Because the lawmakers have got their heads up the arses of the breweries and the tobacco barons, is why. Booze and fags bring in a fortune in taxes; they would stand to lose too much if there was a legal, less dangerous and more pleasurable alternative available. Not to mention that many people are getting fat on the illegality of dope. Not just the crime bosses, but the cops and the "rehabilitation" workers.
It's not so much about controlling drugs, it's about controlling people -- and not just the people who do drugs, either. Keeping heroin illegal keeps the prices high. This gives the police a ready supply of petty criminals to arrest. Keeping cocaine illegal was what led to the popularity of crack in the first place; and by happy chance, crack -- or, more specifically, the withdrawal effect of crack -- is even more effective than heroin in fostering a criminal culture. A certain level of crime builds up fear in the law-abiding population, which gives the establishment leverage with the public.
Calculus is based on two concepts: the idea that taking the slope of a graph and taking the area enclosed between a graph and the axes are mutually inverse operations, and the idea that everything can be considered as being made of many more smaller and smaller bits. When you differentiate you are effectively subtracting one dimension from your model, and when you integrate you are adding another dimension. For example, the integral of cross-sectional area with respect to height gives you the volume of a solid, and the derivative of area with respect to length is breadth.
It might be fascinating, but it just happens. Phi is just another irrational number, and there are an infinite number of those to choose from. In fact, solving a simple quadratic equation gives phi = (1 + sqrt(2)) / 2.
Integers exist and I don't see how anything could be such that they did not. If integers exist, and division exists, then rational numbers {i.e. numbers which can be made by dividing one integer by another integer} exist. And we can prove mathematically that irrational numbers must also exist.
If you really want to dazzle a non-mathematician, show them how e ** (j * pi) = -1.
It's different because you can enter it into a file requester, effectively treating the ftpd server as part of your file system. The file requester itself knows how to handle other protocols beyond a simple local files.
Actually, though, this shouldn't surprise anyone. This is just another example of something just working, which is what Unix-like systems are supposed to do.
I think total self-destruction is a bit pessimistic. I think a much more likely scenario is that the world population reduces to a sustainable level -- excluding the worst elements, the ones who made it that way -- and stabilises there.
Although, we should not forget that the population could fall before it rises.
Re:Desktop Slide Show
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Review: KDE 3.2
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· Score: 2, Informative
It can. Under KDE, if you give a filename as
kbearftp://login:password@some.server.co.uk/path/f ile
then it will make an ftp connection {assuming you have KBear installed} and fetch the file for you. You can miss out the password if you're paranoid, and you'll get prompted; but there is still one layer of password protection.
The only way anything is ever going to change this situation is government intervention. Manufacturers nowadays are too concerned with making money, and they don't care at what cost. I like to think of myself as a libertarian; but when corporations are ready to shit on the people who pay their wages, then I can say without qualms that it's time for the government to intervene -- because we pay their wages too, and it's their job to protect the little guy from the big guy. If they aren't doing that, then they aren't doing their job properly.
Make it mandatory for manufacturers to perform H.A.L.T. on every new product -- they already have to perform plenty of other tests -- and determine an expected lifespan, which must be displayed alongside the goods when offered for sale. Long-life products will sell better than short-life products. Tax products as they leave the factory to pay for eventual recycling -- then nobody can evade payment. Tax virgin materials, so as to increase the demand for recycled materials; they should be paying us for our old kit, not the other way around.
Of course, a prerequisite for all of this is to have a government in power that realises that there are more important things in life than making money.
FYI, methane does not deplete ozone. It does, however, trap heat in the atmosphere, and more so in its unburned state than does carbon dioxide {which is soluble in water}.
LAMP.
Linux - a popular operating system; basically, Unix rewritten from the gound up.
Apache - the Web server; Apache is to httpd as Coke is to caffeinated beverage with plant extracts.
MySQL - it's free, it's fast and it's robust. It doesn't crash and corrupt its own tables.
Pick any scripting language you like; it could be Perl, PHP or Python. Whichever you're most comfortable with.
