The Linux Development Platform might be better titled "The GNU Development Platform"
Even better, call it "The GNU Development Environment". The installation of the GNU development tools won't change Solaris to GNU. The platform is still Solaris.
It's worse than that. The standard defense from SYN attacks is to apply/enable the vendor fix. SCO is a vendor! That they have fallen prey to a SYN attack speaks volumes about the company.
But try telling the press that. They believe everything Darl says without question. One single person do this. In fact, the probability of it being one single person is enormous. Yet it's reported as an attack by the Linux *community*.
How come the press never similarly reports that "the Windows community unleashed a virus today..."?
most people who make business decisions to use commercial software believe that the vendor is liable
Actually they don't. Your average Joe Blow might believe this, but business people don't.
The main reasons are support, training, etc. Sun support is expensive, but very good. Redhat doesn't have any local support reps. Microsoft doesn't offer realistic support options, but trained and experienced Windows IT contractors are everywhere. Rational came out and gave my company training for Rose. Is anything similar available for Umbrello? Teachers for MSOffice are a dime a dozen, but OpenOffice teachers are nearly impossible to find.
If I were setting up a company, I would like to go with Linux and FreeBSD. But the lack of ubiquitous support is a factor I would have to enter into my equations. Starting out small, I won't have the budget for a full time IT department. But when I grow big enough to afford one, I won't want to throw out the existing infrastructure. A local reliable source for Linux/BSD support will make all the difference in the world.
The main thing is that a company can go to someone for help. This is changing, but it's still easier to get reliable support for Solaris, AIX and Windows than it is for Linux or BSD.
The average end-user is very concerned with 2D quality. Reading email, browsing the web, creating presentations, writing documentation, etc, etc. All are 2D applications.
The only people who care about 3D are gamers. They're a minority. A small minority. Much more significant are the non-gamer home users and businesses.
I always thought it was the Board of Directors that authorized stock issuance, not the CEO. The former are direct representatives of the shareholders, while the latter is a mere employee.
Both of those claims will be reported with a straight face by the media. Which is why you should never, never trust anything you read in the paper, see on television, hear on radio, or find online. When you realize that everything told to you is a lie, the world suddenly starts making sense.
There is an open source swf plugin, but it does not work with "standard" realworld swf. The alternative is to use the proprietary plugin from Macromedia, EXCEPT that it is only available for certain platforms. Since I run FreeBSD this is a problem. Using a Linux plugin in a FreeBSD executable doesn't (currently) work. Running a Linux Konqueror so I can use a proprietary Macromedia plugin for Linux is one possibility, but that means my whole KDE must be a Linux binary KDE. That's a pain in the butt.
In the near future there will be a solution of some kind (I keep hearing), but for the present, my solution is to simply avoid all Flash requiring sites.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining. I can easily (and comfortably) live without Flash. But claiming that swf is an open file standard, when there is no open implementation, is erroneous.
the newspaper article has swallowed a little too much FUD today
Remember that when election season rolls around. Newspapers do not report the facts, they report opinions, conjectures and regurgitated press releases.
NO change to the deal with the lawyers. Just don't push the red button (and give away a fifth of the store) without asking the owners first.
Which brings up an interesting question in my mind. If the deal with the lawyers was made by the executives and not the board, is this deal even legal? Was the right to give away a "fifth of the store" even theirs?
If I were an investor in SCO, and this prior deal wasn't disclosed to me, or made subsequent to my investment without my knowledge, I would immediately be on the phone to the SEC.
In theory the Flash file format is open, in practice it is not. Please direct me to an open source Flash browser plugin that works. I don't know that much about Flash, or the differences between flash, shockwave, and other siblings, but I do know that I *need* the closed Macromedia plugin to view webpages that use Flash.
I agree. I use FreeBSD so I have a different perspective. The FreeBSD kernel does support burning to atapi devices directly. The base system includes burncd, which is a very good CD/DVD burning tool for IDE. Unfortunately, no third party tool supports it, since all the third party tools are written for SCSI-only cdrecord.
Linus is right when he said "ide-scsi has always been broken. You should not use it, and indeed there was never any good reason for it existing AT ALL." FreeBSD has recently gotten a similarly redundant SCSI-to-ATA layer. I'm glad it's there, because I can now use all the myriad cdrecord-based tools. But it should never have been necessary in the first place.
The problem is not with the Linux kernel, it's with cdrecord. It's use of SCSI as a universal drive API is silly. It's implicit belief that ATA CDRW drives don't exist places a large burden on the user.
