If the US patent office allows you to patent knives and forks, RH is assuming that they will have to patent the spork to guarantee their future rights to use it without paying royalties.
This just shows how sick the patent process is at the moment. I only wonder why someone hasn't patented callable functions--prior art hasn't seemed to be much of an obstacle in the past.
There are utilities that will yank those right out of the registry for you:) I'm in a similar situation to you in that I'm sort of the keeper of the Linux boxes on a mostly windows network, but here's my take on it. In my opinion I shouldn't have any passwords other than my own period. My company sort of forces them on me since "people might forget them". Not like it matters since I can get half of them within an hour with John the Ripper, but it's the principle of the thing. Passwords aren't meant for having one person in control of everything, they're meant to verify that you are really you. If she doesn't get this, then i'd just hit escape anyway =P
I don't get you here... sysadmins should have access to all passwords, yes? As a matter of fact they should assign them! I shouldn't have to guess that the user with the preraphaelite wallpaper is waterhouse123.
You are mistaking the symptom for the disease. The disease is cluelessness. The cure is a short, sharp introduction to the harsh marble edge of the Clue Desk.
There is no immediately obvious way to edit a post and I know it's bad form to reply to your own post but here we go:
The other day, I had the owner of a company come close to reading me his company credit card number OVER A CELL PHONE! I shut him up politely and got the number from his accountant. I was buying antivirus software for him... Eset Nod32, it's very good, you should check it out: nod32.
...when you are dealing with management and end users. It's less about flaws in code than about realizing the importance of patching, strong passwords, encryption etc.
I do ebusiness consulting and let me tell you, security is a joke: critical servers set up OUTSIDE firewalls, trivial to nonexistent passwords, persons responsible for security with almost no computer experience... oy.
When I try to encourage people to use good passwords, make things more difficult for crackers, I am shot down. God forbid that anyone should have to remember or type in a password!
Let me give you an example of the levels of cluelessness: I have the root password for a Unix (actually, Linux) server on which all of a particular business's sales and production data resides. Yet, the person who is most technically adept at said company won't let me have the passwords to the Windows 9x workstations! She insists on typing them in for me! Never mind that I can just hit ESC and have total access to the company's network resources.... AAAAARGHHHH!
This kind of thing is going to happen continually until people get educated.
At one time in history, literacy was considered unimportant for the masses and the ruling elite. There were scribes for that. Then it became essential for everyone working to have at least basic literacy skills. Now it has become crucial for all workers to have at least basic computer literacy--by which I mean more than just ability to use a GUI. I'm talking if not programming ability, then at least an understanding of what programming is, what ASCII files are, how computers authenticate users, etc.
When are managers and end users going to catch up to the infrastructure we've created? It seems that the only large organizations that are even nibbling at the edges of the problem are the MPAA and RIAA!!!!
Here's the thing, see: the old episodes worked because they made no sense except for a kind of dream logic. Trying to figure out what was going on with the greys and the clones and the black oil and the government plots would drive you dizzy. It was also more subtle--rather than hit you over the head with the words "alien" and "extraterrestrial" in every sentence, you'd wait through a whole episode just to hear the word hybrid or colonization.
Then the writing became horribly literal and hamfistedly explicit, but there was no way to make daylight sense out of the dream logic, and the whole thing turned into a big pile of ca-ca.
For me, the best X files episodes were the ones that made the least sense and reveled in it, like Clive Bruckman, Jose Chung, and Hollywood AD (the nutty nutty nutty one with the Lazarus bowl and Gary Shandling and the dancing undead).
NAV and McAfee both suck, especially the latter--Norton may also be a processor hogging pile of bloated crap but at least it detects viruses.
People, you should check out NOD32. It has won an improbable number of Virus Bulletin 100% awards, it's affordable, and it runs just fine without slowing down a reasonably modern system.
"I was never an avid music consumer before Napster/mp3s. I would buy one album a year if even that. Then when Napster came along, and I was able to listen to different music and figure out what *I* liked, I have bought dozens of albums."
Exactly , me too. But I sneakingly suspect they don't care how many Autechre, Boards of Canada, Handsome Family, Chicks on Speed and Fennesz disks I buy at my favorite specialty shop... their metric is how quickly the dump bins empty at the megamart.
