Don't read Slashdot links unless they look credible. I'm sorry, but there are just too many trolls here to assume that any link is going to take you somewhere useful. And after that auto-modding incident, you can't even trust a link from a "Score: 5, Insightful" post.
Steps to ensure you don't get goatsexed:
*Always* check the real link (displayed at the bottom of most browsers). Don't trust the link in the posting.
Make sure the link is from a credible source. In other words, a site you've been to before.
Never trust a redirected link (bigfoot, cjb, etc).
It is possible to use tricks to redirect from a credible source like msn.com. If the link is too long, or contains something in the URL that you don't understand, don't click it.
If you see goatse in the URL anywhere, definitely don't click it:)
Last but not least, use lynx. Generally if I don't trust the link then I don't even bother clicking it. But if it's something that you really need to check into, use lynx on it (or some no-image browser). I've caught quite a few goatse redirects through lynx.
Just a few extra steps go a long way. No person should have to go through the viewing of that image in their lifetime. And for those of us for which it is already too late: multiple viewings..
Re:The solution is not always software
on
DSLBlaster?
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· Score: 2
Who even thought up this winmodem stuff anyway? In an age where we offload everything for greater performance (3d accelerators, TV cards, mp3 capable sound cards, etc) we are reversing the process with modems. Gee, all that CPU you saved by offloading your 3D rendering to a separate card has just gone to your software modem. Isn't that ludicrous? What loon came up with this idea?
5 bucks? That's not much. Remember you are paying for content, not for the price of the media. Of course it's cheap to make the actual CDs, but what about the music? Manufacturing is not the only cost, my friend. Some artists may take a year (or more!) to make an album. Granted, that's not all hardcore 40 hours a week work.
At my company, we just finished an RPG for Gameboy Color. It will probably sell for $30. I wish we could sell it for more though, considering the amount of time/work/energy it took to make. As is, we'll probably break even on expenses. Did you know the cost of producing a cartridge is less than $1? That's just the manufacturing cost. When you start piling on the expenses (employees, outsources, publishers, middlemen) it gets out of control.
You never know, some of these CDs you speak of may actually be worth much more than 17 dollars. Our game is worth well over $30, I can tell you that much.
-Justin
Re:Games: XFree86 with DRI, or Linux FBDev?
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XFree 4.1.0 Out
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· Score: 2
I don't think there's anything wrong with including a video driver in the kernel. Tying the kernel to a desktop is another story. The Linux framebuffer console is how video should have been all along. No need to be root in order to access the display. This is probably good for security as well as stability.
While I don't have much experience with other unices, I do believe that there is a concept of a framebuffer in most other variants. I heard somewhere that Linux was the one of the later OS's to get such a thing.
As for GPL issues, aren't there ways to load closed source kernel modules? They could be distributed "precompiled" for various kernel versions, or some sort of wrapper module could be compiled and linked against a closed source driver.
-Justin
Games: XFree86 with DRI, or Linux FBDev?
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XFree 4.1.0 Out
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· Score: 4
Hey, does anyone know if there have been any improvements into getting XFree86 to play nice with the Linux framebuffer console?
Currently, I feel the best way to play a full screen game is in a virtual terminal under fbdev rather than through X, so that I can keep my desktop and the game separated. Ctrl-Alt-F3 takes me to my game, and Alt-F7 takes me back to X. Plus, the high-resolution framebuffer console is very cool just for shell usage too.
Unfortunately for me though, the XFree86 driver for my card clashes with the framebuffer driver from the kernel. So in order to have my super-cool framebuffer console *and* X, I have to use the fbdev version of X. This works and all, but it is unnaccelerated which means I can't do much. Fortunately, most of the games I have are SDL based, so I can just flip to a console to play. But something like OpenGL? Not a chance.
Now can anyone explain to me why there are two video drivers on my system to clash in the first place? It seems logical to me that everyone should use a framebuffer driver (I have a Voodoo3, and it is supported in the kernel) and that X should ride on top. The kernel has every other driver, so why is the video driver so special that X has its own?
Wouldn't it be easier for the XFree folks if they didn't have to worry about making video drivers, and instead it was all taken care of by the kernel? IMO, the only driver they should develop is the fbdev version.
Anyone else have any insights to this? Any reason why DRI couldn't be applied to an fbdev Xserver?
-Justin
Re:I LIKE these updates, so there.
on
XFree 4.1.0 Out
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· Score: 1
Right, I know what it stands for. I even stated later in the post that OLED does not solve the backlit dilemma, because its purpose is to emit light. Sheesh. I even got modded down, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because of the negative follow up comments from people that failed to read my entire post?
I brought up an interesting problem with LCDs that despite all of our technical advances still needs to be solved. I thought readers might take interest. Guess not.
