According to the original Berkley article, the dating was done using the argon/argon method.
This article points out some flaws in the method, which could give older dates than the actual age.
Interestingly though, the Berkley article states that "Howell added that these anatomically modern humans pre-date most neanderthals, and therefore could not have descended from them, as some scientists have proposed."
If the relative age difference could be relied upon (which is suspect considering the possibility of excess argon in the volcanic layers they dated), this could point to a possible "dark ages" of civilization after an initial period of greater civilization.
If you believe the general flow of history as documented by the Bible, this would be consistent with an intelligent race which falls into decline after a widespread flood followed by an ice age.
As a Christian, I believe my ancestor "Noah" had genes for all races who descended from him, and thus most probably had darker skin that most "whites" and lighter skin than the darkest "blacks", some asian features, etc.
Really, the Bible is a very non-racist book. Even though it deals mostly with the Jews, their racism against non-Jews was not condoned, nor was the racism of their enemies.
I can't speak for all Linux users, but I had no problem with Caldera trying to make money with Linux. Rather, it was their lack of cooperation with the community that bothered me. The distribution was one of the nicer ones for the time. It had the first installer to let you play a game (Tetris) while installing. Yes, there were some incompatibilities with RedHat, but it was freely downloadable like all the other Linux distros of the time. And, if I had been recommending distros for purchase at the time, Caldera would have been on the top of my list.
However, when I wanted to customize the GPL'ed installer, the Caldera sources were broken and it seemed as if they didn't want to allow customization, even though the sources were under the GPL. It was as if Caldera was doing the minimal to fulfill the GPL, but not really wanting to be part of the community. Mind you, nothing required them to make their installer GPL'ed, and nothing required cooperation with the community, but I believe the attitude that Caldera first exhibited, led to the disdain that the community felt for them, even before this fiasco.
Perhaps it was also a matter of unclear licensing policy. Since nothing requires an entire distribution to be under open source licenses, a distributor could certainly claim the right to limit distribution of the entire collection of software as a unit. However, it should be clearly spelled out, in that case, that the customer still has the right to freely distribute the open portions of the software. Which portions are distributable and which are not should also be clearly spelled out. Perhaps Caldera had not completely figured this out at the time. As other distributions have also had to work out the issues, it has become more clear what they are. Open source fans can then be reassured that the software they created won't be restricted, and proprietary companies satisfied that they will still be able to make a profit (economy permitting).
I was impressed with the concept of Bayesian filtering, and was happy to find the latest Mozilla Mail supporting it with built-in buttons to mark mail as Spam/Not Spam. I wasn't so happy when I discovered many spams slipping through, even though they had the same type of content as previous ones I had marked as spam.
In viewing the source of one of the mail messages, I discovered embedded HTML comments which split up phrases and even words which might get flagged otherwise. The content of the comments appeared to be randomly generated text, so a filter wouldn't be able to categorize it the same every time. And the placement of the comments within a word wouldn't be the same every time either, so a naive implementation could never filter spam based on previous choices.
A smarter implementation might try operating on the results a viewer would see-- with the HTML tags stripped out. However, as soon as a filter does that, spammers could add Javascript within comments, that generates the spam text, and viewers who allow Javascript (many) would still see the spam.
It seems that both the text without the HTML tags, and the contents of the HTML tags, need to be considered separately in order to be able to filter the new generation of spam.
IIRC, the three instructions (PUSHF, POPF, and IRET) don't cause a kernal trap, which is the problem. There's no way to trap the instructions, but they behave differently in ring 0 than they do in ring 3 (e.g. setting the flags differently or something like that).
Re:Is KDE trying to be Windows?
on
KDE 3.1 Released
·
· Score: 1
I noticed that many of these features are simply being integrated into KDE (e.g. integrating mail and PIM, integrating VNC desktop sharing). In this case, Linux had the features first, Windows made them integrated first, and now Linux is getting them integrated.
It appears that the community is good at innovating, but we just need to think in a more "integrated" manner;-)
I think more requested features could be implemented if a competent programmer broke the features down into sub-features, which less competent programmers could implement in their spare time. I see too many projects which try to create complex features. They may eventually succeed, but even then, the sub-features might be more useful as separate parts than as a single monolithic feature.
