0.9.5 was incrementally better. 0.9.6 was incrementally better again. Ditto 0.9.7, 0.9.8 and 0.9.9. At some point, that loose change starts adding up into real money.
I really noticed this when using a Debian-stable box recently. It came with M18 (late 2000). I wanted a current browser, so upgraded Mozilla to 0.9.8 (early 2002) from Debian-testing. It was incredible to see a year's improvements in one hit. Much faster, significantly smaller memory usage and leakage, much more stable.
"Release early, release often." Mozilla puts out a test release every night. People like me (someone who triages the day's new bugs whenever I have a bored hour) hammer on it. Problems get fixed. Particularly since early 2001, when the browser finally hit critical mass and became usable on a daily basis - thus sending the number of testers through the roof.
IE 5 is an undeniably good browser, but compared to Mozilla it's an experience in pain for me. Opera 6 is nice and has a better UI than Mozilla (though I'm accumulating a list of pages it dies horribly on). Aside from its incredibly fat arse (system requirement is 64 meg memory - I would say 256 meg for a happy life), Mozilla is already a world-beater and will be inconceivably good in another year. These are exciting times!
I mean that Excel is the only one where the one paying for the thing has to suffer it. So it's the only one with that sort of direct user quality feedback.
Why? Because, unlike NT or Word or whatever, it's the main application used by the people who sign the cheques.
NT is not marketed to the poor bastards who administer it; it's marketed to their boss's boss's boss. And Word is not marketed to the secretaries. Excel is used by the people who sign the cheques, so they get something decent to use, that does its job well...
I work at a development office of a VBC. (We use ClearCase, an expensive but VERY nice version control system. Knocks CVS into a cocked hat. Now if only there were sufficiently talented open source programmers on hand who had CC experience...)
We put EVERYTHING into the VOB (Versioned Object Base, what CC keeps stuff in). Text files (e.g. source), FrameMaker documents (our documentation is generally written in Frame), etc.
The Windows tool for CC is called Attache. It sucks copiously. But if you say to an office type these magic words:
"Ever spent three days editing the wrong version of a document?"
- they become instant converts to version control, and are willing to slog through any horrible tool to gain its benefits;-)
We happily throw binary documents (photos, FrameMaker docs, Word docs, whatever) into the VOBs as well. Takes up disk space (that's expensive backed-up and maintained disk space, not cheap raw disk space), but the benefits are UTTERLY UTTERLY worth it.
If you have trouble convincing the Points That Be, try the above sentence and see if they shudder at the thought. If they do, you've got 'em.
As for tools... even a crappy Windows tool for CVS access is fine if it fundamentally works. They really will use a crappy tool if they can get version control for themselves as well.
You might even get them to cough up for more sophisticated commercial version control systems. CVS does the job, but I for one don't like the idea of going back to it from ClearCase, pricey as CC is.
Wanna find out if your users really "want the latest and greatest?" Grab a nontechnical user who remembers working with Windows 3.1 in an office environment.
Install Windows 3.1 and Office 4.2 on a modern PC (i.e., P166 or greater). Reboot. Sit the user in front of the PC. Type "win" from the DOS prompt. Windows will be up and running in less than 3 seconds.
If the first word out of their mouth is anything other than "Wow!", I think I've made my point.
(OK, my example breaks down because they also want a web browser, most likely IE4 or higher, and network connectivity. So they'll probably want their Win9x or NT box back after a few minutes. But I'll still bet the first word out of their mouth is "wow".)
Solution: instead of 3.11, use NT 3.51 - like
Win 3.1 but stable (more stable than NT 4, because
they didn't put the graphics subsystem in the kernel).
Added bonus: almost all Win32 apps work just fine on it. Put suitable NT4 DLLs in the app's home
directory if you have problems.
There's a bit of discussion happening on the OpenBSD SMP list. Nothing solid - nothing "near future" - but there's a list of interested people. Now to see if anyone feels up to cutting code...
