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Bigger folders.

It disturbs me that people post changes like this in conjunction with the phrase "Operating System".

I'm in an Operating Systems class right now, and we're writing a little filesystem as a small project. No, there aren't any icons. You can't click it. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

The Horde Project; their IMP program looks pretty good.
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Wow, he ripped that one entirely!

Thanks, I probably should have been able to figure that out; I watched Forever Knight a few times, and I thought it was alright, and somewhat similar to the Highlander TV Series.

...I just couldn't figure out what this one had to do with the usual topics; Microsoft, Open Source, and whatnot. At least it had Natalie Portman, eh? :)
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Love 'em or hate 'em, you should always read 'em.

Anyone know what this one is based on?

The Wizard of Oz post was awesome, but this one is kina weird...
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I get to upgrade all my RPM's again! Hopefully it'll all work with kernel 2.4.0-test8, since that's what I've been running lately, but it'll probably break all the extra RPM's I have for the NCSU realm. Oh well, I can probably fix that...

But guys, only do this if you like to live on the bleeding edge; the X.0 Redhat releases are generally pretty rough, with lots of new stuff; I know, because I've been through three of them. If you're just trying out Linux for the first time, stick with 6.2 and wait for the reviews.

Generally Redhat Release X.1 is pretty decent, and X.2 is downright stable. If you're deploying a system based on RedHat, go with 6.2 and all the updates, with Bastille and the Openwall security patch, and watch redhat.com for updates. Otherwise, beware.

Also, what's this 'apt-get' for Redhat I keep hearing about? I've been using rpmfind for a while, and it works great. RedHat has their own stuff for this these days, but generally rpmfind.net is faster for me...
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Gosh, I wish; I could have gotten it all cheaper through Pricewatch. But instead, I bought it all from my friendly neighborhood local computer store, and indeed have tech support, warranties, and a return policy. I bought the parts and put it together because I didn't want to wait, but they would have assembled it for me if I had needed it...

That $799 iMac is pitiful; I've looked at the specs. In fact, anything with a built-in monitor is downright archaic, regardless.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Sorry; I can't get an equivalent Mac for less than $1,000 more. Unless you know a place that's cheaper than the Apple Store? I'd be happy to spell it out for you, but the equivalently priced macintosh would have less than half of the specs my machine does. Half the RAM. Half the Hard Drive space. A crappy video card with half the Video RAM.

I didn't even compare the Mhz; that's why it's as low as $1,000. But if you want to send me an appropriately specced Mac, I'll benchmark the two.

If no one cares, then why did you reply? Obviously I struck a nerve. I can tell you weren't interested in the details, either, or we'd be discussing those instead. Could it be that you don't agree with me, but have no valid argument, either?

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I've tried Be; it is indeed very cool. I didn't run it before because it didn't support my video card. (grayscale sucks)

Now that I have a new computer, BeOS supports my hardware just as well as Linux does; I tried the free version, and I liked it. Maybe I'll play around with it some more after they have more cool apps for BeOS.

But I completely agree: they put the friendly interface on top of Unix first. BeOS detected all my hardware easily once it was supported, it was very friendly, and it wasn't even hard for me to get to a command prompt.

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I think Apple is missing the boat; yes, I think their boxes are more expensive. However, I could be wrong, so let me check real quick...

Yep. The base price on anything except for an iMac is more than I paid for my system. For $200 more than I paid for my computer, I can literally get half the computer I have. If I paid ~$1,000 more, I could get something roughly equivalent.

The difference between my statements and yours are that I can quantify mine; if you want the details, I'll go into it for you, but suffice it to say that Apple's boxes are massively more expensive than what I can get in x86 land. Sorry, it's still true. If the opposite were true, I'd probably be running Linux on PowerPC, and think about trying MacOS X.

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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I didn't, I was comparing PowerPC to PowerPC.

IBM can make a 1Ghz PowerPC processor.

Apple can't get them due to fabbing agreements (IIRC).

Is that so hard to understand?

And yes, the PowerPC is a different architecture. But it isn't so fundamentally different that it's twice as fast as my Athlon, clock for clock, for general purpose apps. So even given some benchmarking, they still need to catch up a lot.

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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Actually, I only need one of each, but I'm pretty happy with what I have available.

