If Communism is ever tried, it might succeed I am sorry, but communism is contradictory to evolution. Our lives are governed by the forces of nature, and this requires that the weakest die out childless, the strongest survive. In capitalism the survival of the fittest is achieved with money - homeless and unemployed can not afford to have children. There always has to be poverty, there is no way to avoid it. Guys with plenty of money can afford more wives and / or lovers and have more offspring, so that their genes get propagated. Beautiful women marry rich guys, so their children have better prospects of survival. How does it work in communism ? How do you model the social hierarchy there? Is there any social hierarchy in communism ? You have to remember, that some people always have better lives than others - i.e. some girls are prettier than other, so they can give birth to healthier children. They usually mate with guys with more money. Who gets the best girls in communism? Party leaders? Don't be ridiculuous.
Your logic is easy to rebuff. In case of a movie the money doesn't go back to the system just like this, because the resources and time lost in producing the cars and buildings, etc. could be used for another purpose - they won't come back, simply because others paid for it. However people need enternainment, you cannot feed hungry children or do researching all day every day, so it might make sense to destroy all those things in order to make a decent movie. With frivolous lawsuits, the very smart people who spend years arguing about silly things could really do something useful, instead of wasting their time and life on something like this. If you think that the money always goes back to the system, even in case of stupid decisions, then why some nations are poor and have starving children and other are rich and powerful ?
Just today I was writing a C++ program for a contest, and came to the conclusion, that it would be nice if any IDE for Linux had decent debugger. KDevelop 2.1 had problems with a console app and eclipse is notoriously difficult to configure under Linux. But such problems are something completely different than compiling the kernel. Linux will achieve "World Domination" not if it will have this or that feature, but if it can innovate faster than proprietary software. Given it is behind, much faster. As for your problem, try Synaptic. In Add/Remove programs under Red Hat 9 it is System / Popular programs / Synaptic (or similar - I use a local version). Is it a gui frontend for apt-rpm. Point and click - you might tell me, if you feel satisfied.
I have been using Linux for five years (dual boot with Windows) and I have never in my life compiled the kernel. Frankly I have no idea how to do this and I don't know why I should bother.
I had (have) used two printers, three computers, all with different video cards, different sound cards. I used modems (winmodems were not supported and I didn't bother, bought normal one and it worked. I had to compile the drivers though - two or three commands). Now I use a DSL and it works.
What you talk about was true like five years ago - I remember I asked a geek friend then how do I install a sound card. He talked about compiling the kernel and I laughed him off. Now it's all auto. The only thing that I have to configure using text mode now is the DSL (I don't know why visual setup doesn't work with this one, the text was no brainer though) and 3d video accelerator (it compiles some kind of interfaces, but it does it on itself and I have to modify the XFree86 config file, but it's easy as well). 2d is auto of course.
Windows XP has it's issues as well. Like I played with a network manager and it messed up the DSL. I forgot about it and we had fun after my brother phoned the ISP:
They: (having exhausted all configuration issues they came up with): someone must have hacked your computer and your account was disabled. It happens very seldom (the guy on the other side seemed excited). You are assigned case no X354yZ. Phone tommorrow and give the no, we will tell if it is fixed.
My brother: But it works under Linux
They: 3 minutes silence
It is because most people don't care what they use, as long as it works. An average person buys a computer that is equipped with Windows, talks to his/her friends who also use Windows and decides that Windows is the standard. Why bother with installing a different OS, if the one you use is fine. For Linux to succeed, it has to :
either be much better than Windows and have more apps, so people will bother to install it. It is unlikely, as many people simply pirate software, so for them Windows is always better equiped.
or buisnesses must find out that using Linux and OpenOffice saves them enough money to go for it - then many computers will ship with Linux preloaded, be cheaper and thus more attractive than those with Windows, producers will write software for Linux,...
Seriously, I doubt it will happen. Microsoft has enough resources to always be ahead in the game. Unless they screw something, they shouldn't lose. After seeing some screenshots from Longhorn, I admit it seems to have lots of useful inventions tightly integrated into the system, like WinFS and generally seems very user-friendly for non-geeks.
Do you understand the choice between delegates and inner clases, properties and get/set methods, attributes and... (java doesn't have an equivalent)?
Java doesn't have delegates, because it would be difficult to introduce them that late in language development. As for get/set methods I don't see how they are an advantage - I'd rather know if I call a method or I access a field (not so obvious with C#).
