Incidentally, I wonder if anybody around here has any experience using PC keyboards and mice with Macs?
As long as they are USB, PC mice are fully supported out of the box -- no problem.
The same is true for PC keyboards, with a few annoyances. All the functions are available, but the Mac-specific ones are on non-obvious keys, which is somewhat annoying. The following is as found out experimentally on my Logitech officially-PC-only keyboard, for which there is no Mac driver available, in combination with my PowerMac G5:
The Windows/Start key is the Command (cloverleaf) key. The Alt (= Option) and Command keys are on opposite locations than on a Mac keyboard.
F12 is the eject key. (On the Logitech keyboards the function keys are only reachable by turning the "Mode F" indicator on.)
Pause/Break is the "increase brightness" key, Scrl Lk (Scroll Lock) is the "decrease brightness" key (on the Logitech keyboards, the latter one is only reachable by turning the "Mode F" indicator off).
The Volume and Mute controls work as indicated on the keyboard.
There are utilities available with which you can switch the Command and Option keys around so that on PC keyboards they are on the location you would expect. I use uControl on Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) to achieve this, but it doesn't run on 10.4 (Tiger). The uControl webpage refers to fKeys as an alternative for Tiger, but it doesn't seem to have the Option and Command key reversal feature, so I don't know how to get that functionality for Tiger. I imagine there must be something out there, but I can't be bothered to look it up right now.
So, since we're having fun being nerdy and pedantic, here is a way that works even if there aren't any JPG files in the directory and even with JPG files with a different file name extension (or without any):
So who's really at fault here? The students? The hospital for not securing their computers and network? Or the adware companies for providing the incentive?
So if you distribute a modified version of the Firefox source you have to remove all references to the name "Firefox"?
Yes. But it's not like they have made that difficult. If you compile Firefox from source, by default you get an application named "Deer Park" -- unless you enable the "--enable-official-branding" option.
If independent software packagers risk running afoul of the intellectual property lawyers retained by open source projects then what sort of mess have we created?
Even if there is no built-in way to remove the trademark, it's not like using grep is that hard.
No, it isn't. All (native) Mac applications are MDI; it is fundamental to the Mac's user interface. The difference is that the Mac does MDI right by not embedding document windows in a big application window; the screen is the (transparent) application window, with the menu bar at the top, where it belongs. But it is still MDI because the same instance of an application opens several documents, not just one.
[re: formatting partition] how many of our parents or non-techie friends know how? Very few if any is my guess. I know mine can't.
True. But those parents or non-techie friends wouldn't have installed an operating system on their own anyway -- neither Windows nor Linux. They use what comes preinstalled or get their geek friend to install it. I think if someone can install an operating system, they can format the partition to get rid of it.
Driver API. Centralised driver development doesn't work - period.
Yes it does, as long as the driver is distributed in source. But even closed-source NVIDIA seems to manage fine - they just put a source code wrapper around their binaries. Installed fine for me on 'unsupported' Slackware.
More driver stupidity. Not every program people run on Linux is GPLd today,
Neither is every driver . Your innuendo about kernel developers threatening to sue is just that.
C++ support. It doesn't work.
BWAHAHA! Try to tell that to the developers of the preferred Linux desktop environment, KDE, which is entirely written in C++. And I'm not even mentioning such non-working programs as Firefox and Inkscape. <smirk>
No easy install/uninstall -
I guess formatting a partition isn't easy enough for you?
No credible DRM support.
Praise the Lawd for that.
Now I've done my share of troll-feeding for the day. Bye!
Relegating their set of newsgroups under comp.* (one of the Big 8 hierarchies) would render it subject to their newsgroup creation procedures which involves an eleborate public voting process. That is fine for public newsgroups but not appropriate for a set of groups belonging to and managed by a specific organization.
Essentially these are simply local newsgroups that the Mozilla organization has chosen to distribute around the net. They could have started web forums but this way you can read their groups with your local newsreader instead.
I have no data, but I would imagine that the graphics processor does a huge chunk of the processing in games like those mentioned, and the video cards haven't changed architectures, so the speed hit caused by the CPU emulation would have relatively little effect.
Actually, in The Netherlands there was a programme on radio that broadcast data tapes (!). Just tape the radio show to cassette, run a translator from BASICODE (which was the "univeral" basic dialect the broadcasts were in) to your home computer's very own basic dialect, and you were in business.
You are attributing far too much intelligence to them. Anyone who would seriously think of filtering the internet obviously has no idea of what it is.
