That is a bad thought that I try to keep out of my head for a long time now. Imagine what would happen if there would be no new competing browser. Monopoly. No, not that funny game - real monopoly. So what? So THIS: there will be NO real possibility anymore for an open source browser, because the 'net will slowly become a propietary thing. It will take some years, but M$ will have NO resistance and can do whatever they plan with IE. Slowly but surely the web would become a piece of hypothetical PassiveX technology. If M$ plays it nice it also syncs IE for other platforms, i.e. Mac. But a platform that has no IE, would have no Web.
We NEED a competing browser.
By the way: 2 friends of mine own 1 nice Mac. They have always used Netscape 4.7, but it got broken. So they initially tried out Netscape 6 Prerelease 1. You know what? They got SCARED of the completely strange interface and fleed to M$IE 5.? for Mac, which, by the way, is a COOL app. I can't help it: it's the best quality a Microsoft app had since Commodore 64 Basic bugfix 13.
Netscape'd better wake up. The current product is *not* intuitive; it doesn't integrate *at all* with a current environment (GNOME, Mac, Windows). Besides, the prerelease really had some stability problems.
If they abandon the trash they add to it *now* and work on beauty, user-friendliness and stability, there is still something to save. Otherwise, 8=#
And that would be very bad because it would practically mean that Linux would be without a browser on the long term because of the monopoly thingy I explained. And that would scare away users.
Hmm, I sound a little depressive... Is it realistic what I say?
My little experience with tech support is that they blame something anyway. Things like "it should work now" and "it works from here", and I being unable to convince them that it does *not* work from *here*.
This experience is with service providers (for websites, etc.). And what I really want to do then, is get over there myself and solve the problem with my very own hands: because I experience the problem myself, I won't stop after a minute trying to solve it or declare it as done, forcing the costumer to ring for the Nth time saying "no, it still doesn't work". I will solve the problem instead of making the costumer so tired that he gives up - but I am not allowed to do that.
The problem I have with service providers, is the same as what you have with your soft-/ hardware providers. My advice would be to minimize your dependency on the service of your provider, because they don't really *care* about your problems.
So, open source springs to mind, no matter how boring it is to put the topic up here. You can repair your own problems, have a third party look into it, etc. Vendor independent, bladidibla, go ask ESR anyway.
For those parts that you'll really have to get as closed source (in the cases when the propietary product simply outperforms the alternatives), I guess all you can do is bothering tech support with your problems and keep bothering them, as others have already advised.
Some "IANAL"ish excuses are in place, though: I am not a specialist, but these are my thoughts on the topic.
everybody is suddenly complaining about the lack of information surrounding the Evolution 0.3 announcement. I mean, c'mon, you have Linux installed, with GNOME, prolly Helix Code too, right? (No flames about the necessity of the command line and CLI-driven mailers are allowed here.)
But I haven't yet found complains (maybe just because I don't look to well, but still) about these headlines:
-- Napster Ruling Stayed
StoryMan was the first of a flood of readers to note: "Napster ruling has been stayed. Doesn't have to close by midnight! Woohoo!" --
Who the hell is Napster? What's CNN?
-- Ask Slashdot: What Does The Future Hold For 3D Myst-ery Games? -- What is Myst?
And now, for the best:
-- Unfinished D&D movie footage Leaked To Net --
D&D? Donald and Daisy?
What's a Palm VII? A toonami? Welcome to the world of buzz-words. To name it after Orson Wells' (am I right?) "NewSpeak":
Those geniuses had done better by putting the mouse away instead of the keyboard. I have never heard of anybody with a "keyboard arm", while the "mouse arm" is an official disease by now.
When they'll have touch screen-like devices for this virtual keyboard of them, the mouse would probably disappear as well. But what I really don't understand is that such a usability inventor as Apple didn't drop the mouse for something better on their standard hardware long before. Instead actually, they're still proud that they made that brainless invention ppopular.
A mouse is a silly and irritating input device, and I'd love to see it replaced with touch screens or pens or whatever other devices there are. We can't wait for Microsoft to invent that usability, for it has never been their job. Instead, we'll have to trust on Apple to change our view on computers again.
But if it takes much longer than this I'll have a mouse arm myself.
Today's a good time to learn a lesson in life in general. This one: the goal is more important than the methods involved.
Here, see: I'll put some things in a row: - Object Orientation - GUI Design - Religion - Politics (etc.)
Object Orientation: The goal is to build a program. Often the goal BECOMES: working around the problems involved in this design paradigm. (E.g. try to design a "grep" program using only true OO methodology.)
