I think that this is an excellent example for school teachers. There's always that one student in the class who always forgets to write his name at the top of the papers. Now the teacher can hold it against him...
"Do you want to be like that guy who invented the telegraph? Hmmm? Nobody knows his name because he didn't put it on his paper either..."
It ought to work better than my moms "Eat your breakfast! Don't you know kids are starving in China?!"
While I believe the parent post to be nothing more than a troll/flamebait, I'll bite.
Either you never studied compression or never fully understood it. There are two basic types of compression: lossy and lossless. Lossless means that none of the original data is lost. This doesn't mean that the compressed version is -identical- to the original. It simply means that by following a predetermined algorithm, the original can be fully restored. Compression schemes look for repeating patterns. The more common a pattern is, the better a compression ratio you will acheive. Common repeating patters are replaced by some sort of symbol or mapping (which is saved with the compressed file). To reverse this you simply replace the symbol or mapping with the original sequence of characters.
If you take a file, make a copy, compress it using lossless compression, and decompress it to a different filename the computer will find no differences between the two. The compressed/decompressed copy will look -identical- to the orignal. That's what's meant by lossless encoding.
By claiming " There's no such thing as 'lossless compression' by definition" you are only showing your ignorance.
Debuggers aren't flashy or glamorous. I don't know anybody that thinks debuggers are cool. The tools and pieces of a development environment that are going to catch a programmers eye first are what's focused on most. You look at a nicely developed IDE that's polished and slick, and you'll be impressed. It's eye candy that sells products more than anything else.
Sadly, most -programmers- even look at a development environment's debugger as an afterthought. IMHO, it's one of the single most important tools (if not THE most important) and it's what I check out first.
Have you ever used the Gnu Visual Debugger at the GNAT Libre software developers' site? It's a multi-platform (Linux/Unix/Windows), open-source debugger with a "different view" of the world. Check it out, you may be pleasantly suprised.
The beautiful thing about open source is it's virtually impossible to kill. It's a grass roots movement. It's not so hard to kill a company that deals in open source software (i.e. Redhat, Suse, Mandrake, etc). Microsoft can squeeze just about anybody out of business, but with the GPL, the code never dies. There will always be someone out there that wants to see a particular app or distro survive. One one person or company falls, another comes along and picks up the gauntlet. It appears as an endless sea of open source programmers...
When the "revolt" comes from the end users, it's virtually impossible to stop.
Massive price discounts is the "worst" thing Microsoft can do (to Linux based companies), since -most- people could give a $%#@! about software freedom. It's the wallet that people mostly pay attention too.
Re:So what does this mean for the everyday linux u
on
New Linux 2.5 Benchmarks
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Overall throughput has not increased (actually, it is believed to have decreased). So the overall speed of the system is relatively equal to the 2.4 series of kernels. You probably won't see any major performance speedups in any apps you use.
However, the overall responsiveness of the system is improved. Most people who have used it have claimed that it feltmuch faster than the 2.4 series. You won't have starved processess.
This means if you're running XMMS and you compile a kernel, XMMS won't just hang until the compilation is done. The kernel developers have done a great job in improving -fairness- between processes.
Mostly, the results will be seen on Big Iron and server applications, but the overall desktop experience is expected to improve.
I'm not excited for copy protection or DRM, yet it almost seems like an unavoidable reality. Once DRM is in place, business will *own* us. If you think wide spread customer service is bad *now* just wait until they have control over what you can and can't do with your machine. They won't have to listen to a single complaint.
I'm tired of the attitude of the record companies and don't want to send them anymore money. On that note, what are the best places to download and listen to indie music? I know that various links have been provided before, but I've never bothered to bookmark them and can't remember where to find them. If you know of ANY decent site where you download and listen to.MP3's of indie bands, please respond with a link!
Weren't the first stealth aircraft announced just before Gulf War I? There was speculation at the time that we just needed an excuse to test new weapons in real combat.
If you read the article, you'd know they're announcing it because they're retiring it. It was only a prototype , a technology demonstration if you will. We won't be producing these jets.
I originally tried CDex. I liked it, but it -never- produced 100% quality rips from my CD's. There would always be a pop or glitch somewhere in the song. I could re-rip the song over and over and it would always happen in the exact same spot. I used Audiograbber (free version) until I found EAC. Eac is highly configurable and one of the best rippers I've ever used. No more song glitches. Period.
