Slashback: Bundestux, Kerberos, Blizzard 325
This deserves a hearty 'Jawohl!' DocSnyder writes: "Since the Bundestux campaign started collecting votes in favor of putting Free Software into the German parliament (Bundestag), more than 25000 people have done so. A lot of online discussions - in addition to Heise News and Linux-Community.de, even some Bundestag parties have put up their online forums - are very active to share user experience about GNU/Linux and Free Software. (Sorry for most of the linked sites speaking German, it's simply too much to translate at once.)
After several open letters and press releases have been exchanged between lobbyists and politicians, some information about a research performed by the German company Infora appeared on Heise News (english version), recommending an all-Microsoft infrastructure with the exception of some security-critical services like e-mail. The detailed paper is still not available.
An internal test (english version) between the Bundestag administration, SuSE, IBM and Microsoft confirmed that GNU/Linux and Free Software are in fact ready for the Bundestag's IT infrastructure, yet the testers don't like the copy&paste method used by KDE and recommend Windows for the desktops.
Last week, the Bundestag members (MdB) Jörg Tauss and Hans-Joachim Otto have been invited by Heise for an online chat with the community. While Jörg Tauss is a clear supporter of open standards and Free Software, Hans-Joachim Otto takes the internal test as well as Infora's research as primarily relevant for the coming decision.
On Saturday, MdB Uwe Küster summarized some details in an interview. He considered the decision - officially due Feb 28 - as almost finalized. The solution would show GNU/Linux on most servers, Windows XP and Office XP on the desktops, keeping proprietary data formats and lock-in interfaces up to the next upgrade cycle, which in fact would have been problem number one to solve.
All in all, the community has provided lots of experience, ideas and solution paths which finally seem to be largely ignored in the decision finding process towards the successor of a homogenous Microsoft Windows NT4 infrastructure, which has to be replaced until 2003 when Microsoft will no longer provide support for NT4."
That's a lot of cleaning up to do! maffew writes "A lot of feedback and ideas have been flying around since my article How to fix the Unix configuration nighmare was featured on freshmeat and slashdot. So we've created an ongoing web site and mailing list for people to continue discussing, organising, and hopefully in the end coding. It's all at unixconfig.sourceforge.net.
Meanwhile here's a link to the permanent home for the nightmare article. This is where I'm making revisions and adding links."
Raise your hand if this would mean seeing it for the 4th time ... Chris Brewer writes "In case you've been living on a different planet, The Fellowship of the Ring picked up Five Baftas, the British equivalent of the Oscars, including Best Director, Best Film, and Peoples Choice. During a live interview (Real only) after the awards, Peter Jackson announces that a preview for The Two Towers will be shown from the March 22 screenings of The Fellowship."
At long last ... something? If you've followed the strange relationship Microsoft has had with Kerberos, you may feel grateful to the anonymous coward who writes: "It would seem that Microsoft is granting the world a royalty-free, non-exclusive license to implement their Kerberos extension."
Here's some comfort for Starcraft players. An Anonymous Coward writes "As stated on Blizzard's battle.net service, the latest Starcraft patch supports UDP play, so some of the compelling reasons to use bnetd have been addressed. Whatever you may think of Blizzard and the DMCA, at least it shows Blizzard is listening to its fans."
Desktops. (Score:2)
Sounds a little odd to me - given my druthers, I'd probably go with a BSD on the servers and a custom Linux distro on the desktops.
Speaking of which, I assume it would be SuSe?
But hey, what do I know. Not German, for one thing.
--saint
Re:Desktops. (Score:2)
No problem with it. The most important topic in the Bundestux campaign is not GNU/Linux or Free Software everywhere. It's about open standards - getting rid of proprietary data formats especially in public and governmental institutions.
Once the Bundestag would use open, migration-friendly standards, file formats and protocols, switching between GNU/Linux, BSD, MacOSX or whatever, even back to the Microsoft world, would be quite easy. And what is more - nobody willing to communicate with members of the Bundestag would be kind of forced into a certain proprietary Office software.
Re:Desktops. (Score:2)
Why?
Just because this is part of the standard, sheepish slashdot 'informative' comment may say it, it isn't necessarily true.
Because I have found that the *BSDs tend to be a bit more stable and secure as servers than the Linux distros I've tried.
Linux, on the other hand, tends to have more support for different hardware (especially laptops and newer components), so it seems more suited to desktop use.
Admittedly, my opinion is a little biased (my home network, for example, has OpenBSD on the server and Linux on a desktop), but if anecdotal evidence can be trusted I'm not the only one who thinks this way.
As for whatever you were trying to say in that last sentence, I really couldn't parse it. Sorry.
--saint
MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:5, Interesting)
"All data is encoded as little-endian."
Oh, god. Look, since the start of time itself binary data on the net has been big endian. No, you do not know better.
Head->table: Bang! Bang! Bang!
Dave
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:2, Interesting)
Um, I don't mean to flame, but why does it matter? Byte ordering strikes me as rather arbitrary. Except for the fact that you probably want to keep any new standards consistent with the existing dominant processors, which seem to be little endian. At least, I for one am annoyed at having to call ntohl() every time I want an int I pulled off the network to be usuable.