For example, newdocms is a case of a complex feature, which could be sub-divided to make it easier for more programmers to contribute. Implementing portions of it as a lower-level kernel driver, a user-space daemon, and separate graphical UIs for GNOME, KDE, etc., rather than as a single KDE component, would be both more flexible (e.g. a user could categorize documents from the console) and easier for contributors to work on the separate pieces (assuming the interfaces between them were well defined).
I haven't tried this specifically with ASFRecorder and XMMS, but you should be able to create a named pipe (mknod filename.asf p) and used that as the filename passed to both ASFRecorder and XMMS. However, that won't allow you to seek in the stream.
Sams Club (owned by the same Sam Walton who owns Walmart) is selling computers for $299 in store, with Linux included on a CD. It appears to not be pre-loaded, but to come with instructions as to how to install for the computer it comes with (which could be nearly as good, since the hardware is known and install should go flawlessly).
The brand of Linux included is unknown, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Lindows.
"proponents of" is the correct wording, not "proponents for". To be a proponent is to be in favor of. If you say "proponent for" it is equivalent to saying "I am in favor for" (on behalf of) rather than "I am in favor of" the object of the sentence.
In this context, you would be saying these people are acting as an agent on behalf of copyleft (for), to be a proponent of some unspecified object.
For the most part, different distributions use kernels that are still part of the same codebase, though at different version levels. Yes, there are some patches that have been applied, but unless you regularly play with kernel patches, I don't think that's much of an issue.
And I still say, the GPL tends to reduce forks. Since the source is guaranteed to be available, any forks in the Linux kernel source are due to different needs of the distributions. Ones focusing on end-users need patches like automount, whereas server-focusing distributions might not care about that, for instance.
In contrast, the BSD license allows closed-source forks. It is only due to the current political situation in the BSD camp that a large number of forks haven't occurred.
All the various distributions *do not* demonstrate forking of the code base, as the majority of them use the exact same codebases for most packages.
There is no reason why the BSDs couldn't show the same amount of diversification of distributions, except for the fact that there is much less interest in them.
Okay, I admit I'm not a biologist, but I do respect the opinions of a growing number of scientists that are studying the potential dangers of vaccines. I would suggest you study up on the contraindications before you decide that the government should force them on people.
Regarding:
Now, the failure of parents to participate in these public health measures does not only impact the health of their own but on all the other children that their children come into contact with. I'm a great believer in draconian, absolute power for public health authorities.
If you trust vaccines to do their job, then those who *aren't* vaccinated should only be a danger to themselves and others who aren't vaccinated. Thus, it should be on their own heads if they don't vaccinate. However, the actual truth is that vaccinations don't even guarantee safety against a disease, and people commonly have to get re-vaccinated. That means, the effects don't last that long, there are potentially dangerous side-effects, and even if you do take the vaccine, you aren't guaranteed. Given a healthy immune system, I'd rather take my chances without the vaccines.
Yes, much of the evidence regarding side-effects of vaccines may be circumstantial at this point, but it should scare you that:
None of the vaccines injected into children have ever been tested for their carcinogenic (cancer causing), mutagenic (mutation causing),or teratogenic (developmental malformation causing) potential. Not a single one.
This is a failure of the drug companies to apply the scientific method!
The fact is, the drug companies have a vested interest in making sure their vaccines are widely used. They have little incentive to perform rigorous testing before releasing them on an unsuspecting public. But they have every incentive to keep adding new vaccines to the market, even if they are for diseases that used to be considered "harmless childhood diseases".
Also, I'm concerned about the trend to create vaccines for non-threatening diseases, such as chicken pox! Yes, I know there is a slight chance of worse diseases to those that have had chicken pox, but I'd rather take my chances with a known evil, then with a new vaccine that hasn't been tested for it's carcinogenic effects.
