You've been using Word98, a MacOS product, on your Windows 98 machine? That's pretty cool.
(Microsoft released office 95, 97, and 2000 for Windows. I assume you're using 97.)
The interesting bit is that if you go back far enough, Open/Star Office starts to get better at old Microsoft formats that MS themselves. Word 95 did a _terrible_ job of importing MS Works files...hey! There's that whole argument about "losing old documents." Sing it with me now: "Throw it out the window!"
Also, keep in mind that Office 2000 was the first one to even attempt a backwards-compatible file format. Try to open a Word 97 document in Word 95 and see what you get. So people were forced to upgrade. Maybe 97 added some nice features for some people, but if I'm only writing plain text with some italics, why can't 95 read it anymore?
Personally, I write stuff in Abiword and OpenOffice, and people have no trouble reading it in Word (and vice-versa). So yes, while I prefer to do things in vi, I'm by no means restricted to it.
The linear notes for Nirvana's "Bleach" say that it was recorded for $400. Personally, it sounds pretty good to me; you can do a lot with a little equipment and a lot of knowledge and time. Many recording majors I know (at UMBC) use their studio project time to record their band. That means it cost them _nothing_, and they got to use some damn nice equipment. Plus, if they ever go back and decide the sound could use improvement, they've got the masters, and can go for it.
The Mountain Goat's "All Hail West Texas" is one singer/guitarist recorded on a _defective_ Marantz, which produces an interesting effect. The album is amazing, and it probably cost nothing to record; the value is in the songs.
A band is generally somewhere between 3 and 5 people. If they're not machine-stamp created by a major label, they've probably spent months or years writing their songs, playing them in bad bars with leaky ceilings, etc., and putting out a CD might not change this very much. But the _cost_ of recording that CD is not too much these days. There are just oodles of bands recording their stuff for not very much money at all. Nirvana recorded "Bleach" for something like $400. Yes, indie bands still give away bunches of CDs to college radio stations (like mine), but when I go to Soundgarden (a music store, not the band), I can get their CDs for less than $10.
The reason major label CDs cost so much is because they spend millions on advertising, pyrotechnics, etc. Cynics (like me) say that they have to do this because the music made by major label artists just isn't that good, and without the commercialism, they are nothing. There are, as always, exceptions (Radiohead and Tool are doing great with everyone...but they started small, moving from college radio to mainstream. This is the way things are "supposed" to be, IMHO.)
However, where is the huge market for "indie" games? Why don't we see lots of little companies making cool games for the consoles? The cost is much higher. While someone can make a great record with just a few people in the band and a recording/mixing/mastering engineer, it simply takes a lot more manpower to take a game idea and make it reality. Good luck doing it on cheap hardware, too. And then, if you want to be on a console, you need to pay the console makers, code your game for different platforms, etc.
The entry barriers for PC games are a bit lower, but still, you're going to need a team of people working for a very long time. If you don't want to spend lots of time in the studio -- which is the part that costs money -- you don't have to do so. Bands can play shows for a year and get their songs down to the point where they can record just about everything in one take (and believe me, it's a lot more fun to record bands like this). Sure, if you're a perfectionist like Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, you might spend all day placing a microphone, but then you probably have your own studio and are doing the sound yourself, so again, the costs go down.
There's also the fact that it probably doesn't take as long to learn how to play bass for a punk band as it does to learn C++ and OpenGL (or Python/SDL, or whatever). And coming up with either good games or good songs requires creativity.
Apache::ASP and asp2php exist, so there's no need to keep Windows around just for the sake of ASP scripts. Both apps are listed on freshmeat.
I work at a college newspaper, so we have a higher turnaround on staff than most businesses. I've found that the incoming editors are more willing to use the Linux X-terminals when the Windows machines are all occupied. Since they have to learn new procedures anyway, I suppose it's not as much of a problem.
--Ray
("myriad" is a direct replacement for the word "many".)
If it's true that Roger Ebert sees digital cinema as a "threat", then why did he rate "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" so highly, and say that even if you didn't "get" the plot, it was important for what it was trying to do?
I don't think that you can classify all movies as simply entertainment rather than a work of art. Most mainstream, big budget movies? Sure. But there are plenty of filmmakers out there (most, but not all, of whom are independant) who still actually care about things like that.
I work for a university newspaper , and we had some old machines (P-90, 16M RAM) that just wouldn't run Win98 usably. So I decided to make them into X-terminals, since the fileserver (running Samba and netatalk) wasn't really being pushed.
