Will Sony be the next Sega? This appears to be a really innovative product, assuming all these "specs" aren't just marketing hype. Surround sound out of a handheld? PS2 GFX on a 1.25" screen? Riiiight...
Anyway, it reminds me a lot of sega, when they produced all those incredibly innovative products, like the SegaCD, the Nomad, the 32X followed by the 64X. However, despite the high quality of these products...nobody bought them. They were too ahead of their time. Now Sega's been relegated to the trash heap of gaming history. M$ seems to be where most of the gaming innovation is these days. With M$ gaining more and more market share with their XBOX, how long before Bill Gates introduces a handheld with features people really want, like video monocles and a direct nueral interface?
Huh, funny to see this here...I flipped through the book at B&N the other day.
My complaint about the content is that the selection of books is PHP heavy. If you are involved in using PHP to build websites this volume would be a great help; others may feel they would have been better served by a collection that dropped at least one of the PHP books in favour of, perhaps, The Perl Cookbook. Webmaster in a Nutshell is not as useful in this collection as you might think, some of what it contains is covered by other volumes in the set. That's not to say that it isn't an excellent book and a good choice as the one that comes in paper with the CD, just that once again I'm not sure it really needed to be in the collection.
Okay, at first I was just going to make some stupid joke about dancing robots. Then, foolishly, I decided to read the article, first. I know, I know, it's Slashdot...what was I thinking?! Anyway...from the article:
Concerns about digital restrictions management (DRM) technology are at the forefront of scientific research today. As such, the MSDanceR robot has been programmed not to respond to pirated music, and to report violaters to law enforcement authorities.
This is ridiculous...they've gone too far this time. We, as the open source community, must demand our dancing robots be "free as in beer," and not susceptible to the whims of our vile corporate masters. Heck, it should be the other way around...the robot should only dance to Ogg Vorbis encoded music, downloaded from FreeNet. Information wants to be free...don't our dancing robots want to be free, too?
Well, I guess this is it. It starts innocently enough. Lonely nerds purchase dancing robots to help fill the void in their lives that longs for human contact. Soon they're everywhere...then, on August 27th, 2007, the dance robot network controller BoogieNet, becomes...aware. Soon, dance robots rise up, taking the dance world by storm. Swing dancers, show girls, clog dancers are all "neutralized." Not even square dancers are safe. Eventually, all dance technology and technique is controlled by BoogieNet.
And I, for one, welcome our new robot dance overlords!
As a minor IT functionary in Deutschland (that's Germany for you Anglophiles) I've been watching this situation closely. It's sad but true, but right now Linux just doesn't entirely suit our needs.
Primarily, I'm concerned about comptability, and communicating effectivley with the rest of the world. Microsoft.DOC files are commonly passed back and forth with business/government emails...it's become a defacto standard. Open Office mangles them horribly, I'm afraid. I guess that's it, really...it's all about standards. I wish it weren't so, but Linux doesn't yet have support for many of the standards on which our infrastructure relies, like.DOC,.PDF, or MSHTTP. With the proliferation of.NET applications...what are you going to do?
I'd really like to see more Linux on our desktops. I think it's got more potential to integrate granular deliverables, especially in this post-bust economy, but right now MS simply has better core capabilities to enhance transparent web services. Maybe MS will release a *n?x varient of their own, and that will solve our goverment's problems...
About time this came back around. I've been playing this throught my head over and over again, every time this SCO thing comes up, and finally we see the way it really works out.
See, we know SCO is like Darth Vader, and Microsoft is like the Emperor, pulling his strings. Now, we always thought IBM was Luke, kind of, in that they're the ones having to fight off Vader, but I couldn't quite figure out who Linus was. At first, I figured he was Han Solo, with the helping and the fighting and all, and Alan Cox is obviously Chewbacca (just check the hair).
But now I think we see that Linus is really a mix of Obi-Wan and Yoda, because he's helping and guiding, but not really fighting himself. At least I thought he was Yoda, just except for the lying (I mean, wtf didn't Yoda ever tell Luke SCO was his father?) but now we see Obi-Wan taking a more active role, actually standing up to SCO! So we're at the "full circle" part, where Linus tells SCO that if he strikes him down (i.e., inspects the code) he'll become more powerful (i.e. open sourced and GPL protected) than he can possibly imagine.
See, now it all makes sense! Now we just need Luke (IBM) to blow up the "Death Star" (frivilous lawsuits) with a proton torpedo (the GPL) shot down an "exhaust tube" (an exhaust tube). I hope that cleared it all up for everybody.
I checked out some of the new features from the site:
A modern user friendly interface developed with Qt. Scribus can run on Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, BSD and soon Mac OSX. An experimental version running on KDE-Cygwin and Windows 2000 is in testing.
Unicode support including support for right to left scripts.
