Can you back up your comment regarding free software cooperation please? Intel has done a pretty good job cooperating with the free software community over the years. A good chunk of the intel drivers in the linux kernel are written by intel. The Linux ACPI work was contributed by intel, and they open sourced their wireless driver, which apparently not that many companies were willing to do.
This sounds like DVD-Audio, yet the article clearly describes this as a new thing from SACD and DVD-A. It seems like a silly thing to create a whole new format when an existing one already exists. The only reason why I'd say "yay go for it" is if they eliminated the encryption and licensing issues with DVD-A, but I highly doubt a media company is going to go there.
But this is nothing new. Ever since day one there have been manufacturer's that release zero documentation for their hardware, and the hardware doesn't work on linux until someone figures out how to release a reverse engineered driver, or someone actually manages to get enough documentation to create an opensource driver.
We're just dealing with hardware that's gotten complicated enough that reverse engineering is no longer feasible.
Basically, in the past the response from the community was "fine, you don't want to give us the info, we'll figure it out ourselves".
Now, that the figuring it out part is alot harder than it used to be, the response has been "you're horrible for not giving us documentation."
You are perfectly in your right to "boycott" nvidia. But plenty of us just want our shit to work and are glad that we have something that actually performs as well as it does under windows.
Re-reading my posts something has become clear. I'm just as guilty of wanting instant gratification as the other side. I want my stuff working now, in whatever practical way I can get it. If that includes binary only drivers, so be it.
I've been in the linux world since 1993 (yes, that's right, over 13 years now). I've been using Mosaic since then as well before Netscape became available. I remember very clearly when Netscape was released, and I also don't recall the same kind of open source bigotism back then. Then again, there wasn't the kind of open source community then as there is now. The fact that I've been around the linux community significantly longer than most of the people on here is probably why I don't see closed source as the great big evil people seem to play it up as. The two worlds can and do live together quite nicely.
By putting my money toward intel, i don't get the accelerated 3D support I need with either open source or proprietary binary drivers. In cases where an open source solution actually works, I have put my money toward them at greater expense than otherwise. But with the 3D gaming cards, without either nvidia or ati, most of the new games out there are unplayable. By going with nvidia, at least I don't have a half-assed closed source driver implementation that I'd get with ATI and most of my games are actually playable at a decent resolution.
This is all a matter of priorities. Some of us are gamers. If we can't game under linux, we'd likely be using a proprietary binary-only driver under a proprietary binary-only operating system (windows). Some of us might need to do 3D modelling, where proprietary binary-only closed sources applications are the only real ones available (like pro/engineer) and they rely on proprietary binary-only closed source 3D drivers to get real performance. If such a compromise didn't exist, 3D modelling would be done on a proprietary closed source operating system as with gaming.
To make the compromise between a closed source driver and linux is indeed short-sighted, but if you have a things you want to do, and this is the best way to do it, then so be it. Longer term, yes, it'd be great if everything was open source, but some of us are actually realistic and understand this ain't gonna happen overnight, and we live with it.
Some of you "open source everything blah blah blah" types want instant gratification (with regards to an open source world) and don't seem willing to accept the reality that it isn't an open source world.
For me, the choice between cable and DSL was a nobrainer. I've had DSL since 1998 with Qwest. I could have had cable about a year later than that, and initially cable and DSL was slightly cheaper than Qwest DSL and significantly faster for download, and slightly slower for uploads. Over the years, comcast cable has surpassed Qwest DSL in cost and in downstream bandwidth, and depending on the service level is pretty close to equivalent with Qwest DSL in upstream (at my current service level, Comcast cable has 6M/768k down/up for roughly $10/month more than my 3M/640k down/up Qwest DSL).
However, it was never a choice between Qwest DSL or Comcast cable for me. Comcast cable uses dynamically allocated addresses, has restrictions on servers. Qwest DSL allowed me to pick an ISP that I wanted. Qwest itself has very little restrictions on the usage of the DSL line itself, and my ISP allows servers, and pretty much whatever I want to do with practical and legal limits. I have a/29 netblock, which I couldn't have gotten as an option with Comcast cable, and in order to get static addresses and allow servers I'd be looking at 2-3x the cost of what I'm paying for DSL.
While, admittedly, my needs are a "niche" consumer market, and one not likely to be targetted by any providers, DSL is far more suited for my use than anything cable gives for reasons beyond pure bandwidth.
