Don't worry, you've just run into a well-known Slashdot phenomena: people reply not for the usefulness of their comments, but rather to whore for karma. Therefore, you get a lot of people who are talking completely out of their asses and are far out of their depth on the issue. Of course, I see that you have found a thoughtful reply that seemed to help you, so all is not lost, but by-and-large I would take anything posted on Slashdot with a grain of salt.
Yes, I'd imagine so. The problem with discussing materials is that there are so many different aspects to them that what makes something absolute crap for one task has a different, special advantage for an entirely different task. Not unlike comparing programming languages.
I used to do some serious competitive sailing, and I can tell you that spectra is rather mediocre when compared to other high-tech synthetic materials on the market currently. It doesn't even measure up to Kevlar as far as strength or streching resistence is concerned. The best that comes to my mind right now would be Vectran, but it has been several years since I was in the field, and thus new developments may have ocurred as a result of America's Cup development and such.
This type of gestapo licensing will not be accepted by even the most hardcore anti open-source companies. Send an e-mail to pr@borland.com to voice your concern.
Umm... well, if your first sentence is true, wouldn't it be completely unnecessary to send them an e-mail protesting it? I mean, jeez, let the market forces run their course. Either that, or accept that the license isn't really that big a deal.
An Xbox has 64MB of RAM (in the consumer version, I.E. the one everyone here is likely to own), it has a custom graphics chipset based on NVidia's next generation chipset. The hard drives are 10GB, not 6. It runs Windows 2000.
On the other hand, it does run a Pentium III, so you're not a complete dipshit, right?
Not only are there probably licensing issues that they would have to overcome should they choose to open the source code to it, but you really have to ask yourself, do they really want their name tarnished by open source?
No, really, think about it for a minute. Sure, opening the source to an older game sounds great at first, but one must consider the full implications of that move. If the source is made publicly available, it will only result in crashy, ugly mods that are hard to use or install. Plus not everyone has Microsoft Visual C++ handy in order to compile the source and install it on a proper gaming OS. So anyone who is new to the game and wants to pick it up will take one look at it after downloading, think "god, what a mess. It isn't worth the trouble." and will probably think less of Infogrames for it.
Also, what license do you suppose they will use? If they want what they are claiming to want, shouldn't they put it under the BSD license so that it is truely in the public domain? I mean, after all, if it is so old as to not generate profitable sales anymore, why worry if someone else takes the code and releases their own modified binaries for profit?
Yeah, "prevailing market conditions". That, and it just plain sucks. Not only does it lack the kind of enterprise-class support for SMP that it's USparcIII cousin has, but it has absolutely pitiful hardware support. Hell, it even makes BeOS look good.
I'd say that even Linux would be a better choice for your x86 machine than Solaris anyway.
Domain speculation was based on the same principles, and tied to, the dotcom revolution. As soon as people realized that speculating in companies that had no business plan to speak of, they pulled their money out of the market, which consequently left the dotcom people without any money to blow on expensive domain names. Thus, no one can sell obvious things like "business.com" for $400,000,000,000,000 or whatever.
All I can say for myself is that I'm glad that bullshit has passed. I will no longer have to worry about having to pay a hefty sum for a domain I want just because it sounds trendy. More power to the people.
but it seems like you want all the exotic new stuff to be already completed, stabilized, and integrated into the kernel. Without having to look at the different branches to see if they've already got it in place. Good luck, you'll need it.
That's why I got rid of Linux. They couldn't get their act together and get this done. FreeBSD already has a great VM and SoftUpdates, stable and working in production systems. The devleopment process is clearly labeled by "-RELEASE" (meaning "it's safe to use in production systems and has been throughly reviewed"), "-STABLE" (meaning that it should work fine, but it is rapidly changing and there could always be bugs that pop up) and "-CURRENT" (meaning "Use at your own risk"). Linux doesn't have any "stable" branch of development. They claim to be stable on even numbers, and have development on odds, but this simply isn't the case. Every new release of 2.4 is constantly changing and they even dropped a new VM in in a stable branch. So what the hell is the difference between 2.4 and 2.5 again? At least BSD get's reviewed before they're willing to portray it as "stable", the kind of honesty you won't find in the Linux community. With Linux, you have people just dropping new stuff in all over the place, and it results in really stupid things like total file corruption in a 2.4 stable release.
