Very interesting how ecryptfs uses the TPM module for encryption. While there is plenty to worry about regarding treacherous computing, it is nice to see that the TPM can be put to uses that actually bolster privacy. This still does not prevent a possible future dystopia, but it still goes to show that devices such as TPM are not necessarily "pure evil."
OK, what is your reference for the generalization that monopoly profits are maximized at a high price point? The best explanation could find was this. As far as I can tell, the statement is based on the assumption that the demand grows fairly slowly as the price drops. But what if the demand grows faster (e.g. quadratically) as the price drops? Then the revenue would be maximized at a low price point.
So it seems to me that the optimum monopoly price depends on the income distribution of the customers. Simply put, if there are five times as many people that will buy the product at $5 as would as $10, then you sell the product at $5, because you would make 2.5 times as much money.
Revenue for monopoly protected goods is maximized at a pricing point where a lot of consumers cannot afford the product.
Well, a clean install is not such a bad idea for a desktop/laptop. If you've planned ahead for it from the beginning, it requires no wiping of your data whatsoever.
Separate your logical partition into five partitions: 1) a "Primary OS" partition, 2) a "Secondary OS" partition, 3) a "/home" partition, 4) a swap partition, and if you like to compile stuff 5) a "/usr/local" partition.
Install your favorite OS to the first partition. Then when time comes to try out how a new OS or upgrade really works out (not via some live-CD garbage, but the real thing), install it in your "Secondary OS" partition without mounting (3) as/home. Try it out for a while. If all is well, then you can go ahead and mount (3) as/home, and boom, you've upgraded your OS to the new version/distro with a clean install and no wiping of data.
Then when time comes to try out yet another new distro/upgrade, install it on partition (1)... you get my meaning.
One more hint---before mounting/home as your home partition on the new OS, do this from your home directory:
mkdir dotfilesbackup
cp -r.* dotfilesbackup
Just in case your old settings cause some sort of panic in the newer version of $DESKTOPENVIRONMENT.
Oh, and if you've got a Dell, use that weird "Dell" partition as your/boot, storing kernel images and grub there. But don't forget to use parted to change the partition type to FAT before trying to install grub on it.
Wrong. It is not exactly the same. You just bought a lower-quality version of the audio tracks compared to what you would have had with a used CD. That is the great iTunes ruse.
ow at this point I have the music I want, on CD and AAC, with no DRM, exactly as though I had bought a used CD with no cover art in the the record store.
Oh. And it doesn't matter if you use your own keys to remove DRM. It's still illegal according to the DMCA unless you can show that not being able to do so "adversely affects" your playback, which is almost certainly not the case.
I used a program to legally strip off the DRM restrictions using my valid key.
No. You should read up on a nifty module (included in the mainline kernel) called FUSE. It lets a you mount various devices/files as private file systems.
The most incredibly useful application of this is sshfs, which basically lets you mount a remote machine as a filesystem without being root (as long as the FUSE kernel module is loaded). This has caused a huge productivity increase for me.
There is also an encrypted file system that runs under FUSE
So, you basically can have a big encrypted file lying around which you mount as a file system when you need it. The keys are encrypted in a separate control file, so there are no unencrypted keys lying around. You need both the pass phrase and the encrypted key file to mount the big file as an FS.
Encrypted filesystems require your boot partition have the encryption keys unencrypted so that they can be read, which sort of mitigates the whole point.
I upgraded to iTunes 7 (which runs on my PowerMac). Then I noticed that rhythmbox (the default GNOME music player) running on my laptop would no longer recognize my shared iTunes Library. It was doing so just fine before with iTunes 6. And it's not just rhythmbox: closed source software is having problems with this as well. And not just with DAAP sharing, either.
So I downgraded to iTunes 6 immediately. Apple penalizes you for doing so: iTunes 6 cannot read iTunes 7 shares (but iTunes 7 can read iTunes 6 shares). Talk about a forced upgrade. It seems that the change to DAAP was fairly trivial and avoidable, which brings up the question of whether they did it with the sole intention of breaking compatibility with the other software out there that reads the v6 DAAP protocol.