Everything was set up, worked fine. But I only got a few people to use it. I made a big poster with a screenshot of the desktop and hung it right above the machines, but still, little use compared to the Windows machines next to them. People would actually _wait_ to use the Windows machines.
That's when I switched from KDE to icewm. I made icewm have the most Windows-like look possible, giving it a "Start" menu instead of "K." I also put 4 shortcuts on the taskbar next to the Start menu (like Win98) for StarOffice, Netscape, GAIM, and a script that connects them to their PINE email. Then I created a _background_ with arrows pointing to things and descriptions (before, people would just not look up and see the poster). Now I see them being used all the time.
Another thing about a place like this is that the (student) staff changes fairly regularly, and so the new people are more likely to use the Linux machines (though still only if the Windows ones are all taken).
If you want to play Scorched Earth on a Linux platform, just get xscorch (it's on freshmeat). They've added lots of interesting features (such as Black Rain, which is a Death's Head full of Hot Napalm, and Solar Panels, which recharge your shield a bit each turn).
I know that there are "slowdown" programs available for Win98, because I've seen someone using one to play an old game, but I don't have a name or place for them.
(This reminds me of the time when I was playing Zelda on a DOS Game Boy emulator on a DX-80, and I cheated on a difficult part by turning off Turbo for slow motion:)
To avoid any mistaken impressions: our fileserver may only be serving 7 _machines_, but the use is decent. About 6-10 articles per week for each of 5 sections, and each article is gone over by a writer, section editor (and/or assistant), managing editor, editor-in-chief, copy editors, and finally the production/layout people. The Win98 machines get heavy enough use that they need to be re-imaged at least once every 2 weeks, or things start to break on them.
I used Samba as a fileserver when I worked for a.com. We only had 20-30 employees, so if you're talking about a company with zillions of employees, I can't really tell you anything.
I also use it as a fileserver in a university environment (newspaper); that's only with about 7 client machines, though the same machine is also running netatalk to serve these files to Macintoshes, acting as a print server for the office (HP Laserjet 4000N), and running XDM to serve 3 X-terminals (which means it also runs Mozilla, StarOffice, GAIM, etc.). And all of this on a P-II 300 with 128M of RAM (when I inherited this machine, it was running Netware 3).
I haven't had any problems with it in either situation.
There's no call for that. "A religious person who goes to church" is not necessarily someone who "agrees with everything someone else says." You have a lot to learn about beliefs. Many religions do encourage people to find answers for themselves. I was raised Presbyterian, and I certainly wasn't expected to agree with everything someone else said.
I've never actually seen the grammar checker in Microsoft Office do anything useful. I think it's a bit fiddly to have a computer attempt to do such a thing in the first place (like a spell checker, it certainly won't catch all of the errors). I've often disagreed with it.
The best method by far (IMHO) is to have someone else proofread your writing. If he is also a writer, you can trade. When proofreading your own work, errors will often slip by, because your brain knows what _should_ be on the page.
It's also very helpful to read a lot of edited material (books, newspapers, etc.). _The_Elements_of_Style_ is a nice guide.
> Themes appear on the main freshmeat page and clog > up the already over-clogged apps site.
If you want to see software without themes, use software.freshmeat.net. For just Palm stuff, use palm.freshmeat.net, etc.
>If you look at a screenshot, you get a tiny 3"x3" >picture that's only marginally more viewable than >the thumbnail, AND if you hit the close button - > BOOM goodbye Mozilla - regardless of how many > other pages you have open in other tabs.
I have no idea what you mean here. I'm using Mozilla 1.0RC1, and I don't have any problems with the close link. Also, all of our screenshots are sized to 640x480. At a user's suggestion (make suggestions! We listen!), we switched to cropping screenshots rather than sizing so that more theme detail could be seen.
This is new, and there are still a few kinks in it. If you've got problems or suggestions, send us an e-mail.
If you're thinking of going back to a text mode browser, you might try w3m. A few of the freshmeat.net staff use it for daily work (hey, there are only really a few of us anyway), and although I use mozilla most of the time, w3m is a fine browser that works great. SSL, frames, tables, and nice default key bindings (except under SuSE, who decided to change them. Bad! But I don't use SuSE, so...oh, well).
Why? Did it immediatly stop functioning when the new one was announced? Did you wake up this morning to find that it didn't run any of your software anymore?
I have a Duron 800, which AMD is about to stop manufacturing (meaning it will be sold for another year, probably). It does what I need; I don't consider it "obsolete." My brother has my "old" K6-3 400 w/ 256M RAM...he uses the GIMP with a Wacom tablet, XMMS, xsane, and xawtv (for PS2 and Dreamcast). He doesn't have problem with it.
