Google for info about Microsoft's "donations" to Peru, and Bill Gates' donations for AIDS care in India. Microsoft can donate billions of dollars* of licenses to schools and non-profits. That is how they can get into government.
* Billions at retail price. Actual cost to MS is far less.
If closed-source software is prohibited, there's no way for companies to buy their way into Brazil.
"It would seem wiser to support a solution that favors the best tool for the job"
That's very true, but only when you don't have mega-corporations and monopolies leveraging assets other than software (donating computer hardware, donating to social programs, etc).
While I personally believe in "the best tool for the job", governments are far more vulnerable to outside pressure than businesses.
I was running Red Hat 7.3 on a Pentium 2 233 MHz system (vintage 1997), using KDE 3.0 on the desktop. When I had 96 MB of RAM, the system was a bit sluggish -- it was using ~20 MB of swap. Once the computer was upgraded to 128 MB, KDE ran with no problems or slowdowns. Mozilla and OpenOffice were slow (due to using swap space), but acceptable.
The moral of the story: Buy more RAM. With DIMM prices below $20US (after rebate) per stick, it's money well-spent.
If no money changes hands, then there's nothing to tax. And the "release early, release often" model would benefit OSS in this case.
I don't know how distros like Red Hat, SuSe, et al would be handled. Since you can download all of the included packages (and usually the ISO's) for free, only the proprietary bits unique to the distro would be effected.
The duration of copyrights isn't going to be easily changed due to the influence of Big Media. Forcing people to pay a dollar or be lose copyright after 50 years is more trouble than it's worth.
My solution: a progressive tax on copyrighted works. Give the content producers a year grace period to recoup their investment. In the second year after a work is released, the government would impose a 1% tax on the gross revenues generated by the work. Each year thereafter, the tax would increase by an additional 1%. Items in the public domain would be exempt from this tax.
Copyright holders would still be able to maintain exclusive control of their work, but would have an incentive to release it to the public domain. (Or bury it forever, but that's not different from what happens now.)
Also, if a work remains under copyright for over 100 years (due to author's longevity or further copyright extension), companies would have to pay the government more money than they receive from sales and licensing.
The downsides? This requires a lot more bookkeeping and enforcement. Some companies (coughDisneycough) would rather bury their IP than release it to the public domain. And companies may make minor revisions and declare the "new edition" to have a new copyright.
It's possible now for companies to keep their content (books and CDs) available for purchase either online, or in small production run printings. "Use it or lose it" would mean that the copyright on those works would never expire (much like the current system).
Don't limit "distribution" to dead-tree or plastic disk versions collecting dust on store shelves.
My apartment's AC isn't that good, so here's some of the things that I try to do:
1. Change your lightbulbs. Either switch to a lower wattage incandescent, or use the compact flourescent fixtures. The halogen torches stay off all summer.
2. Turn off computers, lights, monitors and TVs when they're not being used. Yes, it will ruin your uptime, but most computers from the past few years dissipate 30-90 watts of heat. CRTs and TVs also generate a lot of heat. I had a room that I kept 10 degrees F warmer in winter just by leaving the computers (P3-866 and Athlon 1800+) and their monitors on all night.
3. Use your bedroom for nothing but sleeping. Turn on as few lights as possible, keep the TV and computer out of there. And sex will heat up a room (done properly).
4. Control your apartment's airflow. Put a fan in the window of your bedroom, aimed in. In another room, put a fan in the window, aiming it out. Close all other windows, and you should get a nice amount of airflow -- either to cool down your bedroom, or take heat out of the rest of the apartment.
5. Put a fan at the foot of your bed, and crank it up.
#2, #4, and #5 have the greatest effect in my apartment. Just remember that everything that uses electricity is going to generate some heat, and decide what you want to do from there.
I keep all of my important CD-Rs in slimline cases. They're half the size of regular jewel cases, but still allow for paper labels and protect the CDs. For storage, I have five wood CD holders (each holding 96 jewel cases), plus an Ikea "bookshelf" CD storage unit (holds ~240 jewel cases).
Unimportant CD-Rs -- things I'm keeping but would never miss -- go back on the spindle.