Your statement that:
When introducing a new vaccine, there is a certain risk that it will cause (for example) strong allergic reactions in a certain percentage of patients. We have a number of these dangerous vaccines stockpiled, but we don't give them to children.
doesn't take into account all the known dangerous side-effects on the commonly given vaccines! Many of the vaccines are not supposed to be given to children who have a chance of an allergic reaction. Those children's allergy cannot be detected until past the age of one. And yet, the vaccines are being given before the age of one! Is this circular reasoning, or what?
Go read the potential side-effects list on the CDC's website.
Though this page states that the severe side effects are rare, the criteria for whether a problem can be considered a side-effect, or whether it is unrelated, are often arbitrary. For instance, if your child starts having seizures (known to be a potential side effect of some vaccines) a week after their vaccination, it may be considered to be unrelated. Only if it happens within the next 24 hours might it be considered related. And yet, the same time of seizure is known to be a potential severe side effect. Is it coincidence that the seizure happened a week later? I think not.
Those side effects don't mention the potential for inclusion of other viruses transplanted from the tissue in which the vaccines are grown. And the common screening procedure to determine if a particular batch of vaccine is safe is, to test it on mice, and see if they keep growing or not! That's not a very rigorous test.
In any case, it is my belief that a healthy immune system doesn't need supplementation from the outside by vaccines. How do you get a healthy immune system? Simple, but not very commonly done by people:
Proper nutrition, with a low-fat, high-fiber diet.
Regular exercise
6-8 glasses of water a day
Regular exposure to sunlight or full-spectum lighting (in the winter time, near the poles)
Be moderate in all things (don't over or under-eat, don't overstimulate your system with alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, etc.)
Get fresh air (if you live in LA, maybe you need a de-ionizer).
Get adequate rest, during the dark part of the night: use shades if needed. Exercise prior to bed makes it easier to get to sleep. Most people need 7-9 hours to be fully rested. Though many "get by" on less (myself included at times) it is not the best for your health.
Peace of mind, a happy, hopeful attitude.
I belive that if you follow these principles you can avoid most diseases. And there are a significant number of people who are finding this to be true.
I find whenever I do get sick, I have been neglecting one or more of the above.
In any case, regardless of which license you prefer, it is simple fact that Linux is more widely used, has a larger developer base, and better hardware support (in general) than the BSDs. You will tend to find support for (e.g.) the latest gadgets on Linux sooner than on the BSDs.
While you may find exceptions to this, the tight groups of developers that maintain the BSDs simply cannot keep up with new hardware as well as the mass of Linux developers. Not that it does exceptionally well either, but if you're looking for free software, you have to take what you can get.
Alternately, the BSDs tend to be more stable, since they aren't trying to be on the cutting edge as much.
However, when you look at the licenses, the GPL tends to favor developers who aren't looking to "create wealth" built on other people's work. If you create your own software, you can use a GPL license and also license commercially for commercial users. The original author gets the advantage.
Whereas, with the BSD license, any subsequent author can take advantage of the generous terms, and build wealth from the base contributed by others.
This has worked favorably for companies in cases like X Windows (a similar license), and the Wine project (where companies are creating extensions based on it, they would be unlikely to create if it had been GPLd).
It's a tricky balance of power. If you use the BSD license, a "free software" based company may use the software to create a successful product, thus increasing the use of that codebase. If you're trying to establish a standard, that's good.
However, the company could also keep their changes private, indefinately, and multiple code forks could occur, thus fracturing the code base and depriving the community of a return for their original investment in the code.
The GPL tends to reduce the chance of forking, but makes it harder for companies to add proprietary "value" to create their own products. (Notice I said *harder*, not *impossible*).
Neither license is "bad", they just have different purposes. Developers should make an informed choice as to which license they prefer, for a given project.
This might be considered off-topic, but you stated that "It isn't as huge a deal as the failure to get children vaccinated (criminal to my mind..."
Actually, it isn't a given that vaccines (as they currently stand) are good in all situations. In fact, it may be the case that over-vaccination is leading to adaptation of infectants to the vaccine.
