I'm really glad to hear that ATI will be supporting XFree86 4.3.
Actually, I'm glad to hear that anyone will be supporting XFree86 4.3.
Given the recent Keith Packard comments and flap over the future governance of XFree86 and
given that X is the bedrock underlying graphical interface to all kinds of UNIX flavors,
given that X development is rapidly moving into more insignificant minor rev levels preceded with ever more dots (X11 6.5.1 - No! Wait! X11 6.6 has been out 2 years and I didn't even notice! We'll be at X12 any day now!),
it's encouraging that someone with commercial interests finds it important to support XFree86 on their hardware.
It would be entirely reasonable for them to restrict the use of that application (via the EULA) to avoid deployment on other OS's, due to the unpredictable issues that will pop up.
Would it?
It seems strange to me that software EULA should be so encumbered with these kinds of restrictions if one makes a comparison to automobiles.
In that case, the manufacturer doesn't restrict you to only drive on certains roads, or toll-roads, as the case may be.
Rather, it's understood, and usually described in the user's manual, that the automobile works best and has been test to work well on paved hard-surfaced roads. If you drive off-road, or on a non-recommeded road, then you assume responsibility for the consequences. Various warranties and legal protections are disclaimed.
Software should be treated similarly. You assume the risks and consequences if you use the software in unintended ways, but there shouldn't be some arbitrary restriction on how you may use it.
The only valid reason for tying Visual FoxPro to a particular OS like Windows is in the case of a systems integrator that assumes extra risk by tying together all of your systems and guaranteeing the whole kit and kaboodle will perform.
For MS to claim it is a systems integrator in this regard is, at the least, far-fetched.
Worse, their actions could be viewed very plausibly as a conflict of interest.
Yes, I've become accustomed to watching one hour shows in 40 minutes and not becoming indoctrinated on how various new cars will fulfill my life.
On occasion I've watched the "news" and found it really grating to watch lengthy commercials without option. Sometimes it's bad enough I'll freeze the program to take a break for 5 minutes, and watch the news time delayed 5 or 10 minutes and speed through the commercials.
I agree: having becomed accustomed to the TiVo for the past couple of years I can't imagine going back to watching live. By comparison it's so depressing and tedious that I would rather not watch TV.
Lightning hit the ground outside my house about a year ago and caused a pulse to go over the phone wires in my house.
It fried the modems in both of my TiVos (as well as an external modem on my computer). I'd added disks to both TiVos and have lots of precious programs recorded on those disks.
There are instructions available on the Web for how to diagnose and repair broken modems yourself with parts you can get from 9th tee (which is where you can get the nice mounting brackets for extra hard drives, too.)
At any rate, I'm all thumbs with a soldering iron, so I carefully took out my boards and sent them off to Electric Legs, who will do the work for you. Boards came back and both TiVos have been working well ever since.
[I will say I was hoping for more of a performance boost by having more memory installed in my TiVo's, but it's still sluggish going through some parts of the menu.]
If you read Slashdot, then more than likely you have above average interest and knowledge about computers and technology.
For political expediency, I'll just identify you as Knowledge Workers of the Third Millenium (rather than karma whores, trolls, etc.)
If ever in the future you might consider starting your own technology-related business, or already own a technology-related business, then you can start to increase your employee morale, productivity and unfettered creativity by choosing a place to base your business that does not place draconian measures on the free flow of information for the sake of vested special interest groups saying words like "piracy" and "patriotism".
A trickle of feedback like this to a few chambers of commerce in the right states would do wonders in stemming the tide of such ill-thought legislation. Just about every state in the USA and every locality everywhere wants to become the next Silicon Valley. If you let them know, as the kind of person that makes up what makes Silicon Valley represents, that Tennesse (or wherever) is condemning itself to becoming a repressive backwater by adopting the same kind of legislation that has done so much to help the information economies
I've been trying to tell people for years that my drinking was not responsible for my ill health.
People were willing to listen to my explanation until I got to the part where I was hypothesizing that aliens were monitoring us drinkers and teleporting us aboard the ship at night for those operations.
