If you want to get pedantic about it, Windows NT includes a POSIX subsystem so Windows is a Unix also. Maybe not UNIX(tm), but that is a lawyer thing.
IIRC even VMS once included a compatibility layer to make it qualify as 'Unix'.
You say 'Since OS X is a UNIX, it should be included as a category on Freshmeat.'. But I don't see how that follows; AIX for example is not given its own category on Freshmeat.
You can base your definition of Unixness on legal wrangling and trademarks - in which case Linux would not be included. Or you can base it on tick-list conformance to POSIX standards and certification - in which case Windows NT would be included. Or you can take some position where you look at a range of factors like the kernel, the shell and user interface, whether Unix-like tools and applications are included, and source compatibility with Unix software.
Thank you for the correction. So... if the BSD subsystem runs 'next to' Mach rather than as a personality on top of the microkernel, does this mean you could in principle run only BSD processes on your Mac and not use Mach at all?
Hey, you're right! NTRawrite is a program which runs only on Windows, and it has a Freshmeat entry. But the Freshmeat FAQ says:
Many people submit information to freshmeat regarding software that only runs on the Win32 platform. Such people sometimes become confused when we reject such submissions, since they are under the impression that freshmeat will list any Open Source project. It is true that freshmeat is a big supporter of Open Source, but there are a few problems that would result if we did not limit freshmeat to software for the Unix-like platforms.
Bash / tcsh: not shipped with Windows but you can get them from Cygwin or DJGPP.
X11: not included with Windows - but IIRC an X server is not included with Mac OS X either. Has this changed? You can certainly get X servers for Windows.
Unix kernel: here I have to disagree with you. Mac OS X is based on the Mach microkernel, I think, which is rather different to the classical Unix kernel. It's closer to NextStep or even Minix than it is to traditional Unix.
ssh: but that's just an application isn't it? Ports of ssh exist for the Mac, for Windows and for a whole bunch of other platforms.
Freshmeat lists projects which run on Unix and also happen to run on Windows... but they won't allow Windows applications, even those that are free software. Maybe nowadays you could sneak some in by compiling them against winelib and calling it a Unix port (as happened for PuTTY).
Indeed, the site doesn't even allow a link to download the Windows version or to give more information about a Windows port. In the release information the field for entering a zipfile URL says 'It is not intended for any Win32 version of the software'. Yet there is a separate field for a Mac OS X package. One platform is encouraged, another is explicitly forbidden. I don't pretend to understand why.
I mean to say there aren't enough *good* sites where you can find out about Windows software. Both Tucows and download.com are useless compared to Freshmeat - they don't seem to carry fields like project licence or release history, don't have good project summaries or comments, and the site layout isn't nearly as crisp.
I'm more interested in free software for Windows than the latest shareware. Those two sites are more oriented towards binary-only software and towards users rather than developers. Freshmeat is pretty much perfect, at least it is better than any other site I've found, except for the small detail that it won't carry Windows software.
If anyone knows of a comparable site to Freshmeat but dealing with the Windows platform, please do post details.
The kernel isn't Unix, the GUI isn't Unix. Okay, maybe it qualifies as 'Unix' by having some FreeBSD-derived code in the middle somewhere. The point of whether Mac OS X is 'Unix' or not isn't really important here... I just wanted to suggest that Freshmeat's traditional policy of listing software only for 'Unix-like operating systems' is a bit fuzzy around the edges.
Windows with Cygwin is arguably a 'Unix like' OS based on GNU... you can interpret the term as loosely or as strictly as you want.
A Mac section but refusing to list Windows software? Why the bias towards one platform?
If Freshmeat isn't going to restrict itself to Unix OSes, they ought to allow submitted software for all platforms. Yes, Mac OS X does have a lot of Unix software you can run on it, but the same is true of Windows with or without Cygwin. Both platforms have their own weird microkernel and various layers on top, of which some provide a Unix-like API.
Allowing Windows software on Freshmeat would be very useful in practice - I don't just advocate it out of some sense of 'fairness'. There must be many Freshmeat users who have to use a Windows PC at work and would like somewhere to look up software. And the increasing number of Windows-based free software projects could do with somewhere to make announcements.
Right. It definitely sounds the kind of series I wouldn't watch (I hate all this 'long arc' stuff, at least when it comes in the way of getting a tightly written storyline into each episode).
