The combination of Nautilus and the bloated Sawfish window manager ate over 50% of the valuable CPU time, time that could be far better spent handling database queries and web requests
Unless Sawfish acts differently on Solaris than x86, any bloat you were seeing was Nautilus. Sawfish probably isn't the slimest window manager -- but it's really easy to use whatever wm you want with. Use Blackbox or something.
And, yes, Nautilus is bloated. But you don't need Nautilus, as you almost surely know how to use the command line faster anyway. So just don't run Nautilus.
While there's no doubt usability problems with Gnome, if you use it some you'll get along just fine. IMO, there's not much reason to be running either on a server.
I think geography is more important than people give it credit for, even with the Internet. Sun is an American company, Gnome is an American product. KDE is very Europoean.
There are lots of other reasons, of course. It isn't patriotism on Sun's part. But there's not a lot of very influential KDE people on this side of the Atlantic. And the influence goes both ways: Sun wants to have influence on how their chosen desktop is developed, and it'll be a lot easier for them to influence Gnome (through hiring, for instance).
Doesn't the standard ABI only address binary compatibility across libraries compiled by different compilers? I.e., now you may lose binary compatibility between otherwise compatible libraries if they are each compiled with a different compiler.
But won't you still lose binary compatibility when you change the source sufficiently? For instance, don't most C++ compilers use offsets to refer to the various instance variables, and won't those offsets change as you add or remove variables?
I suppose for virtual methods calls you could preserve binary compatibility. Does Qt use virtual methods for everything?
And if everything was virtualized, wouldn't C++ be about as efficient as Objective C (or maybe even GCJ'd Java)? Or is there some fancy translation that C++ will do when linking, for a one-time-only cost (for each application startup, but not every call)?
I know little about the internals of C++ compiled code and linking, so I really don't know.
There's an XMMS plugin that tracks when you skip over a file, and then when you shuffle a playlist will put those skipped files further down on the playlist.
The GPL makes for damn difficult competition. It makes it hard to make money on Linux, but if you wait too long someone will duplicate your functionality and you're program will be largely insignificant.
That's the free market -- or capitalism turned on its head, perhaps. It promises nothing more than a chance, and Winamp had and continues to have its chance. I don't think it's a very good chance, but no one promised Winamp anything like that.
The implications of what your are saying, if there are any implications, is that people shouldn't worry
about anthrax until more than 41,611 people are infected per year. Reasonable people do not look at risk
this way.
No, the implication is you (personally) shouldn't worry about anthrax until the danger to your demographic is non-negligable. For almost all Americans, the risk of anthrax is negligable -- that is, it is many orders of magnitude less likely to hurt you than many other dangers in your life.
Similarly with flying, it would take far more than four planes to bring the risk up to levels for driving. Admittedly, you can reduce your risk while driving, but I suspect that still, flying is a far, far, far safer manner of long-distance travel.
Trains and buses are still viable, safe alternatives. As with cars, you have to consider the benefits of these various methods with their risk.
One positive nondirect effect I can imagine is an increase of public media. They are really the only good model I've seen of unencumbered media. Ads both suck, and are working less and less. Subscription models demand constant new material to be valid, otherwise DRM. I like the idea of a high standard for constant creation of content, but it's probably not reasonable.
Right now, public radio is (IMHO) by far the best thing on the radio. At this point it's pretty much self-funding. Public TV is perhaps further behind, but there are some things it does really well. Expanding similar models to new media and new audiences does not seem impossible at all.
It's hard -- an imagined Public Music wouldn't have Britney Spears no matter what. There's something monopolistic about celebrity. OTOH, in a more efficient production, the preferences of smaller number of people can still produce great stuff with the resources available.
If you imagine that just 2-3% of the population subscribed to some sort of Public Music, and payed about as much as they otherwise would have on music, how many musicians could they support? Since the music produces was unencumbered, there would be better grassroots marketing than the RIAA could do, even if Public Music didn't have the money to give radio stations kick backs.
kernels are essentially a solved problem, and future interesting stuff will be going on above the kernel level, not
in it.
That's incredibly naive. There's a lot of interesting stuff still to do in kernel development. If you think that
kernels are "finished" maybe that is because you're spending your time in the Linux world too much?