That doesn't matter, because the vast majority of the "filterees" understand just as little, if not less. That's more than enough for the politician to show that something has been Accomplished(TM) and the rest can be dismissed as outlaws or deviants and either ignored or prosecuted. Hey, it seems to work for the Chinese...
I own a gun. If a criminal enters my house to do me harm, I will have no choice but to kill him with this gun. That doesn't mean I want to kill everyone with this gun.
You must be American. I wish you a speedy recovery from that affliction.
I've ranted about this before, but why are people so obsessed with email?
Because it's the most widely used and most practical application of the Internet.
No encryption (unless you have a degree in IT), no authentication (because people are tight, and nobody out side of IT knows what PGP is),
Public-key encryption is inherently difficult, it's not going to be made any easier by changing email protocols. There are very user-friendly PGP interfaces available already, the problem is getting people to use them. The bottom line is that people simply don't care about privacy or encryption.
poor support for attachments (MIME is a hack)
Give me a break! MIME works just fine.
and no enforcable equivalent to recorded delivery.
That point I can concede, but that's nothing that a simple "please send a quick reply if you have seen this" can't solve.
That's before we start to think about the mess that is HTML encoded mails.
Agreed there. So don't send them.
I could live without security, but I'm really suprised that corporations can.
I'm not surprised in the least.
[...] If the FOSS community could establish a new email protocol that transparnetly added real support for attachments, security and formatting and it was adopted quickly by Thunderbird, Evolution and Mail.app (I'm a Mac zealot so I want it too) the next version of Exchange would support it too.
When he finally dies or gets a life slackware is going to be over.
No, the community will take over as it has before during PV's illness.
I wouldn't bet my companies server farm on when that will be.
Right, because all Slackware servers will magically stop working the moment PV dies, and you will have no time at all to consider alternatives and devise an upgrade plan for the case that even became necessary, eh?
Keep surfing -- there's a link in the comments section of that blog to an FAQ on DDT that's more convincing, better documented, and entirely in favor of the original poster's thesis.
Consider the source. According to the Skeptic's Dictionary (not exactly a front for environmentalists), corporate whore Steven J. Milloy of junkscience.com is not exactly a source of objective information.
Not really... If you have your own top level domain (say uk) and you run your own top level servers for that TLD then the US can't do squat to your TLD over night.
That's wrong. Some single entity has to resolve the top level to distinguish between.com and.uk. All of the top-level domains, including the country ones (.uk,.nl, etc.) are ultimately resolved by the US-controlled root servers. This is a feature of the way DNS works. So the US could very well simply disable.nl overnight and there would not be a damn thing we could do about it in the current situation -- apart, of course, from setting up our own root servers and thus 'splitting' the net.
Do you really think if the EU splits the internet, no EU citizens will have access to US webpages?
No, I think the EU root servers will still query the US root servers so that all American sites will be accessible to Europeans. It would be the Americans who cannot reach many European sites, instead.
Note that this idea is not exactly new, there are several
alternative DNS root servers
already (e.g.
ORSN)
which are effectively splits of the Internet as discussed here. Users of these systems can reach the regular Internet domains as well as the alternative ones.
Slashdot Mirror
Konsole damnit!
As long as they are USB, PC mice are fully supported out of the box -- no problem.
The same is true for PC keyboards, with a few annoyances. All the functions are available, but the Mac-specific ones are on non-obvious keys, which is somewhat annoying. The following is as found out experimentally on my Logitech officially-PC-only keyboard, for which there is no Mac driver available, in combination with my PowerMac G5:
There are utilities available with which you can switch the Command and Option keys around so that on PC keyboards they are on the location you would expect. I use uControl on Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) to achieve this, but it doesn't run on 10.4 (Tiger). The uControl webpage refers to fKeys as an alternative for Tiger, but it doesn't seem to have the Option and Command key reversal feature, so I don't know how to get that functionality for Tiger. I imagine there must be something out there, but I can't be bothered to look it up right now.
I hope this helps.
So, since we're having fun being nerdy and pedantic, here is a way that works even if there aren't any JPG files in the directory and even with JPG files with a different file name extension (or without any):
file * | grep "JPEG image data" | cut -f 1 -d ":" | while read i; do
convert -sample 25%x25% "$i" "thumb-$i"
done
I have played Crystal Quest for many hours and it doesn't have that sound in it at all.
All of the above.
DUH!
Yes. But it's not like they have made that difficult. If you compile Firefox from source, by default you get an application named "Deer Park" -- unless you enable the "--enable-official-branding" option.
