That depends on what you consider full support. Dell has never provided OS support for Linux as they do for Windows and Netware, and they have consistently charged more for Linux servers than for the exact same server running Windows. This is also a reason why their foray into the desktop Linux market failed: they were still charging the equivolent of two windows licenses for a Linux machine.
Yes it is very naughty to link a well-known command to some other command making it behave differently than it should on a given system. Besides giving the odd user fits, it will break scripts and programs and make your system the subject of some of the many tales of woe recounted by sysadmins everywhere.
I haven't seen this to be true. Whereas the idea is that info docs can be mroe detailed, and some very detailed info docs exist (for instance on the gnu programming model), I have found that in Linux distributions more often than not the man page and info page for a given utility are identical (even for gnu tools) and both leave a lot to be desired when compared to the man pages on practically any bsd.
Info could be more powerful than man, especially for emacs users (of which I am not one) but in practice the move seems to have more to do with politics than functionality.
If you have done business with a BSA member you have consented to audits, record keeping requirements, etc.
People who get these letters have (1) entered into a formal licensing contract with a BSA member like MS, Apple, Oracle, or others or (2) registered a product to a member of the BSA.
Not quite. I got one of these letters recently, and I have not bought any software from any of those companies in years, I do not have a registered business, and I do not use any of this software on a personal basis. I am not sure where they got the idea that I was running a business they needed to audit, or how they got the address I was at at the time (I do have a domain registered in the name of the business they mention in the letter, but with a different address), but the letter gave me a good chuckle.
People seem to think it is ok to use Windows if you avoid the exorbitant price of use by piracy, but I disagree entirely with that method and BSA audits are but one example of why that can bite you. I use free software, I comply with the licenses on all my software, and I save a lot of money and trouble thereby.
If downloaders are freeloaders, doesn't that make Mandrake a freeloader, too? After all, they do have LOTS of open source software. They even built upon another distro themselves. Plus, its not really ethical to force people to lie (click here if you're a member) is it? Especially when they're obligated by the GPL to offer the software for free, and they've got lots of nonprofit orgs providing them with free mirrors.
No, Mandrake is not a freeloader. The people at MandrakeSoft have created all-new software (most notably the Mandrake Installer) and have written a good chunk of code. They have worked to create an entirely new product which, while based on the products of others, does contain the fruit of their labour.
The labour was not provided without cost. In the article, two points are clearly made: 1) there are a substantial number of developers working daily at MandrakeSoft and 2) the result of these costs is that MandrakeSoft is not profitable, i.e. they are NOT making money because they are working too hard to make a better product for you who wish to download it for free. The GPL, contrary to your belief, does not preclude charging money for software. In fact, the idea that those who work should not receive any form of compensation is in itself absurd. If you are giving the fruit of your labour out under the GPL and did not want people making money from it, you chose the WRONG license. Perhaps a license such as that used for the Diku MUD code would better suit you.
The little guys of open-source aren't in it for the money. They do it because they like it. I speak as one who uses one of the little distros [gentoo.org] which made it into the top 10 less than a month after it went beta, and which still doesn't make money (and doesn't plan to). And I have contributed a couple of improvements of my own to my disto.
Let's face it. Right now any group producing a Linux distribution is a "little guy" in the Open Source world, with the possible exception of the NSA. And I don't know that any of them are currently profitable entities, though several are corporate entities. It would have been a better deal for all of them to be nonprofit orgs perhaps, and indeed this is the direction, again stated in the article, that Mandrake seems to be going. Of course the problem with this model is it makes it tougher to get the money which has driven all of this. I think you are forgetting there are costs involved no matter what, for servers and bandwidth and people to work on this stuff. This is why these groups who are providing the software you want are trying to find services people will pay money for to fund that work. And don't think just because you are firmly esconsced in some random distro of the month that hasn't figured out it might have a big bill from its provider yet you are not profiting from this work. People all over on different distros, including lots of coders working for corporations working often on employers paid time are making improvements to tools you care about as we type. It is good that you contribute code. I applaud that effort. I want to encourage it. But it is unfair for you to discourage people from contributing monetarily, or distros from asking for such contributions. In fact if you one day wish to be employed as a professional coder you will find it is helpful if the company you work for has money to pay you with.
