A lot of people have said CVS could not work, agreeing with Linus. Yet FreeBSD uses a CVS tree with multiple committers, and has had no serious problems that I am aware of. Infact, I would say they have had less problems than linux has had in the last few years.
Consider trying to install the latest version of Gnome... At work (using FreeBSD), cd/usr/ports/x11/gnome ; make install ta da!
At home (using Debian stable), well, it's a non starter, for all the hype about apt, I haven't found a way to use it without a internet connection (if there is a way then it's well hidden). I see no reason why we should not be able to download a huge single file, burn it to cd, take it home and install it. With mirrors in place, large files with all the dependencies, shouldn't be a problem.
There might be something in place at the moment to do this, I'm sure that if I knew what I was doing I could just download the right files from a gnome mirror. But the point is not 'what I do and don't know', rather that a large amount of people will not install the latest version of Gnome/KDE/etc until it just involves downloading one file and taking it home. Not night after night after night, downloading a program, home machine moans it lacks x,y,z, download x,y,z from work, install them at home, y requires a,b,c (which, on the next night, I will find require d,e,f).
I want to spend time being productive, not trying to work out how to upgrade my browser/desktop/wm etc...
There are many good reasons why a company would want to use mySQL as the DB and Access as the client.
We have a small database (26 thousand records), requires very fast reads, little is ever added or changed.
It provides the journal listings from this page (see the alphabetic listing). It does not require transactions. It is currently an Access database on a NT/IIS4 server.
The staff who edit it want to use Access. In my opinion, Access is a good DB client. It allows "average" users, who are advanced in the wonders of office apps, to edit and maintain the database, and use the find/replace and cut/paste commands they are used to. I can not see any obvious alternative for a client that works under windows and offers the same functionality.
You will note that the listings on the above page are created by an asp script. The whole web server is on NT. I'm not Microsoft bashing, though this has created a lot of problems. The asp stuff itself just dies (the mtx process goes mad and needs killing). We've spent days looking in to this with no luck.
We wanted to convert the DB to mySQL (easy, done in a couple of hours), use myODBC and let the staff use Access which uses the myODBC driver. We also re-wrote the asp scripts to php (being stupidly simple in what they do, this took a couple of hours). We would then be free to move our webpages to a nice Solaris box (which is still sitting there doing nothing), apache, php, mySQL, etc.
Not for love or money could we get the myODBC stuff to work with Access. We could connect to the database using a free (and very simple) client that is on the mySQL website, so the myODBC connection was working, though not with Access. The mySQL site does give some hints on using Access, but these did not help us.
I'm sure there must be many people in the same situation, i.e. they have a DB used just for some webpages though the staff (not techies, though they do know how to get the most out of office apps) who maintain that information want to use Access (for good reason, it is quite good for maintaining data), but the web server is on a UNIX platform.
We have had to put the project on hold while we work out a solution that does not involve any functionality loss for the staff who use Access.
I would imagine that text based adverts could be an idea. It would go against everything anyone in advertising knows but may work just because people may actually read them.
Take an advert for a recruitment company as an example. The current trend would be to flash "Working late again", for about five seconds, then "Tired of working for a company that doesn't appreciate you?" for another few seconds, after a few of these it will flash the name of the company (a) for branding (b) so that a few people may even click on the link. Most people will not sit there and read the whole advert. Most will instantly recognise it as an advert and ignore it.
Imagine a text alternative. In a normal font/style: "Jo Bloggs Recruiting is a well established agency specialising in IT based jobs across the US. We will help you find the right job without pushing into something you don't want. Visit our website to view the jobs we currently have on offer. Jo Bloggs Recritment help funds slashdot."
I think I may well be tempted to follow that link if I was looking for the job and I lived in the US. Plus, for us, no more animated gifs, less annoying, less to download, text based adverts may even be useful. Just a thought.
It's FAR from perfect, but we don't have military coups even when our election process is completely hosed. Any private nutcase (hello, Mr. Perot) can run for president, and might even do well (assuming he's _not_ a nutcase, that is).
And not forgetting that America is one of the few places where the nutcase actually wins (hello, Mr. Bush).
