Is this to try to show "need" for the copyrights?
on
SCO Playing Name Games
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· Score: 2, Insightful
As I recall, the much debated Asset Purchase Agreement between Novell and OldSCO specified something to the effect of only including copyrights and trademarks that were "necessary" for the unix business that oldSCO bought from Novell.
Is SCO now planning to claim that they "need" the copyrights to go with the "Unix System Labs" trademark in some bizarre argument?
That'd be fun to watch. Meanwhile, I'll be wondering if it's possible to set up a WebDAV file sharing repository that performs well enough to replace CIFS/SMB and get off of that standard entirely...
However, I think the important factor in this case isn't that "the corporation was Apple" but "the evil hackers" were Real.
Real has managed to tick off people so much in the past that they just can't let go of it, and anything that punishes them - right or wrong - MUST be good because "Real sucks".
Kinda like all the people who were cheering about the browser plugin patent suit against Microsoft. Much as I despise Microsoft corporation, I thought that for once they were in the right (even if only by coincidence) there.
Same here - I dislike Real's past (and present?) habits of hiding the 'free' players on their sites, their nagware, the software's instability...but in this case I think they're in the right - they've apparently "clean-room" reverse-engineered Apple's format to expand interoperability. Their motive may not be pure, but that's irrelevent here.
Apple's "Hackers are evil" implication kinda sets back my opinion of them as a company who'd learned to play nice with others.
This is unspeakably wrong! A company spends MILLIONS, perhaps even BILLIONS to come up with their own proprietary mechanism for exchanging files between their OWN services, and some damned upstart comes along, reverse-engineers it, and has the AUDACITY to make their OWN service interoperate with it...WITHOUT PERMISSION?!?!?
All of that money that the company spent, down the drain, because some "hackers" figured out how their carefully crafted system works! This is wrong and unfair!
Our course is clear! We must NOT support the evildoers who have committed this foul act of hacking! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT!
Well, no, I suppose not, considering the "and for other purposes" pretty much translates to "and a bunch of stuff we don't care to enumerate in the preamble where people might notice what we're really up to..."
I'll agree with you there, actually - it's not really a problem compiling up glib and GTK+ separately. Two whole libraries, no big deal. Additionally, glib and GTK+ seem to get a LOT of use outside of "Gnome", so those two don't have horrible inter-dependencies to worry about. It's when you get into the libraries that seem to be more-or-less only used for official Gnome programs that the problems seem to start.
I'm definitely in a minority here, but my biggest complaint about Gnome is the way the source code is distributed.
I've developed a perverse habit of wanting to compile large portions of my system from scratch. Gnome is a nigh-incomprehensible mass of interdependencies and it's a mess trying to figure out what the minimum set of packages is that I need for a particular package.
There IS a mistaken impression that KDE is simpler in this regard because it has "fewer" libraries, but I don't think that's true - it's just that most of the necessary libraries are collected into a much smaller set of source trees. The Gnome equivalent of QT (a single source download) is "Glib and GTK [and Pango and ATK?]". Gnome requires "Orbit" and "Gnomelibs" and "Gnomeui" and "libidl" and "gnomeprint" and "gnomeprintui" and "bonobo" and "bonoboui" and "gconf" and "gconf-editor" and "gtkhtml" and "gnomecanvas" and....probably a dozen others that I've forgotten - and if you want to compile them up "by hand" (which I often do, glutton-for-punishment that I am) you waste half of your time trying to figure out which order you need to compile them in because the interdependencies aren't obvious.
It appears that most or all of the discussion of Gnome improvements has to do with user-interface issues, though, so I don't think anyone on the Gnome side feels this is an issue.
As far as I can tell, KDE actually DOES have equivalent individual libraries to all of these...but all or nearly all of them are part of the combined "kdelibs" source package. I think this kind of coordination is why KDE is often perceived to be more cleanly "integrated" than Gnome (whether it really is or not).
I wouldn't care except that some of the individual Gnome applications really do seem to be really nice. There doesn't appear to be anything remotely approaching GnomeMeeting for KDE, for example...
