zero0w

Gaim 0.70 has released, now I can have Yahoo! and MSN messenger service back... so far :) . http://sourceforge.net/projects/gaim/ Win32 and Linux rpm versions are available. Enjoy! On the issue of MSN connectivity, we will see what happen on October 15 where MSN protocol v.9 will come into effect. As a side note, a few other open source applications have reached stable or release candidate status, namely MozillaFirebird 0.7 release candidate (installer support) Win32 OSS software: 7-Zip 3.10 stable CDex 1.51 stable It is notable that 7-Zip supports extraction of Linux rpm/deb/tarball package on Windows. It might prove useful for system admins and cross-platform developers.

Reading at Ars-Technica I discovered this interesting article, not that I believe all the points the author raised are valid, but it does propose the increasing unmanageability of patent and also the skewed of interest over to corporation against independent / individual inventors - but there's a catch: the author never thought of those patent which might have hurt public interest (vs foreign/corporate interest) in case when junk patent was filed and got allowed - and how to rectify such problems, nor has he discussed what can/cannot be patented at all: http://reactor-core.org/patent-wars.html

Any mdk rpm for XFce-4 final?

From what I have seen among those amendments, obviously business method such as the famous One-Click purchase of Amazon.com is being shot down and denied of patentability. However, it remains to be seen what constitute as a "technical" innovation, something not so clearly indicated in the amendment. One thing to be sure is pure software patent is unlikely under the amendment, but a hardware + software combination form of patent would be possible as suggested. What we have here is not a clear victory, but a truce to stop fighting in exchange for temporary peace in a while. It remains to be seen how the new proposal will be executed and enforced, and how the anti-ePatent lobbying groups would police and report those in violations.

I thought everybody knew that :wink: : SCO = Stupid Computer Organization I like the word "may" exist, it's just a bunch of speculators betting on unproven claims, or invalid claims so far it seems.

http://www.thehaus.net/AltOS/Linux/ht-ja-winex.shtml

I believe Mandrake has done something to modify KDE/Gnome, but I am not sure the kernel is in anyway faster than other distro.

Not sure if it is good thing though. Consider Red Hat is about to be more open to community process. We shall see it in coming times. Meanwhile some more people may go and try Red Hat or Debian.

Well I will prefer they waited to test out better of GNOME 2.4 and among other things (OpenOffice 1.1, KDE 3.1.4, etc.). Seriously, the incentives to upgrade is much less than 9.1 given the few number of updates of packages.

Great letter. nVidia OpenGL driver + SDL/OpenAL/FMOD library, they only have very few technical reasons not to port to Linux. Besides, another point worth mentioning is the number of volunteer testers out there. Many of them are willing to perform beta testing for Linux game clients for FREE. Keep in mind of this community-based effort in the testing/debugging department.

In fact, given the maturity of nVidia driver and the continuing development of ATi Linux driver, there's no technical reason they can't release a native Linux client either. Market share has been used as an argument for not developing/releasing a Linux client. But with the rate of Linux adoption pace in the coming months, I see less and less reason for not releasing Linux clients (Half Life 2 is the only exception, since DX9-feature were not available until OpenGL 2/1.5 has released, but it seems to me John Carmack managed to adopt nVidia OpenGL vendor extension pretty well). In fact it is very reasonable to ask for a Linux client along side those games who would like to run a Linux server. I think this is a reasonable demand, and I think the community might want to organize together to advocate on this cause. I enjoy ET on Linux very much and would like to do so again when MOH:AA Linux client is released.

Torvalds And Cox Write EU Parliament On Patents http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/...21/2330232&tid= Clear and concise points made in the letter.

Groklaw's Open Letter to SCO's CEO Darl McBride http://www.groklaw.com/article.php?story=2...030920122117265 Digging for Truth http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11649 It is perhaps the most eloquent and thorough answer to Mr. McBribe's manipulative speech in the media so far.

Looks like the Dark Side will now also embrace the Source, assuming this is not just some PR "mere talk" or pretentive posturing.

Well, for what it's worth, Nero cost $39.99 or something. When I come to Linux in late June 2002, K3b was not there, and I used GCombust to perform burning task, there are a few settings to tangle with but it wasn't too difficult after all to get it working (besides, always perform a Dummy burning if you are in doubt about setting). In January 2003 there was an article at Open for Business talking MandrakeSoft filing for Chapter 11 style bankruptcy protection which raise the controversy that Linux On Desktop is dead - even Red Hat had suggested earlier it has no interest in competing against Microsoft on desktop. Now every conversation changes, and people are talking about the "hidden cost" of Linux On Desktop or when it's ready (Gartner said it will be about in 2005). Just to reiterate the point, while many complaints about usability are valid, Linux On Desktop has been struggling just to survive for the past few years. Now we are seeing these complaints to improve it, not just to make it stay afloat. This is a significant change, and we see it is a sign of uptake. The rpm dependency hell was not an easily solvable one, some package delivery project was in progress to deal with this issue, one example is autopackage. Of course cybrjackle is right that urpmi, apt-get or emerge managed to ease the process a lot already, albeit distro centric. Still I think the cost to learn a few things will be outweighed by the benefit in the long run. As far as I can see, the only way to avoid dependency at all is to repackage like the commercial software in a single bundle. But the open source development model makes it unlikely to work. Maybe when GNOME 3.0 or KDE 4 comes out and people are settling down with enough features that we can freeze certain API and system calls so that the dependency does not require/depend on newer libraries. Until then, I don't see it will go away just yet, and the only way to manage it is to use urpmi/apt/emerge style program at this moment. Personally, I know where to look for mdk rpms in a number of rpm outlets so I can get by.

