I avoided all the desktops for years. I really don't care for any of them. I still use a heavily customized twm at home. But when I switched from development to an IT environment where I have to support users who mostly have GNOME on the desktop, I started using it at work. And there's a lot I don't know about it even after three years (it's a tiny part of the job). So I learned a few things. I'm still on SL3 (RHEL3 from source), but I'd never realized there was an SMB URI, which is handy to know.
One thing I never got was the whole "spatial" thing. Woooo, spatial! It sounds like 3D or something, but it's just the same old thing that's been around forever. Some people like it, some don't. But giving it a marketing style name and jabbering away about it like you just solved Fermatt's Last Cryptic Note to the Cleaners is kind of stupid.
In some cases I *do* personally advocate the death penalty for spammers. I don't even care if it's vigilante justice so long as it's proven they got the right guys. Spam costs billions of dollars in wasted time and money. It's already wasted several months of my life between work (I work in IT) and home (I've had the same email address for years, since before spam was a big problem, and I get *at least* 1K spams a day hitting my mailserver). That's like killing me before I would have died. The money and effort wasted on spam last year in the USA alone would probably have taken care of all the hurricane victims in the USA, if not world-wide.
Spammers suck. The worst ones should be made examples of. Put their heads on the fence posts of the Whitehouse or main building of the government of whatever country they're caught in.
If not the death penalty, they should at the very least spend the rest of their lives in public stocks, where passersby can mock and whack them. Send 'em on an international tour (semi trailer, slowboat, etc) and charge people to see 'em. Use the revenue to round up the others.
A Catch 22 requires two mutually exclusive things to be at the same time.
It comes from the book of the same name wherein the only way to get the army to take you out of the war, you had to be proven crazy, but desiring to get out proved you weren't crazy, so there was no (legal) way out (without getting injured or killed in the line of duty).
-- ``...like an alpaca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream, bleeding, pink toes awry...''
The last couple of Dell servers I bought were rock solid.
But for desktops and laptops, their quality isn't what it used to be, their supply chain isn't what it used to be, and their support is nowhere close to world class (at least on non-servers).
And we can get servers that are just as good elsewhere for better prices-- AMD-based servers, which means les power consumption and heat. I suspect they still rule in certain classes of servers, but they don't for anything we buy. Sad.
OK, not completely, but it's way behind where it could be, and a great deal of that is the kind of mentality that both publishes and publicizes articles like this one.
First off, the article doesn't tell you what the heck ifolder is. 99% of those who could use knowledge about ifolder won't read the article because after 1 or 2 paragraphs, they still have no clue what it is. Most would still have to guess after reading the whole thing.
But worse, while the article does point to the ifolder pages, the main page there doesn't tell you anything useful. Either include a short description or make the big, unmissable link a "What it is" button.
DO NOT depend on/. to tell the worls what your cool project does. DO NOT depend on word of mouth. DO NOT depend on google or usenet or anything else. Put the stupid desccription right up front.
Yes, there are a lot of big bucks product pages that are just as brain-edad. If they have the market share, or ar ethe only game in town, they'll survive. But they'd do even better if they followed this rule.
But for most of you, your open source project is NOT the 500 pound gorilla. It's not even the 1 ounce mouse baby, even if it could be the 500 pound gorilla. Why make life more difficyult for the end user? That is NOT the way to market share. Open, closed, free, expensive, doesn't matter. Tell people what the heck it is they can get, even if it's free.
I'm an IT geek by dayy, running a 200+ system Linux shop, and *I* am interested in Linspire at home. At home, I just want to install an OS and have everything work. I mkean *everything*. It sucks when my wife wants to do something basic, and I have to go download a bunch of stuff and try to make it work with my current version of Linux.
If you're not referring to the fact that they include some proprietary software, please explain. Otherwise just realize that Linux will never* get out of cult status in the home until it includes whatever is needed to make it Just Work.
Many, many companies have been destroyed or assimilated into something they didn't wish, because they were beguiled by the promises of quick riches at Wal-Mart (an dthey're not alone).
*That's* why it's news. Almost nobody says no to WM without being punished severely. And it's been a huge thorn in our economy. WM has, indeed, brought some good into the fray, but they've brought at least as much bad. IMO, even more bad.
