Will Mac OS X ever be released for i386? I heard rumors that Apple had some sort of agreement with MS that it wouldn't invade i386 territory. Is there any truth to this? I can see Apple wanting to keep Mac OS X as an incentive to buy Mac hardware. But I think offering OS X for i386 will help OS X approach ubiquity and can only help the sale of Mac hardware indirectly.
So what's the bottom line? Anyone know the inside scoop?
This was one of the most creative, hilarious, and simply _fun_ movies I have seen in a long time (perhaps ever). Taco wasn't lying when he said the jokes were packed tightly together. Your brain is busy processing what just happened before they slam another gag on you. (Like what happened when the princess was singing to the bird, and what they ate for breakfast.)
Taco was a little tougher on the animation than I was. The human CG wasn't perfect, but it was excellently done, and the lively performances from Meyers and Murphy quickly made me forget that it was all fake. That and the scenery, environment (foot steps pressing into the grass is a good example), and amazing lighting made the movie visually compelling.
I'd recommend this movie to anyone. I laughed more than I can ever remember laughing in the last 10 years. If you want to have fun, see it!
I genuinely consider this tragic, but I think the question needs to be asked:
Why is it that when a 13-year-old kid cracks your network he's called a script kiddie, but when he cracks someone else's and commits suicide, he's called gifted? I think if he was as smart as the article made him sound, he would not have committed suicide.
That he holds a black belt in TaekwonDo and would still take his own life is a little surprising to me, as well. I'm a TKD practitioner, and our tenets are courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, and indomitable spirit. Someone with a black belt is expected not just to memorize these tenets, but follow them as a way of life. Committing suicide flies in the face of all these tenets.
Surely an intelligent 13-year-old would have realized he wouldn't be jailed for his offenses, too.
I suppose these questions are all moot. The situation is as disturbing as it is curious. I get the feeling, though, that maybe something was left out in the article. Things just don't seem to add up.
Our (6-way) router has been experiencing stability problems for some time now. I upgraded to 2.4.2-pre4 after one of the ChangeLog entries caught my eye, and the stability problem went away. (I believe the problem was in the 3com drivers.) Finally I've found a stable kernel for our router. No more down time!:)
I had the exact same problem when I went to upgrade screen. Apparently the problem was that I had a duplicate install of Mesa (two different versions, I must have used --force). It probably picked a duplicate to uninstall, and wanted to take every dependency out with it. This happened to be KDE. This also happened with gkrellm -- multiple versions of the same package installed. I removed the duplicate packages manually, and everything worked fine after that.
This is my fault, of course, for using --force and --nodeps which naturally can risk messing up your dependency database. I suspect a machine that uses strictly packages, properly installed (perhaps using Red Carpet from the start) will work great.
One person who replied to you suggested that this was a big anti-KDE conspiracy from Ximian. Please, grow up, people (Macka).
But under the laws of Canada, which already disallows virtual "child" porn, it is illegal to depict someone under the age of 18 (or appears so) engaging in an act which is perfectly legal for a real person of that age to do.
As a Canadian, I find this particular law nothing short of embarrassing. I can run out and legally have sex with my 14-year-old neighbour, but when I come home and write the events in my journal, or create a short story, I can be charged with creating child pornography. Heaven forbid if I post that story on the net! Then I get charged with distribution, too.
These laws ought to be consistent. The fact that they're so out to lunch doesn't give me a lot of faith about my political system (not that I ever had much faith to begin with).
and if we have forgotten.. or refused.. 3yrs in the slammer..
This is particularly disturbing. 3 years in jail for refusing to give out a PGP, say? Would anything like this work in the US given 5th Ammendment rights? (I'm Canadian, but sadly my knowledge of law is quite Americanized.)
A jail term even applies if you forget the password? So if someone who is being investigated sends me a PGP encrypted email, and I happen to have lost my private key I can be jailed?!?
If Canada ever did that, I wouldn't think twice about moving to a different country. Maybe we ought to start focusing more on encryption with plausible deniability (like steganography) to avoid this obvious violation of privacy.
