I've also found, for things that are sort of out there philosophically, that Greg Egan is pretty cool
AOL on that. On the hard SF front, I also enjoy Alastair Reynolds's work (e.g. Revelation space). Other writers I'd recommend are Peter F. Hamilton (in particular the Night's Dawn series - wide-vista space opera with a touch of horror), Allen Steele (Clarke-esque near-future SF), Robert Charles Wilson and on the more slipstreamy side, Michael Marshall Smith and Jeff Noon.
Shouldn't Debian focus on trying to stay up to date on core components instead?
Debian focusses on whatever the Debian developers care about. One thing Debian developers tend not to care about at all is armchair experts. If you happen to disagree with what we care about, feel free to learn How you can help, or to pay for a developer to scratch your particular itch.
We all know that some critical packages are way out of date:
-XFree, 4.2 just appeared in unstable
And excellent prerelease packages have been available from the X Strike Force for months. Not to mention that Debian supports X on 11 architectures rather than just i386.
-KDE 3
Unofficial packages are available; official packages will follow after the gcc transition; see the FAQ.
-Mozilla 1.1
Available in unstable and testing, as are recent CVS snapshots.
And it's even worse for people using woody without 'proposed-updates' package repository!
woody is the stable release. Debian takes stability very seriously and the stable release is only updated to fix serious issues (in particular security issues), not to put in new releases of packages. If you want a more up to date system, use testing.
I don't mind them not having KDE 3 in May 2002, but that means they won't have KDE 3 in May 2003 either!
I wouldn't be so sure of that. You could run testing rather than stable, for one thing. Also we've made significant improvements in the project's infrastructure (the stable/testing/unstable split with mostly automated propagation from unstable to testing; good autobuilders) which significantly increase the chances of "woody+1" being released within a much shorter timeframe than potato->woody (which also was lengthened by the legal and technical resolution of crypto-in-main).
(1) Because they shouldn't have waited until the last minute to break the news
Quite frankly, I fail to see what's news about it.
There has never been a formal announcement of a May 1st release deadline, just a message in which the release manager went out on a limb:
"So, to go out on a limb:
Debian 3.0 (codenamed woody) will release on May 1st, 2002.
Actually, as always, it'll release when it's ready: if we find that the
software doesn't meet our expectations on April 30th, you'll find me on
the ground writhing in pain with leaves, bark and wood all over the place
[1].
[1] I'm going out on a limb, remember."
(2) Because its a rather frivalous reason. Alot of other distro release x86 first and Sparc/Whatever later on. Why can't Debian do that?
Because Debian doesn't treat non-x86 users as second class citizens, and because the developers already have enough versions (stable, testing, unstable) of their packages to worry about without different archs having different versions.
Oh well I'm sure they will get it worked out in due time - until then I'm sure more and more people will begin to think of Debian as a dead distribution rather than as an active one.
Debian's release is going to be dead alright. Dead stable that is, which is exactly the goal of a Debian release. Anyone who gets a woody from a daily fix of "latest and greatest" versions can run woody (testing), or unstable and doesn't have to care about releases. Releases are for folks who require stability.
They really don't have anybody to blame but themselves I mean they are the only ones shipping a distro that still uses the 2.2 kernel.
There are sound reasons for shipping with a 2.2 kernel as the default kernel; check the archives for the debian-boot and debian-cd lists. In any case, 2.4 kernels are supported, just use the "bf2.4" flavour of the installation system.
Yes, woody will become the new stable. Sid will remain unstable, and there'll be a new testing tree which hasn't been officially named yet (though the suggestion of "sarge" seems to have stuck in many developer's heads).
When O'Reilly's onlamp.com published an article on this bibliography, their ad serving system revealed itself to be an AI with a sense of humour by choosing a remarkably inappropriate IBM ad to go along with it.
Unless I am missing something, this won't have any real effect on end users.
It will have benefits for end users, though probably not highly visible ones.
