***THE FOLLOWING EXCUSE IS COPYRIGHT (C) 2004 RANDOMBLAST*** ***LICENSED UNDER THE GNU GPL***
If you're exercising at night in my neighbourhood, you're likely to get mugged. So really, it's much healthier to stay indoors and play games all night.
>It doesn't matter whether you love what you are doing and consider this the hobby you want to spend 110% of your time on: It's exploitation by companies who are not at all interested in creating stuff. They want to use your stuff for free. That's why they trick you into doing it.
No "they" don't. There is no tricking, this letter is lies, lies, lies. Nobody is being exploited here, maybe some corporations are using OSS for free, and possibly profiting or saving money, but most projects are done by talented people that needed this particular program, and decided to share their work with others. And sending this letter to students is just heresy, how is a student studying programming or computer science supposed to learn from closed-source applications? They can't, it's impossible, if the source isn't available there is no way to lok at it to see how it works, you will just be left with "oh, that's cool, i wish i knew how to do that, oh well, i'll never know..."
It's also not a dream, if you think free software is is a dream, you are yourself living in a dream world. Look around you, Open-Source works, i know a lot of people who are using open-source software without even realizing it, while at the same time saying what a bad idea it is. Some people are even benefiting indirectly from it because the "big boys" of the industry used code and ideas from the OSS community.
>The good looking, intelligent girl over there at the bar that you'd really like to talk to doesn't care much whether you are famous amongst a group of geeks
You somehow imply that she will care that you are famous among a group of geeks that develop closed-source software, that is wrong.
>and neither does she even remotely fathom why you'd be famous for that stuff in the first place.
I thought you said she was intelligent:p I'm sure there are some good-looking, intelligent girls in the Closed-Source and Open-Source communities, who will care that you were project lead of.
Oh yes, and i misused that word there - "community", there is no Closed-Source "community" so to speak because (as the name states) closed, if you want a sense of belonging to something, you will be a member of the Open-Source community. For example - Rob Flynn and Sean Egan are the project leads of my favourite and most used application - Gaim. Can you tell me the names of the developers of the closed-source and single-platform equivalent Trillian? Linus Torvalds is project lead of the most famous OSS project - the Linux kernel. Can you tell me the name of the project lead of the Windows kernel? Whenever i meet a fellow geek (not uncommon, i have met 2 in church this past week), and i find they use Linux, we can start a conversation about say, playing around with LDAP, or why the Kernel logger hangs (yes Dave, it's me:p) I could go on and on, but i won't.
I am not against Closed-Source software, i do actually use some of it, and if i worked as a programmer, my job would be to write closed-source apps. But if i were talented enough (and i'm working on it), i would also work on one or more Open-Source projects, that everybody can share. I would not be poor, i would be payed a decent wage by my employer (At least i hope so, for his sake anyway:p) If i help my neighbor move some furniture, or (typical example) help an old lady over the street, or generally do something nice for somebody, am i losing out? Should i demand they pay me for my time and effort? Of course not, it's nice to be nice. If your attitude is "if i'm not getting paid, it's of no value", which you have quite clearly stated in your letter, you need to think about that. Money is a tool, nothing more, and the love of money is the root of all evil. It's not about the money, it's about the community, the attitude, and the general atmosphere. The good software is just the inevitable by-product of everybody helping each other
>What do kids have like that now, though? I'd hate to think that computer studies classes for 14-year-olds drop them right in with C!
I am 14, I am learning C Just today i wrote 2 programs to do my maths for me, it took me 10 minutes, whereas doing the sums would of taken me a good hour. Just what is wrong with a mid-level language? If i learn a low-level language like Assembler i could only write programs for one architecture, and i would have trouble trying to join a real project, if i learn a mid-level language like C i can write for any architecture, and i'm using a common language.
you don't have to backup anything, you can just compile the kernel normally, it will install alongside your current one, then just make a seperate bootloader entry for it. if you want to remove the old kernel (don't bother unlesws you have low diskspace) just rm -rf/lib/modules/2.4. and rm all 2.4 entries in/boot oh, and take out the bootloader entry.
>13000+ Linux break-ins in a year should be serious cause for concern.
mhm, i'm sure there were quite a few more than that, but even so it's nothing compared to the 2 million windows systems hit by some worms, and there are a helluva lot more Linux boxes up in very well advertised positions.
