AFAIK, Linux is much faster than Solaris on single processor Sparcs, and Solaris is much faster than Linux on multi-processor UltraSparcs. Linux is closing the gap, though.
Obscenity has an awkward but binding legal definition that stems from the ruling in Miller v California (1973). Any work can be ruled as obscene, whether it is visual or text. A work is obscene if it meets all three of the following criteria:
It must appeal to the average person's prurient interest in sex;
depict sexual conduct in a "patently offensive way" as defined by community standards; and
taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
As you can see, the rule is very subjective, so it is hard to determine whether something qualifies as "obscene".
Whenever someone is in court using Freedom of Speech as a defense, invariably its a test to see how young a girl they can stick in their magazines.
Very little Freedom of Speech litigation has to do with "young girls" or magazines. Check out these suits, just from a quick check on the ACLU website:
Whether you agree with the ACLU's stand or not, this isn't about defending child pornography, it's about protecting our right to speak out. Check out http://www.aclu.org/library/pbp10.html for more information.
Author unknown, sung to the tune of The Beatles' "Let it Be".
When I find my code in tons of trouble, Friends and colleagues come to me, Speaking words of wisdom: "Write in C."
As the deadline fast approaches, And bugs are all that I can see, Somewhere, someone whispers "Write in C."
Write in C, write in C, Write in C, write in C. LISP is dead and buried, Write in C.
I used to write a lot of FORTRAN, for science it worked flawlessly, Try using it for graphics! Write in C.
If you've just spent nearly 30 hours Debugging some assembly, Soon you will be glad to Write in C.
Write in C, write in C, Write In C, yeah, write in C. Only wimps use BASIC, Write in C. Write in C, write in C, Write in C, oh, write in C. Pascal won't quite cut it, Write in C.
Guitar Solo
Write in C, write in C, Write in C, yeah, write in C. Don't even mention COBOL, Write in C.
And when the screen is fuzzy, And the editor is bugging me, I'm sick of ones and zeroes, Write in C.
A thousand people swear that T.P. Seven is the one for me. I hate the word PROCEDURE, Write in C.
Write in C, write in C, Write in C, yeah, write in C. PL1 is 80's, Write in C.
Write in C, write in C, Write in C, oh, write in C. The government loves Ada, Write in C.
The key piece of help the article points out is needed is help with documentation. I cannot agree more. There have to be thousands of people out there who use Free Software, and wish that they could contribute, but they don't know how to code.
Write documentation! You don't need to know how to code if you can write (you don't even need to be able to write perfectly). If there's a program you know how to use, but doesn't have good documentation, write some. If the program has some documentation, maybe it could use an update, or maybe it could use some more.
Every program needs at least reference documentation, something saying what the program does, and how to get it to do that. A more complex program could also use a Tutorial, a FAQ or an Installation Guide. Also useful is task oriented howto-like guides. If you have a new or interesting use for a program, document it, I'm sure others would be interested.
Yes, but it was much more rudimentary SMP support. The entire SMP system got a rewrite sometime in the 2.1 series, so it's essentially new. They are still tweaking and adjusting things for more than two processor SMP systems.
The specific case mentioned (the 3-pack) might not be ready yet, but they have other multiple computer cases available right now. Check out the 8-pack, very very nice, available today for 800 quid.
The GNOME people are producing the tarballs. Red Hat Software is building RPMS for their distribution. Likewise, Debian volunteers are building debs for their distribution.
Nope, "Open Source" is not in there at all (neither is "Free" BTW, but "Copyleft" is). All in all an excellent upgrade of an already excellent work. Regardless of your opinion of how ESR handles the whole OSI thing, this is a good lexicon.
No, it doesn't dovetail better with the Open Source definition of the OSI. In fact, it points out a failing of the Open Source definition.