I get hit with over 1,000 "spams" a day at my personal address. (Yes, my filters catch most of them, but I'm talking raw numbers sent). While some of that is spam, most of it is scams, viruses, etc. And even the spam is primarily from people who aren't likely to pay even a penny for 100 mails, much less 4.
OTOH, I send and receive a lot of legitimate email. I pay for this when I pay for my connectivity. I shouldn't have to pay agin.
Now if you let *me* decide how much a spammer has to pay me before s/he can send an email to my box, that's another issue. For $100, *anyone* can send me one email on anything. I'll even promise to read it so long as it doesn't require more than one minute of my time. And I'll give 10% to charity and 10% to my ISP to license the technology. No problem.
My health has improved drastically since last summer (lost almost 50 pounds, have gone from being a couch potato to doing regular exercise, had to buy an entirely new wardrobe and am about to do it again). It's terrifying. I'm going straight home, elevating the foot of my waterbed (not sure how that'll work, but they didn't mention any exceptions), and sleeping for a month, waking only to eat Little Debbies and go to the bathroom. Well, maybe for insulin shots after a week...
He never said in the article that he forbade them to do anything!
From what he said in the article, he's simply convinced them that MS has the better way to do things, and that's why they go the MS way. I did the same thing with my kids; I convinced them tat Linux is the better way, that every product has to be evaluated on its own merits. I also explained to them why I generally dislike MS. They will use Windows when they have to at work. They play XBox games, and if the right games come out only for XBox, or work best on XBox, my son will probably buy an XBox. But MS is never their first choice.
He joked about brainwashing them, but I strongly suspect he's simply convinced them.
But is it really a life form? From the article: 'Viruses are tiny bundles of protein and genetic material that straddle the line between life and non-life. Many scientists prefer to call them "particles" because even though they contain RNA or DNA like other lifeforms, they can only replicate inside other living cells.'"
The same could be same for most species of animals; they ``contain RNA or DNA like other lifeforms, they can only replicate inside other living organisms''.
What do yuou mean by "regionalized internet"? That's a term with no real meaning.
But to answer some of your other questions, 99% of the sites I care about use English, but many of those are in outher countries, and loss of access or difficult access, or pay per access would be a huge loss. SInce I also provide information to people in other countries, as well as interact with them on a couple of forums hoste din the USA, they would lose as well.
The 1% that aren't in English are either in Spanish or they are sites where I view schematics, project build photos, or similar things, and losing those would vary from aggravating to problematic.
Again, I'm really not sure what you're asking other than whether putting up walls is a good idea (no, it's a stupid one, IMO). But whatever it means, I don't see much good coming from it. The fact that the internet is open for most of us is precisely what makes it so wonderful.
Some publishers also only care about being first on the shelf with a title. (I know this from personal experience.) So they do whatever it takes to get there first, but then move on to the next title. So they never print that many.
Other publishers print a gazillion, and write off the rest in taxes and selling them cheaply to someone who sells them at deep discounts.
In both cases, it's an abuse of the concept of producing the right volume to get the price lower.
And don't forget that rewrites (2nd editions, etc) cost them a lot in overhead as well.
O'Reilly is an example of a sane publisher. They care about the subjects, they care about the authors, they care about the readers, they care about the publishing industry, they care about their pocketbooks. Far too many publishers only care a bout a subset of these, and in some cases it's only the very last item on the list.
I've worked with O'Reilly in the past, but have no vested interest in them. I have also been published by another company, and my experience with them was disheartening.
We're primarily a linux shop, with a tiny sprinkling of Solaris, Windows and Mac. About 65 desktops and laptops, a compute farm, about a dozen servers and filers.
We use Linux on all desktops except upper management and admin staff.
I used MySQLCC and phpMyEdit to create a simple, web-based inventory app.
Documentation is plain text, HTML, or simple diagrams in xcircuit or xfig (converted to JPEGs where necessary for public perusal), all available on the intranet. Mostly public, some dirs require a web login. I handcode HTML; I've been doing that since there were no HTML editors back when most people belived in the internet as much as they did the tooth fairy (or less in some cases, eh, Mr. King?)
Someone had done a basic cubicle/floor map in Excel and exported it to HTML. I've hacked that up into a web page that accesses the employee database (hand-written before I came here to use LAMP); that's about to be expanded to include wiring information and tie in the equipment inventory.