Cryptographic software packaged for Debian is available (and has been for a long time already) through non-us.debian.org, but crypto-in-main will make further integration of crypto possible. A number of packages in main will get enhanced functionality once crypto is in main. E.g. CVS can start supporting Kerberos for authentication.
The functionality enhancements made possible by crypto-in-main are not limited to the direct benefits of crypto, as I can illustrate with the Gnumeric package. The Gnumeric spreadsheet can be built to be able to fetch data from databases using GDA, the GNU Data Access library. Currently the Debian package is not built with GDA support. The reason for this is that Debian's GDA packages are on non-US (because their source package requires the PostgreSQL development package; PostgreSQL is on non-US as it is built with SSL support). Once we have crypto-in-main, I can build Gnumeric packages that have GDA support (probably in a separate plugin package).
What breakthroughs has there been in RMS-led projects in the last - say - 5 years? I can't think of any.
So? The GNU project does not have a mission statement that includes "produce major breakthrough every couple of years".
The FSF's top level page has a couple of links that are essential when trying to evaluate its success: why we exist (as relevant as ever), what we provide and where we are going.
But of course, that's just my opinion, so flame me.
I rarely flame people for their opinions. I occasionally flame people who clearly haven't bothered to
try to understand what they're talking about and who don't let facts get in the way of their opinions. You seem to fit that category nicely. In particular, your comment
"I think we need a lot more non-GNU involvment for gcc (gcc-foundation?) to get some fresh blood into this project. And if RMS doesn't allow that, we need a fork."
shows you to have little understanding of gcc's development process. Gcc's development process was broken open in 1999 (by the FSF effectively admitting the failure of its cathedral-style development model of gcc 2.8.x and embracing the bazaar-style development model of the EGCS fork) and has an effective foundation (in the form of the
GCC steering committee), as anyone who has read
the GCC FAQ
or is familiar with gcc's history knows.
You're missing the point. "Intelligence" is a very loaded word and defining it in a descriptive fashion is extremely tricky.
Turing's "simulation game" (nowadays known as the "Turing test") avoids the issues of a descriptive definition by focussing on an operational definition.
If you consider his operational definition to be the wrong way to define intelligence, then perhaps you can share your profound insights into the nature of intelligence with the slashdot readers by providing your definition
for us to criticise.
www.linuxslides.com is a fairly large repository of materials from various Linux-related presentations and talks (including introductory ones) which you may find useful.
In order to be able to use "init=/bin/sh", one needs physical access to a machine (discounting the rather obscure case of having a serial console that's accessible via a network). With physical access, there is no such thing as security. Having a LILO password makes things slightly more difficult, but IMO that'll just give a false sense of security: think of booting from a different device, temporarily placing the hard drive in a different machine etc.
Why has Debian tied its long-term future to the Hurd's so long before the Hurd is ready for prime time?
How is it tied? Debian GNU/Hurd is just another port of Debian (albeit to a different kernel, rather than a different processor).
Also, people seem to regard the Debian project as a single entity making this type of decision. That is at best a misleading view. Debian is the sum of hundreds of volunteers. Some of those are interested in porting to the Hurd; a lot aren't. That doesn't mean "Debian" thinks its future is or isn't in the Hurd.
Why is Slashdot reviewing a book that 90% of the educated population read years ago?
There can be plenty of reasons.
Slashdot is read by many non-Americans. F451 is in all likeliness read by significantly less than 90% of the educated population in, say, Europe.
Books, films, articles etc. like all things tend to fade in one's memory. F451 makes points about the human nature that many feel are extremely relevant to today's and tomorrow's societies. I see no harm in paying attention to such relevant items, even if they're not the latest news.
Slashdot Mirror
Earlier speed records were set using configurations running
Debian GNU/Linux and
NetBSD.
I guess it primarily depends on what the participating partners are comfortable with.
William Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum".
