No. This is bullshit. The earth is in the center of the universe (and it's flat). Orbits are perfect circles, that means that the distance it's the same (by definition of circle). If scientifical evidences are against this, it means that science is wrong.
Not really. virus,i, n that means the latin plural is "vira" (since it is not unregular, there is no reason it should not) by the way i agree the english version is viruses. in italian the plural is virus (it does not change).
you can specify things with paths (up to 16 chars), but it does not work one would expect. In fact it matches the string with which the process is known to the system, so if you give full path, the program won't be recognised...
for example if you ps ux, you get/usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin (this is the actual path on Debian), because the script/usr/bin/mozilla calls it that way... But if you run $ links the name of the program is links if you run $/usr/bin/links the name is/usr/bin/links
and for example if you allow mozilla-bin,/usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin is also allowed...
This is the code which gets the string from the options
#ifdef IPT_OWNER_COMM
case '5':
check_inverse(optarg, &invert, &optind, 0);
if(strlen(optarg) > sizeof(ownerinfo->comm))
exit_error(PARAMETER_PROBLEM, "OWNER CMD `%s' too long, max %d characters", optarg, sizeof(ownerinfo->comm));
i think to allow bigger names is a matter of resizing an array.... but to have it recognizing programs, I'm afraid you have to hack, i think it's not a matter of manipulating strings... of course we cannot just force people to call programs with full path...
About already existing solutions, Don't forget you can also check PID's, you can check where an executable lies...
if what you are trying to say the whole thing is not easy for the inexperienced user, then you are right.
The point is that developers and distros will solve the problem when the problem will present.
with Debian i did not even allow my system to run non-free software. There is no point I should check for spyware.
Of course there will be need for it, when there is be a lot of non-free software for GNU/Linux (which is something I hope won't happen, since it means that in some way free software developers failed) some programmers will team up and solve the problem.
By the way if you want to start a project to code "the nice front end", I have got some spare time. If you don't and some others would like to, I think we could do it... You can mail me.
iptables CAN create rules based on the application. --cmd-owner name is the option to do so. you can also make a rule based on uid. Of course you can mix things up, for example you can allow an app to connect to some ports rather than to some others. And of course an application cannot use port 80 (server socket) if it's not uid 0 or suid. For example iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m owner --cmd-owner mozilla-bin -j ACCEPT iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP would let only mozilla connect to port 80 of a remote server. I can tell you: you have got no idea how powerfull is iptables!
Are you joking, aren't you? You can chose not to support a company anymore. You can't attack it. So why not setting a price on each SCO's employee's head? Or maybe we could DOS SCO's Headquarters with all the computer every cracker owns... Or we could tell Bush SCO owns chemical weapons and start a civil war!!! No no... I confide in law. GNU/Linux is safe, until Open Source/Free Software plays fair...
Apple Licence was bad. Now it does not suck that much... Of course you should release new software under the GPL... Apple Licence was born to "protect" DarwinBSD and such things. Remember that for a company grown up with proprietary software (which is, even if super high quality, apple software remains proprietary) it is hard to accept a new way. They need time to convince themselves (and the owners of their shares) it's a Good Thing.
I think that elections are supposed to be more important than quake. And if you cheat the election, you make something not legal...
If someone cheas with Quake, i don't care. It is just annoying.
If a President/PM/Parliament/Whateveryouwant is elected because of cheats, and not because peolpe voted him... well I think it's not the same...
as far as i know, Apple sued Microsoft (back when they did the first versions of Windows), since they "stole" many MacOS ideas. Of course Apple did not win. And that could be more the case of stealing ideas. A GUI is itself an idea. The way it looks, well, it is an accident. And well if they sue Dominik Vogt and the other FVWM developers, I'm sorry for him because the whole thing is annoying, but since he does not sell anything, he probably won't have much trouble... the worst thing is that they prohibit FVWM... they just can't sue Linux developers (as well as BSD ones) because there is a Linux (BSD) port of FVWM. Same thing applies to mplayer. They can attack individual projects, not the whole community. The thing is not as dangerous as SCO's claims (at the moment Linux has far more users than HURD and BSD)
yes. you see, i'm italian. so i'm really afraid, since here things are going really bad, and to me it's hard to realize that in other places things are going better. But you know, as far as I know in Germany you (if you are German) use GNU/Linux and OpenSource Software in Public Administration (for example). I mean you are a bit more advanced in this sense.... But many european countries are not, and that precludes any "european" action. There could be a "German" action, or a "French" action (for example), but not a common action. Am I wrong?