I always find it rather ironic that to escape all the politics and talk of licenses/ownership, I have to use a corporate distro rather than a volunteer effort. Shouldn't it be the other way round?
One of the reasons for keeping it (linux/debian) free was to stop those nasty corporates taking it over, destroying it with small print and legal matters. Yet debian, in my very humble opinion, seems to be heading for that very direction.
Don't get me wrong, I like Debian, but common sense seems to be left behind here. This isn't a case of "Debain doesn't like KDE because KDE isn't free", if that was the reason then fair enough, instead it's "Debian doesn't like KDE because Debains license doesnt like a little line in KDEs license". Is something like that really worth spending time over when we could all be doing something (coding, looking for porn, etc) instead?
No. Licensing is important to those who care about it. I, for example, could not care in the slightest if Be used my code with out releasing the source code, and if they make a zillion quid from it, then bully for them. I enjoy coding, I don't enjoy licenses, so I spend lots of my time coding and zero time on licenses.
IMHO, when these sort of things crop up, the question should be "is this thing fundamentally bad?", not "Does this break the GPL?", if it really sucks then the GPL should be able to stop it. However, and I'm not saying that this has happened here, there is a risk that people will catch companies out just for breaking the GPL, when what the company is doing is harmless.
In other words, the GPL should be there to stop people doing things that suck. The GPL should not be there just to stop people breaking the GPL. The two things aren't always the same.
So when somebody registers coke.ch, The Coca-Cola Company has to go after them. And besides, who is he kidding? coke.ch? Why not cocaineabuse.ch or something like that? "Coke" the mark is powerful because The Coca-Cola Company made it powerful. They are entitled to reap the benefits of the powerful mark and have an affirmative duty to protect the mark.
Everyone wants a catchy domain name, for good reason. Would you choose thedangersofcocaineabuse.ch or coke.ch?
The idea that you have to check trademarks in every spoken language incase your domain name infridges one of them is madness. Who knows, maybe cocaineabuse is a world tradmark of a famous toilet cleaner sold in every country in world, perhaps their sales are small in your own country, small enough for you to not have heard of them, but everywhere else they are a household name. They have a presence in your country, so they have to defend the name cocaineabuse.ch. I'm trying to show (and failing miserably) that thos whole concept does not work well across language and country borders.
As an aside. Unlike The USA, in the UK coke = any brand of black fizzy stuff that rotes your teeth. Coca-cola = brand of drink. I.e. you walk into a pub and ask for a coke and you're just as likely to get Pepsi
Of course, if ch had org.ch and co.ch then this problem would never of occured.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of people have said CVS could not work, agreeing with Linus. Yet FreeBSD uses a CVS tree with multiple committers, and has had no serious problems that I am aware of. Infact, I would say they have had less problems than linux has had in the last few years.
cjk
Toothpaste likes you
Consider trying to install the latest version of Gnome... At work (using FreeBSD), cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome ; make install ta da!
At home (using Debian stable), well, it's a non starter, for all the hype about apt, I haven't found a way to use it without a internet connection (if there is a way then it's well hidden). I see no reason why we should not be able to download a huge single file, burn it to cd, take it home and install it. With mirrors in place, large files with all the dependencies, shouldn't be a problem.
There might be something in place at the moment to do this, I'm sure that if I knew what I was doing I could just download the right files from a gnome mirror. But the point is not 'what I do and don't know', rather that a large amount of people will not install the latest version of Gnome/KDE/etc until it just involves downloading one file and taking it home. Not night after night after night, downloading a program, home machine moans it lacks x,y,z, download x,y,z from work, install them at home, y requires a,b,c (which, on the next night, I will find require d,e,f).
I want to spend time being productive, not trying to work out how to upgrade my browser/desktop/wm etc...
We have a small database (26 thousand records), requires very fast reads, little is ever added or changed. It provides the journal listings from this page (see the alphabetic listing). It does not require transactions. It is currently an Access database on a NT/IIS4 server.
The staff who edit it want to use Access. In my opinion, Access is a good DB client. It allows "average" users, who are advanced in the wonders of office apps, to edit and maintain the database, and use the find/replace and cut/paste commands they are used to. I can not see any obvious alternative for a client that works under windows and offers the same functionality.
