Third Question: Playstation Edge. I assume this is only for licensed developers, yes? Meaning that there's STILL no way for a hobbyist developer to make anything like full use of the hardware? They don't make a dime selling consoles. They make profit through developer licensing. It's not remotely to their financial advantage to provide you with any real dev tools for their environment. You wanna play, you gotta pay.
Furthermore, GPLv3, when it does finally exist, will be unlikely to cover the Linux kernel. Linus (along with other kernel copyright holders) has already stated his distate for GPLv3 multiple times, and the current license for the kernel states GPLv2 only and has for more than 5 years.
Is there really any reason why government-funded research shouldn't be made available to the masses? After all, wasn't it the masses who paid for the research?
Exactly. Most of the driver development in the early days were done by people who -- gasp, shock -- had that particular piece of hardware and needed it to work with the Linux kernel. Much driver development is *still* done that way, although some driver work is now sponsored by companies who develop the hardware (i.e., Broadcom)
Most everyone working on the kernel has an agenda and that's okay -- open source isn't about communism or pure philanthropy, it's more of a libertarian or anarchocapitalist philosophy.
RedHat, Novell and IBM all have dedicated staffs that do nothing but work on the Linux kernel. These are the only companies I know of for sure, but they are also at the top of those contributor lists.
Provided the format is well-known and well documented, any language can be used to write a parser for any file format.
Now, the nice thing about XML in particular is that most modern languages have either built-in parsers or pre-written libraries of parsers available.
If you want to be technical about it, a license is a permission. It's just that licenses spell out specific requirements for granting a permission. You could view the QMail permission as a 'license', but I think the author prefers to refer to it as a permission, rather than a license so he can say that Qmail is 'license free'.
But, yeah, the bottom line is that Qmail's 'license/permission' doesn't meet the official Open Source Definition, so it's not really an Open Source application. As far as patches go, IANAL, but I don't believe that a copyright holder can prevent you from distributing patches because patches typically don't contain any of the copyrighted work (or at least not enough of it to matter).
So? You have the source. You can do what you want with it right? Who needs the repositories? Just make your own. If you have to fork off the development, that's what it takes.
Except that you don't get to define what open source means. The Open Source Initiative has that luxury. IIRC, they went to great lengths to differentiate Open Source and Free Software as two distinct entities. Open Source means you get the code and nothing more. No guarantee that you can redistribute... You just contradicted yourself. You might want to go and read the Open Source Definition, which does state that if a license is to be OSI certified, it must allow modification and redistribution under the same license.
It's unfortunate, too, because CompUSA used to be the place for business customers. They had a corporate sales desk (which they no longer have), good in-house service and support (which they no longer), CompUSA-branded in-store built PCs (which they no longer have), and the level of knowledge used to be much, much better.
Then one day CompUSA decided that their main competition wasn't the local computer shops (which are a much better resource for the SOHO buyer) or CDW or MacWarehouse, but Best Buy, Circuit City and OfficeMax. For crying out loud, I shouldn't get more knowledgeable sales staff out of a freaking office supply story than I do out of a store whose main goal is to sell computers and accessories!
I don't think retail will entirely go away: Office Depot and OfficeMax make quite a hefty sum selling routers, network adapters and notebook computers. Especially in the SOHO market, where people like the convenience of walking into a store and walking out with a computer. And in the SMB market, CDW and MacWarehouse will continue to reign supreme. Dell works for the larger corporates who have in-house IT, and while some SOHO and SMB people get their PCs from Dell, many are finding Dell support to be too poor to be useful. Many SOHO and SMB folks are turning to outside services to handle IT issues, and Geek Squad, 1-800-905-GEEK and other companies are making money hand-over-fist selling services to them.
When they're not being used for spacecraft, we can use them for giant robots! "...and I'll form The Head!" *queue giant sword and majestic Voltron music*
Have you ever actually heard a gunshot? As in live, in person? I have. Gunshots are very loud. Much louder than a mobile phone speaker. Mobile phones simply do not have the dB range to mimick a gunshot accurately.
...and Microsoft will do anything to solve this "crisis" except spend money on it. Ever heard of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default
Addressing educational inequities, especially in the United States, is exactly what they do.
But in my experience, you can tailor a Windows installation to just the most basic requirements and it runs fairly well. I highly doubt that warships would be connecting to the public Internet with the users downloading any number of buggy apps to conflict with mission-critical applications. In my experience, you don't need to download any buggy apps to conflict with mission-critical applications in order to have problems. Microsoft has plenty of annoying bugs without any Internet connection at all.
Sure, once you get all of the bugs ironed out and the system well-integrated and everything disabled except for what you need, it can run well. But that's true of virtually any modern OS -- Linux, OS X, *BSD.