I live in Europe. I can tell you that even if all we had interest in supporting Open Source and Free Software and Linux, goverments are not likely do do anything.
UK's gov is close to Bush. Italy is ruled by a bunch of big companies owners and their servants. President Berlusconi used to say he admires Gates a lot. Everything which helps big corporates is considered good, against what helps common people. The more they pay a Windows Licence, the more they are happy.
Europe is afraid of America. They'll let Linux die, as far as they are concerned. We've got to do it with our own energies.
And think about the way new laws against consumers are approved... you know, now I pay a blank CD twice as I did before, and the money goes to SIAE (italian RIAA).
I can backup my software, my pictures. Still I have to pay SIAE.
No, they are trying to tie us down. They won't do anything.
If you need win apps on Linux (x86), you can use Win4Lin -- the name is something like that -- which kind of installs win (you need win licence), and runs it under linux environment. My friends tried it and they say it works great. A friend of mine used it on a 700MHz Notebook Celeron (you do not need a 1THz PVIII to run it!!!), and said some applications run even faster than on native win (still i did not test this, i report what he said).
If you don't have a win licence you can use codeweaver... that means you cann run office, photoshop and many other applications that have been tested, and they run on linux (just win dll's are emulated).
They are not free software, still the licences of these programs cost about 50$ each (which is fine). If you need some win app, you can use'em
if you want something free, you can use wine... don't say it does not work... sometimes you have to fight to have it working, but eventually it woorks (again buying the to programs i mentioned above is easier)
About MacOS X is great... and there are many many nice games... and of course applications... and i found out they usually run better on MacOS X than oon Win...
Still remember that dual booting on newest macs isn't a breeze... a friend of mine installed yellow dog 3 on a 12" powerbook. He had to follow a pretty unusual procedure -- search google --. And eventuallyy even YD did not support everything (bluetooth still had troubles, this refers to a couple of month ago, maybe it has been fixed)
Well.. i politely disagree... 30 years ago you could use ASSEMBLY (but that would have been very bad) or C... Pascal Sucks... Lisp is really good (I love it), it's string aware... there wer also Lisp Machines and all that stuff... but dynamically resize arrays (that is basically what needs to be done when dealing with strings) is time consuming. Today there is no problem, still old machines... Of course you can tell there where other programming Languages... But considering C idiotic... well Using C is a very good way to understand how the machine works... and if you are skilled enough you understand which assembly code lies under C code... Think C as a kind of structured assembly... and then... do you think you could develope an OS in java??
I don't consider myself an extremist. I am not saying the Hurd is usable for everyday's work (it is not). I'm very much into trying different operating system, cause I like to see how similar things are differently implemented ecc... And HURD is nice to study (again, to study, not to use). At the momente I do prefer Linux to HURD, because it is more mature. Still I told you, I'm not an extremist. That is to say, I like to take a look at the code... I "like" every OS that permits me to do it. There is no doubt that today Linux is far more complete than HURD (as is more complete than FreeBSD from a desktop point of view ecc..), and it probably will for many years yet to come. Still if one day for any reason HURD will be "better" (i still dont' understand what does better mean in this case), I have no ideological reason to keep using Linux, I love it because it works (and lets me work), because it's free, because i can study, because it lets me see how things work, it lets me change them if i do not like the way they work.
