Self defense vs. free software?
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 1
Linux is the heart of GNU/Linux, and Linus is the heart of Linux. Is it so far-fetched to think that the U.S. might wish to make an "example" out of him as "supporting terrorism", given the Constitution-shreading they've done since 9/11/2001?
Yes.
If that happen to RMS, he'd not go down without kicking, screaming, generally making an annoying, attention-getting fuss, and making us think, "ya know, he's annoying, but doing that to him is wrong".
Problem there is one of uniqueness. That's what Stallman does about anything. So, honestly, I don't know that anyone would notice if Stallman's screaming because his mail got misdelivered or because he got thrown in a jail cell in Guantanamo Bay.
First, I think that it's a reach to think that anyone involved with linux will actually be prosecuted/persecuted simply for developing an OS. Second, I think it's a reach to assume that because Linus doesn't get involved with the "Free Software" fight that he would cave in to the US government. That and since he has Finnish citizenship he could tell them to piss off.
You need to separate two scenarios: is Linus in general apathetic, or is he simply uninterested in your cause?
Yes, I am a cynic, and somewhat paranoid.
Well, yeah, but we won't hold that against you. Just remember to keep the tinfoil hat firmly applied to your skull.;)
"That would be hard. I don't even think I have an
ideology. In fact, I reject the notion of ideology
because it denies objectivity."
Oh, you're an existentialist!
Nope. Just a scientist.
Pity it's still an ideology, though.
Interesting, because the notion that "the absence of a choice is itself a choice" is one of the main tenets of existentialism, as I recall. So, in making that connection yourself, you seem to be practicising a bit of existentialism. For me, my lack of a pre-defined ideology is just that. I don't let that lack define me either, because I just don't care enough. I always thought existentialism was a load of crap.
I'll have one OS, hold the politics.
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 1
Torvalds' political apathy, on the other hand is irritating...trying to please all by doing nothing.
On the other hand, one could argue that Stallman's political activism is annoying for those of use trying to enjoy a decent OS. And Linus never said he was trying to please anyone. As far as I can tell, he's been pretty honest in telling Stallman where he stands. I respect that - he isn't getting involved in all of Stallman's projects, because it's not his thing. He's a software engineer, and the world needs software engineers.
Also, I don't want to speak for Linus, but don't necessarily confuse apathy for simply not agreeing with Stallman. There has to be room for disagreement within any community - and if not, it's no longer a community, it's a cult.
Your argument is tantamount to that whole "you're either with us or against us" routine. That's a bit too divisive, as well as self-righteous. Some people, like me, think that there's room in the world for more than one software distribution scheme, and that people/companies that practice them aren't evil. I mean, I don't want linux to become "BSD for those who make their OS a religion" because I actually like linux better, but that seems to be where some people are trying to take it.
Linus be a "fair weather" friend to the Linux community, quietly disappearing into obscurity? I hope not, but, sadly, I'm not sure.
Watch that you don't confuse GNU with Linux as Stallman is ever quick to point out. Linus will be a friend to the Linux community as long as he's involved with the project. However, just because he released a project like Linux under GPL doesn't mean that he has to become a standard-bearer for GNU. I think you should certainly not necessarily count on Linus's support for GNU because, frankly, I don't know that he's given it.
Obviously she's not from a large U.S. city. I need a formula for *this* part alone!
No shit dude. Christ, my grandmother could park a car in that and she's dead. The real skill lies in parking in a space that's 6 inches longer than the diagonal of your car, which is effectively how long your car is while you're midway through parking.
Clearly, this guide is for women. Any guy who can't park in a space 1.5 carlengths long needs to have an "F" in the gender on his license.
Re:Free as in Freedom? WTF?
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 1
Open Source can be enslaved.
Yeah, I heard a BSD-licensed program just the other day talking about how oppressed it was. "Let my people go!" it said.
I'm still not convinced that Stallman hasn't perpetrated the Greatest Troll of All Time. He's just too hilarious.
Sometimes. Not this time though. I've read enough of the short crap Stallman writes without needing to hear the same thing repeated through a damned book.
So much easier than knowing anything. A true Know-Nothing.
Big talk for a guy living in his parents' basement. And I certainly don't see how not blowing Stallman equals knowing nothing. But thanks for at least capitalizing Know-Nothing.
