Where are the sound mixing programs? Nothing compares to CoolEdit.
As one of its authors, I'm quite biased, but I think Audacity is in some ways even better than Cool Edit. Audacity is very user friendly, cross platform (Windows, Linux, Mac), and supports unlimited tracks. At least check it out.:-)
Other sound programs are very powerful but less user friendly. snd is the perfect example of this.
Also, a powerful Digital Audio Workstation program called Ardour has been in the works for a while, and it is in the same ballpark as ProTools.
What I do mind is Woody being delayed, only a few weeks from when packages like KDE 3.0 and Gnome 2.0 would become stable enough for inclusion.
Just because the software is stable enough for inclusion doesn't mean it's ready to be released with the rest of Debian.
For example, a stable version of the Apache 2.0 series was released several weeks ago, but it's not going to be included in woody. Compliance with Debian policy and integration with the rest of the Debian system take time to get right. In the case of Apache 2.0, I believe there are changes to policy regarding virtual hosts that are necessary before it can be included.
While testing is almost sufficiently stable for a production environment, it is a constantly moving target that would need to be upgraded every couple of days; this is simply impractical for a production environment, nobody has that much spare time on their hands at work.
Just because testing is always being updated doesn't mean you have to follow it every couple of days! If you're happy with what you have, then keep on using it. If you need a new version of a package, then just pull the package that you need. There's absolutely zero need to upgrade if you don't want to.
If you want consistancy across a group of machines, then pick a day and declare that day's version of testing to be your locally stable version of the distribution.
I wouldn't call this delegation proper---the problem being that LDAP has overridden the generic term with their goofy concept.
Sorry, I wasn't using "delegation" in a technical sense, but in a political one. I want the global directory to define the list of usernames and passwords, but I want the decision of which accounts to recognize to be politically delegated to me as admin of the local server.
Instead, what about using LDAP for authentication and identity mapping, and then writing your own application permissions map (perhaps even using LDAP, but using the app to link the two, not chaining) with an admin interface? More work but it will be much easier to administer.
If I understand what you're saying, we would have to write client code to support this. Since there would be a diverse mix of clients, I want to keep as much of the intelligence in the server as possible, so that client-side LDAP authentication modules will work out of the box. The alternative is maintaining 5 different versions of the client-side code.
Let me see if I understand what you mean. I'll call our local LDAP server A and the global LDAP server B.
Someone tries to log onto a computer in the Advanced Computing Lab. The LDAP authentication module sends the username and password to server A. A looks only at the username, if it's not in the local group of approved users it denies access, if it IS in the local group of approved users, it refers the client to server B, saying "if the password matches, approve it."
Is that right? Would OpenLDAP support the server side of this? Would most LDAP clients support the client side?
Here is the situation I am in, and LDAP doesn't accommodate for it well:
I work in the Advanced Computing Lab. We get the list of usernames and passwords from a university-wide LDAP directory.
However, only a subset of the university-wide accounts should be able to log into the Advanced Computing Lab (this is mandate from the department head). We don't want to have to modify some property in the global directory to make this distinction, we need to be able to locally define this subset.
From what I can tell, the only way to implement this functionality is to use the LDAP concept of "chaining," however OpenLDAP doesn't seem to support this yet.
This seems like a very common situation, why is there no easy way to accomplish this??
If Microsoft's products are worth the money, then people will buy them without being coerced to by incompatible file formats, protocols, and APIs. Their strategy should be good citizenship in the software community (open AND closed source), by making a good faith effort to make interoperability possible.
I think a lot of the animosity toward Microsoft comes from the obstacles they put in the way of fair competition. Standards are the means by which software can compete on the basis of merit, and Microsoft takes advantage of the fact that pragmatically, a market leader's de facto standard speaks much louder than any written document.
$ dmesg | grep hda
hda: Maxtor 90840D6 (more output snipped to appease the lame lameness filter)
It's pretty old I admit, but it's the loudest hard drive I've ever heard and it drives me crazy. Even when the drive is idle the spinning platters sound like a jet engine.
