May 2012 - openSUSE Users - openSUSE Mailing Lists

Re: [opensuse] gnu libc manual wrong?? concat (const char *str, ...) doesn't work...
by Dirk Gently 16 May '12

16 May '12

Ted Byers wrote: >> From: Dirk Gently [mailto:dirk.gently00@gmail.com] >> Sent: May-15-12 3:58 PM >> To: opensuse >> Subject: Re: [opensuse] gnu libc manual wrong?? concat (const char *str, ...) >> doesn't work... >> >> Carlos E. R. wrote: >>> On 2012-05-13 01:03, Anton Aylward wrote: >>>> For the likes of us, the whole 'first to market and never mind the >>>> bugs' attitude is JUST PLAIN WRONG! >>> >>> You tell that to the bosses. They know not anything about programming, >>> just money. >>> >> >> >> What's needed is some liability lawsuits. All of these "Not fit for any purpose" >> on software packaging are just so much nonsense. I would argue in court that >> they are nothing less than quaint decoration, because if the software vendor >> REALLY believed that the software is not fit for any puropose, then they >> wouldn't have gone to the trouble of advertising its capabilities (both in the >> media and on the package >> itself) and writing and distributing user manuals expressing EXACTLY what the >> software is supposed to do (regardless of whether it actually does it or not). >> >> Once management finds out that legally defending defective software takes all >> the profit out of the "We got our bugware to market first" >> strategy, we will see a change. >> >> Product liability law doesn't tolerate this sort of shoddyness for even a simple >> lawnmower, why should it be tolerated in software which has far greater >> impact on humanity? >> > It doesn't much matter what the laws have to say if you're in a David and Goliath situation. My father used to work in Quality control at an electronics company that was, and still is, a huge international entity. In that role, he worked closely with the design engineers. Way back when I was a kid, he told of a story of an interaction he had with this kid fresh out of university whose first task was to design a new transformer for the company's home entertainment products. He was given the requirements and given time to finish his design and make a few prototype to prove his design met the requirements. After a suitable amount of time he had finished the design and prototypes, and presented them to his supervisor stating that his design met the requirements specified to a finer degree of tolerance than was required, and that his transformers could be guaranteed to last a lifetime. His supervisor examined the work and found the kid's claims justified, and then told the kid, "OK , now go back and modify the design so that mean time before failure is 3 years." The kid was devastated that the boss would demand such a sacrilegious debasement of his first commercial product, and spent hours talking about it with my father. My father told him that if he wanted to remain employed, he'd have to do as he was told, however obscene that act seemed. While my father was as outraged by the demand placed of the kid, he knew there was nothing either of them could do about it. In brief, my father gave him the realist's perspective: management makes the decisions about what gets done by whom, and you either give them what they want or they will get rid of you. He had seen it often enough before. Management wanted a product that would fail quickly, so that the consumer could be more easily tempted to buy the next latest and greatest product. Planned obsolescence he called it. I call it deliberately marketing products you know are defective, but in a way that t he defect doesn't appear until after a usually short warranty period. My landlord told me of a problem he had with his car, which was just 3 years old. There is a known fault with the electrical panel in that it corrodes easily, but generally not until after he warranty period has expired. He was told it would cost $10,000 to fix it, and even though the dealer and manufacturer agreed it is a manufacturing defect, it is not covered under warranty because it failed after the warranty expired. Fortunately he knew a chap that works as a mechanic and who knew both how common the problem is and how to fix it practically for a song (so there was an inexpensive fix that the dealership also would have known about but chose not to use). Clearly the attitude my father experienced with management half a century ago is still commonplace among large manufacturers now. And thy get away with it because no-one who cares about the issue has pockets deep enough to challenge them. And it isn't jus t the sof tware industry in which this happens. It is all industries. > > Those working for large companies often don't have a choice in the quality of product they deliver. They deliver what management mandates. And the consumers don't have pockets deep enough to let them fight a huge international manufacturer. > > Product liability laws sound great, but what good are they if no-one enforces them, and if no-one who cares about product quality has pockets deep enough to fight the large corporations on the matter. > Three words: Class Action Lawsuit. It's amazing how many hours a lawyer will work, without any money up front if he thinks he can get a 1/3 cut of a $1 settlement for each of 10 million or more plaintiffs, all combined into only one court case. You don't go after a complete giant like Microsoft, you just go after a smaller vendor of similarly shoddy software who can't afford to keep a case in the preliminary phase for 10 years, and thereby set a precedence. Once that's done, then you can go after the big fish. And if a judge gets a product liability suit against, oh, say Windows in general for being a crash-happy mess ... with precedence set in an earlier case .... then he'll entertain strategic delying motions for only so long... after all the judge is just as sick and tired of paying through the nose for crapware as everyone else. > I don't think we will ever see a significant change. > I'm still holding out hope. > Cheers > > Ted > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner(a)opensuse.org

