I can help out here. I run a Linux Open Directory Service at home. Here are some usability improvements that I have seen.
Open Directory is being replaced by Samba 4 Active Directory. I expect that when Samba 4.0 goes gold, what it will most likely do is displace OpenLDAP and Heimdal Kerberos first, as Samba 4 provides the OpenLDAP and Heimdal Kerberos infrastructures, which FreeRadius, Cyrus IMAP, PostFix, and eGroupware have grown to depend on. OpenLDAP and Heimdal Kerberos are difficult to configure and administer.
Evolution working in tandem with LibreOffice and eGroupware and Open Directory can create an OutLook+Office+AD trifecta. Members of my household can reply to documents sent by attachments, look up addresses automatically using LDAP, and all this results in Evolution automagically "Knowing" who and what you are E-mailing, and what to attach. This is outstanding!
There are formatting issues that show up in LibreOffice. Even with the odf-integrator-converter, things are slightly off and require adjusting.
This is bad if you have a corporate or state culture that says "I am not allowed to move that line over 1 centimeter because then I am out of compliance".
I have run into work level situations where I have literally been told "If I modify this document's formatting AT ALL I'm violating federal law.
Another thing. There needs to be a collectivist document management platform that integrates with the aboved Mention in the same way SharePoint does. I know Knowlege Tree Comes close,so does GeekLog.
You'd think this is actually just the ignorance of 'Dumb Americans.' That isn't so. The reason is evolution is a deal breaker due to the structure of the Christian religion.
Kalinka told me the following.
It doesn't have anything to say about the existence or non-existence of any gods. It is a problem with the way the Mythos of Christianity works in particular.
The Mythos of Christianity absolutely depends on a a literal understanding of Genesis. In Judaism, Genesis can be metaphor, it changes nothing. But the Sacrifice of Jesus is contingent on an event called the fall of man, where Eve and Adam ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, angering Yahweh (God) and damning all Humans to Hell save for a few Jewish Prophets and anyone who accepts Jesus as the Savior.
The fall of man is considered the *Primary Sin* which sends us to Hell. (The main Reason.)
If The Book of Genesis is metaphorical, then Jesus died for nothing because no fall of man ever occurred for Yahweh to have a reason to send us to Hell to begin with. Ergo, Christianity is collapses because Saint Paul was a liar.
This is why Christians have a problem with Evolution and Jews do not.
The real reason that this doctrine that Paul created was put into place was to exclude the Jews from Salvation.
He didn't for see the evolution problem. That came along later.
If the Garden of Eden never happened, the fall never happened. then there would be no need for the death of Jesus Christ. Which means that Christianity was wrong all along. Biological evolution collapses a core foundation of Christianity.
If you ask my opinion, Mandriva had no corporate offerings that actually offered any actual value. Everything server wise you wanted to do to Mandriva could be done with the base Mandriva Linux distribution.
I run an Open Directory Server with: OpenLDAP + Samba + Kerberos + FreeRadius. On Mandriva Linux. I modified libuser myself to enumerate LDAP accounts. I use Fog for imaging. I use LDAP to administer sudoers, It all works. Mandriva could have taken the Linux Domain controller Market. How? Adding a Widget that said "Create Open Directory Domain" in Mandriva Control Center.
Instead they created this convoluted mess of a service called Mandriva Directory server that complicated everything five or six times. I tried to warn them. They should have handled the creation of Open Directory Servers the same way they handled Open Directory (And Active Directory Clients):
You click on an MMC Widget The Needed Packages for dhcpd, bind, openldap, samba, kerberos, libuser-ldap, etc etc etc... were all installed, and configurations were written, CLEANLY. Services restart... boom Open Directory Domain.
I filed bugs, I pissed and moaned, my bugs got marked Invalid or won't fix.
Yes it can to a degree. For Wiimotes, In the Windows world there is glovePie, in the Linux world there is Cwiid. PS3 Controllers can be used Wired only in Windows as a standard HID. In Linux there is QtSixA XBox 360 uses the "Xbox 360 Dongle for Windows". because they aren't bluetooth. Drivers come with it for Windows. Linux has xboxdrv
Believe it or not, Linux has an absolutely golden opportunity to deliver a 'better than Windows' experience to consumers it will more than likely miss. some of these issues are application developers fault. Others are Linux itself's fault. A few things:
- Stop doing Jacked up things to KDE, Gnome, and similar. No more Mandatory themes per distribution. Mandriva does this with ROSA, I had to make an RPM just to replace the ROSA theme.
- Harmonize RPM and DEB. An RPM be it a Suse RPM, or a Mandriva, or Fedora RPM should generation-ally, be able to be installed on any RPM based system that uses RPM. Same for Deb, although Deb is better than that.
