No, using their network protocol is not linking. What happens is that in order to use the standard SQL language over the network, you link your app to a small library, which handles the transport of SQL to the database, and the transport of the result back. The Java example is their JDBC driver. If that little piece is under the GPL, your entire program needs to be, or you need to pay.
Theoretically, you could reverse engineer their network protocol and re-implement the little piece yourself.
... and actually put Linux on some of their really good business-class machines, as opposed to their cheaper "entry-level" "home" flaky laptops. Write this down, Lenovo and Dell: I don't want Linux because it's cheap; I want it because it's better and free. Now give me that great laptop that a Windows user can already buy, put Linux on that instead, and you have my 1500 euros.
Without having read the article, the summary, or any comments for that matter, I can tell you: posting this question on Slashdot means you already know the answer, but you want to hear it from more people.
It does actually. The problem I have with Valve is not that they comply with a ridiculous law. It is because they lied to me. I clicked on the purchase link and I was told I was buying "Valve Complete Pack (DE)". DE? I stopped right there and filed a tech support question whether the DE meant I was buying the game in German. No, they said, the game is in English. And then I bought it.
Nowhere did they mention on the sales page what the "(DE)" meant, and the tech support guy obviously "forgot" to mention that. They had to make the sale, you know.
A responsible company would say "Valve Complete Pack (Low Violence)" (if they don't want to use a "Censored" label which would be most appropriate). Then I would know what I'm buying, and so would many others. I'm sick and tired of Valve's attitude. Or they would give me my money back. Or, seeing that I had a non-German credit card and that I was no longer connecting from Germany (once I was back in my home country), let me upgrade to the mature thing.
I'm not German. I don't live in Germany, and I don't have a German credit card. Hell, I don't even speak the language much. I'm over 18. However, I just happened to be in Germany when Episode 1 came out, and I bought the Valve Complete Pack. THEY DIDN'T TELL ME I was getting a CENSORED version for three-year-olds! I've hated Valve ever since.
If anyone knows how to get the HL2+EP1+EP2 experience without censorship and preferably without paying those assholes any more money, let me know. Some blood patch maybe?
How long until we get a tiny [i]mandatory[/i] device in each vehicle that broadcasts the vehicle's location 24/7, and that data is tied to a person, whether a criminal or not?
Nonsense. It's their brand that sells, not their prices (which are high). I'm about to buy a Dell laptop because it's a Dell. Being a Dell it will have a good build quality, it will be quiet, it will be durable, fantastically supported, and Linux-friendly. If it were 50 bucks more expensive (read: no discount on the Windows crap), I'd still buy the Dell.
BTW, I'm not buying for myself, otherwise I'd buy one with FreeDOS or Linux and avoid the issue altogether.
How will this affect a 14 year old, much less a 17 year old "child"
Not too well:
1) It will create people that are used to being spied on. When they grow up and more spying comes along, they will accept it without blinking an eye.
or
2) It will backfire. When they become teenagers, they will want to strongly oppose all kinds of authority just for the sake of opposing authority. When done by a large number of irresponsible people, that could do more harm than good, and result in further spying.
or
3) It will create irresponsible people. They will grow up, suddenly lose the overreaching parental control, and go wild. Suddenly, all that was controlled and forbidden becomes accessible - so let's get/do it! Without a parent to guide them, these young people will not have developed their own judgement for acceptable behavior. They will cause problems, and the natural reaction to society will be to impose spying further into adulthood, in order to prevent (in reality - delay) this outbreak.
Pick whichever you like, but one thing is certain: spying always leads to more spying. I think parents should be there for their children but also let them get into trouble a little - it's usually fine while they are young and that's the only way they'll learn.
8 months ago I was on the market for a new mobile phone, and I found this great high-tech little machine. So I looked at the specs, saw it runs Windows Mobile, and went with something else.
You know what? I was thinking of doing that... and then I did it! It made a very very good Counter-strike map. I was initially going to make it a bomb scenario, but settled for hostages for exactly that reason. Although I was thankfully far away from the US, I was in an American high school, and fake bomb threats had become very popular lately (gets you a day off, yay!). I mean, it never ever crossed my mind to bomb the school even for a split second, but try explaining that to those idiots.
