You're right, but I think that when the first poster said, "to get away from Microsoft", he meant "to get away from all the crappy \"features\" of Microsoft software, etc.". That's a perfectly valid reason, as anyone who has beat their head against windoze knows all too well. BTW, my PC has no windoze partition because I never felt the need for windoze, so I never got around to installing windoze on the partition I left for it. I decided to never do it, and started using it for a swap partition. I stopped doing that because somebody pointed out that the kernel tables to manage all that mem was inefficient. Anyway, I use windoze for swap space. Hah. #define X(x,y) x##y
To take an optimistic view of the situation, the law is saying that one of the requirements for all software is that it comes with free source that they can hack if they want to. At first, though, I was thinking along the lines you are (were?). I hope they're smart enough to be doing this to avoid getting locked into vendor dependence, not just to ram OSS down people's throats. The law would stop foolish people who might be swayed by the [short term/sales pitch] lure of flashy closed source software.
The government is free to set out the requirements for tenders to provide a software "solution", and in this case they've decided that all tenders must come with source.
I think the "required functionality" clause will take care of cases where closed source software is significantly better, so this really is a good thing for them to do.
The market _is_ affected. Every company that sells closed source software is automatically prevented from making from the government. (e.g. Corel, Sun, etc.) OTOH, it is very likely that this will help one of RedHat, Caldera, SuSE, or [whoever's selling debian, sorry I forget:]. It'll also help out other OSS companies at the expense of "traditional" business model software companies.
The effect is good, but I don't like the method. Free software should win on its own merits, not by being forced down people's throats. Keep in mind that Corel recently _successfully_ sued the Canadian government over an unfair tender for office software. What I would like to see is the government pointing out that free software needs to be considered alongside the tenders from commercial companies. I imagine it would win much of the time, given the excellent price point:), but then things will have been fairly evaluated. The only time it won't win is if commercial software gives a lot more functionality for not much cost, or if free software can't meet the tender requirements. Obviously there would need to be laws against making up bogus tenders which excluded free software. OSS companies could submit tenders, too. This might work better than just having a zero-cost "free software" tender go in the pot, since most government departments would need someone, or a company, to figure out exactly what piece of open source software they needed, and to set it up. Presumably, they would want to buy a support contract from someone like linuxcare, or something.
I guess whatever happens, the average office dude still has the software choices of his superiors shoved down his throat in many cases.:(
Hmmm, now that I think about it, the above might be not quite true. Having access to source code does make good sense as a tender requirement. We all know how much that matters. (hehe, I guess I just forgot about it for a sec...). So, I guess this is all well and good after all. I imagine there will still be tenders from OSS companies to provide "solutions" for various things, though. Hmm, I wonder if any companies do *BSD, because if not, it could lose the consideration it deserves for the things it is good at, if the selection process involves tenders and support contracts. I bet if many other governments or even [non-tech] companies start doing this, companies will spring up that will install and support pretty much everything. (not everything by each company. you know what I mean.)
I just hope there isn't too much backlash against this from the working dudes in all the offices. (kinda like Torg in UF the last few days...:) I mean, StarOffice is crap. It is the most bloated thing I've ever seen^Asecond (after windoze)^E....and they say Emacs Makes A Computer Slow. I would complain if a place I worked standardized on soffice, but as long as I had freedom to use an OSS I chose, I'd just use Emacs + LaTeX:) (speaking of LaTeX, it would be really awesome if a whole bunch of people in government departments learned LaTeX. If Brazil's anything like Canada, most of the people there could use the infusion of logical thinking it would provide:) In fact, OSS in general requires more thinking to use initially, but once you get used to the UI, it makes perfect sense. (I like that:)
Since you mentioned it, I checked to see if it would be possible to do anything with flash to make it work better. It turns out that you can get the source code, and the file format spec, for flash. I am very impressed by the fact that they realize exactly what they are doing. check out their FAQ. They realize that what they're doing isn't open source, and say so. They are calling it "free source", which means that they own it, they maintain it, but you can look at it. Cool. also check out this page for more info.
