While blindly upgrading seems to be how most IT people respond, Bill Gates seems to disagree with that assesment about that being his customers' only choice. He acknowledges that there can be buggy products, but that bugs won't be fixed without bug-reports filed. If what he says about consumer behaivor is true, his business decisions seem fairly reasonable to me.
Many users of Microsoft products seem to take the approach of upgrade to the latest (and "greatest") whenever possible. Usefulness of features is irrelevant, it's quantity that counts! Odds are, significant bugs will be fixed by the next verision. That makes it a worthy gamble for my upgrade dollar! (Especially if I warez it.)
It is an interesting question that I won't address as to whether Microsoft causes or responds to this phenomenon in consumers of its products. Do users of Open Source products regularly file bug reports and only upgrade to fix these relevant bugs or to add previously desired features? (Hell no, if it's free, then gimme gimme!)
What I am saying, in light of every Bill Gates interview I have ever read, is that maybe Outlook 98 with service pack 1 can be considered the "latest version" of Outlook 98 for Macintosh. Perhaps Outlook 2000 (or was it 2001?) for the Mac is considered distinct in this circumstance.
There are many interviews of Bill Gates available where he discusses bugs in MS products. Check out Bill's Homepage and read some of his thoughts. In various entries you can find him addressing the subject in his own words. Or try, e.g. a less sympathetic source if you need to stoke your Anti-Gates dogma while he tells you that you have other choices than "to pay cash money and upgrade" to their current flagship product.
Like any good capitalist, his corporation is guided by the actions of the marketplace. Perhaps the last version of their product is too "big" and bloated to fit your needs, you are turned off by all of its nasty bugs... when most of the paying consumers respond by grabbing their ankles and asking for more features, more...
Okay, so I took the "shaft" metaphor too far. I blame my lack of sleep for lack of judgement. But I did stay pretty close to your points. Hopefully your eyes were opened. In exchange, I'll close mine.
goodnight
"Craylink" is an SGI technology. As I understand, many SGI engineers were upset over that misnomer, even if it was better for marketing purposes. Well, that was the story, anyhow.
While the Craylink was used for the Onyx2/Origin(200/2xxx) series, they rechristened the interconnect for the Onyx/Origin 3xxx series. It is now called NUMAlink, referring to the ccNUMA architecure utilized by modern SGI systems.
I'd have to agree with the rest of your post, and add that whether long or short timeframes are involved, a ccNUMA style large unified memory is good for large datasets, whether the system has many or few CPUs. 64 bit architecture (64 bits for addressing memory) also comes in handy in such situations. Less data shuffling for huge datasets is a Good Thing.
Swarm Distribution: Mojo Nation breaks up the task of delivering content among many agents across the network, each of which contributes as much as it can to the collaborative effort -- even low-bandwidth, dial-up users can deliver a small portion of a requested resource. Speed and reliability are enhanced because several peers work together rather than one peer working alone.
It seems that MojoNation already implements such functionality. I seem to remember reading about a gnutella client that was working on this, but at the moment I can't remember which one. If not, it would be a great feature to have. Considering the big problem with gnutella, according to all of the technical reports, is the wasted bandwidth and the chatty protocol, any way to more efficently use the gnutella network is a big improvement.
Rights, by definition, are not to be given up. In practice, taking certain actions can justify the removal of some rights, but these rights should never be usurped by that actions of others. This includes declaring a state of war. In message #2314550 an AC points to the US gov't's track record of temporary suspension or rights during war time. I would also propose that many "temporary" measures enacted by the US government have become permanent despite the contrary intentions.
Ideally, there should be no temporary measures... the proper course of action should be determined during average times... for the United States, that has usually been peacetime. The reasonable privelgdes of Americans under any circumstances should be determined, then thet should be the standard we live by, regardless of declarations of war. From the terrorists point of view, we may have already been at war all along, and we just only became aware of that fact on Tuesday. If we legislate our freedoms under times of undue panic, we are left with unnacceptable results.
A secondary solution might be a "prevention of terrorism act" as mentioned by zmower in messge #2313628. Perhaps having measures that are only effective for one year that must be renewed yearly become void might help avoid the side effect of unwanted permanence.
