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Slashback: Rendering, Munich, Clones

Slashback tonight with a passel of updates, corrections and tangents related to recent Slashdot postings, including GNU/Linux vs. Windows in Munich, Bunnie Huang's book on Xbox hacking, Mozilla's 5-line crash-test, and (sigh) yet another SCO note, but at least it's one to smile at. Read on for the details.

How to impress users. chjones writes "The bug that crashes Mozilla with simple HTML has been fixed in the latest nightly build. This was previously mentioned in a Slashback in response to a similar bug in Internet Explorer. No nightly build of IE appears to be available."

Quiet but sterile, or silent and deadly? JerryKnight writes "With the wider availability of TouchStream keyboards, such as at ThinkGeek, I wonder if these great devices are used by anyone else besides me. Since the last story over a year ago, Fingerworks has made quite a few improvements, such as many firmware upgrades and the (currently still Beta) Gesture Editor. Does anyone else find the gesture/mouse benefits to outweigh the headache of learning zero-force typing?"

Would you like to play a game? bigattichouse writes "When I read the piece on using gaming to keep your brain moving, it reminded me of several articles on coders needing 'ramp-up' time to get into coding. I put together a small freeware game PortaLogica as a preliminary attempt to create a game that would help stimulate coding-related-thought. The game is played using schematic logic gates, and trying to get inputs to match outputs. I'd love to flesh it out a bit more (like writing a KDE or Gnome version)..."

Offically official. Alexander Schatten writes "Although Steve Ballmer interrupted his holiday to try to change the decision of the Munich politicians, after some weeks of discussion Munich decided today to change all 14.000 PCs, Notebooks to Linux. Servers as well as Clients!

One of the main reasons was to avoid a too close binding to specific vendors. A wise decision, one will confirm, especially as Munich is one of the biggest cities in Germany and might be an example for other cities. For more details see: SuSE or heise.de (both in German)"

Buy it while it's legal. An anonymous reader writes "Remember Bunnie Huang? He's the MIT student who first hacked the Xbox. He wrote a book that was supposed to be published by a well-known publisher, but the publisher chickened out, afraid of Microsoft's wrath. Bunnie isn't so scared, however. He's publishing the book himself. The book, "Hacking the Xbox," can be purchased from his website. I just saw Bunnie on TechTV, and he's offering a 20 percent discount to TechTV viewers (Scroll to bottom of article to see the coupon code)."

The famous Finnish art of the insult. scotch51 writes "I followed the links to the Raelians website on Friday after ./ reported Linus Torvalds comparing the amazing SCO lawsuit to the Raelians claims of amazing (bio)technological achievements. Today, wanting to show a friend the Raelians rather pretty twist on the Star of David for their own logo, I see that all pages I'd visited yesterday report blank. "Reveal codes" on every page I visited yesterday reveals only: html body /body /html. Guess that's one way to deal with being slashdotted, or were they perhaps hacked?"

293 comments

  1. wget -r http://www.sco.com/ (FP) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's time for sco to feel the PAIN!

    1. Re:wget -r http://www.sco.com/ (FP) by child_of_mercy · · Score: 0, Redundant

      nice one!

      doing so now.

      --
      'There is a Light that never goes out.'
    2. Re:wget -r http://www.sco.com/ (FP) by gearheadsmp · · Score: 1

      Pitty I lost my job at that ISP. They had a 45mbit line. Oh, how I wish I could aim that at SCO. Now I'm stuck with residential cable.

    3. Re:wget -r http://www.sco.com/ (FP) by Phleg · · Score: 4, Funny

      This is silly and sophomoric. You should be ashamed.

      I mean, for god's sakes you forgot the recycling for loop.

      --
      No comment.
    4. Re:wget -r http://www.sco.com/ (FP) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      man wget, it said:

      wget -r -nd --delete-after -U mozilla http://whatever.com/~popular/page/

  2. Not an admin ? by IanBevan · · Score: 4, Funny
    No nightly build of IE appears to be available

    Only the near-daily security updates.

    1. Re:Not an admin ? by pla · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah, but who needs their virus scanner broken because of a web browser fix? ;-)


      (Note to the humor impaired - I realize the Symantec problem with the newest XP patch has nothing to do with virus scanning. Joke, meet Slashbots; Slashbots, meet joke. Joke != troll, even for very weak values of "joke").

    2. Re:Not an admin ? by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 0, Troll

      Wow. What a funny lie.

      --
      "Sufferin' succotash."
    3. Re:Not an admin ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      No nightly build of IE appears to be available

      DON'T try windows update!

    4. Re:Not an admin ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Or the net-update every 3rd day --- Monday update (break) XP, Tuesday un-update-XP, Wednesday update XP .... any bets on Thursday?

    5. Re:Not an admin ? by hdparm · · Score: 1

      Yes, see 'Monday'.

    6. Re:Not an admin ? by FuegoFuerte · · Score: 1

      Wow. What a funny lie.

      Right you are. Not just near-daily, often more frequent than that. Sometimes approaching an average of twice daily over a one-week period.

    7. Re:Not an admin ? by linuxChique · · Score: 1

      Did anyone else notice that /. had MS Visual Studio .NET advertisements all over the front page this morning? Whats that about?

      --
      the penguin will eat you.
    8. Re:Not an admin ? by rynix · · Score: 1

      Thursday Profit ?

      --
      http://logd.programgeeks.net/referral.php?r=lordva der
    9. Re:Not an admin ? by FurryFeet · · Score: 1

      Joke != troll, even for very weak values of "joke"

      True. Which only confirms we really, really need a (-1, Lame) moderation.
      >;)

    10. Re:Not an admin ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft is a for profit business peddling development tools (Visual Studio, C#) primarily aimed at Java web developers. Since most people on slashdot are Java web monkeys, it makes sense to advertise to them in the hopes of selling more of their product, and hence increasing the return on their shareholders investment.

      Any other questions?

  3. Munich by Gortbusters.org · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No suprise they choose SuSE... SuSE just dominates the market place over there with Mandrake coming in second. Alas, RedHat is largely US based.

    --
    --------
    Free your mind.
    1. Re:Munich by captain_craptacular · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, buying locally is a terrible idea. We would all be much better of if everyone mail-ordered everything from Taiwan. Money wants to be free and LOVES to travel!

      --
      They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
    2. Re:Munich by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They haven't chosen SuSE. They've chosen Linux. The details, including which distribution it's going to be, are yet to be determined. The decision was only about the general strategy.

    3. Re:Munich by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Relax. They will choose support contracts, not software, so it's obvious that local companies can make better offers.

    4. Re:Munich by daserver · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When I visited Cebit this year in Germany the only linux distro that you would hear about was Suse, which makes sense since Suse is a german company.

    5. Re:Munich by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Yaknow, it's great that MS lost and all, but when Linux wins for no more reason than jingoism, everyone loses.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    6. Re:Munich by dJCL · · Score: 5, Informative

      Bit it is not jingoism, the reports out there state that they had a scoring system, max 10000 and linux got mid 6K area, windows got lower 5K area, so by thier testing and other procedures, they determined that linux would be the best option for them... This is how every company would love to do it, make a true decision based on business needs. and if they did, some would go MS, some would go Linux, but more people would be happy.

      Enjoy.

      --
      On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
    7. Re:Munich by 73939133 · · Score: 1

      Yaknow, it's great that MS lost and all, but when Linux wins for no more reason than jingoism, everyone loses.

      Well, as others have pointed out, it wasn't "jingoism" but rational decision making.

      But even if it were jingoism, so what? It would still pale in comparison to the jingoism the US government and US companies display in procurement (of course, all that US jingoism doesn't translate into a positive trade balance, but you can't fault Americans for not giving it a good shot).

      Just remember: "Buy American" and "Freedom Fries".

    8. Re:Munich by cscx · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      "Will all the German OSes please add 500 points, and all the American ones please subract 500 points."

    9. Re:Munich by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh... they wanted to avoid vendor dependence, so they chose the largest commercial entity selling Linux?

      How is this better again?

    10. Re:Munich by pigeon · · Score: 1

      Plus that the deal was with suse and ibm. Last time I looked, IBM was a US company.

    11. Re:Munich by stinnux · · Score: 1

      They haven't decided yet it IBM gets the deal. HP and Fujitsu-Siemens are also an option.

    12. Re:Munich by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IBM is in the deal too, so ...

    13. Re:Munich by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They DIDN'T choose SuSE. They chose Linux. They haven't chosen a vendor yet. I'd say everyone, and esp. SuSE, would be surprised if SuSE doesn't get the nod, but it's not a done deal yet.

    14. Re:Munich by digidave · · Score: 1

      Have you ever tried SuSE 8.2 Pro? It's light years ahead of Red Hat or Mandrake in desktop usability. Their selection process may or may not be favouring home-grown software, but even an impartial process would have selected SuSE for the desktop.

      SuSE on the server is quite popular as well. IBM, for instance, only officially supports Red Hat Advanced Server and SuSE with their Linux server apps.

      --
      The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
    15. Re:Munich by mwood · · Score: 1

      "Last time I looked, IBM was a US company."

      That may be where the dividend checks come from, but IBM is an everywhere company. It would be just as sensible to say that the U.S. is an IBM country.

      What part of "In-ter-na-tion-al" did you fail to understand?

    16. Re:Munich by Asic+Eng · · Score: 1
      IBM is an everywhere company

      That's fair, but part of the discussions was also that Microsoft is a "Munich company" i.e. has large offices near Munich and employs people there. As opposed to SuSE which is "far away" in Nuernberg.

      Anyway, some Linux supporters were certainly pushing the city administrators to go for a "German product" but of course their real interest was Linux and they were merely trying to pull the politican's strings. :-)

  4. Not quite a true victory in munich by Bold+Marauder · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While I'm glad to see M$ go down and lose revenue just as much as anyone else, I really feel that we should be more focused on corporate adaptation of Linux in Germany, instead of trying to win the GNU/M$ battle through government intervention.

    1. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by birdman666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Governments are basically corporations nowadays anyway, at least they're being run like them. And if the government can run on something other than Microsoft, other corporations may take notice and give it a shot.

      --

      Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
    2. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To get corporations to adopt it, you need to make one of the biggest customers use it. If the government is using Linux with say OpenOffice and they will only deal with companies whose files they can read, well, the companies will either switch to OO or make sure that OO can read their documents.

    3. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by Jason+Earl · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually government adoption of Free Software makes a lot of sense. After all, the German government gets to tax the consultants that set up and customize their Linux systems, while licensing fees end up in the U.S. For government entities building the local economy is an important consideration. You don't build the local economy by sending millions to Redmond Washington (unless, of course, you live in Redmond).

      Also, governments are really the only entity that can mandate document formats. It doesn't matter how big your company is, if the government wants their information in OpenOffice format you don't send them an MS Word document.

      Most importantly, however, is the fact that a lot of the really large computer installations (where Linux has a definite advantage) are government owned. For small businesses Linux steeper learning curve works against it. In large organizations the openness, flexibility, and scriptability of Linux make it very cost effective to administer.

    4. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by pyrrho · · Score: 1

      remember when everyone thought of Microsoft as being in Seattle? Once people realized they were in Redmond, it was all down hill from there, no offense to Redmond intended.

      --

      -pyrrho

    5. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      Run like a corporation?!? You, my good man, have obviously never worked for the government. I've worked for both and I can say it's night and day. People in corporations get FIRED if they sit around all day and do nothing.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    6. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by afidel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well since here in the US MS has been going after state and local governments left and right for liscensing violation, costing taxpayers money both in fines for any technical violations found (it's hard to keep 100% in compliance even if you are putting in the effort, MS liscensing is almost one hundred pages of legalese) and for the time it takes to perform the audit I think it makes sense to switch. Besides the US government is the largest customer of MS so any pressure they could put on MS might bring about real change.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    7. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by Miguel+de+Icaza · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Linux on the enterprise (and government) desktop has only just begun.It is therefore difficult to see the trend if you are unaware what the big conversion projects are doing. In this multi-billion contract with the German government IBM will not only be converting all their desktops to SUSE-Linux but they are also charged with developing all the applications necessary, porting many internal office applications based on M$ access, eXcel, VB, SQLserver to KDE/java/MySQL/DB2 (Maybe the German government has come to the KDE teams rescue with much needed cash injection just in time!). This is why many others are sitting on the fence, they say "Oh, great, it has started, let's get in line to be at the counter when the goods are becoming available".

      It took the PC about 15 years to take the entreprise.Things like that don't happen overnight. But there is always a point when the critical mass has been reached and from that point on the trend cannot be stopped anymore. Linux is well positioned to reach that critical mass within a few years if ibm/Suse/kde continue to follow their roadmaps as they have done so far.

      --
      Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
    8. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by jpt.d · · Score: 1

      I don't know about over there, but cities are corporations in Canada. Speaking to you from within the Corporation of the City of London.

      --
      What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
    9. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by berzerke · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ...People in corporations get FIRED if they sit around all day and do nothing.



      Obviously you've never worked at a company where the department managers are son-in-laws of the company president, the office manager is black-mailing the company president (I don't know over what), and racism is rampant.

    10. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by Alsee · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Governments are basically corporations nowadays anyway

      And Microsoft is basically a government nowadays anyway.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    11. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by frozenray · · Score: 2, Informative

      > You don't build the local economy by sending millions to Redmond Washington

      Unfortunately, not all city governments in Germany think that way. The city of Frankfurt just signed a major contract with Microsoft, according to this news report from German c't magazine. Oh well, you win some, you lose some - but the decision made by the Munich authorities is a landmark case which gets much more publicity worldwide.

      --
      "There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
    12. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, another New York Times veteran heard from...

    13. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by Jason+Earl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The good news is that Linux doesn't need to win all the battles. In fact, with Microsoft's overwhelming market share we don't hardly need to win any to gain ground.

      Microsoft, on the other hand, has to maintain revenue growth if they are going to keep their investors happy. They can't afford to lose any customers, and they either have to actually gain customers, or they have to charge existing customers less. When the economy recovers and it becomes clear that Microsoft is not going to recover along with it then investors will finally see the light and Microsoft's price/earnings ratio will fall from its present near 30 level to much closer to 10. When it becomes clear that Microsoft is vulnerable to Linux then the fun will really begin.

      Right now CIOs believe that Microsoft is invincible. Disabuse them of that belief and Linux Total World Domination is inevitable.

    14. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by frozenray · · Score: 1

      Well put, full ack.

      I believe it's a Darwinian thing. If Open Source based solutions turn out to have an economical advantage for companies and governments under the bottom line (and I believe they do), they will prevail over traditional licensing models - in a free market, the companies with the least overhead will have an inherent advantage over others.

