I'm not really a huge security buff, but for many general purpose "web servers" a firewall is unnecessary. I don't run anything serious like "ecommerce" or a site like Slashdot that millions of people rely on, but my simple philosophy is to just not run (or expose to the internet interface) services that aren't needed. Filtering ports that nothing is listening on is pointless.
Speaking of security facilitating DOS attacks to cripple, I once helped a friend with his web server that was being DOS'd, slowed by extra i/o and having the hard drive filled up with logs. He had installed Port Sentry (1.x back then) to thwart and block port scanning hosts, and in its default configuration of "-sTCP -UDP" it doesn't take a full connect to trigger an action. Any knock on the door with Syn/Ack, or UDP to one of the trigger ports would add a rule to block that IP (ipchains) for a period of time and enable logging of future connection attempts.
Well... all it took was a spoofed SYN flood, that looked like it was coming from random IP addresses. The flood would have done zero harm had it not been for Port Sentry adding firewall rules and logging targets for every IP address that every packet appeared to come from.
His fault for not understanding how Port Sentry worked, but what a retarded "security" situation that was. Completely pointless, because there were no ports listening that we didn't want anyway. I laugh every time I think about that night. I figured out what was going on in a couple of minutes over a SSH session, but what made it even funnier was that even after I shut down Port Sentry the log entries kept coming seemingly forever because sysklogd was still writing them from buffers. Anyway, I killed syslogd, deleted the huge log files and touched new ones, edited port sentry to react only to full tcp connects (-tcp), disabled the creation of the logging rules, and sent the server down for a reboot and all was well. The SYN attack wasn't really enough to flood the link on its own.
You know, a lot of these fucksticks who get laws passed, and those that empower them (like the M.A.D.D. shills) are rather vain to think that citizens have to submit to their whims.I would never submit to nanny state sensors on my vehicles. I'd get that circumvented right quick.
Biometric IDs for authorized drivers mandated on all vehicles? I don't think so. That will never work, for it will render vehicles inoperable in emergency situations.
Laws are for people who can't think for themselves. The rest of us go about our lives deciding on our own what is acceptable and what is not. The police are little better than adversaries that we have to watch out for, just like street thugs.
I'll be the one who decides whether or not I'm driving. Not M.A.D.D., not the police, not The Law, and not some machine.
I've tried to be positive here and waited a bit before bitching, but I'm sick and tired of developers thinking they know what's best for me, and overriding my choices. Also, Slashdot is now yet another site where the text boxes are white text on a white background, because I dare to use a different GTK+ style than everyone else. Another site where I have to compose posts in a text editor and paste into forms, or keep dragging over my text to highlight it so I can see it. It's more trouble than its worth to post here now.
Webmasters of the world: Don't hard code colours! Let the client decide what the normal foreground and background colours are going to be for text, especially in forms.
Especially since it will be ignored by "default". You can arbitrarily inject headers into requests, but the web servers and sites people are running won't recognize them until they are taught to.
Also, last time I checked, the Mozilla foundation wasn't in any sort of law making position so the chances of it being "legally required" in any country, let alone all countries, are pretty slim. Especially when the resident evil, Microsoft, will be against it. (For their "partners" and themselves)
No, I'm afraid the current technique of blocking advertising sites will be the only effective solution. Perhaps Mozilla could add that functionality to the main browser for those who choose to enable it. (If they have the balls, that is. It would certainly piss off webmasters)
No, that wasn't the one I had tried but had I known about it I would have tried it (They use Windows but I could have set it up on one of my rigs).
What I tried was a solution I got from a phone enthusiast forum. All I knew was that we sure as Hell weren't paying $90 for functionality that should have been a given. It wasn't even that important, it was more like a "it would be nice if we could do that". The folks weren't really in to taking pictures anyway.
Anyway... at the time (~ 2 years ago) other phones you just plugged in and they were detected as USB storage. Sorry, but we disliked those motorola phones. (Nothing to do with the quality of the hardware, they didn't fail or anything). This is likely the carrier's fault, but the folks complained about shitty signal/coverage with those phones too.
Very happy with the Blackberries now. (I don't really like any such gadgets personally, but I haven't had any trouble making my parents happy with them and they don't pester me. Mom is doing all kinds of stuff she never thought about doing with a phone)
My only exposure to Android has been an ArchOS tablet and it seemed OK. I was easily able to poke my way around knowing nothing about it.
My netbook is about as gadgety as I get. I don't have a cell phone personally, I don't like them because I don't want one more way for people to annoy me. I've debated getting one and only using it for road side emergencies and the like, but I've not had one of those (I mostly just drive locally and it wouldn't be hard to get to a phone if I did)
I despise Motorola and their rubbish. My parents had motorola phones previously, and they were so proprietary they wanted $90 for a program just to let us transfer pictures from the phone to the computer.
I dicked around (for hours) trying to get a home grown solution working and finally just gave up. It involved installing a driver from motorola (deeply buried on their web site), and a third party app for accessing it. All it did was hang. What I learned (but wasn't sure if I believed) was that even the USB cable was proprietary and while it was the same connection as a camera cable, it was wired differently.