"Well, here in the UK we have a piece of legislation called the Prevention Of Terrrorism act. This was seen as a temporary act and as such must be renewed in Parliament *every* year. I think it came into force in the early seventies and I can see it being renewed forever now."
"WHY are civil liberties important? Of course they're threatened in the wake of this terrorism--but so is the security of the nation."
While the second part of this statement seems more fruitful, I'll try to address this first part also.
I would gather that many of our American predecessors found civil liberties necessary to live as god would have us live. Maybe that is valid in a religious sense. Maybe that refers to our genetic predispositions. To me, it seems to be a similar question to "Why are we alive?" Whatever the multitudes of obscure reasons, that they are important is spelled out for us. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of hapiness" are important. For some reason, we as a species have a survival instinct. It seems to be related to our desire to be free. When we are healthy and vigorous (full of life), our freedom permits up to pursue happiness. I think it is more than "moral superiority" -- by definition, happiness is better than any state of non-happiness. It's just the way we're wired, happiness is the goal and the means of survival.
"To win the argument in favor of personal liberty over national security, it is necessary to state and defend the reasons why civil liberties are more important--not simply state their moral superiority as some assumed point."
A more revealing question would be, why is the security of the nation important? The answer is simple. In and of itself, it is not important. A nation is not a sentient being, it exists only for the benefit of its citizens. National security is only important as it relates to civil liberty. If all Americans lost their freedoms, their hapiness or their lives, their security as a nation becomes irrelevant. As long as the nation protects our personal liberties, our "life liberty and pursuit of happiness", it is valuable and deserving of security. The more personal liberty our national security costs, the less impotrant our national security is.
Of course civil liberties are good in and of themselves. Anarchy is at the end of the road, but not a possible goal, just like one strives for perfection that can't be reached. Anarchy means that society remains civil without the institutions of government or enforcable law being necessary. Government is a crutch, important only as long as humans refuse to share and act civil to one another. While the government exists, it needs and deserves the respect of all of its citizens. The ultimate goal of the ideal government would be the eventual dissolution of itself. Unfortunately in practice, governments tend to grow in power without proper check and balances. A government should not have more rights than the sum total of its citizens. The paradox is that government needs to be powerful enough to withstand other governments, but yielding enough to not exert undue power over its citizens.
I couldn't agree more with the name check. The biometrics may be feasible, if cost weren't a factor. Maybe a long term goal could be Biometric Identification in major airports, with the understanding that records aren't kept, only comparisons are made against known criminals. Restrict this to the airlines, as they require special consideration.
An airplane is significantly different than a train, bus, or even a van outside of a federal building. The explosive combination of jet fuel and potential gravitational energy is not innate to other forms of travel. I could even strap explosives to my body and go to a crowded public place with similar devastation, despite the train.
The difference is that once the airplane is off the ground, massive destruction is an innate property of most any deviation from standard procedure. To grant such a liability to a non-airborne craft would require extensive and contrived effort, e.g. undetected access to the depot for a "Speed" like rig of the bus. Even then, it takes less expertise than that of the Blue Angels to intercept a two dimentional craft, using a similar craft or even a helicopter. A commercial airplane is for all practicality a hermetically sealed box - there is no viable "backdoor" at 30,000 feet.
(The Blue Angels are highly trained stunt piliots that exhibit feats of synchronized flying -- but even they don't try to board each other's craft mid-flight. Without a breathable atmosphere.
In Speed, the vehicle couldn't stop moving, without a previously rigged bomb detonating. Most aircraft wouldn't need tampering to prove destructive.)
I would hate needing a passport to board a train. I take for granted that I don't need my gov't papers for free unrestricted travel within US borders, as I understand some nations require. I "richly enjoy" all of the liberties defined by our constitution. Any national tragedy is exactly the time that piece of hemp proves invaluable, and deserves the most respect. This is not the time to "temporarily" discount it.
My American prayer - to whichever god it may concern:
Dear Lord, protect us; from those who would protect the constitution at all costs, from those who would protect us at the cost of the constitution, and from your followers who may commit your will upon us. Protect us from zealotry, Christian, Muslim, national and foreign. Most of all, save the Agnostics, and the Citizens of the World.