      Where I work, the management still is in CYA mode ("nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" etc.), but in view of the depleted budgets, some are beginning to see at least the economical advantages of using OSS. I just got clearance to use a GPLed tool for an internal deployment, and this is going to save us about 60'000 USD. A small step, but I hope that it will speed up acceptance of other Open Source solutions within our company.

      --
      "There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
    15. Re:Not quite a true victory in munich by Asic+Eng · · Score: 1

      Additionally, now that one city goes for Linux, they put pressure on MS, too. They now have to compete, and that means they'll also have to offer better prices. So many city administrations might now get better deals - even if they stay with Windows.

  5. OOK! by sulli · · Score: 3, Funny

    Quit linking to bugzilla, you insensitive clod!

    --

    sulli
    RTFJ.
    1. Re:OOK! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Uhuh, so we can't deep link to mozilla.org?

      If bugzilla can't cope with Slashdot, maybe Bugzilla should get fixed with a simple caching mechanism, for example?

    2. Re:OOK! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bugzilla rejects requests with Slashdot-referers. Most users will just see "Ook! Sorry, links to Bugzilla from Slashdot are disabled." when they click on that link, so linking from Slashdot to Bugzilla is really pointless. Doing it anyway is insensitive/rude. It's not illegal or anything, just frowned upon.

    3. Re:OOK! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but you can have Mozilla not set the referer tag, and then everything works fine. In particular, "links to Bugzilla from Slashdot" are then enabled.

    4. Re:OOK! by Mr+Z · · Score: 1

      Or you can cut-and-paste the URL into the location bar. Either way, it's a pretty effective "luser filter," since anyone with more than half a clue has no problem following the link. It just catches the slashbots.

      --Joe
    5. Re:OOK! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, Bugzilla temporarily bans your IP after you click through from slashdot (or it used to, not going to test it again).

      So you click, say "Whoops!", cut + paste into your special no-referrer version of Mozilla -- still blocked.

    6. Re:OOK! by Mr+Z · · Score: 1

      Didn't block mine. Maybe they had too many problems with whole companies getting blocked because one bozo behind the firewall clicked a referring URL from /.

      --Joe
    7. Re:OOK! by Zirnike · · Score: 1

      Nah. It changes the link. Click on it, and look. Instead of http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=200347 you get http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/slashdot/index.html?id =200347

      --
      I'm not shy, I'm stalking my prey
  6. Anyone else remember this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... the Raelians rather pretty twist on the Star of David for their own logo ...

    IIRC, the Raelians' symbol used to be a Star of David with a Swastika inside. They changed it a few years ago to the swirly thing. Anyone else remember this?

    1. Re:Anyone else remember this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yeah I remember that, there's some info on it here.

      Incidentally, the swastika used to be (still is I guess) a symbol of strength and good luck. More info on that here.

      Offtopic I guess, but interesting.

    2. Re:Anyone else remember this? by catsidhe · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I actually own a copy of Let's Welcome Our Fathers from Space, which has the original star-of-david/swastika logo on the front cover.

      There is a section in the introduction trying to justify this (IIRC, he claimed that both were solar symbols, and the swastika was just another symbol before Herr Hitler anyway, and everyone used it, and...) He is right in the technical sense, about the fylfot and its solar symbolism and ubiquity, but the German National Socialists have ruined it for everyone for quite a long time to come.

      --
      "This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
    3. Re:Anyone else remember this? by DeltaSigma · · Score: 1

      I was under the impression that the bad one went this way:
      _
      |_|_
      _| |

      And the good one went this way:
      _
      _|_|
      | |_

    4. Re:Anyone else remember this? by arkanes · · Score: 1

      The history books I read said that the swastika was actually derived from the German iron cross:
      _
      |
      |-*-|
      |
      -

      And that Hitler "modified" it by shifting the crossbars to the right (for some reason that escapes me) and that the similarity to the sun symbol is a coincidenc.

    5. Re:Anyone else remember this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So that it's two crossed S's perhaps? Perhaps it's no coincidence that the Nazi elite were the SS.

    6. Re:Anyone else remember this? by elmegil · · Score: 1

      You must have read some really bad history books then. The swastika has been around a lot longer that Hitler.

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
    7. Re:Anyone else remember this? by Shadowlore · · Score: 1

      Not quite.

      The swastika seen by ~99% of people on the earth in the last 50-60 years is not the original. The Nazis reversed it.

      --
      My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
    8. Re:Anyone else remember this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shurely something that simple would have appeared both ways even before the Nazis got it?

    9. Re:Anyone else remember this? by hdparm · · Score: 1
      you mean

      +

      ?

    10. Re:Anyone else remember this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think that's true. The first one is the symbol for good luck, used by Hindus. It's a really a shame that the Nazis went and used it. Hindu churches have been burned down because people thought the Swastika was a Nazi symbol.

    11. Re:Anyone else remember this? by jc42 · · Score: 1

      My wife's favorite winter coat has a very traditional looking Navaho/Hopi design of a somewhat irregular-looking pastiche of vertical and horizontal brown and black bars against a gray background. She was somewhat bemused when I pointed out that portions of the design formed about 3/4 of a swastika. It's subtle, but once you notice it, you can't stop seeing it.

      Of course, a full, isolated swastika isn't used any more, for obvious reasons. But if you're trying to make a traditional design from the general area of the American southwest or northern Mexico, it's difficult to avoid near-swastikas. It just happens as an artifact of the general design.

      I've always thought that the main origin of this sort of design is that, like a plaid, it's fairly easy to weave. And over the centuries, a design will come to have cultural connotations, even if it was just a simple, pretty design at the start. Parts of the traditional Southwestern designs do have cultural meaning, though the swastika itself seems to be mostly just an artifact of the style.

      Similarly, that traditional Greek zig-zag border design comes awfully close to a swastika at times, but it really is nothing more than a bit of attractive decoration.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
    12. Re:Anyone else remember this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can't these groups get their own symbols? I mean come on! The Jews "aquired" the Star of David by taking 2 pagan god symbols (2 triangles, one inverted, superimposed on each other.) Hitler took the swastika from the Jews because it was a Jewish symbol for good fortune (How ironic is that) and now these guys have taken 2 Jewish icons and combined them. I wonder if they even know the Swastika is Jewish?

    13. Re:Anyone else remember this? by thomas.galvin · · Score: 1

      I was under the impression that the bad one went this way:
      _
      |_|_
      _| |

      And the good one went this way:
      _
      _|_|
      | |_


      "Good and bad" aren't really the right words; "positive and negative," "light and dark," "male and female," etc are closer to the original meaning.

      These things are hindu or budhhist symboly, roughtly equivilent to the yin/yang you used to see all over the place. The swastica corresponds to the dark half, which is what caught Hitler's attention. In it's original context, it was just one half of the balancing forces in nature.

    14. Re:Anyone else remember this? by robotbrain · · Score: 1

      Yup, it went both ways. I have even seen it going the other way on Nazi propagandha. First google hit for "swastika buddhist" - Swastika - The Ancient Symbol

    15. Re:Anyone else remember this? by tengwar · · Score: 1

      I'm told the reason they reversed it was because the original was something like a trademark belonging to the Boy Scouts in Germany. My grandfather (British) once showed me Scout badge he'd been given at a pre-war jamboree in Germany - a swastika on a yellow ribbon, looking rather like a medal.

  7. SCOM by Omega1045 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I heard SCO is adding an "M" their name to make it SCOM. This will make it more closely resemble SCUM.

    --

    Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein

    1. Re:SCOM by bakes · · Score: 3, Funny

      I heard SCO is adding an "M" their name to make it SCOM. This will make it more closely resemble SCUM

      Conveniently, it also closely resembles "SCAM".

      --
      Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
    2. Re:SCOM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also this just announced:

      The Usenet newsgroup alt.sex.bondage.sco-unix has been renamed to something more appropriate: alt.sex.necrophillia.sco-unix

    3. Re:SCOM by Kris_J · · Score: 1

      New Zealanders are wondering why you're just saying the same word over and over...

  8. Steve Jobs NOT a Raelian by JamMasterJGorilla · · Score: 3, Funny

    I was looking at the Raelians' website after the Linus story then, after leaving the site my Safari browser unexpectly quit.
    Could the Raelians have some secret plan to use a buffer overflow to exploit my computer to attack their critics?
    The i began to think, is the Steve Jobs religion just to incompatible with the Raelians? I mean, who needs two god like icons. Steve in his black atire could be the Anti-Raelian, afterall why would he let anyone clone Steve?

    1. Re:Steve Jobs NOT a Raelian by zulux · · Score: 1

      after leaving the site my Safari browser unexpectly quit.


      You're fresaking me out - My Konqueror crashed after pressing "Back" on the Raelian site. Konqueror and Safari share good portions of the rendering engine - KHTML, so this could make sense.

      Opps, nevermined, I just realised that I left my foil hat with the shiny-side out. I put the shiny-side inwards, and my brain waves are happy again.

      --

      Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.

  9. I understand oh great one by djupedal · · Score: 4, Funny

    must....render....munich....clones

    1. Re:I understand oh great one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tch! Bloody Raelians!

  10. santa cruz unix midgets? by Bold+Marauder · · Score: 1

    Santa Cruz Unix ..? ...midgets?

    Someone help me out with this last letter here!

    1. Re:santa cruz unix midgets? by Miffe · · Score: 0

      Santa Cruz Unix Morons

  11. Re:SCO lawsuit by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 3, Funny

    SCO has MUCH case law on their side, which I will not cite

    Gee, there's something new

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  12. the pain of input devices by lingqi · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Does anyone else find the gesture/mouse benefits to outweigh the headache of learning zero-force typing?

    no, I feel the pain for the over 300 dollars deficit in my wallet for such a keyboard.

    Seriously though - I would LOVE to try one, but affordability is definitely not one of its good traits. Anybody knows a place where you can rent one for a week? in japan, possibly?

    otoh, while not having had any touchstream experience, I can speak from the perspective of a dvorak user - which is the pain of having to resort back to qwerty anywhere else. Not so much a problem for me now, but if you work in IT and needs to troubleshoot people's computers - forget it. (I read stuff like "after you learn dvorak you can revert back to qwerty and be fluent in both" which I am finding out is total bullshit - as much as I like the dvorak layout - switching to qwerty on the fly is not easy)

    Not to mention in places such as BIOS and the such, you don't even have the OPTION to configure a dvorak keyboard...

    Similar things I predict for touchstream users - you will go to another computer and wave your hand jedi-like and nothing happens and it will cause a ton of frustration. Heck, just imagine going between work and home. Having big trouble affording one, No way in a billion years I can afford two... I will wait for neurological interfaces instead - well, if we are not already batteries / control modules inside the matrix already.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

    1. Re:the pain of input devices by davidstrauss · · Score: 1
      Not to mention in places such as BIOS and the such, you don't even have the OPTION to configure a dvorak keyboard...

      Why would BIOS even care? It's not like the signal for 'A' from a Dvorak keyboard should be different from another keyboard.

    2. Re:the pain of input devices by phraktyl · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I used a dvorak layout for about a week, and was starting to get decent at it, and then tried to edit something in vi. Have you ever tried to move around using H, J, K and L in a dvorak layout?!

      It was either dvorak or vi, and vi won by a landslide.

      --
      Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
    3. Re:the pain of input devices by Phoukka · · Score: 1

      Because an awful lot of Dvorak users simply remap the keys on an existing qwerty keyboard. Hard to learn on, but if you master Dvorak on a Dvorak-labeled keyboard, your touch-typing skills should carry over to the point where you don't need the labels. At that point, you can just change the keymap in the OS of whatever other computer you find yourself working on and ignore the qwerty-centric labels on the keys. Working on BIOS, though, one's touch-typing Dvorak skills won't help you because there's no such thing as a keymap utility down that far.

    4. Re:the pain of input devices by Whyrph · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why would BIOS even care? It's not like the signal for 'A' from a Dvorak keyboard should be different from another keyboard.


      Most people use software translation so they don't have to buy a real Dvorak keyboard, myself included. It's just easier that way.

    5. Re:the pain of input devices by bobthemonkey13 · · Score: 1

      Most DVORAK keyboards (homemade ones) are just QWERTY keyboards with the keycaps switched around. Thus, they need software-side mapping. You can buy hardware-mapped DVORAK keyboards but this is a bit silly when the average geek already has a bunch of QWERTY keyboards lying around.

    6. Re:the pain of input devices by alannon · · Score: 1

      I believe most Dvorak keyboards return the same signal for the same position as a qwerty keyboard, and leave it to the OS to offer a proper keymap. For the most part, only the caps on the keys are different. Therefore, the BIOS would have to have a dvorak keymap in it to work.

    7. Re:the pain of input devices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I type both Dvorak and QWERTY daily. Dvorak at the moment. If I type QWERTY exclusively for a month, and then try to type some Dvorak, it takes a few hours for things to straighten out, but otherwise I have no problem switching.

      VI is a pain; typing 'ls' is the worst, because both 'l' and 's' are pressed with the right pinky, but it's worth it.

    8. Re:the pain of input devices by Piquan · · Score: 1
      Learn Emacs. :-P

      I have the same trouble with my Maltron, on those rare cases I use vi. I'll flip it to QWERTY mode while I'm moving. Same goes for NetHack.

    9. Re:the pain of input devices by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      The only use for something like this for me would be on a laptop or tablet or similar portable system. If they could superimpose such an input device over your tablet's screen then I could see using it. It'd be useful to me to be able to have a ghostly keyboard come into view when I made a certain gesture and thus let me type and the rest of the time to just have the screen work as a touch/pen surface and support simple gestures. Not having to hual around the keyboard or a clumsy portable mouse IMO would be worth the hassle.

      But then I think peoples laptops/tablets should be able to interface as something of a kvm with headless boxes around the world. They should be able to plug into the keyboard, mouse, and monitor ports and allow you to switch between the connected machine and the portable with some sort of keystroke or gesture. I always found it a bit pointless to have sepperate keyboard, mice, and monitors for each computer.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    10. Re:the pain of input devices by Trogre · · Score: 1

      Have you ever tried to move around using H, J, K and L in a dvorak layout?!

      uh, isn't that what the cursor keys are for?

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    11. Re:the pain of input devices by cduffy · · Score: 1

      Dunno bout most -- but when the touchstream is in dvorak mode, it does the remapping itself.

    12. Re:the pain of input devices by Gregg+Williams · · Score: 2, Informative

      I have a TouchStream keyboard in front of me right now, and it's an integral part of my computer. I have extreme tendinitis in both hands, and a variety of adaptive technologies make it possible for me to use a computer on a daily basis. For dictating English sentences, nothing beats Dragon NaturallySpeaking. However, it's very tedious to use voice-recognition software for the occasional keystroke or for non-English character sequences (Java, anyone?). This is where the TouchStream keyboard is a godsend--I can't see touch-typing with it, but it is a keyboard that I can use (in moderation) without hurting my hands. Also, the ability to use the keyboard's surface as a touchpad to move the mouse is also very helpful.

