Slashdot Mirror

Seen it. It is a nice stable system. Only time I've seen it crash is when I've dropped it.

http://www.geocities.com/rcwoolley/

As you can see, I am horribly bored this evening, but I am doing a test:

I'm running the linux OS you see in the Screenshots link below on a SanDisk 2 GB Cruzer Micro, partitioned like this:
SDA1 700 MB for Knoppix (the CD itself)
SDA5 700 MB for Persistent Home Directory
SDA6 400 MB for GIMP and K3B swap, additional storage also.
SDA7 150 MB linux swap.

Here is the output from TOP:
Tasks: 42 total, 1 running, 41 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 5.5% user, 3.9% system, 0.0% nice, 90.6% idle
Mem: 385800k total, 218864k used, 166936k free, 6456k buffers
Swap: 155192k total, 0k used, 155192k free, 130392k cached
(Uptime not shown, is 2:05)

This PC is a HP Pavilion 8250, Celeron 267 MHZ.
To get the USB drive booted up, I use a small HDD with MSDOS 6.21, and these files.
The small "boot" drive only runs for about 20 seconds, the Menu comes up, you make a choice, then the Linux OS runs entirely from the USB drive. The necessary "loadlin" command line is:
loadlin vmlinuz initrd=miniroot.gz BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix xmodule=s3virge fromhd=/dev/sda1 home=/dev/sda5

Browser is Firefox 2.0.0.4

Thanks for listening...

Rapidweather

As you can see, I am horribly bored this evening, but I am doing a test:

I'm running the linux OS you see in the Screenshots link below on a SanDisk 2 GB Cruzer Micro, partitioned like this:
SDA1 700 MB for Knoppix (the CD itself)
SDA5 700 MB for Persistent Home Directory
SDA6 400 MB for GIMP and K3B swap, additional storage also.
SDA7 150 MB linux swap.

Here is the output from TOP:
Tasks: 42 total, 1 running, 41 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 5.5% user, 3.9% system, 0.0% nice, 90.6% idle
Mem: 385800k total, 218864k used, 166936k free, 6456k buffers
Swap: 155192k total, 0k used, 155192k free, 130392k cached
(Uptime not shown, is 2:05)

This PC is a HP Pavilion 8250, Celeron 267 MHZ.
To get the USB drive booted up, I use a small HDD with MSDOS 6.21, and these files.
The small "boot" drive only runs for about 20 seconds, the Menu comes up, you make a choice, then the Linux OS runs entirely from the USB drive. The necessary "loadlin" command line is:
loadlin vmlinuz initrd=miniroot.gz BOOT_IMAGE=knoppix xmodule=s3virge fromhd=/dev/sda1 home=/dev/sda5

Browser is Firefox 2.0.0.4

Thanks for listening...

Rapidweather

Overpriced.
Underfeatured.

The only people who would willing to waste so much money for so little in actual value are these types:

http://www.geocities.com/peacemalion/iproduct.gif

No thanks Apple, unlike portable music players, people actually are happy with their cellphones.

The biggest media corporation in Latinamerica is by Chavez side. Gustavo Cisneros, richest man in Latinamerica, owner of the now biggest private TV channel in Venezuela (Venevision, by coincidende? they never surpassed RCTV), owner of DirectTV-Latin, Digitel (only GSM cellphone network in Venezuela) an so on:
http://www.geocities.com/expresionverazucv/cisnero s.html
The videos you are talking about are no fake, because the events happen here where I live and I witness them. And before talking crap about left-wing and white versus black, I inform you that the opposition in Venezuela concentrates all those who are the daughters and of sons of those those who lost their countries because the all-knowing anglosaxon superiority did not regard the latin and slavic countryes of europe entitled to democracy. The same air of superiority that embargoed the arms acquisition by the Spaniard Republic during the Spaniard Civil War just to not upset Mr Hitler.

Any Knoppix distro, or remaster of Knoppix, like mine, (see screenshots, below) can be used to work with an XP install that is having problems. You don't need a linux distro on a USB stick to do that, the CD will work, and will run on computers that don't have the USB boot option in the bios.
Look through a copy of Knoppix Hacks, by Kyle Rankin for all that Knoppix can do for Windows. Most bookstores have a copy you can look at for free. The book in the link has Knoppix based on Version 3.4, which will boot on almost any computer. I did remaster that, and have much improved it over the past two years of development. For instance, for a boot: prompt, I have bright yellow on a black background, Knoppix has pale grey on a black background. (that's the logo16 file) Hard to see, especially if you have to enter a long series of commands and Knoppix cheatcodes.

I have fixed a Dell Inspiron 1505 with it, repartitioning the hard drive, and assisting with an XP reinstall by obtaining necessary Dell drivers. Be advised, that the Dell restoration CD does not contain all of the drivers for a particular PC, and you may have to get nearly 60% of them from Dell via download. the Knoppix CD can do that for you until you get XP restored to the point where it can get it's own drivers.
One item to remember with Knoppix, it can see inside all partitions on the PC, whereas XP may not in all cases. You need to know what is on the PC, and in what partition. Important on Dell PC's where Media Direct is installed on the machine in a partition, and also the all-important Restoration Partition (caps mine) that you will need to sucessfully use the Dell restoration CD.

Now for a shameless plug: (kindly bear with me)
Since I placed all of the Debian font packages (that are compatible) in my Knoppix Remaster, the web pages look better on Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux using Firefox 2.0.0.4 (yes, I can run that) than on XP. Or Vista, for that matter. For most users, it's how the web pages look that matters. Later versions of Knoppix have cut the fonts down too much for me, same is true for Damn Small Linux. So, their desktops, browsers don't look as good as they need to be.

