Irony really. But, I would suggest perhaps they're biggest gripe is the fact that you can get very comprehensive and useful list of ad sites for firefox (namely abp). Now, why you would blame mozilla for that is a tad mysterious, its like blaming microsoft for java on windows.
Highly intelligent folk obviously and i look forward to not bothering to try to read their site in the future!
It can work in a number of ways, but essentially its like a volume replication thing where it continuously replicates the hd itself to another device (usb drive or iscsi drive). Now while your on the laptop outside you can replicate to a partition on the usb drive. In the office you can use something like an iscsi lun to replicate to.
Its not terribly expensive from what i remember for only that capability (like $99/laptop?). If you use iscsi and it cant see the iscsi lun (offsite), it just keeps a log of the changes and sync's then when it can get to the iscsi lun again.
If you add a second product i cant remember the name of (another falcon stor product) you then get some more manageability like taking snapshots of the replicated disk, quessing databases and stuff like that. But I think thats where it starts getting expensive.
There are other options. Acronis is very kewl in that you can image your hd when you feel like it (and typically quite quickly too) and it has alot of kewl features (does even allow for incremental images too iirc), plus it works on linux partitions.
Typically speaking, i find laptops + centrallized backup can be really painfull sometimes though and why i think falconstor is quite a nice product for its price/feature set because it can actually exist with a centralized backup solution that you might already have (i.e. backup the iscsi lun locally).
The giant may not be wrong and the non-profit may not be right... legally.
BUT, how about we talk about morally right and wrong, or perhaps plain old fashioned good versus evil. Oh what am I thinking, neither of those concepts have any place in good old corporate greed now do they?
Sure, you can argue J&J have every right and in fact are required to defend their trademark, but going after an organization like the ARC who has done much good in the world is just plain sickening. There are alot better ways of dealing with this then going straight for the throat.
My personal opinion, i know, but I think the fact that bittorrent was really the only open and functional protocol out there and hence why it rose to its supremacy. The only other thing that really set it apart in terms of functionality was the removal of the centralized distribution/search mechanism.
But, I dont really believe the owners reasons tbh. "Some people are illegally redistributing my stuff", oh come on like thats a new state of affairs for anything.
Actually, i decided to fall on the other side so that I wouldnt be forced to agree with MS.. im now very strictly pro-bush and i now see terrorists everywhere...
Whats that hotline phone number again?
The paranoia is setting in...
Seriously though, if MS are saying it, i believe theres a bargaining chip behind it.
Then realistically I cant see her being nailed to the wall for it - I mean IANAL as always, but as stupid as the US legal system supposedly is I really cant see a jury going "hmm, we have 20 seconds of movie and 50minutes of kids running around being idiots, they are soooo guilty".
Who knows, but before you crucify either side, best hope you know the truth. Wouldn't be the first time/. (or many other news sites for that matter) were used to protest someones innocence in this type of case. Especially when every one here is sick to death of the mpaa and riaa and (like me) hate them with a passion/pray hell exists so they get thrown there.
ext3cow was written with compliance in mind (i.e. with an untouchable past), and so its AFAIK the ONLY solution that can fit in compliance (keeping in mind that this only covers part of compliance). svn, git, cvs - im sorry, but thats just a non-solution for compliance. It also gives you no-mess management with a very easy interface to make sure you are being compliant (this is important, and its something YOU dont have to be involved in, your lawyers can "look at the past" to make sure "discovery" is going to be consistent).
The second thing is, compliance is (ridiculously) complex - the compliance vendors have spent many hours with lawyers getting it together, they know the requirements and they know they fullfill them - this is important. It also means their solutions come with an implicit warranty - "hey, your using netapp worm, we know it works" as apposed to "what software is that? how do you know it works?". At the end of the day a lawyer is going to either go "well i cant argue with the compliance solution" when your with a well-known or "your honor, the defendant is using... which has never been proven or certified by anyone".
Compliance is the only time i will say to someone - "get a throat to cut", get a solution you know works, written by people who know what they are doing and its all because compliance req's were written by lawyers for lawyers (i.e. scum) and so their scum is going to make you have to act like scum.
Seriously, when it comes to legal requirements, do not skimp!
Go for something that is guarentee'd to fulfill your legal compliance requirements.
Yeah, optical media is great for WORM, but you dont want something your going to have to manage day to day. The legal req's of sox and so forth are beyond that of traditional optical drives in terms of life span in any case. Do not go with optical for compliance unless its something specifically designed for compliance (Again, thats $$$).