So I don't particularly care what they say and do, there will be no more Motorola devices in this household anyway.
The folks have since switched to Blackberries.
Long before this, I hated Motorola for their shitty modems. Some of the worst rubbish that I have ever had the pleasure of tossing in the garbage.
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
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Xfce 4.8 Released
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Except that OpenOffice is only bloat if I open it and when I close it, it goes away. I don't care about bloat in an application like that but I do care if the system is kludgy and bloated. It doesn't matter if I have the hardware for it, waste is shameful.
There used to be a time when you opened a KDE app outside of KDE, that the kdeinit process would clean up after itself (and exit) when all child processes were gone. Not so anymore... KDE services and their ilk stay running.
I've been using XFCE for several years (Starting back when it was a new desktop environment that used GTK+ 1.x) and every version becomes more Gnome-like it seems. Out of the box, it takes me a while to get things the way I like them... the way it used to be.
I tend to just never upgrade XFCE 4 after the initial build anymore because it's just too damned much work to get everything set up again, only to have it introduce changes that piss me off. It's my work environment and it's too important for me to dick around with. If I'm starting from scratch on a new Linux setup, I'll get the latest and work out any annoyances then.
I too like the Linux Nvidia driver (ignoring the ideology) and they sure do a good job supporting different kernel versions and X. Nobody does a proprietary driver better than Nvidia. Get a new -rc kernel? If the current version doesn't build and link in, and there's no beta that covers it, there's probably someone already in the forums who has a patch or code snippet that will make you happy again.
However, the proprietary ATI driver is no longer the length of turd that it used to be. They haven't quite got it together like Nvidia does in terms of supporting diverse Linux systems, but I haven't suffered too much at their hands in the year or so that I've had a Radeon HD 5870.
On my current rig I opted for an ATI card, because I hated my last Nvidia card: 9800 GX2 which was buggy in a lot of my Windows games and died 17 months after purchase. (It was an "OCX" model from BFG though, factory overclocked. It ran very, very hot, even with the fan at 100% during gaming and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to suspect that it got damaged. I burned for the lifetime BFG warranty too because they went out of business. That was a $600 video card. Even that is partly my fault for procrastinating though.)
I wasn't sorry, I have been very happy with the ATI 5870 in Windows 7, and I've managed to do OK with the proprietary ATI driver. It always needs patching though... three ATI driver versions have gone by and it STILL doesn't build for Linux 2.6.36.x or 2.6.37. (I use --buildpkg Slackware/All to make slackware packages) Fortunately the kernel parts haven't changed that much and the patches can be easily adjusted. That's still pretty piss poor maintenance on their part, but at least it's not an untenable situation for me.
The end result has been great though. In fact, for what I do with 3D acceleration in Linux, older games like UT2004, Quake 4, Doom 3 and friends as well as things like Sauerbraten, it's as good as or better than Nvidia (e.g. No glitches in UT2004). I think that 2D acceleration has been better than Nvidia as well.
For a browser, 2D is more important anyway at this time. I know that since I switched to Firefox 4 in Linux (I'm using sources I got using Mercurial a few days ago, it says 4.0b10pre) that long Slashdot threads load up a lot faster, and no longer make the browser unresponsive while they are rendering. They also scroll effortlessly.
So I'm assuming that I have better 2D acceleration with Firefox 4 than Firefox 3.6.
Cripes... I now have to retract some of what I said.
First of all, the status bar 4ever extension works acceptably as a status bar.
It seems, with the update I got last night (I presume it was the Minefield update... I also got Windows updates last night as well, some of which were "recommended" reliability/compatibility updates), Minefield no longer does that delay with hard disk dance when first starting it up. I rebooted Windows 7 three times to test that and it wasn't just a fluke.
I pretty much have most of the yuck factor sorted as best as I can now too (Things like showing the menu bar and tabs underneath address bar I had already done, but I solved my last niggle... I realized I could move the home button, which was way over to the far side of my wide screen display. Duh!)
I might start to experiment with Firefox 4.x in Linux now.
I just hope that status bar extension isn't going to be too fragile against new firefox 4 versions when the time comes. I've tended to shun extensions in the past, because of the pile of feces people go through at upgrade time.
I hate that... I rely on the status bar all the time. I disable the javascript setting that lets sites change the status bar text, so I see only what I'm supposed to. (and I run my browser maximized)
In Firefox 4.x, when you hover over URLs it DOES show part of it up top, near the address bar but it's truncated. You can see the domain you are about to connect to, but often not much more than that. It's important to see the entire URL.
That's a show stopper for me. I also dislike the new user interface.
I'm currently using Minefield in my Windows 7 install, just because it's a convenient 64 bit Firefox binary that is able to update itself. (official rather than third party). I don't care as much, because Windows is just for games, and the only browsing I do is to download new video drivers and such, and check a few of my forums.
Also, I can excuse this right now because it's "beta" quality, but when I first start Minefield in Windows (for the first time in a session) there's a lengthy, hard disk gyrating delay before it opens. I don't know what the Hell it's doing, but after that it's fine (and quick enough at page rendering)
But when we get to the point where Firefox 3.x.x is no longer maintained, I'll be changing browsers in Linux, which is my work environment and the browser is a very important application.
