Re:I'd like to see two pointers, two focuses
on
X.Org 6.8.2 is Out
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· Score: 1
There used to be some ugly hacks to do this with XFree86. I think there's also a patch called the backstreet ruby patch that allows normal X servers to run on multiple terminals each with there own focus. As I understand it the kernel has been limiting this (one console one focus) as well as limitations in the X server. Personally I'd love to see this ability in maintstream distros using some kind of clean solution in the kernel. In a computer lab or any public access area, this would be wonderful.
Sorry but GTK+ is better written and much more portable. And it has way better language bindings to Java, C#, Perl, PHP, and others. While QT is available for C#, it's actually a wrapper for the C version (wrapper) of QT. As far as features and look and feel go, I think GTK is way ahead now with atk, pango, and other niceities. Furthermore the signal propagation system for GTK (and GTKmm) is faster than QT and requires no weird preprocessor support. Since QT is built on C++, it will always be in C++, which I think will turn out to be its greatest weakness as other languages start taking over (C#, Java, Perl). I applaud the availability of QT on windows, though, and look forward to having many kde apps on windows once the kdelibs are ported, which is in progress now.
Yes, but this is what ASN1 encoding is for. It's a structured, self-describing encoding scheme that works very well for structured data. What advantages does this binary XML have over ASN1? Both require external descriptions to attach meaning to the data.
In your case, ASN1 is what you should be using, not XML in the first place.
If your wife wants the Mac Mini, then buy her the Mac Mini. Why are you trying to find a lower-quality alternative? You've already stated you cannot find an quivalent Wintel machine at the same cost.
Very true. Most server setups I know of, though, have a hardware firewall that creates a DMZ. I think in this case a hardware firewall (a separate dedicated box) does a better job of this. Besides if someone compromises a box with iptables running on it, they simply have to turn them off. Obviously they'd have to get root, but if they've compromised a service it won't be long until they have root. Of course SELinux will make a huge difference here.
There is almost no reason to run iptables on production servers if you've followed all the correct steps. Remember that iptables is not an application-level firewall and as such cannot do anything to protect your server. That is because you want your server to serve stuff. No iptables firewall can protect you from bad guys exploiting your services that you exposed intentionally! Instead you should disable every service that you don't want to expose to the outside world. In some cases, like sendmail, you have services you need internally to the server itself and so you bind them to localhost. My server is live on the internet and runs no firewall. Every port open on it (http, https, pop3, imap, smtp) is open because I want it open. It would be mostly pointless to turn on iptables. The only case I can see iptables being useful is to restrict the source ip address for ssh.
I think Gnome passed windows on the classy professional look some ago. I am really starting to love the UI of Mac OS X and Gnome is doing a great job of catching up to OS X in this area. If you want something more like windows, stick to KDE.
I agree. No "wow" factor. Just incremental steady improvements. KDE 4 is looking pretty good too. No wows there either. But certainly there are precious few deficiencies in either desktop environment compared to Mac and Windows.
Please. No enlightenment. It may look cool for a short while, but in the end most of us want a simple, elegant interface.
Yes I did discover the the fstab information. It seems quite limited in its present state and does not seem to address any of the software installation problems that we currently face in linux.
As for mounting the compressed file systems, they could use avfs (relative of fuse) to virtually mount the cmg file and intercept all file i/o calls to make it appear as though the cmg was mounted and give transparent access to these files. Such a scheme would not require any root support at all, since it would all be done with a ld_preload.
I have read through the docs, but I can't find any indication of how klik really works. Clearly the cmg file has to be mounted somewhere. I found references to the overlay file system (which linus refuses to integrate). Does the cmg file get mounted somehow (with a root helper) and overlayed on the root file system? cmg files seem to be created from binary deb files, so I don't imagine they are recompiled to look for their files elsewhere (say $HOME/etc or something).
I believe this klik system could have real application across all kinds of distros, even RPM-based. However klik still doesn't truely offer (due to how linux works) apps that are dependency free. For example the galeon.cmg would still require mozilla and a few other things. I suppose they could make each cmg independent, but then we'd have tons of glibc's in memory, plus multiple copies of gtk, etc. How do they get around this issue?
It appears the main target of klik is to allow the downloading and running of software in a liveCD environment. How will this work in a real environment?
Yes the API is path-based, but once the paths are rendered to a bitmap and then composited on the screen it is finished. Any scaling at that point is done on a bitmap level (for example the zoomable icons). Avalon preserves the paths and vectors all the way into the composite layer so things can be warped and scaled without having to have the program do a redraw. Currently Quartz forces the app to create the paths all over again every time the window is redrawn or if the display was to be suddenly scaled to a new DPI. So while quartz has a vector-based API, the actual rendering engine is not vector-based.
