I think one thing that a lot of newbies miss, and this includes Katz, is that there is a difference between what they percieve as flaming and what really *is* flaming. In my 15+ years in on-line communications (BBSs, Fido and now the Internet) I've been in true flame wars and what others considered a flame war.
A true flame war, to me, is just flat out insults with very little content. An example: You motherfucker! You're so god-damned wrong it isn't even funny!! What, your mother forget to get of your daddy's dick and swollow you that one night? Geez, fucking moron! Die!!!
That is flaming in the true sense of the word. Now, a lot of debates that I'm in I've been accused of flaming when there is no flaming at all. In the style that I debate in I start of pretty civil and temper it with humor. However, my humor is mildly sarcastic in nature and not ill-intended. However, constantly some people persist on a track of obvious futility I crank up the sarcasm to drive my point home. This is because I don't really like having to reiterate over and over something that is plainly obvious to me to someone who isn't taking the time to think the problem over before entering the discussion. I also crank up the sarcasm with someone decides to come off as rude, brash and more than a slightly holier-than-thou.
You get two of those people together and while the sarcasm and side jabs will fly, it is *NOT* a "flame" war. We're not blasting one another with raw, out and out insults. In each case that I've been blamed for it I've also been told to calm down, even though I am calm when I post, and that I really should get along, even though I'd associate with the person if we ever met.
In each case the person who calls it a flame war or tells me what is going on is new to the net.
It isn't that the net is abusive, that flame wars break out easily or that people sending a message don't think that the other side is being read by a human. Granted, those are factors, but one is left out. That is the tone that the reader takes a particular message. Stated simply, people see abuse because they expect abuse. It is one of the fun thinks that happens to language when posted. The tone is not dictated solely by the context or the style of the poster but also in how the reader decides to read it. It is the singlemost overlooked factor in many disagreements.
This is not something new to people who have been on the net for years. We know that things will be read the wrong way, which is why we go off half-cocked but we're also willing to back down fast if we're pointed out,/clearly/, that we're wrong *and why*. This is something that newbies to the net don't grasp as well.
Anyway, rambling reply to a rampling feature. Point of it all, don't call it flaming or a flamewar until it really is. Sarcasm, disagreements, and subtle jabs are nothing more than word play and part of the culture, not flamewars. Like a pair of kittens playing, it only looks hostile.;)
My 10 second analysis is that they are fairly similar
Well, looking at the two links provided here and here my >10 second analysis differs.
Of just the alphabet the following letters have convergence. F, I, J, L, S, Z. Of those only F really differs from the normal Latin rendering in both sets as it drops the cross bar to become an upside-down, backwards L. The others are the same. There are other similar strokes, but they mean different things. For example, Q in unicode is K in grafiti, A is "uppercase", E is "backspace", K is "command", R is the start of the two stroke set, etc, etc, etc.
In fact, writing the unicode alphabet on my Palm IIIe renders the following: Tcftijaoxks vuhy z
Hardly what I call a highly convergant set of characters. The c is actually the C with the little tail (dunno the ASCII code for it) and after the J would be KL which on the Palm using unicode is "Command-L" for "lookup". I had to go back into the memo pad to continue the rest of the alphabet.
My opinion is that, yes, Xerox did advance an idea which may or may not have been unique for the time. However, Grafiti, however Palm came about to aquiring it, is clearly superior to Unicode. Chalk up Xerox ("y" in unicode on my Palm, for the record) for a nice lawsuit based on nothing more than sour grapes.
Personally I use Quicken and Wells Fargo. I've looked at all the different online banking solutions but none of them really appealed to me after I got used to Quicken's online banking. In fact I switched to Quicken from Wells Fargo's On-Line banking.
For me the ability to keep track of all my accounts, get the updates to them automatically over the internet, write checks all from one interface is a complete boon. Pretty soon I'm going to upgrade to Quicken2k and purchase PocketQuicken for my Palm. Can't keep more up to date on your books than that, IMHO.
My only problem is that more of the newer online banking institutions don't offer this solution *AND* that there were some open standard so there would be products other than Quicken and, IIRC, Microsoft Money to do it.
Agreed. Personally when I hung out on #linux on dal.net for over a year I was the brunt of a lot of "duh!" jokes. I learned and laughed with them.
The most ribbing that I've ever gotten, the most belittling, and the most I've laughed at myself is for the following:
mount mail://mnt/mailroot cd/mnt mkdir mailcopy (tar mailroot to STDOUT | tar extract STDIN to mailcopy) ls -lR mailcopy cd mailroot rm -rf *
For those following along at home, yes, I was making a backup of mailroot to mailcopy, verified it to see if it was what I wanted. When I did I had meant to cd into mail copy and delete it. When it wasn't happening I CNTL-C'd and found that my rm -rf had traversed down to the/dev tree on mail's root drive.
Took me 4 hours to fix that machine.
It's been over a year since I made that simple mistake.
The funny thing is if you actually *read* UF you'd see that a grand portion of it isn't about what Scott was ranting about. I'd say less than 10% of UF is about the techs belittling customers. The other 90% is about a great deal of other things.
Scott's completely missed the point. Having work tech support for well over three years there are people out there that are abusive, rude, crass and uncaring. I had to take calls from people who, if their problem wasn't fixed 5 minutes ago they were cussing and screaming and hollaring and would *NOT* listen. After 1/2 hour of abuse we'd come to find out that he was doing something wrong. He'd hang up. No thank you, nothing.
