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Gee, that's nice. Care to explain how to make that "sophisticated" clipboard model work with something other than plain text?

It's explained (high-level) right there in that same article that you didn't bother to read.

Better luck next time.

Actually, the X has a fairly sophisticated clipboard model, maybe a little bit too sophisticated. [...] Also read this for a backgrounder about clipboard and X: http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html

Gee, that's nice. Care to explain how to make that "sophisticated" clipboard model work with something other than plain text?

CodeCon's being held at Jamie Zawinski's (JWZ's) club, the DNA Lounge, in case you were curious.

a guy i know asked for something similar earlier today, but his request was...
My vision is a tool that you download a list of "categories" such as: "pr0n", "web e-mail", "environmentalism", "news", "hacking", "mp3", etc... and for each category there are thousands of URLs that are just continuously requested

i modified some spiders i had lying around and came up with a script that does google queries for terms you specify and then follows the searches returned. here is the script. It currently does no error checking and i havent tested it that much, just wrote it this morning, but it could be easily modified to do random queries.

i wrote something that did random queries and created pages from that a few years ago. there are other people who've done similar, like JWZ's webcollage, which he also integrated into Xscreensaver, so running that screensaver will generate constant random traffic.

a guy i know asked for something similar earlier today, but his request was...
My vision is a tool that you download a list of "categories" such as: "pr0n", "web e-mail", "environmentalism", "news", "hacking", "mp3", etc... and for each category there are thousands of URLs that are just continuously requested

i modified some spiders i had lying around and came up with a script that does google queries for terms you specify and then follows the searches returned. here is the script. It currently does no error checking and i havent tested it that much, just wrote it this morning, but it could be easily modified to do random queries.

i wrote something that did random queries and created pages from that a few years ago. there are other people who've done similar, like JWZ's webcollage, which he also integrated into Xscreensaver, so running that screensaver will generate constant random traffic.

Re: the great compromise

Worse Is Better.

[chars added to beat the slashdot characters-per-line filter]

http://www.jwz.org/webcollage/

found here..http://www.jwz.org/hacks/

http://www.jwz.org/webcollage/

found here..http://www.jwz.org/hacks/

Webcollage -- slowly builds a random collage of images from the net.

DadaDodo -- generates random sentences based on word probabilities in pages on the net.

Webcollage -- slowly builds a random collage of images from the net.

DadaDodo -- generates random sentences based on word probabilities in pages on the net.

I personally think it'd be coolest to turn it into an art project.. imagine you had a repository of the consciousness of an entire race and could run a script on it. Things like the map of the internet. Or the web collage. Or use it to power some kind of AI chatterbot.

I dunno. Their webpage on it didn't seem to do much to promote being creative; they just want to pay someone 10k to develop a new way to make more relevent search results.

In hindsight, complying with the company's Document Retention Policy (which at Netscape was basically, ``shred anything within 90 days unless you can't get your job done without it'') might have been a good idea.

For an example of what can happen to you even if you haven't done anything wrong, go look here at what happened to Jamie Zawinski. During their monopoly trial, Microsoft subpoenaed the contents of the bad-attitude and really-bad-attitude internal blow-off-steam newsgroups at Netscape. I never heard of anything that came up in court as a result of it, but the privacy of the users of that list was violated, big-time.

For an example of what can happen to you even if you haven't done anything wrong, go look here at what happened to Jamie Zawinski. During their monopoly trial, Microsoft subpoenaed the contents of the bad-attitude and really-bad-attitude internal blow-off-steam newsgroups at Netscape. I never heard of anything that came up in court as a result of it, but the privacy of the users of that list was violated, big-time.

If you aren't legally required to maintain records of every email/document/etc, then why SHOULD you? Do you recall the Netscape fiasco where Microsoft subpoenad the history of every email to an employee bitch newsgroup? In that case Netscape had no legal duty to maintain backups and records of every posting, but because they made the mistake of not deleting them frequently suddenly they were required to provide them and were then barred from destroying them: It's an odd circumstance when you don't legally have to archive information, but if someone asks for it then suddenly it's legally protected and you have to defend and explain the context of every message, every word, etc, and of course everyone says something now and then that can be taken out of context (or alternately that they said in the heat of passion but backed down from).