The only episode of DBZ I saw featured some pink monster who was attacking this hero dude (for some reason not clear) and being attacked in turn. Then after a 50 minute fight sequence they got trapped in a parallel dimension or something. I was asked to tune in next time to find out if they ever get out, but uh...
It's good to see that the Creative Commons people are encouraging authors to put works into the public domain, which is the simplest way to make something freely redistributable and the most liberal (as well as not having questions of how to interpret the wording in a particular licence).
Unfortunately, the Open Source Initiative refuse to certify public domain code as Open Source (they did in an earlier version of the Open Source definition, but not now, according to license-approval@opensource.org). So in a way this is another split between the Stallman / Lessig / FSF camp and the Eric Raymond / OSI camp, even though in theory they hold the same set of criteria for deciding what is free.
There should be a Slashdot zeitgeist listing the most common words (and sequences of two or more words, using some weird statistical algorithm possibly mentioning 'Markov chains' although I have no idea what they are) appearing in comments.
(Maybe with long identical sequences removed to reduce the weighting given to multiple identical troll postings.)
Re:Dragonball processor
on
Web Zeitgeist
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· Score: 2
Can someone explain what's so great about Dragonball Z? I watched it the other day and it seemed to be one hour-long 'fight' sequence (meaning, unimpressive cartoon special effects and new-move-of-the-week). Or is it a case of 'if you gotta ask, you'll never know'?
The liquid nitrogen should be under software control, so when the load average gets really high some of it pours out and the processor is overclocked to 4GHz. Perhaps a hard real-time operating system could manage this best, or a web server could do it when getting Slashdotted, or a game when there is a lot happening on screen.
And the marketing term is ready-made: Nitro Boost.
Advertising not a problem
on
Google vs. Evil
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I don't really care what advertising they choose to accept, because ads on Google are clearly identified as such. If they choose to lose income by not accepting advertising for certain products, that's their business. I'm much more concerned about the search results started being tainted by either paid placements or Scientology-style censorship.
Right. I understand. Maybe with PC buyers being more reluctant to upgrade to the latest hardware (since a 300MHz box is adequate for everything except games and hardcore graphics stuff) it would make sense for the game developers to keep their stuff working on lower spec PCs, at least if the work has already been done to make the game run on the Xbox. OTOH, probably people who don't upgrade their PCs don't buy new games either.
What puzzles me is the way these sites all seem to be 'Extreme Overclocking' or 'Overclocking to the Max'. Where are the sites promising Moderate Overclocking or Careful Now Overclocking or Just A Little Overclocking? This area isn't provided for by current sites. I expect there is a whole mod community competing to get the smallest possible overclock.
Well yeah this is what I was asking: if games developers have to optimize the code to run on the Xbox hardware, does the work they did on that carry over to the PC version? Or are the PC versions of games always more bloated, so that a PC with equivalent spec to the Xbox would always have worse performance?
If PC games are cheaper, does it make sense to put Windows on your XBox? Do the Xbox versions of games run noticeably better than the PC versions on the Xbox hardware?
(Not to mention using Linux and WineX... but the compatibility wouldn't be so good.)
I am not a scientist, I am just a humble student (or rather ex-student, I graduated this year). When I wrote my project report I was asked by my supervisor to get in references to papers X, Y and Z. So I ended up putting in a few fairly meaningless or irrelevant sentences just to cite the correct paper. Of course here the aim is to get marks, not to get kudos or whatever else real researchers write for, so it's not really a problem.
Is it possible to replace the OS on the phone, to upload software without some bossy 'environment'? Not that you'd want to do this most of the time, but it's nice to know you have the option, or for specialized applications.
Digital computers have (mostly) been around for less than a hundred hears. Biological organisms for several million times as long. In which field is it more likely that 'everything has been done'?
I'd sign up for the membership if you got anything valuable in return.
Mandrake has the active 'Cooker' distribution containing recent versions of many packages, and providing a good opportunity to report bugs (especially since, as I mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, they seem to object to anyone filing bugs against the stable distribution). But it is impossible to keep up with Cooker development unless you have a fast network connection.
For $50 a year surely they could burn a CD every two weeks with the latest Cooker packages and post it to you? Plus maybe the latest errata packages for the stable distribution.