Then there are the people who are utterly opposed to the idea of learning anything at all about computers. Their mantra is "But I shouldn't have to know that!" Sorry pal, yes, you do need to know that. Computers, like any other tool, requires some learning and training to operate.
Finally, not everyone can be tech support. It takes a great deal of patience, a lot of training and a good helping of intelligence. The good techs know how to solve a problem not because it is on a script, but because they can work through the problem. In my shop we couldn't script 1/3rd of the problems and each time Microsoft or Netscape came out with a new version we had to start from scratch since the "options" wasn't in the same place. "Options" became "tools" and was moved from "edit" to "preferences" and so on.
The bad techs get fired, the good techs get burnt out and either quit or finally get paid their due in a better position with better pay.
Through all of that, ALL of it, the techs have two options. Either laugh or blow up at the customers. The latter isn't an option so the former is all they can do and keep getting a paycheck.
That is where User Friendly (the *only* strip I read on a daily basis) comes it. I'm out of the tech game now but I completely sympathize with those who are still in it. I know how much abuse they get and it isn't pretty. I knoew there are users out there who are rude, are crass, are complete and utter pricks and don't want to learn anything. I know all that, read UF, and laugh. Not at any one individual, nor at the techs or anyone else, but at the whole absurdity of the situations presented and knowing that yes, I *have* been there!
Finally, I took a look at PvP to see what Scott viewed as "humor". I picked a good 20-30 different comics from his archives. Not one laugh, guffaw, snort, shook head. Nothing. It was not funny in the least. He wishes that we would all move "past" the humor presented in User Friendly and get onto something with "real" content. The first strip of PvP that I read was someone shooting someone else in the eye with a nerf gun. Oh, that is real content. Then I read a strip about someone being forced to wear a Pokemon costume at a Holloween party. Ohh, stop my laughter now.
From what I can see Scott can not nor will he ever approach the wit and humor Illiad has packed into UF. Just remembering the whole "raid" on Microsoft by the gang brings a smile to my face. That is real nerf gun content. The ROT13 y2k joke is just so subtle that geeks would get it right off and write a perl/vi/sed/etc macro to read what the strip said. All the fun poked at the battles between Linux and FreeBSD, the different distributions of Linux, Open Source and Microsoft with a hint of BeOS and even the classic runs of Dust Puppy versus Crud Puppy. Hell, Illiad even got the classic editor wars (vi vs. emacs) thrown into a rather unique and fun situation.
That is comedy.
Scott clearly doesn't get it for if all he sees is UF belitting people who call into tech support and equates all that belitting with the common user instead of the rare luser when it is clearly so much more. Obviously, he isn't a geek.
Scott, leave the geek humor to the geeks and keep your non-geek self out of it, ok?
Also one has to look at the pure number of clients on uptime.hexon.cx for each OS. Linux has such a low average time because there are 200+ clients on uptime instead of the, what, 30-40 for the BSDs? This gives a much better sampling where a few abherrant ones don't skew the data to far off.
As for the top dogs I've heard that one of the two is just copying his uptime between reboots since the current version of his OS wasn't even out when his uptime supposedly started.
Finally, as for Windows, you won't find any windows above 49 days, 17 hours and some odd minutes. Remember, Windows has the 49 day bug!
The last presidental election I voted for Clinton. Better of the two evils, IMHO. No flames please.
Since that time I've opened my eyes quite a bit politically and can say that my leanings are strongly Libertarian. I only differ from the Libertarian Philosphy on a few issues relating to business. IE, Libertarianism says that what the US Government is doing with M$ is wrong. In my head, I agree, but considering how it, and other businesses do, well, business, I do see the need for some loose, high-level checks against such power. We don't give absolute power to government, we shouldn't give absolute power to business, either.
So this year I'm hitting the polls with that philisophical backing in mind. Do these candidates come close to the political philisophy that I hold. Not just single issues but the thought process from which the stands on those issues is derived. Because of that requirement the Rebublocrats won't be getting my vote. They have no philosphy backing their stands on issues.
Be that as it may, get out there and vote. If the majority really did rule we wouldn't have a government at all since the majority didn't vote. And vote for the people and issues that you want, even if there is a good chance they will lose. Good numbers this year means press the next year. More press the next year means more numbers that year. Which, in turn, gives more press. Sometimes you gotta lose a few to win.
Personally I don't mind the corner desk, a "flat" keyboard or a blocky, 3 button, no frills mouse but please, PLEASE, turn *off* the damned overhead, non-directional flourecent lights! I know people who get headaches from the refresh of the monitor compined with the flicker of those lights. Personally, having worked graves for 2+ years at a small ISP, I am quite content with enhancing my tan only with the monitor, nothing else.
Of course, if one does get the lights turned off one finds out something real quick. Unlike paper, a monitor projects light. That means black on while (hint, hint, Slashdot-type people) is blinding while the true colors, white on black, are quite easy to read.
Personally, I'm worried more about all of this glaring, blinding, horrible light and pages designed for it than I am with the other parts of "ergonomics". I mean, I bet there are some regs and standards on ergonomics which state that everything should be well lit.:/
"* Can be a little chilly. If you find your office cold, the Aeron does not help at all as the air is free to seek heat from the rear! I don't mind this much, but a few other people that have them have mentioned that to me."
