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> IRC, RMS wrote a piece encouraging developers to not use Java,...

I don't believe that.

If RMS wanted developers to stay away from Java, then why did RMS and the FSF create the GCJ Java compiler?

Do you have a link? Maybe RMS said something different, for example, maybe he was encouraging people to use an Open Source JVM instead of Sun's JVM.

There is no reason for people to avoid the Java _language_, any more than there is a reason for people to avoid C++. But you might want to avoid certain proprietary _implementations_ of those languages, such as, for example, Sun's JVM, or Microsoft's Visual C++.

> because Sun still wants to keep people under their thumb.

Bullsh**! Sun can't control what people do with Java. There is too much competition in the Java market for Sun to control it.

Sun licensed the Java spec to be open. Anyone can use it, and anyone can create their own Java Virtual Machine. There are no royalties to pay, and no contracts to sign.

You can even change or extend the Java spec if you want, though you can't use the word "Java" to describe the result. For example, HP created a modified-spec embedded JVM, and called it Chai. And Transvirtual added the Microsoft J++ extensions to their Open Source Kaffe JVM.

Only the _word_ "Java" is controlled by Sun. You can't use that word for your product unless you prove your product is compatible with the official Java spec. Sun reserves the word "Java" as a guarantee of compatibility.

But if you don't use the word "Java" -- if you call your product Chai, or Kaffe, for example -- then you can do whatever you want.

Of course, I'm not recommending for people to create incompatible versions of Java, because the whole purpose of Java is to provide cross-platform compatibility.

> That position is now kinda mitigated by GCJ but I still agree with RMS's position...

_Kinda_ mitigated? Only now? What nonsense!

There are dozens of Java virtual machines and compilers.

They come from many different companies.

Some of them are Open Source.

They're not controlled by Sun.

And you can switch between them.

Unlike Windows, there is competition in the Java market. As a result, no one is under Sun's thumb because they use Java.

In fact, Sun isn't even the biggest supplier of Java in the market. That would be IBM.

And Sun can no longer control the direction of Java. For example, the companies that make up the Eclipse group recently decided to continue with their own Java graphics library, instead of Sun's Swing.

> To be truly free [speech] software, your language cannot be under a corporate thumb like that.

That statement repeats your original error.

The Java _language_ is not under Sun's thumb.

Sun controls the Java _name_ (like Linus controls the Linux name), and Sun controls the source code for their own Java _implementation_ (i.e. Sun's JVM). That's it.

There is nothing stopping us from taking the Java _language_ in any direction we want, as long as we call it something different. For example, we could call it by the name of one of the Open Source Java implementations, such as JBoss.

In other words, we could fork Java.

But why would we want to?

People aren't forced to follow Sun's published spec for Java. But we do anyway, for the same reason that we continue to follow Linus for the Linux kernel -- because we want a single standard, and Sun is doing a reasonably good job as its custodian.

> Sun is opening Java! Wait, not yet...

Ah, I see you have fallen for Microsoft's recent FUD campaig

I must be very lucky because I typically go weeks without rebooting.

What happens every few weeks that requires you to reboot? Last time I had to log out was when I put more RAM in my workstation. Before that, it was a powercut round about Christmas time.

Last time I got a new computer, I just put my home directory into a TAR file, and moved it across to the new machine, so I got all of my files, emails, bookmarks, etc. That takes about 10 minutes (including tweaking things for different versions of apps on the new machine)

I can't use all of the features in Office 200[0] yet....

Agreed, I don't think I even used all of the Office 97 features. To me the only difference I notice is the amount of disk space consumed by new office suites, and slightly different UIs.

Synchronization of our Internet bookmarks across all our computers
Now wouldn't THAT be nice?

When I log into a machine at work or home, my home directory gets picked up via NFS, so I always get the same bookmarks and settings regardless of what computer I'm using. I'm sure there are other ways of doing that too, including keeping everything in CVS :-)

Some people seems to disagree with you on the easiness of Python.

Not to belittle this project in any way, but didn't I see an article about a boombox Linux PC in Linux Journal about a year (or so) ago? Maybe someone on slashdot with more backissues can find it.

