I know of Lothar, it comes with Mandrake 7.0. The web page is at http://www.linux-mandrake.com/lothar/
From the web site:
"It is a fully GUI based tool which ties together many of the tools already included in a Linux distribution to automate and simplify the process of installing new hardware. Some items will be detected, others can be selected from a drop down list. The various IO, IRQ and such X86 annoyance settings can be adjusted from within this interface."
You're actually raising a good point. It would mean that I (since I live in Canada) could reverse engineer the think legally and sell it, while an american company couldn't. It would basically mean it's an american law that shoots in the foot of americal software companies (not that it would be the first). Though of course as always, they'd try to impose the law to other countries (again Canada first) and I predict the same response as for the "anti-trading with Cuba" law (Helms-Burton or something). (As a reminder, the response was: "screw you")
I think you can't find a better incensive for people to use OSS. First, it kills the "who's accountable is the software crashes" argument. And let's face it, piracy (call it what you want) is good for software vendors, as people copy the software at home, and then buy it at work. If it were totally impossible to copy software, much less people would be using MS Office right now.
Now the choice will be: 1) Pay a lot for a closed source without any guarantee that it works correctly, risk having it disabled from the outside because you weren't nice with the company. And even then, you're not even free to use it as you like.
2) Download (or buy for $2) Open Source Software, do whatever you like with it (modifying it if you like) and then give it to your friends, your brother and your dog.
I guess the next step to this law is having to call the vendor to ask permission to use the software when you need it... or paying per minute fees for use of the software. The more abuse from closed source software vendors, the more good it will do to OSS.
Isn't there already a little instrument in your car that measures speed? Just add some electronics that prevents the car from going more than 120 km/h and you've solved most of the problem.
And actually, this is a case where I consider that my right not to get hit by a car doing 160 km/h is stronger than your right to do 160 km/h.
I guess after the FSF, it's time for the Free Patent Foundation (or patent-free foundation?). Maybe some organization to keep track of "prior art" would be helpful. Although IANAL, one thing to be careful about is that companies don't take that "prior art list" and claim patents on it (because of the one year "protection").
Or there could simply be a non-profit organization that accumulates patents (as silly as possible) and then force companies to cross-license for all open source software....or sue Micro$oft for a couple billions...
You just don't understand... This theory also replaces thermodymanics, relativity, and multiplication. I guess this fits within the general theory of perpetual motion, and the special law of alchemy.
How did the guy manage to get $25M in funding? Are investors that naive? or is there a fraud there. Regardless of whether or not what he says is true, what are the odds that a "breakthrough" like that is real. I'd guess one true story in about 1M "breakthrough" like this one.
I guess it comes down to this: Give hope to people and they'll believe anything. (same applies to cure for cancer, AIDS,...)
As much as it may be cool to have a 200 MHZ FSB, what will you do with it if your memory is 100 Mhz? I actually own a K7 (FSB = 200 MHz) and don't even think my board/CPU will let me use 133 MHz RAM (that is, without a soldering iron). Anyone knows about 200 Mhz SDRAM???
Today, Microsoft's new IPO spinoff, Solitaire Inc. opened at $700, up from $1.99. There are rumors of Solitaire buying Corel, but these rumors have not been confirmed.
It would be nice to have a Lawyer's advise on this. Patents are expensive, but what if you simply file a patent and drop it when it's accepted? I don't think any later patent for this idea would be accepted, so it would we the equivalent of the PPL. The other good point is that you only pay the fee for filing for a patent, not the other fees.
What if your site is not in the US? I'm pretty sure there exists a place in the world where this stupit trick isn't patented. Can you simply put the web site there and be free to do what you like without being sued? BTW, AFAIK, IANAL.
The fact that Amazone helps some Linux sites isn't an issue here. Bill Gates gives a lot of money to all kind of non profit organizations (not to mention the new MIT building). Does that mean the DOJ should drop all charges against Microsoft since, Bill's just a nice guy after all!
parallel lines do intersect according to the general theory of relativity. Where there's a mass, the universe curves, thus parallel lines can intersect (as in double stars that are in fact a single star with a huge mass between it and the earth). Maybe what they mean is "do not intersect" where there's no mass...
