The vast majority of the use of a typical ISP is legitimate and kiddie porn freaks are very much the minority.
Even if true, that doesn't change the principle involved. Whether you have one kiddie pornographer or a dozen or a million - they are the criminals, not the network providers they use.
And Napster has done extremely little to change that.
Haven't they terminated users in every case where they were presented with evidence of copyright infringement? What more are they supposed to do?
If that's not enough, then the sad fact of the matter is that record companies are just going to have to find another revenue model. And this is going to happen, whether napster closes or not. The only difference I can see that anyone can make at this point, is in whether or not a potentially disastrous legal precedent is going to be set in this case before they finally face reality.
I have to disagree with you. Whatever their faults, Fanning and Napster are clearly in the right on this issue, and their attackers ARE clearly attacking things that I hold dear and that I believe to be the very basis of good as it exists (arguments about platonic ideals shoved to the side.)
Napster is a file sharing service. Any file sharing service can be used to break copyright laws - but it is the users who do this that are in violation of the law, not the service. Providing the service is reasonably responsive in shutting down abusers when notified, of course. This is long standing and well thought out case law, deriving from actions taken in the past attempting to hold ISPs liable because they were unwittingly being used by trafficers in kiddie porn.
Defending the ISPs is not defending kiddie porn - it's defending service providers. Napster is just another service provider, everything I've seen indicates that Napster has been responsive and responsible in locking out users from the system when they are made aware of violations, and if they can be shut down because some of their users are infringing copyright, then expect to see ISPs start shutting down left and right as well. It's precisely the same principle.
And just for your information, I have never even used napster. From the comments I have read it appears I am in a very small minority here in that, but it's true. I don't have the bandwidth to dick around with.mp3s, and I've never even considered using napster. I'm very very concerned about bad precedent though, and holding a service provider responsible for violations commited by it's users is very bad precedent.
It uses gtkhtml to compose your mail, giving you the choice (not: optional!) to send HTML formatted mail
Other than this is sounds really good, but PLEASE rethink that crap. HTML is not a suitable or legal format for email. It's bad enough to have all these windows lusers flooding the net with this crap, the absolute LAST thing we need is *nix users doing it too! Come on, we should be setting an example, NOT mindlessly adopting every screwed up so-called "feature" that MS decides to tack onto their bugware!
Even in the windows world the better email programs (Eudora and Pegasus Mail for instance) do not encourage this nonsense! If you really must have email that is formatted beyond the capabilities of text/plain, the proper way to do this is by sending text/enriched (see RFC 1896 ) NEVER by sending HTML.
Please, please, reconsider this "feature." This is BAD. For whatever it's worth, I personally, and many people I know, do not think this is a joke. This is a very serious matter. I've been a supporter and a user of the GNOME project and the software it's produced for over a year now, but I will definately have to rethink things if you continue with this, and I know for a fact that I am far from the only one that feels this way. Text/enriched is bad enough, but at least with it the output is still readable in standard mail readers like PINE (if barely.) HTML is over the line.
While the fact that Sting is a common english word was mentioned, it apparently was not the rationale for the decision. Rather, it was found that the current holder of the domain had not registered it in bad faith. One of the several requirements to evict someone from a domain is indeed the bad faith element.
While, on the face, that looks like a very sound reason (the current owner is known as sting in his online community, and has a real, if cluelessly constructed, site occupying it,) it makes me very suspicious. I've read through reams of prior cases, and this is the first time I've seen WIPO dismiss a case brought by anyone "important" on these grounds. The bad faith clause normally gets a rubberstamp, even when the evidence presented for it seems quite weak.
I've gotta be a little cynical at this point and wonder who in Sting pissed off.
And once the initial install is done, upgrading is nearly trivial. I've actually been running 4.1 since yesterday since I had noticed a version number bump in the source tree and decided to do the old make world trick.
A few questions about this "trick":
How many version numbers can you actually cross like this?
What sorts of problems/pitfalls might the *BSD newbie run into trying this, particularly if he's several versions behind?
If your net connection is too slow/unreliable to even think about doing make world via the net, but one has the new version on cd, can that be used instead? (i.e. easy upgrade?)
I've probably said something incredibly dumb here, but hey, flaming me for asking a question won't help convince me to use *BSD, educating me might;^)
I've read through several *BSD FAQs and haven't seen any clear answer to these questions, so I figured maybe someone would enlighten me.
I have to agree, I don't see much real advantage for unix-folk (folken? volken? whatever) in porting to Mac OS 10. (Yes, 10, just say no to stupid hoops marketing departments dream up and try to impose on you.) After all, how many of us are actually going to be using it? Not nearly as many as use NT at work, I would wager.
But, porting a lot of unix stuff will be quite easy to do, and there ARE some excellent programmers in the Mac world. Expect to see THEM doing quite a bit of porting. And hopefully getting turned on to Free Software in the process. The Unix world could definately use an influx of people that understand concepts like 'usability' in a consumer, not uber-geek, context.
