I never saw any paddleboats, but they did have a keg of beer outside the cafe yesterday. And there's no shortage of caffeinated drinks in the mini-kitchens.
I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any secret video game testing rooms.
Also, the first 10 articles of the Bill or Rights are NOT amendments, they are declatory articles as stated in the preamble of the Bill of Rights.
Where do you get that wacky idea? The first ten amendments make up what is called the Bill of Rights. The preamble is for the original 7 Articles (which you can read, along with the preamble, here); it has nothing to do with the Bill of Rigths. Unless the National Archives and Records Administration also can't be trusted. I mean, even though they actually have the original document, they might be getting their history of it wrong. Maybe. Anything's possible, I guess...
Seriously though, the Constitution was ratified on September 17, 1789. Twelve amendments to the Constitution were proposed on September 25, 1789 -- ten passed. Those first ten amendments are actually genuine, according-to-Hoyle amendments to the Constitution. They were proposed (instead of altering the original document) to ensure that the "vague" wording of the original articles couldn't be abused by a tyrannical federal government to trample on the rights of the citizenry. They are collectively called the "Bill of Rights" because of these guarantees.
The NARA article A More Perfect Union: The Creation of the U.S. Constitution has a lot of good information in it. You seem like someone who might be interested in reading it. What better way to "Get Learned" than to get information straight from the official source?
JavaScript, used correctly, is good. Look at all the compliments Google gets on GMail and Google Suggest...
The parent is right, if only by you validating his point. GMail won't work on any of the browsers I use. Google Suggest is worse: it crashes Konqueror outright. It seems to leave Opera alone, however.
Are those still examples of correct use of good JavaScript? What then would be examples of incorrect and bad use of JavaScript? Spyware, maybe? There's a fine line there between good and bad, if you ask me.
The balkanization of the Web will most certainly continue on into the 21st century, and use of JavaScript is partly responsible.
The sad thing about this article is that we still don't have a decent, non-specific, OSS point-of-sale package for *nix
I was the one that had the extra time on my hands to take apart one of my mom's surplus registers. I oringally got it to see what was inside, so we could figure out what could run, whether we could put wireless on it, etc. (My mom's store in in PHX, I'm in San Diego, so I was sort of exploring on my own.)
I suspected that it was a normal PC all along, but my mom didn't get manuals or anything when she got them from Service Mechandise. And since she had a few months until she was going to use them I figured I'd play around with one. So that's why I put Linux on it.
I wanted to mainly get the led-on-a-stick working for her (it's an AZ law that registers have to have them I guess),and I wanted to see how the cash drawer works (via the printer). I also had to figure out the printer. It's a funky printer.
So once I was done exploring, I thought that it was a natural extension that I start trying to write a POS app. I looked around a lot for stuff, and found some occasional links, but nothing that was terribly complete. Linux comes with al the dev tools you'd need, and it ran really well on those systems once I got the memory bumped up.
My mom eventually went with another generic PC for her POS hardware. The original machines couldn't handle the CPU load of a wireless card. The vendor of her old nasty software also released a completely new version that did a lot of what she wanted, so my Linux-based POS app died on the vine.
If anyone wants some perl code that can talk to the pole display or the open the cash drawer or whatever, let me know and I'll dig up all my old stuff.
I know this isn't quite what you asked, and it might only solve half your problem, but have you thought about compiling your perl scripts? I've had lots of cases where I've had to re-use unix-ish thing in a Win32 environment, and found that Perl2exe works pretty well. One of the scripts I had to compile for Windows involved the DBI stuff, a bunch of Crypt::OpenSSL modules, Tie::IXHash, XML::SAX, and a bunch of others. It works like a champ.
The main downside is that you get an exe with a perl intepreter in it. If you have more than one script to build, get the pro versionand compile them with the -small option. That will build a dll which contains the interpreter, and the compiled exes link to it.
As far as your shell scripts, I'm not sure. I've run scripts under Cygwin, but they weren't very complicated and so I wouldn't know much about reliabilty or performance.
The "The top 10 things Microsoft must do to win the living room" list was missing item number zero (out of an 11 item list):
0. Earn consumers' trust.
I personally don't trust MS very much. In addition, they've had a history of choosing convenience over security, and they're business model leaves a lot to be desired. Their products seem to be built on a methodology of expedience rather than robustness. MS also has a habit of trying to think for the consumer, and deal harshly with anyone who tries to move beyonds the bounds of the expected customer experience. Their EULAs are oppressive.
