And I will tell you exactly why I think so. Microsoft releases a retail version of Windows. Included in this retail version of Windows is Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer.
Number 1. Both of these are FREE PROGRAMS. You can download any version of IE and WMP for free directly from Microsoft (and yes, I am aware they don't retain older versions for downloading). You won't see Internet Explorer or WMP sitting on Best Buy's shelves.
Those programs are "free"? I mean, can I legally install in my Linux box and run under Wine?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIR and according to the EULA, starting from IE5 or IE6 you are allowed to install IE only into MS Windows.
Number 3. Those who don't know any better obviously don't care that they come included...and if they do care, they will do the research required to download and use something else.
Well, most do not care, no matter how badly trapped they are (or will be) in MS technology.
The problem is that there are people who care, and that people is being artifficially being prevented to use (or use properly) the technology they prefer because MS do not follow standards as they should.
Number 4. LINUX AND OSX!!!! It's not like Windows is the only game in town...it is perhaps for gaming, but that is not Microsoft's fault...you wouldn't try to sue Sony because your PS3 can't play an Amiga game, would you?
All I'm saying is that this is complete and utter stupidity. People that use windows don't care that they are using windows. If they care enough that they are using windows, they will look at what the other alternatives are. "But...but...but...I HAVE to use office, it's what my job uses!" That's your company's fault for using Microsoft products...no one forced them to. Just like no one has forced you to use Microsoft products.
Are you a hermit?
I ask this because, if you're not, it means you must be able to exchange information with the rest of society.
The moment you graduate and start looking for a job (you need such thing in order to be able to afford things like.. food, for example) you will be asked (or expected), most of the time, to send your CV in.doc format. -- What choice are you talking about?
About that regrettable Amiga (a great machine in its time BTW) comment of yours, I can say this: Today is not the 1980s and interoperability is not a luxury, it's an expected thing from technology.
* Programming is a day job * Don't really want to "talk shop", even when encouraged to * Learns new technologies in company-sponsored courses
There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of company-sponsored courses. Taking advantage of classroom opportunities is just good time management (it can be easier to learn more, faster, in a well-taught course than in self-study).
From what I've seen, it's typical that people who takes courses from time to time does so merely to inflate their CV.
The end result being people who barely know even what was the course about.
I think that argument is about such cases.
* Started programming at university
That's a stupid criterion. Why someone starting programming is a lot more important than when
I guess that's because in the most cases a person started to program at a university, the "why" tends to be "dunno".
My trainees, for example: On the ones who started IT-virgin at the univ, I honestly don't remember any specially bright. The good ones always had such previous experience.
I think it is valid as a consequence of a personal desire to learn, showing the person is indeed interested on the subject and capable of learning by him/herself.
Frankly, I work 50+ hours a week and the last thing I want or feel a need to do is look at a f*cking computer when I go home. And this comes from someone who got a Master's in CS while working full time; led implementation of new technologies and languages within the group.
It sure as _hell_ doesn't mean I don't have passion for what I do.
That's not passion, you merely like what you do. You may even like it a lot, but certainly no passion here.
Now if you wanted to state that dealing with IT even during your freetime is not positive/healthy/whatever, that's a different matter.
Perhaps, but you will never meet one (feminist BB that is), and one is extremely more likely to run across a man who is a rapist, murder, a liar, 'insecure about their own masculinity' or living in their parents basement.
Oh, please.. quit this crap.
Feminists always come with arguments on how women are the default victims and stuff, and assume that women have no issues whatsoever.
When feminists speak, there's always a logical explanation for a woman's actions. But a man's actions always fit in the rape-murder-domination-masculine_insecurity category.
And this 'masculinity insecurity' argument is so tired is not even an argument. Nowadays it's simply a way women, ones with issues, found to offend men.
The latest Mac Pro supports 16 GB of RAM and the latest XServe (a better option IMHO) supports 32GB of RAM.
The guy asked about motherboards and OSes (citing Vista and Linux).
XServe-whatever supports 16 GB of RAM -- so what? Dozens of Dell, HP, IBM xyz beige-servers-inc etc machines do aswell but that's not what was asked about.
Yup, the projection area is saturated.