The problem with X-ray is that you need an X-ray lens to do the focus... I think such a thing exists, but once again, it might not be suitable for mass production.
I wonder how they're going to build the thing for CPU's. Electron beam litography is nice in a lab, but I'm pretty sure the plants are quite far from using it for mass production. And optical lithography is not an option either as.18 is probably the best you can do with visible light. You would need to go to far ultra-violet spectrum I guess. That's also a place where patents could get in the way: when someone find a way to mass produce that.
I've noticed that KDE2 (at least KOffice and kdecore) don't link with mico anymore. Are you planning to completly replace CORBA by more lightweight IPC?
For what I understand Moore's Law is about the amount of transistors you can put per square inch, not the computing power. If you put more processors in one machine, it doesn't have anything to do with Moore's Law. Moore's Law is about going from.5 um, to.35 um, to.18,...
NEC simply isn't using *micro*processors. Some CPU's can be built of tens of single chips. For problems which can't be eficently solved using distributed memory (MPP), you have to use SMP. Unfortunatly SMP isn't *generally* good beyond 32-64 CPU (not enough memory bandwidth), so if you want more power, you have to build faster CPU's. That's what NEC (and probably others) is doing.
Has anyone said it was a new thing. Linux just lacked a kernel debugger and now it has one. Linux still lacks a journaled file system, and will eventually have one. Nobody's saying it's new, but it's still a reason to be happy for.
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I'm pretty sure you'll see a bunch of small green guys jumping around on the Mars Polar Lander... That'd be cool!
I know of Lothar, it comes with Mandrake 7.0. The web page is at http://www.linux-mandrake.com/lothar/
From the web site:
"It is a fully GUI based tool which ties together many of the tools already included in a Linux distribution to automate and simplify the process of installing new hardware. Some items will be detected, others can be selected from a drop down list. The various IO, IRQ and such X86 annoyance settings can be adjusted from within this interface."
You're actually raising a good point. It would mean that I (since I live in Canada) could reverse engineer the think legally and sell it, while an american company couldn't. It would basically mean it's an american law that shoots in the foot of americal software companies (not that it would be the first). Though of course as always, they'd try to impose the law to other countries (again Canada first) and I predict the same response as for the "anti-trading with Cuba" law (Helms-Burton or something). (As a reminder, the response was: "screw you")
I think you can't find a better incensive for people to use OSS. First, it kills the "who's accountable is the software crashes" argument. And let's face it, piracy (call it what you want) is good for software vendors, as people copy the software at home, and then buy it at work. If it were totally impossible to copy software, much less people would be using MS Office right now.
Now the choice will be:
1) Pay a lot for a closed source without any guarantee that it works correctly, risk having it disabled from the outside because you weren't nice with the company. And even then, you're not even free to use it as you like.
2) Download (or buy for $2) Open Source Software, do whatever you like with it (modifying it if you like) and then give it to your friends, your brother and your dog.
I guess the next step to this law is having to call the vendor to ask permission to use the software when you need it... or paying per minute fees for use of the software. The more abuse from closed source software vendors, the more good it will do to OSS.
Simple: 8b = 1B, so 16x288Mb = 576MB.
It's true that sometimes, mostly in non technical articles, you're not totally sure whether they mean bit or byte...
I guess the full moon was just not Y2K complient in North America. A programmers team is working on this issue and a patch will be released soon.
Isn't there already a little instrument in your car that measures speed? Just add some electronics that prevents the car from going more than 120 km/h and you've solved most of the problem.
And actually, this is a case where I consider that my right not to get hit by a car doing 160 km/h is stronger than your right to do 160 km/h.
