Ah, but these questions would make sense if you knew more of the story behind JP. If so many people hate this guy and ask him such questions, there must be a reason for it. The world hasn't conspired against him to make him look like a fool; he did that perfectly well on his own.
Without context, nothing makes any sense. Would a Mac user in 1986 know why everyone hated Microsoft and Bill Gates so much? --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
My personal definition is that the OS proper is the sum total of the kernel and hardware abstraction (such as, in the case of UNIXen, the wonderful memory/paging abstraction accessed with mmap(), which is the foundation of what is usually used to execute a program). Thus, X11, being a hardware abstraction, is part of the operating system, by my definition, even though you can have a fully-functional UNIX without it (as I do on my main server). Similarly, in Windows, GDI is kinda-sorta part of the OS, since it abstracts the hardware video card driver, though it does lots of other stuff too (such as button drawing, if I'm not mistaken).
Now, that's just the functional part of the OS proper. When I refer to Linux, I usually refer to a relatively complete operating environment - namely, the operating system and the parts that make Linux Linux, such as fvwm2 and esd and so forth, and maybe even for the more directly-used programs such as Netscape and GIMP. It also includes unique characteristics of the sum total Linux experience; you can have a Linux system without gcc/g++, but then you can't compile all that wonderful free software (though I rarely do anyway, being a die-hard Debian user with a serious apt habit).
I know, it's a very vague definition, but it's a very vague concept. That and it's 6:20 AM and my sleep schedule is fscked lately.:) --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
see-shell tee-see-shell lie-low cash tilde hash or pound, depending on context (or when I'm feeling really funky, 'octothorpe':) bang or exclamation point, again depending on context --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Well, actually, the Palm's screen is 240x320, but other than that, yeah, that was exactly the point I was implying. In WindStar's defense, it looks like they've got some decent drawing/widget toolkits for uClinux, but again, that's a moot point - PalmOS is already MUCH more suited for a handheld than Linux ever will be. If someone wants to do a free clone of PalmOS or a free handheld-oriented OS, that's fine by me, but don't try to retrofit a server OS with workstation legacy to a handheld... --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
What, women can't be geeks? I know quite a few female geeks.:) Oh, and I'm not talking about something like JenniCam... that's not a wearable device where someone can see exactly what's going on from Jenni's point of view, with or without biometric information. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
You know, some days, I type faster than others... some days I use a different keyboard... if someone were to use my typing patterns in order to determine whether I was really me, they'd better have a really damned big standard deviation. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
I'd disagree. wget or some other sort of client running on the Palm could be very useful for a sync. I have no problem with using HTTP as the underlying protocol for a synchronization. However, that doesn't necessitate having a webserver in your pocket.
However, I can see where a webserver would be handy in the palm of your hand afterall... for the total geek factor, hook up a bunch of sensors to various parts of your body, maybe add in a webcam (though the Palm certainly doesn't have the CPU speed to drive a webcam effectively), and then someone can live vicariously through you on the web.:)
Also, I have no problem with having a web *browser* on the Palm. That's what AvantGo is for. AvantGo is a very good browser, considering what it has to work with. (Hint: PalmIIIs only have 2 megs of RAM total.)
Now, what I'd be interested in is making a wearable computer based on the uCsimm/uCgarden. Most geeks I know have a dead SIMM on their keychain... I'd have a fully-working wearable computer.:) (My idea regarding a wearable is have it as simple as possible, and basically be a thin client. As long as it has ethernet of some sort, preferrably wireless, and the ability to run screen, ircII, TinyFugue, w3m, and some simple PIM-type programs locally, I'm happy.) --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
You're likely thinking of uClinux, an embedded MMUless version of Linux for the Palm. According to this site, Windstone is based on uClinux. From what I can glean from the site (it's going really slowly), Windstone is uClinux with the capability to run PalmOS programs. Personally, I don't know how they can really do that; many applications are based on the fact that PalmOS doesn't have any high-level multitasking. As someone else pointed out, PalmOS is very good for what it does, and as much as I love the idea of free software on my Palm (not this freeware and millions of crappy $5 trivial shareware programs where the nagscreen and registration code probably took more coding than the program itself), if all this does is makes it easy to port Linux applications to the Palm, well, that's rather pointless. I don't need GIMP or Netscape on my Palm, as TealPaint and AvantGo do the same sort of functionality except better in the context of the Palm. PalmOS is *great* as far as handheld OSes go; as useful on a theoretical front as a Palm running Linux is, and as geeky it is to have a webserver in your pocket, there really is little, if any, practical application to this. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
That is patented? Jeeze. Oh well, I have lots of ideas on improvements of the system (like adding in various dithering and resampling to improve the large-scale image quality), so maybe I could one-up that guy.:) Oops, nevermind, I just divulged that idea to the world at large - which means it can't be patented at all. How about that, folks.;) --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Yes, and the things he examined the patents for were physical devices, not this current deluge of "well duh" things. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Hm. In trying to find the patent in question, I did a search on 'yahoo' in the IBM patent database... US patent 05896132 is even more unbelievable than this one. Apparently IBM tried and succeeded patenting using the word 'more' for flipping through multiple pages of text:
Scroll bars conventionally used in a graphical user interface are replaced with "more" bars at each edge of a display bordering a direction in which more information is available for viewing. Actuation of a cursor on one of the more bars scrolls the display in the direction of the more bar. The more bars provide an intuitive mechanism for controlling the display of graphical user interface.