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:4, Interesting)
actually why it's an issue at all is shrouded in history
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:2)
Why Arabic numbers are the way they are (Score:2)
Arabic numbers are written LS right, MS left because of the way numbers are read in classical Arabic. Classical Arabic (unlike modern standard arabic) reads numbers LS digit first. Since Arabic is written right-to-left, the LS digit comes first, i.e. right. That's why Arabic numbers in Arabic script are written the way they are.
Since numeral ordering is a relatively script-independent thing, the order of the numerals was retained when the Arabic digits were adopted into the latin script (probably in medieval Spain). This is convenient because most Indo-European languages pronounce their numbers MS digits first.
BTW The Arabic numbers weren't even invented by the Arabic. Arabic numbers were originally invented in India and written in the Sanskrit language and the Devanagari [unicode.org] script which runs left-to-right. Sanskrit numerals are pronounced MS digit first, so it makes sense that way as well. In Arabic, the so-called "Arabic" digits are called Indian digits even today.
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:2, Insightful)
Because there is such as thing as network order [google.com].
It's called "portability".
If you're following good programming practices, you shouldn't have to care - or even know - whether your system is big-endian or little-endian, unless you're writing kernels or compilers.
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:4, Informative)
It's the only way to allow different computers to communicate with each other.
I would say though that the whole berkley socket interface is antiquated for handling binary socket data. It works wonderfully for handling ascii data (which is what a majority of early protocols where).
Fortunately, most languages have decent socket libraries that abstract network byte ordering. Now, the really annoying thing about berkley sockets is the lack of an async name lookup mechanism...
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:2)
Suppose you want to send a 32-bit integer, let's use 2864434397 as an example, since its hexadecimal representation is the convenient form 0xAABBCCDD.
Now, suppose this value is stored in memory starting at location 0. On a little endian machine, location 0 would contain the byte 0xDD, 1 would contain 0xCC, 2 would contain 0xBB, and 3 would contain 0xAA. On a big endian machine, those values would be reversed (0xAA would be written first).
This also applies to file data. Suppose you have the following C code:
void write_data(int x[], int count)
{
FILE *f;
f = fopen("data.bin", "w");
fwrite(x, sizeof(int), count, f);
fclose(f);
}
On a big-endian machine, the data file would be written out as big-endian. On a little-endian machine, the data would be written out as little-endian. If you want to read the data file written by a little-endian machine on a big-endian machine, you'll have to swap the individual bytes around.
Anyway, the convention for "network byte order" is to send AA first, followed by BB, CC, and DD, in that order. Some protocols, such as Gnutella, send things in little-endian mode. I can only assume that this is because the original programmers were lazy and were using x86 machines.
Now if someone could just tell me why I bothered to write this long of a reply...
Cryptnotic
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:2)
Network byte order is an abstraction. It just so happens that it's implementation is the same as big endian.
TCP/IP had a standard word size so I am definitely confused as to what your talking about 8-bit bytes. Higher bit words are needed for things like storing the packet CRC, size, etc.
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:2)
A different binary format than some other architectures use. It's not the only processor capable of operating on little-endian data; a number of other processors can run in little-endian mode (most if not all MIPS processors, at least some SPARC V9 processors, Alpha processors, at least some PowerPC processors, at least some PA-RISC processors), and some of them typically run in little-endian mode (Alpha, for example).
If by "it" you mean "network byte order", no, it is not the only way to allow different computers to communicate with each other over a network.
There are several ways to allow different computers to communicate with each other over a network (or via files). For example:
(There may well be others I haven't listed.)
Each of those is used by some protocol or protocols:
It wasn't intended to provide a presentation-layer protocol to allow machines with different data representations to communicate; it was intended to allow you to build that atop it, just as read() and write() (or ReadFile() and WriteFile(), for Win32 folks) don't provide a mechanism for writing out files in a data-representation-independent fashion, but they let you build such mechanisms atop them.
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:2)
No, by "it" I mean TCP/IP. All your examples can be simplified to simply "both sides agree on a way to send data."
BTW: The IP protocols use network byte order. Network byte order != big endian. It's an abstraction. Just because it happens to be implemented as big endian, does mean that one should not use ntoh? on big endian machines.
Of course SMB would use little endian. It's was originated by MS! Windows runs on x86.
And I have to disagree with your assertion that read() and write() are not meant to be the high level socket interface. The C library is filled with high-level interfaces for things. The fact of the matter is that when these functions were designed, cross platform portability and data sharing wasn't much of a concern.
If these functions were rewritten today, they would be knowledgable of such things (i.e. iostreams in C++).
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:5, Informative)
Almost all network software uses "hton*" and "ntoh*" functions to convert the byte ordering from host to network byte order and reverse. On big-endian machines they happen to be NOPs. So now what? Everyone implementing the protocol on big-endian machines has to implement their "itoh*" and "htoi*" ("idiot to host", "host to idiot") functions. And to implement any software portably you'll need the same functions on little-endian systems as well. OK, so now you can write your non-portable apps without the "ntohl" -- that's OK if don't care about playing nice with others. Those of use who work in heterogenous environments and write software for a living do care.
Sure, network byte ordering is arbitary. But big-endian was chosen long ago and causes no harm. What Microsoft did is just a good way to piss off folks who care about everyone playing nice on the internet.
