arthur

you can sure try...but you might have rejected hunks and errors which might be difficult to resolve unless you're good with kernel hacking. i mean, what does the mandrake kernel have that vanilla kernels dont? supermount? nitro has that too. so I recommend vanilla+nitro, not mandrake+nitro. There are enough goodies in the nitro patch. :)

um...i use gedit to write perl, bash scripts, and c. guess I'm an old-fashioned one :unsure:

er, yahoopops? evolution and thunderbird can do that too...just go to the yahoo website and set it up, then configure your mail client.

er...this is starting to look hard...i need more than a kernel recompile... :sad:

IRDA is a pain to work with in Linux, but i'm just starting to work on it as a "project". At the moment though, i recommend google.

I was going to say that myself. i suggest you check the md5sums of those CDs you're using...

uh...shorewall uses iptables, and you can insert a rule for that specific ip address that drops/discards any packets from that address.

I have another solution... :D using iptables... just type (as root) iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp -j DROP this will disable all internet surfing, IM, and anything else that uses a tcp connection. If you use dial-up or ADSL, change 'eth0' to 'ppp0'. You have to make sure this command always runs at startup, but ONLY for your kid's account, otherwise you'll lock yourself out of the internet as well. If that accidentally happens, type "iptables -F" and your netfilter stack will be flushed (down the toilet).

You can make your modem/ethernet card accessible to only a group of users, and create a group called "internet". Make yourself a member of that group thru MCC (UserDrake). Then, use chmod to make /dev/eth0 (or ppp0, whichever you use for the internet) owner and group-accessible only (which probably might be rw-rw----). You have to include root as a member of that group too. Now this might be quite complicated...I haven't tested this too, so simpler solutions are welcome. Anyone? NB. The device permissions would disappear after a reboot, so you have to run chmod again. You can set it to run at every boot using the init scripts. btw, welcome to the board!

/me hugs my Portage :D

iTunes isn't bloated. It's cool, rhythmbox is based on it (rhythmbox isn't as good, though). For streaming audio and such - playlist management is easier on iTunes and its ilk.

signal processing can be written down as mathematical formulas. I think the "gray area" you mention is that computer code sometimes works more "mathematically" than "mechanically" which is where the current patent system is based on. I mean, the design for a DVD system (high-precision stepper motor, laser operating at around 700nm, etc) works well with patents. However, computer code may go like..."generate 2 prime numbers m and n, then raise the data value by the power n..." But the patents you've mentioned you said yourself that there are hundreds of ways to circumvent. Then how could a software patent be in any way protective? Although I agree, trying to "get around" patents will jumpstart innovation in the FLOSS community. Although I think it already has a lot of that. And it may be just the mathematical property of programming that's driving the programmers on the anti- side absolutely nuts...

just a quick question...isn't mp3 just a form of signal processing, which you said wasn't patentable?

saying that software patents would not harm FLOSS is a bit too optimistic. It certainly WON'T kill FLOSS as some doomsayers like to trumpet. but it will hurt linux in the sense that its compatibility, which is part of its marketing strengths, will suffer. Imagine if OpenOffice could not write documents in .doc format anymore. There would be a lot of rewriting going on in linux if software patents push through, and some of that will be good. but some projects will die. Maybe, probably linux could quantify its losses which would make it easier to manage, but a slowdown in its growth is likely to happen. I just find it really annoying that Microsoft stands to gain the most from it. Its size is the biggest obstacle to innovation IMO, not software patents. This is a good discussion, I'm learning a lot. please keep the posts coming.

aRTee...yes, not all cases will end up in court, but those "some cases" will still add up to millions. And millions wasted in buying and registering patents, there's no way out of that... now, what are patents for? for a healthy atmosphere of innovation. But the system assumes those people innovating have equal capabilites of owning, buying and creating patents. This is not the case, those capabilities are HUGELY tipped towards MS' end of the scale. Monopolies are the last environments I'd expect a patent system to work. Do you think it would work in the current monopoly?

i have to add...patents are for the purpose of better capitalism - competition. So I don't think software patents are appropriate while Microsoft holds a 90% market share since it only improves their position. Once theres' about even market shares (say, 40% MS, 30% linux, 30% macs and others) then software patents MIGHT be a good idea to improve competition in the industry. But IMO don't even think about it while MS has more than 50% market share.

Patents have been important in the growth that the 20th century has experienced. But progress can still be made without patents, since all that "unauthorized imitation" that patents aim to prevent are a part of the business world's "survival of the fittest" principle. The best or luckiest product will win, but a lot of ugly things would happen too. Now although I have to admit this is a grey area, since software patents could prevent microsoft imitating "multiple desktops" and such and such if the patent owner was an Open Source organization or individual... You also say that the specifics in the patents themselves are important - i agree. But legalese is very hard to understand and millions of dollars would be wasted in courts arguing over the wording of patents. Millions of dollars would be wasted in buying and enforcing patents. What for? For a healthier competitive atmosphere?

aRTee, those examples are not just patentable. They've already been patented. MP3 is patented, progress bars are patented, and the whole lot of stuff is already patented. The debate here is whether the patents are going to become legally viable. Unisys started charging royalties for the LZF algorithm(for .gif files) years ago, which IMO is ridiculous (but fortunately their 'patent' expires next year) but not everyone paid for it. Making software patents legal would make them legally more able to squeeze money from their invention of a mathematical formula. One good thing came out of it, the invention of PNG graphics. But overall i think software patents are still bad. Microsoft is currently registering 1,000 software patents a year. The Open Source community would never be able to afford that.

I remember making an iptables-ruleset (firewall) that was wayyy too secure. I ended up not being able to connect to the X server, so starting GNOME always failed. oops. :woops:

yup, Munich just switched to Linux, and it's quite important. They just spent a lot on the migration, and I don't think they'd let go of that without a fight.

stayed with mandrake for a few months, just to learn the ropes, then switched to gentoo. i was planning on distro-hopping, but i stopped after one hop - gentoo grew too much on me. I got the ubuntu cds in the mail, but I'm not planning to switch at all, I'll just try out other distros if i get another PC. so the ubuntu cds will stay unused for a while...

software patents...stupid idea. like patenting a mathematical formula... why the hell do they get granted in the first place? better write to the patent offices...

viruses? what are those? :P

Nominated Screenshot nothing special, just matching colours i think. :) gnome goodness.

argh. the Ghrome GTK and Sedation GTK themes are crashing my xmms and Eye of Gnome