Use exim for your on-site mail server, dire warnings notwithstanding, because it runs just fine on Linux if you have plenty of RAM. Linux reads back transparently from disk cache, so it doesn't have to decache before it can read stuff, unlike certain operating systems. Exim can easily be configured to talk to an upstream SMTP server, which probably is what you want with an ordinary ADSL connection. Its configuration file is less unfriendly than Sendmail's one. Make sure your mail host can insert envelope-to headers {if they are running exim, which does, so much the better; otherwise refer them to Sendmail FAQ 3.29} so you send the right message to the right user. To complete the mail route to the desktop, you'll probably need a pop3 server; Debian default is Qpopper but anything will do.
You could maybe add a news server -- news is what people used to think the Internet was before the advent of the World Wide Web. With a HTML-aware newsreader, you can do Real Fun Stuff.
Create a company policy forbidding the importation of binaries: all binaries run on any company-owned computers are to be compiled from source on a company-owned computer. Unfortunately, you'll have to make a short term exception for the kernel and gcc. Be interesting to see what software vendors say to that one..... though it probably will result in something like what happens if you misuse IPC::Open2:-/
And lastly, never forget that it is entirely possible to do most, if not all, common business tasks without the use of a computer at all. If you really care about not using Closed Source software AT ALL, then consider using Traditional Methods. You might even get in the newspapers, and that would be a great opportunity to plug your Cause. {Actually, if you really wanted to make the news, you could arrange for somebody to make an 'anonymous tip-off' to FAST or someone. But even if you know you're clean, surviving a bust can be pretty hairy. Absolutely don't even think about this if you have any Closed Source software on the premises.}
Sometimes, for some people, some things are more important than not offending people. And I would hope that the whole closed source ideology would be more offensive in and of itself than anything I could say about it.
I still say that closed source software is every bit as socially damaging as slavery. The users of closed source software are beholden to the corporate developers, therefore they are not Free. If you use Outlook, you have no way to be sure that Bill Gates cannot read every single one of your e-mails. And any attempt to create a system wherein Open and Closed Source software can co-exist will be doomed to failure. If Microsoft were forced to publish the Word document specification, you still could not be sure they would not bend the rules with their own software. How long has the.sxw format been documented? So why hasn't Microsoft released a patch to allow Word to read and write.sxw files? Answer: because if Word could read and write.sxw files, it would instantly be redundant.
Once someone has got locked-in to proprietary software, they are as helpless as a heroin addict -- it takes a big effort to get clean for good, but it's less effort just to get another fix that will wear off after a few hours. {Of course, most addicts are already the wrong side of the break-even point}. Distributing closed-source software at no or low initial cost and to people who so not fully understand the alternatives is a lot like giving cheap heroin to schoolkids in the playground.
Closed source software is just inhuman. I have nothing nice to say about it, because I honestly believe there is nothing nice to say about it.
And about your sig: it's not actually illegal in the UK to create MP3s. The law quite clearly authorises you to take "any necessary step" in the process of listening to the music you have bought and paid for. Copying from CD or LP to cassette is a "necessary step" in listening to your music on a car cassette player or walkman, for example. Similarly, encoding from uncompressed PCM to MPEG-1 layer 3 would be a "necessary step" if the device with which you have chosen to listen to it can play MP3 but not PCM audio.
Let me say first off that I do not think there is anything wrong with what you call "elitism". Some people can do some things, some people can't, anyone can learn and that's just the way the world works. If you aren't prepared to learn to help yourself just a little bit, then other people are less likely to want to help you. Freeloaders will be Disappointed.
When a set of Sources is released, the fact is advertised first to Distributors. Now some people can't wait for a distributor to pick up on the Latest Thing, and go to the trouble of learning how to compile and install stuff from source just so they can have it. The Free Software community does not object to anyone taking the "wholesale / kit form" version, but if you'd rather have a "retail / ready built, tested and painted" version, then you're not the target audience of the announcement. As we're beginning to see even now, distributions are starting to package KDE 3.2.
Let me also say that compiling packages from source is not hard, and
should not be shied away from. The command line is nothing to be afraid of. I for one get really annoyed by attitudes like "oh no, I could never do that - that's far too hard for me" and the other excuses people make for not trying. If you have really got some kind of phobia, I'm afraid I can't help you.
I never said there was anything wrong with using ready-built packages; I just don't think it's that big a deal. After all, many people have given freely of their time to create this software. You might not have to part with money to get it; but does that make it unfair to expect you either to make just a little effort to get it to work, or to wait until someone else does so? I'll say it again: Freeloaders will be Disappointed.