As someone suggested, centera is a good option - but all the storage vendors have good options (from emc, netapp, hds, sun, falconstor, mimosa the list is endless) and they'll all tell you how theirs is better than anyone else (and why). At the end of the day, you want a compliance solution with someone's stamp on it, and a throat you can cut when it goes wrong.
If your absolutely determined to go the compliance route on OSS - go with ext3cow (www.ext3cow.com) IMHO, a fully versioning COW fs with a non-erasable past and the best OSS solution for the job - backup on to optical if you like, but dont make optical your only option. If it only had policy-based management (i.e. snapshot whenever user X or group y writes a file) rather then crontab'ing its snapshot agent it would almost be perfect for a start-point solution for compliance. It has a big benifit along with it though, you can show users how to get files "from yesterday".
Keep in mind, WORM means policy-based write-once, not necessarily immutable storage! And almost every compliance worm product out there depends on that fact.
I can only say i know of no one in the "enterprise" that uses anything but ms office format.
Having said that, i moved my life to f7 on the desktop and haven't felt terribly inconvenienced by the move (so to speak).
The battle for OSS and linux in AU seems like a hopelessly lost cause though. One client I went out on told me they've got rid of all their unix and moved everything into vmware esx "so we have no unix anywhere anymore". "You know esx is linux right?", "no its not, its running windows". Idiot (But he was a managerial type).
I know of only 2 clients that use linux heavily and in a supprise move semetime a couple of months back one of them (quite large) said "lets go desktop". I was quite shocked and excepted the typical "its a MS licensing cost reduction tactic" and it turned out not to be. The second uses it for servers.
But its a drop in the pond - specially for a country that used to be quite ahead of the game, we've become a nation of sheep now. As for ODF vs OOXML - my god, was the outcome really every in debate? Like MS ever loses those type of battles. MS is the devil in disguise - no wonder managers love it.
First alot of you seem to have the impression that this isnt possible.
Ok, so go buy an electic car then... Oh wait, you didnt? why not? OH thats right, the only way you really can is if you build it yourself.
Ok, so there's hybrid's... YAY, i dont think so - just read up about hybrids and you start to think "oh, right they're not really anywhere near as good as they claim to be".
Car manufactures have barely attempted to build electics - the EV1 was a good case in point. Now even if you dont believe that the car companies are "in bed with the petrol companies" (and i tend be to a fence sitter on that one). What incentive is there for them to do it? are you not going to buy a car because they dont make electric? unlikely, the only people that might do that is 0.00001% of car enthusiasts that build electics (and there is some seriously impressive EV's out there if you google) and seriously fanatical anti-petrol people.
But what are the incentives to do this? 1) environment - what company cares about that? seriously - who have you seen do this except companies that do seem to actually care, those with an image problem (trying to fix it), or those forced to act by the government. Further to that, you see tonnes of ad's for the hybrids, for how car companies are "working on it", and how their next generation is going to be heaps better. 2) removal of oil from the economy - now before you shoot me with "well this wouldnt remove oil from the economy, remember that its a step in the right direction. Again, this is not an incentive for a car company. This is only an incentive for humanity. 3) a jump on the market - "we're the first out with an electic car". GM already tried it with the EV1 and it failed (whether you believe it was failed deliberately or not). 4) Image - see 1. How many of you hate merc, bmw, honda, gm, ford, toyota, suburu, etc because they produce petrol cars? the vast majority writes, reads, appears on tv, or wont shutup about how the latest xyx from car company abc is soooo much faster than the last generation, or how it does this or that. 5) Renewable energy sources - renew-a-what now? are you talking about re-tread tires?
And what are the down sides: 1) huge investment - thats right, its gunna take money to produce it (i think they quoted something like 2bil to produce the ev1 prototype?) 2) hybrids are so much easier to "invent" - after all they're around to make you feel like your doing something for environment and your fuel bill, not so you actually can achieve anything 3) investment in petrol motors - yes, we've been building those for years and every year we get more efficient at it so shutup your whinging everyone wants a hummer anyway (what retards buy these btw? I really cant understand how anyone who owns these ridiculous vehicles is smart enough to earn enough money to buy one in the first place).
The only way it will ever happen is if we start seeing something like this: 1) car companies having to foot the bill based on their emissions 2) big government incentive to build electic - billions, not millions 3) social incentives (car spaces only for ev, toll-free for ev, etc etc)
or
4) a company starts from scratch and pushes out an electic car. They'll have alot to learn, but if they get some people behind them the other companies better start watching their backs. And guess what, he's been looking at it from the EV enthusiasts view. Which means he's giving people an incentive to install solar panels on their house (and that is a big plus one way or another).
