Do *not* sniff passwords or publish them, unless you want to face some nasty consequences. What you should to is draw up a list of the tools required to sniff the passwords and give them a recipe as to how someone could crack their security.
From what you've said there... You should say something along the lines of "A person could sit in the school parking lot with a laptop and a wireless networking card, and run the program 'Ethereal' to watch the network traffic. This person could literally watch the login IDs and passwords, and use that information to get your SSN and other vital and private information."
Pass that along to IT, your school administrators... if that doesn't get them hopping try passing the story on to your local community newspaper. That would be much safer than risking the legal reprecussions of cracking passwords yourself.
It's not just London, I found the same results on a flight to Tokyo. Seattle->Vancouver->Tokyo was several hundred dollars cheaper than simply Vancouver->Tokyo, even though the flight numbers and departure times made it obvious this was the exact same airplane. The one problem was that I couldn't get a straight answer from anyone if I could get on in Vancouver if I was supposed to start in Seattle. I ended up going with a different airline (Cathay Pacific) which was cheaper than Air Canada from Vancouver but more expensive than Air Canada from Seattle, just to minimize the risk of problems.
I'd be interested in knowing if anyone has actually done this, and if they'd had problems getting on in Vancouver and more importantly deplaning in Vancouver on the return journey. I imagine the return trip would be more complicated since they would be expecting you to clear US customs? Not sure though, it would be interesting to hear from someone with actual experience.
Funny you should say that... I recently switched my primary desktop from Debian unstable to Fedora because it strikes the right balance (for me) between having up to date applications and a solid desktop system. Mandrake is too KDE oriented, Sid breaks important stuff too often, Woody is too outdated, SuSe doesn't have good application support unless you buy their CD, and I don't have the patience to compile everything for Gentoo nor the inclination to manage a Slackware installation.
These are all fine distributions, don't get me wrong... my point is not that they suck and that Fedora rules, my point is that Fedora strikes a new balance to the mix that some users like me will prefer. If it's not right for everyone that's actually very good -- it can only benefit the Linux community to promote diversity in distributions so hardware and software vendors can't only support binaries for a single platform.
If you think about it, the fact that they are going to force everyone outside of North America, including the absolutely nonthreatening Japanese, it just means that it's a matter of time for us. Since Canadians and Mexicans make up the lions share of visitors to the USA, the requirements of the project go up an order of magnitude if you include Canada and Mexico.
As despicable as I personally find this scheme, it seems to be that they are rolling it out in a very reasonable way in order to scale the procedures and find bottlenecks before the excessive quantity of data comes in.
To rephrase: if they are going to deter the Japanese from visiting the US despite the impact that should have on the travel economy, they are fucking serious about tracking every person that comes into the US. Canadaians and Mexicans just get a delay, that's all...
and Good Luck if you have a table at the top of a page and want to insert lines above it.
I agree there is no "good way" to deal with it, but it's possible. The way I do it is to turn on the "direct cursor" (look for the cursor icon on the left of the page) and click the far left corner of the table. Hit enter, and the table moves down a line. Like I said, I admit that it's a bit clunky and something the OOo people should work on, but it _is_ possible to deal with if you use OOo as your primary office suite.
Isn't it about time we ditched x86 for something better? AMD As far as I know, AMD uses x86 and x86-64, which to me qualifies as a valid interpretation of "shouldn't this have been ditched already?".
Isn't it about time we ditched BASIC for something better? Uhm... it's for beginners. We can't ditch the biginners... No, but you can teach them to use Python.
Isn't it about time we ditched 20-year-old TV sets for something better? New TVs, available at your local stores. I think you mean HDTV? Because that makes sense, while your reply didn't in that context.
Isn't it about time we ditched Dubya for something better? John Kerry We can only hope...
Eh, why stop there? We need to take a pre-emptive measure and kill anyone who we can prove has a knife on them* and looks at an iPod owner in a manner that can be interpreted as threatening.
Note: * completely fabricated evidence should still count as proof, if we really don't like them.
aw snookums... I didn't meant for you to get your panties in a bunch! Perhaps you can understand the contradiction between "They're not MY priorities." and "I want the Mac to succeed as much as possible.", but perhaps I'm giving you too much credit. No matter.
"It would be reasonable, but it wouldn't get a fucking thing done. The squeeky wheel gets the grease."
