What surprised me is that I needed to hack up my distro to get those things (like MP3 support) even in the pay-for-it version of 10.1. I can understand why free distros may have licensing concerns, but I'd expect that forking over some cash would free me from having to deal with that crap.
I'm personally really looking forward to SLED 10, since 10.1 really feels like its still a beta release. However, it is a beta of some really promising-looking things.
And while I like FOSS and all, my reason for using Linux has nothing at all to do with the FOSS movement. It has to do with the fact that I simply prefer a *nix environment by a long shot, am actually willing to pay a reasonable price for it, and these days Linux distributions provide the best one on the desktop. (my server machines still being Solaris and FreeBSD, where I care about totally different characteristics of the OS)
Actually, it sounds a heck of a lot more like "identity theft," on a corporate level. Well, I suppose that would be trademark violation of sorts, except taken to a whole new level.
Just remember that "/proc" only contains process table information in real UNIX. The only OS I'm aware of where it contains everything one could possible care about in the kernel is Linux.
Also, "/proc" is rapidly being deprecated. Heck, on the *BSDs, it is mostly now a totally optional feature. MacOSX doesn't even have "/proc" at all. Solaris still has it, but I wonder how long. (since there are system/kernel calls that utilities can make to get at all that information anyways, and I've heard there are security issues with "/proc")
Yeah, VMS uses "/" for command line switches. Of course it does directories as "[foo.bar]" instead of "\foo\bar" or "/foo/bar", and when looking at a directory listing, directories show up like files with a ".dir" extension. The whole way VMS handles directories and files would probably confuse the heck out of DOS or UNIX users to some extent.
But I also think VMS and Microsoft have more of a connection in developer-land than UNIX and Microsoft, and it does sometimes show.
Well, over the past several yeas, Sun has gotten REALLY GOOD at the whole thin client thing. A modern Sun Ray setup bears no resemblance to the terminals of old, or even X terminals. They're essentially stateless devices you just "plug in", and everything runs off the server. When I say "everything", I even mean your whole session and screen contents (something X terminals and serial terminals don't do as nicely). You can even detach and re-attach (i.e. hot-desking) your session between thin clients. (I equate it to "VNC in a box, that doesn't suck")
Heck, the UI performance is even good enough that you *can* use it comfortably as a primary desktop, for 2D stuff.
But guess what? There's more!
These things also support audio (with hot-desking, so you're mp3s are still playing in the background and hit the speakers of the next thin client when you re-attach your session). These things also support USB peripherals as well! (a couple of days ago, I plugged my SD card reader into one to get some photos from my digital camera... normally I have one hooked to a USBRS-232 box for some embedded stuff I do)
Yes, I actually have a home installation of the Sun Ray 150 model, and I've been REALLY happy with it. I get a persistant session not tied to a portable device (something not do-able with laptops, unless thinking of the Tadpole COMET15 SunRay laptop), and essentially computer access in every room. It rocks!
Havn't you learned anything over the years? Mac users don't acknowledge anything until Apple hand-delivers it to them. When OSX first came out, think of all the Mac users who "suddenly discovered the UNIX workd". They never knew of it before, but now that Apple handed it to them, they suddenly took an interest.
With Book Camp, now you'll find all sorts of Mac users who *suddenly* decided to discover that Windows was ok to run (despite what they may have said the week before Boot Camp was released).
Damn, I hate old-school Mac users...
(thankfully OSX has created two distinct classes of Mac users...)
That's right... It seems like NASA is full of education initiatives that cater to younger children. Children at that age tend to be easily interested in all sorts of new and exciting things, and don't need NASA's help. The problem is that they'll likely lose any and all interest once they get to an age where they can actually steer their future.
I think NASA should focus much more on grades 9-12, where the goal actually is to prepare oneself for college and ultimately a future career. This is the critical time when we're loosing interest.
I can definitely say there is a need for more applications-type courses. When I was an undergrad, one of my favorate (and hardest) CS courses was on robotic algorithms. It is much more interesting to see how you'd go about applying Computer Science to solve a real problem (i.e. motion planning, sensor mapping, etc) than some abstract one like list sorting. And yes, we actually did have to write programs that implemented all those algorithms.
But is there a Mandrake for PPC? And can any of those tools resize HFS+ filesystems? Somehow, I think not.
