I have to say - SO WHAT. Every one is entitled to their opinion whether others agree with it or not. If he wants to vent at the opposition then let him. I bet half the people on Slashdot have done the same at one time or another. I know I have.
Unfortunately, it's not enough to be able to host ActiveX controls, you have to provide support to install and script them as well. Neither of these things are easy. Installation is a problem because it uses MS proprietary technology for packaging (CAB files) and installation (INS files). Scripting is a problem because Konq would have to be map JS calls via an OLE typelibrary or through Wine into the control's IDispatch interface. I doubt it does either.
This means ActiveX is pretty limited and next to useless in Konq. It's a kewl feature and handy for shockwave, but that's about it.
BTW you can run ActiveX controls in Mozilla or Netscape (on Win32) if you want but you're still face the same limitations.
Sure they can track that information, but it should be made very clear what you're letting yourself in for when you use your loyalty card. Basically you're selling your soul to the casino for a few comps.
Every time you use your card the casino is collating data on your gambling character; how often you gamble; where you live; what kind of credit card you have and approximate credit limit; whether you're trailer trash or affluent; whether you're single or married; gay or straight; how many kids you have; whether you're ahead or behind; what your spending limit is; what table games you play; whether you're reckless or cautious; what machines you like; how long you play them for; if you are loyal to a machine; where you play in the casino; the times when you gamble; the times when you don't gamble; what features of a machine make you spend more; what food you like eating; whether you respond to "comps"; what room you like and so on.
All of that information makes it considerably easier to part someone with their money. You can target certain kinds of people and hit them at their most vulnerable spot. If the table take is down, the casino sends a mailshot out to some high, reckless spenders. If it's low season, mailshot all the trailer trash with cheap bus fares and accomodation.
The same is true for supermarkets of course, but then the scale is so much different. A supermarket mailshot might get someone to spend ten dollars more on their groceries with a coupon, whereas a free meal comp from a casino could end up with someone losing hundreds of dollars.
MandrakeUpdate is an adequate tool once you get to used it but it is still overly complicated for the novice. Part of the problem is that it offers little assistance to set it up and contains some very cryptic buttons. It would only be by luck that a novice would know that the "Edit Sources" button is what you must click on to add an update site (after filling in the cryptic "New Source" dialog), or that "Reload sources" actually means "Check for updates".
Why couldn't they give it simple UI like Red Carpet instead of all these cryptic buttons and dialogs? It wouldn't have diminished its usefullness to do so.
Frankly it's perplexing. An hour in a usability lab would have exposed these flaws. It makes me wonder if Mandrake have any clue about usability at all. It is no wonder people say Linux isn't ready for the desktop when distros can even write a software update tool without slapping an overly complicated UI on top of it.
Part of the reason the Palm is so good is precisely because it is a "calculator". It doesn't have to waste precious energy trying to power a colour display, or a fast CPU, or the large amounts of memory that the iPaq has. Less electronics also means the thing is smaller and lighter than an iPaq which means I can put it in my jeans pocket.
Despite being less powerful, I have yet to run out of memory on the thing, even though I have quite a few useful apps on it such as BigClock, AvantGo, DiddleBug and a dozen or so ebooks.
Personally, I'd like an iPaq to fiddle with but I don't see why I should splash out a large amount of money for one when I already have a PDA which does its job so well.
I think the iPaq is a neat device but it certainly isn't as good as a Palm device as an organizer
I have a Palm Vx and it kills the likes of the iPaq as personal organiser. It's lighter, smaller, has a much longer battery life, is much cheaper, handwriting recognition is good and the organiser apps are great. All these add up to a more convenient accessible device.
Re:They'll NEVER beat Babylon 5
on
Andromeda
·
· Score: 2
The two are totally disimilar.
JMS is really talented guy, scripting entire series of B5 and finding time to answer his fans through all of it.
On the other hand, Roddenberry is a producer who had one good idea his whole life and milked it for all its worth. Other than Star Trek, he's produced nought but scores of second rate, short lived sci fi series.
Imagine if the next versions of Apache and Squid were changed so they inserted the "no smart tags" metadata by default. It would kill smart tags technology stone dead.
The difference is that its easy to walk the web and it's quick and painless.
Walking Freenet is not quick and painless. It can be an agonisingly slow wait for a document to arrive, and the actual act of pulling the document affects how the document is cached. That's why searching should be a protocol. At the very least it should be possible to pull a document without raising it's importance.
I have great hopes for Freenet's future, but the current implementation is agonisingly slow and difficult to find anything with (unless you have a link to it). The project really needs to implement a decent search protocol.
