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

wget -r http://www.sco.com/ (FP)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time for sco to feel the PAIN!

Re:wget -r http://www.sco.com/ (FP)

[Phleg]

This is silly and sophomoric. You should be ashamed.

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

Not an admin ?

[IanBevan]

No nightly build of IE appears to be available

Only the near-daily security updates.

Re:Not an admin ?

[pla]

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").

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.

Re:Munich

[captain_craptacular]

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!

Re:Munich

[dJCL]

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.

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

[birdman666]

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.

Re:Not quite a true victory in munich

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

Re:Not quite a true victory in munich

[Miguel de Icaza]

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.

OOK!

[sulli]

Quit linking to bugzilla, you insensitive clod!

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.

SCOM

[Omega1045]

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

Re:SCOM

[bakes]

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".

Steve Jobs NOT a Raelian

[JamMasterJGorilla]

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?

I understand oh great one

[djupedal]

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

Re:SCO lawsuit

[ShieldW0lf]

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

Gee, there's something new

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.

Re:the pain of input devices

[Phs2501]

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".

Do not /. Bugzilla...

[$$$$$exyGal]

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.

Re:Do not /. Bugzilla...

[dcmeserve]

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!

Re:Zero-force typing?

[realdpk]

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

Fingerworks LP ZeroForce Keyboard...

[GNU_Suit]

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.

Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges

[RhettLivingston]

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.

Re:Mozilla bug fixed and apples and oranges

[foandd]

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.

Re:Zero-force typing?

[Mononoke]

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.

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.

Raelians slashdotted?

[vladkrupin]

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

Alas RedHat indeed.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.)

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. :)

Re:Alas RedHat indeed.

[MikeFM]

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.

"Reveal codes"

[matthewn]

"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?

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:Raelians

[MikeFM]

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. :)

Touchstream conclusions

[JerryKnight]

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.