Hershey chocolate isn't bad. You just don't like it because it's not some exotic imported stuff. Everything's better if it's unique, right? Right..
Honestly, I'm not a huge chocolate lover to begin with but I've tried all sorts of different types and I still think Hershey's chocolate is pretty good.
And not only the embedded world
on
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GCC is the staple of the entire OSS/GNU/Linux world. While it's possible to run alternate compilers on Linux and some people do, the majority of OSS is compiled on GCC for the same reason the majority of OSS is written on Linux - it's free, it's available, and it works well.
It doesn't much matter if the Intel compiler can out perform GCC on x86 because people will continue to use GCC.
I can only see GCC getting better and better over time.
But on the bright side.. a lot of software compiled by GCC is open source, so people fix it!
Ahh, the cost of advancement.. It's frustrating when GCC/glibc breaks but somehow everyone's linux boxes keep on truckin'.
GCC/glibc are the staples of the OSS world, and I think the devs do a great job. They try to make things compatible and keep things as smooth as possible but sometimes it just can't happen if the system is to move forward.
As the entire GNU/Linux suite matures, problems like incompatibility between version skews will continue to be less of a problem.
You're right but they still need full staffs to be answering the phone when people.. well, answer the phone. We get 400 spams a day because it takes no staff and close to no effort. And, you can sell crap that you don't make big profit on because it cost you almost nothing to market it. If you had to staff a call center, with rent, electricity, computers, phones, people...
I'm ruthless when I get a machine calling me - if I say hello and someone doesn't say hello in the first second or two, I hang up, even if I hear someone start to talk as I'm pushing the button. And forget those "We have an important message for you, please stay on the line" calls - if it's so important, call me yourself.
If someone has to be on the other end of the phone when you answer it, it will be a lot more dificult to get 150 calls a day out to every house. On the other hand, with spam, you just hit "Send" and you're done.
But I do see this becomming a problem. Maybe there will be a setting you can set to block all calls from IP, rendering the entire technology useless.
I won't have a problem completely disconnecting my phone if I get 15 calls a day from telemarketers though.
There's two primary differences between AD design and conventional LDAP directory designs.
While AD is extensible and you can use it in nearly any instance where you could use a "standard" LDAP directory, it's designed for a corporate network. The basic structure, client access, and replication topology of AD is meant to serve this end. It's less flexible, but it works really well.
AD was created in 2000, where broadband and otherwise high speed connections were quickly becoming commonplace between company offices. Because of this, AD pretty much replicates the entire database to any of the other DC's in the domain. There's not much in the way of partitioning. While this would be a nightmare in the days of 56K lines being the strongest, or dial-up, now a days it's not all that bad. And you end up with a fully functional database in each location, if you need one. In this way, it's much easier to organize AD into logical groups instead of geographical groups.
At my company, AD is designed first by IT policy-user type/Security policy, then by geographic region.
On the other hand, LDAP itself has been around for quite some time and many conventional practices involve partitioning off the database into replicas only necessary for each site. While this makes good sense for the most part, it also complicates things. Most LDAP admins would never imagine replicating the entire directory out to each site, and maybe I wouldn't either - but with Active Directory it works because it assumes faster links, and it's right, in the year 2005.
If I were to design a corporate directory with OpenLDAP, I'd probably model some of the design after a typical corporate AD setup.
I do think that OSS 'replacements' for a lot of big and necessary software (Office, for example) will match the quality of the competition (I will fully admit that Office 2003 is quite good), sometimes it won't, and sometimes you can't wait.
When you have very viable alternative free software to choose from, maybe it will promote much better quality commercial software?
egime also régime Pronunciation Key (r-zhm, r-) n.
1.
1. A form of government: a fascist regime.
2. A government in power; administration: suffered under the new regime.
2. A prevailing social system or pattern.
3. The period during which a particular administration or system prevails.
4. A regulated system, as of diet and exercise; a regimen.
So, you CAN call the Bush Administration a Regime, as it fits not one but two of these definitions. It says nothing about being a good or evil regime, you'll note.