Are you getting this people? When they talk about the music industry, they mean big companies with mainstream artists. They don't care about piracy so much as alternate advertising and distribution routes. Basically, they want to make competition illegal.
G
Re: Now Waaaaait a Minute here....
on
.NETly News
·
· Score: 1
Before you start ragging on Salon like that, remember what their usual position on tech issues is: Linux positive, opensource-positive. I was also taken aback by the tone of the piece but then began to suspect that they printed it as is to let us see propaganda with its pants down.
(actually it kind of reminded me of Will Ferrell doing his Actor's Studio sketch: "Not since God Himself commanded that there be light has such illumination been shed on the earth. You are, Bill Gates, a delight and a wonder to behold.")
I think the average Salon reader is not the kind of reader who takes things at face value. I think the editors know it too. Look at it as a subtle editorial troll, designed to provoke an outraged response. Which it has.
..not to mention that the fonts look crappy on some pages (zdnet, cnet).
I've tried installing in ~, in/usr/local, and in/usr/lib (which is where Mandrake 8 puts its mozilla rpm).
No go. No Java, no Flash. Can't make it seem to read its own fershlugginer plugins directory. Annoys the hell out of me. Other than that it looks to be a nice fast stable release of Mozilla. (I blame the problems on 'drake 8 which is a pain in the tooshie in other ways too)
I remember finding the first in the series when I was 13 or 14, on vacation with my mum and my aunt in Maine. I stood in the bookstore reading up to, I think, the Vogon Poetry routine, and gasping with laughter. I begged and begged my mom to buy it--she snorted derisively, instinctively knowing that it was a Bad Thing for a Young Mind. Amazing what a campaign of precisely targeted and persistent begging will overcome.
Douglas Adams could impart like no other author a sense of the simultaneous wonder and meaninglessness of existence. I think, for instance, of the parable of the blue whale and the bowl of petunias. Okay, now I'm just being silly. But to a young mind that's not just humor, it's an introduction to philosophy. Not only that but his books made me laugh harder than any other writer.
Without Douglas Adams I wouldn't be the smartass pseudo-intellectual computer programmer I am today. Hey, wait a minute...!:-)
Overall I wish he was just spending a year dead for tax purposes like Desiato Hotblack.:-)
I dunno about this Nautilus thingy but Konqueror lets me open up multi-paned views. That way I can have my origin and target folders open simultaneously, and have one in big-icon mode and one in detail view... I usually keep three file panes and one tree view per Konq window.
It's not like Windows explorer--it's better. You just have to really look at the menu options to see what you can do. I love being able to save view profiles. I love the way you can lock any pane to the tree view so they CD together, and open a terminal pane and lock it to a window so it CDs as you change directories by point 'n' click... it's verrrry cool.
But sorry, this is spozed to be about Nautilus. Oops.
There is NO WAY this news will change the minds of hardcore creationists. All it will do is make them look even sillier in the eyes of those who know better.
Many creationists believe the entire fossil record was deposited by Noah's flood. If you ask them why there are different species at different layers, they will reply with the theory of "hyrdrological sorting". (What's that? See link below)
As soon as I read the article I knew what the reply would be, at least from some of them: a) God was economical and once he came up with genes that worked he used them over and over in other creatures, and b) there's no proof that the genes changed slowly over time instead of being created in one fell swoop. Never mind why that's absurd; when you question creationist "theories" they develop baroque rationalizations and ask idiot things like "how do we really know anything for sure except God's word?" AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!
If you want to know what so-called scientific creationists think and why they're wrong, there's no better resource than The TalkOrigins Archive.
The last release on Windows could do layers, so I'm going to go out on a limb, make and ass out of U and me and assume this Linux version does too--after all, isn't it just a Windows version ported with compatibility libraries (i.e., Wine)?
I'm wondering how many of the neat filters that ship with the Windows version come with the free Linux version. The Win version has Terrazzo and Impressionist, which while not terribly practical are a hoot to play with. ^_^
"I also remember when there was more than just two companies making anti-virus software (Let's not even get into McAfee). "
There goes my karma, but I feel compelled to mention the fact that Norman, Kaspersky and others are still around.
