I certainly see your point that for some popular devices (e.g. nVidia cards), the proprietary drivers are much better than the open ones. I also agree that going the moral road will turn away some users.
However, Debian is imho big enough to pull this sort of thing. If some micro-league, half-assed distro went this route, it would die in obscurity, but a major product like Debian will survive. Furthermore, by rejecting proprietary firmware and documentation, Debian is raising awareness of some important issues (like Fedora not including mp3 support raises awareness of patent encumbered technologies).
Say you get a shiny new pci card with a little tux on the box, and a proprietary driver on the CD. Cool, huh? No. Not cool. The driver will work with your Linux system provided:
-you use kernel 2.4 or maybe 2.6
-you compiled said kernel with gcc 3.2 or 3.3
-you use glibc 2.somethingorother
-your/etc,/dev, and/proc are set up just right.
Years pass. Linux gains 20% desktop market share. Duke Nukem Forever is released for Mac and Lintel. You fish out an old computer from your closet; you want to install a Linux (kernel 3.0; compiled with gcc 3.5; with glibc 2.somethingelse; and a GNU/Darwin directory layout) to turn into a streaming virtual reality server for your apartment. Guess what's the probability of your closed-source driver still working?
Open source drivers might be a hassle to use in the short term, but C source is still the most portable way to distribute software.
We have machines at work that are currently running Redhat 7.2. A couple are RedHat 8, 9, and RHEL 2.1.
I am curious: are you still getting bugfixes and security updates for your redhat 7 systems? It seems hard to believe that someone still maintains the package tree for distributions that old, especially since redhat itself seems to have abandoned them.
Straight from the FAQ: 'the "g" in "gentoo" is a soft "g", as in "gentle"'. You know, as in the name of the penguin species, or as in Gen(eration) Two?
Why 3 (CPU's or cores)? All modern hardware seems to do things in power of two, for obvious reasons (largest number of components for a given address space). Many algorithms are simplest to express if they operate on data sets with 2^n elements. So why does Microsoft go the odd route?
My guess, just based on numerology, is that this is a fake or a joke.
The companies comprising RIAA form an oligopoly (and the RIAA itself can be considered to form a monopoly if it usually acts as a single body) simply by virtue of their dominance of the market. It doesn't matter if they provide a useful service. It doesn't matter if they charge, or don't charge, exorbirant rates. It doesn't matter if they have 10 million competitors (each with $0.12 in annual sales). As long as you have 5 firms dominating (>50%) a given market, that's oligopoly for you.
Now, is oligopoly good? Classical economics says it's not an efficient way to distribute goods. I.e. RIAA makes a killing, the consumers get ripped off, and the ripping off part actually outweighs the making a killing part. On the other hand, if I understand it right, under some circumstances oligopolies produce more research and development than a monopoly or a large number of small firms. If only that research was directed at something useful and not at turning a given random person off the street into a pop star...
Isn't there a theory that says whenever you want to check if a software is _really_ user-friendly, give it for your mother to try it. If she can use it easily, then anyone will.
Not necessarily. An interface that is easy to learn the first time might be a nightmare to use repeatedly. An interface that is intuitive for a non-computer-literate person might seem idiotic to a more experienced user (MS Bob, anyone?). And an interface that is fundamentally good might seem bad to someone who spent 10 years using Windows.
You know, in the country of United States of America, government officials have the power to listen to all your communications, confiscate your property, deprive you of the right to travel, vote, or run for public office; they can send you to fight a war you are not interested in fighting, they can raze your house to build a highway, and they can even deprive you of life.
You know why that doesn't worry most people?
Because the system has "checks and balances". Police (theoretically) need a warrant to search your house. The president (very theoretically) needs Congressional approval to fight a war for more than 90 days. Your county has to hold public hearings before bulldozing your property, and even then you will get compensation.
