I recently watched a well known (in the UK) documentary series called "Horizon" on the WTC disaster. It basically stated in no uncertain terms that the disaster was caused by the use of drywall for all the fireproof walling. The theory was that the explosions caused by the planes basically blew away the drywalling and so the heat from the flames which would have otherwise been slowed down by the drywall, would have been dramatically slowed down.
I wasn't sure whether to entirely believe the program or not, but it seemed fairly plausible. However I came away asking only one question: "So what would have been better?"
Debian is not a desktop or first time user OS. Sure it works great for geeks, but I wouldn't give a debian CD to my mother and expect her to get it working (however I might consider giving her an installed debian system). Debian doesn't automatically configure sound cards. It doesn't automatically configure networking. It doesn't automatically do a hell of a lot of things that other distributions' installers do, and have been doing for years. I don't have anything against Debian, but please don't use it as an example when arguing about the Linux battle for desktop acceptance.
Take for example the configuring of USB devices. In windows you plug it in and in most cases it works (yes, I did say in most cases). In Linux you have to rebuild your kernel first. I can imagine most novice users will be scared of that.
What distribution are you running? On the majority of "new" distributions (e.g. Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE - which covers 95% or more of new users' desktop Linux distribution) this stuff is already compiled into the kernel as a module, and it's plug and go, except that unlike on Windows you don't need to insert a driver disk from your manufacturer (it either works or it flat out doesn't - but that's a different argument to whether it's easy to configure or not - thats an issue of manufacturer support for Linux).
However that doesn't help you now. I noticed that Konqueror didn't pick up my SVG plugin (the Adobe beta plugin, which you can download from their "older versions" link) which works fine in Mozilla 0.9.9. I tried all sorts of ways of copying it around different places but just couldn't get it to work. I suspect that Konqueror expects plugins to be in the old Netscape format, rather than the newer Mozilla plugin format - so I think you need to ask the KDE people to look into supporting Mozilla plugins too.
My wife is a teacher, so I'll try and convey the general feeling about teaching. She's not "under qualified" or crap at her field. She was probably one of the brightest students at her University. She simply decided she did not want a job sitting behind a desk all day long.
The problem with teaching is not the money. There are many teachers who don't care about the poor pay. The problem is the non-teaching crap you have to put up with - governments who want you to have all the i's dotted and the t's crossed by making sure you follow the exact strict rules laid down by them, and fill in a dozen forms so they can check you're doing things right. The problem that arises from that is that you end up working 3, 4 or sometimes 5 hours into every evening doing paperwork and marking. So teachers end up over tired and stressed out.
However teaching is still probably one of the more rewarding proffessions out there. My job seems incredibly minor (stopping spam) in comparison to training young minds to think for themselves, and often dealing with their social education too.
So often it's not about the quality of applications, but more about the constant drain on their sensibilities that leads those who are top in their field to eventually leave teaching, not because they don't love it, but because they need to maintain their sanity.
Because when closed source software (not limited to just MS) has a security bug it was found because somebody managed to exploit it. When you find bugs in open source software you don't have to find them with an exploit, you can find them with your eyes.
Actually yes, I care. I took part in the project when I was 9, and I helped survey the old tannery and the stone masons in a small village called Strensall in North Yorkshire. Both of those businesses are no more now (I think the stone masons simply closed, and the tannery is a housing development). These things are important to historians, to be able to track things back through time, and they're important for various sentimental reasons too.
I hope something is done about this, but I certainly don't have the power or the resources to influence the right people.
Re:Stop the FUD surrounding Cocoon 2
on
Zope or Cocoon 2?
·
· Score: 2
Some threads on Cocoon-dev by the core Cocoon developers talking about Cocoon 2 slowness, that you've apparently missed in your anti-fud rant, which apparently was quite justified:
So, perhaps you should give other people some more credit, instead of blasting them here? Sure Cocoon2 is getting better all the time, but there are issues there, yet you've managed to become blinded by your advocacy.
All the best to AxKit, but they are cloning Cocoon. They were not doing the same thing as Cocoon. They were trying to clone Cocoon. Cocoon is ahead of the development curve here.
You're obviously not an AxKit user. We've been doing some stuff for longer than Cocoon, and better than them. We never started out as a clone - it was a completely independant invention. Some stuff like XSP in AxKit is lightyears ahead of what Cocoon is doing, other stuff like caching is slightly behind. Its swings and roundabouts.
But to answer your specific question, yes, lots of people have found Cocoon particularly slow, and have investigated AxKit for just that reason. Others have used AxKit because Cocoon simply isn't viable on Java unfriendly platforms like FreeBSD (yes, I know this is changing, but slowly). Don't dismiss us because you think we're "second".
Please do consider AxKit, another official xml.apache.org project. It's the mod_perl/C equivalent to Cocoon. It's known to compile fine on Solaris and OSX, and because all of the transformation (XSLT) happens in C (using libxml/libxslt from the Gnome project) it's fast too.
Having said that, always consider what your programmer's skills are. If they're happy using Java they may not be too thrilled by a Perl or Python based framework. And sometimes hardware is cheaper than pissing off your developers;-)
The people reporting problems are talking about heavily loaded systems usually on SMP systems. This is the stuff 2.4 promised to deliver, and while it's delivered them, it's delivered unstable stuff.
But this is the way of open source - it's obvious this stuff wasn't tested to destruction while still in the 2.3 phase, or we wouldn't be seeing this stuff. However distribution developers should be doing this testing before releasing a new OS, and they're obviously not doing so.
If you can, skip SAMBA. Instead use IPP in conjunction with CUPS. It's simply the easiest thing to use on the planet, and works perfectly with Windows2K, 98, ME and XP.
I was astonished how easy it was to get this working, and you can even copy over the printer drivers onto the server (from the NT box) and have CUPS automatically deliver the printer driver down to the client when they request to "add" that printer.
As far as I can see it (i.e. as an outsider), the only reason Roxio would have gone with Gracenote on this is if Gracenote convinced Roxio that going with FreeCDDB was going to be a bad thing long term.
How could they convince them of that? Well they likely told them they were going after FreeCDDB next, which while they're unlikely to win, will possibly shut down freecddb in the short term (I know this is unlikely to happen in real terms, but that's probably what they convinced Roxio they would do).
What I'd really personally like to see is ruby catch up with perl (and python) performance wise. I haven't checked the latest 1.7 betas/cvs, but I think it's still significantly slower on things like hash lookups. Hopefully a parrot backend for everyone would even out the scores in things like that, and allow for universal just-in-time compilation.
I'm really looking forward to parrot getting real-code front ends.
Exactly. That wouldn't even take any server-side storage, you just put the last messageid or better yet - a timestamp (so that it works across stories?), in a cookie.
Seriously, think about it. There are about 3 million registered users on slashdot (shocking to think that you and I have user id's below 2000!). There are probably 20 new stories a day. Each story gets on average about 150 posts. So for each post you need to store one entry in a database per user.
That's 9 billion new rows a day.
Of course you could do some compression or bit-twiddling to reduce that, but not by a significant enough amount.
The best you can do is what LinuxToday does - mark stories as "new" since you last refreshed the page.
Usenet doesn't have this problem because all the "What I've read" stuff is stored client-side, and there's not enough room in cookies to do that.
A large number of perl web sites have been spammed with this. I consider the manner in which it's been done quite rude, as it has in no way been personalised, and is very "spam" like in appearance (i.e. it's saying that DeveloperWork's articles are of the highest quality - well they would, wouldn't they?).
I'm not disputing the quality of the articles there, just pointing out that this has gone to several places, and even been posted on a few sites. I didn't post it on the one I admin because it was totally impersonal.
Also, you forgot that you can now send.txt files that get executed as though they were.exe's.
Sorry, but there's really no simple way to stop all viruses. Though you're probably doing a reasonable job with your script, it's certainly possible to get past it.
