The domains in question were being actioned off by domain squatters...
How many of these Linux domains were snapped up because of the various IPOs in the 4th quarter of 1999? I betcha lots:-)
Linus was doing the community a service. If you're a guy in a basement with an idea for a new distro or something, and instead of the 50$ NSI or (cheaper) alternative, you have to go give 2,000$ to 200,000$ to some squatter for it (and they are using them for money) you're SOL. Linus is giving the middle finger to squatters (who rank with spammers, in my books), and helping keep the domains as cheap as you can find them. And that's a Good Thing (TM). ---
"If the money were going to go to Microsoft in some way, do you doubt in the slightest way that there wouldn't be 9 million such Linux-zealot trolls making every version of Windows-Sucks up for a username posting fake bids?"
I should hope not. While there is the odd zealot, the Linux community has grown up over the last year or so in terms of their dealings with the outside world.
I don't see how you can draw a parrellel to Linux and Microsoft about the money going somewhere, though, as it'd go to either the charity Mike chose, or a charity the highest bidder chose -- not Linux or a distribution maker. And if it did go to MS -- why? They're a big company, and they are very profitable. Why would they need money? ---
I only vote for that I like to use. Slashdot has posted links to a couple of polls, and it's funny to watch the various deluded people from each group fight over it (today it's OpenBSD, tomorrow it's Windows, the next day Linux, and then FreeBSD).. It's entertainment, a spectator sport, if you will.
Raising a bid price is not. If you've big 2,400$, and some guy forces you to 2,800$ -- are you happy? There's no way to prove he is trolling the price higher.. If he did never intend to pay, there's 400$ poofed away. That's not entertainment. That's sick. ---
With the requisite shades. And, suprisingly, seems to have a high bid (might be a welcher).
But who would sink to this level? This is going to a charity, be it one to feed the homeless, one to help children, or one to help people being stepped on big corporations. Why should some troll be allowed to stomp all over this good will?
Using this for free adversiting or free trolling over Linux users (raising the bid price unfairly, too).. It really says a lot about a person's moral fibre, that. It also really disgusts me. ---
From their FAQ: Q: Does this mean BeOS runs "under" Windows?
A: No. Although you can launch BeOS via a file within Windows, BeOS does not run as a Windows application. Double-clicking the file will exit Windows and boot BeOS from a large file in the FAT file system which contains within it a BFS volume.
Q: If I install BeOS 5 within Windows, will I still have the advantages of the Be File System?
A: Yes.
Q: Will I have to run Windows to run BeOS 5?
A: No. Although we will offer an installation as described above that will allow you run BeOS from within Windows without repartitioning your hard drive, you will still be able to run BeOS as a stand-alone operating system.
Q: If I install BeOS 5 within Windows, will performance suffer compared to the stand-alone version?
A: Assuming your Windows partition is not highly fragmented, in most cases you probably won't notice a difference in performance between installation methods.
Q: Will I be able to install BeOS 5 within operating systems other than Windows?
A: Not at this time. Note, though, that if you don't use Windows, you will be able to install BeOS as a stand-alone operating system as described above.
I mean, this is the third or fourth complaint about BeOS 5 requiring Windows, losing the advantage of BeFS, etc. How many clue-by-fours must be applied for people to finish reading the FAQ? Why must people stop right when they see "Windows" and go complain on Slashdot? ---
"Basically, the gist of his argument is that microkernels aren't any better than monolithic kernels, simply because any tricks you can pull to optimize a microkernel can be applied towards optimizing a monolithic kernel. Microkernels aren't necessarily any more portable than a well-designed monolithic one, and they don't necessarily guarantee better performance. Further, they have some overhead that monolithic kernels can avoid."
He's right. Splitting up a perfectly working kernel in a myriad of tiny things that run in seperate address spaces buys you flexibility, not performance. Microkernels depend quite heavily on message passing via memory regions and other IPC methods. The problem is that (on the x86 PC at least) there is a heavy overhead to the memory reads. In the days when the CPU core can only access its L2 cache on every other, or every third, CPU instruction (K7), it doesn't make sense to play tricks with the MMU and address space. It's great for embeded systems where modularity is important, and memory latencies are not an issue, but a properly designed/architectured monolithic kernel works better on x86 machines.
If you read this Kernel Traffic piece, you'll see that (suprise, suprise!) the DinX framebuffer does not work as well as X's classic system because of the x86 memory bottleneck.