There is nothing wrong with the government having power over individuals, as long as there are checks to make sure a single small group cannot abuse that power. So, I welcome black boxes as long as (like in the Montreal case) opening them requires a judge's order to gather evidence in a criminal trial. I welcome having to swipe your driver's licence to turn on the engine, as long as the card reader is only installed by judge's order in the cars of serial DUI offenders or whatever. And I welcome having the police be able to remotely scan car registration data, as long as they get a warrant because they are looking for a particular felon.
Seriously, dude. The weather outside is nice. Take off the tin foil hat.
True, the Windows client is spyware-ridden. But in my experience, the Real codec for audio provides a decent sound at much lower bitrates than just about anything else. It's just that the maximum quality it attains is kind of sucky... Anyway, if you want an almost flawless-sounding 3.5 minutes of jazz weighing in at 500 K, you have to use Real.
Ever head of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. by GSC? Granted, the sunlit meadow will be radioactive enough to kill you in 5 minutes, and the birds 'n butterflies are all weird mutants... (game is set around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant)
ou can have all your "fonts" in a row under KDE or Gnome but Mozilla is still likely to render and scale them improperly.
This is an interesting point. I have recently switched to Xorg 6.7, and noticed Firefox and KDE fonts get uglified. Solution took a bit of time to find. Essentially: carefully look at the order xfs or xserver loads the fonts; use:unscaled for all bitmapped fonts; download Microsoft and Bitstream truetype fonts and have them load before anything else; and don't forget to regenerate fontconfig cache. So basically, it's not Mozilla's fault, it's the fault of your sysadmin if he can't configure fonts properly.
Oh, and if it matters, I am using Firefox compiled against gtk2. Maybe the gtk1 version has worse font handling, but then again, why would you want to use it?
The p;roblem, among others, is that we don't have enough real punishment going on for hacking activities.
The problem is that the concentration of clue among sysadmins is just too low. If you are still running a do_brk vulnerable kernel 5 months after the vulnerability was discovered and patched and widely publicised (remember the Debian and Gentoo server compromises that were all over the news?), you deserve whatever you get. I mean, sure, if you were hacked on December 5, my sympathy goes out to you, but if you are running unpatched 2.4.22 right now, there is no excuse.
As for jail time for hackers: to justify that, you would need to show that a moderately skilled sysadmin, one that reads a security-related news source at least on a quarterly basis, physically cannot protect his/her system from a moderately skilled attacker. For example, suppose someone proved P=NP and made a polynomial-time ssh decryptor. Only then we would need laws against password sniffing, because once you let a government have a taste of regulating the Internet, it will not stop until it has, so to speak, filled its belly with electronic freedoms.
Don't forget Eskil Steenberg's Verse, the 3D package with quite possibly the coolest backdrope image ever. (I believe Eskil lives in Sweden.) The project received some money from the EU, so perhaps, one day, there will be Loq Airou released for Linux...
Much as I like Python's clean syntax and extensive libraries, currently it's just too slow. I have used Python programs in system administration (Gentoo uses it for just about everything) and cgi scripting (ViewCVS); also, I have written a fairly large Python program with a Tkinter GUI (a frontend to a computational fluid dynamics package). The only things that unites those pieces of software are 1) Python; and 2) waiting long, long seconds for them to respond.
I don't want to start a flame war, but Perl seems quite a bit faster. Why is no-one even considering it?
1.) In a battle, it's important to keep moving. If you suddenly spin your ship 180 degrees and fire your thrusters the other way, you're going to come to a complete stop for a moment before re-accellerating back to your attack speed. A wide sweeping arc keeps you in motion and provides for better evasive maneuvers.
A far more important consideration is G-forces. If you are traveling at 0.2c (relative to a given planet, for instance), turn 180 degrees, suddenly engage thrusters, and start going at 0.2c the other way, you are going to end up with a lot of dead space marines. A wide turn helps keep your carbon-based lifeforms alive and functional.
Why not make the ship radially (or for that matter, spherically) symmetric?
