It's the university's bandwidth, they can say what does and doesn't pass through it. Personally, I feel the same way to "censoring" things in libraries. It's the library's computers, they can say what you read or don't read on it, the only problem here is the censorware's blacklist, and it being abused
Not the same thing at all. (1) A library is supposed to be a "common carrier" of information. They should provide you with any book you ask for (perhaps they may ask a small administration fee if they need to buy it especially or ship it from another library), and they should offer free access to the Net. (2) The library censorship that's topical at the moment is not decided by the libraries themselves: it's forced on the libraries by local government. I guess it's within the local government's rights to do whatever they like with their funding, but this kind of thing deserves a referendum. --
When I was at Uni, I got into some moderate trouble for mailing on a copy of the 1000 question Purity Test to a few friends. I didn't object: those computers, that network infrastructure, they were paid for so that we (the students) could use them for education -- not so we could exchange lighthearted smut.
When MP3s flying around the network start to affect people's ability to get real work done -- both by students and researchers -- I think it's entirely within the rights of the admins to restrict the use of things like Napster. Buy your own T1. --
There is no such thing as a region free player. Most players are intentionally left hackable by manufacturers and hacked by small repair/tune outlets before they go into sales in the big stores. But they are actually being hacked. Ask an insider at your closest high street store if you do not believe this. Or search slashdot or the register.
Actually, I bought a DVD player in my local (UK) supermarket, and it plays both region 1 and 2 DVDs without modification -- nor even any secret remote sequence shenanigans.
Admittedly, the player was not advertised or labelled as a region free player; and a lot of it is shady stuff along similar lines to Playstation chipping. However, Region 1 DVD is *big* in the UK, and I suspect that the distributors will have a better time trying synchronise their release dates, than suppressing imports of DVDs from the States.
With the sheer volume of Region 1 DVDs being bought online from US sites by UK customers, to play on their chipped players, I'm guessing that movies will start reaching us a lot quicker, quite soon: otherwise cinemas will lose out.
At the moment, I can often buy a movie on DVD from Reel.com before it's even on theatrical release in the UK. --
The extent to which the rules are well-known are inversely proportional to their frequency. Hence, the 100 year exception is quite well known, the 1000 year exception is less well known.
I'm guessing the programmers here knew the 100 year exception, and programmed it in, but didn't happen to know about the 1000 year exception, and didn't look anything up. Assumptions, always a bugger, expecially with dates.
Failover, sustainability and load balancing are key when building a web infrastructure. You are better off with fifty rackmount P III's than one mainframe any day of the week. That is why no one uses or advocates using mainframes for web serving.
A S/390 has fault tolerance features that the PC world can only dream of. Failover and sustainability are really not a problem in mainframe world, believe me. --
Sounds like the job for a lot of PCs with load balancing or perhaps some form of a beowulf cluster for the actual processing. Also you could have multiple high speed printers I really can't believe that you need a mainframe to increase something that is on the device end like a printer.
Beowulf? For billing applications? Do you know how complex parallel programming is?
And how do you like the idea of maintaining 200 PCs: I'd suggest it's a lot more difficult and expensive than maintaining one mainframe. Especially when most mainframe components are 100% hot-swappable: hell, you can do a microcode update on these things without any downtime.
Of course you'd have multiple printers, although the last mainframe printer I was attached to did 120 ppm, and had its own monitor. --
It's too late to do that. You can't get rid of ":w" from vi (I won't stand for it!) nor can you enforce ":w" on other programs.
Likewise, unless you're Microsoft, you can't force anyone to use a particular widget set, UI, anything.
As a user, you *may* choose to restrict yourself to (say) Gnome compliant apps, or KDE compliant apps, or whatever. Then you'll have the consistency you so crave. But you're denying yourself some programs which you might find useful. --
What linux, and all OS's, needs is a groovy way to store, organize, and retrive files. All this nested directory stuff is fine for us people who can "visualize" the tree, but to most people this makes no sense. I have never been inside an office that had file cabinets nested inside file cabinets ad naseum.
That's dumb. The hierarchy thing *is* the groovy way to store, organise and retrieve files. Especially when you have nice things like symlinks. File cabinets would nest too, if it weren't for those pesky laws of physics. That's why I can usually find a file on my computer more quickly than I can find a document around my house. --
"The goal is not for Linux to be the OS of the 3/_33t who like recompiling kernels and hacking X windows config files. If you want to be able to graduate and not have to use Windows on the job, then Linux has to progress beyond the embryonic stage.
