First time I saw this implimented was about 95 on a BSDi system. The concept and availability of this isn't anything new. The first discussions I heard where in the late 80's, and those where stories about mainframe systems on ArpaNet. Talk about old news *grin* The perl implimentation my be new code but the methodology isn't for sure.
And I have been since right after the bust. Know the following.
1. In 1999 you needed an idea, in 2003 you need a current revenue stream. Meaning the product must be in a form that is saleable and people are buying. This of course is for the Angel round VC rounds need more.
2. Count on a factor of 4 in time. People withing the group will come and go. And every time they do the same wheel gets gone over 1 more time.
3. No matter how good it is. It wont be what marketing wants. They are really good at selling what they never have.
4. Markets change constantly. You have to be ready willing and able to drop a line of developement you think is neat to meet real customer demands.
5. If you are developing for Linux invariably the customer will present you with a problem that is in reality a Windows problem and ask you how you solve it in Linux. No amount of explaining that it is a windows problem not a Linux one will work. You need to apear to solve a problem they never will have.
6. When in Linux it is nearly impossible to make people understand that
You cant install a RH 9 binary kernel on RH8 (source rebuilds are a different matter.)
SuSE and RH are different distributions not different OSs
7. days = weeks and weeks= months. In this kind of environment things can go much slower than youd like (lest test equipment, and shear exhaustion play a factor.)
8. Talk with your signifigant other. If he/she isnt on board with the hassles of starting a company you are hosed.
9. Declare one day a week a no work day. Youll need the break.
10. Seperate work and home physically. If you can roll out of bed and be in your office, your productivity will suffer.
11. Keep a regular schedule. Its good for you mentally as well as physically.
12. Dont eat at your desk. Taking 20 minutes to eat away from your desk will improve your productivity.
13. Dont code whats cool. Code what solves the problem you need to solve.
14. Take the time to know your competition before you write the first line of code. Find out what people do/dont like about it.
15. Dont re-invent wheels. Leverage your system. For example dont write software to create a database of installed RPMS. Read the rpm database instead. If you are writing for windows dont create all of your own unique classes check MFC first.
16 Dont rewrite - re-factor. (exception the code is 100% borked and doesnt do anything.)
17. Dont solve problems you like solve problems people have. Code to create a mirror image of a word doc might look cool, but its not much of a product.
18. If you dont have the time to do it right you wont have the time to do it over. Shortcuts are nearly garuanteed to byte you in the buns when its critcal that it doesnt.
19. Be flexible. You may have the greatest solution in the world but if everyone is fascinated with your widget.... build widgets.
20. K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple stupid) More money was made off of paper clips than Lasers.
Ummmm excuse me... but MySQL won a lawsuit on just this point a little over a year ago. Part of MySQL had ben incorporated into another companies proprietary database program.
Silly Con Valley USA..... DSL 29.95 for 256 down 128 up..... Cable... 49.95 a month + in both cases you may or may not have to rent a modem from them.....
Has anyone noticed the requirement to have a FreeBSD install ISO in order for it to work? I mean cripes if you have the iso why don't you just install FreeBSD. Lower ram requirement, works faster and well. You end up with FreeBSD.
computers of the WWW era it would have to be the Next computer at Cern and the one at SLAC. The first one is the machine upon wich the first webserver and webbrowser where written (along with html etc) The second is the one that did (and still could accourding to Chuck) house the original SLAC HEP (High Energy Physics) Library website. Online searchability of millions of scientific papers and reports. The Next may not have sold alot but the few it did sell left a very influential mark.
P166 with original 850mb hdd - Linux Firewall P233 with original 3.4GB hdd - In house Web/application server 9 year old bt848 TV card. Still works too.
My laptop is a Compaq M700 (500mhz) that runs MDK 9.1
Give me your old your tired your "under powered" I'll put ram a better video card and linux on it and use it till it dies.
For a complete explination of how this is possible read 1984 by George Orwell. It will explain the process of doublespeak and how by removing your freedoms democracy and liberty are enhanced.
