This comment isn't really related to the story, but it is related to encryption and the reasons people use it. I see at least once per encryption-related discussion the envelope / encryption analogy. It goes like, "you don't write letters on a postcard, you use an envelope so people don't read your correspondence. Likewise you should use encryption so people don't read your e-mail."
Actually, I put my letters in envelopes for reasons completely unrelated to security--I don't want them being soiled or becoming illegible because of moisture, etc. The envelope is simply protection from accidental damage.
An envelope will not keep other people from reading my postal mail! Have you ever tried opening one of those things? I open dozens a week, and I've become so good with them that it takes me hardly a second to get one open.
No, they adopt a real Open Source license, develop for the toolkit with which they are most comfortable, and let the GTK fans provide GTK widgets. Let the QT fans provide QT widgets (if this is legally possible). Let those running libc5 supply patches so that it will build cleanly on libc5 systems.
The fans will be there--the Java fans are already there, but their team hasn't shown up to the game yet. If the team bus arrives, they'll have all the enthusiasm they could ask for. Right now, the bus driver is lost somewhere out of town, and he doesn't know where he's supposed to be going.
Release a development kit under a real Open Source license.
Accept the patches that will come back to you.
It's really not that hard. I will even commit myself to doing any work to make the JDK compile nicely under Linux, including Makefile changes or general portability clean-ups that may be needed. It's not that hard to write clean code that compiles across all Unixes, let alone all Linuxes. The "henious differences" between different Linux distributions are myths; you write ANSI C and it will work.
Why should that matter? You didn't purchase the _source_code_, you purchased nice CD and paid the company for the labor that went into producing it; or maybe it was someone else's money. The source code is _FREE_ for a reason, so you can share it. There should be no guilt involved here.
store.apple.com is where I bought mine. I got a custom build; 333 MHz G3 model but with 6 GB disk, 128 MB ram. The 333 MHz model starts at $2,499. I bought a 3-button USB Logitech mouse at Best Buy for an extra $30.:)
Let me second this notion! I too have a Lombard G3 (333 MHz PowerBook), and it runs Linux beautifully! The Debian install wasn't too bad, either. LinuxPPC seems to offer a graphical install, if you're a fan of a Red Hat-style distribution.
X runs accelerated (through the ATI framebuffer) at 1024x768 at 32bpp on a 14.1 inch screen, I have a 3 button Logitech USB mouse installed, the 10/100 Mbit ethernet is great (I plug in at home, at work, wherever). The built in modem works great; I get 5.1 KB/sec over local phone lines. It's even got external SCSI connector, built-in CD-ROM. I can pull 6 hours off the internal battery while doing the odd compile work in X. You can fill the second media bay with a battery and pull more than 10 (or so Apple says, I'd believe them).
If this reads like an endorsement for the G3 laptops and Linux, it is! The thing's nice and fast, and getting Linux installed in place of MacOS is simple. It's unfortunate that my purchase "included MacOS", but I'd rather funnel money back into a company doing great things with hardware.
You could always use the "wv" Microsoft Word file import library from AbiWord, which is GPLed... and you'll be able to sleep at night knowing you won't be sued by Sun.
As I understand it, the war between vacuum tube and solid-state amplification has nothing (well, very often nothing) to do with the merits of analog vs. digital sound. Solid-state amplification doesn't mean digital sampling, processing, and conversion is taking place, only that tubes aren't used to drive the output. Both signal paths are analog; some people just love the smooth, warm tone from tube amplification and the small artifacts it embeds in the signal.
Of course, these days, it's possible to buy an amplification system that digitizes the input signal (at some point) for equalization or other signal modification, and then converts the signal back to analog for output. Many guitarists argue that digital effects suck the tone out of your music. I don't necessarily agree; bad effects suck the tone out of your music.
Not all bootlegs are low quality. Some bands (perhaps the Dead) allow fans to plug straight into the mixing console at live events. An experienced audio engineer with a DAT and a good equalizer could make a top quality disc from a live event.
Guys, I think both sides of this article were either translated from a language that wasn't English. If the content was originally written in English, I believe it was probably written by a non-native speaker of the language. The errors in SCO's flyer could be in the translation; they may have been in the original.
I have a diskless Alpha machine (266 MHz UDB) running Linux Alpha; it has no local drives. It boots via BOOTP/TFTP, loads the kernel, and the kernel primes its 100baseT EEPRO card. It boots 100 Mbit ethernet to a machine beside it, uses NFS for all its filesystems, and then raises the 10 Mbit link to the big net.
NFS (for all its filesystems) is faster than when it used to have a local SCSI disk. Linux's NFS is often broken (you get what you get with the kernel you pick), but with a little hacking it performs just as well as NFS between our Sun boxes.
