Why all that complaining about the lack of a single universal package systems when Debian has a tool to convert.rpm to.deb? That's almost as stupid as complaining about that there's not a single universal graphics format. As long as there are tools to convert from one to another, what's the problem?
Nice idea:-) I'm normally a really old (100 years at least) woman who lives in Afghanistan, has really good education, makes the maximum amount of money possible and is interested in technology and Internet
What format do you think people will choose after hearing a few Ogg songs and seeing that they get much better quality than MP3 in less space? Hard disks might be cheap, but even with my quite decent 40GB disk I have to delete stuff every few months. Same for players, on a larger scale because there's less space available. Basically the choice with them will be filling it with lots of tiny songs that sound like crap, or have that same amount as Ogg with a very decent quality.
That was not my main point. I just think it'd be a bit silly to implement something as complex as a TCP stack in a mouse. It should work perfectly with something much simpler. Maybe simple devices would use UDP and the more complex ones TCP.
The part about a different protocol was just because I think it's more logical that way. Do we really want every user to configure a firewall to block all the mouse traffic from reaching the internet? It'd me much easier to have a new protocol and make routers block it by default. Also I can't imagine a situation where it would be useful to have my keystokes reach Australia (I'm Spain)
Could be a pretty good for security on servers. Here's my idea of how it could work:
You have the server running as normal, with some crypto code in the kernel to verify signatures. When a binary is loaded the kernel checks if the file has been changed from the last time it checked it. If it has, the kernel looks for the signature for the binary on a readonly floppy. If it doesn't match, it doesn't run it. There should be no big slowdown because the kernel could cache floppy accesses.
If you want to update the server go to another computer, do all the security checks you need and make a new floppy with signatures. Then change the floppy on the server and replace the binary.
Here's an idea I had. Why instead of inventing new "standards" like Firewire and USB don't we just use ethernet for everything? Network cards are really cheap these days, and integrated into the motherboard.
To avoid requiring a mouse implement a TCP/IP stack another protocol could be used, which would make it impossible from it to escape from the LAN. Then we'd plug the computer into the hub, and the mouse, printer, keyboard and everything else too.
Of course this would be annoying if the network was really busy, but the motherboard could always have a second ethernet connector, and if needed a second hub could be used. The advantages would be greater speed and possibly cheaper prices as network cards cost next to nothing.
Also, wouldn't that be a great way of troubleshooting devices? No more hours spending if a device doesn't work because it's broken of it's not supported. Just start ethereal and watch if it's sending anything.
Well, I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure that the command completion in bash wasn't made after IntelliSense, and menus that show frequently used items on the top probably were already done before in text mode.
Now, I'd love to hear about a big innovation MS did. Did they invent something comparable in size to multitasking, for example?
Would people like a CVS-like system that used for example a mySQL database? This would solve the locking and data integrity problems. It probably would also make it easier to extend.
I'm feeling curious if people would mind having the source code in a database, or they prefer text files like in CVS
Hmm, that's not exactly what I mean. I'd like a site where you could point to any program, on sourceforge, savannah or the author's web site and ask if somebody would be so nice to add a feature to it or fix a bug.
As I understand it, sourceforge allows a developer to ask other developers to help, but what I'd like is where users of the program ask a volunteer developer to write a bit of the program for them
Bah, why complicate things so much needlessly? Why would you need anybody to type 'ifconfig' or anything? Just use a dynamic DNS server. Get yourmom.dynodns.net, and add a script to/etc/network/if-up.d (Debian, Mandrake was different I think) to update it. I just don't understand why people will do all this obscure stuff when it can be made transparent and invisible on a Linux box.
And BTW, Windows isn't any easier, the alternative is running winipcfg. In Win2K as far as I know there's only ipconfig, which is a command line too. And don't forget that it might not work from Start/Run because the DOS box will close unless you configure it not to.
Well, you can always pay somebody to do it. That's how Namesys (the people who make ReiserFS) earn money.
Now, of course there are lots of programs out there that are useful, but broken in some way or not actively maintained. I'm sure everybody has found a nice project that just needs one little thing to be perfect but nobody touched it for a year.
I think what we need is a "Volunteer Hackers" site where users could post their requests for help, and programmers willing to help could see what is needed. I'm wondering if this could succeed. It would be very nice if it did, and probably would be yet another good reason to switch.