It's really a shame they are so different. There really IS a great need, in my mind, for some sort of translation or easy porting mechanism. Having KDE accept GTK themes is nice (since I, and most people I talk to, wind up using bits of both GNOME and KDE, this should make the desktops a little prettier) but it's just window dressing.
Doing something about the need to install and (wince) load in memory two duplicate libraries that do the same thing would be much more significant.
MPL is basically BSD. QT is what he has a problem with, not MPL.
Hrmm... I don't think this is correct. BSD code can be used in a GPL program. MPL code cannot. (Galeon anyone?) This seems like a HUGE difference from a Free Software perspective.
The message I got from what RMS has written about QT is not that he likes it in any sense, but only that he doesn't believe there is any legal problem with KDE using it in their GPLd code.
Actually, the sysinstall is a nice, menu driven program. It's just not graphical, which means it will also work without X and Gnome. Packages can be installed via the ports (this will mean compiling, except in the case where the ports are only available in binary format, like netscape), or as binaries with pkg_add.
The sysinstall would be the install program for freebsd? It sounds much like the slackware installer, whatever it's called.
Ideally I would prefer to never use anything I didn't compile on my own machine, in abstract that just makes incredible sense, but somehow it's all too often a lot more work - I wind up having to find headers manually, download source packages to a half dozen other things (qt for licq for one annoying instance, keep in mind that qt is many times larger than licq, and it DOESN'T use the same QT that KDE uses and is already installed - not only do you have to download this thing, you have to make and install it to a new directory and make sure it doesn't overwrite the old QT and break KDE) track down things that are on my system but configure can't find, etc. etc. - in the end it's just really handy when I am in a hurry (which is most of the time) to be able to run rpmfind and let it trace out all the dependencies and download everything I need precompiled and install it easily. Even if, in a perfect world, I would never do that, in the real world it makes sense at times.
It would be a very good idea if you read some docs on XFree86 configuration... you can physically damage your monitor and your videocard if it's done wrong by the configuration program, as appears to have been the case with you. The autogenerated XF86Config file looks intimidating, but most of it you don't need at all. In the case of XF86-4.0 it's been made a bit easier too.
Believe me, I've read all the info and man pages I could find on XF86 configuration. I pored through the config file in emacs over and over again. I put in the modelines from the monitor manual (in Mandrake I entered them in the config program instead - my monitor IS a bit quirky in that apparently there is another monitor out there with the same designation and different specs.) Beats me why X on slack goes all goofy and X on mandrake and redhat don't, when I give them the same settings, but that's what happened.
And yes, I know how dangerous driving the monitor improperly is - that's why I went back to Mandrake. Because, as much as I appreciate text mode, I DO need X too, and I never dared run X under slack more than the 2 seconds or so at a time it took to verify that my new settings weren't working any better than the old.:~
As to XF4, I've heard it's great, I've also heard there are some upgrade problems, so I don't feel like trying it until I have a good chunk of time free in case it goes sour... soon.:>
There's some speculation about the copyleft model as a reason for Linux' popularity over *BSD; I don't know if it's that or the head start it got by not having to extract itself from the legal system as did *BSD. Whatever the reason, the fact is that Linux has the commercial momentum right now, although that could change overnight.
I could be wrong, but I thought BSD was through with legal issue with AT&T well before Linux became popular. Unless you mean the advertising clause, which was dropped more recently.
I do honestly think the copyleft aspect does have more to do with it. BSDs from all I can find are quite capable, competent systems. But *BSD is Free for now (yes, what's released can't be taken back, which is good, but anyone can close derived works with impunity, which bothers some of us,) GPL is Free forever, and that does seem to attract more developers and let Linux move forward a lot quicker.
From what you post, I suspect the linux distro for you would be slackware. It's very nice if you prefer command line and compiling instead of downloading binaries and the like - I have never run *BSD but I understand that slack is very similar to them.
The one thing I didn't like about slack, personally, was that setting up X in it is a nightmare, at least on my machine. And my machine can't be all that uncommon a configuration (mach64 is pretty generic and very far from cutting edge.) That part was very frustrating, I did get X working, but it seemed to be overdriving my monitor (I assume that's what it means when there are bubbles of distortion slowly wandering around the monitor) and I couldn't get it to stop no matter how much I tweaked the monitor settings. So I went back to Mandrake, which doesn't have that problem and runs WindowMaker well and happily. If I were called on to set up a server I would definately use slack.
I'll probably give slack a try again in a release or two, I liked the text mode installation and configuration, the BSD style file placement, and the package management is superb (it uses.tgzs and comes with a tool to convert.rpms that worked beautifully for me, the best of both worlds.) Then again, I might just try a BSD instead... no using.rpms with that though, which might be inconvenient at times.
ORBS is a net.terrorist! NOT
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MAPS vs. ORBS
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· Score: 2
Spammers do these blind probes to find open relays.
ORBS do these blind probes to find open relays. Spammers use the open relays to pass spam.
Right so far.
ORBS publish these open relays so spammers can use them to pass spam.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you are smart enough to run a server you have to be smart enough to know you are talking out your tailpipe here, so the conclusion that you are deliberately lying is a reasonable one that many readers can be expected to make.
