RMS hasn't come right out and said he wants a ban on other licenses. Indeed, Eric Raymond publicly asked him whether he would support a law banning all licenses but the GPL, and he has not to my knowledge replied.
But he made it clear that nothing but the GPL is acceptable, in an essay he co-wrote:
Tim O'Reilly says the most fundamental software freedom is: "The freedom to choose any license you want for software you write." Unstated, but clearly implied, is that one person or corporation chooses the rules to impose on everyone else. In the world that O'Reilly proposes, a few make the basic software decisions for everyone. That is power, not freedom. He should call it "powerplay zero" in contrast with our "freedom zero".
He says, explicitly, that the freedom of a developer to choose a license is not freedom; it is power over the users.
If code is law, as Professor Lessig has stated, then the real question we face is: Who should control the code you use -- you, or an elite few? We believe you are entitled to control the software you use, and giving you that control is the goal of free software.
In other words, authors of code should not have control over what license to use. He stops short of saying he wants a law, but I can't see why he wouldn't.
[Using the GPL] is the ethical choice, in a situation where laws give us and others such power.
If it is the ethical choice, why not make it the only choice? I support laws making stealing illegal, because I feel stealing is unethical. If RMS feels any license but the GPL is unethical...
I give RMS credit: he is very honest and consistent. Given that he has laid down his views on what should happen, on what is ethical, it follows that he would support laws requiring it. I'd be pleased if he would prove me wrong by explicitly saying he would not support such laws.
He is free to use the "bully pulpit" all he likes; he can write essay after essay on why free software is better, and I'm all for that. And he does write good essays. But I'm opposed to laws actually requiring the use of GPL.
I've always liked the hood-welded-shut analogy too. Do you support leaving people destitute or imprisoned for daring to unweld their own hoods, or having a friend or mechanic do it for them?
I support people abiding by the contracts they sign. If you want the ability to tinker under the hood, don't buy a car from Welded-Shut Motors. I certainly won't.
Note that I also do not support a law requiring all cars to be welded-shut cars. Nor do I support a law requiring all cars to not be welded-shut cars. I support maximum freedom: freedom to make products you want to make, however stupid they may be, and freedom to buy what you want to buy, however stupid it may be (to me, anyway).
Tell me, do you support a law making it illegal to sell any computer that isn't built from readily-available spare parts? (Before you answer, consider how many custom parts there are in an iMac, let alone a sub-notebook.)
RMS has not called for a law banning any form of proprietary software (that I can tell)
He has done the closest thing I can think of: he has stated that developers should be required to release all their software under GPL only.
Eric Raymond publicly challenged RMS: would you be in favor of, or against, a law requiring all software to be released under GPL? RMS did not reply. I think it is clear that if RMS did reply, he would say he is in favor of it.
This is why I use free software: because proprietary software is a car with the hood welded shut.
This is also why I like to use free software. But I support the right of people to buy hood-welded-shut cars if they want to! If people want to buy proprietary software instead of using GPL software, that's fine. If people want to buy an iMac instead of a beige box assembled from standard parts, that's fine.
Note that GPL software is competing very well against the proprietary software. In the near future, people will no longer be willing to pay for a word processor, any more than they are willing to pay for a web browser now.
O'Reilley supports the rule of copyright law over software. This is not libertarianism.
Actually, Mr. O'Reilley's position is very compatible with libertarianism.
The libertarian view is that people are free to make whatever contracts they choose; Mr. O'Reilley is in favor of software developers using whatever license they choose.
RMS argues against copyright law covering software, this is a much more libertarian viewpoint than O'Reilly's.
First of all, you are wrong: RMS likes copyright law covering software. He hates the BSD license, or public domain software, or any other license that does not prevent someone from taking source code private again. He has decided that the GPL is the only acceptable license, and GPL depends in turn upon copyright. If there were no copyright, then effectively all software would be public domain, and nothing would stop anyone from making a few tweaks and releasing a product while keeping the source code a secret.
Also, RMS has stated publicly that he is not in favor of letting a software developer choose which license to use; use of the GPL should be mandated. This is far from a libertarian position!
RMS isn't opposed to developers being paid, but he wants to take away their ability to maximize their earnings with an appropriate choice of licenses. He once seriously suggested that government should collect a tax, and use the tax revenue to pay developers, to compensate developers for being forced to write only GPL code. This tax idea is a very socialist idea.
* Tim O'Reilly values the rights of the developer over the rights of the user.
* RMS values the rights of the user over the rights of the developer.
Almost correct. Mr. O'Reilly doesn't want to take away any rights from the developer. RMS has framed the terms of the debate as developer vs. user, but it really isn't that simple. More rights for the developer do not mean less rights for the user. The developer and the user aren't enemies!
Users have a large body of software to choose from. Some is free software, some is open-source, some is shared source, some is proprietary. People should be free to choose whatever software they like. Note that GPL software is doing very well, competing against proprietary software. We don't need centralized government control of software, and I for one don't want it.
I, as a developer, feel that RMS's viewpoint is the healthier one in the long run.
I, as a developer and as a libertarian, feel that RMS's desire for control over developers is not healthy. It's one thing to promote free software. I am all in favor of Linux continuing under the same license it has now, for example, and I would rather use Linux than a non-free OS. But I am not willing to use government to force all software to be released under the GPL.
RMS has said that the developer's ability to choose any license he or she wishes is actually an exercise of power over the users. This is a bizarre concept of power, and it is not a libertarian idea.
I really love TuxRacer. I'm sure there are other racing games out there that are equally fun, but that takes nothing away from TuxRacer.
TuxRacer is easily played with just a keyboard; it runs smoothly and looks pretty; some of the courses are really well-designed; in short, it is nice in many ways. The only shortcoming, to me, is that there aren't enough courses, there is only 1 song, and only 1 player model... and the 1.0 release will provide more courses, music, and models.
There are times when I am in the mood for a short, fun game, a sort of snack of a game, and TuxRacer hits the spot. Unless they have changed the fundamental nature of TuxRacer somehow, I'll be paying for 1.0.
I'd say a significant number of Progeny's features never made it into the debian mainstream.
Read the article again. Steve Schafer said:
Many of our Debian improvements have been submitted to the Debian Project and will appear in upcoming releases. Others are being revised to be Debian generic and will be submitted ASAP.
I think someone told me that there was one episode of MST3K where the movie was so bad the Bots broke down; they were reduced to sobbing, unable to continue hurling sarcastic abuse, because the movie was just too bad... and Joel shouted at the mad scientists "Look what you've done!" and the mads looked ashamed. Was that this movie, some other one, or am I just confused?