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:2)
Since Windows worked in a 32-bit mode on DEC Alpha, they didn't necessarily address much of that problem when they did the Alpha port of Windows NT. It ran with 32-bit long and 32-bit pointers.
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:2, Insightful)
Arbitrary perhaps, but not unmotivated. Big-endian of course has the obvious relation to how we write numbers. Little-endian has the advantage that if you are attempting to load a 1-byte value into a 2-byte register you can use the same offset (assuming the next byte is 0). This means casting an unsigned byte to a short to an int or back does not require any actual pointer fiddling.
Now, back to your regular program...
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's completely arbitrary. Which means that since Kerberos is supposed to be Big Endian, Microsoft had no compelling reason to screw with it. Its arbitrary, but by no means interchangable. Now when using Kerberos you actually need the check every time you use an integer to determine which way 'round it ought to be, thus allowing for a whole new class of bugs. Hooray.
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:4, Insightful)
The existing dominant processors are the IBM and Sun big iron.
Maybe you like reading the hex value 12345678 as 78 56 34 12, but I don't.
Re:MS Kerberos, a corporate culture of wrongness (Score:2)
Please understand:
There is no Linux community. That's like talking about a Windows community. It's a fairly arbitrary (see - on topic) grouping of people whose sole connection is they all use a particular kernel some of the time.
If you were to talk to someone in the Free Software community, which does exist, and is populated by people with common principles and ideas about freedom in software for moral reasons, you won't have to suffer being called a 'complete fucking moron' unless you really are. Principally that's because people with morals tend to like other people.
Microsoft and Kerberos (Score:4, Interesting)
After filtering out the marketoids who repeatedly insisted everything was fine, a couple engineers conceded that the implementation was broken. It;s interesting to see Microsoft try and sell this as an extension that others shoupls implement and use. Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the effect of monopoly power.
'We support the standard but if you want to access our systems you need to implement the standard our way'
What a sham.
--CTH
Linux on desktops (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a reason to fix the shitty broken clipboard, then. I'll be grateful when I can at last paste from KMail into Mozilla.
That darn clipboard (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm. This is just the sort of problem Lycoris would attack. Another reason to download it -- as soon as the slashdot effect dies down.
Re:That darn clipboard (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That darn clipboard (Score:2, Funny)
If I had a dollar for every time some slashdotter made the claim that reason X was why Linux was never going to succeed on the desktop, I'd probably have enough money to take my other kidney out of hawk.
Re:That darn clipboard (Score:2)
And if I had a dolla' for every time a slashbot comes to the defense of the slow, ugly,
antiquated, inconsistent-by-design POS that is X, I'd have a limitless supply of beer money.
C-X C-S
Huh? (Score:2)
OK, with you so far.
insanity-inducing if you're used to the simpler Windows model.
Here you lost me..
Using the windows clipboard isn't simpler, it's more complex - highlight, edit -> copy, click destination, edit -> paste.
Using X (or at least Xfree, the only version I've used), it's highlight, (middle) click destination; half as many steps to accomplish the same task.
I keep hearing about how poor X implements the clipboard - for graphics, it's true; but for text, it's not only better, it's simpler.
Can someone explain to me exactly where the problem lies with the X clipboard?
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
OK, thanks for that explanation..
One thing that's interesting though - I've been around (and used) PC's since Windows 3.0, and I've never seen anyone use this functionality (I know it existed, but nobody I've ever known uses it... which might explain why I didn't think it was an issue
How many windows users use this feature?
Re:That darn clipboard (Score:2)
Ya, that can be pretty painful.
Re:That darn clipboard (Score:2)
- highlight URL,
- click on Konqueror's "delete URL" button,
- middle click,
- press enter
- grin.
Re:That darn clipboard (Score:2)
Re:That darn clipboard (Score:2)
Re:That darn clipboard (Score:2)
Re:Linux on desktops (Score:2)
Moving to X (enlightenment) the biggest change someone has to get used to between windows and X is the paste. It *is* pretty annoying. That and to close the window you now have to click on the upper *left*, but who ever needs to close windows when you've got 4 desktops?
I also don't use X terribly much except for just having multiple terms open, and the occasional mozilla so there's probably more unintuitive stumbleblocks, but the cut&paste is the only thing that isn't easily picked up and remembered...
Re:Linux on desktops (Score:2)
highlight == copy
middle click == paste
doesnt get much simpler than that.
Re:Linux on desktops (Score:2)
Agreed -- copy/paste needs to be fixed (Score:2)
It works perfectly in windows.
I hope that this news reminds some people that there are still basic problems to be addressed before linux on the desktop can go mainstream.
(OTOH, I am pretty impressed with KDE. It has been running 160 days straight on this box, and 160 days ago was my first boot... other window managers I've used have not been so stable.)
Re:Agreed -- copy/paste needs to be fixed (Score:2)
The version that was out 160 days ago sure wasn't. Although I have yet to crash the most recent one (35 days on my system).
Re:Agreed -- copy/paste needs to be fixed (Score:2)
And some of us like select-to-select, middle-click-to-paste-current-selection, Ctrl-C-to-copy-current-selection-to-clipboard, and Ctrl-V-to-paste-clipboard.
Fortunately, that's all possible with X - Motif and GTK+, for example, have done that for ages, and now Qt 3.0 does it, so KDE 3.0 will do so as well.