The pursuit of money is a necessary evil in a Capitalist society. Money pays the rent and the electric and the help. Money makes this stuff possible. To deny this is folly. But then this is/....
Darwin has been available on x86 for years now. The current version is available for x86 even as an iso. You can get it here Why FUD routinely gets modded as insightful is one of those Great Secrets of Slashdot.
It seems no one who replied to this post actually read it. Or the article. The article said there were more linux machines than OSX machines. The poster said "Open-Source Desktops Gain on Proprietary, Non-Customizable Desktops". Your posts that OSX is proprietary are, therefore, redundant, as are those which point out Darwin does not use the proprietary OSX desktop, both of which were part of the posters point which you missed.
But since it is Unis and the military who were conected, it meant students and military people got free beer net. So while someone (the govt) paid for it, still it had a tradition of free beer and free speech, and indeed was built om technology which was both free as in soeech and as in beer.
I seem to recall a Baygen radio which was advertised and did this. It was supposed also to be able to pick up shortwave and stuff, and the later versions, indeed, did include a built-in flashlight.
But Vitamin A tablets and refrigerators are cost items. Whereas it is proven third world countries possessing computers can create whole new economies by selling resultant products and services to developed nations, as India and Eastern Europe, for example, do.
Yes, but like most respondants in the thread, you are just skirting the issue. Sure, Windows restarts the graphics subsystem. But the applications you are using are still there. In the case of Linux, you have to shut down all applications, shut down X, and then run a config tool in console mode (or vi your config file) to change resolutions and monitors. That is the real problem.
And the ctrl-alt-shift-plus people crack me up. I wonder how they change their colour depth. Or how they make these changes permanent. Hmm? Oh yes, you must edit/etc/X11/XF86Config. Besides, ctrl-alt-shift-plus(or minus) only cycles through what is in the XF86Config file. It's not magical or anything.
Granted, in my case, like most linux users, I just set my display up for my favorite monitor and leave it be until the unlikely time I change monitors. And indeed this was my method for windows, as well, when I used it. (I quit using ms for a plethora of reasons.) But this does not reflect what the majority of pc users do or indeed how people use their computers today.
There are a number of real-world examples being brought up here, like laptops roaming to lcd projectors for prezzos and new monitors, etc. And they get mama's basement answers like "well if you just use one monitor..." The fact of the matter is these are problems microsoft and apple overcame.
I remember having to run setup in dos to get the res right for windows 3.1, and being astonished when in windows 95 they allowed res changes on the fly and in the gui. In 98 they added the autodetection of monitors people are talking about. In short it took MS at least 5 years of solid work to get there, with the intention of getting there. If linux development follows the trend of "well you can't figure out how to do it the hard way so you suck" it will never get there.
For some people that is okay. I mean it won't stop me from using Linux, and Linus never cared about replacing windows for the masses. But to me we are missing a great opportunity. I think Linux has every potential to be better than windows or mac in this space, and replace windows, resulting in the fulfillment of stallman's mad dream of giving people their computers back. To me, this is Linux greatest strength, the ability to give people back the productivity which has heretofore been lost in proprietary software.
Aren't you tired of all the proprietary apps that go so far, but lack feature x that was in some older app, and then die, so you have to find app z that does the same thing where the developers are starting at square one and are missing feature x y and z? This cycle is wasting millions of developer hours, and is easily solved by open source solutions. Granted, the linux world has other ways of wasting developer hours, but once we get to a certain point (eg once we have the features of the leading software and more in the free projects) it will be unstoppable. Never again will we have to reinvent the wheel. Yes we have to do it the one time it takes to get it invented in a free implementation, but once we do that, never again.
Software development will see a new era of productivity. If you want to build a better mousetrap, you don't have to figure out how to copy the features of the original, you can just copy the code, and either build yours or make the original better. Computers you buy won't come with a few crippleware apps and the option to spend thousands on more apps that still don't do what you want, but instead with a plethora of applications that are more useful than the ones we had before.