As you must know, what ORBS does is use the same checks a spammer would to find exploitable open relays to use, but UNLIKE a spammer, instead of exploiting your security holes, they inform you of them (or at least make a legitimate effort to inform you of them, more on that in a moment) and DO NOT PUBLISH the problems they have found unless you refuse to rectify the situation within the next 30 days! IF you refuse to fix the problem within 30 days, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that you have no intention to fix the problem, and therefore it makes perfect sense that they feel the need to publish your site as one that their subscribers will not want to accept traffic from. If this is wrong, I'd love to hear you explain why.
Looks like ORBS is just a front for spammers, doesn't it?
No, it looks like they have implemented an effective way to fight spam. MOST system administrators are quite happy that ORBS is out there trying to find security problems BEFORE the spammers do, and notifying responsible parties BEFORE their equipment is hijacked.
The fact that you object to this certainly suggests to me that YOU, not ORBS, might be fronting for spammers.
What part of "I am blocking your site, so please use snail-mail" were you not understanding?
I think I understand you perfectly, I think most people reading this will understand you perfectly, and I think Pi showed complete understanding of what you are saying when he wrote:
I understood your message entirely. You didn't want them to contact you at all so you made sure they couldn't. And now you rant about it. Great work.
When you block their traffic, refusing to allow them to inform you of the problems they find in your network, what option do you leave them? Should they bother to snail-mail someone who is so obviously carrying a chip on your shoulder against them? I certainly wouldn't. Even if you aren't a spammer or knowingly providing services to spammers (which is a reasonable suspicion given your own account of the situation) then for whatever other reason your attitude is going to make it pointless for them to waste their time trying to talk with you. They made a reasonable effort to contact you, you chose to do the equivelent of sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting while they talked... you deserved what you got, and probably a lot worse.
Yeah, I know, his name is Linus not Linux. Thought I fixed that before I posted *sigh* but netscape was churning my hard drive and about to die so I was in a hurry, sue me:~
... any more than it's posix compliant. They have paid lip service to both, but that doesn't make it true.
For all the lip service, the fact is that the NT Kernel is a monolithic image including among other things the I/O Manager, Object Manager, Security Reference Monitor, Process Manager, Local Procedure Call Facility, and Virtual Memory Manager. These "parts" of the NT kernel are only parts in concept, in application they are a monolithic kernel. This is a single executable that controls the basic functions in kernel space, not user space. The NT design team paid lip service to the idea of a monolithic kernel, sure, but at they also carefully (and wisely) avoided making an actual microkernel system. The reason? Performance, of course.
As Linux himself mentions in the link I posted above.
not entirely true. microkernels can scale better with multiple procs than monolithic designs..which is why linux/BSDs are having so many SMP problems...and one more reason why NT..besides the fact its dog slow..beat linux on a quad box. exokernels are slightly worse in design but better in performance than microkernels giving improvements in IPC where microkernels bog down. i'd take a slightly slower microkernel over a monolithic any day since the design itself is cleaner...portability is a non issue as you mentioned.
Hrmm, yes, it's probably true that a microkernel as a general rule should perform better on multiprocessor systems than on single processor systems. A monolithic kernel with robust SMP code should do just as well, however. This is one of the most important points Linus made in the article I linked - most if not all of the research that's been done on speeding up microkernels so that they can approach monoliths in performance can be applied to speed up the monolith as well. Leaving the microkernel as far behind as it was to begin with. Many of the things that were touted as advantages of microkernels circa 1990 (and in some circles still are) turn out to be things that a monolithic kernel can do just as well.
It's ironic that you cite the infamous test where NT beat Linux on an SMP box. NT is no more a microkernel than Linux is. The NT SMP code was just more robust at the time of the test.
If you acknowledge that microkernel performance is necessarily inferior and that portability is a non-issue, I fail to see what is left in practical terms to recomend a microkernel approach. 'Cleaner design' is a rather subjective term, but it certainly seems to me that a properly written monolithic kernel can be very cleanly designed as well...
They release the specs and you whine because they didn't write a driver for you? *boggles in incomprehension* Releasing the specs is the holy grail so far as hardware support goes, and it puts them a world ahead of their competition. With the specs disclosed competent kernel hackers can and will be writing good solid open source drivers, not just for a few versions of x86 linux, but for any system that needs them. Releasing the specs shows that they get it.
Besides that, I believe you are in fact wrong about that, they have contracted with Precision Insight (I think that's the name) to write drivers for them in the past and several other posters have said they are doing that in this case too. At any rate, drivers are icing, the specs are the cake, how can you complain if they are releasing specs?
Don't expect the HURD to go anywhere. Who needs it? Linux works better now than the HURD will ever work. The MACH kernel is a fundamentally flawed thing, in concept alone. It's a great example of why we have the term "ivory towers" - it's designed by academics based on theory rather than experience and fact. It's advantage, in theory, is that it's more portable. In practice, Linux proves that a properly written monolithic kernel can be so close to it in portability as to make that a non-issue, without incurring the huge performance hit that the MACH kernel imposes by insisting on a lot of unecessary abstraction.