(The clipboard is what Ctrl-C copies to. The current selection is what's selected. Don't confuse the two, they are not the same thing in X. See the X clipboard selection [freedesktop.org] for details.)
Re:Linux on desktops (Score:2)
"shitty" broken clipboard? Use the X clipboard (works on every Unix I've tried it on) to copy and paste from Kanything to anythingelse. Swipe with the left button down to mark, change focus and middle-click where you want to paste
Re:Linux on desktops (Score:4, Insightful)
The Windows and Mac clipboards work one way. The X clipboard works another. X is, therefore, wrong.
Re:Linux on desktops (Score:2)
I vaguely remember reading that it would come with two options: standard linux cut&paste or windows-like cut and paste. How can you complain against options like that?
Easy; unless you're in a totally KDE environment, you get a mix of the two. I live with it every day on this notebook. KDE for almost everything, OpenOffice 6 for office, and WindowMaker and aterm pulling up the rear (well Citrix is in there too). I have *two* clipboards and *both* cut and paste methods... I've gotten used to it but it was frustrating for a while. :-)
Copy and paste of all things... (Score:2, Interesting)
Choosing a desktop on the basis of a copy and paste model. I thought people got their priorities wrong but this takes the biscuit. Copy and paste vs free and more stable...
Just out of interest - how easy would it be to port a windows-style copy and paste model to KDE? I thought the KDE UI was relatively customisable in this sort of area so implementing such a feature would be relatively easy. Then again, I could be completely wrong.
Re:Copy and paste of all things... (Score:4, Insightful)
I would imagine that what the users are talking about is the inability to copy and paste all formats of data from anywhere to anywhere. Like copying a table from a HTML document and pasting it into Excel. That's just useful sometimes when your manager is breathing down your neck looking for a report of something that could just be looked up online. We all know how it is.
About the more stable thing... The last time I tried making ANY in-depth spreadsheets on *nix, I tended to take the app (I think it was Star Office) right down. Or sometimes when importing data from other existing sources the app would either blow up or fail to import the data. Users can't have that when they have deadlines. On the other hand I've been sitting here for the last five hours working up process documentation in Excel (yep, management can't get it done, I want a faster process, I'll write it myself) without a single issue.
Yes, I love Linux, but I don't think it's ready for the desktop. MS has it right with near-universal copy and paste and stability is no longer an issue. On a properly configured machine there is no reason that 2000 or XP should crash. Ever. My machines don't, yours can too. I still believe that Linux's best place is on the back end. Passing out files with Samba without people thinking about it. Serving internal websites with Apache. Watching what's going on with Snort. There's many, many good places for Linux, but the desktop just isn't there yet.
Not to mention notebooks... I've yet to see a Linux distro that can transparently handle being undocked, taken to a conference room, hooked up with a PCMCIA NIC, worked on, then docked again. If I'm wrong here, please correct me and provide links...
-Steve
Re:Copy and paste of all things... (Score:3, Informative)
I have a Sony 505TR notebook. I installed Slackware 8.0 on it when I got it back in September. I've since rebooted the thing once (to install a 2.4 kernel). Basically the thing's been booted for nearly 6 months, all i do is close the lid to suspend it. I'm always swapping out PCMCAI NIC's (wirless at home, ethernet at work, no card on the road) and have never had to manually change anything when switching cards (if that's what you mean by transparent).
Am I missing something?
Re:Copy and paste of all things... (Score:5, Informative)
It is true that selection and middle-mouse click will work between all X applications.
However Windows users are used to ctrl+x and ctrl+v. Most X apps initially supported this by simply making ctrl+x do nothing (because the text was already selected) and making ctrl+v do the same as middle-mouse click. This is how current KDE applications work.
This worked pretty good, but it turns out most Windows users were also used to selecting the text they wanted to replace and then typing ctrl+v to replace it. This unfortunately changed the clipboard and the paste did not work. They do have a point that this is confusing to anybody coming from Windows.
There are several kludges an app could do to detect this and do what the user expects, but it appears the solution adopted, first by Motif programs like Mozilla and then by GTK and several other toolkits, was to have 2 clipboards, one for the selection and another for the most recent ctrl+x. In many ways this is an ideal solution, as in fact the middle mouse is really equivalent to drag & drop and is best combined with that mechanism, not the clipboard.
The problem now is that KDE apps (and quite a few others, I'm sure) do not understand this. Typing ctrl+v still pastes the selection. Since this is usually the same as the clipboard except for the "select and replace" Windows reflex it probably isn't any worse than before. However the opposite way is a pain, as ctrl+x in KDE does nothing and ctrl+v in a newer program then pastes and older ctrl+x, which I am sure drives the user nuts.
Yes the next version of KDE will fix this.
PS: the newest versions of FLTK match GTK as well, it had the same problem as KDE.
Re:Copy and paste of all things... (Score:2)
The Alt/Ctrl stuff can be entirely blamed on MicroSoft. When Motif and CDE was being designed windows used the ctrl+insert and other keys as the "standard" for cut & paste. Though windows still supports that, ask any user and you will see just how popular that is! But Motif and CDE copied that, and also "copied" the other popular interface, which was the Macintosh, which used Apple+X, Apple+V, etc.
Take a look at a contemporary Mac and PC keyboard and you will see it is obvious why the Alt key was chosen. In fact virtually every program written for MSDOS and Windows then used Alt+letter as shortcuts.