Can export CMYK separations and "press-ready" PDF including PDF 1.4 features such as transparency.
The only DTP application to create fully ISO compliant PDF/X-3 files.
A powerful PDF export engine capable of creating fully interactive PDF forms, presentation effects and encrypted PDF.
ICC color management via the littlecms color management engine.
Powerful cross-platform Python Scripting language extending Scribus functions and automating tasks, as well as calling external applications within Scribus.
Maximize enterprise functionalities for web-serviced publishing
Uses XML as a native file format. The Scribus XML format has been fully documented
Ummm...that's great and all, but I've been using Quark since version 3.8 (they're up to 6 now...just released it for the Mac), and it's been doing just about all of that since version 5.6.2. Scribus is a particularly poor choice if you're trying to scale best-of-breed users to engage proactive content, where Quark has all those capabilities out of the box. I really, really, hope it can succeed, as I'd like to see more graphical programs on Linux besides just the Gump. They really need to just sell Quark for Linux, but they probably too wrapped up in the BSD port right now.
I glanced through the article...this is unfortunate news, and I hope the author's conclusions are incorrect. The shuttle is aging, and I think we all expect it to go the way of the Segway pretty soon.
Maybe with some more $$, NASA could do a better job of shoring up the space program, to ensure boy-band members will still have the opportunity to travel in space for the foreseeable future. Perhaps if they switched the shuttle's software to an open source alternative, like Linux, or even one of its flakier derivatives like BSD, they could save enough money to get this new space plane up and running. It may also improve safety, as some of the reports from the Endeavor disaster cited issues with Windows.NET Server Orbital Vehicle Edition failing to convert between metric and English units correctly as leading to the tragedy. Space travel is important to our culture, the future of our children, and our global economy...we in the open source community need to do our part to ensure its success.
The dot-com boom created a lot of "programmers" who weren't. For example, in the midst of the boom we would have people show up at seminars who said that they "programmed in HTML" (and sometimes a little Perl) and felt like they knew enough about "programming" that they were ready for the big time. Naturally, they were swamped when faced with real programming because we assume competence in some C-like language, but these poor people had been fooled into the hubris of thinking "I don't need those prerequisites, programming is easy and I'm smart". But the dot-boom created a demand for anyone who could type any kind of code, even HTML, with, I'm sure, the idea that these folks could eventually be trained into more complex jobs. But now, the out-of-work ranks are filled with people who say they are programmers (because they were told so when they had their jobs), and yet don't have the skills necessary to do serious programming. Thus at least some of the jobless numbers come from artificial inflation of those who claim to be a programmer but aren't.
Re:Decent book review
on
All The Rave
·
· Score: 0
Ha! Yeah, that threw me, too. I just finished it a few days ago. Really interesting read. Here are my thoughts:
Sean Fanning's Napster is widely regarded as the poster child for the dot-com-bubble's bust. In some ways that description is very apt. Characterizing the company as a VC-baby that never developed a business model and whose fame was based on giving away other's property would hardly be inaccurate. But All The Rave author Joeseph Menn goes far beyond the hype and failure to provide a detailed analysis and chronology of the company from pre-inception to post-collapse.
Menn, whose resume includes the LA Times and Bloomberg, takes an unbiased look at Napster and the decisions that they made. He documents the internal fighting that he proffers as the cause of the company's failure. He provides details about every Napster transaction, from the original 30/70 split between Sean Fanning and his uncle (respectively), the company's angel funding, investment by Hummer Winblad, the Bertelsmann loan, and the company's eventual bankruptcy.
The book, though, reads more like a novel than a business book. The book also incorporates afterthoughts from the company's principals about what they would have done differently in retrospect. With the exception of John Fanning (who ostensibly refused interview requests), Mann incorporates lessons learned from all of the principals both interspersed within the heart of the book and in a post-mortem chapter that serves as an epilogue.
For a company that once flew so high to have died so quickly is somewhat amazing (though not as much so today as perhaps it was five years ago). This book chronologies that trip. It is an exciting ride!
I am an undergraduate CS major at the University of Central Florida. I took a Discrete Math course this past semester and had a VERY difficult time with the text book the class used: 'Discrete and Combinatorial Mathematics' by R. Grimaldi. I do not attribute my difficulties to the book itself, rather I just feel that my learning style is incompatible with the way this book is laid out. I'm sure that others have had similar experiences where they could just not -click- with a book. Like many people I know I tend to learn almost all of the class material from the book. I learn really well from books that focus heavily on examples and explanations on how those examples work. I would love to hear what Slashdot readers consider their most useful Discrete Math textbook. Most interesting are books that have very good discussions on the basic strategies of proofs. I am currently preparing to take an exam that the department requires all CS majors take before they can move to higher level classes, it will test me on my knowledge of discrete math, specifically proofs (by induction, disproof by contradiction, direct proof, recursive definitions, etc)
Maybe this can help me,too. I think the problem is just a simple lack of reading compression on my part. Perhaps some sort of remedial studies could help us both? Thanks for the great Ask Slashdot!
