The 2600n uses a proprietary protocol. The Windows drivers give very good output. The Mac drivers have worse colour rendering. The only Linux drivers are at http://foo2hp.rkkda.com/ and have poor colour rendering (as the page also states). Also read his comment about how much assistance HP provided. Somewhat uniquely the printer does ship with full cartridges and the printer is cheaper than the price of the 4 cartridges!
There is a new 2605 that has Postscript and PCL but is out of the OP's price range. My local Costco has had it recently.
Re:Not practical or profitable to develop for Linu
on
Cedega and Linux Games
·
· Score: 1
The thing about Linux is that you don't have to do things the conventional way. There is absolutely no reason for you to provide platform support. For example you could partner with the various distros instead. They can provide the support (and packaging) for a cut. You could contract it out (the original LinuxCare model).
Or you could release the game for free but charge for the art and media like how you could get Doom with shareware and retail WAD files. Again others will do the porting and packaging work and hence the platform support.
I am not trying to bypass them. If Cedega works on my AMD64 running Gentoo and plays Rise of Nations then I am happy to pay for it. However they do not provide any way to evaluate the software other than giving them non-refundable money. And since the software is known to have issues (I'm not apportioning blame) it isn't unreasonable to want to verify it works sufficiently well. Ignoring email just seems like a silly way to run a business.
My big problem with Cedega is how they don't provide a evaluation version. I have no idea if Rise of Nations will run. (The game database lists someone last trying in 2004). The only way to try the software is to buy a subscription and nowhere does it say you get a refund if it doesn't work. Emailing info@transgaming.com doesn't elicit a reply.
I use Password Safe (Google it). I use two files - one is usernames and passwords and one is the stupid questions (and randomly generated answers). I avoid using the same question for two different sites. That effectively means I have two different usernames and passwords for each site.
If I lose both the files then I am screwed since I don't even know what the answers are!
Fortunately, use of this feature within NTFS is not widespread
It is if you know where to look. For users of Internet Explorer, the zone a file was downloaded from is put in an ADS. That is why you can later click on a file and be told it came from the Internet Zone and do you really want to continue. It is also why you can copy the file around and get still get the warning - Explorer, copy etc all copy the ADS.
The other use is for file summary information. For Office documents it is stored as part of the file itself (thanks to structured storage). For other file types it is stotred in an ADS. To do this, get properties on a file (eg right click) and go to the summary tab. This is why you can set those fields on a.txt file yet not have the contents of the file altered.
The ADS is an extremely useful place to put information. For example this is a way to implement file indexing. You can put user entered information (eg importance) as well as other meta data into the ADS and then the indexing tool picks that up. On Linux these are being called extended attributes (aka xattr). They aren't particular different than ADS and no doubt similar issues will arise.
Microsoft executives have recently said they are committed to a greater outreach to the open source community and to make Windows software interoperable with that licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
A nice start would be allowing redistribution of MSVCP71.DLL and MSVCR71.DLL as part of GPL applications? Python 2.4 switched to a newer Microsoft compiler and requires these DLLs on machines. Microsoft provides free compilers - see http://wiki.python.org/moin/Building_Python_with_t he_free_MS_C_Toolkit However the C libraries that the compilers use can only be redistributed under terms that preclude GPL licensed software, although some debate the interpretation.
Consequently that means that people who have GPL licensed Python apps can't move to Python 2.4 or newer because of Microsoft's licensing.
After installing Office 2007 beta, I couldn't get it to activate. I did some tracing with Ethereal and found that an https connection was made to Microsoft servers and a blob of data sent. Microsoft servers don't respond and 60 seconds later the connection is closed. After installing WGA, the Office 2007 activation worked fine.
What is really funny is that if you click Validate Now on that page and you are using Firefox, it wants to install a plugin for Firefox. Yes, Microsoft has written a plugin for Firefox!