Eazel has setup usability labs for Nautilus, and have discovered some very interesting things. Their experiences have been that indeed usability studies are very necessary. These are people with years or decades of experience with designing interfaces at Apple, and they were _still_ caught off guard with how users responded to Nautilus.
It just goes to show you that no matter how much experience you have, you simply can't predict or estimate usability. You need usability labs. Eazel has set the stage in free software for this, and I think you'll see companies like HelixCode and RedHat follow suite.
I do development across the board from web projects to administration tools, and it all will be or already is available under the GPL. Many of my other projects are worked on during business hours because my job is flexible enough to allow me to do that. At the same time, much of my spare time is spent developing work-related software. It all balances out.
We use Linux and other GPL (and otherwise Free) software here at work, and I feel I and the organization I work for owes it to Free software to give back. I haven't formally asked permission to do this, however I'm reasonably sure my boss wouldn't have any objections.
However, should my employer one day demand I stop releasing my work (technically owned by them) as Free software, I wouldn't argue with them. Instead I would immediately quit in protest, and they'd be much worse off (read screwed).
I work in computing services in a small university, and I must say, sometimes I sure am glad I'm in a position of influence over stuff like this. There's no way in hell this sort of thing would happen so long as I work here.
Quite obviously you read the "this is a satire" line _after_ you posted your original comment. Your recovery was less than graceful, but at least you tried.:)
I've used Linux and Netscape every day for the past 3 years, on 3 different systems (2 at home, one at work) with wildly different configurations, and never once -- not once! -- has it ever rendered my system inoperable. Sure it crashes, and sometimes it crashes X, and sometimes (rarely, fortunately) it even renders my console useless, but the kernel is always alive and well and I can always telnet in and handle things gracefully.
If this happens to you regularly, something could be wrong with your hardware.
Furthermore, it's easy to see why. Linux on Intel is easy to install and find support on the Internet for. But I've done a few Linux on Alpha installs, and let me tell you that once you leave the warmth and light of the x86 world you are on your own.
Installing RedHat on my AlphaServer was admittedly a real pain in the ass, but installing RedHat 6.2 on my SparcStation was bone simple. Don't compare these two platforms. I'm not about to speculate as to the userbase of these two platforms, but I'm willing to bet the sparc userbase isn't "few to none."
The environment I work in seems to be quite effective. Our boss, part of management, doesn't deal too much with technical things at all. He goes to the meetings, explains in high level terms what's going on in computing services to the rest of management, makes sure we have a big budget, signs our purchase orders, and every month or two we meet and discuss our plan for the next few months. He also handles prioritizing certain tasks. This way, when someone has a problem with his level on the work queue, he talks to our manager.
Managers should manage people on a high level, not micromanage them. If you need your boss to tell you what to do (unless you're a student or trainee or something), then your team doesn't sound structured properly. If something breaks, I fix it. I don't ask my boss for permission, or ask him how to do it. The only time he needs to intervene is when we need PO's signed, when people have complaints with our department, or when we need help prioritizing tasks.
This way, he does his management things -- like going to meetings and conversing in management-speak -- while we get the real work done.
I wonder if this move from Xi will bring the KDE and GNOME developers closer together. After all, if my enemy is your enemy, aren't we friends?
I'm not going to lose any sleep over the possibility of CDE taking over the Linux desktop. That simply won't happen. But there might be some good that comes out of this, and it's not CDE.
Basing a programming language, which must be unambiguous, on the characteristics of an evolved natural language, which is always ambiguous, is just asking for trouble.
Don't get me wrong: perl gives me warm fuzzies like the next guy. But comparing Perl to natural languages as an argument in its favor is not the way to go.
Why does the X consortium produce software that nobody uses? I really don't understand the concept of actually coding a sample implementation that nobody uses.