Java also (unlike C#) doesn't have operators overloading, but it is a design choice - too often programmers in C++ used this features for things like
cout <<"See I can do this too!"<<endl;
As C# is mainly copy-cat from Java, Java 1.5 will be mainly
copy-cat from C# :
Generics (introduced in.NET 1.1 I believe)
Enhanced for loop (equivalent of foreach in C#)
Autoboxing - in C# since 1.0
Enums - also in C#
Metadata - used mainly for Webservices, does away with all those tedious interfaces, also a feature in C#.
I think all major C# inventions will find their way back to Java. The only real things missing are the delegates, but they cannot be introduced that late.
Do you realize how important it is to have a bytecode language that is not tied to a single language?
As for different languages, I refer you Jython. I have found a page with something like 30 languages compilable to Java bytecode (most completely useless to me). But I think there is a need for one dynamic binding variable language and one static. I don't get how do I benefit from having both VB.NET and C#, other that I have to learn two very similar languages (people often don't get that i.e. you have only single inheritance with *every*.NET language and it cannot be changed, so you cannot port standard C++ to.NET).
Also I'd like to point out, that the main thing that stops Java from mass adoption and is a huge pain is Swing. It looks weird and is like 20 times slower than native GUI. You might argue what you want, but if I install Vi in Windows, in normal file open dialog boxes I can right-click a file and choose Edit with Vim. It is a normal behaviour I expect it from every program, that has a file open dialog. Alas, not so with Swing, which has reinvented the dialog box for completely unknown purposes (I don't get the "programs written in Java should look the same on every platform" - to me programs under Linux should look like Linux, under Windows like Windows). Java programmers sometimes refer to themselves that they live in a ghetto - every development environment produces normal looking programs, whereas if you use Swing, every one can tell it.
As to speed - in Forte reformatting 2000 LOC takes about 20 seconds, in Eclipse half a second. Maybe after Sun finally goes down, IBM will buy them and replace Swing with SWT/JFace
people would buy Linux and OpenOffice, because you save something like $500 for not buying Windows + Office XP. And yes, Linux/OO is easy to use, if you want only Web Browser and writer/spreadsheet. You have several icons that you click to start programs and that's it. I don't know how browsing from Mozilla is in any way more difficult than from IE or how Word is better than Writer for simple tasks. And $500 is more of a difference, than the $200 - $300 between Mac and Dell you discuss.
It is developed faster than Windows (it has 9 years, Windows has 18) Mozilla has new releases every 3-4 months, IE had its last release in 2001 next should be in 2006
It is free and computers are getting cheaper, so Windows price will relatively grow making it unattractive
It is more secure, so it is easier for newbies
Programmers get the source code, so they can better integrate their programs with Linux
Linux is being developed mainly by technical people
Linux has plenty advertising in Linux magazines and Linux portals and they are lots of them
It is relatively cheap to write portable apps - see Unreal Tournament 2003 and 4, so migration should be easy
See - I can do it too!
Really, you cannot predict what will happen, unless these are obvious things (like I predict pigs won't fly upside down under water wearing steel smokings), but then such predictions are useless. Linux is kind of phenomena, because no one ever predicted such a thing would occur. I think it will be decided in the next few years, whether Linux has the potential to replace MS or not.
AFAIK Red Hat doesn't even ship with XFS. No one really uses XFS, nor JFS. The filesystems du jour are ext3 and ReiserFS. I recall there were problems with either XFS or JFS. One of this systems had code duplicated with kernel's and it was difficult to include it in the kernel. There were even rumours it would be abandonded.
That said, I think SCO doesn't have a clue what it's up to - saying the community would be unable to replace XFS and JFS - it already had long ago! They probably think GNU/Linux is controlled by corporations and wouldn't survive without them (this is why they are suing IBM and (probably) SGI), but I think it is slowly becoming the other way - corporations are becoming dependant on GNU/Linux and are not really needed in the development process!
Also in that game, people who thought they were given to little (i.e one penny) refused the deal, even though they would gain from it (one penny).
When you think about, it is not irrational. Imagine the X is 10000$, you get a dollar, and the other person keep 9999$. You participate in an auction - new Mercedes S class is being sold at a very steep discount. Few people know about it, so it's a real bargain. You loose that auction to the person 1 by 5000$; but if you rejected the deal in the first place, person 1 would have 9999$ less, and you would win the same auction by 4999$. Rejecting the deal if it's unfair sounds very rational to me.
