While Slackware certainly is not new, once it was. What was it about distributions at that time that caused you to create a new one? What did you think that they lacked? Sam TH
Well, first my post was intended to be slightly humorous. Second, I have no idea about the non-obviousness E2B. I know next to nothing about security, and thus am a very bad source for this information. I was just trying to point out that Stallion had applied for a software patent, something generally considered to be not such a good idea.
As the various articles have mentioned, in order to merge, the two companies first need approval from federal regulators. This may be our chance to force Network Solutions to live up to their legal obligations. As anyone who has followed the various stories about ICANN knows, NSI has been most uncooperative, even defying orders from the government. This has allowed them to maintain their monopoly, and keeps domain registration prices artifically high. However, in the approval process, companies under scrutiny often are willing to make concessions in order to be allowed to complete the deal. While I realize that this would require that there be some basis for suspicion of these two companies, perhaps the FTC could impose as a condition of the buyout that Verisign was required to cooperate with ICANN. This might not help much, but it could be one of our few chances to force NSI to open up their government-granted monopoly to the world.
Unfortunately, it seems like our good poster failed to notice that Stallion has committed the ultimate sin - they have applied for a software patent. To quote the press release "Stallion has applied for a patent for E2B." E2B appears to be simply a method for hardening the connection to the ISP. I don't know nearly enough about security, and they don't tell nearly enough about their technology, to have a reasonable opinion about this patent, but my knee-jerk reaction to it would be opposition, as it is a software patent.
According to this Wired article, they plan to wait until there are more govenment and industry privacy standards. This means that once someone develops some self-serving standard, DoubleClick will consider it a-ok to follow that, and track everything you do again. Unfortunatley, the Yahoo article doesn't mention this.
I feel that we should be careful of DC's promises not to abuse our privacy, as they have not shown themseleves to be the most trustworthy business in that regard. We also should not blindly assume than any 'industry standard' for privacy will agree with the beliefs of people here on slashdot.
Fortunately, researching colleges (something I did fairly recently) does not require the internet at all. Otherwise, we would further depress the chances of people who start life impoeverished of reciveing the education they need to better themselves.
But as to how you can learn about Beaver College from California - 1 Just write to them 2 Buy one of the monstrous books that lists every college in the known universe 3 check the box on the PSAT or SAT or ACT that says (loosely) "I want junk mail" 4 Look at the resources your school has. In my experience, they have information from just about everywhere. The Web is an invaluable resource for researching colleges. I know it helped me figure out where I want to go. But when particular people's access to your website is a determining factor in _changing the name of your college_ maybe we are relying a little to much on it.
Well, the bates address is my old email. I first registered with slashdot quite a while ago (#10819), so it reflects my email as of then, which I haven't bothered to change, since it still works. I suspect you don't care, but I'm responding anyway. Sam TH
While you did enough research to find that article, you didn't have the time to read the one this story is about. If you had, you would have noticed that Beaver has admitted men since 1973. Sam TH
Everyone's friend Jon Katz notwithstanding, maybe this is a sign that the Internet is not always a liberating force. I suspect that the name calling hasn't changed much in a long time, but the _neccessity_ of a high-visibility web site in the college admissions business is certainly a recent development. Maybe is people were willing to do more research than just look at the fancy graphics in choosing a college, this would not be such a severe problem. (Maybe that's a little harsh)
Aside from that, blocking an entire domain that is obviously legitamate is just so ludicrous that it suggests that the people writing this software simply have no intelligence, in addition to not having a clue. Unbelieveable. (shakes head)
I thought one of the more entertaining aspect of their attempt at a plot was that the IPO and the release to the public of FPS's first and only product were on the same day. I have to say I would have trouble investing in a company where no one had ever seen the product. Of course, the fact that turning the game off was impossible, and would destroy the software(!?) was pretty funny too. And that power switches seemed to have been forgotten. Sam TH
For your cut and paste problems, this is one that I remember. Currently, if you paste the same text multiple times, some of the display of the previously pasted text dissapears momentarily. However, the text is not actually deleted, and on my machine it reappears almost immediately. We are attempting to fix this bug currently. This bug is number 735 in Bugzilla. Sam TH AbiWord Developer
I probably shouldn't reply to this, but I can't resist.
1 - Precisely which "hype" would you be reffering to? I have yet to see that much hype about AbiWord. For example, mentions of it on Slashdot are very rare, unlike many items that don't even exist yet.