Given these facts, which you can easily verify for yourself, (start with this bit by Torvalds explaining the difference between microkernel and monolithic architecture from a practical point of view, and how the design of Linux enables it to meet the same goals without sacrificing performance) it's easy to see why the vast majority of competent kernel hackers are working on Linux or *BSD, not MACH, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. The longer they do this the further behind the HURD gets and the less likely it becomes that it will ever become anything usable, let alone desirable. If by some miracle the HURD project suddenly starts moving and puts out a usable product, it still won't go anywhere, because it will still be inferior to Linux and *BSD performance wise, and Linux and *BSD are both portable enough that no one would choose the HURD just for portability.
In short, the HURD is dead, for good reason, so your entire post is irrelevant.
But, even without the HURD, there are still no shortage of good systems that people use and develop that won't work with a binary only driver.
Linux on anything besides an x86.
*BSD in any form on any platform.
Solaris on any platform.
Linux on x86, as soon as you need to update the kernel.
That's nowhere near a comprehensive list I am sure, but just a few major ones off the top of my head.
When M$ claims that much of their stability problems come from poor 3rd party drivers, for once they are telling the truth. Unlike windows, linux was not designed to support binary only drivers, and it's not maintained in such a way to support them, by design and for good cause. The whole point to linux for most people is to get away from the bad things that come with windows, and binary only drivers are right up in the top part of that list. If a company won't release the source for their drivers, or at least the technical specs so that someone else can write a driver for it, I won't buy their hardware. Far better for them to release the specs and let a kernel hacker write the driver (which costs them nothing) than for them to pay a team of their programmers to produce, test, and release the best binary only driver in the world. Releasing a binary only driver isn't supporting linux, it's proving that you don't have a clue about Linux or Free Software in general.
Honestly, I don't think StarOffice will have that much of an effect, GPL or no GPL. As others have pointed out, it's an absolutely enourmous codebase, and while Open Source has a great track record on projects suited to it (such as the kernel itself) you only need to check out Mozilla for proof that there are some projects it isn't as well suited to, and it is no panacea. StarOffice looks a lot more like Mozilla than Linux to me. At best I expect that if StarOffice is GPLd it will be a boost to projects like AbiWord that will be able to cull it for useful snippets.
Quattro is of course not affected by the Borland merger falling through, but you know that by now. Quattro and WP itself are IMOP far superior products to the M$ competitors, that have been beaten rather badly solely as a consequence of M$ marketing clout resting on control of the OS. Their strategy of trying to produce an end-user friendly linux distro and convert Windows users to Linux (knowing full well that their products simply by virtue of being commercial are unacceptable to a good chunk of existing linux users, and that the people that could be customers are not going to be that eager to change operating systems) is a ballsy move, and I am honestly a little disappointed you seem to want to give them short shrift. Win or lose, they're fighting the good fight against Redmond, and you have to admire that.
I'm sorry to hear you are having trouble getting WP working, but the earlier version that I have here works just fine, I can't help thinking this must be a problem particular to your installation. Admittedly I don't use it that often (I'm a text editor type not a word processor type by inclination, and I also avoid using proprietary software when I can reasonably avoid it) but it is very handy for converting word documents, and adding formatting to text before printing it out, and I've certainly gone well over 4 pages in it. With my link I won't even attempt to download StarOffice, but I have had occasion to use it on another machine, and I must say I was singularly unimpressed. Big (enourmous actually) slow clunky and not at all in the same league as WP. Maybe the subset of hackers that really want an office suite will find it usable, but I don't see many secretaries finding it usable - or many financial officers wanting to write big checks for hardware upgrades to run it at an acceptable speed for that matter.
Finally, I want to say that the programs in the WP suite are far from Corels "unique advantages" - but I have to admit at the moment that statement may be fair. That's what they have on Linux right now. If they can survive a few more months we may see far bigger stuff ported though - things like CorelDraw, Painter, Bryce, and Ventura. WordPerfect is a toy compared to Ventura. The GIMP is great for basic graphics manipulation, but it's no Corel Painter. And I can't think of any Free Software that even attempts to be comparable to Bryce. Truly professional level painting, 3d modelling, and DTP programs are things that the hackers can and will live without, but they are also things that a great many offices cannot. These offices will therefore have no choice but to continue to run Windows or Macs if Corel goes down.
Given all that, I honestly don't see your position here. And I usually find myself agreeing with what you write.
Sure, you make an easy to use distribution, but anyone can just download it, so where's the money in that?
The money obviously isn't in selling linux. That should go without saying. The money is in selling the other programs that you can't download for free. Perfect Office for example. Corel has problems, yes, and they may not make it, yes, but it's not because their linux excursion is based on a faulty business model. This is a tried and true business model. You think M$ makes much money off Windows? They make the bulk of their income off their application programs (and support contracts) and sell Windows for practically nothing because it increases the demand for those products. Since M$ is using their control of Windows to kill Corel, Corel is seeking to stay alive through expanding to the linux market, and expanding the linux market itself with their distro. This may or may not work, but it's certainly sound strategy.