I guess after the FSF, it's time for the Free Patent Foundation (or patent-free foundation?). Maybe some organization to keep track of "prior art" would be helpful. Although IANAL, one thing to be careful about is that companies don't take that "prior art list" and claim patents on it (because of the one year "protection").
...or sue Micro$oft for a couple billions...
Or there could simply be a non-profit organization that accumulates patents (as silly as possible) and then force companies to cross-license for all open source software.
You just don't understand... This theory also replaces thermodymanics, relativity, and multiplication. I guess this fits within the general theory of perpetual motion, and the special law of alchemy.
How did the guy manage to get $25M in funding? Are investors that naive? or is there a fraud there. Regardless of whether or not what he says is true, what are the odds that a "breakthrough" like that is real. I'd guess one true story in about 1M "breakthrough" like this one.
...)
I guess it comes down to this: Give hope to people and they'll believe anything. (same applies to cure for cancer, AIDS,
What's next, "heptium"? what about "aquarium"? Next generation: "octopus"!
As much as it may be cool to have a 200 MHZ FSB, what will you do with it if your memory is 100 Mhz? I actually own a K7 (FSB = 200 MHz) and don't even think my board/CPU will let me use 133 MHz RAM (that is, without a soldering iron). Anyone knows about 200 Mhz SDRAM???
Today, Microsoft's new IPO spinoff, Solitaire Inc. opened at $700, up from $1.99. There are rumors of Solitaire buying Corel, but these rumors have not been confirmed.
It would be nice to have a Lawyer's advise on this. Patents are expensive, but what if you simply file a patent and drop it when it's accepted? I don't think any later patent for this idea would be accepted, so it would we the equivalent of the PPL. The other good point is that you only pay the fee for filing for a patent, not the other fees.
What if your site is not in the US? I'm pretty sure there exists a place in the world where this stupit trick isn't patented. Can you simply put the web site there and be free to do what you like without being sued? BTW, AFAIK, IANAL.
The fact that Amazone helps some Linux sites isn't an issue here. Bill Gates gives a lot of money to all kind of non profit organizations (not to mention the new MIT building). Does that mean the DOJ should drop all charges against Microsoft since, Bill's just a nice guy after all!
parallel lines do intersect according to the general theory of relativity. Where there's a mass, the universe curves, thus parallel lines can intersect (as in double stars that are in fact a single star with a huge mass between it and the earth). Maybe what they mean is "do not intersect" where there's no mass...
> Woohoo! Quake 3 on my TNT in Linux!
I'm already running Q3 on my K7-500/TNT2 and it's looking quite good!
The problem with X-ray is that you need an X-ray lens to do the focus... I think such a thing exists, but once again, it might not be suitable for mass production.
I wonder how they're going to build the thing for CPU's. Electron beam litography is nice in a lab, but I'm pretty sure the plants are quite far from using it for mass production. And optical lithography is not an option either as .18 is probably the best you can do with visible light. You would need to go to far ultra-violet spectrum I guess. That's also a place where patents could get in the way: when someone find a way to mass produce that.
I've noticed that KDE2 (at least KOffice and kdecore) don't link with mico anymore. Are you planning to completly replace CORBA by more lightweight IPC?
I think it's the first time I hear MS is concerned about security! Sounds suspicious...
For what I understand Moore's Law is about the amount of transistors you can put per square inch, not the computing power. If you put more processors in one machine, it doesn't have anything to do with Moore's Law. Moore's Law is about going from .5 um, to .35 um, to .18, ...
NEC simply isn't using *micro*processors. Some CPU's can be built of tens of single chips. For problems which can't be eficently solved using distributed memory (MPP), you have to use SMP. Unfortunatly SMP isn't *generally* good beyond 32-64 CPU (not enough memory bandwidth), so if you want more power, you have to build faster CPU's. That's what NEC (and probably others) is doing.
Has anyone said it was a new thing. Linux just lacked a kernel debugger and now it has one. Linux still lacks a journaled file system, and will eventually have one. Nobody's saying it's new, but it's still a reason to be happy for.