There is a device known as the Doctor 64, which houses a standard PC IDE CDROM drive inside a case which sites ontop of the Nintendo 64.
It interfaces with the unit via the cartridge port. A CDR version is also availiable. ROM images [maximimum 100 mb, typically much smaller (Mario64 is actually 8Mb)] are stored on a standard ISO9660 filesystem, using the extension.n64, in the root dir of the CD-ROM.
Fifteen games typically fit ona single disk, and these compilations are sold throughout the markets of Hong Kong.
The CDR version simply grabs the contents of the current cartidge and burns them to a clean disk. You need a PC to eb able to collect the images and make the compilation.
No, I've never stolen an N64 title with it. I'm just interestyed to see how the crack was done. When I want games, I buy Linux ones and support those that support the penguin
Thousands of kids? Among others. The majority of typical open-source projects have VERY formal review processes, and most reject the overwhelming majority of patches submitted. Hence the existence of tools such as CVS, developed escpecially for the purposes of managing such development efforts.
VNC was originally developed by US Telco AT&T. Sendmail originally started off as a couple of hackers, but is not administered by Sendmail corporation, submitting contributions from 14 year old genuises to major corporations, and rejecting all but the few. Projects like Apache and WINE have contributions from major corporations.
Remember, Cisco started out as some undergraduates too, as did most IT players [yes, even Bill was stealing spare cycles at Harvard for his efforts].
If anything, having the code publicly auditable but controlled by the code-nazis who run most OSS projects is a major advantage. Would anyone dream of using unpublished encryption algorithms?
The proof is in the code, in your uptime, and in the markey share of these products [Apache, BIND, etc].
What I refer to as Linux is more than the kernel. When Microsoft talks about Winodws being innovative, they're talking about more than the kernel - they're talking about IIS, Terminal Services, the GUI, Management interface, SMS, and a whole heap more.
It might not be technically correct to refer to typical Linux apps as `Linux', but it's necessary for an apples-to-apples comparision. You can't compare one kernel to one kernel plus a thousand apps
The Linux innovation is bringing a rock-solid OS onto commodity hardare at an affordable price.
And doing so in a manner that total NT heads like me [whose only been using Linux around one and a half years] can get to grips with, and administer in a way we're accustomed to [ie, with a cute graphical interface], without beaking Unix compatibility.
Linux is the portable OS of all time, and can scale from a PalmPilot to an AS400. No other operating system can do that.
Open source technologies [which, if yo were MS, you'd call aprt of the OS] are also innovative. AT&Ts VNC provides remote administration capabilities multi platform with full interaction and at better performance than most commercial products.
Apache came out with many features MS replicated in IIS, and some MS have yet to replicate.
Linux has had many MS inovations, such as Dynamic DNS, Kerberos, Filesystem Encryption, etc. for many years before Microsoft has.
Linux has been 32 bit on Intel since it's birth. It was also the first IA64 bit OS.
Linux is the first OS with publicly available source distributed udner a license where, so that one can, for example, remove every feature of my database server that's unnecessary and tune my machien so its completely dedicated to pumping out transactions as fast as it possibly can.
Linux is the first OS to have over 10,000 developers.
While the rest is a good point, this phrase is, IMHO, incorrect. A Unix with full Access Control Lists [somethign already implemented, but easy to work around, in NT] wouldn't make Linux or Unixes suddenly not become Unix compatible. The ACL concept is a noble one and more flexible than ugo/rwx - I believe an implementation on Linux was discusses in Slashdot Jeremy Allison interview recently.
I have no idea about VA or Caldera, but Redhat was profitable for every year from its inception to Venture Capital Investment Round A.
Furthermore, it has %54 of the market share and unlike Caldera, refuses to write and non-open source code, as well as contributing significants amounts of its funds towards open source development [eg, a quarter of its annual expenses went of GTK development in 1998].
You might not necessarily be concerned about open source drivers. In my mopinion, I think they would be much more maintainable, and perform better than closed source ones. Furthermore, I can't understand this mysterious secret about NViDia hardware specs when Creative, 3DFX, and Matrox already have open source driovers and don't seem overly concerned about them exposing design secrets....
But anyway, the other thing to consider is NViDia has been promising that as soon as XFree86 4.0 was out, you'd have Linux drivers based on DRI that very instant.
