This is *exactly* why ala-cart channels are better for citizens. The package idea would not fly in any other market.
"No, sir, you can not buy that printer without also buying the computer."
"No, sir, you can not have a soda without also buying the burger and fries."
The media companies, however, are huge and know they have the weight to toss around. I've never used either dish provider, but I'm glad to see one stand up to keep citizen's prices lower (and thus their own, of course.)
For that matter, I was using several types of vwm's back in Win95 (from Litestep mostly, but also a few others like IceSphere.)
I just don't see this one being approved, or if for some freakish reason it was, it would be struck down the first time they tried to leverage it. Even their lawyers can't be that stupid.
I'm willing to bet you're a troll, but just in case you're not:
I'm using an optical, usb mouse right now. (A cheap, no-name model.) What brand are you using? USB works fine for me, even with my Phillips WebCam, though I did have to use a 3rd party driver mod for that, but the USB part is all kernel.
I am *so* tired of being say that X is slow. I use X everyday, at work and at home, and never, ever has it been slow. There are some *applications* that are slow, most notable among them OpenOffice running on a Pentium 400Mhz machine, but on my 1Ghz+ machines it's quite nice.
The X Server has never been slow for me, and I really wonder where the myth that running X is slow. I have plenty of apps that run rather speedily on my X boxes that take longer on faster Win32 based machines. (Firebird comes to mind.) And just for the fun of it, I use a PyQT text editor that I wrote to teach myself PyQT -- it's interpreted, gui-based text editor -- and it launches and displayed in under a second on this Pentium 400Mhz machine.
I know you're just trying to be funny, and succeeded, but I can't help but think about the buff geeks I know.
My boss is one. He used to be the stereo-typical chubby, pony-tailed geek, but over the last few years, he's lost weight, gained tone and lost all the hair. (On purpose, mind.) He works out regularly and is for the most part, an icon of healthy living.
Second, my friend (female geek linux user!) who is a black-belt, works out quite often, and can give good advice on how to keep onself fit.
Lastly, myself. Now, I am no icon -- I love my chili dogs and burgers, but I practice tai chi regularly with my wife, rollerblade lots in the summer (I live in MI, and hate the snow, so no winter sports for me) and generally keep myself healthy.
Now, the most unhealthy person I know is not a geek, but a couch potato. How come us poor geeks always get maligned on the exercise, healthy living path.;)
Way back in the day (1996 to be exact) I called my Website a "webzine" since that is how I saw it. All was just fine for months and then one day, I recieve and e-mail from so-n-so firm of lawyers represending some NYC based company that owned the trademark to "webzine" and they wanted me to stop using that term on my site. At first, I thought the same thing, "An e-mail? This has got to be bogus."
So I called, talked to a very nice gentleman lawyer and he pointed me to references and sure enough, they did own the trademark. So I did stop using it, but I also did get the notice via e-mail.
The first time you run KDE, a nice wizard walks you through some very basic options, and that's it. A new user would not have to be concerned with the power of KDE's customability. KDE as well "just works" out of the box, as I've seen giving two brand new computer users (note, *computer* newbies, not just *nix newbies) a KDE desktop. It was no more harder than a new user to Windows, etc.
I do agree with the over abundance of Text apps in KDE. WTH? Tho, on the other hand, I did teach myself PyQT by writing yet another text editor. lol
Not a flame, but are you kidding? I've used Gnome 2.4 for quite some time on my home machine, and KDE 3.1.* on my work machine for quite some time now. I have decided to go with KDE at home too. Gnome, to me at least, does *not* seem polished or "finished" whatever that means exactly. (OSS never seems to be finished.)
KDE, for all the claims of bloat, has applications that *work together* in ways that I can not seem to get most Gnome based apps to do. The KDE desktop is more than just the kicker and wm, but a whole suite of OSS software built around that framework that every other DE I have uses lacks. And Konqueror after two years is still my browser of choice -- Mozilla, for all it's geekiness, still seems clunky. (I have no used the *birds yet, as I've had no need.)
That said, there are things about Gnome I do miss. The MacOS-like bar at the top of the screen. I prefer that, and putting the KDE kicker up there is a poor comparison. It does have desktop menus, but then you can't put applets to that, but I hear that is to change in 3.2. I sure hope so.
