Slashback: Film, Solaris, Contention 215
Sun giveth and taketh away. axehind writes: "This ZDNet article tells us StarOffice will no longer be free. The decision completes the transition of the StarOffice suite back to being a paid product, as it was when Sun bought the software along with its maker, Germany's Star Division, in 1999. Sun says it will stop free downloads of StarOffice 5.2 at midnight on Wednesday night."
On the other hand, The Pi-Guy writes: "It has been confirmed by Sun that Solaris 9 will be on Intel platforms - you can get it for free on DVD here. Quite surprising considering that a few months ago they were saying 'No S9 at all on x86!'"
Update: 05/29 03:03 GMT by T : As several readers have noticed, the page no longer indicates Solaris 9 once you've chosen x86 as your platform of choice -- looks like a case of mistaken identity.
Strong opinions tend to draw answers. Guillaume Laurent writes "Given that Murray mentions me in his interview, and that I disagree with most of what he says, I felt the need to reply. Enjoy."
Six seems a tad low. supafly613 writes: "Six people were arrested in South Africa over the weekend on suspicion of being involved in the infamous 'Nigerian' e-mail and letter fraud. Four of those detained were Nigerian, one was Cameroonian and the sixth was South African. Police in South Africa believe that the six are part of an international fraud and drug-dealing cartel, sending out thousands of e-mail and letters in an attempt to defraud."
Lost in cyberspace ... Mindphunk writes "Six hackers remain to be found so that Mozilla can be relicensed under the LGPL and GPL as well as the MPL original license. This is really important if Mozilla is going to interoperate readily with all kinds of free software. Perhaps the power of Slashdot can find them in time for the 1.0 release?? The missing hackers are:
- David Nebinger
- 'Uncle George'
- Sanjay Gupta
- Makoto Kato
- Thierry LeBouiland
- Jiwei Wang"
This is a followup to our earlier mention of the missing hackers.
Still waiting for NetBSD :) llordsmiff writes: "According to this, the world's first Xtender Xbox modchip preorders were shipped today (24 May). There are installation pictures also. "It plays back all import and backups on all worldwide sold Xbox machines." It's also supposed to play any DVD, regardless of region."
Wonder if this will be 'content protected.' neema writes: "Just a bit of an update to an older post, but Revolution OS will apparently be released on DVD (region free) in September for 20 dollars. Trailer and first 8 minutes can be found here. I, for one, welcome the chance to see it."
Cameroonian (Score:1, Funny)
Surprised (Score:1, Troll)
I'm actually surprised that any of them were really Nigerian. I would have expected the scam to be run by some guy named Tony living in New Jersey that had set up a psuedo-corporation in Nigeria.
Re:Surprised (Score:2, Funny)
I'd keep a lookout for newly-opening sanitation companies opening in Nigeria. Also be suspicious of the 4 stocky Italian guys meeting outside the pork store.
Re:Surprised (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.waronspam.com/cases/ibrahim/ibrahim
http://thespamletters.com/letter.php?spamID=
Re:Surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
The info I got on the scam was that there is a definite Nigerian connection. A number of people duped in the scheme have gone off to meet people in Nigeria, some have disappeared entirely.
Scams of that sort are much easier to conduct in a country where laws are not exactly diligently enforced so Nigeria would be a much more likely base than the US. Compared to the Nigerian mafia Tony Soprano is a real small time player, all he has is a garbage business and a strip joint, in Nigeria they run the country.
Re:Surprised (Score:2)
In the nigerian case I tried (with some success) to persuade the upstream ISP to act as per their AUP. In other words consider it as SPAM and disconnect them to hell and gone.
In all SA, US and BE cases I have asked the ISP in question to try to both apply their AUP and contact the local law enforcement. To the extent of my knowledge the law was got involved only in one of the SA cases. The US law ISPs usually drop the ball in these cases.
No wonder that the number of these SCAMs we all get in our mailbox steadily increases. If the ISPs were doing the right thing (TM) this would not have been a profitable business. Too high risk levels.
