What's this about Jon Klatz saying that we old ladies are to scared to put people in their place!! Is he on drugs?
In my day kids didn't talk like that to their elders let me tell you what. I've got a good mind to come over there and box his ears.
"Old ladies can't flame!" he says. I'll have you know that I was flaming people while you were still pooping in your diapers. It's stupid stuff like this is why most old ladies don't even read slashdot anymore.
Technology hasn't shortenned the work week or done any number of things it was supposed to, but at the same time I think it has made life better.
Right now anyone in America can find food to eat and clothes to wear. It's not like this in the rest of the world. I think it's because technology has advanced.
On the other hand American prosperity has harmed the environment. It has also harmed the countries where America drills for oil. And clears the rainforest to raise cattle for burger joints.
Perhaps in the end technology merely redistributes the most of the wealth and greed cancels out the new stuff.
I actually downloaded a copy of the code once a long time ago. But I never used it although I did poke around in it for about an hour just to see what was up. it's been a year since the last slashdot release, I think someone said?
I kind of understand that Rob doesn't get paid to package the code neatly and he probably doesn't even enjoy doing it that much either. And he doesn't have a lot of free time probably.
On the other hand I guess people would like to see the code and use it.
So why doesn't someone offer to handle packaging for Rob. For free. (Because we expect him to do it for free) Actually maybe a bunch of people could work on it. They would be given access to a lot of fairly raw code that Rob doesn't feel is ready yet.
They would be responcible to:
1) package the code. 2) perhaps fix the occasional bug. 3) answer newbie questions.
There could even be a full mailing list [slash-dev] for questions etc.
This way the code would be out there and Rob could spend the afternoon in his hamock at the geek compound. Everyone would be happy.:)
personally this doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun so I won't volunteer. but I don't use the slashdot code so I could be wrong about how fun a progect it would be.
I'll admit in high school I did ocasionally use a word processor. But it wasn't too much different than the one I have on my Linux box right now.
Kids mostly want to play games. But only for the first couple weeks after they get them. Then some few will leave but some few like me will stay.
I did't stay to use spread sheets. I didn't stay to type stupid stuff in word processors. Or even to organize my check book.
After I had beaten all my games on my 80-88 I stayed to program in basic. I taught myself basic in fourth grade and up by reading source. A lot of other kids did too. My mother once said that basic was so much better than any computer game because I didn't seem to get tired of it.
All of the stuff I learnt about computers I learnt from friends. All the games I got were share/free ware games that I got from my friends. We was almost a club of computer enthusiats. And guess what! Not one of us gave a flaming hoot about spreadsheets. Or wordprocessors. We cared about games, pranks (all harmless and fun), programing and modems.
When windows 3.1 graphics came out, basic was kinda pointless. So I took a pascal programming class in highschool. But that ofcourse didn't help at all because where was I going to get a compiler at home? My parents weren't going to shell out any 40 bucks for it.
So far as i remember, my parents (like most people) only used the software that came with there computer. Unless of course the software was free.
Now I'm taking Electrical and Computer Engineering in College. When I got my computer, of course, I installed Linux because it was cheaper (free) and because it came with all the tools I would need. I'm still a little bit new at it (3 months so far) but I wish I had it back in school because it is so FUN.
Linux comes with so many tools for budding, and also flowering hackers. Imagine all the cool stuff you could do with AWK. It's almost as simple as turtle but it has real uses. Looking through source code has actually been really cool. More than I would have thought. Linux has so many programs that are human readable and you could mess around with them all day.
And talk about aplications! Debian has thousands of applications that set themselves up automajically. (I know the article is about redhat but I use debian so bear with me).
So I guess what I'm trying to say is. 1) From my experience Linux actually has FAR MORE applications than windows. Even if windows has more, it doesn't do me any good if I can't afford them.
2) Applications are generally not very interesting. As a kid I stayed away from them as I do now.
and also netscape hasn't been giving me any problems since I installed my current version. Only thing is I wish it had better PNG support.