I respect macromedia a lot more than I did before I read that, since they obviously have people who can think checking on what they are saying on their web site. #define X(x,y) x##y
try making it clear that you're joking, like putting another paragraph at the bottom, and using a;)
It's hard to tell who really is that dumb, unless they give you some kind of clue that they have a clue. I didn't think about the fact that you weren't AC, and I bet most people didn't either.
convincing defense of useless time-wasting projects like the Perl/GNU utils thing
It's pretty ironic that you say that, considering how this whole thread got started! I guess the difference is that the the guys writing V2 are doing it for fun.
uh huh? with exactly what hardware? Seriously, what evidence do you have for your claim that they can brute force crack 128 crypto (not by exploting weaknesses in the algorithm, but by going through the _entire_ keyspace.) #define X(x,y) x##y
a few million orders of magnitude?!? Maybe then they could crack it in 12 microseconds, with a handheld device...:)
but yeah, I agree with you on the possibility of a cryptanalytic attack. That would be the only possibility, unless they've actually got quantum computers. (I say would be because we all know that this thread is moot, given the recent update to the header:) #define X(x,y) x##y
The system now works quite well, and is able to run nearly everything, but it's still far from stable, and miles from being optimized. Filesystem demons are the most important thing to finish, and they are now almost completely stable.
hehe I think I'll wait until HURD has got daemons for fs drivers, not demons...:) I wonder what one of the filesystem demons would do to the guy who tried to run a "modern" [non-]operating system based on FAT16. Hold onto that HURD code, we have uses for those demons even after they are replaced by daemons:)
mpg123 doesn't play some of the "instant-play" mp3 (.m3u) files, even though it plays them if I download them first. (with the download URI. I haven't tried downloading what the.m3u points to) I don't know exactly why. This seems to happen with other stuff too, sometimes, but it would be cool if you figured out what was wrong with yours.
Starnet sells XWin32, but the demo version of it works well. It exits after 2 hours of use, unless you fork over the cash (you can start it again, but your X apps will have to be restarted too.) One cool feature which I haven't seen in other non-unix X servers (not that I've tried many, but I've seen eXceed and Mi/X on a Mac) is that you can set it to open X windows as top level windows managed by MS Windoze's WM. (then you don't need to run a UNIX WM.) You can use the traditional one-big-window style, too. The only disadvantage to xwin32 is that it is non-free (speech). It's a nice free beer, though, even if you can only drink it for 2 hours at a time:) #define X(x,y) x##y
all they do is break a single encrypted message. There is no way to use the work done by the d.net distributed computer to help break any other encrypted message, even using the same encryption algorithm (not key!) You can make use of the the work done by the d.net crew because the source for the cores are available for free.
Maybe your point is that it is good to realize that rc5-64 is not all that strong. If that's what you mean, then you have a good point. #define X(x,y) x##y
thanks for that great link to localhost. They have some great software on there. It looks a bit like what I've got on my machine already, but its still useful in case of a disk crash.:) < grin > #define X(x,y) x##y
This is a directive to all/. linux/bsd/UNIX proponents (of which I am a member.): Do not start a big thread here. We all know that a Real Operating System will not be brought down by anything unless it is run by root.
to keep the raving masses happy, I will try to say what everybody will say. (gee, this is sounding really bad. I'm not trying to censor people, just to stop them wasting their time raving about Linux. sorry.)
Anyway, most operating systems use various schemes to stop random users from bringing down the machine. Most sensible OS designers see the ability to crash the system as a Bad Thing. Only the superuser should be able to do that, and even then only be explicitly using interfaces to the stuff that should be mucked with carefully. There are a couple of "modern" OSes which don't live up to this standard, but the majority of OSes don't crash easily from bad programs. The program goes down, but it cant touch the rest of the system. You should look into this sometime, if you find that your OS does let itself be crashed easily.
oh yeah, and tux rules, so does devil dude (whatever the BSD mascot is called).