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Re: [opensuse] gnu libc manual wrong?? concat (const char *str, ...) doesn't work...
by Dirk Gently 16 May '12

16 May '12

Anton Aylward wrote: > Dirk Gently said the following on 05/14/2012 04:44 AM: >>>> the profs in the computing department were heavily involved with the >>>> hardware and doing "Control Systems" and other practical work rather >>>> than abstract things and the profs in "Electronics" were doing things >>>> that needed computers to analyse the data on control stuff in the lab. >> >> That's analog circuits stuff, and has nothing to do with the teaching >> of programming techniques as a discipline. > > First, its not always or entirely analogue. > Yes, actuators/transducers may be linear - the speakers in the earbuds > when you listen to your iPod/MP3 are analogue; the microphone when you > talk using Skype is analogue. > > But many control systems are logic sequencer or finite state machines. True > As I mentioned, one bit slide project I worked on was doing FFT > butterfly transforms - DIGITALLY. It was one of those "they said it I can't think of any way to do FFTs without doing it digitally :-) And I can't think any truly analog way of doing FT in the analogue domain outside of the human ear for sound, and the prism for light. > couldn't be done" projects, not just doing it digitally, but doing > transforms on a GHz data stream using <1MHz logic. > Excellant. I'd love to see what your technique was someday. There's a saying in the electrical engineering industries... IF you have a problem that "can't be solved", throw it at some guys who just got their bachelor's degrees -- and tell them that it's a simple enough problem that they shouldn't need micromanagement by the senior engineers. Fresh-out BSEE's haven't been taught "you can't do that" yet. > Programming techniques" are embodiments of algorithms. > We've seen shifts back and forth between hardware and software. > The Motorola 68K was the first micro to be microprogrammed; before that > they were all 'random logic' that did the same thing. Mainframes went > though a similar evolution. Yeah. IBM invented microcode so that they could make standardized CPU hardware, and then just change the microcode to have a "Business" CPU or a "Scientific" CPU. Then they got really fancy and realized that in a timesharing system, they could bank-switch the microcode memory, so that the accountant types would see a "Business" CPU and the guys in R&D would see a "Scientific" CPU, even though both were time sharing not just the same model of equipment, but in fact, the SAME single computer installed in the building. > > A lot of systems today use Programmable Gate Arrays, burn logic and > algorithms into hardware. We see a similar shift in crypto; doing the > transforms using hardware rather than software. It's faster. Of course, voice encryption was always done in hardware, even when it was done by analogue means -- even with changeable keys. > > The Turing et al models are "general purpose hardware" which is > specifically targeted with software. That's because its easier to > change the software (e.g. microcode). From an epistemological POV, it > could equally well be a well proven chunk of "general purpose code" for > which the hardware does the targeting. There is an equivalence from the > POV of the mathematics :-) > > Teaching "coding" (in particular in a specific language) and teaching > *PROGRAMMING* are two entirely different things. I suspect many CS > departments/profs do the former without doing the latter. > I think so. There's a big debate going on now due to the whole Climate brouhaha. The CRU leaks showed how truly awful the code was being used at the center of all the climate studies... and so some are calling for papers