I can't believe this. Slashdot is now repealing stories???? What happened to the Dihydrogen monoxide story! That stuff is dangerous, see The Dihydrogen Monoxide Website for the full story!
Yes, I know this is offtopic for this story, but the fact that Slashdot repealed such an important story is unbelievable!
Did anyone save the link to the story on Slashdot? If so, post a reply to this!
I thought I was the only one with font corruption problems. Personally, I use an nVidia TNT2 Ultra, but 2 of my friends have an ATI Rage 128 and the fonts always get screwed up. I tried disabling part of the accelleration (mentioned in the man page that sometimes a certain part of the accelleration causes font corruption) but that didn't help at all.
Anyone got a solution to this problem (or is it finally fixed in the XFree version 4 betas)?
Into the kernel go: only mode-setting, memory-management and an interface to the hardware pipelines for rendering.
That sounds good in theory, but I think that having half of the graphics subsystem in kernel space and half outside is too much overhead. With that we now need to constantly switch from user to kernel code and back.
First of all, let's try to agree on a few things, if you don't agree with these, then the solution won't make much sense.
Younger children (i.e. elementary students) should not even know what pornography is, let alone be viewing pornography, especially in a library.
Older children (i.e. middle school) probably have seen their dad's Playboys (or their friend's dad's Playboys) and are in their adolescence. These children are usually old enough to start making basic decisions, and should be intelligent enough not to view pornography in a public library
Young adults (i.e. high school) are probably buying Playboys already without ID. These kids should also be intelligent enough not to view pornography in a library
Adults (i.e. those of us who are capable of making our own decisions-- in the US that means 18 and above) should not be viewing pornography at a libary terminal
So, having defined the basic age groups, I'll go into a little more detail. The younger children should be given a "white-list" of sites to go to. They should also be presented with a simple interface of relevant sites. I am suggesting sites that are directly related to research. Stuff like online card-catalogs and other community related sites. However, it is ultimately up to the parent to decide if and when their younger child is ready for the net. When accompanied by a parent, children should be able to view any site they want. When parents give the OK, children should be able to view any site any time.
Above that young impressionable age, everyone should be allowed unrestricted access to the internet. However, by unrestricted I do not mean not checked in any way. I would suggest a system whereby a page that has questionable content (such as XXX harcore titty-fuck go here) should not be loaded, but instead a message stating "The content you are about to view may not be appropriate for viewing at the library. Furthermore, some content may prevent you (or try to prevent you) from using the back button or even the close button to leave the site. If you are stuck in this situation, please minimize all windows and contact a librarian for assistance. At your own discretion, you may (link)view the website(/link).
I know this seems strange, but it allows the user to decide if the page is appropriate. It is also very helpful in mentioning that it may not be possible to exit the site. In fact, the software could probably check for nasty javascript and stuff like that. Note that this software does NOT block any content, but merely warns that it may not be appropriate and that it may try to trap you into the site. A library patron could always ask the librarian for assistance upon seeing this message.
Feel free to reply with questions or comments about this, I personally feel like it would be a good idea, but would like some other input (kind of like an open source idea development process)
Actually, you can try the LinModem site for information and preliminary code for getting your winmodem to do neat stuff under Linux.
There is a bit of code for Lucent based modems allowing you to do full duplex audio. There is also some code for a CL-MD5620DT (Cirrus Logic) which includes code for modem emulation.
What needs to be done is this:
Some sort of device for the modem which would allow it to be completely controlled (as in pick up the phone, hang up, send out this audio stream, receive an audio stream).
A modem emulation package with support for v.34, v.90 and all the other good standards.
Currently all of this is done in user-space. It would definitely be better to do #1 in kernel space with interrupts instead of polling.
There is already a modem emulator with 14.4 speed and DTMF dialing capability. The only thing it really needs is a bit more work to do v.90 and everything.
If Lucas doesn't want to release Star Wars on DVD that is too bad. It really doesn't matter how many people refuse to buy it-- Lucas won't be affected. But I would strongly suggest against wasting your money on a crappy VHS version of a movie that wasn't all that good anyway. I would actually buy it if it was coming out on DVD, but if VHS is going to be the only release format, forget it.
Actually, you can make profit off of GPL too. Not just the obvious support of the code. Being author you are the most qualified individual to offer the support. If you write the code entirely and place it under GPL, there is nothing in the GPL that says you (the original owner) can't place that code under another license. Once you do so, it has basically been forked. That means that you CAN NOT place anyone elses enhancements made to the GPL version into your non GPL code. You can do what ever you want to the stuff you write. But nothing has to be forced under the GPL.
You most certainly can take other peoples mods to your code provided you have them assign the copyright for the mod to you. Or have them license the mod to you under an X11 or modified-BSD style license as well as the GPL.
That would let you use their modification in your proprietary fork as well. I am sure not many people (except die hard GPL fanatics) would care about a small change. Now with a larger change they could reasonably demand royalties or their patch is GPL only.
Now who says RMS doesn't want people to make money. Just think, if it was under X11 or modified-BSD license, then people would have sent in the patch agreeing to let you sell it without compensating them. That would be great for you, the original author turned capitalist pig[1]. But that would be bad for someone making a sizable modification to your software. And that begs the question: Would someone make a sizable modification knowing you could turn around and sell it?