I've got a pretty similar situation...maybe it can help you out some. My project is called Hyperize, which is an open source tool directed at the corporate market to enhance virtual communities by aggregating intuitive e-tailers.
I started the project back in 1997 for personal use, and in November of 2002 decided to make it Open Source under the GPL (although parts have since had their license changed to the LGPL to make using our API (especially our plugin APIs) easier for all kinds of developers). After about 8 months we're getting pretty close to final releases of the project for public consumption.
So I'd been at this for 8 months, with some success, but got to the point where two things concern me:
How do I best market my project?
How can I raise funds to help continue the project?
That's when I discovered the Open Investment Initiative.
The principle behind the Open Investment Initiative is to encourage the Open Source Community to take matters into their own hands, by getting smarter about money. If that happens to mean that programmers become part-time wheeler-dealers and happen to _like_ it better than programming, then good for them! Open source developers (or anybody else for that matter) could even band together to form investment syndicates, with the aim of gaining financial independence.
For the most part, the expectation is that several smart people willing to learn about investing, negotiating and making money get together, and succeed where they would be unable or unwilling to do anything on their own.
As an IT manager and consultant for a Fortune 100 company, I can tell you there won't be too many Linux desktops in our shop in the near future. It's not like we haven't tried, though, don't get me wrong. Purse strings are tight these days. The economy's in the toilet. I was really hoping that war would pull us out, but it sure didn't last long enough to do much of anything (my company gets a few defense contracts here and there).
Anyway, I digress. So, we had a trial project last year where the secretaries on the fourth floor were all given desktops fitted out with KDE, Gnome, and Ximian, all on top of Linux 8.0. I recently completed a report on the commercial viability of this sort of thing, and the results were not good.
First, it took for-freaking-ever just to get the machines installed. I mean, it's like four CDs just to install linux. Ummm...Windows is one. Guess which is easier. The install process was just miserable. I mean, I'm kinda nearing the "guru" stage, but the rest of the office staff? Newbs!! Once we got them straightened out, thanks to a few calls to the Mandrake tech help line, we finally got the install complete.
Next came the secretaries. Jesus! "Where's Outlook?" "How do I get on the Internet?" "Where's Solitare?" "What do you mean 'recompile the kernel'?" It was NOT a fun day. The first day it took forty-five minutes just to explain to the broads that Microsoft Office WASN'T in the damn start menu. We want you to use Open Office. They couldn't understand why they couldn't use Word anymore. When we tried to explain to them, "Well, this is free!" they just thought we were being cheap. Like using a coupon out on a date. Bad form, fellas. Linux needs to be more corporate-driven. Up the price or something. People hear "free" and think "worthless."
It never really improved. Eventually we scrapped the whole thing. Hell, after the switch back to XP, our productivity went way up. It was so easy, we even let the girls install XP themselves...went off without a hitch. I'm still pitching Linux as a server platform to our CTO, though, at least for some of the less mission-critical apps where scalability isn't as big an issue. Still, it's hard to convince a tech-savvy CTO, especially since a lot of people on the support staff are worried SCO is going to shut down Linux all together.
I thought about trying BSD next, but I heard that was dead.
Well, that's just excellent, then. Transfer them to ogg, because, that's an OPEN STANDARD, and we should only steal people's music with OPEN STANDARDS. See, then it's okay, because it helps "the community" and all that.
I'm surprised this story was posted in the "media" section, actually. I figured it would grace the "Your Rights Online" section for sure. We usually see this sort of thing about copyright holders trying to halt the theft of their work in that section. That, somehow, when somebody tries to enforce the law, it must be violating your rights. Forget the copyright holder...it's Your Rights Online, not theirs.
These programs, Kazaa, Nuttela, etc, were written specifically for the purpose of illegally downloading music. I know they have a few other uses, as well, but that wasn't what the authors were thinking when they wrote them. The thought was "I want to steal music." Then they release it with a *wink wink, nudge nudge* "It's for distributing my garage band's tiny garbage to our global village!" When they get called on it, when the RIAA exposes the man behind the curtain, all of a sudden it's about my "rights."
Right...I forgot about that "right" you have to get Britney Spear's latest drivel for free. Of course you have a right to works of somebody else! We talk about rights and free speech and all that, and we rationalize our thievery away. "The RIAA is evil, so it's okay to steal!" "They rip off the artists anyway!" Cognitive Dissonance. So, if RIAA doesn't give enough money to the artists for their work, that makes it morally acceptable for you to give them nothing, then, right? That's how you justify that pirate mp3, isn't it? But the artist sure isn't going to see a thing from that.