Pesonally, I don't see this as a problem, I see it as a boon. Which is more common, a chilly office or sitting in a chair for 4-8 hours and having a bad case of "sweat butt"? For me, the latter.
With a traditional chair there isn't much that you can cool it down. With the Aeron you can always bring in a blanket to warm your buns.
Actually, I stop using Amazon.com. In fact, I just sent feedback to them demanding that they remove my information from/all/ their databases or face any legal action I can muster. Wonder if we can get a class action if they refuse to do that with enough people.
That demand letter was BCC'd to my parents and friends who would use Amazon.com for their purchases. I followed that up with an explination of why I was demanding the removal of my account from Amazon's databases. That letter will soon be chopped and sent to my other friends.
Will I return purchases from Amazon.com? No. It is other people's choice to purchase through that company. However, I did just drop $100+ at Barnes & Noble for my xmas shopping that would have been Amazon's until they decided to abuse the patent system.
You have to remember, it is more than just/.ers. It is/.ers and those who value their opinions.
The time between releases issue has been raised constantly and I have the same answer each time.
1: If the person on the other end wants bleeding-edge stuff installed they can always compile their own or ride the unstable tree. For example, I've been running 2.2 on all my Debian machines since the day 2.2.0 came out.
2: If one looks at the release cycle of the main distributions (Red Hat, Slackware, SUSE, Debian) one will note that Debian's release cycle isn't slower. The logest release so far was 2.1 at 7 months. All the others have had 7 month release cycles in their past. The others have had release cycles as low as 3 months. Interestingly enough the low month releases were also the most buggy for the other distributions. Debian's stable tree has been just that, stable as rock. If a quicker release cycle means less stability (which I think it does) then ride unstable and be done with it!
Sooo close yet soooo far
on
Interface Zen
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· Score: 1
As always Tom writes quite well but doesn't quite know when to stop. Reading this article I winced when it came to the various rants on the arrows and chorded command sequences. While I agree that examples like CNTL-ALT-SHIFT-F11 are bad, simple chords (CNTL-K, for example) are no worse than other chords that some editors use (SHIFT-Q, for example). Ah, did we forget that the SHIFT key combo is a chord?
Then there was how many paragraphs devoted to the concept of muscle memory yet he so flippantly dismisses the arrow keys by stating that the user must look down at the keyboard to find them and look again to regain his place on the keyboard. Can't have it both ways. I can attest that I can easily switch from main block to arrows and back again without looking using that very same muscle memory.
Speaking of arrows, oddly enough, the keyboard I use now doesn't have the up and down directly over one another. Even so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to do this simple thing to make all the keys accessable at once. Place middle finger on up arrow, index on left, ring on right. Now, the thumb naturally rests slightly below the index and to the left. Move it over 1", moving the hand up slightly. This is not moving the fingers up and down nor is it folding your hand in half.
As for moving fingers, why is it that moving the index from up to down and back again is not acceptable but moving the same infex from j to h for the vi movements acceptable? If you don't move the index then you're moving the whole hand over one. Why then is that acceptable and moving the hand to the arrows not?
Finally, the tired old "main block only commands" for "speed". Tom spent many paragraphs talking about getting into the zen state with the keyboard and how all these keys are "bad". However he never gave thought to the fact that being in modes is just as "bad"... IE, neither are bad or good, they are different.
I spent many years in Joesph Allen's "joe" editor. I moved my hands from main block to arrows and back. I've used chorded command characters constantly. Oddly enough, I got into that zen state where I could hammer out code, or newsgroup articles, or poetry. I could get into the zen state because I didn't have to deal with vi's stupidity. With joe I never had the following thoughts, "And now I'll just move over, damn, crap, crap, gotta get back into command mode!" If there ever was something which would throw someone out of their groove it is that, not moving their hands 5-6" to the arrows or hitting a simple chord just like the many chords I've used to write this.
Tom's article goes a long way because it defines a lot of what is wrong with keyboards in general as well as provides a very good distiction between GUI/CLI and using the right interface for the task at hand. However, he overstepped by stating that how/he/ learned to edit is the/only/ way to achieve the zen state he described. His arguments work both for and against because when it comes to editing we learn what works for us be it joe, [el|n]vi[is|m], [X]Emacs, etc, etc, etc.
Just as a note, for the past 8 months I've been using vim, not joe. This isn't an editor flame against any editor. It is just pointing out that editor wars exist because people are different. We're all right in our choice of editor and it just saddened me to see someone like Tom apparently unable to grasp that.
"Opt-out" wrong, "Opt-in" is what should be said.
on
Another Software Spy
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· Score: 1
In all of these recent transgressions on personal privacy one phrase always sets my teeth a-grinding... "Opt-out." It is usually said in a sentence like this. "It is ok if they get the data as long as they inform the consumer and allow them to opt-out."
No, wrong, sorry, try again.
"Opt-out" presupposes that the little checkbox is already marked. This gives the people on the other end the ability to hide what is going on in the small fine print; usually at the bottom of some long agreement.
Consumers should have to opt-*IN* on such marketing research. If the data is so harmless, if the masses really want it, then why do we constantly have companies who are doing it on the sly, hiding what they do and forcing the consumer to stop it instead of asking the consumer participate?
Please, for anyone who writes articles or responses to articles, note the difference of opt-out versus opt-in and use the latter.
