It seems any post criticising Linux is marked troll.
Why - it's completely true. Linux is not even the best free Unix clone, never mind the best OS.
What Linux does have is:
a good name
a great publicity team
a cute penguin
Hell if FreeBSD was called Linux, it would do well too.
Why don't these morons who don't know shit about kernels or operating systems, but who just instinctively censor the anti-Linux posts keep their mod points to themselves.
The point about professionals is very true: a controlled program is the way it should be.
This isn't a troll - it's the truth - why the hell should companies like Adobe and Corel invest their money in Linux when they have three hundred different versions of Linux already - for example, Photopaint doesn't install with Mandrake 7.2.
This doesn't happen with Windows - with it, when you release a new program, you're pretty damn sure Microsoft have taken the trouble to make sure it works with all the software.
A controlled OS made by professionals is better for everyone - just try telling me that Linux is a good as Windows or OS X.
Although the established parts of Linux are often well written (the kernel, things like mail utilities), the newer stuff, like KDE, is cobbled together by a bunch of amateurs, many of whom are writing their first programs as KDE.
PS. I'm sure that someone will mark this as troll as well, but it's not.
The fact is that Linux is a massive black hole of resources and effort - people trying to cobble layers of stuff onto decades of cruft - whereas a proper OS like Solaris, Windows or OSX is actually
managed - people say Windows sucks and Linux rules, but it's just a lie - you can't even configure the thing without using a hundred different text files, each with different formats; even projects like linuxconf have to be maintained separately because of the *massive* existing fragmentation.
Linux is already more fragmented than anything - how else can each different distribution be configured differently, therefore presenting a nightmare for developers.
Linux doesn't stand a chance while we have a hundred different, poorly tested, distributions deterring developers.
Those who say that Windows only succeeds through its publicity department are lying - the fact is that Linux has much better publicity than Windows - how else could people seriously promote it as a usable GUI when I can't even do something as simple as copying something from the best web browser, Mozilla, to the best interface, KDE, because of their using different toolkits.
I mean 'cmon people. If Windows' success is really due to MS' publicity, then Linux's publicity department must be run by an army of Goebells clones.
> SDMI is announcing that they are paying two hackers $5000 each for breaking the encryption on their watermarking technology." And as the article points out, conspicuously ignoring the fact that independent researchers have broken four of the watermarking schemes without getting taking part in the official contest.
So? The money is for taking part in the contest.
They didn't, so they can hardly be expecting to get paid any money.
This is from my cache [can't post front page - just an image]:
The Turing Machine Program
The program I chose is one that duplicates a pattern of 1's. With 2 1's on the tape to the right of the reading position it takes 16 cycles to stop with 4 1's on the tape. This takes over one hour on my computer.
The state transition table for this program is as:
State
Input Symbol 0
Input Symbol 1
Input Symbol 2
Where:
D = Direction
V = Value of symbol to write
NS = next state
A P240 gun has been placed to insert the instruction "D:R, V:0, NS:0" when the blocking glider is deleted, which it is in the initial pattern above. This starts up the Turing Machine.
Although the license is reasonably free, (and it comes in printer-friendly formats like pdf and postscript) it might not be free enough for you:
'This work may not be reproduced in hard copy except for personal use. Further, it may not be reproduced in hard copy for training material, nor for commercial gain, nor for public or organisation-wide distribution. Further, it may not be reproduced in hard copy except where the intended reader of the hard copy initiates the process of converting the work to hard copy.'
So it looks like it would be illegal to print it for them, and although I can't see anything wrong with telling them the location of it and letting it print it out, it would be illegal to use it as course material. [This is probably because the book is being published]
The LDP HOWTOs are much freer - hence the profusion of $20 books collating them all (generally badly labeled, so most people wouldn't realise that they are HOWTOs unless they'd seen the HOWTOs before).
Rute does leave some things to be desired, so why not write/start a 'Linux manual'?