Clearly you have never managed or worked on an OSS project, because you are dead wrong. A chorus of users requesting a feature will get attention from the developers, an annoying asshole making persistant demands of our time to satisfy his needs will be ignored. When you are dealing with companies you can bitch and moan and people will listen because they are paid to. I know few people that are willing to volunteer their time to be bitched at by asshole strangers and in my experience I find they don't respond well to people like you.
"And let me suggest to YOU, Mr. Indignant, that if your're this damn easily offended, you find someplace other than Slashdot to hang out."
OT: How in the bloody fuck did you know that my real name is Mr. Indignant?!?! You CIA/FBI/NSA or what?? In any case I wasn't offended, I was just pointing out that you are an asshole... something we both seem to agree on. Please feel free to continue being an asshole, it doesn't bother me at all. Also, have a nice day.
The problem is not that he has an opinion -- we all have opinions. The problem is that the orginal poster was an ass and suggested that other people spend time on his priorities. Since he isn't a customer he has no basis to make those demands. It is reasonable to say "it would be nice and useful to have an OSX version" but stupid and childlike to say "you suck because you don't spend your time on what I want." I'm sure the OOo developers had a very good reason to finish up the 1.1.1 release instead of devoting all of their resources to the far-distant 2.0 release, so unless you are willing to contribute with your own sweat and time, at the very least keep your suggestions polite.
Your demands are not realistic, you could not reasonably expect HP to support any linux distribution someone could throw one one of their machines. There is so much variety in the linux world that a technical support team would be hard pressed to help the disparate needs of their customers, I would be surprised if they would even support version of SuSE or RedHat that was customized in a significant way (for example a custom kernel or non-stock filesystem type or desktop environment). Tech support just doesn't work that way, and you can't reasonably expect them to be able to help people that deviate too far from the stock system they understand.
What you _can_ reasonably suspect is that they will officially support a select few distributions that have special relationships with the company, to ship drivers that work with those distribtions, and finally *release specs* to their hardware and the source to their distro-specific drivers. That way, other distributions have all the information they need to get their systems to work with HP's hardware if they desire it. That is far more reasonable that what you propose.
My point was, and remains to be, something that seems to be eluding you. The nature of the medium of broadcast television leads to simple shows that don't require much backstory or effort in order to understand what is going on. You call this the effect of the lowest common denominator, but in fact you are incorrect. DVD sales show that people actually want to watch the good shows that didn't perform on television, which nullifies your whinge about reality shows.
The internet is an altogther different medium and the same rules will not apply to it. If (when) the internet is used as a distribution vehicle for mass-media filmed entertainment the viewer may be able to watch shows in proper context, allowing for more complex plotlines to be constructed. This does not mean that Joe Millionairre of the Internet won't exist, something like that will exist, or more likely an even more stupid version of it. But it will also lead to a venue to provide even more intelligent programming than we can get today -- and quite likely someone will provide it.
I hope you are no longer confused. I'm here to help if you still have more problems or questions.
It was "too hard" for Joe Denomenator to follow multi-show stories.
Guess what, Buck-o... if you aren't a dedicated watcher of the show, multi-show stories are impossible to watch. If I had a choice between watching a single mid-season episode of Andromeda or a stupid reality show, at least the stupid reality show would be watchable as it's own entity.
The problem is with the medium of broadcast television, not with the viewers. It's near impossible to have a popular show with long storyline arcs because most people have lives that interfere with watching every single episode in the correct order week after week.
The rescue is here, however, because DVD sales for those types of shows have been very successful. I bet the DVD sales for an unpopular television show like Babylon 5 would outpace a DVD release of Joe Millionaire.
Today, shows like 24 and the Sopranos release the DVD editions pretty soon after the season has gone off the air, making the shows more financially successful and encouraging more of them to be made. It's a compromise that means that the shows you like can be more complicated and survive enough for financial success. I suggest you stop whining about what other people watch on TV and just be thankful that the next Babylon 5 will be able to get long story arcs thanks to DVD sales.
What you say is of course correct, however it is important to add that your app should also rebuild those INI files (in the proper places) to their defaults in case a user does directly copy the application folders. However that assumes you care about application portability...
If Joe User has anything like my experience I'd suggest it will affect him quite a bit. I've not yet got 2.6 to recognize my PS/2 mouse without a kernel patch to restore the old-style/dev/psaux functionality after trying with debian, fedora, knoppix 3.4, and kernel.org kernels. Hopefully these issues have been fixed for Mandrake's release, because it's preventing me and others from adopting 2.6.
