Since he mentioned MAX, I feel that I should post a reminder that while MAX is a commercial program for MacOS, you can get jMax, the descendent, free for Linux and SGI.
You need the JDK, Swing, and libaudiofile (probably have that anyway) to compile it. Everything but Swing can be found in packages (at least, for Debian), and Swing is also free (beer).
What is it? Well, it's a programming language for music. You can either do it textually or graphically. What you do is create little modules, and link them together via "patch cables". Each module could be a slider, wah-wah, sine generator, or whatever. It also allows for time-programmed events. Once linked together, you can then "run" this "program" to produce sound.
I've only just gotten time to start with it in the past few days, but as someone who's been doing music for years, it's truly incredible to me. And I also like the fact that it's one app Linux has that Windows doesn't:)
ps: Aphex Twin uses MAX. If you haven't listened to his stuff, do so immediatly.
Many sysadmins that I know will always wipe the vendor pre-installation in favor of doing their own, just because there will always be something (partition choices, etc.) that they find to be "not quite the way they want it".
So, my question is: has anyone bought pre-loaded linux boxes from VA or other companies? How have you found the installation? Personally, none of these would do me much good because my distro of choice is Debian (just my preference!). However, lots of people blow away the factory installations of IRIX and Solaris to re-install the same thing, so I'm wondering how prevalent this will be with pre-installed Linux.
Also, I've seen where some vendors charge more for Linux instead of Windows...if this is the case, it seems silly to even offer the option. As another poster said, just give me the system with nothing on the hard disk at all, and let me do as I please. Of course, that would certainly make them difficult to support (I speak from experience building and reselling Windows PCs...some customers would want them without OSs, because they already owned Windows or something, but even in that case we'd still have to hook up a hard disk with an OS to test all the hardware).
I am posting this comment with it on Debian Potato. However, freshmeat does seem to crash it, hard.
The tar.gz releases wouldn't start on Debian, until I figured out that they were compiling against an older version of one of the libraries, and made a symlink so that it would be happy...it was.
If you want something like Golgo 13 or James Bond, except really, really cheesy and really, really 70s, watch some episodes of Lupin the 3rd. Fun stuff.
Blue Submarine #6 is also good, but in an actually good way, rather than cheese-good: part hand-drawn anime, part CG, and the 5.1 sound on the DVD (I know, I know) is AMAZING...
If you liked watching "People Under The Stairs" (not animie, terrible terrible 'horror' movie) just to make fun of it, then you should definitely watch the dubbed version of the Fist Of The North Star movie:)
For further bad taste, Ping Pong Club can't be beat.
Each of those Baby Bills would certainly be able to compete WITH EACH OTHER. However, Corel Office would still not be able to compete with any office suite that was written by the same company that wrote the closed-source OS. This is the real problem, IMHO. If you split the company horizontally, then MS#1-office would still always be the best office suite for MS#1-windows, and so on with the other two (reasons below). You would have 3 companies each doing the same thing that one company is now.
I really don't think that this would solve the problem at all. If MS#3 decided to write their own antivirus software (which sends me into gales of laughter...), then eventually that would become the most widely-used antivirus software on MS#3-windows. Why? Because it would run faster (since they know all those secret APIs), know the OS inside+out from the start, and, most importantly, MS#3 could offer it bundled with MS#3-windows. If someone already has a product which is adequate, why go out and buy (or even download for free) another?
No, I am still firmly of the opinion that MS must be split into OS + Apps companies in order for true competition to begin.
In a way, I hope that developers DON'T come out with a patch that makes "standard" kerberos capable of talking to MS Kerberos.
Why? Because this would be tantamount to accepting the Microsoft extensions, and making the standard needlessly more complicated to support. Why should MS be allowed to have a different implementation than everyone else? Why should people who want to use Kerberos in heterogenous environments be forced to deal with 2 separate interfaces?
No, I think that I would prefer to see the rest of the world adapt the new standard, and snub the MS version completely. That would be a great test of whether MS really does have monopoly power over the industry; we could just see who gave in. If it's a case of "The rest of the world" vs. "Microsoft", and the world loses...then there is definitely still a problem, and that means that MS can still do whatever they want, unchecked, and unfettered by what is good or preferable for the populance.
I do not understand your claim that Debian installed anything, especially Netscape, without asking you. This is for several reasons:
1. Even if you do submit to using their default tool, dselect, it does NOT select any packages "automatically" beyond a base set of about 30MB or so. This does not even include X.
