I do buy games. I've also been ripped off more times than I care to think.
Too many games only last a weekend, or are just cloning stuff that's been done before.
Nowadays, I won't buy anything without reading a couple of reviews first, or better yet trying it out via demo.
You know what pisses me off most? Forcing me to stick an easily scratched CD in every time I want to play a game I paid for. The first thing I do after installing is go look for the inevitable patch, then the second thing is to grab the no-cd crack that crackers like deviance and flt make.
And now they're being arrested. Fine. But don't come complaining to me when sales drop because people can't 1) try before they buy or 2) use the software they paid for without having to jump through hoops.
People who are prepared to pay for the 'real deal' will do so regardless of the availablity of warez. People who are not (mainly because they can't afford it), will not buy even if you shut the whole scene down - they'll just go without.
There are "Fair Dealing" rights in the UK, which are basically the same thing.
They're not very precisely defined (in terms of quantity), which is half the problem. You're specifically allowed by law to copy a portion for "private study and criticism and review and news reporting".
Using the record button on a cassette/radio to 'time-shift' broadcasts, or the same with a video to time-shift TV broadcasts has been judged in court to be a fair dealing right also.
Technicially, the court case only allows you to watch the timeshift once, then you're supposed to wipe the tape!
Conversely, making an entire copy of the work to 'media-shift' (copying one for your car; ripping it to your pc; converting AAC to mp3 via CD) is technically illegal, as the personal study fair dealing exemption specifically does not allow for entire copies.
Therefore, everyone advertising products in the UK with the specific ability to 'rip, mix and burn' (I'm looking at you, Apple) is committing vicarious copyright infringement! (what they nailed napster with)
Isn't life ironic?
Of course, that's the typical UK position. Make it illegal, but don't enforce it. That way the law won't get amended (the courts would almost certainly grant 'media-shifting' as a fair dealing right, if it every came up in court), but they can do whatever they like DRM wise, as technicially, we don't have the rights they're taking away in the first place.
That said, there's no law in the UK (yet) that prevents removing said DRM, as protection schemes are not protected from interference here. So we could use PlayFair to our hearts content, as long as we don't transcode the resultant file...
no the GPL does restrict how you use the software and you agree to it when to do. the restriction is on use of the software for profitby distributing itwithout the source or the ability to get the source.
That is not USE of the software. That is DISTRIBUTION of the software.
They are legally two separate and different things.One is protected by law, one is not.
You can USE the software for profit as much as you like without distribution.
the GPL is like a EULA in the sense that you must agree with it to utilize it in certain ways.
Nope. You NEVER have to agree to the GPL. that's your right, nothing forces you to accept it, the GPL itself tells you that.
However, if you distribute ANY large piece of code (not just GPL) without permission, you're breaking copyright law, and you can be sued by the copyright holder. The main exception is material that has been declared public domain, or has passed beyond the copyright period. The only other exception would be "fair use" rights, but there's no fair use right that allows you to publish a large or complete part to others.
The GPL is your defence to being sued. If linus sues you for distributing your theoretical binary only kernel, your one and only defence is to wave that GPL and say 'but you already gave me permission to distribute using this licence'. However, that defence can only work if you abide by all of it's terms, to whit, distributing source with the binary.
To contrast back to the Apple DRM'd files; there is no law, none, that prevents me removing that DRM using playfair. The DMCA prevents an american writing such a program, or distributing such a program, but USING it is totally legal.
Using it, legally, to get back the legal rights that Apple has no legal ability to forbid (only technical ability) has a certain karma to it.
Face it. The GPL is your defence to an accusation of breaking copyright law; Apple DRM is a restriction with no legal basis, especially not copyright.
Copyright has nothing to do with Fairplay, so drawing a comparison with the GPL is silly, to say the least.
To put it bluntly, EULA's and DRM take away your rights granted under law; the GPL gives you MORE rights than the law does.
Someone else that doesn't understand the difference between a EULA and the GPL.
The GPL has zero clauses about how you use a product. Once you've downloaded a GPL'd program, you can do anything you like with it - run it how you like, or print it out and stick it to your cat, even use it to run your tinpot dictatorship torture chambers.
Music downloaded from itunes has an implicit licence (or even an explicit licence - I can't find out, as they won't let us heathen british in yet), enforced by DRM, which restricts how you use the music. You can't put it on anything but an ipod, you can't sell it to anyone else, you can't easily transcode so you can listen to in other than your "Apple Approved" equipment (yes, yes, I know about the cd-burning. My only machine with a burner runs linux.)
NONE of these are protections entitled by law. EULA's are unenforceable fake contracts. The ONLY thing stopping you is the DMCA, which prevents you circumventing protections, even when it otherwise LEGAL to do so.
Even that is debatable, as the DMCA does not prevent reverse engineering for interoperability, so it could be argued that, even in the US, you are entitled to media shift your legally purchased music to use on an alternate player.
So the GPL allows you to do whatever you want with the product, Apple'd DRM does not. One is as open as you can be, one is very restrictive (if you don't own 100% apple equipment)
When you get a GPL program, you can copy it as much as you like, and distribute as much as you like, even distributing modified versions. Except that's illegal under copyright law, so you need permission to do so. The GPL grants you that permission, as long as you distribute the source.