Immune to facts or reality
Whose? Yours? I'm pretty OK with reality. I just don't happen to believe Stallman would know reality if it hit him in the ass.
you just spouted off ideologically
That would be hard. I don't even think I have an ideology. In fact, I reject the notion of ideology because it denies objectivity. If laughing at Stallman is ideology then a lot of us are guilty.
accusing someone (Stallman) of being a zealot
That wasn't actually me, but it's hard to disagree. In fact, I'm not so sure Stallman would disagree. Look at the word - Stallman is certainly someone who approaches his causes with a great deal of zeal.
when you are in fact the ideologic zealot posting fantasies about what someone else thinks or says.
We need to work on your vocabulary. I can't really be a zealot because I just don't give a fuck about the whole deal. Apathy and being a zealot are damned mutually exclusive. And we've been over the ideology thing. As for fantasies regarding RMS, I now feel the need to be ill. I get the idea you have fantasies about RMS though...and now I am ill.
Illustrative of the whole radical right movement.
I have no idea how the fuck you get that. 1)I'm definitely not radical. 2) I'm not too right (policitally, smartass!). 3) What does laughing at Stallman have to do with the radical right? Hell, even the left does that! Also, I don't think the radical right movement even know who the fuck Stallman is.
I think you need to remember to take your pills next time. And as for being a zealot - I'm not the one whose blood pressure went up just because someone made fun of my idol. That would be you.
Hey, I bet you have a lot of posters of RMS up in your little room in the parents' basement, huh?
You can bet that there will be proprietary elements to the platform and OS/X won't run on commodity x86 hardware.
Depends what their market is. If they can make it so that they control the MOBO and BIOS's like they do now for PPC architecture, then it doesn't matter. They could build systems based on the same Intel or AMD chips I can buy off the shelf, but it doesn't get me any closer to having an actual system because I can't get a MOBO except from Apple. And it's not like generics can legally reverse engineer the BIOS's like back in the day (thanks DMCA!). Even if someone did, all they need is a check in the BIOS that checks who made the MOBO and maybe another in the OS that refuses to run on a non-MacOS BIOS. So control of their platform is not a problem.
At that point, the only reason they'd have to even bother mussing around with the chip is to control the upgrade market...but do they care that much? I'm not saying they *should* go Intel/AMD, just that they *could* and it wouldn't matter that much.
I may disagree with you say, but I will defend to the death your right to prevent others from saying what they want to say, and as if that wasn't enough already, I'll let you do it with my software.
Right, because DRM naturally implies censorship. Methinks you're getting your causes mixed up. I'm no DRM fan, but I'm having a hard time seeing the protection of my copyrighted works as curtailing your free speech rights.
Free as in Freedom? WTF?
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 1
So, to paraphrase Stallman, "free software" = "open source" + "bunch of ideological dung." He says that free software = "free as in freedom." Exactly what the crap does that mean, other than a circular definition?
I reiterate, is it free as in beer, balls, or speech? Or all of the above?
You've obviously never read anything that Richard Stallman has ever written about free software.
What, like one of his usual windy manifestos? I can assure you I've not, and am rather happy with the fact. One time I was about to when I realized there was some paint drying, and that immediately stole my attention. That guy gives new meaning to "Quixotic."
That said, which part of what I said was wrong? He fits the zealot part, that's for sure. And he has, in the past, received money for writing code. So he doesn't seem to have a problem with the code for $ thing.
Free as in...?
on
Linus on DRM
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Stallman is a free software zealot, not an open source zealot.
Free as in.....? Last I checked, he doesn't care if it's free as in beer or free as in balls as long as it's free as in speech. And "free as in speech" pretty much means open source.
Just do a little searching on Sam Varghese and see what an idiot this supposed journalist is. His articles are little more than the whining of an ill-informed, angst-ridden gadget-geek.
His "article" on Mono, for instance. [smh.com.au]
Man, mono sucks, I dunno what your problem is. First time I tried it, I got it from my girlfriend, and I couldn't even get out of bed for a week. Damned doctor had to run all kinds of tests on me. I tell ya, I don't ever want to try using mono again.
If this guy says.NET is worse than mono, that's pretty bad. I don't know what this.NET thing is, but it sounds like plague or polio or something.