I don't know about the ogg version, but you may adjust the video and get better results with avi version.
I was only able to see there was some text there, unfortunately it was unreadable.
Or the Great Salvation, corn ethanol which is 1/7th as cost and energy efficient as Brazilian sugar beets.
Firstly the organic energy source commonly used in Brazil is not beet-derived, it's from sugarcane.
Second, corn ethanol is not very efficient if compared to sugarcane.
I think that corn is overrated as an alternative for energy production, it probably suits best for the corn farm owners' lobby in the US.
It is sometimes difficult for Americans to comprehend that very few countries understand the concept of the free speech and a free press.
How patronizing...
It is sometimes difficult for Americans to comprehend that very few countries think that farts from the U.S. smells better than the rest either.
The one who posted this article made a careful choice of listing countries like Russia, China and Iran. Nice manipulative way to put this situation.
Where's "Brazil" in that list? (the article mentioned that country)
The guy ommited that - how clever! Let's add North Korea too!
Now, if China gov't want to use their internet structure to supress dissidents (as they currently do), quite frankly, that's between them and their people. Same for Iran, Russia etc.
Well, if the US gov't want to screw _their_ own citizens, that's ok for me. I couldn't care less.
And let's stop this BS of "ah, the US invented the internet".
Yeah, thanks. But did you pay for the structure deployed in my country?
Oh, you didn't? Then I guess we can do whatever we want, even screw that completely.
Most likely, it is using OSS as its base (smart), so is now paying politicians to damage Cisco (stupid).
It's more probable that Dalai Lama is involved than OSS policy having anything to do with that.
I'm a brazilian public servant and, believe me, all that OSS talk over the years is just that -- talk.
There are OSS projects going on, yes, but those have nothing to do with federal incentives of any kind, because there are none.
Cisco closes Brazilian plant, hundreds of jobs lost.
Hundreds? I find it hard to believe.
They basically import and resell those equipments, I don't think that even the adhesive tape was glued to the box by a brazilian.
The best students in the world go to the best Universities in the world. The Universities in the United States consistently dominate the top universities in the world.
Considering that graduation in the USA is a big business, any claim that universities from that country are the best should be treated with suspicion.
Now what is this site you're linking to? I've never heard about that.
That thing looks like made by someone who just learned to create html pages.
The about page is hosted in what looks like being from a Chinese university.
If you want such argument to be taken seriously, try at least to provide some reliable sources.
Yep, and Samba (as an example) wasn't coded by one individual. The Samba page lists 47 people, though I'm not sure that counts all contributions from all coders in the history of the project.
Right, and who's the copyright holder?
Think of a closed software developed by persons A, B and C hired by company XYZ. The XYZ company holds the copyright and it's the one who have a say on that software.
A contributor to a FOSS project isn't that much different license-wise. Unless he contributes the code he claims copyright.
Or, a similar situation, when you merge a FOSS project (assuming the respective licenses are compatible) with different copyright holders, in that case the resulting software have both as copyright holders.
Later versions or forks, are derivative work under copyright law, even if they are developed by largely the same team. The license stipulates that certain rights are granted, and may not be removed. Where does the license stipulate an exception that the original author can suddenly revoke rights for derivative works?
But who's saying the author is closing an already GPL'ed version? He may claim he has the original free-of-any-licenses version, and that the GPL version is just a derivative of that original version.
He, then, releases the closed version claiming it was derived from that original version. No GPL involved at all.
You hold the copyright of XYZ software, no license applied at his point.
You release a derivative (or claim it is a derivative) of that work, but release under the GPL license.
What is changed to the root version of yours? Nothing.
Now, you take the root version (not the GPL-licensed one) and release as a closed software. -- You're the copyright holder and that version had no license attached to it, the GPL is simply not present here.
I can't take GPL code and then relicense it under a closed-source license. The entire purpose of the GPL, is that once you write code under the GPL, every right is forever protected, and can never be taken away.
We're not talking about the same thing.
GPL code is under the copyright of someone, right?
A work simply being copyrighted means that nobody - except the copyright holder - has distribution rights.
Then the copyright holder decides to make it free open source software.
He releases his copyrighted work under the GPL, thus giving rights to the one who receives that. Now you (as an user) have some rights but, still, do not hold the copyright of that work.
