And by buying the CD, knowing that it is DRMed, you are saying "Getting something that sounds decent is more important to me than my freedom." And the RIAA is listening.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Re:journalists
on
Meet Joe Blog
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· Score: 4, Insightful
There are a few legitimate journalists around. But when most major media outlets are owned by the very companies they are reporting on, legitimate objectivity is impossible.
Step one to taking back America: No more than one media outlet owned at a time, and "content producers" (ie, cartels) cannot own news outlets.
As the parent and others have posted, X11 has TWO (well, three but no one uses the third) clipboards. One is highlight/middle-click, and one is Copy/Paste. The proper, documented (see parent and others) behavior is for both to be implemented and for both to operate completely and entirely independently of each other.
In a properly implemented program, you should be able to use it as if there is no Primary Selection feature (highlight/middle-click) and not notice the difference from your usual Windows/Mac Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V habits. If you come across a program that does not do that, and mixes them together, that is not a feature that is a bug. Report it as a bug. If the developer dismisses it, report it as a bug again, email the developer telling him that you're going elsewhere, and switch to any of the plethora of other programs around (Free Software is great like that) that do things properly. Eventually someone will get the message.
That's one reason why I stick to KDE applications whenever possible. All KDE applications (ie, ones provided by the KDE.org team) are well-behaved and non-buggy in this respect. Programs that misbehave should simply not be used. Period.
We went through this once before with Ma Bell. You didn't own your phone, you rented it from the phone company, who could futz with it whenever and however they wanted. They also had no incentive to ever upgrade it. My parents still have an ancient phone in their kitchen that is owned by the phone company, even though legally they are required to let you connect your own phone.
Now, these companies want to do the same with computers. You don't own anything, you merely rent it as part of a service contract. Car companies want you to lease a car, rent an apartment...
HELL NO! When possible, you always want to own your stuff instead of leasing it. For one thing, its financially more advantageous. (Take good care of it, and the cost over its lifetime is lower.) For another, it gives you equity for loans and other transactions. For another, it frees you of the control of the leasing party.
Me: You know, I want to try some different software that MS doesn't offer in their archive. MS: OK, fine, give us your computer back. Me: What? No way, dude, all of my personal files are on here. MS: Gee, sucks to be you. Guess you're stuck giving us money just to read your own data. Neener neener!
And that's just one example. The only compromise point I could see would be the way mobile phone companies subsidize the cost of a mobile phone with a service agreement, but that's a "lease to buy" arrangement at best. When it's over, that is YOUR phone by law, and even before that it's still your phone, you just have to pay an early termination fee and the phone is still yours. MSN used to do that with low-end PCs before they realized that no one wanted it.
Perhaps someone can explain to this ignorant American exactly how the government can use publication in a newspaper as a punishment for a crime (whatever the crime may be). At least here in the US, we at least pretend to have freedom of the press.
I'm happy to see that they're planning to do something non-drastic. RCN opted to simply block all outbound 25 and inbound 80, which is asinine. Fortunately I'd already moved from them to Comcast by that point, and Comcast wasn't misbehaving. If they start blocking ports, though, I'll go elsewhere.
Biggest advantage of running my own mail server? I can run IMAP there as well with squirrelmail, then receive AND send mail from any terminal in the world on my own account. No screwing around with finding the local SMTP server on whatever ISP I happen to be on. That's far more useful than you realize! And no, I do not accept the idea that just because some people abuse SMTP to send spam that we should slam everyone for it. I also run my own DNS server behind my firewall to let me centrally control aliases to various hosts. That's a perfectly benign act. I also make NTP requests, although I don't serve NTP to anyone else.
Someone else suggested a good compromise, I think. Default block anything below 1024 (in the appropriate direction, depending on the port), but let anyone explicitly request any given port to be opened, no questions asked. Quick signup on a web form, no long delay. That automatically keeps 99% of the zombies in check (since zombified users, most likely, won't know what a port is) and allows people like me to make full use of an always-on connection. Anyone who has requested a port be opened, however, is monitored not for content but for volume. OK, they'd get cranky if my home web server were slashdotted. Well so would I.:-) If they see a shitload of mail flooding out of my mail server constantly, then either I'm a spammer (in which case they should kill my account) or my SMTP server has been hacked, in which case they can notify me and I can fix it, saving everyone in the world a huge hassle. If I don't fix it, then they can turn the port off until I do.
Makes everyone happy, and kills most zombies in the process.
Having Shatner guest star as a random alien villan is cheesy and dumb, but in the end harmless compared to the other stupidity that is Enterprise.
Having Shatner appear as James T. Kirk would be the final straw that would have me petition to have the "Star Trek" taken back out of the show's title, the show disowned as part of the Trek franchise, and a price taken out on Rick Berman's head.