The thing is - I don't mind paying for software. One of the problems I see with OSS/GPL is that although I get tons and tons of great software for almost no cost, it also turns people against paying for ANY software.
Something like TurboTax is worth it, I think. I mean, like you said, it does take a bit of effort to make sure your software has every single applicable tax law set up, and it needs to be accurate. While it IS software, it's also a service.
I really feel as though the core components of computers need to be free, and open. This would include the OS and the key applications like browsers. But add-on specialty software doesn't HAVE to be free. Turbotax is one of these things.
The Mac mini is all well and good and all, but you can't really do much to expand the thing and that's not really my thing. With any new PC I'd want to be able to throw in a new graphics board every once in awhile and maybe a better, more versitile sound card.
It's cheap and that does solve the price problem, but at the cost of options.
I'd really like to be able to get myself a nice near-top of the line Mac (doesn't need to be dual processors) with 1GB memory minimum for less then $800. But on the Apple site, the closest you can get is a 1.8Ghz machine with 256MB and a low-end video board for $1500. For $1500 I could build one kick ass AMD box with 2GB ram and a SATA raid with a top of the line video board.
For someone who's not sure if they'll like the Mac like myself (will it sit on the desk and do nothing? Will I never use it? Will I love it?) it's kinda a high cost to entry. And it wouldn't be fair to judge the Mac based on the Mac Mini. You know what I mean?
I know the one button mouse can be replaced, and I'd do that as soon as possible, but it's still so annoying! Come on apple! Give up the single button mouse crap. It's more of a persistent annoyance then an actual problem. And maybe it's because every mac I've ever sat at only has the single button mouse. There's other reasons, but I'd rather not get into it =)
"Do you mean the way the menu bar changes when you switch applications?"
Yea, exactly. I'm sure I could get used to it to some degree, but every other GUI I've ever used has menu bars as part of the windows. It's true that not all UI's have to conform with the rest but when I use a Mac I find it confusing sometimes when there's many windows up on the screen - which one is the one showing the title bar? Instead of being able to click the window I want where the menus are, I have to click the window, then roll the mouse to the menu bar and make my selection. I just don't like it.
I like the Windows interface. I find it to be quick and effecient. I don't like the whole monopoly thing and the security and reliability (or lack thereof) but the UI is solid. Maybe that's why I like KDE - it takes many of the design elements of Windows that I like. If they just refine KDE a little more.. standardize on some of the configuration elements and such..
Well, that's the thing. I mean, with OSS projects you often get what PearPC is - it works, it's getting better, more features, etc. Very rough around the edges.
A commercial vendor could step in, put a nice face on it, make it more user friendly, and sell it. They could take their changes to the GPL code and hand it back to PearPC.
Crossover Office is a very comparable situation. They use Wine and make it work for what they need it for, put a nice installer on it, and integrate it into Gnome and KDE. They sell it. And they are major contributers to the Wine project. Everyone benefits!
I think it's pretty obvious that this guy is selling PearPC. He'll probably get busted and shut down. And he could have avoided it all by using the Crossover model. Some people are just too greedy.
On my AthlonXP 3000+ it's actually not that bad. It's NOT FAST. But it's usable.
"You need a real live Mac if you want to appreciate OSX."
I don't really want to appreciate it. I just wanna test stuff on it.
I really would like to get a Macintosh some day to play with, but when I look at the price of a nice new shiney AMD box versus a new Mac... the price is just too much of a deterrant. Sad, but true. While I've always been very happy with x86 over the years and don't see myself ever accepting the one-button mouse and the dancing title bar, it would still be a fun machine to have around. You know, next to the A4000 and the Alpha I got here too.
If Apple would lower their prices, they'd sell a lot more macs and get more marketshare. But hey, maybe not. I'm no marketing expert.
