Would you kindly do everyone else the favor of not flaming their favorite OS without proof? Where on earth do you BSD is more powerful than Linux statements come from? They may be true, you might well be able to back them up. But please, either back them up or don't make them. If one OS is superior, and this can be factually proved, then fine, state that (with proof) if you wish. What on earth can be gained from "*BSD is more stable and powerful than Linux, listen to me all you Linux wet-behind-the-ears suckling babes. Come try a real man's OS. My penis is bigger than yours and I have more chest hair."
Maybe there should be some rule that the only people who get to make unjustified statements about Operating Systems have to include some sort of credentials, such as having written 60% or more of two or more operating systems with 5000+ users each?
> Here I agree with you. There are extremely few > exceptions to the rule that everyone enjoys > coding more than packaging, testing, or > documenting. Thus, when your "workforce" has > _total_ freedom to pick what they work on (yes, > this is the theme I said I'd come back to) these > other tasks get pretty short shrift. The result, > one might think, is that the core code is all > elegant and pretty but the ancillary code and > the non-code are either nonexistent or shoddy. > In actual fact, the core code isn't that elegant > or pretty either.
Let's be honest with each other: the majority of code isn't elegant. Not from anywhere. Software from everywhere has proven itself to be good. Free software has proven itself to be (generally) free from the direction of the marketing department more than commercial software has.
As far as being user friendly, it's best to observe the classic wisdom that "all generalizations are false, including this one". What you're saying is just completely bogus. No friend of mine (qua friend) has tied me to a chair and made me do only what he wants me to do. Generally, no free software has either. Lots of commercial software has. Sure, the commercial stuff put explicit labels on all the nobs so instead of reading the manual in a book, I read it on the device. This is arguably more convenient. It's also not limited to either domain (free or commercial). The catch is that the majority of the labels on the nobs in commercial software are poorly designed. The labels are vague quite often. There are so many "user friendly" apps that I've had to go to a manual which is generally fairly crappy because the software is "user friendly". I couldn't find what I wanted to know anywhere. And let's not forget those utterly useless "user friendly" error messages. Some of them make me wonder why the programmers didn't just use a smiley face or a frowning face instead of text.
And what happens with all these "user friendly" applications? Geeks figure it out themselves, and everyone else buys the books or asks the geeks. I've fixed win95 problems for people way to much to buy into the idea that it's easy to use. It's easy to use for non-technicle people because they aren't the ones who deal with the problems, we are. An F14 is easy to use if you are going for a joy ride and the pilot is the one flying the plane.
Besides, have you seen Econf (I think that that is what it is called)? It's the all-new half-price free-trial-offer open-source buzzword compliant configuration editor that looks both (a) really pretty and (b) really easy. It's open source. It is free. Look at gnome. Look at KDE. Hell, configuring the kernel is 9/10 times a brainless activity (just do a make xconfig and click on the pretty buttons with the nice labels next to them, it's what I do). Why don't we all get over our X will never Y nonsense. Life isn't black or white, it's a giant and complex checkerboard, you'll find pieces of black and white all over the place.
Oh, about debugging, that's what lots of users do, they test the edge cases. After all, with OSS someone uses every edge case, that's why its there. It's just about never the case that every user only uses 90% of a program (or even 99%). If you ever read Changelogs, how do you think that all those absolutely obscure bugs are fixed? (hint: someone tried the edge case and found them.)
To sum up, I'll use a paraphrase of a quote from a movie which I only saw 5 minutes of and never caught the title: "It's hard all over". If anyone has a tragic flaw that will be its downfall, it's commercial software for having the marketing department and the shareholders. OSS can do anyting that it wants to, and someone wants to do everything.