For unknown reasons MicroSoft decided in their own programs (once they decided the shift-ins stuff was not user friendly) to use ctrl+letter. Plausible reasons were to avoid interfering with foreign letter input that used Alt, to avoid interfering with the existing MSDOS programs using Alt as a shortcut, or with Windows (also useless) use of Alt to navigate to the menubar, or possibly an evil attempt to make life painful for programmers used to Emacs and to make going between a Mac and a PC difficult. In any case for at least a few years Windows was as much a mess as Unix.
It looks like all new Unix programs have decided to copy Windows, so only older Motif stuff like Netscape use alt. I personally try to make both work, that avoids problems with all users.
Unfortunately having seen OS/X I'm not sure if things are solved. OS/X apps already appear to assumme that Ctrl+x and Apple+x can be different shortcuts (try the ctrl keys, it works like Emacs in their text editor) and that Apple+x is used more often. This is going to be a pain for anybody trying to port between OS/X and Windows and having a consistent interface. Linux, with ports in both directions, may end up just as messy as before.
However I do put all the blame on MicroSoft for choosing ctrl as the menu binding rather than Alt.
Re:Copy and paste of all things... (Score:2)
So Germany should use KDE 3!
kennedy... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:kennedy... (Score:2, Informative)
Schroeder: Ich bin ein Pinguin...
(found within an article about Bundestux on Web.de [portale.web.de])
Microsoft bows to outside pressure? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am neither expert enough at Kerberos nor Samba to know if the above-referenced web page (Here [microsoft.com] in case you missed it) is truly sufficient for interoperability, but it sure looks like it.
And the critical language is at the bottom:
and
Translation: You can use this spec in your products. It's not covered by any of our current or pending patents, and even if it is, you can still use it royalty-free.
Other related specs are not rendered licensed or royalty-free, so they MAY have kept a loophole - but this looks sincere so far.
Amazing news, really.
Re:Microsoft bows to outside pressure? (Score:3, Interesting)
/imagine: a half bald, bawling marketdriod with a pile of his own bloddy hair at his feet, more in his fists at the side of his head, shouting "NO! We could of owned it all! NOOOOOOO!". Now smile.
IMHO, it was the leaking of the Halloween Documents that had the most devestating effects on Microsoft. Those very same documents also give reason to still be guarded with our support.
The timing of this is also suspicious with
To paraphrase a famous Trojan :
"I fear Microsoft even when they come bearing gifts".
I'm pleased, but will still be very wary all the same.
Soko
Re:Microsoft bows to outside pressure? (Score:2)
Hopefully, this will help products such as Samba and pam_smb to interoperate with win2k better.
Two Towers Trailer at END of Movie (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, given what theaters pay their workers, let's hope they actually tack it to the end and not the beginning.
Re:Two Towers Trailer at END of Movie (Score:2)
I just saw it again yesterday.. did not stay.
guess I will have to go again.
Re:Two Towers Trailer at END of Movie (Score:2, Informative)
Blizzard (Score:2, Interesting)
UDPbnetd (Score:2, Informative)
Blizzard is suck.
Starcraft (Score:5, Interesting)
There were a few posts to insidemacgames.com's forums by the Blizzard techs who made the patch.
Re:Why do all the games seem to use IPX for lan pl (Score:2, Interesting)
And... I though Mac did support IPX...
Re:Why do all the games seem to use IPX for lan pl (Score:4, Insightful)
Simply put, use of IPX is certainly for nothing more than restricting user options and control or just maybe, they have this old IPX networking library laying around that works and they'd simply not rewrite it unless they had too. Meaning? They might of been trying to save time and money and it have nothing to do with control or technical merits of the protocol. As for your assertion that IPX has bandwidth guarantees, please back that statement up. That's pretty hard to do when a) it's going over ethernet and b) the os can commit to the application all day long at what it thinks it can deliver over the wire but it really has no say at all, otherwise, a single IPX station could bring down a whole IPX network (that is, one computer says, all the network bandwidth is mine...go find your own). The words, "ya right!" come to mind. How would it control this with other types of network activity on the wire? After all, when it's all said and done, it's the wire activity that counts!
End point, you're statement is completely without merit and makes no sense. If you do have games which support multiple protocols on the same OS and one is notibly faster than the other, it more likely it is reflective of nothing more than one was optimized and the other was extremly poorly implemented, or both.
It's really as simple as that.
Re:Why do all the games seem to use IPX for lan pl (Score:2, Informative)
Listening to which fans? (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh? Which fans might that be?
I think I can speak on behalf of D1 players everywhere: over 5 years on the clock and still running. Where's the patch for the dupe bug, Blizz? Oh, what's that you say? There's NOT a patch for the most egregious bug in the game YET? After 5 YEARS? And don't even get me started on all the other bugs that would be easily fixed if they gave half a rat's ass.
Hm. So much for the fans.
-Kasreyn
Re:Listening to which fans? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no replacement for StarCraft. There doesn't appear to be one on the horizon. I think it is remarkable that a company like Blizzard continues to support and enhance it. How many other companies are still provding free patches for five-year-old games? How many other companies even provide bug fixes for old products like this with little sales potential?
