I've been using it for years and it's the best email client on ANY platform (Windows or Linux). It's nearly impossible to budge people off Outlook, especially onto a client you actually have to *pay* for, but those that have moved have stopped running crying to me every couple of weeks with virus problems and their productivity has shot up. One of the nice things it does is refuses to run dodgy executable types (eg.pif), and those that can affect your system (eg.exe) it recommends you save to disc and virus scan it first (and importantly presents that as default option) though you can still run it straight off if you really want to. Thoroughly recommended. You can get it here and it will import all our Outlook stuff ok.
Smaller drives should cut energy uptake. With such a drive and a Transmeta, you could have a laptop that keeps going.
It would be a good complement to the main hard drive. You could put the OS (along with/swap and cache dirs) on the small hard drive, and let the main drive spin down for 99% of the time.
Either you live in an appalling area, in which case I'd suggest moving, or you watch FAR too much TV. Life out there isn't dangerous, and if bars don't suit you then join some clubs (rambling, canoeing, etc). In fact in many clubs (eg orchestra, French lessons, any kind of dance lesson) the women outnumber the guys more than 2-1. Last time I went to a dance lesson, there were 3 women for every 1 guy and you got to dance with every single one of them.
Don't bother trying to scare the women with being raped either. Though many of them may enjoy going online they still prefer to meet men the traditional way (ie face to face) if possible. Taking the easiest route may not prove to be the most durable in the long run. Get out there, and if you're a nice guy then you'll bump into someone eventually. There's no rush. In the mean time savour being single... you'll miss it later;-)
> The Eurocrats are jealous of the fact that the U.S. has the power to act in its own interest with or without anyone's help
Yeah, just like the allies went to war with Hitler because they were "jealous" of him. Get out of the playground politics and into the real world pal!
He does have a point. There is no single nation in Europe that can act unilaterally, which is why the Eurocrats have created a new European Army (currently only 60,000 strong). We can expect to see the size and scope to expand dramatically. Couple this with the new EU constitution to have a single European Foreign Minister and Policy and it's not hard to see where the Eurocrats want to go...
Most Europeans (and many Americans) are concerned because they want to live in a world where nations obey the rule of law, not a world where the sheriff is whoever has the biggest gun, which is the world the US is rapidly creating.
At the same time, we don't want to sit back and helplessly hear about the horrors perpetrated in the world.
And lets remember that the UN was created by those brave Americans and Europeans who fought and won the Second World War, and it is being demolished by people who for the most part never risked their own lives at war, nor those of their family.
Unfortunately over the past few decades the UN has accumulated a reputation of an impotent and expensive talking shop. We want to see people like Saddam removed. We want to see the political tortures and murders in Zimbabwe to stop. Tutting and passing resolutions isn't enough.
I doubt the management would like all the PCs building OO from source for 3 days though;-)
If they are all on a network, then you could check out distcc which will use all available machines to compile the source for your one target machine. Should cut compile time down drastically.
Most people in Europe generally perceive that the war in Iraq was for the benefit of the US companies that will be given access to the oil in Iraq, and for the benefit of Dubya, who gets a war that satisfies his need for revenge and to distract from the fact that the war on terror isn't going too well
Most people in Europe think it was a good thing to get rid of someone who was a Very Bad Man (tm). We're not too bothered about secondary motives (some claim oil, others claim more military bases, etc).
We're also scared and appalled by the arrogance that the US administration has shown with it's mistreatment of France and Germany.
Are you kidding? France has a go at the US any chance it gets. France is jealous of the power the US has, which is why it wants to build a Federal Europe as an alternative superpower.
These are countries that have been strongly allied with America for fifty years on most global issues.
Now I know this is a troll.
Two other points, Europe is not jealous of the ability of the US to wage war anywhere in the world against any country - after having so many wars waged across Europe we are broadly opposed to all wars.
That is so not true. Europe definately is jealous of the US might. As for Europe being opposed to all wars, England didn't hesitate to defend the Falklands after being invaded by Argentina. Rather than being broadly against all wars, I would go so far as to say we now have many lazy democracies that are afraid to stand up and do the right thing.
This really is a cultural difference between the citizens of the US and the EU, probably because apart from the American Civil war, the US has not seen or had to bear the horrors of wars at close hand, and with the 'patriotic' news coverage of the Iraq war, you still won't.
