Well, to be fair there are exceptions to every rule - everyone everywhere in the world would agree with me on that one!
I neglected an extra in the "Professional" category, BTW, which I realised as soon as I posted - an IT professional who uses Linux on their desktop as a general working environment - almost invariably chooses Ubuntu AFAICT.
The Newbie - uses Ubuntu or something similar - doesn't want to compile anything, just wants something other than Windows with the minimum extra effort.
If you go back in time to before Ubuntu existed, this sort of person was very rare and often graduated to "enthusiast" level quite quickly.
The Enthusiast - uses the unstable, beta stream of a well-known distribution or Gentoo, happy to compile whatever's necessary and will put up with a hell of a lot. For most outsiders, watching these people is like seeing someone in an abusive relationship. You know it doesn't have to be like that, you know they're setting themselves up for punishment but the only person who can pull them out of it is themselves.
The Professional - uses Debian, CentOS or RHEL. Has no intention of wasting time compiling stuff, and wants to be able to get as many packages as possible without any compiling. Is not afraid of compiling if strictly necessary. May have a need to run commercial package(s) which are only supported on these distributions. Usually reached this point having come from some other Unix or bubbled up from the Enthusiast.
They sent out a memo years ago saying geeks were allowed to get laid. Since at least Y2K as I recall we're been encouraged to go forth and get busy (I think that was the exact wording).
Man, you need to check your mail-slot more often.:-P
I am well aware you can work around it. I'm talking about the letter of the EULA, not whether or not such a scenario would leave you high and dry in the real world.
I've already posted this as a thought experiment a couple of times, but I'll say it again for the shameless karma-whoring.
Let's look 50 years into the future. The 3D printers we know today have moved on somewhat - someone's actually built a full-on 3D photocopier.
Except this one's a little more sophisticated than modern technology.
Copies are practically indistinguishable from the original at an atomic level. This means that your copy looks the same, functions the same and has the same strengths and weaknesses.
Originals comprising many different materials can be copied.
Complicated objects can be copied easily without having to break them down into their component parts.
While there are limits to the size you can easily copy, they're sufficiently high that most people wouldn't have an issue. You could copy something the size of, say, a refrigerator quite easily.
The copier can be bought for less than £1500 (about US$2400)
How would society react to such an invention? I reckon what we've seen with the RIAA and MPAA would be as nothing in comparison to what we'd see with this.
I'm not making shit up. Microsoft have a dedicated licensing team who are happy to answer all sorts of questions, and I called them about this exact issue.
In Microsoft's view, the OEM license is tied to the motherboard. You can have the activation reset if it complains at you, eg. because you upgraded some other bit of hardware. But (again, this is Microsoft's view, not mine), a motherboard replacement which is not a like-for-like repair - regardless of the reason - is sufficient to effectively kill the OEM license. If you're a small computer shop and you couldn't source an identical motherboard so you had to use something else - tough. Sucks to be you.
Re:OSNews? Thom Holwerda? Seriously?
on
OpenBSD 4.8 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If you take a wider view, what you're describing is typical of the worst of F/OSS development attitudes across all platforms - OpenBSD is by no means unique. Many projects have taken active steps to curb such responses (such as introducing codes of conduct on mailing lists), but many haven't.
What generally happens is:
Someone mentions on a developers' mailing list a perceived weakness of the product. They may word it perfectly politely, they may ask if there's a reason for this perceived weakness they may have missed - but ATEOTD they're still drawing that weakness to the developers' attention.
That person gets enough flaming to toast a small buffalo - regardless of how politely the thread started. If questioned, those doing the flaming justify it by saying things like "We believe in communicating in the quickest, most direct way possible. That means we have to tell the poster he's an ignorant f*ckwit who obviously doesn't realise that what he's asking for is totally unrealistic/unnecessary/both". (The fact that every other product already has this "unrealistic" feature is ignored)
The original poster gets the hint, and uses an alternative product. Who wants to deal with people like that if it should prove necessary further down the line? The thread eventually dies naturally and everyone forgets about it. This process may repeat itself a few times.