      --
      InfoML.org: an XML language for capturing and sharing general information

    13. Re:the pain of input devices by mnewton32 · · Score: 1

      no, I feel the pain for the over 300 dollars deficit in my wallet for such a keyboard.

      Hmmm, if this were a poll, one could make a joke about paying CowboyNeal $0.50 an hour to do all your typing for you for 700 hours...

    14. Re:the pain of input devices by Phs2501 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Probably the best thing to do is simply remap the vi commands to the Dvorak keys in their old QUERTY positions. You will have to remember the vi commands by position instead of letter, but if you've been using vi on QUERTY for any length of time that's how you do it now. That way the old "hjkl" commands will be on dvorak "dhtn" and you will be a happy Dvorak vi user.

      I'm sure I've seen vim scripts that do exactly this. Try searching for "dvorak vim".

    15. Re:the pain of input devices by ShadowDrake · · Score: 1

      I don't know of a BIOS that needs the main alphabetic area.

      Most operations are done with arrows, +/-/pageup/pagedown/return and a few function keys. The primary exception is setting hard-disc type, if it doesn't autodetect.

      --
      It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
    16. Re:the pain of input devices by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      No, cursor keys are bad for two reasons:

      1) Many terminals represent cursor and other non-ascii keys as multi-character sequences (usually escape-something-or-another) and the tty line discpline "guesses" that you typed a special key like a cursor key by measuring the time between receiving characters - the idea is that if they come quick enough, it must be a special key because no human can type that fast.

      But, neither linux nor most other unices are real-time so sometimes random delays get inserted in the middle of the multi-char sequences and the system now thinks you typed seperate keys instead of just one. Ever hold down a cursor key for a long time only to have vi start going crazy and insert a bunch of weird line-noise like garbage into the text? You just had a timing anomaly like the above description.

      2) Cursor keys are inefficient, you have to move your hand far away from the home position and back, often needing to actually glance at the keyboard in order to make sure your fingers get aligned and re-aligned correctly. Using H-J-K-L, like most other commands in vi, your fingers stay right there in the middle of the keys requiring no special extra thought on your part to align your fingers. This may seem trivial, but when you move a cursor around a couple of thousand times per day, it adds up real quick.

      So, in summary, HJKL GOOD, Cursor Arrow Keys BAD. If you haven't learned HJKL yet, wean yourself of the arrow keys as soon as possible. It is one more step down the path of acheiving unix nirvana.

      -- Your friendly unix bodhisattva

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    17. Re:the pain of input devices by lewp · · Score: 1

      ... thus completely eliminating the speed benefit of using the Dvorak layout in the first place. Thanks!

      --
      Game... blouses.
    18. Re:the pain of input devices by srussell · · Score: 1
      Have you ever tried to move around using H, J, K and L in a dvorak layout?!

      Yeah, for about 8 hours a day. It isn't a problem. k/j (up/down) are right under your left hand, and h/l (left/right) are under your right. It is pretty easy to get used to, and, although not optimal, I find it actually easier than their layout on a QWERTY board.

    19. Re:the pain of input devices by zojas · · Score: 1

      yes, I use the h,l,j,k keys in vim on a dvorak layout every day, all day long. no big deal once you practice a bit.

    20. Re:the pain of input devices by MntlChaos · · Score: 1

      QUERTY swddenly the parent poster's problem becomes clear. His keyboard has W and U suitched around

    21. Re:the pain of input devices by JerryKnight · · Score: 1

      Your point #1 is good, except obviously in most local terminals where it doesn't apply.

      In response to #2: On the Touchstream keyboard, dragging around 2 fingers on the right hand acts as the mouse cursor. However, dragging around 2 fingers on the left hand acts as the TEXT cursor. It takes some getting used to, but on a local terminal, it is very responsive and easy to control precisely.

      Apart from the fact that I am an evil emacs user, this method seems easier than brain-mapping any set of keys to text cursor movement, unless a slow terminal makes it impossible to control or interpret key codes. Sure I still use n/p/f/b from time to time, but usually only for the Meta commands.

      --

      Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
    22. Re:the pain of input devices by Information+Mechanic · · Score: 1
      I have been typing on one of these for a few months and have a few reflections to share.


      It was pain that drove me to get a Touchstream. Scary right-hand wrist and shoulder pain from repetitive mousing/trackballing. Possibly-career-ending RSI type pain. I was anxious enough to try anything and the price tag was not an obstacle under the circs :-)


      I've had the TS for 5 months at the office. The first month was hell. The second month was hell.
      My output fell through the floor. I felt like I was trying to type upside down and underwater in handcuffs. My brain hurt.


      The third month I started to feel less like my brain was being tied in a decorative knot, and sequences of more than 10 characters at a time came out correctly -- sometimes at nearly normal speeds! The fourth month it started feeling almost "ordinary," and mechanical keyboards started to feel kinda clunky and odd.


      It's a very different ballgame from a mechanical keyboard, and it's not just the zero force thing. You can't do those light, tentative, phantom keytouches that constantly tell you where the keycaps are. No resting on the keys except with all five fingers down, and definitely no shadow-tapping ruminatively while considering the next line :-)


      The mousing OTOH was intuitive and delightful from the first moment I tried it. It was like finally experiencing what point/click/wheel was supposed to be like all along, but no one ever got it quite right before. I curse that stupid little touchpad on the laptop now that I've got the real thing in the office :-)


      However, I do type a lot on the laptop and I don't feel any serious cognitive dissonance when switching kbrds... well maybe on a Monday morning for a few minutes :-) I can't tell whether the pain relief is due to the TS lower-stress mousing or to using two radically different keyboard/pointer devices and hence switching motion patterns a lot. Whatever -- it works.


      The mousing features and gesture editing are imho infinitely worth the retraining period. I am still typing too hard on the zero-impact surface, when the lightest touch will do -- but it gets faster w/each passing week. Still mis-hit a few keys 'cos the board is not well proportioned for shorter fingers, but there are rumours that the latest greatest configware might let me relocate individual keycaps (!!) The customisable Programmer's Pad on the right hand is nifty for the short-fingered, as you can put your favourite punctuation (long-reach shifted) keys there for your favourite programming language. The programmable gestures can be used as simple aliases for very-frequently used comands. None of these features mattered much to me when I first got the board, but I have become fond of them over time.


      Today, I think you'd have to be motivated by more than "kewlness" to retrain yourself to one of these. It's not a device you adapt to casually. A little less weird than the Twiddler or half-boards, but it's definitely an effort to regain fluency. Early RSI warnings were very motivating :-) But I think this may be the keyboard/input technology of the future. Spill proof, light, portable, programmable. What more can we ask, except "cheaper"?


      No driver is needed except generic USB so you can carry it around to machines with USB input device support...


      Touchstream tech support was very good to deal with. Poor Carl suffered along with me, I'm sure, as my gripes and whines clogged up his inbox during the learning curve. But he was always responsive and it was fun being a beta user for the gesture editor. My only criticism is that they didn't seem to be testing the configware sufficiently with Linux -- sometimes the download shars had MS-inflicted pollution, etc.


      "And that's all I have to say about that."

    23. Re:the pain of input devices by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      Your point #1 is good, except obviously in most local terminals where it doesn't apply.

      No, it applies to ALL tty terminals, even local xterm/eterm/etc. The only case where it doesn't apply is in a pure GUI evironment where the X server talks directly to the keyboard and generates keypress events that the application being controlled receives directlya s events and not as characters. Merely sending keypress events to an xterm window in which vi is running will not eliminate the race condition because the xterm will translate those keypresses into multi-character escape codes that it feeds the tty line discipline. Anything that uses the tty drivers (aka pty, aka ttyp, etc) is potentially subject to the problem.

      For example - vim will always be vulnerable, gvim will not be.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  13. Zero-force typing? by radon28 · · Score: 1

    So, what, that means I just have to think about it and the letters appear?

    1. Re:Zero-force typing? by realdpk · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey Radon28, what's your password?
      <radon28> *thinks about password for a split second, decides against sharing*
      <dpk> N/m, thanks!

    2. Re:Zero-force typing? by radon28 · · Score: 1

      what?

    3. Re:Zero-force typing? by Mononoke · · Score: 4, Funny
      So, what, that means I just have to think about it and the letters appear?
      Zero-Force that is not. The Force that is, young one.

      --
      NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
    4. Re:Zero-force typing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      off topic, but what the hell

      Do you even think of your passwords as symbols? To me it's sort of abstract and it looks rather weird when I accidentally type one where I can read it (as opposed to seeing *'s). My fingers just do the typing, and even if I had to spell it out loud, I probably couldn't.

    5. Re:Zero-force typing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      huh... I always thought I was the only one who felt that way... I think of my passwords as a gesture... at this point, I'm not even entirely sure what my password is without thinking about where my fingers land...

  14. Parent quotes out of context by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Real quote
    SCO has MUCH case law on their side, which I will not cite so as not to point back to my Novell source,

    I can't blame him for that... you should never reveal your sources.

    1. Re:Parent quotes out of context by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 1

      The excuse is irrelevant... without details, it's just more FUD

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    2. Re:Parent quotes out of context by realdpk · · Score: 1

      you should never reveal your sources.

      If only SCO had hired you before all this, they wouldn't have had to sue IBM. And they'd be making boatloads of money licensing their valuable source code.

  15. WRONG. Its called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    good reporting. A good reporter never reveals their resources. Would you sell your friend up the river for a ./ post?

    1. Re:WRONG. Its called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      good reporting. A good reporter never reveals their resources. Would you sell your friend up the river for a ./ post?

      Hell yes. I'd strangle my mother with her own intestines for ./ karma.

    2. Re:WRONG. Its called... by realdpk · · Score: 1

      Citing case law, which is public (otherwise it'd be sealed, eh?), == selling your friend up the river?

      Anyways, it all just smells of FUD. Watch this.

      I talked with a few lawyer buddies of mine who work for the firm SCO hired (but are not on the specific case). They say this is a slam dunk - the evidence they have is really quite significant and will stun the community. I will not share the details on the evidence, although you can find it in your newspaper. They said Linux users would definitely have to pay some sort of fee for use.

      See, I can play that game too. Except I'm not posting anonymously, so I'm probably not going to come across as credible.

    3. Re:WRONG. Its called... by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 1

      No, they don't generally reveal their sources... But they do generally reveal what they're reporting. "SCO is going to win. Someone told me why. But I can't tell you, or someone might guess who my friend is" is not reporting. It has no substance. It says nothing. Fittingly, it was moderated as a Troll.

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    4. Re:WRONG. Its called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Holy crap, you are posting with a name instead of an anonymous IP address, you must be MUCH more credible.

    5. Re:WRONG. Its called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why you post as AC?

  16. Re:Why oh why? by Derek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No stock, but one of my best T-shirts was a "Caldera" T-shirt. I'll miss it....

    -Derek

  17. Raelians by cageyjames · · Score: 0

    I followed the link and couldn't back out. What a bunch of bastards. :( I wish the site was down after seeing that picture of the guy with the chrome dome... :(

    1. Re:Raelians by MikeFM · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is why real browsers such as Opera and Mozilla offer tabbed browsing. Open links in new tabs. When your done just kill the tab and your still on the original page. :)

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    2. Re:Raelians by Inda · · Score: 1

      I use IE and have tabbed windows. Does that make it a real browser now?

      Try Avant Browser then please STFU. It's a browser, it lets me view media, and it does its job fine. You Mozilla users are getting real boring with your elitism.

      --
      This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
    3. Re:Raelians by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      It's a step closer to being a real browser. It's recent improvements in CSS support go a long way towards that end too.

      Avant looks okay but still to IE'ish for me. Especially with those default XP colors. I assume by looking that you can skin it not to look like a candy factory exploded. :) I'm not quite sure why people bother copying features from Opera and Mozilla to IE but if it pleases them to do so rather than to just use one of these then I guess it's their time so I don't care. I don't really like the preview image of Avant with the multiple windows inside the main window. To me those kind of programs are annoying. Why would you want a tab that wasn't full-browser? Just curious. :)

      When a product is good I praise it. I choose not to praise products that suck. Is that elitism? Since anyone is free to improve their own product or just switch to the one I recommend it hardly seems so.

      If I get bored maybe I'll see if Avant will run on my Linux box. IE6 runs fine but sometimes minor things can make one Windows program run fine while another brain farts.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
  18. Do not /. Bugzilla... by $$$$$exyGal · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's the Bugzilla text:
    ===

    User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030401
    Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030401

    Even though the given testcase might be an abusive use of CSS and as of that to
    be considered invalid html the browser crashes on loading this page.

    Reproducible: Always

    Steps to Reproduce:
    1. load the testcase

    Actual Results:
    crash

    Expected Results:
    rendered the page - at least somehow ;)

    <html>
    <body>
    <fieldset style="position:fixed;">
    <legend class="bblack14">Crash test</legend>
    hello world content
    </fieldset>
    </body>
    </html>

    ==
    The bug is fixed in the nightly build.

    --
    Very popular slashdot journal for adul
    1. Re:Do not /. Bugzilla... by realdpk · · Score: 1

      Yes, Bugzilla is sacred. /. the other sites all you want. ;)

    2. Re:Do not /. Bugzilla... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't worry... nobody ever actually reads slashbacks.

    3. Re:Do not /. Bugzilla... by ceejayoz · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Heh...

      Anyone else remember the comments about how shitty IE was for having a bug like this?

      Zealotry will come and bite ya in the ass. Hehehe...

    4. Re:Do not /. Bugzilla... by Type-R · · Score: 1

      Yeah... except that mozilla has fixed the problem and shown people what went wrong.. IE is still broken.. That's a case of zealotry being validated, lol.

    5. Re:Do not /. Bugzilla... by dcmeserve · · Score: 3, Funny
      Do not /. Bugzilla.

      Do not taunt Bugzilla.

      Do not use Bugzilla on concrete.

      Bugzilla may stick to certain types of skin.

      Caution: Bugzilla may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.

      Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children should avoid prolonged exposure to Bugzilla.

      Discontinue use of Bugzilla if any of the following occurs:

      * Itching

      * Vertigo

      * Dizziness

      * Tingling in extremities

      * Loss of balance or coordination

      * Slurred speech

      * Temporary blindness

      * Profuse Sweating

      or

      * Heart palpitations

      Bugzilla comes with a lifetime guarantee.

