Fair enough; no insult intended. I agree that most slashdotters feel that because they can administer a UNIX box they know everything related to computers. It can be very frustrating.
...the definition of "better" is a multidimensional equation.
This is so true and in so many ways. (but I will reinforce again that if you're complaining about power, an Intel chip has a hard time of recieving the term "better" under any circumstances:) ).
Wow, looks like I hit a nerve! Well I work in the embedded market too, and I've experienced exactly the same engineering pressures as you have. Perhaps the x86 processor really does fit your system requirements, but if you're going to use it, accepts its limitations: don't go complaining about 20 watts power consumption.
What I stated above is still perfect valid: obviously power consumption isn't that big a deal for you or you'd be using a better processor.
I can't come up with any reason for the embedded market to inflate that significantly that quickly.
This is so funny. I've noticed that the vast majority of people on slashdot don't even understand what constitutes the embedded market. Most people, if they think of it at all, consider "embedded" to mean handhelds and Tivos. Consider: routers, switches, DSL modems, DVD players, microwaves, robotic control, almost any modern car; basically anything electronic that does more than a simple task and isn't a desktop computer probably has an embedded processor in it.
I've got news for you: the embedded market already outnumbers the laptop market! It is estimated that for every personal computer (not just laptops) there are eight to ten embedded computers. When Transmeta mentioned that they expect this market to be bigger than the market for latops they were referring to their chips penetrating that market (ie, sales of their embedded chips will outnumber sales of their laptop chips).
If you're dealing with just PCs and servers, you're missinga an entire world of computers. And unlike the PC market, the embedded market is actually growing.
If you're that concerned about power, why aren't you using an actual embedded processor?! It never ceases to amaze me how many people insist on using x86 based processors in embedded systems when there are lot of other processors, such as MIPS, PowerPC, StrongARM and SuperH, that are specifically designed for these types of circumstances!
Christ! We're already locked into the x86 architecture monopoly for personal computers and servers, why do we need to bring this into the embedded market where it was never meant to be used?! Use the right tool for the job. Embedded systems are a lot more than an old PC in a little box.
Well it depends on what kind of embedded device you're designing, but in many cases the MIPS processor fits the bill better than ARM. MIPS processors are designed by many different vendors, and each has their own target market. The MIPS architecture has seen a massive growth in the embedded market in the last few years and there are some impressive processors out there from the low end to the extremely high-end.
StrongARM is well positioned for handheld devcies, but I'd say the MIPS architecture is the most promising in the embedded space over all.
Nice idea, but the easy-to-use P2P of choice isn't going to be around much longer. Kazaa and MusicCity are going to be shut down by the RIAA; expect new legislation that makes this much easier in the future too. Gnutella isn't an issue becuase anybody who sucessfully makes a user-friendly gnutella client for Windows will be shut down. It's pretty much certain that your obscure Linux P2P client will still be around, as will the gnutella network, but when over 98% of the computing population can't figure out how to get to it, the RIAA, as far as they're concerned, has won.
Even easier: reboot and hold down CMD-S (Option-S on some versions of OS X) and look! You're in single-user mode with root access!
But this is all moot anyhow: if you have physical access to the machine of just about ANY operating system (Linux included), you have full access to everything. Just the other day I booted an NT laptop with a Linux disk that can read NTFS so I could re-set the (forgotten) administrator password.
This is why anybody using Mac OS X should comment out the line:
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
in their/etc/sudoers file. The vast majority of Mac users won't miss sudo, and those who do need root privileges can enable the root account through NetInfo, add their account to the "wheel" group, and use su instead of sudo.
...or you should live with it, but ensure that your main account is a non-administrator account.
All it takes is a couple of geeks to make mp3s from the CDs, release it on IRC, and then it's available to everyone.
No it isn't. Do you realize what a miniscule percentage of the population even knows what IRC is, nevermind how to use it? The vast majority of consumers will never go to these lengths to get free music: it's easier for them just to buy it.