Go to www.google.com, and type in the keywords "farces fun with spam". The top hit is the page with the details about this. Click on "cached" to see what google.com has in the cache, and you can read the whole thing.
But I pasted a copy of the text in here. Well, most of it; the slashdot lameness filter won't let me paste in the whole thing.
Warning: the spammer likes to use bad words.
BEGIN QUOTED TEXT
Every day I get roughly as much spam, which I define as any unsolicited bulk email, as legitimate email. It's a problem that doesn't have an easy solution. The proposed legislation generally misses the mark of eliminating either the unsolicited bit or the bulk bit. While the first amendment protects your speech, it doesn't include a requirement that I subsidize it--financially or with my attention.
With that in mind, I think I may have hit on a formula that probably won't eliminate spam, but it sure makes the parasites think twice about doing it again. And it always seems to push the indignant outrage button that all of these vermin seem to have in common. So far, the formula has worked like a choreographed dance in each instance. Here's how it goes (please play along at home):
Each day I select 2 or 3 of the more outrageous spam messages that serve no useful purpose whatever. They're almost always some sort of commercial scam. I do a traceroute and a whois with NeoTracePro (it's got neat maps) to determine who they really are, where the message really originated, and who their local and upstream bandwidth providers are. Then I send the following reply to the original message--complete will all header information from the original spam--with copies to the abuse, postmaster, and hostmaster addresses at the bottom-feeder's local and upstream provider:
Remove this and all addresses within the farces.com domain from your distribution lists immediately. We have no existing business relationship, nor do I wish to establish one. I don't do business with spammers. Not now. Not ever. You are using my resources for your gain without my permission or compensation. Any further contact from your domain to any address within this domain will indicate tacit agreement to your use of our resources at our published billing rate of US$125 per hour with a 10 hour minimum.
Clear enough?
Invariably I get a quick response, singularly uninspired in its lack of originality:
From: Jim Hobuss
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001
To: mfraase@farces.com
Subject: RE: Save Money On Your Home Loan Today!
Not really.
Could you explain it again?
Yeah, right!
Except this idiot, dumber than most, actually sent a second retort, this time issuing a challenge:
From: Jim Hobuss
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 7:43 PM
To: mfraase@farces.com
Subject: RE: Save Money On Your Home Loan Today!
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. That email you
received was an opt-out email... Certainly legal.
If you want to be removed from our mailing list,
I suggest you follow the instructions on the email.
Go ahead and send me a bill... And try to collect.
Clear enough?
Astute readers will recognize that I never claimed what scum like Hobuss was doing was illegal, only that I rejected his offer and counter-proposed one of my own. Of course, by responding, he's now agreed to my terms and is billed accordingly (with copies again going to his local and upstream providers):
You received the following message on 1 Sep 2001 in reply to your spam and yet you continue to spam this domain. Accordingly you have accepted our terms of contract and are being invoiced under Minnesota state statutes and the Universal Commercial Code. Payment in full is due immediately. If you fail to pay in full immediately the invoice will be rendered for collection, appropriate credit reports will be prepared, and we will vigorously pursue judgment in the appropriate venue(s).
For the record, our original offer is included below.
Remove this and all addresses within the farces.com domain from your distribution lists immediately. We have no existing business relationship, nor do I wish to establish one. I don't do business with spammers. Not now. Not ever. You are using my resources for your gain without my permission or compensation. Any further contact from your domain to any address within this domain will indicate tacit agreement to your use of our resources at our published billing rate of US$125 per hour with a 10 hour minimum.
Clear enough?
Invoice
[Professional-looking invoice for US$1250 removed thanks to slashdot's lameness filter. I particularly enjoyed the part on the invoice where it says "Thank you for your business."]
In this case, Hobuss actually got two of these, differing only in invoice number. As you can imagine, this game of Invoice Ping Pong can go on for days, but it rarely does. It almost always immediately devolves into barely intelligible abuse:
From: Jim Hobuss
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 8:18 PM
To: mfraase@farces.com
Subject: RE: Save Money On Your Home Loan Today!
Go ahead and try collect asshole.
And if you even try to file one Judgement against me, I'll
sue you and your LLC. There is no fucking tacit agreement
here. Kiss my ass and fuck off. I've taken your name off our list.
Clear enough?
Oooh, I imagine the spittle at the corners of his mouth are not very attractive. But he's made the mistake of crossing over into clear abuse and maybe even threats, a second and more serious violation of his provider's Acceptable Use Policy. At this point, all I have to do is reply to the message (again with copies to his--they've always been male so far--local and upstream providers) with yet another invoice and the following tasty bit addressed specifically to his providers:
NOTICE TO ISP AND UPSTREAM PROVIDER(S): As you can see this has escalated to abuse on the part of your client. Kindly take whatever action you find necessary with regard to your AUP and notify me directly of anything necessary on my part to expedite the process. Suffice it to say that I expect immediate action with regard to this matter.
Most importantly, he's removed me from his spam list. And I'll bet good money he's at least thinking about the next spam missive he sends. From his next provider, of course.
Now, I probably can't collect on all 3 invoices, but I can certainly make the parasite's life miserable with just one. A quick trip to the county courthouse (until they get their system web-enabled) generates a court date that subsequently renders a judgment that I can easily file with the appropriate agencies. Like fish in a barrel. I've never done it because I haven't had to; my intent is to stop the spamming of my domain, and it's working. A few of these bottom-feeders have, however, paid the invoices. I deposit the checks with a grin.
END QUOTED TEXT
Notes on my editing: To avoid the slashdot lameness filter, I used HTML "blockquote" for the quoted email messages; the original text used '>' characters. Also, some of the punctuation came through as question marks; I tried to replace it with correct ASCII punctuation. (The punctuation was apostrophes and long hyphens.) I did my best not to introduce any errors, but no promises!
We can all agree that nVidia has the best drivers in the industry. ATI is #2.
Sometimes when you are #2 you try harder. ATI, being behind on drivers, has been much more open about their cards' architectures, and so Xfree86 has fully open 3D drivers for Radeon but not for nVidia.
Even under Linux, the nVidia drivers perform better than the ATI drivers. But there is a chance that the open source community will improve the ATI drivers. It may take a long time -- Mozilla took years before it became really good -- but at least under Xfree86, ATI may catch up or even pull ahead.
If I were ATI, I would be paying money to one or more Xfree86 developers. Not only would that mean one developer would be working to improve the drivers, but that developer would also be collecting patches and integrating them. Long-term it could pay off very well. (The free software community will improve the ATI drivers no matter what, but it would go faster if they paid one or more people to work on the drivers full-time.)