In addition, it is quite common for vaccines to cause severe reactions in children, as can be attested to by this link (top hit on Google, "Vaccines"):
In any case, it should always be the parent's choice as to whether to vaccinate their child or not. For diseases which are at epidemic proportions, especially in developing countries, vaccines may be a positive good, but in America and other "first world" countries, vaccines are overused, and potentially dangerous.
which can convert the Windows Terminal Server protocol (RDP) to the VNC protocol on the fly, giving you access to multiple client logins on a single server, using VNC, but at Citrix speeds.
No client licenses needed.
Of course, your other options are good too, but add rdp2vnc to the mix and you'll save the last 10% Citrix licenses as well.
Nothing needs to be installed on the server. Just install rdp2vnc on the client, run something like:
You are behind the times (if not biased).
Wine can be used to run already installed business applications (MS Word included) though admittedly, each new release by MS attempts to break Wine compatibility.
However, non-Microsoft programs actually often run quite well on Wine, expecially on WineX (Transgaming's version of Wine with DirectX support).
I've been quite impressed with WineX since subscribing to Transgaming's service, as I can now run:
* Chutes and Ladders (a cute game for my daughter that came in a Cheerios box)
* Diablo II
* Starcraft
* Sierra's Lighthouse
and all with decent performance.
Wine all by itself, has had a herculean task of trying to keep up with Microsoft's "innovative" API "enhancements". However, with applied effort by a commercial entity, against a specific area of the Win32 API (DirectX), I believe it will be possible to keep up.
Further more, Game companies are the most likely to attempt to remain backwards compatible (even while using the latest APIs), are less likely to use many features of the OS (being almost an OS in themselves), and rarely use the native interface, choosing instead to implement their own.
So, if you are a game player, and even if you aren't, give Transgaming a try. For 5 bucks a month (and you can drop it if you don't think it's worth it) you get precompiled binaries and easy installation, or you can use their source from CVS and get it for free if you are cheap.
Personally, I'm subscribing even though I rarely play games, in the hopes that others will be able to.
If you know a little about the underlying technologies it helps you understand. The technologies of XP and.NET are not OS-level (though MS would like us to think so). They are user-level in the classical sense, in that creating them doesn't require "root" access.
So, for Linus, a kernel programmer, there is nothing for him to do, to compete with XP and.NET because it's a comparison of apples and oranges. Or should I say, of acorns and oaks. The Linux kernel is merely an acorn, but a very good one, from which Oak trees grow.
It's the place of developers like Miguel de Icaza (GNOME founder) to worry about.NET, not the place of a kernel developer, even if he's the head one.
Along this line, a great idea (which I had even before I saw MS Office 2000) is to:
1. Ask the user what to install, but...
2. By default, opt to install the minimum, but...
3. Still install icons for everything on the CD, and...
4. When you click an icon for a program which isn't installed, a simple installer gets run, which prompts you for the right CD, installs it, then runs the requested program.
5. And to extend the concept, make this work at the command line too (e.g. If you run "cat somefile | grep sometext" and cat and grep aren't installed, you get prompted to insert the right CD, the programs get installed, and the real cat/grep get run with the original parameters).
Win4Lin (http://www.netraverse.com/), unlike VMWare, has very good integration of Windows with Linux, using the native Linux filesystem, network stack, and video drivers, rather than the user having to install these from within Windows.
It appears that this integration could be done in Win4Lin as well, by an install proceedure which set up Windows to boot from a Linux filesystem, replacing winsock.dll and wsock32.dll, and other portions of Windows as needed to do the job.
Is anyone working on such integration features, and if not, would you be interested in people contributing Windows drivers for that purpose?
Microsoft's Windows monopoly status isn't at issue here. However, they did have a monopoly on the DOS market of the time, and it was DR-DOS that Microsoft was trying to kill (a competitor) using their monopoly power.
Re:Pronunciation: Depends on your mother tongue.
on
Linux on Jeopardy
·
· Score: 2
I think there is a pronunciation HOWTO, which I read years ago.
It gave good reasons why Lye-nucks is the correct pronunciation for English-speaking people. It was something like this:
1. "Linux" is taken from Linus' name. 2. English speakers pronounce the name Linus as "Lye-nuss" (or should;-) ). 3. Therefore, "Linux" should be pronounced as "Lye-nucks" by English speaking people. 4. Lee-nooks would be the alternate correct pronunciation (based on how Linus prounounced his own name when he lived in Finland). 5. There is no basis for the "Lin-nucks" pronunciation.
