Right there I think OSX has one-upped both Windows and Linux. Never install anything, per se. And with disk space and bandwidth both being fairly plentiful these days, let's move away from shared libraries for everything that isn't seriously fundamental to the OS.
Oh, yeah, let's go back about 50 years, and link everything in at compile time. Hell, why use an operating system at all, why not ship every program with it's own frikin KERNEL. After all, disk space, ram, and bandwidth are cheap, right? Seriously, shipping a program with its dependencies is PRIMITIVE; it's bloody redundant, and you have to download the same shitty libraries over and over again.
Windows applications can do way too much damage to each other by way of the system32 folder IMO. And the registry... well, we don't even need to talk about that;-). For Unix, the whole "dump it all in/usr/local/bin" irritates the crap outta me. Great, so when I want to nuke it later on or upgrade it, how do I know I got it all?
Windows has no package manager. OSX attempts to use the filesystem as a package manager, leading to redundancy. Linux actually has a package manager, which is how you know you "Got it all"; you track what you put in, so you can remove it later. Incidentally, this also enables much more complicated stuff; installing a server will automatically set up that server. It also is infinitely more safe than just going in there and deleting stuff. Furthermore, it also centralizes distribution and upgrades. On windows (and probably the mac, too, I don't know) each application uses installs a little daemon that checks for updates when the system boots up. This is fine, until you have Windows, AVG, ZoneAlarm, QuickTime, RealPlayer, and God knows what all trying to check for updates at the same time over your crappy dialup connection. On Debian, you can update your system with a cron job that runs at midnight, out of sight and mind.
Forget Debian. You know what I want? A P2P package manager. Packages should be signed by the devs (Debian has this already, this is yet another reason for package managers). Once seeded, updates would spread virally across the network. You wouldn't need to give a shit about the legality of your mplayer package; you would just go get it. Anyone could easily build and distribute packages, and it would truly be an open distro.
My initial problem with Etch was the difficulty of finding packages for all the evil, patent-infringing programs like mplayer. But after I found debian-unofficial and debian-multimedia, it was a very sweet system, better than Ubuntu.
And I've come to the conclusion that getting the drivers from the source is the best way to go. Even with Ubuntu, if you want Beryl working, you need the nvidia drivers.
I know what you mean, but it still hurts, seeing some of those machines. I remember when my library got a bunch of brand new dells with what must have been 64 megs of ram, and "secured" them with some crappy VB app must have been written by some 12 year-old. It blocked the Open File dialog by popping up a window over it, let you type in your filename, and then used SendKeys on the real dialog to get you your file. Of course, you could "hack" their systems by putting in an invalid filename. I actually used this several times so that my eyes wouldn't bleed from the 60Hz refresh rate. For web browsing, they used another crappy VB app that was based on IE. I hope they didn't pay for any of that stuff. I really hope they didn't.
The sad thing is that Linux is so ideal for that kind of thing: extremely low-budget, low-resource machines that should be as stable as hell and work without any kind of intervention. Hell, having a strange user interface wouldn't even be a problem, as they already borked up the system with their "security apps", and they get people in there who don't know how to use a mouse.
And hell, if you use XFCE and have plenty of swap, even 64 megs isn't cause to weep.
What pissed me off about python was the apparent lack of a "for loop". Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, but I can't find the equivalent of the C "for" where you just have an initializer, an ending condition, and an iterator. Yes, I know you can iterate over a range, but that isn't the same at all.
Yeah, I used to really like Arch, because it was so light and fast. The problem is, the package manager isn't quite as robust as in Debian, so upgrading packages piecemeal can totally screw up your libraries. On the other hand, the package manager won't touch your config files (unlike Debian), so it is pretty easy to configure, if you know how.
NAPOLEON. They do not look at it quite in that way. The most worthless soldier wants to live for ever. To make him risk being killed by the enemy I have to convince him that if he hesitates he will inevitably be shot at dawn by his own comrades for cowardice.
THE ORACLE. And if his comrades refuse to shoot him?
NAPOLEON. They will be shot too, of course.
