This sounds almost like the Slow Animations bug that happens after roughly 200 hours of gameplay and has never been fixed. People playing on the PC can hack their saves to reset a 32bit float value to temporarily work around the problem, though those with the Xbox (and probably PS3 too) version of the game are SOL.
> If they do everything right and you can't think of a better way, consider getting a license from them.
What if the concept behind it is right but the existing implementation sucks both in cost and performance? Why should I not be able to compete in such a situation? Remember, my ability to compete depends on the patent owner's willingness to license it to me. This is why software patents make no sense at all.
> If Gnome is so terrible, why wouldn't anyone switch to something else? Have you considered that maybe some people don't dislike Gnome as much as you do?
I believe that many of the people who still use GNOME are people who got used to the console and are yet to find a GUI consistent enough for their liking (which is my case, as well as many of my friends'). Personally I only use GNOME because unlike Flux/Blackobox, compiz doesn't run as a standalone window manager, otherwise I'd gladly get rid of it.
Also, due to my preference for LGPL, gtk+ is more appealing to me than qt.
That is not true for a simple reason: a contributor doesn't have to agree with anything besides the compatibility of their code with the GPLv2 in order to submit code. Therefore, without an agreenment, there's no reassignment of rights, and the effective license at the end of the day is the kernel's (since that's the licence with which the mainstream-blessed code is distributed): GPLv2.
Seconded on the ARM opinion, although I must admit that the only other architecture in which I have low level experience besides ARM is x86. Anyway when compared to x86, ARM is a walk in the park, a well thought architecture with a simple and organized instruction set with a lot of multimedia capabilities.
DirectX 10. As soon as games start complaining for lack of DX10 support, people will have to switch. My current video card is already DX10-ready and I intend to use it in its fullest potential.
Any geek who has read comics for any length of time knows that the superheroes of today are *much* less powerful than they were 40 - 50 years ago. I doubt if the laws of physics have changed. Perhaps the shift has been with writers finally understanding that they can only push the boundaries of reality so far.
The only thing that irritates me on those languages is them being weakly typed. When I write a Perl module, for example, I like to write it in such a way that if the user makes a mistake, the error is reported in his source, not in my module (to make things easier for him to debug), and sometimes this is hard to achieve because there are way too much run-time checks to be performed that wouldn't be needed in a strongly typed language. Regular expressions help a lot, but when you have to make sure that the scalar you are receiving is not an undefined value or a reference before verifying it against the regular expression, things get repetitive and sometimes complex. PHP makes it even worse to me because it forces me to deal with arrays and objects which share the same namespace as scalar values and aren't treated in the same consistent way as lists are in Perl.
Personally I think it has more to do with the possibility of information leakage than product quality. The case they lost against the Does has probably contributed a lot to this sudden decision.
> That's a bitch to get acceleration working in some, if not all, Linux distributions.
All ATi chips before and including the r250 (ranging from the RADEON 7000 to the RADEON 9250) have open source drivers bundled with Xorg and the Linux kernel. All other ATi chips can be used with the binary drivers from ATi. The thinkpads I know have RADEON MOBILITY 7500 chips, so they are perfectly supported.
> On the other hand, I run Debian on my T30, no acceleration on the video at all. It used to be working just fine, but somewhere along the way it stopped working and I never noticed it.
Maybe this is the right time to switch to Gentoo.;-) And no, this is not a question of fanboyism, I'd just hard-guess (because I didn't bother to actually check) that Debian, Ubunto, and other dpkg/rpm based distributions are suffering from the same problem as the Kororaa Live CD: distributing precompiled binaries of the kernel modules required to load the ATi and nVidia drivers violates the GPL (a similar problem happened with the old Sun Java license which those distributions weren't allowed to support because they couldn't redistribute the software). On Gentoo the installation scripts and patches are completely independent from the distfiles thus allowing developers to provide portage support for software without redistributing it.
I'll definitely buy the Wii as soon as it's launched because of the Nintendo exclusives and the backward compatibility. I still regret missing the chance of having a Nintendo 64 back when it was relevant and won't miss it again.
For third party games I'm considering the PlayStation 3 for two reasons: the Sony exclusives and the possibility of running Linux on a relatively cheap Cell implementation.
> Way to frame the debate. I have a constitutional right to tell people I think they're ugly too. Does that mean it's moral to walk around doing so without any particular reason?
It doesn't mean it's moral, but why should you be bothered? One thing is to have good faith because it makes you feel better, another completely different thing is to expect others respect the same values as you do. Being morally right also means being tolerat towards others, even when they don't share your opinions. Morality is a rather subjective topic, never bring it up in a discussion, because what you think is right others might not and vice versa.