Libranet does have a downloadable.iso, it is just a version behind. Their newest version, which must be paid for, includes such cutting edge components (at the time of its release) as Linux Kernel 2.4, Xfree86 4, the newest KDE et al.
In fact, when I was unable to find a Debian.iso, I was able to find Libranet's (I think) 1.8.2.iso, and install Debian from that. There was a time when Debian.iso's were quite hard to come by, as I didn't have a Linux box handy to run their rsync/cd image creator script. Now, tahnksfully, Progeny seems to have all kinds of tasty Debian and other open source.iso's available for download. Progeny has prety much superceded Libranet in my estimation in most significant capacities.
regardless, the downloadable Libranet.iso is still very useful if you don't mind X11 3.3 and kernel 2.2. Its default install includes every window manager I've ever used, all configured fairly intelligently. The install is basically a standard Debian install, with some of the defaults not as intelligent, and a few options a bit more useful. Not at all comparable to, e.g. the Progeny GUI installer, but it does include recompiling the kernel as part of its standard install, which I haven't seen in any of the Linux distros I've used.
The Progeny Debian Gui installer is great though, and definietly worthwhile even if you don't end up with as large an installed system as Libranet. I prefer to have a minimal system anyway, and only install components I plan to use.
As refreshing as the Progeny install is, it isn't quite as robust as I might like. Most of the time it will complete without any problems, but for those few systems that do have problems, error messasges aren't displayed. It seems that the "Congratulations on you successful install" message is always displayed, regardless of whether you have earned it.
As an example, try installing on a partition that doesn't have adequate space to complete the first stage install...
While choosing Progeny as the most likely to succeed does come quite naturally from their visibility and history with Debian, there are other Debian based OSes. Two general distros in non-English languages, and a router specific version, at least. That doesn't change the validity of your statement however.
As for proprietary packages, I can't image Xandros/corel doing such a thing, as that would likely cause conflicts with the standard Debian packages and dependancies. No other Debian-based distro has done that intentionally, and for very good reason. One of the benefits of using.dpkgs is using standard Debian mirrors, thus saving greatly on bandwidth.
I do wish Xandros the best of luck on picking up where Corel left off - They will most certainly need it.
I think you meant to say that with a command line interface, like BASH for instance, a creator type isn't useful. That is because there is not an equivalent to "double clicking" a document, so there is no infrastructure in place for automatically calling an external default (not necessarily) application to execute the document. That does not mean that a "creator" field can not be useful under "Linux", just not under current command line implementations.
Under a GUI, "creator" like information can be very useful if properly utilized. It shouldn't be called a creator type though, that implies that the creating application should be the default application launched. This is a shortcoming of the MacOS implementation, especially considering Apple's emphasis on content creation. The tools for HTML generation and photo editing aren't well suited just for browsing same media. such problems have been solved on other systems.
While it is an understandable foible to add misguided reverence to a command line artifact along with the command line itself, it is highly shameful considering Apple's record of innovation in interface semantics. Should the cyclops put out one eye to better fit in with the blind? Why destroy a superior, if still insufficient file typing mechanism, for a clearly inferior solution? Because it's good enough for Windows?
Three letters cannot hold enough information to represent all of the distinct file types that are necessary in modern computing systems. Even Apple's four character types permuted with four character creators weren't enough, the limited space was running out. It is appalling that they exacerbated the situation by severing the superior system they had in place, instead of adopting or creating a superior system. BeOS adopted MIME types for use in their system, after determining that Apple style Type + Creator codes weren't sufficient. Why did Apple go backwards? Now the seemingly defunct BeOS has a better GUI than most curent systems, with the "creator type" situation nicely solved. Instead of having a distinct creator type, the MIME derived file types all have default applications associated with them. Thus, double clicking will usually open the desired program, and right clicking will show a list of all available applications that know how to open that type of file.
Thankfully, this one point is probably moot, as at least GNOME currently maintains (BeOS) Style MIME types. Such functionality is indeed most useful in a GUI environment, whether on top of Linux or any other Kernel. What would be really revealing is some benchmarks determining efficiency of MIME typing versus automatic type determiniation with magic numbers and file headers. I suspect that even if performance measures weren't clear, there would still be an advantage to having an up-to-date database of file types contained on the system.