These OLED displays sound cool, and it's nice that they are faster than LCD, but do they solve the old backlight problem? This is the main problem with LCDs today, not speed. Currently, an LCD is either backlit (laptops, Sega Game Gear) or non-backlit (some digicams, Gameboy Color/Advance). There are advantages/disadvantages to each, mainly that:
Backlit consume more power
Backlit require no external light source
Backlit has glare issues (try using a laptop on the beach sometime)
Non-backlit require a light source
Non-backlit look better in natural light than a backlit screen in optimal conditions
Non-backlit consume WAY less power (probably the reason that Nintendo Gameboy is as popular as it is today)
Maybe someday it will be possible for a screen to be backlit or non-backlit depending a toggle. Or maybe just a photosensor to make the decision automatically. As it stands, laptops are almost worthless outdoors and Gameboy sucks in the dark.
From the article it seems like OLED is for backlight-only type devices (since they emit light) so maybe we'll have to wait for the next train before this problem is solved.
1. This is where your "power as user" kicks in. Turn the phone off if you don't want imcoming calls. You miss out on half the point of owning a wireless phone, but that's your choice. As for annoying people with rings, many modern phones these days support vibration alerts. Also, a nice option is to have a "ring once". Most people don't mind the initial ring, it's the subsequent rings (as some lady digs in her purse to locate the ringing phone) that really drive us insane. And please, no "song" rings people:P
2. Well, it's your bandwidth. The same would apply to any line. There could be too many cheap tricks you could do if incoming calls were free.
3. This is harder than it sounds, as most phones these days are encrypted and frequency hopping. How would you be able to tell who is who? Identification should be after key-exchange. If it isn't, well.. it should be!
4. Yes, but integration is good too. Witness the the Nokia 9xxx series. See http://www.nokia.com/phones/9210/ *drool*. This is much easier than aiming an IR port to your PDA or carrying extra cables. All-in-one has its drawbacks, but remember you are limited on pocketspace too.
5. Ick, so you are going to borrow from someone else? I'll agree that payphones can be convenient, but the independence of "rolling your own" can be better. Usage anywhere, for one. I've connected to the 'net with my Laptop+Cellphone at friends' houses before, simply because I didn't want to tie up their line. Think about it this way: would you rather use a library computer, or your own if you had it with you?
6. People are dumb. They also get in car crashes, and let their phone ring at movie theatres. The many idiotic users are what give this awesome technology a bad name.
7. Funny
I think you're missing out, my friend. "Wireless technology is somewhat magical. With the naked eye, it appears that data is traveling from one point to another invisibly. This teleportation trick would have you burned at the stake in the 1400's, but in the present it is a huge part of modern life. Cell phones, cordless peripherals, radios, TV, GPS, etc."* Warping data from point A to point B is fun! Don't live in a cave.
-Justin
* taken from my web page: http://www.affinix.com/~justin/stuff/#wireless
Ricochet is good, but the concept is not the same. Ricochet relies on very close-range (quarter mile) access points, and there is no voice capability (although that could be added I suppose). Wireless phones transmit across miles to the nearest tower and serve as an all purpose communications device for both voice and data.
Currently, GSM (Global System for Mobile), the most popular wireless standard, has coverage in just about every country. With Globalstar satellite service, it has coverage of the entire planet.
While data rates are limited to 9600bps in most areas, 3G is set to be an upgrade to existing networks. This means that when 3G is finally out there, the coverage will likely be just as great as GSM currently is now (maybe minus the satellite part). Other networks are planning a 3rd generation as well.. GSM is not the only one.
Ricochet is a good deal, and if you live in their territory and you don't travel much, it can be useful. Like an extended wireless LAN or something. But for true coverage everywhere you go, you have to turn to wireless phones.
Heh, I guess I came off not so well. I actually wanted to see some insightful discussion on the one-size-fits-all topic.
...you consider vast differences between distros to be a good thing?
Focus is a good thing. If a distro has several audiences in mind then it can be difficult to excel. Witness the Mandrake forum.
They use the Debian-born menu system now, which can keep menus in sync between different windowmanagers/desktop environments. Can you explain why that's a bad thing?
It sounds like a good thing, but it seems like unnecessary work on the distro's part. If there is some standard application that takes care of this (the "Debian-born" menu system you mention?), it might be a different story.
Oh, and where did you get your copy of 7.2?
From Mandrake's site.
Nice flamebait, BTW. I was actually looking for a desktop-centric, no-fuss distro. I found Mandrake. [...] I want a mostly-working system, which I've found.
I was merely pointing out that SuSE is KDE-centric like Redhat is GNOME-centric. I think many (like I was) may still be confused into thinking that Mandrake is KDE-centric. For those that only use KDE (and no other WM) this is good information to know.
