My current favourite is rekonq (http://rekonq.sourceforge.net/), a KDE-native WebKit-based browser. The version I'm compiling from git (they're releasing 0.4.0 soon and it's shaping up well) is looking very nice indeed. If you have the dependencies it needs (recent version of QT needed for plugin support. I'm running with QT 4.6 and KDE 4.4) it's very nice. KDE's web shortcuts work, integrates with KGet, Click To Flash built in, slim UI. I've got nspluginwrapper on this system (my 64-bit Fedora installed it by default) and it isolates the browser from plugin crashes (and I can kill the plugins if they use lots of CPU).
Not good news. But at least we've seen the BBC respond to budgetary and practical issues in the past through innovation. I imagine that something along the lines of "Oh no, we've got all these historical costumes from other dramas lying around! And lots of bubblewrap! And some shiny things we can't identify. And some old breakfast. And I certainly don't know what to do with that old Police Box, it's just taking up space!". Use up the costume drama cast-offs by doing time-travel, save on special effects by using a police box (and make it bigger on the inside - much easier than having a full-size spaceship model to lug around), cover a few props guys in bubble wrap and tip some porridge over them - and we basically have Doctor Who, one of their most successful shows and one of the most enduring Sci Fi shows around. Budget and plausible special effects came later.
Other examples abound, I'm sure - sometimes austerity breeds innovation although that's not really a good reason for forcing it on a quality broadcaster.
The BBC has a pretty good web presence. I certainly prefer BBC News, Democracy Live and the other services they provide to anything that is tainted by Rupert Murdoch. Just because Murdoch doesn't understand the web and has no sense to realise that, quality news sources like the BBC shouldn't just provide a more shitty service to make Murdoch lose less money.
In this case, a public service is providing great service and if you can't compete with that, instead of whining maybe you should go bankrupt.
I don't disagree with anything you've said. I think what Murdoch is saying is stupid. I've seen people point out here previously, however, that Murdoch himself is not stupid. He might just be an old media dinosaur in this case but I wouldn't be so sure. He holds vast swing in UK politics and what he's basically emitting are none-too-subtly coded messages that he wants something done about the BBC. By being so noisy about how it's impossible to make money in ways he 'ought' to be able to he's also spreading the meme that pay-to-access information is better, that it's a business model that needs protecting explicitly, that the BBC is bigger than people want. He's working towards a political climate in which it will be more acceptable / desirable for the next government to attempt to constrain the BBC and "regulate the internet".
It would probably be good for "the people" if Rupert Murdoch were simply falling behind the times and losing his control. On the other hand, if this is just a move to stall changes in society / industry and put roadblocks in the way of competition then I'm somewhat worried he'll succeed (temporarily) and cause harm overall.
Well, presumably the police having your DNA *on file* increases the likelihood that you'll be hauled in by them for other things, should there be a spurious match (say). And regardless, if they're keeping personal information they promised not to keep then that's a serious moral issue regardless of the practical consequences - can people trust the police at their word? Should they?
I think when they're saying "systems" they really mean stuff like network servers, etc. I guess that is systems code so it's fair up to that point. But, unlike C, it's not suitable for *all* systems-level code (low level libraries, kernel stuff, embedded stuff), which seems a shame. So they're overreaching the language's scope somewhat there...
I liked the look of the language as far as it went but what disappointed me a bit was that it still didn't seem suitable for lower level stuff, e.g. embedded and kernel work. Those guys are still stuck with C, which serves them well but isn't as nice as it could be either. If I wanted a replacement for C in userland without so much complexity as C++ or Obj-C offer, I'd think Go would be a relevant choice, although it probably needs to mature a bit first.
I think they should have charged less for ODST. That said, I bought it new as I didn't want to wait. I think I've had / am having my moneys worth with Firefight mode alone so I'm not upset, even though I think the decent thing to do would have been to sell at a reduced price.
