You drop hints about possible liability if anyone uses non-licensed distributions, discouraging their adoption and funding.
Yeah, just like SCO dropped hints about liability for copyright infringement unless we would purchase their Linux "license". We all know how many bought that. A few lonely suckers, but not many.
if DOS won't run on Linux, how can C++/MFC/COM/Win32 apps?
I'd think that making DOS applications run on Linux is harder than their Win32 equivalents, at least without considering the size of the Win32 API. DOS programs expect direct hardware access in many cases, but Win32 applications don't. Writing a compatibility layer for the latter is technically easier than writing a DOS emulator, if we assume that the Win32 API would be well documented (which does not always seem to be the case), just more time-consuming (again, because of the size of the Win32 API).
Hardcore Linux users probably scoff at the idea of running Office on a Linux box, but as a IT manager myself it sounds like a great idea.
Be sure that it will mess upp your filesystem structure though. It'd probably create/Program Files/Microsoft/Office/... and/Documents and Settings/[Username]/My Documents/... instead of using the common filesystem layout in Linux.
The key thing to learn about this is to never, ever, browse to a dvorak article, because that is exactly what they want you to do.
What about browsing his articles with Adblock+, Adblock Filterset.G Updater and Noscript? Then I won't see any ads, and his employer should not get any money for those ads.
It takes a lot longer than 4 seconds for a Slashdot story to load, particularly with the new AJAXy discussion system.
Slashdot does not use AJAX, just some Javascript, for the new discussion system. In essence, the only thing it does is hide all posts until you click on its header to expand it. The posts are there anyway, loaded along with the rest of the page. That way, it uses about the bandwith of the nested option, while presenting it as a dynamic threaded view. If they used AJAX, it would (probably) send an asynchronous query to the Slashdot servers asking for precisely the post you try to open. That does not happen, I checked tcpdump myself.
Had they really used AJAX, a comment thread might have been a lot quicker to load initially, but slightly slower loading each post.
maybe in the United States, but not everywhere. The EU is trying to sneak it though, while at the same time keeping an eye on Windows Vista for possible anticompetitive practises. Suing a Linux distributor may make the EU think hard about throwing the proposed software patent legislation in the trash, where it belongs.
Morally its outrageous, It is a protection racket, isn't that what steve balmer is saying buy your linux from these guys or we're going to sue your ass's (maybe).
If taken to the extreme, the internet will become unusable unless you replace your NIC with one that has an IPv6 address burned into the chipset on the card.
Do you have any idea about how internet routing works? Unless NIC's are going to be handed out by the ISP, this scheme will fail to work. IP addresses are supposed to be hierarchical to minimize routing table size. If any address could be used anywhere on earth, the routing tables would become extremely large, since there is no pattern in what networks are where. An important way of minimizing routing table sizes is to assign IP addresses close to each other in the address space to nodes close to each other (such as on the same local network). Thus a random router on the internet does not have to know how to route packets for each node, it only needs to know how to route packets for each network.
someone being in favor of better identification of easy terror targets like airlines, and being in favor of better money tracing, automatically means they are in favor of no privacy in society at all.
That is actually true for many of them. They usually use the "if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" argument to say that only criminals are in favor of privacy.
That is only true of the L4 and L5 points. The others are unstable and require station keeping. Specifically, I remember (it's not in the wikipedia page) that the solar L3 point has a stability of about 180 days. Fortunately you can orbit the L1/L2/L3 points.
I know, I wanted to make a long post short. I supplied the link for those who wanted to read up on Lagrange points.
Another problem that others have brought up here is the solar wind. For a solar monitoring mission, it's not much of a problem, but once you "spread your wings" to scatter the light, you'll keep getting blown away by the solar winds.
I know that too. My post was only meant as a very short explanation of the term L1.
As for what it will look like, L1 is far enough out there that it shouldn't affect anything in the sky other than the brightness of the sun. Solar astronomers will be pissed off, but a random African bushman wouldn't notice.
The solar astronomers shouldn't be too pissed, AFAIK they already have the SOHO orbiting L1, which would hopefully stay out of the shade from the cloud of reflectors.
Since life evolved long before 300 million years ago, we are left to assume that it somehow survived in the oceans... on the sunlight that made it through a kilometer of ice. Or have I missed something?
Relative to the majority of the deep sea, the areas around hydrothermal vents are biologically productive, often hosting complex communities fueled by the chemicals dissolved in the vent fluids. Chemosynthetic archaea form the base of the food chain, supporting diverse organisms, including giant tube worms, clams, and shrimp.
Isn't there a real chance that creating that much oxygen and pumping it into the atmosphere is going to take us from the relatively safe 2.5% up to the scary-fireball-of-death 3% oxygen levels?
I don't know where you got your numbers from, but they are incorrect by a large margin. The earth's atmosphere contains 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen and about 1% other gases.