Now if only US providers would get off their asses and offer ADSL2+, I might be able to get 7/896 service that I'm currently out of range for:)
both the westinghouse 42" 1080p LCD panel and the Scepter 42" 1080p LCD pane actually take 1080p inputs via hdmi/dvi. Of course there are no A/V sources for 1080p really out there yet other than a computer:)
not necessarily.
It's getting better already. Don't discount people's ability to reverse engineer.
Just expect to have to shop around for the right card a bit more closely than if you were in the windows world.
that page is very useful but: 1) it's a mess as was mentioned 2) it gets updated somewhat sporadically, although with the most recent update it is pretty complete.
But most importantly, to newbies, there's no good site that consolidates what uses what. Yes, manufacturers change interfaces and even chipsets mid-stream alot, but you'd think there'd be enough interest out there for a really good page that just documents what people have figured out as far as what hardware uses what chip uses what driver (if it can use an existing driver).
That's the kind of thing that would really really be useful, and would make a very very useful wiki. If such a thing exists, I haven't seen it, although the prism54 site does have a decent chart of what uses the prism54 chips, but this kind of database would be really nice if it was consolidated somewhere.
802.11g under linux is sort of a mess. Wireless cards are getting cheaper and cheaper (in terms of manufacturing) and much of this cheapness is cutting corners, taking more logic off the cards and putting it into software (drivers/firmware).
The vast majority of 802.11g cards out there are almost entirely controlled by software. The frequency, transmit power, etc. I believe the specs to this are all goverend by the FCC (in the US at least, I'm sure most other nations have their own governmental bodies governing what can and can't be done).
As such, opensource drivers are tough as you don't want anyone just modifying the code to change frequencies, up transmit power etc. Also, a number of manufacturers have used "competition" as their reason for keeping things closed.
As a result, the support out there is lumped into a few different chunks: 1) no drivers available 2) atheros drivers (contain a binary HAL object file. This allows them to have a small source component that people can build that links against the binary object which contains the routines to do the various things I mentioned above (basically control the card) 3) opensource driver + firmware (where the firmware component does what the HAL does, but since it's actual firmware loaded to the card, it allows the driver interface to be fully opensourced without revealing too much of what's going on. The intel and prism54 drivers are in this camp.
Basically, if you don't have a prism54 or intel based 802.11g card, you can't use open source drivers, and the drivers will never be included into the kernel because they can't be open sourced. Atheros was nice to release their stuff so that at least their cards are usable.
Every other manufacturer's card users need to hope that their mfg is nice enough to do what atheros does (or if their driver is firmware based, do what intel/intersil[or whoever owns the prism54 stuff now] did by either writing drivers, or helping with it.
It makes it tough if you don't know this ahead of time, but really with 802.11g, you just need to pick the right card and hope. Unfortunately none of this is really very well documented.
Yeah, and we saw how well this method worked on Linux. I'm still waiting for increase marketshare to get us games:)
Console gaming is starting to get there, but for a sizeable chunk of gamers, it's not there yet. FPSes with a console controller suck. Simulation games suck on a console due to lack of input options. With newer consoles able to support USB (and usb keyboards/mice) this is bound to get better, but gaming on a PC for many people still beats consoles hands down.
There are legions of NeXT fans that would disagree with your statement regarding.NET. The Interface Builder component has always been considered one of the most elegant, easy to use, intuitive UI constructing tools out there. It does what it needs to do, is well integrated into the rest of the tool (and the language) and just plain rocks. I have yet to use a UI layout tool that comes near the ease of use and effectiveness of InterfaceBuilder.app.
When it comes to Xcode (or ProjectBuilder.app as the old NeXT fans were used to), it's also an intuitive, easy to use project management system. I don't like IDEs, I hate IDEs. I prefer vi/vim to do all my code editing. The nice thing about ProjectBuilder in old days (I'm not sure about Xcode, I haven't had the opportunity to do much with my mac mini yet) was that it did what I needed (collect all my files in a nice visual fashion, manage my building and integration with UI components, and built skeleton files). It does all those things well, without forcing the user to be hampered by some built in editor components.
There are legions and legions of developers out there that consider the NeXT development tools to be the ultimate developer toolkit (and objective c is a pretty nice language). It's nice to see it didn't disappear into history:)
It seems to me that if you're able to get information to actually "hack" an account, you're either: a) able to sniff all their network traffic, which means eventually, you'd probably get enough info to socially engineer their password b) have access to their system somehow, so you could probably employ a keystroke logger of some sort and just get userid/password that way rather than sift through web browser cache's to guess cookie and session id information.