That does it, I'm nuking the USPTO... --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
This is incredibly vague, but hell, even QLink on the C64 did stuff like this back in the mid-80s. And they got a patent on this?! --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
He obviously has communism and fascism confused. Granted, there are fascist aspects of any communist government, but the Chinese government is a pretty good example, all things considered, of a large-scale communism. Yes, the voluntary aspects are forced upon people, but it's to the point that the people embrace it as their only way of life. I recommend reading the old Doonesbury strips from when Duke was an emmissary to China for a rather accurate (as far as I know, anyway - I'm not Chinese nor have I ever lived in China) portrayal of the Chinese government and the popular American conception of it.
ESR certainly doesn't speak for me. He has no right to claim that he speaks for me. I was all for the idea of China adopting Linux as an official OS, and it also makes sense, considering that GNU/Linux is the current choice of Richard Stalin^H^Hlman. (I don't mean that as a slur, either. I'm a pinko leftie communist at heart.:)
ESR needs to realize that not everyone in the free software movement is an opensource libertarian. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
For that matter, are there any places I could find some information comparing the various JFS projects for Linux? I know that there are a few (ext3, XFS, and a few others) but that's all I know about them - that they're being worked on. Even some information on theoretical comparisons regarding design philosophies would be really nice...
Hm, in that vein, I wonder if Be could be coerced into releasing BeFS as free. I mean, they've borrowed plenty of stuff from Linux (mostly shells, commandline utilities and LILO); one could argue that they owe the Linux community something in return, and from what I've seen, BeFS is very robust, stable, future-compatible (mmm, 64-bit addressing...), and very UNIXy and then some. It certainly has all the functionality that ext2 has, including the parts which nobody uses.:) --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Well, there is a free version of Motif, namely Lesstif. It's apparently about on-par with Motif, except that it's apparently missing a few of the more obscure widgets and has no means of using pure Motif's particular binary flavor of compiled UIL (User Interface Language, a neat interface-design scripting language Motif has), though compiled UIL isn't really a major concern for free software projects anyway since, well, the UIL source would theoretically be available and compilable from there.:)
I'm with you regarding Java though. Servlets are godly for having clustered high-availability webservers with heterogenous systems. You can have a cluster of webservers where each is running a different CPU and OS and you only need what amounts to one compiled CGI binary for everything. (Say what you will, but I'd prefer to have a bytecompiled Java CGI than a runtime-interpreted PERL one. Yes, I know PERL can be bytecompiled too.) Oh, and it'll also be nice to be able to see all the glitzy web stuff which everyone seems to be using now without my system crawling and my browser crashing... --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Good point. I was trying to come up with a better argument than the hackneyed "automatic transmission on a bicycle" one, since there are bicycles with an automatic transmission, and it apparently is quite useful. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Ah, but I run my own mail domain from my cable modem connection. Yeah, I know, it's kinda unethical, but then I have control over my mail and can setup as many accounts as I need (for roommates, spam-trapping, etc.) in my own domainname, rather than having to pay out the ass for additional mailboxes. Granted, this is a moot point, as I'll soon be setting things up where a friend's machine does a vhosted MX for me and everyone with an account in trikuare.cx will use fetchmail or whatever, which solves several problems (including the potential for being blocked through DUL). In the meantime, this is the first I've heard of DUL, and have yet to have any mail blocked (as far as I know, anyway) because of the fact that the PTR to my mailserver is obviously a dynamic IP address (though not technically a dialup one). In the meantime, I somehow doubt that my cable provider's sysadmins even care about participating in DUL anyway. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
The 'To:' header in the message itself has nothing to do with the message it was sent to. Your typical SMTP session looks something like this: (italics is what is sent to the server; username is typically gotten through the auth mechanism)
220 some-mailserver.fred.org ESMTP Exim 2.05 #1 Wed, 10 Nov 1999 22:54:45 -0500 HELO some-machine.bob.net 250 some-mailserver.fred.org Hello username at some-machine.bob.net [192.168.1.2] MAIL FROM: bob@bob.net 250 is syntactically correct RCPT TO: some-user@fred.org 250 is syntactically correct DATA 354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself From: Bob Loves You <bob@dobbs.net> To: your friend <fluffy@yellow.com> Subject: I love you
I love you! . 250 OK id=11llKJ-0000we-00 QUIT 221 some-mailserver.fred.org closing connection
Notice that the To: and From: lines in the message itself (what comes after the DATA) have nothing to do with the actual sender and recipient as far as the mailserver is concerned (the MAIL FROM and RCPT TO, respectively, in the SMTP negotiation). SMTP is a very simple, open, flexible protocol which assumes that everyone is benevolent and sharing. Sadly, this isn't so, which is why now the domain in the MAIL FROM or RCPT TO must be one handled in some way by the mailserver (otherwise it's an open relay), and why there's lots of fun authentication (such as the identd) to make tracking non-benevolent users a little bit easier. --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
But some protection is better than none. Also, it'd help with the relay time (which the original poster never said it wouldn't be through). --- "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
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Without context, nothing makes any sense. Would a Mac user in 1986 know why everyone hated Microsoft and Bill Gates so much?