But to reject the theory at all, only because it doesn't apply always, would be stupid as well.
GUI Design: The goal is to let the user work with a program. Often the goal BECOMES: making a piece of bloatware and let the user live with it. (E.g. try to make a "grep" program for all those non-command line people out there.)
But to reject the guidelines at all, only because they don't work in some situation, is stupid as well.
Religion: The goal is to get yourself a reason of life. Often this goal BECOMES: get yourself a reason to die (E.g. holy war sessions).
But to believe in nothing at all... Well, it works fine to me. Only keep smiling, OK?
Politics: The goal is to rule the country. Often the goal BECOMES: discussing the manner once again.
But to have no politicians at all... Hmm...
And hey, here's what: you can fill in your own paradigms, guidelines, rules and dogma's as well! (Think of things as "Law", "Microsoft Certified", "freedom", "web-standards", etc.)
- Galeon is nice, but e.g. the scrollbar is a Mozilla scrollbar. While the techie party (including me) wouldn't *really* mind, it is a usability point. If it's an all-GNOME (GTK+) thing, people will understand it better. - Also, it would make a smaller footprint if Gecko only used the GTK+-toolkit instead of adding its own. - Additionally, it would be nice to have it GPL'ed. Just nice, OK? No big deal and stuff.
I think the most realistic plot for this to work is, that the ppl of Galeon would take Gecko, make it an all-GNOME (or GTK+) thing and distribute it with their Galeon browser, while making clear that Gecko is a Mozilla license thing. That would make sense, I guess.
Well, and I'd love to see Nautilus off course. But there hasn't been any release except for CVS yet, and the website is also not really informative (like in "good old Amiga gossip":-). So I don't know how long that will take. Anyone?
It's... It's...
There is more "open" on Linux than just its source
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Why Develop On Linux?
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· Score: 1
I think it is the complete idea behind UNIX that makes Linux a better development platform. UNIX has been designed to be a multiuser development platform in the first place.
It is already said that everything is a file in Linux. Indeed, that makes it very open. If you want to know something, you can read it with your own eyes, no big mysteries here.
Furthermore, every configuration is a textfile. Even less big mysteries.
Off course you can read the code, and the headers.
There is a lot of room in UNIX, GNU and Linux for documentation, it is simply seen as a necessity. Man pages, Info files,/usr/doc,...etc!
The file system structure also makes things logical; while in Windows the structure coming after "C:\Program Files" is completely random, in Linux programs are forced to be in logical places. This does ease development when your program cooperates with other programs (should be useful).
The multiuser system and tools like CVS also make it very handy to work with more people, without making things more mysterious.
The stability makes that in case of an error, you KNOW what caused it (which I almost never know with Windows - has been said before).
You can work in good graphical environments and stuff, but this does not take away the underlying structure of commands, files, configuration textfiles, etc. Can be VERY handy (also for remote working, e.g. with SSH).
You are encouraged to program in Linux. Not only the source, but also the fact that GCC and Perl (to name two) are considered standard parts. There is no hard difference between developers (who require headers and stuff) and normal folks, like with Windows. (Which doesn't mean you have to be a programmer and you can't leave out -devel packages.)
...etc. etc.
While Linux presents itself structured from the ground up, even though the building blocks are "simple" things like files, Windows presents itself as some kind of magic book from which some selected people can learn some selected things.
Uhmm, I believe I am the first one to ask this. I believe that it's an interesting question, too. Strange (then again, it's Slashdot).
Could someone explain to me what this "new security model" is all about -- in very simple words?
I mean, please answer questions like: - what about chmod and rwsrwxr-x and so on? Is that going to be a thing of the past? - I thought that until now, we have always claimed that the "old" UNIX security model (chmod and stuff) was the best thing there was? What's wrong with it? - Isn't the new model confusingly complex? Like, that users would not understand it and misuse it? - Is this a sign that Linux goes it's own way and abandons UNIX?
...altogether, what's wrong with the "good ol' UNIX security model"?
> I mean... with all the VBS files flying around when will somebody port Visual Basic Sripting > support to linux. I am sick of having to run Windows just to get a VBS worm. Is somebody > working on this already?
Prepare for a great shock, but a VB clone is indeed being made for Linux. What's worse, the people of Evolution seem to be very interested in it. What's even more queer, it was available on the GNU Task List for ages...
I never quite understood the reason; they say that GNOME Basic (= the name) is built from the ground up to be secure. But what do you need VB for besides for virus writing anyway?