And I also don't think it's a big deal that the authors and packagers are not the same people. In fact, in some ways it's better; because someone who is bad at packaging can just concentrate on developing applications, and someone who is not necessarily a brilliant low-level programmer can concentrate on the packaging side -- probably even on just one distribution's take on the file system.
Now there's an idea for a benchmark:) Of course, actually running KDE needs a fair bit of horsepower, unless you turn off some of the bells and whistles, so I'd guess that most of the machines people would want to run it on would be up to the job. And it's not as if you can't leave the compilation to get on with itself. {Just make sure you have plenty of credit on your electricity meter before you start}.
Re:You took the comment out of context.
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KDE 3.2.0 Released
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Yes. But if there is one thing better than getting a return on your own investment, then it is getting a return on someone else's investment. And whenever anyone invests effort in improving Open Source software, everybody who uses it benefits. You get to keep everything you added to it, plus you get to keep everything anyone else added to it.
Some documents are going to be made unreadable because of this ridiculous piece of bureaucratese.
Documents that use too many fonts, or fonts that aren't installed on my system, or that use joke fonts, are a pain to read. But it is hardly the business of government to dictate what typeface should be used for documents; and at the very least, three typefaces are required: one monospaced and two proportional (serif and sans). The typographer should be trusted to select the most appropriate, because that's what typographers do. If you're going to let people loose on a system where they get to pick their own typeface, then freakin' teach them how to pick one. {They probably will pick Times [or Helvetica] anyway, or Courier if it needs to be monospaced, but if they know why to use it then they aren't going to get all resentful.} Governments run countries, and one would expect them to have drier lentils to soak.
Of course, if and when lives are lost due to such whims and caprices of the US Federal Government, the blame will be laid squarely on the shoulders of "terrorists", "drug dealers" or "paedophiles".
I am just about to release the Linux Digital Camera Starter Kit, a set of utilities to detect digital cameras / slot readers, download photos and generate HTML indices with thumbnails. This is to be released under a modified BSD-like licence with an extra sentence that says if you release binary versions you have to honour any request for the source code, in perpetuity*. I would have used the GPL; but I figured that if most of the tarball was taken up with the licence, it'd be (a) poor value and (b) possibly rippable-off under fair dealing provisions {some scrote could claim that the code was less than x% of the package, and they were allowed to copy that little verbatim}.
As they're written in perl, with an installer in bash script, it's kind of an academic point about binary-only releases, but I was covering my behind. I don't want somebody stealing the work I gave to the Linux Community.
* Actually I said until copyright lapses or the work otherwise enters the public domain. But it's pretty much the same thing.
But you should be developing open source software anyway, or not developing at all. If you want to develop closed source, then you have already lost my sympathy, and the sympathy of the entire Open Source movement.
Closed source software is an abomination that should never have been allowed to happen. The fruits of all human endeavour belong to all of humanity, and it is not for anyone to deprive people of the benefits of progress for their own short-term financial gain.
You want binary packages? You get them from a distributor. That's what distributors do. They take.tar.gz packages; they compile them, setting options in a way they consider sane; they package them up in a binary package; and they offer it for download.
KDE just provide source packages, which will compile -- with perhaps a little tweaking -- on any setup which is computationally complete enough. Out of the goodness of their own hearts, they link to binary packages that other people have created; but the job of making it easy for non-programmers to install software falls to distributors. Think of it this way: the KDE developers are like farmers, growing basic food ingredients. Meat, milk, eggs, veg, grains. You can get really fresh ingredients from a farm, but you still have to prepare them before you can eat them. And that takes hard work. The distributors - Debian, Red Hat / Fedora, SUSE and so forth - are like chefs, taking those ingredients and preparing them in a ready-to-eat form. Sometimes that limits your options as a consumer; but nobody is stopping you buying fresh ingredients and preparing and cooking them your own way.
If you really can't spell make you could just keep pestering your distributor to provide you with.rpm packages. But you'd do as well to just download the source tarballs and compile them yourself, taking notes as you go along. Distributors will take your requests much more seriously if you can show you've tried something. In my experience, source.tar.gz files are the way to install software; more reliable and more configurable. You could even -- shock, horror -- create your own binary package from the source you downloaded and compiled!
What are you smoking? "Expensive to develop for" ? No it isn't. The necessary libraries, and even the compiler, are distributed under the GPL. That means you can get them for the cost of the media.
