It was a DX3700 (IIRC, I sold it a few months ago). You had to use the Kodak supplied driver, even under Windows (I didn't try it under XP). Gphoto2 supported it as "experimental", but I was never able to get it to work. My friend's PowerBook didn't recognize it.
But I have not had one single problem with my new Olympus C-740. It cost a heck of a lot more, but it's a much better camera all around.
Consumers have spoken, and Kodak digital cameras are going the way of the dinosaur. They use proprietary drivers instead of the standard USB Mass Storage protocol most other cameras are using. This means it's extremely difficult to use them under Linux or BSD, even with a current gphoto. And Mac users are too used to *REAL* plug and play to bother with installing drivers, particularly for devices that shouldn't need them.
On the other hand, most UMass based cameras just work. Period. Without installing one damned driver anywhere, I can use it on my FreeBSD machine, my friends PowerBook, and my mom's Wind98SE system.
Having to carry around the Kodak Install CD just so you can grab your photos anywhere other than your own computer, is just silly. It sucks when you're on vacation. It's just another thing you have to remember to pack. "Dear, don't forget the Kodak CD! Remember that Aunt Martha uses a Canon camera instead..."
Your rant talks a lot about taxation, the military, India and China, but you fail to adequately explain your "yes".
By "yes" do you mean that every US citizen has a right to a have a job? The right to get a job? On demand? Should I be able to walk up to any employer, wave the Constitution, and demand that they instantly hire me? Would it imply that the US Army should send tanks into Palo Alto to force Carly into giving YOU a job?
Haven't done this yet but will soon, have done some research though.
Digital cameras work great. In short, if they'll work under Linux they'll work under FreeBSD. It supports all UMass compatible cameras out-of-the-box. Just plug it in and copy/drag the photos out of it. Non-UMass cameras will need gphoto, just like under Linux.
Cameras that aren't supported by USB mass storage or gphoto probably won't work. But these are getting pretty rare now.
Not to bash Perl or anything, but I think that these incompatibilities between minor version numbers is a Perl weakness. Having to use perl 6.x instead of 5.x I could understand. But having to use perl 5.8 instead of 5.6 is silly. The 5 means it's the same major version.
But in any case, just update your perl through ports and you're done. Easy.
I think he was referring to Knoppix like systems, where the live CD boots you up into a full multi-user X11 environment. There are such projects under way, and Freesbie is one of them. There's one project I heard about that will let you create a custom live CD. I haven't tried any yet, but I've been meaning to.
Several reasons. First, FreeBSD is a unified system. Linux, on the other hand, is a kernel, distro supplied scripts, shells, libraries, and utilities. Not everything in the core FreeBSD is native (gcc, tar, etc), but most of it is. This has a few disadvantages, but overall it's a benefit. It even feels unified.
Second, the documentation is superb. Linux is notorious for having imcomplete documentation. Part of this is the fault of GNU, which actively discourages the writing of man pages. A while ago I was trying to get a USB thumb drive working under Linux and I couldn't find instructions anywhere. Heading online, most of the stuff I found was outdated. But under FreeBSD there is a man page for everything, down to and including individual drivers. The Handbook is comprehensive and well written. There is install documentation for everything from writing and updating ports to dual booting with Linux and Windows.
Performance. This is highly subjective, and I have not done any benchmarks. I am sure that there is stuff that Linux does better than FreeBSD, and vice versa. But from my experience, FreeBSD just seems snappier and more responsive. It boots faster. Shutdown is faster.
Finally, believe it or not, hardware support. In my experience FreeBSD supports more hardware than Linux. This didn't use to be the case, but I think the situation has reversed. Other posts in this article talk about SATA. Linux supports it, but it's a separate driver that isn't default on many current distros. Under FreeBSD SATA support is built into the ATA driver, and it's been there for a while. I've found through experience that USB support is much better on FreeBSD than on Linux. I recently purchased a new laptop, and FreeBSD supported everything on it (sans winmodem) out-of-the-box. Linux did not.
But hey! FreeBSD is Free! You can try it for yourself. Find a spare partition and try it for a week to get the feel of it. Even if you decide to stick with Linux, you'll at least get the benefit of exposure to another system.
Are you also removing other GPL licensed libraries? all of them? Better check, because you wouldn't want to get into any legal troubles because a member of your team accidentally linked to libreadline...
Maybe someone should take these distros and slap them upside the head! When I use Linux, I use Slackware. One of the principles reasons is because Slackware doesn't futz around with the software. The kernel is vanilla. GCC is vanilla. KDE and GNOME are vanilla. It's enough work putting together a quality stable distribution, without second guessing other projects.