According to other accounts I've read, the engine has been upped to support much larger distances between co-op partners (i.e. less of the annoying teleport effect) and to support up to 40 full enemy AIs, which is something like double the Halo 3 engine. So don't write off the world size and monster count just yet...
You almost certainly already have some grasp of Complexity Theory since it governs why e.g. mergesort is faster than bubblesort. I personally found it a somewhat dull topic but it is probably worth delving into a bit for "self improvement" purposes.
Functional programming is worth playing around with. US universities tend to focus on Lisp, I think. ML and Haskell are often used in the UK and have a very interesting type system (proponents say that it's about the most advanced one out there) that it's also worth being aware of. Haskell is also a lazy language, which is interesting although you're unlikely to encounter it anywhere else! Some of my ML programming course dealt with how to build lazy data structures without explicit language support, which was potentially a useful technique.
Others have mentioned design patterns. I guess it's worth looking at those since even though you might instinctively know some, it's easier in an interview if you can *name* them so they know you know what you're talking about.
I'm no economist but doesn't this constitute a lack of understanding of how their market works? These attacks on the used game market seem to be based on a logic that if the used game market didn't exist, people would buy the same stuff new at higher prices. But that only works if customers have infinite amounts of money and a burning need to buy *that particular item* and no other, surely? In which case they just need to shake the customers a bit harder and the money will fall out. But people are actually buying this stuff on a limited budget, so if you force people to "buy new or not at all" they might just chose not to buy! Also, as others have noted, part of the value of an item you buy is that you can resell. If you can't resell then the value to you is reduced, so these games ought to cost less - if they don't then you're getting a worse deal than before, potentially balancing out any free DLC that might have been bundled.
There's a bigger problem of interacting markets though. You can trade in games in order to help finance the purchase of new games. Maybe you can't afford that new game that just came out but if you could trade in a couple of titles you're bored of you might *just* be able to stretch your budget a little and get it. If the used games market disappeared there'd be no trade in and you wouldn't have made that new purchase at all. Used games also help attract people into shops where they may buy other titles. And people will take a risk on a used title and maybe get into a series.
Examples: * I've bought a few games used that didn't get such good reviews and enjoyed them because I knew I hadn't wasted money. I might trade those in to buy a new title I really want, rather than waiting for lower prices / sales. * I bought Halo: CE used, Halo 3 on heavy discount (but new), Halo 2 used. Loved Halo. Bought Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST new very soon after they came out because the cheap copies of the earlier games had got me interested. I'll probably pre-order Reach because I'm confident in its quality and want to get it as soon as possible. * I bought Mirror's Edge used. Part of the reason I bought it was because it was inexpensive. I loved it and will probably buy the sequel new as long as it has decent reviews.
If you eliminate the second hand market I would have been disinclined to risk trying new series that I might not like, so I might never have become early buyers of the future releases. I might also be more wary of new purchases that I could not trade in, although to be fair I'm usually quite careful about selecting ones I'll want to keep when I do buy new.
Rather than trying to undermine the used market, publishers ought to realise that - unpalatable as it is - their customers do not have unlimited money to spend on their games so the used market is an important part of the ecosystem that keeps their sales going and keeps the games market overall healthy. If they want to sell more new games all they have to do is make games that people can't wait to play; if people are thinking "meh, I'll buy that later" then it's because their customers don't place that high a value on the game. That's either because they don't have the money (so it's not a lost sale) or they're not interested (you need to make better games and / or allow them to get into a series cheaply, maybe through used sales!).
To be fair, the article does say that he banned biker gangs and he's suggesting that he's under more threat over this games business than he was over that. Given somebody has evidently been round his house, slipping a note under the door, I can understand why the guy might be freaked out.
But as you pointed out, he's only banned / restricted biker gangs, not motorcycles. Banning motorcycles because of biker gangs would have annoyed a larger section of the population, many of whom would resent being grouped in with gangs just because of their transportation. Perhaps a larger number of indignant people makes a response like this more likely, although still not acceptable. In a sense the situation of banning motorcycles would be somewhat closer (although still more severe) to his stance on video games. At least he's not banning video games outright but he doesn't exactly seem to be being reasonable if he's allowing there to be an R18 rating. Aside from anything else, not having an appropriate rating encourages developers - and potentially the regulators themselves - to skate on thin ice and try and push products through that would more appropriately have a higher rating if it existed.