You will note that the listings on the above page are created by an asp script. The whole web server is on NT. I'm not Microsoft bashing, though this has created a lot of problems. The asp stuff itself just dies (the mtx process goes mad and needs killing). We've spent days looking in to this with no luck.
We wanted to convert the DB to mySQL (easy, done in a couple of hours), use myODBC and let the staff use Access which uses the myODBC driver. We also re-wrote the asp scripts to php (being stupidly simple in what they do, this took a couple of hours). We would then be free to move our webpages to a nice Solaris box (which is still sitting there doing nothing), apache, php, mySQL, etc.
Not for love or money could we get the myODBC stuff to work with Access. We could connect to the database using a free (and very simple) client that is on the mySQL website, so the myODBC connection was working, though not with Access. The mySQL site does give some hints on using Access, but these did not help us.
I'm sure there must be many people in the same situation, i.e. they have a DB used just for some webpages though the staff (not techies, though they do know how to get the most out of office apps) who maintain that information want to use Access (for good reason, it is quite good for maintaining data), but the web server is on a UNIX platform.
We have had to put the project on hold while we work out a solution that does not involve any functionality loss for the staff who use Access.
Take an advert for a recruitment company as an example. The current trend would be to flash "Working late again", for about five seconds, then "Tired of working for a company that doesn't appreciate you?" for another few seconds, after a few of these it will flash the name of the company (a) for branding (b) so that a few people may even click on the link. Most people will not sit there and read the whole advert. Most will instantly recognise it as an advert and ignore it.
Imagine a text alternative. In a normal font/style: "Jo Bloggs Recruiting is a well established agency specialising in IT based jobs across the US. We will help you find the right job without pushing into something you don't want. Visit our website to view the jobs we currently have on offer. Jo Bloggs Recritment help funds slashdot."
I think I may well be tempted to follow that link if I was looking for the job and I lived in the US. Plus, for us, no more animated gifs, less annoying, less to download, text based adverts may even be useful. Just a thought.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/Digital/Update/2 001-02/amazon030201.shtml
And not forgetting that America is one of the few places where the nutcase actually wins (hello, Mr. Bush).
cjk
One of the reasons for keeping it (linux/debian) free was to stop those nasty corporates taking it over, destroying it with small print and legal matters. Yet debian, in my very humble opinion, seems to be heading for that very direction.
Don't get me wrong, I like Debian, but common sense seems to be left behind here. This isn't a case of "Debain doesn't like KDE because KDE isn't free", if that was the reason then fair enough, instead it's "Debian doesn't like KDE because Debains license doesnt like a little line in KDEs license". Is something like that really worth spending time over when we could all be doing something (coding, looking for porn, etc) instead?
No. Licensing is important to those who care about it. I, for example, could not care in the slightest if Be used my code with out releasing the source code, and if they make a zillion quid from it, then bully for them. I enjoy coding, I don't enjoy licenses, so I spend lots of my time coding and zero time on licenses.
IMHO, when these sort of things crop up, the question should be "is this thing fundamentally bad?", not "Does this break the GPL?", if it really sucks then the GPL should be able to stop it. However, and I'm not saying that this has happened here, there is a risk that people will catch companies out just for breaking the GPL, when what the company is doing is harmless.
In other words, the GPL should be there to stop people doing things that suck. The GPL should not be there just to stop people breaking the GPL. The two things aren't always the same.
cjk
Everyone wants a catchy domain name, for good reason. Would you choose thedangersofcocaineabuse.ch or coke.ch?
The idea that you have to check trademarks in every spoken language incase your domain name infridges one of them is madness. Who knows, maybe cocaineabuse is a world tradmark of a famous toilet cleaner sold in every country in world, perhaps their sales are small in your own country, small enough for you to not have heard of them, but everywhere else they are a household name. They have a presence in your country, so they have to defend the name cocaineabuse.ch. I'm trying to show (and failing miserably) that thos whole concept does not work well across language and country borders.
As an aside. Unlike The USA, in the UK coke = any brand of black fizzy stuff that rotes your teeth. Coca-cola = brand of drink. I.e. you walk into a pub and ask for a coke and you're just as likely to get Pepsi
Of course, if ch had org.ch and co.ch then this problem would never of occured.
cjk.