Most of the images (the little logos for topics, the slashdot name itself, ect.) are gifs. It's really annoying. I'd like to use kfm more and netscape less as a browser, but my build of kfm doesn't do gifs, but does do pngs. Slashdot is probably the worst site I visit in terms of using gifs. I'd love to see png replace gifs so I could use kfm more.
For the record, there is a difference between a crappy, uninformed publication like most of the ones Ziff-Davis makes, that are made to pander to equally uninformed consumers and a serious group of publications such as CACM and the verious other ACM publications. There is a lot of very good technical info in a lot that ACM puts out.
Is Solaris was free (as in a GPL or BSD license), Linux would certainly survive. Solaris and Linux both have their strengths and weaknesses. However, there are several parts of Solaris, such as the IP Stack and some SMP code that would quickly be folded into linux. It would likely be a lot easier/more fun to fold bits of Solaris into the Linux source tree than the other way around, even though neither is horrifically bad.
Yep. That was a truly horrible article. Granted it was blurb, but it basically didn't say anything. It didn't describe at all what product netscape might be infringing on other than saying it had something to do with databases. I hate c|net
...and that assumes that the potential cracker can even get to the machine on which the data resides. The big boys, especially the Swiss, are really paranoid. If you can find your way through the packet filtering going on at the router, a couple of firewalls between the different servers (web, DB, a middle-man, ect.) and most likely a B1 Trusted OS, and then you can break a bit of cryptography, then you can start dealing with the issues you describe. Simply put, good luck, but the time could probably be used better elsewhere.
Nobody who is worth their weight in shit relies upon just one level of security when serious financial transactions are happening (and no the exhange of two-fitty for a box of baked beans on ebay does not constitute a serious financial transaction). The big swiss banks have a record of security to protect. Their lure is security. Even when the world goes to hell in a bucket, your money will stay safe in Switzerland. That's how they make the huge profits and get people to line up to open accounts when their level of interest in miniscule. The swiss aren't going to play any games. Putting your money in an online account in a big swiss bank is probably ten times *more* secure and *safer* than giving your money to some two-bit tellar at your local bank, and letting that bank keep it for you. The guy at the window at an American bank has a lot of power. How the hell do you think they give money to you. They know how much money you have, and can take it out of your account on the fly. Serious people don't do this. Things are handled on a need-to-know basis, and most minions in the big banks don't need to know much.
Mandrake integrates a little more with kde (aka they use kdm instead of gdm by default), they have a little updater app which lets you get the latest updates easily, they debug and test a bit more than redhat and thus tend to have a few less "quirks", they ship with egcs/pgcc (now gcc/pgcc) by default, and compile all the binaries with it which should lead to a 5-30% speedup depending upon app.
First of all, please understand that RPM is not a standard. It is one way of doing things. Making rpm a dependency is a _bad_ idea. Now for each of your points: a. This has been a point of contention for a while. Some groups within each project are trying. b. Adding an app to the K-Menu can be accomplished by picking up an icon for the app, and dropping it onto the menu. It just doesn't get any easier than that. c. This has existed for a while. KDM has a pull down menu that allows the user to choose what wm/desktop environment to use. GDM does something similar. d. The KDE does have this type of help viewer. It's called khelp, and is accessed throughout the environment. Re-read first sentence about RPM.
See: http://www.mysql.com/Manual_chapter/manual_Licensi ng_and_Support.html Basically, if you are selling MySQL on CD, charging to intall it, or putting it in a non-redistrubitable distribution they want a cut. The client is already GPLed.
I've been very happy with my years at UIUC. However, there is of course the downside, the UC part. I don't know if I'd want to stay hear for as long as some grad students I know have. Personally, I'd favor Stanford, if you have the means and ability. They have the most top notch faculty around, although after the retirement of some big names (Knuth, McCarthey), that's somewhat less the case. That said, I have no intention of going to grad school anytime soon, but that's me.
I have no problem with Mandrake. In fact it's currently my distribution of choice. Redhat is a packager of linux software, so is Mandrake. Redhat contributes to free software, so does Mandrake. Mandrake borrows Redhat's contributions, Redhat borrows Mandrake's. The difference is that Mandrake takes a bit of time to debug the distribution, while Redhat has been notoriously bad at doing this.
