That "big chunk of pre-compiled libary" is the HAL library. It is not necessary for the normal operation of the card. Try to get the Sacred nVidia operational without any binary-only code and you fail.
By damn, this is not an nVidia chip! We must do what it takes to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt upon Matrox. Followers of the Sacred GeForce must rally together, lest the heathen Open Source community realize that our Beloved Chipset is more closed than the typical Microsoft file format.
Strict adherence to the herd mentality gives rise to freedom. Choice is the enemy of Liberty.
the relationship between Luke Skywalker and Biggs (who is jarring in the movie because they greet like old friends in Yavin-4 but viewers don't know *why*)
That was in the movie. It was in the first theater run of Star Wars. But the scene was cut out in additional runs, TV, VHS, DVD and the new digitally destroyed version.
It was the first scene where we saw Luke. He was saying goodbye to Biggs, who was going off to join the rebellion.
"We detect that you're using the Konqzilla browser. Since by using Konqzilla our site may appear 'fugly', we have no other alternative but to deny you entrance."
"Your browser identifies itself as Internet Explorer 5.5 running on Windows XP. But it's really Konqzilla. I don't know why you want to see our site using Konqzilla. Please use a modern browser to view this site. Now go away."
"It appears that you're running Internet Explorer 5.5 running on Windows XP. And it's the real thing this time. But you're running it under WineX. Do you think we're stupid. We don't want you to view our site. Now bugger off!"
"Ah, a genuine Internet Explorer 5.5 running on a genuine Windows XP! Congratulations. But you have your monitor temperature set to 5000! Our site was designed for 9300. It will look fugly without it. Please correct the situation before returning"
This is why the web is fucked, and will remain fucked. Ignoring the fact that it's impossible, here is no valid reason for a web page to look the same in all browsers.
Yes, I said "no valid reason", and I mean it. I know some of you will give "presenting a uniform corporate image" as a reason. But it still won't be valid unless the corporate image you want to present is "style over substance".
Doesn't it say something about the language's lack of standardization if you have to read a long technical book in order to understand how to use the tools that let you make your code portable?
Hey! I just finished reading that book too!
It also has a chapter on C portability problems, and is quite instructive with regards to shell portability as well. C++ is hardly alone when it comes to quirks.
Oh, and that book also considers "make uninstall" to be a "not a very useful feature."
Re:Other innovative early games
on
Netrek
·
· Score: 2
I fondly remember Empire. I haven't played it in about fifteen years. Perhaps that's because it caused me to almost flunk two classes.
It was similar in look to the classic Unix empire game, but for multiple players, with economics, military, diplomacy, etc. Pretty complex. It has balanced so that being constantly logged in had no advantage.
Mr. Frog was the diety, and every morning I would go print out the reports, stats, messages, etc. Then I would pore over them during lunch. Moves were made during dinner. And at night I would log in and make my moves.
One of these days I'll play again. I have a lot of vacation time acrued...
Re:One word: Spider strength
on
Comic Book Physics
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Physics again. Spiders and other very tiny creatures have "super" strength simply because they are very tiny.
The question makes a wrong assumption about Open Source. It assumes that you have to give the source away to everyone. That is wrong. There may be some licenses that require this, but they are few and far between.
Let's take two examples, the BSD license and the GPL. The GPL only requires you to give the source code to the recipient. In this case it happens to be your client. Once they get it, it's up to them as whether they want to distribute the source further. The BSD license doesn't even require this. But you're going to give your client the source code anyway. So it makes no difference.
That said, I think it would be extremely rude if you charged your client for the code and then turned around and posted it on your website. If you're going to do this, let them know ahead of time.
I've always wanted to see a Linux distro that installed a bare bones non-nonsense system with just KDE or Gnome. And then put an "Install Additional Packages" icon on the desktop. Save the user the headache of reading the descriptions for ten thousand packages during install time.
I wear my seat belts because it is practical, not because I am forced to. I give up none of my freedom when I wear them because I choose to wear them with no reference to the law.
Re:Thankfully due to the GPL...
on
The Stallman Factor
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
After Debian started running, there was no reason for the FSF to do their own OS.
Except that GNU has still not met its initial goal, which was to release The GNU System.
Maybe an analogy is in order. Suppose RMS's goal was to build an automobile made entirely of hemp. Suppose someone else (most likely from Santa Cruz) beat him to it. RMS's goal still hasn't been met. Even if that guy from Santa Cruz used RMS's plans, it still wasn't RMS who built it. In order for him to achieve his goal, he still has to build a hemp car. Or find another goal.
I hope I don't sound like I'm down on RMS, because I'm not. I hope GNU actually releases The GNU System soon, so we can have three completely free operating systems out there all cross pollinating each other. Then we can start componentizing them so we can mix an match parts at install time.