So, since you were too stupid to keep up with Kernel development in Linux
What's your problem? Mistake the popluarity of your favorite OS for the girth of your penis? Did it occur to you that maybe people who want to get things done don't have the time to dick around with all the myriad patches and bugs that appear in the chaotic Linux development process?
Glad to see that you result to being insulting rather than constructive.
One thing, if you like BSD you might want to try Debian.
I'd like Debian too, except for a few things:
It uses the overly-complicated runlevel system for startup scripts so it's harder to write your own.
It uses the Linux kernel, with all the horrible hacks and sorry VM.
Most of the Debian people are Free Software zealots. Sorry, but I prefer not to be at the mercy of a bunch of RMS clones when it comes to what software I run. Plus it makes them real assholes.
As far as solid Java support, FreeBSD does support Java, as reported in this Slashdot article.
Or look at it this way: corporations are going to need People-Who-Know-What-They're-Doing-(TM) if they want to use open source *nix anyway
Hell, why not just have them all write an OS from scratch for every machine? That would be the best way, and the people would have to know what they're doing, right?
The point is, people would rather do something the easy way and save time. Especially in this case where you don't even lose anything in quality by switching.
You don't understand. This is a small lawfirm where everyone knows everyone. Someone isn't just going to go in a erase everything, even if they knew how to, there are about 6 or 7 people there whom I all know. They don't have a dedicated server room where they can keep everything locked up. I can't just tell them to not touch it, because as soon as I do, my client (the boss there, who thinks he knows a lot about computers) starts screaming about how he needs to be able to reboot it when it crashes. The most logical step is to keep them from doing any harm through trying to reboot it, and thus the journaled file system. But I suppose it's easy to hide behind some percieved fault of the user than it is to admit that Linux has its faults.
But of course: because it isn't supported in FreeBSD it OBVIOUSLY isn't needed and unimportant.
Let's try changing a couple of words there and see how it sounds:
But of course: because WinModems aren't supported in Linux they OBVIOUSLY aren't needed and unimportant.
This is exactly the kind of crap I got when I tried to get my modem to work under Linux. "Your hardware sucks! It's not Linux's fault! Go get some real hardware!"
But hey, I don't need XFS when I have EXT3, and I didn't really need EXT3 to begin with, it's just nice to have.
Oh, you don't need it, it's just nice to have? Tell that to my boss. I do occasional consulting for a small law firm where I installed Debian as a fileserver for the Windows clients. Great idea, right? Wrong. Since the stupid office people just hit the "reset" button whenever they percieve that something's wrong (it isn't), then ext2 gets a little more fragmented and broken each time. Until it all came to a head this past week and ext2 was such a mess that everything on the system was unstable. Which meant I had to transfer EVERYTHING over to a spare Windows 98 machine while I sorted out the whole mess. You know what I would have had to do in FreeBSD? I would have had to just turn on Soft Updates. No screaming and pulling hair, just messing with a config file or two.
the reason linux takes a while to parse/proc for top is because everything in/proc is a file, which is 'the Unix way'.
Gee, I'd hate to see good design get in the way of tradition. And Linux is incredibly standards compliant. Take system-independent includes for example: in Linux, they are placed in include/linux. Why? Well, presumably so you can't make portable code that works on a non-Linux platform. But I'm sure you already knew that.
Are you kidding me? Who in their right mind would use either as a true desktop? What the hell are you doing using a 3d accelerator and soundcard supporting rear speakers in Linux anyway?
Stop being a cheapskate and just shell out the $50 or so for a copy of Windows 98 SE and get it over with. I know that when I'm talking about OSes, I'm talking about the machine that I prefer to develop on; I don't care about crap like playing shitty 3D games in *nix.
You know, there was one point in my life, about 2 years ago, where I was new to Linux and hopeful. It was strange and different, and I was eager to learn its ins and outs.
Then I became cynical. Why? Because I experienced one of the few things worse than DLL hell: kernel version hell. My thoughts when this occured were as follows:
Hmmm... I wonder if I can run XFS without recompiling... Nope, looks like I'll have to upgrade the kernel. But wait! Do I use the -ac kernel with its new VM or do I use the main branch with the most "standard" stuff? Oh crap, looks like 2.4.whatever had a really bad bug by default, and they didn't fix it until 2.4.later. Shit, I don't have the time for this.