You use lots of legalese and it sounds like you're hiding behind it. You use plain English and you sound unprofessional.
What are lawyers supposed to sound like?
Uh, lawyers are supposed to use legalese... that's the point of the bloody legalese. There is no "hiding behind it", lawyers can write things correctly or incorrectly. The quote that people are poking fun of here was written sloppily and it indicates a general lack of seriousness on the part of Infinium Labs and some people find it funny.
You're just another one of those slashdot OSS zealots, aren't you? I bet you can't name three examples of technologies that they used in this manner. What's that, you say you can? Well I'm sure this time they will be nice and fair, despite their past history and obvious motivation. Stop trolling.... la la la I can't hear you la la la!
Even better is the quote at the bottom of your linked page: "Windowcat Designs, Inc.: Do you need help starting a new website, or someone to host your existing site? Check out www.windowcat.com for full-service web site development services and affordable hosting options by familiar folks."
Yes, after seeing an example of their mad HTML skillz I'm dying to pay them to design sites for me. Hell, I know people who design better looking sites than that who are literally colourblind. And I'm not going to touch on "NETSCAPE USERS: This site is best viewed using an IE 6.0+ browser. Click here to get one free". Fucking twits.
The problem you are complaining about is a problem with Xandros's distribution, not linux. If gnome doesn't run properly in Xandros that just means that they haven't bothered to properly package it. Many distributions have the ability to install GNOME and KDE on the same installation, and applications written for one DE have always run just fine in the other one in every distributions I have tested.
For a simple Windows user, what are these "packages" and why do they need to be managed?
With many windows programs, the source is closed and the developer creates a binary package and controls how the program will be distributed. But with free software, many people take those source files and distribute them in whatever way works best for them -- a package is simply a way to put programs in a file for distributing to others.
If you'd like you can think of of package as an installation program -- with modern end-user distributions the distinction is minor. A package is RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSE all have programs that will automatically install a.RPM package with a GUI front end, not unlike what you would find in a.MSI file in windows -- even more simple, to be honest.
But it gets more complicated than that, because of the increased complexity of the *NIX world. Certain programs depend on external libraries (think of it like a.dll file) to run properly, so the package knows which libraries are required for it to install. Debian, Gentoo, and FreeBSD have great systems for automatically installing those dependancies when the user requests a package, and the.RPM-based linux distibutions are getting better at this too.
It seems just eliminating the whole concept of packages would make life so much easier. Installation programs (like MSI files) are simpler, aren't they?
Some applications, like the Sun Java JRE, OpenOffice, and the binary NVIDIA drivers (I'm sure there are many others) have their own installation programs. It's ugly and messy and doesn't work that well compared with how each distribution handles packages natively.
To put it more practical terms, if I download OpenOffice from openoffice.org and run their installer I see a custom installation program that they have developed. I have to answer a lot of questions about how my Linux distribution is set up and do this all in an unfamiliar environment. However if I install OpenOffice.RPMs or use Debian/Gentoo to install the program, the package management system knows how to handle many of the default questions, installs everything in an expected place, and presents any questions in a familliar manner.
I hope this helps answer your question.
Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 1
Unfortunately that link did not clear up the fundamental disagreement that we have over the GPL. The question in the FAQ "I just found out that a company has a copy of a GPL'ed program, and it costs money to get it. Aren't they violating the GPL by not making it available on the Internet?" is dealing with a person who has never received the binary. The hypothetical I have consistantly been referring to is a person inside a company using a binary copy of an app that depends on the GPL. Unfortunately this FAQ entry doesn't address that situation, and also unfortunately I agree with you in regards to TrollTech's bias interfering with a purely legal interpretation of the GPL. So we are in a bind.
You have maintained that employee usage within an organization doesn't count as a copy or as distribution in the terms of the GPL, while I stand with my strict interpretation saying that anyone who receives a binary dependant on a GPL'd library can demand the source, employee or not. While I continue to disagree with you, I will at least admit that you have made a strong enough argument to introduce doubt as to the exact meaning of the GPL which hurts everyone. This is why I continue to maintain that it should be clarified to prevent misunderstandings like the kind one of us is having here.
Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 1
What does trolltech say about this? From their site:
Q: When Qt Free Edition is Open Source and GPL, can I use it to make commercial (proprietary/closed-source) software?
A: No.
You will still need to purchase the Professional or Enterprise Edition to make commercial (proprietary/closed-source) software with Qt.