Some time later - maybe months or even years a new patch is introduced. This patch adds support for the feature which was originally discussed and led to the flamewar, and the feature will be trumpeted loudly from the rooftops in the next set of release notes.
Which brings us to the question: why couldn't a similar agreement be reached with Apple? The ease with which a Hackintosh can be produced demonstrates that OS X is not that tightly tied down to Apple hardware - there is absolutely no question that Apple could put their own version of OS X that will install on any old PC (drivers permitting) in escrow.
Of course, Apple only moved over to x86, what, four, five years ago now? So you can see why this may not have sunk in at a government level yet. And you do still get questions asked about non-Microsoft products which are obviously borne of the idea that the Internet is proprietary and requires a specific OS.
"Most corrupt department" was the hardest fought competition this whole decade, and it's clearly continued even after Bush/Cheney left. I am not at all surprised that the Interior Department is in bed with another monopoly disserving the people it's supposed to protect.
OT, but of course it has. You don't honestly think all those government mandarins who have spent decades empire building are going to give it all up and change their MO altogether just because someone else is warming the seat in the oval office?
FFI, watch "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister".
You can run Windows on any old hardware, and if Microsoft were to cease to exist tomorrow, you could continue to install Windows on new hardware. Sure, you'd have to look to migrate off Windows sooner or later but - and here is the big but - you wouldn't be essentially forced to before you start to see hardware failing around your ears. Not so OS X - if Apple were to cease to exist tomorrow, you'd find yourself stuck.
Less of an issue today now that Macs run Intel processors, but you'd be putting together a bunch of bastardised hackintoshes which you hope will work. Possibly. As long as (insert feature here) is not important.
Most of the LO guys were being paid by Sun. Unless The Document Foundation can get some serious money coming in, those guys are going to be seeking alternate day jobs sooner or later - and if they can't get jobs in a F/OSS friendly company developing LO, I imagine it'll be relegated to hobby and "when they have time".
The contents of your average Microsoft EULA were, for some reason, mostly ignored in the antitrust trials and even today contain clauses that should raise eyebrows.
For instance, a company can't use an OEM version of Windows to form the basis of an image they roll out to their PCs. They can, however, use a version they purchased through an Enterprise agreement. Such agreements include language to the effect that you license Windows for every PC which is capable of running Windows - no exceptions. So that includes those that came with an OEM license that already covers the version you're buying - and you can have Linux on the desktop but you'll be paying for Windows anyhow.
I agree that I'm not sure how well such things would stand up in court but I have yet to meet an organisation that has the stomach to openly take Microsoft on.
Microsoft Vista? $200. Microsoft 7? $300. Losing your hard-drive and being unable to recover because your licence is tied to a particular disk in a particular physical machine? Priceless!
It isn't, the OEM license is tied to the motherboard. New motherboard, new license. The only exception is a like-for-like replacement in order to effect a repair - if there's no like-for-like on the market, then it sucks to be you.
Interestingly, this means that Microsoft are essentially forcing small PC shops (which can't reasonably be expected to keep a good stock of spares for every PC they've ever built, not when motherboards seldom stay on the market that long) to either break the terms of the license or absorb quite a bit of additional risk over the large OEM - the customer can't very reasonably be expected to fork out for another Windows license when their motherboard failed under warranty.
If you treat them as a special sort of calendar function (which in essence they are), I can easily see how a bug like this can creep in. Calendars - particularly in things like the iPhone - generally keep track of appointments in such a fashion as to account for people being in different time zones so you don't wind up dialling into a conference call four hours after it finished, bearing in mind that the conference call may be an hour later this week because the organiser's in a time zone that has gone over to DST but the user isn't.
There's a number of ways to do that, but generally speaking it means that the form you store the appointment in and the form you display it to the user and use for firing off alerts are two different things. It's quite possible that neither of these forms will bear much resemblance to how the underlying operating system keeps track of time. It's while converting from one to another that you find the bugs.