The purpose of this release is a reference implementation of the new specification. It has no support for the myriad of video cards and so is rather useless for most desktops. But this isn't the point. They're not going to spend their time tweaking video drivers when the real purpose of a reference implementation is a proof-of-concept of the specification.
Releasing a specification without a reference implementation is just a bad idea. I'm willing to bet they revised the specification many times in the process of coding the reference implementation because they found parts of the spec that just didn't make sense or were just plain broken in practice.
Herein lies the whole point of a "sample implementation that nobody uses." It proves the specification is sound in practice. (Or at least, much more likely to be sound.) And incidentally, OMG won't adopt any spec unless it's been implementated at least once for this very reason. This is not wasted effort. It is sound software engineering.
to say nothing of making the crucial leap that a lot of sound sort of "cancels out" in our head and may therefore be ommitted - that doesn't even strike me as in the same field as computer science.
I think you're describing a Fourier anaylsis, which wasn't actually discovered by Fraunhoffer, but rather used by them.
You're joking, right? I mean, it's good that the people who can't afford insurance can still get healthcare, but since EVERYONE gets it free, it's way over abused.
Here, take my sarcasm detector. I don't need it anymore, but I guess you do. (Yes, I was joking. I thought it was horribly apparent. Then again, I'm feeling rather cynical today, so perhaps not.)
People go to the hospital for hangnails. They don't care. As soon as anything -- the tiniest little thing -- comes up, off to the emergency room. "I twisted my ankle."
You're right, our health care system encourages hypochondriacs. Some people have suggested usage fees ($5-$20 fees per visit which is refunded if your case is legitimate), but in the end nothing has been resolved, at least in Ontario. So, people still go to the hospital for hangnails and watery eyes, and the rest of us pay for it.
I'm sure there are ups and downs, but I can't say I'm overly happy with our healthcare system compared to health insurance in the U.S. I had a very close friend die due to the incompetence of our doctors. (She went to the hospital at least every other day for 5 months complaining of pains, each time informing the doctors of her past history of cancer. They never checked, and several weeks later she died because the cancer had overtaken her body.)
People tell me not to move to the U.S. and site health care as the main reason to stay in Canada. That's not the best argument, IMO.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Will Mac OS X ever be released for i386? I heard rumors that Apple had some sort of agreement with MS that it wouldn't invade i386 territory. Is there any truth to this? I can see Apple wanting to keep Mac OS X as an incentive to buy Mac hardware. But I think offering OS X for i386 will help OS X approach ubiquity and can only help the sale of Mac hardware indirectly.
So what's the bottom line? Anyone know the inside scoop?
Jason.
Taco was a little tougher on the animation than I was. The human CG wasn't perfect, but it was excellently done, and the lively performances from Meyers and Murphy quickly made me forget that it was all fake. That and the scenery, environment (foot steps pressing into the grass is a good example), and amazing lighting made the movie visually compelling.
I'd recommend this movie to anyone. I laughed more than I can ever remember laughing in the last 10 years. If you want to have fun, see it!
Jason
I genuinely consider this tragic, but I think the question needs to be asked:
Why is it that when a 13-year-old kid cracks your network he's called a script kiddie, but when he cracks someone else's and commits suicide, he's called gifted? I think if he was as smart as the article made him sound, he would not have committed suicide.
That he holds a black belt in TaekwonDo and would still take his own life is a little surprising to me, as well. I'm a TKD practitioner, and our tenets are courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, and indomitable spirit. Someone with a black belt is expected not just to memorize these tenets, but follow them as a way of life. Committing suicide flies in the face of all these tenets.
Surely an intelligent 13-year-old would have realized he wouldn't be jailed for his offenses, too.
I suppose these questions are all moot. The situation is as disturbing as it is curious. I get the feeling, though, that maybe something was left out in the article. Things just don't seem to add up.
Jason.
Go ahead and erase gnome-libs. The GIMP does not rely on them.
Our (6-way) router has been experiencing stability problems for some time now. I upgraded to 2.4.2-pre4 after one of the ChangeLog entries caught my eye, and the stability problem went away. (I believe the problem was in the 3com drivers.) Finally I've found a stable kernel for our router. No more down time! :)
Jason.