So then VMWare is an emulator? BTW I do lump VMWare in with with MAME and the various console emulators because they emulate hardware. Some of those emulators require a rom image from the original hardware. Playstation emulators and some of the old machine emulators like the ones for commodores come to mind. The main difference between something like VMWare and MAME is that VMWare doesn't have to do a cpu code translation.
No. That's like saying that WINE's not an emulator because it runs real software. Here's the parallels you have to see to compare MAME to VMware to WINE:
ROM from game cartridge = software program
console BIOS (internal to machine, not the games) = OS
Console = computer
So, at what level does MAME emulate, and at what level does it actually replicate? You don't compare the software programs, as what is run is irrelevant. You compare the OS's - ie, if what you're running is the ORIGINAL OS, then it's NOT an emulator. MAME did NOT have the original OS - it had to reverse engineer it. See here to see how MAME works - they wrote the console BIOS from scratch, allowing it to *emulate* the console API. This is also how WINE works.
This is *not* how vmware works. VMware,again, runs an ACTUAL COPY of windows (the OS). VMware instead creates a "virtual machine" (hence the "VM") that a real OS is allowed to use.
Wine, on the other hand, does not - like MAME, it attempts to reverse-engineer the Windows API. Thus, the difference between something being an emulator (as it is classically defined) or not lies with the OS. It doesn't lie with the hardware. Obviously, console emulators perform both jobs - they create a sort-of virtual machine and then run an emulator on it. That's like they're running some software in WINE on top of VMware, so they have to perform the parallel functions of both.
But bottom line is VMware creates virtual machines. It doesn't emulate an OS as it dosn't have to.
Ahhh...no. Let's just say their regular releases have been buggy enough for me to decline the pleasure of a beta. But certainly, I'll give it another shot when 1.1 comes out.
I have to disagree that MS Office is better than OO. We have three tech writers here. They all prefer Open Office for large, complex documents because Microsoft Office won't cut the mustard. When will Microsoft get auto-numbering right??? Or Backward compatability? What about embedding images?
For your situation, I might agree. I will admit that the most polished part of Openoffice is the word processor. And if you can get your whole office to switch, I can go along with that. Because the issues you mention are much less of a problem in OO than MSO.
My situation is a bit different from yours tho - I'm in grad school, and my advisor is tied to MScrap. When we submit stuff for publication, it has to be formatted precisely. Also, I don't want to have to deal with conversion issues when we pass versions back and forth between us (it's a nightmare as it is between different versions of office).
So I would say if you have little or light spreadsheet use, and you don't have to do much converting of MS formats, then OO can work. But if you need these features, I don't think it's useable.
Far in the future mind you... If you are a true gamer, as in the kind who likes to play with friends who are physically in the same room while drunk and/or stoned, you stick to the console.
Yeah, that's true...and I have spent many a night playing Gran Turismo drunk as an Irishman. But for different sorts of games...like RPG's? (No, final fantasy doesn't count). First person shooters? RTS's? All these are fun games to play, and those of us who are married (see fellow geeks! You *can* get laid!), playing all-night drunken-playstation ain't an option, so some solo gaming will occur. And then what? Because as you point out, the strength of the console is multi-player.
Sigh. Time for some more slapping. One: The GPL is not an EULA. One more time: THE GPL IS NOT AN EULA.
Well, if you reread it, the guy never specifically said that the GPL was a EULA - he said it's a license, and it is. His point, I believe, simply is that both are licenses, and from some viewpoints, extremely restrictive. He finds it odd that people would criticize one and not the other, and perhaps feels that it derives from MS's fight of OSS. His point, while I may not agree with it, has some validity. If anything, you seem to be by his analogy, as it was at a bit of a slant.
You are of course correct that the GPL isn't a EULA, since you can do whatever you want with GPL'd software as long as you don't release it. So there are obviously no restrictions on the EU portion of the license.
It works under a different premise of law and performs a totally different purpose. It's been explained dozens of times and if you aren't clear on it now then you're either willfully ignorant or shouldn't be talking about things you haven't read.
Now that's a bit cranky! First, if he were talking about things he's not read he'd hardly know it, would he? Second, I don't think he claimed what you think anyway. Let's be a bit more tolerant shall we? Because I can assure you intolerance on the part of the *nix community is a great way to ensure M$'s continued domaninance on the desktop. We have to be willing to teach, even if it's the same thing, over and over.