It's just a music player, but now I'm getting a little taste of what Richard Stallman means when he tells you to refrain from using closed source software. Even when you think a closed source vendor has good intentions, there's always a chance that they'll turn on you and slap you with an upgrade that breaks compatibility with your other software.
Imagine this. A clueless properietary software company builds some software based on all the best libraries it can find. It takes some GPLed libraries, licenses some closed source libraries, and links it all together into one closed source executable. Normally, it has to sign non-discolsure agreements as parts of the deal to license the closed source libraries.
In this situation, there is absolutely no way for the clueless company to legally sell the executable. Under the GPL, it must supply the source code for everything needed to build the executable. The only options are: 1) violate the GPL and try to get away with it; 2) release the complete source and get sued by the other closed source licensors for violation of the NDA; 3) no longer sell the executable. I wonder which options most companies would go for?
I bet you this happens all the time. Perhaps even in some of our favorite closed source Linux kernel modules. NDAs are the primary reason given by NVidia and ATI for not open sourcing their graphics card drivers. Perhaps there are even several layers of this happening, with companies trying to sell licenses to closed-source modules that include GPLed software.
Does emerge break things frequently? There seem to be too many posts for comfort on this and other Gentoo-related forums with users complaining about emerge breaking their system.
I'm an Ubuntu user here, and I've never had apt-get update break anything (without having been responsible for the breakage myself through fiddling with the configs). I think Ubuntu users would be furious if a security update wound up breaking their system.
As people who rely on a Linux computer, we really do put our fates in the hands of apt-get / yum / emerge, and it's a real feeling of betrayal when these tasks let us down. I remember in the old days of Red Hat 9 how horrible up2date was in this regard.
Perhaps I'm wrong, and it's only a few loud people doing this... but as a potential Gentoo user reading slashdot, I wouldn't get the most comfortable feeling about relying on emerge. It's not that I don't have the knowledge or desire to fix things if they're broken by the package manager. It's that I don't have the time. My work is too demanding for me to spend a lot of time cleaning up after broken packages.
And while it is true that emerge updates can break, they will at least teach the user in time how to deal with them and learn quite a bit.
Yes, it is true that there are some quality assurance failings with packages in Portage, but let's put that aside for a moment.
Linux has an huge base of open source device drivers taylored to run under it. This is what sets it aside from other kernels. No matter how spiffy the *BSD/minix/Solaris/Hurd or other open source kernels are, they will never catch up with linux as far as popularity, because of this simple issue. You can't use an OS if it doesn't support your devices.
If you ever watch the kernel compiling, most of the time is spent compiling device driver. And the legacy support is immense. Heck, you can shave a few minutes off the compile time just by disabling ISDN.
Even as an admin, you are always prompted to enter your password whenever a process is trying to change system files. For those familiar with Debian-based linux, that means that an "admin user" is a regular user who is a sudoer, whereas a non-admin is a regular user who is not a sudoer.
The big deal here is that the additional password prompt---which signals the fact that you are changing system files---allegedly never happened under the conditions described here.
Have you ever used P2P? Everytime you download a file you are also uploading it at the same time. That's how the whole thing works!! Without that necessary feature, we wouldn't even be having this discussion because not enough people would finish downloading files.
The only reason what you say will work is that the lawsuits are being targeted at people who are offering hundreds or thousands of copyrighted files for download---the worst offenders. If you delete a file from your shared folder after downloading it, you are (probably) OK only because the copyright holders have decided on this worst-cases-first strategy.
One day they could easily switch strategies and sue people at random, to scare off even people who remove files from their shared folders after downloading.
The only activity that will get you
in trouble with the RIAA is to make copyrighted items available for download
over the internet. If you downloaded gigabytes of music and did not make
any of your file system visible over the internet they wouldn't catch you
now would they?
It's great for scientific computing. My software (which analyzes the structure of galaxy clusters) is fully parallelized. Its speed scales with the number of CPUs, i.e., if you double the CPUs you double the speed. A quad mac pro would be an enormous productivity boost for me.