They're much behind their own deadline and Linxu users have already had to wait a very long time to use their cards because of NViDia own self interest. 3DFX users have had an open source driver for over a year now and now X4s out, hey, the drivers already written thanks to the open source community. Thats also a big consideration - when you have an infinite number of people working on your Linux code, as opposed to ten guys in a lab somewhere, the company can commit less resources in terms of maintenance once they've released the specs.
I have an MCSE. With any luck within the next six months I'll have an RHCE too - a good friend of mine is an RHCX [Redhat certified eXaminer] [the `X' multiplies the cool factor by 500% IMHO].
My opinion of the MCSE is varied. It did provide me me with the equivalent of quite afew hours of experience - I went instructor based, probably a waste of cash for the earlier courses, but I needed to play on some large hardware that I wouldn't normally have access to.
The course was about four of five weeks solid, and ran intermittently over six months, and went from `what is a network' to `DNS zone files' `WINS Node types' `Subnetting' etc. within a fairly short time. If you needed to know the former, you'll never know the later. If you already knew the former, you've wasted money having it taught to you.
My course included a one day Networking Essentials training session. A waste of cash - when going through bus types [early 1999], the instructor covered ISA, MCA, PCI, and the relative bandwidths of each....asked re: AGP `What's AGP?'
Anyone who says the MCSE exams are entirely multiple choice and therefore easy has not sat any of the exams, which are actually quite difficult [and sometimes obscure - I had questions of SQL / IIS stuff pop up on my exam which were not covered in my courseware. Boo MS! At least they have a feedback proceedure at the end of each exam.
I've since forgotten a lot of the stuff I answered on the exams. That probably highlights nothing more than that one has to keep fresh, and I can brush up on this at any time - the courseware was excellent. Perhaps 6-7000 pages of quality reading, plus 7 CDROMs of actually useful stuff that I continue to use when playing with MS networks. A years free Technet Plus also provides more training, beta exams, and beta software. It's around ten Cds a month. Quite good value, and I really do wish there was a similar, subscription style, non-vendor specific thing for Linux
I have heard rumors that MS is retiring NT4 MCSEs at the end of *this* year. That sucks and is far less time than the 3.5 guys had.
The Redhat course is much more difficult and requires much more experience. All the training firms offereing MCSEs require is experience with the Windows UI and rudimentary netowrking. I haven't signed the NDA, so I can tell you the exams involve actually sorting out real-world problems with a variety of hardware and software issues on training machines - rather than sitting at a computer answering questions, you're DOING rather than SAYING. I like that a lot. Remember, good MCSEs hate the idiot MCSEs just as much as you do.
A point I have yet to see raised is that most instructor based certification vendors have a guarantee that if an employee leaves your company within six months as a result of the training they will provide the company with another four weeks of training aty no cost whatsoever.
Once course I think whose reputation has not soiled over the years has been the Certified Cisco Internet Engineer, CCIE. Their knowledge seems to be unparralelled in any certification program.?
I'd find it rather shocking if homosexual [the overwhelming majority of which are non-pornographic] and AIDs msites were blocked, or even moderated.
I know this is flamabait. But what next? What if someone finds Jewish people offensive? I can't believe you throw the above in with general pornography. I would understand the point if you were comparing hard-core porn to the implied kind, or erotica/sex studies as typically shown in womens magazines. But really? AIDS?
Perhaps, in the end, meta tags might be an option - having a voluntary code of pratice which lists that a site is of an sexual / violent nature and the information it contains [basic sex education, instruction, depiction, discussion, etc], the form of it [images, text, video, sound, etc].
I don't want to stop anyone, including Microsoft, from extending the standards. Specifically, I want to stop them from exploiting the work of others and harming interoperability.
It unfortunate that I have to put a disclaimer here that I'm not a Linux zealot. My work is half divided between Linux and NT, and I have an MCSE and MCP+I [though I share the opinion of others that these qualifications mean very little]. I believe those performance charts which show BSD ahead of Linux for certain services. Nevertheless, I'm trying to prevent the flame war when a Windows zealot brands me a Linux zealot, or vice versa.