Re:Surprised (Score:3, Informative)
You might be surprised at which schools are not accredited. Accreditation is most useful for schools without great reputations. After all, everyone knows about Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and similarly presigious places. They know that those schools aren't just handing out degrees to anyone with a big enough stack of cash, so who cares what some agency says? Some of those schools, though, might not want to do everything that whatever accrediting group claims is important, so they may give up formal accreditation to maintain their academic independence. In fact, when I got my degree, Caltech was not accredited as an institution for exactly that reason. Individual departments and programs were accredited by appropriate professional groups, but not the school as a whole.
OTOH, the average man on the street has probably never heard of Backwater State and doesn't know if they have a real program there or not. The only thing they have to go on is what the accrediting agencies say. If they want anyone to take their degrees seriously, they need the accreditation.
LGPL and GPL (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:LGPL and GPL (Score:4, Informative)
So say I create an offshoot of Mozilla called Boozila, I can pick the LGPL license for this project, which means anyone who derives from my work must abide by the LGPL (or they can go use the original Mozilla source minus my changes and use GPL, or MPL..up to them!).
In essence, it gives developers a bit of a choice over which licenses they want to support while using the codebase...They are free to choose GPL, LGPL or MPL.
Re:LGPL and GPL (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is to say, by LGPL'ing your software, you are effectively dual licensing it with the GPL anyway(it's implied).
So, what's the point?
Re:LGPL and GPL (Score:2, Informative)
No. No more than the GPL gives you the option to redistribute under the LGPL. If someone forked an LGPL project and changed it to the GPL, the original author would not be able to take the changes from the fork and fold them back into their own tree under the LGPL. Which is unfair, to say the least.
Re:LGPL and GPL (Score:2)
If I write a program, then I own the copyright on it. That is, I have the exclusive right to reproduce the program in any form. If you reproduce it, or even posess a copy, without the right to do so, then you are guilty of copyright infringement.
If I want to, I can grant you a license to my copyrighted work. Maybe I would do this in exchange for money, sex, or just because I'm a nice guy.
Closed source licenses (often EULA's) may require you to agree to certian terms in exchange for the grant of a license. In other words, I may not choose to grant you a license unless you (A) pay me, (B) promise not to decompile the program, (C) promise to run through the streets in your underwear screaming at 3 AM, etc.
Once you are granted a license, you are entitled to a copy under the terms of that license. The license may or may not include the right to reproduce the program in either source or binary form.
As the exclusive copyright owner, I can license the program to as many as I would like under whatever terms I would like. I can license you the right to have one copy of the program, and 3 backup copies. But I can license Joe the right to give his 25 closest friends copies, because I like him better. I could (probably in exchange for $$) license Microsoft to reproduce the program in binary form only as part of their closed source product. Finally, I could still turn around and license the program under the GPL. (A commercial vendor might rather pay for an alternative license rather than use the GPL.)
Finally, back to your question. As the copyright holder, I can grant different licenses. In fact, if I am a really nice guy, I can put the program under several different open licenses. You choose which license you wish to agree to, and then you better abide by the terms of that license. Nothing, other than the grant of a license by the copyright owner, gives you any right whatsoever to the program! For instance, with the GPL, if you don't agree to it, then you are not granted a license, and nothing else gives you a right to the program, so you are guilty of copyright infringement.
Other software, such as Open Office, for instance, is dual licensed. I'm sure others can point out even more dual licensed software. One or more public licenses do not prevent the copyright owner from also offering closed source licenses to other parties.
Does that clarify things?
Solaris 9 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Solaris 9 (Score:2)
The downside is that is ships with CDE by default, which is an eyesore (it can be changed, provided you have root access). I wonder if Sol 9 is shipping with CDE or Gnome?
BTW, I don't think Sun has a chance of being "Slashdotted" any time soon. They sit on one of the biggest pipes in the country. And just think of the purple server boxes their web servers sit on... (drool...)