I've always kept my eye on CDex and tried newer versions. It's pretty slick. I like the software. I've just always obtained better results from EAC. However, I don't think EAC is open source. Is it? This discussion was supposed to be about OSS, and not just about quality Win32 freeware.
I agree. I admit, I've had a somewhat limited experience with WD's. But that's only because they couldn't last long enough to get me to consider buying them again.
4 years ago, in September of 1998, I built my own computer. The hard drive? The WD36400. It crashed by November. This was a new experience to me. I had been using computers since the early-mid '80s and this was the first time I had a first hand experience with a crashed hard drive. I did a low-level format using WD's tools and it "recovered" enough to use for 4 more months before it -totally- ate it. Fortunately, one month before it died, I had purchased a *refurbished* Seagate 1.7GB off of ebay to install linux on to. The Seagate became my primary drive (and Linux became my primary operating system). That Seagate is now running in my linux firewall and has been running 24/7 for 2 straight years. -NEVER a single problem with the drive (and only 2 crashes with Linux! No kidding)-. The WD? I RMA'd it and they replaced it with a "better model". The WD26400. Guess what drive lasted slightly more than a year? Yup, two dead WD's in less than 2 years. I'm so glad that I bought the 20GB Seagate Barracuda when it got cheap.
My parents purchased a computer in October of 1996. It came with a Conner hard drive (bought out by Seagate). That drive ran for 6 years on their computer without a single hitch. It's still in 100% working order and is the backup drive for my linux firewall if the Seagate -ever- dies.
> Netscape 6 was based on mozilla 0.9.4 which is pretty old now.
I think you need to clarify WHICH Netscape 6.x browser you are refering to. Netscape 6.2.x was based off of 0.9.4. But the original netscape 6.0 was based of off M18. It was before they were even using real numbers. The Netscape 6.0 code that was back-ported to Mozilla was released as Mozilla version 0.6. Then the next version of Mozilla was 0.7 and so on and so forth...
So the code for the original Netscape 6.0 is almost 2 years old!
The new VIA KT400 chipset will support the 333MHz FSB. You should be able to look at the silk screening on your motherboard to see if it supports it or not.
Chances are, however, that it doesn't. Plan on buying a new motherboard.
>Maybe they had a 9500 but decided to tweak it a little more but not to the point where it was a 10000.
The 9500 will be released in a couple of months (as in mentioned in the Tom's Hardware Guide article). It will be a scaled down 9700. It should have a lower clock speed and fewer texture units.
> The only companies who will release Linux games are those that really really rely on geek support (like Id).
I think that you misattributed Id's actions with a need to "really, really rely" on geek support. That's total baloney. Id doesn't need a Linux geek any more than any of the other video game companies. Not only are their games incredibly popular in their own right, but do you know how MUCH Id makes licensing their engines?! Try to name all of the games that licensed the Quake I, II, and III engines. We'll be here for a while.
Here's a bit of info for you... all of Id's games since Quake have supported Unix/Linux because... That's what quake was DEVELOPED on! The original quake was developed under Unix using OpenGL. It was then ported to Windows. I'd imagine that they had similar processes for their subsequent games (Quake II, Quake III, Return to Castle Wolfenstein). So "supporting" a Linux "port" was a no-brainer.
Don't get me wrong. I love the fact that you can buy native Linux versions of their games, but to say that they "really really need you" is a delusional fantasy.
1) I read the slashdot story. 2) Logged into my server running Trustix (a hardened RedHat). 3) Ran "swup --upgrade" to see if the packages had already been updated. 4) It downloaded and installed the fixed packages.
All in less than 5 minutes.
What's so hard about that? I have fixed binary packages quicker than anyone else at/. trying to get the original sources.
> I saw some statistics for 3.1, it takes TWICE as long to compile, and the resulting binaries are slightly slower at linking.