      Bugzilla! Accept no substitutes!

      --
      "Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
  19. Re. the mozilla rendering bug... by Bake · · Score: 1

    Does anyone know if it's also fixed in recent nightly builds of FireBird (The Browser Formerly Known As Phoenix)?

    1. Re:Re. the mozilla rendering bug... by yerricde · · Score: 1

      It should be fixed in Mozilla Firebird as well. As far as I know, Mozilla Firebird is built from the same tree as Mozilla Seamonkey (the kitchen sink version).

      --
      Will I retire or break 10K?
  20. Re:SCO lawsuit by htm3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    hmmm... last time i checked, "all the available documentation" did not include any actual evidence (unless you are now under a sco nda?). all the information you could possibly obtain from novell couldn't help you there... it seems a bit strange that you could arrive at such a conclusion without knowing what sco's "proof" is, no matter how good a lawyer you may be. then again i am no lawyer, so what do i know? - cheers!

  21. Re:Why oh why? by cageyjames · · Score: 0

    I'd sue them...

  22. Newsflash, troll boy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Novell is backing Linux

  23. help me out please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    how do i set the proxy environment variable in linux? thanks, geeks. you guys are the best

    1. Re:help me out please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps "export HTTP_PROXY='http://proxy:port/'" would be of use to you? I'm not sure if all applications use that though.

  24. Touchstream Keyboards by Gyorg_Lavode · · Score: 1

    I just got my touchstream keyboard today. My typing is a little slower but it's still faster than most peoples typing. I have more mistakes but not that many more, ( and most of them are from the rearamgement of the keys from a normal keyboard, not from touch typing). I really like it already. The gestures are great and not having to move your hand to move your mouse is very nice. It's definately expensive, but it was my graduation to myself. Anyway, I think it's great. As the price for the technology comes down, I imagine everyone will be using this type of thing.

    --
    I do security
    1. Re:Touchstream Keyboards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I've been using the Touchstream since Xmas. My typing has improved a lot since starting but I still think there are improvements that could be made (slight ridges that give better location feel of keys, for example). Hand position is critical when starting long text entries. Nonetheless, I like it a lot, the gestures are a huge improvement to stopping, moving your hand, setting up the mouse, deleting (or whatever), moving your hand back, and typing. I use a bunch of features constantly like magnifying my browser view for certain websites, opening apps, closing apps, saving, etc. And I use it at work while I have an old Darwin Smartboard at home. The transition is a little funny but just emphasizes how much I dislike having to go to my trackball for window movement.

    2. Re:Touchstream Keyboards by JerryKnight · · Score: 1

      I share your frustrations learning to type on this thing. My advice is to "center" your hands before typing a sentence or whatever. You do this by putting all 5 fingers on each hand down at once, then you slide them around til they are all on the "braille" dots. Then you adjust your heals to where the fingers are comfortably angled. Then type away. If you make a bunch of typos, stop and recenter. It takes practice, but it does get better.

      For me, the hardest thing is reaching the pinky keys (ie. P, or L in dvorak), but when I miss those keys, I recenter and angle my hands more inward.

      --

      Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
  25. Re:SCO lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You don't need proof in law anymore. You just need to sway the jury that is hand-picked for gullibility.

  26. Soviet Rendering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In Soviet Russia, Munich clones render you!

  27. Fingerworks LP ZeroForce Keyboard... by GNU_Suit · · Score: 3, Informative

    is incredible. I recently bought one (DVORAK no less) and it's made interacting with my computer a lot more productive.

    Also, I don't buy the story about difficulty in going between QWERTY and DVORAK as I do it each day between my home machines and the one I use at work. If there was a problem, it's not that expensive to buy two ($300... for good hardware, it's not a bad price!).

    If anyone who reports to me preferred a non-QWERTY keyboard, I'd be happy to purchase one for him/her to use. It's very much akin to someone who is left handed wanting lefty scissors.

    1. Re:Fingerworks LP ZeroForce Keyboard... by dajt · · Score: 1

      I just use a PFU Industries Happy Hacker with the layout remapped to Dvorak in software. It sure cured me of the sin of looking at my hands while I type! To type in qwerty, I just need to look at the keys :-)

      --
      Geez. Fifteen years and we still haven't taken over the world.
    2. Re:Fingerworks LP ZeroForce Keyboard... by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      My computer only cost $405 and it isn't bad (rather good actually). I have to continue to think that $300 just for a keyboard/mouse is overpriced. Dare I ask if wherever you work is hiring? If you can afford to buy lots of $300 keyboards I want to do what you do. :)

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    3. Re:Fingerworks LP ZeroForce Keyboard... by alienw · · Score: 1

      Umm... No. $300 for a mouse / keyboard is not that much if you do serious computer / programming work. It may seem like a lot, but given that a keyboard can easily last for 10 years, I think it's an excellent investment. For example, I type much faster and make fewer errors on a clicky keyboard like Northgate Omnikey or IBM Model M. If I use a cheap membrane keyboard, I make more typos and get tired quickly. What do you think is more expensive -- a $100 keyboard or lost programmer productivity?

      Buying cheap keyboards in a programming company is just like making everyone work on rickety tables that were dug out of a dumpster. It catches up with you, productivity-wise, and you don't save that much money in the long run. After all, if your programming team increases productivity by even 5%, that could save you from having to hire another programmer who would be exponentially more expensive than a bunch of quality keyboards. I wouldn't be surprised if productivity increased even more, given that people's hands get less tired with a proper keyboard and they might enjoy working at their computer more.

      In any case, the notion that everyone can use cheap keyboards with no lost productivity is as wrong as saying that Formula 1 race car drivers would do as well if their steering wheel was as cheap as that in a lawn tractor.

    4. Re:Fingerworks LP ZeroForce Keyboard... by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      I've never noticed keyboards making much difference on my coding speed unless they are dramaticlly different.. to small (like some laptops) or those nasty ergonomical things that are bent in crazy shapes. Windows keyboards with dozens of useless buttons annoy me too.

      My one big keyboard bitch other than those is keyboards that are metal on the bottom. I like to lay the keyboard on my legs (so I can sit with my feet up) and the ones with metal are COLD when your wearing shorts. :)

      I like my Happy Hacker keyboard but I usually use my cheap $10 (I actually buy them wholesale for $3) keyboards. They may die a couple times a year from heavy abuse but they are so cheap I don't care. I keep the Happy Hacker for special occassions.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
  28. Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges by RhettLivingston · · Score: 3, Insightful

    To compare the release of a fix for a Mozilla bug in a nightly build of the development trunk to the release of an Explorer patch is an apples and oranges comparison at the least. Post the story when the Mozilla bug fix has been run through a complete test cycle and appears in a stable release. Put another way, if Mozilla had a system designed to drive the fix out to every user including the secretaries and the grandmothers in the nursing home (maybe it has, I don't know), you might have a story if they drove their fix out before Microsoft drives theirs out. To know whether the comparison made today means anything, you'd have to know whether Microsoft has fixed this in their internal nightly builds.

    1. Re:Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges by foandd · · Score: 3, Informative
      To know whether the comparison made today means anything, you'd have to know whether Microsoft has fixed this in their internal nightly builds.

      No you wouldn't.

      As a matter of fact, you just showed yourself why the comparison means something. We all know the bug has been fixed in Mozilla. We can all get a version of Mozilla in which this bug has been fixed. We all know there will be "official" releases of browsers coming (Netscape et al) which will not have this bug.

      We don't have any clue as to the status of the IE bug. The only one of these things we know about IE is whether or not we can get a fixed version today, and the answer to that is no.

      You may think these things are meaningless, but that would be more an indication of your unwillingness to face reality than anything else.

    2. Re:Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges by RhettLivingston · · Score: 0

      A bug is not "fixed" until it is fixed and it is been through enough testing to have a high degree of confidence that unwanted side effects have not occurred. Access to a development version doesn't tell me that it has been fixed, even if I go download it and run it through random tests myself for hours. A full regression test suite on a product like this takes a test farm many hours to run in Microsoft's case or in Mozilla's case, I suppose the substitute would be just making it through a few months of being run by the more hardcore users with no complaints.

    3. Re:Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges by RodgerDodger · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not so; the availability of the nightly build means that if someone really requires this functionality, then they can get it now (albeit at the cost of losing support). Try that for IE.

      While I don't bother using nightly builds of Mozilla, I have used nightly builds of other open-source products to get around bugs that would otherwise have been showstoppers. It's very useful when needed.

      Of course, why someone would need the crash bug fixed is an interesting question. But imagine if the next email virus included the crash HTML?

      --
      "Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
    4. Re:Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're absolutely right.

      If you need to refresh your memory regarding Microsoft's stable and tested updates, go back to the front page and scroll down a bit.

      ass.

    5. Re:Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges by MikeFM · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Is this why Microsoft yanked their newest XP patch back after it started screwing things up? Really on such a simple fix as this it's pretty easy to test if it stops the problem. Load the code in question into a non-patched Mozilla.. oops crashes. Load the code into a patched Mozilla.. yeh it doesn't crash. Pretty good chance things are working nice. Problems occur more when you wait and package lots of small fixes into a single patch. The more you change at once the more likely you'll break something. Every nights builds of Mozilla get tested by thousands of users on all sorts of different platforms and configurations. No commercial product can manage that.

      There is something to saying that a nightly build is not the same as a fix in the stable branch but often such fixes are backported and distributed to end users (via their distro) so that the users don't have to use unstable builds or wait for the next stable version.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    6. Re:Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges by MattRog · · Score: 1

      Also, look at the timeline. The Mozilla bug was entered in 2Apr, and fixed 22May. The IE bug was found on 23Apr, and I assume Microsoft was notified around that time as well. If we want to be fair, MS still has another two weeks to release a patch in order to match Mozilla's turnaround time.

      --

      Thanks,
      --
      Matt
    7. Re:Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges by ckaminski · · Score: 1

      Not true. Unit testing makes sure that the module fixed does the proper things with both the good and bad input fed to it.

      System regression testing ensures that the code change you made doesn't set up some subtle side-effect that causes a stack explosion or data corruption 2000 function calls later.

      Every code change has the potential to screw the pooch. While you are correct that said chance goes up for each extra code change made, the probability is NEVER zero that a code change is perfect.

    8. Re:Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      I assume (prehaps incorrectly) that Netscape and other commercial bundlers of Mozilla do regression testing and such using specialized tools for such things. I still think the opensource process itself is it's own type of testing which does much the same thing but obviously it never hurts to run more tests. The more careful you are the better the output. There is no reason to hold up nightly builds for these other tests though. :)

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
  29. porta logica ? Logic games by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Want logic games?

    Try some of the games in Mame (also available for Linux/Unix) such as: Boxy Boy, Chicken Shift, Logic Pro, Logic Pro 2, Phozon, Pushman, and Wise Guy.

    Some of these can are real real brain-busters.

    --
    If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
  30. PortaLogica by scrotch · · Score: 1

    That PortaLogica looks pretty cool to me. Wonder if it runs on my computer...

    Doesn't mention any system requirements at all. Maybe it runs on my old C64. They do mention the C64.

    That must be it.

    1. Re:PortaLogica by MntlChaos · · Score: 1

      PortaLogica has a bit of a design flaw, you get points for being INefficient. This is because it lets you connect gate outputs to 2 places. Consider: 3 0's. AND/OR/XOR 2 of them. AND/OR/XOR the gate with the third. AND/OR/XOR both gates. AND/OR/XOR the second and third gate. ... AND/OR/XOR the nth and n+1th gate. you get the same 3 outputs while increasing your score indefinitely. With 4 binary 1's to start with, you can do 2 ORs, XOR the ORs, OR the XOR and OR (do 2 of these). You now have access to 4 binary 1's. lather rinse repeat.

  31. Succomb To The Hype While It's Legal by istartedi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Last time I heard, TechTV is owned in part by Paul Allen. Is it just possible that this whole brewhaha is nothing more than a charade designed to get us to say "X-box" all the time? Oh no... it's working. No thanks. I'll keep my $24.99-20%+shipping and spend it on beer or something.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    1. Re:Succomb To The Hype While It's Legal by headpushslap · · Score: 1

      I thought beer was free at /.

      No?

  32. Speaking of the Raelean Website... by ProfessionalCookie · · Score: 1

    Dude they have now applied slashdot armor to their website. No more getting slashdotted!!

    When ever you go there it loads a Flash Intro.

    Looks like they're taking this "keep slashdot out" attitude quite seriously!

  33. Raelians slashdotted? by vladkrupin · · Score: 3, Funny

    No, they just moved the servers to the outer space and what you saw was a glitch during the transition.

    --

    Jobs? Which jobs?
  34. SOFT-dvorak by lingqi · · Score: 1

    that's the problem. you can't buy dvorak keyboards anywhere reasonable - and certainly not with the same selection of split boards / tiny boards / wireless boards, etc, so the easiest way is to set the keymapping (this can be done in windows and linux alike - i have no idea about macs, however, though i assume no problems).

    this means that you may have to rearrange some keys on the keyboard, but once you start to touchtype you don't need to do even that (besides laptop keys are notoriously easy to break); To me this is the more elegant* way to do things, because while you can map a standard qwarty board to whatever you want, if your board was hardwired dvorak, when you want to type, say, german, you are fsck'd (see below for more details).

    * i say elegant because this removes the dependency of keyboard with OS. there is a layer in the keyboard driver / handler / blah that does a mapping of key pressed (0xABC) to a character (alphanumeric / control / whatever, or something in japanese, even). modifying this translation layer is more universal but does have the side-effect of making BIOS etc difficult. Yes even if you had a hardwired dvorak you can translate it to german / whatever with this layer too, but that means you have to make your own table. not fun in unix, and even less fun (is it even possible?) in windows.

    anyways - the other downside is that for some input methods, like say japanese / chinese, you can't match a dvorak map to it, so it's still qwerty. however with those languages, dvorak is not designed to be the most suitable anyhow, so i am not complaining that much.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

  35. or scAm by mdfst13 · · Score: 1

    The SCUM are SCAMming us. They don't even own the trade secrets about which they are suing. They just want to SCIM a little money by selling their stock while it is high. Of course, maybe they didn't realize that corporate officers have certain honesty requirements under the law. I hope they enjoy their cushy jail cells with their soul mates from Enron.

  36. Alas RedHat indeed. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Alas, RedHat is largely US based.

    Alas, Redhat indeed.

    As far as I'm concerned RedHat is not ready for prime time - and WON'T be until:

    1) Their prepaid included-with-the-expensive-box support continues until your first install is up on the net or LAN (and preferably with a built-from-source kernel), rather than stopping when you first get a login screen.