Destroying old information quite simply removes the liability that it potentially represents, even if there is absolutely nothing indicting in it. It can also protect freedoms: Websites aren't legally required to keep IP logs, but if they DO then those IP logs can be subpoenad.

As usual, everything in the universe eventually ends up hitting jwz at some point. This story (read: rant) is a perfect example on how something as trivial as non-company-related-email lists set up by a few employees can land them and the company in hot water.

As usual, everything in the universe eventually ends up hitting jwz at some point. This story (read: rant) is a perfect example on how something as trivial as non-company-related-email lists set up by a few employees can land them and the company in hot water.

I wonder what Jamie Zawinski has to say about this.. hi Jamie, do you still browse slashdot?

...on this matter, or at least his beef with Netscape getting bought out by AOL. Here: 1 2

Both are good reads.

...on this matter, or at least his beef with Netscape getting bought out by AOL. Here: 1 2

Both are good reads.

Jamie Zawinski left netscape, as shown here and here shortly after it was AOLized. Here are some highlights from those pages:

April 1st, 1999 will be my last day as an employee of the Netscape Communications division of America Online, and my last day working for mozilla.org.

I think AOL still has all the stigma that it always has, as far as image goes. My friends keep saying ``jwz@aol.com'' and then laughing uncontrollably...

AOL is about centralization and control of content. Everything that is good about the Internet, everything that differentiates it from television, is about empowerment of the individual.
I don't want to be a part of an effort that could result in the elimination of all that.

Jamie Zawinski left netscape, as shown here and here shortly after it was AOLized. Here are some highlights from those pages:

April 1st, 1999 will be my last day as an employee of the Netscape Communications division of America Online, and my last day working for mozilla.org.

I think AOL still has all the stigma that it always has, as far as image goes. My friends keep saying ``jwz@aol.com'' and then laughing uncontrollably...

AOL is about centralization and control of content. Everything that is good about the Internet, everything that differentiates it from television, is about empowerment of the individual.
I don't want to be a part of an effort that could result in the elimination of all that.

I hope this is not a redundant post, but see what happened to Jamie Zawinski. Some highlights:

I think AOL still has all the stigma that it always has, as far as image goes. My friends keep saying ``jwz@aol.com'' and then laughing uncontrollably...

AOL is about centralization and control of content. Everything that is good about the Internet, everything that differentiates it from television, is about empowerment of the individual.
I don't want to be a part of an effort that could result in the elimination of all that.

At any rate, it's not obvious just what the results of taking over RHAT would be. There are ample possibilities for both good and ill, from many perspectives:

• Having a Really, Really, Really Big Company can lend either credibility or be very injurious.
  
  

  On the one hand, "If AOL/TW thinks there's something to it..." but then if they do something silly, credibility can get badly hurt.
  
  

• Control of spending policies moves from one group of folks responsible primarily to their investors to another group of folks responsible primarily to their investors.
  
  

  Enter a new set of "policy controllers." Again, this can be good or bad.
  
  

• AOL bought Netscape, and then, on the one hand, seems to have left the Mozilla project alone to continue developing, but on the other hand are bundling Internet Exploder with CDs to customers.
  
  

  Ambiguous again.
  
  

One interesting effect, regardless, is that a bunch of people that invested in RHAT will get some pretty substantial value out of it. If things go bad, Debian is still there, and we might see some made-rich hackers get into new involvements. Hopefully a little more computing-related than jwz's DNA Lounge, but that's not to be a flame of jwz...

If the result is that AOL/RHAT "craters," there's always Debian, Slackware, Mandrake, SuSE, and the BSDs still around...

Of course, the Tent of Doom page lives on at jwz.org.