Two female computer science role models come to mind. First of all in the millionare category there is Ester Dyson, who really is one of the most respected pundits/Vulture Capialist types around. As for females who can code, there's Adelle Goldberg from back at PARC who was a major player in the creation of Smalltalk.
The role models are there, if people bother to look.
So what you're saying is that Linux systems are advancing and improving at a very fast pace, but still manage to maintain backwards compatability (due to the fact you can have multiple versions of things like libc on a system).
The HURD was in development before linux. The HURD never went anywhere. The HURD is a remnant from the days in the early part of this decade when the prevailing view was you couldn't do anything useful without using a microkernel design, it was the holy grail. Many OSes (the HURD, NeXTstep, NT, BeOS) came from this era. Linux disproved this general theory by creating a stable, fast, portable OS with a monolithic kernel. The HURD is and probably always will be the OS that wasn't. It still hasn't met the goals set for it in the early part of this decade, let alone implementing modern features linux is coming to terms with today (SMP, Journaling file systems, ect.). The HURD may be the politically correct OS in your mind, but it is rather uninteresting when compared to linux, BeOS, QNX, ect. and is nowhere near the level of development that linux and the BSDs are at. I'd be suprised if it reaches the level linux is at today in the next 5-10 years.
First of all the issue with servers has already been pointed out. Linux will continue to grow there, and a GUI is irrelevent for servers.
Second, the KDE is in many ways a easier to use interface than Windows. The use of single click as a default (and currently only option, though KDE 2.0 will support double clicking as well) is one of the reasons. People who have been using Windows and MacOS for years hate it. Those of us, like myself, who think of mouse clicks logically in terms of speed and having enough states like it. New users will love it. I've watched quite a number of new users, primarily older people who never used a computer before, click on an icon and get very frustrated when nothing happens, so they click it over and over again until five copies of the app start up, which also frustrated them. Back when I was younger this led me to unconsciously tripple click, which made my friends laugh at me.
None the less, Linux with KDE is a viable alternative to Windows for the avarage joe on the desktop.
Why do you put up with the crap of board meetings, deadlines, releasing bad code, ect.
Becuase someone is paying you to do stuff, you are under the control of the suits.
Linux isn't under the control of the suits, no matter how many IPOs there are becuase its developers aren't under the control of the suits. Linus, for example, to the best of my knowledge isn't being pressured by money. The KDE project was mentioned before, many of its developers are in academia. Even those who work for the suits, aren't really controlled by them. We saw this with Rasterman and JWZ. Both felt some pressures or influence from above that they didn't like, and they off and left.
That's the primary reason why this "Linux is being controlled by big business" attitude is dead wrong.
1. The Apple menu has some of the same charachteristics of a start or K menu, but is nowhere near as featureful or mature.
2. OK, so we agree?
3. Mac OS X. I'll believe it when I see it. The answer two years ago would be Copeland, which was coming "any day now". OS X server is out, I'll grant you, but it looses Apple's main advantage on the desktop, graphical consistency. It also has NeXTstep's crappy IP implementation instead of the nice streams based one used by Open Transport and Solaris. It also had stability issues as a server right off the bat. I used to have a NeXT. It was a great machine. Apple, however, isn't adding much to the OS we all knew and loved 8 years ago.
What you refer to is what's in the book...the words.
You can buy a hundred different PCs and find quite few with the exact same pieces of hardware, aka the same book.
What you are talking about is the case, a pice of plastic or steel devoid of any technological value. This would be more analogous to the book cover. If you published a book in a blue translucent color cover and called it "Ramlings about bad analogies" by Hrothgar, and I released a book with a blue translucent cover named "Bite me" by Scola, that would hardly be grounds to sue. The internals and the name on the cover are quite distinct even if the covers look similar.
He said computer, not PC. PC is a difficult word to define. IBM made computers long before Apple did, and a lot of academic institutions made computers years before IBM.
If you want to use the common definition of PC, then Altair would be the one suing Apple and everyone else.
