Not-for-profit is basically just like any old corporation, except that the company can't make a profit at the end of the year. They often get around this by paying their staff large bonuses or spending the "profits" on capital goods (assuming a good year).
I've noticed a few posts bashing Slashdot for the use of the 'Spam' (tm) logo in association with 'SPAM' mail that people are so against. While I agree that companies shouldn't use the Hormel logo alongside the SPAM email we all hate there's one difference: People on Slahsodot do (or at least should) know the difference. Heck, that logo on Slashdot is enough to make me consider buying Spam at the supermaket. Seriously. I (as well as 99.99% of Slashdot) known darned good and well that Hormel does not create SPAM email. They make a wonderfully meat-like product (heh) that hakcers everywhere are likely to enjoy.
As a side note... this wonderfully LOGICAL jump by Hormel here I'll auctally try their Spam product. It does look good, seriously. BTW -- they make good Chili in a can. Works freaking great when mixed with Velveta (sp?) for chip dip.
Seriously... look at the post. MS is attacking open source at it's weakest point: the GPL. The GPL is -not- about open source for crying out loud. You would think the Slashdot community would have jumped on this ASAP, or heck, even the editors should have commented on the article before posting it.
We (should) all know the GPL is not about open source. If you don't know this you really really should read more of Stallman's writings.
"Open Source" to me means BSD -- seriously. BSD licences are "strong" open source licesneses; the GPL is the "strong" Free Software licenese.
I'm not sure why developers prefer the GPL over BSD... no wait... I do; I'm a developer. Why a business would hire coders to make GPL software _is_ beyond me though. The only rational there is they're looking for long term benefits to the computing world or they don't know dick diddly about business.
Even without that an admin should inspect anything that's viewable upon basic install -- and delete it if not needed. Really, this is like letting Apache install stuff to your cgi-bin/ directory and leaving it there even if you have no use for it.
A) This thing shouldn't have been installed by default. Oops on Microsoft.
B) If an admin is worth his weight in dirt he would have seen it already and canned it.
C) The MS coder that wrote something which would be included in a basic install should have been notified of this... and the code should have been properly audited. Odds are, whoever coded this ISAPI extension would have said upon notice that his extension would be in the default install something along the lines of, "WTF for? Nobody actually _uses_ this thing.":)
C would have fixed a few problems... betcha anything the guy who coded it had no idea ever that this was in the default install. He's probably running around pisses as hell in the Redmond base right now because his "quick little addon" turned into a huge deal behind his back.:)
Yeah, you can't really write the next "Wow, gotta have it!" game anymore unless you've got a huge budget... but there's still other opportunities.
The old games were made by a programmer who had a real simple idea for a game, coded it up, and sold it. We can still do that... just not with games. Fifteen years ago you could have probably done something like with a word processor too -- not anymore though. There's plenty of oportunities though...
A quick and dirty piece of software that'd let you interact with MS Exchange scheduling features from a *nix client would be nice. Can't be too hard either (I'd imagine)... could be a nice tool. Heck, Napster is good recent example of a quick and dirty hack that caught on huge. Shaun Fanning wasn't even experienced at the type of coding he initiall put into Napster... he was just learning as he went.
This by no means answers the originall poster's question... but if he's looking to do something neat, and be recognised for his work I'd suggest not going into gaming... pick networking.
I like C... because I can manipulate the memory byte by byte in an uncontrolled manner.
I like C++ because it makes me really say what I want to do if I try and do crazy shit to memory.
I like Java because no matter what I do I can't do anything dangerous. Err wait, I hate that about it:).
C++ has a nice way of protecting people.. you need to explicitly say "Yeah I'm totally sure I need to take this hunk of memory, cast it into a void* and do some arithemtic on it." It's too long though.. the lines of source that is.
Allow a Java like straight jacket... using something like #pragma preprocessor defs or something.
Examples:
#babysit_me_i_am_dumb... this would act like Java:)
#make_sure_i_am_sure... this would act like C++
#back_the_fuck_up... like C -- you do what you want.
when was the last time you read email on an 80 column terminal?