Both the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiatives are talking about software licenses. Software licenses are essentially based on copyright law, since in most cases, you have to copy software (i.e. install it) in order to use it, so your rights to copy it must be clearly defined. Copyright law only governs distribution of intellectual property, not use, so when both the FSF and OSI were defining things, nobody thought to point out that the freedom to use the software was important, it just went without saying.
Some recent licenses (such as IBM's Jikes license, and the APSL) have come out with terms saying that the company (IBM or Apple) can under certain circumstances terminate your right to use the software. The OSI has taken the position that such terms are not against the rules. The FSF has taken the position that these terms take away a fundamental freedom, just one they hadn't bothered to write down. Personally, I think such provisions are probably legally unenforcable, but I am not a lawyer, and I don't think either organization wants to sue IBM or Apple. In absence of that, I personally agree with the FSF, such terms make software non-Free.
The State of the GNOME
on
CDE vs Gnome
·
· Score: 2
Here's my opinion of the state of GNOME:
The core of GNOME is three modules: gnome-libs - very stable, powerful, fast and good; gnome-core - pretty stable, powerful, fast and good, a few wrinkles to iron out; gmc - pretty stable, powerful, fast and good, a few wrinkles to iron out.
The other modules are more or less ready, ranging from excellent and stable to barely functional; but the GNOME 1.0 release wasn't the release of these modules. These modules are in many respects independant but related development efforts with their own release cycles.
If you want a high quality, functional GNOME system spoon fed to you, RedHat 5.9 Starbuck offers it, right now. Download it from RedHat or buy it from CheapBytes.
A small company should not be altruistic. Focus your few resources on what you need to do to stay alive. If your programmers are inadequate - either get more or replace them. Sending them off to waste away days in the Mozilla source tree is simply ridiculous, especially for a small company.
The market punishes altruism.
I fail to see this. Carefully selected, altruism can seriously help a company. Altruism can be used to increase mindshare, a critical and intangible issue that is incredibly important for a startup. Altruism can also help employee morale, and solidify the company culture, both of which will improve productivity.
The market punishes stupid business moves, but properly thought through altruism is far from a stupid business move.
If the only reason the posters boss directed him to do this was to speed up their webpage, this would be pretty witless. It's clear to me that his company is getting much more out of his particiapation.
The biggest benefit is the employee gets training and experience on cutting edge software, with minimal expense to the company. Rather than going out and hiring an WWW guru, this startup is growing their own. That's the sort of investment that can really pay off in the long run.
They also have positioned themselves so that they can have more influence over standards than they otherwise would have. This programmer is presumably on the mailing lists and newsgroups, networking and meeting people that matter as far as such things go. This is another investment that can pay off in the long run.
Granted, the move is something of a gamble, there is no guarantee that they will realize these benefits, but I applaud them for the attempt. If the programmer went out and dug ditches for fibre, his morale would possibly drop, and the networking and training he would probably not relate to his job very well. Telling him to help out Mozilla sounds like a much better move.
Since he's conviced RedHat to host it for him, and I know they care about licensing issues there, I expect if his license isn't really free, they will tell him to leave. Than someone else with less direct experience, but a better understanding of Freedom can start an equivalent project.
Hopefully, since I am sure he's gotten flamed aplenty for the Bochs license, he knows what he's doing and will actually make freemware Free. From the announcement, this certainly looks like the case, so don't go around saying it won't be Free unless and until it becomes clear that it won't.
RedHat probably appreciates VMWare for providing a useful product on GNU/Linux, but RedHat would really like to be able to bundle a freed software emulator for Micros~1 software that actually works. The $300 is way to high to sell as a Windows {9[58]|NT} replacement.
VMWare is not a software emulator at all. It is a processor virtualizer, within which you can run Windows95/98/NT. You still need to pay for the operating system on top of the $300 for VMWare. For Windows NT Workstation (probably the most common thing run in VMWare), it's another $295 last I checked.
Now, if freemware gets off the ground, and Wine gets more stable, than with a little tweaking, you might be able to take freemware, run freedos in it, and run a modified version of Wine on top of it, and have a completely Free Windows clone running in a window on your Linux box:-).
