They are currently working with a scheme that adds an extra version number. So small changes go into that last number (eg. 2.6.11.7 -> 2.6.11.8) and the large changes then become something to put in what used to be smaller changes. The extra version number allows them to put bugfixes out faster than in the old model I guess, so you don't have all those patchsets around to keep track off for sysadmins, while the other one now adds features. I seem to recall that was the second goal, to reduce feature latency in the kernel. (eg. they no longer have to backport stuff from the development trees because the feature has been in there and stable for years, but the rest of the kernel isn't ready to be switched over yet)
People in debian are actually working on making.debs which are installable as rpm and deb. So you get something of both work. Right now it's hackish and nobody is really interested in doing the work. This is mostly because the LSB lacks a real community around it. And.deb is still the technically better solution as far as I know, though RPM has come a long way.
LSB is also not the only standard which affects how and where things get done. The File Hierarchy Standard is a common one which does get followed up really good in debian. The only problem being that some upstream authors don't really care about it, and write their packages so it's really hard to change them back to use the common scheme the FHS proposes. But it helps that now on most linux distro's you can be sure that allmost all config files will be in/etc, and that/media will probably contain your mountpoints etc...
There is no patent-encumbered technology in Linux since that would contradict the purpose of the GPL license. Are you talking about Linux distros? I am aware of patented technology in these. NVidia and ATI drivers are good examples of binary installs. I have yet to see these incorporated into any distro though. Do you know of one?
I would bet you that there is plenty of patent-encumbered technology in "linux". (I suspect you are talking about the kernel?) Only a couple of months ago there was an article which claimed there were quite a number of techniques used throughout the linux kernel that were patented. (I think they had a list of about 90 patent violations, not entirely sure) Lots of other GPL'ed software incorporates patent-encumbered techniques (for instance, about every video encoding library)
As for nvidia and ATI I was under the impression Suse (now part of Novell) distributed them on their installer cds. Not quite sure though. Most distros only seem to provide installers. But in general, any propietary app can be redistributed with a distro, as long as it license doesn't prohibit redistribution, and some other things. I believe the reason Debian doesn't carry the java binaries from Sun is because the license requires you to indemnify for instance. But the propietary nature of the software is not the reason not to redistribute it.
I'm loosing my moderation in this thread because of this. But I dug up a bugreport from ubuntu which discusses it. Apparently Mark Shuttleworth himself decided on keeping this "feature" in because he disagreed with the way gnome does it right now. Personally, I think that if they think spatial is so bad, they should have made the non-spatial the default, and spatial an option.
On a personal note, I actually like spatial. It takes some getting used to and it is unlikely that you will ever use it without using shortcuts (eg. alt+l for location, and the alt+arrows combinations). I think that is what most people's problems is, wanting to do everything with the mouse. That and desktop clutter off course (which is a valid point, but IMHO the reason we have multiple desktops)
I suggest next time you install something with apt-get, you actually take the time to understand the "errors". Something might not be installable, but that doesn't mean something is broken (except for that package). In this case, kdebase wasn't installable for a long while because it wasn't current with the dependencies in sarge. (it is a dummy package anyway, which you would have known, had you bothered to read the manual)
Oh and ubuntu is derived from unstable, not testing.
Okay these come without the "MS Tax", but they replace it with the "Apple Tax". Some people don't wanna run Mac OS X on those things either. And I'm pretty sure you can't buy them laptops without the OS included.
There is no obligation of enforcement that I know of. I think the OP, though, was talking about the obligation of implementation. eg. You can't take out a patent on something and then do nothing with it for 20 years except sue other people. You are supposed to try to make and distribute your own implementation of, or license at reasonable fees to others, the material covered by the patent.
This is all true for Europe, I do not know about the rest of the world. Also, there is a period you have before you must do something with it. I believe it's three years or something. The only drawback to this system is that the only way such a patent can be invalidated is by a competitor suing you to have the patent destroyed. (so you can still threaten people with a supposedly invalid patent)
And in any case, Microsoft does actively license out their patents, so it's not really applicable to them here.
I think most projects have both. I'm currently using hibernate which has both an API reference and a 'reference guide', which I find a bit lacking here and there (I wouldn't have called it a reference guide) but it does the job.