Why don't I just farm the software out to a Beowulf cluster? Well, I do, but we have a queue for ours. When I'm testing the software I need to run, stop, and rerun the software, something which would be inefficient on a remote cluster with a queue.
Aka the provision is the GPL about how you MUST provide the greedy original author with your cool enhancements is a restriction of the GPL, not a freedom it provides.
Wrong. The GPL says that if you decide to give out your cool enhancements in binary form, you must do so in source form as well. That's all.
So if you make cool enhancements and keep them to yourself, that is fine. And you do not have to send the author anything.
The GPL is all about this: when redistributing the software, you cannot deny others the freedoms and information that the author has given you.
At this point in time, governments support the copyright holder's desire to restrict the free flow of 0s and 1s. Specifically, they support the idea that an entity can own the right to certain combinations of 0s and 1s.
This will change as soon as the current generation of downloaders come into power. Eventually, governments will view the right to freely exchange 0s and 1s as being more important than the copyright holder's right to earn a living. At that point, copyright holders will have to find a different way to make money. And I am confident that they will.
Are there any other improvements in 64 bit CPUs other than the larger memory ceiling? Or is that it? Will power users get any other benefits from the CPU upgrade?
It's fine to have the hardware validate the software, I don't think anyone can rationally argue against that. What's not fine is to have the hardware refuse to run the software at all. If the user is conscious that the software is modified and therefor unsupported, then the user should have the ability to run any software he chooses.
So, have a cryptographic check alongside a message or error light or something about running in unsupported mode, but don't completely cripple the hardware just because you want to avoid support headaches.
What you say makes sense; however, I don't think the current language of the GPLv3 draft is clear on this point. Here is the relevant passage, emphasis mine:
The Corresponding Source also includes any encryption or
authorization keys necessary to install and/or execute modified
versions from source code in the recommended or principal context of
use, such that they can implement all the same functionality in the
same range of circumstances. (For instance, if the work is a DVD
player and can play certain DVDs, it must be possible for modified
versions to play those DVDs. If the work communicates with an online
service, it must be possible for modified versions to communicate with
the same online service in the same way such that the service cannot
distinguish.)
It seems that the first phrase in bold allows what you describe: "implement all the same functionality" does not seem to prohibit a pop-up warning that the code is unsigned. However, the second phrase in bold says that modified versions must be indistinguishible from the original source from the point of view of an outside device. This seems to prohibit that same pop-up warning.
So, it seems that Moglen & Stallman still have some clarifying work to do.
No pun intended, but I second that. That was actually the worst part of the "new release" changes for me---having to end the series without the Ewok music! ROTJ was the first movie I got to see in a theater, and it was my first experience with star wars... so that wacky "yum yum" music actually has a bit of nostalgia attached to it for me:)
On the other hand - without other people, it's not a RPG. It's just clicking on a keyboard.
Aaah, the age-old discussion about what is an RPG. To some people, a computer RPG is a game you play with other people where you all pretend to be in a made-up world. To other people, a CRPG is a game where, like a book, there is a clear story and a clear protagonist---the player.
The first group of people are transfers from tabletop RPGs. They don't see the point of pretending to be a paladin/ninja/timelord without having the occasional irreverent out-of-character fun or computer equivalent of drinking beer with buddies.
The second group of people are folks who want a story above all else, and usually want to be the focus of that story. They don't like OOC talk, and for them the ideal game isn't about being with other people---it's more like reading a good book.
Some people just want to get their work done. Sometimes the ethical hairsplitting and free vs. not-free debate gets in the way of that. Some people want software, not a cause.
Yeah, I used to think that way. When I started writing software to do some astrophysical computing (lots of numerical integrals), I just used the numerical analysis package I had always used in grad school. My thoughts were precisely, "Hey, it works, why should I change? It just takes time and effort."
Now the software's done. And it's quite good. So good that I want to distribute it, so other scientists can use it too. But ooops! The numerical analysis package I used doesn't allow me to redistribute its source code. On their website, they even encourage my colleagues to tattle-tale on each other if they ever find someone redistributing their source code. So now I find myself having to go back and change the software so that it runs on GSL instead.