Re:Cedega will never get my money.
on
Cedega 5.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The transgaming folks have contributed alot of their work into the core wine stuff back. They also said they'll open up everything they can assuming they reach their subscription goal, which I believe they haven't reached, although admittedly there's some contraversy around how to account for where they are toward their goal.
Their DirectX work is largely something they keep to themselves, but honestly, it's their right to. They took a wine version at a specific point where the license allowed them to do it, and they forked it. They didn't abuse the license, the license specifically allowed it. Sure some people later on felt jipped and changed the license, but that doesn't really reflect on the fact that someone should have considered it when the original license was chosen, especially if they didn't want this to happen.
Plus, they're putting alot of hard work into the DirectX stuff. I can't fault them for wanting to hang on to it for a while. It's a very niche market they're targetting and they could use the revenue.
The other component that they get alot of criticism for is the copy protection portions of the code, and I believe this is actually the only part not in CVS and there's a reason for that, it's licensed intellectual property that they aren't at liberty to give out the source code for. Since the legality of no-cd cracks is still in a legal gray area, plus the stability of some cracks are questionable, it's nice that they're able to implement this so we can run pristine binaries of the games.
Re:Cedega will never get my money.
on
Cedega 5.0 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
What developers? The majority of games that are released for linux now are by the same folk who've pretty much always released games for linux (ID Software, Epic for their unreal games). There is significant work by icculus.org folks to port a number of games to linux (medal of honor, serious sam 1 + 2) but a vast amount of the work done at icculus is of very little interest by the time it's released (most of it isn't released and is still in alpha/beta form. While playable, they are buggy). Don't get me wrong though, the icculus guys absolutely rock, and it's not their fault, but since loki went away, the number of windows games with linux versions has declined considerably. Neverwinter Nights is one of the only other big ones I can think of, but it still can't play video cutscenes.
Without cedega/winex/crossover/wine people, there are very few games to play under Linux. I can only go so far with quake4, doom3 and ut2004 before I get bored of them.
I love it. I swear people take these things way too seriously. I get the feeling that the vast majority of people on slashdot are computer geeks with no social skills, hence the inability to get a joke.
That said, the OPENSTEP/NEXTSTEP UI has largely been considered one of the most elegant and usable interfaces to have been created. It's extremely intuitive, and while the GNUSTEP work isn't there yet, the "completion" of Gorm.app is a very good sign, as the interface builder is the foundation to creating the wonderful UI of classic NeXT applications. NeXT spent a ton of money hiring some of the best UI designers in the world, and the UI shows it. People laud over OS X's ability to hide the Unix from the newbie user, but I don't think many of them know that this had existed since the '90s beginning with NEXTSTEP.
Apple broke alot of the inherent intuitiveness of the NeXT UI when they moved to OS X, which isn't necessarly bad though, as intuitiveness != familiarity and their changes were mainly to make existing Mac OS users comfortable.
I'm impressed that the GNUStep project is still able to have milestones like this.
That's true, the phones you get from them generally come locked. However, that doesn't mean you can't go buy a phone of your choice (including one the provider doesn't actually offer) from a 3rd party and use it with them, which is basically what you can do in the rest of the world
i take it you don't know the politics behind this? You call it a province of china, and china is happy, but taiwan isn't. you even imply taiwan is a standalone country and taiwan might be happy, but china won't be. So yeah, this is an easy technical problem to fix, but good luck doing it without pissing someone off.
That's sorta my thought. There already is free tech support in gentoo bugzilla and their forums. 99% of the problems I've had have been either solved by filing a bug (or reading a bug in buzilla) or going to the forums. The few problems that haven't been addressable there I can't imagine another web forum or chat support is going to be able to do much more of.
Just because the patent was filed earlier than when the iPod was announced doesn't mean that it's any more valid of a patent.
The patent system is for novel idea. This is hardly a novel idea. There are many examples of hiearchical organization of media files prior to this. Just because they're displayed on a little LCD screen doesn't make it any more unique than the various media jukebox programs that existed prior to 1/5/01.
Creative failed in marketing and implementation. Their Nomad Zen had superior sound quality than the iPod, but the iPod beat them out with better UI, better usability, and far better integrating applications.