You can quote "surveys" and "proven statistics" at me until you're blue in the face, but when i have to use knoppix to get rid of 2-3 virii per month from my Dad's winXP box that is constantly being "automatically updated" with Windows Update (R) and norton's LiveUpdate, and i have no problems with my 3 Linux boxes (Gentoo-hardened,Debian-stable, and SuSE 9.0) and 1 FreeBSD 5.2 box, and a Linux-based router that are on the same network and get the same use and are all 3 months out-of date because i can't be arsed patching, i can see which is the better OS.
but yes, i do think that the OS is not everything, and you need to know how to secure it, but it's good to have a solid foundation to start with.
define open source. the nVidia drivers (the UDA at least) have source code available, in case there is no precompiled module for your kernel. there is an interesting clause in the LICENSE file:-
No Reverse Engineering. Customer may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE, nor attempt in any other manner to obtain the source code.
but these files are in the package:- nv.c nv.h nv-linux.h os-agp.c os-re gistry.c os-interface.c os-interface.h rmretval .h os-registry.c nv-misc.h gcc-version-check.c
if the source is already there you don't have to reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE. although attempting in any other manner to obtain the source code could include just extracting the archive.
you obviously have the luxury of being a UNIX-only house, and not having the need of a thin-client system, not everybody does. I have VNC servers running on every box on my network except the servers
Firstly, how can a graphics system depend on a DE framework when the DE runs on top of the graphics system And i take it that by not being GNU you mean the license isn't compatible with the GNU GPL. And it does use autoconf.
Other than that I agree that XFree isn't complete crap, and the developers deserve a great deal of respect, but it still has some problems, and it's not really moved with the times, and if Y windows takes off it will be be so much better than XFree And hopefully we may see a snowball effect where XFree falls on it's arse and all the developers join Y Windows:p
My only concern about the proposed Y Windows framework is will it eventually have GTK and Qt libraries? it says on the website that it will have a server-side widget set, but there area a LOT of applications that are written using the GTK and Qt API's, id this is indeed the case then Y Windows will never ever be accepted by the majority of users, especially if Y apps can't run on X.
>It's a shame no one's making Linux games any more, or I might feel compelled to upgrade my graphics card.
Rubbish, it's just the ones on crappy D3D engines, and Half-Life that aren't ported.
And as we all know, they can't port Half-Life because it's a jumbled mess of code mutated from an engine that was upgraded from an engine that was taken from an engine that is now 8 (yes, count them, EIGHT!) years old. And yes, i hate HL, because i've never been able to get it running at all under Wine or Winex, and my framerate natively under win98 or winXP is about 7FPS at 640x480, with an Athlon 1400, 448MB RAM, and an MX400, which is far ahead of the fastest ststem that was around when HL was released. And the less i say about steam the better:p
I tried Debian Woody on one of my spare machines, and i thought it was seriously out of date, it may have the option of a 2.4.18 kernel (the same as RedHat Shrike), but it's got KDE 2.2, which sucks. I tried to go online and use apt-get to update it, but it didn't fetch any of the packages i wanted, apparently they are for the testing release only. Ah well, wiped Debian, got my SuSE 9 with KDE 3.2, and it's compiling the 2.6.2 Kernel now.
but that's just the easy part, try getting your girlfriend/parent/granparent/whoever to install debian or gentoo, i don't think so.
imagine trying to tell them over the phone..."okay, you first you need to relabel the partition to type 83, then build an ext3 filesystem, then make a type 82 filesystem and activate it with swapon, then all you have to do is extract the stage, compile the GNU toolset and bootstrap GCC, then compile the kernel and start emerging your packages one by one. call me in 2-4 days when it's all compiled and i'll show you how to use evolution and openoffice"... "what?...i think i'll stick with windoze"
I think a distro like xandros with red carpet and an easy installer, along with no choice of different dekstop environments or applications would be better for those kinds of people.
um, ok
solution 2 - take www.sco.com out of DNS, right?
but your ping returned an IP address.
and it proves nothing except the fact that their server does not respond to ICMP echoes, which is a common practice.
Starting nmap 3.45 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2004-01-31 21:57 GMT
Interesting ports on www.sco.com (216.250.128.12):
PORT STATE SERVICE
7/tcp filtered echo
80/tcp open http
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 13.062 seconds
That's interesting, because my download speeds vary, sometimes it's 2KB/s, sometimes the whole 70 KB/s. But it always hogs my download so anything else only gets around 2KB/s, and DNS lookups are really slow.
I am using the cursed client from bitcounjurer (python sux), i will try another one.
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***THE FOLLOWING EXCUSE IS COPYRIGHT (C) 2004 RANDOMBLAST***
***LICENSED UNDER THE GNU GPL***
If you're exercising at night in my neighbourhood, you're likely to get mugged.
So really, it's much healthier to stay indoors and play games all night.
>It doesn't matter whether you love what you are doing and consider this the hobby you want to spend 110% of your time on: It's exploitation by companies who are not at all interested in creating stuff. They want to use your stuff for free. That's why they trick you into doing it.
:p .
:p)
:p)
No "they" don't.
There is no tricking, this letter is lies, lies, lies.
Nobody is being exploited here, maybe some corporations are using OSS for free, and possibly profiting or saving money, but most projects are done by talented people that needed this particular program, and decided to share their work with others.