(yes, a Real Artist who Gets Paid For Art and likes the GIMP.)
Don't despair. Neither you, I, nor my brother run Windows, so computers aren't obsolete nearly as quickly:)
That said, I've had my thoughts towards an Apple notebook for some time now. However, I've still got a few problems with them:
1. The keyboard does not have a delete key. It has a backspace key labeled "delete." This may seem silly, but it actually bothers me more than the one-button mouse (since OS X was designed with the mouse in mind.) Is the Powerbook keyboard different? That, and "Esc" never seems to be where I expect it...and I use vi:)
2. I'm used to 1600x1200, so 1024x768 was really cramped. The new Powerbooks solve this, though I'd have to break out my savings bonds to get one.
3. Terminal.app doesn't seem to have a termcap entry I can copy to other *nix systems so that things like PageUP and PageDown will work. They work fine on a local console, but not on remote Debian systems, so hopefully there is a solution to this.
Cost doesn't bother me; I'm well aware that it's worth it to pay a bit more and not go crazy down the road (I used to work for a tiny computer OEM). I'd probably even give on the "delete" issue if Terminal.app was workable, especially since there's Free software on sourceforge that lets me run X apps on OS X.
> As for license upgrades, nobody's forcing you to > upgrade.. if you bought the software it's yours to > do whatever you like with it.
Are you sane? You would really run outdated Microsoft software on any sort of network that was connected to anything? I don't want to hear, "But it's behind a firewall!", either, because that's a terrible excuse. I recently heard someone say that most networks are like a baked alaska: hard on the outside but soft in the middle. Relying on a firewall as your sole defense is madness.
This is not necessarily an anti-Microsoft flame; I certainly wouldn't run *nix software with known exploits, either.
> But isnt the reason there are no copycat > Mozarts because there is no money in it?
No. The reason is because Mozart was a rare combination of a photographic memory and perfect pitch (either of which are pretty uncommon). An anecdote: as a youth, he once heard a piece of music performed in a church. This music was only allowed to be performed once a year, and copies never left the church. He went home, continued composing and playing other music for a month, and then finally got around to transcribing that church music...perfectly, from memory.
Brittany Spears is someone who has a pretty good voice and is considered beautiful by the general public. Does she even write her own songs? She got lucky, and will probably continue to be so for a few more years...where are New Kids on the Block? Fame created solely by marketing is short-lived. Nobody listened to Brittany Spears "when she was just getting her start playing the club scene", because that didn't happen. She was created by the music industry, and will be tossed aside when they've had enough.
This is not to say that there aren't dozens of "emo" bands that all sound pretty much the same, but:
1. At least they wrote their own songs, about things that really matter to them. 2. Most of them are trying honestly to get people to hear their music (i.e., playing dozens of bars in dozens of cities, wherever they can). 3. If they really are fairly unremarkable, I'll listen to them maybe once, or go to see a show if they're playing with a few other bands. The really excellent "indie" stuff, like The Promise Ring, will hang around in my collection.
> Do you really think that people could tell who > wrote a piece of classical music?
Well, yes. That's because really great composers have something called a unique style. Everyone might not agree that Danny Elfman is really great, but there are certain characteristics present in most music he composes which make it evident that he wrote it. Even if someone copies his style, people will probably agree that "that piece sounds like Elfman."
As for Mozart, scientific studies have shown that his music mirrors that of human brain patterns, which goes some way towards explaining how people who listened to Mozart in studies did better on math tests than those who did not.
I was using Samba for Win2k domain stuff a year ago. At that point (not sure about today), you needed to use the "Samba TNG" branch, where much of the work on that sort of thing is progressing. Part or all of this branch may have been merged in with 3.0, but I'm sure you should be able to do what you need. You just aren't going to be able to do it with comfortable, known stable, binary-available-for-your-distro versions.
(that said, the Samba I used that was "pre-alpha" wasn't having any problems)
"...almost any Windows user...a Dell, HP, Gateway, Compaq...90% chance..."
To mangle a metaphor, what does this have to do with the price of dried plums in Korea?
I am not "almost any Windows user"; in fact, I'm not a Windows user at all, except for a few rare instances where I have to use one of the university machines to get around truly horrible Windows-isms in some important (for 2 seconds) Web sites.
I didn't buy my computer, unless you count the fact that the floppy drive came with the 486 SX-22 that my parents bought years and years ago. I guess I still have a valid license for Windows 3.1 and Microsoft Works.