There are things I like about Nautilus file-manager as well, both in appearance in and how it works, but Konqueror as a file-manager is not bad at all, and it does exactly what I think a fm would do.
In the end, I feel that KDE is the more professional feeling of both popular desktops. It has a unified look-n-feel, simple customization (widgets and window decs) of colors that *I* find pleasing, and the group of apps are just great and always tend to fit whatever need I have at the moment. My only real beef with it is the Trolltech licence. Having gotten into PyQT developing lately, I'm frustrated I can't easily move my apps to Win32 for my friends to use.
Again, not a flame, but I always hear that Gnome always appears more professional, but I gave it a test of damn near a year, and in the end, the DE felt disconnected from all the elements and apps.
I'm sorry, but I use that kind of copy-n-paste, drag-n-drop "innovations" every day in KDE. This is one of the *main* reasons I use KDE on my desktop, because the KDE apps work together so well.
Granted, it does not work so well from a KDE app to, say, some independant GTK app, and vice-versa. KDE does *not* feel kludgy to me, and I've used just about every damn Desktop/Window Manager that you can possible get and compile for Linux, as well as SGI's 4DWM on the old Irix machine that sits on my desk.
All it would take is for the KDE folks and the GNOME folks to sit down and implement a shared C-n-P and D-N-D functionality, which if I remember correctly, might actually be happening.
So, to sum it up, I think a Linux desktop *is* ready to tackle any other OS out there, if it is a unified desktop. If you built it from ad hoc pieces, then I would agree with you. I just don't see any major distro doing that though.
Declaration: I work for one of his businesses, but this viewpoint is my own, not that of my employer or anyone connected to it.
Paul Allen owns Charter Communications, 3rd largest cable company, currently. He owns TechTV. Last I heard he is owns several sports teams and is well invested in other tech companies. Of the two co-founders of Microsoft, I have a lot more respected for Paul Allen than Bill Gates. Although I've had to see some damn good people get laid off this year, I know the order did not come from him, but from the corp beuracracy. He seems to "get" the placement of tech in people's lives and plays up on that.
Now, all that said, I've love to have just 0.001% of his worth to get my own debts to go bubbye.;-)
> Additionally, Python is an embodiment of Open > Source, because the code is actually readable and > concise enough to lower the barrier of reading it.
This is very true and important. I have written python scripts that I have had to give to non-coders to use and maintain. It's a painful, but true reality. However, python's syntax and clear code made it a lot easier to explain what the code was doing, and where to change things. For instance:
Perl: if(!$AccountNumber) {
doSomething();
}
Python: if not AccountNumber:
doSomething()
It's easy for us coders to easily grok $'s and @'s, etc, in perl, etc, but for teaching somebody new how to code or having to, unfortunately, but code into a non-coders hands, I vote for python hands down.
- I have used python for parsing billing dumps, comparing it to our DHCP server dumps, for audits.
- I have written an plug-in extensible, fully functional IRC bot in python, taking advantage of it's ability to load and reload external code on the fly. All the plug-in modules from auto-op to dice randomizers are all written in python code. (And eventually, once I get it commented, it'll be released. Eventually. lol)
- My mySQL backup/modification scripts are written in python.
- My SSH-User's (my newbs) shells are written in python and the ncurses library. Took me a *lot* less time than trying to kludge my way through C/ncurses.
Weaknesses: Semi-Strict syntax. It took me time, but I now enjoy the way python code writes. I do not have to worry about missing brackets, but I know some people who definately dislike python because of it. Confusing RegEx library. (At first anyways...for me.) Monty Python Humor.
> Why is it worth learning another programming > language?
For me, flexbility. And for OO-style coding, I preferred it over Perl (which I think has ugly OO.) I almost never use perl anymore, which is kind of sad, since it was my first real language after BASIC. lol
I really disliked python at first, but over time I grew to appreciate it's strengths.
I saw the movie with our networking department here in West Michigan. When the cracking scene popped onto the screen there was a collective, whispered "Nice!" across the entire row.
3) Contact his ISP or mail provider asking for them to identify him due to copyright infringement. A legal-looking request in a certified letter will many times get an actual response. If not, then you might have to go the DMCA route with them or Ebay.
Actually, if he is using cable (or, I suspector DSL) you'd need a subpeona to get his indentity. Cable Privacy Act prevents anything else. Having to handle abuse and have people ask me who was scanning their network, etc, I have to give them the answer, "Sorry, by law I can not give you that information."