Re:Apple is going to make a killing...
on
Going To Boot Camp
·
· Score: 1
OSX is, IMHO, really that middle-ground we're always seeking. On one hand, its grandma-friendly. On the other hand, it's techie friendly. Most importantly, though, while every dismisses even acknowledging that people use Linux on the desktop, plenty of people acknowledge that people use Macs on the desktop. So, we can actually get lots of end-user commercial software for the Mac. Yes, even MS Office. Yes, multimedia codecs. Yes, even occasionally other random 3rd party thingies.
By running OSX, we can have the computer us geeks *want*, as well as the computer we *need* to interoperate a little better. I've actually managed to use a PowerBook as my "work" machine for the past year, and it actually works pretty well for that. (also nice that half of my office uses PowerBooks, even if "corporate IT" is Windows-focused) Though if I were to try Linux, I'd likely have to get Crossover Office, VMware, etc, and *pray* I didn't have to dual-boot the machine often/ever.
(Oh, and with a laptop, OSX perfectly supports all the hardware that would sometimes be a great challenge in Linux.)
Then again, today I think my biggest worry is Apple's decision to build a camera into the new MacBook Pro. Considering that many people (myself sometimes included) work in environments were we can't even have camera cell phones on us, I think this will make the MacBook Pro simply an unchoosable option for my next laptop.
Non-destructive partition tool? That I don't have to pay some 3rd party for? Makes me want a PPC version so I can play around with other PPC OSes on my PowerBook.
And what people often forget is that Army-types *always* wear BDUs. Yes, even in an office situations. Yes, regardless of rank. In fact, the only place you're likely to see Army officers in anything but BDUs is on TV.
People who use MS products seem to have a habit of taking the most general and meaningless portion of the product name, and using that to refer to the product. This annoys the crap out of me, personally. So you worked with people who used "Visual Studio.Net" and just called it ".Net". This trend is made ever more annoying, as MS loves to use very generic terms in their product names. Heck, with Windows, they just mention the version name/number in complete isolation. So it's not "MS Windows XP". It's just XP, and be damned anything else that might be called XP. It's not "MS SQL Server", it's "SQL Server", and be damned any other database product that might actually be an "SQL Server". (most of 'em). So on and so forth. (At least I try to prefix MS product names with "MS" whenever I can, since I don't believe they get an automatic exception from products needing full identification.)
You know, it's funny that you bring it up. Once upon a time, when MS was first talking about.NET, it seemed like people could sit through 2-hour MS presentations and still not know what.NET actually was. Essentially, it was some sort of all-encompassing FUD/vaporware vehicle to get everyone behind a name, without knowing what that name meant.
Of course today people do know what it is. Essentially, it is like the intermediary java byte-code and VM, with a somewhat language-independent front-end. So you can write.NET apps in multiple languages.
Yes, most "real" UNIX admins probably are familiar with *BSD. Also, far more *BSD admins tend to be familiar with "real" UNIX. I think this is partly because the *BSD camp (well, mainly FreeBSD) tries to push itself as a "good open-source UNIX".
Meanwhile, it seems like far too many Linux users (at least from what I see in local LUGs) seem to have "I want to move away from Windows/MS" as their prime motivation. What's also interesting is that they'll blabber in support of that blatant generalization to no end, but then they'll refute it to no end the moment you call them on it. As such, Linux is always being compared to Windows (even when its an apples to oranges comparison), while FreeBSD usually isn't.
Of course that being said, Linux has far more "mindshare," and thus far more official software support. I'd say the two are probably close to equal in terms of software support in the opensource world (unless you count some desktop-oriented things), but most vendors tend to only notice Linux. Then again FreeBSD does have the ability to run Linux binaries, but that only works for user-land stuff.
Actually, it's not silly if you think about it. You just said that you used *BSD (you didn't mention which one, and they aren't all the same OS). Sure, you chose not to use it, but you did use it enough to know whether it would work for your application. Usually I find it dismissed out of hand, either because people don't know about it (and once they learn, they do try it), or because they stick to Linux like everyone else sticks to Windows.
Besides, as Linux becomes more popular, the hardcore geeks will need another platform to move on to. Rememeber, once upon a time it was possible to consider oneself a geek by being adept at DOS/Windows. Today, that no longer qualifies you for geek status.