Although many of the skins mentioned here are very good. (I have tried a lot of them). I always seem to come back to the Cyrus theme by Markus Kniebes http://kniebes.de/
Obviously to be a good skin it has to look good. But to be a great skin it has to look good day after day after day. Too many skins have huge borders, or really gaudy colors that may have seemed like a good idea at the time but after 3 weeks begin to grate on ones nervers. For a truely elegant and polished looking skin then try Cyrus at http://e.themes.org/themes.phtml?themeid=934138341
After using Windows at school all day it's nice to come home to menu's that aren't beige (apparently MicroSoft did this to match the compute case). Instead Cyrus theme is darkish green. But what strikes me most is not the color but the texture. The menu's are soft looking. A softness broken by a few small, hard, see-through buttons. For a long time I believed they were actually see-through but now I know that it's just a beautifull illusion.
There is a brilliant use of texture throughout this theme. The buttons on the title bar, for example, are the same color as the title bar but just raised up a little.
At first this theme may not seem very colorful because most of the colors are fairly subdued. But if you look carefully you'll notice that some buttons turn red breifly after you use them. The reflections on the title bar and the way the border is darkest on the lower right hand side make it look like there is a light source at the top left of the screen. Most people don't notice this because the illusion is so complete.
The largest thing that seperates this theme from its peers is the complete absence of rough edges. The author had extreme attention to detail not just in the art but everywhere. In the handling of the mouse for example. There is a unity overall. It is beautifull. If I had to live with a theme for the rest of my life this would be it.
Glow in the dark things rule. They look fun and you can do all kinds of cool stuff with them.
I have always wanted more glow in the dark stuff. I remember as a kid having glow in the dark stars over my bed and a glow in the dark frizby. The ultimate would be something like this, though, where you could make yourself glow in the dark by spashing yourself with their solution.
Back in the day though we didn't have everything handed to us on a platter like kids do these days (it makes me sick sometimes to think how spoiled some of these brats are) No, instead of some counting on some big shot company to do it we had to do it ourselves!
How you may ask? Through hard work, that's how. After about 3 nights of collecting fire flies and glow worms you have about an inch of them in the bottom of a jar. Then all you have to do is smush them onto your self and presto! Home-made alien costume.
I have been using linux only three months and so am still in many ways a newbie. A friend first installed Mandrake on my computer and I think that all he taught me was how to use ls and./
Linuxnewbie.org was incredibly helpfull and far more friendly than the man pages. A couple times I read man pages for about 658.4 hours before I did a search on LNO and found some one had had the exact same question as I and posted a solution.
-- I just had to pause and think about the fun hours I spend as a newbie typing./licq.tar.gz and cusssing at my computer, linux, unix, and the world in general. For help on untarring files go to: http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000444. html
tpck writes "Corel is suing the U.S. Department of Labour for favoring Microsoft's Office software over Corel's own WordPerfect. They have already successfully sued the Canadian government for similar discrimination and won $9.9 million. "
This is the first paragraph of the article:
Ottawa -- Corel Corp. is suing the U.S. Department of Labor for allegedly tilting a bidding process in favour of Microsoft Corp., fresh off the Ottawa software maker's successful lawsuit against the Canadian government.
the way i see it (without being any smarter than the average joe, mind you) is that you are right on.
the internet browser could be broken up into dozens of usefull programs. This would make it tons more flexible and easy to program upgrades for.
this is my dream browser.
the browser would have just the top list of things [file][edit][view][go]
then it would have the quickie buttons. [back][reload][forward][home][bookmarks] if these can all fit on the top line, then that's the way to go. (i like to save space on my tiny screen.)
then you would have a location to type addresses in [http://slashdot.org ]
that would be the default setting.
if you wanted more buttons you could add them and program what they would do with perl scripts. kinda like shortcut keys. i'd have a button for [www.informit.com] maybe one for [search page]
after the toolbar everything else would be handled by other programs. (it's time the browser learned to share)
the video and sound part of the browser are obviously reusable.
the same thing for anything to do with graphics.
AND your standard html interpreter could [imho] have plenty of uses outside of the browser.
the documents for a bunch of files i have downloaded are already in html form. take that one step further and make a tiny fast html interpretter, and there is no reason why most of text can't be rewritten in html. man pages could be rewritten with hyperlinks and fuzzy graphics that would make newbies feel at home.
you wouldn't want a tool bar for this, just the text, a couple buttons, a graphic. if the there was any video in the html-ized man page it would have to call up the video program itself.
adding on features to this browser would be easy.
the script parents would get to change all the naughty words would be about a page long, written in perl.
someone would have a spell checker program going.
plus you could program your own buttons to do anything.
this idea has problems and it's not thouroughly thot out. but to me this seems like a pretty cool way to do it.