All true, of course. The only real solution I can see to either uselessly demanding everyone dump all-things-Microsoft (which, I have to admit, would give me pleasure, but just plain isn't going to happen in the real world like that)...or to carefully and quietly migrate away, piece by piece, until it's all been replaced and nobody's noticed (except perhaps they may wonder why they've been getting fewer viruses and crashes lately).
Here's an example that I'm actively plotting to try - I want to get a "Windows Terminal Server" machine installed at a small office, to "standardize" the configuration, hopefully make keeping things patched and scanned a bit easier, and so on - all perfectly legitimate goals even in a "pure Windows" environment. Then, I plan to set up a couple of Linux boxen running rdesktop that can be used to log into the Windows Terminal server...shouldn't cause any problems for the users at all, but that makes for a few less Windows boxes running around the office.
If it works well, I can start adding additional features to the Linux side of the terminals. If I can manage to address legitimate end-user needs with those features, the Windows Terminal sessions will start getting less use.
If I can manage to keep that progress up, and Microsoft continues to be more interested in controlling their users than in addressing the user's actual needs and wants, eventually we'll have migrated away from Microsoft entirely, without me ever having to FORCE anyone - in fact in that case the end-users would probably be feeling more like it was THEIR idea, since the process was driven by what they wanted to accomplish.
Of course, if Microsoft ever manages to wake up and take down the metaphorical "Berlin Wall" they've built into their systems to stop their users from escaping, and they start playing better with others, the process will reach equilibrium while there is still Microsoft stuff in use, but if this actually happened, I would have a lot less reason to try to convince people to move away from the platform (are you listening, Microsoft????)
Expedia is currently the only "Automatic" download option in GPSDrive (there used to be an option to grab USGS Topo maps from "Topozone", but they complained so it's been removed - They weren't QUITE in the right projection for GPSDrive anyway). GPSDrive can work with any map image that is the right size and projection though.
I haven't managed to figure out what projection the "street" maps are in (someone on the mailing list opined that they thought it was a "Miller" projection, but nobody who knew for sure has ever been enticed to post the information in the GPSDrive mailing list that I can find - that's the reason I was asking about the Expedia map projection in an earlier post), but the "Topo" maps are "flat" (or "equirectangular" or whatever term you want to use), meaning each pixel is exactly the same latitude and longitude) ever since the NASA satellite data was added as an option to GPSDrive. Maps need to be 1280x1024, in a graphics format that GTK2 can interpret, and you need to know the "scale" and latitude/longitude of the center of the map.
There appear to be free maps of Canada available here. If you can convert them to the appropriate size and format, you can just stick them in ~/.gpsdrive, add them to the map_koord.txt file and GPSDrive will use them.
In regards to the database, I wasn't wondering specifically in the context of developing my own applications, necessarily, where I can choose whatever database backed I want, though. Oracle is obviously(?) not, literally, a drop-in replacement for MS-SQL either, since it uses a different interface entirely as far as I can tell (although many MS-SQL-using software systems have the ability to choose to use Oracle INSTEAD, but it has to be specifically configured differently for it). Good point though - where Oracle is an option as a backend, it certainly ought to drop in onto a non-MS platform and the MS-based client shouldn't even know the difference, other than potentially improved performance.
Do you know which features or functionality are commonly required by MS-SQL-using software that MySQL doesn't offer or which MySQL's implementation isn't compatible with (and might they be accepted as feature requests by MySQL AB as additions to "MS-SQL Compatibility Mode" for 4.1 or 5.0?)
Have you found that a software package which officially calls for MS-SQL through ODBC will usually run fine with PostgreSQL via ITS ODBC driver instead?
s'okay - if the posts in the "GPS and Portability" Ask Slashdot are any indication, I think people have been conditioned to assume that Ask Slashdot is a tech-support hotline - and both my question here and the asker in the GPS thread are LOUSILY worded if they had been intended as tech support type questions...
