World: r3wp

ROS - rebol open source :-)

S.O.S  -  "Spagetti Open Source "

COS - Carl's open source :-) Rebol with a cause :-)

I do not want to download anything from the net, nor should that 
be necessary..
 I think thats the main problem, specially with debian..

 and found that Debian is really the meat behind a lot of these distros

 thats right. Which is why i suggested knoppix. Which is a debian 
 modified to run from cd without needing harddisk. Which was lthen 
 modified to dump itself to hd as debian-installation. Which is a 
 nice way to install debian IMHO.

btw - yesterday I tried to manually remove one virus but I give up 
.... the virus is more clever or it seems there is more than one 
virus involved .... :-)

but using some Sysinternals tools I managed to find out, where the 
stuff is hiding etc ... but no time now ...

I tried Bart's PE installer, which very easily let's you make your 
bootable Windows CD .... but it screwed my czech language ...

so I tried 2002 version of my friend's Knoppix and I was impressed 
(but I miss my Total Commander, huh :-)

I am willing to give new Knoppix or Ubuntu a try - what do you suggest 
please for small, 1CD intro, which is able to easily mount your NTFS 
partition and let's you to delete windows, program files, or simply 
to back-up some files and does not screw your filesystem?

intro=distro

mepis.org

Writing to NTFS is always a problem on Linux, though

yep, i don't suggest you trying to change the ntfs partition from 
linux.

i have another partition with a clean windows install, to use for 
repair opeartions on ntfs.

Well, I have tried captive ntfs and it worked well (no accessive 
testing, though). It uses your NT/XP drivers ... http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/

interesting, bookmarked that. it will come useful.

accessive = excessive

Yes, it was for me ;-)

I think part of the "mess" of OSS is the perception that it is a 
single movement, a unified army of developers. That is completely 
wrong, even though some of the louder proponents of open source work 
hard to make you believe exactly that. Even folks who understand 
the truth have their perceptions colored by all the from the Eric 
Raymonds and Richard Stallmans of the world. Then they wonder how 
this OSS army is going to take over the world when they can't get 
their act together and produce easily usable apps written in clear 
code. Individual developers and teams do all the time, but that's 
hardly an army.

brian, I 100% agree

all the ... from the Eric Raymonds


A little unintentional self-censoring there, but I'll let you fill 
in the blank on your own ;)

It is amazing how we Open Source can divide people. There is gray 
all over the place and this is not a black and white issue. I think 
this is not about the armies of developers, or the quality, but about 
the ability to move fwd and construct on the disclosure of code. 
For as much bad applications there are in Open Source, there are 
good ones, OpenBSD, GCC, Postgress, and the one Rebol incorporated 
AGG.

Brian, exactly. The fact that MS still dominates the world of OS 
and Apps when there is so much OSS is a very good example.

I would never have thought that we would still be here. And it is 
disappointing to watch Europe and Asia now fall in step with USA 
on total MS adoption.

If you want a really good example, check this one out. Abiword.

I thought it was a great work at first, because people would not 
need to buy Word anymore. But, the more you use it, the more problems 
you have.

I had my son use it at college, but he had so many problems with 
it and the way it printed, that he had to stop. I've had that same 
experience with it.

So I would not say that open source model is bad or better that the 
proprietary model when producing quality applications. They are just 
models. The advantage of Open Source is that some day in the future 
anybody digging on an scavation in america will find an OpenBSD or 
Linuxe Source CD and my be able to learn from that src code. Because 
there is a mass of distribution of this CDs and it is available wideley, 
I think people will avoid reinventing the wheel. Which usually happens 
when a proprietary project go bust, and the only ramains are in tapes 
in a vault where nobody knows the *pearls* that it contatins.

The core of the problem is that OSS people write their software, 
then they move on. After all, they cannot spend all their time on 
it, because they need to feed themselves.

Not everyone moves on of course.

Jaime, however, the issue is single-to-noise.

So many times I've thought: ah, let me go look at some open source 
to learn how they solve the problem!

I understand but some signal is better than no signal.

And the code is so horrible and disoranized, that what should be 
done in 2 pages spans 5 modules of source code!

Thats the reason some projects flourish and others die, or lag behind. 
AGG vs Cairo.

So, it has been for me extremely rare to find it educationally useful. 
However, there are the gems, and things like AGG are shining examples. 
I wil grant you that. (But then, I do not try to understand AGG, 
I just accept it for a masterpiece that it is.)

I think the community around some of the projects is equally important, 
and also if the main person who is pushing it is willing to keep 
making it shine.

As I said is not black or white. I think for me is more about freedom 
of information, than process. I can not learn much of a black box. 
With the scientific method I can describe the balck box, but not 
necesarily reconstruct it.

So black boxes are easier to comprehend and reproduce than others, 
but does it make sense to waste time when information can be free.

On the other hand I find that keep information close makes for very 
good biz in many areas.

So, would you really want to see the 100M lines of MS WinXP source 
code? Really?

For me, I care less about it.

I don't care about things like how Abiword works. Black box is fine. 
But, it better work correctly.

So, would you really want to see the 100M lines of MS WinXP source 
code? Really?

 I personally don't, but the chinnese goverment does. ;-) (For security 
 reasons).

So does European union in fact.

it's a load of crap. who has the resources to go through that? and 
do they really expect to find security holes by doing it?

Black box is fine. But, it better work correctly.

 I agree completely. The problem I face is that many good black boxes 
 that I used to appreciate, stop being useful to me for any of these 
 reasons:
1) Lack of vendor support
2) Vendor abandon the project (Bankarupy, Acquisitions, etc).

3) The software was never made public, so there is no way to change, 
modifiy it, adapt it, or evolve it.

I have a solution to all those.

I still wonder how much reinvention has happend. What will be of 
the world if the Church hasn't burnd so many accient text, from the 
greeks, to the incas.

For example, we have a source escrow account inside some mountain 
 in Colorado. ;)