I use Nagios to monitor systems, network gear, printers, etc.
I use mrtg and SNMP with some custom web pages to monitor switch data.
I have perl scripts to monitor the compute farm, PBS, etc.
The one thing I *don't* have is a graphical net explorer that wlil also show me the net in real time in a format that shows the network structure with traffic, etc. 3M has a tool, but it is only so-so (last time I tried it) and rather slow on the older Windows laptop I have available. I'd love to have a good FOSS app for this, preferably for use under Linux, but Windows is aceptable.
I also did a simple task list app with MySQLCC & phpMyEdit. Not really a trouble ticket system. We have both gnats and bugzilla here for the hardware and software guys, but I wasn't really happy with either of those. (I haven't looked at either one closely in some time.) So anything that isn't just daily operations goes on the task list. Daily operations stuff is all handled through email. I wouldn't mind recommendations for a good, *simple*, easily customizable touble ticket system (gnats was a pain to customize, and bugzilla seemed like overkill).
A couple of our software tools developers have put together some scripts around apt or yum to handle OS upgrades the way we want them handled (we have to be picky about which updates we grab).
Lots of perl and shell scripts for everything else.
We tried a wiki for some thing a long time ago. Never worked very well for us.
Slashdot Mirror
When we started out, Thawte was really the only rational choice.
I haven't found any reason to change.
I avoided all the desktops for years. I really don't care for any of them. I still use a heavily customized twm at home. But when I switched from development to an IT environment where I have to support users who mostly have GNOME on the desktop, I started using it at work. And there's a lot I don't know about it even after three years (it's a tiny part of the job). So I learned a few things. I'm still on SL3 (RHEL3 from source), but I'd never realized there was an SMB URI, which is handy to know.
One thing I never got was the whole "spatial" thing. Woooo, spatial! It sounds like 3D or something, but it's just the same old thing that's been around forever. Some people like it, some don't. But giving it a marketing style name and jabbering away about it like you just solved Fermatt's Last Cryptic Note to the Cleaners is kind of stupid.
Because I know some people who would happily beat him to within an inch of his life, THEN put him in public stocks for a few years.
The guy as well may just put up a ginat banner proclaiming that he's a wold class jackass.
In some cases I *do* personally advocate the death penalty for spammers. I don't even care if it's vigilante justice so long as it's proven they got the right guys. Spam costs billions of dollars in wasted time and money. It's already wasted several months of my life between work (I work in IT) and home (I've had the same email address for years, since before spam was a big problem, and I get *at least* 1K spams a day hitting my mailserver). That's like killing me before I would have died. The money and effort wasted on spam last year in the USA alone would probably have taken care of all the hurricane victims in the USA, if not world-wide.
Spammers suck. The worst ones should be made examples of. Put their heads on the fence posts of the Whitehouse or main building of the government of whatever country they're caught in.
If not the death penalty, they should at the very least spend the rest of their lives in public stocks, where passersby can mock and whack them. Send 'em on an international tour (semi trailer, slowboat, etc) and charge people to see 'em. Use the revenue to round up the others.
We're waaaay to "civilised" for our own good.
A Catch 22 requires two mutually exclusive things to be at the same time.
It comes from the book of the same name wherein the only way to get the army to take you out of the war, you had to be proven crazy, but desiring to get out proved you weren't crazy, so there was no (legal) way out (without getting injured or killed in the line of duty).
--
``...like an alpaca sack full of hairy strawberry ice cream, bleeding, pink toes awry...''
Since the BBC does music shows, if they give away a free Apple, then Apple Records will sue them on behalf of the Beatles, both living and dead!
The last couple of Dell servers I bought were rock solid.
But for desktops and laptops, their quality isn't what it used to be, their supply chain isn't what it used to be, and their support is nowhere close to world class (at least on non-servers).
And we can get servers that are just as good elsewhere for better prices-- AMD-based servers, which means les power consumption and heat. I suspect they still rule in certain classes of servers, but they don't for anything we buy. Sad.
OK, not completely, but it's way behind where it could be, and a great deal of that is the kind of mentality that both publishes and publicizes articles like this one.
/. to tell the worls what your cool project does. DO NOT depend on word of mouth. DO NOT depend on google or usenet or anything else. Put the stupid desccription right up front.