The funniest thing about this that I've seen in several places now is that the people who forward it on completely ignore the fact that 2-2-2000 is *not* the next even day. 2-2-2222 is. Why?
0 is not even, odd, positive or negative. Therefore all the digits in 2-2-2000 are not even, only half of them are.
The problem is with Cyber Patrol. When the ISP I used to work for got blocked by one of those censoring software packages I found out that most, if not all, operate on a domain basis. Not URL, not IP, domain.
Seperate servers will not help. It also would not be cost effective, especially for the smaller ISPs, to have to double their architecture and police their own users. Furthermore, there really isn't any reason for the censorship consortium to not block the new server(s) when they come up.
For the larger ISPs, domain block and IP blocking are just simply insane. Take ELN, for example. Over one million customers. Just because one of those has some "objectionable" content doesn't mean the other 999,999,999 should be blocked along with them. Also, since ELN uses several servers in a round robin fashion the same IP does not serve up the same content.
In the end, it is up to the censoring software people to tighten up the way they block and the sites they do block. It is up to the users of such software to complain, LOUDLY, to the censoring software people to get their filters straight, to disable the filters, or to switch to something which doesn't filter in such an inane fashion.
Believe me, I was a die hard text only editor for web pages until I downloaded the v1.0 demo of Dreamweaver. Joe, joe, nothing but joe, who needed anything else?
That changed. For those who will bash a WYSIWYG editor just because it us WYSIWYG, go away, ignorant fools.
Dreamweaver is EXACTLY what you want it to be. EXACTLY. If you want WYSIWYG, you can use that aspect of it. If you want text editor, open up the HTML preview and edit there. If that isn't enough for you, install your own into its external editor support. I consider the WYSIWYG aspect of Dreamweaver more of a nice preview in which I can make quick edits than a cast-in-stone, only way to edit.
Furthermore, Dreamweaver does not CHANGE your code at all. Not one bit, literally, not unless you tell it to. I also find the code that it does generate is quite easy to read and logical. I will admit there are some quirks in DW that take getting used to but believe you me, those are miniscule compared (to the dark side of the force) to having to try to keep tables straight without the visual aspect. Being able to tab through the cells in a table and enter/modify the data that way more than makes up for having to remove a few stray CRs, clean up a link here and there, and remove the cell width definition.
Not necessarily. - Complete BS
on
Why Kids Kill
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· Score: 1
More gun control would have prevented it!?
I've spent the past few days listening to people spew that utter tripe and I'm tired of it. Here's why.
Right now the US has the most restrictive gun control in its history. These kids got them anyway. *MORE* control will not prevent people who want guns from getting guns, only prevent people who need guns from getting guns.
If a robber came into my house right now, chances are high that the gun he has was NOT BOUGHT LEGALLY! That means the laws DO NOT WORK. More laws WILL NOT WORK. Figure it out, people!
Why do we have the 2nd amendment? Why? So kids can shoot people in the playground? NO! Want a prime example, look at Kosovo. The government targeting ITS OWN PEOPLE. *THAT* is why the 2nd amendment is there. Get rid of the guns anre you're nothing more than cattle for some 2 bit dictator to take over and exploit.
The point of Debian's stable tree is not the latest and greatest the moment it comes out. It is a set of packages that have been tested to work well *TOGETHER*. That takes time to put all the packages together and then work all the kinks out.
For those who want the latest and greatest, ride the unstable tree, that is what it is there for! I installed in the middle of the Hamm freeze. About 2 days later I started riding Slink. I'm currently riding Potato. That is my choice. Meanwhile my laptop, which I use for work, I've only just recently upgraded to slink. You know what? I don't care that it isn't the latest and greatest because IT WORKS.
The number one problem with people who don't know how to use computers is that they fear learning because they think the computer will blow up if they do something wrong. This is further compounded by the endless levels of abstraction that the computer industry piles into the interfaces in the attempt to make it "simplier" for the novice. The other thing the computer industry is doing that compounds the problem is that they bill computers in general as a device that you need no training to operate.
The computer is one of the most complex machines humans have ever created. It is a general purpose machine that has no clear start and end point. Microwaves heat food, TVs are for viewing things, CD players are for playing CDs, etc. But a computer, with the proper programs and interfaces could do all of that and more.
Any person who wants to use a computer needs training on the computer. They need to learn how to operate that complex machine as they have needed to learn how to operate other complex machines. We train to drive a car. We train cook food. We train to do pretty much any complex operation.
Of all of them, to me, the computer is the easiest thing in the world to learn. You mess up with a car, you've got an insurance claim. You mess up with food, you burnt the food and might have a fire insurance claim. You mess up with a computer, in 99% of the cases.... you lose data which never really existed in the first place and can, more often than not, recover.
Linux is good because it doesn't have a lot of the layers of abstraction the two major competitors (Windows/Mac) have. It forces a person to become computer literate. When a person is computer literate they can see that most operations on a computer are logical and can be figured out. For example, printer drivers on a CD. Just like driving a Ford and going to a Chevy, operations are similar and it only takes a little bit to figure out the little quirks.
Slashdot Mirror
I think one thing that a lot of newbies miss, and this includes Katz, is that there is a difference between what they percieve as flaming and what really *is* flaming. In my 15+ years in on-line communications (BBSs, Fido and now the Internet) I've been in true flame wars and what others considered a flame war.