If no one is going to accept my document as authoritative, then what makes people think that new in-code policies would be accepted in their place?
There are two models that shape GUIs. One is the centralized authority model, where the law is handed down from above, which you ignore at the peril of losing official approval. This is the Windows, NeXT and Apple model. The other way is the decentralized market model, where your vision of the GUI competes with other people's visions. This is the X11R6 way.
You cannot tell people how they must write X11 applications. If you try to impose one toolkit or another on them, they will reject both you and the toolkit. This is how Motif died. You don't control the platform, so you can't dictate the terms of its use. There's no way around this.
Is it confusing for the user to see different widget appearances and different GUI behaviors? Maybe. But it's not much more confusing that the same users being confronted with the myriad other choices the marketplace presents to them. GTK+ versus Qt is not much different than Ford versus Chrysler or Krupps versus Braun. Eventually the GUI policies will approach each other. If you take a look, they are doing so already.
The copyleft is meerely a tool to fight fire with fire
That argument would make sense, but for one thing. Information is different from all other forms of economic goods. It can be infinitely copied and reproduced with zero impact on the original. No matter what one does with their copy of the software, it will not affect any other copies. The "fire" you are fighting is a boojum.
Merely distributing your your own works under unrestricted terms is sufficient. There's no need for copyleft to "protect" the code, because there's nothing in the code that can be damaged through misuse. Proprietary code must be "protected", because an artificial value has been placed on it. But that is not the case for free software. Don't fall into the same intellectual trap that the proprietary developers have.
Fighting fire with fire analogy does not work because the fire cannot damage you. A better analogy is "fighting the lack of choices by offering choices." Any form of free software, copyleft or otherwise, fulfills this goal.
but nobody other that the ATF would listen til it was too late
The ATF is not an all-purpose generic law enforcement agency. Next you'll be saying that's it's okay for the Department of Agriculture to arrest people for writing bad checks.
I don't own the copyright to Windows, but I damned well own my copy of it and the CD it came on. The software industry pretends otherwise, but the reality says differently. The only reason why they've gotten away with it is because the courts have ignored the situation.
When you walk into a store, pick up a box that says "Windows XP", see a price tag that says "$199", walk to the sales counter, hand over $199 plus tax, and receive a receipt that says "Windows XP",...you have purchased a copy of Windows XP. There's no other way to interpret the transaction. Subsequent dialogs presented to you during installation are irrelevent. No where on the box, during the sales transaction, or on the sales receipt does it say "license to use Windows XP".
It's like buying a fork. You may not have the copyright to the design on the fork, but you still the owner of the fork. You can use it, throw it away, give it to a friend, or sell it at a garage sale.
I have stopped buying commercial software for this reason. They are engaging in illegal bait and switch. I've got no problems if they tell me up front at the time of purchase that I'm not really buying the software. At least that's honesty. But I'm sick and tired of the outside of the box saying "product" and the inside saying "fooled you, it's really a license".
not being able to open that complex word attachment that your coworker mailed you
The annoyance is your coworker, not your OS.
not being able to browse every site online
The annoyance is the website, not your OS.
Re:Stuck with Windows?
on
PC Annoyances
·
· Score: 0
Some of us work for "companies" with "IT Departments" who have "rules" and tell us what to "do" to get "money".
Your company tells you what OS to use at *home*? Wow!
But not surprising. My company just changed their telecommuting policy so that you MUST use a company owned PC running approved software at home. It solved the telecommuting problem. No one does it anymore.
But so far they haven't had the guts to tell me that I have to always use Windows at home. It's only a matter of time.
I have never seen an application for which Alt+F4 doesn't work, and if there are any, it would be a violation of the Microsoft UI guidelines
Aah! So this isn't actually the GUI, but a document. So why not write a document for X and be done with it? After all, if a mere document ensures complete consistancy in Windows, surely a document would do the same in X...
Gee, I was going to say that! Everytime people start bitching about Linux audio, I start wondering what the problem is. Linux certainly supports more sound cards than FreeBSD, but fat lot of good that does if it doesn't work
I almost get the sense that Linux kernel development is along the lines of "we got hardware X up and running, stop all work on hardware X and move on to something else."
Slashdot Mirror
last time my office of 300+ people had some worm running around, my mac was NOT infected
Last time my office of 2000+ people had some worm running around, none of the Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris or Mac boxes were affected.
Actually to be fair, you don't run as the administrator account in XP by default.
Not in my experience. When I create only one user, that user is the administrator, and has full administrative rights. Not good.