Because unless you have some kind of a magical gravity generator on board, if you want a "floor" and a "ceiling", you have to accelerate more or less in one direction. (Note that a warship is likely to always be under acceleration, at least while in battle.)
Re:From sSomeone who pitches those PHB's...
on
Why PHBs Fear Linux
·
· Score: 1
You know... I've never met a Windows zealot. I know many people who only use Windows, and they do so for non-zealoty reasons. Some don't know anything else exists. Some have tried an old Mac (or Redhat 5), and decided Windows is the better of two evils. Some know about Linux, but think it's too hard. Some don't want to switch because Windows works well enough, or because changing an OS takes too much effort. Some have considered switching, but their software or hardware doesn't allow them to do so. None of them are passionate about their choice of OS, and they don't go around trying to convert Mac and Linux users.
On the other hand, Linux users tend to plug their OS whenever an opportunity arises. "Hey, so you got a new microwave? Did you know it can probably run Slackware?"
This is seriously a problem. To survive, minority OS's must recruit new users, but if they go about it like Jehovah's witnesses, they will only generate hostility.
I don't see why her instructor was clueless; each of the questions actually has a fairly deep answer that might not be obvious unless you've been immersed in the open-source world.
1.What is Linux and who created it? This involves talking about Linux vs. GNU/Linux, the way the kernel is being developed, etc.
2.Why was it released into the public domain rather than copyrighted? Involves finding out about Minix, GPL, and FSF.
3. Is it possible to copyright anything that relates to Linux? If so, in what way? This may not be obvious after a cursory glance at the GPL. So, cue discussion about copyright vs. source code availability, and modifying a GPL program vs. running a program on a GPL kernel.
selecting the text and middle clicking always does
In my limited experience, it doesn't. My testcase is copying from a recent beta of Openoffice-ximian into Kate 3.2 all inside XFce4 (not a very typical setup, I suspect, but it's the way I like it). After maybe 5-10 times of copying/pasting (using middle click or ^V/^C, it doesn't matter) weird things start to happen. Basically, only a small random excerpt of the copied material gets pasted. Fortunately, XFce4 includes a clipboard applet which seemst to be compatible with all copied text.
Seems to me Linux/Unix has the advantages of good fundamental design (SMB, anyone?)
Are you implying that NFS (v3 at least, I don't know much about v4) is a "good fundamental design"? SMB at least allows finer-grained security than by IP address.
... and pretty solid stability/security. Microsoft has flash and convenience.
Internally, WinNT series is based on VMS, which was extremely stable and secure. If Microsoft releases a stripped-down version with no (or optional) GUI, no flash and no convenience, I suspect it will make a great server operating system. Of course, that will won't happen until pigs evolve wings.
Create a free public online database of doctors who have been sued and the reasons why.
Even better, use slashcode. You should be able to leave comments about any of the lawsuits in the database, and others should be able to mod you down if you are a Simpsons character. The system would have to be tweaked so the collective mod power of the doctors equals the collective power of lawyers and victims (otherwise, a doctor would have no more chance than a Microsoft apologist), but it would probably be the fairest way for everyone concerned to get their opinions into the open.
Thing is, there are no good guys in there. There are doctors who view their patients as walking wallets, and there are lawyers who would sue the hospital, the Federal Highway Safety Administration, their carmaker, and every other person on the road for "whiplash syndrome" in a 3 mile-per-hour collision. So make them a publically acessible forum, and watch the trolls dancing around flames.
Slashdot Mirror
I certainly see your point that for some popular devices (e.g. nVidia cards), the proprietary drivers are much better than the open ones. I also agree that going the moral road will turn away some users.
/etc, /dev, and /proc are set up just right.
However, Debian is imho big enough to pull this sort of thing. If some micro-league, half-assed distro went this route, it would die in obscurity, but a major product like Debian will survive. Furthermore, by rejecting proprietary firmware and documentation, Debian is raising awareness of some important issues (like Fedora not including mp3 support raises awareness of patent encumbered technologies).
