets a good precedent).
Contact info at http://www.fsf.org/home.html#ContactInfo
The biggest problem with spell checkers is that they don't handle homonyms at all. Further, their handling of misspelled words can be weak as well: how many times have you seen allot where the person meant "a lot." The problem is that the person used the common misspelling alot, which the spell checker identifies as allot. T.f. the person changes to allot instead of correcting to a lot, totally changing the meaning of the sentence (it would actually have been easier to read the misspelled alot).
To, too, and two and for and four are common examples of words that go through a spell checker misspelled. Replacing the contraction 've with of is another example (e.g. should've is written should of). A spell checker will never catch that. People who rely on spell checkers (even if they feedback immediately) will find that they miss a lot of common misspellings.
Spell checkers are *not* a substitute for knowing how words are spelled. Spelling seems simple (just a dictionary lookup) but is actually heavily context dependent. Computer programs remain bad at that (and even a separate human being can be bad at that; to do this properly, one must have as much understanding of that particular topic as the original writer; clearly, the best person to resolve these issues is the original writer, who knows what she or he was trying to say).
But in that world...there are no products other than SQL server. He just said that they call *all* DB servers SQL server. Thus, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. are all SQL server.
My personal theory is that the best response to this would be to use the IBM product when they don't specify properly. As they say, it's hard to get fired for buying IBM.
I actually read a post (different forum) once where someone argued that saying SQL was sufficient to indicate that they meant Microsoft SQL Server, not the query language. He got really offended when people told him he was nuts.
Slashdot Mirror
When I worked at a computer repair store, the laptops with which we had the best results were (in no particular order): IBM, Dell, Toshiba. IBMs are the most expensive of the three. All three are quite capable.
You are probably correct that the ThinkPads are the hardest to damage, but that is part of the reason why they are the most expensive. In normal use (i.e. not standing on them), all three are quite durable.
I wonder if he ever asked them to make a change prior to filing the suit. If he did not, I would say that his goose is cooked. Otoh, if he did, it is quite possible that a judge/jury would rule that they should have made a change to make the snippet more accurately reflect what actually happened.
It's the same idea as a web forum being forced to remove a libelous post.
I think that it's relevant in this case that the service is one that you can't find in brick and mortar stores. There are stores for auto parts (e.g. AutoZone), so if someone wants to ask questions, they will go into the store and do it. Not a big market for brick and mortar stores that sell web hosting.
Another recent article pointed out that SCO has authorized itself to purchase shares from employees. T.f. it is likely that these purchases are being made by *SCO* from insiders.
A side effect of this is that it means that the SCO insiders are still able to dump their stock.
Putting on my tinfoil hat, I wonder if this is also why they are suing the feds. This seems dangerously close to illegal stock manipulation to me. I wonder if they plan on claiming that the only reason that they are being prosecuted is to quash their law suit.
Have you tried setting up SPF records ( http://spf.pobox.com ) for your domain? I thought I saw that AOL was going to start using SPF records to block prior to receipt (rather than after, as bounces--that server is a bounce sender as posted in other posts). SPF records would catch if your domain is being joe jobbed.
"Now, if only my webhost would have a way to prevent people from forging email to appears as if it originated from my domain"
Not that it affects this situation (it's not the email address that triggers the blocking, but the links in the email), but your host does have a way to prevent domain forging (joe jobs): publishing SPF records ( http://spf.pobox.com ) for your domain. Didn't I see that AOL was thinking about using SPF records to check incoming mail? It was one of the big ones.
"There was an link on Fark a week ago to an article about some guy that actually looks forwards to receiving spam, and had bought a lot of things from spam mails."
Go back and read the discussion. That guy was a scammer. He may or may not have actually bought stuff from spam, but he was *definitely* involved in a MLM like scam on his web site. He also had sent spam in the past.
The fact that people sometimes buy things advertised in spam does not validate what spammers do. Spam is like making a collect phone call that always goes through to pitch their wares. Regardless of whether the product does what it says or not, this is not how I want to be contacted. If you really want to receive such things, get yourself an 800 line.