The copyright holder cannot revoke that specific release under the GPL, you cannot lose those rights previously granted (unless you violated the license, but that's another history).
Still, the copyright holder remains being so. As such he may release a different version under a different license, or even release it as closed source. He's not closing what was previously opened, he just took his (let's say) "internal version" and decided not to license it under the GPL as the other version.
"You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."
As I said, it applies only to code released under the GPL.
Unless the copyright holder states that his root development tree is under the GPL aswell.
With BSD licensed software, you can relicense it largely, since BSD offers very little in the way of protection.
Are you suggesting you can replace BSD by GPL?
I used to think that way, but the BSD license says nothing about such right. You may distribute under the GPL, but the BSD is still there.
Granted, in practice the result works like a code licensed under the GPL only.
The copyright holder may license each different version as he pleases, he may even make a parallel commercial release.
The one able to violate such license is the one who receives the code already under such license.
All in all, their attitude - or at least of this rep - has been an offensive defensiveness (aka justify their actions by attacking those of others). I'm hoping that along with having the issues settled he now has an understanding of how the GPL works, but I'm sure he'll probably continue along with the mistaken assumption that his company was never in the wrong, and that this whole thing is the fault of those darn free-software people.
I don't believe so.. That kind of stuff is just theatrical, what they really think is another matter.
They probably thought that it would be possible to keep their way just ignoring/scaring the eventual complainer. But after a while it looked like they could have some real trouble, so releasing the code (or just announcing that) seemed the more convenient solution.
I don't think this company believed for a moment they were right or wrong in the moral sense... Looks more like an amoral behavior: You do whatever is needed for profits as long as you don't have too much trouble with the law.
The broadcasters are suggesting what? That the service, including all the RF stuff, will be implemented and maintained by a group of undergraduated nerdy 16yo teenagers who happen to know bash scripting?
Gimme a break...
I do live in Curitiba and I do remember that ~15 years ago you could quite a lot of stars during the night, enough to try to identify the constelations and stuff. Nowadays all you can see during the night is a reddish haze in the sky (due to the city's mercury lamps), the Moon, Venus and perhaps one and another star. When the weather is _very_ dry you may see perhaps more 5-6 stars.
Once, 10+ years ago, I was returning from Paraguay by bus and we were stuck in the middle of nowhere in a freak-long line (customs control). The line was completely stuck, I was feeling bored and went from the bus to take some fresh air. I remember that when I looked at the night sky I could see clearly the Via-Lactea, the sky was filled with stars and the whole thing seemed sort of colorful.. You could even see some meteorites/satellites/whatever passing by.
Man, that was an unique experience for a city guy. I guess it was only then I realised the point of appreciating the night sky people so often wrote about.
I'm ok with Xen paravirtualization.
It has such a low overhead you cannot compare to VMware/kvm full virtualization.
If you really want/need so, you can run full virtualization with Xen too (if you have the proper hardware extensions).
Now if you just want to toy with another OS, frankly, paravirtualization is not the most convenient way to do that. But if you're working with dozens of VMs distributed in a couple of servers, I think that paravirtualization is the way to go.
Good for you if you can choose jobs from a menu. Some people are not so lucky and, still, they have to eat.
If you have no control over what job you can do then what the hell are you doing poking around on Slashdot? You should be in night classes.
What made you believe I'm talking about myself?
I'm happy with my job and able to read Slashdot (mostly) whenever I want, thank you. But I know people who are not in an easy situation.
And what made you think that what you wrote about the US applies to the rest of the world?
I suggest you getting informed on how things works beyond your backyard because, really, in other places the situation is _very_ different from what you're used to.
Depending on where you are you may consider yourself lucky to have a job and afford basic stuff, even if you're a IT guy. You mentioning saving money on Wii and movies sounds quite laughable to people who cannot afford that luxury in the first place.
Your narrow-minded moral lession doesn't bring sympathy either.
Slashdot Mirror
And I will tell you exactly why I think so. Microsoft releases a retail version of Windows. Included in this retail version of Windows is Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer.
.doc format. -- What choice are you talking about?