Firstly, why don't you site a source rather than, I saw this once somewhere... It's much more helpful in a discussion. According to the GCC 3.1 changelog "# The preprocessor is 10-50% faster than the preprocessor in GCC 3.0." The preprocessor is GCC 3.0 is known to be slower than the preprocessor in 2.95.3, so this doesn't mean that GCC 3.1 compiles faster than 2.95.3. However, code compiled with GCC 3.1 is is up to 8.2% faster than code compiled with GCC 3.0 and code compiled with GCC 3.0 is up to 2.1% faster than code compiled with GCC 2.95.3.
There are tradeoffs between runtime speed and compile time speed. The better, faster code optimizations you want, the longer it's going to take to compile. But how often do you compile the same program many times? I'd MUCH rather have slower compile times than slower program speed.
Programs compiled with GCC 3.1 can be up to 10.3% faster than programs compiled with GCC 2.95.3. That's just enough that you'll notice the difference (though it won't be huge). Plus, GCC 3.1 complies much more closely with the C++ ABI. This will improve even more so with GCC 3.2.
Remember, this is only a BETA! The final version is expected to have the GCC 3.2 compiler.
One that's also been around a while is Aegis. It was first released in 1991, so is not a newcomer to the scene.
I haven't used it personally, so I can't vouch for how well or poorly it works. I was looking into Source Code Control programs a while back and decided on good old CVS. Don't forget a GUI.
The discount can be even bigger than that, actually.
Where I work, Office 2000/XP is standard. My employer is a research branch of a University. Instead of negotiating a seperate site license with Microsoft, we add our purchases to the Universities, increasing the total volume of licenses purchased and decreasing the individual cost. Along with an educational discount, the total cost per copy of Office is slightly less than $49. So I'd imagine a large company purchasing many copies of office could get it to the $50 mark or pehaps even below. Though, I doubt they will match the $25 per copy...
Also, Sun is offering StarOffice 6.0 free to educational institutions, IIRC. But were still not sure whether or not that applies to us. (*Crosses fingers*) Here's to hoping.
It amazes me that in this world of "let's make a new distro every minute", that one old timer like Slackware can stay alive. It's refreshing to know that a distribution can have such lasting power. It just goes to show the dedication of it's userbase. Patrick must be doing something right.
Slackware was the first Linux distro that I "broke my teeth on", which at the time, is exactly what it felt like. I had used Unix but never had to set it up and my hardware was not well supported. After trying different versions of Slack over the ensuing months, I gave it up. I tried Linux again a while later with Redhat 4.2 and have since used Redhat for many years (along with a *bunch* of others).
I've been watching Slack's progress over the past 1 or 2 years and have really been wanting to try it again. Now that 8.1 is out I think I'm going to have to head back to my Linux roots and give it a try.
If you are trying to explain why you feel that Linux would be a good choice, make your biggest emphasis on points that the average joe cares about. Any Joe Voter can understand cost savings and increased security. With the current economic slump and the recent publicity about holes in Microsofts brand new "secure" operating system, along with the ongoing reports of problems with previous versions, these would be good points to highlight. These are things that people will feel they have enough knowledge to make judgements on.
So, If I were you I'd emphasize the aspects of saving money and protecting private data. But I'd not overdue it. While these could be good points to make on the campaign trail, I'd not make them your biggest emphasis. While people may appreciate what you have to say, I don't believe many people will find this all that important. Perhaps they should, but I doubt it. Taxes, Crime reduction, Drug tasks forces, etc are usually bigger on voters priority lists.
I gave wu-ftpd the boot ages ago. I can't understand why people would still trust this buggy, bloated "just asking for trouble" piece of software. There are better alternatives.
PureFTPD (based on TrollFTPD)
ftpd-BSD (port from OpenBSD)
Virtual FTPD (based on ftpd-BSD)
are all good examples of decent alternatives. I've even heard good things about vsftpd.
Some people (myself not included) even consider ProFTPD to be a viable alternative.
How can people still trust software that has had more holes in it then the finest Swiss Cheese?!
Slashdot Mirror
On a bike, you're part of the road, the scenery, nature.
Especially if you get in an accident.
The trunk is feature frozen for the upcoming alpha release for 1.4.
While a minor mistake, the Mozilla is in feature freeze for the 1.4 BETA release, it's already in "alpha".
"I ran a 2.4 kernel on a box that was largely unchanged from its original Slackware 3.2 install from November 1997."