/clearly/, that we're wrong *and why*. This is something that newbies to the net don't grasp as well.
;)
A true flame war, to me, is just flat out insults with very little content. An example:
You motherfucker! You're so god-damned wrong it isn't even funny!! What, your mother forget to get of your daddy's dick and swollow you that one night? Geez, fucking moron! Die!!!
That is flaming in the true sense of the word. Now, a lot of debates that I'm in I've been accused of flaming when there is no flaming at all. In the style that I debate in I start of pretty civil and temper it with humor. However, my humor is mildly sarcastic in nature and not ill-intended. However, constantly some people persist on a track of obvious futility I crank up the sarcasm to drive my point home. This is because I don't really like having to reiterate over and over something that is plainly obvious to me to someone who isn't taking the time to think the problem over before entering the discussion. I also crank up the sarcasm with someone decides to come off as rude, brash and more than a slightly holier-than-thou.
You get two of those people together and while the sarcasm and side jabs will fly, it is *NOT* a "flame" war. We're not blasting one another with raw, out and out insults. In each case that I've been blamed for it I've also been told to calm down, even though I am calm when I post, and that I really should get along, even though I'd associate with the person if we ever met.
In each case the person who calls it a flame war or tells me what is going on is new to the net.
It isn't that the net is abusive, that flame wars break out easily or that people sending a message don't think that the other side is being read by a human. Granted, those are factors, but one is left out. That is the tone that the reader takes a particular message. Stated simply, people see abuse because they expect abuse. It is one of the fun thinks that happens to language when posted. The tone is not dictated solely by the context or the style of the poster but also in how the reader decides to read it. It is the singlemost overlooked factor in many disagreements.
This is not something new to people who have been on the net for years. We know that things will be read the wrong way, which is why we go off half-cocked but we're also willing to back down fast if we're pointed out,
Anyway, rambling reply to a rampling feature. Point of it all, don't call it flaming or a flamewar until it really is. Sarcasm, disagreements, and subtle jabs are nothing more than word play and part of the culture, not flamewars. Like a pair of kittens playing, it only looks hostile.
You're right, I did. Thanks for catching that.
My 10 second analysis is that they are fairly similar
Well, looking at the two links provided here and here my >10 second analysis differs.
Of just the alphabet the following letters have convergence. F, I, J, L, S, Z. Of those only F really differs from the normal Latin rendering in both sets as it drops the cross bar to become an upside-down, backwards L. The others are the same. There are other similar strokes, but they mean different things. For example, Q in unicode is K in grafiti, A is "uppercase", E is "backspace", K is "command", R is the start of the two stroke set, etc, etc, etc.
In fact, writing the unicode alphabet on my Palm IIIe renders the following:
Tcftijaoxks vuhy
z
Hardly what I call a highly convergant set of characters. The c is actually the C with the little tail (dunno the ASCII code for it) and after the J would be KL which on the Palm using unicode is "Command-L" for "lookup". I had to go back into the memo pad to continue the rest of the alphabet.
My opinion is that, yes, Xerox did advance an idea which may or may not have been unique for the time. However, Grafiti, however Palm came about to aquiring it, is clearly superior to Unicode. Chalk up Xerox ("y" in unicode on my Palm, for the record) for a nice lawsuit based on nothing more than sour grapes.
Personally I use Quicken and Wells Fargo. I've looked at all the different online banking solutions but none of them really appealed to me after I got used to Quicken's online banking. In fact I switched to Quicken from Wells Fargo's On-Line banking.
For me the ability to keep track of all my accounts, get the updates to them automatically over the internet, write checks all from one interface is a complete boon. Pretty soon I'm going to upgrade to Quicken2k and purchase PocketQuicken for my Palm. Can't keep more up to date on your books than that, IMHO.
My only problem is that more of the newer online banking institutions don't offer this solution *AND* that there were some open standard so there would be products other than Quicken and, IIRC, Microsoft Money to do it.
Uhm, newsflash, UF makes fun of geeks. It *IS* us.
Agreed. Personally when I hung out on #linux on dal.net for over a year I was the brunt of a lot of "duh!" jokes. I learned and laughed with them.
/mnt/mailroot /mnt
/dev tree on mail's root drive.
The most ribbing that I've ever gotten, the most belittling, and the most I've laughed at myself is for the following:
mount mail:/
cd
mkdir mailcopy
(tar mailroot to STDOUT | tar extract STDIN to mailcopy)
ls -lR mailcopy
cd mailroot
rm -rf *
For those following along at home, yes, I was making a backup of mailroot to mailcopy, verified it to see if it was what I wanted. When I did I had meant to cd into mail copy and delete it. When it wasn't happening I CNTL-C'd and found that my rm -rf had traversed down to the
Took me 4 hours to fix that machine.
It's been over a year since I made that simple mistake.
I still laugh at my own stupidity.
I learned to mount root drives RO.
The funny thing is if you actually *read* UF you'd see that a grand portion of it isn't about what Scott was ranting about. I'd say less than 10% of UF is about the techs belittling customers. The other 90% is about a great deal of other things.
This was scored up? By who, the poster? Someone put this troll in his place, please.
The law you're looking for is the "Communications Decency Act."