It's much easier to persuade your parents to buy you a PC than a playstation ('I'll do homework and research'), and with the shortage of Playstations, the absence of competition in the console market, Windows PCs, and Windows games can expect a bumper Christmas.
It's not really a Perl book - it's a CGI with Perl book, covering things like JavaScript. If you want to learn Perl get Programming Perl.
OTOH, if you just want a cgi script for your guestbook, you should reject Perl - that is unless you have, and want to learn how to use, mod_perl - otherwise it's very slow. Learn PHP by reading the excellent manual; see also the HOWTO.
Of course if you want to become an expert in some of the seriously sick bits of perl (it's oo functions, etc.), then you'll need a book (not this one though - AFAICT, this book is redundant - wouldbe Perl hackers should get a dedicated Perl book, while everyone else should use PHP or ASP).
For this kind of work, Linux does not shine - the only reason to use it is for cost reasons, and when something costs $1500, you can afford a copy of Windows to go with it, so the only market is from graphic artist Unix zealots, and I don't think there's too many of them!
* How many dtp people use Linux? These people are not, in the main, technical types into kernel recompilation. So no market for the product. Simple economics - I have graphics dudes around me, and they like Apple Macs, and, in a few cases, Windows - they don't like Unix, and couldn't use it.
* Inferior architecture - I've used Corel Photopaint on Linux, and it looks very ugly because of the lack of things like anti-aliasing (in the OS, not at a user level - the program looks ugly).
This is a *good* and brave decision - it's better to write the money off than to pour money into the Linux blackhole of giveaway software (Photopaint, etc.) - we don't want Adobe going the way of Corel.
> Red Hat has worked incredibly hard to make Red Hat 7 the best Linux distribution ever,
If it is true, Microsoft don't have anything to worry about - a piece of software so poorly tested that it broke within 30 days of installation.
Compare this with Windows, which has test periods of a year or more for new Windows releases.
Would you really trust your company to a distro that ships a broken compiler?
Just as a point, with linux, simply running every program will show you a large number don't work. We're not talking advanced QA here - it's not like a program that crashes - some of these things don't even work.
It seems they don't even run the most basic test of checking each program (e.g., type vimtutor in Redhat - they renamed vim to vi).
> > [Why the broken compiler?]
> It would have been great if GCC 3.0 had been a released compiler
> At the same time, the latest released version of the compiler, 2.95.2, had a number of significant issues... 2.95 is the least stable release that we (the fsf gcc team) have shipped
in a long time.
This doesn't make an eachway-incompatible compiler a good idea. What it does say, however, (his words not mine) is that
(a) the current compiler is a POS
(b) we're using an incompatible, and immediately obsolete compiler.
Doesn't really encourage you to use Linux, rather than say, Windows, *bsd or Solaris, does it - the current compiler sucks.
> Someone on this thread complained that the RPM that we shipped is highly
> patched. Bar two (the sbreg_byte patches), all of those patches are in
> current cvs. Since at some point procedure would not allow us to take a new
> snapshot, those 85 patches are a visible side effect of the QA work that was
done.
These patches are indicative of the unstable state of Linux development, and of the fact that essentially a server product (see Mandrake for a desktop product, not that it's a patch on Windows or Mac) has 2-week beta test periods, rather than months for commercial-strength OSs.
> although the philosophy of the book does indeed reflect a sort of 60's true love ambiance that is wholly incredible in todays self serving and AIDs fearing world.
Actually it reflects the author's obsession with notorious Victorian satanist Aleister Crowley. Furthermore, while it might be rubbish, it was a significant book in the climate of its time - don't forget the paranoia about Communists that was rampant around that time.
A substantial essay on the influences of Crowley on Heinlein is here
This is actually not as far from the truth as it might seem - hospitals are just about the worst place to go if your ill - it's a fecund environment for viruses, and almost all of the so-called 'superbugs' have developed in hospitals - they get resistant to the antibiotics used.
