For more info on GIMP and GTK under OS X...
on
OS X
·
· Score: 3
...visit www.macgimp.org. Presently, it's all still a bit fiddly though - so be warned. A screenshot of the GIMP (running fairly happily, it seems) can be found here.
....today also saw a major release of Java-GNOME, a set of Java bindings for GNOME and GTK. Presently at version 0.6, this project has been going on for quite a while now, and an enormous amount of work has been put into this release. (It's been almost four months since the last major release). Check out screenshots, and lots of doumentation.
....is that someone decided to use Word 97 to write their HTML. Which is a very bad idea. Hence the wonderful sequence of tags
...
, which unsurprisingly fails to render properly. Of course, once XHTML becomes standard, mistakes like this should finally stop.
PS If you do want to convert your word files to HTML, I strongly recommend using AbiWord. It gives clean, standard HTML - and you can always apply a style sheet afterwards to make it look prettier.
...check out Shannon's classic 1948 paper "A mathemtical theory of communication". It is available in postscript (460 Kb), gzipped postscript (146 Kb), and PDF (358 Kb) formats, here on the Bell-Labs site. Warning, though: it's 55 pages, including 7 appendices.
Re:KDE: one of the most successful OSS projects
on
KDE 2.1 Is Out
·
· Score: 4
KDE comes with so many other good programs as well, like KNode (News reader) and KMail (lightweight email program)... Does GNOME have any comparable programs?
Errr... yes! Pan is probably the best free newsreader for any platform, Evolution is an incredibly well-integrated mail, calender and addressbook program, and Balsa is a very decent more lightweight mail reader. For office programs, Gnumeric is way more advanced than KSpread, Guppi (still in CVS) is one of the only serious free graphical data analysis tools, GnuCash is very polished, and Dia rocks. Graphically, Sodipodi is shaping up very nicely, gPhoto rules, and the GIMP integrates better with a GNOME environment than with KDE. And then there's XMMS (the best mp3/ogg/mpeg/divx Linux player), Grip (the best CD player/ripper combo) and GStreamer for multemedia; there's GnomeICU, Gabber, Gaim and X-Chat for messaging; there's Gnapster for file-sharing; and there's more useful utilities (e.g. Bug Buddy), system utilities (e.g. Red Carpet), and panel applets than you could shake a stick at. And I know I've missed out quite a few more (Gnome-DB, Oregano and Dr. Genius have just spring to mind - and, yes, Galeon, which rocks and is now my primary browser). In other words, GNOME is hardly short on applications.
If anything, I've often found it to be the other way round. While Konqueror rules, and KWord is much better featured than AbiWord (though I personally dislike the interface), I think where KDE usually excels is in the underlying desktop core, rather than the applications. But that's just my opinion.
To quote Vladimir Vukicevic off Gnome News: "One of the things that red carpet demands currently is that the database (especially for rpm) be in a consistent state. This is often not the case, especially on systems that have been around for a while."
So if any packages have dependency problems which Red Carpet can't fulfil by installing a necessary package, it instead prompts you to remove them. Which means that if, for example, your installation of QT has a dependency problem (as mine did), you will be prompted to remove most of KDE.
Rather than uninstalling, though, you can just sort out the conflict. In my case the problem was a hand-compiled version of Mesa (for my voodoo card). I should have built an RPM when I compiled it, but a quick rpm --justdb on a generic Mesa RPM left the files as they were but updated the database as necessary. Presto!
(PS Future versions of Red Carpet will tell you more about the nature of the conflicts, and hopefully help you deal with them more constructively)
".deb packages have a lot of things that are an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time, such as the post-install configuration. We don't want this type of stuff..."
Erm, actually RPM has had optional pre- and post- install/uninstall script capabilities for a while now. At the moment they're mainly used for running ldconfig, though I have seen them used for generating post-install SSH keys, and for setting an SQLd password interactively from the shell prompt.
I wonder how well GnoRPM would cope with that, though...
Network Solutions initially allowed all words, then banned George Carlin's "seven dirty words," alone or as substrings, with occasional slip-ups and odd exceptions. The seven words were piss, shit, fuck, cunt, motherfucker, cocksucker, and tits.
Isn't motherfucker a bit redundant here, containing, as it does, the subword fuck? Also, what exactly is so offensive about the word motherfucker in the first place? After all, motherfuckers are a fairly essential part of motherhood.
Is it just me or is anyone else getting slightly annoyed at Napster not having its own topic icon? Considering the quantity of Napster-related discussion recently, I think people would appreciate being able to separate Napster stories from stories about new artist or new compression methods.
