I've never been a developer, but I've been a tester, and this is the way we used to estimate how long a testing job would take. Basically, we would estimate how long it would take us to do the job if everyone left us the hell alone and we were able to concentrate entirely on that job. Then, we'd quadruple it because, inevitably, something would come up and we'd have to deal with some other random thing on some completely different application.
Of course, that's for apps we're already somewhat familiar with. If we have to also get familiar with the app, we'd factor in some "read the docs and play with the app to see how it REALLY works" time as well. That'd add oh, about 25% to the base estimate (before quadrupling).
We generally got things done within our stated timeframes. Those few times we finished way ahead of schedule made us look like miracle workers.;) But, really, it all comes down to the psychology of dealing with management/customers. You want to underpromise and overdeliver.
A MUD I have played and occasionally still play (http://www.vikingmud.org/) had, at one time, something called "white powder" which you could "sniff" and become temporarily immortal. Of course, it only lasted about 2 minutes and drained your Con if you didn't take more of it (there were even other "withdrawal" symptoms, too, I think.)
I think the only time anyone ever used it (after finding out what it did) was in tanking the Demon Highlord. Basically, the Demon Highlord was the most badass monster on the MUD for some time, and was generally fought by teams of at least 3-4 players. The stuff he had was more or less the best stuff on the MUD.
Now, due to nearly 20 years of inflation, it's possible for a single player to successfully take out the Demon Highlord, but few do, because his treasure is no longer the best stuff around. But, once in a while, someone gets bored and gets together a few other bored someones to go beat him up.
Two words: Graduate student.
I'm looking at 6 years of indentured servitude all for that lovely piece of paper that says "Doctor of Philosophy" on it. At least I'm not paying for it.
The only way I see that the submitter could run into legal trouble doing this is if he wanted to relicence the code. Since he does not hold the copyright on the other project's changes, and, given the attitude of the other project's leader, it seems unlikely that he would cooperate in a relicencing scheme, there would be a nice legal mess if someone came up with a brand new licence that was, in some way, better for the project than the GPL (yes, heresy, I know, but just for the sake of argument...;) )
Practically speaking, though, this is a problem that a lot of OSS projects have, since most do not require that the author of a patch assign copyright to the project leader or other designated representative. It would make things difficult by opening lots of people up to liability if someone decided to sue the project, for example.
Um, read the article. And the license. All you did was read the Slashdot headline.
Oh? I suppose that's the reason the grandparent post is modded informative... Everybody knows mods don't mod people informative who actually RTFA. (Hint: mods aren't always on crack... they have to come down some time.)
If you read the license, you would've seen this:
[...]
In other words, "We don't own or have any legal rights over any of this stuff. We're, instead, pointing you to the public domain."
I would have also seen how 3.1 and 3.2 of the licence begin with "To the extent Microsoft has " [patent|copyright] claims. I am beginning to think you didn't even read my post, much less the licence. I would say you must be new here, but that seems kind of typical in MSFT vs FOSS type topics.
The language of the licence tries its best to retain all rights MSFT currently may have to the protocols in question. Whether it is a valid licence or not is a question for an IP lawyer, which I am not.
Also, I never said these licences were a bad thing in a case where MSFT does have actual valid claims. Something like this would be the only way you're ever going to licence a proprietary protocol like SMB from MSFT. One can certainly question whether it's a good thing that MSFT can even licence protocols in this manner at all, but that is dealing with the broader issue of whether software patents are a good thing, and does not pertain at all to TFA.
See, this is what the problem is all about. The idea behind this sentence fragment is just wrong. This is one reason the dark ages are called dark (ie: no progress).
It's an entirely separate issue whether software ought to be covered under patents or not. This licensing scheme is either meaningless (if MSFT does not have rights to the protocol in question), or well within their rights (if they do). And, it is most definitely not MSFT "licencing the internet," as those who did not RTFA are crowing against.
Keep in mind that even though the core protocols haven't changed that much, actual TCP/IP deployments have drastically changed since the early 80s. Efficient packet forwarding algorithms (which are necessary in Gigabit networks and beyond) are certainly subject to patents today.
