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I imagine that Alan might have something to do with it - the River Severn is the largest river in England and Wales and separates the two countries. It's also spanned by one of the most impressive bits of engineering in the UK.

They probably come from sites like this:

... and finally WETA who did Lord of the Rings effects. The first film was rendered on Linux, and for the second film they were using Linux on desktops too...

And this:

[Talking about Gollum] The most incredible special effects in recent movie history were not created on high-end Silicon Graphics workstations running Unix. They were built on farms of industry-standard servers and workstations with Intel processors and running Red Hat Linux ... To Weta Digital's delight, performance with Linux has been exceptional. As a former user of Silicon Graphics systems and the Irix operating system (based on Unix), the company now runs its high-end applications on Linux, including Alias|Wavefront's Maya, Apple's Shake, and Pixar's RenderMan and Alfred

And this:

Wellington-based digital effects facility Weta Digital, Ltd. will move a significant proportion of production work related to The Lord of the Rings film trilogy onto IBM Intellistations running Linux ... The first of the new machines were installed at Weta Digital in early May for use by the special effects artists working on The Two Towers, the second film in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

(I couldn't provide a link to IBM as their site was broken when I tried to access the article.)

So where do the rumors come from? WETA and IBM, apparently. (Not to mention various little Linux sites that jump all over press releases like this)

It's a freaking diary, keep it under your bed. What makes you thing the rest of the world gives a damn.

See, there's lots of reasons for blogging. As for the term, the beauty of it or the need for a new term: it's discussible, naturally, but I believe weblogs differ from journals enough to deserve a new term. They're more like open letters than diaries.

1. If you haven't read it before, check out Confessions of an Arch-Wizard . Imagine "BOFH" meets online RPG's. It'll bring a smile to your face.

2. One of the more popular MUDs, AberMUD, was written by Linux's own Alan Cox!

   One player of the Essex MUD was Alan Cox, also known as Anarchy. He wrote (with a bit of help) AberMUD, named after the University of Aberystwyth, Wales, which he attended at the time. It was originally implemented on a Honeywell mainframe running GCOS but was soon ported to UNIX.

1. If you haven't read it before, check out Confessions of an Arch-Wizard . Imagine "BOFH" meets online RPG's. It'll bring a smile to your face.

2. One of the more popular MUDs, AberMUD, was written by Linux's own Alan Cox!

   One player of the Essex MUD was Alan Cox, also known as Anarchy. He wrote (with a bit of help) AberMUD, named after the University of Aberystwyth, Wales, which he attended at the time. It was originally implemented on a Honeywell mainframe running GCOS but was soon ported to UNIX.

December 10th NTL broke my so called 'service' again.

Word of advice for the wise - avoid NTL business cablemodem services if you can.

As in a Tesla coil?

Some one is gonna be extremely pissed!

It's Tesla. Telsa is wife of Linux hacker Alan Cox and does not make coils.

Greetings from Russia!

I am Zabor Rachlav of Russian Academy of Science in Moscow.

We are planing to implement heart pacemaker Linux project but are having issue with "kernel panic in swapper". Where can we get support for Linux in medical application?

We've had some people in initially clinical trials pass out due to temporary hiccups in the scheduler, and we'd like to fix it before we release to market, obviously.

Is Linux pre-emptible patch "hard realtime" compliance?

Could that be solution to our problem?

We haven't had any panics in the field, we can stop the panics by keeping the maximum heart rate under 128, but the patients feel that "cramps there style". We will liking to fix that to. Any ideas?

Should be use arm instead of x86 architecture? Battery life is short due to high draw of the current of battery. x86 use more power but code tested more.

We are as you know a poor country having economy problems so any support needs to be cheap or even better cost none.

The only information I could find wasn't very helpful.

Any help appreicated muchly!

With Warm Regards,

Zabor Rachlav

I have done some OpenGL work with GTK+.
GTK+ does not support OpenGL out of the box, so to speak, but you can get a package called gtkglarea which adds an OpenGL widget.
If you use GTK+ v1.2, then gtkglarea v1.2.x packages are easy to find and come with many distros (e.g. Redhat).
However, I would recommend that you use GTK+ 2.x, since you are coding a new application, and GTK+ 2.x is much improved. There is no *official* version of gtkglarea for GTK+ 2.0 though. HOWEVER, you can get gtkglarea v1.99.0. Look on developer.gnome.org. I think.