I'm not "90%", I'm a Linux user. I don't steal commercial software, and I don't want to buy Microsoft Office...not even from UMBC for $20. I don't want to run emulated software; I want a Linux office program that does what I need.
The ironic bit is that I agree with you; this doesn't look to be worth the price. OpenOffice does everything I need, apparently better than this, and it's free (in both ways). Why would I buy this?
That said, it's good to see people trying, though it would also be nice to see them work to improve existing implementations (this is all mentioned above by other people). Someone else above mentioned the Korean car industry, and this ties in with what I've been saying about Asia: this is where the "revolution" will occur. People who can't afford Micrsoft prices, or don't want to give that much money to (or trust) a shady United States company. There are LOTS of people in Asian countries, and most of them aren't nearly as firmly stuck in the land of Microsoft and consumer culture as the majority in the U.S.
Installation is not the important bit here. You also have to help them _maintain_ their installation. Installing Linux on machines does more harm than good if:
1. The teachers don't know how to use it, and no one shows them, so the students don't use it either.
2. It goes out of date and gets cracked (or is just, well, out of date...)
Setting up a group of students to take care of this sort of thing is problematic, because students generally tend to graduate (and leave). You have to make certain that there's something in place to maintain what you install so that it's actually useful.
Much of the dependency problems do stem from the way software is packaged. For many RPM-based distributions, they have 1 or 2 CDs worth of material where the packages are all designed to work well together, and then everything else is "contrib", and is not controlled as tightly (or at all). This is very bad.
The reason that tools like apt-get work very well with Debian is that all 8,000 packages are actually forced to follow guidelines before they are accepted. They also _are_ tested before they get into "testing" from "unstable", and tested even more thoroughly before "stable" is released. There is a policy that actually exists, and it is adhered to strictly.
In regards to your "multiple versions" suggestion, Debian does this quite frequently. If a package has a version with a Gnome GUI, but can be used without it, Debian will have a base package for that software, and another package you can install for the Gnome GUI. A similar thing is done with PHP and the various modules (PostgreSQL support, etc.).
To comment on another poster's reply: apt never automatically installs anything for you. If the package you requested to install has unmet dependencies, it will prompt you with the names of the packages which need to be installed/removed, and not continue unless you confirm.
I've read many books in my time, and I plan on reading many more. I'm certainly not putting them down as a source of entertainment. However...
I strongly feel that entertainment, in some form, is very necessary, unless you're a very boring and unfulfilled person. This could very well come from within (I play several musical instruments). But it annoys me when people say "I don't buy CDs anymore because all music put out today is bad."
A lot of commercial, mainstream music is very bad. Music put together with money instead of a slowly growing fan base is horrible. How many people say, "I listened to N'Sync when they were just getting their start on the club scene in Minneapolis"? No one, because they're not a real band and they didn't do it that way. They were created to be sold.
Go to small venues in your area to see local bands. Find the independant music store in your town...some towns don't really have a source, but you're obviously online, so... (PS: for Baltimore, it's Soundgarden in Fell's Point). Most of these labels and bands still actually want their music to be heard. The CDs are less expensive, and they don't just have one "hit single" and a bunch of crap. Don't know which bands you might like? Your local college probably has a radio station that can help you find out. If not, there are plenty of others available online.
Personally, I don't have TV at all, but I've found plenty of interesting things to fill that space.
I do admit I'm interested in this sort of idea, and I'm sure I'll end up trying it in a machine once I get some spare time (currently scheduled to happen on March 3, 2005:)
To answer a few questions I've seen in the comments:
1. If you want something like this on a "wimpy" machine, then you might look at Debian. I'm sure you've all heard about the magic of apt, which is similar to this, but with binaries. This way, your machine doesn't have to do all that compiling. Leading to:
2. You can do similar things like this with Debian by using deb-src lines in sources.conf. You can just do "apt-get source " to get the source, along with the patches, rules, etc. to make an officially compliant Debian package from it. You can even add the -b option to build it automatically after downloading.
3. Debian has binaries for many platforms; they haven't abandoned SPARC, and their PPC distribution has been solid for some time now.
Anyway, I think that Gentoo is cool and a good idea, but I wanted to make sure this stuff was known. I've done all of the above (run Debian on very wimpy machines, run it on PPC, and had it compile GAIM packages for me, since GAIM isn't in potato, but the sources are available via deb-src).
Slashdot Mirror
You've been using Word98, a MacOS product, on your Windows 98 machine? That's pretty cool.
(Microsoft released office 95, 97, and 2000 for Windows. I assume you're using 97.)