Now if Gnome would actually make better use of them, I could finally start complaining about the other GUI enhancements Linux supported GUIs should steal from Be (If Apple doesn't smarten up first and steal them back:)
Although I generally agree with your wiewpoint, I have to point out that I have seen README type executable files on a small but significant amount of shareware programs.
The text file is usually distributed in an archive with the executable program, so that it can be hard to notice the custom icon.
So in conclusion, the best way to operate on Mac OS (not X) would be the standard power-user setup, list view with file details (Metadata) shown, and launch non execuatable documents by dragging them onto the applications. This allows maximum flexibility and control. Many Mac users use program launchers, floating palettes and toolbars containing their favorite apps for easy access. I usually just have aliases of my media viewing apps in a folder that can pop-up when I need it, then get out of site when I don't.
BTW, for non Mac users, an alias is like a soft link to an inode. Thus it behaves like a soft link except that isn't broken when the original changes locations (like a hard link).
Although I generally agree with your wiewpoint, I have to point out that I have seen README type executable files on a small but significant amount of shareware programs.
The text file is usually distributed in an archive with the executable program, so that it can be hard to notice the custom icon.
So in conclusion, the best way to operate on a Mac OS ( X) would be the standard power-user setup, list view with file details (Metadata) shown, and launch non execuatable documents by dragging them onto the applications. This allows maximum flexibility and control. Many Mac users use program launchers, floating palettes and toolbars containing their favorite apps for easy access. I usually just have aliases of my media viewing apps in a folder that can pop-up when I need it, then get out of site when I don't.
BTW, for non Mac users, an alias is like a soft link to an inode. Thus it behaves like a soft link except that isn't broken when the original changes locations (like a hard link).
I would say this is indeed very useful, if you have any Legacy UNIX machines still operating. Now their (in some cases) ancient software can be updated or bugfixed where they were previously unsupported. Similar programs, like grep, can be comprehensively compared for differences in functionality. They can also be generally compared for efficiency of code, and (in the case of GNU compatible licensing) even be possibly merged with their GNU equivalents.
This is, for many I'll guess, more than just symbolic.
Last century? No way! What is Doom from, the Epoch? Marathon has up and down, a full third axis of technological wonderment! and how long has Marathon 3 (infinity) been out? Doom is just now catching up, baby... and it needs 3 mouse buttons to do it.
If that doesn't show Marathon's technological superiority, then I don't know what does!
AFAIK, anybody is allowed to make proprietary changes to GPL'ed software. The issue is that those changes cannot be redistributed unless they are also GPLed, which makes them completely open. This takes away the profit motive for redistributing your own changes. Thus, to redistribute your changes will likely benefit the community.
To answer you question, yes. The community would be harmed if you could make GLPed software proprietary. The GPL is intended to protect the community, not the author. There is no license I am aware of which prevents the creator of software from accessing her own code.
So I would be violating the copyright if I were to try to base a business model on the copyrighted works. There are plenty of instances of the copyright owner violating the author's wishes. (That's why Prince wasn't Prince for a while if I understand correctly.) Nobody should be able to wish away any freedoms I have in private, as what I do in private does not harm anybody. Not even Metallica.
It qualifies, but it is depricated. The Original BSD license, with the advertising clause is a workable license, but not workable as a model for other licenses.
XFree86 is recommended as a model for a non-copyleft (GNU) but still "free" license. This is not for legal or philisophical reasons, but because the popularity of the XFree86 project is most comparable to that of the BSD projects.
Fortunately, Freenet would propagate the content towards the node that requests it. Eventually, the node would be sending 10,000 requests to the nearest node - itself. That would likely result in that node flooding itself with requests, and not likely affecting the system as a whole.
Sure, this would likely contributed to the permanence of your content, but at what cost to the Service? For what they would charge you for the service, you'd probably be better off storing the content on a static web site if permanence is your goal. Or if you need distributed permanence, look into The Eternity Service.
Slashdot Mirror
While blindly upgrading seems to be how most IT people respond, Bill Gates seems to disagree with that assesment about that being his customers' only choice. He acknowledges that there can be buggy products, but that bugs won't be fixed without bug-reports filed. If what he says about consumer behaivor is true, his business decisions seem fairly reasonable to me.