I think the best solution would be to make the ISPs cut off those customers from the internet that are a zombie at the time they become aware of it, asking that customer to immediately take action against the malware on his PC. Without requiring them to actively monitor their users for this activity, since that would increase the burden a bit too much.
Through this means, ISPs would not harm their other customers or their own intrests, since they can tell their customers that any ISP would do the same. And the number of zombies could steadily decline, where the users who previously had such a zombie box would have an instant lesson in network security and patching their box. The only problem remaining is how such a user would be able to repair his box.
Just indent with tabs and set tabs to 2 charwidth in your favourite editor. Nobody'll ever notice how you indent. However, authors that indent backwards better hope nobody ever looks at their code.
Even further off-topic, debian carries 'java-package' which basically takes a sun.bin file and wraps it in a debian package. I suppose most distributions that dont distribute java (and there are other reasons for this then the freeness, notably indemnification) have a similar solution.
Well the zealot thing kinda implies that you will try to win people over or something. I was just noting a reason to run linux on mac, not trying to convince anyone to actually do it. Though I very much prefer running free software for all the obvious reasons (especially control), that doesn't mean I go as far as thinking running propietary software is actually immoral or something. So in that regard I'm definitely not a zealot.
It's usually a bit more nuanced than zealot/normal person. Most people are somewhere in between I guess.
Because Mac OS X is not free software but I guess mac fanboys don't like arguing about that one.
Anyway, mac hardware does own most pc's when it comes to performance. If I had the money for a dual G5 (or if somebody bought me one) I would certainly prefer it over any x86 box.
Not to mention just about every EA sports title available. There is a reason why the gaming industry is one of the fastest growing markets right now, it's because it has universal appeal.
"Most people (see: Users, Windows), don't want to give up usability for security."
It is a tradeoff. If you are not willing to give up usability for security, you don't deserve security. And yes I have worked in places where they used windows and yes I have seen how they feel about security (installing security updates may break things, so we don't do that). Seriously, the problem is sometimes not with the developers, not even Microsoft but with the idiot users who can't be bothered to secure their own systems. When you leave the house at night or go to sleep you do lock your door don't you? You don't just leave it open because "it's too hard to lock them all".
No DRM scheme is uncrackable. It is effectively a "security through obscurity" scheme. Once you figure out how they do it (what keys they use, what things they check, etc.) you can easily crack it. And it's allways possible to find out since it is all happening right there on your computer. Well, unless you buy into that "Palladium" thing, but that's still a ways off...
You'd think that these people talking about creating usable templates and proper layouting would at least create a site that doesn't require me to maximize my browser window (at least in the horizontal direction. Seriously, not everybody is viewing everything at 1600px width.
Yes but this does not pertain to the patent question. If they were really serious about giving FOSS projects the chance to use their patents in their code, they would give all programs licensed under an OSI-approved license a license to those patents. Notice how I'm talking about two different thinks here, copyright licenses and patent licenses. These are not one and the same like the press release seems to be stating.
Effectively, what we want is not the solaris code. We want to implement something that vaguely resembles something in solaris without getting our asses sued off. I imagine a lot of people in this thread so far are confused between the two, but they are indead very different situations.
Basically it's a very different thing. This is IP law. The publishers can extend copying rights to everyone they please, including the public libraries. That they have to crack the protection is a trivial fact as long as it is with the permission of the owner. You cannot make this analogy since it are two very different cases. There's just no comparison. The one is property law, the other is not.
And I suppose in your perfect universe everybody has the ability to provide for this by themselves and don't need any help whatsoever. I suppose that over there there aren't people with disabilities, there is no possibility for widespread unemployment and disease doesn't cripple your ability to work and acquire resources. Guess what, most people don't live there.
The basic rights are otherwise known as the human rights. You know, right to shelter, food, religion, etc. That's where it stops, and there is not one government in the world that can satisfy them all for all of its inhabitants, so I think we're quite safe from the "inflating" of requested rights.
I don't know about grandparent, but we receive it as part of our cable package. So yeah we basically do pay for it. We get the original broadcast too so if there are adverts, it's the original ones. There are not any added adverts or anything like that.
