This is somewhat off-topic, but reading about Ant remembered me of a question I've been meaning to ask the net for some time now. Since it involves software for building software, this thread may be a good place to do it (and it's only karma, anyway:-)
For a long time I've been wishing that there was an alternative to autoconf. I mean, autoconf is useful, and I still don't know of a better way to build complex stuff on a lot of platforms. But it is painfully slow on small machines, it's hell to make it run on Win32, and it is way too complex, requiring you to write scripts that run through three different interpreters (sh, m4 and make), each with more than their fair share of syntactic weirdness and idiosyncrasies.
(I'm using it for a product we're developing in my company, and I'm the only one who knows how the build system works. It's black magic for everyone else. I do work with very competent programmers, but only I have the patience for making autoconf scripts. Granted, we push it a bit hard: one of our targets is Win32. That part is the worse. Cross-compiling and running from cygwin, with libtool and all that, is tough shit. Every now and then I get so pissed off with it that I start writing plain Makefiles, one for each architecture/OS. Then I reconsider, realize the maintenance hell that would become, and go back to work even blacker magic on the acinclude.m4's... *sigh*)
So, this Ant here I welcomed with high hopes some months ago, and then dumped it just as fast. The thing is: it's Java. It requires you to install a JVM to build a project. Some of our build machines, the most exotic ones, are so small that I would say they're barely able to run the monstruous configure scripts that autoconf creates... So, run a JVM. Right.
Also, when I tried it, Ant was good to build Java stuff, but required some serious hacking to make it build C or C++ (or anything else, for that matter). Since it was targeted to build projects on essentially one platform (Java), it's really hard to make it check for availability of libraries or headers, and to define macros for conditional compilation and stuff. And of course, it didn't have all that "knowledge" autoconf has accumulated over the years, with regard to the subtle peculiarities of each platform. So I found Ant to be nothing more than a fancy make. And I already have make.
So, I'd like to ask: Is Ant any better for non-Java stuff these days? Is someone using it for non-Java projects? And, while I'm at it, does anyone know of a practical alternative for autoconf?
Actually windows users use windows, most of the time,
because that's whats on the computer when they get it. i've dealt with
the whole spectrum of users, from powerful, capable people to the guy
who says "it's broken@!!!" when he tries to dialup while calling me on
the phone. Most of these guys don't know about linux, or that windows
!= computer.
I would say, if I may, that at this point the Windows dependency is
more complex and serious than that. It is not only that Windows was
the OS installed on Joe's computer, but that it is also the OS
installed in all the computers he has ever had, or used, in
his entire life. Windows is the only way of interacting with a
computer that the vast majority of people knows of. My point is
that if he could get a machine with Linux preinstalled, it is quite
likely that he would go out of his way to replace it with Windows,
because that is what he knows and feels comfortable with.
There's a little cyber-cafe in Mexico City's airport, that has some
four or five Macs, and one Windows computer. I've seen people queue
up to use the Windows box, instead of just sitting at a Macintosh and
firing Internet Explorer to get their HotMail.
IMO, the only chance that Linux has for taking over the desktop is
emulating Windows so well that it becomes indistinguishable from
it. Which is why I'm fairly against the common notion that Linux
should strive to replace Windows: that would make Linux, well, suck.
My very personal opinion is that Linux GUI developers should focus in
something actually better than Windows (say, put a lot of work on
GNUstep, or Berlin, that kind of stuff, instead of pushing Gnome or
KDE to become the best Windows clones they can be). Make that as
bullet-proof as the core OS is, focus on the needs of the young (say
games and edu software), and the next generation of users will switch,
if that stuff is good enough. The current generation is completely
lost.
Stability. Simple, basic interface. Plays all media
files. GUI if you want it. Easy to learn, given a few
minutes.
Hmm...sounds like mplayer...
Just as an example of my point, mplayer crashes on me more often
than it should. I mean, it has crashed at least twice in the three
months or so that I've been using it. Compared to, say, Postfix or
Apache, two crashes in three months is kind of a poor record (not that
I'm saying that there's a better piece of multimedia software that I know
of, for Linux).
Pictures of a web page? C'mon, couldn't they save quite a bit of work, and bandwidth, by just writing their stuff in HTML, instead of photoshopping it? I think it was JWZ who once said something like "the web is full of pictures of text, which is kinda sad."
And yes, I do realize the irony of this being the first impression I got from their comments.
PGP (for windows or mac, ie not GPG) has two commands related to this: wipe file and wipe free space. [...] Also, what's the one-line unix command (running MacOS X here).
On Linux, I've always used shred(1). I think is part of fileutils. I guess that for wiping an entire harddrive, you could shred the device. Or run a couple of dd's from urandom.
They have found that the market WILL NOT EAT their bullshit, so they are stepping back as carefully as they can in order to not look like the bunch of spineless techno-asswipes they are.
How I wish that were true. But I'm not convinced. The thread's parent asked "Gotta wonder... what sparkled this change of heart? [...] can't help but think there's a juicy story behind this decision."
Well, here's my theory: The RIAA just realized that DRM will not have to be pushed by legislation. Once finantial institutions, online retailers, software companies, and media publishers realize exactly what DRM technology buys for them, it will be them that will require--no, demand it, from the ISPs and their users. There is no need for legal coercion, when you can use four or more industries to push it on their customers.
DRM allows big companies to restrict what you can do with your computer. That means "email and documents that can not be printed or duplicated, or altered or forged", "media that can not be permanently stored, much less shared", "software that can not be pirated". Do you think that there is a single bank that does not want that for online transactions? A single large software company that does not want to use it for selling big and expensive packages online? A single media company that does not want it to sell movies, music and books?
DRM's technical design is simple and remarkably effective. Very well designed, very, very evil. And, best of all (for them, not for us), it can be introduced slowly, in little steps, so that nobody realizes what's going on until it is too late.