This would still be true, even if MSFT did not offer to licence these protocols! Furthermore, by not having a licence to a protocol which MSFT has legitimate patent claims on, you effectively deny yourself the ability to use that protocol. That is, unless the idea of a horde of MSFT lawyers beating down your door looking to extract licencing fees you could have avoided by licencing the protocol for free.
I'm not saying anybody should licence TCP/IP from MSFT. Far from it. MSFT clearly has no legitimate claims on ipv4, because the patents would have expired by now anyway, as TFA very clearly states. (Well, that, and MS Windows' ip stack was basically ripped out of BSD.)
If your lawyers have reviewed any possible claims MSFT has on a given protocol and determine that there are no valid ones, then there is no reason to licence it from MSFT at all. If MSFT does have a valid claim, then this licence is probably the best you're going to get out of them for free. If you want more, you'll have to licence it the normal way, which involves spending some dough.
SMB is entirely different from the basic protocols of the internet. Samba was not in the best legal situation to begin with, before MSFT came out with this licencing scheme. You can hardly equate SMB with TCP/IP.
This FAQ entry referenced by TFA makes it pretty clear that MSFT is not claiming ownership of anything with this:
Published Protocols And Royalty-Free License FAQ
Q. When I sign a royalty-free agreement for these protocols, what am I licensing?
A. The list of protocols under this license includes protocols for which documentation has been published, and that Microsoft has implemented in Windows client operating systems to interoperate with Windows server operating systems (up to and including Windows Server 2003). However, just because a protocol appears on the list does not mean that Microsoft is the owner or sole owner of rights in that protocol or its documentation. What the royalty-free license does is ensure that a license is available from Microsoft under whatever rights it may have in the published documentation and/or protocols on the list.
MSFT is not, as TFA summary indicates, "licencing the internet," in any meaningful way. That would imply that MSFT owns or controls what it is licencing. Further, TFA itself states that "a significant number of protocols date from the early 1980's," so, "here is no reason to suspect that Microsoft has any patent rights
to these early protocols (such as the TCP/IP v4 core protocols). Further, in the unlikely event that applicable patents may be discovered, they would have likely expired at this point."
This is clearly, yet again, a story that is more about MSFT bashing than about anything real.
I wonder if this would work better while wearing a tinfoil hat...
Re:Americans talk about freedom
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
That's funny because I am going through psychiatric treatment right now, exactly because I hear voices in my head... Actually, that's not funny at all. (Posting as AC for obvious reasons.)
Interesting you should mention this. It's a real shame how we treat people in this country with mental disabilities. Mental disabilities are theoretically covered by the ADA. However, the average person has no problem dismissing, say, bipolar disorder or attention deficit disorder as "all in their head." That same person probably wouldn't make fun of someone in a wheelchair or who uses a cane to walk, though.
Hell, I have a heart condition and asthma, and nobody ever questions me about it or disbelieves me or thinks what I have aren't "real" conditions. Yet these same people will not believe me when I say I have attention deficit disorder.
Getting back on topic, somewhat, I wonder how the good old US of A would rank in other freedoms, like, freedom of assembly, of religion, and from unreasonable search and seizure, just to choose a few of the relatively uncontroversial [*] "guarantees" in our Constitution.
My guess is not very high.
[*] By this I mean I don't want to get into a debate on the second amendment "right to bear arms."
Note that even with "only" 20K genes, this still gives us nearly 400M subsets of 2 individual genes to ponder. The complexity of the human organism is not surprising. In fact, it would be surprising if it were not so complex.
Joe User is in real trouble when something does break, if he does not understand [insert OS here]. Inevitably, by Murphy's Law, something will break. This is true whether Joe runs Linux or Windows.
As for usability, note that 33 of those screenshots appear to be from the installer, which looks like it could have been taken from Debian (not sure on this). The remaining 109 appear to be from GNOME. Those could be duplicated on any Linux system having GNOME installed, including mine.
I think what you are looking for with respect to usability standards is available here: http://www.freedesktop.org/.
If you want to use it "as a replacement for WinXP," then I need to ask: What do you use WinXP for?
If it's games, forget it. Stick with XP.
If it's office-type apps, then any distro really will do. If you want something that will install and "just work," then I'd use something like Mandrake or Fedora Core. If you want to get really frustrated doing your first install, but come out of it having learned something, then Gentoo or Linux From Scratch are good choices.