I mean, come on. Kirk is in his what, 30s or 40s during the TOS series? Enterprise is set over a century before (early 2150s vs. late 2260s). Even with the overreliance on screwing with the timeline that Berman is so fond of, there's no way to make that work. Besides, Shatner himself is in his 70s now. He'd have to be playing an extremely old Kirk sent back in time or something. Of course, Kirk already died in Veridian III ("Generations").
Whoever speculated that Shatner would be playing Kirk either has an even lower opinion of Berman than I do (which is saying a great deal), or is even more of a moron than Berman and Braga (which is saying even more).
Earlier this year at work, I needed to run Visio 2003 to make some simple diagrams. (This is at work, not home, so I didn't have a choice of software.) Visio, installed on Win2k SP4, would not run. When I started it up, it would crash immediately, usually without even giving me a message.
Called Microsoft.
After a 45 minute call to setup an account, then a wait to get a callback, then another 45 minute conversation with a very nice Indian gentleman, we fixed the problem.
Microsoft Visio and Microsoft Windows are incompatible. This is a known issue. The fix is to drill down to some obscure registry key and add a 1 to it. Then everything works fine.
And somehow Linux is the OS with the reputation for obscure configuration and software conflicts. Go figure.
Back in 1995, my family had been using our first PC (whitebox 486 with Windows 3.1) for about a year. Our Microsoft mouse had been trouble from day 1. It kept sticking on screen as if the pointer hit something, even though the mouse itself was fine. I called MS, and over the course of the next few weeks they had us clean the mouse (several times), buy cleaning kits, change drivers, get a new mouse, nothing seemed to work. Finally, one tech (perfect English in those days) said, and I quote, "Well, I guess it's obviously your mouse pad. I guess you could always take your business elsewhere."
The next day we bought a Logitech mouse, and have used exclusively Logitech mice for the past decade without the slightest bit of trouble. I later went on to help found a Linux Users Group in college.
The moral: Dude, NEVER dare your customer to take their business elsewhere. Not even if you're Microsoft.
Re:Fedora Core 2 wins the vote of this Debianite
on
Fedora Core 2 Review
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· Score: 3, Informative
Ahem.
Debian Unstable (sid) is only slightly less bleeding edge than Gentoo.
Debian Stable (currently woody) is about as bleeding edge as a wooly mammoth.:-)
The joke would have been funny if you knew what you were talking about.
2) In the next election, send a letter to their opponent telling them why the incumbent pissed you off (software patent support), along with a check.
WTH? How does that differ from bribary? (Pardon my naivety.)
I'm not sure about in Europe, but over in the States political contributions to a campaign are considered a part of free speech. Unfortunately that's what's allowed our government to be sold to the highest bidder (this week the oil companies, last week the media cartels), but until that changes, the only choice is to get lots of little people to bribe the politicians with more "donations" than the big fish. There is strength in numbers, if the numbers have zeros on the right side.
When this sort of thing happens in the US, there is a huge cry of "you don't like it, you voted for them. Vote them out." Well, now it's time.
I'm in the US, so I can't do it this time. But to all the Europeans on Slashdot: Your own governments just lied to you about an EXTREMELY important issue. Your own representatives said they would vote against software patents, and then voted for them. Your next move is very simple.
1) Send a letter to the appropriate bureaucrat stating that you are upset, and inform them that they have lost your vote. 2) In the next election, send a letter to their opponent telling them why the incumbent pissed you off (software patent support), along with a check. 3) Vote for the challenger. 4) Watch as a few people wake up and realize that the voting public is not completely stupid and full of sheep. 5) Profit (not in money, but in Freedom).
Your turn now. You take out those bosos while we work against George "Fascist" Bush here on this side of the Atlantic. If you don't, you only encourage our slide into an information dark ages.
I'm gonna go out on a limb: I think the theme song is the best theme song ever written for any series. It captures the mood of the series perfectly. The first time I heard it I didn't like it, but then as I watched the opening sequence again I realized what they were trying to do and how well the song fit.
I'll admit I loathe it less than I did when the show first started. However, it's still a dumb song, and it actually got WORSE with season 3. Not because of the "jazzing up" of the music, but because they changed the premise of the show!
The musical style doesn't fit Trek. The video sequence, however, fits perfectly. That's good. The first half or so of the lyrics do sort of fit the idea for the first two seasons. (Vulcans won't stop us from getting out in to space like my daddy wanted me to, yee haw! --John Archer) The second half ("faith of the heart" repeated over and over again) is just plain dumb, and also doesn't fit Trek.
But then Berman decided that exploring and defying the Vulcans by being all exploration-like "wasn't big enough". So instead, let's throw in a terrorist plot (it's the in thing) and then rip off a 1980s computer game (no one will remember it) after wasting a third of season 2 building up the Klingons and doing nothing with it (because it's like, we can say Duras a lot, Trekkies know that name, right?). And then we keep the theme music that no longer is even tangentially related to the overall plot arc of season 3!
That makes about as much sense as anything else Berman has done. That is to say, none. Fire Berman and his team and hire some REAL writers (DC Fontana, Diane Duane, Diane Carey, Peter David, all old Trek hands who "got it"), and maybe Trek will start not-sucking again.