When you get an Apple DRM file, you can make a handful of copies for personal use. You can't give it to anyone else at all, even to legally sell your only copy!
So even with making copies, the one thing copyright law prevents, the GPL is very open, while the Apple DRM is very restrictive.
Playfair has nothing to do with copyright (the right to publish copies, natch). Playfair allows you to remove the DRM-enforced USE restrictions.
It's as defendable as a record button on a video player, it's as defendable as a lockpick, it's as defendable as a crowbar - all of which can be used for legal, or illegal things.
Apple have the right to sell their products with use-restricting DRM; we have the right to remove it.
I was maybe a tad harsh, given you weren't actually originally planning on showing those screenshots to the whole of slashdot:)
It's just that kde can look as 'lickable' as any other desktop these days, and when so many people line up to slag of kde and linux in general, I want to jump up and down and say 'linux can look pretty, honest! It doesn't all have to be pixellated fonts and monochrome boxes!
Anyway, kudos for the effort you put into it, hopefully it'll get a few more people seing the power of a kde desktop - lets just hope they're not put off by the twm style colour scheme;)
tight and real VNC servers are available under nix, but IIRC, they start new xsessions, rather than tie into the existing local one, which doesnt sound like what you want. You might have more joy with it than I did though.
KDE desktop sharing (under K/system, in kde 3.2), on the other hand, is very similar to the XP desktop sharing (in use if not in underlying tech), and you can connect to it using a standard VNC client.
AS far as sharing a console goes, I know screen allows you switch between 'virtual' consoles in a given single logon console (and resume them after logging back in) - that may allow you to share a console with someone at the physical terminal.
If you have control over the workstations, establishing thin client servers on them, i.e. ltsp on their box (which only you use) might work, as I've seen someone logon multiple thin clients into a single session on an LTSP server using one account, and demo something to them all at once that way.
I'd still run a memory check anyway, just to double check there's not an issue with it. It's virtually the first thing i check when i get random lockups/crashes on any system.
you can grab a memtest86 bootable iso (only a couple of meg) which is simplest, or you can stick it in lilo or on a dos floppy.
Another thing which is always worth double checking is making sure dma is enabled (hdparm/dev/hda)
Anyway, if you're happy using icewm, kde and gnome are both probably overkill anyway. If you want a bit more candy though, you could try out xfce, it's a gtk powered DE that's not as chunky as gnome.
Other than that, I'll have to leave you to the tender mercies of the debian mailing lists;)
In a konqueror window, go settings/configure konqueror and select 'previews & meta-data'.
You may well need to increase the maximum file size (slider at bottom) that will be previewed; obviously, if you got a whole lot of big files, it will take a while to create thumbnails on a less grunty system, so it's set fairly conservative by default.
If you're previewing over a network, you may also need to enable the appropriate protocol in the list of tick boxes (preview over said protocols is turned off by default, to save network bandwidth I presume)
As an aside, that list is all the protocols you can handle using the:// syntax in the konqueror location bar, i.e. smb://windows/share, or webdavs://secure.webfolder.com or my personal favourite fish://www.webserver_i_can_ssh_into.com
This hasn't been a problem for at least two years. If you're using an rpm distro, there's urpmi for mandrake, YAST for SuSE, I believe RHN handles dependencies for redhat, and if none of those float your boat, there's apt4rpm.
Dependency issues are gone, as long as you stick to using your chosen package management system and don't start compiling system libraries by hand without doing it properly - and if you do that, it's no different than manually copying random version directx.dll's into the windows system tree and complaining when it goes tits up.
Both kde 3.2.x and gnome 2.4 (2.6 too, for what little testing i've done with it) have been rock solid on the many boxes I run them on.
First question; have you run memtest86 on your memory? icewm may well not be pushing it as hard, and a minor flaw can cause all sorts of havoc.
Second question, did you try swapping out the graphics card? I've seen some really weird issues caused by an old lowspec card with iffy memory.
Thirdly, did you use distro packages, compile yourself, or use third party packages?
If it's any but the first, that may be the issue.
I've had solid win2k/xp systems, and i've had incredibly flakey ones. These days, on modern systems, I find iffy hardware causes more major problems than buggy software, even including shitty drivers.
I have to admit, those screenshots are just nasty. My kde hasn't looked that bad since the 2.2 days.
I've no idea why he has AA turned off (ok, some people don't like it in the 9-14pt range, but you've gotta be insane not to use at the higher pts), and kde supports any fonts that X does, i.e. TTF for example. Personally, I use the microsoft fonts (verdana etc) off my doze games rig, but the free bitstream vera ones are also very nice.
Combine that with the ugly colours, scheme and windeco, it looks like something from mid 90's.
If you want a good example of some kde styles, you've got
plastik (included by default in 3.2), style and windeco
The problem with security by security comes when your source code does get leaked, as the win2k source leak shows (at least two viruses written already on discovered flaws, quite possibly more which I don't know about). It's also entirely possibly, if not even likely, that there have been other windows source leaks which are only known about by the hackers who got them, and they weren't widely spread.
