Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

Whatever the motive, I'm glad Slashdot posted this. Sounds very interesting and I'd never have known about it otherwise. Might have to buy it for my nephew.

Software licensing is always complicated, particularly when a product is a assembly of separate modules and pieces. If they have violated the license for the Linux kernel itself, I highly doubt this would touch their actual VMWare software at all, though a court could determine that. Conventional wisdom would indicate that the license does not cross the API boundary, so the copyright infringement ends at their kernel drivers. My understanding from the article is that it's the kernel drivers themselves (the vmkernel module anyway) that VMWare includes borrowed code from the kernel sources, which are then released with a proprietary license. Had VMWare wrote all the driver from scratch, there wouldn't even be a case, even if the drivers are proprietary, non-free code.

I can think of plenty of car repairs that can make your car faster and more comfortable. Fixing broken A/C would make most people more comfortable. As would fixing a bad power steering pump, fixing warped rotors, etc. And if your engine isn't running, then your car is by definition not fast, so repairing that will make your car faster.

But "repair" and "refactor" are hardly the same thing. I'm sure automotive companies refactor their car systems all the time.

You're free to not use and not install it.

I use compiz on Fedora and CentOS with the Mate desktop. I don't do it for wobbly windows. I do it because it allows me to set up my desktop to work the way I want it to, and it increases the smoothness and perception of speed. Other compositing window managers like Gnome 3 just don't work the way I do. I like being able to customize compiz completely to my liking. I like my hot corners to do certain things, such as show all desktops, and show all windows. The compiz desktop expo viewer is just super slick and better than anything I've seen yet. You won't find any wobbly windows or gratuitous effects here. Everything I have on is to make my desktop work well and smoothly.

I don't see how blender is relevant. Just because renders everything in its window with OpenGL doesn't mean it has anything to do with being a composite manager using the output from other apps and windows.

Now with indirect rendering as a normal X11 extension, Enlightenment is a compositing window manager, like compiz or gnome 3's wm. And the future is, they tell me, with wayland, where these things will continue to exist as compositing managers.

Funny how short your memory is. The last 10 years of fighting in foreign countries has worked out real well for us, hasn't it.

I think we'd have a much better chance fighting ISIS on our own turf than invading yet another Arab country that we could never hold and win.

The problem the GP mentions is a real one, at least it was for me a few months back, and no it's not a malware issue. Fake answer link farm sites were completely gaming Google's search. Perhaps things have gotten better as Google tweaks their algorithms. Wish I could remember what it was I was searching for when I last encountered this frustrating problem months ago, but I remember being very frustrated.

Arguably off topic, but anyone that thinks on-disc custom menus with interactive content are a good idea should have watched my grandmother try to just play a DVD. Pop the disc in, hit pay. Then after wading through unbypassable FBI warnings (how can they even get away with some of the things they claim in those messages?) and previews, you finally get to the movie. Erm no. It's video loop with an integrated menu. She could hardly remember which remote was which, let alone what button did what. Trying to explain to a hearing impaired person how to play the video was always very interesting. Sometimes hitting play again worked, sometimes it didn't. Turn on CC? Very difficult for her. In many respects the old VHS was way more usable for her. Put it in, hit play, hit the CC button. Call it good. interactive blu rays would probably have been completely unusable to her.

I learned a lot about technology over the years watching her try valiantly to interact with it. She did an admirable job for someone in her 90s (She learned computers with MS-DOS in her late 60s, so she's always had aptitude for it), but it made me realize most modern technology seems to be developed by 30 something year old hipsters who never think they will grow old and decline cognitively, or decline in terms of physical dexterity (drag and drop, double click, or any modern tablet action). Things that are obvious to me and easy now will be much harder some day. But never to worry. The next generation will roll their eyes and push buttons for us (or touch screens) while rolling out their own hip technology that we're just too old to appreciate.

It's actually gold/black, white/blue. The real dress is dark black in the areas that people, including me, see as gold (and the rgb values are in fact gold), and the areas that people see as white (rgb values are highly saturated blue) are in fact dark blue.

Agreed that the picture is rubbish.