> Yeah, it should. If not for your incoherent post, at least for this crap. Why does every fucking Slashbot loser have to pre- or suffix his post with "I'll probably lose a lot of karma for this, but...", "Oh well, there goes my karma..." or "Let the downmods begin"? If you have something to say, just say it. Don't preemptively whine that people might not like it.
With the huge crowd of Mac fanboys slashdot has, negative moderation is to be expected when someone tries to point out their collective bias. If I was really concerned about my karma I would have posted as anonymous, just like you did.;-)
> Its one thing to find holes and tell Apple and people you did, and send the info to Apple. But I am so sick of these people who feel that if said company doesnt respond NOW they are then in the right to exploit said holes and make everyones life misserable.
What do you mean? That he doesn't have the right to disclose what he found? Does his constitutional rights make you sick? Well then I think that YOU are the one with a problem. You should be thanking him for warning Apple. I know many who would have kept it secret and written all kinds of worms just to make fun of fanboys like you, and I guess that's what you're really asking for with your complaints.
> What a load of rubbish - viruses infect via operating system and application vulnerabilities, the chipset those are running on has very little relevance.
No, the article points out what I thought was obvious.
To write a worm/virus you actually need to know how to assemble on the target architecture for at least two reasons:
1 - The first thing you do before attempting to exploit a crash is to debug it, now how do you debug on an architecture which you don't know? Trying to debug low level code (remember it's precompiled binaries we're talking about here, not scripts) without knowing how to assemble on the target architecture is like running the marathon without a leg.
2 - If you find a way to inject code you'll need, well... code to inject..., and this code has to be written in the lowest possible level so that you can interrupt to system calls without depending on operating system libraries and avoid specific opcode patterns that would have a meaning to the high level application and prevent your injected code from running as expected.
Taking in account that every geek in the universe knows x86 assembly, if you think for a while you'll realize that the architecture switch makes OSX much easier to debug for the majority of people, and inherently much easier to exploit.
> Yet another proof of the fact that the more bandwidth you give an individual their their home, the greater the likelihood they'll use it to start pirating copyrighted material. Join with me to say HELL NO to high speed broadband links in homes. Nobody needs more than a 128kbps ISDN link.
I never really understood why people use statistical excuses to limit the freedom of others, that's a sign of intolerance. The correlation between bandwidth availability and piracy is, to say the least, far fetched, and should never be considered as the cause or part of the problem.
The real problem is that copyright holders are enjoying free lunches with a legislation which values easily replicable content instead of services. The piracy which you consider a problem (but I don't) should instead be perceived as a sign of evolution. Measures such as the new DMCA will only slow down this evolutionary process, but won't hold it forever.
I used to be a syncmaster fan myself, but samsung failed me on two requirements: 1 - Their wide screen displays were either too expensive ($2000+) or too crappy (low contrast ratios, narrow and assimetric view angles); 2 - They removed the OSD controls from newer displays in favor of software.
Since I was looking for a wide screen monitor with high contrast ratio, the widest possible view angle, a reasonable AVERAGE response time, and the best possible color accuracy, I ended up choosing an HP F105 instead of a syncmaster. While the design of the monitor is not the best, its performance was the best I had ever seen back when I bought it.
For people looking for new LCDs with quality in mind, I recommend this LCD technology and tests page, especially the color and viewing angle dependency test page as it tells a lot about the quality of the display, and be very suspicious about the claimed latency values, because vendors always tell the fastest response time, not the average.
I just HATE this idea! Just because I have a lot of screen real estate doesn't mean I want to spend all of it on a browser window! Sure I can use other workspaces, but I like to keap at least the browser AND the mailer in the same workspace, that's why I bought a big monitor to begin with!
> Compare this with giving the root password to everyone, which requires the password to be changed whenever someone leaves the company (or someone's root privs are revoked).
Create multiple UID 0 accounts with different passwords.
As for the rest of your post, I'd rather not trust the security of a server to sudo, firstly because it had security issues in the past, and secondly because it's not a trivial task to decide which commands a user can and can not have access to.
Slashdot Mirror
This sounds almost like the Slow Animations bug that happens after roughly 200 hours of gameplay and has never been fixed. People playing on the PC can hack their saves to reset a 32bit float value to temporarily work around the problem, though those with the Xbox (and probably PS3 too) version of the game are SOL.
> If they do everything right and you can't think of a better way, consider getting a license from them.
What if the concept behind it is right but the existing implementation sucks both in cost and performance? Why should I not be able to compete in such a situation? Remember, my ability to compete depends on the patent owner's willingness to license it to me. This is why software patents make no sense at all.
