Obligatory mention of gkrellm... www.gkrellm.net. IMHO, its smaller, more lightweight... can be extended with hundreds of plugins and doesn't clutter the desktop. I think it's been around a bit longer too, but I could be wrong.
My biggest pet peeve with linux (distros) is that each application has it's own config file format. Want to configure sendmail? Great... learn it's format. Want to configure apache? Great... learn it's format. Want to configure the plethora of smaller programs and utilities? Great... learn their formats. It gets annoying after a while... especially when most of the confuration tools available (Redhat) are buggy and aren't really capable of anything beyond the most basic configurations.
Now... I'm not going to bitch without providing a possible solution, so here it is:
I think there should be a standardized configuration API, format, and storage for Linux. Perhaps something the LSB or big distros could put together... basically, the concept would be similiar to the windows registry, but better and smaller in scope. Store configuration data for applications in an XML format with a defined standard layout in a central location. Then, provide an API that application authors can use to manipulate configuration data.
This would make it really simple to write a standardized configuration tool for ALL of linux.
i hand over money to my ISP and in return i get to view all these web pages , download movies/mp3's/chat/im... which is roughly equivalent to saying "I pay my phone company, so I shouldn't have to pay to call a 1-900 number".
ISP = Internet Service Provider... they are providing you with internet *service*. It's the ability to connect, not necessarily the content you view (consume goods) with the connection.
The ultimate irony in this whole thing is the US Patriot Act itself... it will eventually take away the very freedoms it purports to protect. How ironic.
Here's one easy thing that you can do to minimize the impact a power supply will have on the internal temperature of your case...
You'll notice on most power supplies that there is a fan venting heat INTO the case. An easy solution is to reverse the fan(s) in your power supply so that they pull air from inside the case and vent it out the back. This is especially handy when incorporated with a case fan in the front of the chassis that moves cool air into the case. This establishes a nice flow of cool in the front and warm out the back.
Reversing the power supply fans is usually one of the first mods I make to my PCs when setting up the cooling system.
My website is in the US. The US has no such law. The Swedish government has no jurisdiction here, so this is completely irrelevant except to those that publish websites within Swedish jurisdiction. Screw Sweden -- they suck anyway.
"The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA became the first in the world to run an http server on a vintage Altair 8800. The exhibit was promptly destroyed when millions of crazed fanatics of the website "slashdot" tried to access the Altair at the same moment."
How about this... I engineer these types of systems as my profession, so I know what I'm talking about... did you even bother to READ and understand my post before spouting off in such a rude manner? I don't think you did.
I'd suggest that you visit the Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire's Franconia Notch... but he recently committed suicide. Nothing to see there folks... move along.
This idea sounds good on paper, but won't work in practice.
Here's the flaw... how does the system know when data is being accessed illegitimately? Just because there's a dummy record in a database, doesn't mean that it won't be accessed. The example given with the patient table fails to account for times when the software itself will access the data for various purposes... updating information, reporting, etc.
Exactly how would one go about monitoring data access? In theory, it's simple... enable some form of auditing on the database server. Ok, but then the flaw... how does the auditing system know which data reads are good and which are bad? Even on a bogus fake record, there will be legitimate data reads by the application software that uses the database.
"too many people voting" was why the Congress was created. A direct democracy doesn't scale well above a small group of people. The idea behind having a Congress (and the US government) is to have a representative republic. Yes, its shocking news to those that were taught in school at we have a democracy, but its simply not true. The US Government is a representative republic. We elect a small group of individuals and send them to the House and Senate to do our business. There's the power to be heard... not with voting, but by communicating with your legislators.
Actions like this adds fuel to the fire that will erupt in revolution. Remember, this country was founded by people that became intensely disgusted with the opressions of their own government.
Chances are very good that they'd be disgusted today with what their foundations for freedom have become. I think the US government is now far worse than the british government was in 1776.
Firebird is based on the Mozilla rendering engine, right?
Yes.
The one without a full, documented API that enables you to actually do things to the content, right?
The W3C DOM API compliant one, which is very well documented and implemented closer to the standard than IE.
The one that doesn't allow you to get actual rendered layout values?
Again, its W3C DOM compliant.
The one that doesn't support the ruby tag?