Hopefully Creative doesn't resort to legal action, which I bet they will, since they did so with ID Software and carmack's reverse. Lots of games stayed away from EAX due to the intellectual property concerns of having to license/implement EAX, so guess what, let's make the most talked about game be forced to include EAX on a stupid patent that they should never have gotten to begin with.
Does this mean that armageddon isn't coming? Or does this just mean that satan is joining the computer revolution and will be embedding us all with RFID's encoded with 666?
That's a neat trick. Considering the AMD64 architecture was released about 2 years after the first Itanium.
While you're right that Itanium was meant to keep AMD out of the market by essentially creating a new "proprietary" architecture, it's hardly made to be different from amd64 "on purpose" since they didn't really have any clue what amd64 was (since it didn't exist).
How is that not true? The new JRL license is still very limiting. In order to distribute and give away what you do, you still need to agree to agree with Sun's commercial agreement:
Directly from the new JRL: f you decide to use your project internally for a productive use, and/or distribute your product to others, you must sign a commercial agreement.
There's still a significant amount of baggage with the "research" license.
The trademark issue is a HUGE issue. If a product claims to want Java. You have your own JVM. It's not called Java. You can't call it anything with Java or refer to it as Java. People sure as hell aren't going to use your product. In-the-known people might, but the general windows click a button population sure as hell isn't. Acceptance will be a huge issue. (Does TCK still cost money? It used to and if I remember right, was quite a bit).
Realistically, someone with money can have Java reimplemented in no time. That's not a problem.
You just missed my entire point. There's a hell of alot more damage one can do by buying Java (which is licensed so that you'd have a hard-time creating your own free implementation of it) than someone somehow obtaining the trademarks to Linux. Linux is out there, and it can't be taken away. Sun can take Java away. The very terms of their license allows them to take it away.
Here's another quote from their JRL license that should make any proponent of free software cringe:
"Research Use" means research, evaluation, or development for the purpose of advancing knowledge, teaching, learning, or customizing the Technology or Modifications for personal use. Research Use expressly excludes use or distribution for direct or indirect commercial (including strategic) gain or advantage.
Personal use. I'd hardly call the GNU foundation creating a Java clone based on the code they get by agreeing to the JRL to be personal use. Most likely, they'd get slapped by sun.
Would you like to explain to me WHY THIS IS SUN'S PROBLEM? They have given everything away except for the actual rights to Java itself. If the GNU Foundation can't produce an Open JVM based on open specs and fully available source code, THAT IS THEIR PROBLEM.
There are a number of problems with your statements.
1) To get Sun's source code, I believe you have to agree to the terms of Sun's community license, which has some severe limitations on how it can be used. This has serious impacts on the GNU foundation creating an Open JVM, for example, if you use their source to create your own JVM, you can only give out your executable to those who agree to the sun license and other third parties only for the purposes of evaluation.
2) The Java Specification is very useful for helping to create a Java-like language. However, the implementation details make creating a full Java clone next to impossible with just the spec. There are also potential issues with Java implementations that dependent on third parties.
3) You can't really use the Java trademark to refer to your own Open JVM.
4) Sun is trying to make it seem like they're very open source savvy, but what it boils down to is that they want as much control as Java as they can get. In many ways they are just as insidious as microsoft is. (FYI, I am a java developer and get paid to do Java. I like the language, and use it on it's technical merits, but the licensing sucks)
If a malevolent entity bought Sun - with a depressed Sun stock, it's a real possibility - could that entity do damage? Oh boy, you bet.
If a malevolent entity hit Linus with a bus and acquired his Linux trademarks, and with the number of evil people out there it's a real possibility, could that entity do damange? Oh boy, you bet!
This analogy isn't even close to accurate. Someone could potentially perform a hostile takeover of Sun, or even offer Sun an amazingly crazy amount of money to be sold. That new entity could rewrite all the licensing they want going forward. Linus Torvalds getting hit by a bus would at worst kill Linus. Linux will still go on. It's possible that Linus' next of kin could do it, and take over the Linux trademarks, or hell, maybe they'd buy the Linux trademarks from Linus, but that wouldn't hurt Linux. Linux could be forced to be renamed, but realistically, that's not a problem. Linux is out there, given to the world, call it Linux, call it FoobarOS, it's the same either way. This is the beauty of the GPL model, and the Sun model doesn't come close.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you back up your comment regarding free software cooperation please? Intel has done a pretty good job cooperating with the free software community over the years. A good chunk of the intel drivers in the linux kernel are written by intel. The Linux ACPI work was contributed by intel, and they open sourced their wireless driver, which apparently not that many companies were willing to do.