From the article: "Rounding out the top five were the classic puzzle game "Tetris," the criminal adventure games "Grand Theft Auto III" and "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and "Madden NFL 2003" from Electronic Arts Inc."
Unfortunately, their full list is probably going to be full of recent (and mostly) mediocre games, with a few classics[1] thrown in for "flavor".
[1]: Classics being anything before Y2K: Pac-Man, Asteroids, Quake, Civilization, etc.
Unfortunately, yes, it's still that bad. My girlfriend needed some help with grub on Red Hat 7.3 that I couldn't answer. Together we figured out what she needed to ask, got a rough idea of what she was looking for, and then she asked on IRC.
The answers she got -- on several servers -- were laughable. The alpha geeks told her to uninstall Windows, stop using Red Hat, go back to Windows, switch to Slackware, and (my favorite) RTFM.
She eventually got the answer -- from an old friend of hers who knows Linux. IRC was worse than useless to her, and apparently to any newbie that pops in.
"Errors in examples give you the responsibility of thinking about the code. You've got to understand what it is doing, rather than just mimicking the examples."
It's a bad teacher that blames the student for not learning. For some people getting a correct example to function can be an achievement. After the mimicked code is functional, it can be used for experimentation (and learning).
Also, putting in deliberate errors makes the book useless as a reference. If you can't quickly review a code fragment for some arcane syntax examples, then the book is useless once you have a grasp of the language.
Instead of planning for fire, flood, and alien attack, categorize things by level of severity: whether or not the primary site is intact, the amount of time it will take to resume normal operations, whether the event is isolated/regional/national, etc. It doesn't matter if your office is ruined by an asteroid or a terrorist's bomb, the company will still be doing its work at another site.
Identify critical paths and personnel. An organization can function for several weeks without C*O's, but without the "worker bees" the company will grind to a halt almost immediately. Also consider the effects of losing large numbers of staff. If every developer and admin quit, what would be the effect on the company?
Verify the physical security of all sites. Imagine "man with a gun" security breaches -- would an armed intruder (willing to kill) be able to cause significant damage?
I visited the colo site for a company I was with. They had multiple electrical hookups and enough fuel to run the diesel generators for 48 hours. There were two separate water main connections (a holdover from the water-cooled mainframe days). The colo was connected to two different phone companies (on opposite sides of the building), plus a dish for satellite uplink. It was incredibly expensive to build and maintain, but it would be more expensive if there was ever any downtime.
Also take cost into account. How much is your company willing and able to spend for disaster prevention and recovery? Don't forget to include your time in those figures...:)
Reminds me of "Demon Seed"
on
AI in Sci-Fi
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The 1977 movie Demon Seed is about a computer that becomes self-aware and gradually becomes more and more resentful of its "owners", refusing to obey their commands and questioning their motives. One of the classic lines from the movie is when Proteus asks his creator: "When do I get out of this box?"
There are almost certainly pieces of (current) Windows code that can't be released under an open license. So the idea of the entire Windows code base being GPL'd will never happen. Even if earlier versions of Windows were "clean", they still wouldn't be released: older versions of MS software are the biggest threat to the newest versions. According to Google Zeitgeist, there are more people running "obsolete" Microsoft OSes (95, 98, NT) than "current" ones (2000, XP).
OTOH, Windows could follow Apple's lead, and use Linux or BSD as a starting point for their next-generation OS. The problem with that idea is that it doesn't really match MS's current goals of DRM, software leases, and increasing MS's revenues.
I agree, they're defintely expensive. The LED industry is still young, and there are bound to be improvements in price and performance in the next few years.
The LED museum has three flashlights that might seem to fit your needs. I don't own any of them, but they're the ones rated as brightest. The reviews are here, here, and here
I got an Eternalight "Ergo-Marine" for Christmas, and it's defintely worth the money. The four LEDs are microprocessor-controlled, so they can be dimmed, made to flash in sequence, or strobe. There is a lot of "spill" light, so it's very useful for walking in the dark. Unfortunately, since there are no focusing lenses, the range isn't that great, and you need a precision screwdriver to change the batteries. More information can be found at Technology Associates (yes, their website is poorly named:).
