How much money would they save, now and in the long run, by switching to Apple? I mean this as a real question, because it's not clear to me they would save anything. We shouldn't forget to include the up-front migration and retraining costs. I think the idea with an Free Software migration would be that the up-front costs represented long-term infrastructural investments, rather than a subscription to future license payments.
FWIW, it's possible to make an ISO image bootable on Alpha, PPC, and Mac simultaneously. Scyld (Donald Becker's company) has done this with one of their products.
After booting, though, there's still a lot of work to do. =-) But such an iso might be nice for a network install. It would be fun to see someone install linux over appletalk. =-)
If only Debian were that easy for *geeks* to install. I tried Debian on my laptop, and fiddled with several sets of install disks before I could even *boot* the installer (the ide-only disks finally worked). Then there is the matter of jigdo always failing at the last minute. And the pathetic 2.2 kernel not supporting my network hardware. I found it far easier to install Sorcerer, Lunar, and Gentoo, despite the fact that they've existed far less time than Debian.
Once I did have Debian installed, there's always the problem that the X packages date from before the Dinosaurs walked the Earth. I concluded that there are a lot of nice things about Debian, but their priorities must be strange to have fallen so far behind.
I expect that "The one" was a typo. You probably meant to write "The ones". Besides Gentoo, there are also Sorcerer (now in two versions;-), Lunar, and Rock. I imagine there are more as well.
Also, Americans receive hardly any vacation time. It's always depressing when a European asks you (if you are American) "What do you do on your summer holiday?".
If you are interested in GNU/Linux laptops, you can narrow the search quickly via Linuxcare Lab's certification reports. As usual, GNU/Linux-related docs are useful descriptive than the manufacturers'. =-)
Re:Saw something similar about EULAs in general
on
GPL's Strength
·
· Score: 2
I believe that part of the legal trouble comes from differentiation between products and services. This determines whether the EULA is a contract or a license. Further complicating this, I believe, is that we're talking about State law, and not Federal law -- so things can change from place to place.
The general idea is something like this: it is possible to impose "licensing" terms on services, and EULAs are likely to be enforceable in these cases. Contracts, on the other hand, have to be agreed before money exchanges hands; this means the EULAs are not valid contracts. The question, then, is whether software accompanied by a EULA is a service or a product.
In a recent California case, certain software was declared to be a product. Had the software been "rented" instead of sold, it *might* have been considered a service. This meant that the terms of the EULA were not enforceable. In particular, I think they were not enforced on a company that had never agreed to the EULA anyway, and was simply redistributing the product in a manner different than Adobe corporation wanted them to.
I felt the author was open and truthful about his biases, thereby increasing the credibility of the article. This was clearly a summary article written to encourage exploration of GNU/Linux, and as such did a fine job.
I believe it would be appropriate to compare this article with the myriad whitepapers offered by vendors in support of their own products. There's nothing wrong or bad about this, unless blatent lies are told. I don't believe Mr. Wheeler made any blatent lies in this document. It seems that Mr. Wheeler believes he can support every statement he wrote. If you believe he is lying and care enough to write a public comment denouncing his work, it would be appropriate and polite to challenge him directly. His email address is at the top of the article.
Another thing this article accomplishes is pointing out the huge volume of studies available about GNU/Linux. This is qualitatively important to anyone who wonders whether GNU/Linux should be taken seriously. I read far to much computer news every day (I now set an upper limit on time spent reading news =-), and still I had seen less than 50% of the articles and studies mentioned.
Mr. Wheeler demonstrates the breadth of interest in GNU/Linux. A simple tabulation of companies and publishers mentioned in his article demonstrates that many, many organizations are investigatiing GNU/Linux. No matter what these organizations conclude, I would assume that this breadth of interest would stick in a corporate decision-maker's mind.
I believe you are referring to genetic algorithms. They're not a cure-all for problem solving. There are some good applications for genetic algorithms, but I expect that finding good compression algorithms for images is not one of them. As for evolving image processing algorithms, they are always evolving. But throwing a random AI technique (genetic algorithms, neural nets, simulated annealing, whatever) at a random problems is unlikely to help that process. All of these are simply nonlinear function approximators, and choosing the right method often require a great deal of human labor. Once the model and algorithm have been chosen, there is no guarantee that any of the mentioned algorithms will converge to optimality within a finite period of time.
