People are more likely to buy a system with a bazillion titles no matter if the quality of 6 kajillion of them is akin to single-ply recyled orphanage-grade toilet paper.
I must admit, I laughed at the name "FreeBSD Live". I'm disappointed that the trolls couldn't come up with a wittier piece of trollery given material like that.
Of course, there are downsides to ML-style type checking as well... like getting incomprehensible error messages that indicate completely the wrong line of code, when you make a small syntactic error somewhere. I found ML intensely frustrating, whereas I love Scheme.
Not having easy ways to deal with typed heterogeneous data tends to be a bitch in the real world too.
Actually, it's worse than that--Gentoo doesn't handle removal of software safely at all. If you tell it to unmerge perl, it'll just remove it, no matter how many packages explicitly depend on it.
My system is an EPIA with a VIA C3 processor. Where's my Debian package?
Sure, you can provide multiple binary packages. I mentioned that. But there's a pretty big overhead in doing so, and it doesn't provide you with dependency resolution as fine-grained as building from source.
As for your second point, I happen to think that the "never put dev tools on a non-dev box" thing is stupid. If you're cracked, the cracker can just transfer a copy of GCC to the box. Plus, any kind of malicious code you're going to write in C could just as easily be written in Perl or Python, and good luck running a Linux system without either of those installed.
A fundamental fact of computing is that most software has design flaws like that. If you're going to base your distribution around the assumption that all the software in it is going to have a well-written modular plugin API, it's going to be a pretty small distribution.
I'll take vim's installation design flaws over emacs's user interface design flaws any day:-)
So then the virus authors just make their code run a quick port scan across the commonly used SMTP ports, and we're back to square one, but with a much uglier setup to deal with.
Right now, they haven't really done any work on optimizing the portage tree, so it's a bit of a hog. But, you have to bear in mind that these days a "small" hard disk is measured in GB.
The place Gentoo is problematic is systems with no hard drive at all.
You can get portage to drop out after configuring, allowing you to install just part of a package.
And we're going way off topic here, but if you're using ntpdate to set your clock, don't. That's not the right way to do it. You should run ntpd and have it adjust the clock; you can get some very weird bugs if the system clock winds backwards.
The point of Gentoo is that using the source for installation allows much finer grained dependency resolution.
For example, take vim. Depending on what you have installed, it may or may not have Perl integration, Python integration, an X UI, ctags support, make or ANT integration, and so on.
A binary distribution needs to provide a different binary for every possible combination of those, if it's going to allow fine-grained choice around what the Linux system has installed. Either that, or you have to turn off a lot of functionality which could be turned on, in case the dependencies aren't installed.
With Gentoo, the binary's dependencies are determined at install time, so you can have a single package which supports all the possible combinations of other components the user might have chosen to install. If I have Perl but no Python dev tools and opted not to have Python integration, no problem, vim is built appropriately from the same package everyone else is using.
In practice, the binary distributions seem to provide only two versions of vim, a "minimal" terminal-only one, and an "everything, including X" version. Personally, I don't want either of those--I want most things, excluding Python and X. Gentoo lets me have that, Debian doesn't because it doesn't have a vim-perl-ant-make-nox-nopython package.
Currently my e-mail goes out via my ISP's SMTP server, with totally legitimate RFC822 headers in which all of the e-mail addresses are valid--From, Sender and envelope sender.
SPF will make those perfectly valid e-mails bounce. Hence it's SPF that's at fault.
Furthermore, the chances of my ISP deciding to implement pobox's special sender rewriting system are zero. What's in it for them? They'd much rather I used my address on their system, because it locks me in and makes it harder to change ISP. In fact, some ISPs (e.g. Verizon) do their best to prevent you using any kind of forwarding address.
So how can I send mail? The only option left will be SMTP to pobox's SMTP server. Which you propose my ISP should block.
Yeah, let's block outgoing SMTP at the same time as people are starting to introduce SPF (Sender Permitted From) to stop people from using their forwarding address when sending via their ISP's SMTP server.
That's the best idea I've heard since Michael Jackson and R Kelly discussed opening a daycare center.
I posted much the same thing in my journal the other day, explaining why I don't have an online adaptor for either of my game consoles, even though I'm in the target market and they're both sitting next to the router.
An hourly fee, capped at whatever the monthly rate used to be, would definitely get me interested in trying some online games. The other thing they need to do is drop the up-front price of the disc.
In fact, Thomas Dolby was sued for trademark violation by Dolby Labs. The court found in his favor, as he'd been known as "Thomas Dolby" as a nickname since his school days, when he used to play with tape decks all the time.
We're not talking about forging e-mail addresses. We're talking about sending perfectly legitimate RFC822 e-mail with correct values in all the headers, which suddenly gets bounced because of SPF.
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c.f. Microsoft Windows vs Apple Macintosh...
Yeah, if the PSP was really PS2-like hardware, where would they get the juice to power the vacuum cleaner fan?
(Yes, I have a PS2, and a Gamecube. Guess which I prefer from the hardware point of view?)
I must admit, I laughed at the name "FreeBSD Live". I'm disappointed that the trolls couldn't come up with a wittier piece of trollery given material like that.
Yeah, or imagine if the authors of mplayer were using copyrighted Microsoft codec DLLs for their... oh, wait, never mind.
Of course, there are downsides to ML-style type checking as well... like getting incomprehensible error messages that indicate completely the wrong line of code, when you make a small syntactic error somewhere. I found ML intensely frustrating, whereas I love Scheme.
Not having easy ways to deal with typed heterogeneous data tends to be a bitch in the real world too.