- Application developers: Target SDL when making games (OpenGL for 3D). Do NOT use the deprecated X11 Video, Joystick, and similar input. Some Linux games still use these conventions which can result in crashes.
- For Retro Gamers: Linux is in a better emulation position than Windows on a few fronts with a few exceptions: Those being: Atari Jaguar, Sharp X68000, PC-9801. FM Towns/Marty. Fix this, and Linux has absolute supremacy in the legacy hardware emulation realm no 'virtual console' can match.
Linux has the ability using Wine to take ground and hold ground at all cost against Windows. Wine and Samba are the best example of this. The resilience of the Samba 3.x NT Domain backward compatibility issue has shown that Linux CAN alter Window's behavior. In the Samba realm Samba 3 took NT Domains, and to over come the lack of BDC support, added LDAP and Kerberos that was standard, creating Open Directories with multiple PDCs, forcing Microsoft to maintain backward compatibility far beyond what they wanted.
Now; with the entrenched position of AD, the same thing can happen again, Samba 4.0 can extend AD by tacking on OpenAFS Cell Clusters, and other things, and overcome AD's technical design limitations in the same way; creating a superior AD experience under Linux.
Wine stands to one up Windows 7 and XP for game compatibility with 9x. Try and make 9x games and XP games that don't work right hold ground over Windows 7.
In the new game arena, make sure that Wine can stand it's ground on Steam. make sure new games work Wine even without the creator's consent. If possible, try and get them to run better on Wine.
Ensure Linux has tools to clean Windows machines. Especially remotely that does not mean reformatting the machine.
Ensure that Linux can seamlessly run Android products. As with Wine, an Android API translation layer should be availible for Linux.
Hardware wise: With a Bluetooth Module, you should be able to seemlessly pair any PS3 Controller, Wiimote, and 360 Controller without Human intervention. This does work. But it takes Human intervention. I have to install drivers and an applet, and I have to launch that applet MANUALLY. If I have a Bluetooth module, or the 360 Dongle, it should work, perfectly, with the proper Quadrant lights, the first time. Currently I can make this work, by hand. But I shouldn't have too.
I have a feeling people will screw this up. They always do.
I wonder if this Steam Linux client will act like PlayOnLinux and download Whitelisted Wine Clients that Steam won't flag as "cheating." I say this because I have a family member that keeps one Windows 7 machine just because he plays Left 4 Dead 2, and Steam once banned a whole sloth of Wine Users because their DLL files did not match the database Steam had.
Supposedly, Steam keeps a whitelist of known Wine DLLs to prevent this.
Does anyone remember using uuencode and uudecode under Minuet for DOS? I used to use that in the late 1990s on my Tandy 1000 TL. Minuet couldn't read Base64 Mime Attachments.
Whenever I see these peope constantly banging the drums of how we have to continually make worse laws about controlling the Internet, one thing comes to my mind:
Why do these government officials keep harping on it? Ministers like Ted Haggard attack gays constantly, and turn out to be gay themselves. Me thinks the government officials might be producing or consuming this material. Otherwise, why, might I ask, are you harping on it so much?
I tried a dating site long ago (eHarmony) and I found that they are utterly worthless for finding real relationships with real people. All it does is attract spammers, scammers, and predators. If you want to date, get to know people in your local community. To dating sites, you are just money to be made.
There is an effort to collapse or split education into haves and have-nots in the US. Its been really going on since Integration in the US. For decades before Integration, there were policies of "Dual Schools" in the US. That's happening again, and it's going to take legislators to stop it. The only way I can see it happening is massive over haul of the Public education system and forced closure of private education systems. There is a concerted effort by the conservative power elite in the USA to splinter and collapse universal schooling. The only way is to outlaw non-state sanctioned schooling so the wealthy are forced to participate in the public schooling system.
The Taliban is one organization I would not mind if we used a Neutron Bomb or some sort of method of extinguishing all organic life in an area to eliminate. They are probably the lowest vermin on the face of the Earth.
Are these people aware that a Tanuki is a MYTHICAL Japanese Raccoon Youkai (Spirit) with a magic shape shifting abilities that can normally talk like Humans? That is why Mario has his abilities in the game. He didn't skin an actual Raccoon dog, he gained the spirit energy of the Youkai including its Statue ability...
We've already done more damage than we can reverse. It was 71 degrees the other day on November 1st. Our atmosphere is changing probably to a configuration that is hostile to our survival. Probably the first to go will be our crop resources. I don't think our society will change. The majority of this species believes in an Earth that will exist forever because a 2500 year old anthology of books say so.
