Out of curiosity, where are you? I know that in many countries, attempting to do this would be dumb because of import tariffs on software (and everything else).
I think this is a cool innovation (and quite frankly overdue for graphics manipulation packages) but people don't seem to be too happy with the way Adobe has been handling bug fixes to CS3, which was already expensive enough. Now comes another $$$ upgrade.
There's an interesting list of popular gripes here, which mostly seem to center around "you didn't fix CS3 to begin with" and "it's too expensive".
I don't mind companies charge for software at all, and if you need Photoshop or any of the other apps then there's really no question about paying for them (need here == paying the bills). But CS4 seems to be just a bit too expensive for most people. I don't use Adobe apps, but I know many people in the publishing industry who do and tend to have a weird love-hate relationship with them.
Still, it's an interesting approach even if you're *just* dodging bullets and this is a disaster recovery scenario for your company. If anything it proves that you don't need a white-room, halon-protected, perfectly air conditioned data center to run your business, which seems to be the common belief across the US, European and Canadian enterprise.
Just ask any of the companies in the Gulf area affected by Ike if they would have been glad to have something like this in place a month ago.
I could have told them that computers tend to be resilient. I ran lots of them for many years in a little room at ambient temperature or higher, and high humidity. Every time I opened one of them up to upgrade or something I was amazed that they would even run at all. And the dirt...
I think the reason most people bitch about the Idle articles is not due to the fact that there is an Idle section or what it's about, but rather because it kind of a let down. I can't believe that after more than 10 years of being on the cross hairs of every nutjob and bored teenager on the internet, these are the weirdest emails you've received or the strangest stories you can tell.
If you're going to take up space on the front page with this, you better make it worth the while for people who read the site.
For many people WP has become a fun little fiefdom and constant power trip. Not unlike many other online communities. While some editors/admins are truly helpful and dedicated, there are way too many of them who are in it for the dubious pleasure of making sure everyone conforms to their worldview. One of them doesn't watch TV, so pages about TV shows are annoying and should be fought tooth and nail, etc. Eventually it becomes a matter of self-pride and things tend to get ugly. It's happened thousands of times. The victims are usually people who become disillusioned with WP, and the elimination or watering down of potentially valuable content.
You have to experience something like seeing four people go into arbitration over the inclusion of a single paragraph in an entry about a single Simpsons episode to appreciate how broken the whole thing is.
WP's official policy on these issues is to ignore them, unless they overflow to the real world and actually get reported somewhere.
I think it's safe to dismiss that annoying list of yours. If not for the sheer number of invalid and made-up "facts" in it, the dollar sign crapflood, the comments on there or even the hilarious 4chan image linking is more than enough to write it off as propaganda and dismissed "without further thought", as you say.
I think WP needs to stop calling itself an "encyclopedia" and just come to terms with the fact that they are nothing more than an enormous repository of pop culture knowledge, with a decent but not impressive (volume-wise) level of actual encyclopedic knowledge.
That doesn't detract from its value, far from it. But they take themselves way too seriously in some cases.
What's the difference if there are 65K more articles? I'm all for removing vanity entries and truly useless crap, but "fancruft" tends to be a rather slippery thing to define.
Considering how trivial it is to put a full-screen interface on top of the Windows shell and use it to launch other applications (or even replace the Explorer shell completely with a single registry entry), this is patently ridiculous.
the Firefox EULA imposes additional restrictions on the trademarks without making it clear that those restrictions do not apply to the code.
Yes, but it's not like it was on purpose. No one is claiming that Mozilla is doing something evil on purpose. At least I hope not. And really, the users don't give a damn either way.
You've got it backwards: the GPL should be shown with the message that the user doesn't have to agree to it; the trademark license should be shown with the message that the user does have to agree to it.
If the user does not have to agree to the GPL then there's no reason for them to look at it at all. A condensed, one-paragraph "these are your rights as a user of the software" blurb with a link to the actual full text of the license should suffice.
As to the trademark issue, it should be made clear to the user that they have to accept it only if they intend to modify and redistribute.
Or better yet, the installer ought to allow the user to reject the trademark license, but install the browser with the alternative (i.e., non-trademarked) icons and names.
That would be nice but I think it's a minefield support-wise, not to mention the effort to maintain it.
Or even better than that, Mozilla could give up this stupid trademark bullshit
Why? They have all the rights in the world to protect their trademarks. Even Linus Torvalds has a corporation or entity of some sort that protects the "Linux" trademark from dilution. The key here is to find a way to separate the two issues (usage rights under the GPL and trademark permissions).
I don't understand what the big deal is here. Mozilla acknowledges that the issue is not the software itself, but their trademarks. So show the trademark notice (not the actual GPL text) during install with a specific message that tells the user they do not have to agree to it unless they're actually thinking of redistributing it. Don't have "Accept" and "Reject" buttons, just an "OK" one. Done, end of story.
Seriously, this has reached epic levels of lameness, even for the usual petty "not free enough!!1!!" flamewars.