Actually if you bothered to read the parent of the post you're responding to, they mean all of DirectX... These people may only be working on a Direct3D wrapper, but that was a criticsm the parent of the post you replied to was making; that it was just Direct3D...
Re-reading the original message, I can see how you interpreted it that way, and perhaps that's what the poster meant. It was ambiguously written, however, and this was my reading:
"Wow, using this Direct3D wrapper would be great for writing games! But it only provides 3d functionality, I'd like to be able to use SDL for the rest. I hope they integrate these wrappers into SDL so that I can use Direct3D calls for 3D and regular SDL calls for the rest."
In the future you should use that +1 more conservatively, since your response is off topic at best, or just another troll with a +1...
Your implied belief that/. comment ratings have some kind of sanctity that needs to be protected is quite amusing (a quick sample of the god-awful "jokes" rated +5 funny is more than enough to purge me of any "guilt" for using a +1 by default). Being called off-topic for directly replying to a parent's subject matter is even better. But the very best is being called a troll by someone whose comments default to Score:0. Thanks, you've made my day.
SDL provides kind of a minimal interface, which makes it really easy to pick up and learn. If you want to expose / accelerate all the features that DirectX does, you'd need a significant rewrite or extension of the SDL API.
Really? I have a 5-year old PII-300 that is showing its age these days. I could upgrade it to an Athlon 1.2G for $150. Or I could buy the very cheapest old-school iMac for $799. Which is cheaper again? If I buy an iMac I get a static appliance. Hell, you can't even reuse the MONITOR from one of them!
Not to mention Dell is NOT the only PC retailer (what a surprise, in the PC world, you get to CHOOSE who you buy from, remember that "competition" thing?) High-end computers can be had for much less than the prices you quote.
And if you haven't noticed, most new Mac software runs on hardware 3 years old!
That's amazing! Except that even the PII-300 I was compliaing about earlier (the 5-year-old-wasnt-even-the-top-of-the-line-then one) can run any of today's applications, and even most games. 3 years is nothing.
What I don't get are you Unix/BSD/Linux junkies who don't see the joy in a Mac. It's BSD with the arguably the greatest User Interface made!
That much is great. The fact that it costs $129 and isn't libre makes me refuse to invest anything into it. I will not entrust my future in computing to a company, whose ONLY goal is to make profit, and who could be here today gone tomorrow. If I've learned anything from BeOS it's that. BeOS was a vastly superior desktop OS to anything else out there, and I was won over. I began using it on a regular basis, writing some code, investing time. And then it was gone, never to be seen again. I'm not going to get screwed again by the whims of the business world, I will never again use a non-libre OS as my primary computing environment.
That's not even a philosophical thing, it's a pragmatic one. If I got deep into OS X and tomorrow Apple started pulling something like integrating DRM tightly into the OS, I would be up shit creek. I refuse to be held hostage by the selfish interests of a company.
I've never mailed anything that expensive, and never really thought about it much. I guess I naively assumed that mail would always reach its destination.
* You should say "open source," because saying it isn't free is ambiguous even in your mind, and downright wrong in an accountant's mind. This isn't the show-stopper you seem to imply it is. People have been using and will continue to use closed-source compilers for many, many years. Take a look at the popularity of VC++, Watcom, Borland, etc. in spite of the free (as in open source and $$$) availablility of GCC on Windows.
You're comparing apples and oranges when you try to argue that since Windows people use closed-source compilers, then Linux people will also. These are completely different groups of people, and I suspect that plenty of people in the Linux community will start using a closed-source compiler when they pry the gcc source from their cold, dead hands.
* No, they didn't compile kernels. They compiled (and tested) ON multiple kernels. Don't you feel silly now, contesting so loudly a point you misinterpreted?
Christopher wasn't the misinterpreter, Slashdot was. Did you read the text he quoted? "the new Intel C/C++ compiler's geometric mean performance on multiple kernels compiled through it reached 47% improvement over GCC." You cleverly omitted the bolded text.
Next time the zealot in you decides to come raging out, take a deep breath and count to 10. Think about how this news might be good for the open-source community before you begin bashing wantonly.