I'm using the Kaspersky AVPlite for Dos scanner on my Win95 partition. It works great, and AVP scores 100% in the Virus Bulletin wildlist tests time after time. I put a shortcut in my send-to menu with replaceable parameters so I can scan a directory by right-clicking.
Tray-resident monstrosities like NAV and Macafee are designed for people foolish enough to click indiscriminately on anything that comes their way. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing--I'd rather have them take a performance hit than pass me an infected floppy anyday.:-)
I had the same thought... will they go after ZDnet for advertising the Xcam next? We can only hope.
But seriously, who's seen the reports on newsmagazines about parents monitoring babysitters with hidden cameras and catching them abusing their toddlers horrendously? Shouldn't they be allowed to do this?
What about those baby monitors that let you hear if your kid is choking on his teletubby? Must be illegal, you can hide it and listen in on your baby's conversations about sex with the president!
He also loves to drop names. I saw him on Charlie Rose blathering on about Basquiat, Warhol and other nonsense. He had absolutely nothing to say.
Look at his comment about Nietzsche, where he blames him for the atom bomb. Has he ever actually read Nietzsche? I bet not--he probably only knows that the man said "God is dead" and not the context in which it was said.
If you want to check out a musician who really has interesting things to say about technology and dystopian futurism, check out some old Gary Numan. Yes, his work has been forgettable since Telekon (here come the flames) but Replicas, Pleasure Principle and Telekon are brilliant. These three are available now on CD, remastered lovingly with bonus tracks and extensive liner notes.
Replicas is especially dense and meaningful to geeks. There is much in it that resonates with Burroughs and Philip K. Dick. The new songs on the remastered CD really add something to the mythology Numan crafted for this album. The liner notes on the rerelease are a must-read for fans.
This is a good example of why I like Numan. It's not a literal extrapolation of the future so much as a nightmarish whirl of poetic horror.
I use Window Maker with the excellent DFM file manager. It uses the GTK widgets and it's very lightweight. You can drop file icons on Window Maker icons to open them.
Drawbacks: It parses directories slower than GMC, and it's weird and uncomfortable until you learn the keyboard shortcuts. Other than that, it's great.
...whether he wants to be a common foulmouthed troll or a spokesman for the community. Letting him be both exposes the Linux community to situations like this one in which Mindcraft posted his bile. It makes us all look bad.
The LinuxWorld forum for Joe's latest article, "competition keeps Linux lean and mean", contains posts from people who are addressing this issue. From Joe's responses, it is clear that he refuses to accept responsibility for his actions. Nick Petrely's mealymouthed response is also sad and alarming.
I think the Linux community needs to stand up and tell Joe loudly and clearly that his behavior is unacceptable. I won't be satisied until he acknowledges the gravity of his actions (given his position), apologizes, and promises not to do it again. Sadly, I'm not sure Joe is capable of it.
More info in the readme in/usr/doc/netscape-common-4.xx, also with instructions for tcsh etc.
This stops the dns helper from starting. When I did it, Netscape got a LOT faster at dns lookups. Now I guess it just uses the nameservers I specified in/etc/resolv.conf, which is kinda what I wanted in the first place.:-)
If you still think Netscape sucks, try the latest KFM which is not too shabby and renders pages very quickly. Look at Freshmeat on Netscape then try it with KFM. All those bloody tables render faster in KFM. Gawd, I can't wait for Mozilla.:-)
"If we can show others that there's nothing horribly wrong with us black-leather-wearing, quake-playing non-conformists, then we've made a step towards mutual understanding."
I didn't know nonconformists were so homogenous.
Certain fashion statements are meant to say, "I'm dangerous and unpredictable". That's why teens wear them in the first place. If society didn't perceive black trenchcoats, tattoos, noserings and chains as threatening they wouldn't have such appeal in some quarters.
If you wanna play at being threatening don't be surprised when you are taken seriously. Especially in light of recent events.
Mutual understanding? Fine. Let's start with you understanding that some people are scared.
"I and my friends do this sometimes -- it's amazing how many people you meet that way. And it's been fairly obvious to us that we're having some effect on at least some of the people we run into as we cruise down the street in our black leather, spreading goodwill."