Goal? There's a goal now?
Seriously, though: I think you'll find there as many different goals as there are developers. Personally, I'm 100% happy with the UI on my (Linux) desktop today. The Gnome peeps are nice enough to want a Linux desktop for the unwashed, and that's nice too. --
"A crucial element of having a GUI is that there is a common look and feel among the applications. In Linux, there's 4+ widget sets, a couple desktop environments, and countless window managers - and each distro comes set up differently. At the very least, a widget set should be made standard, and a default windowmanager/desktop environment should be chosen.
... and who's going to do that? You make a widget set "standard", and all that happens is that someone gets fed up with it and invents a new one. After all, we could have decided that Xaw was the standard. There, decision made.... or (shudder) Motif.
Choice is good. Choice is what lets you use Enlightenment, me use Windowmaker. Choice is why you're not using twm today (not to say that twm isn't excellent: I'm guessing that it's not to the taste of yer average GUI-head).
Netscape make money from their portal site (which the browser is effectively an ad for) and for their server software (which, again, the browser is an ad for).
Widespread use and admiration for their (free) browser is definitely in their interest: the toilets in pubs are free, but you don't drink there if the toilets are revolting... --
Where I work (IBM UK if you must know), we fill in a weekly timesheet. It should add up to 37 hours a week, and if it doesn't I have to assume questions would get asked.
Personally, I get all my work done (properly, too) during those 37 hours a week, *and* I get plenty of time to browse Slashdot, educate myself with O'Reilly books, and handle a modest amount of personal email while at work. --
Before this story gets archived, I'd just like to thanks everyone for their extremely helpful comments - and that includes the many people who mailed me personally, some of whom I've failed to reply to individually.
I've decided not to bother with wireless access, for several reasons. The cost and the patchy coverage, yes, but also as several people pointed out, when I'm out travelling, there'll be far more interesting things to see than my laptop screen.
So, it's a PCMCIA modem, and the phone sockets in the hotel in the evening. I work for IBM, and I'm a little embarassed that using my work's dialup didn't occur to me. D'Oh!
Also, thanks to the people who offered to meet me along the way. I hope to see a few of you.
Thanks again, and I hope to wow you with some stories and some pics of the desert and the neon come August.
I'll agree that the standard Sega DC controller is a bit fiddly for Street Fighter derivatives, where you need 6 punch/kick buttons.
Don't forget that not all fighters need 6 buttons: Tekken and Soul Calibur have 4 button systems.
Also, a number of 3rd party dreamcast controllers have 6 buttons (two of which replicate the functions of the shoulder triggers) under the right thumb.
Plus, the official Sega arcade stick is the Right Tool if you're fussy about conrollers for fighting games (or, like me, interface your console into a full size arcade cab;) ).
Remember, no mainstream console has ever had a standard pad (the one that comes in the box) with "street fighter buttons" - i.e. two rows of three - apart from the Saturn (oh, and the N64, but there are very few competent fighters for the N64). "Mainstream console" does not include the Neo Geo either, since nobody could afford one. --
Actually, I work for IBM, and I can't believe I didn't consider that my work dialin account would work in the States. D'Oh!. So that's the ISP problem solved. john --
In the words of the (corny) poet: "What is this world if, full of care, we have no time to stop and stare"
We only plan to drive a couple of hours a day. Lots of sightseeing to be done. Bumper stickers to be bought at Meramec caverns, detours to the Grand Canyon and Vegas. Etc. --
Americans and British Humour
on
The Truth
·
· Score: 3
Terry Pratchet is hard to pin down -- is this humor? Unadulterated absurdity? Clever satire? More real than real?
This statement really drives home the existence of Anglo-American divide to me. Pratchett's a funny writer, but "hard to pin down"? Come on.
Disclaimer: I'm ashamed to admit it, but it was a couple of weeks before I noticed the pun in the title of "The Fifth Elephant"... --
I dunno what the Oz exchange rate is, but this weekend in UK "What TV and Video" I was reading about a fully featured DVD deck (i.e. it does everything it should, including a digital audio output for Dolby Digital) which retails for US$160. That works out at £100.
