So, I've been running XFree86 3.9.16, since my multiheaded hardware horribly confuses previous XFree releases. Everything works great, except Netscape. And I can't get Mozilla to compile? Any progress/hacks with 4.7 to make it work? ---------
Well, this is a neat idea, of course, this article doesn't tell us that much about it. My big question, I guess, is how this is going to change our concepts of socalization. I mean, governments have traditionally been based on geography, presuming comon interestes on that basis. If "cyber nations" get going, then you have governments based on comon interest, presumably. Can you really have a government with widely, geographically seperated individuals. Even some of the larger nations now are having problems.
As a side note, I think a requirement for becoming a UN member is already having land. They can't be granted land by the UN, since the UN doesn't actually have any land to grant.
Still, this is an interesting idea... ---------
Re:Multi-head & Xinerama: How are they?
on
XFree86 News
·
· Score: 1
Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near a good enough C progammer (or any other kind of programmer, for that matter) to be able to make code contributions to XFree86. Who's working on the development of that part of the code? I'd be happy to act as a guinea pig, if somebody can kick me in the right direction. ---------
As much as I can see the intuitive logic in the "Lay you own cables" arguement, I think there are several arguements against it.
(1) Price: Laying any sort of network is incredibly expensive. Weather it's gas pipes, electrical cables, or phone/data wiring, it's expensive to access rural areas, and complicated and disruptive in urban areas. This was, of course, the initial logic in giving regulated monopolies in the gas, electrial and telephone markets. The only way to insure that this expensive infrastructure was installed was to make it profitable, and the only way to do that was to give a monopoly to the company that did the installation. Of course, with deregulation, the same barriers remain to people who want to build new networks (without the same degree of rewards), and the already entrentched companies are free to use their (de facto) monopoly base to encroach into other businesses (like ISP's).
(2) Legality: There's a concept called essential facility. Back in the late 1800's, there was one railroad bridge across the Missisipi near St. Louis, and was the only practical river crossing for that region. The company which owned the bridge, a rail company, would allow access (for a fee) to other railroad companies. However, there came a point where the company owning the bridge began preventing some of their competitors from using the bridge. In an antitrust case, it was decided that the bridge was an "essential facility", and as such, had to be made available, at a reasonable fee, to all comers. We've seen the same sort of thing in the telephone industry, where your local phone company MUST give you the long distance service you desire.
The bundling of ISP services with bandwidth services, is totally counter to everything we've seen so far. Bell Atlantic will provide me with an ISDN line, but can't require me to use their ISP. (that would be tying, exactly what Microsoft is accused of doing, might I add). As long as service and bandwidth are connected, we won't be able to turn bandwidth into a commodity, just like rice or paper.
[Note: I am not a lawyer. I learned about essential facility from a variety of sources, and I believe I've gotten the core of essential facility correct.]
---------
Multi-head & Xinerama: How are they?
on
XFree86 News
·
· Score: 1
So, my multi-headed system has languished, ever since I went to the 2.2 kernel, which broke Metro-X for reasons unbeknownst. Has anybody yet tried using the new XFree's multihead support? (Xfree 3 got horribly confused by it...couldn't even display on just one card.) My system has two Matrox Millenium II's, which, given what XFree's website says, should work. I hope. And anybody played with Xinerama yet? Any WM's able to handle it? ---------
I looked into C-band satellite a few years ago, and my big question was can you pull down "cable" channels too. This is particularly important to us Babylon 5 fans out there (Well, I guess it's a moot point now, but you get the idea). Is it just an issue of finding the satellite? I was under the impression that most of those signals were encrypted these days (except for, like, CNN) ---------
Well, I wrote a rather large paper for a course fall semester, about 30 pages, where I discussed the history of UNIX, it's connection to the open-source concepts, the way in which it impacted and was impacted by the industry evolution over the 80's and 90's.
I plan on posting it on my website, although I haven't done it yet. (maybe I should before I get slashdotted.) If you'd like me to let you know when I post it, gimme an e-mail. ---------
Well, I guess this means I can wear my "This Shirt is a Munition" t-shirt (Joel K. Furr original too!), when I go to London next month.
The crypto restrictions were always pretty dim, particularly since you could export books which explained the theory of the algorithms, or even, as somebody noted, the source-code itself.
Definately headed for the Supreme's, particularly since there have been conflicting concepts of software as speach. Given that, the court will probably choose to hear the case. They could always let the deicision stand without comment, though. We shall see. ---------
Doesn't this mean something?
on
DOJ vs NSI
·
· Score: 2
Maybe I'm missing it, but why was NSI given this plumb deal in the first place? Domain registration seems like exactly the sort of thing Government SHOULD do. It's part of the infrastructure, like the roads (private roads have had a terrible history in this country). The advantage would be that we wouldn't have all this squabbling over the distribution of names (I've been getting junk-mail through my registration, BTW), and this bullshit attempt to keep the database private. Granted, government-run has other problems, but it might be a better option than the mire we're in now. (And why does ICANA get to make these decision? Who the hell ARE they!?) ---------
The strange, funny thing to note about "The Road Ahead" (besides the fact tha tpeople actually bought it), is that, quite rightly, the original 1995 printing didn't contain an iota about the Internet. However, the second printing, which was not marked as such (nothing on the cover or inside), contained a totally overhauled conception, which included the Internet. I think old Bill is trying to pull a fast one with that, and it's the same thing with "Business". ---------
While we all seem to be on the topic of Linux and 3D-acceleration, anybody tried using the new, well-priced and well-reviewed Matrox m3D accelerators? Do these work with OpenGL? Will they? Do they break various things (being a multi-heading user also, this is of concearn to me)?