All populaces get divided 50/50 down the center. Florida is no exception. On specific issues there will be sigificant differences, but between generalities the divide is equal. For example, the divide between pro/anti abortion and pro/anti gun registration is hardly 50%. But the divide between Republicans and Democrats tends towards an equal distribution.
Why? Candidates seek to distinguish themselves from their opponents, and so will move to the other side of the "average" aggregate opinion. At the same time, the leading candidates (in order to be leading candidates) will court the mainstream voter, moving closer to the "average". In a field of two mainstream candidates, the vote will tend to split 50/50.
If there were no third party candidates, Bush and Gore would have split the vote 50/50. That's because they were mainstream candidates who positioned themselves barely opposite the "average" point from each other. But what if Nader and Buchanan where the only two options? The vote would NOT have been 50/50, because these candidates were not courting the mainstream vote. They were not centrists. What if Buchanan and Brown were the only two candidates? Again, the vote would NOT have been 50/50, even though they were both on the same side from the average.
You guys are STILL having problems with that! Looking at the other replies, it looks like you do have it, but you need special kernel modules. Aaaargh!
Let me give you a hint. Use FreeBSD-5.x. (5.2 due this month). SATA drives just work. Out. Of. The. Box. Without the need for any special kernel modules. Without the need for reconfiguring or rebuilding the kernel. And it's on the install CD, so you don't need to fiddle with your BIOS to install it.
Awesome! I always knew the standard Windows install method was bad, but until you exposed it to the light of day, I never really understood how bad it was. Everyone knows it's as bad as you say, but they refuse to let it enter their consciousness.
I was sold on the concept of "package manager" the very first time I ran across it. Combine it with intelligently packaged software, and it blows the socks off of self-installing executables. Combine it with a database of available packages, so that you can browse for software and automatically install dependencies, and I can't think of any reason why someone would want the archaic Windows way.
I did not say I wanted hemp to remain illegal. Far from it. I want it fully legalized, for all uses, industrial and personal.
My point was that you can't go into a funk just because one path out of thousands is being blocked by the government. Alternative energy solutions are being researched today by non-government individuals and organizations. A few avenues of research have been declared off limits, but many others are still open.
A silly argument. To pick one example that isn't being researched for reasons obvious to all, while ignoring research in a multitude of other areas, is disingenuous.
Maybe hemp is an awesome energy source. But slightly less awesome sources also exist in other plants. Alcohol can be produced efficiently from a myriad other plants. There's also solar energy. Not a great source given the expected level of technology for the next couple of decades, but it's still great for heating your shower water. There's still other sources, that while not universal, could take a some load off of petroleum use in some specific locales. Examples include wind and geothermal.
And then there's a really good source. Nuclear. While the government tyranny bogs down the construction of nuclear power plants in gigatons of paperwork, it's only because environmentalists have urged them to.
If this is the case, then doesn't it make sense to aggressively pursue alternative forms of energy, and do so now?
Aren't we already doing this? Have I missed something? We don't need government tyranny to step in and do something, because we're already doing something as private individuals. It might not be as fast as you would like, but it is happening.
When people panicked over 9/11, we got a Department of Homeland Security. Do you want a similar Department of Environmental Coercion?
free trade is only fair with free movement of labor
I agree with you 100% in principle. It makes absolutely no sense for one treaty to say "we won't block your goods from coming in", while another law says "but don't you dare send you people along with them!"
If skilled Indian labor could be imported as easily as skilled US labor could be outsourced, the wages of IT work would have dropped due to the supply, and there would have been less incentive for companies to outsource their labor. Call me nuts, but I think getting paid half of what I'm making today is a damned sight better than being laid off and making nothing. We would also have a situation where India was busy setting up it's own companies, instead of undergoing the current corporate imperialism. (as a US citizen working for a European company, I have the option to transfer to a division in Germany or England, should I wish. But this option is not available to our new offshore Indian employees, even if they could get the visas.)
But I'm going to question your use of "free trade". We do not have free trade. We have managed trade. It's a very different thing. Trade is only free when my government does not tell me what I can or cannot trade, and imposes a uniform across-the-board tarriff on all goods (if it imposes one at all). Free Trade is when I in California can trade with someone in Oregon just as easily as I can trade with someone in India.
Slashdot Mirror
Similarly name your NFS mount points, and you can get all sorts of sentences guaranteed to get you in trouble at work...
It's a freaking compiler! It doesn't have to be user friendly!
If you want to use an IDE, go use and IDE. No one is stopping you. I have nothing against them. But a compiler is not and should be an IDE.
It was a DX3700 (IIRC, I sold it a few months ago). You had to use the Kodak supplied driver, even under Windows (I didn't try it under XP). Gphoto2 supported it as "experimental", but I was never able to get it to work. My friend's PowerBook didn't recognize it.
