"A 32 bit extension and graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition."
CVS-1.8 and 1.9 are not ready, and no newer version is listed as having been tested.
Uhhh, cvs 1.10 is listed there as "claimed OK".
IMHO, the most worrying are fileutils 3.16 and 4.0 and gawk 3.0.3, which are "mostly okay". I use both of these things on a daily basis (esp. fileutils), and while gawk has the later version 3.0.4, only 3.0.0 is listed as okay and 3.0.3 is still in common circulation.
Most of the not okay list isn't too bad, I think, but only just - groff and g77 worry me the most...
I emailed the great CmdrTaco about this just earlier this week.
Here's the email I sent:
Subject: quickies?
Hi,
Whatever happened to the quickies batches? We haven't seen any in over a month!:( I used to laugh my ass off to most of the stuff in there, and found them to be hands down better (in terms of content density) than most other posts...
Please bring back the quickies! You need to dust off that vaccuum!!:)
Anyway, considering all the other cool things he's been doing with Slashdot, I for one have forgiven him.:) I also imagine that it takes longer for him to compose quickies, because he'd have to cut and paste urls from like 20 regular stories into one...
Good comments regarding Window Managers, Environments, and how open source/free software trancends any particular OS.
Is it possible that one day, we'll all be saying "Open-Source is essential" and actually wake up & realise it doesn't happen any more, given the rate at which non-free things are being ported?
No. This is tantamount to saying that the marketroids and suits can fool the geeks, which we all know is completely impossible - they're too stupid and we're too smart.
It can't happen because there are people like you and I and RMS and Bruce Perens and on and on, who actually care about the freedom of software "for the sake of it", as the suits would suppose. While these people exist, non-free software cannot win (at least not with these people), because you can't beat free software. That's the beauty of free software - you can't wake up in a world of non-free ports, because dedicated people will keep working on the free software, and once it's free there's (usually) no going back.
The suits may fool as many Joe Averages as they like into using non-free software, but they can't fool free software believers into using the non-free software, and they cannot beat free software except by joining them, and making their software free. And if they do that, well, who's won then?
I'm a Linux user calling BSD users elitist, and I want to be part of that elitism (and probably could be, too, and would enjoy it immensely).
Linux could use some elitism to keep out the trolls, dolts, twits, marketroids, suits and just plain morons. (The ones who think they know stuff are the worst.) Seems like Linux is just too "hip" for that now, though. Hence my considering moving to BSD, where you can still get flamed for asking stupid questions or not RTFM...
OTOH, I could just wait for Linux to get passe, like Southpark is now - after the huge wave of mainstreamism, I find it's really just the original fans who watch it, rather than those who watched it because it was "cool" and/or for the shock value. Can't wait to be rid of those little turds, when they piss off back into Windows.:)
Sigh... The more attention Linux gets, the more polluted it gets (both in code and community), and the more I think about switching to FreeBSD (or NetBSD, for the hell of it). There's something to be said about the elitist attitude that would stop poorly designed apps and programs (like these) from being run.
Agreed, technically Open Source is the same as Free software when it comes to licenses (though I'm not sure about where the APSL fits in), and the DFSG is great for when you don't want to be so restrictive as GPL only.
The freedom aspect is indeed very important, and Open Source downplays it. However, what bothers me most is what I see as (mainly) hypocracy in the Open Source movement. The two main arguments for the adoption of the term Open Source are:
(a) executives, marketroids, etc are all scared off by the term free software, and
(b) the term free software is ambigious (speech vs. beer).
I only have a problem with people trying to attract business when it compromises on morals, such as (a) does.
As for (b), well, as is pointed out in http://www.gnu.org/phi losophy/free-software-for-freedom.html, the term Open Source is worse because the obvious connotation (and let's face it, this is the one that counts, that Joe Public is going to directly or indirectly use) is that you can see the term, which is completely different from the actual meaning, which is the OSD, and quite similar to free software.
Hmmmm, I think I might hop off my soapbox now...:)
No. Read it properly - it says they're not free. There's a difference between free and open-source (at least in connotation, despite what ESR says), and you appear to have missed that distinction. As http://www.gnu.org/phi losophy/free-software-for-freedom.html says,
``Open source software'' describes a category of software licenses, almost but not quite the same as ``free software.''
