Being a Linux fan, I'll shed half a tear for Corel dumping its distro.
However, being a fan of Good Products(TM), I'll jump for joy. Corel sucked at making a good Linux distro, and in general, I think it was a bad business decision to use wine to port their products to Linux.
Performance of software under wine just sucks, horribly. I'm sorry, but my load average goes through the friggin' roof when I use Corel Photopaint for Linux, which uses the wine libraries. No, I'm not talking about when I actually invoke a process on a picture, I'm talking about when I *move my mouse* within the window (gotta love xosview). This is also *after* I fixed the kernel panic with my stock winelib by downloading and installing a decent snapshot.
I mean...c'mon...it's insane.
Yes, wine works for some things, and it doesn't work for others. I am one of those people that thinks that the wine project should be halted and discarded to force software houses, such as Corel, that wish to have a Linux Marketshare (TM) to actually port to NATIVE CODE.
Speaking as a person who actually *bought the boxed version* of Word Perfect, I want a real office suite written FOR Linux, not some half-baked half-port. Maybe with Corel dumping its Linux distro, they'll actually be able to put the effort into writing a native-code port of its office products. I would shell out good money for such a beast, but never again will I do so if it uses wine for its operation in any way.
At the end of the article, it seems to state that RMS and FSF are interested in a free text/etext archive project.
Uh, folks, shouldn't we be putting our efforts behind an already working project? I'm talking about Project Gutenberg, and the Internet Wiretap. wiretap.area.com has an pretty large archive of books that are no longer under Copyright. As far as I can tell, all of these texts or most of them were typed in by hand by various intrepid keyboarders.
This is nothing new. It's been in existence since the age of gopherspace, in 1991.
Maybe RMS can work with these people instead of duplicating effort?
It makes sense because you can store 300 web addresses (or other bar codes) in it. It's a data collector that you can *take with you* as opposed to *tying you down* to your computer to scan cc bar codes. The cuecat, as it is right now, is an abomination of design. It's downright inconvenient.
However, the Cross version is *completely* cordless, smaller, and looks neat, and actually fits in a shirt pocket without making the user look like a complete moron.
It's simply a more elegant design than the cuecat ever was.
I was a kid during the stand-off, and about all I remember was our entire block gathered around a black-and-white TV in Providence, R.I., to hear Kennedy's grainy, grim speech declaring a military blockade of Cuba. Everybody was stunned and totally silent. Parents rushed off after the speech to the market to stockpile food.
RIers still do that. At the first whisper of a snowstorm that will bring more than an inch or two, everyone runs off to the markets to buy bread, milk, and liquor to stock enough food and booze to last 2 weeks. Oh, and mustn't forget the TP. People will leave work early and pull their kids out of school if there's more than 3 inches on the ground.
And people are supposed to find the sine of an angle *how*?
Log trig tables?
TI-30 type calcs are available for 10 to 15 bux these days. You're telling me that the university has figured out that some people can't afford a calc with basic trig and stat functions?
That regulation at your uni is just _stupid_.
A calculator is a tool, just like a hammer or a screwdriver. Out in the real world, people don't care if your toolbox is full or empty, just that you can do the job. A good calculator is _essential_ these days if your job revolves around any kind of math. Requiring only 4 function calcs for work done at your university is a sign that they suffer from the worst of "ivory tower syndrome" and have no clue as to what's going on in the real world.
You should be learning how to use the latest and greatest tools, because that's what you'll be using once you graduate. If someone told me I'd have to do all my shit in a 4 function calc, I'd whack that person repeatedly over the head with my HP manual until he or she becomes enlightened.
There's a reson why professionals such as surveyors, engineers, and toolmakers (like me) use HP calculators:
They're not brain damaged. Brain damage is a calculator that does "algebraic" data entry, but does postfix notation when using the trig functions (Hello, TI and Casio). Consistency across the user interface, on top of RPN, makes for an extremely powerful and useful machine.
Seriously, once one gets used to RPN (it takes about a week, or a day if you're really pounding the keys), there's no going back to infix math. Everything else just seems *inferior*. It's like the hackers' disdain for "strong typing".
If there's anything confusing about calculators, it's trying to remember how deep the parentheses are nested in that nasty equation. RPN dispenses with parentheses entirely and gives the user a stack to push and pop numbers to and from. Algebraic calculators typically only limit the user to 6 layers of parentheses, but the HP stack is limited only by available memory.
To top it off, HP calculators tend to be so much more durable than the offerings of TI, Casio, and Sharp and the keyboards can't be beat for feel and durability. HP calculators also tend to be logically laid out on the keyboard, and important functions on the graphical calcs are NOT buried under menus (my last Casio graphing calc put the most common trig functions in a menu. Really.), or if they must be menued, are only 2 keypresses away.
I have also heard that Hewlett Packard calcs are "too expensive". I thought this too, until I bought one. HP is competitive with TI in this area. Hewlett Packard's calcs tend to be a bit *less* expensive than the corresponding offerings from TI on the high end (HP49G vs TI-92).
In my not-so-humble opinion, there is no substitute for a good tool, and a Hewlett-Packard calculator is a Good Tool.
Typical non-hp user vs Me.
Non HP user - "Hey, can I borrow your calculator for a sec?"
Me - "Sure" *hands calc*
Non HPer - "WTF!?"
Me - "wossamatta, never seen a real calculator before?"
Non HPer - "Man, that's fucked up. Why don't you use a _normal calculator_?"
Me - "I'm far from normal" *gives evil eye and a mad-scientist chuckle*
I guess I'll use the tt tag again. Just to piss you off.
As for _your_ post, it was entirely bereft of content. You disagreed with my typing style only. If you had two brain cells to rub together, maybe you'd contribute to the conversation. You don't however, so you posted as an AC. We're the brave little flamemeister, aren't we?
OBTopic: In this state we have a Use Tax, that if you don't pay enough sales tax on out of state purchases, you're supposed to remit the remainder of the hypothetical tax to the great state of Rhode Island.
I wonder if they ever stop cars at the border that have been in New Hampshire, at the state liquor stores there. (no sales tax for the entire state, there)
So technically, internet sales are ALREADY taxed in Rhode Island.
Internet sales are such a microscopic percentage of all retail sales that having states claim that they're losing sales tax is just ludicrous.
