Man, the film industry is going to get *killed* by the games industry in a few years, and it seems they don't see it coming.
Seriously, 'interactivity' is not about downloading a flick and laboriously re-editing it (a process of questionable legality in the curent political climate), it's about the viewer/audience being able to influence the content at 'run-time'.
DVD offers minimal interactivity, and everyone who has ever tried to 'interact' with a DVD knows this.
The moviemakers are just trying to talk up their pathetic 'interactivity' to make it seem like they aren't still just rehashing the same old shit and ripping off the viewing public over and over again.
I thought that it was quite legal and acceptable to reverse engineer a product and publish the specifications, provided you do not infringe on any other laws e.g. copyright to do so.
This move is designed to avoid the Settlement terms.
By making the filesystem a database, and conveniently sourcing the database from a third party, they won't have to release any specs for interoperability etc. since their filesystem will essentially be supplied by a third party who is not required to disclose anything under the terms of the MS settlement.
I can't believe the Canadian government holds the view that the only copyright-holders worth compensating are those sponsored by large corporates.
Everybody produces work protected by copyright, whether they know it or not, almost every day.
But obviously some entities produce work that is more equal than others in terms of the protection/compensation imposed by this proposed legislation.
This measure is a ludicrous abuse of power, and will not benefit Canadians in any way whatsoever.
I am not a Canadian, I am from New Zealand, on the other side of the planet, but I fear that my government will foolishly follow the lead set by countries like Canada in introducing these despicable laws.
I would like to see how democracy is served by this proposed legislation - How many canadians consider this legislation beneficial?
I had a similar dilemma - a big mean x86 workstation or the Titanium Powerbook.
I chose the Powerbook, and I think i definitely made the right decision.
MacOS X feels a lot slower than Win2K or Linux, and it is a big step backwards from OS9 in terms of GUI functionality, but its mostly tolerable.
The chicks dig the dock magnification and window resize animations, anyway.
I develop Java/Tomcat apps, do web design with Photoshop and remotely administer my Linux and Win2K servers with XDarwin and rdesktop.
The Powerbook is IMHO way superior to any x86 laptop I have used, and i've used a few.
It wakes from sleep practically instantly, is easy to switch between different locations, has a useful array of expansion ports, and is light enough to carry easily. It doesn't crash often (Though the Finder locks up for me quite a lot - easily fixed with a 'Force Quit' that actually works reliably for the first time in MacOS history)
Add a good, free (as in beer) IDE and extensive GUI and general purpose APIs, and its a dream to program for.
I would recommend this machine, except for the Aqua GUI, which i can't say has grown on me with time. However, this is a minor annoyance, and I can always run a fullscreen X server to cover it up.
Nusphere should continue to be able to release their software in compliance with the GPL, however for each copy of their software they distributed without complying with the GPL, they should be forced to negotiate with MYSQL AB etc. and agree on a fee to be paid for each copy of the software distributed illegally.
If precise figures cannot be had, then an estimate should be created based on the length of time NuSphere was distributing product that did not comply with the GPL.
A price per copy should be constructed based on similarly featured products in the marketplace. It could get expensive for NuSphere, but commercial software is an expensive commodity.
As MySQL is open-source, it may make more sense to have NuSphere donate the money to an organisation like the EFF or the FSF, to support Open Source software as a whole.
If this law is passed, doesn't this mean that if I, Joe Average, mix up a couple of tracks and find some webcasters playing my tracks, that I can extract money from them?
How do I go about doing that, and if the state is deputizing the RIAA to be their tax-collectors (conveniently only collecting taxes for their clients), then this really stinks.
What this should mean is that artists would be able to release music independently from any specific label and get paid if their material is played.
Personally, I think that if this law to to be fairly and equitably applied to the majority of the copyright-holders in the country, then some type of government-funded independent registry should be maintained where artists interested in deriving income from webcasted tracks must register them with at no charge.
A percentage of the money could be taken by the governement to cover the costs of running the registry.
Radio stations would then check the single, unified list, and credit the appropriate account.
Yes, it could be a goddamn big list, but thats the price you pay for a fair and just law.
Payments would be held by the government for the period that copyright lasts (however long that might be), and the artist, upon providing appropriate identification, could collect the money.
This would not preclude the RIAA from extracting revenue from their artists web-play, but would help to ensure that all copyright-holders, not just those financed by the RIAA to benefit.
I mean, how is this supposed to work otherwise?
Am I, a guy with not much more than a guitar to his name, going to be able to afford a lawyer to sue the radio stations? Thats ridiculous.
This law promotes the efforts of a tiny percentage of copyright-holders and does nothing to promote the creation of new works (unless they are on RIAA labels).
