Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Rendering, Munich, Clones
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?"
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
> 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
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?
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.
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"
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.
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
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.