Re:When will Red Hat join?
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SuSE For PPC
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· Score: 1
Well if RedHat wanted a chance at getting into the PowerPC market, realisticly they would need to purchase LinuxPPC, Inc. -- there are just too many distros competiting in too small of space to have Red Hat attempt to join in without purchasing somebody else out who is pretty big.
Currently (or to be released soon), include Debian, LinuxPPC, MkLinux R1, RockLinux, SuSE, Yellow Dog and some are experiment with Slackware (including the people behind Slackware) on the PowerPC. And don't forget similar things like NetBSD and Darwin are also in the PowerPC race.
Competition in the PowerPC market is going to be tough -- with many respected leaders in this field. While there won't be any real clear winners or losers for a while, at any rate expect to see the populuarity of PowerPC Linux distros in general to increase -- as people see big names, and big companies join in.
Re:When will Red Hat join?
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SuSE For PPC
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· Score: 1
Years ago (Like 1997), when monolithic Linux for the PowerPC was first starting to stablilize, LinuxPPC.org approached RedHat asking about making a RedHat distro. They said at the time, they weren't really interested, but that LinuxPPC would be free to do what they wanted with a RedHat-based distro, assuming it didn't stomp on their own trademarks.
At any rate this is basically paraphrased from the Linux/PowerPC RedHat Installation Addum, as used to be found at http://kernel.crashing.org/. I don't have an updated url, although I know you can get the RPM with these docs at ftp.linuxppc.org.
My opinion (if you should care:) is that LinuxPPC, Inc. would benifet greatly if bought by RedHat, they could get some better management people (instead of using hackers to run it), better quality control (LinuxPPC isn't known for it's exceptional quality, at least in my book), and more people (it seems that more developers/people are looking away from LinuxPPC when it comes to distro of choice for using/developing).
Re:When will Red Hat join?
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SuSE For PPC
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· Score: 2
You can do it at the X Server level or at the kernel level.
To do it at the kernel level (as required by gpm and/or XF68_FBDEV) you can use the adbbuttons=x,x,x kernel argument, the three numbers represent the key you want to map it to on your keyboard -- many use the F Keys for that function.
Some XServers (namely Xpmac) support mapping of second and third mouse buttons, by default Xpmac makes middle equal option-2, right equal option-3. Although this is easily changed by adding arguments to startx.
Then again, you can be like most of the PowerPC Linux users, who end up buying a cheap two or three button mouse.
Re:I'm holding my breath...
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SuSE For PPC
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· Score: 2
Just in case you are wondering, there are a few projects out there to port Slackware to the PowerPC.
LinuxPPC developer Ani Joshi has been playing around with Slackware for the PowerPC for some time, he has a bootable system, although I don't know if it's avalible yet on the net.
The offical Slackware project also now has 2 G3s and an iMac DV. So it looks like they may be also working on a port.
Finally Slackintosh is working on another PowerPC port. It appears it is the most complete right now. They started out a year ago with a 7200/120mhz machine, and now they are on a screaming G4 machine. See Slackintosh.Exploits.org for details.
It appears we will be seeing more of Slackware on the PowerPC -- more sooner then later.:)
These people train their children in proper gun handling at an early age. They are generally gifted with a gun, as well, typically when the parents or guardians determine that they have demonstrated by their behavior that they are responsible to handle it, or at the first birthday thereafter. This may happen as early as age 12 (though the gun will be stored safely, and the child will lose access to it if he demonstrates irresponsibility later).
Gun safety is an essential issue, many people are missing. Many childern are missing out on learning to use guns safely, and sportman like, therefore causing problems. Ensuring that all kids get a few hours of real (ie. taking the kid to a proper shooting range and praticing) gun safety and training, would go a long ways.
The fact is the majority of gun deaths/wounds (excluding wars) are accidental -- almost always due to inproper safety procedures. If people were more knowledgable about these safety procedures, the numbers would be greatly reduced.
And even those numbers, are much lower then the rate you see with other accidents -- almost everyday on the news you hear about serious car or other motor vechical accidents, fendor-benders are much more common then accidental gun shootings.
"The criminal and violent activity of children who have been trained with guns by responsible adults has been studied, and compared with that of those who have not been so trained."
That is true. You see the same thing with automobiles all the time -- more experienced drivers rarely get into accidents, the majority of accidents are caused by people under 25, or those under the influence of drugs (such as beer).
"While the kids not trained with guns are out selling drugs, mugging, and robbing liquor stores, the kids trained with guns are out after curfew, or smoking in the boy's room. Even when kids trained with guns become involved with local youth gangs or commit assaults (which they do much less frequently than those not so trained), there is a conspicuous difference: They don't use a gun in the assault."
While since I don't have experience with any of the above I can't really comment, although I haven't seen any proof of trained gun users being more likely to kill.
Part of my high school "career" dealt specifically with overcoming people like that - they have nothing constructive to say.
These kind of people are common in most societies, and well there lives relect it, very ordinary very standard (and "America like".)
"Anyway, I'm 20 now and I had to graduate with a GED - high school towards the end was going straight to hell... 2 arrests in as many weeks, public protests, leafleting of the building.. this was in a conservative town of 10k out in Wisconsin.. middle-class bible-loving people."
I have never seen anything like that before. Although I do remember years ago (when I was younger) some really major walkouts and other student protests took place (frequently backed by Teachers and Parents), making school much more libral in policy, and well less enforcing of policies.
"The police were of similar composition - they were tired of the whole debatacle.."
Well around here it seems the police (there is a police station in Greenville, made up of mostly under guys -- I have feeling this is more of training kind of thing then anything else) are pretty understanding -- although there have been some arrests, most of them are for really sensible reasons -- dwi, speeding excessively, and some other really bad stuff.