I'd be more impressed if you could do that in a suit and tie, or a Taco Bell uniform, or a clown costume. Real personal power comes from within and doesn't rely on leather. Or from a baseball cap and a football team jacket, for that matter.
If you really want to be different, change from within. So few do.
Lao Tzu sez:
"The ancient masters were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive.
The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable.
Because it is unfathomable, all we can do is describe their appearance.
Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream.
Alert, like men aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests.
Yielding, like ice about to melt.
Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood.
Hollow, like caves.
Opaque, like muddy pools."
Notice that he doesn't mention what they're wearing.:-)
Yes, harassing people for wearing trenchcoats seems prima facie idiotic. At least it did yesterday.
Last night I was walking along the street around midnight and I saw two young boys coming towards me. One was wearing a long black coat. I have to admit this thought crossed my mind: what if he's planning a copycat killing?
And hey, I'm a freaky geek who was picked on in high school. Shouldn't I be sympathetic?
The fact is, these cops and principals, who are so out of touch that they probably never noticed trenchcoats before, are suddenly struck dumb with fear at the sight of that particular piece of apparel. It's not a conspiracy to suppress individuality, it's just the honest terror of the clueless whitebread types.
Will there be copycat killings, though? It seems there was one yesterday in Canada, with a trenchcoat-wearing gunman wounding one student and killing another.
Try to understand that people are very afraid right now. Try to leave your trenchcoat, your Marilyn Manson t-shirts and your skull earrings at home for a few weeks. When the urge comes upon you to utter threats in a rage or say that you understand how the gunmen felt, bite your tongue and post about it later. If parents or teachers question your right to use the Internet, quietly and calmly argue that you use it for research, that you like to read the headline news, and that you need it to download antivirus updates (point to Melissa and CIH).
Slashdot Mirror
...they are looking towards the future.
If the US patent office allows you to patent knives and forks, RH is assuming that they will have to patent the spork to guarantee their future rights to use it without paying royalties.
This just shows how sick the patent process is at the moment. I only wonder why someone hasn't patented callable functions--prior art hasn't seemed to be much of an obstacle in the past.
G
I don't get you here... sysadmins should have access to all passwords, yes? As a matter of fact they should assign them! I shouldn't have to guess that the user with the preraphaelite wallpaper is waterhouse123.
You are mistaking the symptom for the disease. The disease is cluelessness. The cure is a short, sharp introduction to the harsh marble edge of the Clue Desk.
All else is folly.
G
There is no immediately obvious way to edit a post and I know it's bad form to reply to your own post but here we go:
The other day, I had the owner of a company come close to reading me his company credit card number OVER A CELL PHONE! I shut him up politely and got the number from his accountant. I was buying antivirus software for him... Eset Nod32, it's very good, you should check it out: nod32.
G
...when you are dealing with management and end users. It's less about flaws in code than about realizing the importance of patching, strong passwords, encryption etc.
I do ebusiness consulting and let me tell you, security is a joke: critical servers set up OUTSIDE firewalls, trivial to nonexistent passwords, persons responsible for security with almost no computer experience... oy.
When I try to encourage people to use good passwords, make things more difficult for crackers, I am shot down. God forbid that anyone should have to remember or type in a password!
Let me give you an example of the levels of cluelessness: I have the root password for a Unix (actually, Linux) server on which all of a particular business's sales and production data resides. Yet, the person who is most technically adept at said company won't let me have the passwords to the Windows 9x workstations! She insists on typing them in for me! Never mind that I can just hit ESC and have total access to the company's network resources.... AAAAARGHHHH!
This kind of thing is going to happen continually until people get educated.
At one time in history, literacy was considered unimportant for the masses and the ruling elite. There were scribes for that. Then it became essential for everyone working to have at least basic literacy skills. Now it has become crucial for all workers to have at least basic computer literacy--by which I mean more than just ability to use a GUI. I'm talking if not programming ability, then at least an understanding of what programming is, what ASCII files are, how computers authenticate users, etc.
When are managers and end users going to catch up to the infrastructure we've created? It seems that the only large organizations that are even nibbling at the edges of the problem are the MPAA and RIAA!!!!