THE ORACLE. By whom?
NAPOLEON. By their comrades.
THE ORACLE. And if they refuse?
NAPOLEON. Up to a certain point they do not refuse.
THE ORACLE. But when that point is reached, you have to do the shooting yourself, eh?
NAPOLEON. Unfortunately, madam, when that point is reached, they shoot me.
Actually, somebody wrote a java backend for gcc. Problem is, RMS didn't want it in. The idea was, java bytecode might be used as an intermediate language, so that a manufacturer of proprietary hardware could write a proprietary bytecode-to-machine language compiler for their architecture, and then take advantage of the nice GCC toolchain to promote their proprietary stuff.
Now, this seems a little paranoid to me, but there you have it. However, the little known mono competitor, dotGNU claims to have a c to.net compiler, and will eventually suppor java too. might be worth checking out.
I think it's the other way around. It's not that windows programmers are averse to opening their source, it's more that any windows applications that are open sourced are usually ported to linux. I hate to say this, but Firefox is primarily used by windows users, as is azureus, codeblocks, eclipse, blender, audacity, OGRE, etc.
On the other hand, there is a strong reluctance to port KDE apps to windows because the developers think that this will devalue linux as a platform. I doubt that this is the case, since only a very small minority use linux as a desktop environment, and there is simply not enough momentum to switch. But, they wrote it, so they can do whatever they want with it.
The next time I read another "Ubuntu worked for me" post, I'm going to murder someone.
Yes, Ubuntu is a fine distro for ease of installation. I am posting this from Ubuntu. But the suggestion that Ubuntu is good for gaming just makes me wince. The ubuntu universe has a total of 9 tolerable games:
tetris solitaire emulators PlanetPenguin Racer (they ruins it!) SuperTux And a whole lot of very old, queer games that were inherited from Debian.
That's all. Really. As far as I can determine, Nexuiz is the only prepackaged FPS for Ubuntu, despite all the open source quake mods out there. Furthermore, 3D acceleration almost never works out of the box. However, I remember video acceleration working fine under RH9, even with my crappy onboard card.
Trust me, desktop linux is at it's best under lightweight "configure everything yourself" distros like arch, gentoo, and LFS. Trouble is, few people have the time and skills to do this. Handing out Ubuntu CDs like to noobs isn't really doing them a favor, unless you hope to increase their understanding of computers. Or unless you want to maintain their system yourself.
If you're wondering what the other good games are, try Sauerbraten, Planeshift, AlienArena and Warsow.
They check to see what's plugged into the motherboard, form a checksum, and send it to microsoft when you activate. If your system changes more than a certain amount, it becomes a "different computer"
Yeah, I know. Firefox's incompatibility with KDE made me switch to Konqueror. I don't mean to troll, but it is faster and more stable. Unfortunately, it doesn't have all those nice firefox extensions:-(
And as soon as it's on your system....it's on your system. You have it.
Correction: You only have the server. To be able to use it, you would have to reverse-engineer a client. Which would be pointless, because regular hacking tools are probably better anyway.
The only real advantage would be that AV programs might not detect it. The other possibility would be if the police forgot to put a password on the server, leaving the poor suspect wide open to all the evil haxx0rs.
Well, if you want to continue the biological analogy, the other corporations will "evolve resistance" to microsoft's poison, And microsoft will cut itself out of the foodchain, leaving all the other companies stronger. Or whatever.
To have free speech in a society is to undermine totalitarianism.
I don't think that's quite right. Civil liberties don't "protect" citizens from totalitarianism. Rather, they're more of a barometer. Any government that wants to remove your civil liberties is screwed up, as is a society that is willing to accept such a government. If the citizens don't wan't civil liberties, they aren't going to protect them any.
And what if it was the KKK marching down the street saying things like "prepare for the real holocaust"? What do you expect when white supremacists are provoked? Would you still support their right to protest?
"Wouldn't it be better to talk with people you disagree with instead of insulting them?!"
No, it can't. What do you do when your premises are wrong, eh? What do you do when you have secular groupthink, like the commies, eh?