Consider the story about the TCPA-enabled chip from AMI, from a couple days ago. The chip is harmless enough, not stopping anything from working, just providing a small additional feature (bootloader hashing) that can be even useful for a few people, and that of course can be disabled (I'm almost sure about that). But it is there, and it is part of step one: deployment. When Windows 2006, or whatever, is released, there will be already thousands of machines with such feature. Then that you'll start to have problems downloading things from a couple of places, and then more, until someone tells you that you just need to enable the little dicken and your problems will be gone.
Oh, but you'll have to use Windows, or OS-X, or other DRM enabled OS, too. But everybody uses that, right? So there's no problem at all.
Last time I posted something about this, I got an encouraging reply, which I think is the only thing we can do: If those companies abuse their new power, which is almost certain that they will do, people just may get too annoyed, and start looking for alternatives. We have to build alternatives while there's still time.
Also, IMO Linux should be starting to look for a way to implement DRM, without compromising its principles (or well, without compromising them too much). Maybe someone, say like the FSF, could provide DRM signing of binaries, so that we can still use OSS for dealing with this crap.
Anyway, I think it's foolish to sigh in relief, and cheer at news like this. DRM is here to stay, and you better get used too it.
So, what's stopping me, a Linux user, from getting a Windows bootloader checksum and a Windows Media Player hash and telling Mozilla (which of course appears to be IE to the outside viewer) to provide those when Universal asks?
A simple "nonce" in Universal's request. You know, a timestamp, a serial number, a random cookie, which is part of both the request and the response. That's the usual protection for replay attacks, which is what you are proposing (saving the real Windows hash for replaying it over and over from your Linux machine).
ALL hardware can be emulated in software, and there is no way for Universal to prove that I haven't done that without sending jackbooted thugs to bust into my house and tear my system apart.
Ah, yes. But the problem is the key, deeply embedded in the chip. You certainly can emulate the BIOS' signed-hash generation in software. But without the right key the emulation is useless. And you can probably forget about getting a good key from the warez kids: the key can very well be different for every chip, and it is not accessible without tearing the chip apart and doing some nano-surgery on it. Which is, of course, quite over our current capabilities. Yours and mine, at least.
Hardware based crypto is all well and good, but no outside application has a direct line to my hardware. It MUST go through my OS first, and I control that. Therefore my hardware is whatever I tell my OS to say it is. Problem solved.
You have not yet understood the problem. Think about it a little more. It REALLY does allow Universal, or anyone for that matter, to prove that you have, or haven't, done funny things with your computer, without sending jackbooted thugs to bust into your house and tear your system apart. You'll be amazed, and probably a bit more worried, once you grasp it.
The greed and arrogance of media companies will be enough to turn people against DRM, although it may take a while. We need to stick to our principles, to ensure that when the time comes there is a free world for people to choose. I'm in for the long haul, how about everyone else ?
Very well put, sir. Of course I'm in. I won't bend over for those greedy pieces of shit, not even drunk and stoned. And I'm sure that many others will never take this neither, even if that means starting over and building everything again, from scratch, from the personal computer to the Internet (which may well be the case: If this nonsense gets entrenched too much, chances are we'll have to build our own computers and networks to bypass it).
Anyway, I'm very glad I read your post. I'm starting to believe that there is no other way of fighting this DRM crap. And yours is precisely the attitude I hope the OSS community will take: focus on building a free world, not wasting time fighting a war that can't be won. I will be happy to participate.
(It's just that, considering what a setback this would be for OSS, the 'net and everything, this is kind of annoying, isn't it?)
The problem, is that since M$ controls 99.9% of the desktop market, they can pretty much cajole all the ISP's to modify their user agreements to demand that you must maintain a "trusted" computing platform in order to remain an account in good standing.
Hear, hear.
This, IMO, is the core of Microsoft's evil plan. I will even dare to say that, as much as I am interested in theis AMI guy's answers, his company is not the one with for the plan --they are merely dragged into it, and I think they can't do squat about it. You will get no relief from him.
See, I really don't think AMI, or any BIOS manufacturer, will ever make one that plainly refuses to boot a bootloader because it lacks a signature from a CA it trusts. That opens a class vulnerability in the scheme (a single CA key is compromised and you lose the whole system). Also, it is just too bloody obvious to the EFF and the likes. And it is unnecessary for the evil plan to succeed. The BIOS will always boot whatever you ask it to boot. I'm ready to take a bet on that. That is not the problem.
The problem is, the BIOS will checksum the bootloader, and store that checksum in a safe place. Furthermore, the BIOS will provide, to any program that asks for it, be it "trusted" or not, that hash, cryptographically signed with the BIOS key (btw the only key that has to reside in the BIOS, and you can bet it will be hardcoded in the silicon, not overridable). From that point on, you can build "trusted" data delivery paths entirely in software.
Here's an example: Say, you want to watch a movie trailer. So your browser connects to Universal Pictures' server, which demands cryptographic proof that it can "trust" your computer. So your media player software obtains that proof from the OS, and delivers it. What the OS delivers the hash of the media player, signed with the OS key. To guarantee the integrity of the OS, it includes the OS' hash, signed by the bootloader. To guarantee the bootloader's integrity, it includes the bootloader's hash, signed by the BIOS. Voilá, you have crypto proof that your entire system is kosher. Universal's server has only to verify that the BIOS's key is trustable, which they can do by checking it against AMI, or whatever. If that key is compromised (e.g., you crack the key of your BIOS), then they have a problem with a single individual, not a class compromise.
But the point is: you have NO say on which keys are trustable or not, because the verifying is not done by you. It is done by Universal. The best you can do is not buy Universal.
But now imagine this thread's scenario: your ISP is the one that requires proof of "trustability" before letting you connect. You will have to either (1) make your ISP include your OS's key in their trust list, or (2) switch to Windows, or (3) switch to another ISP that does not require this. But you will have option (3) for just some time: just picture the logical progression of this. Extend to almost everything else: online banking, electronic commerce, fucking email! You have MS Internet[TM], what Bill has always wanted.