Newbies, try here for the tent of doom

IANAL, but companies can subpoena pretty much anything they want. Microsoft is famous for this (so are other companies) but my favorite story is the r-b-a one. However much I wasn't involved in r-b-a, I still vented a lot on b-a. I too hope they wasted many lawyer hours trying to figure out if I really knew anything or was just talking out my ass.

From http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rbarip.html,

The subpoena asked for, among other things,

All electronic mail messages -- including all such messages maintained on any employee's personal computer, any external storage medium, any mail server or mail backup server share, tape archive, hardcopy or otherwise -- sent or received by any present or former Netscape employee associated with an e-mail alias maintained by Jamie Zawinsky [sic] entitled "Bad Attitude" or "Really Bad Attitude."

Remember, lots of stuff can be subpoenad. What's done with it is another matter

See, unlike most hackers, I get little joy out of figuring out how to install the latest toy. I don't get much sense of reward from having discovered how to get the Foo card to coexist with the Bar card. As far as I'm concerned, that crap is a solved problem, and not worth revisiting. That's like banging rocks together and being proud that you've re-derived fire from first principles. It's boring.

And while he was talking about the usability of Linux (which I still think pretty much sucks in many ways) back in 1998, I believe that sentiment applies to hardware as well. I hate dealing with stupid IRQ conflicts and other idiotic reliability problems most x86-based hardware has.

Give me a Mac, give me a Sun, give me an x86 manufacturer who actually puts together systems where I don't have to worry about anything more than how to get the cover off to (easily!) add more RAM or a bigger disk. (Ha. Only Dell comes closest there and I'm still not really impressed with their kit.)

Unless you can dedicate the time to chasing hardware conflicts or you're planning to do a lot of research constantly to find out what particular PC parts are good and which are crap, PCs are generally a good way to waste a lot of time that you could be using for solving worthwhile problems. In general I want to plug my computer in, turn it on, maybe install an OS, and just have it work so I can get to hacking.

See, unlike most hackers, I get little joy out of figuring out how to install the latest toy. I don't get much sense of reward from having discovered how to get the Foo card to coexist with the Bar card. As far as I'm concerned, that crap is a solved problem, and not worth revisiting. That's like banging rocks together and being proud that you've re-derived fire from first principles. It's boring.

And while he was talking about the usability of Linux (which I still think pretty much sucks in many ways) back in 1998, I believe that sentiment applies to hardware as well. I hate dealing with stupid IRQ conflicts and other idiotic reliability problems most x86-based hardware has.

Give me a Mac, give me a Sun, give me an x86 manufacturer who actually puts together systems where I don't have to worry about anything more than how to get the cover off to (easily!) add more RAM or a bigger disk. (Ha. Only Dell comes closest there and I'm still not really impressed with their kit.)

Unless you can dedicate the time to chasing hardware conflicts or you're planning to do a lot of research constantly to find out what particular PC parts are good and which are crap, PCs are generally a good way to waste a lot of time that you could be using for solving worthwhile problems. In general I want to plug my computer in, turn it on, maybe install an OS, and just have it work so I can get to hacking.

Jamie Zawinski wrote a most informative rant on the labyrinthine regulations and pitfalls that potentially face anyone wishing to Webcast. As he owns and operates the DNA Lounge nightclub in San Francisco, which does its own share of Webcasting, the man has definitely done his homework. Definitely worth a read.

Schwab

I've migrated from NT 4.0 -> Win2k -> XP over the past 3 years and the XP install was by far the easiest, most trouble free and most painless.

My very vanilla config:

Intel 866EB
512MB RAM
10GB storage on 2 older UDMA drives (I know I should upgrade since drives are so cheap, but if it ain't broken...)
52x CDROM
Voodoo3 3k
Viewsonic 17"
NetGear 10/100 NIC + DSL
HP 5L parallel port

When I installed XP it properly detected and installed ALL of my devices (including my printer and my NIC/DSL connection) the very first time. From the first time it booted after installing, everything worked. I remember having to struggle to get devices (printers, NICs and modems most notably) to work under NT4, and I was thrilled to bits not to have to go through that circle of hell again. XP just works.