    2) Their quickstart manual includes a clear description (accessable to neophytes - and keystroke-by-keystroke again) of both
    * how to install the system (Of particular interest as of 6.x: Tell 'em how to make sane choices for the size of the partitions.) and
    * how to obtain and install security upgrades.

    3) Their install documentation includes a step-by-step, keystroke-by-kestroke recipe for going:
    * from a blank computer and their CDROMs,
    * through an intermediate system installed from the CDROM image
    * To the SAME system but with the kernel built from the supplied sources.

    4) Their in-depth manual includes a section giving a COMPLETE list of the configuration files twiddled by each of the functions of each of the graphic-interface admin tools. (And don't tell me to read the source or look it up on the net. You're a packager. Package it already.)

    5) Their quickstart manual tells me how to adjust the screen parameters. (And DON'T tell me to go figure out X. Give a recipe.)

    C'mon, guys! Get a tech writer and assign him/her the task with 2), 3), 4), and 5) as the goals.

    (And while we're at it, the Gnome and/or KDE crews really ought to do a desktop tool, on the model of Apples', for tuning the screen, and RedHat should have it in the default menus.)

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
    1. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by aber · · Score: 1

      geez, do you use any linux distro at all? I'm a SuSE user, I think it's a pretty friendly distro -- at least I thought so, until I read your post. It fails in pretty much all items you listed (it does have a very good admin book, maybe even as complete as you seem to want it).

      I'm familiar with RH, slackware and SuSE. But I risk to say that what you described is not available anywhere, for under US$100. Of course, you're not saying it is.

      RH is a good distro, stability wise. It's very bare bones (I never understood why people call it bloated, it has as many cds as slackware). In fact is way too barebones for me, which is why I removed it from my workstation and replaced it with SuSE.

      Cheers.

    2. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by Stinking+Pig · · Score: 1

      1) Their prepaid included-with-the-expensive-box support continues until your first install is up on the net or LAN (and preferably with a built-from-source kernel), rather than stopping when you first get a login screen.

      wow, it goes that far now? Last time I bought it, it didn't include anything past a login prompt in init 3. You want X Windows? Best of luck, kiddo!

      --
      "Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
    3. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by MikeFM · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Just to be argumenative I'll say that the main problem with RedHat (and Linux) recently is the effort to dumb it down for the folks out there who can't do anything but run Minesweeper on their XP box.

      Linux should not be Windows or MacOS. If users want a dumbed down OS let them use Windows or MacOS. At most let them use a retarded distro like Lindows. Playing copycat you can never be the best. KDE and Gnome have both driven me away as a user as they have become more bloated and dumbed down.

      The same with support. Once the machine is booted to your desktop you have what you paid for. That support is more than what you'll get from Microsoft. If you want more then pay for it or learn to use the community support Linux offers. Linux is a community as much as software. You have to accept both to appreciate either.

      Installing is about as easy as to keep pressing 'next' so I don't really know what more you need help with. Again I find it easier than the Windows install or the last MacOS I installed (ver 9).

      Keystroke by keystroke guides suck because few computers are likely to be the same. People will need to learn to think a little bit if they want their computer to work well for them. This is especially true when it comes to compiling software.

      Your fourth demand is actually reasonable I think. Maybe don't give a full guide to all configuration files but a quick overview of what the files are would be a nice touch. The only obvious problem with this is that there is no way a newbie will comprehend even the descriptions of these files. It'd be confusing to them.

      In Linux you seldom need to adjust your screen parameters. Maybe they need to add a note about CTRL-ALT-+ so that users will know how to shift between the available settings easily. There is really no need to tweak X settings directly as a user.

      I would like to see RedHat include Ximian's Red Carpet in their default installs. I think it would make it easier for users to learn to add/remove/update packages. IMO Red Carpet is just better than any of RedHat's own tools for this job.

      If you really want a no brainer distro for newbies then try Knoppix. You don't need to install it, recompile anything, or configure anything. For the most part 'it just works'. It could always be better though. :)

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    4. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by lurking · · Score: 2, Funny

      Are you sure you are not trying to install Redhat 2.1?

    5. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by cprincipe · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Just to be argumenative I'll say that the main problem with RedHat (and Linux) recently is the effort to dumb it down for the folks out there who can't do anything but run Minesweeper on their XP box.

      Linux should not be Windows or MacOS. If users want a dumbed down OS let them use Windows or MacOS. At most let them use a retarded distro like Lindows.

      And as long as people continue to have this attitude, Linux will be nothing more than a niche system used by 5% of the total desktop PC market.

      --

      bun-fhuinneog agam!

    6. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by MikeFM · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not at all. You can make something BETTER by not copying and not dumbing things down. I for one don't think people as a whole are stupid. UI design should be based on making things easier - not dumber. The difference being that intermediate to expert users should find the interface easy rather than newbies. People will spend much more time being an experienced user than a novice so it doesn't make sense to cater to the novice. Sure there is a fear of learning but that's something people will just have to get over if they want things to be better.

      A good example is that many enterprise apps when ported from DOS to Windows tried to be more novice friendly by making moving between fields a mouse action where before they were a TAB action. This requires the users hands to leave the keyboard, find the mouse, find the pointer, move the pointer to the next box, click that box, move back to the keyboard, and resume typing. It wasn't long before many of these programs began adding back in the ability to TAB to the next field. Yes, to newbies the mouse seemed easier.. but experienced workers hated the change and it could badly damage the businesses productivity.

      Stability and speed is also important. KDE/Gnome especially IMO are going the wrong way in these areas as they try to satisfy Windows users.

      Besides - the desktop is a dying concept. Embedded devices to a large degree will take the place as novice users interface of choice. Why figure out how to do something with a powerful (but possibly complex) interface when you can use a handheld gadget that has three buttons and can do what you need (and only what you need)? Obviously you'll still have desktops just as we still have command line interfaces.. but they'll shift from being a cashcow to being a geek tool.

      I predict a near future in which less complex devices, similar to (or the same as) game consoles are used by most people for tasks like web browsing, word processing, etc. The systems will likely run Linux or a similar OS but in a version that has been stripped of anything unneeded.. configured especially for the given hardware and tested for stability. I think they'll have a desktop but given the limited capabilities of the systems that the desktop will be very lightweight. Just to step further out on a limb I'll guess that Apple and Sony will be the two major competitors in this market.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    7. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by Rysc · · Score: 1
      And as long as people continue to have this attitude, Linux will be nothing more than a niche system used by 5% of the total desktop PC market.

      ..and so what? I am a fanatic and I want everyone to use Linux. But I want them to WANT to use Linux; if 5% of the people want to, then I am pleased. If others do not use Linux it is their loss. People will convert as they realize Linux is better, not as Linux becomes the same as that which they would be leaving.

      I'm not saying 'don't make it easy'. People always assume that, which is annoying.

      --
      I want my Cowboyneal
    8. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by spacefight · · Score: 1

      6) They ship NTFS drivers by default. Updating NTFS drivers each time the kernel is new is a minor PITA.

      7) They package an uncrippled XMMS for playing MP3 from the beginning.

      That so far for the consumer migrating from Windows. I know why they're afraid of putting these to stuff in but c'mon, every other distro has them.

    9. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (And while we're at it, the Gnome and/or KDE crews really ought to do a desktop tool, on the model of Apples', for tuning the screen, and RedHat should have it in the default menus.)

      Actually, what you're looking for is called xrandr (X resize and rotate). It's an extension to XFree that is partially supported in v4.3 and will have full support in v4.4 that allows you to switch between resolutions / colourdepths / orientations without restarting X (The current ctrl-alt-[+/-] combo doesn't really change resolution, it just adjusts the viewport, which is not the same thing). The KDE project (and I assume the GNOME project too) has a configuration dialog in their development version which allows you to use this.

      So in other words: pretty soon, this argument is going to become pointless.

    10. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by fishbowl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "And as long as people continue to have this attitude, Linux will be nothing more than a niche system used by 5% of the total desktop PC market."

      A whole lot of people don't actually see that as a problem of any sort, and that seems to be difficult for others to grasp. Maybe Linus shouldn't have made that "world domination" joke so early on.

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    11. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by MrResistor · · Score: 1

      I'm wondering if you've tried SuSE recently? Especially with 8.x I think they've acheived the goal of making things easier without dumbing them down. I'm not a Red Hat user, but I often get the impression that they are consistently missing the mark on this.

      IMHO, yast is comprehensible to a newbie, usable and even helpful for an intermediate user (which I consider myself), and gets out of the expert's way when it needs to. Updates are easy and intuitive, as is installation of any package SuSE includes (which is a hell of a lot), And everything is actually configured during the installation (something I understand Red Hat doesn't do).

      As for your desktop experience, I agree with you partially. I personally prefer WindowMaker, but that's mostly because I don't like clutter and am extremely comfortable on the command line. KDE is great for my wife, though, and seems to be quite stable for her. Perhaps the stability issues you've experienced are the fault of the distro, not the environments themselves? On the speed differences, though, I really don't see that much of a difference on my current system (nForce2, AthlonXP 1800+, GeForce2 32MB, 512MB RAM). Perhaps you don't have DMA enabled for your hard drive? That sped up load times significantly for me, I'd estimate something like 60-70%.

      I disagree that the desktop is dying, and here's why: devices such as you suggest have been repeatedly introduced to the market, and just as repeatedly rejected by it, at least as a replacement for the desktop. They certainly complement it, and in some cases augment it, but they will never replace it until they somehow manage to squeeze the functionality of at least a 17" monitor into that hand-held device. There are ways to do that of course, even today, but I don't see them becoming mainstream any time soon.

      --
      Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
    12. Re:Alas RedHat indeed. by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      I haven't tried SuSE for a year or so but I've used it in a work enviroment (for which I was an admin/programmer) and while I found it good for client machines I really hated it for servers. Yast (At that time at least) was in the way far to often and things didn't work as they do under most other distros (RedHat or Debian derived distros). Installation was also sort of a pain at that time mostly due to weirdness in disc swapping that 7 or 8 cd's involved. I'd like to try the dvd version now. I think that'd be much easier to install.

      I'm very anti-clutter. Clutter equals more time needed to think about what you are doing. All menus and such should have keystroke equivilants also. I like in place menus also.. so you don't have to mouse to a side of your screen in order to find a menu.

      I've used a lot of distros so o my bitches are actually against KDE and Gnome themselves. You are right that part of the problem is in that I've seen no distro that has an intelligent default configuration. On most systems I've used loading either KDE or Gnome can take from 15 seconds to a couple minutes depending on the hardware's power.
      On the other hand HackedBox loads in about 1 second on everything I've tried. I doubt hdd speed is an issue because it's slow even when loaded from a ram disk or compact flash.

      I think the embedded market is slowly growing. Up until recently the power/size of such devices was a problem for their adoption. Now a PDA sized device can do quite a lot. I won't say that the desktop will be dead anytime soon.. just that it's passed it's peak. It's not worth making a bad desktop just to steal customers from Windows and MacOS. Better to look towards long term goals.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
  37. Logic Game -- Paradroid! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That logic game is a cute idea (although whose programming resembles gate logic?). I Loved that part of the old game Paradroid (which is obliquely mentioned in the games future plan). Maybe they will take it to another level and then combine it with that Paradroid clone, Nighthawk. I can't believe they took the logic contest out of Nighthawk--that was always the heart of the game for me... Ah, to capture the 999 directly from some dinky toy bot. Now that's a game that creates programmers, not warms them up.

    1. Re:Logic Game -- Paradroid! by bigattichouse · · Score: 1

      You get the prize, the first person to mention Paradroid!.. I'll have to check out NightHawk. I honestly think paradroid was *VERY* instrumental to my career path and a LOT of tinkering (both hardware and software) growing up.

      --
      meh
    2. Re:Logic Game -- Paradroid! by Goonie · · Score: 1
      NightHawk doesn't have the takeover game which, to my mind, was the coolest part of Paradroid.

      I'm surprised nobody's ever tried a FPS based around the same idea as Paradroid - your character as a "wraith" that takes over other entities within the game, with a puzzle game to determine whether the takeover is successful or not.

      --

      Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
      --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
    3. Re:Logic Game -- Paradroid! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not exactly like that, but Maken X (for the Dreamcast) was a 1st person game where you occasionally took over other beings thus switching playable characters. The game could go several ways depending on who you took over. There weren't really puzzles though, it was hack and slash as most 1st person games are. Still, I'm not sure how likely it is that your average 1st person game player will want to play a puzzle game before they can continue shooting things.

    4. Re:Logic Game -- Paradroid! by bigattichouse · · Score: 1

      Imagine a FPS related to Paradroid... you are the little "Wraith" flying around trying to free a ship.. you can take over other bots (heck, why not use the same sceme), the logic game would come up overlayed on the 3-d screen, imagine a "3d- chessboard" style view, your "inputs" on your side, theirs on the other side.. and it just jumps into action, you having a very short time to make the lights all your color to "take over" the bot. I think it would work quite well.

      --
      meh
    5. Re:Logic Game -- Paradroid! by bigattichouse · · Score: 1

      Looks like there *IS* a pc (and a heavily modified Linux version) Here:
      http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/paradroid 90/paradroid90/frames.html

      --
      meh
  38. Re:SCO lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Funny thing is, the Harvard-graduate lawyers I know all say "as an attorney with x years of experience in corporate practice and a degree from Harvard Law, " not "as a Harvard-pedigreed lawyer." They all write a hell of a lot better than you do, too.

  39. Rael is BAAAAACCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!! by kalidasa · · Score: 1

    The website is accessible once again. Time to /. BTW, anyone else feel that the only thing the Raelians are missing is the black clothes and the tennis shoes???

  40. "Reveal codes" by matthewn · · Score: 4, Funny
    "Reveal codes" on every page I visited yesterday reveals only: html body /body /html.
    Reveal codes? What, we're surfing the web with WordPerfect here?
    1. Re:"Reveal codes" by yerricde · · Score: 2, Informative

      Reveal codes? What, we're surfing the web with WordPerfect here?

      What's the real difference between the meanings of "reveal codes" and "view source" again? Perhaps "view source" and "reveal codes" translate to the same thing in some language other than English. Or perhaps you're right, that WordPerfect's latest office suite includes a customized web browser.

      --
      Will I retire or break 10K?
    2. Re:"Reveal codes" by bethel · · Score: 1

      I love this... I remember those days of WordPerfect 5.0 in Dos. With the blue screen and reveal code. Ah...the wonder years...

  41. vi / dvorak / qwerty improved? by lingqi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i agree. that was the most difficult thing to get used to. I didn't have so much problem because i used the cursor keys (yes yes, not *true* geek, fine).

    but in other apps cut/paste etc would fudge one over too (for example ctrl-c / ctrl-v are mapped to ctrl-i and ctrl-. respectively).