Qt 1.x is not free (Qt 2.x is, AFAIK). It may be open source, but it is not truly free. AFAIK, KDE is, but as has already pointed out, it's useless without Qt and Qt 2.x won't do.
The goal of RMS Linux is like Debian, to be a 100% free distro, not open source. If you want open source, just go for the regular Redhat.
And what happens when he dials up on a different IP? Besides, whatever happened to free speech? You shouldn't stop him from speaking, you should stop listening.
Which prompted me to think of a neat idea. Previously Rob's said to set your threshold up to weed out the twits. Problem is that sometimes you then miss out reasonable stuff that's sitting on score 1 or 2.
Better would be to have an extra option which is a kill file, where you can list the nicks or uids of people you never ever want to read stuff from. Kindof like a/ignore for/.:) Then you can just add the fools to there. Also should have an option to truncate the discussion tree at their posts, so you can't see the bun-fight that occurs after their post.
Then we just have to get ESR to put Bruce Perens in his, and Bruce to put ESR in his, and maybe then slashdot wouldn't explode when one of them posts a story or comment...:):):)
If companies like Adobe and MS slased prices, then these goons would have to drop theirs, which isn't something they can reasonably do while keeping up a front of "respectability".
I agree that this is the right way to go, but people have a natural tendancy to resist this.
Consider that this exact same argument is used in support of the decriminalising and legalising of hard drugs (ie. to stop the pushers and makers from being profitable). It hasn't got very far there, just like I think it won't get very far with software.
Which is why I believe that free software is the only solution, and why I just don't concern myself with non-free software anymore, as much as possible.
Getting the OS would be relatively easy - as you've pointed out, Linux would be an obvious choice for a port.
The hardest part would be supporting the graphics - whatever OS is chosen, graphics drivers would need to be written, debugged and tuned. They're touting the PSX2 as a superb graphics machine, so the graphics performance is what's going to count. The hardware would most likely be really nifty and complicated, and so getting optimum performance would be non-trivial.
To put it another way, noone buys SGI machines for IRIX, they buy them because of the good graphics hardware and fully integrated and stable GL (and OpenGL) support in IRIX and it's X server.
But the wavefunctions evolve deterministically (Schroedinger's equation etc).
This is true, but worthless, because the wavefunction can never be known (and is complex). All that can ever be observed is the square of the wavefunction, the probability distribution of the quantum state described by the wavefunction. If you think about this for a bit, you realise that this prevents you from ever being able to make any predicitions at all using QM.
Somehow I get the feeling that they would bother to install 21 NT service packs if Microsoft had that many of them (don't laugh), and they wouldn't even think it strange.
And let's not forget the 21 consecutive reboots that would require, plus how long it would take to download all 21 x ~ 50Mb of them...:)
K: Why isn't there an entry for "free software" in the Jargon Dictionary?
ESR: Zounds! You know, until this moment, I didn't realize that entry was missing. I don't think you want me to write it, though. I would find it hard to avoid using phrases like "rhetorical millstone around our necks" and "held us back for fifteen years". Care to submit one yourself?
How about letting RMS write it?
It's a good thing he's not writing the entry for "Open Source", he might find it hard to avoid using phrases like "commercial pandering", "misleading" and "fear of freedom"...
Or we could rally the community together to get specs/licenses from Real, and then develop a completely free, portable (ie. to Windows, too), more stable, easier to use, more featured (eg. save to file) alternative to RealPlayer.
Perhaps THEN Real might have a reason to improve their stuff. But while there is no alternative to RealPlayer, Real may as well be Microsoft - no competition = no innovation.
The best part about this would be that it wouldn't matter if Real got their act together - we wouldn't need them anymore, as we'd have a superior product (and free to boot)... Game over.
Having proprietary software like these for Linux doesn't hurt us.
Yeah, it does. It hurts in the same way that non-free documentation does, like ORA's books do. To divert to that topic, free software needs free manuals. ORA's books make people think "Why bother writing a manual; ORA already have a good book for this software." In the same way, non-free software available makes people think "Why bother writing stuff; just get it from real.com". This is the whole fundamental point behind gnu and the fsf.
To summarise that, what else should I use to play my realmedia in Linux? "Use what you want" doesn't work when the standards are closed or obfuscated like real. pdf is much better in this respect and staroffice/msoffice are slightly better. The only real solution, though, is free software, plain and simple. While there is non-free software there will be these kinds of problems. (Sorry if I sound like a free software nazi, but this is just how I feel - I know that a world of only free software is pretty utopian.)