Todays computers have many times the power of those of the 70's and 80's, but due to an unfortunate chain of events, they do less for us than those computers did, and certainly are a far cry from what people thought computers would be doing. We have monster cpu's but they aren't being utilized in a useful way. We have gigabytes of storage, but we aren't effectively keeping track of data. And far from assisting people in organizing and simplifying their lives, computers have instead become an end in themselves, sucking away years of time as people struggle endlessly and futiley to mold them into something useful.
The real answer is not "do you know how to configure all this crap?" but why? The purpose of a computer is not to while away the hours finding out how to make things work on it, but instead to do useful work with it. It is to balance your budget, control your environmental system, play games, write a novel, or design some new and nifty use for it by writing a neat application and compiling it. It is NOT to spend hours trying to figure out why you can't get graphics and how to configure that. It is NOT to spend weeks trying to find all the pieces to a simple application so you can compile it. And it is NOT (as in windows) to spend days rebooting and installing patches because there is no easier way to do it and if you don't you will get "hacked by chinese."
IT people enjoy learning about such things, and as an IT guy, sure I did. But the problem is these are not the things the computer is meant to do. The only reason so many joe schmoes bought computers in the 90's was to get on the net. Now think about that. We have systems that dwarf those used to design nuclear reactors, saturn V moon rockets, and modern irrigation systems, which are being used to boot up, go to aol, and launch instant messenger. And why? between that and solitaire, there isn't much else useful for the average joe schmoe. We've been so busy trying to reinvent the wheel and install patches, etc, that we never got around to the Next Great Thing for Humanity. It is sad.
That is why I think it is necessary some people get their priorities straight on this. Microsoft doesn't get it. IBM Doesn't get it. My hope is that several someones will, and when it happens, it will probably happen to Linux, because we have the code and can fix these things.
One other thing I forgot to add. It is provably impossible for your grandmother to actually buy anything from spammers. Studies in which people gathered spam and attempted to contact the company to actually buy something came up with exactly none of the numbers or addresses being valid places with which to conduct business. They could find no way to send money to the spammers. Most of this is because the numbers and websites get cut off within minutes of spam being sent.
There is one other way to make money with spam, and it was outlined in a Wired article. That is to con companies into paying you for sending spam for them. There the spammer makes money, but again because there usually ends up being no way to ac tually contact the company, the company makes nothing.
Both spam and telemarketing are nothing but scams and should be outlawed, IMHO.
Both in spam and telemarketing the biggest business is not in doing business in these ways but rather in selling lists to people who want to spam and be telemarketers. This is why spammers and telemarketers actually *want* to be able to bother people they know do not want to be bothered and will never buy their products, because that adds names to the lists. Both industries have continually lobbied in congress against any attempt to make laws which might allow someone to subscribe to a national list and therefore remain unmolested by these entities.
It's about time someone called bullshit on rpm. One of the interesting points in the article was that not all packages are created equal, thus you must find a package that works for your version of rpm, your distro, and the version of your distro you are using. However, I have found that even using rpm's from the install cd of the next version of an rpm distro will not mean the install will go through smoothly.
I'm not just talking about normally failed dependencies; that is understandable enough and can be dealt with (though the author was more than generous in his treatment of the goose chase that can be) but in fact I am talking about a situation in which you have libfoo-mdk-8.0-5.5.1 and are trying to install the rpm for libfoo-mdk-8.1-5.6.4 and it chokes, saying it requires libfoo-5.5.1 installed, or something to that effect.
When you can't even use rpms from the next version of a distro to upgrade your distro, there is a problem. Hell, even microsoft had that much working long ago. Why is the answer to getting to a new version of a distro often a fresh install? For that matter, why do many distros in their faqs for setting things up only tell how to do it in the install, as though no one is ever going to change things later?
Which of course is why I use slackware. The system is clean and relatively free of proprietary extensions to the way things are done. Most things are configurable on a slackware box in the same way most other unix boxes are. And I don't have to deal with rpm's. At first I used the slackware package system a lot, but lately I just compile most stuff from source.