And you can bet it will be eagerly adopted by banks, media companies, and the likes, because it is the single scheme that allows them to "protect" their data against their own customers. And all the time we will be scratching our own heads, wondering how we let that happen, if we, after all, successfully coerced AMI into not making a BIOS that refuses to boot Linux.
This is pure, concentrated evil. I stand in awe of Microsoft. I'm very, very concerned about this.
Thank you for posting that dump. The first thing I thought of was sniffing my ethernet myself, just to see if this was true. Regrettably, I have no Windows machines available here to test with (never imagined that I would ever think of this as 'regrettable':-).
Anyway, I'm having a really hard time believing this story. I just can't get me to think that such a nasty hack would have gone unnoticed for years (the article speaks of years). I mean, think of the security holes it would open! The many router and firewall mysterious misbehaving it would trigger. And no sysadmin, or lowly script kiddie noticing this? It just can't be.
I'd love to have information on how to reproduce this, and see it for myself on my network. Yes I'd put Windows and (yuck) IIS in one of my boxes, for a couple of hours, to run this test. But until I can see it myself, or read about it in Bugtraq, I won't believe it, and will be ashamed that Slashdot is publishing it without a big note stating at the very least that "this may be not true".
Really, even though I'm a GNU/Linux user, the kind that actually uses the "GNU/Linux" tag from time to time, and that I love Mozilla and all, if find this just as low as the best FUD Microsoft has come up with in their dirty history.
Just a short rant on my experience and conclusions regarding threads. Me, having been formed in the "new age" school of programming (trained on the Commodore Amiga), always used threads. Used to design all my software with threads in mind. But not anymore. Since my jump to Unix, some five years ago, I've experienced a rather deep change of perception on this issue.
IMO, threaded code is much, much harder to implement correctly, and to debug, than single-threaded code. I used to blame the crappy thread support of many Unix libraries and tools. But now that gdb supports threads, along with pretty much everything else (except gprof, but the workaround is simple), I've found that it still is a PIA to debug all but the simplest threaded apps.
After years of hard work trying to determine what library calls are not reentrant, how are asynchronous signals delivered in each platform you support (God! Never, ever, ever mix threads and signals when writing portable code, not if you can avoid it), and which objects should be synchronized to get the best compromise between sync overhead and avoiding trashing the heap, you just fall in love with a design in which no locking is necessary at all. No ambiguities in library calls, no undocumented whatever_r() calls, no weird signal handling. A design in which a single core dump can tell you EXACTLY what was your program doing and why did it crash. Really, the simplicity and elegance of Unix programming without threads is just beautiful. The best adjective I can come up with is "liberating".
Of course, you do have to switch to a state-machine kind of mentality when designing your applications. It is not easy (was not easy for me, at least). But it can be done very cleanly and elegantly (for an example, look for the "State" pattern, the one in which you derive classes for representing your state machine states). If portability is not an issue, it can also be done very efficiently, if you use IO signals instead of select().
Now, having said all that, I'll now point out that I still use threads, because my code usually has to run on WIN32 too, and programming without threads there is hell (not that programming with them is much better). But I avoid threads as much as I can. I still worry about writing reentrant functions, because I find that to be a very good practice, even if no threads ae involved. But threads are used only when no other portable solution cuts it (like when checking asynchronusly for activity on non-socket descriptors, on WIN32).
Re:Congratulations, Phoenix. I'll never buy again.
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Phoenix To Change Name
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· Score: 2
so Phoenix, AZ should change its name because it infringes on Phoenix Bios's copyright?
Well, probably not, unless the city council or something wants to go ahead and turn the city into a web browser or BIOS manufacturer...
Re:Congratulations, Phoenix. I'll never buy again.
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Phoenix To Change Name
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· Score: 5, Informative
That's right. It's called
"firstview connect", and it actually runs an embedded Linux kernel (that's what the page says, anyway).
What are the chances of Phoenix (the embedded browser) to be actually based on Mozilla? I think Phoenix (the company) is right asking Phoenix (the project) for the name change, but they should do it very, very politely. Like an open letter asking to please change the name. Otherwise they'll look like a bunch of hypocrites when they go ahead and use Phoenix (the really good browser) in Phoenix (the BIOS).
You know, the name does get confusing when talking about this...
Those "nations" have always been toilets, and they always will be, so we might as well use them as such. Just as with any toilet, there can be occasional backflow, but you can bet I'll again be taking a nice steaming shit on them soon enough.
You know, it's idiots like you, sir, that give gringos their bad name around the world. Thankfully (for you), most people in your country are not that screwed. Or so I hope. For you see, that World Trade Center thing still looks like an unspeakable atrocity from here, but the more blabbering assholes like you are let loose on the world by the U.S. of A., the harder it becomes to be sad for your country, and side with you and try to help in any way we can, when that kind of shit happens. I won't excuse Bin Laden, for he is a homicidal madman --but you are making me see how you could annoy someone beyond his sanity.
Oh well, this is offtopic and flamebaitish, so mod me down. Just got too pissed off by dickless here.
I don't think there'll be many options to choose from.
Maybe opaque keys with a hole on the top, and a single-character LCD panel fitted in the hole (not 7-segment but pixelled, like those in "scientific" calculators). Then you can use a single bright light inside the keyboard that will shine through the white dots. And you could add a potentiometer to control the intensity of the light, like a car dashboard, in case it gets annoying. And you can put two lights, one green and one red, and a switch to turn on one or the other, or both, so you can change the light color.
I'm guessing power consumption should be much lower than leds on each key, too.
I can see it now. They'll get Gates to finance this thing (he just loves innovation, and giving money, doesn't he?). Now, he'll make them use Windows boxes for traffic control. Next thing you now, some controller downtown will get a blue flash on his face, and you'll find yourself in a cute little cylindrical coffin stuck in a tube-traffic jam, in vacuum, with 18 minutes of oxygen left and a real urgent need for a bathroom. You can say I'm old fashioned, but I'll stick to my bike for a while, thank you very much.