(I quote from the piece)"Just to clarify, performance is currently horrible on PC hardware because we read (memmove) from the framebuffer a lot when dragging windows around. And it seems PC hardware does this really slowly. " This is because a read requires the data to filter through the main memory bus (100Mhz or 66Mhz), to the L2 cache (same as memory bus on Socket 7, a bit faster for PII/Celeron/K7), and then to the CPU and its L1 cache. So the message reading overhead exists, and is getting exponentially worse as the CPU/L2 Cache/Memory latencies add up. Writes are "fire and forget," and so do not suffer as much because of the latencies.
"I'm sure all of that is well and good, but the fact that the BeOS kernel exists, is a microkernel, and has a performance on par or better than (depending on the situation) the Linux kernel tends to, in my mind, dispute Torvalds' views that microkernels are basically intellectual playthings not worthy of implementation."
Now, if you'd read Linux-Kernel (digest or otherwise) or Kernel Traffic, you'd know that Linus has rejected a patch that removes a lot of the Linux Kernel latency because he says Linux is not competing with the BeOS. This patch does exist, and in this Kernel Traffic piece, we see how it removes the latency you complain about, without recoding the Linux kernel as a microkernel. QED: this proves your assertation based on architecture is flawed and false.
If you think the Linux Kernel's design is so horrible, anyway, you should go work on the GNU/Hurd. It needs more development/developers.
I'm the one who injected the "point-and-click" phrase, because it's quite appropriate.
In Linux, when I upgrade the kernel to deal with some erratum, it's a simple process to me. However, it's not simple to other people. To design a script to automate backing up the old kernel source and untar the new, copying the.config, recompiling, and (the hardest part for newbies) updating lilo, would go a long way towards fixing some of the "ease-of-use" things that newbies think exist.
Compare to how it is on OS/2 or NT (or even 9x): to fix a problem fairly easily, you just double click on the.exe -- fwoom. The fix is installed, and you are asked to reboot. One step, vs 4 steps. Heck, if you're using the IE integration in MS, it'll even point out & suggest upgrades for you. The PHBs love that kind of thing.
What I'm not talking about here are the mindless auto-detect or plug & play routines of the various MS OSes. What I am talking about is a way for a user to fix a known problem easily, ie: without having to become an almost kernel developer. A big, shiny, red button "upgrade to Kernel 2.2.14" would be nifty for people new to Linux. They'd feel they were in control, instead of being just confused by a different interface. If they're in control, they like it, and are more likely to experiment and learn.
Debian's apt and the *BSDs ports tree is closest to what could be used to easily fix general userland problems, and with a nice program to deal with keeping the kernel and lilo up to date, you'd have a lot of what the general populace needs. After that, you'd want to look at something like Win2k's Add/Remove program panel, which monitors what's used and what's not, as well as simplifies installing and removing in the eyes of PHBs everywhere (I love Slackwares installpkg/removepkg myself;).
The voice is not quite convincing as belonging to an actual human being, but I still think it's a monumental achievement, especially considering the level of expressiveness it achieves with plain-text English (no hard-coded phonemes or stress codes). What's more, it's by far the most comprehensible and pleasant-sounding TTS engine I've ever encountered -- and, being a TTS nut, I've played with a lot of them, as far back as "Speech by Andy Maguire" on the IBM PC internal speaker and even S.A.M. on the Apple ][
I stuck this into their demo of any text to speech. I think it's interesting how it expanded your TTS to "TextToSpeech"... I wonder what other easter eggs exist there:-) ---
"No, then it's dead in the water for corporate adoption. If there's one thing that linux enthusiasts should take to heart it is the lesson that MS has taught the entire industry: controlling one market allows you to rapidly extend into other (related) markets and then embrace the tech, subvert it, and take that market over."
What "owns" the vertical market space for thin servers? What is going into vertical areas like resteraunt software? What is expanding into desktop and embedded areas at an exponential rate?
Not NT..
I, and others, know Linux isn't perfect. This is why we work together as a coherent community, and why things like FUD will never harm us. You do have a point about the pundits, and I hope it won't be ignored because you acknowledge Linux isn't perfect. ---
"Linux isn't perfect. Support is still an issue. And fixes add up to patches, although you can use automated installation utilities."
At this point, the list of people not supporting Linux is likely shorter than the list of people who are. I think he's confusing support with "double click to add SP9 to your system" ease-of-fixing.
"You will like our integration. Microsoft's decision to make Internet Explorer a hard-to-remove feature of Windows 98 -- in direct defiance of an earlier order by Judge Jackson -- has..."
I don't think there were earlier rulings by Mr. Jackson about not integrating Explorer in Win98. Perhaps he means another judge.
However, there are many interesting bits: "icrosoft got away with this because its legal counsel convinced two out of three judges on an appeals court that Windows 98 "isn't an upgrade of Windows 95" and therefore was in compliance with the previous order. You know a company's in trouble when legal hairsplitting replaces common sense."