That said, there are legitimate reasons why people might like reading advertising in their email. Those people should be able to do so. This can be done now, although it puts some burden on the senders to continually validate themselves to the receiving ISP (for the big ones like Yahoo, they accept mailing list traffic but struggle over it being solicited vs. unsolicited; sign up for a yahoo mail account and label a legitimate mail as junk and see what happens).
Does present an interesting idea though. What about a spam friendly email server that allows people to receive as much spam as they want? It could support VRFY, publish an email directory, allow posting to *all* addresses on the server at once, etc. Maybe I'll pitch that at work.
Your numbers are off, Even put together, China and India have less than 10 times the population of the US. However, that's not the problem with your argument.
Have you ever seen a want ad that said something like "local candidates only?" There are significant advantages to hiring someone who is local or who can at least move to your location. Some jobs are only meaningful locally (e.g. network admin, hardware repair, installer, etc.).
People forget how the outsourcing trend started. In the 90s, there was a significant shortage of tech workers. As a result, the US outsourced a large number of tech jobs. When the tech bubble burst, this caused layoffs on both sides of the Pacific. As a result, there was a large number of available and trained workers in India. Companies that were under cost pressures could relieve these by shifting commodity jobs from the high wage US to low wage India.
This is already reversing in individual situations. Companies for whom tech support is important (as opposed to those who just want to show good statistics) are realizing that outsourcing to people who don't natively speak the language is a bad idea. Managers are realizing that it is hard for them to manage workers who are on the far side of the globe.
Yes, the trend will level off. Further, the US tech market will grow again. While some of this will benefit those overseas, a number of jobs will open up in the US as well.
Both Apache and IIS can be configured to only accept connections made with a particular name (or names). This is how multiple web sites can share the same IP.
PHP outputs web pages. If that's what you want, great. If not, then why use it? There are plenty of languages that just run and don't bother to produce output unless requested (*shell, Perl, C, Java, etc.).
I tried using PHP from the command line to do some database manipulation because I had never worked with the Perl MySQL libs. I played with it for a while and then took a day to figure out the Perl syntax instead. No extraneous output (e.g. <html><head>junk</head><body>mor e junk</body></html>) that way.
Why did HP buy Compaq? Computers are far less profitable than printers and other such accessories. Why did HP want to further dilute its company with marginally profitable computers?
Perhaps the biggest reason was that it funnelled more customers to the more profitable accessories businesses (if I buy a computer from HP, I might as well buy the printer from there as well). Also, the economies of scale in their parts business (both HP and Compaq sell highly proprietary parts which are only available from them--e.g. $300 motherboards for $500 PCs).
Microsoft has been consistently willing to lose money with MSN. If I am reading the article correctly (AOL profits are not separately available easily, since they are a subsidiary; probably available somewhere, but I'm not taking the time to try), AOL is at least currently profitable (albeit decreasingly so). Further, purchasing it more than triples their subscriber base. All the reasons for Microsoft to be in the ISP business at all (presumably to help funnel business back to their profitable OS and office suite lines) are reasons for them to want AOL.
No, I don't think that AOL has anything to teach Microsoft, but that has nothing to do with the potential aquisition. The biggest thing that Microsoft can gain is market share. Next biggest is content, but they will probably look to outsource most of that anyway (they might even leave the content part with Time Warner, as sharing content was the original purpose of their talks).
If I thought that an election was in the bag for a candidate, it would make me *more* likely to vote for a third party candidate. If it is a close election, then I will restrict my voting to the two major candidates. If I don't know if the race is close, then I stick with the two major candidates. Thus, only when an exit poll tells me that one of the major party candidates is going to win handily will I consider voting for a third party candidate.
There are a lot of reasons why the 2 party system is entrenched, but exit polls are not even a small part of this.
Which is almost exactly the system used in that county in Florida. Dimples, hanging chads, etc.