I know in Britain we've never had anything like the Vietnam war. I hear that wasn't a picnic in the park.
Finally, France opposed the war both for it's own economic reasons and because it thought that the US was trying to manipulate the UN with false intelligence on the WMDs
Well France would know, having provided the WMD to Iraq in the first place.
End result of the US decision to invade ? Thousands of Iraqi civilians dead (not to count tens of thousands of Iraqi army personnel), no WMDs found and the chances of terrorist attacks have increased as people see the US as invading and subjugating another muslim country.
End result? A brutal dictator deposed, an oppressed country the chance to flourish and take advantage of the natural wealth their country can provide them (whether that happens or not is in their hands... but at least their fate now IS in their hands). For all the conspiracy theories you can come up with, from what I can see the world has ended up a better place.
And no, being an ostrich and sticking your head in the sand would not make crazy terrorists intent on killing Western people go away.
He has no idea on how to use any technical tools, but the man cooks like there is no tomorrow. So don't ask him to wack away at HTML. Do not ask him to use CVS. Do not ask him to start a script. He wants something like a word processor to go in and edit his webpage.
We use CVS here and it works a treat. The guys change the web pages using Dreamweaver, then they just look at the Explorer window, see the files they've changed highlighted in red and then right-click and select "Commit" from the menu. Totally non-technical. Check out TortoiseCVS.
The CVS output is incredibly easy to parse. Each user can view online the pages he's changed, publish them to staging or live (simple cvs checkout in each case), view the history of the file, etc.
CVS is full of features such as being able to watch a file and react to triggers, though I've never had need of them yet. Installation is a doddle, there are plug-and-play online CVS viewers. Personally I would go to a dynamic db backed CMS, but if you are forced to stay with static HTML pages edited by hand then it's worth keeping CVS as an option.
I think the lesson the DRM-and-associated industries will take from this is the Boiling Frog story.
For those not familiar with it (there might be a few), the theory goes that if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water it will immediately jump out. If you place that frog in a pan of warm water and slowly raise the heat to boiling, the thing won't budge until it's dead (and then it still won't budge. =)
You failed to point out that this is an urban legend (or this link is funnier as they actually tried it).
Leave it up to morals? I think the outrageous success of Kazaa and gnutella are testament to the effectiveness of this strategy. You can't rely on people being honest when there's money involved. Sad as it is, we're all thieves when we get the chance.
I'm not sure how the above post got moderated insightful. The success of Kazaa and gnutella have nothing to do with the collapse of morals, and everything to do with a new concept admirably executed and easy to use.
All the songs were already available on the web and by ftp/irc. It was a slight effort so most people didn't bother. With Kazaa you can start playing a CD quality tune seconds after the name pops into your head. And it's not as though it got the edge competing with a RIAA backed service but by being free... the music industry point-blank refused to set up an online service which customers obviously demanded.
Which is easier? Typing the name of a song you want to play into Kazaa (Lite) and listening to it instantly? Or searching the web to find what album it's part of, hunting around web sites to find out who sells the album cheapest, finding your credit card, ordering the album online (bit dodgy using your credit card but taking the risk anyway), waiting several days for it to arrive on CD, and then inserting into your computer only to find the new copy protection stops it from working in your CD-ROM drive?
You can rely on being honest when money is around because most people are honest. This is why security with credit cards and cheques isn't as high as it could be... fraud is low enough just to build it into the cost of running things. The fact is you are sad enough to repeat the RIAA myth that by default we are all thieves.
You may be a thief when you get the chance, but please don't speak on the behalf of the rest of us.
Take your 486SX without a coprocessor... you can get an FPU (coprocessor) which does floating point operations MUCH faster than you can emulate them. However, you can't just use an FPU and ditch the 486, since the FPU can't do anything but floating point ops - it can't boot MS-DOS... it can't run Windows 3.1... it can't fetch values from memory... it can't even add 1+1 precisely!
Or if you upgraded your 486 to a Pentium, you'll find it's division it has a problem with...
Can I name the guy down the record store as prior art? His auto-completion is pretty good when I ask, "What's that band that begins with PO that had a hit in..."
Seriously though, it really does not qualify under "non-obvious". Maybe a "nice to have" for the users but it's just a hack (throwing some auto-complete data in the header and adding a couple of lines of Javascript). Definately not something that should be patentable.