I then removed the hostages, made it into a Half-life map (no objectives or anything) and I was going to use it as a senior school project, selling it as a "virtual tour" etc. I didn't do that in the end, because the map was not that good, and the idiots wouldn't have appreciated the effort anyway, and I needed the grades.
I ended up doing an entire small computer game instead. Of course, it wasn't appreciated either and I got a low grade. Oh well. Fuck high school.
The parent raises a point though: now that we have bigger sectors, are we finally getting a standard for partition tables with more than 4 entries without using logical partitions?
Get a 1 or 2 gigabyte USB stick. Install your Linux distribution of choice on it. Now your system runs from flash, while you can keep your/home directory where all your data is on the hard drive. The flash system is also easy to clone or move to another machine, and if you are careful to not let it use the Usb stick for temporary files, won't wear out anytime soon.
It's already here. Now, if you were talking about a *Windows* OS that does this, this will never happen. If nothing else, the size of Windows grows faster than the price-feasible USB stick size / flash hard drive, and you can't control what goes where easily.
I agree it's possible, and I also run Konqeuror by default, but that's not the point. Using 32bit software on a 64bit machine is just wrong. Using proprietary software is also just wrong. I'd rather gno with the currectly very limited Gnash, which is even worse on Konqueror than on Firefox. That, or no Flash at all.
Hey doesn't an old lady in Iowa own the patent to the banana split and every movie after 1950 with the banana split in it will have to help keep her grand kids in fast cars, coke & hookers?
Slashdot Mirror
No, using their network protocol is not linking. What happens is that in order to use the standard SQL language over the network, you link your app to a small library, which handles the transport of SQL to the database, and the transport of the result back. The Java example is their JDBC driver. If that little piece is under the GPL, your entire program needs to be, or you need to pay.
Theoretically, you could reverse engineer their network protocol and re-implement the little piece yourself.
... and actually put Linux on some of their really good business-class machines, as opposed to their cheaper "entry-level" "home" flaky laptops. Write this down, Lenovo and Dell: I don't want Linux because it's cheap; I want it because it's better and free. Now give me that great laptop that a Windows user can already buy, put Linux on that instead, and you have my 1500 euros.
That, or I'm getting an Eee.
Amarok.
Qt.
I rest my case.
Without having read the article, the summary, or any comments for that matter, I can tell you: posting this question on Slashdot means you already know the answer, but you want to hear it from more people.
:)
Which is good, in this case!
It does actually. The problem I have with Valve is not that they comply with a ridiculous law. It is because they lied to me. I clicked on the purchase link and I was told I was buying "Valve Complete Pack (DE)". DE? I stopped right there and filed a tech support question whether the DE meant I was buying the game in German. No, they said, the game is in English. And then I bought it.
Nowhere did they mention on the sales page what the "(DE)" meant, and the tech support guy obviously "forgot" to mention that. They had to make the sale, you know.
A responsible company would say "Valve Complete Pack (Low Violence)" (if they don't want to use a "Censored" label which would be most appropriate). Then I would know what I'm buying, and so would many others. I'm sick and tired of Valve's attitude. Or they would give me my money back. Or, seeing that I had a non-German credit card and that I was no longer connecting from Germany (once I was back in my home country), let me upgrade to the mature thing.
I'm not German. I don't live in Germany, and I don't have a German credit card. Hell, I don't even speak the language much. I'm over 18. However, I just happened to be in Germany when Episode 1 came out, and I bought the Valve Complete Pack. THEY DIDN'T TELL ME I was getting a CENSORED version for three-year-olds! I've hated Valve ever since.
If anyone knows how to get the HL2+EP1+EP2 experience without censorship and preferably without paying those assholes any more money, let me know. Some blood patch maybe?
And don't even get me started on Linux support.
But how does it compare against Western Digital's 1TB Green Power drive?
In the UK, Possession of the Anarchist's Cookbook Is Terrorism
Possession of what isn't an act of terrorism in the UK?
Leaked... yeah, right ;) Someone wants to taunt AMD, me thinks.