I'm not sure what that is going to be, because I like Firefox (and like to do my own custom builds of it), hate Chrome, hate Konqueror and I have never been very fond of Opera (Though it's quite usable). Maybe Seamonkey, if they don't mess that up too.
I can't see Firefox 3.x going away any time soon though, so I'm probably OK for a while.
It's a bit tricky in all of those so called "easy" distributions but not impossibly difficult. It's probably best to use the distributor's kernel sources and methods, but you don't have to if you make some changes to the system first. You have to be careful that you're not using features they've patched in to their kernels if you do that though.
I have Ubuntu 10.10 (actually Xubuntu with XFCE) on my netbook, and I have been using a regular kernel.org kernel (2.6.36.2 currently) without using an initrd or anything. This requires changes to fstab to use normal device nodes rather than the UUID. In Ubuntu I was previously using their sources and the alternate "Debian" method of building them.
On redsplat distros (Fedora, RHEL) it won't boot without an initrd unless you manually create some hard device nodes in/dev first. (This is assuming it's still possible... I haven't tried one in a long time)
In all of those "easy" distros it sucks out of the box though... you have to install all the tools you'll need. (In *buntu that's usually just build-essential and libncurses5-dev for kernel)
Distros like Slackware, Gentoo, Arch and similar are pretty much meant for the user to roll their own kernels.
There are always going to be absolutists in society. Just because we can do something about it, doesn't mean we should, or to such an extent, for such low levels of intoxicants.
Yes, as a matter of fact I would be OK with a pilot or a surgeon having a couple of drinks with lunch, if that's what he does and it never causes a problem. Just the same as it's his judgment call if he chooses to work while sleep deprived. (of which surgeons are the perfect example and someone may live because of it) I care more about the end result.
I would rather have the volunteer fire department come to my burning house rather than in unison all saying to the dispatcher "sorry, I've had a few drinks"
Now let's look at this realistically. The risks of slight impairment by alcohol are exaggerated. Get up dark and early in the morning, rub the sleep from your eyes and commute to work. That's more impairment than someone who has a few beers on a Saturday night. Got a sinus cold? Yes, that's right, impaired. Got something on your mind? The weight of the world on your shoulders? Let's just see what percentage of a second (200%?) it takes for some people to react.
We can't do much about these things though, can we? We just have to accept that drivers aren't always at their best. For the severe cases, there are negligence type charges that can be used.
The people who are 0.05 to 0.08 aren't really the problem, it's the remorseless drunks who don't care about the risks or the penalties.
So because of a relative few, they think that harassing and criminalizing all the rest is going to stop these people. Lobbyist groups like "Mothers against Drunk Driving" are out of control and it won't stop until there is complete prohibition, leaving them to take their antidepressants and tranquilizers in peace, with nobody else to blame.
I also have a problem with the categorization of "alcohol related" accidents. If any of the drivers involved have alcohol in their system, it's blamed on that whether it was really the cause or not.
Statisticians can also show that traffic fatalities are down and correlate it with the new policies if that's what they were commissioned to do.
A good friend of mine was minding his own business, stopped at a red light when he was hit from behind (hard, causing thousands of dollars of damage). The driver that hit him was a teenage girl, who only had a learner's permit which did not allow her to drive at night, or without another licensed driver in the car. My friend blew 0.09 and was charged with impaired, and the accident was automatically his fault and the teenage brat drove away with no charges. "There, there, never mind that nasty drunk that caused the accident" (not an actual quote, I'm just ridiculing the police)
That is ridiculous situation, but even so it's not him being charged with impaired that I object to (he was over the limit), it's the idiotic mentality that he was at fault and it was a "drinking and driving" related accident.
I have more of a problem with the arbitrary road side punishment for a 0.05 BAC (at least in the province of Ontario Canada where I live) than the actual drinking and driving "laws" (0.08 BAC). At least at 0.08 there's a reasonable amount of leeway for someone to have a few drinks.
I don't have to drink and smoke to protest the ostracization of those who do. I'm sure you have heard the old saying "First they came for ____ but I wasn't a ____. Then they came for the..." etc.
I also don't have to have a cell phone gadget (I don't!) to scoff at the nannying GPS software being discussed here, or the general state of society that breeds that sort of thing.
So in summary: fuck you. I hope the nanny state mandates interlock devices in every vehicle to prevent you from deciding that you feel just fine and are totally personally responsible, as if that means you are somehow magically exempt from running someone over due to your impairment. Because make no mistake, if your BAC is registering.05, then you are, measurably impaired, even if your impaired judgement lets you believe you're not.
No, no. Actually, it's fuck YOU. I eat people like you, especially righteous Americans.
My line of thinking on the snooze button is: If your alarm goes off, and you have time to hit the snooze button without it mattering, stop setting the alarm early. The fact it's an alarm means nothing if people can say "oh I can wait 10 more minutes".
There is actually a bit of science behind that 10 minute snooze button. It doesn't always work out (because you don't necessarily fall back to sleep immediately) but if you wake up from the wrong phase of sleep feeling like crap, an additional 10 minutes of shallow sleep can make you feel more refreshed.
