As a web developer and designer, my biggest worry is that a significant proportion of my target audience (too large to ignore) will be stuck with IE6 for the forseable future, and that will further complicate the development process.
So true. When Microsoft dropped support for IE5 it took several months of complaining until I was allowed to remove it from our supported browser list at work... I just wish we'd been able to do it much, much sooner.
legal action against Theo van Gogh was most certainly justified.
On what grounds? Yes, he made some deliberately provocative comments, but no more than a number of radical Muslim clerics who also reside in European countries. Or are inflammatory comments only to be the preserve of a minority of Muslims? If their creed is so strong, then why do they take offensive at the slightest percieved "attack". For instance, the recent farrago about the Apple store in New York that happened to be - gasp - in the shape of a cube, and was mentioned as being a "Mecca" for Apple fans in a third party report. Apart from misreporting that alchohol was on sale in the store (because of course, whisky is not at all popular in the middle east) why didn't the websites that and newspapers that recorded this is an offense to Muslims point out Steve Jobs track record with cube shaped stuff? Could it be that then the over-inflated inferiority complex of their readership couldn't be massaged some more?
Not sure if that's the case in the UK. I once had a part-time job in a supermarket when I was a teenager, where one of the full-timers was sacked for trying to take a damaged bottle of beer home. It was a large two-litre plastic bottle that had been placed next to a rubbish skip (I think they're called "dumpsters" in the US), and the guy was apprehended as he wandered past the front of the store. The manager knew the bottle was destined for landfill, but still sacked they guy.
Only my opinion, but as an owner of a Dell Inspiron and an Apple Powerbook, I can only recommend Dell laptops if you're on a very tight budget and will only give it light use. Firstly, Dell use the cheapest components available - don't just compare size of disks or RAM, compare how fast they are. My Inspiron has had two new keyboards and one new motherboard (the onboard ethernet packed up - a common problem according to the engineer who fixed it), and wont boot if certain USB devices are plugged in. Finally, the lid hinges are beginning to split which is also what happened to my previous Inspiron. The Powerbook has had no hardware problems, is equipped with a much more pleasant keyboard and has much longer battery life.
groups like labor unions, the ACLU, and the NRA can't run issue-specific ads.
But looked at the other way round, why should an unelected single issue organisation influence the vote for government? Just because the NRA for instance, doesn't like a party or candidates policy on guns, should that allow them to influence an election that should be about the whole policy platform? Think about the Swift Boat Veterans at the last US presidential election - what relevance did their pressure group interest have in relation to the policies of a future Kerry presidency?
Well, with one of the examples the article cites, Qt, you also get support from the company that makes the software. In the case of Qt, there aren't many other commercial cross-platform toolkits left - most of them got eclipsed by Java in the late 1990's.
So a pair of crackers get up on stage and describe an exploit with no proof and some people are surprised when it's a hoax. When you consider the primary motivation of many crackers, the hoax shouldn't come as a surprise. Every cracker or wannabe cracker that I've ever met is a sad individual with low self-esteem looking to counter this with a bit of ego boosting. Why else do a lot of the more theatrical exploit demonstations come with an obligatory swipe at the quality of the code they have supposeldy exploited? The truth is that many crackers are piss poor programmers who spend ages poring over code that they themselves lack the ability to have written. When they find a possible vulnerability, rather than reporting it to the authors and waiting for a timely security update to be released, they try and boost their own egos by demonstrations at some toe-curlingly named conference.
correct me if I'm wrong-- these cards already work in Linux.
IIRC they require a binary only blob that runs in userspace, and it's x86 only. Even if it was open source, I can understand why they'd want to do it in userspace given that the Linux driver ABI is such a moving target.
Fujitsu do a lot of integration work, which means they may have installed SCO Unix at MacDonalds in the first place. Changing the registers isn't really a good indicator that they're changing OS.
On a related note, I was amazed to the Blockbuster Video chain still using DEC VT420 terminals a couple of years back. I wonder if their backend was still running on VMS...
Not the current version. Sun's original flavour of Unix was based on BSD, but for Sun OS 5 they based it on SVR4 from AT&T. A few bits of the last BSD based version were ported across (hence the/usr/ucb directory). The SVR4 version was called Solaris, but in a typical Sun marketing exercise they later renamed the last BSD version Solaris 1 and the current SVR4 version Solaris 2.
Which version of Firefox did you install? I'm running a native build from pkgsrc, but I've encountered occasional problems in the past with some of the emulated Linux binaries.