"t's a truly sad state of affairs.. but in a democracy people often forget that the mob makes the rules; the majority can often have the wrong opinion of what needs to be done. The result is a vicious circle that eats away at itself.. and it's citizens."
Yes and no. Democratcy has it weak points, but it's one of the better goverments currently in power today. While it's true that the mob often makes the rule -- the mob is the majority of people -- the majority that will be effected by the majority of the laws. You can't expect to always get your way, as you probably have heard when your younger -- things have to be done in the public interest.
All and all, everytime I go to a town meeting, visit the NY capitol, I see goverment working pretty much in the right way. Their may be flaws -- and the best thing to do, is educate the public, get involved in goverment, and fix it.
Pratically speaking, with exceptions, I enjoy being an American. Yes at times it can be fustrating when you are limited in public interest, but that's the way it has to be.
I am not sure I can agree with that. Certainly their are certian limits, but freedom of express, and a liberal and open enviroment is essential for education of America's future thinkers and workers.
Studies show that if a worker is comfortable, they will be more productive. For me that means wearing comfortable tshirt and twil pants. For others they prefer jeans or shorts (in the Spring/Fall). Being different is cool, in it's own sense.
Maybe it's because I go to a public school in rurual Greenville, NY (30 miles South West of Albany, on Route 32), I don't see this kind of stuff that demands nazi-like strict policy, or maybe it's just the general librartism of this particular public school.
DAB doesn't exist in the US, except for some small scale experiments by companies.
Some of is due to political bickering (the FCC took a long time to develop the US DAB standard, and it is lower quality then the European standards), the rest it probably the fault of groups like the RIAA putting it off.
Remeber the United States took a good 30 years to make FM a true standard -- FM radio was invented in 1931, it did not become mainstream until the early seventies.
Yes, FM existed during the 1960's, but it was limited to simucasting on both AM/FM, hard rock and really strange pcydellic stuff. Most people during the 1960's were still listening to AM radio.
Another standard like that is AM Stereo. Released in 1982, one of my car radios had it, although I haven't yet seen it in most common hi-fi gear. At this point AM stereo is kind of silly -- since most FM dominates the radio now days in the US for music -- AM music stations are rare, and usually simulcast their FM relatives.
Well that isn't quite true. Take a look a Mac OS 9.0 system -- typically 45% of the code is still uses 68k registers. Not quite as 68k free as Apple wants you to think.
This still is a major improvement over Mac 0S 8.0 -- which if I recall correctly used alot more 68k code, probably around 60% of the registers were 68k. Still lots of cruft and old junk hanging around for compatiblity (although Windows isn't much better -- look at micros~1.doc, 16-bit apps, the really H^H^H^ MS-DOS, etc.)
The classic Mac OS relies heavily on 68k assembly, in some cases replacing it with newer PowerPC-native code would break lots of applications. And don't be shocked if Mac OS X contains some 68k code -- especially with the Blue (Classic) box.
Take a look at macfixit.com for some stats on this...
Actually the LGPL has several constraints, for one if a person wants to you a piece of LGPL'd software in their binary-only product, it's illegal, as is statically linking a LGPL'd piece of software, in a binary only release.
AFAIK, that's not quite right. I am not a lawyer, but here is my impression on how the QPL works.
"Lets say you wanted to do a Qt version of Mozilla. Then the MPL tells you that you have to allow Netscape to take any code that you write, and not to let anybody else do so."
No that's not correct at all. The MPL says you must give Netscape any code (for any use, properity or not) that you have created based on MPL source.
"The QPL tells you that you cannot let Netscape take the code."
Basically the QPL just says you must provide your code to anyone for free, if you want to use the qt free license. If Netscape decided to put your product to a non-free use (ie. not provide the source on demand), it must first purchase a license from Troll.
"So combining two 'free' software projects is a failure."
I wouldn't say so. Maybe I am just plain wrong, but a quick glance at both licenses, shows that some of those conflicts you refer to don't really exist.
The biggest advancement Linux/UNIX GUIs need is Antialiased fonts."
This more of an X11 problem then anything -- the X11 standard only supports 1-bit fonts and cursors. Some people argue this is a big disadvantage, but I don't think it is -- colored cursors are nice, but they don't really effect use (how often do you use colored Windows cursors -- the Mac only recently [like 5 years ago or so:] started supporting colored cursors).
Antialiasing can be done client side, but it puts an extra burden on the main CPU (since it normally can't take advantage of graphic acceloraters) and possibly the network if you run X11 over your network.
<i>"but text sure does look like shit unless you have a 100+dpi moniter. Even then it isn't very impressive."</i>
Every modern video card (one with more then 2 megs of VRAM) can drive a monitor at 1024x768 16bpps. That gives nice smooth fonts and graphics on your stock 15 or 14 inch monitor. And many newer computers ship with 4 meg or more VRAM -- so you can easily drive your video at high resolution on bigger screens.
And yes, I run at 1024x768 16 bpps, on my old 1997 PowerMac 4400/200 with it's 603ev processor, 15 inch monitor and a ATI Mach 64 VT card.
<i>"My girlfriend always asks "why do the letters look like that when they are small?" and I respond, "Because that is the only thing Windows has better than Linux."</i>
More likely that's because you don't have scalable fonts (truetype, postscript) installed and/or because your font render, really does a bad job a small type. Then again, high resolution screens, do make reading small type easier (just make sure that you reconfigure your font server's dpi settings when you reconfigure your screen resolution).