It does *not* say anything about intra-company distributions, but it's quite clear to me that you are not allowed to create a closed-source application that depends on the QT GPL edition. So far as I can tell, that is the basis of TrollTech's business model, and MySQL AB's business model as well. But obviously it is unclear how it applies to intra-company copies and our debate proves to me at least that the license should be clearer in order to (a) stop companies planning on creating proprietary apps that depend on the GPL or (b) get bastards like me to shut up.
Semi-serious: does your disk controller need a license to copy copyrighted binaries into memory? Does your keyboard need a license if you type in your new novel?
Semi-serious answer: It doesn't have to accept the terms of the license and it can still be a user, you must not have read the GPL.
The moderation of your initial post was unfair. Slashdot's moderation system doesn't work well, that's for sure.
Thankfully I don't care about/. moderation. My initial post was more flamebait than trollish, but the distinction is minor so I don't really care all that much about it.
But whether your opinion is the truth isn't clear yet. I for one disagree with you, but we both don't have enough facts at hand to decide this question definitely. If you don't come up with new information, I will end the discussion at this point - unresolved.
At the very least I hope you have a great day.
Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 1
The GPL doesn't make such a distinction. It uses the term "distribution" according to copyright law. I'm no lawyer, so I can't prove my opinion to you.
It makes references to copying, distributing, and modifying. We can argue about the legal definition of distributing, but I agree that it is a gray area and I'm no lawyer either. But copying is copying is copying, and I still can't see the distinction between copying inside an organization and outside. If a binary app that depended on the GPL was distributed/copied to me it is my understanding that I had the right to demand the source regardless of any other fact.
But I'm not some asshole that refuses to back down from an argument. I reviewed it twice and didn't come up with any distinction for intercompany copying, but if you can point me to the section I'll gladly agree with you. As it stands now I'm just another person who was modded to -1 troll for pointing out the truth...
Re:Before the trolls come out.
on
Review: KDE 3.2
·
· Score: 1
I'd agree with you if you could point to where the GPL makes the distiction between copying inside an organization and copying outside of the organization. Since I can't see the distinction it seems to me that the provisions on making binary copies include distributing copies to co-workers.
If you can rebut this argument I will concede that you are correct.
Slashdot Mirror
Do *not* sniff passwords or publish them, unless you want to face some nasty consequences. What you should to is draw up a list of the tools required to sniff the passwords and give them a recipe as to how someone could crack their security.
From what you've said there... You should say something along the lines of "A person could sit in the school parking lot with a laptop and a wireless networking card, and run the program 'Ethereal' to watch the network traffic. This person could literally watch the login IDs and passwords, and use that information to get your SSN and other vital and private information."
Pass that along to IT, your school administrators... if that doesn't get them hopping try passing the story on to your local community newspaper. That would be much safer than risking the legal reprecussions of cracking passwords yourself.
As for how good this is as a business model...It works, more or less, for NWA, United, et al. but Southwest only flies point-to-point.
And which of those is the more successful business? Based on your example I'd say it doesn't work, more or less.
It's not just London, I found the same results on a flight to Tokyo. Seattle->Vancouver->Tokyo was several hundred dollars cheaper than simply Vancouver->Tokyo, even though the flight numbers and departure times made it obvious this was the exact same airplane. The one problem was that I couldn't get a straight answer from anyone if I could get on in Vancouver if I was supposed to start in Seattle. I ended up going with a different airline (Cathay Pacific) which was cheaper than Air Canada from Vancouver but more expensive than Air Canada from Seattle, just to minimize the risk of problems.
I'd be interested in knowing if anyone has actually done this, and if they'd had problems getting on in Vancouver and more importantly deplaning in Vancouver on the return journey. I imagine the return trip would be more complicated since they would be expecting you to clear US customs? Not sure though, it would be interesting to hear from someone with actual experience.
Funny you should say that... I recently switched my primary desktop from Debian unstable to Fedora because it strikes the right balance (for me) between having up to date applications and a solid desktop system. Mandrake is too KDE oriented, Sid breaks important stuff too often, Woody is too outdated, SuSe doesn't have good application support unless you buy their CD, and I don't have the patience to compile everything for Gentoo nor the inclination to manage a Slackware installation.
