Everyone should stop whining about MS not making the Office formats available. They have been available for quite some time (not long after Office 97 was released IIRC). To get them (instructions copied from the MSWordView homepage):
As someone who is currently working on MSWordView as well as the Word importer for Abiword, I can tell you that the Word file format is a sick joke, and that documentation you reference contains about 80% of what you need to do it, and only 60% of it is actually right. And then, that insane mess of unnecessarily complex data is wrapped inside an OLE2 structured storage object (ie. another poorly documented proprietary creation of Microsoft).
Please, download those docs, and skim through the 500K of documentation. By the end, you will agree the Word file format was created by either a) a company intending for no one else to ever successfully write a perfect Word importer, or b) by sadistic programmers obviously under the heavy influence of one or more narcotics.
And as for their supposed conversion to XML, I'll bet anyone a $1000 that it's non-compliant XML wrapped around arcane, poorly documented (if at all) binary data.
What's most amusing, however, is that you defend Microsoft on this. The documentation on MSDN is a joke. If you want to make use of it, expect lots of reverse engineering, too (as work on WINE will clearly demonstrate). They put that stuff there so suckers like you would think Microsoft is playing nice. They're not. They are bad for this industry. And anyone who tries to tell you the effect of their "standardization" has been good is buying into the MS PR BS, too. Interoperability is easy and reduces costs by increasing competition, and it would be considerably easier if not for Microsoft's anticompetitive, predatory practices. My solution to this antitrust trial? The DOJ shold call up the DOD and have Redmond wiped off the of the planet.
With yesterdays ALSA post, it now seems like OSS free isn't dead and not without support. So if ALSA is going to win any distribution space it is going to have to earn it. Still it would be nice if these guys could work together.
Don't worry about ALSA. It will be the sound architecture in 2.3 and later kernels. OSS modules will still work of course, but if ALSA has support for your card, you want to run it. It's vastly superior.
Furthermore, the notion that 4Front is going to make XMMS use special OSS extensions is ridiculous. Have any of you ever looked at the OSS API? It's remarkably simple and going nowhere. Don't expect OSS to support >2 channel sound output or hardware processing (such as 3D) anytime soon. The ALSA interface is currently being designed to allow these things in the future. And right now, it already emulates most (if not all) of the OSS API.
4Front might have a future writing and selling proprietary ALSA modules (as well as OSS for other unices), but OSS on Linux isn't going to be around much past Linux 2.4.
f your system freezes so hard that Ctrl-Alt-Backspace won't fix it, you have kernel or X server problems. I'll guess that your X server died.
Not quite. I've had this problem with gnome, as well, and the problem actually appears to be that mouse and keyboard input are being ignored. When it happens, I just telnet into my box from another computer and kill the current session. Then everything recovers fine back in the console.
It's probably just a weird interaction between gnome and X; one's tickling a bug in the other. After it happened the second time, I've been starting up X with decent logging output, hoping I could track the problem down... but it hasn't happened since...
But the emotions and thoughts to be created can not be predicted even if the audience is defined as a set of variables, machines have predictable outputs that's why they are programmed (given all variables).
The only inherit limit to predicting a human response to normal speech is the due to quantum uncertainity. _Theoretically_ we could predict a human response that would be 99.99999999999999% accurate if we just knew enough about the system (brain chemistry, neural structure, etc...) (ie. "given all variables").
Likewise, our ability to predict a computers response to speech is also bound by this same uncertainity. Maybe the RAM flipped a bit, a drive sector demagnetized, transistor wouldn't switch, or some other little unexpected, highly unlikely quantum disturbance, and suddenly the computer is no longer predictable. Sure it doesn't happen often, but it's basically the same problem as with humans.
We you get right down to it, a human is a machine, just like a computer. A computer is an incredibly simple machine, and so we can almost always predict its response. A human brain is such a complex, chaotic system that predictions of its response is far more unreliable than that of a computer. Regardless, a computer language, like a human language, is often manipulative, but never deterministic.
You can look at any Windows binary and see what API calls it makes. If MS apps made any undocumented calls it'd be public knowledge.
No you can't. Windows uses something called ordinals as a method of calling functions in a dll. The name doesn't show up in the binary.
Also, browse through the WINE changelog, and look for comments like "implementation of undocumented function kernel.dll:35". Even their file browser (explorer) didn't work under wine for a long time (it still might not) as it was dying on undocumented calls in kernel.
I think Borland's compiler makes use of a few of these functions, too, but otherwise, only Microsoft products have these problems under wine.
You couldn't be more wrong.
on
Red Hat 6.0
·
· Score: 1
Actually GNOME changed one of its system monitoring libraries to a GPL license from LGPL after Stallman's rant. They have mentioned they might do it for more. That would make the creation of proprietary software with GNOME impossible.
libgtop changed it's license. It extracts info from the/proc filesystem, providing a set of routines to check things such as cpu and memory usage, active processes etc.
It's not exactly a vital Gnome library. In fact, how many companies wanting to port their proprietary apps are going to use that? And even if they needed the functionality, their programmers could reimplement the necessary pieces pretty quickly.
But you see, that's the point. Gnome will never change the license on core libraries. Some of the highly specialized, and non-vital, helper libraries might. So what? If some company wants to port, they'll duplicate what they need. Missing libgtop won't affect their decision...
Second, I'm not sure you understand the economics of proprietary software. QT is somewhere in the ballpark of $1000US. To a company putting out proprietary software this is nothing.
Exactly why your first argument is pointless. Paying a programmer to duplicate the bits of functionality they need out of a GPLed library is trivial to the total cost of the project.
The well designed and just generally easy and lovely API of QT speeds up developement time greatly, perhaps by as much as 30-50%. The money the company will thus save by going with QT in programmer salaries will far outweigh the cost of qt by several orders of magnitude.