Of course, this does not deal with a major cause of rpm dependency hell, which is the extremely fragmented nature of linux projects. Granted, this is building off the unix tradition of using mamny small parts to come together to a cohesive solution. However, it becomes a problem in two areas: one being the desktop user, and two being complex applications that require many of these parts. Usually the two are involved together, as with a project like Enlightenment or KDE. The problem is that when you want to install one thing, it requires 30 others. But you have to figure out where they are. Now I can do that, though it can be a headache, but what about poor Joe Sixpack and his shiny new Walmart computer with Lindows and DeerHunter installed?
In desktop systems like BeOS, OS/2, Windows, or MacOS, it is typical to encounter everything needed to run the program packaged with the program, right down to system libraries. What Windows based game written in the last 6 years did not come with some version of DirectX right on the cd? Now, granted, the windows way screwed many over, as program installers installed older libraries over newer ones and wreaked other fun havok on people's systems, and microsoft's patches gleefully broke people's programs. But, still, if we are talking about getting linux on the desktop, we shoudl be talking about learning from microsoft's mistakes and coming up with something better.
I think it helps everyone to have better package management, and definitely better dependency handling. I think apt-get and sourcerer's "spells" might be steps in the right direction, but I'm not ready to call it there yet. Oh, and I am sure lots of responses to this article will say it should be tough for newbies. But what we tend to forget, is that there really is not anything wrong with things being easier to do. In fact, saving time and trouble is supposed to be what technology is about, and putting a better tool in a skilled hand is the best thing we can do. The only problem is when we obscure the works so much that it is difficult or impossible for that skilled hand to fix the tool should it go awry, and this is of course the case with both windows and rpm, which is why I use neither if I can help it.
If someone says something isn't funny, repeating the thing doesn't make it any funnier.
Obviously not a fan of David Letterman, or Sergio Aragone. In fact it seems that repeating something that is not in itself funny seems to be taken as funny eventually. Cases in point are the milage the former gets from stuff like "These pretzels are making me thirsty" and the latters' references to mulching and cheese dip.
It's not a disincentive to non-MS-based game developers.
Why not? looks like it is a windows-only technology to me. After all, it uses DirectX. True, it also claims to use OpenGL, but while OpenGL is cross-platform, the compiler in the article is not.
Some people like to have two distinct buttons, one which closes the window, and one which closes the program. perhaps this is teh source of your two buttons?
Another possibility is that you (or someone) had the one button, and wanted the three on the right, but after editing the config so you had that, did not get rid of the one on the left for whatever reason. Not being familiar with your window manager, I could not be sure...
Re:Correction to the debian package line
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slashdot purposefully mangles any url you present in cleartext (e.g. any url you don't set up an href for). It is supposed to have something to do with the lameness filter. I think it is lame and pointless, but oh well..
(* How do you know there is no afterlife for an AI? *)
There might not be, but it does not have to know that. Tell it there is. (I don't know what it would be like. Floating around on clouds and calculating pi to infinity?)
Unfortunately, they already told it there is not one. From the article:
They have been feeding a database named Cyc 1.4 million truths and generalities about daily life so it can automatically make assumptions humans make: Creatures that die stay dead. Dogs have spines. Scaling a cliff requires intense physical effort.
Really, just the few examples cited in the article show the inherent problem in a system like this. As with any system, we are a slave to our assumptions. As humans, we can change our assumptions over time, but the purpose of this database seems to be to give a basis of "incontrovertible truths" which is teh basic fallacy of the whole premise.
Why are we telling the computer "Sex is bad, there is no life after death, and don't try to climb cliffs, it is just common sense?" The whole idea is ridiculous. It might help us create ai systems more easily; as with humans if you feed the thing enough bullshit and tell it not to bother questioning it it might spend less time thinking overall, therefore not requioring as much brainpower to do its job, but it will suffer unfortunate limitations. Then again, perhaps we don't care to have a mars lander robot pondering the meaning of life and its place in the universe when we want it to go take pictures of some damn rocks.:)
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That depends on what you consider full support. Dell has never provided OS support for Linux as they do for Windows and Netware, and they have consistently charged more for Linux servers than for the exact same server running Windows. This is also a reason why their foray into the desktop Linux market failed: they were still charging the equivolent of two windows licenses for a Linux machine.
