I am serious. You have manufacturer-supplied drivers for video cards. How many other important components had their drivers provided by the manufacturer?
Ethernet? No, that was written by a kernel hacker. Modem? No, that was written by some Linux hobbiest who knows way more about QAM modulation than I ever will. Southbridge? No, that was also written by a kernel hacker. Northbridge? Yes!..er, wait. That comes with your video card driver. Or you can use one written by a kernel hacker. Hard drive controller? Kernel hacker, again. Mouse? No, that was written by a kernel hacker, based on a standard. Those funky extra keys on your keyboard? No, those were figured out by GNOME and KDE developers.
Compared to every other piece of hardware in your computer, the video card receives an extraordinary amount of Linux support by the manufacturer. People used to complain that NVidia and ATI didn't offer Linux drivers. Now they complain that those drivers are closed, or don't support ancient cards. People will always complain.
The poor guy who sets up the ghost images for the lab I work in needs to satisfy the application software requirements for over fourty classes from our department alone, plus a few from other departments.
One other question, though. Why not just make it so that only the folder/file that it writes to has the permissions set such that only those authorized may read/write to it? We are talking access controls where it can be specified down to the individual user or user group today. We use Novell for per-user authentication, but Windows sees each user as "DLUStudent". All that's really needed, though, is to redirect the GFS directory to the J drive, which is mapped to a student's network storage upon login.
I can pass along the info, but I, a lowly student tutor, am likely to have my information discared. The only time anyone pays attention to me is when I find security flaws.
That happened to me with my Radeon. At that point, the open source driver supported my card, and I didn't have to futz around with building kernel modules every time I tinkered with my kernel.
Somehow, I wiped half my comment just prior to clicking submit. I meant to add that depending on the network for such a high-bandwidth task as graphical terminal services would require additional infrastructure investment. If your LAN gets clogged, your entire system will be slow.
If your LAN goes down, well, there's another vulnerability of routing your services through one or two machines.
I had a PostScript laser printer I'd bought locally for $50, used. I loved it. It was totaled with my car in November, and I'm still waiting on a replacement. (My insurance seems to be dragging.)
I'm a poor college student with a $6K/year job, sharing an apartment with two roommates. If I could afford a decent printer, I'd get one. Deals like the one that landed me my last printer don't come along every day.
My most frequent use of VNC has been to connect to a Linux X desktop behind my friend's cablemodem, from a Windows machine. (I can only use standalone apps.)
When I had two Linux desktops and a Linux laptop, I used X's network functionality a great deal. I loved how it allowed me to seamlessly integrate apps running on multiple systems almost seamlessly into one X display. VNC is capable of serving up single applications from a Linux application server, but it's not nearly as seamless.
Today, I occasionally use x2x to link my laptop and my new desktop system.
Proxy servers and virtual networks like Gnutella and Freenet. You'd need special tools to parse and analyze such data, and your suspect may only be bouncing traffic off of the ISP's customer.
What of the case where a suspect is bouncing traffic off of an ISP's customer, and that customer isn't the target? If an ISP doesn't have the tools to dynamically parse Gnutella or SOCKS traffic, or decrypt Freenet traffic, it's conceivable that they won't have the information law enforcement is looking for.
Funny thing is, with dual-core becoming prevalent, doing timing-sensitive things in software on a Linux system doesn't seem like such a terrible thing anymore.
This is about business computing. Microsoft has a campus. Google has a campus. IBM has several campuses. X-Rite's campus is just a few miles from me. These are not educational facilities.
How can they, they're only allowed to get to what I let them (ahhh, the good old days), there's no more usb ports, no more downloading stuff from the internet, the user gets the applications and access they need and no more. Let me know when you can guard against every vulnerability before it's announced. Drive-by website malware, network worms and email viruses aren't necessarily eliminated just because you've switched to a locked-down terminal server.
For some of the situations I work in, you can't completely lock down the user accounts. Some software is simply written that poorly. (Take, for example, the Gordon Food Service client. Saves all data to the hard disk, in a specific place. No user-accessible option to save it somewhere else.)
I know and love CUPS. But it hasn't always been there for me.