Cheers. Don't flame too hard;-)
Re:Europe vs. America: No reason to smirk
on
Linux on Jeopardy
·
· Score: 1
Actually, I think there is a pronunciation HOWTO, which I read years ago.
It gave good reasons why Lye-nucks is the correct pronunciation for English-speaking people. It was something like this:
1. "Linux" is taken from Linus' name. 2. English speakers pronounce the name Linus as "Lye-nuss" (or should;-) ). 3. Therefore, "Linux" should be pronounced as "Lye-nucks" by English speaking people. 4. Lee-nooks would be the alternate correct pronunciation (based on how Linus prounounced his own name when he lived in Finland). 5. There is no basis for the "Lin-nucks" pronunciation.
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly though, the Berkley article states that "Howell added that these anatomically modern humans pre-date most neanderthals, and therefore could not have descended from them, as some scientists have proposed."
If the relative age difference could be relied upon (which is suspect considering the possibility of excess argon in the volcanic layers they dated), this could point to a possible "dark ages" of civilization after an initial period of greater civilization.
If you believe the general flow of history as documented by the Bible, this would be consistent with an intelligent race which falls into decline after a widespread flood followed by an ice age.
As a Christian, I believe my ancestor "Noah" had genes for all races who descended from him, and thus most probably had darker skin that most "whites" and lighter skin than the darkest "blacks", some asian features, etc.
Really, the Bible is a very non-racist book. Even though it deals mostly with the Jews, their racism against non-Jews was not condoned, nor was the racism of their enemies.
However, when I wanted to customize the GPL'ed installer, the Caldera sources were broken and it seemed as if they didn't want to allow customization, even though the sources were under the GPL. It was as if Caldera was doing the minimal to fulfill the GPL, but not really wanting to be part of the community. Mind you, nothing required them to make their installer GPL'ed, and nothing required cooperation with the community, but I believe the attitude that Caldera first exhibited, led to the disdain that the community felt for them, even before this fiasco.
Perhaps it was also a matter of unclear licensing policy. Since nothing requires an entire distribution to be under open source licenses, a distributor could certainly claim the right to limit distribution of the entire collection of software as a unit. However, it should be clearly spelled out, in that case, that the customer still has the right to freely distribute the open portions of the software. Which portions are distributable and which are not should also be clearly spelled out. Perhaps Caldera had not completely figured this out at the time. As other distributions have also had to work out the issues, it has become more clear what they are. Open source fans can then be reassured that the software they created won't be restricted, and proprietary companies satisfied that they will still be able to make a profit (economy permitting).
I was impressed with the concept of Bayesian filtering, and was happy to find the latest Mozilla Mail supporting it with built-in buttons to mark mail as Spam/Not Spam. I wasn't so happy when I discovered many spams slipping through, even though they had the same type of content as previous ones I had marked as spam.
In viewing the source of one of the mail messages, I discovered embedded HTML comments which split up phrases and even words which might get flagged otherwise. The content of the comments appeared to be randomly generated text, so a filter wouldn't be able to categorize it the same every time. And the placement of the comments within a word wouldn't be the same every time either, so a naive implementation could never filter spam based on previous choices.
A smarter implementation might try operating on the results a viewer would see-- with the HTML tags stripped out. However, as soon as a filter does that, spammers could add Javascript within comments, that generates the spam text, and viewers who allow Javascript (many) would still see the spam.
It seems that both the text without the HTML tags, and the contents of the HTML tags, need to be considered separately in order to be able to filter the new generation of spam.
IIRC, the three instructions (PUSHF, POPF, and IRET) don't cause a kernal trap, which is the problem. There's no way to trap the instructions, but they behave differently in ring 0 than they do in ring 3 (e.g. setting the flags differently or something like that).
I noticed that many of these features are simply being integrated into KDE (e.g. integrating mail and PIM, integrating VNC desktop sharing). In this case, Linux had the features first, Windows made them integrated first, and now Linux is getting them integrated.