I too am concerned about Blizzard's actions with respect to bnetd. I understand their legitimate need (and their right) to control the spread of the Warcraft III beta, but they overreacted. I hope this is just an aberration. Too many companies seem to have run out of fresh ideas of their own, so they use the legal system to suppress fair competition. It would be a shame if Blizzard has joined that list.
Yes, Blizzard has problems. If you look at their overall record, I think Blizzard is still one of the good guys. There don't seem to be many of them left. Give Blizzard a little slack, at least for a while longer.
But that's just my $0.02 worth.
Re:Listening to which fans? (Score:2)
I am being reasonable. (Score:2)
You're wrong. D2 is a whole different kettle of fish. I have both, and you know what? I prefer D1. D2 is not an enhancement, it's a cheap knock-off of a game they did right the first time.
How many other companies are still provding free patches for five-year-old games?
All their recent patches do is remove functionality, change the networking of the other games to better suit D2, and screw with the balance for games that will never be balanced. Frankly, I could live without patches like that. I like the rules of a game to remain consistent over time as I play it, but that's not the case in SC and D2.
Yes, Blizzard has problems. If you look at their overall record, I think Blizzard is still one of the good guys. There don't seem to be many of them left. Give Blizzard a little slack, at least for a while longer.
Give me a break. I was giving Blizzard slack for years. I'm tired of it. If you'd been around Bnet as many years as I have, and seen the way they treat their oldest fans, you'd be disgusted with them too. I'm all out of patience and loyalty to Blizz.
You act like it's unreasonable for them to patch those bugs in D1? Those bugs ruin the game online. People don't even need trainers to ruin the play. Not only that, those bugs have been fixed in fan-written mods, yet Blizzard continues to say they can't do it. Won't is closer to the truth; I'm sure if they asked the modders for the patch code they'd just GIVE it to them for free, just to see the bugs finally fixed. And yet they've managed to release enough patches to bring Diablo to version 1.09, without ever finding time to even bother with it. You know what those patches did? They removed functionality from D1, and brought it in line with D2's new Bnet networking scheme.
I don't think what I ask is too much to ask from a company like Blizzard used to be. But they're not what they once were, and I for one have seen through it.
-Kasreyn
Non-exclusive license (Score:2, Funny)
It's good to know they're not granting the world a royalty-free, exclusive license.
Solve the configuration problem. (Score:2)
Solve two problems, configuration and proprietary file formats, and Microsoft products will disappear. Why? People don't like being abused. For one of the many, many examples of Microsoft abuse, see Microsoft Program Tracks User Info [yahoo.com].
Suggestion: 1) An interface like Ganymede [utexas.edu]. 2) Have every project write their own modules to integrate their configuration text files with Ganymede. 3) Put characteristics that depend on other characteristics into a folder-like structure, to show the dependency.
StarCraft ...not really. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever since Blizzard went after bnetd using the DMCA, my respect for Blizzard dropped below that of goatse.cx trolls. And I hate to say it but I will not purchase WarCraft III. I played WC3 at E3 almost 2 years ago. I had to change my underwear at the hotel that evening because of it, but sadly, I am being forced to boycott WC3 because I don't agree with their business practices, and it's sad because they make good games.. It's similar to Microsoft, Microsoft has a fantastic marketing ability, and a real appeal to the average user, but man, do they make a bad Operating System...
Re:StarCraft ...not really. (Score:2)
UnixConfig (tm) (Score:4, Interesting)
--8<--
A core system would handle parsing, verification and storage of text-based configuration files in one or two basic formats.
We cannot do this. We must be able to handle arbirary file formats. There is no way we will get anyone to change the format of Samba's smb.conf, Apaches truly arcane httpd.conf, or DNS zone files for example. We *could* standardize on a uniform in memory representation but I'm not in favor of that either. I think we have to go all the way up to the API level (e.g. int exports_add(const char path, int flags,
The master copy of the configuration is always left in the native text files (in
Absolutely. The confuration files *are* the database. On a separate front, we might provide an idealized open-ended application configuration library for assisting new development but I think there would have to be some weight behind the main front before developers would even consider it. That might also give us the opportunity to normalize on a few file formats (e.g. scanf, WINI, XML).
Another option is to allow plugins to handle how the data is stored.
That's a goodish idea but there are interfacing issues. By "plugins" are you suggesting one could write their parser in C or C++ or Perl? At what point do you normalize on a common language? Keep in mind this has nothing to do with *file* formats.
In order for some features to work, it might be necessary for application developers to switch to the use of the configuration manager for their internal routines.
We cannot do this. We must transparently manage data within the configuration files of the applications themselves. There is no way in heck we'll get app developers to convert. Their intrests are far more important in their mind (and they're probably rigth).
A key element would be the configuration format description file. This would list the configuration options for a given piece of software, giving for each one the name, type (boolean, list, string, filename, internet address, etc.), options, category (for sub-sections within the config), and help text (short and long).
You'll end up with a glorafied property editor and that's not what you want. What I mean by this is that you do NOT just want to map configuration options within application config files to the configuration options of whatever tool we're talking about. This is one of the greatest failures of UNIX confuration tools. It would be far more effective to isolate and the concepts associated with changing the behavior of a system (or group of systems) rather than just mapping check boxes to booleans and selects to lists. The KDE runlevel editor is a spectacular example of this failure; it does not isolate the concept of what it means to change the initialization behavor of your system.