And sending this letter to students is just heresy, how is a student studying programming or computer science supposed to learn from closed-source applications?
They can't, it's impossible, if the source isn't available there is no way to lok at it to see how it works, you will just be left with "oh, that's cool, i wish i knew how to do that, oh well, i'll never know..."
It's also not a dream, if you think free software is is a dream, you are yourself living in a dream world.
Look around you, Open-Source works, i know a lot of people who are using open-source software without even realizing it, while at the same time saying what a bad idea it is.
Some people are even benefiting indirectly from it because the "big boys" of the industry used code and ideas from the OSS community.
>The good looking, intelligent girl over there at the bar that you'd really like to talk to doesn't care much whether you are famous amongst a group of geeks
You somehow imply that she will care that you are famous among a group of geeks that develop closed-source software, that is wrong.
>and neither does she even remotely fathom why you'd be famous for that stuff in the first place.
I thought you said she was intelligent
I'm sure there are some good-looking, intelligent girls in the Closed-Source and Open-Source communities, who will care that you were project lead of
Oh yes, and i misused that word there - "community", there is no Closed-Source "community" so to speak because (as the name states) closed, if you want a sense of belonging to something, you will be a member of the Open-Source community.
For example - Rob Flynn and Sean Egan are the project leads of my favourite and most used application - Gaim.
Can you tell me the names of the developers of the closed-source and single-platform equivalent Trillian?
Linus Torvalds is project lead of the most famous OSS project - the Linux kernel.
Can you tell me the name of the project lead of the Windows kernel?
Whenever i meet a fellow geek (not uncommon, i have met 2 in church this past week), and i find they use Linux, we can start a conversation about say, playing around with LDAP, or why the Kernel logger hangs (yes Dave, it's me
I could go on and on, but i won't.
I am not against Closed-Source software, i do actually use some of it, and if i worked as a programmer, my job would be to write closed-source apps.
But if i were talented enough (and i'm working on it), i would also work on one or more Open-Source projects, that everybody can share.
I would not be poor, i would be payed a decent wage by my employer (At least i hope so, for his sake anyway
If i help my neighbor move some furniture, or (typical example) help an old lady over the street, or generally do something nice for somebody, am i losing out?
Should i demand they pay me for my time and effort?
Of course not, it's nice to be nice.
If your attitude is "if i'm not getting paid, it's of no value", which you have quite clearly stated in your letter, you need to think about that.
Money is a tool, nothing more, and the love of money is the root of all evil.
It's not about the money, it's about the community, the attitude, and the general atmosphere.
The good software is just the inevitable by-product of everybody helping each other
11AM on a weekend? :o
You are one early riser.
>What do kids have like that now, though? I'd hate to think that computer studies classes for 14-year-olds drop them right in with C!
I am 14, I am learning C
Just today i wrote 2 programs to do my maths for me, it took me 10 minutes, whereas doing the sums would of taken me a good hour.
Just what is wrong with a mid-level language?
If i learn a low-level language like Assembler i could only write programs for one architecture, and i would have trouble trying to join a real project, if i learn a mid-level language like C i can write for any architecture, and i'm using a common language.
you don't have to backup anything, you can just compile the kernel normally, it will install alongside your current one, then just make a seperate bootloader entry for it. /lib/modules/2.4. and rm all 2.4 entries in /boot
if you want to remove the old kernel (don't bother unlesws you have low diskspace) just rm -rf
oh, and take out the bootloader entry.
oh, and for the DoSing script-kiddies that wanna bring down my 3-month old boxes, my IP address is 127.0.0.1
>13000+ Linux break-ins in a year should be serious cause for concern.
mhm, i'm sure there were quite a few more than that, but even so it's nothing compared to the 2 million windows systems hit by some worms, and there are a helluva lot more Linux boxes up in very well advertised positions.
You can quote "surveys" and "proven statistics" at me until you're blue in the face, but when i have to use knoppix to get rid of 2-3 virii per month from my Dad's winXP box that is constantly being "automatically updated" with Windows Update (R) and norton's LiveUpdate, and i have no problems with my 3 Linux boxes (Gentoo-hardened,Debian-stable, and SuSE 9.0) and 1 FreeBSD 5.2 box, and a Linux-based router that are on the same network and get the same use and are all 3 months out-of date because i can't be arsed patching, i can see which is the better OS.
but yes, i do think that the OS is not everything, and you need to know how to secure it, but it's good to have a solid foundation to start with.
>It should be close to equal. A properly secured Windows box is just as secure as a properly secured Linux box. Security is in the process not the OS.
Oh yes, i have a totally hackproof winXP box in my room.
On the floor.
In pieces.
Switched off.
>That is not anything near 'rely on TOTAL DIPSHITS'.