As TweakHound put it, box version will not contain any ads at all according to MandrakeSoft. http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/09/12/157237

Well, suppose McDonalds stop selling ads for a month, will their restaurants sales go down? I think it differs place by place, but probably not in some regions due to the already well-known franchise (maybe different in US where they got many competitors like Burger King, but McDonalds probably has no match in many Asian countries). It will be interesting to conduct such an experiment. As for the ads to get people buy things, again it's differed case by case. I think many brand such as "this is SONY" no longer serves to promote a product, but an image. You can say this gets people to buy SONY products but it can hardly be traced down to any particular product anymore (in an ad to promote SONY). In US, the ads on broadcast TV can cost millions of dollars just for 15-30 seconds, so $7,500 won't be much relatively. In the case of SONY or McDonalds, where they probably secured a great market share over many regions, the further increase in market share is unlikely to happen (or marginal at best) due to ads (unless they are getting into new market). They just don't want customers to forget they are fashionable (i.e. they are not old brands only in the mind of old people), and that they don't want existing customers to feel a "brand absence" or go for something more fashionable (again because of new ads). In the case of online advertising, only very few can generate great revenue for product sales, but the case is improving with sophisticated market matching technique (eg. such as an ad of IT product besides an IT-related article in NY Times - all done automatically thru AI and CMS). It more or less follows the same strategy as email adverstising. If only 0.5 percent of 3 million Mandrake users are interested at a product and buy it, it might already well worth $7,500. Then again it is not the average 3 million Joe users we are talking about. They are more likely technical literate people, so not all product/brand category will be effective in this situation, but it is still possible, for example, to advertise some Linux-related IT product to get the 0.5 percent potential customers needed, who may not be you nor me, but as far as email advertising worked in about 0.5 percent people of a large base (according to a study I read, but forgot the source already), I don't see why it cannot work with Mandrake advertising, though the product being advertised at least should not contradict the value of open source community to be effective and users not being turned off. EDIT: As for the one time thing, you already explain it a bit. My home has 2 PCs so at least two times of advertising for me :wink: . For users who aren't turned off at the homepage first shown up in browsers and interested to buy stuff there (eg. Amazon or Barnesandnobles), that potential could go further, but then I only expect 0.5 percent users fall for it to be more realistic, does it worth it? Only the company can do the math (if they are selling high margin product, they should know it better if this marketing channel could be effective or not).

Well if MandrakeSoft is right, the number of Mandrake users out there (3 million was that?) if they all at least see the message once, then it probably worths $7,500. It's not about whether Ads can get people to buy something, it's also about publicity. McDonalds probably don't need ads to remain well-known and perhaps competitive in many regions around the world - and obviously not to inform people about their "product lines". Yet it is constantly selling ads in TV to incorporate a fashionable/up-to-date image to customers that McDonalds is a popular brand.

I don't know. It really depends on what kind of ads they put on the the installer progress or screensaver. If Mandrake puts an Oracle/IBM ad on it I find it okay as they work with open source folks, but if Mandrake starts putting Microsoft advertising or anything controversial, it may do more bad than good in the long run. The background screensaver can be switched or disabled, but I wonder what ads will be put on the Installer progress - which you probably can't avoid at all. $7500 (cost of a single ad) worths 150 copy of retail sale/125 basic MandrakeClub membership; so it's hard to say if the benefit outweighs the potential risk of turning off *some* Linux users.

ET Linux 2.56 Update is now available: http://www.linuxgames.com/news/feedback.ph...action=flatview

Most of the claims SCO put in the public are either shot down by Open Source Community, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, or Linus Torvalds himself. The curious thing is except eWeek and CNet, very few "mainstream" IT journalists even bother to interview about the views of people in the open source community. I am not sure it is a culture thing, or as some other put it, a pro-Microsoft agenda was behind the publication.

Thanks for the input, actually dia is a really good flow chart program, and I am going to try Xfig soon (urpmi xfig, it's on CD2 of mdk 9.1). EDIT: I tried it, but I think I like sodipodi better, the control point tool is much more intuitive if you ask me.

ArsTechnica reviews GNOME 2.4: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/003/softwar...gnome2.4-1.html

Linux luminary Eric S. Raymond is taking the fight with The SCO Group right back to the basics: he has developed a utility known as a comparator that looks for common code segments in large source trees and which, on an Athlon 1.8 GHz box, has an effective comparison rate of over 55,000 lines per second. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1257617,00.asp I think it is time to show more prominent use of the source against Stupid Computer Organization.

Great, Gnome 2.4, seems to be much better than 2.0/2.2. Finally we will have another robust desktop DE in 2003. I hope MDK 9.2 will have XFCE-4 final as well. In fact I believe there's no need to rush this release out this time.