> It will start to mean something soon with all
> that product activation crap built into the
> eXPerimental build of windows that requires you
> to ask the M$ servers for permission to
> continue using the product you've spent £200/
> $300 on.
I don't think it will. While I think Windows Activation does seem to thwart the casual of casual PC users, there are still relatively easy ways around it. For example, simply warez the Corporate version of WinXP which doesn't require Activation. Also, theres a ZIP file out there that contains the relevant portions of the Corporate version which you can use to replace the equivalent files of the home versions to remove the activation requirement. These two methods are sure to work without fail.
There are of course a plethora of cracks available too which I can't vouch for because I've never tried any of them.
Hmm.. it seems to me that you are redefining what "scientific creationism" is. What's commonly referred to as "scientific creationism" is that pseudo-pseudo-scientific garbage spewed by people like Duane Gish and Henry Morris. Morris even wrote a textbook on "scientific" creationism meant to be used in public schools. And according to him, the basis of the whole "theory" can be found in the book of Genesis in the Bible.
Whether you are a "scientific" creationist in the traditional sense or not, the whole "theory" rests on whether or not God exists. Because you can't prove whether or not he does exist, you can not base any *scientific* theory on him. The term "scientific creationism" is an oxymoron.
Not to mention that the download of the Java VM is all automagic (just like you were downloading the Flash plugin or something). If you're on broadband, its hardly anything to blink at. Dial up users may notice it, but its still no biggie as you only do it once.
And how is it a bad hack? ext2 was designed from the ground up to be easily extendable. The near seamless addition of journaling to the filesystem shows that they've succeeded at least in this area.
> Networks in Billerica MA or anything)... that
> tried to tell me that the C++ new operator has
> nothing to do with malloc() after he asked me
> about new's behaviour.
Actually, he's probably correct. The new operator calls operator new of the specific class you are trying to instantiate an object of. And for those in the audience who don't know, there is such a thing as the "new operator" and "operator new" in C++ and they are NOT the same thing. In the following piece of code, the new operator is being invoked:
MyClass* o = new MyClass;
What the new operator does is invoke MyClass::operator new() (operator new for MyClass) which does the actual work of doing the memory allocation and returning a pointer to it. Note that operator new does not have to allocate dynamic memory at all... it can do something else such as allocate a buffer on disk for example and return a "smart" pointer to it rather than a regular "dumb" pointer.
So the guy with the PhD was correct when he said that the new operator has nothing to do with malloc(). Its also reasonable to assume that the default operator new does not use malloc() to allocate the memory but instead invokes the sbrk() system call directly (on UNIX-like machines anyway) because calling free() on memory allocated with new leads to undefined behavior (likewise, calling delete on memory allocated with malloc() is also undefined).
> An important factor in Linux' cost is its
> maintenance. Linux requires a *lot* of
> maintenance, work doable only by the relatively
I never understood this argument against Linux. I hardly ever have to mess with my Debian Linux boxen. Just because a new kernel is released every 2 weeks, doesn't mean you have to upgrade to the latest and greatest (and with 2.4.x's track record so far, it'd be wise NOT to). And if your distribution releases a security fix, its usually just a matter of doing an apt-get or rpm -i to install that fix. And with Debian, you can even automate the whole process and have security fixes installed automagically from a cron job! So this "Linux requires a *lot* of maintenance" statement is completely unjustified. It requires no more work than any other OS.
> Add to this the cost of loss of data. Linux'
> native file system, EXT2FS, is known to lose
> data like a firehose spouts water when the file
> system isn't unmounted properly. Other unix
> file systems are much more tolerant towards
> unexpected crashes.
Well, Linux has ReiserFS, XFS, and JFS now. So that point is moot. Furthermore, when I used to use ext2, I've improperly shutdown my boxen many times without experiencing significant data loss. At least not to the extent that you are saying. "ext2 loses data like a firehouse spouts water" when it is not properly unmounted is a gross exaggeration.
> The upcoming 'solution' to this, EXT3FS, is
> nothing more than an ugly hack to put
> journaling into the file system. All the
> drawbacks of the ancient EXT2FS file system
> remain in EXT3FS, for the sake of 'forward- and
> backward compatibility'.
