But I know a lot of people here do. Please, every one of you that have bought faux-CDs with this junk on them, get together, find some lawyers, sue the bloody bejesus out of Sony, ok?
It makes the curve gentler, but doesn't alter the sequence, if that's what you mean. As long as the hardware is the same. But when comparing AMD and Intel, it's not. They take different boards, different memory, and there are significant differences there.
Yeah, but you had those capabilities with DR-DOS or third party extension to MS-DOS from Quarterdeck for many years before MS included them, and those other versions remain far more capable.
The effect of distance is all in targetting inaccuracies -- having a number of soldiers pinpoint a distant object exactly is not really feasible.
Nail on the head.
It's clear that it's quite possible to build a mirror array that can channel enough energy on a clear, sunny day at greek latitudes, to set pitch-covered cedar on fire.
The problematic element is the aiming.
Now, despite the claim that this 'busts' the 'myth' it really does nothing of the sort. The problem of aiming the thing is very much the type of problem which one might reasonably expect an Archimedes could solve, even though a bunch of MIT freshmen and some rather dubious television 'experts' have failed to do so.
The story may or may not be a myth, but the experiments so far seem to favour the conclusion that it is not, even if only relatively mildly.
Hmm in fact, as I wrote this, I just got an idea for how he could have done it. Time to start looking for those mirror-tiles, I just might have an experiment of my own to do.
Actually it says they can look for programs that you are using to cheat with. It doesn't say they can look for other programs or for you bank account information.
You need to brush up on your legalese man. It says they can look for whatever the hell they want and do whatever the hell they want, period. Here's the key bit:
ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY "ADDON" OR "MOD," THAT IN BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT'S SOLE DETERMINATION:
Considering there seems to be good reason to suspect MS of bankrolling Calderas little suicide mission, and have certainly been guilty of more than their share of dirty pool throughout their history in any case, it's not such a bad analogy at all. OpenOffice, Apache, etc. are all ported to Windows, and no one makes a stink out of that. It's done to bring Free Software to the poor unfortunates still using that OS, not to make MS happy, but if MS were willing to pay for that development would that suddenly make it wrong? Of course not.
The only reason it's an issue is because web sites like this one are heavily infiltrated by astro-turfers that will try to make it an issue so their masters can then squeal about 'linux zealots.'
MySQL made a deal, they got paid money to support a platform. That the client, in this case, happens to be the litigiousbastards was sure to raise a few eyebrows, and did, but not much more than that. Business is business. I hope Mårten made sure their check cleared before he let anyone put in any hours on that project... *shrug*
Here's my problem: if I have to start editing a makefile to point to the right libraries (assuming my distro has the libraries) to get a compilation going, and depending on which distro I use the bits I need aren't all in the same place. Make isn't a standard unless there is a standard way of writing a makefile - and if there is, it isn't transparent to me, based on my experience.
You shouldn't need to edit the makefile to point to the libraries manually. The configure script should be able to do that automatically. And autoconf writes the configure script automatically.
It is a tool that one has to spend a little time learning to understand and use, but it solves the problems you're talking about very neatly and elegantly, and is a truly enormous timesaver in the long run.
The fact is, there are actually a large number of distinct (but very similar) Operating Systems that use the Linux kernel, and a lot of people get confused about this and talk about 'Linux' as if it were an Operating System alone. They're all source-compatible, which means it's trivial to run the same Free Software across the board, but it's slightly less than friendly to closed binary-only distribution.
A lot of people don't have a problem with that. Those that do, are welcome to work on 'solutions' like this, but they shouldn't be surprised when large portions of the community don't see the point. Particularly when they start off by proclaiming their desires 'linux standards' (thereby imply that the major community-supported OSs like Debian and its derivatives and Slackware are somehow 'non-standard') and deliberately adopting the design decisions of johnny-come-lately commercial distributors as the basis for their so-called standards. These moves seem almost calculated to alienate large portions of the community.