Can you sense the bitterness here? I can understand why the man doesn't like Microsoft: how can they sleep at night knowing they were selling IE 4 + the upgrade equivalence of a service pack to the public, for the same price as a full operating system?
It sounds like he's really cluefull about how Linux is starting to make MS sit up and take notice. Since Linux has passed the "embrace and extend," and FUD litmus tests, MS is starting to realise that they have to compete on merits. They obviously thought they could set up Linux as a nice straw men for their DoJ hearing, and later take the community down a few pegs.. But now the result is an actual form of competition, if not full out market share battles:-) ---
Being in italics, I assume the user who submitted it is responsible for it. Bitch to them.
I'm sure Rob and the guys don't have time to cleanup every thing sent their way. ---
Re:glibc2.0 is not obsolete: RedHat - UPDATE GLIBC
on
Mozilla Status Update
·
· Score: 2
Unlike with the Linux kernel, even numbers in the minor quad for the glibc indicates a developer, or unstable, branch. I would not sooner advocate an unstable libc on a distro intended for consumer consumption, than I would advocate using Win 3.1 for running a heart and lung machine.
Please do not join in the usage of unstable code on consumer machines. This leads to bad impressions of Linux, as people are exposed to what should be developer-only problems. ---
glibc2.0 is the development branch of glibc. Running a development C library is probably worse than running a development kernel, as rather than a simple kernel problem causing issues, it's a library problem that will trash any dynamically linked executables that depend on a behaviour.
This is why Slackware did not put glibc2 into it until the 2.1 (stable) branch was released, and a reason why I do not respect Red Hat's distro inclusion methods.
But when I download it, it still has more than 5 megs.
Last time I checked, IE 5 added aprox 120mb to whatever Win32 OS you decided to meld it into. Saying that Mozilla is bad because it's greater than 5mb is like saying you don't like this car getting 10mpg, when your current car takes 20gpm..
It still pops up a DOS window and does not have a nice design.
A CLI box is != a DOS window. There is no command.com, and there is no DOSVM. This is a debug window for developers.. "Pre-alpha" not have meaning in your personal lexicon?
As soon as the GUI gets faster (and nicer) Mozilla will be an option.
The GUI is slick right now, although there are annoying bugs of things not implemented. Most of the slowness is, again, due to debug code. "Pre-alpha"...
If they don't release a public BETA VERY SOON, with a SETUP and a NICE FAST GUI, most people will stick to IE. And all efforts made have been wastedt.
People bitched about Nintendo not releasing their Super Nintendo at the same time as the Sega Genesis. I still bought and loved my Super Nintendo, as did millions of others. Why bitch about delaying, when it's clear from the pre-alpha version that the quality will be much greater than the current 5th gen browsers, in an open source form which allows greater flexibility? ---
"Given a GCC code generator for "native Crusoe," or whatever they'd call the not-involving-emulation instrution set, it ought to be more sensible to run Linux natively on the chip, as that should be faster and more efficient since it takes direct advantage of the CPU's facilities."
This put me in mind of how Apple migrated people from the 68k to the PPC architecture. If you think about it, it's entirely possible now that we could go and, over time, migrate our x86 ISA applications to a perhaps better VLIW or other ISA....
This is very, very much a change from the everyday.
An ISA architectural shift like this would immediately make something like the K7 an expensive paperweight, in terms of the technology it represents. Win2k in VLIW for a cool new proc? It might not happen. But if I can get a proc that runs Linux ultra, ultra fast, and which has a cool software emulation mode for x86 apps.... Folks, we have a winner!!!
Heck, if this chip has been architected correctly, it'd be very, very simple for Linux/Cruseo to start up a x86 emulation "virtual processor" using the processor's own features, and make something like VMware another piece of expensive legacy-ware. There are just so many possibilities!:-)
It'd be tres simple to have hydrogren/oxygen stored in pure form at home in a granular powder (this technology was existing and working in 1993). This way you'd just have a home station, or perhaps, like gas, oxygen/hydrogen could be sold, and it's very simple to get it from water (either by eletricity or heat, and waste heat is readily available)...
All the power of gasoline, with all the impact of electricity.. I like it:-)
Theoretical situation: Enter Jon Katz "Hi, I'm Jon Katz, here to introduce my movie. I'll start by briefly discussing how technology affects the many people in society. Why, just recently I was...." Eye's heavy. Can't think.. Sleepy.. fading.. The geeks fall asleep. The marketters in the audience are enthralled.
72 minutes later...
