08.08.08

IRC: #boycottnovell @ FreeNode: August 7th, 2008

Posted in IRC Logs at 5:47 am by Roy Schestowitz

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schestowitz	>75% for Google UK: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/08/06/re…	Aug 07 07:33
schestowitz	http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives… : “I Feel Much Safer Now. Hurray! Osama Bin Laden’s driver has been convicted by a totally impartial jury of, umm, US military officers. Next week we have the trial of the woman who cooked his soup, while I understand the CIA are pursuing a very reliable lead on the whereabouts of his local dry cleaner.”	Aug 07 08:20
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benJIman	Heh http://blog.unto.net/opensource/will-si…	Aug 07 10:11
schestowitz	Do you find it funny. Novell is supporting it.	Aug 07 10:12
schestowitz	I see some ex-Microsoft seniors replying to this post. Well, the Commission is already probing Microsoft abuses with Silverlight. Many companies complained a year and a half ago.	Aug 07 10:16
kentma1	http://www.cuil.com/ - anyone seen this?	Aug 07 10:26
schestowitz	Cool. Well, it’s a chicken-and-egg trap. How can they harvest enough data to start off with. Same issue for Wikia.	Aug 07 10:26
kentma1	They reckon that they already have the data, my question would be, are their servers big enough for a really high load?	Aug 07 10:27
schestowitz	Naa. They’d need to store (and index) like a trillion pages. It’s important to keep Google humble. It has become a gateway to information and Microsoft already steaks results for self gain.	Aug 07 10:28
schestowitz	I noticed yesterday that Microsoft goes for Iowa with its large datacentre/s because of tax breaks. In a previous post I covered this serious issue that’s Microsoft’s games around taxation.	Aug 07 10:29
kentma1	they have 121,617,892,992 web pages	Aug 07 10:29
kentma1	not bad…	Aug 07 10:29
schestowitz	That’s a lot. Indexes can be big too, require time to update and also require proximity to the user (for speed).	Aug 07 10:30
schestowitz	I once thought about doing a second PhD on semantic search engines.	Aug 07 10:31
kentma1	interesting subject, for sure.	Aug 07 10:31
schestowitz	That’s basically part of the reason for Iuron.com. I metProf. Ian Horrocks at the time to discuss this.	Aug 07 10:31
schestowitz	Microsoft bought Powerset, which does exactly the same thing. More or less.	Aug 07 10:31
kentma1	Unfortunately, I suspect that our understanding of linguistics is insufficient, yet, to make the perfect interface.	Aug 07 10:36
schestowitz	You can approximate.	Aug 07 10:38
schestowitz	Just spotted this: http://www.fsdaily.com/Opposition/Novell_is…	Aug 07 10:38
kentma1	On search: Absolutely, but my point was that the critical part is the user interface, and our linguistics understanding is probably yet too poor to fix that. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, of course, but the interface is, to my mind, more critical than the back-end in this case.	Aug 07 10:39
kentma1	Hey, you’re getting headlines almost daily now!	Aug 07 10:39
schestowitz	I don’t know. Well, there are some people in FSDaily that appreciate the site. I’ve just noticed that Carla Schroder was told off for linking to the linuxhaters blog.	Aug 07 10:41
schestowitz	benJIman: do you know ‘Tallken’?	Aug 07 10:42
benJIman	No.	Aug 07 10:43
schestowitz	Are you reporting to OpenSUSE people?	Aug 07 10:44
benJIman	How do you mean?	Aug 07 10:48
schestowitz	My mistake, I guess. I thought you were in the Opensuse IRC channel/s. Never mind.	Aug 07 10:50
benJIman	I am.	Aug 07 10:50
schestowitz	Oh. Do you talk there about the site and about this channel?	Aug 07 10:50
benJIman	Sometimes.	Aug 07 10:51
schestowitz	Critically, right?	Aug 07 10:51
benJIman	We sometimes discuss your articles. There has been less interesting recently tbh.	Aug 07 10:52
kentma1	benJIman: so what’s more interesting at the moment?	Aug 07 10:56
benJIman	kentma1: More interesting than boycottnovell?	Aug 07 11:00