Number 1. Both of these are FREE PROGRAMS. You can download any version of IE and WMP for free directly from Microsoft (and yes, I am aware they don't retain older versions for downloading). You won't see Internet Explorer or WMP sitting on Best Buy's shelves.
Those programs are "free"? I mean, can I legally install in my Linux box and run under Wine?
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIR and according to the EULA, starting from IE5 or IE6 you are allowed to install IE only into MS Windows.
Number 3. Those who don't know any better obviously don't care that they come included...and if they do care, they will do the research required to download and use something else.
Well, most do not care, no matter how badly trapped they are (or will be) in MS technology.
The problem is that there are people who care, and that people is being artifficially being prevented to use (or use properly) the technology they prefer because MS do not follow standards as they should.
Number 4. LINUX AND OSX!!!! It's not like Windows is the only game in town...it is perhaps for gaming, but that is not Microsoft's fault...you wouldn't try to sue Sony because your PS3 can't play an Amiga game, would you?
All I'm saying is that this is complete and utter stupidity. People that use windows don't care that they are using windows. If they care enough that they are using windows, they will look at what the other alternatives are. "But...but...but...I HAVE to use office, it's what my job uses!" That's your company's fault for using Microsoft products...no one forced them to. Just like no one has forced you to use Microsoft products.
Are you a hermit?
I ask this because, if you're not, it means you must be able to exchange information with the rest of society.
The moment you graduate and start looking for a job (you need such thing in order to be able to afford things like.. food, for example) you will be asked (or expected), most of the time, to send your CV in
About that regrettable Amiga (a great machine in its time BTW) comment of yours, I can say this: Today is not the 1980s and interoperability is not a luxury, it's an expected thing from technology.
* Programming is a day job * Don't really want to "talk shop", even when encouraged to * Learns new technologies in company-sponsored courses
There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of company-sponsored courses. Taking advantage of classroom opportunities is just good time management (it can be easier to learn more, faster, in a well-taught course than in self-study).
From what I've seen, it's typical that people who takes courses from time to time does so merely to inflate their CV.
The end result being people who barely know even what was the course about.
I think that argument is about such cases.
* Started programming at university
That's a stupid criterion. Why someone starting programming is a lot more important than when
I guess that's because in the most cases a person started to program at a university, the "why" tends to be "dunno".
My trainees, for example: On the ones who started IT-virgin at the univ, I honestly don't remember any specially bright. The good ones always had such previous experience.
I think it is valid as a consequence of a personal desire to learn, showing the person is indeed interested on the subject and capable of learning by him/herself.
Frankly, I work 50+ hours a week and the last thing I want or feel a need to do is look at a f*cking computer when I go home. And this comes from someone who got a Master's in CS while working full time; led implementation of new technologies and languages within the group.
It sure as _hell_ doesn't mean I don't have passion for what I do.
That's not passion, you merely like what you do. You may even like it a lot, but certainly no passion here.
Now if you wanted to state that dealing with IT even during your freetime is not positive/healthy/whatever, that's a different matter.
Perhaps, but you will never meet one (feminist BB that is), and one is extremely more likely to run across a man who is a rapist, murder, a liar, 'insecure about their own masculinity' or living in their parents basement.
Oh, please.. quit this crap.
Feminists always come with arguments on how women are the default victims and stuff, and assume that women have no issues whatsoever.
When feminists speak, there's always a logical explanation for a woman's actions. But a man's actions always fit in the rape-murder-domination-masculine_insecurity category.
And this 'masculinity insecurity' argument is so tired is not even an argument. Nowadays it's simply a way women, ones with issues, found to offend men.
The latest Mac Pro supports 16 GB of RAM and the latest XServe (a better option IMHO) supports 32GB of RAM.
The guy asked about motherboards and OSes (citing Vista and Linux).
XServe-whatever supports 16 GB of RAM -- so what? Dozens of Dell, HP, IBM xyz beige-servers-inc etc machines do aswell but that's not what was asked about.
Go back sniffing Steve Jobs' ass.
and I *do* strike fear into the hearts of all men,
Who are you? Some kind of dominatrix?
Yup, the projection area is saturated.
I don't know about the ogg version, but you may adjust the video and get better results with avi version.
I was only able to see there was some text there, unfortunately it was unreadable.