2. Debian does not even present you with non-free packages by default; you have to tell it to do this. Netscape is definitely in the non-free section (as well as any other packages that do not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines).
3. I am not that familiar with dselect, but I know that apt will NEVER install any extra packages without confirmation (ie, dependencies for something)
4. I _wanted_ to install Netscape and found it difficult to do so, because they break it up into so many different packages (flexibility IS good...but...)
So please tell me exactly how this occurred. I've installed Debian on dozens of machines and never encountered this, and I'm very interested in knowing.
If you have compiled Apache to do dynamically loaded modules, it doesn't. That's how the Debian packages work; you have several versions of the mod_php package, each for a different database, and you install the one you want. It's easy, and it works (which is pretty much true of everything Debian; that's why I use it)
As another poster pointed out, they most likey do compile Apache themselves (which I did not find that difficult when I tried it to check out mod_ssl [wanted to use rsaref to stay legal], but then I wasn't using Mandrake). Even if you compile it yourself, with dynamic modules you can always compile more modules later without recompiling Apache.
Also, I don't understand your comment of "RH runs Postgres, not MySQL". Both of these should run on all Linux distros.
Well, first of all there's the fact that it's WEBMAIL...ugh.
Secondly, are you subscribed to any mailing lists? When the only thing on the To: line is "bugtraq@securityfocus.com", then that mail will go into the bulkmail folder along with the spam. Now, a lot of the stuff on BUGTRAQ is about Windows and doesn't concern me:), but there are also lots of important security announcements that DO concern me. I don't want those shuffled into the "junk" folder.
Also, this couldn't really work on a normal mail server (as a procmail rule, say) because you can have aliases (such as president@foo.com), and then the To: field will be that, rather than jtsidu3@foo.com. Oops.
However, you probably could filter (with procmail) any aliases/lists into their own mail folders, THEN do the described filtering. That might be useful, though not likely doable on Hotmail.
As for me, I have my own "spam-filtering" method...I have a throwaway webmail account:)
This is on my Debian system. I also do not like the fact that RedHat really likes to throw everything into/usr/bin. So, it is incorrect to say that "Linux" does this. Debian has defined things like this very specifically in their Debian Policy Manual for package maintainers, and certain others would do well to follow.
Debian also does not install telnetd, etc. (and enable them!) by default. If you haven't tried Debian GNU/Linux before, I would highly recommend it...I used to use RH, but I've been completely sold on Debian and now run it on all of my machines. Even if it were not for the directory issue, apt-get would have won me over.
This is really only true in the case of something like a Word document, which has its own little scripting language and can do something devious. If clicking on a jpeg fired up a jpeg viewer...that is not such a big deal. This is actually 1 thing that I miss from Windows (one of the ONLY things!:) However, double-clicking on something should NOT run a script without some sort of confirmation.
Of course, others have pointed out here that no matter what the confirmation dialog box says, people will just hit "OK", as in "OK, yes, whatever, just get on with it". I personally believe that they've been led to this by the excessive amount of confirmation dialogs in Windows/MacOS, but that is just my opinion:)
These sorts of things spread for 2 reasons: weaknesses in the OS is one, but the more critical one is a weakness in the users. It woulnd't matter if everyone started running Linux/BSD/whatever tomorrow, if they all ran everything as root and left a bunch of services open. How to solve this problem is probably beyond me; my only advice is to try to educate users in the most non-technical terms possible. If you can explain it to them in ways they can understand (analogies help lots!)...you know, it's not like they WANT to spread virii. Most people want to Do the Right Thing...
I'm about to start building my own car computer/stereo, and I really feel as though I must have something more flexible than a hardware MPEG decoder. For example, I am very excited about Vorbis OGG, and plan to use and support it heavily if it does turn out to be better than MP3. Why should I build a player that saves me a few $$, only to have to replace parts later when a newer, better encoding standard arrives?
I'm starting out with an M590 motherboard from PCWare. True, PCWare doesn't make the highest quality mobos in the world, but my experience is that if you get one that works, it tends to keep working. This mobo has onboard sound and video (linux supported!), and so will allow me to place it in a relatively flat case (no cards to worry about). My friend has developed a library to interface with 3-line text LCDs, so that they can display menus while selecting and audio meters while playing; it's open source (all of his stuff is), and you can find it at http://www.mobydisk.com
I was originally thinking of using hard disk storage to avoid swapping media all the time, but since hard disks of sufficient durability are not available at a reasonable size/price ration, I'm going with a CD-ROM for now. One CD-R will hold FAR more than a Rio...I can put Linux on a small solid-state hard disk, and I'm set! For power, an adaptor from car-DC to computer-AC is not terribly expensive.
