Slashdot Mirror

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

"SLONY - an add on" - Different needs need different replication. The replication should be a add on.

Slony-I is made by Jan Weick. He is one of the main developers of PostgreSQL. Slony-I uses the core technology of PostgreSQL. Is it a real integrated solution that you can choose to add on.

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/18/slon y.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/03/17/slon y_changes.html

Slony-I is not a multimaster replication system. They are working on Slony-II that will have more features.
http://slony2.org/

"SLONY - an add on" - Different needs need different replication. The replication should be a add on.

Slony-I is made by Jan Weick. He is one of the main developers of PostgreSQL. Slony-I uses the core technology of PostgreSQL. Is it a real integrated solution that you can choose to add on.

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/11/18/slon y.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/03/17/slon y_changes.html

Slony-I is not a multimaster replication system. They are working on Slony-II that will have more features.
http://slony2.org/

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

...here's an article by Curt Hibbs on Ajax with Rails. He's got an "Ajax in 60 seconds" history lesson at the top of the article...

Ruby on Rails if you want to switch, Catalyst if you're comfortable with perl and don't want to switch. There are excellent introductory articles on the O'Reilly web site for both of them.

I'd sure love to hear ESR's input as to what goes into GPL3

ESR's belief is that We don't need the GPL anymore

I recently switched a project from J2EE to RoR (with a Postgres 8 back end). Rails lives up to a lot of the hype!

It takes a little work to get from some of the simplistic tutorials on the web to larger-scale apps, especially if you are working with an existing database schema as I was. However, I've found that RoR really offers huge productivity gains.

Compared to the J2EE project I was working on, where I was evaluating persistence frameworks, J2EE vs. Spring IoC for the business logic, presentation/templating frameworks, etc., RoR is a one-stop framework. For the most part, everything you need is just there, and it already works together beautifully.

IMHO, one of the real strengths of Rails is Ruby itself. Compared to Java, the syntax is simple, clean, more pure OO, and a heck of a lot of fun to write. It embodies some ofthe best parts of a lot of languages I've used in the past such as Smalltalk , LISP, etc.

Here are some links to help get you started:

Curt Hibbs "Rolling with Ruby on Rails":
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rail s.html

Four Days on Rails:
http://rails.homelinux.org/

why's (poignant) guide to Ruby (this one is reason enough to learn ruby...Chunky Bacon - need I say more?)
http://www.poignantguide.net/ruby/

Quoth McBride:
We also believe in quickly responding to the latest security threats. In CNET's, May 27, 2005 article entitled "OS Makers Slow to Fix Flaw," a vulnerability was discovered affecting Intel's hyperthreading and allows a local hacker to steal sensitive information. A notification was given to all operating system vendors in March. "FreeBSD security team member Percival has received formal responses to the issue from the makers of the BSD family of open-source operating systems, as well as SCO and Ubuntu Linux. However, Linux vendors Red Hat, Novell and Mandriva have been slow to act, as has Microsoft," he said. SCO was first to respond to the security threat.

As I commented in a recent interview, I was quite surprised at how professionally SCO responded to this security issue.

However, SCO was not the first to respond: That distinction goes to FreeBSD, which released patches at 00:01:20 UTC on May 13th and sent out an advisory at 00:38:35 UTC. SCO's advisory followed almost a day later.

If you must know, it claims:
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::RemoteSourceException) Error fetching remote gem cache: getaddrinfo: no address associated with hostname.

I guess Ruby isn't quite done yet. Although to be fair, it took about a day and a half to install Microsoft Visual Studio.

Ruby on Rails has clean, built-in support for template code that generates the client-side Javascript for using the prototype.js library.

It makes it next to trivial to create, for example, Google Suggest text fields because the developer focuses on using Ruby syntax to indicate the server action to invoke, based on what client behavior, and what to do when the results come back to the browser. The annoying little details that are easy to muck up are handled for you.

This may help explain more

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/09/rail s_ajax.html

Ruby on Rails has clean, built-in support for template code that generates the client-side Javascript for using the prototype.js library.

It makes it next to trivial to create, for example, Google Suggest text fields because the developer focuses on using Ruby syntax to indicate the server action to invoke, based on what client behavior, and what to do when the results come back to the browser. The annoying little details that are easy to muck up are handled for you.