Of course, a system involving multiple topics would be ideal, giving people more control over what they read. But I appreciate that implementing this would be a major time investment.
If somebody wrote a program for linux that allowed shell scripts to run when you double-click 'em, do you really think it would be any more secure?
Any attachment that is run automatically should at least be run as nobody. Likewise, all scripts should be run in a sandboxed environment like Java (and Gnome Basic). This way, if they try to do anything naughty like ILOVEYOU, then the user gets a security exception, and a chance to decide whether to run them or not.
This, together with an increased use of GPG signing of attatchments, would make such a system considerably more secure without making the system more difficult to use for the clueless.
"Redistributing a radio recording is not legal either, AFAIK."
Very true. There's very little copyrighted music that is legal to distribute (without paying licensing fees, that is). Even all the `free' music from MP3.com can't be redistributed, since pretty much all the revenue of the site comes from advertising. Similarly those 30 second clips you get on sites like cdnow and amazon.
So in fact there is very very little music which can actually be legally put onto Napster, unless you're the copyright holder yourself.
"Don't buy anything from Metallica. They obviously don't want you as a fan."
That's bollocks. Metallica of all people have always treated their fans with respect: they put up with bootlegs, and they have no problem with fans sharing music, such as lending it and copying it for their friends. But there is a huge step from that to the massive online trading of mp3s. When you have over 5GB of assorted music, more than you could ever hope to listen to and appreciate, can you really call yourself a fan of anything? Or are you just, as they claim, a "commodity" trader? For the vast majority of people Napster is not a community. It's just a market.
Even so, Metallica aren't suing these people for copyright infringement. After all, they are potential fans. All they're asking is for them to stop it and grow up. And maybe learn to listen to music, not just amass it...
"Metallica has every right to fight for its interests. But the unleashing of lawyers on more than 330,000 Napster users -- many of them kids -- who allegedly downloaded the band's music last week is an outrage, a punitive and thoughtless assault on privacy and freedom."
That's rich! On the one hand you defend Mettallica's "right to fight for [their] interests". But they can't go after Napster -- after all it isn't any different from FTP since it does have a 'widespread' legal use (NB: you can't even redistribute free MP3.com music due to copyright). And they can't go after the users making their music illegally available (they're accused of serving files, not downloading them - get your facts right!) -- since they're only a bunch of poor confused kids with fast net connections. And it's not even as if they decided to sue anyone for copyright infringement, only trying to get them to stop infringing the law.
If you live in the UK, do listen to PigleT and visit www.stand.org.uk to protest about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill 2000, which is slated to become law in October. While it too late to stop that now (the Bill's second reading took place on March 6th), a constant stream of intelligent criticism can only serve to educate your probably slightly clueless MP. And remember - as a voter, you will be listened to.
Indeed, I recently received a full reply from my MP, former actress Glenda Jackson. While I disagree with some of what she said, she did at least try to adress the issues I raised. Each time she has to do this, she is forced to think about the issue a bit more, and is a bit more likely to realise that parts of the Bill are intrinsically flawed.
PS If anyone is interested in the text of the reply I will post it.
1. There's a difference between imitating GUI concepts (such as curved edges and other 'look and feel' factors) and blatantly copying a piece of copyright art, even if done using the 'look and copy' method rather than the 'cut and paste'. People going on about GUI similarities between WIN95 and MacOS should look at this GIF animation showing a screenshot off sawmill.themes.org, with elements of the original MacOS X screenshot differenced out. Black means identical pixels.
2. Being able to emulate MacOsX's precise look on Win32 and X machines will harm Apple's campaign to market Macs as a trendy alternative - which is why they spent so much time and money developing it. Of course, you are are perfectly entitled to develop a similar look using their ideas. You shouldn't be able to just copy it directly.
3. This isn't about the right to emulate. That was settled in Apple's case versus Microsoft. This is about the right to copy.
As an analogy, think of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Originally a masterpiece. However, any half-decent artist can paint a very good copy of it. The true artist, though, takes the eyes, the smile and the use of color and paints his own masterpiece.
According to this BBC news article, hackers managed to break into UK rail company Railtrack's website, posting a message that due to Y2K all train services would be suspended. Unfortunately this was spotted and corrected quite quickly.
2.2 (c) if You Deploy Covered Code containing Modifications made by You, inform others of how to obtain those Modifications by filling out and submitting the information found at http://www.apple.com/publicsour ce/modifications.html, if available.
