I'm currently using OSX running on a G4 Cube at home and a G4 Black and White in my office for most of my writing and research programming (my laptop still run linux and sees a good deal of use).
I do all of writing in LaTeX (using teTeX) and occasionally use mutt. OSX comes with GNU emacs installed, but I've started to use bbedit as my text editor of choice. X11 will run rootless in OSX, so you can use the X-enabled GNU emacs and xemacs if you want (and I have). All my documents end up in CVS, and transitioning them from one machine to another requires no changes what-so-ever.
I haven't touched mutt or fetchmail, my home mail server is still a linux box, which I ssh into, and the same in my office. I assume they work, however. I'm pretty sure there are fink packages available.
OSX isn't Linux, it is based on NeXT, and, therefore, does have a number of quirks. Besides one issue with the GUI [1], I have not found any issues that make me want to switch back to a Linux box as a primary machine. Yes, updates are not weekly, and the debacle of OSX 10.1 being released without Developer Tools was annoying (though we were clearly warned before hand). However, none of these things are insurmountable.
ProjectBuilder is... interesting, and takes getting used to, but it powerful once you do spend some time in it.
-Seth
[1] I miss virtual workspaces that I can ctrl->right-arrow to terribly. The only current contender (a docklet called Spaces) doesn't have keyboard bindings and doesn't quite work 100%.
I go to the debian site and I see the top news story with the headline of " Debian GNU/Linux 2.2, the "Joel 'Espy' Klecker" release, is officially released". What would you have preferred? The Debian 2.2 release has always been known by the codename of potato, and it is dedicated to espy, but that doesn't entail it no longer being called potato.
So I've just moved down to CT, and qualify (through some half-truths) for self-install DSL from SNet, which is part of the SBC group. The apartment I moved into had DSL previously from SNet.
The problem is that it still takes them 15 business days to flip the bloody switch to turn on DSL for the apartment. So, while this will save several weeks of time to get an actual technician to come out here, and save me the typical "you can't run DSL on anything less than a PII/400" conversation, it doesn't speed things up that much.
I found that with ipmasq, my ssh connection would close unless I was in a program such as mutt or screen. I did further research and found this link which mentions that ipmasq connections will die after a timeout period. The solution (which I haven't actually tested, 'cause I'm almost always in mutt or screen) is to set a longer timeout.
Boston to the 95/93 junction is at least 20 minutes, sometimes longer. The few times I've driven from Waltham to Providence (Waltham is about 20 minutes West of Boston, right on i95) it took about 40 - 50 minutes. And that is without going through Boston itself.
Amtrak. Amtrak goes from Providence to all Westwood and into downtown Boston. South Station is actually pretty close to the event itself. Dunno what the price is, though.
Not true. Geekpride Day is sponsered (i.e., corporate sponsership) by Andover, etc., but Geekpride Day was happening long before Andover was part of it. This isn't an Andover/VA/etc event.
So I was leafing through an old Linux Journal this morning. I think it was Feb. 99, though I might be wrong. They had a blurb on Sun joining Linux International and supporting the port of Linux to the UltraSparc.
So how or why do they say "we'll never support Linux" when they starting supporting linux before IBM did?
Methinks that either the person who spoke doesn't speak for the company or the company is changing positions, or the company has a face for the people that care about Solaris and another face for those that care about Linux.
Huh? I don't understand how making money possibly goes against the "free speech, not beer" principles.
Free software / open source software is about software unencumbered by restrictions. If I purchase a copy of RedHat 6.1, I have the ability to redistribute it, change it, use it, abuse it as I see fit. This license which RedHat has with the enduser is free of restrictions.
The "Free speech, not beer" mantra specifically says "you are free to do what you want with this". It does not say anything about "money bad" or "you cannot charge for this", etc.