Also, if an average person sees that you have to go to these kinds of lengths to 'steal' music, they'll question the legality and ethics of it. Do you know how many of the people leeching from Napster didn't know it was illegal? I'm totally serious: I was talking with some kids that had just joined university, back in '99, and they didn't believe me that Napster was illegal. They said things like "if it's illegal, why don't the police shut it down? There's no way this is illegal." Some even thought it was run by the record companies! (OK, people are ignorant and stupid--what else is new?)
Regardless, if 'stealing' music starts to involve more than three clicks, the vast majority of consumers will just go buy it instead. I belive that this situation is all the RIAA is really striving for.
Well N*Sync isn't the greatest music ever written, but they're actually pretty good. And why wouldn't they be? They have some of the highest-paid writers, voice trainers and musicians working for them. That doesn't mean that any of the people behind them are the next Beethoven, but they know how to write a catchy tune that sticks in your head.
All in all, some decent music is produced under the N*Sync brand. Their ballads are clearly targeted towards their early teen and pre-teen female audiences, but they're musically sound. Their more up-beat songs are actually quite catchy. The Backstreet Boys are more consistent in their sound, and I think that generally their music can be considered catchy more often, but when the N*Sync brand gets it right, they product some absolutely great tracks, such as "Bye Bye Bye," and "I Want You Back." Still, it's getting difficult to market the Backstreet Boys brand as the models creep closer to 30 and get married.
But that aside, we should be worried about this copy protection. If this technogy turns out to be reasonably effective for this market with few complaints, it will be much easier to roll it out on all future CDs. Remember, the RIAA doesn't assume that any technology will be 100% effective, but if it stops 99.9% of the population, then it will have done its job. Sure the geeks will still be able to obtain it, from ripping themselves or through obscure P2P clients, but the vast majority of people won't be able to get their hands on the MP3s, and that's all that really matters for the RIAA. The DMCA will take care of the misfits.
But what is the point? Anyone with an internet connection will have no doubt experienced the instability.... so I'm a bit unclear on why this study was called for
It's an analytical tool called a scientific proof. Believe it or not, anecdotal evidence (like you suggested) is not enough to prove your intuition that IIS worms influence global routing stability. You need scientific evidence to prove a hyptothesis such as this.
Actually I meant to link to this bug above, but the one I linked to is relevant as well. These feature requests are the way to make Fizilla more "Mac" like, not some hack theme.
I just wish they would let a Mac port of Mozilla have a Mac look.
Oh give me a break. If there's that much demand for an Aqua look-and-feel "theme" for Mozilla then somebody will put in the time to add native Quartz calls to Mozilla. Adding a silly "theme" is not the way to do this when it's on the native platform of Aqua. Besides, how would you do transparencies with a theme? An Aqua "theme" would be a hack for these purposes.
If Mozilla were changed to use native aqua screen widgets, then the only thing needed to make it look like it "fits in" is a very simple theme for the menubar buttons -- a theme that Apple wouldn't complain about at all and it would be 100% original artwork.
Just another data point: MacOS X has extensive support for Japanese; it's been a major goal for Apple to make OS X support for Japanese as good as it is for English.
I haven't actually used Photoshop Elements, but my understanding is that it doesn't support layers, has weak support for text, and comes with a pretty limited set of filters.
Wrong to all of the above. Everything you mentioned is there, and it includes all of the basic Photoshop filters, completely un-crippled, which is more than enough for 99% of users. Many of the features are presented in a much more intuitive way for beginners, though just about every function you'd find in the GIMP is there.
I'm not going to spend a dime on anything that isn't Carbon or Cocoa.
That's understandable; I'll give you this one:)
GIMP provides everything I need, and I've been using it for ~2 years so I'm used to the interface. Why change?