This is very true. Font anti-aliasing is just a major kludge!! (and a ugly, slow, hard to read kludge). Font anti-aliasing works by lighting the colors at the edge of a font, making it appear smoother to the human eye -- and making it much less readable.
The idea behind font anti-aliasing, is that your display's resolution is too low to produce dots small enough, that they don't appear jagged. Since most Windows and Mac machines have an actual screen resolution of less then 75 dpi, while many UNIX machines run at about 100 or more dpi this is a difference.
How many Windows machines have you seen running at 640x480 with 17 inch screens, that just plain leave you screeming running for the monitor settings!!
Many. These are the machines that need font anti-aliasing, not those Linux machines with high resolution displays -- that have pixels too small to look jagged.
Many Linux programs, demand at least 1024x768 to be usable, unlike both Mac OS and Windows programs. Anything less, makes you craving for screen space, some programs are a tight fit, and nice Window Managers are slow and ugly.
As far as I know KDE 2.0 apps should be able to support multiple keybindings, as set by the recently commited-to-cvs(TM) KDE tool for selecting keybindings.
If they will change the way KWord and the alike edit text, I don't know. I am sure they would be more then happy to accept patches.
That KOffice RPM is really an RPM of everything from KDE 2.0 jammed into one package (excluding qt 2.0). It's really packed full to the top. Here is a rundown of stuff in it:
- Konqueror, A Full Featured Standards Based Browser, that reguluarly beats Netscape on W3C tests. (It's quite small -- relies heavly on KDE Libs)
- KOffice, KWord (365k binary itself -- uses lots of Sharedlibs -- so it's very efficent!), KSpread (A pretty decent spreadsheet, although some functions are still a bit cryptic to access, KPresenter (A full presentation app -- if you haven't tried it -- it's quite full of effects -- many that are really part of the KDE Core libs). And more....
- KDE 2.0 Libs - A full set of libraries, designed to make writting KDE apps easier by providing developers a full set of functions. From advanced gradient support to many common KDE dialogs to the advanced khtml 2.0 engine.
- KDE Utils - Many popular KDE 1.x add ons (including Caitoo and KCrontab...) plus all of the KDE 1.x packages.
- KDE Games - Again half a dozen new games... Plus all of the classic KDE 1.x.
- The brand new KWin and Kpanel Window Manager. All of the theming stuff, plus several themes, Pixie and more.
- Plus everything else in KDE 1.x, except with more features, and some new apps.
- KDevelop will also be part of it, but I am not sure if it's in the tarball yet.
By the time it ships, with all of the code complete, and debuging symbols removed, the total of all of the packages should weigh around 35 megs for everything + about 2 megs for the QT-2.0 binary. That's a hell of alot of functionality for a complete desktop enviroment, dozens of utils and apps.
Microsoft wouldn't be able to ship that much functionality on a CD:)
- KOffice is cross licensed between the GNU Public License 2.0 and Artistic (the same as Perl, a very liberal license). You are free to choose between the two.
- KDE Libs are all avalible under the GNU Library/Lesser GPL.
- Other KDE Apps: Depends the Author's Preference. At minium they must be GPL'd to be included as part of the standard KDE distro, many are cross licensed with the GLPL or the Artistic License.
- Qt, is the KDE widgit set. Qt is free as in beer to use for X11 Systems. Programming is also free with Qt, assuming that your software's source code is under a "free-ish" license, like the GPL, artistic, BSD or the alike. The only issue with Qt is you must clearly label patches to the "offical" Qt product, and you can't start your own Qt source tree. Most of the people at Troll are extermely active KDE developers -- so they essentially open to any kind of stable patch that improves Qt, but doesn't damage or break other things. This is much like the Linux Kernel.
And alas, see me post above -- KOffice isn't 29 megs. The KWord binary is only 365k -- it uses shared libraries extensively.
BootX works correctly on my machine running 7.5.3. It is suppost to support all 7.5 and newer Macs, and will probably stay that way since their is no real reason to change this.
<p>At any rate, any Mac that can run System 7.5/7.6 (both 3 years+ old) should be able to boot using open firmware / quik, so you really don't have to use BootX at all.
AFAIK it's currently a 256 meg limit for memory hard coded in the PowerPC Kernel (with an define), and can not be changed by a kernel argument. The reason for this, was one of the kernel hackers felt that more then 256 megs of RAM caused stablity on many PowerPC Linux machines. Once this problem was fixed it is to be remove.
<p>See the linuxppc-user list for were this is found (I have forgetten already).
A couple of hackers in Apple worked with the OSF on MkLinux, and Apple dropped all work on it many years ago. Limited hardware support, slow kerneldevelopment, few users (those with NuBus machines are the majority)..."
It sounds like you have fallen under the common misconseption that Apple doesn't care about the MkLinux project and that it was more of an Mach experiment then anything. While MkLinux is an interesting experiment with Mach running a kernel on top of it (such as Linux) on the PowerPC, you will see that MkLinux has had much of a life past Apple.
Apple from the start intended to make MkLinux not it's pet project, but just to get it started and introduced to outside developers who would take it from there. They offically announced it in Febuary 96, and started giving out CD-ROMs at the Apple WWDC '96, the big Apple Developer conference. From the start they didn't want to be the company controlling and running MkLinux, from the start they outsourced MkLinux.
The MkLinux team is working hard at their next version of the MkLinux 1.0, the first non-developer release of MkLinux. The MkLinux project may have lagged a bit behind the rest of the Linux world do a lack of developers, it is quickly catching up with support for newer G3 machines (as well as some really old Nubus Macs), built-in MkLinux support is being added to BootX, an experimental/rough port of Linux 2.2 runs on Mach now, and many more exciting things. MkLinux currently has at least an dozen developers, and by some estimates thousands of users. It's not Linux by any amount (by interest of developers/users), but it's far from a dead project.