I generally use Mozilla for web browsing, (because the latest builds are awesome!) everybuddy for chatting, (because it supports ICQ, AIM, and the lot) elm for mail, pico for text editing (although I do like nano better), and I generally don't use anything Office-like if I can help it, but if I have to, I'll try those out too. (last I saw, StarOffice is just like MS-Office, but I'm not sure if that's a feature)

As to widget sets, well, that's generally up to the application developer, but they're all usually fine with me, and better than Motif. Mozilla is themeable, and I tend to use fvwm2 for a window manager; I love my virtual screens. None of the apps are half as annoying as the Windows Explorer or the MacOS Finder, with its cryptic negative error messages, and bizarre Trash Can behavior.

And yes, it also makes a great server, and I'm currently reading slashdot from w3m, which is a great browser even on a server. :)

I gather Mozilla at least would be available on MacOS X, and some of the rest might build there too, but why bother? It all works great on Linux, and my (non-Apple) hardware platform works great too...

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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

No, I'm running an *awesome* system, with a top-notch Unix re-implementation, with support for kernel modules, and tons of hardware and software. My system is decently integrated with a heterogenous realm of different computers, and I still manage to run development level stuff, and stay more stable than Windows or MacOS. But that wasn't really the topic anyhow.

I'm sure Apple doesn't need people who know they aren't the only game in town. I'm not supporting their price-gouging for hardware, and I don't like how often they fall victim to NIH ("Not Invented Here") Syndrome.

I think MacOS X is a chance for them to repent, and show what they can really do, but that obviously hasn't happened yet.

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I know that Apple makes their money on their hardware; it's painfully evident in their pricing. However, I think you missed what I was saying.

If Apple released MacOS X on Intel, and it was truly a good OS, then I would buy it, and try it out, and use it. Otherwise, they lose my business, because I'm not buying their proprietary, overpriced hardware, and I certainly don't support their *closed* way of doing business. If that way of doing business changed, then I would respect Apple more.

Apple will eventually reach a hardware crisis. As it stands, there isn't much available for the poor, neglected Mac consumer. Their processor is woefully underpowered, due to Apple's agreements with IBM (no 1Ghz levels of speed, even though it's possible), and they don't have the same choice the PC market has. (Want a fast 3D card? Which one?)

Also, in the not-too-distant future, everyone will be porting to a new hardware platform. Windows and a lot of major Unix flavors, including Linux, will be available. Will Apple be there?

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Did I say "Darwin"?

I believe I said "MacOS X".

If you don't know the difference, well, please go elsewhere.

Do you know if Apple has any plans to release "MacOS X" on the x86 platform?

If so, please post a trustworthy link, and I will admit to either being a troll, or not knowing that fact, dealers choice.

If not, please go somewhere else...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Since I don't have a PowerPC, I'll wait until someone ports Darwin to anything else, and then see what happens.

1) If Apple graciously incorporates the code and releases versions of MacOS X for other platforms, maybe I'll try it out.

2) If Steve Jobs curses them and doesn't release anything for those 'renegade' platforms, I'll sigh as I always do when Apple doesn't get it.

3) I'll wonder why people didn't make a fuss like this over BeOS. It is also rather easy to use and Unix-ish, and at least they "get it" somewhat.

However, *BSD has accomplished something big: at least we won't have people tortured by MacOS anymore. Hopefully. Now let's see how long it takes for Win2k to turn into a *real* Unix. :)
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Psi Phi
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The .lsm files have been standard (find them on SunSite, or whatever it's called this week), and I suppose Freshmeat's format is pretty standard on the web, too...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I completely agree, but the benchmarks and software I've seen don't reflect our perspective. (like using them for something other than Quake...)

I didn't say anything about general matrix processing; I was just wondering if it could be faster to offload some (probably specialized, yeah) work onto a graphics card; I gather it would be for certain massively parallel cases.

...and thanks for the tip! I'll try to re-implement my brute-force Life program to use OpenGL... :)
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I don't even know what that agreement is for, or what it would give me if I agreed to it, but since I don't have one of their cheap scanners, I can be bound to it by pressing the 'Agree' button.

So where's the 'Agree' button?

Also, my name is not "Your Signature". Sorry, try again... Could they at least have you fill out a form to generate something official-looking with the right name on it? Sheesh.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Ok, I've got a Matrox G400 32MB Dualhead that I'm very happy with, and I can run the GL versions of MESS and MAME in 1280x1024x32 and whatnot... But doesn't this all get really silly after a while?