Chill. Chris wasn't being a zealot, he was simply offering counterarguments to the ridiculous claim that Intel's closed-source, x86-only, C/C++ only (I bet) compiler spells death for GCC.
First, you find an opponent. Make sure it's someone whose ideals threaten your grip on whatever power you hold.
Bin Laden and anyone who doesn't think we should nuke him into the stone age.
Then you pick a fight. State that the enemy is attacking your idea with theirs, and that if their idea wins, everyone loses something.
Invade Afghanistan.
Then you paint everyone related to, close to, friends of, employees of, advisors of, or anything of relation to the enemy as...the enemy. You repeat this over and over.
The Al-Quida terrorist network, any nation who harbors terrorists.
You make sure that the people repeating your accusations (i.e., newspapers, TV, the media in general) lean toward your side, which now means they must be against the enemy as well. Make sure your accusers far outnumber their apologists and supporters.
Check.
Finally, propose some kind of legislation that will prohibit anyone from making any disparaging comments, in any form, against those on your side, no matter how far out and ridiculous (especially if they are members of some victim class). This way, if the enemy says even one small thing against that victim, you can accuse him of crimes against the state.
The Patriot Act of 2001. Doesn't directly prohibit dissent, but allows increased surveillance in addition to eroding other rights (in the name of the fight against terrorism).
Yes, I believe that Bin Laden and terrorists need to be pursued and dealt with. But it's deliciously ironic that these exact same methods are being used by politicians to take away our freedoms now, conservatives included (hell, they're leading the effort). They've even gotten us to agree that it's ok.
Just like our freedoms and liberties. Take them away incrementally, and when you realize they're gone, it's too late.
Amen. So you are staunchly against the USA Patriot Act (and efforts like it)?
Or is that a "legitimate" reason to take away freedoms and liberties?
The moderation system on slashdot is awful and wrong. Using an analogy of a hostile government. If I say anything remotely conservative, I will get modded down.
You may not authorize, encourage or allow the Player or any Content to be reproduced, modified, displayed, distributed or otherwise used by any other party
You think that's bad? This only indirectly prohibits lending. My new Bach B Minor Mass CD that I got for Christmas has this written on the CD:
All rights of the producer and of the owner of the work reproduced reserved. Unauthorised copying, hiring, lending, public performance, and broadcasting of this record prohibited.
This CD's from the UK, maybe this kind of restriction can actually be enforced there?? (it's an excellent CD, by the way).
Many systems have files readable by other students by default, and students don't bother to read-protect their files.
I would fit that description. In fact, I keep my assignments in a public CVS repository as I'm writing them, and many of my classmates know this. I have absolutely no problem with this, just as I have no problem discussing an assignment with my classmates or helping them out on their programs. I'm also fairly certain that cheating is quite rare (and since about half my class did all their work in the computer lab, it would be hard to cover up if it were happenning).
I didn't say you should switch to Linux today. I was only providing evidence to show that there IS an active audio development community.
There's nothing negative about the terms "in development" or "plan to release soon." I think the same things could be said of the Linux kernel, but people use it in production every day. In particular, the snd editor "snd" is very powerful and mature, and Ardour is very capable right now. The latter isn't ready for casual users yet, but that doesn't mean it's vaporware--very substantial functionality is already in place, if anything it's the difficulty of the build process that keeps it from being useful to the general public.
Again: you don't have to switch to Linux if you don't want to. But don't claim that there's no development community or no useful software available, because that simply isn't true.
I work in an electronic music studio. I'd love to use Linux, but the apps just aren't there.
The fact that there's almost no development community addressing this potentially enormous market amazes me to no end.
On the linux-audio-dev mailing list, many things are discussed and software developed such as Ardour, digital audio workstation software for Linux, JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit), a low-latency infrastructure for connecting audio applications, and severalwaveeditors. Dave Phillips maintains a list of Linux sound applications--many are not that advanced but some are.
Work in this area is progressing, and many smart people are involved. In particular, Paul Barton-Davis, author of Ardour and the main force behind JACK, seems to be pursuing commercial possibilities of selling linux-based sound workstations under a company named Linux Audio Systems. You can read Paul's slashdot comments to see some of his opinions on the situation of Linux audio.
