Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the product) is free. That is why CentOS exists. The only cost to using CentOS is having employees who can set it up and keep it running.
but afaict redhat tries to hide the fact this option exists. Afaict they make the projects rebuild from source and strip out all the identity of the OS. They also make them replace the update mechanism but that is a fairly minor point.
RedHat(TM) is a trademarked name. That is the reason that the CentOS folks must remove the RedHat trademark from the SRPMS before redistributing them. Everything that RedHat has released is GPL or LGPL-licensed - if they were concerned about hiding the source code, that would be a particularly bizarre choice! RedHat can not continue to use the RedHat trademark if they do not protect its use, such being the requirements of trademark law.
Sometimes dynamic compression is a good thing all around.
I often am forced to listen to my music in either a loud environment or in an area where I must keep the music volume as low as possible. A wide dynamic range means that in order to hear the quiet parts, the louder parts are unacceptably loud.
So process it yourself - there are plenty of dynamic compression filters out there that you can run your music through. If the source material has not been messed around with and is an accurate representation of the original, you can mess it up however you like. However, if the mastering process has done this for you, you can't reverse the process.
The new texture technology that JC is demonstrating is fascinating but it really is a neat new twist on a much older trick - using tile-able textures to build up a much larger map, and then using overlays to take it further and make it less predictable.
The basic landscape is built up at some reasonable level of detail for distance shots, with whatever geometry the modeller wants. Then the new techniques are applied to any polygon, anywhere. From the videos, there is a part where JC takes a texture, paints it on either side of the track. At this point, you can see that it really is square tiles - maybe 128x128 in the demo but I suspect it is arbitrary. Then these tiles are blended against other tiles and it's no longer so obvious what is going on. Then the overlays are painted on over the top to provide unique details.
Now - the backend technology to cache all of these separate layers together must be pretty impressive to ensure that the view doesn't stutter as you pan the view. Using this level of organisation for the textures is akin to a smart compression routine, except you are identifying common elements right up front in the form of texture tiles, rather than trying to do it after the fact.
I'd pay serious money to get my hands on the level editors for this tech - but I don't think my salary will stretch to a ID license fee.
At the moment it appears that GM is not bad by itself but it is unprofitable unless you employ highly questionable business tactics. Good points, but my post doesn't contradict it. I was just arguing that genetic engineering isn't a bad thing in itself, I still think that Monsanto is the evil twin of Microsoft in the agriculture industry.
I think you should re-read your post.
Frankenfood? You mean food that doesn't need to be sprayed with (as much) pesticide because it's biologically resistant to insects?
Maybe you were referring to some other GM-modification but Roundup Ready crops are engineered to be more resistant to Roundup herbicide, allowing it to be sprayed more heavily than would otherwise be the case. Roundup Ready is a classic example of monopoly-bundling leveraging one product to increase sales of another. Roundup is also a key ingredient on the massively successful *cough* "War on drugs" as it is purchased in quantity by the US Government for spraying on South American fields to destroy the Coca crops.
And if that didn't scare you enough, consider this. 13 states have already reported Glyphosate-resistance in weeds. How long do you think it will take for the Coca crops to become Glyphosate-resistant? Glyphosate has only been available for 30 years, so any resistance is a new phenomenon.
If Microsoft has taken the job of taking some binary BLOB and make it into something human-readable, OOXML or not, then I say you'd have an easier time converting OOXML to something readable in OpenOffice than not.
If it's a text document, then you might be able to parse the OOXML regardless and understand most of the formatting. If it's a spreadsheet, then many of the parts of the OOXML spec are ALSO binary LOBs and you are no better off. If it's something that OOXML doesn't support, you are out of luck. At least ODF provides ways to package other formats along with itself in a transparent fashion, is completely documented and supported by multiple vendors.
I have been told many times the virtues of emacs. I have been told that it does all my IDE does and buys my lunch also. But you know what, I don't know how to use it beyond a point, and unless I invest lots of time in it I never will.
That's one of those trade-off scenarios. Invest the time to learn what Emacs can do for you now and be more productive later or use an "Icon factory" IDE which gives you a pretty decent collection of tools but is ultimately limited in what it can do for you.