(This isn't to imply that other distros aren't good; these are just the ones that came to mind immediately.)
It looks like this desktop is nothing more than KDE modified to look even more like Windows than it already does. The question is, do we need this?
Okay, we, the readers of/. probably do not, but does this type of Windows-alike desktop environment really add anything to Linux? In my opinion, it does not. Windows users will find that Linux is a worse Windows than Linux, and experienced Linux users can install their own DE that is customized to their needs, either by tweaking KDE/Gnome, or installing a more minimal environment like Fluxbox, XFCE, FVWM, and adding apps as needed. This distro seems to target Linux noobs whose only previous OS experience is Windows, yet in a way that encourages them not to learn about Linux! I had that same experience with Redhat when I installed it, and I don't think it benefitted me in the least.
I admit, the Xandros File Manager looks pretty slick. But, a file manager does not a distro make. The summary notes that Xandros lets other distros "get the bugs out" first, making for a quality, bug-free release. If I wanted that, I'd just run Debian. (Xandros is based on Debian Sarge.)
I might download their file manager to check it out, but I'm not going to download the whole distro. It's just not worth it to me.
disclaimer: I run an ~x86 gentoo system here at home and love it.
George Lucas talks about this on the extras DVD. He says it was primarily to make them the movies they were supposed to be. So, I suppose you could say, it's for the art.
When I was looking for a PDA and GPS, I chose the Garmin iQue over the Sharp Zaurus + compact flash GPS for this very reason. I don't use it on a boat (it's not even waterproof), but it is very important to me that my GPS work well.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, that's for apps we're already somewhat familiar with. If we have to also get familiar with the app, we'd factor in some "read the docs and play with the app to see how it REALLY works" time as well. That'd add oh, about 25% to the base estimate (before quadrupling).
We generally got things done within our stated timeframes. Those few times we finished way ahead of schedule made us look like miracle workers. ;) But, really, it all comes down to the psychology of dealing with management/customers. You want to underpromise and overdeliver.
I think the only time anyone ever used it (after finding out what it did) was in tanking the Demon Highlord. Basically, the Demon Highlord was the most badass monster on the MUD for some time, and was generally fought by teams of at least 3-4 players. The stuff he had was more or less the best stuff on the MUD.
Now, due to nearly 20 years of inflation, it's possible for a single player to successfully take out the Demon Highlord, but few do, because his treasure is no longer the best stuff around. But, once in a while, someone gets bored and gets together a few other bored someones to go beat him up.
Good times... :)
Two words: Graduate student. I'm looking at 6 years of indentured servitude all for that lovely piece of paper that says "Doctor of Philosophy" on it. At least I'm not paying for it.
Practically speaking, though, this is a problem that a lot of OSS projects have, since most do not require that the author of a patch assign copyright to the project leader or other designated representative. It would make things difficult by opening lots of people up to liability if someone decided to sue the project, for example.
MHO only, of course, IANAL.
I, for one, welcome our new rich, buggy overloads.
Oh? I suppose that's the reason the grandparent post is modded informative... Everybody knows mods don't mod people informative who actually RTFA. (Hint: mods aren't always on crack... they have to come down some time.)
I would have also seen how 3.1 and 3.2 of the licence begin with "To the extent Microsoft has " [patent|copyright] claims. I am beginning to think you didn't even read my post, much less the licence. I would say you must be new here, but that seems kind of typical in MSFT vs FOSS type topics.
The language of the licence tries its best to retain all rights MSFT currently may have to the protocols in question. Whether it is a valid licence or not is a question for an IP lawyer, which I am not.
Also, I never said these licences were a bad thing in a case where MSFT does have actual valid claims. Something like this would be the only way you're ever going to licence a proprietary protocol like SMB from MSFT. One can certainly question whether it's a good thing that MSFT can even licence protocols in this manner at all, but that is dealing with the broader issue of whether software patents are a good thing, and does not pertain at all to TFA.
I'm not saying anybody should licence TCP/IP from MSFT. Far from it. MSFT clearly has no legitimate claims on ipv4, because the patents would have expired by now anyway, as TFA very clearly states. (Well, that, and MS Windows' ip stack was basically ripped out of BSD.)