The GPL would be a perfect solution to this problem. Proprietary extensions are fine, as long as at the end of the day, those extensions can have their code released, auditied, made interoperable, and returned to the community from which that code sprang. Yes, the BSD license is more `free' than the GPL [if you define free as ebing able to do what you want with something]. But the GPL makes more sense from both an engineering [Raymond] and ethical [Stallman] point of view. It's harder to exploit the work of others, and increases the pace of development and tightness of the code via a stringent peer-preview process.
Kerberos might be as widely used as possible, but is the use of the sort you want? A non-interoperable standard [through no fault of the developers, but the license used].
Compare, for example, to rsync. The rsync algorithm is one of the most significant advancements in data transfer for a very long time. besides file transfer, what about database replication? Streaming? The ramifications of rsync being applied to common remote data transfer operation are enormous. But the algorithm and implementation only got as tight as it did via its license. BSDing it would slow development and fracture the standard, at the same time as maing its use more widespread. I'm confortbale with MySQL, the GNU tools, and other open-source projects reaping the benefit and giving back, rather than Oracle, MS SQL, and others trying to leg-up their competition.
The vast quantity of Slashdot readers mostly understand this. There's afew who don't. That was my audience.
Fromt he sound of this discussion it sounds if Tux the penguin's contact details were given on Microsoft's details page. I think it's been updated: The only name I get is Mark Williams.
Could someone please post or mirrror the content of the original?
I realize these programs all cover diffferent aspects of the printing system that is Linux, and rely onn eachother in different ways. However, are Staroffice's drivers compatible with Corels?
XFree86 and XFS can provide TrueType fonts - that's why current distributions use the external font server in the first place. XFree86 4.0 has Freetype, Truetype,a nd Type 1 fonts capabiltities. I don't think anyone seriously is interested in bitmap fonts anymore. But again, Staroffice has it's own font system.
Likewise, which combination of system and interface is yours today? How well do they fit together? Is KDEs printing interface able to handle CUPS? Is it compatible with GNOME and Corels printing interfaces?
Alll these questions and more will neeed to be answered. I think the poster below gave the response I'd like to ehar - that it's a matter of stitching these technologies together to form a tight and comprehensive framework. I really do hope the number of parties involved working on new and unique systems, interfaces, font management solution,s etc, can get together and come to the party.
Agreed. We have far too much of an abundance of next generation print technologies and not enough cooperation between the projects...
* LPR * CUPS * Ghostscript * Minolta / SuSEs new printing system * HP / VAs new printing system * StarOffice's printing system * The GNOME print architecute * The KDE print architecture * XFS and Xfree86 4.0 [both have font servers which could benefit fron print integration]
Could those involved in any of these technologies please comment about how they relate to other projects? A unified successor to LPR would be the best possible outcome for all. Technology should be command line or CLI interfaced, integrated with both desktop environments, cope equally well with the damnds of network and local printing, provide a system for open-sourced or binary only drivers, and have intelligent downloading and execution of drivers [unlike the NT model]. It also must be simple to develop for, compatible with a variety of existing standards [postscript, unix, lpr, etc]...
Do you care? Then write to the developers wiht your concerns, and try and create dialogue between the projects. This is the Linux community and you have a direct say in the future of its architecture.
It seems Rob's taken things to heart. While I didn't read the vast majority of flamebait posts, neither do most people. The Slashdot community moderated up the posts that criticized the decision. None of them criticized Rob personally. They spanned both sides of ther argument.
Calls for artticle moderation are valid, despite the fact that this may very well be difficult to implement.
Rob, chill out. You posted an article that alot of peopel thought hadn't been background checked efficiently. That doesn't mean we hate you, it means we think you made an error in judgement. I'm sure the overwhelming amount of people who responded to this article would be saddened if you ever left slashdot - you are slashdot.
You've brought thousands of people together tom participate in debate. Be proud of it,but please expect that occasionally their opinions will differ from yours.
You're having a bad day. Walk away from the computer, get drunk, have a shower with your girl. Wake up tomorrow a happy man.
For those of you with licensing concerns, perhaps you might request that Secure Computing posts, in a public manner, its understanding of how and if it is obligated to release any source code changes. Since they haven't specifically mentioned that they are `publishing' their work, or even any mention of the GPL, this might be a nice way to coax them *without* pre-emtivaly flaming...