Some of these questions have popped up on Slashdot earlier and you can search older stories for some suggestions.
Two important things.
It's vitally important you and your mate-to-be feel very comfortable about communicating with one another honestly. You should be able to ask her what she thinks about jewelry, engagement rings, wedding bands. And she should be able to tell you honestly what she thinks ("Really - everythings fine!" [goes off to pout]). If it turns out that she doesn't say what she means, then you're in for some rough times ahead. But you should know by now whether or not that's the case.
Don't go for the geek chic titanium rings because they can't be easily sawed off if, say, someone gains weight and the ring starts to feel constricted.
...it's a matter of them having to take the blame if it goes badly.
Which is why, if you really want to make the point of how OSS can be beneficial to your business, seek forgiveness after the fact rather than permission before the fact of introducing OSS.
You have to assume some risk and responsibility. It's too dangerous for your manager to do so. They can't invest the time to educate themselves on the rapidly reducing risks of a new technology. So, you bring up a tiny Linux stealth server and tailor it to do some small task well (crunch through a database and produce some plots on the web that show the upper management something they didn't know before but really like to know now; be creative and think about what you can extract that they would really find interesting.)
When you show the higher ups how OSS is already actually doing something useful for the business, hasn't been down over a period of time long compared to rebooting and repatching Windows servers, doesn't require licensing costs now or evermore, can be customized as much as you like without signing some NDA in blood, then they're likely to forgive you for your good deed.
Then, since no good deed goes unpunished, you'll be asked if you can do more projects on those OSS based systems.
After all, if Linux has "perfect" emulation of Windows there is no practical reason for developers to port their code to be platform independent.
Well, with Microsoft having saturated the desktop market for OS and office productivity applications, their new revenue model is based on upgrade cycles and subscription licenses.
In other words, they're deliberately cutting the cords of compatibility back to Win 9X, for example. And stopping future support for NT4 and other versions of Windows at specific times in the future. Anyone with a Windows infrastructure that went through Software Assurance 6.0 knows that MS has them by the balls. From an economic perspective, there is little elasticity in the price of Windows and Office: at zero price you might get an additional 5% of the market, at double the price you might lose 5% of the market.
If people that are happy running their business on those creaky old Windows systems have an emulator that works on Linux that helps them to keep their business running without huge investments in new software (and new hardware to go along with it), then that's a good thing for them. Development of native Linux applications will still go on and probably be spurred even more by those users with only one foot in the Linux camp.
The day may come when more of the legacy Windows applications of yore will run on a Linux/Wine system than on Windows 2006, for the simple reason that MS has a business reason to force those users into upgrading to Windows 2006, while the Linux development roadmap is not so encumbered.
Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer announced today that President Bush has, after consulting with VP Dick Cheney, other members of his cabinet and unidentified experts from the poultry industry that The Fox would be put in charge of The Henhouse.
"We think The Fox will lend invaluable experience to the management of The Henhouse," said Fleischer. "He has decades of experience with both eggs and with chickens, a breadth of experience that most other candidates just don't have."
I remembered being offered the opportunity to run CDE on my early 1990's vintage RISC workstation.
I didn't consider drag n' drop advantage and integration (there weren't lots of "dt... " applications) worth the performance hit compared to running ctwm under X.
Maybe now, on current hardware, CDE performs tolerably.
It still seems to lack "pizzazz" compared to either Gnome or KDE. I think the OSS efforts tend to attract people who fervently believe they are working on the most important thing in the world.
If you choose to work on some project without being paid to do it, then you must feel motivated that you are doing something really worthwhile.
Some TiVo owners didn't like the unit calling the mother ship and potentially downloading new revs of the OS that might mootify all their carefully-soldered hardware add-ons (eg, ethernet out).
I bought the lifetime subscription for the two TiVos I own (which have user-added hard drives) and been reasonably happy with it.
One problem, though, is schedule drift, where some movie off the satellite runs over the regularly scheduled time slot. The TiVo's feature of tacking on extra time to the recording helps this problem, but I'm loath to record too much unwanted crap (I already get commercials that I have to FF through and can't edit out).