-Rapidweather

Here's some more Shrek 2 pictures.

• Prince Charming
• Queen and King
• Fairy God Mother and Prince Charming
• Bartender

That seems like an artificial line. Remember, this is a curve. I think it's clear the Oblivion guy is near the bottom of the curve, and something like cell-shading is to the left, and the humans in Shrek 2 managed to crawl out of the valley. If they were as good as photographs they'd be all the way to the right.

http://www.geocities.com/pronto4u/mouseemulator.ht ml

I used this mouse emulator for about 2 months. excellent tool.

zeroin23

I am amazed, really, at the idea that a major manufacturer of PC's will be shipping one with Linux.
I always thought you got a PC that may have had Windows 95 or 98 on it, and then you partitioned the hard drive, and installed at least one Linux distro, maybe more. I often kept the Windows partition, and played around with it for a while before getting bored. Most of the time I swapped hard drives, still went ahead and installed Windows 98 on one partition, and then proceeded to install something like Red Hat 6.1 on the rest of the drive. Sound never worked. Soon I found out that later versions of Firefox, for instance, required additional libraries, so I got introduced to rpm hell. Tried Debian 2.2, but wound up fowling that up so bad that apt-get would not work anymore. I loved it, anyway. Then there was SuSE Linux, but that's another story. Unusual to work with. That's when I discovered Knoppix, via Damn Small Linux. Never looked back (see screenshots, below), but I still say I am living in the Past, and cannot comprehend the idea of a Dell with something besides Windows on it. I did fix up a box lately that has FC 6, upgraded it to have KDE as default window manager, and placed a handy "update" icon on the toolbar, so I can tie up the machine for a while as it updates lots of items, twice now it has updated the kernel itself, and screwed up GRUB, so it defaults to FC 6 instead of my Knoppix remaster
Easily fixed, however. That's the way I like it.
But a Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled? Do you suppose your Wireless card works?
What is the World coming to?

Wal-Mart is expected to account for only a tiny part of Dell's business. Stephen Baker, a tech analyst with researcher NPD, expects Dell to sell between 30,000 and 50,000 PCs there initially. Dell sold nearly 9 million PCs in the first three months of the year, mainly though catalogs and the Internet.

I bought a Dell Inspiron on line, and it was delivered Tuesday, 05-22-07. Paid about $1,700 for it, Dell took $500 off the $2,200 beginning price. It has Vista on it (cringe).
They are a good Company, and do look after the customers. I wonder how the Walmart setup will figure in to that. Normally, Walmart is very easy to deal with on any returns, no questions asked. Probably the purchaser will deal directly with Dell on any problems on a Walmart-purchased computer, I can't imagine Dell leaving the buyer high and dry just because they bought the PC at Walmart.
Dell does have excellent online support, they have a complete driver download site that you need if you have to reinstall the OS, to get rid of all of the preloaded "crapware" on the PC. I did that recently on another Inspiron, with XP. I found that the "restoration cd" does not access all of the drivers you need on a particular PC, not even 40% of them. They have a hidden partition with the restoration, and another one for the Media Direct setup, that bypasses the main OS. This is unlike the days when Toshiba's restoration CD could put everything back like it was when the PC was new. So, you do need Dell's online support and drivers, even if you have to get some drivers downloaded on another PC, and move them to your machine with a USB flash drive.
To get all of the hardware information and to see the hidden partitions, I booted the machine with my Knoppix remaster, and used KDE's system information application, and wrote everything down, then when looking for needed drivers from Dell.
No, I can't imagine the average Walmart purchaser doing something like that, but it would result in a smoother running PC, without all the unnecessary Dell additional software. I don't recommend anyone trying this, but I was sucessful, with XP, anyway. You may re-partition the hard drive, as long as the restoration partition is not touched.

--Rapidweather

For the record, I asked my brother -- who has a degree in linguistics -- about this, and he said the following:

  1. http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/virgin.html?20 0724#mistranslation
  Parthenos means "virgin" in Greek. The site author says that it's
Hebrew equivalent "almah" means only young woman and not virgin.
Hebrew isn't my specialty so I can't speak with authority, but I have
heard there is debate on this. I will, however, give a cultural
explanation. A young woman (whether almah means explicitly virgin or
not) would almost always be a virgin in Hebrew society, because of the
obvious penalties for promiscuity, i.e. being shamed and then stoned
to death.

  His Proverbs 30:18-19 example could be turned against him. Again, in
Hebrew society, young women were usually virgins. So it could easily
be translated "the way of a man with a virgin". As for the harem
example, perhaps the semantic range of this word allows the meaning of
"young woman" and sometimes "virgin". That is beside the point, in my
mind. Women in a harem weren't virgins, but they were sort of
"married" to the king in a way. Again, I think the cultural argument
of the purity of young Hebrew women holds up. The Greek alternative
word "neanis" presented does nothing to uphold his argument in the
face of the cultural argument. Remember, we must consider not only
LINGUISTIC, but also CULTURAL evidence and their combined
implications. So I feel his using this sole vocabulary item attempting
to invalidate the virgin birth is not only misguided but a weak
argument. In archaeology and history one looks at language, culture,
genetics, artifacts, and many other forms of evidence to see if they
all point in a similar direction.

  Later in this article he states that this Isaiah passage doesn't
specifically mention or prophesy the virgin birth. It is a fact that
many OT passages with prophecy don't actually directly state what they
are prophesying. There are others such as "I brought my son out of
Egypt" which may have meant something different when they were written
and were reapplied to Christ. I know this is a hard issue to accept
sometimes.