So, lets say you have a dozen DIVX disks, all of them are either silver licensed (or whatever the name is) or safely locked in a box. You have a friend, who has the identical situation. Now, your kid invites their kid over, and their kid brings his favorite movie over, so they can watch it together (an likely mistake).
You then get a $3.25 (or whatever) bill for a movie you didn't approve of, you dispute it, and refuse to pay it. Are you saying that they can hold use of all of your hundreds of dollars in silver licenses ransom towards setting this $3.25 bill?!?!
While I enjoy reading The Register, it is not the most reliable of sources. They often don't check their facts before posting a rumour. I certainly wouldn't label them as "evidence".
Well, what are all those computers-things then? I've got this big box here with blinky lights on 'em. What can it do? (another decent question!) And there's this, this thing with Looooots of buttons on it, what's that then?
The computer thingy that's a big box with blinky lights on it is a computer toaster. It is a super special interactive toaster, you put bread into the slot in the front, and push its buttons until the bread is toasted. Hours of fun (that's why it cost so much).
The thing with lots of buttons is a cat bed, what else could it be?
Actually, I've seen Linus get flamed alot. I've seen him get flamed over the GGI issue, over other things that someone is convinced must be in the kernel. I've even seen him get flamed for the top-level name in his tarballs (linux rather than linux-x.x.x).
Slashdot Mirror
AFAIK, Linux is much faster than Solaris on single processor Sparcs, and Solaris is much faster than Linux on multi-processor UltraSparcs. Linux is closing the gap, though.
Linus Torvalds is a Swede, born and raised in Finland, currently residing in California. Check out the Linus FAQ for more info.
- It must appeal to the average person's prurient interest in sex;
- depict sexual conduct in a "patently offensive way" as defined by community standards; and
- taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
As you can see, the rule is very subjective, so it is hard to determine whether something qualifies as "obscene".Cassius wrote:
Whenever someone is in court using Freedom of Speech as a defense, invariably its a test to see how young a girl they can stick in their magazines.
Very little Freedom of Speech litigation has to do with "young girls" or magazines. Check out these suits, just from a quick check on the ACLU website:
http://www.aclu.org/news/1999/n012299b. html
http://www.aclu.org/news/1999/n012899a. html
http://www.aclu.org/news/1999/n021299a. html
http://www.aclu.org/news/1999/n030599a. html
http://www.aclu.org/action/flag106.html
Whether you agree with the ACLU's stand or not, this isn't about defending child pornography, it's about protecting our right to speak out. Check out http://www.aclu.org/library/pbp10.html for more information.
Author unknown, sung to the tune of The Beatles' "Let it Be".
When I find my code in tons of trouble,
Friends and colleagues come to me,
Speaking words of wisdom: "Write in C."
As the deadline fast approaches,
And bugs are all that I can see,
Somewhere, someone whispers
"Write in C."
Write in C, write in C,
Write in C, write in C.
LISP is dead and buried,
Write in C.
I used to write a lot of FORTRAN,
for science it worked flawlessly,
Try using it for graphics!
Write in C.
If you've just spent nearly 30 hours
Debugging some assembly,
Soon you will be glad to
Write in C.
Write in C, write in C,
Write In C, yeah, write in C.
Only wimps use BASIC,
Write in C.
Write in C, write in C,
Write in C, oh, write in C.
Pascal won't quite cut it,
Write in C.
Guitar Solo
Write in C, write in C,
Write in C, yeah, write in C.
Don't even mention COBOL,
Write in C.
And when the screen is fuzzy,
And the editor is bugging me,
I'm sick of ones and zeroes,
Write in C.
A thousand people swear that T.P.
Seven is the one for me.
I hate the word PROCEDURE,
Write in C.
Write in C, write in C,
Write in C, yeah, write in C.