Frankly, the best (and in some sense only) real way to prevent lock-in is source-availability, and the only real standard is make. I'm not saying that the LSB is evil or that no good can come of these efforts - quite the opposite. The effort is a sensible one for those involved, although I think they've made some major tactical errors, and I really do wish them the best and think their efforts could result in real benefits for their customers, particularly if they do some reëvaluation and refocusing. But this effort isn't the end-all and be-all of the platform - quite the opposite, it's a niche concern, and those behind it would be well advised to recognise that fact and adjust their attitude if they'd like to see community support.
Mmm no I consider the essential element of a 'corporation' to be, as the word implies, an organisation that functions as a fictional or legal person. Of course the military is one (of many) examples of this. 'The Army' can be treated in many ways as if it were an individual, it is attributed goals, interestes, desires, responsibilities, etc. but in fact there is no individual there with those properties - it's just a legal fiction under which the reality of thousands of individuals with their own individual interests function.
The trouble is the corporation structure. A company that's too big for anyone to actually understand and manage, with a structure that insulates it from responsibility, creates a culture where managers like that survive and thrive. And it's not just the US, although we *might* be in the lead on that issue - big corporations are in every country, and increasingly dominant in the worldwide economy.
First, MS has always been very pointed in their philosophy that these sorts of things are to be used only as bait to get customers onboard - once onboard they'll be nudged and prodded into porting to Win32. I don't see MS today as being even half agile enough to turn that MO around, and if they don't, it's a useless road.
Second - yes, they could throw IIS down the drain where it belongs and get serious about supporting Apache. Smart move? Undoubtedly. But again, one that goes completely against the grain of everything MS has ever stood for. Plus the customers that did drink the MS kool-aid and love IIS would be royally pissed about it, and linux or bsd would STILL be a better choice to run IIS on, so I'm not even sure this one would make sense for a sane company in MS' place.
Third - MS has done everything in their power to mutilate and kill Java. They're completely commited to '.net' instead. So, again, while it might be a good idea to give it real support, I just can't see this company doing that.
At best, they might decide to try to *appear* to be doing these things, but actually sabotaging themselves on the issues. Use the appearance as an argument to get customers, then tell the customers to move to Win32/IIS/'.net' as the solution to their problems once they're invested. THAT would be perfectly consistent with MS' MO, but unfortunately for them, that MO is pretty well known now, so not many are likely to be suckered like that.
It seems to me that, without completely abandoning the company culture and MO which I doubt they can or will do, the best they'll be able to come up with is another commercial unix. Which would be rather silly, and a waste of time. There's a reason everyone and their dog are migrating AWAY from commercial unix, and to Free linux-based systems, after all. And it's not because AIX or Solaris lack features or functionality so MS could step in and better them. It's because Freedom has plenty of practical advantages.
What can they do? Revive Xenix? SCO would love that, but who else would care? Do the NT POSIX subsystem again, only this time for real? Sure, they could do something like that, but why would anyone buy it even if they did? It will never, ever, be Free, so it would simply be yet another commercial *nix. And commercial *nix is dying.
So, for example, back in the 19th century, the government seized land, gave it to railroad companies so that they could put privately owned tracks on it
Yes, that was the beginning of corporate welfare. Also of the era of the 'robber baron' and the monopolist. And this is your defense?
These are forced sales, but they're not robberies.
A distinction without a difference.
If I pull a gun on you and demand you 'give' me your wallet, I'm mugging you, not soliciting donations.
And if I pull a gun on you and demand you fork over your wallet in exchange for something else, anything else, that's still a mugging, not a sale.
The essential difference between robbery and sale is coërcion. When you are forced to sell, that's not really a sale, it's just a robbery with a dress and some makeup on.
You can use the safepeer plugin, edit the blocklist, figure out which networks are in NZ and allow them and block everything else. Probably a bit of work, you might want to share the results when done with other Kiwis. Still don't like the implications for the network, but in cases like you're in it makes sense I suppose.
Actually you're all wrong. I ran an X Workstation on a 386DX33 for several years. Not the fastest thing in the world, true, but easily as fast as Win 3.1 on the same machine, and usable.
No, you're not going to have very good performance if you try to run a pile of wasteful bloated crap (GNOME for instance) but throw on a reasonable window manager and standard X applications and you can do just fine.
