However: for once, a large government entity is saying, 'We think your practices are wrong, and will make you pay for them'. The fact of it being just media player software is likely to be buried under the hype, and it will have an effect.
More and more people are starting to wake up to the power they have ceded to Microsoft. Isn't that a good start?
Trouble is, people here at Slashdot think it's possible to have
swift : as if the courts and bureaucracies could ever be
harsh : not only in cash but also in technical terms (as you want)
complete : ibid.
... decisions. Not going to happen soon.
Not trying to diss you, I think you've a point, but the Commission stance is a lot stronger than the US antitrust case from a few years ago. The Commission is considerably stronger than a lot of people give it credit for, give it some time. This decision will carry a great deal of weight.
Looking over his platform, I noticed one omission:
What the hell is going to happen to XFree86? He's worked like an animal on it for the last four years or so. Is he planning on handing it off to someone else? Or is he going to juggle both?
Either way, one of the two sets of duties -- Project Leader or XFree86 -- will certainly suffer.
As much as I might want him in place as Project Leader, why hasn't he discussed this in his platform? (Not that what I say matters;/me user, non developer:)
I have problems with this. But I'm not bitching on Slashdot about it, and hiding behind AC status to boot. A bit more information might be useful, such as:
Are you a developer? If so, what specifically are your gripes? (I'm a user and will remain so for the foreseeable future)
The Project Leader term is too short to make a considerable impact in that time -- one of the many reasons why this particular Project Leader hasn't made an impression on you, I'd say. What do you suggest to ameliorate this?
Debian has no marketing department. I do wonder sometimes if it couldn't use a [very] modest one. (Disclaimer: I used to work in marketing and am very aware of how it is generally a negative thing)
I thought teas had theobromine, which was a stronger caffeine relative, not caffeine itself.
In reply to the parent, don't start. Caffeine addiction is one of the most widespread going, and like most habits, most people don't notice their addiction until they can't stop.
My cousin stopped drinking it years ago. Within a month, the bags under his eyes disappeared, probably from the corollary effect of actually going to bed on time.
Unfortunately, I do really like the stuff, so call me a hypocrite...
Keep in mind that an Italian saying coffee is good for you -- even with the disclaimer that she personally hates it -- only goes so far.
I like it too, and I consume loads here in Italy -- but she has a vested interest in saying that espresso is the best of all types to drink.
Why? Because you really have to try hard to find 'long coffee' or caffe' americano here. It's almost impossible. I remember a year ago watching a French girl flip her lid at some poor barista because he couldn't understand that she wanted the 'long coffee' instead of the syrupy stuff. And she was shouting at him in English, which was most amusing. She'd have had more success using French...
Also, no other nationality fetishises food to the extent the Italians do. I'll leave it there.
I think you forgot one corollary to your statement. 'There aren't just rules, there are laws and morals and values...' : which are only effective when society as a whole upholds them. And even then it's not a given that 'in the long run' evil gets what's coming to it.
We all may hate SCO and Microsoft around here, and hope that they both get royally bumblasted by the courts, but there is no certainty that this will be the case. Moreover, the expectation that SCO will be flattened can only exist in a society that actively promotes those values as important. If your society doesn't value those ideals... (For instance, where I am now, we have basically a crook in power and thinks there is nothing wrong with controlling both the public and most of the private media in the country...)
Unfortunate because they're targeting large companies? Would it really be better for them --or us-- if they went after smaller firms unable to defend themselves (from a lack of cash)?
Doesn't this say more about said companies' lack of { brains | balls } ? I seem to recall that during the 1980s when Oral Robertson claimed he needed money (or he'd shake off this mortal coil) that there was no shortage of morons ready to fork over the cash.
Isn't this the same situation? I looked at the link you provided and thought it spoke more to the Houston firm's weakness than SCO's compelling case...
He has to pay it, even if he doesn't have a TV, if he has a TV tuner card in his machine. Also, if he is a tenant in a flat with others, he has to pay the license, because the fee is allocated on 'separately occupied places'.
