Slashdot Mirror
The Search for Secret Shuttle Parts
Slashdot readers have been submitting this story about the search
for secret shuttle parts with all sorts of insane conspiracy theories attached to their cut & paste of the URL. It's apparently just the box that handled encryption for messages, so of course Uncle Sam wants it back. Quite the needle in a haystack tho.
You sir are unhinged. Please remand yourself to your nearest mental health facility.
Why the FUCK is there a microsoft add on SLASHDOT??!?!?!
Are people really that much of a slave to the mighty Dollar that they must do that?
Yes.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
ave seen that tries something like this, but it suffers from the same problem as the KDE & GNOME menus: it gives you a list of programs you can run, instead of tasks that you can do. People use computers to do things, not to run programs.
5. Cleaner redraws.
This has long been a complaint of mine in almost every OS and desktop environment: slow or flickery window updates. I have only ever seen one OS do it right, and that's Mac OS X. This isn't a speed issue, really; it's a how-you-update-the-screen issue. Mac OS X pops a window onto the screen all at once. Presumably it does any drawing that it needs to do on a back buffer and then blits it to the screen when it's all done, just like a video game. Even on a slower system, it still appears very "clean" - the window just takes a little while to appear. But you don't see any ugly drawing artifacts in the meantime. Mac OS X is great.
The latest version of Windows is not bad; mostly I think this is due to the fast speed of modern hardware coupled with the minimal eye candy that the OS offers. Things like the file explorer still don't update all at once, but it's a minor point; they've mostly got it right.
KDE, on the other hand, continues to flicker and pop. Here's a key example: click on the "home" icon in your menu bar. The window pops onscreen, but many of the drawing elements (the files themselves, but many widgets) are temporarily drawn as large white or grey boxes. A split second later the full images appear. Even on a high-end system it looks a little funny; on a slow system it looks terrible.
This is not a functionality issue, so in many ways its not that important. But it is a "user experience" issue; people coming from Mac OS X or even Windows will find their experience a little less pleasant, and that makes them less likely to come back.
6. Die stray processes, die!
In Linux when a process messes up you can exit X, drop to a console, and start running "killall kdeinit", "killall mozilla", etc, but this is lame and for non-technical users it boils down to the same thing. Possible solution: when in X, WM should keep track of processes and the windows they are attached to. When an app has no windows concat(or the main window is not open), the WM should attempt to kill them (first normally, then with -9). This functionality could be configured for debugging whereby instead of killing them, it attaches gdb to the process so that developers could figure out why there are stray processes.
7. Easy way of sharing files.
Ideally a right-click on a directory and chose "share this directory". Be able to pull up a list of all folders you are sharing and change permissions or remove the sharing.
8. Sound support.
OSS was great a few years ago and continues to offer support for modern cards (including professional quality ones such as the Midiman Delta 1010, which is what I have) but it is commercial and it is showing its age. ALSA is a superior solution and has been rolled into the dev kernel. Once it makes its way into the stable kernel and distros start using it uniformly (Mandrake and SuSE have offered it for some time now) along with a good configuration tool, audio on Linux will rock.
9. No common editor which supports "soft wrapping."
By which I mean displaying things wordwrapped, even when it's one long line. This means you can go back and edit the line and the rest of the paragraph will reformat itself automatically. Evolution's message editor does this, but that doesn't help me for composing text files (like this one!). Others I've tried - Kate, GEdit, and even vi - only support "hard wrapping", where it inserts a newline when you get to the end of the line. Then when you insert more words into the paragraph later, the formatting gets all screwy.
10. No easy way to configure X - especially change resolution on the fly.
This varies by distribution, but I the resolution issue is a common one. (The only distro I have seen that does it right was Corel 1.0. You could change your resolution from the KDE control panel. However, I believe this is because they were using the commercial X server Metro-X.) It boggles my mind that, after all these years, the best way to configure X is to run Xconfigurator from the console! This is perhaps the longest running embarrassment of the free software desktop.
Does it come in a plain brown box with 'Not Penis Cream' on it?