Seconded. Though I trade Kate for Vim with pychecker mapped to:make. I find Vim is just fine for this, except when I have to debug something, in which case the $60 I paid for Wing IDE are more than justified.
I tried both Eric and Komodo and I think they're perfect in every way (perhaps Komodo a bit more so) except for the fact that they're desperately slow on both Linux and Windows. Same goes for Eclipse+PyDev.
So what you're saying is that anyone's opinion other than Richard Stallman's is irrelevant and useless, that the very use of the term "intellectual property" must immediately eliminate any attempt at rational discourse, and that going to the effort to illustrate a complex issue like this one using popular, easy to understand allegories must be rejected as "industry propaganda". Without further thought, no less.
Thanks, that makes sense. I'm sure I'm going to buy this book now, considering how unfocused, biased and rather hysterical most of the FSF's essays that you recommend on the matter tend to be.
Sure, you can "remove" IE to the point where it's no longer accessible as a standalone browser. Some of the components, like the rendering engine, remain though.
Can I remove WebKit completely from OS X? As a KDE user, can I remove Konqueror and KHTML completely and still have everything work correctly?
As for preinstalling, well, the last out-of-the-box computer I saw had the Google everything (search, toolbar, pack, etc) installed. The search one was amusing considering the built-in Vista search is better than theirs. I guess it depends who you buy your computers from.
I hate replying to myself, but I forgot to mention something.
The last company I did a large contract for is one of the large Fortune 50 financial services companies. The Team Lead of the business unit we were creating these systems for once mentioned over drinks that she gives a lot of importance to LinkedIn profiles when hiring analysts. I've never used LinkedIn, though, so I'm not exactly sure what it is that she looks for or why it's important. Also, papers, articles and things like that on college websites were supposed to be a big thing, I assume for candidates that are fresh out of there.
Again, different industry/skill/job description, I could care less about LinkedIn when hiring an architect or a test engineer.
That's a pretty narrow view, considering there are other, more time-tested ways to socialize.
I suppose it depends on the position you're hiring for. I usually tend to frown on developers who don't have a web presence in the form of a blog with technical content and what not. Comments on technical forums or even USENET posts are always good. However, the lack of that presence does not necessarily translate into immediate dismissal, there are many other factors, obviously like the ability to ace a technical interview. But being recognized in your field by your peers is always a *huge* plus.
I really could care less (and again, that's just my opinion and the type of people I hire) if you have a facebook page or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Out of curiosity, where are you? I know that in many countries, attempting to do this would be dumb because of import tariffs on software (and everything else).
I think this is a cool innovation (and quite frankly overdue for graphics manipulation packages) but people don't seem to be too happy with the way Adobe has been handling bug fixes to CS3, which was already expensive enough. Now comes another $$$ upgrade.
There's an interesting list of popular gripes here, which mostly seem to center around "you didn't fix CS3 to begin with" and "it's too expensive".
I don't mind companies charge for software at all, and if you need Photoshop or any of the other apps then there's really no question about paying for them (need here == paying the bills). But CS4 seems to be just a bit too expensive for most people. I don't use Adobe apps, but I know many people in the publishing industry who do and tend to have a weird love-hate relationship with them.
Wow, no wonder you like twitter.
I can assure you that, in the US, under the scenario you described, you would not.
Probably in Europe though.
pwned, as usual.
Oh god, you really are batshit insane.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=112229&cid=9521025
Still, it's an interesting approach even if you're *just* dodging bullets and this is a disaster recovery scenario for your company. If anything it proves that you don't need a white-room, halon-protected, perfectly air conditioned data center to run your business, which seems to be the common belief across the US, European and Canadian enterprise.
Just ask any of the companies in the Gulf area affected by Ike if they would have been glad to have something like this in place a month ago.
I could have told them that computers tend to be resilient. I ran lots of them for many years in a little room at ambient temperature or higher, and high humidity. Every time I opened one of them up to upgrade or something I was amazed that they would even run at all. And the dirt...
I think the reason most people bitch about the Idle articles is not due to the fact that there is an Idle section or what it's about, but rather because it kind of a let down. I can't believe that after more than 10 years of being on the cross hairs of every nutjob and bored teenager on the internet, these are the weirdest emails you've received or the strangest stories you can tell.
If you're going to take up space on the front page with this, you better make it worth the while for people who read the site.
For many people WP has become a fun little fiefdom and constant power trip. Not unlike many other online communities. While some editors/admins are truly helpful and dedicated, there are way too many of them who are in it for the dubious pleasure of making sure everyone conforms to their worldview. One of them doesn't watch TV, so pages about TV shows are annoying and should be fought tooth and nail, etc. Eventually it becomes a matter of self-pride and things tend to get ugly. It's happened thousands of times. The victims are usually people who become disillusioned with WP, and the elimination or watering down of potentially valuable content.
You have to experience something like seeing four people go into arbitration over the inclusion of a single paragraph in an entry about a single Simpsons episode to appreciate how broken the whole thing is.