OK, maybe for macros, but I don't want crappy VB *applications* in Linux. Having to _download_ 4 Mb to get a program that _uploads_ your IP address sux. Especially when it is also crappy, shareware, and it requires some obscure *vbs.dll libs you don't have. Yuck!
Besides, we have tons of languages with "macro capacities" already.
So even though I cannot see WHY, there IS VB for Linux !!!
Sounds all very attractive... but I wished they would have a better file manager than the Beish thing from the screen shots. To get a directory upwards, you have to use the menu... Thát is what counts. Thát is why I don't like Be (oh, yeah, and because it was so damn EASY to overwrite my Linux partition, that I did so by accident...)
But this beast is GPL }:-) Har har! So it won't take much time for a nice file manager to get there...
Linux is compared to Mac, and we're all surprised that it looses, but we say "hey, there is a lesson to learn. Let's make it even better".
Heh. Who could've dreamed that when this all started Linux would be compared to Mac *at all* (not Linus:-). And that it now looses on some small bonus points *only* - I mean, it is not at all like "mud compared to gold"; they started the comparision because they really thought there was something to compare!
OK, so I only see it from the bright side. But well, "we" open-source people always think in terms of "use what's there, and make what is not already there", in other words, we are satisfied with what we get, no matter how little that is.
In previous times there *was* little. But people set up their computers and servers with Linux nevertheless. And everything only got better since then. So I see Linux being compared to Mac only as another milestone in the history of GNU.
Does it mean: the system that should get honor, or the system that is honored, or the system that does something with the substantion honor (like "the time machine")?
I had the occasion to moderate the "is there a plan B" question up, when it was asked, and I am glad that it is asked. But it took a while before RMS's answers came in, and meanwhile I, impatiently, came up with an idea how the answer could be.
RMS says now: "we could change the GLP a little" but does not cover further details. Let me explain what I think these details are, and why they are, actually, very nice.
If you apply the GPL to your code, you do this with a sentence saying this program is GPL "as published by the Free Software Foundation", version 2.1 (or so) "or, at your option, any later version".
Which means, that ANYBODY can relicense a GPLed piece of code to a newer version of the GPL without having to ask all the people who worked at it (because these people agreed that you could choose under which GPL version you'd use the code). In other words, any time the GPL fails, it is relatively easy to make a new one and adapt that new one to your software.
Off course, people who own older copies will still have the option to use the then "deprecated" version, but this is about the biggest harm that can be done. NOBODY can stop you from licensing GPLed code under a newer version, and thus keeping THAT version free.
And even if the Free Software Foundation gets bought up by Microsoft (:-) ) and they issue a new version of the GPL, this would not harm us as much as it seems, because you can let the OLD GPL apply to your code. Now pretty solid for copyrighted freedom, eh?
Got that eerie feeling that I forgot to mention something... oh, yes: IANAL
You say that they thought that only the KERNEL was a GPL thingy. That is very queer (odd, whatever).
Imagine, you start a company and start doing losts-a-things with Linux. (I don't really know WHAT Abid is doing with it.)/Any/ company should know what it can expect from its market. That's why company presidents always have such a nice flat-screen display with all kinds of bar diagrams on it on their desk. In order to get even the/minimum/ control over what the h*ll you're planning to do, you should first research your product and its market/in depth/. But Abid must have done very very minimal research, making such a mistake.
Now, what happens: Abid/will/, when faced with the facts, distribute their sources. So there would be no problem for us, otherwise there will be a lawsuit that will be THE famous GPL lawsuit, oh yeah. But I expect no problems.
That is, on/our side/. But Abid thought that they had a mostly propietary product. They could have altered the code in such a way that it handles a lot of things that Abid wanted to keep propietary (like special drivers etc.?). Now they're faced with opening the source. I hope they will survive it, because they don't really seem to understand the open source market. They could drown in it, and the fact that they HAVE to distribute their changes, could be a disaster for them.
Off course, I hope they'll live, and that we will all live happily ever after, but it could be a hard punish for their (really silly!) GPL ignorance.
If this will be a battlefield:
One of the repliers said that he was willing to donate $100 to GNU for the court battle. This reminded me of what a friend of mine told me about the Pokemon hype:
"imagine that Nintendo would spread the word: 'if you find a BLACK pokemon card, you'll have to commit suicide.', and then some time later, put the black cards on the marked. It would be a mass suicide amongst the pokemon-freaks!"
That is exactly the same as what is applied here. All those that have until now only PROFITED from Free Software, could be found well willing to donate that $100 (that you'd otherwise have long spend on your software) for this court battle, if only one person suggested.