I emailed him about that hours after he released the patch. No reply yet. :)
Jason.
I had the exact same problem when I went to upgrade screen. Apparently the problem was that I had a duplicate install of Mesa (two different versions, I must have used --force). It probably picked a duplicate to uninstall, and wanted to take every dependency out with it. This happened to be KDE. This also happened with gkrellm -- multiple versions of the same package installed. I removed the duplicate packages manually, and everything worked fine after that.
This is my fault, of course, for using --force and --nodeps which naturally can risk messing up your dependency database. I suspect a machine that uses strictly packages, properly installed (perhaps using Red Carpet from the start) will work great.
One person who replied to you suggested that this was a big anti-KDE conspiracy from Ximian. Please, grow up, people (Macka).
Jason.
As a Canadian, I find this particular law nothing short of embarrassing. I can run out and legally have sex with my 14-year-old neighbour, but when I come home and write the events in my journal, or create a short story, I can be charged with creating child pornography. Heaven forbid if I post that story on the net! Then I get charged with distribution, too.
These laws ought to be consistent. The fact that they're so out to lunch doesn't give me a lot of faith about my political system (not that I ever had much faith to begin with).
Jason.
This is particularly disturbing. 3 years in jail for refusing to give out a PGP, say? Would anything like this work in the US given 5th Ammendment rights? (I'm Canadian, but sadly my knowledge of law is quite Americanized.)
A jail term even applies if you forget the password? So if someone who is being investigated sends me a PGP encrypted email, and I happen to have lost my private key I can be jailed?!?
If Canada ever did that, I wouldn't think twice about moving to a different country. Maybe we ought to start focusing more on encryption with plausible deniability (like steganography) to avoid this obvious violation of privacy.
Jason.
It just goes to show you that no matter how much experience you have, you simply can't predict or estimate usability. You need usability labs. Eazel has set the stage in free software for this, and I think you'll see companies like HelixCode and RedHat follow suite.
Jason.
I do development across the board from web projects to administration tools, and it all will be or already is available under the GPL. Many of my other projects are worked on during business hours because my job is flexible enough to allow me to do that. At the same time, much of my spare time is spent developing work-related software. It all balances out.
We use Linux and other GPL (and otherwise Free) software here at work, and I feel I and the organization I work for owes it to Free software to give back. I haven't formally asked permission to do this, however I'm reasonably sure my boss wouldn't have any objections.
However, should my employer one day demand I stop releasing my work (technically owned by them) as Free software, I wouldn't argue with them. Instead I would immediately quit in protest, and they'd be much worse off (read screwed).
Jason.
I work in computing services in a small university, and I must say, sometimes I sure am glad I'm in a position of influence over stuff like this. There's no way in hell this sort of thing would happen so long as I work here.
Jason.
Quite obviously you read the "this is a satire" line _after_ you posted your original comment. Your recovery was less than graceful, but at least you tried. :)
Jason.
I've used Linux and Netscape every day for the past 3 years, on 3 different systems (2 at home, one at work) with wildly different configurations, and never once -- not once! -- has it ever rendered my system inoperable. Sure it crashes, and sometimes it crashes X, and sometimes (rarely, fortunately) it even renders my console useless, but the kernel is always alive and well and I can always telnet in and handle things gracefully.
If this happens to you regularly, something could be wrong with your hardware.
Jason.
In the interest of being pedantic, I should point out that it was Linus who said that; ESR just paraphrased him.
Jason.
Furthermore, it's easy to see why. Linux on Intel is easy to install and find support on the Internet for. But I've done a few Linux on Alpha installs, and let me tell you that once you leave the warmth and light of the x86 world you are on your own.
Installing RedHat on my AlphaServer was admittedly a real pain in the ass, but installing RedHat 6.2 on my SparcStation was bone simple. Don't compare these two platforms. I'm not about to speculate as to the userbase of these two platforms, but I'm willing to bet the sparc userbase isn't "few to none."