Why would I ever need greater than 60fps in anything? And once I have that, in truecolor, why would I need much better than 800x600 in the first place? Especially if I'm too busy playing Quake to look at the graphics?

What I want to see is a more versatile, programmable hardware acceleration, like edge-detection style algorithms in hardware that lets you implement, say, Conway's Game of Life. Or let your graphics card churn away on a dataset, doing those funky matrix computations that we all love....
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Is this just for consumers, or does Handspring have to pay anything? (i.e. "The 3Com Tax", or even worse, fragmenting PalmOS...)
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All you need is some dry ice and some flourinert, and it'll run fine.

Geez, what a bunch of wusses. Why, in my day... :)
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"Look, honey, I've got the Prince of Darkness across the street from me! And he doesn't want my soul, he just has this bridge to sell me. It looks like a good deal..."

Suburbia already is hell; they just don't know it yet. (watch Face/Off, they say it well there; and, for anyone else from the RTP area: it's Cary. 'Nuff said.)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

There's a simple answer to that:

Obviously, once it stops promoting "The Progress of Science and useful Arts", it should stop being copyright.

I think that the current copyright laws have hurt consumers in the music and computer industries, and therefore are not promoting useful Arts anymore. Therefore, under the constitution, they should no longer be copyrighted.

Anyone want to use this as a basis for a Supreme Court case to reform copyright? (or is anyone out there ACTUALLY a lawyer who has some better ideas, and can tell me exactly how stupid that was... :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Yes, if Cyc couldn't eventually add to its ontology, it would be quite limited, because eventually new things really do get created...

Incidentally, you and I can download a selected portion of the Cyc ontology; it's really so very detailed and well-thought-out that I'm amazed so much is missing!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Hey, I have great respect for Hofstadter, and I think he had a valid point; that's why I mentioned Penrose in my example. :)

My point was, you have to start somewhere. Hopefully these guys will learn from their mistakes.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

The point Hofstadter is trying to make is sound, but the argument is horrible!

...say you learned everything in Spanish. And someone else speaks English. You might have a very good conceptual model going, and you might actually *think* in Spanish; the only thing you don't know is English. And you'll learn that by mapping the existing English concepts onto the Spanish ones.

How different is that from learning a "gibberish" language?

The real question is, do we have an independent idea conceptually of what these things are? Well, if you label the picture "Apple", maybe you're doing a little better than if you're just using text. (great, now it knows that apples are red, and red is #FF0000, text seems to work well so far...) But ultimately, it's a concept, and you have to represent it somehow, and text is a good start, especially if you're a computer.

However, remember that these projects are fundamentally at odds with anything you read in a book. That's because this is research, and that is theory. Of course theory helps enormously in implementation, and I think that both of these projects suffer from a lack of research, and a utilization of existing sane AI techniques.

But there comes a time when you have to get off your ass and do something and see if it works, instead of writing another book saying that it'll never happen, and hiding under your desk when it does. A good example of that would be "The Emporer's New Clothes", which I wasn't terribly impressed with, although it's been a long time since I read it.
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fourteen: info?
AOLiza: i'm not sure i understand you fully.
fourteen: information 'bout you
AOLiza: oh, i?
fourteen: a/s/l?
AOLiza: i'm not sure i understand you fully.
fourteen: age?sex?location?
AOLiza: tell me more about that.
fourteen: how old are u? male/female? where
u live?
AOLiza: are such questions much on your
mind?

Yeah, I guess slashdot is proof of the human-non-reasoning principle, eh?

Neural nets are an interesting approach as well, but in that case, you'd need a big network, and a lot of training. In that case, it might be better to do everything at once, and try to create the autonomous robot baby that learns for itself first, and go from there. Otherwise, it'd be hard to interact with anything, and I'd never want to teach a baby just from the World Wide Web as we know it today; that's cruel and unusual!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

These are both just open versions of The CYC Project. I have serious doubts about a project like this working, but if anyone *does* get it working, they'll end up doing it first. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they're going to *release* anything to the public anytime soon.

However, I'd rather try to gather money to buy out/opensource cycorp than re-implement everything they've done in the past 16 years; they have a huge knowledge base already built, and a lot of code, and CYC can already do some interesting reasoning. (I know there isn't much there, but read what articles you can find; it's fascinating stuff)

And only using yes/no facts for data is just stupid; the computer needs to do some reasoning, and have some structure, otherwise, it would all just take too long! That's about as stupid as 'the table method' in AI. Even simple AI's can't necessarily be represented like that, so I hope there's more to it that I just missed.