But then, in some areas it's coming back together again. The new VIA/Cyrix CPU will use Socket370, and possibly later on both SSE and 3dNow! (thus making programmers' lives easier) Also, since the Alpha and AMD CPUs use the same bus, there has been talk of making them able to use the same motherboards as well. That would be interesting!
However, in a way it doesn't matter as much. Yes, I do own lots of machines and enjoy swapping parts between them. However, what with CPUs having to improve their voltage/bus attributes in order to get better performance, many times a new CPU in an older board won't be doing its best anyway. I really don't mind CPUs being tied to the board so much, so long as my PCI cards, RAM, keyboards, etc. are still interchangeable. I don't think than CPU designers should have to limit themselves to several-year-old socket technology. Plus, if we try to get them all to use the same socket, then the advantage obviously goes to the mfr. who designs it--and the chances of getting AMD, VIA, and Intel together to design something are rather slim.
If everyone behaves themselves and uses as little processor specific assembly code as possible, then we should even be OK when the CPUs start to have different instruction sets...though a lot of things will REALLY go crazy then (Sledgehammer vs. Merced vs. lots of older CPUs still hanging around).
If someone gets access to the console, they don't need root access. They can TAKE YOUR HARD DISK WITH THEM. Or boot from a floppy, unplug your machine, take an axe to it....
That's why, when this came up on BUGTRAQ, it was basically dismissed.
Sun CPUs have ID numbers of the same type...no one went after them. Though, this is probably because most home users (yes, I know the 11 people that are the exception will all reply to this post!) don't use Sun hardware:)
Also, Intel CPUs have had Processor IDs ever since they went to.25 micron. Yes, that means the Pentium MMX, and everything after it. They just didn't do anything with it until the PIII. So, if they really are ditching it, then the new CPUs will NOT be like the PII:)
As RickHunter stated above, an excellent example of this is the apt-get front-end to the Debian package system. This is now a standard package with Debian.
You provide it with a list of trusted servers, and tell it which categories of packages (main, non-free, etc.) you want to get from that server.
Every once in (insert number here), you do this:
apt-get update (refreshes list of available packages and version numbers) apt-get upgrade (Brings all packages up to the latest version. In some cases, it may decide to hold back certain packages if upgrading them might cause things to happen that you don't want to happen. If you want to upgrade these, you can do an "apt-get install ")
apt will prompt you for certain things (ie, to ask whether you want to keep your configuration files or install the new default ones), but it handles dependencies and is pretty much automatic.
Supposedly something like apt is now available for RPM, but I haven't checked.
I am a Christian myself, but I find myself not really agreeing with you at all on several points.
First, it is annoying that you seem to ignore the values espoused by all other religions. This is the type of thinking which has lead to needless "Holy Wars" between cultures who have far more in common than not.
Personally, I feel that RPGs are getting much better. The hero isn't some perfect, shining figure that always does everything right. That's not the least bit realistic, especially if the character is supposed to be a human. The "anti-hero" philosophy is very attractive to me; yes, sometimes the "hero" screws up, sometimes they make bad decisions, sometimes people die. This is life. Of course, life doesn't have Cure3 and Airships, but more realism makes for a more enjoyable game--at least, when it is played by humans. You do believe that all people are flawed sinners, correct? Why would you want to present an image of something else to children, and give them the wrong idea? As they say, nobody's perfect.
Also, you MUST be able to question your beliefs if they are true. If your beliefs are truly so strong, and you are certain of your faith, then you should feel not at all threatened by made-up religions in video games. I didn't go off and start worshipping Espers after playing zillions of hours of Final Fantasy 6, even though it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. That's ridiculous.
Sorry for going offtopic on this, but it as someone who both believes in God and loves RPGs, it really struck a nerve...
For my sequencing needs (composing for small jazz combos, etc.), I use Jazz++...it's finally to the point where it can replace Cakewalk (at home). For my tracking, SoundTracker is nice, as I was "raised" on FastTracker in DOS.
jMax, however, is something entirely new and different...and free. Just as many people have realized the cool potential of Max in the Macintosh world, let's not forget that we have something all our own (jMax is currently available on Linux and SGI)
I'm the Technology Manager for a group of student organizations at UMBC, known as Student Media. This encompasses the radio station, newspaper, and yearbook (and soon a creative arts journal).