Now for driving around where I live, these would be perfect. I live in AU, so driving to my parents house is out of the question (a short trip of 200km's on high-speed freeways), but he's sure getting in at the right time. He's not the only one wising up to this either. The best part is he's doing it the right way.
You cant rely on a gov't to provide the funding for doing something like this because they really dont care (as we've proven time
I spent an hour attempting to read that and I still dont have the faintest idea about what it means really but IANA biologist.
It certainly didnt sound like a frivolous patent to me. But, im also very lost when it comes to how it relates to music. it seemed more like they were into cloning than anything else or storing dna in some fashing. It would have been nice if someone with a clue had said "oh, this section here, this means encoding music from a dna stream" or something even vaguely represented something that was like english (or even american english considering i can almost read that).
Is the wrong patent linked or have patents become such that they use terminology that doesnt make sence to a single human being in the known universe? i mean for the love of god, "music" doesn't even appear once in the patent and nor does "harmony", "song" or any other terminology that seems to even relate to music except "encoding".
Speaking as a layman - oh well i cant turn my dna into music (apparently). But I probably couldn't in first place anyway and nor would I want to for that matter. I'd love to be angry at the patent and shake my first at it, but its so hard when it is just incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo and even sounds like theres been alot of work put into it. I'm certainly not going to take someone word for it that its a bad patent.
But then again, thats what lawyers do, i remember a lawyer turning a sentence i wrote about how i wanted the software i'd written for a company into 50 pages of rubbish i couldnt understand anymore.
Is Dell/Ubuntu/whoever turn around to the games makers and go:
"Hey games boys, some of you port to mac already, what would it take to convince you that linux is a worthwhile proposition also?" (perhaps even with the whole "its just a jump to the left, and a step to the riiiiiight" in full rocky horror picture show style - though i really REALLY dont want to see Shuttleworth in a teddy).
I'd love to see the answer. Was very bitterly disappointed to see bioware not put out nwn2 for linux.
The point being of course that if you can put the gamer in front of linux I personally think you'll be winning quite a large battle if only in small parts. The number of people i know who have a pc solely for games, email, web and chat is not inconsequential and linux can do 3 out of 4 of those very efficiently already.
Reading all the legal mumbo jumbo above cast my mind back a number of years ago when I way trying to figure out if and how a project i was working was being distributed legally given that I wanted to make it GPL. I made the software Free for all in the end because I read thru the gnu.org site that tries to explain the gpl and left feeling that I knew less then when I started.
There was even a little quiz at the end to "test" your knowledge of the GPL and regrettably i cant find it now but I do remember I failed miserably.
I was a little bit annoyed reading through that. You'd get this tiny little 300x200 image that you wanted to see larger and not a single link too you anywhere that you could view it... That was more than a little frustrating.
Regardless of what his reasons are or what you think of them (or him for that matter), he's still leaving.
As a fellow AU'er, its sad to see him leave. As a linux guy, its sad to see him leave. As a FOSS guy, its sad to see him leave.
He contributed a lot and I certainly wish I could say the same. So for everyone out there calling him a whiner, you had BETTER have done at least as much as him otherwise just STFU.
I would say we care cause i do actually like slashdot... Now, if running alexia means their advertiser revenue is boosted all well and good, cause i'd like it to be around for a little while yet;)
But, of course as everyone says its a flawed metric - to hell with that, use the flaws to your advantage!
I swear i had to look at the date to make sure i hadn't slept until the next april fools day.
But, to everyone who's sitting there going "oh thats crap! what is slashdot doing?" remember you have a bit of a say in that too! So dont just sit there blaming slashdot, help fix the problem...
Having read the comments I think people didn't actually read had been put on the announcement page, mostly about SSI losing some of its value in the wake of faster and bigger machines.
To proclaim this is an object of example for the failure of OSS projects - my god, what a leap of stupidity that is. In reality, i'd be claiming the exact opposite in that it was one of the few SSI's to get into real world situations and be used quite heavily - which means it was actually very successful. It's a project that made it through a complete life cycle, birth, success and death. I would say its probably dying slightly before its time, but the authors reasons are quite sound in reality.
This is something you just don't often see in the CSS world - companies make something and want/need to make money off it (indefinitely if possible), so not only do they bring a new version with more bells and whistles every year (even when the prior version only had 10% of its bells and whistles used) they're continuously pushing to continue making money off the product, and that often means "never expire the product, morph it if we must, but every coder hour is less profit - sales are dropping, NEW VERSION TIME!". Wow, that was even less cynical than I normally am!