More opportunity for Rick Berman to urinate on Roddenberry's vision.
I know it's cool to knock Enterprise, but I've been knocking Berman since long before it was cool.:-) The man just doesn't understand what Roddenberry created, and now he's trying to compete head on with other Sci Fi or with the memory of Babylon 5. Is it any wonder Star Trek has been in a downward spiral for the past 10 years?
Enterprise's ratings weren't good enough "just exploring" (and as they were doing a poor job of it I'm not surprised), so instead they spent a third of season 2 building up a relationship with the Klingons only to drop it at the last second to run off on a blatant 9/11-inspired warmed over mini-epic. (And stolen from a 1980s Star Trek computer game for the Commodore 64 called "Star Trek: Rebel Universe".) Everything about it is predictable, from the plot right down to the characters involved. And of course there's no tension, because we all know (since it's a prequel) that Earth isn't going to be destroyed.
Of course, Berman isn't pitching to people who know Star Trek, he's pitching to 20-somethings that the beancounters like to pitch to. Of course, those people don't watch Star Trek BECAUSE it's Star Trek. Don't alienate your existing fan base to go after a new one that doesn't want you.
Of course, after this season's finale, then what? Go back to exploring? Yeah, that will help ratings now that they've said that exploring "isn't big enough". Throw in another huge season-long pseudo-epic plot thread to further destroy the timeline? I don't know what they're going to do.
On the one hand, it's Trek, yay, there will be more. On the other, this isn't the Trek I grew up on (TNG and reruns of TOS), and I wouldn't greatly miss it.
Although moving the show to Friday night means that it won't be lasting much longer. That is how NBC killed the original series, after all.
You want to be away from a computer, but you want an electronic way to take notes? Does Not Compute.
Honestly, get yourself a Palm and the Palm UT Keyboard or even the wireless IR keyboard they sell. OK, so it's electronic. It's still the most convenient you'll find, and has a ton of other features as well. Like reading ebooks on the plane on the way to your vacation, then taking notes while on the vacation, then playing games on the way back from your vacation. It works out quite nicely.:-)
These guys can give you great advice on which model you want to get. They've reviewed just about every handheld in existence.
And still customers HAVE THAT OPTION. No one is threatening them at gunpoint. They are voluntarily handing over their money, Bill Gates is not mugging them.
You clearly do not understand the concept of a monopoly. I CAN'T take my business elsewhere. If I want to be able to do business with the vast majority of the businesses in the US, I have to use Windows or MS formats. My university supports distance learning by video stream, but only, ONLY using WMP 9. Microsoft actively works to KEEP 3rd parties from being compatible, thus protecting their monopoly.
Gunpoint? Maybe not. But "exclusive club needed if you want to send your resume to someone point", most certainly.
The "not forcing you" argument is one of the stupidest arguments I've ever heard, and yet I hear it time and time again. A monopoly DOES force you. That's the point of a monopoly, you CAN'T take your business elsewhere. And Microsoft is legally recognized as an official, government-regulated monopoly. (Our wonderful Republican government just chooses to forget that "regulated" part.)
The reason MySQL has been so successful is that it is NOT a relational DBMS. It doesn't have any of the features that a "real" database would have. That's the point.
MySQL is a glorified card catalog with a reduced-SQL interface. And for the vast majority of the projects that use it, that really is all it needs.
I say this as someone who has not written in any production SQL environments except for MS Access and MySQL. For small stuff, all I want is a card catalog with joins, and MySQL gives me that easily. I know the projects I've worked on aren't going to scale to a million rows, they're only in the few thousands, or in a few cases only a few hundred. If they start to get to the point that they're handling millions of transactions, then I'll be rewriting the whole thing anyway.
Tell me: WHY would I want to use Oracle or even PostgreSQL for a recipe book or web calendar when MySQL requires less mental overhead for me? I wouldn't. That's like using a Mac truck to drive to the grocery store and back.
When I start writing financial apps or systems that actually require complete integrity checking, good bye MySQL, hello Postgres. But for right now, MySQL is simple, my web host supports MySQL, and it's all these projects are going to need.
Of course you did. You just don't see the lies as being harmful so you do it. You probably lie every day at least once if not a dozen times. They may be small lies but they are lies anyway.
No, I do not lie about coming in late or the dog eating my homework or whatever. I do not lie.
Why? Because I am an honorable person, and it is dishonorable to deliberately lie to someone. If you were an honorable person, you would innately understand why.
Do a lot of people lie on a regular basis? Sadly, yes. Such people are an absolute disgrace to the name of Man, and the sooner they are expunged from society and the gene pool the better.
And it is the responsibility of honorable men to see that such liars are not allowed to run our society into dishonorable ruin any longer. Now which sort of man are you?