Of course, you have to release whatever you developed under an open-source licence. But then again, you should anyway -- source-hoarding is 21st century slavery. Other people wrote that software, and they wrote it for everyone to use. Put it this way: don't stab in the back, those whose backs you have ridden on.
The company and the ex-employee both want something from you. The company want information, the ex-employee want you not to pass on that information. You, therefore, hold the balance of power.
Proper etiquette in this situation is to back up the data onto a CD-R, make a second copy, and place each in a separate safe deposit box in the same city. You should then e-mail each party independently, telling them that you have the information stored on a CD-R, and it is in a safe deposit box at..... [different address in each e-mail], it is the only copy since your recent server upgrade, and how much would they be prepared to offer you to lay their hands on it? You must fake the headers so it looks as though the same message was sent cc: to both parties, even though the SDB location is different.
In your next e-mail to each side, you "carelessly" let slip how much the other side was prepared to offer you for the disputed data, and ask if they would like to raise their bids. You do this several times and it proceeds like a poker game when it's down to just two players: they keep calling and raising the stakes, and if neither side folds then it will come to a showdown.
Once each side has reached their maximum bid for how much they are prepared to offer, and you have booked a flight to the West Indies, then you let each side have their own copy of the data!
There's nothing wrong with what you call "elitism". It's easily the most justifiable form of discrimination. It is not easy for a woman to become a man, or for a black person to become white, or even for a poor person to become rich; but anyone can learn what they do not already know.
If people paid more attention to whether or not somebody can do the freakin' job and less to whether or not they are "presenting a professional image" the world would be a better place.
Sometime, somewehere, a meme started that said hey, if it's wrong to discriminate against black people and it's wrong to discriminate against women then it must be wrong to discriminate against ignorant people. So we are seeing school examinations get easier so that the "less able but equally valuable" kids "don't feel left out", while the more able kids get dragged down to their level {and some of them turn to misbehaviour as a way of relieving the boredom that results from lack of mental challenge; at least they are the smart ones and thus less likely to get caught!}
No, I've nothing against what liberals call "elitism" and what realists call "how the freakin' world works for crying out loud", because I simply don't think it's unfair. I can see it's unfair not to promote someone just because they're black, and it's unfair not to let somebody into a nightclub because they are wearing the wrong sort of shoes. But I can't see what is unfair about not letting people loose with a computer just because they don't know how to use it properly.
OK, but remember those "Linux" exploits actually were referring to application software running on Linux, and most distributions have upwards of 2000 application packages. {Debian has even more, but some of them are stuff like less and bzip2, which are included in most people's base packages}. For a truly fair comparison, you would have to limit your search to programmes that would be found on a minimal desktop. GAIM cropped up a few times -- and that might well be found in such a situation, so I'll give you it -- but the vulnerability only exists while the programme is running, and how often does a server run an Instant Messaging client?
Maybe, though, my terminology was a little incorrect. Perhaps the phrase should be not so much Windows exploit, as Windows user exploit. And that is my point: worms, viruses &c. are social phenomena, and are only thought of as a computer phenomenon because they involve the use of a computer at some stage. Really though, it's not much different from ringing somebody up, putting on an official sounding voice to pretend to be from the gas board, and persuading them to blow up their house.
And, I stand by my original assertion that, today, the typical Linux user is more clued-up than the typical Windows user. The Linux way of "riding the metal" rather than "doing everything at arm's length" is inextricably bound with this cluefulness -- <generalisation>Linux programmers aim to achieve unity with the hardware, Windows programmers aim to use abstraction to almost deny the existence of the hardware.</generalisation>
Find a country where the law (1) forbids manufacturers to keep secrets from customers and (2) specifically permits the use of reasonable force in certain situations; or (3) forbids the release of closed-source software. {This may require the purchase of a small uninhabited island, but you probably can pick up a used one on ebay. Alternatively, there was talk about some Central / South American countries outlawing closed-source software: see if you can find one that actually has}. Go there and take a graphics card with you. Request driver source code from manufacturer. Point out that local law says you have a right to that information. If driver source code is not forthcoming, disassemble binary driver under reasonable force provisions of local law. Publish source code as discovered by you on secure web server located in that country and with all logs diverted to/dev/null. Get general feeling that this is like DeCSS all over again. Wait for authorities in USA to determine that your liberated source code is not illegal. Sue prosecutor.