My gaming PC I can handle updating all the time and not using very much. My TV and DVR are "appliance-grade" items, and I expect them to work without fail, all the time. I don't see MS delivering there.
And even if they did, I wouldn't trust them with something as innocuous as knowing my family's TV viewing habits.
Why should I be afraid of guns? It's the people wielding them with ill intent that I should be wary of. And so I try not to put myself in positions where'd I'd be near that sort.
The rest of that stuff I can't do much about, so worrying does little good there either.
Lately I've been into cooking. Blame it on Alton and Good Eats. I could have used some food knowledge after I got out of college.
Right now, I'm reading Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. It's the history of the world as told by salt. Salt, it seems, was the petroleum of the ancient world. Venice, for example, was founded on considerable wealth generated mostly from salt. British salt was ballast in slave ships, making one third of the voyage to the New World and creating a entire economy in the Caribbean. The Romans were paid in salt, which they called 'sal'. It's from this that we get the modern word 'salary'. And a Roman salad was lettuce/veg with oil and salt.
In that same vein, you've got another hell of a book in Robert Wolke's What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained. It's basically excerpts from Wolke's "Food 101" column in the Washington Post, but they make for fascinating reading.
I've also got Alton's books. I'm Just Here for the Food is a great intro to the why's and how's of cooking.
If your student winners aren't into food, you might try the latest volume in Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, The Confusion. Although in case they haven't read Quicksilver, you might want to get that as well, and maybe give them both as a set. At a little over 1,700 pages, if they don't find a job right away, they'll have something to occupy their time this summer.
You could also give them a gift certficate from your local book seller. Maybe put it in a nice card that everyone can sign?
You're there, man. You got news of your project posted to Slashdot's front page. That's a pretty well-targeted market, if you ask me. Plenty of OSS geeks here, many of whom would surely donate. Well done, man. Seems like you've had some pretty good (free) advertising already. And luckily you've got your project's name figured out, the online marketing strategy all whiz-banged up, and finally you're on Slashdot's home page, telling the world about your project, asking how to best market it and get a little (well-deserved) slice of the e-commerce pie for all your hard work. You're in the catbird seat now. The sales are sure to pour in now.
Um, wait: What was your project called again?
Huh? You mean I had to click on the link for the submitter's screen name in order to find out what was actually being talked about and, hopefully, sold? Brilliant idea!!!1! Step 3: Profit!
Seriously though, one idea: Try telling people about what you would like them to buy from you. Just try it one time or two. See if it works. I think you'd be surprised.
This might not be all that practical, but my suggestion would be to store mail for each user in different directories and then encrypt those directories when the MUA is not in use.
I know that with some MUAs one can specify certain folders for local mail storage, and you can do this with Eudora in particular (you can probably do it with The Bat or maybe even Outlook; I've used neither of those, so I can't say). So install Eudora, and create your shortcuts for each user like in the link. You'll want to create folders on a different drive letter for each user. User #1 gets h:\mail, User #2 gets i:\mail, etc.
Now, install BestCrypt. You have three users, so create three container files. Have each roommate type in their own passphrase. Open each one, mounting each on the drive letter where the icon shortcuts above point to. Ensure that Eudora can get/send mail (look for mtimes on the.toc files for the inboxes if nothing else).
Now create three small batch files, one for each Eudora shortcut from above. In each, you'll have a line with the command for that user's bcrypt container mounting command, then the text in the "Target" from the Eudora icon above after that. Edit the properties of each icon, and point them to the appropriate batch file.
When User #1 clicks his Eudora desktop icon, BestCrypt will fire off, asking him for a passphrase. Then once the container with User #1's mail folders is mounted, Windows will start Eudora, pointing it at the newly mounted drive. It'll check mail, and store everything. When User #1 is done reading his mail, he can either leave his mail container moutned, or right-click the system tray icon and unmount it. (You could alternately create a batch file that shuts down Eudora and then unmounts the container.)
It sounds like a lot of work, but it should take more than 5-10 minutes to set up. And it'll be secure. You can pick many different algorithms with BestCrypt. Using Blowfish with a 256-bit key ought to be just fine for your needs. An alternate solution would be to go on ebay and find some cheap used laptops for your roommates' mail needs. Then you can encrypt your entire filesystem.