;-)
It appears that the community is good at innovating, but we just need to think in a more "integrated" manner
For example, newdocms is a case of a complex feature, which could be sub-divided to make it easier for more programmers to contribute. Implementing portions of it as a lower-level kernel driver, a user-space daemon, and separate graphical UIs for GNOME, KDE, etc., rather than as a single KDE component, would be both more flexible (e.g. a user could categorize documents from the console) and easier for contributors to work on the separate pieces (assuming the interfaces between them were well defined).
I haven't tried this specifically with ASFRecorder and XMMS, but you should be able to create a named pipe (mknod filename.asf p) and used that as the filename passed to both ASFRecorder and XMMS. However, that won't allow you to seek in the stream.
Sams Club (owned by the same Sam Walton who owns Walmart) is selling computers for $299 in store, with Linux included on a CD. It appears to not be pre-loaded, but to come with instructions as to how to install for the computer it comes with (which could be nearly as good, since the hardware is known and install should go flawlessly).
The brand of Linux included is unknown, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Lindows.
In this context, you would be saying these people are acting as an agent on behalf of copyleft (for), to be a proponent of some unspecified object.
For the most part, different distributions use kernels that are still part of the same codebase, though at different version levels. Yes, there are some patches that have been applied, but unless you regularly play with kernel patches, I don't think that's much of an issue.
And I still say, the GPL tends to reduce forks. Since the source is guaranteed to be available, any forks in the Linux kernel source are due to different needs of the distributions. Ones focusing on end-users need patches like automount, whereas server-focusing distributions might not care about that, for instance.
In contrast, the BSD license allows closed-source forks. It is only due to the current political situation in the BSD camp that a large number of forks haven't occurred.
All the various distributions *do not* demonstrate forking of the code base, as the majority of them use the exact same codebases for most packages.
There is no reason why the BSDs couldn't show the same amount of diversification of distributions, except for the fact that there is much less interest in them.
Regarding:
Now, the failure of parents to participate in these public health measures does not only impact the health of their own but on all the other children that their children come into contact with. I'm a great believer in draconian, absolute power for public health authorities.
If you trust vaccines to do their job, then those who *aren't* vaccinated should only be a danger to themselves and others who aren't vaccinated. Thus, it should be on their own heads if they don't vaccinate. However, the actual truth is that vaccinations don't even guarantee safety against a disease, and people commonly have to get re-vaccinated. That means, the effects don't last that long, there are potentially dangerous side-effects, and even if you do take the vaccine, you aren't guaranteed. Given a healthy immune system, I'd rather take my chances without the vaccines.
Yes, much of the evidence regarding side-effects of vaccines may be circumstantial at this point, but it should scare you that:
None of the vaccines injected into children have ever been tested for their carcinogenic (cancer causing), mutagenic (mutation causing),or teratogenic (developmental malformation causing) potential. Not a single one.
(from this page)
This is a failure of the drug companies to apply the scientific method! The fact is, the drug companies have a vested interest in making sure their vaccines are widely used. They have little incentive to perform rigorous testing before releasing them on an unsuspecting public. But they have every incentive to keep adding new vaccines to the market, even if they are for diseases that used to be considered "harmless childhood diseases".
Also, I'm concerned about the trend to create vaccines for non-threatening diseases, such as chicken pox! Yes, I know there is a slight chance of worse diseases to those that have had chicken pox, but I'd rather take my chances with a known evil, then with a new vaccine that hasn't been tested for it's carcinogenic effects.
Your statement that: When introducing a new vaccine, there is a certain risk that it will cause (for example) strong allergic reactions in a certain percentage of patients. We have a number of these dangerous vaccines stockpiled, but we don't give them to children.
doesn't take into account all the known dangerous side-effects on the commonly given vaccines! Many of the vaccines are not supposed to be given to children who have a chance of an allergic reaction. Those children's allergy cannot be detected until past the age of one. And yet, the vaccines are being given before the age of one! Is this circular reasoning, or what?
