What this does is to thread all replies to a message, Usenet style. There are commands to break apart (for people who send a message to a mailing list by replying to a random other message) and join together (for people with bad email clients) threads.
The sort_aux tells Mutt "OK, once you've threaded everything, sort the the messages by using the date received of the top level message in each thread." If you're one of those lunatics that doesn't like a threaded view, you can just use 'set sort="date-received"' instead.
The only time this is a problem is when your email server goes down and there are a batch of messages from a mailing list that arrive in reverse order. But then, if they all happen to be in the same thread, they're sorted by who's replying to what, so it ends up OK.
I went from Netscape mail to PINE to Mutt, and I don't see any reason to use anything else.
Before anyone jumps in with how artists who are unsigned or on small labels suck...all musicians of substance start out that way. Only those that are created for commercial purposes (Britney, N'Sync, etc.) start out with a bang. I saw OK go open for They Might Be Giants a few times over the course of a year (and also play a local tiny bar, the Ottobar) and bought their self-released 3-song CD before they were ever signed to Capital. Radiohead got their start on college radio. The Butthole Surfers had eleven albums before they hit commercial radio.
Blah, blah, blah...you get the point. Basically, I know that less mainstream artists aren't in it for the money, because they don't have that much money. Most of them aren't as motivated to come up with something bland that the majority of the CD buying population is guaranteed to enjoy.
If the people who allegedly want to sell you the music that you currently like are trying to make it as difficult as possible for you to enjoy said music, maybe it's time to go somewhere else.
You see, smaller bands and record labels can't afford to intentionally alienate listeners. They're trying as hard as they can to get their music heard, and they don't have a mighty fortress of cash to sustain them through the sort of foolishness in which companies such as BMG are engaging.
Check out http://www.cmj.com for what's current in college radio. Listen to a non-mainstream station. Listen to MY station:) Find your local independent music store; most cities will have at least one.
For the record, I get 10-15 or so CDs a week from various small labels (and distributors who work with labels too small to distribute their own stuff). I've NEVER had a problem with copy protection. I'ver certainly never gotten a copy protected CD from an unsigned band that I saw at a tiny bar.
It's not the same as "cool with the padlocks", i.e. willing to accept them. "...cool to the virtual padlocks..." means that they are giving the padlocks a so-so reception; they are only slightly interested in the technology because of the padlocks. Think cool as in lukewarm, not cool as in "Cool, man!"
>In a few years there will be no analogue speakers...
Er...how were you planning on hearing the sound, then? At some point, the digital signal must be transformed into waves passing through the air in order to by heard by the human ear. Unless the RIAA somehow persuades people to all get digital jacks implanted in themselves (as far as people will let things slide, I don't think even the masses will go quite that far), there will always be analog.
The RIAA has spoken in the past about "plugging the analog hole", and trying to find ways to disallow recording of copyrighted materials, but I can't forsee this being possible in the near future (we're talking about analog recording devices that would somehow detect analog copyrighted content and only refuse to record that.)
I've still got several Win98 clients in a lab setting (the main room of my school newspaper, where all editors/writers can use them). I use Ghost to reimage them weekly, and gwalk does a fine job of changing the SID/machine name/whatever it is under Windows.
I'm interested in this, because at the moment, I need to use one of the Windows clients to generate/push images. I'd also like something that could work for MacOS (9.x, unfortunately, since we use Quark).
> The average gamer needs to run win98 or XP if they > want to have a chance of playing the latest games.
Really? Every computer in our house runs Debian, and we play lots of games. My brother is a graphic artist and sells tropical fish; he's not a computer expert, and doesn't seem to have any trouble with...
Oh, you mean you play the games on your PC? I used to do that when I ran Win98 (right before + after it came out). That was hellish. Thanks, Sony, Sega, and Nintendo!
In all seriousness, if you "just want to play games", it's not worth your time to mess around with a PC for doing so. Two games sometimes want different versions of a video driver. The hardware is expensive (I'll bet your video card cost more than our GameCube, didn't it?). You have to deal with booting (and crashing). I'm happy to run NES emulators on my machine (The Guardian Legend is just fun sometimes, OK?) and simple games like liquidwar, but all of the games that interest me (such as Grandia Extreme) are on the consoles anyway.
I use Linux on my desktop for accomplishing things, since I think it's the OS best suited for doing so. I use consoles to play games for the same reason.
