Basically, you need to look at it like this. Can you risk the possibility of having the BSA or some other watchdog group coming after you personally? If not, then you should take a strong stand. Your first course of action is to scare the shit out of your boss, not by making threats, but by getting documented evidence of just what happens to companies that willfully break copyright law. Find the absolute worst examples you can come up with to show to them. Perhaps if they realize that they can be sued personally, and in some cases even spend time in jail, they might see things in a different light.
...to hear this one of these days. When I had lunch with Steven Edwards of Codeweavers a couple weeks back, he mentioned how this idea was being thrown around. I wish them the best of luck and hope this helps them get some more capital and market share. I only hope that it does not come at the expense of native ports.
As someone who spends his free time leading a team that makes Gentoo's releases, I can tell you that this is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine. I always enjoy hearing people tell me about how "If Linux wants to..." this or that. I usually just laugh and shake my head.
Personally, I'm not one for WYSIWYG editors, but I've heard good things about Dreamweaver, and was impressed with it the once or twice I took it up and used it. The first time I used Bluefish, I fell in love with it. It is a fairly simple interface, and can help you once you start to learn what you're doing, without being braindead and making asinine assumptions for you, which is definitely appreciated.
This sort of thing scares the shit out of me. Besides being an American and working on a faily predominant open source project, I am also a Systems Engineer at a telecommunications company, working on the ISP side of the house. I've seen what government regulation can do on the telco side of the house, and it is truly scary to think that people would actually want the government getting involved in their Internet connection. Without even going into the political aspects of this, how the hell would they possibly be able to do anything on a global, distributed network such as the Internet? Are we going to have the "Great FireWall of America" right along with the Chinese? Better yet, who's going to protect us from ourselves?
While I can understand people believing that Microsoft is the answer to their prayers, I respond with this. Microsoft should be! They should make sure that their systems have reasonable defaults. They should do more to secure their OS. This isn't just something Microsoft is liable for, everyone producing software should be making their software as safe as possible, out of the box. One thing we definitely do not need is a bunch of fat cat politicians who don't understand nor care about the problem making more laws controlling how things are done on a network that isn't bound by political boundaries, who are only working on the behalf of their "constituents" and "special interests" and not us, the American people.
Also, who are we to tell other countries what to do? And if we don't tell other countries what to do, then how the hell can the government do anything that would actually be beneficial?
Perhaps more work needs to be done at the ISP level to ensure customer safety. Perhaps more work needs to be done by the software vendors to ensure customer safety. However, I know for sure that the government really needs to stay the hell out of it. They've proven time and time again that technology is not something that they understand. Couple that with the fact that technology changes much mroe rapidly than a slow-moving government is capable of handling, and I think we all can see where this is going.
Then again, Joe Sixpack thinks it is a good idea, and they seem to be the guys actually out there running this country, so maybe it is time I start looking at other countries to reside in, rather than allow my personal liberties to be eroded by Joe AOLuser can't figure out to turn on the fscking firewall.
Seriously, dump that Linksys or other SOHO box and spring for a small *nix-based machine. Personally, I use a slimmed-down Linux box running iptables. I also use the TARPIT target. The TARPIT target is designed to keep the connection open until it times out. This slows port scans and worms to a crawl. While it takes slightly more resources on the firewall machine itself, it doesn't eat up any more bandwidth than the port scan itself would, except that now the bandwidth is spread over a longer period of time. It also helps to block other packet types that can cause issues, such as ICMP echo. It is definitely not a good idea to block all ICMP traffic, though. Also, try setting up QoS or some other form of traffic shaping to give priority to your packets, specifically ACK packets, as this will improve responsiveness and will keep you from being locked out of your connection, even when under a high bandwidth load.
I'm sorry, but I worked with Daniel for most of my time as a Gentoo developer, and I don't remember once him swearing that Microsoft was his enemy. In fact, I can't think of a single open source developer that I've had contact with that has made such a proclamation. Would you care to point to the mailing list archive showing such a statement? I would love to see it.
As for making money doing open source, Red Hat seems to be doing pretty well. Remember that Gentoo wasn't ever a commercial distribution, but has always been community-based. It's pretty hard to make money on something that you give away for free and don't sell any form of support on, now isn't it? Daniel was trying to fund himself entirely from sales from the Gentoo store, which had absolutely dismal sales.
Daniel hasn't been doing development for a while. In fact, he's been working contracts for private companies that had nothing to do with open source. Basically, Microsoft bought themselves someone who used to be big in the open source community. Daniel himself stepped back from the entire community months ago to better provide for his family, and this is the ends that he came up with that can best allow him to do so. I applaud Daniel not only for his courage in making such a step, but also want to wish him the best of luck in his new life.
Right. Nevermind that Daniel wasn't the lead developer for anything for quite some time, as he had stepped back to simply a "visionary" role long before he left Gentoo.