Don't jump to say MkLinux dead, just because Apple isn't pushing the development along. For more info on MkLinux, please take a look at MkLinux.org
Actually xamin plays all my Quicktime 2.5 (Radius Cinepack) movies perfectly.
Later versions of Quicktime frequently use Sorsen video compression, a very small yet CPU intensive codec. Size is the biggest advantage of Cinepack -- a 5 meg Cinepack movie is the same quality as a 500k Sorsen codec. However don't even try to play a Sorsen movie on a slow computer, anything less then a 200/604e Mhz will have trouble with them.
If you don't mind the size of Cinepack movies, xamin plays them well, and even on older hardware (I have seen pratically full screen Cinepack movies play on a 040/25 mhz Macs without problems).
And Quicktime 2.5 != Quicktime 4.0. Quicktime 4.0 has some major improvements over Quicktime 2.5, such as those new codecs, new formats (it plays more AVI MooVs and au, etc.) and has many other new things.
"But the quicktime player is a fairly hardcore macos app, there isn't even a decent player for OSX yet... I'm betting it wouldn't be quite so easy to strip away the gui and port it."
Very True. Quicktime was orginally built and designed to work on Macs, and many of the orginal Quicktime features were hard coded for the M68k processor (which is the reason for the Quicktime PowerPlug, which appears to simply be a big PowerPC-native hack of Quicktime).
Of course this wouldn't be the first platform specfic software to get new life in other platforms, just look at Linux, an OS at one time designed to run exclusively on the x86. Now, after around 5 years of hard hacking it works pretty good on many non-x86 platforms, I am writting this on a PowerPC Linux machine right now.
Apple is already making Quicktime less dependent on the Mac OS/68k, since much of it now works on Windows and the modern mostly-PowerPC Mac OS.
"I doubt we'll persuade Sorensen to abandon their technology and release it to the world, but I heard that Compaq at one time was going to license Quicktime for $1/cpu shipped. I'd gladly pay $1 (probably even more) for the right to use a good collection of video codecs. "
Quicktime is free to bundle and use with your apps. The only fee is if you choose to bundle Quicktime Pro (costs at bulk $2 per copy included) or refuse to have a Apple Quicktime Pro ad appear the first time the user starts up an app linking to Apple Quicktime (costs at bulk $1 per copy included). So in most cases it's free.
And it's free to write your own app to access the Quicktime Pro features, the pro upgrade only effects the features of the offical Apple Quicktime Player or the offical Apple Quicktime Plugin. Write your own player and you are free to access these features, AFAIK.
I haven't been paying close attention to Quicktime licenseing lately, so things may have changed, but they might not have.
"The Linux community is great at writing its own GUI apps (look at KDE and Gnome), so all we really need is a complete libQuickTime.so."
That's basically how it works on Mac OS and Windows (AFAIK).
Quicktime is not a player per se(although it comes with some players/apps), it's an multimedia library (in Mac OS it's called "Quicktime Extension" and in Windows it's "qt40.dll" or something to the same effect).
It includes basic graphic functions (like rotating and scaling of images), several import and export functions, several media (mp3, mpeg 1/2 video, several properity codecs, and a bunch of other standard codecs) functions, and more.
It quite different from RealPlayer, since anybody who writes an app can use Quicktime for free (although if you install it with your software you must run an ad while it installs). So basically Quicktime is an shared library/API that developers may use as part of their applications. Feel free to check out Apple's Quicktime developer documentation for details.
Once Quicktime becomes avalible for Linux, you'll see many multimedia apps to follow it -- since it provides many useful APIs for multimedia apps (even Microsoft Encarda uses Quicktime Extensively). So if you want to create a Mp3 player, you can use the Quicktime software to do so or use Quicktime to create a simple image editing program.
"I don't care much for Windows QuickTime's interface myself..."
Luckly on the Mac OS their is several non-Apple Quicktime Players (such as Adobe Premier [which also does much other stuff], SoundApp [plays Quicktime Sounds], Graphic Converter [uses some of Apples quicktime APIs] and PlayerPro [alternative non-Apple Quicktime Player]) that hook into the Quicktime Extension "shared library" for basic Quicktime Playing, and add features of their own.
FWIW, On the back of the Red Album (The Beatles 1962-1966 double CD) exactly:
The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by EMI Records Ltd. (c)1993 The copyright in this compilation is owned by EMI Records Ltd. (c)1993 Apple Corps Ltd. under exclusive license to EMI Records Ltd.
So as you can see EMI owns Apple Corps Ltd., the Beatles recording company. Details are at http://www.abbeyroadstudios.com/.
Actually in the early 1980's there were a few reverse engineered Mac ROMs avalible, that you could purchase and install in your Amiga, for example.
By the time of the Mac SE, ROMS had become pretty complex, and Apple basically shuted down anybody (in court with insane lawsuits that Apple mostly won), who even dared to attempt to reverse engineer an Apple ROM. Apple was known for putting quarks in it's early ROMs just so that they would show up in any copies that were bit for bit of the ROM.
Companies being afraid of being shut down by Apple just gave up on reversing Apple's ROMS. By the 1990's came around, Apple stopped caring, since Mac ROMs were big and complex and filled with useless garbage/easter eggs/stuff to fill ROM chips, the i386 had became the only popular platfrom, and finally non-Apple 68k Macs became extermely rare so reversing or copying the Apple ROM wasn't worthwhile.
