Posts by zeke

Microsoft silently kills dev backdoor that boots Linux on locked-down Windows RT slabs

Re: not long before RT slab-tops are completely worthless

As someone who lives in Canada and drove on all-season tires on my 4x4 for more than 2 decades going skiing, fishing and visiting family, I call BS on this unwise statement.

What happened is that the automotive industry just increased their tire sales by a lot, thats what happened and people who live in appartments and have their balconies loaded with recycling bins, compost bins, garbage bins are paying $50+ twice a year to get their tires stored on top of the costs of tires. What has happened to (non-alcohol) winter accidents numbers since then? Nothing. Stayed the same.

Accepting blindly what you are forced something isnt learning.

Now I can show you numbers that prove that wearing bike helmets do protect you from brain injury but that doenst matter since there is no lobby with enough political power to enforce this.

The good part with the tires thing is that more and more people have stopped having a 2nd car which is a necessity if both spouses work or you have more than 1 child doing sports/activities and replaced it with car sharing services. Its actually better this way and cheaper but that was an unintended consequence.

Shuttleworth delivers death blow in Umbongoland dispute

Re: Why is this 'news'...

This is news because Canonical/Ubuntu prides itself to be the kings of 'community' yet has over the past few years screwed up so often that incompetence of that nature is spectacular to see.

Canonical might think itself as some collaboration gurus but "Jimmy doenst play well with other kids" is the first thing youd write on their report card.

I think any bunch of developers who ask for clarifications and are dragged along for 2.5 to 4yrs (depending on accounts) will start being a bit testy and worry about whether there are other reasons to delay this info for YEARS which by the way is one of the things you cant do.

You have to assume good intentions to be in good standing with the Buntus. Thinking that a wait of a few years to some basic and fundamentals problems is perhaps an indication of something else is FORBIDDEN but you can very easily see why people would start feeling taht way.

In their over the top response, Canonical has only confirmed some people beliefs that there wasnt good intentions. But thats Canonical, horrible at PR, horrible at working with other communities that make up the GNU-LInux desktop yet still proud like a peacock at how good they think they are.

THATS why this is news. We love seeing car crashes unfold and Canonical has been amusing us quite a bit with how inept they are at something they claim to be good at.

Microsoft welcomes OSI open source to Win8 store

FSF says you CAN charge for GPLed work

>The GPL only works in the ideal world, where people can create code without financial >recompense from their work. Because you can't charge for GPL stuff, you just can't.

Lots of clueless things written about the GPL in one post but that one takes the cake.

You CAN charge for GPLed software. Heck, the FSF has a whole section called Selling Free Software.

Dont forget the free is for libre not gratis.

It can be free-libre without being free-gratis.

Microsoft arranges 'safe' Silverlight and HTML marriage

Miguel de Icaza whistles by the graveyard

>The added reliance on COM means Silverlight is becoming tied tighter to Windows, and it will >move away from parity with Silverlight for the Mac.

De Icaza and his cult following keep telling us that Moonligh isnt a few steps behind Silverlight even though its an eternal catch up game.

Luckily, when news like this hits, he relies on the classic plug your ears and shout really loud "Lalalalalalala!!" and then when youre finished, everything is fine.

Gosling blows lid off Jobs Java nonsense

The only good Mac is a Big one

>Just don't bother with Macs. The world can go on without Macs.

Not without Big Macs it can't.

Apple's Mac are limited to US and somewhat in a few euro countries.

The Big Mac is found in every country in the planet it seems.

Theyve invented plenty of things..

Oh come on now, you are being mean.

Apple invented many things like the GUI, the mouse, the personal computer, the mp3 player, the smartphone, JavaScriptCore, Webkit and of course tablets.

Had it not been for them, all these things wouldnt exist.

</sarcasm>

Aussie pols want compulsory AV software and firewalls

ISPs would be obliged to provide security advice

>ISPs would be obliged to provide security advice,

I worked at the help desk of an ISP in my last year in college doing the basic mindless stuff (Is your computer plugged into the wall?) and I had a standard answer to that question from clients whose Windows machines got pwned?:

Leave Microsoft.

- If you have the money to be locked in, get a Mac for pete's sake. No more headaches.

- If youre on a budget, want to recycle older hardware and care about free-freedom and free-gratis, and still want continously updated desktops then there are myriads of Linux desktop options to suit everyone's needs (ive installed Linux on the machines of about two dozen seniors by now) from the Mac clone Ubuntu to other more Windows centric desktops that use KDE4.5: Mandriva and such..

The desktops are really at parity now so the changes are easy (just as easy as going from XP to Vista 7) to make.

It always come down to the human element/stupidty of course but I can tell you that in all the Mac and Linux boxes in my extended family (inlaws, parents, grandparents, aunts, cousins), my free tech support for the usual "Help, my Windows machines is infested... what do I do ? I need my data files, I DIDNT back up!!! Help!!" call at 2ham is not the same as with Microsoft using friends who I now transfer to my 14yr nephew who charges 12$hr for that kind of time consuming stuff.. (Heck with KDE's KRDC 4.4 Remote Desktop Client I dont even bother going over to do stuff.).

