Apple certainly could have used the Linux kernel and much of the GNU software rather than BSD. Which by the way, you are incorrect in stating that it was based on FreeBSD. Only with the newest darwin release (used by OS 10.2) is it actually based on FreeBSD code. Previously it was based on a much older branch of BSD and Apple brought in some features from FreeBSD.
In any case, the point is that if Apple had used Linux and GNU then they would have to release their modifications to GNU utilities and Linux under the GPL rather than taking BSD licensed code, modifying it, and releasing the changes under the more restrictive APSL. They would still have been completely free to run their own windowserver and other proprietary software on top of Linux.
What exactly is it about the GPL that seems to just scare the shit out of most commercial developers? Please quit spreading FUD about how we should all make our code "free in the truest sense of the word" under a BSD license. The arguments have been gone over several times, and the only thing I've ever gotten out of them is that as a free software developer I'm supposed to be a charity to everyone in the world. Sorry, that's not how it works for me-- I expect in return for showing you some of my code that you show me some of yours.
Well, not quite. An NSAutoReleasePool does not allocate a large region of memory and suballocate objects out of that. What an NSAutoReleasePool does is make it possible to avoid explicitly sending the release message for temporary objects.
For example, from Foo() I allocate an NSObject with [[NSObject alloc] init] and pass that as an argument to Bar() which takes ownership of it. However, I must then ensure that I release the object because Bar() is following good coding practices and retains it, so thus with alloc+retain it's reference count is now 2. So instead what I do is Bar([[[NSObject alloc] init] autorelease]) which allocates NSOjbect (with ref count one) initializes it, marks it for autorelease, and passes sends it to Bar() which retains it (ref count 2) and keeps a pointer to it (presumably it is a method of a class). Coming out of bar the ref count is now 2, and perhaps Foo() proceeds to do some other things. Presumably at some point higher up the call stack (or perhaps at the beginning of Foo()) an NSAutoReleasePool was allocated. At the corresponding exit point (either at the end of Foo() or the end of whatever higher up function) [whateverpool release] will be called. When the pool is released, it will call release on any objects it has been asked to take ownership of. At this point one of two things it true. Either the class that Bar() belongs to has already released the object and thus its reference count went back down to one, and now is going to zero (so bye-bye), or the class that Bar() belongs to has not released the object and doing this release merely brings the refcount back to one such that when the other owner releases the object, its refconut will be zero and it will be freed.
Sorry if that was confusing, but in reality it's really not. It also really helps out when you are coding functions that allocate ObjectA, then allocate ObjectB, then ObjectC, and then find out something is wrong and need to "roll back" to the begining. If you allocate an NSAutoReleasePool at the beginning, and autorelease everything you alloc then if you error out you can free the release pool and everything gets released. If you don't you can simply retain what you need and then free the autorelease pool.
Anyway.. what this guy is REALLY talking about is NSZone. NSZone allocates a chunk of memory which other objects will be allocated from. The caveat being that while the memory will be freed, the objects will not be properly destroyed. Now this guy was talking about holding C strings and the like, so this is not a problem. However, had he been holding some C++ or objective-C objects this would be a problem as none of the destructors/deallocators would ever be called.
I think what it all boils down to is that programmers need to read more code than they write and that we should really be getting Masters of Fine Arts in Programming. I completely agreed with what Dr. Gabriel said. Programming is about as much like building a bridge as writing poetry is. That is to say.. not much.
Going along with that thought, I think it should be pointed out that/EVERYONE/ here who programs in any language (but specifically C programmers, and ESPECIALLY C++ coders) needs to learn Cocoa and Objective-C. I imagine some of the C++ whiny bitches are going to continue to whine about how much easier and better C++ is, but for those of us who actually prefer to wrangle pointers, Objective-C is where it's at. It's like C with JUST enough object orientation, but not overdone in some committee like C++. Also, one should note that I do like C++ quite a bit, but sometimes there's too many provided ways to do things. With Objective-C, the provided ways are almost all good. In addition, like C or C++ you are not limited to doing it that way, it's just that Objective-C only makes it easy to do good things.
Think for example of wxWindows vs. Microsoft MFC. wxWindows is suprisingly similar to Cocoa (although wxWindows does not do ref counting so making sure that one and only one class ever owns an object can be problematic at times). MFC, on the other hand, is rather a bear to work with as Microsoft has written it such that an MFC programmer/can/ do things multiple ways, none of which work very well. Obviously this is a generalization, but I think the average MFC programmer will understand where I'm coming from here. That is, again, except for the whiny C++ and MFC bitches who can't figure pointers out. Go home!
Man.. back in the day the parent post would have been +5 funny. It's not a goatse.cx link, just a decent looking girl (being penetrated in an awfully strange position, but yes, it is porn after all). Besides, linking to CoolSweetGirls.com might be a tip-off that it is porn... just maybe
Please.... please... have a sense of humor once in a while.
The original comment follows (without the link, which originally went to an image on a porn site)
I actually tried and downloaded Mozilla 1.2.1 for Windows today. Having installed it on my computer, I tried going to some DHTML-based sites. However, I still keep getting the same error message as 1.2.0:(
For example:
this site won't work
Of course now the joke is completely ruined.. dickhead trolls and moderators
Re:wxWindows: the toolkit everyone should be using
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· Score: 3, Informative
Hmm.. all good points and all good questions, I was starting to think Slashdot had completely lost its touch after posting in the comments with 40+ porn trolls. Anyway...
You're right, there is nothing really wrong with using VB for what it is, a quick way to get something pushed out the door. I was at an MS developer conference (read:.NET sales pitch) the other day. Normally when I think VB programmer I tend to think someone who hasn't bothered to learn anything except VB and thinks that Microsoft is just great for giving them this RAD tool.
What I found out is that there are a lot of people programming in VB simply because under the time and budget constraints it makes sense compared with other programming toolkits. Sad to say it, the majority was the stereotypical VB programmer, but there were at least some people there who were genuinely interested in a better way to program. Microsoft.net does not seem to be the answer though.
To get back to your question. Yes, I do think that someone who is an expert VB programmer with a grasp of C and C++ can rapidly develop with wxWindows. I was talking with some people there about wxWindows, just trying to get the word out there about this great toolkit. Nicely enough, wxWindows actually/has/ a cross platform data layer, though I personally have not used it, many other people have.
I would suggest that you try wxWindows on something that is not immediately urgent. Obviously with any new toolkit you are going to have to get up to speed a bit. I noticed that setting controls up on a frame, sized properly and all, is just dead simple to code (by hand). However, if you are into the drag-n-drop form creation then you're in luck because there is one free software project (a bit limited from what I hear) and a commercial product (that everyone raves about) for creating forms. Even if you don't use one of those tools you will still be amazed at how easy it is to just code the GUI by hand.
For a bit of background, my most recent project was a rewrite of an existing program. When I first saw it, I said "I could rewrite/that/ in 2 weeks". And indeed I did have something that very closely resembled the existing MFC app in just a bit over two weeks. The many many months that followed was all polish. I added real curves and levels dialogs, a real settings dialog for the image processing utils, a powerful and good looking batch processing mode, and many many more things. But as I look back, my original estimate of 2 weeks (although in some part a reference to the Money Pit) was not too far off.
So in short, stuff that should be easy is easy. Stuff that is a bit more advanced is not too hard. Generally if you are talking about simple data forms applications then you're not doing anything highly advanced anyway, so I would definitely say once you get up to speed on wxWindows you'll be able to knock out applications just as fast or even faster than with VB.
Oh, and the help system totally rocks too. The wxWindows system uses a zip file containing html pages and special contents and index pages. Each zip file is a book, and you can load multiple books. If you want a more native help system you can drop in a different help controller and you will be able to use the normal Microsoft stuff.
As I said in the previous mail, the best way to get up to speed is to look at the samples. Generally I have found that the the whole front-end of your program has already been written for you if you use the sample code for reference. The back-end is obviously a program specific thing, although if you are churning out many similar programs, I'm sure you'll start making your own reusable classes for the backend. wxWindows has an RTTI system built-in so you can actually do REAL OO programming, and not the pseudo-OO that stock C++ provides.
Seriously.. check it out!:-)
wxWindows: the toolkit everyone should be using
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wxEmbedded Beta Released
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· Score: 4, Informative
I started using wxWindows about 10 months ago (January 2002). I was in the planning stages of a complete rewrite of an application (shameless plug) and had carte blanche to decide what toolkit and development environment I would be using.
After doing some fairly extensive research I came across wxWindows. I'll admit, I don't find the website too easy to navigate-- it seems too different from most other free software websites, but there is a lot of information there. One of the interesting things is that the documentation is GREAT. Normally you don't see detailed documentation like this in any open source or free software project, and many times not even in commercial products (think MFC). With that said, I'll admit that for some complex tasks the documentation is lacking. However, at that point you look at the code which is just absolutely beautiful.
You can tell that wxWindows was created by people who thoroughly understand OO programming, and more importantly understand the specifics of programming OO in C++. C++ is/not/ a toy language. Unlike some other toolkits or frameworks which attempt to hide "complexities" from the programmer, wxWindows exposes nearly everything. When using wxWindows you/WILL/ need to deal with pointers. However, every effort has been made to free memory when and how is appropriate. Some classes really are just reference counters (wxBitmap, wxImage, GDI Objects, etc.). Other classes have their own memory allocation/deallocation scheme. When dealing with window creation you simply use the new operator to allocate the window. Part of a window's constructor is a pointer to its parent. Parents will delete children.
There is no overall "garbage collector". Everything is done just as any reasonable programmer would expect it, and these behaviors are detailed in the documentation. wxWindows is the only toolkit I have seen designed with C++ in mind. Sure.. there is QT, but the Moc is a hack (/me ducks), and QT programming just doesn't hit the right nerve in my mind.
For those looking to get a quick start with wxWindows I'd say to first browse the documentation (especially the topic overviews) and get a feel for how wxWindows deals with things in general. Then grab wxWindows and do the standard configure business (might I suggest you install to its own prefix like/opt/wx). The main makefile does not build the samples. To build a sample, go into the build directory and run make from there. The samples are excellent. For one thing you will get a feel for how the general programming is done with wxWindows. You will be able to take a sample and use it as a starting point for your application. The samples are also great when you are having a problem that shows up in your app and you need a simple testcase. Just add some code to the appropriate sample and see what the behavior is.
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that if you have not tried wxWindows, you need to. Don't be put off by C++. Just because you have tried foobar C++ toolkit and thought C++ sucked does not mean wxWindows is the same way. I would even say it's not too much of a stretch that even a Visual Basic programmer could get accustomed to it so long as they actually had at least some grasp of C++ in general. This is especially true for those people who use VB simply because it is "faster and easier than C++" when what they really mean is that it's faster and easier than MFC (which it is). Once you see wxWindows and get to know what a real toolkit should be, you'll not want to use anything else.