And if you don't know how your microwave oven works, you don't have that power. And do you know what happens when your oven breaks? You have to pay someone to fix it. They're not that complicated. neither are cars, trains, etc. I'm not talking about being an expert in every field, but you should know how your tools work. If you didn't know that the MWO uses microwaves, which ar e harmful to human life, and the oven got damaged in such a way as to obviously leak, you'll be hurt. If you don't know how your chainsaw works, please take ten steps away from me. Just think about this quote:
The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws). -- Doug Gwyn
One way is to work with software designers to come up with auser design. I've got a program called XAmixer (http://cs.alfred.edu/~lansdoct/linux/xamixer/). I've tried to make the interface good, but I don't know interface principles. As well, I need art, pixmaps, etc. from graphic designers. I can do a few things with the gimp, but i can't really do any original work. That's one area where graphics designers can also contribute greatly. Work with coders to come up with good looks and good graphics. Also giving help with principles would be greatly appreciated by many people (such as myself). Teaching design techniques to coders (who generally will want to know everything) will also go a long way, if done in a friendly way. Even making and publicising a user-interface design howto that is genuinely good and also general would be very helpful.
Ok, I see what you mean, and you are correct in it.
I do recommend getting a TV card and a playstation, or just a playstation if you have a TV. It doesn't crash, has a tremendous selection of software, is reasonably priced, has good hardware acceleration, and is compatable with all playstation games. It isn't that good for some forms of RPGs, but FF7 is amazing. Frankly, are the windows games really that much better than the playstation games?
What on earth are the benefits of the SB live? Do you have the appropriate 8 speaker system to take advantage of its new features? It will eventually be supported once creative gets a clue and releases specs. There will probably be some shoddy binary only nonsense that doesn't work for a good percentage of the population even sooner.
As far as 3D, it's not here now, you are correct. It will never be in the kernel. However, XFree86 should be there within 6-12 months. And it won't be shoddy games only crap, either. It should be (given the descriptions of what precision insight is working on) SGI workstation quality software, even if the hardware won't have that sort of power.
Oh, as a side note, I'm not terribly familiar with sound hardware, but creative generally doesn't make very good stuff. All of the boards that we have specs for give evidence of that. They use pathetically small buffers and other junk. Btw,if you want a good sound card, get an Ensoniq AudioPCI card. It has two independent DSPs, so you can play two pcm streams simultaneous (e.g. voice and mp3 background, game and voice, etc.)
Linux does not currently support all sound cards out there. This will hopefully change to a degree, but until Linux has 20-30% marketshare, I don't think that it will change all that much. There will always be Uncle Bill's $5 sound cards that don't work, and there will be some companies who are just anal (creative labs, for example).
About openGL, just wait a bit. Precision Insight is putting together a direct 3D multipipe rendering architecture for XFree86. That combined with Terrence Riperenda's glx work, and you'll have better 3D support than windows does. Then all that's left is hardware support. You should have the 3dfx cards, hopefully matrox cards, and permedia cards. Give it a little while and it should be really good, giving you almost the functionality of some SGI workstations.
As far as controllers, from what I have read, the new Linux joystick driver rivals the win95 one, supporting just about everything (I think that the BFRIS people said that, check them out to be sure).
It's either there or coming. Linux isn't perfect yet, especially not for games. If you really want multimedia, get an O2. Why on earth would to mention windows? There is a lot of hardware compatability problems with NT, and 95/98 is just a new version of DOS with some unified drivers. Playing games, it's incredibly unstable. God, why would you even mention windows? They haven't been able to accomplish anything but market share on that nonsense system.
So, oh technical guru, how much did microsoft pay you? Don't get me wrong, people are free to support whatever views they want, and I don't go screaming M$ lackey at anyone who doesn't support microsoft. The thing is, you're comment sounds an awful lot like a promotional pitch. It's the sort of thing that I'd expect to see on a brochure (sp?). About sound, ever checked out ALSA? About 3D, ever hear of precision insight? About microsoft, that isn't a 3D experience, it's a new version of DOS. If you want to compare Linux to IRIX, and say that IRIX offers real multimedia and Linux doesn't, fine, you'd be right, at least for now. Microsoft offering a complete multimedia experience? Right. My playstation offers a more complete multimedia experience than windows does. And I use that with my TV card under Linux. How do you sleep at night?