When my wife got a laptop and wanted to use the printer from her machine via our home LAN, all I had to do was click "share printer" and magically she can print from her WinME laptop. XP just works. I didn't have to fiddle with any config files in /etc/bin/usr/local/conf or any of that crap.

The last time I rebooted my XP machine was when the power went out about a month ago. I have had zero systems problems since installing XP.

I'm not saying that XP is better than Linux, or that every company should run out and upgrade, but I am saying that I have had a significantly lower cost of administration and higher reliability on my home development machine with windows XP than with any other OS I've ever used. And yes, I've used Mandrake 6.0 and RH 7.0 distros, and yes, they did finally work once I read many howtos and books. JWZ said it best: "Linux is free if your time has no value."

He's not talking about the Mozilla project, he's talking about the transition from 3.0 to 4.0. Basically Netscape threw away a lot of good code and some very nice algorithms for the sake of newness. They also developed a java fixation while the language and libraries were still very immature.

By the time the Mozilla project was announced, Netscape was already out of marketshare and had a product that was cleary inferior to ie 4. Considering the amount of bugs in the initial release of ie 4, making an inferior product was no easy feat.

Jamie Zawinski has a great deal to say about this period in Netscapes history.

--Shoeboy

As TeX shows, it does not take hundreds of megabytes to implement a messy scripting/macro language and some good layout.

As for JWZ, I mean, they guy hates the design of his own brain. I'd like to see a system he doesn't dislike.

Netscape 4.7 crashes all the fucking time. It's really an obscenity. It's bad on Linux, but atrocious on IRIX- which I still use for a number of weird reasons (nice UI, classy computer)- and this is quite unfortunate since I like the way Netscape renders on IRIX. I'll try to buy books online and the browser keeps going down like a transvestite in a subway restroom. If I turn JavaScript off, stability is fine- and pages look like ass or don't even load. Especially if they're made for IE.

Galeon's home page uses DIV and SPAN tags everywhere. I get one column about an inch wide on the left with all text and images. My CPU sounds like it's about to puke. Turn JS off, and I get a 1994-style page with gray background. None of the web pages I create have this problem, but I'm not trying to awe people with my mastery of Dreamweaver. If it can't be done in Vi or Emacs, it's not worth doing.

I'm with Jamie Zawinski on this one. The web has become a giant, soggy mess, and it seems as if the fall of the dotcoms has made everyone even more desperate to prove they've got their shit together by throwing up a huge Flash/Java/DHTML/pop-up-enabled masturbatory home page. My computer used to be used for number crunching and modelling- still makes a great X terminal and molecular graphics workstation- but that 150Mhz MIPS CPU doesn't stand a chance against today's web.

Galeon appears to have some useful features. Perhaps it'll suck less than Netscape 6.1 on Linux. Konqueror is nice, except that running it on anything other than Linux (or perhaps BSD) is rather troublesome, and it's still unstable, and I only get 8bit color running it remotely over X. I would pay cash for a browser that would ignore pop-ups, ignore Flash, ignore Java, and render all pages correctly and quickly. In the meantime, I'm going to have to keep running 'killall netscape' every thirty minutes. I could get a better computer, but this one does almost everything I need. I guess faster 3D would be nice- and compiling can be sluggish- but why should I upgrade my computer to use the Web? This thing blew away any PC on the market when Netscape 1 came out. I refuse to be sucked into the forced-obsolescence cycle. Fuck the economy, I like my computers old and working.

That giant sucking noise you hear is my computer loading msnbc.com.

I stumbled on a thoughtful discussion about lisp
The Rise of ``Worse is Better''.

Even though I don't care about lisp it made me come to the conclusion that XSLT is not a good idea. They have set a goal (no side-effects) with one hand and try the hardest to work around it with the other, making it practically impossible.
When different approaches to comparing two objects can come up with both true and false there's something wrong, a commite's work that's going to give implementors headaches forever.

It's the worst possible standard for a drive interface which is currently in widespread use.

SCSI electronics aren't any more complex than IDE electronics, and the price of SCSI would not be what it is if Worse is Better hadn't stuck it's dirty fingers into the pot.