This is a political issue, so doing things like slipping a note under his door during the night is not going to help anyone. A sensible letter-writing campaign / publicity / demonstrations would seem more appropriate, something that will add political pressure for him to reconsider instead of making gamers look dangerous, which would only support his case.
Well, IIRC, once he lost his job for getting some admitted dodgy dealings, the second time he was officially cleared of wrongdoing but had resigned anyway. Personally I'd trust him about as far as I could throw him (but there'd be no point, since he'd fly back boomerang-style). But the second time he went he was, at least officially, actually in the clear.
They have a "solution" to that, which is to use it as a stick to motivate ID card systems. The New Labour government mindset sadly seems to be "We could fix everything if only we had more power and fewer of these inconvenient checks and balances!". I don't expect the Tories to be better though; I think the Tories have said they'll scrap the ID cards but I'm betting that'll be a marketing exercise on some level. They might get delayed / repurposed / renamed but I can't see them going away once there's been money spent and momentum built up within the civil service (not to mention once electioneering is over).
And, in fact, it wouldn't even be so depressing if that was all they were proposing. But the 360 supports original Xbox games and that influenced people who had a back catalogue of existing games. Now those people will have a load of games they can't play online, accompanied by a console that is harder to mod to use alternate services.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if we start seeing ports of original XBox games, updated to use the new Live multiplayer systems, being sold as DLC so you can't resell it. That way they can sell you your old games again so you can buy back functionality. Maybe I'm being over cynical... nah.
For just encoding, or for decoding too? The encode job did seem quite compute intensive but for the (admittedly low res) video that I did encode the CPU usage is not tremendously high although I can see it might perhaps be a problem on mobile devices. I should try on my netbook perhaps, see if it can keep up...
I tried out Dirac for some of my private video collection last night and was quite impressed by the size of files output whilst still having reasonable quality. I shall be trying it out as my own preferred format for ripped DVDs but it is a standard it would be really interesting to see more uptake of. It's worth remembering that Theora is not the only open source and patent free codec out there, nor necessarily even the highest quality one.
OK, so how many people have been killed due to terrorists boarding flights in the UK in the past decade? How many have been killed due to terrorists on the London Underground and London buses. The London public transport system is a more successful target here. We can't possibly scan everyone who uses that, though therefore I guess we'll have to ban clothes in London. Getting on the tube at rush hour is going to get a *whole* lot worse than it is now...
I can't really see that much appeal in having Android on a tablet, to be honest. On a phone I can see there are arguments for a software stack that diverges from the Linux "norm" but on something larger I would actually quite like it to be easy to run my favourite applications (possibly with GUI modifications). Moblin has a touch-oriented interface that's designed to expose information to the user on a read-mostly device, KDE's Plasma Netbook shell is going in this direction too. I'd prefer to get access to the much larger developer base (and existing software base) that you'd get with a full-featured OS.
Also, having a "full" Linux on a tablet gives me the potential to, say, redirect sound from a movie I'm watching onto a home theatre machine with better speakers, or to migrate a radio stream from my desktop onto the tablet when I take it out of the room. If I'm running a more restrictive device it makes it harder for me to knock together cool hacks like that - and it probably makes it harder for other developers (and the device manufacturers) to do so.
Not a solution in themselves - using Xinerama makes it possible to have a big desktop spread across multiple monitors AFAIK, which is not what the Asker needs. He wants separate virtual desktop switching on each monitor, which most WMs don't do under Xinerama, though as he notes there are some tiling WMs that do something like this.
He's not really right, AFAICS. A solution might include Xinerama and xrandr but they're not a solution in themselves. Most window managers will switch desktops on all displays simultaneously if you use Xinerama, whereas he wants desktop switching independently on different monitors. You also can't do it easily with separate X screens because it's apparently not possible to move windows between them, which he also would like to do.