Just out of curiousity, have you tried Abiword(word processor) and Gnumeric(spreadsheet)? Both are pretty slick Linux apps with Microsoft file compatibility.
I haven't tried Abiword - for what it's worth, word processing isn't my main complaint with openoffice (I find it somewhat passable). As for gnumeric, it's not bad (I have used it for simple things when OO got my blood pressure up), but it doesn't support native plotting. That's a biggie for me - I have to have plotting capabilities.
Know of any MS-compatible spreadsheets with decent plotting and statistics capabilities? Don't have to be free either, as long as they have a free trial.
I would think that vmware is as much an emulator as MAME and snes9x are arcade and console emulators.
MAME (and other console emulators) do NOT have a copy of the original console OS running on them. The creators have attempted, as well as possible, to recreate the API, but it ain't the same (as you will note by the occasional bug in games). Hence it *emulates* the original OS. Vmware, rather, provides virtual resources to a REAL OS (like windows - you DO need your own copy on vmware).
If you want to look at it this way, WINE is a windows emulator - vmware is a *computer* emulator.
To summarize: MAME emulates hardware *and* software. WINE emulates software, but not hardware. Vmware only emulates the hardware.
I'd geniunly like to hear from people who want to run OfficeXP on Linux. Why it is necessary?
Well, I won't touch anything with the letters "XP" voluntarily, but if I might substitute Office 2000, then it's simply because, overall, it's better than OO *now*. No, this isn't a flame or a troll...simply the result of struggling and fighting with OO for months before deciding that it gave me more headaches than MS.
To disclose, I'm not a Stallman disciple - I would prefer an Open alternative, but really I'm going to use the best tool for the job. Right now (and yes, I'm obviously talking 1.0) OO isn't it. Open anything reasonably complicated (things embedded, complicated formatting, etc) and OO pukes. The UI is a joke, even compared to MS, and that's hard to do. Opening ASCII datafiles is a pain in the ass. It's way too bloated (easily rivals if not beats MSOffice), and actually too integrated for it's own good. I could go on...
Now, I would rather have Office running on linux than on a separate box (I can't dual boot my linux box, I use it as a server too). I tried xoveroffice 1.0, and found it to be exceptionally buggy. Things would occasionally hang, and worse, sometimes the hanging would necessitate a complete reinstall of xover. Not good! Then I tried vmware, and had some issues there too (it doesn't like slackware's startup scripts, so I had issues getting modules to restart on reboot).
So far, my solution is to avoid Offices of all kinds. I use Matlab for my data analysis, and I do as much in that as possible to avoid excel. I can do a lot in that, but I would like a decent spreadsheet too, and one that doesn't hang at inopportune times.
So, bottom line, 1) OO is a mess, and 2) I haven't found a great way to run MS Office on linux yet. So, at the office, we have a linux box, a mac(OSX), and a windows box. Between them, at least one does any job reasonably.
Vmware actually requires that a copy of windows (or whatever OS) be used on top of it, and programs in that OS. So vmware generates a virtual machine that acts (mostly) as any other machine - vmware gives it virtual resources such as ports, space, memory, etc, which are in turn available to the OS. Bottom line, if you want to run windows programs on vmware, you need a copy of windows. For wine, you don't. Big difference.
Regarding EULAs, though, vmware is currently (I believe) good with MS.
This will likely become a thornier issue when Palladium comes around. There, the idea is that the OS (or its representative) hase some control over the machine. It might get cranky when the machine is virtual, as that might give control of the machine back to the owner (yes, note sarcasm).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes.
If that happen to RMS, he'd not go down without kicking, screaming, generally making an annoying, attention-getting fuss, and making us think, "ya know, he's annoying, but doing that to him is wrong".
Problem there is one of uniqueness. That's what Stallman does about anything. So, honestly, I don't know that anyone would notice if Stallman's screaming because his mail got misdelivered or because he got thrown in a jail cell in Guantanamo Bay.
First, I think that it's a reach to think that anyone involved with linux will actually be prosecuted/persecuted simply for developing an OS. Second, I think it's a reach to assume that because Linus doesn't get involved with the "Free Software" fight that he would cave in to the US government. That and since he has Finnish citizenship he could tell them to piss off.
You need to separate two scenarios: is Linus in general apathetic, or is he simply uninterested in your cause?