Sure, the time spent learning gimp over photoshop will have cost associated with it - but coming from photoshop to gimp was/is a much easier transition than from ms office to open office (IMHO).
The thing you're forgetting is the long term dividend - Gimp will cost nothing now but the time you spend to learn it, so ok thats 10 hours - 400$ you have photoshop. The next version of photoshop will cost you maybe 200-400$ again to upgrade depending on the options. The next version of gimp still costs you nothing. Wow, i just made a 200$ saving. On the plus side you now know both gimp and photoshop which is not an entirely useless skill in either ball park now is it?
And same with moving to OO - I was a little lost with him going on about no road map, cause there is definitely one for OO and its always quite up to date and accurate. Learning their new CIO was an x-ms employee sold the deal for me. If there were an even close alternative to outlook/exchange in the real OSS world then i know i would never shutup about it at work.
I dont hate Office, and i dont hate windows. But I do hate Microsoft with a passion.
Speaking as a person who has to go out on site as a consultant and recommend the best product for the job (regardless of personal bias) - and yes, that includes the places that are MS-only where i find myself saying "yeah, sql server 2005 is briliant", or "yeah, you should really get ms systems server op's center". I do believe things are changing somewhat. It started about 6-9months ago, i'd go out to a traditional windows company and they'd be running a samba server with apache where there used to be IIS and win 2k3.
Then a friends company (not a small one mind you) went off to do a linux-on-the-desktop study as alot of their windows agreements were about to become eol so to speak. At first I thought this was a bargaining tool to get cheaper software, but I was surprised to find that not only was it about replacing the desktop but also the server side functionality. It turned out they'd started looking at linux desktops because they'd managed to gain some linux servers to replace most costly machines (some windows, but alot were aix or solaris) - interestingly, alot of the now-linux server hardware are sun x86'ers running centos. As a result they took on some linux types to administer them, and it grew - they replaced a few non-essential file servers. changed a few mail gateways to linux. Moved proxies to squid. As their CTO put it "i was suddenly surrounded by linux and didn't realise it until i looked at the balance sheets, all we are paying for is hardware and alot of the things we are using linux for are internally grown and maintained. I started to think we weren't paying for licenses were we should be". One of the things that did take him by supprise is that half his IT department by this time had switched to a linux desktop and used mail thru imap or some such (some were using windows still thru vmware player or from a terminal server running outlook). Apparently if you pxe boot off alot of the networks, you'll get a pxelinux menu that allows you to boot various things like dsl or install a customized ubuntu (though i didn't see that myself). I know they're also running some systems with RHEL too because they "feel good" to know they have support.
To sum it up, i was quite shocked. 12 months ago I was feeling "unix was coming to an end" and feeling quite disappointed by that, but I feel quite elated by what i've seen lately - Especially so in Australia where linux has had a really tough time of it.
Having said all that, i think the author wasn't just referring to linux users but also the users of FOSS replacements for commercial applications (like open office, gimp, etc). I can't say i've seen a tonne of that myself, but its not uncommon to see things like gaim, firefox, jedit, eclipse - smaller things really.
It will be very interesting to see what the next 12months brings us.
The way i like (note, LIKE) to read it.. and how i think it might differ from other OSS offerings -
- all the interfaces to the proprietary bits are open. i.e. the gps is serial, hopefully the phone bit is too - its a framework, so fic built theirs and other people are happy to go build more phones with the same framework
And how it differs from other things in this vein: - the wrt54g has a binary-only driver, so your stuck with a pre-compiled kernel that makes you jump thru hoops compiling other kernel modules for it - the palm linux thing looks very much like you wont be able to get to the kernel at all (or in a very limited way) and you'll be stuck with every kernel they deem appropriate.
which sounds pretty kewl actually, like they didn't put wifi in because of no low-power OSS wifi drivers - it could be leading down a path alot of people might actually follow (and by people, i dont really mean consumers).
on the other hand i really dont want it. it an open phone, except for the "phone" bits - WTF (yes, i know its an interface)?
It would have been nice to see a device of its size, with the 3d components and no phone at all - i think i need to read the wiki (when its less/.'d) a bit more cause i can see it looks cool, but its really hard to tell..
Slashdot Mirror
Irony really. But, I would suggest perhaps they're biggest gripe is the fact that you can get very comprehensive and useful list of ad sites for firefox (namely abp). Now, why you would blame mozilla for that is a tad mysterious, its like blaming microsoft for java on windows.