1.08 for Linux has been out for almost a month. Don't trust www.quake3arena.com, trust the archives. ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames/idstuff/quake3/lin ux/q3test-1.08-glibc-2.i386.tar.gz is dated Aug 11, 1999.
What's this about two thousand dollar compilers? Required? You must be kidding me. You need to fix your operating system first, then worry about building Mozilla.
As far as I know (and I've burned both kinds for years), audio and digital media are the same CD forms. There's just no difference. If they're selling two different kinds, one's probably either that ObPoorMusicCompanyBooHoo tax or just a scam to sell you "higher quality" media (it's digital... if the bits make it you have a perfect copy).
Most computer CD preparation software can create ISO9660 data images, red book audio images, and even arbitrary byte stream images (ext2 works on a CD). The same 650 MB / 74 minute media is used for both.
Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the role Cutler had (or didn't have) in the implementation of NT 4, and the differences between the 3.5 and 4.0 driver architecture.
NeXT was a hardware company, and a proprietary closed one at that (just ask the Black Hardware Linux port group). I consider the fact that they designed some excellent software a fortunate side-effect of the effort, and I'm glad Objective-C and some of the object design they created still lives to this day. NeXT could have been the worst thing to happen to hardware had they succeeded.
Only if you don't know your toolkits. The editor you use will only affect the look of your program if you don't care about the graphical presentation. You can make beautiful applications with Emacs or vi and absolutely disgusting applications with VB or Delphi.
And what software runs well and is bug free? None. I'd love to see how you'll get your proprietary little Delphi application to run on my PowerPC, or my Alpha, or my Sun, without source code.
My personal opinion here is that if it doesn't have source code, it's not worth touching. It's just not useful to me.
You completely mis-read that manual page. The X protocol is used for every single X operation you can think of (input reads, line drawing, box drawing, fonts, color control, even authorization of clients). X servers work with X clients--without the X protocol, there is no X, at all. It's that simple. The clients could never get their wishes to the hardware.
X _is_ that protocol, and the server that can turn it into pictures. X describes no standard for interface design or policy. Go read that manual page again.
Slashdot Mirror
There is also "lsh."
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This comment isn't really related to the story, but it is related to encryption and the reasons people use it. I see at least once per encryption-related discussion the envelope / encryption analogy. It goes like, "you don't write letters on a postcard, you use an envelope so people don't read your correspondence. Likewise you should use encryption so people don't read your e-mail."
Actually, I put my letters in envelopes for reasons completely unrelated to security--I don't want them being soiled or becoming illegible because of moisture, etc. The envelope is simply protection from accidental damage.
An envelope will not keep other people from reading my postal mail! Have you ever tried opening one of those things? I open dozens a week, and I've become so good with them that it takes me hardly a second to get one open.
--
The fans will be there--the Java fans are already there, but their team hasn't shown up to the game yet. If the team bus arrives, they'll have all the enthusiasm they could ask for. Right now, the bus driver is lost somewhere out of town, and he doesn't know where he's supposed to be going.
--
- Release a development kit under a real Open Source license.
- Accept the patches that will come back to you.
It's really not that hard. I will even commit myself to doing any work to make the JDK compile nicely under Linux, including Makefile changes or general portability clean-ups that may be needed. It's not that hard to write clean code that compiles across all Unixes, let alone all Linuxes. The "henious differences" between different Linux distributions are myths; you write ANSI C and it will work.--
Why should that matter? You didn't purchase the _source_code_, you purchased nice CD and paid the company for the labor that went into producing it; or maybe it was someone else's money. The source code is _FREE_ for a reason, so you can share it. There should be no guilt involved here.
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store.apple.com is where I bought mine. I got a custom build; 333 MHz G3 model but with 6 GB disk, 128 MB ram. The 333 MHz model starts at $2,499. I bought a 3-button USB Logitech mouse at Best Buy for an extra $30. :)
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Let me second this notion! I too have a Lombard G3 (333 MHz PowerBook), and it runs Linux beautifully! The Debian install wasn't too bad, either. LinuxPPC seems to offer a graphical install, if you're a fan of a Red Hat-style distribution.
X runs accelerated (through the ATI framebuffer) at 1024x768 at 32bpp on a 14.1 inch screen, I have a 3 button Logitech USB mouse installed, the 10/100 Mbit ethernet is great (I plug in at home, at work, wherever). The built in modem works great; I get 5.1 KB/sec over local phone lines. It's even got external SCSI connector, built-in CD-ROM. I can pull 6 hours off the internal battery while doing the odd compile work in X. You can fill the second media bay with a battery and pull more than 10 (or so Apple says, I'd believe them).