2 - I have to say that when Star Office is 1 free, 2 10 MB in size, 3 under development for only about 2 years, 4 has only about five people employed to develop it then I will consider your criticism more reasonable. I consider AbiWord a better word processore, that uses less resources and has been developed with less work than SO.
3 - What problems precisely are you refering to? I am willing to take any problems posted here and bring them back to the developers.
4 - Someone must like us. We have won Show Favorite at LinuxWorld twice in a row.
Well, I don't use the Win32 version, but I have never experienced the sorts of problems you described. There have been some cut and paste bugs (and there still are), but I can't diagnose "weird shit" that well. As for rearranging paragraphs, I have never heard of a bug like that. If you have more info, we would be very grateful. As a side note, of course it is less stable than notepad. I have never, ever seen pico crash either, but I don't write papers using it. AbiWord is not just a text editor, it is a full-featured word processor.
As one of the many AbiWord developers, I feel called upon to discuss the apparent misconception that AbiWord is part of the Gnome Office. Currently, the Gnome Office consists of Gnumeric, which has been developed by the Gnome team, and additional applictions developed by outsiders, such as AbiWord. AbiWord is NOT just a Gnome, or even just a Linux, application. We run on Win32, BeOS, QNX and soon Macintosh. These are not addon ports, the are integral parts of what AbiWord is. If you have specific concerns with AbiWord, we would appreciate hearing from you. We realize that all is not yet perfect, but we think that we do what we do well. Sam TH
www.dn.se works great for me. Of course, I am using the build from Monday, and not M13. But I like Mozilla, and find that it is _much_ faster than regular old Netscape. Sam TH
As one of "these guys" (albeit a minor one) I wholeheartedly second this. We would love the input of anyone, esp. a professional writer. And we thank you very much for plugging AbiWord so nicely. (Just as a side note, I really have no idea how other people manage to write such large word processors. AbiWord runs on 3 different OS's and multiple different CPU's, and the source is about 15 MB.) Sam TH
Greece was not yet part of the Empire in 276 BCE. According to the EB, the beginning of the conquest of Greece was sometime aroung 215 BCE, and ended in 146 with the burning of Corinth (the same year as the sack of Carthage). Thus, this writer fails on this small point.
I would just like to take this opportunity to plug Abiword. For me, it is by far the most usable wordprocessor around for Linux. While it doesn't have some of the features that are found on other products (like page numbers) it is making rapid progress. The binary tarball is only about 5 megs. And to the best of my knowledege, we are the only one that has an overline feature. Come check it out. You'll be converted.
While you are correct to say that Chomsky's work in linguistics is now mainstream, it would be more correct to say that it significantly changed the direction of that mainstream. With regard to you other comments, they are the ones with no connection to reality. Merely because Chomsky subscribes to a different set of political beliefs than you do does not make his claims "horseshit" While I frequently disagree with Chomsky's views on international relations, and would not classify him as a visionary, he is certainly an astute observer of American intenational politics. Take for instance his commentary on the recent bombing of Serbia. While I disagreed with his conclusions, he is certainly correct to point out that although such countries as Indonesia and Turkey have committed grevious human rights violations with weapons sold to them below cost by the American government, no only did we not bomb them, we continuted to trade with them. He is also correct in pointing out that this decision had nothing to do with human rights and everything to do with American economic concerns, mostly the concerns of large industries with significant political influence. Merely because this suggests conclusions that are antithetical to your beliefs about politics does not make it incorret, and certainly not worthy of the derision you show.
As a student a the U of C, I could not in good conscince allow this post to go unrefuted. Your comments about Chicago amount to nothing more than unsubstantied slander of a great number of people, most of whom you have probably never met. In contrast to you, I have had very positive experiences with the professors here. I am sorry that you have not had the best professors, but that is no excuse for denigrating an entire university, one of the best anywhere.
An excellent example of this would be the Emperor of Prussia, who was kind enough to hand over power to the people, after they politely requested it.
Actually, Wilhelm II fled during the revolution of 1918, when his government became no longer tenable due to the massive popular revolt. He spent the rest of his life in exile in Belgium. His reasons for abidication certainly had nothing to do with the best interests of Germany at the time.
This is not the whole story. However, you are significantly closer to the truth than Raymond. (whose ideas about the Nazi regime are both incorrect and offensive)
1 - In July 32, the Nazi party recives 37% of the vote, and becomes a partner in the government led by Franz von Papen, leader of one of the conservative parties.
