There are several reasons that distros are built top down and you would think that Ian would know.
Linux packaging isn't bad at all, it is actually the lack of any standards that hurts the natural evolution of a modular Linux.
GCC/glibc are moving targets. You can't depend on linking between two versions of GCC or glibc, so all the apps we package today will be of questionable use tomorrow.
All other libraries suffer from the same problem. There is no guarantee that you can upgrade or install anything on the system without breaking random other applications.
There are far too many compile time options in applications. Instead of checking for dependencies at runtime and acting on that information, the applications have to be built either for a minimal system configuration, possibly dropping features, or built with every possible dependency, making installation require far too many dependencies.
Until these issues are cleared up, there is no other way to create a distribution than top down so that all dependencies are known and accounted for or built from source.
I've been a big fan of all the previous Trek series, but Enterprise was only mildly interesting as "another ST series".
I watched every episode during the first season and even into the second, just to give the actors a chance to get into their roles. Unfortunately, few did. When the doctor and the engineer are the only decent characters, there isn't a lot of hope for a show.
I own many of the STNG series and still enjoy them from time to time. UPN refuses cable, so I don't get to see much of DS9, my close second favorite. Possibly the cable issues are hurting UPN these days. When your target audience is geeks, and they need to put up with bad reception and rabbit ears to view your show, good luck.
Somewhere in the last few years I stumbled upon Farscape. Now THIS is an interesting series. You hardly ever know exactly what will happen, The stories are detailed and have a decided lack of timeline holes. The characters are much more real than the squeeky clean, mostly mindless Trek crews.
After watching Farscape, I don't enjoy any of the Trek series nearly as much as I did before. The characters are shallow and predictable. DS9 is really the only ST that would let the characters have moral problems or self doubt from time to time.
Enterprise just isn't deep enough to hold the attention of the viewers. Capped off by bad writing and bad acting, it doesn't even make me hope for a new ST series.
This is a great way to get more developers on the bandwagon. Slam them repeatedly and without mercy.
I agree, past Real Players for Windows were really bad, but then so were previous versions of every app you ever use.
The recent Windows versions were really not bad if you lost the adware and opt outs.
I'll try this out and if it is good and doesn't fill my Linux system full of adware, spyware and spam, I will buy it.
It's $20. I can invest that much in decent software if it means future improvments. It would be worth $20 just to play iTunes songs on Linux legally, hint, hint.
Ok, so why are we worried about WMP? Every user needs a media player. Real can go out of business.
And browsers, everybody needs a browser, so who cares. Netscape can go out of business.
And CD burning software, everybody needs that these days. Ahead can go out of business.
Office software? Everybody needs that, so Corel and Lotus can go out of business. Microsoft should simply bundle MS Office with Windows and save us another purchase. Oh, most OEM's do that already?
Games? Heck, Microsoft makes those too! Why do we need other companies for games and consoles?
Movies? Everybody watches movies, Microsoft should develop a way to watch hi-res digital movies! Oh, they did?
Microsoft has been looking for a CPU design team too...
At what point is the monopoly so strong that you people quit whining that it is "just application X and everyone needs it"?
If it is so easy (I personally think it is) why isn't there an open source alternative?
Base it on OpenBSD for security Touchscreen input Take the votes Print out what they voted Ask "Is this correct?" Answer yes/no Place printout into audit box on the way out the door
is a lesson in the difference between free as in beer and free as in speech.
Yes, some people do get the product for free. That does not mean that some programmers were not paid for their services. Ask any Red Hat or SuSE employee.
The freedom Mr. Strauss does not understand is the freedom to improve given with the software. Not only the right to improve the software, but to improve the community by the giving of ones services and improvement in ones self by learning from previous programmers.
I hope that this is satire, as some of you have posted. Otherwise this serves as a sure sign of failure in our education system. The fact that someone this closed minded, short sighted and greedy is teaching our future generations is a tragedy.
I agree, but how about donating a name that makes sense and doesn't sound funny?
Look at Cinepaint, Gimps big brother that was originally called Film Gimp. It has commercial donations from the film studios. They changed the name because it was stupid and hard to justify to the higher-ups.
If you asked a corporate buyer which graphics program to use, would they pick Photoshop or Gimp?
If you installed Gimp instead of Photoshop, then ANYTHING went slightly wrong, you are out of a job.
If something goes wrong with a program called Photoshop or anything normal, more than likely they will simply write it off as a software error.
What the heck to Gimp and Sodipodi mean to the user anyway? PHOTOshop and Illustrator both make sense.
On another note, don't call a program something that has a negative meaning! Gimp = Cripple Lets figure out some program to call Nigger next!