I'm not sure what the precise figure is, but an alarmingly high number of people get ill[er] in hospital.
> Using a deadly bacteria to cure a probably more benign bacteria seems a little bit extreme if you ask me.
This is the principle on which most vaccinations are based - Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine came from his observation that cowmaids, who caught the less deadly cowpox, did not get smallpox. The use of deadly bacteria is going on already - not just in this case, but others.
And I had salmonella sandwiches for my lunch [or that might have salmon - I can't remember].
> > the first major bible printed in the West available online
> Uhh? The Bible Gateway has dozens of major Bibles available online
I think you miss the point: *major* bible.
This is just about the most major bible ever created - online versions of modern translations do not count as major when compared to Gutenberg's bible - after all, Gutenberg's invention of printing has to count as one of the most important developments in the history of Western civilization.
Slashdot Mirror
Why has this post been marked as a troll?
It seems any post criticising Linux is marked troll.
Why - it's completely true. Linux is not even the best free Unix clone, never mind the best OS.
What Linux does have is:
a good name
a great publicity team
a cute penguin
Hell if FreeBSD was called Linux, it would do well too.
Why don't these morons who don't know shit about kernels or operating systems, but who just instinctively censor the anti-Linux posts keep their mod points to themselves.
The point about professionals is very true: a controlled program is the way it should be.
This isn't a troll - it's the truth - why the hell should companies like Adobe and Corel invest their money in Linux when they have three hundred different versions of Linux already - for example, Photopaint doesn't install with Mandrake 7.2.
This doesn't happen with Windows - with it, when you release a new program, you're pretty damn sure Microsoft have taken the trouble to make sure it works with all the software.
A controlled OS made by professionals is better for everyone - just try telling me that Linux is a good as Windows or OS X.
Although the established parts of Linux are often well written (the kernel, things like mail utilities), the newer stuff, like KDE, is cobbled together by a bunch of amateurs, many of whom are writing their first programs as KDE.
PS. I'm sure that someone will mark this as troll as well, but it's not.
The fact is that Linux is a massive black hole of resources and effort - people trying to cobble layers of stuff onto decades of cruft - whereas a proper OS like Solaris, Windows or OSX is actually
managed - people say Windows sucks and Linux rules, but it's just a lie - you can't even configure the thing without using a hundred different text files, each with different formats; even projects like linuxconf have to be maintained separately because of the *massive* existing fragmentation.
Linux is already more fragmented than anything - how else can each different distribution be configured differently, therefore presenting a nightmare for developers.
Linux doesn't stand a chance while we have a hundred different, poorly tested, distributions deterring developers.
Those who say that Windows only succeeds through its publicity department are lying - the fact is that Linux has much better publicity than Windows - how else could people seriously promote it as a usable GUI when I can't even do something as simple as copying something from the best web browser, Mozilla, to the best interface, KDE, because of their using different toolkits.
I mean 'cmon people. If Windows' success is really due to MS' publicity, then Linux's publicity department must be run by an army of Goebells clones.
> SDMI is announcing that they are paying two hackers $5000 each for breaking the encryption on their watermarking technology." And as the article points out, conspicuously ignoring the fact that independent researchers have broken four of the watermarking schemes without getting taking part in the official contest.
So? The money is for taking part in the contest.
They didn't, so they can hardly be expecting to get paid any money.
It's not secure at all - you could easily trace illegal emails by a court order taken out on Yahoo!.
Hushmail or no-id's anonymous remailer, preferably accessed via anonymous proxy server is better
This is from my cache [can't post front page - just an image]:
The Turing Machine Program
The program I chose is one that duplicates a pattern of 1's. With 2 1's on the tape to the right of the reading position it takes 16 cycles to stop with 4 1's on the tape. This takes over one hour on my computer.