If you are really concerned about not crashing, there are several things you could do. Most are well known and rational, but some aren't:)
If I screwed up some here, then I won't be mad if you post more in this thread. Just this is not the place for _another_ OS flameout. #define X(x,y) x##y
all you lynx users will have noticed that following the posted link to the d.net/beta/beta.html gives you a Alert: Location URL is not absolute! message, and you lose. Their web server is returning: "The document has moved here" in its 302 Found reply. I've mailed them about it, so don't slashdot their mail server. (I'd like to think that all the/.ers who use lynx add up to something:)
The actual URI that you get to is: http://distributed.net/beta/
(I was going to post this as HTML, so I could make the real addy a hyperlink, but slashdot doesn't allow , and I didn't feel like quoting the interresting part of the first paragraph. curse you slashdot:) Oh this is even better: If I preview with lynx this message as plain text, my pre tag is interpretted as HTML. maybe this is lynx or maybe this is slashdot. watch this: notice that there is a pre tag embedded before just before this sentence #define X(x,y) x##y
Too bad there isn't a project which uses floating point. If there was, they could write a client that interleaves floating point with integer calculations to _use more of your computers brain at once_:) (Pentium CPUs (and others, but I haven't read as much about them) have multiple execution pipelines, so they can start a floating point pipeline working on finding the cosine of something, while the integer pipelines carry on running instructions at full speed. The CPU stalls if some other isns need the result of the multiply before it is done, of course. I think the most recent (PII and PIII (oh yeah, celery too), k6-{2,3}, and k7) all can all have floating point insns running at the same time as integer. I may be wrong on this one. Maybe the x86 doesn't have enough registers to make this work very well though. Oh well, I think the G3 and G4 all have kick ass stuff like this, too. And then there's Alpha.:) #define X(x,y) x##y
Linux is also very, very nice as a programmer's OS. It is on my desktop. It is on my dad's desktop. It is even on my family computer, because everyone in my house is smart enough to learn it fairly easily, with me and my dad around.
As an OS for skilled computer users, it rocks. My dad is a physics prof. He uses linux on his office computer for everything. LaTeX, number crunching, web browsing, email, tracking student marks with Applix spreadsheet, etc. Once you've taken the time to learn some UNIX, linux is perfect. I guess it helps that I live at home and help him with tricky admin stuff, but he would do fine without the extra stuff I help set up.
So, Linux is a great desktop OS for people who don't mind the learning curve. Be is cool though. I saw it on my friend's computer... Kick ass:) For those of you that don't know, Be is a Real Operating System:) it has GNU bash2, and tools like ls and mv and gcc:). Its filenames use / as a directory separator. In fact I think bash under Be is POSIX conformant. (i.e. has awk, sed, ls, mv, and all that.) #define X(x,y) x##y
Who's the fool that moderated this one? The guy was probably expressing an honest opinion. I would tend to agree with him, mostly because I know C a _lot_ better than I know Java. (I'd been doing C for a fun-filled two years when the CS dept. switched to using Java. I'm doing a weird program, so I had been in the C courses in first year, but got the Java second year courses. Fortunately, everything before 3rd year here is easy, so learning Java was no prob. (except for the project with the GUI... GUIs suck... (for some things):)) When I learned Java, I was not too impressed. It has some nice features, but it sucks for tty I/O (as one example!). Where is the functionality of scanf(). Oh my mistake, "method"ality in OO:)
OTOH, Java would be a great language for writing interactive programs, but so is C++. I like C when I want to write a program that takes some args on the command line, does its thing, and exits. This is by nature procedural. OO almost gets in the way for this, especially if the program is fairly simple.
Anyway, moderators, just because the guy slighted java doesn't mean he is flaimbait. Java is _not_ unanimously a Good Thing for all tasks, or all programmers. I am not "against" Java. It has its uses, but it is not for everything. #define X(x,y) x##y
for i in $(count 10);do dd if=/dev/urandom of=vmlinux bs=1 count=1\ conv=notrunc seek=$RANDOM done make zlilo This would be much more fun, because this would build a kernel which wouldn't fail its CRC check on uncompressing. (I think the kernel does a data check when it decompresses, which would stop you from mucking with vmlinuz directly:( Somebody, try this on your system, and tell us what happens:) #define X(x,y) x##y
why would you like pressing the power button? Your computer turns off when you do that, and then you can't use it:( Also, it can't run rc5des without power.:) #define X(x,y) x##y
Did the guy say i386 linux binary? No, he didn't. If they developed a driver (hopefully in collaboration with linus or other people who can help them make sure they provide the right interfaces and stuff), then they would obviously have a much easier time getting it working on a second architecture. I'm sure some company could afford to pay a guy to keep the driver up to date with the linux kernel, and to handle requests for a x-hardware version by using a cross compiler. This person could also keep the driver up to date with new versions of the kernel, if it was found that the binaries stopped working with a newer kernel.
Obviously, there should be a *BSD driver available too. (and whatever other OSes people ask for).