I've been using the Windows version of the GIMP for a week or two now, quite heavily.
THE GIMP IS A MAJOR OPEN SOURCE SUCCESS STORY!
And it's jolly fun showing the Windows users this GTK application on Win32. Explode they haids. Particularly when I break the news to them that we can't afford Aus$1000 for another Photoshop licence, so this is what they get to use. Heh.
Mozilla's REAL beta test will start when ...
on
Netscape 6 Vs. 4.7x
·
· Score: 1
... it sucks less than Netscape 4.
Mozilla is a good idea. Fat as hell, of course. (Just for fun I tried running M18 on a 486 with 12 meg running Win95B. 150 seconds to display a page off the hard disk...)
The tipover point - the REAL beta test - will start the day Mozilla sucks less than Netscape 4. On that day, thousands of Unix users will switch over. Expect a THOROUGH beta-testing.
Ah, that's the thing: laptops are inherently very proprietary in their hardware, because the only hardware extensions or modifications likely are a PC card, new memory or a new hard disk.
Getting Windows to run on a new laptop generally involves the manufacturer writing the drivers themselves, often rewriting chunks of Windows. Getting Linux to run involves LOTS of work from people who REALLY WANT IT TO RUN.
Getting J. Random x86 OS to run involves getting the hardware specs and writing drivers oneself.
It's not malice or neglect on the part of IBM that leaves FreeBSD unsupported. Unless you count not releasing the hardware specs as such.
Goddamn. I got to play the ORIGINAL Space Invaders. Not some crappy clone, but the ACTUAL 1978 GAME.
Certainly brightened up my day, I can tell you.
For those who started on the original Space Invaders, may I recommend the ROM for 'Super Space Invaders '91'. It's like that spotty 12yo has been fed bad acid.
I'm amazed how much playability they could fit in 10-20 kilobytes.
Our policy (tech support call centre, >100 techs) is that MP3s will get you a formal warning, because they're already being a major bandwidth problem. We have a 4Mb link into the office, and it's already thrashed with MP3s and cubemailed MPEGs (usually the latest from Stile Project).
There's another approach to this, if you don't have your own domain: get one from bizland.com, which offers free email and webspace. You get a domain in the form foo.bizland.com, and all mail to username@foo.bizland.com (for any username at all) is redirected to you. So I typically set up my email address as domain.com@foo.bizland.com and am able to track just what came from where.
The bizland account redirects to an iname.com account, so if the spam ever starts mounting I can kill it fairly easily.
(Note that 'foo' is NOT my Bizland name!)
So far I haven't received anything I shouldn't have. Which is nice to know.
I'm using Mozilla M16 on an NT4sp6 box with 64meg RAM. (I'm typing this message in it.) This box also has IE5.
My personal usage style is to go to a page (e.g. Slashdot) and open all the pages off it, thus having ten to twenty browser windows open. This tends to become a smoke test for browsers...
M16 is as stable as, if not more than, Netscape 4.7 for me - the 10-20 windows thing kills Netscape dead about three times a day. Pretty good for an alpha against a release version - I have no plans to use Netscape 4 on this box ever again!
IE5 dies once or twice a day under these conditions.
Mozilla seems to take a LOT more memory than IE5. I'm judging this by the amount of thrashing the machine does when I open this many windows...
All I need is another 64 meg and I'll be just fine.
One reason Photoshop is regarded as suitable for use as industrial machinery is that Photoshop has the Pantone colours built in - licenced from Pantone. Is there any way to get these into the Gimp? A licenced plugin or something?
Would underclocking the system help cut the power requirements, thus perhaps not needing such a large fan (or any fan at all, if we have a large enough hunk of metal for a heatsink)?
Relieve your frustrations on machinery!
on
Is Pinball Dying?