Is this governement by the people, for the people?
Because it sounds like government by the RIAA for the RIAA.
after using gmc, Nautilus and Konqueror (and TkDesk, and various others), i found ROX.
and never looked back.
For the few times i need to use a file-manager (I usually prefer the command-line), ROX works like a charm. Plus it's not bloated and slow like Konqueror and the hideously bloated and slow Nautilus.
I no longer use either GNOME or KDE because of the poor performance, which doesn't seem to be improving with newer releases, and WindowMaker + ROX run all the GTK+/Qt apps, without the baggage of some stupid Windows-alike 'Desktop Environment'
It literally starts up in under a second on my P3-500, and does everything i need from a filemanager.
I don't use the other ROX components, but the file manager is perfect for me.
In 10 years you'll be glad your Mac runs Linux
on
Linux on the iMac G4
·
· Score: 2, Troll
Since Apple have a propensity to obsolete their hardware, and OSes rather quickly.
Look at 68k macs - no longer supported by any current version of the MacOS.
Look at the Newton - dumped
Look at Pre-G3 Power Macs - unsupported by OS X, or any Apple Unix
Look at A/UX - dumped by Apple
My IIfx, PowerMac 8500, Rev. A iMac, Titanium PowerBook, Duron 750, Celeron 366, dual P-Pro 200, P-133 and Sega Dreamcast will *all* run Linux, and will likely be able to run Linux until their hardware fails.
Apple can't support their products like the Open Source community can, they seem to be of the opinion that if a machine is more than 2 years old, it is useless and you should buy a new one.
I, for one, am extremely glad my Macs can run Linux, because I know that when Apple forget me (and they will), the open Source community are still here to support me (and they encourage me to help support myself).
A huge thank you to the LinuxM68k, LinuxPPC, Linux-SH4 and Linux-x86 coders, you have made such a difference to my computing life.
Surely implementing something already in wide use within the Linux community - C, Java, Perl or Python would be much more useful than implementing some new, unproven toy language like C#.
If.NET truly is a good technology, which stands on it's own merit, and not because it happens to be the next lock-in tool of corporate behemoth Microsoft, then why would it not be immediately useful as a platform for existing proven Linux development tools and techniques?
Personally, I think.NET is a complete waste of time, which will fail to gain critical mass, despite the enormous pressure on developers from that fucking clown Steve Ballmer and his crew.
.NET offers nothing we don't already have except for the 'Made by Microsoft' stamp, but it's been a long time since that mark held any sway over me and my choice of development tools.
Obviously, Miguel de Icaza is free to do whatever floats his boat, but you can count me as a 'former user of the GNOME project' should.NET ever play a significant role in it's frameworks.
Maybe its petty politics and free-software rhetoric from RMS etc. that has led me to this decision, but thats how disillusioned I am with Microsoft and it's products.
I don't trust them, don't like them, and I feel much gratitude to the developers of Linux and all that has been built on top of it that lets get as far away from Microsoft and their shithouse software as possible.
These machines (all Win2K) have their entire filesystems exposed over the internet, and are promiscuously advertising their presence because they are infected by a virus that leaves a clear trail in the logs of any web server they attempt to infect.
These machines are engaged in abuse of my web services, and I hold Microsoft at least partly responsible for this situation.
Presumably the virus itself is responsible for opening their shares with guest access, but maybe it's M$'s lame out-of-the-box security.
If your machine's IP is on this (small fragment of my) list of machines banned from accessing my web server due to virus infection, then i suggest you replace your hopelessly insecure OS with a decent one.
I was incredulous when i analysed my web-servers logfiles and found the sheer number of virus-infected hosts, all Windows NT and 2000, and most of which were sharing the entire contents of their hard-drives over the public internet.
I know Windows can be secure as the admin is competent, but the ease with which it's security is breached through Outlook/IE is breathtaking.
The idea that Windows is somehow more secure than Linux/UNIX is laughable to me.
I am the sys. admin for a Wellington-based technology business, and we use Citylink to connect to ISPs and other sites.
Recently, we moved premises and because Citylink was available in both locations, i have been able to securely bridge my two locations (using Linux-running routers on both ends) transparently over Citylink, which means the users don't even notice that all the servers and outbound router are still down the road.
LAN traffic averages about 2Mbps across the link, and if we had done this using our link to TelstraSaturn (our ISP) we would have ended up with a bandwith bill of extraordinary proportions.
The link was set up simply by assigning an unused 192.168.x.x address to both ends of the connection, running VTUN across this link and then bridging the virtual interfaces using Linux's bridge-utils.