Apple may start caring about Mac ROMs again in the future, when Mac emulators for Windows start using the Mac OS ROM file, which is included with all new System Software and is a free download. It includes a complete, bootable Mac ROM -- today the PowerPC Linux Mac OS runtime Mac-on-Linux uses this ROM file to boot in most cases (even on non-new/open world macs!).
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Well if RedHat wanted a chance at getting into the PowerPC market, realisticly they would need to purchase LinuxPPC, Inc. -- there are just too many distros competiting in too small of space to have Red Hat attempt to join in without purchasing somebody else out who is pretty big.
Currently (or to be released soon), include Debian, LinuxPPC, MkLinux R1, RockLinux, SuSE, Yellow Dog and some are experiment with Slackware (including the people behind Slackware) on the PowerPC. And don't forget similar things like NetBSD and Darwin are also in the PowerPC race.
Competition in the PowerPC market is going to be tough -- with many respected leaders in this field. While there won't be any real clear winners or losers for a while, at any rate expect to see the populuarity of PowerPC Linux distros in general to increase -- as people see big names, and big companies join in.
Years ago (Like 1997), when monolithic Linux for the PowerPC was first starting to stablilize, LinuxPPC.org approached RedHat asking about making a RedHat distro. They said at the time, they weren't really interested, but that LinuxPPC would be free to do what they wanted with a RedHat-based distro, assuming it didn't stomp on their own trademarks.
At any rate this is basically paraphrased from the Linux/PowerPC RedHat Installation Addum, as used to be found at http://kernel.crashing.org/. I don't have an updated url, although I know you can get the RPM with these docs at ftp.linuxppc.org.
My opinion (if you should care :) is that LinuxPPC, Inc. would benifet greatly if bought by RedHat, they could get some better management people (instead of using hackers to run it), better quality control (LinuxPPC isn't known for it's exceptional quality, at least in my book), and more people (it seems that more developers/people are looking away from LinuxPPC when it comes to distro of choice for using/developing).
You can do it at the X Server level or at the kernel level.
To do it at the kernel level (as required by gpm and/or XF68_FBDEV) you can use the adbbuttons=x,x,x kernel argument, the three numbers represent the key you want to map it to on your keyboard -- many use the F Keys for that function.
Some XServers (namely Xpmac) support mapping of second and third mouse buttons, by default Xpmac makes middle equal option-2, right equal option-3. Although this is easily changed by adding arguments to startx.
Then again, you can be like most of the PowerPC Linux users, who end up buying a cheap two or three button mouse.
Just in case you are wondering, there are a few projects out there to port Slackware to the PowerPC.
LinuxPPC developer Ani Joshi has been playing around with Slackware for the PowerPC for some time, he has a bootable system, although I don't know if it's avalible yet on the net.
The offical Slackware project also now has 2 G3s and an iMac DV. So it looks like they may be also working on a port.
Finally Slackintosh is working on another PowerPC port. It appears it is the most complete right now. They started out a year ago with a 7200/120mhz machine, and now they are on a screaming G4 machine. See Slackintosh.Exploits.org for details.
It appears we will be seeing more of Slackware on the PowerPC -- more sooner then later. :)
These people train their children in proper gun handling at an early age. They are generally gifted with a gun, as well, typically when the parents or guardians determine that they have demonstrated by their behavior that they are responsible to handle it, or at the first birthday thereafter. This may happen as early as age 12 (though the gun will be stored safely, and the child will lose access to it if he demonstrates irresponsibility later).
Gun safety is an essential issue, many people are missing. Many childern are missing out on learning to use guns safely, and sportman like, therefore causing problems. Ensuring that all kids get a few hours of real (ie. taking the kid to a proper shooting range and praticing) gun safety and training, would go a long ways.
The fact is the majority of gun deaths/wounds (excluding wars) are accidental -- almost always due to inproper safety procedures. If people were more knowledgable about these safety procedures, the numbers would be greatly reduced.
And even those numbers, are much lower then the rate you see with other accidents -- almost everyday on the news you hear about serious car or other motor vechical accidents, fendor-benders are much more common then accidental gun shootings.
"The criminal and violent activity of children who have been trained with guns by responsible adults has been studied, and compared with that of those who have not been so trained."
That is true. You see the same thing with automobiles all the time -- more experienced drivers rarely get into accidents, the majority of accidents are caused by people under 25, or those under the influence of drugs (such as beer).
"While the kids not trained with guns are out selling drugs, mugging, and robbing liquor stores, the kids trained with guns are out after curfew, or smoking in the boy's room. Even when kids trained with guns become involved with local youth gangs or commit assaults (which they do much less frequently than those not so trained), there is a conspicuous difference: They don't use a gun in the assault."
While since I don't have experience with any of the above I can't really comment, although I haven't seen any proof of trained gun users being more likely to kill.
Part of my high school "career" dealt specifically with overcoming people like that - they have nothing constructive to say.
These kind of people are common in most societies, and well there lives relect it, very ordinary very standard (and "America like".)
"Anyway, I'm 20 now and I had to graduate with a GED - high school towards the end was going straight to hell... 2 arrests in as many weeks, public protests, leafleting of the building.. this was in a conservative town of 10k out in Wisconsin.. middle-class bible-loving people."
I have never seen anything like that before. Although I do remember years ago (when I was younger) some really major walkouts and other student protests took place (frequently backed by Teachers and Parents), making school much more libral in policy, and well less enforcing of policies.
"The police were of similar composition - they were tired of the whole debatacle.."
Well around here it seems the police (there is a police station in Greenville, made up of mostly under guys -- I have feeling this is more of training kind of thing then anything else) are pretty understanding -- although there have been some arrests, most of them are for really sensible reasons -- dwi, speeding excessively, and some other really bad stuff.