Now, if it weren't for the bloody region lockout, I'd be ordering one today. At the moment, importing region 1 DVDs is the best way, but with a region 1 only machine, here in the UK, I'd be prevented from renting DVDs, impulse-buying them from shops... and the BBC are starting to release a number of quite attractive Region 2 DVDs -- e.g. Monty Python and Blackadder. --
The original poster might not care, but I imagine the average reader will. These providers run push services, whereby email and news get broadcast, and your computer receiveds it without the upstream modem connection being needed.
Two things worry me about this: one is that I don't know the protocol, and whether it is open (and therefore supportable in Linux). The second is that I'm concerned that mail might be being broadcast from a sattelite in plaintext.
I think I'll investigate these things now, and follow myself up if I unearth anything... --
About four years ago I spent a summer travelling around Sweden with some university friends.
The majority of Swedes I met were lovely people: I must stress that before I go on.
One night, we were settled in a campsite, when in the distance we heard shouting. It turned out to be a mob of skinheads wearing swastica badges, marching a circuit around the site, shouting "Sieg Heil". I've never seen anything like that before or since.
... so yes, maybe there are problems in Sweden (bloody nice place though. If you ever get the chance to visit Stokholm, do).
My views on censorship start to waver when it homes to hate sites, because unlike porn, they do offend me. It's important to keep your head straight at times like these, and realise that what you said about "not being forced to look at porn" still applies here. --
The most insightful part of this article was the bit that explained that the demographic of *advisors*, rather than gamers themselves, was pushing the direction of gaming.
In a nutshell, for those who won't read the article, the people who really dictate what will sell are the magazine reviewers and the shop salesmen, who are mostly males between 14 and 25.
A mother goes to a games shop, and says she's looking for a game to give to her 12 yr old daughter. The shop assistant is a 16 year old boy. He likes Quake. Either he tries to sell her Quake, or he'll sell her a random "kiddies" game, of unknown quality, knowing nothing as he does about quality children's software. As a result there is nothing driving children's software to improve.
(the same thing applies to "women's software", "senior citizen's software"). Why is there nothing on the Playstation that will appeal to my Mum? I'm sure if anyone actually put some thought into it, they'd think of something. Sim Country Garden. There, that didn't take long. --
Slashdot Mirror
It's the university's bandwidth, they can say what does and doesn't pass through it. Personally, I feel the same way to "censoring" things in libraries. It's the library's computers, they can say what you read or don't read on it, the only problem here is the censorware's blacklist, and it being abused
Not the same thing at all. (1) A library is supposed to be a "common carrier" of information. They should provide you with any book you ask for (perhaps they may ask a small administration fee if they need to buy it especially or ship it from another library), and they should offer free access to the Net. (2) The library censorship that's topical at the moment is not decided by the libraries themselves: it's forced on the libraries by local government. I guess it's within the local government's rights to do whatever they like with their funding, but this kind of thing deserves a referendum.
--
When MP3s flying around the network start to affect people's ability to get real work done -- both by students and researchers -- I think it's entirely within the rights of the admins to restrict the use of things like Napster. Buy your own T1.
--
There is no such thing as a region free player. Most players are intentionally left hackable by manufacturers and hacked by small repair/tune outlets before they go into sales in the big stores. But they are actually being hacked. Ask an insider at your closest high street store if you do not believe this. Or search slashdot or the register.
Actually, I bought a DVD player in my local (UK) supermarket, and it plays both region 1 and 2 DVDs without modification -- nor even any secret remote sequence shenanigans.
Admittedly, the player was not advertised or labelled as a region free player; and a lot of it is shady stuff along similar lines to Playstation chipping. However, Region 1 DVD is *big* in the UK, and I suspect that the distributors will have a better time trying synchronise their release dates, than suppressing imports of DVDs from the States.
--
With the sheer volume of Region 1 DVDs being bought online from US sites by UK customers, to play on their chipped players, I'm guessing that movies will start reaching us a lot quicker, quite soon: otherwise cinemas will lose out.
At the moment, I can often buy a movie on DVD from Reel.com before it's even on theatrical release in the UK.
--
Point taken. My bad :)
--
It's a Y2K problem in the sense that the rule goes:
isleap = false;
if(year%4 == 0) {
isleap=true;
year%100 == 0 ? isleap=false;
year%1000 == 0 ? isleap=true;
}
The extent to which the rules are well-known are inversely proportional to their frequency. Hence, the 100 year exception is quite well known, the 1000 year exception is less well known.
