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Go through Freenet. There are so many addresses available that they give them away without effort:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5988

And you would be wrong. I've worked in very large projects (in the Telecom industry), and am currently coding specialized C/C++ code generators for the European Space Agency (the kind that actually generate the static, speedy, typesafe code that is appropriate for many projects). I know what you are talking about, and I never implied that Python is the way to go for all kinds of problems. My site has just as much C++ stuff as it does Python (e.g. my realtime 3D renderers) - even x86 SSE asm! What I am trying to show people is that there are many kinds of problems where scripting languages are not only adequate, but in fact the best way to go about... Google uses and advocates Python a lot, and Eric Raymond (esr) explains why a lot better than I ever could (Why Python?). In this day and age, developing speed and code clarity is just as important (if not more) as execution speed. Try Python and you'll know what I mean, when I refer to developing speed... And as for code clarity, the world is moving towards dynamic and type-infering languages (Ocaml, F#) for a reason...

YellowDog makes a PowerPC based Linux machine. The latest Linux Journal has a review of it:

http://us.fixstars.com/products/powerstation/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10263

Not perfect, but workable.

There are a whole bunch of "history" tricks, to recall old commands without using the mouse.

When I started college, I studied the shell's man page until I knew them all. Some are so obscure I have forgotten them.

Generally, these involve an '!' character in some way.

Here are a few I use:

!! # run again the last command that was run
!9 # run again the command with history number 9
!v # run again the last command that started with a 'v'
!vi # run the last command that started with "vi"
!?foo? # run the last command that had the string "foo" anywhere in it

diff oldfile newfile
mv !$ !^ # same as "mv newfile oldfile"
# !$ is last arg of previous command, !^ is first arg

ls foo bar baz
rm -f !!* # same as "rm -f foo bar baz"
# !!* repeats all arguments from previous command

There are actually some baroque tricks that recall a previous command and perform a search-and-replace on it, but for anything that complicated I just recall the line and edit it. The baroque tricks would have been pretty darn cool back in the paper teletype days, though.

By the way, the Bash shell can be configured to edit command lines using vi or Emacs commands. I described how to do it in an article I wrote for Linux Journal magazine. It's the last section, "vi or Emacs Mode in the Shell".

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8361

Oh, not exactly a history trick, but here's something I use all the time:
ls -1 > /tmp/files
vi /tmp/files # edit list to include just the files I want
rm `cat /tmp/files`
# `cmd` inserts the standard output from cmd into the command line as if you typed it

ls -1 > /tmp/files
vi /tmp/files
# edit list to include just the files I want
# now run this command: :%s+.*+mv & /some/directory/path/&+
# save file and quit vi
source /tmp/files

This moves the chosen files to "/some/directory/path". The breakdown of the vi command is as so:
: # invoke "ex mode" for search and replace command
% # run the following command on every line of the file
s # do a search and replace
+ # use a '+' for the command delimiter, so I won't have to backslash escape '/' chars in the path

.* # all characters on the line
+ # end the match pattern, begin replace pattern
# & refers to the match pattern, thus all chars on the line
mv & /some/directory/path/& # replace "foo" with "mv foo /some/directory/path/foo"

Takes less time to do it than to explain it!

The above is perhaps overkill if all the files are going to the same place. It's great if you want to send some files one place, some to another, because you can just edit the destinations until it looks right.

steveha

I've considered that, and will be adding a Skype phone for trial shortly. When I bought Vonage, the options for Skype were limited. I'm looking for very small Skype appliance footprint. I have a few computers at home, but only one stays on always. I'd like something like this: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8592 and all the features of Vonage. It's getting to be where they are much the same. It was not so previously.

Read the postscript in this article: Linux Journal

The problem is that you're working with dogs!

"Windows: Where do you want to go today?

MacOS: Where do you want to be tomorrow?

Linux: Are you coming or what?"

So, I wish you all the best with your project to make a new release, convince other people to make a new release, or pay people to make a new release.

In other areas it seems like the intersection between programmers and users are very low, like say video editors. If you've tried any of the OSS editors and compared them to commercial ones, you know what I mean.

Have you tried CinePaint aka Film GIMP? Movie makers like Dreamworks uses it, along with Linux.