I, on the other hand, would much rather have everyone looking at the source code for my voting machines or my nuclear launch systems, on the basis that there will a large number who will also help spot bugs, and report them. With closed source, you're relying in a much, much smaller number of people to audit the code, quite a few who have a vested interest in NOT reporting the bugs. Especially if it leaks, and you don't know that it's leaked.
Look at encryption tools. The whole process is open, on that exact basis, that only under the scrutiny of many experts can any system be declared secure.
The flaw with your argument is this: you're saying that closed source can identify and eliminate the same number of bugs as a closely examined open source project, which is simply not true, if you compare like with like. (assuming the government pumps similar resources into the open source project as it would to a closed source contractor, rather that just try and get it on the cheap) You're also assuming the security of the closed source vendor itself will never be breached, which you simply cannot assume when designing secure systems.
That's not to say security through obscurity is totally invalid; just that it should be applied at the implementation area, rather than in the underlying code.
There are good reasons, for example, for hiding what services you run, how they're accessed (pork knocking etc), and what internal audit and security processes you run to monitor your systems. In a sense, a password itself is 'security by obscurity'. Even so, the methods themselves should be tried, tested and known good security methods, applied in other areas.
SuSE dont do ISOs (apart from the bootable live-cd)
IIRC, the package updates should show up in YOU (eventually, they seem to prefer backporting patches to the versions on the DVD for a while), or you can configure YAST to connect to an ftp mirror, which is usually available about a month after the packaged cds hit the shelves.
You could either pull down the updates individually through yast, or do it all in one go, and do a net-install upgrade via ftp.
Alternatively, you can get a cheaper upgrade version, if you don't have broadband.
APIC is a way to address CPU's in a multi-CPU system. (it's Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller), so is usually only seen on servers, i.e. SMP or multiprocessor boards.
I/O-APIC is a newer way of handling device interrupts (IRQ's) than boards using PIC's. I'm not particularly versed in this area, but I think you still only see it on newer boards. It seems to be around in the same sort of places as you find ACPI usage (a newer way of handling power management than APM)
I would guess that passing that option to the SuSE boot, is actually selecting a slightly different kernel, with different modules compiled into it, designed for high end workstations or servers - APIC and IO-APIC support are kernel options only available for uniprocessor systems (presumably they're enabled automatically with the SMP support option)
Equally, I presume it's the I/O-APIC-enabled kernel that has the SATA drivers compiled in, and the stock one on SuSE 9.0 doesn't.
SuSE does take a while to install (it does chuck on a lot of packages) but it's always possible it didn't DMA enabled or summat when you were installing.
If you're worried about your system now, you can run drive speed tests from the console, i.e. hdparm -tT/dev/hda will give you your drive speeds.
For comparison, I get about 35MB/sec buffered disk reads for my 5400rpm ATA-100, and about 50MB/sec for my 7200rpm ATA-133 drives. I get about 50-55MB/sec for the 7200rpm SATA-150 RAID1 in my server at work, and we managed to get nearly 70MB/sec on a 7200rpm RAID0 SATA-150 system a colleague built.
I did a bit more digging, and according to this, (scroll down to the sata support recap) the poweredge 750 SATA is supported natively by RHEL3 using libata (Jeff Garzik's library), and looks like it uses the ICH5 driver, thus it should work on any 2.6 kernel (with the sata drivers compiled), so i'd be very surprised if there isn't one of the SuSE 9.1 2.6 kernels that supports this SATA off the boot CD.
Normally, you'd pull it off the SuSE DVD or cds - SuSE Pro comes with an insane amount of software rpms, it's one of it's main advantages, I don't think I found a single app I wanted that wasn't supplied on the DVD when I used to run it, so you don't need a broadband connection like you do with some distros. But yes, YAST would install grip and it's dependencies for you. There's even meta packages, like gnome, which grabs the lot.
SuSE personal is also fairly well supplied, but lacks all the server rpms like apache and mysql which is a bit limiting I think.
YOU tends to pull down backported security patches for the versions that are on the DVD, rather than new versions of packages per se (though those do show up eventually) and it can be a bit of a wait for official SuSE rpms to show up for newer versions, such as mozilla.
That's the main reason I no longer run SuSE - I like to run bleeding edge, and I ended up using apt4rpm with the unofficial suse rpms. That worked, but I wanted a distro with a faster release cycle.
FWIW, I believe the yast licence allows you to copy someone else's SuSE CD's, as long as you don't pay them for it. (obviously, you can copy the gpl-based software). I don't think you can copy the pay-series CD (staroffice etc) as they tend to have more restrictive licences. Still, if you know someone running SuSE, you can legally try it out using their cd's, or a copy of them, or you could do an internet ftp install (they normally put up an ftp install of a release about a month after it hits the shelves).
Or, they do a live-cd demo version, which doesn't have the whole enchilada (it doesn't install to HD, last i checked), but is a bootable cd, somewhat like knoppix.
Still, it's worth buying an official copy of you like it, as they do provide a HUGE amount of packages that all work first time on the DVD (you get cd's too), and the dead-tree manual is the best I've seen supplied for any OS or distro, bar none.