I personally think that the balance depends on whether either you or some colleague likes coding in LISP - if you have someone on your team who knows Emacs backwards, your team will be able to package all that Emacs can provide in an easy-to-consume setup. If not, then you may still find Emacs a reasonably capable editor but you won't be exposed to Emacs in its most effective form.
I support Emacs for a fair number of developers so you could say I am biased!
While I have programed with Emacs in the past, I now use IDE's All the time.
they are useful, they show me alternative views of my data structures, they correct my spelling mistakes, they warn me of errors before they happen. they make helpful suggestions. In short they make my job easier.
Obviously you are unaware that Emacs can do all these things for you as well - such as the Semantic libraries for understanding your code, Speedbar for navigating your code and the fabulous JDEE environment with the beanshell backend that speeds up your Java compiling sessions.
The same is true for C/C++ development - in cases where Emacs does not provide direct lookup, I have tools like Cscope integrated into my Emacs sessions for speedy code traversal. Version control is built right into the Emacs sessions, including awareness of the current state of a file. Simple things like quick-access menus allowing you to jump directly to a function and the almost infinitely configurable "expand this thing" (hippie-expand!).
Remember - there is very little that Emacs can't do. You are limited only by your knowledge of how to expand what it provides by default.
Off-topic, but this highlights a major problem with Linux. They follow, but rarely lead. The only exception to this that springs to mind is filesystems. Linux has perhaps a few too many, but they are certainly pushing well beyond what MS is doing. Other than that, it's hard to find any area in Linux where they are doing things substantially better than Windows from a "feature" perspective.
I think you'd find that there are other areas where Linux is well ahead of Windows, beyond filesystem support and research. The following are just the ones right off the top of my head:
Support for massive multiprocessor machines (over 1024 processors on NUMA 64bit Linux).
Support for massive memory architectures (8589934592GB on Linux 64bit, compared with 128Gb Windows)
Support for many platforms (x86, x86_64, IA64, Sparc, MIPS, System 390, PowerPC, POWER, etc.)
Vastly better performance on pipes and sockets.
Faster thread and process creation.
Multiple schedulers to choose from (and new ones being flamed on kerneltrap^W^W^W written every month).
I'm sure there'll be more to add to this list. There are good comparisons around.
That is not to suggest that parts of the kernel can be distributed under the GPL v3. That would require some careful study of the licenses to work out whether it would be consider just an aggregation of parts.
Toby, care to tell me where you got this info about leaks?
A "leak on window closure" regression appeared in NoScript 1.1.4.6.070322 (an "unofficial" development build) and was fixed 3 days later.
I have NoScript updating automatically so it's tracking whatever releases I'm getting from mozilla.org. Any attempt to close an open window fires leak monitor reports containing a javascript object which references information that looks like Noscript data - lists of whitelisted and blacklisted sites, etc. I can reliably reproduce this on my x86 laptop (work machine) but I can't send bug reports from that machine. I see that there is a new Leak monitor for x86_64 platforms so I'll try and repro the leak on my personal box using the same set of extensions.
If you have NoScript installed, it leaks memory every time you close a window (no leak when closing a tab though). There are other examples of Extensions chewing memory up - try installing Leak Monitor to find out whether you have Javascript objects getting orphaned.
However, having NoScript installed seriously reduces the amount of Javascript running so it tends to be a net win on memory usage.
But OpenOffice.org Writer isstunningly better than Microsoft Word, in many, many ways, unless you're one of those people that simply must have Word's outline view.
I keep hearing about Word's outline view - what does it offer that OpenOffice.org's Navigator does not offer? I can move sections around, demote and promote sections, quickly jump to a section/table/picture in the document from the Navigator. Please enlighten me!
To be brutally honest though, I find it difficult to even *understand* selinux. I'm still only running it in permissive mode.. If Microsoft actually manages to show the user/system admin such audit messages and modify policy accordingly (based on system admin's response) then I think that's a good idea. Fetchmail and spamassassin spew some "denied" audits on my home computer but I haven't (yet:-)) found out how to modify the selinux policy.