kentma1	benJIman: yes…	Aug 07 11:00
benJIman	Lots of things. I’m not aware of anything quite in the same genre.	Aug 07 11:02
schestowitz	benJIman: have some developers considers disengaging from the covenant?	Aug 07 11:02
benJIman	schestowitz: The developers are not engaged with the covenant in the first place.	Aug 07 11:03
kentma1	umm, firefox 3 just crashed on me.	Aug 07 11:06
kentma1	6 days and 30 tabs over 5 windows shouldn’t be a problem, should it?	Aug 07 11:07
schestowitz	Firefox crashes on me once in a few weeks. It’s open all the time. Flash can be an issue sometimes. It’s a blob. Quality control does not apply to it.	Aug 07 11:10
schestowitz	Earlier today I sent back an E-mail to Cringely about Microsoft. I think I’ll reuse the message and post it to BN now.	Aug 07 11:11
kentma1	I’ve just seen the article on Xbox360 vs PS3 textures.	Aug 07 11:26
schestowitz	Microsoft could drop the price of the 360 to just $200. It bets the farm on it.	Aug 07 11:28
kentma1	Having backed the wrong high-density optical storage, though, is a major problem. It’s already looking dated, with Carmac talking about needing 3 DVDs for textures, whereas blu-ray can do it in one disk - that sort of thing will change purchasing decisions.	Aug 07 11:30
kentma1	Maybe a US$20bn buyback is the best bet after all.	Aug 07 11:31
schestowitz	DRM aside, some day that Vista’s bloat is due to lots of stock art and crufy they have added XP for shallow ‘added value’ … perception.	Aug 07 11:31
schestowitz	*say	Aug 07 11:31
schestowitz	*cruft (damn, I should proofread)	Aug 07 11:32
schestowitz	re bubacks: just posted this a minute ago: http://boycottnovell.com/2008/08/07…	Aug 07 11:32
kentma1	some day?	Aug 07 11:32
schestowitz	“Some say”. It’s a typo.	Aug 07 11:32
kentma1	aha - understood it now.	Aug 07 11:33
kentma1	XP is too old and dated to take on current generation linux distros. XP is what, 6-7 years old now, and really just a face-lift for 2k/NT5 anyway, which puts it at 8 years old.	Aug 07 11:36
kentma1	In the epochs of software development, that puts XP as something like Devonian or Mississipian in the paleozoic era!	Aug 07 11:37
schestowitz	KDE4 is impressive. It’s not mature yet, though. 3.5.x is very solid.	Aug 07 11:37
kentma1	Debian stable might be considered to be Cretaceous in the Mesozoic	Aug 07 11:37
kentma1	Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian Unstable are probably Quaternary in the Cenozoic.	Aug 07 11:38
kentma1	And KDE4 is still going through some kind of Darwinian process	Aug 07 11:38
schestowitz	OS X is the challenge for Free desktops to beat. Cocoa is a nice coating for just another Free system and people judge by looks.	Aug 07 11:38
kentma1	As I’ve mooted many times in cola, that Microsoft would abandon Windows after Vista, the Midori project rather confirms this. This leaves the field wide-open for Linux, with OSX probably taking the cream at the top, as Apple have always done in their “B&O of computing” position.	Aug 07 11:40
schestowitz	B&O?	Aug 07 11:40
kentma1	Bang and Olufsen. They sell exceptionally attractive hifi, phones, televisions, videos, dvd players, loudspeakers and so on, at phenomenally high prices. Like a Bristol car, say.	Aug 07 11:41
schestowitz	How mature is Singularity, I wonder. Over a year ago, after the Novell deal had been signed, I imagined they would consider BSD (they won’t tolerate GPL in Linux).	Aug 07 11:41
kentma1	Microsoft will not be able to write a business case for it internally.	Aug 07 11:42
kentma1	How will they make money from an OS?	Aug 07 11:42
kentma1	If they were smarter, they’d port office, exchange, mssql, iis and anything else they could onto Linux and sell it to CIOs who could then claim they were doing open-source whilst sticking with Microsoft.	Aug 07 11:43
kentma1	The value disappeared from Windows long ago.	Aug 07 11:43
schestowitz	I’m not sure.	Aug 07 11:46
schestowitz	The thinking there (and I’m not alone in thinking this) is that a licensing company is a better route and the only way to stay profitable.	Aug 07 11:47