An AMD sponsored web site with the goal of porting free/open-source software to x86-64. Self-serving publicity stunt? Maybe, but it's nice anyway, and certainly more than we can ever expect to see from Intel.
It's been mentioned that this could be solved by simply buffering X keystrokes before sending, and then send them all at once. This works, but as the poster mentioned, the latency it would introduce would be very annoying.
A better, modified version of this solution would buffer data ONLY when you're typing in a password of some sort. But who wants to manually tell SSH that they're typing in a password every time they run sudo or su?
The solution: while an SSH session is in progress, LD_PRELOAD a library that intercepts whatever library/system call disables echoing on a terminal (I don't know enough about terminals to know what call this would be). Then, enable buffering whenever the terminal echo is disabled. Problem solved!
If it's not a system or library call that disables echo, then just monitor for the escape sequence that does it instead.
You would of course pad the buffer so that you don't give away the length of the password.
If you are this paranoid then you would already be using public key authentication
STOP IT!! PLEASE LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT BEFORE YOU START SPEWING MISINFORMATION ABOUT HOW TO FIX IT!!
Public key authentication will help you ZERO to ward off this kind of attack. The issue is NOT about the password that establishes a connection, it is about passwords typed DURING the connection (like for sudo).
I certainly think that Debian is a fine distro; I just don't like Debian elitists always claiming that Debian is the be-all and end-all of Linux.
It's pretty hard not to pipe in when people who have never heard of Debian are still futzing around with rpmfind or building common software from source. It's like, "don't you realize there's a better way?"
Slashdot Mirror
Well done.
Where are the sound mixing programs? Nothing compares to CoolEdit.
:-)
As one of its authors, I'm quite biased, but I think Audacity is in some ways even better than Cool Edit. Audacity is very user friendly, cross platform (Windows, Linux, Mac), and supports unlimited tracks. At least check it out.
Other sound programs are very powerful but less user friendly. snd is the perfect example of this.
Also, a powerful Digital Audio Workstation program called Ardour has been in the works for a while, and it is in the same ballpark as ProTools.
What I do mind is Woody being delayed, only a few weeks from when packages like KDE 3.0 and Gnome 2.0 would become stable enough for inclusion.
Just because the software is stable enough for inclusion doesn't mean it's ready to be released with the rest of Debian.
For example, a stable version of the Apache 2.0 series was released several weeks ago, but it's not going to be included in woody. Compliance with Debian policy and integration with the rest of the Debian system take time to get right. In the case of Apache 2.0, I believe there are changes to policy regarding virtual hosts that are necessary before it can be included.
While testing is almost sufficiently stable for a production environment, it is a constantly moving target that would need to be upgraded every couple of days; this is simply impractical for a production environment, nobody has that much spare time on their hands at work.
Just because testing is always being updated doesn't mean you have to follow it every couple of days! If you're happy with what you have, then keep on using it. If you need a new version of a package, then just pull the package that you need. There's absolutely zero need to upgrade if you don't want to.
If you want consistancy across a group of machines, then pick a day and declare that day's version of testing to be your locally stable version of the distribution.
An interesting thing you could do with a PDP-11 emulator is try out one of the winning entries from the 1984 IOCCC that requires a PDP-11 to run. Look at the entry and you'll see why. :-)
I wouldn't call this delegation proper---the problem being that LDAP has overridden the generic term with their goofy concept.
Sorry, I wasn't using "delegation" in a technical sense, but in a political one. I want the global directory to define the list of usernames and passwords, but I want the decision of which accounts to recognize to be politically delegated to me as admin of the local server.
Instead, what about using LDAP for authentication and identity mapping, and then writing your own application permissions map
(perhaps even using LDAP, but using the app to link the two, not chaining) with an admin interface? More work but it will be much
easier to administer.
If I understand what you're saying, we would have to write client code to support this. Since there would be a diverse mix of clients, I want to keep as much of the intelligence in the server as possible, so that client-side LDAP authentication modules will work out of the box. The alternative is maintaining 5 different versions of the client-side code.