The guys from linuxgames.com have talked with Vivendi Universal Games and recieved an offical response: the Linux version will not be givien away. Note that you can still get the Linux dedicated server files, so you can at least use the free Windows version of T2 in order to host a server on Linux.
Apparently Tuxgames is sold out of the letfover Linux versions from Loki's firesale, and there's nothing on ebay. Looks like T2 won't work in WineX as well.
Sometimes you just don't get a break being a Linux gamer. Maybe if every third Linux gamer hadn't pirated the Linux version in the first place (since everything in Linux has to be "free", right?) things would be different. But there's so much legal detritus floating around, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting to see a free Linux version.
-B
300 lines of Java?
on
Spam Bits
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· Score: 4, Funny
You are welcome to review the code that I used, although there really isn't
much to it... some 300 lines of java.
So that's like, what? 25 lines of Perl?
I kid because I love.
-B
Re:The market has decided...
on
See Spot Surf
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· Score: 2, Funny
The site itself is not original. The fact that "Catster", "Birdster" or even "Hamster" could be running off this codebase, is.
Well, there you go. That's more than a silver lining: it's the groundwork for a new project. (Assuming that a popular web site is what's you're aiming for.)
If what you're after is to showcase your work and get the word out there about your project, then why not try something like Linux Magazine's Project of the Month? They've had articles by the guys that did Gallery, TightVNC, etc, so you'd be in good company. It'd be a good way to get your project in front of people.
-B
The market has decided...
on
See Spot Surf
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· Score: 4, Interesting
...and nobody cares. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this.
Dogster. Wonderful. I write an Open Source Social Network program, and Slashdot rejects any sort of story on it only to put a story about Dogster.
Perhaps that's because the owners of this site feel that nobody would care about your web site? Or are you just upset that you can't get free advertising? Not to put too fine a point on it, but you sound like a kid whining because nobody comes to your birthday party. You can't force them to come, you know. If people see some value in doign so, or satisfy some personal need in doing so, they will come.
Yeah, I know, the type of site I'm doing has been done... But then again, does that make Linux "Just Another Kernel?" I'm sure that would be up for debate.
You hit the nail on the head: "it's been done". And done more than a few times. And been done probably better than you did it -- better than I would have done it, too. That's just reality.
But what gets me is that you compare your web page to an operating system's kernel. Newflash: one is important in the grand scheme of things, and one is not. Again, that's just reality. I'm a little surprised that I even have to say that. I mean, your comparison isn't even close to valid. It's like you're complaining that nobody cares about the really nice and intricate paper airplanes you've made, and all anyone talks about is 747's. And now all everyone -- the ingrates! -- is talking about this new Airbus thing. Where's the justice? Seriously, can't you see where your anger is just a little misplaced?
Yes everyone, the ideal is novel
Again, you hit the nail squarely on the head: Dogster is a novel idea. My mom even knows about it. My relatives who hardly use computers think it's just fabulous, and put up profiles of little Fluffy the poodle. The idea has traction, for whatever reason (quite a bit of that reason is being the first to do it).
Yours is not a novel concept, and is probably somewhat played out by now. You're late to the party. Time to look at reality again. If you did "Catster" or "Birdster" or, hell, even "Hamster" people might come. But imagine if you did a Dogster clone. Can you see anyone coming to it? No? Why not? Probably for the same reason that nobody comes to your Friendster clone: it's an already crowded market, with no room for your efforts. That may be sad, but it's true.
But hello, anyone? This is news for NERDS, not, news for dogs. We typically like things like anime, Open Source, Star Wars and SCO. This fits under neither.
Try not to tell people what they like. That's likely partly the cause of your problems.
I'd suggest abandoning the Friendster clone you've done and spending time and effort on something else. You've probably learned a lot from your efforts, so it likely wasn't a completely lost cause. Use that knowledge to make a new site, if a web site is really what you want, only this time find a novel concept. Slashdot, even though it's been copied over and over, was novel when it started out. That's why it's popular (and regardless of what you think about its occupants or its design, Slashdot is popular).
I'd much rather they pass along anonymous ratings data based on actual viewing statistics of a random cross-section of TiVo-owning Americans than opinion surveys of people named Nielsen (or some other small group). I know there's more to it than that, but you get the point. A statistically meaningful sample is a good thing.