Gentoo is very simple to install. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. It teaches you a lot about Linux, not as much as LFS but enough to fascinate most techies without being *too* much like hard work.
The real selling point of Gentoo is the portage system. Want to try a new application? Type "emerge appname", and go have a coffee whilst it fetches the sources, compiles it optimised for your system, and then configures and installs it all for you. Want to update every application on your computer to the newest version? Type "emerge -u world".
It really is the most easy to maintain system I have ever used, and the only distro where installing and updating software is simpler than Windows. Whilst both Gentoo and LFS let you get a good look under the hood, the difference (as parent poster points out) in maintaining the systems is a gulf apart.
I agree. RiscOS on a Linux kernel would be a dream. The UI is the most productive I've ever used, installation a doddle (there is no 'install', you just drag and drop the app directory where-ever you want). Even the shared libraries ('modules') you just drag and drop around as you need them, just like ordinary files. You really get an instant feel for how the system fits together. The drag-and-drop saving concept is especially good. There is nothing more of a pain under Windows/KDE/etc than EVERY time you want to save something you need to keep bringing up that irritating file navigator.
until everyone up your street gets cable because of this report and yer speed drops....;)
Cable modem scales a lot better. They can have one hub serving an wide area, and if the speed drops then the area can be installed by installing a 2nd hub and splitting the area into two. With DSL, every line has to go all the way into a (physically restricted in size) exchange.
In Surrey, I had both cable modem and DSL. Cable modem was both faster and had better ping time for gaming.
As groundless as the accusations may be, and as much as I spit at the feet of SCO for their tactics, I cannot agree with a system that rewards the richest litigant, instead of the one that deserves to win on the merit of the case.
You remind me of the juror that turned up in court in a Starfleet uniform, and was fined for contempt of court when they refused to recognise any law other than the Federation. You don't get to choose which legal system you can use when you get taken to court, you have to use the one that country provides. If SCO are going to play dirty, then the previous poster is right... just leave it to their lawyers to figure out the best retaliation tactics within the framework of the legal system provided.
I guess the US has gotten used to having corporations possessing so much power that it's considered normal to wave it around like a plush toy.
It's always seemed that way over the pond, though they sometimes get a bit of a bloody nose when they try the same over here.
The database, since "Firebird" is a codename for the browser component of Mozilla and should not be applied to actual shipping products.
It's not a codename, it's the product name. Phoenix was the name of the browser, which with my Gentoo system I typed "emerge phoenix-cvs" (as I wanted latest version) to download and build. When I type "emerge firebird" it automatically downloads and installs the database. The two products having the same name is going to cause a lot of confusion in this area.
The browser Phoenix had a legitimate beef, I mean you have two browsers of the same name. That is really confusing.
The browser isn't called Phoenix, that is the name of the company. The browser is part of what's called "FirstBIOS". They are obviously worried people would mistake the name of the company for the name of the application. Sure it's about protecting a company's brand, but it's not because there is another browser called Phoenix.
I would have modded that post as Insightful rather than Funny. I think "Browse" or "Browser" is a really good name. Look at Microsoft: Internet Explorer. Simple, says what it does, and close enough to generic to give it a chance of becoming a household name.
... because I think Firebird isn't a very good name for the browser. It's all very well having it as an in-joke but the wider world won't get that. I'd keep it as Phoenix if legally the position is tenable. The name was chosen in good faith, is a good name for the browser, and has now massive brand recognition. From the Phoenix thread, I liked "Browse" best, which was/is the name of the RiscOS web browser that is available only on the Acorn platform. Simple 'lite' name, which complements the browser.
Hell, we can get software from my school for so dirt cheap, ($30 for Windows XP Pro) they might as well give it away for free.
On a related note, I've had youngsters telling me enthusiastically that there are people hanging around the school gates offering drugs for little or no money. I feel obliged to point out that once they become hooked, they'll be hit later for the full amount.
Where did they learn their interviewing skills? This is terrible. "Why don't you do blah and blah? Your software doesn't do blah. I always have problems with blah. Blah blah blah." I was very impressed with Matt's answers, though. He didn't get mad and say, "Well, why don't you fork the project then?!!" He just cordially and politely explained the concepts of open source and their development efforts. Nice work.