But as I said, I hope everyone will just live. And I do fully agree with Whyte Rabbyt's "Pax" greet. I just wanted to say that I have hope for the times when there will be really dark clouds coming from Mordor.
I am not a Perl-person, and so I do not understand this stuff in deep. But this Obfuscated Poem looked so astonishing that I just had to get a copy and test it (reminds me of how I got Linux:-). Problem is: it doesn't work as expected.
$ perl perlfun.pl waiting ------- ^C $
Like that. It just waits. If anyone got it to work, I'd like to know. I have copied and pasted from the HTML source so I had to rewrite some >'s etc. and though I tried I didn't find differences between my proggie and the displayed one on the page.
OK, so this is a bullshit post. I just want to try out that proggie:-)
Listen dude, *I* come from Holland, so *I* have an excuse. You should be glad that I am able to talk English anyway.
*You* have NO excuse for talking the way you do. Offensive language, and even anonymous. You're even a lower life form than those that call you anonymously by telephone to offend you.
Furthermore, my question was *not* "what is the plural of virus?" and as it seems, I don't seem to be the only confused around here (see your own link), so I think "fucking bitch as nigga" is a little bit overdone!
Now smart ass, *answer my question* or die silent, please.
It should, then, be so damn easy to embed a virus in a PostScript document, right? Or am I being paranoia? (Or has it been done n times before, and didn't I notice?)
(BTW at my last post (just above) the HTML tags have fallen away cause I had Extrans on. I don't understand: if I want these tags to work (like here) they never do. Whatever.)
Some time ago someone posted on slashdot about an Atari 800 server. I was one of the lucky to get through the "slashdot effect", and I saw the source code of this thing. It was in BASIC. It first redirected the output, and then it went like:
40 PRINT "" 50 PRINT "This page serverd by Atari"
...ertc.
Great.
Haven't figured out yet how Postscript should be executable, though. This time I haven't yet get through the/.ted page.
It's... It's...
Re:Lawmakers are idiots, not QNX engineers
on
QNX Crypt Cracked
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· Score: 1
The original poster is still wrong, because he said you would have to have a non-DES version for the US market. Read the post next time. <P> I wasn't talking about the original poster, but about you. Read my posts;-)
It's... It's...
Re:Lawmakers are idiots, not QNX engineers
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QNX Crypt Cracked
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· Score: 1
Since when is the US an idiotic country?
Since day one, but that is another topic. Get your facts straight anyway, importing any kind of encryption into the US is legal.
Yeah, but exporting is not always, and that creates the stupid implications.
When using ordinarily GPL (so not necessarily LGPL!) for a library, everyone can dinamically link to it.
When using GPL for your program, everyone is free to put it in a library.
Conclusion: when you write a GPL program, EVERYONE can use it in their proprietory code, as long as they are smart enough to make a dll from it, and distribute that dll freely.
Whopee! Wonder when we'll see Microsoft(R) GIMP(tm) 2000:-))
Canvas 7 Linux Edition is a fully native Linux application
Until here I thought "huh? Oh, well, off course. Fun."
which was developed with the help of the Wine library. For more information on wine you can go to
^_^ Now things get clear. They have ported it with the help of Wine. Good to see that Wine is of use here. But a funny sidenote is that I have never seen anyone mention to be "fully native" when he really is so, but that it often happens to make sure that he is when he actually is not. Of course all they tried to say is that you don't need Wine to run Canvas.
//http:www.winehq.com.
Anyway, if you would need it, you wouldn't get there;-)
After reading your message I went to gnu.org reading their comments on the Mozilla license. I couldn't quite figure out the details.
Is it true that anyone can distribute Mozilla? And how about making money by doing so? If anyone can, why should Netscape be blamed for Mozilla throwing away their sources; that wasn't Netscape's idea. And anyway, what did RedHat ever do for Linux in its first days - OK, now it's making GNOME and stuff, but in their first days they were only profiting from free software. Well, don't we all:-)
BTW anyway Mozilla didn't throw away/all/ sources. I still recognize some silly Netscapish inconveniences through the new Mozilla;-)
But if there are some complexities which would bind code to Netscape, I would love to have these explained, as some other projects also start using a MPLish license, and it is important to know what the restrictions are.
Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla dead?