You're thinking of two different products. What has been released, as I understand it, is the source code for GEOS 1.0 for the C64. Awesome little machine, with an even more awesome GUI that ran off of floppies. (Back in my day we didn't have hard drives, and we liked it!) Very powerful, very stable, especially when you consider it had a whole 64 KILObytes of RAM and ONE Megahertz to play with. They had a trash can concept long before Apple even thought of it.
You're thinking of GeoWorks Ensemble, based on the GEOS 2.0 kernel, which ran on the PC. It was a contemporary of Windows 3.0, and every review at the time said that it wiped the floor with Microsoft's baby. Of course, the company had zero marketing skill while Microsoft, well, we know their marketing strategy. So Windows won and GEOS, which I still consider to be one of the best idiot-friendly interfaces ever created, eventually petered out.
It's last gasp was on the Casio Z-7000 Zoomer handhelds. They were released right after the original Apple Newton (the Newton beat them by about 3 months), and wasa joint coventure between Casio (hardware), GeoWorks (OS), and a little startup company run by Jeff Hawkins and Dona Dubinsky called "Palm Computing". While the Z-7000 was a market flop, along with the original Newton, it was from the mistakes there that Hawkins and company learned how to make a handheld the right way, and so was born the Palm Pilot.
There was also an attempt at a GEOS 3.0-based handheld, or more accurately a "tablet PC", called the Sharp PT-9000. It ran all of the same apps as the desktop GeoWorks and used the exact same data file format, and used a very tablet PC-esque form factor and design as far back as 1995-1996. Unfortunately, Sharp for unknown reasons killed the project at the last minute, and it was never produced outside of beta units within the company itself. Once again, GEOS beat Microsoft to the punch, by nearly a decade this time, but it just didn't work out for whatever reason.
(I have a used Z-7000 I bought off eBay for nostalgia, but never did get my hands on a PT-9000.)
Except for really hard core hackers with old C64s, this is not really major news. Still, it's a nice trip down memory lane.
It's Valentine's day. Save the hardware and gadgetry for his birthday, Christmas, etc. Valentine's day, for one day, you can be sentimental, even to a techie. The geekiest you'd want to go would be, like, "his and hers" memory cards or something.:-) Something you've made yourself, even if it is tech-related, is best.
Of course, you could just let him see this thread. A girlfriend who likes her geek beau enough that she'll ask the nexus of geekdom how to best make a geek happy? Just the knowledge that a girl cares that much and knows him that well is a major gift in itself. Maybe frame the thread or something.:-)
Widget from ThinkGeek: $30
New iPod: $300
New gaming rig: $3000
A girlfriend willing to say "I love my geek and want to show it" on Slashdot: Priceless
I was deeply troubled by the depth of innacuracy present in the recent BBC article "Linux cyber-battle turns nasty". There were scarecely any factually correct statements in the article at all. One of the few moments of journalistic accuracy was:
"It's hard to see how any website could withstand that kind of clever evil."
Yep, there are very few web sites that can withstand a Distributed Denial of Service attack. That much is absolutely true.
What is not true is that there is any evidence whatsoever that "internet zelots" were responsible for the MyDoom virus. In fact, the evidence is pointing toward Russian spam agencies as the same virus also creates spam backdoors.
What is not true is that SCO's web site was targeted because it had "enraged many people devoted to the Linux operating system." Can Mr. Evans show any evidence of that at all? If he cannot, then it is unprofessional of him to make such claims.
What is not true is that "SCO has sued IBM, accusing it of using SCO property because it too uses Linux." SCO is suing IBM, accusing it of adding SCO-copyrighted code to the Linux kernel and releasing it under the GNU General Public License, contrary to their contractual agreement. SCO is attempting to extort money from some corporate users of Linux before the case (in which they have yet to present any significant evidence to support their claims) has even begun. That is not, however, what the article by Mr. Evans claims.
What is not true is that "Meanwhile the court dispute between SCO and Linux users (rather than the cyberspace war between SCO and the hackers) is scheduled for next year in a court in Utah." The court case between SCO and IBM has been delayed many times, and is currently in the discovery phase. There is no court dispute between SCO and the multiple millions of Linux users in the world. There is only a public relations campaign by SCO that borders on criminal libel.
What is true, however, is this statement: "There's no proof, of course...". That much is very true. There is no proof whatsoever to any of the claims Mr. Evans makes in this article. And for him to present such statements as if they were actual fact, when in fact he has not one shred of evidence to support that outrageous claim against millions of computer users world-wide, is simply unprofessional.
And that's fine. Using it to track runners, with their knowledge, for short periods of time (during a race) is not a problem. Nor, frankly, is using it to improve inventory management control.
But when it's used to track me after I buy something, or without my knowledge, then I get very very cranky.
When I first started reading the article, I figured they were talking about New York versus California.
Once again, leaving out my native Chicago and the rest of the midwest. *sigh* We don't get no respect. There's more than cornfields between the Hudson and Vegas, folks!