How is the journaling capability an "ugly hack"? Ext3's journaling works and it works *well*. Your main argument against ext2 seems to be that it loses data when it is not properly unmounted. Ext3 alleviates this problem. Furthermore, the ext2 filesystem was designed from the get-go to be easily extended. The near seamless addition of journaling to the filesystem illustrates that they at least succeeded in this area.
> This is interesting, considering that the DOS
> heritage in the Windows 9x/ME series was
> considered a very bad thing by the Linux
> community, even though it provided what could
> be called one of the best examples of
> compatibility, ever.
Personally I've always thought that it was amazing that Win9x even ran as well as it did considering that one of its design constraints was to maintain maximum backwards compatibility with legacy DOS applications and hardware designed to be used with DOS. Microsoft learned its lesson about ignoring backwards comptibility with OS/2 1.x's poor DOS support. Yes, a lot of Linux zealots seem to fail to recognize this feat. But actually its not just Linux zealots, its anti-MS zealots in general and also people who just hate MS because they think its cool to hate MS.
Hmm.. thats probably a little harsh. Troll Tech is just trying to protect their software but at the same time appease the Open Source zealots. Qt is an excellent toolkit, and its licensing is actually rather cheap compared to other commercial software development libraries.
If you're going to get pissed off at somebody, be pissed at the KDE people for using Qt in the first place. I mean, they could've helped the Hungry Programmers finish Lesstif. At least then, the free unices would've had a fully functional clone of the industry standard GUI at the time.
Not that I'm advocating hostility towards the KDE people. As far as I'm concerned, the KDE people have done an excellent job and have done the entire free software community a great service. The fact that they work out of the goodness of their hearts gives them every right in the world to use and do whatever they want with the project. Shame on those who shit on them for their efforts.
> Qt was always open.
> The only difference between the QPL and the GPL
At the start of the KDE project, Qt wasn't even licensed under the QPL yet (because it didn't exist back then). It was just free for free software development. Kind of like that old X toolkit XForms. The QPL came out because of the growing popularity of KDE and the concern that Troll Tech might take advantage of this by suddenly locking down Qt. However, the QPL wasn't good enough so now Qt is licensed under the GPL for free software development.
> theres no way dialup on demand can open up a
> PPP connection from the outside, that i know
> of)
Well, thats not entirely true. You just gotta get creative.
For example, you can set it up so that after you let the phone ring, say, 5 times, it'll automagically set up the PPP connection for you. I suppose, if theres support for it, you can make use of the voice mail functionality of some modems to get even fancier ("press 1 to dial ISP A, press 2 to dial ISP B, etc.").
No, not really. If an elected official is found to be up to no good, that person is usually impeached and then given the boot. So far, regarding the presidency, it's never come to that. It's come pretty close though. Clinton and some president in the 1800s I think were impeached. And Nixon resigned before they got a chance to impeach him.
> Let's recapitulate: first, you said the last
> American presidents were fools (actually you
> wrote "tools" but I interpreted it as a typo),
> and you said no country had any president that
> was any good. I mentioned that the current
> Brazilian president has some degrees and
> qualifications that put him in the "not-fool"
> category.
I don't believe Knunov made a typo when he said "tools" instead of "fools". Calling someone a "tool" is akin to calling that person an "asshole" or a "dickhead". And since, according to Knunov's girlfriend, that Brazilian president embezzeled millions of bucks that would most definately put him in the "tool" category.
At any rate, I think Knunov's main point is that Americans should be glad for what they have here. Bitching and moaning by Americans about how much America sucks seems to be popular these days (especially here on Slashdot). But these people obviously have no idea about how much worse it could be, and compared to some other nations we have it pretty good here.
> The point of your post was that if an
> intelligible post appears on Slashdot, some
> socially retarded nerd will show up and try to
> prove that he's smart by picking nits.
No, you anonymous little cumstain, let me spell it out for you:
GNOME and KDE are NOT window managers.
This point is NOT irrelevant. If people would realize this, then you wouldn't have dumbshits saying stuff like "Oh, I'd use GNOME, but AfterStep is my favorite window manager and I don't want to give it up."
Saying GNOME and KDE are window managers is like saying Red Hat is Linux. And it wouldn't suprise me one bit if you are one of those ignorant little fucks who say shit like that too.