Of course most people do use it in silly ways like you say, (i.e. setting their alarm a few snooze button cycles early knowing they are going to use it), but it's not intended for such procrastination.
We're evolving into a society of retards. I'm not one of them, but it's impossible to not be affected by others.
Weak minded fools will voluntarily employ these nannying technologies now, but when they catch on they will be standard equipment.
Like the annoying seat belt chime in that car you just spent $30,000 on.
Look at the ridiculous drinking and driving laws because people can't take responsibility for their behaviour. Imagine... 0.05 BAC causing impairment enough to warrant criminal charges in some places or administrative punishment without due process in others (impounding of car and roadside license suspension for a week even though it's not an offense until 0.08 or more).
Only in our kindergarten society where the righteous love to cast blame and see other people get in trouble and get taken down.
Actually I realize that (I often like to see what I'm connected to and use netstat). I think perhaps I wasn't completely clear. Note what I said though... "if any software delivery system or service is slow because of content distribution" I would stop using it.
This could be akamai, fileplanet's mirrors, whatever. If I get pissed off, I go elsewhere. For example, I have better downloads through Steam's content delivery system than Direct2Drive (FilePlanet) so I started buying from Steam instead. I can also go back to meatspace any time to buy my games, though I do so hate optical media.
If I can't at least get something I pay for at the full capacity of my meager DSL link (I can download about 620 kilobytes/sec at best) then fuck it.
I'm quite happy with the speed of my DNS lookups, as well as DNS changes refreshing admirably quickly when sites move, using OpenDNS and I'm not going back to my ISP's shitty ones because of Akamai. (therefore, I say "fuck akamai")
Umm no, I think I'll just pass on those services if they are that daft, thanks.
Fuck akamai... if any software delivery system or service is slow for me because of content distribution tomfoolery, I simply won't use it. I would never have anything to do with iAnything in the first place, though.
Most ISP's DNS servers suck... and the whole reason I started using OpenDNS is because the ISP's were slow to respond, and the primary was often out and there were delays until the resolvers queried the secondary.
Hell, even my ISP's DNS servers that I would otherwise get assigned aren't exactly local.
A big, fat, monopolistic communications company that didn't get broken up on our side of the fence (in Canada) that doesn't care about their customers. Unfortunately it's the best Internet connection (DSL) I can get where I live. I could throw a stone and hit houses on nearby streets that have fiber, but they aren't bringing it to me because there's nothing but dead people that live on my street. (and the rest are just summer cottages)
DNS is only meant to be used for resolving hostnames and IP addresses. Any other inference people choose to make from any part of it for any purpose is wrong.
Sure it's a trivial topic, but it may be of interest. It is to me... I watched the original Tron movie again on Saturday night (hadn't seen it in decades) and enjoyed it just as much now as I did then.
They do, I'm sure. To their lawyers. It's not Slashdot worthy.
Sure it is. Don't try to decide what is worthy of the interest of others.
I find this story very interesting, I sympathize with the complainants at SimpleCDN and wish a swift and virulent Ebola infection on the creeps at SoftLayer, ThePlanet, Hosting Services Inc., and UK2 Group.
Advanced notice of the termination of services should have been given, to at least give people a chance to minimize the disruption. Treating it like a "TOS violation" when they altered the TOS after the agreement is both dishonest and abusive.
Yes, there is plenty wrong, if you have signed a contract with the customer saying you will sell your service to them you can't just go and change your mind later and say you'll take their money but don't have to give them service because you dreamed up some new rule after they paid you. It's utter crap, how can you not see this?
Don't think for a instant that I disagree with you, but unfortunately there's a big difference between what is right, and what "is"
Right now just about every TOS type document has "we reserve the right to alter this agreement without notice at any time" clauses. It is time to test that, though. Just because you were arbitrarily forced to agree to something to use a service, doesn't mean it will stand up in court.
Shit, I think I will grab Metro 2003. Steam has it for $10.00 and it looks like something I'll probably like. It's downloading now... thanks for the suggestion.
Yes, it's a nice bonus when it's a good game:-)
Another really good game I got for $10.00 (+ 2 expansion packs included) was the original F.E.A.R. Now THAT has replay value. Exhilaratingly violent and bloody. The graphics are old, but very good for its age.
I'll admit to being a graphics whoring "content tourist" at times though.
These antiquated consoles are actually holding back game advancement. All we get on the PC now are console caliber graphics. Sure, you can buy a motherfucker Nvidia card for your PC, but it's pointless because the games aren't evolving to match. There was a time when PC versions of games had better graphics, but they just aren't putting in the effort anymore.
For example, a new game like Call of Duty Black Ops doesn't have much better graphics than previous titles like Modern Warfare 2 or even older ones like World at War and COD 4 for that matter.
We keep getting more iterations of the same shit and game publishers are getting away with it.
I'm done buying games for a while, I've been disappointed with current titles. (Other than Black Ops, which has a lot to like, despite just "good" but mediocre graphics)
We need another Crysis to give hardware a kick in the ass.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not really a huge security buff, but for many general purpose "web servers" a firewall is unnecessary. I don't run anything serious like "ecommerce" or a site like Slashdot that millions of people rely on, but my simple philosophy is to just not run (or expose to the internet interface) services that aren't needed. Filtering ports that nothing is listening on is pointless.