The best way to get the price of DVDs down is to stop buying them!!!
People have to be educated before boycotting will work.
There is a perception that because a DVD is better quality (than VHS), that it should therefore cost more. Pretty much the same argument that CDs had over LPs and cassettes. This is hogwash of course. A DVD weighs less, takes up half the volume, and the cost to manufacture (even considering mastering). This combination of the weight, volume and price makes floorspace selling DVDs four times more profitable than selling VHS. People should be aware of that. Add to that the regional encoding issue which, especially outside of the US artifically raises prices even more and it all comes down to one thing:
People are being ripped off.
Once that fact sinks in, I suspect consumers will boycott or certainly be more selective of which titles they buy. Prices will come down if that happens.
I switched to DMoz now that every directory entry in Yahoo! is goes through a CGI redirect script. Who knows what they're doing with the data they gather? If you have a My Yahoo! account you should be extremely concerned that they could associate every place you visit with your Yahoo! ID.
DMoz is used here as well as here. If you don't believe they're taken from DMoz, try searching for for "Slashdot" or browsing through the categories a bit.
As for Mozilla/Gecko, haven't you heard of the Komodo project? No doubt it will debut in an embedded form in AOL 7.0 and not to mention Netscape 6.5 and that AOL/Gateway device it's already running in.
Up until now, encryption support in email packages has been rotten. If you want people to more regularly use encryption, lobby or better yet assist with efforts to integrate GPG/PGP into the likes of Mozilla.
Why PGP or GPG? Well, primarily because its better than the execrable S/MIME format. Not having to obtain keys from a CA, not having certs that expire and generally faster encryption/decryption are major points in favour of supporting OpenPGP compliant encryption.
Re:OSS Zealots Launch FUD Attack Against Windows 2
on
XFree 4.1.0 Out
·
· Score: 2
Ignore people who advocate an OS on grounds of religion. I just look at it this way - I saved enough money by using Linux instead of W2K that I could take my girlfriend and myself on holiday for a week.
And it's not like I sacrificed anything by doing so. Linux (Mandrake to be precise) works perfectly in the firewall/router/NAT role its in. Probably much better than W2K server would in fact considering the hardware I'm running it on.
Big deal. So the guy was rich enough to fly into space. That doesn't make him an expert on all space-related matters. He should be seen for what he is, a rich arsehole who's upset that NASA wouldn't kowtow to his selfish quest to go into space.
You don't need to port an entire operating system in order to run MAME. It would be much simpler to port MAME directly to the PS/PS2 in the same way its been ported to Win32, Mac etc. Probably its the only way you could use it anyway what with the low memory constraints.
I have a crappy P133 AT box sitting in the corner. Rather than throw it away, I installed Linux on it and now it makes a fine router/firewall for my network. Now all my other machines share a dial-out ISDN connection, with the box doing all the masquerading, routing, DHCP, DNS and HTTP proxying. Basically it's life would be over by now if Windows were the only choice.
BTW I tried installing OpenBSD and FreeBSD on it before Linux but I was less than enamoured with their support for ISDN. Linux works like a charm and I'm very happy.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to say - SO WHAT. Every one is entitled to their opinion whether others agree with it or not. If he wants to vent at the opposition then let him. I bet half the people on Slashdot have done the same at one time or another. I know I have.
This means ActiveX is pretty limited and next to useless in Konq. It's a kewl feature and handy for shockwave, but that's about it.
BTW you can run ActiveX controls in Mozilla or Netscape (on Win32) if you want but you're still face the same limitations.
It was called a ZX81.
Every time you use your card the casino is collating data on your gambling character; how often you gamble; where you live; what kind of credit card you have and approximate credit limit; whether you're trailer trash or affluent; whether you're single or married; gay or straight; how many kids you have; whether you're ahead or behind; what your spending limit is; what table games you play; whether you're reckless or cautious; what machines you like; how long you play them for; if you are loyal to a machine; where you play in the casino; the times when you gamble; the times when you don't gamble; what features of a machine make you spend more; what food you like eating; whether you respond to "comps"; what room you like and so on.
All of that information makes it considerably easier to part someone with their money. You can target certain kinds of people and hit them at their most vulnerable spot. If the table take is down, the casino sends a mailshot out to some high, reckless spenders. If it's low season, mailshot all the trailer trash with cheap bus fares and accomodation.
The same is true for supermarkets of course, but then the scale is so much different. A supermarket mailshot might get someone to spend ten dollars more on their groceries with a coupon, whereas a free meal comp from a casino could end up with someone losing hundreds of dollars.