> In fact, Solaris 8 comes with a software CD
> with a bunch of nice GNU utils which include
> GNOME and KDE window managers.
Just the window managers? Wouldn't it be more useful if they included the whole thing? And what is the GNOME window manager anyway? Last I checked, GNOME didn't really have an official one. I know KDE 1.x uses kwm and KDE 2.x uses KWin, but GNOME? Hmm...
Ya...Win4Lin is good stuff. I use it too. However, it can actually lock your entire box up nice and tight. Its been a pretty rare occurance so far, but I've experienced Win4Lin crashing the box. Though I should probably mention that the Win4lin kernel patch didn't entirely apply cleanly to my kernel, so I had to hand patch some things. Theres always the chance I screwed that part up.
But overall, Win4lin is great. Though the VMWare guys also offer a toned-down, Win9x-only, version of VMware that costs about the same as Win4lin. Supposedly this version is more optimized to run Win9x.
Slashdot Mirror
> Yeah, back when I first heard about the .edu
> activation thing, I thought about all the
> medium to large size businesses and
These people would probably get the Corporate version which doesn't require Activation.
- Arcadio
> I'd bet that within a week we'll hear
... there've been ways around Windows Activation since the betas.
> about "cracks" that let criminals install
> illegal copies of Windows XP
Get with the times
- Arcadio
> XP (Home at least) is not an upgrade to W2K
.. no shit Sherlock. How the hell was this modded up to Informative?
> users
Well
- Arcadio
> It will start to mean something soon with all
> that product activation crap built into the
> eXPerimental build of windows that requires you
> to ask the M$ servers for permission to
> continue using the product you've spent £200/
> $300 on.
I don't think it will. While I think Windows Activation does seem to thwart the casual of casual PC users, there are still relatively easy ways around it. For example, simply warez the Corporate version of WinXP which doesn't require Activation. Also, theres a ZIP file out there that contains the relevant portions of the Corporate version which you can use to replace the equivalent files of the home versions to remove the activation requirement. These two methods are sure to work without fail.
There are of course a plethora of cracks available too which I can't vouch for because I've never tried any of them.
- Arcadio
> Because you can only run that copy of Windows
> on one computer.
LOL! As if that means anything to the typical home user.
And to the business user, it might be easier in the long run (read: cheaper) to just use Windows to run his/her Windows applications.
- Arcadio
> And you can assure yourself you're not sending
> your personal information to a company that
> wants to control your computer
You don't send any personal information to MS when you use Windows Update either.
-Arcadio
> This is the tenet upon which evolution is built.
Not biological evolution. Darwin's Natural Selection assumes that life already exists.
- Arcadio
Hmm .. it seems to me that you are redefining what "scientific creationism" is. What's commonly referred to as "scientific creationism" is that pseudo-pseudo-scientific garbage spewed by people like Duane Gish and Henry Morris. Morris even wrote a textbook on "scientific" creationism meant to be used in public schools. And according to him, the basis of the whole "theory" can be found in the book of Genesis in the Bible.
Whether you are a "scientific" creationist in the traditional sense or not, the whole "theory" rests on whether or not God exists. Because you can't prove whether or not he does exist, you can not base any *scientific* theory on him. The term "scientific creationism" is an oxymoron.
- Arcadio
Not to mention that the download of the Java VM is all automagic (just like you were downloading the Flash plugin or something). If you're on broadband, its hardly anything to blink at. Dial up users may notice it, but its still no biggie as you only do it once.
-Arcadio
> Or you could use a journalling fs that isn't
> just a bad hack off of an existing fs.
Reiser isn't a full journaling filesystem. It only journals metadata. ext3, on the other hand, is.
And how is it a bad hack? ext2 was designed from the ground up to be easily extendable. The near seamless addition of journaling to the filesystem shows that they've succeeded at least in this area.
- Arcadio
> KDE today is as good as window manager
KDE isn't a window manager.
- Arcadio
> Networks in Billerica MA or anything) ... that
... it can do something else such as allocate a buffer on disk for example and return a "smart" pointer to it rather than a regular "dumb" pointer.