So, in this case, not using free software wound up costing me some time. Last week I changed the first module over to GSL. And it was like a breath of fresh air. The GSL integrator is much better than the proprietary one, too.
I had always followed the GNU movement, but it never hit me practically until this point. The whole time I was writing the software, the restrictive license of the original numerical analysis package was hanging over the project like a cloud. Now I really can understand what free-as-in-freedom means.
So, if "work" for you ever means programming for a non-profit/scientific community, be very wary of following the lazy, non-free route. It may even save you some time, as it would have in my case.
People keep bringing this up, but I never understand it. In what distro does one actually experience dependency hell these days? Using RPM on FC without using it through yum would be just as wise as using dpkg on Ubuntu without using it through apt. I don't know about Mandriva or Suse, but I'd be guessing that that's what urpmi and yast do. Portage certainly handles it well on Gentoo.
Well, I don't know very much about yum. The first time I tried redhat, it was version 8. There was no yum. Upon upgrading to version 9, a lot of my files became fubar. I couldn't upgrade some apps because (through some update error somewhere) they erroneously dependended on an older version of themselves(!). That's when I swore off redhat for good, and bought a Mac. Oddly, enough, fink for os X, which uses apt, schooled me in the goodness off real package management. So when I bought a PC laptop, I went for a debian-based distro, which happened to be Ubuntu. Just goes to show you how much power first impressions have, that I didn't even consider trying an rpm based distro.
From what I've read about yum, it's about the same as apt. But does it have a supported GUI, features like version locking, and smart upgrades (conflict resolution)?
OK, that is cool, but I have to wonder: How large percentage of newbs go to the forums anyway? I can't say I know, but I just can't imagine it to be too large a ratio.
Actually, you might be surprised. There are so many people on the forums who come in saying, "OK, I know absolutely nothing about Linux, but I'm ready to ditch this windows thing. Help me." Often they are the sort of people you and I can't stand to deal with---refusing to understand instructions, for example. But the forums denizens seem to be very patient with them. More often than not, even the most difficult newbs seem to get somewhere near where they want to go.
On the other hand, Fedora Core has the excellent NetworkManager program, which makes it at all possible for newbs to move between different wireless networks. Ubuntu will have that in 6.04, but that isn't released yet.
Yes, their current network manager is pretty user-unfriendly, isn't it? It would be nice if they upgraded to a more intuitive one. However, as of Dapper Flight 5 I didn't see any changes in the network manager, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?
If anything, I can definitely say that Ubuntu is positioning itself for the "ease of use" kind of stuff. They have definitely made headway into creating package manager front ends that are easy to use, and I absolutely adore their use of sudo instead of su.
Yes, I'm addicted to sudo now (thanks to OS X, actually). And the synaptic package manager is a wonder to use.
They also have graphical admin tools that I'd imagine are quite nice, but I can't say that I can truly imagine how a newb would think about them. FC seems much more targeted at the corporate desktop or Linux enthusiast to me (in other words, something which a newb can use, but not install or administrate). On the other hand, I can't say that I think that Ubuntu 5.10 has come far enough to match FC's polish. Hopefully, Ubuntu 6.04 will be better.
Well, yes, I can't imagine redhat allowing a vulnerability like the cleartext admin passwords in the log files to pass through. That was pretty embarassing for Ubuntu, I can't say that people will forget about that any time soon.
My feeling about Ubuntu is that they are taking the opposite path of redhat. They are not really targeting themselves at businesses. But they are not targeting just newbs, either. Look at EdUbuntu, the educational version of the distro. I think Ubuntu sees itself becoming a free mac alternative. That is, they want to be the non-mac alternative to Windows inside people's homes, their schools, and their libraries. With names like Breezy Badger and Dapper Drake, they're not really making a huge effort to appeal to CEOs, are they? But names like this do appeal very much so to younger people who use their home PCs as their chief news/entertainment source.
1) Like Debian, has apt, there is so no dependency hell when you install new packages or upgrade
2) Unlike Debian, has regular releases (every 6mo or so), so you can regularly get quality-tested new software. Plus the Ubuntu unstable is usually usable three months into development.