Oh?
what about the "dipshit" originators of the bug and the "dipshit" virus-writers?
define open source.
e gistry.cl .h
the nVidia drivers (the UDA at least) have source code available, in case there is no precompiled module for your kernel.
there is an interesting clause in the LICENSE file:-
No Reverse Engineering. Customer may not reverse engineer,
decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE, nor attempt in any other
manner to obtain the source code.
but these files are in the package:-
nv.c
nv.h
nv-linux.h
os-agp.c
os-r
os-interface.c
os-interface.h
rmretva
os-registry.c
nv-misc.h
gcc-version-check.c
if the source is already there you don't have to reverse engineer,
decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE.
although attempting in any other
manner to obtain the source code could include just extracting the archive.
you obviously have the luxury of being a UNIX-only house, and not having the need of a thin-client system, not everybody does.
I have VNC servers running on every box on my network except the servers
Firstly, how can a graphics system depend on a DE framework when the DE runs on top of the graphics system
:p
And i take it that by not being GNU you mean the license isn't compatible with the GNU GPL.
And it does use autoconf.
Other than that I agree that XFree isn't complete crap, and the developers deserve a great deal of respect, but it still has some problems, and it's not really moved with the times, and if Y windows takes off it will be be so much better than XFree
And hopefully we may see a snowball effect where XFree falls on it's arse and all the developers join Y Windows
My only concern about the proposed Y Windows framework is will it eventually have GTK and Qt libraries?
it says on the website that it will have a server-side widget set, but there area a LOT of applications that are written using the GTK and Qt API's, id this is indeed the case then Y Windows will never ever be accepted by the majority of users, especially if Y apps can't run on X.
sh, listen... :p
hear that?
it's them, they're coming for you
they're gonna lock you away until you have been educated
and?
:p
big bloody deal, i can put up with a little smearing, so take your trademark and stick it up your arse.
no pun intended
oh, and i didn't notice you mention an alternative to good ole xfree.
or alternatively use a real mail client like evolution :p
>It's a shame no one's making Linux games any more, or I might feel compelled to upgrade my graphics card.
:p
Rubbish, it's just the ones on crappy D3D engines, and Half-Life that aren't ported.
And as we all know, they can't port Half-Life because it's a jumbled mess of code mutated from an engine that was upgraded from an engine that was taken from an engine that is now 8 (yes, count them, EIGHT!) years old.
And yes, i hate HL, because i've never been able to get it running at all under Wine or Winex, and my framerate natively under win98 or winXP is about 7FPS at 640x480, with an Athlon 1400, 448MB RAM, and an MX400, which is far ahead of the fastest ststem that was around when HL was released.
And the less i say about steam the better
I tried Debian Woody on one of my spare machines, and i thought it was seriously out of date, it may have the option of a 2.4.18 kernel (the same as RedHat Shrike), but it's got KDE 2.2, which sucks.
I tried to go online and use apt-get to update it, but it didn't fetch any of the packages i wanted, apparently they are for the testing release only.
Ah well, wiped Debian, got my SuSE 9 with KDE 3.2, and it's compiling the 2.6.2 Kernel now.
heh, Gentoo is even easier
emerge foo
emerge sync
but that's just the easy part, try getting your girlfriend/parent/granparent/whoever to install debian or gentoo, i don't think so.
imagine trying to tell them over the phone..."okay, you first you need to relabel the partition to type 83, then build an ext3 filesystem, then make a type 82 filesystem and activate it with swapon, then all you have to do is extract the stage, compile the GNU toolset and bootstrap GCC, then compile the kernel and start emerging your packages one by one. call me in 2-4 days when it's all compiled and i'll show you how to use evolution and openoffice"... "what?...i think i'll stick with windoze"
I think a distro like xandros with red carpet and an easy installer, along with no choice of different dekstop environments or applications would be better for those kinds of people.
um, ok solution 2 - take www.sco.com out of DNS, right? but your ping returned an IP address. and it proves nothing except the fact that their server does not respond to ICMP echoes, which is a common practice. Starting nmap 3.45 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2004-01-31 21:57 GMT Interesting ports on www.sco.com (216.250.128.12): PORT STATE SERVICE 7/tcp filtered echo 80/tcp open http Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 13.062 seconds
americans 8-)
That's interesting, because my download speeds vary, sometimes it's 2KB/s, sometimes the whole 70 KB/s.
But it always hogs my download so anything else only gets around 2KB/s, and DNS lookups are really slow.
I am using the cursed client from bitcounjurer (python sux), i will try another one.
if they have to rove it, that would mean releasing their headers. they are never going to do that.
There are some cheesy versions of the movies floating around at your local blockbuster. yes there are, and they're crap
yeah, except RotK is only on cinema atm, so unless you have a screener you couldn't watch it with mplayer.
slashdot news for nerds ringing a bell? response from average nerd: bittorrent, no problem