Today... and the day before that. And the day before that... and so on for about 3-4 years I'd say. Before that I didn't really use email much.
I write code on 80 character terminals (aterms actually under Linux). I write documentation in 'vim' on 80 character terminals. Why? I can crap it out to a printer and it comes out nicely on paper -- anywhere. It's lovely. It's archaic, heck this 80 character thing dates back to the days of punch cards but I still like it. I agree with the reply to this post that above 80 chars per line the reader can get confused. I'm one of them honestly... I like my stuff staying 80 characters.
And to prevent any replies saying, "Old fogie, get with the times." I'm only 21.
I've thought of doing something similar with my home... not because I'm really worried -- just because I'd think it's kinda neat to do.
Grab a bttv based tv card, hookup a poopy video camera too it. I bet you can get a black and white one pretty cheap -- it doesn't even need to record itself. There's a util I see on freshmeat.net called bttvgrab or something of that nature that'll fire off an event and capture a picture when motion is detected. When you get a snapshot of something moving just have your box on the boat dish the picture to a remote location, and notify you of the change on your cellphone. Dish the picture to a remote location in case they steal the computer itself of course.
In order to NOT get caught they'd have to disconnect the machine, THEN steal your stuff. I'm guessing your average vandal wouldn't really think that something like this would be setup. If you ran a large data center it might be a different story... I'd imagine somebody breaking into a NOC would realize they should try and cut the incoming 'net connection before trying anything... but that's another topic.
Ahhh, but the joys of Caller ID on your mobile phone.
Scenario 1: It's Friday, you're hanging out with friends, having a few beers away from home and the girl you met last weekend calls; you ID the number in your head and pick up the phone.
Scenario 2: It's Friday, you're hanging out with friends, having a few beers away from home and you get a call, you ID the number as being somebody from work; you laugh heartily, joke too your friends that you must be out of range right now and order another round.
Just because it rings, you don't have to pick it up. I'm still amazed as how compulsive people are about picking up a ringing phone.
I'm pretty sure that the install of NT we were trying around here today was attended by demonic spirits. If the monitor started spewing forth pea-soup like liquids at me it wouldn't have surprised me at all.
I was hoping I'd see a reply to the parent post in here that cleared this up. Microsoft did not come up with or champion this idea. Sun has done that -- MS picked up on it (almost too late) and started adopting it. The network is the computer. -- ring a bell?
I agree with your advice -- I've heard of from plenty of people but I'm living the uber counter example to that advice right now.
I live with a guy I've been friends with for about 5 years. We've been pretty close the entire time; our hobbies are all the same; and we enjoy the same line of work.
... and I loan him money if need be. He'll loan me money.
... and I work with him. He's a few cubes down right now probably being more productive than I at the moment.
... and we're part of a team of 5 people that are starting with own line of software. It's not commercial yet; but this means we can often be found putting in 40 hours at our real job, 25-30 more on the 2ndary job, then partying together on the weekend with our common set of friends.
There's only been one shouting match in the year we've been doing this. And it was over something completey unrelated to work, home, and money.
Agreed -- OpenGL and OpenIL do sound similar... but when's the last time you saw somebody buy something that was based on OpenGL off it's name alone? Riiiiight:). Who knows what OpenGL is? Coders. Who would confuse it with OpenIL? Bad coders... although I can't imagine somebody being so stupid as to write code and not even know wha API they're dealing with. If they _did_ get confused about what they're actually coding to do you think they can release a product that's in any way shape or form going to complete with something SGI has built? Would someobody pick up a product off the shelf made by SGI using OpenGL and then put it back because they see something made by a coder too damn stupid to know that OpenGL and OpenIL aren't the same things?
I'd consider a coder who didn't know OpenIL wasn't OpenGL to be on the same level as a developer who doesn't know C++ from C -- and C++ and C are closer than OpenIL and OpenGL it seems -- they're at least both programming languages. OpenGL and OpenIL are libraries doing different things.
We're not talking about a consumer grade shrinked wrapped package here, are we? Nope... we're talking about a nitty gritty library versus another one. If a developer gets confused by this SGI should be damned well glad that they're not trying to release shit based on their library -- becuase that's what'd it'd be -- shit.