In the context of Linux, there isn't really that much more to do, is there?
I guess it's kind of fuzzy, what exactly the kernel is supposed to do. As far as Linus seems inclined, the kernel should provide a safe interface to the hardware, certain conventional operations (like the filesystem), process control, and not much of anything else.
If that's what the kernel is supposed to do, then it's mostly done and there isn't much interesting left to do. Tweaking isn't generally considered all that interesting (though of course some people are interested in it -- that doesn't make it interesting).
Of course, some people think more things should be added to the kernel than what's already there. But Linus is pretty clear that he usually disagrees with those people, and the functionality belongs in userspace.
Note that he didn't say that there was no interesting work to be done on the operating system, of which the Linux kernel is a small and not-very-interesting part. There's a ton to be done there, but it's being done by the distribution people, not the kernel developers.
I really don't understand why more people don't direct their ideas for cool hacks to libc, which seems a much better level for it. It doesn't seem like anyone's done anything interesting to libc for many, many, many years.
I don't know why people think you don't have the option to change your mind, regardless of past faith. To not change your mind because of past faith (or lack thereof) would be intellectual dishonesty. Just because we grow and our beliefs change over time, it does not mean we shouldn't be sincere in our beliefs at any moment.
I disagree with the statement that atheists have nothing to pursue -- they have everything to pursue, the entire world is a source of spiritual conundrums and inspiration. We just don't tend to personalize it in a god. Buddhists are atheist (except maybe not the dumb ones that worship The Buddha, despite how that contradicts his teachings) -- it's not an unspiritual or even necessarily unreligious philosophical stand.
However, I agree that agnostics are rather lazy. Generally agnostics act on the belief that god does not exist, yet they will not say that they believe that god does not exist. Whether they know whether god exists or not isn't a very interesting question -- for a sufficiently demanding definition of "know" nothing is known. Arguments based on that are not insightful -- they are tedious and distracting.
The real question is how you live your life. Do you think about god in a concrete way, like "how could he let this happen", or "how would he judge me"? Do you speak to him? If you're looking the other way, then suddenly look inward, do you find an assumption that god exists?
If so, but you don't really "believe" that god exists, then I suppose you are agnostic. Perhaps a decent transitional phase, but it's a rather conflicted place to leave yourself.
If not, then you are an atheist. Trying to be all accepting by claiming you don't know god exists is just laziness. Say what you really believe. Say the truth about how you live your life. Don't be afraid to say you think other people are wrong -- that's not such a big deal, since at least you don't think they'll go to hell for being wrong:)
While this sort of thing is commonly mentioned, the underlying assumptions always trouble me:
By making campaign
spending a constitutionally protected form of speech, and essentially legalizing bribery, we created a system where
the average member of Congress spends most of his waking hours trying to raise money, just to compete with
some other person who might do the same thing. Now the new members of Congress are people who excel at
fundraising, or have money to begin with.
Underneith those sorts of statements -- and, I suppose, the actual actions of the politicians -- is the notion that all of our votes are for sale. Not even just that money helps, but that votes simply go in proportion to the spending of the candidates.
This is probably true. So what has gone so horribly wrong with the citizens of the US that are so shallow?
I think there are real 1st Ammendment issues when barring issue ads -- not just real issues, but huge issues... how can you tell someone they can't express their opinion, just because that opinion agrees with a certain candidate (isn't that supposed to happen?)
Probably a significant part of the problem is that, with no other real difference between candidates, ads are the only thing to tip the balance. One way to fix that would be to bring some real democracy to the parties, instead of having candidates simply be anointed by a party committee. The other solution, of course, is the very hard path of a third party. Or maybe the option of a "I don't like any of them" vote to demand an election with all-new candidates.
Still, we're all a bunch of losers to let our votes follow the money. OTOH, the other option is not to vote at all -- which is, unfortunately, mistaken as nihilistic apathy (which I don't think it is). No one mentions that Bush wasn't elected with 49% of the vote, but actually less than 25%. Pathetic.
The Linux VM can easily bring my system to a complete halt under high memory usage (by no means extreme). That is not to say FreeBSD's VM that great -- I've never tried it, but it has a good reputation. I mean to say that Linux's VM is disgraceful.