Links:
Gnome ftp site
Gnome ftp mirror

GTK+'s main advantages are its maturity, its solid design, and its comprehensive selection of widgets. If your application is going to reach an appreciable size, then you will want a good widget set like GTK+.

As a C++ programmer, I find GTK+'s reliance on vanilla C to be a little irritating, however, you can gtk GTK-- which is a C++ wrapper for it. I prefer to use GTK+ directly though, so I interface my C++ code with GTK+ by using static member functions for callbacks.

Hope that helps


Mr. Meanie

I've posted the link earlier, but here it is again... Alan Cox recently gave an IRC talk: here.

The only usefull weblog I ever found is Alan Cox' diary. Does anybody know more like this?

click on photo's for more pron...

On May 04, Nicolas Pitre released a free (GPL) fixed point vorbis decoder and announced it on Vorbis Developement list.

But this important contribution was kept in silence. Even all posts from May 2002 had mysteriously dissapeared from Vorbis-dev archive.

Fortunately a copy of Nicolas announcement could be find here.

Now Xiph.org anounces that its fixed-point implementation is available for free under BSD style license.

This seems very strange to me.

1. A free fixed point decoder has been announced.

   Supposedly the Ogg-on-a-Chip Project has a workable hardware design. I've not heard of anyone planning to build these tho.

2. With version 1.0 out now, Vorbis is pretty solid for decoding. Ongoing development is expected to not break decoding functionality.

3. Legal complications remain embarrassingly unresolved.

i presume that this may be read by non-techy people so I repeat what alot of peoplle know that read this page sorry about that but I am trying to convince charitys in the UK to use a cost effective solution and not go wasting their money on PC's and such I would much rather they employ a gardner or handy man to keep propertys in good condition than spend money on upgrading and just use the best solution

yes and you could do it with any modern OS (Microsoft Windows XP, Mac OS X.2 and yes linux )
the cost to a charity would be the decideing factor

I would use Debian debian or Redhat also look for a local Linux User Group (LUG) these people would donate their time and expertise I am sure (-:
find UK LUG's here

useing a linux based solution would mean that you may not have to buy any new machines as you could use any that you already have

in terms of presenting information (I presumne thats why you want them networked )

THE best solution is to make a website that as well as you can publish to the world through a website you can also setup Linux box as a kiosk so that you can view nothing else except what you want (just think of the web broser area in full screen ) have a look around www. I am sure they have a solution I just cant remember the link (anyone help out ?)

also remember that DSL or ISDN is a bill every month so you might want a private link to cut costs

also if you have a grant that you can only spend on network I would recomend getting a IR link between the buildings (I have a backup link for the fiber that is between two Uni buildings and no these are not like your IR link on your PC but about 1-2Mbps which is pretty good) I cant remember the people that make it anyone got any good recomendations for IR links ?

hope this helps please contact people in your LUG and when you have a solution up and running let slashdot know !

regards

John Jones

Alan Cox's girlfriend is called Tesla.

Alan Cox's girlfriend is called Tesla.

Face it, most everyone that does one of these online journals is just not interesting. I even hate the stupid word 'blog' that people use to describe them. Its just a buzz word that stupid people use to sound important, like 'proactive' and 'paradigm.'

SAT Question time:
1) 'blogs' are to the 2000's as websites were to:
a) the 1860's
b) 1975
c) the late 90's
d) CoyboyNeal

Remember the Mad Website Rush of the late 90's? Little Timmy gets his own site. Here's a picture of my dog. Here's a picture of my sister. Look at this animated ninja I swiped off my dork friend Johnny's site. Who the fuck cares?

Like it or not, blogs are now in vogue. Anyone who's anyone has one (guess I'm not anyone - I haven't updated my slashdot journal since march). It's just another way to make unimportant people feel important.. Not to mention feel like a part of the 'in' crowd.

The only one I have ever read with any regularity is Alan Cox's diary, and that's only cause it was a non-time consuming way to keep up with some of the bleeding-edge kernel stuff without having to get tangled up in the mess that is the linux-kernel list. Even then, it annoys me to read about taking his In laws out for Thai food, for example. Why the hell should I care about his love of Thai food? Yeah, I know "if it annoys you don't read it". Well, I don't any more.

Shayne

anal cocks is married with that ? he puts it in there

If you mean she looks like this: yikes!, then you are right!
Now, if this isn't a good argument for birth control, I don't know what is.