In fact, if I were ATI I think I would release the Windows drivers as open source! It's not as if they need to worry about nVidia stealing their code.
P.S. If you feel strongly about free software, then a Radeon is the card for you. With a decent computer you get enough performance to play games. (Tux Racer runs great.) Maybe ATI should get Richard Stallman to endorse their 3D cards?:-)
There are several calculators you can get. I have had RPN, one of the best ones, for years. The latest version of RPN has graphing features!
One person noted screen real-estate limitations. RPN works around these by having two key areas: the bottom area has the most commonly-used keys, and always looks the same; the top area has remappable keys. There is a pick-list you use to choose which function set the top keys will be right now. Doing metric conversions? Choose the conversions keyset. Doing stats? Choose the statistical functions keyset. Have some weird project? Define your own keyset.
There are situations where a good HP calculator is exactly what you want... but I always have my Visor Deluxe with me anyway, so I pretty much always use it when I want a calculator.
Intel's theory was that the trace cache would eliminate the need to decode an instruction every clock cycle.
But they made the trace cache way too small, which made this even less likely to work.
I agree with you: the P4 is broken in many ways.
If they really can push its clock rate much faster than AMD can, the P4 might start to win just on sheer clock speed; but so far AMD has been keeping up. Since AMD's chips do more per clock, they don't need as high a clock rate.
My freshman year at college, I was worried about an exam, and stayed up very late studying my computer science textbooks. Around 3 or 4 in the morning, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone creeping up on my left, holding a big knife. I snapped my head around to see better and of course there was nothing there.
I immediately packed up my books and went to bed. Time for some sleep!
might it be useful to add some new branch instructions[?]
I received an email telling me that the IA64 already has this: you can specify a static branch that is likely to be taken, a static branch that is unlikely to be taken, and dynamic branches in both likely/unlikely flavors.
Also, even on x86, there are some tricks worth doing. The Linux kernel hackers have started using likely() and unlikely() macros around some branches in the kernel source. GCC can arrange the generated code somewhat differently and it will do some good.
Reading the discussion of improvements to the branch prediction, I had an idea: might it be useful to add some new branch instructions, which serve as hints to the branch prediction hardware?
Suppose you have a branch on checking the error code returned by a function. That is what the article called a "static" branch: it almost always branches one way, assuming the function rarely fails. The Hammer will try to detect static branches, but might it be useful to let the compiler use different instructions, the static branch instructions, to tell the branch prediction hardware to assume a certain branch is static?
I guess I don't have a good handle on how difficult it is for the branch prediction hardware to sort out static branches vs. the other kind. Would the new instructions help enough to be worth the costs of extra instructions?
The solution: don't subject yourself to bumper-sticker philosophy.
You are so right. Next time, instead of typing in a short summary, I'll just spend a few days writing an encyclopedic history of libertarian thought, exploring every plank in the LP's party platform, and analyzing the DMCA line-by-line with libertarian commentary. I'm sure at least one or two people will be willing to take a few hours to read through everything.
The world is a bit more complex than that.
What part of "my attempt to briefly describe" don't you understand?
Short answer: no, libertarians are not Marxists. If you decide to work for a company in exchange for a salary, a libertarian has no problem with that. If you own a factory, a libertarian doesn't want to take it away from you. Free markets are what libertarians want, not an overthrow of the people who own factories.
steveha
Re:The Get-Rich-Quick Scheme Taco Should Have Used
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 2
$10 and you can take that pro MSFT comment from +5 all the way down to -2!
I have always wanted to see a jukebox where you could pay a dime to shut off the currently-playing song.
Which reminds me of a story... at a pizza place they had a jukebox, and they gave the staff there some quarters to put in the jukebox and play music. (The quarters were painted, so they could be recognized and returned to the staff for re-use instead of being counted as revenue.) The staff was supposed to use these to play a few songs so people would notice the jukebox was there, and play more songs. Well, one day they took all the quarters they had, and put them all in at once, and selected the song "Whip It" (by Devo) over and over and over. Dozens of times in a row. "Whip It" for something like two hours. I'm glad I wasn't eating there at the time.
steveha
Fine-grained auto-moderation: a good thing
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 2
This is a bad option, even if we all agree as to what you can laugh at.
Dude, he is saying he wants a -2 penalty, not that Slashdot will assign a -2 penalty for everyone. He is talking about an option you can turn on and off. He will turn it on. You will leave it off (the default, I'm sure, will be off). This would be one of many such little preferences.
Fine-grained control over how articles are ranked would be a good thing. For example, suppose you hate the "overrated" moderation; there could be an option to change "overrated" from a -1 to a zero (no change). Or suppose you read Slashdot only for the humor; you could set the "funny" moderation to +2 instead of its usual +1. CmdrTaco will set it to -2 instead of +1. It's a good thing.
We can do even better than tweaking scores from moderators: we can tweak scores based on the articles themselves. Wouldn't you love a filter that can adjust score based on the user name? Anything posted by John Carmack gets an automatic +3, and anything posted by steveha gets an automatic -2. You ought to be able to read a really cool article, and click on a button to assign a bonus or penalty based on the user name who wrote it. And of course you should be able to use a regular expression in the user name; I remember a while back when some idiot kept creating new accounts and posting under them: "PenisBirdGreen", "PenisBirdBlue", "PenisBirdBlack", etc. etc. I would have been grateful for the ability to auto-moderate any post from a user whose name includes "PenisBird", or for that matter any post whose signature included the string "PenisBird".
My only fear is that all these fancy features, running on the server, will drive up the server load even worse for Slashdot. Maybe you should only get these features if you are a paid subscriber.
As far as I can tell, "Libertarians" seem to be against government interference in any area. Of course, all of these groups tend to favor any government decision that furthers their more immediate goals, or hinders the immediate goals of the other parties. For the Libertarians, this results in an oddly self-referencing approach where one acceptable role of government is to prevent government interference.
I am a minarchist libertarian, and here is my attempt to briefly describe libertarianism.
First of all, the difference between "libertarian" and "Libertarian" is that the second one specifically means a member of the Libertarian Party, while the first one just means anyone who believes in libertarian ideas. Thus Thomas Jefferson could be called a libertarian, but he was not a Libertarian.
The defining principle that all libertarians must believe in (or else they are not really libertarians) is that people own themselves, and the product of their own labor. All else follows from that.
Because people own themselves, it is wrong for government to outlaw behavior that doesn't hurt anyone but the person doing it. Thus it is wrong for government to outlaw smoking, or outlaw eating fatty foods, or outlaw prostitution. (Government may have a legitimate role regulating prostitution, for example to require medical screening of prostitutes for public health reasons, but there is no moral basis for government to outlaw it.)
