If MSFT wants to keep the users current they've gotta either find some way of updating Windows that's not quite so hard on dial up (mailing CDs sounds good) or they need to find some way to bring the average patch size down.
xdelta's even BSD-licensed, so there's nothing to stop them integrating it today. But again, Microsoft's arrogance and NIH-attitude stops them from recognising that outsiders might just have solved problems years before they even recognised the problem.
And the cost? Think about this. Today the average game costs ~$50. Ten years ago, the average game cost about... ~$50. Heck, fifteen years ago the average game cost about $50.
I don't know what kind of games you were buying, but in the 80s, I was paying 1.99-9.99GBP for Spectrum games (average was probably 4.95-5.95GBP for a long time). During the 90s, Amiga/ST games were typically 20-25. Now, most games are 35-50GBP.
It's more likely a buggy X driver for your video card than Gnome. Applications that don't bang the metal (i.e. bypass the OS and directly program hardware) should never crash the OS.
What card are you using? What version of XFree? (I would expect 4.3.0)
Once you've determined what card you're using, check the XFree86 docs for your card to see if there are any known problems. Try disabling all the acceleration features and switch them back on, one at a time, until the problem re-occurs.
The newest XForms release I could find on the official website was 0.89, and the Changelog listed no change in license. Not surprising as it didn't happen until 0.9999.;-)
-rwxr-xr-x 1 alex builders 332859 Aug 12 17:11./hewx
$ strip hewx
$ ls -Al hewx
-rwxr-xr-x 1 alex builders 194980 Aug 12 17:12 hewx
Be careful what you wish for though - look at the ~28x size increase of the binary though. Now imagine that for all the graphical applications on your system (not to mention the hassles with security updates, as witnessed when problems were found with zlib).
...especially seeing as I've been successfully running a P4 2.40B/i845PE/Radeon 7500/RAID/DVD/CDRW/512M machine for nearly a year off of a 'P4 Compatible' PSU that only offers 180W on the +12V rail.
Expecting the label to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is naive.
I have a Toshiba Satellite 3000-214 which I know is essentially the Compal ACL-00. The label says "Assembled in Europe" (Germany, I think), but that implies manufactured elsewhere, probably China or Taiwan.
In the UK it's common practice for consumer electronics to be assembled here, typically by factories funded significantly by government "regional (re)development" grants. Doing so allows goods to be considered as "made in the EU" and thereby avoid import tariffs based on the price of the finished product.
When people go to use a computer they don't want to be bothered with writing up shell scripts or searching through system files with a text editor -
Respectfully, that depends on the user (or more correctly, administrator) in question. I find writing and reusing a shell script much more efficient than repeating a series of mouse movements and clicks. It's also less error-prone (assuming you test your damn script before you use it in production!)
And of course, with modern GUIs (speaking for GNOME 2.0, at least), naive users can do everything they want through the GUI anyway.
Perhaps the biggest difference in philosophy between Windows and UNIX on the desktop, is that most Windows users are expected to have at least a little administration knowledge. On a UNIX-based desktop, it's perfectly reasonable to lock workstations down and have one administrator perform administrative duties remotely for hundreds or thousands of machines. Windows (tries to) make administration easy for normal users but in doing so, makes it harder for the administrators and power users. UNIX has traditionally assumed that you know what you're doing if you're in the hotseat (though even this is changing with tools like redhat-config-* and webmin).
learning an ever changing language of acronyms and condensed words.
Actually, that's one of the reasons I much prefer UNIX - I first started using UNIX over ten years ago, and I haven't really needed to throw out much along the way (in fact "DiG instead of nslookup with BIND9+" is about the only thing that springs to mind). I've been using Windows since the 3.x days, and with every new release I've had to throw out large chunks of knowledge and learn or reverse-engineer the stuff Microsoft have changed drastically. Because I don't need to do that with UNIX every few years, my understanding of that OS goes much deeper than with Windows.
IMHO, if an OS provides a feature (in this case, the system tray applets), a user should be able to use it as much or as little as they wish without having to wonder "gee, will this make my system unstable".