Why don't you Google to answer your silly question on why NeXT (not Apple) chose Objective-C over C++.

You may as well as why ID chose NeXT and Objective-C over Windows and C++ to develop the original Quake engine.

But, to save you the effort of typing "Objective C versus C++" in a Google search field, I cut & paste a short paragraph out of an article (returned by said search) printed in the Linux Journal on Sept 13, 2003.

As for C#...Objective-C pre-date C# by decades. It was developed independently and comtemporaniously with C++.

---anactofgod---

An introduction to Objective-C for programmers familiar with C++ or any other OOP language.

It is a surprising fact that anyone studying GNUstep or the Cocoa Framework will notice they are nearly identical to the NEXTSTEP APIs that were defined ten years ago. A decade is an eternity in the software industry. If the framework (and its programming language--Objective C) came through untouched these past ten years, there must be something special about it. And Objective-C has done more than survive; some famous games including Quake and NuclearStrike were developed using Objective-C.

Why Should I Learn Objective-C?

Objective-C gives you the full power of a true object-oriented language with exactly one syntax addition to C and, unlike C++, about a dozen additional keywords.

Since Apple purchase Next for $400 million and Mac OS X ships with Objective-C, recycling NEXTSTEP (later called OpenStep), as well as the fact that GNUstep is delivering the rock-solid window-manager Window Maker, Objective-C is (rightly) getting more attention because it is more flexible than C++ at the cost of being slower.

In reality, Objective-C is Object C and is as close to Smalltalk as a compiled language can be. This is no surprise as Brad J. Cox added object-oriented, Smalltalk-80-based extensions to the C language.

So objective-C is a hybrid between Smalltalk and C. A string can be represented as a `char *' or as an object, whereas in Smalltalk everything is an object. As with Java (int, double,.. are no objects) this leads to faster performance.

In contrast, C++ traditionally is associated with the Simula 67 school of object-oriented programming. In C++, the static type of an object fixes what messages it can receive. In Objective-C the dynamic type of an object determines what messages it can receive. The Simula 67 format allows problems to be detected at compile time. The Smalltalk approach delays typing until runtime and therefore is more flexible.

A GNU version was written by Dennis Gladding in 1992 and then Richard Stallman took over the development. The current GNU version is derived from the version written by Kresten Thorup when he was a still a university student in 1993. He ported that version to the NeXTcube and joined NeXT.

Apple chose Objective-C for Cocoa, as NEXTSTEP was based on Objective-C. But, even if they had written it from scratch, they might have decided to use Objective-C because it is object-oriented, which is undoubtedly a must for big software projects. It extends the standard ANSI C, so that existing C programs can be adapted to use the frameworks, and programmers can chose when to stick to procedural programming and when to go the object-oriented way. C was intended to be a good language for system programming. C is fine as it allows the programmer to do exactly what she wants, all the way down to the hardware. C also keeps the gold old pointers, which can be used for efficient code.

Objective-C is simple, unambiguous and easy to learn. But most of all, it is the most dynamic language of all object-oriented languages based on C. Its dynamic late binding offers flexibility and power. Messages are not constrained by either the class of the receiver or the method selector, allowing rapid change and offering access to information about running applications.

The following i

There is a great article about how ILM does their rendering. It was a cover story in Linux Journal magazine.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6783

People have been saying that even if the studio didn't care about the security issues, there are bandwidth issues that would keep this from really working. There are a few quotes in the article that confirm this: all the rendering machines make a sort of denial-of-service attack on their NFS servers, for example. And the article talks about their VPN, which they call the ILM Conduit; it sends everything double-encrypted with Blowfish. They really are worried about security.

The coolest thing, to me, is that ILM has rolled out Linux all the way across their organization; people run Linux on their desktop computers. When people go home at night, their computers get added to the render farm!

steveha

To refresh your ram

US Army ?going to Linux? after OS switch for GI PDA
US Army Marches to Red Hat

What Distro Do You Want To Wear Today?

Quote:

HEC Montréal is Canada's first management school, founded in 1907. More than 11,000 students and 220 professors use HEC's e-mail system every year. Unfortunately, the proprietary e-mail system did not evolve and as the load started to increase, the infrastructure could no longer keep up with requirements.