Every time there's a NetBSD article on Slashdot, up pops a message about it not working on the Vax. I'm beginning to suspect it's the same individual, as the message is always worded in a very similar way - as a none too subtle attack on NetBSD's cross platform capabilities. Just for the record my Vax, SGI Indy, SparcStation 5 and Dell laptop are all running NetBSD 3.0.1, the most recent release. The Vax previously ran 2.1, 2.0, 1.6.2, and 1.5.3 without problems. Around the time of 2.0 I was actually running it on three different Vax machines (3100 m76, 3100 m80 and 4000 VLC). Never had a single problem installing from CD or running NetBSD.
Now, getting NetBSD running on the last generation of Apple's 12" Powerbook (model 6,8) is a different matter - but I've been unable to get OpenBSD or YellowDog Linux installed on it either...
Just look at gunshots; people fly in the air after catching a bullet, when in reality they wouldn't even fall over.
Depends what they're shot with. At the end of The Day Of The Jackal, the Jackal is shot with a short burst from a sub-machine gun at close range. The impact throws him several feet in the air and his body hits a wall. This is pretty realistic, although a longer burst at that range and angle would have literally ripped him in half.
All of these things are things you would know if you actually LOOKED at the code you so readily criticize. Linux is free and freely available. Get a copy from kernel.org and see for yourself.
What the fuck do you think I was doing when I came across the shitty driver in question? Well if you want to believe that Linux is a decent solution for embedded systems then go ahead and use it. Personally I'll stick with NetBSD where I get an entire, well integrated operating system, not some hastily thrown together mess based on an old RedHat distribution.
No, my post is not full of FUD, as I experienced the lack of Linux driver portability when trying to get a network driver working on a PowerPC embedded board. The driver made assumptions about the endianness of the host system as it was written for x86 - a typical portability fuck up. Great care has been taken with support for different bus architectures in NetBSD, which makes drivers much more readily portable than with Linux where there is a huge amount of duplication in driver code that should be abstracted away.
As for Linux supporting more architectures than NetBSD, that's not quite the case. Many Linux porting efforts stagnate as major kernel subsystems and their APIs are overhauled with little attempt at backwards compatability. As a result many ports (and drivers) fail to build as the authors quit trying to play catchup. The NetBSD codebase is cross compiled to all the supported architectures that make up a release on a nightly basis, so it becomes apparent much more readily when breakage has occurred than with the Linux kernel.
Linux more portable than NetBSD? If you look at the number of lines of machine dependent code per-architecuture, then Linux is far less portable than NetBSD. Which is what you'd expect from an operating system designed specifically for the 80386. NetBSD on the other hand is a successor of the first Unix codebase, which was rewritten in C with portability as a key goal. Also, in Linux device drivers are usually tied to one architecture. On NetBSD, a PCI driver for a network card will work on any architecture with a PCI bus. So in fact, more of the code in Linux is machine dependent than it first appears!
Having worked on an embedded system (Arcom), I found it easier to ignore the piss poor Linux kit that came with the machines and use NetBSD instead. The result was a smaller operating system and more space for my application code.
Mein Kampf is legal to own in Germany, and existing copies may be traded. However, the Bavarian state government owns the copyright and does not allow printing of new editions in Germany. The state government has also attempted to block publication in other European countries, but without success. When I studied modern European history at university, I did several modules on Nazi Germany. Mein Kampf wasn't on our reading list, but the university library held several copies - one of which was a period copy printed in an almost indecipherable font (Fraktur I believe).
Interesting, in light of some of the NetBSD issues posted by Charles... Maybe this is OSS evolution in action.
The real story behind Charles Hannums little rant has now been revealed - see the NetBSD-users mailing list. It turns out that Hannum had fucked up the day to day running of The NetBSD Foundation, to the point were it was not conforming to the regulations in Delaware where it was incorporated. Christos Zoulas and others sorted the mess out, but Hannum was totally uncooperative (the "fraudulent coup" crap that he was harping on about was him being ignored after being a jerk).
All the linux distributions have the same kernel and the same toolchain.
Only the same kernel in name. Check out the source package for the kernels that come with your distribution. They will have hundreds of patches that the vendor has applied to the vanilla version - it may say kernel version 2.6.8 for instance, but it will be substantially different to the vanilla 2.6.8 kernel that Linus Torvalds blessed with holy penguin pee.
As for the toolchain, that would be the same one the BSD's use.
Slashdot Mirror
SGI created OpenGL.
As a web developer and designer, my biggest worry is that a significant proportion of my target audience (too large to ignore) will be stuck with IE6 for the forseable future, and that will further complicate the development process.
So true. When Microsoft dropped support for IE5 it took several months of complaining until I was allowed to remove it from our supported browser list at work ... I just wish we'd been able to do it much, much sooner.
legal action against Theo van Gogh was most certainly justified.