I'll buy the '$1000 is trivial to the cost of the project' argument, but speeding up development time? I can write pretty functional applications in 100 lines of Perl/GTK. Translate it C and you add a bit, but it's all just duplicating Perl functionality, and not GTK. Maybe, MAYBE, a marginal improvement, but saving several orders of magnitude over the $1000? Qt saves $100,000-$1,000,000 over GTK? Please!
I'd say rather than an economic problem, it's just going to be annoying, perhaps even amusing to proprietary companies. They have some Linux port requests, so they decide to look into it, and then find they have to spend $1000 for the privilege to use Qt. I think it will leave an interesting impression on a lot of companies, at the least.
creative labs did hire a Linux device writer, and drivers for the sb live will be forthcoming! None of this happens, however, unless informed buyers holler long, loud and often at the vendors who refuse to support Linux.
They're going to release binary drivers for the SB Live, which isn't adequate. So don't stop hollering yet. Wait until we have full specs, as well.
The voodoo3, on the other hand, should have open source drivers, eventually.
Only with KGI there will someday be games for Linux.
KGI might be useful, but there'll be games regardless. XFree has a lot more hardware company involvement than KGI/GGI. I have 3D hardware acceleration for my Permedia 2v card already.
Just bought SuSE6, and SAX nicely configured my video. It might be a big buggy right now, but it sure kicks xf86setup for new users.
SAX will probably be incorporated into XFree86 for the 4.0 version.
And on a related note, DDC support will take care of the monitor timings for most people (at least those with newer monitors). Also, the new driver module infrastructure will mean supporting new chipsets just requires downloading a small easy-to-install driver, rather than the whole X distribution.
The whole feminist movement is a joke. What has it solved? Men still rule 99% of the world. And there's no Germaine Greer or Andrea Dworkin who will change that.
Giving up on social progress so easily? Feminism is a relatively new thing. It will take time to get rid of sexism. But (generally) every generation is a little more open-minded than the previous.
A paper tiger that has 11000 nuclear warheads pointed to every other NATO country... sure it's not a superpower anymore, but they still have what it takes to remove all forms of life from this planet.
Russia will not go to war with NATO over Serbia. They want to pretend like they are still a significant world power, so they oppose everything the US does. They won't back it up.
As for nukes? Jesus, do you really think Russia would launch ICBMs over this?
MS is the only thing that the three sites (userfriendly, bedope, segfault) have in common.
And the same audience... And the people who run these sites know each other... And they're all part of the same MS-hating community. Slashdot is in on it, but only to provide the final piece -- a big story on the first concerning the lawsuits... Slashdot couldn't pretend like it was being threatened or else we'd have a massive media frenzy and then the joke would be revealed early... like checking to see if a suit has actually been filed in the appropriate courts.
I'll bet you a $1000 the lawsuit does not exist. They probably planned it at LinuxWorld...
I doubt it. It started too early and has gone on too long.
No. I'm right. I'm certain it's a joke. I've been following up on this stuff, and I've gotten too many strange responses. Besides, why would MS go after these sites? Their primary readers already hate MS...
This is one massive, well-coordinated April Fool's joke. Slashdot is in on it, too. Expect a story tomorrow about how Microsoft is shutting those sites down due to libel.
I remember a comment from either CmdrTaco or Hemos a while back about BIG plans for the April Fool's day. This is it.
So that I can steal all your customers. Its about stupidity. I'm relying on YOU being stupid enough to give me YOUR code. So fork it over, OSS rules. Especially when I can just take your IP from under your stupid noses.
Where the hell are these people coming from?!? Did Slashdot just get a blurb in Windows NT Magazine, or something?
And, sorry, my router won't let you have my IP number. Furthermore, the Open Sound System is old, give ALSA a try. It's much nicer.
Printing? KOM/Openparts? Not in at least two years (for GNOME, that is. readily available for KDE)
Well the gnome-print stuff appears to already exist. Perhaps it's not finished, but two years? I doubt it.
As for KOM/Openparts, why the hell would Gnome want it? Gee, another component object model.. just what the world needs. From what I understand, Gnome is using an object model based on ILU, a commonly accepted standard. So you criticize Gnome for using the standard as opposed to supporting the thing KDE made up? Why doesn't KDE support Gnome's object model?
I'm going to make a script to auto-post my standard Wine response to comments such as these, but in the meantime, here is my latest variation on "you don't know anything about WINE":
Corel's intention from the beginning was to use components of Winelib to assist in native ports to Linux. In this respect, it's like using gtk or qt (actually more like gnome-libs or kde's equivalent). They haven't backed off from anything, and they have contributed a lot of time and people towards Wine so far. I would expect later versions of their applications to move to more cross-platform development. In the meantime, fixing Wine is much quicker than rewriting their apps from scratch.
Also, WINE alone won't attract uninterested Windows users. People who have wanted to use Linux, but were dependent on a Windows only program, would be more inclined to switch. Lotus Notes is a good example of this. Eventually, the market demand will result in native ports.
And finally, Microsoft can't change APIs without annoying their developers. Basically, nothing goes away, just new stuff is added. And most of the time, the new stuff is just a new wrapper over the old stuff, with a few extensions. Once Wine is fully functional with the current Win95/98/NT base, keeping up with Microsoft changes won't be hard. And it will only be necessary until the Win platform loses its monopoly.
So, in conclusion, Wine won't hurt you or Linux. The worst case scenario is a bunch of developers end up wasting their time on a project they code for fun (primarily). The best case scenario is a bunch of Windows users and developers use Wine to run/port applications on Linux, giving us more market leverage to get open hardware drivers and the latest games (which, ultimately, is the ONLY reason I care about our marketshare).
Why is it that when Wine is mentioned on slashdot, the exact same ignorant posts are made? Here are some corrections to the frequent anti-Wine postings:
1. It does run lots of applications; some of them are functional enough to be useful and others only require modest debugging. However, there are still many unusable applications, too. They will be useable soon.