The current MandrakeClub options seem to involve paying money in order to get a discount on proprietary software. Somehow, paying MandrakeSoft to act as a middleman so I can get a discount on StarOffice doesn't appeal to me.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to get pedantic about it, Windows NT includes a POSIX subsystem so Windows is a Unix also. Maybe not UNIX(tm), but that is a lawyer thing.
IIRC even VMS once included a compatibility layer to make it qualify as 'Unix'.
You say 'Since OS X is a UNIX, it should be included as a category on Freshmeat.'. But I don't see how that follows; AIX for example is not given its own category on Freshmeat.
You can base your definition of Unixness on legal wrangling and trademarks - in which case Linux would not be included. Or you can base it on tick-list conformance to POSIX standards and certification - in which case Windows NT would be included. Or you can take some position where you look at a range of factors like the kernel, the shell and user interface, whether Unix-like tools and applications are included, and source compatibility with Unix software.
Thank you for the correction. So... if the BSD subsystem runs 'next to' Mach rather than as a personality on top of the microkernel, does this mean you could in principle run only BSD processes on your Mac and not use Mach at all?
Bash / tcsh: not shipped with Windows but you can get them from Cygwin or DJGPP.
X11: not included with Windows - but IIRC an X server is not included with Mac OS X either. Has this changed? You can certainly get X servers for Windows.
Unix kernel: here I have to disagree with you. Mac OS X is based on the Mach microkernel, I think, which is rather different to the classical Unix kernel. It's closer to NextStep or even Minix than it is to traditional Unix.
ssh: but that's just an application isn't it? Ports of ssh exist for the Mac, for Windows and for a whole bunch of other platforms.
Freshmeat lists projects which run on Unix and also happen to run on Windows... but they won't allow Windows applications, even those that are free software. Maybe nowadays you could sneak some in by compiling them against winelib and calling it a Unix port (as happened for PuTTY).
Indeed, the site doesn't even allow a link to download the Windows version or to give more information about a Windows port. In the release information the field for entering a zipfile URL says 'It is not intended for any Win32 version of the software'. Yet there is a separate field for a Mac OS X package. One platform is encouraged, another is explicitly forbidden. I don't pretend to understand why.
I mean to say there aren't enough *good* sites where you can find out about Windows software. Both Tucows and download.com are useless compared to Freshmeat - they don't seem to carry fields like project licence or release history, don't have good project summaries or comments, and the site layout isn't nearly as crisp.
I'm more interested in free software for Windows than the latest shareware. Those two sites are more oriented towards binary-only software and towards users rather than developers. Freshmeat is pretty much perfect, at least it is better than any other site I've found, except for the small detail that it won't carry Windows software.
If anyone knows of a comparable site to Freshmeat but dealing with the Windows platform, please do post details.
The kernel isn't Unix, the GUI isn't Unix. Okay, maybe it qualifies as 'Unix' by having some FreeBSD-derived code in the middle somewhere. The point of whether Mac OS X is 'Unix' or not isn't really important here... I just wanted to suggest that Freshmeat's traditional policy of listing software only for 'Unix-like operating systems' is a bit fuzzy around the edges.
Windows with Cygwin is arguably a 'Unix like' OS based on GNU... you can interpret the term as loosely or as strictly as you want.
A Mac section but refusing to list Windows software? Why the bias towards one platform?
If Freshmeat isn't going to restrict itself to Unix OSes, they ought to allow submitted software for all platforms. Yes, Mac OS X does have a lot of Unix software you can run on it, but the same is true of Windows with or without Cygwin. Both platforms have their own weird microkernel and various layers on top, of which some provide a Unix-like API.
Allowing Windows software on Freshmeat would be very useful in practice - I don't just advocate it out of some sense of 'fairness'. There must be many Freshmeat users who have to use a Windows PC at work and would like somewhere to look up software. And the increasing number of Windows-based free software projects could do with somewhere to make announcements.
Right. It definitely sounds the kind of series I wouldn't watch (I hate all this 'long arc' stuff, at least when it comes in the way of getting a tightly written storyline into each episode).
The only episode of DBZ I saw featured some pink monster who was attacking this hero dude (for some reason not clear) and being attacked in turn. Then after a 50 minute fight sequence they got trapped in a parallel dimension or something. I was asked to tune in next time to find out if they ever get out, but uh...