The technology is called `Adams Platform', developed by an Australian [Adam Clark] who needed to pipe video through PSTN lines for a video wall at a shopping mall. Some journalist's believe the story and have been demonstrated the technology. I'm not quite sure what to think...the level of compression has been acknowledged by Clark as impossible according to existing theory...
It promised to compress 1.3Gb AVI's to a floppy.
Check out http://www.theage.com.au/daily/980519/infotech/inf otech1.html for more details.
I guess `half as good' is fairly difficult to define. I think Plex86 currently falls in to the category of being half as good as vmware. I think Linux users will use VmWare over Plex86 for at least another two years.
There are many Open Source first person shooters which easily fall in to the category of `half as good as quake 3'. There are stacksa of OpenGL 3D games being produced by under Open Source licenses, most of which [same as their closed brethren] are crap, and a few of which are good.
But Quake 3 is, in my own observations, much more preferable to Crystal Space, or the Open Source Quake 1, or any of the other OS 3D FPSs. Its closest competition is Unreal Tournament, followed by Soldiuer of Furtune....get the picture?
Generally, Civilisation's genre isn't as popular due to the turn based nature of gameplay [most modern strategy games are real-time based]. Nevertheless, I'm quite sure the Open Source users that plays lots of Civilisation use Call to Power over Freeciv.
Netscape, as you cite it, is really no better than vim
Well, yes, Netscape 4 isn't. That's the point I was trying to make. I was using Netscape 4s architecture and packaging methods as another example of how things shouldn't be done, and Netscape 6 / Mozilla's architecure as the improved newer version, which is capable of being packaged into many smaller packages which can add functionality without modifying binaries.
I should have said this earlier, but my preference is to change the architeture of the application to be more componentized, or replace the application with something better designed. The design of most Unix text editors is generally acknowledge to be un-Unixlike [in philosophy] and quite bloated by their users.
Gradually, the lessons are being learnt. Look at Netscape 4, with Netscape-common, Netscape-communicator, and netscape-navigator packages. Mozilla and Netscape 6 comes as various library packages and neat plugin modules.
Take the sixth item in particular. It ties into your "best free mail client" jibe. In fact, creating the "best free mail client" is a pragmatic strategy, even if it means ignoring Outlook-ish features, because most free software developers use free mail clients. If you make the best free client, you get lots of enthusiastic developers interested, which gives you lots of momentum. So creating the "best free mail client" is a valid goal
I don't udnerstand your logic [and I think you're being rather rude to the original poster]. Developers make tools to atract developers who make tools to attract developers?
In the world I live in, developers, Open or closed, are attracted by platforms with large user bases. Good developer tools helps, but are a definite second [or lower on the list].
The free email clients that most Open Source developers use are fairly stagnant in their development. Actually, quite a few Open Source developers I know use Netscape Messenger. The rest use PINE/mutt and hate it.
The post above should have been moderated UP. The WMA format has already been cracked [hunt for unf**k.exe at google]. Reverse engineering for compatibility purposes is legal, and XMMS already has a very strong plugin architecture. Furthermore, WMAs are based on ASFs, which is more of an open standard than real... which has previously been reverse engineered successfully by the winamp-ra plugin people.
Even if we can't reverse engineer it, there's another alternative: A VQF plugin was recently released which simply used Yamaha's Windows.dll via wine, under XMMS. Why not do the same with MSs encoder?
There's currently a plugin competition over at XMMS.org. Already someone's built an AAC decoder [AAC is semi-MP4]...
The price of Reals backend software right now is extraordinary comapared to Windows Media. Shoutcast can compete on price but not on bandwidth. WMA will be an unfortunate part of the future...
Coders, earn the respect of your peers, the admiration of Linux users everywhere, and some prizes to boot. Write a WMA client for XMMS!
Slashdot Mirror
There is a device known as the Doctor 64, which houses a standard PC IDE CDROM drive inside a case which sites ontop of the Nintendo 64.
.n64, in the root dir of the CD-ROM.
It interfaces with the unit via the cartridge port. A CDR version is also availiable. ROM images [maximimum 100 mb, typically much smaller (Mario64 is actually 8Mb)] are stored on a standard ISO9660 filesystem, using the extension
Fifteen games typically fit ona single disk, and these compilations are sold throughout the markets of Hong Kong.