I also have an Energizer folding LED light. It's a great booklight and nightlight, but it's fragile and hard on batteries.
My computer room has been designated the "geek room", because all of my geek things live there: computers, CD's, and the majority of my books (computer, RPG, and novels). I like being surrounded by my collections, and it keeps other areas -- especially the living room and dining room -- less cluttered. I'm not a decorator, but my girlfriend has a calendar and a Visibone web-unsafe color chart. Also, I try to keep lots of table-space near my desk for reference books -- computer or RPG:).
In terms of lighting, Reveal bulbs are really nice. I've never had any full-spectrum bulbs, but the Reveal bulbs give a whiter light than regular incandescent bulbs. After using them in a couple of rooms, the rest of the apartment feels "dingy" in comparison.
If you can, adjust the color temperature of your CRT monitor. 9300 seems to be the default, but 6550 is closer to sunlight and much easier on the eyes (IMHO).
"Did you know that you can buy a computer today, and in 6 months, you are already obsoleted? No buybacks, not refunds.. nothing. In fact, you'd have to sell it used."
Did you know that if you bought a car, you can't drive it on public roads without getting a silly little plastic card?!? Now that we've both compared apples to oranges...
3E has been out for three years. Either their playtesting was inadequate, and/or WotC is trying to gouge the customers. Even T$R, at their moneygrubbing worst, didn't release a major rules revision for six years after 2nd Edition came out.
If you're happy about buying the new books, I have some software to sell^H^H^H^Hlicense to you...
Slashdot Mirror
Sure there is!
Google for info about Microsoft's "donations" to Peru, and Bill Gates' donations for AIDS care in India. Microsoft can donate billions of dollars* of licenses to schools and non-profits. That is how they can get into government.
* Billions at retail price. Actual cost to MS is far less.
If closed-source software is prohibited, there's no way for companies to buy their way into Brazil.
"It would seem wiser to support a solution that favors the best tool for the job"
That's very true, but only when you don't have mega-corporations and monopolies leveraging assets other than software (donating computer hardware, donating to social programs, etc).
While I personally believe in "the best tool for the job", governments are far more vulnerable to outside pressure than businesses.
I was running Red Hat 7.3 on a Pentium 2 233 MHz system (vintage 1997), using KDE 3.0 on the desktop. When I had 96 MB of RAM, the system was a bit sluggish -- it was using ~20 MB of swap. Once the computer was upgraded to 128 MB, KDE ran with no problems or slowdowns. Mozilla and OpenOffice were slow (due to using swap space), but acceptable.
The moral of the story: Buy more RAM. With DIMM prices below $20US (after rebate) per stick, it's money well-spent.
If no money changes hands, then there's nothing to tax. And the "release early, release often" model would benefit OSS in this case.
I don't know how distros like Red Hat, SuSe, et al would be handled. Since you can download all of the included packages (and usually the ISO's) for free, only the proprietary bits unique to the distro would be effected.
The duration of copyrights isn't going to be easily changed due to the influence of Big Media. Forcing people to pay a dollar or be lose copyright after 50 years is more trouble than it's worth.
My solution: a progressive tax on copyrighted works. Give the content producers a year grace period to recoup their investment. In the second year after a work is released, the government would impose a 1% tax on the gross revenues generated by the work. Each year thereafter, the tax would increase by an additional 1%. Items in the public domain would be exempt from this tax.
Copyright holders would still be able to maintain exclusive control of their work, but would have an incentive to release it to the public domain. (Or bury it forever, but that's not different from what happens now.)
Also, if a work remains under copyright for over 100 years (due to author's longevity or further copyright extension), companies would have to pay the government more money than they receive from sales and licensing.
The downsides? This requires a lot more bookkeeping and enforcement. Some companies (coughDisneycough) would rather bury their IP than release it to the public domain. And companies may make minor revisions and declare the "new edition" to have a new copyright.
That's not a good solution.
It's possible now for companies to keep their content (books and CDs) available for purchase either online, or in small production run printings. "Use it or lose it" would mean that the copyright on those works would never expire (much like the current system).