If your lawyers have reviewed any possible claims MSFT has on a given protocol and determine that there are no valid ones, then there is no reason to licence it from MSFT at all. If MSFT does have a valid claim, then this licence is probably the best you're going to get out of them for free. If you want more, you'll have to licence it the normal way, which involves spending some dough.
Maybe you should ask them?
Please.
SMB is entirely different from the basic protocols of the internet. Samba was not in the best legal situation to begin with, before MSFT came out with this licencing scheme. You can hardly equate SMB with TCP/IP.
This is clearly, yet again, a story that is more about MSFT bashing than about anything real.
I wonder if this would work better while wearing a tinfoil hat...
Interesting you should mention this. It's a real shame how we treat people in this country with mental disabilities. Mental disabilities are theoretically covered by the ADA. However, the average person has no problem dismissing, say, bipolar disorder or attention deficit disorder as "all in their head." That same person probably wouldn't make fun of someone in a wheelchair or who uses a cane to walk, though.
Hell, I have a heart condition and asthma, and nobody ever questions me about it or disbelieves me or thinks what I have aren't "real" conditions. Yet these same people will not believe me when I say I have attention deficit disorder.
Getting back on topic, somewhat, I wonder how the good old US of A would rank in other freedoms, like, freedom of assembly, of religion, and from unreasonable search and seizure, just to choose a few of the relatively uncontroversial [*] "guarantees" in our Constitution.
My guess is not very high.
[*] By this I mean I don't want to get into a debate on the second amendment "right to bear arms."
Like what? You mean the whole universe or just the Sun?
Note that even with "only" 20K genes, this still gives us nearly 400M subsets of 2 individual genes to ponder. The complexity of the human organism is not surprising. In fact, it would be surprising if it were not so complex.
As for usability, note that 33 of those screenshots appear to be from the installer, which looks like it could have been taken from Debian (not sure on this). The remaining 109 appear to be from GNOME. Those could be duplicated on any Linux system having GNOME installed, including mine.
I think what you are looking for with respect to usability standards is available here: http://www.freedesktop.org/.
If it's games, forget it. Stick with XP.
If it's office-type apps, then any distro really will do. If you want something that will install and "just work," then I'd use something like Mandrake or Fedora Core. If you want to get really frustrated doing your first install, but come out of it having learned something, then Gentoo or Linux From Scratch are good choices.
(This isn't to imply that other distros aren't good; these are just the ones that came to mind immediately.)
Whoops. Of course, that should be "Windows users will find that Linux is a worse Windows than Windows."
Okay, we, the readers of /. probably do not, but does this type of Windows-alike desktop environment really add anything to Linux? In my opinion, it does not. Windows users will find that Linux is a worse Windows than Linux, and experienced Linux users can install their own DE that is customized to their needs, either by tweaking KDE/Gnome, or installing a more minimal environment like Fluxbox, XFCE, FVWM, and adding apps as needed. This distro seems to target Linux noobs whose only previous OS experience is Windows, yet in a way that encourages them not to learn about Linux! I had that same experience with Redhat when I installed it, and I don't think it benefitted me in the least.
I admit, the Xandros File Manager looks pretty slick. But, a file manager does not a distro make. The summary notes that Xandros lets other distros "get the bugs out" first, making for a quality, bug-free release. If I wanted that, I'd just run Debian. (Xandros is based on Debian Sarge.)
I might download their file manager to check it out, but I'm not going to download the whole distro. It's just not worth it to me.
disclaimer: I run an ~x86 gentoo system here at home and love it.
Did anyone notice the irony in the fact that the email address for submissions is dyebold@gmail.com? LOL.
George Lucas talks about this on the extras DVD. He says it was primarily to make them the movies they were supposed to be. So, I suppose you could say, it's for the art.
It can. The fundamental work on this was done by John Nash. The "optimal" solution is called the Nash equilibrium.
When I was looking for a PDA and GPS, I chose the Garmin iQue over the Sharp Zaurus + compact flash GPS for this very reason. I don't use it on a boat (it's not even waterproof), but it is very important to me that my GPS work well.
How can search as a concept become better integrated into the desktop? Are projects like dashboard the next killer app?