3) Newb-friendly community; people will go out of their way to help newbs, not flame them. Yes, even if they did not RTFM. They believe that you deserve help even if you don't RTFM. Can you imagine that?
4) Plus, the forums provide an environment that newbs are comfortable in. Check out the other distro's forums and you'll see the difference. Admittedly this is tied to their considerable financial resources.
4) Most people (including myself) report superior hardware detection to Fedora/Suse. On my laptop it detected everything perfectly. I am not sure how it compares to Debian.
5) They will mail you a free CD. Anywhere you are in the world. And the whole distro fits on a single CD. It truly aims to be a universal distribution, for everyone. The whole community treats itself/Linux as gospel to be spread, especially to Win users, which I think is a good thing but you may not.
OK, well folks in the bug report are now saying they have the cleartext password in their logs even with an expert install. So it's not at all clear why some users have the cleartext and other don't. Anybody know why?
Those monks copying texts year after year (sometimes without understanding them at all) are hardly a sign that all was well with western civilization during the dark ages. How about this:
The Homeric texts were lost to the West during these times, prompting Dante to speak of Homer only as somebody that Virgil had revered... the Divine Comedy has several references to how Dante wished he could have read Homer!
How about Aristotle's texts? So many of the originals to the world permanently; with the Greek originals lost during much of the dark ages, people could only read some of his works as translations from the Arabic into Latin...
The Greeks and Romans had figured out how to do perspective in their paintings and murals... that art was completely lost, and had to be "rediscovered" during the early renaissance...
I could go on. Much, much of the West's sum total of knowledge was lost during the Dark Ages. That is why they are called dark!
Slashdot Mirror
Very interesting how ecryptfs uses the TPM module for encryption. While there is plenty to worry about regarding treacherous computing, it is nice to see that the TPM can be put to uses that actually bolster privacy. This still does not prevent a possible future dystopia, but it still goes to show that devices such as TPM are not necessarily "pure evil."
So it seems to me that the optimum monopoly price depends on the income distribution of the customers. Simply put, if there are five times as many people that will buy the product at $5 as would as $10, then you sell the product at $5, because you would make 2.5 times as much money.
Well, a clean install is not such a bad idea for a desktop/laptop. If you've planned ahead for it from the beginning, it requires no wiping of your data whatsoever.
/home. Try it out for a while. If all is well, then you can go ahead and mount (3) as /home, and boom, you've upgraded your OS to the new version/distro with a clean install and no wiping of data.
/home as your home partition on the new OS, do this from your home directory: .* dotfilesbackup
/boot, storing kernel images and grub there. But don't forget to use parted to change the partition type to FAT before trying to install grub on it.
Separate your logical partition into five partitions: 1) a "Primary OS" partition, 2) a "Secondary OS" partition, 3) a "/home" partition, 4) a swap partition, and if you like to compile stuff 5) a "/usr/local" partition.
Install your favorite OS to the first partition. Then when time comes to try out how a new OS or upgrade really works out (not via some live-CD garbage, but the real thing), install it in your "Secondary OS" partition without mounting (3) as
Then when time comes to try out yet another new distro/upgrade, install it on partition (1)... you get my meaning.
One more hint---before mounting
mkdir dotfilesbackup
cp -r
Just in case your old settings cause some sort of panic in the newer version of $DESKTOPENVIRONMENT.
Oh, and if you've got a Dell, use that weird "Dell" partition as your
New to Linux? Don't try any of the above.
Oh. And it doesn't matter if you use your own keys to remove DRM. It's still illegal according to the DMCA unless you can show that not being able to do so "adversely affects" your playback, which is almost certainly not the case.
The most incredibly useful application of this is sshfs, which basically lets you mount a remote machine as a filesystem without being root (as long as the FUSE kernel module is loaded). This has caused a huge productivity increase for me.
There is also an encrypted file system that runs under FUSE
http://arg0.net/users/vgough/encfs
So, you basically can have a big encrypted file lying around which you mount as a file system when you need it. The keys are encrypted in a separate control file, so there are no unencrypted keys lying around. You need both the pass phrase and the encrypted key file to mount the big file as an FS.