The state transition table for this program is as:
State
Input Symbol 0
Input Symbol 1
Input Symbol 2
0 Find next v=1
D:R, V:0, NS:2
D:R, V:2, NS:1
D:L, V:2, NS:0
1 Write 2*v=2
D:L, V:2, NS:0
-
D:R, V:2, NS:1
2 Convert v=2 to v=1
Halt
-
D:R, V:1, NS:2
Where:
D = Direction
V = Value of symbol to write
NS = next state
A P240 gun has been placed to insert the instruction "D:R, V:0, NS:0" when the blocking glider is deleted, which it is in the initial pattern above. This starts up the Turing Machine.
Back to Turing Machine Main Page
Although the license is reasonably free, (and it comes in printer-friendly formats like pdf and postscript) it might not be free enough for you:
'This work may not be reproduced in hard copy except for personal use. Further, it may not be reproduced in hard copy for training material, nor for commercial gain, nor for public or organisation-wide distribution. Further, it may not be reproduced in hard copy except where the intended reader of the hard copy initiates the process of converting the work to hard copy.'
So it looks like it would be illegal to print it for them, and although I can't see anything wrong with telling them the location of it and letting it print it out, it would be illegal to use it as course material. [This is probably because the book is being published]
The LDP HOWTOs are much freer - hence the profusion of $20 books collating them all (generally badly labeled, so most people wouldn't realise that they are HOWTOs unless they'd seen the HOWTOs before).
Rute does leave some things to be desired, so why not write/start a 'Linux manual'?
Rute, the beginner's guide to Linux
It's much easier to persuade your parents to buy you a PC than a playstation ('I'll do homework and research'), and with the shortage of Playstations, the absence of competition in the console market, Windows PCs, and Windows games can expect a bumper Christmas.
Read Teach Yourself CGI Programming with PERL 5 in a Week online.
It's not really a Perl book - it's a CGI with Perl book, covering things like JavaScript. If you want to learn Perl get Programming Perl.
OTOH, if you just want a cgi script for your guestbook, you should reject Perl - that is unless you have, and want to learn how to use, mod_perl - otherwise it's very slow. Learn PHP by reading the excellent manual; see also the HOWTO.
Of course if you want to become an expert in some of the seriously sick bits of perl (it's oo functions, etc.), then you'll need a book (not this one though - AFAICT, this book is redundant - wouldbe Perl hackers should get a dedicated Perl book, while everyone else should use PHP or ASP).
> unlike with languages like java, you can't always take it with you.
I think you mean 'unlike languages like java, you can almost always take it with you.'
> Going from sparc to x86 and vice versa has always been a headache.
No, there's no problem there, since Perl is a highlevel scripting language.
The only problem is using Unix-specific functions (symbolic links, / as directory separator) on Windows and vice-versa (e.g., using COM).
Um. No. It's his time, and he can do with it what he chooses.
But anyway, it's probably not going to be written that much by Linus anyway. In general with these celebrity books co-author means ghostwriter.
Typically an author will pass interesting titbits, or perhaps chapters, and the ghostwriter will put them together.
Everyone does it - Bill Gates, film stars, etc.
Exactly.
For this kind of work, Linux does not shine - the only reason to use it is for cost reasons, and when something costs $1500, you can afford a copy of Windows to go with it, so the only market is from graphic artist Unix zealots, and I don't think there's too many of them!
Just think about it.
* How many dtp people use Linux? These people are not, in the main, technical types into kernel recompilation. So no market for the product. Simple economics - I have graphics dudes around me, and they like Apple Macs, and, in a few cases, Windows - they don't like Unix, and couldn't use it.
* Inferior architecture - I've used Corel Photopaint on Linux, and it looks very ugly because of the lack of things like anti-aliasing (in the OS, not at a user level - the program looks ugly).
This is a *good* and brave decision - it's better to write the money off than to pour money into the Linux blackhole of giveaway software (Photopaint, etc.) - we don't want Adobe going the way of Corel.