Apple ripped off the Xerox PARC concept for a GUI. I don't have a problem with this, but it's true. Windows, GNOME, and KDE all have very substantial modifications to the way Apple did things. The start menu in windows, and the bar in kde for example, plus ditching the stupid menus at the top of the screen thing.
Of course, Apple tells us all we should "Think Different" which I suppose means that we should believe that having a computer come in "5 delicious flavors, yum" is important, but preemptive multitasking is overrated, and protected memory is an uneeded luxury.
Apple should spend a little more time bringing their OS to the level of modernity that MS hit in 1995, and UNIX hit in 1971.
I compiled KDE1.0-pre1, KDE-1.0, KDE-1.1, and KDE-1.1.1 all with egcs with pgcc patches thrown in for good measure. All compiled out of the box without modification or problems.
Hmmm...did MS actually copyright that. Of course MacOS had all sorts of wizzards. I though either WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 had something they called a wizzard (perhaps not though). Was MS really the first company to use the word "wizzard" to describe these sorts of things.
Of course, it wouldn't be the first time KDE ran into a problem like this. I recall some discussion over whether KDE could continue to have a trash, because the the rights to the term trash, in the context of an icon on the desktop where you put files to be eventually deleted were owned by Apple.
OK, before calling me a moron perhaps you should check your facts.
Either ORBIT only supports C, or the core GNOME docs are horrible (which I'd consider at least as bad).
From the GNOME FAQ found directly off of www.gnome.org:
ORBit is intended to be multilingual; ILU proves that this is possible. Right now it only supports C, but in the future it will support other languages. (Really, we mean it! It is a very, very new project right now, which is the only reason it is C only.)
If GNOME's own docs are right, ORBit only supports C, and that's all there is to say about that.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the images (the little logos for topics, the slashdot name itself, ect.) are gifs. It's really annoying. I'd like to use kfm more and netscape less as a browser, but my build of kfm doesn't do gifs, but does do pngs. Slashdot is probably the worst site I visit in terms of using gifs. I'd love to see png replace gifs so I could use kfm more.
For the record, there is a difference between a crappy, uninformed publication like most of the ones Ziff-Davis makes, that are made to pander to equally uninformed consumers and a serious group of publications such as CACM and the verious other ACM publications. There is a lot of very good technical info in a lot that ACM puts out.
Is Solaris was free (as in a GPL or BSD license), Linux would certainly survive. Solaris and Linux both have their strengths and weaknesses. However, there are several parts of Solaris, such as the IP Stack and some SMP code that would quickly be folded into linux. It would likely be a lot easier/more fun to fold bits of Solaris into the Linux source tree than the other way around, even though neither is horrifically bad.
Yep. That was a truly horrible article. Granted it was blurb, but it basically didn't say anything. It didn't describe at all what product netscape might be infringing on other than saying it had something to do with databases. I hate c|net
...and that assumes that the potential cracker can even get to the machine on which the data resides. The big boys, especially the Swiss, are really paranoid. If you can find your way through the packet filtering going on at the router, a couple of firewalls between the different servers (web, DB, a middle-man, ect.) and most likely a B1 Trusted OS, and then you can break a bit of cryptography, then you can start dealing with the issues you describe. Simply put, good luck, but the time could probably be used better elsewhere.
Nobody who is worth their weight in shit relies upon just one level of security when serious financial transactions are happening (and no the exhange of two-fitty for a box of baked beans on ebay does not constitute a serious financial transaction). The big swiss banks have a record of security to protect. Their lure is security. Even when the world goes to hell in a bucket, your money will stay safe in Switzerland. That's how they make the huge profits and get people to line up to open accounts when their level of interest in miniscule. The swiss aren't going to play any games. Putting your money in an online account in a big swiss bank is probably ten times *more* secure and *safer* than giving your money to some two-bit tellar at your local bank, and letting that bank keep it for you. The guy at the window at an American bank has a lot of power. How the hell do you think they give money to you. They know how much money you have, and can take it out of your account on the fly. Serious people don't do this. Things are handled on a need-to-know basis, and most minions in the big banks don't need to know much.
Just curious, you wouldn't happen to have an S3 Virge card. If so, that's happening because the X server(s) for the Virge are so completely broken.