I upgraded to iTunes 7 (which runs on my PowerMac). Then I noticed that rhythmbox (the default GNOME music player) running on my laptop would no longer recognize my shared iTunes Library. It was doing so just fine before with iTunes 6. And it's not just rhythmbox: closed source software is having problems with this as well. And not just with DAAP sharing, either.
So I downgraded to iTunes 6 immediately. Apple penalizes you for doing so: iTunes 6 cannot read iTunes 7 shares (but iTunes 7 can read iTunes 6 shares). Talk about a forced upgrade. It seems that the change to DAAP was fairly trivial and avoidable, which brings up the question of whether they did it with the sole intention of breaking compatibility with the other software out there that reads the v6 DAAP protocol.
It's just a music player, but now I'm getting a little taste of what Richard Stallman means when he tells you to refrain from using closed source software. Even when you think a closed source vendor has good intentions, there's always a chance that they'll turn on you and slap you with an upgrade that breaks compatibility with your other software.
Imagine this. A clueless properietary software company builds some software based on all the best libraries it can find. It takes some GPLed libraries, licenses some closed source libraries, and links it all together into one closed source executable. Normally, it has to sign non-discolsure agreements as parts of the deal to license the closed source libraries.
In this situation, there is absolutely no way for the clueless company to legally sell the executable. Under the GPL, it must supply the source code for everything needed to build the executable. The only options are: 1) violate the GPL and try to get away with it; 2) release the complete source and get sued by the other closed source licensors for violation of the NDA; 3) no longer sell the executable. I wonder which options most companies would go for?
I bet you this happens all the time. Perhaps even in some of our favorite closed source Linux kernel modules. NDAs are the primary reason given by NVidia and ATI for not open sourcing their graphics card drivers. Perhaps there are even several layers of this happening, with companies trying to sell licenses to closed-source modules that include GPLed software.
I'm an Ubuntu user here, and I've never had apt-get update break anything (without having been responsible for the breakage myself through fiddling with the configs). I think Ubuntu users would be furious if a security update wound up breaking their system.
As people who rely on a Linux computer, we really do put our fates in the hands of apt-get / yum / emerge, and it's a real feeling of betrayal when these tasks let us down. I remember in the old days of Red Hat 9 how horrible up2date was in this regard.
Perhaps I'm wrong, and it's only a few loud people doing this... but as a potential Gentoo user reading slashdot, I wouldn't get the most comfortable feeling about relying on emerge. It's not that I don't have the knowledge or desire to fix things if they're broken by the package manager. It's that I don't have the time. My work is too demanding for me to spend a lot of time cleaning up after broken packages.
Linux has an huge base of open source device drivers taylored to run under it. This is what sets it aside from other kernels. No matter how spiffy the *BSD/minix/Solaris/Hurd or other open source kernels are, they will never catch up with linux as far as popularity, because of this simple issue. You can't use an OS if it doesn't support your devices.
If you ever watch the kernel compiling, most of the time is spent compiling device driver. And the legacy support is immense. Heck, you can shave a few minutes off the compile time just by disabling ISDN.
Even as an admin, you are always prompted to enter your password whenever a process is trying to change system files. For those familiar with Debian-based linux, that means that an "admin user" is a regular user who is a sudoer, whereas a non-admin is a regular user who is not a sudoer.
The big deal here is that the additional password prompt---which signals the fact that you are changing system files---allegedly never happened under the conditions described here.
The only reason what you say will work is that the lawsuits are being targeted at people who are offering hundreds or thousands of copyrighted files for download---the worst offenders. If you delete a file from your shared folder after downloading it, you are (probably) OK only because the copyright holders have decided on this worst-cases-first strategy.
One day they could easily switch strategies and sue people at random, to scare off even people who remove files from their shared folders after downloading.
It's great for scientific computing. My software (which analyzes the structure of galaxy clusters) is fully parallelized. Its speed scales with the number of CPUs, i.e., if you double the CPUs you double the speed. A quad mac pro would be an enormous productivity boost for me.