I've got a gigabyte mainboard based server, with dual SATA drives (md RAID 1).
With the ICH5 chipset, and the 2.6.4 kernel, it's running merrily, and with the 1000TX network card on it, the thing laughs at every network speed test I've thrown at it (I haven't got a desktop fast enough to hit its limits), and SATA drive to drive transfers when I was testing were in the 50MB/s range, or about 35MB/s when transferring to ATA.
So when it works, it works happily:)
The 2.6 kernel is more responsive to user tasks than 2.4, the scheduler is pretty nifty.
That said, the 2.4 kernel, especially the 2.4.2x series ones was pretty good too.
Chances are, if your system grinds to a halt when doing heavy disk access, is that you don't have DMA turned on.
run hdparm/dev/hda (for example) and look for using_dma. If it's not set to 1, then you need to fix that. Depends on the distro as to the best method, but adding hdparm -d1/dev/hda to one of the boot-time scripts is pretty foolproof.
YAST is sort of the equivalent of urpmi, (i.e. an RPM dependency management tool/graphical installer)
It's been a year or so since I used SuSE, but yast was avaiable either as a curses interface, or GTK.
YAST is the entire management tool tho, so it's more like the whole *drake tools than urpmi alone.
IIRC, YAST is used for installing/uninstalling packages, modifying settings, configs etc, YOU (YAST online update, iirc) is security patches for existing installed RPMS, similar to windows update or redhat's up2date.
I don't use SuSE any more, but I assume that it was using a 2.4 series kernel on 9.0.
From the problems you describe, it sounds like it may be an ICH5 sata chipset (should say on bootup), and it's using the piix driver, which is the native intel IDE driver, and its close enough to the ICH5 to support that too.
There are fairly nasty reports about the piix driver when it's supporting SATA, i.e. lockups and timeouts, and you'd have more joy using a 2.6 kernel (which has libata, and lib_piix specifically, which works much better) or getting a 2.4 kernel with the libata patch applied.
Mind you, since you've gone back to using IDE, it's a bit of a moot point. SATA is not a significant improvement over PATA (old style IDE) at this point, as the underlying drives are the same, and you'd struggle to saturate either bus. Give it a couple of years though, and SATA will be kicking PATA's ass.
Oh, and you should be able to turn the SATA off, either in the main bios, or the 'mini bios' when the controller itself tried to start.
linux in general works fine with SATA drives if you're using the 2.6 kernel (they're under device drivers/scsi device support/low level drivers) and as the page you link says, there's the same libata patch for the 2.4 kernel series.
Having done a quick google, it appears the suse 9.0 cd has the support for sata controllers if you type 'apic' at the boot screen. (presumably that's the kernel with the drivers compiled in)
So the one remaining question is if the 7210 chipset is one of the supported ones.
This thread
is a patch for the 2.4.26-rc1 kernel piix driver (the one which treats the drive like hda, rather the scsi emulation libata lib_piix which treats it as sda, and is what the 2.6 kernel uses)
Basically, it looks like it's a minor varient of the ICH5 chipset (which is well supported), so if the 7210 isn't supported yet by Jeff Garziks' libata, it soon will be.
At worst, you'll have to install with the sata controller in legacy mode (pretending to be a normal ide master/slave controller), setup a new or patched kernel, and change the bios back to enhanced mode afterwards.
Don't forget, Dell sell their poweredge servers with redhat enterprise - and if redhat supports that chipset, suse likely will too. The simplest route is probably just to email Dell's corporate tech support, and ask if the sata on that model is supported in linux yet. (jeff garzik may work for redhat, he's certainly got a redhat email address, though I hesitate to recommend emailing him directly)
You could also email SuSE, either tech support or one of the mailing lists (suse-linux-e@suse.com iirc, the full list is at lists.suse.com, it's been a while since I used SuSE)
As a quick addendum, avoid the nasty onboard RAID 0/1 on these mainboards. It's like a winmodem, most of the work is done in the closed driver, and the linux support is pretty weak at best.
You're by far and away better off using the sata drives 'standalone' then using the linux native md RAID support to RAID individual partitions. The only time you'd need the closed drivers would be if you were dual booting with windows using the onboard RAID.
You, I, him will all die. That's 100% guaranteed. Whether it's hit by a bus, eaten by cancer, or jumping off a bridge we're *all* dead men walking.
Many people deal with that by joking about it. What you think is disturbing and inappropriate, I think is a handy counter for being one of the few, if only animals aware of our own mortality.
Only problem with reciprocating it is that we end up with a large database of fingerprinted US citizens, the ones who are known to travel.
I'm sure the current US administration would love to get their hands on such a database (after all, I believe some of the 9/11 hijackers passed through the UK and germany)
And the UK government would certainly hand over such data easily. Hell, the Home Secretary is going to implement ID cards for some, soon to be ID cards for all UK citizens.
This is in fact why visitors are being fingerprinted. It's only a stop gap until their own countries fingerprint them for their passport.
Slashdot Mirror
I do buy games. I've also been ripped off more times than I care to think.