What they're doing is killing the commercial side of the net. Really. If there is no advantage of shopping online anymore, why would anyone do it? The lack of tax is nearly eaten up in shipping charges for online deals, and if sales tax is tacked on to this, brick-and-mortar stores will have the upper hand. That's what it's all about, folks. It's not about lost sales tax, it's about the brick-and-mortar stores lobbying their governors.
But whatever the reason, taxing internet sales will kill online shopping. The governors can't figure out that a 7 percent sales tax on 0 dollars is still 0 dollars.
Nobody ever said that you had to be smart to be a politician.
As for me, I'd rather be where we were BEFORE NSFNET disappeared.
I'm a machinist, and as an Expert In The Field, yeah, it would be neat to see a titanium beer can, but....
Titanium is a *bitch* to work with. It does *not* want to be worked. It doesn't like to be turned, milled, or ground, and if you're using a surface grinder and oil as a coolant, keep a fire extinguisher handy.
Or just shut off the oil.
I don't even want to imagine what it's like to weld.
Anyway, I digress...
Yeah, it'd be cool to see titanium as cheap as aluminum. It could be useful where aluminum cannot take the place of steel. It still won't make aluminum any less useful. Aluminum is *much* easier to work with (6061 alloy, anyone?), and therefore, less expensive for a finished product. You'll still see aluminum beer cans and aluminum engine blocks in the future.
It also seems to me that he has yet to read anything by Sheri Turkel. He obviously fell asleep during his Anthropology and Sociology classes. What, IRC, MOOs, MUDs and other forms of group communication are not subject to the same rules of "in real life" societies?
As for the Internet being "high priced real-estate", I can whip together a 486 box, with Windows 95, a cheap-ass modem, and Netzero for under 100 bux, including monitor.
A friend of mine has 5 kids, one income (can you say tight wallet?) and *he's* on AOL, a PAY service, yet. Please. Being connected has nothing to do with money, and has everything to do with how resourceful you can be.
Indeed, this author of this article is a guy who is a doctoral candidate. He hasn't been out of school since the stone age and probably doesn't know people can connect without ethernet.
This isn't even news anymore. The digital divide is imaginary. The only thing keeping people off the net is that they decided to pay for cable TV instead, fed to a giant 37 inch glass-tubed TV.
QA is a good thing, and should be SOP for anything that someone takes pride in...
However, reading a standard shrinkwrap license such as Microsoft's, the *end user* is ultimately left swinging in the wind as regards to the quality of the software. If you buy a copy of WindowsblowME and it doesn't work with your equipment, you're screwed out of however much you paid for it because the EULA nullifies any implied warrantees of fitness of use or merchantablity.
Usually, handing money over for a product implies some sort of merchantablity and fitness of use for simple things like garden trowels. Buy a garden trowel at your local garden center, and if it breaks under normal use, you can (usually) either get a new one gratis or your money back from the store where you got it.
Put simply, most commercial software doesn't even meet the standards of a garden trowel in merchantablity and fitness of use.
Now enter OSS. It's free as in freedom, but it's also free as in beer. No money changes hands for it. There is absolutely no implied merchantability or fitness of use. It's not buyer-beware because nobody is _buying_ anything. We are now supposed to hold _this_ to higher quality than Microsoft software as a _standard_? And back it up? With what? How is the author responsible for the quality of the software? I see no way that an author can be bound by a QA program if he/she is not charging money for the product. There's no implied contract betweent the user and the author.
IOW, if we want software authors who write OSS to be bound to some sort of QA program, it will have a chilling effect on someone who wants to scratch an itch and release some code, however bug-ridden it may or may not be. Mpst decent OSS projects start out really ragged around the edges. Putting an arbitrary QA program on software like this is just _nuts_.
Someone up there said there IS a quality assurance program already in existence. It's called Peer Review. I agree with this. OSS has more in common with scientific research than it does with manufacturing. For example: The funk-soulbrother-programmer sez "check out this proggy I wrote" and many people do, sending him feedback on bugs and whatnot. If he takes pride in his work, and pays attention to the feedback, the next release is better, and so-on. But this is _entirely_ up to the author! If he decides he wants to just cast-adrift the software, he should be free to do so, and not be held to an arbitrary QA standard.
QA is good when there's an actual implied agreement between the end-users and the author by the exchange of something of worth (usually money, but sometimes goats or sheep or pecan pies...or my favorite, beer.). But I fail to see where it applies when the "product" is distributed freely (as in beer and in freedom).
You knew, getting in, that AOL was a FOR PROFIT COMPANY.
You _VOLUNTEERED_
If you decided that your time was worth 20 bux/month, then that is what it's worth. There's no going back and saying "Oh, I deserve more money, gimme more or I'll SUE." In other words, *you* decided that your hourly wage was 20/time, NOT AOL.
You could have told AOL to stuff it and use your precious time for something more productive, but you didn't. As someone who volunteers here and there, I have _no_ sympathy for your poor choices. You screwed _yourself_, bud. Nobody isted your arm to volunteer. Comparing yourself to someone who is getting slave wages in a third-world country is beyond intellectual dishonesty, it's so indescribably macaronic that for me to find a shred of intelligence, I'd have to consult the ghost of Moe Howard.
Go AWAY. Don't EVER volunteer for ANYTHING ever AGAIN.
You guys are going to scotch it up for anyone who wants an internship in a for-profit company, for people who need to get *experience* so they can get *hired for real*, and for people who do such things for Fun and Self Satisfaction. The latter is what you SHOULD have used as a criteria for volunteering for AOL. If this was not the case, then you need your head examined.
If there's something wrong here, it's your SELF SERVING and SELF RIGHTEOUS attitude. It's not about "fair wages" on your end is it? It's about your "pound of flesh". Fine, then you've just earned the scorn and derision of anyone who's truely done volunteer work.
Unpaid, abused, stuffed into the air conditioner register...
If he gets company perks on top of his college credits, does this mean he has to get minimum wage?
This will absolutely kill internships. Seriously.
If you're a volunteer, it means you GET NO PAY, got it? If you don't friggin' like it, LEAVE. Just because some people might be KIND to you and give you something on the side doesn't mean that you're entitled to the whole schmeer!
Just where people's heads are, I have no idea. Kudos to Steve Case for being smart enough to come up with volunteers...and a BIG whomp on the head to the volunteers who ain't happy with what they got.