You post comments to see, if other share your views, that is whether your views are popular. You might also find out, if you are misinformed, don't understand something correctly, etc. People get modded up not only for karma, but also because their view is interesting, insightful and can shed light on some issues, so you can later perform more informed choices
You are comparing companies (Microsoft vs RedHat),
but let's compare products (Linux vs Windows)
This is from news.com
(see bottom of page)
$2.05 billion: Total revenue from sales of Linux servers in 2002, up 63 percent from 2001. (IDC)
Which is only 1/4th of total Microsoft revenue.
What is the revenue from, say, Windows Servers ?
But that any code IBM wrote for AIX (under the SCO liccens) is SCOs property as AIX uses SCOs intelectual property as a code base.
SCO doesn't claim they own copyrights to the code.
SCO's complaint relies heavily on a 1985 license agreement between AT&T and IBM. While SCO's complaint quotes extensively from that agreement, it makes scant mention of the "side letter" to that agreement, which SCO filed as Exhibit C to its complaint.
That side letter expressly permits IBM to create new products using "ideas, concepts, know-how or techniques" found in the UNIX code, as long as the programmers creating the new products do not (1) copy code from UNIX or (2) refer to the UNIX code or manuals in creating those new products. In addition, on page 2 of the side letter, AT&T agreed that "modifications and derivative works prepared by you [IBM] are owned by you." Thus, unless IBM actually copied UNIX code into its Linux contributions rather than re-coding the ideas it found there, its contributions to Linux were probably proper.
Quoted from
an article
on zdnet.
AFAIK (and I might be wrong, since no one talks about what SCO has written in their accusation presented to the court, but only about their press released) SCO merely claims, that these deriavitives (i.e. JFS) are / were trade secrets and that IBM breached the contract by releasing them under the GPL. I thought that was all, but then someone told me they also sue for direct copyright infrigments, but I don't know the details. *Does anybody know what they exactly accuse of*? Can anybody explain in layman's terms what this lawsuit is about (trade secret - what does it apply to, copyright infrigment - what does it apply to, etc)????
And what if a big corporation like Sun, with lots of patents goes broke and starts sueing everyone? Wouldn't it damage the whole industry? Consider it - one patent is worth 500 million, 100 patents ?
Shouldn't we rather help those programmers that want to leave SCO? Why not offer them alternative jobs, so they can quit working for Darl? By making the developers feel even more alienated we might leave them no choice. In the end they might turn against Linux personally, because Linux programmers turned against them.
This might not be a good example, but if you want to release a competing browser, you must make it simple for users of the old one to use yours. You include additional guides for them, allow them to switch to alternate interface, that is similar to the old one etc. You do not tell them they are wrong, because they used the old one!
If you must punish people working at SCO - punish those that *started* working there *after may*
But if I make my living writing code -- or performing music -- then why is it acceptable for people to take my product w/o compensating me?
The truth is, if you are not self employed, you don't own your own work. Your boss / company does. Think about it - the copyright law prevents you from using your own work. If you come up with a reusable module or any decent invention, your company fires you, you find another job and you are asked to do the same. You are forbidden. You have to write the same thing over again, but make sure it is different from your first solution - your experience works against you. This is why I try to avoid writing any truly reusable software at work - I don't want to limit myself in the future. What is truly scary is not the copyright law itselft, but the way it is used. Rarely nowadays do people really own their creations. This is not Madonna or Eminem suing people, but an organization most people even doesn't know exists!
I would much rather have copyright laws abandoned, that what is now. Then I would truly write software the best I can, not worrying that in some near/far future I might be infringing stranger's (ip is transfarable - who knows who might own your work in the future) copyrights by using my *own* creations.
I think this is the reason why Linux has picked up - you can write the best you can to the benefit of others. You can then reuse the code you commit to open source projects over and over, no matter who your boss is at the moment. It is usually the only way to make sure you have the rights to your creations!!!
Their site is pretty slow, because they use Amazon Web Services. This means, every time you submit, they probably connect to amazon to check you query. I remember Amazon had restrictions on connections - no more than one per second. Anyway, sometime ago I developed a desktop application to browse the Amazon store - both in C# and Java. I think I could easily adapt it to finding, if a given record is released under RIAA. It works much faster, than the website of course, since there is no proxy.