You should have checked out the site. From the front page: "It requires Gnome and MOZILLA M16. You can download an RPM version at http://people.redhat.com/blizzard/software/RPMS/. To compile from sources you will also need devel package from this site or gtkmozembed.h from another MOZILLA package. Because of license issue I cannot distribute it."
Anyone know what the licensing issues are precisely?
Re:One browser that doesn't have this problem
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Web Site "Lock-In"
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· Score: 1
To answer the question of the poster, this is an excellent example of very poor web design IMHOP.
You mention lynx, Opera is another browser that allows you to avoid this crap rather easily - you can turn off javascript and redirects and automatic document creation etc... it's not perfect but it's close. I normally use opera with the crap turned off in windows, and I'm quite happy with it. Since the linux port is still alpha (I've got it, it shows promise, but it's not ready for use yet) I'm using netscape at the moment, and it has a workaround too, others have mentioned already, using the history list. Bottom line though, a site like that turns me right off, and I'm very unlikely to go back.
A lot of people using Linux are not interested in buying commercial programs from Corel. They understand that. They are fundamentally trying to convert a good chunk of their current Windows customers to Linux.
Passing out loss-leaders on the platform like candy can only help. After all, a free download costs a heck of a lot less than most physical loss-leaders. And they know M$ and Adobe haven't positioned themselves to chase any customers that go to Linux-land.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if true, that doesn't change the principle involved. Whether you have one kiddie pornographer or a dozen or a million - they are the criminals, not the network providers they use.
Haven't they terminated users in every case where they were presented with evidence of copyright infringement? What more are they supposed to do?
If that's not enough, then the sad fact of the matter is that record companies are just going to have to find another revenue model. And this is going to happen, whether napster closes or not. The only difference I can see that anyone can make at this point, is in whether or not a potentially disastrous legal precedent is going to be set in this case before they finally face reality.
Or just a simple collage of cliches and an opinion that he's wrong?
I don't see any argument here.
I have to disagree with you. Whatever their faults, Fanning and Napster are clearly in the right on this issue, and their attackers ARE clearly attacking things that I hold dear and that I believe to be the very basis of good as it exists (arguments about platonic ideals shoved to the side.)
Napster is a file sharing service. Any file sharing service can be used to break copyright laws - but it is the users who do this that are in violation of the law, not the service. Providing the service is reasonably responsive in shutting down abusers when notified, of course. This is long standing and well thought out case law, deriving from actions taken in the past attempting to hold ISPs liable because they were unwittingly being used by trafficers in kiddie porn.
Defending the ISPs is not defending kiddie porn - it's defending service providers. Napster is just another service provider, everything I've seen indicates that Napster has been responsive and responsible in locking out users from the system when they are made aware of violations, and if they can be shut down because some of their users are infringing copyright, then expect to see ISPs start shutting down left and right as well. It's precisely the same principle.
And just for your information, I have never even used napster. From the comments I have read it appears I am in a very small minority here in that, but it's true. I don't have the bandwidth to dick around with .mp3s, and I've never even considered using napster. I'm very very concerned about bad precedent though, and holding a service provider responsible for violations commited by it's users is very bad precedent.
Other than this is sounds really good, but PLEASE rethink that crap. HTML is not a suitable or legal format for email. It's bad enough to have all these windows lusers flooding the net with this crap, the absolute LAST thing we need is *nix users doing it too! Come on, we should be setting an example, NOT mindlessly adopting every screwed up so-called "feature" that MS decides to tack onto their bugware!
Even in the windows world the better email programs (Eudora and Pegasus Mail for instance) do not encourage this nonsense! If you really must have email that is formatted beyond the capabilities of text/plain, the proper way to do this is by sending text/enriched (see RFC 1896 ) NEVER by sending HTML.
Please, please, reconsider this "feature." This is BAD. For whatever it's worth, I personally, and many people I know, do not think this is a joke. This is a very serious matter. I've been a supporter and a user of the GNOME project and the software it's produced for over a year now, but I will definately have to rethink things if you continue with this, and I know for a fact that I am far from the only one that feels this way. Text/enriched is bad enough, but at least with it the output is still readable in standard mail readers like PINE (if barely.) HTML is over the line.
While the fact that Sting is a common english word was mentioned, it apparently was not the rationale for the decision. Rather, it was found that the current holder of the domain had not registered it in bad faith. One of the several requirements to evict someone from a domain is indeed the bad faith element.
While, on the face, that looks like a very sound reason (the current owner is known as sting in his online community, and has a real, if cluelessly constructed, site occupying it,) it makes me very suspicious. I've read through reams of prior cases, and this is the first time I've seen WIPO dismiss a case brought by anyone "important" on these grounds. The bad faith clause normally gets a rubberstamp, even when the evidence presented for it seems quite weak.
I've gotta be a little cynical at this point and wonder who in Sting pissed off.
A few questions about this "trick":
I've probably said something incredibly dumb here, but hey, flaming me for asking a question won't help convince me to use *BSD, educating me might ;^)
I've read through several *BSD FAQs and haven't seen any clear answer to these questions, so I figured maybe someone would enlighten me.
