My guess is that PWS that comes with 98/Frontpage is Apache or NCSA
If either, then it's most likely a descendant of NCSA, or written by someone who used it. If so, it's kinda like IE really, since that was decended from Mosaic. (Netscape's primitive predecessor)
As for why they'd stick a web server in every box, it's more likely just so they can say "Ha! Apache's not in the lead anymore! Now 80% of the computers connected to the internet have a Microsoft Web server installed on them! That many people can't be wrong, use IIS!" All it takes is a bit of 'integration' and forcing it to be installed even if you don't want it. (Like they try to do with IE...) It's not a quest for profit there, it's a long-term attempt to attack Open Source, which Apache is just as much, or even more of a representative of than Linux. They just want to be able to say they're gaining market share against something that's prominent and Open Source, to make it look like they're better.
all they need is one Killer Feature and Joe Public won't look anywhere else.
I believe there was some hype spouted about HTTP-DAV being just that when MS first released it. (It was mentioned in Halloween 1) However, the nature of Apache prevents any advance like that from lasting - features in Apache can be developed and added by anyone who's interested in them, just like DAV was. If there's some server interaction feature out there that someone wants, then either they, or possibly someone they know can make it as an Apache module.
Yeah, I managed to (finally) dig up the IP for their site, and then tried to do a reverse lookup, and I found out that they don't have any reverse-DNS records for that IP, which may explain why some sites won't contact it.
and how we gonna make a leech brain when leeches dont really have brains? sure, they have ganglia, but thats not really the same.
I think they were making a brain out of leech ganglia... the real problem is going to come when one of these things passes a turing test (most people I know can't do that...:) and the 'Leech Processor Rights' movement starts demanding weird things like bans on salt, and fresh lettuce in every home or something...
E may not be the WM everyone uses at work, but its the one everyone uses for shows.
Actually, not only do I use E at work, my job would be considerably more difficult without it. I have to take care of 6 Unix servers, and several Unix workstations, and I've got E set up on my desktop to change window borders/... depending on which machine a window is connected to so that I can find my way around faster. To the best of my knowlege, that's not an easy task with any other Wm. Between that, and the keyboard shortcuts, I'm about 3 or 4 times as fast using E as when I'm using any other Wm. I've used twm, Mwm, 4Dwm, OpenLook, AfterStep, WindowMaker, fvwm, and even a few scary 'built-into-the-Xterminal' window managers, and so far, the only one that I've had not crash on me is E-15. (I'm very abusive towards system resources.) I guess that makes me a freak or something, but the only one I've used that was as fast as E was OpenLook. (On linux that is. The only Sun I've natively run X on is a sparc1, and it's slower than my 486, which runs imlib just fine.)
I don't know how my Grandmother would react to E, but my 3 year old niece has no problems using it. Most of the time she just wants to turn on the screen saver or shut the machine down, but she also knows how to start up a drawing program to doodle with. (She scares me.)
Did it occur to you that these packages were meant for use with said distribution, and would not require "downloading something else" to install them?
Did it occur to you that he might have been using a different distribution than debian? That would mean he would have to either download/install something else to install.deb packages, or else he would have to download/get/install the Debian distribution, which still qualifies as something else. You can, after much effort get rpms to work even with old slackware installations, so there isn't any reason to even believe that he's a RedHat customer.
If I was using Debian on any of my systems, I'd probably use the.deb packages, but I don't, and I can't be bothered going to the effort of installing another package manager when there's.tar.gz available.
Good point. Let's use Postscript and PNG instead.:) (And REALLY long chunks of alt text for the lynx users, who, if they upgrade to a recent version of lynx, will not have problems with image maps, since (I think) it gives a list someplace of the links on the page anyhow.)
Ah, screw that, let's all surf the web with "telnet host:80" - then we'll know exactly where the links in the image map go.:)
Yeah, that's one way to put it... one of the users at my ISP tried to use frontpage to make a simple 'Hello, my name is [Name here]' page, and it killed his whole 1 meg quota before it even got the HTML part fully installed. It added about 7 sub-directories, each with the same 30 or so little files in them, and dumped so much crap into the HTML codes that it didn't all fit. Just to stick one page with a single sentance on it on the web... This may not happen with people who are experienced at wrestling with frontpage, but since it was the first (and last) time the guy ever tried it out, he didn't know what 'features' to use, and probably left them at their default settings.