The optical system works perfectly fine *if* you have voters do a test score with standard settings after voting. Then they know how their ballots will be scored by the system. If this does not match their intended choices, they can fix it.
At least here the votes are still recorded. Much better than the electronic systems, which have no way of knowing if they lost info or not. As someone already posted, this is not an e-voting problem. E-voting (with paper trail) only gets mentioned as a better alternative to what they did. Of course, that misses the point that in this case, the paper trail exists (the actual ballots may be recounted).
The missing part is that voters need to be able to check how their ballot will be scored prior to final submission. Then the ballot could be destroyed and redone if errors exist. A visual inspection is not enough, as it leaves open the possibility of the machine scoring differently than the voter thought it would. The check/verification needs to be done with a machine with identical settings to those used in the actual count--preferably by the exact same machine.
The obvious answer is that you won't pay $700 to get something that big for that much money.
Microsoft will eventually realize this and cut the price to the $400-$500 range (or possibly further). Just like they cut XBox prices from $300 (about breaking even) to $200 (lose $100 per unit). Of course, they may not continue producing them after that, as I don't know that they get the same benefit from this that they do from the XBox (the unit loses money, but the games for it are profitable; do they sell any content for these fake iPods? I don't think that they make enough from their DRM licenses to support this).
I don't care if you do not pay for software. Your choice. There is quite a bit of software which I might get for free but would not pay to get: game demos come to mind.
What I protest is preaching to others not to pay for software and calling that the GNU philosophy. That is two *separate* things. I *especially* protest preaching to others not to pay for GNU software, as it weakens the system (other people paying Hans Reiser to work on ReiserFS helps me as it gives him more time/resources to use to develop ReiserFS).
"LIVE GNU OR DIE."
Ok, die then. You obviously have no intention of living GNU. GNU is about free like speech should be, not free like people wish beer was. Yes, there are free beer versions of most open source software. However, these mostly come from pay software: Linux (Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, et. al. are all pay software primarily); ReiserFS (Hans collects enough from support and alternate licensing to live reasonably); MySQL; etc.
Promoting a refusal to pay for software has nothing to do with GNU or open source. Read http://www.tlug.jp/docs/rms.html to see Stallman take to task someone talking like you. The issue is not to get software without paying for it. The issue is to be free to modify the software afterwards. You can get binaries without paying for them, both legally (freeware) and illegally (warez). However, they will never be free software in the GNU sense of the word, as they are unmodifiable.
Living GNU means refusing to use software that you can't modify and redistribute. Refusing to pay for it? You are just leeching off the system. Money is the contribution of those who can't code. Money is also the way that those who can't code can influence development. Thus, paying for software makes it more inclusive by including non-coders in the process.
"(like how can his eyes still be authorized to the top secret area when he is most wanted)"
This is one of those things that may be hard to believe but is very realistic. The key to it is understanding that the top secret area was not connected to any of the rest of the systems and was essentially hard coded. The reason for this was to keep it from being compromised (compromising the exterior systems does not help compromise the interior systems).
It would have been very difficult to change that system to keep him from getting in, as it would have involved changing the hard coding. To make it worse, the person who would naturally have been in charge of seeing that that was done was him. Further, his replacement did *not* have authority to go into that area, much less change it.
This was actually very realistic. Separating the exterior and interior systems is the correct thing to do, but it also means that if one of the limited number of people authorized to change that system (the movie implies three people had access, including him; the precogs do not count, as they wouldn't have access to open the door) is compromised, one must make changes to that system as well as the exterior system. Easy to overlook.
The part of Minority Report that bothered me was the idea that if they couldn't send the people to jail, the system would fall apart. Who cares if they go to jail if they don't murder anyone? Particularly with the crimes of passion, like the guy with the scissors. The issue was subtly different in the short story, which I remember as being more realistic.
They also don't explain how they were going to expand the system with only three precogs with limited range.
