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?"

Comments

Munich

[Gortbusters.org]

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

Not quite a true victory in munich

[Bold Marauder]

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.

Re:Not quite a true victory in munich

[Jason Earl]

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.

Anyone else remember this?

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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?

Re:Anyone else remember this?

[catsidhe]

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.

the pain of input devices

[lingqi]

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.

Re:the pain of input devices

[phraktyl]

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.

porta logica ? Logic games

[innocent_white_lamb]

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.

there is no such thing as "zero-force typing"

[73939133]

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.

Re:there is no such thing as "zero-force typing"

[the hopthrisC]

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 ;)

Re:Alas RedHat indeed.

[MikeFM]

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. :)