"t's a truly sad state of affairs.. but in a democracy people often forget that the mob makes the rules; the majority can often have the wrong opinion of what needs to be done. The result is a vicious circle that eats away at itself.. and it's citizens."
Yes and no. Democratcy has it weak points, but it's one of the better goverments currently in power today. While it's true that the mob often makes the rule -- the mob is the majority of people -- the majority that will be effected by the majority of the laws. You can't expect to always get your way, as you probably have heard when your younger -- things have to be done in the public interest.
All and all, everytime I go to a town meeting, visit the NY capitol, I see goverment working pretty much in the right way. Their may be flaws -- and the best thing to do, is educate the public, get involved in goverment, and fix it.
Pratically speaking, with exceptions, I enjoy being an American. Yes at times it can be fustrating when you are limited in public interest, but that's the way it has to be.
I am not sure I can agree with that. Certainly their are certian limits, but freedom of express, and a liberal and open enviroment is essential for education of America's future thinkers and workers.
Studies show that if a worker is comfortable, they will be more productive. For me that means wearing comfortable tshirt and twil pants. For others they prefer jeans or shorts (in the Spring/Fall). Being different is cool, in it's own sense.
Maybe it's because I go to a public school in rurual Greenville, NY (30 miles South West of Albany, on Route 32), I don't see this kind of stuff that demands nazi-like strict policy, or maybe it's just the general librartism of this particular public school.
DAB doesn't exist in the US, except for some small scale experiments by companies.
Some of is due to political bickering (the FCC took a long time to develop the US DAB standard, and it is lower quality then the European standards), the rest it probably the fault of groups like the RIAA putting it off.
Remeber the United States took a good 30 years to make FM a true standard -- FM radio was invented in 1931, it did not become mainstream until the early seventies.
Yes, FM existed during the 1960's, but it was limited to simucasting on both AM/FM, hard rock and really strange pcydellic stuff. Most people during the 1960's were still listening to AM radio.
Another standard like that is AM Stereo. Released in 1982, one of my car radios had it, although I haven't yet seen it in most common hi-fi gear. At this point AM stereo is kind of silly -- since most FM dominates the radio now days in the US for music -- AM music stations are rare, and usually simulcast their FM relatives.
Well that isn't quite true. Take a look a Mac OS 9.0 system -- typically 45% of the code is still uses 68k registers. Not quite as 68k free as Apple wants you to think.
This still is a major improvement over Mac 0S 8.0 -- which if I recall correctly used alot more 68k code, probably around 60% of the registers were 68k. Still lots of cruft and old junk hanging around for compatiblity (although Windows isn't much better -- look at micros~1.doc, 16-bit apps, the really H^H^H^ MS-DOS, etc.)
The classic Mac OS relies heavily on 68k assembly, in some cases replacing it with newer PowerPC-native code would break lots of applications. And don't be shocked if Mac OS X contains some 68k code -- especially with the Blue (Classic) box.
Take a look at macfixit.com for some stats on this...
Actually the LGPL has several constraints, for one if a person wants to you a piece of LGPL'd software in their binary-only product, it's illegal, as is statically linking a LGPL'd piece of software, in a binary only release.
AFAIK, that's not quite right. I am not a lawyer, but here is my impression on how the QPL works.
"Lets say you wanted to do a Qt version of Mozilla. Then the MPL tells you that you have to allow Netscape to take any code that you write,
and not to let anybody else do so."
No that's not correct at all. The MPL says you must give Netscape any code (for any use, properity or not) that you have created based on MPL source.
"The QPL tells you that you cannot let Netscape take the code."
Basically the QPL just says you must provide your code to anyone for free, if you want to use the qt free license. If Netscape decided to put your product to a non-free use (ie. not provide the source on demand), it must first purchase a license from Troll.
"So combining two 'free' software projects is a failure."
I wouldn't say so. Maybe I am just plain wrong, but a quick glance at both licenses, shows that some of those conflicts you refer to don't really exist.
The biggest advancement Linux/UNIX GUIs need is Antialiased fonts."
:] started supporting colored cursors).
This more of an X11 problem then anything -- the X11 standard only supports 1-bit fonts and cursors. Some people argue this is a big disadvantage, but I don't think it is -- colored cursors are nice, but they don't really effect use (how often do you use colored Windows cursors -- the Mac only recently [like 5 years ago or so
Antialiasing can be done client side, but it puts an extra burden on the main CPU (since it normally can't take advantage of graphic acceloraters) and possibly the network if you run X11 over your network.
<i>"but text sure does look like shit unless you have a 100+dpi moniter. Even then it isn't very impressive."</i>
Every modern video card (one with more then 2 megs of VRAM) can drive a monitor at 1024x768 16bpps. That gives nice smooth fonts and graphics on your stock 15 or 14 inch monitor. And many newer computers ship with 4 meg or more VRAM -- so you can easily drive your video at high resolution on bigger screens.
And yes, I run at 1024x768 16 bpps, on my old 1997 PowerMac 4400/200 with it's 603ev processor, 15 inch monitor and a ATI Mach 64 VT card.
<i>"My girlfriend always asks "why do the letters look like that when they are small?" and I respond, "Because that is the only thing Windows has better than Linux."</i>
More likely that's because you don't have scalable fonts (truetype, postscript) installed and/or because your font render, really does a bad job a small type. Then again, high resolution screens, do make reading small type easier (just make sure that you reconfigure your font server's dpi settings when you reconfigure your screen resolution).
This is very true. Font anti-aliasing is just a major kludge!! (and a ugly, slow, hard to read kludge). Font anti-aliasing works by lighting the colors at the edge of a font, making it appear smoother to the human eye -- and making it much less readable.