I have to agree, I don't see much real advantage for unix-folk (folken? volken? whatever) in porting to Mac OS 10. (Yes, 10, just say no to stupid hoops marketing departments dream up and try to impose on you.) After all, how many of us are actually going to be using it? Not nearly as many as use NT at work, I would wager.
But, porting a lot of unix stuff will be quite easy to do, and there ARE some excellent programmers in the Mac world. Expect to see THEM doing quite a bit of porting. And hopefully getting turned on to Free Software in the process. The Unix world could definately use an influx of people that understand concepts like 'usability' in a consumer, not uber-geek, context.
It's really a shame they are so different. There really IS a great need, in my mind, for some sort of translation or easy porting mechanism. Having KDE accept GTK themes is nice (since I, and most people I talk to, wind up using bits of both GNOME and KDE, this should make the desktops a little prettier) but it's just window dressing.
Doing something about the need to install and (wince) load in memory two duplicate libraries that do the same thing would be much more significant.
This is a very simple point in a way, but the implications are deep. Think about this a moment.
Developers are users too.
Hrmm... I don't think this is correct. BSD code can be used in a GPL program. MPL code cannot. (Galeon anyone?) This seems like a HUGE difference from a Free Software perspective.
The message I got from what RMS has written about QT is not that he likes it in any sense, but only that he doesn't believe there is any legal problem with KDE using it in their GPLd code.
The sysinstall would be the install program for freebsd? It sounds much like the slackware installer, whatever it's called.
Ideally I would prefer to never use anything I didn't compile on my own machine, in abstract that just makes incredible sense, but somehow it's all too often a lot more work - I wind up having to find headers manually, download source packages to a half dozen other things (qt for licq for one annoying instance, keep in mind that qt is many times larger than licq, and it DOESN'T use the same QT that KDE uses and is already installed - not only do you have to download this thing, you have to make and install it to a new directory and make sure it doesn't overwrite the old QT and break KDE) track down things that are on my system but configure can't find, etc. etc. - in the end it's just really handy when I am in a hurry (which is most of the time) to be able to run rpmfind and let it trace out all the dependencies and download everything I need precompiled and install it easily. Even if, in a perfect world, I would never do that, in the real world it makes sense at times.
Believe me, I've read all the info and man pages I could find on XF86 configuration. I pored through the config file in emacs over and over again. I put in the modelines from the monitor manual (in Mandrake I entered them in the config program instead - my monitor IS a bit quirky in that apparently there is another monitor out there with the same designation and different specs.) Beats me why X on slack goes all goofy and X on mandrake and redhat don't, when I give them the same settings, but that's what happened.
And yes, I know how dangerous driving the monitor improperly is - that's why I went back to Mandrake. Because, as much as I appreciate text mode, I DO need X too, and I never dared run X under slack more than the 2 seconds or so at a time it took to verify that my new settings weren't working any better than the old. :~
As to XF4, I've heard it's great, I've also heard there are some upgrade problems, so I don't feel like trying it until I have a good chunk of time free in case it goes sour... soon. :>
I could be wrong, but I thought BSD was through with legal issue with AT&T well before Linux became popular. Unless you mean the advertising clause, which was dropped more recently.
I do honestly think the copyleft aspect does have more to do with it. BSDs from all I can find are quite capable, competent systems. But *BSD is Free for now (yes, what's released can't be taken back, which is good, but anyone can close derived works with impunity, which bothers some of us,) GPL is Free forever, and that does seem to attract more developers and let Linux move forward a lot quicker.
From what you post, I suspect the linux distro for you would be slackware. It's very nice if you prefer command line and compiling instead of downloading binaries and the like - I have never run *BSD but I understand that slack is very similar to them.
The one thing I didn't like about slack, personally, was that setting up X in it is a nightmare, at least on my machine. And my machine can't be all that uncommon a configuration (mach64 is pretty generic and very far from cutting edge.) That part was very frustrating, I did get X working, but it seemed to be overdriving my monitor (I assume that's what it means when there are bubbles of distortion slowly wandering around the monitor) and I couldn't get it to stop no matter how much I tweaked the monitor settings. So I went back to Mandrake, which doesn't have that problem and runs WindowMaker well and happily. If I were called on to set up a server I would definately use slack.
I'll probably give slack a try again in a release or two, I liked the text mode installation and configuration, the BSD style file placement, and the package management is superb (it uses .tgzs and comes with a tool to convert .rpms that worked beautifully for me, the best of both worlds.) Then again, I might just try a BSD instead... no using .rpms with that though, which might be inconvenient at times.
Right so far.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. If you are smart enough to run a server you have to be smart enough to know you are talking out your tailpipe here, so the conclusion that you are deliberately lying is a reasonable one that many readers can be expected to make.
As you must know, what ORBS does is use the same checks a spammer would to find exploitable open relays to use, but UNLIKE a spammer, instead of exploiting your security holes, they inform you of them (or at least make a legitimate effort to inform you of them, more on that in a moment) and DO NOT PUBLISH the problems they have found unless you refuse to rectify the situation within the next 30 days! IF you refuse to fix the problem within 30 days, it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that you have no intention to fix the problem, and therefore it makes perfect sense that they feel the need to publish your site as one that their subscribers will not want to accept traffic from. If this is wrong, I'd love to hear you explain why.