That a fact? I've got a nice WinXP (no SP1) box here that begs to differ...Thus, it also follows that anyone running Win2K or WinME or anything earlier would also have to either install DivX, or upgrade Windows Media Player.
Wtf has mplayer to do with Windows Media Player upgrades?
Or, are you suggesting, contrary to common Slashdot mythos, that I *should* install all the latest and greatest upgrades of software from Microsoft, which will violate my privacy and auction my firstborn to evil megacorps and sell my wife to a whorehouse in Utah?
I thought he was suggesting that we Linux users can watch DivX out of the box, with mplayer.
(btw, the RealVideo version of this Nemo clip can be watched with RealPlayer 8 for Linux --if you can stand the EULAs on that thing. Just don't install it as root.)
yea, i had to rant. i sometimes take my anger out on slashdot:)
Yeah, I can understand you. I used to feel exactly that way some years ago.
and yes, i have figured which files i have to edit to get the ones i really want to change to change but i really shouldn't have to go to all that trouble...
It would be great if someone would find a way of making Linux (and Unix) configuration simpler, while still allowing advanced users to work some magic, without breaking the installer. I mean, I'd love to be able to configure my machine with two clicks of the mouse, but not if that means that I won't be able to insert a couple of scripts to configure my personal mini-firewall, or establish a VPN link to my office, when the net goes up, or something like that. I hope one such solution will be found in the future, but in the mean time, I'd rather read HOWTOs than fight with GUIs.
i hear you on the low end hardware but if you have 240mb you can handle a few header files too. and remember the libfoo's get installed as dependencies anyway and thats where the real bloat comes in - why do i, a postgresql fan, have libmysql installed on my machine? and libldap... i think one of those source based distros is for me once i get the hardware to build it in less than a week (i'm not far ahead of the 486 you mention, and thats on the box i do my coding(!),
As for dependencies: there's nothing I can argue. I use libldap, but I'm sure most users don't need it. Don't know why it gets installed a standard (I think SASL pulls them), maybe that should be filed as a bug. As for the 240 MB, uncompressed headers do take quite a bit of space (around 50 MB on my laptop, which has a lot of -dev packages installed). Static libraries take another huge chunk. And I rather install some docs (which also take a lot of space) and leave some 100 MB for logs and temp files (it's just a drag when/tmp or/var fill up, isn't it?)
but i've convinced the wife that an upgrade is needed so now i just need to cough up the dough:) i'll of course continue to run debian on my ancient boxes tho.
The Lunix zealots who think that Grandma Bessie will read the FUCKING ALSA HOWTO so she can play her Public Enemy MP3's are smoking some good stuff, and I WANT SOME OF IT!
. ..
I myself am devoid of Microsoft zealotry. It's simply a platform that I and all of my high-paying clients use. I don't have any high-paying clients who use Lunix, except as a cheap web server. Please reflect on your Lunix zealotry, and decide whether it is the best use of your time.
. ..
Dude... I think you mean Linux, not Lunix. Lunix is a multitasking,
Unix-like operating system for the Commodore 64. It's almost as cool
as Linux, but not quite the same.
this sooo sums up debian's lack of focus for me. i would like to love debian, but it is a distro for experienced linux users that makes just enough of an attempt to attract newbies that it pisses off it's target audience. debian is too hard for normal people to run and a pain in the ass to those of us who ran linux pre '97. pick one or the other, but middle of the fence just sucks.
I don't completely agree with you here. I do agrre in that Debian's efforts to ease the road for the newbies are pretty lackluster, to say the least. However, maybe I'm just insensitive, but I can't say I care too much about that. For power users, there isn't anything close to Debian --anything that I've tried, anyway. That includes several other Linux flavors, Windows, Solaris and MacOS pre-X (I'm really interested to try FreeBSD, Gentoo and MacOS X, but alas, no time).
example - package foo is split into foo, foo-dev, libfoo, and libunrelated1, 2 and 3.
But that's a feature, not a bug! That's precisely what allows me to build full-featured Debian routers out of old 486 boxes with 240 MB hard disks (no kidding).
another - edit/etc/modules.conf, reboot. where did the changes go? oh, sorry debian rebuilds that file.
You just have to read a little. By now I'm sure you found out that in Debian you don't edit modules.conf directly, but put files in/etc/modutils, which update-modules assemble into a modules.conf file. It's cleaner, easier to maintain, it avoids one package from clobbering other package's modules. If only you manage to get used to it, you'll probably find that there's usually a very good reason behind most of Debian's oddities.
please... i know how to make my goddamn soundcard work! now stop writing scripts that overwrite my config and concentrate on bringing the packages in unstable up to date!
Debian will seldom touch your hand-edited files, if you know where and how to write them. I know, that can annoy a great deal out of an old timer used to edit conf files freely --but then again, Debian's scheme of things allows you to install and deinstall things, and even to upgrade from slink to potato to woody, without worrying about breaking anything. I think that's a good reason to deviate from traditional setups.
gnome2? kde3? don't like the desktops but i like the apps from both! where are they?
Yeah, that is a problem. Again, I don't care much: I use FVWM, and the few GTK/Gnome apps that I need (Mozilla, Evolution, XChat, the Gimp) I installed from Woody and work flawlessly. But I do see someone getting frustrated from the lack of Gnome2 and/or KDE3. I hope someone that actually gets bothered enough by this will go help the guys packaging that stuff --they've been doing it for a long time, and a little bit of help probably won't hurt.
well...my laptop does not seem to want to work with audio...I have a VIA ac97 sound chip and it does not want to work with OSS modules that come in the kernel.
My laptop has one of those too. You need ALSA.
And yes, I did recompile the kernel and ALSA modules some months ago. It's not that terrible, but you do need a lot of disk (300 MB or so)... However, you do not have to compile the kernel, nor the ALSA modules, if you're using Woody and a 2.4 kernel. The package is already done, it's just that for some reason it is still in unstable. Probably some issue that hasn't been dealt with yet, I don't know. The packages work for me. Just fetch the right package for your kernel, run dpkg -i on it, and configure for your card.