Well sure, use what you're most familiar with, but the conversation started with a reference to Mac users switching over to the GIMP. If you're familiar with the GIMP, that's fine, but you would be doing a great disservice to a beginner if you told them to use the GIMP over Photoshop Elements.
I was expecting the worst, so I was pleasantly surprised. The effects were good, but not overpowering, the acting was decent, the storyline was better than I thought, and the soft-porn was great, but I'd prefer to have seem some XXX live girl-on-girl action... uh.. yeah it was ok.
They didn't completely screw up the time-travel angle (but I suppose there's lots of time for that), but it did strike me that it was awfully easy for them to accomplish their "mission" even though the "bad guys" had vastly superior technology and advanced genetics. I guess they forgot to advance their brians when they were going though their genetic engineering.
Anyhow I haven't seen Star Trek in years so I wasn't really sure what to expect (I've hardly seen Voyager for instance), but I thought it showed some promise. I think the best part about it is that it's not overly Star Trekky--this might make it appeal to a larger audience. It's no masterpiece, but for TV, I say it's pretty good.
Photoshop is major $$$. Why do you think so many Mac users have been interested in a GIMP port?
Well photoshop is available to students for only about $200, which is how I first bought it years ago. Anybody who isn't a student will have a job and therefor money, but even then one can still find photoshop for about $500, sometimes less if you pick up an older version and upgrade.
Add to all this the fact that the GIMP is useless for print, and if you're not doing print then you'd be better off buying Photoshop Elements for a mere $99. There are even upgrade programs to buy Photoshop Elements for as low as $70 if you have a copy of Photoshop LE (included with many scanners, and I've even seen it included free with magazines and at tradeshows!)
It should also be noted that while I've seen many Mac users interested in the GIMP (hey, everybody likes free stuff), I've run into exactly zero who were impressed by it when they finally got it running. The GIMP is a nice idea, but despite what many (ignorant) zealots preach, the GIMP does not, in any way shape or form, come close to the power of Photoshop Elements, nevermind Photoshop.
A lot of people are saying "it depends," but I'm not really sure why. Just about any UNIX app that will compile on *BSD (graphical or not) can run on OS X. Get XonX and you can run a rootless XFree86 port right next to the Aqua windows. Where does "it depends" even enter this? OS X is as much a UNIX as FreeBSD and Linux are, period.
The funny thing I've found however, is that after going to great lengths to install beta versions of XDarwin and hacking libraries to get them to compile (this was 6 months ago, all of this is much easier now), I found myself wondering what exactly to do with it. I put a lot of importance on running my old Linux apps, but when it came down to it there was nothing I needed to run under X! I used the Gimp for a bit, but then picked up a copy of Photoshop instead; Mozilla runs better under Aqua than X-Windows; Fire is a great ICQ client and I really like Apple's Mail.app for email; Microsoft Office for the Mac is hands down better than any UNIX clone (or even Office for Windows). The new Office for X looks phenomenal! Everybody using OS X should download the Word for X trial version and try it for themselves. StarOffice and the like don't even come close to this newest version of Word for the Mac. Amazing.
Sometimes I use the xterms in XDarwin just for old times sake, and it's nice to remotely connect to my linux box though the X Server, but what really struck me is how much better apps are in OS X than they are in Linux. Sure a lot of these apps aren't free, but I was never using them because they were free: I was using them because they got the job done well. Now I'm using no X-Windows apps, a handful of OS 9 apps, but the vast majority of the apps I use are OS X native. It's official, I'm a Mac convert:).
Totally off topic, but do you have any psytrance mixes of yours that I could get ahold of? I'm a hard house and hard house DJ from Toronto, and while I prefer to spin housier stuff, I've been a big psytrance fan for years. Actually there's a really good reason why I won't spin psytrance, but I won't get into it here:).
Anyhow, if you (or anybody else reading this!) has some good psytrance mixes, send 'em my way! And if you like UK Hard House or Hard Trance, listen to my mixes at djnumbernine.com.