Just tell me, if anybody is interested (I can release the source code under GPL or BSD)
You can find pictures of it at the bottom of this page
I think you miss the point. AFAIK SCO didn't sue IBM on the basis of copyright infrigment, but rather breaching trade secrets. They admit the code in question is owned and copyrighted by IBM. They talk a lot about Linux code infringing their copyrights, but they haven't so far sued anybody because of it, nor did they say what the problem is. They are only talking, making press releases, etc., no legal action. They are not probably even offering those licenses for real - I haven't heard about anybody who bought them - did you? It could be a basis for a lawsuit against them after all.
It seems to me they are playing safe on the legal side - one lawsuit, nothing more.
The real issue here is the media attention they get. Microsoft has lots of lawsuit - the Timeline case (users of SQL Server might be held responsible), the browser case (they might be forced to remove ActiveX support from IE and 0.5 billion fine), the case brought against them by Intertrust (DRM infringing their patents, might affect almost all of their products, Microsoft is loosing so far). These are real cases, yet few notice it. But one lawsuit by a little known company, with little chances for success gets so much attention, and moreover everybody seems to get it wrong - I don't recall reading a note, commentary or an article in a newspaper or a magazine that would get it right. This is (correct me if I'm wrong) a case about a breach of contract by IBM, because it contributed its own code, that has not a single line of SCO in it to Linux, which was later sold by SCO. They claim now, that they didn't know what they were selling. They didn't know Linux contained (at that moment) JFS support, NUMA, SMP, contributed by IBM, SGI, etc. After all - how could they? Did they have access to the source code?
Of course they did. Get it finally. The goal of this company is not to make profit. It's not find justice. It is to make everybody believe, that Linux is illegal. This is why ESR moves are waste of time.
People treat their claims seriously, because the media do. The question is - why the media behave the way they do?
If you consider the productivity gained by using an IDE such as Visual Studio.NET 2003.
intellesense statement completion, automatic code formatting and highlighting, and intelligent help You have the same thing with Java IDE such as Eclipse (free)
Plus
automatic error detection while you type - similar to Word (but without the clipper!)
suggestions to correct your errors, like:
import a particular class you are using
surround a part of code with the try / catch clause
correcting simple misspelling
and others
refactoring - choose a variable whose name you don't like and simply rename it - eclipse updates all references
organize your imports
The automatic error detection and suggestion(s) how to correct it are addictive - I found it impossible to return to vi after trying eclipse! At work I use VS and MFC and I miss things like refactoring.
The problem is speed - eclipse runs perfectly well under windows - comparably to VS. It uses native widgets - not Swing like Forte (which is sometimes 10 - 20 times slower - try code formatting for example). However this seems to be a disadvantage under Linux and GTK2 - it seems to be tenfold slower than windows and even slower than Swing! I am more and more convinced, that the main problem with Linux is not it's lack of functionality, but unnecessary bloat and slowwwwwnesssss.
P.S. The main thing lacking is debugging - it is there in theory, however I was never able to do anything useful with it.
P.S2. Has anyone tried WebSphere, which is built on top of eclipse?
Slashdot Mirror
If Communism is ever tried, it might succeed
I am sorry, but communism is contradictory to evolution. Our lives are governed by the forces of nature, and this requires that the weakest die out childless, the strongest survive. In capitalism the survival of the fittest is achieved with money - homeless and unemployed can not afford to have children. There always has to be poverty, there is no way to avoid it. Guys with plenty of money can afford more wives and / or lovers and have more offspring, so that their genes get propagated. Beautiful women marry rich guys, so their children have better prospects of survival. How does it work in communism ?
How do you model the social hierarchy there? Is there any social hierarchy in communism ?
You have to remember, that some people always have better lives than others - i.e. some girls are prettier than other, so they can give birth to healthier children. They usually mate with guys with more money. Who gets the best girls in communism? Party leaders?
Don't be ridiculuous.
You forgot about one hidden cost when it comes to the PDA.
You still have to buy a cell phone.
Plus pay monthly fees, which will subsidize the phone.
Your logic is easy to rebuff. In case of a movie the money doesn't go back to the system just like this, because the resources and time lost in producing the cars and buildings, etc. could be used for another purpose - they won't come back, simply because others paid for it.
However people need enternainment, you cannot feed hungry children or do researching all day every day, so it might make sense to destroy all those things in order to make a decent movie.
With frivolous lawsuits, the very smart people who spend years arguing about silly things could really do something useful, instead of wasting their time and life on something like this. If you think that the money always goes back to the system, even in case of stupid decisions, then why some nations are poor and have starving children and other are rich and powerful ?