TERMINATION OF LICENCE
9.1 Infringement. If any portion of, or functionality implemented by, the Original Code becomes the subject of a claim of infringement, Apple may, at its option: (a)... (b)... or (c) suspend Your rights to use, reproduce, modify, sublicense and distribute the Affected Original Code until a final determination of the claim is made by a court or governmental administrative agency of competent jurisdiction and Apple lifts the suspension as set forth below. Such suspension of rights will be effective immediately upon Apple's posting of a notice to such effect on the Apple web site that is used for implementation of this License....
12.1 (c) This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically without notice from Apple if You, at any time during the term of this License, commence an action for patent infringement against Apple.
There seems to have been a recent trend in window managers such as IceWM and Sawmill to aim for a fast and simple (yet extensible) product which integrates well with a desktop enviroment. People are now looking to their DEs to provide them with the configurability, consistency and inter-operability that they want, and hence no longer require features such as application docks and background selection in a Window Manager. However, people still want control and choice in the feel of their X environment, at a level that shouldn't concern the DEs (a major drawback of KDE, I thought, was the overly strong link between it and kwm). We now have consistency and choice - Linux is really coming of age.
As an aside, I noticed that IceWM is released under the LGPL license. Does anyone know why this is? Also, did this prevent them from being chosen as the default GNOME window manager, when the GNOME team were looking for a lightweight replacement for E (this is before Sawmill came around)?
I think what you say illustrates the difference between scientific patents and software patents. The thing that makes free software possible is the low investment cost - a bit of time and a fair amount of brainpower. It is also why we should be more cautious in providing software the protection afforded by patents.
In the case of medical and scientific advances the (financial) investments are that much greater, and I agree that patenting is a vital means of encouraging research. Ideally, all research would be funded by the government for the good of the community, but I am aware that this is a somewhat impractical utopia.
Slashdot Mirror
...visit www.macgimp.org. Presently, it's all still a bit fiddly though - so be warned. A screenshot of the GIMP (running fairly happily, it seems) can be found here.
....today also saw a major release of Java-GNOME, a set of Java bindings for GNOME and GTK. Presently at version 0.6, this project has been going on for quite a while now, and an enormous amount of work has been put into this release. (It's been almost four months since the last major release). Check out screenshots, and lots of doumentation.
...
, which unsurprisingly fails to render properly. Of course, once XHTML becomes standard, mistakes like this should finally stop.PS If you do want to convert your word files to HTML, I strongly recommend using AbiWord. It gives clean, standard HTML - and you can always apply a style sheet afterwards to make it look prettier.
...check out Shannon's classic 1948 paper "A mathemtical theory of communication". It is available in postscript (460 Kb), gzipped postscript (146 Kb), and PDF (358 Kb) formats, here on the Bell-Labs site. Warning, though: it's 55 pages, including 7 appendices.
KDE comes with so many other good programs as well, like KNode (News reader) and KMail (lightweight email program)... Does GNOME have any comparable programs?
Errr... yes! Pan is probably the best free newsreader for any platform, Evolution is an incredibly well-integrated mail, calender and addressbook program, and Balsa is a very decent more lightweight mail reader. For office programs, Gnumeric is way more advanced than KSpread, Guppi (still in CVS) is one of the only serious free graphical data analysis tools, GnuCash is very polished, and Dia rocks. Graphically, Sodipodi is shaping up very nicely, gPhoto rules, and the GIMP integrates better with a GNOME environment than with KDE. And then there's XMMS (the best mp3/ogg/mpeg/divx Linux player), Grip (the best CD player/ripper combo) and GStreamer for multemedia; there's GnomeICU, Gabber, Gaim and X-Chat for messaging; there's Gnapster for file-sharing; and there's more useful utilities (e.g. Bug Buddy), system utilities (e.g. Red Carpet), and panel applets than you could shake a stick at. And I know I've missed out quite a few more (Gnome-DB, Oregano and Dr. Genius have just spring to mind - and, yes, Galeon, which rocks and is now my primary browser). In other words, GNOME is hardly short on applications.
If anything, I've often found it to be the other way round. While Konqueror rules, and KWord is much better featured than AbiWord (though I personally dislike the interface), I think where KDE usually excels is in the underlying desktop core, rather than the applications. But that's just my opinion.
PS Sorry for ranting.
No need to immediately leap to conclusions.
