I don't want to sound mean, but if you want toolbars in your apps, that's your problem. The fact that this wasn't done so far shows, imho, that most current users don't care much for that. Perhaps most of them are quite happy with TeX or plain text.
Now to dreamweaver: I don't find a lack of such program to be a handicap at all. When I was doing full-time web design on windows, I still used vim. The problem with GUI html editors is that you can't automate them like you can a good text editor. With vim you get immensely useful things like abbreviations, copy/pasting multiple times, so on. If I need to create 10 links, I create one, copy it, do 10p (paste 10 times) and change the URLs. I realize that for many people it's a matter of taste to prefer GUI tools, but again, lack of such programs shows that it's not a big deal for most. But if you really want it, start coding.
First a bit of background: I heard about Python once, went to their website, read the tutorial, realized that it is, indeed, a very clear and useful language and bought a Python book.
Some other time, I heard about Haskell and went to look at haskell.org. They also had a tutorial there but it wasn't nearly enough for me. The problem is either that they assume a person already knows FP, or that tutorial isn't as good as Python's or that the language itself is much harder to grasp (note that if it is, it would make sense to make the tutorial correspondingly easier).
Some russiad dood in '20s or '30s proposed something like that, but i believe it was supposed to be higher than 100km. A. Clarke wrote a book about it and called it 'The fountains of paradise'. Anybody knows how much the thing would cost? Since NASA isn't actively looking into this, it's probably too much or not technically possible yet.
I suppose the reason for this is that a government official worries about situation where they'd pay some company $1b to do something and that company would go and do the job for $50m and take the rest as profit. This would be a good thing, essentially - because a new efficient technology is invented, these extra money goes to a smart company which is likely to reinvest it in R&D that will pay off. But to that official it'd be a loss. He'd rather have them spend all $1b or $800m if company gets no more than 5% profit.. And he probably gets patted on the back for saving the country $150m and feels proud too.
If that *is* the case (and keep in mind that I know next to nothing about the industry), then this sort of thing should be illegal. Can some industry insider comment on this? The story seems to imply that but how true is it? Who are the guys who wrote it, are they generally respected or widely known as clueless bozos?
One of the main principles of our judicial system is that until you're innocent until proven guilty. In this case, If you say on your page "follow this link for some pirated mp3s" or "follow this link for some metallica songs", you're obviously incriminating yourself.
If, on the other hand, you say something vague like "this page has some nice mp3's on it", you're not incriminating yourself because it's possible the page didn't have illegal stuff on it when you link.
Linking to files is essentially the same - it's either clear that you knew it's illegal or it's not clear. If it's not clear, they don't have much of a case against you and they should focus on the site you linked to.
You might say, hey, what if everybody starts linking without saying outright it's illegal? That's possible but unlikely. When you link, you want people to come to your page and follow the links somewhere. If visitors aren't sure what lies behind these links, they'll just go elsewhere. Web is too large for nonesense like "follow this link for some nice stuff" and the like. There's always plenty of sites that say outright what they link to.
Banners not making enough revenue, VC drying up, now junkbuster.. and so on and so forth.. there will be major shakedown, majority if not all commercial sites will die.. Nonsense.
Companies, as well as VCs, look 10-20 years in the future. Internet is not going away and it's not reasonable to suggest there won't be _huge_ money to be made on it. Sites are trying to get as many users right now while at the same time trying not to run out of money. Why are they going so to running out? Because they know that headstart advantage is a too good to give up.
If VC does dry up a bit (it may have already), all they have to do is cut down expenses. Spend less on ads, fire non-essential people, replace NT systems with linux or BSD* boxes, and so on. Some companies will make a few mistakes and file bankruptcy but their share of users will be immediately accomodated by luckier or better dotcoms. Life goes on. Now to junkbuster.. if this is seen as a real problem at some point, ads will be put in a way that is indistinguishable from regular images. That's all there's to it, and probably won't be necessary anyway. Don't we also forget that expenses are going down? Hardware's getting cheaper, software - too, bandwidth - too; even workforce will get cheaper.
One thing won't change though.. there will be people predicting impending armageddon after each thunderstorm.
My stand on nono revolution is that we will end up having to be somehow separated from outside environment for this to work. Ok, I think that sounds too vague.. Let's look at the situation: in 50 to 200 years it will be relatively easy to make tiny automata that could, for instance, navigate itself inside one's body and destroy lobe parts of brain, so to say, an internal lobotomy. Almost anybody who wants to do this will be able to.