The offices, for the most part, have Windows98 running on the machines. For the most part, this is OK...sure, every once in a while the machines crash, and sometimes they forget their network settings, but we expect this, no? Oh, and of course, the occasional macro-virus, despite the auto-updating version of McAfee. All of these machines are used by one or two people.
We also have a newsroom, which is a place where all the writers can go and write their stories. Some writers have weekly columns, and some write one story and then never show up again. The section editors use these machines, because they don't have their own offices. A similar situation exists at the radio station...all of the Music Directors share an office, because space is tight.
These multi-user machines SUCK. Despite the fact that we have them completely locked down (as far as we can), they consistently break in new and exiting ways. The only way that we can keep them at a reasonably sane level of operation is to use Ghost to wipe the hard disk each week, and replace it with a fresh installation image. The same is true of the NT machines in the university labs.
We have 3 older machines, P90s w/ 16M of RAM, which just don't run Win98 well enough. I've made them into Linux X-terminals. These machines are right next to the Windows ones in the newsroom, and get plenty of use. They have been around for a year, and do not break. This is a sharp contrast to the Windows machines. We'll not even mention the fact that people routinely download and install things like Quicktime 3, even though 4 is already on the machines (back to Windows now.)
Windows may work OK in a setting where 1 or 2 people use the machine (98 is NOT a multi-user-OS!) But in a setting like this, or in an "Internet Cafe" (I'm theorizing on that one, but they're similar enough), it's abominable.
I know that I don't have the skills to check every line of source in even the smallest programs. I wouldn't trust myself to audit ls:)
However, there are lots of people out there who CAN do this, and do. This is the critical part of open source. You personally don't have to check the source, if you can get the binaries (or code) from a source (my apologies for the English language!:) which you can trust, eg ftp.us.debian.org. The packages can also be signed so that they can be verifiable (as with, I believe, the sendmail source).
The point is that you ought to be able to trust at least your distribution vendor, and hopefully the official mirrors as well. If you can't trust ANYONE, then you have a lot of reading to do:)
If you are getting a binary/source from the author, and it is not available in package form from your vendor, then you do have to take care.
If you use Debian, it will not allow you to run Netscape as root, stating that it is for security reasons. Debian also has a warning during the install, and prompts you to create a normal user account (with "Yes" as the default).
Also, I believe that Gnome (I've seen this in RedHat too) pops up a warning to the screen if you are running as root. I run neither X as root nor Gnome (at all), so I can't confirm that this is still true.
Contrarily, not being able to log in as root from the console is probably a bad thing in some situations. However, it's good to not allow remote root logins; as my friend says, "People should have to know 2 passwords to get root".
If you're typing in vim, you can use Shift-V to go into Visual Line mode, and select stuff to copy. There are also key combos for block select, etc. but that's the one I use the most.
See that web page link next to my user name? Go ahead and follow it, if you think you can handle it. It leads to the radio station site WMBC, of UMBC campus. We play almost entirely independant music, stuff that is not on major labels like these, and that major labels would probably prefer to see go away. In fact, some people don't even listen to any bands that are on major labels. For many of these bands, their albums are not even sold in all major cities in the US, let alone in different countries...MP3 is the only way they're likely to be heard in Germany. In fact, they even voluntarily allow distribution of their songs in this format...if you can imagine!:)
The FACT is, that the mp3 format itself is not illegal. Nowhere in the story did it ever advocate _illegal_ mp3s. In fact, Jamie gave the example of being a self-promoting independant musician, and having your site stomped out (without notice! and you'll probably never know, because you think it's still up...because it is!) of view from a big chunk of the population by huge record companies. These record companies are responsible for commercial radio being as bad as it is, and they certainly don't want some upstarts coming along and trying to change the state of things...they like their money.
I personally am part of an unsigned band. Yes, I have the copyright to all of my songs, and yes, I distribute them in MP3 format. Please try and tell me how that is illegal; I'm all ears.
Can anyone comment on how well Waacom tablets are supported under Linux? My brother currently uses Photoshop, but he'll use whatever I tell him to (and he is a little odd, being an art major and hating Macs but liking DOS...) However, in order for Gimp+Linux to be a viable option for him, his 12x12 tablet needs to be supported, including pressure-sensitivity. The buttons along the top aren't all that critical, but PS _has_ to work.
Slashdot Mirror
Since he mentioned MAX, I feel that I should post a reminder that while MAX is a commercial program for MacOS, you can get jMax, the descendent, free for Linux and SGI.
