Its a 3/4 page ZDNet article, for christ's sake! Have you forgotten that Redhat, just like every other Linux distribution, is based on GPL software? Thats free to upgrade. Why anyone would rely on a distribution to determine what software you get is beyond me. Download what you need, when you need it. Sure, have a list of new packages to review, but don't trust just one source with your computer's (read: network's) well being. One bad package, and everything goes kaputz.
Also, you mention that there is no promise of quality. Of course, Redhat can't guarentee the quality of GPL'd software. No one can! Do you think Debian guarentees all of its packages are bug free? Ha! Of course, since they release a new distro every other year, we should hope there would be less bugs. Just wish harder I guess.
But getting back to Redhat, they probably have an uptime guarentee that says their update server will be up 99.9% of the time or something like that, and that all packages will be updated in a timely fashion. That's better than nothing.
I'm suprised no one has mentioned CVS yet. You can see every change made to every file, in numerous forms. I'm no CVS expert, but it seems like it does (or can be easily modified to) contain information about every characteristic about a file. And since you download the CVS directories when you download a package (most packages that use CVS don't bother to remove the CVS directories), the information is carried over to the local machine for access there.
Of course, this is most relavent to Open Source projects that make extensive use of CVS, but in a few years there will be no conflict to worry about.
The author of the article must not have made an RPM before. Every specfile generator out there has a section for pre and post install scripts. Plus, there is no reason why you can't include other commands in the middle of other sections, as is appropriate on a package-by-package basis. As you mentioned, a/lot/ of programs run ldconfig.
Configuration programs can be run also. Take the SSH RPMs for example. After installing the server RPM, it generated public and private keys. Saved me the trouble of doing it by hand, and made sure it was done right. I believe the client RPM even asked for a keyphrase. There's no explaination for what the author of the article said about not having configuration tools, except for inexperience.
I do agree that standard configuration parameters would be a nice addition, but there is absolutely no reason why package maintainers should have to conform to anything other than the stand specfile pre- and post- install sections. It allows them much more freedom and ease of use to use the scripts that come with their tar files. Why bother converting them to yet another format?
Disclaimer: I'm no electronics expert. Forgive me if I'm showing my ignorance.
This is off the subject, but when I read this I thought of one thing: having Linux Open Source is of course great, but when implanted into a device like the Tivo, there is not much hacking to be done on the kernel. Sure, you could take the code and make your own device, but who has the time? Not to mention the $$ it would take to mass market such a product.
Would it be reasonable to make an optional extention to the GPL requiring all devices running Linux (or any other GPL'd software) to include instructions on how to extract and modify the source? I'm assuming the kernel in the Tivo is just a binary, so it would be more of a matter of replacing what's there. Do all devices run on generic CMOS or DSP chips that use the same technique to modify the memory on them?
It seems that it would be easy to store the kernel where no one would be able to modify it, thus rendering the OS code useless. Just a thought. Flame as is appropriate.
RMS just wanted to make sure it was done right. He is an expert, very much the expert on Open Source licenses, especially the GPL. No doubt he has studied the QPL vs GPL issues for hours on end. He knows what he's talking about, and he knows that something needs to be done. And it needs to be done now, before KDE goes off on its newfound completely-free-software high.
I don't think anyone on the outside knew that there was so little code in KDE that could actually cause a problem; I certainly would have thought more than just the two programs mentioned would have been affected.
It just doesn't make sense to ignore such small problems, trivial as they are. They can be solved with a quick email from the authors of the code. Might as well spend a week soliciting responses, and get it right this time. For sure.
And perhaps KDE is better off just releasing a "clean" version and then re-incorporating the old code back in. But it also doesn't show ANY respect to the programmers how made the code. Maybe they would actually like a say in how their work is being used.
First of all, firewalling Napster does nothing. The future is Freenet, Gnutella, and other distributed (and encrypted) systems. Napster might as well be dead.
I have an idea. Have Project Gutenberg distribute their official archives on Gnutella. Trying to censor audio and video is one thing, but try censoring harmless, useful, and loved books. Even the common joe should take offense to that.
"Big Brother, Inc. tries to stop 1984 from begin read" is alot worse for PR than "[Insert beloved band here] tries to prevent teenagers from stealing its livelyhood."
Who USES Gnome or USES KDE? This whole debate is a joke as far as I'm concerned. Gnome and KDE do NOTHING work talking about. 'gnomecc' and 'kcontrol' are the settings/control programs for G/K. What is in there?
gnomecc
Desktop options
Gnome-edit settings
Mime types
Multimedia
Keyboard/mouse
Session management
URL handlers
kcontrol
Same as gnomecc
System information
Network
Sound
Window Behavior
The only reason kcontrol has anything more is because it includes settings for kwm, whereas gnome relies on a separate WM.