First off, the article doesn't tell you what the heck ifolder is. 99% of those who could use knowledge about ifolder won't read the article because after 1 or 2 paragraphs, they still have no clue what it is. Most would still have to guess after reading the whole thing.
But worse, while the article does point to the ifolder pages, the main page there doesn't tell you anything useful. Either include a short description or make the big, unmissable link a "What it is" button.
DO NOT depend on
Yes, there are a lot of big bucks product pages that are just as brain-edad. If they have the market share, or ar ethe only game in town, they'll survive. But they'd do even better if they followed this rule.
But for most of you, your open source project is NOT the 500 pound gorilla. It's not even the 1 ounce mouse baby, even if it could be the 500 pound gorilla. Why make life more difficyult for the end user? That is NOT the way to market share. Open, closed, free, expensive, doesn't matter. Tell people what the heck it is they can get, even if it's free.
I'm an IT geek by dayy, running a 200+ system Linux shop, and *I* am interested in Linspire at home. At home, I just want to install an OS and have everything work. I mkean *everything*. It sucks when my wife wants to do something basic, and I have to go download a bunch of stuff and try to make it work with my current version of Linux.
If you're not referring to the fact that they include some proprietary software, please explain. Otherwise just realize that Linux will never* get out of cult status in the home until it includes whatever is needed to make it Just Work.
Man, you really need to get a secret decoder ring.
They go by the name of "Mood Ring".
And so I broke the code of both your girlfriend *and* the quasars.
Next?
Many, many companies have been destroyed or assimilated into something they didn't wish, because they were beguiled by the promises of quick riches at Wal-Mart (an dthey're not alone).
*That's* why it's news. Almost nobody says no to WM without being punished severely. And it's been a huge thorn in our economy. WM has, indeed, brought some good into the fray, but they've brought at least as much bad. IMO, even more bad.
I get hit with over 1,000 "spams" a day at my personal address. (Yes, my filters catch most of them, but I'm talking raw numbers sent). While some of that is spam, most of it is scams, viruses, etc. And even the spam is primarily from people who aren't likely to pay even a penny for 100 mails, much less 4.
OTOH, I send and receive a lot of legitimate email. I pay for this when I pay for my connectivity. I shouldn't have to pay agin.
Now if you let *me* decide how much a spammer has to pay me before s/he can send an email to my box, that's another issue. For $100, *anyone* can send me one email on anything. I'll even promise to read it so long as it doesn't require more than one minute of my time. And I'll give 10% to charity and 10% to my ISP to license the technology. No problem.
My health has improved drastically since last summer (lost almost 50 pounds, have gone from being a couch potato to doing regular exercise, had to buy an entirely new wardrobe and am about to do it again). It's terrifying. I'm going straight home, elevating the foot of my waterbed (not sure how that'll work, but they didn't mention any exceptions), and sleeping for a month, waking only to eat Little Debbies and go to the bathroom. Well, maybe for insulin shots after a week...
He never said in the article that he forbade them to do anything!
From what he said in the article, he's simply convinced them that MS has the better way to do things, and that's why they go the MS way. I did the same thing with my kids; I convinced them tat Linux is the better way, that every product has to be evaluated on its own merits. I also explained to them why I generally dislike MS. They will use Windows when they have to at work. They play XBox games, and if the right games come out only for XBox, or work best on XBox, my son will probably buy an XBox. But MS is never their first choice.
He joked about brainwashing them, but I strongly suspect he's simply convinced them.
But is it really a life form? From the article: 'Viruses are tiny bundles of protein and genetic material that straddle the line between life and non-life. Many scientists prefer to call them "particles" because even though they contain RNA or DNA like other lifeforms, they can only replicate inside other living cells.'"
The same could be same for most species of animals; they ``contain RNA or DNA like other lifeforms, they can only replicate inside other living organisms''.
What do yuou mean by "regionalized internet"? That's a term with no real meaning.
But to answer some of your other questions, 99% of the sites
I care about use English, but many of those are in outher
countries, and loss of access or difficult access, or pay
per access would be a huge loss. SInce I also provide
information to people in other countries, as well as interact
with them on a couple of forums hoste din the USA, they would
lose as well.