Tables and frames do not belong on a WWW page. HTML is a markup language, NOT a layout language. It is up to the user to determine how the page is laid out, NOT the author.
Blink...
Damn, you're on the wrong site for someone who believes that... try doing a 'view source' on this page - I guarantee you'll see at least four table tags, possibly more, all used to format the text on the page into an easier to read layout. Unfortunately, the idea that the user should be the one who decides on page layout is not one that goes into the planning of world wide web pages, any more than it goes into the planning of News Papers, Term Papers, Pamphlets, or any other media where information is presented to an audience. Layout and presentation affects how information is recieved, be it well or poorly, and knowing how to do proper layout can be the deciding factor between a web site being successful, and being ridiculed. Admittedly, knowing enough to not over-do the layout is a major factor, but even dumping a big pile of words on someone with no line breaks, paragraph separations, colours, collumns, or menus is still a decision about layout made by the site designer - and usually it's a bad one, since the site then becomes nigh-impossible to read.
That's all fine and well for "Hi, and welcome to my homepage on the Internet," but have fun with nested tables, extensive frames, image maps, etc.
I do those all the time for client sites, with nothing more advanced than pico. Really, a nested table is no different from anything else, if you pay attention to what you're doing. HTML is a simple standard, and if you follow it, even horribly complex pages like Slashdot are pretty easy to make. They may take a long time to type in, but the markup for it is really simple - you make a sketch of what you want, draw circles around the 'bits' to figure out their arrangement, and start typing. You'd be amazed how simple all of that stuff really is when you pick it apart before you write it down.
I certainly wouldn't want programmers without degrees working on an important project.
Bah. A degree is a piece of paper that says 'this person shelled out a bunch of cash and occasionally sat through a class'. Absolutely nothing more. Several of the people I went to University with, (who got their degrees even,) could not program their way out of a wet paper bag that was being held open for them. They've already gone off and been given major programming jobs by people with exactly the attitude you've got, and as a result, one company went bankrupt, and another wound up losing a lot of money for the year, instead of the large profit they would have had if their programs had been done by someone with ability instead of a piece of paper. Also, the absolute best programmer I know of got pissed off with the University (both the politics involved, and the sheer volume of idiots they were churning out) and dropped out to get a job - he was doing quite well the last time I heard from him, and so were the people who hired him, without the piece of paper. What's more, his programming ability did not get improved by going to classes in University in the least. He spent the whole time bored out of his skull, playing tick-tack-toe with the rest of us who already knew the material for the day.
The ability to program isn't just suddenly aquired by sitting around near other people who have it. You've got to work at it, and actually think about what you're doing, always. Some people just can't do that, and they'll never be good programmers. One of my co-workers is a great example of this, he never bothers to check for errors along the way, he won't think about different ways of solving problems - there's only one way, and mentioning anything else gets him angry. Fortunately, I do almost all of the programming in our company. (And while I don't consider HTML to be programming, he has exactly the same problems with it as he has with C/Java/Javascript/VB/anything... and I frequently have to fix his web pages when they develop little quirks from sloppy construction.)
While grade school was rather unpleasant for me, I have to admit that my highschool was pretty exceptional considering some of the horror stories I've seen on here lately - our Physics club was praised for successes in competition just as much as the football team. Of course, the physics club had more fun, and no injuries. Well, none except for that incident with the silly putty. Remember kids, a pound of silly putty does not mix well with a sledgehammer. Plus, in the Physics club, we got to play with explosives. (from a safe distance of course)
I just realized this while reading the Y2K for Women site. We're all gonna die. Y2K is gonna kill us all. Not because our computers crash, not because the Nuclear Reactors blow up, not because the Russian Defense System declares war and blows us all to kingdom come...