StarOffice does have a small place, though, where you mention converting stuff (and I understand the rock and hard place you're stuck between). However, I think mswordview, and/or microsoft's own free (beer) office viewers would be a better solution here (assuming you don't need to make msword docs).
These are three apps that I simply won't touch these days, unless I absolutely have to. I used to think that they were all great, but really they're just sucky token gestures...
1) RealPlayer. Anything that performs this badly (compared to the Windows version on the same hardware), looks this ugly and is this idiosyncratic isn't worth having. Real don't care about Linux.
2) Acrobat Reader. Stunningly slow. It runs barely acceptably at home in Linux, but on the multi-user Solaris box at Uni it's terrible. Adobe don't care about Linux. Thank God ghostscript does pdf now, gv is so much nicer in every way.
3) StarOffice. If I wanted a stupid program like MSOffice, I'd use MSOffice. Didn't they see all of MSOffice's flaws when they were copying it? And that Windows-esque flavour in one big X window makes me want to wretch. (While I'm at it, modal dialog boxes are pure evil. No well designed GUI should need modal dialog boxes.) And don't get started on the speed!
My conclusion: There are a lot of companies out there who couldn't care less about Linux or its philosophy, or why it works. They merely see a userbase to suck. The result is "token-gesture" software, which is just a crappy port of their Windows software. Only enough effort is put into it to get it to compile.
The saddest thing is that as Linux grows, there's only going to be more of these kinds of things... Especially as they continue to screw us over with non-free software...
Slashdot Mirror
Why can't I just sign up with my slashdot id??
Because these days, a slashdot account is sadly no guarantee of any kind of cluefulness whatsoever.
yes, I'd boot to windows just to use getright)
My brother raves about getright, too, but I don't see the attraction. I'd rather stay in Linux and use wget or snarf.
"A 32 bit extension and graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition."
:) :)
"What is Windows 95?"
Ahhh... it's an oldie but a goodie.
CVS-1.8 and 1.9 are not ready, and no newer version is listed as having been tested.
Uhhh, cvs 1.10 is listed there as "claimed OK".
IMHO, the most worrying are fileutils 3.16 and 4.0 and gawk 3.0.3, which are "mostly okay". I use both of these things on a daily basis (esp. fileutils), and while gawk has the later version 3.0.4, only 3.0.0 is listed as okay and 3.0.3 is still in common circulation.
Most of the not okay list isn't too bad, I think, but only just - groff and g77 worry me the most...
I emailed the great CmdrTaco about this just earlier this week.
:( I used to laugh my ass off to most of the stuff in there, and found them to be hands down better (in terms of content density) than most other posts...
:)
H HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
:) I also imagine that it takes longer for him to compose quickies, because he'd have to cut and paste urls from like 20 regular stories into one...
Here's the email I sent:
Subject: quickies?
Hi,
Whatever happened to the quickies batches? We haven't seen any in over a month!
Please bring back the quickies! You need to dust off that vaccuum!!
And this is his somewhat amusing reply:
I'm sorry! I've been busy!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I can almost hear the pain in that scream...
Anyway, considering all the other cool things he's been doing with Slashdot, I for one have forgiven him.
Good comments regarding Window Managers, Environments, and how open source/free software trancends any particular OS.
Is it possible that one day, we'll all be saying "Open-Source is essential" and actually wake up & realise it doesn't happen any more, given the rate at which non-free things are being ported?
No. This is tantamount to saying that the marketroids and suits can fool the geeks, which we all know is completely impossible - they're too stupid and we're too smart.
It can't happen because there are people like you and I and RMS and Bruce Perens and on and on, who actually care about the freedom of software "for the sake of it", as the suits would suppose. While these people exist, non-free software cannot win (at least not with these people), because you can't beat free software. That's the beauty of free software - you can't wake up in a world of non-free ports, because dedicated people will keep working on the free software, and once it's free there's (usually) no going back.
The suits may fool as many Joe Averages as they like into using non-free software, but they can't fool free software believers into using the non-free software, and they cannot beat free software except by joining them, and making their software free. And if they do that, well, who's won then?
Read what I wrote again.
:)
I'm a Linux user calling BSD users elitist, and I want to be part of that elitism (and probably could be, too, and would enjoy it immensely).