Slashdot Mirror
They are currently working with a scheme that adds an extra version number. So small changes go into that last number (eg. 2.6.11.7 -> 2.6.11.8) and the large changes then become something to put in what used to be smaller changes. The extra version number allows them to put bugfixes out faster than in the old model I guess, so you don't have all those patchsets around to keep track off for sysadmins, while the other one now adds features. I seem to recall that was the second goal, to reduce feature latency in the kernel. (eg. they no longer have to backport stuff from the development trees because the feature has been in there and stable for years, but the rest of the kernel isn't ready to be switched over yet)
People in debian are actually working on making .debs which are installable as rpm and deb. So you get something of both work. Right now it's hackish and nobody is really interested in doing the work. This is mostly because the LSB lacks a real community around it. And .deb is still the technically better solution as far as I know, though RPM has come a long way.
/etc, and that /media will probably contain your mountpoints etc...
LSB is also not the only standard which affects how and where things get done. The File Hierarchy Standard is a common one which does get followed up really good in debian. The only problem being that some upstream authors don't really care about it, and write their packages so it's really hard to change them back to use the common scheme the FHS proposes. But it helps that now on most linux distro's you can be sure that allmost all config files will be in
There is no patent-encumbered technology in Linux since that would contradict the purpose of the GPL license. Are you talking about Linux distros? I am aware of patented technology in these. NVidia and ATI drivers are good examples of binary installs. I have yet to see these incorporated into any distro though. Do you know of one?
I would bet you that there is plenty of patent-encumbered technology in "linux". (I suspect you are talking about the kernel?) Only a couple of months ago there was an article which claimed there were quite a number of techniques used throughout the linux kernel that were patented. (I think they had a list of about 90 patent violations, not entirely sure) Lots of other GPL'ed software incorporates patent-encumbered techniques (for instance, about every video encoding library)
As for nvidia and ATI I was under the impression Suse (now part of Novell) distributed them on their installer cds. Not quite sure though. Most distros only seem to provide installers. But in general, any propietary app can be redistributed with a distro, as long as it license doesn't prohibit redistribution, and some other things. I believe the reason Debian doesn't carry the java binaries from Sun is because the license requires you to indemnify for instance. But the propietary nature of the software is not the reason not to redistribute it.
I'm loosing my moderation in this thread because of this. But I dug up a bugreport from ubuntu which discusses it. Apparently Mark Shuttleworth himself decided on keeping this "feature" in because he disagreed with the way gnome does it right now. Personally, I think that if they think spatial is so bad, they should have made the non-spatial the default, and spatial an option.
On a personal note, I actually like spatial. It takes some getting used to and it is unlikely that you will ever use it without using shortcuts (eg. alt+l for location, and the alt+arrows combinations). I think that is what most people's problems is, wanting to do everything with the mouse. That and desktop clutter off course (which is a valid point, but IMHO the reason we have multiple desktops)
I suggest next time you install something with apt-get, you actually take the time to understand the "errors". Something might not be installable, but that doesn't mean something is broken (except for that package). In this case, kdebase wasn't installable for a long while because it wasn't current with the dependencies in sarge. (it is a dummy package anyway, which you would have known, had you bothered to read the manual)
Oh and ubuntu is derived from unstable, not testing.
Okay these come without the "MS Tax", but they replace it with the "Apple Tax". Some people don't wanna run Mac OS X on those things either. And I'm pretty sure you can't buy them laptops without the OS included.
There is no obligation of enforcement that I know of. I think the OP, though, was talking about the obligation of implementation. eg. You can't take out a patent on something and then do nothing with it for 20 years except sue other people. You are supposed to try to make and distribute your own implementation of, or license at reasonable fees to others, the material covered by the patent.
This is all true for Europe, I do not know about the rest of the world. Also, there is a period you have before you must do something with it. I believe it's three years or something. The only drawback to this system is that the only way such a patent can be invalidated is by a competitor suing you to have the patent destroyed. (so you can still threaten people with a supposedly invalid patent)
And in any case, Microsoft does actively license out their patents, so it's not really applicable to them here.
I think most projects have both. I'm currently using hibernate which has both an API reference and a 'reference guide', which I find a bit lacking here and there (I wouldn't have called it a reference guide) but it does the job.