Personally, I *like* to volunteer for various things in my life. I did so at a small shop down the road from me to keep my electronics skills up. I got perks. I could use the shop for personal use any time. I had access to all sorts of stuff that I could never afford on my own (scopes and other test equipment) I could come and go as I pleased...but lo, someone quit and I got hired. Now I live by a schedule...bah.
Should I sue for back wages? No friggin' way. I don't want to screw it for someone else.
The AOLers in question are morons and are only looking to fill their own pockets while screwing everyone else. I've always said that the general AOL user is an idiot. Until now, I had no idea how low some of them could sink.
Hey, guys, you _volunteered_. What part of that word did you not understand?
I work in a shop where we do electronics repair on anything from antique radios to the latest stuff from the audiophile designer down the street (he's brought stuff in to us to be modified).
We also build OEM computers.
We have one customer who's kid is always wiping out the entire machine (uggh...). Who's fault is this? Certainly not ours. It's certainly not our fault that we have customers that install every binary program they get via email (gee, how many viruses this time?). Our computers are not lemons and the yes, sometimes bad parts wind up installed, but they're replaced with a smile.
Repeat customers are our lifeline.
If we screwed every tom/dick/jane who came into the shop, we would have closed long ago.
Should there be a law? Maybe... Should it be two years? No. 1 year is sufficient. If it doesn't burn out in 90 days, it's never going to burn out unless hit by a surge. On top of that, it should be a HARDWARE protection *only*. Software is just too flaky to even guarantee 'till next week.
On used PeeCees: We give a 90 day warrantee on used stuff. It's only sane. Most of these people are looking for a 200 dollar PC to "try out the net". To give a 2 year warrantee on used equipment would be sheer lunacy. Yes, we explain to the customer the significance of this. No, they really don't care and they know what they're getting into by spending only 200/250 bux (with monitor).
The important point is that we're honest and fair, unlike listening to a clueless salesdroid at CompUSA or Circuit City...
Cripes, man, I'm from South County and I *MOVED TO* Cranston. Guido City. Trust me on this, Where else can you go to an Italian Catholic feast nearly every weekend, depending on which society is throwing one? I love it here. Every where else seems to be bland in comparison.
I LOVE the Providence Renaissance. Dave Brussat is my GOD (Ever see Mississauga, Ontario? If you're looking for a vat of fermenting Modern Architecture, that's the place to be. It's butt ugly.)
As for the smuggling bit, to you honestly think it ended when we signed up with the other 12 states? How do you think Brown University was funded?? The answer? There are TWO WORDS; they both begin with an S.
I think RI is the only place in the WORLD that has made Politics into the Spectator Sport that It Is. Even CANADIANS cannot outdo us!
Gimme Caesar Cianci over Jean Cretien.
He's an asshole, but he's the best cheerleader Providence has ever had.
You wanna leave? Go to Boston? Seattle? Denver? San Fran? NYC? Toronto? Do you seriously want to spend $500K for a Cape in the BAD part of town?
They're all "better" but try "living" in them (with the exception of Toronto, I would give all of em a "thumbs down" on livability).
[End Flamebait]
Anyway, back to On Topic....
I want to see a MST3K fest at the Avon. Joel And The Robots on the East Side.
"In reality, it [the mouse] does not appear as bulky and cumbersome as the sketches may imply, nor is its 'footprint-like' shape as apparent."
Oh yeah? And my TrackMan Marble FX doesn't look like a duck's head? (if you've got one, look at the side view).
It looks like a foot. Will they be releasing a leftie one though? I know a few people that this is going to piss off if they only release a rightie.
The lack of a mousebutton, however, is a *flaw*. Newbie users don't want to *guess* at how something works. Another flaw I see is that it looks like it makes you point and draw with your FIST, like a gorilla! "Ug!...grunt!....must click on slashdot icon!" Note to ESR: Got another pick for your Jargon File: Gorilla Fist (related to Gorilla Arm) from gripping an Apple mouse too long.
It also looks like someone smuggled out a.dxf file instead of plain.gifs. Note how many views the page gives. Now THAT is inside info.
Besides, who the hell knows. This may be just a trial balloon. There's a LOT of stuff from Apple's Design Group that has NEVER SEEN THE LIGHT OF DAY, except in a certain book I saw last weekend. As far as THAT goes, wow, they've got some original thoughts there.
That's a bogus argument, because pricing is not based upon how much money is lost to piracy...it's based upon the prices of OTHER software packages.
Consider the price scheme of Autocad as compared to Personal Designer (GCD) or Cadra.
No matter how you cut it, they compete against *each other* rather than compete against the *pirates*. MultiKilobuck licenses (without student discounts, I must add) are there to extract the most money from those with the DEEP POCKETS. J Random User does NOT have deep pockets, but it is J Random User that makes a certain package more or less Popular.
If Piracy were to end *tonight*, the price of Autocad would NOT DROP ONE PENNY.
Autocad is a perfect example, the same goes for other commonly-used, but hideously expensive software packages.
Why? Autocad has been the Most Pirated Software Package (TM) bar *none* and it's the _reason_ for its popularity. There are other packages that are _better_ and _faster_ than Autocad, but they're not nearly as widely known through the Samizdat network because _nobody pirates them_. Autodesk *knows this* and its threats of making it impossible to copy are empty.
Goof software houses learned long ago that copy protection is a good way of annoying your legitimate users and killing off your free PR. Those who have forgotten (like Autodesk seems to have) are throwing out the baby with the bathwater *along with the tub*.
For example: J Random Student has all his money tied up in tuition fees to Brown EDU or Northeastern EDU. Where in bloody blazes is he going to get the multi-kilobuck license fee for Autocad? He doesn't. He gets a Gold Copy (TM) and becomes member of the Autodesk Student Borg Association. He then graduates and becomes a member of the Autodesk Professional Borg Association, through which either he (as a Professional Engineer(R)) or his Employer has the budget for a Legitimate Copy(TM) of Autocad.
J Random Listener also downloads MP3s, decides that the music is cool, but the quality of the copy is utter _crap_ and buys a legitimate copy on CD. Radio Stations, up until now, have performed the SAME SERVICE as Napster or Gnutella for *billions* of people.
Such is the way of All Piracy.
So what the hell is this about "lost revenue"?
It's not piracy, it's Advertising.
Shut The Fuck Up, RIAA, MPAA, SPA. You're giving BAD ADVICE to the producers of IP.