[snip]

HEC Montréal is a tough e-mail problem: 35,000 users and more than 600,000 spam messages a week.

Read on for the details.

Quote:

HEC Montréal is Canada's first management school, founded in 1907. More than 11,000 students and 220 professors use HEC's e-mail system every year. Unfortunately, the proprietary e-mail system did not evolve and as the load started to increase, the infrastructure could no longer keep up with requirements.

[snip]

HEC Montréal is a tough e-mail problem: 35,000 users and more than 600,000 spam messages a week.

Read on for the details.

The measured UBEs over a 3 moth period were 172,887 - only for their top-25 most spammed employees!

I will not debate you on the legality or binding-ness of a EULA as they have almost always been upheld by the courts.
Crap, I said I wasn't going to but This decision certainly didn't.

Now, for the sake of argument lets take an edge case. You purchased the songs on iTunes and burnt them to CD. After doing ghis you break the EULA. Do you think a court would allow Apple to confiscate that CD (assuming they could). I seriously doubt it, especially considering the above decision, the fact it was in California, and the TOS specifically mentions that it is governed by California law. How is having it on your MP3 player any different?

Linux Journal has an article in the most recent edition entitled "The Linux Soundfile Editor Roundup". Check it out! Audacity is reviewed, along with several other audio file editors.

Linux Journal has an article in the most recent edition entitled "The Linux Soundfile Editor Roundup". Check it out! Audacity is reviewed, along with several other audio file editors.

It also sounds like SashXB, a sort of Javascript applet thing some IBM summer hires wrote a while back. It was a little manager app that would download current versions of various javascript GUI apps on demand.

Soooooo... You want diskless workstations that run Windows, and have an X server to use LTSP? The configuration is all server side. There is no OS on the client until you flick the switch and it gets transfered from the server.

In an LTSP setup, if you want access from a Windows box, you put an X server on it, and tell it to XDMCP query the LTSP server. You've then got an LTSP client inside Windows. Look here, The only thing left to be automated is the server setup. LTSP does this in Linux, being the Linux Terminal Server Project, but there's no reason you couldn't apply the same technique to any flavour of Unix. The tricky part is the transfering of the kernel, and in the DHCP server that dishes them out. Here is a Linux Journal article on LTSP from February that explains things quite well.

I'd assume they got those issues ironed out, considering they were publicized as working with LJ for the 2003 Ultimate Linux Box

OK, I fibbed. It's a Linux notebook.

Summary: Very small portable computer with a regular keyboard. The base system is built on a name-brand hardware (Sharp) with a customized Linux distribution on it. The customizations take care of the specific hardware; just like Dell, IBM, Compaq/HP, Sony, and -- well -- Sharp do for the customized versions of Windows they ship. Includes support, and yes you can update the packages -- just don't expect support for packages they don't provide.

The company selling this one has other name-brand hardware that fit other categories of notebook/laptops.

Element computer also has a good selection of hardware customized for Linux. Not rebranded IBM/Sony/Sharp/... though you can get a notepad laptop of you want -- ready to go -- and it looks like good stuff. They do not sell Windows, so you won't be paying Microsoft like Emperorlinux had to (using top-notch hardware with Windows already bundled on it).

there's a reason why Solaris still holds more market share in the enterprise than AIX and HPUX combined

Say what you will about research firms, I know, but have you seen the March 2004 Garner report that talks about server operating system futures?

In a March 2004 report, Gartner predicted that, based on current market share trends, the server operating system shakeout would continue and that only three growth operating systems would exist - AIX, Linux and Windows - through 2008 (0.8 probability). Additionally, by year-end 2008, Gartner predicts that AIX will increase market share and approach or pass Solaris as the No. 1 UNIX operating system (0.8 probability).

Quoted from Linux Journal.

I work with AIX systems every day and have worked with Solaris plenty, and the reality is that they are pretty much equally capable technically, and IBM's got a better and more stable business plan, and better a hardware technology growth path.