Yanno... I'm so tired of seeing this. I have been using Linux since about 1998, and since 2000 full-time on my boxen at home.
At *no* time during my learning phases was I *_EVER_* told to go RTFM or any other such rudeness. Maybe I got lucky, maybe I just found the right irc channels on a good day, I don't know, but I have yet to hear any first hand accounts of such behaviour. Yes, I am sure there are some elitists out there -- thankfully I have yet to meet them. (Even though, I a bit of an elitist myself, I have never and will never refuse to give honest to goodness help just because I "know more" at that time.)
As for the shortage of apps, I say Bull. Microsoft "standard" apps, sure, yes, correct -- but business ready office apps are here. OpenOffice for one, and I recently tried out TextMaker for Linux, and quite frankly, it's *very* nice. I would *love* to see KOffice get better, since it's my fave for my own in-house docs.
I use Linux full time here at work, in a world surrounded by boxen standardized on Win2k -- I have *very* little trouble working with them. About the *only* app I truly miss from my Windows days is Photoshop -- and only because I know it very well and I have to hunt how to do the same things in GIMP, but once I learn, it's really no different. (Well, granted, the text tool sucks in GIMP right now...;-)
Yeah, it's not very obvious...but if you turn off your menu bar, just right-click on the webpage and it's also the first option on the context menu.;-)
Forgent won't, from what I've read, disclose who paid money for a "license". I am thinking, and perhaps I am wrong, that those who paid have their *own* patents and fear that if they fight this one, their own patents might be fought.
Slashdot Mirror
This is *exactly* why ala-cart channels are better for citizens. The package idea would not fly in any other market.
"No, sir, you can not buy that printer without also buying the computer."
"No, sir, you can not have a soda without also buying the burger and fries."
The media companies, however, are huge and know they have the weight to toss around. I've never used either dish provider, but I'm glad to see one stand up to keep citizen's prices lower (and thus their own, of course.)
Hmmm, with that kind of money, they could buy out SCO.
"Oh, man, IBM didn't bite -- who else can we threaten that has enough cash on hand?"
For that matter, I was using several types of vwm's back in Win95 (from Litestep mostly, but also a few others like IceSphere.)
I just don't see this one being approved, or if for some freakish reason it was, it would be struck down the first time they tried to leverage it. Even their lawyers can't be that stupid.
I'm willing to bet you're a troll, but just in case you're not:
I'm using an optical, usb mouse right now. (A cheap, no-name model.) What brand are you using? USB works fine for me, even with my Phillips WebCam, though I did have to use a 3rd party driver mod for that, but the USB part is all kernel.
I am *so* tired of being say that X is slow. I use X everyday, at work and at home, and never, ever has it been slow. There are some *applications* that are slow, most notable among them OpenOffice running on a Pentium 400Mhz machine, but on my 1Ghz+ machines it's quite nice.
The X Server has never been slow for me, and I really wonder where the myth that running X is slow. I have plenty of apps that run rather speedily on my X boxes that take longer on faster Win32 based machines. (Firebird comes to mind.) And just for the fun of it, I use a PyQT text editor that I wrote to teach myself PyQT -- it's interpreted, gui-based text editor -- and it launches and displayed in under a second on this Pentium 400Mhz machine.
No, X is not slow. The apps are.
I know you're just trying to be funny, and succeeded, but I can't help but think about the buff geeks I know.
My boss is one. He used to be the stereo-typical chubby, pony-tailed geek, but over the last few years, he's lost weight, gained tone and lost all the hair. (On purpose, mind.) He works out regularly and is for the most part, an icon of healthy living.
Second, my friend (female geek linux user!) who is a black-belt, works out quite often, and can give good advice on how to keep onself fit.
Lastly, myself. Now, I am no icon -- I love my chili dogs and burgers, but I practice tai chi regularly with my wife, rollerblade lots in the summer (I live in MI, and hate the snow, so no winter sports for me) and generally keep myself healthy.
Now, the most unhealthy person I know is not a geek, but a couch potato. How come us poor geeks always get maligned on the exercise, healthy living path.