2. Wine includes implementations of everything you get with Windows 95/98/NT. Not all of them are complete. There is already a framework in place for Win64, whenever Microsoft gets around to that. You don't need to buy or license anything from Microsoft. Wine has it all.
3. Microsoft can't change the API more rapidly than Wine can reimplement it. If they change the API, developers have to change their applications, too. Sure there will be new DLLs and occasional changes to the API, but it's not that big of a project once Wine has caught up.
4. Wine will not kill the commercial interest in Linux. In case you haven't noticed, Linux is popular because it is a way to break the Microsoft monopoly. Other companies want a neutral ground to compete on. They want everything to move to alternative OSes. Commercial apps will stop if Linux is perceived to fail. It doesn't matter. We'll be back eventually.
5. Wine is for legacy applications and their code (ie. all Windows applications and their code). It's just like dosemu, console emulators, fat-based filesystems, SMB, and every other old technology which still has a large installed base. Why not be compatible? They're going to be replaced by superior alternatives eventually, so there's no harm in making the present a little more convenient by supporting legacy systems.
samba is not good enough to replace a production NT server yet. I have done a lot of experimentation with it, its getting better. its got a lot of flexibility, but its not quite there.
Here at the University of Kansas, student mail and web servers (Digital Unix boxes) are running Samba. I'm not sure what the usage is on SMB to these things, but with 25-30,000 students, it's probably WAY more than an NT box could handle.
Also, I'm not sure what experiments you've been running, but I'm never seen an NT box able to keep up with Samba -- performance or stability.
COM+ could present something of a nuisance for a cross-platform world. Microsoft will obviously want to leverage COM's popularity to push it's server marketshare. How many companies have intranets using ActiveX-based components? Gee, you have to have a Windows OS to access this. Of course, they give us DCOM for UNIX via SoftwareAG just to show their "cross-platform" commitment, but how many people here want to run a proprietary piece of software donated by Microsoft? Why didn't Microsoft release it themselves? Probably because it would be too obvious they just want to suck the world into another "standard" upon which they can "innovate" new ways to screw us over and take our money.
Now, with that in mind, how do we wrestle control of COM from their hands? I'm thinking of something along the lines of Samba. The widespread adoption of Samba has now forced Microsoft to play nice in that particular cross-platform area. If they go and break NT file-serving purposely, it's going to be a major pain for a lot of companies, who would just go with the Samba version over NT to prevent future problems. If we can use the popularity of Linux on the server to take part of the COM+ server market (rather than being all NT boxes), we can force the same situation as with Samba.
I think part of the solution is a COM/CORBA bridge. However, the Transaction Server stuff has me slightly confused. It seems to me that CORBA already provides transaction services, so I don't get what the hype is about.
We need to provide true platform independence for COM+, whether by a bridge or a Free implementation of COM+. However, this is not my area of expertise. Can someone who understands all of this stuff tell us what we need to do?
I used to be an OS/2 user, and Windows compatibility is one of the possible reasons that no native OS/2 apps were ever developed... I hope the same does not happen to Linux.
If OS/2 never got a lot of apps, it might be do to the fact that it was effectively derailed by Microsoft. It got some marketshare, but to most companies, it didn't look like it was growing. Companies will port to Linux as long as they think it's going to be big. If Linux growth drops off to zero this year, don't expect to companies to port. That's the reason all of those Java projects died; Java lost its momentum.
But if Linux becomes a major player, it will get ports. Look at the Mac. It only has ~10% market share, and there are Windows emulators, but people still write software for it. And if it was easy and cheap to port Win apps to the Mac, it would have a lot more. If two companies are competing in a market, and one ports to Linux while the other can only be run under WINE, who do you think is going to get the Linux market? If we're significant, we'll get ports, and eventually, completely native (non-Winelib) ports.
In the meantime, how many mainstream users are going to switch if they can't bring their day-to-day apps with them? Even if it's faster, more reliable, less expensive, and has a better user interface, without MS Office, there are a lot of people who won't switch. We HAVE to support legacy Windows applications to appeal to a wider, mainstream market. Once they're here, they'll discover all of the superior options.
The monstrosity that is the Windows API is Microsoft's one of two remaining advantages (the other being mindshare). Writing anything complex for Windows is a nightmare, and many companies aren't going to rewrite a few million lines of Windows-specific code to support Linux right now. Microsoft locks companies into Windows with their API; it takes a large investment to develop those applications and they aren't eager to rewrite everything. WINE removes that advantage. It helps fuel marketshare growth, and as a result more native apps will come.
And I must say, my problem with WINE is that, while it does look promising, I have yet to see a *SINGLE* Windows application of mine work with it... Every single one crashes and burns.
WINE releases are still considered developmental, meaning they are unstable. Sometimes older releases work better with some applications. Remeber that the releases you've been using are just CVS snapshots. Sometimes implementing a previously stubbed function causes a once (mostly) working application to no longer work. Lots of things are changing.
However, getting many applications to run fairly well requires only minor modification from a current release. I remember one developer commenting on how he was working to get PowerPoint working now, since he considered Office and Excel functional (sometimes not with the latest CVS copy, but it just takes a little tweaking usually).
I think WINE still has longer to go than is reasonable at this point before it becomes truly usable...
I'm going to estimate 6 months before just about any application could be ported with Winelib, requiring only minor additional touch-ups. Good, stable binary emulation might be further off, since it's easy to work around holes in WINE when you have the application source. Corel is doing a lot of work on WINE, too. Anymore, many of the CVS changelogs have email addresses with corel or macadamiam (sp?) (subcontractors for corel). It is progressing quickly.
Why don't they just give up on it? It might be better for the Linux community in the longrun, too.