If you need help understanding the SE Linux audit messages, you should install SE Troubleshoot
[root@branch ~]# which setroubleshootd/usr/sbin/setroubleshootd
[root@branch ~]# rpm -qf/usr/sbin/setroubleshootd
setroubleshoot-1.7.1-1.fc6
This gives you some help with analysing the failed action. I won't say it taught me a huge amount but it is a step in the right direction.
My experience with F/OSS as a whole is that it tends to be compatible only with the one use case that represents the itch the author needed to scratch. Of course, it is possible to take the source and scratch my own itch - if I want to invest the labor to customize a hack to solve my problem, but many times it's less time and hassle to pay for the packaged work.
The point of Free Software (and to a lesser extent Open Source) is to achieve source code compatability. Binary compatability is a "nice to have" but it is not essential to allow any user to benefit from the software.
That's not to say that you may save money in the long term by having a provider package your software for you and charge you a fee for doing so - but that's not the point of Free Software.
All software costs. Sometimes F/OSS costs more, sometimes less. Sometimes commercial software is a better deal than F/OSS. There's room in the ecosystem for lots of business models.
F/OSS costs you NOTHING to acquire. Whatever happens after that, you still have the software, the opportunity to compile it, change it and distribute it further. If your time is money, then the time spent compiling the software is a cost "to you". If I compile software in the evening at home, there is no financial cost to me.
Microsoft and other commercial vendors love to beat the ROI drum, because they can't win against FOSS on the acquirement cost basis. Funnily enough, only a minority of companies use the ROI metric for their future planning (I think the last figure I saw floating around CIO-type magazines was 31%); the reason is simple enough - most companies are concentrating on solving problems and improving productivity. If existing FOSS solutions fit a companies needs, they will use it. And yes - they may well pay Redhat or Canonical to service those FOSS solutions.
Big box retailers are interested in volume and marginal pricing. The range of music they pick, the bands that get prominent shelf space and the albums that appear in the advertising will all be driven by the bottom line.
No - if we want diverse musical forms to survive the big box stores, it will be despite them, not because of them.
Small dealers will help - but at best they can only provide small niche markets. Internet sites tied to such retailers may help a lot. For me though, the future of diverse music depends on the internet providing the resources to find out about less known bands and albums and hear stuff I can't hear on the radio. But right now, the Internet Radio station is on the brink of an extinction event. So support Save Net Radio before it really is too late.
My concern is that you are right - "so have most people that actually pay attention to security posts." The strong benefit of Linux vis-a-vis MSFT (and its not price) is that as an open system you have an nearly unlimited pool of the best computer code writing minds constantly updating and improving upon one another's kernel code around the world.But, if when errors are uncovered and corrections made, patches are only known to that pool of people then mass users will be exposed to significant security risk. The average Joe running Linux will suffer and that hurts the entire community in both reputation and user adoption rates.
You are overlooking the way that most Joe Linux users get their updates - automatically. When security flaws are found and patches are delivered, you can guarantee that the people who package that software at Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian and other major distributions are aware of the update. Those security patches will be tested and rolled out into the main update repositories, probably within 24 hours to all the mirrors worldwide. The automatic update daemon on Joe User's modern Linux distro will be downloading the update within the next 24 hours or sooner. From security patch being announced to patched home computer in 48 hours in the worst-case scenario.
One of the nicest things about the distro's automatic updates is that this applies to ALL packages in the distro. I don't need to worry about Apache needing it's own updater. So no - the average Joe running Linux does not suffer - he gets informed about the update or even has it applied without manual intervention depending on the settings. Joe benefits and so does the community who recognise that fixing security flaws promptly is key.
Part of IBMs problem is turnaround. Many of the developers are new to DB2 and fresh out of uni. The hash template I saw was a prime example of "I found this in a textbook somewhere." It was completely overkill since it's only used to hash array of bytes (why a template?) and the montgomery reduction used to perform the bucketing is not needed since the hash is invoked only upon startup/shutdown.
I have to stop you there. Turnaround on DB2 developers, at least in my area, is almost zero. Most of the developers around me who have 5 or more years experience, some having been with the project for 20 plus years.