One reason that IPP (Internet Printing Protocol, which appears to be "HTTP for submitting print jobs") and WebDAV came to my mind was that I was wondering about getting file and printer sharing removed entirely from the Microsoft realm. I'm under the impression that NetBIOS isn't particularly efficient, is very "chatty" (or am I confusing it with NetBEUI?), seems to more-or-less belong to Microsoft, and as far as I know, there is no equivalent to SSL support in NetBIOS short of making everyone run over IPSec. IPP and WebDAV (at least via mod_dav, which is the only one I've so far personally tried) works great on my Linux boxen. I'm curious whether, in others' experience, MS's support for IPP and WebDAV are sufficiently standard (or can be MADE so) as to allow file sharing and printing to be entirely migrated to those and eliminate netbios entirely without causing undue grief for the current MS Windows users on the network...
Then people would have no reason to worry if/when Microsoft's NetBios "submarine patents" come out...
Every time I see someone complain about not having auto-routing I feel older.
"Kids today...when I was YOUR age, you whippersnapper, we didn't have these newfangled auto-route thingamajiggers to tell us where to go! We had to learn to READ maps! Chiseled on clay tablets! In Cuneiform! Uphill! In the snow!....and we were THANKFUL for it!"
Seriously though - GPSDrive can import maps at various resolutions (including "street level" 1:2500 or so) from Expedia already, and of course you can generate your own. I prefer to plot my routes out by reading the maps myself anyway. Sure, if you have good data an 'auto-route' program can tell you what way is shortest or sometimes what way may be fastest...but how many can tell you automatically which way "looks like the most fun"?
I'm working on interpreting the US Census bureau's "TIGER/Line" data for auto-generating my own maps for use in GPSDrive, myself. I've currently got it plotting highways over the NASA satellite photo data that GPSDrive can use on-the-fly as well. I haven't got it perfect yet, but it works and is fun.
And on that subject, for those who are miffed that the question posed covers a very broad area, here's a nice specific "tech support" question: Anybody know what sort of "projection" the Expedia street maps are in? They don't appear to be UTM, at least.
Interfaces - Serial, USB, Bluetooth
on
GPS and Portability?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Incidentally, as far as I can tell so far ALL of Serial, USB, and Bluetooth are "Serial" interfaces: The USB-based GPS units that I've actually looked at (not that there have been many) seem to be Serial units with a Serial-USB adapter integrated into it, and the Bluetooth units seem to work similarly (basically giving you a "wireless serial port"), so for the most part, it should really only be a question of your platform's support for the appropriate type of "serial" adapter. In the case of my Deluo, it's the "USB Prolific 2303 Single Port Serial Driver" in Linux.
From there, whatever software you're using just gets pointed at the "serial port" (/dev/ttyS0,/dev/ttyUSB0, etc.) that the serial, USB, or bluetooth driver makes available and away you go. Or at least, that's how it SHOULD work.
Anybody know where the CompactFlash GPS would show up in the system if I were to, for example, plug it into my linux laptop with a CompactFlash PCMCIA adapter? I've always wondered about that.
Re:What the hell is the question?
on
GPS and Portability?
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· Score: 1, Insightful
It looked like a "discussion question" wondering about people's experiences with GPS devices that connect to different systems.
Personally, I find the resulting posts for the more general "Ask Slashdot" questions more useful than the ones that accompany the more specific questions. "What GPS unit should I get for my Dell Wastium 5200XPi computer running Blurglesoft Thingiepro 12.7" has kind of a limited appeal for anyone but the asker...
Low-cost Deluo USB/Serial GPS...
on
GPS and Portability?
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· Score: 3, Informative
I've got a Deluo USB GPS that works great on my Linux box. It's effectively a serial GPS, with a USB/Serial adapter (supported in Linux) built in. My wife has borrowed it and used it on her Mac OSX box as well, and of course, I ASSUME it works in windows since it comes with a disk of windows drivers and software.
I see they make a Bluetooth GPS now, too. If it works as well as the USB one does, I'd consider it...