That's one reason I switched to FreeBSD. At the time, there really wasn't a good source based distribution for Linux. With FreeBSD I could build everything from the kernel on up to the KDE eyecandy from source with a few simple commands. Stuff was regularly updated so you didn't have to spends ten hours a week checking for updates, poring over exploit lists, etc. And the kicker was that I could still use binary packages if I wanted to.
I tried Gentoo recently, but I didn't like it. I see a lot of potential there. But it still feels like a pre-alpha release. A ton of documents on emerge, but nothing on the system itself. Emerge is like a forest without any trees. For example, there's lots of packages, but no package descriptions. And the installation is goofy. It gives you all of the hassle of LSF without any of the educational opportunities. Sigh.
But why "GNU/Linux"? Why not "LiGNuX"? RMS proposed this name long before he insisted on current monicker. If we really want to show our respect to RMS, then we should use his first choice for the name, instead of his third choice.
Okay, you have a kernel, you some some bin utils. You have a C library. Now what can you do with them? Nothing, because it's still not an operating system! All the GNU programs in the world plus the linux kernel still don't add up to an operating system.
You also need a file system, some init scripts, and a whole bunch of other stuff which I lump under the category of "infrastructure". This is the glue that binds everything together into a whole. Without it you don't have an OS, only OS parts. Linus and GNU provide some really great OS parts, but they're still just parts.
It's the distros that provide this infrastructure, so it is the distros that actually made the operating system. Thus, they are they ones who get to name it. Debian is rightfully called "GNU/Linux" only because Debian named it that.
Re:You cannot deny GCC is the heart of free softwa
on
The Stallman Factor
·
· Score: 2
Why must free software be dependent upon a free compiler? Seriously! Using that argument, nothing written for the MS, Borland or Intel compilers can be free. That's nonsense.
Of course free tools are preferable, but that doesn't mean they are necessary.
(besides, the maker of the compiler doesn't get to name the output of the compiler, or do you really want to give Microsoft that kind of marketing power...)
Except that it's not his. The FSF may have originally funded Debian, but it hasn't done so in years. VA Linux (or whatever their name is now) probably contributed ten times to funding to Debian that the FSF ever did. Debian is not GNU.
But it does bring up an interesting point. Why hasn't GNU ever released a fully operational OS?
I've actually used a voice recognition system that worked well (OS/2 4). I was amazed at how accurate it worked.
But I shut it off after two weeks. It was embarassing and inefficient.
It was embarassing to talk to a computer. Really. Wether you're all alone in your geek compound, or in a maze of twisty cubicles all alike, you just don't want to talk to your computer. You don't want the people around you to know what you're doing with your computer. Conversation is interactive, but you don't want to interact with an inanimate object. (and those times you do want to interact in just a manner are the times that are most embarassing to be overheard...)
Scenario: "Computer, erase Bob's addendum to the memo..Oh! Hi Bob! Didn't see you standing there."
And it's inefficient if you know how to type. I can type faster than I can speak. I expect most people who know how to type will agree. If you don't know how, I still bet you can use your mouse faster. How fast does it take to say "Mickeysoft Word" compared to clicking on the icon right in front of you and the desktop?
Scenario: After you have learned how to read, you read books silently to yourself, despite the fact that the drama could be vastly intensified by speaking the dialog out loud. "That's quite enough baths, don't you think, Samwise Gamgee!"
Using the present paradigm, I definitely can see a use for dictation, and some specialty applications. But not much else makes sense for a desktop metaphor. You don't talk to your wood/melamine desktop, so why talk to your computer desktop?
But other paradigms may emerge. For some of them, voice control may make sense. But I really don't forsee that situation for another couple of decades.
The problem is that the Gnome libraries are a huge tangle of dependencies that change and shift every release. So it all typically ends up in a single library. But does AbiWord really need libusb? librep? Even on the distros that keep those libs separate, they are still tend to be dependencies of gnomelibs.
(on the opposite side of the political spectrum who have kdelibs, which has everything you need wrapped up in one big 16 ton weight. It would be nice if there were a middle ground, where there were a handful of medium sized core libs)
AbiWord may be a part of Gnome Office, but it isn't a Gnome-only application. It will build and run just fine without Gnome. So knowing if it will eventually integrate with other non-exclusively-gnome office apps is something I a lot of people would like to know. Frankly, I'm not interested in installing Gnome just to get an office suite.
To keep things fair, I also think it would be great if KOffice could be built as a Qt-only suite as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, I definitely recall that scene. It's not a folk tale. Or at least, if it's a folk tale, it's one that happens to be true.
I'm not telling you about a friend of a friend whose great aunt says she saw it, I'm telling you first hand.
