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Comment Re:What's really interesting... (Score 1) 374

Really not what the original article says - have you read it?

From TFA:

In fact, Burt says that the Banshee team had unanimously opted to turn off the Amazon store when given the choice, but now "Canonical came up with their own plan: essentially the option we rejected."

Further, Burt doesn't seem pleased with the way Canonical has handled the situation. "Canonical offering us options and then going back on them when we didn't pick their preferred one was not reasonable." Lorentz says he agrees "wholeheartedly" with Burt's response.

Some who commented on the original report suggested that the Banshee team had made a mistake in choosing to turn off the store rather than taking the 25% cut. Burt says, "it is possible that GNOME will do better financially with this arrangement than if Canonical disabled the Amazon store. GNOME would do 4x better than that if our upstream code shipped unmodified, as it does in other Linux distributions.

Comment Re:Flamebait (Score 2) 374

Did you RTFA? The maintainers they asked were *not* happy with the decision and the maintainers have *gone on record* as saying it's "unreasonable" - I know that one of the OMGUbuntu folks has been going around saying he's a Banshee contributor (he is, but not one of the maintainers) and trying to characterize it as everything is OK - but that is NOT the case.

DRM

Submission + - E-Book Lending Stands Up To Corporate Mongering (publishingperspectives.com)

phmadore writes: Publishing Perspectives is talking today about the rise of e-book lending, which, one would hope, will lead to a rise in questioning exactly how far one's digital rights extend. Although the articles are mostly talking about the authorized lending programs through Kindle and Nook ("The mechanics are simple: ebook owners sign up and list books that they want to allow others to borrow. When someone borrows one of the ebooks you have listed, you earn a credit. Credits can also be purchased for as little as $1.99 from eBook Fling."), we have to ask ourselves why we are suddenly paying publishers more for less. In the case of iBooks, you can't even transfer your books to another device, let alone another user, but then at least the prices are somewhat controlled. In the case of sites like BooksOnBoard, you've got ridiculously out of control prices with a greatly decreased cost of delivery. It's not all bad, don't get me wrong: Kobo offers competitive that never leave me feeling ripped off or stuck with an inferior product. Still, I can't help but think: digital rights management, sure! Where are my rights, as a consumer, and who is managing them? I wouldn't mind selling the rights back to the publisher or store for in-store credit; I also wouldn't be terribly bothered if they got a reasonable cut off the resale of the product to someone else. What I won't like is if they never allow it or continue to make it impossible for me to sell what's rightfully mine! This is not software we're talking about and copyright has been very clear on it for decades: not only can I legally re-sell a CD, but I can burn a copy and give it to my mother if I please, or even burn a copy and give it to my mother and THEN re-sell it. Anyways, WTF /.?
Books

Submission + - Volume 4A of Knuth's TAOCP Finally In Print (informit.com) 1

jantangring writes: "It's been 28 years since Volume 3 of Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming was published. The book series is a classic work of computer science in spite of the fact that still more than half of the seven volume series is still to be finalized. In 1992 Donald Knuth retired to medieval monkness in order to finish his work. After many long years in draft volume 4A now in print and you can get it in a boxed set if you don't mind admitting that you don't already own the first thee volumes. They won't be checking if you read it."
Google

Submission + - MS Asks Google to Delay Fuzzer Tool (computerworld.com)

eldavojohn writes: Polish Google security white hat Michal Zalewski has announced concerns that one of a hundred vulnerabilities his fuzzer tool found in IE is well known to third party hackers in China. His simple explanation provides an interesting counter argument to Microsoft's usual request that security problems not be released until they can slowly investigate them. From the article, 'Microsoft asked Zalewski to delay cross_fuzz's release, but he declined, in part because of his fear the IE vulnerability was already being explored by Chinese hackers, but also because the company's security experts had not responded to information he provided.' You can read about and download cross_fuzz for your own use.
Linux

Submission + - Most Android tablets fail at GPL compliance (networkworld.com)

polar_bear` writes: Red Hat's Matthew Garrett has been checking to see who's naughty and nice. Most Android tablet vendors? Naughty, naughty, naughty, when it comes to GPL compliance. The current crop of Android tablets fails miserably when it comes to GPL compliance, with most of the vendors flouting the GPL and failing to ship source.
GNOME