Nonetheless I think they'd be hard-pressed to use open source stuff on a widespread basis. Remember when they used to stream Radio One using ogg?
They refuse to do things free of commercial considerations because at the end of the day and notwithstanding their highblown language, they still have to think about the all-mighty pound.
'OK,' I hear you say, 'you sure about that?' Yes, I'msure.
I used to work as a customs officer on the Canadian side and often helped my colleagues in Immigration with US personnel coming north. As such I can't really offer you concrete advice but here are some tips -- I live in Europe now (dual citizenship: get it if you can), so feel free to take all of this with a big hunk of salt.
The consulates never talk to customs/immigration people except at higher levels, and as a result bureaucracy will always win out in the end. Moreover the Cdn consulate in the US is in no position to offer you any real information or help on what you will find with the US customs/INS people on the front line, despite what they will say.
Your best bet is to go to your firm -- it is supposed to have legal staff (after all, they got you down there in the first place, right?) who are supposed to know about this. Use the legal staff, it's their job. Also, go to the USINS website and rummage around for TN visa information. The latter is not really a solution, it's more of a palliative; however, more information doesn't hurt.
When I used to work for a dotbomb in 2000 (in Vancouver) I ended up looking at immig. issues for a group of tech staff from Mexico who needed to go to the US. I could not have done it without our immigration lawyer, and I was more familiar with the subject than just about everyone else in the firm. They may not be able to surmount the actual issues, but they should be able to tell you -- in clear language -- what paperwork you need, what the employer has to provide, and what the immigration people expect to see.
Bishop, you may have just saved my life. Thank you for pointing this out (haven't looked at ECN since early on in 2.4 release days) but I will check it immediately.
My firm changed routers 2 weeks ago. With the defaults, all the other boxes (Windows) can browse, send/receive mail, etc; however my Linux box can't.
Even my VMware XP inside Linux can get on (it's how I write this message at the moment) but Linux proper is blocked.
traceroute shows incredible lag, ping is slow, and DNS is slowed to a crawl. How the hell would the router do this?
The guy who installed the router (**Not me!**) doesn't have a clue how to fix it, and the router's support people haven't deigned to reply to several e-mails. Googling for the router brand and model (among other searches) doesn't seem to help.
I have noticed that the Win mail clients sometimes will bomb the router into submission, and as a result the router will need to be reset. Increasing the router timeouts doesn't seem to help. Moreover, the router has no information in its firewall set that blocks my static IP in particular.
If someone could just point me to a resource I'd be most grateful.
Point taken. They're even buying Office-branded ads on the New York Times article discussing this issue... (at least, it's what I saw on the NYT site a few minutes ago)
I like the concept too, but I think a lot of people get overly emotional about the idealistic aspects of the distribution when a bit more pragmatism would go a lot farther.
Why does Debian rock?
Debian rocks because they are nitpicky about all that shit. It means that I don't have to be. Their work rewards your laziness, and that's a good thing!
Debian tests for a wider range of architectures than the rest of the Linux distros, and in fact wider than XFree86 itself does. (Branden Robinson points this out on his site - Google for 'Debian X Strike Force').
The odd architectures are more difficult to test for, but it results in a couple of benefits:
* Changes can go upstream (obviously, I'm not referring to 4.4) -- and in fact XF86 kind of expects Debian to test for them * Debian as a whole gets a much more stable set of X packages than the others do -- unstable packages for X are at least as stable as most other distros' production versions.
Thanks. Didn't see that, obviously wasn't reading carefully enough.
Re:Most press-release like post ever
on
Google's Bigger Index
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
What sucks about the press release (indeed, makes it sooo press releasy) is the total lack of anything that makes it useful: * "...to 6bn" : From what number before?
And I still can't find what I'm looking for! (pun definitely not intended)
Wouldn't a fucking roof be cheaper -- and more intelligent? They need to screw up local weather patterns as well? Have they done environmental studies for collateral effects?