No, you can't use it all for free. You don't get RHN
Well, you can use the software for free, right? But not the RHN servers, so you are paying for that service along with the support contract? I never really understood what RHN was for when I used RH9 and I've never used a real RHEL box, so it's still a bit mysterious to me. But I'd be surprised if you couldn't get the RHN client software for free, even if you don't get access to the servers at the other end.
Not really part of the software though... it shouldn't make a functional difference to what you can do? The trademarks seem to be the main stick that prevents people simply putting RHEL up for free download.
and you don't get built-in compatibility with VMWare and various commercial installers.
If you want / need that couldn't you use CentOS, which is binary compatible with RHEL?
You *can* run more than 4 VM's, supported, with the "server" licenses, not the desktop licenses.
You can use CentOS for many purposes quite effectively, and switch to RHEL when needed. I've done that, and used CentOS for testing setups on non-standard hardware. That's difficult to do with Windows, you need the registered licenses.
The point the RH guy was making to me was that even if you have an unsupported configuration they'll just make you shut down your surplus VMs, rather than just saying "Sorry, not our problem" or crippling the software to limit how many VMs you can start. I think that's an improvement over a number of enterprise suppliers out there! *cough* MS *cough*
On the topic of switching between RHEL and CentOS, I did once read that (for the perverse) it is possible to use yum to crossgrade from one to the other. I wouldn't want to try it, put it like that;-)
Slashdot Mirror
My current favourite is rekonq (http://rekonq.sourceforge.net/), a KDE-native WebKit-based browser. The version I'm compiling from git (they're releasing 0.4.0 soon and it's shaping up well) is looking very nice indeed. If you have the dependencies it needs (recent version of QT needed for plugin support. I'm running with QT 4.6 and KDE 4.4) it's very nice. KDE's web shortcuts work, integrates with KGet, Click To Flash built in, slim UI. I've got nspluginwrapper on this system (my 64-bit Fedora installed it by default) and it isolates the browser from plugin crashes (and I can kill the plugins if they use lots of CPU).
It was a Team America quote - he does actually say that. Crazy film. Offensive to everyone in the entire world, basically. Funny though.
Not good news. But at least we've seen the BBC respond to budgetary and practical issues in the past through innovation. I imagine that something along the lines of "Oh no, we've got all these historical costumes from other dramas lying around! And lots of bubblewrap! And some shiny things we can't identify. And some old breakfast. And I certainly don't know what to do with that old Police Box, it's just taking up space!". Use up the costume drama cast-offs by doing time-travel, save on special effects by using a police box (and make it bigger on the inside - much easier than having a full-size spaceship model to lug around), cover a few props guys in bubble wrap and tip some porridge over them - and we basically have Doctor Who, one of their most successful shows and one of the most enduring Sci Fi shows around. Budget and plausible special effects came later.
Other examples abound, I'm sure - sometimes austerity breeds innovation although that's not really a good reason for forcing it on a quality broadcaster.
The BBC has a pretty good web presence. I certainly prefer BBC News, Democracy Live and the other services they provide to anything that is tainted by Rupert Murdoch. Just because Murdoch doesn't understand the web and has no sense to realise that, quality news sources like the BBC shouldn't just provide a more shitty service to make Murdoch lose less money.
In this case, a public service is providing great service and if you can't compete with that, instead of whining maybe you should go bankrupt.
I don't disagree with anything you've said. I think what Murdoch is saying is stupid. I've seen people point out here previously, however, that Murdoch himself is not stupid. He might just be an old media dinosaur in this case but I wouldn't be so sure. He holds vast swing in UK politics and what he's basically emitting are none-too-subtly coded messages that he wants something done about the BBC. By being so noisy about how it's impossible to make money in ways he 'ought' to be able to he's also spreading the meme that pay-to-access information is better, that it's a business model that needs protecting explicitly, that the BBC is bigger than people want. He's working towards a political climate in which it will be more acceptable / desirable for the next government to attempt to constrain the BBC and "regulate the internet".
