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GNU is Not Unix

There Were 19 New GNU Releases Last Month (fsf.org) 30

"Nineteen new GNU releases in the last month," reads a "July GNU Spotlight" announcement from the Free Software Foundation.

Here's (edited and condensed) descriptions of some of the highlights:
  • GNU Datamash (version 1.8) — a command-line program performing basic numeric, textual, and statistical operations on input textual data files (designed to work within standard pipelines).
  • GNUnet (version 0.17.2) — a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking. "The high-level goal is to provide a strong foundation of free software for a global, distributed network that provides security and privacy. GNUnet in that sense aims to replace the current internet protocol stack. Along with an application for secure publication of files, it has grown to include all kinds of basic applications for the foundation of a GNU internet."
  • GnuTLS (version 3.7.7) — A secure communications library implementing the SSL, TLS and DTLS protocols, provided in the form of a C library.
  • Jami (version 20220726.1515.da8d1da) — a GNU package for universal communication that respects the freedom and privacy of its users, using distributed hash tables for establishing communication. ("This avoids keeping centralized registries of users and storing personal data.")
  • GNU Nettle (version 3.8.1) — a low-level cryptographic library. It is designed to fit in easily in almost any context. It can be easily included in cryptographic toolkits for object-oriented languages or in applications themselves.
  • GNU Octave (version 7.2.0) — a high-level interpreted language specialized for numerical computations, for both linear and non-linear applications and with great support for visualizing results.
  • R (version 4.2.1) — a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics, along with robust support for producing publication-quality data plots. "A large amount of 3rd-party packages are available, greatly increasing its breadth and scope."
  • TRAMP (version 2.5.3) — a GNU Emacs package allowing you to access files on remote machines as though they were local files. "This includes editing files, performing version control tasks and modifying directory contents with dired. Access is performed via ssh, rsh, rlogin, telnet or other similar methods."

Click here to see the other new releases and download information.

The FSF announcement adds that "A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance."


Comment Re:The Achilles heel of this... (Score 1) 394

In a perfect world, all drivers would be open source, but sadly, this world is far from perfect.

It would be nice however if the hardware vendors for older/outdated devices would just open source the drivers once the product has reached its end of life.

Additionally, if a company goes out of business, the software produced by that company should automatically fall into the public domain. Of course this would require the company to give a rats ass at that point, and actually release the source.

Just my opinion.

Comment Re:Any statisticicians out there? (Score 1) 428

I agree that 11 returns seems excessive. But of the eight people I personally know who own xbox 360s (not including myself), ALL OF THEM (including me) have experienced a failure that required a replacement. Of those eight, four of them have had to replace the console more than once. And one of them just sent in his third.

Granted, this is a small sampling of the overall Xbox 360 ownership population, but since these people are geographically spread across the United States, and purchased thier original consoles at different times, it's unlikely they recieved the consoles from the same manufacturing run. So I feel that while small, it's probably a fairly good sampling.

I'm currently replacing my first one which lasted a solid 5 months. I know that I dont have any power problems because I monitor the line quality via my UPS. In addition, I had the console plugged in to a high end surge supressor to eliminate any spikes. Ventillation shouldn't have been an issue either as the console was placed on top of my entertainment system's cabinet. So I dont feel that I used it in an unusual way or that the environment should have played a role in it's demise. I will say that it ran HOT! So there's a good chance a lot of people are roasting them inside of an enclosure of some type.

Bottom line is that it seems to me that these console do have a problem! Most likely a thermal one.
I'm not a statistician, but Microsoft's claim of a 3-5% failure rate is probably a tad on the low side of reality.

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