Oh, great, let's send a legally questionable program to COMDEX and get it in the spotlight. MS , Real, Intel and Apple won't care that we ignore the EULA's and strip out dll's from their applications in order to make it work.
Maybe do a dual booth with Mplayer and DeCSS just to really make certain two of our most important desktop apps get removed.
The only thing you argue is that you can get specials on the hardware and that you can actually name a couple of HD programs. How is TV not as bad as he makes it out to be?
TV is slowly becomming a popup ridden mess of incompatible standards and minimal quality content overseen by greedy corporations that want to control your actions and drive out competition while making you pay for crap that you don't want anyway.
Just like the internet and radio.
Consumers are at fault for not saying NO to this crap. Corporations and governments only listen to money, they don't give a damn about you or your problems.
They are trying to fight computer users and don't even know enough about computers to see that a well documented feature of the OS 95% of their victims use will defeat the protection they paid thousands of dollars for?
They have no clue how bad off they are. It's time for management to close shop and hope they are smart enough to land a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart.
How about consumers sue for the record companies installing what is in all respects a virus that adversely effects the operation of your computer? It spreads with the CD and disables your ability to read CD tracks, sounds like a virus to me...
Even better, use a few of these new Parrot Act laws against them. Computer hacking is a hard time offense these days.
As for a few other ways of avoiding this virus, how about disabling autorun? That is well documented also.
XP's driver rollback or System Restore should do it. Again, well documented.
Do you have to be logged in as Administer for it to install? I'd thing playing an audio CD as a normal user would be an easy way to defeat this unless it somehow is able to change system files as a user which would make the virus claim even stronger.
You could use Linux, BSD or any other non-MS OS on your system.
Or my favorite way to defeat the protection...don't buy shit from an RIAA affiliated label.
With all these suggestions I guess they will be after me next for stating the obvious.
Obviously they are protecting both their image, i.e. future sales, and their current revenue stream.
Seriously, how many people need dsl to check email and browse? Nobody.
P2P is the killer app that drives the internet these days.
Oddly enough, AOL, SBC and other broadband providers may actually do us a great service by protecting our rights (and possibly helping grant a few new ones)
How many other companies have enough money to both successfully fight the RIAA in court and lobby (pay for) changes in law?
These are the companies we need to rally around instead of bashing at every chance.
If you listen to a Clear Channel station (how can you NOT listen to one) you notice they play the same 20 songs all day and all night.
I don't know about you, but if I hear the same songs every time I turn on the radio, I have NO need to by the CD. I get burned out on it for free.
If they start using this info and get more artists on the air it can only help. This could increase their ratio of "listeners due to lack of choice" to "willing listeners" and help their advertisement revenue.
It will also help RIAA and non-RIAA affiliated labels sell more records by getting more airplay for lesser known artists. Less total air time for the current top artists would help them not to give away the need to buy while also not making people think of them as annoying.
IMHO, quite a bit of the RIAA's low sales can be traced back to the Clear Channel monopoly.
After sending a notice to the ISP that their servers are hosting kiddie porn, the ISP should disable the site and report them to the police along with the files stored on the server as proof.
If the ISP doesn't comply, block ALL their IP's if they reside in another country. Lock them up as an accessory to the crime if they are located in a semi-moral country.
If I was a legit business owner who lost access to my site because of this, I doubt I would have a problem with relocating my site. It isn't like there aren't plenty of other hosting services that have a bit of decency.
Slashdot Mirror
Can someone please explain how David Dawes can still be in charge of the project after this past year of turmoil?
He didn't start the project and it is an important community project for 90% of the users of just about any "alternative" OS.
Why hasn't someone else replaced him?
Keith and other motivated devs couldn't get anything into X in the first place, that is why they left.
And THAT is why there is nothing big in this release.
There are several reasons that distros are built top down and you would think that Ian would know.
Linux packaging isn't bad at all, it is actually the lack of any standards that hurts the natural evolution of a modular Linux.
GCC/glibc are moving targets. You can't depend on linking between two versions of GCC or glibc, so all the apps we package today will be of questionable use tomorrow.
All other libraries suffer from the same problem. There is no guarantee that you can upgrade or install anything on the system without breaking random other applications.
There are far too many compile time options in applications. Instead of checking for dependencies at runtime and acting on that information, the applications have to be built either for a minimal system configuration, possibly dropping features, or built with every possible dependency, making installation require far too many dependencies.
Until these issues are cleared up, there is no other way to create a distribution than top down so that all dependencies are known and accounted for or built from source.