Incidentally the "fewest dropped calls" thing is a spin on poor coverage. After all a call can't be dropped if you can't make it in the first place! I think one of the biggest problems is how the carriers nickel and dime their customers. For example Verizon Wireless have been trying to prevent getting camera images over a cable and forcing you to do it over the air (for a price). Similarly they arbitrarily remove Bluetooth functionality to prevent users from doing things that VZW can't get paid for each time.
Virtually all Windows software from 2000-1 still runs without any issues.
You can download Visicalc from http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm and it will still work. It is from 1981. It targetted MS-DOS 1.0 which was before subdirectories existed (the big feature of MS-DOS 2).
As I like to say, Microsoft puts the backwards into backwards compatibility.
Please name one example of Microsoft every being held accountable for their software failing to work as promised?
Read their EULA. About 10 years ago they changed the US one to say that they warrant the product will perform substantially in accordance with the accompanying documentation for a period of 90 days. You can get a refund if it doesn't.
This may sound lame, but it is a lot further than most products go. Most just say they have no warranty at all, and so if they turn out to just calculate grains of sand instead of what the box says, then tough.
Java on the other hand is Java. Unless you want to go the SWT route, if you are using Swing/Java2D, all the stuff is there.
Errm, that isn't true except for trivial applications. A standard Linux box will not have all
the many libraries used to run bigger Java applications. How do they print, how do they do databases,
what about Hibernate, servlet containers etc
A good example is a finance manager. Look at how many libraries it needs:
With a program like Azureus you may need log4j and commons. Again it is pretty random as
to whether a distro includes those and how up to date they are.
Python and Java aren't as simple as you imply. Non-trivial applications are going to require other libraries. They may need printing, gui, data exchange, remote communication, database etc. There are extra packages that can be installed to do all that for each environment, and in many cases those packages aren't provided with each distro, or they don't keep the versions up to date.
I package a GPLed Python application which requires 8 other Python libraries. Although users could run from source, they would have a really hard time installing each of those dependencies. Even a CPAN style solution has problems since the distro's packaging system then doesn't know about the modules installed.
The Gaim folks ended up making something for each distro. Note how they only need exactly one Windows download even though the same/equivalent libraries are used.
Ultimately the only thing that may work is doing as the Gaim folks do. Using VMWare and some scripting it isn't too difficult to pull off.
Now if only SourceForge would provide some automated way of uploading files without their arduous and annoying interface...
BTW OE does do server side drafts/sent and always has. You can see it in the IMAP tab of the account properties. That used to be my number one complaint about all the other clients out there. It has only been the last few years that the other clients have finally grokked that server side folders mean *everything* should be on the server.
OE does do flagging and it does it right (ie flags over IMAP).
OE is a bit on the connection happy side but sometimes that is a benefit. For example it may use one connection to download a large message and establish others as you view other folders and messages.
It's still better than Outlook Express, that's for sure.:-)
It is funny you mention that. I have been a hard core IMAP user since the mid 90s. mutt has been the best text mode client for IMAP I have found. On the GUI side Outlook Express is!
Every year or so I try all the other clients out there and keep coming back to OE. OE works perfectly for offline mode. It also doesn't suffer the belief that it is the only mail client you use. Most other mail clients treat IMAP as a source just like POP3 and do the best they can to copy mail into local folders after which it is treated just like it came from POP3. They don't fundamentally get that the mail is stored on the server and that the contents could be changed by any number of clients from any number of locations at any time. (The IMAP protocol has good support for dealing with that - the poorer clients aren't paying attention since they are just in gloried POP3 mode).
And perhaps the funniest thing is the clients with the fancy features (Outlook, Evolution, Mac Mail etc). The settings are stored on the local machine. If you lose the local machine, you lose the settings. If you use the same program on another machine, then it knows nothing about the other instance. If you want the same settings, you have to manually reenter them. And of course the client will reapply the rules/learning/whatever each time you it on the disparate machines! This all makes the features mostly useless. (A good solution would be for the programs to store the settings in an IMAP folder or to use the ACAP Protocol (rfc 2244) but none do.)