Excuse me?
GPL = General Public License
EULA = End User License Agreement

And what is this supposed to prove? A license is a grant of permission. That certainly does not have to mean that different licenses are completely the same in the face of the law. More specifically, an EULA is a license which governs the use of software. However, by buying the software, you have already entered into a contract with the vendor. Without an EULA, you could still use the software. In contrast, the GPL is a distribution license. It is the only thing which can allow you to distribute software, since by default, copyright disallows you to do so. Therefore, there is no debate among knowledgable people about the whether the GPL is binding, because you will have to accept it in order to have a right to distribute software. EULAs are much more disputed, because you will usually have more rights when you are not bound to them.

An EULA is a 'contract'

No, which is why software vendors were so desperate to get UCITA passed. It would give software vendors contract-like control over their users, which they only have in spotty parts of the country due to conflicting court cases.

The reason why software vendors wanted UCITA passed had to do with the problem that I previously mentioned, the question whether you are obliged to the contract provisions of the EULA or not. It has got nothing to do with the EULA being a contract or not. The decision in Softman vs Adobe agrees with me on this issue:

"Courts have required that assent to the formation of a contract be manifested in some way, by words or other conduct, if the contract is to be effective. [...] In the instant case, the Court finds that there is only assent on the part of the consumer, if at all, when the consumer loads the Adobe program and begins the installation process. It is undisputed that SoftMan has never attempted to load the software that it sells. Consequently, the Court finds that SoftMan is not subject to the Adobe EULA."

This quote clearly illustrates that the judge sees the EULA as a contract.

Ah, but there's the rub. You don't buy software (at least most commercial software). You license it. You don't actually own it, meaning that the first sale doctrine never kicks in, and that's how they can prevent you from reverse engineering it, regardless of the fact that RE is legal according to copyright law.

That is not the point here. The EULAs can't take that right away from you if they aren't valid.

But then I can apply my own morality and call it impertinent, unfair, etc. Because I find it offensive when authors [the authors of a GPL program] grant others certain rights [the right to copy and modify, subject to certain conditions] and you [Sun] try to come in between and redefine that grant. [confuse the user about their rights and obligations]

No. The authors of a GPL program granted Sun certain rights and PJ tried to come in and redefine that grant. You keep on talking out of your ass about GPL infringement, but again, that is not the point here. Let's do a little fact quiz:

- Is this story about PJs allegations?
- Did PJ argue that Sun was violating the GPL (as in: according to the law)?
- Is there any evidence that they did (not just questions or unsubstantiated allegations)?
- Is Sun doing what the authors of the GPLed software requested if they simply comply with the license (regardless of whether they actually did, which PJ did not argue against)?
- Are the authors complaining that Sun isn't complying with the license or otherwise should do more?
- Is PJ an author of that software?

After answering these questions, it should be clear to you what the question really is. Then we can talk about whether Sun should do what the authors asked of them or do what PJ asks of them.

All

Although most of the piracy apologists follow your reasoning, you fail to concede that there is a middle-ground. The internet has opened new ways to make business. However, for the last ten years, the music industry establishment has done nothing but try and keep the old business model. Why?

I'd wager that current publishers think they hold the middle-man spot because they have a strong grip on product exposition. The internet makes product exposition a lot easier, and has the potential to downgrade the middle-man value, therefore causing the whole industry to 'deflate'. This deflation is overall good, for public and artists, but is obviously bad for the editors.

In the end, give or take a couple of years, alternative music selling models will break through the barriers. Then, middle-men (editors) will have to excel in the role they are really needed for: weeding out bad artists, so people don't have to listen to every band out there. Then, only then, we'll again see great bands. Bands that really innovate the way music is created. The last ones, for me, were Nirvana, the pilar of the grunge movement. From then on, no really great global movement came out from the music scene. (The boy-band, girl-band movement fails on the grounds of musical quality).

I finish the comment with a glimmer of hope: Magnatune. Magnatune is clearly a small shop. However, it's a small shop, almost a one-man stunt, with a really innovative business model. And you know what? It's currently profitable.

Linux and the military? Old news. The Army has used Linux since at least 1998, because I was using their MCS/P system at the time.