2 - November 32 - The above government falls. New elections have the Nazis at less than before, although they are still the largest party in parliment.
3 - January 33 - Von Papen has Hindenburg (the german president at the time) agree to make Hitler chancellor, with Von Papen as vice-chancellor. Hindenburg and Papen belive they can use Hitler for their purposes.
4 - About a month later, and just before the next election, the Reichstag (parliment building) is burned by an arsonist. The Nazis, now in power, blame the communists and arrest their leaders. In the election, hysteria generates a 44 percent vote for the Nazis. This is germany's last free parlimentary election before the end of the war.
5 - The parliment (with the communists, a significant percentage of the representatives, locked out by the SA - the precursors to the SS) votes in the Enabling Act, granting Hiter dictatorial power.
6 - Hitler holds a plebiscite in October to withdraw from the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference (both created by the hated Treaty of Versaille) This passes with 96.3 % of the vote. This was NOT a parlimentary election. At this point, Hiter was already in control of the state.
7 - Already having dictatorial powers via the Enabling Act, Hiter calls another plebiscite to make him 'Furher' and give him permanent emergency power. 90 % vote in favor. This is August 1934, 20 months after he first took power.
While the Nazis were supported by a significant percentage of the electorate, it was never more than 37%. They worked with the other parties, which gave Hitler the chance to take power through their own unwillingness to work with each other. The German people voted for dictatorship only after a year and a half of Nazi rule, in an election enviroment that could hardly be called free and fair.
While Mill was certainly in favor of liberty, I find myself skeptical about his being the father of Libertarianism. In fact, he is one of the foremost philosophers of Utilitarianism, which holds that the morally correct action is the one that produces the most happiness. For example, forcing people to wear motorcyle helmet will save lives, and therefore increase overall happiness. Yet it is clearly anti-libertarian. In general, Libertarianism and Utilitarianism (as described in Mill's work of the same name) are not that compatible.
Slashdot Mirror
While Slackware certainly is not new, once it was. What was it about distributions at that time that caused you to create a new one? What did you think that they lacked?
Sam TH
Well, first my post was intended to be slightly humorous.
Second, I have no idea about the non-obviousness E2B. I know next to nothing about security, and thus am a very bad source for this information. I was just trying to point out that Stallion had applied for a software patent, something generally considered to be not such a good idea.
Sam TH
As the various articles have mentioned, in order to merge, the two companies first need approval from federal regulators. This may be our chance to force Network Solutions to live up to their legal obligations. As anyone who has followed the various stories about ICANN knows, NSI has been most uncooperative, even defying orders from the government. This has allowed them to maintain their monopoly, and keeps domain registration prices artifically high. However, in the approval process, companies under scrutiny often are willing to make concessions in order to be allowed to complete the deal. While I realize that this would require that there be some basis for suspicion of these two companies, perhaps the FTC could impose as a condition of the buyout that Verisign was required to cooperate with ICANN. This might not help much, but it could be one of our few chances to force NSI to open up their government-granted monopoly to the world.
Sam TH
Unfortunately, it seems like our good poster failed to notice that Stallion has committed the ultimate sin - they have applied for a software patent.
To quote the press release
"Stallion has applied for a patent for E2B."
E2B appears to be simply a method for hardening the connection to the ISP. I don't know nearly enough about security, and they don't tell nearly enough about their technology, to have a reasonable opinion about this patent, but my knee-jerk reaction to it would be opposition, as it is a software patent.
Sam TH
According to this Wired article, they plan to wait until there are more govenment and industry privacy standards. This means that once someone develops some self-serving standard, DoubleClick will consider it a-ok to follow that, and track everything you do again. Unfortunatley, the Yahoo article doesn't mention this.
I feel that we should be careful of DC's promises not to abuse our privacy, as they have not shown themseleves to be the most trustworthy business in that regard. We also should not blindly assume than any 'industry standard' for privacy will agree with the beliefs of people here on slashdot.
Sam TH
Fortunately, researching colleges (something I did fairly recently) does not require the internet at all. Otherwise, we would further depress the chances of people who start life impoeverished of reciveing the education they need to better themselves.