Google Pointless License, version 1 or later
So that's where all that taxpayer money goes!
How long until we get a tiny [i]mandatory[/i] device in each vehicle that broadcasts the vehicle's location 24/7, and that data is tied to a person, whether a criminal or not?
Can we get enough facts please? What RAID was used? RAID0, RAID1, RAID5...? Which version of Office did they run on the RAID?
Nonsense. It's their brand that sells, not their prices (which are high). I'm about to buy a Dell laptop because it's a Dell. Being a Dell it will have a good build quality, it will be quiet, it will be durable, fantastically supported, and Linux-friendly. If it were 50 bucks more expensive (read: no discount on the Windows crap), I'd still buy the Dell. BTW, I'm not buying for myself, otherwise I'd buy one with FreeDOS or Linux and avoid the issue altogether.
"all previous Facebook applications work under Facebook OS, but they work more like Windows does today"
'nuff said.
" the Xbox has become the company's most hated product "
It's also their only cool product. I wonder if there's any correlation?
How will this affect a 14 year old, much less a 17 year old "child"
Not too well:
1) It will create people that are used to being spied on. When they grow up and more spying comes along, they will accept it without blinking an eye.
or
2) It will backfire. When they become teenagers, they will want to strongly oppose all kinds of authority just for the sake of opposing authority. When done by a large number of irresponsible people, that could do more harm than good, and result in further spying.
or
3) It will create irresponsible people. They will grow up, suddenly lose the overreaching parental control, and go wild. Suddenly, all that was controlled and forbidden becomes accessible - so let's get/do it! Without a parent to guide them, these young people will not have developed their own judgement for acceptable behavior. They will cause problems, and the natural reaction to society will be to impose spying further into adulthood, in order to prevent (in reality - delay) this outbreak.
Pick whichever you like, but one thing is certain: spying always leads to more spying. I think parents should be there for their children but also let them get into trouble a little - it's usually fine while they are young and that's the only way they'll learn.
8 months ago I was on the market for a new mobile phone, and I found this great high-tech little machine. So I looked at the specs, saw it runs Windows Mobile, and went with something else.
"I for one, welcome our old human overlords!" - a fruit fly
You know what? I was thinking of doing that... and then I did it! It made a very very good Counter-strike map. I was initially going to make it a bomb scenario, but settled for hostages for exactly that reason. Although I was thankfully far away from the US, I was in an American high school, and fake bomb threats had become very popular lately (gets you a day off, yay!). I mean, it never ever crossed my mind to bomb the school even for a split second, but try explaining that to those idiots.
I then removed the hostages, made it into a Half-life map (no objectives or anything) and I was going to use it as a senior school project, selling it as a "virtual tour" etc. I didn't do that in the end, because the map was not that good, and the idiots wouldn't have appreciated the effort anyway, and I needed the grades.
I ended up doing an entire small computer game instead. Of course, it wasn't appreciated either and I got a low grade. Oh well. Fuck high school.
The parent raises a point though: now that we have bigger sectors, are we finally getting a standard for partition tables with more than 4 entries without using logical partitions?
Get a 1 or 2 gigabyte USB stick. Install your Linux distribution of choice on it. Now your system runs from flash, while you can keep your /home directory where all your data is on the hard drive. The flash system is also easy to clone or move to another machine, and if you are careful to not let it use the Usb stick for temporary files, won't wear out anytime soon.
It's already here. Now, if you were talking about a *Windows* OS that does this, this will never happen. If nothing else, the size of Windows grows faster than the price-feasible USB stick size / flash hard drive, and you can't control what goes where easily.
I agree it's possible, and I also run Konqeuror by default, but that's not the point. Using 32bit software on a 64bit machine is just wrong. Using proprietary software is also just wrong. I'd rather gno with the currectly very limited Gnash, which is even worse on Konqueror than on Firefox. That, or no Flash at all.
Sure, I'm so enjoying Flash 9 on my AMD64 machine.
Sarcasm intended.
Hey doesn't an old lady in Iowa own the patent to the banana split and every movie after 1950 with the banana split in it will have to help keep her grand kids in fast cars, coke & hookers?
That patent would have expired in 1970 anyway.