The only solution? Well, this may sound ridiculous but consider that a middle of 18th century english gentleman would probably consider ridiculous the notion of boob implants or video games. My solution is basically for every compact group (a family, or a group of families, a small community united by religious belief) to live in a spacecraft that is protected by impenetrable shield of steel (or what else do they use, iridium?).
Sure, you will say that's too extreme and simply having a spaceship-like undergroud complex will be protection enough, but I seriously doubt it, because in a spacecraft you can't "go out for a quick stroll down the valley, cause grass and trees look so inviting.."
Please do not take it as a joke - I'm quite serious.
I absolutely agree that python is perfect for studying programming - it's easy and at the same time it'll scale down to C. It has been said that it bridges the gap between RAD languages like perl and serious languages like C. One interesting project based on Python is 'computer programming for everybody' (cp4e). Parent article links to document with details. In short, the idea is to eliminate difference between a programmer and a user. Right now there's probably.1% users who participate in development and 99.9% users who don't and therefore have only indirect influence on development. If the language was easy enough for let's say 60% of users to be able to go and make minor changes/tweaks, that would be quite a revolutionary change. That's what cp4e is trying to accomplish, in a nutshell.
Python highlights: * Free, OpenSource * Simpler and more elegant than Perl (subjectively) * Mature - started in '89 - before Linux. * Unix/Win/Mac/etc * Some big organizations like NASA and Yahoo use it. * Core philosophy is KISS (keep it simple stupid) vs Perl's 'There Is More Than One Way to Do It'.
I don't think it's fair that people listen to a cd after they buy it. It's like buying a car without a testdrive, buying dress without trying it on. Here's my proposal: everybody should be able to download any song he wants for free and then, if he likes it enough, he'll pay the artist directly. There are alot of dishonest people out there but that will be offset by the fact that artists won't have to share with label companies and the fact that people will simply listen to more music. Right now the situation is skewed in favor of big bands who get enough publicity to generate sales and get on MTV. Consumer and smaller bands are at a loss. Napster and Gnutella make it right. I don't like Metallica but I do like Pink Floyd and I bought all of their cds that I first listened to in mp3 format. If not for mp3s, chances are I'd never buy these cds. Think about Metallica fans who bought their cds after listening mp3s. Or perhaps you're not sure that alot of people would buy your cds after first trying them as mp3s? Well, I guess this situation is also better for bands who make high quality music, as opposed to Spice girls and the like.
I studied in ZDU (ziff-davis online university) and the biggest problem imho was that they used forums as a replacement for classroom. I think a much better replacement would be something similar to IRC. What do you think? Logs would make a good study guide for people who come by later.
>I'm sure everyone will agree that a real book is far easier to read than a monitor. Not for me. I've read about a hundred full books (from gutenberg) online and it's just as easy for me as reading paper books and maybe even a little easier (don't have to look all around the place for it). The =ONLY= problem with online books for me is that you can't take it to subway, but that should be taken care of eventually with e-books and all that.
I see this popping up all the time: good ol paper book much nicer and easier to read than something on the 'net. Now, I'm not going to claim that it ain't so for other people, but for me there really is no difference. I've read perhaps a hundred or so full format (300papges +) books on the 'net and sometimes I read paper books and it feels exactly the same to me. I guess I just soak up the content and the form isn't that important for me. Maybe you people have bad refresh rate set on your monitor or just a bad monitor or something? Also, NS or IE aren't really meant for reading books. I use lynx where I remember the page and can jump to it easily (ie you can hit 273p[enter] and jump to page 273). As far as this article goes, I think this guy is very mistaken. If he can give people the choice, why not? Saying that it's isolating and stuff is pure bull - let's say I have 2 or 3 hours left at sunday evening, and I have work tomorrow, would I go to library and spend perhaps 1-1.5 hour getting there, picking the book, getting back home and reading it the time I have left? The truth is, I simply won't do it, and most people won't either. Momentous accessibility of Gutenberg project goes a loooong way. You have a free hour, you go there and read something. If it wasn't there, you'd probably go and watch teevee or read./ or something as time-wasting:>. The point is, he obviously "don't get it". Simple as that.
Alot of stuff/may/ lead to a worse result than microsoft desktop monopoly. Cisco control of routers, ebay's control of online auctions, amazons control of online bookselling, martian invasion, Stalin returning from grave.. I suggest as a home assignment project that every/. reader write a feature on one such threat that may turn out as bad as Microsoft's monopoly. Yawn.