Heck, usually you hear about "Windows on the desktop, Linux on the server." But for me, it is "Linux on the desktop, FreeBSD/Solaris on the server";-)
(I used to run OpenBSD on the firewall, but I had continually growing bad experiences with hardware support as I upgraded the machine, so that now is running FreeBSD as well. Besides, FreeBSD has OpenBSD's firewall software as one of its options anyways.)
Everyone and their dog has head of Linux, and the #1 reason I find for people to not use *BSD in some capacity is that they just don't know much about it.
Come to think of it, PostgreSQL is BSD-licensed too.
Re:Single Unix Standard, Version 3
on
What is UNIX, Anyway?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yeah, you'd have to stretch things to make those comparisons. VMS may have some syntactic similarities to DOS, but not as many as you'd think. Let's take a complete file path, for example: UNIX:/files/stuff/foo.txt DOS: C:\FILES\STUFF\FOO.TXT VMS: SYS$SYSDEVICE:[FILES.STUFF]FOO.TXT;1
Though DOS and VMS both use "DIR", while UNIX uses "ls". However, both DOS and UNIX use "cd", where VMS uses "SET DEFAULT". DOS and UNIX also use "mkdir", where VMS uses "CREATE/DIRECTORY". Though UNIX uses "-foo" for command switches, where both DOS and VMS would use "/FOO", but VMS doesn't require a space between the command and the switches.
Yeah, and you can do on-line scheduling with TiVo as well. Just need a browser that can login to the TiVo website. No, it isn't an extra feature.
If you want to see what your TiVo has already recorded, you can even talk to it through a web browser. Just need to get to it through https, and have your media access key handy.
And not having an escape mechanism can be more dangerous. Witness the lack of an ejection mechanism in the Space Shuttle.
Of course an advantage of the escape tower approach is that it moves you far from the exploding rocket, probably a lot further than any other sort of mid-air separation. It also gives you a quick on-pad escape mechanism, if you are launching with a conventional rocket.
Umm... We've had this thing called a "launch escape tower" ever since Mercury, and the Russians have something similar. (In fact, I think the Russians are the only ones to have actually used it in an actual abort.)
The idea is that a little rocket is mounted on a small tower above the crew capsule. In the event of a booster failure (yes, even on the pad), the rocket fires and pulls the capsule safely away from the booster. Then, it can parachute down to safety.
Though what really bothers me is how so many office-workers insist on putting their phones on vibrate, then placing them on the table during meetings. Yes, the table makes the vibration very annoying and audible, especially when their phones ring off the hook.
I think too many people just havn't learned that cell phones do have a vibrate mode. Either that, or too many women keep them in purses where such a feature would be useless.
I'm reminded of the summer when I got my first "real UNIX machine that wasn't old junk".. (it was 2000, and this was a nicer-model SGI Indigo2) A few weeks after getting it and bringing it up to snuff software-wise, I went off to this computer camp where I worked as a counselor for the rest of the summer. It definitely got attention being that "cool-looking purple computer". However, I still remember when the R/C Cars counselor (we had lots of activities) came by my room, looked at it (it was running 4Dwm, of course) and asked of it was running "'98".
I also had a "project" machine at my last job which I had installed FreeBSD on and used KDE as a desktop. Several people still actually had to ask if I was using my "corporate network" machine (which was locked-down WinXP). They really couldn't recognize just how different the desktops really looked.
ExpressPCB provides a locked-in PCB-only tool that did not appear to have any import/export capabilities the last time I checked. I just checked again, and it seems like they now have a schematic capture program to go along with it, albeit probably a basic one.
Frankly, I think the ExpressPCB model is handicapped by the fact that you have to use their software, and are locked into it. Meanwhile, standard data formats do exist for sending PCB designs to board shops.
And despite all these problems, it is still the best thing out there for those of us who are working on hobbyist budgets. I'd equate gEDA's failings to the reason why there is no good alternative to Visio in the diagramming world...
SYMBOLS! SYMBOLS! SYMBOLS!
No EDA program is going to have schematic/PCB symbols for every component you'll ever use, but at least Eagle almost has a majority of them. But for the rest, you have to make your own. While the process of doing this is a bit painful and annoying with Eagle's GUI "kinks", it is fairly straightforward and I've done it on several occasions. Yes, this is do-able from within the GUI. Last I checked, it seemed like doing it in gEDA was tricker, and involved manually editing data files.