I daresay that OOP can make a plate of spaghetti look relatively uncomplicated.
The spaghetti analogy to OOP works better if the spaghetti is overcooked, so that pulling a single strand causes an enormous giant squid-like multi-noodle to emerge from the depths.
To make the analogy really complete, though, you would need to mix in some other topologically-interesting pasta shapes, maybe even a few Klein bottles.
To top it off, when you dredge up a strand of spaghetti with a fork, if you started to pull out a re-instantiation of self connected to a fork pulling out a noodle, then that would start to mimic what you can find in OO code.
P.S. Double height cube walls prevents the Prairie Dog effect.
That would be an especially important suggestion.
Another good, earlier suggestion was to put plants around the top of the cubes to give it a friendlier jungle look, which I like.
But making the cube walls double height will prevent a bad situation from happening when cube dwellers happen to stand up at the same moment that the plant mowing blades are being used to trim the plants.
At MyCorp, we've found the productivity of programmers typically falls about 97% after their heads have been mowed off like a prairie dog that popped up at the wrong time under a riding mower.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm really glad to hear that ATI will be supporting XFree86 4.3.
Actually, I'm glad to hear that anyone will be supporting XFree86 4.3.
- Given the recent Keith Packard comments and flap over the future governance of XFree86 and
- given that X is the bedrock underlying graphical interface to all kinds of UNIX flavors,
- given that X development is rapidly moving into more insignificant minor rev levels preceded with ever more dots (X11 6.5.1 - No! Wait! X11 6.6 has been out 2 years and I didn't even notice! We'll be at X12 any day now!),
it's encouraging that someone with commercial interests finds it important to support XFree86 on their hardware.It would be entirely reasonable for them to restrict the use of that application (via the EULA) to avoid deployment on other OS's, due to the unpredictable issues that will pop up.
Would it?
It seems strange to me that software EULA should be so encumbered with these kinds of restrictions if one makes a comparison to automobiles.
In that case, the manufacturer doesn't restrict you to only drive on certains roads, or toll-roads, as the case may be.
Rather, it's understood, and usually described in the user's manual, that the automobile works best and has been test to work well on paved hard-surfaced roads. If you drive off-road, or on a non-recommeded road, then you assume responsibility for the consequences. Various warranties and legal protections are disclaimed.
Software should be treated similarly. You assume the risks and consequences if you use the software in unintended ways, but there shouldn't be some arbitrary restriction on how you may use it.
The only valid reason for tying Visual FoxPro to a particular OS like Windows is in the case of a systems integrator that assumes extra risk by tying together all of your systems and guaranteeing the whole kit and kaboodle will perform.
For MS to claim it is a systems integrator in this regard is, at the least, far-fetched.
Worse, their actions could be viewed very plausibly as a conflict of interest.
Yes, I've become accustomed to watching one hour shows in 40 minutes and not becoming indoctrinated on how various new cars will fulfill my life.
On occasion I've watched the "news" and found it really grating to watch lengthy commercials without option. Sometimes it's bad enough I'll freeze the program to take a break for 5 minutes, and watch the news time delayed 5 or 10 minutes and speed through the commercials.
I agree: having becomed accustomed to the TiVo for the past couple of years I can't imagine going back to watching live. By comparison it's so depressing and tedious that I would rather not watch TV.
Lightning hit the ground outside my house about a year ago and caused a pulse to go over the phone wires in my house.
It fried the modems in both of my TiVos (as well as an external modem on my computer). I'd added disks to both TiVos and have lots of precious programs recorded on those disks.
There are instructions available on the Web for how to diagnose and repair broken modems yourself with parts you can get from 9th tee (which is where you can get the nice mounting brackets for extra hard drives, too.)
At any rate, I'm all thumbs with a soldering iron, so I carefully took out my boards and sent them off to Electric Legs, who will do the work for you. Boards came back and both TiVos have been working well ever since.
[I will say I was hoping for more of a performance boost by having more memory installed in my TiVo's, but it's still sluggish going through some parts of the menu.]
If you read Slashdot, then more than likely you have above average interest and knowledge about computers and technology.