Of course, I shouldnt complain, the onslaught of Conflicker-infected PCs in the corporate world helped me get my first job last year out of school so not everyone loses when it comes to security.

Windows is a great environment for the security field.

GPLv3 grows as GPL stumbles

Its all in the (GPL) family

We use GPL2, GPL3, LGPL and Affero at work and everyone considers them to be GPLed projects except that each license has its own use.

As long as the copyleft provision is strong and people can benefit from my work like I benefited from my predecessors (standing on the shoulders of giants and such), then its all good.

The rest is equivalent to counting pubes on angels.

>I've seen it time and time again - a lot of so-called professionals

Ive seen time and time again people get paid good salaries and be total lunkheads and take bad decisions.

Stupidity in others is none of my beeswax. There is too much in the world to get upset over.

We get it, You dont like GPL but would rather use a BSD buffet. Fine.

But please dont insult our intelligence by claiming peolpe choose GPL arent thinking ahead.

If that is the case, no license in the world can bring common sense to those people.

Microsoft open-source license finds (some) love

Open sauce license means nothing

People kept saying we have too many licenses and instead they give them out like Pez candy.

Whether something is an open source license is meaningless to most free software deveopers except in one way: is it compatible with the GPL family of licenses?

The MS-PL was made to be incompatible with the GPL (and others like Affero, LGPL,etc) and this was not by accident but by design.

You *can't* combine it into a GPL project which seems designed gratuitously to break GPL

compatibility.

This license is:

(a) like the BSD license in that you can take a derived work proprietary

(b) like the BSD license in that you can redistribute it in open source form under the same

license

(c) *unlike* the BSD license in that you cannot incorporate it into an open source project

with a more restrictive license.

When you have more lawyers than hell will ever need, you end up

producing a GPL-incompatible clone of the GPLv2, and a GPL-incompatible clone of the BSD license.

That is impressive legal judo that Im sure the Groklaw crowd would appreciate more than most developers.

Will the license is called open source, its almost transparently designed to impede code

sharing with other free/open source projects... which is one of the great

strengths of the free software movement.

hey, it does its job which is to give lip service to the 'Redmond has changed' PR that they are milking out of this while the heads of the company never once hint that this fantasy is true.

How often have you taken the words of low level Apple employees to signal a dramatic change of direction for the company?

Yet, we are being fed this line about Microsoft when NONE of the heads of the company have ever showed ANY signs of treating the 'cancer' differently.

Of course, if they can get something out of developers for free but without having to share this work with others, then they are all for it.

Opera to 'reinvent the web' in four days

Freedom as in teh Four Freedoms?

four kinds of freedom, for the users of software:

* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Opera is going GPL !!!

Cray sells Opteron-Linux super to Swiss boffins

Nyet to netbooks, oui to Crays

AMD doesnt believe the netbook fad will survive.

Theyre looking the other way.

Microsoft should get serious on Moonlight

Mono is a lie and a disease

Mono has all the makings of a patent trap by a company who has shown willingness for these kinds of tactics so why on earth would the people at Gnome allow it to become an integral part of their DE?

Moonlight is the first taste of crack "You can see pretty pictures" (just like you can now w Flash) but you can refuse it if you think that its a bad idea and too high a risk to take. Its stupid, dangerous and wrong (not to mention doomed to be always behind and at the mercy) but its a choice.

But installing Mono in every Gnome system to run Evolution, Tomboy and some others, is insane.

Depending on something so potentially hazardous at that level is negligent.

Of course, we have the apologists saying that many things in Linux could be potentially litigious, which is total bull..

'Lenny': Debian for the masses?

which KDE?

You spend three sentence teling us about Gnome 2.22 and that it doenst use Gnome 2.24

but dont bother telling people if its KDE 3.5 or 4.x?

The difference between the two KDE's? HUGE.

The dif. between the Gnomes? Not so much.

Get your money back from the online journalism school.

Microsoft trades goodwill for TomTom Linux satisfaction

battered wife syndrome leads some to hope things will change

What part of "Red Hat users owe us money (while Novell dont since theyve paid the protection racket for 'using' our IP)|" didnt some of you folks understand?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B0GTYfPoMo

I have never listened to what the assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture has to say about the direction of our country, instead I listen to what the president says.

Same thing whether its GM, IBM or any other Fortune 500 company: do you base yoursef on some low level manager or the CEO?

"Gee, I know Steve Jobs/Eric Schmidt/pick says one thing but Bob in accounting says the company is going in another direction? Hmm, who should I believe?"

Yet when it comes to Microsoft, were supposed to be oblivious to the 800pd gorilla?

So why should I listen to some low level flunky like Bill Milf or Ramji about which way the company is going? You listen to what the guy who signs the paychecks says.