Thank you for your reply.
Let me see if I understand what you mean. I'll call our local LDAP server A and the global LDAP server B.
Someone tries to log onto a computer in the Advanced Computing Lab. The LDAP authentication module sends the username and password to server A. A looks only at the username, if it's not in the local group of approved users it denies access, if it IS in the local group of approved users, it refers the client to server B, saying "if the password matches, approve it."
Is that right? Would OpenLDAP support the server side of this? Would most LDAP clients support the client side?
Here is the situation I am in, and LDAP doesn't accommodate for it well:
I work in the Advanced Computing Lab. We get the list of usernames and passwords from a university-wide LDAP directory.
However, only a subset of the university-wide accounts should be able to log into the Advanced Computing Lab (this is mandate from the department head). We don't want to have to modify some property in the global directory to make this distinction, we need to be able to locally define this subset.
From what I can tell, the only way to implement this functionality is to use the LDAP concept of "chaining," however OpenLDAP doesn't seem to support this yet.
This seems like a very common situation, why is there no easy way to accomplish this??
If Microsoft's products are worth the money, then people will buy them without being coerced to by incompatible file formats, protocols, and APIs. Their strategy should be good citizenship in the software community (open AND closed source), by making a good faith effort to make interoperability possible.
I think a lot of the animosity toward Microsoft comes from the obstacles they put in the way of fair competition. Standards are the means by which software can compete on the basis of merit, and Microsoft takes advantage of the fact that pragmatically, a market leader's de facto standard speaks much louder than any written document.
$ dmesg | grep hda
hda: Maxtor 90840D6
(more output snipped to appease the lame lameness filter)
It's pretty old I admit, but it's the loudest hard drive I've ever heard and it drives me crazy. Even when the drive is idle the spinning platters sound like a jet engine.
Actually if you bothered to read the parent of the post you're responding to, they mean all of DirectX... These people may only be working on a Direct3D wrapper, but that was a criticsm the parent of the post you replied to was making; that it was just Direct3D...
/. comment ratings have some kind of sanctity that needs to be protected is quite amusing (a quick sample of the god-awful "jokes" rated +5 funny is more than enough to purge me of any "guilt" for using a +1 by default). Being called off-topic for directly replying to a parent's subject matter is even better. But the very best is being called a troll by someone whose comments default to Score:0. Thanks, you've made my day.
Re-reading the original message, I can see how you interpreted it that way, and perhaps that's what the poster meant. It was ambiguously written, however, and this was my reading:
"Wow, using this Direct3D wrapper would be great for writing games! But it only provides 3d functionality, I'd like to be able to use SDL for the rest. I hope they integrate these wrappers into SDL so that I can use Direct3D calls for 3D and regular SDL calls for the rest."
In the future you should use that +1 more conservatively, since your response is off topic at best, or just another troll with a +1...
Your implied belief that
See sig. Consider #3 dedicated to you.
SDL provides kind of a minimal interface, which makes it really easy to pick up and learn. If you want to expose / accelerate all the features that DirectX does, you'd need a significant rewrite or extension of the SDL API.
SDL has had the ability to create OpenGL contexts for a long time. And we're talking about Direct3D, not DirectX, so the DirectDraw example doesn't apply.
First of all, Macs cost less. SHUT UP! They do.
Really? I have a 5-year old PII-300 that is showing its age these days. I could upgrade it to an Athlon 1.2G for $150. Or I could buy the very cheapest old-school iMac for $799. Which is cheaper again? If I buy an iMac I get a static appliance. Hell, you can't even reuse the MONITOR from one of them!
Not to mention Dell is NOT the only PC retailer (what a surprise, in the PC world, you get to CHOOSE who you buy from, remember that "competition" thing?) High-end computers can be had for much less than the prices you quote.
And if you haven't noticed, most new Mac software runs on hardware 3 years old!
That's amazing! Except that even the PII-300 I was compliaing about earlier (the 5-year-old-wasnt-even-the-top-of-the-line-then one) can run any of today's applications, and even most games. 3 years is nothing.