Many users of Microsoft products seem to take the approach of upgrade to the latest (and "greatest") whenever possible. Usefulness of features is irrelevant, it's quantity that counts! Odds are, significant bugs will be fixed by the next verision. That makes it a worthy gamble for my upgrade dollar! (Especially if I warez it.)
It is an interesting question that I won't address as to whether Microsoft causes or responds to this phenomenon in consumers of its products. Do users of Open Source products regularly file bug reports and only upgrade to fix these relevant bugs or to add previously desired features? (Hell no, if it's free, then gimme gimme!)
What I am saying, in light of every Bill Gates interview I have ever read, is that maybe Outlook 98 with service pack 1 can be considered the "latest version" of Outlook 98 for Macintosh. Perhaps Outlook 2000 (or was it 2001?) for the Mac is considered distinct in this circumstance.
There are many interviews of Bill Gates available where he discusses bugs in MS products. Check out Bill's Homepage and read some of his thoughts. In various entries you can find him addressing the subject in his own words. Or try, e.g. a less sympathetic source if you need to stoke your Anti-Gates dogma while he tells you that you have other choices than "to pay cash money and upgrade" to their current flagship product.
Like any good capitalist, his corporation is guided by the actions of the marketplace. Perhaps the last version of their product is too "big" and bloated to fit your needs, you are turned off by all of its nasty bugs... when most of the paying consumers respond by grabbing their ankles and asking for more features, more...
Okay, so I took the "shaft" metaphor too far. I blame my lack of sleep for lack of judgement. But I did stay pretty close to your points. Hopefully your eyes were opened. In exchange, I'll close mine.
goodnight
Just a nitpick...
"Craylink" is an SGI technology. As I understand, many SGI engineers were upset over that misnomer, even if it was better for marketing purposes. Well, that was the story, anyhow.
While the Craylink was used for the Onyx2/Origin(200/2xxx) series, they rechristened the interconnect for the Onyx/Origin 3xxx series. It is now called NUMAlink, referring to the ccNUMA architecure utilized by modern SGI systems.
I'd have to agree with the rest of your post, and add that whether long or short timeframes are involved, a ccNUMA style large unified memory is good for large datasets, whether the system has many or few CPUs. 64 bit architecture (64 bits for addressing memory) also comes in handy in such situations. Less data shuffling for huge datasets is a Good Thing.
From the Mojonation.net Technical overview:
Swarm Distribution: Mojo Nation breaks up the task of delivering content among many agents across the network, each of which contributes as much as it can to the collaborative effort -- even low-bandwidth, dial-up users can deliver a small portion of a requested resource. Speed and reliability are enhanced because several peers work together rather than one peer working alone.
It seems that MojoNation already implements such functionality. I seem to remember reading about a gnutella client that was working on this, but at the moment I can't remember which one. If not, it would be a great feature to have. Considering the big problem with gnutella, according to all of the technical reports, is the wasted bandwidth and the chatty protocol, any way to more efficently use the gnutella network is a big improvement.
Use an electronic simulator, like LabView! That would be pretty nifty.
Or maybe one of those Radio-Shack Breadboard kits.
Rights, by definition, are not to be given up. In practice, taking certain actions can justify the removal of some rights, but these rights should never be usurped by that actions of others. This includes declaring a state of war. In message #2314550 an AC points to the US gov't's track record of temporary suspension or rights during war time. I would also propose that many "temporary" measures enacted by the US government have become permanent despite the contrary intentions.
Ideally, there should be no temporary measures... the proper course of action should be determined during average times... for the United States, that has usually been peacetime. The reasonable privelgdes of Americans under any circumstances should be determined, then thet should be the standard we live by, regardless of declarations of war. From the terrorists point of view, we may have already been at war all along, and we just only became aware of that fact on Tuesday. If we legislate our freedoms under times of undue panic, we are left with unnacceptable results.
A secondary solution might be a "prevention of terrorism act" as mentioned by zmower in messge #2313628. Perhaps having measures that are only effective for one year that must be renewed yearly become void might help avoid the side effect of unwanted permanence.