Most computers that shipped with Windows 7 have an OEM activation right in the BIOS. Last time I reinstalled Windows 7 on my Lenovo laptop, I used the official ISO from DigitalRiver (not available there anymore), and instead of using my license code, I followed the instructions here and used my OEM activation. Everything activated and ran normally. This is completely legit because the license is in the BIOS.

Indeed this is the way to go. And I checked the specs; these laptops appear to have IDE drives in them. I can't believe how many people are proposing incredibly complex solutions such as finding a PCMCIA ethernet card and trying to use the old lanmanager protocol to copy files off. Or using a serial cable.

Every slashdotter should have a IDE and SATA to USB adapter in their toolbox. They are dirt cheap (I own probably three I think) and they are always useful for doing data recovery. Most adapters you can buy today connect to SATA, normal IDE, and the 44-pin laptop IDE, and even come with a power supply.

Before you try going down any of those other complex routes, do yourself a favor and go buy a rosewell one from NewEgg or any other vendor really. You'll probably use it more frequently than you think.

Yeah you've been gone a long time. Not just from Sashdot, but apparently there are yet rocks one can hide under!

Turns out that the Slashdot predictions in the 90s about taking over the world pretty much came to pass. The obscure project Linux is now known by everyone, and Linux is pretty much everywhere now for good or bad. Maybe not on the desktop, which is an every shrinking small part of the overall picture. Linux dominates the mobile world, pretty much swept clean the super computing world and the cloud computing landscape, and is still a huge player in the server world. It's not work for free either. Linux development is mostly done by full-time paid employees of quite a few companies that depend on Linux, and make serious money from it. So Linux really has been wildly successful, and makes people working on it a lot of money, and we all benefit. Pretty amazing picture.

Not having root access to my device is not legitimate? Are you serious? How can you think that is appropriate? Perhaps you are an app developer who's been burned. If so, I'm sorry. But two wrongs don't make a right. You're right to make money on your own proprietary app is legitimate. But so is my right to have full control of my own devices. If those come into conflict (I don't think they do), then it can be resolved with existing laws. To justify removing users's freedoms to preserve your income stream is a bit shaky. That is if you are a disgruntled app developer.

In any case, what if I want to develop my own homebrew apps using whatever tools I want or come up with, other than Xcode? Or access the raw hardware sensors directly and do cool things outside the Apple-defined garden? Or the ability for others to do this and for me to be able to run their cool stuff on my phone, tablet, or other device. Or the ability to replace the system software completely?

Right now in the RC toy world companies from China are shaking up the transmitter market by introducing low-cost transmitters that are completely open and hackable. Homebrew firmwares are very popular and do amazing things that the incumbent companies only offer on their most expensive radios. It's a beautiful mix of open hardware and open software. Niche market sure but it illustrates what can happen.

And Android does have some of this going for it, but most phones are, like Apple's phones, rather locked down and must be cracked open, sadly. Though google never tried to make that very difficult thank goodness. Still annoying, but less so than on iPhone, especially with sanctioned, boot-unlockable phones out there, such as the Nexus 5.

In the end it just comes down to personal freedom with my devices. On Android, thanks to root access, I have a number of utilities I use on a regular basis such as an ssh daemon that can give me full access to the file system (good for tweaking obscure settings, performing legitimate backups, etc). Titanium Backup is the killer app for rooted Android phones I think, though I confess Google made it less necessary for most users by syncing apps and data to the cloud (privacy!).

Except that being "legal" isn't enough. iPhones are only able to be freed with a jailbreak because of Apple's bugs that are exploitable to gain root access. This is ridiculous and it's the reason I haven't bought any Apple device in many years. Buying an iPhone to jailbreak is kind of like buying an appliance knowing (and hoping) it has some kind of structural flaw (a chipped corner perhaps, or maybe missing screws) so that one get to device's innards. Except in physical machines I can always open them if I try hard enough. Digital is not the same way. Thus, in order to have true freedom, we need to not only make jailbreaking legal, but also require companies to give you the owner root access if you request it.

And even food is actually used by the US as an economic weapon, especially when it's tied to aid packages, which is very unfortunate.

It's been this way for weeks now, off and on. I figure it must be Dice just screwing around with the site, trying to figure out how to get it working with a CDN, and maybe even with SSL! But failing and then reverting the normal, working, no-SSL site. Then trying again. At least a couple of times a week.