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Because the lawmakers have got their heads up the arses of the breweries and the tobacco barons, is why. Booze and fags bring in a fortune in taxes; they would stand to lose too much if there was a legal, less dangerous and more pleasurable alternative available. Not to mention that many people are getting fat on the illegality of dope. Not just the crime bosses, but the cops and the "rehabilitation" workers.
It's not so much about controlling drugs, it's about controlling people -- and not just the people who do drugs, either. Keeping heroin illegal keeps the prices high. This gives the police a ready supply of petty criminals to arrest. Keeping cocaine illegal was what led to the popularity of crack in the first place; and by happy chance, crack -- or, more specifically, the withdrawal effect of crack -- is even more effective than heroin in fostering a criminal culture. A certain level of crime builds up fear in the law-abiding population, which gives the establishment leverage with the public.
Calculus is based on two concepts: the idea that taking the slope of a graph and taking the area enclosed between a graph and the axes are mutually inverse operations, and the idea that everything can be considered as being made of many more smaller and smaller bits. When you differentiate you are effectively subtracting one dimension from your model, and when you integrate you are adding another dimension. For example, the integral of cross-sectional area with respect to height gives you the volume of a solid, and the derivative of area with respect to length is breadth.
It might be fascinating, but it just happens. Phi is just another irrational number, and there are an infinite number of those to choose from. In fact, solving a simple quadratic equation gives phi = (1 + sqrt(2)) / 2.
Integers exist and I don't see how anything could be such that they did not. If integers exist, and division exists, then rational numbers {i.e. numbers which can be made by dividing one integer by another integer} exist. And we can prove mathematically that irrational numbers must also exist.
If you really want to dazzle a non-mathematician, show them how e ** (j * pi) = -1.
It's different because you can enter it into a file requester, effectively treating the ftpd server as part of your file system. The file requester itself knows how to handle other protocols beyond a simple local files.
Actually, though, this shouldn't surprise anyone. This is just another example of something just working, which is what Unix-like systems are supposed to do.
I think total self-destruction is a bit pessimistic. I think a much more likely scenario is that the world population reduces to a sustainable level -- excluding the worst elements, the ones who made it that way -- and stabilises there.
Although, we should not forget that the population could fall before it rises.
It can. Under KDE, if you give a filename as kbearftp://login:password@some.server.co.uk/path/f ile
then it will make an ftp connection {assuming you have KBear installed} and fetch the file for you. You can miss out the password if you're paranoid, and you'll get prompted; but there is still one layer of password protection.
The only way anything is ever going to change this situation is government intervention. Manufacturers nowadays are too concerned with making money, and they don't care at what cost. I like to think of myself as a libertarian; but when corporations are ready to shit on the people who pay their wages, then I can say without qualms that it's time for the government to intervene -- because we pay their wages too, and it's their job to protect the little guy from the big guy. If they aren't doing that, then they aren't doing their job properly.
Make it mandatory for manufacturers to perform H.A.L.T. on every new product -- they already have to perform plenty of other tests -- and determine an expected lifespan, which must be displayed alongside the goods when offered for sale. Long-life products will sell better than short-life products. Tax products as they leave the factory to pay for eventual recycling -- then nobody can evade payment. Tax virgin materials, so as to increase the demand for recycled materials; they should be paying us for our old kit, not the other way around.
Of course, a prerequisite for all of this is to have a government in power that realises that there are more important things in life than making money.
FYI, methane does not deplete ozone. It does, however, trap heat in the atmosphere, and more so in its unburned state than does carbon dioxide {which is soluble in water}.
LAMP.
..... though it probably will result in something like what happens if you misuse IPC::Open2 :-/
Linux - a popular operating system; basically, Unix rewritten from the gound up.
Apache - the Web server; Apache is to httpd as Coke is to caffeinated beverage with plant extracts.
MySQL - it's free, it's fast and it's robust. It doesn't crash and corrupt its own tables.
Pick any scripting language you like; it could be Perl, PHP or Python. Whichever you're most comfortable with.
Use exim for your on-site mail server, dire warnings notwithstanding, because it runs just fine on Linux if you have plenty of RAM. Linux reads back transparently from disk cache, so it doesn't have to decache before it can read stuff, unlike certain operating systems. Exim can easily be configured to talk to an upstream SMTP server, which probably is what you want with an ordinary ADSL connection. Its configuration file is less unfriendly than Sendmail's one. Make sure your mail host can insert envelope-to headers {if they are running exim, which does, so much the better; otherwise refer them to Sendmail FAQ 3.29} so you send the right message to the right user. To complete the mail route to the desktop, you'll probably need a pop3 server; Debian default is Qpopper but anything will do.