kentma1	For MS? But that’s what they are, and have been for all of their existence.	Aug 07 12:01
schestowitz	Novell enables this. They have begun establishing a funnel for Linux tax. SCO craved for it, too. Hovsepian is just being Microsoft’s doll here.	Aug 07 12:07
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schestowitz	Hi, libervisco.	Aug 07 12:34
libervisco	Hi schestowitz	Aug 07 12:34
libervisco	Just commented on the story about moonlight	Aug 07 12:34
schestowitz	Thanks. Let me see.	Aug 07 12:35
schestowitz	Was it just now?	Aug 07 12:36
libervisco	yeah	Aug 07 12:36
schestowitz	Oh, I see. It’s in the queue. I’ll approve it.	Aug 07 12:37
libervisco	Thanks	Aug 07 12:38
schestowitz	Have you seen Alan Lord’s post? The comments there are interesting.	Aug 07 12:39
schestowitz	http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2008/08/04…	Aug 07 12:39
libervisco	oh, not yet	Aug 07 12:40
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moparx	hey libervisco. ltns	Aug 07 14:37
schestowitz	I spot some /NET boosting here. Hmm… http://digg.com/linux_unix/An_Introd… Makes me think of the days Microsoft was caught gaming public opinion (even polls) against Java.	Aug 07 14:42
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schestowitz	http://www.informationweek.com/news/soft… “Stop copying 2001 Windows. That’s not where the usability action is,” Sutor said during his afternoon keynote.	Aug 07 17:33
schestowitz	Someone has just mailed me this saying: “IBM is telling de Icaza to back the f* off”	Aug 07 17:33
SeveredCross	Wait, what?	Aug 07 17:51
SeveredCross	I don’t even see how you could ever draw that sort of conclusion from that press release.	Aug 07 17:51
schestowitz	I’ve also left a commet here seconds ago: http://www.thevarguy.com/2008/08…	Aug 07 17:51
schestowitz	It’s a presentation, I think, not a press release.	Aug 07 17:52
schestowitz	Besides, Sutor hates Mono for a fact. He blogged about it several times and I warned him about Mono many tiems.	Aug 07 17:52
SeveredCross	Also, that comment is what many would call a troll.	Aug 07 17:52
SeveredCross	Baseless allegation, no fact, no substance, nothing.	Aug 07 17:53
schestowitz	It’s true. Well, it contains two typos in one sentence.	Aug 07 17:53
schestowitz	I’ll add some URLs to back this, I guess.	Aug 07 17:53
schestowitz	Okay. He replied and I posted: “Okay, other than the two typos (”matters what it says”), I probably ought to less impulsively back this with examples. Firstly, Microsoft funds CompTIA, which then participated in the abuse of ISO and push for OOXML. Van Der Beld now lobbies at CompTIA for Microsoft’s interests and he used to be at ECMA where he did the same thing (on Microsoft’s payroll pretty much). CompTIA did a lot more for OOXML	Aug 07 17:58
schestowitz	, it attacked Stallman, attacked the GPL, and did so many other things over the years. It even praised Internet Explorer, believe it or not…	Aug 07 17:58
schestowitz	COmpTIA is money driven. Microsoft feeds it. The same goes for ACT.”	Aug 07 17:58
kentma1	arggh! converted main debian server to UTF-8 only, got updated versions of pretty much everything to support it, found out how to set the gterm to “utf-8″ the ubuntu client machine… thought all was well, and then…	Aug 07 18:22
kentma1	Guess what? At some point in the past, I’d installed an slrn in /usr/local/bin, and completely forgotten about it!	Aug 07 18:23
schestowitz	I use UTF-8. That would resolve encoding issues in digests.	Aug 07 18:23
kentma1	I thought I had - today’s was looking fine, but slrn munged it due to being on old version, not the nice shiny new one in /usr/bin.	Aug 07 18:24
schestowitz	BTW, BN was flaky this morning. Lots os visitors because the Mono Pandora box has been reopened by Alan and others.	Aug 07 18:24
kentma1	well, can’t complain about interest, really!#	Aug 07 18:25
schestowitz	Well, there’s lots going on, so I’m almost burning out. E-mails and some bad news about software patents.	Aug 07 18:27
kentma1	keep it coming, Roy, you’re doing an excellent job!	Aug 07 18:27
