I'm a Freenet Developer, and I have talked with the author of this program on the freenet-dev list in the past. He's fairly new to Freenet, and, frankly, asks a lot of annoying questions (but we put up with him:).
There was a nasty flame war on the Freenet lists about rebirthing when he came on board. Can't tell you much about it, because I filtered it out after the first few messages. David was once a programer, then started this rebirthing thing, and now he works on some Freenet stuff along with it.
name ONE linux-centric company that will still be around in 5 years, besides redhat.
VA Linux, because they sell mostly hardware, Penguin Computing for the same reason. Cygnus (now owned by Red Hat, for better or for worse) was profitable long before this "Open Source" foolishness came about.
Then a host of other companies that aren't totaly GNU/Linux, but they are headed in the right direction, e.g. IBM, Dell, Compaq, Sun, etc. In other words, a lot of the old timers of computing that want to get away from Microsoft. Again, mostly hardware sellers.
As for the software side of things, well, I don't hold much hope for them. I think that creating Free Software is much better served by a non-profit corperation, such as the FSF, Debian, Freenet Project Inc., etc. Red Hat and a few others (like the aforementioned Cygnus) get away with it because they sell support or aren't pure Free Software.
This is what IPv6 (as opposed to today's IPv4) does, but to a greater degree then you mention.
Warning: For the rest of this post, I will talk about things I have no clue about.
IPv6 allows for addresses to contain hexidecimal, and you can have 16 "octets" (to use the old, IPv4 term, but they're not really 8-bit words anymore and I don't know what they call them in IPv6) instead of 4.
This means the theoretical address space of IPv6 is greater then the total number of atoms in the universe (depending on which physicist you ask).
Doesn't matter. Installing an OS is an inheritly difficutly process, at least for those who've never done it before. You can give it all the eye candy you want and the "click here to do everything for you" button, but it will still be too hard for most users.
Besides, Mandrake is, ummm, not the first distro I'd recommend using.
The hard part about GNU/Linux is installation. I'd like to see your mom try to install Windows or MacOS. Installation is allways difficult. The thing that makes GNU/Linux unable to really break into the consumer OS area is not being able to go into Best Buy and see a computer pre-installed with GNU/Linux. Really, GNOME and KDE has made something thats probably easier and more powerful then the Windows desktop (IMHO).
I'd prefer to get my stuff from a non-profit company. It helps to bring people together to get a job done in a similar fashion that a for-profit would, but not with the goal of making money (except as it is nessary to get money to keep the group going).
I work on the "Everything Over Freenet" (EOF) project, and have been involved in Freenet to one degree or another for just over a year. I don't do this because I think it's going to change the world, or it's going to help Chinese dissidents get their message out, or anything like that (although these things would be a definate plus).
I do it because Freenet presents many facinating problems to solve.
That, I think, is the most important thing for any Free Software developer to have: A lot of facinating problems. I went to Freenet specificly because I beleived that Ian Clarke's solution to the problem of getting an anoynomous, decentralized means of broadcasting unrestriced speech to be the most interesting.
A toaster is a very simple device. A few heating elements here and there, a little spring hooked into a timeing device to pop the toast up at the right time, and a plug. A toaster has no need for an "expert mode" because theres nothing "expert" about it.
OTOH, computers are very complex beasts. Transisters must be aligned perfectly on a very small chunk of silicon and other materials in a special order and positioning just to make the CPU. Then theres RAM, chipsets, ROM, BIOS, and implementing various hardware standerds like PCI or AGP. We haven't even touched how all this works with the software side of things yet!
I'm not going to stop you from having a shiny click-and-drool interface, but I don't want you to stop me from having my hyper-efficent CLI, either.
Furthermore, Windows has one of the worst GUIs ever. It's just easy enough to use so that if you went into Best Buy, having never used a computer before, you could probably do a few simple tasks right there and say "I want to buy this". After actualy using it for a while, that same user will be cursing the machine because he/she runs into the same bugs over and over and over and over and they're sick of it. This is not a user-freindly OS; it's purchase-freindly OS.