G
Here's the thing, see: the old episodes worked because they made no sense except for a kind of dream logic. Trying to figure out what was going on with the greys and the clones and the black oil and the government plots would drive you dizzy. It was also more subtle--rather than hit you over the head with the words "alien" and "extraterrestrial" in every sentence, you'd wait through a whole episode just to hear the word hybrid or colonization.
Then the writing became horribly literal and hamfistedly explicit, but there was no way to make daylight sense out of the dream logic, and the whole thing turned into a big pile of ca-ca.
For me, the best X files episodes were the ones that made the least sense and reveled in it, like Clive Bruckman, Jose Chung, and Hollywood AD (the nutty nutty nutty one with the Lazarus bowl and Gary Shandling and the dancing undead).
G
NAV and McAfee both suck, especially the latter--Norton may also be a processor hogging pile of bloated crap but at least it detects viruses.
People, you should check out NOD32. It has won an improbable number of Virus Bulletin 100% awards, it's affordable, and it runs just fine without slowing down a reasonably modern system.
G
"I was never an avid music consumer before Napster/mp3s. I would buy one album a year if even that. Then when Napster came along, and I was able to listen to different music and figure out what *I* liked, I have bought dozens of albums."
Exactly , me too. But I sneakingly suspect they don't care how many Autechre, Boards of Canada, Handsome Family, Chicks on Speed and Fennesz disks I buy at my favorite specialty shop... their metric is how quickly the dump bins empty at the megamart.
Are you getting this people? When they talk about the music industry, they mean big companies with mainstream artists. They don't care about piracy so much as alternate advertising and distribution routes. Basically, they want to make competition illegal.
G
Before you start ragging on Salon like that, remember what their usual position on tech issues is: Linux positive, opensource-positive. I was also taken aback by the tone of the piece but then began to suspect that they printed it as is to let us see propaganda with its pants down.
(actually it kind of reminded me of Will Ferrell doing his Actor's Studio sketch: "Not since God Himself commanded that there be light has such illumination been shed on the earth. You are, Bill Gates, a delight and a wonder to behold.")
I think the average Salon reader is not the kind of reader who takes things at face value. I think the editors know it too. Look at it as a subtle editorial troll, designed to provoke an outraged response. Which it has.
G
..not to mention that the fonts look crappy on some pages (zdnet, cnet).
/usr/local, and in /usr/lib (which is where Mandrake 8 puts its mozilla rpm).
I've tried installing in ~, in
No go. No Java, no Flash. Can't make it seem to read its own fershlugginer plugins directory. Annoys the hell out of me. Other than that it looks to be a nice fast stable release of Mozilla. (I blame the problems on 'drake 8 which is a pain in the tooshie in other ways too)
G
I remember finding the first in the series when I was 13 or 14, on vacation with my mum and my aunt in Maine. I stood in the bookstore reading up to, I think, the Vogon Poetry routine, and gasping with laughter. I begged and begged my mom to buy it--she snorted derisively, instinctively knowing that it was a Bad Thing for a Young Mind. Amazing what a campaign of precisely targeted and persistent begging will overcome.
:-)
:-)
Douglas Adams could impart like no other author a sense of the simultaneous wonder and meaninglessness of existence. I think, for instance, of the parable of the blue whale and the bowl of petunias. Okay, now I'm just being silly. But to a young mind that's not just humor, it's an introduction to philosophy. Not only that but his books made me laugh harder than any other writer.
Without Douglas Adams I wouldn't be the smartass pseudo-intellectual computer programmer I am today. Hey, wait a minute...!
Overall I wish he was just spending a year dead for tax purposes like Desiato Hotblack.
Groucho
If you have a speedstream 5260 it looks like the innards are from Alcatel. More info here.
That's the model Sympatico just gave me last week.
Fuck.
G
I dunno about this Nautilus thingy but Konqueror lets me open up multi-paned views. That way I can have my origin and target folders open simultaneously, and have one in big-icon mode and one in detail view... I usually keep three file panes and one tree view per Konq window.
It's not like Windows explorer--it's better. You just have to really look at the menu options to see what you can do. I love being able to save view profiles. I love the way you can lock any pane to the tree view so they CD together, and open a terminal pane and lock it to a window so it CDs as you change directories by point 'n' click... it's verrrry cool.
But sorry, this is spozed to be about Nautilus. Oops.