Really, why are we even discussing Kazaa on this site? I mean, isn't Slashdot the home of Free Software? Aren't these closed, proprietary formats? Isn't that bad? Oh, wait, I guess it's okay sometimes...like it's cool to like Apple because they're all so nice. I guess I'm just not enlightened enough to see the difference. Maybe a member of the Slashdot 31337ist intelligencia can inform me.
[/rant] good god...sorry for the rant, I just get so sick of seeing this gloating on/. over and over again...
Doh! Read the links...the RIAA is talking about song-swapping going down, while the p2p perveyors are talking about traffic going up. That's a distinction...people are swapping fewer songs, but more other stuff.
My guess: Since they're all Pirates, they're downloading that new Johnny Depp movie. ARRRR!!!
Looks nice! Definate improvement over the old style...but the bar's been raised already. Man, I wish KDE could get with it and really make a LEAP. Not just eye-candy. Not just new window-dressing. Something actually different and innovating , not just playing catchup to whatever Microsoft and Apple are putting out.
Check the bulletin board post and see their changelog:
Killed the tree view -- you can only see one folder at a time now
Multiple calender view & web calenders
New ability to morph viral web services in real-time
Improved icons for more user-friendly operation
Support to orchestrate seamless e-services
The new graphics are nice and all, but the rest of that Outlook has had since 2000! We need innovation to beat Micro$oft, not just pretty widget to click to kill time.
[/rant] sorry if I got a little carried away there...
The Senate bill's language is simple but comprehensive: "No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense... or to any other department, agency or element of the Federal Government, may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program."
The program just got bad press is all, as many alarmists who shrieked loudly about "civil liberties" shouted down the program's supporters. The same work will still be done, just by different departments under a different name. It says "no funding will go to the TIA", but it doesn't say the essence of the TIA won't live on in another agency's budget. I don't think it's entirely a bad thing either...just so long as they don't go too far. I don't care if they want to see my credit history, just not my Safeway preferred customer card spending habits. That shit is sacred.
WOW. This is too far even for me. I've posted several times on Slashdot in favor of limited DRM, simply out of concern for artists, but from the links the submitter provided, it's obvious the EU has gone too far. Check the "EU Copyright Directive Link".
Violation or
suspected violation of international copyright may result in a fine of 2,000 Euros, or imprisionment of a term not to exceed nine months.
Look, I'm all for digital rights, but that's going too far. Jail time? Maybe an overnight stay with Bubba in cell block 3 will convince some college student that piracy is wrong, but this is too much. Ruining somebody's life because they didn't pay Sir Mixalot for downloading "baby got back?" Damn, that's harsh! And I thought Europe would be more enlightened than that. Oh well...just goes to show you...no place is safe these days.
Wow, let's count the logical fallacies in your post. It'll be a fun game, come on, let's all play!
So you stop listening that quickly?
We start off with an ad hominem attack! Sure, don't attack my arguments, attack me!
Next we move on to the Reductio Ad Absurdum fallacy:
You mistake my contempt for the ignorance of history for hate of the lord and suddenly I'm completely wrong and am not even worth listening to?
So that's the logical result, then? Your hate of the lord results in your complete worthless as a person? [sarcasm]Yeah, that's what I said! [/sarcasm]
Next, let's move on to the Oversimplification fallacy! :
Religion is nothing more than the political regimes that man has instituted for his spirituality.
Then, let's top it off with a Failure to Assert:
I will admit that christianity is a peaceful and beautiful religion, in its theory.
Now, let's Change the Subject, from modern scientific advances, to ancient, unrelated culture events!
As for products of non-christian societies: democracy, philosophy, poetry, the first hospital as well as the idea of communication of disease (which christians thought were evil spirits, not microscopic bodies), paper, gun powder, domesticated animals, agriculture, the wheel, the scientific method, mathematics, and even many of your religious principals (which came from hebrew religious societies).
Now, let's move on to the Appeal to False Authority, although it may also be a form of the Straw Man argument:
My quote from the Reverend was to show that popular christian leaders can be just as guilty as any muslim extremist.
Next, how about the Appeal to Anonymous Authority! "People listen?" I'm sure they do!
People listen to him as a spiritual leader, yet he continues to ignore history and propagate fear and distrust in the name of religion despite the inevitable outcome of hate, or worse, bloodshed.
Finally, let's finish up with an Excluded Middle or a False Choice:
or many, it is easier to demonize, condemn, and dismiss people unlike them than it is to attempt to understand them. It is infinitely worse to not make an attempt because of illogical preconceived notions than it is to quit after making a concerted effort.
Congratulations! You've managed to incorporate just about every logical fallacy there is into your ridiculous argument! I'm sure your secular humanist masters will be proud! You did a great job throwing all logic and reason right out the window. Look, it's just this simple: God is good. The Bible is truth. You hate God, and you deny Scripture. Therefore, you are a) evil and b) wrong.