I just can't help but think that if real viewing stats were used as predictors of progamming popularity, we might have more stuff like Firefly, Mythbusters, Penn & Teller's Bullshit, etc. and less Everyone Loves Raymond, Friends, Frasier, or a million indistinct reality TV shows.
If it keeps shows I want to watch on the air longer, then let them see what I'm watching and recording, I say.
I've never used dBase3, so I don't know what it's tools looked like, but for MySQL there are a bunch of GUI options.
For a straight-up GUI, he might try MySQL Control Center. It's a Qt-based app, so it'll run on Linux and Windows. It lets you build and run queries, manage the server, etc. Even has a "viewer" for images stored as BLOBs.
There's phpMyAdmin as another option. It's web-based, so the "GUI" should run on anything. It does the same kind of stuff that MySQLCC does: lay out tables, create fields, run queries, etc.
On the admin side of things, the upcoming MySQL Administrator looks like it should be very nice. It lets you drop users, tune the DB, monitor the server, etc.
No matter what he winds up using for a GUI, if he uses MySQL, I couldn't recommend the MySQL Cookbook highly enough. It's an amazingly well-written book and very helpful. Every time I find myself with a "what's the best way to do so-and-so..." question, the answer is never more than 30 seconds of page turning away. It's also good for beginners because it's an easy way to find out how to do particular tasks without having to read an entire manual. It'll let a novice user figure out what query to type into MySQLCC, in other words. And the novice user might eventually find out that all the "database theory stuff" isn't all that difficult to learn.
That's about all I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure some googling or trolling through freshmeat will yield some GUI apps for PostgreSQL if that's what he's into using.
Same here, although I've had quite a bit less traffic that you:
wee@foo:~$ grep mydoom.procmaillog | wc -l 163
My personal domain is an "MCI network" (friends and family), and I only have 5 users. They all use Windows, so I'm happy to keep them shielded from recent trouble. It's been quiet for them.
I happened to be talking to one guy who gets mail from me (we see each other infrequently) and offhandedly asked how he was coping with the MyDoom problem. He didn't know what I was talking about. He hadn't been reading the news lately, and it took me a minute before I realized all the virus-laden emails were getting dumped before he ever saw them. I forgot my little procmail recipe was in place.
Mostly, I just want to ask: Can I expect the same results from a full-install of a distro?
No. A full install will yield a much nicer experience. I have a little Shuttle XPC sitting next to me here at home and it runs Windows XP. It mostly stays suspended, except when I want to play a game. A few months ago, I downloaded the latest Knoppix for an upcoming work project. For grins I threw it in the Shuttle to see what it would do. I had an experience similar to yours.
If you have an old hard drive laying around (even a 3GB drive would do), add it as a slave, disconnect your Windows HDD and reboot with a full install CD. Poke around on the new install for a while. I think you'll have fun. If you don't like the new distro, leave the disk in there and reformat it Fat32 or something. Use for MP3s. If you wind up liking it, go google for a dual-boot howto.
or is this just a function of not being able to cram everything onto a CD? Would another live-cd give me better results?
I suspect that is part of it. Part of it might also be that certain choices have to be hard-coded into a live-cd distro.
Try Fedora, SuSE, or Mandrake and see what you think. Or Ark. They're all pretty good about balancing hand-holding with letting a savvy user get stuff done. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Slashdot Mirror
I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any secret video game testing rooms.
-B
-B
Where do you get that wacky idea? The first ten amendments make up what is called the Bill of Rights. The preamble is for the original 7 Articles (which you can read, along with the preamble, here); it has nothing to do with the Bill of Rigths. Unless the National Archives and Records Administration also can't be trusted. I mean, even though they actually have the original document, they might be getting their history of it wrong. Maybe. Anything's possible, I guess...
Seriously though, the Constitution was ratified on September 17, 1789. Twelve amendments to the Constitution were proposed on September 25, 1789 -- ten passed. Those first ten amendments are actually genuine, according-to-Hoyle amendments to the Constitution. They were proposed (instead of altering the original document) to ensure that the "vague" wording of the original articles couldn't be abused by a tyrannical federal government to trample on the rights of the citizenry. They are collectively called the "Bill of Rights" because of these guarantees.
The NARA article A More Perfect Union: The Creation of the U.S. Constitution has a lot of good information in it. You seem like someone who might be interested in reading it. What better way to "Get Learned" than to get information straight from the official source?