Actually, you can configure apt to do this kind of thing without having to download stuff manually, but it's probably not worth it if the only thing you want from unstable is ALSA (or see apt_preferences(5) for details, if you do want to know more).
Here in Mexico we have a legal resource, called the amparo, which basically means asking a court for permission before you do something that may be questionable in the future. E.g., you would go to the court and say "look, I want to develop this thing, using Microsoft's APIs and so and so, would that be ok with the law?" Then the judge thinks about it, calls anybody she thinks may have something to say about it, and then issues a verdict. And if the judge grants you the amparo, then you can't be subject to legal action if you go ahead and actually do it. For all practical purposes, you have legal immunity on that particular item.
It's like going to trial without the risk of the court finding you guilty of a crime: if the court denies it, nothing else happens (except perhaps setting a legal precedent).
Do you gringos have something like that? If you did, then this could be a very good time for Samba developers (and many others) to use it...
Did that link work, at some point of time? It doesn't now, but using Microsoft to redirect to goatse.cx... Man, I just don't know what to think about it. Trolls have grown. They have grown very much.
Listening to people complain that the site is Flash and therefore "SUX" is bizzare. Its like listening to my father complain how the web browsers are annoying since they are nothing like the old bbs. You dont't have to like it, but don't complain when your system can't handle it. It makes you sound childish.
In my case, it is not that my system can't handle Flash, but rather that it *won't* handle it.
You see, this page looks ok in Linux Mozilla with the Flash 5 plugin. But I can't stand most flash pages because (1) they make stupid noises over my music, (2) they force me to use stupid user interfaces designed for looks rather than functionality (like those insufferable DVD's that force you through a freaking 20 seconds video just to enter a submenu), and (3) because you have to wait ages for them to load when using a modem (and the said system being my laptop, that's most of the time I'm online).
So I have Flash deliberately disabled. Most of Flash content in the Internet is junk, so I don't miss it, but sites like this one, that looks promising but use flash and do not offer a plain HTML version, usually annoy me to no end.
Having said that, this one is one of the least evil flash sites I've seen, and I like his case mods. But still, I won't excuse him for not doing it in HTML+CSS.
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This is somewhat off-topic, but reading about Ant remembered me of a question I've been meaning to ask the net for some time now. Since it involves software for building software, this thread may be a good place to do it (and it's only karma, anyway :-)
For a long time I've been wishing that there was an alternative to autoconf. I mean, autoconf is useful, and I still don't know of a better way to build complex stuff on a lot of platforms. But it is painfully slow on small machines, it's hell to make it run on Win32, and it is way too complex, requiring you to write scripts that run through three different interpreters (sh, m4 and make), each with more than their fair share of syntactic weirdness and idiosyncrasies.
(I'm using it for a product we're developing in my company, and I'm the only one who knows how the build system works. It's black magic for everyone else. I do work with very competent programmers, but only I have the patience for making autoconf scripts. Granted, we push it a bit hard: one of our targets is Win32. That part is the worse. Cross-compiling and running from cygwin, with libtool and all that, is tough shit. Every now and then I get so pissed off with it that I start writing plain Makefiles, one for each architecture/OS. Then I reconsider, realize the maintenance hell that would become, and go back to work even blacker magic on the acinclude.m4's... *sigh*)
So, this Ant here I welcomed with high hopes some months ago, and then dumped it just as fast. The thing is: it's Java. It requires you to install a JVM to build a project. Some of our build machines, the most exotic ones, are so small that I would say they're barely able to run the monstruous configure scripts that autoconf creates... So, run a JVM. Right.
Also, when I tried it, Ant was good to build Java stuff, but required some serious hacking to make it build C or C++ (or anything else, for that matter). Since it was targeted to build projects on essentially one platform (Java), it's really hard to make it check for availability of libraries or headers, and to define macros for conditional compilation and stuff. And of course, it didn't have all that "knowledge" autoconf has accumulated over the years, with regard to the subtle peculiarities of each platform. So I found Ant to be nothing more than a fancy make. And I already have make.
So, I'd like to ask: Is Ant any better for non-Java stuff these days? Is someone using it for non-Java projects? And, while I'm at it, does anyone know of a practical alternative for autoconf?
I would say, if I may, that at this point the Windows dependency is more complex and serious than that. It is not only that Windows was the OS installed on Joe's computer, but that it is also the OS installed in all the computers he has ever had, or used, in his entire life. Windows is the only way of interacting with a computer that the vast majority of people knows of. My point is that if he could get a machine with Linux preinstalled, it is quite likely that he would go out of his way to replace it with Windows, because that is what he knows and feels comfortable with.
There's a little cyber-cafe in Mexico City's airport, that has some four or five Macs, and one Windows computer. I've seen people queue up to use the Windows box, instead of just sitting at a Macintosh and firing Internet Explorer to get their HotMail.
IMO, the only chance that Linux has for taking over the desktop is emulating Windows so well that it becomes indistinguishable from it. Which is why I'm fairly against the common notion that Linux should strive to replace Windows: that would make Linux, well, suck. My very personal opinion is that Linux GUI developers should focus in something actually better than Windows (say, put a lot of work on GNUstep, or Berlin, that kind of stuff, instead of pushing Gnome or KDE to become the best Windows clones they can be). Make that as bullet-proof as the core OS is, focus on the needs of the young (say games and edu software), and the next generation of users will switch, if that stuff is good enough. The current generation is completely lost.
Just as an example of my point, mplayer crashes on me more often than it should. I mean, it has crashed at least twice in the three months or so that I've been using it. Compared to, say, Postfix or Apache, two crashes in three months is kind of a poor record (not that I'm saying that there's a better piece of multimedia software that I know of, for Linux).
Pretty funny, indeed. But...