The Linux Development Platform might be better titled "The GNU Development Platform"
Even better, call it "The GNU Development Environment". The installation of the GNU development tools won't change Solaris to GNU. The platform is still Solaris.
It's worse than that. The standard defense from SYN attacks is to apply/enable the vendor fix. SCO is a vendor! That they have fallen prey to a SYN attack speaks volumes about the company.
But try telling the press that. They believe everything Darl says without question. One single person do this. In fact, the probability of it being one single person is enormous. Yet it's reported as an attack by the Linux *community*.
How come the press never similarly reports that "the Windows community unleashed a virus today..."?
You paraphrased an old Mark Twain quote. Funny how long it's been this way.
most people who make business decisions to use commercial software believe that the vendor is liable
Actually they don't. Your average Joe Blow might believe this, but business people don't.
The main reasons are support, training, etc. Sun support is expensive, but very good. Redhat doesn't have any local support reps. Microsoft doesn't offer realistic support options, but trained and experienced Windows IT contractors are everywhere. Rational came out and gave my company training for Rose. Is anything similar available for Umbrello? Teachers for MSOffice are a dime a dozen, but OpenOffice teachers are nearly impossible to find.
If I were setting up a company, I would like to go with Linux and FreeBSD. But the lack of ubiquitous support is a factor I would have to enter into my equations. Starting out small, I won't have the budget for a full time IT department. But when I grow big enough to afford one, I won't want to throw out the existing infrastructure. A local reliable source for Linux/BSD support will make all the difference in the world.
The main thing is that a company can go to someone for help. This is changing, but it's still easier to get reliable support for Solaris, AIX and Windows than it is for Linux or BSD.
The average end-user is very concerned with 2D quality. Reading email, browsing the web, creating presentations, writing documentation, etc, etc. All are 2D applications.
The only people who care about 3D are gamers. They're a minority. A small minority. Much more significant are the non-gamer home users and businesses.
I always thought it was the Board of Directors that authorized stock issuance, not the CEO. The former are direct representatives of the shareholders, while the latter is a mere employee.
it's time for the Public International Internet to be managed more openly and cooperatively.
And just what makes you think that the UN will do this? Did you read the article? Microsoft would manage a more open internet than the UN would.
Both of those claims will be reported with a straight face by the media. Which is why you should never, never trust anything you read in the paper, see on television, hear on radio, or find online. When you realize that everything told to you is a lie, the world suddenly starts making sense.
There is an open source swf plugin, but it does not work with "standard" realworld swf. The alternative is to use the proprietary plugin from Macromedia, EXCEPT that it is only available for certain platforms. Since I run FreeBSD this is a problem. Using a Linux plugin in a FreeBSD executable doesn't (currently) work. Running a Linux Konqueror so I can use a proprietary Macromedia plugin for Linux is one possibility, but that means my whole KDE must be a Linux binary KDE. That's a pain in the butt.
In the near future there will be a solution of some kind (I keep hearing), but for the present, my solution is to simply avoid all Flash requiring sites.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining. I can easily (and comfortably) live without Flash. But claiming that swf is an open file standard, when there is no open implementation, is erroneous.
the newspaper article has swallowed a little too much FUD today
Remember that when election season rolls around. Newspapers do not report the facts, they report opinions, conjectures and regurgitated press releases.
NO change to the deal with the lawyers. Just don't push the red button (and give away a fifth of the store) without asking the owners first.
Which brings up an interesting question in my mind. If the deal with the lawyers was made by the executives and not the board, is this deal even legal? Was the right to give away a "fifth of the store" even theirs?
If I were an investor in SCO, and this prior deal wasn't disclosed to me, or made subsequent to my investment without my knowledge, I would immediately be on the phone to the SEC.
The Flash file format is open and documented.
In theory the Flash file format is open, in practice it is not. Please direct me to an open source Flash browser plugin that works. I don't know that much about Flash, or the differences between flash, shockwave, and other siblings, but I do know that I *need* the closed Macromedia plugin to view webpages that use Flash.
I agree. I use FreeBSD so I have a different perspective. The FreeBSD kernel does support burning to atapi devices directly. The base system includes burncd, which is a very good CD/DVD burning tool for IDE. Unfortunately, no third party tool supports it, since all the third party tools are written for SCSI-only cdrecord.
Linus is right when he said "ide-scsi has always been broken. You should not use it, and indeed there was never any good reason for it existing AT ALL." FreeBSD has recently gotten a similarly redundant SCSI-to-ATA layer. I'm glad it's there, because I can now use all the myriad cdrecord-based tools. But it should never have been necessary in the first place.