I don't believe the Earth will be like Venus because Venus is in a different orbit than Earth is. But I do think the Earth will change and probably become hostile to our species. We didn't always have the atmosphere we do now. and when our species dies off, another species will take our place. Our sun can probably support the deveopment of one more species before it perishes.
The Human species had its chance to survive and chose badly.
There is evidence to support the idea that Paul invented the idea that 100% of all Humans go to Hell with the exception of those saved by Jesus as a way of breaking the original covenant with Abraham the Jews had. The idea is that Adam brought Sin into the world, and at that point all Humans were damned to Hell. Jews of Paul's time were rejecting Christianity, while the surrounding "Pagans" were adopting it. The Jews were a disliked class, so this little poison pill was a way of condemning the Jews.
This also explains why there are Christian Creationists. For Christianity to be true, and the Jesus Crucifixion to have had any purpose, that particular story is the most important story after the story of Jesus. Without Creationism, Christianity collapses entirely because Yahweh has no original sin with Which to condemn us all to Hell from the start.
Paul provided Christianity with the rope to hang itself. Because he created the clause in the Bible that requires the initial original sin of Adam to take place for any of this to mean anything. The Original sin of Adam is the PRIMARY reason for the Crucifixion in Jesus, ordinary Human failings are SECONDARY.
I understand what Paul was trying to do, he was looking for a way to make the laws of the Torah invalid for salvation. He wanted to be able to go to the Jews of his time, and say "Yahweh doesn't care if you follow the laws of Moses any longer. You were bad followers so he no longer wants you because you have the audacity to reject the sacrifice of the savior. So, see you in Hell."
We know the world is not 6000 years old, we know that the Genesis myths were allegory because those desert nomads didn't know how the world began, Paul hedged the entire religion on the foundation of that myth.
So in conclusion, Christianity is the cult of Paul. This only applies to Christianity. But it is the critical fault in Christianity that disproves it. Thats why creationists cling tp the creation myth more than any other myth in the Bible. It's the corner stone that collapses the whole religion.
Boutique Computer systems like the Atari ST, Amiga, and Sharp X68000 are some of the most insufferable tasks one can undergo as far as emulation goes.
I will say this now. The Amiga and Atari ST were fine products for their time, but now, their only usefulness is as gaming consoles. The games they had that were unique to their platform and superior ports produced really were a sight to see, and have withstood the test of time in this era of retro-gaming revival.
Atari ST Emulation is tolerable under Windows and Linux. Amiga emulation is absolutely insufferable, especially under Linux where the emulators just seem to get worse with every port produced. Even under Windows, Amiga emulation is a complicated abysmal mess, with dozens of archane rom versions, Disk insertion and image issues, and emulation bugs.
The gaming library from the Amiga era is the only thing it has going for it, and is why Amiga programmers should do their best to make Amiga games fully playable on Linux platforms.
The best games in my opinion on fair use are as follows:
The game as a Static beginning, and ending. When you defeat the Final boss of a game, the game should end with one of many multiple programmed endings. The game should support Multiplayer, either by multiple controllers in the case of a Console oriented game, or LAN/Peer to Peer Internet play possibly with Lobby servers But if you shouldn't have to use Lobby servers if you don't wish too. There should be no currency that can be exchanged for real money. Real money should not be used to inflate the abilities of the players. Unlockable characters, and secret levels should be in the game at the start. They should not be something you pay for. Patches should be freely available.
Prior to the PS3/360/Wii era, when I bought a game it was a complete game. There was no online pass, there was no DLC, and there shouldn't be.
Star Wars is not Science fiction, it's Arthurian Legend. Star Trek is about a possible future of our world/universe and the progress of secular Humanity, and the triumph of reason and science.
Star Wars is like a King Aurthur's knights of the round table, or spiritualist story about good vs. evil, just set in space. It discusses a quasi-religious struggle between right and wrong, and the struggle of rightful Camelot style kings vs. vicious tyrants. It is a fairy tale, or fable.
A few pointers. Don't use LDAP for authentication. use Heimdal Kerberos for authentication (PAM) and use LDAP for authorization. (NSS). Don't let machines bind as cn=Manager. That is very bad should a machine become compromised. Generally, SASL LDAP binds are recommended over simple. Kerberos should bind
And most relevent. Only let users in the People OU bind to their own uid in the suffix. If you are binding to the tree with cn=Manager, on a regular basis, you deserve what you get, set your ACLs right.
The DVD's being produced that I have seen are lke the live install aspect of Ubuntu. The poblem with that is that Mandriva 2010.2 had a dedicated installer that could both preform complete installations of full setups, as well as on the fly upgrades, rebuilding and if you had Mandriva installed already, it would rebuild and upgrade everything. These ISO images are compressed with squashfs, so you can't extract the RPMs from them and push a live upgrade. I hope that in the future a non-live full install DVD is produced not this 1.6 GB "live install" crap from Ubuntu's way of doing things.