I've also found, for things that are sort of out there philosophically, that Greg Egan is pretty cool
AOL on that. On the hard SF front, I also enjoy
Alastair Reynolds's work (e.g. Revelation space). Other writers I'd recommend are Peter F. Hamilton (in particular the Night's Dawn series - wide-vista space opera with a touch of horror), Allen Steele (Clarke-esque near-future SF), Robert Charles Wilson and on the more slipstreamy side, Michael Marshall Smith and Jeff Noon.
Debian focusses on whatever the Debian developers care about. One thing Debian developers tend not to care about at all is armchair experts. If you happen to disagree with what we care about, feel free to learn How you can help, or to pay for a developer to scratch your particular itch.
We all know that some critical packages are way out of date:
-XFree, 4.2 just appeared in unstable
And excellent prerelease packages have been available from the X Strike Force for months. Not to mention that Debian supports X on 11 architectures rather than just i386.
-KDE 3 Unofficial packages are available; official packages will follow after the gcc transition; see the FAQ.
-Mozilla 1.1
Available in unstable and testing, as are recent CVS snapshots.
And it's even worse for people using woody without 'proposed-updates' package repository!
woody is the stable release. Debian takes stability very seriously and the stable release is only updated to fix serious issues (in particular security issues), not to put in new releases of packages. If you want a more up to date system, use testing.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. You could run testing rather than stable, for one thing. Also we've made significant improvements in the project's infrastructure (the stable/testing/unstable split with mostly automated propagation from unstable to testing; good autobuilders) which significantly increase the chances of "woody+1" being released within a much shorter timeframe than potato->woody (which also was lengthened by the legal and technical resolution of crypto-in-main).
Indeed. A release-critical bug is a bug that makes the _package_ unfit for release, which doesn't imply a release can't be made.
There are several resources providing details on current release critical bugs, in the base and standard packages, as well as Wichert's overview.
Quite frankly, I fail to see what's news about it. There has never been a formal announcement of a May 1st release deadline, just a message in which the release manager went out on a limb: "So, to go out on a limb: Debian 3.0 (codenamed woody) will release on May 1st, 2002. Actually, as always, it'll release when it's ready: if we find that the software doesn't meet our expectations on April 30th, you'll find me on the ground writhing in pain with leaves, bark and wood all over the place [1].
(2) Because its a rather frivalous reason. Alot of other distro release x86 first and Sparc/Whatever later on. Why can't Debian do that?[1] I'm going out on a limb, remember."
Because Debian doesn't treat non-x86 users as second class citizens, and because the developers already have enough versions (stable, testing, unstable) of their packages to worry about without different archs having different versions.
Oh well I'm sure they will get it worked out in due time - until then I'm sure more and more people will begin to think of Debian as a dead distribution rather than as an active one.
Debian's release is going to be dead alright. Dead stable that is, which is exactly the goal of a Debian release. Anyone who gets a woody from a daily fix of "latest and greatest" versions can run woody (testing), or unstable and doesn't have to care about releases. Releases are for folks who require stability.
They really don't have anybody to blame but themselves I mean they are the only ones shipping a distro that still uses the 2.2 kernel. There are sound reasons for shipping with a 2.2 kernel as the default kernel; check the archives for the debian-boot and debian-cd lists. In any case, 2.4 kernels are supported, just use the "bf2.4" flavour of the installation system.Yes, woody will become the new stable. Sid will remain unstable, and there'll be a new testing tree which hasn't been officially named yet (though the suggestion of "sarge" seems to have stuck in many developer's heads).
When O'Reilly's onlamp.com published an article on this bibliography, their ad serving system revealed itself to be an AI with a sense of humour by choosing a remarkably inappropriate IBM ad to go along with it.
Unless I am missing something, this won't have any real effect on end users.
It will have benefits for end users, though probably not highly visible ones.
Cryptographic software packaged for Debian is available (and has been for a long time already) through non-us.debian.org , but crypto-in-main will make further integration of crypto possible. A number of packages in main will get enhanced functionality once crypto is in main. E.g. CVS can start supporting Kerberos for authentication.