:)
You need the JDK, Swing, and libaudiofile (probably have that anyway) to compile it. Everything but Swing can be found in packages (at least, for Debian), and Swing is also free (beer).
What is it? Well, it's a programming language for music. You can either do it textually or graphically. What you do is create little modules, and link them together via "patch cables". Each module could be a slider, wah-wah, sine generator, or whatever. It also allows for time-programmed events. Once linked together, you can then "run" this "program" to produce sound.
I've only just gotten time to start with it in the past few days, but as someone who's been doing music for years, it's truly incredible to me. And I also like the fact that it's one app Linux has that Windows doesn't
ps: Aphex Twin uses MAX. If you haven't listened to his stuff, do so immediatly.
Many sysadmins that I know will always wipe the vendor pre-installation in favor of doing their own, just because there will always be something (partition choices, etc.) that they find to be "not quite the way they want it".
So, my question is: has anyone bought pre-loaded linux boxes from VA or other companies? How have you found the installation? Personally, none of these would do me much good because my distro of choice is Debian (just my preference!). However, lots of people blow away the factory installations of IRIX and Solaris to re-install the same thing, so I'm wondering how prevalent this will be with pre-installed Linux.
Also, I've seen where some vendors charge more for Linux instead of Windows...if this is the case, it seems silly to even offer the option. As another poster said, just give me the system with nothing on the hard disk at all, and let me do as I please. Of course, that would certainly make them difficult to support (I speak from experience building and reselling Windows PCs...some customers would want them without OSs, because they already owned Windows or something, but even in that case we'd still have to hook up a hard disk with an OS to test all the hardware).
I am posting this comment with it on Debian Potato. However, freshmeat does seem to crash it, hard.
The tar.gz releases wouldn't start on Debian, until I figured out that they were compiling against an older version of one of the libraries, and made a symlink so that it would be happy...it was.
If you want something like Golgo 13 or James Bond, except really, really cheesy and really, really 70s, watch some episodes of Lupin the 3rd. Fun stuff.
:)
Blue Submarine #6 is also good, but in an actually good way, rather than cheese-good: part hand-drawn anime, part CG, and the 5.1 sound on the DVD (I know, I know) is AMAZING...
If you liked watching "People Under The Stairs" (not animie, terrible terrible 'horror' movie) just to make fun of it, then you should definitely watch the dubbed version of the Fist Of The North Star movie
For further bad taste, Ping Pong Club can't be beat.
Each of those Baby Bills would certainly be able to compete WITH EACH OTHER. However, Corel Office would still not be able to compete with any office suite that was written by the same company that wrote the closed-source OS. This is the real problem, IMHO. If you split the company horizontally, then MS#1-office would still always be the best office suite for MS#1-windows, and so on with the other two (reasons below). You would have 3 companies each doing the same thing that one company is now.
I really don't think that this would solve the problem at all. If MS#3 decided to write their own antivirus software (which sends me into gales of laughter...), then eventually that would become the most widely-used antivirus software on MS#3-windows. Why? Because it would run faster (since they know all those secret APIs), know the OS inside+out from the start, and, most importantly, MS#3 could offer it bundled with MS#3-windows. If someone already has a product which is adequate, why go out and buy (or even download for free) another?
No, I am still firmly of the opinion that MS must be split into OS + Apps companies in order for true competition to begin.
In a way, I hope that developers DON'T come out with a patch that makes "standard" kerberos capable of talking to MS Kerberos.
Why? Because this would be tantamount to accepting the Microsoft extensions, and making the standard needlessly more complicated to support. Why should MS be allowed to have a different implementation than everyone else? Why should people who want to use Kerberos in heterogenous environments be forced to deal with 2 separate interfaces?
No, I think that I would prefer to see the rest of the world adapt the new standard, and snub the MS version completely. That would be a great test of whether MS really does have monopoly power over the industry; we could just see who gave in. If it's a case of "The rest of the world" vs. "Microsoft", and the world loses...then there is definitely still a problem, and that means that MS can still do whatever they want, unchecked, and unfettered by what is good or preferable for the populance.
I do not understand your claim that Debian installed anything, especially Netscape, without asking you. This is for several reasons:
1. Even if you do submit to using their default tool, dselect, it does NOT select any packages "automatically" beyond a base set of about 30MB or so. This does not even include X.
2. Debian does not even present you with non-free packages by default; you have to tell it to do this. Netscape is definitely in the non-free section (as well as any other packages that do not meet the Debian Free Software Guidelines).