This sounds like DVD-Audio, yet the article clearly describes this as a new thing from SACD and DVD-A. It seems like a silly thing to create a whole new format when an existing one already exists. The only reason why I'd say "yay go for it" is if they eliminated the encryption and licensing issues with DVD-A, but I highly doubt a media company is going to go there.
But this is nothing new. Ever since day one there have been manufacturer's that release zero documentation for their hardware, and the hardware doesn't work on linux until someone figures out how to release a reverse engineered driver, or someone actually manages to get enough documentation to create an opensource driver.
We're just dealing with hardware that's gotten complicated enough that reverse engineering is no longer feasible.
Basically, in the past the response from the community was "fine, you don't want to give us the info, we'll figure it out ourselves".
Now, that the figuring it out part is alot harder than it used to be, the response has been "you're horrible for not giving us documentation."
You are perfectly in your right to "boycott" nvidia. But plenty of us just want our shit to work and are glad that we have something that actually performs as well as it does under windows.
Re-reading my posts something has become clear. I'm just as guilty of wanting instant gratification as the other side. I want my stuff working now, in whatever practical way I can get it. If that includes binary only drivers, so be it.
I've been in the linux world since 1993 (yes, that's right, over 13 years now). I've been using Mosaic since then as well before Netscape became available. I remember very clearly when Netscape was released, and I also don't recall the same kind of open source bigotism back then. Then again, there wasn't the kind of open source community then as there is now. The fact that I've been around the linux community significantly longer than most of the people on here is probably why I don't see closed source as the great big evil people seem to play it up as. The two worlds can and do live together quite nicely. By putting my money toward intel, i don't get the accelerated 3D support I need with either open source or proprietary binary drivers. In cases where an open source solution actually works, I have put my money toward them at greater expense than otherwise. But with the 3D gaming cards, without either nvidia or ati, most of the new games out there are unplayable. By going with nvidia, at least I don't have a half-assed closed source driver implementation that I'd get with ATI and most of my games are actually playable at a decent resolution.
This is all a matter of priorities. Some of us are gamers. If we can't game under linux, we'd likely be using a proprietary binary-only driver under a proprietary binary-only operating system (windows). Some of us might need to do 3D modelling, where proprietary binary-only closed sources applications are the only real ones available (like pro/engineer) and they rely on proprietary binary-only closed source 3D drivers to get real performance. If such a compromise didn't exist, 3D modelling would be done on a proprietary closed source operating system as with gaming.
To make the compromise between a closed source driver and linux is indeed short-sighted, but if you have a things you want to do, and this is the best way to do it, then so be it. Longer term, yes, it'd be great if everything was open source, but some of us are actually realistic and understand this ain't gonna happen overnight, and we live with it.
Some of you "open source everything blah blah blah" types want instant gratification (with regards to an open source world) and don't seem willing to accept the reality that it isn't an open source world.
For me, the choice between cable and DSL was a nobrainer. I've had DSL since 1998 with Qwest. I could have had cable about a year later than that, and initially cable and DSL was slightly cheaper than Qwest DSL and significantly faster for download, and slightly slower for uploads. Over the years, comcast cable has surpassed Qwest DSL in cost and in downstream bandwidth, and depending on the service level is pretty close to equivalent with Qwest DSL in upstream (at my current service level, Comcast cable has 6M/768k down/up for roughly $10/month more than my 3M/640k down/up Qwest DSL).
/29 netblock, which I couldn't have gotten as an option with Comcast cable, and in order to get static addresses and allow servers I'd be looking at 2-3x the cost of what I'm paying for DSL.
:)
However, it was never a choice between Qwest DSL or Comcast cable for me. Comcast cable uses dynamically allocated addresses, has restrictions on servers. Qwest DSL allowed me to pick an ISP that I wanted. Qwest itself has very little restrictions on the usage of the DSL line itself, and my ISP allows servers, and pretty much whatever I want to do with practical and legal limits. I have a
While, admittedly, my needs are a "niche" consumer market, and one not likely to be targetted by any providers, DSL is far more suited for my use than anything cable gives for reasons beyond pure bandwidth.