The interesting bit is that if you go back far enough, Open/Star Office starts to get better at old Microsoft formats that MS themselves. Word 95 did a _terrible_ job of importing MS Works files...hey! There's that whole argument about "losing old documents." Sing it with me now: "Throw it out the window!"
Also, keep in mind that Office 2000 was the first one to even attempt a backwards-compatible file format. Try to open a Word 97 document in Word 95 and see what you get. So people were forced to upgrade. Maybe 97 added some nice features for some people, but if I'm only writing plain text with some italics, why can't 95 read it anymore?
Personally, I write stuff in Abiword and OpenOffice, and people have no trouble reading it in Word (and vice-versa). So yes, while I prefer to do things in vi, I'm by no means restricted to it.
The linear notes for Nirvana's "Bleach" say that it was recorded for $400. Personally, it sounds pretty good to me; you can do a lot with a little equipment and a lot of knowledge and time. Many recording majors I know (at UMBC) use their studio project time to record their band. That means it cost them _nothing_, and they got to use some damn nice equipment. Plus, if they ever go back and decide the sound could use improvement, they've got the masters, and can go for it.
The Mountain Goat's "All Hail West Texas" is one singer/guitarist recorded on a _defective_ Marantz, which produces an interesting effect. The album is amazing, and it probably cost nothing to record; the value is in the songs.
That's not really a fair comparison.
A band is generally somewhere between 3 and 5 people. If they're not machine-stamp created by a major label, they've probably spent months or years writing their songs, playing them in bad bars with leaky ceilings, etc., and putting out a CD might not change this very much. But the _cost_ of recording that CD is not too much these days. There are just oodles of bands recording their stuff for not very much money at all. Nirvana recorded "Bleach" for something like $400. Yes, indie bands still give away bunches of CDs to college radio stations (like mine), but when I go to Soundgarden (a music store, not the band), I can get their CDs for less than $10.
The reason major label CDs cost so much is because they spend millions on advertising, pyrotechnics, etc. Cynics (like me) say that they have to do this because the music made by major label artists just isn't that good, and without the commercialism, they are nothing. There are, as always, exceptions (Radiohead and Tool are doing great with everyone...but they started small, moving from college radio to mainstream. This is the way things are "supposed" to be, IMHO.)
However, where is the huge market for "indie" games? Why don't we see lots of little companies making cool games for the consoles? The cost is much higher. While someone can make a great record with just a few people in the band and a recording/mixing/mastering engineer, it simply takes a lot more manpower to take a game idea and make it reality. Good luck doing it on cheap hardware, too. And then, if you want to be on a console, you need to pay the console makers, code your game for different platforms, etc.
The entry barriers for PC games are a bit lower, but still, you're going to need a team of people working for a very long time. If you don't want to spend lots of time in the studio -- which is the part that costs money -- you don't have to do so. Bands can play shows for a year and get their songs down to the point where they can record just about everything in one take (and believe me, it's a lot more fun to record bands like this). Sure, if you're a perfectionist like Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, you might spend all day placing a microphone, but then you probably have your own studio and are doing the sound yourself, so again, the costs go down.
There's also the fact that it probably doesn't take as long to learn how to play bass for a punk band as it does to learn C++ and OpenGL (or Python/SDL, or whatever). And coming up with either good games or good songs requires creativity.
Apache::ASP and asp2php exist, so there's no need to keep Windows around just for the sake of ASP scripts. Both apps are listed on freshmeat.
I work at a college newspaper, so we have a higher turnaround on staff than most businesses. I've found that the incoming editors are more willing to use the Linux X-terminals when the Windows machines are all occupied. Since they have to learn new procedures anyway, I suppose it's not as much of a problem.
--Ray
("myriad" is a direct replacement for the word "many".)
If it's true that Roger Ebert sees digital cinema as a "threat", then why did he rate "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" so highly, and say that even if you didn't "get" the plot, it was important for what it was trying to do?
--Ray
I don't think that you can classify all movies as simply entertainment rather than a work of art. Most mainstream, big budget movies? Sure. But there are plenty of filmmakers out there (most, but not all, of whom are independant) who still actually care about things like that.
--Ray
I work for a university newspaper , and we had some old machines (P-90, 16M RAM) that just wouldn't run Win98 usably. So I decided to make them into X-terminals, since the fileserver (running Samba and netatalk) wasn't really being pushed.
Everything was set up, worked fine. But I only got a few people to use it. I made a big poster with a screenshot of the desktop and hung it right above the machines, but still, little use compared to the Windows machines next to them. People would actually _wait_ to use the Windows machines.