> The difference is, however is that because Microsoft put out Vista, the drivers *will* get fixed, one way or another, and in pretty short order.
;)
Put your money where your mouth is, buy Vista 64!
'Nuff said.
"at least on some configurations" doesn't sound exactly like a "default install", does it?
My brain actually listens to what I see? How confusing...
> If Gnome is so terrible, why wouldn't anyone switch to something else? Have you considered that maybe some people don't dislike Gnome as much as you do?
I believe that many of the people who still use GNOME are people who got used to the console and are yet to find a GUI consistent enough for their liking (which is my case, as well as many of my friends'). Personally I only use GNOME because unlike Flux/Blackobox, compiz doesn't run as a standalone window manager, otherwise I'd gladly get rid of it.
Also, due to my preference for LGPL, gtk+ is more appealing to me than qt.
That is not true for a simple reason: a contributor doesn't have to agree with anything besides the compatibility of their code with the GPLv2 in order to submit code. Therefore, without an agreenment, there's no reassignment of rights, and the effective license at the end of the day is the kernel's (since that's the licence with which the mainstream-blessed code is distributed): GPLv2.
Don't take my word for it, let me dispell your beliefs with this thread on the LKML, or if you're not feeling like reading a flame, a clarification message from Patrick McLean, or if that's not enough, another clarification message from Linus himself.
Seconded on the ARM opinion, although I must admit that the only other architecture in which I have low level experience besides ARM is x86. Anyway when compared to x86, ARM is a walk in the park, a well thought architecture with a simple and organized instruction set with a lot of multimedia capabilities.
DirectX 10. As soon as games start complaining for lack of DX10 support, people will have to switch. My current video card is already DX10-ready and I intend to use it in its fullest potential.
The client works wonderfully under Linux, FreeBSD, OSX, and Windows, at the very least. And yes, OpenVPN is the way to go for all your VPN needs.
Mmhmm, so what are the Super Saiyans for you?
> I use Gentoo on my toaster and it runs great. In about 13 years it will have finished compiling Bash
Go and read something about Gentoo Embedded and stop trolling!
The only thing that irritates me on those languages is them being weakly typed. When I write a Perl module, for example, I like to write it in such a way that if the user makes a mistake, the error is reported in his source, not in my module (to make things easier for him to debug), and sometimes this is hard to achieve because there are way too much run-time checks to be performed that wouldn't be needed in a strongly typed language. Regular expressions help a lot, but when you have to make sure that the scalar you are receiving is not an undefined value or a reference before verifying it against the regular expression, things get repetitive and sometimes complex. PHP makes it even worse to me because it forces me to deal with arrays and objects which share the same namespace as scalar values and aren't treated in the same consistent way as lists are in Perl.
Personally I think it has more to do with the possibility of information leakage than product quality. The case they lost against the Does has probably contributed a lot to this sudden decision.
> That's a bitch to get acceleration working in some, if not all, Linux distributions.
;-) And no, this is not a question of fanboyism, I'd just hard-guess (because I didn't bother to actually check) that Debian, Ubunto, and other dpkg/rpm based distributions are suffering from the same problem as the Kororaa Live CD: distributing precompiled binaries of the kernel modules required to load the ATi and nVidia drivers violates the GPL (a similar problem happened with the old Sun Java license which those distributions weren't allowed to support because they couldn't redistribute the software). On Gentoo the installation scripts and patches are completely independent from the distfiles thus allowing developers to provide portage support for software without redistributing it.
All ATi chips before and including the r250 (ranging from the RADEON 7000 to the RADEON 9250) have open source drivers bundled with Xorg and the Linux kernel. All other ATi chips can be used with the binary drivers from ATi. The thinkpads I know have RADEON MOBILITY 7500 chips, so they are perfectly supported.
> On the other hand, I run Debian on my T30, no acceleration on the video at all. It used to be working just fine, but somewhere along the way it stopped working and I never noticed it.
Maybe this is the right time to switch to Gentoo.
I'll definitely buy the Wii as soon as it's launched because of the Nintendo exclusives and the backward compatibility. I still regret missing the chance of having a Nintendo 64 back when it was relevant and won't miss it again.
For third party games I'm considering the PlayStation 3 for two reasons: the Sony exclusives and the possibility of running Linux on a relatively cheap Cell implementation.
> Way to frame the debate. I have a constitutional right to tell people I think they're ugly too. Does that mean it's moral to walk around doing so without any particular reason?
...", "Oh well, there goes my karma ..." or "Let the downmods begin"? If you have something to say, just say it. Don't preemptively whine that people might not like it.