"Well, here in the UK we have a piece of legislation called the Prevention Of Terrrorism act. This was seen as a temporary act and as such must be renewed in Parliament *every* year. I think it came into force in the early seventies and I can see it being renewed forever now."
"WHY are civil liberties important? Of course they're threatened in the wake of this terrorism--but so is the security of the nation."
While the second part of this statement seems more fruitful, I'll try to address this first part also.
I would gather that many of our American predecessors found civil liberties necessary to live as god would have us live. Maybe that is valid in a religious sense. Maybe that refers to our genetic predispositions. To me, it seems to be a similar question to "Why are we alive?" Whatever the multitudes of obscure reasons, that they are important is spelled out for us. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of hapiness" are important. For some reason, we as a species have a survival instinct. It seems to be related to our desire to be free. When we are healthy and vigorous (full of life), our freedom permits up to pursue happiness. I think it is more than "moral superiority" -- by definition, happiness is better than any state of non-happiness. It's just the way we're wired, happiness is the goal and the means of survival.
"To win the argument in favor of personal liberty over national security, it is necessary to state and defend the reasons why civil liberties are more important--not simply state their moral superiority as some assumed point."
A more revealing question would be, why is the security of the nation important? The answer is simple. In and of itself, it is not important. A nation is not a sentient being, it exists only for the benefit of its citizens. National security is only important as it relates to civil liberty. If all Americans lost their freedoms, their hapiness or their lives, their security as a nation becomes irrelevant. As long as the nation protects our personal liberties, our "life liberty and pursuit of happiness", it is valuable and deserving of security. The more personal liberty our national security costs, the less impotrant our national security is.
Of course civil liberties are good in and of themselves. Anarchy is at the end of the road, but not a possible goal, just like one strives for perfection that can't be reached. Anarchy means that society remains civil without the institutions of government or enforcable law being necessary. Government is a crutch, important only as long as humans refuse to share and act civil to one another. While the government exists, it needs and deserves the respect of all of its citizens. The ultimate goal of the ideal government would be the eventual dissolution of itself. Unfortunately in practice, governments tend to grow in power without proper check and balances. A government should not have more rights than the sum total of its citizens. The paradox is that government needs to be powerful enough to withstand other governments, but yielding enough to not exert undue power over its citizens.
I couldn't agree more with the name check. The biometrics may be feasible, if cost weren't a factor. Maybe a long term goal could be Biometric Identification in major airports, with the understanding that records aren't kept, only comparisons are made against known criminals. Restrict this to the airlines, as they require special consideration.
An airplane is significantly different than a train, bus, or even a van outside of a federal building. The explosive combination of jet fuel and potential gravitational energy is not innate to other forms of travel. I could even strap explosives to my body and go to a crowded public place with similar devastation, despite the train.
The difference is that once the airplane is off the ground, massive destruction is an innate property of most any deviation from standard procedure. To grant such a liability to a non-airborne craft would require extensive and contrived effort, e.g. undetected access to the depot for a "Speed" like rig of the bus. Even then, it takes less expertise than that of the Blue Angels to intercept a two dimentional craft, using a similar craft or even a helicopter. A commercial airplane is for all practicality a hermetically sealed box - there is no viable "backdoor" at 30,000 feet.
(The Blue Angels are highly trained stunt piliots that exhibit feats of synchronized flying -- but even they don't try to board each other's craft mid-flight. Without a breathable atmosphere.
In Speed, the vehicle couldn't stop moving, without a previously rigged bomb detonating. Most aircraft wouldn't need tampering to prove destructive.)
I would hate needing a passport to board a train. I take for granted that I don't need my gov't papers for free unrestricted travel within US borders, as I understand some nations require. I "richly enjoy" all of the liberties defined by our constitution. Any national tragedy is exactly the time that piece of hemp proves invaluable, and deserves the most respect. This is not the time to "temporarily" discount it.
My American prayer - to whichever god it may concern:
Dear Lord, protect us; from those who would protect the constitution at all costs, from those who would protect us at the cost of the constitution, and from your followers who may commit your will upon us. Protect us from zealotry, Christian, Muslim, national and foreign. Most of all, save the Agnostics, and the Citizens of the World.