We're all gonna die because when it's all said and done, all of the idiots and fear-mongers like this one will be out of jobs, and rampaging in the streets. With the armed, and terrified maniacs that this woman is trying to create running around the streets, nobody will be safe. Did anybody else find that FAQ disturbing, and just a bit paranoid? (My Grandmother will tell you it's all the Postal Service's doing, that they're sneaking subliminal recordings into the author's radio and making her crazy. Of course, that's also why my Grandmother says she's compelled to put coconut in everything she cooks, even though she's severely allergic to it, so I'm not sure I'd trust that line of reasoning...)
Hey, if you want to avoid geting slashdotted, get mirrors set up ahead of time, and post it with a list of all of them. (And of course, you can always put one of GeoCities.:)
I can handle running a temporary mirror, if there's any other volunteers. Anyone?
... neoplanet IS internet explorer (with a different looking interface, just like aol's browser). Not really, they put a new interface on it, which actually responds when I tell it to do things. It's the weirdest thing - I think IE knows that I don't like it or something. Also, the next version of NeoPlanet is supposed to be based on the Gecko engine, which means that it will be 100% standard compliant.
They're only controlling their own sites, and the sites of buisnesses that deal with them. If you want to (ab)use the Blink tag, go right ahead. Ignore standards all you want, don't use alt text on your images, set your background to lime green and your text to bright orange. (I've seen it done. *shudder*) The Gov't won't care. Unless of course you do that when you're making a site for them, or for one of the buisnesses that they deal with. Then they'll say: 'No, make it legible, take it down, or we'll cancel our contract with you.'
Hehe... be happy you just had to deal with those two. Back when I was marking projects, I was a real bastard - I marked with Netscape, Lynx, Amaya, Arena, Opera, and a nifty little parsing program that I used to find specific standard violations in projects, all at once. (Amaya is REALLY cool for marking web pages, it spews out a listing of HTML errors, and it tells you what line they happen on.) If I was still doing it now, I'd probably be using Gecko and NeoPlanet too, but still no IE, since it hates me almost as much as I hate it. (Does anyone else have trouble getting it to load anything? Dosen't matter what version I use, it just ignores me.)
Since when did anyone have a "right" to the work of another person, or to force another to make his work meet their needs?
Well, since it's the Government's web sites that are most affected by this, and the sites of those who do buisness (other than just paying taxes) with the Government, I think not only do people have a "right" to see it, but the makers of the pages (Government and the companies doing federal contracts) have a responsibility to the people to make that information available to all of them. And what is the main requirement that's going to be put on them? Make your sites legible. Damn, that's really gonna crimp their style, ain't it? (For those who think I'm being sarcastic, think again. Most Web designers today seem to think that the harder it is to read a page, the more "stylish" it must be. Excuse me while I puke.)
The thing is, most pages that are truely up to the standards, and are well designed don't do too bad in Lynx. It's people who don't bother with things like 'alt="text"' on their image links, and who worry more about big flashing graphics that can't design sites that work in Lynx.
Also, as far as these new rules go, Lynx friendlyness may be more likely mandated than actually being standares-friendly. After all, some disabled people are considered disabled because they have this problem called 'blindness' - they have to use speech programs to read web pages to them, and anything that is Lynx friendly will go very smoothly through a speech program. Things that are not lynx friendly will not work well with those readers at all.
And after teaching HTML and WWW design at my U for three years, I'm allowed to rant about people with poor design skills all I want, I've marked over 500 of the most horrid web site projects on the planet, and less than 300 of the good ones. Ugh. Glad I moved on to a different job with no marking involved, and very little HTML.
Apple doesn't actually own the CODECs. They license them from third parties such as Sorenson. Apple licensing out technology they don't own isn't a good idea.
Well, according to Mark Podlipec's Xanim page, "I have contacted Sorenson about licensing their codec. They responded that Apple won't allow them to license it to others." - to me, that says Apple has something to do with whether or not it gets licenced out, ne?