Now we do hire a fair number of IIP students each year for 16 months sessions - maybe you were surrounded by students.
In my experience, DB2 concentrates on functionality, stability and performance. Code-size is tackled when it impacts one of those areas and is otherwise unimportant.
I work on a C/C++ code base that is a lot bigger than 500k lines. I've worked with results produced by Klocwork and also with the output from Reasoning. Both of these services/packages will cost you money but both provide good insight into your code. The commercial packages generally produce more focused results with less false-positives, so while they cost you money up front, your developers will spend less time weeding out the noise.
If paying money out for a commercial package isn't your thing, don't overlook the old standby lint or splint, an updated successor.
Also well worth investigating to see how your code is actually running is Valgrind and it's associated tools. The Valgrind toolkit will give you a good idea where memory is being leaked, where variables and pointers are going off the rails. Valgrind hooks into a running program, so it's important to make sure that you test all the corners of the codebase if you go this route.
The kernel is currently distributed under GPL v2. Some terms allow for it to be "v2 or later", meaning someone can use the code in a GPLv3 kernel. Software companies could also go to dual-licensing and offer it under v2 or v3. Then you could use that code in either a GPLv2 kernel or a GPLv3 kernel. You can't have a part-v3, part-v2 kernel because of license incompatibilities. Thus a kernel would be offered as either pure v2 or pure v3.
No - the kernel is currently distributed under GPL v2 BUT it is not entirely comprised of GPL v2 only code. 40% of the Linux kernel has the "or later versions" message intact and can be trivially relicensed.
GPL v2 and GPL v3 code can be compiled into a single entity without issue. What you can't do is take some GPL v2 code, rewrite part of it and call it GPL v3. Aggregation of code has never been an issue.
Now mayhap the OP is writing about Direct3D... in that case, even DirectX 9.x's version of Direct3d features a LOT more functionality than OpenGL's most recent revision contains.
*sigh* - don't feed the trolls...
There's pretty much feature parity between Direct3D in DirectX 10 and Open GL. Advanced shaders, advanced extensions - they are all in there. Now you may be looking at an OpenGL driver from a manufacturer who doesn't keep up to the spec, but the NVidia OpenGL implementation can access every part of the hardware that Direct3D does.
Now, DirectX covers keyboard handling, spatial sound management and other stuff beyond the actual display. Other platforms tend to use other libraries (such as libSDL) for this functionality.
Another tool which can be used to remove objects from pictures is Resynthesizer. I've used this to remove overhead wires from photos, create more sky for a panorama and clean up dust spots of scans successfully.
It can also take one image and repaint it in the style of another image, so you can take a black and white photo and a pencil sketch as inputs and end up with your photo rendered using parts of the pencil image which are similar in form.
Another trick it can pull is creating tileable textures from any image. Sometimes the results are a little surprising if you start off with a picture of people at a party but they are totally seamless.
It comes as a GIMP plugin and is easy to use if you are used to the GIMP.
Yes Windows has issues. But in my old Windows 2000 box, with a Tyan Trinity S1598 based box, K6-III 450 and 512MB of memory, I was regularly getting multi-month uptimes. And I even gamed a bit, though not much.
I'd be throwing my Linux boxes in the bin if they didn't have multi-month uptimes. In fact, I'd be tempted to tip them if they showed signs of instability caused by anything other than power fluctuations in my area. The only box I have which does not have uptimes > 100 days is my laptop, which I power down at night. The rest run from kernel update to kernel update (or power outage) without hangs, crashes or hiccups. My AMD64 box is used for 3D gaming (DropTeam, Quake 4) most nights and still pounds out the uptimes into the hundred+ days or so.
Stability is not negotiable for me. For me, Linux fulfills that. Every Windows system I have had sooner or later either gets into an unusable state, usually hanging, failing to associate with the network or the performance degrades, despite closing all the user apps. For Windows XP, that point is around 7 - 10 days of use. I remember better luck with Windows NT (3-8 weeks, depending) and didn't play much with Windows 2000.
Slashdot Mirror
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (the product) is free. That is why CentOS exists. The only cost to using CentOS is having employees who can set it up and keep it running.
but afaict redhat tries to hide the fact this option exists. Afaict they make the projects rebuild from source and strip out all the identity of the OS. They also make them replace the update mechanism but that is a fairly minor point.