Yes, I am a cynic, and somewhat paranoid.
Well, yeah, but we won't hold that against you. Just remember to keep the tinfoil hat firmly applied to your skull. ;)
Oh, you're an existentialist!
Nope. Just a scientist.
Pity it's still an ideology, though.
Interesting, because the notion that "the absence of a choice is itself a choice" is one of the main tenets of existentialism, as I recall. So, in making that connection yourself, you seem to be practicising a bit of existentialism. For me, my lack of a pre-defined ideology is just that. I don't let that lack define me either, because I just don't care enough. I always thought existentialism was a load of crap.
On the other hand, one could argue that Stallman's political activism is annoying for those of use trying to enjoy a decent OS. And Linus never said he was trying to please anyone. As far as I can tell, he's been pretty honest in telling Stallman where he stands. I respect that - he isn't getting involved in all of Stallman's projects, because it's not his thing. He's a software engineer, and the world needs software engineers.
Also, I don't want to speak for Linus, but don't necessarily confuse apathy for simply not agreeing with Stallman. There has to be room for disagreement within any community - and if not, it's no longer a community, it's a cult.
Your argument is tantamount to that whole "you're either with us or against us" routine. That's a bit too divisive, as well as self-righteous. Some people, like me, think that there's room in the world for more than one software distribution scheme, and that people/companies that practice them aren't evil. I mean, I don't want linux to become "BSD for those who make their OS a religion" because I actually like linux better, but that seems to be where some people are trying to take it.
Linus be a "fair weather" friend to the Linux community, quietly disappearing into obscurity? I hope not, but, sadly, I'm not sure.
Watch that you don't confuse GNU with Linux as Stallman is ever quick to point out. Linus will be a friend to the Linux community as long as he's involved with the project. However, just because he released a project like Linux under GPL doesn't mean that he has to become a standard-bearer for GNU. I think you should certainly not necessarily count on Linus's support for GNU because, frankly, I don't know that he's given it.
No shit dude. Christ, my grandmother could park a car in that and she's dead. The real skill lies in parking in a space that's 6 inches longer than the diagonal of your car, which is effectively how long your car is while you're midway through parking.
Clearly, this guide is for women. Any guy who can't park in a space 1.5 carlengths long needs to have an "F" in the gender on his license.
Yeah, I heard a BSD-licensed program just the other day talking about how oppressed it was. "Let my people go!" it said.
I'm still not convinced that Stallman hasn't perpetrated the Greatest Troll of All Time. He's just too hilarious.
Sometimes. Not this time though. I've read enough of the short crap Stallman writes without needing to hear the same thing repeated through a damned book.
So much easier than knowing anything. A true Know-Nothing.
Big talk for a guy living in his parents' basement. And I certainly don't see how not blowing Stallman equals knowing nothing. But thanks for at least capitalizing Know-Nothing.
Immune to facts or reality
Whose? Yours? I'm pretty OK with reality. I just don't happen to believe Stallman would know reality if it hit him in the ass.
you just spouted off ideologically
That would be hard. I don't even think I have an ideology. In fact, I reject the notion of ideology because it denies objectivity. If laughing at Stallman is ideology then a lot of us are guilty.
accusing someone (Stallman) of being a zealot
That wasn't actually me, but it's hard to disagree. In fact, I'm not so sure Stallman would disagree. Look at the word - Stallman is certainly someone who approaches his causes with a great deal of zeal.
when you are in fact the ideologic zealot posting fantasies about what someone else thinks or says.
We need to work on your vocabulary. I can't really be a zealot because I just don't give a fuck about the whole deal. Apathy and being a zealot are damned mutually exclusive. And we've been over the ideology thing. As for fantasies regarding RMS, I now feel the need to be ill. I get the idea you have fantasies about RMS though...and now I am ill.
Illustrative of the whole radical right movement.
I have no idea how the fuck you get that. 1)I'm definitely not radical. 2) I'm not too right (policitally, smartass!). 3) What does laughing at Stallman have to do with the radical right? Hell, even the left does that! Also, I don't think the radical right movement even know who the fuck Stallman is.
I think you need to remember to take your pills next time. And as for being a zealot - I'm not the one whose blood pressure went up just because someone made fun of my idol. That would be you.