I think the best solution would be to make the ISPs cut off those customers from the internet that are a zombie at the time they become aware of it, asking that customer to immediately take action against the malware on his PC. Without requiring them to actively monitor their users for this activity, since that would increase the burden a bit too much.
Through this means, ISPs would not harm their other customers or their own intrests, since they can tell their customers that any ISP would do the same. And the number of zombies could steadily decline, where the users who previously had such a zombie box would have an instant lesson in network security and patching their box. The only problem remaining is how such a user would be able to repair his box.
Just indent with tabs and set tabs to 2 charwidth in your favourite editor. Nobody'll ever notice how you indent. However, authors that indent backwards better hope nobody ever looks at their code.
Even further off-topic, debian carries 'java-package' which basically takes a sun .bin file and wraps it in a debian package. I suppose most distributions that dont distribute java (and there are other reasons for this then the freeness, notably indemnification) have a similar solution.
Well the zealot thing kinda implies that you will try to win people over or something. I was just noting a reason to run linux on mac, not trying to convince anyone to actually do it. Though I very much prefer running free software for all the obvious reasons (especially control), that doesn't mean I go as far as thinking running propietary software is actually immoral or something. So in that regard I'm definitely not a zealot.
It's usually a bit more nuanced than zealot/normal person. Most people are somewhere in between I guess.
Because Mac OS X is not free software but I guess mac fanboys don't like arguing about that one.
Anyway, mac hardware does own most pc's when it comes to performance. If I had the money for a dual G5 (or if somebody bought me one) I would certainly prefer it over any x86 box.
Not to mention just about every EA sports title available. There is a reason why the gaming industry is one of the fastest growing markets right now, it's because it has universal appeal.
"Most people (see: Users, Windows), don't want to give up usability for security."
It is a tradeoff. If you are not willing to give up usability for security, you don't deserve security. And yes I have worked in places where they used windows and yes I have seen how they feel about security (installing security updates may break things, so we don't do that). Seriously, the problem is sometimes not with the developers, not even Microsoft but with the idiot users who can't be bothered to secure their own systems. When you leave the house at night or go to sleep you do lock your door don't you? You don't just leave it open because "it's too hard to lock them all".
No DRM scheme is uncrackable. It is effectively a "security through obscurity" scheme. Once you figure out how they do it (what keys they use, what things they check, etc.) you can easily crack it. And it's allways possible to find out since it is all happening right there on your computer. Well, unless you buy into that "Palladium" thing, but that's still a ways off...
I think you're right but if you logged out the last time you can no longer login now. So in that respect you're still fucked.
layout,n
But it is. :-)
You'd think that these people talking about creating usable templates and proper layouting would at least create a site that doesn't require me to maximize my browser window (at least in the horizontal direction. Seriously, not everybody is viewing everything at 1600px width.
Yes but this does not pertain to the patent question. If they were really serious about giving FOSS projects the chance to use their patents in their code, they would give all programs licensed under an OSI-approved license a license to those patents. Notice how I'm talking about two different thinks here, copyright licenses and patent licenses. These are not one and the same like the press release seems to be stating.
Effectively, what we want is not the solaris code. We want to implement something that vaguely resembles something in solaris without getting our asses sued off. I imagine a lot of people in this thread so far are confused between the two, but they are indead very different situations.
a month? I switch between qwerty and azerty all the time, what makes dvorak so different that you have to spend an entire month learning it?
Basically it's a very different thing. This is IP law. The publishers can extend copying rights to everyone they please, including the public libraries. That they have to crack the protection is a trivial fact as long as it is with the permission of the owner. You cannot make this analogy since it are two very different cases. There's just no comparison. The one is property law, the other is not.
And I suppose in your perfect universe everybody has the ability to provide for this by themselves and don't need any help whatsoever. I suppose that over there there aren't people with disabilities, there is no possibility for widespread unemployment and disease doesn't cripple your ability to work and acquire resources. Guess what, most people don't live there.
The basic rights are otherwise known as the human rights. You know, right to shelter, food, religion, etc. That's where it stops, and there is not one government in the world that can satisfy them all for all of its inhabitants, so I think we're quite safe from the "inflating" of requested rights.
I don't know about grandparent, but we receive it as part of our cable package. So yeah we basically do pay for it. We get the original broadcast too so if there are adverts, it's the original ones. There are not any added adverts or anything like that.