RedHat(TM) is a trademarked name. That is the reason that the CentOS folks must remove the RedHat trademark from the SRPMS before redistributing them. Everything that RedHat has released is GPL or LGPL-licensed - if they were concerned about hiding the source code, that would be a particularly bizarre choice! RedHat can not continue to use the RedHat trademark if they do not protect its use, such being the requirements of trademark law.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I often am forced to listen to my music in either a loud environment or in an area where I must keep the music volume as low as possible. A wide dynamic range means that in order to hear the quiet parts, the louder parts are unacceptably loud.
So process it yourself - there are plenty of dynamic compression filters out there that you can run your music through. If the source material has not been messed around with and is an accurate representation of the original, you can mess it up however you like. However, if the mastering process has done this for you, you can't reverse the process.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
The new texture technology that JC is demonstrating is fascinating but it really is a neat new twist on a much older trick - using tile-able textures to build up a much larger map, and then using overlays to take it further and make it less predictable.
The basic landscape is built up at some reasonable level of detail for distance shots, with whatever geometry the modeller wants. Then the new techniques are applied to any polygon, anywhere. From the videos, there is a part where JC takes a texture, paints it on either side of the track. At this point, you can see that it really is square tiles - maybe 128x128 in the demo but I suspect it is arbitrary. Then these tiles are blended against other tiles and it's no longer so obvious what is going on. Then the overlays are painted on over the top to provide unique details.
Now - the backend technology to cache all of these separate layers together must be pretty impressive to ensure that the view doesn't stutter as you pan the view. Using this level of organisation for the textures is akin to a smart compression routine, except you are identifying common elements right up front in the form of texture tiles, rather than trying to do it after the fact.
I'd pay serious money to get my hands on the level editors for this tech - but I don't think my salary will stretch to a ID license fee.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I think you should re-read your post.
Frankenfood? You mean food that doesn't need to be sprayed with (as much) pesticide because it's biologically resistant to insects?Maybe you were referring to some other GM-modification but Roundup Ready crops are engineered to be more resistant to Roundup herbicide, allowing it to be sprayed more heavily than would otherwise be the case. Roundup Ready is a classic example of monopoly-bundling leveraging one product to increase sales of another. Roundup is also a key ingredient on the massively successful *cough* "War on drugs" as it is purchased in quantity by the US Government for spraying on South American fields to destroy the Coca crops.
And if that didn't scare you enough, consider this. 13 states have already reported Glyphosate-resistance in weeds. How long do you think it will take for the Coca crops to become Glyphosate-resistant? Glyphosate has only been available for 30 years, so any resistance is a new phenomenon.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
If it's a text document, then you might be able to parse the OOXML regardless and understand most of the formatting. If it's a spreadsheet, then many of the parts of the OOXML spec are ALSO binary LOBs and you are no better off. If it's something that OOXML doesn't support, you are out of luck. At least ODF provides ways to package other formats along with itself in a transparent fashion, is completely documented and supported by multiple vendors.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
That's one of those trade-off scenarios. Invest the time to learn what Emacs can do for you now and be more productive later or use an "Icon factory" IDE which gives you a pretty decent collection of tools but is ultimately limited in what it can do for you.
I personally think that the balance depends on whether either you or some colleague likes coding in LISP - if you have someone on your team who knows Emacs backwards, your team will be able to package all that Emacs can provide in an easy-to-consume setup. If not, then you may still find Emacs a reasonably capable editor but you won't be exposed to Emacs in its most effective form.
I support Emacs for a fair number of developers so you could say I am biased!
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Obviously you are unaware that Emacs can do all these things for you as well - such as the Semantic libraries for understanding your code, Speedbar for navigating your code and the fabulous JDEE environment with the beanshell backend that speeds up your Java compiling sessions.
The same is true for C/C++ development - in cases where Emacs does not provide direct lookup, I have tools like Cscope integrated into my Emacs sessions for speedy code traversal. Version control is built right into the Emacs sessions, including awareness of the current state of a file. Simple things like quick-access menus allowing you to jump directly to a function and the almost infinitely configurable "expand this thing" (hippie-expand!).