We've been gradually weening a few customers from Exchange etc over the last few months and continued development of Kontact/Kolab/OpenGroupware only helps us.
Do you find a lot of user resistance or strange incompatibilities in the process? Do the "Outlook" users find that OpenGroupware works well enough/as well/better than Exchange for them?
Actually, I agree for the most part. Everywhere that I have COMPLETE control of the network environment -e.g. my own home - Microsoft have been long since entirely-migrated-from.
It seems a majority of people don't have this option, realistically, at their jobs, or perhaps at their schools. Wholesale ripping-out-and-replacing Microsoft-brand clients and servers isn't normally feasible, so the choice is either just sit and put up with it, or - my preference - find ways to replace the Microsoft-brand stuff bit by bit, without causing disruptions that are going to tick people off and make them hostile to further changes...
You're right about the moving-target problem, but if one can catch up just long enough to keep things working smoothly during migration away from the encumbered Microsoft-brand client and/or server, it may be worth it.
Yeah, yeah, I've got a bad case of parentheses poisoning...
I tried to go back to clarify what I was wondering about and ended up inserting a bunch of extra material. Here it is in shorter form:
"Hey, has anyone found out anything interesting while researching or actually trying to insert a non-Microsoft server in places where the clients expect or demand Microsoft-brand servers, or getting non Microsoft-branded clients to work with Microsoft-branded servers where the server was, as usual, designed only for Microsoft branded clients?"
The rest of it is examples of situations that I can think of and have tried to find out about. The comment encouraging non-SAMBA examples specifically was because Samba is an obvious one, and there IS plenty of information about using it to replace MS-branded services out there, so it didn't seem worthwhile leaving the discussion open to ending up focussed on why Samba is so cool (or sucky, depending on your opinion).
Just a general question for discussion. Not ALL "Ask Slashdot" submissions have to be answerable with "Just use google, and here are the step-by-step instructions", after all.
I didn't ask people "not to recommend SAMBA" - the point is, SAMBA is an already obvious example of one such replacement. It does not cover every Microsoft service, however. I just didn't think it'd be helpful for anyone to see 500+ posts that say "Dude, do some research, SAMBA already does this". What I'm asking is, how feasible is it to do something similar for the rest of MS's services?
The MS-SQL example wasn't just a question of whether or not it's possible to use ODBC. Yes, I know what ODBC is. And, yes, I've already found UnixODBC. What I want to know is, for example, if I have a commercial package that claims to require MS-SQL server, and I try pointing it at a MySQL server in "MS-SQL Compatibility" mode, how likely is it to work? I EXPECT that the answer is probably "only if it's using ODBC to connect", but in that case, has anyone tried it, and if so, does it turn out that it occasionally still doesn't work due to special quirks or capabilities provided by MS-SQL's ODBC driver that MySQL doesn't replicate?
If I, for some reason, don't WANT an entire Windows authentication framework but just want a directory server that MS Outlook will think is "ActiveDirectory", can it be done with the right schema in OpenLDAP, or is there special missing functionality?
I suggested this as a discussion question, not a "hey, I'm trying to do a single specific task, can somebody do a google search for me and give me detailed step-by-step instructions?" which seems to show up in the "Ask Slashdot" section from time to time lately. The subjects of making Microsoft clients somehow work with non-MS servers, and making MS servers interoperate with non-MS clients just happens to interest me, and I thought it might interest other people here too, so I asked...
Slashdot Mirror
As I recall, the much debated Asset Purchase Agreement between Novell and OldSCO specified something to the effect of only including copyrights and trademarks that were "necessary" for the unix business that oldSCO bought from Novell.
Is SCO now planning to claim that they "need" the copyrights to go with the "Unix System Labs" trademark in some bizarre argument?
What blasphemy is this? Next you'll be claiming they they didn't write Internet Explorer themselves either! Or that Bill Gates didn't write MS-DOS!
Sheesh, the nerve of some people...
(Couldn't resist, sorry...)