...and for those people who think computers inherently will never be able to reason: go home; you aren't welcome here. I'll argue with your facts, but I won't cater to your prejudices.
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Don't those FreeBSD people have any notion of binary packages? Or would that be completely non-portable now?

I'm with the other guys: if they changed *that* much stuff, then grab a copy of Darwin; there are many crazier things out there. Otherwise, good luck writing a compiler (and an assembler, and an...) with the tools they give you. You might have more luck with a cross-compiler, in that case. :)

I completely sympathize; my school uses tcsh, and trust me, there's no good way to change that. (you can have tcsh run a bash, yeah, but then you have to port all the aliases and crud that's already set up) Whenever I want to do any real scripting, I run bash; I'm just more comfortable with it.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Ok, I finally found the paper I was citing. It's in postscript, but it's really worth reading at least once, even if it is from '95...

It's a good paper, but I'd like to see current results for the testing, too. I guess I should hunt down a copy of the FUZZ tools. I don't have a copy of NEXTSTEP, but it looks like they were using NEXTSTEP 3.2.

However, NEXT had the worst failure rate, at 43%. If they switched to the GNU tools later, well, that's fortunate, 'cause they were the best, at only 6%...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

As long as they used the tools from *BSD instead of the ones from NeXT, (which it sounds like they did) I have no problems with it.

Of course, I like the GNU Tools better, so I'd probably do what every other hacker stuck on a foreign platform would do: compile them.
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That's not quite how it works...

But you don't have to take it from me, take it from her!

Read this post instead, and follow the link, because pegiron deserves the credit for finding this gem...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

That is an awesome speech; that has to be the best argument I've seen against the music industry yet.

...and at the end, she even quotes from Snow Crash!

Please follow the link, read the story, and either mod the parent post up two billion points, or demand that it be modded so.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Well, it makes sense to me...

1) You're an artist; the record company (henceforth referred to as "The Man") already screwed you over.
2) The Man is "protecting" your interests, and gets a lot of money; will you ever see that money? No.
3) Since The Man publicly states this "protecting the interests of the artists" bullshit, you call them on it, and ask for your fair share. After all, if this had been a class-action suit, you would have gotten your fair share; they're just representing you.
4) Either The Man realizes what's going on, and pays you off, or they suffer the negative press as everyone realizes that they don't give a FUCK* about the artists.
5) All hell breaks lose; everyone (who hasn't already) loses faith in The Man. I laugh my ass off.

* Although I consider this post to be informative, I understand that profanity is an alternative way to get modded up, and I want to be Enoch Root when I grow up. It's cool, daddi-o.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

That's right.

And, in this case, Sun is the user of that code.

So where's their responsibility now?
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rating 6/10
summary ploddingly written but important premise
reviewer Jon Katz
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Well, you're right in that no one should be able to patent something that we've all thought of at one time or another. And software patents might be more feasable if they didn't last for so long!

(17 years is a ridiculously long time to have complete control of something in computing; 17 years ago, we didn't have the Macintosh, and Microsoft actually had competition!)

However, the real reason I'm against software patents is that it comes down to patenting code, and algorithms, which is just as bad as patenting math. It would piss me off to no end to spend some time inventing a new, awesome, fast sorting algorithm (for instance), distribute it, write papers about it, whatever; and then get a cease-and-desist letter telling me that some other company just got a broad patent on *my idea* because they had something like that in the works a year ago. Screw that.

Or, for that matter, think of any significant advancement in computing or math or physics in the last 17 years, and say "what if this had been patented instead?" I can give you a few that have: GIF and RSA. In both cases, they became standards, so everyone used them, but because they were patented, everyone found alternatives, too; and now we have PNG and Blowfish and whatnot. (But what if *those* had been patented.... Sheesh.)

I wish most posters on slashdot were as kind and polite as you are. If being drunk is what it takes, then I say to you all, drink up!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Definitely sign the petition. I did, even if I'm only from 'North America'. :)

Apparently in the US, computer programs strictly by themselves aren't patentable, but once they start doing something, (method for dimming lights in a greenhouse...) they are. I was reading through some random patent law the other day, the US patent office has strict, brain-dead guidelines as to what is and is not enforced.