Libranet does have a downloadable .iso, it is just a version behind. Their newest version, which must be paid for, includes such cutting edge components (at the time of its release) as Linux Kernel 2.4, Xfree86 4, the newest KDE et al.
.iso, I was able to find Libranet's (I think) 1.8.2 .iso, and install Debian from that. There was a time when Debian .iso's were quite hard to come by, as I didn't have a Linux box handy to run their rsync/cd image creator script. Now, tahnksfully, Progeny seems to have all kinds of tasty Debian and other open source .iso's available for download. Progeny has prety much superceded Libranet in my estimation in most significant capacities.
.iso is still very useful if you don't mind X11 3.3 and kernel 2.2. Its default install includes every window manager I've ever used, all configured fairly intelligently. The install is basically a standard Debian install, with some of the defaults not as intelligent, and a few options a bit more useful. Not at all comparable to, e.g. the Progeny GUI installer, but it does include recompiling the kernel as part of its standard install, which I haven't seen in any of the Linux distros I've used.
.dpkgs is using standard Debian mirrors, thus saving greatly on bandwidth.
In fact, when I was unable to find a Debian
regardless, the downloadable Libranet
The Progeny Debian Gui installer is great though, and definietly worthwhile even if you don't end up with as large an installed system as Libranet. I prefer to have a minimal system anyway, and only install components I plan to use.
As refreshing as the Progeny install is, it isn't quite as robust as I might like. Most of the time it will complete without any problems, but for those few systems that do have problems, error messasges aren't displayed. It seems that the "Congratulations on you successful install" message is always displayed, regardless of whether you have earned it.
As an example, try installing on a partition that doesn't have adequate space to complete the first stage install...
While choosing Progeny as the most likely to succeed does come quite naturally from their visibility and history with Debian, there are other Debian based OSes. Two general distros in non-English languages, and a router specific version, at least. That doesn't change the validity of your statement however.
As for proprietary packages, I can't image Xandros/corel doing such a thing, as that would likely cause conflicts with the standard Debian packages and dependancies. No other Debian-based distro has done that intentionally, and for very good reason. One of the benefits of using
I do wish Xandros the best of luck on picking up where Corel left off - They will most certainly need it.
I think you meant to say that with a command line interface, like BASH for instance, a creator type isn't useful. That is because there is not an equivalent to "double clicking" a document, so there is no infrastructure in place for automatically calling an external default (not necessarily) application to execute the document. That does not mean that a "creator" field can not be useful under "Linux", just not under current command line implementations.
:)
Under a GUI, "creator" like information can be very useful if properly utilized. It shouldn't be called a creator type though, that implies that the creating application should be the default application launched. This is a shortcoming of the MacOS implementation, especially considering Apple's emphasis on content creation. The tools for HTML generation and photo editing aren't well suited just for browsing same media. such problems have been solved on other systems.
While it is an understandable foible to add misguided reverence to a command line artifact along with the command line itself, it is highly shameful considering Apple's record of innovation in interface semantics. Should the cyclops put out one eye to better fit in with the blind? Why destroy a superior, if still insufficient file typing mechanism, for a clearly inferior solution? Because it's good enough for Windows?
Three letters cannot hold enough information to represent all of the distinct file types that are necessary in modern computing systems. Even Apple's four character types permuted with four character creators weren't enough, the limited space was running out. It is appalling that they exacerbated the situation by severing the superior system they had in place, instead of adopting or creating a superior system. BeOS adopted MIME types for use in their system, after determining that Apple style Type + Creator codes weren't sufficient. Why did Apple go backwards? Now the seemingly defunct BeOS has a better GUI than most curent systems, with the "creator type" situation nicely solved. Instead of having a distinct creator type, the MIME derived file types all have default applications associated with them. Thus, double clicking will usually open the desired program, and right clicking will show a list of all available applications that know how to open that type of file.
Thankfully, this one point is probably moot, as at least GNOME currently maintains (BeOS) Style MIME types. Such functionality is indeed most useful in a GUI environment, whether on top of Linux or any other Kernel. What would be really revealing is some benchmarks determining efficiency of MIME typing versus automatic type determiniation with magic numbers and file headers. I suspect that even if performance measures weren't clear, there would still be an advantage to having an up-to-date database of file types contained on the system.