If you mean she looks like this: yikes!, then you are right!
Now, if this isn't a good argument for birth control, I don't know what is.

Yes there is such a thing...

If you have followed GNU/Linux for the last few years you know that GNOME has long been a stronghold of C, Perl and Python GUI programming. With Ximian's work on Mono, C# seems also to be a language that will see wide use in GNOME. Sun's involvement should also make Java applications integrate strongly with GNOME. But what about C++? Even in the GNU/Linux and Unix world this language has received many advocates and developers. I sat down with Murray Cumming, lead developer on the gtkmm and gnomemm C++ bindings for GTK+ and GNOME to get some information on the status of C++ development in GNOME.

Christian: What is your background and what puts food on your table in real life?

Murray: I'm a freelance developer, though that's difficult in the current market. I do C++ development on Unix, on all kinds of projects, such as protocol implementations, compilers, interpreters, data converters, management systems, and GUIs to make sense of all these. I've lived in Munich, Germany, for the past 3 years, but I'm officially a Brit. I love Munich's healthy outdoors lifestyle and easy-going socialising. I try to put the Lederhosen out of my mind.

Over the past ten years I worked my way up through paper-shuffling, data-entry, typography/design, tech-support, database consultancy, and Windows development. I didn't learn programming at a college, and I still stubbornly believe that it made me a better developer. You have to really care about something to teach yourself in your spare time.

I didn't use any Unix-like systems until Linux was widely available. People forget that before Linux you had to go to University to use Unix. Some companies had big Unix boxes, and the staff who used them generally earned huge sums because they knew how to move files around. Naturally they didn't let anyone else near them.

I've grown to love the control that Unix gives you but I've done hardcore GUI development on MacOS and Windows, so I know there's more to life. Unlike lots of GNOME developers, I know that the Mac is a worthy influence but that Windows gives us nothing to chase.

Christian: How did you get involved in developing gtkmm and gnomemm?

Murray: I was originally just a user, more attracted to the up-to-date gtkmm than the awkward (and then non-free) QT. I did the carthorse work necessary to get gnomemm 1.2 usable and stable, and that's how I learned about the general issues involved.

Then I decided to make a big effort to get gtkmm2 going, when it didn't look like anyone else was going to do it. Karl had the beginnings of gtkmm2, but it didn't build and he was reluctant to show it to the world, fearing that people would expect a certain amount of work from him. He didn't have time to do much more on it, but I did persuade him to put it on the gnome cvs. I worked on it gradually, sending progress reports to the list in case anyone was interested, and so that other people could learn too. After about 4 months I understood what it was doing, and it was able to run simple example code. As soon as I reached that stage lots of people started helping out.

Christian: What are the main design ideas of gtkmm and gnomemm?

Murray: We aim to provide the interface that a skilled C++ coder would expect, based on his experience of the language and the standard C++ Library. We try to use the standard language features wherever possible, just as any sensible C++ coder should. There would be nothing unusual about this if it weren't for bizarre C++ libraries such as QT and MFC. Is sanity really a design decision?

It's not really a design decision, but we are particularly proud that C++ allows us to simplify the underlying C interfaces. For instance, GtkTreeView has a great deal of flexibility, but gtkmm doesn't expect you to worry about that functionality unless you actually want to use it.

Christian: Okay, as you told me you made an effort to get gtkmm going, what where your aims when starting out with it?

Murray: I had 2 aims for gtkmm2:

1) Refactor it until both the interface and the implementation were ridiculously clear. I did not want any lingering doubt about the code just because people couldn't understand it. I believe that even a dull-witted person, with enough time, and enough notepaper, can make sense of anything. If he's not dull-witted then he'll make it easier for the next person.

2) Get more developers involved. This becomes easier after 1) when people can understand the code enough to improve it, but it's also necessary to:

• Present a clear vision so people know what's happening. To this end, I make a point of pre-announcing all major changes, discussing them, and announcing my interpretation of the consensus before proceeding. Everybody now understands that that's how we work, and that's why we've been successful. We only have to point to the list archives to justify our decisions in detail.
• Nurture people to get them started. We do this on the mailing list and in the #c++ IRC channel on irc.gimp.net.
• Let people know that their contributions are valued.

I know from commercial software development that money alone doesn't motivate people. In both proprietary and open-source projects, a team can only succeed if its members feel valued and involved in something worthwhile. That requires constant attention, but it pays off eventually.

