I thought Ctrl-Z/X/C/V/P/F was already a given? Are these shortcuts different in Linux?
Linux is a kernel. The "shortcuts" you refer to are found in the desktop environment, which is built on top of the XFree86 windowing system... The KDE desktop uses the shortcuts you mentioned by default. Gnome uses different key bindings by default. However, they are all globally configurable, so you get what you want. But these desktops are not Linux; these desktops are available for, and used by, various different UNIX systems.
If it is, it's just ridiculous, and is the reason why Linux doesn't make a good desktop system.
These are Microsoft's "standards." Your point is valid to the extent that they are defacto desktop standards for the majority of people. However, the GNOME people had legitimate reasons for their choice of default, primarily the fact that they were serving an established non-Microsoft user base. So they chose UNIX defaults.
I for one dislike having to use ctrl-c/ctrl-v in Windows; cut and paste with a three button mouse (or the equivalent, such as a scroll wheel) is much quicker and intuitive after you become accustomed to it. (This is called "primary selection" as opposed to "clipboard selection" - X11 has both. Read this for more info)
The point that some now see the primary issue as how to gain desktop market share at Microsoft's expense is irrelevant. It is not ridiculous, just different. And configurable.
As far as I'm concerned some things in Linux are far too complicated, even for me. That makes is a powerful OS, but doesn't really help with ease of use.
If it is too difficult for you to learn, then don't use it. How this is different from Microsoft, I don't know. If it is a question of changing from a known to an unknown for an office drone, everything is difficult. And how does being complicated make something powerful? A 2002 Ford Focus is considerably more complicated than a '69 Mustang 428 Cobra Jet R. The GNU/Linux system is actually elegantly simple in comparison with the various MS OSes.
A good example is the standard text editor that ships with Unix, VI. Seriously, this is a powerful tool, but it's counter-intuitive in too many ways. E-macs is equally complicated. There needs to be a simple edit tools, like DOS-edit. Nice and easy to use.
Have ever really tried to learn to use a Linux distribution? If you want a very simple editor, there are dozens of options. GNOME and KDE each have their own simple editors that come with the system. This you should know if you feel competent to criticize.
Granted, vi and emacs require an effort to learn, but the reward is rich indeed. I use Vim (a supercharged, vi based editor with a GUI mode) for all my programming, and could not live without it.
The choice between the two is largely a matter of religion (who got to you first) in my view. vi got to me first.
Nicolai Josuttis, The C++ Standard Library, A Tutorial and Reference
Avi Silbershatz, Peter Galvin & Greg Gagne, Applied Operating System Concepts
Algorithms is also available with the code examples in C or Java.
Sedgewick is very clear and concise with an appropriate amount of mathematical treatment for a practical algorithms text.
I also have Knuth, and while he may be authoritative, I do not always have the time to wade through three chapters of his authority to glean the knowledge required. It is my experience from school that most people who have Knuth do not spend a lot of time with him, but seek alternatives to learning MIX for code examples.
Silberschatz et al is a smaller version of their earlier thorough treatment, suited for readers who will not be actually writing OS code (most of us). It uses java for code examples, quite creatively.
Re:Structured Computer Organization and compilers
on
General IT Books?
·
· Score: 1
I agree on this one - an excellent text, and very well written.
I highly recommend having an old computer as a firewall. The 486 will do just fine
I agree; my firewall runs on an old 486DX2-66, 32MB RAM, 127MB HD, two Intel EtherExpress Pro/10 ISA ethernet cards and it works fine for my needs (@HOME cable connection).
I use the free EDGE Firewall from Fireplug Computers (recently acquired by Lineo), based on their ThinLinux distribution. It is a stripped down Linux that does packet filtering and NAT, and uses DHCPCD to connect with my ISP (@HOME) and serves DHCP to my LAN.
It is amazingly easy to setup if the instructions are followed carefully, and being a linux is as configurable as you want it to be.
I have not noticed any reduction in speed since setting up the firewall, though I must admit that the service I get from Rogers@Home is not what it used to be since all my neighbours jumped on the highspeed bandwagon. (I get max 150 KB/s these days, and am moving to ADSL as soon a port comes free). If I was still getting top-line cable speeds I might be seeing some limitation due to the slow ISA bus (no PCI in this box), but the processor is not a limitation.