Because these are the questions that people want answered. They are the kind of questions you see in forums all the time. Rather than Matt getting mad, I'd have thought that he would appreciate the chance to answer everyone's top gripes in one place (like a FAQ) rather than having to repeat himself over and over.
When you develop OS software, you wonder at how unappreciative people can be as you strive to add in all their requests. It's only late into the project when you look back at how much ground you've covered that you appreciate that extra push they gave you. It's true that we shouldn't forget to give them the plaudits as well. Whether you use Red Hat or not, they have produced a product that pleases many people.
I am always amazed at how Bush and his administration manage to get so much support from the Americans. Are the schools there teaching children not to question anything, stop thinking and take what's being said on TV as some holy thoughts?
People believe in err either because they want to believe, or because they are too lazy to question. For the former, take as an example all those that fell for the Nigerian 419 scam. For the latter, all those that forwards hoax virus warnings. I don't think it's anything new or to do with todays crop of politicians, I think it's been in human nature for a long time. I won't comment on you cloaking your reasonable point in a political statement I disagree with, as it's a bit off-topic. Also, people are lazier these days and used to being spoon-fed information, hence the success of marketting slogans and media sound-bites.
It is shocking how easily people are being manipulated into thinking this is all being done for their own good. The basis of all this at the moment seems to be the creation of a black and white world: with us/against us - patriotic/unpatriotic etc. making more and more difficult to express disagreement and encouraging censorship.
What can I say? People love causes that are black and white. If they don't have one then they will invent one. It might manifest as a religion, a Cold War, a football rivalry, or an anti-war movement. The simpler it is, the less thinking is involved.
The best way to avoid 1984 is to ensure there are always counter-weights for everything. For every war, an anti-war movement. For every Orwellian piece of legislation, an active privacy coalition. For every DRM proposal, a consumer rights group. Give the debates raging. Keep the issues in the spotlight. When you tire of the fight, make sure there is fresh blood to replace you. Freedom isn't a war you win, it's an eternal struggle albeit one worth fighting for.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using it for years and it's the best email client on ANY platform (Windows or Linux). It's nearly impossible to budge people off Outlook, especially onto a client you actually have to *pay* for, but those that have moved have stopped running crying to me every couple of weeks with virus problems and their productivity has shot up. One of the nice things it does is refuses to run dodgy executable types (eg .pif), and those that can affect your system (eg .exe) it recommends you save to disc and virus scan it first (and importantly presents that as default option) though you can still run it straight off if you really want to. Thoroughly recommended. You can get it here and it will import all our Outlook stuff ok.
Phillip.
Smaller drives should cut energy uptake. With such a drive and a Transmeta, you could have a laptop that keeps going.
/swap and cache dirs) on the small hard drive, and let the main drive spin down for 99% of the time.
It would be a good complement to the main hard drive. You could put the OS (along with
Phillip.
Either you live in an appalling area, in which case I'd suggest moving, or you watch FAR too much TV. Life out there isn't dangerous, and if bars don't suit you then join some clubs (rambling, canoeing, etc). In fact in many clubs (eg orchestra, French lessons, any kind of dance lesson) the women outnumber the guys more than 2-1. Last time I went to a dance lesson, there were 3 women for every 1 guy and you got to dance with every single one of them.
;-)
Don't bother trying to scare the women with being raped either. Though many of them may enjoy going online they still prefer to meet men the traditional way (ie face to face) if possible. Taking the easiest route may not prove to be the most durable in the long run. Get out there, and if you're a nice guy then you'll bump into someone eventually. There's no rush. In the mean time savour being single... you'll miss it later
Phillip.
I'm Brian. And so is my wife.
> The Eurocrats are jealous of the fact that the U.S. has the power to act in its own interest with or without anyone's help
Yeah, just like the allies went to war with Hitler because they were "jealous" of him. Get out of the playground politics and into the real world pal!
He does have a point. There is no single nation in Europe that can act unilaterally, which is why the Eurocrats have created a new European Army (currently only 60,000 strong). We can expect to see the size and scope to expand dramatically. Couple this with the new EU constitution to have a single European Foreign Minister and Policy and it's not hard to see where the Eurocrats want to go...
Most Europeans (and many Americans) are concerned because they want to live in a world where nations obey the rule of law, not a world where the sheriff is whoever has the biggest gun, which is the world the US is rapidly creating.
At the same time, we don't want to sit back and helplessly hear about the horrors perpetrated in the world.
