quite apart from the fact that it has very little to do with 'not wanting to disclose your hardware', it is not the linux-way. the linux-way is to make the best possible kernel. for this reason, the binary interface keeps changing to make it better. the drivers just need to be maintained by people who are aware of this fact. if that means that the driver disk you got with your all-in-one scanner-copier-coffee machine doesn't work after 2 years, so be it.
You're wrong. They're saying that your status as a free/libre distro is in question (which ultimately means you can no longer distribute under the GPL).
you seem to be confused. the gpl is a license which applies to a piece of software.
the 'year of the linux desktop' will come when 'linux' manages to strong-arm every oem into installing 'linux' exclusively on every home computer they ship.
it has nothing to do with linux vs. windows. instead it is 'secretive company trying to obscure how something works and keep it expensive to copy bluray discs' vs. 'format now freely understandable and playable on any computer'.
slysoft basically just tried to divert the revenue stream for bluray discs to themselves. these people have allowed you to understand what bluray is, how it works, what it is doing to your computer and to share this knowledge with others. a necessary corollary is of course that the information is no longer locked inside the disc.
and thinking about it, that's not the point. other's will adopt the new technology and so force you to adopt it as well. just like getting documents from people who use microsoft office forces you to have a number of different microsoft office installations so you can read the documents.
i don't think they're as good as sun in this regard. and if you have the sourcecode, it's difficult to find a program written in c that once ran on a gnu/linux box and now won't.
if it doesn't work now on your laptop, it probably never will. the linux kernel has a perfectly standards-conform implementation of power management. softkeys should just work and wireless is solely dependent on the wireless manufacturer doing something about it. my recommendation to you would be to get another laptop.
i have never used vista, but every time i see it i'm reminded of kubuntu from about 3 years ago. a current ubuntu desktop really does look a lot more modern than either os x or (especially) vista. the fonts are nicer, the icons are nicer, the buttons are nicer etc. etc.
i was thinking about this recently with regards to hollywood and the music industry coming down hard on youtube. now there's probably a lot of real copyright infringement going on on youtube, but what THEY don't want us to know is that the top video on youtube is by a stand-up comic who filmed himself and put it there. the whole world isn't so obsessed with depriving britney spears of money as they would have us believe. that's what they don't want us to realise.
he explains that the agreement for the specs for adobe flash prohibits you from working on a competing implementation if you have ever used adobe's flash plugin. the report was made after adobe released the documentation.
the company i work for moved to microsoft sharepoint about 6 months ago. seeing as i work at a small branch, i don't have to use it much (we have an ubuntu server with ftp for documents and scheduling is done by waving across the room at whoever you want to speak to). however, mail is still handled by sharepoint. last week, sharepoint just stopped working for a day. i don't know what they did in head office on that day, nor do i want to. nor do i want to know how many weekends have been spent on trying to get it to work better (it had huge teething troubles)
the point of this is, if you want mail and calendering, use proper software which works.
the article continues to say that those 40 have never been seen in the wild because they were research projects. it then links to a webpage called WildList, claiming that some viruses for Linux (sic) are mentioned there. the article is from 2003. i've been browsing WildList for the last 15 minutes, working my way back through 2008 and 2007 and have yet to find a virus for Linux (sic).
face it, there aren't any gnu/linux viruses in the wild, despite the fact that gnu/linux has a majority share of webservers---exactly those computers you would most like to infect.
strange. i watched transformers as a download from a guy with a camcorder in a movie theater. i saw enough to know that i was not interested in buying it. i won't even go to the effort of downloading a decent version of it now.
why high-definition disks won't succeed
high-definition disks already have succeeded. they're called the audio cd and the movie dvd. now they are trying to tell us that the old stuff wasn't high-def, but the new stuff is so please upgrade. in order to make this work, they'd have to stop selling films on dvd (it worked for microsoft and stopping xp). dvd solves every problem people had: films lasted for ever without loosing quality, they were smaller so making storage easier, you could jump around the film to a new chapter without having to rewind and they were flat and shiny. most high-def media don't improve on these solutions, indeed they make stuff worse (someone told me that you can't jump over the adds on a blu-ray disk).
so, summing up, blu-ray disks and hd-dvds just aren't shinier than standard dvds. there's nothing space-age about them, just hum-drum more-of-the-same. now if they put the information on some sort of marble-sized silver or see-through ball which floated in mid-air above the tv, we'd all want to buy it, because the equivalent of that is what they did with the cd.
the problem with this approach is that people eating at macdonalds do not force you to eat at macdonalds but people producing files in proprietary formats or using proprietary protocols do force you to use the same software if you want to interact.
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quite apart from the fact that it has very little to do with 'not wanting to disclose your hardware', it is not the linux-way. the linux-way is to make the best possible kernel. for this reason, the binary interface keeps changing to make it better. the drivers just need to be maintained by people who are aware of this fact. if that means that the driver disk you got with your all-in-one scanner-copier-coffee machine doesn't work after 2 years, so be it.
You're wrong. They're saying that your status as a free/libre distro is in question (which ultimately means you can no longer distribute under the GPL).
you seem to be confused. the gpl is a license which applies to a piece of software.
