The execs at HP just figured out that they do not have as good of software to offer and this is just a stupid ploy. Having non-GPL licenses is what is going to bring money and corporate interest to OS software. Some corporations will tell you that if any part of a product is GPL'ed they would not touch it with a 10 foot pole. Big business is afraid of "viral" OS licensing.
Computer companies want to create a stable platform to sell. They know that certifying a machine for Windows provides this stability. Apple knows that their OS provides this for their machines. If you want a Linux machine go find all of the components that you want that provide Linux stable Linux drivers and build your own machine. I guarantee you that you are not going to have as polished and tested of a product as many commercial offerings. Hardware manufacturers like stability, I like stability, that is why certification processes are a good thing. If a company can offer a stable(not just technically but on the business side) software platform using the Linux kernel then it might get somewhere. Case and point: Apple takes the BSD system and adds their own API, desktop env, and I/O kit and suddenly people are making all sorts of devices that work with OS X and offering their own drivers. Do these vendors have the same offerings for BSD? No.
Linux on the desktop is not failing because any technical problems, it is failing because the hardware manufacturers(PC's and periphs) are not behind it.
I have had problems with eclipse visual editing, but I found an alternative. The newest NetBeans IDE has the best visual editor for Java that I have ever seen. But for everything else eclipse blows it away. For non-gui coding go eclipse, for gui go NetBeans.
It should always come down to using the right tool for the right job. Windows works better on my computer because it was made(and certified) to work with Windows XP. This means that XP runs flawlessly and Linux distros struggle to work properly. I have a computer to get things done and not to tool around with the OS. In my opinion XP is a good OS. If my computer was made to run a Linux distro then I am sure it would run just as well if not better. People should just face the facts that sometimes the right tool comes from MS.
No I did not read it, because I pretty much knew what it stated. After reading your post I took a quick look at it and here is what you might be interested in:
B. University Property. E-mail services are extended for the sole use of University faculty, staff, students and other appropriately authorized users to accomplish tasks related to and consistent with the University's mission. University e-mail systems and services are University facilities, resources and property as those terms are used in University policies and applicable law. Any e-mail address or account assigned by the University to individuals, sub-units, or functions of the University, is the property of the University.
I was given the email account for academic purposes. If you want to filter out non-school related email it is simple, have the server only accept emails from its own domain. If every student, teacher, staffer has an email from said domain then they can all communicate within the university system. Here is the policy and guideline document if you want to have some fun.
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ELECTRONIC MAIL POLICY
(I am not educated in the US gov regs on the communication industry, but here is my simple analysis) the phone company can block on their switches, but that might put them in breach of contract with customers. even if it did not this would easily lead to loss of business. so in all logic they cannot afford to block on the switches. as a college student myself it would not surprise me to know that in my agreement with my university they are allowed to block any non school related emails. if I do not like that then there are tons of free email services for personal use. the university is not going to go out of business, they do not need people to use their accounts for personal reasons.
the only way to block something is if you have control of a machine that it is going to. if it is your machine than you have all of the rights in the world to block anything that comes in or tries to go out. if you have control of the machine by less than legal means, well that's another issue.
I currently have been using kubuntu because it has proven to be the most user friendly KDE distro, for free (full version, no eval). I have tried suse before and enjoyed it, but I did not like having eval versions and such. And just felt stupid trying to get a pirated version of a linux distro. if this pans out I will definitely give it a chance.
first of all I think you might be looking for the word fruition, maybe. also I hope Nintendo kicks the crap out of Sony and MS. Nintendo has shown that they are really the only one of the three that cares about gaming and innovation. Sony and MS seem to just follow the trend of high power. I think they are going the way of the Pentium 4, which I would no longer touch with a 10 ft pole once they moved passed 2 GHz. Give it as many "features" as you want, you still have a steaming (literaly), inefficient mess.
what you just mentioned about the gamecube is exactly why I like it. If you have people over what better to play than super smash bros melee or similar nintendo games. they build in an optional automatic handicap as opposed to halo where it is obvious that the people who play it constantly destroy everybody. a little off topic but I just had to comment on the gamecube remark. in general I like where Nintendo is taking gaming.
No, just not always necessary. If you are writing production level software that is aimed at being a long term product then good code commenting is important. If you are writing small utility programs, small scripts, or idea prototypes then you should not worry about having good comments when subpar will do. But some form of comments are always good to have.
the difference of the what and how is needed. In the case of C style languages, the what would be the general comments for a function that explains what the function is supposed to accomplish. The how is more of the internal function comments explaining the process that is being used to accomplish the task.
If a non-programmer or somebody with no real knowledge of the project can look at a piece of code and understand what it generally does and how, then you have good comments. But good comments are not always necessary, sometimes subpar will do. Next question.
Many people criticize IE7 for copying from Firefox, but is this not the cycle of mass market software? First Netscape, and then IE copies Netscape and probably does it a little better. People dislike IE and Mozilla->Firefox is born. They essentially copy the same model and add a few nifty ideas. People like those ideas so other future browsers (IE7) implement these ideas. Which would make Microsoft look more stupid to the Slashdot crowd, not implementing proven good features(tabbed browsing) or ignoring the demand? Think about it, either way most of you will hate IE7 and criticize Microsoft for its creation.