Personally, I am okay with that. But if you are concerned about putting food on the table, the GPL actually protects the programmers rights even better than a BSD license, because with the GPL, if you fork a proprietary version, you'll be paying me royalties if you want my patch in your proprietary code.
Is this the true spirit of the GPL? Well, in a way yes, it protects the author of the code, much more so than BSD or X11 could hope to accomplish. Is this RMS's idea of the GPL? I don't know, I am not RMS (Or IANRMS for those acronym crazy freaks).
Clarifications:
I firmly believe in the capitalist system, I mean, come on, I am even arguing that using the GPL could actually be more capitalist than using the BSD or X11 (for the author of code that is, not necessarily the original author though).
Okay, readline is under the regular old GPL instead of the LGPL.
Let's say I write a program that uses readline. Unfortunately for me, I must GPL that program. This is an example of the agenda of the FSF to make ALL software free software. It does not mean that Stallman suddenly owns your code, but it does mean that you must keep your code open. This is definitely an example of restricting freedom, but let's look at the flip side.
Let's say I write a program based on some LGPL library. In that case then I do not have to GPL my code. But I am using the work of someone else, but that someone else chose to allow me to use their library. That seems fair though, if the person writing the library was okay with people using it in non-GPL programs that is fine. Especially if it's a fairly standard type of library (like a GUI toolkit or something).
It all depends on the wishes of the library author, which IMO it should. Let's say I write some sort of specialized library.. for a bad example I am going to use a 3d rendering library. I LGPL my code instead of GPLing it. Some company makes billions off of a 3d game that is a very thin program around my library. I would be pretty pissed (mostly out of jealousy and greed) but damnit I would have every right to be, they used my work to make their money and I am not getting any cut of it. First of all, that would be shitty of someone to do that, but you gotta realize that people are evil, so someone would. So you should GPL that library (and maybe hang on to the copyright so you can also sell a non-GPL version to some company for use in that 3d game).
In my opinion, that fits halfway okay with the agenda of the FSF. You still have free access to the code, but you can at least negotiate with proprietary companies if you want to. Of course, part of the terms could be that they could not modify the library unless they actually modified the GPL version of it. And hey, that would be fine, you want to remain proprietary, well, sorry, you are gonna have to at least give some of your work back. Though that is still less restrictive than a lot of proprietary library licenses.
NT does use the El-Torito format and shows up as a hard-disk. Of course it shows up as a VERY SMALL hard disk because as soon as you kick into protected mode you can't see it (since it's basically hacking INT 13 to emulate an HD).
Basically what the NT CD does is instead of those 3 floppies you get a small virtual hard-disk on the CD and you tell it which drivers you need and it loads them then starts the kernel.
Right now at least with RH 6, RH is still emulating a floppy drive and just using their 1st boot disk as the image. It would probably be a better idea to emulate a hard-drive so that you wouldn't need other disks for weird SCSI adapters (you could just put the modules for ALL the SCSI adapters on the hard-disk image). That is (again) exactly what NT does.
I was thinking about a bootable game CD myself. I think it'd be a VERY cool idea, the only problems I would see is that you need somewhere to save games. I suppose floppies would work, or maybe allow you to mount a partition and save files in some directory would work too.
Hmm.. actually, the more I think about it, the more this becomes a good idea. Imagine: Software like the old days where you just put the disk in, and turned on the computer!
Dude.. the prices aren't outrageous, if you are doing work for less then you are the one who is getting ass raped.
$60/hr is actually a GREAT price for computer work, assuming the tech working on it is halfway decent, which I suppose isn't true at most Best Buy stores.
Wintergreen Computers (local store in NW Indiana) charges $120/hr and they pretty much suck from what I've seen. I see a lot of computers come in that Wintergreen had "upgraded". A guy came in 'cause his fax software wasn't working right. Turns out the dumbasses took out a USR Courier because they couldn't get it to play nice with Windows (it was not plug-and-play, it had jumpers). They replaced it with some winmodem piece of crap.
So anyway, you wanna see ass-rape.. THAT is ass-rape.
In general though, I have noticed that working on an hourly basis tends to make me feel more temporary. I am part-time and all only working like 10-20 hours a week, so hourly definitely makes sense. But that fscking time-clock is annoying, especially the one I use. It won't let you punch in early and won't let you leave late. It used to be open for computer techs (which I am) but they put us on stricter scheduling now.
Anyway though... When doing freelance computer work (or anything like this, even plumbers, electricians and all that) it's usually better to get an idea of how much it is going to cost you to do certain jobs and charge by the job. People are really reluctant to give up $60/hr for "General computer labor" (which is actually a good price) but a "Well, I can install that hard-drive for $50.00" usually makes it easier to swallow. Incidently, that is how Best Buy (where I work) prices computer labor.
Anyway, I'd much rather get paid a salary and have a set of tasks to do than get paid hourly and treated like a grunt helper. Of course since I am a full-time student and this is part time work, hourly is about the only thing that makes sense.
Remember that though, hourly makes you feel like you are temporary, or part-time, or a grunt. Those are not the kind of feelings you want your workers to have. But I can't say that working hourly is bad, it is definitely the right solution for a company like Best Buy.