Hey, I bet you have a lot of posters of RMS up in your little room in the parents' basement, huh?
Depends what their market is. If they can make it so that they control the MOBO and BIOS's like they do now for PPC architecture, then it doesn't matter. They could build systems based on the same Intel or AMD chips I can buy off the shelf, but it doesn't get me any closer to having an actual system because I can't get a MOBO except from Apple. And it's not like generics can legally reverse engineer the BIOS's like back in the day (thanks DMCA!). Even if someone did, all they need is a check in the BIOS that checks who made the MOBO and maybe another in the OS that refuses to run on a non-MacOS BIOS. So control of their platform is not a problem.
At that point, the only reason they'd have to even bother mussing around with the chip is to control the upgrade market...but do they care that much? I'm not saying they *should* go Intel/AMD, just that they *could* and it wouldn't matter that much.
Right, because DRM naturally implies censorship. Methinks you're getting your causes mixed up. I'm no DRM fan, but I'm having a hard time seeing the protection of my copyrighted works as curtailing your free speech rights.
I reiterate, is it free as in beer, balls, or speech? Or all of the above?
What, like one of his usual windy manifestos? I can assure you I've not, and am rather happy with the fact. One time I was about to when I realized there was some paint drying, and that immediately stole my attention. That guy gives new meaning to "Quixotic."
That said, which part of what I said was wrong? He fits the zealot part, that's for sure. And he has, in the past, received money for writing code. So he doesn't seem to have a problem with the code for $ thing.
Free as in.....? Last I checked, he doesn't care if it's free as in beer or free as in balls as long as it's free as in speech. And "free as in speech" pretty much means open source.
That's worked super with Stallman.
His "article" on Mono, for instance. [smh.com.au]
Man, mono sucks, I dunno what your problem is. First time I tried it, I got it from my girlfriend, and I couldn't even get out of bed for a week. Damned doctor had to run all kinds of tests on me. I tell ya, I don't ever want to try using mono again.
If this guy says .NET is worse than mono, that's pretty bad. I don't know what this .NET thing is, but it sounds like plague or polio or something.
...and then fire every last one of the fuckers. That would serve them.
No. That's like saying that WINE's not an emulator because it runs real software. Here's the parallels you have to see to compare MAME to VMware to WINE:
ROM from game cartridge = software program
console BIOS (internal to machine, not the games) = OS
Console = computer
So, at what level does MAME emulate, and at what level does it actually replicate? You don't compare the software programs, as what is run is irrelevant. You compare the OS's - ie, if what you're running is the ORIGINAL OS, then it's NOT an emulator. MAME did NOT have the original OS - it had to reverse engineer it. See here to see how MAME works - they wrote the console BIOS from scratch, allowing it to *emulate* the console API. This is also how WINE works.
This is *not* how vmware works. VMware,again, runs an ACTUAL COPY of windows (the OS). VMware instead creates a "virtual machine" (hence the "VM") that a real OS is allowed to use.
Wine, on the other hand, does not - like MAME, it attempts to reverse-engineer the Windows API. Thus, the difference between something being an emulator (as it is classically defined) or not lies with the OS. It doesn't lie with the hardware. Obviously, console emulators perform both jobs - they create a sort-of virtual machine and then run an emulator on it. That's like they're running some software in WINE on top of VMware, so they have to perform the parallel functions of both.
But bottom line is VMware creates virtual machines. It doesn't emulate an OS as it dosn't have to.
Ahhh...no. Let's just say their regular releases have been buggy enough for me to decline the pleasure of a beta. But certainly, I'll give it another shot when 1.1 comes out.
For your situation, I might agree. I will admit that the most polished part of Openoffice is the word processor. And if you can get your whole office to switch, I can go along with that. Because the issues you mention are much less of a problem in OO than MSO.
My situation is a bit different from yours tho - I'm in grad school, and my advisor is tied to MScrap. When we submit stuff for publication, it has to be formatted precisely. Also, I don't want to have to deal with conversion issues when we pass versions back and forth between us (it's a nightmare as it is between different versions of office).
So I would say if you have little or light spreadsheet use, and you don't have to do much converting of MS formats, then OO can work. But if you need these features, I don't think it's useable.
Thanks a bunch! I'll give it a shot.