And to those of you who're going to gripe that Windows/Mac own 90% of the Desktop market, and then claim that Linux/Unix is a server only OS, so we shouldn't be allowed to have access to the codec mentioned above because we're insignificant and don't really exist in a market-share perspective, (yes, both of you, I've already read your posts.) those of us who use Unix systems on our desktops (we really do exist, it's not a halucination, really!) would like to be able to see new movie files too, without having to use some other system, just because a bunch of other people use that system. (If 90% of 'the people' (whoever they are) were hitting themselves in the head with baseball bats, would you insist we do that to?) What would be so horrible about them releasing their specs under an NDA to Mr. Podlipec so he can write a driver? It would get them more good publicity, and they would be able (finally) to claim one thing MS can't claim about their new AVI format (yes, they too have changed to a new, incompatible codec again recently)- that it runs on 100% of the desktop market, instead of just 90%.
Besides, we may only be 10%, but we're a really noisy and annoying 10%, and we also tend to be the 10% that the 90% looks to for tech support. Gosh, think that puts us in a bit of a power position when it comes to recommendations and such? If Apple really wants their format to fly, they should be trying to get everyone they can to like it, including the 10% who make lots of loud noise and sometimes influence the decisions of the 90% in big ways. That's what marketing is all about - you pick the most effective strategy for pushing your product to the masses, and part of effective is reducing resistance.
Does anyone know how transferable Linux knowledge is to UNIX? Of course, it depends on the UNIX that one's talking about, I know. I assume that Linux knowledge will transfer to a sys V based system better than to a BSD based system, since most Linux dists are based on sys V standards (correct me if I'm wrong).
Well, it also depends on which distribution of Linux you're using - for example, if you want to learn about boot time configuration, Red Hat uses an arangement very similar to what IRIX uses, but Slackware (last time I checked was I while ago, so it may have changed) uses a completely different one. (I'm talking about the layout of the rc files here.) In a lot of things though, it will only be a little different. Shell commands are almost always the same. Some systems will want different parameters for a few commands - though that is mostly because of different versions of utilities. (For example, in current Linux distro's, 'ps' dosen't need a '-' in front of it's parameters, but IRIX yells at you if you don't include it. ps is an external utility, but I'm too lazy to replace it on the IRIX systems right now, so I just remember the '-'.) Some other things will be totally different, like file systems. Formatting drives in IRIX 4 was scary, it took me an hour just to interpret and calculate the parameters, where in Linux it's just a case of typing one command and remembering to tell it which drive to wipe. If you've got all the same versions of external utilities tho (like NFS, Perl, Tcl/Tk, (t)csh, etc...) then you should have only a few differences to worry about, since most of the environment will be the same. (Oh, and make sure you know where those utilities are. On Linux perl defaults to/usr/bin/perl, but IRIX puts it in/usr/sbin/perl, so scripts can break if you don't change the header to compensate.)
The thing is tho, once you've learned a few Unixes, you can pretty much wing it with any of them. I learned Unix initially on IRIX 5.1, and Solaris 2.? - I decided I liked it, got Linux and put it on my PC, and learned some admin stuff. (The hard way. I only fried two hard drives, a sound card and a cheap mono monitor before I learned to stop doing that...:)
The first actual admin work I did was on an IRIX 5.3 system (volunteer work is great, you gain experience without needing to already have it. If you're a Comp.Sci. or Engineering student and you've got a chance to volunteer for stuff in your field, GRAB IT - it's the difference between getting a cool job later, and being told 'Sorry, we're looking for someone with more experience.') Then my first paying admin work was on systems with IRIX and Solaris both - while there's a few major differences, most things you learn apply anywhere. Now of course, I'm working with Linux and IRIX, and I replaced the Solaris box here with another Linux install. (Sorry, but the latest solaris is too slllloooooowwwww on a Sparc1 system.:)
Once in a while, I even get to poke at my friend's *BSD box. (He installs the latest whatever is available. New Linux kernel? Change system over. New FreeBSD? Change... New NetBSD? Change... Eventually he'll find something that supports all of his freaky obscure hardware... And even then, most things are the same, it's just the minor differences to get used to. Just like talking to a bunch of people (in english) with really thick, and different accents, once you get past the fact that the guy over there emphasizes a different sylable than the guy over here, they're all still speaking the same language. Except for my old data structures prof. We're not sure what language he speaks.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the Ahab method of hitching a ride's probably better than the 'Bug on the windshield' as far as the probe surviving is concerned...
My guess is that PWS that comes with 98/Frontpage is Apache or NCSA
If either, then it's most likely a descendant of NCSA, or written by someone who used it. If so, it's kinda like IE really, since that was decended from Mosaic. (Netscape's primitive predecessor)
As for why they'd stick a web server in every box, it's more likely just so they can say "Ha! Apache's not in the lead anymore! Now 80% of the computers connected to the internet have a Microsoft Web server installed on them! That many people can't be wrong, use IIS!" All it takes is a bit of 'integration' and forcing it to be installed even if you don't want it. (Like they try to do with IE...) It's not a quest for profit there, it's a long-term attempt to attack Open Source, which Apache is just as much, or even more of a representative of than Linux. They just want to be able to say they're gaining market share against something that's prominent and Open Source, to make it look like they're better.
all they need is one Killer Feature and Joe Public won't look anywhere else.
I believe there was some hype spouted about HTTP-DAV being just that when MS first released it. (It was mentioned in Halloween 1) However, the nature of Apache prevents any advance like that from lasting - features in Apache can be developed and added by anyone who's interested in them, just like DAV was. If there's some server interaction feature out there that someone wants, then either they, or possibly someone they know can make it as an Apache module.
Yeah, I managed to (finally) dig up the IP for their site, and then tried to do a reverse lookup, and I found out that they don't have any reverse-DNS records for that IP, which may explain why some sites won't contact it.
and how we gonna make a leech brain when leeches dont really have brains? sure, they have ganglia, but thats not really the same.
:) and the 'Leech Processor Rights' movement starts demanding weird things like bans on salt, and fresh lettuce in every home or something...
I think they were making a brain out of leech ganglia... the real problem is going to come when one of these things passes a turing test (most people I know can't do that...
E may not be the WM everyone uses at work, but its the one everyone uses for shows.
Actually, not only do I use E at work, my job would be considerably more difficult without it. I have to take care of 6 Unix servers, and several Unix workstations, and I've got E set up on my desktop to change window borders/... depending on which machine a window is connected to so that I can find my way around faster. To the best of my knowlege, that's not an easy task with any other Wm. Between that, and the keyboard shortcuts, I'm about 3 or 4 times as fast using E as when I'm using any other Wm. I've used twm, Mwm, 4Dwm, OpenLook, AfterStep, WindowMaker, fvwm, and even a few scary 'built-into-the-Xterminal' window managers, and so far, the only one that I've had not crash on me is E-15. (I'm very abusive towards system resources.) I guess that makes me a freak or something, but the only one I've used that was as fast as E was OpenLook. (On linux that is. The only Sun I've natively run X on is a sparc1, and it's slower than my 486, which runs imlib just fine.)
I don't know how my Grandmother would react to E, but my 3 year old niece has no problems using it. Most of the time she just wants to turn on the screen saver or shut the machine down, but she also knows how to start up a drawing program to doodle with. (She scares me.)
Did it occur to you that these packages were meant for use with said distribution, and would not require "downloading something else" to install them?
.deb packages, or else he would have to download/get/install the Debian distribution, which still qualifies as something else. You can, after much effort get rpms to work even with old slackware installations, so there isn't any reason to even believe that he's a RedHat customer.
.deb packages, but I don't, and I can't be bothered going to the effort of installing another package manager when there's .tar.gz available.
Did it occur to you that he might have been using a different distribution than debian? That would mean he would have to either download/install something else to install
If I was using Debian on any of my systems, I'd probably use the
Good point. Let's use Postscript and PNG instead. :) (And REALLY long chunks of alt text for the lynx users, who, if they upgrade to a recent version of lynx, will not have problems with image maps, since (I think) it gives a list someplace of the links on the page anyhow.)
:)
Ah, screw that, let's all surf the web with "telnet host:80" - then we'll know exactly where the links in the image map go.
Yeah, that's one way to put it... one of the users at my ISP tried to use frontpage to make a simple 'Hello, my name is [Name here]' page, and it killed his whole 1 meg quota before it even got the HTML part fully installed. It added about 7 sub-directories, each with the same 30 or so little files in them, and dumped so much crap into the HTML codes that it didn't all fit. Just to stick one page with a single sentance on it on the web... This may not happen with people who are experienced at wrestling with frontpage, but since it was the first (and last) time the guy ever tried it out, he didn't know what 'features' to use, and probably left them at their default settings.