Sorry, I don't understand; how is MySQL "more integrated" with PHP than PostgreSQL? I've used PHP quite a bit with both of them, and I have no idea what you mean.
Additionally, both PostgreSQL and MySQL have very good documentation; I have always been able to find the answers I need relatively easily in either.
On the other hand, I've actually taken classes on databases and know/care about things like normalisation, referential integrity, etc. I still use MySQL in one project where these don't quite apply (because it's so simple), but even for the Web site for our newspaper, I need what PostgreSQL does in order for it to have a good internal design. Yes, you can make up for the shortcomings of your database by doing more work in the external code (which is what the MySQL manual suggests, though not in those words), but why?
StrongARM and NetBSD were pretty bad examples to pick to support your claims. ARM processors are used in all sorts of embedded devices, and I believe there are even laptops with them. There are certainly far more people using StrongARM than IA-64 at the moment.
As for NetBSD:
http://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/
Remember: people are doing this work because it is relevant and interesting to them. You can't reasonably draw conclusions that if they were suddenly not doing this work anymore, they'd be working on things that you thought were more important. Maybe they'd give up and become chefs! You have no idea.
>the problem is that the next apt-get upgrade will
> overwrite your "customized" package.
So tell it not to do that. There are at least two methods of marking a package to not be upgraded; one involves using dselect (GACK; when will we kill this beast?), and one involves exporting the package database, editing, and re-importing. Perhaps there are others; I haven't had to do this in a while, so I don't remember the exact procedure, but it's there.
Maybe this will clear up a few things. Debian is supporting these architectures because no other Linux distribution does. As the message states, XFree doesn't even support as many architectures as Debian; the Debian project is how users of those architectures get XFree86 at all.
Maybe you feel that they are not important, but I think that the people using them would disagree. Obviously, there are enough people who use each platform to do the work of porting packages to it. What makes you think that they would turn around and do some other, "more important" work instead if support for their architecture was dropped?
[And isn't this why most hardware manufacturers don't release Linux drivers? Because "most people" use Windows?]
Debian exists as it is for many reasons, and there is nothing else like it. It is not going to change into your idea of the perfect distribution. However, there are several distributions which are addressing some of the "problems" _you_ (and others) have with Debian. Most of these amount to pretty graphical installers and a few other things, and are only for x86. Since that seems to be what you want, why don't you try one of them? IOW, don't complain that Mozilla doesn't have an integrated AIM client; use Netscape instead.
Yes, this is sometimes annoying. One example is Mozilla; for a very long time, we were stuck with M18 in Potato, while new releases were certainly an improvement.
I understand that there are more variables in Debian with all of its supported architectures, and it wouldn't be as easy to simply release updates of later versions as distributions such as Red Hat do; you can't be sure of the impact it will have everywhere, and backporting security fixes is safer.
Perhaps a "mostly harmless" package repository could be created. No, "testing" doesn't count, because the packages in there will often be built against new libraries, and you probably don't want to go there. But this could contain binaries for packages such as Mozilla, which gets updated a lot (1.1 really is much better than 1.0) and would be unwieldy to build from source). These binaries would be built on a potato system. Those who wanted this sort of thing could simply add another line to their apt sources file, and accept the small risk.
It's possible for someone to do this on their own; Adrian Bunk maintained a repository of several updated packages so that 2.4 series kernels could be used on Potato. But I think it would be nice to have this as an official part of Debian. It doesn't sound so great to say, "Oh, yeah, you can do that; just get the packages from $THIS_GUY".
Keep in mind that you can install from source when you really need it. For example, I was still running potato on my servers a while back when AOL broke Everybuddy. Newer versions were out, but Debian only updates packages for security reasons (which is occasionally annoying). Not a problem:
apt-get -b source everybuddy
This will grab the source and Debian modifications, apply the mods, and build a package. You can omit the -b option if you want to customise it.
Some will say that if you do this, you lose the stability provided by Debian's long release cycle, but I disagree. The rest of the system is not less stable because you installed an IM client (which shouldn't be able to hurt anything else, unless there are severe bugs in it). This is not any different than compiling it from source yourself and installing it into/usr/local (except that when you dist-upgrade, you'll get a newer version if one is available).
On the other hand, installing packages from testing or unstable may upgrade libraries, and that could affect your system as a whole (especially if it's libc6). You'll have to weigh the benefits of this if it ever comes up.