If this reads like an endorsement for the G3 laptops and Linux, it is! The thing's nice and fast, and getting Linux installed in place of MacOS is simple. It's unfortunate that my purchase "included MacOS", but I'd rather funnel money back into a company doing great things with hardware.
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You could always use the "wv" Microsoft Word file import library from AbiWord, which is GPLed... and you'll be able to sleep at night knowing you won't be sued by Sun.
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As I understand it, the war between vacuum tube and solid-state amplification has nothing (well, very often nothing) to do with the merits of analog vs. digital sound. Solid-state amplification doesn't mean digital sampling, processing, and conversion is taking place, only that tubes aren't used to drive the output. Both signal paths are analog; some people just love the smooth, warm tone from tube amplification and the small artifacts it embeds in the signal.
Of course, these days, it's possible to buy an amplification system that digitizes the input signal (at some point) for equalization or other signal modification, and then converts the signal back to analog for output. Many guitarists argue that digital effects suck the tone out of your music. I don't necessarily agree; bad effects suck the tone out of your music.
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Not all bootlegs are low quality. Some bands (perhaps the Dead) allow fans to plug straight into the mixing console at live events. An experienced audio engineer with a DAT and a good equalizer could make a top quality disc from a live event.
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The way I understand it, one's always free not to subscribe to phone service.
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Guys, I think both sides of this article were either translated from a language that wasn't English. If the content was originally written in English, I believe it was probably written by a non-native speaker of the language. The errors in SCO's flyer could be in the translation; they may have been in the original.
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I have a diskless Alpha machine (266 MHz UDB) running Linux Alpha; it has no local drives. It boots via BOOTP/TFTP, loads the kernel, and the kernel primes its 100baseT EEPRO card. It boots 100 Mbit ethernet to a machine beside it, uses NFS for all its filesystems, and then raises the 10 Mbit link to the big net.
NFS (for all its filesystems) is faster than when it used to have a local SCSI disk. Linux's NFS is often broken (you get what you get with the kernel you pick), but with a little hacking it performs just as well as NFS between our Sun boxes.
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1.08 for Linux has been out for almost a month. Don't trust www.quake3arena.com, trust the archives.n ux/q3test-1.08-glibc-2.i386.tar.gz is dated Aug 11, 1999.
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/idgames/idstuff/quake3/li
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You need to look around more. DJGPP (GCC) has run on DOS (and hence Windows) since 1994 or so, maybe even earlier.
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Bachman Turner Overdrive? I'm not getting that acronymn.
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What's this about two thousand dollar compilers? Required? You must be kidding me. You need to fix your operating system first, then worry about building Mozilla.
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As far as I know (and I've burned both kinds for years), audio and digital media are the same CD forms. There's just no difference. If they're selling two different kinds, one's probably either that ObPoorMusicCompanyBooHoo tax or just a scam to sell you "higher quality" media (it's digital... if the bits make it you have a perfect copy).
Most computer CD preparation software can create ISO9660 data images, red book audio images, and even arbitrary byte stream images (ext2 works on a CD). The same 650 MB / 74 minute media is used for both.
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So you use NT? :)
Linux only uses 32-bit addressing on a 64-bit chip?! What an insult to the owners of real chips! Linux certainly does use 64-bits of a 64-bit Alpha!
Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the role Cutler had (or didn't have) in the implementation of NT 4, and the differences between the 3.5 and 4.0 driver architecture.
NeXT was a hardware company, and a proprietary closed one at that (just ask the Black Hardware Linux port group). I consider the fact that they designed some excellent software a fortunate side-effect of the effort, and I'm glad Objective-C and some of the object design they created still lives to this day. NeXT could have been the worst thing to happen to hardware had they succeeded.
Only if you don't know your toolkits. The editor you use will only affect the look of your program if you don't care about the graphical presentation. You can make beautiful applications with Emacs or vi and absolutely disgusting applications with VB or Delphi.
And what software runs well and is bug free? None. I'd love to see how you'll get your proprietary little Delphi application to run on my PowerPC, or my Alpha, or my Sun, without source code.
My personal opinion here is that if it doesn't have source code, it's not worth touching. It's just not useful to me.
You completely mis-read that manual page. The X protocol is used for every single X operation you can think of (input reads, line drawing, box drawing, fonts, color control, even authorization of clients). X servers work with X clients--without the X protocol, there is no X, at all. It's that simple. The clients could never get their wishes to the hardware.
X _is_ that protocol, and the server that can turn it into pictures. X describes no standard for interface design or policy. Go read that manual page again.