PL1 is 80's,
Write in C.
Write in C, write in C,
Write in C, oh, write in C.
The government loves Ada,
Write in C.
The key piece of help the article points out is needed is help with documentation. I cannot agree more. There have to be thousands of people out there who use Free Software, and wish that they could contribute, but they don't know how to code.
Write documentation! You don't need to know how to code if you can write (you don't even need to be able to write perfectly). If there's a program you know how to use, but doesn't have good documentation, write some. If the program has some documentation, maybe it could use an update, or maybe it could use some more.
Every program needs at least reference documentation, something saying what the program does, and how to get it to do that. A more complex program could also use a Tutorial, a FAQ or an Installation Guide. Also useful is task oriented howto-like guides. If you have a new or interesting use for a program, document it, I'm sure others would be interested.
If someone were to give me a pair of those Xeon servers, I'll come up with some legitimate Linux vs NT Benchmarks :-)
Yes, but it was much more rudimentary SMP support. The entire SMP system got a rewrite sometime in the 2.1 series, so it's essentially new. They are still tweaking and adjusting things for more than two processor SMP systems.
Don't forget KOffice. Also, other office-type projects are moving along nicely, like GNOME's spreadsheet and word processor, AbiWord and Siag Office.
The specific case mentioned (the 3-pack) might not be ready yet, but they have other multiple computer cases available right now. Check out the 8-pack, very very nice, available today for 800 quid.
The GNOME people are producing the tarballs. Red Hat Software is building RPMS for their distribution. Likewise, Debian volunteers are building debs for their distribution.
Check out the entry in the GNOME FAQ.
Nope, "Open Source" is not in there at all (neither is "Free" BTW, but "Copyleft" is). All in all an excellent upgrade of an already excellent work. Regardless of your opinion of how ESR handles the whole OSI thing, this is a good lexicon.
No, it doesn't dovetail better with the Open Source definition of the OSI. In fact, it points out a failing of the Open Source definition.
Both the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiatives are talking about software licenses. Software licenses are essentially based on copyright law, since in most cases, you have to copy software (i.e. install it) in order to use it, so your rights to copy it must be clearly defined. Copyright law only governs distribution of intellectual property, not use, so when both the FSF and OSI were defining things, nobody thought to point out that the freedom to use the software was important, it just went without saying.
Some recent licenses (such as IBM's Jikes license, and the APSL) have come out with terms saying that the company (IBM or Apple) can under certain circumstances terminate your right to use the software. The OSI has taken the position that such terms are not against the rules. The FSF has taken the position that these terms take away a fundamental freedom, just one they hadn't bothered to write down. Personally, I think such provisions are probably legally unenforcable, but I am not a lawyer, and I don't think either organization wants to sue IBM or Apple. In absence of that, I personally agree with the FSF, such terms make software non-Free.
Here's my opinion of the state of GNOME:
The core of GNOME is three modules:
gnome-libs - very stable, powerful, fast and good;
gnome-core - pretty stable, powerful, fast and good, a few wrinkles to iron out;
gmc - pretty stable, powerful, fast and good, a few wrinkles to iron out.
The other modules are more or less ready, ranging from excellent and stable to barely functional; but the GNOME 1.0 release wasn't the release of these modules. These modules are in many respects independant but related development efforts with their own release cycles.
If you want a high quality, functional GNOME system spoon fed to you, RedHat 5.9 Starbuck offers it, right now. Download it from RedHat or buy it from CheapBytes.
But they're just linking to the GNOME homepage.
No, the KDE DOWNLOAD.COM page you reference is just a link to a KDE FTP site, just like the GNOME one is just a link to the GNOME web site.
I fail to see the point of listing either project alongside such systems as "Biggy 3.5" a program to modify your Windows cursor.
A small company should not be altruistic. Focus your few resources on what you need to do to stay alive. If your programmers are inadequate - either get more or replace them. Sending them off to waste away days in the Mozilla source tree is simply ridiculous, especially for a small company.