For political expediency, I'll just identify you as Knowledge Workers of the Third Millenium (rather than karma whores, trolls, etc.)
If ever in the future you might consider starting your own technology-related business, or already own a technology-related business, then you can start to increase your employee morale, productivity and unfettered creativity by choosing a place to base your business that does not place draconian measures on the free flow of information for the sake of vested special interest groups saying words like "piracy" and "patriotism".
A trickle of feedback like this to a few chambers of commerce in the right states would do wonders in stemming the tide of such ill-thought legislation. Just about every state in the USA and every locality everywhere wants to become the next Silicon Valley. If you let them know, as the kind of person that makes up what makes Silicon Valley represents, that Tennesse (or wherever) is condemning itself to becoming a repressive backwater by adopting the same kind of legislation that has done so much to help the information economies
C, which no one knows about yet.
EXACTLY!
I've been trying to tell people for years that my drinking was not responsible for my ill health.
People were willing to listen to my explanation until I got to the part where I was hypothesizing that aliens were monitoring us drinkers and teleporting us aboard the ship at night for those operations.
Does it work on Hep C?
Last I heard, there was no vaccine for that.
I traveled recently and got vaccinated for Hep A and B.
Some of these questions have popped up on Slashdot earlier and you can search older stories for some suggestions.
Two important things.
It's vitally important you and your mate-to-be feel very comfortable about communicating with one another honestly. You should be able to ask her what she thinks about jewelry, engagement rings, wedding bands. And she should be able to tell you honestly what she thinks ("Really - everythings fine!" [goes off to pout]). If it turns out that she doesn't say what she means, then you're in for some rough times ahead. But you should know by now whether or not that's the case.
Don't go for the geek chic titanium rings because they can't be easily sawed off if, say, someone gains weight and the ring starts to feel constricted.
Which is why, if you really want to make the point of how OSS can be beneficial to your business, seek forgiveness after the fact rather than permission before the fact of introducing OSS.
You have to assume some risk and responsibility. It's too dangerous for your manager to do so. They can't invest the time to educate themselves on the rapidly reducing risks of a new technology. So, you bring up a tiny Linux stealth server and tailor it to do some small task well (crunch through a database and produce some plots on the web that show the upper management something they didn't know before but really like to know now; be creative and think about what you can extract that they would really find interesting.)
When you show the higher ups how OSS is already actually doing something useful for the business, hasn't been down over a period of time long compared to rebooting and repatching Windows servers, doesn't require licensing costs now or evermore, can be customized as much as you like without signing some NDA in blood, then they're likely to forgive you for your good deed.
Then, since no good deed goes unpunished, you'll be asked if you can do more projects on those OSS based systems.
No one will ever be able to beat them. Ever. Its not even worth attempting to compete with them.
Quick, somebody tell the Wine developers!
After all, if Linux has "perfect" emulation of Windows there is no practical reason for developers to port their code to be platform independent.
Well, with Microsoft having saturated the desktop market for OS and office productivity applications, their new revenue model is based on upgrade cycles and subscription licenses.
In other words, they're deliberately cutting the cords of compatibility back to Win 9X, for example. And stopping future support for NT4 and other versions of Windows at specific times in the future. Anyone with a Windows infrastructure that went through Software Assurance 6.0 knows that MS has them by the balls. From an economic perspective, there is little elasticity in the price of Windows and Office: at zero price you might get an additional 5% of the market, at double the price you might lose 5% of the market.
If people that are happy running their business on those creaky old Windows systems have an emulator that works on Linux that helps them to keep their business running without huge investments in new software (and new hardware to go along with it), then that's a good thing for them. Development of native Linux applications will still go on and probably be spurred even more by those users with only one foot in the Linux camp.
The day may come when more of the legacy Windows applications of yore will run on a Linux/Wine system than on Windows 2006, for the simple reason that MS has a business reason to force those users into upgrading to Windows 2006, while the Linux development roadmap is not so encumbered.
A friend of mine (Chinese ethnicity, as a matter of fact) had a condition where his face would break out into a red flush after he consumed alcohol.