You could maybe add a news server -- news is what people used to think the Internet was before the advent of the World Wide Web. With a HTML-aware newsreader, you can do Real Fun Stuff.
Create a company policy forbidding the importation of binaries: all binaries run on any company-owned computers are to be compiled from source on a company-owned computer. Unfortunately, you'll have to make a short term exception for the kernel and gcc. Be interesting to see what software vendors say to that one
And lastly, never forget that it is entirely possible to do most, if not all, common business tasks without the use of a computer at all. If you really care about not using Closed Source software AT ALL, then consider using Traditional Methods. You might even get in the newspapers, and that would be a great opportunity to plug your Cause. {Actually, if you really wanted to make the news, you could arrange for somebody to make an 'anonymous tip-off' to FAST or someone. But even if you know you're clean, surviving a bust can be pretty hairy. Absolutely don't even think about this if you have any Closed Source software on the premises.}
Sometimes, for some people, some things are more important than not offending people. And I would hope that the whole closed source ideology would be more offensive in and of itself than anything I could say about it.
I still say that closed source software is every bit as socially damaging as slavery. The users of closed source software are beholden to the corporate developers, therefore they are not Free. If you use Outlook, you have no way to be sure that Bill Gates cannot read every single one of your e-mails. And any attempt to create a system wherein Open and Closed Source software can co-exist will be doomed to failure. If Microsoft were forced to publish the Word document specification, you still could not be sure they would not bend the rules with their own software. How long has the .sxw format been documented? So why hasn't Microsoft released a patch to allow Word to read and write .sxw files? Answer: because if Word could read and write .sxw files, it would instantly be redundant.
Once someone has got locked-in to proprietary software, they are as helpless as a heroin addict -- it takes a big effort to get clean for good, but it's less effort just to get another fix that will wear off after a few hours. {Of course, most addicts are already the wrong side of the break-even point}. Distributing closed-source software at no or low initial cost and to people who so not fully understand the alternatives is a lot like giving cheap heroin to schoolkids in the playground.
Closed source software is just inhuman. I have nothing nice to say about it, because I honestly believe there is nothing nice to say about it.
And about your sig: it's not actually illegal in the UK to create MP3s. The law quite clearly authorises you to take "any necessary step" in the process of listening to the music you have bought and paid for. Copying from CD or LP to cassette is a "necessary step" in listening to your music on a car cassette player or walkman, for example. Similarly, encoding from uncompressed PCM to MPEG-1 layer 3 would be a "necessary step" if the device with which you have chosen to listen to it can play MP3 but not PCM audio.
Let me say first off that I do not think there is anything wrong with what you call "elitism". Some people can do some things, some people can't, anyone can learn and that's just the way the world works. If you aren't prepared to learn to help yourself just a little bit, then other people are less likely to want to help you. Freeloaders will be Disappointed.
When a set of Sources is released, the fact is advertised first to Distributors. Now some people can't wait for a distributor to pick up on the Latest Thing, and go to the trouble of learning how to compile and install stuff from source just so they can have it. The Free Software community does not object to anyone taking the "wholesale / kit form" version, but if you'd rather have a "retail / ready built, tested and painted" version, then you're not the target audience of the announcement. As we're beginning to see even now, distributions are starting to package KDE 3.2.
Let me also say that compiling packages from source is not hard, and should not be shied away from. The command line is nothing to be afraid of. I for one get really annoyed by attitudes like "oh no, I could never do that - that's far too hard for me" and the other excuses people make for not trying. If you have really got some kind of phobia, I'm afraid I can't help you.
I never said there was anything wrong with using ready-built packages; I just don't think it's that big a deal. After all, many people have given freely of their time to create this software. You might not have to part with money to get it; but does that make it unfair to expect you either to make just a little effort to get it to work, or to wait until someone else does so? I'll say it again: Freeloaders will be Disappointed.
And I also don't think it's a big deal that the authors and packagers are not the same people. In fact, in some ways it's better; because someone who is bad at packaging can just concentrate on developing applications, and someone who is not necessarily a brilliant low-level programmer can concentrate on the packaging side -- probably even on just one distribution's take on the file system.