Or the Great Salvation, corn ethanol which is 1/7th as cost and energy efficient as Brazilian sugar beets.
Firstly the organic energy source commonly used in Brazil is not beet-derived, it's from sugarcane.
Second, corn ethanol is not very efficient if compared to sugarcane.
I think that corn is overrated as an alternative for energy production, it probably suits best for the corn farm owners' lobby in the US.
It is sometimes difficult for Americans to comprehend that very few countries understand the concept of the free speech and a free press.
How patronizing...
It is sometimes difficult for Americans to comprehend that very few countries think that farts from the U.S. smells better than the rest either.
The one who posted this article made a careful choice of listing countries like Russia, China and Iran. Nice manipulative way to put this situation.
Where's "Brazil" in that list? (the article mentioned that country)
The guy ommited that - how clever! Let's add North Korea too!
Now, if China gov't want to use their internet structure to supress dissidents (as they currently do), quite frankly, that's between them and their people. Same for Iran, Russia etc.
Well, if the US gov't want to screw _their_ own citizens, that's ok for me. I couldn't care less.
And let's stop this BS of "ah, the US invented the internet".
Yeah, thanks. But did you pay for the structure deployed in my country?
Oh, you didn't? Then I guess we can do whatever we want, even screw that completely.
Most likely, it is using OSS as its base (smart), so is now paying politicians to damage Cisco (stupid).
It's more probable that Dalai Lama is involved than OSS policy having anything to do with that.
I'm a brazilian public servant and, believe me, all that OSS talk over the years is just that -- talk.
There are OSS projects going on, yes, but those have nothing to do with federal incentives of any kind, because there are none.
Cisco closes Brazilian plant, hundreds of jobs lost.
Hundreds? I find it hard to believe.
They basically import and resell those equipments, I don't think that even the adhesive tape was glued to the box by a brazilian.
The best students in the world go to the best Universities in the world. The Universities in the United States consistently dominate the top universities in the world.
Considering that graduation in the USA is a big business, any claim that universities from that country are the best should be treated with suspicion.
Now what is this site you're linking to? I've never heard about that.
That thing looks like made by someone who just learned to create html pages.
The about page is hosted in what looks like being from a Chinese university.
If you want such argument to be taken seriously, try at least to provide some reliable sources.
Yep, and Samba (as an example) wasn't coded by one individual. The Samba page lists 47 people, though I'm not sure that counts all contributions from all coders in the history of the project.
Right, and who's the copyright holder?
Think of a closed software developed by persons A, B and C hired by company XYZ. The XYZ company holds the copyright and it's the one who have a say on that software.
A contributor to a FOSS project isn't that much different license-wise. Unless he contributes the code he claims copyright.
Or, a similar situation, when you merge a FOSS project (assuming the respective licenses are compatible) with different copyright holders, in that case the resulting software have both as copyright holders.
Later versions or forks, are derivative work under copyright law, even if they are developed by largely the same team. The license stipulates that certain rights are granted, and may not be removed. Where does the license stipulate an exception that the original author can suddenly revoke rights for derivative works?
But who's saying the author is closing an already GPL'ed version? He may claim he has the original free-of-any-licenses version, and that the GPL version is just a derivative of that original version.
He, then, releases the closed version claiming it was derived from that original version. No GPL involved at all.
Let me put things this way:
You hold the copyright of XYZ software, no license applied at his point.
You release a derivative (or claim it is a derivative) of that work, but release under the GPL license.
What is changed to the root version of yours? Nothing.
Now, you take the root version (not the GPL-licensed one) and release as a closed software. -- You're the copyright holder and that version had no license attached to it, the GPL is simply not present here.
That simply is not true.
I can't take GPL code and then relicense it under a closed-source license. The entire purpose of the GPL, is that once you write code under the GPL, every right is forever protected, and can never be taken away.
We're not talking about the same thing.
GPL code is under the copyright of someone, right?
A work simply being copyrighted means that nobody - except the copyright holder - has distribution rights.
Then the copyright holder decides to make it free open source software.
He releases his copyrighted work under the GPL, thus giving rights to the one who receives that. Now you (as an user) have some rights but, still, do not hold the copyright of that work.