Educate yourself first, then you can make an informed fool of yourself.
It never fails to amaze me that Americans (trolls, flamebaiters, average folks and brilliant people) know next-to-nothing about their largest trading partner, closest ally and next door neighbour (that's Canada, by the way). When I was 9 years old (1972) my family drove to Florida from Ottawa. I got a great kick out of telling everyone I met I was from the capital of Canada, and asking them if they knew where it was. Almost everyone replied "Toronto". Some thought we lived in igloos. Seriously. I thought that was hilarious, and would reply with the capitals of most of the US states. I was a rude little brat.
To this day I run into the same ignorance on the internet (frequently on/.), with tourists in Vancouver, in the media. Americans know far less about the rest of the world than we know about America. Is it some sort of insularity? A fear of the unknown? Superiority? What?
Educate your children. It's good for them. The world is larger than the USA.
FYI: British Columbia is on the West Coast of North America, about 8 time zones or 7-8000 kilometres from Britain. BC is directly north of Washington state and Montana, and extends north along the Pacific coast to Alaska. The northern boundary is with the Yukon Territory, and the eastern boundary is with Alberta. BC is about the size of California, New Mexico and Nevada added together, but with a population of about 3-4 million. Much of the province is mountainous, with the Northern Rockies, Kootenays, Columbia and Coast mountain ranges. The coastal rainforest is wet and mild; inland it is dry with more extreme temperatures (hot in summer, cold in winter). BC has some of the world's best skiing and snowboarding.
The capital is Victoria, located on the huge Vancouver Island in the Pacific Ocean. The largest city is Vancouver(popn 2million ). Vancouver has a surging high-tech industry, including such companies as PMC-Sierra(HQ), Electronic Arts (sports games div'n), Creo(HQ), MacDonald-Dettwiler, and Ballard Power Systems(HQ). Vancouver is also home to Stormix Technologies, developers of Storm Linux, and FirePlug Computers (recently acquired by Lineo), developers of ThinLinux and the Edge Router project. Plus many more...
If you didn't want pepper sprayed in your face, perhaps you should have moved off the road when asked, and refrained from tearing down security fencing. You could have continued your protest elsewhere. This is a technology forum. If you want to discuss the politics of protest, go to http://www.LookAtMe!!LookAtMe!!.org As a Canadian who has taken part in constructive protest I am embarrassed by the actions of these professional protesters. They will not let this silly issue go away because they seek personal glory. Get a life.
Your concerns are not to be taken lightly. They are very real dangers.
I write from Canada, so I am simply an interested observer, but political events in the U.S. have a serious impact on Canada and the rest of the world so I am very interested...
If you want to work toward a solution, I suggest you pay close attention in the upcoming presidential election. The only candidate (with a hope in hell of winning) that I have heard disavow the power of corporate lobbyists, and stand up for the independence of government from corporate interference and self-interest, is Senator John McCain of Arizona.
That is not to say he is necessarily a desirable candidate on other issues. And I am by no means a political conservative (if I was American I doubt I would vote Republican very often). However, no one else seems to even have the guts to discuss the issue for fear of losing campaign financing. Look at the size of George W. Bush's corporate-funded campaign war chest! If he is elected, say goodbye to government by and for the people and hello to government by and for the corporations.
Use your power as free citizens and rid the Whitehouse of undue corporate influence. For your own good and the good of the rest of the world.
After all, what good is having the decrypted data, if you can't make a playable disk with it?
The point is not to produce playable disks, but to produce free (as in freedom) DVD appliances - recording and playback, audio and digital. This is what the consortium fears, not the ability to make an unencrypted disk. If they lose absolute control over the hardware, they lose absolute control over the content, and that is what Hollywood has always been interested in, controlling content.
The media giants involved in the DeCSS suit are not interested in preventing piracy, but in maintaining control over the distribution of content. To this end, they wish to maintain control over the mass market appliance for content playback and production, the DVD hardware. This way they can control content absolutely, restrict releases to the media types they desire, require artists to pay premiums in order to release works on the 'new standard medium'...