Wave did have potential especially if they marketed it alongside Google Apps for Business, but it's definitely not going to drive the kind people who use Facebook to start switching in droves to using Wave instead -- that's a bit unrealistic. If that's what Lars was looking for, everyone's probably better off with him at Facebook.
They did. You could enable Wave for your domain quite easily.
We tried it and rapidly concluded it was a lookgran product.
Seeing as Disney is a member of the MPAA, it's probably a very bad idea to ask questions along the lines of "Would (insert insignificant change) really kill you?".
The chances are you'll get a diatribe about how yes, it would kill them - complete with an advertising campaign to tell the world, forced ads in DVDs and at the cinema, notices on DVDs sold only to non-US markets full of how copying is a "federal offence" and various attempts - some more dubious than others - to "persuade" politicians to pass legislation making it illegal to use the DVD in anything other than the prescribed manner.
When that is clearly taking too long, the next Media Storage Product (tm) will be developed - and the Old Media Storage Product will be quietly discontinued as quickly as market forces will allow. Naturally it'll be patented into the middle of the 23rd century, and a condition of licensing the patents will be that every developer, every engineer who's involved in implementing the product will be taken outside and shot when the product reaches market.
Doubtless some clever so-and-so will reverse engineer the product, but the combination of patent requirements and the legislation (which, while all the reverse-engineering was going on, finally passed! Yay!) mandating the death penalty for not only the person doing the reverse engineering but also for their friends, their family, everyone they've ever worked with, their dog and the guy they don't really know but he came around to fix the heating last week will do a reasonably efficient job of ensuring that the ability to Do What You Want with the Media You Damn Well Purchased, TYVM is limited to such a small fraction of society that they can be safely ignored.
All this because you asked Disney if it would be too much to let customers decide whether or not they want to watch trailers.
(Well, if you're going to do hyperbole, do it properly!).
Don't, you're bringing back memories of my first year CS degree - modules with things like "Rich pictures" (which today I suspect was a euphemism for "I cannot express myself clearly so I'm hoping that if I draw a little picture instead I won't be asked to do so").
That's perfectly fine sir. If you report to the airline's desk and fill in form 274(a) (Plane Exploded) in triplicate within 48 hours of the plane blowing up and submit your £20 processing fee, you can have your refund within 3-6 months.
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Well, to be fair there are exceptions to every rule - everyone everywhere in the world would agree with me on that one!
I neglected an extra in the "Professional" category, BTW, which I realised as soon as I posted - an IT professional who uses Linux on their desktop as a general working environment - almost invariably chooses Ubuntu AFAICT.
IME, there are three sorts of Linux users.
The Newbie - uses Ubuntu or something similar - doesn't want to compile anything, just wants something other than Windows with the minimum extra effort.
If you go back in time to before Ubuntu existed, this sort of person was very rare and often graduated to "enthusiast" level quite quickly.
The Enthusiast - uses the unstable, beta stream of a well-known distribution or Gentoo, happy to compile whatever's necessary and will put up with a hell of a lot. For most outsiders, watching these people is like seeing someone in an abusive relationship. You know it doesn't have to be like that, you know they're setting themselves up for punishment but the only person who can pull them out of it is themselves.
The Professional - uses Debian, CentOS or RHEL. Has no intention of wasting time compiling stuff, and wants to be able to get as many packages as possible without any compiling. Is not afraid of compiling if strictly necessary. May have a need to run commercial package(s) which are only supported on these distributions. Usually reached this point having come from some other Unix or bubbled up from the Enthusiast.
Dude, have you been celibate all this time?
They sent out a memo years ago saying geeks were allowed to get laid. Since at least Y2K as I recall we're been encouraged to go forth and get busy (I think that was the exact wording).
Man, you need to check your mail-slot more often. :-P
It doesn't count if it's your right hand.
I am well aware you can work around it. I'm talking about the letter of the EULA, not whether or not such a scenario would leave you high and dry in the real world.
I've already posted this as a thought experiment a couple of times, but I'll say it again for the shameless karma-whoring.
Let's look 50 years into the future. The 3D printers we know today have moved on somewhat - someone's actually built a full-on 3D photocopier.