The problem is not with the Linux kernel, it's with cdrecord. It's use of SCSI as a universal drive API is silly. It's implicit belief that ATA CDRW drives don't exist places a large burden on the user.
If no one is going to accept my document as authoritative, then what makes people think that new in-code policies would be accepted in their place?
There are two models that shape GUIs. One is the centralized authority model, where the law is handed down from above, which you ignore at the peril of losing official approval. This is the Windows, NeXT and Apple model. The other way is the decentralized market model, where your vision of the GUI competes with other people's visions. This is the X11R6 way.
You cannot tell people how they must write X11 applications. If you try to impose one toolkit or another on them, they will reject both you and the toolkit. This is how Motif died. You don't control the platform, so you can't dictate the terms of its use. There's no way around this.
Is it confusing for the user to see different widget appearances and different GUI behaviors? Maybe. But it's not much more confusing that the same users being confronted with the myriad other choices the marketplace presents to them. GTK+ versus Qt is not much different than Ford versus Chrysler or Krupps versus Braun. Eventually the GUI policies will approach each other. If you take a look, they are doing so already.
The copyleft is meerely a tool to fight fire with fire
That argument would make sense, but for one thing. Information is different from all other forms of economic goods. It can be infinitely copied and reproduced with zero impact on the original. No matter what one does with their copy of the software, it will not affect any other copies. The "fire" you are fighting is a boojum.
Merely distributing your your own works under unrestricted terms is sufficient. There's no need for copyleft to "protect" the code, because there's nothing in the code that can be damaged through misuse. Proprietary code must be "protected", because an artificial value has been placed on it. But that is not the case for free software. Don't fall into the same intellectual trap that the proprietary developers have.
Fighting fire with fire analogy does not work because the fire cannot damage you. A better analogy is "fighting the lack of choices by offering choices." Any form of free software, copyleft or otherwise, fulfills this goal.
but nobody other that the ATF would listen til it was too late
The ATF is not an all-purpose generic law enforcement agency. Next you'll be saying that's it's okay for the Department of Agriculture to arrest people for writing bad checks.
You don't own Win98. It's licensed to you by M$.
...you have purchased a copy of Windows XP. There's no other way to interpret the transaction. Subsequent dialogs presented to you during installation are irrelevent. No where on the box, during the sales transaction, or on the sales receipt does it say "license to use Windows XP".
Let me put this as politely as I can: bullshit!
I don't own the copyright to Windows, but I damned well own my copy of it and the CD it came on. The software industry pretends otherwise, but the reality says differently. The only reason why they've gotten away with it is because the courts have ignored the situation.
When you walk into a store, pick up a box that says "Windows XP", see a price tag that says "$199", walk to the sales counter, hand over $199 plus tax, and receive a receipt that says "Windows XP",
It's like buying a fork. You may not have the copyright to the design on the fork, but you still the owner of the fork. You can use it, throw it away, give it to a friend, or sell it at a garage sale.
I have stopped buying commercial software for this reason. They are engaging in illegal bait and switch. I've got no problems if they tell me up front at the time of purchase that I'm not really buying the software. At least that's honesty. But I'm sick and tired of the outside of the box saying "product" and the inside saying "fooled you, it's really a license".
not being able to open that complex word attachment that your coworker mailed you
The annoyance is your coworker, not your OS.
not being able to browse every site online
The annoyance is the website, not your OS.
Some of us work for "companies" with "IT Departments" who have "rules" and tell us what to "do" to get "money".
Your company tells you what OS to use at *home*? Wow!
But not surprising. My company just changed their telecommuting policy so that you MUST use a company owned PC running approved software at home. It solved the telecommuting problem. No one does it anymore.
But so far they haven't had the guts to tell me that I have to always use Windows at home. It's only a matter of time.
I have never seen an application for which Alt+F4 doesn't work, and if there are any, it would be a violation of the Microsoft UI guidelines
Aah! So this isn't actually the GUI, but a document. So why not write a document for X and be done with it? After all, if a mere document ensures complete consistancy in Windows, surely a document would do the same in X...
Perhaps you should look at FreeBSD?
Gee, I was going to say that! Everytime people start bitching about Linux audio, I start wondering what the problem is. Linux certainly supports more sound cards than FreeBSD, but fat lot of good that does if it doesn't work
I almost get the sense that Linux kernel development is along the lines of "we got hardware X up and running, stop all work on hardware X and move on to something else."
Maybe you should go write your own X toolkit...