The market punishes altruism.
I fail to see this. Carefully selected, altruism can seriously help a company. Altruism can be used to increase mindshare, a critical and intangible issue that is incredibly important for a startup. Altruism can also help employee morale, and solidify the company culture, both of which will improve productivity.
The market punishes stupid business moves, but properly thought through altruism is far from a stupid business move.
If the only reason the posters boss directed him to do this was to speed up their webpage, this would be pretty witless. It's clear to me that his company is getting much more out of his particiapation.
The biggest benefit is the employee gets training and experience on cutting edge software, with minimal expense to the company. Rather than going out and hiring an WWW guru, this startup is growing their own. That's the sort of investment that can really pay off in the long run.
They also have positioned themselves so that they can have more influence over standards than they otherwise would have. This programmer is presumably on the mailing lists and newsgroups, networking and meeting people that matter as far as such things go. This is another investment that can pay off in the long run.
Granted, the move is something of a gamble, there is no guarantee that they will realize these benefits, but I applaud them for the attempt. If the programmer went out and dug ditches for fibre, his morale would possibly drop, and the networking and training he would probably not relate to his job very well. Telling him to help out Mozilla sounds like a much better move.
Since he's conviced RedHat to host it for him, and I know they care about licensing issues there, I expect if his license isn't really free, they will tell him to leave. Than someone else with less direct experience, but a better understanding of Freedom can start an equivalent project.
Hopefully, since I am sure he's gotten flamed aplenty for the Bochs license, he knows what he's doing and will actually make freemware Free. From the announcement, this certainly looks like the case, so don't go around saying it won't be Free unless and until it becomes clear that it won't.
Pessimism is self-fulfiling.
jerodd wrote:
:-).
RedHat probably appreciates VMWare for providing a useful product on GNU/Linux, but RedHat would really like to be able to bundle a freed software emulator for Micros~1 software that actually works. The $300 is way to high to sell as a Windows {9[58]|NT} replacement.
VMWare is not a software emulator at all. It is a processor virtualizer, within which you can run Windows95/98/NT. You still need to pay for the operating system on top of the $300 for VMWare. For Windows NT Workstation (probably the most common thing run in VMWare), it's another $295 last I checked.
Now, if freemware gets off the ground, and Wine gets more stable, than with a little tweaking, you might be able to take freemware, run freedos in it, and run a modified version of Wine on top of it, and have a completely Free Windows clone running in a window on your Linux box
So, lets say you have a dozen DIVX disks, all of them are either silver licensed (or whatever the name is) or safely locked in a box. You have a friend, who has the identical situation. Now, your kid invites their kid over, and their kid brings his favorite movie over, so they can watch it together (an likely mistake).
You then get a $3.25 (or whatever) bill for a movie you didn't approve of, you dispute it, and refuse to pay it. Are you saying that they can hold use of all of your hundreds of dollars in silver licenses ransom towards setting this $3.25 bill?!?!
How long would it take someone to take Sony's OPEN-R specification, and replace Aperios with Linux or RT-Linux?
While I enjoy reading The Register, it is not the most reliable of sources. They often don't check their facts before posting a rumour. I certainly wouldn't label them as "evidence".
Michel wrote:
Well, what are all those computers-things then? I've got this big box here with blinky lights on 'em. What can it do? (another decent question!) And there's this, this thing with Looooots of buttons on it, what's that then?
The computer thingy that's a big box with blinky lights on it is a computer toaster. It is a super special interactive toaster, you put bread into the slot in the front, and push its buttons until the bread is toasted. Hours of fun (that's why it cost so much).
The thing with lots of buttons is a cat bed, what else could it be?
Actually, I've seen Linus get flamed alot. I've seen him get flamed over the GGI issue, over other things that someone is convinced must be in the kernel. I've even seen him get flamed for the top-level name in his tarballs (linux rather than linux-x.x.x).