My question is, if most source is closed anyhow, how do we demonstrate 'prior art'? And, for that matter, how can you tell the code is really that old? Find an old backup tape as proof? Hope no one asks you if you faked it all yesterday? This could be somewhat hard to do with computer software...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I agree man, slashdot still sucks these days. I'm still here for historical reasons, to get my news, and also in the hopes that some intelligent, rational conversations will suddenly appear. This hasn't happened very much lately...

At least kuro5hin will be back up RSN, according to the site; I like their entire way of doing things a *lot* better.

Unfortunately, it wasn't as asshole proof as slashdot, because they didn't have so many to test it. (But that's the point: they never wanted them there in the first place...)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I completely agree; I posted on this as well.

Fortunately, lots of people didn't seem to notice our posts; that's good, because Angband is also highly addictive. :)

Have you tried out Mangband? I messed with Angband, and The Angband Borg, and played Zangband a little, but then I lost interest for a while. (I need to change the behavior of Vampires sleeping in an Inn: waking up in the morning can be fatal! ;)
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But then I'll try to post, and then...

Well, then I'll ask the stewardess for a stiff drink. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Tenzing, on the other hand, is offering a "cached" or
prepackaged Internet stored in an on-board server computer,
which would periodically forward e-mail to the ground and back.

Of course, you're going to see some of both, but I think the 'bazaar'-style projects would usually have to be simple enough for the average coder to at least understand and modify parts of it, with a positive effect on the codebase. Otherwise, they'll just do something else, and leave the hard stuff to a core development team (cathedral-style) or let the code rot.

However, I think Angband is a good example of some free code that has mutated as people have changed it. There are a few main developers, and they do accept patches, but there are also tons of forks, and some healthy, nifty add-ons. (Zangband, Mangband, the Angband Borg...)

I would love to see the Tk version finally back-ported to Unix, or for that matter, any graphical front-end on top of X would be nice... If I have some more time, I'll try to work on that. I have messed with the Borg code before, and it wasn't that hard to do; I got it to use (and not sell) my Rod of Restoration, and to value items more like a Mage and less like a Paladin...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Good call; an empty robots.txt file does have no effect. I was going for a basic explanation, but apparently that was a little too basic.

However, for more info, the other reply I got has a handy link in it! :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Search engines (and any webcrawling 'bots') don't index sites where they find a 'robots.txt' file. This is called the Robot Exclusion Principle.

If you run a web site, check your error log for notes to that effect. (you'll get a random bot from, say, 'inktomi' or something, and they'll check for a robots.txt file, they don't find it, you get a message in your error log, and then your site gets crawled...)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Linux has a lot of little features that I'd miss otherwise, even on a Sparc.

Probably the biggest one for me is virtual text consoles. I know the Sparc has *a* console, but it sucks! (furthermore, people generally configure it to write some error messages there even in X! That's really stupid...)

Also, the threading should be slightly faster. At least gcc has improved somewhat as well, 'cause it used to really suck on the Sparc platform. (or, for that matter, most non-x86 platforms....)

Of course, Solaris does have some features of its own; I'd happily stick Linux on an Ultra 10, especially if I could get the 3D acceleration to work. But heck, the Ultra 10 is basically a glorified PC with a Sparc processor in it; you can find them with PCI buses and IDE hard drives!

However, on huge, enterprise-level Sparc boxes, of course I'd keep Solaris on there. Heck, the support contract alone is enough to make you do that, much less the superior multiprocessing support, and any other native hardware support they have...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

You're right; technology is finally making the old laws useless.

Unfortunately, instead of embracing the technology, they've been making worse laws restricting our freedoms, and after the mp3 furor, understand if I'm not anxious to see them try to take away all rights to video as well, because of the potential copyright abuse.

I'd love to see the copyright laws seriously revised, because I would love to have, say, a bunch of e-books, and an archive of old Looney Tunes cartoons, and whatnot. But that's not about to happen anytime soon. Rather, I'm expecting the direct descendent of OOG the caveman to come down and start charging royalties on his "intellectual property rights" for the wheel, and fire.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I think they should have seen this coming. Any tool can be misused, and the Open Source aspect to it makes it much harder to stop.

DeCSS is GPLed as well; stick the two together, and not only have you created a new (and potentially illegal) tool, but you're obligated to keep distributing it for three years (barring an actual challenge to the GPL)...
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