Environmentalism and Dr. Seuss are not distinct themes.
The Lorax was a Dr. Seuss character who builds a factory that makes something out of some type of plant. The Lorax eventually exhausts the natural resources (the plant) and emits too much smog, etc.
It is a very good story, you should (re)read it sometime. One of my professors read it in class to show an example of allegory.
If you are interested in similar stories, you can try something like Gulliver's Travels (wonder if Yahoo got its name from the book, or if they just didn't spell "Yee-haw" correctly).
My knee-jerk reaction is to say "Oh (deity), one more FUD tactic for people to use against Linux."
After reading a few comments, I think that there may be a realization that if China, a very large state with scarce resources, is using Linux successfully, maybe it would be a good idea for the US, a very large state with abundant resources, to use Linux so that resources that would otherwise go to a proprietary system, could go into a system that is already endorsed by the academic world.
The US does have a histroy of condemming communism and anything like it, but then borrowing the good ideas for its own use. While welfare is not an ideal solution, when people were starving the dole helped at least until government work could be provided. NOTE: FDR despised the dole, he wanted government work programs. Nationalizing work is definitely a socialist ideal, but unlike the communist implementation (where a military state forces nationization) the implementation in the US was to vote (albeit indirectly) for nationalization when it is necessary.
Hopefully the US government will realize that it is better off not depending on proprietary systems such as Windows, Novell, Solaris, MacOS, and others. The US government would be much better off if it followed China's lead and spent my money (yes, I pay taxes, so it's my money) hiring good system administrators and using open solutions from the academic world.
And then we'd make a high speed bus that the CPU can easily interface with, and since we don't want all of our devices hanging outside the computer, we could put it on the motherboard.
Umm.. ever hear of SCSI ?
You gotta figure if it's fast enough for a hard-drive it oughtta be fast enough for almost anything. And you can have multiple SCSI busses and put, say, a hard-drive and a wide CD-ROM and maybe a wide video capture (if such a thing exists). And then another bus for the lower speeds like normal CD-ROMs and Zips and Scanners, printers, etc.
Of course SCSI does seem to be the standard that never happened on PCs.. mostly because of the prohibitive cost of cables. When you need cables with 50 to 68 wires in them (and don't tell me only 25 are connected, good cables have 25 return wires so that there is less impedence on the ground signal. This is the reason USB/Firewire/etc. was invented: They are high-speed serial busses, and thus require fewer wires, but parallel busses will always be faster just because you can do high-speed on 16 wires instead of 1 (or even 8 instead of 1 is still great).
I remember reading some info on a GNOME website about how to write cross platform apps better. What you really should do is write the core functionality as a seperate library. For instance, lets say you are writing an ICQ program (actually, this is what I am doing, but nevermind). What you need to do is write a generic library that is event-driven. That is, if data is waiting on a socket, do something, or if the user has sent the connect command start the connection process, etc.
I suggest writing it with a cheapie CLI first, but be warned: it is way too easy to write a CLI application that is not event-driven, try to keep that in mind and design around user events not around your programs code.
Both QT and GTK can be sent a file descriptor to wait on. When it "goes off" it will send a signal and you can do some quick processing. Remember to keep your functions/methods short. If you need to wait on something else then you need to let GTK/QT take over the event loop again and they will let you know when the something else comes in.
Remeber that you do not run an iterative loop. QT and GTK both have their own loops. And while it is possible to write your own loop to wait for stuff and call gtk_main_iteration() or something like that in the loop, it's a bad idea because more than likely what you want to wait on can already be waited on by GTK or QT.
If you want to port this to a Windows platform, you can also do so, but I believe you will run your own loop in Windows. Also, the CLI version will need to have its own event loop to wait on stuff (think the UNIX select system call).
I know it seems like a daunting task, but it will create a better program with fewer bugs because it will make you think about what you are doing. Take a look at the micq or gicq source for a very bad example. micq is essentially a command line app ONLY (and it does some dirty crap with structures instead of properly packing data, but that's another story all together). Gicq is based on micq and is a very bad hack trying to get micq to work with gtk. Instead of adding the file descriptors into GTK's select loop, the author decided instead to run iterations of gtks loop and do his own select (probably to avoid substantial modification to his existing codebase that he borrowed).
If you decide to write your app this way, it will be a much less buggy, more polished app, and will have the distinct advantage of being able to drop in a different front-end when you feel like it.
Of course, it has the distinct disadvantage of taking much longer to write.
It was a 28.8 back when the 28.8 standard had just been finalized.
It got upgraded to 33.6 when the 33.6 standard was finalized.
They added caller ID and distinctive ring while there were no new standards to add.
They added x2 (and I got it for free even because I registered for the enabling key while they were free).
Of course it was also a $700 modem... But if anyone remembers BBSes, they probably also remember that most of the good ones had these modems.. why? because they cost $250 for sysops (and I had a good BBS back then).
Of course the modem is for "Demonstration purposes only, not for resale". Like I would ever want to sell it, I'm kind of attached to it now.
Oh.. and it's external too (I like the lights).
As far as connection speeds go, I *ALWAYS* get greater speed than with a 33.6.