There is nothing more important than wealth creation.
Gaining money is hardly the most important thing in life. Making money is fine if it does not become the paramount objective.
And therein lies the problem. A great deal of the western world does believe that there can be no greater happyness then having a limo pick you up from work and drive you to your 250 bedroom house on the lake with an airfield where a LearJet is parked to take you to your 100 bedroom summer home at a moment's notice.
All those things are fine in their place, but true happyness comes not from them. For that, you must find something greater.
Part of that fulfillment for me comes from writing good software that hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of people use all over the world. Thats why I write Free Software. I put it all under the GPL because I demand that people will always have the oppertunity to get the same fulfillment I did.
I don't mind if my best computer is a rusty old pentium, or my car has squeeky breaks, or my house is on the verge of colapse. All those things are not a primary motivation. I'm quite happy as I am.
As an AC said, this is in "vi", not your bash prompt. "dd" in bash gets you your CD/floppy image, whereas "dd." would be interpreted by bash (or whatever shell you use, no reason to start a holy war) as a diffrent command.
One of my freinds once had a personal web site. It had some images copyrighted by Nintendo. Nintendo's lawyers sent him a bark letter. He was allowed to continue, but only if he put up a bunch of stuff promoting Pokemon. What else could he do but comply?
Nintendo basicly got advertising for the cost of a bark letter.
old grade-school trick of closing your eyes, swinging your fists toward someone, and saying I'm just exercising my right to swing my arms, and if you happen to be in the way it's your fault
Except that there is really no "non-infringing use" for swinging your arms around. OTOH, running a Freenet node definately does.
I used to be of the "compile everything from source" club. I still think it's an important skill to learn. However, in production machines, I much prefer Debian packages because they're immediately upgradeable.
My main box is also Debian (potato), but I allways keep a few cheep boxes around for doing crazy hacker-type stuff. I have one box thats compiled completely from scratch. Everyone should learn how to do it; you'll be better off for it.
We would like to think Linux would overtake MS as the most used OS, but the fact remains, most of the people jumping online, and working on the "typical" PC based application solely need simple functions out of their pc, and them having to gcc -o something something.c or./configure --with-some-new-package ; make ; make install is just not going to cut it.
Do you really have to compile your own stuff these days??? Sure, some crazy hackers (like me!) compile everything from scratch, but it's hardly nessary. Run Debian? It's by far easier to install a program on Debian then Windows:`apt-get install `. On Windows, you have to click the program, click through the license agreement written by Nazi war criminal lawyers, decide where to install it, sit there waiting for it to install (and hope it doesn't blue screen in the process), then you're done.
Then what do you do when you want to get rid of a program on Windows *shudder*. No, the little uninstall icon is not enough, as it often leaves cruft in the system (this is why it's a good idea to do a clean reinstall of Windows a lot, especialy if you install and uninstall a lot of stuff). To *really* get rid of a program on Windows, you have to go digging through the registry, and the \windows directory, and the \windows\system directory, and the \windows\system32 directory, and the \Program Files directory, and the . . . well, you get the point.
Want to get rid of that program on Debian? `apt-get remove `
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a Freenet Developer, and I have talked with the author of this program on the freenet-dev list in the past. He's fairly new to Freenet, and, frankly, asks a lot of annoying questions (but we put up with him :).
There was a nasty flame war on the Freenet lists about rebirthing when he came on board. Can't tell you much about it, because I filtered it out after the first few messages. David was once a programer, then started this rebirthing thing, and now he works on some Freenet stuff along with it.
------
name ONE linux-centric company that will still be around in 5 years, besides redhat.
VA Linux, because they sell mostly hardware, Penguin Computing for the same reason. Cygnus (now owned by Red Hat, for better or for worse) was profitable long before this "Open Source" foolishness came about.
Then a host of other companies that aren't totaly GNU/Linux, but they are headed in the right direction, e.g. IBM, Dell, Compaq, Sun, etc. In other words, a lot of the old timers of computing that want to get away from Microsoft. Again, mostly hardware sellers.