However, security holes, which are huge in Windows, still represent a huge issue, even with machines that aren't attached to the Internet. Consider that the vast majority of serious attacks on system security come from within your network, not from the outside. Without an Internet connection, security patches must be applied by systems people (who, of course, inevitably download the patch from the Internet, but....) and usually well behind the normal release dates for the patches. And this still discounts the THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of undiscovered security bugs that will inevitably crop up, mostly due to Windows' very poor security architecture.
So, we take $15*12=$180. Office 2003 Small Business can be had for as little as $145. If you use Office at least once a month, then 'pay as you go' is simply not cheaper. Yet another example of 'cheaper is not always cheaper.'
Yeah, you're right. I think the key is that he didn't have his Aboriginal ID. He does NOW, but he didn't then. Why he didn't have it, though, is a very long story.
English is a very colloquial language. I don't know what your mother tongue is, but I can almost guarantee that it has colloquialism, some not unlike the one I used in the post you quoted.
Other countries can turn our people away, but we can't seem to turn other counties people away Hm. I live next to a Canadian border. Believe me, U.S. Customs/DHS turns people away. A friend of mine is a permanent U.S. resident, but is not a U.S. citizen. He was born in Canada. But, he's not a Canadian citizen either as he was born on a Native American reservation in Canada. Not too long after the border restrictions went into place, he visited Canada and got stuck at U.S. customs -- Canadian customs never checked his residency/citizenship status on the way in (which isn't a surprise, since Canadian Customs is very lax in checking IDs), but on the way back in he didn't have one of the then-required documents to prove citizenship (because he doesn't have any). I think finally they just got sick of him and let him go.
I agree. The absolute decay of the Fedora package repositories and the total and utter stagnation of RPM were my two biggest reasons from moving away from Fedora Core to Ubuntu. I should never have to chase down dependencies -- ever. Especially not for a package that is considered core to the GNOME desktop. Maybe apt and the Ubuntu/Debian package repositories have me absolutely spoiled, but then again, how is Linux ever going to gain desktop marketshare with attitudes like: "Oh, well, just add this switch to your yum command-line to add the updates-testing repository to your update command and that'll work around the problem." The system should make life easy for me.
I don't have a computer so I can go around chasing problems all the time.I need to do real work, and the package system is the LAST thing that should get in my way.
I'm not saying Ubuntu is perfect by any stretch. But in the two years I've been using it, I've only seen one update that caused any problems at all and the mailing lists were filled with "don't update package so-and-so because it is broken" the day the bad package was released, a workaround for those who did get the update was posted just after that, and a fixed package was ready by the next morning. I'm just not seeing that level of response out of the Fedora camp.
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If they use a standard interface like SATA, IDE, or even USB storage, then no special driver is required in the kernel.
Furthermore, GPLv3, when it does finally exist, will be unlikely to cover the Linux kernel. Linus (along with other kernel copyright holders) has already stated his distate for GPLv3 multiple times, and the current license for the kernel states GPLv2 only and has for more than 5 years.
IBM doesn't supply Linux distros, except for the fact that they sell some servers preloaded with SuSE.
Mac guy (in sitting position): Hi, I'm a Mac notebook.
PC dork (in sitting position): And I'm a PC noteb....
*BOOOOOOOOMM*
Mac guy: looks like the PC had a Sony battery again!
New PC dork: Hi, I'm a PC notebook.
Mac guy: You're not going to blow up like the last on...
*BOOOOOOMMMM*
Mac guy: Guess so.
Mac guy: See? Mac's don't bl....
***BBBOOOOM****
Fade to white:
Apple Notebooks: Less Explosive.
Is there really any reason why government-funded research shouldn't be made available to the masses? After all, wasn't it the masses who paid for the research?
Exactly. Most of the driver development in the early days were done by people who -- gasp, shock -- had that particular piece of hardware and needed it to work with the Linux kernel. Much driver development is *still* done that way, although some driver work is now sponsored by companies who develop the hardware (i.e., Broadcom)
Most everyone working on the kernel has an agenda and that's okay -- open source isn't about communism or pure philanthropy, it's more of a libertarian or anarchocapitalist philosophy.
RedHat, Novell and IBM all have dedicated staffs that do nothing but work on the Linux kernel. These are the only companies I know of for sure, but they are also at the top of those contributor lists.
Provided the format is well-known and well documented, any language can be used to write a parser for any file format. Now, the nice thing about XML in particular is that most modern languages have either built-in parsers or pre-written libraries of parsers available.