What I don't get are you Unix/BSD/Linux junkies who don't see the joy in a Mac. It's BSD with the arguably the greatest User Interface made!
That much is great. The fact that it costs $129 and isn't libre makes me refuse to invest anything into it. I will not entrust my future in computing to a company, whose ONLY goal is to make profit, and who could be here today gone tomorrow. If I've learned anything from BeOS it's that. BeOS was a vastly superior desktop OS to anything else out there, and I was won over. I began using it on a regular basis, writing some code, investing time. And then it was gone, never to be seen again. I'm not going to get screwed again by the whims of the business world, I will never again use a non-libre OS as my primary computing environment.
That's not even a philosophical thing, it's a pragmatic one. If I got deep into OS X and tomorrow Apple started pulling something like integrating DRM tightly into the OS, I would be up shit creek. I refuse to be held hostage by the selfish interests of a company.
Would YOU drop an $1800 computer in the mailbox?
I've never mailed anything that expensive, and never really thought about it much. I guess I naively assumed that mail would always reach its destination.
The fool (supposedly) shipped it via plain parcel post and no small wonder, it went missing.
What is "plain parcel post," and why is it so unreliable that it would be expected to go missing??
* You should say "open source," because saying it isn't free is ambiguous even in your mind, and downright wrong in an accountant's mind. This isn't the show-stopper you seem to imply it is. People have been using and will continue to use closed-source compilers for many, many years. Take a look at the popularity of VC++, Watcom, Borland, etc. in spite of the free (as in open source and $$$) availablility of GCC on Windows.
You're comparing apples and oranges when you try to argue that since Windows people use closed-source compilers, then Linux people will also. These are completely different groups of people, and I suspect that plenty of people in the Linux community will start using a closed-source compiler when they pry the gcc source from their cold, dead hands.
* No, they didn't compile kernels. They compiled (and tested) ON multiple kernels. Don't you feel silly now, contesting so loudly a point you misinterpreted?
Christopher wasn't the misinterpreter, Slashdot was. Did you read the text he quoted? "the new Intel C/C++ compiler's geometric mean performance on multiple kernels compiled through it reached 47% improvement over GCC." You cleverly omitted the bolded text.
Next time the zealot in you decides to come raging out, take a deep breath and count to 10. Think about how this news might be good for the open-source community before you begin bashing wantonly.
Chill. Chris wasn't being a zealot, he was simply offering counterarguments to the ridiculous claim that Intel's closed-source, x86-only, C/C++ only (I bet) compiler spells death for GCC.
First, you find an opponent. Make sure it's someone whose ideals threaten your grip on whatever power you hold.
Bin Laden and anyone who doesn't think we should nuke him into the stone age.
Then you pick a fight. State that the enemy is attacking your idea with theirs, and that if their idea wins, everyone loses something.
Invade Afghanistan.
Then you paint everyone related to, close to, friends of, employees of, advisors of, or anything of relation to the enemy as...the enemy. You repeat this over and over.
The Al-Quida terrorist network, any nation who harbors terrorists.
You make sure that the people repeating your accusations (i.e., newspapers, TV, the media in general) lean toward your side, which now means they must be against the enemy as well. Make sure your accusers far outnumber their apologists and supporters.
Check.
Finally, propose some kind of legislation that will prohibit anyone from making any disparaging comments, in any form, against those on your side, no matter how far out and ridiculous (especially if they are members of some victim class). This way, if the enemy says even one small thing against that victim, you can accuse him of crimes against the state.
The Patriot Act of 2001. Doesn't directly prohibit dissent, but allows increased surveillance in addition to eroding other rights (in the name of the fight against terrorism).
Yes, I believe that Bin Laden and terrorists need to be pursued and dealt with. But it's deliciously ironic that these exact same methods are being used by politicians to take away our freedoms now, conservatives included (hell, they're leading the effort). They've even gotten us to agree that it's ok.
Just like our freedoms and liberties. Take them away incrementally, and when you realize they're gone, it's too late.