Pictures of a web page? C'mon, couldn't they save quite a bit of work, and bandwidth, by just writing their stuff in HTML, instead of photoshopping it? I think it was JWZ who once said something like "the web is full of pictures of text, which is kinda sad."
And yes, I do realize the irony of this being the first impression I got from their comments.
On Linux, I've always used shred(1). I think is part of fileutils. I guess that for wiping an entire harddrive, you could shred the device. Or run a couple of dd's from urandom.
How I wish that were true. But I'm not convinced. The thread's parent asked "Gotta wonder ... what sparkled this change of heart? [...] can't help but think there's a juicy story behind this decision."
Well, here's my theory: The RIAA just realized that DRM will not have to be pushed by legislation. Once finantial institutions, online retailers, software companies, and media publishers realize exactly what DRM technology buys for them, it will be them that will require--no, demand it, from the ISPs and their users. There is no need for legal coercion, when you can use four or more industries to push it on their customers.
DRM allows big companies to restrict what you can do with your computer. That means "email and documents that can not be printed or duplicated, or altered or forged", "media that can not be permanently stored, much less shared", "software that can not be pirated". Do you think that there is a single bank that does not want that for online transactions? A single large software company that does not want to use it for selling big and expensive packages online? A single media company that does not want it to sell movies, music and books?
DRM's technical design is simple and remarkably effective. Very well designed, very, very evil. And, best of all (for them, not for us), it can be introduced slowly, in little steps, so that nobody realizes what's going on until it is too late.
Consider the story about the TCPA-enabled chip from AMI, from a couple days ago. The chip is harmless enough, not stopping anything from working, just providing a small additional feature (bootloader hashing) that can be even useful for a few people, and that of course can be disabled (I'm almost sure about that). But it is there, and it is part of step one: deployment. When Windows 2006, or whatever, is released, there will be already thousands of machines with such feature. Then that you'll start to have problems downloading things from a couple of places, and then more, until someone tells you that you just need to enable the little dicken and your problems will be gone.
Oh, but you'll have to use Windows, or OS-X, or other DRM enabled OS, too. But everybody uses that, right? So there's no problem at all.
Last time I posted something about this, I got an encouraging reply, which I think is the only thing we can do: If those companies abuse their new power, which is almost certain that they will do, people just may get too annoyed, and start looking for alternatives. We have to build alternatives while there's still time.
Also, IMO Linux should be starting to look for a way to implement DRM, without compromising its principles (or well, without compromising them too much). Maybe someone, say like the FSF, could provide DRM signing of binaries, so that we can still use OSS for dealing with this crap.
Anyway, I think it's foolish to sigh in relief, and cheer at news like this. DRM is here to stay, and you better get used too it.
A simple "nonce" in Universal's request. You know, a timestamp, a serial number, a random cookie, which is part of both the request and the response. That's the usual protection for replay attacks, which is what you are proposing (saving the real Windows hash for replaying it over and over from your Linux machine).
Ah, yes. But the problem is the key, deeply embedded in the chip. You certainly can emulate the BIOS' signed-hash generation in software. But without the right key the emulation is useless. And you can probably forget about getting a good key from the warez kids: the key can very well be different for every chip, and it is not accessible without tearing the chip apart and doing some nano-surgery on it. Which is, of course, quite over our current capabilities. Yours and mine, at least.
You have not yet understood the problem. Think about it a little more. It REALLY does allow Universal, or anyone for that matter, to prove that you have, or haven't, done funny things with your computer, without sending jackbooted thugs to bust into your house and tear your system apart. You'll be amazed, and probably a bit more worried, once you grasp it.
Very well put, sir. Of course I'm in. I won't bend over for those greedy pieces of shit, not even drunk and stoned. And I'm sure that many others will never take this neither, even if that means starting over and building everything again, from scratch, from the personal computer to the Internet (which may well be the case: If this nonsense gets entrenched too much, chances are we'll have to build our own computers and networks to bypass it).
Anyway, I'm very glad I read your post. I'm starting to believe that there is no other way of fighting this DRM crap. And yours is precisely the attitude I hope the OSS community will take: focus on building a free world, not wasting time fighting a war that can't be won. I will be happy to participate.
(It's just that, considering what a setback this would be for OSS, the 'net and everything, this is kind of annoying, isn't it?)
Hear, hear.
This, IMO, is the core of Microsoft's evil plan. I will even dare to say that, as much as I am interested in theis AMI guy's answers, his company is not the one with for the plan --they are merely dragged into it, and I think they can't do squat about it. You will get no relief from him.
See, I really don't think AMI, or any BIOS manufacturer, will ever make one that plainly refuses to boot a bootloader because it lacks a signature from a CA it trusts. That opens a class vulnerability in the scheme (a single CA key is compromised and you lose the whole system). Also, it is just too bloody obvious to the EFF and the likes. And it is unnecessary for the evil plan to succeed. The BIOS will always boot whatever you ask it to boot. I'm ready to take a bet on that. That is not the problem.
The problem is, the BIOS will checksum the bootloader, and store that checksum in a safe place. Furthermore, the BIOS will provide, to any program that asks for it, be it "trusted" or not, that hash, cryptographically signed with the BIOS key (btw the only key that has to reside in the BIOS, and you can bet it will be hardcoded in the silicon, not overridable). From that point on, you can build "trusted" data delivery paths entirely in software.
Here's an example: Say, you want to watch a movie trailer. So your browser connects to Universal Pictures' server, which demands cryptographic proof that it can "trust" your computer. So your media player software obtains that proof from the OS, and delivers it. What the OS delivers the hash of the media player, signed with the OS key. To guarantee the integrity of the OS, it includes the OS' hash, signed by the bootloader. To guarantee the bootloader's integrity, it includes the bootloader's hash, signed by the BIOS. Voilá, you have crypto proof that your entire system is kosher. Universal's server has only to verify that the BIOS's key is trustable, which they can do by checking it against AMI, or whatever. If that key is compromised (e.g., you crack the key of your BIOS), then they have a problem with a single individual, not a class compromise.