The (lack of) organisation of Windows itself (i.e no/etc,/lib,/bin,/sbin or equivalents) does not encourage application programmers to create "tidy" applications. This in turn discourages users from keeping track of components. Additionally, there are no standard tools to help them do so either (e.g. dpkg or rpm equivalents). The "Add/Remove Programs" and various installers (e.g. InstallShield) promise to make this completely unnecessary, but frequently do not deliver on that promise.
It is also not clear whether the replies from CEO#1 refers to the first CEO in the list at the top of the article, or if the order has purposely been scrambled to limit the fallout at a given company.
"We presented the CEOs with a selection of 10 questions, the answers to which you will find in the coming pages. Our format has made it so that CEO #1 for question 1 is not the same CEO #1 for question 2 and so on. Comments made by each CEO have not been attributed to them and have been purposely jumbled around, so as to give a reasonably high level of anonymity to all participants.
I thought that paragraph made the CEO numbering arrangement perfectly clear.
Heh. I'm now 29 and have *zero* fillings. I've a few minor cavities that have built up over the years, but nothing (in my dentist's opinion) that's worth the trauma of filling. Suits me.
Unfortunately, my teeth are slightly yellowed due to some medicine or other that I was taking when my teeth were coming through. Bummer.
For the record, I eat chocolate fairly regularly (mainly ~50-70% cocoa stuff) and drink red wine regularly, but I only drink tea/coffee/cola occasionally, brush morning and night, and usually drink 1/2pt of semi-skimmed milk per day. I may die of heart disease, but at least my corpse will have nice teeth!
IMHO, the Bitstream Vera fonts, coupled with sub-pixel rendering thrash anything from Microsoft prior to Windows 2000.
If the sub-pixel rendering looks blurry, your distro is probably using freetype compiled without the bytecode interpreter (blame software patent stupidity), or the application you're using has been statically linked against a version of freetype so compiled (e.g. the OpenOffice binaries, last time I looked at 1.0.3).
Sounds like you need to either try some better fonts (The Bitstream Vera series are good) and/or recompile Freetype with the bytecode interpreter enabled. Most distros ship with the code disabled as it may have patent liabilities.
Fair point. I was mainly referring to proprietary UNIXes like Solaris, AIX, SCO, Irix, HP-UX etc (for at least two of those, compilers are a cost-option).
For what it's worth, in my experience, Linux is much more widely used (excluding appliances) in the UK than any of the BSDs. The only place where that isn't the case is some ISPs.
I think Linux's USPs over the BSDs are the broader hardware support, "brand recognition", and finally a more friendly UI (even on the command line) compared with "traditional UNIX", as a result of using GNU- instead of BSD-sourced components wherever possible.
--
what does Linux do that the other flavors of UNIX can't?
Support best-of-breed Free and Open Source applications like Apache without lots of fumbling around compiling from source (unless you want to) and installing the GNU toolchain.
I'm asking myself why he didn't take the controller from a cheapo PC keyboard and convert the Atari keyboard to use the same matrix layout as the membrane/switchgear the controller was designed to work with...
A friend used this approach to build a MAME cab by connecting a joystick and buttons where the cursor and ALT/SHIFT/CTRL/5/6/1/2 keys should be.
FWIW, my reading is that Red Hat assert that for each machine running a RHEL distro, you must to purchase matching RHN services (see the beginning of clause 4), regardless of whether you even even want support, or Red Hat Network functionality. I'm intrigued as to how it can be read any other way.
A seperate concern of mine is that Red Hat, could, if they wished, choose not to distribute the source to BSD-licensed components such as XFree86 and Apache. That would be unbearable for me, at least, and I would move ASAFP to Debian.
Slashdot Mirror
Like rsync or xdelta, you mean?
xdelta's even BSD-licensed, so there's nothing to stop them integrating it today. But again, Microsoft's arrogance and NIH-attitude stops them from recognising that outsiders might just have solved problems years before they even recognised the problem.
--
I don't know what kind of games you were buying, but in the 80s, I was paying 1.99-9.99GBP for Spectrum games (average was probably 4.95-5.95GBP for a long time). During the 90s, Amiga/ST games were typically 20-25. Now, most games are 35-50GBP.