Speaking of security facilitating DOS attacks to cripple, I once helped a friend with his web server that was being DOS'd, slowed by extra i/o and having the hard drive filled up with logs. He had installed Port Sentry (1.x back then) to thwart and block port scanning hosts, and in its default configuration of "-sTCP -UDP" it doesn't take a full connect to trigger an action. Any knock on the door with Syn/Ack, or UDP to one of the trigger ports would add a rule to block that IP (ipchains) for a period of time and enable logging of future connection attempts.
Well... all it took was a spoofed SYN flood, that looked like it was coming from random IP addresses. The flood would have done zero harm had it not been for Port Sentry adding firewall rules and logging targets for every IP address that every packet appeared to come from.
His fault for not understanding how Port Sentry worked, but what a retarded "security" situation that was. Completely pointless, because there were no ports listening that we didn't want anyway. I laugh every time I think about that night. I figured out what was going on in a couple of minutes over a SSH session, but what made it even funnier was that even after I shut down Port Sentry the log entries kept coming seemingly forever because sysklogd was still writing them from buffers. Anyway, I killed syslogd, deleted the huge log files and touched new ones, edited port sentry to react only to full tcp connects (-tcp), disabled the creation of the logging rules, and sent the server down for a reboot and all was well. The SYN attack wasn't really enough to flood the link on its own.
You know, a lot of these fucksticks who get laws passed, and those that empower them (like the M.A.D.D. shills) are rather vain to think that citizens have to submit to their whims.I would never submit to nanny state sensors on my vehicles. I'd get that circumvented right quick.
Biometric IDs for authorized drivers mandated on all vehicles? I don't think so. That will never work, for it will render vehicles inoperable in emergency situations.
Laws are for people who can't think for themselves. The rest of us go about our lives deciding on our own what is acceptable and what is not. The police are little better than adversaries that we have to watch out for, just like street thugs.
I'll be the one who decides whether or not I'm driving. Not M.A.D.D., not the police, not The Law, and not some machine.
I've tried to be positive here and waited a bit before bitching, but I'm sick and tired of developers thinking they know what's best for me, and overriding my choices. Also, Slashdot is now yet another site where the text boxes are white text on a white background, because I dare to use a different GTK+ style than everyone else. Another site where I have to compose posts in a text editor and paste into forms, or keep dragging over my text to highlight it so I can see it. It's more trouble than its worth to post here now.
Webmasters of the world: Don't hard code colours! Let the client decide what the normal foreground and background colours are going to be for text, especially in forms.
Especially since it will be ignored by "default". You can arbitrarily inject headers into requests, but the web servers and sites people are running won't recognize them until they are taught to.
Also, last time I checked, the Mozilla foundation wasn't in any sort of law making position so the chances of it being "legally required" in any country, let alone all countries, are pretty slim. Especially when the resident evil, Microsoft, will be against it. (For their "partners" and themselves)
No, I'm afraid the current technique of blocking advertising sites will be the only effective solution. Perhaps Mozilla could add that functionality to the main browser for those who choose to enable it. (If they have the balls, that is. It would certainly piss off webmasters)
No, that wasn't the one I had tried but had I known about it I would have tried it (They use Windows but I could have set it up on one of my rigs).
What I tried was a solution I got from a phone enthusiast forum. All I knew was that we sure as Hell weren't paying $90 for functionality that should have been a given. It wasn't even that important, it was more like a "it would be nice if we could do that". The folks weren't really in to taking pictures anyway.
Anyway... at the time (~ 2 years ago) other phones you just plugged in and they were detected as USB storage. Sorry, but we disliked those motorola phones. (Nothing to do with the quality of the hardware, they didn't fail or anything). This is likely the carrier's fault, but the folks complained about shitty signal/coverage with those phones too.
Very happy with the Blackberries now. (I don't really like any such gadgets personally, but I haven't had any trouble making my parents happy with them and they don't pester me. Mom is doing all kinds of stuff she never thought about doing with a phone)
My only exposure to Android has been an ArchOS tablet and it seemed OK. I was easily able to poke my way around knowing nothing about it.
My netbook is about as gadgety as I get. I don't have a cell phone personally, I don't like them because I don't want one more way for people to annoy me. I've debated getting one and only using it for road side emergencies and the like, but I've not had one of those (I mostly just drive locally and it wouldn't be hard to get to a phone if I did)
I despise Motorola and their rubbish. My parents had motorola phones previously, and they were so proprietary they wanted $90 for a program just to let us transfer pictures from the phone to the computer.
I dicked around (for hours) trying to get a home grown solution working and finally just gave up. It involved installing a driver from motorola (deeply buried on their web site), and a third party app for accessing it. All it did was hang. What I learned (but wasn't sure if I believed) was that even the USB cable was proprietary and while it was the same connection as a camera cable, it was wired differently.
So I don't particularly care what they say and do, there will be no more Motorola devices in this household anyway.
The folks have since switched to Blackberries.
Long before this, I hated Motorola for their shitty modems. Some of the worst rubbish that I have ever had the pleasure of tossing in the garbage.