For Crying Out Loud. Had anyone at/. actually read the Article? It's not about banning EITHER Napster nor Gnutella. It's about allocating a network's priorities where it should be. A College/University's responsibility is to Educate The Students, not to give free bandwidth to MP3 traders! Fascist admins aside, I tend to agree with the intent of this software. Having a University's bandwidth go to pieces because of Terabytes of MP3's being sucked down a T-1 is *not* supposed to happen.
They even have the right to block port numbers greater than 1000, as was done at one point at the University of Rhode Island, because chats and muds were not considered "Educational". Whether you agree with that or not, it's still the way things are run at Universities because it's thier JOB.
The same can be said for private industrial network hookups to the Net. You're supposed to be working, not surfing for pr0n.
They're not even talking about banning *any* peer-to-peer file sharing. They're trying to give the OWNERS of the PRIVATE NETWORKS control over their bandwidth!
This sorry excuse for a headline at/. is below the level of yellow journalism, it smacks of *trolling*.
Excuse me, but people used to release source code *all the time*. It wasn't just WWIV, it was *everything*. It was that way in the old Big Iron days. It was that way in the days of the early Personal Computers (home computers), with source code written in *books* so you could *type it in* yourself!
ALL of it was protected by copyright!
Every last single character!
As the way it should be!
Only recently *in the last 15 years* has it been the case that programs came in hermetically sealed packages* never to be poked and prodded.
As a hobbyist, I learned alot about programming back in the old days...I *stopped* learning when I couldn't look at any code anymore. I'm one of the ones that left programming when it looked like it was impossible for the *ordinary user* to get a compiler without spending huge bucks and impossible to look at source.
The Open Source movement has been a boon to me, and my computing spirit. Computing is *fun* again.
But back to the point. Just because you release source code to *legitimate customers* doesn't mean you *give up any rights*! You can still sue that punk-ass-mofo that steals your Stacker code and incorprates it into his OS.
Yes, you lose Trade Secrets. Big Hairy Deal. Most of what is written is not Trade Secret, but recycled algorithms because nobody is fond of re-inventing the wheel. What *really* protects your rights is not Trade Secret law, but trademark and copyright law. Just ask RMS amd the RIAA.
Back in the day, when someone wanted the source code to the popular BBS program "WWIV", all one had to do was pay a nominal fee (it wasn't a huge price, compared to a full shrink-wrapped version of Winblows). After that and a few re-writes later, you had yourself a custom BBS that nobody else had.
The owner of WWIV did not lose any rights *at all* when he sold the source code. Woe be to the one who put up an unregisterd BBS on WWIVNET without paying the piper for the source.
Releasing code != loss of IP rights.
Needless to say, WWIV was wildly popular, and spawned a couple of mutant children, Telegard and Renegade.
It is still available, at http://www.wwiv.com
Microsoft's complaint of IP loss is utter bullshit, and anyone with half a clue and a sense of history knows it. Hopefully Judge Jackson and the Justice Department will not fall for their dubious rouse.
There are lies, damn lies, and Steve Ballmer press conferences.
The Acme Corporation stemmed from games the Jones tads played in their juvenile dotage. My sister Dorothy fell in love with the title Acme, finding that it was adopted by many struggling and ebmryonic companies because it put them close to the top of their chosen services in the Yellow Pages. Today of course, it is commonplace to see AAAAA Cleaners and Dryers or AABBBBCCCCDDD Drugs, which sounds like a Porky Pig establishment. But in those simple days, such verbal chicanery was unheard of -- Acme was a word; it was that simple.
So, for many years later, it seemed logical to use Acme in our films, from Acme Dancing Academy for Infant Ducks to the Acme Corporation we put on our door when Chuck Jones, Inc., lived on the twelfth floor at Sunset and Vine, followed by our slogan: "We build fine Acmes."
Long before that, however, the Acme Corporation had become the sole supplier to Wile E. Coyote. Whatever his needs were, the Acme Corporation was there to supply. It was a perfect symbiotic relationship; no money was ever involved. The Acme Corporation supplied the Coyote's requirements: Acme Jet-Propelled Roller Skates, Acme Burmese Tiger Trap, Acme Leg Muscle Vitamins, Acme Female Road Runner Costume, Acme Batman Outfit, etc. All of them *almost* perfect. But surely the jet-propulsion group should have eschewed the use of the Acme Little Giant Bobrick, even at the bargain rate of thirty-five cents.
Here I am, in my apartment, with my TV next to the computer. It's a nice TV, really it is. It's a Sony 25 inch with MTS stereo, the whole nine yards. It's a really nice TV to watch music videos with, especially back when MTV used to actually play music videos. Remember those?
The power switch has been broken on it for 8 months, because I haven't been motivated enough to spend _20_ minutes to actually open the beast up and resolder the switch.
500 channels and nothing on.
*Shrug*, in the next 10 years, the TV networks will be nonexistent as you know them today, simply because it can't compete with the *content* of the 'Net, as the rest of us out here already know.
A good guess as to why Intel is investing in linux can be seen in the painful extension of the x86 architecture long after it should have died a quiet death. Really, folks, it's 20 years old, and there are far better ways to do things (witness Power PC vs x86 benchmarks) than to keep compatibility with the same old opcodes.
The _only_ reason that x86 survives is backward compatibility with *DOS*. With Linux, and other OSes like it, it's much *easier* to port the old OS to the new processor than it is to build a processor that is backward compatible. Note that Linux _already_ runs in the Merced simulator (or whatever they're calling it these days) and Win2k *doesnt*.
Micro~1 has had a vested interest in bullying Intel into keeping the x86 architecture, since they're experts at writing assembler and not at writing portable operating systems. However, Linux presents a way out of this trap, and _that_ is why Intel likes Linux.
They've been complaining about MCI for quite a while now, and viewing the situation from afar, their bitching is justified.
Redundancy and QoS? Cripes, the half-assed (or full assed) ISP I belong to is dual-homed, and probably has no problem keeping things running because of it. MCI seems to have no QoS policy.
I think the Chicago Board of Trade should send a wake-up call to MCI and change providers, possibly to AT&T. THAT would get their attention. If it doesn't, it should signal the other big subscribers to MCI to find other sources of bandwitdth.
Slashdot Mirror
Being a Linux fan, I'll shed half a tear for Corel dumping its distro.