Christian: That sounds good, so what is the current status of the C++ bindings for GNOME 2?

Murray: We are approaching API stability for gtkmm2, I think. Our code generator warns us about any functions that we've forgotten to wrap, and we are keeping track of API coverage manually too. We are spending most of our time now perfecting and simplifying the complex TreeView and TextView interfaces, and I see the end in sight there too. Lots of people are using gtkmm2 now and the response is overwhelmingly positive.

gnomemm 2 is progressing more slowly, mostly because it's more difficult for people to install all the latest GNOME 2 libraries. While it's still in development. Gnomemm 2 is much more integrated than gnomemm 1.2 - you can even download and install it as one tarball to get wrappers for libgnomeui, libglade, and gconf, among others.

I recently shared the gtkmm maintainership with Daniel Elstner because he's been doing so much good work on fundamental stuff. With two committed maintainers, and several regular developers, the future should be secure.

Also, we just announced support for the Forte C++ compiler that Sun will use for GNOME 2 on Solaris. And we are on the threshold of supporting Windows. Both of these platforms should be of great interest to commercial in-house developers.

Christian: Do looking ahead, what are the future directions of gtkmm and gnomemm?

Murray: For the future, we need to work on more Rapid Application Development stuff. The idea should be to add convenience without adding complication or straying from existing standards.

I'm working on some libglade additions that should make it easier to link custom code with separately-designed user interfaces. libglademm's syntax is already simpler and more helpful than libglade.

When GNOME's Anjuta2 is released, and when I can easily install KDevelop for KDE3, we need to add helper features for gtkmm.

We need to add things such as:

• Application-creation wizards so people can get started quickly.
• An "Add a signal handler for this widget to this class" feature
• An "Add a member variable for this Glade widget to this container class" feature.
• A widget creation wizard.
• A Bonobo control creation wizard.

• Add a class, deriving from this widget class.
• Add a method to this class.
• Override this method in this class.

Christian: OrbitCpp is being integrated to ship as part of the core ORBit2 package. What will this mean for C++ developers working on GNOME apps?

Murray: The Bonobo bindings are progressing well, but until ORBit2's C++ support is merged in, just after GNOME 2, we must supply bonobomm separately. I'm particularly proud of the Bonobo bindings - the lack of API clarity in Bonobo has long irritated me and this is an opportunity to show that it's not really that difficult. I've explained the issues in more detail elsewhere. C++ is the natural language for CORBA, which is inherently object-orientated - CORBA in C was always a freakish idea so it's no wonder that it's difficult.

So this means more people can use Bonobo. And the API clarity should mean that the Bonobo interfaces receive more scrutiny, because people will understand them well enough to criticize them.

We're really lucky that Michael Meeks decided to support our efforts by merging the C++ mapping into ORBit2 itself. It gives it a mainstream future.

Christian: The release of GNOME 2 is approaching fast now, how does the GNOME 2 platform look from the view of someone producing language bindings for the GNOME platform? Will there be any significant design changes introduced into the bindings due to the changed in the GNOME 2 platform?

Murray: Language bindings should now be much easier. The GTK+ and GNOME authors are more aware of the needs of language bindings and the various bindings are cooperating more, particularly with the .defs interface-definition files. For instance, we use James Henstridge's .defs generation scripts for pygtk.

The transition to GNOME 2 has allowed us to make previously forbidden interface changes to the underlying libraries. We developed gtkmm2 while GTK+ 2 was being developed. With gtkmm 1.2, we just complained about problems in GTK+ 1.2, but this time we fixed the problems in GTK+ as we found them.

gtkmm2 (for GNOME 2) is significantly different than gtkmm 1.2 (for GNOME 1.x). Some of these changes are due to changes in GTK+, but most are just lessons that we learned from gtkmm 1.2. GNOME 2 rationalizes its interfaces a lot by deprecating its more crufty stuff, and we make our interfaces even clearer by omitting those deprecated parts completely.

Christian: What are you favourite applications that has been developed using the gtkmm and gnomemm bindings?

Murray: I use Gabber every day as an instant messenger client - I love how it Just Works. I'm trying to persuade Julian to start the gnomemm2 port, even if I have to code it myself.

Cactus's Guikachu is also pretty impressive - it has made me want to do some Palm development.

There's a bunch of specialist apps out there, though not so many have been ported to gtkmm2 yet. I think that a lot of our users are doing in-house stuff. C++ is much more popular than C for that kind of thing.