Re:Solaris 9 (Score:1)
Re:Solaris 9 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Solaris 9 (Score:2, Informative)
CDE almost certainly. GNOME 2 is not yet ready and they probably need more integration to include it. Anyway, as with Solaris 8, the "Bonus Software" CD pack that comes with the OS (or OE, whatever
BTW, that Bonus pack also includes the GNU utils, Emacs, even KDE. Also StarOffice (at least Solaris 8 did) and Netscape 6.
Regards,
fsmunoz
Re:Solaris 9 (Score:1)
I believe Solaris 9 is initially shipping with CDE, but Sun no longer supports CDE. Sun will ship with and support Gnome2.0 later this year.
http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/gnome/events/
I use Solaris and Gnome1.4 at work, and MAN is Gnome slow. I'm really looking forward to 2.0 , which is supposedly faster in many areas.
Re:Solaris 9 (Score:1)
Gee, is Gnome region-encoded too?
Re:Solaris 9 (Score:2)
And no, there is currently noSolaris 9 for Intel. Again, believe me, I'd know if there were. :-)
Re:Solaris 9 (Score:3, Informative)
Solaris has many pluses like scheduler optimised for threading, working POSIX realtime priorities, etc but it also has a slow filesystem that is technologically inferior to anything else out there. It is also fairly buggy and ridden with security holes. The buggy bit is especially valid for x86. Bugs are of all varieties: non-working multicast on half of the network adapters, crashes, memory leaks, you name it. Neither ACPI nor APM are supported either which means that it will not work properly on laptops and many desktop class new machines. The range of supported hardware is also very small compared to what you get working with BSD or Linux. So it depends what you want it for, but you better get a proper server class system with SCSI to run it on.
Sun (the download section) got slashdotted to hell and gone when they released Soffice 5 for free for the first time.
Re:Solaris 9 (Score:2)
I think this is because Sun is like Apple in a way... they release Solaris only with SPARC in mind. They don't have to give a shit about support on Wintel/Lintel boxes cause that's not their main target audience. I mean, why waste their time if 90% of Solaris installations are on Sun hardware?
Six seems a bit low? (Score:1)
Not really. You don't need much manpower to send spam, and the more people you have the more you have to split the profits.
well, for the email part maybe ... (Score:1)
My mom (strangely) has gotten at least 2 handwritten, snail-mail letters in the Greater Nigerian Spam family. One of them referred to her as "The President." She found it pretty amusing
Over the phone, it took me a while to comprehend that she didn't mean email spam
They must have more than 6 people copying those bizarrely worded letters
timothy
Re:well, for the email part maybe ... (Score:1)
Solaris 9 really for intel? (Score:5, Informative)
Solaris 9 for Sparc
Solaris 8 for Intel
Are you sure they're releasing 9 for intel?
Re:Solaris 9 really for intel? (Score:1)
Re:Solaris 9 really for intel? (Score:2, Funny)
According to this page [sun.com] make reference to deferring and discontinuing Solaris for Intel...
Who knows why they say "We no long offer Solaris on Intel" on one page, and "yes, I want a free copy" on another page.
Developers: There is NO WAY IN HELL that we can develop or maintain Solaris Intel binaries. Not enought staff. We have enough work as it is! We should drop the whole projet.
Marketing translation: Coming in Q4, Solaris on Intel!
Linux vs. Solaris: sink or swim (Score:1)
No longer will questions over Linux's bizarre VM and Solaris's baroque scheduler plague admins, keeping us always in the dark as to which OS is truly better.
It's cool, but it's scary, especially for me, as a long-time Linux "junkie" and hacker (programmer, not the illegal kind!).
I wonder who will be prompted into playing catch up...Linus and the Linux gang (you know who you are), Sun and its suits (we know who they are!), or both!!!!
I can't wait.
Re:Linux vs. Solaris: sink or swim (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Linux vs. Solaris: sink or swim (Score:2)
Mind, it's not always been great (hence the nickname "Slowaris"), but it's been there.
Re:Linux vs. Solaris: sink or swim (Score:2)
Re:Linux vs. Solaris: sink or swim (Score:1)
Well I personally ran Solaris 2.4 & 2.5 on x86 before I switched to Linux, and I think Solaris 2.3 was available on x86 as well.