But as to how you can learn about Beaver College from California -
1 Just write to them
2 Buy one of the monstrous books that lists every college in the known universe
3 check the box on the PSAT or SAT or ACT that says (loosely) "I want junk mail"
4 Look at the resources your school has. In my experience, they have information from just about everywhere.
The Web is an invaluable resource for researching colleges. I know it helped me figure out where I want to go. But when particular people's access to your website is a determining factor in _changing the name of your college_ maybe we are relying a little to much on it.
Sam TH
Well, the bates address is my old email. I first registered with slashdot quite a while ago (#10819), so it reflects my email as of then, which I haven't bothered to change, since it still works. I suspect you don't care, but I'm responding anyway.
Sam TH
While you did enough research to find that article, you didn't have the time to read the one this story is about. If you had, you would have noticed that Beaver has admitted men since 1973.
Sam TH
Everyone's friend Jon Katz notwithstanding, maybe this is a sign that the Internet is not always a liberating force. I suspect that the name calling hasn't changed much in a long time, but the _neccessity_ of a high-visibility web site in the college admissions business is certainly a recent development. Maybe is people were willing to do more research than just look at the fancy graphics in choosing a college, this would not be such a severe problem. (Maybe that's a little harsh)
Aside from that, blocking an entire domain that is obviously legitamate is just so ludicrous that it suggests that the people writing this software simply have no intelligence, in addition to not having a clue. Unbelieveable. (shakes head)
Sam TH
I thought one of the more entertaining aspect of their attempt at a plot was that the IPO and the release to the public of FPS's first and only product were on the same day. I have to say I would have trouble investing in a company where no one had ever seen the product. Of course, the fact that turning the game off was impossible, and would destroy the software(!?) was pretty funny too. And that power switches seemed to have been forgotten.
Sam TH
For your cut and paste problems, this is one that I remember. Currently, if you paste the same text multiple times, some of the display of the previously pasted text dissapears momentarily. However, the text is not actually deleted, and on my machine it reappears almost immediately. We are attempting to fix this bug currently. This bug is number 735 in Bugzilla.
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
Sam TH
In AbiWord, with a simple press of the F12 key, you can switch from VI to EMACS to normal keybindings.
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
Sam TH
I probably shouldn't reply to this, but I can't resist.
1 - Precisely which "hype" would you be reffering to? I have yet to see that much hype about AbiWord. For example, mentions of it on Slashdot are very rare, unlike many items that don't even exist yet.
2 - I have to say that when Star Office is 1 free, 2 10 MB in size, 3 under development for only about 2 years, 4 has only about five people employed to develop it then I will consider your criticism more reasonable. I consider AbiWord a better word processore, that uses less resources and has been developed with less work than SO.
3 - What problems precisely are you refering to? I am willing to take any problems posted here and bring them back to the developers.
4 - Someone must like us. We have won Show Favorite at LinuxWorld twice in a row.
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer
Sam TH
Well, I don't use the Win32 version, but I have never experienced the sorts of problems you described. There have been some cut and paste bugs (and there still are), but I can't diagnose "weird shit" that well. As for rearranging paragraphs, I have never heard of a bug like that. If you have more info, we would be very grateful.
As a side note, of course it is less stable than notepad. I have never, ever seen pico crash either, but I don't write papers using it. AbiWord is not just a text editor, it is a full-featured word processor.
Sam TH
As one of the many AbiWord developers, I feel called upon to discuss the apparent misconception that AbiWord is part of the Gnome Office. Currently, the Gnome Office consists of Gnumeric, which has been developed by the Gnome team, and additional applictions developed by outsiders, such as AbiWord. AbiWord is NOT just a Gnome, or even just a Linux, application. We run on Win32, BeOS, QNX and soon Macintosh. These are not addon ports, the are integral parts of what AbiWord is. If you have specific concerns with AbiWord, we would appreciate hearing from you. We realize that all is not yet perfect, but we think that we do what we do well.
Sam TH
www.dn.se works great for me. Of course, I am using the build from Monday, and not M13. But I like Mozilla, and find that it is _much_ faster than regular old Netscape.
Sam TH
As one of "these guys" (albeit a minor one) I wholeheartedly second this. We would love the input of anyone, esp. a professional writer. And we thank you very much for plugging AbiWord so nicely. (Just as a side note, I really have no idea how other people manage to write such large word processors. AbiWord runs on 3 different OS's and multiple different CPU's, and the source is about 15 MB.)