I am used to paralell LDAP+Kerberos+SSH installations of all my machines. This sqashfs method is unacceptable. Especially considering Mageia CAN do that.
Atari did make better hardware to replace the 2600, but they screwed up. They made the Atari 5200 intentionally incompatible with the 400/800/600XL. Those were all excellent machines that were ahead of their time in 1984. They even supported Composite output and RF. If you got a 5200 you had a machine that could not play 2600 or 400/800 games with incompatible controllers, an ultra-proprietary RF Switch and power adapter, and broken controllers.
They backslid even FURTHER into obscurity when they released the 7800 which was just a slightly improved 2600 as late as 1988.
What they should have done was just release a version of the 400/800 without the keyboard, or with the keyboard as an add-on... oh wait. They did... The Atari XEGS... in 1991, when everyone was moving to the Super NES.
What was called FireFox 4.0 should have been called FireFox 3.7, and we should still be in 3.7.x phase. These version number games make me have the very real inclination to punch the people responsible in the face repeatedly. They are doing no less than turning FireFox, which once had reverence, into an object of ridicule.
Is it that big evil thing from the Fifth Element? Do we need four stones to make it fire a a giant Laser beam at it? Is it going to make evil people leak black tar?
Corporate Desktop: Here are some things you should keep in mind. Since 2006, among Linux users, the Open Directory model where OpenLDAP runs a directory service, Samba 3.x runs a PDC, and Heimdal Kerberos runs the KDC, and FreeRadius runs RADIUS has been extremely popular. Open Directory (OpenLDAP+Samba+Heimdal Kerberos) was a definite step above the Sun Yellow Pages+NFS, or early NT4 Domains created by Samba 2.2, and it ran like a well oiled machine. Certain distributors supported it well. Mandriva and Suse being model citizens, while Ubuntu not so much. Ubuntu and Debian did a horrible job with Samba, LDAP and Kerberos. But Samba, LDAP, and Kerberos as Open Directory aren't MS Active Directory. That cost the Linux world many casualties. For the longest time, AD Dominated.
I recently tried Samba 4.0 Alpha 15 and was able to create a mostly functional Windows 2008 R2 Style Forest. I ran into problems incorporating Open Directory applications and schemas used to OpenLDAP's model, but I am certain those can be resolved. Samba 4.0 will have all the features of Open Directory and all of Active Directory's forms combined. It will likely replace OpenLDAP and Heimdal Kerberos because it is so much easier to manage just one application that does all three, and is completely compatible with its predecessors in the Unix world's feature sets.
In the future, I can see Samba 4 becoming the predominant Server for both Windows AD Clients, and Unix Clients running applications like NFS and AFS, FreeRadius, PostFix, eGroupware, and Zimbra. At the same time offering AD support to AD Clients. If you think it can't happen, just remember that Windows 7 has special code in it's registry to allow Samba 3 Domains to authenticate with Windows 7 clients, and even though Samba 3 style domains are still in some sense NT4 Domains, while NT4 itself is completely incompatible with Windows 7.
Samba 4 can devour the AD market inside out.
Home Desktop What really matters here are games. Linux desktop needs to be able to run games of all platforms, for Windows, this of course means Wine. Wine again, is in a position to become more compatible with Windows than real Windows. There are now, a few applications that will run on Wine but not Modern Windows. This is mostly Games from the 9x era. But as time moves on, we may see more XP games that work on Wine that won't work on Windows.
Android support is another issue. A market for Android phones is growing, and Linux needs some sort of API translation layer to run Android games on PCs.
Desktop Interface: Another thing is this: The constant desktop shifting and changing has to stop. someone really needs to back the Trinity Desktop Environment. Both KDE and Gnome now take away system resources from video cards to make the desktop look and interact more wth the user. This needs to stop. These effects slow the machine down, they slow games down, they slow EVERYTHING down. What I want is an interface that runs what I tell it to run. I would be extremely angry if my game was slowed down by KDE compositing, Gnome effects, Compiz or Beyrl. They look cool, but, they are completely useless and take away from resources I need for other things.
This is sorta the result of nearly thirty years of political conservatism's push. You have to realize a few things. Much of this behavior of US Conservatives came from the civil rights movement. It really boils down to the fact they don't like what the US has become. So they in the leadership are doing everything they can to drive the US into a ditch. The white christian supremacist world they knew of is gone. That is why this is happening. If they can't own the US they will cry and scream about the evils of 'government' and 'liberty'. even when it is a complete lie.
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I can help out here. I run a Linux Open Directory Service at home. Here are some usability improvements that I have seen.