Except this one's a little more sophisticated than modern technology.
How would society react to such an invention? I reckon what we've seen with the RIAA and MPAA would be as nothing in comparison to what we'd see with this.
How many of these people are going to pay again?
At £2/week, I wonder how many simply won't notice the money leaving their bank account for some time.
I'm not making shit up. Microsoft have a dedicated licensing team who are happy to answer all sorts of questions, and I called them about this exact issue.
In Microsoft's view, the OEM license is tied to the motherboard. You can have the activation reset if it complains at you, eg. because you upgraded some other bit of hardware. But (again, this is Microsoft's view, not mine), a motherboard replacement which is not a like-for-like repair - regardless of the reason - is sufficient to effectively kill the OEM license. If you're a small computer shop and you couldn't source an identical motherboard so you had to use something else - tough. Sucks to be you.
If you take a wider view, what you're describing is typical of the worst of F/OSS development attitudes across all platforms - OpenBSD is by no means unique. Many projects have taken active steps to curb such responses (such as introducing codes of conduct on mailing lists), but many haven't.
What generally happens is:
Disks always did have cylinders, it's just that they don't mean cylinder in the sense of "a whole bunch of toilet roll tubes taped together".
Having said that, it hasn't been necessary to describe disks in C/H/S parlance in years.
Which brings us to the question: why couldn't a similar agreement be reached with Apple? The ease with which a Hackintosh can be produced demonstrates that OS X is not that tightly tied down to Apple hardware - there is absolutely no question that Apple could put their own version of OS X that will install on any old PC (drivers permitting) in escrow.
Of course, Apple only moved over to x86, what, four, five years ago now? So you can see why this may not have sunk in at a government level yet. And you do still get questions asked about non-Microsoft products which are obviously borne of the idea that the Internet is proprietary and requires a specific OS.
"Most corrupt department" was the hardest fought competition this whole decade, and it's clearly continued even after Bush/Cheney left. I am not at all surprised that the Interior Department is in bed with another monopoly disserving the people it's supposed to protect.
OT, but of course it has. You don't honestly think all those government mandarins who have spent decades empire building are going to give it all up and change their MO altogether just because someone else is warming the seat in the oval office?
FFI, watch "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister".
Actually, I can see some (albeit twisted) logic.
You can run Windows on any old hardware, and if Microsoft were to cease to exist tomorrow, you could continue to install Windows on new hardware. Sure, you'd have to look to migrate off Windows sooner or later but - and here is the big but - you wouldn't be essentially forced to before you start to see hardware failing around your ears. Not so OS X - if Apple were to cease to exist tomorrow, you'd find yourself stuck.
Less of an issue today now that Macs run Intel processors, but you'd be putting together a bunch of bastardised hackintoshes which you hope will work. Possibly. As long as (insert feature here) is not important.
OO.o wasn't written in Java. It uses Java for some components, but that's it. It certainly doesn't need it just to open.
Which means that OO.o needs 5 minutes to open because... well, I don't know really. It's a damn good question.
Most of the LO guys were being paid by Sun. Unless The Document Foundation can get some serious money coming in, those guys are going to be seeking alternate day jobs sooner or later - and if they can't get jobs in a F/OSS friendly company developing LO, I imagine it'll be relegated to hobby and "when they have time".
The contents of your average Microsoft EULA were, for some reason, mostly ignored in the antitrust trials and even today contain clauses that should raise eyebrows.
For instance, a company can't use an OEM version of Windows to form the basis of an image they roll out to their PCs. They can, however, use a version they purchased through an Enterprise agreement. Such agreements include language to the effect that you license Windows for every PC which is capable of running Windows - no exceptions. So that includes those that came with an OEM license that already covers the version you're buying - and you can have Linux on the desktop but you'll be paying for Windows anyhow.
I agree that I'm not sure how well such things would stand up in court but I have yet to meet an organisation that has the stomach to openly take Microsoft on.