The CDR version simply grabs the contents of the current cartidge and burns them to a clean disk. You need a PC to eb able to collect the images and make the compilation.
No, I've never stolen an N64 title with it. I'm just interestyed to see how the crack was done. When I want games, I buy Linux ones and support those that support the penguin
Thousands of kids? Among others. The majority of typical open-source projects have VERY formal review processes, and most reject the overwhelming majority of patches submitted. Hence the existence of tools such as CVS, developed escpecially for the purposes of managing such development efforts.
VNC was originally developed by US Telco AT&T. Sendmail originally started off as a couple of hackers, but is not administered by Sendmail corporation, submitting contributions from 14 year old genuises to major corporations, and rejecting all but the few. Projects like Apache and WINE have contributions from major corporations.
Remember, Cisco started out as some undergraduates too, as did most IT players [yes, even Bill was stealing spare cycles at Harvard for his efforts].
If anything, having the code publicly auditable but controlled by the code-nazis who run most OSS projects is a major advantage. Would anyone dream of using unpublished encryption algorithms?
The proof is in the code, in your uptime, and in the markey share of these products [Apache, BIND, etc].
What I refer to as Linux is more than the kernel. When Microsoft talks about Winodws being innovative, they're talking about more than the kernel - they're talking about IIS, Terminal Services, the GUI, Management interface, SMS, and a whole heap more.
It might not be technically correct to refer to typical Linux apps as `Linux', but it's necessary for an apples-to-apples comparision. You can't compare one kernel to one kernel plus a thousand apps
The Linux innovation is bringing a rock-solid OS onto commodity hardare at an affordable price.
And doing so in a manner that total NT heads like me [whose only been using Linux around one and a half years] can get to grips with, and administer in a way we're accustomed to [ie, with a cute graphical interface], without beaking Unix compatibility.
Linux is the portable OS of all time, and can scale from a PalmPilot to an AS400. No other operating system can do that.
Open source technologies [which, if yo were MS, you'd call aprt of the OS] are also innovative. AT&Ts VNC provides remote administration capabilities multi platform with full interaction and at better performance than most commercial products.
Apache came out with many features MS replicated in IIS, and some MS have yet to replicate.
Linux has had many MS inovations, such as Dynamic DNS, Kerberos, Filesystem Encryption, etc. for many years before Microsoft has.
Linux has been 32 bit on Intel since it's birth. It was also the first IA64 bit OS.
Linux is the first OS with publicly available source distributed udner a license where, so that one can, for example, remove every feature of my database server that's unnecessary and tune my machien so its completely dedicated to pumping out transactions as fast as it possibly can.
Linux is the first OS to have over 10,000 developers.
Please list your NT innovations.
Mike MacCana
MCSE+I and former NT admin
ugo/rwx permissions
While the rest is a good point, this phrase is, IMHO, incorrect. A Unix with full Access Control Lists [somethign already implemented, but easy to work around, in NT] wouldn't make Linux or Unixes suddenly not become Unix compatible. The ACL concept is a noble one and more flexible than ugo/rwx - I believe an implementation on Linux was discusses in Slashdot Jeremy Allison interview recently.
I have no idea about VA or Caldera, but Redhat was profitable for every year from its inception to Venture Capital Investment Round A.
Furthermore, it has %54 of the market share and unlike Caldera, refuses to write and non-open source code, as well as contributing significants amounts of its funds towards open source development [eg, a quarter of its annual expenses went of GTK development in 1998].
You might not necessarily be concerned about open source drivers. In my mopinion, I think they would be much more maintainable, and perform better than closed source ones. Furthermore, I can't understand this mysterious secret about NViDia hardware specs when Creative, 3DFX, and Matrox already have open source driovers and don't seem overly concerned about them exposing design secrets....
But anyway, the other thing to consider is NViDia has been promising that as soon as XFree86 4.0 was out, you'd have Linux drivers based on DRI that very instant.