That's when I switched from KDE to icewm. I made icewm have the most Windows-like look possible, giving it a "Start" menu instead of "K." I also put 4 shortcuts on the taskbar next to the Start menu (like Win98) for StarOffice, Netscape, GAIM, and a script that connects them to their PINE email. Then I created a _background_ with arrows pointing to things and descriptions (before, people would just not look up and see the poster). Now I see them being used all the time.
Another thing about a place like this is that the (student) staff changes fairly regularly, and so the new people are more likely to use the Linux machines (though still only if the Windows ones are all taken).
If you want to play Scorched Earth on a Linux platform, just get xscorch (it's on freshmeat). They've added lots of interesting features (such as Black Rain, which is a Death's Head full of Hot Napalm, and Solar Panels, which recharge your shield a bit each turn).
:)
I know that there are "slowdown" programs available for Win98, because I've seen someone using one to play an old game, but I don't have a name or place for them.
(This reminds me of the time when I was playing Zelda on a DOS Game Boy emulator on a DX-80, and I cheated on a difficult part by turning off Turbo for slow motion
Addendum:
To avoid any mistaken impressions: our fileserver may only be serving 7 _machines_, but the use is decent. About 6-10 articles per week for each of 5 sections, and each article is gone over by a writer, section editor (and/or assistant), managing editor, editor-in-chief, copy editors, and finally the production/layout people. The Win98 machines get heavy enough use that they need to be re-imaged at least once every 2 weeks, or things start to break on them.
What do you mean by "serious"?
I used Samba as a fileserver when I worked for a
I also use it as a fileserver in a university environment (newspaper); that's only with about 7 client machines, though the same machine is also running netatalk to serve these files to Macintoshes, acting as a print server for the office (HP Laserjet 4000N), and running XDM to serve 3 X-terminals (which means it also runs Mozilla, StarOffice, GAIM, etc.). And all of this on a P-II 300 with 128M of RAM (when I inherited this machine, it was running Netware 3).
I haven't had any problems with it in either situation.
There's no call for that. "A religious person who goes to church" is not necessarily someone who "agrees with everything someone else says." You have a lot to learn about beliefs. Many religions do encourage people to find answers for themselves. I was raised Presbyterian, and I certainly wasn't expected to agree with everything someone else said.
I've never actually seen the grammar checker in Microsoft Office do anything useful. I think it's a bit fiddly to have a computer attempt to do such a thing in the first place (like a spell checker, it certainly won't catch all of the errors). I've often disagreed with it.
The best method by far (IMHO) is to have someone else proofread your writing. If he is also a writer, you can trade. When proofreading your own work, errors will often slip by, because your brain knows what _should_ be on the page.
It's also very helpful to read a lot of edited material (books, newspapers, etc.). _The_Elements_of_Style_ is a nice guide.
Topic::Desktop Environment::Theme Resources
d =9 73
:)
http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/973/?topic_i
This is because someone actually wrote in to suggest/request this, instead of simply complaining about it on Slashdot.
> Themes appear on the main freshmeat page and clog
> up the already over-clogged apps site.
If you want to see software without themes, use software.freshmeat.net. For just Palm stuff, use palm.freshmeat.net, etc.
>If you look at a screenshot, you get a tiny 3"x3"
>picture that's only marginally more viewable than
>the thumbnail, AND if you hit the close button -
> BOOM goodbye Mozilla - regardless of how many
> other pages you have open in other tabs.
I have no idea what you mean here. I'm using Mozilla 1.0RC1, and I don't have any problems with the close link. Also, all of our screenshots are sized to 640x480. At a user's suggestion (make suggestions! We listen!), we switched to cropping screenshots rather than sizing so that more theme detail could be seen.
This is new, and there are still a few kinks in it. If you've got problems or suggestions, send us an e-mail.
Have you considered making this script publicly available? If you're generating so many new records, just imagine the good it could do if it spread.
If you're thinking of going back to a text mode browser, you might try w3m. A few of the freshmeat.net staff use it for daily work (hey, there are only really a few of us anyway), and although I use mozilla most of the time, w3m is a fine browser that works great. SSL, frames, tables, and nice default key bindings (except under SuSE, who decided to change them. Bad! But I don't use SuSE, so...oh, well).
> My PowerBook 667 is now obsolete :(
:)
:)
Why? Did it immediatly stop functioning when the new one was announced? Did you wake up this morning to find that it didn't run any of your software anymore?