Debian is great man!!! And if you don't like some Debian users, there is no reason not to use it because of this... if you prefer Slackware (as I did before trying Debian)/Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE/Gentoo/whatever_you_want, well you have your reasons. But I don't think that some Debian's users' extremism is a very good reason, at least in my opinion... I'm still thinking about the Linux GNU/Linux stuff.. well, think about poor RMS... he coded Emacs, he almost wrote alone operating systems for good old Lisp Machines, he promoted Free Software, ecc and then he sees that everybody seems to forget what he has done... (this is, I think, a good approximation of his point of view). So he tells, "ok... I have been into it since 1984, don't forget me!!!"... GNU/Linux is not that bad... of course you won't be sued if you call it Linux... You might say that many people do not like rms very much... probably they have got their own reasons, probably he has his own, too... But in fact when you talk about MacOS X, you don't call it DarwinBSD, and you consider that most of the system is Aqua ecc ecc... Still I have to admit that before Linux came out... Open Source/Free Software ecc was not that popular (and even today it is not popular among other OS's users if you read some Mac magazine, you'll understand that they have not clear the difference between freeware and open sorce --look i'm not even using the term free software:-)... that is to say, many people use(d) it, still many of them (a|we)re not aware of the fact it is|was free software)... Linux in this sense is revolutionary... it spot the light on the whole Unix thing (and even on GNU)... before Linux there was MacOS and ehm Win (i mean in the houses, i'm not talking bout big computer stuff)... And Apple were expencive (my first LC costed 2500 $)... so there wasn't really choice... Linux broke this... ok it's true... probably FSF would be much different today without Linux... still Linux would be much different today without GNU... I'm not saying "RMS is right, you should call it GNU/Linux!"... I'm just saying that he is not wrong, that he has his reasons... It depends wether you consider them good or not.. but anyway, think about it!
Why? I can tell you even today (and todayit is super-alpha software) it works well...
and i think it will be a very good operating system, with a very interesting architecture...
I have no idea why you are so skeptical...:-)
wait... first of all not every posix compliant system will become unlegal. BSD was there BEFORE SysV, and consequently BSD based system can't be touched (that is to say FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin BSD -- MacOS X's kernel). Moreover you can't forget the HURD... They sued IBM (and not Linus Torwalds or Linux) because they think that IBM developers copied SCO's code into Linux. Even if IBM loses (and I'm not so sure about it), Linux code which is not copied (the most, copied parts are told to be SMP and that stuff, not Linux home user/small-middle companies stuff) Linux itself won't become outlaw. There are just some parts which will have to be rewritten (but let me tell you that unless your home 32bit computer has got more than 4GB of RAM you won't need them:-). Moreover Microsoft is becoming arrogant. Companies are getting aware of that...... and if vendors do not make drivers (they are not doing them even today), well Linux is made by hackers... you can just learn how to code a driver you need and write it... it's not that difficult (ahem... i get paid for everything optimistic I say...).. well anyway.. ALSA is GPL'd... there are very good tutorials.... XFree86 is open source... again, very good tutorials... Printers are easy to support... About scanners.. Sane is really powerfull... don't be afraid...
Nvidia??? with those closed source drives?? no thanks...
i am not going to load a closed source kernel modele, and i never will...
Maybe Matrox (but only if their drivers are GPL'd... i don't know anything about the licences they released them with...)
I think Creative is a good example...
Sure, but one who likes fascism is called a fascist.
Still, since you have read many books, you should know that what the fascist declared in their S Sepolcro Manifesto, they did never do it. Just because they ruled with the mony of the capitalists. And in the beginning (before they went to power) Fascism was anti-capitalist (also anti-communist, but that's another story).
Moreover I can tell you corporatism is a slightly different thing. And a part from this, I can tell you it does not work. How I can? I'm Italian. I know people who lived in those times, and everibody who was not a member of the Fascist Party had to buy food at the black market, since there was no food for them. The Fascist didn't gave them enough. Still the Fascists themselves could eat. How? They gave the population almoist anything so they could have almost everything.