You sound like my gran; she would never turn off the wireless set in the middle of a song.
Now there's an idea for a benchmark :) Of course, actually running KDE needs a fair bit of horsepower, unless you turn off some of the bells and whistles, so I'd guess that most of the machines people would want to run it on would be up to the job. And it's not as if you can't leave the compilation to get on with itself. {Just make sure you have plenty of credit on your electricity meter before you start}.
Yes. But if there is one thing better than getting a return on your own investment, then it is getting a return on someone else's investment. And whenever anyone invests effort in improving Open Source software, everybody who uses it benefits. You get to keep everything you added to it, plus you get to keep everything anyone else added to it.
Courier was monospaced. Times is proportional.
Some documents are going to be made unreadable because of this ridiculous piece of bureaucratese.
Documents that use too many fonts, or fonts that aren't installed on my system, or that use joke fonts, are a pain to read. But it is hardly the business of government to dictate what typeface should be used for documents; and at the very least, three typefaces are required: one monospaced and two proportional (serif and sans). The typographer should be trusted to select the most appropriate, because that's what typographers do. If you're going to let people loose on a system where they get to pick their own typeface, then freakin' teach them how to pick one. {They probably will pick Times [or Helvetica] anyway, or Courier if it needs to be monospaced, but if they know why to use it then they aren't going to get all resentful.} Governments run countries, and one would expect them to have drier lentils to soak.
Of course, if and when lives are lost due to such whims and caprices of the US Federal Government, the blame will be laid squarely on the shoulders of "terrorists", "drug dealers" or "paedophiles".
Funny you should ask that.
I am just about to release the Linux Digital Camera Starter Kit, a set of utilities to detect digital cameras / slot readers, download photos and generate HTML indices with thumbnails. This is to be released under a modified BSD-like licence with an extra sentence that says if you release binary versions you have to honour any request for the source code, in perpetuity*. I would have used the GPL; but I figured that if most of the tarball was taken up with the licence, it'd be (a) poor value and (b) possibly rippable-off under fair dealing provisions {some scrote could claim that the code was less than x% of the package, and they were allowed to copy that little verbatim}.
As they're written in perl, with an installer in bash script, it's kind of an academic point about binary-only releases, but I was covering my behind. I don't want somebody stealing the work I gave to the Linux Community.
* Actually I said until copyright lapses or the work otherwise enters the public domain. But it's pretty much the same thing.
But you should be developing open source software anyway, or not developing at all. If you want to develop closed source, then you have already lost my sympathy, and the sympathy of the entire Open Source movement.
Closed source software is an abomination that should never have been allowed to happen. The fruits of all human endeavour belong to all of humanity, and it is not for anyone to deprive people of the benefits of progress for their own short-term financial gain.
You want binary packages? You get them from a distributor. That's what distributors do. They take .tar.gz packages; they compile them, setting options in a way they consider sane; they package them up in a binary package; and they offer it for download.
.rpm packages. But you'd do as well to just download the source tarballs and compile them yourself, taking notes as you go along. Distributors will take your requests much more seriously if you can show you've tried something. In my experience, source .tar.gz files are the way to install software; more reliable and more configurable. You could even -- shock, horror -- create your own binary package from the source you downloaded and compiled!
KDE just provide source packages, which will compile -- with perhaps a little tweaking -- on any setup which is computationally complete enough. Out of the goodness of their own hearts, they link to binary packages that other people have created; but the job of making it easy for non-programmers to install software falls to distributors. Think of it this way: the KDE developers are like farmers, growing basic food ingredients. Meat, milk, eggs, veg, grains. You can get really fresh ingredients from a farm, but you still have to prepare them before you can eat them. And that takes hard work. The distributors - Debian, Red Hat / Fedora, SUSE and so forth - are like chefs, taking those ingredients and preparing them in a ready-to-eat form. Sometimes that limits your options as a consumer; but nobody is stopping you buying fresh ingredients and preparing and cooking them your own way.
If you really can't spell make you could just keep pestering your distributor to provide you with
What are you smoking? "Expensive to develop for" ? No it isn't. The necessary libraries, and even the compiler, are distributed under the GPL. That means you can get them for the cost of the media.