Mandrake integrates a little more with kde (aka they use kdm instead of gdm by default), they have a little updater app which lets you get the latest updates easily, they debug and test a bit more than redhat and thus tend to have a few less "quirks", they ship with egcs/pgcc (now gcc/pgcc) by default, and compile all the binaries with it which should lead to a 5-30% speedup depending upon app.
First of all, please understand that RPM is not a standard. It is one way of doing things. Making rpm a dependency is a _bad_ idea. Now for each of your points: a. This has been a point of contention for a while. Some groups within each project are trying. b. Adding an app to the K-Menu can be accomplished by picking up an icon for the app, and dropping it onto the menu. It just doesn't get any easier than that. c. This has existed for a while. KDM has a pull down menu that allows the user to choose what wm/desktop environment to use. GDM does something similar. d. The KDE does have this type of help viewer. It's called khelp, and is accessed throughout the environment. Re-read first sentence about RPM.
See: http://www.mysql.com/Manual_chapter/manual_Licensi ng_and_Support.html Basically, if you are selling MySQL on CD, charging to intall it, or putting it in a non-redistrubitable distribution they want a cut. The client is already GPLed.
I've been very happy with my years at UIUC. However, there is of course the downside, the UC part. I don't know if I'd want to stay hear for as long as some grad students I know have. Personally, I'd favor Stanford, if you have the means and ability. They have the most top notch faculty around, although after the retirement of some big names (Knuth, McCarthey), that's somewhat less the case. That said, I have no intention of going to grad school anytime soon, but that's me.
I have no problem with Mandrake. In fact it's currently my distribution of choice. Redhat is a packager of linux software, so is Mandrake. Redhat contributes to free software, so does Mandrake. Mandrake borrows Redhat's contributions, Redhat borrows Mandrake's. The difference is that Mandrake takes a bit of time to debug the distribution, while Redhat has been notoriously bad at doing this.
Two female computer science role models come to mind. First of all in the millionare category there is Ester Dyson, who really is one of the most respected pundits/Vulture Capialist types around. As for females who can code, there's Adelle Goldberg from back at PARC who was a major player in the creation of Smalltalk.
The role models are there, if people bother to look.
So what you're saying is that Linux systems are advancing and improving at a very fast pace, but still manage to maintain backwards compatability (due to the fact you can have multiple versions of things like libc on a system).
Oh no, anything but that!
The HURD was in development before linux. The HURD never went anywhere. The HURD is a remnant from the days in the early part of this decade when the prevailing view was you couldn't do anything useful without using a microkernel design, it was the holy grail. Many OSes (the HURD, NeXTstep, NT, BeOS) came from this era. Linux disproved this general theory by creating a stable, fast, portable OS with a monolithic kernel. The HURD is and probably always will be the OS that wasn't. It still hasn't met the goals set for it in the early part of this decade, let alone implementing modern features linux is coming to terms with today (SMP, Journaling file systems, ect.). The HURD may be the politically correct OS in your mind, but it is rather uninteresting when compared to linux, BeOS, QNX, ect. and is nowhere near the level of development that linux and the BSDs are at. I'd be suprised if it reaches the level linux is at today in the next 5-10 years.
First of all the issue with servers has already been pointed out. Linux will continue to grow there, and a GUI is irrelevent for servers.
Second, the KDE is in many ways a easier to use interface than Windows. The use of single click as a default (and currently only option, though KDE 2.0 will support double clicking as well) is one of the reasons. People who have been using Windows and MacOS for years hate it. Those of us, like myself, who think of mouse clicks logically in terms of speed and having enough states like it. New users will love it. I've watched quite a number of new users, primarily older people who never used a computer before, click on an icon and get very frustrated when nothing happens, so they click it over and over again until five copies of the app start up, which also frustrated them. Back when I was younger this led me to unconsciously tripple click, which made my friends laugh at me.
None the less, Linux with KDE is a viable alternative to Windows for the avarage joe on the desktop.
You do know Debian is a free, open project, and organization like the FSF, and a not for profit one at that.
Debian's IPO will happen right after the FSF has an IPO which will happen right after the United Way and American Cancer Society have their IPO.
I don't agree with the Debian project on many things, both technical and political, but Debian isn't changing from its 100% free stance ever.