Also, don't forget that what your OS says the modem has connected at is total BS, it is constantly changing speeds to accomodate line conditions.. Load up minicom -o and type in ATIn where n is somewhere around 10 and see what speed it achieved.
I'd just like to point out something that one of my (CS) professor's mentioned. "Computer Science != Computer Tech." CS is the study of programming and engineering, where effecient algorithms and all of the science and math behind them makes a difference.
A student interested in computers does not necessarily make the best CS candidate. For instance, an MIS (or IT) degree is much less interested in the abstract math and science behind computers, and more interested in the actual applications of the technology.
The article was a bit vague on exactly which field was declining, but it doesn't surprise me, considering tech jobs are quickly becoming something that cheap foreign labor can do. If you really want to ensure your career future, don't be content knowing how to code, go on to get an MS and learn more about the design process instead of throwing yourself into the herd while you are still wet behind the ears just after getting your BS.
Of course all of that should be taken w/ a grain of salt, since I am not even completely sure what I would do with a CS degree. But it does at least show that you had the willingness to complete your schooling instead of being tempted away by jobs that may prevent you from learning what you really need to know.
Gee.. I always love how people defend certain distros and then bitch when they don't come with c libraries that are up to spec.
Outdated distros give Linux a BAD NAME. I was talking with a professor of mine about considering using Linux and her response was something to the effect of libc5 vs. glibc incompatibilities.
I am sorry to say it folks, but IMHO, libc5 is extremely outdated and we need to get rid of it ASAP. We are now on glibc-2.1 which has some nice features (one of which is better pty support).
I understand that not everyone wants the most cutting-edge stuff on their system, but in case you haven't noticed, there have been some major changes including kernel-2.2.x and glibc-2.1 and the release of GNOME-1.0 (which still needs work, but I'm glad it's official).
Red Hat's latest distro is glibc2.1 based, has the nice new ptys, has gnome included and a bunch of Really Cool Shiznat . Starbuck has a few problems, so I'd probably wait on a production machine, but it is definitely clear (and should be extremely obvious) that the future of Linux is kernel-2.2 and glibc-2.1 (well DUH!).
One of the things I hate about redhat is that you cannot choose to not install libc5 (although you can remove it later if nothing depends on it). However, chances are some stupid ass binary-only POS is libc5 based (ARGH! WP is a good example) so you'll probably have your libc5 compatibility libs around for a while.
And BTW.. RedHat works just fine being glibc based.. why is slack still in the damn dark ages.
Is it just me, or does someone else think this guy should find a different line of work..
1. "That is a really dumb idea" - Great.. thanks for telling me. Try something like "Given factor A and factor B it does not appear to be in AOLs best interest to implement this plan" and NOT "Oh.. that's a stupid idea."
2. The whole intel chip thing. - Excuse me.. doesn't Linux run on ARM's and PPCs and Alphas and m68ks and a bunch of other thins??
Methinks this guy is very good at spreading FUD (and I hate to mudsling him, but Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt all seem to be prevelant in his comments).
Dude.. you are seriously missing out on one of the coolest things about Red Hat. RPMs are a great way to keep track of what is on your system. Red Hat has done a really good job of putting everything in/usr/(...) so that when you install something with a normal configure script that puts it in/usr/local/(...) you can see what you have installed and what was an RPM. It also means that if you "upgraded" a program by installing the newer version from source, that it won't get overwritten by an RPM that is trying to possibly "upgrade" to an older version (example: installing Netscape from it's.tar.gz, it's a good idea to remove the RPM and install netscape in/usr/local/netscape so that if you ever upgrade Red Hat it won't overwrite that installation and you can quickly remove the older rpm if necessary).
The best thing to do, IMHO, is to make an RPM of everything you install. Sometimes you can find one in the contrib section. By far, the best method that I have found for building RPMs is to create a new RPM group and setgid rpm every directory from/usr/src/redhat on down. Also allow writes to/var/tmp by the rpm group. Then you can build RPMs without being root, because it "installs" them in/var/tmp/program-root/(...) instead of in/(...).
I really need to get a good book on RPMs and learn some more, but I already love the simplicity that RPM provides when it comes time to install and uninstall packages. doing "rpm -e packagename" is a lot easier than "rm/usr/local/bin/file1/usr/local/bin/file2" (...etc...). And it's really a lot easier than anything MS has ever come up with or will ever come up with.
For those of you who are debian fans, I'd really like to know some more about how.debs compare with rpms and stuff. That doesn't mean I want a lot of flames, but it'd be nice to know why people are many times as enthusiastic about.debs as I am about.rpms.
Linux Mandrake has a set of kernel-2.2.3 RPMs available. My only hard-drive is through my aic7xxx SCSI adapter. All you need to do is install the RPMS (that's install.. NOT upgrade) for the new kernel, run mkinitrd (Apparently scsi_mod is compiled into the mandrake kernel, so you don't need to use with-scsi-modules). edit/etc/lilo.conf to allow you to boot linux and oldlinux (or whatever), run lilo and reboot. I'll probably put a kernel 2.2.5 RPM up soon if Mandrake hasn't already done it, check my website.
I think a lot of people would agree that it really should be GNU/Linux, but even those people agree that GNU/Linux is too much to say.