Like the other guy said, you need a PowerPC machine already in order to use MOL. Basically, you need a Mac, running Linux, in order for you to run MacOS on MacOnLinux.
PearPC runs on x86 hardware, enabling you to run MacOS on an Intel or AMD machine. And it's way slower! Terribly slow. But it's actually usable if you have a very fast machine, networking works, and sound is on the way. It's not production quality but it's real cool.
"I don't want to know the exact criteria by which passengers are selected for more intensive searches; that information could help terrorists figure out how to avoid extra scrutiny"
Security through obscurity doesn't work. It doesn't work in computer software and it doesn't work at the airport.
Keeping these procedures/rules/whatever a secret only serves to allow officials to harass people whenever they want for whatever reason they want. They'll search you because they don't like your haircut, or your skin color, or the jeans you're wearing, and there isn't shit you can do about it.
If the rules were written out clearly for everyone to see it wouldn't help terrorists any, because they have time on their side and can discover the rules with simple trial and error. What it WOULD do is prevent the citizens from being harassed from our own government.
Because of the false sense of security provided by keeping them "secret," we're actually making things worse.
While I agree with the other points about patents, I don't necessarily agree with this one:
"You want to patent something, you should have to get one working first"
The problem with this is that the big corporations could have an unfair advantage by being able to produce things faster then anyone else. So, if they find out (by whatever means at their disposal) that your small company is trying to build something to patent it, they could just go and do it before you and patent it themselves.
However, I do feel as though you should prove intent to build and capacity to build whatever a patent describes, before it's granted.
But right now, asking anything more from the patent office is silly because they can't even handle themselves properly as it is; granting patents to people for the most ridiculous things.
The information about previous bugs in IE are available on various sites (I don't feel the need to go dig them up just to please you) and those are just the ones that we know about. Microsoft is sure to have plenty of other bugs in their bug tracking systems that we don't know about.
While there's bugs in Mozilla/Firefox and there will be more dug up in the days to come, I feel as though they will be less abundant and easier to fix as Mozilla/Firefox are bound to standards, not proprietary extensions that can be more difficult to fix without breaking things.
" I'm pointing out that one should be careful in making broad assumptions about the future."
Just as I was pointing out to the parent of my post that Firefox isn't IE so you can't assume it will have the same problems as IE if it became the #1 browser.
I genuinly feel that the Mozilla/Firefox platform is more stable then IE ever has been, and will continue to improve. While there's bugs in all software, sticking to standards helps the Mozilla/Firefox team fix problems in their applications more effectively because they are not bound to protect some out-of-band feature that they put in to keep people on their products.
You're assuming that Firefox has the same amount of bugs and vulnerabilities that IE does and it's not the case.
A lot of why IE has been so problematic is that during their war for the browser they "extended" the crap out of it, adding a lot of out-of-standard enhancements and extensions. IE has countless API's that keep web sites and applications stuck on IE and making it harder to switch to something else (really, no different then anything else Microsoft has ever made.)
Firefox is open source, it adheres to standards more strictly, and it's a lot more light-weight. There's less opportunity for malware to get in with Firefox, and if there's a security flaw it's fixed a lot faster. On the other hand, because of IE's extensions and extra functionality, it makes it much more difficult for Microsoft to back off on all the extra (and not soundly designed) features because everyone is stuck on them.
But it doesn't work like that. When verisign is signing certs for companies that call themselves "Click YES to view this web page!!!" in order to get people to install spyware, then what good is it?
I think the SSL encryption part itself should be good enough, and all this trusted CA crap just needs to go away.
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Hershey chocolate isn't bad. You just don't like it because it's not some exotic imported stuff. Everything's better if it's unique, right? Right..
Honestly, I'm not a huge chocolate lover to begin with but I've tried all sorts of different types and I still think Hershey's chocolate is pretty good.
GCC is the staple of the entire OSS/GNU/Linux world. While it's possible to run alternate compilers on Linux and some people do, the majority of OSS is compiled on GCC for the same reason the majority of OSS is written on Linux - it's free, it's available, and it works well.