And lets remember that the UN was created by those brave Americans and Europeans who fought and won the Second World War, and it is being demolished by people who for the most part never risked their own lives at war, nor those of their family.
Unfortunately over the past few decades the UN has accumulated a reputation of an impotent and expensive talking shop. We want to see people like Saddam removed. We want to see the political tortures and murders in Zimbabwe to stop. Tutting and passing resolutions isn't enough.
Phillip.
I doubt the management would like all the PCs building OO from source for 3 days though ;-)
If they are all on a network, then you could check out distcc which will use all available machines to compile the source for your one target machine. Should cut compile time down drastically.
Phillip.
Most people in Europe generally perceive that the war in Iraq was for the benefit of the US companies that will be given access to the oil in Iraq, and for the benefit of Dubya, who gets a war that satisfies his need for revenge and to distract from the fact that the war on terror isn't going too well
Most people in Europe think it was a good thing to get rid of someone who was a Very Bad Man (tm). We're not too bothered about secondary motives (some claim oil, others claim more military bases, etc).
We're also scared and appalled by the arrogance that the US administration has shown with it's mistreatment of France and Germany.
Are you kidding? France has a go at the US any chance it gets. France is jealous of the power the US has, which is why it wants to build a Federal Europe as an alternative superpower.
These are countries that have been strongly allied with America for fifty years on most global issues.
Now I know this is a troll.
Two other points, Europe is not jealous of the ability of the US to wage war anywhere in the world against any country - after having so many wars waged across Europe we are broadly opposed to all wars.
That is so not true. Europe definately is jealous of the US might. As for Europe being opposed to all wars, England didn't hesitate to defend the Falklands after being invaded by Argentina. Rather than being broadly against all wars, I would go so far as to say we now have many lazy democracies that are afraid to stand up and do the right thing.
This really is a cultural difference between the citizens of the US and the EU, probably because apart from the American Civil war, the US has not seen or had to bear the horrors of wars at close hand, and with the 'patriotic' news coverage of the Iraq war, you still won't.
I know in Britain we've never had anything like the Vietnam war. I hear that wasn't a picnic in the park.
Finally, France opposed the war both for it's own economic reasons and because it thought that the US was trying to manipulate the UN with false intelligence on the WMDs
Well France would know, having provided the WMD to Iraq in the first place.
End result of the US decision to invade ? Thousands of Iraqi civilians dead (not to count tens of thousands of Iraqi army personnel), no WMDs found and the chances of terrorist attacks have increased as people see the US as invading and subjugating another muslim country.
End result? A brutal dictator deposed, an oppressed country the chance to flourish and take advantage of the natural wealth their country can provide them (whether that happens or not is in their hands... but at least their fate now IS in their hands). For all the conspiracy theories you can come up with, from what I can see the world has ended up a better place.
And no, being an ostrich and sticking your head in the sand would not make crazy terrorists intent on killing Western people go away.
Phillip.
He has no idea on how to use any technical tools, but the man cooks like there is no tomorrow. So don't ask him to wack away at HTML. Do not ask him to use CVS. Do not ask him to start a script. He wants something like a word processor to go in and edit his webpage.
We use CVS here and it works a treat. The guys change the web pages using Dreamweaver, then they just look at the Explorer window, see the files they've changed highlighted in red and then right-click and select "Commit" from the menu. Totally non-technical. Check out TortoiseCVS.
The CVS output is incredibly easy to parse. Each user can view online the pages he's changed, publish them to staging or live (simple cvs checkout in each case), view the history of the file, etc.
CVS is full of features such as being able to watch a file and react to triggers, though I've never had need of them yet. Installation is a doddle, there are plug-and-play online CVS viewers. Personally I would go to a dynamic db backed CMS, but if you are forced to stay with static HTML pages edited by hand then it's worth keeping CVS as an option.
Phillip.
I think the lesson the DRM-and-associated industries will take from this is the Boiling Frog story.
For those not familiar with it (there might be a few), the theory goes that if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water it will immediately jump out. If you place that frog in a pan of warm water and slowly raise the heat to boiling, the thing won't budge until it's dead (and then it still won't budge. =)
You failed to point out that this is an urban legend (or this link is funnier as they actually tried it).
Phillip.