See my other comment for a better explaination. Of course the person I quote could just be making up sh** too.
While you are right about the API being a path-based and vector-based API, everything is rendered to a bitmap that is composited on the screen. See http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/view/cs_msg/3368 7
relevant quote:
Quartz uses composition, but despite the fact that it also has extensive support for vector drawing, there is a big limitation: there is no vector-level retention - as I understand it the composition is done *after* the rasterization of the vector imagery. The vector support in Mac OS X actually works in pretty much exactly the same way as GDI+ does in current versions of Windows, and is not integrated into the composition engine.
Compare this with Avalon, which uses vector-level retention as part of its composition model, and can interleave multiple transform and rasterization steps as a result. (It can also retain bitmaps as an optimization, but it always retains vector information too.) This enables transforms to be integrated with the composition engine. Transforms in Quartz are done much more like current versions of Windows handle them - they are dealt with at the level of a drawing context when the application generates its imagery. (At least that's how I've always seen it done. If you can point me at an example that shows transformations at the composition level rather than the drawing level in Quartz, I'd be very interested to see that.)
Avalon is much more advanced than Quartz is currently. Avalon is a vector-based drawing API. Quartz, although it looks smooth, is really bitmapped, although not for long. Quartz will gain true vector capabilities very soon I'm sure, probably before longhorn ships.
As far as the issue of somehow owning genes go, well, genes can and do travel by themselves in nature. For example a few years ago very small percentages of the seed canola grown on my farm did test positive for the Monsanto gene. This monsanto variety had never been grown before on my land. The nearest field was over 4 miles away and several years previous. Yet the gene persisted somehow and was introduced into my crop. So obviously Monsanto can't hope to keep control over this gene in the long run. But they can badger farmers in the short run.
On another note, much of Monsanto's seed development includes the creation of roundup-ready plants, as well as creating crops that cannot reproduce. I'm not terribly afraid of GMO, but I think we should really think seriously about what Monsanto is doing. If, on one hand, we produce crops that are resistant to the only herbicide that kills every thing then we are pretty much creating a super weed. On the other hand, if we make seed sterile, then we are locking many developing nations into being forced to buy seed every year. Then to sue people to boot... I think hard questions need to be asked of chemical companies in general, and genetic manipulation of our crops.
I'm sure it does void the warranty. But at $500, I can almost afford to not worry about the warranty anyway.
This issue is a huge downside to the mini mac (and any similar product). But on the other hand, I have less and less reason to tear into the device than I used to with my old PC.
This is very interesting indeed. I apologize for being so harsh. I do know that Monsanto is promoting a round-up-ready canola which I am extremely wary of. Anyway, if you feel like it (and have any information on the subject), drop me a line. My email address is at torriem [at] gmail.com.
I'm interested in this because I do think there is a real movement on the part of some of the seed developers (chemical companies) to do things that ultimately will put farmers and the environment at risk.
I grow Canola up in Alberta, Canada (hundreds of acres) and no the soil is not toxic. I can assure you that many weeds will still grow afterwards. I have to grow a crop next year (something other than Canola) and I can assure you that wheat and so forth still grow just fine after Canola.
You can even eat canola flowers. They taste like cabbage. Cattle get sick and die (something that I've never seen) probably for the same reasons that alfalfa kills cattle (in other words you can't graze cattle on alfalfa either).
So please. Stop spreading FUD, particularly in regards to pesticides and herbicides. Have you ever farmed before? Have you actually gone out and witnessed this toxicity of which you mention? I can assure you that farmers are highly sensitive to issues of herbicide toxicity and residue. Pesticides are a non-issue here since they are almost never used on Canola. Our lifeblood is the soil and the last thing we want to do is poison it.
Canola was specificly bread from rapeseed to get an edible oil. Rapeseed oil is high in acid content which is toxic in high doses. Whether or not Canola oil causes cancer (and any number of thousands of other food products) is a legitimate issue. But these other things you mention are FUD plain and simple.
I'm shocked and surprised to see someone actively spreading this misinformation. Your opinion on the health qualities of Canola oil is valid, but please don't spread this kind of FUD about something you know little about.
Umm, you do know that burning coal produces a lot of toxic byproducts that are much more of an immediate danger to millions of people (air pollutants, etc). In fact most of the coal we burn is slightly radioactive and that radiation is released into the environment.
Yes the waste problem has to be addressed, but to simply dismiss nuclear power out of hand is stupid and uninformed.