Because people own themselves, government should not prevent them from freely entering into contracts. Government can legitimately have a role in enforcing contracts. (The major areas where government is useful: national defense, enforcing the laws against violence and theft, and enforcing contracts.) Because of this, if Microsoft wants to require product activation, government shouldn't tell them they can't do that. It's up to people to vote with their dollars. (Note that it was not government that finally dethroned IBM from its monopoly position, it was the free market.)
So, no libertarian can be in favor of a law like the DMCA. The record companies could have annoying license agreements, and libertarians would not be in favor of using government to force the companies to not have them, but the kind of free speech infringement that the DMCA is all about would be right out. And of course no libertarian would be in favor of outlawing encryption.
P.S. In case you are wondering, a "minarchist" libertarian is in favor of a minimal government; an anarchist is in favor of no government. There are many libertarians who believe that we don't need a government at all; the free market can solve all problems. Minarchists like me think we do need a small government to handle things like national defense.
steveha
Re:Emacs 21 is really a step ahead.
on
GNU Emacs 21
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· Score: 4, Informative
Hey, if you want to code up a feature and call it IntelliSense, I'm not going to stop you. I am not a lawyer. But you would be running the risk that real lawyers would want to talk to you, in court perhaps, and that gets expensive in both money and time.
It would be even worse to write features similar to the ones Microsoft used the IntelliSense name on, and call those features "intellisense". MS absolutely would send lawyers after you then. After all, they paid money to use that trademark; why should they sit idle when someone else uses it for free?
And while you may not agree with me, I think it is common courtesy to not infringe on trademarks owned by other people. Microsoft can't add new features to Windows XP and call them the "Linux features" because Linux is a trademark belonging to someone else (Linus). If we want others to respect the trademarks we care about, we should respect the trademarks of others.
Trademarks don't give you a right to ban words from conversation.. they don't give a right to the owning corporation to have a word redefined at will.
Is "intellisense" a word? If MS "redefined" it, where was it first defined?
As long as a certain meaning is understood to refer to a specific thing, then no qualification is needed.
Ever need to parse or rework a file with 1000 lines? No problem. Just write a 10 line elisp script that does it for you with regexp. This took you maybe 5 minutes and saved you hours of work! yay emacs!
I'm glad you like emacs so much. But I like vi just as much as you like emacs.
Using the powerful global search-and-replace functions in vi, you can do powerful things without writing any code to do it. Years ago, I helped a guy in one of the college computer labs; he had typed in a Pascal program just like it was in the textbook, i.e. with all the keywords written in ALL CAPS. The problem was that Berkeley Pascal was case-sensitive and didn't recognize ALL CAPS keywords. I told him he could either use the -S switch every time he compiled (-S for "standard" behavior, and standard Pascal is case-insensitive) or else I could fix it for him. He chose to have me fix it. I typed a one-line regexp that meant "find all words that are two letters long or longer, and are all upper-case letters, and force each one to lower case". In vi, this command looks like this:
:%s/[A-Z][A-Z][A-Z]*/\L&/g
Much easier to type than to explain! Want the explanation? Here goes...
':' enters command-line mode (as opposed to interactive text-editing mode) for one single command; '%' means run the command on every line in the file; 's' is the search-and-replace command; "[A-Z]" matches any single upper-case letter; '*' means "zero or more of whatever comes before the '*'", i.e. "[A-Z]*" means zero or more upper case letters; "\L" means "force everything after \L to lower case"; and '&' means "whatever text was matched in the search part of the search and replace command".
Anyway, I typed it in (didn't take long; I'm a fast typist and I didn't need to look anything up). I hit the Enter key, and on his screen, every ALL CAPS keyword simply went to lower-case. I really don't think he had any idea how I did that; he looked pretty surprised.
One of the cool things about vim is that you can recall, and edit, previous command-line commands you typed in; so if you have a typo in a complicated search-and-replace, you can simply undo it, fix the typo, and run it again. Nice.
I now use the version of vim that has integrated Python support, so I can write powerful functions in Python if I like. I prefer Python to LISP, so I'm happy. Plus vi has always had the ability to filter selected lines, or the whole file, through an external program; you can feed a messy source file through an indenting program or whatever. You could even feed a messy source file through a 10-line LISP program if you wanted to!
People should use vi, or emacs, or whatever else makes them productive. emacs doesn't have an exclusive lock on Zen-like elegance.
Re:Emacs 21 is really a step ahead.
on
GNU Emacs 21
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· Score: 4, Informative
support for tooltips (I am working on an intellisense package)
Great. Just don't call it "intellisense" because IntelliSense is a trademark that someone owns. MS had to pay money to Ademco (a burglar alarm company with "IntelliSense" brand sensors) to get permission to use the "IntelliSense" brand.
Not to mention that if you go to intellisense.com you will find a MEMS company there.
Don't pull a Killustrator! Call it something else.
My understanding is that Ximian is merely a 'distro' of GNOME.
More or less correct.
So, why would I use Ximian instead of GNOME?
Um, this is like asking why you would use Red Hat instead of Linux. Ximian is a distro of GNOME. When you use Ximian you are using GNOME.
To answer the question of why you would use Ximian, let's consider how you can get GNOME:
You can get GNOME from your Linux distribution, and then get updates only when your Linux distro provides an update.
You can get GNOME stuff as sources, and build on your own machine.
You can get the Ximian GNOME packages, and get updates from Ximian.
If there is a fourth option, I cannot think of it right now.
So, if your Linux distro provides you with updates as often as you wish, just stick with that. If you like building from source, go ahead and do that. If you want updates more often than your distro gives them to you, and you want someone else to build the packages for you, go with Ximian.
As for me, I use the "unstable" branch of Debian; and I get updates within a few days of any new release. Debian had Gnumeric 0.71 within two days of when it was released. So I have no interest in getting Ximian packages. But I think many people find it convenient to get updates from Ximian.
It's true that other parts of a portable can draw more power than the CPU: the display is a huge drain. But it's still useful to have a low-drain CPU.
I would love to have a Crusoe laptop that was as small and light as a NEC MobilePro: no moving parts, just a lot of RAM and some flash memory. Put Linux on it instead of Windows CE. Put in a Lithium ion battery. Give it a PC card slot so we can put in a 5 GB hard drive card if we want. It would rock. Sure the display would suck more power than the Crusoe, but why make the situation worse by going with some other CPU?