Scott's completely missed the point. Having work tech support for well over three years there are people out there that are abusive, rude, crass and uncaring. I had to take calls from people who, if their problem wasn't fixed 5 minutes ago they were cussing and screaming and hollaring and would *NOT* listen. After 1/2 hour of abuse we'd come to find out that he was doing something wrong. He'd hang up. No thank you, nothing.
Then there are the people who are utterly opposed to the idea of learning anything at all about computers. Their mantra is "But I shouldn't have to know that!" Sorry pal, yes, you do need to know that. Computers, like any other tool, requires some learning and training to operate.
Finally, not everyone can be tech support. It takes a great deal of patience, a lot of training and a good helping of intelligence. The good techs know how to solve a problem not because it is on a script, but because they can work through the problem. In my shop we couldn't script 1/3rd of the problems and each time Microsoft or Netscape came out with a new version we had to start from scratch since the "options" wasn't in the same place. "Options" became "tools" and was moved from "edit" to "preferences" and so on.
The bad techs get fired, the good techs get burnt out and either quit or finally get paid their due in a better position with better pay.
Through all of that, ALL of it, the techs have two options. Either laugh or blow up at the customers. The latter isn't an option so the former is all they can do and keep getting a paycheck.
That is where User Friendly (the *only* strip I read on a daily basis) comes it. I'm out of the tech game now but I completely sympathize with those who are still in it. I know how much abuse they get and it isn't pretty. I knoew there are users out there who are rude, are crass, are complete and utter pricks and don't want to learn anything. I know all that, read UF, and laugh. Not at any one individual, nor at the techs or anyone else, but at the whole absurdity of the situations presented and knowing that yes, I *have* been there!
Finally, I took a look at PvP to see what Scott viewed as "humor". I picked a good 20-30 different comics from his archives. Not one laugh, guffaw, snort, shook head. Nothing. It was not funny in the least. He wishes that we would all move "past" the humor presented in User Friendly and get onto something with "real" content. The first strip of PvP that I read was someone shooting someone else in the eye with a nerf gun. Oh, that is real content. Then I read a strip about someone being forced to wear a Pokemon costume at a Holloween party. Ohh, stop my laughter now.
From what I can see Scott can not nor will he ever approach the wit and humor Illiad has packed into UF. Just remembering the whole "raid" on Microsoft by the gang brings a smile to my face. That is real nerf gun content. The ROT13 y2k joke is just so subtle that geeks would get it right off and write a perl/vi/sed/etc macro to read what the strip said. All the fun poked at the battles between Linux and FreeBSD, the different distributions of Linux, Open Source and Microsoft with a hint of BeOS and even the classic runs of Dust Puppy versus Crud Puppy. Hell, Illiad even got the classic editor wars (vi vs. emacs) thrown into a rather unique and fun situation.
That is comedy.
Scott clearly doesn't get it for if all he sees is UF belitting people who call into tech support and equates all that belitting with the common user instead of the rare luser when it is clearly so much more. Obviously, he isn't a geek.
Scott, leave the geek humor to the geeks and keep your non-geek self out of it, ok?
Also one has to look at the pure number of clients on uptime.hexon.cx for each OS. Linux has such a low average time because there are 200+ clients on uptime instead of the, what, 30-40 for the BSDs? This gives a much better sampling where a few abherrant ones don't skew the data to far off.
As for the top dogs I've heard that one of the two is just copying his uptime between reboots since the current version of his OS wasn't even out when his uptime supposedly started.
Finally, as for Windows, you won't find any windows above 49 days, 17 hours and some odd minutes. Remember, Windows has the 49 day bug!
The last presidental election I voted for Clinton. Better of the two evils, IMHO. No flames please.
Since that time I've opened my eyes quite a bit politically and can say that my leanings are strongly Libertarian. I only differ from the Libertarian Philosphy on a few issues relating to business. IE, Libertarianism says that what the US Government is doing with M$ is wrong. In my head, I agree, but considering how it, and other businesses do, well, business, I do see the need for some loose, high-level checks against such power. We don't give absolute power to government, we shouldn't give absolute power to business, either.
So this year I'm hitting the polls with that philisophical backing in mind. Do these candidates come close to the political philisophy that I hold. Not just single issues but the thought process from which the stands on those issues is derived. Because of that requirement the Rebublocrats won't be getting my vote. They have no philosphy backing their stands on issues.
Be that as it may, get out there and vote. If the majority really did rule we wouldn't have a government at all since the majority didn't vote. And vote for the people and issues that you want, even if there is a good chance they will lose. Good numbers this year means press the next year. More press the next year means more numbers that year. Which, in turn, gives more press.
Sometimes you gotta lose a few to win.
Personally I don't mind the corner desk, a "flat" keyboard or a blocky, 3 button, no frills mouse but please, PLEASE, turn *off* the damned overhead, non-directional flourecent lights! I know people who get headaches from the refresh of the monitor compined with the flicker of those lights. Personally, having worked graves for 2+ years at a small ISP, I am quite content with enhancing my tan only with the monitor, nothing else.
:/
Of course, if one does get the lights turned off one finds out something real quick. Unlike paper, a monitor projects light. That means black on while (hint, hint, Slashdot-type people) is blinding while the true colors, white on black, are quite easy to read.
Personally, I'm worried more about all of this glaring, blinding, horrible light and pages designed for it than I am with the other parts of "ergonomics". I mean, I bet there are some regs and standards on ergonomics which state that everything should be well lit.