On what grounds? Yes, he made some deliberately provocative comments, but no more than a number of radical Muslim clerics who also reside in European countries. Or are inflammatory comments only to be the preserve of a minority of Muslims? If their creed is so strong, then why do they take offensive at the slightest percieved "attack". For instance, the recent farrago about the Apple store in New York that happened to be - gasp - in the shape of a cube, and was mentioned as being a "Mecca" for Apple fans in a third party report. Apart from misreporting that alchohol was on sale in the store (because of course, whisky is not at all popular in the middle east) why didn't the websites that and newspapers that recorded this is an offense to Muslims point out Steve Jobs track record with cube shaped stuff? Could it be that then the over-inflated inferiority complex of their readership couldn't be massaged some more?
AFAIK, trash isn't yours once it is on the curb.
Not sure if that's the case in the UK. I once had a part-time job in a supermarket when I was a teenager, where one of the full-timers was sacked for trying to take a damaged bottle of beer home. It was a large two-litre plastic bottle that had been placed next to a rubbish skip (I think they're called "dumpsters" in the US), and the guy was apprehended as he wandered past the front of the store. The manager knew the bottle was destined for landfill, but still sacked they guy.
You're not running a shitload of security updates if you haven't rebooted in 55 days.
Only my opinion, but as an owner of a Dell Inspiron and an Apple Powerbook, I can only recommend Dell laptops if you're on a very tight budget and will only give it light use. Firstly, Dell use the cheapest components available - don't just compare size of disks or RAM, compare how fast they are. My Inspiron has had two new keyboards and one new motherboard (the onboard ethernet packed up - a common problem according to the engineer who fixed it), and wont boot if certain USB devices are plugged in. Finally, the lid hinges are beginning to split which is also what happened to my previous Inspiron. The Powerbook has had no hardware problems, is equipped with a much more pleasant keyboard and has much longer battery life.
It's cheap compared to the "other" price for Photoshop
Mmm, like a Porsche Boxster is cheap compared to a Porsche 911 Carerra.
groups like labor unions, the ACLU, and the NRA can't run issue-specific ads.
But looked at the other way round, why should an unelected single issue organisation influence the vote for government? Just because the NRA for instance, doesn't like a party or candidates policy on guns, should that allow them to influence an election that should be about the whole policy platform? Think about the Swift Boat Veterans at the last US presidential election - what relevance did their pressure group interest have in relation to the policies of a future Kerry presidency?
Well, with one of the examples the article cites, Qt, you also get support from the company that makes the software. In the case of Qt, there aren't many other commercial cross-platform toolkits left - most of them got eclipsed by Java in the late 1990's.
So a pair of crackers get up on stage and describe an exploit with no proof and some people are surprised when it's a hoax. When you consider the primary motivation of many crackers, the hoax shouldn't come as a surprise. Every cracker or wannabe cracker that I've ever met is a sad individual with low self-esteem looking to counter this with a bit of ego boosting. Why else do a lot of the more theatrical exploit demonstations come with an obligatory swipe at the quality of the code they have supposeldy exploited? The truth is that many crackers are piss poor programmers who spend ages poring over code that they themselves lack the ability to have written. When they find a possible vulnerability, rather than reporting it to the authors and waiting for a timely security update to be released, they try and boost their own egos by demonstrations at some toe-curlingly named conference.
correct me if I'm wrong-- these cards already work in Linux.
IIRC they require a binary only blob that runs in userspace, and it's x86 only. Even if it was open source, I can understand why they'd want to do it in userspace given that the Linux driver ABI is such a moving target.
You have to remember that the only other language he's programmed in is Visual Basic.
Fujitsu do a lot of integration work, which means they may have installed SCO Unix at MacDonalds in the first place. Changing the registers isn't really a good indicator that they're changing OS.
On a related note, I was amazed to the Blockbuster Video chain still using DEC VT420 terminals a couple of years back. I wonder if their backend was still running on VMS ...
Sun's Solaris is based on BSD
Not the current version. Sun's original flavour of Unix was based on BSD, but for Sun OS 5 they based it on SVR4 from AT&T. A few bits of the last BSD based version were ported across (hence the /usr/ucb directory). The SVR4 version was called Solaris, but in a typical Sun marketing exercise they later renamed the last BSD version Solaris 1 and the current SVR4 version Solaris 2.
As any (Motif programming) fool knows, a gadget is a lightweight widget. Except they ended up being even more heavyweight so nobody used them.