What they didn't mention, but I have always been amazed by, is the way MS sabotages changing registered file types for URLs.
Windowsupdate is one example of a site that must be viewed in IE to work -- MS has added more such pages to the OS as time as gone on. They make a link to windowsupdate in the start menu. But, in an act so dumb I can only imagine it is malicious, they make that link a proper URL. That means that it will be opened by whatever program is registered to open URLs.
So if you change your default browser to Netscape or some other non-ActiveX browser, you can't do anything useful with that link. That entry in the menu should be an explicit command to open IE with the proper link.
It's certainly possible that MS is simply being dense, but I find it much more likely that they are seeking to punish users who change their browser as an example to others. (Of course, you can still open windowsupdate.microsoft.com in IE manually, but many people don't ever realize that it's just a normal web page and not a special program)
It's only so confusing because few window managers are only window managers. A window manager manages the windows -- their placement on the screen, the manner of arranging them, and focus. Presumably it also does virtual desktops because there's no one else to do them.
A desktop environment is pretty much everything else on the desktop -- a launcher, file manager, maybe an object system for files and components... it's kind of fuzzy. A window manager is part of a desktop environment.
For a long time no one was stepping up to do the work of making a real desktop environment, so the people who made window managers made small steps in that direction. For instance, the dock in Afterstep and Windowmaker -- there's really no decent reason it should be part of the window manager, but no one else was making it, so what the hell.
It probably also had something to do with a crude interface between the window manager and applications, where the specific behavior that you wanted in a dock wasn't possible to create without being integrated with a window manager. Those interfaces have been improved, so it's no longer necessary to integrate.
Emacs does include some features that are equivalent to these sort of macros. They are disabled by default, but I don't believe there is any other security -- i.e., you can't turn them on and have them run in a sandbox or anything.
I can't remember the exact syntax, but you can put elisp statements in a comment section of the file and have Emacs execute them when opening the document. Since it's not that easy to turn the feature on (I can't remember how), it's unlikely to ever be used widely enough to become a vector. For Emacs' problem space, there are a number of non-scripting solutions that mostly fill the need.
Re:YES, please: more ways to browse with the keybo
on
Mouse Gestures in Mozilla
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
One thing I like about the keyboard is that it's so predictable -- I hit a key three times, and it's exactly three times. I have near-100% accuracy, where mice are always fuzzy -- always off by a pixel or two, sometimes much more.
But in browsers there's another level of unpredictability that is a pain. You never know where the next tab is going to leave you. Could be any number of input forms, or a URL, or maybe you didn't realize it and your focus isn't on the page... it makes navigation with a keyboard near-impossible. Of course, this is largely true for any complicated GUI form. Browsers just happen to be the most common complicated GUI in use.
I suppose it's because keyboards are good for modal or serial interfaces, where mice are better for more random-access interfaces. OTOH, with you use the keyboard to its full potential (i.e., as more than just a bunch of shortcuts) the keyboard can be far more expressive (e.g., CLI). But I don't have any clever ideas on how to map that to a web page.
Re:keeping track of ops..?
on
Apocalypse 3
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Well, there's not really anything novel in what he's talking about. Almost all languages do the same thing. Consider these two expressions:
5 - 3
5 + - 3
The first "-" relates to subtraction. The second one relates to negating a number. Those are two different kinds of operations, and those are considered two different operators. You can tell the two apart, because in the first one when you encounter "-" you are looking to extend the expression; while in the second when you encounter "-" you are looking for a second term to go after "+".
You could do the same thing with "=", but that sort of thing can get confusing. Imagine an expression $x = =$y (quite different from $x == $y !)
Any idea how DirectFB relates to KGI (and/or GGI)?
It seems similar -- GGI uses KGI, where I suppose DirectFB uses the framebuffer. The advantage being, I suppose, that the framebuffer is included in the main kernel where KGI has always been a patch.
But the problem with the framebuffer is that it is so darn slow. Perhaps reasonable in hardware that doesn't have any graphics acceleration (like on a handheld), but not useful on normal computers. I don't know if there is any real effort to ever make the framebuffer any faster -- the very name seems to imply non-accelerated simplicity.