Then there was Solaris 2.6 before they jumped the version number to just '7'.
Re:Linux vs. Solaris: sink or swim (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, there was. Nine years ago this month (May 1993), Solaris 2.1 for x86 was released. Interestingly, x86 support was apparently dropped after that and didn't reappear until Solaris 2.4.
The releases of Solaris that have existed are 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.6, 7, 8, and (now) 9. Of these, 2.1, 2.4. 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.6, 7, and 8 have been available for Intel. 2.5.1 (and maybe 2.5?) was available for PowerPC as well. And Sun was the very first vendor to announce they had an operating system (that would be Solaris) running on an Itanium simulator. BTW, more Solaris version info can be found by going to google.com, typing in "Solaris FAQ", and hitting the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.
Also, as long as I'm clearing things up, Sun's statement about Solaris 9 and Intel availability was fairly ambiguous. Essentially, it said that when Solaris 9 was released, there wouldn't be a version for Intel. But Sun releases updates about every quarter, and it wasn't really said AFAIK that one of those wouldn't have Intel support. Probably it won't happen, but I'm just trying to say that "we will make the Intel version a lower priority and release it at our leisure" may be a valid interpretation of Sun's statements.
Umm. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Umm. (Score:2)
I should have said "The Unix operating system that Sun Microsystems Inc. Produces" and you would have been happy.
So they changed the name for marketing reasons. Whee.
Yes, I know that there were other changes as well.
Re:Linux vs. Solaris: sink or swim (Score:1)
Will it be piracy to copy Staroffice after midnite (Score:1)
Re:Will it be piracy to copy Staroffice after midn (Score:4, Informative)
so the answer is no.
(This assumes the EULA hasn't changed since the time you didn't read it.
For News Stories... (Score:5, Funny)
Corporate (Special) Trust Fund,
United Political Parties of America,
Contract Award Committee,
Washington DC USA
Dear Esteemed Nigerian Sir:
I am the Chairman of the Contract Award committee and my committee is solely responsible for awarding and payment of contracts on behalf of the United Political Parties of America. My Committee has received payments from Enron, Microsoft, Walt Disney, and many other large American companies that we then disbursed in accordance with United States law to the intended politicians in return for government services rendered to The Corporations. We overshot the contracted sum by USD35 Million. We have paid the politicians and withholding the balance of Thirty-Five Million United States Dollars. Since the existing domestic laws forbid civil servants from opening, operating and maintaining foreign accounts, we do not have the expertise to transfer this balance of funds to a foreign account.
Due to the salubrious investment and taxation climate in Nigeria, as outlined in FMF A26 Unit 3B paragraph "D" of the Auditor General of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Report of NOV. 1999 about annual estimated petroleum revenues of 28billion US Dollars, and especially opportunities relateed to the late Head of State General Sani Abacha who died on 8th June 1998, which we have become aware of through various emails we have received from your countrymen about the supply of Agricultural Machines and spare parts to the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, we have prepared to pay a commission to a worthy individual like yourself equal to 25% of the total sum transfered while 5% will be reserved for incidental expenses that both parties will incur in the course of actualizing this transaction and the balance of 70% will be kept for the Committee members.
If you know you are capable of helping us actualize our life's dream, you should send to me immediately the details of your bank particulars or open a new account where we can transfer the money(US$35M)which you will hold in trust for us until we come over there for our own share.
As soon as you open the account, send by e-mail to me immediately the details of the account viz: Name of bank, address, routing number, telex number, Account number, Tel and Fax number.You should also include the name of your company, your personal address, Tel and Fax numbers for further communication.
Note that this transaction will be concluded within 10 working days from the day you give your consent.