I've recently started using OpenBSD and I had heard how ports and packages were functionally equivalent to Debian's apt-get (with which I am most familiar). I was very disappointed to find out that while packages and ports are nice, they're nowhere near as nice as apt-get.
First of all with ports, you have to compile everything yourself, which can take a lot of time on slower machines (like my home router/firewall). In the end it just creates an OpenBSD package anyway.
So I tried packages. They're pre-compiled, like debs, but the pkg_add software is terrible! In order to update a package you have to first remove the package then add it again! And if the package has dependancies you have to remove all the dependancies and re-install them all again! Plus you can't just do a "pkg_add foo," you have to do a "pkg_add ftp://ftp.openbsd.org{blabalbla}/foo-3.17-2.pkg," which means you not only have to know where to get the file, you also have to know the version number and all other information in the filename in advance! Add to this the fact that there's no real comparable substitue to "apt-get update;apt-get upgrade," and it's quite obvious that OpenBSD's packaging system is woefully inadequate.
I'm not sure if FreeBSD's paackaging system is better, but I was shocked to see just how bad OpenBSD's packaging was. It's too bad, because apart from the packaging management, I love OpenBSD. Perhaps I'll start working "apt-get-izing" OpenBSD. Has anybody else started such a project? It seems badly needed.
From product activation to (fill in the blank) to this latest EULA fiasco, I think most people have had just about enough.
Make that people on slashdot have had just about enough. The vast majority of the population don't notice or care about Microsoft's abuses, and if you think otherwise, you've been hanging around geeks too much. Sad but true.
Slashdot Mirror
Here are some hi-res photos
Since whend did "hi-res" mean "larger than a postage stamp? High-resolution is more like a 300dpi photo, not this slightly larger picture.
- j
Fair enough; no insult intended. I agree that most slashdotters feel that because they can administer a UNIX box they know everything related to computers. It can be very frustrating.
...the definition of "better" is a multidimensional equation.
:) ).
This is so true and in so many ways. (but I will reinforce again that if you're complaining about power, an Intel chip has a hard time of recieving the term "better" under any circumstances
- j
Wow, looks like I hit a nerve! Well I work in the embedded market too, and I've experienced exactly the same engineering pressures as you have. Perhaps the x86 processor really does fit your system requirements, but if you're going to use it, accepts its limitations: don't go complaining about 20 watts power consumption.
What I stated above is still perfect valid: obviously power consumption isn't that big a deal for you or you'd be using a better processor.
- j
I can't come up with any reason for the embedded market to inflate that significantly that quickly.
This is so funny. I've noticed that the vast majority of people on slashdot don't even understand what constitutes the embedded market. Most people, if they think of it at all, consider "embedded" to mean handhelds and Tivos. Consider: routers, switches, DSL modems, DVD players, microwaves, robotic control, almost any modern car; basically anything electronic that does more than a simple task and isn't a desktop computer probably has an embedded processor in it.
I've got news for you: the embedded market already outnumbers the laptop market! It is estimated that for every personal computer (not just laptops) there are eight to ten embedded computers. When Transmeta mentioned that they expect this market to be bigger than the market for latops they were referring to their chips penetrating that market (ie, sales of their embedded chips will outnumber sales of their laptop chips).
If you're dealing with just PCs and servers, you're missinga an entire world of computers. And unlike the PC market, the embedded market is actually growing.
- j
If you're that concerned about power, why aren't you using an actual embedded processor?! It never ceases to amaze me how many people insist on using x86 based processors in embedded systems when there are lot of other processors, such as MIPS, PowerPC, StrongARM and SuperH, that are specifically designed for these types of circumstances!
Christ! We're already locked into the x86 architecture monopoly for personal computers and servers, why do we need to bring this into the embedded market where it was never meant to be used?! Use the right tool for the job. Embedded systems are a lot more than an old PC in a little box.