I'm so torn on this one. On the one hand, it'd be nice to see distributions settle on one little area. On the other hand, different distributions couldn't be trusted to settle on conventions between different systems, so web-server-centric distros would have one config methodology, the file-sharing server distro would have another, the print-server distro yet another setup, the desktop distro yet another...
I think you went a little overboard there. There could be various server distros, like a "office / home / LAN" server vs a "production web" server. Agreeing on a standard configuration may not be a bad idea..
You say it does the job well, but fail to tell us what job it does well (for you). Since you're sure to be using it for the one area it excels at, what is it?
It succeeds at being minimalist. It has a lot of packages, mainly for convenience, but they are not all necessary. It doesn't get in your way, and there is no configuration system to wrestle with (simply because there is no configuration system). This is nice, but not in all cases. My desktop runs Slackware, but my laptop runs SuSE.
Last time I checked, Slack was not just x86, but also Alpha and Sparc. So it's not okay for Mandrake to be on more than one platform, but it is for your favorite distro, eh?
Mandrake has a history of trying to please everybody, so this adds yet another item to their list of things to support. As far as I can tell, Slackware is pretty much done. They needed something to do:-)
why advocate one distro above all others when you don't want an "ultimate distro"?
Actually I was advocating Slack as a focused distro, not an "ultimate distro". It doesn't try to be one-size-fits-all. Those who like Slack's direction will be the most happy with it, but definitely not every Linux user.
I've installed a few distributions in my time, and one thing that really bugs me is when they try to do too much. Mandrake stands out as the distro that just tries to do way to much.
First off, lets look at other distros. Redhat has a few install options, like workstation, server, etc. But then so does Mandrake. And so do others. Why? Isn't the point of distributions to be their own unique piece of the Linux pie? If all distros have the same sorts of install options, and all distros have many target platforms, and they support all desktop environments, then what's the point? There's no uniqueness.
I'll admit now that I'm not a GNOME fan. At one point I used Redhat (totally a GNOME-ish distro). One day, I found Mandrake and thought it might just be the KDE-version of Redhat. Boy was I wrong. Configuration is mostly Gtk, and a whole lot of work has been put into Mandrake to keep the menus synced between each Window Manager (and it comes with lots). I'll ask again, why? I haven't used the latest Mandrake, but 7.2 was a mess.
I later messed with SuSE. SuSE is a MUCH more focused distribution. Granted, it's KDE-centric, but hey, you GNOME folks have Redhat. For the record, anyone looking for a KDE-centric distro should look at SuSE.
Maybe the distributions need a wide audience so they can guarantee more sales? Really, these desktop-distributions should not be targetting the server market, but they all do. This is nuts. Pick a goal guys.
So now Mandrake will operate on PPC as well. Gee, another distro on the road to being the "ultimate distro". The trouble is that I don't think anyone wants an ultimate distro (I sure don't) that does everything to some extent, but nothing to the full extent.
Which is why I use Slackware. It does its job well.
Still, all we can go by is what the licenses are _now_. Heck, GTK's next release could be closed source, if all the developers agreed to it. The community would have the most recent LGPL version though. Same situation with Trolltech. We'll always have the latest GPL version of Qt, even if they decide not to honor their promise to go BSD if they shut down. There are no bets here.
Ever read the philosophy pages at www.gnu.org ? The LGPL is rarely a good idea. The only real good use is to "get your foot in the door". The funny thing is Qt managed to get its foot in the door without the LGPL. There was no toolkit at the time like it, and so it "got in" merely be technical merit. There is no reason at this point to go LGPL. Free software developers use Qt's GPL option, and commercial developers (see a list at Trolltech's website) pay the license fee.
With LGPL, commercial companies would be able to take,take,take without giving a single line of code back. It's a watered down version of the GPL, and not good.
Dynamic linking could be an easy-out for companies, and this would not be good for the GPL. If a company wants to extend a GPL program or include some its code, they could just put the guts into a shared library and now they have circumvented the GPL. This is BAD. The viral effect is now completely gone. We might as well license everything by the BSD license then.
Also, certain programs make more sense to be dynamically linked. Like most libraries. Does this mean there can be no GPL libraries? Do you know how screwed over Trolltech would be if the GPL didn't apply to dynamic libraries?
Dynamic linking MUST be covered by the GPL (and it is) otherwise it could be used as a loophole.
That it is still a violation regardless of whether or not it is a dynamic or static link. That's why there is an LGPL. Think of Trolltech and Qt right now. Their library is GPL, and almost every application is dynamically linked to it. I'm sure the outcome of this case will be *very* important to them. If the GPL doesn't hold water for dynamic linking, then we may never see another GPL'd Qt.
People/companies depend on the GPL. And Vidomi needs to play by the rules.
-Justin
Re:Possibly for somethings, not all though.