"So that's how I got to work with the cool Slashdot guys. Here's the movie." Jon Katz steps to the side to watch the responce. A familiar theme song starts up.
Geeks in audience start to groggily wake. "WHAT THE HELL!? This is just Geeks In Space playing! Wait, what's that on the screen..."
On the screen, an image that is sometimes a mandelbrot set and sometimes a julia set is jiggling through a tunnel like image. It is not anti-aliased, and looks very pixelated.
"Hey, I recognize that, that's a sonqiue visualisation plugin. That bastard is making money from boring us to tears, and the slashdot crew's own music! And using a pathetic Windows MP3 player with no anti-aliasing.. LET'S GET 'IM!"
The geeks swarm over Jon, leaving nothing behind but a laptop with a pre-release of Windows 2000 Professional on it. On their way out the theatre, they also start mobbing the marketters in the audience, and incite a few riots around Radio Shack.
[fin]
Yeah, so if this movie is just Jon/Mp3 visualisation, we'll be on you like stink on a monkey. We at Echsuh (the Elite Cabal of High School and University Hackers) are not to be toyed with!
Actually, a friend homebrewed something in VB. I stuck it on some sacrificial machines that had Windows on them. They're on for CSC/RC5-64, so they might as well pay for their electricity/net connection. I can't wait until I can sell my spare proccessing time to grad students >;-) ---
But those protocols would seem to require reverse engineering, ala Samba..
The best solution you'll likely find (interum) is either VNC from AT&T (free, semi-opensource), or one of the commercial ones listed on this X resource site.
Citrix has a download site with some multi-platform clients for their servers, but nothing for Linux (although there is a Java one).
I'm afraid that's the closest you'll get. Even then, they're not the best solution as Win32 API (and 99.99999999999, yadda, % apps) really were not designed with anything other than the assumption that 1) they'd be on the local machine, and 2) there's only one user ever on the machine. This is why VNC is a bit slow, and things like Winframe and NT:TSE don't scale well. ---
You can never really know what you're getting in a boxed system, just as you can never know what you're getting component wise. However, you'll know you're buying good components when you homebrew.
Another good thing is that a lot of companies are putting ludicrous little stickers that invalidate your warrantee if you try to expand or just open up your computer. I'd rather find components (which can even be had cheaply via eBay, and other one-time places that equalise the prices vs. a bulk bought machine), and stick them together than have to worry about black-box purchased machines. There is a great satisfaction to this.
Here's an even better pro for homebrew: when something breaks, you don't lose your whole PC. I had a friend who bought an eMachine. It died (PS/mobo failure). They returned it for another. It died. (Twice now they've lost important data, data they can't get back, as well as put sensitive data into the hands of someone else).. Now they have an HP Pavilion, and I'm hoping it'll die so they'll break down and let me build them one:-)
A reverse of the above situation: When I had a problem with my HD (in my tres cool homebrew system), I called the tech number for the HD (not some clueless middle-man company, like Gateway). I talked to people who work with the hardware designers, and they were able to advise me on what to do quickly, and for free. A simple loop of LLF and zero filling later (wouldn't want sensitive data to leave with my busted HD), and it was off to the company, which replaced it at no cost within a few weeks.
Homebrew means answering to yourself, and dealing with hardware manufacturers. Pre-built means dealing with a (quite possibly clueless) middle man, who may or may not charge for support, and dealing with proprietary things (Compaq, HP, eMachines).. Not to mention the insanity of buying a computer with a modem, when you will never, ever use one (my friend has a cable modem, but both eMachines and the HP Pavilion have modems they'll never, ever use).
But then, that's just my opinion. YMMV, although you'll kick yourself when you eMachine dies >:-) And none of it applies to laptops, which are very, very proprietary (perhaps another ask Slashdot: where to get good laptops). ---
They've already outlawed television. While this isn't the same as the Internet, it proves they are somewhat reactionist. Let time's natural forward flow reintroduce them to reality.. Although it will be more jarring if they hadn't decided to live in the old ways.
Note: The old ways are bad because they stop people from building up a global picture, and a developing an understanding of how they themselves relate to it. This leads to nasty xenophobia and racial/religous intollerance, among other things. ---
Slashdot Mirror
The domains in question were being actioned off by domain squatters...
:-)
How many of these Linux domains were snapped up because of the various IPOs in the 4th quarter of 1999? I betcha lots
Linus was doing the community a service. If you're a guy in a basement with an idea for a new distro or something, and instead of the 50$ NSI or (cheaper) alternative, you have to go give 2,000$ to 200,000$ to some squatter for it (and they are using them for money) you're SOL. Linus is giving the middle finger to squatters (who rank with spammers, in my books), and helping keep the domains as cheap as you can find them. And that's a Good Thing (TM).