But I have not had one single problem with my new Olympus C-740. It cost a heck of a lot more, but it's a much better camera all around.
Consumers have spoken, and Kodak digital cameras are going the way of the dinosaur. They use proprietary drivers instead of the standard USB Mass Storage protocol most other cameras are using. This means it's extremely difficult to use them under Linux or BSD, even with a current gphoto. And Mac users are too used to *REAL* plug and play to bother with installing drivers, particularly for devices that shouldn't need them.
On the other hand, most UMass based cameras just work. Period. Without installing one damned driver anywhere, I can use it on my FreeBSD machine, my friends PowerBook, and my mom's Wind98SE system.
Having to carry around the Kodak Install CD just so you can grab your photos anywhere other than your own computer, is just silly. It sucks when you're on vacation. It's just another thing you have to remember to pack. "Dear, don't forget the Kodak CD! Remember that Aunt Martha uses a Canon camera instead..."
Heck, I choose not to "enable" their products...
Yes.
Your rant talks a lot about taxation, the military, India and China, but you fail to adequately explain your "yes".
By "yes" do you mean that every US citizen has a right to a have a job? The right to get a job? On demand? Should I be able to walk up to any employer, wave the Constitution, and demand that they instantly hire me? Would it imply that the US Army should send tanks into Palo Alto to force Carly into giving YOU a job?
During college I worked at a pizza parlour, and the manager was a monk. Getting a job outside of the monastery was his way of supporting himself.
Haven't done this yet but will soon, have done some research though.
Digital cameras work great. In short, if they'll work under Linux they'll work under FreeBSD. It supports all UMass compatible cameras out-of-the-box. Just plug it in and copy/drag the photos out of it. Non-UMass cameras will need gphoto, just like under Linux.
Cameras that aren't supported by USB mass storage or gphoto probably won't work. But these are getting pretty rare now.
Not to bash Perl or anything, but I think that these incompatibilities between minor version numbers is a Perl weakness. Having to use perl 6.x instead of 5.x I could understand. But having to use perl 5.8 instead of 5.6 is silly. The 5 means it's the same major version.
But in any case, just update your perl through ports and you're done. Easy.
I think he was referring to Knoppix like systems, where the live CD boots you up into a full multi-user X11 environment.
There are such projects under way, and Freesbie is one of them. There's one project I heard about that will let you create a custom live CD. I haven't tried any yet, but I've been meaning to.
Several reasons. First, FreeBSD is a unified system. Linux, on the other hand, is a kernel, distro supplied scripts, shells, libraries, and utilities. Not everything in the core FreeBSD is native (gcc, tar, etc), but most of it is. This has a few disadvantages, but overall it's a benefit. It even feels unified.
Second, the documentation is superb. Linux is notorious for having imcomplete documentation. Part of this is the fault of GNU, which actively discourages the writing of man pages. A while ago I was trying to get a USB thumb drive working under Linux and I couldn't find instructions anywhere. Heading online, most of the stuff I found was outdated. But under FreeBSD there is a man page for everything, down to and including individual drivers. The Handbook is comprehensive and well written. There is install documentation for everything from writing and updating ports to dual booting with Linux and Windows.
Performance. This is highly subjective, and I have not done any benchmarks. I am sure that there is stuff that Linux does better than FreeBSD, and vice versa. But from my experience, FreeBSD just seems snappier and more responsive. It boots faster. Shutdown is faster.
Finally, believe it or not, hardware support. In my experience FreeBSD supports more hardware than Linux. This didn't use to be the case, but I think the situation has reversed. Other posts in this article talk about SATA. Linux supports it, but it's a separate driver that isn't default on many current distros. Under FreeBSD SATA support is built into the ATA driver, and it's been there for a while. I've found through experience that USB support is much better on FreeBSD than on Linux. I recently purchased a new laptop, and FreeBSD supported everything on it (sans winmodem) out-of-the-box. Linux did not.
But hey! FreeBSD is Free! You can try it for yourself. Find a spare partition and try it for a week to get the feel of it. Even if you decide to stick with Linux, you'll at least get the benefit of exposure to another system.
Are you also removing other GPL licensed libraries? all of them? Better check, because you wouldn't want to get into any legal troubles because a member of your team accidentally linked to libreadline...
The OS/2 of 1993 is still more advanced than the WindowsXP of today. The Warp desktop is still more advanced than any desktop today.
As a new laptop owner, I've seen the same thing. Even before they want to know how fast it is, they want to know about shared memory. Why?
Which closed source GTK+ applications do you have in mind? There aren't too many out there, you know.
Yes!