That'd be fun to watch. Meanwhile, I'll be wondering if it's possible to set up a WebDAV file sharing repository that performs well enough to replace CIFS/SMB and get off of that standard entirely...
I like it
However, I think the important factor in this case isn't that "the corporation was Apple" but "the evil hackers" were Real.
Real has managed to tick off people so much in the past that they just can't let go of it, and anything that punishes them - right or wrong - MUST be good because "Real sucks".
Kinda like all the people who were cheering about the browser plugin patent suit against Microsoft. Much as I despise Microsoft corporation, I thought that for once they were in the right (even if only by coincidence) there.
Same here - I dislike Real's past (and present?) habits of hiding the 'free' players on their sites, their nagware, the software's instability...but in this case I think they're in the right - they've apparently "clean-room" reverse-engineered Apple's format to expand interoperability. Their motive may not be pure, but that's irrelevent here.
Apple's "Hackers are evil" implication kinda sets back my opinion of them as a company who'd learned to play nice with others.
This is unspeakably wrong! A company spends MILLIONS, perhaps even BILLIONS to come up with their own proprietary mechanism for exchanging files between their OWN services, and some damned upstart comes along, reverse-engineers it, and has the AUDACITY to make their OWN service interoperate with it...WITHOUT PERMISSION?!?!?
All of that money that the company spent, down the drain, because some "hackers" figured out how their carefully crafted system works! This is wrong and unfair!
Our course is clear! We must NOT support the evildoers who have committed this foul act of hacking! BOYCOTT! BOYCOTT!
We must NEVER use SAMBA AGAIN!!!!!
Wait...who were we talking about again?....
Wait...Komodo appears to be violating a trademark! Don't all software packages that start with a K(tm) have to be for KDE????
(Yes, it's a joke, even if it's a bad one...)
Well, no, I suppose not, considering the "and for other purposes" pretty much translates to "and a bunch of stuff we don't care to enumerate in the preamble where people might notice what we're really up to..."
Thanks for the links - I may give them a try.
There is very little to be gained by building "by hand" (typingI get The Shakes, hallucinations, and bad gas if I don't get a chance to type:
CFLAGS="-O3 -march=athlon-xp -mmmx -m3dnow -msse -mfpmath=sse,387 -fexpensive-optimizations" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -march=athlon-xp -mmmx -m3dnow -msse -mfpmath=sse,387 -fexpensive-optimizations" CC=distcc CXX=distccg++ ./configure
at least 3 or 4 times a day. There's not anything WRONG with that, is there?...
I'll agree with you there, actually - it's not really a problem compiling up glib and GTK+ separately. Two whole libraries, no big deal. Additionally, glib and GTK+ seem to get a LOT of use outside of "Gnome", so those two don't have horrible inter-dependencies to worry about. It's when you get into the libraries that seem to be more-or-less only used for official Gnome programs that the problems seem to start.
I'm definitely in a minority here, but my biggest complaint about Gnome is the way the source code is distributed.
I've developed a perverse habit of wanting to compile large portions of my system from scratch. Gnome is a nigh-incomprehensible mass of interdependencies and it's a mess trying to figure out what the minimum set of packages is that I need for a particular package.
There IS a mistaken impression that KDE is simpler in this regard because it has "fewer" libraries, but I don't think that's true - it's just that most of the necessary libraries are collected into a much smaller set of source trees. The Gnome equivalent of QT (a single source download) is "Glib and GTK [and Pango and ATK?]". Gnome requires "Orbit" and "Gnomelibs" and "Gnomeui" and "libidl" and "gnomeprint" and "gnomeprintui" and "bonobo" and "bonoboui" and "gconf" and "gconf-editor" and "gtkhtml" and "gnomecanvas" and....probably a dozen others that I've forgotten - and if you want to compile them up "by hand" (which I often do, glutton-for-punishment that I am) you waste half of your time trying to figure out which order you need to compile them in because the interdependencies aren't obvious.
It appears that most or all of the discussion of Gnome improvements has to do with user-interface issues, though, so I don't think anyone on the Gnome side feels this is an issue.