These are all fine distributions, don't get me wrong... my point is not that they suck and that Fedora rules, my point is that Fedora strikes a new balance to the mix that some users like me will prefer. If it's not right for everyone that's actually very good -- it can only benefit the Linux community to promote diversity in distributions so hardware and software vendors can't only support binaries for a single platform.
If you think about it, the fact that they are going to force everyone outside of North America, including the absolutely nonthreatening Japanese, it just means that it's a matter of time for us. Since Canadians and Mexicans make up the lions share of visitors to the USA, the requirements of the project go up an order of magnitude if you include Canada and Mexico.
As despicable as I personally find this scheme, it seems to be that they are rolling it out in a very reasonable way in order to scale the procedures and find bottlenecks before the excessive quantity of data comes in.
To rephrase: if they are going to deter the Japanese from visiting the US despite the impact that should have on the travel economy, they are fucking serious about tracking every person that comes into the US. Canadaians and Mexicans just get a delay, that's all...
and Good Luck if you have a table at the top of a page and want to insert lines above it.
I agree there is no "good way" to deal with it, but it's possible. The way I do it is to turn on the "direct cursor" (look for the cursor icon on the left of the page) and click the far left corner of the table. Hit enter, and the table moves down a line. Like I said, I admit that it's a bit clunky and something the OOo people should work on, but it _is_ possible to deal with if you use OOo as your primary office suite.
Isn't it about time we ditched x86 for something better? AMD
As far as I know, AMD uses x86 and x86-64, which to me qualifies as a valid interpretation of "shouldn't this have been ditched already?".
Isn't it about time we ditched BASIC for something better? Uhm... it's for beginners. We can't ditch the biginners...
No, but you can teach them to use Python.
Isn't it about time we ditched 20-year-old TV sets for something better? New TVs, available at your local stores.
I think you mean HDTV? Because that makes sense, while your reply didn't in that context.
Isn't it about time we ditched Dubya for something better? John Kerry
We can only hope...
Eh, why stop there? We need to take a pre-emptive measure and kill anyone who we can prove has a knife on them* and looks at an iPod owner in a manner that can be interpreted as threatening.
Note:
* completely fabricated evidence should still count as proof, if we really don't like them.
aw snookums... I didn't meant for you to get your panties in a bunch! Perhaps you can understand the contradiction between "They're not MY priorities." and "I want the Mac to succeed as much as possible.", but perhaps I'm giving you too much credit. No matter.
"It would be reasonable, but it wouldn't get a fucking thing done. The squeeky wheel gets the grease."
Clearly you have never managed or worked on an OSS project, because you are dead wrong. A chorus of users requesting a feature will get attention from the developers, an annoying asshole making persistant demands of our time to satisfy his needs will be ignored. When you are dealing with companies you can bitch and moan and people will listen because they are paid to. I know few people that are willing to volunteer their time to be bitched at by asshole strangers and in my experience I find they don't respond well to people like you.
"And let me suggest to YOU, Mr. Indignant, that if your're this damn easily offended, you find someplace other than Slashdot to hang out."
OT: How in the bloody fuck did you know that my real name is Mr. Indignant?!?! You CIA/FBI/NSA or what?? In any case I wasn't offended, I was just pointing out that you are an asshole... something we both seem to agree on. Please feel free to continue being an asshole, it doesn't bother me at all. Also, have a nice day.
The problem is not that he has an opinion -- we all have opinions. The problem is that the orginal poster was an ass and suggested that other people spend time on his priorities. Since he isn't a customer he has no basis to make those demands. It is reasonable to say "it would be nice and useful to have an OSX version" but stupid and childlike to say "you suck because you don't spend your time on what I want." I'm sure the OOo developers had a very good reason to finish up the 1.1.1 release instead of devoting all of their resources to the far-distant 2.0 release, so unless you are willing to contribute with your own sweat and time, at the very least keep your suggestions polite.
Your demands are not realistic, you could not reasonably expect HP to support any linux distribution someone could throw one one of their machines. There is so much variety in the linux world that a technical support team would be hard pressed to help the disparate needs of their customers, I would be surprised if they would even support version of SuSE or RedHat that was customized in a significant way (for example a custom kernel or non-stock filesystem type or desktop environment). Tech support just doesn't work that way, and you can't reasonably expect them to be able to help people that deviate too far from the stock system they understand.
What you _can_ reasonably suspect is that they will officially support a select few distributions that have special relationships with the company, to ship drivers that work with those distribtions, and finally *release specs* to their hardware and the source to their distro-specific drivers. That way, other distributions have all the information they need to get their systems to work with HP's hardware if they desire it. That is far more reasonable that what you propose.