- j
Well it depends on what kind of embedded device you're designing, but in many cases the MIPS processor fits the bill better than ARM. MIPS processors are designed by many different vendors, and each has their own target market. The MIPS architecture has seen a massive growth in the embedded market in the last few years and there are some impressive processors out there from the low end to the extremely high-end.
StrongARM is well positioned for handheld devcies, but I'd say the MIPS architecture is the most promising in the embedded space over all.
- j
Nice idea, but the easy-to-use P2P of choice isn't going to be around much longer. Kazaa and MusicCity are going to be shut down by the RIAA; expect new legislation that makes this much easier in the future too. Gnutella isn't an issue becuase anybody who sucessfully makes a user-friendly gnutella client for Windows will be shut down. It's pretty much certain that your obscure Linux P2P client will still be around, as will the gnutella network, but when over 98% of the computing population can't figure out how to get to it, the RIAA, as far as they're concerned, has won.
- j
Even easier: reboot and hold down CMD-S (Option-S on some versions of OS X) and look! You're in single-user mode with root access!
But this is all moot anyhow: if you have physical access to the machine of just about ANY operating system (Linux included), you have full access to everything. Just the other day I booted an NT laptop with a Linux disk that can read NTFS so I could re-set the (forgotten) administrator password.
Big deal. Physical access == root.
- j
This is why anybody using Mac OS X should comment out the line:
/etc/sudoers file. The vast majority of Mac users won't miss sudo, and those who do need root privileges can enable the root account through NetInfo, add their account to the "wheel" group, and use su instead of sudo.
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
in their
...or you should live with it, but ensure that your main account is a non-administrator account.
- j
All it takes is a couple of geeks to make mp3s from the CDs, release it on IRC, and then it's available to everyone.
No it isn't. Do you realize what a miniscule percentage of the population even knows what IRC is, nevermind how to use it? The vast majority of consumers will never go to these lengths to get free music: it's easier for them just to buy it.
Also, if an average person sees that you have to go to these kinds of lengths to 'steal' music, they'll question the legality and ethics of it. Do you know how many of the people leeching from Napster didn't know it was illegal? I'm totally serious: I was talking with some kids that had just joined university, back in '99, and they didn't believe me that Napster was illegal. They said things like "if it's illegal, why don't the police shut it down? There's no way this is illegal." Some even thought it was run by the record companies! (OK, people are ignorant and stupid--what else is new?)
Regardless, if 'stealing' music starts to involve more than three clicks, the vast majority of consumers will just go buy it instead. I belive that this situation is all the RIAA is really striving for.
- j
Well N*Sync isn't the greatest music ever written, but they're actually pretty good. And why wouldn't they be? They have some of the highest-paid writers, voice trainers and musicians working for them. That doesn't mean that any of the people behind them are the next Beethoven, but they know how to write a catchy tune that sticks in your head.
All in all, some decent music is produced under the N*Sync brand. Their ballads are clearly targeted towards their early teen and pre-teen female audiences, but they're musically sound. Their more up-beat songs are actually quite catchy. The Backstreet Boys are more consistent in their sound, and I think that generally their music can be considered catchy more often, but when the N*Sync brand gets it right, they product some absolutely great tracks, such as "Bye Bye Bye," and "I Want You Back." Still, it's getting difficult to market the Backstreet Boys brand as the models creep closer to 30 and get married.
But that aside, we should be worried about this copy protection. If this technogy turns out to be reasonably effective for this market with few complaints, it will be much easier to roll it out on all future CDs. Remember, the RIAA doesn't assume that any technology will be 100% effective, but if it stops 99.9% of the population, then it will have done its job. Sure the geeks will still be able to obtain it, from ripping themselves or through obscure P2P clients, but the vast majority of people won't be able to get their hands on the MP3s, and that's all that really matters for the RIAA. The DMCA will take care of the misfits.