I absolutely love hearing this argument. Do you know why Debian is so stable? It is because the software that they choose to include has been tested and patched and tested and tested again. That is one of the main reasons that it is considered by many to be stale. Ubuntu, on the other hand, can be no more stable than Gentoo or Fedora, since it uses very fresh and new packages, just like Gentoo or Fedora.
Just because it is based on Debian does not Debian make. I could easily make a "Debian-based" distribution that used apt but pulled stuff straight from CVS HEAD on a ton of projects and it would be anything but stable. Does that mean Debian is unstable? We are talking about a "Debian-based" distribution.
Ubuntu is no more "simply Debian" than Knoppix or MEPIS or Morphix. They are all based on Debian and use Debian's package manager, but that doesn't
make them Debian. The sooner that people start to realize this, the sooner that people will start to look at these distributions as entities of their
own, and not as Debian. I mean, how many people think that Mandriva or Novell/SuSE are Red Hat because they use RPM?
The truth is that a lot of people like Ubuntu. It has little to nothing to do with it being based on Debian, other than people already know how to use its package manager.
unless you count RHN (which isn't distributed per se anyways)
I just wanted to point out that Red Hat's Satellite Server product is a local copy of RHN, and definitely is distributed. The company that I work for uses it.
...that I see to this is the ability to run flash applications on non-x86 machines. Then again, I've grown accustomed to not seeing little punching monkeys and other such nonsense when surfing the web, so perhaps this isn't such a good thing, after all...;]
Anyway, good job guys. I'm glad to hear that you're back in business.
If your vendor cannot provide you with the services that you require, then why are they your vendor? Hit them where it hurts and buy from someone else.
If it were not for Windows, I never would have been pushed to using Open Source software. I never would have become a Linux developer for Gentoo. I never would have landed a career working on Linux machines and making more than double what my Windows Administrator peers make.
I applaud Bill Gates and Windows. If it were not for them, so many more people might have been forced to learn more about their computers, and jobs such as mine would be much more competitive and harder to come by today.
Windows truly has done a wonderful job of bringing computing to the masses of technophobic individuals who want things to be dumbed down for them so much that their 4-year-old nephew can run circles around them. It really is a strong platform, capable of providing everything you need all at your fingertips.
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I'm actually in agreement with you. The current packaging systems out there all have their issues. Being most familiar with portage (obviously), I see lots of places where its design could be improved.
I was mostly commenting on how RPM will be used, along with a very long support cycle. Most of the community distributions are Debian-based in some form or another, with the major exception of Gentoo. A universal packaging system would definitely improve Linux' market share and would open Linux up to a whole new world of people that are simply used to double clicking on "setup.exe" then hitting next a few times. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but it is bound to happen one of these days...;]
They're claiming that they're going to support a 3-5 year support lifecycle. That is unheard of for a community-based distribution! I would love to see these guys do well, and hope they really can stick to their support lifecycle.
I always enjoy hearing about new community-based distributions. It will be a bit strange having an RPM-based distribution out there, but now we have YUM that provides the required functionality that RPM lacks, such as automatic dependency resolution, ala portage or apt.
Not having a Mini myself, I was asking a serious question.
Is it really so hard to install Linux on a Mini compared to any other Mac that it deserves its own article?
I could care less what you think about Gentoo. However, you made your position quite clear when you immediately assumed that I was spouting some pro-Gentoo stance and trying to detract from other distributions. Whether I am a Gentoo developer or not doesn't change the simple fact that I asked a simple question, to which I would really like to hear an answer rather than some baseless nonesense being spouted off by an obvious Gentoo detractor that self-admittedly has never even tried the distribution.
Oh! You mean the exact same stuff you would learn if you did a stage3 + GRP install?
You're right, that extra few hours/days of compiling to get a stage1 install out of the way tought you so much more than "/usr/portage/scripts/bootstrap.sh && emerge -e system". Not like you would ever have to do things like partition or a bootloader with a binary install. *grin*
(For the humor impaired, I am pointing out how these Gentoo "facts" that most people like to spew are simply false and continue to be propogated by those with an agenda. I thought *I* was supposed to be the one with a Gentoo agenda, being a developer and all, not random Slashdot user Gentoo fanboy. What is the world coming to?)
Slashdot Mirror
Basically, you need to look at it like this. Can you risk the possibility of having the BSA or some other watchdog group coming after you personally? If not, then you should take a strong stand. Your first course of action is to scare the shit out of your boss, not by making threats, but by getting documented evidence of just what happens to companies that willfully break copyright law. Find the absolute worst examples you can come up with to show to them. Perhaps if they realize that they can be sued personally, and in some cases even spend time in jail, they might see things in a different light.