That is the true freedom of free software. It can be called anything anybody wants to call it, as long as the source code is there.
Even stuff like Solaris runs better with GNU tools.. remember: "Got a broken *NIX tool, fix it by replacing it with a GNU version."
In fact, the only piece of GNU software which I don't like is Emacs (sorry, just prefer VI). The great thing about GNU is that anyone can use it for anything as long as they don't try to call it, or derivatives of it, their own. They can however call it anything else they want, even "Linux".
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe this. Slashdot is now repealing stories???? What happened to the Dihydrogen monoxide story! That stuff is dangerous, see The Dihydrogen Monoxide Website for the full story!
Yes, I know this is offtopic for this story, but the fact that Slashdot repealed such an important story is unbelievable!
Did anyone save the link to the story on Slashdot? If so, post a reply to this!
Thank you,
I thought I was the only one with font corruption problems. Personally, I use an nVidia TNT2 Ultra, but 2 of my friends have an ATI Rage 128 and the fonts always get screwed up. I tried disabling part of the accelleration (mentioned in the man page that sometimes a certain part of the accelleration causes font corruption) but that didn't help at all.
Anyone got a solution to this problem (or is it finally fixed in the XFree version 4 betas)?
That sounds good in theory, but I think that having half of the graphics subsystem in kernel space and half outside is too much overhead. With that we now need to constantly switch from user to kernel code and back.
At leasts that's my opinion (I could be wrong).
First of all, let's try to agree on a few things, if you don't agree with these, then the solution won't make much sense.
So, having defined the basic age groups, I'll go into a little more detail. The younger children should be given a "white-list" of sites to go to. They should also be presented with a simple interface of relevant sites. I am suggesting sites that are directly related to research. Stuff like online card-catalogs and other community related sites. However, it is ultimately up to the parent to decide if and when their younger child is ready for the net. When accompanied by a parent, children should be able to view any site they want. When parents give the OK, children should be able to view any site any time.
Above that young impressionable age, everyone should be allowed unrestricted access to the internet. However, by unrestricted I do not mean not checked in any way. I would suggest a system whereby a page that has questionable content (such as XXX harcore titty-fuck go here) should not be loaded, but instead a message stating "The content you are about to view may not be appropriate for viewing at the library. Furthermore, some content may prevent you (or try to prevent you) from using the back button or even the close button to leave the site. If you are stuck in this situation, please minimize all windows and contact a librarian for assistance. At your own discretion, you may (link)view the website(/link).
I know this seems strange, but it allows the user to decide if the page is appropriate. It is also very helpful in mentioning that it may not be possible to exit the site. In fact, the software could probably check for nasty javascript and stuff like that. Note that this software does NOT block any content, but merely warns that it may not be appropriate and that it may try to trap you into the site. A library patron could always ask the librarian for assistance upon seeing this message.
Feel free to reply with questions or comments about this, I personally feel like it would be a good idea, but would like some other input (kind of like an open source idea development process)
Dave.Actually, you can try the LinModem site for information and preliminary code for getting your winmodem to do neat stuff under Linux.
There is a bit of code for Lucent based modems allowing you to do full duplex audio. There is also some code for a CL-MD5620DT (Cirrus Logic) which includes code for modem emulation.
What needs to be done is this:
Currently all of this is done in user-space. It would definitely be better to do #1 in kernel space with interrupts instead of polling.
There is already a modem emulator with 14.4 speed and DTMF dialing capability. The only thing it really needs is a bit more work to do v.90 and everything.
Dave.
If Lucas doesn't want to release Star Wars on DVD that is too bad. It really doesn't matter how many people refuse to buy it-- Lucas won't be affected. But I would strongly suggest against wasting your money on a crappy VHS version of a movie that wasn't all that good anyway. I would actually buy it if it was coming out on DVD, but if VHS is going to be the only release format, forget it.
You most certainly can take other peoples mods to your code provided you have them assign the copyright for the mod to you. Or have them license the mod to you under an X11 or modified-BSD style license as well as the GPL.
That would let you use their modification in your proprietary fork as well. I am sure not many people (except die hard GPL fanatics) would care about a small change. Now with a larger change they could reasonably demand royalties or their patch is GPL only.
Now who says RMS doesn't want people to make money. Just think, if it was under X11 or modified-BSD license, then people would have sent in the patch agreeing to let you sell it without compensating them. That would be great for you, the original author turned capitalist pig[1]. But that would be bad for someone making a sizable modification to your software. And that begs the question: Would someone make a sizable modification knowing you could turn around and sell it?
Personally, I am okay with that. But if you are concerned about putting food on the table, the GPL actually protects the programmers rights even better than a BSD license, because with the GPL, if you fork a proprietary version, you'll be paying me royalties if you want my patch in your proprietary code.
Is this the true spirit of the GPL? Well, in a way yes, it protects the author of the code, much more so than BSD or X11 could hope to accomplish. Is this RMS's idea of the GPL? I don't know, I am not RMS (Or IANRMS for those acronym crazy freaks).
Clarifications:
- I firmly believe in the capitalist system, I mean, come on, I am even arguing that using the GPL could actually be more capitalist than using the BSD or X11 (for the author of code that is, not necessarily the original author though).
Dave.Okay, readline is under the regular old GPL instead of the LGPL.