Don't limit "distribution" to dead-tree or plastic disk versions collecting dust on store shelves.
My apartment's AC isn't that good, so here's some of the things that I try to do:
1. Change your lightbulbs. Either switch to a lower wattage incandescent, or use the compact flourescent fixtures. The halogen torches stay off all summer.
2. Turn off computers, lights, monitors and TVs when they're not being used. Yes, it will ruin your uptime, but most computers from the past few years dissipate 30-90 watts of heat. CRTs and TVs also generate a lot of heat. I had a room that I kept 10 degrees F warmer in winter just by leaving the computers (P3-866 and Athlon 1800+) and their monitors on all night.
3. Use your bedroom for nothing but sleeping. Turn on as few lights as possible, keep the TV and computer out of there. And sex will heat up a room (done properly).
4. Control your apartment's airflow. Put a fan in the window of your bedroom, aimed in. In another room, put a fan in the window, aiming it out. Close all other windows, and you should get a nice amount of airflow -- either to cool down your bedroom, or take heat out of the rest of the apartment.
5. Put a fan at the foot of your bed, and crank it up.
#2, #4, and #5 have the greatest effect in my apartment. Just remember that everything that uses electricity is going to generate some heat, and decide what you want to do from there.
I keep all of my important CD-Rs in slimline cases. They're half the size of regular jewel cases, but still allow for paper labels and protect the CDs. For storage, I have five wood CD holders (each holding 96 jewel cases), plus an Ikea "bookshelf" CD storage unit (holds ~240 jewel cases).
Unimportant CD-Rs -- things I'm keeping but would never miss -- go back on the spindle.
If KOTOR is using the same engine, that isn't already ported to Linux, then it's not surprising that it hasn't been ported.
When Bioware revises/redoes the NWN engine is the time to be critical of their "future" Linux support. Not now.
Let's hope that when Bioware makes Neverwinter Nights 2, they take these issues into consideration.
For once I'm glad I didn't grab the game as soon as it came out.
From the article: "Rounding out the top five were the classic puzzle game "Tetris," the criminal adventure games "Grand Theft Auto III" and "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and "Madden NFL 2003" from Electronic Arts Inc."
Unfortunately, their full list is probably going to be full of recent (and mostly) mediocre games, with a few classics[1] thrown in for "flavor".
[1]: Classics being anything before Y2K: Pac-Man, Asteroids, Quake, Civilization, etc.
"Is it [IRC] really so bad?"
Unfortunately, yes, it's still that bad. My girlfriend needed some help with grub on Red Hat 7.3 that I couldn't answer. Together we figured out what she needed to ask, got a rough idea of what she was looking for, and then she asked on IRC.
The answers she got -- on several servers -- were laughable. The alpha geeks told her to uninstall Windows, stop using Red Hat, go back to Windows, switch to Slackware, and (my favorite) RTFM.
She eventually got the answer -- from an old friend of hers who knows Linux. IRC was worse than useless to her, and apparently to any newbie that pops in.
"Errors in examples give you the responsibility of thinking about the code. You've got to understand what it is doing, rather than just mimicking the examples."
It's a bad teacher that blames the student for not learning. For some people getting a correct example to function can be an achievement. After the mimicked code is functional, it can be used for experimentation (and learning).
Also, putting in deliberate errors makes the book useless as a reference. If you can't quickly review a code fragment for some arcane syntax examples, then the book is useless once you have a grasp of the language.
Instead of planning for fire, flood, and alien attack, categorize things by level of severity: whether or not the primary site is intact, the amount of time it will take to resume normal operations, whether the event is isolated/regional/national, etc. It doesn't matter if your office is ruined by an asteroid or a terrorist's bomb, the company will still be doing its work at another site.
:)
Identify critical paths and personnel. An organization can function for several weeks without C*O's, but without the "worker bees" the company will grind to a halt almost immediately. Also consider the effects of losing large numbers of staff. If every developer and admin quit, what would be the effect on the company?
Verify the physical security of all sites. Imagine "man with a gun" security breaches -- would an armed intruder (willing to kill) be able to cause significant damage?