Paul Martin has made noises about 'increasing democracy' for years now, but the actual fact of the matter is that he only cares about democracy when it is 'clamoring' for his place at the top table, courtesy of his nameless, faceless attack goons.
I remember when he ran for election in my Montreal riding. I also distinctly remember voting Conservative, something I am rather embarrassed to admit, because the appeal of a second-generation politician running for election based on what Daddy could give him was in the negative figures for me.
There's only one reason he's PM right now -- the right in Canada is a fucking joke. After however many years of Chretien somnambulance Canadians want something that reinforces their complacency. Paul Martin fits that bill.
I think he should buy good kneepads and a bib for when he finally meets Bush, it's obvious he needs them.
Decompress. Run runme.pl as root. This will reconfigure your vmmon and vmnet modules, then ask you if you want to re-run vmware-config.pl (which you will probably need to do). Look for the kernel loader messages saying that VMware's services are up and running, boot your VMware guest. Don't change your networking settings.
Caveats: 1. I am running VM 4 on NVidia GForce2 MX 400 equipment. Previous versions of VMware may not work. Also, NVidia's binary module will probably complain after compiling 2.6.0. 2. I'd back up my VMware config files if I were you... 3. The update script may ask you if you want to look for binary modules. That'd be nice. However, I run Debian and thus don't have an RPM option. Also, it's 2.6.0 - there won't be a module available for it yet. Be prepared, the script needs to recompile, not go on a wild goose chase.
All told the procedure takes about literally five minutes. I've had it running since test8 without problems. Now if I only get the damn IDE-CD thing to work...
I'd like to join you in ide-scsi-less land, but under test11 and 2.6.0 something got severely buggered. mount no longer sees the burner, though dmesg seems to show that the kernel itself does see the CDRW. The documentation doesn't seem to show why, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you're right.
However: for once, a large government entity is saying, 'We think your practices are wrong, and will make you pay for them'. The fact of it being just media player software is likely to be buried under the hype, and it will have an effect.
More and more people are starting to wake up to the power they have ceded to Microsoft. Isn't that a good start?
Trouble is, people here at Slashdot think it's possible to have
Not trying to diss you, I think you've a point, but the Commission stance is a lot stronger than the US antitrust case from a few years ago. The Commission is considerably stronger than a lot of people give it credit for, give it some time. This decision will carry a great deal of weight.
Looking over his platform, I noticed one omission:
/me user, non developer :)
What the hell is going to happen to XFree86? He's worked like an animal on it for the last four years or so. Is he planning on handing it off to someone else? Or is he going to juggle both?
Either way, one of the two sets of duties -- Project Leader or XFree86 -- will certainly suffer.
As much as I might want him in place as Project Leader, why hasn't he discussed this in his platform? (Not that what I say matters;
Mi spiace, ho sbagliato! Grazie per la correzione, pero' (got it right this time... :)
I thought teas had theobromine, which was a stronger caffeine relative, not caffeine itself.
In reply to the parent, don't start. Caffeine addiction is one of the most widespread going, and like most habits, most people don't notice their addiction until they can't stop.
My cousin stopped drinking it years ago. Within a month, the bags under his eyes disappeared, probably from the corollary effect of actually going to bed on time.
Unfortunately, I do really like the stuff, so call me a hypocrite...
Keep in mind that an Italian saying coffee is good for you -- even with the disclaimer that she personally hates it -- only goes so far.
I like it too, and I consume loads here in Italy -- but she has a vested interest in saying that espresso is the best of all types to drink.
Why? Because you really have to try hard to find 'long coffee' or caffe' americano here. It's almost impossible. I remember a year ago watching a French girl flip her lid at some poor barista because he couldn't understand that she wanted the 'long coffee' instead of the syrupy stuff. And she was shouting at him in English, which was most amusing. She'd have had more success using French...