The 1% that aren't in English are either in Spanish or they are
sites where I view schematics, project build photos, or similar
things, and losing those would vary from aggravating to problematic.
Again, I'm really not sure what you're asking other than whether
putting up walls is a good idea (no, it's a stupid one, IMO).
But whatever it means, I don't see much good coming from it.
The fact that the internet is open for most of us is precisely
what makes it so wonderful.
I finally arrived at the same conclusion, but untila fter hours of soul searching.
Google or Taliban?
Google or Taliban?
Google or Taliban?
But once I realized the Taliban would shoot me rather than consider moving the tabs, the choice became easy.
Some publishers also only care about being first on the shelf with a title. (I know this from personal experience.) So they do whatever it takes to get there first, but then move on to the next title. So they never print that many.
Other publishers print a gazillion, and write off the rest in taxes and selling them cheaply to someone who sells them at deep discounts.
In both cases, it's an abuse of the concept of producing the right volume to get the price lower.
And don't forget that rewrites (2nd editions, etc) cost them a lot in overhead as well.
O'Reilly is an example of a sane publisher. They care about the subjects, they care about the authors, they care about the readers, they care about the publishing industry, they care about their pocketbooks. Far too many publishers only care a bout a subset of these, and in some cases it's only the very last item on the list.
I've worked with O'Reilly in the past, but have no vested interest in them. I have also been published by another company, and my experience with them was disheartening.
because now the TV junkies will stop and stare at the monitors and clog the superarket aisles.
If this shows up at HEB, I'm going elsewhere.
Who the heck cares if they don't have internet ready phones? That's like whing that they don't all have Ipod Nanos!
What this does mean is that you should never sacrifice the usability of your website for a fancy design effect or a more visually appealing website.
Why do the vast majority of fancy website designers seem to not know this?
When using something linke "needtoinsertlink" as part of a link in a slashdot lead, don't forget to replace "needtoinsertlink" with the actual link!
And maybe they want to make sure when everyone thinks "$color hat" they *don't* think of "Red Hat".
MS plays that sort of game a lot.
We're primarily a linux shop, with a tiny sprinkling of Solaris, Windows and Mac. About 65 desktops and laptops, a compute farm, about a dozen servers and filers.
We use Linux on all desktops except upper management and admin staff.
I used MySQLCC and phpMyEdit to create a simple, web-based inventory app.
Documentation is plain text, HTML, or simple diagrams in xcircuit or xfig (converted to JPEGs where necessary for public perusal), all available on the intranet. Mostly public, some dirs require a web login. I handcode HTML; I've been doing that since there were no HTML editors back when most people belived in the internet as much as they did the tooth fairy (or less in some cases, eh, Mr. King?)
Someone had done a basic cubicle/floor map in Excel and exported it to HTML. I've hacked that up into a web page that accesses the employee database (hand-written before I came here to use LAMP); that's about to be expanded to include wiring information and tie in the equipment inventory.
I use Nagios to monitor systems, network gear, printers, etc.
I use mrtg and SNMP with some custom web pages to monitor switch data.
I have perl scripts to monitor the compute farm, PBS, etc.
The one thing I *don't* have is a graphical net explorer that wlil also show me the net in real time in a format that shows the network structure with traffic, etc. 3M has a tool, but it is only so-so (last time I tried it) and rather slow on the older Windows laptop I have available. I'd love to have a good FOSS app for this, preferably for use under Linux, but Windows is aceptable.
I also did a simple task list app with MySQLCC & phpMyEdit. Not really a trouble ticket system. We have both gnats and bugzilla here for the hardware and software guys, but I wasn't really happy with either of those. (I haven't looked at either one closely in some time.) So anything that isn't just daily operations goes on the task list. Daily operations stuff is all handled through email. I wouldn't mind recommendations for a good, *simple*, easily customizable touble ticket system (gnats was a pain to customize, and bugzilla seemed like overkill).
A couple of our software tools developers have put together some scripts around apt or yum to handle OS upgrades the way we want them handled (we have to be picky about which updates we grab).
Lots of perl and shell scripts for everything else.
We tried a wiki for some thing a long time ago. Never worked very well for us.
At least with a g chip that supports WPA, you can downgrade to WEP
At last! A serious post unrelated to porn jokes, I think!
if you *really* want to run around with your pants down.
Alas. No such luck.