They're much behind their own deadline and Linxu users have already had to wait a very long time to use their cards because of NViDia own self interest. 3DFX users have had an open source driver for over a year now and now X4s out, hey, the drivers already written thanks to the open source community. Thats also a big consideration - when you have an infinite number of people working on your Linux code, as opposed to ten guys in a lab somewhere, the company can commit less resources in terms of maintenance once they've released the specs.
Conference of Australian Linux Users, June 1998
You'll have to say this quietly for now, but Linux IS the standard Unix
I have an MCSE. With any luck within the next six months I'll have an RHCE too - a good friend of mine is an RHCX [Redhat certified eXaminer] [the `X' multiplies the cool factor by 500% IMHO].
My opinion of the MCSE is varied. It did provide me me with the equivalent of quite afew hours of experience - I went instructor based, probably a waste of cash for the earlier courses, but I needed to play on some large hardware that I wouldn't normally have access to.
The course was about four of five weeks solid, and ran intermittently over six months, and went from `what is a network' to `DNS zone files' `WINS Node types' `Subnetting' etc. within a fairly short time. If you needed to know the former, you'll never know the later. If you already knew the former, you've wasted money having it taught to you.
My course included a one day Networking Essentials training session. A waste of cash - when going through bus types [early 1999], the instructor covered ISA, MCA, PCI, and the relative bandwidths of each....asked re: AGP `What's AGP?'
Anyone who says the MCSE exams are entirely multiple choice and therefore easy has not sat any of the exams, which are actually quite difficult [and sometimes obscure - I had questions of SQL / IIS stuff pop up on my exam which were not covered in my courseware. Boo MS! At least they have a feedback proceedure at the end of each exam.
I've since forgotten a lot of the stuff I answered on the exams. That probably highlights nothing more than that one has to keep fresh, and I can brush up on this at any time - the courseware was excellent. Perhaps 6-7000 pages of quality reading, plus 7 CDROMs of actually useful stuff that I continue to use when playing with MS networks. A years free Technet Plus also provides more training, beta exams, and beta software. It's around ten Cds a month. Quite good value, and I really do wish there was a similar, subscription style, non-vendor specific thing for Linux
I have heard rumors that MS is retiring NT4 MCSEs at the end of *this* year. That sucks and is far less time than the 3.5 guys had.
The Redhat course is much more difficult and requires much more experience. All the training firms offereing MCSEs require is experience with the Windows UI and rudimentary netowrking. I haven't signed the NDA, so I can tell you the exams involve actually sorting out real-world problems with a variety of hardware and software issues on training machines - rather than sitting at a computer answering questions, you're DOING rather than SAYING. I like that a lot. Remember, good MCSEs hate the idiot MCSEs just as much as you do.
A point I have yet to see raised is that most instructor based certification vendors have a guarantee that if an employee leaves your company within six months as a result of the training they will provide the company with another four weeks of training aty no cost whatsoever.
Once course I think whose reputation has not soiled over the years has been the Certified Cisco Internet Engineer, CCIE. Their knowledge seems to be unparralelled in any certification program.?
I'd find it rather shocking if homosexual [the overwhelming majority of which are non-pornographic] and AIDs msites were blocked, or even moderated.
I know this is flamabait. But what next? What if someone finds Jewish people offensive? I can't believe you throw the above in with general pornography. I would understand the point if you were comparing hard-core porn to the implied kind, or erotica/sex studies as typically shown in womens magazines. But really? AIDS?
Perhaps, in the end, meta tags might be an option - having a voluntary code of pratice which lists that a site is of an sexual / violent nature and the information it contains [basic sex education, instruction, depiction, discussion, etc], the form of it [images, text, video, sound, etc].
I don't want to stop anyone, including Microsoft, from extending the standards. Specifically, I want to stop them from exploiting the work of others and harming interoperability.
It unfortunate that I have to put a disclaimer here that I'm not a Linux zealot. My work is half divided between Linux and NT, and I have an MCSE and MCP+I [though I share the opinion of others that these qualifications mean very little]. I believe those performance charts which show BSD ahead of Linux for certain services. Nevertheless, I'm trying to prevent the flame war when a Windows zealot brands me a Linux zealot, or vice versa.