I have to admit you are perfectly right. I started programming when I was 8 or 9, I had a Macintosh LC, and my father installed BASIC... ok, it was nice.. you could do many nice things... And we've got to face that most peolpe has a PC with Windows... and probably a 10 years old child does not even know GNU/Linux exists... Moreover it is very likely the "average boy"'s got no interest in programming. Probably he just wants to play with Quake 3... And think about this... You could code pong in C in let's say an afternoon... maybe more maybe less And that means that in those days you could write a game that resembled those you used to play... But... could you code Quake 3??? I don't think so... The point is that computers have spread among common people who are not intrested in computer science or anything ike that... they don't care how things work... the just want to write a document and to read mail... Once the ones who had a computer, were really interested IN the compuuer... So... even if you give them a programming language, they won't learn it... I can tell you.. I am a maths student at the university (i'm also italian)... People who were not interested in coding, BEFORE, still remain not interested after they've been taught... And so... what's the problem... if you are interested in coding, be sure that you find a way.... I switched from MacOS to Linux just because I had no programming language for MacOs 8 a part from AppleScript.... Coding is just a sort of art... is something you have within... from 95 to 99 i had no compiler... so I wrote flowcharts and programmed on paper... then i got GNU/linux/compiler and i was happy again...
and then don't talk about VB... that's crap!!! Well... i'm not saying it is bad... still let's say it is very easy to develope awful programs, written in an awful way... if you try to code like that in C, I've been told that Ritchie can jump out the monitor and kill you.....
Slashdot Mirror
No. This is bullshit.
The earth is in the center of the universe (and it's flat). Orbits are perfect circles, that means that the distance it's the same (by definition of circle).
If scientifical evidences are against this, it means that science is wrong.
Not really.
virus,i, n
that means the latin plural is "vira"
(since it is not unregular, there is no reason it should not)
by the way i agree the english version is viruses.
in italian the plural is virus (it does not change).
it can't be virii.
you can specify things with paths (up to 16 chars), but it does not work one would expect. In fact it matches the string with which the process is known to the system, so if you give full path, the program won't be recognised...
/usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin (this is the actual path on Debian), because the script /usr/bin/mozilla calls it that way... /usr/bin/links /usr/bin/links
/usr/lib/mozilla/mozilla-bin is also allowed...
for example if you ps ux, you get
But if you run
$ links
the name of the program is links
if you run
$
the name is
and for example if you allow mozilla-bin,
This is the code which gets the string from the options
#ifdef IPT_OWNER_COMM
case '5':
check_inverse(optarg, &invert, &optind, 0);
if(strlen(optarg) > sizeof(ownerinfo->comm))
exit_error(PARAMETER_PROBLEM, "OWNER CMD `%s' too long, max %d characters", optarg, sizeof(ownerinfo->comm));
strncpy(ownerinfo->comm, optarg, sizeof(ownerinfo->comm));
if (invert)
ownerinfo->invert |= IPT_OWNER_COMM;
ownerinfo->match |= IPT_OWNER_COMM;
*flags = 1;
break;
#endif
i think to allow bigger names is a matter of resizing an array.... but to have it recognizing programs, I'm afraid you have to hack, i think it's not a matter of manipulating strings...
of course we cannot just force people to call programs with full path...
About already existing solutions,
Don't forget you can also check PID's,
you can check where an executable lies...
if what you are trying to say the whole thing is not easy for the inexperienced user, then you are right.
The point is that developers and distros will solve the problem when the problem will present.
with Debian i did not even allow my system to run non-free software. There is no point I should check for spyware.
Of course there will be need for it, when there is be a lot of non-free software for GNU/Linux (which is something I hope won't happen, since it means that in some way free software developers failed) some programmers will team up and solve the problem.
By the way if you want to start a project to code "the nice front end", I have got some spare time.
If you don't and some others would like to, I think we could do it...
You can mail me.
iptables CAN create rules based on the application.
--cmd-owner name is the option to do so.
you can also make a rule based on uid.