  He also states that the earliest "Christian" sources don't say
anything about the virgin birth. This probably comes because he may
believe the Gospel writings came much later than Christians say they
did. Many people say this because they don't want to believe that the
early sources, close to the time of Christ, made such extravagant
claims about Jesus. However, there is large evidence that the Gospels
and other NT books were all written within 100 years of his death. He
also says pagan sources had virgin birth examples. Pagan sources have
all kinds of strange thinking, but we don't find all these included in
the Bible. The fact that the virgin birth also happens to be found in
pagan ideas doesn't mean they ripped it off from pagans. Pagans also
had fertility cults and temple prostitutes, but Corinthians (1 Cor 6)
warns Christians against these pagan practices, as well as against
meat sacrificed to idols.

  There were certain false teachings, like Gnosticism, which did
includes features from Greco-Buddhism. These are some of the ideas
found in the Da Vinci Code. Also, strangely enough, many of the
mainstream "pop theology" found in stores today includes ideas which
seem to have sprung from New Age thinking. This doesn't nullify
Christianity, in my mind. It just means a smart, discerning person
checks their sources and verifies if what they read elsewhere fits
with the Bible's truth. You and I already know that many "Christians"
don't verify things, and just blindly stupidly believe whatever
nonsense comes their way. James warns against these "double-minded"
people. And I think anyone is at risk unless they learn discernment.

    That's my take on this, in a short way of writing it.

Ah, here we go:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V114/N40/crash.40w.html
http://www.geocities.com/roboplanes/cessna.html
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/ustreas/usss/t1pubrp t.html

so what's a 2%er ? Someone living on 2% fat milk ?
ITCOB must be sure "I Tame Cops On Breakfast" because, milk.. just belongs to breakfast...
I Tend Crunchy Obscure Bohavians could also be it

Frankly I still don't know what they mean; without offense to any cops (on milk .. or for the Bohavians among us)

Being given a tour my CPA's office, with a couple of ladies posting to spreadsheets, he said, "I have a 20 MB Hard Drive". This was before Windows. I was impressed, as only a few years before that, my Bank's data processing center person that took care of our computer processing on their mainframe said, "And, we are going to install a Disk Drive!" By way of further explanation, he told me that the data could be randomly accessed. I was impressed that day, too.
For entertainment this evening, I am considering using a Dell 64 MB USB memory drive (/dev/sda) as a "persistent home directory" for my Knoppix Remaster, and risk burning it up from the constant read/write activity. Normally, I might use a hard drive partition of say 10 GB, on a 7200 RPM drive for that purpose. The size is overkill, but in this current day and time of cheap 160, 200, or more GB hard drives, 10 GB is nothing.

Rapidweather

If there were no Microsoft, would anything like the Inspiron 1505 be available at that price?

Rapidweather

this (in hat form) also works wonders to keep the secret reptilian-government streetlight cameras from reading my thoughts...but don't tell them i said so.

Mind you, I suppose incineration is a lot better than the alternative.

Ok, about the Dell computers shipped with bloatware, etc.
How will that affect Ubuntu. Probably not too much, unless the bloatware software writers want to starting writing lots of non-windows software all of a sudden.
I did get ahold of a Dell Inspiron 1505 with XP, and it was so loaded up with bloatware that the owner asked my to format the XP partition, and "start over". Used my Knoppix Remaster to look around in the drive, and see what partitions Dell had. Seems there were several, one for the Media Direct button setup, that bypasses the main OS. Another for the restoration, and then the main XP partition. Had to download lots of drivers from Dell to get everything set up and running. The restoration is rather generic Dell, does not exactly fit the particular Dell notebook, with all necessary drivers. First, I used another computer to obtain the missing drivers, and stored them on a flash drive, to move them to the 1505. Quite a few, actually.
When done, the 1505 ran like a dream, without any of the bloatware.
Now for the interesting part:
I have another 1505 being built for me by Dell, but it will come preloaded with Vista. I kinda doubt I would want to try and "format" the main Vista partition, and start over like I did (successfully) with the XP 1505.
Sounds like I would be on the telephone with Microsoft splaining what I was trying to do that fowled up the Vista setup.
I will run my livecd linux (screenshots below), however, I am not apprehensive about connecting to the internet with that. The ultimate owner of this particular 1505 will be using Vista, so I can't just format and install something else. I would expect that Dell's linux machines will be shipped with drivers that match the hardware, something I would have to "go it alone" on, if I just "installed Ubuntu" on the 1505. Should be some value in getting a Dell with Ubuntu preinstalled, i.e. "everything works", sound card, graphics, everything, just like it is supposed to be with a Dell Vista computer. One thing, though: Will Ubuntu boot up fast enough to satisfy the average user? Vista is supposed to boot up quickly, I don't know from first hand experience, yet. My Remaster boots up fairly quickly, I boot up and down lots of times daily, no problem. In comparison, Fedora Core 6 takes a lot longer on the same machine, so much so, I don't use it much.

Here's what I wrote back when there was still hope for Microsoft:

If I were in Ray Ozzie's shoes I would apply something like the The Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge to the entirety of MS's software services suite. This, of course, requires making a rigorous spec for testing purposes.

Make the engine, upon which the winning succinct byte code runs, a new W3C standard browser programming language (or at least virtual machine) and reduce the Microsoft OS CD to those components required to create a web-delivered application platform using the winning engine. Such an engine would, of course, have some features that dynamically encached expansions (and/or "memoizations") similar to the Hotspot optimization technology that originated with the Self programming language (and was later adopted by Sun's Java Virtual Machine). Hence it would make sense to have the OS CD contain a partially pre-expanded/optimized code base.