That is a bad thought that I try to keep out of my head for a long time now. Imagine what would happen if there would be no new competing browser. Monopoly. No, not that funny game - real monopoly. So what? So THIS: there will be NO real possibility anymore for an open source browser, because the 'net will slowly become a propietary thing. It will take some years, but M$ will have NO resistance and can do whatever they plan with IE. Slowly but surely the web would become a piece of hypothetical PassiveX technology. If M$ plays it nice it also syncs IE for other platforms, i.e. Mac. But a platform that has no IE, would have no Web.
We NEED a competing browser.
By the way: 2 friends of mine own 1 nice Mac. They have always used Netscape 4.7, but it got broken. So they initially tried out Netscape 6 Prerelease 1. You know what? They got SCARED of the completely strange interface and fleed to M$IE 5.? for Mac, which, by the way, is a COOL app. I can't help it: it's the best quality a Microsoft app had since Commodore 64 Basic bugfix 13.
Netscape'd better wake up. The current product is *not* intuitive; it doesn't integrate *at all* with a current environment (GNOME, Mac, Windows). Besides, the prerelease really had some stability problems.
If they abandon the trash they add to it *now* and work on beauty, user-friendliness and stability, there is still something to save. Otherwise, 8=#
And that would be very bad because it would practically mean that Linux would be without a browser on the long term because of the monopoly thingy I explained. And that would scare away users.
Hmm, I sound a little depressive... Is it realistic what I say?
It's... It's...
My little experience with tech support is that they blame something anyway. Things like "it should work now" and "it works from here", and I being unable to convince them that it does *not* work from *here*.
This experience is with service providers (for websites, etc.). And what I really want to do then, is get over there myself and solve the problem with my very own hands: because I experience the problem myself, I won't stop after a minute trying to solve it or declare it as done, forcing the costumer to ring for the Nth time saying "no, it still doesn't work". I will solve the problem instead of making the costumer so tired that he gives up - but I am not allowed to do that.
The problem I have with service providers, is the same as what you have with your soft-/ hardware providers. My advice would be to minimize your dependency on the service of your provider, because they don't really *care* about your problems.
So, open source springs to mind, no matter how boring it is to put the topic up here. You can repair your own problems, have a third party look into it, etc. Vendor independent, bladidibla, go ask ESR anyway.
For those parts that you'll really have to get as closed source (in the cases when the propietary product simply outperforms the alternatives), I guess all you can do is bothering tech support with your problems and keep bothering them, as others have already advised.
Some "IANAL"ish excuses are in place, though: I am not a specialist, but these are my thoughts on the topic.
It's... It's...
Hmm. Right. It was one of them two anyway ;)
It's... It's...
everybody is suddenly complaining about the lack of information surrounding the Evolution 0.3 announcement. I mean, c'mon, you have Linux installed, with GNOME, prolly Helix Code too, right? (No flames about the necessity of the command line and CLI-driven mailers are allowed here.)
But I haven't yet found complains (maybe just because I don't look to well, but still) about these headlines:
--
Napster Ruling Stayed
StoryMan was the first of a flood of readers to note: "Napster ruling has been stayed. Doesn't have to close by midnight! Woohoo!"
--
Who the hell is Napster? What's CNN?
--
Ask Slashdot: What Does The Future Hold For 3D Myst-ery Games?
--
What is Myst?
And now, for the best:
--
Unfinished D&D movie footage Leaked To Net
--
D&D? Donald and Daisy?
What's a Palm VII? A toonami? Welcome to the world of buzz-words. To name it after Orson Wells' (am I right?) "NewSpeak":
NewGeek
It's... It's...
Those geniuses had done better by putting the mouse away instead of the keyboard. I have never heard of anybody with a "keyboard arm", while the "mouse arm" is an official disease by now.
When they'll have touch screen-like devices for this virtual keyboard of them, the mouse would probably disappear as well. But what I really don't understand is that such a usability inventor as Apple didn't drop the mouse for something better on their standard hardware long before. Instead actually, they're still proud that they made that brainless invention ppopular.
A mouse is a silly and irritating input device, and I'd love to see it replaced with touch screens or pens or whatever other devices there are. We can't wait for Microsoft to invent that usability, for it has never been their job. Instead, we'll have to trust on Apple to change our view on computers again.
But if it takes much longer than this I'll have a mouse arm myself.
It's... It's...
Hi,
Today's a good time to learn a lesson in life in general. This one: the goal is more important than the methods involved.
Here, see: I'll put some things in a row:
- Object Orientation
- GUI Design
- Religion
- Politics
(etc.)
Object Orientation:
The goal is to build a program. Often the goal BECOMES: working around the problems involved in this design paradigm. (E.g. try to design a "grep" program using only true OO methodology.)