> tried to tell me that the C++ new operator has
> nothing to do with malloc() after he asked me
> about new's behaviour.
Actually, he's probably correct. The new operator calls operator new of the specific class you are trying to instantiate an object of. And for those in the audience who don't know, there is such a thing as the "new operator" and "operator new" in C++ and they are NOT the same thing. In the following piece of code, the new operator is being invoked:
MyClass* o = new MyClass;
What the new operator does is invoke MyClass::operator new() (operator new for MyClass) which does the actual work of doing the memory allocation and returning a pointer to it. Note that operator new does not have to allocate dynamic memory at all
So the guy with the PhD was correct when he said that the new operator has nothing to do with malloc(). Its also reasonable to assume that the default operator new does not use malloc() to allocate the memory but instead invokes the sbrk() system call directly (on UNIX-like machines anyway) because calling free() on memory allocated with new leads to undefined behavior (likewise, calling delete on memory allocated with malloc() is also undefined).
- Arcadio
> An important factor in Linux' cost is its
> maintenance. Linux requires a *lot* of
> maintenance, work doable only by the relatively
I never understood this argument against Linux. I hardly ever have to mess with my Debian Linux boxen. Just because a new kernel is released every 2 weeks, doesn't mean you have to upgrade to the latest and greatest (and with 2.4.x's track record so far, it'd be wise NOT to). And if your distribution releases a security fix, its usually just a matter of doing an apt-get or rpm -i to install that fix. And with Debian, you can even automate the whole process and have security fixes installed automagically from a cron job! So this "Linux requires a *lot* of maintenance" statement is completely unjustified. It requires no more work than any other OS.
> Add to this the cost of loss of data. Linux'
> native file system, EXT2FS, is known to lose
> data like a firehose spouts water when the file
> system isn't unmounted properly. Other unix
> file systems are much more tolerant towards
> unexpected crashes.
Well, Linux has ReiserFS, XFS, and JFS now. So that point is moot. Furthermore, when I used to use ext2, I've improperly shutdown my boxen many times without experiencing significant data loss. At least not to the extent that you are saying. "ext2 loses data like a firehouse spouts water" when it is not properly unmounted is a gross exaggeration.
> The upcoming 'solution' to this, EXT3FS, is
> nothing more than an ugly hack to put
> journaling into the file system. All the
> drawbacks of the ancient EXT2FS file system
> remain in EXT3FS, for the sake of 'forward- and
> backward compatibility'.
How is the journaling capability an "ugly hack"? Ext3's journaling works and it works *well*. Your main argument against ext2 seems to be that it loses data when it is not properly unmounted. Ext3 alleviates this problem. Furthermore, the ext2 filesystem was designed from the get-go to be easily extended. The near seamless addition of journaling to the filesystem illustrates that they at least succeeded in this area.
> This is interesting, considering that the DOS
> heritage in the Windows 9x/ME series was
> considered a very bad thing by the Linux
> community, even though it provided what could
> be called one of the best examples of
> compatibility, ever.
Personally I've always thought that it was amazing that Win9x even ran as well as it did considering that one of its design constraints was to maintain maximum backwards compatibility with legacy DOS applications and hardware designed to be used with DOS. Microsoft learned its lesson about ignoring backwards comptibility with OS/2 1.x's poor DOS support. Yes, a lot of Linux zealots seem to fail to recognize this feat. But actually its not just Linux zealots, its anti-MS zealots in general and also people who just hate MS because they think its cool to hate MS.
- Arcadio
Hmm .. thats probably a little harsh. Troll Tech is just trying to protect their software but at the same time appease the Open Source zealots. Qt is an excellent toolkit, and its licensing is actually rather cheap compared to other commercial software development libraries.
If you're going to get pissed off at somebody, be pissed at the KDE people for using Qt in the first place. I mean, they could've helped the Hungry Programmers finish Lesstif. At least then, the free unices would've had a fully functional clone of the industry standard GUI at the time.
Not that I'm advocating hostility towards the KDE people. As far as I'm concerned, the KDE people have done an excellent job and have done the entire free software community a great service. The fact that they work out of the goodness of their hearts gives them every right in the world to use and do whatever they want with the project. Shame on those who shit on them for their efforts.