Then, for delivery of software services to pre-existing platforms, create a legacy port of the services code to pre-existing W3C standards like XForms implemented in a downloadable ECMAScript Client/SOA library in a manner similar to the way TIBET(tm) does. The idea is to go "Live", ie: web-delivered, with a fundamentally new W3C base (whatever engine won the prize) but support legacy W3C environments for migration.

Again, this prize-oriented strategy would, of course, require a rigorous specification of the software services so the testing could be largely automated.

This approach addresses Microsoft's 2 biggest problems deriving from the same fundamental reality: Everyone has needed their OS to interoperate with the bulk of the information industry.

The first problem is ethical and really goes beyond the scope of my professional opinions to my public opinions about the support of property rights. Suffice to say, I have no trouble with someone who goes after a natural monopoly position and succeeds. I have a problem with someone who then refuses to use that position of success to fix the bug in the society that made them inordinately rich and their technology inordinately influential.

The second problem is technical, which is what my argument here is really all about.

Basically Microsoft's code bloat problem derives from its monopoly position. This may seem like a truism since all of the software "profession" suffers from code bloat, but only Microsoft can take this to monopolistic proportions -- proportions that make Ma Bell's monopolistic complexities of yore look Spartan.

So Microsoft has this problem and it has many programmers (contributing to the code-bloat problem). It also has mountains of cash.

So how can Microsoft bust its own monopoly position turning its many programmers and mountains of cash into succinct code?

Monetary Incentives for the Programmers, ala the Hutter Prize:

S = size of uncompressed code-base
P = size of program outputting the uncompressed code-base
R = S/P (the compression ratio).

Award monies in a manner similar to the M-Prize:

Previous record ratio: R0
New record ratio: R1=R0+X

Fund contains: $Z at the time of the new record
Winner receives: $Z * (X/(R0+X))

What happens very rapidly is the programmers first apply their skills to maximally refactoring

Gates of course became the world's richest man by trashing the potential of semicondoctors through their greatest increase of price/performance by occupying a monopoly position -- and he hasn't done anything to fix the bug in society that he exploited to do that. He's far worse than any black hat hacker no matter how much he donates to "worthy causes".

I do have an Insprion 1505 coming, Dell takes nearly 3 weeks now to build one, and will run Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux (See screenshots, below) on it, with the "toram" cheatcode, since we will have 2GB of RAM. I'll have to use the network cable for broadband, I don't have a driver for the new Intel wireless setup in the 1505. I have run it on one other 1505, so I know it will boot up OK.

That would be Gerry and the Pacemakers

Slurm Queen: As for you, you will be submerged in Royal Slurm which, in a matter of minutes, will transform you into a Slurm Queen like myself.

Small Glurmo #1: But, Your Highness, she's a commoner. Her Slurm will taste foul.

Slurm Queen: Yes! Which is why we'll market it as New Slurm. Then, when everyone hates it, we'll bring back Slurm Classic, and make billions!

(thanks to The Neutral Planet)

I did look at her MySpace page, it seems that there was a petition asking Gov. Schwarzenegger to pardon her so she won't have to go to jail, and apparently Paris herself decided to thank the individual involved by posting a "thank-you" on her page. She misspelled "sign", when asking people to "sign" the petition.

It's gone now, the MySpace page is a horrible excuse for a web page, someone needs to clean up the page, perhaps by cutting off the public's right to post there, just leaving posts cleared by a kind and caring webmaster that can turn the page into something not so out-of-control.

With so many talented webmaster types here at Slashdot, I'm sure some of you would like to somehow contact Ms. Hilton, offering your help in her time of need.

I probably could work the assignment in somehow, but I'll go ahead and let some of you cut in line ahead of me, being the nice fellow that I am.

I do play with GIMP, and I have a "Wallpaper Control Center" application in my Knoppix remaster that has a section where one can, at the touch of a button, download and install a desktop wallpaper directly from my rapidweather.com/images directory. One of them is a nice picture of Paris Hilton. I do it that way so I can change the "downloadable" wallpapers, all the others are in the CD, and are fixed.
Check the "screenshots" link, below for a screenshot of the "Wallpaper Control Center".

The application is basically for managing right clicked web images for wallpaper purposes, sizing them to a particular desktop, and saving them for future use, within a "livecd linux" environment. If the user downloads too many images and tries to apply one, the application will take notice and guide the user through a fix, where extra images are easily moved from the active "desktop wallpaper" area, where they can be managed. Almost impossible to fowl it up without the application asking questions, and arranging for fixes. Very easy to do, so if one comes across a batch of web images that you want for your desktop, download all you want, then start the control center by clicking on the IceWM toolbar icon. Much faster processing of these downloaded images than with KDE, for instance.
Here is the url for the Paris wallpaper image:

http://www.rapidweather.com/images/sample6.jpg

I can't link to it here, you'll get a Forbidden error, but you may copy the link and go there directly in your browser. To see the others, enter "sample1.jpg, etc. (There are six 1024x768 images, all produced using GIMP)

       

For instance, I provide an icon for Firefox on the IceWM toolbar. The user clicks it, and Firefox boots up.
Now, the end-user goes to a certain website that has harmful javascript, etc. and he can't get loose from that
web page. All of Firefox's buttons are locked up tight. Now what? Turn the computer off?

Well, I use a "Security and Control Script" that Firefox runs in, lots of details here.