It doesn't much matter if the Intel compiler can out perform GCC on x86 because people will continue to use GCC.
I can only see GCC getting better and better over time.
But on the bright side.. a lot of software compiled by GCC is open source, so people fix it!
Ahh, the cost of advancement.. It's frustrating when GCC/glibc breaks but somehow everyone's linux boxes keep on truckin'.
GCC/glibc are the staples of the OSS world, and I think the devs do a great job. They try to make things compatible and keep things as smooth as possible but sometimes it just can't happen if the system is to move forward.
As the entire GNU/Linux suite matures, problems like incompatibility between version skews will continue to be less of a problem.
You're right but they still need full staffs to be answering the phone when people.. well, answer the phone. We get 400 spams a day because it takes no staff and close to no effort. And, you can sell crap that you don't make big profit on because it cost you almost nothing to market it. If you had to staff a call center, with rent, electricity, computers, phones, people...
I'm ruthless when I get a machine calling me - if I say hello and someone doesn't say hello in the first second or two, I hang up, even if I hear someone start to talk as I'm pushing the button. And forget those "We have an important message for you, please stay on the line" calls - if it's so important, call me yourself.
If someone has to be on the other end of the phone when you answer it, it will be a lot more dificult to get 150 calls a day out to every house. On the other hand, with spam, you just hit "Send" and you're done.
But I do see this becomming a problem. Maybe there will be a setting you can set to block all calls from IP, rendering the entire technology useless.
I won't have a problem completely disconnecting my phone if I get 15 calls a day from telemarketers though.
There's two primary differences between AD design and conventional LDAP directory designs.
While AD is extensible and you can use it in nearly any instance where you could use a "standard" LDAP directory, it's designed for a corporate network. The basic structure, client access, and replication topology of AD is meant to serve this end. It's less flexible, but it works really well.
AD was created in 2000, where broadband and otherwise high speed connections were quickly becoming commonplace between company offices. Because of this, AD pretty much replicates the entire database to any of the other DC's in the domain. There's not much in the way of partitioning. While this would be a nightmare in the days of 56K lines being the strongest, or dial-up, now a days it's not all that bad. And you end up with a fully functional database in each location, if you need one. In this way, it's much easier to organize AD into logical groups instead of geographical groups.
At my company, AD is designed first by IT policy-user type/Security policy, then by geographic region.
On the other hand, LDAP itself has been around for quite some time and many conventional practices involve partitioning off the database into replicas only necessary for each site. While this makes good sense for the most part, it also complicates things. Most LDAP admins would never imagine replicating the entire directory out to each site, and maybe I wouldn't either - but with Active Directory it works because it assumes faster links, and it's right, in the year 2005.
If I were to design a corporate directory with OpenLDAP, I'd probably model some of the design after a typical corporate AD setup.
That's a good point, and I feel the same way.
I do think that OSS 'replacements' for a lot of big and necessary software (Office, for example) will match the quality of the competition (I will fully admit that Office 2003 is quite good), sometimes it won't, and sometimes you can't wait.
When you have very viable alternative free software to choose from, maybe it will promote much better quality commercial software?
From Dictionary.com:
egime also régime Pronunciation Key (r-zhm, r-)
n.
1.
1. A form of government: a fascist regime.
2. A government in power; administration: suffered under the new regime.
2. A prevailing social system or pattern.
3. The period during which a particular administration or system prevails.
4. A regulated system, as of diet and exercise; a regimen.
So, you CAN call the Bush Administration a Regime, as it fits not one but two of these definitions. It says nothing about being a good or evil regime, you'll note.
The thing is - I don't mind paying for software. One of the problems I see with OSS/GPL is that although I get tons and tons of great software for almost no cost, it also turns people against paying for ANY software.