It might because I use a Red Hat 9 based distro called Aurox.
Just today I was writing a C++ program for a contest, and came to the conclusion, that it would be nice if any IDE for Linux had decent debugger. KDevelop 2.1 had problems with a console app and eclipse is notoriously difficult to configure under Linux.
But such problems are something completely different than compiling the kernel. Linux will achieve "World Domination" not if it will have this or that feature, but if it can innovate faster than proprietary software. Given it is behind, much faster.
As for your problem, try Synaptic. In Add/Remove programs under Red Hat 9 it is System / Popular programs / Synaptic (or similar - I use a local version).
Is it a gui frontend for apt-rpm. Point and click - you might tell me, if you feel satisfied.
I had (have) used two printers, three computers, all with different video cards, different sound cards. I used modems (winmodems were not supported and I didn't bother, bought normal one and it worked. I had to compile the drivers though - two or three commands). Now I use a DSL and it works. What you talk about was true like five years ago - I remember I asked a geek friend then how do I install a sound card. He talked about compiling the kernel and I laughed him off. Now it's all auto. The only thing that I have to configure using text mode now is the DSL (I don't know why visual setup doesn't work with this one, the text was no brainer though) and 3d video accelerator (it compiles some kind of interfaces, but it does it on itself and I have to modify the XFree86 config file, but it's easy as well). 2d is auto of course.
Windows XP has it's issues as well. Like I played with a network manager and it messed up the DSL. I forgot about it and we had fun after my brother phoned the ISP:
They: (having exhausted all configuration issues they came up with): someone must have hacked your computer and your account was disabled. It happens very seldom (the guy on the other side seemed excited). You are assigned case no X354yZ. Phone tommorrow and give the no, we will tell if it is fixed.
My brother: But it works under Linux
They: 3 minutes silence
- either be much better than Windows and have more apps, so people will bother to install it. It is unlikely, as many people simply pirate software, so for them Windows is always better equiped.
- or buisnesses must find out that using Linux and OpenOffice saves them enough money to go for it - then many computers will ship with Linux preloaded, be cheaper and thus more attractive than those with Windows, producers will write software for Linux,
...
Seriously, I doubt it will happen. Microsoft has enough resources to always be ahead in the game. Unless they screw something, they shouldn't lose. After seeing some screenshots from Longhorn, I admit it seems to have lots of useful inventions tightly integrated into the system, like WinFS and generally seems very user-friendly for non-geeks.Wasn't it $5+ billion before they lost that $1+ billion last quarter ?
Java doesn't have delegates, because it would be difficult to introduce them that late in language development. As for get/set methods I don't see how they are an advantage - I'd rather know if I call a method or I access a field (not so obvious with C#).
Java also (unlike C#) doesn't have operators overloading, but it is a design choice - too often programmers in C++ used this features for things like
cout <<"See I can do this too!"<<endl;
As C# is mainly copy-cat from Java, Java 1.5 will be mainly copy-cat from C# :
I think all major C# inventions will find their way back to Java. The only real things missing are the delegates, but they cannot be introduced that late.
Do you realize how important it is to have a bytecode language that is not tied to a single language?As for different languages, I refer you Jython. I have found a page with something like 30 languages compilable to Java bytecode (most completely useless to me). But I think there is a need for one dynamic binding variable language and one static. I don't get how do I benefit from having both VB.NET and C#, other that I have to learn two very similar languages (people often don't get that i.e. you have only single inheritance with *every* .NET language and it cannot be changed, so you cannot port standard C++ to .NET).
Also I'd like to point out, that the main thing that stops Java from mass adoption and is a huge pain is Swing. It looks weird and is like 20 times slower than native GUI. You might argue what you want, but if I install Vi in Windows, in normal file open dialog boxes I can right-click a file and choose Edit with Vim. It is a normal behaviour I expect it from every program, that has a file open dialog. Alas, not so with Swing, which has reinvented the dialog box for completely unknown purposes (I don't get the "programs written in Java should look the same on every platform" - to me programs under Linux should look like Linux, under Windows like Windows). Java programmers sometimes refer to themselves that they live in a ghetto - every development environment produces normal looking programs, whereas if you use Swing, every one can tell it.