If you want to be technical about it, a license is a permission. It's just that licenses spell out specific requirements for granting a permission. You could view the QMail permission as a 'license', but I think the author prefers to refer to it as a permission, rather than a license so he can say that Qmail is 'license free'.
But, yeah, the bottom line is that Qmail's 'license/permission' doesn't meet the official Open Source Definition, so it's not really an Open Source application. As far as patches go, IANAL, but I don't believe that a copyright holder can prevent you from distributing patches because patches typically don't contain any of the copyrighted work (or at least not enough of it to matter).
1. There is no "Qmail license." Qmail is license-free. There is just a permission to distribute. 2. The qmail permission is not OSI-approved.
So? You have the source. You can do what you want with it right? Who needs the repositories? Just make your own. If you have to fork off the development, that's what it takes.
It's unfortunate, too, because CompUSA used to be the place for business customers. They had a corporate sales desk (which they no longer have), good in-house service and support (which they no longer), CompUSA-branded in-store built PCs (which they no longer have), and the level of knowledge used to be much, much better.
Then one day CompUSA decided that their main competition wasn't the local computer shops (which are a much better resource for the SOHO buyer) or CDW or MacWarehouse, but Best Buy, Circuit City and OfficeMax. For crying out loud, I shouldn't get more knowledgeable sales staff out of a freaking office supply story than I do out of a store whose main goal is to sell computers and accessories!
I don't think retail will entirely go away: Office Depot and OfficeMax make quite a hefty sum selling routers, network adapters and notebook computers. Especially in the SOHO market, where people like the convenience of walking into a store and walking out with a computer. And in the SMB market, CDW and MacWarehouse will continue to reign supreme. Dell works for the larger corporates who have in-house IT, and while some SOHO and SMB people get their PCs from Dell, many are finding Dell support to be too poor to be useful. Many SOHO and SMB folks are turning to outside services to handle IT issues, and Geek Squad, 1-800-905-GEEK and other companies are making money hand-over-fist selling services to them.
Plus, you have to enable to the Universe repository, as it is NOT enabled by default.
You owe me a new keyboard, considering I just spit Diet Pepsi all over my old one!
Have you ever actually heard a gunshot? As in live, in person? I have. Gunshots are very loud. Much louder than a mobile phone speaker. Mobile phones simply do not have the dB range to mimick a gunshot accurately.
...and Microsoft will do anything to solve this "crisis" except spend money on it. Ever heard of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? http://www.gatesfoundation.org/defaultAddressing educational inequities, especially in the United States, is exactly what they do.
Sure, once you get all of the bugs ironed out and the system well-integrated and everything disabled except for what you need, it can run well. But that's true of virtually any modern OS -- Linux, OS X, *BSD.
However, security holes, which are huge in Windows, still represent a huge issue, even with machines that aren't attached to the Internet. Consider that the vast majority of serious attacks on system security come from within your network, not from the outside. Without an Internet connection, security patches must be applied by systems people (who, of course, inevitably download the patch from the Internet, but....) and usually well behind the normal release dates for the patches. And this still discounts the THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of undiscovered security bugs that will inevitably crop up, mostly due to Windows' very poor security architecture.
So, we take $15*12=$180. Office 2003 Small Business can be had for as little as $145. If you use Office at least once a month, then 'pay as you go' is simply not cheaper. Yet another example of 'cheaper is not always cheaper.'
Yeah, you're right. I think the key is that he didn't have his Aboriginal ID. He does NOW, but he didn't then. Why he didn't have it, though, is a very long story.
English is a very colloquial language. I don't know what your mother tongue is, but I can almost guarantee that it has colloquialism, some not unlike the one I used in the post you quoted.
I agree. The absolute decay of the Fedora package repositories and the total and utter stagnation of RPM were my two biggest reasons from moving away from Fedora Core to Ubuntu. I should never have to chase down dependencies -- ever. Especially not for a package that is considered core to the GNOME desktop. Maybe apt and the Ubuntu/Debian package repositories have me absolutely spoiled, but then again, how is Linux ever going to gain desktop marketshare with attitudes like: "Oh, well, just add this switch to your yum command-line to add the updates-testing repository to your update command and that'll work around the problem." The system should make life easy for me.
I don't have a computer so I can go around chasing problems all the time.I need to do real work, and the package system is the LAST thing that should get in my way.
I'm not saying Ubuntu is perfect by any stretch. But in the two years I've been using it, I've only seen one update that caused any problems at all and the mailing lists were filled with "don't update package so-and-so because it is broken" the day the bad package was released, a workaround for those who did get the update was posted just after that, and a fixed package was ready by the next morning. I'm just not seeing that level of response out of the Fedora camp.