So ultimately the simplicity of Outlook Express and it treating IMAP server side storage sensibly keeps me coming back to it. I really wish someone would do a better IMAP client. It is about time for my annual check...
The irony is that Google pays below what other companies do! (Ask anyone who has been made an offer). The working conditions are what is so different, with many people willing to be paid lower in return for such good conditions.
The startups are offering worse working conditions and so they have to pay more to tempt people away.
My point is that it is worse than Windows! One package is binary compatible with Win9x/2K/XP. Additionally you don't have to supply the windowing system.
You can't use the system supplied copy of Xlibs. For example Fedora Core 2 has xlibs with a xinerama symbol missing which means you have to have to supply the xlibs as well or start supporting at least pre-FC2 and FC2 plus distros. Also don't forget that bundling all these libraries severely increases the size of your downloads.
LSB doesn't currently have a realistic option for C++ apps either. I can assure you that your solutions only work in the most trivial of cases. Go and have a look on SourceForge for desktop type apps (start with the most active ones). All the ones I looked at ended up with one (desktop) Windows package, multiple different Linux distro version packages and source. If there was some magic bullet that actually worked, I am sure all the developers of Linux desktop apps would love to hear about it!
That doesn't solve the problem - I was assuming the app was including its own libraries privately. It is immaterial if static linking or $LD_LIBRARY_PATH is used to get them.
Lets say for example you are the vendor and include a copy of libpng, and that your application allows users to supply PNG images that they could have got from other sources (eg the Internet). And then a security patch for libpng comes out. The user just updating their system libpng won't make them secure.
As the app vendor you also need to supply an update for the libpng you are including. Now work out how much work this is if you supported the top 7 versions of Linux distributions. That is 7 times you have to rebuild this library and make it available for download and installation in your program directory. Multiply by how many libraries you use (because you don't want to reinvent wheels) and this process gets real tedious real quick.
Three solutions happen:
- Only support a very small number (and maybe even only one) distribution and version
- Expect the distribution vendors to support their own
- Let the user compile it up against exactly what they have on their system
True, but they only have one Windows download (which works on Win9x/2K/XP). For Linux the problem is magnified if you supply binaries for a number of different versions of different distros.
While I agree with you, you should be aware that there is another reason behind not offering binaries. Quite simply every Linux distribution is at various different versions of the various packages they include, especially graphical and related libraries. The different versions have different compatibility, functionality issues and bugs.
In the olden days it was easy. In the US you compiled against some random version of Redhat and claimed to support only that, with similar approaches in Europe (Suse) etc.
You will see that enterprise software still takes this approach (that is exactly what the pay for Redhat versions are all about).
Look at the highest activity project on SourceForge:
Note there is one Windows download, and then seperate ones for every version of various Linux distros (and they didn't bother with Suse). I can assure you that the last thing developers want to do is compile, package up and test their software on such a wide variety of distributions and versions.
So the developer could include all the necessary libraries etc. Now a second problem arises. If there is a security fix to any of those libraries, then just running an update from your distribution vendor won't fix everything. The developer now also has to track all those libraries and their updates and provide an infrastructure for users to get the updates to the developer supplied libraries, and as a user you'll have to visit the update site of your distribution vendor *and* every app vendor.
Given those issues, the only realistic path out is to have the distribution vendor package up and maintain the apps. And when they choose not to, then users are left to compile it up with all the support libraries themselves.
I don't remember how much swap it had. About 5 years after we stopped using the machine, HP asked for the drives back (the machine was a loaner). They valued them at $17,000 each!
X could run in way less than 8MB. I once used an HP machine over a decade ago that was a news server, mail server, DNS server and ran X well. It had 4MB of ram and dual 330MB hard drives.