So I ask you again, who gives flying f* what "desktop environment" you are using? They do NOTHING. It is the programs that do everything. I run KDE, but I program in GTK only. Incompatible programs are a pain in the ass (although I hardly experience any problems currently). Imagine trying to tell a Linux newbie that he can't copy and paste between two different applications because of what they were programmed in.
To conclude this rant, let me say this:
I should be able to use any program made for GNOME or KDE, almost to its full potential, with a program made for the other "desktop environment". In TWM. Period.
The one thing I'd be concerned about, a year from now, is that you might be buying graphics cards with 256MB of RAM, which is more than the amount of "regular RAM."
You know what's kind of silly? There is a special AGP bus for video cards which goes (n) X (the normal speed of the bus), and must transfer all kinds of data back and forth. Why can't Intel or VIA or someone come up with a special bus that connects the AGP bus with the RAM. That way, you could buy a video card with just some ROM, and no RAM, and the video card could use as much of the system memory as you needed. You could have 64MB of RAM now, and when your games run slow, upgrade to 256MB and everything will run faster. You could even have the AGP->RAM bus work for only one or two RAM slots, because I can imagine how out-of-sync ISA and PCI cards could get running at AGP speeds.
Of course, video card manufactures wouldn't like this unless they also manufactured RAM, but I think it's time has come.
Even if RAMBUS actually works at 200Mhz, it still couldn't top the speeds attained by AGP 4x.
I don't think that's what he meant. I think he meant that dpkg should be able to accept dependaecies from.tar.gz files, so you wouldn't get dependency errors and be forced to use --ignore-depends. --ignore-depends is just like --no-deps in RPM, but RPM also allows you to add dependencies in/etc/rpmrc
Maybe dpkg has an option to do that; I wouldn't know since it wouldn't install on my RH system.
Open Source software, and software in general, shouldn't be just about the code. My personal preference is to release early and often, even in an not-very-usable state. That way, users can give feedback about what they'd like to see in a product; ie new features. User feedback can change a whole product's focus. If you originally designed it for advanced users, but when you release the betas, only newbies show interest, then you should refine the program to target that audience.
So releasing early helps not only the code, but the direction of the program itself. And its alot easier to build-as-you-go rather than releasing a stable version just to find out its not what users wanted, and then have to change your existing code base.
Am I the only one who thinks the transparency is a cheap trick? KDE/Konsole have never had real transparency AFAIK. Is this going to change with KDE2, or did someone just load a tinted background picture into Konsole (as opposed to Konsole getting the picture from the desktop and auto-tinting and auto-positioning it)?
BTW, I use KDE and do get real transparency from Eterm; that's why I don't use Konsole.
Anyone else notice the l=sdot in there? Since it was submitted by someone at IBM, it would seem that they want to track specifically how many people visit the site after reading it on Slashdot. Conspiracy? Its probably a good thing, since its bound to get tons of visitors and maybe make IBM consider releasing even more software for Linux.
The root DNS servers are pretty important. From a quick looksee at my named.ca, I'd say 10/12 are in the US, including 3 at government facilities (.gov and.mil). Of the other 2, one is hosted by RIPE (K) and another in Japan (M).
Certainly, this wouldn't stop you from setting up your own root server, but I'd venture to guess that most ISP's in other countries use the US ones that come with BIND. It might take a few days before they all got switched over.
Kinda OT: You should be using 199.166.24.1 (ns1.vrx.net) as your main DNS server (or setup your named.ca to be a root server). Try it, then visit the.earth or free.tibet.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. At this moment, DeCSS is completely legal to distribute, both in source code and documentation. All of what I posted is included in roughly the same form in the README included with css-auth. And besides, if the MPAA was going to sue someone over a comment, it would be me, not Slashdot.
I said they'd make money; I didn't say they'd make a profit. And as Kevin42 pointed out, they apparently didn't make a profit from the Windows version either.
Considering the views of yourself and a lot of Slashdotters in this thread, if Descent 3 sells 100 copies we should call the pope because its a miracle. Then again, if you have a really good game (by the majority's standard) like the next Doom or Quake, there is no reason you can't make a profit. So this is NOT bad news.
I can say that the Descent 2 port for Linux is very fast. I have an 8MB Diamond Stealth II G460 AGP card. Its very weak when it comes to 3D acceleration. However, I don't think the D2 port has any specific 3D support in it (no OpenGL). Even when running in a window under KDE on X, it still runs almost as fast as it did under DOS.
Sorry, I have to say you're way off base. I love the Descent series. I bought Descent 2 the first week it came out (I had Win3.11 back then). I run and hack on the Linux version. I downloaded Descent 3 just a month ago to play at school because I couldn't play it at home.
I like this game. I will pay money for this game. Therefore, Outrage will make money. Thus, there is interest in games on Linux.
