Actually, let's be totally fair here. Yes, having everyone in the world use the same measurement system would make a lot of things easier.
Yes, let's do be fair. Every country in the world except for Burma, the US, and Liberia currently use the metric system as their primary method of measurement.
Having everyone in the world speak the same language would make things even easier -- indeed the benefits of a common language are far greater than the benefits of a common measuring system.
Especially if 94 percent of the world already spoke the same language it would make sense for the other 6 percent to learn it too. 6% being the 350 million people in USA, Burma, and Liberia.
It allows IT departments to specifically set aside 1 (or more) days a month on a regular schedule to test the updates before rolling them out to the client computers.
If the updates come out on a random schedule, as done before, you cannot plan ahead for the testing required to ensure the updates don't break functionality.
Nonsense. Companies are free to test and upgrade on a given day no matter when updates come out. I test patches and update my Linux servers once a month even though patches for said machines may come out at any point in time between my patch days. I make exceptions to this only for patches that we deem critical enough to apply outside of our schedule.
You don't see the little thumbs up/down beside each story?
Nope. Here's what I see. When I click on a story title it opens up and displays the summary and below it says "Coming soon - Read More & Discuss..." in light grey. The title appears to be the only clickable thing.
Is the Firehose only for long time readers or something?
See that "Firehose" link at the top of your browser? Click it.
What's that supposed to do? You can't vote on stories in the firehose like you can on digg. There aren't even any instructions on the firehose page. All you can do is see upcoming stories.
Yes, I understand what you are saying. I was pointing out that this fact was not clear in your blog post. Stalwart means robust, strong, well built. Your blog post characterized that you were upset that they reviewed such stalwart programs which left me thinking, "as opposed to what?" I was left with the impression that the newer versions that you listed were not as well built as the one they reviewed leaving me to ask myself, "why would I want to use a less stable newer version?" If your blog post were as clear as your response to me then I would not have misunderstood. That is all I meant.
couldn't they have reviewed newer versions of the tools they covered?
Regarding your blog post, you almost sound like you're complaining that they are using stalwart versions of the software that they reviewed. I fail to see what the problem is with that. Would you rather that they have reviewed software that was buggy and barely functional? The rest of your blog posting gives me this impression leading me to believe that you think stalwart means old. It doesn't.
So, my original question: We're happy because this primarily means not paying for windows when we're not using it, right? What other benefits are there?
To me the benefit is knowing that Linux will support the hardware. Even if I want to run a different distro I can boot up, run lsmod, and know what drivers are used. I can then reinstall with whatever distro I want. That's a big deal (to me at least) and means that when I look at replacing my current laptop in about a year I'll be considering Dell hardware first.
The meaning of the word "free" as Stallman likes to use it has existed long before Stallman was even born. He's using the language as it currently exists, not redefining it.
So here we have you defending RMS right to use language as it exists, without redefinition, when the original thread arose because of people taking umbrage with someone, uhhh... using language as it exists, without redefinition.
The problem with the Oracle presentation, as Bruce Perens already pointed out, is that the presenter was presenting to an audience for whom the word "free" had a different meaning than the assumed "no cost." A fundamental rule for giving a successful presentation is to know your audience. This is taught early in high-school or college speech classes and organizations such as Toastmasters. The Oracle presenter wasn't prepared and, therefore, his audience wasn't receptive to what he said. This fact has not been lost on other slashdot readers [1][2].
Well, actually software cannot be "free as in freedom", because freedom is about rights, and software doesn't have rights, only humans have.
Freedom isn't about rights; freedom is about being unrestrained. You can have the rights you want but that doesn't mean you always have the freedom to exercise them. Freedom can easily be applied to inanimate objects and abstract concepts. I can have free time. My clothes can be loose enough to offer me freedom of movement. I can unlock my bicycle and free it for use.
Which of the following suggests or implies that the word "free" means "without price".
a) Free at last. b) She's free. c) My dog was free. d) Free download. e) I'm free today. f) Free to use freely. g) None of the above. h) All of the above.
If we were talking about my ex, I'd have to say option E.
Um... in spite of Richard Stallman's rather pathetic attempt to redefine the English language, that is what the term "free software" actually means.