Yes but the problem is that in order to install it I have to severly downgrade my system. (running MDK 9.1) to where most of my other software doesn't work. Now if I was running Red Hat 6.2 I bet it would work. Doesn't work on My FreeBSD 5.1 box either. (Ok it does start. can't read the fonts in the message windows no matter what I change them to.. )
Given that in my short (to me) lifetime the current arguements against MP3's etc are nothing new (First it was reel to reel then 8 track then Dual Drive Cassettes and Dolby) all of which were predicted by the RIAA to be the pending doom of the recording industry. Somehow the Recording industry in the past was able to pull it's act together and embrace and extend. Just like with all the prior attempts they did this by releasing a product that was higher quality and at a price that made it just too easy to do it the legal way. Like with the others MP3's that are home ripped are problematic (and in fact more difficult) than deck to deck with dolby. And like those are never as good (close) as the original. What is it that makes this any different? (and don't say file sharing... you should have seen the network for cassettes in college.)
That this isn't the first test of the GPL!!!!! Mysql recently won their suite concerning illegal usage of Mysql code in a competitors non GPL'd product. It took nearly 2 years but they won hands down. THAT was the first test. That is the case that made the GPL viable. Take a look here.
Linux Magazine and search for the section, "Jurist Judges GPL as Just"
The point here is that in his opinion the judge establish legal precident for the GPL and it's validity as a "contract". I'm no lawyer but I do know that the SCO bulldink might be the most current test... but it's not the first.
He states that rpm is not unpackable by standard tools. Can an experienced user, when presented with a package in this format, extract its payload using only tools that will be on any linux system? They can remember a few facts to help them deal with the format, but remembering file offsets and stuff like that is too hard.
First problem I have is with the "any linux system" Ummmm I've a Linksys router running Linux that can't do jack with any of these. Next an RPM is actually a cpio archive rpm2cpio is actually just a tool to shortcut what is doable with cpio. This applies as well to all of the "standard tools" statements. I also would like to point out that standard depends on which standard you use. Posix, LSB etc. In that rpm is a standard of LSB but not of Posix.
His statement that binary programs are not allowed. Must these programs be scripts, or can compiled binaries be used as well?
This is very, unclear. Can I execute a binary from within rpm. The answer is yes. I do it all the time. Can RPM be made directly from binaries (skiping all of the build etc.) Yes it can. Can I embed the binary in the RPM and not have it ever get installed... no. But I can run it then remove it before RPM finishes.
Suggestions... he states that RPM doesn't have them. A suggestion says a package may sometimes work better if another package is installed. The user can just be informed of this as a FYI
This is really the fault of the packager not of the product. There are two areas for comments which can give you this kind of data... but it's up to the packager to use the tool. Second the author needed to get a little deeper into rpm's queryformat (info here) He would have found much of what he needed.
Statement that RPM can't do Boolean Relationships. This means that a package can depend, conflict, etc on a package AND (another package OR a third package). Any boolean expression must be representable, no matter how complex.
RPM does have the conflicts and the depends paramaters that can be set. Once set you can't install a without b and c, plus removing y and x. HOWEVER he is very right about the boolean "or" being missing... I've been championing this one for a while (I've talked with some of the developers.) but it seems it hasn't up till now been high enough on the horizon to have someone take a shot at it. (Sorry but it's beyond my ken to work on this personally) So I will keep politely advocating this until it does break the plane of need.
New Section
Sorry but this stament is just too nebulous. It's been coping with the unforseen for years. Just as debian has. That's why it get's upgraded. That's in fact a lot of the reason for the new version coming out now. To make the format more modular. and easier to mutate as times change.
All and all the article seems well done. However I'd say the chances are pretty strong that the author is a Debian fan. My personal recommendations would be. One lose the subjective nature of a number of statements. Next, when doing research be careful how you ask a question. Often times asking "Can this product do X" will yeild a no. But if you ask.. On a system that uses this product how do you do X" will yeild a completely different answer.
I'd give this article all in all a 6 on a 1 to 10 scale for research. a 3 for new info. and a 7 for layout and style.