For example, rather than writing configuration screens for Samba, Apache, Pro-FTPd, and NFS exports, write an "Exports" module that handles all of them uniformly. They all do essentially the same thing; make a portion of your filesystem available as a network service. Similarly, instead of having a PPP dialer, make a module that controls your "Network Interfaces" (RH has largely done this working PPP into network-scripts). Again, isolate concepts rather than parameterize configuration options.
Re:UnixConfig (tm) (Score:2)
Once done, any of the usual xml property editors can be used to edit same.
Re:UnixConfig (tm) (Score:2)
Once done, any of the usual xml property editors can be used to edit same.
No. This is a very naive approach that does nothing to solve the real problems. XML is a file format. This UnixConfig issue will not be solved with a file format. We are not writing a property editor.
Re:UnixConfig (tm) (Score:2)
That's a goodish idea but there are interfacing issues. By "plugins" are you suggesting one could write their parser in C or C++ or Perl? At what point do you normalize on a common language? Keep in mind this has nothing to do with *file* formats.
No need to "normalize on a standard language"
Personally, I would expect that a Universal Unix Configuration Tool(TM) would come with a plugin interface supporting C, C++, pascal, fortran, Java, perl, php (maybe
IMNSHO, The Universal Unix Configuration Tool and the Kernel Janitors project, comprise the KEY component in the World Domination Project(SM).
Unix (and Linux IS a "u" Unix) IS user-friendly
Re:UnixConfig (tm) (Score:2)
You will be able to ask that base non-trivial questions about your configuration, which is not possible in other approaches.
If if calculates dependencies between functionality then it sounds like a great idea. Otherwise I'm not convinced this "system of knowledge" would really be useful.
Regarding the text file vs. database issue, I suppose the config file data could be parsed on demand and cached for the prolog interpreter. You would just have to come up with a normalized data structure to address every datum and then load the file(s) when one of those datums is trapped. That's really how a database works albeit this UnixConfig Prolog Interpreter version would be a bit more complex due to the inconsistent nature of datafiles under it.
Unfortunately, don't see app developers committing to it though. Having a 'prolog language' backend must not be required for the app to run at least. And it cannot be another daemon mucking up my process table! Make it a lib and use shared memory pls
Re:UnixConfig (tm) (Score:2)
Like AIX's smit ?
Humm, smit [ibm.com] does look interesting. I particularly like the part about dropping out to a shell with the command on the commandline without actually executing it right away. That's a great idea. Are you familiar with this program? If so, what are it's weaknesses?
UDP is an Internet Protocol, right? (Score:2)
BlackGriffen
Re:UDP is an Internet Protocol, right? (Score:2, Interesting)
If anybody can actually tell me what the hell happened to Kahn, you get a cookie or something. At least one of the Stargate Network guys must read /. !!
Re:UDP is an Internet Protocol, right? (Score:2, Informative)
I used kali all the time a long time go.
Non-exclusive Bullshit (Score:2)
What ever happened to the Prime Directive, dammit!
I'm suspicious of MS (big shock) (Score:2)
However, if Microsoft becomes aware or has any patent(s) and/or pending applications that are essential to implement this specification, Microsoft will grant you a royalty-free license under applicable Microsoft intellectual property rights essential to implement this specification for the sole purpose of implementing this specification.
First, there's a word missing in there somewhere. To what are they granting a license under "applicable Microsoft intellectual property rights"? But more importantly, when they grant whatever it is, what will those "applicable Microsoft intellectual property rights" do to the entities that try and use whatever is being granted? This is NOT the GPL by any stretch of the imigination.
Re:I'm suspicious of MS (big shock) (Score:2)
Read that to say "the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing
"OTOH, if somebody else has a patent/copyright we've infringed, you're on your own (read 'hosed'), Bubba, because our IP rights are zero."
Kerberos - not all released (Score:2, Interesting)
Hurray! But... It is jus the license and doc's for half of their extensions: the part which does group enumeration. Which was already understood anyway.
The real beef - i.e. the domain controller specifics - are still as closed as ever. And according to the presentation at the RSA conference last week - are going to remain so.
Congrat's to slashdot for picking it up just as the spinmeisters intended :-)
Dw.
Read the X clipboard explanation before commenting (Score:5, Informative)
If you plan to comment on the "cut and paste" issue, please read the X clipboard explanation [freedesktop.org], in detail, and make sure you fully understand it before commenting.
X - or, at least the X11 Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM) - does specify a clipboard that works like the MacOS/Windows clipboard. Selecting text does not have to copy to that clipboard; it merely has to set the "primary selection". The middle mouse button can paste the "primary selection". Ctrl+C and Ctrl+X can copy/cut to the clipboard, and Ctrl+V can paste the clipboard even if you've subsequently selected something else (in which case it replaces the selection with what you're pasting).
Motif and GTK+, for example, work that way. Qt 1.x and 2.x, as used by KDE 1.x and 2.x, didn't; Qt 3.x, as used by KDE 3.x, works that way.
The KDE announcement speaks of the primary selection and the real clipboard as both being clipboards; that was, as far as I know, done to avoid "frightening the horses", i.e. to work around the confusion that some people suffer from, thinking that selecting text copies it to "the clipboard". The ICCCM doesn't call them both clipboards (it calls them both selections; for better or worse, that's standard terminology inside the innards of X, but you don't have to call them "selections" when talking to users).