But to reject the theory at all, only because it doesn't apply always, would be stupid as well.
GUI Design:
The goal is to let the user work with a program. Often the goal BECOMES: making a piece of bloatware and let the user live with it. (E.g. try to make a "grep" program for all those non-command line people out there.)
But to reject the guidelines at all, only because they don't work in some situation, is stupid as well.
Religion:
The goal is to get yourself a reason of life. Often this goal BECOMES: get yourself a reason to die (E.g. holy war sessions).
But to believe in nothing at all... Well, it works fine to me. Only keep smiling, OK?
Politics:
The goal is to rule the country. Often the goal BECOMES: discussing the manner once again.
But to have no politicians at all... Hmm...
And hey, here's what: you can fill in your own paradigms, guidelines, rules and dogma's as well! (Think of things as "Law", "Microsoft Certified", "freedom", "web-standards", etc.)
It's... It's...
NOT a flamebait; let me explain my points.
:-). So I don't know how long that will take. Anyone?
- Galeon is nice, but e.g. the scrollbar is a Mozilla scrollbar. While the techie party (including me) wouldn't *really* mind, it is a usability point. If it's an all-GNOME (GTK+) thing, people will understand it better.
- Also, it would make a smaller footprint if Gecko only used the GTK+-toolkit instead of adding its own.
- Additionally, it would be nice to have it GPL'ed. Just nice, OK? No big deal and stuff.
I think the most realistic plot for this to work is, that the ppl of Galeon would take Gecko, make it an all-GNOME (or GTK+) thing and distribute it with their Galeon browser, while making clear that Gecko is a Mozilla license thing. That would make sense, I guess.
Well, and I'd love to see Nautilus off course. But there hasn't been any release except for CVS yet, and the website is also not really informative (like in "good old Amiga gossip"
It's... It's...
I think it is the complete idea behind UNIX that makes Linux a better development platform. UNIX has been designed to be a multiuser development platform in the first place.
/usr/doc, ...etc!
It is already said that everything is a file in Linux. Indeed, that makes it very open. If you want to know something, you can read it with your own eyes, no big mysteries here.
Furthermore, every configuration is a textfile. Even less big mysteries.
Off course you can read the code, and the headers.
There is a lot of room in UNIX, GNU and Linux for documentation, it is simply seen as a necessity. Man pages, Info files,
The file system structure also makes things logical; while in Windows the structure coming after "C:\Program Files" is completely random, in Linux programs are forced to be in logical places. This does ease development when your program cooperates with other programs (should be useful).
The multiuser system and tools like CVS also make it very handy to work with more people, without making things more mysterious.
The stability makes that in case of an error, you KNOW what caused it (which I almost never know with Windows - has been said before).
You can work in good graphical environments and stuff, but this does not take away the underlying structure of commands, files, configuration textfiles, etc. Can be VERY handy (also for remote working, e.g. with SSH).
You are encouraged to program in Linux. Not only the source, but also the fact that GCC and Perl (to name two) are considered standard parts. There is no hard difference between developers (who require headers and stuff) and normal folks, like with Windows. (Which doesn't mean you have to be a programmer and you can't leave out -devel packages.)
...etc. etc.
While Linux presents itself structured from the ground up, even though the building blocks are "simple" things like files, Windows presents itself as some kind of magic book from which some selected people can learn some selected things.
It's... It's...
Uhmm, I believe I am the first one to ask this. I believe that it's an interesting question, too. Strange (then again, it's Slashdot).
Could someone explain to me what this "new security model" is all about -- in very simple words?
I mean, please answer questions like:
- what about chmod and rwsrwxr-x and so on? Is that going to be a thing of the past?
- I thought that until now, we have always claimed that the "old" UNIX security model (chmod and stuff) was the best thing there was? What's wrong with it?
- Isn't the new model confusingly complex? Like, that users would not understand it and misuse it?
- Is this a sign that Linux goes it's own way and abandons UNIX?
...altogether, what's wrong with the "good ol' UNIX security model"?
It's... It's...
> I mean ... with all the VBS files flying around when will somebody port Visual Basic Sripting
> support to linux. I am sick of having to run Windows just to get a VBS worm. Is somebody
> working on this already?
Prepare for a great shock, but a VB clone is indeed being made for Linux. What's worse, the people of Evolution seem to be very interested in it. What's even more queer, it was available on the GNU Task List for ages...
I never quite understood the reason; they say that GNOME Basic (= the name) is built from the ground up to be secure. But what do you need VB for besides for virus writing anyway?