That "big chunk of pre-compiled libary" is the HAL library. It is not necessary for the normal operation of the card. Try to get the Sacred nVidia operational without any binary-only code and you fail.
By damn, this is not an nVidia chip! We must do what it takes to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt upon Matrox. Followers of the Sacred GeForce must rally together, lest the heathen Open Source community realize that our Beloved Chipset is more closed than the typical Microsoft file format.
Strict adherence to the herd mentality gives rise to freedom. Choice is the enemy of Liberty.
the relationship between Luke Skywalker and Biggs (who is jarring in the movie because they greet like old friends in Yavin-4 but viewers don't know *why*)
That was in the movie. It was in the first theater run of Star Wars. But the scene was cut out in additional runs, TV, VHS, DVD and the new digitally destroyed version.
It was the first scene where we saw Luke. He was saying goodbye to Biggs, who was going off to join the rebellion.
"We detect that you're using the Konqzilla browser. Since by using Konqzilla our site may appear 'fugly', we have no other alternative but to deny you entrance."
"Your browser identifies itself as Internet Explorer 5.5 running on Windows XP. But it's really Konqzilla. I don't know why you want to see our site using Konqzilla. Please use a modern browser to view this site. Now go away."
"It appears that you're running Internet Explorer 5.5 running on Windows XP. And it's the real thing this time. But you're running it under WineX. Do you think we're stupid. We don't want you to view our site. Now bugger off!"
"Ah, a genuine Internet Explorer 5.5 running on a genuine Windows XP! Congratulations. But you have your monitor temperature set to 5000! Our site was designed for 9300. It will look fugly without it. Please correct the situation before returning"
This is why the web is fucked, and will remain fucked. Ignoring the fact that it's impossible, here is no valid reason for a web page to look the same in all browsers.
Yes, I said "no valid reason", and I mean it. I know some of you will give "presenting a uniform corporate image" as a reason. But it still won't be valid unless the corporate image you want to present is "style over substance".
Doesn't it say something about the language's lack of standardization if you have to read a long technical book in order to understand how to use the tools that let you make your code portable?
Hey! I just finished reading that book too!
It also has a chapter on C portability problems, and is quite instructive with regards to shell portability as well. C++ is hardly alone when it comes to quirks.
Oh, and that book also considers "make uninstall" to be a "not a very useful feature."
I fondly remember Empire. I haven't played it in about fifteen years. Perhaps that's because it caused me to almost flunk two classes.
It was similar in look to the classic Unix empire game, but for multiple players, with economics, military, diplomacy, etc. Pretty complex. It has balanced so that being constantly logged in had no advantage.
Mr. Frog was the diety, and every morning I would go print out the reports, stats, messages, etc. Then I would pore over them during lunch. Moves were made during dinner. And at night I would log in and make my moves.
One of these days I'll play again. I have a lot of vacation time acrued...
Physics again. Spiders and other very tiny creatures have "super" strength simply because they are very tiny.
The question makes a wrong assumption about Open Source. It assumes that you have to give the source away to everyone. That is wrong. There may be some licenses that require this, but they are few and far between.
Let's take two examples, the BSD license and the GPL. The GPL only requires you to give the source code to the recipient. In this case it happens to be your client. Once they get it, it's up to them as whether they want to distribute the source further. The BSD license doesn't even require this. But you're going to give your client the source code anyway. So it makes no difference.
That said, I think it would be extremely rude if you charged your client for the code and then turned around and posted it on your website. If you're going to do this, let them know ahead of time.
The should have told him the "L" stood for "LiGNuX".
I've always wanted to see a Linux distro that installed a bare bones non-nonsense system with just KDE or Gnome. And then put an "Install Additional Packages" icon on the desktop. Save the user the headache of reading the descriptions for ten thousand packages during install time.
For the entire system? With one command? Without having to hunt for all the SRPMs to begin with?
I wear my seat belts because it is practical, not because I am forced to. I give up none of my freedom when I wear them because I choose to wear them with no reference to the law.
After Debian started running, there was no reason for the FSF to do their own OS.
Except that GNU has still not met its initial goal, which was to release The GNU System.
Maybe an analogy is in order. Suppose RMS's goal was to build an automobile made entirely of hemp. Suppose someone else (most likely from Santa Cruz) beat him to it. RMS's goal still hasn't been met. Even if that guy from Santa Cruz used RMS's plans, it still wasn't RMS who built it. In order for him to achieve his goal, he still has to build a hemp car. Or find another goal.
I hope I don't sound like I'm down on RMS, because I'm not. I hope GNU actually releases The GNU System soon, so we can have three completely free operating systems out there all cross pollinating each other. Then we can start componentizing them so we can mix an match parts at install time.
Debian is not GNU, but all of the pages seem to say 'GNU/Linux' in the header.