All in all, I don't think closed source companies will disappear for a very long time even if Windows/Office were to disappear (and that's a looooooong way to go there too).

There's no good reason for closed source software to disappear. I'd like to see more open source but wouldn't make all software open. Instead I'd let a freemarket encourage competition, as well as cooperation.

Falcon

While your advice is good, it's off topic and not directly related to his question, which was optimization. You can run an unoptimized VM just as easily as you can run an unoptimized real machine. Furthermore, the VM host can benefit from optimizations and must be at least stable to run VM's in the first place. This guy is new, lets not ask him to run 2 servers (VM Host + VM) on 1 system right out of the gate. It's all in a days work for some of us, but this guy is new and wants to learn.

That said, I'll drop my 2 cents onto the original question. One of the problems with learning to run a webserver is that traffic doesn't happen overnight. What runs great when you're browsing your websites may not run so great when 10 or 100 people are simultaneously viewing your website.

Setting up LAMP is fairly well documented, but writing and running efficient applications is not. You should look into methods of traffic generation to simulate real-world loads (stress testing). I'm not talking about a looped wget --delete-after, maybe give a few stress testing articles a read

Would work beautifully, but it's completely broken the day someone manages to get the private key out of it.

This is the same reason why DRM cannot provide a cryptographically strong guarantee. No matter how the private key is generated, hidden, or otherwise obfuscated it is still provided to the adversary (i.e. the owner - isn't DRM screwed up like that? You the owner are considered to be an adversary) and forms the "weak link" in the chain. The fact that public key cryptography is used means nothing if the private key needed for decryption is sent along with the package because any crypto system is only as strong as the weakest link. So unless the RFID or the DRM requires Internet access to perform remote attestation (ala Palladium) the private key must be provided and RFID or the DRM is weakened to the complexity of the private key obfuscation techniques (which are never as strong as the crypto itself). Incidentally, this is also why Microsoft and the Trusted Computing Group DO NOT want to implement owner override, because they know that it will break their attempt at strong DRM if they are NOT permitted to treat the owner of the computer or the RFID chip as an adversary via forced remote checks (i.e. using the Internet). I for one will never accept and refuse to use any software (or recommend that others use it) which requires trusted computing and does NOT include owner override. We should all of us refuse to purchase or use any Trusted Computing products which do NOT include owner override. Demand sovereignty over your computing devices, you paid for them and they should obey you.

Is this an IP law debate?

It's a simple debate about what "freedom" means. Placing restrictions on users that take away their freedom is NOT freedom, as I've tried to make clear by showing what happens if copyright no longer applies. You may argue that more software with greater freedoms results from this restriction, but that's a 2nd order effect of taking away freedom from the individual.

I think this distinction is important, lest the true meaning of freedom is lost. Freedom does not mean you have to "give back".

If you want to provide real freedom, release your source into the public domain.

That's the general idea, but see below.

Any license relies on copyright law, and limits freedom.

A license is required to abdicate copyright, or so claims at least one lawyer:

"Just as there is nothing in the law that permits a person to dump personal property on a public highway, there is nothing that permits the dumping of copyrighted works into the public domain, except as happens in due course when any applicable copyrights expire. Until those copyrights expire, no mechanism is in the law by which an owner of software can simply elect to place it in the public domain."

That being said, you can write a license to disclaim all the privileges of copyright.

But no license can claim any kind of moral high ground.

You cannot call one license "more free", as Stallman and the FSF like to do, when it places more restrictions on the recipient. Licenses like the MIT or BSD licenses are pretty close to public domain and contain fewer restrictions than the GPL.

The GPL limits distribution, not usage.
As Tivo is the distributor, the "version 2 or later" clause means tivo, not their users, get to pick if is distributed to the users under "version 2" or under "later."

Then why did Linus remove the "This version or later" clause from the license of Linux? Clearly he was concerned that people might opt for a future version of the license which contained clauses he didn't agree with, like GPLv3.

He described the GPLv3 as a "convert the infidels" license and GPLv2 as one that forced a "quid pro quo" -

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8876

Also how could the anti Tivoisation GPLv3 clause work if Tivo got to decide which license people used? They could just opt to license code under GPLv2. It only makes sense if the users get to decide to use GPLv3 and thus get the power to compel Tivo to do something it doesn't want to do?