What I find appealing about this business model is that we have a choice. This is what free software is about. If I do not want to pay for RedHat, I don't have to. If I don't want to pay for support, I don't have to. However, if I wish to have the value added product or support or the convience of a RedHat CD with their logo, I have that option.
You can easily contribute without being a new maintainer. You can fix bugs and send them to the package maintainer, for example. In fact, the only real reason to be a maintainer is if you are going to upload new packages yourself.
In fact, one of the reasons why, I think, a new maintainer policy isn't up yet is that, because of the inpending freeze, it isn't useful to have new packages (not updates, new) uploaded at this point.
Or maybe I'm missing something. What are you looking to do that you need to be a maintainer for?
-Seth (not a maintainer, and desperately trying to dig up some tuits so I can help out)
So a friend of mine had a network with the typical "planet" names... So there was sol as the server, with earth, mars, etc, etc, etc. Machine number 12 (9 planets + luna and sol) was named "apes"...
Needless to say, not enough people got it.
My network is heinlein-based. My desktop is job, my g/fs desktop is mycroft. I named a bunch of macs jubal, lazarus and michael. Then I ran out of names, so I named the next desktop crooked and the laptop they...
Okay, I don't get it. Loki had a contest where you get to see the code to Civ and muck around with it. People complained that it was the corporation trying to screw us because they were going to take our work for free. So what? If I could have afforded to the trip to Atlanta, I would have done it, because it was geeky and fun. I could have cared less if they provided a prize.
Now Mozilla is saying, look through the code and see how many design patterns you can come up with. That sounds neat. Yeah, they benefit from it, so what? Of course, we get the same outrage.
Here's my take on both... (1) no one is forcing you to take part (2) it is a learning experience (3) it is bragging rights and (4) you get a neat prize.
The Ig Nobels are the prizes given by the Annals of Improbable Research for research that "cannot or should not be reproduced" You can't talk about the nobels without talking about the igs. The link is here
To be honest, I question how useful being able to upgrade the op system is. Just now, 3Com is releasing the first operating system upgrade, which isn't upgrading anything major.
I think that the "You can upgrade the operating system" line from 3Com is to comfort the purchaser who can't stomach a computer that isn't upgradable. I don't think it is a very useful feature right now, and I question if it will be in the future.
-Seth
Re:Other Stephenson early novels ...
on
The Big U
·
· Score: 1
Yup. Zodiac is much more enjoyable living in Boston. I read it when I first moved into Brighton and it seemed incredulous. Living in Boston for a couple more years and it all seems very believable now.
I haven't been able to find Big U in any of the interlibrary loan networks. The network Waltham Library is on (Minuteman, I think) doesn't have it, nor does the network that Brandeis is on (which includes all the schools, I think). Let me know if you find it.
Other Stephenson early novels ...
on
The Big U
·
· Score: 2
I've been told (and I think I read it on the back of the book covers) that Stephenson wrote or cowrote (not sure which) the books Interface and The Cobweb under the pseudonym of Stephen Bury. I own both books, and they sit in my to-read bookcase (some people have a shelf, I have a bookcase). Has anyone read these? Are they any good? Where do they fall on Stephenson's timeline? (i.e., before Big U? After?)
I registered my domain with register.com. My experiences with them have been fine. I've never had a domain change take more than 24 hours, their domain change page is nice and simple and the fact that they take care of domain parking and dns for you is really nice.
They do cost the same as NSI (70$ for two years), which isn't the cheapest, but isn't that bad.
What about a GnomeDoom widget or a GtkDoom widget, based on this source code? I haven't looked at the code yet, so this might be impossible, but that could be kinda cool, or at least a worthy hack?
Or how about an XML-based WAD file format? Might be worth hacking that up.
Hmm, or a JNI-based Java bindings for Doom... I could see that...:)
I have linux running on several laptops and I've never come across a laptop recently that couldn't be made ot run linux. The worst I've seen is the laptop I'm using now, which won't do sound under linux due to the neomagic sound card.