XEmacs supported things like multiple windows on X , hence the name XEmacs (previouly Lucid Emacs). Gnu Emacs can do that now as well. Here's a great little quote from RMS in 1993:

Lucid Emacs is set up to use and require an X toolkit; our version does not use one. I think it is too expensive to require a toolkit. Especially since we have already got most of the features we want, without a toolkit.

So why is this relevant? RMS did asked Lucid to do a rewrite of the same features for him, but under his complete micromanaged control - his emails at the time (link above) tell the story. The question remains as to whether his attitude has matured and whether he will treat the gnome project as its own entity and not just as a tool for his other projects. His recent words about gcc, about everthing else taking second place to hurd support is probably more relevant.

This is all just the opinion of an outsider that has been flamed a few too many times for not putting gnu in front of linux - gnome confuses me when things break and it shows up weird dependancies (if thai language support is broken in pango you can forget about compiling the gimp) so it's up to the real gnome people to do what they do and increase the functionality of the Gimp Tool Kit and port it to more platforms.

It contains the excellent advice "The lesson to be learned from this is that it is often undesirable to go for the right thing first. It is better to get half of the right thing available so that it spreads like a virus. Once people are hooked on it, take the time to improve it to 90% of the right thing."

.NET and Java are not even in the same class. One is a language. The other is a marketing buzzword that covers a variety of technologies. Be more precise. What part of .NET are you talking about?

I did this better in webcollage years ago. But of course I didn't call myself an Artist Collective, and I didn't put out a press release, so no article in the Times for me, darn. I guess that's why webcollage is a ``hack'' rather than an ``art project.''

I swear, one of these days I'm gonna apply for a federal grant to hack on xscreensaver . I've seen people get money for worse things . All you have to do is swallow your sanity and gag up an artist statement of some kind, and the literati will take you seriously: if you cloak it in pretentiousness, the most trivial piece of eye candy can become a Serious Work, full of Insight And Meaning!

The problem with art is artists. My goal has long been to eliminate the artist from the creative process.

I did this better in webcollage years ago. But of course I didn't call myself an Artist Collective, and I didn't put out a press release, so no article in the Times for me, darn. I guess that's why webcollage is a ``hack'' rather than an ``art project.''

I swear, one of these days I'm gonna apply for a federal grant to hack on xscreensaver . I've seen people get money for worse things . All you have to do is swallow your sanity and gag up an artist statement of some kind, and the literati will take you seriously: if you cloak it in pretentiousness, the most trivial piece of eye candy can become a Serious Work, full of Insight And Meaning!

The problem with art is artists. My goal has long been to eliminate the artist from the creative process.

Windows also suffers from this debilitating illness known as the 'Blue Screen of Death', which provides employees with instant five minute coffee breaks

Don't leave Linux out of it, it too has a Blue Screen of Death that comes on when the user goes for a coffee break.

The only protection an AC, and Slashdot, has is to be able to honestly and truthfully say "That information does not exist and never did."

Could someone with experience explain the difference between Xemacs and gnu emacs??

Well, I could point out that image support and colors on TTYs were in XEmacs a long time ago (I still have a machine with XEmacs 20.4 on it, which has both...) but that might start up another "frank exchange of views" so I guess I'd better be pusillanimous instead.

To be more succinct: they're different, based on the fact that the different development teams have different priorities. There are features that come in both directions, but IMHO they tend to show up on XEmacs first.

If you want a ready-made way to try this, check out jwz's gronk HTML based jukebox.

If you want a ready-made way to try this, check out jwz's gronk HTML based jukebox.

Why is it that people always forget the Konqueror?

I don't think they do. Konqueror is my preferred browser by far. It's not perfect, there are areas where it needs a little work (Javascript and Netscape plugin handling for instance) but the overall feel of the browser UI and rendering engine is unmatched. It's quick, full of useful features, relatively light on resources and renders well. In short, everything I want out of a web browser.