The GPL would be a perfect solution to this problem. Proprietary extensions are fine, as long as at the end of the day, those extensions can have their code released, auditied, made interoperable, and returned to the community from which that code sprang. Yes, the BSD license is more `free' than the GPL [if you define free as ebing able to do what you want with something]. But the GPL makes more sense from both an engineering [Raymond] and ethical [Stallman] point of view. It's harder to exploit the work of others, and increases the pace of development and tightness of the code via a stringent peer-preview process.
Kerberos might be as widely used as possible, but is the use of the sort you want? A non-interoperable standard [through no fault of the developers, but the license used].
Compare, for example, to rsync. The rsync algorithm is one of the most significant advancements in data transfer for a very long time. besides file transfer, what about database replication? Streaming? The ramifications of rsync being applied to common remote data transfer operation are enormous. But the algorithm and implementation only got as tight as it did via its license. BSDing it would slow development and fracture the standard, at the same time as maing its use more widespread. I'm confortbale with MySQL, the GNU tools, and other open-source projects reaping the benefit and giving back, rather than Oracle, MS SQL, and others trying to leg-up their competition.
The vast quantity of Slashdot readers mostly understand this. There's afew who don't. That was my audience.
Fromt he sound of this discussion it sounds if Tux the penguin's contact details were given on Microsoft's details page. I think it's been updated: The only name I get is Mark Williams.
Could someone please post or mirrror the content of the original?
I realize these programs all cover diffferent aspects of the printing system that is Linux, and rely onn eachother in different ways. However, are Staroffice's drivers compatible with Corels?
XFree86 and XFS can provide TrueType fonts - that's why current distributions use the external font server in the first place. XFree86 4.0 has Freetype, Truetype,a nd Type 1 fonts capabiltities. I don't think anyone seriously is interested in bitmap fonts anymore. But again, Staroffice has it's own font system.
Likewise, which combination of system and interface is yours today? How well do they fit together? Is KDEs printing interface able to handle CUPS? Is it compatible with GNOME and Corels printing interfaces?
Alll these questions and more will neeed to be answered. I think the poster below gave the response I'd like to ehar - that it's a matter of stitching these technologies together to form a tight and comprehensive framework. I really do hope the number of parties involved working on new and unique systems, interfaces, font management solution,s etc, can get together and come to the party.
Agreed. We have far too much of an abundance of next generation print technologies and not enough cooperation between the projects...
* LPR
* CUPS
* Ghostscript
* Minolta / SuSEs new printing system
* HP / VAs new printing system
* StarOffice's printing system
* The GNOME print architecute
* The KDE print architecture
* XFS and Xfree86 4.0 [both have font servers which could benefit fron print integration]
Could those involved in any of these technologies please comment about how they relate to other projects? A unified successor to LPR would be the best possible outcome for all. Technology should be command line or CLI interfaced, integrated with both desktop environments, cope equally well with the damnds of network and local printing, provide a system for open-sourced or binary only drivers, and have intelligent downloading and execution of drivers [unlike the NT model]. It also must be simple to develop for, compatible with a variety of existing standards [postscript, unix, lpr, etc]...
Do you care? Then write to the developers wiht your concerns, and try and create dialogue between the projects. This is the Linux community and you have a direct say in the future of its architecture.
I echo those congratulations - Rasterman's needed that haircut for a real long time now... good going boy!
It seems Rob's taken things to heart. While I didn't read the vast majority of flamebait posts, neither do most people. The Slashdot community moderated up the posts that criticized the decision. None of them criticized Rob personally. They spanned both sides of ther argument.
,but please expect that occasionally their opinions will differ from yours.
Calls for artticle moderation are valid, despite the fact that this may very well be difficult to implement.
Rob, chill out. You posted an article that alot of peopel thought hadn't been background checked efficiently. That doesn't mean we hate you, it means we think you made an error in judgement. I'm sure the overwhelming amount of people who responded to this article would be saddened if you ever left slashdot - you are slashdot.
You've brought thousands of people together tom participate in debate. Be proud of it
You're having a bad day. Walk away from the computer, get drunk, have a shower with your girl. Wake up tomorrow a happy man.
For those of you with licensing concerns, perhaps you might request that Secure Computing posts, in a public manner, its understanding of how and if it is obligated to release any source code changes. Since they haven't specifically mentioned that they are `publishing' their work, or even any mention of the GPL, this might be a nice way to coax them *without* pre-emtivaly flaming...
http://www.securecomputing.com/C_Cont_FRS.html
http://www.securecomputing.com/C_Cont_FRS.html
Here's an interview with Adam Clark...
h tm
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/elp/innovatn/inots675.
