Okay, I agree, the 'You make me sick' was over the top. I apologise.
However, I still feel my original point was valid. I *do* understand free software. I also understand that free software is a choice. If someone wishes to keep their code which they've invested considerable resources into proprietary, then that's their right. If someone wishes to release their code under an open source license, then that's also their right. Good for them. However, it's also not proved (yet?) to be a feasible buisiness model for software development, and I suspect that in many areas it will stay that way (Games development springs to mind...)
So let me get this straight... You're advocating cracking the Limux version and then distributing it for free? Otherwise known as 'Software Piracy'? Just because you happen to think that Open Source software is the Way To Go, doesn't give you the right to steal their intellectual property. Jeez, here comes a small company, trying to make a good browser so that you don't have to feel stuck with the weighty IE or Netscape, and all you can do is encourage people to fuck them over.
Personally I love having MDI on my browser. The only thing I don't like is when one of those annoying ad boxes pops up and takes up the whole window over the top of whatever I was viewing...
However, it wouldn't suprise me if MDI is an option on future versions of Windows Opera, and I aslo wouldn't be suprised to find that many of the other versions of Opera run SDI anyway.
The possibility of bendy circuits is the most exciting to me - when I compare my wallet with my Palm III, I find that although my wallet is wider and thicker, it fits in my pocket a lot more easliy, largely because it has a small amount of 'give' and is able to contour (to a small extent) to the curve of my butt.
My Palm III, however won't curve at all and therefore causes me discomfort if I sit down with it stuffed in my back trouser pocket.
Slightly bendy electronics would probably also be a lot more resilient to bangs and knocks, as much of the kinetic energy would be transferred into bending the device rather than snapping it's components.
However, I think it's a bit of a big step to assume that Microsoft *will* do this, when all they have said is that they will help with perl...
The reason they went after Java was because of the abiulity to run precompiled binaries on any Java compliant platform, which would undermine people's reliance on their operating system. However, perl is just another language that people find useful - it's not got the 'write once, run anywhere' features (i.e. abstraction of most of the operating system). Compare it to C - you can write portable code, but there's quite a few little incompatibilites to with endedness, standard libraries etc - perl is and probably will be exactly the same. A largely portable core language with platform-specific modules.
Whereas most of the Perl that has been written by Unix users is always *completely* compatible with perl on other platforms...
Come on! Any extensions that Microsoft add that are windows-specific are likely to be just that: specific to windows. You *wouldn't want* to do them on Unix - things like playing with the registry etc..
If anything, any windows-specific extensions will probably result in *more* portable perl code being written, as the 'write portable code' issue becomes more visible. Windows perl users are used to the idea that you have to give a little thought to portability, because of all the Unix-specific perl out there that they've had to alter.
They use Leech neurons because they've been more extensivley studied than most other types of animal neurons, probably because Leeches don't have a whole lot of them...
It seems to me to be unfair of you to expect all of those who use Linux to contribute back to it, if they have the skills to do so - surely that goes against the idea of 'free software' (Okay, I suppose I'm talking 'free beer' here, but...)
I am a professional programmer. My speciality is not operating systems, but I'm sure that I'd have the technical ability to do some useful work towards an open source operating system if I really wanted to. However, I don't want to. It simply doesn't interest me that much, I'd much rather be working on other kinds of things. I don't mind learning a bit about Linux, and I'd probably use it a lot more if someone else was administering the system. However, to me the OS is just a tool that I use that allows me to do the things that I'm interested in - I don't want to have to spend time working on stuff that could be spent more productively.
It also seems that it's rather against the spirit of the GPL to expect people to give stuff back if they use it - sure, if you use and make it better, then by all means!, but surely part of the original aim of Linux and the GNU project was to have a set of freely avaliable tools that people could *use*...
I see this as being a fundamental test of the whole open source philosiphy - will there continue to be enough people out there with a sufficient interest in operating system development to keep Linux going?
You've got to admit that SDMI has a certain amount going for it, i.e. protection of digitally-distributed music. If the internet is ever to become the mainstream music distribution format, we're going to need something to prevent people from easily just passing along the music files that they just downloaded. However, there'll be nothing to stop you MP3'ing your CD's etc (and even the output of your soundcard), so I can't see things really moving on the SDMI front until they come up with a compression algorithm that is at least 2-3 times as efficient as Mp3, in which case people will start drifting from Mp3, and mp3 will probably end up being largely the domain of those who wish to make get hold of/ distribute illegal copies of music.
It's called competition. Paying for something that your competitors can then use for free means that it's costing you more to produce your product than it's costing them. Therefore they have an advantage over you that they wouldn't have otherwise.
Re:Why movies are not released at the same time
on
TPM movie reel stolen
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· Score: 2
Because duplicating films is very expensive. At present once the film has started dying down in the U.S, the reels of film are cleaned up and then sent to other the other countries and so on.