·
· Score: 1
The great thing about pinball is that you can play the game by BEATING THE SHIT out of it. I recall a psychotic fuckhead database lecturer many years ago... after every lecture, I would go to the cafeteria and bash the living tar out of a 'Back To The Future' machine. One coin, half an hour? NO problems.
It's an idea that won't work anyway. Australia tried banning Scientology in the '60s, and it just didn't work to get rid of them. You can read some press articles from the '60s on the subject here.
Also: going up against $cientology is entertaining and invigorating. They make out that they are the toughest bullies around, but stand up to them and they shrink away.
Slashdot Mirror
0.9.5 was incrementally better. 0.9.6 was incrementally better again. Ditto 0.9.7, 0.9.8 and 0.9.9. At some point, that loose change starts adding up into real money.
I really noticed this when using a Debian-stable box recently. It came with M18 (late 2000). I wanted a current browser, so upgraded Mozilla to 0.9.8 (early 2002) from Debian-testing. It was incredible to see a year's improvements in one hit. Much faster, significantly smaller memory usage and leakage, much more stable.
"Release early, release often." Mozilla puts out a test release every night. People like me (someone who triages the day's new bugs whenever I have a bored hour) hammer on it. Problems get fixed. Particularly since early 2001, when the browser finally hit critical mass and became usable on a daily basis - thus sending the number of testers through the roof.
IE 5 is an undeniably good browser, but compared to Mozilla it's an experience in pain for me. Opera 6 is nice and has a better UI than Mozilla (though I'm accumulating a list of pages it dies horribly on). Aside from its incredibly fat arse (system requirement is 64 meg memory - I would say 256 meg for a happy life), Mozilla is already a world-beater and will be inconceivably good in another year. These are exciting times!
I mean that Excel is the only one where the one paying for the thing has to suffer it. So it's the only one with that sort of direct user quality feedback.
is Excel.
Why? Because, unlike NT or Word or whatever, it's the main application used by the people who sign the cheques.
NT is not marketed to the poor bastards who administer it; it's marketed to their boss's boss's boss. And Word is not marketed to the secretaries. Excel is used by the people who sign the cheques, so they get something decent to use, that does its job well ...
"1.0" is when Mozilla has API stability. It doesn't at present. (e.g. some bugs require API changes to fix.)
The ACLU will not go up against Scientology. We've tried plenty to get them to. But the Co$ are the ones who sued the I.R.S. into submission.
We put EVERYTHING into the VOB (Versioned Object Base, what CC keeps stuff in). Text files (e.g. source), FrameMaker documents (our documentation is generally written in Frame), etc.
The Windows tool for CC is called Attache. It sucks copiously. But if you say to an office type these magic words:
- they become instant converts to version control, and are willing to slog through any horrible tool to gain its benefits ;-)
We happily throw binary documents (photos, FrameMaker docs, Word docs, whatever) into the VOBs as well. Takes up disk space (that's expensive backed-up and maintained disk space, not cheap raw disk space), but the benefits are UTTERLY UTTERLY worth it.
If you have trouble convincing the Points That Be, try the above sentence and see if they shudder at the thought. If they do, you've got 'em.
As for tools ... even a crappy Windows tool for CVS access is fine if it fundamentally works. They really will use a crappy tool if they can get version control for themselves as well.
You might even get them to cough up for more sophisticated commercial version control systems. CVS does the job, but I for one don't like the idea of going back to it from ClearCase, pricey as CC is.
Solution: instead of 3.11, use NT 3.51 - like Win 3.1 but stable (more stable than NT 4, because they didn't put the graphics subsystem in the kernel).
Added bonus: almost all Win32 apps work just fine on it. Put suitable NT4 DLLs in the app's home directory if you have problems.
There's a bit of discussion happening on the OpenBSD SMP list. Nothing solid - nothing "near future" - but there's a list of interested people. Now to see if anyone feels up to cutting code ...
There is a warning not to use these plugins if you are a US resident, of course.