In his recent interview on osnews.com, Linus said he was in no hurry to include the kernel preemption patches in the official kernel source. He said:
Some people have been playing with using the [SMP] locks on UP too, creating a fully preemptible kernel. A lot of people are playing around with the patches, and we'll see when/if I'll integrate them into the standard tree. It's not a high priority for me: they don't add performance (like the SMP scalability does), and if they improve latency noticeably I'd really rather look at why the latency is bad in the first place.
So right now as far as I'm concerned it's one of those "cool features" things, and it will need some prodding from the real world to show whether it is worth it.
I was surprised he said this. This isn't a big scary kludge that inserts a bunch of hacks all over the place in the kernel; this is a relatively small patch that simply leverages all the SMP work. It won't make the kernel uglier or harder to maintain, so IMHO it is very worth adding.
I am confident that Linus will get that prodding from the real world he is waiting for, because my own experiences with this patch are overwhelmingly positive. I'm using kernel 2.4.10 with the preemption patch on my desktop Linux boxes, and I love the snappy feel it gives my system. Playing back MP3 music never skips now, and my K6-III/450 system pops up web pages in Galeon so fast it feels like an Athlon system.
Kudos to Robert Love and anyone else who worked on this patch.
Slashdot Mirror
RMS hasn't come right out and said he wants a ban on other licenses. Indeed, Eric Raymond publicly asked him whether he would support a law banning all licenses but the GPL, and he has not to my knowledge replied.
But he made it clear that nothing but the GPL is acceptable, in an essay he co-wrote:
He says, explicitly, that the freedom of a developer to choose a license is not freedom; it is power over the users.
In other words, authors of code should not have control over what license to use. He stops short of saying he wants a law, but I can't see why he wouldn't.
If it is the ethical choice, why not make it the only choice? I support laws making stealing illegal, because I feel stealing is unethical. If RMS feels any license but the GPL is unethical...
I give RMS credit: he is very honest and consistent. Given that he has laid down his views on what should happen, on what is ethical, it follows that he would support laws requiring it. I'd be pleased if he would prove me wrong by explicitly saying he would not support such laws.
He is free to use the "bully pulpit" all he likes; he can write essay after essay on why free software is better, and I'm all for that. And he does write good essays. But I'm opposed to laws actually requiring the use of GPL.
I've always liked the hood-welded-shut analogy too. Do you support leaving people destitute or imprisoned for daring to unweld their own hoods, or having a friend or mechanic do it for them?
I support people abiding by the contracts they sign. If you want the ability to tinker under the hood, don't buy a car from Welded-Shut Motors. I certainly won't.
Note that I also do not support a law requiring all cars to be welded-shut cars. Nor do I support a law requiring all cars to not be welded-shut cars. I support maximum freedom: freedom to make products you want to make, however stupid they may be, and freedom to buy what you want to buy, however stupid it may be (to me, anyway).
Tell me, do you support a law making it illegal to sell any computer that isn't built from readily-available spare parts? (Before you answer, consider how many custom parts there are in an iMac, let alone a sub-notebook.)
steveha
RMS has not called for a law banning any form of proprietary software (that I can tell)
He has done the closest thing I can think of: he has stated that developers should be required to release all their software under GPL only.
Eric Raymond publicly challenged RMS: would you be in favor of, or against, a law requiring all software to be released under GPL? RMS did not reply. I think it is clear that if RMS did reply, he would say he is in favor of it.
This is why I use free software: because proprietary software is a car with the hood welded shut.
This is also why I like to use free software. But I support the right of people to buy hood-welded-shut cars if they want to! If people want to buy proprietary software instead of using GPL software, that's fine. If people want to buy an iMac instead of a beige box assembled from standard parts, that's fine.
Note that GPL software is competing very well against the proprietary software. In the near future, people will no longer be willing to pay for a word processor, any more than they are willing to pay for a web browser now.
steveha
O'Reilley supports the rule of copyright law over software. This is not libertarianism.
Actually, Mr. O'Reilley's position is very compatible with libertarianism.
The libertarian view is that people are free to make whatever contracts they choose; Mr. O'Reilley is in favor of software developers using whatever license they choose.
RMS argues against copyright law covering software, this is a much more libertarian viewpoint than O'Reilly's.
First of all, you are wrong: RMS likes copyright law covering software. He hates the BSD license, or public domain software, or any other license that does not prevent someone from taking source code private again. He has decided that the GPL is the only acceptable license, and GPL depends in turn upon copyright. If there were no copyright, then effectively all software would be public domain, and nothing would stop anyone from making a few tweaks and releasing a product while keeping the source code a secret.
Also, RMS has stated publicly that he is not in favor of letting a software developer choose which license to use; use of the GPL should be mandated. This is far from a libertarian position!
RMS isn't opposed to developers being paid, but he wants to take away their ability to maximize their earnings with an appropriate choice of licenses. He once seriously suggested that government should collect a tax, and use the tax revenue to pay developers, to compensate developers for being forced to write only GPL code. This tax idea is a very socialist idea.
* Tim O'Reilly values the rights of the developer over the rights of the user.
* RMS values the rights of the user over the rights of the developer.
Almost correct. Mr. O'Reilly doesn't want to take away any rights from the developer. RMS has framed the terms of the debate as developer vs. user, but it really isn't that simple. More rights for the developer do not mean less rights for the user. The developer and the user aren't enemies!
Users have a large body of software to choose from. Some is free software, some is open-source, some is shared source, some is proprietary. People should be free to choose whatever software they like. Note that GPL software is doing very well, competing against proprietary software. We don't need centralized government control of software, and I for one don't want it.
I, as a developer, feel that RMS's viewpoint is the healthier one in the long run.
I, as a developer and as a libertarian, feel that RMS's desire for control over developers is not healthy. It's one thing to promote free software. I am all in favor of Linux continuing under the same license it has now, for example, and I would rather use Linux than a non-free OS. But I am not willing to use government to force all software to be released under the GPL.
RMS has said that the developer's ability to choose any license he or she wishes is actually an exercise of power over the users. This is a bizarre concept of power, and it is not a libertarian idea.
steveha
Yeah, it is just you.
I really love TuxRacer. I'm sure there are other racing games out there that are equally fun, but that takes nothing away from TuxRacer.
TuxRacer is easily played with just a keyboard; it runs smoothly and looks pretty; some of the courses are really well-designed; in short, it is nice in many ways. The only shortcoming, to me, is that there aren't enough courses, there is only 1 song, and only 1 player model... and the 1.0 release will provide more courses, music, and models.