The "RUBY" tag was recommended to the W3C in 2001 and became part of XHTML 1.1. They're working on it... http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33339, although I personally am not aware of its actual status.
I agree with you... BUT, they aren't incapable of making the change. They just need a good reason...
I'll say this to start: Firebird.6 seriously kicks ass! Its the browser I've been wanting for a long time. Gecko is good, but the standard Mozilla implemention is bloated and it sucks too much. That's why firebird is nice... light, fast, and only the features I want. Nothing more.
The good reason we can give for the IE tards out there that don't want to switch... POP-UPS! Christ... all we need is an anchor on CNN (they're AOLTIMEWARNER, RIGHT? They *could* easily push firebird/mozilla) to do a 1 minute piece about how IE sucks and Firebird is better.
The EASILY demonstrated value in Firebird/mozilla is the pop-up blocking feature. I bet that if Joe and Sally Q. Computeruser knew that there's an easier to use web browser that doesn't bombard them with POP-UPS, they'd download and install in an instant.
Installing firebird is a piece of cake by the way... download, click the icon, the browser starts to run. Can't really get much easier than that.
I have first hand experience with this subject after spending 2 long years working with a State level government agency to develop motor vehicle registration software...
The problem is not so much about "how hard is it to write software that works"... its more about "we're writing software for what we need RIGHT NOW".
When governments sit down to write software, its usually done through private contractors. So, a group of beaurocrats have a pow-wow and come up with a spec that generally reflects the type of work that the agency is doing "now", without much future consideration.
15 years later... as legislation, beaurocracy, and agency regulations expand, so do the requirements of the software. For example, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in an unspecified state put their first computer system in place in 1968. Since then, the scope of the BMV has expanded at least 10-fold.
Complicating the issue, "upgrades" are usually in the form of applying a new "layer" to the system somehow. As of 2003 in this unspecified state, the typical motor vehicle registration passes through 4 different systems before arriving in the central (OLD and limited) database at the state.
Complicating the problems even further are the many new layers of regulatory bloat -- meaning, the BMV is using software that met their needs in 1968, but doesn't meet their needs now. For example, (and this is how data goes bad), they're required to track whether or not somebody's registration is under suspension. However, back in 1968 registration suspension wasn't even a blip on the radar. To handle the problem after the "registration suspension legislation" was enacted, an "exception" had to be built into the system... if the street address field contains a special message, it indicates that the registration is under suspension. Ultimate problem... fields in the database are being used for purposes they were never intended. The age of the system does not allow for it to be updated properly.
Language standardization is generally something that happens at the management level... with *real* people. The people managing the projects should be the ones to say "hey, we need to develop this whole thing in the same language so it can be easily maintained in the future". However, there are advantages to the interoperation of.NET languages... because developers *could* develop pieces in different languages makes it easier for a software company to develop multiple software packages in different languages that might share some pack of common code. But of course, its up to the project managers to ensure future maintainability.
Helios began its life as "centurion", which was a bit smaller and then expanded to the helios configuration. http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Research/Erast/centurion2.html
Why upgrade a server if it still works? Put 2000 and XP on the workstations, sure, but why replace an already-functional server? As long as it keeps serving files, right?
It'll only keep serving files for a few weeks until the next worm comes along and exploits an unpatched hole in the system. Then what? You upgrade.
I still contend that Asia only needs one 1 IP address... then, NAT the entire country. This solves many problems...
1. They're all communists anyway and if all traffic went through one IP, they'd have better control over their people. Government wins.
2. No more problems with reaching the limit of ipv4. Millions of addresses would be free'd from Asia for the benefit of the rest of the world. The entire world wins.
3. Since most spam originates in China, and if they all go down to one big NAT box somewhere, then we'd be able to eliminate almost all spam by simply blocking Asia's IP address. We all win!
Looks like a win-win-win situation to me... Lets get onto these metrics, shift the paradigms, and leverage the synergy we are presented with.
Slashdot Mirror
Obligatory mention of gkrellm ... www.gkrellm.net. IMHO, its smaller, more lightweight... can be extended with hundreds of plugins and doesn't clutter the desktop. I think it's been around a bit longer too, but I could be wrong.