I have high hopes for my own Glom app. It's meant to be a very easy-to-use database application that embodies my years of database design experience. But I've been too busy working on gtkmm2/gnomemm2 to port it properly. In the meantime, I released a small file utility, PrefixSuffix, which is a pretty good gtkmm2 example.

Christian: What are your thoughts on the future of the C++ language? Will it continue to be one of the major computer languages or is it set to be replaced by languages such as Java and C#?

Murray: In my opinion, Java and C# are much closer to interpreted languages in their design. By this I mean that much more is decided at runtime than at compile-time. I'm bored by discussions of executable speed, but I do feel that compile-time checking verifies designs and speeds development. Java and C# offer object-orientated improvements over scripting languages such as Perl and Visual Basic, but I see no competitor to C++'s feature set. I expect it to maintain its current high level of popularity.

Christian: About two years ago there was a lot of noise around gtkmm and gnomemm, with Havoc Pennington having started the Inti project, and with the leaving of Guillaume Laurent from gtkmm development, after which Guillaume was quite vocal in why he felt that gtkmm wasn't what thought is should be, in fact he called it a 'throw-away prototype' for a GTK+ C++ wrapper. Two years is a lot of time in the software world so I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the issues debated on back then, and how you see today's versions of gtkmm and gnomemm responding to any real issues raised back then.

Murray: I wasn't involved in those discussions, but I was annoyed at the schism. I like to think that I would have found an acceptable consensus. Most gtkmm users and developers strongly disagreed with Inti's design decisions so we carried on hoping that we would prevail. We did, and Inti didn't, and it's all history now. Inti died because it never involved a community of hackers, whereas I like to think that people preferred to work on gtkmm's design and felt more welcome in the gtkmm community.

RedHat's whole Inti framework never made much sense to people. Havoc is such a pragmatic developer that I still don't believe it was really his brainchild.

But Inti did create confusion among users, and even prompted one of the gtkmm maintainers to give up. My guess is that Guillaume never really got a handle on the gtkmm codebase and took the opportunity to jump clear of something that daunted him. When I was building gtkmm2 I sometimes felt the same but I chose instead to radically refactor it until it was manageable. I believe Guillaume felt certain anyway that, with RedHat's backing, Inti would succeed and gtkmm would fade away.

Guillaume uses QT now. He has stated that it was more important for him to have a full working toolkit than a perfect API. gtkmm2 will go stable soon - then we will have both in one toolkit.

Christian: What are the main differences of coding with gtkmm and gnomemm compared to coding with QT and KDE?

Murray: I addressed this in my GUADEC talk (1) and (2).

Basically, QT isn't developed publicly so it makes a number of mistakes without the benefit of any real criticism. Chief among these is its modification of the C++ language and the use of its own non-standard string class. It isn't necessary, as we've proved. These are just two ways that we've kept more up-to-date with the state-of-the-art in C++. It's then easier to use gtkmm in combination with other C++ APIs. I believe that you'll love gtkmm if you love C++, and that gtkmm is a better role-model if you're learning C++.

People sometimes complain about a lack of gtkmm documentation compared to QT, but that hasn't been true for a long time(*).

And perhaps most importantly, if you find a problem with gtkmm you can submit a patch or discuss it with the developers.

Christian: What is the advantage of using the bindings when creating GNOME and GTK+ applications in C++ compared to just accessing the C widgets?

Murray: Again, the GUADEC talk mentioned this (1) and (2).

gtkmm applications tends to be more organized than GTK+ programs. That's mostly because it's laughably easy for us to derive new widgets just to organise our code. In comparison, the structure of GTK+ code tends to be defined by the path that data happens to take through the code, rather than the layout of the source code itself.

Christian: What would you say to a developer who is trying to decide whether to write his application in C or whether to use gtkmm and gnomemm and C++?

Murray: I believe it's easier to develop software with C++, even if you're not very experienced, because the structure is there in the code, not just in your head. If you're as good as the GTK+/GNOME developers then maybe you can deal with the underlying C interfaces, but, in my experience, most coders want an easier life.

I'd recommend that people compare the C and C++ versions of the examples before deciding.

Christian: You made a presentation at GUADEC 3 this year. What is your impression of the GNOME community, is it becoming more language agnostic or is there still a strong favouring of C among the hackers you talked too?