Now if Gnome would actually make better use of them, I could finally start complaining about the other GUI enhancements Linux supported GUIs should steal from Be (If Apple doesn't smarten up first and steal them back
Although I generally agree with your wiewpoint, I have to point out that I have seen README type executable files on a small but significant amount of shareware programs.
The text file is usually distributed in an archive with the executable program, so that it can be hard to notice the custom icon.
So in conclusion, the best way to operate on Mac OS (not X) would be the standard power-user setup, list view with file details (Metadata) shown, and launch non execuatable documents by dragging them onto the applications. This allows maximum flexibility and control. Many Mac users use program launchers, floating palettes and toolbars containing their favorite apps for easy access. I usually just have aliases of my media viewing apps in a folder that can pop-up when I need it, then get out of site when I don't.
BTW, for non Mac users, an alias is like a soft link to an inode. Thus it behaves like a soft link except that isn't broken when the original changes locations (like a hard link).
Although I generally agree with your wiewpoint, I have to point out that I have seen README type executable files on a small but significant amount of shareware programs.
The text file is usually distributed in an archive with the executable program, so that it can be hard to notice the custom icon.
So in conclusion, the best way to operate on a Mac OS ( X) would be the standard power-user setup, list view with file details (Metadata) shown, and launch non execuatable documents by dragging them onto the applications. This allows maximum flexibility and control. Many Mac users use program launchers, floating palettes and toolbars containing their favorite apps for easy access. I usually just have aliases of my media viewing apps in a folder that can pop-up when I need it, then get out of site when I don't.
BTW, for non Mac users, an alias is like a soft link to an inode. Thus it behaves like a soft link except that isn't broken when the original changes locations (like a hard link).
I would say this is indeed very useful, if you have any Legacy UNIX machines still operating. Now their (in some cases) ancient software can be updated or bugfixed where they were previously unsupported. Similar programs, like grep, can be comprehensively compared for differences in functionality. They can also be generally compared for efficiency of code, and (in the case of GNU compatible licensing) even be possibly merged with their GNU equivalents.
This is, for many I'll guess, more than just symbolic.
And I'll bet that RMS feels damn fuzzy inside...
I never even expected to get past Uranus!
Last century? No way! What is Doom from, the Epoch? Marathon has up and down, a full third axis of technological wonderment! and how long has Marathon 3 (infinity) been out? Doom is just now catching up, baby... and it needs 3 mouse buttons to do it.
If that doesn't show Marathon's technological superiority, then I don't know what does!
Or Aleph1, suppose.
but how does the GeForce3 handle Marathon?
Let not forget the important issues.
Interesting question, but you posted it under a poor thread.
Slashdot really needs a positive moderation choice for interesting, on-topic questions.
AFAIK, anybody is allowed to make proprietary changes to GPL'ed software. The issue is that those changes cannot be redistributed unless they are also GPLed, which makes them completely open. This takes away the profit motive for redistributing your own changes. Thus, to redistribute your changes will likely benefit the community.
To answer you question, yes. The community would be harmed if you could make GLPed software proprietary. The GPL is intended to protect the community, not the author. There is no license I am aware of which prevents the creator of software from accessing her own code.
So I would be violating the copyright if I were to try to base a business model on the copyrighted works. There are plenty of instances of the copyright owner violating the author's wishes. (That's why Prince wasn't Prince for a while if I understand correctly.) Nobody should be able to wish away any freedoms I have in private, as what I do in private does not harm anybody. Not even Metallica.
It qualifies, but it is depricated. The Original BSD license, with the advertising clause is a workable license, but not workable as a model for other licenses.
XFree86 is recommended as a model for a non-copyleft (GNU) but still "free" license. This is not for legal or philisophical reasons, but because the popularity of the XFree86 project is most comparable to that of the BSD projects.
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Fortunately, Freenet would propagate the content towards the node that requests it. Eventually, the node would be sending 10,000 requests to the nearest node - itself. That would likely result in that node flooding itself with requests, and not likely affecting the system as a whole. Sure, this would likely contributed to the permanence of your content, but at what cost to the Service? For what they would charge you for the service, you'd probably be better off storing the content on a static web site if permanence is your goal. Or if you need distributed permanence, look into The Eternity Service.