I agree entirely here. At first glance at the story, I'm thinking, "Okay, makes sense.. FreeBSD is supposed to the superior SMP system, right?". Wait.. backup.
A) Slashdot isn't coded for performance, never has been it seems like. It's an ad-hoc Perl/CGI implementation. This screams "bad performance" no matter what OS you put it on. Logically if they wanted a faster response time they'd code in mod_perl, php, or SOMETHING other than this archaic architecture.
B) Tracking down any nuance in the Linux -> FreeBSD transisition wouldn't be transparent. It should be, and I've never looked at the Slash code but I'm really _really_ doubting it was built with portability in mind.:)
C) With all the pro-Linux stuff I see on here I'd consider it more likely to see Natalie Portman waring a pants full of hot grits screaming "All your base are belong to us!" in the middle of Times Square than see Slahdot switch to a BSD.
The above was ment to be moderately humorous... sue me if I didn't hit my target.
How their brains interpret this data however is totally beyond explaination to those of us who have "normal" three colour vision.
Great... I couldn't understand how women could tell such subtle differences between the origianl 3 colors and now I've gotta try and figure out how the F they do it with 4.. and I can't even see the fourth one?! This is jacked up. I'm screwed -- I'll just give up on trying to match my clothing for women now.
It would be nice if a website could ask my browser what my default text color is and send out the appropriate background.
Ahh... why set the background image? Why set the text color? Let the browser pick it. You can change the default BG color in Mozilla / Netscape 6, and probably in the 4.x series too but I can't remember. I can change my default text color too, my default link color, etc. And i can set up an option to ignore stylesheets. Designers that begin forcing colors onto my browser bug me; but I can understand it to some point simply because everybody does it. Try Yahoo! sometime in Netscape -- they don't even set their BG color. Nice.:)
I'm part of a team who works with PostgreSQL & ODBC connected to ColdFusion on a dynamic website.
One of the guys, who has zero education when it comes to coding, databases, and computeres in general (don't ask me why or how he's a programmer.. I have no idea) managed to whack Access up against the PostgreSQL database via the ODBC portal I had done to it (can't remember how... it wasn't much of a thing).
It certainly isn't a revolutionary idea, people do it all the time... it's a two step process:
Setup ODBC to the database
Setup Access to hit an ODBC source (doesn't matter WHAT it is)
Yes, you don't want an "RTFM" post but really.. that's what you'll get:). I can at least tell you that it's been done, this is what the tools were DESIGNED to do, and that I've personally seen it all put together before. I can also tell you that it wasn't any major feat to get it working (it stumbled into our lap basically). The guy hated working with the command line psql client (read: he couldn't)... so he slapped Access up against it.
Properly coded (according to W3C standards) sites are no harder for lynx/emacs/etc browser to render. They're probably _easier_ in fact. Run some pages through W3C's 'Tidy' program and take a look at the errors you get from common pages. You'll get warnings if you don't have 'alt' attributes on your 'img' tags, and 'summary' attributes on your 'table' tags.
This is a _good_ idea for people who have oddball browsers or interfaces. I didn't see any recommendation either to block people from your sites, just to pop up a JavaScript if they're known to have a non-standards compliant browser.
You mean.. what would Linus do if somebody were so outrageous to name their products something like:
Slackware Linux
Redhat Linux
Debian GNU/Linux ... yadda yadda. It _is_ Linux just like OpenSSH _is_ SSH. OpenSSH is giving credit to the SSH protocol just like Linux distributions are giving credit to the Linux kernel. If the original creators of SSH want their implementation to stand out above the crowd then they simply need a more distinctive name:
OfficialSSH
NotTotallyFreeSSH
UseTheLettersEssEssAcheAndWeComplain ... pick your flavor:)
I admit, SSH has a reason to protect their trademark, but to use an overused analogy it's like Ford tradmarking "automobile" here.
Shoot, lets take the most "evil of evil" in the Slahdot realm: Microsoft.