Murray: I think people accept now that there will always be active language bindings for GNOME, and many of the core hackers now routinely use more than one programming language. There is still some general Unix-style dislike of C++, but interest has grown as people have seen that gtkmm is very much alive and useful.

Christian: For anyone wanting to learn how to create applications using gtkmm and gnomemm, where should they start looking? Are there any applications out there that you think a newbie would find a easy starting point to look at before starting creating their own applications?

Murray: Assuming that you're already a C++ coder, you should be able to get started easily by looking at the examples and the 'Programming with gtkmm' book. In fact, we have a particularly good documentation overview page with quick links into the manual and the reference documentation: http://www.gtkmm.org/gtkmm2/

We have converted all of the GTK+ examples and demos and added some of our own. I believe it's easier for a C++ coder to understand the gtkmm examples than it is for a C coder to understand the GTK+ examples.

I strongly suggest that you start with gtkmm2 rather than the stable gtkmm 1.2, because we have obliterated several confusing things.

People should also join the gtkmm-main mailing list and the #c++ channel on irc.gnome.org. We are a helpful bunch.

Christian: Okay, thanks for taking the time to talk with me Murray.

Murray: No problem, it was a pleasure.

What a goddess!

Several people asked about his feelings. Some asked about what he does besides kernel hacking. Half of the answer is here: Alan's diary, the other half is here: Alan's wife's diary. I don't think it would be appropriate to mail him questions already answered repeatedly in the diary.

Several people asked about his feelings. Some asked about what he does besides kernel hacking. Half of the answer is here: Alan's diary, the other half is here: Alan's wife's diary. I don't think it would be appropriate to mail him questions already answered repeatedly in the diary.

Are you kidding?
I got laid a lot of times. However, I never had a girlfriend, but I'm working on it.

i'm sure somebody out there is thinking about it. i found a couple threads like this one that basically say the same thing:

not bloody likely.

for one, the OS is in ROM, so you'd have to bypass it and put linux into RAM, which, even on the highest-end newton 2100 is still only 4 megs. the newton OS normally takes up about 3.5 of this, leaving the rest for user stuff. a very very tight linux implementation might work, but there are a lot of issues to deal with - namely, where to put your OS? in flash? a custom ROM?

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Nameplate computers, all serving up naked pics of geekgirls.

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Nameplate computers, all serving up naked pics of geekgirls.

We've had a couple of people in my lab looking into handheld devices with Java solutions. The fact is, many of the devices and OS's that claim to support Java only support a subset of the packages.

Since we wanted to use the Corba classes in Java, many of the options we looked at simply didn't have that implemented. And few (if any) devices actually support Java 2 1.3.x, which we needed to use the Swing classes.

In the end (and I know the Slashdot crowd will love to hear this), we snagged an iPaq 3670 and installed ARM Linux on it, which allowed us to install Blackdown's Java-Linux runtime environment. Beautiful.

Unfortunately, the number of free sofware hackers who are women is very, very small, on the order of 1%, and almost none of these women has any leadership role. However, there is one woman who would make an excellent interview subject, and who does have a leadership role (at the Gnome Foundation): Telsa Gwynne.

She herself would probably deny being a "free software hacker", though her testing and documentation work is critical to making the Gnome desktop a high-quality product.

It takes the current clipboard, and opens a Google search for it. Small tweaking (it's only a short amount of code) would, I'm sure, make it work for other sites. Telsa claims it as working with Gnome, but I use IceWM, and it works great. A real boon, and no wasted space in my netscape toolbar.

All you need is the GIMP to make your favorite popstar go nude.

http://www.linux.org.uk

I predict mass acceptance of WANKER linux

Micropayments don't work online. NZ has the highest use of EFTPOS and ATMs but charities and street stalls only take cash.
If you want to prove micropayments, why don't you try micropaying for sex?
I'll bet your favorite whore will only ask for a few cents to suck a dick as small as yours.

Wow. That was even gayer than Anal Cocks, Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman in a hot bath. And that is _seriously_ gay.

The content companies...argue that failure to build copy protection into the very digital environment itself will lead to their industry's destruction.

And if it is built in then large corporation will control how almost completely how we get and watch our digital entertainment.

I will agree with the entertainment industry that the choice doesn seem to be quite simple, either they have complete control of digital entertainment or that they will have practically no control with very few possible levels in between.

However to put the options another way - should we put controls one the much larger electronics and communications industry, limiting their ability to (actually) innovate, restrict how people own their own property by outlawing people breaking in to watch DVDs they _own_ or should we insist that the entertainment industry does what every other business has had to do throughout history and adapt to changing times.