Say you get a shiny new pci card with a little tux on the box, and a proprietary driver on the CD. Cool, huh? No. Not cool. The driver will work with your Linux system provided:
-you use kernel 2.4 or maybe 2.6
-you compiled said kernel with gcc 3.2 or 3.3
-you use glibc 2.somethingorother
-your
Years pass. Linux gains 20% desktop market share. Duke Nukem Forever is released for Mac and Lintel. You fish out an old computer from your closet; you want to install a Linux (kernel 3.0; compiled with gcc 3.5; with glibc 2.somethingelse; and a GNU/Darwin directory layout) to turn into a streaming virtual reality server for your apartment. Guess what's the probability of your closed-source driver still working?
Open source drivers might be a hassle to use in the short term, but C source is still the most portable way to distribute software.
We have machines at work that are currently running Redhat 7.2. A couple are RedHat 8, 9, and RHEL 2.1.
I am curious: are you still getting bugfixes and security updates for your redhat 7 systems? It seems hard to believe that someone still maintains the package tree for distributions that old, especially since redhat itself seems to have abandoned them.
Hm...
root# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=~x86 USE="chief_architect" emerge 'sys-distro/gentoo'
Here are the packages that I would emerge, in order:
[ebuild R ] sys-distro/gentoo-linux-20040426 0 kB
Total size of downloads: 0 kB
root# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=~x86 emerge -pl 'sys-distro/gentoo-linux'
Here are the packages that I would emerge, in order:
[ebuild R ] sys-distro/gentoo-linux-20040426
*gentoo-linux-20040426
26 Apr 2004; Daniel Robbins gentoo-linux-20040426.ebuild:
dreadfully sorry
chief_architect USE flag removed
so long, suckers
root#
Straight from the FAQ: 'the "g" in "gentoo" is a soft "g", as in "gentle"'. You know, as in the name of the penguin species, or as in Gen(eration) Two?
Why 3 (CPU's or cores)? All modern hardware seems to do things in power of two, for obvious reasons (largest number of components for a given address space). Many algorithms are simplest to express if they operate on data sets with 2^n elements. So why does Microsoft go the odd route?
My guess, just based on numerology, is that this is a fake or a joke.
Should I feed the troll? Yes, I think I should.
The companies comprising RIAA form an oligopoly (and the RIAA itself can be considered to form a monopoly if it usually acts as a single body) simply by virtue of their dominance of the market. It doesn't matter if they provide a useful service. It doesn't matter if they charge, or don't charge, exorbirant rates. It doesn't matter if they have 10 million competitors (each with $0.12 in annual sales). As long as you have 5 firms dominating (>50%) a given market, that's oligopoly for you.
Now, is oligopoly good? Classical economics says it's not an efficient way to distribute goods. I.e. RIAA makes a killing, the consumers get ripped off, and the ripping off part actually outweighs the making a killing part. On the other hand, if I understand it right, under some circumstances oligopolies produce more research and development than a monopoly or a large number of small firms. If only that research was directed at something useful and not at turning a given random person off the street into a pop star...
Isn't there a theory that says whenever you want to check if a software is _really_ user-friendly, give it for your mother to try it. If she can use it easily, then anyone will.
Not necessarily. An interface that is easy to learn the first time might be a nightmare to use repeatedly. An interface that is intuitive for a non-computer-literate person might seem idiotic to a more experienced user (MS Bob, anyone?). And an interface that is fundamentally good might seem bad to someone who spent 10 years using Windows.
So ask yourself, is this a good thing?
You know, in the country of United States of America, government officials have the power to listen to all your communications, confiscate your property, deprive you of the right to travel, vote, or run for public office; they can send you to fight a war you are not interested in fighting, they can raze your house to build a highway, and they can even deprive you of life.
You know why that doesn't worry most people?
Because the system has "checks and balances". Police (theoretically) need a warrant to search your house. The president (very theoretically) needs Congressional approval to fight a war for more than 90 days. Your county has to hold public hearings before bulldozing your property, and even then you will get compensation.