schestowitz	I’ll just sleep less.	Aug 07 18:27
kentma1	:-)	Aug 07 18:28
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schestowitz	sigh Finally it’s all over. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/stor… Less to keep track of now…	Aug 07 19:01
schestowitz	Perens reckons it might be the last one: http://technocrat.net/d/2008/8/6/47413	Aug 07 19:02
schestowitz	kentma1: BT slams bandwidth brakes on all subscribers ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/0… ).	Aug 07 19:15
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schestowitz	FT emits FUD: http://blogs.ft.com/techblog…	Aug 07 19:53
schestowitz	These writer only use what supports their hypothesis. See the chart in Vista: DOA in the Enterprise http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/vista/vist… (Linux exceeds even Macs)	Aug 07 19:54
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twitter	:)	Aug 07 20:22
schestowitz	Hey, twitter.	Aug 07 20:23
schestowitz	Are you the twitter who leaves comments under that nick?	Aug 07 20:23
twitter	hello, yes I am.	Aug 07 20:23
schestowitz	That last one was good. I wish it was possible to do more advocacy in the site. It just seems more urgent to counter the bigger issues.	Aug 07 20:24
twitter	Thanks, I had fun with the story.	Aug 07 20:25
twitter	I also like your IRC tool.	Aug 07 20:26
schestowitz	It’s imported from a service.	Aug 07 20:26
schestowitz	I have heaps of new stuff about Microsoft trying to steal FOSS again.	Aug 07 20:27
schestowitz	There’s also a new swpatent assault in India. I can hopefully post about it tonight.	Aug 07 20:27
twitter	I look forward to that.	Aug 07 20:28
twitter	Is there anythign I can look up for you?	Aug 07 20:28
schestowitz	Yes please, hold on.	Aug 07 20:28
schestowitz	I need to find out if Microsoft is making active attempts to enter the OSI at the moment (board level). The video was revealing and others suspect the same.	Aug 07 20:30
schestowitz	Earlier I saw the OSA in the same stage (some Dennis Byron nutter)… well, with Microsoft, IIRC. OSA has pushed away Microsoft for ages, but Microsoft persisted. The members of the OSA were angry but Microsoft kept waving its money.	Aug 07 20:31
twitter	What video are you talking about?	Aug 07 20:34
schestowitz	It was in Linux.com. Here is a reference: http://www.fsdaily.com/osi-b… . Last week’s (Well, days old) post from Michael where he talked about “what Microsoft can do for OSS” struck a nerve. It’s almost like “make a promise”.	Aug 07 20:35
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twitter	Bruce Perens predicted M$ joining the OSI board back in March	Aug 07 21:32
twitter	http://slashdot.org/art…	Aug 07 21:32
twitter	I consider that authoritative.	Aug 07 21:32
twitter	When you say Michael’s post, do you mean this http://www.opensource.org/no…	Aug 07 21:33
twitter	?	Aug 07 21:33
schestowitz	Thanks. Yes, I was going to mention Bruce’s warning.	Aug 07 21:36
schestowitz	And yes… that’s the past I talked about. Maybe asking Micheal would be handy, but I doubt he would say a thing.	Aug 07 21:37
ZiggyFish	found the article you were looking for	Aug 07 22:20
ZiggyFish	Borland fights big brain suck (http://www.networkworld.com/news…)	Aug 07 22:20
schestowitz	Oh, thanks a million!	Aug 07 22:23
ZiggyFish	np, (dogpile is a good serbice )	Aug 07 22:24
ZiggyFish	*sevice	Aug 07 22:24
schestowitz	:-) Well, I haven’t used it since 2004, I think. Their name is a bit of a repellent, isn’t it?	Aug 07 22:26
ZiggyFish	yeah, but when you need to find something that is not in google, I go there	Aug 07 22:27
schestowitz	There’s another one that’s apparently gone. A professor sent this to me an hour ago.	Aug 07 22:41
schestowitz	I needed an article about 1998 MSFT losses. He wrote: “That would be “Share and Share Unalike” from the Economist, yet another article which appears to have been withdrawn during the last year. http://www.economist.com/displa… “	Aug 07 22:42
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