3. I am not that familiar with dselect, but I know that apt will NEVER install any extra packages without confirmation (ie, dependencies for something)
4. I _wanted_ to install Netscape and found it difficult to do so, because they break it up into so many different packages (flexibility IS good...but...)
So please tell me exactly how this occurred. I've installed Debian on dozens of machines and never encountered this, and I'm very interested in knowing.
"Switching requires a recompile of Apache"
No.
If you have compiled Apache to do dynamically loaded modules, it doesn't. That's how the Debian packages work; you have several versions of the mod_php package, each for a different database, and you install the one you want. It's easy, and it works (which is pretty much true of everything Debian; that's why I use it)
As another poster pointed out, they most likey do compile Apache themselves (which I did not find that difficult when I tried it to check out mod_ssl [wanted to use rsaref to stay legal], but then I wasn't using Mandrake). Even if you compile it yourself, with dynamic modules you can always compile more modules later without recompiling Apache.
Also, I don't understand your comment of "RH runs Postgres, not MySQL". Both of these should run on all Linux distros.
Well, first of all there's the fact that it's WEBMAIL...ugh.
:), but there are also lots of important security announcements that DO concern me. I don't want those shuffled into the "junk" folder.
:)
Secondly, are you subscribed to any mailing lists? When the only thing on the To: line is "bugtraq@securityfocus.com", then that mail will go into the bulkmail folder along with the spam. Now, a lot of the stuff on BUGTRAQ is about Windows and doesn't concern me
Also, this couldn't really work on a normal mail server (as a procmail rule, say) because you can have aliases (such as president@foo.com), and then the To: field will be that, rather than jtsidu3@foo.com. Oops.
However, you probably could filter (with procmail) any aliases/lists into their own mail folders, THEN do the described filtering. That might be useful, though not likely doable on Hotmail.
As for me, I have my own "spam-filtering" method...I have a throwaway webmail account
bash-2.03$ whereis netscape /usr/lib/netscape /usr/X11R6/bin/netscape /usr/bin/X11/netscape
/usr/bin. So, it is incorrect to say that "Linux" does this. Debian has defined things like this very specifically in their Debian Policy Manual for package maintainers, and certain others would do well to follow.
netscape:
bash-2.03$
This is on my Debian system. I also do not like the fact that RedHat really likes to throw everything into
Debian also does not install telnetd, etc. (and enable them!) by default. If you haven't tried Debian GNU/Linux before, I would highly recommend it...I used to use RH, but I've been completely sold on Debian and now run it on all of my machines. Even if it were not for the directory issue, apt-get would have won me over.
This is really only true in the case of something like a Word document, which has its own little scripting language and can do something devious. If clicking on a jpeg fired up a jpeg viewer...that is not such a big deal. This is actually 1 thing that I miss from Windows (one of the ONLY things! :) However, double-clicking on something should NOT run a script without some sort of confirmation.
:)
Of course, others have pointed out here that no matter what the confirmation dialog box says, people will just hit "OK", as in "OK, yes, whatever, just get on with it". I personally believe that they've been led to this by the excessive amount of confirmation dialogs in Windows/MacOS, but that is just my opinion
These sorts of things spread for 2 reasons: weaknesses in the OS is one, but the more critical one is a weakness in the users. It woulnd't matter if everyone started running Linux/BSD/whatever tomorrow, if they all ran everything as root and left a bunch of services open. How to solve this problem is probably beyond me; my only advice is to try to educate users in the most non-technical terms possible. If you can explain it to them in ways they can understand (analogies help lots!)...you know, it's not like they WANT to spread virii. Most people want to Do the Right Thing...
I'm about to start building my own car computer/stereo, and I really feel as though I must have something more flexible than a hardware MPEG decoder. For example, I am very excited about Vorbis OGG, and plan to use and support it heavily if it does turn out to be better than MP3. Why should I build a player that saves me a few $$, only to have to replace parts later when a newer, better encoding standard arrives?
I'm starting out with an M590 motherboard from PCWare. True, PCWare doesn't make the highest quality mobos in the world, but my experience is that if you get one that works, it tends to keep working. This mobo has onboard sound and video (linux supported!), and so will allow me to place it in a relatively flat case (no cards to worry about). My friend has developed a library to interface with 3-line text LCDs, so that they can display menus while selecting and audio meters while playing; it's open source (all of his stuff is), and you can find it at http://www.mobydisk.com
I was originally thinking of using hard disk storage to avoid swapping media all the time, but since hard disks of sufficient durability are not available at a reasonable size/price ration, I'm going with a CD-ROM for now. One CD-R will hold FAR more than a Rio...I can put Linux on a small solid-state hard disk, and I'm set! For power, an adaptor from car-DC to computer-AC is not terribly expensive.