As far as I can tell, KDE actually DOES have equivalent individual libraries to all of these...but all or nearly all of them are part of the combined "kdelibs" source package. I think this kind of coordination is why KDE is often perceived to be more cleanly "integrated" than Gnome (whether it really is or not).
I wouldn't care except that some of the individual Gnome applications really do seem to be really nice. There doesn't appear to be anything remotely approaching GnomeMeeting for KDE, for example...
All true, of course. The only real solution I can see to either uselessly demanding everyone dump all-things-Microsoft (which, I have to admit, would give me pleasure, but just plain isn't going to happen in the real world like that)...or to carefully and quietly migrate away, piece by piece, until it's all been replaced and nobody's noticed (except perhaps they may wonder why they've been getting fewer viruses and crashes lately).
Here's an example that I'm actively plotting to try - I want to get a "Windows Terminal Server" machine installed at a small office, to "standardize" the configuration, hopefully make keeping things patched and scanned a bit easier, and so on - all perfectly legitimate goals even in a "pure Windows" environment. Then, I plan to set up a couple of Linux boxen running rdesktop that can be used to log into the Windows Terminal server...shouldn't cause any problems for the users at all, but that makes for a few less Windows boxes running around the office.
If it works well, I can start adding additional features to the Linux side of the terminals. If I can manage to address legitimate end-user needs with those features, the Windows Terminal sessions will start getting less use.
If I can manage to keep that progress up, and Microsoft continues to be more interested in controlling their users than in addressing the user's actual needs and wants, eventually we'll have migrated away from Microsoft entirely, without me ever having to FORCE anyone - in fact in that case the end-users would probably be feeling more like it was THEIR idea, since the process was driven by what they wanted to accomplish.
Of course, if Microsoft ever manages to wake up and take down the metaphorical "Berlin Wall" they've built into their systems to stop their users from escaping, and they start playing better with others, the process will reach equilibrium while there is still Microsoft stuff in use, but if this actually happened, I would have a lot less reason to try to convince people to move away from the platform (are you listening, Microsoft????)
Expedia is currently the only "Automatic" download option in GPSDrive (there used to be an option to grab USGS Topo maps from "Topozone", but they complained so it's been removed - They weren't QUITE in the right projection for GPSDrive anyway). GPSDrive can work with any map image that is the right size and projection though.
I haven't managed to figure out what projection the "street" maps are in (someone on the mailing list opined that they thought it was a "Miller" projection, but nobody who knew for sure has ever been enticed to post the information in the GPSDrive mailing list that I can find - that's the reason I was asking about the Expedia map projection in an earlier post), but the "Topo" maps are "flat" (or "equirectangular" or whatever term you want to use), meaning each pixel is exactly the same latitude and longitude) ever since the NASA satellite data was added as an option to GPSDrive. Maps need to be 1280x1024, in a graphics format that GTK2 can interpret, and you need to know the "scale" and latitude/longitude of the center of the map.
There appear to be free maps of Canada available here. If you can convert them to the appropriate size and format, you can just stick them in ~/.gpsdrive, add them to the map_koord.txt file and GPSDrive will use them.
Nuts to that - where the heck are the PHP bindings?!?!
(Okay, yes, I AM joking. Well, mostly.)
In regards to the database, I wasn't wondering specifically in the context of developing my own applications, necessarily, where I can choose whatever database backed I want, though. Oracle is obviously(?) not, literally, a drop-in replacement for MS-SQL either, since it uses a different interface entirely as far as I can tell (although many MS-SQL-using software systems have the ability to choose to use Oracle INSTEAD, but it has to be specifically configured differently for it). Good point though - where Oracle is an option as a backend, it certainly ought to drop in onto a non-MS platform and the MS-based client shouldn't even know the difference, other than potentially improved performance.
Do you know which features or functionality are commonly required by MS-SQL-using software that MySQL doesn't offer or which MySQL's implementation isn't compatible with (and might they be accepted as feature requests by MySQL AB as additions to "MS-SQL Compatibility Mode" for 4.1 or 5.0?)