Of course, you have to release whatever you developed under an open-source licence. But then again, you should anyway -- source-hoarding is 21st century slavery. Other people wrote that software, and they wrote it for everyone to use. Put it this way: don't stab in the back, those whose backs you have ridden on.
The company and the ex-employee both want something from you. The company want information, the ex-employee want you not to pass on that information. You, therefore, hold the balance of power.
..... [different address in each e-mail], it is the only copy since your recent server upgrade, and how much would they be prepared to offer you to lay their hands on it? You must fake the headers so it looks as though the same message was sent cc: to both parties, even though the SDB location is different.
Proper etiquette in this situation is to back up the data onto a CD-R, make a second copy, and place each in a separate safe deposit box in the same city. You should then e-mail each party independently, telling them that you have the information stored on a CD-R, and it is in a safe deposit box at
In your next e-mail to each side, you "carelessly" let slip how much the other side was prepared to offer you for the disputed data, and ask if they would like to raise their bids. You do this several times and it proceeds like a poker game when it's down to just two players: they keep calling and raising the stakes, and if neither side folds then it will come to a showdown.
Once each side has reached their maximum bid for how much they are prepared to offer, and you have booked a flight to the West Indies, then you let each side have their own copy of the data!
There's nothing wrong with what you call "elitism". It's easily the most justifiable form of discrimination. It is not easy for a woman to become a man, or for a black person to become white, or even for a poor person to become rich; but anyone can learn what they do not already know.
If people paid more attention to whether or not somebody can do the freakin' job and less to whether or not they are "presenting a professional image" the world would be a better place.
Sometime, somewehere, a meme started that said hey, if it's wrong to discriminate against black people and it's wrong to discriminate against women then it must be wrong to discriminate against ignorant people. So we are seeing school examinations get easier so that the "less able but equally valuable" kids "don't feel left out", while the more able kids get dragged down to their level {and some of them turn to misbehaviour as a way of relieving the boredom that results from lack of mental challenge; at least they are the smart ones and thus less likely to get caught!}
No, I've nothing against what liberals call "elitism" and what realists call "how the freakin' world works for crying out loud", because I simply don't think it's unfair. I can see it's unfair not to promote someone just because they're black, and it's unfair not to let somebody into a nightclub because they are wearing the wrong sort of shoes. But I can't see what is unfair about not letting people loose with a computer just because they don't know how to use it properly.
OK, but remember those "Linux" exploits actually were referring to application software running on Linux, and most distributions have upwards of 2000 application packages. {Debian has even more, but some of them are stuff like less and bzip2, which are included in most people's base packages}. For a truly fair comparison, you would have to limit your search to programmes that would be found on a minimal desktop. GAIM cropped up a few times -- and that might well be found in such a situation, so I'll give you it -- but the vulnerability only exists while the programme is running, and how often does a server run an Instant Messaging client?
Maybe, though, my terminology was a little incorrect. Perhaps the phrase should be not so much Windows exploit, as Windows user exploit. And that is my point: worms, viruses &c. are social phenomena, and are only thought of as a computer phenomenon because they involve the use of a computer at some stage. Really though, it's not much different from ringing somebody up, putting on an official sounding voice to pretend to be from the gas board, and persuading them to blow up their house.
And, I stand by my original assertion that, today, the typical Linux user is more clued-up than the typical Windows user. The Linux way of "riding the metal" rather than "doing everything at arm's length" is inextricably bound with this cluefulness -- <generalisation>Linux programmers aim to achieve unity with the hardware, Windows programmers aim to use abstraction to almost deny the existence of the hardware.</generalisation>
Find a country where the law (1) forbids manufacturers to keep secrets from customers and (2) specifically permits the use of reasonable force in certain situations; or (3) forbids the release of closed-source software. {This may require the purchase of a small uninhabited island, but you probably can pick up a used one on ebay. Alternatively, there was talk about some Central / South American countries outlawing closed-source software: see if you can find one that actually has}. Go there and take a graphics card with you. Request driver source code from manufacturer. Point out that local law says you have a right to that information. If driver source code is not forthcoming, disassemble binary driver under reasonable force provisions of local law. Publish source code as discovered by you on secure web server located in that country and with all logs diverted to /dev/null. Get general feeling that this is like DeCSS all over again. Wait for authorities in USA to determine that your liberated source code is not illegal. Sue prosecutor.
Great, so now matter can take its A-levels. Now they've just got two years to create a university for it!