Linux could use some elitism to keep out the trolls, dolts, twits, marketroids, suits and just plain morons. (The ones who think they know stuff are the worst.) Seems like Linux is just too "hip" for that now, though. Hence my considering moving to BSD, where you can still get flamed for asking stupid questions or not RTFM...
OTOH, I could just wait for Linux to get passe, like Southpark is now - after the huge wave of mainstreamism, I find it's really just the original fans who watch it, rather than those who watched it because it was "cool" and/or for the shock value. Can't wait to be rid of those little turds, when they piss off back into Windows.
Sigh... The more attention Linux gets, the more polluted it gets (both in code and community), and the more I think about switching to FreeBSD (or NetBSD, for the hell of it). There's something to be said about the elitist attitude that would stop poorly designed apps and programs (like these) from being run.
Agreed, technically Open Source is the same as Free software when it comes to licenses (though I'm not sure about where the APSL fits in), and the DFSG is great for when you don't want to be so restrictive as GPL only.
:)
The freedom aspect is indeed very important, and Open Source downplays it. However, what bothers me most is what I see as (mainly) hypocracy in the Open Source movement. The two main arguments for the adoption of the term Open Source are:
(a) executives, marketroids, etc are all scared off by the term free software, and
(b) the term free software is ambigious (speech vs. beer).
I only have a problem with people trying to attract business when it compromises on morals, such as (a) does.
As for (b), well, as is pointed out in http://www.gnu.org/phi losophy/free-software-for-freedom.html, the term Open Source is worse because the obvious connotation (and let's face it, this is the one that counts, that Joe Public is going to directly or indirectly use) is that you can see the term, which is completely different from the actual meaning, which is the OSD, and quite similar to free software.
Hmmmm, I think I might hop off my soapbox now...
No. Read it properly - it says they're not free. There's a difference between free and open-source (at least in connotation, despite what ESR says), and you appear to have missed that distinction. As http://www.gnu.org/phi losophy/free-software-for-freedom.html says,
``Open source software'' describes a category of software licenses, almost but not quite the same as ``free software.''
Qt 1.x is not free (Qt 2.x is, AFAIK). It may be open source, but it is not truly free. AFAIK, KDE is, but as has already pointed out, it's useless without Qt and Qt 2.x won't do.
The goal of RMS Linux is like Debian, to be a 100% free distro, not open source. If you want open source, just go for the regular Redhat.
can we ban this bastard by his ip?
/ignore for /. :) Then you can just add the fools to there. Also should have an option to truncate the discussion tree at their posts, so you can't see the bun-fight that occurs after their post.
:) :) :)
And what happens when he dials up on a different IP? Besides, whatever happened to free speech? You shouldn't stop him from speaking, you should stop listening.
Which prompted me to think of a neat idea. Previously Rob's said to set your threshold up to weed out the twits. Problem is that sometimes you then miss out reasonable stuff that's sitting on score 1 or 2.
Better would be to have an extra option which is a kill file, where you can list the nicks or uids of people you never ever want to read stuff from. Kindof like a
Then we just have to get ESR to put Bruce Perens in his, and Bruce to put ESR in his, and maybe then slashdot wouldn't explode when one of them posts a story or comment...
If companies like Adobe and MS slased prices, then these goons would have to drop theirs, which isn't something they can reasonably do while keeping up a front of "respectability".
I agree that this is the right way to go, but people have a natural tendancy to resist this.
Consider that this exact same argument is used in support of the decriminalising and legalising of hard drugs (ie. to stop the pushers and makers from being profitable). It hasn't got very far there, just like I think it won't get very far with software.
Which is why I believe that free software is the only solution, and why I just don't concern myself with non-free software anymore, as much as possible.
Getting the OS would be relatively easy - as you've pointed out, Linux would be an obvious choice for a port.
The hardest part would be supporting the graphics - whatever OS is chosen, graphics drivers would need to be written, debugged and tuned. They're touting the PSX2 as a superb graphics machine, so the graphics performance is what's going to count. The hardware would most likely be really nifty and complicated, and so getting optimum performance would be non-trivial.
To put it another way, noone buys SGI machines for IRIX, they buy them because of the good graphics hardware and fully integrated and stable GL (and OpenGL) support in IRIX and it's X server.