The issue is not piracy but content control and manipulation of the spending of the public. The favoured corporate tool for increasing profit today is the courts, not creativity and innovation.
when counting the years in a millenium, by mispositioning the first boundary. If you have a fence 2000 metres long, with a post every metre, how many posts do you need? And where is the first post?
Lets look at a simpler case:
Assume this is a 10 m long fence. How many posts are there? Eleven.
I---I---I---I---I---I---I---I---I---I---I
If the space between the posts represents years, then we have 10 years here, with eleven boundaries. Our question is where the boundary falls for the end of the decade (in our simple case). _If_ the first boundary represents the transition from, say, 1989 to 1990 then the end of the decade falls at the eleventh boundary, the transition from 1999 to 2000.
However, such is not the case. If we examine a parallel case at the beginning of the calendar, we would have a first year of zero. But there is no Year Zero. Years are not represented with the set of whole numbers, but with the set of natural numbers, beginning at 1. Preceding Year One is a mirror image extending backward in time, designated as B.C. The calendar is not represented with integers, as there is no zero in the set of years.
So we rebuild our fence starting at year one. The end of the first decade is thus at the boundary between Year 10 and Year 11. The first century ends at the boundary between Year 100 and Year 101. And the first millenium ends at the boundary between Year 1000 and Year 1001.
Thus our current decade, and millenium, ends at the boundary between 2000 and 2001.
This argument can be made for any calendar that uses Natural numbers.
p.s. The Catholic Church's view is entirely irrelevant. If your "logic" is based on the pronouncements of the Pope or any other religious leader, you are reading the wrong forum. Humankind has spent far too much time and blood arguing about ridiculous religious crap throughout the millenia. If you wish to make a religious argument for the end of the millenium go to www.*zealot.org or whatever.
I concur, as I did a similar thing, as my video card was unsupported by XFree86 when I installed RH 6.0. My problem was not monitor support, but the same approach obviously works for any new hardware not yet supported by the [enter fave distro here] distribution or component thereof.
However this model should be used to support an on-disk database, not replace it, if the goal of installation ease for newcomers is to be achieved. An option to return after installation of network/ppp functionality and connect to an online database to search for updated drivers/config files would simplify installation in a constantly growing hardware pool.
So I installed, but was able to use the generic vga server to get standard 640x480 res on my Viewsonic PS790/Matrox G400 video system. Then I 'simply' installed the latest XFree86 release, with G400 support, and was off and running with 1280x1024 res. But it was not 'simple' at the time, because I had never seen a *nix before. This was my first exposure and if I was not somewhat motivated by the challenge, and happy to muck about, I might have been turned off. As it turns out, I was inspired by the whole experiment/experience, but I do not think the majority of computer users feel the same. Most view the OS as a tool, not a toy, and would rather not have to ever get their hands dirty by (consciously) picking it up and using it.
These are things that need to be overcome to challenge the desktop market, and there are many examples in Linux, simple things that experienced users, especially those doing the development, do not notice. That is why the phenomenal growth we see with Linux is mostly limited to the server market.
Humanity has always had problems and will always have problems. That is not a reason to stop progress.
I agree that there are many issues on earth requiring attention and resources; however, those issues will not go away even if every dollar spent on space exploration was diverted to social and environmental issues.
If we were to wait until Earth is a utopian paradise before investing in scientific and technological prgress, none would ever occur. Utopia is unattainable.
Um, whether you or I like it or not, the world of business, commerce, and the internet DOES currently revolve around the largest economy on the earth, that being the USA. By the way, as a Canadian I am not especially fond of this fact. But it is a fact. Accept it.
Sarcasm? Or are you a M$ marketing suit in training? I would not want to recieve a new HD preloaded with ANYTHING. I vote for choice. Then I can pay the bucks for the OS of my dreams, or download it for free.
...and maybe he will eventually be critically wounded. This type of strategy must hit close to the quick, as this is how The Borg came to dominate the OS market. Is this really a good thing for Linux? Marketing is a little frightening... Now if only Dr. Cowpland could keep ahead of the security regulators...