It seems that both the FSF and Linus believe that "version 2 or later at your option" is something which, it it had been applied to the kernel, users could use to force Tivo to do things that version 3 demands of them but version 2 did not. What's interesting is that Linus doesn't agree with GPLv3. He said that Tivoisation was something that he "expressly considered to be ok".

Now if he'd left in the "or later" clause then both he the author and Tivo would have been forced to do something they didn't agree with once users decided to opt for GPLv3. It would have been much worse than that actually, companies like IBM would have been forced to grant royalty free patent licenses to all Linux users, even though when they contributed code that wasn't part of the GPL.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9585

"ISS" doesn't use windows at all.. Most if not all of the actual hardware seem to be running on different versions of linux (mind you, quite a bit of the hardware is from around the Y2K or before, so you'll see p233s with 64mb ram running things).

The only things infected were a couple of laptops running "nutritional programs", (whatever the hell those are).. Even then, all ISSEarth communication goes through fairly tough screening, and is not directly linked to the 'net, so it's not as if planting trojans on astronaut's laptops is very useful, or challenging (seeing how the laptops weren't running AV Software, and are far from mission critical equipment).

anyway, see this possibly partial, old entry on what some parts of ISS are run on.

He describes quite succinctly why he moved away from Perl back around 2000:

...Writing these programs left me progressively less satisfied with Perl. Larger project size seemed to magnify some of Perl's annoyances into serious, continuing problems. The syntax that had seemed merely eccentric at a hundred lines began to seem like a nigh-impenetrable hedge of thorns at a thousand. "More than one way to do it" lent flavor and expressiveness at a small scale, but made it significantly harder to maintain consistent style across a wider code base. And many of the features that were later patched into Perl to address the complexity-control needs of bigger programs (objects, lexical scoping, "use strict", etc.) had a fragile, jerry-rigged feel about them.

These problems combined to make large volumes of Perl code seem unreasonably difficult to read and grasp as a whole after only a few days' absence. Also, I found I was spending more and more time wrestling with artifacts of the language rather than my application problems. And, most damning of all, the resulting code was ugly--this matters. Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.

With a baseline of two dozen languages under my belt, I could detect all the telltale signs of a language design that had been pushed to the edge of its functional envelope. By mid-1997, I was thinking "there has to be a better way" and began casting about for a more elegant scripting language.

The rest of the essay can be found here.

I see ... so by giving away sex on the internet, porn is taking something of value away from women. Wouldn't Jim Allchin call that un-American?

However, recently the first sale right was upheld by the court in the Softman v. Adobe case - Softman was the guy who wanted to sell an Adobe Product via e-bay. Technically, they said, if the license is "forever" it can be considered a product being sold.

From http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5628 :

"The Court understands fully why licensing has many advantages for software publishers. However, this preference does not alter the Court's analysis that the substance of the transaction at issue here is a sale and not a license," Judge Pregerson writes. If you put your money down and walked away with a CD, you bought that copy, EULA or no EULA.

More info in the wikipedia entry.

Which is why he bought a used laptop, it had serial ports but only could run Windows 2000.

The Windows Vista laptop had that USB to serial adapter and it was limited to 9600 baud for some reason. He needs it a lot faster than that, and sometimes it doesn't work right either.

There are projects to get PLCs to work on Linux but some software like Directsoft only exists for Windows XP and 2000 and not Vista or Linux.

Linux runs on more platforms and more CPU architectures needs citation? Are you stupid? Windows does what, Itanic, x86, x86-64 and if you stretch "Windows" (CE, AKA Mobile doesn't even use close to the same codebase as Windows proper, unlike Linux) maybe ARM? There are 11 alone supported by the Debian distribution, to say nothing of where the kernel actually runs. That's many more than Wind River or NetBSD actually support. They are embedded systems. Linux runs both embedded AND desktop AND big iron with the same kernel. No other OS can say that.

And for higher performance, identical software on identical machines runs faster under Linux than Windows.

BTW, NT only booted on Alpha and MIPS derivatives natively as a commercial product. SPARC support wasn't even done by Microsoft, it was done by Intergraph for a special contract. But guess what? They did that in 1995, and Linux had Alpha support in 1994. Guess you were wrong. And given that the first Linux kernel was very specifically x86 and was written in 1991, if you want to compare rates of development, I'd say that Linux is WAY ahead of Windows. Go troll your idiocy elsewhere.