There are times when I am in the mood for a short, fun game, a sort of snack of a game, and TuxRacer hits the spot. Unless they have changed the fundamental nature of TuxRacer somehow, I'll be paying for 1.0.
steveha
Read the article again. Steve Schafer said:
Patience, dude.
steveha
I think someone told me that there was one episode of MST3K where the movie was so bad the Bots broke down; they were reduced to sobbing, unable to continue hurling sarcastic abuse, because the movie was just too bad... and Joel shouted at the mad scientists "Look what you've done!" and the mads looked ashamed. Was that this movie, some other one, or am I just confused?
steveha
But I pasted a copy of the text in here. Well, most of it; the slashdot lameness filter won't let me paste in the whole thing.
Warning: the spammer likes to use bad words.
BEGIN QUOTED TEXT
Every day I get roughly as much spam, which I define as any unsolicited bulk email, as legitimate email. It's a problem that doesn't have an easy solution. The proposed legislation generally misses the mark of eliminating either the unsolicited bit or the bulk bit. While the first amendment protects your speech, it doesn't include a requirement that I subsidize it--financially or with my attention.
With that in mind, I think I may have hit on a formula that probably won't eliminate spam, but it sure makes the parasites think twice about doing it again. And it always seems to push the indignant outrage button that all of these vermin seem to have in common. So far, the formula has worked like a choreographed dance in each instance. Here's how it goes (please play along at home):
Each day I select 2 or 3 of the more outrageous spam messages that serve no useful purpose whatever. They're almost always some sort of commercial scam. I do a traceroute and a whois with NeoTracePro (it's got neat maps) to determine who they really are, where the message really originated, and who their local and upstream bandwidth providers are. Then I send the following reply to the original message--complete will all header information from the original spam--with copies to the abuse, postmaster, and hostmaster addresses at the bottom-feeder's local and upstream provider:
Remove this and all addresses within the farces.com domain from your distribution lists immediately. We have no existing business relationship, nor do I wish to establish one. I don't do business with spammers. Not now. Not ever. You are using my resources for your gain without my permission or compensation. Any further contact from your domain to any address within this domain will indicate tacit agreement to your use of our resources at our published billing rate of US$125 per hour with a 10 hour minimum.
Clear enough?
Invariably I get a quick response, singularly uninspired in its lack of originality:
Except this idiot, dumber than most, actually sent a second retort, this time issuing a challenge:
Astute readers will recognize that I never claimed what scum like Hobuss was doing was illegal, only that I rejected his offer and counter-proposed one of my own. Of course, by responding, he's now agreed to my terms and is billed accordingly (with copies again going to his local and upstream providers):
You received the following message on 1 Sep 2001 in reply to your spam and yet you continue to spam this domain. Accordingly you have accepted our terms of contract and are being invoiced under Minnesota state statutes and the Universal Commercial Code. Payment in full is due immediately. If you fail to pay in full immediately the invoice will be rendered for collection, appropriate credit reports will be prepared, and we will vigorously pursue judgment in the appropriate venue(s).
For the record, our original offer is included below.
Remove this and all addresses within the farces.com domain from your distribution lists immediately. We have no existing business relationship, nor do I wish to establish one. I don't do business with spammers. Not now. Not ever. You are using my resources for your gain without my permission or compensation. Any further contact from your domain to any address within this domain will indicate tacit agreement to your use of our resources at our published billing rate of US$125 per hour with a 10 hour minimum.
Clear enough?
Invoice
[Professional-looking invoice for US$1250 removed thanks to slashdot's lameness filter. I particularly enjoyed the part on the invoice where it says "Thank you for your business."]
In this case, Hobuss actually got two of these, differing only in invoice number. As you can imagine, this game of Invoice Ping Pong can go on for days, but it rarely does. It almost always immediately devolves into barely intelligible abuse:
Oooh, I imagine the spittle at the corners of his mouth are not very attractive. But he's made the mistake of crossing over into clear abuse and maybe even threats, a second and more serious violation of his provider's Acceptable Use Policy. At this point, all I have to do is reply to the message (again with copies to his--they've always been male so far--local and upstream providers) with yet another invoice and the following tasty bit addressed specifically to his providers:
NOTICE TO ISP AND UPSTREAM PROVIDER(S): As you can see this has escalated to abuse on the part of your client. Kindly take whatever action you find necessary with regard to your AUP and notify me directly of anything necessary on my part to expedite the process. Suffice it to say that I expect immediate action with regard to this matter.
Most importantly, he's removed me from his spam list. And I'll bet good money he's at least thinking about the next spam missive he sends. From his next provider, of course.
Now, I probably can't collect on all 3 invoices, but I can certainly make the parasite's life miserable with just one. A quick trip to the county courthouse (until they get their system web-enabled) generates a court date that subsequently renders a judgment that I can easily file with the appropriate agencies. Like fish in a barrel. I've never done it because I haven't had to; my intent is to stop the spamming of my domain, and it's working. A few of these bottom-feeders have, however, paid the invoices. I deposit the checks with a grin.
END QUOTED TEXT
Notes on my editing: To avoid the slashdot lameness filter, I used HTML "blockquote" for the quoted email messages; the original text used '>' characters. Also, some of the punctuation came through as question marks; I tried to replace it with correct ASCII punctuation. (The punctuation was apostrophes and long hyphens.) I did my best not to introduce any errors, but no promises!
steveha
We can all agree that nVidia has the best drivers in the industry. ATI is #2.
:-)
Sometimes when you are #2 you try harder. ATI, being behind on drivers, has been much more open about their cards' architectures, and so Xfree86 has fully open 3D drivers for Radeon but not for nVidia.
Even under Linux, the nVidia drivers perform better than the ATI drivers. But there is a chance that the open source community will improve the ATI drivers. It may take a long time -- Mozilla took years before it became really good -- but at least under Xfree86, ATI may catch up or even pull ahead.
If I were ATI, I would be paying money to one or more Xfree86 developers. Not only would that mean one developer would be working to improve the drivers, but that developer would also be collecting patches and integrating them. Long-term it could pay off very well. (The free software community will improve the ATI drivers no matter what, but it would go faster if they paid one or more people to work on the drivers full-time.)
In fact, if I were ATI I think I would release the Windows drivers as open source! It's not as if they need to worry about nVidia stealing their code.
P.S. If you feel strongly about free software, then a Radeon is the card for you. With a decent computer you get enough performance to play games. (Tux Racer runs great.) Maybe ATI should get Richard Stallman to endorse their 3D cards?
steveha
Yes, a Palm makes a good replacement.
There are several calculators you can get. I have had RPN, one of the best ones, for years. The latest version of RPN has graphing features!
One person noted screen real-estate limitations. RPN works around these by having two key areas: the bottom area has the most commonly-used keys, and always looks the same; the top area has remappable keys. There is a pick-list you use to choose which function set the top keys will be right now. Doing metric conversions? Choose the conversions keyset. Doing stats? Choose the statistical functions keyset. Have some weird project? Define your own keyset.