For the Silly Con valley folks.... Across from the Sunnyvale Fry's.... Action Computers. The service is surly but the products are gone through and work, work right too. Just know that no one is as good as their tech thinks he is. Right next door is a place called Disk Drive Depot.. along with 5 or 6 other names... If you need a disk drive. Any size type flavor or speed. These guys have it... period. But my favorite is still software and stuff www.softwareand stuff.com. The prices really are surplus... the quality is high and man when it comes to electronics, tools and a bunch of other stuff. This is the place.. (Check out the gameing chairs on the website)
Ummmmm lets see once they come out with a release it takes them about 6 months to make it stable. (or in the case of 7.0 never.) Then it takes me 2 or three weeks to undo all the help they gave me, so that it's usable. So I'm left with a little over 5 months of lifecycle. I mean it's not like they support the product or anything. When in the past I worked in an environ that did pay for RH support we dropped it. Why. We were constantly told.
1. Upgrade/change your hardware.(Uh guys you list this hardware as supported and it did work in the last release!) 2. RTFM (To which the answer is WFM (what fine manual)) However most current man pages I really need are current for RH 6.2 3. They don't plan to support that feature. (You mean the one where when I click on an icon the appliction doesn't immediately crash?) 4. The problem is with the application developer and I should contact him/her. (Should I also send this person the check I would have sent to you?) 5. Download the beta rpm 6. We don't support the beta rpm yet. (%$&#) 7. Check the archives. 8. It's a known problem wait till the next release. (Ummm how to I tell corporate that they have to wait to get this fixed?)
If I want real support.... I go to the community. There I get answers and often, in multiple flavors. More problems are fixed in the community than you can imagine. Paying RH by purchasing mulitple copies of the OS I do and will continue to do. But support. No thanks. I just don't feel I got my moneys worth. HOWEVER if they want contributions to handle the maintenance of the mailgroup servers I'd be happy to contribute to that.
Slashdot Mirror
First time I saw this implimented was about 95 on a BSDi system. The concept and availability of this isn't anything new. The first discussions I heard where in the late 80's, and those where stories about mainframe systems on ArpaNet. Talk about old news *grin* The perl implimentation my be new code but the methodology isn't for sure.
What they never got before...... Stable CDs when they buy thier Power Packs.... *sigh* love it love it love it!!!!!
1. In 1999 you needed an idea, in 2003 you need a current revenue stream. Meaning the product must be in a form that is saleable and people are buying. This of course is for the Angel round VC rounds need more.
2. Count on a factor of 4 in time. People withing the group will come and go. And every time they do the same wheel gets gone over 1 more time.
3. No matter how good it is. It wont be what marketing wants. They are really good at selling what they never have.
4. Markets change constantly. You have to be ready willing and able to drop a line of developement you think is neat to meet real customer demands.
5. If you are developing for Linux invariably the customer will present you with a problem that is in reality a Windows problem and ask you how you solve it in Linux. No amount of explaining that it is a windows problem not a Linux one will work. You need to apear to solve a problem they never will have.
6. When in Linux it is nearly impossible to make people understand that
You cant install a RH 9 binary kernel on RH8 (source rebuilds are a different matter.)
SuSE and RH are different distributions not different OSs
7. days = weeks and weeks= months. In this kind of environment things can go much slower than youd like (lest test equipment, and shear exhaustion play a factor.)
8. Talk with your signifigant other. If he/she isnt on board with the hassles of starting a company you are hosed.
9. Declare one day a week a no work day. Youll need the break.
10. Seperate work and home physically. If you can roll out of bed and be in your office, your productivity will suffer.
11. Keep a regular schedule. Its good for you mentally as well as physically.
12. Dont eat at your desk. Taking 20 minutes to eat away from your desk will improve your productivity.
13. Dont code whats cool. Code what solves the problem you need to solve.
14. Take the time to know your competition before you write the first line of code. Find out what people do/dont like about it.
15. Dont re-invent wheels. Leverage your system. For example dont write software to create a database of installed RPMS. Read the rpm database instead. If you are writing for windows dont create all of your own unique classes check MFC first.
16 Dont rewrite - re-factor. (exception the code is 100% borked and doesnt do anything.)
17. Dont solve problems you like solve problems people have. Code to create a mirror image of a word doc might look cool, but its not much of a product.
18. If you dont have the time to do it right you wont have the time to do it over. Shortcuts are nearly garuanteed to byte you in the buns when its critcal that it doesnt.
19. Be flexible. You may have the greatest solution in the world but if everyone is fascinated with your widget.... build widgets.