These fuckers also added me to their mailing list. No I didn't sign up for it, nor did I confirm in any way. And SpamAssassin didn't catch it until the bayesian stuff learnt to treat their crap with the respect it deserves.
Slashdot Mirror
The 2600n uses a proprietary protocol. The Windows drivers give very good output. The Mac drivers have worse colour rendering. The only Linux drivers are at http://foo2hp.rkkda.com/ and have poor colour rendering (as the page also states). Also read his comment about how much assistance HP provided. Somewhat uniquely the printer does ship with full cartridges and the printer is cheaper than the price of the 4 cartridges!
There is a new 2605 that has Postscript and PCL but is out of the OP's price range. My local Costco has had it recently.
The thing about Linux is that you don't have to do things the conventional way. There is absolutely no reason for you to provide platform support. For example you could partner with the various distros instead. They can provide the support (and packaging) for a cut. You could contract it out (the original LinuxCare model).
Or you could release the game for free but charge for the art and media like how you could get Doom with shareware and retail WAD files. Again others will do the porting and packaging work and hence the platform support.
I am not trying to bypass them. If Cedega works on my AMD64 running Gentoo and plays Rise of Nations then I am happy to pay for it. However they do not provide any way to evaluate the software other than giving them non-refundable money. And since the software is known to have issues (I'm not apportioning blame) it isn't unreasonable to want to verify it works sufficiently well. Ignoring email just seems like a silly way to run a business.
My big problem with Cedega is how they don't provide a evaluation version. I have no idea if Rise of Nations will run. (The game database lists someone last trying in 2004). The only way to try the software is to buy a subscription and nowhere does it say you get a refund if it doesn't work. Emailing info@transgaming.com doesn't elicit a reply.
I use Password Safe (Google it). I use two files - one is usernames and passwords and one is the stupid questions (and randomly generated answers). I avoid using the same question for two different sites. That effectively means I have two different usernames and passwords for each site.
If I lose both the files then I am screwed since I don't even know what the answers are!
It is if you know where to look. For users of Internet Explorer, the zone a file was downloaded from is put in an ADS. That is why you can later click on a file and be told it came from the Internet Zone and do you really want to continue. It is also why you can copy the file around and get still get the warning - Explorer, copy etc all copy the ADS.
The other use is for file summary information. For Office documents it is stored as part of the file itself (thanks to structured storage). For other file types it is stotred in an ADS. To do this, get properties on a file (eg right click) and go to the summary tab. This is why you can set those fields on a .txt file yet not have the contents of the file altered.
The ADS is an extremely useful place to put information. For example this is a way to implement file indexing. You can put user entered information (eg importance) as well as other meta data into the ADS and then the indexing tool picks that up. On Linux these are being called extended attributes (aka xattr). They aren't particular different than ADS and no doubt similar issues will arise.
A nice start would be allowing redistribution of MSVCP71.DLL and MSVCR71.DLL as part of GPL applications? Python 2.4 switched to a newer Microsoft compiler and requires these DLLs on machines. Microsoft provides free compilers - see http://wiki.python.org/moin/Building_Python_with_t he_free_MS_C_Toolkit However the C libraries that the compilers use can only be redistributed under terms that preclude GPL licensed software, although some debate the interpretation.
Consequently that means that people who have GPL licensed Python apps can't move to Python 2.4 or newer because of Microsoft's licensing.
After installing Office 2007 beta, I couldn't get it to activate. I did some tracing with Ethereal and found that an https connection was made to Microsoft servers and a blob of data sent. Microsoft servers don't respond and 60 seconds later the connection is closed. After installing WGA, the Office 2007 activation worked fine.
In case anyone is curious, these are the benefits Microsoft claims if you use WGA: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=39157
What is really funny is that if you click Validate Now on that page and you are using Firefox, it wants to install a plugin for Firefox. Yes, Microsoft has written a plugin for Firefox!