submitted to scientific journals that rely on results from computer programs should require that the code used be published (either in print in the journal, or on-line). The fiercest resistance is coming from the climate alarmism camp. Jones doesn't want anyone seeing his data "because they just want to criticize it and look for mistakes!" -- evidently not understanding that your results aren't really validated UNLESS those who truly oppose your point of view look at it and can't find any mistakes. And he sure as hell didn't want anyone looking at his kludge-filled kode. Not code... kode. Because it's that bad. Other scientists are saying "I'm not a professional, and so I don't want people laughing at my amateurish code" -- To maintain any sort of credibility, people who make any sort of scientific claims based on the results of computer code MUST put that code for inspection by people who, for example, actually understand the fact that a computer floating point numbers are *NOT* equivalent to mathematical numbers. Anything less is the equivalent of writing up a chemistry lab report, and in place of your calculations, just writing ".. and then a miracle occurs ... " The mathematical constant e can be calculated by the equation n=infinity ---- n-1 e = 1 + / (-1) \ ------ ---- n! n=1 Now, if you try to calculate e by /* Note, not debugged.. not even for syntax errors */ #include <math.h> #define MAXN 1000000 /* from in comments in math.h */ #define e_lib 2.7182818284590452353602874713526625L #define INLINE 0x01 /* for in-line oriented output*/ #define VERTICAL 0x10 /* for vertically oriented output */ #define BOTH (INLINE || VERTICAL) /* print both */ main () { long double e_comp; /* our computed value of e */ long double term; /* nth term of ((-1)^n)/n! */ long double numerator; /* either 1.0L or -1.0L */ long int n, denominator; /* term long int denominator; /* will overflow before giving an inaccurate value */ long double error; /* difference between e and computed e */ short int formatting = ; /* valid values: INLINE, VERTICAL or BOTH */ if (!(formatting && both)) { printf("You did not set a value for the variable 'formatting'\nExiting now.."); exit (1); } e=1.0; denominator=1; for (n=1 ; fraction != 0.0 ; n++) { numerator = ((n-1) && 0x01) ? -1.0 : 1.0; /* is (n-1) odd or even? */ denominator *= n; /* denominator always = n!*/ term = numerator / (long double) denominator; error = e_lib - e_comp; if (formatting && INLINE ) { printf("N= %d\tCalculated value of e: %f\terror=%g\tterm=%g\n", n, e_comp, error, term); } if (formatting && VERTICAL) { printf("Current computed value of e: %f\n", e_comp); printf(" Actual value of constant e: %f\n", e_lib); printf("\t\t-------------------------------------------\n"); printf("difference of values : %f = %g\n", error, error); printf("last computer term : %f\n", term); } } Notice that this method never even gets close to the actual value of e, due to the floating point type inability to successfully add successively smaller and smaller values to sum when sum >>> value. By the time the program crashes due to denominator going out of range, the error value dwarfs the magnitude the next term. But if the value were being calculated accurately, absolute value of each term should ALWAYS be larger than the error between the current approximation of e and the actual value of e. Programming challenge: to calculate an accurate value of e. If you want to try this puzzle, do not read any further. SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT To get an accurate value of e, it must be calculated in reverse order, starting with a large n and working back towards n=1. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] gnu libc manual wrong?? concat (const char *str, ...) doesn't work...
by David C. Rankin 16 May '12