Open Directory is being replaced by Samba 4 Active Directory. I expect that when Samba 4.0 goes gold, what it will most likely do is displace OpenLDAP and Heimdal Kerberos first, as Samba 4 provides the OpenLDAP and Heimdal Kerberos infrastructures, which FreeRadius, Cyrus IMAP, PostFix, and eGroupware have grown to depend on. OpenLDAP and Heimdal Kerberos are difficult to configure and administer.
Evolution working in tandem with LibreOffice and eGroupware and Open Directory can create an OutLook+Office+AD trifecta. Members of my household can reply to documents sent by attachments, look up addresses automatically using LDAP, and all this results in Evolution automagically "Knowing" who and what you are E-mailing, and what to attach. This is outstanding!
There are formatting issues that show up in LibreOffice. Even with the odf-integrator-converter, things are slightly off and require adjusting.
This is bad if you have a corporate or state culture that says "I am not allowed to move that line over 1 centimeter because then I am out of compliance".
I have run into work level situations where I have literally been told "If I modify this document's formatting AT ALL I'm violating federal law.
Another thing. There needs to be a collectivist document management platform that integrates with the aboved Mention in the same way SharePoint does. I know Knowlege Tree Comes close,so does GeekLog.
MySQL started spiking my CPU when the leap second hit. Only MySQL, and nothing else. It was odd.
You'd think this is actually just the ignorance of 'Dumb Americans.' That isn't so. The reason is evolution is a deal breaker due to the structure of the Christian religion.
Kalinka told me the following.
It doesn't have anything to say about the existence or non-existence of any gods. It is a problem with the way the Mythos of Christianity works in particular.
The Mythos of Christianity absolutely depends on a a literal understanding of Genesis. In Judaism, Genesis can be metaphor, it changes nothing. But the Sacrifice of Jesus is contingent on an event called the fall of man, where Eve and Adam ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, angering Yahweh (God) and damning all Humans to Hell save for a few Jewish Prophets and anyone who accepts Jesus as the Savior.
The fall of man is considered the *Primary Sin* which sends us to Hell. (The main Reason.)
If The Book of Genesis is metaphorical, then Jesus died for nothing because no fall of man ever occurred for Yahweh to have a reason to send us to Hell to begin with. Ergo, Christianity is collapses because Saint Paul was a liar.
This is why Christians have a problem with Evolution and Jews do not.
The real reason that this doctrine that Paul created was put into place was to exclude the Jews from Salvation.
He didn't for see the evolution problem. That came along later.
If the Garden of Eden never happened, the fall never happened. then there would be no need for the death of Jesus Christ. Which means that Christianity was wrong all along. Biological evolution collapses a core foundation of Christianity.
Was a complete disaster.
If you ask my opinion, Mandriva had no corporate offerings that actually offered any actual value. Everything server wise you wanted to do to Mandriva could be done with the base Mandriva Linux distribution.
I run an Open Directory Server with:
OpenLDAP + Samba + Kerberos + FreeRadius. On Mandriva Linux. I modified libuser myself to enumerate LDAP accounts. I use Fog for imaging. I use LDAP to administer sudoers, It all works. Mandriva could have taken the Linux Domain controller Market. How? Adding a Widget that said "Create Open Directory Domain" in Mandriva Control Center.
Instead they created this convoluted mess of a service called Mandriva Directory server that complicated everything five or six times. I tried to warn them. They should have handled the creation of Open Directory Servers the same way they handled Open Directory (And Active Directory Clients):
You click on an MMC Widget
The Needed Packages for dhcpd, bind, openldap, samba, kerberos, libuser-ldap, etc etc etc... were all installed, and configurations were written, CLEANLY. Services restart... boom Open Directory Domain.
I filed bugs, I pissed and moaned, my bugs got marked Invalid or won't fix.
Yes it can to a degree. For Wiimotes, In the Windows world there is glovePie, in the Linux world there is Cwiid.
PS3 Controllers can be used Wired only in Windows as a standard HID. In Linux there is QtSixA
XBox 360 uses the "Xbox 360 Dongle for Windows". because they aren't bluetooth. Drivers come with it for Windows. Linux has xboxdrv
Believe it or not, Linux has an absolutely golden opportunity to deliver a 'better than Windows' experience to consumers it will more than likely miss. some of these issues are application developers fault. Others are Linux itself's fault. A few things:
- Stop doing Jacked up things to KDE, Gnome, and similar. No more Mandatory themes per distribution. Mandriva does this with ROSA, I had to make an RPM just to replace the ROSA theme.
- Harmonize RPM and DEB. An RPM be it a Suse RPM, or a Mandriva, or Fedora RPM should generation-ally, be able to be installed on any RPM based system that uses RPM. Same for Deb, although Deb is better than that.