    You can train yourself to get past it, but not the easiest.

    I have been convincing myself to re-learn qwerty by doing "float-typing" (don't know what's you'd call that), i.e. don't give a damn about the homerow, and the thumb-only-hits-space typing methodology that I think is holding everyone back.

    The "home-row" would roughly become (from left pinky to right pinky)

    a/s, e, r, t, b/space [left-hand]
    n/space, h, u, i, o/p [right-hand]

    the homerow roughly corresponds to the dvorak homerow, but stuff that has consecutive s and a, or o and p, would require finger shifts. almost like a piano, i guess.

    we'll see. that may turn out to be the ultimate solution in the end. or neurological interface

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

    1. Re:vi / dvorak / qwerty improved? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I too was using dvorak, and it was going well for the first two days until I actually tried using short-cuts inside applications. It became an excercise in frustration and I dropped it after another two days.

      I can't think of any easy solution this, maybe some positional keyboard mapping where you can change keymaps, but positional mapping remains the same?

    2. Re:vi / dvorak / qwerty improved? by cduffy · · Score: 1

      vim also can use the arrow keys -- and those are the same wherever.

      -- a happy vim user with a dvorak touchstream

    3. Re:vi / dvorak / qwerty improved? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Once you learn to touch type its a non-issue. Just THINK "ctl-x" or whatever and you do it... no need to look at the keyboard at all, it will just slow you down if you do. Once you get over the hurdle, the location of 'x' or 'j' or whatever is burned right into your motor memory.

      I switched to dvorak about 5 years ago and have not looked back since.

    4. Re:vi / dvorak / qwerty improved? by Ami+Ganguli · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think the problem is that people _do_ touch-type, but they're thinking "cut", not "control-x" or looking down at the keyboard. I certainly do that.

      Similarly, if you ask me what the movement keys are in vi (or Nethack - where I really learned this skill many years ago) I'd have to think really hard to remember. But put me in front of a keyboard and it's automatic, at least with Qwerty.

      --
      It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
  42. You fail it by n9hmg · · Score: 0

    Finally, it falls to me to say so.

  43. PortaLogica scoring by sholden · · Score: 1, Troll
    From the web page:
    You get a better score for more complex logic.
    That's just stupid, play the increedible machine if you want to make convoluted stupid ways of doing things...

    It also doesn't help with teaching logic or starting up your brain in the morning, after all the usual aim is to minimise either the cost (by using cheaper gates and as few as possible) or the delay (by using faster gates and as few in series as possible) plus you can always make something more complicated whereas there is a 'best' solution (possible a few) using cheaper/faster as the metric.

    Also if you want to flesh it out more posting the damn source on your web page would be a good start, "source available on request" just means I won't bother wasting my time...
    1. Re:PortaLogica scoring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well La-Ti-Da!
      Look, if you don't like the concept of the game, don't play it!
      Your complaint about 'source available on request' wasted more of your precious time than a simple email request would have, so you don't have a valid complaint there either.
      I don't know what you hope to accomplish by referring to this guy's program as 'stupid'. If you want to play something 'smarter' then go find one and pay for it, play it, and leave the rest of us alone rather than hurling insults at somebody who offers you something freely.

    2. Re:PortaLogica scoring by Garridan · · Score: 1

      IMHO, That game sucks. You get a good score for excessive logic, and the logic must only translate a single input to a single output. I'd be MUCH more interested if you were given a SET of inputs and a SET of results, or a set of inputs, and a single result.

    3. Re:PortaLogica scoring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is still essential a test, isn't it (I havn't played it, but that was my impression from the site). Maybe such things will get added in the future.

    4. Re:PortaLogica scoring by bigattichouse · · Score: 1

      That was planned Later version, thought I might see if anyone even wanted to play the game before I got into multiple I/O... When I came up with scoring was just getting the idea together.. It just seemed better to try and come up with *some* kind of scoring instead of just saying *Yeah, you won!* I've also thought about building "blackbox" circuits that you have to try and duplicate, getting points for having fewer logic gates than used in the black-box circuit.

      --
      meh
    5. Re:PortaLogica scoring by bigattichouse · · Score: 1

      Figured I'd wait and see if anyone thought it worthwhile first. I'll put you down for a "not interested, thank you" ... hmm, I guess constructive criticism isn't common down under?

      --
      meh
    6. Re:PortaLogica scoring by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      If you really want to make this game good, add in some sort of web integration where people can compete, with solutions using the least gates for a given problem being ranked higher. I can't think of any other reasonable way to score it that would be a lot of fun. Your idea about black boxen is pretty good, though.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    7. Re:PortaLogica scoring by Garridan · · Score: 1

      Good good good. Then I take back my original opinion of the game. I didn't see that in your planned update list. My problem was that the problem simply has too many solutions (and far too many stupid ones) for it to be challenging. Once you've got multiple I/O, though, you should probably add a place to change the number of inputs. (or it'll quickly go from too easy to impossible for me -- all I know about circuit logic is how the operators work... I'd have to open my CS book to make a half-adder)

      Any way you could use white/black instead of red/blue? It took me a minute to figure out which was "on".

    8. Re:PortaLogica scoring by sholden · · Score: 1

      How the hell was that cot constructive?!?!?!?

      I pointed out something I thought was wrong with the scoring system. *And* gave a suggestion that I think would be better. If that isn't constructive ciriticism, then what the hell is?

      I pointed out that "source available on request" is far less likely to get people hacking on the source, it adds an extra step that isn't necessary. Especially if you are going to email the source to nayone that asks anyway - since that's functionally identical to allowing downloads aside from the email address thing, but hotmail addresses are disposable. That seems constructive to me as well?

      Saying "That program sucks" would be non-constructive. But I didn't say that.

    9. Re:PortaLogica scoring by sholden · · Score: 1

      Learn how to read.

      I said the scoring system was stupid. That's orthogonal to the actual program.

      I even explained why I though it was stupid.

      Stupid is synonymous with pointless in the context I used. I stand by my statement that a scoring system which encourages inefficient logic is pointless for learning logic.

    10. Re:PortaLogica scoring by bigattichouse · · Score: 1

      Source is now posted on the site:
      PortaLogica

      --
      meh
  44. there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by 73939133 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Zero force typing is a myth. When you type, whether on a flat surface or a keyboard, your fingers at some point need to change directions (move up/down, etc.). The forces to bring that about either come from your own muscles or from the keyboard.

    Normal keyboards are carefully designed to cushion the strike and let you recover energy to make your finger go up again after going down. That's what all those little springs, levers, and rubber pads are for in your keyboard. A flat surface has none of those.

    The difference is similar to jumping barefoot on concrete vs. jumping barefoot on a trampoline. Which would you rather do? Keyboards basically give you a carefully designed trampoline for each finger, and that's good.

    1. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Besides, what is the fun of being a fast typer if you dont have a keyboard producing a machine gun like sound???

    2. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by Babbster · · Score: 1
      That's interesting but I have an interest in these boards because of the occupation I'm currently in. Specifically, I'm a medical transcriptionist and my job is to listen to doctors speak and type it. With normal keyboards, the sound generated (I haven't found a silent one yet) necessitates turning up the volume more than I would generally need. That means that I have a harder time hearing any external sounds outside my headphones (like the phone ringing or someone knocking at the door) and that the volume is more likely to irritate or even damage my ears/hearing.

      I'll be picking up one of these keyboards ASAP because they sound like the perfect solution to the sound problem, not to mention the fact that when I work on the computer I sit back in my chair and have to adjust myself anytime I have to fiddle with the mouse. If it works out, the cost will be more than offset by the advantages.

    3. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by 73939133 · · Score: 1

      I think you'd be better off and pay a lot less money by getting one of these. CompUSA has them ($40-60). Silent and waterproof. And they are cushioned and springy--not as nice as a real keyboard but acceptable.

    4. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by Babbster · · Score: 1

      Trust me when I tell you that typing 100+ WPM on one of those is quite impossible [for me], and I'm in an occupation that pays for production (in combination with accuracy of course, but volume constitutes 90% of my income). :)

    5. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      If you're really concerned about PC noise you might look into getting a Mini-ITX system. For around $300-$400 you can get a system that is about as silent as any computer can get (slight noise from disk drives when in use). I'd suggest getting one that is fully fanless. No CPU fan with an external fanless power supply. Combined with your silent keyboard I think you'd have a very quiet work enviroment.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    6. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by 73939133 · · Score: 1

      What makes you think you'll come anywhere near 100+ WPM on the TouchStream keyboards? And what good is 100+ WPM anyway if you ruin your hands in the process?

      You can choose the silicone keyboards. Another choice is quiet mechanical keyboards. There are a bunch of companies that make those, for example, this one. Untried, expensive, and oddball technology like the TouchStream would be at the bottom of my list of things to try.

    7. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by Babbster · · Score: 1

      It's not the PC itself. It's the sound of keys being pressed at high speed. :)

    8. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by kurosawdust · · Score: 1

      alright, "within-epsilon-of-zero" force typing. Happy now?

    9. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by the+hopthrisC · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The TouchStream products work with a much better technology than springs, levers and rubber pads: gravity.



      Touchtyping with on one of those is possible and when you have mastered it (which doesn't take very long, provided you could touch type on an ordinary keyboard to begin with) you don't 'strike' the keys anymore, you simply lift the finger and let it fall back. Thus you regain all of the energy (except for the losses with your joints, of course ;)

    10. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      You must then either already have a fairly quiet computer or you hit those keys mad hard (harder even than me.. which is hard to believe) to make that much noise.. or I guess you could have a very noisy keyboard (mine was $10 and is reasonably quiet). Otherwise the noise of a keyboard is typically drowned out by those jet engines attached to modern PC's that we call fans. :)

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    11. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by 73939133 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You are still assuming that by getting rid of the springs, you reduce the force and work. But the opposite is true: when you type on a surface, your fingers experience more force and you need to perform more work than if you type on a regular computer keyboard.

    12. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by 73939133 · · Score: 1

      The TouchStream products work with a much better technology than springs, levers and rubber pads: gravity.

      At issue isn't what makes your finger go down, at issue is what makes it stop and makes it go up again. If your finger moves fast and hits a solid surface, it will experience a lot of acceleration (well, deceleration, actually). It is just like running into a brick wall. It is that effect that all those springs, levers, and rubber pads are designed to reduce.

      you don't 'strike' the keys anymore, you simply lift the finger and let it fall back. Thus you regain all of the energy (except for the losses with your joints, of course ;)

      Even if we accept your naive view of biomechanics, you are saying that lifting something against gravity doesn't require any force?

      In any case, most of the mass that moves when you move your fingers is in your forearms; gravity isn't going to make that go anywhere. What you think of as "gravity" when you try typing "without force" is your fingers return to equilibrium position. You can see that because it basically works the same way when you turn your hands around and you try typing against the underside of a horizontal surface. But if you try typing at any reasonable speed, you need to use your muscles to cause those movements to go faster.

    13. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by JerryKnight · · Score: 1

      My advice, don't knock it til you try it. The force to overcome the springs and such is thousands of times more than simply RELAXING the finger and letting it drop onto the pad. Tap your fingers lightly on your desk. Chances are that is more than enough for this keyboard to respond. How can that be "more work" than pushing down a spring-loaded key? As far as the stress involved on the fingers/hands, I have played piano for 17 years, and that is infinitely more forceful than this keyboard, and I am perfectly fine (I think). Besides, I am not sure, but I think that this keyboard is still padded, at least on the bottom. If you really are pounding away at the force you imply, it should still cushion the force to some degree.

      So try to find one to demo or buy one and try it, your assessment simply wrong.

      --

      Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
    14. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by JerryKnight · · Score: 1

      Again, not to be confrontational, but your concept of what is necessary for typing "zero force" is off. There isn't massive acceleration when your finger hits the pad. This is not the same typing as with a mechanical keyboard, but with no springs. You bearly have to tap the keys on these keyboards.

      The only added effort I can see is using the extensor muscles to hold your fingers above the keys when not typing, but in those instances, the keyboard lets you relax by putting ALL fingers down on the pad. This does not cause spurious keystrokes. Besides, put your heals on the desk with the fingers elevated and see how long it takes for your forearms to become the least bit fatigued. I am sure a physical therapist could recommend some exercises to do if your hands get tired immediately.

      Really, the force required here is a fraction of that required for even the softest mechanical keyboard, and the impact stress is neglegable.

      --

      Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
    15. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by 73939133 · · Score: 1

      My advice, don't knock it til you try it.

      I have. Except for the gestural input, these kinds of keyboards are decades old. They used to be used on cheap PCs. As you may have noticed, they haven't caught on widely, even though they are cheaper, and that's because they are not very good for typing on.

      The force to overcome the springs and such is thousands of times more than simply RELAXING the finger and letting it drop onto the pad. [...] As far as the stress involved on the fingers/hands, I have played piano for 17 years, and that is infinitely more forceful than this keyboard, and I am perfectly fine (I think).

      There are several forces at work here. The piano gets it right: you use a lot of force to push down the keys, which helps you play fast and accurately, and the keyboard cushions it, which is why you are still fine after 17 years. That's roughly the way computer keyboards work at well. The "ZeroForce" gets it wrong: because it doesn't cushion your fingers, you have three choices: either you hit a hard surface with a lot of force, which is uncomfortable, or you use a light touch, which slows you down, or you use opposing muscles to be both fast and avoid hitting the surface too hard, which is more effort and strain. Whichever way you choose, you lose something relative to a traditional keyboard.

    16. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by JerryKnight · · Score: 1

      Perhaps we are talking about different keyboards. I can type faster with this than a mechanical, overall. I may burst-type faster on a mechanical keyboard, causing the strain you mentioned.

      Send a link to something about these decades-old keyboards you're talking about, because I am confused. With a light touch, I can type fast enough to keep me happy. I have never had to use alot of force/downward speed with this, with nowhere near the impact force of a good forte strike of a piano key, regardless of the key moving or "cushioning".

      Zero-force is a good thing by my estimation, but it would be foolish to think it is right for everyone. If you are curious about what it takes to type on these keyboards at a reasonable speed, perhaps you could print out the key layout and mock type -- not for accuracy, just speed. Only use a light tap then see how much additional speed a hard tap gives you.

      The typing is certainly a drawback for a long time after getting the keyboard. But it is the gesturing that makes the ZF typing worth it for me. Except on the keyboards with that stupid eraser-J-key mouse peg thing, nothing lets you do all your mousing without removing your hand from the keyboard, even if you are left-handed. And I don't even have to reach to the side to hold the Shift/Ctrl/Alt keys when typing. There are so many more gestures, most of which are commonly used. The keyboards-of-old you mention may not have been worth it then, but they certainly are now.