The technology is called `Adams Platform', developed by an Australian [Adam Clark] who needed to pipe video through PSTN lines for a video wall at a shopping mall. Some journalist's believe the story and have been demonstrated the technology. I'm not quite sure what to think...the level of compression has been acknowledged by Clark as impossible according to existing theory...
f otech1.html for more details.
It promised to compress 1.3Gb AVI's to a floppy.
Check out http://www.theage.com.au/daily/980519/infotech/in
I guess `half as good' is fairly difficult to define. I think Plex86 currently falls in to the category of being half as good as vmware. I think Linux users will use VmWare over Plex86 for at least another two years.
There are many Open Source first person shooters which easily fall in to the category of `half as good as quake 3'. There are stacksa of OpenGL 3D games being produced by under Open Source licenses, most of which [same as their closed brethren] are crap, and a few of which are good.
But Quake 3 is, in my own observations, much more preferable to Crystal Space, or the Open Source Quake 1, or any of the other OS 3D FPSs. Its closest competition is Unreal Tournament, followed by Soldiuer of Furtune....get the picture?
Generally, Civilisation's genre isn't as popular due to the turn based nature of gameplay [most modern strategy games are real-time based]. Nevertheless, I'm quite sure the Open Source users that plays lots of Civilisation use Call to Power over Freeciv.
Netscape, as you cite it, is really no better than vim
Well, yes, Netscape 4 isn't. That's the point I was trying to make. I was using Netscape 4s architecture and packaging methods as another example of how things shouldn't be done, and Netscape 6 / Mozilla's architecure as the improved newer version, which is capable of being packaged into many smaller packages which can add functionality without modifying binaries.
VMWare, Win4Lin, StarOffice and Netscape 4.x are also popular closed source apps, vastly more so than their Open Source counterparts.
I think your vision of the Linux market is limited to yourself.
I should have said this earlier, but my preference is to change the architeture of the application to be more componentized, or replace the application with something better designed. The design of most Unix text editors is generally acknowledge to be un-Unixlike [in philosophy] and quite bloated by their users.
Gradually, the lessons are being learnt. Look at Netscape 4, with Netscape-common, Netscape-communicator, and netscape-navigator packages. Mozilla and Netscape 6 comes as various library packages and neat plugin modules.
Take the sixth item in particular. It ties into your "best free mail client" jibe. In fact, creating the "best free mail client" is a pragmatic strategy, even if it means ignoring Outlook-ish features, because most free software developers use free mail clients. If you make the best free client, you get lots of enthusiastic developers interested, which gives you lots of momentum. So creating the "best free mail client" is a valid goal
I don't udnerstand your logic [and I think you're being rather rude to the original poster]. Developers make tools to atract developers who make tools to attract developers?
In the world I live in, developers, Open or closed, are attracted by platforms with large user bases. Good developer tools helps, but are a definite second [or lower on the list].
The free email clients that most Open Source developers use are fairly stagnant in their development. Actually, quite a few Open Source developers I know use Netscape Messenger. The rest use PINE/mutt and hate it.
The post above should have been moderated UP. The WMA format has already been cracked [hunt for unf**k.exe at google]. Reverse engineering for compatibility purposes is legal, and XMMS already has a very strong plugin architecture. Furthermore, WMAs are based on ASFs, which is more of an open standard than real... which has previously been reverse engineered successfully by the winamp-ra plugin people.
.dll via wine, under XMMS. Why not do the same with MSs encoder?
Even if we can't reverse engineer it, there's another alternative: A VQF plugin was recently released which simply used Yamaha's Windows
There's currently a plugin competition over at XMMS.org. Already someone's built an AAC decoder [AAC is semi-MP4]...
The price of Reals backend software right now is extraordinary comapared to Windows Media. Shoutcast can compete on price but not on bandwidth. WMA will be an unfortunate part of the future...
Coders, earn the respect of your peers, the admiration of Linux users everywhere, and some prizes to boot. Write a WMA client for XMMS!
Cmon - we have the technology. Let's do it!