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Qt for Mac
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· Score: 2
Well, for one thing, they could stop misleading people about the meaning of the GPL. It is, in fact, perfectly fine to develop commercial/closed source software with a GPL'ed library under a number of circumstances
It's not terribly misleading; more of a subtle request. Anyone who has done their GPL homework should know what is acceptable. Obviously Trolltech should be concerned about in-house development (probably the large majority of all software), since it would require no commercial license. This is likely the reason there is no GPL version of Qt/Windows.
big loss for Linux: that situation would be worse than the situation we had with Motif on UNIX.
I don't recall the old days of Motif, but was the situation really exactly like this? Could you develop a GPL application with Motif? With Qt as GPL, and a BSD version if Trolltech goes under, Linux is in great shape.
Really, the only problem anyone could have with Qt is that you have to pay for it if you do commercial development. This has never made it "unnattractive" however. As stated in other comments to this article, many companies have invested in Qt.
In any case, technically, I don't think Qt is where Linux GUIs should be going anyway.
Where should they be going? Do you not like KDE? Are there any Linux toolkits/GUIs that are going where you think they should?
-Justin
Re:Possibly for somethings, not all though.
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Qt for Mac
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· Score: 2
... TrollTech has gotten a lot more out of KDE than they have given.
They released their flagship product as GPL. Really, what more can they do? While obviously TrollTech has gained a lot of popularity through KDE, their giving away of a very high-quality toolkit has been a great benefit to the *nix community. I'd say the community has gained more than Trolltech has gained, however it's silly to argue about who had the greater benefit. In this case, everyone has won.
-Justin
Re:bah -- qt the "de facto" standard?
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Qt for Mac
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· Score: 2
There are many libraries, yes.
However, I can't name that many crossplatform applications. Mozilla/Netscape come to mind, but those use a custom widget set. I believe Opera uses Qt, but I am not sure (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Limewire is the only Java application I can name. Really, there are barely any crossplatform apps out there.
Zoolib is a nice idea, although it is barely usable. wxWindows sounds like a good library, although I can't name any applications built with it. That leaves GTK and Qt, of which I can name _many_ applications. However, win32 GTK applications don't look/behave like native Windows apps (not to mention that it is beta).
So it could be reasoned that Qt is the de facto crossplatform standard, simply because it has the most potential. In other words, all these developers using the GPL Qt for Linux know a very powerful, truly crossplatform API.
Is why a driver can allow you to cheat. Really, that's the fundamental problem here.
Remember BBS games? Could you ever cheat in those? NO! Not unless there was a known hack on the server. Otherwise, send all the info you want to the BBS. There was absolutely no possible way to cheat by hacking. You could hack your terminal client, but big whoop-de-do.
This is the current problem with multiplayer games: too much information is known by the client. WAY too much. And most of these games: Half-life, Quake, etc are *server* based games. So what's the excuse? It's not like you have the insecurities of peer-to-peer. There is a trusted server. So why - oh - why do these client machines know so much? In particular, why does the video card know so much? Are the programmers that lazy that they are trusting the video card to figure everything out? Man, back in my day we had to render each pixel. The video card knew only what we wanted it to know.
Granted, there are other ways to cheat in games (like auto-aim, etc), but this? See through textures? This is plain laughable. This is not a driver vender problem. This is a game developer problem. Fix your damn games.
Very true. I heard Nokia even gave away a Linux-related award to someone (Linus?). I've never understood their resistance to the gnokii project though. Really, it seems out of place to come from such a pro-Linux company.
Although it's a moot point now I guess. All the new phones by Nokia are no longer winmodems, so there is no special protocol to release.
I used to be an avid follower of the gnokii project, which was/is an attempt to create open source drivers for various Nokia digital phones. I even wrote a completely portable driver for the 51xx/61xx phones by using gnokii as a reference. As I remember, Nokia would never help the team out with any technical information. The company showed promise at one point, but then never delivered. For the years that the project has been going, not once has Nokia given them any help. And now they are embracing Linux with this set-top box?
This is just wrong.
-Justin
Re:Why KDE won't be on the standard X desktop.
on
Eazel Come, Eazel Go?
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· Score: 1
A commerical Qt license is really not that expensive. Did you know some companies even use Qt for Windows-only development, simply because they find Qt to be better than MFC, even though Qt costs much more?
Have a look at Trolltech's page (www.trolltech.com) and browse around. Many large companies use it, and there is a page full of praise from customers. Obviously you know that Trolltech is selling licenses as we speak, right? It's not like Qt is a new product that came out yesterday. So, yes, companies are developing software _right now_ with Qt. The licensing costs are well within reason.
It's better this way. If Qt were LGPL it would suffer from the same problems as BSD licensed software: companies would take without giving back. With Qt as GPL, companies that want to develop closed-source must put money into Trolltech, and this is spent towards making Qt better. It's perfect.