And so it goes. Just the other night I decided to dump Linux off my home machine all together and went with FreeBSD. No worrying about the latest kernel or what the best distro is, just have to stay with the most current "RELEASE" version if I want new features. If there are some bugs or (unlikely) security holes, then I just get all the patches for that version, install and recompile. And most importantly, no more retarded Linux VM. As soon as I fired up top, I noticed that while I was compiling something, it actually used *all* of my RAM and never had to swap to disk. That's right, none of this Linux shit about leaving 16MB free and going right to the swap space. Not to mention the moronic implementation of/proc that makes top consume resources by parsing/proc instead of using system calls like any good system would.
Eh? How can they get away with selling that?
on
HP-LX 1.0 Secure Linux
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
First of all, I'd like to know what the hell they were thinking when they did this? I mean, it's a glorified chroot jail, and we all know what a breeze those are to administrate (like compiling a seperate set of libs for each app that runs in one). Really, one could do this for free either by using FreeBSD's superior security features or just going with the NSA's linux distro.
Secondly, I'd like to know exactly how they can get away with this and not violate the GPL? They are clearly writing software that interacts with the components of a GPL'ed piece of software (the Linix kernel), and according to the GPL, that means that their extensions ought to be under the GPL as well. So where are the source code downloads, HP? Hmmm? Maybe you'll be getting a letter from the FSF's legal team sometime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry, you've just run into a well-known Slashdot phenomena: people reply not for the usefulness of their comments, but rather to whore for karma. Therefore, you get a lot of people who are talking completely out of their asses and are far out of their depth on the issue. Of course, I see that you have found a thoughtful reply that seemed to help you, so all is not lost, but by-and-large I would take anything posted on Slashdot with a grain of salt.
Yes, I'd imagine so. The problem with discussing materials is that there are so many different aspects to them that what makes something absolute crap for one task has a different, special advantage for an entirely different task. Not unlike comparing programming languages.
I used to do some serious competitive sailing, and I can tell you that spectra is rather mediocre when compared to other high-tech synthetic materials on the market currently. It doesn't even measure up to Kevlar as far as strength or streching resistence is concerned. The best that comes to my mind right now would be Vectran, but it has been several years since I was in the field, and thus new developments may have ocurred as a result of America's Cup development and such.
Umm... well, if your first sentence is true, wouldn't it be completely unnecessary to send them an e-mail protesting it? I mean, jeez, let the market forces run their course. Either that, or accept that the license isn't really that big a deal.
Seriously, though. This isn't a real product. Get your facts straight.
On the other hand, it does run a Pentium III, so you're not a complete dipshit, right?
No, really, think about it for a minute. Sure, opening the source to an older game sounds great at first, but one must consider the full implications of that move. If the source is made publicly available, it will only result in crashy, ugly mods that are hard to use or install. Plus not everyone has Microsoft Visual C++ handy in order to compile the source and install it on a proper gaming OS. So anyone who is new to the game and wants to pick it up will take one look at it after downloading, think "god, what a mess. It isn't worth the trouble." and will probably think less of Infogrames for it.
Also, what license do you suppose they will use? If they want what they are claiming to want, shouldn't they put it under the BSD license so that it is truely in the public domain? I mean, after all, if it is so old as to not generate profitable sales anymore, why worry if someone else takes the code and releases their own modified binaries for profit?
I'd say that even Linux would be a better choice for your x86 machine than Solaris anyway.
All I can say for myself is that I'm glad that bullshit has passed. I will no longer have to worry about having to pay a hefty sum for a domain I want just because it sounds trendy. More power to the people.
That's why I got rid of Linux. They couldn't get their act together and get this done. FreeBSD already has a great VM and SoftUpdates, stable and working in production systems. The devleopment process is clearly labeled by "-RELEASE" (meaning "it's safe to use in production systems and has been throughly reviewed"), "-STABLE" (meaning that it should work fine, but it is rapidly changing and there could always be bugs that pop up) and "-CURRENT" (meaning "Use at your own risk"). Linux doesn't have any "stable" branch of development. They claim to be stable on even numbers, and have development on odds, but this simply isn't the case. Every new release of 2.4 is constantly changing and they even dropped a new VM in in a stable branch. So what the hell is the difference between 2.4 and 2.5 again? At least BSD get's reviewed before they're willing to portray it as "stable", the kind of honesty you won't find in the Linux community. With Linux, you have people just dropping new stuff in all over the place, and it results in really stupid things like total file corruption in a 2.4 stable release.