This may help explain more

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/09/rail s_ajax.html

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

I've experience in PHP and JSP. I was interested in an OSS project, and the developer wanted to use Rails. I didn't feel like learning another architecture, so I passed on it. A couple months went by, and I saw Curt Hibb's article on ONLAMP "Rolling with Ruby on Rails" (http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rai ls.html). My jaw dropped just skimming the tutorial. I fired up Rails when I got home that night, and was amazed. I've since converted 2 projects to Rails, cutting my code base down (even with adding new features), and the projects are much easier to maintain. I highly recommend looking into it.

If it's a better piece of software, then yes, that is possible. The same would apply if a better commercial offering came along. And yet there is no reason why two competing products should not co-exist in the marketplace, although they may force a more realistic pricing model on some of the competitors.

I've taken the liberty of scanning a few of your recent posts. For instance, you commented on the thread concerning Robert Lefkowitz's Calculating the True Price of Software. I take it that you read the article? Lefkowitz makes an excellent case for the fact that the most import part of the software price for corporate buyers are teh support and upgrade options. And that, oddly enough is proprietory software's answer to free software. The customer doesn't pay for the software so much as for support and the assurance that upgrades will be available in due course.

You even commented making a similar point:

no licensing fee to a company also means there isn't anyone thaey can blame when something goes wrong. This is why commerical applications are used.

yeah, it is competition at work. Do I sense some sarcasm in your statement?

None intended. I'm just getting some mixed signals. You say you're okay with open source, but you equate free software development with Embrace and Extend which is generally reckoned to be one of Microsoft's dirtier tricks. Your comment about using open source in your own development leads me to imagine a small independant software house, and yet you seem to be an ardent apologist for Microsoftv .

Now I wouldn't go so far, (as I know some have) as to accuse you of astroturfing for MS, but you don't fit any of my mental models of slashdot posters. Thus I'm trying to validate a few of my assumptions as I go. For instance, most of slashdotters would agree that competition in the marketplace is a good thing. But rather than assume, I thought I'd better seek confirmation.

I notice you confirmed the "competition" for instance, but didn't say anything about "good". A deliberate omission? Many people would infer a condemnation of competition from that.

Opera has native SVG now. Mozilla has it in the latest nightly builds. Safari will also have it soon, courtesy of the KSVG project for Konqueror/KDE.

IE? Who cares? If Microsoft doesn't follow suit, it's one more nail in their shiteware's coffin.

I thought the XP fiasco was kinda funny

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

You want an OpenBSD cd? Here's a live one: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2005/07/14/openbsd _live.html

Jim Gettys (the X Window System guy) also got the boot from HP. It is mentioned here.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

In my opinion, AJAX has some compelling uses, but for most web application work, it adds a lot of extra complexity and points of failure with little end user return. Ruby on Rails on other hand, will probably be the next PHP. It greatly speeds prototype development on and into live production. It also has built in unit testing and lots of other compelling features. Run through the first Ruby Tutorial here. It will change your thinking on creating web apps forever.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Wonder how similar it will be to AJAX on Rails, one of the best AJAX abstractions I've seen to date, using the excellent Ruby on Rails object persistence and MVC framework

As a number of people have mentioned, Internationalization and localization can be an incredibly complex process.

Since you are working with an existing system, you don't have the option of designing in I18N support from the very beginning.

Get a good book.

I recommend "XML Internationalization and Localization" by Yves Savourel, and "Beyond Borders web globalization strategies" by John Yunker. Both the authors have been in the I18N business a long time. They know what they are talking about.

Choose your tools wisely.

Use MySQL 4.1 (or newer) --

Since MySQL 4.1, you have the option of choosing which character set to use on a per DB, per table, or per field basis. The simplest solution is to just make the entire DB use the UTF-8 character set (This may not be appropriate for reasons of optimization or other reasons).

Learn about Unicode/UTF-8. (Others have provided links)

Store your localized data in UTF-8. Using a single character set makes life much easier.

Use a fairly recent version of PHP --

PHP 4.1.1 (or newer) comes bundled with GNU Gettext.