Now if only US providers would get off their asses and offer ADSL2+, I might be able to get 7/896 service that I'm currently out of range for
both the westinghouse 42" 1080p LCD panel and the Scepter 42" 1080p LCD pane actually take 1080p inputs via hdmi/dvi. Of course there are no A/V sources for 1080p really out there yet other than a computer :)
not necessarily. It's getting better already. Don't discount people's ability to reverse engineer. Just expect to have to shop around for the right card a bit more closely than if you were in the windows world.
that page is very useful but:
1) it's a mess as was mentioned
2) it gets updated somewhat sporadically, although with the most recent update it is pretty complete.
But most importantly, to newbies, there's no good site that consolidates what uses what. Yes, manufacturers change interfaces and even chipsets mid-stream alot, but you'd think there'd be enough interest out there for a really good page that just documents what people have figured out as far as what hardware uses what chip uses what driver (if it can use an existing driver).
That's the kind of thing that would really really be useful, and would make a very very useful wiki.
If such a thing exists, I haven't seen it, although the prism54 site does have a decent chart of what uses the prism54 chips, but this kind of database would be really nice if it was consolidated somewhere.
802.11g under linux is sort of a mess. Wireless cards are getting cheaper and cheaper (in terms of manufacturing) and much of this cheapness is cutting corners, taking more logic off the cards and putting it into software (drivers/firmware).
The vast majority of 802.11g cards out there are almost entirely controlled by software. The frequency, transmit power, etc. I believe the specs to this are all goverend by the FCC (in the US at least, I'm sure most other nations have their own governmental bodies governing what can and can't be done).
As such, opensource drivers are tough as you don't want anyone just modifying the code to change frequencies, up transmit power etc. Also, a number of manufacturers have used "competition" as their reason for keeping things closed.
As a result, the support out there is lumped into a few different chunks:
1) no drivers available
2) atheros drivers (contain a binary HAL object file. This allows them to have a small source component that people can build that links against the binary object which contains the routines to do the various things I mentioned above (basically control the card)
3) opensource driver + firmware (where the firmware component does what the HAL does, but since it's actual firmware loaded to the card, it allows the driver interface to be fully opensourced without revealing too much of what's going on. The intel and prism54 drivers are in this camp.
Basically, if you don't have a prism54 or intel based 802.11g card, you can't use open source drivers, and the drivers will never be included into the kernel because they can't be open sourced. Atheros was nice to release their stuff so that at least their cards are usable.
Every other manufacturer's card users need to hope that their mfg is nice enough to do what atheros does (or if their driver is firmware based, do what intel/intersil[or whoever owns the prism54 stuff now] did by either writing drivers, or helping with it.
It makes it tough if you don't know this ahead of time, but really with 802.11g, you just need to pick the right card and hope. Unfortunately none of this is really very well documented.
Yeah, and we saw how well this method worked on Linux. I'm still waiting for increase marketshare to get us games :)
Console gaming is starting to get there, but for a sizeable chunk of gamers, it's not there yet. FPSes with a console controller suck. Simulation games suck on a console due to lack of input options. With newer consoles able to support USB (and usb keyboards/mice) this is bound to get better, but gaming on a PC for many people still beats consoles hands down.
There are legions of NeXT fans that would disagree with your statement regarding .NET. The Interface Builder component has always been considered one of the most elegant, easy to use, intuitive UI constructing tools out there. It does what it needs to do, is well integrated into the rest of the tool (and the language) and just plain rocks. I have yet to use a UI layout tool that comes near the ease of use and effectiveness of InterfaceBuilder.app.
When it comes to Xcode (or ProjectBuilder.app as the old NeXT fans were used to), it's also an intuitive, easy to use project management system. I don't like IDEs, I hate IDEs. I prefer vi/vim to do all my code editing. The nice thing about ProjectBuilder in old days (I'm not sure about Xcode, I haven't had the opportunity to do much with my mac mini yet) was that it did what I needed (collect all my files in a nice visual fashion, manage my building and integration with UI components, and built skeleton files). It does all those things well, without forcing the user to be hampered by some built in editor components.