16 May '12

Guys, I need a bit of help. I've tried to follow the example after wchar_t * wcscat that explains why using mempcpy is better than using strcat or wcscat, but I run into a segmentation fault attempting to use the suggested mempcpy replacement. The code in libc.html (Ver: 2.15) is shown below. I had to add the declaration for 's' to get past an undefined error (should have told me something right then). char * concat (const char *str, ...) { va_list ap; size_t allocated = 100; char *result = (char *) malloc (allocated); if (result != NULL) { char *newp; char *wp; const char *s; ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ va_start (ap, str); wp = result; for (s = str; s != NULL; s = va_arg (ap, const char *)) { size_t len = strlen (s); /* Resize the allocated memory if necessary. */ if (wp + len + 1 > result + allocated) { allocated = (allocated + len) * 2; newp = (char *) realloc (result, allocated); if (newp == NULL) { free (result); return NULL; } wp = newp + (wp - result); result = newp; } wp = mempcpy (wp, s, len); } /* Terminate the result string. */ *wp++ = '\0'; /* Resize memory to the optimal size. */ newp = realloc (result, wp - result); if (newp != NULL) result = newp; va_end (ap); } return result; } I created a simple test program to verify the code: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <stdarg.h> #ifndef _GNU_SOURCE #define _GNU_SOURCE #endif /* combine strings efficiently */ char * concat (const char *str, ...); int main (int argc, char **argv) { char * myS1 = "This is the beginning"; char * myS2 = " of my string to test"; char * myS3 = " libc manual concat."; char * result; fprintf ( stderr, "myS1: %s\nmyS2: %s\nmyS3: %s\n", myS1, myS2, myS3); result = concat( myS1, myS2, myS3 ); fprintf ( stderr, "The result is: %s\n", result); return 0; } The compiler issues 2 warning (obviously the problem) that I cannot fix? 13:55 alchemy:~/dev/prg/ccpp/src-c/io/file> gcc -Wall -oct contest.c contest.c: In function ‘concat’: contest.c:61:4: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘mempcpy’ contest.c:61:9: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘mempcpy’ The man page (on 11.4) shows the exact same use of mempcpy: void *mempcpy(void *dest, const void *src, size_t n); The runtime failure is on the line: 'wp = mempcpy (wp, s, len);' (the if is skipped due to length < 100 of all strings). I like the idea of sticking with the gnu libc guidance of using mempcpy instead of strcat or wcscat, especially with the manuals labeling of programmers that use strcat "as lazy and reckless", but if the suggested replacement doesn't work... So what gives here? What am I not seeing? What say the gurus? -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] ownCloud fails to install using Mirall with 1&1
by Roger Luedecke 16 May '12

16 May '12

I have hosting with 1&1. Mirall seems to chug along just fine while uploading tons of folders, then it suddenly coughs up a bit of red text saying it failed to install. I know basically nothing about Mirall, so I have no idea where to begin trying to debug it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Persistent icons
by eddie 16 May '12

16 May '12

I have dolphin and firefox icons (launchers) on my taskbar. I remove them and within a little while they return. Does anyone know what's going on and how to get rid of them permanently? Thanks I'm using opensuse 12.1 and kde 4.8 Eddie -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] crazy clocks
by Felix Miata 16 May '12

16 May '12

I have a Foxconn motherboard with Phoenix-Award BIOS and Cedar Mill P4 (Hyperthreading PAE single core) RAID1 system with 11.0 first installed, later 11.2 added, and still later with 11.4 added, now with 3.3.4-1-desktop, giving me three boot choices. 11.4 has been running fine many months, except that /proc/cpuinfo has been reporting my 3.4GHz CPU running at 2400MHz for as long as I can remember, back to when I had a cooling problem and purposely underclocked to keep the temperature down. So today, long after solving the cooling problem, I finally tried to get the CPU speed where it belongs. Eventually I just did a "load optimized defaults" in the BIOS, with a resulting CPU speed within a few MHz of 3400. However, that resulted in the system clock going crazy fast, gaining at least 1.5 minutes every 10 minutes. I Googled and found that Spread Spectrum enabled can cause this, so I went back to the BIOS. I found a way to turn Spread Spectrum off, but that system clock fix brought the CPU speed back down to 2400MHz. The BIOS Spread Spectrum setting has limited access. To reach it, "Fox Intelligent Stepping" needs to be set to "manual", but it is the manual setting that produces 2400MHz CPU speed. I finally figured out that the Spread Spectrum setting appears to remain wherever set while accessible even after restoring to one of the automatic settings that denies access to it. In order to write this, I needed to reboot into the BIOS again to get the right terms. On next boot, I decided to remove CPUFREQ=off from cmdline to see what difference it might make, and the clock error was back. I have no recollection what caused me to include it, but I've had it there at least as long as 11.4 has been installed. Google also said try adding clock=tsc, so next I tried that instead of CPUFREQ=off, also resulting in speedy clock. Google also suggested clock=hpet, which seems to be a fix I'll have to confirm after some sleep. Google said delete /etc/adjtime if the clock runs slightly fast or slow, so I've done that 3-4 times over these boots. I've been using puters for decades, and have never had clock trouble anything like this. I found http://susefaq.sourceforge.net/howto/time.html, but it's 8 years old, not particularly easy to understand, and I have to wonder if kernel evolution has changed things anyway. How common is this kind of clock error? Anyone else here run into this, or know why it ever happens? -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] Forum website down?
by Thomas Taylor 16 May '12