They both work fine for me under Windows and they are both unsupported in Linux. What's the difference again?
What's your problem? Mistake the popluarity of your favorite OS for the girth of your penis? Did it occur to you that maybe people who want to get things done don't have the time to dick around with all the myriad patches and bugs that appear in the chaotic Linux development process?
Glad to see that you result to being insulting rather than constructive.
I'd like Debian too, except for a few things:
Hell, why not just have them all write an OS from scratch for every machine? That would be the best way, and the people would have to know what they're doing, right?
The point is, people would rather do something the easy way and save time. Especially in this case where you don't even lose anything in quality by switching.
You don't understand. This is a small lawfirm where everyone knows everyone. Someone isn't just going to go in a erase everything, even if they knew how to, there are about 6 or 7 people there whom I all know. They don't have a dedicated server room where they can keep everything locked up. I can't just tell them to not touch it, because as soon as I do, my client (the boss there, who thinks he knows a lot about computers) starts screaming about how he needs to be able to reboot it when it crashes. The most logical step is to keep them from doing any harm through trying to reboot it, and thus the journaled file system. But I suppose it's easy to hide behind some percieved fault of the user than it is to admit that Linux has its faults.
Let's try changing a couple of words there and see how it sounds:
But of course: because WinModems aren't supported in Linux they OBVIOUSLY aren't needed and unimportant.
This is exactly the kind of crap I got when I tried to get my modem to work under Linux. "Your hardware sucks! It's not Linux's fault! Go get some real hardware!"
Oh, you don't need it, it's just nice to have? Tell that to my boss. I do occasional consulting for a small law firm where I installed Debian as a fileserver for the Windows clients. Great idea, right? Wrong. Since the stupid office people just hit the "reset" button whenever they percieve that something's wrong (it isn't), then ext2 gets a little more fragmented and broken each time. Until it all came to a head this past week and ext2 was such a mess that everything on the system was unstable. Which meant I had to transfer EVERYTHING over to a spare Windows 98 machine while I sorted out the whole mess. You know what I would have had to do in FreeBSD? I would have had to just turn on Soft Updates. No screaming and pulling hair, just messing with a config file or two.
Gee, I'd hate to see good design get in the way of tradition. And Linux is incredibly standards compliant. Take system-independent includes for example: in Linux, they are placed in include/linux. Why? Well, presumably so you can't make portable code that works on a non-Linux platform. But I'm sure you already knew that.
Stop being a cheapskate and just shell out the $50 or so for a copy of Windows 98 SE and get it over with. I know that when I'm talking about OSes, I'm talking about the machine that I prefer to develop on; I don't care about crap like playing shitty 3D games in *nix.
Then I became cynical. Why? Because I experienced one of the few things worse than DLL hell: kernel version hell. My thoughts when this occured were as follows:
And so it goes. Just the other night I decided to dump Linux off my home machine all together and went with FreeBSD. No worrying about the latest kernel or what the best distro is, just have to stay with the most current "RELEASE" version if I want new features. If there are some bugs or (unlikely) security holes, then I just get all the patches for that version, install and recompile. And most importantly, no more retarded Linux VM. As soon as I fired up top, I noticed that while I was compiling something, it actually used *all* of my RAM and never had to swap to disk. That's right, none of this Linux shit about leaving 16MB free and going right to the swap space. Not to mention the moronic implementation of /proc that makes top consume resources by parsing /proc instead of using system calls like any good system would.
I have absolutely no regrets.
Dammit! If we can mechanically augment the UN's anti-terrorist forces, then we can damn well use bots to get first post!
This post in a space of indeterminate time.
Oh yes! First post of 2002!
Secondly, I'd like to know exactly how they can get away with this and not violate the GPL? They are clearly writing software that interacts with the components of a GPL'ed piece of software (the Linix kernel), and according to the GPL, that means that their extensions ought to be under the GPL as well. So where are the source code downloads, HP? Hmmm? Maybe you'll be getting a letter from the FSF's legal team sometime soon.
GOOD? Are you kidding me? It's a libertarian wankoff manifesto. Just like almost all of Heinlein's work.