I don't know exactly how expensive, but I'm guessing tens of thousands of dollars.
I have Satellite TV at home (Sky Digital) I get 100 digital channels from one satellite.
Now taking a nominal resolution for TV as 640x480 and film res as, say - 4000x2000, then (just by scaling up) you'd need about 25 times the bandwidth. So, just using a similar satellite as the Sky Digital one, you could transmit 4 movies at once in the space of 100 channels.
Of course, I'm not sure how well mpeg scales up, but it's obviously not out of the question.
Why on earth would they put Linux on there - it's obviously aimed at being a easy-to-use games/internet machine, not a server! I know that yes, you can play games on Linux, and yes, it supports sound aand a little bit of OpenGL etc... but it's all rather shoehorned in, as far as I can tell.
If you're going to go with a new machine architecture with an operating system with no (or hardly any) games written for it, why would you go for Linux? Far better to go for something that is much more multimedia friendly...
Here in the UK, we still get charged by-the-minute for our local phone calls, which works out at about 5p/minute (8c) during peak hours, 1.5p/minute (2.4c) at evenings, and 1p/minute (1.6c) at weekends. Most people's ISP's now use 0845/0345 numbers, which are national numbers, charged at the rate of a local call. Companies who set up 0345/0845 numbers get a share of the money that BT charges the customer, so the 'Free' ISPs make their money from the time that their users spend online.
Personally, I'd much rather pay a monthly rate, and have flat-rate local calls, or even better - ADSL;-)
From the talk that was given at GDC, it's a 300Mhz MIPS-based processor with two vector floating point units added on, which makes it about as good as a PII for integer performance. As far as floating point performance goes, it's got closer to the power of 3 PIII's...
For instance, in the UK you can join the British Computer Society (BCS) which requires various levels of competence for various levels of membership, and all members have to agreee to a 'Code of Conduct' and a 'Code of Practice'...
Is this consistent with common carrier status?
on
ISP Sues Spammer
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· Score: 2
The ISP only really has an interest in the content if that content harms the ISP in some way. As you have to enter into a contract with the ISP when you sign up, part of which is an agreement not to send spam, the ISP is quite within it's legal (and moral, IMO) rights to sue.
Remember, this guy knew that he was breaking the agreement, and that he was abusing the system.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I agree, the 'You make me sick' was over the top. I apologise.
However, I still feel my original point was valid. I *do* understand free software. I also understand that free software is a choice. If someone wishes to keep their code which they've invested considerable resources into proprietary, then that's their right. If someone wishes to release their code under an open source license, then that's also their right. Good for them. However, it's also not proved (yet?) to be a feasible buisiness model for software development, and I suspect that in many areas it will stay that way (Games development springs to mind...)
cheers,
Tim
So let me get this straight... You're advocating cracking the Limux version and then distributing it for free? Otherwise known as 'Software Piracy'? Just because you happen to think that Open Source software is the Way To Go, doesn't give you the right to steal their intellectual property. Jeez, here comes a small company, trying to make a good browser so that you don't have to feel stuck with the weighty IE or Netscape, and all you can do is encourage people to fuck them over.
You make me sick.
Personally I love having MDI on my browser. The only thing I don't like is when one of those annoying ad boxes pops up and takes up the whole window over the top of whatever I was viewing...
However, it wouldn't suprise me if MDI is an option on future versions of Windows Opera, and I aslo wouldn't be suprised to find that many of the other versions of Opera run SDI anyway.
The BeOS, Epoc and Mac versions of Opera have also progressed, with the Epoc and BeOS versions nearing beta.
/. has a big Linux bias, but really! BeOS is about to have it's first ever 3rd-party browser released, and it's not even mentioned?
Now, I know that
They've now shot down in price. I can buy a Panasonic DVD-RAM for £400 ($640) at Dabs.
The possibility of bendy circuits is the most exciting to me - when I compare my wallet with my Palm III, I find that although my wallet is wider and thicker, it fits in my pocket a lot more easliy, largely because it has a small amount of 'give' and is able to contour (to a small extent) to the curve of my butt.
My Palm III, however won't curve at all and therefore causes me discomfort if I sit down with it stuffed in my back trouser pocket.
Slightly bendy electronics would probably also be a lot more resilient to bangs and knocks, as much of the kinetic energy would be transferred into bending the device rather than snapping it's components.
However, I think it's a bit of a big step to assume that Microsoft *will* do this, when all they have said is that they will help with perl...
The reason they went after Java was because of the abiulity to run precompiled binaries on any Java compliant platform, which would undermine people's reliance on their operating system. However, perl is just another language that people find useful - it's not got the 'write once, run anywhere' features (i.e. abstraction of most of the operating system). Compare it to C - you can write portable code, but there's quite a few little incompatibilites to with endedness, standard libraries etc - perl is and probably will be exactly the same. A largely portable core language with platform-specific modules.