My biggest pet peeve with linux (distros) is that each application has it's own config file format. Want to configure sendmail? Great... learn it's format. Want to configure apache? Great... learn it's format. Want to configure the plethora of smaller programs and utilities? Great... learn their formats. It gets annoying after a while ... especially when most of the confuration tools available (Redhat) are buggy and aren't really capable of anything beyond the most basic configurations.
Now... I'm not going to bitch without providing a possible solution, so here it is:
I think there should be a standardized configuration API, format, and storage for Linux. Perhaps something the LSB or big distros could put together... basically, the concept would be similiar to the windows registry, but better and smaller in scope. Store configuration data for applications in an XML format with a defined standard layout in a central location. Then, provide an API that application authors can use to manipulate configuration data.
This would make it really simple to write a standardized configuration tool for ALL of linux.
let the flames begin
--csb
"Everquest IV: The IRS Has No Power Here"
Cool. Can we melee attack IRS agents? Gimme buffs.
i hand over money to my ISP and in return i get to view all these web pages , download movies/mp3's/chat/im ... which is roughly equivalent to saying "I pay my phone company, so I shouldn't have to pay to call a 1-900 number".
... they are providing you with internet *service*. It's the ability to connect, not necessarily the content you view (consume goods) with the connection.
ISP = Internet Service Provider
Lemme guess... you're an AOL user?
The ultimate irony in this whole thing is the US Patriot Act itself ... it will eventually take away the very freedoms it purports to protect. How ironic.
Here's one easy thing that you can do to minimize the impact a power supply will have on the internal temperature of your case...
You'll notice on most power supplies that there is a fan venting heat INTO the case. An easy solution is to reverse the fan(s) in your power supply so that they pull air from inside the case and vent it out the back. This is especially handy when incorporated with a case fan in the front of the chassis that moves cool air into the case. This establishes a nice flow of cool in the front and warm out the back.
Reversing the power supply fans is usually one of the first mods I make to my PCs when setting up the cooling system.
My website is in the US. The US has no such law. The Swedish government has no jurisdiction here, so this is completely irrelevant except to those that publish websites within Swedish jurisdiction. Screw Sweden -- they suck anyway.
We are the borg.
In related news ...
"The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA became the first in the world to run an http server on a vintage Altair 8800. The exhibit was promptly destroyed when millions of crazed fanatics of the website "slashdot" tried to access the Altair at the same moment."
How about this ... I engineer these types of systems as my profession, so I know what I'm talking about... did you even bother to READ and understand my post before spouting off in such a rude manner? I don't think you did.
I'd suggest that you visit the Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire's Franconia Notch... but he recently committed suicide. Nothing to see there folks... move along.
This idea sounds good on paper, but won't work in practice.
... updating information, reporting, etc.
... enable some form of auditing on the database server. Ok, but then the flaw... how does the auditing system know which data reads are good and which are bad? Even on a bogus fake record, there will be legitimate data reads by the application software that uses the database.
Here's the flaw... how does the system know when data is being accessed illegitimately? Just because there's a dummy record in a database, doesn't mean that it won't be accessed. The example given with the patient table fails to account for times when the software itself will access the data for various purposes
Exactly how would one go about monitoring data access? In theory, it's simple
"too many people voting" was why the Congress was created. A direct democracy doesn't scale well above a small group of people. The idea behind having a Congress (and the US government) is to have a representative republic. Yes, its shocking news to those that were taught in school at we have a democracy, but its simply not true. The US Government is a representative republic. We elect a small group of individuals and send them to the House and Senate to do our business. There's the power to be heard ... not with voting, but by communicating with your legislators.
And throwing more fuel on the fire ...
Waco, Texas, April 19th, 1993 -- 75 people killed by the US Government.
Ruby Ridge, Idaho, August 22, 1992 -- 2 people killed by the US Government.
Actions like this adds fuel to the fire that will erupt in revolution. Remember, this country was founded by people that became intensely disgusted with the opressions of their own government.
... how much longer?
Chances are very good that they'd be disgusted today with what their foundations for freedom have become. I think the US government is now far worse than the british government was in 1776.
So, the ultimate question is
Firebird is based on the Mozilla rendering engine, right?
... http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33339, although I personally am not aware of its actual status.
Yes.
The one without a full, documented API that enables you to actually do things to the content, right?
The W3C DOM API compliant one, which is very well documented and implemented closer to the standard than IE.
The one that doesn't allow you to get actual rendered layout values?
Again, its W3C DOM compliant.
The one that doesn't support the ruby tag?
The "RUBY" tag was recommended to the W3C in 2001 and became part of XHTML 1.1. They're working on it
I agree with you ... BUT, they aren't incapable of making the change. They just need a good reason...
.6 seriously kicks ass! Its the browser I've been wanting for a long time. Gecko is good, but the standard Mozilla implemention is bloated and it sucks too much. That's why firebird is nice... light, fast, and only the features I want. Nothing more.
... POP-UPS! Christ... all we need is an anchor on CNN (they're AOLTIMEWARNER, RIGHT? They *could* easily push firebird/mozilla) to do a 1 minute piece about how IE sucks and Firebird is better.
I'll say this to start: Firebird
The good reason we can give for the IE tards out there that don't want to switch
The EASILY demonstrated value in Firebird/mozilla is the pop-up blocking feature. I bet that if Joe and Sally Q. Computeruser knew that there's an easier to use web browser that doesn't bombard them with POP-UPS, they'd download and install in an instant.
Installing firebird is a piece of cake by the way... download, click the icon, the browser starts to run. Can't really get much easier than that.
I have first hand experience with this subject after spending 2 long years working with a State level government agency to develop motor vehicle registration software ...
... its more about "we're writing software for what we need RIGHT NOW".
... as legislation, beaurocracy, and agency regulations expand, so do the requirements of the software. For example, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in an unspecified state put their first computer system in place in 1968. Since then, the scope of the BMV has expanded at least 10-fold.
The problem is not so much about "how hard is it to write software that works"
When governments sit down to write software, its usually done through private contractors. So, a group of beaurocrats have a pow-wow and come up with a spec that generally reflects the type of work that the agency is doing "now", without much future consideration.
15 years later
Complicating the issue, "upgrades" are usually in the form of applying a new "layer" to the system somehow. As of 2003 in this unspecified state, the typical motor vehicle registration passes through 4 different systems before arriving in the central (OLD and limited) database at the state.
Complicating the problems even further are the many new layers of regulatory bloat -- meaning, the BMV is using software that met their needs in 1968, but doesn't meet their needs now. For example, (and this is how data goes bad), they're required to track whether or not somebody's registration is under suspension. However, back in 1968 registration suspension wasn't even a blip on the radar. To handle the problem after the "registration suspension legislation" was enacted, an "exception" had to be built into the system... if the street address field contains a special message, it indicates that the registration is under suspension. Ultimate problem... fields in the database are being used for purposes they were never intended. The age of the system does not allow for it to be updated properly.
Portland? Which one? Are there any real journalists in the house?
Language standardization is generally something that happens at the management level ... with *real* people. The people managing the projects should be the ones to say "hey, we need to develop this whole thing in the same language so it can be easily maintained in the future". However, there are advantages to the interoperation of .NET languages ... because developers *could* develop pieces in different languages makes it easier for a software company to develop multiple software packages in different languages that might share some pack of common code. But of course, its up to the project managers to ensure future maintainability.
Helios began its life as "centurion", which was a bit smaller and then expanded to the helios configuration. http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Research/Erast/centurion2 .html
Why upgrade a server if it still works? Put 2000 and XP on the workstations, sure, but why replace an already-functional server? As long as it keeps serving files, right?
It'll only keep serving files for a few weeks until the next worm comes along and exploits an unpatched hole in the system. Then what? You upgrade.
No shit sherlock.
typo ... asia is a continent, not a country. Sorry 'bout that.
I still contend that Asia only needs one 1 IP address... then, NAT the entire country. This solves many problems ...
1. They're all communists anyway and if all traffic went through one IP, they'd have better control over their people. Government wins.
2. No more problems with reaching the limit of ipv4. Millions of addresses would be free'd from Asia for the benefit of the rest of the world. The entire world wins.
3. Since most spam originates in China, and if they all go down to one big NAT box somewhere, then we'd be able to eliminate almost all spam by simply blocking Asia's IP address. We all win!
Looks like a win-win-win situation to me... Lets get onto these metrics, shift the paradigms, and leverage the synergy we are presented with.
Presented to you by psycho-babble 1.0.