There is no reason this concept couldn't be expanded to link arbitary numbers of sites into a nice, flat, stable, secure 'WAN'. In fact, this is exactly what i will be doing to fulfil some of my company's disaster-recovery requirements.
I couldn't be happier with the support, stability and speed Citylink provides.
The kernel that shipped with Mandrake 8.0 was completely broken. Processes, especially mozilla, would go into 'D' uninterruptible sleep every hour or so, requiring a reboot to be killed.
This was immensely frustrating and made a joke out of Linux's claimed 'stability'. I blame Mandrake for this one, whats worse is that this distro is one i paid for. Will i buy another Mandrake Linux distro? Not likely.
The 2.4.15 'issue' was one i luckily missed, but it would have been all too easy to download 30MB of kernel, spend several hours configuring and compiling on my P-75, only to have a broken system that inexplicably corrupted my disks.
That being said, every other 2.4 kernel i have tried has worked pretty well, and the 2.4.17 kernel i run on my routers seems to work flawlessly and fast, while providing significant extra capabilities over 2.2. 2 out of 17 aint bad i guess.
I am not complaining, i got this stuff for free, and in general, it is good stuff, but I there is definitely room for improvement in the way kernel releases are tested and labelled.
I mean, on kernel.org, 2.4.15 is listed identically to the other kernel releases - there should at least be a 'broken' sub-directory with kernels with major issues that prevent safe operation of your system.
The changelog on kernel 2.4.15 and 2.4.16 don't make specific reference to '2.4.15 would corrupt your disks when unmounted', which might be understandable to the average user.
'Correctly sync inodes in iput()', in the 2.4.16 changelog only makes sense if you already knew what the problem was, or if you are already a kernel hacker.
In general, the 2.4 kernel has been a huge step forward in functionality and performance, but i think it would be very helpful to flag kernel releases with issues somewhere prominent on kernel.org.'
Let us not forget that these guys are simply trying to protect the rights of the companies they represent.
When you or your company pirates software, you are breaking the terms of the license.
If you take GPL software and distribute it without providing source, i doubt there would be any outcry when the author of the software - or, in fact, an organisation like the FSF, sends cease-and-desist letters to the offending organisation.
I agree that the BSA entering your premises is a questionable practice, but, as we have seen with recent Borland liceses, in many cases you or your emplyer will have agreed to this as part of your licensing contract.
I am constantly stunned at the apathy the senior management of my company express with regard to software licensing.
My Linux desktops and servers are all completely compliant with regard to their respective software licenses, but every Windows desktop/server we run has at least several hundred and at worst several tens of thousands of dollars of unlicensed software on it.
When presented with an estimate of the cost of becoming compliant (over a hundred thousand dollars with our current deployed server apps), they shrug and ask how long we can continue to put off paying.
So, IMHO, these guys get what is coming to them when the BSA knocks on their doors.
It's not like they don't have a choice to use free software, if they feel that paying for it is not really an option.
Like, will it run the RDP Terminal Server that pisses over X, VNC and seemingly everything else available for remote access in terms of speed, without the bizarre and restrictive licensing scheme.
I'd like to run Linux apps over RDP, but there doesn't seem to be an RDP server available for Linux.
For my current Java project, my IDE consists of NEdit plus a couple of supporting perl scripts which handle compiling,.war-ing and rebuilding my project, along with restarting tomcat (though Tomcat 4.0 doesn't need to be restarted when your classes change i hear)
my 'build.pl' invokes javac once for all the files that need compilation - it checks my source folders for changed timestamps and recompiles all the changed files with one invocation of 'javac'.
NEdit is a hell of a lot faster than JBuilder's editor, stdout isn't as slow as molasses like it is with both netbeans and JBuilder (haven't tried Eclipse yet) and i don't miss the 'IDE' features at all, though during initial development the auto-completion and GUI interface builder might come in handy.
My litte psuedo-IDE doesn't have all the features of JBuilder,Netbeans or Eclipse but its only about 100-200 lines of perl altogether and gets the job done perfectly.
My next project will be developed using Project Builder on OS X, which while not super-fast for java development , is complete, with a decent editor (though it lacks auto-complete, unless i have missed the menu option to turn this on) and stable with a very nice GUI interface builder.
the most fun i ever had at a LAN party was in an 8-player Kingpin deathmatch.
You don't need the CD for multiplayer action, and the graphics and sound effects make for a good experience even on older machines (uses Quake2 engine)
I moved from sawfish/GNOME to KDE to WindowMaker over the course of this year.
It makes you realise what a pig KDE is in terms of resources. GNOME is faster than KDE but isn't anywhere near to KDE as far as 'Desktop Environment' functionality goes.