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Now, that's just the functional part of the OS proper. When I refer to Linux, I usually refer to a relatively complete operating environment - namely, the operating system and the parts that make Linux Linux, such as fvwm2 and esd and so forth, and maybe even for the more directly-used programs such as Netscape and GIMP. It also includes unique characteristics of the sum total Linux experience; you can have a Linux system without gcc/g++, but then you can't compile all that wonderful free software (though I rarely do anyway, being a die-hard Debian user with a serious apt habit).
I know, it's a very vague definition, but it's a very vague concept. That and it's 6:20 AM and my sleep schedule is fscked lately. :)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
I thought it was gigavolts.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
He didn't.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
see-shell :)
tee-see-shell
lie-low
cash
tilde
hash or pound, depending on context (or when I'm feeling really funky, 'octothorpe'
bang or exclamation point, again depending on context
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Well, actually, the Palm's screen is 240x320, but other than that, yeah, that was exactly the point I was implying. In WindStar's defense, it looks like they've got some decent drawing/widget toolkits for uClinux, but again, that's a moot point - PalmOS is already MUCH more suited for a handheld than Linux ever will be. If someone wants to do a free clone of PalmOS or a free handheld-oriented OS, that's fine by me, but don't try to retrofit a server OS with workstation legacy to a handheld...
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
What, women can't be geeks? I know quite a few female geeks. :) Oh, and I'm not talking about something like JenniCam... that's not a wearable device where someone can see exactly what's going on from Jenni's point of view, with or without biometric information.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
You know, some days, I type faster than others... some days I use a different keyboard... if someone were to use my typing patterns in order to determine whether I was really me, they'd better have a really damned big standard deviation.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
However, I can see where a webserver would be handy in the palm of your hand afterall... for the total geek factor, hook up a bunch of sensors to various parts of your body, maybe add in a webcam (though the Palm certainly doesn't have the CPU speed to drive a webcam effectively), and then someone can live vicariously through you on the web. :)
Also, I have no problem with having a web *browser* on the Palm. That's what AvantGo is for. AvantGo is a very good browser, considering what it has to work with. (Hint: PalmIIIs only have 2 megs of RAM total.)
Now, what I'd be interested in is making a wearable computer based on the uCsimm/uCgarden. Most geeks I know have a dead SIMM on their keychain... I'd have a fully-working wearable computer. :) (My idea regarding a wearable is have it as simple as possible, and basically be a thin client. As long as it has ethernet of some sort, preferrably wireless, and the ability to run screen, ircII, TinyFugue, w3m, and some simple PIM-type programs locally, I'm happy.)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
You're likely thinking of uClinux, an embedded MMUless version of Linux for the Palm. According to this site, Windstone is based on uClinux. From what I can glean from the site (it's going really slowly), Windstone is uClinux with the capability to run PalmOS programs. Personally, I don't know how they can really do that; many applications are based on the fact that PalmOS doesn't have any high-level multitasking. As someone else pointed out, PalmOS is very good for what it does, and as much as I love the idea of free software on my Palm (not this freeware and millions of crappy $5 trivial shareware programs where the nagscreen and registration code probably took more coding than the program itself), if all this does is makes it easy to port Linux applications to the Palm, well, that's rather pointless. I don't need GIMP or Netscape on my Palm, as TealPaint and AvantGo do the same sort of functionality except better in the context of the Palm. PalmOS is *great* as far as handheld OSes go; as useful on a theoretical front as a Palm running Linux is, and as geeky it is to have a webserver in your pocket, there really is little, if any, practical application to this.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
That is patented? Jeeze. Oh well, I have lots of ideas on improvements of the system (like adding in various dithering and resampling to improve the large-scale image quality), so maybe I could one-up that guy. :) Oops, nevermind, I just divulged that idea to the world at large - which means it can't be patented at all. How about that, folks. ;)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Yes, and the things he examined the patents for were physical devices, not this current deluge of "well duh" things.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
God, I didn't intend for this to be moderated as funny... I had no idea I was making a joke, either.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Wow, apparently allegories are very offtopic. I had no idea.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
You can try the IBM patent database or the US Patent and Trademark Office. I usually use the former.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
This is incredibly vague, but hell, even QLink on the C64 did stuff like this back in the mid-80s. And they got a patent on this?!