There is nothing wrong with the government having power over individuals, as long as there are checks to make sure a single small group cannot abuse that power. So, I welcome black boxes as long as (like in the Montreal case) opening them requires a judge's order to gather evidence in a criminal trial. I welcome having to swipe your driver's licence to turn on the engine, as long as the card reader is only installed by judge's order in the cars of serial DUI offenders or whatever. And I welcome having the police be able to remotely scan car registration data, as long as they get a warrant because they are looking for a particular felon.
Seriously, dude. The weather outside is nice. Take off the tin foil hat.
True, the Windows client is spyware-ridden. But in my experience, the Real codec for audio provides a decent sound at much lower bitrates than just about anything else. It's just that the maximum quality it attains is kind of sucky... Anyway, if you want an almost flawless-sounding 3.5 minutes of jazz weighing in at 500 K, you have to use Real.
Real Helix nightly builds 'n tarballs goodness/
It looks like this will be RealPlayer 11. I am not sure how usable the code is at the moment though...
Ever head of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. by GSC? Granted, the sunlit meadow will be radioactive enough to kill you in 5 minutes, and the birds 'n butterflies are all weird mutants... (game is set around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant)
ou can have all your "fonts" in a row under KDE or Gnome but Mozilla is still likely to render and scale them improperly.
:unscaled for all bitmapped fonts; download Microsoft and Bitstream truetype fonts and have them load before anything else; and don't forget to regenerate fontconfig cache. So basically, it's not Mozilla's fault, it's the fault of your sysadmin if he can't configure fonts properly.
This is an interesting point. I have recently switched to Xorg 6.7, and noticed Firefox and KDE fonts get uglified. Solution took a bit of time to find. Essentially: carefully look at the order xfs or xserver loads the fonts; use
Oh, and if it matters, I am using Firefox compiled against gtk2. Maybe the gtk1 version has worse font handling, but then again, why would you want to use it?
The p;roblem, among others, is that we don't have enough real punishment going on for hacking activities.
The problem is that the concentration of clue among sysadmins is just too low. If you are still running a do_brk vulnerable kernel 5 months after the vulnerability was discovered and patched and widely publicised (remember the Debian and Gentoo server compromises that were all over the news?), you deserve whatever you get. I mean, sure, if you were hacked on December 5, my sympathy goes out to you, but if you are running unpatched 2.4.22 right now, there is no excuse.
As for jail time for hackers: to justify that, you would need to show that a moderately skilled sysadmin, one that reads a security-related news source at least on a quarterly basis, physically cannot protect his/her system from a moderately skilled attacker. For example, suppose someone proved P=NP and made a polynomial-time ssh decryptor. Only then we would need laws against password sniffing, because once you let a government have a taste of regulating the Internet, it will not stop until it has, so to speak, filled its belly with electronic freedoms.
Don't forget Eskil Steenberg's Verse, the 3D package with quite possibly the coolest backdrope image ever. (I believe Eskil lives in Sweden.) The project received some money from the EU, so perhaps, one day, there will be Loq Airou released for Linux...
Much as I like Python's clean syntax and extensive libraries, currently it's just too slow. I have used Python programs in system administration (Gentoo uses it for just about everything) and cgi scripting (ViewCVS); also, I have written a fairly large Python program with a Tkinter GUI (a frontend to a computational fluid dynamics package). The only things that unites those pieces of software are 1) Python; and 2) waiting long, long seconds for them to respond.
I don't want to start a flame war, but Perl seems quite a bit faster. Why is no-one even considering it?
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have found the new goatse. Any bets on how long it would take for someone to make ascii art of that?
1.) In a battle, it's important to keep moving. If you suddenly spin your ship 180 degrees and fire your thrusters the other way, you're going to come to a complete stop for a moment before re-accellerating back to your attack speed. A wide sweeping arc keeps you in motion and provides for better evasive maneuvers.