But then, in some areas it's coming back together again. The new VIA/Cyrix CPU will use Socket370, and possibly later on both SSE and 3dNow! (thus making programmers' lives easier) Also, since the Alpha and AMD CPUs use the same bus, there has been talk of making them able to use the same motherboards as well. That would be interesting!
However, in a way it doesn't matter as much. Yes, I do own lots of machines and enjoy swapping parts between them. However, what with CPUs having to improve their voltage/bus attributes in order to get better performance, many times a new CPU in an older board won't be doing its best anyway. I really don't mind CPUs being tied to the board so much, so long as my PCI cards, RAM, keyboards, etc. are still interchangeable. I don't think than CPU designers should have to limit themselves to several-year-old socket technology. Plus, if we try to get them all to use the same socket, then the advantage obviously goes to the mfr. who designs it--and the chances of getting AMD, VIA, and Intel together to design something are rather slim.
If everyone behaves themselves and uses as little processor specific assembly code as possible, then we should even be OK when the CPUs start to have different instruction sets...though a lot of things will REALLY go crazy then (Sledgehammer vs. Merced vs. lots of older CPUs still hanging around).
If someone gets access to the console, they don't need root access. They can TAKE YOUR HARD DISK WITH THEM. Or boot from a floppy, unplug your machine, take an axe to it....
That's why, when this came up on BUGTRAQ, it was basically dismissed.
Sun CPUs have ID numbers of the same type...no one went after them. Though, this is probably because most home users (yes, I know the 11 people that are the exception will all reply to this post!) don't use Sun hardware
Also, Intel CPUs have had Processor IDs ever since they went to
I just did an apt-get install of the libsdl1.0 and libsdl1.0-dev packages, compiled dgen (a Genesis emulator), and ran it. No problems at at all...
As RickHunter stated above, an excellent example of this is the apt-get front-end to the Debian package system. This is now a standard package with Debian.
You provide it with a list of trusted servers, and tell it which categories of packages (main, non-free, etc.) you want to get from that server.
Every once in (insert number here), you do this:
apt-get update
(refreshes list of available packages and version numbers)
apt-get upgrade
(Brings all packages up to the latest version. In some cases, it may decide to hold back certain packages if upgrading them might cause things to happen that you don't want to happen. If you want to upgrade these, you can do an "apt-get install ")
apt will prompt you for certain things (ie, to ask whether you want to keep your configuration files or install the new default ones), but it handles dependencies and is pretty much automatic.
Supposedly something like apt is now available for RPM, but I haven't checked.
I am a Christian myself, but I find myself not really agreeing with you at all on several points.
First, it is annoying that you seem to ignore the values espoused by all other religions. This is the type of thinking which has lead to needless "Holy Wars" between cultures who have far more in common than not.
Personally, I feel that RPGs are getting much better. The hero isn't some perfect, shining figure that always does everything right. That's not the least bit realistic, especially if the character is supposed to be a human. The "anti-hero" philosophy is very attractive to me; yes, sometimes the "hero" screws up, sometimes they make bad decisions, sometimes people die. This is life. Of course, life doesn't have Cure3 and Airships, but more realism makes for a more enjoyable game--at least, when it is played by humans. You do believe that all people are flawed sinners, correct? Why would you want to present an image of something else to children, and give them the wrong idea? As they say, nobody's perfect.
Also, you MUST be able to question your beliefs if they are true. If your beliefs are truly so strong, and you are certain of your faith, then you should feel not at all threatened by made-up religions in video games. I didn't go off and start worshipping Espers after playing zillions of hours of Final Fantasy 6, even though it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. That's ridiculous.
Sorry for going offtopic on this, but it as someone who both believes in God and loves RPGs, it really struck a nerve...
For my sequencing needs (composing for small jazz combos, etc.), I use Jazz++...it's finally to the point where it can replace Cakewalk (at home). For my tracking, SoundTracker is nice, as I was "raised" on FastTracker in DOS.
jMax, however, is something entirely new and different...and free. Just as many people have realized the cool potential of Max in the Macintosh world, let's not forget that we have something all our own (jMax is currently available on Linux and SGI)
http://www.ircam.fr/equipes/temps-reel/jmax/
I'm the Technology Manager for a group of student organizations at UMBC, known as Student Media. This encompasses the radio station, newspaper, and yearbook (and soon a creative arts journal).