Bugs aren't the issue with this insurance. IP claims are the issue. It doesn't insure against bugs; it insures against someone making a patent or copyright claim against you. It also agrees to fight the claim in court and to pay various damages from complying with a court order. One use would be anti-SCO insurance, but it seems that they are really more interested in being an anti-Eolas insurance (patent claim).
/. headline (but is not the subject, just an incidental), buggy code is less of an issue than damages caused by buggy code. For example, if your buggy code deletes their customer database, then the malpractice insurance would pay to recreate it from hard copy.
Even with the malpractice insurance that is mentioned by the
Btw, even if you refused to code without insurance (which you are not forced to do; you are in no way required to get the malpractice insurance to code), it is normally a slow process to get insurance cancelled (not to mention that it normally takes more than one claim). You would generally have plenty of time to fix the software prior to losing the insurance.
I am fairly sure that Microsoft would prefer to release bug free code. However, for some reason, they have never done so. Bug free is a great (albeit unreachable) target, but it's not like not buying malpractice insurance will make software bug free. Otoh, having damage insurance can help a company weather a major bug that interferes with day to day operations.
What are you talking about? My cousin got his $11 (or whatever) from the record industry just a few months ago! It's almost enough to buy a whole CD! Maybe even get a couple extra songs with iTunes! /Move along, no serious thinking here
No, not *just* legacy games, but still *including* legacy games. If you have a choice between a platform that runs *all* your games (old and new) and a platform that runs *some* new games, which will you choose? I return to my original example of the Warcraft II expansion set. I like that game better than Warcraft III or its expansion set. UT, Quake, Half Life, etc. do nothing for me. Warcraft II (which runs under WineX) or a newer form of Civilization would.
Your view of classics seems limited to one or two genres (one person adventures and 3D shooters). My area of interest (Strategy) would be totally different (Half Life is the only game that you mention that I have actually played for any length of time; to me, the *craft and Civilization series are the classics). Someone else will come up with entirely different areas (Puzzle, Sports, etc.). Not just minor areas like stamp collecting, but many major areas.
Office apps are far more monolithic. A person uses *one* spreadsheet, one word processor, one web browser (Ok, I use two, but that is because some of my work is web design related.), and one email client. Someone may prefer one flavor to another, but they can usually get by with what's available. If you told me that I would have to play UT instead of Warcraft II, I would go nuts. However, I can switch between using Word/Excel at work and OpenOffice at home relatively easily.
You mention four games just in your genre which you would need to move entirely to Linux. If I came up with four games, they would be entirely different. If my niece came up with four games, they would be different again. Her sister might come up with an entirely different list. Their mother would have another group.
Games will get ported to Linux when Linux market share supports it. For some games (UT, Id Software games), this has already happened. When Linux tops 5% (traditional Mac market share, although it is lower now), this will probably happen with most popular games.
Morphix ( www.morphix.org ) already does this (and Gentoo did). Two problems:
1. Hardware compatibility. Knoppix and Morphix are great at this, but not as good as Microsoft Windows. Yes, a good part of this is that hardware manufacturers support Microsoft more, but reasons do not matter; results do.
2. One has to reboot the computer to start or switch games.
As you note, consoles already do this. They have market penetration and pay for advertising to maintain it. Linux does not have market penetration and cannot (by its nature) pay for advertising.
Look at how much money Microsoft is spending to try to get into this market (XBox). Linux could never put this much money into a project. It's not just the development. The biggest problem is marketing. Linux is stuck with word of mouth and projects like sourceforge. Proprietary developers use proceeds from software sales. Games are horrid products from an open source perspective as they do not include any way to charge (beyond the initial sale; not of much use if only one in a hundred users actually gets it direct from the company).
Linux should stick to areas where its model does well: servers and workstations. Businesses will pay for support where individuals mostly won't. If some individuals get free rides as well, that's nice. However, that shouldn't be the focus IMO, as it is not sustainable.
