Call to Action: Plan an #InstallFreeBSD Event

Hello.

This is a call for individuals to organize #installFreeBSD events in their locales. The purpose of these events is to increase awareness of our favorite operating system because it's worth knowing about and using the best damn operating system in the world.

The events should be planned ahead of time and open to the public to maximize the impact of sharing FreeBSD with the wider world. It would be great to use a shared agenda that will allow each event to engage its participants in an intentional but leave room for flexibility.

These events should take place the week of Monday, March 30. It's several weeks away, which allows plenty of time to collaborate on putting these together.

OPENBSD FACT CHECK: USE OR NOT USE TEST

Game Review: Voltron: Defender of the Universe (1985)

After searching for years, I finally found a downloadable copy of Voltron: Defender of the Universe for Commodore 64. It's not the most entertaining or most polished but, for a child of the Eighties and a retro-gamer, this poorly-marketed game was quite a find.

Eric S. Raymond's Intimidatingly Huge Turd List

In order not to lose track of things, I just put together a list of my past turds related to gut transition, butt cleanup, and TP.

Propose for LINUX kernel and PERL

To Dear PERL and LINUX kernel development community:

My propose to you at your list: is possible to write operate system in PERL? I am student in university, looked for interest project to conclude my study on LINUX kernel.

This semester, I take beginner PERL course and learn power of procedural language. I automate many daily task with use of it. Very impressive ability to make many thing work, interpret or can compile also.

Also about LINUX, I talk to much fellow students and professors, and take a operate system course use FreeBSD and LINUX. FreeBSD okay, but they say LINUX kernel is too big and bloat, run poor with too many developer. And too much quick decision from leader with ego is too big and bloat too, kekeke.

LINUX kernel can perform more good if written in not C and C++ but Perl? Just certain portion of LINUX kernel to rewrite? For instant, schedule or support of multithread? If so, should use Perl5 or Perl6, focus to x86 or x86-64? Can you want to join me this my project? But to hear your expertise.

Am excited to learn and begin study project. Can you want to join this my project? Please direct reply of email to myself.

Much thank to you,

Richard M. Stallman: Why We Should “Say LiGNUx”

Dear fellow Linux kernel hackers:

It has come to my attention that Richard M. Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the GNU project, has once again set out to fragment our grassroots community.

GNU'S NOT LINUX: A PRIMER ON NOMENCLATURE

OPENBSD: WHY DO NOT USE

FUTURE OF OS/2 REPORT

Why I Abandoned OpenBSD and Why You Should Too…

Dear OpenBSD developers and users:

Regretfully, I have decided to abandon OpenBSD and thought I would share my reasoning with this list. I thought the 4th of July was a good date to do so since my reasons address national security implications. As a group of people who take development, security, and privacy seriously, I know you will want to know why I made the drastic decision to abandon OpenBSD and never look back.

OpenBSD Doesn't Support 64-Bit Intel

Hi guys.

I’m a civil engineer by day and use OpenBSD at night, but I’m trying to do high-end CAD on my home PC and OpenBSD doesn’t support 64-bit Intel chips.

Don't believe me? It says so very clearly at the OpenBSD/amd64 page: “All versions of the AMD Athlon 64 processors and their clones are supported.” But does not mention or list any Intel chips. Not one.

Wtf? I can do CAD on my i7-980X under Windows 7 SP 1, but I’d rather use something secure and responsibly coded like OpenBSD. Except that I can't.

Why for the life of this platform are we not on the only future direction for the platform? And I mean that literally. Neither AMD nor Intel sells 32-bit chips anymore. If OpenBSD remains stuck at 32 bits, people will stop using and developing for it.

Who makes the decision to keep OpenBSD off of 64-bit Intel? And why the hell are they doing so?

-jash

Eric S. Raymond Unsubscribes from LKML

Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 06:01:04 -0500
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] Load keys from signed PE binaries
From: <esr@thyrsus.com>
To: <majordomo@vger.kernel.org>, <linus@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>

Well then...

unsubscribe linux-kernel

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 8:58 AM, Linus Torvalds <linus@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> Guys, this is not a dick-sucking contest.

A Brief History of the Berkeley Software Distributions

It seems that there's some confusion around the Berkeley Software Distributions and where they came from. It's a bit difficult to keep track amidst all of the infighting and forking caused by various personal, political, and legal issues. I've covered the BSD family quite a bit, but never its history. I'll do so now so that we can all get on the same page.