Incidentally the "fewest dropped calls" thing is a spin on poor coverage. After all a call can't be dropped if you can't make it in the first place! I think one of the biggest problems is how the carriers nickel and dime their customers. For example Verizon Wireless have been trying to prevent getting camera images over a cable and forcing you to do it over the air (for a price). Similarly they arbitrarily remove Bluetooth functionality to prevent users from doing things that VZW can't get paid for each time.
You can download Visicalc from http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm and it will still work. It is from 1981. It targetted MS-DOS 1.0 which was before subdirectories existed (the big feature of MS-DOS 2).
As I like to say, Microsoft puts the backwards into backwards compatibility.
Read their EULA. About 10 years ago they changed the US one to say that they warrant the product will perform substantially in accordance with the accompanying documentation for a period of 90 days. You can get a refund if it doesn't.
This may sound lame, but it is a lot further than most products go. Most just say they have no warranty at all, and so if they turn out to just calculate grains of sand instead of what the box says, then tough.
Errm, that isn't true except for trivial applications. A standard Linux box will not have all the many libraries used to run bigger Java applications. How do they print, how do they do databases, what about Hibernate, servlet containers etc
A good example is a finance manager. Look at how many libraries it needs:
With a program like Azureus you may need log4j and commons. Again it is pretty random as to whether a distro includes those and how up to date they are.
Python and Java aren't as simple as you imply. Non-trivial applications are going to require other libraries. They may need printing, gui, data exchange, remote communication, database etc. There are extra packages that can be installed to do all that for each environment, and in many cases those packages aren't provided with each distro, or they don't keep the versions up to date.
I package a GPLed Python application which requires 8 other Python libraries. Although users could run from source, they would have a really hard time installing each of those dependencies. Even a CPAN style solution has problems since the distro's packaging system then doesn't know about the modules installed.
The Gaim folks ended up making something for each distro. Note how they only need exactly one Windows download even though the same/equivalent libraries are used.
Ultimately the only thing that may work is doing as the Gaim folks do. Using VMWare and some scripting it isn't too difficult to pull off.
Now if only SourceForge would provide some automated way of uploading files without their arduous and annoying interface...
BTW OE does do server side drafts/sent and always has. You can see it in the IMAP tab of the account properties. That used to be my number one complaint about all the other clients out there. It has only been the last few years that the other clients have finally grokked that server side folders mean *everything* should be on the server.
OE does do flagging and it does it right (ie flags over IMAP).
OE is a bit on the connection happy side but sometimes that is a benefit. For example it may use one connection to download a large message and establish others as you view other folders and messages.
It is funny you mention that. I have been a hard core IMAP user since the mid 90s. mutt has been the best text mode client for IMAP I have found. On the GUI side Outlook Express is!
Every year or so I try all the other clients out there and keep coming back to OE. OE works perfectly for offline mode. It also doesn't suffer the belief that it is the only mail client you use. Most other mail clients treat IMAP as a source just like POP3 and do the best they can to copy mail into local folders after which it is treated just like it came from POP3. They don't fundamentally get that the mail is stored on the server and that the contents could be changed by any number of clients from any number of locations at any time. (The IMAP protocol has good support for dealing with that - the poorer clients aren't paying attention since they are just in gloried POP3 mode).
And perhaps the funniest thing is the clients with the fancy features (Outlook, Evolution, Mac Mail etc). The settings are stored on the local machine. If you lose the local machine, you lose the settings. If you use the same program on another machine, then it knows nothing about the other instance. If you want the same settings, you have to manually reenter them. And of course the client will reapply the rules/learning/whatever each time you it on the disparate machines! This all makes the features mostly useless. (A good solution would be for the programs to store the settings in an IMAP folder or to use the ACAP Protocol (rfc 2244) but none do.)
So ultimately the simplicity of Outlook Express and it treating IMAP server side storage sensibly keeps me coming back to it. I really wish someone would do a better IMAP client. It is about time for my annual check
The irony is that Google pays below what other companies do! (Ask anyone who has been made an offer). The working conditions are what is so different, with many people willing to be paid lower in return for such good conditions.