Too many games only last a weekend, or are just cloning stuff that's been done before.
Nowadays, I won't buy anything without reading a couple of reviews first, or better yet trying it out via demo.
You know what pisses me off most? Forcing me to stick an easily scratched CD in every time I want to play a game I paid for. The first thing I do after installing is go look for the inevitable patch, then the second thing is to grab the no-cd crack that crackers like deviance and flt make.
And now they're being arrested. Fine. But don't come complaining to me when sales drop because people can't
1) try before they buy
or 2) use the software they paid for without having to jump through hoops.
People who are prepared to pay for the 'real deal' will do so regardless of the availablity of warez. People who are not (mainly because they can't afford it), will not buy even if you shut the whole scene down - they'll just go without.
There are "Fair Dealing" rights in the UK, which are basically the same thing.
They're not very precisely defined (in terms of quantity), which
is half the problem. You're specifically allowed by law to copy a portion for "private study and criticism and review and news reporting".
Using the record button on a cassette/radio to 'time-shift' broadcasts, or the same with a video to time-shift TV broadcasts has been judged in court to be a fair dealing right also.
Technicially, the court case only allows you to watch the timeshift once, then you're supposed to wipe the tape!
Conversely, making an entire copy of the work to 'media-shift' (copying one for your car; ripping it to your pc; converting AAC to mp3 via CD) is technically illegal, as the personal study fair dealing exemption specifically does not allow for entire copies.
Therefore, everyone advertising products in the UK with the specific ability to 'rip, mix and burn' (I'm looking at you, Apple) is committing vicarious copyright infringement! (what they nailed napster with)
Isn't life ironic?
Of course, that's the typical UK position. Make it illegal, but don't enforce it. That way the law won't get amended (the courts would almost certainly grant 'media-shifting' as a fair dealing right, if it every came up in court), but they can do whatever they like DRM wise, as technicially, we don't have the rights they're taking away in the first place.
That said, there's no law in the UK (yet) that prevents removing said DRM, as protection schemes are not protected from interference here. So we could use PlayFair to our hearts content, as long as we don't transcode the resultant file...
the restriction is on use of the software for profit by distributing it without the source or the ability to get the source.
That is not USE of the software. That is DISTRIBUTION of the software.
They are legally two separate and different things.One is protected by law, one is not.
You can USE the software for profit as much as you like without distribution.
the GPL is like a EULA in the sense that you must agree with it to utilize it in certain ways.
Nope. You NEVER have to agree to the GPL. that's your right, nothing forces you to accept it, the GPL itself tells you that.
However, if you distribute ANY large piece of code (not just GPL) without permission, you're breaking copyright law, and you can be sued by the copyright holder. The main exception is material that has been declared public domain, or has passed beyond the copyright period. The only other exception would be "fair use" rights, but there's no fair use right that allows you to publish a large or complete part to others.
The GPL is your defence to being sued. If linus sues you for distributing your theoretical binary only kernel, your one and only defence is to wave that GPL and say 'but you already gave me permission to distribute using this licence'. However, that defence can only work if you abide by all of it's terms, to whit, distributing source with the binary.
To contrast back to the Apple DRM'd files; there is no law, none, that prevents me removing that DRM using playfair. The DMCA prevents an american writing such a program, or distributing such a program, but USING it is totally legal.
Using it, legally, to get back the legal rights that Apple has no legal ability to forbid (only technical ability) has a certain karma to it.
Face it. The GPL is your defence to an accusation of breaking copyright law; Apple DRM is a restriction with no legal basis, especially not copyright.
Copyright has nothing to do with Fairplay, so drawing a comparison with the GPL is silly, to say the least.
To put it bluntly, EULA's and DRM take away your rights granted under law; the GPL gives you MORE rights than the law does.
*sigh*
Someone else that doesn't understand the difference between a EULA and the GPL.
The GPL has zero clauses about how you use a product. Once you've downloaded a GPL'd program, you can do anything you like with it - run it how you like, or print it out and stick it to your cat, even use it to run your tinpot dictatorship torture chambers.
Music downloaded from itunes has an implicit licence (or even an explicit licence - I can't find out, as they won't let us heathen british in yet), enforced by DRM, which restricts how you use the music. You can't put it on anything but an ipod, you can't sell it to anyone else, you can't easily transcode so you can listen to in other than your "Apple Approved" equipment (yes, yes, I know about the cd-burning. My only machine with a burner runs linux.)
NONE of these are protections entitled by law. EULA's are unenforceable fake contracts. The ONLY thing stopping you is the DMCA, which prevents you circumventing protections, even when it otherwise LEGAL to do so.
Even that is debatable, as the DMCA does not prevent reverse engineering for interoperability, so it could be argued that, even in the US, you are entitled to media shift your legally purchased music to use on an alternate player.
So the GPL allows you to do whatever you want with the product, Apple'd DRM does not. One is as open as you can be, one is very restrictive (if you don't own 100% apple equipment)
When you get a GPL program, you can copy it as much as you like, and distribute as much as you like, even distributing modified versions. Except that's illegal under copyright law, so you need permission to do so. The GPL grants you that permission, as long as you distribute the source.