A far more important consideration is G-forces. If you are traveling at 0.2c (relative to a given planet, for instance), turn 180 degrees, suddenly engage thrusters, and start going at 0.2c the other way, you are going to end up with a lot of dead space marines. A wide turn helps keep your carbon-based lifeforms alive and functional.
Why not make the ship radially (or for that matter, spherically) symmetric?
Because unless you have some kind of a magical gravity generator on board, if you want a "floor" and a "ceiling", you have to accelerate more or less in one direction. (Note that a warship is likely to always be under acceleration, at least while in battle.)
You know... I've never met a Windows zealot. I know many people who only use Windows, and they do so for non-zealoty reasons. Some don't know anything else exists. Some have tried an old Mac (or Redhat 5), and decided Windows is the better of two evils. Some know about Linux, but think it's too hard. Some don't want to switch because Windows works well enough, or because changing an OS takes too much effort. Some have considered switching, but their software or hardware doesn't allow them to do so. None of them are passionate about their choice of OS, and they don't go around trying to convert Mac and Linux users.
On the other hand, Linux users tend to plug their OS whenever an opportunity arises. "Hey, so you got a new microwave? Did you know it can probably run Slackware?"
This is seriously a problem. To survive, minority OS's must recruit new users, but if they go about it like Jehovah's witnesses, they will only generate hostility.
I don't see why her instructor was clueless; each of the questions actually has a fairly deep answer that might not be obvious unless you've been immersed in the open-source world.
1.What is Linux and who created it?
This involves talking about Linux vs. GNU/Linux, the way the kernel is being developed, etc.
2.Why was it released into the public domain rather than copyrighted?
Involves finding out about Minix, GPL, and FSF.
3. Is it possible to copyright anything that relates to Linux? If so, in what way?
This may not be obvious after a cursory glance at the GPL. So, cue discussion about copyright vs. source code availability, and modifying a GPL program vs. running a program on a GPL kernel.
On the third hand (this guy must be a mutant! ;)) a lot of companies won't bother to fix flaws if they aren't publicly and obviously posted...
Shouldn't that be "on the gripping hand"?
selecting the text and middle clicking always does
In my limited experience, it doesn't. My testcase is copying from a recent beta of Openoffice-ximian into Kate 3.2 all inside XFce4 (not a very typical setup, I suspect, but it's the way I like it). After maybe 5-10 times of copying/pasting (using middle click or ^V/^C, it doesn't matter) weird things start to happen. Basically, only a small random excerpt of the copied material gets pasted. Fortunately, XFce4 includes a clipboard applet which seemst to be compatible with all copied text.
Seems to me Linux/Unix has the advantages of good fundamental design (SMB, anyone?)
... and pretty solid stability/security. Microsoft has flash and convenience.
Are you implying that NFS (v3 at least, I don't know much about v4) is a "good fundamental design"? SMB at least allows finer-grained security than by IP address.
Internally, WinNT series is based on VMS, which was extremely stable and secure. If Microsoft releases a stripped-down version with no (or optional) GUI, no flash and no convenience, I suspect it will make a great server operating system. Of course, that will won't happen until pigs evolve wings.
Create a free public online database of doctors who have been sued and the reasons why.
Even better, use slashcode. You should be able to leave comments about any of the lawsuits in the database, and others should be able to mod you down if you are a Simpsons character. The system would have to be tweaked so the collective mod power of the doctors equals the collective power of lawyers and victims (otherwise, a doctor would have no more chance than a Microsoft apologist), but it would probably be the fairest way for everyone concerned to get their opinions into the open.
Thing is, there are no good guys in there. There are doctors who view their patients as walking wallets, and there are lawyers who would sue the hospital, the Federal Highway Safety Administration, their carmaker, and every other person on the road for "whiplash syndrome" in a 3 mile-per-hour collision. So make them a publically acessible forum, and watch the trolls dancing around flames.