Of course you can mix things up, for example you can allow an app to connect to some ports rather than to some others.
And of course an application cannot use port 80 (server socket) if it's not uid 0 or suid.
For example
iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m owner --cmd-owner mozilla-bin -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j DROP
would let only mozilla connect to port 80 of a remote server.
I can tell you: you have got no idea how powerfull is iptables!
It's charity. This way on NewYear's Day some kiddie can make the station explode, thus saving money. :-)
unfortunately as far as i know they are not open source
Are you joking, aren't you?
You can chose not to support a company anymore. You can't attack it.
So why not setting a price on each SCO's employee's head?
Or maybe we could DOS SCO's Headquarters with all the computer every cracker owns...
Or we could tell Bush SCO owns chemical weapons and start a civil war!!!
No no...
I confide in law. GNU/Linux is safe, until Open Source/Free Software plays fair...
Apple Licence was bad. Now it does not suck that much... Of course you should release new software under the GPL... Apple Licence was born to "protect" DarwinBSD and such things. Remember that for a company grown up with proprietary software (which is, even if super high quality, apple software remains proprietary) it is hard to accept a new way. They need time to convince themselves (and the owners of their shares) it's a Good Thing.
you are a bit pedantic, aren't you?
t m :-)
still i would not say windows is efficient...
Windows CeMeNT
hard as a rock and as stupidd as a brick
http://www.vidbay.com/pics/windowscement.h
I think that elections are supposed to be more important than quake. And if you cheat the election, you make something not legal... If someone cheas with Quake, i don't care. It is just annoying. If a President/PM/Parliament/Whateveryouwant is elected because of cheats, and not because peolpe voted him... well I think it's not the same...
as far as i know, Apple sued Microsoft (back when they did the first versions of Windows), since they "stole" many MacOS ideas.
Of course Apple did not win.
And that could be more the case of stealing ideas. A GUI is itself an idea. The way it looks, well, it is an accident.
And well if they sue Dominik Vogt and the other FVWM developers, I'm sorry for him because the whole thing is annoying, but since he does not sell anything, he probably won't have much trouble... the worst thing is that they prohibit FVWM... they just can't sue Linux developers (as well as BSD ones) because there is a Linux (BSD) port of FVWM.
Same thing applies to mplayer.
They can attack individual projects, not the whole community.
The thing is not as dangerous as SCO's claims (at the moment Linux has far more users than HURD and BSD)
yes. you see, i'm italian. so i'm really afraid, since here things are going really bad, and to me it's hard to realize that in other places things are going better.
But you know, as far as I know in Germany you (if you are German) use GNU/Linux and OpenSource Software in Public Administration (for example). I mean you are a bit more advanced in this sense....
But many european countries are not, and that precludes any "european" action. There could be a "German" action, or a "French" action (for example), but not a common action.
Am I wrong?
I live in Europe. I can tell you that even if all we had interest in supporting Open Source and Free Software and Linux, goverments are not likely do do anything. UK's gov is close to Bush. Italy is ruled by a bunch of big companies owners and their servants. President Berlusconi used to say he admires Gates a lot. Everything which helps big corporates is considered good, against what helps common people. The more they pay a Windows Licence, the more they are happy. Europe is afraid of America. They'll let Linux die, as far as they are concerned. We've got to do it with our own energies. And think about the way new laws against consumers are approved... you know, now I pay a blank CD twice as I did before, and the money goes to SIAE (italian RIAA). I can backup my software, my pictures. Still I have to pay SIAE. No, they are trying to tie us down. They won't do anything.
If you need win apps on Linux (x86), you can use Win4Lin -- the name is something like that -- which kind of installs win (you need win licence), and runs it under linux environment. My friends tried it and they say it works great. A friend of mine used it on a 700MHz Notebook Celeron (you do not need a 1THz PVIII to run it!!!), and said some applications run even faster than on native win (still i did not test this, i report what he said).