Except that, by saying "you can't talk about proprietary software", you're taking away freedom. It's called censorship.
except no one's saying that. they are however saying that you shouldn't promote non-free software.
difficult, when they patent bits of it and then sue you.
If they think they can make money off my work, they're welcome to try.
it's not about making money off your work. that's not what the gpl prohibits. it's about not letting people steal your freedom.
Elevating free speech over other rights is a part of American ideology, however it is not universally accepted, certainly not in Europe or Asia.
not necessarily so. try running an advert for atheism in the us.
so many buzzwords. 'enterprise', 'deploy', 'office software', 'vendor'.
i dunno, was sun offering support for staroffice as part of the google pack?
is it impossible to get support for openoffice.org?
ask the developers of gnewsense
the 'year of the linux desktop' will come when 'linux' manages to strong-arm every oem into installing 'linux' exclusively on every home computer they ship.
you seem to be laboring under the delusion that the vast majority of foss zealots are male.
it has nothing to do with linux vs. windows. instead it is 'secretive company trying to obscure how something works and keep it expensive to copy bluray discs' vs. 'format now freely understandable and playable on any computer'.
slysoft basically just tried to divert the revenue stream for bluray discs to themselves. these people have allowed you to understand what bluray is, how it works, what it is doing to your computer and to share this knowledge with others. a necessary corollary is of course that the information is no longer locked inside the disc.
and thinking about it, that's not the point. other's will adopt the new technology and so force you to adopt it as well. just like getting documents from people who use microsoft office forces you to have a number of different microsoft office installations so you can read the documents.
i don't think they're as good as sun in this regard. and if you have the sourcecode, it's difficult to find a program written in c that once ran on a gnu/linux box and now won't.
if it doesn't work now on your laptop, it probably never will. the linux kernel has a perfectly standards-conform implementation of power management. softkeys should just work and wireless is solely dependent on the wireless manufacturer doing something about it. my recommendation to you would be to get another laptop.
i have never used vista, but every time i see it i'm reminded of kubuntu from about 3 years ago. a current ubuntu desktop really does look a lot more modern than either os x or (especially) vista. the fonts are nicer, the icons are nicer, the buttons are nicer etc. etc.
i was thinking about this recently with regards to hollywood and the music industry coming down hard on youtube. now there's probably a lot of real copyright infringement going on on youtube, but what THEY don't want us to know is that the top video on youtube is by a stand-up comic who filmed himself and put it there. the whole world isn't so obsessed with depriving britney spears of money as they would have us believe. that's what they don't want us to realise.
in this case the specs aren't enough. watch this report by the gnash project leader, rob savoye: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoNvsiBTQDE
he explains that the agreement for the specs for adobe flash prohibits you from working on a competing implementation if you have ever used adobe's flash plugin. the report was made after adobe released the documentation.
i'd have thought the way forward is to get decent svg rendering in firefox/konqueror. then you wouldn't need flash.
the company i work for moved to microsoft sharepoint about 6 months ago. seeing as i work at a small branch, i don't have to use it much (we have an ubuntu server with ftp for documents and scheduling is done by waving across the room at whoever you want to speak to). however, mail is still handled by sharepoint. last week, sharepoint just stopped working for a day. i don't know what they did in head office on that day, nor do i want to. nor do i want to know how many weekends have been spent on trying to get it to work better (it had huge teething troubles)
the point of this is, if you want mail and calendering, use proper software which works.
eben moglen talks about facebook here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLQiTzs8PQ4
you may find it interesting
at the moment, yes. the potential for misuse is however immense.
the article continues to say that those 40 have never been seen in the wild because they were research projects. it then links to a webpage called WildList, claiming that some viruses for Linux (sic) are mentioned there. the article is from 2003. i've been browsing WildList for the last 15 minutes, working my way back through 2008 and 2007 and have yet to find a virus for Linux (sic).
face it, there aren't any gnu/linux viruses in the wild, despite the fact that gnu/linux has a majority share of webservers---exactly those computers you would most like to infect.
... which in total take up somewhere around 1% of gnu/linux installs.
strange. i watched transformers as a download from a guy with a camcorder in a movie theater. i saw enough to know that i was not interested in buying it. i won't even go to the effort of downloading a decent version of it now.
why high-definition disks won't succeed
high-definition disks already have succeeded. they're called the audio cd and the movie dvd. now they are trying to tell us that the old stuff wasn't high-def, but the new stuff is so please upgrade. in order to make this work, they'd have to stop selling films on dvd (it worked for microsoft and stopping xp). dvd solves every problem people had: films lasted for ever without loosing quality, they were smaller so making storage easier, you could jump around the film to a new chapter without having to rewind and they were flat and shiny. most high-def media don't improve on these solutions, indeed they make stuff worse (someone told me that you can't jump over the adds on a blu-ray disk).
so, summing up, blu-ray disks and hd-dvds just aren't shinier than standard dvds. there's nothing space-age about them, just hum-drum more-of-the-same. now if they put the information on some sort of marble-sized silver or see-through ball which floated in mid-air above the tv, we'd all want to buy it, because the equivalent of that is what they did with the cd.
the problem with this approach is that people eating at macdonalds do not force you to eat at macdonalds but people producing files in proprietary formats or using proprietary protocols do force you to use the same software if you want to interact.