Slashdot Mirror
What surprised me is that I needed to hack up my distro to get those things (like MP3 support) even in the pay-for-it version of 10.1. I can understand why free distros may have licensing concerns, but I'd expect that forking over some cash would free me from having to deal with that crap.
I'm personally really looking forward to SLED 10, since 10.1 really feels like its still a beta release. However, it is a beta of some really promising-looking things.
And while I like FOSS and all, my reason for using Linux has nothing at all to do with the FOSS movement. It has to do with the fact that I simply prefer a *nix environment by a long shot, am actually willing to pay a reasonable price for it, and these days Linux distributions provide the best one on the desktop. (my server machines still being Solaris and FreeBSD, where I care about totally different characteristics of the OS)
Actually, it sounds a heck of a lot more like "identity theft," on a corporate level. Well, I suppose that would be trademark violation of sorts, except taken to a whole new level.
Just remember that "/proc" only contains process table information in real UNIX. The only OS I'm aware of where it contains everything one could possible care about in the kernel is Linux.
Also, "/proc" is rapidly being deprecated. Heck, on the *BSDs, it is mostly now a totally optional feature. MacOSX doesn't even have "/proc" at all. Solaris still has it, but I wonder how long. (since there are system/kernel calls that utilities can make to get at all that information anyways, and I've heard there are security issues with "/proc")
Yeah, VMS uses "/" for command line switches. Of course it does directories as "[foo.bar]" instead of "\foo\bar" or "/foo/bar", and when looking at a directory listing, directories show up like files with a ".dir" extension. The whole way VMS handles directories and files would probably confuse the heck out of DOS or UNIX users to some extent.
But I also think VMS and Microsoft have more of a connection in developer-land than UNIX and Microsoft, and it does sometimes show.
Well, over the past several yeas, Sun has gotten REALLY GOOD at the whole thin client thing. A modern Sun Ray setup bears no resemblance to the terminals of old, or even X terminals. They're essentially stateless devices you just "plug in", and everything runs off the server. When I say "everything", I even mean your whole session and screen contents (something X terminals and serial terminals don't do as nicely). You can even detach and re-attach (i.e. hot-desking) your session between thin clients. (I equate it to "VNC in a box, that doesn't suck")
Heck, the UI performance is even good enough that you *can* use it comfortably as a primary desktop, for 2D stuff.
But guess what? There's more!
These things also support audio (with hot-desking, so you're mp3s are still playing in the background and hit the speakers of the next thin client when you re-attach your session). These things also support USB peripherals as well! (a couple of days ago, I plugged my SD card reader into one to get some photos from my digital camera... normally I have one hooked to a USBRS-232 box for some embedded stuff I do)
Yes, I actually have a home installation of the Sun Ray 150 model, and I've been REALLY happy with it. I get a persistant session not tied to a portable device (something not do-able with laptops, unless thinking of the Tadpole COMET15 SunRay laptop), and essentially computer access in every room. It rocks!
Havn't you learned anything over the years? Mac users don't acknowledge anything until Apple hand-delivers it to them. When OSX first came out, think of all the Mac users who "suddenly discovered the UNIX workd". They never knew of it before, but now that Apple handed it to them, they suddenly took an interest.
With Book Camp, now you'll find all sorts of Mac users who *suddenly* decided to discover that Windows was ok to run (despite what they may have said the week before Boot Camp was released).
Damn, I hate old-school Mac users...
(thankfully OSX has created two distinct classes of Mac users...)
That's right... It seems like NASA is full of education initiatives that cater to younger children. Children at that age tend to be easily interested in all sorts of new and exciting things, and don't need NASA's help. The problem is that they'll likely lose any and all interest once they get to an age where they can actually steer their future.
I think NASA should focus much more on grades 9-12, where the goal actually is to prepare oneself for college and ultimately a future career. This is the critical time when we're loosing interest.
I can definitely say there is a need for more applications-type courses. When I was an undergrad, one of my favorate (and hardest) CS courses was on robotic algorithms. It is much more interesting to see how you'd go about applying Computer Science to solve a real problem (i.e. motion planning, sensor mapping, etc) than some abstract one like list sorting. And yes, we actually did have to write programs that implemented all those algorithms.
But is there a Mandrake for PPC? And can any of those tools resize HFS+ filesystems? Somehow, I think not.