"* Can be a little chilly. If you find your office cold, the Aeron does not help at all as the air is free to seek heat from the rear! I don't mind this much, but a few other people that have them have mentioned that to me."
Pesonally, I don't see this as a problem, I see it as a boon. Which is more common, a chilly office or sitting in a chair for 4-8 hours and having a bad case of "sweat butt"? For me, the latter.
With a traditional chair there isn't much that you can cool it down. With the Aeron you can always bring in a blanket to warm your buns.
Actually, I stop using Amazon.com. In fact, I just sent feedback to them demanding that they remove my information from /all/ their databases or face any legal action I can muster. Wonder if we can get a class action if they refuse to do that with enough people.
/.ers. It is /.ers and those who value their opinions.
That demand letter was BCC'd to my parents and friends who would use Amazon.com for their purchases. I followed that up with an explination of why I was demanding the removal of my account from Amazon's databases. That letter will soon be chopped and sent to my other friends.
Will I return purchases from Amazon.com? No. It is other people's choice to purchase through that company. However, I did just drop $100+ at Barnes & Noble for my xmas shopping that would have been Amazon's until they decided to abuse the patent system.
You have to remember, it is more than just
Let me sum up what I think about this article.
Debian 2.1r2 got 6 of 10. They called it hard to install, cryptic, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Corel Linux was prased as the best for the home user. Easy to install, blah, blah, blah.
Raise your hand if you know that Corel Linux is based on Debian 2.1(r1, I think) and the only thing they really included *was* the installer.
*Grey raises his hand.*
'nuff said.
The time between releases issue has been raised constantly and I have the same answer each time.
1: If the person on the other end wants bleeding-edge stuff installed they can always compile their own or ride the unstable tree. For example, I've been running 2.2 on all my Debian machines since the day 2.2.0 came out.
2: If one looks at the release cycle of the main distributions (Red Hat, Slackware, SUSE, Debian) one will note that Debian's release cycle isn't slower. The logest release so far was 2.1 at 7 months. All the others have had 7 month release cycles in their past. The others have had release cycles as low as 3 months. Interestingly enough the low month releases were also the most buggy for the other distributions. Debian's stable tree has been just that, stable as rock. If a quicker release cycle means less stability (which I think it does) then ride unstable and be done with it!
As always Tom writes quite well but doesn't quite know when to stop. Reading this article I winced when it came to the various rants on the arrows and chorded command sequences. While I agree that examples like CNTL-ALT-SHIFT-F11 are bad, simple chords (CNTL-K, for example) are no worse than other chords that some editors use (SHIFT-Q, for example). Ah, did we forget that the SHIFT key combo is a chord?
/he/ learned to edit is the /only/ way to achieve the zen state he described. His arguments work both for and against because when it comes to editing we learn what works for us be it joe, [el|n]vi[is|m], [X]Emacs, etc, etc, etc.
Then there was how many paragraphs devoted to the concept of muscle memory yet he so flippantly dismisses the arrow keys by stating that the user must look down at the keyboard to find them and look again to regain his place on the keyboard. Can't have it both ways. I can attest that I can easily switch from main block to arrows and back again without looking using that very same muscle memory.
Speaking of arrows, oddly enough, the keyboard I use now doesn't have the up and down directly over one another. Even so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to do this simple thing to make all the keys accessable at once. Place middle finger on up arrow, index on left, ring on right. Now, the thumb naturally rests slightly below the index and to the left. Move it over 1", moving the hand up slightly. This is not moving the fingers up and down nor is it folding your hand in half.
As for moving fingers, why is it that moving the index from up to down and back again is not acceptable but moving the same infex from j to h for the vi movements acceptable? If you don't move the index then you're moving the whole hand over one. Why then is that acceptable and moving the hand to the arrows not?
Finally, the tired old "main block only commands" for "speed". Tom spent many paragraphs talking about getting into the zen state with the keyboard and how all these keys are "bad". However he never gave thought to the fact that being in modes is just as "bad"... IE, neither are bad or good, they are different.
I spent many years in Joesph Allen's "joe" editor. I moved my hands from main block to arrows and back. I've used chorded command characters constantly. Oddly enough, I got into that zen state where I could hammer out code, or newsgroup articles, or poetry. I could get into the zen state because I didn't have to deal with vi's stupidity. With joe I never had the following thoughts, "And now I'll just move over, damn, crap, crap, gotta get back into command mode!" If there ever was something which would throw someone out of their groove it is that, not moving their hands 5-6" to the arrows or hitting a simple chord just like the many chords I've used to write this.
Tom's article goes a long way because it defines a lot of what is wrong with keyboards in general as well as provides a very good distiction between GUI/CLI and using the right interface for the task at hand. However, he overstepped by stating that how
Just as a note, for the past 8 months I've been using vim, not joe. This isn't an editor flame against any editor. It is just pointing out that editor wars exist because people are different. We're all right in our choice of editor and it just saddened me to see someone like Tom apparently unable to grasp that.
In all of these recent transgressions on personal privacy one phrase always sets my teeth a-grinding... "Opt-out." It is usually said in a sentence like this. "It is ok if they get the data as long as they inform the consumer and allow them to opt-out."
No, wrong, sorry, try again.
"Opt-out" presupposes that the little checkbox is already marked. This gives the people on the other end the ability to hide what is going on in the small fine print; usually at the bottom of some long agreement.