Slashdot Mirror
+1 ROTFLMAO funny
Somebody report this man!
Linux is a kernel. The "shortcuts" you refer to are found in the desktop environment, which is built on top of the XFree86 windowing system... The KDE desktop uses the shortcuts you mentioned by default. Gnome uses different key bindings by default. However, they are all globally configurable, so you get what you want. But these desktops are not Linux; these desktops are available for, and used by, various different UNIX systems.
These are Microsoft's "standards." Your point is valid to the extent that they are defacto desktop standards for the majority of people. However, the GNOME people had legitimate reasons for their choice of default, primarily the fact that they were serving an established non-Microsoft user base. So they chose UNIX defaults.I for one dislike having to use ctrl-c/ctrl-v in Windows; cut and paste with a three button mouse (or the equivalent, such as a scroll wheel) is much quicker and intuitive after you become accustomed to it. (This is called "primary selection" as opposed to "clipboard selection" - X11 has both. Read this for more info)
The point that some now see the primary issue as how to gain desktop market share at Microsoft's expense is irrelevant. It is not ridiculous, just different. And configurable.
If it is too difficult for you to learn, then don't use it. How this is different from Microsoft, I don't know. If it is a question of changing from a known to an unknown for an office drone, everything is difficult. And how does being complicated make something powerful? A 2002 Ford Focus is considerably more complicated than a '69 Mustang 428 Cobra Jet R. The GNU/Linux system is actually elegantly simple in comparison with the various MS OSes.
Have ever really tried to learn to use a Linux distribution? If you want a very simple editor, there are dozens of options. GNOME and KDE each have their own simple editors that come with the system. This you should know if you feel competent to criticize.
Granted, vi and emacs require an effort to learn, but the reward is rich indeed. I use Vim (a supercharged, vi based editor with a GUI mode) for all my programming, and could not live without it. The choice between the two is largely a matter of religion (who got to you first) in my view. vi got to me first.
Algorithms is also available with the code examples in C or Java.
Sedgewick is very clear and concise with an appropriate amount of mathematical treatment for a practical algorithms text.
I also have Knuth, and while he may be authoritative, I do not always have the time to wade through three chapters of his authority to glean the knowledge required. It is my experience from school that most people who have Knuth do not spend a lot of time with him, but seek alternatives to learning MIX for code examples.
Silberschatz et al is a smaller version of their earlier thorough treatment, suited for readers who will not be actually writing OS code (most of us). It uses java for code examples, quite creatively.
I agree on this one - an excellent text, and very well written.
I highly recommend having an old computer as a firewall. The 486 will do just fine
I agree; my firewall runs on an old 486DX2-66, 32MB RAM, 127MB HD, two Intel EtherExpress Pro/10 ISA ethernet cards and it works fine for my needs (@HOME cable connection).
I use the free EDGE Firewall from Fireplug Computers (recently acquired by Lineo), based on their ThinLinux distribution. It is a stripped down Linux that does packet filtering and NAT, and uses DHCPCD to connect with my ISP (@HOME) and serves DHCP to my LAN.
It is amazingly easy to setup if the instructions are followed carefully, and being a linux is as configurable as you want it to be.
I have not noticed any reduction in speed since setting up the firewall, though I must admit that the service I get from Rogers@Home is not what it used to be since all my neighbours jumped on the highspeed bandwagon. (I get max 150 KB/s these days, and am moving to ADSL as soon a port comes free). If I was still getting top-line cable speeds I might be seeing some limitation due to the slow ISA bus (no PCI in this box), but the processor is not a limitation.
damn brits suck anyways
Educate yourself first, then you can make an informed fool of yourself.
It never fails to amaze me that Americans (trolls, flamebaiters, average folks and brilliant people) know next-to-nothing about their largest trading partner, closest ally and next door neighbour (that's Canada, by the way). When I was 9 years old (1972) my family drove to Florida from Ottawa. I got a great kick out of telling everyone I met I was from the capital of Canada, and asking them if they knew where it was. Almost everyone replied "Toronto". Some thought we lived in igloos. Seriously. I thought that was hilarious, and would reply with the capitals of most of the US states. I was a rude little brat.