Except that OpenOffice is only bloat if I open it and when I close it, it goes away. I don't care about bloat in an application like that but I do care if the system is kludgy and bloated. It doesn't matter if I have the hardware for it, waste is shameful.
There used to be a time when you opened a KDE app outside of KDE, that the kdeinit process would clean up after itself (and exit) when all child processes were gone. Not so anymore... KDE services and their ilk stay running.
I've been using XFCE for several years (Starting back when it was a new desktop environment that used GTK+ 1.x) and every version becomes more Gnome-like it seems. Out of the box, it takes me a while to get things the way I like them... the way it used to be.
I tend to just never upgrade XFCE 4 after the initial build anymore because it's just too damned much work to get everything set up again, only to have it introduce changes that piss me off. It's my work environment and it's too important for me to dick around with. If I'm starting from scratch on a new Linux setup, I'll get the latest and work out any annoyances then.
I too like the Linux Nvidia driver (ignoring the ideology) and they sure do a good job supporting different kernel versions and X. Nobody does a proprietary driver better than Nvidia. Get a new -rc kernel? If the current version doesn't build and link in, and there's no beta that covers it, there's probably someone already in the forums who has a patch or code snippet that will make you happy again.
However, the proprietary ATI driver is no longer the length of turd that it used to be. They haven't quite got it together like Nvidia does in terms of supporting diverse Linux systems, but I haven't suffered too much at their hands in the year or so that I've had a Radeon HD 5870.
On my current rig I opted for an ATI card, because I hated my last Nvidia card: 9800 GX2 which was buggy in a lot of my Windows games and died 17 months after purchase. (It was an "OCX" model from BFG though, factory overclocked. It ran very, very hot, even with the fan at 100% during gaming and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to suspect that it got damaged. I burned for the lifetime BFG warranty too because they went out of business. That was a $600 video card. Even that is partly my fault for procrastinating though.)
I wasn't sorry, I have been very happy with the ATI 5870 in Windows 7, and I've managed to do OK with the proprietary ATI driver. It always needs patching though... three ATI driver versions have gone by and it STILL doesn't build for Linux 2.6.36.x or 2.6.37. (I use --buildpkg Slackware/All to make slackware packages) Fortunately the kernel parts haven't changed that much and the patches can be easily adjusted. That's still pretty piss poor maintenance on their part, but at least it's not an untenable situation for me.
The end result has been great though. In fact, for what I do with 3D acceleration in Linux, older games like UT2004, Quake 4, Doom 3 and friends as well as things like Sauerbraten, it's as good as or better than Nvidia (e.g. No glitches in UT2004). I think that 2D acceleration has been better than Nvidia as well.
For a browser, 2D is more important anyway at this time. I know that since I switched to Firefox 4 in Linux (I'm using sources I got using Mercurial a few days ago, it says 4.0b10pre) that long Slashdot threads load up a lot faster, and no longer make the browser unresponsive while they are rendering. They also scroll effortlessly.
So I'm assuming that I have better 2D acceleration with Firefox 4 than Firefox 3.6.
Cripes... I now have to retract some of what I said.
First of all, the status bar 4ever extension works acceptably as a status bar.
It seems, with the update I got last night (I presume it was the Minefield update... I also got Windows updates last night as well, some of which were "recommended" reliability/compatibility updates), Minefield no longer does that delay with hard disk dance when first starting it up. I rebooted Windows 7 three times to test that and it wasn't just a fluke.
I pretty much have most of the yuck factor sorted as best as I can now too (Things like showing the menu bar and tabs underneath address bar I had already done, but I solved my last niggle... I realized I could move the home button, which was way over to the far side of my wide screen display. Duh!)
I might start to experiment with Firefox 4.x in Linux now.
I just hope that status bar extension isn't going to be too fragile against new firefox 4 versions when the time comes. I've tended to shun extensions in the past, because of the pile of feces people go through at upgrade time.
Thank you, I'm going to try that extension tonight when I boot to Windows for some death and destruction.
I hate that... I rely on the status bar all the time. I disable the javascript setting that lets sites change the status bar text, so I see only what I'm supposed to. (and I run my browser maximized)
In Firefox 4.x, when you hover over URLs it DOES show part of it up top, near the address bar but it's truncated. You can see the domain you are about to connect to, but often not much more than that. It's important to see the entire URL.
That's a show stopper for me. I also dislike the new user interface.
I'm currently using Minefield in my Windows 7 install, just because it's a convenient 64 bit Firefox binary that is able to update itself. (official rather than third party). I don't care as much, because Windows is just for games, and the only browsing I do is to download new video drivers and such, and check a few of my forums.
Also, I can excuse this right now because it's "beta" quality, but when I first start Minefield in Windows (for the first time in a session) there's a lengthy, hard disk gyrating delay before it opens. I don't know what the Hell it's doing, but after that it's fine (and quick enough at page rendering)
But when we get to the point where Firefox 3.x.x is no longer maintained, I'll be changing browsers in Linux, which is my work environment and the browser is a very important application.