As for the waste, I think it not unreasonable to consider dumping it into deep ocean trenches where we know it will be consumed by molten rock under the earth's crust. No virginia that won't hurt the environment. Where do you think the radioactive materials came from in the first place? That's right. The earth's core. Now of course this is a crazy plan, probably worth dismissing out of hand.
No canola is not incredibly toxic. No idea where you got that idea. There are some crackpots here in the US who try to spread FUD about it. Rapeseed oil could be thought of as toxic (although people in India actually use it in cooking), but Canola oil is most definitely not toxic. Canola is grown right now exclusively for food oil.
Well said. The Hydrogen economy simply isn't. Those that call for a hydrogen economy are either grossly mislead or have an agenda. Biodiesel is the *only* viable option for a post-fossil-fuel era. That and generating electricity from solar, etc. I was disappointed to see Bush declare that we're aiming for a hydrogen economy. I think he is pretty smart, though, because there's no better way to discredit the propents of alternatives to fossil-fuels.
The idea of a registry is not inherently flawed, but the implementations of it are. gconf and elektra both seem to be decent implementations. the registry database is an aggregation of many files. This means that the package manager can add registry entries and remove them automatically without having to result to programmatic uninstall programs. This keeps the registry from getting full of crap like it does get on Windows. Simply delete the application (rpm -e) and the entries are gone. The problem of local entries (like local dotfiles) in the home directory remains, though. Anyway, I'll wait to see what this all does before I pass judgement on Elektra itself. Something like this should, however, work under in the freedesktop.org umbrella. Making yet another desktop environment seems problematic.
Umm, most mac users I know always run at least 512 mb of ram with Panther. Anything under that and the entire OS is sluggish. RAM is cheap, so I don't care.
No, WPA does not necessarily allow online attacks. Cisco's LEAP authentication for WPA does, but everyone else seems to be moving (and Cisco supports this also) to PEAP authentication, which is MS-CHAPv2, but wrapped in an SSL-encrypted session. So offline dictionary attacks are much, much more difficult since the SSL session uses a new key every authentication attempt.
But others have moderated this insightful. Why? Why do you need to suddenly wipe out this evidence? Are you at work and worried about getting fired? Or worried about a spouse finding out?
While the SO2 emissions are considered pollution, I was shocked at how high the daily man-made CO2 emissions were. The CO2 emissions wouldn't be such a big deal if they were coming from some organic source, but since they are being added to the carbon cycle, that's a lot of CO2 to absorb. And there's no end in sight. It is high time we started replacing our fossil fuels with organic fuels. At that point CO2 emissions become non-issues since there would be no net increase in the carbon levels of the enviroment. It's not the burning that is the problem (outside of NO2 and SO2 creation); it's the buring of fossil fuels that add CO2 that is the problem.
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There used to be some ugly hacks to do this with XFree86. I think there's also a patch called the backstreet ruby patch that allows normal X servers to run on multiple terminals each with there own focus. As I understand it the kernel has been limiting this (one console one focus) as well as limitations in the X server. Personally I'd love to see this ability in maintstream distros using some kind of clean solution in the kernel. In a computer lab or any public access area, this would be wonderful.
Sorry but GTK+ is better written and much more portable. And it has way better language bindings to Java, C#, Perl, PHP, and others. While QT is available for C#, it's actually a wrapper for the C version (wrapper) of QT. As far as features and look and feel go, I think GTK is way ahead now with atk, pango, and other niceities. Furthermore the signal propagation system for GTK (and GTKmm) is faster than QT and requires no weird preprocessor support. Since QT is built on C++, it will always be in C++, which I think will turn out to be its greatest weakness as other languages start taking over (C#, Java, Perl). I applaud the availability of QT on windows, though, and look forward to having many kde apps on windows once the kdelibs are ported, which is in progress now.
Yes, but this is what ASN1 encoding is for. It's a structured, self-describing encoding scheme that works very well for structured data. What advantages does this binary XML have over ASN1? Both require external descriptions to attach meaning to the data.
In your case, ASN1 is what you should be using, not XML in the first place.
If your wife wants the Mac Mini, then buy her the Mac Mini. Why are you trying to find a lower-quality alternative? You've already stated you cannot find an quivalent Wintel machine at the same cost.
Very true. Most server setups I know of, though, have a hardware firewall that creates a DMZ. I think in this case a hardware firewall (a separate dedicated box) does a better job of this. Besides if someone compromises a box with iptables running on it, they simply have to turn them off. Obviously they'd have to get root, but if they've compromised a service it won't be long until they have root. Of course SELinux will make a huge difference here.