Sun never introduced a Sombra-like module for the desktop-class equipment (E450 and below)
You have an E450 on your desktop? That's a very strong desk! :)
Yes it is very naughty to link a well-known command to some other command making it behave differently than it should on a given system. Besides giving the odd user fits, it will break scripts and programs and make your system the subject of some of the many tales of woe recounted by sysadmins everywhere.
Why would you buy HPUX when you can download Solaris isos for free? Heck, HP wanted $3000 for its Linux distro. :P
I haven't seen this to be true. Whereas the idea is that info docs can be mroe detailed, and some very detailed info docs exist (for instance on the gnu programming model), I have found that in Linux distributions more often than not the man page and info page for a given utility are identical (even for gnu tools) and both leave a lot to be desired when compared to the man pages on practically any bsd.
Info could be more powerful than man, especially for emacs users (of which I am not one) but in practice the move seems to have more to do with politics than functionality.
Break out the C64s then! Go Lunix! :)
Apparently, according to this story, even reporters can be charged with criminal tresspass.
If you have done business with a BSA member you have consented to audits, record keeping requirements, etc.
People who get these letters have (1) entered into a formal licensing contract with a BSA member like MS, Apple, Oracle, or others or (2) registered a product to a member of the BSA.
Not quite. I got one of these letters recently, and I have not bought any software from any of those companies in years, I do not have a registered business, and I do not use any of this software on a personal basis. I am not sure where they got the idea that I was running a business they needed to audit, or how they got the address I was at at the time (I do have a domain registered in the name of the business they mention in the letter, but with a different address), but the letter gave me a good chuckle.
People seem to think it is ok to use Windows if you avoid the exorbitant price of use by piracy, but I disagree entirely with that method and BSA audits are but one example of why that can bite you. I use free software, I comply with the licenses on all my software, and I save a lot of money and trouble thereby.
If downloaders are freeloaders, doesn't that make Mandrake a freeloader, too? After all, they do have LOTS of open source software. They even built upon another distro themselves. Plus, its not really ethical to force people to lie (click here if you're a member) is it? Especially when they're obligated by the GPL to offer the software for free, and they've got lots of nonprofit orgs providing them with free mirrors.
No, Mandrake is not a freeloader. The people at MandrakeSoft have created all-new software (most notably the Mandrake Installer) and have written a good chunk of code. They have worked to create an entirely new product which, while based on the products of others, does contain the fruit of their labour.
The labour was not provided without cost. In the article, two points are clearly made: 1) there are a substantial number of developers working daily at MandrakeSoft and 2) the result of these costs is that MandrakeSoft is not profitable, i.e. they are NOT making money because they are working too hard to make a better product for you who wish to download it for free. The GPL, contrary to your belief, does not preclude charging money for software. In fact, the idea that those who work should not receive any form of compensation is in itself absurd. If you are giving the fruit of your labour out under the GPL and did not want people making money from it, you chose the WRONG license. Perhaps a license such as that used for the Diku MUD code would better suit you.
The little guys of open-source aren't in it for the money. They do it because they like it. I speak as one who uses one of the little distros [gentoo.org] which made it into the top 10 less than a month after it went beta, and which still doesn't make money (and doesn't plan to). And I have contributed a couple of improvements of my own to my disto.
Let's face it. Right now any group producing a Linux distribution is a "little guy" in the Open Source world, with the possible exception of the NSA. And I don't know that any of them are currently profitable entities, though several are corporate entities. It would have been a better deal for all of them to be nonprofit orgs perhaps, and indeed this is the direction, again stated in the article, that Mandrake seems to be going. Of course the problem with this model is it makes it tougher to get the money which has driven all of this. I think you are forgetting there are costs involved no matter what, for servers and bandwidth and people to work on this stuff. This is why these groups who are providing the software you want are trying to find services people will pay money for to fund that work. And don't think just because you are firmly esconsced in some random distro of the month that hasn't figured out it might have a big bill from its provider yet you are not profiting from this work. People all over on different distros, including lots of coders working for corporations working often on employers paid time are making improvements to tools you care about as we type. It is good that you contribute code. I applaud that effort. I want to encourage it. But it is unfair for you to discourage people from contributing monetarily, or distros from asking for such contributions. In fact if you one day wish to be employed as a professional coder you will find it is helpful if the company you work for has money to pay you with.