Slashdot Mirror
And by buying the CD, knowing that it is DRMed, you are saying "Getting something that sounds decent is more important to me than my freedom." And the RIAA is listening.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
There are a few legitimate journalists around. But when most major media outlets are owned by the very companies they are reporting on, legitimate objectivity is impossible.
Step one to taking back America: No more than one media outlet owned at a time, and "content producers" (ie, cartels) cannot own news outlets.
Dude, it looks like we just slashdotted CmdrTaco's web site. How's that for irony? :-)
(And now Taco is going to go smack michael upside the head for posting this story. Gotta love it.)
As the parent and others have posted, X11 has TWO (well, three but no one uses the third) clipboards. One is highlight/middle-click, and one is Copy/Paste. The proper, documented (see parent and others) behavior is for both to be implemented and for both to operate completely and entirely independently of each other.
In a properly implemented program, you should be able to use it as if there is no Primary Selection feature (highlight/middle-click) and not notice the difference from your usual Windows/Mac Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V habits. If you come across a program that does not do that, and mixes them together, that is not a feature that is a bug. Report it as a bug. If the developer dismisses it, report it as a bug again, email the developer telling him that you're going elsewhere, and switch to any of the plethora of other programs around (Free Software is great like that) that do things properly. Eventually someone will get the message.
That's one reason why I stick to KDE applications whenever possible. All KDE applications (ie, ones provided by the KDE.org team) are well-behaved and non-buggy in this respect. Programs that misbehave should simply not be used. Period.
We went through this once before with Ma Bell. You didn't own your phone, you rented it from the phone company, who could futz with it whenever and however they wanted. They also had no incentive to ever upgrade it. My parents still have an ancient phone in their kitchen that is owned by the phone company, even though legally they are required to let you connect your own phone.
Now, these companies want to do the same with computers. You don't own anything, you merely rent it as part of a service contract. Car companies want you to lease a car, rent an apartment...
HELL NO! When possible, you always want to own your stuff instead of leasing it. For one thing, its financially more advantageous. (Take good care of it, and the cost over its lifetime is lower.) For another, it gives you equity for loans and other transactions. For another, it frees you of the control of the leasing party.
Me: You know, I want to try some different software that MS doesn't offer in their archive.
MS: OK, fine, give us your computer back.
Me: What? No way, dude, all of my personal files are on here.
MS: Gee, sucks to be you. Guess you're stuck giving us money just to read your own data. Neener neener!
And that's just one example. The only compromise point I could see would be the way mobile phone companies subsidize the cost of a mobile phone with a service agreement, but that's a "lease to buy" arrangement at best. When it's over, that is YOUR phone by law, and even before that it's still your phone, you just have to pay an early termination fee and the phone is still yours. MSN used to do that with low-end PCs before they realized that no one wanted it.
Live Free. Own your life. Own yourself.
Perhaps someone can explain to this ignorant American exactly how the government can use publication in a newspaper as a punishment for a crime (whatever the crime may be). At least here in the US, we at least pretend to have freedom of the press.
I'm happy to see that they're planning to do something non-drastic. RCN opted to simply block all outbound 25 and inbound 80, which is asinine. Fortunately I'd already moved from them to Comcast by that point, and Comcast wasn't misbehaving. If they start blocking ports, though, I'll go elsewhere.
:-) If they see a shitload of mail flooding out of my mail server constantly, then either I'm a spammer (in which case they should kill my account) or my SMTP server has been hacked, in which case they can notify me and I can fix it, saving everyone in the world a huge hassle. If I don't fix it, then they can turn the port off until I do.
Biggest advantage of running my own mail server? I can run IMAP there as well with squirrelmail, then receive AND send mail from any terminal in the world on my own account. No screwing around with finding the local SMTP server on whatever ISP I happen to be on. That's far more useful than you realize! And no, I do not accept the idea that just because some people abuse SMTP to send spam that we should slam everyone for it. I also run my own DNS server behind my firewall to let me centrally control aliases to various hosts. That's a perfectly benign act. I also make NTP requests, although I don't serve NTP to anyone else.
Someone else suggested a good compromise, I think. Default block anything below 1024 (in the appropriate direction, depending on the port), but let anyone explicitly request any given port to be opened, no questions asked. Quick signup on a web form, no long delay. That automatically keeps 99% of the zombies in check (since zombified users, most likely, won't know what a port is) and allows people like me to make full use of an always-on connection. Anyone who has requested a port be opened, however, is monitored not for content but for volume. OK, they'd get cranky if my home web server were slashdotted. Well so would I.
Makes everyone happy, and kills most zombies in the process.
Having Shatner guest star as a random alien villan is cheesy and dumb, but in the end harmless compared to the other stupidity that is Enterprise.
Having Shatner appear as James T. Kirk would be the final straw that would have me petition to have the "Star Trek" taken back out of the show's title, the show disowned as part of the Trek franchise, and a price taken out on Rick Berman's head.