There are legions and legions of developers out there that consider the NeXT development tools to be the ultimate developer toolkit (and objective c is a pretty nice language). It's nice to see it didn't disappear into history :)
It seems to me that if you're able to get information to actually "hack" an account, you're either:
a) able to sniff all their network traffic, which means eventually, you'd probably get enough info to socially engineer their password
b) have access to their system somehow, so you could probably employ a keystroke logger of some sort and just get userid/password that way rather than sift through web browser cache's to guess cookie and session id information.
The transgaming folks have contributed alot of their work into the core wine stuff back. They also said they'll open up everything they can assuming they reach their subscription goal, which I believe they haven't reached, although admittedly there's some contraversy around how to account for where they are toward their goal.
Their DirectX work is largely something they keep to themselves, but honestly, it's their right to. They took a wine version at a specific point where the license allowed them to do it, and they forked it. They didn't abuse the license, the license specifically allowed it. Sure some people later on felt jipped and changed the license, but that doesn't really reflect on the fact that someone should have considered it when the original license was chosen, especially if they didn't want this to happen.
Plus, they're putting alot of hard work into the DirectX stuff. I can't fault them for wanting to hang on to it for a while. It's a very niche market they're targetting and they could use the revenue.
The other component that they get alot of criticism for is the copy protection portions of the code, and I believe this is actually the only part not in CVS and there's a reason for that, it's licensed intellectual property that they aren't at liberty to give out the source code for. Since the legality of no-cd cracks is still in a legal gray area, plus the stability of some cracks are questionable, it's nice that they're able to implement this so we can run pristine binaries of the games.
What developers? The majority of games that are released for linux now are by the same folk who've pretty much always released games for linux (ID Software, Epic for their unreal games). There is significant work by icculus.org folks to port a number of games to linux (medal of honor, serious sam 1 + 2) but a vast amount of the work done at icculus is of very little interest by the time it's released (most of it isn't released and is still in alpha/beta form. While playable, they are buggy). Don't get me wrong though, the icculus guys absolutely rock, and it's not their fault, but since loki went away, the number of windows games with linux versions has declined considerably. Neverwinter Nights is one of the only other big ones I can think of, but it still can't play video cutscenes.
Without cedega/winex/crossover/wine people, there are very few games to play under Linux. I can only go so far with quake4, doom3 and ut2004 before I get bored of them.
I love it. I swear people take these things way too seriously. I get the feeling that the vast majority of people on slashdot are computer geeks with no social skills, hence the inability to get a joke.
That said, the OPENSTEP/NEXTSTEP UI has largely been considered one of the most elegant and usable interfaces to have been created. It's extremely intuitive, and while the GNUSTEP work isn't there yet, the "completion" of Gorm.app is a very good sign, as the interface builder is the foundation to creating the wonderful UI of classic NeXT applications. NeXT spent a ton of money hiring some of the best UI designers in the world, and the UI shows it. People laud over OS X's ability to hide the Unix from the newbie user, but I don't think many of them know that this had existed since the '90s beginning with NEXTSTEP.
Apple broke alot of the inherent intuitiveness of the NeXT UI when they moved to OS X, which isn't necessarly bad though, as intuitiveness != familiarity and their changes were mainly to make existing Mac OS users comfortable.
I'm impressed that the GNUStep project is still able to have milestones like this.
That's true, the phones you get from them generally come locked. However, that doesn't mean you can't go buy a phone of your choice (including one the provider doesn't actually offer) from a 3rd party and use it with them, which is basically what you can do in the rest of the world
i take it you don't know the politics behind this? You call it a province of china, and china is happy, but taiwan isn't. you even imply taiwan is a standalone country and taiwan might be happy, but china won't be. So yeah, this is an easy technical problem to fix, but good luck doing it without pissing someone off.
That's sorta my thought. There already is free tech support in gentoo bugzilla and their forums. 99% of the problems I've had have been either solved by filing a bug (or reading a bug in buzilla) or going to the forums. The few problems that haven't been addressable there I can't imagine another web forum or chat support is going to be able to do much more of.
Just because the patent was filed earlier than when the iPod was announced doesn't mean that it's any more valid of a patent.
The patent system is for novel idea. This is hardly a novel idea. There are many examples of hiearchical organization of media files prior to this. Just because they're displayed on a little LCD screen doesn't make it any more unique than the various media jukebox programs that existed prior to 1/5/01.
Creative failed in marketing and implementation. Their Nomad Zen had superior sound quality than the iPod, but the iPod beat them out with better UI, better usability, and far better integrating applications.