--
What card are you using? What version of XFree? (I would expect 4.3.0)
Once you've determined what card you're using, check the XFree86 docs for your card to see if there are any known problems. Try disabling all the acceleration features and switch them back on, one at a time, until the problem re-occurs.
--
--
The newest XForms release I could find on the official website was 0.89, and the Changelog listed no change in license. Not surprising as it didn't happen until 0.9999. ;-)
--
$ gcc -L/usr/X11R6/lib -L /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/3.2/ -static -o hewx ../source/he.o ../source/hebuffer.o ../source/heexpr.o ../source/hemisc.o ../source/heobject.o ../source/heparse.o ../source/heres.o ../source/herun.o ../source/heset.o ../source/stringfn.o hewx.o hewxwin.o hejpeg.o hepath.o hesound.o hevideo.o -lwx_gtk-2.4 -lgtk -lgdk -lpthread -lmikmod -lstdc++
-lsupc++ -lglib -lgthread -lX11 -lm -ljpeg -lgmodule -lXext -lXi -ldl
$ ldd ./hewx
not a dynamic executable
$ ls -Al hewx -rwxr-xr-x 1 alex builders 5489167 Aug 12 17:09 hewx
$ mv hewx hewx.static
$ make
gcc -lwx_gtk-2.4 -lgtk -lgdk -lpthread -lmikmod -o hewx ../source/he.o ../source/hebuffer.o ../source/heexpr.o ../source/hemisc.o ../source/heobject.o ../source/heparse.o ../source/heres.o ../source/herun.o ../source/heset.o ../source/stringfn.o hewx.o hewxwin.o hejpeg.o hepath.o hesound.o hevideo.o -lm
$ ldd ./hewx
libwx_gtk-2.4.so.0 => /usr/lib/libwx_gtk-2.4.so.0 (0x4002f000)
libgtk-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-1.2.so.0 (0x404c7000)
libgdk-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-1.2.so.0 (0x40621000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x4065a000)
libmikmod.so.2 => /usr/lib/libmikmod.so.2 (0x406ab000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x406ea000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x4070b000)
libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0x40836000)
libgmodule-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-1.2.so.0 (0x408e8000)
libgthread-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgthread-1.2.so.0 (0x408eb000)
libglib-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0 (0x408ee000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x40914000)
libXi.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXi.so.6 (0x40917000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x40920000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x4092e000)
libpng.so.3 => /usr/lib/libpng.so.3 (0x40a0d000)
libjpeg.so.62 => /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62 (0x40a31000)
libtiff.so.3 => /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3 (0x40a4f000)
libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0x40a91000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x40aa0000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
$ ls -Al ./hewx
-rwxr-xr-x 1 alex builders 332859 Aug 12 17:11 ./hewx
$ strip hewx
$ ls -Al hewx
-rwxr-xr-x 1 alex builders 194980 Aug 12 17:12 hewx
Be careful what you wish for though - look at the ~28x size increase of the binary though. Now imagine that for all the graphical applications on your system (not to mention the hassles with security updates, as witnessed when problems were found with zlib).
--
Bzzt. The author claims that the predecessor to FLTK, XForms, isn't free software - and it isn't.
--
Nothing overclocked, I grant you, but...
--
I have a Toshiba Satellite 3000-214 which I know is essentially the Compal ACL-00. The label says "Assembled in Europe" (Germany, I think), but that implies manufactured elsewhere, probably China or Taiwan.
In the UK it's common practice for consumer electronics to be assembled here, typically by factories funded significantly by government "regional (re)development" grants. Doing so allows goods to be considered as "made in the EU" and thereby avoid import tariffs based on the price of the finished product.
--
--
Err... eine megabyte unt konstantly schwapping? ;-)
--
Respectfully, that depends on the user (or more correctly, administrator) in question. I find writing and reusing a shell script much more efficient than repeating a series of mouse movements and clicks. It's also less error-prone (assuming you test your damn script before you use it in production!)
And of course, with modern GUIs (speaking for GNOME 2.0, at least), naive users can do everything they want through the GUI anyway.