I don't know if it would make sense for them to define a new standard for DVDs, and do the above for it. This would obsolete all the hardware DVD rendering cards, I think, so they probably wouldn't do it. New versions of software for the DVD cards could maybe handle it? Haven't taken the time to grasp exactly what is going on with all this:(
Hmm, wait a minute. If they provided a driver which decrypted a DVD stream, even if the crypto part of the driver was binary only, you wouldn't need to do anything to copy DVDs. Just use the driver itself to get a decrypted copy! If there was a driver that provided a/dev/dvd to be read by a software DVD renderer, you could just copy it to a file instead of rendering it. I don't see how they can provide a Linux driver unless they provide a complete program like they have for windoze, which doesn't give access to the data at any time after it has been decrypted. This would be fine with me, but it would be a lot more work for them. It would also horribly knot the knickers of some open source bigots^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hadvocates. All else equal, I think an open source program would be better. (usually all else isn't equal. Usually, open source programs actually are better (== more functional, stable, and extensible. not always faster of flashier.):)
How about a cover which shows a window from a high end graphics app (like blender, if that counts as high end). Standing next to the window is Tux holding an palette of paints, and he (/she?) is reaching into the window to draw the super-detailed cool thing which is being rendered. So Tux is doing the rendering:)
idea version 2: I think it would be cool to take a real window dump from a graphics program, and leave the window borders in. Maybe even better would be to have a whole screen dump, showing a nice-looking desktop. Xfractint rendering a Mandelbrot fractal in one window, gimp in another window, editting Tux, and a large window covering parts of the others (so we know it is the important one) running blender. (or if you have access to some commercial super-cool program (like mentioned in LJ) use that). On top of the screen capture, draw a Tux standing on an xterm, and painting in the 3D window. Next to the Gimp window, another Tux (ooh, SMP:) holds a tile of raster graphics that he is about to put into the image of Tux being editted. For the 3D image being rendered/drawn by Tux, use a 3D tux, unless anyone has a better idea:)
In response to all the suggestions to kick dirt at BG, keep in mind that this will be the cover of a high-end graphics mag. This is the domain of SGI and other Real Computer manufacturers, not Micros~1. The target audience is probably people who know what they are doing, and probably know all too well about NT.
Tux rocks. If you don't like Tux, then draw a better logo yourself. I admit, he is a bit pudgier than I'd like to see, but I can't draw worth a damn, so I don't complain. (except for that last self contradictory sentence:)
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, but I think that when the first poster said, "to get away from Microsoft", he meant "to get away from all the crappy \"features\" of Microsoft software, etc.". That's a perfectly valid reason, as anyone who has beat their head against windoze knows all too well.
BTW, my PC has no windoze partition because I never felt the need for windoze, so I never got around to installing windoze on the partition I left for it. I decided to never do it, and started using it for a swap partition. I stopped doing that because somebody pointed out that the kernel tables to manage all that mem was inefficient. Anyway, I use windoze for swap space. Hah.
#define X(x,y) x##y
I heard you're meant to move it to /dev/null. This means all the copies you have.
:-)
:)
hehe, why don't you go troll Micros~1's tech support dept. I'm sure they'd love the entertainment you'd bring to their lives
#define X(x,y) x##y
To take an optimistic view of the situation, the law is saying that one of the requirements for all software is that it comes with free source that they can hack if they want to. At first, though, I was thinking along the lines you are (were?). I hope they're smart enough to be doing this to avoid getting locked into vendor dependence, not just to ram OSS down people's throats. The law would stop foolish people who might be swayed by the [short term/sales pitch] lure of flashy closed source software.
The government is free to set out the requirements for tenders to provide a software "solution", and in this case they've decided that all tenders must come with source.
I think the "required functionality" clause will take care of cases where closed source software is significantly better, so this really is a good thing for them to do.
#define X(x,y) x##y
The market _is_ affected. Every company that sells closed source software is automatically prevented from making from the government. (e.g. Corel, Sun, etc.) OTOH, it is very likely that this will help one of RedHat, Caldera, SuSE, or [whoever's selling debian, sorry I forget :]. It'll also help out other OSS companies at the expense of "traditional" business model software companies.
:), but then things will have been fairly evaluated. The only time it won't win is if commercial software gives a lot more functionality for not much cost, or if free software can't meet the tender requirements. Obviously there would need to be laws against making up bogus tenders which excluded free software. OSS companies could submit tenders, too. This might work better than just having a zero-cost "free software" tender go in the pot, since most government departments would need someone, or a company, to figure out exactly what piece of open source software they needed, and to set it up. Presumably, they would want to buy a support contract from someone like linuxcare, or something.