My high school had a school psychologist and I think most schools do.
Really this program is just another tool. Psychologist like to give people tests I guess. There's no reason why you shouldn't have a test that's given on the computer. This is the way of the future.
It's futile to say that psychologists can't give tests. And it's futile to say that people can't give tests on the computer.
That said, I must confess that psychologists give me the creeps also. They are the dentists of the mind. Who knows what they are really asking when they show you a blurry picture of a nekkid woman and ask you, "what do you see?"
I always lie on tests coz, dang it, my mind is private property. stay out.
Right on! Your connection to the internet is what matters now.
I am connected by an ethernet to my university which has T3 lines to the University of Minnesota.
An IP that stays the same lets me setup apache from my dorm room. I can download MP3's 5 times faster than I play them. I've got ICQ. I can play Quake 3 without lag. The only time I _have_ to cuss at my connection these days is when the server on the otherside is slow.
Just a lot of motivation to stay in school really. error27
Good point. Some rich kids DO have to work. >(assuming the parents live an extravagant lifestyle). I can *definately* sympothise with you one that one. And it's true what you said about capitol gains taxes. At first, I thot that you said you used to get a new sports car every season, but when I re-read it I see you said: >Sports after school every season (mandatory) I got cut from the sports team in my high school because I wasn't good enough. I am glad my parents are poor because otherwise they may have hit me I hadn't made the cut. As it was they didn't give two hoots. I think that what Upsilon said: >Isn't there something we can do about them [rich kids]? Was very rude in the extreme. Thank you very much for your excelent reply. error27
Slashdot Mirror
Trick is to choose a good password and encrypt it with pgp. And then choose another password and encrypt it again 5 or 6 more times.
It would take years to brute force that out...
What's this about Jon Klatz saying that we old ladies are to scared to put people in their place!! Is he on drugs?
In my day kids didn't talk like that to their elders let me tell you what. I've got a good mind to come over there and box his ears.
"Old ladies can't flame!" he says. I'll have you know that I was flaming people while you were still pooping in your diapers. It's stupid stuff like this is why most old ladies don't even read slashdot anymore.
Technology hasn't shortenned the work week or done any number of things it was supposed to, but at the same time I think it has made life better.
Right now anyone in America can find food to eat and clothes to wear. It's not like this in the rest of the world. I think it's because technology has advanced.
On the other hand American prosperity has harmed the environment. It has also harmed the countries where America drills for oil. And clears the rainforest to raise cattle for burger joints.
Perhaps in the end technology merely redistributes the most of the wealth and greed cancels out the new stuff.
Oh well. I'm as guilty as anyone.
I actually downloaded a copy of the code once a long time ago. But I never used it although I did poke around in it for about an hour just to see what was up. it's been a year since the last slashdot release, I think someone said?
:)
I kind of understand that Rob doesn't get paid to package the code neatly and he probably doesn't even enjoy doing it that much either. And he doesn't have a lot of free time probably.
On the other hand I guess people would like to see the code and use it.
So why doesn't someone offer to handle packaging for Rob. For free. (Because we expect him to do it for free) Actually maybe a bunch of people could work on it. They would be given access to a lot of fairly raw code that Rob doesn't feel is ready yet.
They would be responcible to:
1) package the code.
2) perhaps fix the occasional bug.
3) answer newbie questions.
There could even be a full mailing list [slash-dev] for questions etc.
This way the code would be out there and Rob could spend the afternoon in his hamock at the geek compound. Everyone would be happy.
personally this doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun so I won't volunteer. but I don't use the slashdot code so I could be wrong about how fun a progect it would be.
-error27
bah.
no one uses applications in school.
I'll admit in high school I did ocasionally use a word processor. But it wasn't too much different than the one I have on my Linux box right now.
Kids mostly want to play games. But only for the first couple weeks after they get them. Then some few will leave but some few like me will stay.