I've been using Debian for a few years now, after using Red Hat for about 1.5 years. I've really gotten to like it; server updates are easy, and running unstable on my desktop allows me to install many recent things with very little trouble (and no, unstable almost never breaks).
However, I'm not sure that listing absolutely everything should ever be a goal. Having a lot of packages is very good, because it's nice to easily have all of your choices laid out, but it can make it difficult when you're trying to choose software. I can only imagine the horror if they tried to list every CMS or MP3 jukebox (we get _buckets_ of those types of projects submitted to freshmeat, and most are very similar).
On the other hand, people shouldn't necessarily be restricted from putting new packages in Debian just because there are a lot of similar projects, because everyone has different needs. It's a difficult problem, and I'm not sure how/if the project currently deals with it (though most everything I've seen in there seems to be of reasonable quality).
And I don't mean Record and Tape Traders (although they are a bit better than most chains and mega marts). Here in Baltimore, MD we have Soundgarden (not related to the band); I would guess that most cities of moderate size have a store which mainly caters to less mainstream music. If you can't find one in your area, you'll have to order online, but try checking around; if you've got a local college radio station, ask them where they buy their music.
Since about Mozilla 9.9, online banking at allfirst.com has worked quite well. All I do with it is to check my account balances and histories, and transfer money between checking and savings, so maybe there are some other features that don't work, but it's fine for me. You can download stuff in MS Excel format, CSV, PDF, etc.; it's pretty good.
Now, as far as banks go, Allfirst isn't the best in the world, but since I don't exactly have piles of money from my lowly freshmeat contractor and college newspaper jobs, it'll do for the present:)
I can live with that. I run Debian (unstable for my _home_ desktop, stable for all production servers), but I also run Mozilla which, according to mozilla.org, is not intended for the end user:)
Sure, I buy music. For example, last night I went to a relatively new bar/music place in Baltimore called The Talking Head. My friend Matt Dahl was playing, as well as a band called Soltero who had been recommended to me by another band I like (The Beatings, when I saw them about 2 weeks ago, also at The Talking Head).
Anyway, I liked Soltero, and bought their CD for $10. I don't buy so very much music, since I'm constantly under a flood of music to review for the radio station, but when I do buy music, it's always like this: from bands that are going out there, writing great songs, and driving around in their own cars to play them for small crowds in strange cities. They obviously care about what they're doing, and it shows in the music. They get all of my $10, and they deserve it.
Oh, and please don't blame the terrible Web page with its silly "?theurl" crap and Win 3.1 Hot Dog Theme look on me; I only write the music database software, review music, and have a show. I am in no way responsible for that Web site (though I did write the musical philosophy), and have often protested it:)
Well, there's...um...us. We don't exclusively play non-RIAA music, because we're a small station at a diverse university, and we wouldn't be able to get enough DJs if we restricted our format that much (you can see the gaps in our schedule as it is, and thanks to the RIAA, we can't play music unattended during those gaps anymore [we're working on a way around this]).
But I think a lot of the DJs we have _do_ have good shows, and we mostly play music from smaller labels, many of whom are not affiliated with the RIAA. Yes, we also play stuff like okgo, but:
1) They're good 2) I saw them play for over a year before they were even signed to Capital, so I still have trouble thinking of them as "mainstream":)
IOW, we're not going to stop playing Tool and Radiohead just because commercial radio figured out that they're good, but we are going to have smaller bands and labels as our main focus. You can check out an expanded version of our musical philosophy here:
http://wmbc.umbc.edu/?theurl=purpose.html
I'm also working on an open source package for radio stations; right now, it keeps a database of CDs, allows DJs to enter their spins using a Web interface, and does some statistics (Top 30 for submitting to CMJ, overview of spins viewable as a list or schedule, etc.). All I need to do is tie this into some icecast log analysis for RIAA tracking purposes, and I hope to have something (after some cleanup of yucky code) that will help out other stations. Yes, we're using it now; help would not be unwelcome:)
(We don't currently have enough listeners to go above the minimum fee for the data we've been tracking [only started tracking it with RIAA accuracy as of this semester], so that's why the tie in with icecast isn't yet complete.)
What we certainly don't need is the McDonalds of radio, where everything is exactly the same across the whole country. As Mr. Pibb pointed out, with ClearChannel, most radio stations play almost exactly the same thing already.