:(
:) I mean, StarOffice is crap. It is the ...and they say Emacs Makes A Computer Slow. I would complain if a place I worked standardized on soffice, but as long as I had freedom to use an OSS I chose, I'd just use Emacs + LaTeX :) (speaking of LaTeX, it would be really awesome if a whole bunch of people in government departments learned LaTeX. If Brazil's anything like Canada, most of the people there could use the infusion of logical thinking it would provide :) In fact, OSS in general requires more thinking to use initially, but once you get used to the UI, it makes perfect sense. (I like that:)
The effect is good, but I don't like the method. Free software should win on its own merits, not by being forced down people's throats. Keep in mind that Corel recently _successfully_ sued the Canadian government over an unfair tender for office software. What I would like to see is the government pointing out that free software needs to be considered alongside the tenders from commercial companies. I imagine it would win much of the time, given the excellent price point
I guess whatever happens, the average office dude still has the software choices of his superiors shoved down his throat in many cases.
Hmmm, now that I think about it, the above might be not quite true. Having access to source code does make good sense as a tender requirement. We all know how much that matters. (hehe, I guess I just forgot about it for a sec...). So, I guess this is all well and good after all. I imagine there will still be tenders from OSS companies to provide "solutions" for various things, though. Hmm, I wonder if any companies do *BSD, because if not, it could lose the consideration it deserves for the things it is good at, if the selection process involves tenders and support contracts. I bet if many other governments or even [non-tech] companies start doing this, companies will spring up that will install and support pretty much everything. (not everything by each company. you know what I mean.)
I just hope there isn't too much backlash against this from the working dudes in all the offices. (kinda like Torg in UF the last few days...
most bloated thing I've ever seen^Asecond (after windoze)^E.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Since you mentioned it, I checked to see if it would be possible to do anything with flash to make it work better. It turns out that you can get the source code, and the file format spec, for flash. I am very impressed by the fact that they realize exactly what they are doing. check out their FAQ. They realize that what they're doing isn't open source, and say so. They are calling it "free source", which means that they own it, they maintain it, but you can look at it. Cool. also check out this page for more info.
I respect macromedia a lot more than I did before I read that, since they obviously have people who can think checking on what they are saying on their web site.
#define X(x,y) x##y
try making it clear that you're joking, like putting another paragraph at the bottom, and using a ;)
It's hard to tell who really is that dumb, unless they give you some kind of clue that they have a clue. I didn't think about the fact that you weren't AC, and I bet most people didn't either.
#define X(x,y) x##y
It's pretty ironic that you say that, considering how this whole thread got started! I guess the difference is that the the guys writing V2 are doing it for fun.
#define X(x,y) x##y
uh huh? with exactly what hardware? Seriously, what evidence do you have for your claim that they can brute force crack 128 crypto (not by exploting weaknesses in the algorithm, but by going through the _entire_ keyspace.)
#define X(x,y) x##y
but yeah, I agree with you on the possibility of a cryptanalytic attack. That would be the only possibility, unless they've actually got quantum computers. (I say would be because we all know that this thread is moot, given the recent update to the header :)
#define X(x,y) x##y
hehe I think I'll wait until HURD has got daemons for fs drivers, not demons...
#define X(x,y) x##y
hehe nice tunes dude.
.m3u points to) I don't know exactly why.
mpg123 doesn't play some of the "instant-play" mp3 (.m3u) files, even though it plays them if I download them first. (with the download URI. I haven't tried downloading what the
This seems to happen with other stuff too, sometimes, but it would be cool if you figured out what was wrong with yours.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Starnet sells XWin32, but the demo version of it works well. It exits after 2 hours of use, unless you fork over the cash (you can start it again, but your X apps will have to be restarted too.) One cool feature which I haven't seen in other non-unix X servers (not that I've tried many, but I've seen eXceed and Mi/X on a Mac) is that you can set it to open X windows as top level windows managed by MS Windoze's WM. (then you don't need to run a UNIX WM.) You can use the traditional one-big-window style, too. The only disadvantage to xwin32 is that it is non-free (speech). It's a nice free beer, though, even if you can only drink it for 2 hours at a time :)
#define X(x,y) x##y
can we buy it on the Web? :)
#define X(x,y) x##y
check the jargon file
#define X(x,y) x##y
all they do is break a single encrypted message. There is no way to use the work done by the d.net distributed computer to help break any other encrypted message, even using the same encryption algorithm (not key!) You can make use of the the work done by the d.net crew because the source for the cores are available for free.