WP's official policy on these issues is to ignore them, unless they overflow to the real world and actually get reported somewhere.
Ah yes, I forgot. I work for Microsoft and I'm supposed to feel awed by your dumb journal droppings. Yes.
For a platform like this, I bet they'll let the OEM replace the shell as long as they include a big Windows logo =)
I think it's safe to dismiss that annoying list of yours. If not for the sheer number of invalid and made-up "facts" in it, the dollar sign crapflood, the comments on there or even the hilarious 4chan image linking is more than enough to write it off as propaganda and dismissed "without further thought", as you say.
I think WP needs to stop calling itself an "encyclopedia" and just come to terms with the fact that they are nothing more than an enormous repository of pop culture knowledge, with a decent but not impressive (volume-wise) level of actual encyclopedic knowledge.
That doesn't detract from its value, far from it. But they take themselves way too seriously in some cases.
What's the difference if there are 65K more articles? I'm all for removing vanity entries and truly useless crap, but "fancruft" tends to be a rather slippery thing to define.
You're confusing OEM-branded IE shells with the normal shell.
Considering how trivial it is to put a full-screen interface on top of the Windows shell and use it to launch other applications (or even replace the Explorer shell completely with a single registry entry), this is patently ridiculous.
Yes, but it's not like it was on purpose. No one is claiming that Mozilla is doing something evil on purpose. At least I hope not. And really, the users don't give a damn either way.
If the user does not have to agree to the GPL then there's no reason for them to look at it at all. A condensed, one-paragraph "these are your rights as a user of the software" blurb with a link to the actual full text of the license should suffice.
As to the trademark issue, it should be made clear to the user that they have to accept it only if they intend to modify and redistribute.
That would be nice but I think it's a minefield support-wise, not to mention the effort to maintain it.
Why? They have all the rights in the world to protect their trademarks. Even Linus Torvalds has a corporation or entity of some sort that protects the "Linux" trademark from dilution. The key here is to find a way to separate the two issues (usage rights under the GPL and trademark permissions).
I don't understand what the big deal is here. Mozilla acknowledges that the issue is not the software itself, but their trademarks. So show the trademark notice (not the actual GPL text) during install with a specific message that tells the user they do not have to agree to it unless they're actually thinking of redistributing it. Don't have "Accept" and "Reject" buttons, just an "OK" one. Done, end of story.
Seriously, this has reached epic levels of lameness, even for the usual petty "not free enough!!1!!" flamewars.
Seconded. Though I trade Kate for Vim with pychecker mapped to :make. I find Vim is just fine for this, except when I have to debug something, in which case the $60 I paid for Wing IDE are more than justified.
I tried both Eric and Komodo and I think they're perfect in every way (perhaps Komodo a bit more so) except for the fact that they're desperately slow on both Linux and Windows. Same goes for Eclipse+PyDev.
*yawn* Sockpuppets, as usual.
Where did you get that idea?
So what you're saying is that anyone's opinion other than Richard Stallman's is irrelevant and useless, that the very use of the term "intellectual property" must immediately eliminate any attempt at rational discourse, and that going to the effort to illustrate a complex issue like this one using popular, easy to understand allegories must be rejected as "industry propaganda". Without further thought, no less.
Thanks, that makes sense. I'm sure I'm going to buy this book now, considering how unfocused, biased and rather hysterical most of the FSF's essays that you recommend on the matter tend to be.
Sure, you can "remove" IE to the point where it's no longer accessible as a standalone browser. Some of the components, like the rendering engine, remain though.
Can I remove WebKit completely from OS X? As a KDE user, can I remove Konqueror and KHTML completely and still have everything work correctly?
As for preinstalling, well, the last out-of-the-box computer I saw had the Google everything (search, toolbar, pack, etc) installed. The search one was amusing considering the built-in Vista search is better than theirs. I guess it depends who you buy your computers from.
Welcome to Slashdot.
I hate replying to myself, but I forgot to mention something.
The last company I did a large contract for is one of the large Fortune 50 financial services companies. The Team Lead of the business unit we were creating these systems for once mentioned over drinks that she gives a lot of importance to LinkedIn profiles when hiring analysts. I've never used LinkedIn, though, so I'm not exactly sure what it is that she looks for or why it's important. Also, papers, articles and things like that on college websites were supposed to be a big thing, I assume for candidates that are fresh out of there.
Again, different industry/skill/job description, I could care less about LinkedIn when hiring an architect or a test engineer.
That's a pretty narrow view, considering there are other, more time-tested ways to socialize.
I suppose it depends on the position you're hiring for. I usually tend to frown on developers who don't have a web presence in the form of a blog with technical content and what not. Comments on technical forums or even USENET posts are always good. However, the lack of that presence does not necessarily translate into immediate dismissal, there are many other factors, obviously like the ability to ace a technical interview. But being recognized in your field by your peers is always a *huge* plus.
I really could care less (and again, that's just my opinion and the type of people I hire) if you have a facebook page or not.