...to hear this one of these days. When I had lunch with Steven Edwards of Codeweavers a couple weeks back, he mentioned how this idea was being thrown around. I wish them the best of luck and hope this helps them get some more capital and market share. I only hope that it does not come at the expense of native ports.
Amen, brother...
As someone who spends his free time leading a team that makes Gentoo's releases, I can tell you that this is somewhat of a pet peeve of mine. I always enjoy hearing people tell me about how "If Linux wants to..." this or that. I usually just laugh and shake my head.
Windows: Dreamweaver
Linux: Bluefish
Personally, I'm not one for WYSIWYG editors, but I've heard good things about Dreamweaver, and was impressed with it the once or twice I took it up and used it. The first time I used Bluefish, I fell in love with it. It is a fairly simple interface, and can help you once you start to learn what you're doing, without being braindead and making asinine assumptions for you, which is definitely appreciated.
This sort of thing scares the shit out of me. Besides being an American and working on a faily predominant open source project, I am also a Systems Engineer at a telecommunications company, working on the ISP side of the house. I've seen what government regulation can do on the telco side of the house, and it is truly scary to think that people would actually want the government getting involved in their Internet connection. Without even going into the political aspects of this, how the hell would they possibly be able to do anything on a global, distributed network such as the Internet? Are we going to have the "Great FireWall of America" right along with the Chinese? Better yet, who's going to protect us from ourselves?
While I can understand people believing that Microsoft is the answer to their prayers, I respond with this. Microsoft should be! They should make sure that their systems have reasonable defaults. They should do more to secure their OS. This isn't just something Microsoft is liable for, everyone producing software should be making their software as safe as possible, out of the box. One thing we definitely do not need is a bunch of fat cat politicians who don't understand nor care about the problem making more laws controlling how things are done on a network that isn't bound by political boundaries, who are only working on the behalf of their "constituents" and "special interests" and not us, the American people.
Also, who are we to tell other countries what to do? And if we don't tell other countries what to do, then how the hell can the government do anything that would actually be beneficial?
Perhaps more work needs to be done at the ISP level to ensure customer safety. Perhaps more work needs to be done by the software vendors to ensure customer safety. However, I know for sure that the government really needs to stay the hell out of it. They've proven time and time again that technology is not something that they understand. Couple that with the fact that technology changes much mroe rapidly than a slow-moving government is capable of handling, and I think we all can see where this is going.
Then again, Joe Sixpack thinks it is a good idea, and they seem to be the guys actually out there running this country, so maybe it is time I start looking at other countries to reside in, rather than allow my personal liberties to be eroded by Joe AOLuser can't figure out to turn on the fscking firewall.
Seriously, dump that Linksys or other SOHO box and spring for a small *nix-based machine. Personally, I use a slimmed-down Linux box running iptables. I also use the TARPIT target. The TARPIT target is designed to keep the connection open until it times out. This slows port scans and worms to a crawl. While it takes slightly more resources on the firewall machine itself, it doesn't eat up any more bandwidth than the port scan itself would, except that now the bandwidth is spread over a longer period of time. It also helps to block other packet types that can cause issues, such as ICMP echo. It is definitely not a good idea to block all ICMP traffic, though. Also, try setting up QoS or some other form of traffic shaping to give priority to your packets, specifically ACK packets, as this will improve responsiveness and will keep you from being locked out of your connection, even when under a high bandwidth load.
I'm sorry, but I worked with Daniel for most of my time as a Gentoo developer, and I don't remember once him swearing that Microsoft was his enemy. In fact, I can't think of a single open source developer that I've had contact with that has made such a proclamation. Would you care to point to the mailing list archive showing such a statement? I would love to see it.
As for making money doing open source, Red Hat seems to be doing pretty well. Remember that Gentoo wasn't ever a commercial distribution, but has always been community-based. It's pretty hard to make money on something that you give away for free and don't sell any form of support on, now isn't it? Daniel was trying to fund himself entirely from sales from the Gentoo store, which had absolutely dismal sales.
Daniel hasn't been doing development for a while. In fact, he's been working contracts for private companies that had nothing to do with open source. Basically, Microsoft bought themselves someone who used to be big in the open source community. Daniel himself stepped back from the entire community months ago to better provide for his family, and this is the ends that he came up with that can best allow him to do so. I applaud Daniel not only for his courage in making such a step, but also want to wish him the best of luck in his new life.
Right. Nevermind that Daniel wasn't the lead developer for anything for quite some time, as he had stepped back to simply a "visionary" role long before he left Gentoo.
I absolutely love hearing this argument. Do you know why Debian is so stable? It is because the software that they choose to include has been tested and patched and tested and tested again. That is one of the main reasons that it is considered by many to be stale. Ubuntu, on the other hand, can be no more stable than Gentoo or Fedora, since it uses very fresh and new packages, just like Gentoo or Fedora.