The functionality enhancements made possible by crypto-in-main are not limited to the direct benefits of crypto, as I can illustrate with the Gnumeric package. The Gnumeric spreadsheet can be built to be able to fetch data from databases using GDA, the GNU Data Access library. Currently the Debian package is not built with GDA support. The reason for this is that Debian's GDA packages are on non-US (because their source package requires the PostgreSQL development package; PostgreSQL is on non-US as it is built with SSL support). Once we have crypto-in-main, I can build Gnumeric packages that have GDA support (probably in a separate plugin package).
So? The GNU project does not have a mission statement that includes "produce major breakthrough every couple of years". The FSF's top level page has a couple of links that are essential when trying to evaluate its success: why we exist (as relevant as ever), what we provide and where we are going.
But of course, that's just my opinion, so flame me.
I rarely flame people for their opinions. I occasionally flame people who clearly haven't bothered to try to understand what they're talking about and who don't let facts get in the way of their opinions. You seem to fit that category nicely. In particular, your comment "I think we need a lot more non-GNU involvment for gcc (gcc-foundation?) to get some fresh blood into this project. And if RMS doesn't allow that, we need a fork." shows you to have little understanding of gcc's development process. Gcc's development process was broken open in 1999 (by the FSF effectively admitting the failure of its cathedral-style development model of gcc 2.8.x and embracing the bazaar-style development model of the EGCS fork) and has an effective foundation (in the form of the GCC steering committee), as anyone who has read the GCC FAQ or is familiar with gcc's history knows.
Y appears to be quite dead. The only X replacement I've recently seen activity of is Berlin for which Debian packages are now available.
Can someone compare this to the MySQL filesystem, or perhaps point me to a place where pgfs can still be downloaded?
Turing's "simulation game" (nowadays known as the "Turing test") avoids the issues of a descriptive definition by focussing on an operational definition.
If you consider his operational definition to be the wrong way to define intelligence, then perhaps you can share your profound insights into the nature of intelligence with the slashdot readers by providing your definition for us to criticise.
www.linuxslides.com is a fairly large repository of materials from various Linux-related presentations and talks (including introductory ones) which you may find useful.
Ben Zorn maintains a list of memory debugging tools (both for detecting access violations (like Electric Fence) and for detecting memory leaks).
In order to be able to use "init=/bin/sh", one needs physical access to a machine (discounting the rather obscure case of having a serial console that's accessible via a network). With physical access, there is no such thing as security. Having a LILO password makes things slightly more difficult, but IMO that'll just give a false sense of security: think of booting from a different device, temporarily placing the hard drive in a different machine etc.
This is similar to "The Debian Linux Manifesto", the document that started the Debian project (as included in A Brief History of Debian).
Yes. Even images of "unstable". At cdimage.debian.org
Ian's last name is Murdock, not Murdoch. See e.g. his old homepage
How is it tied? Debian GNU/Hurd is just another port of Debian (albeit to a different kernel, rather than a different processor).
Also, people seem to regard the Debian project as a single entity making this type of decision. That is at best a misleading view. Debian is the sum of hundreds of volunteers. Some of those are interested in porting to the Hurd; a lot aren't. That doesn't mean "Debian" thinks its future is or isn't in the Hurd.
Please note that Ian hasn't been actively involved with the Debian project for a long time; it makes more sense to ask this on a Debian list.
In any case, lvm is packaged in "potato", the forthcoming Debian release. I don't know if the install process supports it by default.
Indeed. See for instance, Slashdot's earlier coverage of the USENIX paper this article is about.
Could we talk about Interbase as well? Even though its source is not yet available, it is expected soon under an MPL-like license (the IPL).
There can be plenty of reasons.
Slashdot is read by many non-Americans. F451 is in all likeliness read by significantly less than 90% of the educated population in, say, Europe.
Books, films, articles etc. like all things tend to fade in one's memory. F451 makes points about the human nature that many feel are extremely relevant to today's and tomorrow's societies. I see no harm in paying attention to such relevant items, even if they're not the latest news.