All these machines are immensely stable, as stable as any desktop I've setup linux on.
What browser plugs are missing? I have real player, java and flash all working properly on my linux laptop. What else would you add? QuickTime, I suppose, probably an mpeg player, but I don't see how lacking those "ruins" the experience.
Zodiac is still my favoriate. It isn't real sf in the same sense as Snow Crash or Diamond Age, but is a great, great book. Living in Boston makes it even better. I've had to cross comm ave at a dead traffic light...:)
So I bought this book a week ago and started thumbing through it and I see an actual printed chapter which takes about the automake / autoconf / configure junk which I've wanted to use for a very long time, but could never find a tutorial that was decent enough to not force me to thumb through man (or worse, info) pages. Yay!
Why must a technology approach 100% market share in order for it be successful? Linux has a small marketshare, but I consider it very successful, because it performs its job very well and very cleanly.
Java has a small-ish marketshare, but it is approaching what I consider successful in that it is the best tool for many jobs.
I use java extensively in my groupware research. Java is an excellent language for prototyping guis and playing with rapid application development without having to piece things together in an IDE (which I dislike).
Will I replace all C code on my system with java? Not. Not right now. Probably never. Is that an unsuccessful product? I haven't replaced all of my C with c++ or perl or python or basic, either.
So yes, java isn't posed for world domination, but then neither are most things, and that's okay.
RedHat's betas and releases have had code names since 4.2 at least, as I recall... I *LIKE* that redhat is publicly betaing new minor releases. RedHat 5.1 -> 5.2 was a PITA transition in my department. A nice beta period could have shaken out some of those issues.
Is there any good reason why they couldn't use the same socket as the Celerons? Are the busses too different to allow them to work on a Celeron 433-compatible board? I don't like the concept of buying a motherboard which locks you into a specific processor. I think that both companies and definitely the board manufacturers would be better off if AMD / Intel / Transmeta / Joe's Chip Manufacture could all use the same set of sockets.
Slashdot Mirror
n/t
To answer the question asked, yes.
... interesting, and takes getting used to, but it powerful once you do spend some time in it.
I'm currently using OSX running on a G4 Cube at home and a G4 Black and White in my office for most of my writing and research programming (my laptop still run linux and sees a good deal of use).
I do all of writing in LaTeX (using teTeX) and occasionally use mutt. OSX comes with GNU emacs installed, but I've started to use bbedit as my text editor of choice. X11 will run rootless in OSX, so you can use the X-enabled GNU emacs and xemacs if you want (and I have). All my documents end up in CVS, and transitioning them from one machine to another requires no changes what-so-ever.
I haven't touched mutt or fetchmail, my home mail server is still a linux box, which I ssh into, and the same in my office. I assume they work, however. I'm pretty sure there are fink packages available.
OSX isn't Linux, it is based on NeXT, and, therefore, does have a number of quirks. Besides one issue with the GUI [1], I have not found any issues that make me want to switch back to a Linux box as a primary machine. Yes, updates are not weekly, and the debacle of OSX 10.1 being released without Developer Tools was annoying (though we were clearly warned before hand). However, none of these things are insurmountable.
ProjectBuilder is
-Seth
[1] I miss virtual workspaces that I can ctrl->right-arrow to terribly. The only current contender (a docklet called Spaces) doesn't have keyboard bindings and doesn't quite work 100%.
I go to the debian site and I see the top news story with the headline of " Debian GNU/Linux 2.2, the "Joel 'Espy' Klecker" release, is officially released". What would you have preferred? The Debian 2.2 release has always been known by the codename of potato, and it is dedicated to espy, but that doesn't entail it no longer being called potato.
So I've just moved down to CT, and qualify (through some half-truths) for self-install DSL from SNet, which is part of the SBC group. The apartment I moved into had DSL previously from SNet.