The Internet allows more access to information for more people than has ever been anticipated in human history....they must be able to figure out a way to translate bigger audiences, cheaper distribution and less control to make more money.

Top Quote from Telsa Gwynne it's copy protection - protection as in racket.

The Linux Portaloo

and of course:

The more accurate diary. Really.

Good reading...

t_t_b

The Linux Portaloo

and of course:

The more accurate diary. Really.

Good reading...

t_t_b

Heh, if you want to get spoilers (before monday ;), I personally always read Linux Weekly News every thursday. Especially the kernel pages.
Also the Kerneltrap has sometimes news on latest kernel developments (like recent O(1)+preempt patch..).

Speaking of that, they should have full interview with Alan Cox tomorrow..

Better is a matter of opinion, and people who claim that usually do so out of ignornance of X. You're unlikely to find a better windowing system than X any time soon. Sure, it has some problems in current implementations, but those are being fixed with time (alpha blending, antialiased fonts, etc.). X is so much more than people think, and still has a long way to go. If people put in the effort to get it to where it was always intended to be, it'll be untouchable. The ability for an application to specify an editor widget, for example, but leave the implementation as user-configurable. Sure, most people will just stick with the standard text box, but others can replace it with a vi or a jed or even emacs-alike widget. For *all* applications, not needing to be configured on a per-app basis. Those interested may find Alan Cox's comments from his April 7th diary entry enlightening.

If you could get Linux running on the GBA, you could sell a 256 meg cartridge with the system and lots of empty space to play with. This would allow a whole bunch of capabilities:

• MP3 Player
• Internet access via modem attached to phone or mobile via the GBA Link cable.
• Web browser
• Multi-player games over the net
• Downloading additional game ROMs and MP3s
• Java for easy development
• etc.

-Russ

Don't you get it? They're afraid because these pirate-types are now paying the same amount for Windows XP as they are for that joint finnish/british operation to take over the world. And as with everything else, the worth of software *must* be measured by the amount you pay for it.

One thing that is really missing is a list of changes in each kernel release that is meant to be consumed by the masses. The "changelogs" that are offered up are sorely lacking for us non-kernel hackers. What I'd like to see is a prose description of the changes in each version. Something like Release notes for 2.2.18 by Alan Cox is a step in the right direction, but some of it is even a little too technical. For example, in the above document,

set_current_state

• Fixed potential SMP race

How do you feel about doing something like this?

First and foremost I respect and admire the work Mr. Cox does. And just as I am allowed to respect and admire his work I freely choose to disagree with his overt political opinions regarding the changelogs and the withholding of them from US citizens based on a law he is interpreting to include those changelogs.

Secondly I admit I am not an expert on the DMCA but from what I have read and studied so far his camparison of publishing changelogs -vs- circumvention devices/reverse engineering of document protection is the equivalent to comparing apples -vs- oranges.

In the Skylarov case for example,Mr. Skylarov wrote code to circumvent Adobes ebook encryption scheme.. correct? Then Adobe complained to authorities prompting an investigation and subsequently withdrew its complaint. After investigating it was determined by the FBI that he (Skylarov) violated US law by writing and distributing a "crack", code to circumvent Adobes encryption scheme so that people would not have to purchase content in Adobe ebook format. With his "crack" one could gain the content without paying for it. Whether or not you agree with proprietary formats or not, "stealing" it by way of circumvention is still petty theft in my opinion.

Back to how Cox fits in... Why would Mr. Cox fear his publishing of changelogs would be in violation? I have yet to see on Slashdot or his diary pages or from the main pages at that website a detailed explanation of exactly WHY he feels he needed to do this.

And if I am right it would take a whole lot more than simply publishing the changelogs to violate the DMCA. Correct me if I am wrong, but please show me proof (from sources that are legitamate). Would "NOT" publishing the changelogs feed into the premise that the DMCA is legitamite? Wouldn't the owner of the code have to actually submit a complaint to the authorities to be charged with a violation of the DMCA, similar to what Adobe did to Mr. Skylarov? BTW, since the linux kernel is open source and licensed under the GPL doesn't that in effect offer protection against a DMCA violation for publishing changelogs? I mean does Mr. Cox think Linus or someone else is going to complain to the FBI that he has somehow violated the DMCA by publishing changes he made to the Linux kernel? Why does he NOT worry about the changes to the kernel itself then? The kernel is obviously published all over the world includeing the US and it has his changes in it already doesn't it? That kinda seems oxymoronic in my opinion.