Photoshop Replacement - The GIMP

So the GIMP supports my $300 in Photoshop plugins now? Not. Because Photoshop is an art tool supporting artistic workflow, not a photo editor with. Color Profiles, while a must are only one of the must have features to be a Photshop Replacement. Personally, I buy Pixel and install it on Linux. It is a photoshop replacement. (Also, this example disproves the all Linux Nerds are freeloaders who won't pay for software, but I digress.)

-Labyrinthe configuration utilities and applet

Something like YaST from SuSE or Redhat's Linuxconf, perhaps? The Linux Journal (or even a Google search) will beat stinky-pedia for real, not just made in the last 5 minutes, information.

To the OP,

-Full command line environment (DOS)

Your definition of 'Full' intrigues me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

That sounded familiar, like something I have heard of before called GeekPAC. I thought they had a website, but I can't find it. However there are stories about it on linux journal and Lisa Rein's blog. I don't know what happened to them.

You should realize there are a lot of congressmen, so "donating" 9k or so to each one would cost somewhere around $100k or $1M+ (you do the math if you want to know the exact amount), that isn't exactly cheap. I suppose if a hundred thousand geeks get together and pay $10 each, you'd have the million you need. :-)

Actually, a couple of years ago I just helped my son with the Computers merit badge--it is definitely one of the more information-intensive merit badges and took quite a while to polish off. I was glad at the time to see that the older version of the merit badge sheet listed articles from www.linuxjournal.com as resources for adult leaders, including an article called "Bit Prepared: A Missing Link?, Building the case for turning the Boy Scouts into a worldwide advocate of free software" http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7533. Looks like they were on the right road once. But, when they recently revised the merit badge worksheet, this stuff was left off and new copyright stuff was added from the RIAA, including asking the scout to explain "the restrictions and limitations of downloading music from the Internet." In a sense, this was good because it let me explain the issue to my son and explain what copyright is, what fair use is, what DRM is, what a rootkit is, and what legal antics have gone on in the name of the poor penniless recording companies. He now understands these issues without all the hype. As to all the bigotry comments, I don't see it in my son's troop. Mostly it is about having fun and learning to take responsibility for yourself and as you get more mature, learning to take responsibility for and lead a group (a patrol, or a troop)--not bad goals regardless of your ethical or sexual orientation.

You're mixing up two similar (in form factor) machines, that were otherwise quite different in architecture and time of availability.

One is the Alpha-based DEC Multia/UDB, from way back in the mid '90s. LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: Slashdot was originally run on one of these.

The other is the StrongARM-based Netwinder, which appeared around the year 2000.

They did have one thing in common other than their size - they both tended to overheat if they weren't stood up vertically.

Do you live in the United States of America? Also known as "The United States of Advertising?" (Bill Hicks)

Take the Microsoft Mafia Monopoly Challenge:

1. Walk into one or several of your local stores selling computers
2. Ask them what their computers have preloaded on them for an Operating System
3. If they reply, "Windows", inquire about other choices and note them if available (most won't have alternatives)
4. If they tell you every system is preloaded with Windows, note this and add a Windows logo flag next to the store name
5. Ask about the possibility of refunds for Windows should you purchase a preloaded Windows system and want a refund for the OS. Even if this isn't the way to go about it, ask about the refund anyway to see what they say, express your dismay at the limited choices and the forcing of Windows on desktops. A convicted monopoly should not continue to enjoy the luxury of a monopoly on the desktop
6. Compile this list and post it online somewhere visible, or coodinate your effort with others with sites like BoycottNovell.com and the like, groups of people collecting this information may wish to present it to the appropriate people in American government, to show how strong the Microsoft monopoly remains today, and how little the DOJ has leaned on Microsoft vs. other countries.

If the DOJ will do nothing further to stop Microsoft's continued monopoly in the United States, we must do something.