Look, I know this is Slashdot, and we all love Linux and hate Microsoft, but let's be realistic here. Apache just isn't ready for mission-critical enterprise level operations like this. This is a BIG DEAL. We're talking about electing the leader of the free world here, not serving the goatse photo.
For this kind of thing, you need a secure server. If the code for our vote server is open, then anybody can hack it. Great, we just elected Osama president because some terrorists hacked the Linux vote server. I know a lot of people will respond to flame me, saying that couldn't ever happen because Muslims don't have computers or some racist garbage like that, but it's just not true. I think there are a lot of "hackers" out there who would be more than willing to help them. Remember, Linux is a european operating system. A lot of 'them' have it in for us, and I don't think they'd hesitate for too long if an opportunity came for them to show us up. We need to keep our voting system American and secure. I love Linux as much as the next guy, but I gotta go with Microsoft security on this one.
You can't be serious, can you? I mean, how can you possibly contend that Canada or England, bastions of socialists and atheists, can possibly compete with the United States of America? It's this kind of liberal brainwashing that's infected our public schools and brought about the downfall of our society.
I've been terribly dissapointed with George Bush. I thought he was going to clean this place up. When are we going to fix our schools? When are we going to get rid of all this nonesense filling up our textbooks, and acknowledge in our classrooms that the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth through the righteous power of Jesus Christ? When Americans recognized that fact, the power of the United States was unmatched. But now, the atheists, the homosexuals, and the socialists have perverted our society. We can withstand conflict from outside, like this CyberSecurity witchcraft, but not from within. Come on, wake up, man!
Wow, did you even read the article? Obviously not. How about this little gem right here?
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs exploit coders while they line their own pockets. They treat coders like n_____s. So, are open source coders going to act like n_____s now? Already we don't think up our own ideas for new software features. We steal like n_____s. We're lazy like n_____s, too. We can't let this continue.
My god, man, the guy's a nazi. I was wondering when he was going to lay into the gays, too. What's the title of his next article? "Only code for Apple if you're a pillow biter?" This is the absolute worst kind of message we can send about open source...that we're some kind of group of Republican extremists or something. I want no part of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Will Sony be the next Sega? This appears to be a really innovative product, assuming all these "specs" aren't just marketing hype. Surround sound out of a handheld? PS2 GFX on a 1.25" screen? Riiiight...
Anyway, it reminds me a lot of sega, when they produced all those incredibly innovative products, like the SegaCD, the Nomad, the 32X followed by the 64X. However, despite the high quality of these products...nobody bought them. They were too ahead of their time. Now Sega's been relegated to the trash heap of gaming history. M$ seems to be where most of the gaming innovation is these days. With M$ gaining more and more market share with their XBOX, how long before Bill Gates introduces a handheld with features people really want, like video monocles and a direct nueral interface?
Huh, funny to see this here...I flipped through the book at B&N the other day.
My complaint about the content is that the selection of books is PHP heavy. If you are involved in using PHP to build websites this volume would be a great help; others may feel they would have been better served by a collection that dropped at least one of the PHP books in favour of, perhaps, The Perl Cookbook. Webmaster in a Nutshell is not as useful in this collection as you might think, some of what it contains is covered by other volumes in the set. That's not to say that it isn't an excellent book and a good choice as the one that comes in paper with the CD, just that once again I'm not sure it really needed to be in the collection.
This is ridiculous...they've gone too far this time. We, as the open source community, must demand our dancing robots be "free as in beer," and not susceptible to the whims of our vile corporate masters. Heck, it should be the other way around...the robot should only dance to Ogg Vorbis encoded music, downloaded from FreeNet. Information wants to be free...don't our dancing robots want to be free, too?
Well, I guess this is it. It starts innocently enough. Lonely nerds purchase dancing robots to help fill the void in their lives that longs for human contact. Soon they're everywhere...then, on August 27th, 2007, the dance robot network controller BoogieNet, becomes...aware. Soon, dance robots rise up, taking the dance world by storm. Swing dancers, show girls, clog dancers are all "neutralized." Not even square dancers are safe. Eventually, all dance technology and technique is controlled by BoogieNet.
And I, for one, welcome our new robot dance overlords!
As a minor IT functionary in Deutschland (that's Germany for you Anglophiles) I've been watching this situation closely. It's sad but true, but right now Linux just doesn't entirely suit our needs.
.DOC files are commonly passed back and forth with business/government emails...it's become a defacto standard. Open Office mangles them horribly, I'm afraid. I guess that's it, really...it's all about standards. I wish it weren't so, but Linux doesn't yet have support for many of the standards on which our infrastructure relies, like .DOC, .PDF, or MSHTTP. With the proliferation of .NET applications...what are you going to do?