Highly intelligent folk obviously and i look forward to not bothering to try to read their site in the future!
Half the time i find out about google things by accident. Like google pushing out google desktop for linux i found out from slashdot i think?
I often wonder what I'm missing on google cause things come out that you just never seem to know about.
Falconstor disk-safe replicator.
It can work in a number of ways, but essentially its like a volume replication thing where it continuously replicates the hd itself to another device (usb drive or iscsi drive). Now while your on the laptop outside you can replicate to a partition on the usb drive. In the office you can use something like an iscsi lun to replicate to.
Its not terribly expensive from what i remember for only that capability (like $99/laptop?). If you use iscsi and it cant see the iscsi lun (offsite), it just keeps a log of the changes and sync's then when it can get to the iscsi lun again.
If you add a second product i cant remember the name of (another falcon stor product) you then get some more manageability like taking snapshots of the replicated disk, quessing databases and stuff like that. But I think thats where it starts getting expensive.
There are other options. Acronis is very kewl in that you can image your hd when you feel like it (and typically quite quickly too) and it has alot of kewl features (does even allow for incremental images too iirc), plus it works on linux partitions.
Typically speaking, i find laptops + centrallized backup can be really painfull sometimes though and why i think falconstor is quite a nice product for its price/feature set because it can actually exist with a centralized backup solution that you might already have (i.e. backup the iscsi lun locally).
The giant may not be wrong and the non-profit may not be right... legally.
BUT, how about we talk about morally right and wrong, or perhaps plain old fashioned good versus evil. Oh what am I thinking, neither of those concepts have any place in good old corporate greed now do they?
Sure, you can argue J&J have every right and in fact are required to defend their trademark, but going after an organization like the ARC who has done much good in the world is just plain sickening. There are alot better ways of dealing with this then going straight for the throat.
My personal opinion, i know, but I think the fact that bittorrent was really the only open and functional protocol out there and hence why it rose to its supremacy. The only other thing that really set it apart in terms of functionality was the removal of the centralized distribution/search mechanism. But, I dont really believe the owners reasons tbh. "Some people are illegally redistributing my stuff", oh come on like thats a new state of affairs for anything.
Actually, i decided to fall on the other side so that I wouldnt be forced to agree with MS.. im now very strictly pro-bush and i now see terrorists everywhere...
Whats that hotline phone number again?
The paranoia is setting in...
Seriously though, if MS are saying it, i believe theres a bargaining chip behind it.
Then realistically I cant see her being nailed to the wall for it - I mean IANAL as always, but as stupid as the US legal system supposedly is I really cant see a jury going "hmm, we have 20 seconds of movie and 50minutes of kids running around being idiots, they are soooo guilty".
/. (or many other news sites for that matter) were used to protest someones innocence in this type of case. Especially when every one here is sick to death of the mpaa and riaa and (like me) hate them with a passion/pray hell exists so they get thrown there.
Who knows, but before you crucify either side, best hope you know the truth. Wouldn't be the first time
Is a laptop with no operating system.
I can do the rest, thank you!.
ext3cow was written with compliance in mind (i.e. with an untouchable past), and so its AFAIK the ONLY solution that can fit in compliance (keeping in mind that this only covers part of compliance). svn, git, cvs - im sorry, but thats just a non-solution for compliance. It also gives you no-mess management with a very easy interface to make sure you are being compliant (this is important, and its something YOU dont have to be involved in, your lawyers can "look at the past" to make sure "discovery" is going to be consistent).
... which has never been proven or certified by anyone".
The second thing is, compliance is (ridiculously) complex - the compliance vendors have spent many hours with lawyers getting it together, they know the requirements and they know they fullfill them - this is important. It also means their solutions come with an implicit warranty - "hey, your using netapp worm, we know it works" as apposed to "what software is that? how do you know it works?". At the end of the day a lawyer is going to either go "well i cant argue with the compliance solution" when your with a well-known or "your honor, the defendant is using
Compliance is the only time i will say to someone - "get a throat to cut", get a solution you know works, written by people who know what they are doing and its all because compliance req's were written by lawyers for lawyers (i.e. scum) and so their scum is going to make you have to act like scum.
Seriously, when it comes to legal requirements, do not skimp!
Go for something that is guarentee'd to fulfill your legal compliance requirements.
Yeah, optical media is great for WORM, but you dont want something your going to have to manage day to day. The legal req's of sox and so forth are beyond that of traditional optical drives in terms of life span in any case. Do not go with optical for compliance unless its something specifically designed for compliance (Again, thats $$$).