If the average user is able to send email to Aunt Ethyl with the mess-that-is-Outlook, then these same people should have no problem using, say, Kmail (KDE's included email client).
Crashnbur is hardly the dunce of a user that you describe. Just by reading his rant I can see that: he downloads, he burns CDs, and he actually cares about computing upgrades. The high-priced software he speaks of is likely development software. He should have very little difficulty trying out Linux on his desktop. I think my suggestion to him was valid.
Slashdot Mirror
Steps to ensure you don't get goatsexed:
- *Always* check the real link (displayed at the bottom of most browsers). Don't trust the link in the posting.
- Make sure the link is from a credible source. In other words, a site you've been to before.
- Never trust a redirected link (bigfoot, cjb, etc).
- It is possible to use tricks to redirect from a credible source like msn.com. If the link is too long, or contains something in the URL that you don't understand, don't click it.
- If you see goatse in the URL anywhere, definitely don't click it
:)
- Last but not least, use lynx. Generally if I don't trust the link then I don't even bother clicking it. But if it's something that you really need to check into, use lynx on it (or some no-image browser). I've caught quite a few goatse redirects through lynx.
Just a few extra steps go a long way. No person should have to go through the viewing of that image in their lifetime. And for those of us for which it is already too late: multiple viewings..Who even thought up this winmodem stuff anyway? In an age where we offload everything for greater performance (3d accelerators, TV cards, mp3 capable sound cards, etc) we are reversing the process with modems. Gee, all that CPU you saved by offloading your 3D rendering to a separate card has just gone to your software modem. Isn't that ludicrous? What loon came up with this idea?
5 bucks? That's not much. Remember you are paying for content, not for the price of the media. Of course it's cheap to make the actual CDs, but what about the music? Manufacturing is not the only cost, my friend. Some artists may take a year (or more!) to make an album. Granted, that's not all hardcore 40 hours a week work.
At my company, we just finished an RPG for Gameboy Color. It will probably sell for $30. I wish we could sell it for more though, considering the amount of time/work/energy it took to make. As is, we'll probably break even on expenses. Did you know the cost of producing a cartridge is less than $1? That's just the manufacturing cost. When you start piling on the expenses (employees, outsources, publishers, middlemen) it gets out of control.
You never know, some of these CDs you speak of may actually be worth much more than 17 dollars. Our game is worth well over $30, I can tell you that much.
-Justin
I don't think there's anything wrong with including a video driver in the kernel. Tying the kernel to a desktop is another story. The Linux framebuffer console is how video should have been all along. No need to be root in order to access the display. This is probably good for security as well as stability.
While I don't have much experience with other unices, I do believe that there is a concept of a framebuffer in most other variants. I heard somewhere that Linux was the one of the later OS's to get such a thing.
As for GPL issues, aren't there ways to load closed source kernel modules? They could be distributed "precompiled" for various kernel versions, or some sort of wrapper module could be compiled and linked against a closed source driver.
-Justin
Hey, does anyone know if there have been any improvements into getting XFree86 to play nice with the Linux framebuffer console?
Currently, I feel the best way to play a full screen game is in a virtual terminal under fbdev rather than through X, so that I can keep my desktop and the game separated. Ctrl-Alt-F3 takes me to my game, and Alt-F7 takes me back to X. Plus, the high-resolution framebuffer console is very cool just for shell usage too.
Unfortunately for me though, the XFree86 driver for my card clashes with the framebuffer driver from the kernel. So in order to have my super-cool framebuffer console *and* X, I have to use the fbdev version of X. This works and all, but it is unnaccelerated which means I can't do much. Fortunately, most of the games I have are SDL based, so I can just flip to a console to play. But something like OpenGL? Not a chance.
Now can anyone explain to me why there are two video drivers on my system to clash in the first place? It seems logical to me that everyone should use a framebuffer driver (I have a Voodoo3, and it is supported in the kernel) and that X should ride on top. The kernel has every other driver, so why is the video driver so special that X has its own?
Wouldn't it be easier for the XFree folks if they didn't have to worry about making video drivers, and instead it was all taken care of by the kernel? IMO, the only driver they should develop is the fbdev version.
Anyone else have any insights to this? Any reason why DRI couldn't be applied to an fbdev Xserver?
-Justin
All unfinished perl programs, of course.
Right, I know what it stands for. I even stated later in the post that OLED does not solve the backlit dilemma, because its purpose is to emit light. Sheesh. I even got modded down, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because of the negative follow up comments from people that failed to read my entire post?
I brought up an interesting problem with LCDs that despite all of our technical advances still needs to be solved. I thought readers might take interest. Guess not.