We need more small, community-based radio stations that are actually connected with and serve the people in their area. Not something that broadcasts a bland national inoffensive monoculture, and not dozens of radio stations owned by the same company.
You might think by my signature that I'm a bit biased here, and I am:). But I wouldn't be involved if I didn't think I were right...or something like that...
The ability of your Mom to install XP and not call you about dependency problems is not related to Linux's ability to "play in the business world." This is because your mom is not (as things currently stand) going to be hired as a network administrator.
Businesses don't want it to be easy for their employees to install software or operating systems. Employees should not be doing these things; it will only make the job of the admin more difficult.
Linux may not be ready for the "typical" home user, but it has proven a success in business and educational settings, and can be made easier to use than Windows in those cases. I use it at the college newspaper and radio station.
Just to cite one example, the radio station has a playlist computer running Debian Woody. Most DJs do not even care that it is running Debian woody, because it starts up X and mozilla and keeps them running (using daemontools), and they basically use it as a Web kiosk to a custom PHP/SQL playlist application. If this machine were running Windows, I would have to worry about viruses and people installing all sorts of crap on it. I would also have to worry about it crashing, and couldn't use it for the lo-fi MP3 stream or the webcam.
Yes, it is news. No, auto makers such as BMW and Volkswagen were not releasing the diagnostic codes. This made it impossible for non-dealer repair shops to diagnose a variety of problems on newer model cars.
My father is the supervisor of the auto shop at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and he was very concerned about this, as they certainly don't want to have to outsource any repairs on their fleet. These days, much of the work in diagnosing car problems involves hooking up a computer to the car and asking the car's computer, "OK, what's not normal?". It's not quite that simple; you still have to know what you're doing in order to figure out what's wrong (not like a dialog box pops up and says, "Mass air flow sensor bad. Replace? Y/N).
Anyway, I spoke to my father today to make sure he had seen this article, and he said that basically the auto makers have said, "We promise to release the specs if you don't pass a law saying we have to do so." He doesn't really trust them, but is hopeful, and will wait and see.
Slashdot Mirror
As usual
From my configuration file:
set sort="threads"
set sort_aux="date-received"
What this does is to thread all replies to a message, Usenet style. There are commands to break apart (for people who send a message to a mailing list by replying to a random other message) and join together (for people with bad email clients) threads.
The sort_aux tells Mutt "OK, once you've threaded everything, sort the the messages by using the date received of the top level message in each thread." If you're one of those lunatics that doesn't like a threaded view, you can just use 'set sort="date-received"' instead.
The only time this is a problem is when your email server goes down and there are a batch of messages from a mailing list that arrive in reverse order. But then, if they all happen to be in the same thread, they're sorted by who's replying to what, so it ends up OK.
I went from Netscape mail to PINE to Mutt, and I don't see any reason to use anything else.
Before anyone jumps in with how artists who are unsigned or on small labels suck...all musicians of substance start out that way. Only those that are created for commercial purposes (Britney, N'Sync, etc.) start out with a bang. I saw OK go open for They Might Be Giants a few times over the course of a year (and also play a local tiny bar, the Ottobar) and bought their self-released 3-song CD before they were ever signed to Capital. Radiohead got their start on college radio. The Butthole Surfers had eleven albums before they hit commercial radio.
Blah, blah, blah...you get the point. Basically, I know that less mainstream artists aren't in it for the money, because they don't have that much money. Most of them aren't as motivated to come up with something bland that the majority of the CD buying population is guaranteed to enjoy.
Try it; I think you'll like it.
If the people who allegedly want to sell you the music that you currently like are trying to make it as difficult as possible for you to enjoy said music, maybe it's time to go somewhere else.
You see, smaller bands and record labels can't afford to intentionally alienate listeners. They're trying as hard as they can to get their music heard, and they don't have a mighty fortress of cash to sustain them through the sort of foolishness in which companies such as BMG are engaging.
Check out http://www.cmj.com for what's current in college radio. Listen to a non-mainstream station. Listen to MY station
For the record, I get 10-15 or so CDs a week from various small labels (and distributors who work with labels too small to distribute their own stuff). I've NEVER had a problem with copy protection. I'ver certainly never gotten a copy protected CD from an unsigned band that I saw at a tiny bar.
It's not the same as "cool with the padlocks", i.e. willing to accept them. "...cool to the virtual padlocks..." means that they are giving the padlocks a so-so reception; they are only slightly interested in the technology because of the padlocks. Think cool as in lukewarm, not cool as in "Cool, man!"