---
"If the money were going to go to Microsoft in some way, do you doubt in the slightest way that there wouldn't be 9 million such Linux-zealot trolls making every version of Windows-Sucks up for a username posting fake bids?"
I should hope not. While there is the odd zealot, the Linux community has grown up over the last year or so in terms of their dealings with the outside world.
I don't see how you can draw a parrellel to Linux and Microsoft about the money going somewhere, though, as it'd go to either the charity Mike chose, or a charity the highest bidder chose -- not Linux or a distribution maker. And if it did go to MS -- why? They're a big company, and they are very profitable. Why would they need money?
---
I only vote for that I like to use. Slashdot has posted links to a couple of polls, and it's funny to watch the various deluded people from each group fight over it (today it's OpenBSD, tomorrow it's Windows, the next day Linux, and then FreeBSD).. It's entertainment, a spectator sport, if you will.
Raising a bid price is not. If you've big 2,400$, and some guy forces you to 2,800$ -- are you happy? There's no way to prove he is trolling the price higher.. If he did never intend to pay, there's 400$ poofed away. That's not entertainment. That's sick.
---
"linuxsux (0) "
With the requisite shades. And, suprisingly, seems to have a high bid (might be a welcher).
But who would sink to this level? This is going to a charity, be it one to feed the homeless, one to help children, or one to help people being stepped on big corporations. Why should some troll be allowed to stomp all over this good will?
Using this for free adversiting or free trolling over Linux users (raising the bid price unfairly, too)..
It really says a lot about a person's moral fibre, that. It also really disgusts me.
---
From their FAQ:
Q: Does this mean BeOS runs "under" Windows?
A: No. Although you can launch BeOS via a file within Windows, BeOS does not run as a Windows application. Double-clicking the file will exit Windows and boot BeOS from a large file in the FAT file system which contains within it a BFS volume.
Q: If I install BeOS 5 within Windows, will I still have the advantages of the Be File System?
A: Yes.
Q: Will I have to run Windows to run BeOS 5?
A: No. Although we will offer an installation as described above that will allow you run BeOS from within Windows without repartitioning your hard drive, you will still be able to run BeOS as a stand-alone operating system.
Q: If I install BeOS 5 within Windows, will performance suffer compared to the stand-alone version?
A: Assuming your Windows partition is not highly fragmented, in most cases you probably won't notice a difference in performance between installation methods.
Q: Will I be able to install BeOS 5 within operating systems other than Windows?
A: Not at this time. Note, though, that if you don't use Windows, you will be able to install BeOS as a stand-alone operating system as described above.
I mean, this is the third or fourth complaint about BeOS 5 requiring Windows, losing the advantage of BeFS, etc. How many clue-by-fours must be applied for people to finish reading the FAQ? Why must people stop right when they see "Windows" and go complain on Slashdot?
---
"Basically, the gist of his argument is that microkernels aren't any better than monolithic kernels, simply because any tricks you can pull to optimize a microkernel can be applied towards optimizing a monolithic kernel. Microkernels aren't necessarily any more portable than a well-designed monolithic one, and they don't necessarily guarantee better performance. Further, they have some overhead that monolithic kernels can avoid."
:-)
He's right. Splitting up a perfectly working kernel in a myriad of tiny things that run in seperate address spaces buys you flexibility, not performance. Microkernels depend quite heavily on message passing via memory regions and other IPC methods. The problem is that (on the x86 PC at least) there is a heavy overhead to the memory reads. In the days when the CPU core can only access its L2 cache on every other, or every third, CPU instruction (K7), it doesn't make sense to play tricks with the MMU and address space. It's great for embeded systems where modularity is important, and memory latencies are not an issue, but a properly designed/architectured monolithic kernel works better on x86 machines.
If you read this Kernel Traffic piece, you'll see that (suprise, suprise!) the DinX framebuffer does not work as well as X's classic system because of the x86 memory bottleneck.
(I quote from the piece)"Just to clarify, performance is currently horrible on PC hardware because we read (memmove) from the framebuffer a lot when dragging windows around. And it seems PC hardware does this really slowly. "
This is because a read requires the data to filter through the main memory bus (100Mhz or 66Mhz), to the L2 cache (same as memory bus on Socket 7, a bit faster for PII/Celeron/K7), and then to the CPU and its L1 cache. So the message reading overhead exists, and is getting exponentially worse as the CPU/L2 Cache/Memory latencies add up. Writes are "fire and forget," and so do not suffer as much because of the latencies.