When you get an Apple DRM file, you can make a handful of copies for personal use. You can't give it to anyone else at all, even to legally sell your only copy!
So even with making copies, the one thing copyright law prevents, the GPL is very open, while the Apple DRM is very restrictive.
Playfair has nothing to do with copyright (the right to publish copies, natch). Playfair allows you to remove the DRM-enforced USE restrictions.
It's as defendable as a record button on a video player, it's as defendable as a lockpick, it's as defendable as a crowbar - all of which can be used for legal, or illegal things.
Apple have the right to sell their products with use-restricting DRM; we have the right to remove it.
If you only want to regularly check for the important security updates, other than minor bugfixes, feature upgrades etc
;)
there's a new experimental feature, GLSA only updates
Basically, it's a script that only pulls in the updates that warrant a gentoo linux security announcement.
It's still worth doing an emerge -puvD world every so often though
I was maybe a tad harsh, given you weren't actually originally planning on showing those screenshots to the whole of slashdot :)
;)
It's just that kde can look as 'lickable' as any other desktop these days, and when so many people line up to slag of kde and linux in general, I want to jump up and down and say 'linux can look pretty, honest! It doesn't all have to be pixellated fonts and monochrome boxes!
Anyway, kudos for the effort you put into it, hopefully it'll get a few more people seing the power of a kde desktop - lets just hope they're not put off by the twm style colour scheme
tight and real VNC servers are available under nix, but IIRC, they start new xsessions, rather than tie into the existing local one, which doesnt sound like what you want. You might have more joy with it than I did though.
KDE desktop sharing (under K/system, in kde 3.2), on the other hand, is very similar to the XP desktop sharing (in use if not in underlying tech), and you can connect to it using a standard VNC client.
AS far as sharing a console goes, I know screen allows you switch between 'virtual' consoles in a given single logon console (and resume them after logging back in) - that may allow you to share a console with someone at the physical terminal.
If you have control over the workstations, establishing thin client servers on them, i.e. ltsp on their box (which only you use) might work, as I've seen someone logon multiple thin clients into a single session on an LTSP server using one account, and demo something to them all at once that way.
I'd still run a memory check anyway, just to double check there's not an issue with it. It's virtually the first thing i check when i get random lockups/crashes on any system.
/dev/hda)
;)
you can grab a memtest86 bootable iso (only a couple of meg) which is simplest, or you can stick it in lilo or on a dos floppy.
Another thing which is always worth double checking is making sure dma is enabled (hdparm
Anyway, if you're happy using icewm, kde and gnome are both probably overkill anyway. If you want a bit more candy though, you could try out xfce, it's a gtk powered DE that's not as chunky as gnome.
Other than that, I'll have to leave you to the tender mercies of the debian mailing lists
In a konqueror window, go settings/configure konqueror and select 'previews & meta-data'.
:// syntax in the konqueror location bar, i.e. smb://windows/share, or webdavs://secure.webfolder.com or my personal favourite fish://www.webserver_i_can_ssh_into.com
You may well need to increase the maximum file size (slider at bottom) that will be previewed; obviously, if you got a whole lot of big files, it will take a while to create thumbnails on a less grunty system, so it's set fairly conservative by default.
If you're previewing over a network, you may also need to enable the appropriate protocol in the list of tick boxes (preview over said protocols is turned off by default, to save network bandwidth I presume)
As an aside, that list is all the protocols you can handle using the
This hasn't been a problem for at least two years. If you're using an rpm distro, there's urpmi for mandrake, YAST for SuSE, I believe RHN handles dependencies for redhat, and if none of those float your boat, there's apt4rpm.
.dll's into the windows system tree and complaining when it goes tits up.
Dependency issues are gone, as long as you stick to using your chosen package management system and don't start compiling system libraries by hand without doing it properly - and if you do that, it's no different than manually copying random version directx
Both kde 3.2.x and gnome 2.4 (2.6 too, for what little testing i've done with it) have been rock solid on the many boxes I run them on.
First question; have you run memtest86 on your memory? icewm may well not be pushing it as hard, and a minor flaw can cause all sorts of havoc.
Second question, did you try swapping out the graphics card? I've seen some really weird issues caused by an old lowspec card with iffy memory.
Thirdly, did you use distro packages, compile yourself, or use third party packages?
If it's any but the first, that may be the issue.
I've had solid win2k/xp systems, and i've had incredibly flakey ones. These days, on modern systems, I find iffy hardware causes more major problems than buggy software, even including shitty drivers.
I've no idea why he has AA turned off (ok, some people don't like it in the 9-14pt range, but you've gotta be insane not to use at the higher pts), and kde supports any fonts that X does, i.e. TTF for example. Personally, I use the microsoft fonts (verdana etc) off my doze games rig, but the free bitstream vera ones are also very nice.
Combine that with the ugly colours, scheme and windeco, it looks like something from mid 90's.
If you want a good example of some kde styles, you've got plastik (included by default in 3.2), style and windeco
baghira, a mac clone
knifty, new, my current favourite
and of course, luna if you just luuurve the windows look.