While I respect your opinion that X11 is bad for PDAs I have to say I think you are mistaken. It's along the lines of saying TCP/IP is overkill for this and that. Some years ago everyone had their own proprietary protocols. But now you see everything running over at least TCP. And more and more you see things running over XML over HTTP over TCP etc... etc. Seems like a lot of overkill but in ways it has its advantages.
Aside from that, the simple fact is that wxWindows is in fact NOT limited to X11. The API is absolutely phenomenal. wxWindows can be made to run on anything that can display graphics without requiring changes to your application code. I really cannot say enough good things about wxWindows, but I plan to try anyway in a toplevel comment.
The record labels have been spurred to action by figures they find terrifying: The number of "units shipped" -- CDs sent to record stores or directly to consumers -- fell by more than 6 percent last year, and it's widely expected to fall 6 to 10 percent more by the end of 2002.
Those drops are already hitting the industry hard. Labels are laying off employees, ditching artists, slashing budgets for tours and videos, and combing their back catalogues for reissues that cost almost nothing to release.
So let me get this straight. Because they are supposedly losing money to file sharing (which lets say they are) they've had to ditch artists, slash budgets for tours and videos, and reissue music out of their back catalogues.
Now, consider the recent trends in music with many many really crappy bands being made by the record companies for the record companies (think N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, etc.) and also a number of not really all that good bands getting publicized to death. Now think about some of the music in their back catalogues (Pink Floyd, The Who, The Doors, Steve Miller Band, Santana, The Eagles, Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen, etc.. etc.. etc...).
Is the fact that people would rather buy good music than the crap the RIAA has been forcing down peoples' throats so surprising to the RIAA? Hell, if anything the supposed lost revenues seem to have made an improvement!
Unless you really know what you are doing I don't recommend building your own. What I can recommend is finding a computer shop that is willing to build to order. There are many reasons that you may not have thought of
Whether you build yourself or have a prebuilt system, here are some things to look out for:
First and foremost, have an adaquate power supply. Don't go buy the CompUSA special. CompUSA here actually does sell an Antec P/S and the specs on it are good. Don't ever go by the wattage. The Antec 330W supply outputs more current on every voltage line than the CompUSA 400W. Shop around, read the detailed specs, make sure you are getting plenty of current especially on 3.3 and 5 volt lines.
Secondly, you'll want a good motherboard. ASUS generally has a great name, although I have recently had to return an ASUS (possibly due to my violation of rule #1 though, but at least they did replace it). I have had really good luck with Gigabyte and know others who have. Gigabytes are also a bit cheaper than ASUS, I think you are paying a little bit for the ASUS name sometimes.
The CPU is now days probably the least important component in the system. AMD makes plenty of cheap processors that certainly perform very well. Intel makes some damn pricey processors that also perform well. Your choice.
Memory is another item you want to be rock solid. Don't skimp and buy the generic whatever the hell RAM. It's like $10 more for a name brand manufacturer's RAM with a warranty, get that.
Floppy.. they're about $15-$20 for the drive usually.... you'll probably want one for one reason or another, if for nothing else than Linux boot disks:-)
Optical drives (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-R(/W), DVD-R(/W)): It used to be I'd recommend to get a DVD drive for use as your primary CD-ROM and then get a CD-R/W for writing CDs only. Of course now with the advent of the DVD-R(/W) drives it makes more sense just to get one of these that can handle it all. However, if budget is tight then I guess you go with either DVD or CD-R/W... it's a shame too if that's the case because you really do want both.
Hard drive... Dunno what to say here. Lately I've been using Maxtors... although recently I purchased an 80GB model and noticed that it was really a quantum drive. I remember the deal with Quantum bigfoots being probably the worst hard drive ever made, but I think that their regular 3.5" drives were just fine. Western Digital used to be my favorite way back in the day, but I did have a lot of those crash which prompted the switch to Maxtor. Of course that is my experience, I'm sure someone is bound to have an opposite story. Again, though it may seem like a moot point since if your HD crashes you lose ALL your data (unless you keep backups) you still want to have a good 3yr warranty on the HD. All the WDs I had that crashed were replaced under warranty so at least I didn't lose all the data AND have to shell out cash for a new one.
There are other things like soundcards, modems, ethernet, whatever. I recommend buying a MB with ethernet port on it if possible, or buying an ethernet card with the system. Integrated sound generally sucks but does make configuration easier. Oh, BTW, don't turn on legacy audio support if you are installing Win2k... it causes hardware detection to cause an NMI (non-maskable interrupt).
The gist of it is that Linux is suited to many different types of devices. Windows CE is not by any stretch of the imagination "Open Source". And it is definitely not Free Software.
As another poster has mentioned what good is source that you can't even legally compile? The only purpose it serves is that if someone were to look at it for purposes of reimplementing parts of it correctly (e.g. for Wine) they'd get a big nasty fat lawsuit slapped on 'em by MS. No thanks. Couple this with the fact that you must sign up for an MS passport to get this stuff and thus they know who downloaded it you can rest assured that MS will most definitely go after anyone who releases rewrites of Windows code after having viewed this.
I've looked at your user info page, trying to find anything actually indicating that you are in fact Charles Petzold. At least I suppose you don't hide the fact that you work for MS. And if you really want to know why people want to use Linux for everything then start using it. Start programming with it. From the sounds of your other comments you have played with Linux programming but you seem to fail to understand the fundamental differences in architecture. That works both ways. I am writing a program right now for work and am really pissed about all this overlapped IO crap. Why isn't there just a damn "select()" call? Why can't everything be a file descriptor? What is this WaitForMultipleObjects crap they have tried to pass of as select but can't even because for all intents and purposes you really/HAVE/ to go multithreaded in some cases because you can't just add something to your GUIs main loop such as "when data is available to read from the pipe, return a message and process as usual". Or maybe there is but I sure as hell haven't found a way.
Anyway, enough ranting about the broken WinAPI for now. I really hope you find some time to actually use and program on a Linux system. You won't look back.
Running another X server is not going to waste resources.
When you start up another X server it has full control of the graphics card and thus the only resources you are using as RAM.
However, remember that the other X server is no longer speaking to the graphics card and thus is more than likely not running very much at all. Except I am sure it does still service X protocol requests, so it'll be doing some of that, but as far as blitting out to the screen I would think no.
So that would mean that most of its image is going to be swapped out so the only thing you are using is some swapspace.
Couple this with the advantage of being able to pause the game and then Ctrl-Alt-F7 to the other server and then Ctrl-Alt-F8 back I don't see the problem here.
You can always use the xinit command from within an xterm on your usual display (probably:0) and tell it to load up and X on:1 or whatever with a different config file and to start the client/usr/bin/quake3 or whatever.
I did this myself a lot except that NVs drivers tend to crash when switching. However I have found that the absolute latest drivers (1.0-2313) seem to work perfectly when doing this. However sometimes it was possible to do a Ctrl-Alt-F1 before hand, wait for the text screen to show up normally and then Alt-F[78] to whichever one you wanted to go to then. But eventually even that method would sometimes crash. New drivers seem to make this work right.
AOLs strategy is simple.. get $20+/month revenue from each and every subscriber from a steadily increasing number of subscribers.
What the hell is MSes strategy? The only thing MS seems to want is to monopolize. They don't even seem to necessarily want to directly make money. They just want every PC to run MS software. That is almost a/direct/ quote from Bill Gates himself, something like "A PC on every desk running Microsoft software".
I think AOL has a clear advantage here. MS is trying to play the our technology is better card. AOL is playing the our service is better card. 'Cept more and more people are starting to realize that MS's software is overpriced and generally sucks while at the same time more and more new computer users are signing up for AOL and most of the ones that already have AOL are keeping it. AOL has excellent brand loyalty. MS really doesn't. The only thing keeping MS everywhere is MS's monopoly.
Anyway... as for the "bigger picture" that is a load of crap. You don't make good money speculating on what the next development paradigm will be. You make good money by having loyal customers who give you money on a repeat basis. Wonder why people like free software? Because there isn't any of that crap about trying to come up with a development platform. MS has created that market for themselves to live in. Everyone else functions in the real world where you leave that sort of shit up to the academic world and make your money selling finished, working products (something MS has pretty much been unable to ever do).
Everybody who has posted this obviously didn't read it correctly. It is said soon after the author mentions an AOL product for Sony's PlayStation 2. Thus the sentence "Linux also runs the Sony product" means "Linux also runs AOL's Sony product" which I assume is factually correct seeing as how the product they are referring to is an AOL for the PS2 running Netscape under Linux.
So it seems AOL may actually have a method to its madness. It seems they are interested in buying up as many technologies as possible to drive their online subscribtion service.
People, this makes/so much/ business sense. AOL is in the business of getting repeated revenues. Every month they get $23+ from almost every subscriber. They offer a service that many computer users find usefull. Usefull enough that they are willing to part with over $20 a month for it while other ISPs tried to price compete and most are dead.
When AOL bought Netscape everybody groaned. JWZ left and everybody said good for him, fuck working for AOL. But AOL didn't care. They had no rush to get the new version of Netscape out. They didn't fall into the trap of trying to get as many people as possible to use their free (as in price) software like MS did with IE. No instead what they did is basically sat on it while they continued to make buckets of cash (did I mention revenue at over $20/month for almost every subscriber).
Now they've got a bunch of subscribers, mostly inexperienced computer users, who mostly use their computer for running AOL and probably MS Works (not Office, just Works, plus maybe plain old Word without the rest of Office). These are the people that are easy to move to a different OS. These are the people who don't care as long as they can get on AOL and they can type up some stuff in a word processor. It's never the OS that people care about, it's always the applications.
The only thorn in AOLs side is that all of these subscribers must have MS Windows and MS Internet Explorer to do this. But wait.. they bought Netscape a few years ago and do you think that reports of them using Netscape in some internal betas were just leaked mistakenly? Think again.. that was a big fuck-you to Microsoft. The only thing left is to replace Windows with something else. What worked before will work again... so go look for a company to buy. Let's see.. who has an OS with small but somewhat increasing market share and has the technical know-how to make it work right... hmm.. how about Red Hat. The people here saying they should have gone after Mandrake are forgetting that (I hate to say this and start a flamewar) Mandrake blows. Remember that article earlier about moving from RH6.2 to Mandrake 8 saying that the kernel 2.4 that Mandrake uses just wasn't stable for production use. RH is very active with this. RH knows their kernels and employs several developers who know what they are doing. I don't mean to say that Mandrake is a bunch of morons either. But from my experience Red Hat has had a more quality product (if even only slightly).
Also, to you people who think that AOL is gonna attempt some coup d'etat with MS... think again. Believe me they'll keep their current customers happy. But at the same time they'll hype the hell out of their new improved product that just boots you directly into AOL. Also, don't think they won't test this first. What do you think the whole PlayStation 2 thing is about. That looks to me as if it is blatantly a testbed to see how customers will respond to basically just running AOL on their computers.