Why don't I just farm the software out to a Beowulf cluster? Well, I do, but we have a queue for ours. When I'm testing the software I need to run, stop, and rerun the software, something which would be inefficient on a remote cluster with a queue.
So if you make cool enhancements and keep them to yourself, that is fine. And you do not have to send the author anything.
The GPL is all about this: when redistributing the software, you cannot deny others the freedoms and information that the author has given you.
At this point in time, governments support the copyright holder's desire to restrict the free flow of 0s and 1s. Specifically, they support the idea that an entity can own the right to certain combinations of 0s and 1s. This will change as soon as the current generation of downloaders come into power. Eventually, governments will view the right to freely exchange 0s and 1s as being more important than the copyright holder's right to earn a living. At that point, copyright holders will have to find a different way to make money. And I am confident that they will.
Are there any other improvements in 64 bit CPUs other than the larger memory ceiling? Or is that it? Will power users get any other benefits from the CPU upgrade?
It seems that the first phrase in bold allows what you describe: "implement all the same functionality" does not seem to prohibit a pop-up warning that the code is unsigned. However, the second phrase in bold says that modified versions must be indistinguishible from the original source from the point of view of an outside device. This seems to prohibit that same pop-up warning. So, it seems that Moglen & Stallman still have some clarifying work to do.
No pun intended, but I second that. That was actually the worst part of the "new release" changes for me---having to end the series without the Ewok music! ROTJ was the first movie I got to see in a theater, and it was my first experience with star wars... so that wacky "yum yum" music actually has a bit of nostalgia attached to it for me :)
Only US viewers are allowed to watch... tsk tsk tsk.
On the other hand - without other people, it's not a RPG. It's just clicking on a keyboard.
Aaah, the age-old discussion about what is an RPG. To some people, a computer RPG is a game you play with other people where you all pretend to be in a made-up world. To other people, a CRPG is a game where, like a book, there is a clear story and a clear protagonist---the player.
The first group of people are transfers from tabletop RPGs. They don't see the point of pretending to be a paladin/ninja/timelord without having the occasional irreverent out-of-character fun or computer equivalent of drinking beer with buddies.
The second group of people are folks who want a story above all else, and usually want to be the focus of that story. They don't like OOC talk, and for them the ideal game isn't about being with other people---it's more like reading a good book.
Some people just want to get their work done. Sometimes the ethical hairsplitting and free vs. not-free debate gets in the way of that. Some people want software, not a cause.
Yeah, I used to think that way. When I started writing software to do some astrophysical computing (lots of numerical integrals), I just used the numerical analysis package I had always used in grad school. My thoughts were precisely, "Hey, it works, why should I change? It just takes time and effort."
Now the software's done. And it's quite good. So good that I want to distribute it, so other scientists can use it too. But ooops! The numerical analysis package I used doesn't allow me to redistribute its source code. On their website, they even encourage my colleagues to tattle-tale on each other if they ever find someone redistributing their source code. So now I find myself having to go back and change the software so that it runs on GSL instead.
So, in this case, not using free software wound up costing me some time. Last week I changed the first module over to GSL. And it was like a breath of fresh air. The GSL integrator is much better than the proprietary one, too.
I had always followed the GNU movement, but it never hit me practically until this point. The whole time I was writing the software, the restrictive license of the original numerical analysis package was hanging over the project like a cloud. Now I really can understand what free-as-in-freedom means.
So, if "work" for you ever means programming for a non-profit/scientific community, be very wary of following the lazy, non-free route. It may even save you some time, as it would have in my case.
People keep bringing this up, but I never understand it. In what distro does one actually experience dependency hell these days? Using RPM on FC without using it through yum would be just as wise as using dpkg on Ubuntu without using it through apt. I don't know about Mandriva or Suse, but I'd be guessing that that's what urpmi and yast do. Portage certainly handles it well on Gentoo.
Well, I don't know very much about yum. The first time I tried redhat, it was version 8. There was no yum. Upon upgrading to version 9, a lot of my files became fubar. I couldn't upgrade some apps because (through some update error somewhere) they erroneously dependended on an older version of themselves(!). That's when I swore off redhat for good, and bought a Mac. Oddly, enough, fink for os X, which uses apt, schooled me in the goodness off real package management. So when I bought a PC laptop, I went for a debian-based distro, which happened to be Ubuntu. Just goes to show you how much power first impressions have, that I didn't even consider trying an rpm based distro.