As someone suggested, centera is a good option - but all the storage vendors have good options (from emc, netapp, hds, sun, falconstor, mimosa the list is endless) and they'll all tell you how theirs is better than anyone else (and why). At the end of the day, you want a compliance solution with someone's stamp on it, and a throat you can cut when it goes wrong.
If your absolutely determined to go the compliance route on OSS - go with ext3cow (www.ext3cow.com) IMHO, a fully versioning COW fs with a non-erasable past and the best OSS solution for the job - backup on to optical if you like, but dont make optical your only option. If it only had policy-based management (i.e. snapshot whenever user X or group y writes a file) rather then crontab'ing its snapshot agent it would almost be perfect for a start-point solution for compliance. It has a big benifit along with it though, you can show users how to get files "from yesterday".
Keep in mind, WORM means policy-based write-once, not necessarily immutable storage! And almost every compliance worm product out there depends on that fact.
I can only say i know of no one in the "enterprise" that uses anything but ms office format.
Having said that, i moved my life to f7 on the desktop and haven't felt terribly inconvenienced by the move (so to speak).
The battle for OSS and linux in AU seems like a hopelessly lost cause though. One client I went out on told me they've got rid of all their unix and moved everything into vmware esx "so we have no unix anywhere anymore". "You know esx is linux right?", "no its not, its running windows". Idiot (But he was a managerial type).
I know of only 2 clients that use linux heavily and in a supprise move semetime a couple of months back one of them (quite large) said "lets go desktop". I was quite shocked and excepted the typical "its a MS licensing cost reduction tactic" and it turned out not to be. The second uses it for servers.
But its a drop in the pond - specially for a country that used to be quite ahead of the game, we've become a nation of sheep now. As for ODF vs OOXML - my god, was the outcome really every in debate? Like MS ever loses those type of battles. MS is the devil in disguise - no wonder managers love it.
First alot of you seem to have the impression that this isnt possible.
Ok, so go buy an electic car then... Oh wait, you didnt? why not? OH thats right, the only way you really can is if you build it yourself.
Ok, so there's hybrid's... YAY, i dont think so - just read up about hybrids and you start to think "oh, right they're not really anywhere near as good as they claim to be".
Car manufactures have barely attempted to build electics - the EV1 was a good case in point. Now even if you dont believe that the car companies are "in bed with the petrol companies" (and i tend be to a fence sitter on that one). What incentive is there for them to do it? are you not going to buy a car because they dont make electric? unlikely, the only people that might do that is 0.00001% of car enthusiasts that build electics (and there is some seriously impressive EV's out there if you google) and seriously fanatical anti-petrol people.
But what are the incentives to do this?
1) environment - what company cares about that? seriously - who have you seen do this except companies that do seem to actually care, those with an image problem (trying to fix it), or those forced to act by the government. Further to that, you see tonnes of ad's for the hybrids, for how car companies are "working on it", and how their next generation is going to be heaps better.
2) removal of oil from the economy - now before you shoot me with "well this wouldnt remove oil from the economy, remember that its a step in the right direction. Again, this is not an incentive for a car company. This is only an incentive for humanity.
3) a jump on the market - "we're the first out with an electic car". GM already tried it with the EV1 and it failed (whether you believe it was failed deliberately or not).
4) Image - see 1. How many of you hate merc, bmw, honda, gm, ford, toyota, suburu, etc because they produce petrol cars? the vast majority writes, reads, appears on tv, or wont shutup about how the latest xyx from car company abc is soooo much faster than the last generation, or how it does this or that.
5) Renewable energy sources - renew-a-what now? are you talking about re-tread tires?
And what are the down sides:
1) huge investment - thats right, its gunna take money to produce it (i think they quoted something like 2bil to produce the ev1 prototype?)
2) hybrids are so much easier to "invent" - after all they're around to make you feel like your doing something for environment and your fuel bill, not so you actually can achieve anything
3) investment in petrol motors - yes, we've been building those for years and every year we get more efficient at it so shutup your whinging everyone wants a hummer anyway (what retards buy these btw? I really cant understand how anyone who owns these ridiculous vehicles is smart enough to earn enough money to buy one in the first place).
The only way it will ever happen is if we start seeing something like this:
1) car companies having to foot the bill based on their emissions
2) big government incentive to build electic - billions, not millions
3) social incentives (car spaces only for ev, toll-free for ev, etc etc)
or
4) a company starts from scratch and pushes out an electic car. They'll have alot to learn, but if they get some people behind them the other companies better start watching their backs. And guess what, he's been looking at it from the EV enthusiasts view. Which means he's giving people an incentive to install solar panels on their house (and that is a big plus one way or another).