Wow that's AMAZING! You were able to run a kernel FOUR YEARS BEFORE IT WAS INVENTED?! Dude, what's your secret?
I think you meant a 2.0 series kernel (since 2.2 didn't even come about until 1999). Such a small typo, and yet, such a big one.
I think that this is an excellent example for school teachers. There's always that one student in the class who always forgets to write his name at the top of the papers. Now the teacher can hold it against him...
"Do you want to be like that guy who invented the telegraph? Hmmm? Nobody knows his name because he didn't put it on his paper either..."
It ought to work better than my moms "Eat your breakfast! Don't you know kids are starving in China?!"
While I believe the parent post to be nothing more than a troll/flamebait, I'll bite.
Either you never studied compression or never fully understood it. There are two basic types of compression: lossy and lossless. Lossless means that none of the original data is lost. This doesn't mean that the compressed version is -identical- to the original. It simply means that by following a predetermined algorithm, the original can be fully restored. Compression schemes look for repeating patterns. The more common a pattern is, the better a compression ratio you will acheive. Common repeating patters are replaced by some sort of symbol or mapping (which is saved with the compressed file). To reverse this you simply replace the symbol or mapping with the original sequence of characters.
If you take a file, make a copy, compress it using lossless compression, and decompress it to a different filename the computer will find no differences between the two. The compressed/decompressed copy will look -identical- to the orignal. That's what's meant by lossless encoding.
By claiming " There's no such thing as 'lossless compression' by definition" you are only showing your ignorance.
Debuggers aren't flashy or glamorous. I don't know anybody that thinks debuggers are cool. The tools and pieces of a development environment that are going to catch a programmers eye first are what's focused on most. You look at a nicely developed IDE that's polished and slick, and you'll be impressed. It's eye candy that sells products more than anything else.
Sadly, most -programmers- even look at a development environment's debugger as an afterthought. IMHO, it's one of the single most important tools (if not THE most important) and it's what I check out first.
Have you ever used the Gnu Visual Debugger at the GNAT Libre software developers' site? It's a multi-platform (Linux/Unix/Windows), open-source debugger with a "different view" of the world. Check it out, you may be pleasantly suprised.
The beautiful thing about open source is it's virtually impossible to kill. It's a grass roots movement. It's not so hard to kill a company that deals in open source software (i.e. Redhat, Suse, Mandrake, etc). Microsoft can squeeze just about anybody out of business, but with the GPL, the code never dies. There will always be someone out there that wants to see a particular app or distro survive. One one person or company falls, another comes along and picks up the gauntlet. It appears as an endless sea of open source programmers...
When the "revolt" comes from the end users, it's virtually impossible to stop.
Massive price discounts is the "worst" thing Microsoft can do (to Linux based companies), since -most- people could give a $%#@! about software freedom. It's the wallet that people mostly pay attention too.
Overall throughput has not increased (actually, it is believed to have decreased). So the overall speed of the system is relatively equal to the 2.4 series of kernels. You probably won't see any major performance speedups in any apps you use.
However, the overall responsiveness of the system is improved. Most people who have used it have claimed that it felt much faster than the 2.4 series. You won't have starved processess.
This means if you're running XMMS and you compile a kernel, XMMS won't just hang until the compilation is done. The kernel developers have done a great job in improving -fairness- between processes.
Mostly, the results will be seen on Big Iron and server applications, but the overall desktop experience is expected to improve.
I'm not excited for copy protection or DRM, yet it almost seems like an unavoidable reality. Once DRM is in place, business will *own* us. If you think wide spread customer service is bad *now* just wait until they have control over what you can and can't do with your machine. They won't have to listen to a single complaint.
.MP3's of indie bands, please respond with a link!
I'm tired of the attitude of the record companies and don't want to send them anymore money. On that note, what are the best places to download and listen to indie music? I know that various links have been provided before, but I've never bothered to bookmark them and can't remember where to find them. If you know of ANY decent site where you download and listen to
Thanks.
>Imagine if consoles were cheaper in Utah, but any Utah resellers were forbidden to ship them out of state.
You mean there'd actually be incentive to live in Utah?! I think you're on to something here...
Weren't the first stealth aircraft announced just before Gulf War I? There was speculation at the time that we just needed an excuse to test new weapons in real combat.