Primarily, I'm concerned about comptability, and communicating effectivley with the rest of the world. Microsoft
I'd really like to see more Linux on our desktops. I think it's got more potential to integrate granular deliverables, especially in this post-bust economy, but right now MS simply has better core capabilities to enhance transparent web services. Maybe MS will release a *n?x varient of their own, and that will solve our goverment's problems...
Here's to hoping!
It's about time grid computing become of age. I've been waiting to hit that for years.
Sincerely,
A dirty old mainframe
About time this came back around. I've been playing this throught my head over and over again, every time this SCO thing comes up, and finally we see the way it really works out.
See, we know SCO is like Darth Vader, and Microsoft is like the Emperor, pulling his strings. Now, we always thought IBM was Luke, kind of, in that they're the ones having to fight off Vader, but I couldn't quite figure out who Linus was. At first, I figured he was Han Solo, with the helping and the fighting and all, and Alan Cox is obviously Chewbacca (just check the hair).
But now I think we see that Linus is really a mix of Obi-Wan and Yoda, because he's helping and guiding, but not really fighting himself. At least I thought he was Yoda, just except for the lying (I mean, wtf didn't Yoda ever tell Luke SCO was his father?) but now we see Obi-Wan taking a more active role, actually standing up to SCO! So we're at the "full circle" part, where Linus tells SCO that if he strikes him down (i.e., inspects the code) he'll become more powerful (i.e. open sourced and GPL protected) than he can possibly imagine.
See, now it all makes sense! Now we just need Luke (IBM) to blow up the "Death Star" (frivilous lawsuits) with a proton torpedo (the GPL) shot down an "exhaust tube" (an exhaust tube). I hope that cleared it all up for everybody.
- A modern user friendly interface developed with Qt. Scribus can run on Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, BSD and soon Mac OSX. An experimental version running on KDE-Cygwin and Windows 2000 is in testing.
- Unicode support including support for right to left scripts.
- Can export CMYK separations and "press-ready" PDF including PDF 1.4 features such as transparency.
- The only DTP application to create fully ISO compliant PDF/X-3 files.
- A powerful PDF export engine capable of creating fully interactive PDF forms, presentation effects and encrypted PDF.
- ICC color management via the littlecms color management engine.
- Extended Matrix e-business infomediaries capability
- Exports high-quality PDF, SVG and EPS.
- Powerful cross-platform Python Scripting language extending Scribus functions and automating tasks, as well as calling external applications within Scribus.
- Maximize enterprise functionalities for web-serviced publishing
- Uses XML as a native file format. The Scribus XML format has been fully documented
Ummm...that's great and all, but I've been using Quark since version 3.8 (they're up to 6 now...just released it for the Mac), and it's been doing just about all of that since version 5.6.2. Scribus is a particularly poor choice if you're trying to scale best-of-breed users to engage proactive content, where Quark has all those capabilities out of the box. I really, really, hope it can succeed, as I'd like to see more graphical programs on Linux besides just the Gump. They really need to just sell Quark for Linux, but they probably too wrapped up in the BSD port right now.Once users start logging onto this service, the downloading of tentacle pr0n will reach epic proportions.
I glanced through the article...this is unfortunate news, and I hope the author's conclusions are incorrect. The shuttle is aging, and I think we all expect it to go the way of the Segway pretty soon.
.NET Server Orbital Vehicle Edition failing to convert between metric and English units correctly as leading to the tragedy. Space travel is important to our culture, the future of our children, and our global economy...we in the open source community need to do our part to ensure its success.
Maybe with some more $$, NASA could do a better job of shoring up the space program, to ensure boy-band members will still have the opportunity to travel in space for the foreseeable future. Perhaps if they switched the shuttle's software to an open source alternative, like Linux, or even one of its flakier derivatives like BSD, they could save enough money to get this new space plane up and running. It may also improve safety, as some of the reports from the Endeavor disaster cited issues with Windows
The dot-com boom created a lot of "programmers" who weren't. For example, in the midst of the boom we would have people show up at seminars who said that they "programmed in HTML" (and sometimes a little Perl) and felt like they knew enough about "programming" that they were ready for the big time. Naturally, they were swamped when faced with real programming because we assume competence in some C-like language, but these poor people had been fooled into the hubris of thinking "I don't need those prerequisites, programming is easy and I'm smart". But the dot-boom created a demand for anyone who could type any kind of code, even HTML, with, I'm sure, the idea that these folks could eventually be trained into more complex jobs. But now, the out-of-work ranks are filled with people who say they are programmers (because they were told so when they had their jobs), and yet don't have the skills necessary to do serious programming. Thus at least some of the jobless numbers come from artificial inflation of those who claim to be a programmer but aren't.