Sincerely yours,
Worgee G. Shub
Chairman of Disbursements,
Corporate (Special) Trust Fund,
United Political Parties of America,
Contract Award Committee,
Washington DC USA
tel: 1-900-CON-4YOU
NOTE THAT FOR THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF THIS TRANSACTION, WHEN YOU CALL ME THE FIRST THING YOU DO IS FOR YOU TO ASK ME WHAT IS THE CODE, AND MY RESPONSE WILL BE (055).IF I DO NOT TELL YOU (055) THEN KNOW YOU ARE NOT
TALKING TO ME. DROP THE PHONE IMMEDIATELY AND CALL ME BACK TILL I GIVE YOU THE CODE WORD. THIS IS DUE TO JAMMING TELECOMMUNICATION DEVICES IN YOUR COUNTRY AS A RESULT OF THE BOMB EXPLOSION IN A LAGOS MILITARY BASE.
(Thanks to RobLimo)
Re:For News Stories... (Score:3, Informative)
Solaris 9 on x86? (Score:2, Interesting)
Correction: Solaris 9 on Intel (Score:1)
Re:Correction: Solaris 9 on Intel (Score:2, Interesting)
But when I submitted the page I got this msg:
And of course it was *not* blank. And when I went back - i didn't have the option for Solaris 9 but then it was " Solaris 8 on Intel". Guess you gotta be quick...
Solaris 8 on Intel, not 9 (Score:1, Troll)
If you follow the link, you will notice that Sun is giving away Solaris 9 on the SPARC(TM) platform and Solaris 8 on Intel. There is no mention of Solaris 9 on Intel.
Solaris 9 on x86? I don't think so... (Score:2)
"Which version of the Solaris Operating Environment would you prefer?
Solaris 9 on SPARC(TM) platform, Solaris 8 on Intel
Re:Solaris 9 on x86? I don't think so... (Score:2)
From the confirmation page:
"Thank You! You will receive your FREE copy of the Solaris 9 Operating Environment on a DVD (while quanitities last) and be contacted by our sales organization shortly."
Re:Solaris 9 on x86? I don't think so... (Score:1)
Thank You! You will receive your FREE copy of the Solaris Operating Environment on a DVD (while quanitities last) and be contacted by our sales organization shortly.
No number in there...
Coincidence? (Score:5, Funny)
Juxtaposition saves the day.
Prison Defense Fund (Score:2, Funny)
/em holds hands *this* far apart (Score:4, Funny)
Whoa, whoa, whoa there sonny. Did you say "Xtender"? You mean they're making the damned thing even bigger?
*sigh* Someone save me a spot in line at IKEA; I'm gonna need a larger entertainment center.
P.S. - I kid, I kid. I swear. I love my XBox. I'm actually dying to slot Morrowind in it... whenever that game gets around to releasing itself. =)
Re:/em holds hands *this* far apart (Score:1)
"Revolution OS", not "Revolution codec"... (Score:4, Interesting)
Anybody had more luck than me?
Re:Is it really cross platform? (Score:1)
Re:Is it really cross platform? (Score:1)
Re:"Revolution OS", not "Revolution codec"... (Score:2)
And here are the direct links to the Real Player movies, since Mozilla just tells me to download the plugin and so I have to search through the source:
Trailer [ifilm.com]
First 8 Minutes [ifilm.com]
Re:"Revolution OS", not "Revolution codec"... (Score:2)
Flash may be able to play the quicktime video. Apple is suing Sorenson for licensing the codec to Macromedia.
But I have no idea if this is true or not, just a suposition.
-Russ
Re:"Revolution OS", not "Revolution codec"... (Score:2)
An mpeg would be really difficult to produce... right?
StarOffice no longer free after Wednesday??? (Score:2, Funny)
See you guys later, I'm off to download at least hundred copies of it.
Tsk. Tsk. Tim.... (Score:2)
If you are still in Knoxville, then it is a "pot luck." And, by Gawd, any carbonated drink is a Coke irregardless of flavor or manufacturer.
Re:Tsk. Tsk. Tim.... (Score:1)
Re:Tsk. Tsk. Tim.... (Score:2)
Re:Tsk. Tsk. Tim.... (Score:2, Interesting)
If you are still in Knoxville, then it is a "pot luck." And, by Gawd, any carbonated drink is a Coke irregardless of flavor or manufacturer.