WindowMaker needs a fair bit of work put in before all the icons/miniwindows for your apps behave as you want them .
It is not immediately clear how to suppress multiple application icons for apps like xmms, or to override application icons supplied by the apps themselves like NEdit. Nor is it obvious how to actually dock an app like WMClock
Once you figure this out (and i think 0.8 has some extra features in this department), i find WindowMaker to be the most useful desktop environment available on Linux.
Currently, i use OS X primarily, and Window Maker absolutely blitzes it for speed, even on a lower-specced machine (P3-500 vs. G4-550) I also run Window Maker on XDarwin for X apps on the Powerbook.
I don't quite know why a minor upgrade to this package warrants a Slashdot story, but i might as well take this opportunity to thank the WindowMaker team for making my computing life easier.
I am typing this on a TiBook, which i must say is by far the best laptop i have ever used. The screen is great, battery life is great, size and weight are great, keyboard is good, trackpad is good. I always use an external 3-button optical mouse with mine, so the trackpad sees minimal use,
I run OS X, to primarily so I can use Photoshop, Freehand and Flash without needing to dual-boot (Though I still have to use Classic for Photoshop and Flash) along with XDarwin to run rdesktop, Nedit and WindowMaker, as well as to run various apps remotely on my Linux servers when necessary.
I also program with OpenGL and C using ProjectBuilder, which is a pretty nice Development Environment (this is a genuinely great MacOS X feature)
However, i miss Linux for a couple of major reasons:
1. SMB and NFS connectivity - Linux is so, so very much better for connecting to a Windows or UNIX network than OS X.
Apple are either trying to be funny calling what they have done with samba and OS X 'integration', or theyre living in a dream world populated only by Macintoshes, none of whom would ever need to connect to an existing Windows share.
Mounting NFS shares practically requires a third-party shareware GUI app (which seems overcomplicated anyway), and nfs shares that fail to work (for seemingly inexplicable reasons) can't be unmounted, even by root. Despite using the supposedly 'More UNIX than Linux' BSD core, NFS support in MacOS X sucks bigtime.
2. The UI makes you feel like you have your hands tied. You can't actually turn off the superflous window animation antics entirely, which i find completely idiotic.
I miss multiple workspaces greatly. If its such a good idea to support multiple monitors ( a feature Apple has touted for years), then surely it's both easy and a good idea to support multiple 'virtual' workspaces?
Aqua has some good features - it is very consistent, but this certainly seems to be at the expense of flexibility. 'WindowShade' is a useful thing to have, and i can't believe there is no option to enable it on OS X.
After using Linux almost exclusively for the last year or so, i find OS X both a breath of fresh air and a set of candy-coloured chains for my computer.
The biggest (actually useful) feature Aqua has over something like a heavily tweaked Window Maker is the sensible and consistent cut n paste system.
This is the thing I find most liberating about it, as i never have to worry about whether the piece of text i copy from one app will actually paste successfully into another like i do on Linux (though i think my beef is largely with Mozilla's cut n paste)
Konqueror is easily a match for the Finder in terms of functionality, and frankly i find the 'Home', 'Favourites' etc. icons in the Finder downright ugly.
I think OS X is a solid foundation on which to build (it is pretty stable, though prone to annoying problems - See how much fun it is if you accidentally associate the extension '.app' with an application.
Quicktime and DVD playback is handy, though the 'Register for Quicktime Pro' message is not what i expect when i purchase a NZ$6000 machine.
Fuck you Apple, I bought your computer, if i wanted Quicktime Pro, don't you think i would have ordered it with the machine?? This kind of intrusive advertising makes you truly appreciate Free and Open Source software.
And theres no way it can compete with my Hollywood+ equipped Linux machine for DVD playback.
All things considered, I like OS X, but if anything it has impressed upon me just how well-matched Linux's desktop functionality is with Apple's flagship OS.
I won't be replacing Mandrake-PPC which runs on my iMac with OS X anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Man, the film industry is going to get *killed* by the games industry in a few years, and it seems they don't see it coming.
Seriously, 'interactivity' is not about downloading a flick and laboriously re-editing it (a process of questionable legality in the curent political climate), it's about the viewer/audience being able to influence the content at 'run-time'.
DVD offers minimal interactivity, and everyone who has ever tried to 'interact' with a DVD knows this.
The moviemakers are just trying to talk up their pathetic 'interactivity' to make it seem like they aren't still just rehashing the same old shit and ripping off the viewing public over and over again.
Actually, the entire U.S.A sinking beneath the waves would probably be the best thing that could happen to human civilization as we know it.
People saying 'Linux users won't pay for anything' should probably note that theire are far more Windows Blender users than Linux users out there.