Ha! Yeah, that threw me, too. I just finished it a few days ago. Really interesting read. Here are my thoughts:
Sean Fanning's Napster is widely regarded as the poster child for the dot-com-bubble's bust. In some ways that description is very apt. Characterizing the company as a VC-baby that never developed a business model and whose fame was based on giving away other's property would hardly be inaccurate. But All The Rave author Joeseph Menn goes far beyond the hype and failure to provide a detailed analysis and chronology of the company from pre-inception to post-collapse.
Menn, whose resume includes the LA Times and Bloomberg, takes an unbiased look at Napster and the decisions that they made. He documents the internal fighting that he proffers as the cause of the company's failure. He provides details about every Napster transaction, from the original 30/70 split between Sean Fanning and his uncle (respectively), the company's angel funding, investment by Hummer Winblad, the Bertelsmann loan, and the company's eventual bankruptcy.
The book, though, reads more like a novel than a business book. The book also incorporates afterthoughts from the company's principals about what they would have done differently in retrospect. With the exception of John Fanning (who ostensibly refused interview requests), Mann incorporates lessons learned from all of the principals both interspersed within the heart of the book and in a post-mortem chapter that serves as an epilogue.
For a company that once flew so high to have died so quickly is somewhat amazing (though not as much so today as perhaps it was five years ago). This book chronologies that trip. It is an exciting ride!
I'm worried about a similar topic.
I am an undergraduate CS major at the University of Central Florida. I took a Discrete Math course this past semester and had a VERY difficult time with the text book the class used: 'Discrete and Combinatorial Mathematics' by R. Grimaldi. I do not attribute my difficulties to the book itself, rather I just feel that my learning style is incompatible with the way this book is laid out. I'm sure that others have had similar experiences where they could just not -click- with a book. Like many people I know I tend to learn almost all of the class material from the book. I learn really well from books that focus heavily on examples and explanations on how those examples work. I would love to hear what Slashdot readers consider their most useful Discrete Math textbook. Most interesting are books that have very good discussions on the basic strategies of proofs. I am currently preparing to take an exam that the department requires all CS majors take before they can move to higher level classes, it will test me on my knowledge of discrete math, specifically proofs (by induction, disproof by contradiction, direct proof, recursive definitions, etc)
Maybe this can help me,too. I think the problem is just a simple lack of reading compression on my part. Perhaps some sort of remedial studies could help us both? Thanks for the great Ask Slashdot!
I started the project back in 1997 for personal use, and in November of 2002 decided to make it Open Source under the GPL (although parts have since had their license changed to the LGPL to make using our API (especially our plugin APIs) easier for all kinds of developers). After about 8 months we're getting pretty close to final releases of the project for public consumption.
So I'd been at this for 8 months, with some success, but got to the point where two things concern me:
- How do I best market my project?
- How can I raise funds to help continue the project?
That's when I discovered the Open Investment Initiative.The principle behind the Open Investment Initiative is to encourage the Open Source Community to take matters into their own hands, by getting smarter about money. If that happens to mean that programmers become part-time wheeler-dealers and happen to _like_ it better than programming, then good for them! Open source developers (or anybody else for that matter) could even band together to form investment syndicates, with the aim of gaining financial independence.
For the most part, the expectation is that several smart people willing to learn about investing, negotiating and making money get together, and succeed where they would be unable or unwilling to do anything on their own.
Hopefully, that'll help out your situation, too.
Cheap isn't allways a good thing.
As an IT manager and consultant for a Fortune 100 company, I can tell you there won't be too many Linux desktops in our shop in the near future. It's not like we haven't tried, though, don't get me wrong. Purse strings are tight these days. The economy's in the toilet. I was really hoping that war would pull us out, but it sure didn't last long enough to do much of anything (my company gets a few defense contracts here and there).
Anyway, I digress. So, we had a trial project last year where the secretaries on the fourth floor were all given desktops fitted out with KDE, Gnome, and Ximian, all on top of Linux 8.0. I recently completed a report on the commercial viability of this sort of thing, and the results were not good.
First, it took for-freaking-ever just to get the machines installed. I mean, it's like four CDs just to install linux. Ummm...Windows is one. Guess which is easier. The install process was just miserable. I mean, I'm kinda nearing the "guru" stage, but the rest of the office staff? Newbs!! Once we got them straightened out, thanks to a few calls to the Mandrake tech help line, we finally got the install complete.
Next came the secretaries. Jesus! "Where's Outlook?" "How do I get on the Internet?" "Where's Solitare?" "What do you mean 'recompile the kernel'?" It was NOT a fun day. The first day it took forty-five minutes just to explain to the broads that Microsoft Office WASN'T in the damn start menu. We want you to use Open Office. They couldn't understand why they couldn't use Word anymore. When we tried to explain to them, "Well, this is free!" they just thought we were being cheap. Like using a coupon out on a date. Bad form, fellas. Linux needs to be more corporate-driven. Up the price or something. People hear "free" and think "worthless."
