Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 23rd Aug 2008 15:37 UTC
Earlier this week, we ran a story on GoboLinux, and the distribution's effort to replace the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard with a more pleasant, human-readable, and logical design. A lot of people liked the idea of modernising/replacing the FHS, but just as many people were against doing so. Valid arguments were presented both ways, but in this article, I would like to focus on a common sentiment that came forward in that discussion: normal users shouldn't see the FHS, and advanced users are smart enough to figure out how the FHS works.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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2006-10-08
You're bringing up valid questions.
This is really something (along with the lib/ problem) that I find a bit strange in Linux. In BSD, there's a differnce between "the OS" and "installed packages", while Linux does not have this kind of separation. BSD puts system's stuff in /etc/, and local (not to the system belonging) parts in the respective /usr/local/etc/ directories. You can conclude the nature of a file from its name and it place within the file hierarchy.
This one continues the aspect mentioned before. Some Linux distributions have /opt/, others don't. In some cases, the purpose of lib/ and share/ subtrees is merged, too.
In general, additional software should go into /usr/local/ where the basic subtrees of the system (etc/, lib/, include/, bin/, share/) are replicated with the respective purpose. Games should obey this rule. But as I mentioned before, it's hard to say which things do not belong to the system because Linux distributions do not differ between OS and installed packages; in fact, the "OS part" is a set of packages chosen by the creator of the distribution. Rule: Everythin within /usr/local/ is extra stuff, everything outside is the system (mountpoints and home directories not mentioned here).
And /opt/... I think it has initally been intended as a directory that contains extra stuff that does not obay the subtree rule, i. e. no etc/, lib/ or bin/ separation, instead a name of the application with its own subtree.
Following the rule:
/usr/local/bin/foo
/usr/local/lib/libfoo.so.2
/usr/local/share/doc/foo/readme.txt
Not following the rule
/opt/foo/foo
/opt/foo/libfoo.so.2
/opt/foo/readme.txt
/mnt is intended as a temporary mount point for the system administrator (according to man hier).
/media is intended for (usually auto)mounted media, it contains a subtree for the devices (e. g. /media/cdrom, /media/dvd, /media/stick) or mountpoints are created from a label provided by the media itself or by the class of the drive (man geom).
Allthough the access to /floppy and /cdrom is much easier than their successors within /media (due to less typing), these mountpoints may already be deprecated.
No, because programs or users that use /tmp should keep an eye on the stuff they do on their own. This is because /tmp may disappear at system shutdown, or, may be empty after system startup, for example when /tmp leads to a RAM disk or some system setting clears /tmp at startup. It's the system's waste dump. :-)
I mentioned this before, it's complicated in Linux because it's hard to determine what's local and what's not. In BSD, it's obvious.
Only the last one should exist, an assumption from priority and precedence considerations.
Usually databases and logs that are created and managed by programs, not by the user.
If it's okay to lose it - /tmp. If it should be kept - /var.
In ~/public_html? :-)
You see this from my explainations, and some reasons why it is so. Alltough much of the stuff is well intended, there are inconvenient uses of the existing structures, maybe due to sloppyness, or due to general problems of interpretation. There are many differences between the many Linux distributions and among the UNIXes, too.