"I'm sure all of that is well and good, but the fact that the BeOS kernel exists, is a microkernel, and has a performance on par or better than (depending on the situation) the Linux kernel tends to, in my mind, dispute Torvalds' views that microkernels are basically intellectual playthings not worthy of implementation."
Now, if you'd read Linux-Kernel (digest or otherwise) or Kernel Traffic, you'd know that Linus has rejected a patch that removes a lot of the Linux Kernel latency because he says Linux is not competing with the BeOS. This patch does exist, and in this Kernel Traffic piece, we see how it removes the latency you complain about, without recoding the Linux kernel as a microkernel. QED: this proves your assertation based on architecture is flawed and false.
If you think the Linux Kernel's design is so horrible, anyway, you should go work on the GNU/Hurd. It needs more development/developers.
Cogito ergo cogito sum
---
I'm the one who injected the "point-and-click" phrase, because it's quite appropriate.
.config, recompiling, and (the hardest part for newbies) updating lilo, would go a long way towards fixing some of the "ease-of-use" things that newbies think exist.
.exe -- fwoom. The fix is installed, and you are asked to reboot. One step, vs 4 steps. Heck, if you're using the IE integration in MS, it'll even point out & suggest upgrades for you. The PHBs love that kind of thing.
;).
In Linux, when I upgrade the kernel to deal with some erratum, it's a simple process to me. However, it's not simple to other people. To design a script to automate backing up the old kernel source and untar the new, copying the
Compare to how it is on OS/2 or NT (or even 9x): to fix a problem fairly easily, you just double click on the
What I'm not talking about here are the mindless auto-detect or plug & play routines of the various MS OSes. What I am talking about is a way for a user to fix a known problem easily, ie: without having to become an almost kernel developer. A big, shiny, red button "upgrade to Kernel 2.2.14" would be nifty for people new to Linux. They'd feel they were in control, instead of being just confused by a different interface. If they're in control, they like it, and are more likely to experiment and learn.
Debian's apt and the *BSDs ports tree is closest to what could be used to easily fix general userland problems, and with a nice program to deal with keeping the kernel and lilo up to date, you'd have a lot of what the general populace needs. After that, you'd want to look at something like Win2k's Add/Remove program panel, which monitors what's used and what's not, as well as simplifies installing and removing in the eyes of PHBs everywhere (I love Slackwares installpkg/removepkg myself
Just a thought.
---
The voice is not quite convincing as belonging to an actual human being, but I still think it's a monumental achievement, especially considering the level of expressiveness it achieves with plain-text English (no hard-coded phonemes or stress codes). What's more, it's by far the most comprehensible and pleasant-sounding TTS engine I've ever encountered -- and, being a TTS nut, I've played with a lot of them, as far back as "Speech by Andy Maguire" on the IBM PC internal speaker and even S.A.M. on the Apple ][
... I wonder what other easter eggs exist there :-)
I stuck this into their demo of any text to speech. I think it's interesting how it expanded your TTS to "TextToSpeech"
---
You know a company's in trouble when legal hairsplitting replaces common sense."
;-)
Was quoted from the original article.. Bad siggy
I was commenting on, if not the bitterness, and least the not-liking this Windows reporter felt for the MS marketting tactics.
---
Perhaps a filter through ispell would be good, but mailing Rob in a friendly tone would, perhaps, do more in terms of goodlyness.
:-)
You have a very valid point. I suggest you send it
---
"Does linux have an MS Office 2000 clone? 100% word compatibility?"
Projects like AbiWord work to address this.
"No, then it's dead in the water for corporate adoption. If there's one thing that linux enthusiasts should take to heart it is the lesson that MS has taught the entire industry: controlling one market allows you to rapidly extend into other (related) markets and then embrace the tech, subvert it, and take that market over."
What "owns" the vertical market space for thin servers? What is going into vertical areas like resteraunt software? What is expanding into desktop and embedded areas at an exponential rate?
Not NT..
I, and others, know Linux isn't perfect. This is why we work together as a coherent community, and why things like FUD will never harm us.
You do have a point about the pundits, and I hope it won't be ignored because you acknowledge Linux isn't perfect.
---
There's a subtle difference between factual problems, which I'm sure people will point out kindly, and spelling errors.
Don't lose your sense of humanity in the noise of slashdot; don't flame.
---
"Linux isn't perfect. Support is still an issue. And fixes add up to patches, although you can use automated installation utilities."
..."
:-)
At this point, the list of people not supporting Linux is likely shorter than the list of people who are. I think he's confusing support with "double click to add SP9 to your system" ease-of-fixing.