Microsoft is a convicted monopoly and it should not continue to enjoy the luxury of preloaded systems and mysterious OEM deals

In addition, archive/save the following articles before they disappear:

Microsoft's Dirty OEM-Secret
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/23/13219/110

Microsoft Caught Out
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/11/15/124827/52

Microsoft Exec: OEMs Must Not Install Linux Besides Windows
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/27/214930/249

Secret deals MS uses to control PC companies
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/06/10/secret_deals_ms_uses/

Congress: Clear the Air and Stop Preloads
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/50179/

Microsoft Getting Paid for Patents in Linux?
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=1&sid=07/02/11/1443211

Microsoft: Open source is too complex
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39380307,00.htm

Microsoft: "Drug-Dealing Methods"
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7654

Do you live in the United States of America? Also known as "The United States of Advertising?" (Bill Hicks)

Take the Microsoft Mafia Monopoly Challenge:

1. Walk into one or several of your local stores selling computers
2. Ask them what their computers have preloaded on them for an Operating System
3. If they reply, "Windows", inquire about other choices and note them if available (most won't have alternatives)
4. If they tell you every system is preloaded with Windows, note this and add a Windows logo flag next to the store name
5. Ask about the possibility of refunds for Windows should you purchase a preloaded Windows system and want a refund for the OS. Even if this isn't the way to go about it, ask about the refund anyway to see what they say, express your dismay at the limited choices and the forcing of Windows on desktops. A convicted monopoly should not continue to enjoy the luxury of a monopoly on the desktop
6. Compile this list and post it online somewhere visible, or coodinate your effort with others with sites like BoycottNovell.com and the like, groups of people collecting this information may wish to present it to the appropriate people in American government, to show how strong the Microsoft monopoly remains today, and how little the DOJ has leaned on Microsoft vs. other countries.

If the DOJ will do nothing further to stop Microsoft's continued monopoly in the United States, we must do something.

Microsoft is a convicted monopoly and it should not continue to enjoy the luxury of preloaded systems and mysterious OEM deals

In addition, archive/save the following articles before they disappear:

Microsoft's Dirty OEM-Secret
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/23/13219/110

Microsoft Caught Out
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/11/15/124827/52

Microsoft Exec: OEMs Must Not Install Linux Besides Windows
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/27/214930/249

Secret deals MS uses to control PC companies
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/06/10/secret_deals_ms_uses/

Congress: Clear the Air and Stop Preloads
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/50179/

Microsoft Getting Paid for Patents in Linux?
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=1&sid=07/02/11/1443211

Microsoft: Open source is too complex
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,39380307,00.htm

Microsoft: "Drug-Dealing Methods"
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7654

Chumby's been out for a while. I remember reading about this device in an older LJ copy (last September to be exact). I guess what I am trying to say is This is old news but then again it would be presumptuous to think most /. readers also read LJ. Links: Link One Link Two

Chumby's been out for a while. I remember reading about this device in an older LJ copy (last September to be exact). I guess what I am trying to say is This is old news but then again it would be presumptuous to think most /. readers also read LJ. Links: Link One Link Two

This is exactly what's stopping my project from adopting GPLv3. Stylus Toolbox uses GladeGen for some of its more complicated windows (I did the initial design using GladeGen, but the rest of the project just uses stock PyGTK code).

The problem is that the linked-to article, all the documentation that exists for GladeGen, only mentions that the code is GPL; it doesn't specify a version and there is no COPYING file or mention of a license in any of the files or source code. So I'm not entirely certain as to the legal status of the code other than it's probably licensed under some version of the GPL.

If David Reed or Linux Journal could come forward and clarify the legal status, that would be most helpful. Maybe someone with a legal background might provide some help, too.

I am waiting, waiting, waiting for something interesting. Like the Linux Journal http://www.linuxjournal.com/ now changing into BeOS journal. Or the Google's plan http://www.google.com/virgle/index.html to send us all to Mars. I am waiting.

if any of these allegations are true: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsofts-great-besmirching

Is anyone going to use ISO specifications again if Microsoft purchases the OOXML vote?

What really gets my clusters in a bunch is that Microsoft could elect to work with Sun, IBM, Apple, Adobe, Whoever, to really come up with an Open Document specification if they wanted too. This specification isn't about Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and IBM. Its about government documentation funded by the public that needs to be available a thousand years from now. Way to be a good corporate citizen Microsoft!

People will still choose MS Office because they like it, not because it does or does not save documents in a government mandated open specification. Microsoft could simply add a new "Save As" filter following the Open Specification.