(Way more is done for Firefox than I talk about here.)

All that the user needs to do to get "free" of that bad web page is to close the shell that runs Firefox.
Then, restart Firefox by clicking on the icon, and the control script will sweep the ~/ramdisk clean of any
~/.mozilla there, install a new default one, and then Firefox starts, asking if one wants to return to that
web page, or start out at the "home page".

Although I do not provide a toolbar button to shut down a runaway Firefox, I could, but the user does see
the shell start up immediately when the Firefox icon is pressed, (with -iconic, so it does have to be expanded to see the script run), and perhaps after a few times, the user might figure out that closing the shell immediately stops Firefox.
These are the things we have to worry about, and it is up to me to "protect" the user within reason.
I can't have icons for everything on the toolbar, but I do have some in the menu that do some similar things,
such as stopping a runaway XMMS, or fixing KDE if somehow, it won't start up the next KDE application run within the IceWM or Fluxbox window managers.
It's not the users fault that I put the Firefox, Opera and Flock icons on the toolbar, I expect them to use them, and all at once if they want. The "control scripts" for Firefox and Flock have to enable these two to work at the same time, without any suprises. Start either one first, and it's all worked out.
I have done all the "icon clicking" ahead of time, so the "end-user" will get what they expect.
I don't expect anyone to "live with a bug".

In plain language, this means that our musically trained test listeners could reliably distinguish the poorer quality MP3s at 128 kbps quite accurately from either of the other higher-quality samples. But when deciding between 256 kbps encoded MP3s and the original CD, no difference could be determined, on average, for all the pieces. The testers took the 256 kbps samples for the CD just as often as they took the original CD samples themselves.
(...)
This article will not end the ongoing debate of whether the use of MP3 compression is a reasonable or unreasonable procedure. Audiophile fans that concern themselves with brand names and are status conscious will never listen to MP3s, no matter how many tests may prove that the sound experience is equivalent in both cases. Skeptics (They are all sissies at ct; I would certainly have heard the difference) should get encoders and CD burners and then submit themselves perhaps even using the same pieces and under similar conditions to their own Pepsi-Test.

Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation devised, in addition to some marvelous software, the GNU General Public License (GPL for short). Or the CopyLeft it is sometimes called.

It is quite a revolutionary document, using the "copyright" tool to to protect your right to use free software.

Unfortunately using copyright to protect free software is a lot like using a Jackal to guard the hens.

In fact, various inconveniences relating to this have resulted in modifications such as the LGPL (Library General Public License) and more recently the NPL (Netscape Public License)

I call these matters mere inconveniences, the real damage will occur when the Jackal's, (sorry, I mean lawyers), actually get to test the GPL in court for the first time.

Thus enter my version.

Its very simple.

Entirely consistent.

Completely unrestrictive.

Easy to apply.

The "No problem Bugroff" license is as follows...

The answer to any and every question relating to the copyright, patents, legal issues of Bugroff licensed software is....

Sure, No problem. Don't worry, be happy. Now bugger off.

All portions of this license are important..

• "Sure, no problem." Gives you complete freedom. I mean it. Utterly complete. A bit of a joke really. You have complete freedom anyway.
• "Don't worry, be happy." Apart from being good advice and a good song, it also says :- No matter what anyone else says or does, you still have complete freedom.
• Now bugger off. The only way to get rid of pushy Jackals is to ignore them and not feed them. The GPL is just begging somebody to take it to court. Can't you just see it. Exactly the same thing that happened when some twit (not Linus) registered Linux as his own personal trademark. People got upset, started a fund, and hired, off all ruddy things, a Jackal to try and defend the chicken! Who really benefits from this trademark / patent / copyright thing anyway? The lawyers. Who made it up in the first place? The lawyers.

OK so the last part of the license sounds a bit harsh, but seriously folks, if you are a :-

• Lawyer asking these legalese questions... You should go off and learn an honest trade that will actually contribute to life instead of draining it.
• Programmer asking these legalese questions... You have amazingly powerful tools in your hands and mind, use them to ask and answer the worthwhile questions of life, the universe and everything. Stop mucking about with such legal nonsense and get back to programming.
• User/reader asking these question... Don't worry. Go off and be happy. Have fun. Enjoy what has been created for you.

Of course I don't agree.
I'm doing a long term comparison test between Fedora Core 6, and my Knoppix remaster,, both installed on the same machine, a HP Pavilion 8250, maxed out on memory, and with a dual hard drive setup, one 2 GB for MSDOS to run my loadlin menus, and for GRUB in the MBR, and the main hard drive, a 160 GB for both linux installations to use.
My Knoppix remaster, Rapidweather Remaster of Knoppix Linux runs from a "tohd" partition, with a really big "persistent home" partition, and a common swap. So, even though I have a nice "logo16" splash screen with a bright yellow boot prompt, I don't get to see it on a daily basis with the "loadlin" setup, only if I decide to run off the CD for some special purpose.

I have all of the fonts that I could possibly get from the Debian package servers, and I delight in showing off how well Firefox, for instance, displays web pages, compared to Windows XP (another box, with P4 HT and 128 MB ATI). The Fedora Core 6 installation does not quite measure up to either Rapidweather Remaster or Windows XP when it comes to the "font comparison".
I realized early on that I would need the fonts, no one is going to "get used to" poor fonts, once they see something better. The original Knoppix I started with, and the latest ones I have reviewed, do have what I would call "minimal" fonts, I would not be satisfied with.

Rapidweather

You missed the memo. Bill said that we are suppose to keep a low profile when we are working. Keep in mind that we are only paid if it appears real.