-B
The parent is right, if only by you validating his point. GMail won't work on any of the browsers I use. Google Suggest is worse: it crashes Konqueror outright. It seems to leave Opera alone, however.
Are those still examples of correct use of good JavaScript? What then would be examples of incorrect and bad use of JavaScript? Spyware, maybe? There's a fine line there between good and bad, if you ask me.
The balkanization of the Web will most certainly continue on into the 21st century, and use of JavaScript is partly responsible.
-B
JavaScript, used correctly, is good. Look at all the compliments Google gets on GMail and Google Suggest ...
I was the one that had the extra time on my hands to take apart one of my mom's surplus registers. I oringally got it to see what was inside, so we could figure out what could run, whether we could put wireless on it, etc. (My mom's store in in PHX, I'm in San Diego, so I was sort of exploring on my own.)
I suspected that it was a normal PC all along, but my mom didn't get manuals or anything when she got them from Service Mechandise. And since she had a few months until she was going to use them I figured I'd play around with one. So that's why I put Linux on it.
I wanted to mainly get the led-on-a-stick working for her (it's an AZ law that registers have to have them I guess),and I wanted to see how the cash drawer works (via the printer). I also had to figure out the printer. It's a funky printer.
So once I was done exploring, I thought that it was a natural extension that I start trying to write a POS app. I looked around a lot for stuff, and found some occasional links, but nothing that was terribly complete. Linux comes with al the dev tools you'd need, and it ran really well on those systems once I got the memory bumped up.
My mom eventually went with another generic PC for her POS hardware. The original machines couldn't handle the CPU load of a wireless card. The vendor of her old nasty software also released a completely new version that did a lot of what she wanted, so my Linux-based POS app died on the vine.
If anyone wants some perl code that can talk to the pole display or the open the cash drawer or whatever, let me know and I'll dig up all my old stuff.
-B
The main downside is that you get an exe with a perl intepreter in it. If you have more than one script to build, get the pro versionand compile them with the -small option. That will build a dll which contains the interpreter, and the compiled exes link to it.
As far as your shell scripts, I'm not sure. I've run scripts under Cygwin, but they weren't very complicated and so I wouldn't know much about reliabilty or performance.
-B
0. Earn consumers' trust.
I personally don't trust MS very much. In addition, they've had a history of choosing convenience over security, and they're business model leaves a lot to be desired. Their products seem to be built on a methodology of expedience rather than robustness. MS also has a habit of trying to think for the consumer, and deal harshly with anyone who tries to move beyonds the bounds of the expected customer experience. Their EULAs are oppressive.
My gaming PC I can handle updating all the time and not using very much. My TV and DVR are "appliance-grade" items, and I expect them to work without fail, all the time. I don't see MS delivering there.
And even if they did, I wouldn't trust them with something as innocuous as knowing my family's TV viewing habits.
-B
The rest of that stuff I can't do much about, so worrying does little good there either.
-B
Right now, I'm reading Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. It's the history of the world as told by salt. Salt, it seems, was the petroleum of the ancient world. Venice, for example, was founded on considerable wealth generated mostly from salt. British salt was ballast in slave ships, making one third of the voyage to the New World and creating a entire economy in the Caribbean. The Romans were paid in salt, which they called 'sal'. It's from this that we get the modern word 'salary'. And a Roman salad was lettuce/veg with oil and salt.
In that same vein, you've got another hell of a book in Robert Wolke's What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained. It's basically excerpts from Wolke's "Food 101" column in the Washington Post, but they make for fascinating reading.
I've also got Alton's books. I'm Just Here for the Food is a great intro to the why's and how's of cooking.
If your student winners aren't into food, you might try the latest volume in Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, The Confusion. Although in case they haven't read Quicksilver, you might want to get that as well, and maybe give them both as a set. At a little over 1,700 pages, if they don't find a job right away, they'll have something to occupy their time this summer.
You could also give them a gift certficate from your local book seller. Maybe put it in a nice card that everyone can sign?
-B
Um, wait: What was your project called again?
Huh? You mean I had to click on the link for the submitter's screen name in order to find out what was actually being talked about and, hopefully, sold? Brilliant idea!!!1! Step 3: Profit!
Seriously though, one idea: Try telling people about what you would like them to buy from you. Just try it one time or two. See if it works. I think you'd be surprised.