Microsoft Vista? $200. Microsoft 7? $300. Losing your hard-drive and being unable to recover because your licence is tied to a particular disk in a particular physical machine? Priceless!
It isn't, the OEM license is tied to the motherboard. New motherboard, new license. The only exception is a like-for-like replacement in order to effect a repair - if there's no like-for-like on the market, then it sucks to be you.
Interestingly, this means that Microsoft are essentially forcing small PC shops (which can't reasonably be expected to keep a good stock of spares for every PC they've ever built, not when motherboards seldom stay on the market that long) to either break the terms of the license or absorb quite a bit of additional risk over the large OEM - the customer can't very reasonably be expected to fork out for another Windows license when their motherboard failed under warranty.
It depends on how you treat alarms.
If you treat them as a special sort of calendar function (which in essence they are), I can easily see how a bug like this can creep in. Calendars - particularly in things like the iPhone - generally keep track of appointments in such a fashion as to account for people being in different time zones so you don't wind up dialling into a conference call four hours after it finished, bearing in mind that the conference call may be an hour later this week because the organiser's in a time zone that has gone over to DST but the user isn't.
There's a number of ways to do that, but generally speaking it means that the form you store the appointment in and the form you display it to the user and use for firing off alerts are two different things. It's quite possible that neither of these forms will bear much resemblance to how the underlying operating system keeps track of time. It's while converting from one to another that you find the bugs.
"Look at what I can do, Gran!"
"That's nice, dear".
Wave did have potential especially if they marketed it alongside Google Apps for Business, but it's definitely not going to drive the kind people who use Facebook to start switching in droves to using Wave instead -- that's a bit unrealistic. If that's what Lars was looking for, everyone's probably better off with him at Facebook.
They did. You could enable Wave for your domain quite easily.
We tried it and rapidly concluded it was a lookgran product.
Thing is, it wasn't an IM tool as such because you had to expressly set up a wave and invite people to join.
I looked into it myself - and while it was a very nifty bit of AJAX, I really thought it was a solution looking for a problem which didn't exist.
Seeing as Disney is a member of the MPAA, it's probably a very bad idea to ask questions along the lines of "Would (insert insignificant change) really kill you?".
The chances are you'll get a diatribe about how yes, it would kill them - complete with an advertising campaign to tell the world, forced ads in DVDs and at the cinema, notices on DVDs sold only to non-US markets full of how copying is a "federal offence" and various attempts - some more dubious than others - to "persuade" politicians to pass legislation making it illegal to use the DVD in anything other than the prescribed manner.
When that is clearly taking too long, the next Media Storage Product (tm) will be developed - and the Old Media Storage Product will be quietly discontinued as quickly as market forces will allow. Naturally it'll be patented into the middle of the 23rd century, and a condition of licensing the patents will be that every developer, every engineer who's involved in implementing the product will be taken outside and shot when the product reaches market.
Doubtless some clever so-and-so will reverse engineer the product, but the combination of patent requirements and the legislation (which, while all the reverse-engineering was going on, finally passed! Yay!) mandating the death penalty for not only the person doing the reverse engineering but also for their friends, their family, everyone they've ever worked with, their dog and the guy they don't really know but he came around to fix the heating last week will do a reasonably efficient job of ensuring that the ability to Do What You Want with the Media You Damn Well Purchased, TYVM is limited to such a small fraction of society that they can be safely ignored.
All this because you asked Disney if it would be too much to let customers decide whether or not they want to watch trailers.
(Well, if you're going to do hyperbole, do it properly!).
You ever watched a Disney DVD or video? Their entire business is based around making you watch ads for their own products.
Don't, you're bringing back memories of my first year CS degree - modules with things like "Rich pictures" (which today I suspect was a euphemism for "I cannot express myself clearly so I'm hoping that if I draw a little picture instead I won't be asked to do so").
strings .doc
works for me. Doesn't do your formatting any favours, though.
That's perfectly fine sir. If you report to the airline's desk and fill in form 274(a) (Plane Exploded) in triplicate within 48 hours of the plane blowing up and submit your £20 processing fee, you can have your refund within 3-6 months.