What we need is a letter-writing campaign to our government representatives (even if you're not an American) to consider open-source technology when appropriate.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to come up with good content for this letter. What we don't want to say is that our government should be dumping closed-source technologies for open-source ones just because they're open-source. That would just make us look like fanatics, and even if they did listen to us, it would make open-source look bad if the migration were to fail. For instance, suggesting that a secretary replace his Windows desktop running Office 2000 with a Linux desktop running Star Office is foolish.
So what we need to do is come up with reasonings that make sense. I think we need to "educate" our government that assuming everything else is equal, an open-source solution is superior to a closed-source one.
So we need to enlighten with truths and (more importantly) debunk myths. Here's a list to get started:
The idea that you can hold a company responsible in case something goes wrong with your software is a myth. If your Windows server crashes, you'll need to hire someone to fix it. Microsoft won't be any real help, and you'll never get a refund from them any way.
The licensing fees for closed-source products do nothing but make the product more expense the more you use it. Let's say you hire another 100 employees. If the organization were using Windows, you'd have to pay for another 100 Windows licenses. It wouldn't cost you a dime if they were Linux desktops. You'd still be paying the IT staff to install the systems, regardless of the OS.
Open-source technologies give the end-user control of his resources. If something breaks, you don't need to rely on an outside party to fix it.
This list is just a start. I'm hoping the/. community can add some meat. It'd be really cool if we could come up with a nice, well-written letter (i.e. one that didn't look like CmdrTaco wrote it), that would really drive these points home. --
But that's true for every device! If you mount a hard drive as read-only, you still need to send commands to the IDE controller to do the read. I still don't understand why you need write access to/dev/dvd in order to read from it. --
I think his key point was that he might have been able to move the company from Windows to Linux if Linux didn't have a "glibc hell" problem. In other words, Linux lost a potential migration for completely stupid reasons. --
There's nothing wrong with that sentence. In fact, it's remarkable good. Most people forget that "data" is the plural of "datum" and therefore needs an appropriate verb, which in this case is "are" instead of "is".
Of course, it would be easier to read if it had said, "what do you think are the odds of Google acquiring such data?"
--
The annotations are copyrighted, but the original text and any modifications of the original text, are not copyrighted.
Besides, if you were to make a copy of the text (without the annotations) from that book, there's no way to prove that your copy of the text came from that book. --
Microsoft's Mac products are nowhere near as "bad" as they are on Windows. They are generally very "Mac-friendly" (i.e. they follow design and usage guidelines that Mac user like) and superior to the competition. --
It amazes me how the law allows some things on the Internet that are a clear violation in the "real world".
1. All ISPs need to really check the validity of a credit card before authorizing the new customer. If it takes two days to do this, so what? No one needs to get an email account right away at 2am. I suggest a new law that requires credit card companies to provide some method that can absolutely determine whether a credit card is valid, and that ISPs are required to use this service.
2. All ISPs need to charge a user's credit card some hefty fine if the account is used to send spam. Just terminating the account is not enough. I fine must be levied.
3. ISPs must be held legally liable for obvious security holes, such as open SMTP relays. If I own a couple of pit bulls and I accidentally leave my front gate open and the dogs attack someone, I'm responsible, regardless of how that gate got open. If I can prove that someone else maliciously opened the gate, then he's the one in trouble, not me. But that burden of proof lies on me. The same standard should be applied to ISPs. --
VirtualPC is a PC emulator for Macs. It emulates an entire PC, including the BIOS and peripherals, so that you can run pretty much any OS (including OS/2, which VMWare doesn't support).
The reason I bring this up is because VirtualPC includes an API that lets Windows "see" your Mac hard drives and vice-versa. The API exists both inside the VM and outside, but I think it's only capable of letting Windows mount Mac directories, not the other way around.
In either case, this API effectively can let multiple Windows VMs see each other, so VMWare would have to certify that such an API doesn't exist in their NSA-approved VM. --
The limitations in the Windows version don't exist in the OS/2 version (which was released in 1996), because the OS/2 API allows apps like VoiceType to integrate with existing applications. There are also a VoiceType API and a toolkit that let programmers provide specialized integration (see Papyrus Office as well as defining your own grammar.
The only drawback with the OS/2 version is that it only supports discrete, not continuous, dictation. This means that you need to pause between each word. For voice navigation, that's not a problem. You also have to go through a three-hour "training" session if you want it to work well.