However, being a fan of Good Products(TM), I'll jump for joy. Corel sucked at making a good Linux distro, and in general, I think it was a bad business decision to use wine to port their products to Linux.
Performance of software under wine just sucks, horribly. I'm sorry, but my load average goes through the friggin' roof when I use Corel Photopaint for Linux, which uses the wine libraries. No, I'm not talking about when I actually invoke a process on a picture, I'm talking about when I *move my mouse* within the window (gotta love xosview). This is also *after* I fixed the kernel panic with my stock winelib by downloading and installing a decent snapshot.
I mean...c'mon...it's insane.
Yes, wine works for some things, and it doesn't work for others. I am one of those people that thinks that the wine project should be halted and discarded to force software houses, such as Corel, that wish to have a Linux Marketshare (TM) to actually port to NATIVE CODE.
Speaking as a person who actually *bought the boxed version* of Word Perfect, I want a real office suite written FOR Linux, not some half-baked half-port. Maybe with Corel dumping its Linux distro, they'll actually be able to put the effort into writing a native-code port of its office products. I would shell out good money for such a beast, but never again will I do so if it uses wine for its operation in any way.
At the end of the article, it seems to state that RMS and FSF are interested in a free text/etext archive project.
Uh, folks, shouldn't we be putting our efforts behind an already working project? I'm talking about Project Gutenberg, and the Internet Wiretap. wiretap.area.com has an pretty large archive of books that are no longer under Copyright. As far as I can tell, all of these texts or most of them were typed in by hand by various intrepid keyboarders.
This is nothing new. It's been in existence since the age of gopherspace, in 1991.
Maybe RMS can work with these people instead of duplicating effort?
It makes sense because you can store 300 web addresses (or other bar codes) in it. It's a data collector that you can *take with you* as opposed to *tying you down* to your computer to scan cc bar codes. The cuecat, as it is right now, is an abomination of design. It's downright inconvenient.
However, the Cross version is *completely* cordless, smaller, and looks neat, and actually fits in a shirt pocket without making the user look like a complete moron.
It's simply a more elegant design than the cuecat ever was.
RIers still do that. At the first whisper of a snowstorm that will bring more than an inch or two, everyone runs off to the markets to buy bread, milk, and liquor to stock enough food and booze to last 2 weeks. Oh, and mustn't forget the TP. People will leave work early and pull their kids out of school if there's more than 3 inches on the ground.
Really.
Around here, Art Lake is still God.
And people are supposed to find the sine of an angle *how*?
Log trig tables?
TI-30 type calcs are available for 10 to 15 bux these days. You're telling me that the university has figured out that some people can't afford a calc with basic trig and stat functions?
That regulation at your uni is just _stupid_.
A calculator is a tool, just like a hammer or a screwdriver. Out in the real world, people don't care if your toolbox is full or empty, just that you can do the job. A good calculator is _essential_ these days if your job revolves around any kind of math. Requiring only 4 function calcs for work done at your university is a sign that they suffer from the worst of "ivory tower syndrome" and have no clue as to what's going on in the real world.
You should be learning how to use the latest and greatest tools, because that's what you'll be using once you graduate. If someone told me I'd have to do all my shit in a 4 function calc, I'd whack that person repeatedly over the head with my HP manual until he or she becomes enlightened.
Is that really needed here?
There's a reson why professionals such as surveyors, engineers, and toolmakers (like me) use HP calculators:
They're not brain damaged. Brain damage is a calculator that does "algebraic" data entry, but does postfix notation when using the trig functions (Hello, TI and Casio). Consistency across the user interface, on top of RPN, makes for an extremely powerful and useful machine.
Seriously, once one gets used to RPN (it takes about a week, or a day if you're really pounding the keys), there's no going back to infix math. Everything else just seems *inferior*. It's like the hackers' disdain for "strong typing".
If there's anything confusing about calculators, it's trying to remember how deep the parentheses are nested in that nasty equation. RPN dispenses with parentheses entirely and gives the user a stack to push and pop numbers to and from. Algebraic calculators typically only limit the user to 6 layers of parentheses, but the HP stack is limited only by available memory.
To top it off, HP calculators tend to be so much more durable than the offerings of TI, Casio, and Sharp and the keyboards can't be beat for feel and durability. HP calculators also tend to be logically laid out on the keyboard, and important functions on the graphical calcs are NOT buried under menus (my last Casio graphing calc put the most common trig functions in a menu. Really.), or if they must be menued, are only 2 keypresses away.
I have also heard that Hewlett Packard calcs are "too expensive". I thought this too, until I bought one. HP is competitive with TI in this area. Hewlett Packard's calcs tend to be a bit *less* expensive than the corresponding offerings from TI on the high end (HP49G vs TI-92).
In my not-so-humble opinion, there is no substitute for a good tool, and a Hewlett-Packard calculator is a Good Tool.
Typical non-hp user vs Me.
Non HP user - "Hey, can I borrow your calculator for a sec?"
Me - "Sure" *hands calc*
Non HPer - "WTF!?"
Me - "wossamatta, never seen a real calculator before?"
Non HPer - "Man, that's fucked up. Why don't you use a _normal calculator_?"
Me - "I'm far from normal" *gives evil eye and a mad-scientist chuckle*
Mr. Hewlett, we will miss you dearly.
I didn't realise it, but Konqueror did it for me.
I guess I'll use the tt tag again. Just to piss you off.
As for _your_ post, it was entirely bereft of content. You disagreed with my typing style only. If you had two brain cells to rub together, maybe you'd contribute to the conversation. You don't however, so you posted as an AC. We're the brave little flamemeister, aren't we?
OBTopic: In this state we have a Use Tax, that if you don't pay enough sales tax on out of state purchases, you're supposed to remit the remainder of the hypothetical tax to the great state of Rhode Island.
I wonder if they ever stop cars at the border that have been in New Hampshire, at the state liquor stores there. (no sales tax for the entire state, there)
So technically, internet sales are ALREADY taxed in Rhode Island.
Internet sales are such a microscopic percentage of all retail sales that having states claim that they're losing sales tax is just ludicrous.
What they're doing is killing the commercial side of the net. Really. If there is no advantage of shopping online anymore, why would anyone do it? The lack of tax is nearly eaten up in shipping charges for online deals, and if sales tax is tacked on to this, brick-and-mortar stores will have the upper hand. That's what it's all about, folks. It's not about lost sales tax, it's about the brick-and-mortar stores lobbying their governors.
