It's about damn time Microsoft did something with their licensing agreements. Now all we need is for them to make their software less expensive. Of course, that'll happen when hell freezes over.
Well, I suppose you have me on that point. But we'd (all the Comcast customers I know) would rather see the left-side ads gone and replaced with more programming information. Faster response times on the button pressing would be nice too.
The feature I would really like to see is the ability to customize the size of the text on all the "interactive" stuff. While I feel the text is too big and bold-faced, my parents would like to see it bigger. Also, being able to customize the colors for the guide would be nice; my parents have difficulty reading the white text on green background for the sports shows, and I'd prefer to see anything and everything on the PPV channels in purple like our old TV Guide channel had. The best thing, however, would be the option to turn off the display of programming information for non-PPV channels that are not in the package you're currently subscribed to. It's frustrating and difficult to remember the 45 channels I don't have because I pay $60/month for the service instead of $90.
Will it mean that instead of having only the current half-hour's programming shown in the interactive guide alongside ads, there will no longer be ads, leaving room for an hour and a half's worth of programming information? If not, it's no better than the worthless crap they're serving us in the DCT boxes now. Everyone I know that has digital cable from Comcast doesn't want to see ads, they want to see an interactive version of the TV Guide Channel.
No they don't. They've stopped distribution of all their Linux products, including WordPerfect and PhotoPaint. I was too late to get the Linux "port" of WordPerfect but early enough to get PhotoPaint.
If you're lucky you can still find the download on one or two ftp servers, but those are becoming increasingly thin as well. Short form: Linux WordPerfect is dead as a doornail.
That would be a very nice solution (the Install Browser icon), but does anyone see Microsoft actually doing that, even if IE were totally stripped from Windows? I could see OEMs like HP/Compaq, Dell, etc. doing something like this, however, which would be a step in the right direction. However since IE is still part of Windows this will never happen.
I guess my point wasn't clear enough. How many users of Windows these days know enough to realize the ftp command line program exists, let alone to know how to use it? Hell, for that matter, how many Windows users realize that there is a world beyond point-and-click? I'd wager a very, very tiny percentage.
How do you propose that people download alternative browsers if IE is totally removed from Windows?
After all, it's not like you can go out to the local Circuit City, Best Buy, Office Max, etc. and get a browser off the shelf, and whithout a browser, you can't view webpages to get to be able to download something.
for Netscape faithfuls like me. Oh well, at least with the Mozilla project being split, I might be able to get a fairly lightweight mail app that I can tolerate (I already use Opera for browsing and keep Netscape 7.1 around just for mail).
I bet Microsoft's happy to see another competitor dying, though.
OK, I'll accept that it's not legal in C++. But now if "long long" is part of C99 shouldn't VS.Net support it in a pure C program? I can understand VS6 not supporting it, since it's so old, but VS.Net is supposed to be more compliant with all the standards.
It works with g++ and some other UNIX C++ compiler (forget the name of it, it was on a SCO server my stupid college had); if it isn't valid, why does it work?
Recently I installed LiveJournal's server code on a slackware 8 box. The standard version of apache that comes with slackware didn't have mod_perl in it, so I downloaded the newest httpd, which at the time was 2.0.46. I downloaded the appropriate mod_perl as well. This combination compiled fine, but I couldn't use it. LiveJournal is written for the old mod_perl, which doesn't work with apache 2.0.x, and therefore LiveJournal wouldn't work with what I had. I had to rip out apache 2.0.46 and fall back to 1.3.27 with the appropriate mod_perl. Really sucks that the supporting projects can't keep up while maintaining compatibility.
Let me clarify that remark...any windows C/C++ compiler bitches like there's no tomorrow. This includes Visual C++ (either 6 or.NET), all versions of Borland's C++ compiler, etc.
I even have a string parser that can't compile on windows, but g++ compiles it perfectly (and the compiled version actually runs). If anyone wants the code, I'll release it as public domain. It was originally an assignment for procedrual C++.
Thanks for providing this info. I made the number one and number two mistakes of/. posting--I didn't RTFA and I trusted the editor that posted the story. Guess I'll have to be more careful in the future and RTFA for once in my life.
Well, IANAL either but I think for it to be considered binding precedent the Supreme Court or the next higher courts have to rule on it (I'm under the impression the 9th circuit isn't the highest court below the SC).
The problem isn't limited to the judges. The problem is everywhere in the government. Legislators are perhaps the stupidest of all, or at least the most gullible, for passing the stupid laws in the first place. But it's not like we've exactly had any tech-intelligent members of the Executive branch, either.