- Application developers: Target SDL when making games (OpenGL for 3D). Do NOT use the deprecated X11 Video, Joystick, and similar input. Some Linux games still use these conventions which can result in crashes.
- For Retro Gamers: Linux is in a better emulation position than Windows on a few fronts with a few exceptions: Those being: Atari Jaguar, Sharp X68000, PC-9801. FM Towns/Marty. Fix this, and Linux has absolute supremacy in the legacy hardware emulation realm no 'virtual console' can match.
Linux has the ability using Wine to take ground and hold ground at all cost against Windows. Wine and Samba are the best example of this. The resilience of the Samba 3.x NT Domain backward compatibility issue has shown that Linux CAN alter Window's behavior. In the Samba realm Samba 3 took NT Domains, and to over come the lack of BDC support, added LDAP and Kerberos that was standard, creating Open Directories with multiple PDCs, forcing Microsoft to maintain backward compatibility far beyond what they wanted.
Now; with the entrenched position of AD, the same thing can happen again, Samba 4.0 can extend AD by tacking on OpenAFS Cell Clusters, and other things, and overcome AD's technical design limitations in the same way; creating a superior AD experience under Linux.
Wine stands to one up Windows 7 and XP for game compatibility with 9x. Try and make 9x games and XP games that don't work right hold ground over Windows 7.
In the new game arena, make sure that Wine can stand it's ground on Steam. make sure new games work Wine even without the creator's consent. If possible, try and get them to run better on Wine.
Ensure Linux has tools to clean Windows machines. Especially remotely that does not mean reformatting the machine.
Ensure that Linux can seamlessly run Android products. As with Wine, an Android API translation layer should be availible for Linux.
Hardware wise: With a Bluetooth Module, you should be able to seemlessly pair any PS3 Controller, Wiimote, and 360 Controller without Human intervention. This does work. But it takes Human intervention. I have to install drivers and an applet, and I have to launch that applet MANUALLY. If I have a Bluetooth module, or the 360 Dongle, it should work, perfectly, with the proper Quadrant lights, the first time. Currently I can make this work, by hand. But I shouldn't have too.
I have a feeling people will screw this up. They always do.
I wonder if this Steam Linux client will act like PlayOnLinux and download Whitelisted Wine Clients that Steam won't flag as "cheating." I say this because I have a family member that keeps one Windows 7 machine just because he plays Left 4 Dead 2, and Steam once banned a whole sloth of Wine Users because their DLL files did not match the database Steam had.
Supposedly, Steam keeps a whitelist of known Wine DLLs to prevent this.
Does anyone remember using uuencode and uudecode under Minuet for DOS? I used to use that in the late 1990s on my Tandy 1000 TL. Minuet couldn't read Base64 Mime Attachments.
Whenever I see these peope constantly banging the drums of how we have to continually make worse laws about controlling the Internet, one thing comes to my mind:
Why do these government officials keep harping on it? Ministers like Ted Haggard attack gays constantly, and turn out to be gay themselves. Me thinks the government officials might be producing or consuming this material. Otherwise, why, might I ask, are you harping on it so much?
I tried a dating site long ago (eHarmony) and I found that they are utterly worthless for finding real relationships with real people. All it does is attract spammers, scammers, and predators. If you want to date, get to know people in your local community. To dating sites, you are just money to be made.
There is an effort to collapse or split education into haves and have-nots in the US. Its been really going on since Integration in the US. For decades before Integration, there were policies of "Dual Schools" in the US. That's happening again, and it's going to take legislators to stop it. The only way I can see it happening is massive over haul of the Public education system and forced closure of private education systems. There is a concerted effort by the conservative power elite in the USA to splinter and collapse universal schooling. The only way is to outlaw non-state sanctioned schooling so the wealthy are forced to participate in the public schooling system.
The Taliban is one organization I would not mind if we used a Neutron Bomb or some sort of method of extinguishing all organic life in an area to eliminate. They are probably the lowest vermin on the face of the Earth.
Are these people aware that a Tanuki is a MYTHICAL Japanese Raccoon Youkai (Spirit) with a magic shape shifting abilities that can normally talk like Humans? That is why Mario has his abilities in the game. He didn't skin an actual Raccoon dog, he gained the spirit energy of the Youkai including its Statue ability...
We've already done more damage than we can reverse. It was 71 degrees the other day on November 1st. Our atmosphere is changing probably to a configuration that is hostile to our survival. Probably the first to go will be our crop resources. I don't think our society will change. The majority of this species believes in an Earth that will exist forever because a 2500 year old anthology of books say so.