Religion, per se, is not the problem. Groupthink is the problem. Small, isolated communities of people who think they are "saved", smarter than everyone else, "know the real truth", or plan to "save the world": they are the problem. Well, actually, they aren't a problem. It's when they become big communities full of little cells, with a hierarchical organization that they become a problem. Churches are uniquely suited to this, but there are other ways that it can happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget Debian. You know what I want? A P2P package manager. Packages should be signed by the devs (Debian has this already, this is yet another reason for package managers). Once seeded, updates would spread virally across the network. You wouldn't need to give a shit about the legality of your mplayer package; you would just go get it. Anyone could easily build and distribute packages, and it would truly be an open distro.
You have flash without a chroot? How?
My initial problem with Etch was the difficulty of finding packages for all the evil, patent-infringing programs like mplayer. But after I found debian-unofficial and debian-multimedia, it was a very sweet system, better than Ubuntu.
And I've come to the conclusion that getting the drivers from the source is the best way to go. Even with Ubuntu, if you want Beryl working, you need the nvidia drivers.
I know what you mean, but it still hurts, seeing some of those machines. I remember when my library got a bunch of brand new dells with what must have been 64 megs of ram, and "secured" them with some crappy VB app must have been written by some 12 year-old. It blocked the Open File dialog by popping up a window over it, let you type in your filename, and then used SendKeys on the real dialog to get you your file. Of course, you could "hack" their systems by putting in an invalid filename. I actually used this several times so that my eyes wouldn't bleed from the 60Hz refresh rate. For web browsing, they used another crappy VB app that was based on IE. I hope they didn't pay for any of that stuff. I really hope they didn't. The sad thing is that Linux is so ideal for that kind of thing: extremely low-budget, low-resource machines that should be as stable as hell and work without any kind of intervention. Hell, having a strange user interface wouldn't even be a problem, as they already borked up the system with their "security apps", and they get people in there who don't know how to use a mouse. And hell, if you use XFCE and have plenty of swap, even 64 megs isn't cause to weep.
... is against yourself.
Seriously though, I bet Suse loves all the good PR they're getting right now.
What pissed me off about python was the apparent lack of a "for loop". Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, but I can't find the equivalent of the C "for" where you just have an initializer, an ending condition, and an iterator. Yes, I know you can iterate over a range, but that isn't the same at all.
Divide by zero and you get infinity...
Yeah, I used to really like Arch, because it was so light and fast. The problem is, the package manager isn't quite as robust as in Debian, so upgrading packages piecemeal can totally screw up your libraries. On the other hand, the package manager won't touch your config files (unlike Debian), so it is pretty easy to configure, if you know how.
NAPOLEON. They do not look at it quite in that way. The most worthless
soldier wants to live for ever. To make him risk being killed by the
enemy I have to convince him that if he hesitates he will inevitably be
shot at dawn by his own comrades for cowardice.
THE ORACLE. And if his comrades refuse to shoot him?
NAPOLEON. They will be shot too, of course.
THE ORACLE. By whom?
NAPOLEON. By their comrades.
THE ORACLE. And if they refuse?
NAPOLEON. Up to a certain point they do not refuse.
THE ORACLE. But when that point is reached, you have to do the shooting
yourself, eh?
NAPOLEON. Unfortunately, madam, when that point is reached, they shoot
me.
take a look at this
.net compiler, and will eventually suppor java too. might be worth checking out.
Actually, somebody wrote a java backend for gcc. Problem is, RMS didn't want it in. The idea was, java bytecode might be used as an intermediate language, so that a manufacturer of proprietary hardware could write a proprietary bytecode-to-machine language compiler for their architecture, and then take advantage of the nice GCC toolchain to promote their proprietary stuff.
Now, this seems a little paranoid to me, but there you have it. However, the little known mono competitor, dotGNU claims to have a c to
I think it's the other way around. It's not that windows programmers are averse to opening their source, it's more that any windows applications that are open sourced are usually ported to linux. I hate to say this, but Firefox is primarily used by windows users, as is azureus, codeblocks, eclipse, blender, audacity, OGRE, etc.