Slashdot Mirror
So, I've been running XFree86 3.9.16, since my multiheaded hardware horribly confuses previous XFree releases. Everything works great, except Netscape. And I can't get Mozilla to compile? Any progress/hacks with 4.7 to make it work?
---------
Well, this is a neat idea, of course, this article doesn't tell us that much about it. My big question, I guess, is how this is going to change our concepts of socalization. I mean, governments have traditionally been based on geography, presuming comon interestes on that basis. If "cyber nations" get going, then you have governments based on comon interest, presumably. Can you really have a government with widely, geographically seperated individuals. Even some of the larger nations now are having problems.
As a side note, I think a requirement for becoming a UN member is already having land. They can't be granted land by the UN, since the UN doesn't actually have any land to grant.
Still, this is an interesting idea...
---------
Unfortunately, I'm nowhere near a good enough C progammer (or any other kind of programmer, for that matter) to be able to make code contributions to XFree86. Who's working on the development of that part of the code? I'd be happy to act as a guinea pig, if somebody can kick me in the right direction.
---------
As much as I can see the intuitive logic in the "Lay you own cables" arguement, I think there are several arguements against it.
(1) Price: Laying any sort of network is incredibly expensive. Weather it's gas pipes, electrical cables, or phone/data wiring, it's expensive to access rural areas, and complicated and disruptive in urban areas. This was, of course, the initial logic in giving regulated monopolies in the gas, electrial and telephone markets. The only way to insure that this expensive infrastructure was installed was to make it profitable, and the only way to do that was to give a monopoly to the company that did the installation. Of course, with deregulation, the same barriers remain to people who want to build new networks (without the same degree of rewards), and the already entrentched companies are free to use their (de facto) monopoly base to encroach into other businesses (like ISP's).
(2) Legality: There's a concept called essential facility. Back in the late 1800's, there was one railroad bridge across the Missisipi near St. Louis, and was the only practical river crossing for that region. The company which owned the bridge, a rail company, would allow access (for a fee) to other railroad companies. However, there came a point where the company owning the bridge began preventing some of their competitors from using the bridge. In an antitrust case, it was decided that the bridge was an "essential facility", and as such, had to be made available, at a reasonable fee, to all comers. We've seen the same sort of thing in the telephone industry, where your local phone company MUST give you the long distance service you desire.
The bundling of ISP services with bandwidth services, is totally counter to everything we've seen so far. Bell Atlantic will provide me with an ISDN line, but can't require me to use their ISP. (that would be tying, exactly what Microsoft is accused of doing, might I add). As long as service and bandwidth are connected, we won't be able to turn bandwidth into a commodity, just like rice or paper.
[Note: I am not a lawyer. I learned about essential facility from a variety of sources, and I believe I've gotten the core of essential facility correct.]
---------
So, my multi-headed system has languished, ever since I went to the 2.2 kernel, which broke Metro-X for reasons unbeknownst. Has anybody yet tried using the new XFree's multihead support? (Xfree 3 got horribly confused by it...couldn't even display on just one card.) My system has two Matrox Millenium II's, which, given what XFree's website says, should work. I hope. And anybody played with Xinerama yet? Any WM's able to handle it?
---------
I looked into C-band satellite a few years ago, and my big question was can you pull down "cable" channels too. This is particularly important to us Babylon 5 fans out there (Well, I guess it's a moot point now, but you get the idea). Is it just an issue of finding the satellite? I was under the impression that most of those signals were encrypted these days (except for, like, CNN)
---------
Well, I wrote a rather large paper for a course fall semester, about 30 pages, where I discussed the history of UNIX, it's connection to the open-source concepts, the way in which it impacted and was impacted by the industry evolution over the 80's and 90's.
I plan on posting it on my website, although I haven't done it yet. (maybe I should before I get slashdotted.) If you'd like me to let you know when I post it, gimme an e-mail.
---------
The crypto restrictions were always pretty dim, particularly since you could export books which explained the theory of the algorithms, or even, as somebody noted, the source-code itself.
Definately headed for the Supreme's, particularly since there have been conflicting concepts of software as speach. Given that, the court will probably choose to hear the case. They could always let the deicision stand without comment, though. We shall see.
---------
Maybe I'm missing it, but why was NSI given this plumb deal in the first place? Domain registration seems like exactly the sort of thing Government SHOULD do. It's part of the infrastructure, like the roads (private roads have had a terrible history in this country). The advantage would be that we wouldn't have all this squabbling over the distribution of names (I've been getting junk-mail through my registration, BTW), and this bullshit attempt to keep the database private. Granted, government-run has other problems, but it might be a better option than the mire we're in now. (And why does ICANA get to make these decision? Who the hell ARE they!?)
---------
The strange, funny thing to note about "The Road Ahead" (besides the fact tha tpeople actually bought it), is that, quite rightly, the original 1995 printing didn't contain an iota about the Internet. However, the second printing, which was not marked as such (nothing on the cover or inside), contained a totally overhauled conception, which included the Internet. I think old Bill is trying to pull a fast one with that, and it's the same thing with "Business".
---------
While we all seem to be on the topic of Linux and 3D-acceleration, anybody tried using the new, well-priced and well-reviewed Matrox m3D accelerators? Do these work with OpenGL? Will they? Do they break various things (being a multi-heading user also, this is of concearn to me)?