Something like TurboTax is worth it, I think. I mean, like you said, it does take a bit of effort to make sure your software has every single applicable tax law set up, and it needs to be accurate. While it IS software, it's also a service.
I really feel as though the core components of computers need to be free, and open. This would include the OS and the key applications like browsers. But add-on specialty software doesn't HAVE to be free. Turbotax is one of these things.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong..
The Mac mini is all well and good and all, but you can't really do much to expand the thing and that's not really my thing. With any new PC I'd want to be able to throw in a new graphics board every once in awhile and maybe a better, more versitile sound card.
It's cheap and that does solve the price problem, but at the cost of options.
I'd really like to be able to get myself a nice near-top of the line Mac (doesn't need to be dual processors) with 1GB memory minimum for less then $800. But on the Apple site, the closest you can get is a 1.8Ghz machine with 256MB and a low-end video board for $1500. For $1500 I could build one kick ass AMD box with 2GB ram and a SATA raid with a top of the line video board.
For someone who's not sure if they'll like the Mac like myself (will it sit on the desk and do nothing? Will I never use it? Will I love it?) it's kinda a high cost to entry. And it wouldn't be fair to judge the Mac based on the Mac Mini. You know what I mean?
I know the one button mouse can be replaced, and I'd do that as soon as possible, but it's still so annoying! Come on apple! Give up the single button mouse crap. It's more of a persistent annoyance then an actual problem. And maybe it's because every mac I've ever sat at only has the single button mouse. There's other reasons, but I'd rather not get into it =)
"Do you mean the way the menu bar changes when you switch applications?"
Yea, exactly. I'm sure I could get used to it to some degree, but every other GUI I've ever used has menu bars as part of the windows. It's true that not all UI's have to conform with the rest but when I use a Mac I find it confusing sometimes when there's many windows up on the screen - which one is the one showing the title bar? Instead of being able to click the window I want where the menus are, I have to click the window, then roll the mouse to the menu bar and make my selection. I just don't like it.
I like the Windows interface. I find it to be quick and effecient. I don't like the whole monopoly thing and the security and reliability (or lack thereof) but the UI is solid. Maybe that's why I like KDE - it takes many of the design elements of Windows that I like. If they just refine KDE a little more.. standardize on some of the configuration elements and such..
Ahh, so you ARE one of those ignorant bastards that makes sweeping judgements against groups of people, like Slashdot readers.
Your comment was anything but well-intentioned. C'mon man, it was sarcastic as sarcastic can be.
Well, that's the thing. I mean, with OSS projects you often get what PearPC is - it works, it's getting better, more features, etc. Very rough around the edges.
A commercial vendor could step in, put a nice face on it, make it more user friendly, and sell it. They could take their changes to the GPL code and hand it back to PearPC.
Crossover Office is a very comparable situation. They use Wine and make it work for what they need it for, put a nice installer on it, and integrate it into Gnome and KDE. They sell it. And they are major contributers to the Wine project. Everyone benefits!
I think it's pretty obvious that this guy is selling PearPC. He'll probably get busted and shut down. And he could have avoided it all by using the Crossover model. Some people are just too greedy.
Ohh, PearPC isn't that bad.
On my AthlonXP 3000+ it's actually not that bad. It's NOT FAST. But it's usable.
"You need a real live Mac if you want to appreciate OSX."
I don't really want to appreciate it. I just wanna test stuff on it.
I really would like to get a Macintosh some day to play with, but when I look at the price of a nice new shiney AMD box versus a new Mac... the price is just too much of a deterrant. Sad, but true. While I've always been very happy with x86 over the years and don't see myself ever accepting the one-button mouse and the dancing title bar, it would still be a fun machine to have around. You know, next to the A4000 and the Alpha I got here too.
If Apple would lower their prices, they'd sell a lot more macs and get more marketshare. But hey, maybe not. I'm no marketing expert.
Like the other guy said, you need a PowerPC machine already in order to use MOL. Basically, you need a Mac, running Linux, in order for you to run MacOS on MacOnLinux.