There are a lot of things that would be better for the Linux community that aren't going to happen. For instance, the Open Source mess of incompatible licenses is a problem. Mesa had to be forked at version 3 so it could be used for XFree 3D support. Ideally (at least my ideal), we would all be using LGPL and GPL. But that's not going to happen, and two projects I theoretically work on (meaning I don't really do much, if anything), WINE and XFree, both have BSD derivative licenses. Also, it would be ideal if we didn't have multiple groups trying to write video drivers (XFree and GGI) or 3D drivers (Mesa, XMesa, GLX, GGI-3D) or sound drivers (OSS and ALSA) or gaming API's (clanlib and penguin play) or desktop environments (KDE and GNOME), etc, etc,... For the good of the Linux community we should consolidate duplicate programming efforts, not only to prevent a waste of developers, but also to prevent incompatibilities (KDE and GNOME are especially large potential problems here).
The only problem with deciding to consolidate our efforts is picking which one to use. I probably have very different ideas than you, or anyone else, for that matter. For example, I think it might be a good idea to concentrate all graphics device driver development in GGI, and make XFree run on top of that (which it can do). To me, it seems like the most flexible solution. However, I'm never going to be able to convince the XFree project to move all device development to GGI.
So the moral is: people are going to write want they want, regardless of what anyone thinks is best. In response, we should try to make everything as compatible as possible, and eventually, everything will be redone Right. In the meantime, we're going to have rapidly changing, and overlapping API's, desktop standards, device drivers, and applications. If we tried to dictate how everything should be done now, development would fork immediately anyway.
Because that's what my mortgage company, grocery store, computer store, and ISP want.
You sort of missed the point. The problem is just capitalism in general. The reward for all progress doesn't have to be mounds of money, but the nature of our economy requires that. We all work for money. It funds the companies which employ us, and in return we try to repay that investment with interest by succeeding. Tell me you wouldn't work to find a cure for cancer at a mere $70,000 a year, just because you wouldn't make billions off of it if you got it first. What's more important: being rich or making the world a better place?
And no amount of righteous indignation is going to change that.
Perhaps, but then what will? As a civilization, we're on a bad course. I hope we can correct that before it's too late. Doesn't it worry you that a business is only consider successful if it continues to grow? The general belief that capitalism works is grounded upon the misconception that only superior products will make you money. But successful companies can easily succeed just making selling an inferior product to a larger market, and convince that a standard is the way to go. Eventually perhaps, the superior product wins out, but in the meantime, enormous amounts of money, time, and resources are wasted. I vote for progress over commercial success. Maybe the two can coincide, but I'm don't want to bet the future of our species on it.
Given that you equate money and time, are you spending all your free time on a cure for cancer or another equally altruistic goal? No, you're spending at least some of it reading Slashdot.
As only a biochem undergrad, who has not studied cancer in any great detail, I'm afraid I can offer little assistance at this point. However, my comment was in reference to a hypothetical person who has a new, potentially useful idea. And I ask, what kind of person would sit on that until they had adequate confidence they would be able to make a 200% return on the investment of their time and money? As for my free time, I do not mean to imply that you should dedicate every moment and every dollar to any idea of potential significance. I volunteer. I do lab research. I contribute to free software. And if I can across some idea of unbelievable importance of which I could further, I'm more than prepared to dedicate my time and energy to that end.
Maybe I was too indignant in my first post, but all I'm saying is that we shouldn't be working in the interest of money. Ideally, we would work in the interests of progress, and that resources necessary for our own happiness and health would be provided. It's possible, we just need to change the focus of our economy.
Lets look at this from a different perspective, one that I happen to actually be _personally_ familiar with.
Me too! I'm a biochemist and my brother's diabetic.
Imagine that you are a business man / scientist who is trying to develop a glucose sensor and injection pump for Diabetics. Such an innovation will have a profound impact on the lives of diabetics, and will also expected to _dramatically_ improve the health of the diabetic user.
And the pump is going to get done _dramatically_ faster if people share their work. The whole cathedral and the bazaar thing applies to more than just software. Obviously there is a higher level of infrastructure needed for biomedical research than kernel development, but there doesn't necessarily have to be. I'll bet Microsoft would say it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to develop an OS, while we all know that it only takes a lot of motivated people contributing a little of their time. We can do a similar thing for science in general. The only missing piece is easy access to tools, and at a university, even that isn't too hard.
The greater the risk, the higher the rewards must be.
WHY DOES THE REWARD HAVE TO BE MONEY? Why does the reward go primarily to the person who funded the research, rather than the actual people who did it? This is competitive and wasteful! We are capable of much more if we would just cooperate. Call me a communist or socialist if you like, but I prefer to call it humanism. As in, let's make things better, not for my personal greed or dreams of excessive wealth, but just in the interests of happiness and greater understanding.
Who in their right minds is going to risk their own money if they simply cant suceed playing the averages. Some of you might even offer a more reasonable solution. Lets just allow them to 'double' their money, but this doesnt cut it. As the risks are far too great to risk it over only 200% gain, not to mention the time wasted.
What kind of fucking self-absorbed, materialistic hell do you live in? You wouldn't pursue a cure for cancer because you might lose some MONEY? If you have any new ideas on the topic, let me know, as I can put you in contact with a few thousand people who would be willing to sacrifice everything to research a potential cure.
You see this all comes down to intellectual property.
Yes it sure does. It all comes down to the wasteful, selfish, non-cooperative, proprietary waste of resources known as intellectual property.
But such fruits might very well only be reaped if alot of time and money is thrown at it.
Money is nothing more than our material representation of time, and there are a lot of people with plenty of time. We just need a way for people to work together for once, rather than working for their venture capitalists and stock holders.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone should stop whining about MS not making the Office formats available. They have been available for quite some time (not long after Office 97 was released IIRC). To get them (instructions copied from the MSWordView homepage):
As someone who is currently working on MSWordView as well as the Word importer for Abiword, I can tell you that the Word file format is a sick joke, and that documentation you reference contains about 80% of what you need to do it, and only 60% of it is actually right. And then, that insane mess of unnecessarily complex data is wrapped inside an OLE2 structured storage object (ie. another poorly documented proprietary creation of Microsoft).