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
ESR certainly doesn't speak for me. He has no right to claim that he speaks for me. I was all for the idea of China adopting Linux as an official OS, and it also makes sense, considering that GNU/Linux is the current choice of Richard Stalin^H^Hlman. (I don't mean that as a slur, either. I'm a pinko leftie communist at heart. :)
ESR needs to realize that not everyone in the free software movement is an opensource libertarian.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Hm, in that vein, I wonder if Be could be coerced into releasing BeFS as free. I mean, they've borrowed plenty of stuff from Linux (mostly shells, commandline utilities and LILO); one could argue that they owe the Linux community something in return, and from what I've seen, BeFS is very robust, stable, future-compatible (mmm, 64-bit addressing...), and very UNIXy and then some. It certainly has all the functionality that ext2 has, including the parts which nobody uses. :)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
I'm with you regarding Java though. Servlets are godly for having clustered high-availability webservers with heterogenous systems. You can have a cluster of webservers where each is running a different CPU and OS and you only need what amounts to one compiled CGI binary for everything. (Say what you will, but I'd prefer to have a bytecompiled Java CGI than a runtime-interpreted PERL one. Yes, I know PERL can be bytecompiled too.) Oh, and it'll also be nice to be able to see all the glitzy web stuff which everyone seems to be using now without my system crawling and my browser crashing...
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Yes, that's what I said, but only in summary. Or were you agreeing with me? :)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Good point. I was trying to come up with a better argument than the hackneyed "automatic transmission on a bicycle" one, since there are bicycles with an automatic transmission, and it apparently is quite useful.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Ah, but I run my own mail domain from my cable modem connection. Yeah, I know, it's kinda unethical, but then I have control over my mail and can setup as many accounts as I need (for roommates, spam-trapping, etc.) in my own domainname, rather than having to pay out the ass for additional mailboxes. Granted, this is a moot point, as I'll soon be setting things up where a friend's machine does a vhosted MX for me and everyone with an account in trikuare.cx will use fetchmail or whatever, which solves several problems (including the potential for being blocked through DUL). In the meantime, this is the first I've heard of DUL, and have yet to have any mail blocked (as far as I know, anyway) because of the fact that the PTR to my mailserver is obviously a dynamic IP address (though not technically a dialup one). In the meantime, I somehow doubt that my cable provider's sysadmins even care about participating in DUL anyway.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
220 some-mailserver.fred.org ESMTP Exim 2.05 #1 Wed, 10 Nov 1999 22:54:45 -0500
.
HELO some-machine.bob.net
250 some-mailserver.fred.org Hello username at some-machine.bob.net [192.168.1.2]
MAIL FROM: bob@bob.net
250 is syntactically correct RCPT TO: some-user@fred.org
250 is syntactically correct DATA 354 Enter message, ending with "." on a line by itself From: Bob Loves You <bob@dobbs.net>
To: your friend <fluffy@yellow.com>
Subject: I love you
I love you!
250 OK id=11llKJ-0000we-00
QUIT
221 some-mailserver.fred.org closing connection
Notice that the To: and From: lines in the message itself (what comes after the DATA) have nothing to do with the actual sender and recipient as far as the mailserver is concerned (the MAIL FROM and RCPT TO, respectively, in the SMTP negotiation). SMTP is a very simple, open, flexible protocol which assumes that everyone is benevolent and sharing. Sadly, this isn't so, which is why now the domain in the MAIL FROM or RCPT TO must be one handled in some way by the mailserver (otherwise it's an open relay), and why there's lots of fun authentication (such as the identd) to make tracking non-benevolent users a little bit easier.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
But some protection is better than none. Also, it'd help with the relay time (which the original poster never said it wouldn't be through).
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.