To this day I run into the same ignorance on the internet (frequently on /.), with tourists in Vancouver, in the media. Americans know far less about the rest of the world than we know about America. Is it some sort of insularity? A fear of the unknown? Superiority? What?
Educate your children. It's good for them. The world is larger than the USA.
FYI:
British Columbia is on the West Coast of North America, about 8 time zones or 7-8000 kilometres from Britain. BC is directly north of Washington state and Montana, and extends north along the Pacific coast to Alaska. The northern boundary is with the Yukon Territory, and the eastern boundary is with Alberta. BC is about the size of California, New Mexico and Nevada added together, but with a population of about 3-4 million. Much of the province is mountainous, with the Northern Rockies, Kootenays, Columbia and Coast mountain ranges. The coastal rainforest is wet and mild; inland it is dry with more extreme temperatures (hot in summer, cold in winter). BC has some of the world's best skiing and snowboarding.
The capital is Victoria, located on the huge Vancouver Island in the Pacific Ocean. The largest city is Vancouver(popn 2million ). Vancouver has a surging high-tech industry, including such companies as PMC-Sierra(HQ), Electronic Arts (sports games div'n), Creo(HQ), MacDonald-Dettwiler, and Ballard Power Systems(HQ). Vancouver is also home to Stormix Technologies, developers of Storm Linux, and FirePlug Computers (recently acquired by Lineo), developers of ThinLinux and the Edge Router project. Plus many more...
If you didn't want pepper sprayed in your face, perhaps you should have moved off the road when asked, and refrained from tearing down security fencing. You could have continued your protest elsewhere. This is a technology forum. If you want to discuss the politics of protest, go to http://www.LookAtMe!!LookAtMe!!.org As a Canadian who has taken part in constructive protest I am embarrassed by the actions of these professional protesters. They will not let this silly issue go away because they seek personal glory. Get a life.
Your concerns are not to be taken lightly. They are very real dangers.
I write from Canada, so I am simply an interested observer, but political events in the U.S. have a serious impact on Canada and the rest of the world so I am very interested...
If you want to work toward a solution, I suggest you pay close attention in the upcoming presidential election. The only candidate (with a hope in hell of winning) that I have heard disavow the power of corporate lobbyists, and stand up for the independence of government from corporate interference and self-interest, is Senator John McCain of Arizona.
That is not to say he is necessarily a desirable candidate on other issues. And I am by no means a political conservative (if I was American I doubt I would vote Republican very often). However, no one else seems to even have the guts to discuss the issue for fear of losing campaign financing. Look at the size of George W. Bush's corporate-funded campaign war chest! If he is elected, say goodbye to government by and for the people and hello to government by and for the corporations.
Use your power as free citizens and rid the Whitehouse of undue corporate influence. For your own good and the good of the rest of the world.
After all, what good is having the decrypted data, if you can't make a playable disk with it?
The point is not to produce playable disks, but to produce free (as in freedom) DVD appliances - recording and playback, audio and digital. This is what the consortium fears, not the ability to make an unencrypted disk. If they lose absolute control over the hardware, they lose absolute control over the content, and that is what Hollywood has always been interested in, controlling content.
The media giants involved in the DeCSS suit are not interested in preventing piracy, but in maintaining control over the distribution of content. To this end, they wish to maintain control over the mass market appliance for content playback and production, the DVD hardware. This way they can control content absolutely, restrict releases to the media types they desire, require artists to pay premiums in order to release works on the 'new standard medium'...
The issue is not piracy but content control and manipulation of the spending of the public. The favoured corporate tool for increasing profit today is the courts, not creativity and innovation.
And the stable kernel is only 2.2.14! Better get Windows 95!
when counting the years in a millenium, by mispositioning the first boundary. If you have a fence 2000 metres long, with a post every metre, how many posts do you need? And where is the first post?
Lets look at a simpler case:
Assume this is a 10 m long fence. How many posts are there? Eleven.