Let's say I write a program that uses readline. Unfortunately for me, I must GPL that program. This is an example of the agenda of the FSF to make ALL software free software. It does not mean that Stallman suddenly owns your code, but it does mean that you must keep your code open. This is definitely an example of restricting freedom, but let's look at the flip side.
Let's say I write a program based on some LGPL library. In that case then I do not have to GPL my code. But I am using the work of someone else, but that someone else chose to allow me to use their library. That seems fair though, if the person writing the library was okay with people using it in non-GPL programs that is fine. Especially if it's a fairly standard type of library (like a GUI toolkit or something).
It all depends on the wishes of the library author, which IMO it should. Let's say I write some sort of specialized library.. for a bad example I am going to use a 3d rendering library. I LGPL my code instead of GPLing it. Some company makes billions off of a 3d game that is a very thin program around my library. I would be pretty pissed (mostly out of jealousy and greed) but damnit I would have every right to be, they used my work to make their money and I am not getting any cut of it. First of all, that would be shitty of someone to do that, but you gotta realize that people are evil, so someone would. So you should GPL that library (and maybe hang on to the copyright so you can also sell a non-GPL version to some company for use in that 3d game).
In my opinion, that fits halfway okay with the agenda of the FSF. You still have free access to the code, but you can at least negotiate with proprietary companies if you want to. Of course, part of the terms could be that they could not modify the library unless they actually modified the GPL version of it. And hey, that would be fine, you want to remain proprietary, well, sorry, you are gonna have to at least give some of your work back. Though that is still less restrictive than a lot of proprietary library licenses.
NT does use the El-Torito format and shows up as a hard-disk. Of course it shows up as a VERY SMALL hard disk because as soon as you kick into protected mode you can't see it (since it's basically hacking INT 13 to emulate an HD).
Basically what the NT CD does is instead of those 3 floppies you get a small virtual hard-disk on the CD and you tell it which drivers you need and it loads them then starts the kernel.
Right now at least with RH 6, RH is still emulating a floppy drive and just using their 1st boot disk as the image. It would probably be a better idea to emulate a hard-drive so that you wouldn't need other disks for weird SCSI adapters (you could just put the modules for ALL the SCSI adapters on the hard-disk image). That is (again) exactly what NT does.
I was thinking about a bootable game CD myself. I think it'd be a VERY cool idea, the only problems I would see is that you need somewhere to save games. I suppose floppies would work, or maybe allow you to mount a partition and save files in some directory would work too.
Hmm.. actually, the more I think about it, the more this becomes a good idea. Imagine: Software like the old days where you just put the disk in, and turned on the computer!
That'd be cool!
Dave.
Dude.. the prices aren't outrageous, if you are doing work for less then you are the one who is getting ass raped.
$60/hr is actually a GREAT price for computer work, assuming the tech working on it is halfway decent, which I suppose isn't true at most Best Buy stores.
Wintergreen Computers (local store in NW Indiana) charges $120/hr and they pretty much suck from what I've seen. I see a lot of computers come in that Wintergreen had "upgraded". A guy came in 'cause his fax software wasn't working right. Turns out the dumbasses took out a USR Courier because they couldn't get it to play nice with Windows (it was not plug-and-play, it had jumpers). They replaced it with some winmodem piece of crap.
So anyway, you wanna see ass-rape.. THAT is ass-rape.
In general though, I have noticed that working on an hourly basis tends to make me feel more temporary. I am part-time and all only working like 10-20 hours a week, so hourly definitely makes sense. But that fscking time-clock is annoying, especially the one I use. It won't let you punch in early and won't let you leave late. It used to be open for computer techs (which I am) but they put us on stricter scheduling now.
Anyway though... When doing freelance computer work (or anything like this, even plumbers, electricians and all that) it's usually better to get an idea of how much it is going to cost you to do certain jobs and charge by the job. People are really reluctant to give up $60/hr for "General computer labor" (which is actually a good price) but a "Well, I can install that hard-drive for $50.00" usually makes it easier to swallow. Incidently, that is how Best Buy (where I work) prices computer labor.
Anyway, I'd much rather get paid a salary and have a set of tasks to do than get paid hourly and treated like a grunt helper. Of course since I am a full-time student and this is part time work, hourly is about the only thing that makes sense.
Remember that though, hourly makes you feel like you are temporary, or part-time, or a grunt. Those are not the kind of feelings you want your workers to have. But I can't say that working hourly is bad, it is definitely the right solution for a company like Best Buy.
Just my $.02
Yeah, you are right, thanks. Been like a year since I was in that english class.
;)
Imagine.. an AC who knows stuff
Thanks again,
Dave.
Environmentalism and Dr. Seuss are not distinct themes.
The Lorax was a Dr. Seuss character who builds a factory that makes something out of some type of plant. The Lorax eventually exhausts the natural resources (the plant) and emits too much smog, etc.
It is a very good story, you should (re)read it sometime. One of my professors read it in class to show an example of allegory.
If you are interested in similar stories, you can try something like Gulliver's Travels (wonder if Yahoo got its name from the book, or if they just didn't spell "Yee-haw" correctly).
dave.
Does your sig and spoonerisms make you a crashdot slackpot?
