Posts by karlkarl

Some of them I publish and release, but so many people are only interested in "newer" stuff that it often isn't worth the time.

I rarely offer patches back upstream. Mostly because they wouldn't accept them, gutting build systems, ripping out features is not the direction that these projects go. Hence the article on "bloat" I suppose ;)

Some of my work to replace the Gtk in GtkRadiant with FLTK got upstreamed in FLTK itself though (Fl_Flex): https://github.com/fltk/fltk/blob/master/FL/Fl_Flex.H

I only really care about Windows 7 and OpenBSD platforms. Linux tends to build due to the simplification of the software but I only get the urge to give it a shot once in a blue moon. Part of my work on Half-Life was to *remove* Android support because I find it a mess and was damaging the codebase.

Agreed.

I simply don't engage with DRM. It is so easy to avoid these days.

Re: FALSE

Imagine you have 2 unsafe sections:

1) One that allocates some data and passes it out as a wrapped object.

2) Another that causes the data to dangle.

You are passing that wrapped object around potentially the entire codebase. I would now say that 100% of the Rust codebase is compromised. The issue is the order / state of calls that ultimately called that 2) section. This is likely why Rust is finding it hard to establish a common GUI library; those things are very risky with regards to dangling data when wrapping and making bindings.

Yes, this is better than an entire codebase of C that could also be compromised but that loss of direct interop with C may not be worth the difference. Or at the very least, C++ is a pretty strong compromise between the two.

Re: Improvement?

For ISA bus and parallel ports, then DOSBox (or another VM/emulator tech) really is your only choice.

ISA and parallel at least are very tricky to track down on "modern" hardware.

Re: I guess no further extention to the deadline possible

I don't disagree.

But the Lindy Effect is currently suggesting that Solaris 10 will likely be the last remaining OS on earth, outliving all of us.

I mean, seriously, if I knew the lifespan that Solaris 10 was going to have in 2005, I would have absolutely prioritised it over even Linux. 20 years is almost an entire career length.

Re: In the early versions of MacOS it just blew up..

Indeed. Though, I would have thought that in a "debug runtime" build expensive checks could have been done to alert the programmer of this error. This wasn't done and I am slightly surprised it wasn't.

Same with C++ actually, in debug builds, similar to Microsoft's debug iterators we could:

- Lock operator-> to prevent use-after-free of "this"

- Lock operator[] to prevent invalidation of elements during access

- Return some lock passthrough on operator T& to prevent use after free during use as a parameter reference

Yes, it would run slowly (possibly slower than ASan) but in this kind of debug build who cares? It would be a really good compromise.

Re: A better long-term approach...

Yes it is. Its all of ours to weaponise. So long as software freedom is our aim.

Have a read up on the recent article on the ways that the free software community is approaching this:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/27/bruce_perens_post_open/

Re: Apple in Russia?

It exists to extract money from people without giving them much in return.

So I can exactly see how a US company has the relevant blessings to extract money from the Russian people.

Re: GitHub

Not just source, I used to dump loads of random binaries on there too (basically a poor man's dropbox).

That said, I haven't engaged with GitHub since they forced consumer 2FA. It was finally the kick up the butt I needed to jump back to my own infrastructure. Everything is just cleaner and more fun again now.

Indeed. As I mentioned "offline backups just feel like a random cludge of files with no real versioning"

Re: Why?

> I guess all those apps I have installed, not from the App Store, must have been compiled on my machine then...

> They're all signed (an ad hoc signature is fine). This is not necessarily a bad thing, but some people are concerned that over the long run Apple will seek to "iOS-ize" macOS and have only known signatories, certified by Apple.

Its worse than that. Those apps, not from the App Store have been signed by a certificate that the authors have had to beg Apple for (and pay for the privilege). This is the same as Microsoft's Windows RT developer license.

As I mentioned, try compiling a binary on your machine and try running it on your second machine. I bet you can't run it without also begging Apple (and paying) for the privilege. Basically the developers who write software you enjoy using are being forced through stupid hoops by Apple.

Heh, quite a good hack.

I know one version of SFU/Interix/SUA used OpenBSD as the base, but I didn't know any that were binary compatible with a certain Unix. I don't suppose you recall?

There was that BSD on Windows I recently heard about: https://virtuallyfun.com/2023/12/08/bsd-on-windows-things-i-wish-i-knew-existed/

I *think* QuarterDeck's DESQview/X provided a Motif implementation on a "commercial OS" too but perhaps that was licensed.

Re: Telemetry

It came with DRM.

People should have said "no" back when it was introduced in Windows XP.

Too late now.

Re: "twice as repairable"

Hah, indeed. The reparability doubles, year on year!

0 * 2 * 2 * 2

= 0

... but to Apple's defense. At least the machines are getting thinner and thinner so they take up less space in the landfill :)

Re: When will Big Oil face the heat?

> Oil companies don't use fossil fuels - people do.

No we don't, our boilers do. Lets pass the blame further and shout at the (warm, toasty) metal box!

Re: Bull

Have you read through the commits?

They peck at the code because no-one understands it anymore since the Rotor SSCLI days.

> That won't help, 32 bit games won't be usable either, unless the developer releases 64 bit binaries

What? Of course they will. My old 32-bit compatible mac will still run 32-bit software fine... Why wouldn't it? If I ever by a computer, I don't send it to landfill when the next chip comes out... Is that a rare use-case these days? haha.

But by the 32-bit Steam DRM platform no longer being able to activate against Valve's servers, it *will* break it in an artificial (and in my opinion, criminal) manner.

This is all theoretical of course. I would never engage with a DRM product.

(unless someone suggests never being able to reformat my machine again or replace the hard drive once the games are activated? Of course that is a daft suggestion).

Re: As I wrote about something else a month or so ago ...

These days I honestly find "good" and "for everybody" to be mutually exclusive properties. Many projects have to walk a very gray wall, full of compromise.

I personally have found 9front to be very welcoming, particularly through my (admittedly brief) chats about git9 with Ori Bernstein (ori@) a while back.