I've been a big fan of all the previous Trek series, but Enterprise was only mildly interesting as "another ST series".
I watched every episode during the first season and even into the second, just to give the actors a chance to get into their roles. Unfortunately, few did. When the doctor and the engineer are the only decent characters, there isn't a lot of hope for a show.
I own many of the STNG series and still enjoy them from time to time. UPN refuses cable, so I don't get to see much of DS9, my close second favorite. Possibly the cable issues are hurting UPN these days. When your target audience is geeks, and they need to put up with bad reception and rabbit ears to view your show, good luck.
Somewhere in the last few years I stumbled upon Farscape. Now THIS is an interesting series. You hardly ever know exactly what will happen, The stories are detailed and have a decided lack of timeline holes. The characters are much more real than the squeeky clean, mostly mindless Trek crews.
After watching Farscape, I don't enjoy any of the Trek series nearly as much as I did before. The characters are shallow and predictable. DS9 is really the only ST that would let the characters have moral problems or self doubt from time to time.
Enterprise just isn't deep enough to hold the attention of the viewers. Capped off by bad writing and bad acting, it doesn't even make me hope for a new ST series.
Consumers no longer have a God given right to get what they pay for.
This is a great way to get more developers on the bandwagon. Slam them repeatedly and without mercy.
I agree, past Real Players for Windows were really bad, but then so were previous versions of every app you ever use.
The recent Windows versions were really not bad if you lost the adware and opt outs.
I'll try this out and if it is good and doesn't fill my Linux system full of adware, spyware and spam, I will buy it.
It's $20. I can invest that much in decent software if it means future improvments. It would be worth $20 just to play iTunes songs on Linux legally, hint, hint.
Ok, so why are we worried about WMP? Every user needs a media player. Real can go out of business.
And browsers, everybody needs a browser, so who cares. Netscape can go out of business.
And CD burning software, everybody needs that these days. Ahead can go out of business.
Office software? Everybody needs that, so Corel and Lotus can go out of business.
Microsoft should simply bundle MS Office with Windows and save us another purchase. Oh, most OEM's do that already?
Games? Heck, Microsoft makes those too! Why do we need other companies for games and consoles?
Movies? Everybody watches movies, Microsoft should develop a way to watch hi-res digital movies! Oh, they did?
Microsoft has been looking for a CPU design team too...
At what point is the monopoly so strong that you people quit whining that it is "just application X and everyone needs it"?
If it is so easy (I personally think it is) why isn't there an open source alternative?
Base it on OpenBSD for security
Touchscreen input
Take the votes
Print out what they voted
Ask "Is this correct?"
Answer yes/no
Place printout into audit box on the way out the door
What is so hard?
I actually canceled my cable after Farscape was killed off.
I guess now I will have to get cable long enough for the miniseries.
Any bets that front wheel was added after Segways with dead batteries started dropping people on their faces?
is a lesson in the difference between free as in beer and free as in speech.
Yes, some people do get the product for free. That does not mean that some programmers were not paid for their services. Ask any Red Hat or SuSE employee.
The freedom Mr. Strauss does not understand is the freedom to improve given with the software. Not only the right to improve the software, but to improve the community by the giving of ones services and improvement in ones self by learning from previous programmers.
I hope that this is satire, as some of you have posted. Otherwise this serves as a sure sign of failure in our education system. The fact that someone this closed minded, short sighted and greedy is teaching our future generations is a tragedy.
The telling line is:
"Any way we can drive a consumer to purchase music as opposed to taking music is a win for the industry," he said.
The music industry does NOT have any intention of listening to you. They will "drive" you into submission.
You will buy what we say or else.
They still don't get it.
What part of graphic design is it that OSS developers can't understand?
Let me quote the wysiwyg link you provided:
"Even in WYSIWYG mode we will still be entering text into the editor with an editing rule set"
Typing is NOT the best way to create everything!
OSS dev: "I think I'll go type up a painting..."
I give up!
I agree, but how about donating a name that makes sense and doesn't sound funny?
Look at Cinepaint, Gimps big brother that was originally called Film Gimp. It has commercial donations from the film studios. They changed the name because it was stupid and hard to justify to the higher-ups.
If you asked a corporate buyer which graphics program to use, would they pick Photoshop or Gimp?
If you installed Gimp instead of Photoshop, then ANYTHING went slightly wrong, you are out of a job.
If something goes wrong with a program called Photoshop or anything normal, more than likely they will simply write it off as a software error.
What the heck to Gimp and Sodipodi mean to the user anyway? PHOTOshop and Illustrator both make sense.