Is anybody slamming then because they named their database "SQL Server"? Doesn't somebody out their own "SQL"?. Nobody has that I know of. IIS? "Internet Information Server"? IIS isn't the real "Internet" so how do they get away with it?
If your customers are so darned stupid they don't know the difference then it boils down to one of two things:
1) They're idiots.. you don't want to support them anyway (harsh, but hey, I'm a coder)
2) You don't provide any value over the competition anyway so get your poop in a group.
I'll let everybody else hash out _how_ to get data from point to point and offer searching capabilities. What I'm concerned with in the "P2P" business is that everybody wants to erradicate record labels when it comes to MP3 transfering, right? So how do we do that?
My take on it (and I'm sure there are others that agree.. I spent a few nights up 'till 2am reading thesis papers on this stuff) is how you CATALOG the data. Filename keyword searches suck -- really.
I log onto Napster or another P2P network and I already know what I want because the radio has crammed some stuff my way I like. What I would like to see is mathematical representations of music "feeling" really. If I like a song I want to be able to grab it's feeling signature, plop that into a search engine and say I want songs that deviate 5% or so from that. It's outside the realm of P2P technology... but it relates to it. I don't want to sift through artist after artist to find something I "jive" with.
This really applies to all media... take back ground pictures for my desktop. I like certain things, generally blue/green stuff (it's a personality thing). Discovering ways to mathematically represent this "mood" of something I think is totally essential for P2P to take off... and if it does take off people now have a way of finding stuff they like in a concrete mathemtical way.
It's far fetched... but it's very exciting to me. I've considered going back to college simply to expound my mathematical knowledge (instead of computer science) to get this kind of handle on things. It's "uber cool" in my mind... anybody else think so?:)
Imagine two news groups, one dedicated to announcing new up and coming OSes; one dedicated to up and coming bands.
I'm guessing the one announcing new bands would have a fairly significatant amount of traffic:)
People rely on radio stations (for better or for worse) to filter out the "crap" for them. The only way I see a completey opened up music market working is if people rely on their music entusiast buddies to filter out the "crap" again for them; but on a micro level of sorts.
For alot of us getting ahold of some music that doesn't completely suck is all we're looking for. Sure, sometimes it's nice to have something to listen to that completely blows your hair back and all; but _finding_ that among all the music simply takes a long time.
I agree; unless somebody starts trying to photograph or video tape me on my property (assuming I owned some) I have no right to complain really. If I enter a public building (government owned) fine, video tape me, photogrpah me, whatever. Photograph me at intersections... I don't care. Unless somebody begins poking cameras into my own house; I can't really complain.
I've wondered about cloning myself... if either my wife (I'm unmarried -- this is hypothetical) were ever sterile.
I think it would be inresting... to say the last. Personally I was born with some birth defects; I've always wondered what I would be without them -- they're cosmetic (as beat as we can tell)... but I've wondered what I would be like _without_ those.
Aside from that.. I'm an irregular person.. my parents were greatly confused by me when I was growing up for reasons I won't go into -- I'm also of considerably above average intelligence.
Given my genetic makeup... and the possibly of being raised by a person who knew _exactly_ how your mind operated would be rather intresting.
To some extent I see it as being able to go back in time and to teach yourself things you know now ahead of time -- and speed up your development. Which is perhaps what parents do now; but with it being YOU that you're teaching it brings thing to a whole new level.
It's interesting.. perhaps completely unethical and wrong.. but an interesting thought. The funny part I've often wondered about is this: Say I clonsed myself for the first child.. and my wife for the second. Logically the two children would also be good mates for eachother (assuming things like this are genetic) and it would be naturual for the "children" to couple together late in life. Very freaking weird thought there...
Slashdot Mirror
Not-for-profit is basically just like any old corporation, except that the company can't make a profit at the end of the year. They often get around this by paying their staff large bonuses or spending the "profits" on capital goods (assuming a good year).