Why bother? Just pull out the fuse that powers the GPS tracking system.
Why couldn't they give it simple UI like Red Carpet instead of all these cryptic buttons and dialogs? It wouldn't have diminished its usefullness to do so.
Frankly it's perplexing. An hour in a usability lab would have exposed these flaws. It makes me wonder if Mandrake have any clue about usability at all. It is no wonder people say Linux isn't ready for the desktop when distros can even write a software update tool without slapping an overly complicated UI on top of it.
Surely someone somewhere in GPL land has written some code that let's you do what their passport software does. If so let's hear about it!
Forgive me I meant season. He wrote an entire season though I can't recall offhand which one.
3 series but one idea - Star Trek. Most of his other ideas whether alive or dead at the time have amounted to little.
If they really wanted to catch people speeding they should install tachometers into every vehicle.
Despite being less powerful, I have yet to run out of memory on the thing, even though I have quite a few useful apps on it such as BigClock, AvantGo, DiddleBug and a dozen or so ebooks.
Personally, I'd like an iPaq to fiddle with but I don't see why I should splash out a large amount of money for one when I already have a PDA which does its job so well.
I have a Palm Vx and it kills the likes of the iPaq as personal organiser. It's lighter, smaller, has a much longer battery life, is much cheaper, handwriting recognition is good and the organiser apps are great. All these add up to a more convenient accessible device.
JMS is really talented guy, scripting entire series of B5 and finding time to answer his fans through all of it.
On the other hand, Roddenberry is a producer who had one good idea his whole life and milked it for all its worth. Other than Star Trek, he's produced nought but scores of second rate, short lived sci fi series.
I suspect many ISPs would be grateful that the proxy prevent smart tags by default because it would cut down on the amount of traffic.
Imagine if the next versions of Apache and Squid were changed so they inserted the "no smart tags" metadata by default. It would kill smart tags technology stone dead.
Walking Freenet is not quick and painless. It can be an agonisingly slow wait for a document to arrive, and the actual act of pulling the document affects how the document is cached. That's why searching should be a protocol. At the very least it should be possible to pull a document without raising it's importance.
I have great hopes for Freenet's future, but the current implementation is agonisingly slow and difficult to find anything with (unless you have a link to it). The project really needs to implement a decent search protocol.
People have to be educated before boycotting will work.
There is a perception that because a DVD is better quality (than VHS), that it should therefore cost more. Pretty much the same argument that CDs had over LPs and cassettes. This is hogwash of course. A DVD weighs less, takes up half the volume, and the cost to manufacture (even considering mastering). This combination of the weight, volume and price makes floorspace selling DVDs four times more profitable than selling VHS. People should be aware of that. Add to that the regional encoding issue which, especially outside of the US artifically raises prices even more and it all comes down to one thing:
People are being ripped off.
Once that fact sinks in, I suspect consumers will boycott or certainly be more selective of which titles they buy. Prices will come down if that happens.
I switched to DMoz now that every directory entry in Yahoo! is goes through a CGI redirect script. Who knows what they're doing with the data they gather? If you have a My Yahoo! account you should be extremely concerned that they could associate every place you visit with your Yahoo! ID.
DMoz is used here as well as here. If you don't believe they're taken from DMoz, try searching for for "Slashdot" or browsing through the categories a bit.
As for Mozilla/Gecko, haven't you heard of the Komodo project? No doubt it will debut in an embedded form in AOL 7.0 and not to mention Netscape 6.5 and that AOL/Gateway device it's already running in.
Why PGP or GPG? Well, primarily because its better than the execrable S/MIME format. Not having to obtain keys from a CA, not having certs that expire and generally faster encryption/decryption are major points in favour of supporting OpenPGP compliant encryption.
And it's not like I sacrificed anything by doing so. Linux (Mandrake to be precise) works perfectly in the firewall/router/NAT role its in. Probably much better than W2K server would in fact considering the hardware I'm running it on.
Big deal. So the guy was rich enough to fly into space. That doesn't make him an expert on all space-related matters. He should be seen for what he is, a rich arsehole who's upset that NASA wouldn't kowtow to his selfish quest to go into space.
You don't need to port an entire operating system in order to run MAME. It would be much simpler to port MAME directly to the PS/PS2 in the same way its been ported to Win32, Mac etc. Probably its the only way you could use it anyway what with the low memory constraints.
BTW I tried installing OpenBSD and FreeBSD on it before Linux but I was less than enamoured with their support for ISDN. Linux works like a charm and I'm very happy.