I think the path away from X involves factoring the pieces better -- maybe that can even save X, as Xlib isn't really the problem, it's all the other half-assed crap that goes with X.
One of the reasons Qmail is hard to configure is because licensing keeps it from being well packaged. You have to make it yourself. The other problem is that Qmail does all sorts of things different from other Unix services -- it sets up a whole alternate infrastructure. It might be a good infrastructure even... but it's still nonconventional and thus somewhat annoying. lifewithqmail.com does a decent job of leading you through it.
I use Debian, and Exim is the default MTA. I like it well enough. It's dead simple to set up Mailman as well -- you just install the package and you're off (though to avoid editing/etc/aliases you'll have to do some digging -- I wouldn't bother unless you were making lots of lists or someone untrained was going to make lists). I don't know about other distributions.
ezmlm seems to be a good mailing list manager if you have qmail installed. I don't believe it works with other MTAs. Users can create their own mailing lists, which is (I believe) a completely novel feature. There are some good aspects to the interface too, which uses email addresses for most of the commands (again, possible because of the integration with qmail).
Mailman is a pretty good program. It's relatively easy to set up, and includes the whole bundle -- mailing lists, archiving, and web interface. These are all available for the other MLMs, but not generally bundled. I find Mailman's passwords annoying and useless (why do I need another completely unsecure password?) -- otherwise the interface is fairly good. I don't know about other MTAs, but I've set up Exim so that creating mailing lists is easy (no need to edit/etc/aliases).
No one should ever use listproc or listserv, they are old and pointless. I don't know anything about Smartlist. Majordomo is still an option -- I don't think it offers any features over ezmlm or Mailman, but with some work can be at least as functional. Still, I found it a little awkard to work with, and it seemed to take considerable work to patch in all the features that more modern MLMs have aquired.
I don't know why you'd ever want to use a commercial MLM. The free/OSS programs are all entirely sufficient -- if you are having problems setting them up, pay a consultant to help you. You'll get better service than you would with shrink-wrap software anyway. I know the Qmail site has a list of consultants for hire.
Some browsers don't support JS, and cannot download images (eg: lynx, or browsers for
sight-impared people). At least in the latter case, there's a legit reason for them to not have
images.
This does leave the intriguing possibility that such software violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. This isn't a big deal in Germany, I imagine, but if it couldn't be used in the US that would make this software pretty niche.
Of course, such a case would never really occur. Mostly because, if the issue ever came up, it would not be a big deal to fix this for the blind or disabled. Their browsers could simply advertise their purpose, and the ad could be replaced with a text alternative (more obnoxious because it gets read, not skimmed over!) I don't imagine lots of people would misidentify their browser as a browser-for-the-disabled just so their blocker would still work.
Some other techniques I can think of to detect if the add has been blocked:
Send a cookie with the banner image, which is later used like authentication. Unfortunately you block everyone who doesn't have cookies. Lots of sites already do this anyway. So far browsers haven't implemented "do not accept cookies attached to images", for no good reason at all. So only no cookies or image blockers will break this -- image blockers that still download the image won't get around this, but image blockers that leave the headers intact and replace the image with something innocuous would work.
Use JavaScript, with window.open() opening a window that uses window.parent.replace(). You could even use a hash in the URL to make it more secure -- i.e., to block external links, and make it impossible to access the real content without the popup (though you could of course read the popup and not display it). You could hash against a private key and the user's IP address or session ID. This won't (in itself) detect if the images themselves were downloaded, just if the JavaScript was executed.
The advantage of this technique is that the user gets immediate feedback as to whether they can view the page. Both server-side detection and cookies will only kick in after the second page view. You could also use the two together, so that you get immediate feedback on banner ads as well.
I can't think of any way the software could detect if the blocker downloaded the image, left the headers intact, and replaced the image with something blank. JavaScript has no way to inspect the actual images in the document, and the server has no way at all to tell if the proxy has replaced the image. You should be able to do it with Flash ads, and since Flash is proprietary, Macromedia will never put privacy features in and alternatives are not likely to pop up anytime soon. Popup ads should also be relatively immune to blocking, though you can still block the images in the popup (which doesn't make it much less annoying).