- Backlit consume more power
- Backlit require no external light source
- Backlit has glare issues (try using a laptop on the beach sometime)
- Non-backlit require a light source
- Non-backlit look better in natural light than a backlit screen in optimal conditions
- Non-backlit consume WAY less power (probably the reason that Nintendo Gameboy is as popular as it is today)
Maybe someday it will be possible for a screen to be backlit or non-backlit depending a toggle. Or maybe just a photosensor to make the decision automatically. As it stands, laptops are almost worthless outdoors and Gameboy sucks in the dark.From the article it seems like OLED is for backlight-only type devices (since they emit light) so maybe we'll have to wait for the next train before this problem is solved.
-Justin
1. This is where your "power as user" kicks in. Turn the phone off if you don't want imcoming calls. You miss out on half the point of owning a wireless phone, but that's your choice. As for annoying people with rings, many modern phones these days support vibration alerts. Also, a nice option is to have a "ring once". Most people don't mind the initial ring, it's the subsequent rings (as some lady digs in her purse to locate the ringing phone) that really drive us insane. And please, no "song" rings people :P
2. Well, it's your bandwidth. The same would apply to any line. There could be too many cheap tricks you could do if incoming calls were free.
3. This is harder than it sounds, as most phones these days are encrypted and frequency hopping. How would you be able to tell who is who? Identification should be after key-exchange. If it isn't, well.. it should be!
4. Yes, but integration is good too. Witness the the Nokia 9xxx series. See http://www.nokia.com/phones/9210/ *drool*. This is much easier than aiming an IR port to your PDA or carrying extra cables. All-in-one has its drawbacks, but remember you are limited on pocketspace too.
5. Ick, so you are going to borrow from someone else? I'll agree that payphones can be convenient, but the independence of "rolling your own" can be better. Usage anywhere, for one. I've connected to the 'net with my Laptop+Cellphone at friends' houses before, simply because I didn't want to tie up their line. Think about it this way: would you rather use a library computer, or your own if you had it with you?
6. People are dumb. They also get in car crashes, and let their phone ring at movie theatres. The many idiotic users are what give this awesome technology a bad name.
7. Funny
I think you're missing out, my friend. "Wireless technology is somewhat magical. With the naked eye, it appears that data is traveling from one point to another invisibly. This teleportation trick would have you burned at the stake in the 1400's, but in the present it is a huge part of modern life. Cell phones, cordless peripherals, radios, TV, GPS, etc."* Warping data from point A to point B is fun! Don't live in a cave.
-Justin
* taken from my web page: http://www.affinix.com/~justin/stuff/#wireless
Ricochet is good, but the concept is not the same. Ricochet relies on very close-range (quarter mile) access points, and there is no voice capability (although that could be added I suppose). Wireless phones transmit across miles to the nearest tower and serve as an all purpose communications device for both voice and data.
Currently, GSM (Global System for Mobile), the most popular wireless standard, has coverage in just about every country. With Globalstar satellite service, it has coverage of the entire planet.
While data rates are limited to 9600bps in most areas, 3G is set to be an upgrade to existing networks. This means that when 3G is finally out there, the coverage will likely be just as great as GSM currently is now (maybe minus the satellite part). Other networks are planning a 3rd generation as well.. GSM is not the only one.
Ricochet is a good deal, and if you live in their territory and you don't travel much, it can be useful. Like an extended wireless LAN or something. But for true coverage everywhere you go, you have to turn to wireless phones.
-Justin
Come to think of it...nice troll. :-)
...you consider vast differences between distros to be a good thing?
:-)
Heh, I guess I came off not so well. I actually wanted to see some insightful discussion on the one-size-fits-all topic.
Focus is a good thing. If a distro has several audiences in mind then it can be difficult to excel. Witness the Mandrake forum.
They use the Debian-born menu system now, which can keep menus in sync between different windowmanagers/desktop environments. Can you explain why that's a bad thing?
It sounds like a good thing, but it seems like unnecessary work on the distro's part. If there is some standard application that takes care of this (the "Debian-born" menu system you mention?), it might be a different story.
Oh, and where did you get your copy of 7.2?
From Mandrake's site.
Nice flamebait, BTW. I was actually looking for a desktop-centric, no-fuss distro. I found Mandrake. [...] I want a mostly-working system, which I've found.
I was merely pointing out that SuSE is KDE-centric like Redhat is GNOME-centric. I think many (like I was) may still be confused into thinking that Mandrake is KDE-centric. For those that only use KDE (and no other WM) this is good information to know.
I'm so torn on this one. On the one hand, it'd be nice to see distributions settle on one little area. On the other hand, different distributions couldn't be trusted to settle on conventions between different systems, so web-server-centric distros would have one config methodology, the file-sharing server distro would have another, the print-server distro yet another setup, the desktop distro yet another...