And baldy has never uttered anything remotely pragmatic about Linux while Im sure wishful thinking has helped fill in the blanks for a lot of people.

Its almost like battered wife syndrome.

"Sure, he treats me badly, beats me and threathens me but deep down he really loves me. I know it. See the nice bracelet/open source conference sponsorship he gave me? He's really sorry you know."

And when he hits you again, dont be surprised.

Abuse relationships are that way.

Asus quietly demos Eee Box

Asus also has Splashtop

Any reason why no mention of the Asus instant on option?

All Asus motherboards as well as some laptop series will have the Splashtop instant-on option, which is embedded Linux.

5 seconds boot time and you are in a stripped down Linux with Firefox, Skype, IM and a photoviewer. For people who are going online to check their emails regularly, this is amazing.

For decades, we have been complaining about slow boot time.

This lets you bypass that and should be a huge selling point.

Call it a green technology if you want to make it seem sexier!

Open Season exposes the real price paid for Radiohead's new album

Oh, btw, I did like the show!

I forgot to mention that for a first time listener, overall this was an excellent show.

I was bringing my kid to judo and stopped by work to get my iRiver player to have something to listen to while waiting there. Everyone's RSS feeds end up on our secondary server at work so lots of us listen to shows others recommend. Im not sure who at work found your show but the most DLed podcasts here was yours and the Samba & FSFe guys talking about the Microsoft case, what Sun's word is worth, and so on. So those were the two I took with me.

Like the podcast name.

i Googled 'open season podcast' and the first choice is the iTunes store.

i Yahooed (nah, it doesnt have the same ring to it) the same words and the first choice is the link: www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/23/open_season_episode_5

Shouldnt you be pushing traffic to your website if the Register is selling ads or should I changed my Firefox seach to Yahoo now? (yes, I know that since DVD Jon you can run iTunes on Linux. No thanks.)

Have to say that the topics are right on the money and 'très au courant'.

I cant tell the people apart yet, some of the voices arent 'radio friendly' and everyone seems like they took two valiums before the show but still I will come back because it covered many of the FLOSS stories I cared hearing about, with some witty humour with a light hint of snarky.

The web page is bland like german sauerkraut. (once you've had the hungarian, serbian, romanian ones sauted in paprika, the german one feels like eating sea algae but I digress, so close to my midnight snack)

Visually, its so-o-o-o.... open source. Do something about it.

The kids wanted to go with their friends to watch an big judo competition so i got roped into driving and got to hear the show again in the car with 5 first graders. There is a backhanded compliment there somewhere but I have to say I enjoyd the O'Hypey segment even more the second time around.

I just finished DLing episode 4 and the title and description of a 'batshit crazy mouse' sound very Enquirer appealing.

Zeke

Bordeaux/Montreal/Barcelona

Vanity licenses?

Do people at the OSI ever bother discussing the proliferation of licenses?

Does the OSI ever say no?

The problem is you podcast guys polish each others knobs so much that no one seems to want to ask hard questions of each other when inane stuff comes out of someones mouth.

You know, if Im going to force myself to decode british people when they talk tech, I might as well listen to Lugradio because at least they will call each other out and when they do so I get to learn expressions I will never ever use like Bollocks and wankers.

Seems I've read enough people have been talking over the years about the huge amount of licenses that someone at the OSI would have freaking noticed this/

Guys like Matt are the other extreme of ****** like ESR, paralyzed by their fear of doing the wrong thing that they let everything through. You know....like Sgt. Schultz!

No, you dont stop Microsoft from playing by the rules just because they are Microsoft (Im old enough to remember when IBM was the evil empire, so I can deal with Redmond taking part in an FLOSS project that is GPLed IF they follow the rules). You stop them if they are doing the exact thing you allowe them to do; add nothing to the variety of the license pool

That whole part of about how those licenses arent ever used by others and often not by the companies was nauseating because the OSI thumb twiddlers have been immobile.

Then again, I dont know anyone who really gives a rat's arse about the OSI.

You can call the menu at Pizza Hut an open source license for all I care, all I care about when I join a FLOSS project is that my work benefits and can be improved by others.

And as a “Non-Compensated Individual Hobbyist Developer”, I can tell you that I trust many open source proponents as much as I trust Microsoft (speaking of which, when is our buddy ESR going to have the balls to come out and tell us how it feels to be in bed with Microsoft. Linspire/Freespire/potato/potatoe. Interesting how the coward never commented on the extortion scheme).

Just because we have a common methodology, it doesnt make you more trustworthy. There are as many ****heads in open source as in the proprietary world.

zeke

Yahoo!'s insanity over Zimbra and Google's plan to rule open source code

Give Samba and FSFE team their due

Tridge, Allisson and the FSF Europe crew who were the only ones left to fight this case got very, very little credit it seems from the open source community.

How much did Microsoft spend to buy out all the companies involved like Sun, Real, etc?

3.8 BILLION dollars!!!

THey coulgnt buy Samba because it is GPLed, someone would have just forked their work.

Too bad you glossed over this.