I did't stay to use spread sheets. I didn't stay to type stupid stuff in word processors. Or even to organize my check book.
After I had beaten all my games on my 80-88 I stayed to program in basic. I taught myself basic in fourth grade and up by reading source. A lot of other kids did too. My mother once said that basic was so much better than any computer game because I didn't seem to get tired of it.
All of the stuff I learnt about computers I learnt from friends. All the games I got were share/free ware games that I got from my friends. We was almost a club of computer enthusiats. And guess what! Not one of us gave a flaming hoot about spreadsheets. Or wordprocessors. We cared about games, pranks (all harmless and fun), programing and modems.
When windows 3.1 graphics came out, basic was kinda pointless. So I took a pascal programming class in highschool. But that ofcourse didn't help at all because where was I going to get a compiler at home? My parents weren't going to shell out any 40 bucks for it.
So far as i remember, my parents (like most people) only used the software that came with there computer. Unless of course the software was free.
Now I'm taking Electrical and Computer Engineering in College. When I got my computer, of course, I installed Linux because it was cheaper (free) and because it came with all the tools I would need. I'm still a little bit new at it (3 months so far) but I wish I had it back in school because it is so FUN.
Linux comes with so many tools for budding, and also flowering hackers. Imagine all the cool stuff you could do with AWK. It's almost as simple as turtle but it has real uses. Looking through source code has actually been really cool. More than I would have thought. Linux has so many programs that are human readable and you could mess around with them all day.
And talk about aplications! Debian has thousands of applications that set themselves up automajically. (I know the article is about redhat but I use debian so bear with me).
So I guess what I'm trying to say is.
1) From my experience Linux actually has FAR MORE applications than windows. Even if windows has more, it doesn't do me any good if I can't afford them.
2) Applications are generally not very interesting. As a kid I stayed away from them as I do now.
and also netscape hasn't been giving me any problems since I installed my current version. Only thing is I wish it had better PNG support.
Although many of the skins mentioned here are very good. (I have tried a lot of them). I always seem to come back to the Cyrus theme by Markus Kniebes http://kniebes.de/
1
Obviously to be a good skin it has to look good. But to be a great skin it has to look good day after day after day. Too many skins have huge borders, or really gaudy colors that may have seemed like a good idea at the time but after 3 weeks begin to grate on ones nervers. For a truely elegant and polished looking skin then try Cyrus at http://e.themes.org/themes.phtml?themeid=93413834
After using Windows at school all day it's nice to come home to menu's that aren't beige (apparently MicroSoft did this to match the compute case). Instead Cyrus theme is darkish green. But what strikes me most is not the color but the texture. The menu's are soft looking. A softness broken by a few small, hard, see-through buttons. For a long time I believed they were actually see-through but now I know that it's just a beautifull illusion.
There is a brilliant use of texture throughout this theme. The buttons on the title bar, for example, are the same color as the title bar but just raised up a little.
At first this theme may not seem very colorful because most of the colors are fairly subdued. But if you look carefully you'll notice that some buttons turn red breifly after you use them. The reflections on the title bar and the way the border is darkest on the lower right hand side make it look like there is a light source at the top left of the screen. Most people don't notice this because the illusion is so complete.
The largest thing that seperates this theme from its peers is the complete absence of rough edges. The author had extreme attention to detail not just in the art but everywhere. In the handling of the mouse for example. There is a unity overall. It is beautifull. If I had to live with a theme for the rest of my life this would be it.
-error27
Glow in the dark things rule. They look fun and you can do all kinds of cool stuff with them.
I have always wanted more glow in the dark stuff. I remember as a kid having glow in the dark stars over my bed and a glow in the dark frizby. The ultimate would be something like this, though, where you could make yourself glow in the dark by spashing yourself with their solution.
Back in the day though we didn't have everything handed to us on a platter like kids do these days (it makes me sick sometimes to think how spoiled some of these brats are) No, instead of some counting on some big shot company to do it we had to do it ourselves!
How you may ask? Through hard work, that's how. After about 3 nights of collecting fire flies and glow worms you have about an inch of them in the bottom of a jar. Then all you have to do is smush them onto your self and presto! Home-made alien costume.
Ahhhhh... those were the days.