Don't mean to be a nerd, but a potlatch was an orgy of a social festival from what is now the Pacific Northwest USA / Southwest CA in which the chieftan who gave away the most stuff to his opponents and killed the most of his own slaves was officially the most important chief for the next year. Sounds like quite the party to me, they probably ate better during the potlatch than otherwise.
Re:Tsk. Tsk. Tim.... (Score:2)
Solaris, the film. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Solaris, the film. (Score:2)
Re:Solaris, the film. (Score:1)
Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris is an amazing film, by the way, for the 99.999% of you who haven't seen it.
I'm in your 1 in 100,000 club. I've seen Solyaris three times. Still think it's an overrated film. And I tend to be forgiving in my estimation of films. :p
Re:Solaris, the film. (Score:2)
Re:Solaris, the film. (Score:2)
The film is interesting because it is a very "heady" sci-film. It is a film in which takes place far into the future and in futuristic settings, but portrays its characters as being conventional humans. There were no special effects at all used in the making of the film. But it still captures all of the confusion and complexity associated with sci-fi.
The only other film I can think of right now with a similar feel is Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville". Wait, that's not true, there is also David Cronenberg's "eXistenZ", another excellent heady sci-fi film.
Re:Solaris, the film. (Score:2)
Thanks!
Responding to your parent poster, there are those of us who like cerebral films who find Solyaris flawed as a cerebral film - and the director himself was one of them. Again, Stalker is far better. Solyaris loses focus, it does get tedious (and I like good slow films - I like Tarkvosky, I liked Gattaca). It was made partially as a sort of cinematic space-race to show that the Soviet film industry could produce a 2001. Alphaville is an infintely better film - daring, innovative, funny, a little absurd, avant-garde yet still citing tradition film narrative techniques, ahead of its time, and the quirky plot was completely redeemed by the lack of affect of thein the last scene - great Verfremdungseffekt.
I think Cronenberg as an auteur is better than most of his works. Dead Ringers is his best movie - I like eXistenZ, but it wasn't half as clever as it liked to think it was. Actually, I've always thought Naked Lunch got a bum rap, and was a better film than a lot of people gave it credit for.
Re:Solaris, the film. (Score:2)
Why would you watch a film three times that you consider overrated?!?
Re:Solaris, the film. (Score:2)
StarOffice Free (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is part of some master plan to conquer the problem of corporations who dont like free software because nobody is acountable.
Seems like a win-win situation - we get openoffice, corps get staroffice, microsoft get less sales.
"Whoops." (Score:2, Funny)
(a very humble) Pi
StarOffice no longer free after Wednesday??? (Score:1)
Wanted Moz contributors (Score:1)
I know it's probably been tried (Score:2, Informative)
"Uncle George" (Score:3, Funny)
Ma got the coffee makers while Pa got the coon hound.
Conspiracy's all around... (Score:2)
17 more and this would be one HELL of a conspiracy theory...
Re:Conspiracy's all around... (Score:3, Funny)
Missing Mozilla Hacker on CNN? (Score:1)
I KNEW I recognized that name.
Region-free: bad tactical idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Voilla! Now DeCSS has substantial non-infringing uses and since they have the explicit authorization of the copyright-holder, the DMCA can no longer be used against it.
Sure, it might cost them a few sales at the beginning. But the free press would more than make up for it when they quietly release region 1 disks a few months later.
Qt, rosegarden, etc. (Score:3, Interesting)
Gtk alternatives to Gtk (Score:2)
Re:Qt, rosegarden, etc. (Score:2)
Perhaps you could compare Denemo [sourceforge.net], for a gtk vs. qt kinda thing (denemo is further behind).
Denemo is focused on typesetting though. Staffs are just one of the things rosegarden can do.
All that said, I like gtk+, but notice qt audio apps getting ahead of gtk ones (with the very significant exception of Ardour [sf.net]
Ardour [sf.net] is only half done, but it rocks!
Re:Qt, rosegarden, etc. (Score:2)
What distribution are you using? I use Debian, wherein apt just downloads whatever versions of the various libraries I need along with the program. Whenever this comes up, RPM people claim their various systems use apt or some other system to solve the problem just as elegantly.