It would probably be good for "the people" if Rupert Murdoch were simply falling behind the times and losing his control. On the other hand, if this is just a move to stall changes in society / industry and put roadblocks in the way of competition then I'm somewhat worried he'll succeed (temporarily) and cause harm overall.
Telling politicians they could solve a problem with a tax is like telling a guy with a hammer "Say, that sure looks like a nail over there"
Well, presumably the police having your DNA *on file* increases the likelihood that you'll be hauled in by them for other things, should there be a spurious match (say). And regardless, if they're keeping personal information they promised not to keep then that's a serious moral issue regardless of the practical consequences - can people trust the police at their word? Should they?
I think when they're saying "systems" they really mean stuff like network servers, etc. I guess that is systems code so it's fair up to that point. But, unlike C, it's not suitable for *all* systems-level code (low level libraries, kernel stuff, embedded stuff), which seems a shame. So they're overreaching the language's scope somewhat there ...
I liked the look of the language as far as it went but what disappointed me a bit was that it still didn't seem suitable for lower level stuff, e.g. embedded and kernel work. Those guys are still stuck with C, which serves them well but isn't as nice as it could be either. If I wanted a replacement for C in userland without so much complexity as C++ or Obj-C offer, I'd think Go would be a relevant choice, although it probably needs to mature a bit first.
I seem to recall Rob Pike mentioning in his techtalk that a good name for the debugger would be "Ogle"
I think they should have charged less for ODST. That said, I bought it new as I didn't want to wait. I think I've had / am having my moneys worth with Firefight mode alone so I'm not upset, even though I think the decent thing to do would have been to sell at a reduced price.
According to other accounts I've read, the engine has been upped to support much larger distances between co-op partners (i.e. less of the annoying teleport effect) and to support up to 40 full enemy AIs, which is something like double the Halo 3 engine. So don't write off the world size and monster count just yet ...
You almost certainly already have some grasp of Complexity Theory since it governs why e.g. mergesort is faster than bubblesort. I personally found it a somewhat dull topic but it is probably worth delving into a bit for "self improvement" purposes.
Functional programming is worth playing around with. US universities tend to focus on Lisp, I think. ML and Haskell are often used in the UK and have a very interesting type system (proponents say that it's about the most advanced one out there) that it's also worth being aware of. Haskell is also a lazy language, which is interesting although you're unlikely to encounter it anywhere else! Some of my ML programming course dealt with how to build lazy data structures without explicit language support, which was potentially a useful technique.
Others have mentioned design patterns. I guess it's worth looking at those since even though you might instinctively know some, it's easier in an interview if you can *name* them so they know you know what you're talking about.
I'm no economist but doesn't this constitute a lack of understanding of how their market works? These attacks on the used game market seem to be based on a logic that if the used game market didn't exist, people would buy the same stuff new at higher prices. But that only works if customers have infinite amounts of money and a burning need to buy *that particular item* and no other, surely? In which case they just need to shake the customers a bit harder and the money will fall out. But people are actually buying this stuff on a limited budget, so if you force people to "buy new or not at all" they might just chose not to buy! Also, as others have noted, part of the value of an item you buy is that you can resell. If you can't resell then the value to you is reduced, so these games ought to cost less - if they don't then you're getting a worse deal than before, potentially balancing out any free DLC that might have been bundled.
There's a bigger problem of interacting markets though. You can trade in games in order to help finance the purchase of new games. Maybe you can't afford that new game that just came out but if you could trade in a couple of titles you're bored of you might *just* be able to stretch your budget a little and get it. If the used games market disappeared there'd be no trade in and you wouldn't have made that new purchase at all. Used games also help attract people into shops where they may buy other titles. And people will take a risk on a used title and maybe get into a series.