>In a few years there will be no analogue speakers...
Er...how were you planning on hearing the sound, then? At some point, the digital signal must be transformed into waves passing through the air in order to by heard by the human ear. Unless the RIAA somehow persuades people to all get digital jacks implanted in themselves (as far as people will let things slide, I don't think even the masses will go quite that far), there will always be analog.
The RIAA has spoken in the past about "plugging the analog hole", and trying to find ways to disallow recording of copyrighted materials, but I can't forsee this being possible in the near future (we're talking about analog recording devices that would somehow detect analog copyrighted content and only refuse to record that.)
I've still got several Win98 clients in a lab setting (the main room of my school newspaper, where all editors/writers can use them). I use Ghost to reimage them weekly, and gwalk does a fine job of changing the SID/machine name/whatever it is under Windows.
I'm interested in this, because at the moment, I need to use one of the Windows clients to generate/push images. I'd also like something that could work for MacOS (9.x, unfortunately, since we use Quark).
> The average gamer needs to run win98 or XP if they
> want to have a chance of playing the latest games.
Really? Every computer in our house runs Debian, and we play lots of games. My brother is a graphic artist and sells tropical fish; he's not a computer expert, and doesn't seem to have any trouble with...
Oh, you mean you play the games on your PC? I used to do that when I ran Win98 (right before + after it came out). That was hellish. Thanks, Sony, Sega, and Nintendo!
In all seriousness, if you "just want to play games", it's not worth your time to mess around with a PC for doing so. Two games sometimes want different versions of a video driver. The hardware is expensive (I'll bet your video card cost more than our GameCube, didn't it?). You have to deal with booting (and crashing). I'm happy to run NES emulators on my machine (The Guardian Legend is just fun sometimes, OK?) and simple games like liquidwar, but all of the games that interest me (such as Grandia Extreme) are on the consoles anyway.
I use Linux on my desktop for accomplishing things, since I think it's the OS best suited for doing so. I use consoles to play games for the same reason.
Sorry, I don't understand; how is MySQL "more integrated" with PHP than PostgreSQL? I've used PHP quite a bit with both of them, and I have no idea what you mean.
Additionally, both PostgreSQL and MySQL have very good documentation; I have always been able to find the answers I need relatively easily in either.
On the other hand, I've actually taken classes on databases and know/care about things like normalisation, referential integrity, etc. I still use MySQL in one project where these don't quite apply (because it's so simple), but even for the Web site for our newspaper, I need what PostgreSQL does in order for it to have a good internal design. Yes, you can make up for the shortcomings of your database by doing more work in the external code (which is what the MySQL manual suggests, though not in those words), but why?
StrongARM and NetBSD were pretty bad examples to pick to support your claims. ARM processors are used in all sorts of embedded devices, and I believe there are even laptops with them. There are certainly far more people using StrongARM than IA-64 at the moment.
As for NetBSD:
http://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/
Remember: people are doing this work because it is relevant and interesting to them. You can't reasonably draw conclusions that if they were suddenly not doing this work anymore, they'd be working on things that you thought were more important. Maybe they'd give up and become chefs! You have no idea.
>the problem is that the next apt-get upgrade will
> overwrite your "customized" package.
So tell it not to do that. There are at least two methods of marking a package to not be upgraded; one involves using dselect (GACK; when will we kill this beast?), and one involves exporting the package database, editing, and re-importing. Perhaps there are others; I haven't had to do this in a while, so I don't remember the exact procedure, but it's there.
If you got that reference, I'm really sorry.
Anyway, please read this:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/debia
Maybe this will clear up a few things. Debian is supporting these architectures because no other Linux distribution does. As the message states, XFree doesn't even support as many architectures as Debian; the Debian project is how users of those architectures get XFree86 at all.
Maybe you feel that they are not important, but I think that the people using them would disagree. Obviously, there are enough people who use each platform to do the work of porting packages to it. What makes you think that they would turn around and do some other, "more important" work instead if support for their architecture was dropped?
[And isn't this why most hardware manufacturers don't release Linux drivers? Because "most people" use Windows?]