.com business model'
You could have just said 'the
I've noticed a few posts bashing Slashdot for the use of the 'Spam' (tm) logo in association with 'SPAM' mail that people are so against. While I agree that companies shouldn't use the Hormel logo alongside the SPAM email we all hate there's one difference: People on Slahsodot do (or at least should) know the difference. Heck, that logo on Slashdot is enough to make me consider buying Spam at the supermaket. Seriously. I (as well as 99.99% of Slashdot) known darned good and well that Hormel does not create SPAM email. They make a wonderfully meat-like product (heh) that hakcers everywhere are likely to enjoy.
As a side note... this wonderfully LOGICAL jump by Hormel here I'll auctally try their Spam product. It does look good, seriously. BTW -- they make good Chili in a can. Works freaking great when mixed with Velveta (sp?) for chip dip.
Justin Buist
Seriously... look at the post. MS is attacking open source at it's weakest point: the GPL. The GPL is -not- about open source for crying out loud. You would think the Slashdot community would have jumped on this ASAP, or heck, even the editors should have commented on the article before posting it.
... no wait... I do; I'm a developer. Why a business would hire coders to make GPL software _is_ beyond me though. The only rational there is they're looking for long term benefits to the computing world or they don't know dick diddly about business.
We (should) all know the GPL is not about open source. If you don't know this you really really should read more of Stallman's writings.
"Open Source" to me means BSD -- seriously. BSD licences are "strong" open source licesneses; the GPL is the "strong" Free Software licenese.
I'm not sure why developers prefer the GPL over BSD
Even without that an admin should inspect anything that's viewable upon basic install -- and delete it if not needed. Really, this is like letting Apache install stuff to your cgi-bin/ directory and leaving it there even if you have no use for it.
:)
... betcha anything the guy who coded it had no idea ever that this was in the default install. He's probably running around pisses as hell in the Redmond base right now because his "quick little addon" turned into a huge deal behind his back. :)
A) This thing shouldn't have been installed by default. Oops on Microsoft.
B) If an admin is worth his weight in dirt he would have seen it already and canned it.
C) The MS coder that wrote something which would be included in a basic install should have been notified of this... and the code should have been properly audited. Odds are, whoever coded this ISAPI extension would have said upon notice that his extension would be in the default install something along the lines of, "WTF for? Nobody actually _uses_ this thing."
C would have fixed a few problems
Justin Buist
Yeah, you can't really write the next "Wow, gotta have it!" game anymore unless you've got a huge budget... but there's still other opportunities.
The old games were made by a programmer who had a real simple idea for a game, coded it up, and sold it. We can still do that... just not with games. Fifteen years ago you could have probably done something like with a word processor too -- not anymore though. There's plenty of oportunities though...
A quick and dirty piece of software that'd let you interact with MS Exchange scheduling features from a *nix client would be nice. Can't be too hard either (I'd imagine)... could be a nice tool. Heck, Napster is good recent example of a quick and dirty hack that caught on huge. Shaun Fanning wasn't even experienced at the type of coding he initiall put into Napster... he was just learning as he went.
This by no means answers the originall poster's question... but if he's looking to do something neat, and be recognised for his work I'd suggest not going into gaming... pick networking.
I like C ... because I can manipulate the memory byte by byte in an uncontrolled manner.
:).
... this would act like Java :) ... this would act like C++
... like C -- you do what you want.
I like C++ because it makes me really say what I want to do if I try and do crazy shit to memory.
I like Java because no matter what I do I can't do anything dangerous. Err wait, I hate that about it
C++ has a nice way of protecting people.. you need to explicitly say "Yeah I'm totally sure I need to take this hunk of memory, cast it into a void* and do some arithemtic on it." It's too long though.. the lines of source that is.
Allow a Java like straight jacket... using something like #pragma preprocessor defs or something.
Examples:
#babysit_me_i_am_dumb
#make_sure_i_am_sure
#back_the_fuck_up
Justin
when was the last time you read email on an 80 column terminal?
Today... and the day before that. And the day before that... and so on for about 3-4 years I'd say. Before that I didn't really use email much.