Just to add one more comment to the don't care about MSCE's, the guy who wrote the UNIX vs. NT paper (Kirch, the one who pointed out how badly UNIX kicked NT's butt), the main feature of unix-vs-nt.org, has a MSCE. It actually makes his paper more persuasive. Don't bash MSCEs. Just the people that think that that means something serious. If someone picks up a MSCE to get a job, though they'd far prefer UNIX, and are in fact UNIX gurus, by all means take them. On the other hand, if all someone has is a MSCE... politely point out that a computer is significantly differnt from a nintendo system, and suggest learning how.:-)
Funny, I find Xemacs and an Eterm (or five, sometimes) to be the most powerful development environment. Period. has it occurred to you that Emacs (& Xemacs) is meant to be a power tool, not a quick editor? Try flying an F14 or a Mig. I bet you that they're a hell of a lot harder to fly than a single prop airplane. Guess what, they're also a hell of a lot more powerful. Emacs exists when what you're doing isn't quick and dirty, it's for when what you are doing is big and complex. Think of it this way: emacs isn't meant to be intuitive to those who haven't used it, it's meant to give maximum power to those who master it. That's a good thing. When you don't want to master it, you don't use it. If you want to master it, you find that you have an extremely powerful tool at your fingertips, even if you may require all ten of them. Think of it like Kung Fu. It's awfully complex and difficult. (Much more so than emacs, Kung Fu takes decades to master.) The result is awfully powerful and effective. As for the rest, if you can't learn a language in a week, you're probably not the sort of person (at least yet) who would benefit from emacs anyhow. Anyhow, nothing aside from food, shelter, water, and air is good for everyone. Different tools for different jobs, to each his own, etc. To quote some really good people during the interface wars (my term), "The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned."
Out of curiosity, what if Microsoft wins, and owns the world? Have you ever read 1984? Ever thought five minutes about what depending for your life on completely proprietary technology means? Ever think about what that means when one man controls that technology? Ever wonder if someone would stoop to drugging food? Ever wonder how he would be stopped if he owned 100% of the proprietary systems that delivered the food? Do you really think that the world would be better off if more of everyone's money went to bill gates? Think about what every grocery store using NT means. Think about what every government computer using NT means. Higher taxes or more tax money going to microsoft, rather than feeding the hungry or housing the homeless. Think before you criticise.
Look, this is really quite simple: 1. x11amp is free 2. Gtk+ 1.1.14 is pretty close to Gtk+ 1.2.0 3. There are a fairly large number of differences between the two, depending on what you are doing. 4. Pursuant to #4, if your code heavily uses the heavily affected areas, it will be a lot of work to switch. 5. Seeing as how both 2 & 4 are true, it will minize your work the most to use Gtk+ 1.1 until 1.2 comes out. 6. Seeing as how 1 & 5 are true, your best course of action is to use Gtk+ 1.1 until Gtk+ 1.2 comes out. 7. Some users might complain that they don't get to use your bleeding edge program without using the bleeding edge libraries. 8. Pursuant to 7, your best course of action is to politely point out the GPL on your program, and invite them to patch their copy to work with non-development libraries, and then distribute it if they wish. 9. Some users won't do any work but sit around and complain that people aren't giving them free stuff exactly how they want it. 10. Point out that they aren't really who are meant to get the software, they are just a sideeffect of the freedom involved. 11. Also point out that a little humility and gratitude go a long way. 12. Also point out that it is improper for a non-coder to criticise the ways of a coder, or for a beginning coder to criticize the decisions of a master coder.
Look, it's one thing if you are poitning out some sort of moral issue, free versus proprietary, etc. That's everyone's duty to (a) complain about and (b) fix as best they can. Every good open source application that's written weakens the power of closed source software, and every voice that cries against proprietary software helps, too. The money that purchases open source CDs, hires open source programmers, reads open source magazines, buys computers from vendors who install open source operating systems, or purchases services and manuals from open source developers helps even more. This has absolutely nothing to do with that. Do you have something more valid to say than open source developers shouldn't develop for their target platforms, but instead for older ones? I bet, if you look at it, that X11amp will be in its stable version around the time that Gtk+ 1.2 comes out. Therefore that is probably its target platform. If there target platform is Gtk+ 1.2, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to develop on Gtk+ 1.1.x then 1.0.x. It's one thing to switch in the middle of a stable version, but you're complaining about a development version being in development?