Have you found that a software package which officially calls for MS-SQL through ODBC will usually run fine with PostgreSQL via ITS ODBC driver instead?
s'okay - if the posts in the "GPS and Portability" Ask Slashdot are any indication, I think people have been conditioned to assume that Ask Slashdot is a tech-support hotline - and both my question here and the asker in the GPS thread are LOUSILY worded if they had been intended as tech support type questions...
One reason that IPP (Internet Printing Protocol, which appears to be "HTTP for submitting print jobs") and WebDAV came to my mind was that I was wondering about getting file and printer sharing removed entirely from the Microsoft realm. I'm under the impression that NetBIOS isn't particularly efficient, is very "chatty" (or am I confusing it with NetBEUI?), seems to more-or-less belong to Microsoft, and as far as I know, there is no equivalent to SSL support in NetBIOS short of making everyone run over IPSec. IPP and WebDAV (at least via mod_dav, which is the only one I've so far personally tried) works great on my Linux boxen. I'm curious whether, in others' experience, MS's support for IPP and WebDAV are sufficiently standard (or can be MADE so) as to allow file sharing and printing to be entirely migrated to those and eliminate netbios entirely without causing undue grief for the current MS Windows users on the network...
Then people would have no reason to worry if/when Microsoft's NetBios "submarine patents" come out...
Every time I see someone complain about not having auto-routing I feel older.
"Kids today...when I was YOUR age, you whippersnapper, we didn't have these newfangled auto-route thingamajiggers to tell us where to go! We had to learn to READ maps! Chiseled on clay tablets! In Cuneiform! Uphill! In the snow!....and we were THANKFUL for it!"
Seriously though - GPSDrive can import maps at various resolutions (including "street level" 1:2500 or so) from Expedia already, and of course you can generate your own. I prefer to plot my routes out by reading the maps myself anyway. Sure, if you have good data an 'auto-route' program can tell you what way is shortest or sometimes what way may be fastest...but how many can tell you automatically which way "looks like the most fun"?
I'm working on interpreting the US Census bureau's "TIGER/Line" data for auto-generating my own maps for use in GPSDrive, myself. I've currently got it plotting highways over the NASA satellite photo data that GPSDrive can use on-the-fly as well. I haven't got it perfect yet, but it works and is fun.
And on that subject, for those who are miffed that the question posed covers a very broad area, here's a nice specific "tech support" question: Anybody know what sort of "projection" the Expedia street maps are in? They don't appear to be UTM, at least.
Incidentally, as far as I can tell so far ALL of Serial, USB, and Bluetooth are "Serial" interfaces: The USB-based GPS units that I've actually looked at (not that there have been many) seem to be Serial units with a Serial-USB adapter integrated into it, and the Bluetooth units seem to work similarly (basically giving you a "wireless serial port"), so for the most part, it should really only be a question of your platform's support for the appropriate type of "serial" adapter. In the case of my Deluo, it's the "USB Prolific 2303 Single Port Serial Driver" in Linux.
From there, whatever software you're using just gets pointed at the "serial port" (/dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyUSB0, etc.) that the serial, USB, or bluetooth driver makes available and away you go. Or at least, that's how it SHOULD work.
Anybody know where the CompactFlash GPS would show up in the system if I were to, for example, plug it into my linux laptop with a CompactFlash PCMCIA adapter? I've always wondered about that.
It looked like a "discussion question" wondering about people's experiences with GPS devices that connect to different systems.
Personally, I find the resulting posts for the more general "Ask Slashdot" questions more useful than the ones that accompany the more specific questions. "What GPS unit should I get for my Dell Wastium 5200XPi computer running Blurglesoft Thingiepro 12.7" has kind of a limited appeal for anyone but the asker...
I've got a Deluo USB GPS that works great on my Linux box. It's effectively a serial GPS, with a USB/Serial adapter (supported in Linux) built in. My wife has borrowed it and used it on her Mac OSX box as well, and of course, I ASSUME it works in windows since it comes with a disk of windows drivers and software.