There are a few reasons people have stopped making much noise over Konqueror recently:

• There hasn't been a major release of it recently, and there won't be for a little while either (not until KDE3 sometime early next year). This is due to Konqui's coupling to the KDE release schedules. Fair enough I think, given that Konqueror is a key component of KDE.
• The inevitability of Konqui becoming popular, maybe even the most common Linux browser - AKA the IE effect. KDE is the default desktop for most distros these days, and Konqueror is the default web browser for all those KDE desktops. It's a good browser and tightly integrated into KDE. Why bother switching to anything else?
• The fact that many users of Konqui are very happy indeed with its performance, and, perceiving the rapid success which Konqueror has had, feel no need to crow too much about it?

I think that the 'battle' between Konqueror and Mozilla to be the most successful *nix browser is a little like the 1970's 'battle' between UNIX and Lisp machines. Lisp machines (perhaps like Mozilla) were designed by people whose emphasis was on the 'right way' and completeness above all else. If that meant a very large and complex system, then so be it. UNIX (perhaps a bit like Konqueror) was designed by people whose emphasis was on the 'right way' and completeness but ABSOLUTELY NOT at the expense of simplicity.

We all know now who won that 'battle'.

There's more about this subtle difference in design philosophy here. Yes, notice where this is hosted - Jamie Zawinski's site. Ironic? Perhaps not, given jwz's resignation from Netscape and Mozilla. You be the judge.

4. Geek factor. It is oh, so cool to be able to 'sign' an email, and advertise your public key.

I maintain at least 1 active keypair. I put it out on distributed key server groups. I post it on web servers. I use it to encrypt private communications.

But I use it very sparingly when it comes to signing email. I have to see a really good reason to verify who I am before I sign anything. If paranoia causes one to take up using PGP, its an even more selective paranoia that causes one to not use all its potential.

So why am I so paranoid? After watching the subpoenas fly a couple of years ago, I've decided that I'd prefer to make it a little more difficult to prove any bad attitude really is mine. Granted, there's other ways to try and link email to an individual. But why make it a habit to provide that trail for every mail list post, friendly banter, and interoffice discussion message you fire off?

And that's a really important point - a majority of our (or at least mine) email is of a fire-and-forget, trivial nature. Its less a written letter and more a verbal conversation encapsulated in text. Without the bandwidth hit of wav file attachments. In this informal environment, things are often said... or ideas expressed... that one would not set to a permanent record. Yet email, and other forms of electronic communication, have an odd way of sticking around far beyond its intended life.

Do you really need to give a lawyer the means to prove them came from you? And sure, there are other ways to link an email to an individual. But I'd prefer to make anyone giving me a hard time jump through those extra hoops.

As a side note, memo and file retention policies existed well before email became an indispensable tool to business. Email only compounds the problem these policies were really designed to address (and no, storage of files isn't the real issue here). With the lines slowly fading between personal and professional data, it might be worthwhile to think about your own home shredder and review your own document retention policy.

Of course - this all doesn't cover the real reason all this signing happens. Geek appeal. That's easy to handle. Include your PGP Key ID and fingerprint in your .sig and business cards. Stylish and practical, with a bit of geek attitude.

Like many of my friends, I started getting RSI a few years ago, and it got worse and worse. I found out what to do though. You can reduce the RSI (like carpal tunnel syndrome) you're getting by some very simple procedures. The R in RSI stands for repetitive and that's what you get it from - having your hand on the mouse for hours and clicking it. I have a ball mouse at home and a Microsoft one at work so I use different muscles at home and work. I also switch-hit, switching the mouse from left hand to right every half hour. This way, you can stay at the computer like normal, except you're not hurting yourself as much. Switch-hitting every half hour gives your hand half an hour of rest while you keep working. Of course, resting, hand exercises and other things are good too.

Programming guru Jamie Zawinski, the guy who wrote the original Netscape for UNIX has a great page on RSI. Check it out, and other pages on RSI. I really think there should be OSHA regulations at least *informing* young guys that prolonged use of mice and keyboards can damage their wrists and leave them so they can't type.

JWZ's RSI page is:

http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/wrists.html