The startups are offering worse working conditions and so they have to pay more to tempt people away.
My point is that it is worse than Windows! One package is binary compatible with Win9x/2K/XP. Additionally you don't have to supply the windowing system.
You can't use the system supplied copy of Xlibs. For example Fedora Core 2 has xlibs with a xinerama symbol missing which means you have to have to supply the xlibs as well or start supporting at least pre-FC2 and FC2 plus distros. Also don't forget that bundling all these libraries severely increases the size of your downloads.
LSB doesn't currently have a realistic option for C++ apps either. I can assure you that your solutions only work in the most trivial of cases. Go and have a look on SourceForge for desktop type apps (start with the most active ones). All the ones I looked at ended up with one (desktop) Windows package, multiple different Linux distro version packages and source. If there was some magic bullet that actually worked, I am sure all the developers of Linux desktop apps would love to hear about it!
That doesn't solve the problem - I was assuming the app was including its own libraries privately. It is immaterial if static linking or $LD_LIBRARY_PATH is used to get them.
Lets say for example you are the vendor and include a copy of libpng, and that your application allows users to supply PNG images that they could have got from other sources (eg the Internet). And then a security patch for libpng comes out. The user just updating their system libpng won't make them secure.
As the app vendor you also need to supply an update for the libpng you are including. Now work out how much work this is if you supported the top 7 versions of Linux distributions. That is 7 times you have to rebuild this library and make it available for download and installation in your program directory. Multiply by how many libraries you use (because you don't want to reinvent wheels) and this process gets real tedious real quick.
Three solutions happen:
- Only support a very small number (and maybe even only one) distribution and version
- Expect the distribution vendors to support their own
- Let the user compile it up against exactly what they have on their system
True, but they only have one Windows download (which works on Win9x/2K/XP). For Linux the problem is magnified if you supply binaries for a number of different versions of different distros.
My high school math teacher had worked on Concorde. He mentioned how they also had a roomful of women "computers" to do various calculations for them.
While I agree with you, you should be aware that there is another reason behind not offering binaries. Quite simply every Linux distribution is at various different versions of the various packages they include, especially graphical and related libraries. The different versions have different compatibility, functionality issues and bugs.
In the olden days it was easy. In the US you compiled against some random version of Redhat and claimed to support only that, with similar approaches in Europe (Suse) etc.
You will see that enterprise software still takes this approach (that is exactly what the pay for Redhat versions are all about).
Look at the highest activity project on SourceForge:
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/downloads.php
Note there is one Windows download, and then seperate ones for every version of various Linux distros (and they didn't bother with Suse). I can assure you that the last thing developers want to do is compile, package up and test their software on such a wide variety of distributions and versions.
So the developer could include all the necessary libraries etc. Now a second problem arises. If there is a security fix to any of those libraries, then just running an update from your distribution vendor won't fix everything. The developer now also has to track all those libraries and their updates and provide an infrastructure for users to get the updates to the developer supplied libraries, and as a user you'll have to visit the update site of your distribution vendor *and* every app vendor.
Given those issues, the only realistic path out is to have the distribution vendor package up and maintain the apps. And when they choose not to, then users are left to compile it up with all the support libraries themselves.
I don't remember how much swap it had. About 5 years after we stopped using the machine, HP asked for the drives back (the machine was a loaner). They valued them at $17,000 each!
X could run in way less than 8MB. I once used an HP machine over a decade ago that was a news server, mail server, DNS server and ran X well. It had 4MB of ram and dual 330MB hard drives.
These fuckers also added me to their mailing list. No I didn't sign up for it, nor did I confirm in any way. And SpamAssassin didn't catch it until the bayesian stuff learnt to treat their crap with the respect it deserves.
How about someone offered a job doing ACPI and BIOS stuff?
. html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pavelmachek/7323