There is almost no reason to run iptables on production servers if you've followed all the correct steps. Remember that iptables is not an application-level firewall and as such cannot do anything to protect your server. That is because you want your server to serve stuff. No iptables firewall can protect you from bad guys exploiting your services that you exposed intentionally! Instead you should disable every service that you don't want to expose to the outside world. In some cases, like sendmail, you have services you need internally to the server itself and so you bind them to localhost. My server is live on the internet and runs no firewall. Every port open on it (http, https, pop3, imap, smtp) is open because I want it open. It would be mostly pointless to turn on iptables. The only case I can see iptables being useful is to restrict the source ip address for ssh.
I think Gnome passed windows on the classy professional look some ago. I am really starting to love the UI of Mac OS X and Gnome is doing a great job of catching up to OS X in this area. If you want something more like windows, stick to KDE.
I agree. No "wow" factor. Just incremental steady improvements. KDE 4 is looking pretty good too. No wows there either. But certainly there are precious few deficiencies in either desktop environment compared to Mac and Windows.
Please. No enlightenment. It may look cool for a short while, but in the end most of us want a simple, elegant interface.
Yes I did discover the the fstab information. It seems quite limited in its present state and does not seem to address any of the software installation problems that we currently face in linux.
As for mounting the compressed file systems, they could use avfs (relative of fuse) to virtually mount the cmg file and intercept all file i/o calls to make it appear as though the cmg was mounted and give transparent access to these files. Such a scheme would not require any root support at all, since it would all be done with a ld_preload.
I have read through the docs, but I can't find any indication of how klik really works. Clearly the cmg file has to be mounted somewhere. I found references to the overlay file system (which linus refuses to integrate). Does the cmg file get mounted somehow (with a root helper) and overlayed on the root file system? cmg files seem to be created from binary deb files, so I don't imagine they are recompiled to look for their files elsewhere (say $HOME/etc or something).
I believe this klik system could have real application across all kinds of distros, even RPM-based. However klik still doesn't truely offer (due to how linux works) apps that are dependency free. For example the galeon.cmg would still require mozilla and a few other things. I suppose they could make each cmg independent, but then we'd have tons of glibc's in memory, plus multiple copies of gtk, etc. How do they get around this issue?
It appears the main target of klik is to allow the downloading and running of software in a liveCD environment. How will this work in a real environment?
Yes the API is path-based, but once the paths are rendered to a bitmap and then composited on the screen it is finished. Any scaling at that point is done on a bitmap level (for example the zoomable icons). Avalon preserves the paths and vectors all the way into the composite layer so things can be warped and scaled without having to have the program do a redraw. Currently Quartz forces the app to create the paths all over again every time the window is redrawn or if the display was to be suddenly scaled to a new DPI. So while quartz has a vector-based API, the actual rendering engine is not vector-based.
See my other comment for a better explaination. Of course the person I quote could just be making up sh** too.
relevant quote:
Avalon is much more advanced than Quartz is currently. Avalon is a vector-based drawing API. Quartz, although it looks smooth, is really bitmapped, although not for long. Quartz will gain true vector capabilities very soon I'm sure, probably before longhorn ships.
As far as the issue of somehow owning genes go, well, genes can and do travel by themselves in nature. For example a few years ago very small percentages of the seed canola grown on my farm did test positive for the Monsanto gene. This monsanto variety had never been grown before on my land. The nearest field was over 4 miles away and several years previous. Yet the gene persisted somehow and was introduced into my crop. So obviously Monsanto can't hope to keep control over this gene in the long run. But they can badger farmers in the short run.
On another note, much of Monsanto's seed development includes the creation of roundup-ready plants, as well as creating crops that cannot reproduce. I'm not terribly afraid of GMO, but I think we should really think seriously about what Monsanto is doing. If, on one hand, we produce crops that are resistant to the only herbicide that kills every thing then we are pretty much creating a super weed. On the other hand, if we make seed sterile, then we are locking many developing nations into being forced to buy seed every year. Then to sue people to boot... I think hard questions need to be asked of chemical companies in general, and genetic manipulation of our crops.
I'm sure it does void the warranty. But at $500, I can almost afford to not worry about the warranty anyway.
This issue is a huge downside to the mini mac (and any similar product). But on the other hand, I have less and less reason to tear into the device than I used to with my old PC.
This is very interesting indeed. I apologize for being so harsh. I do know that Monsanto is promoting a round-up-ready canola which I am extremely wary of. Anyway, if you feel like it (and have any information on the subject), drop me a line. My email address is at torriem [at] gmail.com.