I'm not sure what that is going to be, because I like Firefox (and like to do my own custom builds of it), hate Chrome, hate Konqueror and I have never been very fond of Opera (Though it's quite usable). Maybe Seamonkey, if they don't mess that up too.
I can't see Firefox 3.x going away any time soon though, so I'm probably OK for a while.
I have a guillotine and I use it only in self defense to chop carrots, you "insensitive clod" :-)
It's a bit tricky in all of those so called "easy" distributions but not impossibly difficult. It's probably best to use the distributor's kernel sources and methods, but you don't have to if you make some changes to the system first. You have to be careful that you're not using features they've patched in to their kernels if you do that though.
I have Ubuntu 10.10 (actually Xubuntu with XFCE) on my netbook, and I have been using a regular kernel.org kernel (2.6.36.2 currently) without using an initrd or anything. This requires changes to fstab to use normal device nodes rather than the UUID. In Ubuntu I was previously using their sources and the alternate "Debian" method of building them.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Kernel/Compile
On redsplat distros (Fedora, RHEL) it won't boot without an initrd unless you manually create some hard device nodes in /dev first. (This is assuming it's still possible... I haven't tried one in a long time)
In all of those "easy" distros it sucks out of the box though... you have to install all the tools you'll need. (In *buntu that's usually just build-essential and libncurses5-dev for kernel)
Distros like Slackware, Gentoo, Arch and similar are pretty much meant for the user to roll their own kernels.
There are always going to be absolutists in society. Just because we can do something about it, doesn't mean we should, or to such an extent, for such low levels of intoxicants.
Yes, as a matter of fact I would be OK with a pilot or a surgeon having a couple of drinks with lunch, if that's what he does and it never causes a problem. Just the same as it's his judgment call if he chooses to work while sleep deprived. (of which surgeons are the perfect example and someone may live because of it) I care more about the end result.
I would rather have the volunteer fire department come to my burning house rather than in unison all saying to the dispatcher "sorry, I've had a few drinks"
Anyway, we are never going to agree.
I am sorry for getting angry, for starters.
Now let's look at this realistically. The risks of slight impairment by alcohol are exaggerated. Get up dark and early in the morning, rub the sleep from your eyes and commute to work. That's more impairment than someone who has a few beers on a Saturday night. Got a sinus cold? Yes, that's right, impaired. Got something on your mind? The weight of the world on your shoulders? Let's just see what percentage of a second (200%?) it takes for some people to react.
We can't do much about these things though, can we? We just have to accept that drivers aren't always at their best. For the severe cases, there are negligence type charges that can be used.
The people who are 0.05 to 0.08 aren't really the problem, it's the remorseless drunks who don't care about the risks or the penalties.
So because of a relative few, they think that harassing and criminalizing all the rest is going to stop these people. Lobbyist groups like "Mothers against Drunk Driving" are out of control and it won't stop until there is complete prohibition, leaving them to take their antidepressants and tranquilizers in peace, with nobody else to blame.
I also have a problem with the categorization of "alcohol related" accidents. If any of the drivers involved have alcohol in their system, it's blamed on that whether it was really the cause or not.
Statisticians can also show that traffic fatalities are down and correlate it with the new policies if that's what they were commissioned to do.
A good friend of mine was minding his own business, stopped at a red light when he was hit from behind (hard, causing thousands of dollars of damage). The driver that hit him was a teenage girl, who only had a learner's permit which did not allow her to drive at night, or without another licensed driver in the car. My friend blew 0.09 and was charged with impaired, and the accident was automatically his fault and the teenage brat drove away with no charges. "There, there, never mind that nasty drunk that caused the accident" (not an actual quote, I'm just ridiculing the police)
That is ridiculous situation, but even so it's not him being charged with impaired that I object to (he was over the limit), it's the idiotic mentality that he was at fault and it was a "drinking and driving" related accident.
I have more of a problem with the arbitrary road side punishment for a 0.05 BAC (at least in the province of Ontario Canada where I live) than the actual drinking and driving "laws" (0.08 BAC). At least at 0.08 there's a reasonable amount of leeway for someone to have a few drinks.
I don't have to drink and smoke to protest the ostracization of those who do. I'm sure you have heard the old saying "First they came for ____ but I wasn't a ____. Then they came for the..." etc.
I also don't have to have a cell phone gadget (I don't!) to scoff at the nannying GPS software being discussed here, or the general state of society that breeds that sort of thing.
So in summary: fuck you. I hope the nanny state mandates interlock devices in every vehicle to prevent you from deciding that you feel just fine and are totally personally responsible, as if that means you are somehow magically exempt from running someone over due to your impairment. Because make no mistake, if your BAC is registering .05, then you are, measurably impaired, even if your impaired judgement lets you believe you're not.
No, no. Actually, it's fuck YOU. I eat people like you, especially righteous Americans.
I don't even drink, asshole.
My line of thinking on the snooze button is: If your alarm goes off, and you have time to hit the snooze button without it mattering, stop setting the alarm early. The fact it's an alarm means nothing if people can say "oh I can wait 10 more minutes".
There is actually a bit of science behind that 10 minute snooze button. It doesn't always work out (because you don't necessarily fall back to sleep immediately) but if you wake up from the wrong phase of sleep feeling like crap, an additional 10 minutes of shallow sleep can make you feel more refreshed.