"You will like our integration. Microsoft's decision to make Internet Explorer a hard-to-remove feature of Windows 98 -- in direct defiance of an earlier order by Judge Jackson -- has
I don't think there were earlier rulings by Mr. Jackson about not integrating Explorer in Win98. Perhaps he means another judge.
However, there are many interesting bits:
"icrosoft got away with this because its legal counsel convinced two out of three judges on an appeals court that Windows 98 "isn't an upgrade of Windows 95" and therefore was in compliance with the previous order. You know a company's in trouble when legal hairsplitting replaces common sense."
Can you sense the bitterness here? I can understand why the man doesn't like Microsoft: how can they sleep at night knowing they were selling IE 4 + the upgrade equivalence of a service pack to the public, for the same price as a full operating system?
It sounds like he's really cluefull about how Linux is starting to make MS sit up and take notice. Since Linux has passed the "embrace and extend," and FUD litmus tests, MS is starting to realise that they have to compete on merits. They obviously thought they could set up Linux as a nice straw men for their DoJ hearing, and later take the community down a few pegs.. But now the result is an actual form of competition, if not full out market share battles
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Being in italics, I assume the user who submitted it is responsible for it. Bitch to them.
I'm sure Rob and the guys don't have time to cleanup every thing sent their way.
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Unlike with the Linux kernel, even numbers in the minor quad for the glibc indicates a developer, or unstable, branch. I would not sooner advocate an unstable libc on a distro intended for consumer consumption, than I would advocate using Win 3.1 for running a heart and lung machine.
Please do not join in the usage of unstable code on consumer machines. This leads to bad impressions of Linux, as people are exposed to what should be developer-only problems.
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glibc2.0 is the development branch of glibc. Running a development C library is probably worse than running a development kernel, as rather than a simple kernel problem causing issues, it's a library problem that will trash any dynamically linked executables that depend on a behaviour.
This is why Slackware did not put glibc2 into it until the 2.1 (stable) branch was released, and a reason why I do not respect Red Hat's distro inclusion methods.
Please, upgrade to a stable glibc branch.
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But when I download it, it still has more than 5 megs.
...
Last time I checked, IE 5 added aprox 120mb to whatever Win32 OS you decided to meld it into. Saying that Mozilla is bad because it's greater than 5mb is like saying you don't like this car getting 10mpg, when your current car takes 20gpm..
It still pops up a DOS window and does not have a nice design.
A CLI box is != a DOS window. There is no command.com, and there is no DOSVM. This is a debug window for developers.. "Pre-alpha" not have meaning in your personal lexicon?
As soon as the GUI gets faster (and nicer) Mozilla will be an option.
The GUI is slick right now, although there are annoying bugs of things not implemented. Most of the slowness is, again, due to debug code. "Pre-alpha"
If they don't release a public BETA VERY SOON, with a SETUP and a NICE FAST GUI, most people will stick to IE. And all efforts made have been wastedt.
People bitched about Nintendo not releasing their Super Nintendo at the same time as the Sega Genesis. I still bought and loved my Super Nintendo, as did millions of others. Why bitch about delaying, when it's clear from the pre-alpha version that the quality will be much greater than the current 5th gen browsers, in an open source form which allows greater flexibility?
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"Given a GCC code generator for "native Crusoe," or whatever they'd call the not-involving-emulation instrution set, it ought to be more sensible to run Linux natively on the chip, as that should be faster and more efficient since it takes direct advantage of the CPU's facilities."
:-)
This put me in mind of how Apple migrated people from the 68k to the PPC architecture. If you think about it, it's entirely possible now that we could go and, over time, migrate our x86 ISA applications to a perhaps better VLIW or other ISA....
This is very, very much a change from the everyday.
An ISA architectural shift like this would immediately make something like the K7 an expensive paperweight, in terms of the technology it represents. Win2k in VLIW for a cool new proc? It might not happen. But if I can get a proc that runs Linux ultra, ultra fast, and which has a cool software emulation mode for x86 apps.... Folks, we have a winner!!!
Heck, if this chip has been architected correctly, it'd be very, very simple for Linux/Cruseo to start up a x86 emulation "virtual processor" using the processor's own features, and make something like VMware another piece of expensive legacy-ware. There are just so many possibilities!
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Yeah.. They poked at my system's port 80, too.. Luckily, they were already denied because of the probe to port 119.. :)
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It'd be tres simple to have hydrogren/oxygen stored in pure form at home in a granular powder (this technology was existing and working in 1993). This way you'd just have a home station, or perhaps, like gas, oxygen/hydrogen could be sold, and it's very simple to get it from water (either by eletricity or heat, and waste heat is readily available)...