Maybe someone should take these distros and slap them upside the head! When I use Linux, I use Slackware. One of the principles reasons is because Slackware doesn't futz around with the software. The kernel is vanilla. GCC is vanilla. KDE and GNOME are vanilla. It's enough work putting together a quality stable distribution, without second guessing other projects.
All populaces get divided 50/50 down the center. Florida is no exception. On specific issues there will be sigificant differences, but between generalities the divide is equal. For example, the divide between pro/anti abortion and pro/anti gun registration is hardly 50%. But the divide between Republicans and Democrats tends towards an equal distribution.
Why? Candidates seek to distinguish themselves from their opponents, and so will move to the other side of the "average" aggregate opinion. At the same time, the leading candidates (in order to be leading candidates) will court the mainstream voter, moving closer to the "average". In a field of two mainstream candidates, the vote will tend to split 50/50.
If there were no third party candidates, Bush and Gore would have split the vote 50/50. That's because they were mainstream candidates who positioned themselves barely opposite the "average" point from each other. But what if Nader and Buchanan where the only two options? The vote would NOT have been 50/50, because these candidates were not courting the mainstream vote. They were not centrists. What if Buchanan and Brown were the only two candidates? Again, the vote would NOT have been 50/50, even though they were both on the same side from the average.
Native support for SATA hard drives!
You guys are STILL having problems with that! Looking at the other replies, it looks like you do have it, but you need special kernel modules. Aaaargh!
Let me give you a hint. Use FreeBSD-5.x. (5.2 due this month). SATA drives just work. Out. Of. The. Box. Without the need for any special kernel modules. Without the need for reconfiguring or rebuilding the kernel. And it's on the install CD, so you don't need to fiddle with your BIOS to install it.
Awesome! I always knew the standard Windows install method was bad, but until you exposed it to the light of day, I never really understood how bad it was. Everyone knows it's as bad as you say, but they refuse to let it enter their consciousness.
I was sold on the concept of "package manager" the very first time I ran across it. Combine it with intelligently packaged software, and it blows the socks off of self-installing executables. Combine it with a database of available packages, so that you can browse for software and automatically install dependencies, and I can't think of any reason why someone would want the archaic Windows way.
I did not say I wanted hemp to remain illegal. Far from it. I want it fully legalized, for all uses, industrial and personal.
My point was that you can't go into a funk just because one path out of thousands is being blocked by the government. Alternative energy solutions are being researched today by non-government individuals and organizations. A few avenues of research have been declared off limits, but many others are still open.
A silly argument. To pick one example that isn't being researched for reasons obvious to all, while ignoring research in a multitude of other areas, is disingenuous.
Maybe hemp is an awesome energy source. But slightly less awesome sources also exist in other plants. Alcohol can be produced efficiently from a myriad other plants. There's also solar energy. Not a great source given the expected level of technology for the next couple of decades, but it's still great for heating your shower water. There's still other sources, that while not universal, could take a some load off of petroleum use in some specific locales. Examples include wind and geothermal.
And then there's a really good source. Nuclear. While the government tyranny bogs down the construction of nuclear power plants in gigatons of paperwork, it's only because environmentalists have urged them to.
Do you really think that climate change science is based on a few anecdotes? That there aren't statisticians working in this field?
But the public puts stock in anecdotes. And it's the public that panics. And it's the public that votes in tyrants to make them feel safe.
If this is the case, then doesn't it make sense to aggressively pursue alternative forms of energy, and do so now?
Aren't we already doing this? Have I missed something? We don't need government tyranny to step in and do something, because we're already doing something as private individuals. It might not be as fast as you would like, but it is happening.
When people panicked over 9/11, we got a Department of Homeland Security. Do you want a similar Department of Environmental Coercion?
free trade is only fair with free movement of labor
I agree with you 100% in principle. It makes absolutely no sense for one treaty to say "we won't block your goods from coming in", while another law says "but don't you dare send you people along with them!"
If skilled Indian labor could be imported as easily as skilled US labor could be outsourced, the wages of IT work would have dropped due to the supply, and there would have been less incentive for companies to outsource their labor. Call me nuts, but I think getting paid half of what I'm making today is a damned sight better than being laid off and making nothing. We would also have a situation where India was busy setting up it's own companies, instead of undergoing the current corporate imperialism. (as a US citizen working for a European company, I have the option to transfer to a division in Germany or England, should I wish. But this option is not available to our new offshore Indian employees, even if they could get the visas.)
But I'm going to question your use of "free trade". We do not have free trade. We have managed trade. It's a very different thing. Trade is only free when my government does not tell me what I can or cannot trade, and imposes a uniform across-the-board tarriff on all goods (if it imposes one at all). Free Trade is when I in California can trade with someone in Oregon just as easily as I can trade with someone in India.