Lastly, x11amp is an mp3 player. This isn't the kernel or libc that we're talking about. you can (a) live without it for a few months and (b) choose another one. Just learn from the closing verse to MST3K's theme song, "Repeat to yourself 'It's just a show' - I should really just relax!"
Whoever designed that "Let's through slow moving graphics IN FRONT of our text" page should be shot, several times, in different places of the body. How do people do that in good conscience?
What trade secrects could possibly be in 3D drivers? The only way that I could see that would be:
-The 3D stuff is done in software. -Building 3D boards is ridiculously easy and making drivers is the hard part.
Of course, if the first one is the case, doesn't this defeat the purpose of hardware acceleration? If the second one is the case, then the real difference between the voodoo I and the voodoo II is the driver?
Shouldn't the interface to 3D hardware be similar to the programmer's interface to openGL? I.e. here's a polygon. Here's the textures. Here's the viewport. Draw it. What could possibly be so secret about that. Can someone please answer this, it's been bugging me for a while.
I don't know what NT does on SMP, but Linux 2.0.x uses BFL, big grained SMP, which is a big disadvantage. 2.2, by contrast, should really look nice on SMP systems, especially bigger ones. Of course, 2.2 dists aren't going to be out for a few months, so that will take a while. It will be fun to see, though, especially given Apache's multi-process architecture.
It also depends on what cpu they compiled it for. Redhat compiles with no cpu optimization, i.e. no -i486, -mpentium, etc. I think that that was what a new dist called somethin glike Stampede was partially about, compiling everything without debugging symbols and for pentiums. Those CPU optimizations can significantly affect performance. That being said, I don't know what cpu optimizations each dist uses. Also, it's not a given that everyone optimizes with -O, -O1, -O2, -O3, etc.
Unfortunately, Motherboards and cache for alpha are very expensive. I'm paying $1810 for a 600 MHz alpha w/4 MB cache on a UX motherboard. Cheaper than the alternative alpha not from samsung would be, though. Long Live Alpha! Everyone write portable code!:-)
The smtp protocol is fairly rebust, and includes specs for retrying. I think it goes something like 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, each hour for 24 hours, once per day. Fatal error on the fifth day. Or something like that. Mail should just be delayed, not bounce, well, unless you send your mail by telnet redhat.com 25 HELO etc. :-)
Jon, there are very few people who can help you by descriptions of your problem. I would personally suggest running pppd by hand. Once you get the script up, it's just much easier than trusting some gui application. Anyhow, if you run pppd with the debug option, then send us the relevant portions of your log file (the portion labeled pppd of/var/log/messages, usually), we can offer advice. Without the log, there are just way too many possibilities. Remember, when you need help, help those who are going to help you.:-) Btw, good luck. It's great to hear that you've learned that there's no magic to computers. That's probably the biggest step.
He didn't claim to be a hacker. He said that he hacked. Anyone can hack. I don't think that just anyone can be a hacker. I've written several open source programs, one of which was downlaoded by over 1000 people. I don't consider myself a hacker (though I hope to be). I have hacked. And he is hacking. As many people have already pointed out, one variety of hacking is getting things to work (see internet jargon file). He's learning that the computer is a tool, not a magic god, and he's learning that on a UNIX box, where that's actually possible to learn for real. Lighten up. Jon hasn't even come close to pretending to be great. Why are you making out that he is? If you read on, you'd see that he acknowledged that what he did wasn't big in the grand scheme of things, but that (quite rightly) it was a big step. And why on earth would being a hacker make everything magically work without having to touch it?