The idea behind font anti-aliasing, is that your display's resolution is too low to produce dots small enough, that they don't appear jagged. Since most Windows and Mac machines have an actual screen resolution of less then 75 dpi, while many UNIX machines run at about 100 or more dpi this is a difference.
How many Windows machines have you seen running at 640x480 with 17 inch screens, that just plain leave you screeming running for the monitor settings!!
Many. These are the machines that need font anti-aliasing, not those Linux machines with high resolution displays -- that have pixels too small to look jagged.
Many Linux programs, demand at least 1024x768 to be usable, unlike both Mac OS and Windows programs. Anything less, makes you craving for screen space, some programs are a tight fit, and nice Window Managers are slow and ugly.
As far as I know KDE 2.0 apps should be able to support multiple keybindings, as set by the recently commited-to-cvs(TM) KDE tool for selecting keybindings.
If they will change the way KWord and the alike edit text, I don't know. I am sure they would be more then happy to accept patches.
That KOffice RPM is really an RPM of everything from KDE 2.0 jammed into one package (excluding qt 2.0). It's really packed full to the top. Here is a rundown of stuff in it:
:)
- Konqueror, A Full Featured Standards Based Browser, that reguluarly beats Netscape on W3C tests. (It's quite small -- relies heavly on KDE Libs)
- KOffice, KWord (365k binary itself -- uses lots of Sharedlibs -- so it's very efficent!), KSpread (A pretty decent spreadsheet, although some functions are still a bit cryptic to access, KPresenter (A full presentation app -- if you haven't tried it -- it's quite full of effects -- many that are really part of the KDE Core libs). And more....
- KDE 2.0 Libs - A full set of libraries, designed to make writting KDE apps easier by providing developers a full set of functions. From advanced gradient support to many common KDE dialogs to the advanced khtml 2.0 engine.
- KDE Utils - Many popular KDE 1.x add ons (including Caitoo and KCrontab...) plus all of the KDE 1.x packages.
- KDE Games - Again half a dozen new games... Plus all of the classic KDE 1.x.
- The brand new KWin and Kpanel Window Manager. All of the theming stuff, plus several themes, Pixie and more.
- Plus everything else in KDE 1.x, except with more features, and some new apps.
- KDevelop will also be part of it, but I am not sure if it's in the tarball yet.
By the time it ships, with all of the code complete, and debuging symbols removed, the total of all of the packages should weigh around 35 megs for everything + about 2 megs for the QT-2.0 binary. That's a hell of alot of functionality for a complete desktop enviroment, dozens of utils and apps.
Microsoft wouldn't be able to ship that much functionality on a CD
- KOffice is cross licensed between the GNU Public License 2.0 and Artistic (the same as Perl, a very liberal license). You are free to choose between the two.
- KDE Libs are all avalible under the GNU Library/Lesser GPL.
- Other KDE Apps: Depends the Author's Preference. At minium they must be GPL'd to be included as part of the standard KDE distro, many are cross licensed with the GLPL or the Artistic License.
- Qt, is the KDE widgit set. Qt is free as in beer to use for X11 Systems. Programming is also free with Qt, assuming that your software's source code is under a "free-ish" license, like the GPL, artistic, BSD or the alike. The only issue with Qt is you must clearly label patches to the "offical" Qt product, and you can't start your own Qt source tree. Most of the people at Troll are extermely active KDE developers -- so they essentially open to any kind of stable patch that improves Qt, but doesn't damage or break other things. This is much like the Linux Kernel.
And alas, see me post above -- KOffice isn't 29 megs. The KWord binary is only 365k -- it uses shared libraries extensively.
BootX works correctly on my machine running 7.5.3. It is suppost to support all 7.5 and newer Macs, and will probably stay that way since their is no real reason to change this.
<p>At any rate, any Mac that can run System 7.5/7.6 (both 3 years+ old) should be able to boot using open firmware / quik, so you really don't have to use BootX at all.
AFAIK it's currently a 256 meg limit for memory hard coded in the PowerPC Kernel (with an define), and can not be changed by a kernel argument. The reason for this, was one of the kernel hackers felt that more then 256 megs of RAM caused stablity on many PowerPC Linux machines. Once this problem was fixed it is to be remove.
<p>See the linuxppc-user list for were this is found (I have forgetten already).
It sounds like you have fallen under the common misconseption that Apple doesn't care about the MkLinux project and that it was more of an Mach experiment then anything. While MkLinux is an interesting experiment with Mach running a kernel on top of it (such as Linux) on the PowerPC, you will see that MkLinux has had much of a life past Apple.
Apple from the start intended to make MkLinux not it's pet project, but just to get it started and introduced to outside developers who would take it from there. They offically announced it in Febuary 96, and started giving out CD-ROMs at the Apple WWDC '96, the big Apple Developer conference. From the start they didn't want to be the company controlling and running MkLinux, from the start they outsourced MkLinux.
The MkLinux team is working hard at their next version of the MkLinux 1.0, the first non-developer release of MkLinux. The MkLinux project may have lagged a bit behind the rest of the Linux world do a lack of developers, it is quickly catching up with support for newer G3 machines (as well as some really old Nubus Macs), built-in MkLinux support is being added to BootX, an experimental/rough port of Linux 2.2 runs on Mach now, and many more exciting things. MkLinux currently has at least an dozen developers, and by some estimates thousands of users. It's not Linux by any amount (by interest of developers/users), but it's far from a dead project.