Also, no other nationality fetishises food to the extent the Italians do. I'll leave it there.
I think you forgot one corollary to your statement.
'There aren't just rules, there are laws and morals and values...' : which are only effective when society as a whole upholds them. And even then it's not a given that 'in the long run' evil gets what's coming to it.
We all may hate SCO and Microsoft around here, and hope that they both get royally bumblasted by the courts, but there is no certainty that this will be the case. Moreover, the expectation that SCO will be flattened can only exist in a society that actively promotes those values as important. If your society doesn't value those ideals...
(For instance, where I am now, we have basically a crook in power and thinks there is nothing wrong with controlling both the public and most of the private media in the country...)
Unfortunate because they're targeting large companies? Would it really be better for them --or us-- if they went after smaller firms unable to defend themselves (from a lack of cash)?
Doesn't this say more about said companies' lack of { brains | balls } ? I seem to recall that during the 1980s when Oral Robertson claimed he needed money (or he'd shake off this mortal coil) that there was no shortage of morons ready to fork over the cash.
Isn't this the same situation? I looked at the link you provided and thought it spoke more to the Houston firm's weakness than SCO's compelling case...
I'm pretty sure the TV license isn't illegal -- after 5 yrs in London I moved to Italy (where I am now) and here they have similar arrangements.
:)
Better bimbos on Mediaset than ITV, though
Ease up man.
He has to pay it, even if he doesn't have a TV, if he has a TV tuner card in his machine. Also, if he is a tenant in a flat with others, he has to pay the license, because the fee is allocated on 'separately occupied places'.
Have you seen the penalties? Up to a thousand quid? Christ.
Thanks Bishop. It worked. Amazing how the simplest things can evade me sometimes ;)
Hm. I sympathise with your line of thinking.
Nonetheless I think they'd be hard-pressed to use open source stuff on a widespread basis. Remember when they used to stream Radio One using ogg?
They refuse to do things free of commercial considerations because at the end of the day and notwithstanding their highblown language, they still have to think about the all-mighty pound.
'OK,' I hear you say, 'you sure about that?'
Yes, I'm sure.
Really sure.
I used to work as a customs officer on the Canadian side and often helped my colleagues in Immigration with US personnel coming north. As such I can't really offer you concrete advice but here are some tips -- I live in Europe now (dual citizenship: get it if you can), so feel free to take all of this with a big hunk of salt.
The consulates never talk to customs/immigration people except at higher levels, and as a result bureaucracy will always win out in the end. Moreover the Cdn consulate in the US is in no position to offer you any real information or help on what you will find with the US customs/INS people on the front line, despite what they will say.
Your best bet is to go to your firm -- it is supposed to have legal staff (after all, they got you down there in the first place, right?) who are supposed to know about this. Use the legal staff, it's their job. Also, go to the USINS website and rummage around for TN visa information. The latter is not really a solution, it's more of a palliative; however, more information doesn't hurt.
When I used to work for a dotbomb in 2000 (in Vancouver) I ended up looking at immig. issues for a group of tech staff from Mexico who needed to go to the US. I could not have done it without our immigration lawyer, and I was more familiar with the subject than just about everyone else in the firm. They may not be able to surmount the actual issues, but they should be able to tell you -- in clear language -- what paperwork you need, what the employer has to provide, and what the immigration people expect to see.
Good luck to you.
Bishop, you may have just saved my life. Thank you for pointing this out (haven't looked at ECN since early on in 2.4 release days) but I will check it immediately.
My firm changed routers 2 weeks ago. With the defaults, all the other boxes (Windows) can browse, send/receive mail, etc; however my Linux box can't.
Even my VMware XP inside Linux can get on (it's how I write this message at the moment) but Linux proper is blocked.
traceroute shows incredible lag, ping is slow, and DNS is slowed to a crawl. How the hell would the router do this?
The guy who installed the router (**Not me!**) doesn't have a clue how to fix it, and the router's support people haven't deigned to reply to several e-mails. Googling for the router brand and model (among other searches) doesn't seem to help.