I write code on 80 character terminals (aterms actually under Linux). I write documentation in 'vim' on 80 character terminals. Why? I can crap it out to a printer and it comes out nicely on paper -- anywhere. It's lovely. It's archaic, heck this 80 character thing dates back to the days of punch cards but I still like it. I agree with the reply to this post that above 80 chars per line the reader can get confused. I'm one of them honestly... I like my stuff staying 80 characters.
And to prevent any replies saying, "Old fogie, get with the times." I'm only 21.
Justin Buist
I've thought of doing something similar with my home... not because I'm really worried -- just because I'd think it's kinda neat to do.
Grab a bttv based tv card, hookup a poopy video camera too it. I bet you can get a black and white one pretty cheap -- it doesn't even need to record itself. There's a util I see on freshmeat.net called bttvgrab or something of that nature that'll fire off an event and capture a picture when motion is detected. When you get a snapshot of something moving just have your box on the boat dish the picture to a remote location, and notify you of the change on your cellphone. Dish the picture to a remote location in case they steal the computer itself of course.
In order to NOT get caught they'd have to disconnect the machine, THEN steal your stuff. I'm guessing your average vandal wouldn't really think that something like this would be setup. If you ran a large data center it might be a different story... I'd imagine somebody breaking into a NOC would realize they should try and cut the incoming 'net connection before trying anything... but that's another topic.
Justin Buist
Ahhh, but the joys of Caller ID on your mobile phone.
Scenario 1: It's Friday, you're hanging out with friends, having a few beers away from home and the girl you met last weekend calls; you ID the number in your head and pick up the phone.
Scenario 2: It's Friday, you're hanging out with friends, having a few beers away from home and you get a call, you ID the number as being somebody from work; you laugh heartily, joke too your friends that you must be out of range right now and order another round.
Just because it rings, you don't have to pick it up. I'm still amazed as how compulsive people are about picking up a ringing phone.
Windows supports unattended installations...
I'm pretty sure that the install of NT we were trying around here today was attended by demonic spirits. If the monitor started spewing forth pea-soup like liquids at me it wouldn't have surprised me at all.
Justin Buist
Thank You!
I was hoping I'd see a reply to the parent post in here that cleared this up. Microsoft did not come up with or champion this idea. Sun has done that -- MS picked up on it (almost too late) and started adopting it. The network is the computer. -- ring a bell?
Justin Buist
I agree with your advice -- I've heard of from plenty of people but I'm living the uber counter example to that advice right now.
... and I loan him money if need be. He'll loan me money.
... and I work with him. He's a few cubes down right now probably being more productive than I at the moment.
... and we're part of a team of 5 people that are starting with own line of software. It's not commercial yet; but this means we can often be found putting in 40 hours at our real job, 25-30 more on the 2ndary job, then partying together on the weekend with our common set of friends.
I live with a guy I've been friends with for about 5 years. We've been pretty close the entire time; our hobbies are all the same; and we enjoy the same line of work.
There's only been one shouting match in the year we've been doing this. And it was over something completey unrelated to work, home, and money.
So, it -can- work. But it's not often.
Justin Buist
Agreed -- OpenGL and OpenIL do sound similar... but when's the last time you saw somebody buy something that was based on OpenGL off it's name alone? Riiiiight :). Who knows what OpenGL is? Coders. Who would confuse it with OpenIL? Bad coders... although I can't imagine somebody being so stupid as to write code and not even know wha API they're dealing with. If they _did_ get confused about what they're actually coding to do you think they can release a product that's in any way shape or form going to complete with something SGI has built? Would someobody pick up a product off the shelf made by SGI using OpenGL and then put it back because they see something made by a coder too damn stupid to know that OpenGL and OpenIL aren't the same things?
I'd consider a coder who didn't know OpenIL wasn't OpenGL to be on the same level as a developer who doesn't know C++ from C -- and C++ and C are closer than OpenIL and OpenGL it seems -- they're at least both programming languages. OpenGL and OpenIL are libraries doing different things.
We're not talking about a consumer grade shrinked wrapped package here, are we? Nope... we're talking about a nitty gritty library versus another one. If a developer gets confused by this SGI should be damned well glad that they're not trying to release shit based on their library -- becuase that's what'd it'd be -- shit.