AOL seems to me to be doing business the right way. Get lots of repeat customers and keep those customers happy and continue to get lots of repeat revenue. Also: diversify. Own as much different shit as you can. This will keep your profits stable. The company I am working for now (no it's not AOL) follows the diversification strategy. Any good company does. My dad has drilled this into me. He worked for an electric/gas utility company and always pointed out that the best thing they could do was keep it as both electric and gas because that means pretty much no matter what happens they got the bases covered. They also had a company which installed generators into places of business which wanted to generate their own power and not depend on the utility. Basically in direct competition with themselves but.. hmm, wait.. that means they get the money either way, especially considering they weren't just selling the product, but the expertise with maintaing it (on a recurring basis of course).;-)
Just remember, money and self-interest are not all bad. When balanced properly with ethics capitalism makes the world go 'round.
Back in the day I had a PCjr (my first computer). When I got it (used) it had an external floppy drive (2nd drive, original drive in the computer) both 360k 5.25". The PCjr floppy controller only supported one drive because it was a supposedly lower-cost version than the PC controller. So the whole kit consisted of (1)a replacement floppy controller, (2)a replacement ribbon cable that ran from the card to the existing internal drive and then out of the case to the back of the (3) external drive case. The external drive case contained a rather large transformer along with I think some diods (extremely basic 120VAC to +12,Earth,Earth,+5 voltages). Also mounted on the circuit board inside of this external case was a ribbon cable that connected to the drive mounted inside the case. The connector for the ribbon cable coming out of the PC to this thing was simply the edge of this board sticking out of the external case a slight bit (with an appropriate hole in the case).
Anyway, the bottom line is that you can very simply get a longer floppy cable, run it outside the computer case somehow. This kit accomplished this by basically filing down part of the case to leave a slit for the ribbon cable to fit through. You'll probably need to figure out a more creative way.
Of course you will need to supply power to the drive. Depending on how you can run cables out of the case, well, just run a power cable outside of it too. Or for a more professional solution actually buy an external 5.25" drive case with power supply. I am sure they exist although many of them probably have a SCSI setup. You ought to be able to find a plain one though.
But lets assume you don't want to do that. If you can get your hands on any parallel port floppy drive then it/should/ be usable as a generic parallel port to floppy adapter. I.e. even if it currently has a 2.88MB 3.5" drive it should work with a 5.25" drive except for the fact that the cable connectors are different (though the signals are the same).
Oh, one other thing, you mention that some of these disks were not from PCs. Hope you know how to read the filesystem on them. However some disks you just plain won't be able to read because the drive is different (i.e. Apple).
Sorry, I disagree with you. I definitely consider programming to be an art and at the same time I completely disagree with the "you can't write a bug free program".
The thing that makes programming an art is that there is a lot of freedom with coding. There are certain rules you must adhere to, but there are not many of these. There are certain models of programming such as OO or functional that you can choose from. That is a lot like the different styles of painting such as impressionist or realist, etc.
Computers are far enough advanced now where we have many high-level languages that can help with prototyping. Personally, I'd rather develop an object model by writing some class definitions in C++ than using some crap like Visio and diagramming everything. I have recently learned of Python and all I can say is.. damn.. nice language. I even took a crufty shell-script of mine and rewrote it in python as a tutorial for myself. It still has a few crufty pieces where it has seemed easier to stick with some shell code, but for the most part it is just way easier for me to understand.
Another thing is that I think people who view code as art generally dislike all of the methods shit you get with CS. Sure, a lot of it is excellent stuff, but only seems to formalize what any programmer worth his salt should already know. Some of it is just outright shit. Use of goto considered harmful? What kind of shit is that anyway. I have seen many a program where one simple goto has or would have made a huge difference in code readability. Of course a lot of the CS types can't handle that because they are locked into this mentality of high-level constructs. Even look at statements like "break;" in C. All it is is a neutered goto. And it's a real crappy thing too since a beginning programmer will forget which high-level constructs a break will jump out of. Of course anybody using goto to jump out of an if block needs his head examined anyway. And it is true also that sometimes putting some stuff in a function can help minimize a lot of the need for goto. But the bottom line is that there are many different ways to code.
A good programmer knows what he has available to him and will use it all appropriately. A bad programmer will have a subset of knowledge and overuse a bad model for his task because that's what he knows. I feel that some of the good programmers are going to emerge as this century's artists. There are a lot of parallels between a good artist and a good coder. Don't get stuck in any one frame of mind.. that is the surest path to becoming a crappy programmer.
Anyway, this is way too long, and I probably haven't made my point anyway, but whatever. I'd also like to say that your comment on mathematics not being art is also incorrect. The best mathematicians are more of the philsopher type. They have an open mind. That to me is what art is all about, creativity, open-mindedness. To me those are far better qualities than someone who has been fed a load of crap on engineering. And I think you should ask these people you know who write these excellent programs if they think what they do is at least somewhat of an art form. I have a strong feeling that they will say yes.
Hello! Great to see this being done. I am the former sysop of Beyond 2000. I notice that on the bbslist it is listed also as "Jake's Place" and that the years are only from 1994-1995.
The listing for Jake's Place is because for a while I let my cosysop (Jake Schroeder) run it as he pleased. The board was not Jake's Place for all that long, only very briefly. The listing as 1994-1995 is probably because that was when I was part of Fidonet. The BBS actually operated from around 1991 or so until about 1995 (partway into 1996 possibly). At that time I got an internet connection from a local ISP, Crown Net, and pretty much tied up the phoneline being connected to the net.
Also sometime towards the end of its life I had my WD 200 MB hard-drive crash and thus lost everything. I think I made a few feeble attempts to put it back up (and I think that may be when I had Jake run it for a while, though I can't quite remember exact details on that whole thing).
While I was probably not the youngest sysop in history I was born in 1980 and ran the BBS from 6th grade up until about 9th or 10th. My cosysop was also the same age.
If you want my input for the documentary please feel free to send email to dfe@tgwbd.org
Well, let me put it this way: when it all comes down to it a computer is a computer is a computer is really just a glorified calculator.
A PDA is simply a computer with far less memory-- both volatile (e.g. RAM) and non-volatile (e.g. a hard-disk or flash ROM), a far slower processor, and a far smaller screen, etc.
With any computer you need some sort of system in place that makes it easier to write applications and keep the system running. So many years ago we went from computers which started, ran a program, and stopped to computers which boot an operating system and run apps from there. So with any modern computer you need an OS. What exactly an OS is is somewhat hard to define. For our purposes lets say it is a kernel and other base services required to make using the device work as intended. For a PDA that's gonna be the kernel and some sort of API that allows programs to call into the kernel and also some sort of GUI interface for the PDA.
Anyway, enough background info. The gist of it is that PalmOS was designed with an extremely limited computer in mind. The specs for a PalmPilot are something like a 20Mhz Motorola Dragonball (IIRC a close relative of the 68x00 series used in Macs before the PowerPC days), about a MB or so of ROM and about a MB or so of RAM. Palm also made some serious design choices to account for this very limited configuration. For one thing, there is no memory protection at all, so if you have a rogue application you'll need to unscrew the top of your stylus and use it to hit the Reset button. For another thing it doesn't scale worth a shit. It's basically limited to the very very very low-end device. So while this was a benefit in getting a reasonably priced working product out the door and opening up everyone's mind to a completely new type of computer, it is really a liability now. From what I understand, Palm is completely rewriting PalmOS so they can make it work with more modern hardware.
WinCE was intended to be run on the more powerful PalmPC class of devices (renamed PocketPC due to lawsuits by Palm, Inc., dunno what the latest marketing name is now). Basically WinCE is a very very stripped down NT kernel. MS has even renamed it now (originally WinCE, then PocketWindows, now Windows XP embedded or something) to reflect that the newest release is a stripped down version of XP. Honestly, it is my understanding that Wince is really not that bloated. Now as you add features, you add code, but that's not necessarily bloat. Maybe feature-creep, but not bloat. Besides, it is up to the OEM to decide which features they include (well, to some extent like everything MS). All in all, Wince is not that bad of an OS from a technical standpoint.
As for Linux, definitely a very cool solution for a PDA maker. Basically you can take whatever pieces you need and leave the rest behind. For the most part more along the lines of Wince than PalmOS.
As far as doing what it was intended for, it's doing exactly what it was intended for, to manage the memory and provide services to applications. That's what an OS does. PalmOS does the same thing, manages memory and provides services to applications. It's just that PalmOS was specifically designed with a very specific set of requirements in mind. Like I said earlier, that has pros and cons.
One notable difference between Wince and Linux (well, other than the obvious ones) is that I have never seen Wince running on a Palm device, while Linux does. The only Palm that Linux will not run on is the original PalmPilot. All the newer palms (III onward) can be made to run Linux. That right there should tell you just how much you can strip it down to get just the bare essentials for a very limited device and still have all the advantages such as standard POSIX programming APIs (a BIG plus). Honestly, I would expect to see a lot more Linux based PDAs coming up, although I won't expect to see it advertised as such. The great thing is that Linux can be made to work just as well as PalmOS on that style device and will scale up a bit and work with more features on a PocketPC style device. One notable exception is that I have no idea what the deal with Graffiti is. That is I think about the only remaining reason why Palm dominates.
Anyway, it's late and definitely time to go to bed. It's been good posting some info for you (and whoever else cares to read it). Only downside that I see is that my original post in this thread got modded down a point for being overrated (i.e. from the default +1 to 0). Go figure, make an informative comment and get modded-down. On Slashdot??? NEVER!:-)
Could you please explain to me what the hell you were thinking in this post?
I can only assume that a) you are a troll (although I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and besides, I don't think this is the case), b) you have no idea what Linux is beyond knowing that a lot of people use it for servers and that some crackpots (like me) use it on their desktops, or c) you know what Linux is but can't figure out why anyone would use it on a PDA.
Anyway, let me get to the point. You may have heard that Linux is free/open-source software. This means the sourcecode is available for all to modify, play with, do whatever with (for the most part). Because of this, Linux lends itself well to running on a variety of devices. Anyone can take the source and port it to different architectures. Also because of this anyone can mix and match components and write some of their own to make Linux more suitable for a particular device.
For example, there is a long standing argument that having a GUI running on a server all the time is just plain silly. Most of the time no-one is going to be physically at the console. Also most of the time it is easier to remotely administer the machine (even from an office down the hall) than it is to go into the server room. Therefore having a GUI running is simply wasting resources. Linux allows you to do this. Windows does not. However, when you are running Linux as a desktop OS it rarely makes sense not to have a GUI running.