Slashdot Mirror
The execs at HP just figured out that they do not have as good of software to offer and this is just a stupid ploy. Having non-GPL licenses is what is going to bring money and corporate interest to OS software. Some corporations will tell you that if any part of a product is GPL'ed they would not touch it with a 10 foot pole. Big business is afraid of "viral" OS licensing.
Computer companies want to create a stable platform to sell. They know that certifying a machine for Windows provides this stability. Apple knows that their OS provides this for their machines. If you want a Linux machine go find all of the components that you want that provide Linux stable Linux drivers and build your own machine. I guarantee you that you are not going to have as polished and tested of a product as many commercial offerings. Hardware manufacturers like stability, I like stability, that is why certification processes are a good thing. If a company can offer a stable(not just technically but on the business side) software platform using the Linux kernel then it might get somewhere. Case and point: Apple takes the BSD system and adds their own API, desktop env, and I/O kit and suddenly people are making all sorts of devices that work with OS X and offering their own drivers. Do these vendors have the same offerings for BSD? No. Linux on the desktop is not failing because any technical problems, it is failing because the hardware manufacturers(PC's and periphs) are not behind it.
I have had problems with eclipse visual editing, but I found an alternative. The newest NetBeans IDE has the best visual editor for Java that I have ever seen. But for everything else eclipse blows it away. For non-gui coding go eclipse, for gui go NetBeans.
It should always come down to using the right tool for the right job. Windows works better on my computer because it was made(and certified) to work with Windows XP. This means that XP runs flawlessly and Linux distros struggle to work properly. I have a computer to get things done and not to tool around with the OS. In my opinion XP is a good OS. If my computer was made to run a Linux distro then I am sure it would run just as well if not better. People should just face the facts that sometimes the right tool comes from MS.
No I did not read it, because I pretty much knew what it stated. After reading your post I took a quick look at it and here is what you might be interested in:
B. University Property. E-mail services are extended for the sole use of University faculty, staff, students and other appropriately authorized users to accomplish tasks related to and consistent with the University's mission. University e-mail systems and services are University facilities, resources and property as those terms are used in University policies and applicable law. Any e-mail address or account assigned by the University to individuals, sub-units, or functions of the University, is the property of the University.
I was given the email account for academic purposes. If you want to filter out non-school related email it is simple, have the server only accept emails from its own domain. If every student, teacher, staffer has an email from said domain then they can all communicate within the university system. Here is the policy and guideline document if you want to have some fun.
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ELECTRONIC MAIL POLICY
(I am not educated in the US gov regs on the communication industry, but here is my simple analysis) the phone company can block on their switches, but that might put them in breach of contract with customers. even if it did not this would easily lead to loss of business. so in all logic they cannot afford to block on the switches. as a college student myself it would not surprise me to know that in my agreement with my university they are allowed to block any non school related emails. if I do not like that then there are tons of free email services for personal use. the university is not going to go out of business, they do not need people to use their accounts for personal reasons.
the only way to block something is if you have control of a machine that it is going to. if it is your machine than you have all of the rights in the world to block anything that comes in or tries to go out. if you have control of the machine by less than legal means, well that's another issue.
I currently have been using kubuntu because it has proven to be the most user friendly KDE distro, for free (full version, no eval). I have tried suse before and enjoyed it, but I did not like having eval versions and such. And just felt stupid trying to get a pirated version of a linux distro. if this pans out I will definitely give it a chance.
first of all I think you might be looking for the word fruition, maybe. also I hope Nintendo kicks the crap out of Sony and MS. Nintendo has shown that they are really the only one of the three that cares about gaming and innovation. Sony and MS seem to just follow the trend of high power. I think they are going the way of the Pentium 4, which I would no longer touch with a 10 ft pole once they moved passed 2 GHz. Give it as many "features" as you want, you still have a steaming (literaly), inefficient mess.
what you just mentioned about the gamecube is exactly why I like it. If you have people over what better to play than super smash bros melee or similar nintendo games. they build in an optional automatic handicap as opposed to halo where it is obvious that the people who play it constantly destroy everybody. a little off topic but I just had to comment on the gamecube remark. in general I like where Nintendo is taking gaming.
No, just not always necessary. If you are writing production level software that is aimed at being a long term product then good code commenting is important. If you are writing small utility programs, small scripts, or idea prototypes then you should not worry about having good comments when subpar will do. But some form of comments are always good to have.
the difference of the what and how is needed. In the case of C style languages, the what would be the general comments for a function that explains what the function is supposed to accomplish. The how is more of the internal function comments explaining the process that is being used to accomplish the task.
If a non-programmer or somebody with no real knowledge of the project can look at a piece of code and understand what it generally does and how, then you have good comments. But good comments are not always necessary, sometimes subpar will do. Next question.
Many people criticize IE7 for copying from Firefox, but is this not the cycle of mass market software? First Netscape, and then IE copies Netscape and probably does it a little better. People dislike IE and Mozilla->Firefox is born. They essentially copy the same model and add a few nifty ideas. People like those ideas so other future browsers (IE7) implement these ideas. Which would make Microsoft look more stupid to the Slashdot crowd, not implementing proven good features(tabbed browsing) or ignoring the demand? Think about it, either way most of you will hate IE7 and criticize Microsoft for its creation.