Please, download those docs, and skim through the 500K of documentation. By the end, you will agree the Word file format was created by either a) a company intending for no one else to ever successfully write a perfect Word importer, or b) by sadistic programmers obviously under the heavy influence of one or more narcotics.
And as for their supposed conversion to XML, I'll bet anyone a $1000 that it's non-compliant XML wrapped around arcane, poorly documented (if at all) binary data.
What's most amusing, however, is that you defend Microsoft on this. The documentation on MSDN is a joke. If you want to make use of it, expect lots of reverse engineering, too (as work on WINE will clearly demonstrate). They put that stuff there so suckers like you would think Microsoft is playing nice. They're not. They are bad for this industry. And anyone who tries to tell you the effect of their "standardization" has been good is buying into the MS PR BS, too. Interoperability is easy and reduces costs by increasing competition, and it would be considerably easier if not for Microsoft's anticompetitive, predatory practices. My solution to this antitrust trial? The DOJ shold call up the DOD and have Redmond wiped off the of the planet.
With yesterdays ALSA post, it now seems like OSS free isn't dead and not without support. So if ALSA is going to win any distribution space it is going to have to earn it. Still it would be nice if these guys could work together.
Don't worry about ALSA. It will be the sound architecture in 2.3 and later kernels. OSS modules will still work of course, but if ALSA has support for your card, you want to run it. It's vastly superior.
Furthermore, the notion that 4Front is going to make XMMS use special OSS extensions is ridiculous. Have any of you ever looked at the OSS API? It's remarkably simple and going nowhere. Don't expect OSS to support >2 channel sound output or hardware processing (such as 3D) anytime soon. The ALSA interface is currently being designed to allow these things in the future. And right now, it already emulates most (if not all) of the OSS API.
4Front might have a future writing and selling proprietary ALSA modules (as well as OSS for other unices), but OSS on Linux isn't going to be around much past Linux 2.4.
f your system freezes so hard that Ctrl-Alt-Backspace won't fix it, you have kernel or X server problems. I'll guess that your X server died.
Not quite. I've had this problem with gnome, as well, and the problem actually appears to be that mouse and keyboard input are being ignored. When it happens, I just telnet into my box from another computer and kill the current session. Then everything recovers fine back in the console.
It's probably just a weird interaction between gnome and X; one's tickling a bug in the other. After it happened the second time, I've been starting up X with decent logging output, hoping I could track the problem down... but it hasn't happened since...
But the emotions and thoughts to be created can not be predicted even if the audience is defined as a set of variables, machines have predictable outputs that's why they are programmed (given all variables).
The only inherit limit to predicting a human response to normal speech is the due to quantum uncertainity. _Theoretically_ we could predict a human response that would be 99.99999999999999% accurate if we just knew enough about the system (brain chemistry, neural structure, etc...) (ie. "given all variables").
Likewise, our ability to predict a computers response to speech is also bound by this same uncertainity. Maybe the RAM flipped a bit, a drive sector demagnetized, transistor wouldn't switch, or some other little unexpected, highly unlikely quantum disturbance, and suddenly the computer is no longer predictable. Sure it doesn't happen often, but it's basically the same problem as with humans.
We you get right down to it, a human is a machine, just like a computer. A computer is an incredibly simple machine, and so we can almost always predict its response. A human brain is such a complex, chaotic system that predictions of its response is far more unreliable than that of a computer. Regardless, a computer language, like a human language, is often manipulative, but never deterministic.
You can look at any Windows binary and see what API calls it makes. If MS apps made any undocumented calls it'd be public knowledge.
No you can't. Windows uses something called ordinals as a method of calling functions in a dll. The name doesn't show up in the binary.
Also, browse through the WINE changelog, and look for comments like "implementation of undocumented function kernel.dll:35". Even their file browser (explorer) didn't work under wine for a long time (it still might not) as it was dying on undocumented calls in kernel.
I think Borland's compiler makes use of a few of these functions, too, but otherwise, only Microsoft products have these problems under wine.
Actually GNOME changed one of its system monitoring libraries to a GPL license from LGPL after Stallman's rant. They have mentioned they might do it for more. That would make the creation of proprietary software with GNOME impossible.
/proc filesystem, providing a set of routines to check things such as cpu and memory usage, active processes etc.
libgtop changed it's license. It extracts info from the
It's not exactly a vital Gnome library. In fact, how many companies wanting to port their proprietary apps are going to use that? And even if they needed the functionality, their programmers could reimplement the necessary pieces pretty quickly.
But you see, that's the point. Gnome will never change the license on core libraries. Some of the highly specialized, and non-vital, helper libraries might. So what? If some company wants to port, they'll duplicate what they need. Missing libgtop won't affect their decision...
Second, I'm not sure you understand the economics of proprietary software. QT is somewhere in the ballpark of $1000US. To a company putting out proprietary software this is nothing.
Exactly why your first argument is pointless. Paying a programmer to duplicate the bits of functionality they need out of a GPLed library is trivial to the total cost of the project.
The well designed and just generally easy and lovely API of QT speeds up developement time greatly, perhaps by as much as 30-50%. The money the company will thus save by going with QT in programmer salaries will far outweigh the cost of qt by several orders of magnitude.
I'll buy the '$1000 is trivial to the cost of the project' argument, but speeding up development time? I can write pretty functional applications in 100 lines of Perl/GTK. Translate it C and you add a bit, but it's all just duplicating Perl functionality, and not GTK.