If you don't have a win licence you can use codeweaver... that means you cann run office, photoshop and many other applications that have been tested, and they run on linux (just win dll's are emulated).
They are not free software, still the licences of these programs cost about 50$ each (which is fine). If you need some win app, you can use'em
if you want something free, you can use wine... don't say it does not work... sometimes you have to fight to have it working, but eventually it woorks (again buying the to programs i mentioned above is easier)
About MacOS X is great... and there are many many nice games... and of course applications... and i found out they usually run better on MacOS X than oon Win...
Still remember that dual booting on newest macs isn't a breeze... a friend of mine installed yellow dog 3 on a 12" powerbook. He had to follow a pretty unusual procedure -- search google --. And eventuallyy even YD did not support everything (bluetooth still had troubles, this refers to a couple of month ago, maybe it has been fixed)
Well.. i politely disagree...
30 years ago you could use ASSEMBLY (but that would have been very bad) or C... Pascal Sucks...
Lisp is really good (I love it), it's string aware... there wer also Lisp Machines and all that stuff...
but dynamically resize arrays (that is basically what needs to be done when dealing with strings) is time consuming. Today there is no problem, still old machines...
Of course you can tell there where other programming Languages...
But considering C idiotic... well
Using C is a very good way to understand how the machine works... and if you are skilled enough you understand which assembly code lies under C code...
Think C as a kind of structured assembly...
and then... do you think you could develope an OS in java??
I don't consider myself an extremist. I am not saying the Hurd is usable for everyday's work (it is not). I'm very much into trying different operating system, cause I like to see how similar things are differently implemented ecc... And HURD is nice to study (again, to study, not to use).
:-)... that is to say, many people use(d) it, still many of them (a|we)re not aware of the fact it is|was free software)...
At the momente I do prefer Linux to HURD, because it is more mature. Still I told you, I'm not an extremist. That is to say, I like to take a look at the code... I "like" every OS that permits me to do it. There is no doubt that today Linux is far more complete than HURD (as is more complete than FreeBSD from a desktop point of view ecc..), and it probably will for many years yet to come. Still if one day for any reason HURD will be "better" (i still dont' understand what does better mean in this case), I have no ideological reason to keep using Linux, I love it because it works (and lets me work), because it's free, because i can study, because it lets me see how things work, it lets me change them if i do not like the way they work.
Debian is great man!!! And if you don't like some Debian users, there is no reason not to use it because of this... if you prefer Slackware (as I did before trying Debian)/Red Hat/Mandrake/SuSE/Gentoo/whatever_you_want, well you have your reasons. But I don't think that some Debian's users' extremism is a very good reason, at least in my opinion...
I'm still thinking about the Linux GNU/Linux stuff.. well, think about poor RMS... he coded Emacs, he almost wrote alone operating systems for good old Lisp Machines, he promoted Free Software, ecc and then he sees that everybody seems to forget what he has done... (this is, I think, a good approximation of his point of view).
So he tells, "ok... I have been into it since 1984, don't forget me!!!"... GNU/Linux is not that bad... of course you won't be sued if you call it Linux...
You might say that many people do not like rms very much... probably they have got their own reasons, probably he has his own, too...
But in fact when you talk about MacOS X, you don't call it DarwinBSD, and you consider that most of the system is Aqua ecc ecc...
Still I have to admit that before Linux came out... Open Source/Free Software ecc was not that popular (and even today it is not popular among other OS's users if you read some Mac magazine, you'll understand that they have not clear the difference between freeware and open sorce --look i'm not even using the term free software
Linux in this sense is revolutionary... it spot the light on the whole Unix thing (and even on GNU)... before Linux there was MacOS and ehm Win (i mean in the houses, i'm not talking bout big computer stuff)... And Apple were expencive (my first LC costed 2500 $)...
so there wasn't really choice... Linux broke this... ok it's true... probably FSF would be much different today without Linux... still Linux would be much different today without GNU...