But whatever the reason, taxing internet sales will kill online shopping. The governors can't figure out that a 7 percent sales tax on 0 dollars is still 0 dollars.
Nobody ever said that you had to be smart to be a politician.
As for me, I'd rather be where we were BEFORE NSFNET disappeared.
I'm a machinist, and as an Expert In The Field, yeah, it would be neat to see a titanium beer can, but....
Titanium is a *bitch* to work with. It does *not* want to be worked. It doesn't like to be turned, milled, or ground, and if you're using a surface grinder and oil as a coolant, keep a fire extinguisher handy.
Or just shut off the oil.
I don't even want to imagine what it's like to weld.
Anyway, I digress...
Yeah, it'd be cool to see titanium as cheap as aluminum. It could be useful where aluminum cannot take the place of steel. It still won't make aluminum any less useful. Aluminum is *much* easier to work with (6061 alloy, anyone?), and therefore, less expensive for a finished product. You'll still see aluminum beer cans and aluminum engine blocks in the future.
pundit predicting the immanent death of USENET.
It also seems to me that he has yet to read anything by Sheri Turkel. He obviously fell asleep during his Anthropology and Sociology classes. What, IRC, MOOs, MUDs and other forms of group communication are not subject to the same rules of "in real life" societies?
As for the Internet being "high priced real-estate", I can whip together a 486 box, with Windows 95, a cheap-ass modem, and Netzero for under 100 bux, including monitor.
A friend of mine has 5 kids, one income (can you say tight wallet?) and *he's* on AOL, a PAY service, yet. Please. Being connected has nothing to do with money, and has everything to do with how resourceful you can be.
Indeed, this author of this article is a guy who is a doctoral candidate. He hasn't been out of school since the stone age and probably doesn't know people can connect without ethernet.
This isn't even news anymore. The digital divide is imaginary. The only thing keeping people off the net is that they decided to pay for cable TV instead, fed to a giant 37 inch glass-tubed TV.
QA is a good thing, and should be SOP for anything that someone takes pride in...
However, reading a standard shrinkwrap license such as Microsoft's, the *end user* is ultimately left swinging in the wind as regards to the quality of the software. If you buy a copy of WindowsblowME and it doesn't work with your equipment, you're screwed out of however much you paid for it because the EULA nullifies any implied warrantees of fitness of use or merchantablity.
Usually, handing money over for a product implies some sort of merchantablity and fitness of use for simple things like garden trowels. Buy a garden trowel at your local garden center, and if it breaks under normal use, you can (usually) either get a new one gratis or your money back from the store where you got it.
Put simply, most commercial software doesn't even meet the standards of a garden trowel in merchantablity and fitness of use.
Now enter OSS. It's free as in freedom, but it's also free as in beer. No money changes hands for it. There is absolutely no implied merchantability or fitness of use. It's not buyer-beware because nobody is _buying_ anything. We are now supposed to hold _this_ to higher quality than Microsoft software as a _standard_? And back it up? With what? How is the author responsible for the quality of the software? I see no way that an author can be bound by a QA program if he/she is not charging money for the product. There's no implied contract betweent the user and the author.
IOW, if we want software authors who write OSS to be bound to some sort of QA program, it will have a chilling effect on someone who wants to scratch an itch and release some code, however bug-ridden it may or may not be. Mpst decent OSS projects start out really ragged around the edges. Putting an arbitrary QA program on software like this is just _nuts_.
Someone up there said there IS a quality assurance program already in existence. It's called Peer Review. I agree with this. OSS has more in common with scientific research than it does with manufacturing. For example: The funk-soulbrother-programmer sez "check out this proggy I wrote" and many people do, sending him feedback on bugs and whatnot. If he takes pride in his work, and pays attention to the feedback, the next release is better, and so-on. But this is _entirely_ up to the author! If he decides he wants to just cast-adrift the software, he should be free to do so, and not be held to an arbitrary QA standard.
QA is good when there's an actual implied agreement between the end-users and the author by the exchange of something of worth (usually money, but sometimes goats or sheep or pecan pies...or my favorite, beer.). But I fail to see where it applies when the "product" is distributed freely (as in beer and in freedom).
You knew, getting in, that AOL was a FOR PROFIT COMPANY.
You _VOLUNTEERED_
If you decided that your time was worth 20 bux/month, then that is what it's worth. There's no going back and saying "Oh, I deserve more money, gimme more or I'll SUE." In other words, *you* decided that your hourly wage was 20/time, NOT AOL.
You could have told AOL to stuff it and use your precious time for something more productive, but you didn't. As someone who volunteers here and there, I have _no_ sympathy for your poor choices. You screwed _yourself_, bud. Nobody isted your arm to volunteer. Comparing yourself to someone who is getting slave wages in a third-world country is beyond intellectual dishonesty, it's so indescribably macaronic that for me to find a shred of intelligence, I'd have to consult the ghost of Moe Howard.
Go AWAY. Don't EVER volunteer for ANYTHING ever AGAIN.
You guys are going to scotch it up for anyone who wants an internship in a for-profit company, for people who need to get *experience* so they can get *hired for real*, and for people who do such things for Fun and Self Satisfaction. The latter is what you SHOULD have used as a criteria for volunteering for AOL. If this was not the case, then you need your head examined.
If there's something wrong here, it's your SELF SERVING and SELF RIGHTEOUS attitude. It's not about "fair wages" on your end is it? It's about your "pound of flesh". Fine, then you've just earned the scorn and derision of anyone who's truely done volunteer work.
Consider your standard intern:
Unpaid, abused, stuffed into the air conditioner register...
If he gets company perks on top of his college credits, does this mean he has to get minimum wage?
This will absolutely kill internships. Seriously.
If you're a volunteer, it means you GET NO PAY, got it? If you don't friggin' like it, LEAVE. Just because some people might be KIND to you and give you something on the side doesn't mean that you're entitled to the whole schmeer!
Just where people's heads are, I have no idea. Kudos to Steve Case for being smart enough to come up with volunteers...and a BIG whomp on the head to the volunteers who ain't happy with what they got.
Personally, I *like* to volunteer for various things in my life. I did so at a small shop down the road from me to keep my electronics skills up. I got perks. I could use the shop for personal use any time. I had access to all sorts of stuff that I could never afford on my own (scopes and other test equipment) I could come and go as I pleased...but lo, someone quit and I got hired. Now I live by a schedule...bah.