GNU gettext

http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/ You probably don't need to download it, since it should be included with your version of PHP. Just enable it in the php.ini, or compile it in from source.

GNU Gettext has been around for a number of years. It's fairly efficient, well maintained and has a larger user base. It basically makes use of mapping a reference ID and a language-locale to a string of text. It replaces the ID with the appropriate text in your template to create a finished document. Text for different language-locales are stored in separate files called PO files.

You will also want a PO file editor.

Here are a couple of articles on GNU Gettext

http://www.phpdig.net/ref/rn26.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2002/06/13/php.htm l
http://www.uberdose.com/php/php-and-gettext-for-i1 8n/

If you are going to be using professional translators, you may want to consider XLIFF as a document exchange format. There are XLIFF to PO converters available.

You may be considering XML (XHTML, XSLT and XLIFF) for Internationalization. The PHP solution, using Sablatron, is not yet fully-baked. I would avoid it for a production system. It shows promise for the future. Plus, XLIFF is not recommended as a storage format. You'll probably find some performance issues if you try to use it as a direct data store.

Use templates, if at all possible.

You may not be able to use the same template for all language-locales, but they should work for most cases. If you have a BDI language, for example Arabic or Hebrew, would likely need a separate template.

Localize your CSS stylesheets.

You may have locale specific layout and formatting information in your stylesheets.

From a design point of view, consider using a combination of a Front Controller pattern to switch languages and a Page Controller pattern to apply the templates.

Where are you storing the article data? Is it in the MySQL DB, or is it in static files that are referenced by the DB? Focus most of your efforts on the part that is most critical, MySQL if most of the data is in the DB, or PHP if most of the data is static. But remember, you are going to have to internationalize both parts of your system.

Don't forget, text from many other languages takes up more space than english to say the same thing. Sometimes 30-50% more space. This can significantly impact layout in heading sections, column widths, a

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Curt Hibbs has a very good step-by-step introduction to creating your first Ruby on Rails web app at onlamp.com:

Part I:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rail s.html/

Part II:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/03/03/rail s.html/

Curt Hibbs has a very good step-by-step introduction to creating your first Ruby on Rails web app at onlamp.com:

Part I:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rail s.html/

Part II:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/03/03/rail s.html/

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rail s.html http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/03/03/rail s.html http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/05/19/xmlh ttprequest.html Try them. they will only take you a couple of hours. Then see who is red in the face. I agree with the other sibling post, this is beyond the most fun i've ever had programming. It allows a programmer to apply engineering principles easily from design into the application.

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rail s.html http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/03/03/rail s.html http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/05/19/xmlh ttprequest.html Try them. they will only take you a couple of hours. Then see who is red in the face. I agree with the other sibling post, this is beyond the most fun i've ever had programming. It allows a programmer to apply engineering principles easily from design into the application.

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rail s.html http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/03/03/rail s.html http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/05/19/xmlh ttprequest.html Try them. they will only take you a couple of hours. Then see who is red in the face. I agree with the other sibling post, this is beyond the most fun i've ever had programming. It allows a programmer to apply engineering principles easily from design into the application.

If you read the actual blog, it doesn't really contain any information or opinion or whatever. One of the comments on the blog provides more useful information - for older and more informative papers go here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/security/2004/08/0 3/symbiot.html and http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/security/2004/03/10/sy mbiot.html

I just use one-time passwords. Go ahead and sniff my password, it won't do you any good. The password, of course, gets me ssh access into my system out on the net somewhere, so I can go from there and everything will be encrypted. Sniff away, chumps.

One example article about it: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/02/06/FreeBSD _Basics.html

That particular article refers to using this method of security in FreeBSD, but there are more articles out there, just Google for "one-time passwords" or similar.

Btw, it seems that *somebody* is sharing my preference, since FreeBSD is used on web servers much more than any Linux distro (2.5 million active sites, against 1.6 million of Red Hat). And from Netcraft numbers (June 2004), FreeBSD had a 25% increase in the last year.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/06/07/nearl y_25_million_active_sites_running_freebsd.html
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/03/14/fedor a_makes_rapid_progress.html

I know, facts like this one are little known on Slashdot - for a reason, I'm afraid. The same reason why lousy "reviews" like this one get produced by NewsForge and posted on Slashdot (they belong to the same company), and the same reason why in the /. BSD section, in the latest 20+ news items, only 2 (two) are about FreeBSD (the 5.4 release, and this piece of crap), notwithstanding its huge user base.
That alone says that FreeBSD is a strong Linux contender: if it weren't, there would be no point in obscuring it.