Slashdot Mirror
But I know a lot of people here do. Please, every one of you that have bought faux-CDs with this junk on them, get together, find some lawyers, sue the bloody bejesus out of Sony, ok?
[nt]
Ah yep. 386DX machine with a whopping 8 megs of RAM, IIRC.
I'm not sure wtf a 'desktop' is supposed to be, but Slack is a damn fine Workstation OS, if that's what you're thinking of.
It makes the curve gentler, but doesn't alter the sequence, if that's what you mean. As long as the hardware is the same. But when comparing AMD and Intel, it's not. They take different boards, different memory, and there are significant differences there.
Yeah, but you had those capabilities with DR-DOS or third party extension to MS-DOS from Quarterdeck for many years before MS included them, and those other versions remain far more capable.
Nail on the head.
It's clear that it's quite possible to build a mirror array that can channel enough energy on a clear, sunny day at greek latitudes, to set pitch-covered cedar on fire.
The problematic element is the aiming.
Now, despite the claim that this 'busts' the 'myth' it really does nothing of the sort. The problem of aiming the thing is very much the type of problem which one might reasonably expect an Archimedes could solve, even though a bunch of MIT freshmen and some rather dubious television 'experts' have failed to do so.
The story may or may not be a myth, but the experiments so far seem to favour the conclusion that it is not, even if only relatively mildly.
Hmm in fact, as I wrote this, I just got an idea for how he could have done it. Time to start looking for those mirror-tiles, I just might have an experiment of my own to do.
You need to brush up on your legalese man. It says they can look for whatever the hell they want and do whatever the hell they want, period. Here's the key bit:
ANY THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY "ADDON" OR "MOD," THAT IN BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT'S SOLE DETERMINATION:
Actually I think my point was that we port software to help users of different OSs, not OS manufacturers.
Considering there seems to be good reason to suspect MS of bankrolling Calderas little suicide mission, and have certainly been guilty of more than their share of dirty pool throughout their history in any case, it's not such a bad analogy at all. OpenOffice, Apache, etc. are all ported to Windows, and no one makes a stink out of that. It's done to bring Free Software to the poor unfortunates still using that OS, not to make MS happy, but if MS were willing to pay for that development would that suddenly make it wrong? Of course not.
The only reason it's an issue is because web sites like this one are heavily infiltrated by astro-turfers that will try to make it an issue so their masters can then squeal about 'linux zealots.'
MySQL made a deal, they got paid money to support a platform. That the client, in this case, happens to be the litigiousbastards was sure to raise a few eyebrows, and did, but not much more than that. Business is business. I hope Mårten made sure their check cleared before he let anyone put in any hours on that project... *shrug*
No, it wasn't. Recognising that, you might want to improve your argument a bit.
No, I don't think you understand at all. Binary compatibility requirements would "shu[n]t costs onto the userbase." You have it exactly backwards.
You shouldn't need to edit the makefile to point to the libraries manually. The configure script should be able to do that automatically. And autoconf writes the configure script automatically.
It is a tool that one has to spend a little time learning to understand and use, but it solves the problems you're talking about very neatly and elegantly, and is a truly enormous timesaver in the long run.
Eh? Moving target? Haven't you heard of 'make?'
The fact is, there are actually a large number of distinct (but very similar) Operating Systems that use the Linux kernel, and a lot of people get confused about this and talk about 'Linux' as if it were an Operating System alone. They're all source-compatible, which means it's trivial to run the same Free Software across the board, but it's slightly less than friendly to closed binary-only distribution.
A lot of people don't have a problem with that. Those that do, are welcome to work on 'solutions' like this, but they shouldn't be surprised when large portions of the community don't see the point. Particularly when they start off by proclaiming their desires 'linux standards' (thereby imply that the major community-supported OSs like Debian and its derivatives and Slackware are somehow 'non-standard') and deliberately adopting the design decisions of johnny-come-lately commercial distributors as the basis for their so-called standards. These moves seem almost calculated to alienate large portions of the community.