No, it looks like they have implemented an effective way to fight spam. MOST system administrators are quite happy that ORBS is out there trying to find security problems BEFORE the spammers do, and notifying responsible parties BEFORE their equipment is hijacked.
The fact that you object to this certainly suggests to me that YOU, not ORBS, might be fronting for spammers.
I think I understand you perfectly, I think most people reading this will understand you perfectly, and I think Pi showed complete understanding of what you are saying when he wrote:
When you block their traffic, refusing to allow them to inform you of the problems they find in your network, what option do you leave them? Should they bother to snail-mail someone who is so obviously carrying a chip on your shoulder against them? I certainly wouldn't. Even if you aren't a spammer or knowingly providing services to spammers (which is a reasonable suspicion given your own account of the situation) then for whatever other reason your attitude is going to make it pointless for them to waste their time trying to talk with you. They made a reasonable effort to contact you, you chose to do the equivelent of sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting while they talked... you deserved what you got, and probably a lot worse.
Yeah, I know, his name is Linus not Linux. Thought I fixed that before I posted *sigh* but netscape was churning my hard drive and about to die so I was in a hurry, sue me :~
... any more than it's posix compliant. They have paid lip service to both, but that doesn't make it true.
For all the lip service, the fact is that the NT Kernel is a monolithic image including among other things the I/O Manager, Object Manager, Security Reference Monitor, Process Manager, Local Procedure Call Facility, and Virtual Memory Manager. These "parts" of the NT kernel are only parts in concept, in application they are a monolithic kernel. This is a single executable that controls the basic functions in kernel space, not user space. The NT design team paid lip service to the idea of a monolithic kernel, sure, but at they also carefully (and wisely) avoided making an actual microkernel system. The reason? Performance, of course.
As Linux himself mentions in the link I posted above.
Hrmm, yes, it's probably true that a microkernel as a general rule should perform better on multiprocessor systems than on single processor systems. A monolithic kernel with robust SMP code should do just as well, however. This is one of the most important points Linus made in the article I linked - most if not all of the research that's been done on speeding up microkernels so that they can approach monoliths in performance can be applied to speed up the monolith as well. Leaving the microkernel as far behind as it was to begin with. Many of the things that were touted as advantages of microkernels circa 1990 (and in some circles still are) turn out to be things that a monolithic kernel can do just as well.
It's ironic that you cite the infamous test where NT beat Linux on an SMP box. NT is no more a microkernel than Linux is. The NT SMP code was just more robust at the time of the test.
If you acknowledge that microkernel performance is necessarily inferior and that portability is a non-issue, I fail to see what is left in practical terms to recomend a microkernel approach. 'Cleaner design' is a rather subjective term, but it certainly seems to me that a properly written monolithic kernel can be very cleanly designed as well...
They release the specs and you whine because they didn't write a driver for you? *boggles in incomprehension* Releasing the specs is the holy grail so far as hardware support goes, and it puts them a world ahead of their competition. With the specs disclosed competent kernel hackers can and will be writing good solid open source drivers, not just for a few versions of x86 linux, but for any system that needs them. Releasing the specs shows that they get it.
Besides that, I believe you are in fact wrong about that, they have contracted with Precision Insight (I think that's the name) to write drivers for them in the past and several other posters have said they are doing that in this case too. At any rate, drivers are icing, the specs are the cake, how can you complain if they are releasing specs?
Don't expect the HURD to go anywhere. Who needs it? Linux works better now than the HURD will ever work. The MACH kernel is a fundamentally flawed thing, in concept alone. It's a great example of why we have the term "ivory towers" - it's designed by academics based on theory rather than experience and fact. It's advantage, in theory, is that it's more portable. In practice, Linux proves that a properly written monolithic kernel can be so close to it in portability as to make that a non-issue, without incurring the huge performance hit that the MACH kernel imposes by insisting on a lot of unecessary abstraction.
Given these facts, which you can easily verify for yourself, (start with this bit by Torvalds explaining the difference between microkernel and monolithic architecture from a practical point of view, and how the design of Linux enables it to meet the same goals without sacrificing performance) it's easy to see why the vast majority of competent kernel hackers are working on Linux or *BSD, not MACH, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. The longer they do this the further behind the HURD gets and the less likely it becomes that it will ever become anything usable, let alone desirable. If by some miracle the HURD project suddenly starts moving and puts out a usable product, it still won't go anywhere, because it will still be inferior to Linux and *BSD performance wise, and Linux and *BSD are both portable enough that no one would choose the HURD just for portability.
In short, the HURD is dead, for good reason, so your entire post is irrelevant.
But, even without the HURD, there are still no shortage of good systems that people use and develop that won't work with a binary only driver.
That's nowhere near a comprehensive list I am sure, but just a few major ones off the top of my head.