The pursuit of money is a necessary evil in a Capitalist society. Money pays the rent and the electric and the help. Money makes this stuff possible. To deny this is folly. But then this is /. ...
Darwin has been available on x86 for years now. The current version is available for x86 even as an iso. You can get it here Why FUD routinely gets modded as insightful is one of those Great Secrets of Slashdot.
Well...seein's how there is no "Linux" brand computer (Like Dell, Gateway, etc...) and Macintosh has a new OS that IS Linux
BSD is Linux? Does that mean Xwindows Windows? Perhaps you should stop smoking that ball of resin, man.
It seems no one who replied to this post actually read it. Or the article. The article said there were more linux machines than OSX machines. The poster said "Open-Source Desktops Gain on Proprietary, Non-Customizable Desktops". Your posts that OSX is proprietary are, therefore, redundant, as are those which point out Darwin does not use the proprietary OSX desktop, both of which were part of the posters point which you missed.
But since it is Unis and the military who were conected, it meant students and military people got free beer net. So while someone (the govt) paid for it, still it had a tradition of free beer and free speech, and indeed was built om technology which was both free as in soeech and as in beer.
I seem to recall a Baygen radio which was advertised and did this. It was supposed also to be able to pick up shortwave and stuff, and the later versions, indeed, did include a built-in flashlight.
But Vitamin A tablets and refrigerators are cost items. Whereas it is proven third world countries possessing computers can create whole new economies by selling resultant products and services to developed nations, as India and Eastern Europe, for example, do.
Yes, but like most respondants in the thread, you are just skirting the issue. Sure, Windows restarts the graphics subsystem. But the applications you are using are still there. In the case of Linux, you have to shut down all applications, shut down X, and then run a config tool in console mode (or vi your config file) to change resolutions and monitors. That is the real problem.
And the ctrl-alt-shift-plus people crack me up. I wonder how they change their colour depth. Or how they make these changes permanent. Hmm? Oh yes, you must edit /etc/X11/XF86Config. Besides, ctrl-alt-shift-plus(or minus) only cycles through what is in the XF86Config file. It's not magical or anything.
Granted, in my case, like most linux users, I just set my display up for my favorite monitor and leave it be until the unlikely time I change monitors. And indeed this was my method for windows, as well, when I used it. (I quit using ms for a plethora of reasons.) But this does not reflect what the majority of pc users do or indeed how people use their computers today.
There are a number of real-world examples being brought up here, like laptops roaming to lcd projectors for prezzos and new monitors, etc. And they get mama's basement answers like "well if you just use one monitor..." The fact of the matter is these are problems microsoft and apple overcame.
I remember having to run setup in dos to get the res right for windows 3.1, and being astonished when in windows 95 they allowed res changes on the fly and in the gui. In 98 they added the autodetection of monitors people are talking about. In short it took MS at least 5 years of solid work to get there, with the intention of getting there. If linux development follows the trend of "well you can't figure out how to do it the hard way so you suck" it will never get there.
For some people that is okay. I mean it won't stop me from using Linux, and Linus never cared about replacing windows for the masses. But to me we are missing a great opportunity. I think Linux has every potential to be better than windows or mac in this space, and replace windows, resulting in the fulfillment of stallman's mad dream of giving people their computers back. To me, this is Linux greatest strength, the ability to give people back the productivity which has heretofore been lost in proprietary software.
Aren't you tired of all the proprietary apps that go so far, but lack feature x that was in some older app, and then die, so you have to find app z that does the same thing where the developers are starting at square one and are missing feature x y and z? This cycle is wasting millions of developer hours, and is easily solved by open source solutions. Granted, the linux world has other ways of wasting developer hours, but once we get to a certain point (eg once we have the features of the leading software and more in the free projects) it will be unstoppable. Never again will we have to reinvent the wheel. Yes we have to do it the one time it takes to get it invented in a free implementation, but once we do that, never again.