On another note, don't call a program something that has a negative meaning! Gimp = Cripple
Lets figure out some program to call Nigger next!
Names do make a huge difference to the public.
Oh, great, let's send a legally questionable program to COMDEX and get it in the spotlight. MS , Real, Intel and Apple won't care that we ignore the EULA's and strip out dll's from their applications in order to make it work.
Maybe do a dual booth with Mplayer and DeCSS just to really make certain two of our most important desktop apps get removed.
Great thinking guys...
Which paragraph did you miss?
The only thing you argue is that you can get specials on the hardware and that you can actually name a couple of HD programs. How is TV not as bad as he makes it out to be?
TV is slowly becomming a popup ridden mess of incompatible standards and minimal quality content overseen by greedy corporations that want to control your actions and drive out competition while making you pay for crap that you don't want anyway.
Just like the internet and radio.
Consumers are at fault for not saying NO to this crap. Corporations and governments only listen to money, they don't give a damn about you or your problems.
Lack of viable alternatives.
Software: Good - lots of software, very usable, stable
Hardware: Bad - High initial cost, affordable systems are unexpandable and generally slow
The price of Mac's was mentioned in the article.
They are even dumerer than I thought.
They are trying to fight computer users and don't even know enough about computers to see that a well documented feature of the OS 95% of their victims use will defeat the protection they paid thousands of dollars for?
They have no clue how bad off they are. It's time for management to close shop and hope they are smart enough to land a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart.
How about consumers sue for the record companies installing what is in all respects a virus that adversely effects the operation of your computer? It spreads with the CD and disables your ability to read CD tracks, sounds like a virus to me...
Even better, use a few of these new Parrot Act laws against them. Computer hacking is a hard time offense these days.
As for a few other ways of avoiding this virus, how about disabling autorun? That is well documented also.
XP's driver rollback or System Restore should do it. Again, well documented.
Do you have to be logged in as Administer for it to install? I'd thing playing an audio CD as a normal user would be an easy way to defeat this unless it somehow is able to change system files as a user which would make the virus claim even stronger.
You could use Linux, BSD or any other non-MS OS on your system.
Or my favorite way to defeat the protection...don't buy shit from an RIAA affiliated label.
With all these suggestions I guess they will be after me next for stating the obvious.
Can someone throw a few troll points his way? I'm all out.
MS would sort things out while being totally unbiased...yeah, right.
Obviously they are protecting both their image, i.e. future sales, and their current revenue stream.
Seriously, how many people need dsl to check email and browse? Nobody.
P2P is the killer app that drives the internet these days.
Oddly enough, AOL, SBC and other broadband providers may actually do us a great service by protecting our rights (and possibly helping grant a few new ones)
How many other companies have enough money to both successfully fight the RIAA in court and lobby (pay for) changes in law?
These are the companies we need to rally around instead of bashing at every chance.
If you listen to a Clear Channel station (how can you NOT listen to one) you notice they play the same 20 songs all day and all night.
I don't know about you, but if I hear the same songs every time I turn on the radio, I have NO need to by the CD. I get burned out on it for free.
If they start using this info and get more artists on the air it can only help. This could increase their ratio of "listeners due to lack of choice" to "willing listeners" and help their advertisement revenue.
It will also help RIAA and non-RIAA affiliated labels sell more records by getting more airplay for lesser known artists. Less total air time for the current top artists would help them not to give away the need to buy while also not making people think of them as annoying.
IMHO, quite a bit of the RIAA's low sales can be traced back to the Clear Channel monopoly.
How can using these P2P statisics be a bad thing?
After sending a notice to the ISP that their servers are hosting kiddie porn, the ISP should disable the site and report them to the police along with the files stored on the server as proof.
If the ISP doesn't comply, block ALL their IP's if they reside in another country. Lock them up as an accessory to the crime if they are located in a semi-moral country.
If I was a legit business owner who lost access to my site because of this, I doubt I would have a problem with relocating my site. It isn't like there aren't plenty of other hosting services that have a bit of decency.
You actually use Promise cards for important data?
Spend a few more dollars and get a 3Ware card.
They are fast, reliable, have low CPU usage and are supported under Windows, Linux and BSD.
Please put this little article on your resume so that anyone with a clue can avoid hiring your cheap ass.
He had me right up to the point of using .Net. I expected something free (and stable) like TRON or Linux.
I want something reliable for $35,000 and I can't imagine the company giving themselves away to Microsoft.
Guess there goes another American industry.
But they could not afford one last season of Farscape to end the series that loyal fans had watched for four years?
SciFi is trying it's level best to run headlong into the ground.
They do not have my sympathy.