Maybe, MAYBE, a marginal improvement, but saving several orders of magnitude over the $1000? Qt saves $100,000-$1,000,000 over GTK? Please!
I'd say rather than an economic problem, it's just going to be annoying, perhaps even amusing to proprietary companies. They have some Linux port requests, so they decide to look into it, and then find they have to spend $1000 for the privilege to use Qt. I think it will leave an interesting impression on a lot of companies, at the least.
Yeah... but drivers don't belong in userspace (X) but in kernelspace (KGI)
Which is why I said KGI might be useful.
However, userspace drivers are better than nothing.
creative labs did hire a Linux device writer, and drivers for the sb live will be forthcoming!
None of this happens, however, unless informed buyers holler long, loud and often at the vendors who refuse to support Linux.
They're going to release binary drivers for the SB Live, which isn't adequate. So don't stop hollering yet. Wait until we have full specs, as well.
The voodoo3, on the other hand, should have open source drivers, eventually.
Only with KGI there will someday be games for Linux.
KGI might be useful, but there'll be games regardless. XFree has a lot more hardware company involvement than KGI/GGI.
I have 3D hardware acceleration for my Permedia 2v card already.
Just bought SuSE6, and SAX nicely configured my video. It might be a big buggy right now, but it sure kicks xf86setup for new users.
SAX will probably be incorporated into XFree86 for the 4.0 version.
And on a related note, DDC support will take care of the monitor timings for most people (at least those with newer monitors). Also, the new driver module infrastructure will mean supporting new chipsets just requires downloading a small easy-to-install driver, rather than the whole X distribution.
The whole feminist movement is a joke. What has it solved? Men still rule 99% of the world. And there's no Germaine Greer or Andrea Dworkin who will change that.
Giving up on social progress so easily?
Feminism is a relatively new thing. It will take time to get rid of sexism. But (generally) every generation is a little more open-minded than the previous.
A paper tiger that has 11000 nuclear warheads pointed to every other NATO country... sure it's not a superpower anymore, but they still have what it takes to remove all forms of life from this planet.
Russia will not go to war with NATO over Serbia. They want to pretend like they are still a significant world power, so they oppose everything the US does. They won't back it up.
As for nukes? Jesus, do you really think Russia would launch ICBMs over this?
MS is the only thing that the three sites (userfriendly, bedope, segfault) have in common.
And the same audience... And the people who run these sites know each other... And they're all part of the same MS-hating community.
Slashdot is in on it, but only to provide the final piece -- a big story on the first concerning the lawsuits...
Slashdot couldn't pretend like it was being threatened or else we'd have a massive media frenzy and then the joke would be revealed early... like checking to see if a suit has actually been filed in the appropriate courts.
I'll bet you a $1000 the lawsuit does not exist.
They probably planned it at LinuxWorld...
I doubt it. It started too early and has gone on too long.
No. I'm right. I'm certain it's a joke.
I've been following up on this stuff, and I've gotten too many strange responses. Besides, why would MS go after these sites? Their primary readers already hate MS...
This is one massive, well-coordinated April Fool's joke. Slashdot is in on it, too. Expect a story tomorrow about how Microsoft is shutting those sites down due to libel.
I remember a comment from either CmdrTaco or Hemos a while back about BIG plans for the April Fool's day. This is it.
Just a hunch, but I bet I'm right...
carl sagan sucks.
Try reading some of his nonfiction works. You may like them better.
Pale Blue Dot is inspiring (at least to me).
So that I can steal all your customers. Its about stupidity. I'm relying on YOU being stupid enough to give me YOUR code. So fork it over, OSS rules. Especially when I can just take your IP from under your stupid noses.
Where the hell are these people coming from?!?
Did Slashdot just get a blurb in Windows NT Magazine, or something?
And, sorry, my router won't let you have my IP number.
Furthermore, the Open Sound System is old, give ALSA a try. It's much nicer.
Printing? KOM/Openparts? Not in at least two years (for GNOME, that is. readily available for KDE)
Well the gnome-print stuff appears to already exist. Perhaps it's not finished, but two years? I doubt it.
As for KOM/Openparts, why the hell would Gnome want it? Gee, another component object model.. just what the world needs. From what I understand, Gnome is using an object model based on ILU, a commonly accepted standard. So you criticize Gnome for using the standard as opposed to supporting the thing KDE made up? Why doesn't KDE support Gnome's object model?
I'm going to make a script to auto-post my standard Wine response to comments such as these, but in the meantime, here is my latest variation on "you don't know anything about WINE":
Corel's intention from the beginning was to use components of Winelib to assist in native ports to Linux. In this respect, it's like using gtk or qt (actually more like gnome-libs or kde's equivalent). They haven't backed off from anything, and they have contributed a lot of time and people towards Wine so far. I would expect later versions of their applications to move to more cross-platform development. In the meantime, fixing Wine is much quicker than rewriting their apps from scratch.
Also, WINE alone won't attract uninterested Windows users. People who have wanted to use Linux, but were dependent on a Windows only program, would be more inclined to switch. Lotus Notes is a good example of this. Eventually, the market demand will result in native ports.
And finally, Microsoft can't change APIs without annoying their developers. Basically, nothing goes away, just new stuff is added. And most of the time, the new stuff is just a new wrapper over the old stuff, with a few extensions. Once Wine is fully functional with the current Win95/98/NT base, keeping up with Microsoft changes won't be hard. And it will only be necessary until the Win platform loses its monopoly.
So, in conclusion, Wine won't hurt you or Linux. The worst case scenario is a bunch of developers end up wasting their time on a project they code for fun (primarily). The best case scenario is a bunch of Windows users and developers use Wine to run/port applications on Linux, giving us more market leverage to get open hardware drivers and the latest games (which, ultimately, is the ONLY reason I care about our marketshare).