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Would you kindly do everyone else the favor of not flaming their favorite OS without proof? Where on earth do you BSD is more powerful than Linux statements come from? They may be true, you might well be able to back them up. But please, either back them up or don't make them. If one OS is superior, and this can be factually proved, then fine, state that (with proof) if you wish. What on earth can be gained from "*BSD is more stable and powerful than Linux, listen to me all you Linux wet-behind-the-ears suckling babes. Come try a real man's OS. My penis is bigger than yours and I have more chest hair."
Maybe there should be some rule that the only people who get to make unjustified statements about Operating Systems have to include some sort of credentials, such as having written 60% or more of two or more operating systems with 5000+ users each?
>Free software will never be really user friendly
> Here I agree with you. There are extremely few
> exceptions to the rule that everyone enjoys
> coding more than packaging, testing, or
> documenting. Thus, when your "workforce" has
> _total_ freedom to pick what they work on (yes,
> this is the theme I said I'd come back to) these
> other tasks get pretty short shrift. The result,
> one might think, is that the core code is all
> elegant and pretty but the ancillary code and
> the non-code are either nonexistent or shoddy.
> In actual fact, the core code isn't that elegant
> or pretty either.
Let's be honest with each other: the majority of code isn't elegant. Not from anywhere. Software from everywhere has proven itself to be good. Free software has proven itself to be (generally) free from the direction of the marketing department more than commercial software has.
As far as being user friendly, it's best to observe the classic wisdom that "all generalizations are false, including this one". What you're saying is just completely bogus. No friend of mine (qua friend) has tied me to a chair and made me do only what he wants me to do. Generally, no free software has either. Lots of commercial software has. Sure, the commercial stuff put explicit labels on all the nobs so instead of reading the manual in a book, I read it on the device. This is arguably more convenient. It's also not limited to either domain (free or commercial).
The catch is that the majority of the labels on the nobs in commercial software are poorly designed. The labels are vague quite often. There are so many "user friendly" apps that I've had to go to a manual which is generally fairly crappy because the software is "user friendly". I couldn't find what I wanted to know anywhere. And let's not forget those utterly useless "user friendly" error messages. Some of them make me wonder why the programmers didn't just use a smiley face or a frowning face instead of text.
And what happens with all these "user friendly" applications? Geeks figure it out themselves, and everyone else buys the books or asks the geeks. I've fixed win95 problems for people way to much to buy into the idea that it's easy to use. It's easy to use for non-technicle people because they aren't the ones who deal with the problems, we are. An F14 is easy to use if you are going for a joy ride and the pilot is the one flying the plane.
Besides, have you seen Econf (I think that that is what it is called)? It's the all-new half-price free-trial-offer open-source buzzword compliant configuration editor that looks both (a) really pretty and (b) really easy. It's open source. It is free. Look at gnome. Look at KDE. Hell, configuring the kernel is 9/10 times a brainless activity (just do a make xconfig and click on the pretty buttons with the nice labels next to them, it's what I do). Why don't we all get over our X will never Y nonsense. Life isn't black or white, it's a giant and complex checkerboard, you'll find pieces of black and white all over the place.
Oh, about debugging, that's what lots of users do, they test the edge cases. After all, with OSS someone uses every edge case, that's why its there. It's just about never the case that every user only uses 90% of a program (or even 99%). If you ever read Changelogs, how do you think that all those absolutely obscure bugs are fixed? (hint: someone tried the edge case and found them.)
To sum up, I'll use a paraphrase of a quote from a movie which I only saw 5 minutes of and never caught the title: "It's hard all over". If anyone has a tragic flaw that will be its downfall, it's commercial software for having the marketing department and the shareholders. OSS can do anyting that it wants to, and someone wants to do everything.
And if you don't know how your microwave oven works, you don't have that power. And do you know what happens when your oven breaks? You have to pay someone to fix it. They're not that complicated. neither are cars, trains, etc. I'm not talking about being an expert in every field, but you should know how your tools work. If you didn't know that the MWO uses microwaves, which ar e harmful to human life, and the oven got damaged in such a way as to obviously leak, you'll be hurt. If you don't know how your chainsaw works, please take ten steps away from me. Just think about this quote:
The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws).