Even if there is no built-in way to remove the trademark, it's not like using grep is that hard.
No, it isn't. All (native) Mac applications are MDI; it is fundamental to the Mac's user interface. The difference is that the Mac does MDI right by not embedding document windows in a big application window; the screen is the (transparent) application window, with the menu bar at the top, where it belongs. But it is still MDI because the same instance of an application opens several documents, not just one.
True. But those parents or non-techie friends wouldn't have installed an operating system on their own anyway -- neither Windows nor Linux. They use what comes preinstalled or get their geek friend to install it. I think if someone can install an operating system, they can format the partition to get rid of it.
Yes it does, as long as the driver is distributed in source. But even closed-source NVIDIA seems to manage fine - they just put a source code wrapper around their binaries. Installed fine for me on 'unsupported' Slackware.
Neither is every driver . Your innuendo about kernel developers threatening to sue is just that.
BWAHAHA! Try to tell that to the developers of the preferred Linux desktop environment, KDE, which is entirely written in C++. And I'm not even mentioning such non-working programs as Firefox and Inkscape. <smirk>
I guess formatting a partition isn't easy enough for you?
Praise the Lawd for that.
Now I've done my share of troll-feeding for the day. Bye!
Yeah, obviously that should have been: "I, for one, welcome our new Google OS overlords."
You have got to be kidding me. They will even go so far as to spam for you and have been doing so for years.
Relegating their set of newsgroups under comp.* (one of the Big 8 hierarchies) would render it subject to their newsgroup creation procedures which involves an eleborate public voting process. That is fine for public newsgroups but not appropriate for a set of groups belonging to and managed by a specific organization.
Essentially these are simply local newsgroups that the Mozilla organization has chosen to distribute around the net. They could have started web forums but this way you can read their groups with your local newsreader instead.
Er, no. That should be: "Good. NeXT!" Remember, those two capitals are essential.
Gotta love 'em. :)
I have no data, but I would imagine that the graphics processor does a huge chunk of the processing in games like those mentioned, and the video cards haven't changed architectures, so the speed hit caused by the CPU emulation would have relatively little effect.
Fond memories, indeed. Funny how history repeats itself: BASICODE could be seen as a precursor to Java. Write once, run anywhere, early 1980s version.
One funny detail is that the former Communist East Germany's state radio (of all places) copied the idea and also broadcast German BASICODE programs.
I still have that issue. :-) That was specific to MSX computers, though.
That doesn't matter, because the vast majority of the "filterees" understand just as little, if not less. That's more than enough for the politician to show that something has been Accomplished(TM) and the rest can be dismissed as outlaws or deviants and either ignored or prosecuted. Hey, it seems to work for the Chinese...
<pedant>Except it's caveat venditor.</pedant>
You must be American. I wish you a speedy recovery from that affliction.
Because it's the most widely used and most practical application of the Internet.
Public-key encryption is inherently difficult, it's not going to be made any easier by changing email protocols. There are very user-friendly PGP interfaces available already, the problem is getting people to use them. The bottom line is that people simply don't care about privacy or encryption.
Give me a break! MIME works just fine.
That point I can concede, but that's nothing that a simple "please send a quick reply if you have seen this" can't solve.
Agreed there. So don't send them.
I'm not surprised in the least.
Ha! You don't seriously believe that yourself.
No, the community will take over as it has before during PV's illness.
Right, because all Slackware servers will magically stop working the moment PV dies, and you will have no time at all to consider alternatives and devise an upgrade plan for the case that even became necessary, eh?
Consider the source. According to the Skeptic's Dictionary (not exactly a front for environmentalists), corporate whore Steven J. Milloy of junkscience.com is not exactly a source of objective information.
That's wrong. Some single entity has to resolve the top level to distinguish between .com and .uk. All of the top-level domains, including the country ones (.uk, .nl, etc.) are ultimately resolved by the US-controlled root servers. This is a feature of the way DNS works. So the US could very well simply disable .nl overnight and there would not be a damn thing we could do about it in the current situation -- apart, of course, from setting up our own root servers and thus 'splitting' the net.
No, I think the EU root servers will still query the US root servers so that all American sites will be accessible to Europeans. It would be the Americans who cannot reach many European sites, instead.
Note that this idea is not exactly new, there are several alternative DNS root servers already (e.g. ORSN) which are effectively splits of the Internet as discussed here. Users of these systems can reach the regular Internet domains as well as the alternative ones.
But it does fail gracefully. Other than looking like crap, Slashdot is perfectly usable in Netscape 4.