-B
I know that with some MUAs one can specify certain folders for local mail storage, and you can do this with Eudora in particular (you can probably do it with The Bat or maybe even Outlook; I've used neither of those, so I can't say). So install Eudora, and create your shortcuts for each user like in the link. You'll want to create folders on a different drive letter for each user. User #1 gets h:\mail, User #2 gets i:\mail, etc.
Now, install BestCrypt. You have three users, so create three container files. Have each roommate type in their own passphrase. Open each one, mounting each on the drive letter where the icon shortcuts above point to. Ensure that Eudora can get/send mail (look for mtimes on the .toc files for the inboxes if nothing else).
Now create three small batch files, one for each Eudora shortcut from above. In each, you'll have a line with the command for that user's bcrypt container mounting command, then the text in the "Target" from the Eudora icon above after that. Edit the properties of each icon, and point them to the appropriate batch file.
When User #1 clicks his Eudora desktop icon, BestCrypt will fire off, asking him for a passphrase. Then once the container with User #1's mail folders is mounted, Windows will start Eudora, pointing it at the newly mounted drive. It'll check mail, and store everything. When User #1 is done reading his mail, he can either leave his mail container moutned, or right-click the system tray icon and unmount it. (You could alternately create a batch file that shuts down Eudora and then unmounts the container.)
It sounds like a lot of work, but it should take more than 5-10 minutes to set up. And it'll be secure. You can pick many different algorithms with BestCrypt. Using Blowfish with a 256-bit key ought to be just fine for your needs. An alternate solution would be to go on ebay and find some cheap used laptops for your roommates' mail needs. Then you can encrypt your entire filesystem.
-B
Apparently Tuxgames is sold out of the letfover Linux versions from Loki's firesale, and there's nothing on ebay. Looks like T2 won't work in WineX as well.
Sometimes you just don't get a break being a Linux gamer. Maybe if every third Linux gamer hadn't pirated the Linux version in the first place (since everything in Linux has to be "free", right?) things would be different. But there's so much legal detritus floating around, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting to see a free Linux version.
-B
So that's like, what? 25 lines of Perl?
I kid because I love.
-B
Well, there you go. That's more than a silver lining: it's the groundwork for a new project. (Assuming that a popular web site is what's you're aiming for.)
If what you're after is to showcase your work and get the word out there about your project, then why not try something like Linux Magazine's Project of the Month? They've had articles by the guys that did Gallery, TightVNC, etc, so you'd be in good company. It'd be a good way to get your project in front of people.
-B
Dogster. Wonderful. I write an Open Source Social Network program, and Slashdot rejects any sort of story on it only to put a story about Dogster.
Perhaps that's because the owners of this site feel that nobody would care about your web site? Or are you just upset that you can't get free advertising? Not to put too fine a point on it, but you sound like a kid whining because nobody comes to your birthday party. You can't force them to come, you know. If people see some value in doign so, or satisfy some personal need in doing so, they will come.
Yeah, I know, the type of site I'm doing has been done... But then again, does that make Linux "Just Another Kernel?" I'm sure that would be up for debate.
You hit the nail on the head: "it's been done". And done more than a few times. And been done probably better than you did it -- better than I would have done it, too. That's just reality.
But what gets me is that you compare your web page to an operating system's kernel. Newflash: one is important in the grand scheme of things, and one is not. Again, that's just reality. I'm a little surprised that I even have to say that. I mean, your comparison isn't even close to valid. It's like you're complaining that nobody cares about the really nice and intricate paper airplanes you've made, and all anyone talks about is 747's. And now all everyone -- the ingrates! -- is talking about this new Airbus thing. Where's the justice? Seriously, can't you see where your anger is just a little misplaced?
Yes everyone, the ideal is novel
Again, you hit the nail squarely on the head: Dogster is a novel idea. My mom even knows about it. My relatives who hardly use computers think it's just fabulous, and put up profiles of little Fluffy the poodle. The idea has traction, for whatever reason (quite a bit of that reason is being the first to do it).
Yours is not a novel concept, and is probably somewhat played out by now. You're late to the party. Time to look at reality again. If you did "Catster" or "Birdster" or, hell, even "Hamster" people might come. But imagine if you did a Dogster clone. Can you see anyone coming to it? No? Why not? Probably for the same reason that nobody comes to your Friendster clone: it's an already crowded market, with no room for your efforts. That may be sad, but it's true.