Why is it that when Wine is mentioned on slashdot, the exact same ignorant posts are made? Here are some corrections to the frequent anti-Wine postings:
1. It does run lots of applications; some of them are functional enough to be useful and others only require modest debugging. However, there are still many unusable applications, too. They will be useable soon.
2. Wine includes implementations of everything you get with Windows 95/98/NT. Not all of them are complete. There is already a framework in place for Win64, whenever Microsoft gets around to that. You don't need to buy or license anything from Microsoft. Wine has it all.
3. Microsoft can't change the API more rapidly than Wine can reimplement it. If they change the API, developers have to change their applications, too. Sure there will be new DLLs and occasional changes to the API, but it's not that big of a project once Wine has caught up.
4. Wine will not kill the commercial interest in Linux. In case you haven't noticed, Linux is popular because it is a way to break the Microsoft monopoly. Other companies want a neutral ground to compete on. They want everything to move to alternative OSes. Commercial apps will stop if Linux is perceived to fail. It doesn't matter. We'll be back eventually.
5. Wine is for legacy applications and their code (ie. all Windows applications and their code). It's just like dosemu, console emulators, fat-based filesystems, SMB, and every other old technology which still has a large installed base. Why not be compatible? They're going to be replaced by superior alternatives eventually, so there's no harm in making the present a little more convenient by supporting legacy systems.
samba is not good enough to replace a production NT server yet. I have done a lot of experimentation with it, its getting better. its got a lot of flexibility, but its not quite there.
Here at the University of Kansas, student mail and web servers (Digital Unix boxes) are running Samba. I'm not sure what the usage is on SMB to these things, but with 25-30,000 students, it's probably WAY more than an NT box could handle.
Also, I'm not sure what experiments you've been running, but I'm never seen an NT box able to keep up with Samba -- performance or stability.
COM+ could present something of a nuisance for a cross-platform world. Microsoft will obviously want to leverage COM's popularity to push it's server marketshare. How many companies have intranets using ActiveX-based components? Gee, you have to have a Windows OS to access this. Of course, they give us DCOM for UNIX via SoftwareAG just to show their "cross-platform" commitment, but how many people here want to run a proprietary piece of software donated by Microsoft? Why didn't Microsoft release it themselves? Probably because it would be too obvious they just want to suck the world into another "standard" upon which they can "innovate" new ways to screw us over and take our money.
Now, with that in mind, how do we wrestle control of COM from their hands? I'm thinking of something along the lines of Samba. The widespread adoption of Samba has now forced Microsoft to play nice in that particular cross-platform area. If they go and break NT file-serving purposely, it's going to be a major pain for a lot of companies, who would just go with the Samba version over NT to prevent future problems.
If we can use the popularity of Linux on the server to take part of the COM+ server market (rather than being all NT boxes), we can force the same situation as with Samba.
I think part of the solution is a COM/CORBA bridge. However, the Transaction Server stuff has me slightly confused. It seems to me that CORBA already provides transaction services, so I don't get what the hype is about.
We need to provide true platform independence for COM+, whether by a bridge or a Free implementation of COM+. However, this is not my area of expertise. Can someone who understands all of this stuff tell us what we need to do?
I used to be an OS/2 user, and Windows compatibility is one of the possible reasons that no native OS/2 apps were ever developed... I hope the same does not happen to Linux.
...
If OS/2 never got a lot of apps, it might be do to the fact that it was effectively derailed by Microsoft. It got some marketshare, but to most companies, it didn't look like it was growing.
Companies will port to Linux as long as they think it's going to be big. If Linux growth drops off to zero this year, don't expect to companies to port.
That's the reason all of those Java projects died; Java lost its momentum.
But if Linux becomes a major player, it will get ports. Look at the Mac. It only has ~10% market share, and there are Windows emulators, but people still write software for it. And if it was easy and cheap to port Win apps to the Mac, it would have a lot more.
If two companies are competing in a market, and one ports to Linux while the other can only be run under WINE, who do you think is going to get the Linux market? If we're significant, we'll get ports, and eventually, completely native (non-Winelib) ports.
In the meantime, how many mainstream users are going to switch if they can't bring their day-to-day apps with them? Even if it's faster, more reliable, less expensive, and has a better user interface, without MS Office, there are a lot of people who won't switch. We HAVE to support legacy Windows applications to appeal to a wider, mainstream market. Once they're here, they'll discover all of the superior options.
The monstrosity that is the Windows API is Microsoft's one of two remaining advantages (the other being mindshare). Writing anything complex for Windows is a nightmare, and many companies aren't going to rewrite a few million lines of Windows-specific code to support Linux right now. Microsoft locks companies into Windows with their API; it takes a large investment to develop those applications and they aren't eager to rewrite everything. WINE removes that advantage. It helps fuel marketshare growth, and as a result more native apps will come.
And I must say, my problem with WINE is that, while it does look promising, I have yet to see a *SINGLE* Windows application of mine work with it... Every single one crashes and burns.
WINE releases are still considered developmental, meaning they are unstable. Sometimes older releases work better with some applications. Remeber that the releases you've been using are just CVS snapshots. Sometimes implementing a previously stubbed function causes a once (mostly) working application to no longer work. Lots of things are changing.
However, getting many applications to run fairly well requires only minor modification from a current release. I remember one developer commenting on how he was working to get PowerPoint working now, since he considered Office and Excel functional (sometimes not with the latest CVS copy, but it just takes a little tweaking usually).
I think WINE still has longer to go than is reasonable at this point before it becomes truly usable...
I'm going to estimate 6 months before just about any application could be ported with Winelib, requiring only minor additional touch-ups. Good, stable binary emulation might be further off, since it's easy to work around holes in WINE when you have the application source.
Corel is doing a lot of work on WINE, too. Anymore, many of the CVS changelogs have email addresses with corel or macadamiam (sp?) (subcontractors for corel). It is progressing quickly.