The copyright holder cannot revoke that specific release under the GPL, you cannot lose those rights previously granted (unless you violated the license, but that's another history).
Still, the copyright holder remains being so. As such he may release a different version under a different license, or even release it as closed source. He's not closing what was previously opened, he just took his (let's say) "internal version" and decided not to license it under the GPL as the other version.
"You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."
As I said, it applies only to code released under the GPL.
Unless the copyright holder states that his root development tree is under the GPL aswell.
With BSD licensed software, you can relicense it largely, since BSD offers very little in the way of protection.
Are you suggesting you can replace BSD by GPL?
I used to think that way, but the BSD license says nothing about such right. You may distribute under the GPL, but the BSD is still there.
Granted, in practice the result works like a code licensed under the GPL only.
The copyright holder may license each different version as he pleases, he may even make a parallel commercial release.
The one able to violate such license is the one who receives the code already under such license.
All in all, their attitude - or at least of this rep - has been an offensive defensiveness (aka justify their actions by attacking those of others). I'm hoping that along with having the issues settled he now has an understanding of how the GPL works, but I'm sure he'll probably continue along with the mistaken assumption that his company was never in the wrong, and that this whole thing is the fault of those darn free-software people.
I don't believe so.. That kind of stuff is just theatrical, what they really think is another matter.
They probably thought that it would be possible to keep their way just ignoring/scaring the eventual complainer. But after a while it looked like they could have some real trouble, so releasing the code (or just announcing that) seemed the more convenient solution.
I don't think this company believed for a moment they were right or wrong in the moral sense... Looks more like an amoral behavior: You do whatever is needed for profits as long as you don't have too much trouble with the law.
AArrgh... Too many old-fart nerd jokes here! I'm gonna&#*(% NO CARRIER
The broadcasters are suggesting what? That the service, including all the RF stuff, will be implemented and maintained by a group of undergraduated nerdy 16yo teenagers who happen to know bash scripting?
Gimme a break...
I'm sure the real Miguel is able to see the obvious technical deficiencies of OOXML.
I do live in Curitiba and I do remember that ~15 years ago you could quite a lot of stars during the night, enough to try to identify the constelations and stuff. Nowadays all you can see during the night is a reddish haze in the sky (due to the city's mercury lamps), the Moon, Venus and perhaps one and another star. When the weather is _very_ dry you may see perhaps more 5-6 stars.
Once, 10+ years ago, I was returning from Paraguay by bus and we were stuck in the middle of nowhere in a freak-long line (customs control). The line was completely stuck, I was feeling bored and went from the bus to take some fresh air. I remember that when I looked at the night sky I could see clearly the Via-Lactea, the sky was filled with stars and the whole thing seemed sort of colorful.. You could even see some meteorites/satellites/whatever passing by.
Man, that was an unique experience for a city guy. I guess it was only then I realised the point of appreciating the night sky people so often wrote about.
I'm ok with Xen paravirtualization.
It has such a low overhead you cannot compare to VMware/kvm full virtualization.
If you really want/need so, you can run full virtualization with Xen too (if you have the proper hardware extensions).
Now if you just want to toy with another OS, frankly, paravirtualization is not the most convenient way to do that. But if you're working with dozens of VMs distributed in a couple of servers, I think that paravirtualization is the way to go.
I thought IB was dead - replaced by 10gigE?
Doesn't IB have lower latency than that?
You're not serious on this - it's a joke, right?
Good for you if you can choose jobs from a menu. Some people are not so lucky and, still, they have to eat.
If you have no control over what job you can do then what the hell are you doing poking around on Slashdot? You should be in night classes.
What made you believe I'm talking about myself?
I'm happy with my job and able to read Slashdot (mostly) whenever I want, thank you. But I know people who are not in an easy situation.
And what made you think that what you wrote about the US applies to the rest of the world?
I suggest you getting informed on how things works beyond your backyard because, really, in other places the situation is _very_ different from what you're used to.
Depending on where you are you may consider yourself lucky to have a job and afford basic stuff, even if you're a IT guy. You mentioning saving money on Wii and movies sounds quite laughable to people who cannot afford that luxury in the first place.
Your narrow-minded moral lession doesn't bring sympathy either.