There are situations where a good HP calculator is exactly what you want... but I always have my Visor Deluxe with me anyway, so I pretty much always use it when I want a calculator.
steveha
Intel's theory was that the trace cache would eliminate the need to decode an instruction every clock cycle.
But they made the trace cache way too small, which made this even less likely to work.
I agree with you: the P4 is broken in many ways.
If they really can push its clock rate much faster than AMD can, the P4 might start to win just on sheer clock speed; but so far AMD has been keeping up. Since AMD's chips do more per clock, they don't need as high a clock rate.
steveha
My freshman year at college, I was worried about an exam, and stayed up very late studying my computer science textbooks. Around 3 or 4 in the morning, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone creeping up on my left, holding a big knife. I snapped my head around to see better and of course there was nothing there.
I immediately packed up my books and went to bed. Time for some sleep!
steveha
might it be useful to add some new branch instructions[?]
I received an email telling me that the IA64 already has this: you can specify a static branch that is likely to be taken, a static branch that is unlikely to be taken, and dynamic branches in both likely/unlikely flavors.
Also, even on x86, there are some tricks worth doing. The Linux kernel hackers have started using likely() and unlikely() macros around some branches in the kernel source. GCC can arrange the generated code somewhat differently and it will do some good.
steveha
Reading the discussion of improvements to the branch prediction, I had an idea: might it be useful to add some new branch instructions, which serve as hints to the branch prediction hardware?
Suppose you have a branch on checking the error code returned by a function. That is what the article called a "static" branch: it almost always branches one way, assuming the function rarely fails. The Hammer will try to detect static branches, but might it be useful to let the compiler use different instructions, the static branch instructions, to tell the branch prediction hardware to assume a certain branch is static?
I guess I don't have a good handle on how difficult it is for the branch prediction hardware to sort out static branches vs. the other kind. Would the new instructions help enough to be worth the costs of extra instructions?
steveha
The solution: don't subject yourself to bumper-sticker philosophy.
You are so right. Next time, instead of typing in a short summary, I'll just spend a few days writing an encyclopedic history of libertarian thought, exploring every plank in the LP's party platform, and analyzing the DMCA line-by-line with libertarian commentary. I'm sure at least one or two people will be willing to take a few hours to read through everything.
The world is a bit more complex than that.
What part of "my attempt to briefly describe" don't you understand?
steveha
Are Libertarians secretly Marxists in disguise?
Are you secretly a troll in disguise?
Short answer: no, libertarians are not Marxists. If you decide to work for a company in exchange for a salary, a libertarian has no problem with that. If you own a factory, a libertarian doesn't want to take it away from you. Free markets are what libertarians want, not an overthrow of the people who own factories.
steveha
$10 and you can take that pro MSFT comment from +5 all the way down to -2!
I have always wanted to see a jukebox where you could pay a dime to shut off the currently-playing song.
Which reminds me of a story... at a pizza place they had a jukebox, and they gave the staff there some quarters to put in the jukebox and play music. (The quarters were painted, so they could be recognized and returned to the staff for re-use instead of being counted as revenue.) The staff was supposed to use these to play a few songs so people would notice the jukebox was there, and play more songs. Well, one day they took all the quarters they had, and put them all in at once, and selected the song "Whip It" (by Devo) over and over and over. Dozens of times in a row. "Whip It" for something like two hours. I'm glad I wasn't eating there at the time.
steveha
This is a bad option, even if we all agree as to what you can laugh at.
Dude, he is saying he wants a -2 penalty, not that Slashdot will assign a -2 penalty for everyone. He is talking about an option you can turn on and off. He will turn it on. You will leave it off (the default, I'm sure, will be off). This would be one of many such little preferences.
Fine-grained control over how articles are ranked would be a good thing. For example, suppose you hate the "overrated" moderation; there could be an option to change "overrated" from a -1 to a zero (no change). Or suppose you read Slashdot only for the humor; you could set the "funny" moderation to +2 instead of its usual +1. CmdrTaco will set it to -2 instead of +1. It's a good thing.
We can do even better than tweaking scores from moderators: we can tweak scores based on the articles themselves. Wouldn't you love a filter that can adjust score based on the user name? Anything posted by John Carmack gets an automatic +3, and anything posted by steveha gets an automatic -2. You ought to be able to read a really cool article, and click on a button to assign a bonus or penalty based on the user name who wrote it. And of course you should be able to use a regular expression in the user name; I remember a while back when some idiot kept creating new accounts and posting under them: "PenisBirdGreen", "PenisBirdBlue", "PenisBirdBlack", etc. etc. I would have been grateful for the ability to auto-moderate any post from a user whose name includes "PenisBird", or for that matter any post whose signature included the string "PenisBird".
My only fear is that all these fancy features, running on the server, will drive up the server load even worse for Slashdot. Maybe you should only get these features if you are a paid subscriber.
steveha
As far as I can tell, "Libertarians" seem to be against government interference in any area. Of course, all of these groups tend to favor any government decision that furthers their more immediate goals, or hinders the immediate goals of the other parties. For the Libertarians, this results in an oddly self-referencing approach where one acceptable role of government is to prevent government interference.
I am a minarchist libertarian, and here is my attempt to briefly describe libertarianism.
First of all, the difference between "libertarian" and "Libertarian" is that the second one specifically means a member of the Libertarian Party, while the first one just means anyone who believes in libertarian ideas. Thus Thomas Jefferson could be called a libertarian, but he was not a Libertarian.
The defining principle that all libertarians must believe in (or else they are not really libertarians) is that people own themselves, and the product of their own labor. All else follows from that.
Because people own themselves, it is wrong for government to outlaw behavior that doesn't hurt anyone but the person doing it. Thus it is wrong for government to outlaw smoking, or outlaw eating fatty foods, or outlaw prostitution. (Government may have a legitimate role regulating prostitution, for example to require medical screening of prostitutes for public health reasons, but there is no moral basis for government to outlaw it.)
Because people own themselves, government should not prevent them from freely entering into contracts. Government can legitimately have a role in enforcing contracts. (The major areas where government is useful: national defense, enforcing the laws against violence and theft, and enforcing contracts.) Because of this, if Microsoft wants to require product activation, government shouldn't tell them they can't do that. It's up to people to vote with their dollars. (Note that it was not government that finally dethroned IBM from its monopoly position, it was the free market.)
So, no libertarian can be in favor of a law like the DMCA. The record companies could have annoying license agreements, and libertarians would not be in favor of using government to force the companies to not have them, but the kind of free speech infringement that the DMCA is all about would be right out. And of course no libertarian would be in favor of outlawing encryption.