Yeah, but (geek)&&(!(married)) == !(laid)
Yeah, that's true...and I have spent many a night playing Gran Turismo drunk as an Irishman. But for different sorts of games...like RPG's? (No, final fantasy doesn't count). First person shooters? RTS's? All these are fun games to play, and those of us who are married (see fellow geeks! You *can* get laid!), playing all-night drunken-playstation ain't an option, so some solo gaming will occur. And then what? Because as you point out, the strength of the console is multi-player.
Well, if you reread it, the guy never specifically said that the GPL was a EULA - he said it's a license, and it is. His point, I believe, simply is that both are licenses, and from some viewpoints, extremely restrictive. He finds it odd that people would criticize one and not the other, and perhaps feels that it derives from MS's fight of OSS. His point, while I may not agree with it, has some validity. If anything, you seem to be by his analogy, as it was at a bit of a slant.
You are of course correct that the GPL isn't a EULA, since you can do whatever you want with GPL'd software as long as you don't release it. So there are obviously no restrictions on the EU portion of the license.
It works under a different premise of law and performs a totally different purpose. It's been explained dozens of times and if you aren't clear on it now then you're either willfully ignorant or shouldn't be talking about things you haven't read.
Now that's a bit cranky! First, if he were talking about things he's not read he'd hardly know it, would he? Second, I don't think he claimed what you think anyway. Let's be a bit more tolerant shall we? Because I can assure you intolerance on the part of the *nix community is a great way to ensure M$'s continued domaninance on the desktop. We have to be willing to teach, even if it's the same thing, over and over.
I haven't tried Abiword - for what it's worth, word processing isn't my main complaint with openoffice (I find it somewhat passable). As for gnumeric, it's not bad (I have used it for simple things when OO got my blood pressure up), but it doesn't support native plotting. That's a biggie for me - I have to have plotting capabilities.
Know of any MS-compatible spreadsheets with decent plotting and statistics capabilities? Don't have to be free either, as long as they have a free trial.
MAME (and other console emulators) do NOT have a copy of the original console OS running on them. The creators have attempted, as well as possible, to recreate the API, but it ain't the same (as you will note by the occasional bug in games). Hence it *emulates* the original OS. Vmware, rather, provides virtual resources to a REAL OS (like windows - you DO need your own copy on vmware).
If you want to look at it this way, WINE is a windows emulator - vmware is a *computer* emulator.
To summarize: MAME emulates hardware *and* software. WINE emulates software, but not hardware. Vmware only emulates the hardware.
Well, I won't touch anything with the letters "XP" voluntarily, but if I might substitute Office 2000, then it's simply because, overall, it's better than OO *now*. No, this isn't a flame or a troll...simply the result of struggling and fighting with OO for months before deciding that it gave me more headaches than MS.
To disclose, I'm not a Stallman disciple - I would prefer an Open alternative, but really I'm going to use the best tool for the job. Right now (and yes, I'm obviously talking 1.0) OO isn't it. Open anything reasonably complicated (things embedded, complicated formatting, etc) and OO pukes. The UI is a joke, even compared to MS, and that's hard to do. Opening ASCII datafiles is a pain in the ass. It's way too bloated (easily rivals if not beats MSOffice), and actually too integrated for it's own good. I could go on...
Now, I would rather have Office running on linux than on a separate box (I can't dual boot my linux box, I use it as a server too). I tried xoveroffice 1.0, and found it to be exceptionally buggy. Things would occasionally hang, and worse, sometimes the hanging would necessitate a complete reinstall of xover. Not good! Then I tried vmware, and had some issues there too (it doesn't like slackware's startup scripts, so I had issues getting modules to restart on reboot).
So far, my solution is to avoid Offices of all kinds. I use Matlab for my data analysis, and I do as much in that as possible to avoid excel. I can do a lot in that, but I would like a decent spreadsheet too, and one that doesn't hang at inopportune times.
So, bottom line, 1) OO is a mess, and 2) I haven't found a great way to run MS Office on linux yet. So, at the office, we have a linux box, a mac(OSX), and a windows box. Between them, at least one does any job reasonably.
Regarding EULAs, though, vmware is currently (I believe) good with MS.
This will likely become a thornier issue when Palladium comes around. There, the idea is that the OS (or its representative) hase some control over the machine. It might get cranky when the machine is virtual, as that might give control of the machine back to the owner (yes, note sarcasm).