As for the software side of things, well, I don't hold much hope for them. I think that creating Free Software is much better served by a non-profit corperation, such as the FSF, Debian, Freenet Project Inc., etc. Red Hat and a few others (like the aforementioned Cygnus) get away with it because they sell support or aren't pure Free Software.
------
Heh, "you don't have the facts". I like that. So, what facts don't I have, huh Mr. School Adminstrator?
------
This is quite intresting. Finaly something truely new in UI design. I wonder if GNOME (or KDE) will implement this in the near-future?
------
This is what IPv6 (as opposed to today's IPv4) does, but to a greater degree then you mention.
Warning: For the rest of this post, I will talk about things I have no clue about.
IPv6 allows for addresses to contain hexidecimal, and you can have 16 "octets" (to use the old, IPv4 term, but they're not really 8-bit words anymore and I don't know what they call them in IPv6) instead of 4.
This means the theoretical address space of IPv6 is greater then the total number of atoms in the universe (depending on which physicist you ask).
------
Just use IPv6 already! Kludges like this are not the answer. This might be a particularly good kludge, but still, a kludge
------
Oh, sure, NOW I find this out. I played through Chrono Trigger a while back, but lost the ROM in a hard drive reformat. GAR!!!
------
Doesn't matter. Installing an OS is an inheritly difficutly process, at least for those who've never done it before. You can give it all the eye candy you want and the "click here to do everything for you" button, but it will still be too hard for most users.
Besides, Mandrake is, ummm, not the first distro I'd recommend using.
------
The hard part about GNU/Linux is installation. I'd like to see your mom try to install Windows or MacOS. Installation is allways difficult. The thing that makes GNU/Linux unable to really break into the consumer OS area is not being able to go into Best Buy and see a computer pre-installed with GNU/Linux. Really, GNOME and KDE has made something thats probably easier and more powerful then the Windows desktop (IMHO).
------
Win ME (upgrade): $82.09
Win 2000 (upgrade): $171.95
Debian GNU/Linux: Free for download (I bought it for ~$20 shrink-wrapped)
FreeBSD: Free for the download (or $49.49 shrink-wrapped)
Solaris: Free for the download, or $75 shrink-wrapped, under "Free Solaris Binary License", not sure about commercial users.
------
If we want to fool ourselves into thinking the 20th century was a time of "togetherness", then yes, thats what we should do.
------
Bob Young is no longer CEO. Red Hat is not the top (limiting "top" to "most widely used"), unless you mean in the US.
------
I'd prefer to get my stuff from a non-profit company. It helps to bring people together to get a job done in a similar fashion that a for-profit would, but not with the goal of making money (except as it is nessary to get money to keep the group going).
------
I work on the "Everything Over Freenet" (EOF) project, and have been involved in Freenet to one degree or another for just over a year. I don't do this because I think it's going to change the world, or it's going to help Chinese dissidents get their message out, or anything like that (although these things would be a definate plus).
I do it because Freenet presents many facinating problems to solve.
That, I think, is the most important thing for any Free Software developer to have: A lot of facinating problems. I went to Freenet specificly because I beleived that Ian Clarke's solution to the problem of getting an anoynomous, decentralized means of broadcasting unrestriced speech to be the most interesting.
------
. . . toaster doesn't have an "expert user" mode
A toaster is a very simple device. A few heating elements here and there, a little spring hooked into a timeing device to pop the toast up at the right time, and a plug. A toaster has no need for an "expert mode" because theres nothing "expert" about it.
OTOH, computers are very complex beasts. Transisters must be aligned perfectly on a very small chunk of silicon and other materials in a special order and positioning just to make the CPU. Then theres RAM, chipsets, ROM, BIOS, and implementing various hardware standerds like PCI or AGP. We haven't even touched how all this works with the software side of things yet!
I'm not going to stop you from having a shiny click-and-drool interface, but I don't want you to stop me from having my hyper-efficent CLI, either.