I mean, come on. Kirk is in his what, 30s or 40s during the TOS series? Enterprise is set over a century before (early 2150s vs. late 2260s). Even with the overreliance on screwing with the timeline that Berman is so fond of, there's no way to make that work. Besides, Shatner himself is in his 70s now. He'd have to be playing an extremely old Kirk sent back in time or something. Of course, Kirk already died in Veridian III ("Generations").
Whoever speculated that Shatner would be playing Kirk either has an even lower opinion of Berman than I do (which is saying a great deal), or is even more of a moron than Berman and Braga (which is saying even more).
Earlier this year at work, I needed to run Visio 2003 to make some simple diagrams. (This is at work, not home, so I didn't have a choice of software.) Visio, installed on Win2k SP4, would not run. When I started it up, it would crash immediately, usually without even giving me a message.
Called Microsoft.
After a 45 minute call to setup an account, then a wait to get a callback, then another 45 minute conversation with a very nice Indian gentleman, we fixed the problem.
Microsoft Visio and Microsoft Windows are incompatible. This is a known issue. The fix is to drill down to some obscure registry key and add a 1 to it. Then everything works fine.
And somehow Linux is the OS with the reputation for obscure configuration and software conflicts. Go figure.
True story.
Back in 1995, my family had been using our first PC (whitebox 486 with Windows 3.1) for about a year. Our Microsoft mouse had been trouble from day 1. It kept sticking on screen as if the pointer hit something, even though the mouse itself was fine. I called MS, and over the course of the next few weeks they had us clean the mouse (several times), buy cleaning kits, change drivers, get a new mouse, nothing seemed to work. Finally, one tech (perfect English in those days) said, and I quote, "Well, I guess it's obviously your mouse pad. I guess you could always take your business elsewhere."
The next day we bought a Logitech mouse, and have used exclusively Logitech mice for the past decade without the slightest bit of trouble. I later went on to help found a Linux Users Group in college.
The moral: Dude, NEVER dare your customer to take their business elsewhere. Not even if you're Microsoft.
Ahem.
:-)
Debian Unstable (sid) is only slightly less bleeding edge than Gentoo.
Debian Stable (currently woody) is about as bleeding edge as a wooly mammoth.
The joke would have been funny if you knew what you were talking about.
2) In the next election, send a letter to their opponent telling them why the incumbent pissed you off (software patent support), along with a check.
WTH? How does that differ from bribary? (Pardon my naivety.)
I'm not sure about in Europe, but over in the States political contributions to a campaign are considered a part of free speech. Unfortunately that's what's allowed our government to be sold to the highest bidder (this week the oil companies, last week the media cartels), but until that changes, the only choice is to get lots of little people to bribe the politicians with more "donations" than the big fish. There is strength in numbers, if the numbers have zeros on the right side.
When this sort of thing happens in the US, there is a huge cry of "you don't like it, you voted for them. Vote them out." Well, now it's time.
I'm in the US, so I can't do it this time. But to all the Europeans on Slashdot: Your own governments just lied to you about an EXTREMELY important issue. Your own representatives said they would vote against software patents, and then voted for them. Your next move is very simple.
1) Send a letter to the appropriate bureaucrat stating that you are upset, and inform them that they have lost your vote.
2) In the next election, send a letter to their opponent telling them why the incumbent pissed you off (software patent support), along with a check.
3) Vote for the challenger.
4) Watch as a few people wake up and realize that the voting public is not completely stupid and full of sheep.
5) Profit (not in money, but in Freedom).
Your turn now. You take out those bosos while we work against George "Fascist" Bush here on this side of the Atlantic. If you don't, you only encourage our slide into an information dark ages.
I'm gonna go out on a limb: I think the theme song is the best theme song ever written for any series. It captures the mood of the series perfectly. The first time I heard it I didn't like it, but then as I watched the opening sequence again I realized what they were trying to do and how well the song fit.
I'll admit I loathe it less than I did when the show first started. However, it's still a dumb song, and it actually got WORSE with season 3. Not because of the "jazzing up" of the music, but because they changed the premise of the show!
The musical style doesn't fit Trek. The video sequence, however, fits perfectly. That's good. The first half or so of the lyrics do sort of fit the idea for the first two seasons. (Vulcans won't stop us from getting out in to space like my daddy wanted me to, yee haw! --John Archer) The second half ("faith of the heart" repeated over and over again) is just plain dumb, and also doesn't fit Trek.
But then Berman decided that exploring and defying the Vulcans by being all exploration-like "wasn't big enough". So instead, let's throw in a terrorist plot (it's the in thing) and then rip off a 1980s computer game (no one will remember it) after wasting a third of season 2 building up the Klingons and doing nothing with it (because it's like, we can say Duras a lot, Trekkies know that name, right?). And then we keep the theme music that no longer is even tangentially related to the overall plot arc of season 3!
That makes about as much sense as anything else Berman has done. That is to say, none. Fire Berman and his team and hire some REAL writers (DC Fontana, Diane Duane, Diane Carey, Peter David, all old Trek hands who "got it"), and maybe Trek will start not-sucking again.