Tables and frames do not belong on a WWW page. HTML is a markup language, NOT a layout language. It is up to the user to determine how the page is laid out, NOT the author.
Blink...
Damn, you're on the wrong site for someone who believes that... try doing a 'view source' on this page - I guarantee you'll see at least four table tags, possibly more, all used to format the text on the page into an easier to read layout.
Unfortunately, the idea that the user should be the one who decides on page layout is not one that goes into the planning of world wide web pages, any more than it goes into the planning of News Papers, Term Papers, Pamphlets, or any other media where information is presented to an audience. Layout and presentation affects how information is recieved, be it well or poorly, and knowing how to do proper layout can be the deciding factor between a web site being successful, and being ridiculed. Admittedly, knowing enough to not over-do the layout is a major factor, but even dumping a big pile of words on someone with no line breaks, paragraph separations, colours, collumns, or menus is still a decision about layout made by the site designer - and usually it's a bad one, since the site then becomes nigh-impossible to read.
That's all fine and well for "Hi, and welcome to my homepage on the Internet," but have fun with nested tables, extensive frames, image maps, etc.
I do those all the time for client sites, with nothing more advanced than pico. Really, a nested table is no different from anything else, if you pay attention to what you're doing. HTML is a simple standard, and if you follow it, even horribly complex pages like Slashdot are pretty easy to make. They may take a long time to type in, but the markup for it is really simple - you make a sketch of what you want, draw circles around the 'bits' to figure out their arrangement, and start typing. You'd be amazed how simple all of that stuff really is when you pick it apart before you write it down.
I certainly wouldn't want programmers without degrees working on an important project.
Bah. A degree is a piece of paper that says 'this person shelled out a bunch of cash and occasionally sat through a class'. Absolutely nothing more. Several of the people I went to University with, (who got their degrees even,) could not program their way out of a wet paper bag that was being held open for them. They've already gone off and been given major programming jobs by people with exactly the attitude you've got, and as a result, one company went bankrupt, and another wound up losing a lot of money for the year, instead of the large profit they would have had if their programs had been done by someone with ability instead of a piece of paper. Also, the absolute best programmer I know of got pissed off with the University (both the politics involved, and the sheer volume of idiots they were churning out) and dropped out to get a job - he was doing quite well the last time I heard from him, and so were the people who hired him, without the piece of paper. What's more, his programming ability did not get improved by going to classes in University in the least. He spent the whole time bored out of his skull, playing tick-tack-toe with the rest of us who already knew the material for the day.
The ability to program isn't just suddenly aquired by sitting around near other people who have it. You've got to work at it, and actually think about what you're doing, always. Some people just can't do that, and they'll never be good programmers. One of my co-workers is a great example of this, he never bothers to check for errors along the way, he won't think about different ways of solving problems - there's only one way, and mentioning anything else gets him angry. Fortunately, I do almost all of the programming in our company. (And while I don't consider HTML to be programming, he has exactly the same problems with it as he has with C/Java/Javascript/VB/anything... and I frequently have to fix his web pages when they develop little quirks from sloppy construction.)
Actually, I think it was more like:
"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
Still very apropriate though, since it's mostly fear that is spurring on the witch hunts, and in the end all they are creating is more suffering.
While grade school was rather unpleasant for me, I have to admit that my highschool was pretty exceptional considering some of the horror stories I've seen on here lately - our Physics club was praised for successes in competition just as much as the football team. Of course, the physics club had more fun, and no injuries. Well, none except for that incident with the silly putty. Remember kids, a pound of silly putty does not mix well with a sledgehammer. Plus, in the Physics club, we got to play with explosives. (from a safe distance of course)
I just realized this while reading the Y2K for Women site. We're all gonna die. Y2K is gonna kill us all. Not because our computers crash, not because the Nuclear Reactors blow up, not because the Russian Defense System declares war and blows us all to kingdom come...