-- Doug Gwyn
One way is to work with software designers to come up with auser design. I've got a program called XAmixer (http://cs.alfred.edu/~lansdoct/linux/xamixer/). I've tried to make the interface good, but I don't know interface principles. As well, I need art, pixmaps, etc. from graphic designers. I can do a few things with the gimp, but i can't really do any original work. That's one area where graphics designers can also contribute greatly. Work with coders to come up with good looks and good graphics. Also giving help with principles would be greatly appreciated by many people (such as myself). Teaching design techniques to coders (who generally will want to know everything) will also go a long way, if done in a friendly way. Even making and publicising a user-interface design howto that is genuinely good and also general would be very helpful.
Ok, I see what you mean, and you are correct in it.
I do recommend getting a TV card and a playstation, or just a playstation if you have a TV. It doesn't crash, has a tremendous selection of software, is reasonably priced, has good hardware acceleration, and is compatable with all playstation games. It isn't that good for some forms of RPGs, but FF7 is amazing. Frankly, are the windows games really that much better than the playstation games?
What on earth are the benefits of the SB live? Do you have the appropriate 8 speaker system to take advantage of its new features? It will eventually be supported once creative gets a clue and releases specs. There will probably be some shoddy binary only nonsense that doesn't work for a good percentage of the population even sooner.
As far as 3D, it's not here now, you are correct. It will never be in the kernel. However, XFree86 should be there within 6-12 months. And it won't be shoddy games only crap, either. It should be (given the descriptions of what precision insight is working on) SGI workstation quality software, even if the hardware won't have that sort of power.
Oh, as a side note, I'm not terribly familiar with sound hardware, but creative generally doesn't make very good stuff. All of the boards that we have specs for give evidence of that. They use pathetically small buffers and other junk. Btw,if you want a good sound card, get an Ensoniq AudioPCI card. It has two independent DSPs, so you can play two pcm streams simultaneous (e.g. voice and mp3 background, game and voice, etc.)
Linux does not currently support all sound cards out there. This will hopefully change to a degree, but until Linux has 20-30% marketshare, I don't think that it will change all that much. There will always be Uncle Bill's $5 sound cards that don't work, and there will be some companies who are just anal (creative labs, for example).
About openGL, just wait a bit. Precision Insight is putting together a direct 3D multipipe rendering architecture for XFree86. That combined with Terrence Riperenda's glx work, and you'll have better 3D support than windows does. Then all that's left is hardware support. You should have the 3dfx cards, hopefully matrox cards, and permedia cards. Give it a little while and it should be really good, giving you almost the functionality of some SGI workstations.
As far as controllers, from what I have read, the new Linux joystick driver rivals the win95 one, supporting just about everything (I think that the BFRIS people said that, check them out to be sure).
It's either there or coming. Linux isn't perfect yet, especially not for games. If you really want multimedia, get an O2. Why on earth would to mention windows? There is a lot of hardware compatability problems with NT, and 95/98 is just a new version of DOS with some unified drivers. Playing games, it's incredibly unstable. God, why would you even mention windows? They haven't been able to accomplish anything but market share on that nonsense system.
So, oh technical guru, how much did microsoft pay you? Don't get me wrong, people are free to support whatever views they want, and I don't go screaming M$ lackey at anyone who doesn't support microsoft. The thing is, you're comment sounds an awful lot like a promotional pitch. It's the sort of thing that I'd expect to see on a brochure (sp?).
About sound, ever checked out ALSA?
About 3D, ever hear of precision insight?
About microsoft, that isn't a 3D experience, it's a new version of DOS. If you want to compare Linux to IRIX, and say that IRIX offers real multimedia and Linux doesn't, fine, you'd be right, at least for now. Microsoft offering a complete multimedia experience? Right. My playstation offers a more complete multimedia experience than windows does. And I use that with my TV card under Linux. How do you sleep at night?