My knee-jerk reaction is to say "Oh (deity), one more FUD tactic for people to use against Linux."
After reading a few comments, I think that there may be a realization that if China, a very large state with scarce resources, is using Linux successfully, maybe it would be a good idea for the US, a very large state with abundant resources, to use Linux so that resources that would otherwise go to a proprietary system, could go into a system that is already endorsed by the academic world.
The US does have a histroy of condemming communism and anything like it, but then borrowing the good ideas for its own use. While welfare is not an ideal solution, when people were starving the dole helped at least until government work could be provided. NOTE: FDR despised the dole, he wanted government work programs. Nationalizing work is definitely a socialist ideal, but unlike the communist implementation (where a military state forces nationization) the implementation in the US was to vote (albeit indirectly) for nationalization when it is necessary.
Hopefully the US government will realize that it is better off not depending on proprietary systems such as Windows, Novell, Solaris, MacOS, and others. The US government would be much better off if it followed China's lead and spent my money (yes, I pay taxes, so it's my money) hiring good system administrators and using open solutions from the academic world.
And then we'd make a high speed bus that the CPU can easily interface with, and since we don't want all of our devices hanging outside the computer, we could put it on the motherboard.
Umm.. ever hear of SCSI ?
You gotta figure if it's fast enough for a hard-drive it oughtta be fast enough for almost anything. And you can have multiple SCSI busses and put, say, a hard-drive and a wide CD-ROM and maybe a wide video capture (if such a thing exists). And then another bus for the lower speeds like normal CD-ROMs and Zips and Scanners, printers, etc.
Of course SCSI does seem to be the standard that never happened on PCs.. mostly because of the prohibitive cost of cables. When you need cables with 50 to 68 wires in them (and don't tell me only 25 are connected, good cables have 25 return wires so that there is less impedence on the ground signal. This is the reason USB/Firewire/etc. was invented: They are high-speed serial busses, and thus require fewer wires, but parallel busses will always be faster just because you can do high-speed on 16 wires instead of 1 (or even 8 instead of 1 is still great).
-Biscuit.
I remember reading some info on a GNOME website about how to write cross platform apps better. What you really should do is write the core functionality as a seperate library. For instance, lets say you are writing an ICQ program (actually, this is what I am doing, but nevermind). What you need to do is write a generic library that is event-driven. That is, if data is waiting on a socket, do something, or if the user has sent the connect command start the connection process, etc.
I suggest writing it with a cheapie CLI first, but be warned: it is way too easy to write a CLI application that is not event-driven, try to keep that in mind and design around user events not around your programs code.
Both QT and GTK can be sent a file descriptor to wait on. When it "goes off" it will send a signal and you can do some quick processing. Remember to keep your functions/methods short. If you need to wait on something else then you need to let GTK/QT take over the event loop again and they will let you know when the something else comes in.
Remeber that you do not run an iterative loop. QT and GTK both have their own loops. And while it is possible to write your own loop to wait for stuff and call gtk_main_iteration() or something like that in the loop, it's a bad idea because more than likely what you want to wait on can already be waited on by GTK or QT.
If you want to port this to a Windows platform, you can also do so, but I believe you will run your own loop in Windows. Also, the CLI version will need to have its own event loop to wait on stuff (think the UNIX select system call).
I know it seems like a daunting task, but it will create a better program with fewer bugs because it will make you think about what you are doing. Take a look at the micq or gicq source for a very bad example. micq is essentially a command line app ONLY (and it does some dirty crap with structures instead of properly packing data, but that's another story all together). Gicq is based on micq and is a very bad hack trying to get micq to work with gtk. Instead of adding the file descriptors into GTK's select loop, the author decided instead to run iterations of gtks loop and do his own select (probably to avoid substantial modification to his existing codebase that he borrowed).
If you decide to write your app this way, it will be a much less buggy, more polished app, and will have the distinct advantage of being able to drop in a different front-end when you feel like it.
Of course, it has the distinct disadvantage of taking much longer to write.
Dave.
Best damn peripheral I ever bought.
It was a 28.8 back when the 28.8 standard had just been finalized.
It got upgraded to 33.6 when the 33.6 standard was finalized.
They added caller ID and distinctive ring while there were no new standards to add.
They added x2 (and I got it for free even because I registered for the enabling key while they were free).
Of course it was also a $700 modem... But if anyone remembers BBSes, they probably also remember that most of the good ones had these modems.. why? because they cost $250 for sysops (and I had a good BBS back then).
Of course the modem is for "Demonstration purposes only, not for resale". Like I would ever want to sell it, I'm kind of attached to it now.
Oh.. and it's external too (I like the lights).
As far as connection speeds go, I *ALWAYS* get greater speed than with a 33.6.
Also, don't forget that what your OS says the modem has connected at is total BS, it is constantly changing speeds to accomodate line conditions.. Load up minicom -o and type in ATIn where n is somewhere around 10 and see what speed it achieved.
I'd just like to point out something that one of my (CS) professor's mentioned. "Computer Science != Computer Tech." CS is the study of programming and engineering, where effecient algorithms and all of the science and math behind them makes a difference.