If you read the article, you'd know they're announcing it because they're retiring it. It was only a prototype , a technology demonstration if you will. We won't be producing these jets.
Bzzzzt. Try again
I originally tried CDex. I liked it, but it -never- produced 100% quality rips from my CD's. There would always be a pop or glitch somewhere in the song. I could re-rip the song over and over and it would always happen in the exact same spot. I used Audiograbber (free version) until I found EAC. Eac is highly configurable and one of the best rippers I've ever used. No more song glitches. Period.
I've always kept my eye on CDex and tried newer versions. It's pretty slick. I like the software. I've just always obtained better results from EAC. However, I don't think EAC is open source. Is it? This discussion was supposed to be about OSS, and not just about quality Win32 freeware.
I agree. I admit, I've had a somewhat limited experience with WD's. But that's only because they couldn't last long enough to get me to consider buying them again.
4 years ago, in September of 1998, I built my own computer. The hard drive? The WD36400. It crashed by November. This was a new experience to me. I had been using computers since the early-mid '80s and this was the first time I had a first hand experience with a crashed hard drive. I did a low-level format using WD's tools and it "recovered" enough to use for 4 more months before it -totally- ate it. Fortunately, one month before it died, I had purchased a *refurbished* Seagate 1.7GB off of ebay to install linux on to. The Seagate became my primary drive (and Linux became my primary operating system). That Seagate is now running in my linux firewall and has been running 24/7 for 2 straight years. -NEVER a single problem with the drive (and only 2 crashes with Linux! No kidding)-. The WD? I RMA'd it and they replaced it with a "better model". The WD26400. Guess what drive lasted slightly more than a year? Yup, two dead WD's in less than 2 years. I'm so glad that I bought the 20GB Seagate Barracuda when it got cheap.
My parents purchased a computer in October of 1996. It came with a Conner hard drive (bought out by Seagate). That drive ran for 6 years on their computer without a single hitch. It's still in 100% working order and is the backup drive for my linux firewall if the Seagate -ever- dies.
God bless those Seagates.
> Netscape 6 was based on mozilla 0.9.4 which is pretty old now.
I think you need to clarify WHICH Netscape 6.x browser you are refering to. Netscape 6.2.x was based off of 0.9.4. But the original netscape 6.0 was based of off M18. It was before they were even using real numbers. The Netscape 6.0 code that was back-ported to Mozilla was released as Mozilla version 0.6. Then the next version of Mozilla was 0.7 and so on and so forth...
So the code for the original Netscape 6.0 is almost 2 years old!
The new VIA KT400 chipset will support the 333MHz FSB. You should be able to look at the silk screening on your motherboard to see if it supports it or not.
Chances are, however, that it doesn't. Plan on buying a new motherboard.
>Maybe they had a 9500 but decided to tweak it a little more but not to the point where it was a 10000.
The 9500 will be released in a couple of months (as in mentioned in the Tom's Hardware Guide article). It will be a scaled down 9700. It should have a lower clock speed and fewer texture units.
> The only companies who will release Linux games are those that really really rely on geek support (like Id).
I think that you misattributed Id's actions with a need to "really, really rely" on geek support. That's total baloney. Id doesn't need a Linux geek any more than any of the other video game companies. Not only are their games incredibly popular in their own right, but do you know how MUCH Id makes licensing their engines?! Try to name all of the games that licensed the Quake I, II, and III engines. We'll be here for a while.
Here's a bit of info for you... all of Id's games since Quake have supported Unix/Linux because... That's what quake was DEVELOPED on! The original quake was developed under Unix using OpenGL. It was then ported to Windows. I'd imagine that they had similar processes for their subsequent games (Quake II, Quake III, Return to Castle Wolfenstein). So "supporting" a Linux "port" was a no-brainer.
Don't get me wrong. I love the fact that you can buy native Linux versions of their games, but to say that they "really really need you" is a delusional fantasy.
1) I read the slashdot story.
/. trying to get the original sources.
2) Logged into my server running Trustix (a hardened RedHat).
3) Ran "swup --upgrade" to see if the packages had already been updated.
4) It downloaded and installed the fixed packages.
All in less than 5 minutes.