I---I---I---I---I---I---I---I---I---I---I
If the space between the posts represents years, then we have 10 years here, with eleven boundaries. Our question is where the boundary falls for the end of the decade (in our simple case). _If_ the first boundary represents the transition from, say, 1989 to 1990 then the end of the decade falls at the eleventh boundary, the transition from 1999 to 2000.
However, such is not the case. If we examine a parallel case at the beginning of the calendar, we would have a first year of zero. But there is no Year Zero. Years are not represented with the set of whole numbers, but with the set of natural numbers, beginning at 1. Preceding Year One is a mirror image extending backward in time, designated as B.C. The calendar is not represented with integers, as there is no zero in the set of years.
So we rebuild our fence starting at year one. The end of the first decade is thus at the boundary between Year 10 and Year 11. The first century ends at the boundary between Year 100 and Year 101. And the first millenium ends at the boundary between Year 1000 and Year 1001.
Thus our current decade, and millenium, ends at the boundary between 2000 and 2001.
This argument can be made for any calendar that uses Natural numbers.
p.s. The Catholic Church's view is entirely irrelevant. If your "logic" is based on the pronouncements of the Pope or any other religious leader, you are reading the wrong forum. Humankind has spent far too much time and blood arguing about ridiculous religious crap throughout the millenia. If you wish to make a religious argument for the end of the millenium go to www.*zealot.org or whatever.
This will not help today as the server was overloaded at 8:55am, but for future reference...
/home/user/RealPlayG2/realplay %s)
[Note: RTFM; the following is all in the readme file that comes with the player]
if you want the player to open automagically from Netscape, you must go, in NS, to:
Edit -> Preferences -> Navigator -> Applications ->New
Then enter the following info:
Description: RealPlayer G2
MIMEType: audio/x-pn-realaudio
Suffixes: ra,rm,ram
Application: realplay %s
(if the realplayer binary is not installed on your path precede with the pathname e.g.
I concur, as I did a similar thing, as my video card was unsupported by XFree86 when I installed RH 6.0. My problem was not monitor support, but the same approach obviously works for any new hardware not yet supported by the [enter fave distro here] distribution or component thereof.
However this model should be used to support an on-disk database, not replace it, if the goal of installation ease for newcomers is to be achieved. An option to return after installation of network/ppp functionality and connect to an online database to search for updated drivers/config files would simplify installation in a constantly growing hardware pool.
So I installed, but was able to use the generic vga server to get standard 640x480 res on my Viewsonic PS790/Matrox G400 video system. Then I 'simply' installed the latest XFree86 release, with G400 support, and was off and running with 1280x1024 res. But it was not 'simple' at the time, because I had never seen a *nix before. This was my first exposure and if I was not somewhat motivated by the challenge, and happy to muck about, I might have been turned off. As it turns out, I was inspired by the whole experiment/experience, but I do not think the majority of computer users feel the same. Most view the OS as a tool, not a toy, and would rather not have to ever get their hands dirty by (consciously) picking it up and using it.
These are things that need to be overcome to challenge the desktop market, and there are many examples in Linux, simple things that experienced users, especially those doing the development, do not notice. That is why the phenomenal growth we see with Linux is mostly limited to the server market.
Humanity has always had problems and will always have problems. That is not a reason to stop progress.
I agree that there are many issues on earth requiring attention and resources; however, those issues will not go away even if every dollar spent on space exploration was diverted to social and environmental issues.
If we were to wait until Earth is a utopian paradise before investing in scientific and technological prgress, none would ever occur. Utopia is unattainable.
Um, whether you or I like it or not, the world of business, commerce, and the internet DOES currently revolve around the largest economy on the earth, that being the USA. By the way, as a Canadian I am not especially fond of this fact. But it is a fact. Accept it.
Sarcasm? Or are you a M$ marketing suit in training? I would not want to recieve a new HD preloaded with ANYTHING. I vote for choice. Then I can pay the bucks for the OS of my dreams, or download it for free.
...and maybe he will eventually be critically wounded. This type of strategy must hit close to the quick, as this is how The Borg came to dominate the OS market. Is this really a good thing for Linux? Marketing is a little frightening... Now if only Dr. Cowpland could keep ahead of the security regulators...