Sites are pulling out all the stops trying to come up with new ideas for funding. Some
of them will succeed. Let's just hope they don't patent their business model...but that's
another rant.
OTOH, let's hope that MediaBEAM does patent their software, preferably in some overexpansive manner with high licensing fees.
True, but all the non-compiled languages don't use ELF (including normal byte-compiled Java). So I don't see how ELF would much relate to language independance.
Slashdot Mirror
And, yes, Nautilus is bloated. But you don't need Nautilus, as you almost surely know how to use the command line faster anyway. So just don't run Nautilus.
While there's no doubt usability problems with Gnome, if you use it some you'll get along just fine. IMO, there's not much reason to be running either on a server.
QT is GPLed. GTK is LGPLed.
There are lots of other reasons, of course. It isn't patriotism on Sun's part. But there's not a lot of very influential KDE people on this side of the Atlantic. And the influence goes both ways: Sun wants to have influence on how their chosen desktop is developed, and it'll be a lot easier for them to influence Gnome (through hiring, for instance).
But won't you still lose binary compatibility when you change the source sufficiently? For instance, don't most C++ compilers use offsets to refer to the various instance variables, and won't those offsets change as you add or remove variables?
I suppose for virtual methods calls you could preserve binary compatibility. Does Qt use virtual methods for everything?
And if everything was virtualized, wouldn't C++ be about as efficient as Objective C (or maybe even GCJ'd Java)? Or is there some fancy translation that C++ will do when linking, for a one-time-only cost (for each application startup, but not every call)?
I know little about the internals of C++ compiled code and linking, so I really don't know.
There's an XMMS plugin that tracks when you skip over a file, and then when you shuffle a playlist will put those skipped files further down on the playlist.
That's the free market -- or capitalism turned on its head, perhaps. It promises nothing more than a chance, and Winamp had and continues to have its chance. I don't think it's a very good chance, but no one promised Winamp anything like that.
Similarly with flying, it would take far more than four planes to bring the risk up to levels for driving. Admittedly, you can reduce your risk while driving, but I suspect that still, flying is a far, far, far safer manner of long-distance travel.
Trains and buses are still viable, safe alternatives. As with cars, you have to consider the benefits of these various methods with their risk.
Right now, public radio is (IMHO) by far the best thing on the radio. At this point it's pretty much self-funding. Public TV is perhaps further behind, but there are some things it does really well. Expanding similar models to new media and new audiences does not seem impossible at all.
It's hard -- an imagined Public Music wouldn't have Britney Spears no matter what. There's something monopolistic about celebrity. OTOH, in a more efficient production, the preferences of smaller number of people can still produce great stuff with the resources available.
If you imagine that just 2-3% of the population subscribed to some sort of Public Music, and payed about as much as they otherwise would have on music, how many musicians could they support? Since the music produces was unencumbered, there would be better grassroots marketing than the RIAA could do, even if Public Music didn't have the money to give radio stations kick backs.
I guess it's kind of fuzzy, what exactly the kernel is supposed to do. As far as Linus seems inclined, the kernel should provide a safe interface to the hardware, certain conventional operations (like the filesystem), process control, and not much of anything else.
If that's what the kernel is supposed to do, then it's mostly done and there isn't much interesting left to do. Tweaking isn't generally considered all that interesting (though of course some people are interested in it -- that doesn't make it interesting).
Of course, some people think more things should be added to the kernel than what's already there. But Linus is pretty clear that he usually disagrees with those people, and the functionality belongs in userspace.
Note that he didn't say that there was no interesting work to be done on the operating system, of which the Linux kernel is a small and not-very-interesting part. There's a ton to be done there, but it's being done by the distribution people, not the kernel developers.
I really don't understand why more people don't direct their ideas for cool hacks to libc, which seems a much better level for it. It doesn't seem like anyone's done anything interesting to libc for many, many, many years.
I don't know why people think you don't have the option to change your mind, regardless of past faith. To not change your mind because of past faith (or lack thereof) would be intellectual dishonesty. Just because we grow and our beliefs change over time, it does not mean we shouldn't be sincere in our beliefs at any moment.