G
There is NO WAY this news will change the minds of hardcore creationists. All it will do is make them look even sillier in the eyes of those who know better.
Many creationists believe the entire fossil record was deposited by Noah's flood. If you ask them why there are different species at different layers, they will reply with the theory of "hyrdrological sorting". (What's that? See link below)
As soon as I read the article I knew what the reply would be, at least from some of them: a) God was economical and once he came up with genes that worked he used them over and over in other creatures, and b) there's no proof that the genes changed slowly over time instead of being created in one fell swoop. Never mind why that's absurd; when you question creationist "theories" they develop baroque rationalizations and ask idiot things like "how do we really know anything for sure except God's word?" AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!
If you want to know what so-called scientific creationists think and why they're wrong, there's no better resource than The TalkOrigins Archive.
Groucho
The last release on Windows could do layers, so I'm going to go out on a limb, make and ass out of U and me and assume this Linux version does too--after all, isn't it just a Windows version ported with compatibility libraries (i.e., Wine)?
I'm wondering how many of the neat filters that ship with the Windows version come with the free Linux version. The Win version has Terrazzo and Impressionist, which while not terribly practical are a hoot to play with. ^_^
G
"I also remember when there was more than just two companies making anti-virus software (Let's not even get into McAfee). "
:-)
There goes my karma, but I feel compelled to mention the fact that Norman, Kaspersky and others are still around.
I'm using the Kaspersky AVPlite for Dos scanner on my Win95 partition. It works great, and AVP scores 100% in the Virus Bulletin wildlist tests time after time. I put a shortcut in my send-to menu with replaceable parameters so I can scan a directory by right-clicking.
Tray-resident monstrosities like NAV and Macafee are designed for people foolish enough to click indiscriminately on anything that comes their way. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing--I'd rather have them take a performance hit than pass me an infected floppy anyday.
G
I had the same thought... will they go after ZDnet for advertising the Xcam next? We can only hope.
But seriously, who's seen the reports on newsmagazines about parents monitoring babysitters with hidden cameras and catching them abusing their toddlers horrendously? Shouldn't they be allowed to do this?
What about those baby monitors that let you hear if your kid is choking on his teletubby? Must be illegal, you can hide it and listen in on your baby's conversations about sex with the president!
Groucho
He also loves to drop names. I saw him on Charlie Rose blathering on about Basquiat, Warhol and other nonsense. He had absolutely nothing to say.
Look at his comment about Nietzsche, where he blames him for the atom bomb. Has he ever actually read Nietzsche? I bet not--he probably only knows that the man said "God is dead" and not the context in which it was said.
If you want to check out a musician who really has interesting things to say about technology and dystopian futurism, check out some old Gary Numan. Yes, his work has been forgettable since Telekon (here come the flames) but Replicas, Pleasure Principle and Telekon are brilliant. These three are available now on CD, remastered lovingly with bonus tracks and extensive liner notes.
Replicas is especially dense and meaningful to geeks. There is much in it that resonates with Burroughs and Philip K. Dick. The new songs on the remastered CD really add something to the mythology Numan crafted for this album. The liner notes on the rerelease are a must-read for fans.
This is a good example of why I like Numan. It's not a literal extrapolation of the future so much as a nightmarish whirl of poetic horror.
Groucho
You're right, we need a central repository.
More must-reads in no particular order:
Naked Lunch
Asimov's (?) "before the golden age" collections if you can find them.
Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven, also his short stories
Hitchhikers series by Doug Adams
the Dangerous Visions anthologies
Titan, Wizard and Demon by John Varley
Philip K. Dick (especially Ubik and Valis)
Lovecraft (all of it if possible)
Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories (possibly the only _good_ fantasy ever written)
Godel Escher Bach
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins
1984 and Animal Farm
as many Robert Sheckley stories as you can find
Groucho
I use Window Maker with the excellent DFM file manager. It uses the GTK widgets and it's very lightweight. You can drop file icons on Window Maker icons to open them.
/ dfm/dfm.html
Drawbacks: It parses directories slower than GMC, and it's weird and uncomfortable until you learn the keyboard shortcuts. Other than that, it's great.