Okay, I misunderstood.
The original comment was: "Thankfully due to the GPL he [RMS] can release his own GNU/Linux."
Your reply of "it already exists", seemed to imply that Debian belonged to RMS.
My apologies for my misparsing your post.
That's one reason I switched to FreeBSD. At the time, there really wasn't a good source based distribution for Linux. With FreeBSD I could build everything from the kernel on up to the KDE eyecandy from source with a few simple commands. Stuff was regularly updated so you didn't have to spends ten hours a week checking for updates, poring over exploit lists, etc. And the kicker was that I could still use binary packages if I wanted to.
I tried Gentoo recently, but I didn't like it. I see a lot of potential there. But it still feels like a pre-alpha release. A ton of documents on emerge, but nothing on the system itself. Emerge is like a forest without any trees. For example, there's lots of packages, but no package descriptions. And the installation is goofy. It gives you all of the hassle of LSF without any of the educational opportunities. Sigh.
But why "GNU/Linux"? Why not "LiGNuX"? RMS proposed this name long before he insisted on current monicker. If we really want to show our respect to RMS, then we should use his first choice for the name, instead of his third choice.
Okay, you have a kernel, you some some bin utils. You have a C library. Now what can you do with them? Nothing, because it's still not an operating system! All the GNU programs in the world plus the linux kernel still don't add up to an operating system.
You also need a file system, some init scripts, and a whole bunch of other stuff which I lump under the category of "infrastructure". This is the glue that binds everything together into a whole. Without it you don't have an OS, only OS parts. Linus and GNU provide some really great OS parts, but they're still just parts.
It's the distros that provide this infrastructure, so it is the distros that actually made the operating system. Thus, they are they ones who get to name it. Debian is rightfully called "GNU/Linux" only because Debian named it that.
Why must free software be dependent upon a free compiler? Seriously! Using that argument, nothing written for the MS, Borland or Intel compilers can be free. That's nonsense.
Of course free tools are preferable, but that doesn't mean they are necessary.
(besides, the maker of the compiler doesn't get to name the output of the compiler, or do you really want to give Microsoft that kind of marketing power...)
To a utilitarian, freedom and practicality are synonymous.
Except that it's not his. The FSF may have originally funded Debian, but it hasn't done so in years. VA Linux (or whatever their name is now) probably contributed ten times to funding to Debian that the FSF ever did. Debian is not GNU.
But it does bring up an interesting point. Why hasn't GNU ever released a fully operational OS?
I've actually used a voice recognition system that worked well (OS/2 4). I was amazed at how accurate it worked.
But I shut it off after two weeks. It was embarassing and inefficient.
It was embarassing to talk to a computer. Really. Wether you're all alone in your geek compound, or in a maze of twisty cubicles all alike, you just don't want to talk to your computer. You don't want the people around you to know what you're doing with your computer. Conversation is interactive, but you don't want to interact with an inanimate object. (and those times you do want to interact in just a manner are the times that are most embarassing to be overheard...)
Scenario:
"Computer, erase Bob's addendum to the memo..Oh! Hi Bob! Didn't see you standing there."
And it's inefficient if you know how to type. I can type faster than I can speak. I expect most people who know how to type will agree. If you don't know how, I still bet you can use your mouse faster. How fast does it take to say "Mickeysoft Word" compared to clicking on the icon right in front of you and the desktop?
Scenario: After you have learned how to read, you read books silently to yourself, despite the fact that the drama could be vastly intensified by speaking the dialog out loud. "That's quite enough baths, don't you think, Samwise Gamgee!"
Using the present paradigm, I definitely can see a use for dictation, and some specialty applications. But not much else makes sense for a desktop metaphor. You don't talk to your wood/melamine desktop, so why talk to your computer desktop?
But other paradigms may emerge. For some of them, voice control may make sense. But I really don't forsee that situation for another couple of decades.
The problem is that the Gnome libraries are a huge tangle of dependencies that change and shift every release. So it all typically ends up in a single library. But does AbiWord really need libusb? librep? Even on the distros that keep those libs separate, they are still tend to be dependencies of gnomelibs.
(on the opposite side of the political spectrum who have kdelibs, which has everything you need wrapped up in one big 16 ton weight. It would be nice if there were a middle ground, where there were a handful of medium sized core libs)
I know, I'm just ranting. I need my coffee.
AbiWord may be a part of Gnome Office, but it isn't a Gnome-only application. It will build and run just fine without Gnome. So knowing if it will eventually integrate with other non-exclusively-gnome office apps is something I a lot of people would like to know. Frankly, I'm not interested in installing Gnome just to get an office suite.
To keep things fair, I also think it would be great if KOffice could be built as a Qt-only suite as well.