The meaning of the word "free" as Stallman likes to use it has existed long before Stallman was even born. He's using the language as it currently exists, not redefining it.
I can read text just fine but that doesn't mean that the text I'm reading is accurate or complete. Searching for "california labor code section 2870" returns a lot of results with the link to the official text several results from the top. A lot of the pages in the top of the results only show part of the section in question or paraphrase it. Although it's great that FooAtWFU's comment is getting modded up a citation would have helped an interested party to investigate further. Since Slashdot's comments are archived it's likely that this article will come up in someone's search results in the future. It would be best to give them as complete a picture as possible so they don't submit the same question to Slashdot in the future looking for more information.
If FooAtWFU doesn't like my advice he's free to ignore it.
You can go with a slower speed and higher data integrity by switching from MyISAM to InnoDB tables. The choice is there, so I would use the term "always sacrifice".
According to the docs MyISAM is the default table format. So how about "sacrifice by default." Sure, you can change the default to InnoDB but why isn't it set to InnoDB already? I find it strange that you have to enable data integrity features in a RDBMS.
"...because enterprises won't be able to write applications for the phone."
It's too bad that companies can't write apps that run on websites.
It's too bad that the iPhone won't be able to browse websites with a fully-functional web browser.
Oh. Wait.
Wow, you're right. Ever since all desktop applications were moved to the web I wondered when those mobile devices would catch up. Who would ever want to run a native application these days when they could use a web site? After all, everyone knows that accessing a web site over a wireless network is so much faster than accessing memory on the device itself. Of course this only works because there's nowhere in the world that people are ever without network access. In a plane, in a remote location, or even in a telco closet many meters underground in the bowels of of a building, everyone always has a strong signal and can access their web servers. Companies won't have to worry about leveraging their existing J2ME and C applications; they can just rewrite them as a web application. After all, if it's not broken we must fix it.
He demonstrated a social engineering attack scenario where a fake elevation prompt can be used to trick users into clicking "allow" to give elevated rights to a malicious file.'
Your computer is broadcasting an IP address! Click here to download the fix!
Furthermore, if this cannot export to PDF or PowerPoint, it's pretty much useless. When giving presentations, Internet access is rarely provided or is flakey at best.
I'm sure it'll export to both. I've been using Google Docs and the word processor can export to HTML, RTF, MS Word, OpenOffice Writer, and PDF. The Google spreadsheet can export to CSV, HTML, OpenOffice Calc, PDF, plain text, and MS Excel.
Of course not. There was nothing inherently annoying about the Cue Cat. It was a free barcode scanner that quickly gained open source drivers. The company behind it might have been fools but that doesn't diminish the usefulness of the device.
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Yes, I understand what you are saying. I was pointing out that this fact was not clear in your blog post. Stalwart means robust, strong, well built. Your blog post characterized that you were upset that they reviewed such stalwart programs which left me thinking, "as opposed to what?" I was left with the impression that the newer versions that you listed were not as well built as the one they reviewed leaving me to ask myself, "why would I want to use a less stable newer version?" If your blog post were as clear as your response to me then I would not have misunderstood. That is all I meant.
Not at all. When Stallman talks about free software he assumes that people will interpret the word "free" to mean "no cost." He makes an effort to clarify which meaning of the word free he is using, going even so far as to state, "To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer.'" He does this not only in his writing but in his speeches as well.
The problem with the Oracle presentation, as Bruce Perens already pointed out, is that the presenter was presenting to an audience for whom the word "free" had a different meaning than the assumed "no cost." A fundamental rule for giving a successful presentation is to know your audience. This is taught early in high-school or college speech classes and organizations such as Toastmasters. The Oracle presenter wasn't prepared and, therefore, his audience wasn't receptive to what he said. This fact has not been lost on other slashdot readers [1] [2].
If FooAtWFU doesn't like my advice he's free to ignore it.
Thanks, but in the future please provide a link to the official source. Here's the relevant text from the California legislative information web site. There's a bit more text than what you've posted. This is from the CA labor code.
Your computer is broadcasting an IP address! Click here to download the fix!
Make that some laptops. I'm running 7.04 on a ThinkPad T30 and I've had no problems at all.