You may think that a glowing red eye switched on by the evil bit is a fault light.

But red on a robot is a feature

Some Mexican coke already has corn syrup. The end is near! http://www.geocities.com/jonclark500/stories/coke. html

Let me clarify the clarification. Even getting head is not so bad. Clinton's actions were "assholish" on two counts:

1. He was married at the time. Granted, there are open marriages out there where it may be ok to get some on the side, I don't recall any evidence that this was the case with the Clintons. The fact that he had to seek her forgiveness, in fact, supports that it was a move with "asshole" status.

2. He was getting it from a subordinate employee approximately half his age. Retire the cup.

The parent is correct that the only reason it became grist for Congress' mill was the fact that he lied about it under oath. Besides, rumors abound that he wasn't the first president who might have got his winky wet the wrong way.

Attic Attack had a secet ingredient, never done before, never done since: the chicken score.
http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Network/95 10/aticatac.gif

Here's me and a million other Brits aged 25-35 saying 'thank you' for the Spectrum. If it wasn't for this little rubber wonder I doubt I'd be sat at this desk today, working in IT as a career. I'll be botting up the emulator" tonight to celebrate!

It's also worth noting Amstrad's healthy attitude to the retro scene (they bought Sinclair Research in 1986, and many of those million Brits will think of Spectra every time they watch The Apprentice...). Anyway, the Spectrum ROM was cracked & emulated before permission was sought. When someone decided to approach Amstrad to seek permission, one Cliff Wilson stepped forward with a simple reply: "Yes, do what you like with the Spectrum ROM, just don't charge money for it and don't remove our copyright message." Such an open attitude towards the scene in 1999 means that it's still thriving today.

Microsoft has combined the strengths of its three most powerfull
operating systems to create its next generation operating system

Windows CE Window ME Windows NT

Windows Cement

as hard as a rock and as dumb as a brick

Like spending $25billion on fake news to rally the cause?

http://dissidentnews.wordpress.com/2006/12/17/oper ation-mockingbird-cia-media-manipulation/
http://www.geocities.com/cpa_blacktown/20000318med iaoverb.htm

http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/6717/priceg uide.htm

at least the mouse fidget wasnt over an ad!

I had a Dell 1705 come into my work area, the owner wanting the XP partition formatted, and started over clean.
Was too slow due to all the programs that Dell preinstalls, according to the owner of the laptop.
I did not touch the restoration partitions, they have the OEM Dell drivers, some of them, at least.
Dell does have all of the necessary drivers online, so you can use a livecd linux to download them, and install until you get your wireless card working, and can boot into XP, and finish the setup.
These laptops are very nice, only complaint is the driver for the ATI video card, it wants you to use the maximum resolution to get top performance, if you back down to 1024x768, so you can see the text better, the driver says you are not getting the most out of the card. This is XP, not Vista, and the entire put-back-together is doable with XP. When I got finished with the laptop, it was very nice indeed. On that hardware, XP beats my live cd linux, in that I don't have a wireless card driver, for one thing. Printer support is another, XP wins there also.
Downside with XP is security, that OS is probably a disaster waiting to happen in the security area.
Rapidweather Remaster (see screenshots, below) wins there.
Glad to hear that Dell still offers XP for these fine machines, running a dual core with 2 GB of RAM is a good match for XP, and way more than enough with Rapidweather Remaster. The Remaster can do well with 256 MB of RAM.
I have heard complaints about the battery life going down within a few months with XP on these laptops, surely Vista would be worse, so the Upgrade to Vista is not being done, owners getting chicken about the new OS fowling up their nice XP installation. With the re-partition of the hard drive on this particular laptop, I can accommodate a livecd linux, with a "persistent home" partition, and a "tohd", "fromhd" partition for the /KNOPPIX folder.
Still has to boot into these hard drive setups with the CD, however. Since we were to keep XP, I couldn't do a loadlin batch file setup to get Linux booted up off the hard drive, without using the CD.
I do that on dual hard drive machines, a small MSDOS drive (2GB)with the files, and a big drive (160GB) for Linux.
You may use these batch files as a guide, just copy them to your MSDOS hard drive partition, and customize.
Should work with an OEM Knoppix 3.4 CD, or with a Rapidweather Remaster CD, (see screenshots below).
I am currently working from a HP Pavilion 8250 with this setup, this machine dates back to the Windows 95 days, but has a fairly decent Celeron processor that gives me good performance as I run Flock 0.7.12 today.
This machine is very quiet, does not beat up the hard drive like Windows 98 would do. Right now I am able to run Amarok and Flock at the same time.

The evidence presented was extremely slim, the witness statements all changed significantly, and several charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. In the end the jury only had a few charges left, but with hardly an hour of deliberation found my friend guilty on all of the charges. The judge noted, in court, that he believed the jury had come to the wrong conclusion and wasn't looking at the evidence, but merely reacting to the accusation. Because of minimum sentancing guidelines he was left with no choice and sentanced him to 25 years (parole possibility at 5).

After my friends family dumped their public defender and got a real lawyer he has a new trial up for scheduling soon. Assuming the new jury only hears the evidence not thrown out (things like testimony given during "play-therapy" and accusations from a person who's accused practically every man she's ever come in contact with of the same thing) he could be out of prison by the end of the year. The problem is, the damage has been done. He's been discharged from the navy, he's got 40k in student loans, 4 kids, and his reputation has been tarnished beyond repair. Any future employers who do a background check will never give him a second chance. He's trained as a nuclear reactor technician, but it's that's definately the kind of job that requires a background check.