Enjoy,

This article does a great job of presenting the big picture:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsofts-great-besmirching

A quick google search

http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000252 shows how to implement pivot tables in OO2. http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2007/programme/wednesday_186.pdf tells us that Pivot Table support will be improved in OO3

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp -m mport \
  --dports 135,139,1025 -j TARPIT

I think its syntax is butt-ugly, but its functionality is great. Maybe next time around I would use lua, but I'm not sure. What's awesome about Tcl is that while communicating with our equipment, I could create procedures on the fly for doing some things:

>proc led_flash { } { set_value 100 1; wait 1000; set_value 100 0 }
>led_flash
>for {set i 0} {$i < 10} {incr i} led_flash
>

So be nice to Tcl :-)

Google doesn't have to do this themselves. See: http://www.thinkgos.com/ and http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9989 .

The interesting thing here is that Microsoft is not just fighting Google. Google is marshaling the whole world in a way that will make Microsoft irrelevant. That's what gives them nightmares. It's got them scared enough to even consider a worthless deal that can never work out. It is an act of desperation.

Nobody here was addressing single files; scp is great for small transfers. When it comes to backing up large filetrees, scp just isn't an option. When it comes to preserving permissions, you're right ... I'm usually in a situation that prevents going the easier way, so I forgot that tar preserves permissions while archiving.

I sometimes solve that by opening up root ssh access via a key, doing the transfer, and closing root ssh access (change the sshd_config file, restart sshd, start the ssh transfer, revert the sshd_config file, then restart sshd; the transfer is only on one session, and only new sessions are affected by the restarted sshd).

One thing I forgot to mention was compression-versus-bandwidth comparison. Linux Journal had a really comprehensive article on this called Compression Tools Compared back in July 2005. Basically, it boils down to suggesting even gzip may be too computationally expensive to be worthwhile if you've got a fast network hookup. On your LAN, you're best off without compression, be it through tar or ssh (set "Compression no" in your ~/.ssh/config for your LAN). Of course, it's often faster to send backup tapes via next-day mail...

EVERYTIME, which is way to frequent, that my mac book Pro crashes, running the monolithic microkernel MacOSX (10.4 - 10.5.1), the Mac asks if I want to report it to Apple. I always say yes and berate them for having IO Drivers in the Kernel (since that's been the reason for the crashes - every time. I encourage them to remove the drivers from the their monolithic microkernel and put them into their own protected space.

Someone has to tell Apple that their Kernel design implementation sucks big time - simply because it crashes WAY TOO OFTEN. MacOSX 10.4 through the current up to date Mac OSX 10.5.1 Leopard (System Version: Mac OS X 10.5.1 (9B18), Kernel Version: Darwin 9.1.0) crashes very frequently week with IO problems (see the actual crash logs at the end of this posting). Usually these problems are with device drivers such as EyeTV or Parallels. If this was a true microkernel design like Minix or QNX the entire machine would not have to be rebooted, just the EyeTV or Parallels apps would need to be rebooted. Why the heck should a problem with the USB driver bring down the entire OS? How on earth can that be justified Apple? It can't so improve the quality by removing ALL drivers from the Kernel and put them in their own processes. Thank you very much in advance.

APPLE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REMOVE ALL DRIVERS FROM THE MACH XNU MICROKERNEL AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. THANKS. AT LEAST GIVE ME THE CHOICE OF HAVING THEM SEPARATED - THE EXTRA CPU % COST IS A PRICE THAT I AS A USER WOULD MAKE TO GAIN THE FAULT TOLERANCE AND RELIABILITY. Below you'll see my actual kernel crash logs for six months - as you can see the number of crashes are intolerable and just amazing to behold when a true microkernel that separates out drivers would have prevented reboots in all these cases.

I HEREBY Challenage ALL Mac OSX users to publish their Kernel Crash Logs for ALL the world to see. Maybe this way APPLE will take microkernels seriously.

Links to the issue of the flawed XNU kernel. (Gee, XNU, almost sounds like the XeNU character out of the Scientology creation mythology. XeNU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu. ;--).