Btw this is an observation, it's not a complaint. FreeBSD has already shown that it can thrive even without the hype.

--
Requiem for the FUD

Btw, it seems that *somebody* is sharing my preference, since FreeBSD is used on web servers much more than any Linux distro (2.5 million active sites, against 1.6 million of Red Hat). And from Netcraft numbers (June 2004), FreeBSD had a 25% increase in the last year.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/06/07/nearl y_25_million_active_sites_running_freebsd.html
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/03/14/fedor a_makes_rapid_progress.html

I know, facts like this one are little known on Slashdot - for a reason, I'm afraid. The same reason why lousy "reviews" like this one get produced by NewsForge and posted on Slashdot (they belong to the same company), and the same reason why in the /. BSD section, in the latest 20+ news items, only 2 (two) are about FreeBSD (the 5.4 release, and this piece of crap), notwithstanding its huge user base.
That alone says that FreeBSD is a strong Linux contender: if it weren't, there would be no point in obscuring it.

Btw this is an observation, it's not a complaint. FreeBSD has already shown that it can thrive even without the hype.

--
Requiem for the FUD

Btw, it seems that *somebody* is sharing my preference, since FreeBSD is used on web servers much more than any Linux distro (2.5 million active sites, against 1.6 million of Red Hat). And from Netcraft numbers (June 2004), FreeBSD had a 25% increase in the last year.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/06/07/nearl y_25_million_active_sites_running_freebsd.html
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/03/14/fedor a_makes_rapid_progress.html

I know, facts like this one are little known on Slashdot - for a reason, I'm afraid. The same reason why lousy "reviews" like this one get produced by NewsForge and posted on Slashdot (they belong to the same company), and the same reason why in the /. BSD section, in the latest 20+ news items, only 2 (two) are about FreeBSD (the 5.4 release, and this piece of crap), notwithstanding its huge user base.
That alone says that FreeBSD is a strong Linux contender: if it weren't, there would be no point in obscuring it.

Btw this is an observation, it's not a complaint. FreeBSD has already shown that it can thrive even without the hype.

--
Requiem for the FUD

Our noble readers may wish to read Rolling with Ruby on Rails where it describes the .rb files generated by RoR. Make no mistake that RoR is a program generator: that some methods are dynamically compiled only tells us that it's slower than need be. The fact that a simple application can be created without explicitly writing code tells us that it's a program generator. Get over it!

RoR is not "a domain-specific language for writing web apps". If you think it is, then show me the BNF definition of the syntax of the language. RoR is a program generator, not a language.

RoR requires the Ruby language, requires a compatible database and requires a web server. Why you think those are not requirements is beyond me. Show me an example of RoR written in Perl, show me an RoR site that has no database, show me an RoR site that has no web server and I'll show you a site that doesn't exist.

RoR does not support round-trip development , no matter how many times you repost. The article Rolling with Ruby on Rails, Part 2 speaks to this weakness. If you override a method and regen the skeleton, your method is overwritten, wiped out.

FYI I've written code in Lisp for more than 30 years and programmed since I was 16. You were shitting in your pants when I was writing satellite navigation control systems and today you're still shitting in your pants [Again I recommend a reduction in coffee intake].

FWIW the parent post is typical of RoR and AJAX proponents - Like Scientologists, they're ready to bite the ass of anyone who says something negative about their "new" toy.

BTW if I find out that you're one of my sons, I'm gonna kick your ass on Father's Day! Hell, you're such an asshole, you probably are one of my sons - one I left behind after fucking some witch whore on a mountaintop in Timbuktu.

Our noble readers may wish to read Rolling with Ruby on Rails where it describes the .rb files generated by RoR. Make no mistake that RoR is a program generator: that some methods are dynamically compiled only tells us that it's slower than need be. The fact that a simple application can be created without explicitly writing code tells us that it's a program generator. Get over it!