A student interested in computers does not necessarily make the best CS candidate. For instance, an MIS (or IT) degree is much less interested in the abstract math and science behind computers, and more interested in the actual applications of the technology.
The article was a bit vague on exactly which field was declining, but it doesn't surprise me, considering tech jobs are quickly becoming something that cheap foreign labor can do. If you really want to ensure your career future, don't be content knowing how to code, go on to get an MS and learn more about the design process instead of throwing yourself into the herd while you are still wet behind the ears just after getting your BS.
Of course all of that should be taken w/ a grain of salt, since I am not even completely sure what I would do with a CS degree. But it does at least show that you had the willingness to complete your schooling instead of being tempted away by jobs that may prevent you from learning what you really need to know.
Gee.. I always love how people defend certain distros and then bitch when they don't come with c libraries that are up to spec.
Outdated distros give Linux a BAD NAME. I was talking with a professor of mine about considering using Linux and her response was something to the effect of libc5 vs. glibc incompatibilities.
I am sorry to say it folks, but IMHO, libc5 is extremely outdated and we need to get rid of it ASAP. We are now on glibc-2.1 which has some nice features (one of which is better pty support).
I understand that not everyone wants the most cutting-edge stuff on their system, but in case you haven't noticed, there have been some major changes including kernel-2.2.x and glibc-2.1 and the release of GNOME-1.0 (which still needs work, but I'm glad it's official).
Red Hat's latest distro is glibc2.1 based, has the nice new ptys, has gnome included and a bunch of Really Cool Shiznat . Starbuck has a few problems, so I'd probably wait on a production machine, but it is definitely clear (and should be extremely obvious) that the future of Linux is kernel-2.2 and glibc-2.1 (well DUH!).
One of the things I hate about redhat is that you cannot choose to not install libc5 (although you can remove it later if nothing depends on it). However, chances are some stupid ass binary-only POS is libc5 based (ARGH! WP is a good example) so you'll probably have your libc5 compatibility libs around for a while.
And BTW.. RedHat works just fine being glibc based.. why is slack still in the damn dark ages.
Is it just me, or does someone else think this guy should find a different line of work..
1. "That is a really dumb idea"
- Great.. thanks for telling me. Try something like "Given factor A and factor B it does not appear to be in AOLs best interest to implement this plan" and NOT "Oh.. that's a stupid idea."
2. The whole intel chip thing.
- Excuse me.. doesn't Linux run on ARM's and PPCs and Alphas and m68ks and a bunch of other thins??
Methinks this guy is very good at spreading FUD (and I hate to mudsling him, but Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt all seem to be prevelant in his comments).
Dude.. you are seriously missing out on one of the coolest things about Red Hat. RPMs are a great way to keep track of what is on your system. Red Hat has done a really good job of putting everything in /usr/(...) so that when you install something with a normal configure script that puts it in /usr/local/(...) you can see what you have installed and what was an RPM. It also means that if you "upgraded" a program by installing the newer version from source, that it won't get overwritten by an RPM that is trying to possibly "upgrade" to an older version (example: installing Netscape from it's .tar.gz, it's a good idea to remove the RPM and install netscape in /usr/local/netscape so that if you ever upgrade Red Hat it won't overwrite that installation and you can quickly remove the older rpm if necessary).
/usr/src/redhat on down. Also allow writes to /var/tmp by the rpm group. Then you can build RPMs without being root, because it "installs" them in /var/tmp/program-root/(...) instead of in /(...).
/usr/local/bin/file1 /usr/local/bin/file2" (...etc...). And it's really a lot easier than anything MS has ever come up with or will ever come up with.
.debs compare with rpms and stuff. That doesn't mean I want a lot of flames, but it'd be nice to know why people are many times as enthusiastic about .debs as I am about .rpms.
The best thing to do, IMHO, is to make an RPM of everything you install. Sometimes you can find one in the contrib section. By far, the best method that I have found for building RPMs is to create a new RPM group and setgid rpm every directory from
I really need to get a good book on RPMs and learn some more, but I already love the simplicity that RPM provides when it comes time to install and uninstall packages. doing "rpm -e packagename" is a lot easier than "rm
For those of you who are debian fans, I'd really like to know some more about how
Linux Mandrake has a set of kernel-2.2.3 RPMs available. My only hard-drive is through my aic7xxx SCSI adapter. All you need to do is install the RPMS (that's install.. NOT upgrade) for the new kernel, run mkinitrd (Apparently scsi_mod is compiled into the mandrake kernel, so you don't need to use with-scsi-modules). edit /etc/lilo.conf to allow you to boot linux and oldlinux (or whatever), run lilo and reboot. I'll probably put a kernel 2.2.5 RPM up soon if Mandrake hasn't already done it, check my website.
I think a lot of people would agree that it really should be GNU/Linux, but even those people agree that GNU/Linux is too much to say.
That is the true freedom of free software. It can be called anything anybody wants to call it, as long as the source code is there.
Even stuff like Solaris runs better with GNU tools.. remember: "Got a broken *NIX tool, fix it by replacing it with a GNU version."
In fact, the only piece of GNU software which I don't like is Emacs (sorry, just prefer VI). The great thing about GNU is that anyone can use it for anything as long as they don't try to call it, or derivatives of it, their own. They can however call it anything else they want, even "Linux".