Remember - there is very little that Emacs can't do. You are limited only by your knowledge of how to expand what it provides by default.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I think you'd find that there are other areas where Linux is well ahead of Windows, beyond filesystem support and research. The following are just the ones right off the top of my head:
I'm sure there'll be more to add to this list. There are good comparisons around.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
It looks like some 40% of the Linux kernel is GPL v2 or later.
How much Linux kernel code is GPL v2 only?
That is not to suggest that parts of the kernel can be distributed under the GPL v3. That would require some careful study of the licenses to work out whether it would be consider just an aggregation of parts.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I have NoScript updating automatically so it's tracking whatever releases I'm getting from mozilla.org. Any attempt to close an open window fires leak monitor reports containing a javascript object which references information that looks like Noscript data - lists of whitelisted and blacklisted sites, etc. I can reliably reproduce this on my x86 laptop (work machine) but I can't send bug reports from that machine. I see that there is a new Leak monitor for x86_64 platforms so I'll try and repro the leak on my personal box using the same set of extensions.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
If you have NoScript installed, it leaks memory every time you close a window (no leak when closing a tab though). There are other examples of Extensions chewing memory up - try installing Leak Monitor to find out whether you have Javascript objects getting orphaned.
However, having NoScript installed seriously reduces the amount of Javascript running so it tends to be a net win on memory usage.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I keep hearing about Word's outline view - what does it offer that OpenOffice.org's Navigator does not offer? I can move sections around, demote and promote sections, quickly jump to a section/table/picture in the document from the Navigator. Please enlighten me!
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
If you need help understanding the SE Linux audit messages, you should install SE Troubleshoot
[root@branch ~]# which setroubleshootd /usr/sbin/setroubleshootd
[root@branch ~]# rpm -qf /usr/sbin/setroubleshootd
setroubleshoot-1.7.1-1.fc6
This gives you some help with analysing the failed action. I won't say it taught me a huge amount but it is a step in the right direction.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
The point of Free Software (and to a lesser extent Open Source) is to achieve source code compatability. Binary compatability is a "nice to have" but it is not essential to allow any user to benefit from the software.
That's not to say that you may save money in the long term by having a provider package your software for you and charge you a fee for doing so - but that's not the point of Free Software.
All software costs. Sometimes F/OSS costs more, sometimes less. Sometimes commercial software is a better deal than F/OSS. There's room in the ecosystem for lots of business models.F/OSS costs you NOTHING to acquire. Whatever happens after that, you still have the software, the opportunity to compile it, change it and distribute it further. If your time is money, then the time spent compiling the software is a cost "to you". If I compile software in the evening at home, there is no financial cost to me.
Microsoft and other commercial vendors love to beat the ROI drum, because they can't win against FOSS on the acquirement cost basis. Funnily enough, only a minority of companies use the ROI metric for their future planning (I think the last figure I saw floating around CIO-type magazines was 31%); the reason is simple enough - most companies are concentrating on solving problems and improving productivity. If existing FOSS solutions fit a companies needs, they will use it. And yes - they may well pay Redhat or Canonical to service those FOSS solutions.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Big box retailers are interested in volume and marginal pricing. The range of music they pick, the bands that get prominent shelf space and the albums that appear in the advertising will all be driven by the bottom line.
No - if we want diverse musical forms to survive the big box stores, it will be despite them, not because of them.
Small dealers will help - but at best they can only provide small niche markets. Internet sites tied to such retailers may help a lot. For me though, the future of diverse music depends on the internet providing the resources to find out about less known bands and albums and hear stuff I can't hear on the radio. But right now, the Internet Radio station is on the brink of an extinction event. So support Save Net Radio before it really is too late.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
A: When the EU space programs drops a Nuke on Redmond. That might be considered excessive.
What does it mean for IBM (which is a corporation) to have an opinion?
I'm not an official mouthpiece of IBM when I'm posting on Slashdot! It's just a disclaimer (more for IBM's benefit than for mine).