You can see who are you connecting to, but the computers you get the data from are acting as routers. I guess you could try to sue the owner, but that would be like the MPAA suing their ISP because their computers are giving them the data.
All you get with netstat is the most nearby routers to you. You can't know who uploaded that data, whether those computers have the data or are getting it from somebody else. Sniffing a computer's connection you can't know whether they're downloading the data for themselves or just forwarding it.
That's why I say Freenet needs more good content. If it had tons of nice websites taking down people who run a node just because it forwarded something you don't like would be very hard.
Really, this is exactly what is needed. The MPAA is doing the role of an evil and strong predator and will force the migration to better file sharing systems. The more they hunt people who share the faster a switch will be made to Freenet-like systems.
Freenet provides anonymous uploads and anonymous downloads. I'm wondering how will MPAA stop that. At this moment Freenet already has some MP3. So if you want to join, I suggest you check the Freenet and Frost websites.
One thing I think Freenet desperately needs is good content. I don't think it will get very far if people use it only to distribute MP3, warez and other illegal content. It needs lots gaming, news, geek, and those typical "This is me and this is my dog" websites to avoid looking as a system only made to distribute illegal content without being caught.
Actually, ReiserFS does produce a profit.
Look at their web site. ReiserFS is licensed under the GPL and free for anybody to use. But if you want a feature you can pay them and they will write it for you. Then it will be available for everybody for free.
Hehe, but here geeks are part of the problem. Let me exlain. I consider myself a quite decent sysadmin. I keep my server up to date, check the logs, have quite paranoid security... I'm pretty sure it's not been broken into.
However, thanks to me many of my friends run web servers on Linux too. Some of them have very little idea of how to keep it reasonably secure and have very little experience. On the other hand, it's better than running Xitami on a personal computer, I guess.
If Linux becomes very popular expect a small population of geeks like I getting all their friends to install Apache. Then we'll have a situation almost like in Windows.
Huh? I never saw that as the use of a MD5SUMS file. I always used them after continuing a failed transfer to make sure I got an exact copy of the file. That's the only purpose it should have. For authenticity checks you use PGP signatures.
that reading Slashdot would avoid me so many problems. I noticed a poster talking about the DRM on the other article, so I choosed not to install it. But I wonder, now what? Will that patch be required to patch something else? Will some new software install it automatically? And does reinstalling Windows take back the EULA changes?
Huh? "Equipment winds up on E-bay and equipment manufacturers find themselves competing against their own stuff.". I don't get it. Are you agreeing with RIAA and other idiots about that reselling something at a low price without the manufacturer getting paid a second time is somehow wrong? That equipment had been bought once, and that's all the manufacturer is and should be entitled to. If I want to sell $1000 hardware for $1 it's nobody's business.
It's the same piece of Windows-style crappy installer that insists on grabbing my screen. Yuck. I don't want to select from the installer. I don't want to click. I want to be able to schedule a quicktime update if I like. It's not consistent. Quicktime installer doesn't look like the MS office installer.
I've been using Debian. The installer works, I don't have to download it every time I want a package and I didn't have any problems with it. No reason why it shouldn't work, excepting an incompetent packager. InstallShield won't save you from that either.
BTW, I guess you'll be very disappointed with Windows too, because it seems to be switching to using.msi files, which curiously look a lot like packages.
Re:Dude, get with the program
on
Is RPM Doomed?
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· Score: 1
I have enough with my 40GB disk. And in case you haven't noticed, I didn't mention hard disks at all. The problem is not what it takes when it's installed, but the extra crap that could not be there. I see packages as small as 10KB on Linux, but I've never seen such a small setup.exe. The problem is not that users have to spend 500KB more of disk space, it's that they have to downloading the same 500Kb piece of data for 20 programs with a 33K modem. What about ADSL, currently many providers have a bandwidth limit. 500KB can make a difference when you download a lot of software.
And FYI on Debian I've yet to have problems with the package system. On Windows I do have problems, however.
That's all very nice, except when you use a modem. Or floppies. Or even CDs. InstallShield adds about 500KB to every of those setup.exe files. Now think about how many programs could you put on a CD even when a tiny 100KB program takes 600KB of disk space! And why the hell I need a copy of DirectX with every game? Some games are even evil enough to install it without asking, and one even overwrote my files with an older version.
That's not the only problem, though. Since every program has its own installer you don't get bug fixes. What if InstallShield screwed up something in some particular version? You can't just upgrade it! BTW, in case you haven't noticed, MS doesn't like all this either. That's why now there are.msi packages.