If you look at the windows internals it's a hodge podge of backwards compatibility, layers on top of layers, and really really ugly APIs. The.NET strategy is some form of attempt to fix this, but ultimately it's still running on top of a lot of the older APIs.
At the user interface end of things, the main reason you see the level of standardisation you're seeing is not always because of Windows itself, but because you're seeing products from commercial companies who program in these standardisation bits (though admittedly it's based on style guides a lot of the time). There's some "Windows" built in stuff, like the menu shortcuts and button shortcuts and tab ordering, but it still involves a lot of QA work and effort on the part of the developer. Effort that often times open source programmers don't have the time or money for.
In short: It's not an OS shortcoming. Not in any way. And linux doesn't lack design any more so than any other current commercial desktop OS.
It takes a long time to write software like this, and often it takes a number of people working closely together. In short, this isn't something that is just going to work by putting together a sourceforge project and hoping people will come along and help - it's going to take dedicated effort, and that will probably come in the form of a closed source proprietary company taking the stand and doing it.
Personally though I'd look more towards SVG, and hope someone can do a good SVG->Flash converter. You'd lose sounds (since SVG doesn't do sound natively, though you could do it with SMIL, which is supported in Real One). If Real and Adobe got together and combined their SVG plugin and Real player you'd have a pretty kickass low bandwidth vector graphics + sound + animation system. Unfortunately that still leaves us waiting for an authoring system...
Slashdot Mirror
I recently watched a well known (in the UK) documentary series called "Horizon" on the WTC disaster. It basically stated in no uncertain terms that the disaster was caused by the use of drywall for all the fireproof walling. The theory was that the explosions caused by the planes basically blew away the drywalling and so the heat from the flames which would have otherwise been slowed down by the drywall, would have been dramatically slowed down.
I wasn't sure whether to entirely believe the program or not, but it seemed fairly plausible. However I came away asking only one question: "So what would have been better?"
Debian is not a desktop or first time user OS. Sure it works great for geeks, but I wouldn't give a debian CD to my mother and expect her to get it working (however I might consider giving her an installed debian system). Debian doesn't automatically configure sound cards. It doesn't automatically configure networking. It doesn't automatically do a hell of a lot of things that other distributions' installers do, and have been doing for years. I don't have anything against Debian, but please don't use it as an example when arguing about the Linux battle for desktop acceptance.
Take for example the configuring of USB devices. In windows you plug it in and in most cases it works (yes, I did say in most cases). In Linux you have to rebuild your kernel first. I can imagine most novice users will be scared of that.
What distribution are you running? On the majority of "new" distributions (e.g. Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE - which covers 95% or more of new users' desktop Linux distribution) this stuff is already compiled into the kernel as a module, and it's plug and go, except that unlike on Windows you don't need to insert a driver disk from your manufacturer (it either works or it flat out doesn't - but that's a different argument to whether it's easy to configure or not - thats an issue of manufacturer support for Linux).
Seems to me you got it wrong. Perl makes great attempts to stop spam. :-)
KDE 3.1 is going to support animated SVG.
However that doesn't help you now. I noticed that Konqueror didn't pick up my SVG plugin (the Adobe beta plugin, which you can download from their "older versions" link) which works fine in Mozilla 0.9.9. I tried all sorts of ways of copying it around different places but just couldn't get it to work. I suspect that Konqueror expects plugins to be in the old Netscape format, rather than the newer Mozilla plugin format - so I think you need to ask the KDE people to look into supporting Mozilla plugins too.
My wife is a teacher, so I'll try and convey the general feeling about teaching. She's not "under qualified" or crap at her field. She was probably one of the brightest students at her University. She simply decided she did not want a job sitting behind a desk all day long.
The problem with teaching is not the money. There are many teachers who don't care about the poor pay. The problem is the non-teaching crap you have to put up with - governments who want you to have all the i's dotted and the t's crossed by making sure you follow the exact strict rules laid down by them, and fill in a dozen forms so they can check you're doing things right. The problem that arises from that is that you end up working 3, 4 or sometimes 5 hours into every evening doing paperwork and marking. So teachers end up over tired and stressed out.