20. K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple stupid) More money was made off of paper clips than Lasers.
Ummmm excuse me... but MySQL won a lawsuit on just this point a little over a year ago. Part of MySQL had ben incorporated into another companies proprietary database program.
Judges early opinion
Silly Con Valley USA ..... DSL 29.95 for 256 down 128 up..... Cable... 49.95 a month + in both cases you may or may not have to rent a modem from them. ....
Has anyone noticed the requirement to have a FreeBSD install ISO in order for it to work? I mean cripes if you have the iso why don't you just install FreeBSD. Lower ram requirement, works faster and well. You end up with FreeBSD.
Damn
computers of the WWW era it would have to be the Next computer at Cern and the one at SLAC. The first one is the machine upon wich the first webserver and webbrowser where written (along with html etc) The second is the one that did (and still could accourding to Chuck) house the original SLAC HEP (High Energy Physics) Library website. Online searchability of millions of scientific papers and reports. The Next may not have sold alot but the few it did sell left a very influential mark.
Oooops forgot my Libretto 30 (100mhz 486) running a highly modded version of Debian.
P166 with original 850mb hdd - Linux Firewall
P233 with original 3.4GB hdd - In house Web/application server
9 year old bt848 TV card. Still works too.
My laptop is a Compaq M700 (500mhz) that runs MDK 9.1
Give me your old your tired your "under powered" I'll put ram a better video card and linux on it and use it till it dies.
Are ports RJ-45 or RJ-11
For a complete explination of how this is possible read 1984 by George Orwell. It will explain the process of doublespeak and how by removing your freedoms democracy and liberty are enhanced.
Yes but the problem is that in order to install it I have to severly downgrade my system. (running MDK 9.1) to where most of my other software doesn't work. Now if I was running Red Hat 6.2 I bet it would work. Doesn't work on My FreeBSD 5.1 box either. (Ok it does start. can't read the fonts in the message windows no matter what I change them to.. )
Please don't forget yp.yahoo.com....... Yep once again google comes out with a brand new technology that yahoo has had for ages (*evile grin*)
Oh... if I live in California but my web server is in Edmonton and my files are served from a box in Michigan...... who gets to see my pages?
If I stop eating I'll starve to death... not live longer! My god.. Is SCO in the medical research business now?
Does it actually have to be one of your face? I was think a little lower and on the other side. Moon shot yeah.. right, that's it.
Given that in my short (to me) lifetime the current arguements against MP3's etc are nothing new (First it was reel to reel then 8 track then Dual Drive Cassettes and Dolby) all of which were predicted by the RIAA to be the pending doom of the recording industry. Somehow the Recording industry in the past was able to pull it's act together and embrace and extend. Just like with all the prior attempts they did this by releasing a product that was higher quality and at a price that made it just too easy to do it the legal way. Like with the others MP3's that are home ripped are problematic (and in fact more difficult) than deck to deck with dolby. And like those are never as good (close) as the original. What is it that makes this any different? (and don't say file sharing... you should have seen the network for cassettes in college.)
They can't fly to the moon.... I mean ..... heck, where are they going to outsource all the programing and manufacturing to?
That this isn't the first test of the GPL!!!!! Mysql recently won their suite concerning illegal usage of Mysql code in a competitors non GPL'd product. It took nearly 2 years but they won hands down. THAT was the first test. That is the case that made the GPL viable. Take a look here.
Linux Magazine and search for the section, "Jurist Judges GPL as Just"
The point here is that in his opinion the judge establish legal precident for the GPL and it's validity as a "contract". I'm no lawyer but I do know that the SCO bulldink might be the most current test... but it's not the first.
And the RIAA is attributing the death of the sperm whale to malicious file sharing programs worldwide.
He states that rpm is not unpackable by standard tools.
Can an experienced user, when presented with a package in this format, extract its payload using only tools that will be on any linux system? They can remember a few facts to help them deal with the format, but remembering file offsets and stuff like that is too hard.
First problem I have is with the "any linux system" Ummmm I've a Linksys router running Linux that can't do jack with any of these. Next an RPM is actually a cpio archive rpm2cpio is actually just a tool to shortcut what is doable with cpio. This applies as well to all of the "standard tools" statements. I also would like to point out that standard depends on which standard you use. Posix, LSB etc. In that rpm is a standard of LSB but not of Posix.