OK, maybe for macros, but I don't want crappy VB *applications* in Linux. Having to _download_ 4 Mb to get a program that _uploads_ your IP address sux. Especially when it is also crappy, shareware, and it requires some obscure *vbs.dll libs you don't have. Yuck!
Besides, we have tons of languages with "macro capacities" already.
So even though I cannot see WHY, there IS VB for Linux !!!
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> actually, it's not possible to really work on a box running gnome/kde with 64Mo of ram. yes sir.
:-)
I do it all the time. Tip: stop Netscape as soon as its leaks are too big
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Sounds all very attractive... but I wished they would have a better file manager than the Beish thing from the screen shots. To get a directory upwards, you have to use the menu... Thát is what counts. Thát is why I don't like Be (oh, yeah, and because it was so damn EASY to overwrite my Linux partition, that I did so by accident...)
But this beast is GPL }:-) Har har! So it won't take much time for a nice file manager to get there...
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Linux is compared to Mac, and we're all surprised that it looses, but we say "hey, there is a lesson to learn. Let's make it even better".
:-). And that it now looses on some small bonus points *only* - I mean, it is not at all like "mud compared to gold"; they started the comparision because they really thought there was something to compare!
:-)
Heh. Who could've dreamed that when this all started Linux would be compared to Mac *at all* (not Linus
OK, so I only see it from the bright side. But well, "we" open-source people always think in terms of "use what's there, and make what is not already there", in other words, we are satisfied with what we get, no matter how little that is.
In previous times there *was* little. But people set up their computers and servers with Linux nevertheless. And everything only got better since then. So I see Linux being compared to Mac only as another milestone in the history of GNU.
World domination... Muhahaha!
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Yet Another Offtopic Question Of Yours Truely.
How should I translate Honor System?
Does it mean: the system that should get honor, or the system that is honored, or the system that does something with the substantion honor (like "the time machine")?
Tnx...
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Hi,
:-) ) and they issue a new version of the GPL, this would not harm us as much as it seems, because you can let the OLD GPL apply to your code. Now pretty solid for copyrighted freedom, eh?
I had the occasion to moderate the "is there a plan B" question up, when it was asked, and I am glad that it is asked. But it took a while before RMS's answers came in, and meanwhile I, impatiently, came up with an idea how the answer could be.
RMS says now: "we could change the GLP a little" but does not cover further details. Let me explain what I think these details are, and why they are, actually, very nice.
If you apply the GPL to your code, you do this with a sentence saying this program is GPL "as published by the Free Software Foundation", version 2.1 (or so) "or, at your option, any later version".
Which means, that ANYBODY can relicense a GPLed piece of code to a newer version of the GPL without having to ask all the people who worked at it (because these people agreed that you could choose under which GPL version you'd use the code). In other words, any time the GPL fails, it is relatively easy to make a new one and adapt that new one to your software.
Off course, people who own older copies will still have the option to use the then "deprecated" version, but this is about the biggest harm that can be done. NOBODY can stop you from licensing GPLed code under a newer version, and thus keeping THAT version free.
And even if the Free Software Foundation gets bought up by Microsoft (
Got that eerie feeling that I forgot to mention something... oh, yes: IANAL
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You say that they thought that only the KERNEL was a GPL thingy. That is very queer (odd, whatever).
/Any/ company should know what it can expect from its market. That's why company presidents always have such a nice flat-screen display with all kinds of bar diagrams on it on their desk. In order to get even the /minimum/ control over what the h*ll you're planning to do, you should first research your product and its market /in depth/. But Abid must have done very very minimal research, making such a mistake.
/will/, when faced with the facts, distribute their sources. So there would be no problem for us, otherwise there will be a lawsuit that will be THE famous GPL lawsuit, oh yeah. But I expect no problems.
/our side/. But Abid thought that they had a mostly propietary product. They could have altered the code in such a way that it handles a lot of things that Abid wanted to keep propietary (like special drivers etc.?). Now they're faced with opening the source. I hope they will survive it, because they don't really seem to understand the open source market. They could drown in it, and the fact that they HAVE to distribute their changes, could be a disaster for them.
Imagine, you start a company and start doing losts-a-things with Linux. (I don't really know WHAT Abid is doing with it.)
Now, what happens: Abid
That is, on
Off course, I hope they'll live, and that we will all live happily ever after, but it could be a hard punish for their (really silly!) GPL ignorance.