But the point is: you have NO say on which keys are trustable or not, because the verifying is not done by you. It is done by Universal. The best you can do is not buy Universal.
But now imagine this thread's scenario: your ISP is the one that requires proof of "trustability" before letting you connect. You will have to either (1) make your ISP include your OS's key in their trust list, or (2) switch to Windows, or (3) switch to another ISP that does not require this. But you will have option (3) for just some time: just picture the logical progression of this. Extend to almost everything else: online banking, electronic commerce, fucking email! You have MS Internet[TM], what Bill has always wanted.
And you can bet it will be eagerly adopted by banks, media companies, and the likes, because it is the single scheme that allows them to "protect" their data against their own customers. And all the time we will be scratching our own heads, wondering how we let that happen, if we, after all, successfully coerced AMI into not making a BIOS that refuses to boot Linux.
This is pure, concentrated evil. I stand in awe of Microsoft. I'm very, very concerned about this.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. --Napoleon Bonaparte
Thank you for posting that dump. The first thing I thought of was sniffing my ethernet myself, just to see if this was true. Regrettably, I have no Windows machines available here to test with (never imagined that I would ever think of this as 'regrettable' :-).
Anyway, I'm having a really hard time believing this story. I just can't get me to think that such a nasty hack would have gone unnoticed for years (the article speaks of years). I mean, think of the security holes it would open! The many router and firewall mysterious misbehaving it would trigger. And no sysadmin, or lowly script kiddie noticing this? It just can't be.
I'd love to have information on how to reproduce this, and see it for myself on my network. Yes I'd put Windows and (yuck) IIS in one of my boxes, for a couple of hours, to run this test. But until I can see it myself, or read about it in Bugtraq, I won't believe it, and will be ashamed that Slashdot is publishing it without a big note stating at the very least that "this may be not true".
Really, even though I'm a GNU/Linux user, the kind that actually uses the "GNU/Linux" tag from time to time, and that I love Mozilla and all, if find this just as low as the best FUD Microsoft has come up with in their dirty history.
Just a short rant on my experience and conclusions regarding threads. Me, having been formed in the "new age" school of programming (trained on the Commodore Amiga), always used threads. Used to design all my software with threads in mind. But not anymore. Since my jump to Unix, some five years ago, I've experienced a rather deep change of perception on this issue.
IMO, threaded code is much, much harder to implement correctly, and to debug, than single-threaded code. I used to blame the crappy thread support of many Unix libraries and tools. But now that gdb supports threads, along with pretty much everything else (except gprof, but the workaround is simple), I've found that it still is a PIA to debug all but the simplest threaded apps.
After years of hard work trying to determine what library calls are not reentrant, how are asynchronous signals delivered in each platform you support (God! Never, ever, ever mix threads and signals when writing portable code, not if you can avoid it), and which objects should be synchronized to get the best compromise between sync overhead and avoiding trashing the heap, you just fall in love with a design in which no locking is necessary at all. No ambiguities in library calls, no undocumented whatever_r() calls, no weird signal handling. A design in which a single core dump can tell you EXACTLY what was your program doing and why did it crash. Really, the simplicity and elegance of Unix programming without threads is just beautiful. The best adjective I can come up with is "liberating".
Of course, you do have to switch to a state-machine kind of mentality when designing your applications. It is not easy (was not easy for me, at least). But it can be done very cleanly and elegantly (for an example, look for the "State" pattern, the one in which you derive classes for representing your state machine states). If portability is not an issue, it can also be done very efficiently, if you use IO signals instead of select().
Now, having said all that, I'll now point out that I still use threads, because my code usually has to run on WIN32 too, and programming without threads there is hell (not that programming with them is much better). But I avoid threads as much as I can. I still worry about writing reentrant functions, because I find that to be a very good practice, even if no threads ae involved. But threads are used only when no other portable solution cuts it (like when checking asynchronusly for activity on non-socket descriptors, on WIN32).
Well, probably not, unless the city council or something wants to go ahead and turn the city into a web browser or BIOS manufacturer...
That's right. It's called "firstview connect", and it actually runs an embedded Linux kernel (that's what the page says, anyway).
What are the chances of Phoenix (the embedded browser) to be actually based on Mozilla? I think Phoenix (the company) is right asking Phoenix (the project) for the name change, but they should do it very, very politely. Like an open letter asking to please change the name. Otherwise they'll look like a bunch of hypocrites when they go ahead and use Phoenix (the really good browser) in Phoenix (the BIOS).
You know, the name does get confusing when talking about this...
You know, it's idiots like you, sir, that give gringos their bad name around the world. Thankfully (for you), most people in your country are not that screwed. Or so I hope. For you see, that World Trade Center thing still looks like an unspeakable atrocity from here, but the more blabbering assholes like you are let loose on the world by the U.S. of A., the harder it becomes to be sad for your country, and side with you and try to help in any way we can, when that kind of shit happens. I won't excuse Bin Laden, for he is a homicidal madman --but you are making me see how you could annoy someone beyond his sanity.
Oh well, this is offtopic and flamebaitish, so mod me down. Just got too pissed off by dickless here.
I don't think there'll be many options to choose from.
Maybe opaque keys with a hole on the top, and a single-character LCD panel fitted in the hole (not 7-segment but pixelled, like those in "scientific" calculators). Then you can use a single bright light inside the keyboard that will shine through the white dots. And you could add a potentiometer to control the intensity of the light, like a car dashboard, in case it gets annoying. And you can put two lights, one green and one red, and a switch to turn on one or the other, or both, so you can change the light color.
I'm guessing power consumption should be much lower than leds on each key, too.