      Your Mileage May Vary, of course. Been a pleasure debating.

      --

      Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
    17. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by 73939133 · · Score: 1

      Send a link to something about these decades-old keyboards you're talking about, because I am confused.

      Here, for example. These kinds of keyboards have been used forever in industrial automation. Note that they are flat, and they require very little pressure, just like the TouchStream thing.

      If you are curious about what it takes to type on these keyboards at a reasonable speed, perhaps you could print out the key layout and mock type -- not for accuracy, just speed.

      Thanks, but I don't want to repeat the experience; I have used those kinds of light-touch keyboards more than enough in the past.

      A simpler way of experiencing the same kind of interface is to tap away on the on-screen keyboard on a Tablet PC (if yours lets you adjust the touch sufficiently well).

      But it is the gesturing that makes the ZF typing worth it for me. Except on the keyboards with that stupid eraser-J-key mouse peg thing, nothing lets you do all your mousing without removing your hand from the keyboard, even if you are left-handed.

      Actually, the most sensible keyboard/mouse combo is probably one with a trackball under the spacebar: it's efficient, cheap, and intuitive. The IBM TrackPoint is efficient and cheap, but it's not very intuitive at first, which is why a lot of people hate it.

      As for gestures, I prefer keyboard chords and keyboard/mouse chords: they would seem to give me, if anything, more possible combinations than any gesture recognizer, they are 100% reliable, and they let me use whatever keyboard I like.

      I think the TouchStream stuff is a technology in search of a problem.

    18. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by rtechie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Again, not to be confrontational, but your concept of what is necessary for typing "zero force" is off. There isn't massive acceleration when your finger hits the pad. This is not the same typing as with a mechanical keyboard, but with no springs. You bearly have to tap the keys on these keyboards.

      It's basic physics. Think about it. In order to type quickly, your fingers MUST move faster. This means that if you're typing fast your finger WILL hit the key harder due to the increased speed. This means that the faster you type on a keyboard, the harder your fingers impact the keyboard and the more "damage" you do.

      Regular keys effectively act like sponges or airbags absorbing and softening the impact of each stroke. This is not the case of a capacitance keyboard like the Touchstream where each keypress is the equivalent to impacting a wall.

      Now you might claim that a light touch can compensate for this, but it seems impossible to me. In order to type fast your fingers MUST impact the keys harder, so it seems to be that on a capacitance keyboard the goals of comfort and fast typing are fundamentally opposed. This has certainly been my experience in the capacitance keyboards I've used.

      There is also the issue of "work". In a properly designed keyboard (like the old "clickity" IBM keyboard I'm using right now) has enough force in the springs to physically move the finger up. On mine the springs are powerful enough the the "return" actually lifts the finger up about 1 mm from the key. What this means is that there is little, if any, "work" involved on the "return stroke". In a capacitance keyboard this is not the case, a user must lift his finger himself.

      Now you could argue that I'm exaggerating the effect of these "impacts", and they might be less of a problem that I think when compared to the damage caused by the extra "work" of having to press a regular key. Of course, a capacitance user also has the extra work of lifting his fingers. I'm not sure which is worse, but my instinct is that the "impacts" are a bigger problem than the extra work in pressing the keys.

    19. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by JerryKnight · · Score: 1

      Well, the only way I can respond is to say that this is a case of instincts vs actual experience. Theory vs observation. "Think about it" vs "I have one sitting in front of me." I don't mean to ridicule or anything, but that is all I can say.

      I have typed on most kinds of keyboards at some point -- mostly on those basic Dell keyboards. Now the only keyboards that come even close to the low-stress properties if the LP sitting in front of me are the laptop keyboards. Those keyboards are just soft enough to make your point somewhat accurate. But I only use those keyboards because I got tired of the hassle of moving the LP from computer to computer.

      In order to type quickly, your fingers MUST move faster.

      At some point, some speed threshold, this becomes true, but the brain has to be moving faster than the fingers for that to be the case. The average typer has fast fingers already, the only improvements come from faster reflex and thought, less idle time during typing. This is at least the case for me -- my hands and fingers have not yet been forced to resort to faster movement and harder impact to increase speed.

      Now you could argue that I'm exaggerating the effect of these "impacts"

      I can and I will, briefly. I wish I had some hard measurements rather than just emphatic assertion, but I can type just as fast on this without going nuts on the finger slamming enough to make the stress comparable to any other keyboard, even the laptop. The force is much less than someone audibly "thumping" their fingers on a desk, and I have never done this for long periods of time, but I imagine it wouldn't do any measurable damage, except for the eventual violent beating by anyone near me.

      And I have to disagree on the statement that this "capacitance" keyboard (I have no good idea how the LP works) offers no cushion or impact absorbsion. It is padded slightly on the surface, on the bottom (soft rubber anti-slide surfaces), and on the metal tent frame (slight "give"). Sure it isn't nearly the energy-return of a spring-loaded key, but it is certainly softer than tapping on a thick metal plate or something equally rigid.

      Of course, a capacitance user also has the extra work of lifting his fingers.

      Now here you have a very good point, but my theory is that the natural "centered" position of the fingers maintained by muscle tension does most of the work. It is impossible to test for sure, but the only part of my hand that I feel the effort of lifting is my entire hand, at the wrist. The fingers feel relaxed even when they are suspended a cm above the surface. Of course, it is hard to "feel" things on a scale such as this -- maybe I am just used to it now.

      The bottom line is that I agree that your ideas about the physics are correct, but they don't come into consideration for "normal" use. Now if you type like Jim Carrey (I've only seen the previews), perhaps a good spring keyboard is best, if just for the keyboard's sake.

      --

      Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
    20. Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing" by rtechie · · Score: 1

      Well, the only way I can respond is to say that this is a case of instincts vs actual experience. Theory vs observation. "Think about it" vs "I have one sitting in front of me." I don't mean to ridicule or anything, but that is all I can say.

      You may indeed be right. I have never used this particular keyboard and I'm basing my opinions on my experience with a similar product.

      I can and I will, briefly. I wish I had some hard measurements rather than just emphatic assertion, but I can type just as fast on this without going nuts on the finger slamming enough to make the stress comparable to any other keyboard, even the laptop. The force is much less than someone audibly "thumping" their fingers on a desk, and I have never done this for long periods of time, but I imagine it wouldn't do any measurable damage, except for the eventual violent beating by anyone near me.

      If you read my other post, you can see that in my experience using a "zero-force" keyboard WAS doing damage (particularly to my fingernails, but also to my fingertips). Which brings me to a related thought: How well do you think the LP would work if the user had long fingernails (long enough so that only the nail struck the surface)?

      And I have to disagree on the statement that this "capacitance" keyboard (I have no good idea how the LP works) offers no cushion or impact absorbsion. It is padded slightly on the surface, on the bottom (soft rubber anti-slide surfaces), and on the metal tent frame (slight "give"). Sure it isn't nearly the energy-return of a spring-loaded key, but it is certainly softer than tapping on a thick metal plate or something equally rigid.

      This is an excellent point. The keyboard I was using had a hard plastic surface (it was basically all plastic, though there was apparently some sort of heavier mounting plate inside it for the keypress sensors) which felt virtually identical to typing on a hard table. If the surface of the LP is designed properly (say a very thin layer of plastic over a layer of foam) I think it would help alleviate this problem. This would impact the durability of the keyboard though.

      The bottom line is that I agree that your ideas about the physics are correct, but they don't come into consideration for "normal" use. Now if you type like Jim Carrey (I've only seen the previews), perhaps a good spring keyboard is best, if just for the keyboard's sake.

      As I said in an earlier post, this was an issue for me. However based on your post I suspect it's less of an issue on the LP and fro people without long fingernails.

  45. Re:learning Dvorak by Leeji · · Score: 1

    When I was learning Dvorak, I printed out a Dvorak keyboard layout and had it rest against my monitor and the function keys of my keyboard.

    That way, when I _really_ needed to know where a letter was, I would just look at the picture, rather than the keyboard. After a few hours, you stop looking at the paper -- and you don't have to worry about starting the bad habit of looking at the keys on your keyboard.

    You can still learn Dvorak on ergonomic keyboards / converted typewriters / etc without having to mash the carefully-designed hardware.

    --
    It all goes downhill from first post ...
  46. well? by zogger · · Score: 1

    well, do they list what other OSes they tried, and all the scores? There's GOT TO BE plenty 0 fun flamebait in that list!

    no, BTW, didn't read any german article, thanks, I am only bilingual, english, and bubba.

  47. And you haven't been paying attention by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I worked at Cisco Systems for five years and in my department they had a guy who regular fell asleep in his cubicle. Did he get fired? No, they promoted him and moved him to a different department where, from what I hear, he still falls asleep.

    1. Re:And you haven't been paying attention by ckaminski · · Score: 1

      Shouldn't matter if he gets his job done. :-)

      I can't count the number of times I've fallen asleep in the office... but then again, we had a room filled with futons. Hell, some of us just crawled under our desks to take a nap. God those were the days.

  48. Novell's legal Actions by linuxislandsucks · · Score: 2

    What are Novell's legal actions it refers to in its letter to SCO?

    It is obvious that they could revoke all licenses that were entered into with SCO Group which kill all SCO Gruop licensing plans and income! It also by pure design takes the least amount of time to implement.

    Is there any other legal optins Novell has besides the obvious ones such as this one above?

    --
    Don't Tread on OpenSource
  49. Re:A black man using Loonix? Say it isn't so! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Experts agree: Negros and Linux don't mix!

  50. For very large values of "bare bones" ... by Shadowlore · · Score: 1

    you could be right.

    However, RH9 comes with a significant amount of desktop SW out of the box. From OpenOffice.org to a nautilus window that pops up when you insert a blank CD into a burner --and provides the means to burn a new disc from there. From spreadsheets to GIMP, Python to Perl, GNOME to KDE.

    From Evolution to Mozilla, and a large quantity of games and screensavers, spreading across 3 CD-ROMs, and a full install of ~5 GB.

    --
    My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
    1. Re:For very large values of "bare bones" ... by mwood · · Score: 1

      Indeed, I just set up a RH9 box. Bare bones they may be, but they look like apatosaurus bones to me. I can't even uninstall all the useless audio gunk (this *server* has no sound card, of course) because the system management tools want Gnome and Gnome wants all the toys.

      (What I *prefer* to do is to get a kernel and basic toolkit up and running from a floppy, then NFS-mount a working box and copy it all over. I've been cloning the heavily-updated remains of a Slackware 1.2 system this way since abount 1994, to build most of my boxes.)

  51. Re:SCO lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey Bill, isn't it past your bedtime? No? Then shutup and go sell off some more of your stock, and take that Steve guy with you!
    If 'Novell clearly transferred the rights to give copyright to *IBM*' then what is the basis of SCO's claim against them?
    If you really have 'friends at Novell's legal department that provided me with the text', how is it that they apparently reached an opposing interpretation of that text? This is obvious given Novell's public statements.
    Stupid Troll!

  52. Suse Announcement - English Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From:

    http://www.suse.com/us/company/press/press_release s/archive03/munich.html

    City of Munich Replaces Windows with Linux

    May 28th 2003

    The city council of Munich today made a key decision to deploy the open source operating system Linux instead of alternative operating systems. This initiative will see Germany's third largest city migrate 14,000 desktop and notebook computers to Linux. Their objective is to deploy information technology that stimulates more commercial and technological flexibility at a lower cost to the public sector. Although the council has not made a decision on its choice of vendor, Linux distributor SuSE AG and IBM Germany will be participating in the resulting contract bid.

    Richard Seibt, CEO SuSE Linux: "Today, the city of Munich announced a courageous, momentous decision to choose the right technology at the right time. Courageous because it is not always easy to decide against the status quo -- especially in the face of the tremendous pressures we know can be brought to bear. Momentous because we believe this truly marks a watershed moment for Linux. The city clearly sees Linux not just as cost savings over costly, proprietary software, but also as the best tool for the job -- bringing security, stability, flexibility and privacy, not available to them before."

    Walter Raizner, Country General Manager IBM Germany: "In the public sector in Germany we have seen a variety of new implementations of open standards-based software such as Linux. And worldwide, more than 75 IBM government customers - including agencies in France, Spain, UK, Australia, Mexico, the United States and Japan - have now embraced open computing and Linux to save costs, consolidate workloads, increase efficiency and enact e-government transformation. With Munich's decision, one thing is clear - it's open season for open computing. Linux represents freedom and flexibility. This is essential in e-government - they need more flexibility to serve their constituencies better and faster, and freedom of choice to do it at less cost to the public. Munich is leading the way."

  53. 20% discount... by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

    Just puts it back at what it cost to pre-order. The pre-order price was $20, and now it's $25, minus 20%...

    Not that great a discount, but a good second chance, I suppose.

  54. Re:SCO lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >> SCO has MUCH case law on their side, which I will not cite

    > Gee, there's something new

    What, a slashbot correctly using / spelling the word 'cite'? :)

  55. please ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    wait untill the middle of the day when they're open ....

  56. Embrace and expand. by Phleg · · Score: 2, Funny



    It's not a bug, it's a feature! The "crash" input type allows the user to crash the browser. It's very useful and another Microsoft (TM) innovation.


    Yeah, gotta love Micrsoft's technique of "embrace and expand". Pretty soon they'll implement

    <input type bsod>

    and

    <input type format_C>

    --
    No comment.
  57. You've got it all backwards!! by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    The book is an effort to get us all saying "Hacking" and "XBox" together - so the average person-on-the-street will hear "Hacking" along with "XBox" a lot and think "Man, I'd better avoid THAT lest my credit card goes to luxuriously furnishing a remote Siberian crime fortress!".

    That's why I bought the book, even though I have no XBox nor plans to buy one.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  58. Constructive criticism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's some constructive criticism for you, sholden. Perhaps your day at work was hard, and you feel compelled to take out your frustrations on people you've never met via Slashdot.

    Well, next time you offer constructive criticism, here's a short list of words not to use:

    stupid, sucks, lame

    Here's a list of words to use only in extreme circumstances:

    pointless, broken, useless

    Also, swearing is generally to be refrained from in civilized conversation.

    1. Re:Constructive criticism by sholden · · Score: 1

      If you consider "damn" and "hell" swearing I suggest you tell daddy to not let you use the computer anymore.

      Clearly the work "stupid" annoyed some people. I can't understand why, since it was used in the description of a method of scoring, not in the description of a person or the entire product.

      In fact in that context stupid and pointless are synonymous, so why have you put them in differnt categories? I used stupid to mean pointless. And I considered it an extreme circumstance - as in it was something I thought was a major flaw in an otherwise good product.