Leave it up to morals? I think the outrageous success of Kazaa and gnutella are testament to the effectiveness of this strategy. You can't rely on people being honest when there's money involved. Sad as it is, we're all thieves when we get the chance.
I'm not sure how the above post got moderated insightful. The success of Kazaa and gnutella have nothing to do with the collapse of morals, and everything to do with a new concept admirably executed and easy to use.
All the songs were already available on the web and by ftp/irc. It was a slight effort so most people didn't bother. With Kazaa you can start playing a CD quality tune seconds after the name pops into your head. And it's not as though it got the edge competing with a RIAA backed service but by being free... the music industry point-blank refused to set up an online service which customers obviously demanded.
Which is easier? Typing the name of a song you want to play into Kazaa (Lite) and listening to it instantly? Or searching the web to find what album it's part of, hunting around web sites to find out who sells the album cheapest, finding your credit card, ordering the album online (bit dodgy using your credit card but taking the risk anyway), waiting several days for it to arrive on CD, and then inserting into your computer only to find the new copy protection stops it from working in your CD-ROM drive?
You can rely on being honest when money is around because most people are honest. This is why security with credit cards and cheques isn't as high as it could be... fraud is low enough just to build it into the cost of running things. The fact is you are sad enough to repeat the RIAA myth that by default we are all thieves.
You may be a thief when you get the chance, but please don't speak on the behalf of the rest of us.
Phillip.
Take your 486SX without a coprocessor... you can get an FPU (coprocessor) which does floating point operations MUCH faster than you can emulate them. However, you can't just use an FPU and ditch the 486, since the FPU can't do anything but floating point ops - it can't boot MS-DOS... it can't run Windows 3.1... it can't fetch values from memory... it can't even add 1+1 precisely!
Or if you upgraded your 486 to a Pentium, you'll find it's division it has a problem with...
Phillip.
Can I name the guy down the record store as prior art? His auto-completion is pretty good when I ask, "What's that band that begins with PO that had a hit in ..."
Seriously though, it really does not qualify under "non-obvious". Maybe a "nice to have" for the users but it's just a hack (throwing some auto-complete data in the header and adding a couple of lines of Javascript). Definately not something that should be patentable.
Phillip.
Gentoo is very simple to install. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. It teaches you a lot about Linux, not as much as LFS but enough to fascinate most techies without being *too* much like hard work.
The real selling point of Gentoo is the portage system. Want to try a new application? Type "emerge appname", and go have a coffee whilst it fetches the sources, compiles it optimised for your system, and then configures and installs it all for you. Want to update every application on your computer to the newest version? Type "emerge -u world".
It really is the most easy to maintain system I have ever used, and the only distro where installing and updating software is simpler than Windows. Whilst both Gentoo and LFS let you get a good look under the hood, the difference (as parent poster points out) in maintaining the systems is a gulf apart.
Phillip.
I agree. RiscOS on a Linux kernel would be a dream. The UI is the most productive I've ever used, installation a doddle (there is no 'install', you just drag and drop the app directory where-ever you want). Even the shared libraries ('modules') you just drag and drop around as you need them, just like ordinary files. You really get an instant feel for how the system fits together. The drag-and-drop saving concept is especially good. There is nothing more of a pain under Windows/KDE/etc than EVERY time you want to save something you need to keep bringing up that irritating file navigator.
Phillip.
until everyone up your street gets cable because of this report and yer speed drops.... ;)
Cable modem scales a lot better. They can have one hub serving an wide area, and if the speed drops then the area can be installed by installing a 2nd hub and splitting the area into two. With DSL, every line has to go all the way into a (physically restricted in size) exchange.
In Surrey, I had both cable modem and DSL. Cable modem was both faster and had better ping time for gaming.
Phillip.
As groundless as the accusations may be, and as much as I spit at the feet of SCO for their tactics, I cannot agree with a system that rewards the richest litigant, instead of the one that deserves to win on the merit of the case.
You remind me of the juror that turned up in court in a Starfleet uniform, and was fined for contempt of court when they refused to recognise any law other than the Federation. You don't get to choose which legal system you can use when you get taken to court, you have to use the one that country provides. If SCO are going to play dirty, then the previous poster is right... just leave it to their lawyers to figure out the best retaliation tactics within the framework of the legal system provided.
I guess the US has gotten used to having corporations possessing so much power that it's considered normal to wave it around like a plush toy.