Just to add one more comment to the don't care about MSCE's, the guy who wrote the UNIX vs. NT paper (Kirch, the one who pointed out how badly UNIX kicked NT's butt), the main feature of unix-vs-nt.org, has a MSCE. It actually makes his paper more persuasive. Don't bash MSCEs. Just the people that think that that means something serious. If someone picks up a MSCE to get a job, though they'd far prefer UNIX, and are in fact UNIX gurus, by all means take them. On the other hand, if all someone has is a MSCE... politely point out that a computer is significantly differnt from a nintendo system, and suggest learning how. :-)
Funny, I find Xemacs and an Eterm (or five, sometimes) to be the most powerful development environment. Period. has it occurred to you that Emacs (& Xemacs) is meant to be a power tool, not a quick editor?
Try flying an F14 or a Mig. I bet you that they're a hell of a lot harder to fly than a single prop airplane. Guess what, they're also a hell of a lot more powerful. Emacs exists when what you're doing isn't quick and dirty, it's for when what you are doing is big and complex.
Think of it this way: emacs isn't meant to be intuitive to those who haven't used it, it's meant to give maximum power to those who master it. That's a good thing. When you don't want to master it, you don't use it. If you want to master it, you find that you have an extremely powerful tool at your fingertips, even if you may require all ten of them.
Think of it like Kung Fu. It's awfully complex and difficult. (Much more so than emacs, Kung Fu takes decades to master.) The result is awfully powerful and effective.
As for the rest, if you can't learn a language in a week, you're probably not the sort of person (at least yet) who would benefit from emacs anyhow.
Anyhow, nothing aside from food, shelter, water, and air is good for everyone. Different tools for different jobs, to each his own, etc. To quote some really good people during the interface wars (my term), "The only intuitive interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned."
Where can you find an Alpha system that supports AGP?
Just a simple question: how do you crash less often then never?
Out of curiosity, what if Microsoft wins, and owns the world? Have you ever read 1984? Ever thought five minutes about what depending for your life on completely proprietary technology means? Ever think about what that means when one man controls that technology? Ever wonder if someone would stoop to drugging food? Ever wonder how he would be stopped if he owned 100% of the proprietary systems that delivered the food?
Do you really think that the world would be better off if more of everyone's money went to bill gates? Think about what every grocery store using NT means. Think about what every government computer using NT means. Higher taxes or more tax money going to microsoft, rather than feeding the hungry or housing the homeless. Think before you criticise.
And what exactly did you do? I bet that your post wasn't posted by telepathy while you were busy feeding people.
What is achieved by installing 98 in the first place, right?
Is that one of the ones in the category of "too obvious"?
Look, this is really quite simple:
1. x11amp is free
2. Gtk+ 1.1.14 is pretty close to Gtk+ 1.2.0
3. There are a fairly large number of differences between the two, depending on what you are doing.
4. Pursuant to #4, if your code heavily uses the heavily affected areas, it will be a lot of work to switch.
5. Seeing as how both 2 & 4 are true, it will minize your work the most to use Gtk+ 1.1 until 1.2 comes out.
6. Seeing as how 1 & 5 are true, your best course of action is to use Gtk+ 1.1 until Gtk+ 1.2 comes out.
7. Some users might complain that they don't get to use your bleeding edge program without using the bleeding edge libraries.
8. Pursuant to 7, your best course of action is to politely point out the GPL on your program, and invite them to patch their copy to work with non-development libraries, and then distribute it if they wish.
9. Some users won't do any work but sit around and complain that people aren't giving them free stuff exactly how they want it.
10. Point out that they aren't really who are meant to get the software, they are just a sideeffect of the freedom involved.
11. Also point out that a little humility and gratitude go a long way.
12. Also point out that it is improper for a non-coder to criticise the ways of a coder, or for a beginning coder to criticize the decisions of a master coder.