Which version of Firefox did you install? I'm running a native build from pkgsrc, but I've encountered occasional problems in the past with some of the emulated Linux binaries.
Every time there's a NetBSD article on Slashdot, up pops a message about it not working on the Vax. I'm beginning to suspect it's the same individual, as the message is always worded in a very similar way - as a none too subtle attack on NetBSD's cross platform capabilities. Just for the record my Vax, SGI Indy, SparcStation 5 and Dell laptop are all running NetBSD 3.0.1, the most recent release. The Vax previously ran 2.1, 2.0, 1.6.2, and 1.5.3 without problems. Around the time of 2.0 I was actually running it on three different Vax machines (3100 m76, 3100 m80 and 4000 VLC). Never had a single problem installing from CD or running NetBSD.
Now, getting NetBSD running on the last generation of Apple's 12" Powerbook (model 6,8) is a different matter - but I've been unable to get OpenBSD or YellowDog Linux installed on it either ...
Just look at gunshots; people fly in the air after catching a bullet, when in reality they wouldn't even fall over.
Depends what they're shot with. At the end of The Day Of The Jackal, the Jackal is shot with a short burst from a sub-machine gun at close range. The impact throws him several feet in the air and his body hits a wall. This is pretty realistic, although a longer burst at that range and angle would have literally ripped him in half.
All of these things are things you would know if you actually LOOKED at the code you so readily criticize. Linux is free and freely available. Get a copy from kernel.org and see for yourself.
What the fuck do you think I was doing when I came across the shitty driver in question? Well if you want to believe that Linux is a decent solution for embedded systems then go ahead and use it. Personally I'll stick with NetBSD where I get an entire, well integrated operating system, not some hastily thrown together mess based on an old RedHat distribution.
No, my post is not full of FUD, as I experienced the lack of Linux driver portability when trying to get a network driver working on a PowerPC embedded board. The driver made assumptions about the endianness of the host system as it was written for x86 - a typical portability fuck up. Great care has been taken with support for different bus architectures in NetBSD, which makes drivers much more readily portable than with Linux where there is a huge amount of duplication in driver code that should be abstracted away.
As for Linux supporting more architectures than NetBSD, that's not quite the case. Many Linux porting efforts stagnate as major kernel subsystems and their APIs are overhauled with little attempt at backwards compatability. As a result many ports (and drivers) fail to build as the authors quit trying to play catchup. The NetBSD codebase is cross compiled to all the supported architectures that make up a release on a nightly basis, so it becomes apparent much more readily when breakage has occurred than with the Linux kernel.
Linux more portable than NetBSD? If you look at the number of lines of machine dependent code per-architecuture, then Linux is far less portable than NetBSD. Which is what you'd expect from an operating system designed specifically for the 80386. NetBSD on the other hand is a successor of the first Unix codebase, which was rewritten in C with portability as a key goal. Also, in Linux device drivers are usually tied to one architecture. On NetBSD, a PCI driver for a network card will work on any architecture with a PCI bus. So in fact, more of the code in Linux is machine dependent than it first appears!
Having worked on an embedded system (Arcom), I found it easier to ignore the piss poor Linux kit that came with the machines and use NetBSD instead. The result was a smaller operating system and more space for my application code.
Mein Kampf is legal to own in Germany, and existing copies may be traded. However, the Bavarian state government owns the copyright and does not allow printing of new editions in Germany. The state government has also attempted to block publication in other European countries, but without success. When I studied modern European history at university, I did several modules on Nazi Germany. Mein Kampf wasn't on our reading list, but the university library held several copies - one of which was a period copy printed in an almost indecipherable font (Fraktur I believe).
Interesting, in light of some of the NetBSD issues posted by Charles... Maybe this is OSS evolution in action.
The real story behind Charles Hannums little rant has now been revealed - see the NetBSD-users mailing list. It turns out that Hannum had fucked up the day to day running of The NetBSD Foundation, to the point were it was not conforming to the regulations in Delaware where it was incorporated. Christos Zoulas and others sorted the mess out, but Hannum was totally uncooperative (the "fraudulent coup" crap that he was harping on about was him being ignored after being a jerk).
Nah, I preferred running Windows on a SPARC based Sun box using an i386 daughter board. And that was 10 years ago!
All the linux distributions have the same kernel and the same toolchain.
Only the same kernel in name. Check out the source package for the kernels that come with your distribution. They will have hundreds of patches that the vendor has applied to the vanilla version - it may say kernel version 2.6.8 for instance, but it will be substantially different to the vanilla 2.6.8 kernel that Linus Torvalds blessed with holy penguin pee.
As for the toolchain, that would be the same one the BSD's use.