More opportunity for Rick Berman to urinate on Roddenberry's vision.
:-) The man just doesn't understand what Roddenberry created, and now he's trying to compete head on with other Sci Fi or with the memory of Babylon 5. Is it any wonder Star Trek has been in a downward spiral for the past 10 years?
I know it's cool to knock Enterprise, but I've been knocking Berman since long before it was cool.
Enterprise's ratings weren't good enough "just exploring" (and as they were doing a poor job of it I'm not surprised), so instead they spent a third of season 2 building up a relationship with the Klingons only to drop it at the last second to run off on a blatant 9/11-inspired warmed over mini-epic. (And stolen from a 1980s Star Trek computer game for the Commodore 64 called "Star Trek: Rebel Universe".) Everything about it is predictable, from the plot right down to the characters involved. And of course there's no tension, because we all know (since it's a prequel) that Earth isn't going to be destroyed.
Of course, Berman isn't pitching to people who know Star Trek, he's pitching to 20-somethings that the beancounters like to pitch to. Of course, those people don't watch Star Trek BECAUSE it's Star Trek. Don't alienate your existing fan base to go after a new one that doesn't want you.
Of course, after this season's finale, then what? Go back to exploring? Yeah, that will help ratings now that they've said that exploring "isn't big enough". Throw in another huge season-long pseudo-epic plot thread to further destroy the timeline? I don't know what they're going to do.
On the one hand, it's Trek, yay, there will be more. On the other, this isn't the Trek I grew up on (TNG and reruns of TOS), and I wouldn't greatly miss it.
Although moving the show to Friday night means that it won't be lasting much longer. That is how NBC killed the original series, after all.
You want to be away from a computer, but you want an electronic way to take notes? Does Not Compute.
:-)
:-)
Honestly, get yourself a Palm and the Palm UT Keyboard or even the wireless IR keyboard they sell. OK, so it's electronic. It's still the most convenient you'll find, and has a ton of other features as well. Like reading ebooks on the plane on the way to your vacation, then taking notes while on the vacation, then playing games on the way back from your vacation. It works out quite nicely.
These guys can give you great advice on which model you want to get. They've reviewed just about every handheld in existence.
Disclaimer: I am one of "those guys".
And still customers HAVE THAT OPTION. No one is threatening them at gunpoint. They are voluntarily handing over their money, Bill Gates is not mugging them.
You clearly do not understand the concept of a monopoly. I CAN'T take my business elsewhere. If I want to be able to do business with the vast majority of the businesses in the US, I have to use Windows or MS formats. My university supports distance learning by video stream, but only, ONLY using WMP 9. Microsoft actively works to KEEP 3rd parties from being compatible, thus protecting their monopoly.
Gunpoint? Maybe not. But "exclusive club needed if you want to send your resume to someone point", most certainly.
The "not forcing you" argument is one of the stupidest arguments I've ever heard, and yet I hear it time and time again. A monopoly DOES force you. That's the point of a monopoly, you CAN'T take your business elsewhere. And Microsoft is legally recognized as an official, government-regulated monopoly. (Our wonderful Republican government just chooses to forget that "regulated" part.)
Sorry, try a new argument next time.
The reason MySQL has been so successful is that it is NOT a relational DBMS. It doesn't have any of the features that a "real" database would have. That's the point.
MySQL is a glorified card catalog with a reduced-SQL interface. And for the vast majority of the projects that use it, that really is all it needs.
I say this as someone who has not written in any production SQL environments except for MS Access and MySQL. For small stuff, all I want is a card catalog with joins, and MySQL gives me that easily. I know the projects I've worked on aren't going to scale to a million rows, they're only in the few thousands, or in a few cases only a few hundred. If they start to get to the point that they're handling millions of transactions, then I'll be rewriting the whole thing anyway.
Tell me: WHY would I want to use Oracle or even PostgreSQL for a recipe book or web calendar when MySQL requires less mental overhead for me? I wouldn't. That's like using a Mac truck to drive to the grocery store and back.
When I start writing financial apps or systems that actually require complete integrity checking, good bye MySQL, hello Postgres. But for right now, MySQL is simple, my web host supports MySQL, and it's all these projects are going to need.
i think you're confusing the subject of this story with the lesser-known RFK.
Now what does the late President's late brother have to do with anything? He didn't invent the Internet, did he?
(Robert F. Kennedy, for those who don't know their American history...)
Of course you did. You just don't see the lies as being harmful so you do it. You probably lie every day at least once if not a dozen times. They may be small lies but they are lies anyway.
No, I do not lie about coming in late or the dog eating my homework or whatever. I do not lie.
Why? Because I am an honorable person, and it is dishonorable to deliberately lie to someone. If you were an honorable person, you would innately understand why.
Do a lot of people lie on a regular basis? Sadly, yes. Such people are an absolute disgrace to the name of Man, and the sooner they are expunged from society and the gene pool the better.