From what I've read about yum, it's about the same as apt. But does it have a supported GUI, features like version locking, and smart upgrades (conflict resolution)?
OK, that is cool, but I have to wonder: How large percentage of newbs go to the forums anyway? I can't say I know, but I just can't imagine it to be too large a ratio.
Actually, you might be surprised. There are so many people on the forums who come in saying, "OK, I know absolutely nothing about Linux, but I'm ready to ditch this windows thing. Help me." Often they are the sort of people you and I can't stand to deal with---refusing to understand instructions, for example. But the forums denizens seem to be very patient with them. More often than not, even the most difficult newbs seem to get somewhere near where they want to go. On the other hand, Fedora Core has the excellent NetworkManager program, which makes it at all possible for newbs to move between different wireless networks. Ubuntu will have that in 6.04, but that isn't released yet. Yes, their current network manager is pretty user-unfriendly, isn't it? It would be nice if they upgraded to a more intuitive one. However, as of Dapper Flight 5 I didn't see any changes in the network manager, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place?
If anything, I can definitely say that Ubuntu is positioning itself for the "ease of use" kind of stuff. They have definitely made headway into creating package manager front ends that are easy to use, and I absolutely adore their use of sudo instead of su.
Yes, I'm addicted to sudo now (thanks to OS X, actually). And the synaptic package manager is a wonder to use.
They also have graphical admin tools that I'd imagine are quite nice, but I can't say that I can truly imagine how a newb would think about them. FC seems much more targeted at the corporate desktop or Linux enthusiast to me (in other words, something which a newb can use, but not install or administrate). On the other hand, I can't say that I think that Ubuntu 5.10 has come far enough to match FC's polish. Hopefully, Ubuntu 6.04 will be better.
Well, yes, I can't imagine redhat allowing a vulnerability like the cleartext admin passwords in the log files to pass through. That was pretty embarassing for Ubuntu, I can't say that people will forget about that any time soon.
My feeling about Ubuntu is that they are taking the opposite path of redhat. They are not really targeting themselves at businesses. But they are not targeting just newbs, either. Look at EdUbuntu, the educational version of the distro. I think Ubuntu sees itself becoming a free mac alternative. That is, they want to be the non-mac alternative to Windows inside people's homes, their schools, and their libraries. With names like Breezy Badger and Dapper Drake, they're not really making a huge effort to appeal to CEOs, are they? But names like this do appeal very much so to younger people who use their home PCs as their chief news/entertainment source.
1) Like Debian, has apt, there is so no dependency hell when you install new packages or upgrade
2) Unlike Debian, has regular releases (every 6mo or so), so you can regularly get quality-tested new software. Plus the Ubuntu unstable is usually usable three months into development.
3) Newb-friendly community; people will go out of their way to help newbs, not flame them. Yes, even if they did not RTFM. They believe that you deserve help even if you don't RTFM. Can you imagine that?
4) Plus, the forums provide an environment that newbs are comfortable in. Check out the other distro's forums and you'll see the difference. Admittedly this is tied to their considerable financial resources.
4) Most people (including myself) report superior hardware detection to Fedora/Suse. On my laptop it detected everything perfectly. I am not sure how it compares to Debian.
5) They will mail you a free CD. Anywhere you are in the world. And the whole distro fits on a single CD. It truly aims to be a universal distribution, for everyone. The whole community treats itself/Linux as gospel to be spread, especially to Win users, which I think is a good thing but you may not.
OK, well folks in the bug report are now saying they have the cleartext password in their logs even with an expert install. So it's not at all clear why some users have the cleartext and other don't. Anybody know why?
I didn't find the password in my installer logs. It seems that if you install in expert mode you're OK. See the bug report here:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/34606
I could go on. Much, much of the West's sum total of knowledge was lost during the Dark Ages. That is why they are called dark!