I think you went a little overboard there. There could be various server distros, like a "office / home / LAN" server vs a "production web" server. Agreeing on a standard configuration may not be a bad idea..
You say it does the job well, but fail to tell us what job it does well (for you). Since you're sure to be using it for the one area it excels at, what is it?
It succeeds at being minimalist. It has a lot of packages, mainly for convenience, but they are not all necessary. It doesn't get in your way, and there is no configuration system to wrestle with (simply because there is no configuration system). This is nice, but not in all cases. My desktop runs Slackware, but my laptop runs SuSE.
Last time I checked, Slack was not just x86, but also Alpha and Sparc. So it's not okay for Mandrake to be on more than one platform, but it is for your favorite distro, eh?
Mandrake has a history of trying to please everybody, so this adds yet another item to their list of things to support. As far as I can tell, Slackware is pretty much done. They needed something to do
why advocate one distro above all others when you don't want an "ultimate distro"?
Actually I was advocating Slack as a focused distro, not an "ultimate distro". It doesn't try to be one-size-fits-all. Those who like Slack's direction will be the most happy with it, but definitely not every Linux user.
I've installed a few distributions in my time, and one thing that really bugs me is when they try to do too much. Mandrake stands out as the distro that just tries to do way to much.
First off, lets look at other distros. Redhat has a few install options, like workstation, server, etc. But then so does Mandrake. And so do others. Why? Isn't the point of distributions to be their own unique piece of the Linux pie? If all distros have the same sorts of install options, and all distros have many target platforms, and they support all desktop environments, then what's the point? There's no uniqueness.
I'll admit now that I'm not a GNOME fan. At one point I used Redhat (totally a GNOME-ish distro). One day, I found Mandrake and thought it might just be the KDE-version of Redhat. Boy was I wrong. Configuration is mostly Gtk, and a whole lot of work has been put into Mandrake to keep the menus synced between each Window Manager (and it comes with lots). I'll ask again, why? I haven't used the latest Mandrake, but 7.2 was a mess.
I later messed with SuSE. SuSE is a MUCH more focused distribution. Granted, it's KDE-centric, but hey, you GNOME folks have Redhat. For the record, anyone looking for a KDE-centric distro should look at SuSE.
Maybe the distributions need a wide audience so they can guarantee more sales? Really, these desktop-distributions should not be targetting the server market, but they all do. This is nuts. Pick a goal guys.
So now Mandrake will operate on PPC as well. Gee, another distro on the road to being the "ultimate distro". The trouble is that I don't think anyone wants an ultimate distro (I sure don't) that does everything to some extent, but nothing to the full extent.
Which is why I use Slackware. It does its job well.
Still, all we can go by is what the licenses are _now_. Heck, GTK's next release could be closed source, if all the developers agreed to it. The community would have the most recent LGPL version though. Same situation with Trolltech. We'll always have the latest GPL version of Qt, even if they decide not to honor their promise to go BSD if they shut down. There are no bets here.
-Justin
Ever read the philosophy pages at www.gnu.org ? The LGPL is rarely a good idea. The only real good use is to "get your foot in the door". The funny thing is Qt managed to get its foot in the door without the LGPL. There was no toolkit at the time like it, and so it "got in" merely be technical merit. There is no reason at this point to go LGPL. Free software developers use Qt's GPL option, and commercial developers (see a list at Trolltech's website) pay the license fee.
With LGPL, commercial companies would be able to take,take,take without giving a single line of code back. It's a watered down version of the GPL, and not good.
-Justin
Dynamic linking could be an easy-out for companies, and this would not be good for the GPL. If a company wants to extend a GPL program or include some its code, they could just put the guts into a shared library and now they have circumvented the GPL. This is BAD. The viral effect is now completely gone. We might as well license everything by the BSD license then.
Also, certain programs make more sense to be dynamically linked. Like most libraries. Does this mean there can be no GPL libraries? Do you know how screwed over Trolltech would be if the GPL didn't apply to dynamic libraries?
Dynamic linking MUST be covered by the GPL (and it is) otherwise it could be used as a loophole.
-Justin
That it is still a violation regardless of whether or not it is a dynamic or static link. That's why there is an LGPL. Think of Trolltech and Qt right now. Their library is GPL, and almost every application is dynamically linked to it. I'm sure the outcome of this case will be *very* important to them. If the GPL doesn't hold water for dynamic linking, then we may never see another GPL'd Qt.
People/companies depend on the GPL. And Vidomi needs to play by the rules.
-Justin
Well, for one thing, they could stop misleading people about the meaning of the GPL. It is, in fact, perfectly fine to develop commercial/closed source software with a GPL'ed library under a number of circumstances
It's not terribly misleading; more of a subtle request. Anyone who has done their GPL homework should know what is acceptable. Obviously Trolltech should be concerned about in-house development (probably the large majority of all software), since it would require no commercial license. This is likely the reason there is no GPL version of Qt/Windows.
big loss for Linux: that situation would be worse than the situation we had with Motif on UNIX.