Still, a chacun son gout and all that.
It's good to see that the Creative Commons people are encouraging authors to put works into the public domain, which is the simplest way to make something freely redistributable and the most liberal (as well as not having questions of how to interpret the wording in a particular licence).
Unfortunately, the Open Source Initiative refuse to certify public domain code as Open Source (they did in an earlier version of the Open Source definition, but not now, according to license-approval@opensource.org). So in a way this is another split between the Stallman / Lessig / FSF camp and the Eric Raymond / OSI camp, even though in theory they hold the same set of criteria for deciding what is free.
Yeah but how do you track how the Soviet Russia mentions have grown and changed over the past 12 months?
You can also guess the top search result on all popular search engines; what's interesting is the more detailed information.
There should be a Slashdot zeitgeist listing the most common words (and sequences of two or more words, using some weird statistical algorithm possibly mentioning 'Markov chains' although I have no idea what they are) appearing in comments.
(Maybe with long identical sequences removed to reduce the weighting given to multiple identical troll postings.)
Can someone explain what's so great about Dragonball Z? I watched it the other day and it seemed to be one hour-long 'fight' sequence (meaning, unimpressive cartoon special effects and new-move-of-the-week). Or is it a case of 'if you gotta ask, you'll never know'?
The liquid nitrogen should be under software control, so when the load average gets really high some of it pours out and the processor is overclocked to 4GHz. Perhaps a hard real-time operating system could manage this best, or a web server could do it when getting Slashdotted, or a game when there is a lot happening on screen.
And the marketing term is ready-made: Nitro Boost.
Who are you to decide that we can't?
I don't really care what advertising they choose to accept, because ads on Google are clearly identified as such. If they choose to lose income by not accepting advertising for certain products, that's their business. I'm much more concerned about the search results started being tainted by either paid placements or Scientology-style censorship.
Right. I understand. Maybe with PC buyers being more reluctant to upgrade to the latest hardware (since a 300MHz box is adequate for everything except games and hardcore graphics stuff) it would make sense for the game developers to keep their stuff working on lower spec PCs, at least if the work has already been done to make the game run on the Xbox. OTOH, probably people who don't upgrade their PCs don't buy new games either.
What puzzles me is the way these sites all seem to be 'Extreme Overclocking' or 'Overclocking to the Max'. Where are the sites promising Moderate Overclocking or Careful Now Overclocking or Just A Little Overclocking? This area isn't provided for by current sites. I expect there is a whole mod community competing to get the smallest possible overclock.
Well yeah this is what I was asking: if games developers have to optimize the code to run on the Xbox hardware, does the work they did on that carry over to the PC version? Or are the PC versions of games always more bloated, so that a PC with equivalent spec to the Xbox would always have worse performance?
If PC games are cheaper, does it make sense to put Windows on your XBox? Do the Xbox versions of games run noticeably better than the PC versions on the Xbox hardware?
(Not to mention using Linux and WineX... but the compatibility wouldn't be so good.)
I am not a scientist, I am just a humble student (or rather ex-student, I graduated this year). When I wrote my project report I was asked by my supervisor to get in references to papers X, Y and Z. So I ended up putting in a few fairly meaningless or irrelevant sentences just to cite the correct paper. Of course here the aim is to get marks, not to get kudos or whatever else real researchers write for, so it's not really a problem.
Is it possible to replace the OS on the phone, to upload software without some bossy 'environment'? Not that you'd want to do this most of the time, but it's nice to know you have the option, or for specialized applications.
In other words, does it run Linux?
Digital computers have (mostly) been around for less than a hundred hears. Biological organisms for several million times as long. In which field is it more likely that 'everything has been done'?
I'd sign up for the membership if you got anything valuable in return.
Mandrake has the active 'Cooker' distribution containing recent versions of many packages, and providing a good opportunity to report bugs (especially since, as I mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, they seem to object to anyone filing bugs against the stable distribution). But it is impossible to keep up with Cooker development unless you have a fast network connection.
For $50 a year surely they could burn a CD every two weeks with the latest Cooker packages and post it to you? Plus maybe the latest errata packages for the stable distribution.
The current MandrakeClub options seem to involve paying money in order to get a discount on proprietary software. Somehow, paying MandrakeSoft to act as a middleman so I can get a discount on StarOffice doesn't appeal to me.