;-)
It doesn't mean it's moral, but why should you be bothered? One thing is to have good faith because it makes you feel better, another completely different thing is to expect others respect the same values as you do. Being morally right also means being tolerat towards others, even when they don't share your opinions. Morality is a rather subjective topic, never bring it up in a discussion, because what you think is right others might not and vice versa.
> Yeah, it should. If not for your incoherent post, at least for this crap. Why does every fucking Slashbot loser have to pre- or suffix his post with "I'll probably lose a lot of karma for this, but
With the huge crowd of Mac fanboys slashdot has, negative moderation is to be expected when someone tries to point out their collective bias. If I was really concerned about my karma I would have posted as anonymous, just like you did.
> Its one thing to find holes and tell Apple and people you did, and send the info to Apple. But I am so sick of these people who feel that if said company doesnt respond NOW they are then in the right to exploit said holes and make everyones life misserable.
;-)
What do you mean? That he doesn't have the right to disclose what he found? Does his constitutional rights make you sick? Well then I think that YOU are the one with a problem. You should be thanking him for warning Apple. I know many who would have kept it secret and written all kinds of worms just to make fun of fanboys like you, and I guess that's what you're really asking for with your complaints.
Here goes my karma...
> What a load of rubbish - viruses infect via operating system and application vulnerabilities, the chipset those are running on has very little relevance.
No, the article points out what I thought was obvious.
To write a worm/virus you actually need to know how to assemble on the target architecture for at least two reasons:
1 - The first thing you do before attempting to exploit a crash is to debug it, now how do you debug on an architecture which you don't know? Trying to debug low level code (remember it's precompiled binaries we're talking about here, not scripts) without knowing how to assemble on the target architecture is like running the marathon without a leg.
2 - If you find a way to inject code you'll need, well... code to inject..., and this code has to be written in the lowest possible level so that you can interrupt to system calls without depending on operating system libraries and avoid specific opcode patterns that would have a meaning to the high level application and prevent your injected code from running as expected.
Taking in account that every geek in the universe knows x86 assembly, if you think for a while you'll realize that the architecture switch makes OSX much easier to debug for the majority of people, and inherently much easier to exploit.
> Yet another proof of the fact that the more bandwidth you give an individual their their home, the greater the likelihood they'll use it to start pirating copyrighted material. Join with me to say HELL NO to high speed broadband links in homes. Nobody needs more than a 128kbps ISDN link.
I never really understood why people use statistical excuses to limit the freedom of others, that's a sign of intolerance. The correlation between bandwidth availability and piracy is, to say the least, far fetched, and should never be considered as the cause or part of the problem.
The real problem is that copyright holders are enjoying free lunches with a legislation which values easily replicable content instead of services. The piracy which you consider a problem (but I don't) should instead be perceived as a sign of evolution. Measures such as the new DMCA will only slow down this evolutionary process, but won't hold it forever.
I used to be a syncmaster fan myself, but samsung failed me on two requirements:
1 - Their wide screen displays were either too expensive ($2000+) or too crappy (low contrast ratios, narrow and assimetric view angles);
2 - They removed the OSD controls from newer displays in favor of software.
Since I was looking for a wide screen monitor with high contrast ratio, the widest possible view angle, a reasonable AVERAGE response time, and the best possible color accuracy, I ended up choosing an HP F105 instead of a syncmaster. While the design of the monitor is not the best, its performance was the best I had ever seen back when I bought it.
For people looking for new LCDs with quality in mind, I recommend this LCD technology and tests page, especially the color and viewing angle dependency test page as it tells a lot about the quality of the display, and be very suspicious about the claimed latency values, because vendors always tell the fastest response time, not the average.
I just HATE this idea! Just because I have a lot of screen real estate doesn't mean I want to spend all of it on a browser window! Sure I can use other workspaces, but I like to keap at least the browser AND the mailer in the same workspace, that's why I bought a big monitor to begin with!
> Compare this with giving the root password to everyone, which requires the password to be changed whenever someone leaves the company (or someone's root privs are revoked).
Create multiple UID 0 accounts with different passwords.
As for the rest of your post, I'd rather not trust the security of a server to sudo, firstly because it had security issues in the past, and secondly because it's not a trivial task to decide which commands a user can and can not have access to.
> On a machine with multiple admins, how do you tell who logged in as root?
Disable root logins completely and have everyone su to root whenever they need super-user privileges. PAM allows you to do this.
> Also if you ever want a RALink driver, OpenBSD is the only OS that has one right now and it seems almost certain any ports will be based off it.
I thought RALink supported Linux themselves, otherwise, what's this?