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
You are overlooking the way that most Joe Linux users get their updates - automatically. When security flaws are found and patches are delivered, you can guarantee that the people who package that software at Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian and other major distributions are aware of the update. Those security patches will be tested and rolled out into the main update repositories, probably within 24 hours to all the mirrors worldwide. The automatic update daemon on Joe User's modern Linux distro will be downloading the update within the next 24 hours or sooner. From security patch being announced to patched home computer in 48 hours in the worst-case scenario.
One of the nicest things about the distro's automatic updates is that this applies to ALL packages in the distro. I don't need to worry about Apache needing it's own updater. So no - the average Joe running Linux does not suffer - he gets informed about the update or even has it applied without manual intervention depending on the settings. Joe benefits and so does the community who recognise that fixing security flaws promptly is key.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I have to stop you there. Turnaround on DB2 developers, at least in my area, is almost zero. Most of the developers around me who have 5 or more years experience, some having been with the project for 20 plus years.
Now we do hire a fair number of IIP students each year for 16 months sessions - maybe you were surrounded by students.
In my experience, DB2 concentrates on functionality, stability and performance. Code-size is tackled when it impacts one of those areas and is otherwise unimportant.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I work on a C/C++ code base that is a lot bigger than 500k lines. I've worked with results produced by Klocwork and also with the output from Reasoning. Both of these services/packages will cost you money but both provide good insight into your code. The commercial packages generally produce more focused results with less false-positives, so while they cost you money up front, your developers will spend less time weeding out the noise.
If paying money out for a commercial package isn't your thing, don't overlook the old standby lint or splint, an updated successor.
Also well worth investigating to see how your code is actually running is Valgrind and it's associated tools. The Valgrind toolkit will give you a good idea where memory is being leaked, where variables and pointers are going off the rails. Valgrind hooks into a running program, so it's important to make sure that you test all the corners of the codebase if you go this route.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
No - the kernel is currently distributed under GPL v2 BUT it is not entirely comprised of GPL v2 only code. 40% of the Linux kernel has the "or later versions" message intact and can be trivially relicensed.
How much of the Linux kernel is GPLv2?
GPL v2 and GPL v3 code can be compiled into a single entity without issue. What you can't do is take some GPL v2 code, rewrite part of it and call it GPL v3. Aggregation of code has never been an issue.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
*sigh* - don't feed the trolls...
There's pretty much feature parity between Direct3D in DirectX 10 and Open GL. Advanced shaders, advanced extensions - they are all in there. Now you may be looking at an OpenGL driver from a manufacturer who doesn't keep up to the spec, but the NVidia OpenGL implementation can access every part of the hardware that Direct3D does.
Now, DirectX covers keyboard handling, spatial sound management and other stuff beyond the actual display. Other platforms tend to use other libraries (such as libSDL) for this functionality.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
It can also take one image and repaint it in the style of another image, so you can take a black and white photo and a pencil sketch as inputs and end up with your photo rendered using parts of the pencil image which are similar in form.
Another trick it can pull is creating tileable textures from any image. Sometimes the results are a little surprising if you start off with a picture of people at a party but they are totally seamless.
It comes as a GIMP plugin and is easy to use if you are used to the GIMP.
Did I miss the press release or isn't Defcon still Windows-only?
You missed the press release. Download the beta (direct link) or place an order with TuxGames.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
I'd be throwing my Linux boxes in the bin if they didn't have multi-month uptimes. In fact, I'd be tempted to tip them if they showed signs of instability caused by anything other than power fluctuations in my area. The only box I have which does not have uptimes > 100 days is my laptop, which I power down at night. The rest run from kernel update to kernel update (or power outage) without hangs, crashes or hiccups. My AMD64 box is used for 3D gaming (DropTeam, Quake 4) most nights and still pounds out the uptimes into the hundred+ days or so.
Stability is not negotiable for me. For me, Linux fulfills that. Every Windows system I have had sooner or later either gets into an unusable state, usually hanging, failing to associate with the network or the performance degrades, despite closing all the user apps. For Windows XP, that point is around 7 - 10 days of use. I remember better luck with Windows NT (3-8 weeks, depending) and didn't play much with Windows 2000.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes