Actually, there are so many different perspectives on Slashdot that I think it gives pretty much all the news you need, as long as you read the comments. Certainly both pro and anti-Linux viewpoints are well represented there, and there are plenty of mainstream "FUD" articles listed.
I first found out about BeOS from a Slashdot story, and I subsequently bought and installed it. I quite like NetPositive - I wish they'd add a decent JavaScript implementation to it. It's small, lightweight and fast, while not being totally retro like Lynx.
Be lovers will appreciate my ironic story, by the way. I had Be installed on a system with Windows, and it was working great. I finally transferred the things I needed Windows for on that machine to another, and enthusiastically gave Be the entire disk. The network card then stopped working, rendering the system unusable - and the only way to get it to work would have been to boot Windows on the machine that no longer had it!
Oops.
So now that system's running Linux. One of these days I want to restore Be since I think it's a truly fantastic environment. I even like a lot of the oddball commercial software created by tiny companies (like BeProductive).
So Be, I'll Be back.
Jean-Louise Gasse must have a strong stomach to withstand all these awful Be puns!
Last Christmas, I wandered over to my favourite Christmas Lights area to check out the decorations. One of the people there had a little plastic robot that his son was playing with. He was a really nice guy, so I hung out around his house for a while, checking out the robot. It couldn't do much sophisticated - it could walk around, say what you told it to via the remote control, and flash a few lights. I can tell you that his son just ate it up.
I think the thing cost about $ 100. Aibo costs twenty times what the robot did, but it's capable of independent behaviour of some kind. It also looks like it's made out of considerably more solid materials.
I'd be a little wary of the value for money proposition. My understanding is that kids get bored with toys pretty fast, and it's an awfully expensive toy. When we get the kind of mania that sells out a toy in seconds, especially something this expensive, I think there are factors more than sheer merit driving the phenomenon. Obviously, Sony's marketing is brilliant, but I doubt this has the long-term potential a $2,000 toy should.
I echo the thoughts of a fellow slashdotter in this thread - I'd blow $2,000 on a comprehensive Lego Mindstorms set and see what my kid (if I had one) could create, instead of getting this pre-packaged temptation. I think it would create a lot more enjoyment.
This is extremely unlikely - you'd have to be accused of actual bad faith to run aground on that clause. It's designed to prevent Bob Young from taking the IPO proceeds, buying a Gulfstream V and flying off to Tahiti with our money.
As long as he can make a persuasive argument that the open source status of Red Hat software is in the shareholder's best interest, we're fine. Since the express purpose of Red Hat is to develop and market open source software, I don't think anyone's going to say that continuing to do so is not in the shareholders' best interest. In fact, you could make a case that doing anything else would not be in their interest, and would be contrary to the company's basic mission for which shareholders signed up.
I might suggest buying a really cheesy old 486 computer used with Windows95 already on it, and use that for the install.
Unfortunately, I guess you have to use the same network card, so I suppose it has to at least be PCI. But still, the market value of any used computer has to be virtually $ 0 nowadays. Cheaper than buying a retail version of Windows for sure.
Unfortunately, GTE has a monopoly of virtually the entire Los Angeles coast, and I just called them and verified that, in fact, GTE would not install a DSL connection of any kind without Windows. And they wouldn't refund your installation fee, either.
That's official policy, and the low-level service drone telling it to me had approximately the sympathy of a robot. About the best you could say is that he didn't scream at me or hang up; he just sat there in his stolid cold way saying that nobody at GTE would ever allow service to be installed for a Linux, SGI Irix or any other user. They do, however, expect Mac support "in a few months".
I don't know how these telcos survive. Looks like I need to use Covad (an alternative carrier that serves Los Angeles). I suggest that anyone else stuck in GTE land do the same if at all possible.
Isn't KDE defined as "acceptably open source" by Red Hat nowadays?
I think KDE is just what Red Hat needs - it's so like Windows it's too scary to even contemplate.
I like Enlightenment but have a hard time with it until I get a decent pager and a less harrowing installation procedure. Until then, it's SGI 4DWM for me.
I hadn't heard that problem before, but I did hear (admittedly second-hand) from someone who used IE for Solaris. He said that it was constantly polling, driving system load up to insane heights even when he wasn't doing anything with it. As a result, he dumped it almost immediately.
I have an old Sun that isn't doing anything that could run Solaris 7 - perhaps I'll check it out one of these days.
I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft stuck with poor programming practices to make Solaris look bad, and if so, IE for Linux is likely to be terrible. They certainly wouldn't take much time optimizing it, when doing so would make Windows look bad.
I don't think there's much doubt that current IE is a cleaner product than current Netscape, simply because they did a complete rewrite in 4.x, while Netscape tried switching around their bloated code base. In the end, though, the new Netscape should run rings around it. I sure hope they recreate the old Netscape 3 user interface, which was IMHO the best I've ever seen in a browser. Netscape 4's "pale imitation of IE" interface was a massive step backwards, as JWZ tacitly acknowledged on his web pages even before he quit.
If IE for Linux would bring better fonts (such as Verdana) to the Linux platform, it might really help us. But I'm not betting on it.
Incidentally, for political reasons I am unlikely to use any Microsoft browser for my regular web surving in the foreseeable future; it sends an unmistakably pro-MS message to the world, and I don't want that to be my message. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean NS is actually better than IE; it just means I don't want to publically support MS with every log entry I write on someone's server.
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Re:Lucas is to movies as Gates is to software
on
More Star Wars Hype
·
· Score: 1
I'm a little confused.
I have to have Windows because people pay me to use Windows, and because those people refuse to use any other OS. If people didn't pay me to use Windows, I would have an entirely Windows-free life.
Do people pay me to see Star Wars? Of course not. If I want to make a living, can I make a living without Star Wars? Of course I can. Therefore, Star Wars doesn't have me by the short and curlies like Windows does; I can ignore it if I want, and I won't lose a penny by doing so.
Personally, I may well never see it, and if I do, it will be when the hordes are gone.
I believe one of the major advantages of Linux is that the GUI isn't integrated with the kernel, so even buggy display drivers can't kill the system. In fact, on a server, graphical display drivers aren't even running, so they don't have a chance to kill the system.
Well, the real issue is not the browser, it's the fonts included with the system. The lack of good fonts included with the software is probably my number one gripe against Linux.
In field testing on an Apple Power Macintosh G3, Netscape, Internet Explorer and iCab [a new Mac only upstart] displayed the page quite well, with precisely equal readability. So your argument that Windows is the one true platform capable of displaying MS web pages is demonstratably false. In addition, it is clear that it does not take Internet Explorer (or any other specific browser) to display the Microsoft web pages well.
On my SGI Irix system (which represents Linux and other Unix variants), the Helvetica on the Microsoft site is very hard to read using Netscape, the only major graphical browser available. One of the reasons I use an Irix machine is that, with the exception of Helvetica, their fonts are very nice. But, alas, helvetica is a terrible font on any Unix machine. Some day, I will have to learn what's needed to fix that.
I will say, though, that since Microsoft should have anticipated heavy use of that specific page by the Linux/Unix community, it would have been better for them to have used a font readable on a typical Unix system. This is just common courtesy.
You forgot the $495 for the software. Although it didn't say so directly, I strongly suspect that's mandatory to be able to do anything with the "beast".
I wonder how long it will take for Linux folks to reverse-engineer the thing and get a Linux client for $ 0? If it was a bit cheaper, that is.
I was surprised they plan to sell only over the Internet. I would think that seeing the creature in a store would be the only way they could market it successfully. I certainly wouldn't want to buy without trying it out, even if it was exactly my thing.
One thing they seem to have missed - doesn't look like there's a video recorder included. It has an image sensor, but you can't shoot video with it. This seems like an unfortunate omission.
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Consumer perception of the pattern
on
Linux 2.3.0
·
· Score: 1
It is certainly simple when explained, but I think the typical consumer is too impatient to listen. I mea, the first thing I thought when I heard "2.3 out" was that it would be a new release version with fabulous features because of the bump in the second number. I had momentarily forgotten that it was an odd numbered, and therefore development, kernel. And I read Slashdot every day, so I'm probably better informed than the average Linux user.
I think it would be a good idea to put "stable" or "development" in the kernel file name so that its status would be obvious by just looking at the directory listing. That might prevent a bunch of "accidents".
Didn't the military make a major commitment to NT only a year or so ago? I see this as a major turnaround, an admission that switching to NT just isn't working. (Perhaps that "smart ship" debacle turned the tide. I know it would make me think twice).
I think it's striking that an unspecified company is doing the port by an unspecified time. I'm not holding my breath for this software; when MS is really serious about something they give a (wildly optimistic) deadline.
Finally, does anyone use and like Internet Explorer for Solaris or any other Unix? The few people I've heard from who've tried it promptly switched back to Netscape, calling it a major dog. I would assume there's at least some common code between IE and Outlook, so whoever did IE is bound to get the Outlook project, and the result is bound to have the same problems.
eBay users are restless due to numerous system performance embarassments. Unfortunately, I can't get the link because Wired News's search engine is down:-(, but I seem to remember reading it there.
Isn't it a little sad that a company that's apparently (*) complaining about non-enterprise-ready Linux can't field an enterprise-ready web server?
D
(*) Apparently; I can't get through to the site at all, but I'm figuring the comments I'm reading are probably an accurate indication of the article's contents. ----
But let's say someone bid $ 100 on your item, he was the only bidder, and he never sent money. He was, of course, from another city and state. The cost of legal action would be way higher than the $100, so you've effectively lost out.
You can give the guy bad feedback, so he can't do it again using the same account - but of course he can just get another account and start the process over.
I should say that in practical terms, I agree with much of what you say. Surely home schooling is one very promising answer to these problems. And certainly we need to remove disruptive kids from the mainstream so they won't damage the education of others.
There is no doubt that religion has been declining as a force on our society for some time (although they are certainly signs of a revival). If you add religion to your educational mix, I think you risk alienating a lot of people - including many good students who really should be on your side.
I would think that imposing discipline and separating out the bullies would be the best way of dealing with these problems, and that adding religion to the mix might well backfire. (It's also unconstitutional, but I think this is a stronger argument in pragmatic terms).
I think this is a power struggle, not a religion struggle.
Does this quote the "Products" section of their web page sound like it came from a rebel?
Rebel.com delivers technology solutions for a connected world. We know that rapid technological change, increased connectivity and organizational change pose significant risks to enterprise stability. Whether your enterprise faces expansion into new business areas, acquisitions/mergers or new technology, Rebel.com delivers the people, products and power to manage change with intelligence, foresight and improved return on IT investment.
Is conformist.com available? Seems like it would suit these guys to a T.
D
PS conformist.com is an incomprehensible site that fills your screen with its windows. Annoying. There's so little actual content on the site that I'd bet they'd be open to a reasonable offer. Call them, Rebels! ----
Is there some reason why DejaNews would want to help out the FBI in this way?
As another poster noted, DejaNews accounts are not anonymous - at minimum, they are always tied to an ISP-based email address.
At any rate, the real problem for privacy advocates is rather different - it's as I state above, and is entirely unrelated to the DejaNews mail or posting accounts. After all, by their very nature, you have to send the text of mail sent or messages posted to DejaNews through their service.
I find their advertising rather intriguing. It's incredibly smooth and slick - I wouldn't mind having their ad agency on my side. Only problem is that, in the end, you are left with their real slogan:
You VILL get Broadband. You VILL. And you VILL shop. And Shop. Or else!
They put redirects on the email addresses, but they can't track the actual mail being sent - that's between you and your mail server, not DejaNews.
I'm not clear on what commercially valid use could be made of this information - I can see how they want to know, in the aggregate, what URLs their users visit, but I can't see any commercial merit in knowing who I write to. Perhaps someone from DejaNews can respond to this.
Of course if you're concerned about this, there is an easy fix - don't click on the email link. The email address is easily visible in the message headers, and you can bring up a new email window and cut/paste or type in the address yourself. The link is just a convenience for lazy people - such as myself, and - probably - most of us.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, there are so many different perspectives on Slashdot that I think it gives pretty much all the news you need, as long as you read the comments. Certainly both pro and anti-Linux viewpoints are well represented there, and there are plenty of mainstream "FUD" articles listed.
I first found out about BeOS from a Slashdot story, and I subsequently bought and installed it. I quite like NetPositive - I wish they'd add a decent JavaScript implementation to it. It's small, lightweight and fast, while not being totally retro like Lynx.
Be lovers will appreciate my ironic story, by the way. I had Be installed on a system with Windows, and it was working great. I finally transferred the things I needed Windows for on that machine to another, and enthusiastically gave Be the entire disk. The network card then stopped working, rendering the system unusable - and the only way to get it to work would have been to boot Windows on the machine that no longer had it!
Oops.
So now that system's running Linux. One of these days I want to restore Be since I think it's a truly fantastic environment. I even like a lot of the oddball commercial software created by tiny companies (like BeProductive).
So Be, I'll Be back.
Jean-Louise Gasse must have a strong stomach to withstand all these awful Be puns!
D
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I checked out the two that appeared. The one for $4,500 is closed, and cheaper one is bid up to $2,550.
What's odd about this is that I believe you can still get one direct from Sony. The close-out applies to Japan only.
D
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You forgot Stage Five - although, admittedly, it takes a while to happen. Ten years pass, the thing gets valuable out of people's nostalgia for it.
D
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Last Christmas, I wandered over to my favourite Christmas Lights area to check out the decorations. One of the people there had a little plastic robot that his son was playing with. He was a really nice guy, so I hung out around his house for a while, checking out the robot. It couldn't do much sophisticated - it could walk around, say what you told it to via the remote control, and flash a few lights. I can tell you that his son just ate it up.
I think the thing cost about $ 100. Aibo costs twenty times what the robot did, but it's capable of independent behaviour of some kind. It also looks like it's made out of considerably more solid materials.
I'd be a little wary of the value for money proposition. My understanding is that kids get bored with toys pretty fast, and it's an awfully expensive toy. When we get the kind of mania that sells out a toy in seconds, especially something this expensive, I think there are factors more than sheer merit driving the phenomenon. Obviously, Sony's marketing is brilliant, but I doubt this has the long-term potential a $2,000 toy should.
I echo the thoughts of a fellow slashdotter in this thread - I'd blow $2,000 on a comprehensive Lego Mindstorms set and see what my kid (if I had one) could create, instead of getting this pre-packaged temptation. I think it would create a lot more enjoyment.
D
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This is extremely unlikely - you'd have to be accused of actual bad faith to run aground on that clause. It's designed to prevent Bob Young from taking the IPO proceeds, buying a Gulfstream V and flying off to Tahiti with our money.
As long as he can make a persuasive argument that the open source status of Red Hat software is in the shareholder's best interest, we're fine. Since the express purpose of Red Hat is to develop and market open source software, I don't think anyone's going to say that continuing to do so is not in the shareholders' best interest. In fact, you could make a case that doing anything else would not be in their interest, and would be contrary to the company's basic mission for which shareholders signed up.
D
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I might suggest buying a really cheesy old 486 computer used with Windows95 already on it, and use that for the install.
Unfortunately, I guess you have to use the same network card, so I suppose it has to at least be PCI. But still, the market value of any used computer has to be virtually $ 0 nowadays. Cheaper than buying a retail version of Windows for sure.
D
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Unfortunately, GTE has a monopoly of virtually the entire Los Angeles coast, and I just called them and verified that, in fact, GTE would not install a DSL connection of any kind without Windows. And they wouldn't refund your installation fee, either.
That's official policy, and the low-level service drone telling it to me had approximately the sympathy of a robot. About the best you could say is that he didn't scream at me or hang up; he just sat there in his stolid cold way saying that nobody at GTE would ever allow service to be installed for a Linux, SGI Irix or any other user. They do, however, expect Mac support "in a few months".
I don't know how these telcos survive. Looks like I need to use Covad (an alternative carrier that serves Los Angeles). I suggest that anyone else stuck in GTE land do the same if at all possible.
D
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Isn't KDE defined as "acceptably open source" by Red Hat nowadays?
I think KDE is just what Red Hat needs - it's so like Windows it's too scary to even contemplate.
I like Enlightenment but have a hard time with it until I get a decent pager and a less harrowing installation procedure. Until then, it's SGI 4DWM for me.
D
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I hadn't heard that problem before, but I did hear (admittedly second-hand) from someone who used IE for Solaris. He said that it was constantly polling, driving system load up to insane heights even when he wasn't doing anything with it. As a result, he dumped it almost immediately.
I have an old Sun that isn't doing anything that could run Solaris 7 - perhaps I'll check it out one of these days.
I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft stuck with poor programming practices to make Solaris look bad, and if so, IE for Linux is likely to be terrible. They certainly wouldn't take much time optimizing it, when doing so would make Windows look bad.
I don't think there's much doubt that current IE is a cleaner product than current Netscape, simply because they did a complete rewrite in 4.x, while Netscape tried switching around their bloated code base. In the end, though, the new Netscape should run rings around it. I sure hope they recreate the old Netscape 3 user interface, which was IMHO the best I've ever seen in a browser. Netscape 4's "pale imitation of IE" interface was a massive step backwards, as JWZ tacitly acknowledged on his web pages even before he quit.
If IE for Linux would bring better fonts (such as Verdana) to the Linux platform, it might really help us. But I'm not betting on it.
Incidentally, for political reasons I am unlikely to use any Microsoft browser for my regular web surving in the foreseeable future; it sends an unmistakably pro-MS message to the world, and I don't want that to be my message. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean NS is actually better than IE; it just means I don't want to publically support MS with every log entry I write on someone's server.
D
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I'm a little confused.
I have to have Windows because people pay me to use Windows, and because those people refuse to use any other OS. If people didn't pay me to use Windows, I would have an entirely Windows-free life.
Do people pay me to see Star Wars? Of course not. If I want to make a living, can I make a living without Star Wars? Of course I can. Therefore, Star Wars doesn't have me by the short and curlies like Windows does; I can ignore it if I want, and I won't lose a penny by doing so.
Personally, I may well never see it, and if I do, it will be when the hordes are gone.
D
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I believe one of the major advantages of Linux is that the GUI isn't integrated with the kernel, so even buggy display drivers can't kill the system. In fact, on a server, graphical display drivers aren't even running, so they don't have a chance to kill the system.
D
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Well, the real issue is not the browser, it's the fonts included with the system. The lack of good fonts included with the software is probably my number one gripe against Linux.
In field testing on an Apple Power Macintosh G3, Netscape, Internet Explorer and iCab [a new Mac only upstart] displayed the page quite well, with precisely equal readability. So your argument that Windows is the one true platform capable of displaying MS web pages is demonstratably false. In addition, it is clear that it does not take Internet Explorer (or any other specific browser) to display the Microsoft web pages well.
On my SGI Irix system (which represents Linux and other Unix variants), the Helvetica on the Microsoft site is very hard to read using Netscape, the only major graphical browser available. One of the reasons I use an Irix machine is that, with the exception of Helvetica, their fonts are very nice. But, alas, helvetica is a terrible font on any Unix machine. Some day, I will have to learn what's needed to fix that.
I will say, though, that since Microsoft should have anticipated heavy use of that specific page by the Linux/Unix community, it would have been better for them to have used a font readable on a typical Unix system. This is just common courtesy.
D
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You forgot the $495 for the software. Although it didn't say so directly, I strongly suspect that's mandatory to be able to do anything with the "beast".
I wonder how long it will take for Linux folks to reverse-engineer the thing and get a Linux client for $ 0? If it was a bit cheaper, that is.
I was surprised they plan to sell only over the Internet. I would think that seeing the creature in a store would be the only way they could market it successfully. I certainly wouldn't want to buy without trying it out, even if it was exactly my thing.
One thing they seem to have missed - doesn't look like there's a video recorder included. It has an image sensor, but you can't shoot video with it. This seems like an unfortunate omission.
D
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It is certainly simple when explained, but I think the typical consumer is too impatient to listen. I mea, the first thing I thought when I heard "2.3 out" was that it would be a new release version with fabulous features because of the bump in the second number. I had momentarily forgotten that it was an odd numbered, and therefore development, kernel. And I read Slashdot every day, so I'm probably better informed than the average Linux user.
I think it would be a good idea to put "stable" or "development" in the kernel file name so that its status would be obvious by just looking at the directory listing. That might prevent a bunch of "accidents".
D
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Didn't the military make a major commitment to NT only a year or so ago? I see this as a major turnaround, an admission that switching to NT just isn't working. (Perhaps that "smart ship" debacle turned the tide. I know it would make me think twice).
I think it's striking that an unspecified company is doing the port by an unspecified time. I'm not holding my breath for this software; when MS is really serious about something they give a (wildly optimistic) deadline.
Finally, does anyone use and like Internet Explorer for Solaris or any other Unix? The few people I've heard from who've tried it promptly switched back to Netscape, calling it a major dog. I would assume there's at least some common code between IE and Outlook, so whoever did IE is bound to get the Outlook project, and the result is bound to have the same problems.
D
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eBay users are restless due to numerous system performance embarassments. Unfortunately, I can't get the link because Wired News's search engine is down :-(, but I seem to remember reading it there.
D
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Isn't it a little sad that a company that's apparently (*) complaining about non-enterprise-ready Linux can't field an enterprise-ready web server?
D
(*) Apparently; I can't get through to the site at all, but I'm figuring the comments I'm reading are probably an accurate indication of the article's contents.
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Of course it is.
But let's say someone bid $ 100 on your item, he was the only bidder, and he never sent money. He was, of course, from another city and state. The cost of legal action would be way higher than the $100, so you've effectively lost out.
You can give the guy bad feedback, so he can't do it again using the same account - but of course he can just get another account and start the process over.
D
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I got custard.org .
:-(
Guess that's the bad thing about name-based virtual hosts.
D
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(With Windows, that is. I'm using my SGI Indigo2 to type this. I like it a lot).
D
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I should say that in practical terms, I agree with much of what you say. Surely home schooling is one very promising answer to these problems. And certainly we need to remove disruptive kids from the mainstream so they won't damage the education of others.
There is no doubt that religion has been declining as a force on our society for some time (although they are certainly signs of a revival). If you add religion to your educational mix, I think you risk alienating a lot of people - including many good students who really should be on your side.
I would think that imposing discipline and separating out the bullies would be the best way of dealing with these problems, and that adding religion to the mix might well backfire. (It's also unconstitutional, but I think this is a stronger argument in pragmatic terms).
I think this is a power struggle, not a religion struggle.
D
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D
PS conformist.com is an incomprehensible site that fills your screen with its windows. Annoying. There's so little actual content on the site that I'd bet they'd be open to a reasonable offer. Call them, Rebels!
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Is there some reason why DejaNews would want to help out the FBI in this way?
As another poster noted, DejaNews accounts are not anonymous - at minimum, they are always tied to an ISP-based email address.
At any rate, the real problem for privacy advocates is rather different - it's as I state above, and is entirely unrelated to the DejaNews mail or posting accounts. After all, by their very nature, you have to send the text of mail sent or messages posted to DejaNews through their service.
D
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I find their advertising rather intriguing. It's incredibly smooth and slick - I wouldn't mind having their ad agency on my side. Only problem is that, in the end, you are left with their real slogan:
You VILL get Broadband. You VILL. And you VILL shop. And Shop. Or else!
D
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They put redirects on the email addresses, but they can't track the actual mail being sent - that's between you and your mail server, not DejaNews.
I'm not clear on what commercially valid use could be made of this information - I can see how they want to know, in the aggregate, what URLs their users visit, but I can't see any commercial merit in knowing who I write to. Perhaps someone from DejaNews can respond to this.
Of course if you're concerned about this, there is an easy fix - don't click on the email link. The email address is easily visible in the message headers, and you can bring up a new email window and cut/paste or type in the address yourself. The link is just a convenience for lazy people - such as myself, and - probably - most of us.
D
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