Besides, I don't buy your "fireball of death" scenario. First, oxxygen will be used to burn the hydrogen produced (either literally in combustion chambers, or metaphorically in fuel cells). Second, raising levels with as much as one percent is a massive undertaking. Since 150 years ago, CO2 levels have risen by 100-150 ppm (the exact numbers may be wrong, but the order of magnitude isn't), which is 0.010 to 0.015%. I think that it would take a lot more than a few electrolysis plants to raise oxygen levels to 22%.
No shit! The Delta 4 Heavy launch vehicle has a payload capacity of 9306 kg to escape velocity according to the Wikipedia article on the subject. That would mean slightly more than two million launches. I wonder how many rockets have been fired in total (fireworks and military missiles excluded) thoughout modern history. My guess would be a few thousands.
the problem has got really bad - a lot worse than most people care to think.
I agree. One problem is called global dimming, and means that our earlier pollutants (such as soot) have been reflecting sunlight out of the atmosphere and thus hiding the effect of the greenhouse gases. When we move to cleaner energy systems (not in terms of CO2, but other light-reflecting pollutants) the hidden effects due to global dimming might accelerate global warming faster than our current CO2 emissions can account for.
Another factor is the sea. The sea is currently acting like a buffer solution, taking up a certain amount of the emitted CO2. This may not last forever. And besides, the effect the more and more acidic oceans has on the seaborne species are still mostly unknown. One should worry, since the oceans are the primary supplier of oxygen on this planet (as opposed to the Amazon rainforest that some people think) and a critically important source of food.
L1 one of the Lagrange points, i.e. points in space where the gravity of the sun and the earth cancel each other out. Objects stationed at these points do not fall towards either the earth or the sun.
If/when the ice there melts, it flows off the land and into the ocean, raising the sea level. Just like Antarctic ice.
And then one may consider the problem of post-glacial rebound. Greenland and the Antarctic has been depressed by the ice and will probably rise, displacing even more water into low areas, although that process will be much slower and contribute less water to the problem of rising sea levels than the melting itself.
WTF Microsoft gets Royalty payments from Novell for sales and support of Novells linux distro
In other words, if you buy Novell SuSE Linux, you will pay the Microsoft Tax. It is very probable that Microsoft will try to make people pay the Microsoft Tax even if they are not using their system. Just look at the invite to negotiations with other Linux distributors.
In 12 months, when Novell hasn't gotten much market traction, Microsoft may suggest "It's because of all the Linux companies competing against *your* UNIX business.. Don't you own the rights to that?"
*lawsuits ensue*
Sorry, they would have to transfer Darl McBride to Novell first. And I don't see that happening, Microsoft partnership or not.:)
And as for the system having more restrictive DRM on it, who is suprised? software and video and music piracy is spiralling to ridiculous levels, does anyone really think that there isnt overwhelming pressure to limit this at the O/S level?
And I predict that the piracy will continue unabated, despite restrictive DRM being integrated into Vista. The only victims of the DRM will be those customers that actually pay for their software/music/movies. DRM will simply be a punishment for staying legal.
then trying to get Flash and Java plug-ins to work.
Maybe you should try Fedora Core? There is an excellent guide to installing Fedora Core 5 at stanton-finley.net that discuss, among others, the installation of Flash and Java. It does not cover Fedora Core 6, but most instructions can be applied successfully anyway.
What do you mean? Why do you state that I'm using an unlicensed copy when I know that this is false? How can you claim to know that with zero knowledge of me or my computers?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, just like SCO dropped hints about liability for copyright infringement unless we would purchase their Linux "license". We all know how many bought that. A few lonely suckers, but not many.
They chose the right distro for that. Just look at the name, SuSE. Remove one S and it becomes Sue. :)
I'd think that making DOS applications run on Linux is harder than their Win32 equivalents, at least without considering the size of the Win32 API. DOS programs expect direct hardware access in many cases, but Win32 applications don't. Writing a compatibility layer for the latter is technically easier than writing a DOS emulator, if we assume that the Win32 API would be well documented (which does not always seem to be the case), just more time-consuming (again, because of the size of the Win32 API).
Be sure that it will mess upp your filesystem structure though. It'd probably create /Program Files/Microsoft/Office/... and /Documents and Settings/[Username]/My Documents/... instead of using the common filesystem layout in Linux.
What about browsing his articles with Adblock+, Adblock Filterset.G Updater and Noscript? Then I won't see any ads, and his employer should not get any money for those ads.
Slashdot does not use AJAX, just some Javascript, for the new discussion system. In essence, the only thing it does is hide all posts until you click on its header to expand it. The posts are there anyway, loaded along with the rest of the page. That way, it uses about the bandwith of the nested option, while presenting it as a dynamic threaded view. If they used AJAX, it would (probably) send an asynchronous query to the Slashdot servers asking for precisely the post you try to open. That does not happen, I checked tcpdump myself.