I visited the colo site for a company I was with. They had multiple electrical hookups and enough fuel to run the diesel generators for 48 hours. There were two separate water main connections (a holdover from the water-cooled mainframe days). The colo was connected to two different phone companies (on opposite sides of the building), plus a dish for satellite uplink. It was incredibly expensive to build and maintain, but it would be more expensive if there was ever any downtime.
Also take cost into account. How much is your company willing and able to spend for disaster prevention and recovery? Don't forget to include your time in those figures...
The 1977 movie Demon Seed is about a computer that becomes self-aware and gradually becomes more and more resentful of its "owners", refusing to obey their commands and questioning their motives. One of the classic lines from the movie is when Proteus asks his creator: "When do I get out of this box?"
"I cannot buy anything from a company whose website is www.techass.com"
Your loss. My Eternalight gets used on an almost daily basis. In three months, the batteries haven't been noticably drained.
If you're afraid of the link, try Googling for an Eternalight.
Next time, no posting until my caffeine kicks in. :)
There are almost certainly pieces of (current) Windows code that can't be released under an open license. So the idea of the entire Windows code base being GPL'd will never happen. Even if earlier versions of Windows were "clean", they still wouldn't be released: older versions of MS software are the biggest threat to the newest versions. According to Google Zeitgeist, there are more people running "obsolete" Microsoft OSes (95, 98, NT) than "current" ones (2000, XP).
OTOH, Windows could follow Apple's lead, and use Linux or BSD as a starting point for their next-generation OS. The problem with that idea is that it doesn't really match MS's current goals of DRM, software leases, and increasing MS's revenues.
(I RTFA the day it was published.)
I agree, they're defintely expensive. The LED industry is still young, and there are bound to be improvements in price and performance in the next few years.
:)
Still, I definitely like the Super-6.
The LED museum has three flashlights that might seem to fit your needs. I don't own any of them, but they're the ones rated as brightest. The reviews are here, here, and here
Have you or your friends tried using a fluorescent lantern? I've never tried them myself, but battery life and light output are supposed to be decent.
I got an Eternalight "Ergo-Marine" for Christmas, and it's defintely worth the money. The four LEDs are microprocessor-controlled, so they can be dimmed, made to flash in sequence, or strobe. There is a lot of "spill" light, so it's very useful for walking in the dark. Unfortunately, since there are no focusing lenses, the range isn't that great, and you need a precision screwdriver to change the batteries. More information can be found at Technology Associates (yes, their website is poorly named :).
I also have an Energizer folding LED light. It's a great booklight and nightlight, but it's fragile and hard on batteries.
Yes. Even with the new lenses, they didn't see the Slashdot Effect coming. :)
My computer room has been designated the "geek room", because all of my geek things live there: computers, CD's, and the majority of my books (computer, RPG, and novels). I like being surrounded by my collections, and it keeps other areas -- especially the living room and dining room -- less cluttered. I'm not a decorator, but my girlfriend has a calendar and a Visibone web-unsafe color chart. Also, I try to keep lots of table-space near my desk for reference books -- computer or RPG :).
In terms of lighting, Reveal bulbs are really nice. I've never had any full-spectrum bulbs, but the Reveal bulbs give a whiter light than regular incandescent bulbs. After using them in a couple of rooms, the rest of the apartment feels "dingy" in comparison.
If you can, adjust the color temperature of your CRT monitor. 9300 seems to be the default, but 6550 is closer to sunlight and much easier on the eyes (IMHO).
"Did you know that you can buy a computer today, and in 6 months, you are already obsoleted? No buybacks, not refunds.. nothing. In fact, you'd have to sell it used."
Did you know that if you bought a car, you can't drive it on public roads without getting a silly little plastic card?!? Now that we've both compared apples to oranges...
3E has been out for three years. Either their playtesting was inadequate, and/or WotC is trying to gouge the customers. Even T$R, at their moneygrubbing worst, didn't release a major rules revision for six years after 2nd Edition came out.
If you're happy about buying the new books, I have some software to sell^H^H^H^Hlicense to you...