However teaching is still probably one of the more rewarding proffessions out there. My job seems incredibly minor (stopping spam) in comparison to training young minds to think for themselves, and often dealing with their social education too.
So often it's not about the quality of applications, but more about the constant drain on their sensibilities that leads those who are top in their field to eventually leave teaching, not because they don't love it, but because they need to maintain their sanity.
Nightlies are built from the current HEAD, whereas 0.9.9 will have branched some time ago.
Because when closed source software (not limited to just MS) has a security bug it was found because somebody managed to exploit it. When you find bugs in open source software you don't have to find them with an exploit, you can find them with your eyes.
Actually yes, I care. I took part in the project when I was 9, and I helped survey the old tannery and the stone masons in a small village called Strensall in North Yorkshire. Both of those businesses are no more now (I think the stone masons simply closed, and the tannery is a housing development). These things are important to historians, to be able to track things back through time, and they're important for various sentimental reasons too.
I hope something is done about this, but I certainly don't have the power or the resources to influence the right people.
Some threads on Cocoon-dev by the core Cocoon developers talking about Cocoon 2 slowness, that you've apparently missed in your anti-fud rant, which apparently was quite justified:
& r= 1&w=2
h e. org/msg06751.html
h e. org/msg06455.html
m =1 00996616112144&w=2
m =1 01001494630419&w=2
m =1 01074422120925&w=2
m =1 01218502403560&w=2
m =1 01363094201574&w=2
m =1 01380679512165&w=2
m =1 01387860631170&w=2
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=101218517600001
http://www.mail-archive.com/cocoon-dev@xml.apac
http://www.mail-archive.com/cocoon-dev@xml.apac
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&
So, perhaps you should give other people some more credit, instead of blasting them here? Sure Cocoon2 is getting better all the time, but there are issues there, yet you've managed to become blinded by your advocacy.
All the best to AxKit, but they are cloning Cocoon. They were not doing the same thing as Cocoon. They were trying to clone Cocoon. Cocoon is ahead of the development curve here.
You're obviously not an AxKit user. We've been doing some stuff for longer than Cocoon, and better than them. We never started out as a clone - it was a completely independant invention. Some stuff like XSP in AxKit is lightyears ahead of what Cocoon is doing, other stuff like caching is slightly behind. Its swings and roundabouts.
But to answer your specific question, yes, lots of people have found Cocoon particularly slow, and have investigated AxKit for just that reason. Others have used AxKit because Cocoon simply isn't viable on Java unfriendly platforms like FreeBSD (yes, I know this is changing, but slowly). Don't dismiss us because you think we're "second".
Please do consider AxKit, another official xml.apache.org project. It's the mod_perl/C equivalent to Cocoon. It's known to compile fine on Solaris and OSX, and because all of the transformation (XSLT) happens in C (using libxml/libxslt from the Gnome project) it's fast too.
;-)
Having said that, always consider what your programmer's skills are. If they're happy using Java they may not be too thrilled by a Perl or Python based framework. And sometimes hardware is cheaper than pissing off your developers
The people reporting problems are talking about heavily loaded systems usually on SMP systems. This is the stuff 2.4 promised to deliver, and while it's delivered them, it's delivered unstable stuff.
But this is the way of open source - it's obvious this stuff wasn't tested to destruction while still in the 2.3 phase, or we wouldn't be seeing this stuff. However distribution developers should be doing this testing before releasing a new OS, and they're obviously not doing so.
This doesn't really answer your question, but...
If you can, skip SAMBA. Instead use IPP in conjunction with CUPS. It's simply the easiest thing to use on the planet, and works perfectly with Windows2K, 98, ME and XP.
I was astonished how easy it was to get this working, and you can even copy over the printer drivers onto the server (from the NT box) and have CUPS automatically deliver the printer driver down to the client when they request to "add" that printer.
It's just the sweetest solution imaginable.