I don't believe the Earth will be like Venus because Venus is in a different orbit than Earth is. But I do think the Earth will change and probably become hostile to our species. We didn't always have the atmosphere we do now. and when our species dies off, another species will take our place. Our sun can probably support the deveopment of one more species before it perishes.
The Human species had its chance to survive and chose badly.
There is evidence to support the idea that Paul invented the idea that 100% of all Humans go to Hell with the exception of those saved by Jesus as a way of breaking the original covenant with Abraham the Jews had. The idea is that Adam brought Sin into the world, and at that point all Humans were damned to Hell. Jews of Paul's time were rejecting Christianity, while the surrounding "Pagans" were adopting it. The Jews were a disliked class, so this little poison pill was a way of condemning the Jews.
This also explains why there are Christian Creationists. For Christianity to be true, and the Jesus Crucifixion to have had any purpose, that particular story is the most important story after the story of Jesus. Without Creationism, Christianity collapses entirely because Yahweh has no original sin with Which to condemn us all to Hell from the start.
Paul provided Christianity with the rope to hang itself. Because he created the clause in the Bible that requires the initial original sin of Adam to take place for any of this to mean anything. The Original sin of Adam is the PRIMARY reason for the Crucifixion in Jesus, ordinary Human failings are SECONDARY.
I understand what Paul was trying to do, he was looking for a way to make the laws of the Torah invalid for salvation. He wanted to be able to go to the Jews of his time, and say "Yahweh doesn't care if you follow the laws of Moses any longer. You were bad followers so he no longer wants you because you have the audacity to reject the sacrifice of the savior. So, see you in Hell."
We know the world is not 6000 years old, we know that the Genesis myths were allegory because those desert nomads didn't know how the world began, Paul hedged the entire religion on the foundation of that myth.
So in conclusion, Christianity is the cult of Paul. This only applies to Christianity. But it is the critical fault in Christianity that disproves it. Thats why creationists cling tp the creation myth more than any other myth in the Bible. It's the corner stone that collapses the whole religion.
Boutique Computer systems like the Atari ST, Amiga, and Sharp X68000 are some of the most insufferable tasks one can undergo as far as emulation goes.
I will say this now. The Amiga and Atari ST were fine products for their time, but now, their only usefulness is as gaming consoles. The games they had that were unique to their platform and superior ports produced really were a sight to see, and have withstood the test of time in this era of retro-gaming revival.
Atari ST Emulation is tolerable under Windows and Linux.
Amiga emulation is absolutely insufferable, especially under Linux where the emulators just seem to get worse with every port produced. Even under Windows, Amiga emulation is a complicated abysmal mess, with dozens of archane rom versions, Disk insertion and image issues, and emulation bugs.
The gaming library from the Amiga era is the only thing it has going for it, and is why Amiga programmers should do their best to make Amiga games fully playable on Linux platforms.
The best games in my opinion on fair use are as follows:
The game as a Static beginning, and ending. When you defeat the Final boss of a game, the game should end with one of many multiple programmed endings. The game should support Multiplayer, either by multiple controllers in the case of a Console oriented game, or LAN/Peer to Peer Internet play possibly with Lobby servers But if you shouldn't have to use Lobby servers if you don't wish too. There should be no currency that can be exchanged for real money. Real money should not be used to inflate the abilities of the players. Unlockable characters, and secret levels should be in the game at the start. They should not be something you pay for. Patches should be freely available.
Prior to the PS3/360/Wii era, when I bought a game it was a complete game. There was no online pass, there was no DLC, and there shouldn't be.
Star Wars is not Science fiction, it's Arthurian Legend. Star Trek is about a possible future of our world/universe and the progress of secular Humanity, and the triumph of reason and science.
Star Wars is like a King Aurthur's knights of the round table, or spiritualist story about good vs. evil, just set in space. It discusses a quasi-religious struggle between right and wrong, and the struggle of rightful Camelot style kings vs. vicious tyrants. It is a fairy tale, or fable.
A few pointers. Don't use LDAP for authentication. use Heimdal Kerberos for authentication (PAM) and use LDAP for authorization. (NSS). Don't let machines bind as cn=Manager. That is very bad should a machine become compromised. Generally, SASL LDAP binds are recommended over simple. Kerberos should bind
And most relevent. Only let users in the People OU bind to their own uid in the suffix.
If you are binding to the tree with cn=Manager, on a regular basis, you deserve what you get, set your ACLs right.
The DVD's being produced that I have seen are lke the live install aspect of Ubuntu. The poblem with that is that Mandriva 2010.2 had a dedicated installer that could both preform complete installations of full setups, as well as on the fly upgrades, rebuilding and if you had Mandriva installed already, it would rebuild and upgrade everything. These ISO images are compressed with squashfs, so you can't extract the RPMs from them and push a live upgrade. I hope that in the future a non-live full install DVD is produced not this 1.6 GB "live install" crap from Ubuntu's way of doing things.
