"Slackware is only for people who already have Slackware installed." -- Rob Malda
I'm not sure I completely agree, but... slackware's best feature is its name... slackware just sounds cool.
Now, as far as other distros, customizability, etc... As *nix goes, and Linux in particular (do you want source code with that?) ultimate control is kind of the point. The first Linux I ever ran was slackware 3.0, and i've also run Red Hat 5.1, Mandrake 7, SuSE 6.4 and now Debian 2.2
Just try to install a standard (i.e., dl'd from kernel.org, blessed-by-linus) kernel on Mandrake or SuSE (make your computer more German) without breaking things and seriously fscking things up.
Red Hat... well, is Red Hat. Nobody really runs that at home, not real geeks.
Okay, we have Slack and Debian. I'm not a license nazi. I tend to side with RMS on licensing issues, but, hey, sometimes you want to run something that isn't GPL'd, MPL'd or BSD-licensed. But you can install whatever you want on slack or debian... so that's not a big deal. The big difference comes down to package management. We've been over the RPM-ified distros, and RPM is nice but not super-pimp. Then there's APT.
Oh, APT. Oh, pimp-ass package management that makes my life so much more pleasant.
The point is, I want to be *able* to do things myself. That's why I run Linux and not some *other* OS. But I have better things to do than hand-satisfying (that sounds dirty) dependencies when there's an Advanced Package Tool to do it for me.
apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade is in my crontab. every night my system updates itself. every morning when I wake up Evolution is a little more stable.
And I can do all of the hand-tweaking I want... without some useless configuration tool (YaST...) telling me not to edit my rc.config.
Slack is fine if you don't want any kind of package management or anything...
But... come on. How many times to you want to hear you have the wrong libPropList... instead of your system grabbing the right one for you?
telekon
Any school (or public) librarian walking around the school (or public) library could easily notice big, glowing, 32-bpp, 1024x768 Naked People on a monitor... And if they don't want porn, that's what Acceptable Use Policies are for. Little Johnny gets caught downloading fake Britney Spears porn when he's supposed to be researching the French Alps, and Johnny gets detention, or a phone call home, or loses access privileges temporarily... Fine.
Censorware raises a different issue. Who decides which software is used? should a fundamentalist school librarian, or, for that matter, principal, be able to decide that the software that blocks plannedparenthood.org and pflag.org, but maybe misses some of the borderline sites that many would consider "hate speech" ?
If nothing else, censorware is unreliable. Websites come and go too quickly to maintain useful blocked-sites lists, and filtering is too stupid to block porn sites and still allow sites that detail the mating habits of the blue-footed booby.
The fact that Peacefire has released its one-click disabling software demonstrates the severity of the situation: for the entire time it has existed, (five years, I think) Peacefire has refused to distribute hacks/cracks/etc. to get past censorware, rather emphasizing grassroots efforts to prevent the use of blocking software.Until now.
This is just going to make things worse... what happens when a nosy librarian starts checking out the logs of failed attempts to access 'restricted sites?'
When 'Little Johnny's' user account shows up on 56 failed attempts to access sites that offer support to gay or questioning teens, who's there to protect his privacy from the school administrators in the small bible-belt town where he lives?
Many of the benefits of the internet may be jeopardized by censorware. When the net is free, everyone is connected. Building walls goes against the nature of the net. Many networks could be more secure if we didn't mind losing the level of connectivity unfettered internet access gives us. But that's something not many people are willing to give up. I'm not. And functionality demands that the net be allowed to exist without regulation or interference.
Right. Which will suck for lusers, but how often do geeks buy PCs off-the shelf?
They would have to prevent consumers from purchasing components necessary to construct "illicit network access devices-" of course, this would mean that anyone who built a 'puter themselves instead of the US Government/Sony/MPAA/Satan/RIAA/Microsoft-built, sanctioned and rationed black box would be subject to prosecution under the same laws that ban using a "found" credit card or login and password--they're "unauthorized access devices."
And of course, any sort of attempt to understand the underlying workings would be verboten by the licence agreement... Oh! Right! Now I remember why open source / GPL is a good idea... I'd forgotten that knowing how to use things isn't the same as understanding how they work, isn't the same as FREEDOM.
telekon
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"Hey, Hey, MPAA, How many movies did you censor today?"--Cecil B. Demented
Java's probably actually a great choice... If you're afraid that they'll lose interest with command-line gcc, then why not give them something where you have swing and the awt to handle the gui, doing nifty little animation effects is a breeze, and they can also put lots of stuff on the web to show their friends? Forte for Java CE is a nice, free IDE and its available for windoze, linux and solaris. Personally, i think python is easier, but if i was starting all over again right now, i kind of wish i had started with java. but that's just me. ---- It's more fun to compute.
Slashdot Mirror
I apologize to everyone for hitting Submit instead of Preview there.