Way back in the day (1996 to be exact) I called my Website a "webzine" since that is how I saw it. All was just fine for months and then one day, I recieve and e-mail from so-n-so firm of lawyers represending some NYC based company that owned the trademark to "webzine" and they wanted me to stop using that term on my site. At first, I thought the same thing, "An e-mail? This has got to be bogus."
So I called, talked to a very nice gentleman lawyer and he pointed me to references and sure enough, they did own the trademark. So I did stop using it, but I also did get the notice via e-mail.
> Running with Linux for over 7 years!
You would do much better if you would stop running and just install it already...
Regarding your first argument:
The first time you run KDE, a nice wizard walks you through some very basic options, and that's it. A new user would not have to be concerned with the power of KDE's customability. KDE as well "just works" out of the box, as I've seen giving two brand new computer users (note, *computer* newbies, not just *nix newbies) a KDE desktop. It was no more harder than a new user to Windows, etc.
I do agree with the over abundance of Text apps in KDE. WTH? Tho, on the other hand, I did teach myself PyQT by writing yet another text editor. lol
Not a flame, but are you kidding? I've used Gnome 2.4 for quite some time on my home machine, and KDE 3.1.* on my work machine for quite some time now. I have decided to go with KDE at home too. Gnome, to me at least, does *not* seem polished or "finished" whatever that means exactly. (OSS never seems to be finished.)
KDE, for all the claims of bloat, has applications that *work together* in ways that I can not seem to get most Gnome based apps to do. The KDE desktop is more than just the kicker and wm, but a whole suite of OSS software built around that framework that every other DE I have uses lacks. And Konqueror after two years is still my browser of choice -- Mozilla, for all it's geekiness, still seems clunky. (I have no used the *birds yet, as I've had no need.)
That said, there are things about Gnome I do miss. The MacOS-like bar at the top of the screen. I prefer that, and putting the KDE kicker up there is a poor comparison. It does have desktop menus, but then you can't put applets to that, but I hear that is to change in 3.2. I sure hope so.
There are things I like about Nautilus file-manager as well, both in appearance in and how it works, but Konqueror as a file-manager is not bad at all, and it does exactly what I think a fm would do.
In the end, I feel that KDE is the more professional feeling of both popular desktops. It has a unified look-n-feel, simple customization (widgets and window decs) of colors that *I* find pleasing, and the group of apps are just great and always tend to fit whatever need I have at the moment. My only real beef with it is the Trolltech licence. Having gotten into PyQT developing lately, I'm frustrated I can't easily move my apps to Win32 for my friends to use.
Again, not a flame, but I always hear that Gnome always appears more professional, but I gave it a test of damn near a year, and in the end, the DE felt disconnected from all the elements and apps.
I'm sorry, but I use that kind of copy-n-paste, drag-n-drop "innovations" every day in KDE. This is one of the *main* reasons I use KDE on my desktop, because the KDE apps work together so well.
Granted, it does not work so well from a KDE app to, say, some independant GTK app, and vice-versa. KDE does *not* feel kludgy to me, and I've used just about every damn Desktop/Window Manager that you can possible get and compile for Linux, as well as SGI's 4DWM on the old Irix machine that sits on my desk.
All it would take is for the KDE folks and the GNOME folks to sit down and implement a shared C-n-P and D-N-D functionality, which if I remember correctly, might actually be happening.
So, to sum it up, I think a Linux desktop *is* ready to tackle any other OS out there, if it is a unified desktop. If you built it from ad hoc pieces, then I would agree with you. I just don't see any major distro doing that though.
Declaration: I work for one of his businesses, but this viewpoint is my own, not that of my employer or anyone connected to it.
;-)
Paul Allen owns Charter Communications, 3rd largest cable company, currently. He owns TechTV. Last I heard he is owns several sports teams and is well invested in other tech companies. Of the two co-founders of Microsoft, I have a lot more respected for Paul Allen than Bill Gates. Although I've had to see some damn good people get laid off this year, I know the order did not come from him, but from the corp beuracracy. He seems to "get" the placement of tech in people's lives and plays up on that.
Now, all that said, I've love to have just 0.001% of his worth to get my own debts to go bubbye.
Linus' letter reminds me of a good example of a flame: biting, yet so intelligently written that you might miss it.
FreeBSD.
Buildworld is different, but same concept. I have a new server I'm needing to get up and running, I think I'm gonna be using Gentoo on this one.
Yanno, he could also be from Michigan's U.P. since they are also quite fond of eh. Heh.