A system like this could introduce some annoying false positives for SARS infected passengers.
OTOH, at least the extra inconvenience would not be as noticeable if one was sufficiently soused.
Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer announced today that President Bush has, after consulting with VP Dick Cheney, other members of his cabinet and unidentified experts from the poultry industry that The Fox would be put in charge of The Henhouse.
"We think The Fox will lend invaluable experience to the management of The Henhouse," said Fleischer. "He has decades of experience with both eggs and with chickens, a breadth of experience that most other candidates just don't have."
so is that really proving a MS monopoly, or is it just shrewd marketing on MS's part?
Yes.
I remembered being offered the opportunity to run CDE on my early 1990's vintage RISC workstation.
I didn't consider drag n' drop advantage and integration (there weren't lots of "dt... " applications) worth the performance hit compared to running ctwm under X.
Maybe now, on current hardware, CDE performs tolerably.
It still seems to lack "pizzazz" compared to either Gnome or KDE. I think the OSS efforts tend to attract people who fervently believe they are working on the most important thing in the world.
If you choose to work on some project without being paid to do it, then you must feel motivated that you are doing something really worthwhile.
I thought Microsoft had more money than the United State's government.
They certainly can afford to pay their lawyers more.
Not necessarily.
Some TiVo owners didn't like the unit calling the mother ship and potentially downloading new revs of the OS that might mootify all their carefully-soldered hardware add-ons (eg, ethernet out).
I bought the lifetime subscription for the two TiVos I own (which have user-added hard drives) and been reasonably happy with it.
One problem, though, is schedule drift, where some movie off the satellite runs over the regularly scheduled time slot. The TiVo's feature of tacking on extra time to the recording helps this problem, but I'm loath to record too much unwanted crap (I already get commercials that I have to FF through and can't edit out).
A more subtle way of inducing male prarie dogs to pop their heads up is the sound of a beautiful woman walking by in high heels on a hard floor.
I daresay that OOP can make a plate of spaghetti look relatively uncomplicated.
The spaghetti analogy to OOP works better if the spaghetti is overcooked, so that pulling a single strand causes an enormous giant squid-like multi-noodle to emerge from the depths.
To make the analogy really complete, though, you would need to mix in some other topologically-interesting pasta shapes, maybe even a few Klein bottles.
To top it off, when you dredge up a strand of spaghetti with a fork, if you started to pull out a re-instantiation of self connected to a fork pulling out a noodle, then that would start to mimic what you can find in OO code.
P.S. Double height cube walls prevents the Prairie Dog effect.
That would be an especially important suggestion.
Another good, earlier suggestion was to put plants around the top of the cubes to give it a friendlier jungle look, which I like.
But making the cube walls double height will prevent a bad situation from happening when cube dwellers happen to stand up at the same moment that the plant mowing blades are being used to trim the plants.
At MyCorp, we've found the productivity of programmers typically falls about 97% after their heads have been mowed off like a prairie dog that popped up at the wrong time under a riding mower.
A G3 is a better tool for the job than an Athlon.
So that's why the TiVo uses a PPC chip!
Slashdot won't be getting any more AC posts from Michigan.
I always kind of liked the AMC Pacer with the wraparound greenhouse glass.
AMC cars had something of a reputation of having problems compared with other makes, but they looked nice.
Three thousand, three hundred and twenty-one?
Tell your son that rules for formal pronunciation require on-the-fly conversion to decimal.
Informally, he can say either "zero eks cee eff nine", or "cee eff nine base sixteen".
If he's smart, he'll figure out it's less work to settle for the serialization scheme of pronunciation.
Shoot, for very large or very many decimal numbers that you have to read over the phone the serialization protocol is typically what is used.
You don't hear many folks talk about their checking account balances of "four hundred eighty-seven undecillion, nine hundred seventeen decillion, ...."
The people who actually know how to find the answers to most Linux questions have spent literally thousands of hours looking at man pages
Sigh, sadly, it's true.
A long time ago I spent more hours than some felons serve behind bars, reading the fscking man pages to some 4.2BSD flavor.
It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.