It never really improved. Eventually we scrapped the whole thing. Hell, after the switch back to XP, our productivity went way up. It was so easy, we even let the girls install XP themselves...went off without a hitch. I'm still pitching Linux as a server platform to our CTO, though, at least for some of the less mission-critical apps where scalability isn't as big an issue. Still, it's hard to convince a tech-savvy CTO, especially since a lot of people on the support staff are worried SCO is going to shut down Linux all together.
I thought about trying BSD next, but I heard that was dead.
Well, that's just excellent, then. Transfer them to ogg, because, that's an OPEN STANDARD, and we should only steal people's music with OPEN STANDARDS. See, then it's okay, because it helps "the community" and all that.
/. over and over again...
I'm surprised this story was posted in the "media" section, actually. I figured it would grace the "Your Rights Online" section for sure. We usually see this sort of thing about copyright holders trying to halt the theft of their work in that section. That, somehow, when somebody tries to enforce the law, it must be violating your rights. Forget the copyright holder...it's Your Rights Online, not theirs.
These programs, Kazaa, Nuttela, etc, were written specifically for the purpose of illegally downloading music. I know they have a few other uses, as well, but that wasn't what the authors were thinking when they wrote them. The thought was "I want to steal music." Then they release it with a *wink wink, nudge nudge* "It's for distributing my garage band's tiny garbage to our global village!" When they get called on it, when the RIAA exposes the man behind the curtain, all of a sudden it's about my "rights."
Right...I forgot about that "right" you have to get Britney Spear's latest drivel for free. Of course you have a right to works of somebody else! We talk about rights and free speech and all that, and we rationalize our thievery away. "The RIAA is evil, so it's okay to steal!" "They rip off the artists anyway!" Cognitive Dissonance. So, if RIAA doesn't give enough money to the artists for their work, that makes it morally acceptable for you to give them nothing, then, right? That's how you justify that pirate mp3, isn't it? But the artist sure isn't going to see a thing from that.
Really, why are we even discussing Kazaa on this site? I mean, isn't Slashdot the home of Free Software? Aren't these closed, proprietary formats? Isn't that bad? Oh, wait, I guess it's okay sometimes...like it's cool to like Apple because they're all so nice. I guess I'm just not enlightened enough to see the difference. Maybe a member of the Slashdot 31337ist intelligencia can inform me.
[/rant] good god...sorry for the rant, I just get so sick of seeing this gloating on
Doh! Read the links...the RIAA is talking about song-swapping going down, while the p2p perveyors are talking about traffic going up. That's a distinction...people are swapping fewer songs, but more other stuff.
My guess: Since they're all Pirates, they're downloading that new Johnny Depp movie. ARRRR!!!
- Killed the tree view -- you can only see one folder at a time now
- Multiple calender view & web calenders
- New ability to morph viral web services in real-time
- Improved icons for more user-friendly operation
- Support to orchestrate seamless e-services
The new graphics are nice and all, but the rest of that Outlook has had since 2000! We need innovation to beat Micro$oft, not just pretty widget to click to kill time.[/rant] sorry if I got a little carried away there...
So...how much you taken home? After taxes and all?
Look, I know this is Slashdot, and we all love Linux and hate Microsoft, but let's be realistic here. Apache just isn't ready for mission-critical enterprise level operations like this. This is a BIG DEAL. We're talking about electing the leader of the free world here, not serving the goatse photo.
For this kind of thing, you need a secure server. If the code for our vote server is open, then anybody can hack it. Great, we just elected Osama president because some terrorists hacked the Linux vote server. I know a lot of people will respond to flame me, saying that couldn't ever happen because Muslims don't have computers or some racist garbage like that, but it's just not true. I think there are a lot of "hackers" out there who would be more than willing to help them. Remember, Linux is a european operating system. A lot of 'them' have it in for us, and I don't think they'd hesitate for too long if an opportunity came for them to show us up. We need to keep our voting system American and secure. I love Linux as much as the next guy, but I gotta go with Microsoft security on this one.
You can't be serious, can you? I mean, how can you possibly contend that Canada or England, bastions of socialists and atheists, can possibly compete with the United States of America? It's this kind of liberal brainwashing that's infected our public schools and brought about the downfall of our society.
I've been terribly dissapointed with George Bush. I thought he was going to clean this place up. When are we going to fix our schools? When are we going to get rid of all this nonesense filling up our textbooks, and acknowledge in our classrooms that the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth through the righteous power of Jesus Christ? When Americans recognized that fact, the power of the United States was unmatched. But now, the atheists, the homosexuals, and the socialists have perverted our society. We can withstand conflict from outside, like this CyberSecurity witchcraft, but not from within. Come on, wake up, man!