I see they make a Bluetooth GPS now, too. If it works as well as the USB one does, I'd consider it...
Do you find a lot of user resistance or strange incompatibilities in the process? Do the "Outlook" users find that OpenGroupware works well enough/as well/better than Exchange for them?
Actually, I agree for the most part. Everywhere that I have COMPLETE control of the network environment -e.g. my own home - Microsoft have been long since entirely-migrated-from.
It seems a majority of people don't have this option, realistically, at their jobs, or perhaps at their schools. Wholesale ripping-out-and-replacing Microsoft-brand clients and servers isn't normally feasible, so the choice is either just sit and put up with it, or - my preference - find ways to replace the Microsoft-brand stuff bit by bit, without causing disruptions that are going to tick people off and make them hostile to further changes...
You're right about the moving-target problem, but if one can catch up just long enough to keep things working smoothly during migration away from the encumbered Microsoft-brand client and/or server, it may be worth it.
Yeah, yeah, I've got a bad case of parentheses poisoning...
I tried to go back to clarify what I was wondering about and ended up inserting a bunch of extra material. Here it is in shorter form:
"Hey, has anyone found out anything interesting while researching or actually trying to insert a non-Microsoft server in places where the clients expect or demand Microsoft-brand servers, or getting non Microsoft-branded clients to work with Microsoft-branded servers where the server was, as usual, designed only for Microsoft branded clients?"
The rest of it is examples of situations that I can think of and have tried to find out about. The comment encouraging non-SAMBA examples specifically was because Samba is an obvious one, and there IS plenty of information about using it to replace MS-branded services out there, so it didn't seem worthwhile leaving the discussion open to ending up focussed on why Samba is so cool (or sucky, depending on your opinion).
Just a general question for discussion. Not ALL "Ask Slashdot" submissions have to be answerable with "Just use google, and here are the step-by-step instructions", after all.
I didn't ask people "not to recommend SAMBA" - the point is, SAMBA is an already obvious example of one such replacement. It does not cover every Microsoft service, however. I just didn't think it'd be helpful for anyone to see 500+ posts that say "Dude, do some research, SAMBA already does this". What I'm asking is, how feasible is it to do something similar for the rest of MS's services?
The MS-SQL example wasn't just a question of whether or not it's possible to use ODBC. Yes, I know what ODBC is. And, yes, I've already found UnixODBC. What I want to know is, for example, if I have a commercial package that claims to require MS-SQL server, and I try pointing it at a MySQL server in "MS-SQL Compatibility" mode, how likely is it to work? I EXPECT that the answer is probably "only if it's using ODBC to connect", but in that case, has anyone tried it, and if so, does it turn out that it occasionally still doesn't work due to special quirks or capabilities provided by MS-SQL's ODBC driver that MySQL doesn't replicate?
If I, for some reason, don't WANT an entire Windows authentication framework but just want a directory server that MS Outlook will think is "ActiveDirectory", can it be done with the right schema in OpenLDAP, or is there special missing functionality?
SharePoint's WebDAV server implementation is yet another issue, as is Microsoft's quirks in their WebDAV client driver.
I suggested this as a discussion question, not a "hey, I'm trying to do a single specific task, can somebody do a google search for me and give me detailed step-by-step instructions?" which seems to show up in the "Ask Slashdot" section from time to time lately. The subjects of making Microsoft clients somehow work with non-MS servers, and making MS servers interoperate with non-MS clients just happens to interest me, and I thought it might interest other people here too, so I asked...
Any day now, Congress will convene a "Central Committee" to handle this issue.
I keep wondering when media lobbyists are going to just give in and start calling their strategy a "Five-year plan"...
What is the LD50 for irony, anyway? The US Federal Government must be poisoning us all with it by now...
Well, yeah, LOTS of them.
It's the ones who go back IN that you have to worry about...
(Sorry, couldn't resist...)