So before you get all excited about how Linux might beat Windows, you should not forgot that OS/2 is real competitor here. --
NT doesn't have a journaled file system. BeOS does. I'm not aware of any other x86-based OS that
does.
OS/2 Warp Server and the upcoming eComStation (which is a repackaged OS/2 Warp with extras). In fact, the JFS that IBM is developing for Linux is actually the OS/2 version being ported. --
I don't think it was the same thing. It sounds as if the mailbox you're talking about was booby-trapped. That is, unfortunately, illegal. The other poster was simply suggesting that you reinforce the mailbox and videotape anyone trying to damage it. I can assure you, there's no way to file a lawsuit if that's all you do. --
I think the whole point behind the law suit is to ensure that such conditions are declared illegal. Just because it's in an EULA doesn't mean anything. Sony could specify that after a year of playing EQ, you'd have to give up your first born child. Even if you agree to the EULA, it does not mean that Sony can take your child - that's still illegal!
If the EQ players win the lawsuit, it means that Sony will have to remove that line from the EULA, because it will be considered illegal to restrict the sale of user accounts.
Frankly, I don't understand why Sony cares. What difference does it make who plays a particular character? The new player will still have to pay the monthly fee and he'll still have to own the game. --
anyone
with enough money can pick up a high level character, join a group, then fail to play that character correctly,
possibly resulting in the death of the entire group.
Sorry, but the fact that the character can be sold is completely irrelevant. You can give the character away, and the new owner can still trash other players. Or, you can decide that since Sony won't let you sell your character, you'll just use it to trash other players anyway. --
C++ lets you write non-OO code. I don't know anyone who always uses "cout " for all output. There's always a printf() somewhere. But with Java, there's no choice - you have to make your code OO, and that makes it easier to teach these concepts. There's no room for laziness with Java. --
Alright, say 100,000 years. Or 500,000 years. It doesn't matter. Anything less than 10,000,000 years is still a blink of the eye as far as the Universe is concerned.
But his point is more subtle: the chance of another civilization out there that is of comparable technological advancement as ours is practically zero. It's far more likely that they are either way more advanced or are a bunch of cavemen. If they are so much more advanced, then chances are they've known about us for a long time now, so they're ignoring us.
"But there could be millions of worlds out there, each with intelligent life." It doesn't matter - there would still be at least one world that is super-advanced compared to us, and already knows about us and all the other intelligent species out there. --
And I know LOTS of people who have Macs at home. In many cases, it's the only computer they have. We personally have two, as well as some PC's.
It's quite obvious that you choose to associate yourself only with people who, for some reason or another, don't have Macs. You are hardly an example for the human race. --
Hahahahahahaha!!!!! If artists like Eminem (notice I didn't use the word "talented") stop writing music, the world would be a better place. And we'll have Napster to thank for that! --
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, it's difficult to come up with good content for this letter. What we don't want to say is that our government should be dumping closed-source technologies for open-source ones just because they're open-source. That would just make us look like fanatics, and even if they did listen to us, it would make open-source look bad if the migration were to fail. For instance, suggesting that a secretary replace his Windows desktop running Office 2000 with a Linux desktop running Star Office is foolish.
So what we need to do is come up with reasonings that make sense. I think we need to "educate" our government that assuming everything else is equal, an open-source solution is superior to a closed-source one.
So we need to enlighten with truths and (more importantly) debunk myths. Here's a list to get started:
- The idea that you can hold a company responsible in case something goes wrong with your software is a myth. If your Windows server crashes, you'll need to hire someone to fix it. Microsoft won't be any real help, and you'll never get a refund from them any way.
- The licensing fees for closed-source products do nothing but make the product more expense the more you use it. Let's say you hire another 100 employees. If the organization were using Windows, you'd have to pay for another 100 Windows licenses. It wouldn't cost you a dime if they were Linux desktops. You'd still be paying the IT staff to install the systems, regardless of the OS.
- Open-source technologies give the end-user control of his resources. If something breaks, you don't need to rely on an outside party to fix it.
This list is just a start. I'm hoping the--
But that's true for every device! If you mount a hard drive as read-only, you still need to send commands to the IDE controller to do the read. I still don't understand why you need write access to /dev/dvd in order to read from it.
--
I think his key point was that he might have been able to move the company from Windows to Linux if Linux didn't have a "glibc hell" problem. In other words, Linux lost a potential migration for completely stupid reasons.
--
Damn - typo: "remarkably" instead of "remarkable".
--
Of course, it would be easier to read if it had said, "what do you think are the odds of Google acquiring such data?"