Now for driving around where I live, these would be perfect. I live in AU, so driving to my parents house is out of the question (a short trip of 200km's on high-speed freeways), but he's sure getting in at the right time. He's not the only one wising up to this either. The best part is he's doing it the right way.
You cant rely on a gov't to provide the funding for doing something like this because they really dont care (as we've proven time
I spent an hour attempting to read that and I still dont have the faintest idea about what it means really but IANA biologist.
It certainly didnt sound like a frivolous patent to me. But, im also very lost when it comes to how it relates to music. it seemed more like they were into cloning than anything else or storing dna in some fashing. It would have been nice if someone with a clue had said "oh, this section here, this means encoding music from a dna stream" or something even vaguely represented something that was like english (or even american english considering i can almost read that).
Is the wrong patent linked or have patents become such that they use terminology that doesnt make sence to a single human being in the known universe? i mean for the love of god, "music" doesn't even appear once in the patent and nor does "harmony", "song" or any other terminology that seems to even relate to music except "encoding".
Speaking as a layman - oh well i cant turn my dna into music (apparently). But I probably couldn't in first place anyway and nor would I want to for that matter. I'd love to be angry at the patent and shake my first at it, but its so hard when it is just incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo and even sounds like theres been alot of work put into it. I'm certainly not going to take someone word for it that its a bad patent.
But then again, thats what lawyers do, i remember a lawyer turning a sentence i wrote about how i wanted the software i'd written for a company into 50 pages of rubbish i couldnt understand anymore.
Is Dell/Ubuntu/whoever turn around to the games makers and go:
"Hey games boys, some of you port to mac already, what would it take to convince you that linux is a worthwhile proposition also?" (perhaps even with the whole "its just a jump to the left, and a step to the riiiiiight" in full rocky horror picture show style - though i really REALLY dont want to see Shuttleworth in a teddy).
I'd love to see the answer. Was very bitterly disappointed to see bioware not put out nwn2 for linux.
The point being of course that if you can put the gamer in front of linux I personally think you'll be winning quite a large battle if only in small parts. The number of people i know who have a pc solely for games, email, web and chat is not inconsequential and linux can do 3 out of 4 of those very efficiently already.
I Am Soooooooooooooo No a Lawyer.
Reading all the legal mumbo jumbo above cast my mind back a number of years ago when I way trying to figure out if and how a project i was working was being distributed legally given that I wanted to make it GPL. I made the software Free for all in the end because I read thru the gnu.org site that tries to explain the gpl and left feeling that I knew less then when I started.
There was even a little quiz at the end to "test" your knowledge of the GPL and regrettably i cant find it now but I do remember I failed miserably.
I was a little bit annoyed reading through that. You'd get this tiny little 300x200 image that you wanted to see larger and not a single link too you anywhere that you could view it... That was more than a little frustrating.
Regardless of what his reasons are or what you think of them (or him for that matter), he's still leaving.
As a fellow AU'er, its sad to see him leave.
As a linux guy, its sad to see him leave.
As a FOSS guy, its sad to see him leave.
He contributed a lot and I certainly wish I could say the same. So for everyone out there calling him a whiner, you had BETTER have done at least as much as him otherwise just STFU.
I would say we care cause i do actually like slashdot... Now, if running alexia means their advertiser revenue is boosted all well and good, cause i'd like it to be around for a little while yet;)
But, of course as everyone says its a flawed metric - to hell with that, use the flaws to your advantage!
I swear i had to look at the date to make sure i hadn't slept until the next april fools day.
But, to everyone who's sitting there going "oh thats crap! what is slashdot doing?" remember you have a bit of a say in that too! So dont just sit there blaming slashdot, help fix the problem...
Having read the comments I think people didn't actually read had been put on the announcement page, mostly about SSI losing some of its value in the wake of faster and bigger machines.
To proclaim this is an object of example for the failure of OSS projects - my god, what a leap of stupidity that is. In reality, i'd be claiming the exact opposite in that it was one of the few SSI's to get into real world situations and be used quite heavily - which means it was actually very successful. It's a project that made it through a complete life cycle, birth, success and death. I would say its probably dying slightly before its time, but the authors reasons are quite sound in reality.
This is something you just don't often see in the CSS world - companies make something and want/need to make money off it (indefinitely if possible), so not only do they bring a new version with more bells and whistles every year (even when the prior version only had 10% of its bells and whistles used) they're continuously pushing to continue making money off the product, and that often means "never expire the product, morph it if we must, but every coder hour is less profit - sales are dropping, NEW VERSION TIME!". Wow, that was even less cynical than I normally am!