One of the big reasons I will pay for this game is because the previous versions of Descent have had their source code released. It is because of that that I can play D2 under Linux. And I'm buying D3 keeping in mind that the source code will most likely be released sometime in the future. And this time, it will be native Linux code, instead of having to port it over ourselves. WTG Outrage and Loki. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the info. I gathered that it was from a Dicken's book from a report on CNBC (which was quite good otherwise). And I actually read 1984, and now the name Goldstein makes perfect sense. I had forgotten all of the characters' names, unfortunately.
I don't even know his real name off hand. I think everyone calls him Goldstein because of what the character in the Charles Dickens' book stood for. I haven't read the book, but perhaps he stood up to some oppressive force, or showed a great amount of courage? I'm not exactly sure.
I didn't purchase it, per se. It was free as part of a promotion. But either way, it was completely legal (or should be considered completely legal) for me to use DeCSS on it. Since I use Linux, it was the only way for me to watch it. So instead of the DeCSS goons being able to point to me as an example, Goldstein's lawyers can feel free to request my testimony as to how useful DeCSS actually is to the average Linux user:)
Slashdot Mirror
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Its a 3/4 page ZDNet article, for christ's sake! Have you forgotten that Redhat, just like every other Linux distribution, is based on GPL software? Thats free to upgrade. Why anyone would rely on a distribution to determine what software you get is beyond me. Download what you need, when you need it. Sure, have a list of new packages to review, but don't trust just one source with your computer's (read: network's) well being. One bad package, and everything goes kaputz.
Also, you mention that there is no promise of quality. Of course, Redhat can't guarentee the quality of GPL'd software. No one can! Do you think Debian guarentees all of its packages are bug free? Ha! Of course, since they release a new distro every other year, we should hope there would be less bugs. Just wish harder I guess.
But getting back to Redhat, they probably have an uptime guarentee that says their update server will be up 99.9% of the time or something like that, and that all packages will be updated in a timely fashion. That's better than nothing.
----
Of course, this is most relavent to Open Source projects that make extensive use of CVS, but in a few years there will be no conflict to worry about.
----
Configuration programs can be run also. Take the SSH RPMs for example. After installing the server RPM, it generated public and private keys. Saved me the trouble of doing it by hand, and made sure it was done right. I believe the client RPM even asked for a keyphrase. There's no explaination for what the author of the article said about not having configuration tools, except for inexperience.
I do agree that standard configuration parameters would be a nice addition, but there is absolutely no reason why package maintainers should have to conform to anything other than the stand specfile pre- and post- install sections. It allows them much more freedom and ease of use to use the scripts that come with their tar files. Why bother converting them to yet another format?
----
This is off the subject, but when I read this I thought of one thing: having Linux Open Source is of course great, but when implanted into a device like the Tivo, there is not much hacking to be done on the kernel. Sure, you could take the code and make your own device, but who has the time? Not to mention the $$ it would take to mass market such a product.
Would it be reasonable to make an optional extention to the GPL requiring all devices running Linux (or any other GPL'd software) to include instructions on how to extract and modify the source? I'm assuming the kernel in the Tivo is just a binary, so it would be more of a matter of replacing what's there. Do all devices run on generic CMOS or DSP chips that use the same technique to modify the memory on them?
It seems that it would be easy to store the kernel where no one would be able to modify it, thus rendering the OS code useless. Just a thought. Flame as is appropriate.
----
RMS just wanted to make sure it was done right. He is an expert, very much the expert on Open Source licenses, especially the GPL. No doubt he has studied the QPL vs GPL issues for hours on end. He knows what he's talking about, and he knows that something needs to be done. And it needs to be done now, before KDE goes off on its newfound completely-free-software high.
I don't think anyone on the outside knew that there was so little code in KDE that could actually cause a problem; I certainly would have thought more than just the two programs mentioned would have been affected.
It just doesn't make sense to ignore such small problems, trivial as they are. They can be solved with a quick email from the authors of the code. Might as well spend a week soliciting responses, and get it right this time. For sure.
And perhaps KDE is better off just releasing a "clean" version and then re-incorporating the old code back in. But it also doesn't show ANY respect to the programmers how made the code. Maybe they would actually like a say in how their work is being used.
----
Now even Indrema has its own TLD?
Psst.. its a joke
I have an idea. Have Project Gutenberg distribute their official archives on Gnutella. Trying to censor audio and video is one thing, but try censoring harmless, useful, and loved books. Even the common joe should take offense to that.
"Big Brother, Inc. tries to stop 1984 from begin read" is alot worse for PR than "[Insert beloved band here] tries to prevent teenagers from stealing its livelyhood."
gnomecc
kcontrol
The only reason kcontrol has anything more is because it includes settings for kwm, whereas gnome relies on a separate WM.