Whatever REAL printer you buy (not those cheap ass Winprinters) will work with CUPS. When I've needed to set up a Linux desktop using existing hardware, I haven't had a choice as to what printer I'd use.
Any printer you WANT to buy, will work with CUPS as long as you stick to HP, Epson and some Lexmark printers. So, as long as I stick to those three brands I'll be fine? Great. When I can afford to buy a printer, I'll keep that in mind.
You can also go with standard 9 and 24 pin dot matrix printers as they were designed with the intelligence to follow a standard developed decades ago. I still don't see why today's printers can't still use the standard parallel port interface emulated over USB with scaling so that you still print in 9 or 24 pin format but that you do it to a much larger virtual medium which then gets represented by a hardware engine in the printer that draws the image using modern, high resolution print heads and inks. Stupid jackasses always trying to kill perfectly usable standards in favor of new, untested and devised by idiots protocols I've got three dot-matrix printers. Two IBM Proprinters and a quiet Epson model whose name escapes me. Dot matrix printouts are subject to bleeding, and generally look like crap when you hand them in for your assignments.
They already emulate the parallel port interface over USB. That's how I hooked up my old z42 inkjet.
As for new protocols over old protocols, perhaps the old protocols didn't support things like detecting paper quality, ink and toner level, and vector graphics? Sure, some of them did. But I doubt 9-pin and 24-pin dot matrix printers did.
I hate the world. That was obvious...
Sounds like it would introduce a single point of failure. One malicious user or virus, and the sytem goes down for everyone. Plus, software needed by different groups often doesn't play well together, leading to irritating misbehavior. Plus, netwo
I wouldn't want something like this campus-wide.
I could see having one terminal server for each department or lab, though. Not only would that localize failures and software requirements, but you wouldn't need to invest in upgrading your existing network infrastructure.
According to Google, SCOX is will open today at $1.00/share. According to Caldera Systems's certificate of incorporation, their stock has a par value of $.001 par value, so their market price is still 1000 times their par value.
Whether or not SCO survives, anyone taking a paycheck from them has already made their cash.
Video cards are already well-supported by their manufacturers. I'd be more interested in seeing wireless drivers, Broadcomm network drivers, and video capture and hardware encoding drivers.
Oh, and don't forget printer drivers. But that's more a userspace thing.
That's pretty cool, but it's not quite the same as Rosetta Code. You've got 18 simple tasks, and RC has 36. You've got 13 programming languages, while RC has 50. This is largely because RC is a wiki, while your site isn't community-expandable.
I received lots of "This has been done before"-type responses, with the most similar site being Code Codex. I created a page on RC, linked off the navigation bar, listing all the sites Slashdotters mentioned.
Slashdot Mirror
I am serious. You have manufacturer-supplied drivers for video cards. How many other important components had their drivers provided by the manufacturer?
Ethernet? No, that was written by a kernel hacker.
Modem? No, that was written by some Linux hobbiest who knows way more about QAM modulation than I ever will.
Southbridge? No, that was also written by a kernel hacker.
Northbridge? Yes!..er, wait. That comes with your video card driver. Or you can use one written by a kernel hacker.
Hard drive controller? Kernel hacker, again.
Mouse? No, that was written by a kernel hacker, based on a standard.
Those funky extra keys on your keyboard? No, those were figured out by GNOME and KDE developers.
Compared to every other piece of hardware in your computer, the video card receives an extraordinary amount of Linux support by the manufacturer. People used to complain that NVidia and ATI didn't offer Linux drivers. Now they complain that those drivers are closed, or don't support ancient cards. People will always complain.
I can pass along the info, but I, a lowly student tutor, am likely to have my information discared. The only time anyone pays attention to me is when I find security flaws.
That happened to me with my Radeon. At that point, the open source driver supported my card, and I didn't have to futz around with building kernel modules every time I tinkered with my kernel.
The same thing is true of the Atheros chipset; Radio power is controlled by software. That's why madwifi has a binary blob for firmware.
Somehow, I wiped half my comment just prior to clicking submit. I meant to add that depending on the network for such a high-bandwidth task as graphical terminal services would require additional infrastructure investment. If your LAN gets clogged, your entire system will be slow.