Just because it is based on Debian does not Debian make. I could easily make a "Debian-based" distribution that used apt but pulled stuff straight from CVS HEAD on a ton of projects and it would be anything but stable. Does that mean Debian is unstable? We are talking about a "Debian-based" distribution.
Ubuntu is no more "simply Debian" than Knoppix or MEPIS or Morphix. They are all based on Debian and use Debian's package manager, but that doesn't make them Debian. The sooner that people start to realize this, the sooner that people will start to look at these distributions as entities of their own, and not as Debian. I mean, how many people think that Mandriva or Novell/SuSE are Red Hat because they use RPM?
The truth is that a lot of people like Ubuntu. It has little to nothing to do with it being based on Debian, other than people already know how to use its package manager.
unless you count RHN (which isn't distributed per se anyways)
I just wanted to point out that Red Hat's Satellite Server product is a local copy of RHN, and definitely is distributed. The company that I work for uses it.
...that I see to this is the ability to run flash applications on non-x86 machines. Then again, I've grown accustomed to not seeing little punching monkeys and other such nonsense when surfing the web, so perhaps this isn't such a good thing, after all... ;]
Anyway, good job guys. I'm glad to hear that you're back in business.
This is spot on the money.
If your vendor cannot provide you with the services that you require, then why are they your vendor? Hit them where it hurts and buy from someone else.
If it were not for Windows, I never would have been pushed to using Open Source software. I never would have become a Linux developer for Gentoo. I never would have landed a career working on Linux machines and making more than double what my Windows Administrator peers make.
I applaud Bill Gates and Windows. If it were not for them, so many more people might have been forced to learn more about their computers, and jobs such as mine would be much more competitive and harder to come by today.
Windows truly has done a wonderful job of bringing computing to the masses of technophobic individuals who want things to be dumbed down for them so much that their 4-year-old nephew can run circles around them. It really is a strong platform, capable of providing everything you need all at your fingertips.
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Hey! You aren't using Internet Explorer! Shame on you! Click here to fix that!
Long live Windows!
Long live Bill Gates!
I'm actually in agreement with you. The current packaging systems out there all have their issues. Being most familiar with portage (obviously), I see lots of places where its design could be improved.
I was mostly commenting on how RPM will be used, along with a very long support cycle. Most of the community distributions are Debian-based in some form or another, with the major exception of Gentoo. A universal packaging system would definitely improve Linux' market share and would open Linux up to a whole new world of people that are simply used to double clicking on "setup.exe" then hitting next a few times. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but it is bound to happen one of these days... ;]
They're claiming that they're going to support a 3-5 year support lifecycle. That is unheard of for a community-based distribution! I would love to see these guys do well, and hope they really can stick to their support lifecycle.
I always enjoy hearing about new community-based distributions. It will be a bit strange having an RPM-based distribution out there, but now we have YUM that provides the required functionality that RPM lacks, such as automatic dependency resolution, ala portage or apt.
Actually, my sig mentions Gentoo exactly once. There also wasn't a single link to Gentoo in my post.
Not to mention, you still have not answered my question, it is pretty obvious that you're just spouting out bullshit to hear yourself talk.
So, can anyone answer my question? Is it really that hard to install Linux on a Mac Mini (versus any other Mac)?
Gentoo Linux Installer
Not having a Mini myself, I was asking a serious question.
Is it really so hard to install Linux on a Mini compared to any other Mac that it deserves its own article?
I could care less what you think about Gentoo. However, you made your position quite clear when you immediately assumed that I was spouting some pro-Gentoo stance and trying to detract from other distributions. Whether I am a Gentoo developer or not doesn't change the simple fact that I asked a simple question, to which I would really like to hear an answer rather than some baseless nonesense being spouted off by an obvious Gentoo detractor that self-admittedly has never even tried the distribution.
Great! You've found the source of the problem! Now the only thing left to to is rectify the situation by installing Gentoo. *grin*
How exactly is this news? Is it really that hard to use other distributions on the Mini?
...welcome our new cybernetic simian overlords.
Great. Like I needed to hear this shit. Now I know where all the little ricer wannabe's come from... *grin*
They better get a move on, then... It's going to be one boring trip.
Oh! You mean the exact same stuff you would learn if you did a stage3 + GRP install?
You're right, that extra few hours/days of compiling to get a stage1 install out of the way tought you so much more than "/usr/portage/scripts/bootstrap.sh && emerge -e system". Not like you would ever have to do things like partition or a bootloader with a binary install. *grin*
(For the humor impaired, I am pointing out how these Gentoo "facts" that most people like to spew are simply false and continue to be propogated by those with an agenda. I thought *I* was supposed to be the one with a Gentoo agenda, being a developer and all, not random Slashdot user Gentoo fanboy. What is the world coming to?)