Perhaps the biggest difference in philosophy between Windows and UNIX on the desktop, is that most Windows users are expected to have at least a little administration knowledge. On a UNIX-based desktop, it's perfectly reasonable to lock workstations down and have one administrator perform administrative duties remotely for hundreds or thousands of machines. Windows (tries to) make administration easy for normal users but in doing so, makes it harder for the administrators and power users. UNIX has traditionally assumed that you know what you're doing if you're in the hotseat (though even this is changing with tools like redhat-config-* and webmin).
learning an ever changing language of acronyms and condensed words.
Actually, that's one of the reasons I much prefer UNIX - I first started using UNIX over ten years ago, and I haven't really needed to throw out much along the way (in fact "DiG instead of nslookup with BIND9+" is about the only thing that springs to mind). I've been using Windows since the 3.x days, and with every new release I've had to throw out large chunks of knowledge and learn or reverse-engineer the stuff Microsoft have changed drastically. Because I don't need to do that with UNIX every few years, my understanding of that OS goes much deeper than with Windows.
--
IMHO, if an OS provides a feature (in this case, the system tray applets), a user should be able to use it as much or as little as they wish without having to wonder "gee, will this make my system unstable".
The (lack of) organisation of Windows itself (i.e no /etc, /lib, /bin, /sbin or equivalents) does not encourage application programmers to create "tidy" applications. This in turn discourages users from keeping track of components. Additionally, there are no standard tools to help them do so either (e.g. dpkg or rpm equivalents). The "Add/Remove Programs" and various installers (e.g. InstallShield) promise to make this completely unnecessary, but frequently do not deliver on that promise.
--
"We presented the CEOs with a selection of 10 questions, the answers to which you will find in the coming pages. Our format has made it so that CEO #1 for question 1 is not the same CEO #1 for question 2 and so on. Comments made by each CEO have not been attributed to them and have been purposely jumbled around, so as to give a reasonably high level of anonymity to all participants.
I thought that paragraph made the CEO numbering arrangement perfectly clear.
--
Unfortunately, my teeth are slightly yellowed due to some medicine or other that I was taking when my teeth were coming through. Bummer.
For the record, I eat chocolate fairly regularly (mainly ~50-70% cocoa stuff) and drink red wine regularly, but I only drink tea/coffee/cola occasionally, brush morning and night, and usually drink 1/2pt of semi-skimmed milk per day. I may die of heart disease, but at least my corpse will have nice teeth!
--
--
OSS Community: Businesses should adopt open source software and get away from MS.
Business Guy: I'd love to if you just has [feature] which MS has and makes my life a lot easier.
OSS Developer: OK, that'll cost you $xxx
BG: OK, deal.
OSSD: OK, *hacks* done!
BG: Ooops, sorry, we don't want it anymore! No $$$ for you!
OSSD: Aw, poop!
--
If the sub-pixel rendering looks blurry, your distro is probably using freetype compiled without the bytecode interpreter (blame software patent stupidity), or the application you're using has been statically linked against a version of freetype so compiled (e.g. the OpenOffice binaries, last time I looked at 1.0.3).
--
Check this support matrix for DRI
--
--
For what it's worth, in my experience, Linux is much more widely used (excluding appliances) in the UK than any of the BSDs. The only place where that isn't the case is some ISPs.
I think Linux's USPs over the BSDs are the broader hardware support, "brand recognition", and finally a more friendly UI (even on the command line) compared with "traditional UNIX", as a result of using GNU- instead of BSD-sourced components wherever possible. --
Support best-of-breed Free and Open Source applications like Apache without lots of fumbling around compiling from source (unless you want to) and installing the GNU toolchain.
--
--
A friend used this approach to build a MAME cab by connecting a joystick and buttons where the cursor and ALT/SHIFT/CTRL/5/6/1/2 keys should be.
--
To précis, the FSF (specifically Prof. Moglen and rms) are aware of the issue, are talking with Red Hat, and hope to have something official to say soon.
FWIW, my reading is that Red Hat assert that for each machine running a RHEL distro, you must to purchase matching RHN services (see the beginning of clause 4), regardless of whether you even even want support, or Red Hat Network functionality. I'm intrigued as to how it can be read any other way.
A seperate concern of mine is that Red Hat, could, if they wished, choose not to distribute the source to BSD-licensed components such as XFree86 and Apache. That would be unbearable for me, at least, and I would move ASAFP to Debian.
--