Now, when running Linux on a PDA not using a GUI would be quite cumbersome and I would agree that I couldn't understand why you would want to do this... assuming you want to use the device as a PDA. But here's where the flexibility comes in again. Why run X11 and something like GNOME/KDE or whatever that is intended for a desktop computer. That would be silly for a PDA. It would be better to have a simpler GUI that is easier to interact with. Linux allows this to happen.
Basically, the bottom line is that the term "Linux" seems to pretty much refer to any system using the Linux kernel. If you were to rephrase your question as "Could someone please explain the infatuation that everybody seems to have about running the Linux kernel on everything..." then you would realize that the Linux kernel is very well suited to the task, along with other parts of what makes up a Linux system. However, not all parts make sense as I described in the previous paragraph.
I sincerely hope that this clears this issue up for you and that you now understand why people try to make the Linux kernel run everywhere. And I sincerely hope that you weren't a troll because if you were that means I just spent the last 5-10 minutes of my life so you could get your jollies hoping someone would get pissed off.
Running two category 5e cables to every room is a good idea. Also, running at least one RG-6 grade coax cable to every room is a good idea, if not two. Fiber is a bit debatable at this point, especially since putting the ends on a fiber cable is a real bitch and the cable is very very fragile.
If cost is not an object at all and you want maximum expandibility for anything then run conduit. If you do that then regardless of what different types of cable may be encountered you can simply pull the cable through the conduit (assuming the conduit is large enough).
Another option would be one of the all-in-one cables that usually have two cat 5, two RG-6 and sometimes one or two fiber lines. Doing a preliminary search brings up smarthome.com which may be able to answer some of your questions and provide you with different types of cabling, including the all-in-one types.
The important thing is to run all the cable to a centralized wiring closet where you can put such things as ethernet switches, cable TV splitters, etc. Be SURE to run your cable TV this way. It's a hell of a lot easier to run cables if every cable going to every room ends in one centralized place. If they need to bring in more cable drops they can just run them into that centralized place and you can do any wiring or rewiring there. The same goes with conduit. If you run conduit just run it all to a central wiring closet and you can do everything from there.
Believe me, you want to be sure that you put high-quality RG-6 coax in. Digital cable/satellite TV requires high-grade coax and RG-6 is the way to go. There is one type which is even more high-grade which is RG-11, but you usually don't need that unless you are running a cable for many many hundreds of meters (very unlikely inside of a house).
Also on the coax front be sure to use good fittings. Brass is the way to go. I suggest something of the snap-n-seal variety, or a compression fitting. Installation of either of these types requires a special tool, but the signal will be much better than with the cheap-ass radio shack fittings crimped on with a pair of pliers.
Also, don't finish your basement. It's a basement, you're SUPPOSED to be able to see the inner-workings of the house. If it's just absolutely not acceptable to be seeing the water pipes or electrical or whatever when you look up at the ceiling in the basement then at least use a drop ceiling of some type. I highly recommend against a dry-wall ceiling in a basement. Usually the only reason a basement is finished is so that it can be included in the square footage of the house's finished areas which is really a cop-out because after all, it's a basement, not a real floor.
Well, I don't think the guy at kdhx.org will have to worry about kdhxfm88.org anymore since it has gone completely down. I guess too many people slashdotted it and probably wanted to view all of the content on the site:-).
Hehe, I knew someone would post that, but that is a half-truth.
Billy-boy stole his shit from Apple who in turn stole it from Xerox who in turn stole the whole concept of a mouse from someone on the east-coast. There are other comments about that in this story, so I'll leave it at that.
I was simply commenting on the things that Bill got his tech from directly. Not the full evolution of the GUI.
Oh -- my home network is on broadcasts (and NetBEUI!) too, so I didn't mean to imply that anyone was a dumbshit in that situation. I've seen the spec sheet for the original IBM product that begot NT 4.0 -- single segment, 25 computers max! So I figure it's perfect for your house nowdays... Don't do admin anymore, so I'll leave the AD stuff to the experts...
Oh, I didn't take any offense to it at all, hence the:-). Are you speaking of OS/2 Lanmanager? I wasn't aware it was spec'd for only 25 computers. The MS materials actually say up to 200. Personally I would say if you can't count them on your fingers you have too many. I guess IBM would basically say if you can't count them on your fingers and toes the you have too many.
I would say that if you have real Unix world admin experience, you'll be fine employment wise -- especially if you get an interview where you can discuss Unix kerberos versus ActiveDirectory with someone who knows his stuff. With no work experience, it will be tough -- just get your foot in the door and hope somebody sees that you are sharp. From what I hear, NT5 people are ratcheting up the bar and looking for ADSI (and other admin) scripting skills and other indicators that you can hold your own.
Unfortunately, that is the issue, no work experience, which is the reason for the MCSE in the first place, to get my foot in the door. Oh well, at least it'll be usefull for that.
And I will definitely go ahead and spend some of my own time learning ADSI. I agree, it would make sense that if you have a candidate that knows how to script that is a more valuable person than someone who doesn't know how to program at all. Fortunately I have been doing programming (starting in BASIC with DOS 2.1 on an IBM PCjr) since 1985 (5 yrs. old)
We are on module 10 right now... configuring printers.... ooh, this is difficult:-/
Anyway, at some point soon here I will have all this Win2K knowledge and can actually give a straight honest-to-god answer that YES, I/HAVE/ done Windows.
Well, it's good that you stated position that you don't know what you are talking about:)
:-) Well, actually classes have been pretty boring as most of the material has been like a "well, duh" for me considering I understand how to implement security policies in the general sense of the phrase.
As to other points -- the Resource Kit and the curriculum is pretty good if you can filter out the crap. It's shocking how many NT admins have never cracked open the resource kit -- it IS the Fucking Manual.
That is actually exactly what I was trying to say. The material is good save for some "gee whiz, look at this new feature" crap. The one that sticks out in my mind was the video covering how wonderful multi-monitor support in Win2K is. How that had anything to do with being a system administrator I am not sure other than it has everything to do with becoming a Microsoft marketroid.
MS designing your network -- This was supremely true with the old LanMan-based products that could heavily rely on autoconfiguration. Dumbshits could throw up an NT4 network and it would sorta hold itself together with broadcasts, not that that was optimal at all. However, this certainly isn't true with ActiveDirectory -- Somebody's has to be smart enough to make some decisions and see how it's put together. Furthermore, they are going to need to know scripting and automation to take advantage of what's there. That puts the Senior Admin price up in the same category as Unix admins.
Sorry, I should have clarified that. And yes, we did go over broadcast (though I think very few people understood this). And yes I do know about them as I use samba on a regular basis to share between my dad's PC and my mom's laptop along with my 3 *nix boxes. The windows machines actually connect to PoPToP since they are on the same network segment as the cable modem while the rest of my machines are on an internal net. Anyway, what I was trying to say was basically that the default accounts and groups simplify things a bit over having to create a full kerberos setup from scratch including figuring out how to add the computers into the database, etc. All done manually.
I think my goal at this point is to make a system like this for UNIX. I.e. clean up the documentation, use scripts or GUI (or preferably both) to automate things which should not require you to know the full internal workings of kerberos (although I strive to know this myself, but I am a true geek).
Dumbasses in MCSE courses -- Most of these people are trying to get a desktop support or call center job. Almost none of those get hired into server admin positions in this day and age.
However I am hoping that having MCSE on my resume will at least get the damn thing looked at and get me an interview at which point if the person interviewing me has a clue they should be able to figure out that I really do have the skills and not just the paper. Do you think this is a valid assumption? I guess worst case is I get stuck in an entry-level help desk position, but hey at least it's better than doing MSN tech support for $8.50/hr. And at least it gets my foot in the damn door at a decent company (if such a thing exists). Besides, I have to delude myself as I just dropped $10k on it.:-/
Well, I really don't know what to say here. For one thing, they mention it at the bottom of the article that this has been tried before but is not widely used. The reason it has not been widely used is because most people don't know about it. For example, people call in to MSN tech support wondering how to block sites and they are told to use Content Advisor which can be found in internet options under the tools menu or in the control panel. However AOL has put its content-blocking up-front in its interface because they felt it was an important option for their customers.
Now, if you think about this sytem, yes, people could lie about the content ratings. People could also rate themselves incorrectly because they don't think they are being objectionable. It's a very subjective thing. So I think for the most part this part of the system will fail because e.g. the author of a website advocating gay-rights may not find their content to be objectionable. And in reality, it really isn't unless they are describing a specific sexual act which I think the person rating the page would realize and rate it appropriately (one would hope). Note that the same would be true for a website describing any sexual act (homo/hetero/whatever you please).
The problem is that some parents want their kids to live in ignorance and like to cry that it should be legislated-- especially after watching the latest NBC/ABC/CNN/etc. report about the dangers of the internet.
So what intrigued me most was that the software would allow you to specify to receive blacklists from organizations that you trust. This is actually a really damn cool idea and I am surprised no-one thought of it before. That is, rather than by some prepackaged software with a prepackaged blacklist that may or may not follow what you want to allow your kids to see you can setup your software to point to several organizations that independently come up with blacklists.
On the software side of things it should be possible (and I would say desirable) to write free software which can utilize these lists (and I am speaking in the GNU sense of free software). This way you are absolutely certain that your program is not doing things it shouldn't be.
On the business side of things you can make money very easily simply by charging a very modest subscribtion fee for your blacklists. You can even create your blacklists by using other orgs blacklists. For example you could collect several blacklists from either non-profit or profit organizations (which presumably you may need to pay a license fee for) and then sell the easy collection of them as one master blacklist. You could even then allow parents to select which ones they would like to have combined into their personal blacklist.
Notice that this actually sounds like a real business model... i.e. charge people a recurring fee for a recurring service. Assuming the cost of creating the blacklists or licensing them from other orgs (i.e. your costs) are less than the total revenues you make from your subscribtions then using the basic profit=revenue-cost you make a profit. Go figure, an internet company making a profit.
This also has benefits as it creates a lot of competition. I.e. if your customers find out your blacklists are crappy and are blocking things they didn't ask for they will just go to one of your competitors. Creates incentive to actually run your business properly. This competition in turn is good for the economy. Damn, funny how when you think about it if everyone follows the basic rules of capitalism then everyone wins. Obviously this is a simplistic view of things but it does at least make sense (at least in my mind).
Feel free to beat me with a clue-stick (well, don't be that harsh, just post a reply) if you feel I or others would benefit from your opinion. That is to say if all you want to say is "censorship sucks" please go away. I hate censorship as much as the next guy, but the bottom line is that we need to make things as easy as possible for parents to control what their children view so the government doesn't step in and do it for us. And one can hope that the clued-in parents will say the hell with it, do what you want, if you don't know better it's your damn problem (that was my parents attitude). However note that very few parents would like their kids to see the goatse.cx pages and that is really what most parents want to prevent and why people are crying for filtering on the internet. If a self-rating system combined with blacklists from trusted organizations who provide open blacklists can do this without requiring government intervention then I am all for it.