It's not that we're sitting on our butts, too lazy to throw our wonder algorithms at problems that would save the world. It's that we don't have any wonder algorithms. If we did, we'd probably not know how to ask the questions anyway. And there are those who think that once we had such algorithms and asked the right questions, we wouldn't understand the answer anyway -- but that's a different matter altogether.;-)
I agree things aren't that simple. I was making fun of the front page comment about 6MB. The Alpha performance I refer to don't come from reading magazines; they come from the last three years I've spent getting intimate with a handful of Alphas and x86 machines. What I don't know about is the Merced. But that's because nobody I know at Carnegie Mellon University has one. From what I have read, the only researchers who think the Merced is worth the money are the researchers who got one for free.
At any rate, I wasn't attempting to share Wisdom. I was attempting to share Scorn for the garbage put out by Intel over the last 10 years. Thanks for the free refreshing on cpu microarchitecture.;-)
Ooh, a 6MB cache. We've got a crusty old Alpha with an 8MB cache. So what? Someday Intel might buy into a fast worstation chip and make good use of it. They did buy the Alpha, but I doubt they'll make good use of it. That's because the only way I believe Intel could make good use of the Alpha would be to reunite the Alpha team and continue its development. It really appears that Intel will never design a fast workstation chip.
Oh, you're one of *THOSE* people.;-) I learned typing on an IBM selectric, not a Sun, so I like capslock on the left. But remapping the windows keys is a good idea. However, I'm now using an expensive ergo keyboard (the Classic from Kinesis) which, thank my lucky stars, has no windows keys.
Your "property rights" are part of society. You have *no* property rights without the consent of society. You have no protection from anything without society, nor do you have any protected rights. For these reasons, your agreement to live in a society signals your acceptance of (not necessarily agreement with) its legal system, including acceptance of the methods used for modifying that system.
For all of these reasons, if society thinks it can interfere with the property rights they gave you, then they in fact *can* interfere with those rights. If a decision is made to prohibit surveilance on private property without prior consent of those being watched, that decision is binding. You don't have to agree with it, and in many societies there is a way to complain about it. But no society can tolerate antisocial members who believe they are more important than the society, or believe that they make law for the society, or believe that they are always correct even if society disagrees.
Wow. Days gone by... Speaking of old, disappeared (but superior) hardware, anyone else remember those keyboards we used to have, which had the ctrl and alt keys right next to each other!;-) Now you have to work pretty hard to find one.
Sounds like you belong in some weapons cult in the middle of Montana, since you don't appear to care about your role in our society. I would assume you don't like laws governing concealed weapons, or safety checks before boarding airliners, or electrical or construction codes for your house, laws that say you can't kill or molest your children, or...
It's probably a state law, then. I was referring to something I had read in, geez, I think the local newspaper, so it might be true in Pennsylvania. Also, the consumer guys don't try to use the stuff they record in court. Home surveilance for the purpose of putting someone in jail is only helpful if it is admissible as evidence (or so my naive law brain thinks =-).
Whichever post wrote the "trackball" comment should be +5. After I finally finished laughing, I tried it. Of course it doesn't work, because the mouse ball rests on plastic instead of rollers.
I probably wouldn't work if I was being filmed either (or else I'd just make funny faces into the camera until I was fired =^). And I definitely think consent should be required for such filming. It's sort of a "golden rule" thing.
If you really had probable cause, couldn't you just bring the police in with a warrent? And stopping the undesireable behavior is what you want anyway. If you're looking for a conviction to prevent this from happening again, I expect the police would be cooperative.
If you're worred about insulting the babysitter's integrity, why would you worry about the babysitter's integrity when he or she is alone with your child? A person should choose: faith, or suspicion. In the latter case, get a different babysitter and call the police.
Would a person really want a conviction at their children's expense? That is, do you really want your child molested a *second* time?
I expect that, to be covered by any consent-based law, they have to be on your property with your knowledge and permission. =-) That said, your general idea (think of the mail, gas, FedEx, and bible thumpers) is one to keep in mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the explanation. I, too, have sigs disabled.
/. today reminds me a lot more of /. when Rob was still making mugs and going to class. It's pretty nice.
Overall,
-Paul Komarek
How much money would they save, now and in the long run, by switching to Apple? I mean this as a real question, because it's not clear to me they would save anything. We shouldn't forget to include the up-front migration and retraining costs. I think the idea with an Free Software migration would be that the up-front costs represented long-term infrastructural investments, rather than a subscription to future license payments.