Justin Buist
I agree entirely here. At first glance at the story, I'm thinking, "Okay, makes sense .. FreeBSD is supposed to the superior SMP system, right?". Wait.. backup.
:)
A) Slashdot isn't coded for performance, never has been it seems like. It's an ad-hoc Perl/CGI implementation. This screams "bad performance" no matter what OS you put it on. Logically if they wanted a faster response time they'd code in mod_perl, php, or SOMETHING other than this archaic architecture.
B) Tracking down any nuance in the Linux -> FreeBSD transisition wouldn't be transparent. It should be, and I've never looked at the Slash code but I'm really _really_ doubting it was built with portability in mind.
C) With all the pro-Linux stuff I see on here I'd consider it more likely to see Natalie Portman waring a pants full of hot grits screaming "All your base are belong to us!" in the middle of Times Square than see Slahdot switch to a BSD.
The above was ment to be moderately humorous... sue me if I didn't hit my target.
Justin Buist
How their brains interpret this data however is totally beyond explaination to those of us who have "normal" three colour vision.
.. and I can't even see the fourth one?! This is jacked up. I'm screwed -- I'll just give up on trying to match my clothing for women now.
Great... I couldn't understand how women could tell such subtle differences between the origianl 3 colors and now I've gotta try and figure out how the F they do it with 4
Justin Buist
It would be nice if a website could ask my browser what my default text color is and send out the appropriate background.
:)
Ahh... why set the background image? Why set the text color? Let the browser pick it. You can change the default BG color in Mozilla / Netscape 6, and probably in the 4.x series too but I can't remember. I can change my default text color too, my default link color, etc. And i can set up an option to ignore stylesheets. Designers that begin forcing colors onto my browser bug me; but I can understand it to some point simply because everybody does it. Try Yahoo! sometime in Netscape -- they don't even set their BG color. Nice.
Justin Buist
Major brain fade there man... the word 'Sybase' wasn't even mentioned in the post. It's a FileMaker implementation right now.
I'm part of a team who works with PostgreSQL & ODBC connected to ColdFusion on a dynamic website.
:). I can at least tell you that it's been done, this is what the tools were DESIGNED to do, and that I've personally seen it all put together before. I can also tell you that it wasn't any major feat to get it working (it stumbled into our lap basically). The guy hated working with the command line psql client (read: he couldn't)... so he slapped Access up against it.
One of the guys, who has zero education when it comes to coding, databases, and computeres in general (don't ask me why or how he's a programmer.. I have no idea) managed to whack Access up against the PostgreSQL database via the ODBC portal I had done to it (can't remember how... it wasn't much of a thing).
It certainly isn't a revolutionary idea, people do it all the time... it's a two step process:
Setup ODBC to the database
Setup Access to hit an ODBC source (doesn't matter WHAT it is)
Yes, you don't want an "RTFM" post but really.. that's what you'll get
Properly coded (according to W3C standards) sites are no harder for lynx/emacs/etc browser to render. They're probably _easier_ in fact. Run some pages through W3C's 'Tidy' program and take a look at the errors you get from common pages. You'll get warnings if you don't have 'alt' attributes on your 'img' tags, and 'summary' attributes on your 'table' tags.
This is a _good_ idea for people who have oddball browsers or interfaces. I didn't see any recommendation either to block people from your sites, just to pop up a JavaScript if they're known to have a non-standards compliant browser.
Justin Buist
You mean.. what would Linus do if somebody were so outrageous to name their products something like:
... yadda yadda. It _is_ Linux just like OpenSSH _is_ SSH. OpenSSH is giving credit to the SSH protocol just like Linux distributions are giving credit to the Linux kernel. If the original creators of SSH want their implementation to stand out above the crowd then they simply need a more distinctive name:
... pick your flavor :)
Slackware Linux
Redhat Linux
Debian GNU/Linux
OfficialSSH
NotTotallyFreeSSH
UseTheLettersEssEssAcheAndWeComplain
I admit, SSH has a reason to protect their trademark, but to use an overused analogy it's like Ford tradmarking "automobile" here.