Frankly, the reason why they couldn't make money was because their app could not compete with the other, more polished solutions in the market.
I thought that it was quite legal and acceptable to reverse engineer a product and publish the specifications, provided you do not infringe on any other laws e.g. copyright to do so.
This move is designed to avoid the Settlement terms.
By making the filesystem a database, and conveniently sourcing the database from a third party, they won't have to release any specs for interoperability etc. since their filesystem will essentially be supplied by a third party who is not required to disclose anything under the terms of the MS settlement.
I can't believe the Canadian government holds the view that the only copyright-holders worth compensating are those sponsored by large corporates.
Everybody produces work protected by copyright, whether they know it or not, almost every day.
But obviously some entities produce work that is more equal than others in terms of the protection/compensation imposed by this proposed legislation.
This measure is a ludicrous abuse of power, and will not benefit Canadians in any way whatsoever.
I am not a Canadian, I am from New Zealand, on the other side of the planet, but I fear that my government will foolishly follow the lead set by countries like Canada in introducing these despicable laws.
I would like to see how democracy is served by this proposed legislation - How many canadians consider this legislation beneficial?
No, law is based on corporations bribing politicians to pass laws promoting the interests of said corporations.
I had a similar dilemma - a big mean x86 workstation or the Titanium Powerbook.
I chose the Powerbook, and I think i definitely made the right decision.
MacOS X feels a lot slower than Win2K or Linux, and it is a big step backwards from OS9 in terms of GUI functionality, but its mostly tolerable.
The chicks dig the dock magnification and window resize animations, anyway.
I develop Java/Tomcat apps, do web design with Photoshop and remotely administer my Linux and Win2K servers with XDarwin and rdesktop.
The Powerbook is IMHO way superior to any x86 laptop I have used, and i've used a few.
It wakes from sleep practically instantly, is easy to switch between different locations, has a useful array of expansion ports, and is light enough to carry easily. It doesn't crash often (Though the Finder locks up for me quite a lot - easily fixed with a 'Force Quit' that actually works reliably for the first time in MacOS history)
Add a good, free (as in beer) IDE and extensive GUI and general purpose APIs, and its a dream to program for.
I would recommend this machine, except for the Aqua GUI, which i can't say has grown on me with time. However, this is a minor annoyance, and I can always run a fullscreen X server to cover it up.
Oh. Yeah, and MacOS 8.6 was written as
MacOS VIII.VI i suppose?
From a company who supposedly values consistency so highly, you'd have to assume they are on crack.
It's got a big goddamn 'X' in it's label, so thats what I call it.
I spose youre one of those people who says 'GIF' as 'Jif'
Nusphere should continue to be able to release their software in compliance with the GPL, however for each copy of their software they distributed without complying with the GPL, they should be forced to negotiate with MYSQL AB etc. and agree on a fee to be paid for each copy of the software distributed illegally.
If precise figures cannot be had, then an estimate should be created based on the length of time NuSphere was distributing product that did not comply with the GPL.
A price per copy should be constructed based on similarly featured products in the marketplace. It could get expensive for NuSphere, but commercial software is an expensive commodity.
As MySQL is open-source, it may make more sense to have NuSphere donate the money to an organisation like the EFF or the FSF, to support Open Source software as a whole.
If this law is passed, doesn't this mean that if I, Joe Average, mix up a couple of tracks and find some webcasters playing my tracks, that I can extract money from them?
How do I go about doing that, and if the state is deputizing the RIAA to be their tax-collectors (conveniently only collecting taxes for their clients), then this really stinks.
What this should mean is that artists would be able to release music independently from any specific label and get paid if their material is played.
Personally, I think that if this law to to be fairly and equitably applied to the majority of the copyright-holders in the country, then some type of government-funded independent registry should be maintained where artists interested in deriving income from webcasted tracks must register them with at no charge.
A percentage of the money could be taken by the governement to cover the costs of running the registry.
Radio stations would then check the single, unified list, and credit the appropriate account.
Yes, it could be a goddamn big list, but thats the price you pay for a fair and just law.
Payments would be held by the government for the period that copyright lasts (however long that might be), and the artist, upon providing appropriate identification, could collect the money.
This would not preclude the RIAA from extracting revenue from their artists web-play, but would help to ensure that all copyright-holders, not just those financed by the RIAA to benefit.
I mean, how is this supposed to work otherwise?
Am I, a guy with not much more than a guitar to his name, going to be able to afford a lawyer to sue the radio stations? Thats ridiculous.
This law promotes the efforts of a tiny percentage of copyright-holders and does nothing to promote the creation of new works (unless they are on RIAA labels).
Is this governement by the people, for the people?