Debian exists as it is for many reasons, and there is nothing else like it. It is not going to change into your idea of the perfect distribution. However, there are several distributions which are addressing some of the "problems" _you_ (and others) have with Debian. Most of these amount to pretty graphical installers and a few other things, and are only for x86. Since that seems to be what you want, why don't you try one of them? IOW, don't complain that Mozilla doesn't have an integrated AIM client; use Netscape instead.
Yes, this is sometimes annoying. One example is Mozilla; for a very long time, we were stuck with M18 in Potato, while new releases were certainly an improvement.
I understand that there are more variables in Debian with all of its supported architectures, and it wouldn't be as easy to simply release updates of later versions as distributions such as Red Hat do; you can't be sure of the impact it will have everywhere, and backporting security fixes is safer.
Perhaps a "mostly harmless" package repository could be created. No, "testing" doesn't count, because the packages in there will often be built against new libraries, and you probably don't want to go there. But this could contain binaries for packages such as Mozilla, which gets updated a lot (1.1 really is much better than 1.0) and would be unwieldy to build from source). These binaries would be built on a potato system. Those who wanted this sort of thing could simply add another line to their apt sources file, and accept the small risk.
It's possible for someone to do this on their own; Adrian Bunk maintained a repository of several updated packages so that 2.4 series kernels could be used on Potato. But I think it would be nice to have this as an official part of Debian. It doesn't sound so great to say, "Oh, yeah, you can do that; just get the packages from $THIS_GUY".
Keep in mind that you can install from source when you really need it. For example, I was still running potato on my servers a while back when AOL broke Everybuddy. Newer versions were out, but Debian only updates packages for security reasons (which is occasionally annoying). Not a problem:
apt-get -b source everybuddy
This will grab the source and Debian modifications, apply the mods, and build a package. You can omit the -b option if you want to customise it.
Some will say that if you do this, you lose the stability provided by Debian's long release cycle, but I disagree. The rest of the system is not less stable because you installed an IM client (which shouldn't be able to hurt anything else, unless there are severe bugs in it). This is not any different than compiling it from source yourself and installing it into
On the other hand, installing packages from testing or unstable may upgrade libraries, and that could affect your system as a whole (especially if it's libc6). You'll have to weigh the benefits of this if it ever comes up.
I've been using Debian for a few years now, after using Red Hat for about 1.5 years. I've really gotten to like it; server updates are easy, and running unstable on my desktop allows me to install many recent things with very little trouble (and no, unstable almost never breaks).
However, I'm not sure that listing absolutely everything should ever be a goal. Having a lot of packages is very good, because it's nice to easily have all of your choices laid out, but it can make it difficult when you're trying to choose software. I can only imagine the horror if they tried to list every CMS or MP3 jukebox (we get _buckets_ of those types of projects submitted to freshmeat, and most are very similar).
On the other hand, people shouldn't necessarily be restricted from putting new packages in Debian just because there are a lot of similar projects, because everyone has different needs. It's a difficult problem, and I'm not sure how/if the project currently deals with it (though most everything I've seen in there seems to be of reasonable quality).
And I don't mean Record and Tape Traders (although they are a bit better than most chains and mega marts). Here in Baltimore, MD we have Soundgarden (not related to the band); I would guess that most cities of moderate size have a store which mainly caters to less mainstream music. If you can't find one in your area, you'll have to order online, but try checking around; if you've got a local college radio station, ask them where they buy their music.
Since about Mozilla 9.9, online banking at allfirst.com has worked quite well. All I do with it is to check my account balances and histories, and transfer money between checking and savings, so maybe there are some other features that don't work, but it's fine for me. You can download stuff in MS Excel format, CSV, PDF, etc.; it's pretty good.
Now, as far as banks go, Allfirst isn't the best in the world, but since I don't exactly have piles of money from my lowly freshmeat contractor and college newspaper jobs, it'll do for the present
ray@bobb:~/fm$ apt-cache search kudzu
hwdata - hardware identification / configuration data
kudzu - The Red Hat Linux hardware probing tool.
kudzu-dev - Hardware detecting library
kudzu-vesa - Hardware detecting library
So Debian has it too (along with pretty much everything else).
I can live with that. I run Debian (unstable for my _home_ desktop, stable for all production servers), but I also run Mozilla which, according to mozilla.org, is not intended for the end user
Sure, I buy music. For example, last night I went to a relatively new bar/music place in Baltimore called The Talking Head. My friend Matt Dahl was playing, as well as a band called Soltero who had been recommended to me by another band I like (The Beatings, when I saw them about 2 weeks ago, also at The Talking Head).