-Paul Komarek
FWIW, it's possible to make an ISO image bootable on Alpha, PPC, and Mac simultaneously. Scyld (Donald Becker's company) has done this with one of their products.
After booting, though, there's still a lot of work to do. =-) But such an iso might be nice for a network install. It would be fun to see someone install linux over appletalk. =-)
-Paul Komarek
"All that much I won't have to pay in taxes!!!"
;-)
Heh, if only it worked that way. What you really mean is "If we're lucky, our state government might not overspend by more than this money."
-Paul Komarek
If only Debian were that easy for *geeks* to install. I tried Debian on my laptop, and fiddled with several sets of install disks before I could even *boot* the installer (the ide-only disks finally worked). Then there is the matter of jigdo always failing at the last minute. And the pathetic 2.2 kernel not supporting my network hardware. I found it far easier to install Sorcerer, Lunar, and Gentoo, despite the fact that they've existed far less time than Debian.
Once I did have Debian installed, there's always the problem that the X packages date from before the Dinosaurs walked the Earth. I concluded that there are a lot of nice things about Debian, but their priorities must be strange to have fallen so far behind.
-Paul Komarek
I expect that "The one" was a typo. You probably meant to write "The ones". Besides Gentoo, there are also Sorcerer (now in two versions ;-), Lunar, and Rock. I imagine there are more as well.
-Paul Komarek
Also, Americans receive hardly any vacation time. It's always depressing when a European asks you (if you are American) "What do you do on your summer holiday?".
-Paul Komarek
If you are interested in GNU/Linux laptops, you can narrow the search quickly via
Linuxcare Lab's certification reports. As usual, GNU/Linux-related docs are useful descriptive than the manufacturers'. =-)
-Paul Komarek
Why hasn't this guy been moderated up as "Funny"?
-Paul Komarek
I believe that part of the legal trouble comes from differentiation between products and services. This determines whether the EULA is a contract or a license. Further complicating this, I believe, is that we're talking about State law, and not Federal law -- so things can change from place to place.
The general idea is something like this: it is possible to impose "licensing" terms on services, and EULAs are likely to be enforceable in these cases. Contracts, on the other hand, have to be agreed before money exchanges hands; this means the EULAs are not valid contracts. The question, then, is whether software accompanied by a EULA is a service or a product.
In a recent California case, certain software was declared to be a product. Had the software been "rented" instead of sold, it *might* have been considered a service. This meant that the terms of the EULA were not enforceable. In particular, I think they were not enforced on a company that had never agreed to the EULA anyway, and was simply redistributing the product in a manner different than Adobe corporation wanted them to.
-Paul Komarek
The lawyer to whom you refer is David Boies.
-Paul Komarek
I felt the author was open and truthful about his biases, thereby increasing the credibility of the article. This was clearly a summary article written to encourage exploration of GNU/Linux, and as such did a fine job.
I believe it would be appropriate to compare this article with the myriad whitepapers offered by vendors in support of their own products. There's nothing wrong or bad about this, unless blatent lies are told. I don't believe Mr. Wheeler made any blatent lies in this document. It seems that Mr. Wheeler believes he can support every statement he wrote. If you believe he is lying and care enough to write a public comment denouncing his work, it would be appropriate and polite to challenge him directly. His email address is at the top of the article.
-Paul Komarek
Another thing this article accomplishes is pointing out the huge volume of studies available about GNU/Linux. This is qualitatively important to anyone who wonders whether GNU/Linux should be taken seriously. I read far to much computer news every day (I now set an upper limit on time spent reading news =-), and still I had seen less than 50% of the articles and studies mentioned.
Mr. Wheeler demonstrates the breadth of interest in GNU/Linux. A simple tabulation of companies and publishers mentioned in his article demonstrates that many, many organizations are investigatiing GNU/Linux. No matter what these organizations conclude, I would assume that this breadth of interest would stick in a corporate decision-maker's mind.
-Paul Komarek
I believe you are referring to genetic algorithms. They're not a cure-all for problem solving. There are some good applications for genetic algorithms, but I expect that finding good compression algorithms for images is not one of them. As for evolving image processing algorithms, they are always evolving. But throwing a random AI technique (genetic algorithms, neural nets, simulated annealing, whatever) at a random problems is unlikely to help that process. All of these are simply nonlinear function approximators, and choosing the right method often require a great deal of human labor. Once the model and algorithm have been chosen, there is no guarantee that any of the mentioned algorithms will converge to optimality within a finite period of time.