Don't jump to say MkLinux dead, just because Apple isn't pushing the development along. For more info on MkLinux, please take a look at MkLinux.org
Actually xamin plays all my Quicktime 2.5 (Radius Cinepack) movies perfectly.
Later versions of Quicktime frequently use Sorsen video compression, a very small yet CPU intensive codec. Size is the biggest advantage of Cinepack -- a 5 meg Cinepack movie is the same quality as a 500k Sorsen codec. However don't even try to play a Sorsen movie on a slow computer, anything less then a 200/604e Mhz will have trouble with them.
If you don't mind the size of Cinepack movies, xamin plays them well, and even on older hardware (I have seen pratically full screen Cinepack movies play on a 040/25 mhz Macs without problems).
And Quicktime 2.5 != Quicktime 4.0. Quicktime 4.0 has some major improvements over Quicktime 2.5, such as those new codecs, new formats (it plays more AVI MooVs and au, etc.) and has many other new things.
"But the quicktime player is a fairly hardcore macos app, there isn't even a decent player for OSX yet... I'm betting it wouldn't be quite so easy to strip away the gui and port it."
Very True. Quicktime was orginally built and designed to work on Macs, and many of the orginal Quicktime features were hard coded for the M68k processor (which is the reason for the Quicktime PowerPlug, which appears to simply be a big PowerPC-native hack of Quicktime).
Of course this wouldn't be the first platform specfic software to get new life in other platforms, just look at Linux, an OS at one time designed to run exclusively on the x86. Now, after around 5 years of hard hacking it works pretty good on many non-x86 platforms, I am writting this on a PowerPC Linux machine right now.
Apple is already making Quicktime less dependent on the Mac OS/68k, since much of it now works on Windows and the modern mostly-PowerPC Mac OS.
"I doubt we'll persuade Sorensen to abandon their technology and release it to the world, but I heard that Compaq at one time was going to license Quicktime for $1/cpu shipped. I'd gladly pay $1 (probably even more) for the right to use a good collection of video codecs. "
Quicktime is free to bundle and use with your apps. The only fee is if you choose to bundle Quicktime Pro (costs at bulk $2 per copy included) or refuse to have a Apple Quicktime Pro ad appear the first time the user starts up an app linking to Apple Quicktime (costs at bulk $1 per copy included). So in most cases it's free.
And it's free to write your own app to access the Quicktime Pro features, the pro upgrade only effects the features of the offical Apple Quicktime Player or the offical Apple Quicktime Plugin. Write your own player and you are free to access these features, AFAIK.
I haven't been paying close attention to Quicktime licenseing lately, so things may have changed, but they might not have.
"The Linux community is great at writing its own GUI apps (look at KDE and Gnome), so all we really need is a complete libQuickTime.so."
That's basically how it works on Mac OS and Windows (AFAIK).
Quicktime is not a player per se(although it comes with some players/apps), it's an multimedia library (in Mac OS it's called "Quicktime Extension" and in Windows it's "qt40.dll" or something to the same effect).
It includes basic graphic functions (like rotating and scaling of images), several import and export functions, several media (mp3, mpeg 1/2 video, several properity codecs, and a bunch of other standard codecs) functions, and more.
It quite different from RealPlayer, since anybody who writes an app can use Quicktime for free (although if you install it with your software you must run an ad while it installs). So basically Quicktime is an shared library/API that developers may use as part of their applications. Feel free to check out Apple's Quicktime developer documentation for details.
Once Quicktime becomes avalible for Linux, you'll see many multimedia apps to follow it -- since it provides many useful APIs for multimedia apps (even Microsoft Encarda uses Quicktime Extensively). So if you want to create a Mp3 player, you can use the Quicktime software to do so or use Quicktime to create a simple image editing program.
"I don't care much for Windows QuickTime's interface myself..."
Luckly on the Mac OS their is several non-Apple Quicktime Players (such as Adobe Premier [which also does much other stuff], SoundApp [plays Quicktime Sounds], Graphic Converter [uses some of Apples quicktime APIs] and PlayerPro [alternative non-Apple Quicktime Player]) that hook into the Quicktime Extension "shared library" for basic Quicktime Playing, and add features of their own.
FWIW, On the back of the Red Album (The Beatles 1962-1966 double CD) exactly:
The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by EMI Records Ltd.
(c)1993 The copyright in this compilation is owned by EMI Records Ltd.
(c)1993 Apple Corps Ltd. under exclusive license to EMI Records Ltd.
So as you can see EMI owns Apple Corps Ltd., the Beatles recording company. Details are at http://www.abbeyroadstudios.com/.
Actually in the early 1980's there were a few reverse engineered Mac ROMs avalible, that you could purchase and install in your Amiga, for example.
By the time of the Mac SE, ROMS had become pretty complex, and Apple basically shuted down anybody (in court with insane lawsuits that Apple mostly won), who even dared to attempt to reverse engineer an Apple ROM. Apple was known for putting quarks in it's early ROMs just so that they would show up in any copies that were bit for bit of the ROM.
Companies being afraid of being shut down by Apple just gave up on reversing Apple's ROMS. By the 1990's came around, Apple stopped caring, since Mac ROMs were big and complex and filled with useless garbage/easter eggs/stuff to fill ROM chips, the i386 had became the only popular platfrom, and finally non-Apple 68k Macs became extermely rare so reversing or copying the Apple ROM wasn't worthwhile.
Apple may start caring about Mac ROMs again in the future, when Mac emulators for Windows start using the Mac OS ROM file, which is included with all new System Software and is a free download. It includes a complete, bootable Mac ROM -- today the PowerPC Linux Mac OS runtime Mac-on-Linux uses this ROM file to boot in most cases (even on non-new/open world macs!).