As far as I can see it (i.e. as an outsider), the only reason Roxio would have gone with Gracenote on this is if Gracenote convinced Roxio that going with FreeCDDB was going to be a bad thing long term.
;-)
How could they convince them of that? Well they likely told them they were going after FreeCDDB next, which while they're unlikely to win, will possibly shut down freecddb in the short term (I know this is unlikely to happen in real terms, but that's probably what they convinced Roxio they would do).
Conclusion (even if I'm wrong): lawyers suck.
What I'd really personally like to see is ruby catch up with perl (and python) performance wise. I haven't checked the latest 1.7 betas/cvs, but I think it's still significantly slower on things like hash lookups. Hopefully a parrot backend for everyone would even out the scores in things like that, and allow for universal just-in-time compilation.
I'm really looking forward to parrot getting real-code front ends.
Exactly. That wouldn't even take any server-side storage, you just put the last messageid or better yet - a timestamp (so that it works across stories?), in a cookie.
Impossible.
Seriously, think about it. There are about 3 million registered users on slashdot (shocking to think that you and I have user id's below 2000!). There are probably 20 new stories a day. Each story gets on average about 150 posts. So for each post you need to store one entry in a database per user.
That's 9 billion new rows a day.
Of course you could do some compression or bit-twiddling to reduce that, but not by a significant enough amount.
The best you can do is what LinuxToday does - mark stories as "new" since you last refreshed the page.
Usenet doesn't have this problem because all the "What I've read" stuff is stored client-side, and there's not enough room in cookies to do that.
A large number of perl web sites have been spammed with this. I consider the manner in which it's been done quite rude, as it has in no way been personalised, and is very "spam" like in appearance (i.e. it's saying that DeveloperWork's articles are of the highest quality - well they would, wouldn't they?).
I'm not disputing the quality of the articles there, just pointing out that this has gone to several places, and even been posted on a few sites. I didn't post it on the one I admin because it was totally impersonal.
This is what SpamAssassin is doing, and it's becoming incredibly accurate (it was already 99% accurate before they used GAs).
Randal tried to tell Intel execs to change their passwords to be more secure. They didn't, and said it was a non issue.
Randal was merely proving his point, when he found out the vice president's password was "pre$ident", and many other insecure passwords.
Umm, you forgot .bat
.txt files that get executed as though they were .exe's.
Also, you forgot that you can now send
Sorry, but there's really no simple way to stop all viruses. Though you're probably doing a reasonable job with your script, it's certainly possible to get past it.
Actually windows doesn't have this either.
.NET strategy is some form of attempt to fix this, but ultimately it's still running on top of a lot of the older APIs.
If you look at the windows internals it's a hodge podge of backwards compatibility, layers on top of layers, and really really ugly APIs. The
At the user interface end of things, the main reason you see the level of standardisation you're seeing is not always because of Windows itself, but because you're seeing products from commercial companies who program in these standardisation bits (though admittedly it's based on style guides a lot of the time). There's some "Windows" built in stuff, like the menu shortcuts and button shortcuts and tab ordering, but it still involves a lot of QA work and effort on the part of the developer. Effort that often times open source programmers don't have the time or money for.
In short: It's not an OS shortcoming. Not in any way. And linux doesn't lack design any more so than any other current commercial desktop OS.
Actually Larry got laid off in the recent cuts at O'Reilly.
The reason isn't technical.
It takes a long time to write software like this, and often it takes a number of people working closely together. In short, this isn't something that is just going to work by putting together a sourceforge project and hoping people will come along and help - it's going to take dedicated effort, and that will probably come in the form of a closed source proprietary company taking the stand and doing it.
Personally though I'd look more towards SVG, and hope someone can do a good SVG->Flash converter. You'd lose sounds (since SVG doesn't do sound natively, though you could do it with SMIL, which is supported in Real One). If Real and Adobe got together and combined their SVG plugin and Real player you'd have a pretty kickass low bandwidth vector graphics + sound + animation system. Unfortunately that still leaves us waiting for an authoring system...