Hopefully Creative doesn't resort to legal action, which I bet they will, since they did so with ID Software and carmack's reverse. Lots of games stayed away from EAX due to the intellectual property concerns of having to license/implement EAX, so guess what, let's make the most talked about game be forced to include EAX on a stupid patent that they should never have gotten to begin with.
Does this mean that armageddon isn't coming? Or does this just mean that satan is joining the computer revolution and will be embedding us all with RFID's encoded with 666?
That's a neat trick. Considering the AMD64 architecture was released about 2 years after the first Itanium.
While you're right that Itanium was meant to keep AMD out of the market by essentially creating a new "proprietary" architecture, it's hardly made to be different from amd64 "on purpose" since they didn't really have any clue what amd64 was (since it didn't exist).
How is that not true? The new JRL license is still very limiting. In order to distribute and give away what you do, you still need to agree to agree with Sun's commercial agreement:
Directly from the new JRL:
f you decide to use your project internally for a productive use, and/or distribute your product to others, you must sign a commercial agreement.
There's still a significant amount of baggage with the "research" license.
The trademark issue is a HUGE issue. If a product claims to want Java. You have your own JVM. It's not called Java. You can't call it anything with Java or refer to it as Java. People sure as hell aren't going to use your product. In-the-known people might, but the general windows click a button population sure as hell isn't. Acceptance will be a huge issue. (Does TCK still cost money? It used to and if I remember right, was quite a bit).
Realistically, someone with money can have Java reimplemented in no time. That's not a problem.
You just missed my entire point. There's a hell of alot more damage one can do by buying Java (which is licensed so that you'd have a hard-time creating your own free implementation of it) than someone somehow obtaining the trademarks to Linux. Linux is out there, and it can't be taken away. Sun can take Java away. The very terms of their license allows them to take it away.
Here's another quote from their JRL license that should make any proponent of free software cringe:
"Research Use" means research, evaluation, or development
for the purpose of advancing knowledge, teaching, learning,
or customizing the Technology or Modifications for personal
use. Research Use expressly excludes use or distribution
for direct or indirect commercial (including strategic) gain
or advantage.
Personal use. I'd hardly call the GNU foundation creating a Java clone based on the code they get by agreeing to the JRL to be personal use. Most likely, they'd get slapped by sun.
Is Java Free Software? Nope. Not yet, it isn't.
Would you like to explain to me WHY THIS IS SUN'S PROBLEM? They have given everything away except for the actual rights to Java itself. If the GNU Foundation can't produce an Open JVM based on open specs and fully available source code, THAT IS THEIR PROBLEM.
There are a number of problems with your statements.
1) To get Sun's source code, I believe you have to agree to the terms of Sun's community license, which has some severe limitations on how it can be used. This has serious impacts on the GNU foundation creating an Open JVM, for example, if you use their source to create your own JVM, you can only give out your executable to those who agree to the sun license and other third parties only for the purposes of evaluation.
2) The Java Specification is very useful for helping to create a Java-like language. However, the implementation details make creating a full Java clone next to impossible with just the spec. There are also potential issues with Java implementations that dependent on third parties.
3) You can't really use the Java trademark to refer to your own Open JVM. 4) Sun is trying to make it seem like they're very open source savvy, but what it boils down to is that they want as much control as Java as they can get. In many ways they are just as insidious as microsoft is. (FYI, I am a java developer and get paid to do Java. I like the language, and use it on it's technical merits, but the licensing sucks)
If a malevolent entity bought Sun - with a depressed Sun stock, it's a real possibility - could that entity do damage? Oh boy, you bet.
If a malevolent entity hit Linus with a bus and acquired his Linux trademarks, and with the number of evil people out there it's a real possibility, could that entity do damange? Oh boy, you bet!
This analogy isn't even close to accurate. Someone could potentially perform a hostile takeover of Sun, or even offer Sun an amazingly crazy amount of money to be sold. That new entity could rewrite all the licensing they want going forward. Linus Torvalds getting hit by a bus would at worst kill Linus. Linux will still go on. It's possible that Linus' next of kin could do it, and take over the Linux trademarks, or hell, maybe they'd buy the Linux trademarks from Linus, but that wouldn't hurt Linux. Linux could be forced to be renamed, but realistically, that's not a problem. Linux is out there, given to the world, call it Linux, call it FoobarOS, it's the same either way. This is the beauty of the GPL model, and the Sun model doesn't come close.