Should I sue for back wages? No friggin' way. I don't want to screw it for someone else.
The AOLers in question are morons and are only looking to fill their own pockets while screwing everyone else. I've always said that the general AOL user is an idiot. Until now, I had no idea how low some of them could sink.
Hey, guys, you _volunteered_. What part of that word did you not understand?
I work in a shop where we do electronics repair on anything from antique radios to the latest stuff from the audiophile designer down the street (he's brought stuff in to us to be modified).
We also build OEM computers.
We have one customer who's kid is always wiping out the entire machine (uggh...). Who's fault is this? Certainly not ours. It's certainly not our fault that we have customers that install every binary program they get via email (gee, how many viruses this time?). Our computers are not lemons and the yes, sometimes bad parts wind up installed, but they're replaced with a smile.
Repeat customers are our lifeline.
If we screwed every tom/dick/jane who came into the shop, we would have closed long ago.
Should there be a law? Maybe... Should it be two years? No. 1 year is sufficient. If it doesn't burn out in 90 days, it's never going to burn out unless hit by a surge. On top of that, it should be a HARDWARE protection *only*. Software is just too flaky to even guarantee 'till next week.
On used PeeCees: We give a 90 day warrantee on used stuff. It's only sane. Most of these people are looking for a 200 dollar PC to "try out the net". To give a 2 year warrantee on used equipment would be sheer lunacy. Yes, we explain to the customer the significance of this. No, they really don't care and they know what they're getting into by spending only 200/250 bux (with monitor).
The important point is that we're honest and fair, unlike listening to a clueless salesdroid at CompUSA or Circuit City...
[Start flamebait]
Cripes, man, I'm from South County and I *MOVED TO* Cranston. Guido City. Trust me on this, Where else can you go to an Italian Catholic feast nearly every weekend, depending on which society is throwing one? I love it here. Every where else seems to be bland in comparison.
I LOVE the Providence Renaissance. Dave Brussat is my GOD (Ever see Mississauga, Ontario? If you're looking for a vat of fermenting Modern Architecture, that's the place to be. It's butt ugly.)
As for the smuggling bit, to you honestly think it ended when we signed up with the other 12 states? How do you think Brown University was funded?? The answer? There are TWO WORDS; they both begin with an S.
I think RI is the only place in the WORLD that has made Politics into the Spectator Sport that It Is. Even CANADIANS cannot outdo us!
Gimme Caesar Cianci over Jean Cretien.
He's an asshole, but he's the best cheerleader Providence has ever had.
You wanna leave? Go to Boston? Seattle? Denver? San Fran? NYC? Toronto? Do you seriously want to spend $500K for a Cape in the BAD part of town?
They're all "better" but try "living" in them (with the exception of Toronto, I would give all of em a "thumbs down" on livability).
[End Flamebait]
Anyway, back to On Topic....
I want to see a MST3K fest at the Avon. Joel And The Robots on the East Side.
"In reality, it [the mouse] does not appear as bulky and cumbersome as the sketches may imply, nor is its 'footprint-like' shape as apparent."
.dxf file instead of plain .gifs. Note how many views the page gives. Now THAT is inside info.
Oh yeah? And my TrackMan Marble FX doesn't look like a duck's head? (if you've got one, look at the side view).
It looks like a foot. Will they be releasing a leftie one though? I know a few people that this is going to piss off if they only release a rightie.
The lack of a mousebutton, however, is a *flaw*. Newbie users don't want to *guess* at how something works. Another flaw I see is that it looks like it makes you point and draw with your FIST, like a gorilla! "Ug!...grunt!....must click on slashdot icon!" Note to ESR: Got another pick for your Jargon File: Gorilla Fist (related to Gorilla Arm) from gripping an Apple mouse too long.
It also looks like someone smuggled out a
Besides, who the hell knows. This may be just a trial balloon. There's a LOT of stuff from Apple's Design Group that has NEVER SEEN THE LIGHT OF DAY, except in a certain book I saw last weekend. As far as THAT goes, wow, they've got some original thoughts there.
That's a bogus argument, because pricing is not based upon how much money is lost to piracy...it's based upon the prices of OTHER software packages.
Consider the price scheme of Autocad as compared to Personal Designer (GCD) or Cadra.
No matter how you cut it, they compete against *each other* rather than compete against the *pirates*. MultiKilobuck licenses (without student discounts, I must add) are there to extract the most money from those with the DEEP POCKETS. J Random User does NOT have deep pockets, but it is J Random User that makes a certain package more or less Popular.
If Piracy were to end *tonight*, the price of Autocad would NOT DROP ONE PENNY.
Piracy==Free Advertising.
Autocad is a perfect example, the same goes for other commonly-used, but hideously expensive software packages.
Why? Autocad has been the Most Pirated Software Package (TM) bar *none* and it's the _reason_ for its popularity. There are other packages that are _better_ and _faster_ than Autocad, but they're not nearly as widely known through the Samizdat network because _nobody pirates them_. Autodesk *knows this* and its threats of making it impossible to copy are empty.
Goof software houses learned long ago that copy protection is a good way of annoying your legitimate users and killing off your free PR. Those who have forgotten (like Autodesk seems to have) are throwing out the baby with the bathwater *along with the tub*.
For example: J Random Student has all his money tied up in tuition fees to Brown EDU or Northeastern EDU. Where in bloody blazes is he going to get the multi-kilobuck license fee for Autocad? He doesn't. He gets a Gold Copy (TM) and becomes member of the Autodesk Student Borg Association. He then graduates and becomes a member of the Autodesk Professional Borg Association, through which either he (as a Professional Engineer(R)) or his Employer has the budget for a Legitimate Copy(TM) of Autocad.
J Random Listener also downloads MP3s, decides that the music is cool, but the quality of the copy is utter _crap_ and buys a legitimate copy on CD. Radio Stations, up until now, have performed the SAME SERVICE as Napster or Gnutella for *billions* of people.
Such is the way of All Piracy.
So what the hell is this about "lost revenue"?
It's not piracy, it's Advertising.
Shut The Fuck Up, RIAA, MPAA, SPA. You're giving BAD ADVICE to the producers of IP.