So I ask you again, who gives flying f* what "desktop environment" you are using? They do NOTHING. It is the programs that do everything. I run KDE, but I program in GTK only. Incompatible programs are a pain in the ass (although I hardly experience any problems currently). Imagine trying to tell a Linux newbie that he can't copy and paste between two different applications because of what they were programmed in.
To conclude this rant, let me say this:
I should be able to use any program made for GNOME or KDE, almost to its full potential, with a program made for the other "desktop environment". In TWM. Period.
You know what's kind of silly? There is a special AGP bus for video cards which goes (n) X (the normal speed of the bus), and must transfer all kinds of data back and forth. Why can't Intel or VIA or someone come up with a special bus that connects the AGP bus with the RAM. That way, you could buy a video card with just some ROM, and no RAM, and the video card could use as much of the system memory as you needed. You could have 64MB of RAM now, and when your games run slow, upgrade to 256MB and everything will run faster. You could even have the AGP->RAM bus work for only one or two RAM slots, because I can imagine how out-of-sync ISA and PCI cards could get running at AGP speeds.
Of course, video card manufactures wouldn't like this unless they also manufactured RAM, but I think it's time has come.
Even if RAMBUS actually works at 200Mhz, it still couldn't top the speeds attained by AGP 4x.
Maybe dpkg has an option to do that; I wouldn't know since it wouldn't install on my RH system.
So releasing early helps not only the code, but the direction of the program itself. And its alot easier to build-as-you-go rather than releasing a stable version just to find out its not what users wanted, and then have to change your existing code base.
Am I the only one who thinks the transparency is a cheap trick? KDE/Konsole have never had real transparency AFAIK. Is this going to change with KDE2, or did someone just load a tinted background picture into Konsole (as opposed to Konsole getting the picture from the desktop and auto-tinting and auto-positioning it)?
BTW, I use KDE and do get real transparency from Eterm; that's why I don't use Konsole.
http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensou rce/tp4bluedrekar/?open&l=sdot,t=gr,p=bd rk
Anyone else notice the l=sdot in there? Since it was submitted by someone at IBM, it would seem that they want to track specifically how many people visit the site after reading it on Slashdot. Conspiracy? Its probably a good thing, since its bound to get tons of visitors and maybe make IBM consider releasing even more software for Linux.
Certainly, this wouldn't stop you from setting up your own root server, but I'd venture to guess that most ISP's in other countries use the US ones that come with BIND. It might take a few days before they all got switched over.
Kinda OT: You should be using 199.166.24.1 (ns1.vrx.net) as your main DNS server (or setup your named.ca to be a root server). Try it, then visit the.earth or free.tibet.
Jeez, thats a long uptime! 16 years? With a Mac?
Psst.. its a joke
Wrong, wrong, wrong. At this moment, DeCSS is completely legal to distribute, both in source code and documentation. All of what I posted is included in roughly the same form in the README included with css-auth. And besides, if the MPAA was going to sue someone over a comment, it would be me, not Slashdot.
Not. Here is how to get a VOB file off a CD so we can actually watch what we paid for. (quick example, don't expect it to work for you).
s /livid && cvs login && cvs -z3 co -P css-auth
/dev/dvd && ./reset /dev/dvd && ./tstdvd /dev/dvd /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd && ./tstdvd /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd/video_ts/vts_01_1.vob /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd/video_ts/vts_01_1.vob | ./css-cat -v1P -> 01_1.vob
export CVSROOT=:pserver:anonymous@cvs.linuxvideo.org:/cv
cd css-auth && make
umount
mount
mv title-key title1-key
dvdinfo
cat
mpeg2player -vob -f 01_1.vob
Just replace 01_1.vob with - in the last two lines to watch it realtime.
Let's just say this is one CLI program that doesn't warrant a GUI interface.
Considering the views of yourself and a lot of Slashdotters in this thread, if Descent 3 sells 100 copies we should call the pope because its a miracle. Then again, if you have a really good game (by the majority's standard) like the next Doom or Quake, there is no reason you can't make a profit. So this is NOT bad news.
I can say that the Descent 2 port for Linux is very fast. I have an 8MB Diamond Stealth II G460 AGP card. Its very weak when it comes to 3D acceleration. However, I don't think the D2 port has any specific 3D support in it (no OpenGL). Even when running in a window under KDE on X, it still runs almost as fast as it did under DOS.
I like this game. I will pay money for this game. Therefore, Outrage will make money. Thus, there is interest in games on Linux.
One of the big reasons I will pay for this game is because the previous versions of Descent have had their source code released. It is because of that that I can play D2 under Linux. And I'm buying D3 keeping in mind that the source code will most likely be released sometime in the future. And this time, it will be native Linux code, instead of having to port it over ourselves. WTG Outrage and Loki. Keep up the good work.
..is to send a rocket to the Moon to collect samples. They want to be the only pizza biz with authentic Green Cheese!
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