Had they really used AJAX, a comment thread might have been a lot quicker to load initially, but slightly slower loading each post.
maybe in the United States, but not everywhere. The EU is trying to sneak it though, while at the same time keeping an eye on Windows Vista for possible anticompetitive practises. Suing a Linux distributor may make the EU think hard about throwing the proposed software patent legislation in the trash, where it belongs.
I agree completely.
Do you have any idea about how internet routing works? Unless NIC's are going to be handed out by the ISP, this scheme will fail to work. IP addresses are supposed to be hierarchical to minimize routing table size. If any address could be used anywhere on earth, the routing tables would become extremely large, since there is no pattern in what networks are where. An important way of minimizing routing table sizes is to assign IP addresses close to each other in the address space to nodes close to each other (such as on the same local network). Thus a random router on the internet does not have to know how to route packets for each node, it only needs to know how to route packets for each network.
That is actually true for many of them. They usually use the "if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" argument to say that only criminals are in favor of privacy.
I know, I wanted to make a long post short. I supplied the link for those who wanted to read up on Lagrange points.
I know that too. My post was only meant as a very short explanation of the term L1.
The solar astronomers shouldn't be too pissed, AFAIK they already have the SOHO orbiting L1, which would hopefully stay out of the shade from the cloud of reflectors.
The answer might be hydrothermal vents. From the article:
Relative to the majority of the deep sea, the areas around hydrothermal vents are biologically productive, often hosting complex communities fueled by the chemicals dissolved in the vent fluids. Chemosynthetic archaea form the base of the food chain, supporting diverse organisms, including giant tube worms, clams, and shrimp.
I don't know where you got your numbers from, but they are incorrect by a large margin. The earth's atmosphere contains 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen and about 1% other gases.
Besides, I don't buy your "fireball of death" scenario. First, oxxygen will be used to burn the hydrogen produced (either literally in combustion chambers, or metaphorically in fuel cells). Second, raising levels with as much as one percent is a massive undertaking. Since 150 years ago, CO2 levels have risen by 100-150 ppm (the exact numbers may be wrong, but the order of magnitude isn't), which is 0.010 to 0.015%. I think that it would take a lot more than a few electrolysis plants to raise oxygen levels to 22%.
No shit! The Delta 4 Heavy launch vehicle has a payload capacity of 9306 kg to escape velocity according to the Wikipedia article on the subject. That would mean slightly more than two million launches. I wonder how many rockets have been fired in total (fireworks and military missiles excluded) thoughout modern history. My guess would be a few thousands.
I agree. One problem is called global dimming, and means that our earlier pollutants (such as soot) have been reflecting sunlight out of the atmosphere and thus hiding the effect of the greenhouse gases. When we move to cleaner energy systems (not in terms of CO2, but other light-reflecting pollutants) the hidden effects due to global dimming might accelerate global warming faster than our current CO2 emissions can account for.
Another factor is the sea. The sea is currently acting like a buffer solution, taking up a certain amount of the emitted CO2. This may not last forever. And besides, the effect the more and more acidic oceans has on the seaborne species are still mostly unknown. One should worry, since the oceans are the primary supplier of oxygen on this planet (as opposed to the Amazon rainforest that some people think) and a critically important source of food.
L1 one of the Lagrange points, i.e. points in space where the gravity of the sun and the earth cancel each other out. Objects stationed at these points do not fall towards either the earth or the sun.
And then one may consider the problem of post-glacial rebound. Greenland and the Antarctic has been depressed by the ice and will probably rise, displacing even more water into low areas, although that process will be much slower and contribute less water to the problem of rising sea levels than the melting itself.
Which would be pretty bad anyway.
The fee on recordable media exists in Sweden too, and the divide it among the artists according to cd sale statistics.
In other words, if you buy Novell SuSE Linux, you will pay the Microsoft Tax. It is very probable that Microsoft will try to make people pay the Microsoft Tax even if they are not using their system. Just look at the invite to negotiations with other Linux distributors.
Sorry, they would have to transfer Darl McBride to Novell first. And I don't see that happening, Microsoft partnership or not. :)
And I predict that the piracy will continue unabated, despite restrictive DRM being integrated into Vista. The only victims of the DRM will be those customers that actually pay for their software/music/movies. DRM will simply be a punishment for staying legal.
Could you please expand on the similarities between ActiveX and XPInstall beyond providing extensions to web browsers?
Maybe you should try Fedora Core? There is an excellent guide to installing Fedora Core 5 at stanton-finley.net that discuss, among others, the installation of Flash and Java. It does not cover Fedora Core 6, but most instructions can be applied successfully anyway.
What do you mean? Why do you state that I'm using an unlicensed copy when I know that this is false? How can you claim to know that with zero knowledge of me or my computers?