Jason.
Managers should manage people on a high level, not micromanage them. If you need your boss to tell you what to do (unless you're a student or trainee or something), then your team doesn't sound structured properly. If something breaks, I fix it. I don't ask my boss for permission, or ask him how to do it. The only time he needs to intervene is when we need PO's signed, when people have complaints with our department, or when we need help prioritizing tasks.
This way, he does his management things -- like going to meetings and conversing in management-speak -- while we get the real work done.
Jason.
I wonder if this move from Xi will bring the KDE and GNOME developers closer together. After all, if my enemy is your enemy, aren't we friends?
I'm not going to lose any sleep over the possibility of CDE taking over the Linux desktop. That simply won't happen. But there might be some good that comes out of this, and it's not CDE.
Basing a programming language, which must be unambiguous, on the characteristics of an evolved natural language, which is always ambiguous, is just asking for trouble.
Don't get me wrong: perl gives me warm fuzzies like the next guy. But comparing Perl to natural languages as an argument in its favor is not the way to go.
Regards,
Jason.
Wow, this browser is awesome. It's like a text-based copy of Navigator. Cool!
Why does the X consortium produce software that nobody uses? I really don't understand the concept of actually coding a sample implementation that nobody uses.
The purpose of this release is a reference implementation of the new specification. It has no support for the myriad of video cards and so is rather useless for most desktops. But this isn't the point. They're not going to spend their time tweaking video drivers when the real purpose of a reference implementation is a proof-of-concept of the specification.
Releasing a specification without a reference implementation is just a bad idea. I'm willing to bet they revised the specification many times in the process of coding the reference implementation because they found parts of the spec that just didn't make sense or were just plain broken in practice.
Herein lies the whole point of a "sample implementation that nobody uses." It proves the specification is sound in practice. (Or at least, much more likely to be sound.) And incidentally, OMG won't adopt any spec unless it's been implementated at least once for this very reason. This is not wasted effort. It is sound software engineering.
Cheers,
Jason.
IMHO the attacks against GNOME were pretty out of line too, to say the least..
What attacks on GNOME?
Jason.
to say nothing of making the crucial leap that a lot of sound sort of "cancels out" in our head and may therefore be ommitted - that doesn't even strike me as in the same field as computer science.
I think you're describing a Fourier anaylsis, which wasn't actually discovered by Fraunhoffer, but rather used by them.
You're joking, right? I mean, it's good that the people who can't afford insurance can still get healthcare, but since EVERYONE gets it free, it's way over abused.
Here, take my sarcasm detector. I don't need it anymore, but I guess you do. (Yes, I was joking. I thought it was horribly apparent. Then again, I'm feeling rather cynical today, so perhaps not.)
People go to the hospital for hangnails. They don't care. As soon as anything -- the tiniest little thing -- comes up, off to the emergency room. "I twisted my ankle."
You're right, our health care system encourages hypochondriacs. Some people have suggested usage fees ($5-$20 fees per visit which is refunded if your case is legitimate), but in the end nothing has been resolved, at least in Ontario. So, people still go to the hospital for hangnails and watery eyes, and the rest of us pay for it.
I'm sure there are ups and downs, but I can't say I'm overly happy with our healthcare system compared to health insurance in the U.S. I had a very close friend die due to the incompetence of our doctors. (She went to the hospital at least every other day for 5 months complaining of pains, each time informing the doctors of her past history of cancer. They never checked, and several weeks later she died because the cancer had overtaken her body.)
People tell me not to move to the U.S. and site health care as the main reason to stay in Canada. That's not the best argument, IMO. :)
Cheers,
Jason (Ontario, Canada).
I'm sure Microsoft employees want to pay 60% income tax.
Ahh yes, but with that you get access to our wonderful Healthcare system!
60% seems like a lot, but really, once you get used to the feeling of the government ass raping you, it's not all that bad.
Jason (from Ontario)