Examples:
* I've bought a few games used that didn't get such good reviews and enjoyed them because I knew I hadn't wasted money. I might trade those in to buy a new title I really want, rather than waiting for lower prices / sales.
* I bought Halo: CE used, Halo 3 on heavy discount (but new), Halo 2 used. Loved Halo. Bought Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST new very soon after they came out because the cheap copies of the earlier games had got me interested. I'll probably pre-order Reach because I'm confident in its quality and want to get it as soon as possible.
* I bought Mirror's Edge used. Part of the reason I bought it was because it was inexpensive. I loved it and will probably buy the sequel new as long as it has decent reviews.
If you eliminate the second hand market I would have been disinclined to risk trying new series that I might not like, so I might never have become early buyers of the future releases. I might also be more wary of new purchases that I could not trade in, although to be fair I'm usually quite careful about selecting ones I'll want to keep when I do buy new.
Rather than trying to undermine the used market, publishers ought to realise that - unpalatable as it is - their customers do not have unlimited money to spend on their games so the used market is an important part of the ecosystem that keeps their sales going and keeps the games market overall healthy. If they want to sell more new games all they have to do is make games that people can't wait to play; if people are thinking "meh, I'll buy that later" then it's because their customers don't place that high a value on the game. That's either because they don't have the money (so it's not a lost sale) or they're not interested (you need to make better games and / or allow them to get into a series cheaply, maybe through used sales!).
To be fair, the article does say that he banned biker gangs and he's suggesting that he's under more threat over this games business than he was over that. Given somebody has evidently been round his house, slipping a note under the door, I can understand why the guy might be freaked out.
But as you pointed out, he's only banned / restricted biker gangs, not motorcycles. Banning motorcycles because of biker gangs would have annoyed a larger section of the population, many of whom would resent being grouped in with gangs just because of their transportation. Perhaps a larger number of indignant people makes a response like this more likely, although still not acceptable. In a sense the situation of banning motorcycles would be somewhat closer (although still more severe) to his stance on video games. At least he's not banning video games outright but he doesn't exactly seem to be being reasonable if he's allowing there to be an R18 rating. Aside from anything else, not having an appropriate rating encourages developers - and potentially the regulators themselves - to skate on thin ice and try and push products through that would more appropriately have a higher rating if it existed.
This is a political issue, so doing things like slipping a note under his door during the night is not going to help anyone. A sensible letter-writing campaign / publicity / demonstrations would seem more appropriate, something that will add political pressure for him to reconsider instead of making gamers look dangerous, which would only support his case.
Well, IIRC, once he lost his job for getting some admitted dodgy dealings, the second time he was officially cleared of wrongdoing but had resigned anyway. Personally I'd trust him about as far as I could throw him (but there'd be no point, since he'd fly back boomerang-style). But the second time he went he was, at least officially, actually in the clear.
They have a "solution" to that, which is to use it as a stick to motivate ID card systems. The New Labour government mindset sadly seems to be "We could fix everything if only we had more power and fewer of these inconvenient checks and balances!". I don't expect the Tories to be better though; I think the Tories have said they'll scrap the ID cards but I'm betting that'll be a marketing exercise on some level. They might get delayed / repurposed / renamed but I can't see them going away once there's been money spent and momentum built up within the civil service (not to mention once electioneering is over).
And, in fact, it wouldn't even be so depressing if that was all they were proposing. But the 360 supports original Xbox games and that influenced people who had a back catalogue of existing games. Now those people will have a load of games they can't play online, accompanied by a console that is harder to mod to use alternate services.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if we start seeing ports of original XBox games, updated to use the new Live multiplayer systems, being sold as DLC so you can't resell it. That way they can sell you your old games again so you can buy back functionality. Maybe I'm being over cynical ... nah.
Like many of you, I use OpenSSH to connect to my Slackware Linux boxes remotely
If many of us are connecting to your Slackware boxes, reconnecting is not your largest vulnerability!