Maybe your point is that it is good to realize that rc5-64 is not all that strong. If that's what you mean, then you have a good point.
#define X(x,y) x##y
thanks for that great link to localhost. They have some great software on there. It looks a bit like what I've got on my machine already, but its still useful in case of a disk crash. :) < grin >
#define X(x,y) x##y
This is a directive to all /. linux/bsd/UNIX proponents (of which I am a member.): Do not start a big thread here. We all know that a Real Operating System will not be brought down by anything unless it is run by root.
to keep the raving masses happy, I will try to say what everybody will say. (gee, this is sounding really bad. I'm not trying to censor people, just to stop them wasting their time raving about Linux. sorry.)
Anyway, most operating systems use various schemes to stop random users from bringing down the machine. Most sensible OS designers see the ability to crash the system as a Bad Thing. Only the superuser should be able to do that, and even then only be explicitly using interfaces to the stuff that should be mucked with carefully. There are a couple of "modern" OSes which don't live up to this standard, but the majority of OSes don't crash easily from bad programs. The program goes down, but it cant touch the rest of the system. You should look into this sometime, if you find that your OS does let itself be crashed easily.
oh yeah, and tux rules, so does devil dude (whatever the BSD mascot is called).
If you are really concerned about not crashing, there are several things you could do. Most are well known and rational, but some aren't :)
If I screwed up some here, then I won't be mad if you post more in this thread. Just this is not the place for _another_ OS flameout.
#define X(x,y) x##y
all you lynx users will have noticed that following the posted link to the d.net/beta/beta.html gives you a Alert: Location URL is not absolute! message, and you lose. Their web server is returning: "The document has moved here" in its 302 Found reply. I've mailed them about it, so don't slashdot their mail server. (I'd like to think that all the /.ers who use lynx add up to something :)
:) Oh this is even better: If I preview with lynx this message as plain text, my pre tag is interpretted as HTML. maybe this is lynx or maybe this is slashdot. watch this: notice that there is a pre tag embedded before just before this sentence
The actual URI that you get to is: http://distributed.net/beta/
(I was going to post this as HTML, so I could make the real addy a hyperlink, but slashdot doesn't allow , and I didn't feel like quoting the interresting part of the first paragraph. curse you slashdot
#define X(x,y) x##y
Too bad there isn't a project which uses floating point. If there was, they could write a client that interleaves floating point with integer calculations to _use more of your computers brain at once_ :) (Pentium CPUs (and others, but I haven't read as much about them) have multiple execution pipelines, so they can start a floating point pipeline working on finding the cosine of something, while the integer pipelines carry on running instructions at full speed. The CPU stalls if some other isns need the result of the multiply before it is done, of course. I think the most recent (PII and PIII (oh yeah, celery too), k6-{2,3}, and k7) all can all have floating point insns running at the same time as integer. I may be wrong on this one. Maybe the x86 doesn't have enough registers to make this work very well though. Oh well, I think the G3 and G4 all have kick ass stuff like this, too. And then there's Alpha. :)
#define X(x,y) x##y
Linux is also very, very nice as a programmer's OS. It is on my desktop. It is on my dad's desktop. It is even on my family computer, because everyone in my house is smart enough to learn it fairly easily, with me and my dad around.
As an OS for skilled computer users, it rocks. My dad is a physics prof. He uses linux on his office computer for everything. LaTeX, number crunching, web browsing, email, tracking student marks with Applix spreadsheet, etc. Once you've taken the time to learn some UNIX, linux is perfect. I guess it helps that I live at home and help him with tricky admin stuff, but he would do fine without the extra stuff I help set up.
So, Linux is a great desktop OS for people who don't mind the learning curve. Be is cool though. I saw it on my friend's computer... Kick ass :) For those of you that don't know, Be is a Real Operating System :) it has GNU bash2, and tools like ls and mv and gcc :). Its filenames use / as a directory separator. In fact I think bash under Be is POSIX conformant. (i.e. has awk, sed, ls, mv, and all that.)