Sorry!
telekon"Slackware is only for people who already have Slackware installed." -- Rob Malda I'm not sure I completely agree, but... slackware's best feature is its name... slackware just sounds cool. Now, as far as other distros, customizability, etc... As *nix goes, and Linux in particular (do you want source code with that?) ultimate control is kind of the point. The first Linux I ever ran was slackware 3.0, and i've also run Red Hat 5.1, Mandrake 7, SuSE 6.4 and now Debian 2.2 Just try to install a standard (i.e., dl'd from kernel.org, blessed-by-linus) kernel on Mandrake or SuSE (make your computer more German) without breaking things and seriously fscking things up. Red Hat... well, is Red Hat. Nobody really runs that at home, not real geeks. Okay, we have Slack and Debian. I'm not a license nazi. I tend to side with RMS on licensing issues, but, hey, sometimes you want to run something that isn't GPL'd, MPL'd or BSD-licensed. But you can install whatever you want on slack or debian... so that's not a big deal. The big difference comes down to package management. We've been over the RPM-ified distros, and RPM is nice but not super-pimp. Then there's APT. Oh, APT. Oh, pimp-ass package management that makes my life so much more pleasant. The point is, I want to be *able* to do things myself. That's why I run Linux and not some *other* OS. But I have better things to do than hand-satisfying (that sounds dirty) dependencies when there's an Advanced Package Tool to do it for me. apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade is in my crontab. every night my system updates itself. every morning when I wake up Evolution is a little more stable. And I can do all of the hand-tweaking I want... without some useless configuration tool (YaST...) telling me not to edit my rc.config. Slack is fine if you don't want any kind of package management or anything... But... come on. How many times to you want to hear you have the wrong libPropList... instead of your system grabbing the right one for you? telekon
So, Porn isn't what's at issue here...
Any school (or public) librarian walking around the school (or public) library could easily notice big, glowing, 32-bpp, 1024x768 Naked People on a monitor... And if they don't want porn, that's what Acceptable Use Policies are for. Little Johnny gets caught downloading fake Britney Spears porn when he's supposed to be researching the French Alps, and Johnny gets detention, or a phone call home, or loses access privileges temporarily... Fine.
Censorware raises a different issue. Who decides which software is used? should a fundamentalist school librarian, or, for that matter, principal, be able to decide that the software that blocks plannedparenthood.org and pflag.org, but maybe misses some of the borderline sites that many would consider "hate speech" ?
If nothing else, censorware is unreliable. Websites come and go too quickly to maintain useful blocked-sites lists, and filtering is too stupid to block porn sites and still allow sites that detail the mating habits of the blue-footed booby.
The fact that Peacefire has released its one-click disabling software demonstrates the severity of the situation: for the entire time it has existed, (five years, I think) Peacefire has refused to distribute hacks/cracks/etc. to get past censorware, rather emphasizing grassroots efforts to prevent the use of blocking software.Until now.
This is just going to make things worse... what happens when a nosy librarian starts checking out the logs of failed attempts to access 'restricted sites?'
When 'Little Johnny's' user account shows up on 56 failed attempts to access sites that offer support to gay or questioning teens, who's there to protect his privacy from the school administrators in the small bible-belt town where he lives?
Many of the benefits of the internet may be jeopardized by censorware. When the net is free, everyone is connected. Building walls goes against the nature of the net. Many networks could be more secure if we didn't mind losing the level of connectivity unfettered internet access gives us. But that's something not many people are willing to give up. I'm not. And functionality demands that the net be allowed to exist without regulation or interference.
where? you mean inside there?, or indide inside there?, or inside inside inside there?
and as he tried to imagine infinitely nested virtual machines, functioning together, he could feel braincells collapsing...
until he realized that 60 virtual x86s on a p3-600 clustered together would be much slower than... a p3-600
slower, but very, very, cool... and still infinitely more stable than win9x...
They would have to prevent consumers from purchasing components necessary to construct "illicit network access devices-" of course, this would mean that anyone who built a 'puter themselves instead of the US Government/Sony/MPAA/Satan/RIAA/Microsoft-built, sanctioned and rationed black box would be subject to prosecution under the same laws that ban using a "found" credit card or login and password--they're "unauthorized access devices."
And of course, any sort of attempt to understand the underlying workings would be verboten by the licence agreement...
Oh! Right! Now I remember why open source / GPL is a good idea... I'd forgotten that knowing how to use things isn't the same as understanding how they work, isn't the same as FREEDOM.
telekon
-----
 
"Hey, Hey, MPAA, How many movies did you censor today?"--Cecil B. Demented
Java's probably actually a great choice... If you're afraid that they'll lose interest with command-line gcc, then why not give them something where you have swing and the awt to handle the gui, doing nifty little animation effects is a breeze, and they can also put lots of stuff on the web to show their friends? Forte for Java CE is a nice, free IDE and its available for windoze, linux and solaris. Personally, i think python is easier, but if i was starting all over again right now, i kind of wish i had started with java. but that's just me. ---- It's more fun to compute.