I'm guessing the programmers here knew the 100 year exception, and programmed it in, but didn't happen to know about the 1000 year exception, and didn't look anything up. Assumptions, always a bugger, expecially with dates.
(c) Slim, 19100
--
I'm pretty sure there was a "back" button on NCSA Mosaic, before Spyglass existed.
Now, if CERN had patented HTTP...
--
Failover, sustainability and load balancing are key when building a web infrastructure. You are better off with fifty rackmount P III's than one mainframe any day of the week. That is why no one uses or advocates using mainframes for web serving.
A S/390 has fault tolerance features that the PC world can only dream of. Failover and sustainability are really not a problem in mainframe world, believe me.
--
Sounds like the job for a lot of PCs with load balancing or perhaps some form of a beowulf cluster for the actual processing. Also
you could have multiple high speed printers I really can't believe that you need a mainframe to increase something that is on the
device end like a printer.
Beowulf? For billing applications? Do you know how complex parallel programming is?
And how do you like the idea of maintaining 200 PCs: I'd suggest it's a lot more difficult and expensive than maintaining one mainframe. Especially when most mainframe components are 100% hot-swappable: hell, you can do a microcode update on these things without any downtime.
Of course you'd have multiple printers, although the last mainframe printer I was attached to did 120 ppm, and had its own monitor.
--
It's too late to do that. You can't get rid of ":w" from vi (I won't stand for it!) nor can you enforce ":w" on other programs.
Likewise, unless you're Microsoft, you can't force anyone to use a particular widget set, UI, anything.
As a user, you *may* choose to restrict yourself to (say) Gnome compliant apps, or KDE compliant apps, or whatever. Then you'll have the consistency you so crave. But you're denying yourself some programs which you might find useful.
--
What linux, and all OS's, needs is a groovy way to store, organize, and retrive files. All this nested directory stuff is fine for us people who can "visualize" the tree, but to most people this makes no sense. I have never been inside an office that had file cabinets nested inside file cabinets ad naseum.
That's dumb. The hierarchy thing *is* the groovy way to store, organise and retrieve files. Especially when you have nice things like symlinks. File cabinets would nest too, if it weren't for those pesky laws of physics. That's why I can usually find a file on my computer more quickly than I can find a document around my house.
--
who like recompiling kernels and hacking X windows config files. If you want to be able to graduate and not have to use Windows on the
job, then Linux has to progress beyond the embryonic stage.
Goal? There's a goal now?
Seriously, though: I think you'll find there as many different goals as there are developers. Personally, I'm 100% happy with the UI on my (Linux) desktop today. The Gnome peeps are nice enough to want a Linux desktop for the unwashed, and that's nice too.
--
"A crucial element of having a GUI is that there is a common look and feel among the applications. In Linux, there's 4+ widget sets, a
... or (shudder) Motif.
couple desktop environments, and countless window managers - and each distro comes set up differently. At the very least, a widget
set should be made standard, and a default windowmanager/desktop environment should be chosen.
... and who's going to do that? You make a widget set "standard", and all that happens is that someone gets fed up with it and invents a new one.
After all, we could have decided that Xaw was the standard. There, decision made.
Choice is good. Choice is what lets you use Enlightenment, me use Windowmaker. Choice is why you're not using twm today (not to say that twm isn't excellent: I'm guessing that it's not to the taste of yer average GUI-head).
--
Netscape make money from their portal site (which the browser is effectively an ad for) and for their server software (which, again, the browser is an ad for).
Widespread use and admiration for their (free) browser is definitely in their interest: the toilets in pubs are free, but you don't drink there if the toilets are revolting...
--
Where I work (IBM UK if you must know), we fill in a weekly timesheet. It should add up to 37 hours a week, and if it doesn't I have to assume questions would get asked.
Personally, I get all my work done (properly, too) during those 37 hours a week, *and* I get plenty of time to browse Slashdot, educate myself with O'Reilly books, and handle a modest amount of personal email while at work.
--
Before this story gets archived, I'd just like to thanks everyone for their extremely helpful comments - and that includes the many people who mailed me personally, some of whom I've failed to reply to individually.