Shoot, lets take the most "evil of evil" in the Slahdot realm: Microsoft.
Is anybody slamming then because they named their database "SQL Server"? Doesn't somebody out their own "SQL"?. Nobody has that I know of. IIS? "Internet Information Server"? IIS isn't the real "Internet" so how do they get away with it?
If your customers are so darned stupid they don't know the difference then it boils down to one of two things:
1) They're idiots.. you don't want to support them anyway (harsh, but hey, I'm a coder)
2) You don't provide any value over the competition anyway so get your poop in a group.
Justin Buist
I'll let everybody else hash out _how_ to get data from point to point and offer searching capabilities. What I'm concerned with in the "P2P" business is that everybody wants to erradicate record labels when it comes to MP3 transfering, right? So how do we do that?
:)
My take on it (and I'm sure there are others that agree.. I spent a few nights up 'till 2am reading thesis papers on this stuff) is how you CATALOG the data. Filename keyword searches suck -- really.
I log onto Napster or another P2P network and I already know what I want because the radio has crammed some stuff my way I like. What I would like to see is mathematical representations of music "feeling" really. If I like a song I want to be able to grab it's feeling signature, plop that into a search engine and say I want songs that deviate 5% or so from that. It's outside the realm of P2P technology... but it relates to it. I don't want to sift through artist after artist to find something I "jive" with.
This really applies to all media... take back ground pictures for my desktop. I like certain things, generally blue/green stuff (it's a personality thing). Discovering ways to mathematically represent this "mood" of something I think is totally essential for P2P to take off... and if it does take off people now have a way of finding stuff they like in a concrete mathemtical way.
It's far fetched... but it's very exciting to me. I've considered going back to college simply to expound my mathematical knowledge (instead of computer science) to get this kind of handle on things. It's "uber cool" in my mind... anybody else think so?
Justin Buist
Imagine two news groups, one dedicated to announcing new up and coming OSes; one dedicated to up and coming bands.
:)
I'm guessing the one announcing new bands would have a fairly significatant amount of traffic
People rely on radio stations (for better or for worse) to filter out the "crap" for them. The only way I see a completey opened up music market working is if people rely on their music entusiast buddies to filter out the "crap" again for them; but on a micro level of sorts.
For alot of us getting ahold of some music that doesn't completely suck is all we're looking for. Sure, sometimes it's nice to have something to listen to that completely blows your hair back and all; but _finding_ that among all the music simply takes a long time.
Yeah.. that was probably a pointless post.
Justin Buist
I agree; unless somebody starts trying to photograph or video tape me on my property (assuming I owned some) I have no right to complain really. If I enter a public building (government owned) fine, video tape me, photogrpah me, whatever. Photograph me at intersections... I don't care. Unless somebody begins poking cameras into my own house; I can't really complain.
Justin Buist
Yeah... Okay, I had a few too many beers in me to be constructing posts to Slashdot... and of course "Preview" seemed like a waste of time :)
Justin
I've wondered about cloning myself... if either my wife (I'm unmarried -- this is hypothetical) were ever sterile.
I think it would be inresting... to say the last. Personally I was born with some birth defects; I've always wondered what I would be without them -- they're cosmetic (as beat as we can tell)... but I've wondered what I would be like _without_ those.
Aside from that.. I'm an irregular person.. my parents were greatly confused by me when I was growing up for reasons I won't go into -- I'm also of considerably above average intelligence.
Given my genetic makeup... and the possibly of being raised by a person who knew _exactly_ how your mind operated would be rather intresting.
To some extent I see it as being able to go back in time and to teach yourself things you know now ahead of time -- and speed up your development. Which is perhaps what parents do now; but with it being YOU that you're teaching it brings thing to a whole new level.
It's interesting.. perhaps completely unethical and wrong.. but an interesting thought. The funny part I've often wondered about is this: Say I clonsed myself for the first child.. and my wife for the second. Logically the two children would also be good mates for eachother (assuming things like this are genetic) and it would be naturual for the "children" to couple together late in life. Very freaking weird thought there...
Justin Buist