(sorry, couldn't resist)
For just encoding, or for decoding too? The encode job did seem quite compute intensive but for the (admittedly low res) video that I did encode the CPU usage is not tremendously high although I can see it might perhaps be a problem on mobile devices. I should try on my netbook perhaps, see if it can keep up ...
I tried out Dirac for some of my private video collection last night and was quite impressed by the size of files output whilst still having reasonable quality. I shall be trying it out as my own preferred format for ripped DVDs but it is a standard it would be really interesting to see more uptake of. It's worth remembering that Theora is not the only open source and patent free codec out there, nor necessarily even the highest quality one.
OK, so how many people have been killed due to terrorists boarding flights in the UK in the past decade? How many have been killed due to terrorists on the London Underground and London buses. The London public transport system is a more successful target here. We can't possibly scan everyone who uses that, though therefore I guess we'll have to ban clothes in London. Getting on the tube at rush hour is going to get a *whole* lot worse than it is now ...
I can't really see that much appeal in having Android on a tablet, to be honest. On a phone I can see there are arguments for a software stack that diverges from the Linux "norm" but on something larger I would actually quite like it to be easy to run my favourite applications (possibly with GUI modifications). Moblin has a touch-oriented interface that's designed to expose information to the user on a read-mostly device, KDE's Plasma Netbook shell is going in this direction too. I'd prefer to get access to the much larger developer base (and existing software base) that you'd get with a full-featured OS.
Also, having a "full" Linux on a tablet gives me the potential to, say, redirect sound from a movie I'm watching onto a home theatre machine with better speakers, or to migrate a radio stream from my desktop onto the tablet when I take it out of the room. If I'm running a more restrictive device it makes it harder for me to knock together cool hacks like that - and it probably makes it harder for other developers (and the device manufacturers) to do so.
Not a solution in themselves - using Xinerama makes it possible to have a big desktop spread across multiple monitors AFAIK, which is not what the Asker needs. He wants separate virtual desktop switching on each monitor, which most WMs don't do under Xinerama, though as he notes there are some tiling WMs that do something like this.
He's not really right, AFAICS. A solution might include Xinerama and xrandr but they're not a solution in themselves. Most window managers will switch desktops on all displays simultaneously if you use Xinerama, whereas he wants desktop switching independently on different monitors. You also can't do it easily with separate X screens because it's apparently not possible to move windows between them, which he also would like to do.
No, you can't use it all for free. You don't get RHN
Well, you can use the software for free, right? But not the RHN servers, so you are paying for that service along with the support contract? I never really understood what RHN was for when I used RH9 and I've never used a real RHEL box, so it's still a bit mysterious to me. But I'd be surprised if you couldn't get the RHN client software for free, even if you don't get access to the servers at the other end.
, you don't get ZFS,
Do you mean XFS? ZFS is the Solaris FS. AFAIK you can use XFS under CentOS, at least if you enable the extras repo: http://www.pantz.org/software/xfsfilesystem/centos5xfskernelmodule.html You can also use XFS with most other Linux distros, using the same free software.
you don't get RedHat trademarks,
Not really part of the software though ... it shouldn't make a functional difference to what you can do? The trademarks seem to be the main stick that prevents people simply putting RHEL up for free download.
and you don't get built-in compatibility with VMWare and various commercial installers.
If you want / need that couldn't you use CentOS, which is binary compatible with RHEL?
You *can* run more than 4 VM's, supported, with the "server" licenses, not the desktop licenses.
You can use CentOS for many purposes quite effectively, and switch to RHEL when needed. I've done that, and used CentOS for testing setups on non-standard hardware. That's difficult to do with Windows, you need the registered licenses.
The point the RH guy was making to me was that even if you have an unsupported configuration they'll just make you shut down your surplus VMs, rather than just saying "Sorry, not our problem" or crippling the software to limit how many VMs you can start. I think that's an improvement over a number of enterprise suppliers out there! *cough* MS *cough*
On the topic of switching between RHEL and CentOS, I did once read that (for the perverse) it is possible to use yum to crossgrade from one to the other. I wouldn't want to try it, put it like that ;-)