As to speed - in Forte reformatting 2000 LOC takes about 20 seconds, in Eclipse half a second. Maybe after Sun finally goes down, IBM will buy them and replace Swing with SWT/JFace
people would buy Linux and OpenOffice, because you save something like $500 for not buying Windows + Office XP. And yes, Linux/OO is easy to use, if you want only Web Browser and writer/spreadsheet. You have several icons that you click to start programs and that's it. I don't know how browsing from Mozilla is in any way more difficult than from IE or how Word is better than Writer for simple tasks.
And $500 is more of a difference, than the $200 - $300 between Mac and Dell you discuss.
- They are some standards on the servers that everybody respects, like TCP, HTTP, FTP, SAMBA, so competition is actually possible
- Oracle - second world software company - and IBM make server software (databases among other) avaiable on Linux
"Standards" on the desktop are Microsoft's - DirectX, Word, Excel, ActiveX, they are generally exclusive to Windows.- It is developed faster than Windows (it has 9 years, Windows has 18) Mozilla has new releases every 3-4 months, IE had its last release in 2001 next should be in 2006
- It is free and computers are getting cheaper, so Windows price will relatively grow making it unattractive
- It is more secure, so it is easier for newbies
- Programmers get the source code, so they can better integrate their programs with Linux
- Linux is being developed mainly by technical people
- Linux has plenty advertising in Linux magazines and Linux portals and they are lots of them
- It is relatively cheap to write portable apps - see Unreal Tournament 2003 and 4, so migration should be easy
See - I can do it too!Really, you cannot predict what will happen, unless these are obvious things (like I predict pigs won't fly upside down under water wearing steel smokings), but then such predictions are useless. Linux is kind of phenomena, because no one ever predicted such a thing would occur. I think it will be decided in the next few years, whether Linux has the potential to replace MS or not.
AFAIK Red Hat doesn't even ship with XFS. No one really uses XFS, nor JFS. The filesystems du jour are ext3 and ReiserFS. I recall there were problems with either XFS or JFS. One of this systems had code duplicated with kernel's and it was difficult to include it in the kernel. There were even rumours it would be abandonded.
That said, I think SCO doesn't have a clue what it's up to - saying the community would be unable to replace XFS and JFS - it already had long ago! They probably think GNU/Linux is controlled by corporations and wouldn't survive without them (this is why they are suing IBM and (probably) SGI), but I think it is slowly becoming the other way - corporations are becoming dependant on GNU/Linux and are not really needed in the development process!
Will they go for it and sue even the noble TLA itself? Can't be !!!
Also in that game, people who thought they were given to little (i.e one penny) refused the deal, even though they would gain from it (one penny). When you think about, it is not irrational. Imagine the X is 10000$, you get a dollar, and the other person keep 9999$. You participate in an auction - new Mercedes S class is being sold at a very steep discount. Few people know about it, so it's a real bargain. You loose that auction to the person 1 by 5000$; but if you rejected the deal in the first place, person 1 would have 9999$ less, and you would win the same auction by 4999$. Rejecting the deal if it's unfair sounds very rational to me.
You post comments to see, if other share your views, that is whether your views are popular. You might also find out, if you are misinformed, don't understand something correctly, etc. People get modded up not only for karma, but also because their view is interesting, insightful and can shed light on some issues, so you can later perform more informed choices
You are comparing companies (Microsoft vs RedHat), but let's compare products (Linux vs Windows) This is from news.com (see bottom of page)
$2.05 billion: Total revenue from sales of Linux servers in 2002, up 63 percent from 2001. (IDC) Which is only 1/4th of total Microsoft revenue.
What is the revenue from, say, Windows Servers ?
And what if a big corporation like Sun, with lots of patents goes broke and starts sueing everyone? Wouldn't it damage the whole industry? Consider it - one patent is worth 500 million, 100 patents ?
Shouldn't we rather help those programmers that want to leave SCO? Why not offer them alternative jobs, so they can quit working for Darl? By making the developers feel even more alienated we might leave them no choice. In the end they might turn against Linux personally, because Linux programmers turned against them.
This might not be a good example, but if you want to release a competing browser, you must make it simple for users of the old one to use yours. You include additional guides for them, allow them to switch to alternate interface, that is similar to the old one etc. You do not tell them they are wrong, because they used the old one!