Check it out:
http://www-c.informatik.uni-hannover.de/~kaiser
Groucho
...whether he wants to be a common foulmouthed troll or a spokesman for the community. Letting him be both exposes the Linux community to situations like this one in which Mindcraft posted his bile. It makes us all look bad.
The LinuxWorld forum for Joe's latest article, "competition keeps Linux lean and mean", contains posts from people who are addressing this issue. From Joe's responses, it is clear that he refuses to accept responsibility for his actions. Nick Petrely's mealymouthed response is also sad and alarming.
I think the Linux community needs to stand up and tell Joe loudly and clearly that his behavior is unacceptable. I won't be satisied until he acknowledges the gravity of his actions (given his position), apologizes, and promises not to do it again. Sadly, I'm not sure Joe is capable of it.
Groucho
Just downloaded the RPM and installed it on RH 5.2 with a 2.2.6 kernel and it works great. Not at all the hog I feared it would be. Check it out.
Groucho
Add this to your .bash_profile
/usr/doc/netscape-common-4.xx, also with instructions for tcsh etc.
/etc/resolv.conf, which is kinda what I wanted in the first place. :-)
:-)
MOZILLA_NO_ASYNC_DNS=True
export MOZILLA_NO_ASYNC_DNS
More info in the readme in
This stops the dns helper from starting. When I did it, Netscape got a LOT faster at dns lookups. Now I guess it just uses the nameservers I specified in
If you still think Netscape sucks, try the latest KFM which is not too shabby and renders pages very quickly. Look at Freshmeat on Netscape then try it with KFM. All those bloody tables render faster in KFM. Gawd, I can't wait for Mozilla.
Groucho
"If we can show others that there's nothing horribly wrong with us black-leather-wearing, quake-playing non-conformists, then we've made a step towards mutual understanding."
I didn't know nonconformists were so homogenous.
Certain fashion statements are meant to say, "I'm dangerous and unpredictable". That's why teens wear them in the first place. If society didn't perceive black trenchcoats, tattoos, noserings and chains as threatening they wouldn't have such appeal in some quarters.
If you wanna play at being threatening don't be surprised when you are taken seriously. Especially in light of recent events.
Mutual understanding? Fine. Let's start with you understanding that some people are scared.
Groucho
"I and my friends do this sometimes -- it's amazing how many people you meet that way. And it's been fairly obvious to us that we're having some effect on at least some of the people we run into as we cruise down the street in our black leather, spreading goodwill."
:-)
I'd be more impressed if you could do that in a suit and tie, or a Taco Bell uniform, or a clown costume. Real personal power comes from within and doesn't rely on leather. Or from a baseball cap and a football team jacket, for that matter.
If you really want to be different, change from within. So few do.
Lao Tzu sez:
"The ancient masters were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive.
The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable.
Because it is unfathomable,
all we can do is describe their appearance.
Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream.
Alert, like men aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests.
Yielding, like ice about to melt.
Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood.
Hollow, like caves.
Opaque, like muddy pools."
Notice that he doesn't mention what they're wearing.
Groucho
Yes, harassing people for wearing trenchcoats seems prima facie idiotic. At least it did yesterday.
Last night I was walking along the street around midnight and I saw two young boys coming towards me. One was wearing a long black coat. I have to admit this thought crossed my mind: what if he's planning a copycat killing?
And hey, I'm a freaky geek who was picked on in high school. Shouldn't I be sympathetic?
The fact is, these cops and principals, who are so out of touch that they probably never noticed trenchcoats before, are suddenly struck dumb with fear at the sight of that particular piece of apparel. It's not a conspiracy to suppress individuality, it's just the honest terror of the clueless whitebread types.
Will there be copycat killings, though? It seems there was one yesterday in Canada, with a trenchcoat-wearing gunman wounding one student and killing another.
Try to understand that people are very afraid right now. Try to leave your trenchcoat, your Marilyn Manson t-shirts and your skull earrings at home for a few weeks. When the urge comes upon you to utter threats in a rage or say that you understand how the gunmen felt, bite your tongue and post about it later. If parents or teachers question your right to use the Internet, quietly and calmly argue that you use it for research, that you like to read the headline news, and that you need it to download antivirus updates (point to Melissa and CIH).
This too shall pass.
Groucho