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Apple certainly could have used the Linux kernel and much of the GNU software rather than BSD. Which by the way, you are incorrect in stating that it was based on FreeBSD. Only with the newest darwin release (used by OS 10.2) is it actually based on FreeBSD code. Previously it was based on a much older branch of BSD and Apple brought in some features from FreeBSD.
In any case, the point is that if Apple had used Linux and GNU then they would have to release their modifications to GNU utilities and Linux under the GPL rather than taking BSD licensed code, modifying it, and releasing the changes under the more restrictive APSL. They would still have been completely free to run their own windowserver and other proprietary software on top of Linux.
What exactly is it about the GPL that seems to just scare the shit out of most commercial developers? Please quit spreading FUD about how we should all make our code "free in the truest sense of the word" under a BSD license. The arguments have been gone over several times, and the only thing I've ever gotten out of them is that as a free software developer I'm supposed to be a charity to everyone in the world. Sorry, that's not how it works for me-- I expect in return for showing you some of my code that you show me some of yours.
What's your server's IP? I can arrange that.
Well, not quite. An NSAutoReleasePool does not allocate a large region of memory and suballocate objects out of that. What an NSAutoReleasePool does is make it possible to avoid explicitly sending the release message for temporary objects.
For example, from Foo() I allocate an NSObject with [[NSObject alloc] init] and pass that as an argument to Bar() which takes ownership of it. However, I must then ensure that I release the object because Bar() is following good coding practices and retains it, so thus with alloc+retain it's reference count is now 2. So instead what I do is Bar([[[NSObject alloc] init] autorelease]) which allocates NSOjbect (with ref count one) initializes it, marks it for autorelease, and passes sends it to Bar() which retains it (ref count 2) and keeps a pointer to it (presumably it is a method of a class). Coming out of bar the ref count is now 2, and perhaps Foo() proceeds to do some other things. Presumably at some point higher up the call stack (or perhaps at the beginning of Foo()) an NSAutoReleasePool was allocated. At the corresponding exit point (either at the end of Foo() or the end of whatever higher up function) [whateverpool release] will be called. When the pool is released, it will call release on any objects it has been asked to take ownership of. At this point one of two things it true. Either the class that Bar() belongs to has already released the object and thus its reference count went back down to one, and now is going to zero (so bye-bye), or the class that Bar() belongs to has not released the object and doing this release merely brings the refcount back to one such that when the other owner releases the object, its refconut will be zero and it will be freed.
Sorry if that was confusing, but in reality it's really not. It also really helps out when you are coding functions that allocate ObjectA, then allocate ObjectB, then ObjectC, and then find out something is wrong and need to "roll back" to the begining. If you allocate an NSAutoReleasePool at the beginning, and autorelease everything you alloc then if you error out you can free the release pool and everything gets released. If you don't you can simply retain what you need and then free the autorelease pool.
Anyway.. what this guy is REALLY talking about is NSZone. NSZone allocates a chunk of memory which other objects will be allocated from. The caveat being that while the memory will be freed, the objects will not be properly destroyed. Now this guy was talking about holding C strings and the like, so this is not a problem. However, had he been holding some C++ or objective-C objects this would be a problem as none of the destructors/deallocators would ever be called.
I think what it all boils down to is that programmers need to read more code than they write and that we should really be getting Masters of Fine Arts in Programming. I completely agreed with what Dr. Gabriel said. Programming is about as much like building a bridge as writing poetry is. That is to say.. not much.
Going along with that thought, I think it should be pointed out that /EVERYONE/ here who programs in any language (but specifically C programmers, and ESPECIALLY C++ coders) needs to learn Cocoa and Objective-C. I imagine some of the C++ whiny bitches are going to continue to whine about how much easier and better C++ is, but for those of us who actually prefer to wrangle pointers, Objective-C is where it's at. It's like C with JUST enough object orientation, but not overdone in some committee like C++. Also, one should note that I do like C++ quite a bit, but sometimes there's too many provided ways to do things. With Objective-C, the provided ways are almost all good. In addition, like C or C++ you are not limited to doing it that way, it's just that Objective-C only makes it easy to do good things.
Think for example of wxWindows vs. Microsoft MFC. wxWindows is suprisingly similar to Cocoa (although wxWindows does not do ref counting so making sure that one and only one class ever owns an object can be problematic at times). MFC, on the other hand, is rather a bear to work with as Microsoft has written it such that an MFC programmer /can/ do things multiple ways, none of which work very well. Obviously this is a generalization, but I think the average MFC programmer will understand where I'm coming from here. That is, again, except for the whiny C++ and MFC bitches who can't figure pointers out. Go home!
Man.. back in the day the parent post would have been +5 funny. It's not a goatse.cx link, just a decent looking girl (being penetrated in an awfully strange position, but yes, it is porn after all). Besides, linking to CoolSweetGirls.com might be a tip-off that it is porn... just maybe
Please.... please... have a sense of humor once in a while.
The original comment follows (without the link, which originally went to an image on a porn site)
Of course now the joke is completely ruined.. dickhead trolls and moderators
Hmm.. all good points and all good questions, I was starting to think Slashdot had completely lost its touch after posting in the comments with 40+ porn trolls. Anyway...
You're right, there is nothing really wrong with using VB for what it is, a quick way to get something pushed out the door. I was at an MS developer conference (read: .NET sales pitch) the other day. Normally when I think VB programmer I tend to think someone who hasn't bothered to learn anything except VB and thinks that Microsoft is just great for giving them this RAD tool.
What I found out is that there are a lot of people programming in VB simply because under the time and budget constraints it makes sense compared with other programming toolkits. Sad to say it, the majority was the stereotypical VB programmer, but there were at least some people there who were genuinely interested in a better way to program. Microsoft .net does not seem to be the answer though.
To get back to your question. Yes, I do think that someone who is an expert VB programmer with a grasp of C and C++ can rapidly develop with wxWindows. I was talking with some people there about wxWindows, just trying to get the word out there about this great toolkit. Nicely enough, wxWindows actually /has/ a cross platform data layer, though I personally have not used it, many other people have.
I would suggest that you try wxWindows on something that is not immediately urgent. Obviously with any new toolkit you are going to have to get up to speed a bit. I noticed that setting controls up on a frame, sized properly and all, is just dead simple to code (by hand). However, if you are into the drag-n-drop form creation then you're in luck because there is one free software project (a bit limited from what I hear) and a commercial product (that everyone raves about) for creating forms. Even if you don't use one of those tools you will still be amazed at how easy it is to just code the GUI by hand.
For a bit of background, my most recent project was a rewrite of an existing program. When I first saw it, I said "I could rewrite /that/ in 2 weeks". And indeed I did have something that very closely resembled the existing MFC app in just a bit over two weeks. The many many months that followed was all polish. I added real curves and levels dialogs, a real settings dialog for the image processing utils, a powerful and good looking batch processing mode, and many many more things. But as I look back, my original estimate of 2 weeks (although in some part a reference to the Money Pit) was not too far off.
So in short, stuff that should be easy is easy. Stuff that is a bit more advanced is not too hard. Generally if you are talking about simple data forms applications then you're not doing anything highly advanced anyway, so I would definitely say once you get up to speed on wxWindows you'll be able to knock out applications just as fast or even faster than with VB.
Oh, and the help system totally rocks too. The wxWindows system uses a zip file containing html pages and special contents and index pages. Each zip file is a book, and you can load multiple books. If you want a more native help system you can drop in a different help controller and you will be able to use the normal Microsoft stuff.
As I said in the previous mail, the best way to get up to speed is to look at the samples. Generally I have found that the the whole front-end of your program has already been written for you if you use the sample code for reference. The back-end is obviously a program specific thing, although if you are churning out many similar programs, I'm sure you'll start making your own reusable classes for the backend. wxWindows has an RTTI system built-in so you can actually do REAL OO programming, and not the pseudo-OO that stock C++ provides.
Seriously.. check it out! :-)
I started using wxWindows about 10 months ago (January 2002). I was in the planning stages of a complete rewrite of an application (shameless plug) and had carte blanche to decide what toolkit and development environment I would be using.
After doing some fairly extensive research I came across wxWindows. I'll admit, I don't find the website too easy to navigate-- it seems too different from most other free software websites, but there is a lot of information there. One of the interesting things is that the documentation is GREAT. Normally you don't see detailed documentation like this in any open source or free software project, and many times not even in commercial products (think MFC). With that said, I'll admit that for some complex tasks the documentation is lacking. However, at that point you look at the code which is just absolutely beautiful.
You can tell that wxWindows was created by people who thoroughly understand OO programming, and more importantly understand the specifics of programming OO in C++. C++ is /not/ a toy language. Unlike some other toolkits or frameworks which attempt to hide "complexities" from the programmer, wxWindows exposes nearly everything. When using wxWindows you /WILL/ need to deal with pointers. However, every effort has been made to free memory when and how is appropriate. Some classes really are just reference counters (wxBitmap, wxImage, GDI Objects, etc.). Other classes have their own memory allocation/deallocation scheme. When dealing with window creation you simply use the new operator to allocate the window. Part of a window's constructor is a pointer to its parent. Parents will delete children.
There is no overall "garbage collector". Everything is done just as any reasonable programmer would expect it, and these behaviors are detailed in the documentation. wxWindows is the only toolkit I have seen designed with C++ in mind. Sure.. there is QT, but the Moc is a hack (/me ducks), and QT programming just doesn't hit the right nerve in my mind.
For those looking to get a quick start with wxWindows I'd say to first browse the documentation (especially the topic overviews) and get a feel for how wxWindows deals with things in general. Then grab wxWindows and do the standard configure business (might I suggest you install to its own prefix like /opt/wx). The main makefile does not build the samples. To build a sample, go into the build directory and run make from there. The samples are excellent. For one thing you will get a feel for how the general programming is done with wxWindows. You will be able to take a sample and use it as a starting point for your application. The samples are also great when you are having a problem that shows up in your app and you need a simple testcase. Just add some code to the appropriate sample and see what the behavior is.
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that if you have not tried wxWindows, you need to. Don't be put off by C++. Just because you have tried foobar C++ toolkit and thought C++ sucked does not mean wxWindows is the same way. I would even say it's not too much of a stretch that even a Visual Basic programmer could get accustomed to it so long as they actually had at least some grasp of C++ in general. This is especially true for those people who use VB simply because it is "faster and easier than C++" when what they really mean is that it's faster and easier than MFC (which it is). Once you see wxWindows and get to know what a real toolkit should be, you'll not want to use anything else.