If your LAN goes down, well, there's another vulnerability of routing your services through one or two machines.
Take another look. He's got an uptime of nine hours. I doubt the machine's been doing nothing in all that time.
You use the OS that comes with the PC?
I swap out the hard drive and install my OS of choice. (I keep the hard drive, Just In Case.)
I had a PostScript laser printer I'd bought locally for $50, used. I loved it. It was totaled with my car in November, and I'm still waiting on a replacement. (My insurance seems to be dragging.)
I'm a poor college student with a $6K/year job, sharing an apartment with two roommates. If I could afford a decent printer, I'd get one. Deals like the one that landed me my last printer don't come along every day.
My most frequent use of VNC has been to connect to a Linux X desktop behind my friend's cablemodem, from a Windows machine. (I can only use standalone apps.)
When I had two Linux desktops and a Linux laptop, I used X's network functionality a great deal. I loved how it allowed me to seamlessly integrate apps running on multiple systems almost seamlessly into one X display. VNC is capable of serving up single applications from a Linux application server, but it's not nearly as seamless.
Today, I occasionally use x2x to link my laptop and my new desktop system.
Why VNC? Wouldn't you be better served running the X protocol natively over the network? That's what it was designed for...
Proxy servers and virtual networks like Gnutella and Freenet. You'd need special tools to parse and analyze such data, and your suspect may only be bouncing traffic off of the ISP's customer.
What of the case where a suspect is bouncing traffic off of an ISP's customer, and that customer isn't the target? If an ISP doesn't have the tools to dynamically parse Gnutella or SOCKS traffic, or decrypt Freenet traffic, it's conceivable that they won't have the information law enforcement is looking for.
Freenet and Gnutella? In such cases, you may not trying to nab the ISP's customer, but a user of a virtual network the customer resides as a node on.
That's my understanding, too.
That doesn't mean people can't still purchase their stock, though. They just have to know where to go to buy it.
I'll pass that along to the guy who prepares the ghost image. I think he hates it when I get advice from Slashdot. :-)
Funny thing is, with dual-core becoming prevalent, doing timing-sensitive things in software on a Linux system doesn't seem like such a terrible thing anymore.
Yeah, I know. But he called me a liar, and I haven't had any caffeine or food today.
For some of the situations I work in, you can't completely lock down the user accounts. Some software is simply written that poorly. (Take, for example, the Gordon Food Service client. Saves all data to the hard disk, in a specific place. No user-accessible option to save it somewhere else.)
They already emulate the parallel port interface over USB. That's how I hooked up my old z42 inkjet.
As for new protocols over old protocols, perhaps the old protocols didn't support things like detecting paper quality, ink and toner level, and vector graphics? Sure, some of them did. But I doubt 9-pin and 24-pin dot matrix printers did. I hate the world. That was obvious...
Sounds like it would introduce a single point of failure. One malicious user or virus, and the sytem goes down for everyone. Plus, software needed by different groups often doesn't play well together, leading to irritating misbehavior. Plus, netwo
I wouldn't want something like this campus-wide.
I could see having one terminal server for each department or lab, though. Not only would that localize failures and software requirements, but you wouldn't need to invest in upgrading your existing network infrastructure.
I'm reading Snow Crash for the first time, and I'm only through the first four chapters. Second Life sounds remarkably like the Street.
According to Google, SCOX is will open today at $1.00/share. According to Caldera Systems's certificate of incorporation, their stock has a par value of $.001 par value, so their market price is still 1000 times their par value.
Whether or not SCO survives, anyone taking a paycheck from them has already made their cash.
Video cards are already well-supported by their manufacturers. I'd be more interested in seeing wireless drivers, Broadcomm network drivers, and video capture and hardware encoding drivers.
Oh, and don't forget printer drivers. But that's more a userspace thing.
That's pretty cool, but it's not quite the same as Rosetta Code. You've got 18 simple tasks, and RC has 36. You've got 13 programming languages, while RC has 50. This is largely because RC is a wiki, while your site isn't community-expandable.
I received lots of "This has been done before"-type responses, with the most similar site being Code Codex. I created a page on RC, linked off the navigation bar, listing all the sites Slashdotters mentioned.