I can see it now. They'll get Gates to finance this thing (he just loves innovation, and giving money, doesn't he?). Now, he'll make them use Windows boxes for traffic control. Next thing you now, some controller downtown will get a blue flash on his face, and you'll find yourself in a cute little cylindrical coffin stuck in a tube-traffic jam, in vacuum, with 18 minutes of oxygen left and a real urgent need for a bathroom. You can say I'm old fashioned, but I'll stick to my bike for a while, thank you very much.
Wtf has mplayer to do with Windows Media Player upgrades?
I thought he was suggesting that we Linux users can watch DivX out of the box, with mplayer.
(btw, the RealVideo version of this Nemo clip can be watched with RealPlayer 8 for Linux --if you can stand the EULAs on that thing. Just don't install it as root.)
Yeah, I can understand you. I used to feel exactly that way some years ago.
It would be great if someone would find a way of making Linux (and Unix) configuration simpler, while still allowing advanced users to work some magic, without breaking the installer. I mean, I'd love to be able to configure my machine with two clicks of the mouse, but not if that means that I won't be able to insert a couple of scripts to configure my personal mini-firewall, or establish a VPN link to my office, when the net goes up, or something like that. I hope one such solution will be found in the future, but in the mean time, I'd rather read HOWTOs than fight with GUIs.
As for dependencies: there's nothing I can argue. I use libldap, but I'm sure most users don't need it. Don't know why it gets installed a standard (I think SASL pulls them), maybe that should be filed as a bug. As for the 240 MB, uncompressed headers do take quite a bit of space (around 50 MB on my laptop, which has a lot of -dev packages installed). Static libraries take another huge chunk. And I rather install some docs (which also take a lot of space) and leave some 100 MB for logs and temp files (it's just a drag when /tmp or /var fill up, isn't it?)
:-)
Btw, it seems that we're getting Gnome2 on this very Sunday!
Dude, that was a reference from The Big Lebowski. A very, very good movie, if I may say so.
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Dude... I think you mean Linux, not Lunix. Lunix is a multitasking, Unix-like operating system for the Commodore 64. It's almost as cool as Linux, but not quite the same.
I don't completely agree with you here. I do agrre in that Debian's efforts to ease the road for the newbies are pretty lackluster, to say the least. However, maybe I'm just insensitive, but I can't say I care too much about that. For power users, there isn't anything close to Debian --anything that I've tried, anyway. That includes several other Linux flavors, Windows, Solaris and MacOS pre-X (I'm really interested to try FreeBSD, Gentoo and MacOS X, but alas, no time).
But that's a feature, not a bug! That's precisely what allows me to build full-featured Debian routers out of old 486 boxes with 240 MB hard disks (no kidding).
You just have to read a little. By now I'm sure you found out that in Debian you don't edit modules.conf directly, but put files in /etc/modutils, which update-modules assemble into a modules.conf file. It's cleaner, easier to maintain, it avoids one package from clobbering other package's modules. If only you manage to get used to it, you'll probably find that there's usually a very good reason behind most of Debian's oddities.
Debian will seldom touch your hand-edited files, if you know where and how to write them. I know, that can annoy a great deal out of an old timer used to edit conf files freely --but then again, Debian's scheme of things allows you to install and deinstall things, and even to upgrade from slink to potato to woody, without worrying about breaking anything. I think that's a good reason to deviate from traditional setups.
Yeah, that is a problem. Again, I don't care much: I use FVWM, and the few GTK/Gnome apps that I need (Mozilla, Evolution, XChat, the Gimp) I installed from Woody and work flawlessly. But I do see someone getting frustrated from the lack of Gnome2 and/or KDE3. I hope someone that actually gets bothered enough by this will go help the guys packaging that stuff --they've been doing it for a long time, and a little bit of help probably won't hurt.
My laptop has one of those too. You need ALSA.
And yes, I did recompile the kernel and ALSA modules some months ago. It's not that terrible, but you do need a lot of disk (300 MB or so)... However, you do not have to compile the kernel, nor the ALSA modules, if you're using Woody and a 2.4 kernel. The package is already done, it's just that for some reason it is still in unstable. Probably some issue that hasn't been dealt with yet, I don't know. The packages work for me. Just fetch the right package for your kernel, run dpkg -i on it, and configure for your card.
Actually, you can configure apt to do this kind of thing without having to download stuff manually, but it's probably not worth it if the only thing you want from unstable is ALSA (or see apt_preferences(5) for details, if you do want to know more).
Here in Mexico we have a legal resource, called the amparo, which basically means asking a court for permission before you do something that may be questionable in the future. E.g., you would go to the court and say "look, I want to develop this thing, using Microsoft's APIs and so and so, would that be ok with the law?" Then the judge thinks about it, calls anybody she thinks may have something to say about it, and then issues a verdict. And if the judge grants you the amparo, then you can't be subject to legal action if you go ahead and actually do it. For all practical purposes, you have legal immunity on that particular item.
It's like going to trial without the risk of the court finding you guilty of a crime: if the court denies it, nothing else happens (except perhaps setting a legal precedent).
Do you gringos have something like that? If you did, then this could be a very good time for Samba developers (and many others) to use it...
Did that link work, at some point of time? It doesn't now, but using Microsoft to redirect to goatse.cx... Man, I just don't know what to think about it. Trolls have grown. They have grown very much.
In my case, it is not that my system can't handle Flash, but rather that it *won't* handle it.
You see, this page looks ok in Linux Mozilla with the Flash 5 plugin. But I can't stand most flash pages because (1) they make stupid noises over my music, (2) they force me to use stupid user interfaces designed for looks rather than functionality (like those insufferable DVD's that force you through a freaking 20 seconds video just to enter a submenu), and (3) because you have to wait ages for them to load when using a modem (and the said system being my laptop, that's most of the time I'm online).
So I have Flash deliberately disabled. Most of Flash content in the Internet is junk, so I don't miss it, but sites like this one, that looks promising but use flash and do not offer a plain HTML version, usually annoy me to no end.
Having said that, this one is one of the least evil flash sites I've seen, and I like his case mods. But still, I won't excuse him for not doing it in HTML+CSS.