Linux is a very flexible operating system which has been created almost purely by the help of generous volunteers and other people associated with it. It has slowly grown from being a mere branch of Minix to a massive contender in the kernel world, having an entire operating system associated with it and its name. It is perhaps one of the most important pieces of software available today, one of the most widely used, and yet there is a gaping hole in its history, a hole currently filled by geek fantasy. Apparently, we are supposed to believe that a lone graduate from a Central European country created the foundation for this kernel and continues working with it to this very day. It amazes me that so many reputable people and organisations have fallen for the ridiculous myth that there is some sort of Finnish student who has single-handedly created something that threatens to overthrow the current software distribution system as we know it. I find it particularly absurd that he is lauded as some sort of super overlord throughout hackerdom. Even generally reliable sources have fallen for this ridiculous scam. The concept that one youth from a continent with French people living in it could sow the seeds for an operating system which frightens Microsoft is risible at best. It has taken Microsoft a decade to produce an OS which is even reasonably reliable and stands alone. So what makes you think that in the short time span from 1991 to the present day that a fictional character could produce an operating system which is more stable than Windows? Microsoft themselves has had thousands of people developing Windows for over a decade and has only recently been able to achieve what Linux has. How could one youth do the same in even less time? Obviously, this "Linus Torvalds" must be some sort of superhuman to have done such a thing. But we all know that there is no such thing as a superhuman Even Nietzsche acknowledged that we still had some way to go before attaining the status of the "Ubermensch". Whatever makes you think that an otherwise anonymous Finnish student would have achieved this status without anyone noticing? As such it must be plain for all to see that this "Linus Torvalds" is some sort of fabrication. It is the only way to explain why Linus keeps such a low profile, and that the main bit of evidence to even suggest his existence is the testimony of his mother and the strange posts "he" makes on obscure kernel hacking message boards. The fact that an entire community of "warez d00ds" and rabid Linux advocates has sprung up, proclaiming that "LUNIX RULEZZZ" is such a flimsy piece of circumstantial evidence that it must be discounted. But if "Linus Torvalds" does not actually exist, then who has conjured up his existence? There is only one possible person who could get away with such a fraud. Mikke Torvalds, "his" supposed birth parent. Mrs. Torvalds may have a lot to say about her son, but this does not excuse the fact that he does not exist. When you consider this, is it genuinely surprising that she found him "easy to raise"? Of course, there is one immediate objection which will no doubt be raised. "If Linus Torvalds doesn't really exist," I hear you ask, "then who wrote Linux?" That is a good question, but it is very obvious to see who. If you take a look around here for a while, you will hear names like Alan Cox, Richard Stallman, and Eric Raymond being bandied about. Obviously, it is immensely skilled coders and hackers such as these people who have made the wonderful OS Linux what it is today. The person who first made that post on comp.os.minix was in fact Linus' mother, who, frustrated by the ludicrous restrictions imposed upon her by Minix, due to its tiny size as a teaching OS, posted a message under a partial pseudonym, asking for help building a new, free UNIX-like operating system. All she wanted was someone to help her use her PC to print out her recipes and work with a serial modem, but before she knew it she was in way over her head. Pretty soon Linux had reached version 1.0 and strangers like Tanenbaum were talking about and claiming it was obsolete; barely before it was even released. Fortunately, Mikke had released the kernel under the GPL from the start, so she was able to dump it onto the shoulders of other people without arousing much suspicion at all from others. Now she only has to make periodic appearances on Usenet as her creation, "Linus", and the like to avoid arousing the interest of news-hungry geeks and hyperactive ZDNet reporters. "But what about the conferences and LUG visits?" you cry. "We have photographic evidence!" Well, that isn't Linus. Are you sure you'd like me to tell you who it is? OK. The person whom you have all been worshipping for eleven years is in fact Richard Stallman, a man simultaneously venerated and vilified by the Slashdot community. When Linux started to become more and more well-known and hit version 2.0, Mikke knew that she was in deep water and that her foolish hoax might be uncovered, so she decided to contact the most trustworthy man in the open source world. RMS was happy to cooperate especially when he knew that Linux had completely overwhelmed the Hurd project and that he might as well help; after all, if Linux was exposed as a giant falsification, mightn't his beloved GNU/Hurd project be considered a hoax also? Neither could take the chance of being discovered, and for that reason Stallman was perfectly happy to quickly purchase a cheap rubber mask and shave off some of his bodily hair. If we take a quick look forward to the 2003, the present day, and GNU/Linux is very stealthily taking over the server and business markets, with famous Linux distributors even starting education Linux courses for children and adults alike. Mikke Torvalds' simple request has turned into a multi-million dollar industry, and Stallman's hobby and grand vision has actually begun to come to fruition, in addition to freeing thousands of people from the chains of proprietary software. This is why, despite the fact that Linus Torvalds is actually a figment of our collective imagination and a warped product of a Finnish liberal's fevered mind, we should all honour "him" for being a prime symbol of our steadfast belief and ability to do what must be done to reach our ultimate goal. May his memory live on forever.
"Felis Cattus, is your taxonomic nomenclature, an endothermic quadruped carnivorous by nature? Your visual, olfactory and auditory senses contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations, a singular development of cat communications that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents; you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance. And when not being utilized to aide in locomotion, it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
O Spot, the complex levels of behaviour you display connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array. And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend, I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend."
-Data, "Schisms" (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
**And that's how I feel about this article.
nah, forget it.