For Crying Out Loud. Had anyone at /. actually read the Article? It's not about banning EITHER Napster nor Gnutella. It's about allocating a network's priorities where it should be. A College/University's responsibility is to Educate The Students, not to give free bandwidth to MP3 traders! Fascist admins aside, I tend to agree with the intent of this software. Having a University's bandwidth go to pieces because of Terabytes of MP3's being sucked down a T-1 is *not* supposed to happen.
/. is below the level of yellow journalism, it smacks of *trolling*.
They even have the right to block port numbers greater than 1000, as was done at one point at the University of Rhode Island, because chats and muds were not considered "Educational". Whether you agree with that or not, it's still the way things are run at Universities because it's thier JOB.
The same can be said for private industrial network hookups to the Net. You're supposed to be working, not surfing for pr0n.
They're not even talking about banning *any* peer-to-peer file sharing. They're trying to give the OWNERS of the PRIVATE NETWORKS control over their bandwidth!
This sorry excuse for a headline at
Anonymous coward, indeed.
*I* live in a fairy world?
Excuse me, but people used to release source code *all the time*. It wasn't just WWIV, it was *everything*. It was that way in the old Big Iron days. It was that way in the days of the early Personal Computers (home computers), with source code written in *books* so you could *type it in* yourself!
ALL of it was protected by copyright!
Every last single character!
As the way it should be!
Only recently *in the last 15 years* has it been the case that programs came in hermetically sealed packages* never to be poked and prodded.
As a hobbyist, I learned alot about programming back in the old days...I *stopped* learning when I couldn't look at any code anymore. I'm one of the ones that left programming when it looked like it was impossible for the *ordinary user* to get a compiler without spending huge bucks and impossible to look at source.
The Open Source movement has been a boon to me, and my computing spirit. Computing is *fun* again.
But back to the point. Just because you release source code to *legitimate customers* doesn't mean you *give up any rights*! You can still sue that punk-ass-mofo that steals your Stacker code and incorprates it into his OS.
Yes, you lose Trade Secrets. Big Hairy Deal. Most of what is written is not Trade Secret, but recycled algorithms because nobody is fond of re-inventing the wheel. What *really* protects your rights is not Trade Secret law, but trademark and copyright law. Just ask RMS amd the RIAA.
Back in the day....
Back in the day, when someone wanted the source code to the popular BBS program "WWIV", all one had to do was pay a nominal fee (it wasn't a huge price, compared to a full shrink-wrapped version of Winblows). After that and a few re-writes later, you had yourself a custom BBS that nobody else had.
The owner of WWIV did not lose any rights *at all* when he sold the source code. Woe be to the one who put up an unregisterd BBS on WWIVNET without paying the piper for the source.
Releasing code != loss of IP rights.
Needless to say, WWIV was wildly popular, and spawned a couple of mutant children, Telegard and Renegade.
It is still available, at http://www.wwiv.com
Microsoft's complaint of IP loss is utter bullshit, and anyone with half a clue and a sense of history knows it. Hopefully Judge Jackson and the Justice Department will not fall for their dubious rouse.
There are lies, damn lies, and Steve Ballmer press conferences.
From "Chuck Amuck" by Chuck Jones:
The Acme Corporation stemmed from games the Jones tads played in their juvenile dotage. My sister Dorothy fell in love with the title Acme, finding that it was adopted by many struggling and ebmryonic companies because it put them close to the top of their chosen services in the Yellow Pages. Today of course, it is commonplace to see AAAAA Cleaners and Dryers or AABBBBCCCCDDD Drugs, which sounds like a Porky Pig establishment. But in those simple days, such verbal chicanery was unheard of -- Acme was a word; it was that simple.
So, for many years later, it seemed logical to use Acme in our films, from Acme Dancing Academy for Infant Ducks to the Acme Corporation we put on our door when Chuck Jones, Inc., lived on the twelfth floor at Sunset and Vine, followed by our slogan: "We build fine Acmes."
Long before that, however, the Acme Corporation had become the sole supplier to Wile E. Coyote. Whatever his needs were, the Acme Corporation was there to supply. It was a perfect symbiotic relationship; no money was ever involved. The Acme Corporation supplied the Coyote's requirements: Acme Jet-Propelled Roller Skates, Acme Burmese Tiger Trap, Acme Leg Muscle Vitamins, Acme Female Road Runner Costume, Acme Batman Outfit, etc. All of them *almost* perfect. But surely the jet-propulsion group should have eschewed the use of the Acme Little Giant Bobrick, even at the bargain rate of thirty-five cents.
___________________________________
Here I am, in my apartment, with my TV next to the computer. It's a nice TV, really it is. It's a Sony 25 inch with MTS stereo, the whole nine yards. It's a really nice TV to watch music videos with, especially back when MTV used to actually play music videos. Remember those?
The power switch has been broken on it for 8 months, because I haven't been motivated enough to spend _20_ minutes to actually open the beast up and resolder the switch.
500 channels and nothing on.
*Shrug*, in the next 10 years, the TV networks will be nonexistent as you know them today, simply because it can't compete with the *content* of the 'Net, as the rest of us out here already know.
For sale, cheap, one Sony 25 inch Trinitron.
A good guess as to why Intel is investing in linux can be seen in the painful extension of the x86 architecture long after it should have died a quiet death. Really, folks, it's 20 years old, and there are far better ways to do things (witness Power PC vs x86 benchmarks) than to keep compatibility with the same old opcodes.
The _only_ reason that x86 survives is backward compatibility with *DOS*. With Linux, and other OSes like it, it's much *easier* to port the old OS to the new processor than it is to build a processor that is backward compatible. Note that Linux _already_ runs in the Merced simulator (or whatever they're calling it these days) and Win2k *doesnt*.
Micro~1 has had a vested interest in bullying Intel into keeping the x86 architecture, since they're experts at writing assembler and not at writing portable operating systems. However, Linux presents a way out of this trap, and _that_ is why Intel likes Linux.
They've been complaining about MCI for quite a while now, and viewing the situation from afar, their bitching is justified.
Redundancy and QoS? Cripes, the half-assed (or full assed) ISP I belong to is dual-homed, and probably has no problem keeping things running because of it. MCI seems to have no QoS policy.
I think the Chicago Board of Trade should send a wake-up call to MCI and change providers, possibly to AT&T. THAT would get their attention. If it doesn't, it should signal the other big subscribers to MCI to find other sources of bandwitdth.