- j
I'm a dj too .. but I can't justify the ~$5k that this thing is expected to cost! :)
- j
Also, you can't burn your own records (at least I haven't seen any "Vinyl-Recordable" or "Vinyl-ReWritable" drives for sale lately).
:)
you obviously haven't seen the Kingston Dubplate Cutter.
- j
But what is the point? Anyone with an internet connection will have no doubt experienced the instability. ... so I'm a bit unclear on why this study was called for
It's an analytical tool called a scientific proof. Believe it or not, anecdotal evidence (like you suggested) is not enough to prove your intuition that IIS worms influence global routing stability. You need scientific evidence to prove a hyptothesis such as this.
- j
Actually I meant to link to this bug above, but the one I linked to is relevant as well. These feature requests are the way to make Fizilla more "Mac" like, not some hack theme.
- j
I just wish they would let a Mac port of Mozilla have a Mac look.
Oh give me a break. If there's that much demand for an Aqua look-and-feel "theme" for Mozilla then somebody will put in the time to add native Quartz calls to Mozilla. Adding a silly "theme" is not the way to do this when it's on the native platform of Aqua. Besides, how would you do transparencies with a theme? An Aqua "theme" would be a hack for these purposes.
If Mozilla were changed to use native aqua screen widgets, then the only thing needed to make it look like it "fits in" is a very simple theme for the menubar buttons -- a theme that Apple wouldn't complain about at all and it would be 100% original artwork.
- j
Just another data point: MacOS X has extensive support for Japanese; it's been a major goal for Apple to make OS X support for Japanese as good as it is for English.
- j
you guys totally suck. :)
B R A I N.
(I'll preview next time; I promise)
- j
I haven't actually used Photoshop Elements, but my understanding is that it doesn't support layers, has weak support for text, and comes with a pretty limited set of filters.
:)
Wrong to all of the above. Everything you mentioned is there, and it includes all of the basic Photoshop filters, completely un-crippled, which is more than enough for 99% of users. Many of the features are presented in a much more intuitive way for beginners, though just about every function you'd find in the GIMP is there.
I'm not going to spend a dime on anything that isn't Carbon or Cocoa.
That's understandable; I'll give you this one
GIMP provides everything I need, and I've been using it for ~2 years so I'm used to the interface. Why change?
Well sure, use what you're most familiar with, but the conversation started with a reference to Mac users switching over to the GIMP. If you're familiar with the GIMP, that's fine, but you would be doing a great disservice to a beginner if you told them to use the GIMP over Photoshop Elements.
- j
I was expecting the worst, so I was pleasantly surprised. The effects were good, but not overpowering, the acting was decent, the storyline was better than I thought, and the soft-porn was great, but I'd prefer to have seem some XXX live girl-on-girl action ... uh .. yeah it was ok.
They didn't completely screw up the time-travel angle (but I suppose there's lots of time for that), but it did strike me that it was awfully easy for them to accomplish their "mission" even though the "bad guys" had vastly superior technology and advanced genetics. I guess they forgot to advance their brians when they were going though their genetic engineering.
Anyhow I haven't seen Star Trek in years so I wasn't really sure what to expect (I've hardly seen Voyager for instance), but I thought it showed some promise. I think the best part about it is that it's not overly Star Trekky--this might make it appeal to a larger audience. It's no masterpiece, but for TV, I say it's pretty good.
- j
Photoshop is major $$$. Why do you think so many Mac users have been interested in a GIMP port?
Well photoshop is available to students for only about $200, which is how I first bought it years ago. Anybody who isn't a student will have a job and therefor money, but even then one can still find photoshop for about $500, sometimes less if you pick up an older version and upgrade.
Add to all this the fact that the GIMP is useless for print, and if you're not doing print then you'd be better off buying Photoshop Elements for a mere $99. There are even upgrade programs to buy Photoshop Elements for as low as $70 if you have a copy of Photoshop LE (included with many scanners, and I've even seen it included free with magazines and at tradeshows!)