If you must punish people working at SCO - punish those that *started* working there *after may*
Did you patch your system today? (TM)
But if I make my living writing code -- or performing music -- then why is it acceptable for people to take my product w/o compensating me? The truth is, if you are not self employed, you don't own your own work. Your boss / company does. Think about it - the copyright law prevents you from using your own work. If you come up with a reusable module or any decent invention, your company fires you, you find another job and you are asked to do the same. You are forbidden. You have to write the same thing over again, but make sure it is different from your first solution - your experience works against you. This is why I try to avoid writing any truly reusable software at work - I don't want to limit myself in the future. What is truly scary is not the copyright law itselft, but the way it is used. Rarely nowadays do people really own their creations. This is not Madonna or Eminem suing people, but an organization most people even doesn't know exists!
I would much rather have copyright laws abandoned, that what is now. Then I would truly write software the best I can, not worrying that in some near/far future I might be infringing stranger's (ip is transfarable - who knows who might own your work in the future) copyrights by using my *own* creations.
I think this is the reason why Linux has picked up - you can write the best you can to the benefit of others. You can then reuse the code you commit to open source projects over and over, no matter who your boss is at the moment. It is usually the only way to make sure you have the rights to your creations!!!
Their site is pretty slow, because they use Amazon Web Services. This means, every time you submit, they probably connect to amazon to check you query. I remember Amazon had restrictions on connections - no more than one per second. Anyway, sometime ago I developed a desktop application to browse the Amazon store - both in C# and Java. I think I could easily adapt it to finding, if a given record is released under RIAA. It works much faster, than the website of course, since there is no proxy. Just tell me, if anybody is interested (I can release the source code under GPL or BSD) You can find pictures of it at the bottom of this page
I think you miss the point. AFAIK SCO didn't sue IBM on the basis of copyright infrigment, but rather breaching trade secrets. They admit the code in question is owned and copyrighted by IBM. They talk a lot about Linux code infringing their copyrights, but they haven't so far sued anybody because of it, nor did they say what the problem is. They are only talking, making press releases, etc., no legal action. They are not probably even offering those licenses for real - I haven't heard about anybody who bought them - did you? It could be a basis for a lawsuit against them after all. It seems to me they are playing safe on the legal side - one lawsuit, nothing more.
The real issue here is the media attention they get. Microsoft has lots of lawsuit - the Timeline case (users of SQL Server might be held responsible), the browser case (they might be forced to remove ActiveX support from IE and 0.5 billion fine), the case brought against them by Intertrust (DRM infringing their patents, might affect almost all of their products, Microsoft is loosing so far). These are real cases, yet few notice it. But one lawsuit by a little known company, with little chances for success gets so much attention, and moreover everybody seems to get it wrong - I don't recall reading a note, commentary or an article in a newspaper or a magazine that would get it right. This is (correct me if I'm wrong) a case about a breach of contract by IBM, because it contributed its own code, that has not a single line of SCO in it to Linux, which was later sold by SCO. They claim now, that they didn't know what they were selling. They didn't know Linux contained (at that moment) JFS support, NUMA, SMP, contributed by IBM, SGI, etc. After all - how could they? Did they have access to the source code?
Of course they did. Get it finally. The goal of this company is not to make profit. It's not find justice. It is to make everybody believe, that Linux is illegal. This is why ESR moves are waste of time.
People treat their claims seriously, because the media do. The question is - why the media behave the way they do?
intellesense statement completion, automatic code formatting and highlighting, and intelligent help
You have the same thing with Java IDE such as Eclipse (free) Plus
- automatic error detection while you type - similar to Word (but without the clipper!)
- suggestions to correct your errors, like:
- import a particular class you are using
- surround a part of code with the try / catch clause
- correcting simple misspelling
- and others
- refactoring - choose a variable whose name you don't like and simply rename it - eclipse updates all references
- organize your imports
The automatic error detection and suggestion(s) how to correct it are addictive - I found it impossible to return to vi after trying eclipse! At work I use VS and MFC and I miss things like refactoring. The problem is speed - eclipse runs perfectly well under windows - comparably to VS. It uses native widgets - not Swing like Forte (which is sometimes 10 - 20 times slower - try code formatting for example). However this seems to be a disadvantage under Linux and GTK2 - it seems to be tenfold slower than windows and even slower than Swing! I am more and more convinced, that the main problem with Linux is not it's lack of functionality, but unnecessary bloat and slowwwwwnesssss.P.S. The main thing lacking is debugging - it is there in theory, however I was never able to do anything useful with it.
P.S2. Has anyone tried WebSphere, which is built on top of eclipse?