The problem is that if someone has a game that they really like (the Warcraft 2 Expansion Set comes to mind for me), then they will want to be able to run that game on their PC. If they can't, it doesn't really matter if the PC runs newer games (which is what manufacturers will port) or not. If they can't run their existing favorite games, they can't run Linux full time.
.doc format; Evolution can connect to my Microsoft Exchange server; etc.).
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For this reason, I consider a games distro to be one of the worst ideas to gain Linux converts. There are just too many games.
Concentrating on general (email, web browser, word processing, spreadsheet, etc.) and specific (CAD, web design: e.g. Dreamweaver) applications makes more sense. There the issues are more in terms of supporting a few apps that someone uses almost exclusively. File compatibility is the important part, not application compatibility (I don't need to run Microsoft Word if OpenOffice can load and save
I especially like CAD as a Linux app, because CAD designers frequently run *only* their CAD software on their PC. Even if they can't run any other software on it, it doesn't matter. They wouldn't anyway. Further, CAD uses gobs of resources and is thus better suited for lean running Linux (system processes leave more room for CAD processes).
IMO, games should be one of the last areas of focus for Linux developers. There are just too many legacy games which will never get ported. Thus promoting hacks like WINE. Linux should concentrate on its own apps, not pretending to be Microsoft Windows.
In the meantime, consider looking at multi-platform game development engines like those provided by Garage Games: http://www.garagegames.com/pg/browse.php?type=dev
Multi-platform engines enable game designers to get both markets easily. Ideally, they could develop on Linux (less system process bloat means faster compiling) and test the game on Microsoft Windows.
Btw, now that I have actually RTFA, I notice that the author is talking about something like bootable CDs with games on them. This already existed: that's exactly what Gentoo Games CDs were. The website ( www.gentoogames.com ) no longer seems to work, so I'm guessing that it never took off. Morphix also works on this (game specific live CD).
Another reason not to wait for games is the problem of too much of them being content rather than code. Modern games are frequently based on impressive 3D graphics (content) and movies (content) rather than spectacular game engines (code). Several of the big time multi-player games have already released Linux version (e.g. Id Software products). Until Linux has much more of a market share (at least 20%), we can't expect anyone to develop a Linux only game.
Look at how much money Microsoft is losing on XBox. Not a problem for them, since they have the money to lose. Linux doesn't have those kinds of resources. One game wouldn't do it. To really draw people would take ten or twenty.
I would contact the Free Software Foundation over this. It's their license; they should be able to give you an idea of how defensible it is. They might even be willing to take up the case if it is stark enough (i.e. an obvious violation that sets a good precedent).
Contact info at http://www.fsf.org/home.html#ContactInfo
The biggest problem with spell checkers is that they don't handle homonyms at all. Further, their handling of misspelled words can be weak as well: how many times have you seen allot where the person meant "a lot." The problem is that the person used the common misspelling alot, which the spell checker identifies as allot. T.f. the person changes to allot instead of correcting to a lot, totally changing the meaning of the sentence (it would actually have been easier to read the misspelled alot).
To, too, and two and for and four are common examples of words that go through a spell checker misspelled. Replacing the contraction 've with of is another example (e.g. should've is written should of). A spell checker will never catch that. People who rely on spell checkers (even if they feedback immediately) will find that they miss a lot of common misspellings.
Spell checkers are *not* a substitute for knowing how words are spelled. Spelling seems simple (just a dictionary lookup) but is actually heavily context dependent. Computer programs remain bad at that (and even a separate human being can be bad at that; to do this properly, one must have as much understanding of that particular topic as the original writer; clearly, the best person to resolve these issues is the original writer, who knows what she or he was trying to say).
But in that world...there are no products other than SQL server. He just said that they call *all* DB servers SQL server. Thus, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. are all SQL server.
My personal theory is that the best response to this would be to use the IBM product when they don't specify properly. As they say, it's hard to get fired for buying IBM.
I actually read a post (different forum) once where someone argued that saying SQL was sufficient to indicate that they meant Microsoft SQL Server, not the query language. He got really offended when people told him he was nuts.