Sam TH
Greece was not yet part of the Empire in 276 BCE. According to the EB, the beginning of the conquest of Greece was sometime aroung 215 BCE, and ended in 146 with the burning of Corinth (the same year as the sack of Carthage). Thus, this writer fails on this small point.
Just so you know AbiWord has a LaTeX export feature.
I would just like to take this opportunity to plug Abiword. For me, it is by far the most usable wordprocessor around for Linux. While it doesn't have some of the features that are found on other products (like page numbers) it is making rapid progress. The binary tarball is only about 5 megs. And to the best of my knowledege, we are the only one that has an overline feature. Come check it out. You'll be converted.
While you are correct to say that Chomsky's work in linguistics is now mainstream, it would be more correct to say that it significantly changed the direction of that mainstream.
With regard to you other comments, they are the ones with no connection to reality. Merely because Chomsky subscribes to a different set of political beliefs than you do does not make his claims "horseshit" While I frequently disagree with Chomsky's views on international relations, and would not classify him as a visionary, he is certainly an astute observer of American intenational politics.
Take for instance his commentary on the recent bombing of Serbia. While I disagreed with his conclusions, he is certainly correct to point out that although such countries as Indonesia and Turkey have committed grevious human rights violations with weapons sold to them below cost by the American government, no only did we not bomb them, we continuted to trade with them. He is also correct in pointing out that this decision had nothing to do with human rights and everything to do with American economic concerns, mostly the concerns of large industries with significant political influence. Merely because this suggests conclusions that are antithetical to your beliefs about politics does not make it incorret, and certainly not worthy of the derision you show.
As a student a the U of C, I could not in good conscince allow this post to go unrefuted. Your comments about Chicago amount to nothing more than unsubstantied slander of a great number of people, most of whom you have probably never met. In contrast to you, I have had very positive experiences with the professors here. I am sorry that you have not had the best professors, but that is no excuse for denigrating an entire university, one of the best anywhere.
An excellent example of this would be the Emperor of Prussia, who was kind enough to hand over power to the people, after they politely requested it.
Actually, Wilhelm II fled during the revolution of 1918, when his government became no longer tenable due to the massive popular revolt. He spent the rest of his life in exile in Belgium. His reasons for abidication certainly had nothing to do with the best interests of Germany at the time.
This is not the whole story. However, you are significantly closer to the truth than Raymond. (whose ideas about the Nazi regime are both incorrect and offensive)
1 - In July 32, the Nazi party recives 37% of the vote, and becomes a partner in the government led by Franz von Papen, leader of one of the conservative parties.
2 - November 32 - The above government falls. New elections have the Nazis at less than before, although they are still the largest party in parliment.
3 - January 33 - Von Papen has Hindenburg (the german president at the time) agree to make Hitler chancellor, with Von Papen as vice-chancellor. Hindenburg and Papen belive they can use Hitler for their purposes.
4 - About a month later, and just before the next election, the Reichstag (parliment building) is burned by an arsonist. The Nazis, now in power, blame the communists and arrest their leaders. In the election, hysteria generates a 44 percent vote for the Nazis. This is germany's last free parlimentary election before the end of the war.
5 - The parliment (with the communists, a significant percentage of the representatives, locked out by the SA - the precursors to the SS) votes in the Enabling Act, granting Hiter dictatorial power.
6 - Hitler holds a plebiscite in October to withdraw from the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference (both created by the hated Treaty of Versaille) This passes with 96.3 % of the vote. This was NOT a parlimentary election. At this point, Hiter was already in control of the state.
7 - Already having dictatorial powers via the Enabling Act, Hiter calls another plebiscite to make him 'Furher' and give him permanent emergency power. 90 % vote in favor. This is August 1934, 20 months after he first took power.
While the Nazis were supported by a significant percentage of the electorate, it was never more than 37%. They worked with the other parties, which gave Hitler the chance to take power through their own unwillingness to work with each other. The German people voted for dictatorship only after a year and a half of Nazi rule, in an election enviroment that could hardly be called free and fair.
While Mill was certainly in favor of liberty, I find myself skeptical about his being the father of Libertarianism. In fact, he is one of the foremost philosophers of Utilitarianism, which holds that the morally correct action is the one that produces the most happiness. For example, forcing people to wear motorcyle helmet will save lives, and therefore increase overall happiness. Yet it is clearly anti-libertarian. In general, Libertarianism and Utilitarianism (as described in Mill's work of the same name) are not that compatible.