My point was, and remains to be, something that seems to be eluding you. The nature of the medium of broadcast television leads to simple shows that don't require much backstory or effort in order to understand what is going on. You call this the effect of the lowest common denominator, but in fact you are incorrect. DVD sales show that people actually want to watch the good shows that didn't perform on television, which nullifies your whinge about reality shows.
The internet is an altogther different medium and the same rules will not apply to it. If (when) the internet is used as a distribution vehicle for mass-media filmed entertainment the viewer may be able to watch shows in proper context, allowing for more complex plotlines to be constructed. This does not mean that Joe Millionairre of the Internet won't exist, something like that will exist, or more likely an even more stupid version of it. But it will also lead to a venue to provide even more intelligent programming than we can get today -- and quite likely someone will provide it.
I hope you are no longer confused. I'm here to help if you still have more problems or questions.
It was "too hard" for Joe Denomenator to follow multi-show stories.
Guess what, Buck-o... if you aren't a dedicated watcher of the show, multi-show stories are impossible to watch. If I had a choice between watching a single mid-season episode of Andromeda or a stupid reality show, at least the stupid reality show would be watchable as it's own entity.
The problem is with the medium of broadcast television, not with the viewers. It's near impossible to have a popular show with long storyline arcs because most people have lives that interfere with watching every single episode in the correct order week after week.
The rescue is here, however, because DVD sales for those types of shows have been very successful. I bet the DVD sales for an unpopular television show like Babylon 5 would outpace a DVD release of Joe Millionaire.
Today, shows like 24 and the Sopranos release the DVD editions pretty soon after the season has gone off the air, making the shows more financially successful and encouraging more of them to be made. It's a compromise that means that the shows you like can be more complicated and survive enough for financial success. I suggest you stop whining about what other people watch on TV and just be thankful that the next Babylon 5 will be able to get long story arcs thanks to DVD sales.
What you say is of course correct, however it is important to add that your app should also rebuild those INI files (in the proper places) to their defaults in case a user does directly copy the application folders. However that assumes you care about application portability...
If Joe User has anything like my experience I'd suggest it will affect him quite a bit. I've not yet got 2.6 to recognize my PS/2 mouse without a kernel patch to restore the old-style /dev/psaux functionality after trying with debian, fedora, knoppix 3.4, and kernel.org kernels. Hopefully these issues have been fixed for Mandrake's release, because it's preventing me and others from adopting 2.6.
You use lots of legalese and it sounds like you're hiding behind it. You use plain English and you sound unprofessional.
What are lawyers supposed to sound like?
Uh, lawyers are supposed to use legalese... that's the point of the bloody legalese. There is no "hiding behind it", lawyers can write things correctly or incorrectly. The quote that people are poking fun of here was written sloppily and it indicates a general lack of seriousness on the part of Infinium Labs and some people find it funny.
So simple, so lame, but so unique and incredibly fun to play. I'm not ashamed to admit I love that game.
"For how long?
What is MS decided one day not to support OSX?"
You're just another one of those slashdot OSS zealots, aren't you? I bet you can't name three examples of technologies that they used in this manner. What's that, you say you can? Well I'm sure this time they will be nice and fair, despite their past history and obvious motivation. Stop trolling.... la la la I can't hear you la la la!
Even better is the quote at the bottom of your linked page: "Windowcat Designs, Inc.: Do you need help starting a new website, or someone to host your existing site? Check out www.windowcat.com for full-service web site development services and affordable hosting options by familiar folks."
Yes, after seeing an example of their mad HTML skillz I'm dying to pay them to design sites for me. Hell, I know people who design better looking sites than that who are literally colourblind. And I'm not going to touch on "NETSCAPE USERS: This site is best viewed using an IE 6.0+ browser. Click here to get one free". Fucking twits.
Bah.
The problem you are complaining about is a problem with Xandros's distribution, not linux. If gnome doesn't run properly in Xandros that just means that they haven't bothered to properly package it. Many distributions have the ability to install GNOME and KDE on the same installation, and applications written for one DE have always run just fine in the other one in every distributions I have tested.
For a simple Windows user, what are these "packages" and why do they need to be managed?
.RPM package with a GUI front end, not unlike what you would find in a .MSI file in windows -- even more simple, to be honest.