Furthermore, Windows has one of the worst GUIs ever. It's just easy enough to use so that if you went into Best Buy, having never used a computer before, you could probably do a few simple tasks right there and say "I want to buy this". After actualy using it for a while, that same user will be cursing the machine because he/she runs into the same bugs over and over and over and over and they're sick of it. This is not a user-freindly OS; it's purchase-freindly OS.
------
There is nothing more important than wealth creation.
Gaining money is hardly the most important thing in life. Making money is fine if it does not become the paramount objective.
And therein lies the problem. A great deal of the western world does believe that there can be no greater happyness then having a limo pick you up from work and drive you to your 250 bedroom house on the lake with an airfield where a LearJet is parked to take you to your 100 bedroom summer home at a moment's notice.
All those things are fine in their place, but true happyness comes not from them. For that, you must find something greater.
Part of that fulfillment for me comes from writing good software that hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of people use all over the world. Thats why I write Free Software. I put it all under the GPL because I demand that people will always have the oppertunity to get the same fulfillment I did.
I don't mind if my best computer is a rusty old pentium, or my car has squeeky breaks, or my house is on the verge of colapse. All those things are not a primary motivation. I'm quite happy as I am.
------
As an AC said, this is in "vi", not your bash prompt. "dd" in bash gets you your CD/floppy image, whereas "dd." would be interpreted by bash (or whatever shell you use, no reason to start a holy war) as a diffrent command.
------
Only if you're a stupid American. Brits don't care. It gets really confusing for technical discussion anyway. For instance:
To delete a line in vi, type "dd."
Do you type "dd." or just "dd"? This is important, because "dd." will actualy delete two lines.
------
One of my freinds once had a personal web site. It had some images copyrighted by Nintendo. Nintendo's lawyers sent him a bark letter. He was allowed to continue, but only if he put up a bunch of stuff promoting Pokemon. What else could he do but comply?
Nintendo basicly got advertising for the cost of a bark letter.
------
I was expecting this to happen years ago. Sheesh.
------
old grade-school trick of closing your eyes, swinging your fists toward someone, and saying I'm just exercising my right to swing my arms, and if you happen to be in the way it's your fault
Except that there is really no "non-infringing use" for swinging your arms around. OTOH, running a Freenet node definately does.
------
You're one of those basterds who have been getting request failures for "*brittiny spears*" for the past few months, aren't you?
------
I now own a patent for "encoding english language characters for transmission over a network". Muhawhaw, everyone on the Internet is an infringer!
------
I used to be of the "compile everything from source" club. I still think it's an important skill to learn. However, in production machines, I much prefer Debian packages because they're immediately upgradeable.
My main box is also Debian (potato), but I allways keep a few cheep boxes around for doing crazy hacker-type stuff. I have one box thats compiled completely from scratch. Everyone should learn how to do it; you'll be better off for it.
------
We would like to think Linux would overtake MS as the most used OS, but the fact remains, most of the people jumping online, and working on the "typical" PC based application solely need simple functions out of their pc, and them having to gcc -o something something.c or ./configure --with-some-new-package ; make ; make install is just not going to cut it.
Do you really have to compile your own stuff these days??? Sure, some crazy hackers (like me!) compile everything from scratch, but it's hardly nessary. Run Debian? It's by far easier to install a program on Debian then Windows:`apt-get install `. On Windows, you have to click the program, click through the license agreement written by Nazi war criminal lawyers, decide where to install it, sit there waiting for it to install (and hope it doesn't blue screen in the process), then you're done.
Then what do you do when you want to get rid of a program on Windows *shudder*. No, the little uninstall icon is not enough, as it often leaves cruft in the system (this is why it's a good idea to do a clean reinstall of Windows a lot, especialy if you install and uninstall a lot of stuff). To *really* get rid of a program on Windows, you have to go digging through the registry, and the \windows directory, and the \windows\system directory, and the \windows\system32 directory, and the \Program Files directory, and the . . . well, you get the point.
Want to get rid of that program on Debian? `apt-get remove `
------