P.S. In case you are wondering, a "minarchist" libertarian is in favor of a minimal government; an anarchist is in favor of no government. There are many libertarians who believe that we don't need a government at all; the free market can solve all problems. Minarchists like me think we do need a small government to handle things like national defense.
steveha
Hey, if you want to code up a feature and call it IntelliSense, I'm not going to stop you. I am not a lawyer. But you would be running the risk that real lawyers would want to talk to you, in court perhaps, and that gets expensive in both money and time.
It would be even worse to write features similar to the ones Microsoft used the IntelliSense name on, and call those features "intellisense". MS absolutely would send lawyers after you then. After all, they paid money to use that trademark; why should they sit idle when someone else uses it for free?
And while you may not agree with me, I think it is common courtesy to not infringe on trademarks owned by other people. Microsoft can't add new features to Windows XP and call them the "Linux features" because Linux is a trademark belonging to someone else (Linus). If we want others to respect the trademarks we care about, we should respect the trademarks of others.
Trademarks don't give you a right to ban words from conversation.. they don't give a right to the owning corporation to have a word redefined at will.
Is "intellisense" a word? If MS "redefined" it, where was it first defined?
As long as a certain meaning is understood to refer to a specific thing, then no qualification is needed.
Are you a lawyer? Is this legal advice?
steveha
Ever need to parse or rework a file with 1000 lines? No problem. Just write a 10 line elisp script that does it for you with regexp. This took you maybe 5 minutes and saved you hours of work! yay emacs!
I'm glad you like emacs so much. But I like vi just as much as you like emacs.
Using the powerful global search-and-replace functions in vi, you can do powerful things without writing any code to do it. Years ago, I helped a guy in one of the college computer labs; he had typed in a Pascal program just like it was in the textbook, i.e. with all the keywords written in ALL CAPS. The problem was that Berkeley Pascal was case-sensitive and didn't recognize ALL CAPS keywords. I told him he could either use the -S switch every time he compiled (-S for "standard" behavior, and standard Pascal is case-insensitive) or else I could fix it for him. He chose to have me fix it. I typed a one-line regexp that meant "find all words that are two letters long or longer, and are all upper-case letters, and force each one to lower case". In vi, this command looks like this:
:%s/[A-Z][A-Z][A-Z]*/\L&/g
Much easier to type than to explain! Want the explanation? Here goes...
':' enters command-line mode (as opposed to interactive text-editing mode) for one single command; '%' means run the command on every line in the file; 's' is the search-and-replace command; "[A-Z]" matches any single upper-case letter; '*' means "zero or more of whatever comes before the '*'", i.e. "[A-Z]*" means zero or more upper case letters; "\L" means "force everything after \L to lower case"; and '&' means "whatever text was matched in the search part of the search and replace command".
Anyway, I typed it in (didn't take long; I'm a fast typist and I didn't need to look anything up). I hit the Enter key, and on his screen, every ALL CAPS keyword simply went to lower-case. I really don't think he had any idea how I did that; he looked pretty surprised.
One of the cool things about vim is that you can recall, and edit, previous command-line commands you typed in; so if you have a typo in a complicated search-and-replace, you can simply undo it, fix the typo, and run it again. Nice.
I now use the version of vim that has integrated Python support, so I can write powerful functions in Python if I like. I prefer Python to LISP, so I'm happy. Plus vi has always had the ability to filter selected lines, or the whole file, through an external program; you can feed a messy source file through an indenting program or whatever. You could even feed a messy source file through a 10-line LISP program if you wanted to!
People should use vi, or emacs, or whatever else makes them productive. emacs doesn't have an exclusive lock on Zen-like elegance.
P.S. www.vim.org
steveha
support for tooltips (I am working on an intellisense package)
Great. Just don't call it "intellisense" because IntelliSense is a trademark that someone owns. MS had to pay money to Ademco (a burglar alarm company with "IntelliSense" brand sensors) to get permission to use the "IntelliSense" brand.
Not to mention that if you go to intellisense.com you will find a MEMS company there.
Don't pull a Killustrator! Call it something else.
steveha
Would Microsoft's Luna look like it does without Apple's Aqua?
Yes. I mean, just put them side by side for crying out loud! How can you think Luna was derived from Aqua?
If you squint at Luna, it looks more like LCARS than Aqua. Maybe Paramount should sue MS instead of Apple.
steveha
More or less correct.
So, why would I use Ximian instead of GNOME?
Um, this is like asking why you would use Red Hat instead of Linux. Ximian is a distro of GNOME. When you use Ximian you are using GNOME.
To answer the question of why you would use Ximian, let's consider how you can get GNOME:
You can get GNOME from your Linux distribution, and then get updates only when your Linux distro provides an update.
You can get GNOME stuff as sources, and build on your own machine.
You can get the Ximian GNOME packages, and get updates from Ximian.
If there is a fourth option, I cannot think of it right now.
So, if your Linux distro provides you with updates as often as you wish, just stick with that. If you like building from source, go ahead and do that. If you want updates more often than your distro gives them to you, and you want someone else to build the packages for you, go with Ximian.
As for me, I use the "unstable" branch of Debian; and I get updates within a few days of any new release. Debian had Gnumeric 0.71 within two days of when it was released. So I have no interest in getting Ximian packages. But I think many people find it convenient to get updates from Ximian.
steveha
It's true that other parts of a portable can draw more power than the CPU: the display is a huge drain. But it's still useful to have a low-drain CPU.
I would love to have a Crusoe laptop that was as small and light as a NEC MobilePro: no moving parts, just a lot of RAM and some flash memory. Put Linux on it instead of Windows CE. Put in a Lithium ion battery. Give it a PC card slot so we can put in a 5 GB hard drive card if we want. It would rock. Sure the display would suck more power than the Crusoe, but why make the situation worse by going with some other CPU?
steveha
I was surprised he said this. This isn't a big scary kludge that inserts a bunch of hacks all over the place in the kernel; this is a relatively small patch that simply leverages all the SMP work. It won't make the kernel uglier or harder to maintain, so IMHO it is very worth adding.
I am confident that Linus will get that prodding from the real world he is waiting for, because my own experiences with this patch are overwhelmingly positive. I'm using kernel 2.4.10 with the preemption patch on my desktop Linux boxes, and I love the snappy feel it gives my system. Playing back MP3 music never skips now, and my K6-III/450 system pops up web pages in Galeon so fast it feels like an Athlon system.
Kudos to Robert Love and anyone else who worked on this patch.
steveha