Because it sounds like government by the RIAA for the RIAA.
after using gmc, Nautilus and Konqueror (and TkDesk, and various others), i found ROX.
and never looked back.
For the few times i need to use a file-manager (I usually prefer the command-line), ROX works like a charm. Plus it's not bloated and slow like Konqueror and the hideously bloated and slow Nautilus.
I no longer use either GNOME or KDE because of the poor performance, which doesn't seem to be improving with newer releases, and WindowMaker + ROX run all the GTK+/Qt apps, without the baggage of some stupid Windows-alike 'Desktop Environment'
It literally starts up in under a second on my P3-500, and does everything i need from a filemanager.
I don't use the other ROX components, but the file manager is perfect for me.
Since Apple have a propensity to obsolete their hardware, and OSes rather quickly.
Look at 68k macs - no longer supported by any current version of the MacOS.
Look at the Newton - dumped
Look at Pre-G3 Power Macs - unsupported by OS X, or any Apple Unix
Look at A/UX - dumped by Apple
My IIfx, PowerMac 8500, Rev. A iMac, Titanium PowerBook, Duron 750, Celeron 366, dual P-Pro 200, P-133 and Sega Dreamcast will *all* run Linux, and will likely be able to run Linux until their hardware fails.
Apple can't support their products like the Open Source community can, they seem to be of the opinion that if a machine is more than 2 years old, it is useless and you should buy a new one.
I, for one, am extremely glad my Macs can run Linux, because I know that when Apple forget me (and they will), the open Source community are still here to support me (and they encourage me to help support myself).
A huge thank you to the LinuxM68k, LinuxPPC, Linux-SH4 and Linux-x86 coders, you have made such a difference to my computing life.
Then why implement a C# compiler for it?
.NET truly is a good technology, which stands on it's own merit, and not because it happens to be the next lock-in tool of corporate behemoth Microsoft, then why would it not be immediately useful as a platform for existing proven Linux development tools and techniques?
.NET is a complete waste of time, which will fail to gain critical mass, despite the enormous pressure on developers from that fucking clown Steve Ballmer and his crew.
.NET ever play a significant role in it's frameworks.
Surely implementing something already in wide use within the Linux community - C, Java, Perl or Python would be much more useful than implementing some new, unproven toy language like C#.
If
Personally, I think
.NET offers nothing we don't already have except for the 'Made by Microsoft' stamp, but it's been a long time since that mark held any sway over me and my choice of development tools.
Obviously, Miguel de Icaza is free to do whatever floats his boat, but you can count me as a 'former user of the GNOME project' should
Maybe its petty politics and free-software rhetoric from RMS etc. that has led me to this decision, but thats how disillusioned I am with Microsoft and it's products.
I don't trust them, don't like them, and I feel much gratitude to the developers of Linux and all that has been built on top of it that lets get as far away from Microsoft and their shithouse software as possible.
All the servers infected with a virus hitting my web server requesting http://www/root.exe are UNIX machines, uh huh.
//WORKGROUP/C\$ -I 207.88.220.61
Why not try this.
With any of the following IPs, type 'smbclient -L 207.88.220.61'
If you're more of a cracker than I am, you might then try smbclient
and just hit return when prompted for a password.
this also works with:
203.228.232.188
203.231.119.70
203.231.166.49
203.233.20.86
203.231.216.208
203.199.54.26
203.231.217.5
203.231.122.227
203.244.13.72
and countless others.
These machines (all Win2K) have their entire filesystems exposed over the internet, and are promiscuously advertising their presence because they are infected by a virus that leaves a clear trail in the logs of any web server they attempt to infect.
These machines are engaged in abuse of my web services, and I hold Microsoft at least partly responsible for this situation.
Presumably the virus itself is responsible for opening their shares with guest access, but maybe it's M$'s lame out-of-the-box security.
If your machine's IP is on this (small fragment of my) list of machines banned from accessing my web server due to virus infection, then i suggest you replace your hopelessly insecure OS with a decent one.
I was incredulous when i analysed my web-servers logfiles and found the sheer number of virus-infected hosts, all Windows NT and 2000, and most of which were sharing the entire contents of their hard-drives over the public internet.
I know Windows can be secure as the admin is competent, but the ease with which it's security is breached through Outlook/IE is breathtaking.
The idea that Windows is somehow more secure than Linux/UNIX is laughable to me.
I am the sys. admin for a Wellington-based technology business, and we use Citylink to connect to ISPs and other sites.
Recently, we moved premises and because Citylink was available in both locations, i have been able to securely bridge my two locations (using Linux-running routers on both ends) transparently over Citylink, which means the users don't even notice that all the servers and outbound router are still down the road.