What's so hard about that? I have fixed binary packages quicker than anyone else at
> I saw some statistics for 3.1, it takes TWICE as long to compile, and the resulting binaries are slightly slower at linking.
Firstly, why don't you site a source rather than, I saw this once somewhere... It's much more helpful in a discussion. According to the GCC 3.1 changelog "# The preprocessor is 10-50% faster than the preprocessor in GCC 3.0." The preprocessor is GCC 3.0 is known to be slower than the preprocessor in 2.95.3, so this doesn't mean that GCC 3.1 compiles faster than 2.95.3. However, code compiled with GCC 3.1 is is up to 8.2% faster than code compiled with GCC 3.0 and code compiled with GCC 3.0 is up to 2.1% faster than code compiled with GCC 2.95.3.
There are tradeoffs between runtime speed and compile time speed. The better, faster code optimizations you want, the longer it's going to take to compile. But how often do you compile the same program many times? I'd MUCH rather have slower compile times than slower program speed.
Programs compiled with GCC 3.1 can be up to 10.3% faster than programs compiled with GCC 2.95.3. That's just enough that you'll notice the difference (though it won't be huge). Plus, GCC 3.1 complies much more closely with the C++ ABI. This will improve even more so with GCC 3.2.
Remember, this is only a BETA! The final version is expected to have the GCC 3.2 compiler.
Cheers!
One that's also been around a while is Aegis. It was first released in 1991, so is not a newcomer to the scene.
I haven't used it personally, so I can't vouch for how well or poorly it works. I was looking into Source Code Control programs a while back and decided on good old CVS. Don't forget a GUI.
The discount can be even bigger than that, actually.
Where I work, Office 2000/XP is standard. My employer is a research branch of a University. Instead of negotiating a seperate site license with Microsoft, we add our purchases to the Universities, increasing the total volume of licenses purchased and decreasing the individual cost. Along with an educational discount, the total cost per copy of Office is slightly less than $49. So I'd imagine a large company purchasing many copies of office could get it to the $50 mark or pehaps even below. Though, I doubt they will match the $25 per copy...
Also, Sun is offering StarOffice 6.0 free to educational institutions, IIRC. But were still not sure whether or not that applies to us. (*Crosses fingers*) Here's to hoping.
Wow,
It amazes me that in this world of "let's make a new distro every minute", that one old timer like Slackware can stay alive. It's refreshing to know that a distribution can have such lasting power. It just goes to show the dedication of it's userbase. Patrick must be doing something right.
Slackware was the first Linux distro that I "broke my teeth on", which at the time, is exactly what it felt like. I had used Unix but never had to set it up and my hardware was not well supported. After trying different versions of Slack over the ensuing months, I gave it up. I tried Linux again a while later with Redhat 4.2 and have since used Redhat for many years (along with a *bunch* of others).
I've been watching Slack's progress over the past 1 or 2 years and have really been wanting to try it again. Now that 8.1 is out I think I'm going to have to head back to my Linux roots and give it a try.
Long live Slackware.
If you are trying to explain why you feel that Linux would be a good choice, make your biggest emphasis on points that the average joe cares about. Any Joe Voter can understand cost savings and increased security. With the current economic slump and the recent publicity about holes in Microsofts brand new "secure" operating system, along with the ongoing reports of problems with previous versions, these would be good points to highlight. These are things that people will feel they have enough knowledge to make judgements on.
So, If I were you I'd emphasize the aspects of saving money and protecting private data. But I'd not overdue it. While these could be good points to make on the campaign trail, I'd not make them your biggest emphasis. While people may appreciate what you have to say, I don't believe many people will find this all that important. Perhaps they should, but I doubt it. Taxes, Crime reduction, Drug tasks forces, etc are usually bigger on voters priority lists.
I gave wu-ftpd the boot ages ago. I can't understand why people would still trust this buggy, bloated "just asking for trouble" piece of software. There are better alternatives.
PureFTPD (based on TrollFTPD)
ftpd-BSD (port from OpenBSD)
Virtual FTPD (based on ftpd-BSD)
are all good examples of decent alternatives. I've even heard good things about vsftpd.
Some people (myself not included) even consider ProFTPD to be a viable alternative.
How can people still trust software that has had more holes in it then the finest Swiss Cheese?!