While I respect your opinion that X11 is bad for PDAs I have to say I think you are mistaken. It's along the lines of saying TCP/IP is overkill for this and that. Some years ago everyone had their own proprietary protocols. But now you see everything running over at least TCP. And more and more you see things running over XML over HTTP over TCP etc... etc. Seems like a lot of overkill but in ways it has its advantages.
Aside from that, the simple fact is that wxWindows is in fact NOT limited to X11. The API is absolutely phenomenal. wxWindows can be made to run on anything that can display graphics without requiring changes to your application code. I really cannot say enough good things about wxWindows, but I plan to try anyway in a toplevel comment.
So let me get this straight. Because they are supposedly losing money to file sharing (which lets say they are) they've had to ditch artists, slash budgets for tours and videos, and reissue music out of their back catalogues.
Now, consider the recent trends in music with many many really crappy bands being made by the record companies for the record companies (think N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, etc.) and also a number of not really all that good bands getting publicized to death. Now think about some of the music in their back catalogues (Pink Floyd, The Who, The Doors, Steve Miller Band, Santana, The Eagles, Billy Joel, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Bruce Springsteen, etc.. etc.. etc...).
Is the fact that people would rather buy good music than the crap the RIAA has been forcing down peoples' throats so surprising to the RIAA? Hell, if anything the supposed lost revenues seem to have made an improvement!
Unless you really know what you are doing I don't recommend building your own. What I can recommend is finding a computer shop that is willing to build to order. There are many reasons that you may not have thought of
Whether you build yourself or have a prebuilt system, here are some things to look out for:
First and foremost, have an adaquate power supply. Don't go buy the CompUSA special. CompUSA here actually does sell an Antec P/S and the specs on it are good. Don't ever go by the wattage. The Antec 330W supply outputs more current on every voltage line than the CompUSA 400W. Shop around, read the detailed specs, make sure you are getting plenty of current especially on 3.3 and 5 volt lines.
Secondly, you'll want a good motherboard. ASUS generally has a great name, although I have recently had to return an ASUS (possibly due to my violation of rule #1 though, but at least they did replace it). I have had really good luck with Gigabyte and know others who have. Gigabytes are also a bit cheaper than ASUS, I think you are paying a little bit for the ASUS name sometimes.
The CPU is now days probably the least important component in the system. AMD makes plenty of cheap processors that certainly perform very well. Intel makes some damn pricey processors that also perform well. Your choice.
Memory is another item you want to be rock solid. Don't skimp and buy the generic whatever the hell RAM. It's like $10 more for a name brand manufacturer's RAM with a warranty, get that.
Floppy.. they're about $15-$20 for the drive usually.... you'll probably want one for one reason or another, if for nothing else than Linux boot disks :-)
Optical drives (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-R(/W), DVD-R(/W)): It used to be I'd recommend to get a DVD drive for use as your primary CD-ROM and then get a CD-R/W for writing CDs only. Of course now with the advent of the DVD-R(/W) drives it makes more sense just to get one of these that can handle it all. However, if budget is tight then I guess you go with either DVD or CD-R/W... it's a shame too if that's the case because you really do want both.
Hard drive... Dunno what to say here. Lately I've been using Maxtors... although recently I purchased an 80GB model and noticed that it was really a quantum drive. I remember the deal with Quantum bigfoots being probably the worst hard drive ever made, but I think that their regular 3.5" drives were just fine. Western Digital used to be my favorite way back in the day, but I did have a lot of those crash which prompted the switch to Maxtor. Of course that is my experience, I'm sure someone is bound to have an opposite story. Again, though it may seem like a moot point since if your HD crashes you lose ALL your data (unless you keep backups) you still want to have a good 3yr warranty on the HD. All the WDs I had that crashed were replaced under warranty so at least I didn't lose all the data AND have to shell out cash for a new one.
There are other things like soundcards, modems, ethernet, whatever. I recommend buying a MB with ethernet port on it if possible, or buying an ethernet card with the system. Integrated sound generally sucks but does make configuration easier. Oh, BTW, don't turn on legacy audio support if you are installing Win2k... it causes hardware detection to cause an NMI (non-maskable interrupt).
Hope that helps you or someone else a bit
Please see my comment on this:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=25075&cid=2724 965
The gist of it is that Linux is suited to many different types of devices. Windows CE is not by any stretch of the imagination "Open Source". And it is definitely not Free Software.
As another poster has mentioned what good is source that you can't even legally compile? The only purpose it serves is that if someone were to look at it for purposes of reimplementing parts of it correctly (e.g. for Wine) they'd get a big nasty fat lawsuit slapped on 'em by MS. No thanks. Couple this with the fact that you must sign up for an MS passport to get this stuff and thus they know who downloaded it you can rest assured that MS will most definitely go after anyone who releases rewrites of Windows code after having viewed this.
I've looked at your user info page, trying to find anything actually indicating that you are in fact Charles Petzold. At least I suppose you don't hide the fact that you work for MS. And if you really want to know why people want to use Linux for everything then start using it. Start programming with it. From the sounds of your other comments you have played with Linux programming but you seem to fail to understand the fundamental differences in architecture. That works both ways. I am writing a program right now for work and am really pissed about all this overlapped IO crap. Why isn't there just a damn "select()" call? Why can't everything be a file descriptor? What is this WaitForMultipleObjects crap they have tried to pass of as select but can't even because for all intents and purposes you really /HAVE/ to go multithreaded in some cases because you can't just add something to your GUIs main loop such as "when data is available to read from the pipe, return a message and process as usual". Or maybe there is but I sure as hell haven't found a way.
Anyway, enough ranting about the broken WinAPI for now. I really hope you find some time to actually use and program on a Linux system. You won't look back.
Yeah, run however many copies of the VNC server on your Linux machine and have them use the VNC viewer.
It's a hell of a lot faster than X as well
If you feel really creative, do something with the vnc inetd patch but allow people to actually reconnect to an existing session.
If not just assign each of them a display number and all will be well.
Running another X server is not going to waste resources.
When you start up another X server it has full control of the graphics card and thus the only resources you are using as RAM.
However, remember that the other X server is no longer speaking to the graphics card and thus is more than likely not running very much at all. Except I am sure it does still service X protocol requests, so it'll be doing some of that, but as far as blitting out to the screen I would think no.
So that would mean that most of its image is going to be swapped out so the only thing you are using is some swapspace.
Couple this with the advantage of being able to pause the game and then Ctrl-Alt-F7 to the other server and then Ctrl-Alt-F8 back I don't see the problem here.
You can always use the xinit command from within an xterm on your usual display (probably :0) and tell it to load up and X on :1 or whatever with a different config file and to start the client /usr/bin/quake3 or whatever.
I did this myself a lot except that NVs drivers tend to crash when switching. However I have found that the absolute latest drivers (1.0-2313) seem to work perfectly when doing this. However sometimes it was possible to do a Ctrl-Alt-F1 before hand, wait for the text screen to show up normally and then Alt-F[78] to whichever one you wanted to go to then. But eventually even that method would sometimes crash. New drivers seem to make this work right.
Happy X-Free Release 420! :-)
AOLs strategy is simple.. get $20+/month revenue from each and every subscriber from a steadily increasing number of subscribers.
What the hell is MSes strategy? The only thing MS seems to want is to monopolize. They don't even seem to necessarily want to directly make money. They just want every PC to run MS software. That is almost a /direct/ quote from Bill Gates himself, something like "A PC on every desk running Microsoft software".
I think AOL has a clear advantage here. MS is trying to play the our technology is better card. AOL is playing the our service is better card. 'Cept more and more people are starting to realize that MS's software is overpriced and generally sucks while at the same time more and more new computer users are signing up for AOL and most of the ones that already have AOL are keeping it. AOL has excellent brand loyalty. MS really doesn't. The only thing keeping MS everywhere is MS's monopoly.
Anyway... as for the "bigger picture" that is a load of crap. You don't make good money speculating on what the next development paradigm will be. You make good money by having loyal customers who give you money on a repeat basis. Wonder why people like free software? Because there isn't any of that crap about trying to come up with a development platform. MS has created that market for themselves to live in. Everyone else functions in the real world where you leave that sort of shit up to the academic world and make your money selling finished, working products (something MS has pretty much been unable to ever do).
Everybody who has posted this obviously didn't read it correctly. It is said soon after the author mentions an AOL product for Sony's PlayStation 2. Thus the sentence "Linux also runs the Sony product" means "Linux also runs AOL's Sony product" which I assume is factually correct seeing as how the product they are referring to is an AOL for the PS2 running Netscape under Linux.
So it seems AOL may actually have a method to its madness. It seems they are interested in buying up as many technologies as possible to drive their online subscribtion service.
People, this makes /so much/ business sense. AOL is in the business of getting repeated revenues. Every month they get $23+ from almost every subscriber. They offer a service that many computer users find usefull. Usefull enough that they are willing to part with over $20 a month for it while other ISPs tried to price compete and most are dead.
When AOL bought Netscape everybody groaned. JWZ left and everybody said good for him, fuck working for AOL. But AOL didn't care. They had no rush to get the new version of Netscape out. They didn't fall into the trap of trying to get as many people as possible to use their free (as in price) software like MS did with IE. No instead what they did is basically sat on it while they continued to make buckets of cash (did I mention revenue at over $20/month for almost every subscriber).
Now they've got a bunch of subscribers, mostly inexperienced computer users, who mostly use their computer for running AOL and probably MS Works (not Office, just Works, plus maybe plain old Word without the rest of Office). These are the people that are easy to move to a different OS. These are the people who don't care as long as they can get on AOL and they can type up some stuff in a word processor. It's never the OS that people care about, it's always the applications.
The only thorn in AOLs side is that all of these subscribers must have MS Windows and MS Internet Explorer to do this. But wait.. they bought Netscape a few years ago and do you think that reports of them using Netscape in some internal betas were just leaked mistakenly? Think again.. that was a big fuck-you to Microsoft. The only thing left is to replace Windows with something else. What worked before will work again... so go look for a company to buy. Let's see.. who has an OS with small but somewhat increasing market share and has the technical know-how to make it work right... hmm.. how about Red Hat. The people here saying they should have gone after Mandrake are forgetting that (I hate to say this and start a flamewar) Mandrake blows. Remember that article earlier about moving from RH6.2 to Mandrake 8 saying that the kernel 2.4 that Mandrake uses just wasn't stable for production use. RH is very active with this. RH knows their kernels and employs several developers who know what they are doing. I don't mean to say that Mandrake is a bunch of morons either. But from my experience Red Hat has had a more quality product (if even only slightly).
Also, to you people who think that AOL is gonna attempt some coup d'etat with MS... think again. Believe me they'll keep their current customers happy. But at the same time they'll hype the hell out of their new improved product that just boots you directly into AOL. Also, don't think they won't test this first. What do you think the whole PlayStation 2 thing is about. That looks to me as if it is blatantly a testbed to see how customers will respond to basically just running AOL on their computers.