This is an interesting ruling, but I think the fact that it's not "binding precedent," as the teaser called it, could be a problem. If a higher court overturns this ruling then it's a huge hit to those who need or take advantage of the "Fair Use" exemptions in copyright law. As it stands now though it's a victory for the fair use camp.
The point was that Linux isn't as stable as everyone claims. I should also have noted that I have had problems with DVD drives hanging the IDE interface in Linux but not in Windows (same PC, same drives). I don't complain about this because I discovered later that the DVD drive is rather unusual in several respects. The problem with VMWare appears to be when VMWare reading from the CD attempts to change the DMA mode, whether or not the change is necessary. Yes, I have reported this to VMWare technical support and received very positive responses. In the meantime, I have switched to setting VMWare's virtual CD-ROM drives to use ISO images instead, or done away with CD drives for the VM altogether where possible.
BTW, if you're willing to break the terms of the VMWare license, you can see the source code for the VMWare kernel modules. This is how VMWare 2.x kernel module patches were made available on the net for those users using kernels newer than 2.4.6.
There are very, very, very few kernels with which the precompiled "stock" modules that ship in the VMWare RPM work properly. When one of these kernels is not found, vmware-config.pl runs through compiling the modules, and if you care to catch it quick enough, the module source appears in/tmp. The perl script also quite frequently forgets to delete the source. Have at it.
Is it just me or does that license look like BSD License meets GPL, with the provision that Apple is allowed to do basically anything they want with any derivative works?
With the windows kernel change, there was also a significant change from Win9x to XP. Don't look at me like I'm an idiot; XP Professional is an incremental upgrade to 2000 Professional, but XP Pro and XP Home are both major release upgrades to Win9x platforms. For the home user, Windows version jumped from 4.0.950, 4.1.1998, 4.1.2222, or 4.9.3000 to 5.1.2600, a significant change both in functionality and stability. (Before anyone bitches about this, let me say something. I have worked on 8 different PCs with radically different hardware. XP runs well on all these PCs and I can count on one hand the times I've seen XP crash and it not be because of bad hardware.)
On my own systems, I noticed a huge improvement in both support and responsiveness when transitioning from 2.2.x to 2.4.0-2.4.10...after 2.4.13, I noticed even further improvement in responsiveness. However, I can deadlock any and all 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels very easily--run VMWare and try to access a CD-ROM drive. This happens on two wildly different systems and both when using ide-scsi emulation for my cdrecorder and when not using it.
I hope that 2.6.x will yield further improvements, and I'm keeping optimistic on that one. BTW, my prediction is May 22, 2004 for a definite 2.6.0.
Keep in mind, however, that Opera by default identifies as IE5, IE5.5, or IE6 depending on Opera's version. For all anyone knows, half of the IE "users" could be Opera users that didn't know they could change the browser ID string or thought it would be advantageous to keep it at IE so that browser detectors didn't bitch they don't have the right browser.
You're right--it takes a lot of time for behemoths to fall. This one is probably the worst of all, so it'll probably take 30 years to fall. Even with the slow adoption of digital distribution, it's still going to take virtually forever for change to show up.
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It's about damn time Microsoft did something with their licensing agreements. Now all we need is for them to make their software less expensive. Of course, that'll happen when hell freezes over.
Yes, this is absolutely identical to the Comcast crap (formerly AT&T crap). Read my other comment here to see my suggestions for improvement.
The feature I would really like to see is the ability to customize the size of the text on all the "interactive" stuff. While I feel the text is too big and bold-faced, my parents would like to see it bigger. Also, being able to customize the colors for the guide would be nice; my parents have difficulty reading the white text on green background for the sports shows, and I'd prefer to see anything and everything on the PPV channels in purple like our old TV Guide channel had. The best thing, however, would be the option to turn off the display of programming information for non-PPV channels that are not in the package you're currently subscribed to. It's frustrating and difficult to remember the 45 channels I don't have because I pay $60/month for the service instead of $90.
But that's just me...
Will it mean that instead of having only the current half-hour's programming shown in the interactive guide alongside ads, there will no longer be ads, leaving room for an hour and a half's worth of programming information? If not, it's no better than the worthless crap they're serving us in the DCT boxes now. Everyone I know that has digital cable from Comcast doesn't want to see ads, they want to see an interactive version of the TV Guide Channel.
If you're lucky you can still find the download on one or two ftp servers, but those are becoming increasingly thin as well. Short form: Linux WordPerfect is dead as a doornail.
That would be a very nice solution (the Install Browser icon), but does anyone see Microsoft actually doing that, even if IE were totally stripped from Windows? I could see OEMs like HP/Compaq, Dell, etc. doing something like this, however, which would be a step in the right direction. However since IE is still part of Windows this will never happen.