I have noticed that the Win mail clients sometimes will bomb the router into submission, and as a result the router will need to be reset. Increasing the router timeouts doesn't seem to help. Moreover, the router has no information in its firewall set that blocks my static IP in particular.
If someone could just point me to a resource I'd be most grateful.
Point taken. They're even buying Office-branded ads on the New York Times article discussing this issue... (at least, it's what I saw on the NYT site a few minutes ago)
I like the concept too, but I think a lot of people get overly emotional about the idealistic aspects of the distribution when a bit more pragmatism would go a lot farther.
Why does Debian rock?
Debian rocks because they are nitpicky about all that shit. It means that I don't have to be. Their work rewards your laziness, and that's a good thing!
Since you asked nicely, here's why:
Debian tests for a wider range of architectures than the rest of the Linux distros, and in fact wider than XFree86 itself does. (Branden Robinson points this out on his site - Google for 'Debian X Strike Force').
The odd architectures are more difficult to test for, but it results in a couple of benefits:
* Changes can go upstream (obviously, I'm not referring to 4.4) -- and in fact XF86 kind of expects Debian to test for them
* Debian as a whole gets a much more stable set of X packages than the others do -- unstable packages for X are at least as stable as most other distros' production versions.
Thanks. Didn't see that, obviously wasn't reading carefully enough.
What sucks about the press release (indeed, makes it sooo press releasy) is the total lack of anything that makes it useful:
* "...to 6bn" : From what number before?
And I still can't find what I'm looking for! (pun definitely not intended)
Wouldn't a fucking roof be cheaper -- and more intelligent? They need to screw up local weather patterns as well? Have they done environmental studies for collateral effects?
Jesus.
No, not at all.
Paul Martin has made noises about 'increasing democracy' for years now, but the actual fact of the matter is that he only cares about democracy when it is 'clamoring' for his place at the top table, courtesy of his nameless, faceless attack goons.
Remember that this is the guy who was supposed to have put his assets (Canada Shipping Lines) in a blind trust, but didn't. This is the guy who out sourced / made redundant Canadian crews at CSL and then refused to talk about it. Corporate welfare? How about a C$4.4bn tax cut for corporations? He also canned affordable housing as a government priority.
I remember when he ran for election in my Montreal riding. I also distinctly remember voting Conservative, something I am rather embarrassed to admit, because the appeal of a second-generation politician running for election based on what Daddy could give him was in the negative figures for me.
There's only one reason he's PM right now -- the right in Canada is a fucking joke. After however many years of Chretien somnambulance Canadians want something that reinforces their complacency. Paul Martin fits that bill.
I think he should buy good kneepads and a bib for when he finally meets Bush, it's obvious he needs them.
Easy-peasy:
Go here and download this.
Decompress. Run runme.pl as root. This will reconfigure your vmmon and vmnet modules, then ask you if you want to re-run vmware-config.pl (which you will probably need to do). Look for the kernel loader messages saying that VMware's services are up and running, boot your VMware guest. Don't change your networking settings.
Caveats:
1. I am running VM 4 on NVidia GForce2 MX 400 equipment. Previous versions of VMware may not work. Also, NVidia's binary module will probably complain after compiling 2.6.0.
2. I'd back up my VMware config files if I were you...
3. The update script may ask you if you want to look for binary modules. That'd be nice. However, I run Debian and thus don't have an RPM option. Also, it's 2.6.0 - there won't be a module available for it yet. Be prepared, the script needs to recompile, not go on a wild goose chase.
All told the procedure takes about literally five minutes. I've had it running since test8 without problems. Now if I only get the damn IDE-CD thing to work...
I'd like to join you in ide-scsi-less land, but under test11 and 2.6.0 something got severely buggered. mount no longer sees the burner, though dmesg seems to show that the kernel itself does see the CDRW. The documentation doesn't seem to show why, though.
Waah!