To quote Vladimir Vukicevic off Gnome News: "One of the things that red carpet demands currently is that the database (especially for rpm) be in a consistent state. This is often not the case, especially on systems that have been around for a while."
So if any packages have dependency problems which Red Carpet can't fulfil by installing a necessary package, it instead prompts you to remove them. Which means that if, for example, your installation of QT has a dependency problem (as mine did), you will be prompted to remove most of KDE.
Rather than uninstalling, though, you can just sort out the conflict. In my case the problem was a hand-compiled version of Mesa (for my voodoo card). I should have built an RPM when I compiled it, but a quick rpm --justdb on a generic Mesa RPM left the files as they were but updated the database as necessary. Presto!
(PS Future versions of Red Carpet will tell you more about the nature of the conflicts, and hopefully help you deal with them more constructively)
".deb packages have a lot of things that are an advantage and a disadvantage at the same time, such as the post-install configuration. We don't want this type of stuff..."
Erm, actually RPM has had optional pre- and post- install/uninstall script capabilities for a while now. At the moment they're mainly used for running ldconfig, though I have seen them used for generating post-install SSH keys, and for setting an SQLd password interactively from the shell prompt.
I wonder how well GnoRPM would cope with that, though...
Network Solutions initially allowed all words, then banned George Carlin's "seven dirty words," alone or as substrings, with occasional slip-ups and odd exceptions. The seven words were piss, shit, fuck, cunt, motherfucker, cocksucker, and tits.
Isn't motherfucker a bit redundant here, containing, as it does, the subword fuck? Also, what exactly is so offensive about the word motherfucker in the first place? After all, motherfuckers are a fairly essential part of motherhood.
Is it just me or is anyone else getting slightly annoyed at Napster not having its own topic icon? Considering the quantity of Napster-related discussion recently, I think people would appreciate being able to separate Napster stories from stories about new artist or new compression methods.
Of course, a system involving multiple topics would be ideal, giving people more control over what they read. But I appreciate that implementing this would be a major time investment.
If somebody wrote a program for linux that allowed shell scripts to run when you double-click 'em, do you really think it would be any more secure?
Any attachment that is run automatically should at least be run as nobody. Likewise, all scripts should be run in a sandboxed environment like Java (and Gnome Basic). This way, if they try to do anything naughty like ILOVEYOU, then the user gets a security exception, and a chance to decide whether to run them or not.
This, together with an increased use of GPG signing of attatchments, would make such a system considerably more secure without making the system more difficult to use for the clueless.
"Redistributing a radio recording is not legal either, AFAIK."
Very true. There's very little copyrighted music that is legal to distribute (without paying licensing fees, that is). Even all the `free' music from MP3.com can't be redistributed, since pretty much all the revenue of the site comes from advertising. Similarly those 30 second clips you get on sites like cdnow and amazon.
So in fact there is very very little music which can actually be legally put onto Napster, unless you're the copyright holder yourself.
"Don't buy anything from Metallica. They obviously don't want you as a fan."
That's bollocks. Metallica of all people have always treated their fans with respect: they put up with bootlegs, and they have no problem with fans sharing music, such as lending it and copying it for their friends. But there is a huge step from that to the massive online trading of mp3s. When you have over 5GB of assorted music, more than you could ever hope to listen to and appreciate, can you really call yourself a fan of anything? Or are you just, as they claim, a "commodity" trader? For the vast majority of people Napster is not a community. It's just a market.
Even so, Metallica aren't suing these people for copyright infringement. After all, they are potential fans. All they're asking is for them to stop it and grow up. And maybe learn to listen to music, not just amass it...
"Replaces any file of types ... mp3 with a copy of itself."
I bet Metallica wish they'd written this! Wait a minute...
"Metallica has every right to fight for its interests. But the unleashing of lawyers on more than 330,000 Napster users -- many of them kids -- who allegedly downloaded the band's music last week is an outrage, a punitive and thoughtless assault on privacy and freedom."
That's rich! On the one hand you defend Mettallica's "right to fight for [their] interests". But they can't go after Napster -- after all it isn't any different from FTP since it does have a 'widespread' legal use (NB: you can't even redistribute free MP3.com music due to copyright). And they can't go after the users making their music illegally available (they're accused of serving files, not downloading them - get your facts right!) -- since they're only a bunch of poor confused kids with fast net connections. And it's not even as if they decided to sue anyone for copyright infringement, only trying to get them to stop infringing the law.
But I forget. This is slashdot.