I am used to paralell LDAP+Kerberos+SSH installations of all my machines. This sqashfs method is unacceptable. Especially considering Mageia CAN do that.
Atari did make better hardware to replace the 2600, but they screwed up. They made the Atari 5200 intentionally incompatible with the 400/800/600XL. Those were all excellent machines that were ahead of their time in 1984. They even supported Composite output and RF. If you got a 5200 you had a machine that could not play 2600 or 400/800 games with incompatible controllers, an ultra-proprietary RF Switch and power adapter, and broken controllers.
They backslid even FURTHER into obscurity when they released the 7800 which was just a slightly improved 2600 as late as 1988.
What they should have done was just release a version of the 400/800 without the keyboard, or with the keyboard as an add-on... oh wait. They did... The Atari XEGS... in 1991, when everyone was moving to the Super NES.
What was called FireFox 4.0 should have been called FireFox 3.7, and we should still be in 3.7.x phase. These version number games make me have the very real inclination to punch the people responsible in the face repeatedly. They are doing no less than turning FireFox, which once had reverence, into an object of ridicule.
Is it that big evil thing from the Fifth Element? Do we need four stones to make it fire a a giant Laser beam at it? Is it going to make evil people leak black tar?
Corporate Desktop:
Here are some things you should keep in mind. Since 2006, among Linux users, the Open Directory model where OpenLDAP runs a directory service, Samba 3.x runs a PDC, and Heimdal Kerberos runs the KDC, and FreeRadius runs RADIUS has been extremely popular. Open Directory (OpenLDAP+Samba+Heimdal Kerberos) was a definite step above the Sun Yellow Pages+NFS, or early NT4 Domains created by Samba 2.2, and it ran like a well oiled machine. Certain distributors supported it well. Mandriva and Suse being model citizens, while Ubuntu not so much. Ubuntu and Debian did a horrible job with Samba, LDAP and Kerberos. But Samba, LDAP, and Kerberos as Open Directory aren't MS Active Directory. That cost the Linux world many casualties. For the longest time, AD Dominated.
I recently tried Samba 4.0 Alpha 15 and was able to create a mostly functional Windows 2008 R2 Style Forest. I ran into problems incorporating Open Directory applications and schemas used to OpenLDAP's model, but I am certain those can be resolved. Samba 4.0 will have all the features of Open Directory and all of Active Directory's forms combined. It will likely replace OpenLDAP and Heimdal Kerberos because it is so much easier to manage just one application that does all three, and is completely compatible with its predecessors in the Unix world's feature sets.
In the future, I can see Samba 4 becoming the predominant Server for both Windows AD Clients, and Unix Clients running applications like NFS and AFS, FreeRadius, PostFix, eGroupware, and Zimbra. At the same time offering AD support to AD Clients. If you think it can't happen, just remember that Windows 7 has special code in it's registry to allow Samba 3 Domains to authenticate with Windows 7 clients, and even though Samba 3 style domains are still in some sense NT4 Domains, while NT4 itself is completely incompatible with Windows 7.
Samba 4 can devour the AD market inside out.
Home Desktop
What really matters here are games. Linux desktop needs to be able to run games of all platforms, for Windows, this of course means Wine. Wine again, is in a position to become more compatible with Windows than real Windows. There are now, a few applications that will run on Wine but not Modern Windows. This is mostly Games from the 9x era. But as time moves on, we may see more XP games that work on Wine that won't work on Windows.
Android support is another issue. A market for Android phones is growing, and Linux needs some sort of API translation layer to run Android games on PCs.
Desktop Interface:
Another thing is this: The constant desktop shifting and changing has to stop. someone really needs to back the Trinity Desktop Environment. Both KDE and Gnome now take away system resources from video cards to make the desktop look and interact more wth the user. This needs to stop. These effects slow the machine down, they slow games down, they slow EVERYTHING down. What I want is an interface that runs what I tell it to run. I would be extremely angry if my game was slowed down by KDE compositing, Gnome effects, Compiz or Beyrl. They look cool, but, they are completely useless and take away from resources I need for other things.
This is sorta the result of nearly thirty years of political conservatism's push. You have to realize a few things. Much of this behavior of US Conservatives came from the civil rights movement. It really boils down to the fact they don't like what the US has become. So they in the leadership are doing everything they can to drive the US into a ditch. The white christian supremacist world they knew of is gone. That is why this is happening. If they can't own the US they will cry and scream about the evils of 'government' and 'liberty'. even when it is a complete lie.