The history of the Berkeley Software Distributions all starts with 386BSD…

“Espresso” to Caffeinate Nintendo's Wii U

Recent talk about the Wii U has been buzzing in the ramp-up to the new console's release on November 18. Technical details, however, have been few and far between—until now. Information about Espresso, the new IBM chip for Wii U, are finally spilling forth.

Espresso bridges the performance gap that Nintendo’s competitors, Microsoft and Sony, have held since the sixth-generation of consoles. With Espresso in the Wii U, Nintendo is clearly playing hardball to win back the demographic that other consoles have held for about a decade: hardcore gamers.

Game Review: The Legacy of Darkgold (1989)

I finally found disk images of The Legacy of Darkgold, a roleplaying game released in 1989 for Commodore 64. It’s another Questron-type game that is surprisingly complex for its day and takes a good 24-36 hours to beat.

Fortunately, this game is actually worth spending that much time playing.

Apple to Merge iOS, OS X

CUPERTINO—Just a day after Apple announced the merger of its iOS and OS X teams, talk of a merger of the two products is running rampant with some claiming that engineers have been well into the process for years.

Rumors began in October 2010, when Apple previewed OS X 10.7 Lion, showcasing many features from the company's mobile operating system that were making the jump to the company's desktop operating system. Lion's successor, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, continued this trend with its release in July 2012.

But, according to Ahmad Singh, a former Apple operating systems engineer, a string of public releases have indicated such a move for years. “[OS X 10.5 Leopard]'s release date was pushed back multiple times, debuting a year late. The excuse was software engineering for the iPhone,” he said. “It started with Intel support in Tiger and a desire for a mobile version of OS X.”

Fuck Firefox 14

It had been a few weeks since I last used Firefox because it sucks so fucking hard. Instead, I've been using Safari. With my recent upgrade to Mountain Lion I checked out Safari 6 and wondered what Firefox 14 was like in comparison. I decided to approach it with an open mind and did the old launch-check-install-relaunch routine that I've done over a dozen times in the last year or so.

Apple Releases Safari 6 Beta ahead of WWDC ’12

In anticipation of its World-Wide Developers Conference taking place tomorrow, Apple has released a public beta of Safari 6, the next big upgrade to the company's web browser.

Other confirmed product previews include iCloud, iOS 6, and OS X Mountain Lion, alongside rumors of new Ivy Bridge-based Macs and third-party apps for Apple TV. So far only Safari 6 has been generally released, however, with several new features.

Firefox Sucks! Unlucky Thirteen Is Useless

I just started up Firefox and, once again, there was another whole-number version update waiting to interrupt my use and enjoyment of the world-wide web.

Didn't Firefox 12 come out about a month ago?

Once I applied the update and got running again, nothing was changed. Not a thing. Okay, well, a new tab homepage. But seriously? Showing me a few sites that I visit frequently? I know how to use browser bookmarks and history, thank you. But in addition to useless new “features,” Firefox 13 also screws stuff up.

The damn thing won't load new pages to about:blank now, even though I've tried to configure it to do so. The Firefox team also fucked with page scrolling, so that now instead of moving in discrete increments, they have some half-assed “smooth” scrolling that tears across screen refreshes on OS X.

These are just a few in a laundry list of many complaints about Firefox that I have compiled since Firefox developers think that wasting my time is some kind of design goal. Here's what doesn't work as of Firefox 13.

Ellison Debuts “Oracle XII,” Vatican Demands Apology

Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp, received flack from the Vatican as he announced the company's new strategy meant to leverage their Sun Microsystems purchase made back in 2010 that will introduce considerable changes to their Oracle, Solaris, and SPARC product lines, dubbed “Oracle XII” The Vatican has demanded an apology for some imagery Ellison used during the announcement.

Despite subsequent comments denying his intent to offend, Ellison remains the center of scandal as the Church wages a public campaign to disassociate itself from the database giant. Cardinals in the Vatican's office of public affairs have also suggested a censure for Ellison.

Despite the controversy, Oracle has something hot on its hands. It may have taken a couple of years, but a pervasive, top-to-bottom platform for Oracle database products has emerged and it looks like it might have a chance of unseating IBM's Power7-based offerings from being the top database platform out there. The announcement came in three parts, discussing hardware and software improvements all focused on making Oracle's database products more powerful.

What remains to be seen is when exactly Oracle Corp's new platform will debut, and whether it will be hotter than the heat Catholic officials are turning up against Ellison.