RoR is not "a domain-specific language for writing web apps". If you think it is, then show me the BNF definition of the syntax of the language. RoR is a program generator, not a language.

RoR requires the Ruby language, requires a compatible database and requires a web server. Why you think those are not requirements is beyond me. Show me an example of RoR written in Perl, show me an RoR site that has no database, show me an RoR site that has no web server and I'll show you a site that doesn't exist.

RoR does not support round-trip development , no matter how many times you repost. The article Rolling with Ruby on Rails, Part 2 speaks to this weakness. If you override a method and regen the skeleton, your method is overwritten, wiped out.

FYI I've written code in Lisp for more than 30 years and programmed since I was 16. You were shitting in your pants when I was writing satellite navigation control systems and today you're still shitting in your pants [Again I recommend a reduction in coffee intake].

FWIW the parent post is typical of RoR and AJAX proponents - Like Scientologists, they're ready to bite the ass of anyone who says something negative about their "new" toy.

BTW if I find out that you're one of my sons, I'm gonna kick your ass on Father's Day! Hell, you're such an asshole, you probably are one of my sons - one I left behind after fucking some witch whore on a mountaintop in Timbuktu.

That's how the PostgreSQL build farm works. People with wierd hardware apply to be added to the automated test farm. ARM, MIPS, PARISC, Alpha, PowerPC, Sparc, etc. are all represented well in the postgresql automated tests.

Any other projects out there with similar transparency in their automated testing?

glibc is one of the main reasons why Linux application deployment sucks in major (read: heterogenous) installations.

This is what Marc Espie, an OpenBSD developer said about Ulrich on O'Reilly's OnLamp (commenting the proactive measures OpenBSD takes in C programming vs. Ulrich's "Linux programmers are geniuses" view):

"We have had a lot of success explaining the issues and getting a lot of people to switch from strcpy/strcat to strlcpy/strlcat.

Weirdly enough, the Linux people are about the only major group of people that has constantly stayed deaf to these arguments. The chief opponent to strlcpy in glibc is most certainly Ulrich Drepper, who argues that good programmers don't need strlcpy, since they don't make mistakes while copying strings. This is a very mystifying point of view, since bugtraq daily proves that a lot of Linux and free software programmers are not that bright, and need all the help they can get.

(Considering the shining, flaming personality of Drepper, and the fact that he is always Right, this is not that surprising, though)."

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

A lot of the information on the wireless work can be found in the Changelog. Basically, they got a lot of work done and are continuing to work on 802.11g chips and HostAP protocols for many wireless devices.

Also, as noted in a previous story, the Sharp Zaurus port allows you to (with a CF ethernet adapter) set up a handheld, on-the-go wireless AP.

A much better source of information can be found at this ONLamp Interview With OpenBSD Developers

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

I don't follow it closely enough to know.

It shows. As does your arrogance. I've been using OpenBSD for 6 years and Linux for 8 years. I have been following OpenBSD very closely.

X? I don't think so. gcc? No.

Such strong statements for someone who does not follow it closely enough.

Xfree forked.

x11 - Houses OpenBSD's adaptation of the XFree86-3 software project. xf4 - Houses OpenBSD's adaptation of the XFree86-4 software project.

gcc is worked on within OpenBSD's source tree and part of their work enabled an mvme88k port.

A few choice quotes from here.

FB: Another license war has started and it seems worse than before. Does OpenBSD really want to fork XFree starting from the last 4.4.0-RC2?
ME: Yes.

And I'm one of the guys who works on gcc and binutils on a continuing basis.

Anil took it one step further and introduced an extension attribute to gcc: bounded, that can tie two function parameters, so that you can say, "Here is the buffer and the corresponding size, try to check that it fits."

With a few small changes to gcc, and with declaring that read is such a function, gcc is now able to detect erroneous code, such as:

ME: ProPolice is a gcc extension developed by Hiroaki Etoh, from IBM, based on older concepts such as StackGuard. ProPolice makes several advances compared to StackGuard:

Hiroaki is also an OpenBSD developer, by the way.