Since the pad draws power from a USB connection, it would be cool if the colours could be controlled via the USB port as well.

It appears many people would pay a fair price for a USB RGB LED light with USB brightness control on each of the three color components.

I did find this: http://www.delcom-eng.com/products_USBLMP.asp. Prices start at $80 (ouch).

There's a linux driver with rudimentary support for the earlier fixed-brightness products from Delcom.

Why not just mod me up instead? I provide links!

Isn't that an oxymoron? Cray Canada's CTO says so. Then again, Borland's CTO said "OS X is my favorite Linux distribution.", so maybe CTOs aren't so smart about Technology after all ;)

How does a critical vulnerability happen? Seriously. Is there a URL someone can provide or a good description that shows what it takes to make an OS or application with a vulnerability?

Of course there's an infinite number of ways to write a vulnerable program, but the most common is to run afoul of a buffer overflow. A buffer overflow is a relatively simple flaw, but it's an easy mistake to make in C and C++ because those languages give economy of computational resources precedence over every other consideration, including security and stability.

There's an illustrated and fairly concise introduction to buffer overflows at LinuxJournal.

2000 was also the Year Of The Penguin, but that turned out to be a bad thing...

Try reading ESR's Why Python?, also check out the Quotes on Python from python.org :)
It's a beautiful language, I'm sorry I can't code in it more...

Those are great articles. Thanks.

Python as a first language

Why Python? by Eric Raymond, who wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I also like this article because I think Perl is a mess and I am glad to see someone else saying that.

Okay, I admit, I'm a butthead. Your 40 line post is a hella lot better than your 2 line post. I had two hours sleep due to massive caffeine intake. My bad.

I'm seriously considering your recommendation of Linux. Already use it, but not enough. It's getting to the point where I think I can make a go of it.

A few days ago there was an article in which Doc Searls mentions that Dan Frye, one of "IBM's leading Linux honchos", said that IBM will be offering both a Linux desktop and a Linux laptop this year. I've heard rumors that IBM wanted to use the G5 or a variant in their own gear, and this would be a perfect situation... if this happens it will be my next laptop.

By the way, did you see the article Cisco Products Have Backdoors? Jesus. You're right, I might as well not worry about backdoors, because I'll never catch them all. Between software, hardware, and the NSA monitoring all my emails anyway, there really IS no privacy. Bummer.

But anyways, sorry I'm a jerk on Slashdot.

Those definitely look don't look too "unix-ish", but the navy *does* use a similar unix-based system in submarines: TALOSS, or Three-Dimensional Advanced Localization Observation Submarine Softare. It runs on linux/unix, and has a 3D display similar to your first link's. It looks a lot cruder, but has the same kind of symbology and stuff. Maybe they were written by the same guys?

The point of the new scheduler(s) is that most access to the disk by a process is sequential (i.e. many blocks at a time), so if another process wants to access some other part of the disk, it most often pays off to let that process wait for a while before serving it, since the original process most likely will want to get more data from your current block.
That way, you don't need to move the head nearly as much as if you responded directly to the other process.
Robert Love has written an excellent article about the new schedulers here: I/O Schedulers

• Steven: What other companies have contracted Precision Insight to write DRI drivers? Are you working on drivers for any other cards?
  Daryl: The only companies that have announced anything publicly are 3dfx, ATI and Intel.

• The XFree86 4 driver was funded by ATI and was donated to The XFree86 Project by:
• 
  Precision Insight, Inc.
  Cedar Park, TX
  USA
  

I fail to see what the point is though, especially after Microsoft used their devious October 2000 investment in Corel to turn the then-Linux powerhouse into a submissive .NET supporter and last year Microsoft engineered the even more devious privatization of Corel using Paul Allen's money and a motley crew of former Microsoft executives, "joint Corel and Microsoft consultants", all apparently planned by Microsoft's investment and business development unit (which makes MS money work for MS business strategy), made infamous by the recent SCO funding revelations.

Is the Corel management perhaps finally under some kind of investigation and this "proof-of-concept" WordPerfect (wordprocessor only?) dealie is supposed to prove the new MS-leaning owners' credentials as "genuine independents"?