Look, it's one thing if you are poitning out some sort of moral issue, free versus proprietary, etc. That's everyone's duty to (a) complain about and (b) fix as best they can. Every good open source application that's written weakens the power of closed source software, and every voice that cries against proprietary software helps, too. The money that purchases open source CDs, hires open source programmers, reads open source magazines, buys computers from vendors who install open source operating systems, or purchases services and manuals from open source developers helps even more. This has absolutely nothing to do with that. Do you have something more valid to say than open source developers shouldn't develop for their target platforms, but instead for older ones? I bet, if you look at it, that X11amp will be in its stable version around the time that Gtk+ 1.2 comes out. Therefore that is probably its target platform. If there target platform is Gtk+ 1.2, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to develop on Gtk+ 1.1.x then 1.0.x. It's one thing to switch in the middle of a stable version, but you're complaining about a development version being in development?
Lastly, x11amp is an mp3 player. This isn't the kernel or libc that we're talking about. you can (a) live without it for a few months and (b) choose another one. Just learn from the closing verse to MST3K's theme song, "Repeat to yourself 'It's just a show' - I should really just relax!"
Whoever designed that "Let's through slow moving graphics IN FRONT of our text" page should be shot, several times, in different places of the body. How do people do that in good conscience?
What trade secrects could possibly be in 3D drivers? The only way that I could see that would be:
-The 3D stuff is done in software.
-Building 3D boards is ridiculously easy and making drivers is the hard part.
Of course, if the first one is the case, doesn't this defeat the purpose of hardware acceleration?
If the second one is the case, then the real difference between the voodoo I and the voodoo II is the driver?
Shouldn't the interface to 3D hardware be similar to the programmer's interface to openGL? I.e. here's a polygon. Here's the textures. Here's the viewport. Draw it. What could possibly be so secret about that. Can someone please answer this, it's been bugging me for a while.
I don't know what NT does on SMP, but Linux 2.0.x uses BFL, big grained SMP, which is a big disadvantage. 2.2, by contrast, should really look nice on SMP systems, especially bigger ones. Of course, 2.2 dists aren't going to be out for a few months, so that will take a while. It will be fun to see, though, especially given Apache's multi-process architecture.
It also depends on what cpu they compiled it for. Redhat compiles with no cpu optimization, i.e. no -i486, -mpentium, etc. I think that that was what a new dist called somethin glike Stampede was partially about, compiling everything without debugging symbols and for pentiums. Those CPU optimizations can significantly affect performance. That being said, I don't know what cpu optimizations each dist uses. Also, it's not a given that everyone optimizes with -O, -O1, -O2, -O3, etc.
Unfortunately, Motherboards and cache for alpha are very expensive. I'm paying $1810 for a 600 MHz alpha w/4 MB cache on a UX motherboard. Cheaper than the alternative alpha not from samsung would be, though. Long Live Alpha! Everyone write portable code! :-)
The smtp protocol is fairly rebust, and includes specs for retrying. I think it goes something like 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, each hour for 24 hours, once per day.
Fatal error on the fifth day.
Or something like that. Mail should just be delayed, not bounce, well, unless you send your mail by
telnet redhat.com 25
HELO
etc.
:-)
Jon, there are very few people who can help you by descriptions of your problem. I would personally suggest running pppd by hand. Once you get the script up, it's just much easier than trusting some gui application. Anyhow, if you run pppd with the debug option, then send us the relevant portions of your log file (the portion labeled pppd of /var/log/messages, usually), we can offer advice. Without the log, there are just way too many possibilities. Remember, when you need help, help those who are going to help you. :-)
Btw, good luck. It's great to hear that you've learned that there's no magic to computers. That's probably the biggest step.
He didn't claim to be a hacker. He said that he hacked. Anyone can hack. I don't think that just anyone can be a hacker. I've written several open source programs, one of which was downlaoded by over 1000 people. I don't consider myself a hacker (though I hope to be). I have hacked. And he is hacking. As many people have already pointed out, one variety of hacking is getting things to work (see internet jargon file). He's learning that the computer is a tool, not a magic god, and he's learning that on a UNIX box, where that's actually possible to learn for real. Lighten up. Jon hasn't even come close to pretending to be great. Why are you making out that he is? If you read on, you'd see that he acknowledged that what he did wasn't big in the grand scheme of things, but that (quite rightly) it was a big step. And why on earth would being a hacker make everything magically work without having to touch it?