I don't recall the old days of Motif, but was the situation really exactly like this? Could you develop a GPL application with Motif? With Qt as GPL, and a BSD version if Trolltech goes under, Linux is in great shape.
Really, the only problem anyone could have with Qt is that you have to pay for it if you do commercial development. This has never made it "unnattractive" however. As stated in other comments to this article, many companies have invested in Qt.
In any case, technically, I don't think Qt is where Linux GUIs should be going anyway.
Where should they be going? Do you not like KDE? Are there any Linux toolkits/GUIs that are going where you think they should?
-Justin
They released their flagship product as GPL. Really, what more can they do? While obviously TrollTech has gained a lot of popularity through KDE, their giving away of a very high-quality toolkit has been a great benefit to the *nix community. I'd say the community has gained more than Trolltech has gained, however it's silly to argue about who had the greater benefit. In this case, everyone has won.
-Justin
There are many libraries, yes.
However, I can't name that many crossplatform applications. Mozilla/Netscape come to mind, but those use a custom widget set. I believe Opera uses Qt, but I am not sure (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Limewire is the only Java application I can name. Really, there are barely any crossplatform apps out there.
Zoolib is a nice idea, although it is barely usable. wxWindows sounds like a good library, although I can't name any applications built with it. That leaves GTK and Qt, of which I can name _many_ applications. However, win32 GTK applications don't look/behave like native Windows apps (not to mention that it is beta).
So it could be reasoned that Qt is the de facto crossplatform standard, simply because it has the most potential. In other words, all these developers using the GPL Qt for Linux know a very powerful, truly crossplatform API.
-Justin
The Qt license is a one-time fee per-developer (not per-machine). It only is a yearly fee if you want support.
Is why a driver can allow you to cheat. Really, that's the fundamental problem here.
Remember BBS games? Could you ever cheat in those? NO! Not unless there was a known hack on the server. Otherwise, send all the info you want to the BBS. There was absolutely no possible way to cheat by hacking. You could hack your terminal client, but big whoop-de-do.
This is the current problem with multiplayer games: too much information is known by the client. WAY too much. And most of these games: Half-life, Quake, etc are *server* based games. So what's the excuse? It's not like you have the insecurities of peer-to-peer. There is a trusted server. So why - oh - why do these client machines know so much? In particular, why does the video card know so much? Are the programmers that lazy that they are trusting the video card to figure everything out? Man, back in my day we had to render each pixel. The video card knew only what we wanted it to know.
Granted, there are other ways to cheat in games (like auto-aim, etc), but this? See through textures? This is plain laughable. This is not a driver vender problem. This is a game developer problem. Fix your damn games.
Very true. I heard Nokia even gave away a Linux-related award to someone (Linus?). I've never understood their resistance to the gnokii project though. Really, it seems out of place to come from such a pro-Linux company.
Although it's a moot point now I guess. All the new phones by Nokia are no longer winmodems, so there is no special protocol to release.
-Justin
I used to be an avid follower of the gnokii project, which was/is an attempt to create open source drivers for various Nokia digital phones. I even wrote a completely portable driver for the 51xx/61xx phones by using gnokii as a reference. As I remember, Nokia would never help the team out with any technical information. The company showed promise at one point, but then never delivered. For the years that the project has been going, not once has Nokia given them any help. And now they are embracing Linux with this set-top box?
This is just wrong.
-Justin
A commerical Qt license is really not that expensive. Did you know some companies even use Qt for Windows-only development, simply because they find Qt to be better than MFC, even though Qt costs much more?
Have a look at Trolltech's page (www.trolltech.com) and browse around. Many large companies use it, and there is a page full of praise from customers. Obviously you know that Trolltech is selling licenses as we speak, right? It's not like Qt is a new product that came out yesterday. So, yes, companies are developing software _right now_ with Qt. The licensing costs are well within reason.
It's better this way. If Qt were LGPL it would suffer from the same problems as BSD licensed software: companies would take without giving back. With Qt as GPL, companies that want to develop closed-source must put money into Trolltech, and this is spent towards making Qt better. It's perfect.
-Justin
If the average user is able to send email to Aunt Ethyl with the mess-that-is-Outlook, then these same people should have no problem using, say, Kmail (KDE's included email client).
Crashnbur is hardly the dunce of a user that you describe. Just by reading his rant I can see that: he downloads, he burns CDs, and he actually cares about computing upgrades. The high-priced software he speaks of is likely development software. He should have very little difficulty trying out Linux on his desktop. I think my suggestion to him was valid.
-Justin