AOL seems to me to be doing business the right way. Get lots of repeat customers and keep those customers happy and continue to get lots of repeat revenue. Also: diversify. Own as much different shit as you can. This will keep your profits stable. The company I am working for now (no it's not AOL) follows the diversification strategy. Any good company does. My dad has drilled this into me. He worked for an electric/gas utility company and always pointed out that the best thing they could do was keep it as both electric and gas because that means pretty much no matter what happens they got the bases covered. They also had a company which installed generators into places of business which wanted to generate their own power and not depend on the utility. Basically in direct competition with themselves but.. hmm, wait.. that means they get the money either way, especially considering they weren't just selling the product, but the expertise with maintaing it (on a recurring basis of course). ;-)
Just remember, money and self-interest are not all bad. When balanced properly with ethics capitalism makes the world go 'round.
Back in the day I had a PCjr (my first computer). When I got it (used) it had an external floppy drive (2nd drive, original drive in the computer) both 360k 5.25". The PCjr floppy controller only supported one drive because it was a supposedly lower-cost version than the PC controller. So the whole kit consisted of (1)a replacement floppy controller, (2)a replacement ribbon cable that ran from the card to the existing internal drive and then out of the case to the back of the (3) external drive case. The external drive case contained a rather large transformer along with I think some diods (extremely basic 120VAC to +12,Earth,Earth,+5 voltages). Also mounted on the circuit board inside of this external case was a ribbon cable that connected to the drive mounted inside the case. The connector for the ribbon cable coming out of the PC to this thing was simply the edge of this board sticking out of the external case a slight bit (with an appropriate hole in the case).
Anyway, the bottom line is that you can very simply get a longer floppy cable, run it outside the computer case somehow. This kit accomplished this by basically filing down part of the case to leave a slit for the ribbon cable to fit through. You'll probably need to figure out a more creative way.
Of course you will need to supply power to the drive. Depending on how you can run cables out of the case, well, just run a power cable outside of it too. Or for a more professional solution actually buy an external 5.25" drive case with power supply. I am sure they exist although many of them probably have a SCSI setup. You ought to be able to find a plain one though.
But lets assume you don't want to do that. If you can get your hands on any parallel port floppy drive then it /should/ be usable as a generic parallel port to floppy adapter. I.e. even if it currently has a 2.88MB 3.5" drive it should work with a 5.25" drive except for the fact that the cable connectors are different (though the signals are the same).
Oh, one other thing, you mention that some of these disks were not from PCs. Hope you know how to read the filesystem on them. However some disks you just plain won't be able to read because the drive is different (i.e. Apple).
Sorry, I disagree with you. I definitely consider programming to be an art and at the same time I completely disagree with the "you can't write a bug free program".
The thing that makes programming an art is that there is a lot of freedom with coding. There are certain rules you must adhere to, but there are not many of these. There are certain models of programming such as OO or functional that you can choose from. That is a lot like the different styles of painting such as impressionist or realist, etc.
Computers are far enough advanced now where we have many high-level languages that can help with prototyping. Personally, I'd rather develop an object model by writing some class definitions in C++ than using some crap like Visio and diagramming everything. I have recently learned of Python and all I can say is.. damn.. nice language. I even took a crufty shell-script of mine and rewrote it in python as a tutorial for myself. It still has a few crufty pieces where it has seemed easier to stick with some shell code, but for the most part it is just way easier for me to understand.
Another thing is that I think people who view code as art generally dislike all of the methods shit you get with CS. Sure, a lot of it is excellent stuff, but only seems to formalize what any programmer worth his salt should already know. Some of it is just outright shit. Use of goto considered harmful? What kind of shit is that anyway. I have seen many a program where one simple goto has or would have made a huge difference in code readability. Of course a lot of the CS types can't handle that because they are locked into this mentality of high-level constructs. Even look at statements like "break;" in C. All it is is a neutered goto. And it's a real crappy thing too since a beginning programmer will forget which high-level constructs a break will jump out of. Of course anybody using goto to jump out of an if block needs his head examined anyway. And it is true also that sometimes putting some stuff in a function can help minimize a lot of the need for goto. But the bottom line is that there are many different ways to code.
A good programmer knows what he has available to him and will use it all appropriately. A bad programmer will have a subset of knowledge and overuse a bad model for his task because that's what he knows. I feel that some of the good programmers are going to emerge as this century's artists. There are a lot of parallels between a good artist and a good coder. Don't get stuck in any one frame of mind.. that is the surest path to becoming a crappy programmer.
Anyway, this is way too long, and I probably haven't made my point anyway, but whatever. I'd also like to say that your comment on mathematics not being art is also incorrect. The best mathematicians are more of the philsopher type. They have an open mind. That to me is what art is all about, creativity, open-mindedness. To me those are far better qualities than someone who has been fed a load of crap on engineering. And I think you should ask these people you know who write these excellent programs if they think what they do is at least somewhat of an art form. I have a strong feeling that they will say yes.
Hello! Great to see this being done. I am the former sysop of Beyond 2000. I notice that on the bbslist it is listed also as "Jake's Place" and that the years are only from 1994-1995.
The listing for Jake's Place is because for a while I let my cosysop (Jake Schroeder) run it as he pleased. The board was not Jake's Place for all that long, only very briefly. The listing as 1994-1995 is probably because that was when I was part of Fidonet. The BBS actually operated from around 1991 or so until about 1995 (partway into 1996 possibly). At that time I got an internet connection from a local ISP, Crown Net, and pretty much tied up the phoneline being connected to the net.
Also sometime towards the end of its life I had my WD 200 MB hard-drive crash and thus lost everything. I think I made a few feeble attempts to put it back up (and I think that may be when I had Jake run it for a while, though I can't quite remember exact details on that whole thing).
While I was probably not the youngest sysop in history I was born in 1980 and ran the BBS from 6th grade up until about 9th or 10th. My cosysop was also the same age.
If you want my input for the documentary please feel free to send email to dfe@tgwbd.org
Well, let me put it this way: when it all comes down to it a computer is a computer is a computer is really just a glorified calculator.
A PDA is simply a computer with far less memory-- both volatile (e.g. RAM) and non-volatile (e.g. a hard-disk or flash ROM), a far slower processor, and a far smaller screen, etc.
With any computer you need some sort of system in place that makes it easier to write applications and keep the system running. So many years ago we went from computers which started, ran a program, and stopped to computers which boot an operating system and run apps from there. So with any modern computer you need an OS. What exactly an OS is is somewhat hard to define. For our purposes lets say it is a kernel and other base services required to make using the device work as intended. For a PDA that's gonna be the kernel and some sort of API that allows programs to call into the kernel and also some sort of GUI interface for the PDA.
Anyway, enough background info. The gist of it is that PalmOS was designed with an extremely limited computer in mind. The specs for a PalmPilot are something like a 20Mhz Motorola Dragonball (IIRC a close relative of the 68x00 series used in Macs before the PowerPC days), about a MB or so of ROM and about a MB or so of RAM. Palm also made some serious design choices to account for this very limited configuration. For one thing, there is no memory protection at all, so if you have a rogue application you'll need to unscrew the top of your stylus and use it to hit the Reset button. For another thing it doesn't scale worth a shit. It's basically limited to the very very very low-end device. So while this was a benefit in getting a reasonably priced working product out the door and opening up everyone's mind to a completely new type of computer, it is really a liability now. From what I understand, Palm is completely rewriting PalmOS so they can make it work with more modern hardware.
WinCE was intended to be run on the more powerful PalmPC class of devices (renamed PocketPC due to lawsuits by Palm, Inc., dunno what the latest marketing name is now). Basically WinCE is a very very stripped down NT kernel. MS has even renamed it now (originally WinCE, then PocketWindows, now Windows XP embedded or something) to reflect that the newest release is a stripped down version of XP. Honestly, it is my understanding that Wince is really not that bloated. Now as you add features, you add code, but that's not necessarily bloat. Maybe feature-creep, but not bloat. Besides, it is up to the OEM to decide which features they include (well, to some extent like everything MS). All in all, Wince is not that bad of an OS from a technical standpoint.
As for Linux, definitely a very cool solution for a PDA maker. Basically you can take whatever pieces you need and leave the rest behind. For the most part more along the lines of Wince than PalmOS.
As far as doing what it was intended for, it's doing exactly what it was intended for, to manage the memory and provide services to applications. That's what an OS does. PalmOS does the same thing, manages memory and provides services to applications. It's just that PalmOS was specifically designed with a very specific set of requirements in mind. Like I said earlier, that has pros and cons.
One notable difference between Wince and Linux (well, other than the obvious ones) is that I have never seen Wince running on a Palm device, while Linux does. The only Palm that Linux will not run on is the original PalmPilot. All the newer palms (III onward) can be made to run Linux. That right there should tell you just how much you can strip it down to get just the bare essentials for a very limited device and still have all the advantages such as standard POSIX programming APIs (a BIG plus). Honestly, I would expect to see a lot more Linux based PDAs coming up, although I won't expect to see it advertised as such. The great thing is that Linux can be made to work just as well as PalmOS on that style device and will scale up a bit and work with more features on a PocketPC style device. One notable exception is that I have no idea what the deal with Graffiti is. That is I think about the only remaining reason why Palm dominates.
Anyway, it's late and definitely time to go to bed. It's been good posting some info for you (and whoever else cares to read it). Only downside that I see is that my original post in this thread got modded down a point for being overrated (i.e. from the default +1 to 0). Go figure, make an informative comment and get modded-down. On Slashdot??? NEVER! :-)
Could you please explain to me what the hell you were thinking in this post?
I can only assume that a) you are a troll (although I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and besides, I don't think this is the case), b) you have no idea what Linux is beyond knowing that a lot of people use it for servers and that some crackpots (like me) use it on their desktops, or c) you know what Linux is but can't figure out why anyone would use it on a PDA.
Anyway, let me get to the point. You may have heard that Linux is free/open-source software. This means the sourcecode is available for all to modify, play with, do whatever with (for the most part). Because of this, Linux lends itself well to running on a variety of devices. Anyone can take the source and port it to different architectures. Also because of this anyone can mix and match components and write some of their own to make Linux more suitable for a particular device.
For example, there is a long standing argument that having a GUI running on a server all the time is just plain silly. Most of the time no-one is going to be physically at the console. Also most of the time it is easier to remotely administer the machine (even from an office down the hall) than it is to go into the server room. Therefore having a GUI running is simply wasting resources. Linux allows you to do this. Windows does not. However, when you are running Linux as a desktop OS it rarely makes sense not to have a GUI running.
Now, when running Linux on a PDA not using a GUI would be quite cumbersome and I would agree that I couldn't understand why you would want to do this... assuming you want to use the device as a PDA. But here's where the flexibility comes in again. Why run X11 and something like GNOME/KDE or whatever that is intended for a desktop computer. That would be silly for a PDA. It would be better to have a simpler GUI that is easier to interact with. Linux allows this to happen.