Integrating ProPolice in OpenBSD has been hard work. ProPolice has found tons of bugs in various programs that shipped with the system. It's also been the first real-scale test of ProPolice itself. With a lot of hard work from Hiroaki Etoh and Miod Vallat (and Peter Valchev and Christian Weisgerber...). ProPolice itself modifies gcc a wee little bit. But, like most programs of its size, gcc itself is buggy, partly due to its gigantic design that is not quite sane in places. In a typical release of gcc, you don't see the bugs, because the corresponding code paths are never taken. Add ProPolice, and suddenly you're sending gcc through some dark venues that have seen less attention, and all of a sudden you are fixing actual, genuine bugs in gcc.

Not it is not maintained, it is called packaged. That they might have a few patches of their own isn't at all unusual - even if they are leet security fixes.

They have made major changes to Apache and as evidenced here and here, they forked it and are taking care of their own branch. Much as they have done for years before the Apache license change. Bundling some software up into a package might be what some Linux distros do, but not OpenBSD with Apache.

"Bolt Apache on" isn't very descriptive. That could be applied to the OpenBSD process too.

There is no way it can be applied to OpenBSD. They have made major changes over the years to the Apache they provide.

Sorry, no. OpenBSD does not maintain X, they do not maintain Apache. That is an insulting and slighting to the developers who do maintain those packages.

I was not saying OpenBSD developers maintain THE xfree and Apache code bases. It should have been obvious from my English that I was referring to the xfree and Apache which they release as part of their base OS. Thier changes do make it back to parent projects though from time to time.

Linux distros

I don't follow it closely enough to know.

It shows. As does your arrogance. I've been using OpenBSD for 6 years and Linux for 8 years. I have been following OpenBSD very closely.

X? I don't think so. gcc? No.

Such strong statements for someone who does not follow it closely enough.

Xfree forked.

x11 - Houses OpenBSD's adaptation of the XFree86-3 software project. xf4 - Houses OpenBSD's adaptation of the XFree86-4 software project.

gcc is worked on within OpenBSD's source tree and part of their work enabled an mvme88k port.

A few choice quotes from here.

FB: Another license war has started and it seems worse than before. Does OpenBSD really want to fork XFree starting from the last 4.4.0-RC2?
ME: Yes.

And I'm one of the guys who works on gcc and binutils on a continuing basis.

Anil took it one step further and introduced an extension attribute to gcc: bounded, that can tie two function parameters, so that you can say, "Here is the buffer and the corresponding size, try to check that it fits."

With a few small changes to gcc, and with declaring that read is such a function, gcc is now able to detect erroneous code, such as:

ME: ProPolice is a gcc extension developed by Hiroaki Etoh, from IBM, based on older concepts such as StackGuard. ProPolice makes several advances compared to StackGuard:

Hiroaki is also an OpenBSD developer, by the way.

Integrating ProPolice in OpenBSD has been hard work. ProPolice has found tons of bugs in various programs that shipped with the system. It's also been the first real-scale test of ProPolice itself. With a lot of hard work from Hiroaki Etoh and Miod Vallat (and Peter Valchev and Christian Weisgerber...). ProPolice itself modifies gcc a wee little bit. But, like most programs of its size, gcc itself is buggy, partly due to its gigantic design that is not quite sane in places. In a typical release of gcc, you don't see the bugs, because the corresponding code paths are never taken. Add ProPolice, and suddenly you're sending gcc through some dark venues that have seen less attention, and all of a sudden you are fixing actual, genuine bugs in gcc.

Not it is not maintained, it is called packaged. That they might have a few patches of their own isn't at all unusual - even if they are leet security fixes.

They have made major changes to Apache and as evidenced here and here, they forked it and are taking care of their own branch. Much as they have done for years before the Apache license change. Bundling some software up into a package might be what some Linux distros do, but not OpenBSD with Apache.

"Bolt Apache on" isn't very descriptive. That could be applied to the OpenBSD process too.

There is no way it can be applied to OpenBSD. They have made major changes over the years to the Apache they provide.

Sorry, no. OpenBSD does not maintain X, they do not maintain Apache. That is an insulting and slighting to the developers who do maintain those packages.

I was not saying OpenBSD developers maintain THE xfree and Apache code bases. It should have been obvious from my English that I was referring to the xfree and Apache which they release as part of their base OS. Thier changes do make it back to parent projects though from time to time.

Linux distros

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.