The culprit: bad monolithic design of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU#I.2FO_Kit and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_kernel

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6105
http://www.maconintel.com/news.php?article=177
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/architecture/index.html
http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/how-long-will-apple-keep-the-mach-microkernel/

"Frankly, I think it's a piece of crap," Torvalds says of Mach [XeNU], the microkernel on which Apple's new operating system is based. "It contains all the design mistakes you can make, and manages to even make up a few of its own." - Linus Torvalds, http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,2085525,00.htm

I only quote Linus because he's right regarding MACh XeNU. However, he's wrong about microkernels in general as the frequent crashing of Linux reveals.

---- ACTUAL MacBook Pro Monolithic XNU Kernel Crash Logs ----- REAL WORLD CRASHES REVEALED -----

Sat Mar 24 07:38:10 2007
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x0035AE53): freeing free mbuf
Backtrace, Format - Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x36563ca8 : 0x128d08 (0x3c9ac4 0x36563ccc 0x131de5 0x0)
0x36563ce8 : 0x35ae53 (0x3ea228 0x9cfc 0x36563d28 0x2)
0x36563d08 : 0x35b1f3 (0x4835b800 0x804c 0x36563d28 0x800)
0x36563d28 : 0xa3d6ad (0x4835b800 0x36563dec 0x6 0x6007c0e0)

Well, I wouldn't call it fully supported. The next version of Kubuntu will not be designated a Long Term Support version, while the Gnome based version of Ubuntu will have long term support. Kubuntu seems to always get shortchanged by Canonical. First, no compositing window manager by default (and a rather buggy one if you switch to it) in the Gutsy Gibbon release, now no Long Term Support for KDE in the upcoming Hardy Heron release. Truly sad. See http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1005960 for more details.

If you're using systems with TCPA chips, then check out this overview and IBM's examples.

I'd use unionfs to mount a tmpfs on top of your SSD for log files and such. Have cron run snapmerge periodically to copy the changes back to the SSD. This will let your SSD enjoy a long and useful life. See http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7714#N0xa50890.0xdfb370 for more info.

It's all a geek dream anyway, that people doing work for free is going to somehow outperform people who do their jobs to get paid and rely on that payment to sustain the quality of living they are used to. Not to mention that during this time that the people are writing free software they have to be working for a living; working on other projects and with other distractions. It just doesn't add up that Linux could be better than Apple, or even Microsoft, despite how completely fucked Vista seems to be so far.

Now, I know there are many ways you can tear up the logic in this post, and I freely encourage you to do so. But ultimately what you need to do is explain why, if my logic is flawed, the situation is as it remains today.

Hey Jim, you can play ogg vorbis on an Ipod, so fear not. You just need to replace its built-in O/S with Linux first. Rockbox makes this possible, and easy to do. http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1005957

His case will be thrown out of court. His lawyer will argue that any illegal files may have been placed on his computer by the employees.

Think about it, if you took your computer to the shop, and the next thing you know, you're being arrested for having child pornography (assuming you didn't intentionally download it), how [c|w]ould you prove that you didn't put the files there? "Well, it's on his computer! Throw the book at him!"

OTOH, The recent Linux Journal has a very interesting article on computer forensics; matching file create/access/modify times against ISP download logs could put some lethal holes in this kind of defense, so I may be wrong.

Also, it should be considered if these pictures were in My Pictures\Jerkoff\Kids\ or in (and only in) a browser cache folder. Following the wrong link posted by a troll on Slashdot could get you an illegal file in your cache. Putting them in a named directory yourself, well, that's a different story.

I've coded in assembly for Mir, in C for Spacelab and I.S.S It doesn't get much better :-) So my advice: try to find the right place. Embedded programming typically has to be better quality than for instance web apps. People just don't tolerate a washing machine that needs a three finger salute (or a spacecraft for that matter).

Life is good.

Understanding and Replacing Microsoft Exchange

(dum, dum, dum) Another hoax bites the dust.

Brian added UDF support for other languages quite a while ago (see Embedding Perl in MySQL for example). Of course, I promised to polish up his code and embed Parrot in MySQL a while ago too, so blame me for part of that.

Linux Journal had a article on doing this back in 2001. The benefits are replication, history, and backups.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5976

Enjoy,

Not sure when it turned up in Dilbert, but a research lab in Cambridge had an "active badge" program in the early 90s:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3047

(obligatory completely unfounded conspiracy theory - the Olivetti Research Lab was replaced with / became the Microsoft Research Cambridge Lab)