#define X(x,y) x##y
Who's the fool that moderated this one? The guy was probably expressing an honest opinion. I would tend to agree with him, mostly because I know C a _lot_ better than I know Java. (I'd been doing C for a fun-filled two years when the CS dept. switched to using Java. I'm doing a weird program, so I had been in the C courses in first year, but got the Java second year courses. Fortunately, everything before 3rd year here is easy, so learning Java was no prob. (except for the project with the GUI... GUIs suck... (for some things) :)) When I learned Java, I was not too impressed. It has some nice features, but it sucks for tty I/O (as one example!). Where is the functionality of scanf(). Oh my mistake, "method"ality in OO :)
OTOH, Java would be a great language for writing interactive programs, but so is C++. I like C when I want to write a program that takes some args on the command line, does its thing, and exits. This is by nature procedural. OO almost gets in the way for this, especially if the program is fairly simple.
Anyway, moderators, just because the guy slighted java doesn't mean he is flaimbait. Java is _not_ unanimously a Good Thing for all tasks, or all programmers. I am not "against" Java. It has its uses, but it is not for everything.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Far more insidious^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfun is
/usr/src/linux ; make vmlinux
:( Somebody, try this on your system, and tell us what happens :)
cd
for i in $(count 10);do
dd if=/dev/urandom of=vmlinux bs=1 count=1\
conv=notrunc seek=$RANDOM
done
make zlilo
This would be much more fun, because this would build a kernel which wouldn't fail its CRC check on uncompressing. (I think the kernel does a data check when it decompresses, which would stop you from mucking with vmlinuz directly
#define X(x,y) x##y
why would you like pressing the power button? Your computer turns off when you do that, and then you can't use it :( Also, it can't run rc5des without power. :)
#define X(x,y) x##y
Did the guy say i386 linux binary? No, he didn't. If they developed a driver (hopefully in collaboration with linus or other people who can help them make sure they provide the right interfaces and stuff), then they would obviously have a much easier time getting it working on a second architecture. I'm sure some company could afford to pay a guy to keep the driver up to date with the linux kernel, and to handle requests for a x-hardware version by using a cross compiler. This person could also keep the driver up to date with new versions of the kernel, if it was found that the binaries stopped working with a newer kernel.
:(
/dev/dvd to be read by a software DVD renderer, you could just copy it to a file instead of rendering it. I don't see how they can provide a Linux driver unless they provide a complete program like they have for windoze, which doesn't give access to the data at any time after it has been decrypted. This would be fine with me, but it would be a lot more work for them. It would also horribly knot the knickers of some open source bigots^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hadvocates. All else equal, I think an open source program would be better. (usually all else isn't equal. Usually, open source programs actually are better (== more functional, stable, and extensible. not always faster of flashier.) :)
Obviously, there should be a *BSD driver available too. (and whatever other OSes people ask for).
I don't know if it would make sense for them to define a new standard for DVDs, and do the above for it. This would obsolete all the hardware DVD rendering cards, I think, so they probably wouldn't do it. New versions of software for the DVD cards could maybe handle it? Haven't taken the time to grasp exactly what is going on with all this
Hmm, wait a minute. If they provided a driver which decrypted a DVD stream, even if the crypto part of the driver was binary only, you wouldn't need to do anything to copy DVDs. Just use the driver itself to get a decrypted copy! If there was a driver that provided a
#define X(x,y) x##y
How about a cover which shows a window from a high end graphics app (like blender, if that counts as high end). Standing next to the window is Tux holding an palette of paints, and he (/she?) is reaching into the window to draw the super-detailed cool thing which is being rendered. So Tux is doing the rendering :)
:) holds a tile of raster graphics that he is about to put into the image of Tux being editted. For the 3D image being rendered/drawn by Tux, use a 3D tux, unless anyone has a better idea :)
:)
idea version 2:
I think it would be cool to take a real window dump from a graphics program, and leave the window borders in. Maybe even better would be to have a whole screen dump, showing a nice-looking desktop. Xfractint rendering a Mandelbrot fractal in one window, gimp in another window, editting Tux, and a large window covering parts of the others (so we know it is the important one) running blender. (or if you have access to some commercial super-cool program (like mentioned in LJ) use that). On top of the screen capture, draw a Tux standing on an xterm, and painting in the 3D window. Next to the Gimp window, another Tux (ooh, SMP
In response to all the suggestions to kick dirt at BG, keep in mind that this will be the cover of a high-end graphics mag. This is the domain of SGI and other Real Computer manufacturers, not Micros~1. The target audience is probably people who know what they are doing, and probably know all too well about NT.
Tux rocks. If you don't like Tux, then draw a better logo yourself. I admit, he is a bit pudgier than I'd like to see, but I can't draw worth a damn, so I don't complain. (except for that last self contradictory sentence
#define X(x,y) x##y