I guess my point wasn't clear enough. How many users of Windows these days know enough to realize the ftp command line program exists, let alone to know how to use it? Hell, for that matter, how many Windows users realize that there is a world beyond point-and-click? I'd wager a very, very tiny percentage.
How do you propose that people download alternative browsers if IE is totally removed from Windows?
After all, it's not like you can go out to the local Circuit City, Best Buy, Office Max, etc. and get a browser off the shelf, and whithout a browser, you can't view webpages to get to be able to download something.
I bet Microsoft's happy to see another competitor dying, though.
OK, I'll accept that it's not legal in C++. But now if "long long" is part of C99 shouldn't VS.Net support it in a pure C program? I can understand VS6 not supporting it, since it's so old, but VS.Net is supposed to be more compliant with all the standards.
It works with g++ and some other UNIX C++ compiler (forget the name of it, it was on a SCO server my stupid college had); if it isn't valid, why does it work?
Recently I installed LiveJournal's server code on a slackware 8 box. The standard version of apache that comes with slackware didn't have mod_perl in it, so I downloaded the newest httpd, which at the time was 2.0.46. I downloaded the appropriate mod_perl as well. This combination compiled fine, but I couldn't use it. LiveJournal is written for the old mod_perl, which doesn't work with apache 2.0.x, and therefore LiveJournal wouldn't work with what I had. I had to rip out apache 2.0.46 and fall back to 1.3.27 with the appropriate mod_perl. Really sucks that the supporting projects can't keep up while maintaining compatibility.
I even have a string parser that can't compile on windows, but g++ compiles it perfectly (and the compiled version actually runs). If anyone wants the code, I'll release it as public domain. It was originally an assignment for procedrual C++.
Thanks for providing this info. I made the number one and number two mistakes of /. posting--I didn't RTFA and I trusted the editor that posted the story. Guess I'll have to be more careful in the future and RTFA for once in my life.
Well, IANAL either but I think for it to be considered binding precedent the Supreme Court or the next higher courts have to rule on it (I'm under the impression the 9th circuit isn't the highest court below the SC).
The problem isn't limited to the judges. The problem is everywhere in the government. Legislators are perhaps the stupidest of all, or at least the most gullible, for passing the stupid laws in the first place. But it's not like we've exactly had any tech-intelligent members of the Executive branch, either.
This is an interesting ruling, but I think the fact that it's not "binding precedent," as the teaser called it, could be a problem. If a higher court overturns this ruling then it's a huge hit to those who need or take advantage of the "Fair Use" exemptions in copyright law. As it stands now though it's a victory for the fair use camp.
Interesting stats. Doing the math like that though can even make dialup seem impressive if you word it right...
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Linux 2.4.20-ac2 i686) Opera 7.11 [en]"
And I get this from IE6:
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
Interesting. I would think that IE would not list Mozilla in its ID string.
BTW, if you're willing to break the terms of the VMWare license, you can see the source code for the VMWare kernel modules. This is how VMWare 2.x kernel module patches were made available on the net for those users using kernels newer than 2.4.6.
There are very, very, very few kernels with which the precompiled "stock" modules that ship in the VMWare RPM work properly. When one of these kernels is not found, vmware-config.pl runs through compiling the modules, and if you care to catch it quick enough, the module source appears in /tmp. The perl script also quite frequently forgets to delete the source. Have at it.
Is it just me or does that license look like BSD License meets GPL, with the provision that Apple is allowed to do basically anything they want with any derivative works?
On my own systems, I noticed a huge improvement in both support and responsiveness when transitioning from 2.2.x to 2.4.0-2.4.10...after 2.4.13, I noticed even further improvement in responsiveness. However, I can deadlock any and all 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels very easily--run VMWare and try to access a CD-ROM drive. This happens on two wildly different systems and both when using ide-scsi emulation for my cdrecorder and when not using it.
I hope that 2.6.x will yield further improvements, and I'm keeping optimistic on that one. BTW, my prediction is May 22, 2004 for a definite 2.6.0.
Keep in mind, however, that Opera by default identifies as IE5, IE5.5, or IE6 depending on Opera's version. For all anyone knows, half of the IE "users" could be Opera users that didn't know they could change the browser ID string or thought it would be advantageous to keep it at IE so that browser detectors didn't bitch they don't have the right browser.
You're right--it takes a lot of time for behemoths to fall. This one is probably the worst of all, so it'll probably take 30 years to fall. Even with the slow adoption of digital distribution, it's still going to take virtually forever for change to show up.