The offices, for the most part, have Windows98 running on the machines. For the most part, this is OK...sure, every once in a while the machines crash, and sometimes they forget their network settings, but we expect this, no? Oh, and of course, the occasional macro-virus, despite the auto-updating version of McAfee. All of these machines are used by one or two people.
We also have a newsroom, which is a place where all the writers can go and write their stories. Some writers have weekly columns, and some write one story and then never show up again. The section editors use these machines, because they don't have their own offices. A similar situation exists at the radio station...all of the Music Directors share an office, because space is tight.
These multi-user machines SUCK. Despite the fact that we have them completely locked down (as far as we can), they consistently break in new and exiting ways. The only way that we can keep them at a reasonably sane level of operation is to use Ghost to wipe the hard disk each week, and replace it with a fresh installation image. The same is true of the NT machines in the university labs.
We have 3 older machines, P90s w/ 16M of RAM, which just don't run Win98 well enough. I've made them into Linux X-terminals. These machines are right next to the Windows ones in the newsroom, and get plenty of use. They have been around for a year, and do not break. This is a sharp contrast to the Windows machines. We'll not even mention the fact that people routinely download and install things like Quicktime 3, even though 4 is already on the machines (back to Windows now.)
Windows may work OK in a setting where 1 or 2 people use the machine (98 is NOT a multi-user-OS!) But in a setting like this, or in an "Internet Cafe" (I'm theorizing on that one, but they're similar enough), it's abominable.
I know that I don't have the skills to check every line of source in even the smallest programs. I wouldn't trust myself to audit ls :)
:) which you can trust, eg ftp.us.debian.org. The packages can also be signed so that they can be verifiable (as with, I believe, the sendmail source).
:)
However, there are lots of people out there who CAN do this, and do. This is the critical part of open source. You personally don't have to check the source, if you can get the binaries (or code) from a source (my apologies for the English language!
The point is that you ought to be able to trust at least your distribution vendor, and hopefully the official mirrors as well. If you can't trust ANYONE, then you have a lot of reading to do
If you are getting a binary/source from the author, and it is not available in package form from your vendor, then you do have to take care.
If you use Debian, it will not allow you to run Netscape as root, stating that it is for security reasons. Debian also has a warning during the install, and prompts you to create a normal user account (with "Yes" as the default).
Also, I believe that Gnome (I've seen this in RedHat too) pops up a warning to the screen if you are running as root. I run neither X as root nor Gnome (at all), so I can't confirm that this is still true.
Contrarily, not being able to log in as root from the console is probably a bad thing in some situations. However, it's good to not allow remote root logins; as my friend says, "People should have to know 2 passwords to get root".
If you're typing in vim, you can use Shift-V to go into Visual Line mode, and select stuff to copy. There are also key combos for block select, etc. but that's the one I use the most.
Have you ever heard of Fugazi? No, probably not.
:)
See that web page link next to my user name? Go ahead and follow it, if you think you can handle it. It leads to the radio station site WMBC, of UMBC campus. We play almost entirely independant music, stuff that is not on major labels like these, and that major labels would probably prefer to see go away. In fact, some people don't even listen to any bands that are on major labels. For many of these bands, their albums are not even sold in all major cities in the US, let alone in different countries...MP3 is the only way they're likely to be heard in Germany. In fact, they even voluntarily allow distribution of their songs in this format...if you can imagine!
The FACT is, that the mp3 format itself is not illegal. Nowhere in the story did it ever advocate _illegal_ mp3s. In fact, Jamie gave the example of being a self-promoting independant musician, and having your site stomped out (without notice! and you'll probably never know, because you think it's still up...because it is!) of view from a big chunk of the population by huge record companies. These record companies are responsible for commercial radio being as bad as it is, and they certainly don't want some upstarts coming along and trying to change the state of things...they like their money.
I personally am part of an unsigned band. Yes, I have the copyright to all of my songs, and yes, I distribute them in MP3 format. Please try and tell me how that is illegal; I'm all ears.
Can anyone comment on how well Waacom tablets are supported under Linux? My brother currently uses Photoshop, but he'll use whatever I tell him to (and he is a little odd, being an art major and hating Macs but liking DOS...) However, in order for Gimp+Linux to be a viable option for him, his 12x12 tablet needs to be supported, including pressure-sensitivity. The buttons along the top aren't all that critical, but PS _has_ to work.