And it is the responsibility of honorable men to see that such liars are not allowed to run our society into dishonorable ruin any longer. Now which sort of man are you?
You're thinking of two different products. What has been released, as I understand it, is the source code for GEOS 1.0 for the C64. Awesome little machine, with an even more awesome GUI that ran off of floppies. (Back in my day we didn't have hard drives, and we liked it!) Very powerful, very stable, especially when you consider it had a whole 64 KILObytes of RAM and ONE Megahertz to play with. They had a trash can concept long before Apple even thought of it.
You're thinking of GeoWorks Ensemble, based on the GEOS 2.0 kernel, which ran on the PC. It was a contemporary of Windows 3.0, and every review at the time said that it wiped the floor with Microsoft's baby. Of course, the company had zero marketing skill while Microsoft, well, we know their marketing strategy. So Windows won and GEOS, which I still consider to be one of the best idiot-friendly interfaces ever created, eventually petered out.
It's last gasp was on the Casio Z-7000 Zoomer handhelds. They were released right after the original Apple Newton (the Newton beat them by about 3 months), and wasa joint coventure between Casio (hardware), GeoWorks (OS), and a little startup company run by Jeff Hawkins and Dona Dubinsky called "Palm Computing". While the Z-7000 was a market flop, along with the original Newton, it was from the mistakes there that Hawkins and company learned how to make a handheld the right way, and so was born the Palm Pilot.
There was also an attempt at a GEOS 3.0-based handheld, or more accurately a "tablet PC", called the Sharp PT-9000. It ran all of the same apps as the desktop GeoWorks and used the exact same data file format, and used a very tablet PC-esque form factor and design as far back as 1995-1996. Unfortunately, Sharp for unknown reasons killed the project at the last minute, and it was never produced outside of beta units within the company itself. Once again, GEOS beat Microsoft to the punch, by nearly a decade this time, but it just didn't work out for whatever reason.
(I have a used Z-7000 I bought off eBay for nostalgia, but never did get my hands on a PT-9000.)
Except for really hard core hackers with old C64s, this is not really major news. Still, it's a nice trip down memory lane.
It's Valentine's day. Save the hardware and gadgetry for his birthday, Christmas, etc. Valentine's day, for one day, you can be sentimental, even to a techie. The geekiest you'd want to go would be, like, "his and hers" memory cards or something. :-) Something you've made yourself, even if it is tech-related, is best.
Of course, you could just let him see this thread. A girlfriend who likes her geek beau enough that she'll ask the nexus of geekdom how to best make a geek happy? Just the knowledge that a girl cares that much and knows him that well is a major gift in itself. Maybe frame the thread or something. :-)
And here is mine (for those who are interested):
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I was deeply troubled by the depth of innacuracy present in the recent BBC article "Linux cyber-battle turns nasty". There were scarecely any factually correct statements in the article at all. One of the few moments of journalistic accuracy was:
"It's hard to see how any website could withstand that kind of clever evil."
Yep, there are very few web sites that can withstand a Distributed Denial of Service attack. That much is absolutely true.
What is not true is that there is any evidence whatsoever that "internet zelots" were responsible for the MyDoom virus. In fact, the evidence is pointing toward Russian spam agencies as the same virus also creates spam backdoors.
What is not true is that SCO's web site was targeted because it had "enraged many people devoted to the Linux operating system." Can Mr. Evans show any evidence of that at all? If he cannot, then it is unprofessional of him to make such claims.
What is not true is that "SCO has sued IBM, accusing it of using SCO property because it too uses Linux." SCO is suing IBM, accusing it of adding SCO-copyrighted code to the Linux kernel and releasing it under the GNU General Public License, contrary to their contractual agreement. SCO is attempting to extort money from some corporate users of Linux before the case (in which they have yet to present any significant evidence to support their claims) has even begun. That is not, however, what the article by Mr. Evans claims.
What is not true is that "Meanwhile the court dispute between SCO and Linux users (rather than the cyberspace war between SCO and the hackers) is scheduled for next year in a court in Utah." The court case between SCO and IBM has been delayed many times, and is currently in the discovery phase. There is no court dispute between SCO and the multiple millions of Linux users in the world. There is only a public relations campaign by SCO that borders on criminal libel.
What is true, however, is this statement: "There's no proof, of course...". That much is very true. There is no proof whatsoever to any of the claims Mr. Evans makes in this article. And for him to present such statements as if they were actual fact, when in fact he has not one shred of evidence to support that outrageous claim against millions of computer users world-wide, is simply unprofessional.
I would have expected better from the BBC.
And that's fine. Using it to track runners, with their knowledge, for short periods of time (during a race) is not a problem. Nor, frankly, is using it to improve inventory management control.
But when it's used to track me after I buy something, or without my knowledge, then I get very very cranky.
When I first started reading the article, I figured they were talking about New York versus California.
Once again, leaving out my native Chicago and the rest of the midwest. *sigh* We don't get no respect. There's more than cornfields between the Hudson and Vegas, folks!