The problem with security by security comes when your source code does get leaked, as the win2k source leak shows (at least two viruses written already on discovered flaws, quite possibly more which I don't know about). It's also entirely possibly, if not even likely, that there have been other windows source leaks which are only known about by the hackers who got them, and they weren't widely spread.
I, on the other hand, would much rather have everyone looking at the source code for my voting machines or my nuclear launch systems, on the basis that there will a large number who will also help spot bugs, and report them. With closed source, you're relying in a much, much smaller number of people to audit the code, quite a few who have a vested interest in NOT reporting the bugs. Especially if it leaks, and you don't know that it's leaked.
Look at encryption tools. The whole process is open, on that exact basis, that only under the scrutiny of many experts can any system be declared secure.
The flaw with your argument is this: you're saying that closed source can identify and eliminate the same number of bugs as a closely examined open source project, which is simply not true, if you compare like with like. (assuming the government pumps similar resources into the open source project as it would to a closed source contractor, rather that just try and get it on the cheap)
You're also assuming the security of the closed source vendor itself will never be breached, which you simply cannot assume when designing secure systems.
That's not to say security through obscurity is totally invalid; just that it should be applied at the implementation area, rather than in the underlying code.
There are good reasons, for example, for hiding what services you run, how they're accessed (pork knocking etc), and what internal audit and security processes you run to monitor your systems. In a sense, a password itself is 'security by obscurity'. Even so, the methods themselves should be tried, tested and known good security methods, applied in other areas.
SuSE dont do ISOs (apart from the bootable live-cd)
IIRC, the package updates should show up in YOU (eventually, they seem to prefer backporting patches to the versions on the DVD for a while), or you can configure YAST to connect to an ftp mirror, which is usually available about a month after the packaged cds hit the shelves.
You could either pull down the updates individually through yast, or do it all in one go, and do a net-install upgrade via ftp.
Alternatively, you can get a cheaper upgrade version, if you don't have broadband.
APIC is a way to address CPU's in a multi-CPU system. (it's Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller), so is usually only seen on servers, i.e. SMP or multiprocessor boards.
/dev/hda will give you your drive speeds.
I/O-APIC is a newer way of handling device interrupts (IRQ's) than boards using PIC's. I'm not particularly versed in this area, but I think you still only see it on newer boards. It seems to be around in the same sort of places as you find ACPI usage (a newer way of handling power management than APM)
I would guess that passing that option to the SuSE boot, is actually selecting a slightly different kernel, with different modules compiled into it, designed for high end workstations or servers - APIC and IO-APIC support are kernel options only available for uniprocessor systems (presumably they're enabled automatically with the SMP support option)
Equally, I presume it's the I/O-APIC-enabled kernel that has the SATA drivers compiled in, and the stock one on SuSE 9.0 doesn't.
SuSE does take a while to install (it does chuck on a lot of packages) but it's always possible it didn't DMA enabled or summat when you were installing.
If you're worried about your system now, you can run drive speed tests from the console, i.e. hdparm -tT
For comparison, I get about 35MB/sec buffered disk reads for my 5400rpm ATA-100, and about 50MB/sec for my 7200rpm ATA-133 drives. I get about 50-55MB/sec for the 7200rpm SATA-150 RAID1 in my server at work, and we managed to get nearly 70MB/sec on a 7200rpm RAID0 SATA-150 system a colleague built.
I did a bit more digging, and according to this, (scroll down to the sata support recap) the poweredge 750 SATA is supported natively by RHEL3 using libata (Jeff Garzik's library), and looks like it uses the ICH5 driver, thus it should work on any 2.6 kernel (with the sata drivers compiled), so i'd be very surprised if there isn't one of the SuSE 9.1 2.6 kernels that supports this SATA off the boot CD.
Normally, you'd pull it off the SuSE DVD or cds - SuSE Pro comes with an insane amount of software rpms, it's one of it's main advantages, I don't think I found a single app I wanted that wasn't supplied on the DVD when I used to run it, so you don't need a broadband connection like you do with some distros. But yes, YAST would install grip and it's dependencies for you. There's even meta packages, like gnome, which grabs the lot.
SuSE personal is also fairly well supplied, but lacks all the server rpms like apache and mysql which is a bit limiting I think.
YOU tends to pull down backported security patches for the versions that are on the DVD, rather than new versions of packages per se (though those do show up eventually) and it can be a bit of a wait for official SuSE rpms to show up for newer versions, such as mozilla.
That's the main reason I no longer run SuSE - I like to run bleeding edge, and I ended up using apt4rpm with the unofficial suse rpms. That worked, but I wanted a distro with a faster release cycle.
FWIW, I believe the yast licence allows you to copy someone else's SuSE CD's, as long as you don't pay them for it. (obviously, you can copy the gpl-based software). I don't think you can copy the pay-series CD (staroffice etc) as they tend to have more restrictive licences. Still, if you know someone running SuSE, you can legally try it out using their cd's, or a copy of them, or you could do an internet ftp install (they normally put up an ftp install of a release about a month after it hits the shelves).
Or, they do a live-cd demo version, which doesn't have the whole enchilada (it doesn't install to HD, last i checked), but is a bootable cd, somewhat like knoppix.