I have a Duron 800, which AMD is about to stop manufacturing (meaning it will be sold for another year, probably). It does what I need; I don't consider it "obsolete." My brother has my "old" K6-3 400 w/ 256M RAM...he uses the GIMP with a Wacom tablet, XMMS, xsane, and xawtv (for PS2 and Dreamcast). He doesn't have problem with it.
(yes, a Real Artist who Gets Paid For Art and likes the GIMP.)
Don't despair. Neither you, I, nor my brother run Windows, so computers aren't obsolete nearly as quickly
That said, I've had my thoughts towards an Apple notebook for some time now. However, I've still got a few problems with them:
1. The keyboard does not have a delete key. It has a backspace key labeled "delete." This may seem silly, but it actually bothers me more than the one-button mouse (since OS X was designed with the mouse in mind.) Is the Powerbook keyboard different? That, and "Esc" never seems to be where I expect it...and I use vi
2. I'm used to 1600x1200, so 1024x768 was really cramped. The new Powerbooks solve this, though I'd have to break out my savings bonds to get one.
3. Terminal.app doesn't seem to have a termcap entry I can copy to other *nix systems so that things like PageUP and PageDown will work. They work fine on a local console, but not on remote Debian systems, so hopefully there is a solution to this.
Cost doesn't bother me; I'm well aware that it's worth it to pay a bit more and not go crazy down the road (I used to work for a tiny computer OEM). I'd probably even give on the "delete" issue if Terminal.app was workable, especially since there's Free software on sourceforge that lets me run X apps on OS X.
> As for license upgrades, nobody's forcing you to
> upgrade.. if you bought the software it's yours to
> do whatever you like with it.
Are you sane? You would really run outdated Microsoft software on any sort of network that was connected to anything? I don't want to hear, "But it's behind a firewall!", either, because that's a terrible excuse. I recently heard someone say that most networks are like a baked alaska: hard on the outside but soft in the middle. Relying on a firewall as your sole defense is madness.
This is not necessarily an anti-Microsoft flame; I certainly wouldn't run *nix software with known exploits, either.
Security _ought_ to be forcing you to upgrade.
> But isnt the reason there are no copycat
> Mozarts because there is no money in it?
No. The reason is because Mozart was a rare combination of a photographic memory and perfect pitch (either of which are pretty uncommon). An anecdote: as a youth, he once heard a piece of music performed in a church. This music was only allowed to be performed once a year, and copies never left the church. He went home, continued composing and playing other music for a month, and then finally got around to transcribing that church music...perfectly, from memory.
Brittany Spears is someone who has a pretty good voice and is considered beautiful by the general public. Does she even write her own songs? She got lucky, and will probably continue to be so for a few more years...where are New Kids on the Block? Fame created solely by marketing is short-lived. Nobody listened to Brittany Spears "when she was just getting her start playing the club scene", because that didn't happen. She was created by the music industry, and will be tossed aside when they've had enough.
This is not to say that there aren't dozens of "emo" bands that all sound pretty much the same, but:
1. At least they wrote their own songs, about things that really matter to them.
2. Most of them are trying honestly to get people to hear their music (i.e., playing dozens of bars in dozens of cities, wherever they can).
3. If they really are fairly unremarkable, I'll listen to them maybe once, or go to see a show if they're playing with a few other bands. The really excellent "indie" stuff, like The Promise Ring, will hang around in my collection.
> Do you really think that people could tell who
> wrote a piece of classical music?
Well, yes. That's because really great composers have something called a unique style. Everyone might not agree that Danny Elfman is really great, but there are certain characteristics present in most music he composes which make it evident that he wrote it. Even if someone copies his style, people will probably agree that "that piece sounds like Elfman."
As for Mozart, scientific studies have shown that his music mirrors that of human brain patterns, which goes some way towards explaining how people who listened to Mozart in studies did better on math tests than those who did not.
I was using Samba for Win2k domain stuff a year ago. At that point (not sure about today), you needed to use the "Samba TNG" branch, where much of the work on that sort of thing is progressing. Part or all of this branch may have been merged in with 3.0, but I'm sure you should be able to do what you need. You just aren't going to be able to do it with comfortable, known stable, binary-available-for-your-distro versions.
(that said, the Samba I used that was "pre-alpha" wasn't having any problems)
--Ray
"...almost any Windows user...a Dell, HP, Gateway, Compaq...90% chance..."
To mangle a metaphor, what does this have to do with the price of dried plums in Korea?
I am not "almost any Windows user"; in fact, I'm not a Windows user at all, except for a few rare instances where I have to use one of the university machines to get around truly horrible Windows-isms in some important (for 2 seconds) Web sites.