Lastly, the irony is that I have read some comments in this artice and on a previous Slashdot article that suggest the US laws are squashing freedom and the US government is oppressing its people, while Mr. Cox nor anyone else has mentioned anything about the UK's own RIP (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000) from the Crown itself, which is a quite scary peice of legislation and comparable to the DMCA only it has a broader, less defined scope about it. Some links on the RIP are here: World Socialist Website , SiliconValley.com , ZDNet , The Register.

In summary, withholding changelogs sounds like just a little more "America bashing". While I typically choose not to be anti-anyone else my feelings of patriotism are quite high due to recent events in America. My personal view of a non-US citizen withholding information from US citizens/developers is counter productive in repealing the DMCA. Should he feel so strongly about the DMCA then I would invite him to become a US citizen and VOTE to repeal this ignorant law instead of bitching about it from some other place in the world that has its own share of ignorant laws and regulations. Yes, do something...anything but legitimizing the DMCA by withholding changelogs!

Zoom

First and foremost I respect and admire the work Mr. Cox does. And just as I am allowed to respect and admire his work I freely choose to disagree with his overt political opinions regarding the changelogs and the withholding of them from US citizens based on a law he is interpreting to include those changelogs.

Secondly I admit I am not an expert on the DMCA but from what I have read and studied so far his camparison of publishing changelogs -vs- circumvention devices/reverse engineering of document protection is the equivalent to comparing apples -vs- oranges.

In the Skylarov case for example,Mr. Skylarov wrote code to circumvent Adobes ebook encryption scheme.. correct? Then Adobe complained to authorities prompting an investigation and subsequently withdrew its complaint. After investigating it was determined by the FBI that he (Skylarov) violated US law by writing and distributing a "crack", code to circumvent Adobes encryption scheme so that people would not have to purchase content in Adobe ebook format. With his "crack" one could gain the content without paying for it. Whether or not you agree with proprietary formats or not, "stealing" it by way of circumvention is still petty theft in my opinion.

Back to how Cox fits in... Why would Mr. Cox fear his publishing of changelogs would be in violation? I have yet to see on Slashdot or his diary pages or from the main pages at that website a detailed explanation of exactly WHY he feels he needed to do this.

And if I am right it would take a whole lot more than simply publishing the changelogs to violate the DMCA. Correct me if I am wrong, but please show me proof (from sources that are legitamate). Would "NOT" publishing the changelogs feed into the premise that the DMCA is legitamite? Wouldn't the owner of the code have to actually submit a complaint to the authorities to be charged with a violation of the DMCA, similar to what Adobe did to Mr. Skylarov? BTW, since the linux kernel is open source and licensed under the GPL doesn't that in effect offer protection against a DMCA violation for publishing changelogs? I mean does Mr. Cox think Linus or someone else is going to complain to the FBI that he has somehow violated the DMCA by publishing changes he made to the Linux kernel? Why does he NOT worry about the changes to the kernel itself then? The kernel is obviously published all over the world includeing the US and it has his changes in it already doesn't it? That kinda seems oxymoronic in my opinion.

Lastly, the irony is that I have read some comments in this artice and on a previous Slashdot article that suggest the US laws are squashing freedom and the US government is oppressing its people, while Mr. Cox nor anyone else has mentioned anything about the UK's own RIP (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000) from the Crown itself, which is a quite scary peice of legislation and comparable to the DMCA only it has a broader, less defined scope about it. Some links on the RIP are here: World Socialist Website , SiliconValley.com , ZDNet , The Register.

In summary, withholding changelogs sounds like just a little more "America bashing". While I typically choose not to be anti-anyone else my feelings of patriotism are quite high due to recent events in America. My personal view of a non-US citizen withholding information from US citizens/developers is counter productive in repealing the DMCA. Should he feel so strongly about the DMCA then I would invite him to become a US citizen and VOTE to repeal this ignorant law instead of bitching about it from some other place in the world that has its own share of ignorant laws and regulations. Yes, do something...anything but legitimizing the DMCA by withholding changelogs!

Zoom

25. TELSA GWYNNE " I do docs, bugs, and hassling developers. I don't code. I also make last minute decisions. " No affiliation. Full statement at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-announce /2001-November/msg00030.html