Still, it's worth buying an official copy of you like it, as they do provide a HUGE amount of packages that all work first time on the DVD (you get cd's too), and the dead-tree manual is the best I've seen supplied for any OS or distro, bar none.
I've got a gigabyte mainboard based server, with dual SATA drives (md RAID 1). With the ICH5 chipset, and the 2.6.4 kernel, it's running merrily, and with the 1000TX network card on it, the thing laughs at every network speed test I've thrown at it (I haven't got a desktop fast enough to hit its limits), and SATA drive to drive transfers when I was testing were in the 50MB/s range, or about 35MB/s when transferring to ATA. So when it works, it works happily :)
The 2.6 kernel is more responsive to user tasks than 2.4, the scheduler is pretty nifty.
/dev/hda (for example) and look for using_dma. If it's not set to 1, then you need to fix that. Depends on the distro as to the best method, but adding hdparm -d1 /dev/hda to one of the boot-time scripts is pretty foolproof.
That said, the 2.4 kernel, especially the 2.4.2x series ones was pretty good too.
Chances are, if your system grinds to a halt when doing heavy disk access, is that you don't have DMA turned on.
run hdparm
Except mad penguin are only reviewing SuSE, not running their webserver on it :)
YAST is sort of the equivalent of urpmi, (i.e. an RPM dependency management tool/graphical installer)
It's been a year or so since I used SuSE, but yast was avaiable either as a curses interface, or GTK.
YAST is the entire management tool tho, so it's more like the whole *drake tools than urpmi alone.
IIRC, YAST is used for installing/uninstalling packages, modifying settings, configs etc, YOU (YAST online update, iirc) is security patches for existing installed RPMS, similar to windows update or redhat's up2date.
I don't use SuSE any more, but I assume that it was using a 2.4 series kernel on 9.0.
From the problems you describe, it sounds like it may be an ICH5 sata chipset (should say on bootup), and it's using the piix driver, which is the native intel IDE driver, and its close enough to the ICH5 to support that too.
There are fairly nasty reports about the piix driver when it's supporting SATA, i.e. lockups and timeouts, and you'd have more joy using a 2.6 kernel (which has libata, and lib_piix specifically, which works much better) or getting a 2.4 kernel with the libata patch applied.
Mind you, since you've gone back to using IDE, it's a bit of a moot point. SATA is not a significant improvement over PATA (old style IDE) at this point, as the underlying drives are the same, and you'd struggle to saturate either bus. Give it a couple of years though, and SATA will be kicking PATA's ass.
Oh, and you should be able to turn the SATA off, either in the main bios, or the 'mini bios' when the controller itself tried to start.
Having done a quick google, it appears the suse 9.0 cd has the support for sata controllers if you type 'apic' at the boot screen. (presumably that's the kernel with the drivers compiled in)
So the one remaining question is if the 7210 chipset is one of the supported ones.
This thread is a patch for the 2.4.26-rc1 kernel piix driver (the one which treats the drive like hda, rather the scsi emulation libata lib_piix which treats it as sda, and is what the 2.6 kernel uses)
Basically, it looks like it's a minor varient of the ICH5 chipset (which is well supported), so if the 7210 isn't supported yet by Jeff Garziks' libata, it soon will be.
At worst, you'll have to install with the sata controller in legacy mode (pretending to be a normal ide master/slave controller), setup a new or patched kernel, and change the bios back to enhanced mode afterwards.
Don't forget, Dell sell their poweredge servers with redhat enterprise - and if redhat supports that chipset, suse likely will too. The simplest route is probably just to email Dell's corporate tech support, and ask if the sata on that model is supported in linux yet. (jeff garzik may work for redhat, he's certainly got a redhat email address, though I hesitate to recommend emailing him directly)
You could also email SuSE, either tech support or one of the mailing lists (suse-linux-e@suse.com iirc, the full list is at lists.suse.com, it's been a while since I used SuSE)
As a quick addendum, avoid the nasty onboard RAID 0/1 on these mainboards. It's like a winmodem, most of the work is done in the closed driver, and the linux support is pretty weak at best.
You're by far and away better off using the sata drives 'standalone' then using the linux native md RAID support to RAID individual partitions. The only time you'd need the closed drivers would be if you were dual booting with windows using the onboard RAID.
You know what? It *was* funny. I laughed.
You, I, him will all die. That's 100% guaranteed. Whether it's hit by a bus, eaten by cancer, or jumping off a bridge we're *all* dead men walking.
Many people deal with that by joking about it. What you think is disturbing and inappropriate, I think is a handy counter for being one of the few, if only animals aware of our own mortality.
Only problem with reciprocating it is that we end up with a large database of fingerprinted US citizens, the ones who are known to travel.
I'm sure the current US administration would love to get their hands on such a database (after all, I believe some of the 9/11 hijackers passed through the UK and germany)
And the UK government would certainly hand over such data easily. Hell, the Home Secretary is going to implement ID cards for some, soon to be ID cards for all UK citizens.
This is in fact why visitors are being fingerprinted. It's only a stop gap until their own countries fingerprint them for their passport.