When M$ claims that much of their stability problems come from poor 3rd party drivers, for once they are telling the truth. Unlike windows, linux was not designed to support binary only drivers, and it's not maintained in such a way to support them, by design and for good cause. The whole point to linux for most people is to get away from the bad things that come with windows, and binary only drivers are right up in the top part of that list. If a company won't release the source for their drivers, or at least the technical specs so that someone else can write a driver for it, I won't buy their hardware. Far better for them to release the specs and let a kernel hacker write the driver (which costs them nothing) than for them to pay a team of their programmers to produce, test, and release the best binary only driver in the world. Releasing a binary only driver isn't supporting linux, it's proving that you don't have a clue about Linux or Free Software in general.
Honestly, I don't think StarOffice will have that much of an effect, GPL or no GPL. As others have pointed out, it's an absolutely enourmous codebase, and while Open Source has a great track record on projects suited to it (such as the kernel itself) you only need to check out Mozilla for proof that there are some projects it isn't as well suited to, and it is no panacea. StarOffice looks a lot more like Mozilla than Linux to me. At best I expect that if StarOffice is GPLd it will be a boost to projects like AbiWord that will be able to cull it for useful snippets.
Quattro is of course not affected by the Borland merger falling through, but you know that by now. Quattro and WP itself are IMOP far superior products to the M$ competitors, that have been beaten rather badly solely as a consequence of M$ marketing clout resting on control of the OS. Their strategy of trying to produce an end-user friendly linux distro and convert Windows users to Linux (knowing full well that their products simply by virtue of being commercial are unacceptable to a good chunk of existing linux users, and that the people that could be customers are not going to be that eager to change operating systems) is a ballsy move, and I am honestly a little disappointed you seem to want to give them short shrift. Win or lose, they're fighting the good fight against Redmond, and you have to admire that.
I'm sorry to hear you are having trouble getting WP working, but the earlier version that I have here works just fine, I can't help thinking this must be a problem particular to your installation. Admittedly I don't use it that often (I'm a text editor type not a word processor type by inclination, and I also avoid using proprietary software when I can reasonably avoid it) but it is very handy for converting word documents, and adding formatting to text before printing it out, and I've certainly gone well over 4 pages in it. With my link I won't even attempt to download StarOffice, but I have had occasion to use it on another machine, and I must say I was singularly unimpressed. Big (enourmous actually) slow clunky and not at all in the same league as WP. Maybe the subset of hackers that really want an office suite will find it usable, but I don't see many secretaries finding it usable - or many financial officers wanting to write big checks for hardware upgrades to run it at an acceptable speed for that matter.
Finally, I want to say that the programs in the WP suite are far from Corels "unique advantages" - but I have to admit at the moment that statement may be fair. That's what they have on Linux right now. If they can survive a few more months we may see far bigger stuff ported though - things like CorelDraw, Painter, Bryce, and Ventura. WordPerfect is a toy compared to Ventura. The GIMP is great for basic graphics manipulation, but it's no Corel Painter. And I can't think of any Free Software that even attempts to be comparable to Bryce. Truly professional level painting, 3d modelling, and DTP programs are things that the hackers can and will live without, but they are also things that a great many offices cannot. These offices will therefore have no choice but to continue to run Windows or Macs if Corel goes down.
Given all that, I honestly don't see your position here. And I usually find myself agreeing with what you write.
The money obviously isn't in selling linux. That should go without saying. The money is in selling the other programs that you can't download for free. Perfect Office for example. Corel has problems, yes, and they may not make it, yes, but it's not because their linux excursion is based on a faulty business model. This is a tried and true business model. You think M$ makes much money off Windows? They make the bulk of their income off their application programs (and support contracts) and sell Windows for practically nothing because it increases the demand for those products. Since M$ is using their control of Windows to kill Corel, Corel is seeking to stay alive through expanding to the linux market, and expanding the linux market itself with their distro. This may or may not work, but it's certainly sound strategy.
Perhaps you should try compiling without debugging info if you are going to compare them, you'll get a more realistic comparison.
You should have checked out the site. From the front page: "It requires Gnome and MOZILLA M16.
You can download an RPM version at http://people.redhat.com/blizzard/software/RPMS/.
To compile from sources you will also need devel package from this site or gtkmozembed.h from another MOZILLA package. Because of license issue I cannot distribute it."
Anyone know what the licensing issues are precisely?
To answer the question of the poster, this is an excellent example of very poor web design IMHOP.
You mention lynx, Opera is another browser that allows you to avoid this crap rather easily - you can turn off javascript and redirects and automatic document creation etc... it's not perfect but it's close. I normally use opera with the crap turned off in windows, and I'm quite happy with it. Since the linux port is still alpha (I've got it, it shows promise, but it's not ready for use yet) I'm using netscape at the moment, and it has a workaround too, others have mentioned already, using the history list. Bottom line though, a site like that turns me right off, and I'm very unlikely to go back.
A lot of people using Linux are not interested in buying commercial programs from Corel. They understand that. They are fundamentally trying to convert a good chunk of their current Windows customers to Linux.
Passing out loss-leaders on the platform like candy can only help. After all, a free download costs a heck of a lot less than most physical loss-leaders. And they know M$ and Adobe haven't positioned themselves to chase any customers that go to Linux-land.