THE GIMP IS A MAJOR OPEN SOURCE SUCCESS STORY!
And it's jolly fun showing the Windows users this GTK application on Win32. Explode they haids. Particularly when I break the news to them that we can't afford Aus$1000 for another Photoshop licence, so this is what they get to use. Heh.
- porting Linux to a coffee cup.
Mozilla is a good idea. Fat as hell, of course. (Just for fun I tried running M18 on a 486 with 12 meg running Win95B. 150 seconds to display a page off the hard disk ...)
The tipover point - the REAL beta test - will start the day Mozilla sucks less than Netscape 4. On that day, thousands of Unix users will switch over. Expect a THOROUGH beta-testing.
Ah, that's the thing: laptops are inherently very proprietary in their hardware, because the only hardware extensions or modifications likely are a PC card, new memory or a new hard disk.
Getting Windows to run on a new laptop generally involves the manufacturer writing the drivers themselves, often rewriting chunks of Windows. Getting Linux to run involves LOTS of work from people who REALLY WANT IT TO RUN.
Getting J. Random x86 OS to run involves getting the hardware specs and writing drivers oneself.
It's not malice or neglect on the part of IBM that leaves FreeBSD unsupported. Unless you count not releasing the hardware specs as such.
They're aiming too low. Now, if Eazel can look less like Windows ...
Keeping Task Manager open while opening a few windows is a ... thought-provoking exercise.
That said, apart from its memory consumption, Mozilla M16 has been about as stable as IE5 for me; I expect M17 to be as good or better.
Certainly brightened up my day, I can tell you.
For those who started on the original Space Invaders, may I recommend the ROM for 'Super Space Invaders '91'. It's like that spotty 12yo has been fed bad acid.
I'm amazed how much playability they could fit in 10-20 kilobytes.
I really don't find this unreasonable.
First machine of my very own was a Dick Smith System-80, a TRS-80 clone.
The bizland account redirects to an iname.com account, so if the spam ever starts mounting I can kill it fairly easily.
(Note that 'foo' is NOT my Bizland name!)
So far I haven't received anything I shouldn't have. Which is nice to know.
I'm using Mozilla M16 on an NT4sp6 box with 64meg RAM. (I'm typing this message in it.) This box also has IE5.
My personal usage style is to go to a page (e.g. Slashdot) and open all the pages off it, thus having ten to twenty browser windows open. This tends to become a smoke test for browsers ...
M16 is as stable as, if not more than, Netscape 4.7 for me - the 10-20 windows thing kills Netscape dead about three times a day. Pretty good for an alpha against a release version - I have no plans to use Netscape 4 on this box ever again!
IE5 dies once or twice a day under these conditions.
Mozilla seems to take a LOT more memory than IE5. I'm judging this by the amount of thrashing the machine does when I open this many windows ...
All I need is another 64 meg and I'll be just fine.
One reason Photoshop is regarded as suitable for use as industrial machinery is that Photoshop has the Pantone colours built in - licenced from Pantone. Is there any way to get these into the Gimp? A licenced plugin or something?
Would underclocking the system help cut the power requirements, thus perhaps not needing such a large fan (or any fan at all, if we have a large enough hunk of metal for a heatsink)?
The great thing about pinball is that you can play the game by BEATING THE SHIT out of it. I recall a psychotic fuckhead database lecturer many years ago ... after every lecture, I would go to the cafeteria and bash the living tar out of a 'Back To The Future' machine. One coin, half an hour? NO problems.
You just can't do that with video games ...
No, you need to write a new version of Happy99 :-) About half of all reported virus infections are still Happy99 ...
It's an idea that won't work anyway. Australia tried banning Scientology in the '60s, and it just didn't work to get rid of them. You can read some press articles from the '60s on the subject here.
My main critics' page is here.
Also: going up against $cientology is entertaining and invigorating. They make out that they are the toughest bullies around, but stand up to them and they shrink away.