I didn't buy my computer, unless you count the fact that the floppy drive came with the 486 SX-22 that my parents bought years and years ago. I guess I still have a valid license for Windows 3.1 and Microsoft Works.
I'm not "90%", I'm a Linux user. I don't steal commercial software, and I don't want to buy Microsoft Office...not even from UMBC for $20. I don't want to run emulated software; I want a Linux office program that does what I need.
The ironic bit is that I agree with you; this doesn't look to be worth the price. OpenOffice does everything I need, apparently better than this, and it's free (in both ways). Why would I buy this?
That said, it's good to see people trying, though it would also be nice to see them work to improve existing implementations (this is all mentioned above by other people). Someone else above mentioned the Korean car industry, and this ties in with what I've been saying about Asia: this is where the "revolution" will occur. People who can't afford Micrsoft prices, or don't want to give that much money to (or trust) a shady United States company. There are LOTS of people in Asian countries, and most of them aren't nearly as firmly stuck in the land of Microsoft and consumer culture as the majority in the U.S.
Installation is not the important bit here. You also have to help them _maintain_ their installation. Installing Linux on machines does more harm than good if:
1. The teachers don't know how to use it, and no one shows them, so the students don't use it either.
2. It goes out of date and gets cracked (or is just, well, out of date...)
Setting up a group of students to take care of this sort of thing is problematic, because students generally tend to graduate (and leave). You have to make certain that there's something in place to maintain what you install so that it's actually useful.
Much of the dependency problems do stem from the way software is packaged. For many RPM-based distributions, they have 1 or 2 CDs worth of material where the packages are all designed to work well together, and then everything else is "contrib", and is not controlled as tightly (or at all). This is very bad.
The reason that tools like apt-get work very well with Debian is that all 8,000 packages are actually forced to follow guidelines before they are accepted. They also _are_ tested before they get into "testing" from "unstable", and tested even more thoroughly before "stable" is released. There is a policy that actually exists, and it is adhered to strictly.
In regards to your "multiple versions" suggestion, Debian does this quite frequently. If a package has a version with a Gnome GUI, but can be used without it, Debian will have a base package for that software, and another package you can install for the Gnome GUI. A similar thing is done with PHP and the various modules (PostgreSQL support, etc.).
To comment on another poster's reply: apt never automatically installs anything for you. If the package you requested to install has unmet dependencies, it will prompt you with the names of the packages which need to be installed/removed, and not continue unless you confirm.
Grah.
I've read many books in my time, and I plan on reading many more. I'm certainly not putting them down as a source of entertainment. However...
I strongly feel that entertainment, in some form, is very necessary, unless you're a very boring and unfulfilled person. This could very well come from within (I play several musical instruments). But it annoys me when people say "I don't buy CDs anymore because all music put out today is bad."
A lot of commercial, mainstream music is very bad. Music put together with money instead of a slowly growing fan base is horrible. How many people say, "I listened to N'Sync when they were just getting their start on the club scene in Minneapolis"? No one, because they're not a real band and they didn't do it that way. They were created to be sold.
Go to small venues in your area to see local bands. Find the independant music store in your town...some towns don't really have a source, but you're obviously online, so... (PS: for Baltimore, it's Soundgarden in Fell's Point). Most of these labels and bands still actually want their music to be heard. The CDs are less expensive, and they don't just have one "hit single" and a bunch of crap. Don't know which bands you might like? Your local college probably has a radio station that can help you find out. If not, there are plenty of others available online.
Personally, I don't have TV at all, but I've found plenty of interesting things to fill that space.
I do admit I'm interested in this sort of idea, and I'm sure I'll end up trying it in a machine once I get some spare time (currently scheduled to happen on March 3, 2005 :)
To answer a few questions I've seen in the comments:
1. If you want something like this on a "wimpy" machine, then you might look at Debian. I'm sure you've all heard about the magic of apt, which is similar to this, but with binaries. This way, your machine doesn't have to do all that compiling. Leading to:
2. You can do similar things like this with Debian by using deb-src lines in sources.conf. You can just do "apt-get source " to get the source, along with the patches, rules, etc. to make an officially compliant Debian package from it. You can even add the -b option to build it automatically after downloading.
3. Debian has binaries for many platforms; they haven't abandoned SPARC, and their PPC distribution has been solid for some time now.
Anyway, I think that Gentoo is cool and a good idea, but I wanted to make sure this stuff was known. I've done all of the above (run Debian on very wimpy machines, run it on PPC, and had it compile GAIM packages for me, since GAIM isn't in potato, but the sources are available via deb-src).