Will Microsoft be soon promoting a new Gartner study claiming that Linux productivity app market is dead because nobody is buying a recompiled and nearly 10 years old WP8?

Whilst people seem to have a knee-jerk reaction against "Trusted Computing", I think there is one crucial issue that actually determines wether or not it's a Good Idea(tm). And that is: Who holds the master keys to my computer?

My God, that is status quo, for God's sake! You already hold the master keys to your computer right now! You don't need any hardware change to preserve the status quo!

Ofcourse, that's pretty guaranteed not what MS wants to push, but still - when discussing "Trusted" architectures in general, I think it's a valid point. It could for instance enable me to say that I trust the FSF's list of trustworthy applications - and viruses and other malware would actually be physically unable to run on my workbox. How could that be wrong?

You don't need "trusted computing" system to do that, for God's sake! You don't need temper-resistant chip in your computer for the most basic cryptography for the love of God! My God, every single "I could use it control my machine" argument I have read so far (and I have been following the discussions for quite a few years now) was describing a feature which can be implemented (or even already have been implemented, like in the case of your Score:5, Insightful idea) in software to achieve exactly the same functionality as when being implemented using temper-proof hardware, the only difference being the fact that the owner can control it. That's it. This whole discussion is a complete waste of my time. Why people post such a crap before even searching Google for trusted computing and reading the first God damn link is beyond me.

Will the Toshiba actually reach the wrist of Slashdot user? It doesn't matter anymore, because of the invention of a little piece of plastic: the cell-phone belt clip. While wearing a PalmPilot makes one a first-class geek, even women now wear cell phones on their belts. The cell phone is the new standard for socially acceptable portable computing, not the Dick Tracy wristwatch.

All thanks to a little piece of plastic.

Here.

Let's not forget that the folks at Salon use and develop the open source CMS system Bricolage (homepage, Salon tech notes on their choice, Linux Journal article, Another).

They're not exactly the bad guys around here.

Let's not forget that the folks at Salon use and develop the open source CMS system Bricolage (homepage, Salon tech notes on their choice, Linux Journal article, Another).

They're not exactly the bad guys around here.

NC State seems to have it working.

Here are the installation directions for the driver.

Some Zaurus 5600's (popular Linux PDAs) come with a buggy CPU that only runs at half speed, and none of the vendors who sell it will tell you whether it has the crippled chip or the new, non-crippled chip. This is NOT the way to please Linux customers!

How about you and Linux?

Linus: Well, Considering how well it has turned out, I really can't say something went wrong: I have done a few design mistakes, and most often those have required re-writing code (sometimes only a bit, sometimes large chunks) to correct for them, but that can't be avoided when you don't really know all the problems

If it's something I have problems with, it's usually the interface between user-level programs and the kernel: kernel-kernel relations I can fix easily in one place, but when I notice that the design of a system call is bad, changing that is rather harder, and mostly involves adding a new system call which has semantics that are the superset of the old and then leaving in a compatibility-hack so that the old calls still work. Ugly, and I avoid it unless it really has to be done.

Right now I'd actually prefer to change the semantics of the and write() system calls subtly, but the gains aren't really worth the trouble.

Linux Journal: The most consistent compliment that Linux receives is its stability on Intel PC computers. This is particularly true compared to ``real Unices'' that have been ported to the Intel platform.

What do you see that was done right in Linux that is causing problems for these other PC Unices?

Linus: There are probably a couple of reasons. One is simply the design, which is rather simple, and naturally suits the PC architecture rather well. That makes many things easier. I'd suspect that the other reason is due to rather stable drivers: PC hardware is truly horrendous in that there are lots of different manufacturers, and not all of them do things the same (or even according to specs).

That results in major problems for anybody who needs to write a driver that works on different systems, but in the case of linux this is at least partially solved by reasonably direct access to a large number of different machines. The development cycle of linux helps find these hardware problems: with many small incremental releases, it's much easier to find out exactly what piece of code breaks/fixes some hardware. Other distributions (commercial or the BSD 386-project which uses a different release schedule) have more problems in finding out why something doesn't work on a few machines even though it seems to work on all the others.