Consumers should have to opt-*IN* on such marketing research. If the data is so harmless, if the masses really want it, then why do we constantly have companies who are doing it on the sly, hiding what they do and forcing the consumer to stop it instead of asking the consumer participate?
Please, for anyone who writes articles or responses to articles, note the difference of opt-out versus opt-in and use the latter.
The funniest thing about this that I've seen in several places now is that the people who forward it on completely ignore the fact that 2-2-2000 is *not* the next even day. 2-2-2222 is. Why?
0 is not even, odd, positive or negative. Therefore all the digits in 2-2-2000 are not even, only half of them are.
The problem is with Cyber Patrol. When the ISP I used to work for got blocked by one of those censoring software packages I found out that most, if not all, operate on a domain basis. Not URL, not IP, domain.
Seperate servers will not help. It also would not be cost effective, especially for the smaller ISPs, to have to double their architecture and police their own users. Furthermore, there really isn't any reason for the censorship consortium to not block the new server(s) when they come up.
For the larger ISPs, domain block and IP blocking are just simply insane. Take ELN, for example. Over one million customers. Just because one of those has some "objectionable" content doesn't mean the other 999,999,999 should be blocked along with them. Also, since ELN uses several servers in a round robin fashion the same IP does not serve up the same content.
In the end, it is up to the censoring software people to tighten up the way they block and the sites they do block. It is up to the users of such software to complain, LOUDLY, to the censoring software people to get their filters straight, to disable the filters, or to switch to something which doesn't filter in such an inane fashion.
Believe me, I was a die hard text only editor for web pages until I downloaded the v1.0 demo of Dreamweaver. Joe, joe, nothing but joe, who needed anything else?
That changed. For those who will bash a WYSIWYG editor just because it us WYSIWYG, go away, ignorant fools.
Dreamweaver is EXACTLY what you want it to be. EXACTLY. If you want WYSIWYG, you can use that aspect of it. If you want text editor, open up the HTML preview and edit there. If that isn't enough for you, install your own into its external editor support. I consider the WYSIWYG aspect of Dreamweaver more of a nice preview in which I can make quick edits than a cast-in-stone, only way to edit.
Furthermore, Dreamweaver does not CHANGE your code at all. Not one bit, literally, not unless you tell it to. I also find the code that it does generate is quite easy to read and logical. I will admit there are some quirks in DW that take getting used to but believe you me, those are miniscule compared (to the dark side of the force) to having to try to keep tables straight without the visual aspect. Being able to tab through the cells in a table and enter/modify the data that way more than makes up for having to remove a few stray CRs, clean up a link here and there, and remove the cell width definition.
More gun control would have prevented it!?
I've spent the past few days listening to people spew that utter tripe and I'm tired of it. Here's why.
Right now the US has the most restrictive gun control in its history. These kids got them anyway. *MORE* control will not prevent people who want guns from getting guns, only prevent people who need guns from getting guns.
If a robber came into my house right now, chances are high that the gun he has was NOT BOUGHT LEGALLY! That means the laws DO NOT WORK. More laws WILL NOT WORK. Figure it out, people!
Why do we have the 2nd amendment? Why? So kids can shoot people in the playground? NO! Want a prime example, look at Kosovo. The government targeting ITS OWN PEOPLE. *THAT* is why the 2nd amendment is there. Get rid of the guns anre you're nothing more than cattle for some 2 bit dictator to take over and exploit.
The point of Debian's stable tree is not the latest and greatest the moment it comes out. It is a set of packages that have been tested to work well *TOGETHER*. That takes time to put all the packages together and then work all the kinks out.
For those who want the latest and greatest, ride the unstable tree, that is what it is there for!
I installed in the middle of the Hamm freeze. About 2 days later I started riding Slink. I'm currently riding Potato. That is my choice. Meanwhile my laptop, which I use for work, I've only just recently upgraded to slink. You know what? I don't care that it isn't the latest and greatest because IT WORKS.
C'Mon people, this isn't rocket science!
The number one problem with people who don't know how to use computers is that they fear learning because they think the computer will blow up if they do something wrong. This is further compounded by the endless levels of abstraction that the computer industry piles into the interfaces in the attempt to make it "simplier" for the novice. The other thing the computer industry is doing that compounds the problem is that they bill computers in general as a device that you need no training to operate.
The computer is one of the most complex machines humans have ever created. It is a general purpose machine that has no clear start and end point. Microwaves heat food, TVs are for viewing things, CD players are for playing CDs, etc. But a computer, with the proper programs and interfaces could do all of that and more.
Any person who wants to use a computer needs training on the computer. They need to learn how to operate that complex machine as they have needed to learn how to operate other complex machines. We train to drive a car. We train cook food. We train to do pretty much any complex operation.
Of all of them, to me, the computer is the easiest thing in the world to learn. You mess up with a car, you've got an insurance claim. You mess up with food, you burnt the food and might have a fire insurance claim. You mess up with a computer, in 99% of the cases.... you lose data which never really existed in the first place and can, more often than not, recover.
Linux is good because it doesn't have a lot of the layers of abstraction the two major competitors (Windows/Mac) have. It forces a person to become computer literate. When a person is computer literate they can see that most operations on a computer are logical and can be figured out. For example, printer drivers on a CD. Just like driving a Ford and going to a Chevy, operations are similar and it only takes a little bit to figure out the little quirks.