Assuming he ends up spending the next 5 to 25 years in prison (and this the federal rape-him-in-the-ass, shiv-me-50-times-until-I-stop-moving, not-in-a-racist-gang-before?-you-are-now prison) he'll end up on the sex-offender registry. On there he'll be hounded by neighbors everywhere he lives. Neighborhood kids will pelt his house with eggs just because.

Assuming he doesn't kill himself inside prison (he's off the suicide watch now, thank god) he's not looking at a pretty shitty life whether he wins or loses.

For a good description of exactly the kind of thing that happened to my friend, read The Dark Tunnels of McMartin. This is probably the best site on the horrific media frenzy involving preposteruous claims by dozens of preschool students against their teachers (among other similar cases about sex abuse and the like). It started with one small claim, then it escelated. When the parents asked if the teachers had done bad things to them they made up stories in an attempt to make their parents happy. One of the absurdaties involved a tunnel for underground sex orgies and animal torture. If this sort of thing was brought up in a court about a car theft, the whole case would be thrown out. Because it was a think-of-the-children case, it was taken all too seriously by not just the court, but the media as well.

The truth is, child testimony is too easily coached. The only statements worth looking at are the original statements made. In the case of my friend, the original statement was that the girl had walked in on my friend masturbating. He was in a closed room at night. His wife was at a girls-night-out party, and apparently he got a little bored/lonely. He committed no crime, but because a child saw it things blew out of proportion. Even worse, she was less than three at the time and didn't really understand what she saw. However, as the years passed her parents kept pressing if anything else had happened. The constant bombardment of questions led to her changing the story and giving the police a statement that my friend wouldn't let her play a specific video game unless she touched him. Never mind the fact the video game in question didn't exist when the supposed event took place, but she would have been two at the time. She didn't play video games, and my friend didn't have the console to play it on, or a T

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/cloned_animals. cfm
http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=C716B55E-E7 F2-99DF-3DE129EA7AA82596&chanID=sa006&colID=2
http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/BEEF.html

A default set of RSS feeds is on the Firefox favorites toolbar, the "My News" section of Flock and the "Feeds" section of Opera. They are not the same for each browser, for variety.

Firefox 2.0.0.3:

When the user closes Firefox, or it crashes, a dialog box appears asking "Did you want to close Firefox", with Yes or No choices. Choose Yes, and the control script deletes the ~/.mozilla, and the ~/.fullcircle from /ramdisk and the browser is gone. If the choice is "No" such as in a crash, then the user is presented with a dialog box to restart the browser with the current ~/.mozilla still in place. This can repeat two more times before the user is instructed to start Firefox using the desktop icon, starting from the beginning. Also, the Firefox preferences are set up in the normal way to delete all of the personal information, including cookies, when it's closed. All that would remain in ~/.mozilla is the RSS feed contents, and any changes to the Firefox preferences over and above my defaults during this session. Opera is set up the same way, using a similar control script. This is designed as a high-security setup, for privacy.

Flock uses a control script, but does not have the "multiple restart" feature that Firefox and Opera have.
I found that Flock can keep data even if one sets the browser's preferences to clear everything out, so using the control scripts to remove the entire ~/.flock takes care of that.
If anyone wants to keep cookies, they can use an alternate menu, that does not use a control script, and starts the browser(s) in the normal manner, setting all preferences as they wish. They cannot, then, use the icon to start the browser(s), or the control scripts will delete their ~/.opera, ~/.mozilla, or ~/.flock.
One useful side effect of running a control script in a shell, if the browser "locks up" as can happen on some older machines, and some websites, one can just close the shell, and the browser is gone. That would leave a ~/.mozilla in place, possibly a defective one if a web site caused problems, so that's why I delete any ~/.mozilla found in /ramdisk and start Firefox with a clean slate, when the control script is used.
So, the icon points to the "start_firefox.sh", rather than to the browser itself.

I put three browsers in my livecd linux, I find that Opera is a little lighter on something like a Celeron (Covington) processor, running at 267 MHZ, than the others.

Rapidweather

A default set of RSS feeds is on the Firefox favorites toolbar, the "My News" section of Flock and the "Feeds" section of Opera. They are not the same for each browser, for variety.

Firefox 2.0.0.3:

When the user closes Firefox, or it crashes, a dialog box appears asking "Did you want to close Firefox", with Yes or No choices. Choose Yes, and the control script deletes the ~/.mozilla, and the ~/.fullcircle from /ramdisk and the browser is gone. If the choice is "No" such as in a crash, then the user is presented with a dialog box to restart the browser with the current ~/.mozilla still in place. This can repeat two more times before the user is instructed to start Firefox using the desktop icon, starting from the beginning. Also, the Firefox preferences are set up in the normal way to delete all of the personal information, including cookies, when it's closed. All that would remain in ~/.mozilla is the RSS feed contents, and any changes to the Firefox preferences over and above my defaults during this session. Opera is set up the same way, using a similar control script. This is designed as a high-security setup, for privacy.

Flock uses a control script, but does not have the "multiple restart" feature that Firefox and Opera have.
I found that Flock can keep data even if one sets the browser's preferences to clear everything out, so using the control scripts to remove the entire ~/.flock takes care of that.
If anyone wants to keep cookies, they can use an alternate menu, that does not use a control script, and starts the browser(s) in the normal manner, setting all preferences as they wish. They cannot, then, use the icon to start the browser(s), or the control scripts will delete their ~/.opera, ~/.mozilla, or ~/.flock.
One useful side effect of running a control script in a shell, if the browser "locks up" as can happen on some older machines, and some websites, one can just close the shell, and the browser is gone. That would leave a ~/.mozilla in place, possibly a defective one if a web site caused problems, so that's why I delete any ~/.mozilla found in /ramdisk and start Firefox with a clean slate, when the control script is used.
So, the icon points to the "start_firefox.sh", rather than to the browser itself.