Software development will see a new era of productivity. If you want to build a better mousetrap, you don't have to figure out how to copy the features of the original, you can just copy the code, and either build yours or make the original better. Computers you buy won't come with a few crippleware apps and the option to spend thousands on more apps that still don't do what you want, but instead with a plethora of applications that are more useful than the ones we had before.
Todays computers have many times the power of those of the 70's and 80's, but due to an unfortunate chain of events, they do less for us than those computers did, and certainly are a far cry from what people thought computers would be doing. We have monster cpu's but they aren't being utilized in a useful way. We have gigabytes of storage, but we aren't effectively keeping track of data. And far from assisting people in organizing and simplifying their lives, computers have instead become an end in themselves, sucking away years of time as people struggle endlessly and futiley to mold them into something useful.
The real answer is not "do you know how to configure all this crap?" but why? The purpose of a computer is not to while away the hours finding out how to make things work on it, but instead to do useful work with it. It is to balance your budget, control your environmental system, play games, write a novel, or design some new and nifty use for it by writing a neat application and compiling it. It is NOT to spend hours trying to figure out why you can't get graphics and how to configure that. It is NOT to spend weeks trying to find all the pieces to a simple application so you can compile it. And it is NOT (as in windows) to spend days rebooting and installing patches because there is no easier way to do it and if you don't you will get "hacked by chinese."
IT people enjoy learning about such things, and as an IT guy, sure I did. But the problem is these are not the things the computer is meant to do. The only reason so many joe schmoes bought computers in the 90's was to get on the net. Now think about that. We have systems that dwarf those used to design nuclear reactors, saturn V moon rockets, and modern irrigation systems, which are being used to boot up, go to aol, and launch instant messenger. And why? between that and solitaire, there isn't much else useful for the average joe schmoe. We've been so busy trying to reinvent the wheel and install patches, etc, that we never got around to the Next Great Thing for Humanity. It is sad.
That is why I think it is necessary some people get their priorities straight on this. Microsoft doesn't get it. IBM Doesn't get it. My hope is that several someones will, and when it happens, it will probably happen to Linux, because we have the code and can fix these things.
One other thing I forgot to add. It is provably impossible for your grandmother to actually buy anything from spammers. Studies in which people gathered spam and attempted to contact the company to actually buy something came up with exactly none of the numbers or addresses being valid places with which to conduct business. They could find no way to send money to the spammers. Most of this is because the numbers and websites get cut off within minutes of spam being sent.
There is one other way to make money with spam, and it was outlined in a Wired article. That is to con companies into paying you for sending spam for them. There the spammer makes money, but again because there usually ends up being no way to ac tually contact the company, the company makes nothing.
Both spam and telemarketing are nothing but scams and should be outlawed, IMHO.
Both in spam and telemarketing the biggest business is not in doing business in these ways but rather in selling lists to people who want to spam and be telemarketers. This is why spammers and telemarketers actually *want* to be able to bother people they know do not want to be bothered and will never buy their products, because that adds names to the lists. Both industries have continually lobbied in congress against any attempt to make laws which might allow someone to subscribe to a national list and therefore remain unmolested by these entities.
It's about time someone called bullshit on rpm. One of the interesting points in the article was that not all packages are created equal, thus you must find a package that works for your version of rpm, your distro, and the version of your distro you are using. However, I have found that even using rpm's from the install cd of the next version of an rpm distro will not mean the install will go through smoothly.
I'm not just talking about normally failed dependencies; that is understandable enough and can be dealt with (though the author was more than generous in his treatment of the goose chase that can be) but in fact I am talking about a situation in which you have libfoo-mdk-8.0-5.5.1 and are trying to install the rpm for libfoo-mdk-8.1-5.6.4 and it chokes, saying it requires libfoo-5.5.1 installed, or something to that effect.
When you can't even use rpms from the next version of a distro to upgrade your distro, there is a problem. Hell, even microsoft had that much working long ago. Why is the answer to getting to a new version of a distro often a fresh install? For that matter, why do many distros in their faqs for setting things up only tell how to do it in the install, as though no one is ever going to change things later?
Which of course is why I use slackware. The system is clean and relatively free of proprietary extensions to the way things are done. Most things are configurable on a slackware box in the same way most other unix boxes are. And I don't have to deal with rpm's. At first I used the slackware package system a lot, but lately I just compile most stuff from source.