16 May '12

Hi All, Was just trying to log onto the openSuSE website and am getting NO response. I then logged onto two other forums so can only assume the problem is with the OS forum. Anyone else having this problem? Tom -- Tom Taylor - retired penguin AMD Phenom II x4 955 -- 4GB RAM -- 2x1.5TB sata2 openSUSE 12.1x86_64 openSUSE 12.2x86_64 KDE 4.7.2, FF 7.0 KDE 4.8.1, FF 10.0 claws-mail 3.8.0 registered linux user 263467 linxt-At-comcast-DoT-net -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] after zypper dup, fglrx error....
by Kristophorus 16 May '12

16 May '12

Hello guys, I need help... After doing zypper dup and instalation process is finish, my opensuse cannot display GUI, only blank screen. Then I search in google and doing some installation of atiupgrade tools and do upgrade with that because I think that the problems, my ati driver not install correctly. For your information, my VGA card is ATI Radeon 6600. This information I've got from atiupgrade and also indicate that all the files that needed is complete including kernel source. My kernel list is like this: kernel-syms-3.1.10-1.9.1.x86_64 kernel-devel-3.1.10-1.9.1.noarch kernel-desktop-devel-3.1.10-1.9.1.x86_64 kernel-default-devel-3.1.10-1.9.1.x86_64 kernel-xen-devel-3.1.10-1.9.1.x86_64 kernel-source-3.1.10-1.9.1.noarch kernel-firmware-20111025git-9.1.noarch kernel-desktop-3.1.10-1.9.1.x86_64 And atiupgrade make rpm file : fglrx64_xpic_SUSE121-8.961-1.x86_64. I've got this message when do startx from konsole: X.Org X Server 1.12.1 Release Date: 2012-04-13 X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0 Build Operating System: openSUSE SUSE LINUX Current Operating System: Linux hadiono 3.1.10-1.9-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Apr 5 18:48:38 UTC 2012 (4a97ec8) x86_64 Kernel command line: root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD7500BPVT-80HXZT3_WD-WX61A61S8306-part5 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD7500BPVT-80HXZT3_WD-WX61A61S8306-part1 splash=silent quiet vga=0x323 Build Date: 08 May 2012 06:08:52PM Current version of pixman: 0.24.4 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org to make sure that you have the latest version. Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational, (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown. (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Tue May 15 13:58:03 2012 (==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf" (==) Using config directory: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d" (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d" (EE) module ABI major version (10) doesn't match the server's version (12) (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@1:0:0) found (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:1:1) found Backtrace: 0: X (xorg_backtrace+0x36) [0x563a26] 1: X (0x400000+0x167759) [0x567759] 2: /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x7f32fb694000+0xf140) [0x7f32fb6a3140] 3: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/fglrx_drv.so (xdl_xs111_atiddxLeaveVT+0x45) [0x7f32f824d735] 4: X (xf86DeleteScreen+0x7c) [0x47dc2c] 5: X (InitOutput+0x9f4) [0x4770f4] 6: X (0x400000+0x27746) [0x427746] 7: /lib64/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xf5) [0x7f32fa543455] 8: X (0x400000+0x27bbd) [0x427bbd] Segmentation fault at address 0x10 Fatal server error: Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help. Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information. Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file. Check the Xorg.0.log file with "grep 'EE' Xorg.0.log" got this : [ 523.768] (EE) module ABI major version (10) doesn't match the server's version (12) [ 523.768] (EE) Failed to load module "radeonhd" (module requirement mismatch, 0) and with "grep 'WW' Xorg.o.log" got this : [ 523.736] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/URW/" does not exist. [ 523.736] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/misc/sgi" does not exist. [ 523.788] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fglrx [ 523.802] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@1:0:0) found [ 523.803] (WW) fglrx: No matching Device section for instance (BusID PCI:0@0:1:1) found [ 523.828] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for fbdev [ 523.829] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for vesa This is my xorg.conf.fglrx-0 : Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "aticonfig Layout" Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0 EndSection Section "Module" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Driver "fglrx" BusID "PCI:0:1:0" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection and this is my xorg.conf: Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "aticonfig Layout" Screen 0 "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" 0 0 EndSection Section "Module" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor" Option "DPMS" "true" EndSection #Section "Device" # Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" # Driver "fglrx" # BusID "PCI:0:1:0" #EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0" Device "aticonfig-Device[0]-0" Monitor "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection I put '#' in xorg.conf following articles that found from google but it doesn't work too. Please, help me.... I don't want to re-install my opensuse... -- Regards, Kris -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner(a)opensuse.org