Whereas most of the Perl that has been written by Unix users is always *completely* compatible with perl on other platforms...
Come on! Any extensions that Microsoft add that are windows-specific are likely to be just that: specific to windows. You *wouldn't want* to do them on Unix - things like playing with the registry etc..
If anything, any windows-specific extensions will probably result in *more* portable perl code being written, as the 'write portable code' issue becomes more visible. Windows perl users are used to the idea that you have to give a little thought to portability, because of all the Unix-specific perl out there that they've had to alter.
They use Leech neurons because they've been more extensivley studied than most other types of animal neurons, probably because Leeches don't have a whole lot of them...
I am a professional programmer. My speciality is not operating systems, but I'm sure that I'd have the technical ability to do some useful work towards an open source operating system if I really wanted to. However, I don't want to. It simply doesn't interest me that much, I'd much rather be working on other kinds of things. I don't mind learning a bit about Linux, and I'd probably use it a lot more if someone else was administering the system. However, to me the OS is just a tool that I use that allows me to do the things that I'm interested in - I don't want to have to spend time working on stuff that could be spent more productively.
It also seems that it's rather against the spirit of the GPL to expect people to give stuff back if they use it - sure, if you use and make it better, then by all means!, but surely part of the original aim of Linux and the GNU project was to have a set of freely avaliable tools that people could *use*...
I see this as being a fundamental test of the whole open source philosiphy - will there continue to be enough people out there with a sufficient interest in operating system development to keep Linux going?
You've got to admit that SDMI has a certain amount going for it, i.e. protection of digitally-distributed music. If the internet is ever to become the mainstream music distribution format, we're going to need something to prevent people from easily just passing along the music files that they just downloaded. However, there'll be nothing to stop you MP3'ing your CD's etc (and even the output of your soundcard), so I can't see things really moving on the SDMI front until they come up with a compression algorithm that is at least 2-3 times as efficient as Mp3, in which case people will start drifting from Mp3, and mp3 will probably end up being largely the domain of those who wish to make get hold of/ distribute illegal copies of music.
Because duplicating films is very expensive. At present once the film has started dying down in the U.S, the reels of film are cleaned up and then sent to other the other countries and so on.
I don't know exactly how expensive, but I'm guessing tens of thousands of dollars.
It's gonna get as bad as PC games - The film gets released in a somehwat 'beta' format and then patches are put up on the LucasFilms website... ;-)
I have Satellite TV at home (Sky Digital) I get 100 digital channels from one satellite.
Now taking a nominal resolution for TV as 640x480 and film res as, say - 4000x2000, then (just by scaling up) you'd need about 25 times the bandwidth. So, just using a similar satellite as the Sky Digital one, you could transmit 4 movies at once in the space of 100 channels.
Of course, I'm not sure how well mpeg scales up, but it's obviously not out of the question.
cheers,
Tim
Why on earth would they put Linux on there - it's obviously aimed at being a easy-to-use games/internet machine, not a server! I know that yes, you can play games on Linux, and yes, it supports sound aand a little bit of OpenGL etc... but it's all rather shoehorned in, as far as I can tell.
If you're going to go with a new machine architecture with an operating system with no (or hardly any) games written for it, why would you go for Linux? Far better to go for something that is much more multimedia friendly...
Here in the UK, we still get charged by-the-minute for our local phone calls, which works out at about 5p/minute (8c) during peak hours, 1.5p/minute (2.4c) at evenings, and 1p/minute (1.6c) at weekends. Most people's ISP's now use 0845/0345 numbers, which are national numbers, charged at the rate of a local call. Companies who set up 0345/0845 numbers get a share of the money that BT charges the customer, so the 'Free' ISPs make their money from the time that their users spend online.
;-)
Personally, I'd much rather pay a monthly rate, and have flat-rate local calls, or even better - ADSL
cheers,
Tim
From the talk that was given at GDC, it's a 300Mhz MIPS-based processor with two vector floating point units added on, which makes it about as good as a PII for integer performance. As far as floating point performance goes, it's got closer to the power of 3 PIII's...
Well, 2 years kind of falls into "It'll be a while".... ;-)
When I said 'PSX' I meant 'PSX 2'
It'll be a while before you'll be able to emulate a PSX on a PC. It'd be interesting to see a PC emulated on a PSX though.... ;-)
$175 for a 17" montior?
What makes you say that? It seems to me that *vast numbers* of people will buy the PS 2...
For instance, in the UK you can join the British Computer Society (BCS) which requires various levels of competence for various levels of membership, and all members have to agreee to a 'Code of Conduct' and a 'Code of Practice'...
The ISP only really has an interest in the content if that content harms the ISP in some way. As you have to enter into a contract with the ISP when you sign up, part of which is an agreement not to send spam, the ISP is quite within it's legal (and moral, IMO) rights to sue.
Remember, this guy knew that he was breaking the agreement, and that he was abusing the system.