Actually, it's worse than that--Gentoo doesn't handle removal of software safely at all. If you tell it to unmerge perl, it'll just remove it, no matter how many packages explicitly depend on it.
You can get a bigger sound quality improvement by switching from iTunes to LAME for your MP3s. Unfortunately, iTunes has a very poor MP3 encoder.
My system is an EPIA with a VIA C3 processor. Where's my Debian package?
Sure, you can provide multiple binary packages. I mentioned that. But there's a pretty big overhead in doing so, and it doesn't provide you with dependency resolution as fine-grained as building from source.
As for your second point, I happen to think that the "never put dev tools on a non-dev box" thing is stupid. If you're cracked, the cracker can just transfer a copy of GCC to the box. Plus, any kind of malicious code you're going to write in C could just as easily be written in Perl or Python, and good luck running a Linux system without either of those installed.
A fundamental fact of computing is that most software has design flaws like that. If you're going to base your distribution around the assumption that all the software in it is going to have a well-written modular plugin API, it's going to be a pretty small distribution.
:-)
I'll take vim's installation design flaws over emacs's user interface design flaws any day
So then the virus authors just make their code run a quick port scan across the commonly used SMTP ports, and we're back to square one, but with a much uglier setup to deal with.
Sure, it would be better to re-write every Linux application to support a modular plug-in architecture. Better, but implausible.
Right now, they haven't really done any work on optimizing the portage tree, so it's a bit of a hog. But, you have to bear in mind that these days a "small" hard disk is measured in GB.
The place Gentoo is problematic is systems with no hard drive at all.
You can get portage to drop out after configuring, allowing you to install just part of a package.
And we're going way off topic here, but if you're using ntpdate to set your clock, don't. That's not the right way to do it. You should run ntpd and have it adjust the clock; you can get some very weird bugs if the system clock winds backwards.
The point of Gentoo is that using the source for installation allows much finer grained dependency resolution.
For example, take vim. Depending on what you have installed, it may or may not have Perl integration, Python integration, an X UI, ctags support, make or ANT integration, and so on.
A binary distribution needs to provide a different binary for every possible combination of those, if it's going to allow fine-grained choice around what the Linux system has installed. Either that, or you have to turn off a lot of functionality which could be turned on, in case the dependencies aren't installed.
With Gentoo, the binary's dependencies are determined at install time, so you can have a single package which supports all the possible combinations of other components the user might have chosen to install. If I have Perl but no Python dev tools and opted not to have Python integration, no problem, vim is built appropriately from the same package everyone else is using.
In practice, the binary distributions seem to provide only two versions of vim, a "minimal" terminal-only one, and an "everything, including X" version. Personally, I don't want either of those--I want most things, excluding Python and X. Gentoo lets me have that, Debian doesn't because it doesn't have a vim-perl-ant-make-nox-nopython package.
On the contrary, SPF breaks RFC822.
Currently my e-mail goes out via my ISP's SMTP server, with totally legitimate RFC822 headers in which all of the e-mail addresses are valid--From, Sender and envelope sender.
SPF will make those perfectly valid e-mails bounce. Hence it's SPF that's at fault.
Furthermore, the chances of my ISP deciding to implement pobox's special sender rewriting system are zero. What's in it for them? They'd much rather I used my address on their system, because it locks me in and makes it harder to change ISP. In fact, some ISPs (e.g. Verizon) do their best to prevent you using any kind of forwarding address.
So how can I send mail? The only option left will be SMTP to pobox's SMTP server. Which you propose my ISP should block.
Blatant bias against them in the mainstream media? Check.
Produce high quality hardware with excellent design? Check.
Described as "doomed" year after year? Check.
Still have billions in cash reserves? Check.
Not enough software? Check.
Always being trolled by moronic Microsoft fanboys? Check.
It's obvious, Nintendo are the Apple of video games.
Yeah, let's block outgoing SMTP at the same time as people are starting to introduce SPF (Sender Permitted From) to stop people from using their forwarding address when sending via their ISP's SMTP server.
That's the best idea I've heard since Michael Jackson and R Kelly discussed opening a daycare center.
Don't forget sound. Linux sound is shitty beyond belief too.
(I finally got ALSA working properly last week.)
Wellclearlyit'samatterofpersonalopinion,butI'llmak eanotenottounnecessarilycluttermyresponsestoyourco mmentswithspacecharacters.
Personally I'd just type " before and after pasting the filename with the spaces in.
Filenames are for humans, fix the broken software that doesn't allow filenames with spaces in.
"The Day Today" vs "On The Hour"? They were able to expand the show to a whole new level.
All of the Lotus software contains extensive third-party code which cannot be open sourced.
I posted much the same thing in my journal the other day, explaining why I don't have an online adaptor for either of my game consoles, even though I'm in the target market and they're both sitting next to the router.
An hourly fee, capped at whatever the monthly rate used to be, would definitely get me interested in trying some online games. The other thing they need to do is drop the up-front price of the disc.
In fact, Thomas Dolby was sued for trademark violation by Dolby Labs. The court found in his favor, as he'd been known as "Thomas Dolby" as a nickname since his school days, when he used to play with tape decks all the time.
I guess I can forget about the product, then, because I doubt they'll sell 'em with Linux, or even just without Windows.
We're not talking about forging e-mail addresses. We're talking about sending perfectly legitimate RFC822 e-mail with correct values in all the headers, which suddenly gets bounced because of SPF.
It is totally legitimate to send e-mail saying
From: myaddr@forwarding-service.com
Sender: login@myisp.com
via myisp.com's SMTP servers.