Of course, this does not deal with a major cause of rpm dependency hell, which is the extremely fragmented nature of linux projects. Granted, this is building off the unix tradition of using mamny small parts to come together to a cohesive solution. However, it becomes a problem in two areas: one being the desktop user, and two being complex applications that require many of these parts. Usually the two are involved together, as with a project like Enlightenment or KDE. The problem is that when you want to install one thing, it requires 30 others. But you have to figure out where they are. Now I can do that, though it can be a headache, but what about poor Joe Sixpack and his shiny new Walmart computer with Lindows and DeerHunter installed?
In desktop systems like BeOS, OS/2, Windows, or MacOS, it is typical to encounter everything needed to run the program packaged with the program, right down to system libraries. What Windows based game written in the last 6 years did not come with some version of DirectX right on the cd? Now, granted, the windows way screwed many over, as program installers installed older libraries over newer ones and wreaked other fun havok on people's systems, and microsoft's patches gleefully broke people's programs. But, still, if we are talking about getting linux on the desktop, we shoudl be talking about learning from microsoft's mistakes and coming up with something better.
I think it helps everyone to have better package management, and definitely better dependency handling. I think apt-get and sourcerer's "spells" might be steps in the right direction, but I'm not ready to call it there yet. Oh, and I am sure lots of responses to this article will say it should be tough for newbies. But what we tend to forget, is that there really is not anything wrong with things being easier to do. In fact, saving time and trouble is supposed to be what technology is about, and putting a better tool in a skilled hand is the best thing we can do. The only problem is when we obscure the works so much that it is difficult or impossible for that skilled hand to fix the tool should it go awry, and this is of course the case with both windows and rpm, which is why I use neither if I can help it.
If someone says something isn't funny, repeating the thing doesn't make it any funnier.
Obviously not a fan of David Letterman, or Sergio Aragone. In fact it seems that repeating something that is not in itself funny seems to be taken as funny eventually. Cases in point are the milage the former gets from stuff like "These pretzels are making me thirsty" and the latters' references to mulching and cheese dip.
It's not a disincentive to non-MS-based game developers.
Why not? looks like it is a windows-only technology to me. After all, it uses DirectX. True, it also claims to use OpenGL, but while OpenGL is cross-platform, the compiler in the article is not.
Some people like to have two distinct buttons, one which closes the window, and one which closes the program. perhaps this is teh source of your two buttons?
Another possibility is that you (or someone) had the one button, and wanted the three on the right, but after editing the config so you had that, did not get rid of the one on the left for whatever reason. Not being familiar with your window manager, I could not be sure...
slashdot purposefully mangles any url you present in cleartext (e.g. any url you don't set up an href for). It is supposed to have something to do with the lameness filter. I think it is lame and pointless, but oh well..
Some people don't pass the turing test. Does it mean they do not have intelligence ?
Yes. Now here is your cookie.
(* How do you know there is no afterlife for an AI? *)
There might not be, but it does not have to know that. Tell it there is. (I don't know what it would be like. Floating around on clouds and calculating pi to infinity?)
Unfortunately, they already told it there is not one. From the article:
They have been feeding a database named Cyc 1.4 million truths and generalities about daily life so it can automatically make assumptions humans make: Creatures that die stay dead. Dogs have spines. Scaling a cliff requires intense physical effort.
Really, just the few examples cited in the article show the inherent problem in a system like this. As with any system, we are a slave to our assumptions. As humans, we can change our assumptions over time, but the purpose of this database seems to be to give a basis of "incontrovertible truths" which is teh basic fallacy of the whole premise.
Why are we telling the computer "Sex is bad, there is no life after death, and don't try to climb cliffs, it is just common sense?" The whole idea is ridiculous. It might help us create ai systems more easily; as with humans if you feed the thing enough bullshit and tell it not to bother questioning it it might spend less time thinking overall, therefore not requioring as much brainpower to do its job, but it will suffer unfortunate limitations. Then again, perhaps we don't care to have a mars lander robot pondering the meaning of life and its place in the universe when we want it to go take pictures of some damn rocks. :)