;-)
It's not that we're sitting on our butts, too lazy to throw our wonder algorithms at problems that would save the world. It's that we don't have any wonder algorithms. If we did, we'd probably not know how to ask the questions anyway. And there are those who think that once we had such algorithms and asked the right questions, we wouldn't understand the answer anyway -- but that's a different matter altogether.
-Paul Komarek
I agree things aren't that simple. I was making fun of the front page comment about 6MB. The Alpha performance I refer to don't come from reading magazines; they come from the last three years I've spent getting intimate with a handful of Alphas and x86 machines. What I don't know about is the Merced. But that's because nobody I know at Carnegie Mellon University has one. From what I have read, the only researchers who think the Merced is worth the money are the researchers who got one for free.
;-)
At any rate, I wasn't attempting to share Wisdom. I was attempting to share Scorn for the garbage put out by Intel over the last 10 years. Thanks for the free refreshing on cpu microarchitecture.
-Paul Komarek
Ooh, a 6MB cache. We've got a crusty old Alpha with an 8MB cache. So what? Someday Intel might buy into a fast worstation chip and make good use of it. They did buy the Alpha, but I doubt they'll make good use of it. That's because the only way I believe Intel could make good use of the Alpha would be to reunite the Alpha team and continue its development. It really appears that Intel will never design a fast workstation chip.
-Paul Komarek
Oh, you're one of *THOSE* people. ;-) I learned typing on an IBM selectric, not a Sun, so I like capslock on the left. But remapping the windows keys is a good idea. However, I'm now using an expensive ergo keyboard (the Classic from Kinesis) which, thank my lucky stars, has no windows keys.
-Paul Komarek
Your "property rights" are part of society. You have *no* property rights without the consent of society. You have no protection from anything without society, nor do you have any protected rights. For these reasons, your agreement to live in a society signals your acceptance of (not necessarily agreement with) its legal system, including acceptance of the methods used for modifying that system.
For all of these reasons, if society thinks it can interfere with the property rights they gave you, then they in fact *can* interfere with those rights. If a decision is made to prohibit surveilance on private property without prior consent of those being watched, that decision is binding. You don't have to agree with it, and in many societies there is a way to complain about it. But no society can tolerate antisocial members who believe they are more important than the society, or believe that they make law for the society, or believe that they are always correct even if society disagrees.
-Paul Komarek
Wow. Days gone by... Speaking of old, disappeared (but superior) hardware, anyone else remember those keyboards we used to have, which had the ctrl and alt keys right next to each other! ;-) Now you have to work pretty hard to find one.
-Paul Komarek
Sounds like you belong in some weapons cult in the middle of Montana, since you don't appear to care about your role in our society. I would assume you don't like laws governing concealed weapons, or safety checks before boarding airliners, or electrical or construction codes for your house, laws that say you can't kill or molest your children, or ...
-Paul
It's probably a state law, then. I was referring to something I had read in, geez, I think the local newspaper, so it might be true in Pennsylvania. Also, the consumer guys don't try to use the stuff they record in court. Home surveilance for the purpose of putting someone in jail is only helpful if it is admissible as evidence (or so my naive law brain thinks =-).
Thanks for the clarifications!
-Paul Komarek
Whichever post wrote the "trackball" comment should be +5. After I finally finished laughing, I tried it. Of course it doesn't work, because the mouse ball rests on plastic instead of rollers.
-Paul Komarek
I probably wouldn't work if I was being filmed either (or else I'd just make funny faces into the camera until I was fired =^). And I definitely think consent should be required for such filming. It's sort of a "golden rule" thing.
-Paul Komarek
If you really had probable cause, couldn't you just bring the police in with a warrent? And stopping the undesireable behavior is what you want anyway. If you're looking for a conviction to prevent this from happening again, I expect the police would be cooperative.
If you're worred about insulting the babysitter's integrity, why would you worry about the babysitter's integrity when he or she is alone with your child? A person should choose: faith, or suspicion. In the latter case, get a different babysitter and call the police.
Would a person really want a conviction at their children's expense? That is, do you really want your child molested a *second* time?
-Paul Komarek
I expect that, to be covered by any consent-based law, they have to be on your property with your knowledge and permission. =-) That said, your general idea (think of the mail, gas, FedEx, and bible thumpers) is one to keep in mind.
-Paul