However, I agree that agnostics are rather lazy. Generally agnostics act on the belief that god does not exist, yet they will not say that they believe that god does not exist. Whether they know whether god exists or not isn't a very interesting question -- for a sufficiently demanding definition of "know" nothing is known. Arguments based on that are not insightful -- they are tedious and distracting.
The real question is how you live your life. Do you think about god in a concrete way, like "how could he let this happen", or "how would he judge me"? Do you speak to him? If you're looking the other way, then suddenly look inward, do you find an assumption that god exists?
If so, but you don't really "believe" that god exists, then I suppose you are agnostic. Perhaps a decent transitional phase, but it's a rather conflicted place to leave yourself.
If not, then you are an atheist. Trying to be all accepting by claiming you don't know god exists is just laziness. Say what you really believe. Say the truth about how you live your life. Don't be afraid to say you think other people are wrong -- that's not such a big deal, since at least you don't think they'll go to hell for being wrong :)
This is probably true. So what has gone so horribly wrong with the citizens of the US that are so shallow?
I think there are real 1st Ammendment issues when barring issue ads -- not just real issues, but huge issues... how can you tell someone they can't express their opinion, just because that opinion agrees with a certain candidate (isn't that supposed to happen?)
Probably a significant part of the problem is that, with no other real difference between candidates, ads are the only thing to tip the balance. One way to fix that would be to bring some real democracy to the parties, instead of having candidates simply be anointed by a party committee. The other solution, of course, is the very hard path of a third party. Or maybe the option of a "I don't like any of them" vote to demand an election with all-new candidates.
Still, we're all a bunch of losers to let our votes follow the money. OTOH, the other option is not to vote at all -- which is, unfortunately, mistaken as nihilistic apathy (which I don't think it is). No one mentions that Bush wasn't elected with 49% of the vote, but actually less than 25%. Pathetic.
The Linux VM can easily bring my system to a complete halt under high memory usage (by no means extreme). That is not to say FreeBSD's VM that great -- I've never tried it, but it has a good reputation. I mean to say that Linux's VM is disgraceful.
Windowsupdate is one example of a site that must be viewed in IE to work -- MS has added more such pages to the OS as time as gone on. They make a link to windowsupdate in the start menu. But, in an act so dumb I can only imagine it is malicious, they make that link a proper URL. That means that it will be opened by whatever program is registered to open URLs.
So if you change your default browser to Netscape or some other non-ActiveX browser, you can't do anything useful with that link. That entry in the menu should be an explicit command to open IE with the proper link.
It's certainly possible that MS is simply being dense, but I find it much more likely that they are seeking to punish users who change their browser as an example to others. (Of course, you can still open windowsupdate.microsoft.com in IE manually, but many people don't ever realize that it's just a normal web page and not a special program)
A desktop environment is pretty much everything else on the desktop -- a launcher, file manager, maybe an object system for files and components... it's kind of fuzzy. A window manager is part of a desktop environment.
For a long time no one was stepping up to do the work of making a real desktop environment, so the people who made window managers made small steps in that direction. For instance, the dock in Afterstep and Windowmaker -- there's really no decent reason it should be part of the window manager, but no one else was making it, so what the hell.
It probably also had something to do with a crude interface between the window manager and applications, where the specific behavior that you wanted in a dock wasn't possible to create without being integrated with a window manager. Those interfaces have been improved, so it's no longer necessary to integrate.
I can't remember the exact syntax, but you can put elisp statements in a comment section of the file and have Emacs execute them when opening the document. Since it's not that easy to turn the feature on (I can't remember how), it's unlikely to ever be used widely enough to become a vector. For Emacs' problem space, there are a number of non-scripting solutions that mostly fill the need.
But in browsers there's another level of unpredictability that is a pain. You never know where the next tab is going to leave you. Could be any number of input forms, or a URL, or maybe you didn't realize it and your focus isn't on the page... it makes navigation with a keyboard near-impossible. Of course, this is largely true for any complicated GUI form. Browsers just happen to be the most common complicated GUI in use.
I suppose it's because keyboards are good for modal or serial interfaces, where mice are better for more random-access interfaces. OTOH, with you use the keyboard to its full potential (i.e., as more than just a bunch of shortcuts) the keyboard can be far more expressive (e.g., CLI). But I don't have any clever ideas on how to map that to a web page.