      If a the winner of a race was declared the one who took the longest to run it, I would use the word stupid to describe that scoring mechanism.

      Similarly, a logic game which awarded more points for longer, more complicated, less efficient solutions is something for which I would also describe the scoring system as stupid.

      I honestly think the scoring system described for that game is stupid - ie. pointless and worthless. But only the scoring system, the rest of it seems good and useful to me.

      I didn't insult the author of the game at all. I didn't take my frustrations out on them.

      I simply criticised one aspect of the game that I think is not just suboptimal but damaging to the rest of the game. And mentioned something about making getting the code more difficult than it needs to be.

      I still can't see how it wasn't constructive.

      A scoring system which would give a higher score to adding a large number of randomly interconnected gates and then adding a not gate before each output that was wrong; then it would to actually thinking and creating an efficient cricuit seems counter-productive to me.

    2. Re:Constructive criticism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since "damn" is defined as swearing and cursing as both a verb and a noun, and is also generally defined as an expletive, I think it's safe to say that it falls under the category of swearing.

      Granted, it's *common* swearing, but it is swearing nonetheless. Dilution hasn't changed its meaning.

    3. Re:Constructive criticism by sholden · · Score: 1

      Usage defined meaning, so dilution certainly affects it.

      Then again I guess it could be argued that 'damn' the context I used it could mean "the least valuable bit". Or even just plain "damned". :)

      Anyway this is slashdot, informal writing is much more common than formal.

  59. What's wrong with Gnome? by ledestin · · Score: 1

    What don't you like in recent Gnome? I run it with Sawfish, and it's not bad IMHO. I never ran Gnome before though, only KDE some time ago and Windows all the time.

    1. Re:What's wrong with Gnome? by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      My main issue is with the desktop, not the libraries themselves. For apps both KDE and Gnome I think are doing okay. It's just as a desktop enviroment that they suck. I don't have any problems with Gnome 1. It lacked polish but was okay mostly. When the switch to Gnome 2 came I delayed for quite a while to give it time to shake out the bugs and then tried it long enough to learn it pretty well. It had stablity problems and configuration of certain items was fairly difficult to do because 1. they got rid of the GUI configuration for those things and 2. they made it harder to manually set those things and 3. they just plain removed them as features. There is a whole list of bitches that I won't bother to respout here but overall they tried to be more 'Windows' without seeming to really consider why they were trying to do so. Also when I asked questions and made comments to people in the development circle I felt I got a lot of attitude that they wanted to draw Windows users and didn't care what the opinions of experienced users was. I got a lot of "We don't want you to do that." as reasons why things had been removed or made difficult. I especially don't like Gnome 2's panels and related menus. They are glitchy, have low usability, and configuring them takes way to much effort (and practice). The default menus are rather horrible for either an experienced user or a newbie. I don't really like the new WM either.. Metacity I think it's called.

      With both KDE and Gnome it takes forever for them to load and they tend to hangup with errors far more than they should. Not so much for me (an experienced user) but for the newbies I deal with and for whom these projects evidently are trying to please.

      Currently, I am running HackedBox as my WM with a mixture of KDE and Gnome apps that I like. I use GDM for graphical logons simply because I like it's look and ease of use better than other options. I'm toying with writing a Gecko-based WM but I'm not sure even I'd use that.. it's mostly just an experiment. I'm also experimenting with gesture support and having panels that superimpose themselves over unused portions of title bars rather than taking up valuable screen space. Minor efforts to make desktop computing more effecient in general.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
  60. Hacking the X-Box by Gax · · Score: 1

    Alternatively try this book

  61. English:City of Munich Replaces Windows with Linux by dj-nix · · Score: 1

    As not all of us can read German, I thought a link to the
    English version of the press release on SuSE's website would not go astray.

  62. Re:SCO lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Haha, nice work.

    AC
    www.utmostmusic.com

  63. #! /bin/bash while ls; do wget -r --delete-after by aaron_pet · · Score: 1
    #! /bin/bash
    while ls; do
    wget -r --delete-after http://www.sco.com ;
    done
    There are probably better ways....
    --
    Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
    Flame me here
  64. --proxy=off by aaron_pet · · Score: 1

    Don't forget the --proxy=off otherwize you just kill your ISP.

    --
    Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
    Flame me here
    1. Re:--proxy=off by Danta · · Score: 1
      Don't forget
      -l 999
      either, to make sure you get the WHOLE site, otherwise it will only go 5 levels deep.
  65. Re:SCO lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Ok, I studied all of the available documentation today for the SCO lawsuit, and as a Harvard-pedigreed lawyer, I regret to say that the Linux community is flat-out screwed.

    A bit of lawyerly advice for you:

    You must learn to read carefully. That is *very* important. You must always read both the assenting and dissenting opinions. You must ponder the insightful treasures buried deeply in the footnotes. You must understand the logic of the cited cases, and be prepared to convincingly distinguish the case at hand. Yes, brother of the Bar, perfecting this skill takes practice, patience and persistence. But you will be a better lawyer for your efforts.

    I suggest you begin on your journey to the mastery of law by carefully scrutinizing your degree with skeptical eyes. Examine the fine print in the seal. Are those tiny words Latin? What do they mean? Is the date correct? Is there a hint that it has been altered? Are there loose threads in the ribbon? If so, how many? Nothing is too insignificant for a complete understanding of the document as a whole. Then put your degree aside and ruminate on your findings. Consider alternative meanings and obscure definitions. Consider the circumstances under which it came into your possession, the "chain of custody" if you will. Once you have thoroughly mulled it over, and only then, should you read it again. See where it says "Harverd Univercity"? That's *very* important.

  66. That's why vi allows you to remap keys by Royster · · Score: 1

    Or at least vim does.

    --
    I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
  67. Freedroid by Moritz+Moeller+-+Her · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I would take a look at freedroid, which is an excellent SDL based clone of paradroid. Very playable and nice!

    Check it out, IMHO it is a bit better than nighthawk.

    --
    Moritz
  68. Not the only thing they ruined by DahGhostfacedFiddlah · · Score: 1

    Can you imagine how different the geek-world would look if Hitler had had a guru-beard instead of that tiny little mustache that he ruined for the rest of the world?

  69. Re:SCO lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Novell clearly transferred the rights to give copyright to IBM

    And how would that apply to SCO's copyright claims? Novell clearly did not transfer its copyrights to SCO. SCO agreed to that contract. SCO has desparately tried to amend that agreement recently by getting copyrights. And failed.


    I have friends at Novell's legal department that provided me with the text.

    I'm no lawyer, but isn't the Novell-IBM agreement like all agreements between two parties considered confidential unless both parties agree to disclose the terms to third parties. I hope your legal buddies had permission, or they could be disbarred.


    SCO has MUCH case law

    Well, there's case law, and there's merit. There's plenty of case law out there for me to sue McDonald's if I slipped and hurt myself in one of their restaraunts, but the fact that the incident never happened really makes all case laws irrelevant.


    as a Harvard-pedigreed lawyer

    Then I would say that you paid way too much for your education.

  70. Re:SCO lawsuit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    "Novell clearly did not transfer its copyrights to SCO."

    And how do you know this without access to the transfer agreement (which I don't believe has been made public)? If you are relying on Copyright Office records, your reliance is misplaced. Recordation of assignment of copyrights by the Copyright Office is not mandatory on either the assignor or the assignee. See, generally, this. IOW, the assignment of ownership rights in a copyrighted work can be perfectly valid and legally binding without the assignment being recorded by the Copyright Office (and thus reflected in their records). Absent seeing the actual transfer agreement between Novell and SCO, one cannot make a definitive statement as to ownership.

  71. Touchstream conclusions by JerryKnight · · Score: 3, Informative

    Okay, from what I can gather, those who have one of these keyboards love it, but those who don't either are sceptical of the touch typing or wary of the price. This is what I expected when I submitted this.

    By zero force, they mean that no movement is required on the part of the key, you need only touch the area on the touchpad. The only necessary force is that of gravity on your finger, since the sensor can "see" your finger even when it barely touches the pad. It is actually quite easy to use after a while, and the biggest obstacle is keeping the hands from drifting while typing. Using it without some sort of padding to elevate the heals of my hands is both painful and annoying since my hands tend to drift quite a bit otherwise. Touch typing is very possible, if the hands are kept stationary. In fact, I am forced to touch type since I got the Qwerty keyboard and type in dvorak, which most dvorak users will agree is commonplace.

    Dvorak... This keyboard remaps its keys in the firmware. I don't use soft-dvorak because the extra keys (read about the programmers pad) would be un-mapped and wrong. I also very frequently revert back to Qwerty with only about 2-3 or sometimes 5 minutes of painful confusion, usually after not typing qwerty for a while. Actually, it is sometimes more painful reverting to mechanical keyboards, even those in dvorak, since my hands get so spoiled by the ZF typing.

    Also, using emacs is surprisingly easy with the included gestures. Ctrl-x? easy, thumb and middle finger dragged together. Ctrl-s? thumb and first three fingers dragged together. Et cetera. Those and similar gestures are actually intended for cut, save, etc, but each gesture is mapped to a keystroke, so it can be used anywhere that keystroke is appropriate. Also, using two fingers on the left hand, you move the cursor around. They include a touchstream.el script supposedly used for some extra shortcuts, but I have yet to try that out.

    Personally, and obviously, I find the gestures and the ease of typing (easy on the fingers I mean) to far outweigh the $340 price tag ($40 for the tent stand, now included with LP). I do not usually lay down that much money for a gadget, but I had to try it, and as it was frequently mentioned, these things are hard to find for demo. Let's fix this by taking a chance and investing in one (no I do not work for Fingerworks). I would be very willing to let anyone in my area (waco, TX) demo the keyboard. If you are convinced on the gestures, but not on the typing, buy the gesture pad for $150 last I checked.

    Great technology, and the price will drop when more people give it a chance.

    --

    Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
  72. alias no='ls' by JerryKnight · · Score: 1

    This bit of bash is necessary for any Dvorak user.

    --

    Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
  73. Re:SCO lawsuit by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1
    Absent seeing the actual transfer agreement between Novell and SCO, one cannot make a definitive statement as to ownership.

    Although the transfer of copyright does not have to be recorded, the fact the SCO has been asking Novell to transfer copyright in the last several months implies that they did not receive it in the initial System V agreement. True, this is Novell's side of the story, but when SCO back-tracked and said their lawsuit was about breach of contract not copyright, it only adds strength to Novell's assertion.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  74. You haven't been playing piano by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In order to type fast your fingers MUST impact the keys harder
    No they *must* not. If you've ever played the piano, you'd know that it is possible to play fast and pianissimo. It may be hard for *you*, but it's rather easy for me and probably others.

    1. Re:You haven't been playing piano by rtechie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No they *must* not. If you've ever played the piano, you'd know that it is possible to play fast and pianissimo. It may be hard for *you*, but it's rather easy for me and probably others.

      Say it with me once again: B-A-S-I-C P-H-Y-S-I-C-S!

      If object a is moving at a higher rate of speed than object b when it strikes object c, object a will transfer more energy to object c.

      In other words, it will hit harder. This isn't rocket science.

      I don't doubt that you can train yourself to play extremely lightly on a piano. However, the situation isn't exactly analogous because you play music at a FIXED METER. You're not trying to bang the keys as quickly as you possibly can, which is exactly what you're trying to do with a keyboard. And when you're trying to move your fingers as fast as you possibly can, you're going to bang.

      With training it's possible that you can play fast and pianissimo, but you'll NEVER be able to play as fast as you can banging away because "playing fast" and "playing softly" and fundamentally at odds with one another as I described. For this reason you'll NEVER be able to type as fast with a capacitance keyboard as you can with a conventional keyboard.

      If you choose to disbelieve in physics I can't help you.

    2. Re:You haven't been playing piano by the+hopthrisC · · Score: 1

      I believe in reality, and reality is that i _own_ such a keyboard.

      Reality is further that i _am_ as fast on this keyboard as on any other (not at last thanks to the smart drivers that correct what you type if your hands are slightly off)

      Reality is also that i no longer have to take hour-long breaks from typing because my _wrists_dont_hurt_anymore.

      I really can live without your basic physics, thanks.

    3. Re:You haven't been playing piano by JerryKnight · · Score: 1

      One line response: Biomechanics (esp. that of the hands) is not basic physics.

      --

      Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
    4. Re:You haven't been playing piano by rtechie · · Score: 1

      I believe in reality, and reality is that i _own_ such a keyboard.

      Bully for you. I'm not speaking from ignorance though. As I said, I've used capacitance keyboards before. I the keyboard I used was virtually identical in size and shape to a regular keyboard except that it angled slightly. It was intended for insudtrial applications. I used it in conjunctions with a wrist wrest, mouse, and mouse rest. I noticed that:

      1) It was difficult to type quickly due to a lack of tactile feedback from the keyboard. On a regular keyboard you know when you have pressed a key by touch, but on a capacitance keyboard you don't thave this feedback. I noticed that I could type at a relatively low speed easily, but when I increased my typing speed typos became much to frequent to be feasible. I didn't mention this before because I believe this problem can probably be overcome by training (I only used the capacitance keyboard for about 2 weeks), plus it's probably an issue unique to high-speed touch typists like myself. I didn't mention this before because it's not an "ergonomic" issue.

      2) "Hovering", which other people mentioned. On the keyboard I was using meant that prolonged contact with a particular key meant repitition like this: ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd This means that when you're not actually typing you have you "hover" your hands over the keyboard, which is hard on the wrists. I think someone mentioned this wasn't a problem on your keyboard though I don't know why.

      3) Using the capacitance keyboard was hard on my fingers. I actually have fingernails and I noticed they were getting bent and damaged as well as slight bruises on each fingertip after using the capacitance keyboard. After a little while it became slightly painful to use at high speed. It took me a while to realize this because I would naturally slow down my speed because of the pain. After playing around I eventually included tht it just wasn't feasible to type quickly on this kind of keyboard. This is the phenomena that I discussed in earlier posts.

      I believe that this last problem was the most serious, which is why I have been focussing on that.

      Reality is also that i no longer have to take hour-long breaks from typing because my _wrists_dont_hurt_anymore.

      Were you using proper wrist rests on conventional keyboards? I noticed no difference in terms of wrist strain between the capacitance keyboard I was using and a conventional keyboard.

  75. Re:learning Dvorak by EvanED · · Score: 1

    Two words: permanent marker

    (And a $1.25 keyboard from Goodwill...)

    My keys now have 2 letters each, one handwritten.

  76. Re:learning Dvorak by Leeji · · Score: 1

    Heh, but you're the kind of guy who touches the glass of his monitor, I'll bet :)

    I could never stand to deface my computer that way...

    --
    It all goes downhill from first post ...