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?"
It's time for sco to feel the PAIN!
Only the near-daily security updates.
Never, ever lose a file again. Ever.
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.
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.
Quit linking to bugzilla, you insensitive clod!
sulli
RTFJ.
... 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?
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
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?
must....render....munich....clones
SCO has MUCH case law on their side, which I will not cite
Gee, there's something new
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
No stock, but one of my best T-shirts was a "Caldera" T-shirt. I'll miss it....
-Derek
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
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!
Hey Radon28, what's your password?
<radon28> *thinks about password for a split second, decides against sharing*
<dpk> N/m, thanks!
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.
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.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
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!
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"?
No, they just moved the servers to the outer space and what you saw was a glitch during the transition.
Jobs? Which jobs?
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.