On the other hand, there is a strong reluctance to port KDE apps to windows because the developers think that this will devalue linux as a platform. I doubt that this is the case, since only a very small minority use linux as a desktop environment, and there is simply not enough momentum to switch. But, they wrote it, so they can do whatever they want with it.
Since QT4 is now available under an open source license for windows, they very well might start competing with OpenOffice.
I see payphones all the time. Of course, they were all smashed to pieces before I was born, but I see them.
Now, whatever you do, don't click this link Resist the temptation. It isn't worth it. Really, it's not all that interesting.
You forgot: First Life fans are total Nazis about RP. Either you stay in character, or they lock you up.
I've been using this modem for 63
years, just fine, and now you want me
to switch to broadband just so that
I can attend some Java conference?
Lynx: The way it's meant to be surfed.
The next time I read another "Ubuntu worked for me" post, I'm going to murder someone.
Yes, Ubuntu is a fine distro for ease of installation. I am posting this from Ubuntu. But the suggestion that Ubuntu is good for gaming just makes me wince. The ubuntu universe has a total of 9 tolerable games:
Wesnoth
bzflag
freeciv
neverball
vega strike
nexuiz
netpanzer
scorched3d
nethack
The rest consists of
tetris
solitaire
emulators
PlanetPenguin Racer (they ruins it!)
SuperTux
And a whole lot of very old, queer games that were inherited from Debian.
That's all. Really. As far as I can determine, Nexuiz is the only prepackaged FPS for Ubuntu, despite all the open source quake mods out there. Furthermore, 3D acceleration almost never works out of the box. However, I remember video acceleration working fine under RH9, even with my crappy onboard card.
Trust me, desktop linux is at it's best under lightweight "configure everything yourself" distros like arch, gentoo, and LFS. Trouble is, few people have the time and skills to do this. Handing out Ubuntu CDs like to noobs isn't really doing them a favor, unless you hope to increase their understanding of computers. Or unless you want to maintain their system yourself.
If you're wondering what the other good games are, try Sauerbraten, Planeshift, AlienArena and Warsow.
They check to see what's plugged into the motherboard, form a checksum, and send it to microsoft when you activate. If your system changes more than a certain amount, it becomes a "different computer"
We have some good news and some bad news. The good news it that we've finally initiated the Singularity.
The bad news is that it's obsessed with myspace and ponies.
Yeah, I know. Firefox's incompatibility with KDE made me switch to Konqueror. I don't mean to troll, but it is faster and more stable. Unfortunately, it doesn't have all those nice firefox extensions :-(
The only real advantage would be that AV programs might not detect it. The other possibility would be if the police forgot to put a password on the server, leaving the poor suspect wide open to all the evil haxx0rs.
Well, if you want to continue the biological analogy, the other corporations will "evolve resistance" to microsoft's poison, And microsoft will cut itself out of the foodchain, leaving all the other companies stronger. Or whatever.
Actually, yeah. It's just that they don't have to heed it.
To have free speech in a society is to undermine totalitarianism.
I don't think that's quite right. Civil liberties don't "protect" citizens from totalitarianism. Rather, they're more of a barometer. Any government that wants to remove your civil liberties is screwed up, as is a society that is willing to accept such a government. If the citizens don't wan't civil liberties, they aren't going to protect them any.
And what if it was the KKK marching down the street saying things like "prepare for the real holocaust"? What do you expect when white supremacists are provoked? Would you still support their right to protest?
"Wouldn't it be better to talk with people you disagree with instead of insulting them?!"
No, it can't. What do you do when your premises are wrong, eh? What do you do when you have secular groupthink, like the commies, eh?
Religion, per se, is not the problem. Groupthink is the problem. Small, isolated communities of people who think they are "saved", smarter than everyone else, "know the real truth", or plan to "save the world": they are the problem. Well, actually, they aren't a problem. It's when they become big communities full of little cells, with a hierarchical organization that they become a problem. Churches are uniquely suited to this, but there are other ways that it can happen.