Linux Journal: Have you heard of any problems running Linux on the Pentium chip? Do you expect any?

Linus: I know from a number of reports that it works, and that the boot-up detection routines even identify the chip as a Pentium ("uname -a" will give "i586" with reasonably new kls, as I ignore Intel guidelines about the name). The problems are not likely to occur due to the actual processor itself, as much as with the surrounding hardware: with a Pentium chip, manufacturers are much more likely to use more exotic hardware controllers for better performance, and the drivers for them all won't necessarily exist for linux yet. So I've had a few reports of a Pentium PCI machine working fine, but that the kernel then doesn't recognize the SCSI hard disk, for example.

From a performance viewpoint, the current gcc compiler isn't able to do Pentium-specific optimizations, so sadly linux won't be able to take full advantage of the processor right now. I don't know when gcc will have Pentium-optimi

Linus: I actually have no good idea at all: I haven't really followed either the CD-ROM sales or any ftp statistics, so it's rather hard to say. I guesstimate a user base of about 50,000 active users: that may be way off-base, but it doesn't sound too unlikely. The c.o.l. newsgroup had about 80,000 readers according to the network statistics back before the split (and I haven't looked at the statistics since), and I saw a number like 10,000 CD-ROMs sold somewhere. Not all of those are active users, I'm sue, but that would put some kind of lower limit on the number.

Here is a article from 1994 from Linux Journal about the DECUS conference.

I also once enjoyed reading an account of the early days of Linux by his near friend. I just can't remember the link or the name of him.

One proposed solution I would love to see getting more attention is SPF ("Sender Policy Framework"), which allows each domain admin to specify their email sending policy using existing infrastructure.

See the SPF site or read this month's Linux Journal to find out more.

Executive summary of SPF: Just use DNS to specify where mail from your domain may originate from. If everyone used this, we could have domain blacklists that actually work.

Do an "nslookup -type=txt psychogenic.com" to see an example entry. And if you manage any domains, please consider doing the same.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6953

As many (most?) other posts have said, you should really look into non MS options. If money is not a critical issue you would likely be best getting a Mac. Otherwise I would strongly recommend either Xandros or OEone's HomeBase. The former for people who are very used to and like the WinXX interface and the latter for people who actually want to do something on their computer.

They didn't get anything right. It's a horrible protocol. Given that, the Samba team are the ones who got it as right as was possible. Which has turned out to be a mixed blessing in that SMB is now more used as a result. The world is pretty much aching for a well-designed, open, cross-platform network filesystem protocol. SMB is a stopgap until it arrives. And "Common Internet File System" is a laughable designation - particularly given how poorly suited SMB really is to use on the wider Internet.

Re: what would happen if they did win, Jim Ready wrote a pretty interesting op peice in the Feb 2004 issue of Linux World - "Linux vs. SCO--A Foregone Conclusion"

It's a bit rah-rah "come and get it" but his conclusions are well reasoned.

(and it would have made one hell of a Slashdot posting ;) /t

You need to go re-learn about Fair Use rights.

Thanks for that tip, really. There is one thing you need to realize about the fair use doctrine as practiced in the US:

It is not a right, but in fact a defence. You do not enjoy a right to make copies, but if sued you can try to pleade "fair use" as an affirmative defence. It's up to you to prove that you were not infringing. This should be compared with the British-derived "fair dealing" enumerated rights of specific quantities of mechanical reproduction. US laws are far less strongly in favour of the defendant than most other countries.

Finally, I'd love to see the doctrine of "first sale" extended to iTMS Product and similar licensed electronic music files, but I think it will take a case similar to Softman v Adobe in scope to establish this, and I wouldn't want to be in the hotseat for this one.

Linux version .01 was launched in September 1991. (timeline) Try 12.5 years.

Rather, if you mean the relative amount of time it seems that I've been thrashing around in the 'quirkiness' (to be polite) that is the linux desktop ... then I think you've underestimated that figure by a few decades.

If you want good interface design, look no further than ESR's own beautifully designed fetchmailconf.

Not to say that he doesn't make good points, but... well... just look at the screenshots.

-Mark