But the wavefunctions evolve deterministically (Schroedinger's equation etc).
This is true, but worthless, because the wavefunction can never be known (and is complex). All that can ever be observed is the square of the wavefunction, the probability distribution of the quantum state described by the wavefunction. If you think about this for a bit, you realise that this prevents you from ever being able to make any predicitions at all using QM.
Somehow I get the feeling that they would bother to install 21 NT service packs if Microsoft had that many of them (don't laugh), and they wouldn't even think it strange.
:)
And let's not forget the 21 consecutive reboots that would require, plus how long it would take to download all 21 x ~ 50Mb of them...
K: Why isn't there an entry for "free software" in the Jargon Dictionary?
ESR: Zounds! You know, until this moment, I didn't realize that entry was missing.
I don't think you want me to write it, though. I would find it hard to avoid using phrases like "rhetorical millstone around our necks" and "held us back for fifteen years". Care to submit one yourself?
How about letting RMS write it?
It's a good thing he's not writing the entry for "Open Source", he might find it hard to avoid using phrases like "commercial pandering", "misleading" and "fear of freedom"...
http://www.gnu.org/phi losophy/free-software-for-freedom.html
Or we could rally the community together to get specs/licenses from Real, and then develop a completely free, portable (ie. to Windows, too), more stable, easier to use, more featured (eg. save to file) alternative to RealPlayer.
Perhaps THEN Real might have a reason to improve their stuff. But while there is no alternative to RealPlayer, Real may as well be Microsoft - no competition = no innovation.
The best part about this would be that it wouldn't matter if Real got their act together - we wouldn't need them anymore, as we'd have a superior product (and free to boot)... Game over.
Having proprietary software like these for Linux doesn't hurt us.
Yeah, it does. It hurts in the same way that non-free documentation does, like ORA's books do. To divert to that topic, free software needs free manuals. ORA's books make people think "Why bother writing a manual; ORA already have a good book for this software." In the same way, non-free software available makes people think "Why bother writing stuff; just get it from real.com". This is the whole fundamental point behind gnu and the fsf.
To summarise that, what else should I use to play my realmedia in Linux? "Use what you want" doesn't work when the standards are closed or obfuscated like real. pdf is much better in this respect and staroffice/msoffice are slightly better. The only real solution, though, is free software, plain and simple. While there is non-free software there will be these kinds of problems. (Sorry if I sound like a free software nazi, but this is just how I feel - I know that a world of only free software is pretty utopian.)
StarOffice does have a small place, though, where you mention converting stuff (and I understand the rock and hard place you're stuck between). However, I think mswordview, and/or microsoft's own free (beer) office viewers would be a better solution here (assuming you don't need to make msword docs).
These are three apps that I simply won't touch these days, unless I absolutely have to. I used to think that they were all great, but really they're just sucky token gestures...
1) RealPlayer. Anything that performs this badly (compared to the Windows version on the same hardware), looks this ugly and is this idiosyncratic isn't worth having. Real don't care about Linux.
2) Acrobat Reader. Stunningly slow. It runs barely acceptably at home in Linux, but on the multi-user Solaris box at Uni it's terrible. Adobe don't care about Linux. Thank God ghostscript does pdf now, gv is so much nicer in every way.
3) StarOffice. If I wanted a stupid program like MSOffice, I'd use MSOffice. Didn't they see all of MSOffice's flaws when they were copying it? And that Windows-esque flavour in one big X window makes me want to wretch. (While I'm at it, modal dialog boxes are pure evil. No well designed GUI should need modal dialog boxes.) And don't get started on the speed!
My conclusion: There are a lot of companies out there who couldn't care less about Linux or its philosophy, or why it works. They merely see a userbase to suck. The result is "token-gesture" software, which is just a crappy port of their Windows software. Only enough effort is put into it to get it to compile.
The saddest thing is that as Linux grows, there's only going to be more of these kinds of things... Especially as they continue to screw us over with non-free software...
Ha. I had hoped so too, but checking their info out (http://www.ina.com.au/register/registerfr.html) gives:
.org, .net Domain Name Registration Prices (renewable every two years): RRP $180 AU, 7 days turnaround.
.com,
It's cheaper (and quicker) to pay NSI's $70 US with a Visa card, working out at around $110 to $120 AU...
Andrew Tridgell, perhaps... :)
http://samba.anu.edu.au/~tridge