> Additionally, Python is an embodiment of Open
> Source, because the code is actually readable and
> concise enough to lower the barrier of reading it.
This is very true and important. I have written python scripts that I have had to give to non-coders to use and maintain. It's a painful, but true reality. However, python's syntax and clear code made it a lot easier to explain what the code was doing, and where to change things. For instance:
Perl:
if(!$AccountNumber) {
doSomething();
}
Python:
if not AccountNumber:
doSomething()
It's easy for us coders to easily grok $'s and @'s, etc, in perl, etc, but for teaching somebody new how to code or having to, unfortunately, but code into a non-coders hands, I vote for python hands down.
> What do Slashdotters use python for?
- I have used python for parsing billing dumps, comparing it to our DHCP server dumps, for audits.
- I have written an plug-in extensible, fully functional IRC bot in python, taking advantage of it's ability to load and reload external code on the fly. All the plug-in modules from auto-op to dice randomizers are all written in python code. (And eventually, once I get it commented, it'll be released. Eventually. lol)
- My mySQL backup/modification scripts are written in python.
- My SSH-User's (my newbs) shells are written in python and the ncurses library. Took me a *lot* less time than trying to kludge my way through C/ncurses.
> What are its strengths and its weaknesses?
Strengths:
Clean syntax. Powerful libraries. Great real-time parser. Monty Python Humor.
Weaknesses:
Semi-Strict syntax. It took me time, but I now enjoy the way python code writes. I do not have to worry about missing brackets, but I know some people who definately dislike python because of it. Confusing RegEx library. (At first anyways...for me.) Monty Python Humor.
> Why is it worth learning another programming
> language?
For me, flexbility. And for OO-style coding, I preferred it over Perl (which I think has ugly OO.) I almost never use perl anymore, which is kind of sad, since it was my first real language after BASIC. lol
I really disliked python at first, but over time I grew to appreciate it's strengths.
If it cost a quarter, it's not free. :P
I saw the movie with our networking department here in West Michigan. When the cracking scene popped onto the screen there was a collective, whispered "Nice!" across the entire row.
It was pretty cool.
SynTruth
Not suprisingly, it doesn't work with Konqueror.
Score 1 for the KDE team.
3) Contact his ISP or mail provider asking for them to identify him due to copyright infringement. A legal-looking request in a certified letter will many times get an actual response. If not, then you might have to go the DMCA route with them or Ebay.
Actually, if he is using cable (or, I suspector DSL) you'd need a subpeona to get his indentity. Cable Privacy Act prevents anything else. Having to handle abuse and have people ask me who was scanning their network, etc, I have to give them the answer, "Sorry, by law I can not give you that information."
Yanno... I'm so tired of seeing this. I have been using Linux since about 1998, and since 2000 full-time on my boxen at home.
;-)
At *no* time during my learning phases was I *_EVER_* told to go RTFM or any other such rudeness. Maybe I got lucky, maybe I just found the right irc channels on a good day, I don't know, but I have yet to hear any first hand accounts of such behaviour. Yes, I am sure there are some elitists out there -- thankfully I have yet to meet them. (Even though, I a bit of an elitist myself, I have never and will never refuse to give honest to goodness help just because I "know more" at that time.)
As for the shortage of apps, I say Bull. Microsoft "standard" apps, sure, yes, correct -- but business ready office apps are here. OpenOffice for one, and I recently tried out TextMaker for Linux, and quite frankly, it's *very* nice. I would *love* to see KOffice get better, since it's my fave for my own in-house docs.
I use Linux full time here at work, in a world surrounded by boxen standardized on Win2k -- I have *very* little trouble working with them. About the *only* app I truly miss from my Windows days is Photoshop -- and only because I know it very well and I have to hunt how to do the same things in GIMP, but once I learn, it's really no different. (Well, granted, the text tool sucks in GIMP right now...
Yeah, it's not very obvious...but if you turn off your menu bar, just right-click on the webpage and it's also the first option on the context menu. ;-)
HTH.
....but....that would be a fairy then, wouldn't it?
And we know that MS avoids any word with the word 'fair' in it.
Forgent won't, from what I've read, disclose who paid money for a "license". I am thinking, and perhaps I am wrong, that those who paid have their *own* patents and fear that if they fight this one, their own patents might be fought.
Just a thought...