The problem is that it still takes them 15 business days to flip the bloody switch to turn on DSL for the apartment. So, while this will save several weeks of time to get an actual technician to come out here, and save me the typical "you can't run DSL on anything less than a PII/400" conversation, it doesn't speed things up that much.
I found that with ipmasq, my ssh connection would close unless I was in a program such as mutt or screen. I did further research and found this link which mentions that ipmasq connections will die after a timeout period. The solution (which I haven't actually tested, 'cause I'm almost always in mutt or screen) is to set a longer timeout.
Boston to the 95/93 junction is at least 20 minutes, sometimes longer. The few times I've driven from Waltham to Providence (Waltham is about 20 minutes West of Boston, right on i95) it took about 40 - 50 minutes. And that is without going through Boston itself.
Amtrak. Amtrak goes from Providence to all Westwood and into downtown Boston. South Station is actually pretty close to the event itself. Dunno what the price is, though.
Not true. Geekpride Day is sponsered (i.e., corporate sponsership) by Andover, etc., but Geekpride Day was happening long before Andover was part of it. This isn't an Andover/VA/etc event.
So I was leafing through an old Linux Journal this morning. I think it was Feb. 99, though I might be wrong. They had a blurb on Sun joining Linux International and supporting the port of Linux to the UltraSparc.
So how or why do they say "we'll never support Linux" when they starting supporting linux before IBM did?
Methinks that either the person who spoke doesn't speak for the company or the company is changing positions, or the company has a face for the people that care about Solaris and another face for those that care about Linux.
Huh? I don't understand how making money possibly goes against the "free speech, not beer" principles.
Free software / open source software is about software unencumbered by restrictions. If I purchase a copy of RedHat 6.1, I have the ability to redistribute it, change it, use it, abuse it as I see fit. This license which RedHat has with the enduser is free of restrictions.
The "Free speech, not beer" mantra specifically says "you are free to do what you want with this". It does not say anything about "money bad" or "you cannot charge for this", etc.
What I find appealing about this business model is that we have a choice. This is what free software is about. If I do not want to pay for RedHat, I don't have to. If I don't want to pay for support, I don't have to. However, if I wish to have the value added product or support or the convience of a RedHat CD with their logo, I have that option.
You can easily contribute without being a new maintainer. You can fix bugs and send them to the package maintainer, for example. In fact, the only real reason to be a maintainer is if you are going to upload new packages yourself.
In fact, one of the reasons why, I think, a new maintainer policy isn't up yet is that, because of the inpending freeze, it isn't useful to have new packages (not updates, new) uploaded at this point.
Or maybe I'm missing something. What are you looking to do that you need to be a maintainer for?
-Seth (not a maintainer, and desperately trying to dig up some tuits so I can help out)
So a friend of mine had a network with the typical "planet" names ... So there was sol as the server, with earth, mars, etc, etc, etc. Machine number 12 (9 planets + luna and sol) was named "apes" ...
...
Needless to say, not enough people got it.
My network is heinlein-based. My desktop is job, my g/fs desktop is mycroft. I named a bunch of macs jubal, lazarus and michael. Then I ran out of names, so I named the next desktop crooked and the laptop they
Okay, I don't get it. Loki had a contest where you get to see the code to Civ and muck around with it. People complained that it was the corporation trying to screw us because they were going to take our work for free. So what? If I could have afforded to the trip to Atlanta, I would have done it, because it was geeky and fun. I could have cared less if they provided a prize.
... (1) no one is forcing you to take part (2) it is a learning experience (3) it is bragging rights and (4) you get a neat prize.
Now Mozilla is saying, look through the code and see how many design patterns you can come up with. That sounds neat. Yeah, they benefit from it, so what? Of course, we get the same outrage.
Here's my take on both
If I can find some time, I'll do it.
-Seth
The Ig Nobels are the prizes given by the Annals of Improbable Research for research that "cannot or should not be reproduced" You can't talk about the nobels without talking about the igs. The link is here
To be honest, I question how useful being able to upgrade the op system is. Just now, 3Com is releasing the first operating system upgrade, which isn't upgrading anything major.