If this will be a battlefield:
One of the repliers said that he was willing to donate $100 to GNU for the court battle. This reminded me of what a friend of mine told me about the Pokemon hype:
"imagine that Nintendo would spread the word: 'if you find a BLACK pokemon card, you'll have to commit suicide.', and then some time later, put the black cards on the marked. It would be a mass suicide amongst the pokemon-freaks!"
That is exactly the same as what is applied here. All those that have until now only PROFITED from Free Software, could be found well willing to donate that $100 (that you'd otherwise have long spend on your software) for this court battle, if only one person suggested.
But as I said, I hope everyone will just live. And I do fully agree with Whyte Rabbyt's "Pax" greet. I just wanted to say that I have hope for the times when there will be really dark clouds coming from Mordor.
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I am not a Perl-person, and so I do not understand this stuff in deep. But this Obfuscated Poem looked so astonishing that I just had to get a copy and test it (reminds me of how I got Linux :-). Problem is: it doesn't work as expected.
:-)
$ perl perlfun.pl
waiting
-------
^C
$
Like that. It just waits. If anyone got it to work, I'd like to know. I have copied and pasted from the HTML source so I had to rewrite some >'s etc. and though I tried I didn't find differences between my proggie and the displayed one on the page.
OK, so this is a bullshit post. I just want to try out that proggie
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Listen dude, *I* come from Holland, so *I* have an excuse. You should be glad that I am able to talk English anyway.
*You* have NO excuse for talking the way you do. Offensive language, and even anonymous. You're even a lower life form than those that call you anonymously by telephone to offend you.
Furthermore, my question was *not* "what is the plural of virus?" and as it seems, I don't seem to be the only confused around here (see your own link), so I think "fucking bitch as nigga" is a little bit overdone!
Now smart ass, *answer my question* or die silent, please.
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Hi,
It should, then, be so damn easy to embed a virus in a PostScript document, right? Or am I being paranoia? (Or has it been done n times before, and didn't I notice?)
(BTW at my last post (just above) the HTML tags have fallen away cause I had Extrans on. I don't understand: if I want these tags to work (like here) they never do. Whatever.)
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Hi,
/.ted page.
Some time ago someone posted on slashdot about an Atari 800 server. I was one of the lucky to get through the "slashdot effect", and I saw the source code of this thing. It was in BASIC. It first redirected the output, and then it went like:
40 PRINT ""
50 PRINT "This page serverd by Atari"
...ertc.
Great.
Haven't figured out yet how Postscript should be executable, though. This time I haven't yet get through the
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The original poster is still wrong, because he said you would have to have a non-DES version for the US market. Read the post next time. ;-)
<P>
I wasn't talking about the original poster, but about you. Read my posts
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Since day one, but that is another topic. Get your facts straight anyway, importing any kind of encryption into the US is legal.
Yeah, but exporting is not always, and that creates the stupid implications.
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Yup.
:-))
When using ordinarily GPL (so not necessarily LGPL!) for a library, everyone can dinamically link to it.
When using GPL for your program, everyone is free to put it in a library.
Conclusion: when you write a GPL program, EVERYONE can use it in their proprietory code, as long as they are smart enough to make a dll from it, and distribute that dll freely.
Whopee! Wonder when we'll see Microsoft(R) GIMP(tm) 2000
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Canvas 7 Linux Edition is a fully native Linux application
Until here I thought "huh? Oh, well, off course. Fun."
which was developed with the help of the Wine library. For more information on wine you can go to
^_^ Now things get clear. They have ported it with the help of Wine. Good to see that Wine is of use here. But a funny sidenote is that I have never seen anyone mention to be "fully native" when he really is so, but that it often happens to make sure that he is when he actually is not. Of course all they tried to say is that you don't need Wine to run Canvas.
Anyway, if you would need it, you wouldn't get there ;-)
Now where are the screenshots for Linux??
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After reading your message I went to gnu.org reading their comments on the Mozilla license. I couldn't quite figure out the details.
:-)
/all/ sources. I still recognize some silly Netscapish inconveniences through the new Mozilla ;-)
Is it true that anyone can distribute Mozilla? And how about making money by doing so? If anyone can, why should Netscape be blamed for Mozilla throwing away their sources; that wasn't Netscape's idea. And anyway, what did RedHat ever do for Linux in its first days - OK, now it's making GNOME and stuff, but in their first days they were only profiting from free software. Well, don't we all
BTW anyway Mozilla didn't throw away
But if there are some complexities which would bind code to Netscape, I would love to have these explained, as some other projects also start using a MPLish license, and it is important to know what the restrictions are.
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