Slashdot Mirror


Slashback: Galeon, Forgent, Platformation

Slashback's blizzard of updates, corrections and amplifications includes some more information about Win2K and HIPAA, another notch on the Browser Progress Chart, Dreamcast ethernet jacks, the Hoopla'd Red Hat Menace and more. Read on.

Who said what now? bratgrrl writes "eWeek's "Red Hat: Next Redmond?"article was quietly and without comment altered- they deleted the crucial "Red Hat backlash" quote from the original article. No retraction, no explanation, just an Orwellian revision. Thank goodness for Google, which cached the original article.

I suspect the original quote never happened."

Because not everyone needs Chatzilla. Mozilla gets a lot of attention around here -- after all, it is the giant lizard of the open source browser world. But to the question "What about Galeon?", Nachtjäger writes: "The answer: LOTS is happening to Galeon. Given the length of time since the last release, we decided to write up an update on how things are going on Galeon2. Check it out here"

I hope certain aspects of Galeon (tab-name shortening and color coding, for two) are soon rolled back into Mozilla.

OK, now you can have it. Esekla writes "Slashdot did an article about the announcement of Kylix 3 (the first Kylix to support C++ code), but at the time it was not actually available for download. Now both Open and Enterprise Trial editions finally can be downloaded."

Now you can assemble your yard-sale cluster. Speaking of things now really available, BJH writes: "The site featured in last week's Dreamcast BBA story is now accepting orders! The good news is, they're only $US80 each. The bad news is, they're not accepting orders from outside Japan ;) (If there's enough interest, perhaps someone could be convinced to do a bulk buy and ship to people overseas...)"

Anyone who offers something interesting enough in trade can have my Dreamcast for mucking about ;)

When you trace things back far enough ... Dennis writes: "Although Chris has a valid point about the catch 22 between Win2K, SP3 and HIPAA, his example is not accurate because medical records that are related to students are protected by FERPA regulations and not by HIPAA. Here's a reference link with more info."

The fat ladies are still warming up. john82 writes "With all the hoopla still swirling about MP3s, there is fresh information in the JPEG saga. Dateline Berlin: Algovision-Luratech GmbH says that Forgent's patent claim (4,698,672) is all wet. Technical experts have laid out the technical and legal arguments against the claim. And they intend to air the dirty laundry at a meeting Sept 4. The announcement by Forgent earlier this year caused quite a stir here. Wonder if Sony can get their money back?"

Of especial interest to iBook owners. Earlier this month, Slashdot posted the news that rather than wiping your Mac's OS to put on a GNU/Linux system, you could order Yellow Dog Linux preinstalled on Apple hardware. Ray Sanders of Qli Tech Linux Computers writes: "We also are selling Apple Systems with Linux installed, however, Terrasoft is only installing Yellow Dog Linux, we offer Gentoo PPC, Debian PPC, Mandrake PPC, and SuSE PPC. We also have full working sound and video on the iBook and Powerbook with XFree86, whereas YDL Does not yet support the mobile Radeon chipset found on those two units."

Competition is good.

8 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. About Red Hat... by Cubeman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think this has interesting implications for the future. I certainly don't like the idea of Internet news sites silently changing pages, but the problem is that there is no definite way (besides Google and the like) to know if a page has been changed. It was sneaky enough when we found out that CNN does it, but at least they update the timestamp. Everything regarding modification date is controlled on the server that returns the page. What I'd like to see, if it doesn't exist already, is a system for clients to verify that a page has not been changed. Perhaps something like a MD5 hash of each webpage you visit being stored on your computer, and a warning displayed if it doesn't match upon future views. Of course this would cause massive false alarms on dynamic sites, but perhaps there could be introduced a standard for putting tags around the actual article on news sites, so they would know what else to filter out?

    Otherwise, I can see these sort of changes becoming more and more prevalent, until eventually the fear of political-correctness and not insulting anyone completely drives us to immediately change anything considered "offensive" and deny it ever existed. Then, we will have 1984.

    "Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me. There lie they, and here lie we, under the spreading chestnut tree."

    1. Re:About Red Hat... by Farley+Mullet · · Score: 2, Insightful

      . . .perhaps there could be introduced a standard for putting tags around the actual article on news sites, so they would know what else to filter out?

      Not to be overly simplistic, but the bottom line is that there can't (and shouldn't) be a technological subsitute for good, old fashioned critical thinking skills. Deciding what to filter in and what to filter out, what is bogus and what isn't, whether you should take information with a grain of salt, and how big that grain of salt should be is ultimately up to the reader, and no amount of tagging and markup will change this.

  2. gcc-3.2 compatibility? by leviramsey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm running gcc-3.2 (with all libs compiled with 3.2). Are the C++ parts of Kylix compatible, and, if not, when does Borland plan to offer a gcc-3.2 compatible version of Kylix?

  3. Galeon: My Browser of Choice by coupland · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've just gotta say that I think Galeon is the best thing to come out of the Mozilla work to date. Maybe newbs like mediocre e-mail clients and other whiz-bangs built into their browsers, me... I like a browser. One that's fast, intuitive, fast, simple, feature-rich, and fast. Galeon is all of these, and fast to boot! My biggest complaint about it is there isn't (nor likely ever will be) a Windows version I can use when surfing at work. But from home, nothing can top it!

  4. Galeon Performance. by dsb3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Galeon has been my browser of choice for many months. I think I started using it at about v0.9, give or take a month or so.

    I love it, can't live without it, but ... it's got a problem. It's slowing down.

    My hardware hasn't changed (dual p3-500) other than bumping ram from 256M to 512M, but with each new galeon release it's turned from lightning to treacle. Opening a new window takes *seconds*. Opening a number of new windows at the same time is painful.

    So ... what's up with that? Will I expect better from galeon2, or will it just slow down further, forcing me to change camps - I certainly don't want to buy new processors because an application drifted towards bloatware!!

    --

    Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
  5. Re:OSX + Fink = no need for a linux by MrEfficient · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Uh, yes. It's called Freedom. It's always been the most compelling reason to use Free Software, although it's usually overlooked.

    Remember the recent story about Apple using the DMCA to threaten someone?

    Apple makes some cool stuff, and so does Microsoft. But neither respects your freedom.

    --
    Check out AbiWord.
  6. eWeek Red Hat Article disappeared from cache? by zufar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I was writing an e-mail to Executive editor of Ziff Media asking for explanation on backward news changes, when the google cache was apparently updated. Nothing ever happened! Freedom is slavery. Peace is war.

  7. Pot's comment upon kettle's abedo by wowbagger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find it very strange that a Slashback would criticize a news web site for silently altering a story, when Slashdot itself does this on a regular basis.

    Come on guys, show the world the correct way - make ALL the editors make ALL changes as addenda to the story, rather than in-line. After all, if I cannot change my posting once I hit SUBMIT, then you shouldn't be able to change your stories.

    If you wish to correct minor speling (sic) errors, then correct them by marking the old text as strikethrough, and then inserting the new. Yes, it won't look as nice, but it will be more honest. And perhaps when the /. editors see how many strikethroughs the main page has, they will incorporate a spell check into the story submission system.