Frankly, the best (and in some sense only) real way to prevent lock-in is source-availability, and the only real standard is make. I'm not saying that the LSB is evil or that no good can come of these efforts - quite the opposite. The effort is a sensible one for those involved, although I think they've made some major tactical errors, and I really do wish them the best and think their efforts could result in real benefits for their customers, particularly if they do some reëvaluation and refocusing. But this effort isn't the end-all and be-all of the platform - quite the opposite, it's a niche concern, and those behind it would be well advised to recognise that fact and adjust their attitude if they'd like to see community support.
Mmm no I consider the essential element of a 'corporation' to be, as the word implies, an organisation that functions as a fictional or legal person. Of course the military is one (of many) examples of this. 'The Army' can be treated in many ways as if it were an individual, it is attributed goals, interestes, desires, responsibilities, etc. but in fact there is no individual there with those properties - it's just a legal fiction under which the reality of thousands of individuals with their own individual interests function.
I believe all those are usually or always structured as corporations.
The trouble is the corporation structure. A company that's too big for anyone to actually understand and manage, with a structure that insulates it from responsibility, creates a culture where managers like that survive and thrive. And it's not just the US, although we *might* be in the lead on that issue - big corporations are in every country, and increasingly dominant in the worldwide economy.
First, MS has always been very pointed in their philosophy that these sorts of things are to be used only as bait to get customers onboard - once onboard they'll be nudged and prodded into porting to Win32. I don't see MS today as being even half agile enough to turn that MO around, and if they don't, it's a useless road.
Second - yes, they could throw IIS down the drain where it belongs and get serious about supporting Apache. Smart move? Undoubtedly. But again, one that goes completely against the grain of everything MS has ever stood for. Plus the customers that did drink the MS kool-aid and love IIS would be royally pissed about it, and linux or bsd would STILL be a better choice to run IIS on, so I'm not even sure this one would make sense for a sane company in MS' place.
Third - MS has done everything in their power to mutilate and kill Java. They're completely commited to '.net' instead. So, again, while it might be a good idea to give it real support, I just can't see this company doing that.
At best, they might decide to try to *appear* to be doing these things, but actually sabotaging themselves on the issues. Use the appearance as an argument to get customers, then tell the customers to move to Win32/IIS/'.net' as the solution to their problems once they're invested. THAT would be perfectly consistent with MS' MO, but unfortunately for them, that MO is pretty well known now, so not many are likely to be suckered like that.
It seems to me that, without completely abandoning the company culture and MO which I doubt they can or will do, the best they'll be able to come up with is another commercial unix. Which would be rather silly, and a waste of time. There's a reason everyone and their dog are migrating AWAY from commercial unix, and to Free linux-based systems, after all. And it's not because AIX or Solaris lack features or functionality so MS could step in and better them. It's because Freedom has plenty of practical advantages.
What can they do? Revive Xenix? SCO would love that, but who else would care? Do the NT POSIX subsystem again, only this time for real? Sure, they could do something like that, but why would anyone buy it even if they did? It will never, ever, be Free, so it would simply be yet another commercial *nix. And commercial *nix is dying.
Yes, that was the beginning of corporate welfare. Also of the era of the 'robber baron' and the monopolist. And this is your defense?
A distinction without a difference.
If I pull a gun on you and demand you 'give' me your wallet, I'm mugging you, not soliciting donations.
And if I pull a gun on you and demand you fork over your wallet in exchange for something else, anything else, that's still a mugging, not a sale.
The essential difference between robbery and sale is coërcion. When you are forced to sell, that's not really a sale, it's just a robbery with a dress and some makeup on.
No, it is specifically allowed by copyright law, it's the normal use of software.
Yep. Software so bad, they have to pay you to take it.
You can use the safepeer plugin, edit the blocklist, figure out which networks are in NZ and allow them and block everything else. Probably a bit of work, you might want to share the results when done with other Kiwis. Still don't like the implications for the network, but in cases like you're in it makes sense I suppose.
Actually you're all wrong. I ran an X Workstation on a 386DX33 for several years. Not the fastest thing in the world, true, but easily as fast as Win 3.1 on the same machine, and usable.
No, you're not going to have very good performance if you try to run a pile of wasteful bloated crap (GNOME for instance) but throw on a reasonable window manager and standard X applications and you can do just fine.