LAN traffic averages about 2Mbps across the link, and if we had done this using our link to TelstraSaturn (our ISP) we would have ended up with a bandwith bill of extraordinary proportions.
The link was set up simply by assigning an unused 192.168.x.x address to both ends of the connection, running VTUN across this link and then bridging the virtual interfaces using Linux's bridge-utils.
There is no reason this concept couldn't be expanded to link arbitary numbers of sites into a nice, flat, stable, secure 'WAN'. In fact, this is exactly what i will be doing to fulfil some of my company's disaster-recovery requirements.
I couldn't be happier with the support, stability and speed Citylink provides.
Yep, autodetection of link speed seems to be horribly broken, with the result that the card just doesn't work.
.c and .h files from a 2.4.8 kernel source tree and rebuilt it as a 2.4.17 module and no more problems.
I just copied the
The kernel that shipped with Mandrake 8.0 was completely broken. Processes, especially mozilla, would go into 'D' uninterruptible sleep every hour or so, requiring a reboot to be killed.
This was immensely frustrating and made a joke out of Linux's claimed 'stability'. I blame Mandrake for this one, whats worse is that this distro is one i paid for. Will i buy another Mandrake Linux distro? Not likely.
The 2.4.15 'issue' was one i luckily missed, but it would have been all too easy to download 30MB of kernel, spend several hours configuring and compiling on my P-75, only to have a broken system that inexplicably corrupted my disks.
That being said, every other 2.4 kernel i have tried has worked pretty well, and the 2.4.17 kernel i run on my routers seems to work flawlessly and fast, while providing significant extra capabilities over 2.2. 2 out of 17 aint bad i guess.
I am not complaining, i got this stuff for free, and in general, it is good stuff, but I there is definitely room for improvement in the way kernel releases are tested and labelled.
I mean, on kernel.org, 2.4.15 is listed identically to the other kernel releases - there should at least be a 'broken' sub-directory with kernels with major issues that prevent safe operation of your system.
The changelog on kernel 2.4.15 and 2.4.16 don't make specific reference to '2.4.15 would corrupt your disks when unmounted', which might be understandable to the average user.
'Correctly sync inodes in iput()', in the 2.4.16 changelog only makes sense if you already knew what the problem was, or if you are already a kernel hacker.
In general, the 2.4 kernel has been a huge step forward in functionality and performance, but i think it would be very helpful to flag kernel releases with issues somewhere prominent on kernel.org.'
Let us not forget that these guys are simply trying to protect the rights of the companies they represent.
When you or your company pirates software, you are breaking the terms of the license.
If you take GPL software and distribute it without providing source, i doubt there would be any outcry when the author of the software - or, in fact, an organisation like the FSF, sends cease-and-desist letters to the offending organisation.
I agree that the BSA entering your premises is a questionable practice, but, as we have seen with recent Borland liceses, in many cases you or your emplyer will have agreed to this as part of your licensing contract.
I am constantly stunned at the apathy the senior management of my company express with regard to software licensing.
My Linux desktops and servers are all completely compliant with regard to their respective software licenses, but every Windows desktop/server we run has at least several hundred and at worst several tens of thousands of dollars of unlicensed software on it.
When presented with an estimate of the cost of becoming compliant (over a hundred thousand dollars with our current deployed server apps), they shrug and ask how long we can continue to put off paying.
So, IMHO, these guys get what is coming to them when the BSA knocks on their doors.
It's not like they don't have a choice to use free software, if they feel that paying for it is not really an option.
Come on, it's a fucking *FIREWALL*.
If you want GCC, then grab it from gnu.org and use it.
Like, will it run the RDP Terminal Server that pisses over X, VNC and seemingly everything else available for remote access in terms of speed, without the bizarre and restrictive licensing scheme.
I'd like to run Linux apps over RDP, but there doesn't seem to be an RDP server available for Linux.
For my current Java project, my IDE consists of NEdit plus a couple of supporting perl scripts which handle compiling, .war-ing and rebuilding my project, along with restarting tomcat (though Tomcat 4.0 doesn't need to be restarted when your classes change i hear)
my 'build.pl' invokes javac once for all the files that need compilation - it checks my source folders for changed timestamps and recompiles all the changed files with one invocation of 'javac'.
NEdit is a hell of a lot faster than JBuilder's editor, stdout isn't as slow as molasses like it is with both netbeans and JBuilder (haven't tried Eclipse yet) and i don't miss the 'IDE' features at all, though during initial development the auto-completion and GUI interface builder might come in handy.
My litte psuedo-IDE doesn't have all the features of JBuilder,Netbeans or Eclipse but its only about 100-200 lines of perl altogether and gets the job done perfectly.