:-)
All the power of gasoline, with all the impact of electricity.. I like it
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(joke)
...."
:-)
Theoretical situation:
Enter Jon Katz
"Hi, I'm Jon Katz, here to introduce my movie. I'll start by briefly discussing how technology affects the many people in society. Why, just recently I was
Eye's heavy. Can't think.. Sleepy.. fading..
The geeks fall asleep. The marketters in the audience are enthralled.
72 minutes later...
"So that's how I got to work with the cool Slashdot guys. Here's the movie."
Jon Katz steps to the side to watch the responce.
A familiar theme song starts up.
Geeks in audience start to groggily wake.
"WHAT THE HELL!? This is just Geeks In Space playing! Wait, what's that on the screen..."
On the screen, an image that is sometimes a mandelbrot set and sometimes a julia set is jiggling through a tunnel like image. It is not anti-aliased, and looks very pixelated.
"Hey, I recognize that, that's a sonqiue visualisation plugin. That bastard is making money from boring us to tears, and the slashdot crew's own music! And using a pathetic Windows MP3 player with no anti-aliasing.. LET'S GET 'IM!"
The geeks swarm over Jon, leaving nothing behind but a laptop with a pre-release of Windows 2000 Professional on it. On their way out the theatre, they also start mobbing the marketters in the audience, and incite a few riots around Radio Shack.
[fin]
Yeah, so if this movie is just Jon/Mp3 visualisation, we'll be on you like stink on a monkey. We at Echsuh (the Elite Cabal of High School and University Hackers) are not to be toyed with!
(/joke)
At-choo
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Actually, a friend homebrewed something in VB. I stuck it on some sacrificial machines that had Windows on them. They're on for CSC/RC5-64, so they might as well pay for their electricity/net connection. I can't wait until I can sell my spare proccessing time to grad students >;-)
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But those protocols would seem to require reverse engineering, ala Samba..
The best solution you'll likely find (interum) is either VNC from AT&T (free, semi-opensource), or one of the commercial ones listed on this X resource site.
Citrix has a download site with some multi-platform clients for their servers, but nothing for Linux (although there is a Java one).
I'm afraid that's the closest you'll get. Even then, they're not the best solution as Win32 API (and 99.99999999999, yadda, % apps) really were not designed with anything other than the assumption that 1) they'd be on the local machine, and 2) there's only one user ever on the machine. This is why VNC is a bit slow, and things like Winframe and NT:TSE don't scale well.
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You can never really know what you're getting in a boxed system, just as you can never know what you're getting component wise.
:-)
However, you'll know you're buying good components when you homebrew.
Another good thing is that a lot of companies are putting ludicrous little stickers that invalidate your warrantee if you try to expand or just open up your computer. I'd rather find components (which can even be had cheaply via eBay, and other one-time places that equalise the prices vs. a bulk bought machine), and stick them together than have to worry about black-box purchased machines. There is a great satisfaction to this.
Here's an even better pro for homebrew: when something breaks, you don't lose your whole PC. I had a friend who bought an eMachine. It died (PS/mobo failure). They returned it for another. It died. (Twice now they've lost important data, data they can't get back, as well as put sensitive data into the hands of someone else).. Now they have an HP Pavilion, and I'm hoping it'll die so they'll break down and let me build them one
A reverse of the above situation:
When I had a problem with my HD (in my tres cool homebrew system), I called the tech number for the HD (not some clueless middle-man company, like Gateway). I talked to people who work with the hardware designers, and they were able to advise me on what to do quickly, and for free. A simple loop of LLF and zero filling later (wouldn't want sensitive data to leave with my busted HD), and it was off to the company, which replaced it at no cost within a few weeks.
Homebrew means answering to yourself, and dealing with hardware manufacturers. Pre-built means dealing with a (quite possibly clueless) middle man, who may or may not charge for support, and dealing with proprietary things (Compaq, HP, eMachines).. Not to mention the insanity of buying a computer with a modem, when you will never, ever use one (my friend has a cable modem, but both eMachines and the HP Pavilion have modems they'll never, ever use).
But then, that's just my opinion. YMMV, although you'll kick yourself when you eMachine dies >:-) And none of it applies to laptops, which are very, very proprietary (perhaps another ask Slashdot: where to get good laptops).
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They've already outlawed television. While this isn't the same as the Internet, it proves they are somewhat reactionist. Let time's natural forward flow reintroduce them to reality.. Although it will be more jarring if they hadn't decided to live in the old ways.
Note: The old ways are bad because they stop people from building up a global picture, and a developing an understanding of how they themselves relate to it. This leads to nasty xenophobia and racial/religous intollerance, among other things.
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