What are you doing on Linux that you weren't doing on Unix? As far as I can tell, the same problems should pop up with add-on packages and Unix.
Re:Qt, rosegarden, etc. (Score:2)
It would be fantastic if there were QPL/GPL versions of Qt for Windows and Mac. It would also be fantastic if I got a 25% raise. But I don't expect either to happen tomorrow.
Shared libraries: I'm not sure I understand your concern. Shared libraries may be relatively new to Unix, but all modern unices (except some embedded ones) have them. You problems with Linux are going to be identical under Solaris, AIX, HPUX, etc. Try installing Gnome from scratch under IRIX without going mad...
But perhaps you're using a distro/OS that's a bit too rigid when it comes to package management. My suggestion would be to try Debian or FreeBSD.
Re:Qt, rosegarden, etc. (Score:2)
Huh? I checked pretty recently, and the only Qt I saw that was free as in anything was Linux. Both the Windows version and the Mac version are $1000 licenses. Has this changed within the last month? Did I miss something on Trolltech's web page?
It would be fantastic if there were QPL/GPL versions of Qt for Windows and Mac.
It is fantastic that there's a GPL'd version of GTK for Windos.
You problems with Linux are going to be identical under Solaris, AIX, HPUX, etc. Try installing Gnome from scratch under IRIX without going mad...
Well, let's compare with the OS that constitutes 90% of the desktop Unix market: MacOS X. To install a MacOS X app: (1) drag it to the Applications folder, (2) double-click on it. That's the way it should be. The heavy use of shared libraries in Linux is just one of the many design decisions that makes it too hard to use for most desktop users.
Re:Qt, rosegarden, etc. (Score:2)
No, the heavy use of shared libraries that break binary compatibility between every freakin' release makes it too hard to use for most desktop users.
Re:Qt, rosegarden, etc. (Score:2)
2) Maybe the Windoze GTK has improved, but the last time I used a WinGTK application it stuck out like a sore thumb. It rather resembled a Unix app ported to Windows (duh!) rather than a native app. That's not what you want for a crossplatform toolkit.
Re:Qt, rosegarden, etc. (Score:2)
Rosegarden is a music sequencer/notation thing. It works in X11. It can export to variety of typesetting formats.
Lilypond is, on the other hand, just a music typesetting system - but it can, if so desired, also produce MIDI files.
Rosegarden's weakness is that it lets you actually put notes on staves (click click!) and export to MIDI beautifully, but it doesn't really do adequeate job at typesetting.
Lilypond's weakness is that it doesn't have a GUI - it just reads text file and produces a DVI file through TeX (than can then be dvips'ed or dvipdf'ed). However, the textual format brings its advantages, such as that it's mostly human-readable =)
I'm not a professional musician, or even an amateur one (I don't have a Vast Knowledge of the music theory, and the only instrument I can play well is my throat - hey, wolves are supposed to know how to sing =) but I found that using Rosegarden to notate, then midi2ly'ing and editing the produced source, is a wonderful way of making beautiful expressions of melody - and it's immediately fit to be included in E2 [everything2.com].
PS. GTK+ isn't so bad - especially with Glade. I use Glade with Perl, and it just rocks - The thing produces the GUI (bare GTK+ or with GNOME), all I need to provide are the signal handler functions... The reason GTK+ looks cryptic is that C wasn't really designed for OO and some macros are required =)
How fight the Nigerian Spammers (Score:4, Funny)
If you get a lot of the Nigerian spam, here's a cute way to fight them. All it takes is two or more spams. Set your email client to forge the address of the first spammer and use that to reply to the second spammer, then switch addresses and reply to the first spammer. Make the replies good, but not identical. Tell them how excited/honor/glad/etc you are to help them in their important/meaningful/lucrative venture.
You will never see the result of this, but you can count on each spammer trying real hard to con the other spammer for at least a couple of messages back and forth (these guys really are tenacious, I've been baiting them regularly and sometimes they just don't give up unless you out and out call them con men).