Basically, the bottom line is that the term "Linux" seems to pretty much refer to any system using the Linux kernel. If you were to rephrase your question as "Could someone please explain the infatuation that everybody seems to have about running the Linux kernel on everything..." then you would realize that the Linux kernel is very well suited to the task, along with other parts of what makes up a Linux system. However, not all parts make sense as I described in the previous paragraph.
I sincerely hope that this clears this issue up for you and that you now understand why people try to make the Linux kernel run everywhere. And I sincerely hope that you weren't a troll because if you were that means I just spent the last 5-10 minutes of my life so you could get your jollies hoping someone would get pissed off.
Running two category 5e cables to every room is a good idea. Also, running at least one RG-6 grade coax cable to every room is a good idea, if not two. Fiber is a bit debatable at this point, especially since putting the ends on a fiber cable is a real bitch and the cable is very very fragile.
If cost is not an object at all and you want maximum expandibility for anything then run conduit. If you do that then regardless of what different types of cable may be encountered you can simply pull the cable through the conduit (assuming the conduit is large enough).
Another option would be one of the all-in-one cables that usually have two cat 5, two RG-6 and sometimes one or two fiber lines. Doing a preliminary search brings up smarthome.com which may be able to answer some of your questions and provide you with different types of cabling, including the all-in-one types.
The important thing is to run all the cable to a centralized wiring closet where you can put such things as ethernet switches, cable TV splitters, etc. Be SURE to run your cable TV this way. It's a hell of a lot easier to run cables if every cable going to every room ends in one centralized place. If they need to bring in more cable drops they can just run them into that centralized place and you can do any wiring or rewiring there. The same goes with conduit. If you run conduit just run it all to a central wiring closet and you can do everything from there.
Believe me, you want to be sure that you put high-quality RG-6 coax in. Digital cable/satellite TV requires high-grade coax and RG-6 is the way to go. There is one type which is even more high-grade which is RG-11, but you usually don't need that unless you are running a cable for many many hundreds of meters (very unlikely inside of a house).
Also on the coax front be sure to use good fittings. Brass is the way to go. I suggest something of the snap-n-seal variety, or a compression fitting. Installation of either of these types requires a special tool, but the signal will be much better than with the cheap-ass radio shack fittings crimped on with a pair of pliers.
Also, don't finish your basement. It's a basement, you're SUPPOSED to be able to see the inner-workings of the house. If it's just absolutely not acceptable to be seeing the water pipes or electrical or whatever when you look up at the ceiling in the basement then at least use a drop ceiling of some type. I highly recommend against a dry-wall ceiling in a basement. Usually the only reason a basement is finished is so that it can be included in the square footage of the house's finished areas which is really a cop-out because after all, it's a basement, not a real floor.
Anyway, that is my $0.02
Well, I don't think the guy at kdhx.org will have to worry about kdhxfm88.org anymore since it has gone completely down. I guess too many people slashdotted it and probably wanted to view all of the content on the site :-).
Hehe, I knew someone would post that, but that is a half-truth.
Billy-boy stole his shit from Apple who in turn stole it from Xerox who in turn stole the whole concept of a mouse from someone on the east-coast. There are other comments about that in this story, so I'll leave it at that.
I was simply commenting on the things that Bill got his tech from directly. Not the full evolution of the GUI.
Oh -- my home network is on broadcasts (and NetBEUI!) too, so I didn't mean to imply that anyone was a dumbshit in that situation. I've seen the spec sheet for the original IBM product that begot NT 4.0 -- single segment, 25 computers max! So I figure it's perfect for your house nowdays... Don't do admin anymore, so I'll leave the AD stuff to the experts...
Oh, I didn't take any offense to it at all, hence the :-). Are you speaking of OS/2 Lanmanager? I wasn't aware it was spec'd for only 25 computers. The MS materials actually say up to 200. Personally I would say if you can't count them on your fingers you have too many. I guess IBM would basically say if you can't count them on your fingers and toes the you have too many.
I would say that if you have real Unix world admin experience, you'll be fine employment wise -- especially if you get an interview where you can discuss Unix kerberos versus ActiveDirectory with someone who knows his stuff. With no work experience, it will be tough -- just get your foot in the door and hope somebody sees that you are sharp. From what I hear, NT5 people are ratcheting up the bar and looking for ADSI (and other admin) scripting skills and other indicators that you can hold your own.
Unfortunately, that is the issue, no work experience, which is the reason for the MCSE in the first place, to get my foot in the door. Oh well, at least it'll be usefull for that.
And I will definitely go ahead and spend some of my own time learning ADSI. I agree, it would make sense that if you have a candidate that knows how to script that is a more valuable person than someone who doesn't know how to program at all. Fortunately I have been doing programming (starting in BASIC with DOS 2.1 on an IBM PCjr) since 1985 (5 yrs. old)
We are on module 10 right now... configuring printers.... ooh, this is difficult :-/
Anyway, at some point soon here I will have all this Win2K knowledge and can actually give a straight honest-to-god answer that YES, I /HAVE/ done Windows.
Well, it's good that you stated position that you don't know what you are talking about :)
:-) Well, actually classes have been pretty boring as most of the material has been like a "well, duh" for me considering I understand how to implement security policies in the general sense of the phrase.
As to other points -- the Resource Kit and the curriculum is pretty good if you can filter out the crap. It's shocking how many NT admins have never cracked open the resource kit -- it IS the Fucking Manual.
That is actually exactly what I was trying to say. The material is good save for some "gee whiz, look at this new feature" crap. The one that sticks out in my mind was the video covering how wonderful multi-monitor support in Win2K is. How that had anything to do with being a system administrator I am not sure other than it has everything to do with becoming a Microsoft marketroid.
MS designing your network -- This was supremely true with the old LanMan-based products that could heavily rely on autoconfiguration. Dumbshits could throw up an NT4 network and it would sorta hold itself together with broadcasts, not that that was optimal at all. However, this certainly isn't true with ActiveDirectory -- Somebody's has to be smart enough to make some decisions and see how it's put together. Furthermore, they are going to need to know scripting and automation to take advantage of what's there. That puts the Senior Admin price up in the same category as Unix admins.
Sorry, I should have clarified that. And yes, we did go over broadcast (though I think very few people understood this). And yes I do know about them as I use samba on a regular basis to share between my dad's PC and my mom's laptop along with my 3 *nix boxes. The windows machines actually connect to PoPToP since they are on the same network segment as the cable modem while the rest of my machines are on an internal net. Anyway, what I was trying to say was basically that the default accounts and groups simplify things a bit over having to create a full kerberos setup from scratch including figuring out how to add the computers into the database, etc. All done manually.
I think my goal at this point is to make a system like this for UNIX. I.e. clean up the documentation, use scripts or GUI (or preferably both) to automate things which should not require you to know the full internal workings of kerberos (although I strive to know this myself, but I am a true geek).
Dumbasses in MCSE courses -- Most of these people are trying to get a desktop support or call center job. Almost none of those get hired into server admin positions in this day and age.
However I am hoping that having MCSE on my resume will at least get the damn thing looked at and get me an interview at which point if the person interviewing me has a clue they should be able to figure out that I really do have the skills and not just the paper. Do you think this is a valid assumption? I guess worst case is I get stuck in an entry-level help desk position, but hey at least it's better than doing MSN tech support for $8.50/hr. And at least it gets my foot in the damn door at a decent company (if such a thing exists). Besides, I have to delude myself as I just dropped $10k on it. :-/
Well, I really don't know what to say here. For one thing, they mention it at the bottom of the article that this has been tried before but is not widely used. The reason it has not been widely used is because most people don't know about it. For example, people call in to MSN tech support wondering how to block sites and they are told to use Content Advisor which can be found in internet options under the tools menu or in the control panel. However AOL has put its content-blocking up-front in its interface because they felt it was an important option for their customers.
Now, if you think about this sytem, yes, people could lie about the content ratings. People could also rate themselves incorrectly because they don't think they are being objectionable. It's a very subjective thing. So I think for the most part this part of the system will fail because e.g. the author of a website advocating gay-rights may not find their content to be objectionable. And in reality, it really isn't unless they are describing a specific sexual act which I think the person rating the page would realize and rate it appropriately (one would hope). Note that the same would be true for a website describing any sexual act (homo/hetero/whatever you please).
The problem is that some parents want their kids to live in ignorance and like to cry that it should be legislated-- especially after watching the latest NBC/ABC/CNN/etc. report about the dangers of the internet.
So what intrigued me most was that the software would allow you to specify to receive blacklists from organizations that you trust. This is actually a really damn cool idea and I am surprised no-one thought of it before. That is, rather than by some prepackaged software with a prepackaged blacklist that may or may not follow what you want to allow your kids to see you can setup your software to point to several organizations that independently come up with blacklists.
On the software side of things it should be possible (and I would say desirable) to write free software which can utilize these lists (and I am speaking in the GNU sense of free software). This way you are absolutely certain that your program is not doing things it shouldn't be.
On the business side of things you can make money very easily simply by charging a very modest subscribtion fee for your blacklists. You can even create your blacklists by using other orgs blacklists. For example you could collect several blacklists from either non-profit or profit organizations (which presumably you may need to pay a license fee for) and then sell the easy collection of them as one master blacklist. You could even then allow parents to select which ones they would like to have combined into their personal blacklist.
Notice that this actually sounds like a real business model... i.e. charge people a recurring fee for a recurring service. Assuming the cost of creating the blacklists or licensing them from other orgs (i.e. your costs) are less than the total revenues you make from your subscribtions then using the basic profit=revenue-cost you make a profit. Go figure, an internet company making a profit.
This also has benefits as it creates a lot of competition. I.e. if your customers find out your blacklists are crappy and are blocking things they didn't ask for they will just go to one of your competitors. Creates incentive to actually run your business properly. This competition in turn is good for the economy. Damn, funny how when you think about it if everyone follows the basic rules of capitalism then everyone wins. Obviously this is a simplistic view of things but it does at least make sense (at least in my mind).
Feel free to beat me with a clue-stick (well, don't be that harsh, just post a reply) if you feel I or others would benefit from your opinion. That is to say if all you want to say is "censorship sucks" please go away. I hate censorship as much as the next guy, but the bottom line is that we need to make things as easy as possible for parents to control what their children view so the government doesn't step in and do it for us. And one can hope that the clued-in parents will say the hell with it, do what you want, if you don't know better it's your damn problem (that was my parents attitude). However note that very few parents would like their kids to see the goatse.cx pages and that is really what most parents want to prevent and why people are crying for filtering on the internet. If a self-rating system combined with blacklists from trusted organizations who provide open blacklists can do this without requiring government intervention then I am all for it.