.dll file) to run properly, so the package knows which libraries are required for it to install. Debian, Gentoo, and FreeBSD have great systems for automatically installing those dependancies when the user requests a package, and the .RPM-based linux distibutions are getting better at this too.
.RPMs or use Debian/Gentoo to install the program, the package management system knows how to handle many of the default questions, installs everything in an expected place, and presents any questions in a familliar manner.
With many windows programs, the source is closed and the developer creates a binary package and controls how the program will be distributed. But with free software, many people take those source files and distribute them in whatever way works best for them -- a package is simply a way to put programs in a file for distributing to others.
If you'd like you can think of of package as an installation program -- with modern end-user distributions the distinction is minor. A package is RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSE all have programs that will automatically install a
But it gets more complicated than that, because of the increased complexity of the *NIX world. Certain programs depend on external libraries (think of it like a
It seems just eliminating the whole concept of packages would make life so much easier. Installation programs (like MSI files) are simpler, aren't they?
Some applications, like the Sun Java JRE, OpenOffice, and the binary NVIDIA drivers (I'm sure there are many others) have their own installation programs. It's ugly and messy and doesn't work that well compared with how each distribution handles packages natively.
To put it more practical terms, if I download OpenOffice from openoffice.org and run their installer I see a custom installation program that they have developed. I have to answer a lot of questions about how my Linux distribution is set up and do this all in an unfamiliar environment. However if I install OpenOffice
I hope this helps answer your question.
Unfortunately that link did not clear up the fundamental disagreement that we have over the GPL. The question in the FAQ "I just found out that a company has a copy of a GPL'ed program, and it costs money to get it. Aren't they violating the GPL by not making it available on the Internet?" is dealing with a person who has never received the binary. The hypothetical I have consistantly been referring to is a person inside a company using a binary copy of an app that depends on the GPL. Unfortunately this FAQ entry doesn't address that situation, and also unfortunately I agree with you in regards to TrollTech's bias interfering with a purely legal interpretation of the GPL. So we are in a bind.
You have maintained that employee usage within an organization doesn't count as a copy or as distribution in the terms of the GPL, while I stand with my strict interpretation saying that anyone who receives a binary dependant on a GPL'd library can demand the source, employee or not. While I continue to disagree with you, I will at least admit that you have made a strong enough argument to introduce doubt as to the exact meaning of the GPL which hurts everyone. This is why I continue to maintain that it should be clarified to prevent misunderstandings like the kind one of us is having here.
It does *not* say anything about intra-company distributions, but it's quite clear to me that you are not allowed to create a closed-source application that depends on the QT GPL edition. So far as I can tell, that is the basis of TrollTech's business model, and MySQL AB's business model as well. But obviously it is unclear how it applies to intra-company copies and our debate proves to me at least that the license should be clearer in order to (a) stop companies planning on creating proprietary apps that depend on the GPL or (b) get bastards like me to shut up.
Semi-serious: does your disk controller need a license to copy copyrighted binaries into memory? Does your keyboard need a license if you type in your new novel?
Semi-serious answer: It doesn't have to accept the terms of the license and it can still be a user, you must not have read the GPL.
The moderation of your initial post was unfair. Slashdot's moderation system doesn't work well, that's for sure.
Thankfully I don't care about
But whether your opinion is the truth isn't clear yet. I for one disagree with you, but we both don't have enough facts at hand to decide this question definitely. If you don't come up with new information, I will end the discussion at this point - unresolved.
At the very least I hope you have a great day.
The GPL doesn't make such a distinction. It uses the term "distribution" according to copyright law. I'm no lawyer, so I can't prove my opinion to you.
It makes references to copying, distributing, and modifying. We can argue about the legal definition of distributing, but I agree that it is a gray area and I'm no lawyer either. But copying is copying is copying, and I still can't see the distinction between copying inside an organization and outside. If a binary app that depended on the GPL was distributed/copied to me it is my understanding that I had the right to demand the source regardless of any other fact.
But I'm not some asshole that refuses to back down from an argument. I reviewed it twice and didn't come up with any distinction for intercompany copying, but if you can point me to the section I'll gladly agree with you. As it stands now I'm just another person who was modded to -1 troll for pointing out the truth...
I'd agree with you if you could point to where the GPL makes the distiction between copying inside an organization and copying outside of the organization. Since I can't see the distinction it seems to me that the provisions on making binary copies include distributing copies to co-workers.
If you can rebut this argument I will concede that you are correct.