I've decided not to bother with wireless access, for several reasons. The cost and the patchy coverage, yes, but also as several people pointed out, when I'm out travelling, there'll be far more interesting things to see than my laptop screen.
So, it's a PCMCIA modem, and the phone sockets in the hotel in the evening. I work for IBM, and I'm a little embarassed that using my work's dialup didn't occur to me. D'Oh!
Also, thanks to the people who offered to meet me along the way. I hope to see a few of you.
Thanks again, and I hope to wow you with some stories and some pics of the desert and the neon come August.
Slim
--
Yeah, you may as well try and categorise CDs!
... you'll note that every music shop in the world attempts to categorise CDs by genre, but nobody's every done a perfect job of it.
Come to think of it, Yahoo and dmoz both try and categorise websites, and they've got a lot more than nine root hierarchies...
--
Don't forget that not all fighters need 6 buttons: Tekken and Soul Calibur have 4 button systems.
Also, a number of 3rd party dreamcast controllers have 6 buttons (two of which replicate the functions of the shoulder triggers) under the right thumb.
Plus, the official Sega arcade stick is the Right Tool if you're fussy about conrollers for fighting games (or, like me, interface your console into a full size arcade cab
Remember, no mainstream console has ever had a standard pad (the one that comes in the box) with "street fighter buttons" - i.e. two rows of three - apart from the Saturn (oh, and the N64, but there are very few competent fighters for the N64). "Mainstream console" does not include the Neo Geo either, since nobody could afford one.
--
Actually, I work for IBM, and I can't believe I didn't consider that my work dialin account would work in the States. D'Oh!. So that's the ISP problem solved. john
--
In the words of the (corny) poet: "What is this world if, full of care, we have no time to stop and stare"
We only plan to drive a couple of hours a day. Lots of sightseeing to be done. Bumper stickers to be bought at Meramec caverns, detours to the Grand Canyon and Vegas. Etc.
--
Terry Pratchet is hard to pin down -- is this humor? Unadulterated absurdity? Clever satire? More real than real?
This statement really drives home the existence of Anglo-American divide to me. Pratchett's a funny writer, but "hard to pin down"? Come on.
Disclaimer: I'm ashamed to admit it, but it was a couple of weeks before I noticed the pun in the title of "The Fifth Elephant"...
--
I dunno what the Oz exchange rate is, but this weekend in UK "What TV and Video" I was reading about a fully featured DVD deck (i.e. it does everything it should, including a digital audio output for Dolby Digital) which retails for US$160. That works out at £100.
Now, if it weren't for the bloody region lockout, I'd be ordering one today. At the moment, importing region 1 DVDs is the best way, but with a region 1 only machine, here in the UK, I'd be prevented from renting DVDs, impulse-buying them from shops... and the BBC are starting to release a number of quite attractive Region 2 DVDs -- e.g. Monty Python and Blackadder.
--
Two things worry me about this: one is that I don't know the protocol, and whether it is open (and therefore supportable in Linux). The second is that I'm concerned that mail might be being broadcast from a sattelite in plaintext.
I think I'll investigate these things now, and follow myself up if I unearth anything...
--
The majority of Swedes I met were lovely people: I must stress that before I go on.
One night, we were settled in a campsite, when in the distance we heard shouting. It turned out to be a mob of skinheads wearing swastica badges, marching a circuit around the site, shouting "Sieg Heil". I've never seen anything like that before or since.
... so yes, maybe there are problems in Sweden (bloody nice place though. If you ever get the chance to visit Stokholm, do).
My views on censorship start to waver when it homes to hate sites, because unlike porn, they do offend me. It's important to keep your head straight at times like these, and realise that what you said about "not being forced to look at porn" still applies here.
--
In a nutshell, for those who won't read the article, the people who really dictate what will sell are the magazine reviewers and the shop salesmen, who are mostly males between 14 and 25.
A mother goes to a games shop, and says she's looking for a game to give to her 12 yr old daughter. The shop assistant is a 16 year old boy. He likes Quake. Either he tries to sell her Quake, or he'll sell her a random "kiddies" game, of unknown quality, knowing nothing as he does about quality children's software. As a result there is nothing driving children's software to improve.
(the same thing applies to "women's software", "senior citizen's software"). Why is there nothing on the Playstation that will appeal to my Mum? I'm sure if anyone actually put some thought into it, they'd think of something. Sim Country Garden. There, that didn't take long.
--