His statement that binary programs are not allowed.
Must these programs be scripts, or can compiled binaries be used as well?
This is very, unclear. Can I execute a binary from within rpm. The answer is yes. I do it all the time. Can RPM be made directly from binaries (skiping all of the build etc.) Yes it can. Can I embed the binary in the RPM and not have it ever get installed... no. But I can run it then remove it before RPM finishes.
Suggestions ... he states that RPM doesn't have them.
... but it's up to the packager to use the tool. Second the author needed to get a little deeper into rpm's queryformat (info here) He would have found much of what he needed.
A suggestion says a package may sometimes work better if another package is installed. The user can just be informed of this as a FYI
This is really the fault of the packager not of the product. There are two areas for comments which can give you this kind of data
Statement that RPM can't do Boolean Relationships.
This means that a package can depend, conflict, etc on a package AND (another package OR a third package). Any boolean expression must be representable, no matter how complex.
RPM does have the conflicts and the depends paramaters that can be set. Once set you can't install a without b and c, plus removing y and x.
HOWEVER he is very right about the boolean "or" being missing... I've been championing this one for a while (I've talked with some of the developers.) but it seems it hasn't up till now been high enough on the horizon to have someone take a shot at it. (Sorry but it's beyond my ken to work on this personally) So I will keep politely advocating this until it does break the plane of need.
New Section
.. On a system that uses this product how do you do X" will yeild a completely different answer.
Sorry but this stament is just too nebulous. It's been coping with the unforseen for years. Just as debian has. That's why it get's upgraded. That's in fact a lot of the reason for the new version coming out now. To make the format more modular. and easier to mutate as times change.
All and all the article seems well done. However I'd say the chances are pretty strong that the author is a Debian fan. My personal recommendations would be. One lose the subjective nature of a number of statements. Next, when doing research be careful how you ask a question. Often times asking "Can this product do X" will yeild a no. But if you ask
I'd give this article all in all a 6 on a 1 to 10 scale for research. a 3 for new info. and a 7 for layout and style.
ILoo + SCO + Code Cleaning....
Am I alone here or does this give a whole new meaning to "core-dump"?
...them to say.
"We plan to bring the same problematic and unrealiable quality you've come to know and love to the Linux world?"
For the Silly Con valley folks.... Across from the Sunnyvale Fry's.... Action Computers. The service is surly but the products are gone through and work, work right too. Just know that no one is as good as their tech thinks he is. Right next door is a place called Disk Drive Depot.. along with 5 or 6 other names... If you need a disk drive. Any size type flavor or speed. These guys have it... period. But my favorite is still software and stuff www.softwareand stuff.com. The prices really are surplus... the quality is high and man when it comes to electronics, tools and a bunch of other stuff. This is the place.. (Check out the gameing chairs on the website)
Ummmmm lets see once they come out with a release it takes them about 6 months to make it stable. (or in the case of 7.0 never.) Then it takes me 2 or three weeks to undo all the help they gave me, so that it's usable. So I'm left with a little over 5 months of lifecycle. I mean it's not like they support the product or anything. When in the past I worked in an environ that did pay for RH support we dropped it. Why. We were constantly told.
1. Upgrade/change your hardware.(Uh guys you list this hardware as supported and it did work in the last release!)
2. RTFM (To which the answer is WFM (what fine manual)) However most current man pages I really need are current for RH 6.2
3. They don't plan to support that feature. (You mean the one where when I click on an icon the appliction doesn't immediately crash?)
4. The problem is with the application developer and I should contact him/her. (Should I also send this person the check I would have sent to you?)
5. Download the beta rpm
6. We don't support the beta rpm yet. (%$&#)
7. Check the archives.
8. It's a known problem wait till the next release. (Ummm how to I tell corporate that they have to wait to get this fixed?)
If I want real support.... I go to the community. There I get answers and often, in multiple flavors. More problems are fixed in the community than you can imagine. Paying RH by purchasing mulitple copies of the OS I do and will continue to do. But support. No thanks. I just don't feel I got my moneys worth. HOWEVER if they want contributions to handle the maintenance of the mailgroup servers I'd be happy to contribute to that.