We're all gonna die because when it's all said and done, all of the idiots and fear-mongers like this one will be out of jobs, and rampaging in the streets. With the armed, and terrified maniacs that this woman is trying to create running around the streets, nobody will be safe. Did anybody else find that FAQ disturbing, and just a bit paranoid? (My Grandmother will tell you it's all the Postal Service's doing, that they're sneaking subliminal recordings into the author's radio and making her crazy. Of course, that's also why my Grandmother says she's compelled to put coconut in everything she cooks, even though she's severely allergic to it, so I'm not sure I'd trust that line of reasoning...)
Hey, if you want to avoid geting slashdotted, get mirrors set up ahead of time, and post it with a list of all of them. (And of course, you can always put one of GeoCities. :)
I can handle running a temporary mirror, if there's any other volunteers. Anyone?
... neoplanet IS internet explorer (with a different looking interface, just like aol's browser).
Not really, they put a new interface on it, which actually responds when I tell it to do things. It's the weirdest thing - I think IE knows that I don't like it or something. Also, the next version of NeoPlanet is supposed to be based on the Gecko engine, which means that it will be 100% standard compliant.
They're only controlling their own sites, and the sites of buisnesses that deal with them. If you want to (ab)use the Blink tag, go right ahead. Ignore standards all you want, don't use alt text on your images, set your background to lime green and your text to bright orange. (I've seen it done. *shudder*) The Gov't won't care. Unless of course you do that when you're making a site for them, or for one of the buisnesses that they deal with. Then they'll say: 'No, make it legible, take it down, or we'll cancel our contract with you.'
Hehe... be happy you just had to deal with those two. Back when I was marking projects, I was a real bastard - I marked with Netscape, Lynx, Amaya, Arena, Opera, and a nifty little parsing program that I used to find specific standard violations in projects, all at once. (Amaya is REALLY cool for marking web pages, it spews out a listing of HTML errors, and it tells you what line they happen on.) If I was still doing it now, I'd probably be using Gecko and NeoPlanet too, but still no IE, since it hates me almost as much as I hate it. (Does anyone else have trouble getting it to load anything? Dosen't matter what version I use, it just ignores me.)
Since when did anyone have a "right" to the work of another person, or to force another to make his work meet their needs?
Well, since it's the Government's web sites that are most affected by this, and the sites of those who do buisness (other than just paying taxes) with the Government, I think not only do people have a "right" to see it, but the makers of the pages (Government and the companies doing federal contracts) have a responsibility to the people to make that information available to all of them. And what is the main requirement that's going to be put on them? Make your sites legible. Damn, that's really gonna crimp their style, ain't it? (For those who think I'm being sarcastic, think again. Most Web designers today seem to think that the harder it is to read a page, the more "stylish" it must be. Excuse me while I puke.)
The thing is, most pages that are truely up to the standards, and are well designed don't do too bad in Lynx. It's people who don't bother with things like 'alt="text"' on their image links, and who worry more about big flashing graphics that can't design sites that work in Lynx.
Also, as far as these new rules go, Lynx friendlyness may be more likely mandated than actually being standares-friendly. After all, some disabled people are considered disabled because they have this problem called 'blindness' - they have to use speech programs to read web pages to them, and anything that is Lynx friendly will go very smoothly through a speech program. Things that are not lynx friendly will not work well with those readers at all.
And after teaching HTML and WWW design at my U for three years, I'm allowed to rant about people with poor design skills all I want, I've marked over 500 of the most horrid web site projects on the planet, and less than 300 of the good ones. Ugh. Glad I moved on to a different job with no marking involved, and very little HTML.
The U.S. Government is looking at doing something good to the Internet...
The end is nigh!!!!!
Apple doesn't actually own the CODECs. They license them from third parties such as Sorenson. Apple licensing out technology they don't own isn't a good idea.
Well, according to Mark Podlipec's Xanim page, "I have contacted Sorenson about licensing their codec. They responded that Apple won't allow them to license it to others." - to me, that says Apple has something to do with whether or not it gets licenced out, ne?