It should also be noted that while I've seen many Mac users interested in the GIMP (hey, everybody likes free stuff), I've run into exactly zero who were impressed by it when they finally got it running. The GIMP is a nice idea, but despite what many (ignorant) zealots preach, the GIMP does not, in any way shape or form, come close to the power of Photoshop Elements, nevermind Photoshop.
- j
A lot of people are saying "it depends," but I'm not really sure why. Just about any UNIX app that will compile on *BSD (graphical or not) can run on OS X. Get XonX and you can run a rootless XFree86 port right next to the Aqua windows. Where does "it depends" even enter this? OS X is as much a UNIX as FreeBSD and Linux are, period.
:).
The funny thing I've found however, is that after going to great lengths to install beta versions of XDarwin and hacking libraries to get them to compile (this was 6 months ago, all of this is much easier now), I found myself wondering what exactly to do with it. I put a lot of importance on running my old Linux apps, but when it came down to it there was nothing I needed to run under X! I used the Gimp for a bit, but then picked up a copy of Photoshop instead; Mozilla runs better under Aqua than X-Windows; Fire is a great ICQ client and I really like Apple's Mail.app for email; Microsoft Office for the Mac is hands down better than any UNIX clone (or even Office for Windows). The new Office for X looks phenomenal! Everybody using OS X should download the Word for X trial version and try it for themselves. StarOffice and the like don't even come close to this newest version of Word for the Mac. Amazing.
Sometimes I use the xterms in XDarwin just for old times sake, and it's nice to remotely connect to my linux box though the X Server, but what really struck me is how much better apps are in OS X than they are in Linux. Sure a lot of these apps aren't free, but I was never using them because they were free: I was using them because they got the job done well. Now I'm using no X-Windows apps, a handful of OS 9 apps, but the vast majority of the apps I use are OS X native. It's official, I'm a Mac convert
- j
Totally off topic, but do you have any psytrance mixes of yours that I could get ahold of? I'm a hard house and hard house DJ from Toronto, and while I prefer to spin housier stuff, I've been a big psytrance fan for years. Actually there's a really good reason why I won't spin psytrance, but I won't get into it here :).
Anyhow, if you (or anybody else reading this!) has some good psytrance mixes, send 'em my way! And if you like UK Hard House or Hard Trance, listen to my mixes at djnumbernine.com.
- j
I've recently started using OpenBSD and I had heard how ports and packages were functionally equivalent to Debian's apt-get (with which I am most familiar). I was very disappointed to find out that while packages and ports are nice, they're nowhere near as nice as apt-get.
First of all with ports, you have to compile everything yourself, which can take a lot of time on slower machines (like my home router/firewall). In the end it just creates an OpenBSD package anyway.
So I tried packages. They're pre-compiled, like debs, but the pkg_add software is terrible! In order to update a package you have to first remove the package then add it again! And if the package has dependancies you have to remove all the dependancies and re-install them all again! Plus you can't just do a "pkg_add foo," you have to do a "pkg_add ftp://ftp.openbsd.org{blabalbla}/foo-3.17-2.pkg," which means you not only have to know where to get the file, you also have to know the version number and all other information in the filename in advance! Add to this the fact that there's no real comparable substitue to "apt-get update;apt-get upgrade," and it's quite obvious that OpenBSD's packaging system is woefully inadequate.
I'm not sure if FreeBSD's paackaging system is better, but I was shocked to see just how bad OpenBSD's packaging was. It's too bad, because apart from the packaging management, I love OpenBSD. Perhaps I'll start working "apt-get-izing" OpenBSD. Has anybody else started such a project? It seems badly needed.
- j
From product activation to (fill in the blank) to this latest EULA fiasco, I think most people have had just about enough.
Make that people on slashdot have had just about enough. The vast majority of the population don't notice or care about Microsoft's abuses, and if you think otherwise, you've been hanging around geeks too much. Sad but true.
- j