PearPC runs on x86 hardware, enabling you to run MacOS on an Intel or AMD machine. And it's way slower! Terribly slow. But it's actually usable if you have a very fast machine, networking works, and sound is on the way. It's not production quality but it's real cool.
I like Linux, and I enjoy using a Linux distribution more then MacOSX. Flexible system!
And if I wrote/managed the kernel of Linux, obviously I'd run it.
Good job! Love the analogy!
"This implies they've already got a network link between them"
It says it in the slashdot post and in the video. It's not implied, it's stated.
"I don't want to know the exact criteria by which passengers are selected for more intensive searches; that information could help terrorists figure out how to avoid extra scrutiny"
Security through obscurity doesn't work. It doesn't work in computer software and it doesn't work at the airport.
Keeping these procedures/rules/whatever a secret only serves to allow officials to harass people whenever they want for whatever reason they want. They'll search you because they don't like your haircut, or your skin color, or the jeans you're wearing, and there isn't shit you can do about it.
If the rules were written out clearly for everyone to see it wouldn't help terrorists any, because they have time on their side and can discover the rules with simple trial and error. What it WOULD do is prevent the citizens from being harassed from our own government.
Because of the false sense of security provided by keeping them "secret," we're actually making things worse.
Sorry, my other reply was supposed to go to the parent. Oops.
In 6 years I'd hope you would have been able to get a working linux system?
I guess it's good you're using XP - go bother Microsoft.
While I agree with the other points about patents, I don't necessarily agree with this one:
"You want to patent something, you should have to get one working first"
The problem with this is that the big corporations could have an unfair advantage by being able to produce things faster then anyone else. So, if they find out (by whatever means at their disposal) that your small company is trying to build something to patent it, they could just go and do it before you and patent it themselves.
However, I do feel as though you should prove intent to build and capacity to build whatever a patent describes, before it's granted.
But right now, asking anything more from the patent office is silly because they can't even handle themselves properly as it is; granting patents to people for the most ridiculous things.
The information about previous bugs in IE are available on various sites (I don't feel the need to go dig them up just to please you) and those are just the ones that we know about. Microsoft is sure to have plenty of other bugs in their bug tracking systems that we don't know about.
While there's bugs in Mozilla/Firefox and there will be more dug up in the days to come, I feel as though they will be less abundant and easier to fix as Mozilla/Firefox are bound to standards, not proprietary extensions that can be more difficult to fix without breaking things.
" I'm pointing out that one should be careful in making broad assumptions about the future."
Just as I was pointing out to the parent of my post that Firefox isn't IE so you can't assume it will have the same problems as IE if it became the #1 browser.
I genuinly feel that the Mozilla/Firefox platform is more stable then IE ever has been, and will continue to improve. While there's bugs in all software, sticking to standards helps the Mozilla/Firefox team fix problems in their applications more effectively because they are not bound to protect some out-of-band feature that they put in to keep people on their products.
You're assuming that Firefox has the same amount of bugs and vulnerabilities that IE does and it's not the case.
A lot of why IE has been so problematic is that during their war for the browser they "extended" the crap out of it, adding a lot of out-of-standard enhancements and extensions. IE has countless API's that keep web sites and applications stuck on IE and making it harder to switch to something else (really, no different then anything else Microsoft has ever made.)
Firefox is open source, it adheres to standards more strictly, and it's a lot more light-weight. There's less opportunity for malware to get in with Firefox, and if there's a security flaw it's fixed a lot faster. On the other hand, because of IE's extensions and extra functionality, it makes it much more difficult for Microsoft to back off on all the extra (and not soundly designed) features because everyone is stuck on them.
But it doesn't work like that. When verisign is signing certs for companies that call themselves "Click YES to view this web page!!!" in order to get people to install spyware, then what good is it?
I think the SSL encryption part itself should be good enough, and all this trusted CA crap just needs to go away.