Oh, sure. I know there are people who use the Internet as a tool. But some of us practically live on it. I have more friends online than in real life, and losing internet access would be extremely depressing to me. Even losing ADSL would be quite hard because it would be much harder to talk to people from other countries.
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't we make say, 500 mirrors of it? ;-)
On Windows there was a nice program called Teleport. For Linux I can't remember right now but there was a good one too.
HTTP Error 403
403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
This error can be caused if the Web server is busy and cannot process your request due to heavy traffic. Please try to connect again later.
Please contact the Web server's administrator if the problem persists.
Why all that complaining about the lack of a single universal package systems when Debian has a tool to convert .rpm to .deb? That's almost as stupid as complaining about that there's not a single universal graphics format. As long as there are tools to convert from one to another, what's the problem?
Nice idea :-)
I'm normally a really old (100 years at least) woman who lives in Afghanistan, has really good education, makes the maximum amount of money possible and is interested in technology and Internet
What format do you think people will choose after hearing a few Ogg songs and seeing that they get much better quality than MP3 in less space? Hard disks might be cheap, but even with my quite decent 40GB disk I have to delete stuff every few months. Same for players, on a larger scale because there's less space available. Basically the choice with them will be filling it with lots of tiny songs that sound like crap, or have that same amount as Ogg with a very decent quality.
That was not my main point. I just think it'd be a bit silly to implement something as complex as a TCP stack in a mouse. It should work perfectly with something much simpler. Maybe simple devices would use UDP and the more complex ones TCP.
The part about a different protocol was just because I think it's more logical that way. Do we really want every user to configure a firewall to block all the mouse traffic from reaching the internet? It'd me much easier to have a new protocol and make routers block it by default. Also I can't imagine a situation where it would be useful to have my keystokes reach Australia (I'm Spain)
Could be a pretty good for security on servers. Here's my idea of how it could work:
You have the server running as normal, with some crypto code in the kernel to verify signatures.
When a binary is loaded the kernel checks if the file has been changed from the last time it checked it.
If it has, the kernel looks for the signature for the binary on a readonly floppy. If it doesn't match, it doesn't run it.
There should be no big slowdown because the kernel could cache floppy accesses.
If you want to update the server go to another computer, do all the security checks you need and make a new floppy with signatures. Then change the floppy on the server and replace the binary.
Here's an idea I had. Why instead of inventing new "standards" like Firewire and USB don't we just use ethernet for everything? Network cards are really cheap these days, and integrated into the motherboard.
To avoid requiring a mouse implement a TCP/IP stack another protocol could be used, which would make it impossible from it to escape from the LAN. Then we'd plug the computer into the hub, and the mouse, printer, keyboard and everything else too.
Of course this would be annoying if the network was really busy, but the motherboard could always have a second ethernet connector, and if needed a second hub could be used. The advantages would be greater speed and possibly cheaper prices as network cards cost next to nothing.
Also, wouldn't that be a great way of troubleshooting devices? No more hours spending if a device doesn't work because it's broken of it's not supported. Just start ethereal and watch if it's sending anything.
Heh, if more people came outside of their homes and sat around the street getting shot in your yard would be a lot harder with all those witnesses.
Well, I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure that the command completion in bash wasn't made after IntelliSense, and menus that show frequently used items on the top probably were already done before in text mode.
Now, I'd love to hear about a big innovation MS did. Did they invent something comparable in size to multitasking, for example?
Would people like a CVS-like system that used for example a mySQL database? This would solve the locking and data integrity problems. It probably would also make it easier to extend.
I'm feeling curious if people would mind having the source code in a database, or they prefer text files like in CVS
Hmm, that's not exactly what I mean. I'd like a site where you could point to any program, on sourceforge, savannah or the author's web site and ask if somebody would be so nice to add a feature to it or fix a bug.
As I understand it, sourceforge allows a developer to ask other developers to help, but what I'd like is where users of the program ask a volunteer developer to write a bit of the program for them
Bah, why complicate things so much needlessly? Why would you need anybody to type 'ifconfig' or anything? Just use a dynamic DNS server. Get yourmom.dynodns.net, and add a script to /etc/network/if-up.d (Debian, Mandrake was different I think) to update it. I just don't understand why people will do all this obscure stuff when it can be made transparent and invisible on a Linux box.