It's always seemed that way over the pond, though they sometimes get a bit of a bloody nose when they try the same over here.
Phillip.
The database, since "Firebird" is a codename for the browser component of Mozilla and should not be applied to actual shipping products.
It's not a codename, it's the product name. Phoenix was the name of the browser, which with my Gentoo system I typed "emerge phoenix-cvs" (as I wanted latest version) to download and build. When I type "emerge firebird" it automatically downloads and installs the database. The two products having the same name is going to cause a lot of confusion in this area.
Phillip.
Screenshots?
Phillip.
The browser Phoenix had a legitimate beef, I mean you have two browsers of the same name. That is really confusing.
The browser isn't called Phoenix, that is the name of the company. The browser is part of what's called "FirstBIOS". They are obviously worried people would mistake the name of the company for the name of the application. Sure it's about protecting a company's brand, but it's not because there is another browser called Phoenix.
Phillip.
I would have modded that post as Insightful rather than Funny. I think "Browse" or "Browser" is a really good name. Look at Microsoft: Internet Explorer. Simple, says what it does, and close enough to generic to give it a chance of becoming a household name.
Phillip.
Well you won't be hearing the phrase from Sony any time soon...
Phillip.
... because I think Firebird isn't a very good name for the browser. It's all very well having it as an in-joke but the wider world won't get that. I'd keep it as Phoenix if legally the position is tenable. The name was chosen in good faith, is a good name for the browser, and has now massive brand recognition. From the Phoenix thread, I liked "Browse" best, which was/is the name of the RiscOS web browser that is available only on the Acorn platform. Simple 'lite' name, which complements the browser.
Phillip.
Hell, we can get software from my school for so dirt cheap, ($30 for Windows XP Pro) they might as well give it away for free.
On a related note, I've had youngsters telling me enthusiastically that there are people hanging around the school gates offering drugs for little or no money. I feel obliged to point out that once they become hooked, they'll be hit later for the full amount.
Phillip.
Where did they learn their interviewing skills? This is terrible. "Why don't you do blah and blah? Your software doesn't do blah. I always have problems with blah. Blah blah blah." I was very impressed with Matt's answers, though. He didn't get mad and say, "Well, why don't you fork the project then?!!" He just cordially and politely explained the concepts of open source and their development efforts. Nice work.
Because these are the questions that people want answered. They are the kind of questions you see in forums all the time. Rather than Matt getting mad, I'd have thought that he would appreciate the chance to answer everyone's top gripes in one place (like a FAQ) rather than having to repeat himself over and over.
When you develop OS software, you wonder at how unappreciative people can be as you strive to add in all their requests. It's only late into the project when you look back at how much ground you've covered that you appreciate that extra push they gave you. It's true that we shouldn't forget to give them the plaudits as well. Whether you use Red Hat or not, they have produced a product that pleases many people.
Phillip.
I am always amazed at how Bush and his administration manage to get so much support from the Americans. Are the schools there teaching children not to question anything, stop thinking and take what's being said on TV as some holy thoughts?
People believe in err either because they want to believe, or because they are too lazy to question. For the former, take as an example all those that fell for the Nigerian 419 scam. For the latter, all those that forwards hoax virus warnings. I don't think it's anything new or to do with todays crop of politicians, I think it's been in human nature for a long time. I won't comment on you cloaking your reasonable point in a political statement I disagree with, as it's a bit off-topic. Also, people are lazier these days and used to being spoon-fed information, hence the success of marketting slogans and media sound-bites.
It is shocking how easily people are being manipulated into thinking this is all being done for their own good. The basis of all this at the moment seems to be the creation of a black and white world: with us/against us - patriotic/unpatriotic etc. making more and more difficult to express disagreement and encouraging censorship.
What can I say? People love causes that are black and white. If they don't have one then they will invent one. It might manifest as a religion, a Cold War, a football rivalry, or an anti-war movement. The simpler it is, the less thinking is involved.
The best way to avoid 1984 is to ensure there are always counter-weights for everything. For every war, an anti-war movement. For every Orwellian piece of legislation, an active privacy coalition. For every DRM proposal, a consumer rights group. Give the debates raging. Keep the issues in the spotlight. When you tire of the fight, make sure there is fresh blood to replace you. Freedom isn't a war you win, it's an eternal struggle albeit one worth fighting for.
Anyway, sorry for rambling.
Phillip.