You miss an important point.
Why do you put up with the crap of board meetings, deadlines, releasing bad code, ect.
Becuase someone is paying you to do stuff, you are under the control of the suits.
Linux isn't under the control of the suits, no matter how many IPOs there are becuase its developers aren't under the control of the suits. Linus, for example, to the best of my knowledge isn't being pressured by money. The KDE project was mentioned before, many of its developers are in academia. Even those who work for the suits, aren't really controlled by them. We saw this with Rasterman and JWZ. Both felt some pressures or influence from above that they didn't like, and they off and left.
That's the primary reason why this "Linux is being controlled by big business" attitude is dead wrong.
1. The Apple menu has some of the same charachteristics of a start or K menu, but is nowhere near as featureful or mature.
2. OK, so we agree?
3. Mac OS X. I'll believe it when I see it. The answer two years ago would be Copeland, which was coming "any day now". OS X server is out, I'll grant you, but it looses Apple's main advantage on the desktop, graphical consistency. It also has NeXTstep's crappy IP implementation instead of the nice streams based one used by Open Transport and Solaris. It also had stability issues as a server right off the bat. I used to have a NeXT. It was a great machine. Apple, however, isn't adding much to the OS we all knew and loved 8 years ago.
Bad analogy.
What you refer to is what's in the book...the words.
You can buy a hundred different PCs and find quite few with the exact same pieces of hardware, aka the same book.
What you are talking about is the case, a pice of plastic or steel devoid of any technological value. This would be more analogous to the book cover. If you published a book in a blue translucent color cover and called it "Ramlings about bad analogies" by Hrothgar, and I released a book with a blue translucent cover named "Bite me" by Scola, that would hardly be grounds to sue. The internals and the name on the cover are quite distinct even if the covers look similar.
He said computer, not PC. PC is a difficult word to define. IBM made computers long before Apple did, and a lot of academic institutions made computers years before IBM.
If you want to use the common definition of PC, then Altair would be the one suing Apple and everyone else.
I'm tired of all of this.
Apple ripped off the Xerox PARC concept for a GUI. I don't have a problem with this, but it's true. Windows, GNOME, and KDE all have very substantial modifications to the way Apple did things. The start menu in windows, and the bar in kde for example, plus ditching the stupid menus at the top of the screen thing.
Of course, Apple tells us all we should "Think Different" which I suppose means that we should believe that having a computer come in "5 delicious flavors, yum" is important, but preemptive multitasking is overrated, and protected memory is an uneeded luxury.
Apple should spend a little more time bringing their OS to the level of modernity that MS hit in 1995, and UNIX hit in 1971.
What the hell are you talking about?
I compiled KDE1.0-pre1, KDE-1.0, KDE-1.1, and KDE-1.1.1 all with egcs with pgcc patches thrown in for good measure. All compiled out of the box without modification or problems.
KDE and egcs work extremely well together.
Hmmm...did MS actually copyright that. Of course MacOS had all sorts of wizzards. I though either WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 had something they called a wizzard (perhaps not though). Was MS really the first company to use the word "wizzard" to describe these sorts of things.
Of course, it wouldn't be the first time KDE ran into a problem like this. I recall some discussion over whether KDE could continue to have a trash, because the the rights to the term trash, in the context of an icon on the desktop where you put files to be eventually deleted were owned by Apple.
Bizarre, but true.
OK, before calling me a moron perhaps you should check your facts.
Either ORBIT only supports C, or the core GNOME docs are horrible (which I'd consider at least as bad).
From the GNOME FAQ found directly off of www.gnome.org:
ORBit is intended to be multilingual; ILU proves that this is possible. Right now it only supports C, but in the future it will support other languages. (Really, we mean it! It is a very, very new project right now, which is the only reason it is C only.)
If GNOME's own docs are right, ORBit only supports C, and that's all there is to say about that.
Really?
8 99.html
See http://www.dreamscape.com/afasoldt/texts/linux071
It gives several examples of things that KDE did correctly in terms of being a good GUI that Windows dropped the ball on.
Furthermore, even if the GUI just pulls even to Windows there is still the fact that Linux/KDE costs less, is more stable, and is faster.