- Arcadio
> Qt was always open.
> The only difference between the QPL and the GPL
At the start of the KDE project, Qt wasn't even licensed under the QPL yet (because it didn't exist back then). It was just free for free software development. Kind of like that old X toolkit XForms. The QPL came out because of the growing popularity of KDE and the concern that Troll Tech might take advantage of this by suddenly locking down Qt. However, the QPL wasn't good enough so now Qt is licensed under the GPL for free software development.
- Arcadio
> theres no way dialup on demand can open up a
...
> PPP connection from the outside, that i know
> of)
Well, thats not entirely true. You just gotta get creative.
For example, you can set it up so that after you let the phone ring, say, 5 times, it'll automagically set up the PPP connection for you. I suppose, if theres support for it, you can make use of the voice mail functionality of some modems to get even fancier ("press 1 to dial ISP A, press 2 to dial ISP B, etc.").
But still not as kewl as having a static IP
- Arcadio
No, not really. If an elected official is found to be up to no good, that person is usually impeached and then given the boot. So far, regarding the presidency, it's never come to that. It's come pretty close though. Clinton and some president in the 1800s I think were impeached. And Nixon resigned before they got a chance to impeach him.
- Arcadio
> Let's recapitulate: first, you said the last
> American presidents were fools (actually you
> wrote "tools" but I interpreted it as a typo),
> and you said no country had any president that
> was any good. I mentioned that the current
> Brazilian president has some degrees and
> qualifications that put him in the "not-fool"
> category.
I don't believe Knunov made a typo when he said "tools" instead of "fools". Calling someone a "tool" is akin to calling that person an "asshole" or a "dickhead". And since, according to Knunov's girlfriend, that Brazilian president embezzeled millions of bucks that would most definately put him in the "tool" category.
At any rate, I think Knunov's main point is that Americans should be glad for what they have here. Bitching and moaning by Americans about how much America sucks seems to be popular these days (especially here on Slashdot). But these people obviously have no idea about how much worse it could be, and compared to some other nations we have it pretty good here.
- Arcadio
> The point of your post was that if an
> intelligible post appears on Slashdot, some
> socially retarded nerd will show up and try to
> prove that he's smart by picking nits.
No, you anonymous little cumstain, let me spell it out for you:
GNOME and KDE are NOT window managers.
This point is NOT irrelevant. If people would realize this, then you wouldn't have dumbshits saying stuff like "Oh, I'd use GNOME, but AfterStep is my favorite window manager and I don't want to give it up."
Saying GNOME and KDE are window managers is like saying Red Hat is Linux. And it wouldn't suprise me one bit if you are one of those ignorant little fucks who say shit like that too.
And thats all I got to say about that.
- Arcadio
Apparently, my post just flew right over your head. Here, let me help you out and repeat the relevant parts of that guy's post:
> with a bunch of nice GNU utils which include
> GNOME and KDE window managers.
----------------
Now try again, and see if you can figure out what the point of my post was.
- Arcadio
> Also, migration to ReiserFS is pretty easy...
Couldn't be easier than ext3 tho. All that involves is specifying the -j switch to tune2fs.
- Arcadio
> In fact, Solaris 8 comes with a software CD
...
> with a bunch of nice GNU utils which include
> GNOME and KDE window managers.
Just the window managers? Wouldn't it be more useful if they included the whole thing? And what is the GNOME window manager anyway? Last I checked, GNOME didn't really have an official one. I know KDE 1.x uses kwm and KDE 2.x uses KWin, but GNOME? Hmm
- Arcadio
Ya .. .Win4Lin is good stuff. I use it too. However, it can actually lock your entire box up nice and tight. Its been a pretty rare occurance so far, but I've experienced Win4Lin crashing the box. Though I should probably mention that the Win4lin kernel patch didn't entirely apply cleanly to my kernel, so I had to hand patch some things. Theres always the chance I screwed that part up.
But overall, Win4lin is great. Though the VMWare guys also offer a toned-down, Win9x-only, version of VMware that costs about the same as Win4lin. Supposedly this version is more optimized to run Win9x.
- Arcadio
Probably because it runs on Windows.
- Arcadio
tune2fs -O'^has_journal' /dev/blah
- Arcadio