And to those of you who're going to gripe that Windows/Mac own 90% of the Desktop market, and then claim that Linux/Unix is a server only OS, so we shouldn't be allowed to have access to the codec mentioned above because we're insignificant and don't really exist in a market-share perspective, (yes, both of you, I've already read your posts.) those of us who use Unix systems on our desktops (we really do exist, it's not a halucination, really!) would like to be able to see new movie files too, without having to use some other system, just because a bunch of other people use that system. (If 90% of 'the people' (whoever they are) were hitting themselves in the head with baseball bats, would you insist we do that to?) What would be so horrible about them releasing their specs under an NDA to Mr. Podlipec so he can write a driver? It would get them more good publicity, and they would be able (finally) to claim one thing MS can't claim about their new AVI format (yes, they too have changed to a new, incompatible codec again recently)- that it runs on 100% of the desktop market, instead of just 90%.
Besides, we may only be 10%, but we're a really noisy and annoying 10%, and we also tend to be the 10% that the 90% looks to for tech support. Gosh, think that puts us in a bit of a power position when it comes to recommendations and such? If Apple really wants their format to fly, they should be trying to get everyone they can to like it, including the 10% who make lots of loud noise and sometimes influence the decisions of the 90% in big ways. That's what marketing is all about - you pick the most effective strategy for pushing your product to the masses, and part of effective is reducing resistance.
Does anyone know how transferable Linux knowledge is to UNIX? Of course, it depends on the UNIX that one's talking about, I know. I assume that Linux knowledge will transfer to a sys V based system better than to a BSD based system, since most Linux dists are based on sys V standards (correct me if I'm wrong).
/usr/bin/perl, but IRIX puts it in /usr/sbin/perl, so scripts can break if you don't change the header to compensate.)
Well, it also depends on which distribution of Linux you're using - for example, if you want to learn about boot time configuration, Red Hat uses an arangement very similar to what IRIX uses, but Slackware (last time I checked was I while ago, so it may have changed) uses a completely different one. (I'm talking about the layout of the rc files here.) In a lot of things though, it will only be a little different. Shell commands are almost always the same. Some systems will want different parameters for a few commands - though that is mostly because of different versions of utilities. (For example, in current Linux distro's, 'ps' dosen't need a '-' in front of it's parameters, but IRIX yells at you if you don't include it. ps is an external utility, but I'm too lazy to replace it on the IRIX systems right now, so I just remember the '-'.) Some other things will be totally different, like file systems. Formatting drives in IRIX 4 was scary, it took me an hour just to interpret and calculate the parameters, where in Linux it's just a case of typing one command and remembering to tell it which drive to wipe. If you've got all the same versions of external utilities tho (like NFS, Perl, Tcl/Tk, (t)csh, etc...) then you should have only a few differences to worry about, since most of the environment will be the same. (Oh, and make sure you know where those utilities are. On Linux perl defaults to
The thing is tho, once you've learned a few Unixes, you can pretty much wing it with any of them. I learned Unix initially on IRIX 5.1, and Solaris 2.? - I decided I liked it, got Linux and put it on my PC, and learned some admin stuff. (The hard way. I only fried two hard drives, a sound card and a cheap mono monitor before I learned to stop doing that... :)
:)
The first actual admin work I did was on an IRIX 5.3 system (volunteer work is great, you gain experience without needing to already have it. If you're a Comp.Sci. or Engineering student and you've got a chance to volunteer for stuff in your field, GRAB IT - it's the difference between getting a cool job later, and being told 'Sorry, we're looking for someone with more experience.') Then my first paying admin work was on systems with IRIX and Solaris both - while there's a few major differences, most things you learn apply anywhere. Now of course, I'm working with Linux and IRIX, and I replaced the Solaris box here with another Linux install. (Sorry, but the latest solaris is too slllloooooowwwww on a Sparc1 system.
Once in a while, I even get to poke at my friend's *BSD box. (He installs the latest whatever is available. New Linux kernel? Change system over. New FreeBSD? Change... New NetBSD? Change... Eventually he'll find something that supports all of his freaky obscure hardware... And even then, most things are the same, it's just the minor differences to get used to. Just like talking to a bunch of people (in english) with really thick, and different accents, once you get past the fact that the guy over there emphasizes a different sylable than the guy over here, they're all still speaking the same language. Except for my old data structures prof. We're not sure what language he speaks.