But hello, anyone? This is news for NERDS, not, news for dogs. We typically like things like anime, Open Source, Star Wars and SCO. This fits under neither.
Try not to tell people what they like. That's likely partly the cause of your problems.
I'd suggest abandoning the Friendster clone you've done and spending time and effort on something else. You've probably learned a lot from your efforts, so it likely wasn't a completely lost cause. Use that knowledge to make a new site, if a web site is really what you want, only this time find a novel concept. Slashdot, even though it's been copied over and over, was novel when it started out. That's why it's popular (and regardless of what you think about its occupants or its design, Slashdot is popular).
-B
I just can't help but think that if real viewing stats were used as predictors of progamming popularity, we might have more stuff like Firefly, Mythbusters, Penn & Teller's Bullshit, etc. and less Everyone Loves Raymond, Friends, Frasier, or a million indistinct reality TV shows.
If it keeps shows I want to watch on the air longer, then let them see what I'm watching and recording, I say.
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Of course, people can pass the -U flag to wget and get around this, but it'd work while you get a real solution in place.
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For a straight-up GUI, he might try MySQL Control Center. It's a Qt-based app, so it'll run on Linux and Windows. It lets you build and run queries, manage the server, etc. Even has a "viewer" for images stored as BLOBs.
There's phpMyAdmin as another option. It's web-based, so the "GUI" should run on anything. It does the same kind of stuff that MySQLCC does: lay out tables, create fields, run queries, etc.
On the admin side of things, the upcoming MySQL Administrator looks like it should be very nice. It lets you drop users, tune the DB, monitor the server, etc.
No matter what he winds up using for a GUI, if he uses MySQL, I couldn't recommend the MySQL Cookbook highly enough. It's an amazingly well-written book and very helpful. Every time I find myself with a "what's the best way to do so-and-so..." question, the answer is never more than 30 seconds of page turning away. It's also good for beginners because it's an easy way to find out how to do particular tasks without having to read an entire manual. It'll let a novice user figure out what query to type into MySQLCC, in other words. And the novice user might eventually find out that all the "database theory stuff" isn't all that difficult to learn.
That's about all I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure some googling or trolling through freshmeat will yield some GUI apps for PostgreSQL if that's what he's into using.
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BTW, I'm up to 269 emails caught. Seems to be picking up steam...
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Same here, although I've had quite a bit less traffic that you:
My personal domain is an "MCI network" (friends and family), and I only have 5 users. They all use Windows, so I'm happy to keep them shielded from recent trouble. It's been quiet for them.
I happened to be talking to one guy who gets mail from me (we see each other infrequently) and offhandedly asked how he was coping with the MyDoom problem. He didn't know what I was talking about. He hadn't been reading the news lately, and it took me a minute before I realized all the virus-laden emails were getting dumped before he ever saw them. I forgot my little procmail recipe was in place.
So, yeah, MyDoom's pretty much been a non-issue.
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* ^ *Content-Disposition: attachment;
* filename=".*\.(pif|exe|scr|zip|bat|cmd)"
Looks like it works:
wee@foo:~$ grep 'mail/virus' .procmaillog | wc -l
21
Not terribly effcient, but every little bit helps.
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No. A full install will yield a much nicer experience. I have a little Shuttle XPC sitting next to me here at home and it runs Windows XP. It mostly stays suspended, except when I want to play a game. A few months ago, I downloaded the latest Knoppix for an upcoming work project. For grins I threw it in the Shuttle to see what it would do. I had an experience similar to yours.
If you have an old hard drive laying around (even a 3GB drive would do), add it as a slave, disconnect your Windows HDD and reboot with a full install CD. Poke around on the new install for a while. I think you'll have fun. If you don't like the new distro, leave the disk in there and reformat it Fat32 or something. Use for MP3s. If you wind up liking it, go google for a dual-boot howto.
or is this just a function of not being able to cram everything onto a CD? Would another live-cd give me better results?
I suspect that is part of it. Part of it might also be that certain choices have to be hard-coded into a live-cd distro.
Try Fedora, SuSE, or Mandrake and see what you think. Or Ark. They're all pretty good about balancing hand-holding with letting a savvy user get stuff done. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
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> ./2038.pl
Tue Jan 19 03:14:01 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:02 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:03 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:04 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:05 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:06 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901
Fri Dec 13 20:45:52 1901
> uname -sr
FreeBSD 4.6.2-RELEASE-p23
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