Anyway, I liked Soltero, and bought their CD for $10. I don't buy so very much music, since I'm constantly under a flood of music to review for the radio station, but when I do buy music, it's always like this: from bands that are going out there, writing great songs, and driving around in their own cars to play them for small crowds in strange cities. They obviously care about what they're doing, and it shows in the music. They get all of my $10, and they deserve it.
Oh, and please don't blame the terrible Web page with its silly "?theurl" crap and Win 3.1 Hot Dog Theme look on me; I only write the music database software, review music, and have a show. I am in no way responsible for that Web site (though I did write the musical philosophy), and have often protested it
Well, there's...um...us. We don't exclusively play non-RIAA music, because we're a small station at a diverse university, and we wouldn't be able to get enough DJs if we restricted our format that much (you can see the gaps in our schedule as it is, and thanks to the RIAA, we can't play music unattended during those gaps anymore [we're working on a way around this]).
But I think a lot of the DJs we have _do_ have good shows, and we mostly play music from smaller labels, many of whom are not affiliated with the RIAA. Yes, we also play stuff like okgo, but:
1) They're good
2) I saw them play for over a year before they were even signed to Capital, so I still have trouble thinking of them as "mainstream"
IOW, we're not going to stop playing Tool and Radiohead just because commercial radio figured out that they're good, but we are going to have smaller bands and labels as our main focus. You can check out an expanded version of our musical philosophy here:
http://wmbc.umbc.edu/?theurl=purpose.html
I'm also working on an open source package for radio stations; right now, it keeps a database of CDs, allows DJs to enter their spins using a Web interface, and does some statistics (Top 30 for submitting to CMJ, overview of spins viewable as a list or schedule, etc.). All I need to do is tie this into some icecast log analysis for RIAA tracking purposes, and I hope to have something (after some cleanup of yucky code) that will help out other stations. Yes, we're using it now; help would not be unwelcome
(We don't currently have enough listeners to go above the minimum fee for the data we've been tracking [only started tracking it with RIAA accuracy as of this semester], so that's why the tie in with icecast isn't yet complete.)
What we certainly don't need is the McDonalds of radio, where everything is exactly the same across the whole country. As Mr. Pibb pointed out, with ClearChannel, most radio stations play almost exactly the same thing already.
We need more small, community-based radio stations that are actually connected with and serve the people in their area. Not something that broadcasts a bland national inoffensive monoculture, and not dozens of radio stations owned by the same company.
You might think by my signature that I'm a bit biased here, and I am
If your server supports PHP, you can redirect people by sending them Location: headers.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.header.ph
The ability of your Mom to install XP and not call you about dependency problems is not related to Linux's ability to "play in the business world." This is because your mom is not (as things currently stand) going to be hired as a network administrator.
Businesses don't want it to be easy for their employees to install software or operating systems. Employees should not be doing these things; it will only make the job of the admin more difficult.
Linux may not be ready for the "typical" home user, but it has proven a success in business and educational settings, and can be made easier to use than Windows in those cases. I use it at the college newspaper and radio station.
Just to cite one example, the radio station has a playlist computer running Debian Woody. Most DJs do not even care that it is running Debian woody, because it starts up X and mozilla and keeps them running (using daemontools), and they basically use it as a Web kiosk to a custom PHP/SQL playlist application. If this machine were running Windows, I would have to worry about viruses and people installing all sorts of crap on it. I would also have to worry about it crashing, and couldn't use it for the lo-fi MP3 stream or the webcam.
Yes, it is news. No, auto makers such as BMW and Volkswagen were not releasing the diagnostic codes. This made it impossible for non-dealer repair shops to diagnose a variety of problems on newer model cars.
My father is the supervisor of the auto shop at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and he was very concerned about this, as they certainly don't want to have to outsource any repairs on their fleet. These days, much of the work in diagnosing car problems involves hooking up a computer to the car and asking the car's computer, "OK, what's not normal?". It's not quite that simple; you still have to know what you're doing in order to figure out what's wrong (not like a dialog box pops up and says, "Mass air flow sensor bad. Replace? Y/N).
Anyway, I spoke to my father today to make sure he had seen this article, and he said that basically the auto makers have said, "We promise to release the specs if you don't pass a law saying we have to do so." He doesn't really trust them, but is hopeful, and will wait and see.