Out of this world! (Score:2)
Boy, talk about a 180-degree policy change! First Microsoft keeps the extensions proprietary, then they reverse that and make it so open that license is even extended to other worlds. I guess that's a good thing. I'd hate to see a Mars mission that couldn't login to the on-board network simply because the authentication algorithm wasn't licensed for use off of Earth...
Re:Bundestag (Score:2, Interesting)
The reason seems to be money.... Should've thought about this earlier
Read it again, because they *have* to. (Score:4, Interesting)
Since Microsoft will not be supporting NT4 past 2003, they are wisely getting their house in order before they run out of time.
Everything has to change anyway, so they are entertaining the idea of building something better. Unfortunately, the argument that they don't have to replace the hardware at all wasn't good enough.
So rather than spend the money on consultants to use existing hardware, and free software, to rebuild their network, they are going to spend the money on consultants, new hardware and new software to retain the same functionality they have now.
And in a few years, when Microsoft stops supporting XP, they're right back where they are now.
That's why it's called an "Upgrade Cycle".
Bob-
Re:Read it again, because they *have* to. (Score:2)
I generally call it the "Upgrade Steamroller".
Re:Read it again, because they *have* to. (Score:2)
But an unsupported oneliner is?
--
Evan
Re:Bundestag (Score:2)
In fact it is. Quite some other public German institutions have already been using Free Software for some time. The main difference is the political importance of the Bundestag as a central part of the German government. The migration away from Microsoft and proprietary lock-ins towards Free Software and open standards would certainly be seen as a precedence, causing many other corporations, public institutions etc. to think similarly.
Re:Reality check (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Reality check (Score:2, Insightful)
When I go shopping at my local computer store and chat with the people in line with me, I will usualy mention that I do not run Windows. I get these really great blank stares returned to me. Then I have to go on to explain what Linux and/or BSD is.
I have yet to see an advertisement for Linux in any mainstream non-computer related media. No TV commercials, no magazine adds, no billboards. The closest I've heard about is IBM painting Tux on NY sidewalks (which I never personally saw), but since nobody's heard of Linux, nobody will recognise Tux. I see Windows commercials all the time.
Maybe a few of the top distros should spend a few dollars and put out some TV commercials. Maybe pool their money and put one up durring the Super Bowl.
Just a thought.
Re:Kerberos and MIT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Smurfs: Socialist Propoganda (Score:2)
Difference between Mac and KDE behavior (Score:2)
KDE has implimented the CTL+(C|V|X) method that windows uses. I don't get how people, that I would assume be coming from windows, not be familiar with CTRL+(X|C|V) for cut/copy/paste?
Let's do the same operation (select, accel+C, select, accel+V) on Mac OS (Windows is the same), the KDE desktop, and the GNOME desktop.
Mac. Select, Cmd+C: Copy first selection to clipboard. Select, Cmd+V: Replace second selection with copy of first selection. Mac users and Windows users are used to this behavior.
KDE. Select: Copy first selection to clipboard. Ctrl+C: ignored. Select: Copy second selection to clipboard. Ctrl+V: No change, because second section is replaced with copy of second selection, the first selection being forgotten entirely.
GNOME. Select: Copy first selection to X clipboard. Ctrl+C: Copy X clipboard to GTK+ clipboard. Select: Copy second selection to clipboard. Ctrl+V: Replace second selection with GTK+ clipboard (which contains the first selection).
Did everyone just forget that KDE does that and assume it used the standard highlight + button2 thing to copy/paste?
KDE's semantics are the same as the oldskool X method, with Ctrl+V simply sending a button2 at the insertion point. GTK+ and some other toolkits have solved the problem by keeping a second clipboard for ^X ^C ^V.
Re:Difference between Mac and KDE behavior (Score:2)
As far as I know, that's Qt behavior that KDE inherits, and is fixed in Qt 3.0 (and will thus be fixed in KDE 3.0).
No, it's more like
See the X clipboard explanation [freedesktop.org] for details.
Actually, as per the X clipboard explanatin, the "second clipboard" (which is actually the only clipboard; the middle mouse button pastes the current selection, not a clipboard) has been a standard part of X - or, at least, of the ICCCM - for ages (that's "ages" as in "dating back to the late 1980's").
Re:"the testers don't like the copy&paste meth (Score:2)
Re:"the testers don't like the copy&paste meth (Score:2)
No, it doesn't. It makes the selected text the primary selection; however, it doesn't necessarily copy the selected text to the clipboard.
In some toolkits, such as Qt 1.x and 2.x, as used by KDE 1.x and 2.x, it does copy the selected text to the clipboard. However, in other toolkits, such as Motif, GTK+, and Qt 3.x, it doesn't copy the selected text to the clipboard, and, as a result...
...that's not necessarily the way to do that in an OS using an X11-based GUI.
For example, I just selected some text in one GTK+ application, typed Ctrl+C, selected some text in another GTK+ application, and typed Ctrl+V; the text I copied from the first application replaced the selected text in the second application.
(This happened to be on FreeBSD, not Linux; this isn't a Linux issue, it's an X toolkit issue.)
See the X clipboard explanation [freedesktop.org] for details.