> Red Hat has worked incredibly hard to make Red Hat 7 the best Linux distribution ever,
If it is true, Microsoft don't have anything to worry about - a piece of software so poorly tested that it broke within 30 days of installation.
Compare this with Windows, which has test periods of a year or more for new Windows releases.
Would you really trust your company to a distro that ships a broken compiler?
Just as a point, with linux, simply running every program will show you a large number don't work. We're not talking advanced QA here - it's not like a program that crashes - some of these things don't even work.
It seems they don't even run the most basic test of checking each program (e.g., type vimtutor in Redhat - they renamed vim to vi).
> > [Why the broken compiler?]
> It would have been great if GCC 3.0 had been a released compiler
> At the same time, the latest released version of the compiler, 2.95.2, had a number of significant issues
in a long time.
This doesn't make an eachway-incompatible compiler a good idea. What it does say, however, (his words not mine) is that
(a) the current compiler is a POS
(b) we're using an incompatible, and immediately obsolete compiler.
Doesn't really encourage you to use Linux, rather than say, Windows, *bsd or Solaris, does it - the current compiler sucks.
> Someone on this thread complained that the RPM that we shipped is highly
> patched. Bar two (the sbreg_byte patches), all of those patches are in
> current cvs. Since at some point procedure would not allow us to take a new
> snapshot, those 85 patches are a visible side effect of the QA work that was
done.
These patches are indicative of the unstable state of Linux development, and of the fact that essentially a server product (see Mandrake for a desktop product, not that it's a patch on Windows or Mac) has 2-week beta test periods, rather than months for commercial-strength OSs.
Obviously it depends on your personal preferences, but you could try:
the FSF: donate here
KDE: contacts here
other projects as you use them; e.g., netbsd, openbsd, Apache, XFree86.
Or just donate computers to Africa or somewhere.
> although the philosophy of the book does indeed reflect a sort of 60's true love ambiance that is wholly incredible in todays self serving and AIDs fearing world.
Actually it reflects the author's obsession with notorious Victorian satanist Aleister Crowley. Furthermore, while it might be rubbish, it was a significant book in the climate of its time - don't forget the paranoia about Communists that was rampant around that time.
A substantial essay on the influences of Crowley on Heinlein is here
If you're interested in wearable computing, there is a very detailed FAQ here - it even tells you how to turn your Palm Pilot into a wearable PC.
Now when we have weddings and throw rice on the bride it will be a golden shower!
I've pinged to it from locations in two different continents and there's no reply. Telnetting in on any port doesn't work either.
It seems to be down.
A report I just heard on the radio said one in ten get ill - due to superbugs and poor hygiene (reuse of equipment, etc.).
This is actually not as far from the truth as it might seem - hospitals are just about the worst place to go if your ill - it's a fecund environment for viruses, and almost all of the so-called 'superbugs' have developed in hospitals - they get resistant to the antibiotics used.
I'm not sure what the precise figure is, but an alarmingly high number of people get ill[er] in hospital.
> Using a deadly bacteria to cure a probably more benign bacteria seems a little bit extreme if you ask me.
This is the principle on which most vaccinations are based - Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine came from his observation that cowmaids, who caught the less deadly cowpox, did not get smallpox. The use of deadly bacteria is going on already - not just in this case, but others.
And I had salmonella sandwiches for my lunch [or that might have salmon - I can't remember].
They might be bacteria-powered, but who's going to drive them?
Sean Connery's getting a bit old for that I think.
> Imagine the publishing opportunities, after all 2000 years is long enough for any mortal to write a sequal why should god be any different ?
He would do, but he's too busy working on Linux 2.4.
> > the first major bible printed in the West available online
> Uhh? The Bible Gateway has dozens of major Bibles available online
I think you miss the point: *major* bible.
This is just about the most major bible ever created - online versions of modern translations do not count as major when compared to Gutenberg's bible - after all, Gutenberg's invention of printing has to count as one of the most important developments in the history of Western civilization.