And BTW, Windows isn't any easier, the alternative is running winipcfg. In Win2K as far as I know there's only ipconfig, which is a command line too. And don't forget that it might not work from Start/Run because the DOS box will close unless you configure it not to.
Now, of course there are lots of programs out there that are useful, but broken in some way or not actively maintained. I'm sure everybody has found a nice project that just needs one little thing to be perfect but nobody touched it for a year.
I think what we need is a "Volunteer Hackers" site where users could post their requests for help, and programmers willing to help could see what is needed. I'm wondering if this could succeed. It would be very nice if it did, and probably would be yet another good reason to switch.
All you get with netstat is the most nearby routers to you. You can't know who uploaded that data, whether those computers have the data or are getting it from somebody else. Sniffing a computer's connection you can't know whether they're downloading the data for themselves or just forwarding it.
That's why I say Freenet needs more good content. If it had tons of nice websites taking down people who run a node just because it forwarded something you don't like would be very hard.
Freenet provides anonymous uploads and anonymous downloads. I'm wondering how will MPAA stop that. At this moment Freenet already has some MP3. So if you want to join, I suggest you check the Freenet and Frost websites.
One thing I think Freenet desperately needs is good content. I don't think it will get very far if people use it only to distribute MP3, warez and other illegal content. It needs lots gaming, news, geek, and those typical "This is me and this is my dog" websites to avoid looking as a system only made to distribute illegal content without being caught.
I agree with the rest of your points though
Hehe, but here geeks are part of the problem. Let me exlain. I consider myself a quite decent sysadmin. I keep my server up to date, check the logs, have quite paranoid security... I'm pretty sure it's not been broken into.
However, thanks to me many of my friends run web servers on Linux too. Some of them have very little idea of how to keep it reasonably secure and have very little experience. On the other hand, it's better than running Xitami on a personal computer, I guess.
If Linux becomes very popular expect a small population of geeks like I getting all their friends to install Apache. Then we'll have a situation almost like in Windows.
Huh? I never saw that as the use of a MD5SUMS file. I always used them after continuing a failed transfer to make sure I got an exact copy of the file. That's the only purpose it should have. For authenticity checks you use PGP signatures.
that reading Slashdot would avoid me so many problems. I noticed a poster talking about the DRM on the other article, so I choosed not to install it. But I wonder, now what? Will that patch be required to patch something else? Will some new software install it automatically? And does reinstalling Windows take back the EULA changes?
Huh? "Equipment winds up on E-bay and equipment manufacturers find themselves competing against their own stuff.". I don't get it. Are you agreeing with RIAA and other idiots about that reselling something at a low price without the manufacturer getting paid a second time is somehow wrong? That equipment had been bought once, and that's all the manufacturer is and should be entitled to. If I want to sell $1000 hardware for $1 it's nobody's business.
Quicktime? I hate it.
.msi files, which curiously look a lot like packages.
It's the same piece of Windows-style crappy installer that insists on grabbing my screen. Yuck.
I don't want to select from the installer. I don't want to click. I want to be able to schedule a quicktime update if I like.
It's not consistent. Quicktime installer doesn't look like the MS office installer.
I've been using Debian. The installer works, I don't have to download it every time I want a package and I didn't have any problems with it. No reason why it shouldn't work, excepting an incompetent packager. InstallShield won't save you from that either.
BTW, I guess you'll be very disappointed with Windows too, because it seems to be switching to using
I have enough with my 40GB disk. And in case you haven't noticed, I didn't mention hard disks at all. The problem is not what it takes when it's installed, but the extra crap that could not be there. I see packages as small as 10KB on Linux, but I've never seen such a small setup.exe. The problem is not that users have to spend 500KB more of disk space, it's that they have to downloading the same 500Kb piece of data for 20 programs with a 33K modem. What about ADSL, currently many providers have a bandwidth limit. 500KB can make a difference when you download a lot of software.
And FYI on Debian I've yet to have problems with the package system. On Windows I do have problems, however.
That's not the only problem, though. Since every program has its own installer you don't get bug fixes. What if InstallShield screwed up something in some particular version? You can't just upgrade it! BTW, in case you haven't noticed, MS doesn't like all this either. That's why now there are
Oh, sure. I know there are people who use the Internet as a tool. But some of us practically live on it. I have more friends online than in real life, and losing internet access would be extremely depressing to me. Even losing ADSL would be quite hard because it would be much harder to talk to people from other countries.