Why don't they just give up on it? It might be better for the Linux community in the longrun, too.
There are a lot of things that would be better for the Linux community that aren't going to happen.
For instance, the Open Source mess of incompatible licenses is a problem. Mesa had to be forked at version 3 so it could be used for XFree 3D support. Ideally (at least my ideal), we would all be using LGPL and GPL. But that's not going to happen, and two projects I theoretically work on (meaning I don't really do much, if anything), WINE and XFree, both have BSD derivative licenses.
Also, it would be ideal if we didn't have multiple groups trying to write video drivers (XFree and GGI) or 3D drivers (Mesa, XMesa, GLX, GGI-3D) or sound drivers (OSS and ALSA) or gaming API's (clanlib and penguin play) or desktop environments (KDE and GNOME), etc, etc,
For the good of the Linux community we should consolidate duplicate programming efforts, not only to prevent a waste of developers, but also to prevent incompatibilities (KDE and GNOME are especially large potential problems here).
The only problem with deciding to consolidate our efforts is picking which one to use. I probably have very different ideas than you, or anyone else, for that matter. For example, I think it might be a good idea to concentrate all graphics device driver development in GGI, and make XFree run on top of that (which it can do). To me, it seems like the most flexible solution. However, I'm never going to be able to convince the XFree project to move all device development to GGI.
So the moral is: people are going to write want they want, regardless of what anyone thinks is best. In response, we should try to make everything as compatible as possible, and eventually, everything will be redone Right. In the meantime, we're going to have rapidly changing, and overlapping API's, desktop standards, device drivers, and applications. If we tried to dictate how everything should be done now, development would fork immediately anyway.
>WHY DOES THE REWARD HAVE TO BE MONEY?
Because that's what my mortgage company, grocery store, computer store, and ISP want.
You sort of missed the point.
The problem is just capitalism in general. The reward for all progress doesn't have to be mounds of money, but the nature of our economy requires that. We all work for money. It funds the companies which employ us, and in return we try to repay that investment with interest by succeeding. Tell me you wouldn't work to find a cure for cancer at a mere $70,000 a year, just because you wouldn't make billions off of it if you got it first. What's more important: being rich or making the world a better place?
And no amount of righteous indignation is going to change that.
Perhaps, but then what will? As a civilization, we're on a bad course. I hope we can correct that before it's too late. Doesn't it worry you that a business is only consider successful if it continues to grow? The general belief that capitalism works is grounded upon the misconception that only superior products will make you money. But successful companies can easily succeed just making selling an inferior product to a larger market, and convince that a standard is the way to go. Eventually perhaps, the superior product wins out, but in the meantime, enormous amounts of money, time, and resources are wasted. I vote for progress over commercial success. Maybe the two can coincide, but I'm don't want to bet the future of our species on it.
Given that you equate money and time, are you spending all your free time on a cure for cancer or another equally altruistic goal? No, you're spending at least some of it reading Slashdot.
As only a biochem undergrad, who has not studied cancer in any great detail, I'm afraid I can offer little assistance at this point. However, my comment was in reference to a hypothetical person who has a new, potentially useful idea. And I ask, what kind of person would sit on that until they had adequate confidence they would be able to make a 200% return on the investment of their time and money?
As for my free time, I do not mean to imply that you should dedicate every moment and every dollar to any idea of potential significance. I volunteer. I do lab research. I contribute to free software. And if I can across some idea of unbelievable importance of which I could further, I'm more than prepared to dedicate my time and energy to that end.
Maybe I was too indignant in my first post, but all I'm saying is that we shouldn't be working in the interest of money. Ideally, we would work in the interests of progress, and that resources necessary for our own happiness and health would be provided. It's possible, we just need to change the focus of our economy.
Lets look at this from a different perspective, one that I happen to actually be _personally_ familiar with.
Me too! I'm a biochemist and my brother's diabetic.
Imagine that you are a business man / scientist who is trying to develop a glucose sensor and injection pump for Diabetics. Such an innovation will have a profound impact on the lives of diabetics, and will also expected to _dramatically_ improve the health of the diabetic user.
And the pump is going to get done _dramatically_ faster if people share their work. The whole cathedral and the bazaar thing applies to more than just software. Obviously there is a higher level of infrastructure needed for biomedical research than kernel development, but there doesn't necessarily have to be.
I'll bet Microsoft would say it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to develop an OS, while we all know that it only takes a lot of motivated people contributing a little of their time.
We can do a similar thing for science in general. The only missing piece is easy access to tools, and at a university, even that isn't too hard.
The greater the risk, the higher the rewards must be.
WHY DOES THE REWARD HAVE TO BE MONEY? Why does the reward go primarily to the person who funded the research, rather than the actual people who did it?
This is competitive and wasteful! We are capable of much more if we would just cooperate. Call me a communist or socialist if you like, but I prefer to call it humanism. As in, let's make things better, not for my personal greed or dreams of excessive wealth, but just in the interests of happiness and greater understanding.
Who in their right minds is going to risk their own money if they simply cant suceed playing the averages. Some of you might even offer a more reasonable solution. Lets just allow them to 'double' their money, but this doesnt cut it. As the risks are far too great to risk it over only 200% gain, not to mention the time wasted.
What kind of fucking self-absorbed, materialistic hell do you live in?
You wouldn't pursue a cure for cancer because you might lose some MONEY?
If you have any new ideas on the topic, let me know, as I can put you in contact with a few thousand people who would be willing to sacrifice everything to research a potential cure.
You see this all comes down to intellectual property.
Yes it sure does. It all comes down to the wasteful, selfish, non-cooperative, proprietary waste of resources known as intellectual property.
But such fruits might very well only be reaped if alot of time and money is thrown at it.
Money is nothing more than our material representation of time, and there are a lot of people with plenty of time. We just need a way for people to work together for once, rather than working for their venture capitalists and stock holders.