Likewise, I too am sad to see open mosix going under - I had alot of geeky fun with it!
:D
But, i also will look forward to seeing what the dev's might move onto in the future!
your not wrong, but your not right either.
Sure, the time spent learning gimp over photoshop will have cost associated with it - but coming from photoshop to gimp was/is a much easier transition than from ms office to open office (IMHO).
The thing you're forgetting is the long term dividend - Gimp will cost nothing now but the time you spend to learn it, so ok thats 10 hours - 400$ you have photoshop. The next version of photoshop will cost you maybe 200-400$ again to upgrade depending on the options. The next version of gimp still costs you nothing. Wow, i just made a 200$ saving. On the plus side you now know both gimp and photoshop which is not an entirely useless skill in either ball park now is it?
And same with moving to OO - I was a little lost with him going on about no road map, cause there is definitely one for OO and its always quite up to date and accurate. Learning their new CIO was an x-ms employee sold the deal for me. If there were an even close alternative to outlook/exchange in the real OSS world then i know i would never shutup about it at work.
I dont hate Office, and i dont hate windows. But I do hate Microsoft with a passion.
Speaking as a person who has to go out on site as a consultant and recommend the best product for the job (regardless of personal bias) - and yes, that includes the places that are MS-only where i find myself saying "yeah, sql server 2005 is briliant", or "yeah, you should really get ms systems server op's center". I do believe things are changing somewhat. It started about 6-9months ago, i'd go out to a traditional windows company and they'd be running a samba server with apache where there used to be IIS and win 2k3.
Then a friends company (not a small one mind you) went off to do a linux-on-the-desktop study as alot of their windows agreements were about to become eol so to speak. At first I thought this was a bargaining tool to get cheaper software, but I was surprised to find that not only was it about replacing the desktop but also the server side functionality. It turned out they'd started looking at linux desktops because they'd managed to gain some linux servers to replace most costly machines (some windows, but alot were aix or solaris) - interestingly, alot of the now-linux server hardware are sun x86'ers running centos. As a result they took on some linux types to administer them, and it grew - they replaced a few non-essential file servers. changed a few mail gateways to linux. Moved proxies to squid. As their CTO put it "i was suddenly surrounded by linux and didn't realise it until i looked at the balance sheets, all we are paying for is hardware and alot of the things we are using linux for are internally grown and maintained. I started to think we weren't paying for licenses were we should be". One of the things that did take him by supprise is that half his IT department by this time had switched to a linux desktop and used mail thru imap or some such (some were using windows still thru vmware player or from a terminal server running outlook). Apparently if you pxe boot off alot of the networks, you'll get a pxelinux menu that allows you to boot various things like dsl or install a customized ubuntu (though i didn't see that myself). I know they're also running some systems with RHEL too because they "feel good" to know they have support.
To sum it up, i was quite shocked. 12 months ago I was feeling "unix was coming to an end" and feeling quite disappointed by that, but I feel quite elated by what i've seen lately - Especially so in Australia where linux has had a really tough time of it.
Having said all that, i think the author wasn't just referring to linux users but also the users of FOSS replacements for commercial applications (like open office, gimp, etc). I can't say i've seen a tonne of that myself, but its not uncommon to see things like gaim, firefox, jedit, eclipse - smaller things really.
It will be very interesting to see what the next 12months brings us.
The way i like (note, LIKE) to read it.. and how i think it might differ from other OSS offerings -
- all the interfaces to the proprietary bits are open. i.e. the gps is serial, hopefully the phone bit is too
- its a framework, so fic built theirs and other people are happy to go build more phones with the same framework
And how it differs from other things in this vein:
- the wrt54g has a binary-only driver, so your stuck with a pre-compiled kernel that makes you jump thru hoops compiling other kernel modules for it
- the palm linux thing looks very much like you wont be able to get to the kernel at all (or in a very limited way) and you'll be stuck with every kernel they deem appropriate.
which sounds pretty kewl actually, like they didn't put wifi in because of no low-power OSS wifi drivers - it could be leading down a path alot of people might actually follow (and by people, i dont really mean consumers).
on one hand i really want it..
/.'d) a bit more cause i can see it looks cool, but its really hard to tell..
on the other hand i really dont want it. it an open phone, except for the "phone" bits - WTF (yes, i know its an interface)?
It would have been nice to see a device of its size, with the 3d components and no phone at all - i think i need to read the wiki (when its less