I put three browsers in my livecd linux, I find that Opera is a little lighter on something like a Celeron (Covington) processor, running at 267 MHZ, than the others.

Rapidweather

> About five people in Asia died from it and it was reported as a 'worldwide pandemic.' Why exaggerate? (More like 800 deaths.) http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Nook/5440/WHO-SARS-d ata-fits.html

Totally unrelated and mostly OT, but I'm reminded of the old DOS "DRAIN.COM" program.

Pre-hard drive days, boot the floppy and instead of a DOS prompt it comes up with:

"Water Detected in Drive A:"

and then goes through a simulation of a spin dryer as it runs the drive and produces increasing, then decreasing frequencies through the speaker. Ah, sophisticated computer humor from the mid-80's.

Still seems to be available, wonder if it runs under DosEMU.

http://www.geocities.com/god_save_the_queen77/dosg ames.html

from the old Cox model aircraft company:
http://www.geocities.com/buckrogers_nz/miscvintage .html?20079
or
http://cgi.ebay.com/COX-flying-saucer-Vintage-COX- glow-powerd_W0QQitemZ220100425113QQihZ012QQcategor yZ19164QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
or another, apparently, similar idea:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4065873.html
also, one you can buy NOW
http://www.bycase.com/Remote-Controlled-RC-Flying- Saucer-WHOLESALE-p-16133.html?gclid=COmWvK-ytosCFQ tzYAodYhNQzQ

these took about 3 minutes to find.... but are they REALLY prior art? I don't know...
ask
an^H^H aeronautical^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H engineer^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
a Lawyer

Can somebody please tell me this image is related to which open source project?

Can anybody please tell me which project this image is associated with?

Funny thing is, it's even more informative than the AC who posted the Ozymandias poem pointed out. (And no, I'm not the same AC!)

In part as a result of a dispute with their record label, The Sisters of Mercy (who had a track named Ozymandias named after the Shelley poem), changed their name to The Sisterhood, and found themselves having to crank something out in a hurry.

Eleven days later, in order to fulfil a recording contract, we got Gift, and for once, a Geocities page is more informative of the story than even Wikipedia.

The album Gift, needless to say, is even less likely to be available through legal channels, than the album which contained Ozymandias.

Which is a pity, because as much of a rush job as it is, it's a damn good listen.

It was the eve of first day of Unleavened bread, a Sabbath, just not the weekly one. He was in the grave three days, three nights, Friday Evening to Sunday morning cannot be "Three days and Three nights" by any measure.

Mat 12:40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

For a detailed versions that doesn't conform to nominal churchianity version see ...

http://ad2004.com/prophecytruths/Articles/Prophecy /3days3nights.html

http://focusonjerusalem.com/thedayJesusdied.html

http://www.geocities.com/bc1in2k/Death_Res_JC.html

The question is whether the GPL (any version) is harder to understand than any other licence. If not, then you don't need a lawyer just for the GPL v3.No, you are wrong. All of us who agree to those contracts (EULAs) are crossing our fingers and hoping it all works out or are ignorant of the law. As individual users we do not, so far(we'll see), have much to worry about when we blindly agree to those EULAs.

But as a developer or corporate user, I have much to worry about.

No sir, I like to have my ducks in a row as much as I can and I don't like gambling too much as you suggested.

And to add, considering your comment, I can tell that you're not a lawyer and you're assertions that there isn't a problem should be ignored.

If you are serious about this sort of thing then you should consult an attorney as you suggested. I would not think you necessarily have to retain one, though it's always a good idea to have one on hand for other complexities of running a business. I've never done this myself, but I understand there are attorneys who will go over a contract for you for a few hundred dollars. It's not like there's a shortage of competition.

You could always use the BSD license instead; after all, it has been described as giving complete freedom even if you want to make a baby-mulching machine with the software. Or there's the Bugroff License, which was clearly created to answer this very problem. There used to be a "Penis Bird Troll" on slashdot who created the "Penis Bird License," which was simply "no restrictions on use." The problem with the Bugroff and Penis Bird licenses is that they seem a bit frivolous and their humour might backfire in that on the one hand, especially in the latter case, it might be difficult to market your software to some companies under such a license just because of the name, and on the other hand, it probably would agitate lawyers.

If you're distributing your own original work, you can use whatever license you want. You can even hire someone to write it for you. If you are going to use other people's work you have to learn what the license means, and a lawyer is always a good idea when it comes to these kinds of questions. You do have one additional recourse in that the FSF does employ lawyers and are more than happy to discuss and explain the GPL to you including any implications from the specific application you intend. If getting advice from the people who wrote both the software and the license, the latter with the help of their lawyers, is not enough then you are definitely right about needing a lawyer.

Personally, I would think that before I got too far in running a business I would make sure I either had money to hire one, or, failing that, that I knew one I could get hold of and pay for these sorts of things. I think most people fall into the latter category (individuals and small businesses) and as I said lawyers can be had for piecemeal jobs like that for reasonable prices specifically because they know this is a market where they can thrive. Believe me as scary as the GPL may seem to you in terms of complexity there are far more dangerous hazards to be faced in business, what with liability, contracts, etc. I'd be willing to bet that you're more likely to be sued by an angry customer than you are by the FSF.