Go read the potential side-effects list on the CDC's website. Though this page states that the severe side effects are rare, the criteria for whether a problem can be considered a side-effect, or whether it is unrelated, are often arbitrary. For instance, if your child starts having seizures (known to be a potential side effect of some vaccines) a week after their vaccination, it may be considered to be unrelated. Only if it happens within the next 24 hours might it be considered related. And yet, the same time of seizure is known to be a potential severe side effect. Is it coincidence that the seizure happened a week later? I think not.
Those side effects don't mention the potential for inclusion of other viruses transplanted from the tissue in which the vaccines are grown. And the common screening procedure to determine if a particular batch of vaccine is safe is, to test it on mice, and see if they keep growing or not! That's not a very rigorous test.
In any case, it is my belief that a healthy immune system doesn't need supplementation from the outside by vaccines. How do you get a healthy immune system? Simple, but not very commonly done by people:
I belive that if you follow these principles you can avoid most diseases. And there are a significant number of people who are finding this to be true. I find whenever I do get sick, I have been neglecting one or more of the above.
Why all the rancor?
In any case, regardless of which license you prefer, it is simple fact that Linux is more widely used, has a larger developer base, and better hardware support (in general) than the BSDs. You will tend to find support for (e.g.) the latest gadgets on Linux sooner than on the BSDs.
While you may find exceptions to this, the tight groups of developers that maintain the BSDs simply cannot keep up with new hardware as well as the mass of Linux developers. Not that it does exceptionally well either, but if you're looking for free software, you have to take what you can get.
Alternately, the BSDs tend to be more stable, since they aren't trying to be on the cutting edge as much.
However, when you look at the licenses, the GPL tends to favor developers who aren't looking to "create wealth" built on other people's work. If you create your own software, you can use a GPL license and also license commercially for commercial users. The original author gets the advantage.
Whereas, with the BSD license, any subsequent author can take advantage of the generous terms, and build wealth from the base contributed by others. This has worked favorably for companies in cases like X Windows (a similar license), and the Wine project (where companies are creating extensions based on it, they would be unlikely to create if it had been GPLd).
It's a tricky balance of power. If you use the BSD license, a "free software" based company may use the software to create a successful product, thus increasing the use of that codebase. If you're trying to establish a standard, that's good.
However, the company could also keep their changes private, indefinately, and multiple code forks could occur, thus fracturing the code base and depriving the community of a return for their original investment in the code.
The GPL tends to reduce the chance of forking, but makes it harder for companies to add proprietary "value" to create their own products. (Notice I said *harder*, not *impossible*).
Neither license is "bad", they just have different purposes. Developers should make an informed choice as to which license they prefer, for a given project.
Actually, it isn't a given that vaccines (as they currently stand) are good in all situations. In fact, it may be the case that over-vaccination is leading to adaptation of infectants to the vaccine.
In addition, it is quite common for vaccines to cause severe reactions in children, as can be attested to by this link (top hit on Google, "Vaccines"):
Children's Gallery
In any case, it should always be the parent's choice as to whether to vaccinate their child or not. For diseases which are at epidemic proportions, especially in developing countries, vaccines may be a positive good, but in America and other "first world" countries, vaccines are overused, and potentially dangerous.
For a command-line add/modify/delete utility, here's one I created:
http://pushan.integritysi.com/down/ldapuser
Check out rdp2vnc:
http://www-lce.eng.cam.ac.uk/~tme23/vdesktop/
which can convert the Windows Terminal Server protocol (RDP) to the VNC protocol on the fly, giving you access to multiple client logins on a single server, using VNC, but at Citrix speeds.
No client licenses needed.
Of course, your other options are good too, but add rdp2vnc to the mix and you'll save the last 10% Citrix licenses as well.
Nothing needs to be installed on the server. Just install rdp2vnc on the client, run something like:
rdp2vnc -u username -d DOMAIN your.terminal.server.domain.here
then run:
vncviewer localhost:5923
to get a Windows Terminal Server login.
Cheers,
Warren E. Downs
You are behind the times (if not biased).
Wine can be used to run already installed business applications (MS Word included) though admittedly, each new release by MS attempts to break Wine compatibility.