5 - 3
5 + - 3
The first "-" relates to subtraction. The second one relates to negating a number. Those are two different kinds of operations, and those are considered two different operators. You can tell the two apart, because in the first one when you encounter "-" you are looking to extend the expression; while in the second when you encounter "-" you are looking for a second term to go after "+".
You could do the same thing with "=", but that sort of thing can get confusing. Imagine an expression $x = =$y (quite different from $x == $y !)
It seems similar -- GGI uses KGI, where I suppose DirectFB uses the framebuffer. The advantage being, I suppose, that the framebuffer is included in the main kernel where KGI has always been a patch.
But the problem with the framebuffer is that it is so darn slow. Perhaps reasonable in hardware that doesn't have any graphics acceleration (like on a handheld), but not useful on normal computers. I don't know if there is any real effort to ever make the framebuffer any faster -- the very name seems to imply non-accelerated simplicity.
I think the path away from X involves factoring the pieces better -- maybe that can even save X, as Xlib isn't really the problem, it's all the other half-assed crap that goes with X.
I use Debian, and Exim is the default MTA. I like it well enough. It's dead simple to set up Mailman as well -- you just install the package and you're off (though to avoid editing /etc/aliases you'll have to do some digging -- I wouldn't bother unless you were making lots of lists or someone untrained was going to make lists). I don't know about other distributions.
Mailman is a pretty good program. It's relatively easy to set up, and includes the whole bundle -- mailing lists, archiving, and web interface. These are all available for the other MLMs, but not generally bundled. I find Mailman's passwords annoying and useless (why do I need another completely unsecure password?) -- otherwise the interface is fairly good. I don't know about other MTAs, but I've set up Exim so that creating mailing lists is easy (no need to edit /etc/aliases).
No one should ever use listproc or listserv, they are old and pointless. I don't know anything about Smartlist. Majordomo is still an option -- I don't think it offers any features over ezmlm or Mailman, but with some work can be at least as functional. Still, I found it a little awkard to work with, and it seemed to take considerable work to patch in all the features that more modern MLMs have aquired.
I don't know why you'd ever want to use a commercial MLM. The free/OSS programs are all entirely sufficient -- if you are having problems setting them up, pay a consultant to help you. You'll get better service than you would with shrink-wrap software anyway. I know the Qmail site has a list of consultants for hire.
Of course, such a case would never really occur. Mostly because, if the issue ever came up, it would not be a big deal to fix this for the blind or disabled. Their browsers could simply advertise their purpose, and the ad could be replaced with a text alternative (more obnoxious because it gets read, not skimmed over!) I don't imagine lots of people would misidentify their browser as a browser-for-the-disabled just so their blocker would still work.
- Send a cookie with the banner image, which is later used like authentication. Unfortunately you block everyone who doesn't have cookies. Lots of sites already do this anyway. So far browsers haven't implemented "do not accept cookies attached to images", for no good reason at all. So only no cookies or image blockers will break this -- image blockers that still download the image won't get around this, but image blockers that leave the headers intact and replace the image with something innocuous would work.
- Use JavaScript, with window.open() opening a window that uses window.parent.replace(). You could even use a hash in the URL to make it more secure -- i.e., to block external links, and make it impossible to access the real content without the popup (though you could of course read the popup and not display it). You could hash against a private key and the user's IP address or session ID. This won't (in itself) detect if the images themselves were downloaded, just if the JavaScript was executed.
I can't think of any way the software could detect if the blocker downloaded the image, left the headers intact, and replaced the image with something blank. JavaScript has no way to inspect the actual images in the document, and the server has no way at all to tell if the proxy has replaced the image. You should be able to do it with Flash ads, and since Flash is proprietary, Macromedia will never put privacy features in and alternatives are not likely to pop up anytime soon. Popup ads should also be relatively immune to blocking, though you can still block the images in the popup (which doesn't make it much less annoying).The advantage of this technique is that the user gets immediate feedback as to whether they can view the page. Both server-side detection and cookies will only kick in after the second page view. You could also use the two together, so that you get immediate feedback on banner ads as well.
True, but all the non-compiled languages don't use ELF (including normal byte-compiled Java). So I don't see how ELF would much relate to language independance.