My next project will be developed using Project Builder on OS X, which while not super-fast for java development , is complete, with a decent editor (though it lacks auto-complete, unless i have missed the menu option to turn this on) and stable with a very nice GUI interface builder.
the most fun i ever had at a LAN party was in an 8-player Kingpin deathmatch.
You don't need the CD for multiplayer action, and the graphics and sound effects make for a good experience even on older machines (uses Quake2 engine)
I moved from sawfish/GNOME to KDE to WindowMaker over the course of this year.
It makes you realise what a pig KDE is in terms of resources. GNOME is faster than KDE but isn't anywhere near to KDE as far as 'Desktop Environment' functionality goes.
WindowMaker needs a fair bit of work put in before all the icons/miniwindows for your apps behave as you want them .
It is not immediately clear how to suppress multiple application icons for apps like xmms, or to override application icons supplied by the apps themselves like NEdit. Nor is it obvious how to actually dock an app like WMClock
Once you figure this out (and i think 0.8 has some extra features in this department), i find WindowMaker to be the most useful desktop environment available on Linux.
Currently, i use OS X primarily, and Window Maker absolutely blitzes it for speed, even on a lower-specced machine (P3-500 vs. G4-550) I also run Window Maker on XDarwin for X apps on the Powerbook.
I don't quite know why a minor upgrade to this package warrants a Slashdot story, but i might as well take this opportunity to thank the WindowMaker team for making my computing life easier.
I am typing this on a TiBook, which i must say is by far the best laptop i have ever used. The screen is great, battery life is great, size and weight are great, keyboard is good, trackpad is good. I always use an external 3-button optical mouse with mine, so the trackpad sees minimal use,
I run OS X, to primarily so I can use Photoshop, Freehand and Flash without needing to dual-boot (Though I still have to use Classic for Photoshop and Flash) along with XDarwin to run rdesktop, Nedit and WindowMaker, as well as to run various apps remotely on my Linux servers when necessary.
I also program with OpenGL and C using ProjectBuilder, which is a pretty nice Development Environment (this is a genuinely great MacOS X feature)
However, i miss Linux for a couple of major reasons:
1. SMB and NFS connectivity - Linux is so, so very much better for connecting to a Windows or UNIX network than OS X.
Apple are either trying to be funny calling what they have done with samba and OS X 'integration', or theyre living in a dream world populated only by Macintoshes, none of whom would ever need to connect to an existing Windows share.
Mounting NFS shares practically requires a third-party shareware GUI app (which seems overcomplicated anyway), and nfs shares that fail to work (for seemingly inexplicable reasons) can't be unmounted, even by root. Despite using the supposedly 'More UNIX than Linux' BSD core, NFS support in MacOS X sucks bigtime.
2. The UI makes you feel like you have your hands tied. You can't actually turn off the superflous window animation antics entirely, which i find completely idiotic.
I miss multiple workspaces greatly. If its such a good idea to support multiple monitors ( a feature Apple has touted for years), then surely it's both easy and a good idea to support multiple 'virtual' workspaces?
Aqua has some good features - it is very consistent, but this certainly seems to be at the expense of flexibility. 'WindowShade' is a useful thing to have, and i can't believe there is no option to enable it on OS X.
After using Linux almost exclusively for the last year or so, i find OS X both a breath of fresh air and a set of candy-coloured chains for my computer.
The biggest (actually useful) feature Aqua has over something like a heavily tweaked Window Maker is the sensible and consistent cut n paste system.
This is the thing I find most liberating about it, as i never have to worry about whether the piece of text i copy from one app will actually paste successfully into another like i do on Linux (though i think my beef is largely with Mozilla's cut n paste)
Konqueror is easily a match for the Finder in terms of functionality, and frankly i find the 'Home', 'Favourites' etc. icons in the Finder downright ugly.
I think OS X is a solid foundation on which to build (it is pretty stable, though prone to annoying problems - See how much fun it is if you accidentally associate the extension '.app' with an application.
Quicktime and DVD playback is handy, though the 'Register for Quicktime Pro' message is not what i expect when i purchase a NZ$6000 machine.
Fuck you Apple, I bought your computer, if i wanted Quicktime Pro, don't you think i would have ordered it with the machine?? This kind of intrusive advertising makes you truly appreciate Free and Open Source software.
And theres no way it can compete with my Hollywood+ equipped Linux machine for DVD playback.
All things considered, I like OS X, but if anything it has impressed upon me just how well-matched Linux's desktop functionality is with Apple's flagship OS.
I won't be replacing Mandrake-PPC which runs on my iMac with OS X anytime soon.