I have been using linux only three months and so am still in many ways a newbie. A friend first installed Mandrake on my computer and I think that all he taught me was how to use ls and ./
./licq.tar.gz and cusssing at my computer, linux, unix, and the world in general. . html
:)
Linuxnewbie.org was incredibly helpfull and far more friendly than the man pages. A couple times I read man pages for about 658.4 hours before I did a search on LNO and found some one had had the exact same question as I and posted a solution.
--
I just had to pause and think about the fun hours I spend as a newbie typing
For help on untarring files go to: http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000444
Thanks Sensei.
this is the summarry:
tpck writes "Corel is suing the U.S. Department of Labour for favoring Microsoft's Office software over Corel's own WordPerfect. They have already successfully sued the Canadian government for similar discrimination and won $9.9 million. "
This is the first paragraph of the article:
Ottawa -- Corel Corp. is suing the U.S. Department
of Labor for allegedly tilting a bidding process in favour of Microsoft Corp., fresh off the Ottawa software maker's successful lawsuit against the Canadian government.
To me it looks like a fairly decent summary.
the way i see it (without being any smarter than the average joe, mind you) is that you are right on.
the internet browser could be broken up into dozens of usefull programs. This would make it tons more flexible and easy to program upgrades for.
this is my dream browser.
the browser would have just the top list of things [file][edit][view][go]
then it would have the quickie buttons. [back][reload][forward][home][bookmarks] if these can all fit on the top line, then that's the way to go. (i like to save space on my tiny screen.)
then you would have a location to type addresses in [http://slashdot.org ]
that would be the default setting.
if you wanted more buttons you could add them and program what they would do with perl scripts. kinda like shortcut keys. i'd have a button for [www.informit.com] maybe one for [search page]
after the toolbar everything else would be handled by other programs. (it's time the browser learned to share)
the video and sound part of the browser are obviously reusable.
the same thing for anything to do with graphics.
AND your standard html interpreter could [imho] have plenty of uses outside of the browser.
the documents for a bunch of files i have downloaded are already in html form. take that one step further and make a tiny fast html interpretter, and there is no reason why most of text can't be rewritten in html. man pages could be rewritten with hyperlinks and fuzzy graphics that would make newbies feel at home.
you wouldn't want a tool bar for this, just the text, a couple buttons, a graphic. if the there was any video in the html-ized man page it would have to call up the video program itself.
adding on features to this browser would be easy.
the script parents would get to change all the naughty words would be about a page long, written in perl.
someone would have a spell checker program going.
plus you could program your own buttons to do anything.
this idea has problems and it's not thouroughly thot out. but to me this seems like a pretty cool way to do it.
My high school had a school psychologist and I think most schools do.
Really this program is just another tool. Psychologist like to give people tests I guess. There's no reason why you shouldn't have a test that's given on the computer. This is the way of the future.
It's futile to say that psychologists can't give tests. And it's futile to say that people can't give tests on the computer.
That said, I must confess that psychologists give me the creeps also. They are the dentists of the mind. Who knows what they are really asking when they show you a blurry picture of a nekkid woman and ask you, "what do you see?"
I always lie on tests coz, dang it, my mind is private property. stay out.
error 27
Right on! Your connection to the internet is what matters now.
I am connected by an ethernet to my university which has T3 lines to the University of Minnesota.
An IP that stays the same lets me setup apache from my dorm room. I can download MP3's 5 times faster than I play them. I've got ICQ. I can play Quake 3 without lag. The only time I _have_ to cuss at my connection these days is when the server on the otherside is slow.
Just a lot of motivation to stay in school really.
error27
Good point. Some rich kids DO have to work. >(assuming the parents live an extravagant lifestyle). I can *definately* sympothise with you one that one. And it's true what you said about capitol gains taxes. At first, I thot that you said you used to get a new sports car every season, but when I re-read it I see you said: >Sports after school every season (mandatory) I got cut from the sports team in my high school because I wasn't good enough. I am glad my parents are poor because otherwise they may have hit me I hadn't made the cut. As it was they didn't give two hoots. I think that what Upsilon said: >Isn't there something we can do about them [rich kids]? Was very rude in the extreme. Thank you very much for your excelent reply. error27