Of course most people do use it in silly ways like you say, (i.e. setting their alarm a few snooze button cycles early knowing they are going to use it), but it's not intended for such procrastination.
We're evolving into a society of retards. I'm not one of them, but it's impossible to not be affected by others.
Weak minded fools will voluntarily employ these nannying technologies now, but when they catch on they will be standard equipment.
Like the annoying seat belt chime in that car you just spent $30,000 on.
Look at the ridiculous drinking and driving laws because people can't take responsibility for their behaviour. Imagine... 0.05 BAC causing impairment enough to warrant criminal charges in some places or administrative punishment without due process in others (impounding of car and roadside license suspension for a week even though it's not an offense until 0.08 or more).
Only in our kindergarten society where the righteous love to cast blame and see other people get in trouble and get taken down.
Actually I realize that (I often like to see what I'm connected to and use netstat). I think perhaps I wasn't completely clear. Note what I said though... "if any software delivery system or service is slow because of content distribution" I would stop using it.
This could be akamai, fileplanet's mirrors, whatever. If I get pissed off, I go elsewhere. For example, I have better downloads through Steam's content delivery system than Direct2Drive (FilePlanet) so I started buying from Steam instead. I can also go back to meatspace any time to buy my games, though I do so hate optical media.
If I can't at least get something I pay for at the full capacity of my meager DSL link (I can download about 620 kilobytes/sec at best) then fuck it.
I'm quite happy with the speed of my DNS lookups, as well as DNS changes refreshing admirably quickly when sites move, using OpenDNS and I'm not going back to my ISP's shitty ones because of Akamai. (therefore, I say "fuck akamai")
Umm no, I think I'll just pass on those services if they are that daft, thanks.
Fuck akamai... if any software delivery system or service is slow for me because of content distribution tomfoolery, I simply won't use it. I would never have anything to do with iAnything in the first place, though.
Most ISP's DNS servers suck... and the whole reason I started using OpenDNS is because the ISP's were slow to respond, and the primary was often out and there were delays until the resolvers queried the secondary.
Hell, even my ISP's DNS servers that I would otherwise get assigned aren't exactly local.
A big, fat, monopolistic communications company that didn't get broken up on our side of the fence (in Canada) that doesn't care about their customers. Unfortunately it's the best Internet connection (DSL) I can get where I live. I could throw a stone and hit houses on nearby streets that have fiber, but they aren't bringing it to me because there's nothing but dead people that live on my street. (and the rest are just summer cottages)
DNS is only meant to be used for resolving hostnames and IP addresses. Any other inference people choose to make from any part of it for any purpose is wrong.
Sure it's a trivial topic, but it may be of interest. It is to me... I watched the original Tron movie again on Saturday night (hadn't seen it in decades) and enjoyed it just as much now as I did then.
I haven't seen the new one, but I will.
I think they have a right to complain.
They do, I'm sure. To their lawyers. It's not Slashdot worthy.
Sure it is. Don't try to decide what is worthy of the interest of others.
I find this story very interesting, I sympathize with the complainants at SimpleCDN and wish a swift and virulent Ebola infection on the creeps at SoftLayer, ThePlanet, Hosting Services Inc., and UK2 Group.
Advanced notice of the termination of services should have been given, to at least give people a chance to minimize the disruption. Treating it like a "TOS violation" when they altered the TOS after the agreement is both dishonest and abusive.
Yes, there is plenty wrong, if you have signed a contract with the customer saying you will sell your service to them you can't just go and change your mind later and say you'll take their money but don't have to give them service because you dreamed up some new rule after they paid you. It's utter crap, how can you not see this?
Don't think for a instant that I disagree with you, but unfortunately there's a big difference between what is right, and what "is"
Right now just about every TOS type document has "we reserve the right to alter this agreement without notice at any time" clauses. It is time to test that, though. Just because you were arbitrarily forced to agree to something to use a service, doesn't mean it will stand up in court.
Shit, I think I will grab Metro 2003. Steam has it for $10.00 and it looks like something I'll probably like. It's downloading now... thanks for the suggestion.
Yes, it's a nice bonus when it's a good game :-)
Another really good game I got for $10.00 (+ 2 expansion packs included) was the original F.E.A.R. Now THAT has replay value. Exhilaratingly violent and bloody. The graphics are old, but very good for its age.
I'll admit to being a graphics whoring "content tourist" at times though.
These antiquated consoles are actually holding back game advancement. All we get on the PC now are console caliber graphics. Sure, you can buy a motherfucker Nvidia card for your PC, but it's pointless because the games aren't evolving to match. There was a time when PC versions of games had better graphics, but they just aren't putting in the effort anymore.
For example, a new game like Call of Duty Black Ops doesn't have much better graphics than previous titles like Modern Warfare 2 or even older ones like World at War and COD 4 for that matter.
We keep getting more iterations of the same shit and game publishers are getting away with it.
I'm done buying games for a while, I've been disappointed with current titles. (Other than Black Ops, which has a lot to like, despite just "good" but mediocre graphics)
We need another Crysis to give hardware a kick in the ass.