Ubuntu Moves Away From GNOME 514

An anonymous reader writes "It's official: Ubuntu has, with its ironically named 'Unity' interface, chosen to move away from GNOME for Ubuntu Natty Narwhal. Or at least move away from GNOME Shell. Mark Shuttleworth says that Ubuntu will still be 'GNOME,' even if it's not using GNOME Shell. Do you agree?"
Linux

Submission + - Ubuntu moves away from GNOME (networkworld.com)

An anonymous reader writes: It's official: Ubuntu has, with its ironically named "Unity" interface, chosen to move away from GNOME for Ubuntu Natty Narwhal. At least move away from GNOME Shell. Mark Shuttleworth says that Ubuntu will still be "GNOME," even if it's not using GNOME Shell. Do you agree?
Linux

Submission + - The real truth about Oracle's "new" Kernel (networkworld.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday at OpenWorld Oracle announced a "new" Enterprise kernel for its so-called Unbreakable Linux. What's the real truth? The company is simply sticking a 2.6.32-based kernel on top of its re-branded Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone and trying to spin it as a new and innovative development.
SuSE

Submission + - Mark Shuttleworth tries to lure openSUSE devs

polar_bear` writes: "A lot of developers are angry at Novell for its deal with Microsoft, but is it fair game for other vendors to try to capitalize on dissatisfaction with Novell? Apparently, Mark Shuttleworth thinks so. Shuttleworth sent an invitation to the openSUSE developers list inviting developers "concerned about the long term consequences" of Novell's deal to participate in Ubuntu Open Week and consider jumping ship to Ubuntu. OpenSUSE and Ubuntu developers are not amused."

Child's Play Goes Live For 2006 41

GiovanniZero writes "Child's Play, the Penny-Arcade based charity just kicked off their 2006 season. Stop by, donate and bring some cheer to sick kids all over the world. 'Since 2003, gamers have banded together through registered Seattle-based charity, Child's Play. Over a million dollars in donations of toys, games, books and cash for sick kids in children's hospitals across North America and the world have been collected since our inception ... Last year's drive raised over $605,000 for sick children, and we're hoping to smash that record total this winter. Check out the wish lists, read up on the local events and let's show the world what the gaming community is all about!'"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Choosing Between Job Offers: Perl or .NET

Trebonius writes: "I have just received two job offers in the same day. The first was for a job coding in Perl on Linux/UNIX platforms, for a small but very cool company around 120 miles from where I live. They play Half-Life together in the off-hours and the people I've talked to there seem very happy with the job and work environment there. (They probably read ./ daily as well.) I'd be making smallish web systems, and I'd basically have total control over the projects on which I work. They offered me 20% more than I make now.

The second offer I received is for a huge nationwide company opening an IT office a couple blocks from where I currently work. They're an all-Microsoft shop — VB, C#, .NET, SQL200*, etc. I'd be a very small cog in a very large machine. They offered me 66% more than I'm making now.

Most of my work experience is in Microsoft development, though not by choice. It was my first job out of college. In my own time, I run Linux, write in PHP, Perl, MySQL, etc. I don't like developing in .NET much, but I'm used to it, and the money's good.

How do I choose? The money issue is huge, of course, and I think I'd much prefer the Perl job in terms of development preference and work environment. However, I've got the impression that Perl web development doesn't have the future potential in the professional world that .NET has. A search of Dice shows a lot more .NET jobs. Would taking the Perl job hurt my prospects in the future?

Benefits are essentially identical between the companies, so that's not a big factor. I'll also give the Perl company a chance to make me another offer, but what should the threshold be? How do you folks balance the desire for a fun job with the need to pay off debt?"

Marrying Gmail and Mutt 31

teumima writes "I found this article very nice and simple on how to configure mutt for g-mail." Indeed; nice piece. I've been experimenting with using Gmail as my default mail drop, but don't really want to be dependent on being online or just POP; I just wish they would let me pay for IMAP service. Linux.com is also owned by OSTG.

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