However, non-Microsoft programs actually often run quite well on Wine, expecially on WineX (Transgaming's version of Wine with DirectX support).
I've been quite impressed with WineX since subscribing to Transgaming's service, as I can now run:
* Chutes and Ladders (a cute game for my daughter that came in a Cheerios box)
* Diablo II
* Starcraft
* Sierra's Lighthouse
and all with decent performance.
Wine all by itself, has had a herculean task of trying to keep up with Microsoft's "innovative" API "enhancements". However, with applied effort by a commercial entity, against a specific area of the Win32 API (DirectX), I believe it will be possible to keep up.
Further more, Game companies are the most likely to attempt to remain backwards compatible (even while using the latest APIs), are less likely to use many features of the OS (being almost an OS in themselves), and rarely use the native interface, choosing instead to implement their own.
So, if you are a game player, and even if you aren't, give Transgaming a try. For 5 bucks a month (and you can drop it if you don't think it's worth it) you get precompiled binaries and easy installation, or you can use their source from CVS and get it for free if you are cheap.
Personally, I'm subscribing even though I rarely play games, in the hopes that others will be able to.
Seems like it would be possible to make a Linux 2.4 module which could internally load Linux 2.2 and 2.0 modules and forward calls to/from them.
If you know a little about the underlying technologies it helps you understand. The technologies of XP and .NET are not OS-level (though MS would like us to think so). They are user-level in the classical sense, in that creating them doesn't require "root" access.
.NET because it's a comparison of apples and oranges. Or should I say, of acorns and oaks. The Linux kernel is merely an acorn, but a very good one, from which Oak trees grow.
.NET, not the place of a kernel developer, even if he's the head one.
So, for Linus, a kernel programmer, there is nothing for him to do, to compete with XP and
It's the place of developers like Miguel de Icaza (GNOME founder) to worry about
Along this line, a great idea (which I had even before I saw MS Office 2000) is to:
1. Ask the user what to install, but...
2. By default, opt to install the minimum, but...
3. Still install icons for everything on the CD, and...
4. When you click an icon for a program which isn't installed, a simple installer gets run, which prompts you for the right CD, installs it, then runs the requested program.
5. And to extend the concept, make this work at the command line too (e.g. If you run "cat somefile | grep sometext" and cat and grep aren't installed, you get prompted to insert the right CD, the programs get installed, and the real cat/grep get run with the original parameters).
It appears that this integration could be done in Win4Lin as well, by an install proceedure which set up Windows to boot from a Linux filesystem, replacing winsock.dll and wsock32.dll, and other portions of Windows as needed to do the job.
Is anyone working on such integration features, and if not, would you be interested in people contributing Windows drivers for that purpose?
Microsoft's Windows monopoly status isn't at issue here. However, they did have a monopoly on the DOS market of the time, and it was DR-DOS that Microsoft was trying to kill (a competitor) using their monopoly power.
I think there is a pronunciation HOWTO, which I read years ago.
;-) ).
;-)
It gave good reasons why Lye-nucks is the correct pronunciation for English-speaking people. It was something like this:
1. "Linux" is taken from Linus' name.
2. English speakers pronounce the name Linus as "Lye-nuss" (or should
3. Therefore, "Linux" should be pronounced as "Lye-nucks" by English speaking people.
4. Lee-nooks would be the alternate correct pronunciation (based on how Linus prounounced his own name when he lived in Finland).
5. There is no basis for the "Lin-nucks" pronunciation.
Cheers. Don't flame too hard
Actually, I think there is a pronunciation HOWTO, which I read years ago.
;-) ).
;-)
It gave good reasons why Lye-nucks is the correct pronunciation for English-speaking people. It was something like this:
1. "Linux" is taken from Linus' name.
2. English speakers pronounce the name Linus as "Lye-nuss" (or should
3. Therefore, "Linux" should be pronounced as "Lye-nucks" by English speaking people.
4. Lee-nooks would be the alternate correct pronunciation (based on how Linus prounounced his own name when he lived in Finland).
5. There is no basis for the "Lin-nucks" pronunciation.
Cheers. Don't flame too hard