I'm interested in this because I do think there is a real movement on the part of some of the seed developers (chemical companies) to do things that ultimately will put farmers and the environment at risk.
I grow Canola up in Alberta, Canada (hundreds of acres) and no the soil is not toxic. I can assure you that many weeds will still grow afterwards. I have to grow a crop next year (something other than Canola) and I can assure you that wheat and so forth still grow just fine after Canola.
You can even eat canola flowers. They taste like cabbage. Cattle get sick and die (something that I've never seen) probably for the same reasons that alfalfa kills cattle (in other words you can't graze cattle on alfalfa either).
So please. Stop spreading FUD, particularly in regards to pesticides and herbicides. Have you ever farmed before? Have you actually gone out and witnessed this toxicity of which you mention? I can assure you that farmers are highly sensitive to issues of herbicide toxicity and residue. Pesticides are a non-issue here since they are almost never used on Canola. Our lifeblood is the soil and the last thing we want to do is poison it.
Canola was specificly bread from rapeseed to get an edible oil. Rapeseed oil is high in acid content which is toxic in high doses. Whether or not Canola oil causes cancer (and any number of thousands of other food products) is a legitimate issue. But these other things you mention are FUD plain and simple.
I'm shocked and surprised to see someone actively spreading this misinformation. Your opinion on the health qualities of Canola oil is valid, but please don't spread this kind of FUD about something you know little about.
Umm, you do know that burning coal produces a lot of toxic byproducts that are much more of an immediate danger to millions of people (air pollutants, etc). In fact most of the coal we burn is slightly radioactive and that radiation is released into the environment.
Yes the waste problem has to be addressed, but to simply dismiss nuclear power out of hand is stupid and uninformed.
As for the waste, I think it not unreasonable to consider dumping it into deep ocean trenches where we know it will be consumed by molten rock under the earth's crust. No virginia that won't hurt the environment. Where do you think the radioactive materials came from in the first place? That's right. The earth's core. Now of course this is a crazy plan, probably worth dismissing out of hand.
No canola is not incredibly toxic. No idea where you got that idea. There are some crackpots here in the US who try to spread FUD about it. Rapeseed oil could be thought of as toxic (although people in India actually use it in cooking), but Canola oil is most definitely not toxic. Canola is grown right now exclusively for food oil.
Well said. The Hydrogen economy simply isn't. Those that call for a hydrogen economy are either grossly mislead or have an agenda. Biodiesel is the *only* viable option for a post-fossil-fuel era. That and generating electricity from solar, etc. I was disappointed to see Bush declare that we're aiming for a hydrogen economy. I think he is pretty smart, though, because there's no better way to discredit the propents of alternatives to fossil-fuels.
The idea of a registry is not inherently flawed, but the implementations of it are. gconf and elektra both seem to be decent implementations. the registry database is an aggregation of many files. This means that the package manager can add registry entries and remove them automatically without having to result to programmatic uninstall programs. This keeps the registry from getting full of crap like it does get on Windows. Simply delete the application (rpm -e) and the entries are gone. The problem of local entries (like local dotfiles) in the home directory remains, though. Anyway, I'll wait to see what this all does before I pass judgement on Elektra itself. Something like this should, however, work under in the freedesktop.org umbrella. Making yet another desktop environment seems problematic.
Umm, most mac users I know always run at least 512 mb of ram with Panther. Anything under that and the entire OS is sluggish. RAM is cheap, so I don't care.
No, WPA does not necessarily allow online attacks. Cisco's LEAP authentication for WPA does, but everyone else seems to be moving (and Cisco supports this also) to PEAP authentication, which is MS-CHAPv2, but wrapped in an SSL-encrypted session. So offline dictionary attacks are much, much more difficult since the SSL session uses a new key every authentication attempt.
I moderate the parent post at +1 funny.
But others have moderated this insightful. Why? Why do you need to suddenly wipe out this evidence? Are you at work and worried about getting fired? Or worried about a spouse finding out?
While the SO2 emissions are considered pollution, I was shocked at how high the daily man-made CO2 emissions were. The CO2 emissions wouldn't be such a big deal if they were coming from some organic source, but since they are being added to the carbon cycle, that's a lot of CO2 to absorb. And there's no end in sight. It is high time we started replacing our fossil fuels with organic fuels. At that point CO2 emissions become non-issues since there would be no net increase in the carbon levels of the enviroment. It's not the burning that is the problem (outside of NO2 and SO2 creation); it's the buring of fossil fuels that add CO2 that is the problem.
Umm, no. I was referring to the program "alien" which converts packages between slackware, rpm, and debian formats. http://kitenet.net/programs/alien/