I'm not saying "RMS is right, you should call it GNU/Linux!"... I'm just saying that he is not wrong, that he has his reasons... It depends wether you consider them good or not.. but anyway, think about it!
Why? I can tell you even today (and todayit is super-alpha software) it works well... and i think it will be a very good operating system, with a very interesting architecture... I have no idea why you are so skeptical... :-)
wait... :-). ...
first of all not every posix compliant system will become unlegal. BSD was there BEFORE SysV, and consequently BSD based system can't be touched (that is to say FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Darwin BSD -- MacOS X's kernel). Moreover you can't forget the HURD...
They sued IBM (and not Linus Torwalds or Linux) because they think that IBM developers copied SCO's code into Linux.
Even if IBM loses (and I'm not so sure about it), Linux code which is not copied (the most, copied parts are told to be SMP and that stuff, not Linux home user/small-middle companies stuff) Linux itself won't become outlaw.
There are just some parts which will have to be rewritten (but let me tell you that unless your home 32bit computer has got more than 4GB of RAM you won't need them
Moreover Microsoft is becoming arrogant. Companies are getting aware of that...
and if vendors do not make drivers (they are not doing them even today), well Linux is made by hackers... you can just learn how to code a driver you need and write it... it's not that difficult (ahem... i get paid for everything optimistic I say...).. well anyway.. ALSA is GPL'd... there are very good tutorials....
XFree86 is open source... again, very good tutorials...
Printers are easy to support...
About scanners.. Sane is really powerfull...
don't be afraid...
May the Source be with you.
Nvidia??? with those closed source drives?? no thanks... i am not going to load a closed source kernel modele, and i never will... Maybe Matrox (but only if their drivers are GPL'd... i don't know anything about the licences they released them with...) I think Creative is a good example...
Sure, but one who likes fascism is called a fascist. Still, since you have read many books, you should know that what the fascist declared in their S Sepolcro Manifesto, they did never do it. Just because they ruled with the mony of the capitalists. And in the beginning (before they went to power) Fascism was anti-capitalist (also anti-communist, but that's another story). Moreover I can tell you corporatism is a slightly different thing. And a part from this, I can tell you it does not work. How I can? I'm Italian. I know people who lived in those times, and everibody who was not a member of the Fascist Party had to buy food at the black market, since there was no food for them. The Fascist didn't gave them enough. Still the Fascists themselves could eat. How? They gave the population almoist anything so they could have almost everything.
Am I supposed to write that way to be cool???
I have to admit you are perfectly right. I started programming when I was 8 or 9, I had a Macintosh LC, and my father installed BASIC... ok, it was nice.. you could do many nice things...
And we've got to face that most peolpe has a PC with Windows... and probably a 10 years old child does not even know GNU/Linux exists...
Moreover it is very likely the "average boy"'s got no interest in programming. Probably he just wants to play with Quake 3...
And think about this... You could code pong in C in let's say an afternoon... maybe more maybe less
And that means that in those days you could write a game that resembled those you used to play...
But... could you code Quake 3??? I don't think so...
The point is that computers have spread among common people who are not intrested in computer science or anything ike that... they don't care how things work... the just want to write a document and to read mail...
Once the ones who had a computer, were really interested IN the compuuer...
So... even if you give them a programming language, they won't learn it...
I can tell you.. I am a maths student at the university (i'm also italian)...
People who were not interested in coding, BEFORE, still remain not interested after they've been taught...
And so... what's the problem...
if you are interested in coding, be sure that you find a way....
I switched from MacOS to Linux just because I had no programming language for MacOs 8 a part from AppleScript....
Coding is just a sort of art... is something you have within... from 95 to 99 i had no compiler... so I wrote flowcharts and programmed on paper...
then i got GNU/linux/compiler and i was happy again...
and then
don't talk about VB... that's crap!!!
Well... i'm not saying it is bad... still let's say it is very easy to develope awful programs, written in an awful way...
if you try to code like that in C, I've been told that Ritchie can jump out the monitor and kill you.....