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Re: [opensuse] gnu libc manual wrong?? concat (const char *str, ...) doesn't work...
by Dirk Gently 15 May '12

15 May '12

Anton Aylward wrote: > Dirk Gently said the following on 05/14/2012 04:44 AM: >> This was at Purdue -- the FIRST Computer Science department in the world. > > Check out Manchester. > > But sometimes being first isn't an advantage; sometimes coming later > means you can learn from the mistakes of the pioneers :-) > The way I see it is, the first CS department in the world should have the advantage of being able to identify mistake notions first, and therefore having the most time to correct them. However, that didn't seem to actually be happening, because the EE School at Purdue did a far better job at teaching programing than the CS School. For example, EE did a far better job teaching the student to analyze a problem first and decide what's the best strategy for solving a problem, as opposed to "I'm just gonna sit down and write using my favorite algorithms and try to avoid the algorithms I don't like" which was what seemed to result from "present the algorithm before presenting a problem" style of teaching. EE also did a far better job of teaching the ideas of verifying both input and output for validity than the CS school did. Admittedly, this is only one campus, but Purdue is a pretty influential University when it comes to computing. The number of CS and computer-oriented EE grads each year amounts to about 10x as many as most other schools in the 35,000 student range that also offer such programs. Each School of Engineering at Purdue (Electrical, Mechanical, Nuke, Aero &Astro, Chemical, Industrial, Materials, etc.) rivals the size of the aggregate total of ALL engineering assets at many similarly sized universities. And in the US, there are very few universities larger than 40,000 students at all, let alone those that have EE and/or CS schools of any influence. [Texas A&M is far bigger, but not notable in either field]. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner(a)opensuse.org

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[opensuse] What does this error message mean?
by Basil Chupin 15 May '12

15 May '12

I installed a new 64-bit version of oS 12.1 recently. It is a stock-standard installation except that I have also installed KDE 4.8.2 as well as LibreOffice v3.5.2, and I do all my updates using zypper on a daily basis (if any are available that is). I have the Online Update activated and it checks for new updates on a daily basis. Everyday the Online Update widget shows me that there is an update available and when I run this I get this error message: If you cannot see the above then look here: http://picpaste.com/snapshot1-xCgPnMpz.png As I mentioned, this is occurring every day. But what is causing this error message when the system is kept up-to-date via zypper? I have also use YaST to check if any Packages need updating/upgrading but even this returns advice that nothing is needed to be updated/upgraded. YaST's Dependency Check also shows that no files have dependency problems. Can anyone throw some light on the above error message, please? (Or do I simply turn off the daily Online Update feature?) BC -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner(a)opensuse.org

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