OSX is, IMHO, really that middle-ground we're always seeking. On one hand, its grandma-friendly. On the other hand, it's techie friendly. Most importantly, though, while every dismisses even acknowledging that people use Linux on the desktop, plenty of people acknowledge that people use Macs on the desktop. So, we can actually get lots of end-user commercial software for the Mac. Yes, even MS Office. Yes, multimedia codecs. Yes, even occasionally other random 3rd party thingies.
By running OSX, we can have the computer us geeks *want*, as well as the computer we *need* to interoperate a little better. I've actually managed to use a PowerBook as my "work" machine for the past year, and it actually works pretty well for that. (also nice that half of my office uses PowerBooks, even if "corporate IT" is Windows-focused) Though if I were to try Linux, I'd likely have to get Crossover Office, VMware, etc, and *pray* I didn't have to dual-boot the machine often/ever.
(Oh, and with a laptop, OSX perfectly supports all the hardware that would sometimes be a great challenge in Linux.)
Then again, today I think my biggest worry is Apple's decision to build a camera into the new MacBook Pro. Considering that many people (myself sometimes included) work in environments were we can't even have camera cell phones on us, I think this will make the MacBook Pro simply an unchoosable option for my next laptop.
Non-destructive partition tool? That I don't have to pay some 3rd party for? Makes me want a PPC version so I can play around with other PPC OSes on my PowerBook.
And what people often forget is that Army-types *always* wear BDUs. Yes, even in an office situations. Yes, regardless of rank. In fact, the only place you're likely to see Army officers in anything but BDUs is on TV.
People who use MS products seem to have a habit of taking the most general and meaningless portion of the product name, and using that to refer to the product. This annoys the crap out of me, personally. So you worked with people who used "Visual Studio .Net" and just called it ".Net". This trend is made ever more annoying, as MS loves to use very generic terms in their product names. Heck, with Windows, they just mention the version name/number in complete isolation. So it's not "MS Windows XP". It's just XP, and be damned anything else that might be called XP. It's not "MS SQL Server", it's "SQL Server", and be damned any other database product that might actually be an "SQL Server". (most of 'em). So on and so forth. (At least I try to prefix MS product names with "MS" whenever I can, since I don't believe they get an automatic exception from products needing full identification.)
You know, it's funny that you bring it up. Once upon a time, when MS was first talking about .NET, it seemed like people could sit through 2-hour MS presentations and still not know what .NET actually was. Essentially, it was some sort of all-encompassing FUD/vaporware vehicle to get everyone behind a name, without knowing what that name meant.
.NET apps in multiple languages.
Of course today people do know what it is. Essentially, it is like the intermediary java byte-code and VM, with a somewhat language-independent front-end. So you can write
Yes, most "real" UNIX admins probably are familiar with *BSD. Also, far more *BSD admins tend to be familiar with "real" UNIX. I think this is partly because the *BSD camp (well, mainly FreeBSD) tries to push itself as a "good open-source UNIX".
Meanwhile, it seems like far too many Linux users (at least from what I see in local LUGs) seem to have "I want to move away from Windows/MS" as their prime motivation. What's also interesting is that they'll blabber in support of that blatant generalization to no end, but then they'll refute it to no end the moment you call them on it. As such, Linux is always being compared to Windows (even when its an apples to oranges comparison), while FreeBSD usually isn't.
Of course that being said, Linux has far more "mindshare," and thus far more official software support. I'd say the two are probably close to equal in terms of software support in the opensource world (unless you count some desktop-oriented things), but most vendors tend to only notice Linux. Then again FreeBSD does have the ability to run Linux binaries, but that only works for user-land stuff.
Actually, it's not silly if you think about it. You just said that you used *BSD (you didn't mention which one, and they aren't all the same OS). Sure, you chose not to use it, but you did use it enough to know whether it would work for your application. Usually I find it dismissed out of hand, either because people don't know about it (and once they learn, they do try it), or because they stick to Linux like everyone else sticks to Windows.
;-)
Besides, as Linux becomes more popular, the hardcore geeks will need another platform to move on to. Rememeber, once upon a time it was possible to consider oneself a geek by being adept at DOS/Windows. Today, that no longer qualifies you for geek status.