--
Besides, if you were to make a copy of the text (without the annotations) from that book, there's no way to prove that your copy of the text came from that book.
--
Microsoft's Mac products are nowhere near as "bad" as they are on Windows. They are generally very "Mac-friendly" (i.e. they follow design and usage guidelines that Mac user like) and superior to the competition.
--
Not at all. Dreamhost requires every new customer to fax a photocopy of the credit card. Is it a pain? Yes. Is it a bad idea? Not at all!
Another idea is that ISPs could refuse to take credit cards that are less than 2 months old.
--
1. All ISPs need to really check the validity of a credit card before authorizing the new customer. If it takes two days to do this, so what? No one needs to get an email account right away at 2am. I suggest a new law that requires credit card companies to provide some method that can absolutely determine whether a credit card is valid, and that ISPs are required to use this service.
2. All ISPs need to charge a user's credit card some hefty fine if the account is used to send spam. Just terminating the account is not enough. I fine must be levied.
3. ISPs must be held legally liable for obvious security holes, such as open SMTP relays. If I own a couple of pit bulls and I accidentally leave my front gate open and the dogs attack someone, I'm responsible, regardless of how that gate got open. If I can prove that someone else maliciously opened the gate, then he's the one in trouble, not me. But that burden of proof lies on me. The same standard should be applied to ISPs.
--
The reason I bring this up is because VirtualPC includes an API that lets Windows "see" your Mac hard drives and vice-versa. The API exists both inside the VM and outside, but I think it's only capable of letting Windows mount Mac directories, not the other way around.
In either case, this API effectively can let multiple Windows VMs see each other, so VMWare would have to certify that such an API doesn't exist in their NSA-approved VM.
--
Instead of being an asshole, why don't you just consider yourself lucky that you don't have the same problems as he does?
--
The only drawback with the OS/2 version is that it only supports discrete, not continuous, dictation. This means that you need to pause between each word. For voice navigation, that's not a problem. You also have to go through a three-hour "training" session if you want it to work well.
So before you get all excited about how Linux might beat Windows, you should not forgot that OS/2 is real competitor here.
--
OS/2 Warp Server and the upcoming eComStation (which is a repackaged OS/2 Warp with extras). In fact, the JFS that IBM is developing for Linux is actually the OS/2 version being ported.
--
I don't think it was the same thing. It sounds as if the mailbox you're talking about was booby-trapped. That is, unfortunately, illegal. The other poster was simply suggesting that you reinforce the mailbox and videotape anyone trying to damage it. I can assure you, there's no way to file a lawsuit if that's all you do.
--
If the EQ players win the lawsuit, it means that Sony will have to remove that line from the EULA, because it will be considered illegal to restrict the sale of user accounts.
Frankly, I don't understand why Sony cares. What difference does it make who plays a particular character? The new player will still have to pay the monthly fee and he'll still have to own the game.
--
Sorry, but the fact that the character can be sold is completely irrelevant. You can give the character away, and the new owner can still trash other players. Or, you can decide that since Sony won't let you sell your character, you'll just use it to trash other players anyway.
--
That was hilarious! Too bad Taco won't learn a damn thing from it.
--
C++ lets you write non-OO code. I don't know anyone who always uses "cout " for all output. There's always a printf() somewhere. But with Java, there's no choice - you have to make your code OO, and that makes it easier to teach these concepts. There's no room for laziness with Java.
--
Jesus Christ, Taco, how stupid are you? "Growed" is not a word! You're supposed to be an editor, so edit, dammit.
--
But his point is more subtle: the chance of another civilization out there that is of comparable technological advancement as ours is practically zero. It's far more likely that they are either way more advanced or are a bunch of cavemen. If they are so much more advanced, then chances are they've known about us for a long time now, so they're ignoring us.
"But there could be millions of worlds out there, each with intelligent life." It doesn't matter - there would still be at least one world that is super-advanced compared to us, and already knows about us and all the other intelligent species out there.
--
Well, that bookstore should be using amazon.minneapolis.mn.us anyway.
--
Probably because he knew that if he didn't do it, someone else would, and that would have made it even worse!
--
With VirtualPC. But I don't run OS/2 on my Macs, I run it on my PCs.
--
It's quite obvious that you choose to associate yourself only with people who, for some reason or another, don't have Macs. You are hardly an example for the human race.
--
Hahahahahahaha!!!!! If artists like Eminem (notice I didn't use the word "talented") stop writing music, the world would be a better place. And we'll have Napster to thank for that!
--