I think that the "You can upgrade the operating system" line from 3Com is to comfort the purchaser who can't stomach a computer that isn't upgradable. I don't think it is a very useful feature right now, and I question if it will be in the future.
-Seth
Yup. Zodiac is much more enjoyable living in Boston. I read it when I first moved into Brighton and it seemed incredulous. Living in Boston for a couple more years and it all seems very believable now.
I haven't been able to find Big U in any of the interlibrary loan networks. The network Waltham Library is on (Minuteman, I think) doesn't have it, nor does the network that Brandeis is on (which includes all the schools, I think). Let me know if you find it.
I've been told (and I think I read it on the back of the book covers) that Stephenson wrote or cowrote (not sure which) the books Interface and The Cobweb under the pseudonym of Stephen Bury. I own both books, and they sit in my to-read bookcase (some people have a shelf, I have a bookcase). Has anyone read these? Are they any good? Where do they fall on Stephenson's timeline? (i.e., before Big U? After?)
-Seth
I registered my domain with register.com. My experiences with them have been fine. I've never had a domain change take more than 24 hours, their domain change page is nice and simple and the fact that they take care of domain parking and dns for you is really nice.
They do cost the same as NSI (70$ for two years), which isn't the cheapest, but isn't that bad.
-Seth
What about a GnomeDoom widget or a GtkDoom widget, based on this source code? I haven't looked at the code yet, so this might be impossible, but that could be kinda cool, or at least a worthy hack?
... I could see that ... :)
Or how about an XML-based WAD file format? Might be worth hacking that up.
Hmm, or a JNI-based Java bindings for Doom
Oh well, back to work.
I have linux running on several laptops and I've never come across a laptop recently that couldn't be made ot run linux. The worst I've seen is the laptop I'm using now, which won't do sound under linux due to the neomagic sound card.
All these machines are immensely stable, as stable as any desktop I've setup linux on.
What browser plugs are missing? I have real player, java and flash all working properly on my linux laptop. What else would you add? QuickTime, I suppose, probably an mpeg player, but I don't see how lacking those "ruins" the experience.
Zodiac is still my favoriate. It isn't real sf in the same sense as Snow Crash or Diamond Age, but is a great, great book. Living in Boston makes it even better. I've had to cross comm ave at a dead traffic light ... :)
So I bought this book a week ago and started thumbing through it and I see an actual printed chapter which takes about the automake / autoconf / configure junk which I've wanted to use for a very long time, but could never find a tutorial that was decent enough to not force me to thumb through man (or worse, info) pages. Yay!
Why must a technology approach 100% market share in order for it be successful? Linux has a small marketshare, but I consider it very successful, because it performs its job very well and very cleanly.
Java has a small-ish marketshare, but it is approaching what I consider successful in that it is the best tool for many jobs.
I use java extensively in my groupware research. Java is an excellent language for prototyping guis and playing with rapid application development without having to piece things together in an IDE (which I dislike).
Will I replace all C code on my system with java? Not. Not right now. Probably never. Is that an unsuccessful product? I haven't replaced all of my C with c++ or perl or python or basic, either.
So yes, java isn't posed for world domination, but then neither are most things, and that's okay.
RedHat's betas and releases have had code names since 4.2 at least, as I recall ... I *LIKE* that redhat is publicly betaing new minor releases. RedHat 5.1 -> 5.2 was a PITA transition in my department. A nice beta period could have shaken out some of those issues.
Is there any good reason why they couldn't use the same socket as the Celerons? Are the busses too different to allow them to work on a Celeron 433-compatible board? I don't like the concept of buying a motherboard which locks you into a specific processor. I think that both companies and definitely the board manufacturers would be better off if AMD / Intel / Transmeta / Joe's Chip Manufacture could all use the same set of sockets.