Heck, usually you hear about "Windows on the desktop, Linux on the server." But for me, it is "Linux on the desktop, FreeBSD/Solaris on the server"
(I used to run OpenBSD on the firewall, but I had continually growing bad experiences with hardware support as I upgraded the machine, so that now is running FreeBSD as well. Besides, FreeBSD has OpenBSD's firewall software as one of its options anyways.)
Hehe... I've noticed the same thing about *BSD...
Everyone and their dog has head of Linux, and the #1 reason I find for people to not use *BSD in some capacity is that they just don't know much about it.
Come to think of it, PostgreSQL is BSD-licensed too.
Yeah, you'd have to stretch things to make those comparisons. VMS may have some syntactic similarities to DOS, but not as many as you'd think. Let's take a complete file path, for example: /files/stuff/foo.txt
UNIX:
DOS: C:\FILES\STUFF\FOO.TXT
VMS: SYS$SYSDEVICE:[FILES.STUFF]FOO.TXT;1
Though DOS and VMS both use "DIR", while UNIX uses "ls". However, both DOS and UNIX use "cd", where VMS uses "SET DEFAULT". DOS and UNIX also use "mkdir", where VMS uses "CREATE/DIRECTORY". Though UNIX uses "-foo" for command switches, where both DOS and VMS would use "/FOO", but VMS doesn't require a space between the command and the switches.
Yeah, and you can do on-line scheduling with TiVo as well. Just need a browser that can login to the TiVo website. No, it isn't an extra feature.
If you want to see what your TiVo has already recorded, you can even talk to it through a web browser. Just need to get to it through https, and have your media access key handy.
And not having an escape mechanism can be more dangerous. Witness the lack of an ejection mechanism in the Space Shuttle.
Of course an advantage of the escape tower approach is that it moves you far from the exploding rocket, probably a lot further than any other sort of mid-air separation. It also gives you a quick on-pad escape mechanism, if you are launching with a conventional rocket.
Umm... We've had this thing called a "launch escape tower" ever since Mercury, and the Russians have something similar. (In fact, I think the Russians are the only ones to have actually used it in an actual abort.)
The idea is that a little rocket is mounted on a small tower above the crew capsule. In the event of a booster failure (yes, even on the pad), the rocket fires and pulls the capsule safely away from the booster. Then, it can parachute down to safety.
Though what really bothers me is how so many office-workers insist on putting their phones on vibrate, then placing them on the table during meetings. Yes, the table makes the vibration very annoying and audible, especially when their phones ring off the hook.
I think too many people just havn't learned that cell phones do have a vibrate mode. Either that, or too many women keep them in purses where such a feature would be useless.
I'm reminded of the summer when I got my first "real UNIX machine that wasn't old junk".. (it was 2000, and this was a nicer-model SGI Indigo2) A few weeks after getting it and bringing it up to snuff software-wise, I went off to this computer camp where I worked as a counselor for the rest of the summer. It definitely got attention being that "cool-looking purple computer". However, I still remember when the R/C Cars counselor (we had lots of activities) came by my room, looked at it (it was running 4Dwm, of course) and asked of it was running "'98".
I also had a "project" machine at my last job which I had installed FreeBSD on and used KDE as a desktop. Several people still actually had to ask if I was using my "corporate network" machine (which was locked-down WinXP). They really couldn't recognize just how different the desktops really looked.
ExpressPCB provides a locked-in PCB-only tool that did not appear to have any import/export capabilities the last time I checked. I just checked again, and it seems like they now have a schematic capture program to go along with it, albeit probably a basic one.
Frankly, I think the ExpressPCB model is handicapped by the fact that you have to use their software, and are locked into it. Meanwhile, standard data formats do exist for sending PCB designs to board shops.
Oh, and its Windows-only.
And despite all these problems, it is still the best thing out there for those of us who are working on hobbyist budgets. I'd equate gEDA's failings to the reason why there is no good alternative to Visio in the diagramming world...
SYMBOLS! SYMBOLS! SYMBOLS!
No EDA program is going to have schematic/PCB symbols for every component you'll ever use, but at least Eagle almost has a majority of them. But for the rest, you have to make your own. While the process of doing this is a bit painful and annoying with Eagle's GUI "kinks", it is fairly straightforward and I've done it on several occasions. Yes, this is do-able from within the GUI. Last I checked, it seemed like doing it in gEDA was tricker, and involved manually editing data files.