Amen. So you are staunchly against the USA Patriot Act (and efforts like it)?
Or is that a "legitimate" reason to take away freedoms and liberties?
The moderation system on slashdot is awful and wrong. Using an analogy of a hostile government. If I say anything remotely conservative, I will get modded down.
Moderation Totals: Insightful=5, Total=5
Well there goes your whole argument, huh?
You think that's bad? This only indirectly prohibits lending. My new Bach B Minor Mass CD that I got for Christmas has this written on the CD:
All rights of the producer and of the owner of the work reproduced reserved. Unauthorised copying, hiring, lending, public performance, and broadcasting of this record prohibited.
This CD's from the UK, maybe this kind of restriction can actually be enforced there?? (it's an excellent CD, by the way).
Many systems have files readable by other students by default, and students don't bother to read-protect their files.
I would fit that description. In fact, I keep my assignments in a public CVS repository as I'm writing them, and many of my classmates know this. I have absolutely no problem with this, just as I have no problem discussing an assignment with my classmates or helping them out on their programs. I'm also fairly certain that cheating is quite rare (and since about half my class did all their work in the computer lab, it would be hard to cover up if it were happenning).
So what's the problem?
I didn't say you should switch to Linux today. I was only providing evidence to show that there IS an active audio development community.
There's nothing negative about the terms "in development" or "plan to release soon." I think the same things could be said of the Linux kernel, but people use it in production every day. In particular, the snd editor "snd" is very powerful and mature, and Ardour is very capable right now. The latter isn't ready for casual users yet, but that doesn't mean it's vaporware--very substantial functionality is already in place, if anything it's the difficulty of the build process that keeps it from being useful to the general public.
Again: you don't have to switch to Linux if you don't want to. But don't claim that there's no development community or no useful software available, because that simply isn't true.
I work in an electronic music studio. I'd love to use Linux, but the apps just aren't there.
The fact that there's almost no development community addressing this potentially enormous market amazes me to no end.
On the linux-audio-dev mailing list, many things are discussed and software developed such as Ardour, digital audio workstation software for Linux, JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit), a low-latency infrastructure for connecting audio applications, and several wave editors. Dave Phillips maintains a list of Linux sound applications--many are not that advanced but some are.
Work in this area is progressing, and many smart people are involved. In particular, Paul Barton-Davis, author of Ardour and the main force behind JACK, seems to be pursuing commercial possibilities of selling linux-based sound workstations under a company named Linux Audio Systems. You can read Paul's slashdot comments to see some of his opinions on the situation of Linux audio.
http://www.x86-64.org/
An AMD sponsored web site with the goal of porting free/open-source software to x86-64. Self-serving publicity stunt? Maybe, but it's nice anyway, and certainly more than we can ever expect to see from Intel.
It's been mentioned that this could be solved by simply buffering X keystrokes before sending, and then send them all at once. This works, but as the poster mentioned, the latency it would introduce would be very annoying.
A better, modified version of this solution would buffer data ONLY when you're typing in a password of some sort. But who wants to manually tell SSH that they're typing in a password every time they run sudo or su?
The solution: while an SSH session is in progress, LD_PRELOAD a library that intercepts whatever library/system call disables echoing on a terminal (I don't know enough about terminals to know what call this would be). Then, enable buffering whenever the terminal echo is disabled. Problem solved!
If it's not a system or library call that disables echo, then just monitor for the escape sequence that does it instead.
You would of course pad the buffer so that you don't give away the length of the password.
If you are this paranoid then you would already be using public key authentication
STOP IT!! PLEASE LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT BEFORE YOU START SPEWING MISINFORMATION ABOUT HOW TO FIX IT!!
Public key authentication will help you ZERO to ward off this kind of attack. The issue is NOT about the password that establishes a connection, it is about passwords typed DURING the connection (like for sudo).
I certainly think that Debian is a fine distro; I just don't like Debian elitists always claiming that Debian is the be-all and end-all of Linux.
It's pretty hard not to pipe in when people who have never heard of Debian are still futzing around with rpmfind or building common software from source. It's like, "don't you realize there's a better way?"