If you live in the UK, do listen to PigleT and visit www.stand.org.uk to protest about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill 2000, which is slated to become law in October. While it too late to stop that now (the Bill's second reading took place on March 6th), a constant stream of intelligent criticism can only serve to educate your probably slightly clueless MP. And remember - as a voter, you will be listened to.
Indeed, I recently received a full reply from my MP, former actress Glenda Jackson. While I disagree with some of what she said, she did at least try to adress the issues I raised. Each time she has to do this, she is forced to think about the issue a bit more, and is a bit more likely to realise that parts of the Bill are intrinsically flawed.
PS If anyone is interested in the text of the reply I will post it.
Dull-named stable releases:
1.0.0 GNOME
1.0.50 October GNOME
Cool-named unstable releases:
1.1.1 Beantown
1.1.2 Curse of the Bambino
1.1.3 Tasty Yellow Banana
1.1.4 Ponies for Sale
Let's just hope there's space for one more 1.1.x before 1.2 arrives!
Does anyone else occasionally get these strange gray lines which refuse to refresh, especially when scrolling up a page?
...can be found on the Microsoft site.
1. There's a difference between imitating GUI concepts (such as curved edges and other 'look and feel' factors) and blatantly copying a piece of copyright art, even if done using the 'look and copy' method rather than the 'cut and paste'. People going on about GUI similarities between WIN95 and MacOS should look at this GIF animation showing a screenshot off sawmill.themes.org, with elements of the original MacOS X screenshot differenced out. Black means identical pixels.
2. Being able to emulate MacOsX's precise look on Win32 and X machines will harm Apple's campaign to market Macs as a trendy alternative - which is why they spent so much time and money developing it. Of course, you are are perfectly entitled to develop a similar look using their ideas. You shouldn't be able to just copy it directly.
3. This isn't about the right to emulate. That was settled in Apple's case versus Microsoft. This is about the right to copy.
As an analogy, think of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Originally a masterpiece. However, any half-decent artist can paint a very good copy of it. The true artist, though, takes the eyes, the smile and the use of color and paints his own masterpiece.
Just found this link. Sweet.
According to this BBC news article, hackers managed to break into UK rail company Railtrack's website, posting a message that due to Y2K all train services would be suspended. Unfortunately this was spotted and corrected quite quickly.
The reason Apple chose Yet Another Licence is because it contains a number of Apple-centric control clauses, which prevent it from being truly free:
... (b) ... or (c) suspend Your rights to use, reproduce, modify, sublicense and distribute the Affected Original Code until a final determination of the claim is made by a court or governmental administrative agency of competent jurisdiction and Apple lifts the suspension as set forth below. Such suspension of rights will be effective immediately upon Apple's posting of a notice to such effect on the Apple web site that is used for implementation of this License. ...
CENTRAL CONTROL OF MODIFICATIONS
2.2 (c) if You Deploy Covered Code containing Modifications made by You, inform others of how to obtain those Modifications by filling out and submitting the information found at http://www.apple.com/publicsour ce/modifications.html, if available.
TERMINATION OF LICENCE
9.1 Infringement. If any portion of, or functionality implemented by, the Original Code becomes the subject of a claim of infringement, Apple may, at its option: (a)
12.1 (c) This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically without notice from Apple if You, at any time during the term of this License, commence an action for patent infringement against Apple.
It seems they already have an appropriate logo :)
There seems to have been a recent trend in window managers such as IceWM and Sawmill to aim for a fast and simple (yet extensible) product which integrates well with a desktop enviroment. People are now looking to their DEs to provide them with the configurability, consistency and inter-operability that they want, and hence no longer require features such as application docks and background selection in a Window Manager. However, people still want control and choice in the feel of their X environment, at a level that shouldn't concern the DEs (a major drawback of KDE, I thought, was the overly strong link between it and kwm). We now have consistency and choice - Linux is really coming of age.
As an aside, I noticed that IceWM is released under the LGPL license. Does anyone know why this is? Also, did this prevent them from being chosen as the default GNOME window manager, when the GNOME team were looking for a lightweight replacement for E (this is before Sawmill came around)?
I think what you say illustrates the difference between scientific patents and software patents. The thing that makes free software possible is the low investment cost - a bit of time and a fair amount of brainpower. It is also why we should be more cautious in providing software the protection afforded by patents.
In the case of medical and scientific advances the (financial) investments are that much greater, and I agree that patenting is a vital means of encouraging research. Ideally, all research would be funded by the government for the good of the community, but I am aware that this is a somewhat impractical utopia.