This attack wastes there time and energy on their like-minded fellow con-men rather than on the suckers that are their true marks. If even 10% of the people who got Nigerian spam did something like this, they would be overwhelmed and crushed by the weight of their own greed.
App server bundled with Solaris 9 (Score:2)
Anyhow, one of the reasons I was excited about trying rev 9 on x86 is Sun is bundling a J2EE app server with Solaris 9. Yes, I could use Jboss - but if Sun released something that even comes close to what I can do with Weblogic and it is free - I can use it for personal use. Alas, no x86 rev9.... No bundled app server.... Not quite sure what is going to be part of the Platform Edition [sun.com], but it looks interesting...
The Platform Edition of the Sun ONE Application Server is integrated into the Solaris 9 OE. The licensing terms are for NO COST, evaluation, development and deployment of this J2EE 1.3 compliant application server. The license allows a single administration server for each application server instance, which means that centralized management of multiple application servers is not provided with this product.
Xtender will not play back any region DVD (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, that's incorrect. According to the table here [xboxhackz.com], and similar info elsewhere, it will reset the region code that the DVD dongle writes to your Xbox, but you still require dongles from different regions to play import DVDs. Playback of any region DVDs may require modding the dongle, not just the Xbox itself.
However, the mod will of course allow you to play import games (great for me - if I move back to Australia, I'd prefer to take my Xbox & games with me, rather than selling the lot & buying it all over again in a new region).
Even more interesting, it will allow the Xbox to run unsigned code. This opens up the box completely to developers - for example, an ISO has already been released to switch the Xbox between PAL & NTSC (excellent :-) and the Enigmah-X group are rumoured to be working on a DivX player. Add an Ethernet-streaming MP3 player to that & you have a very versatile entertainment appliance. Not to mention that it'll give the Xbox Linux Project [sourceforge.net] a huge boost, and may even make that old MAME port [slashdot.org] useful :-)
This could give Xbox sales a significant boost. I'm sure Microsoft would be delighted - if they were actually making money on each sale.
Revolution OS on DVD (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the possibility that the DVD will be region-free, I was at the screening in Pasadena three weeks ago. J.T.S. Moore did a little Q&A at the end of the film; in response to a question, he did mention that a region-free, CSS-free release is a possibility that's being considered. From what I gathered, the decision isn't yet final. I also gathered that he doesn't have much love for the movie cartel [mpaa.org]. Neither the movie site nor iFilm mentioned specific release dates or prices.
(If it becomes available, I'd buy it. I liked it, and I'm not the open-source zealot that some people around here are (I tend to use whatever's appropriate for the task at hand). If a large enough number of copies get sold and it doesn't turn up on Gnutella, maybe it'll be a small lesson to the movie cartel about treating your customers right.)
Damn! (Score:2)
Re:The editors are morons! (Score:1)
Re:They arrested 6 people for the Nigerian Email? (Score:1)
You probably wouldn't have too, because you'd probably be dead.
Re:What is Solaris? (Score:2, Informative)
Solaris supports either Sun Cluster for high-availability purposes. Or for HPC, you can use Sun Grid computing. And, compared to Linux, Solaris scales to a much higher amount of CPUs "within the box".
So to answer your question, no it doesn't do Beowulf, but there are many, many other ways to scale your system.
Re:Qt (Score:3, Insightful)
You are right that Qt and GTK+ are divided along language lines. For the most part, those who prefer C prefer GTK+ while those who prefer C++ prefer Qt. User interfaces are naturally object oriented, so in my opinion it makes sense to use a language that does OO well, like C++. Thus, everything else being equal, Qt is the better choice for writing GUI applications. Yes, I know you can do OO in C. So what? You can do OO in assembly, but I don't know anyone who does.
Okay, to the meat of the issue: the best and most advanced apps. Since most old time Unix hackers are C fanatics, they tend to use GTK+. But that doesn't rule out the multitude of fantastic advanced applications for Qt such as KOffice, KDevelop, Doxygen, QCad, etc.