Blahs > This is a neat IE4 tag that I think should be included in Mozilla as well. I know that most people find it annoying (and so do I) but newbies seem to really like it because it makes pages 'come alive' and makes for some exciting interactive experience.. Let's include it in next W3C standard and make Mozilla support it? What do YOU think?
<ElectroShockTesticles>Blah</ElectroShockTesticl es> This is a neat IE4 tag that I think should be included in Mozilla as well. I know that most people find it annoying (and so do I) but newbies seem to really like it because it makes pages 'come alive' and makes for some exciting interactive experience.. Let's include it in next W3C standard and make Mozilla support it? What do YOU think?
Blah This is a neat IE4 tag that I think should be included in Mozilla as well. I know that most people find it annoying (and so do I) but newbies seem to really like it because it makes pages 'come alive' and makes for some exciting interactive experience.. Let's include it in next W3C standard and make Mozilla support it? What do YOU think?
Please, whenever you state something as profound. always provide your sources for this information. Because if you don't, most people will simply assume that you have *NONE*, which makes you look like a religious nut. Note: you can post the sources in the reply to original post or to this post. I'm gonna check back later. Thanks.
Indeed, is there point in telling newbies to go get the latest buggy GNOME or KDE while Linux is much stronger in CLI department? Some will say that newbies won't fall for this.. I say, how do you know if you never tried? Unfortunately there is no effort to make CLI easier to use, even though much can be done in this direction. Imagine user typing mail at the command line and an intelligent mail client checking that it's run the first time on this machine by that user and asking if the user would like to see a tutorial. Tutorial shows h ow basic things are done, ie sending, deleting, saving messages, and how to get help on more advanced features. Note that tutorial is much easier to make in com and line (and you can make it really small, new screen coming up every 4 seconds will only have a few changed lines.. so you can have something like a script th at says "sleep 4 seconds then erase line 4-8, 16 and write in them: "... ". And this sort of tutorial will be really easy to write. Now imagine how much harder would it be to do something like this in GUI. That's why it's almost never done in GUI - the only exception I can think of was a 3d studio max tutorial I've se en. Not to mention that you can make the CLI tutorial interactive easily.) Indeed, is there point in telling newbies to go get the latest buggy GNOME or KDE while Linux is much stronger in CLI department? Some will say that newbies won't fall for this.. I say, how do you know if you never tried? Unfortunately there is no effort to make CLI easier to use, even though much can be done in this direction. Imagine user typing mail at the command line and an intelligent mail client checking that it's run the first time on this machine by that user and asking if the user would like to see a tutorial. Tutorial shows how basic things are done, ie sending, deleting, saving messages, and how to get help on more advanced features. Note that tutorial is much easier to make in com and line (and you can make it really small, new screen coming up every 4 seconds will only have a few changed lines.. so you can have something like a script that says "sleep 4 seconds then erase line 4-8, 16 and write in them: "... ". And this sort of tutorial will be really easy to write. Now imagine how much harder would it be to do something like this in GUI. That's why it's almost never done in GUI - the only exception I can think of was a 3d studio max tutorial I've seen. Not to mention that you can make the CLI tutorial interactive easily.)
There are 2 programs whose functionality cannot be fully transferred to CLI - netscape and gimp. So, instead of having buggy GNOME or KDE we can have a simple w indowmanager with 3 buttons: netscape, gimp and xterm.
CLI advantages: easy to develop, faster, smaller, there's tons of stable functional CLI programs already that has been years in development.
CLI disadvantage: not as pretty (unless you use a transparent aterm with cool root background).
What is this obsession over GUIs? I can see a newbie being lured in by purty looks but why are serious people developing apps like gnotepad, etc? Dreaming of world domination? Can anybody explain this to me?
PS after I finished writing that and tried to post it, lynx crashed. I had to scroll up in aterm to copy/paste the stuff I've written to a text file and then go to./ and post it again.
check out his bio at useit.com. What bothers me about this is that although not many people think about making their web sites useable, it's still pretty much common sense and shouldn't be patentable.
Imagine that you go and type in your domain name to register in some small registrar's website. Some guy is sitting there and looking at the domains as they're being submitted. When he sees something good, he hits a key and that domain is registered by the registrar and you're told it's unavailable. I had this uncomforing thought when I read/. story on nsi messing up with a domain transfer and some other registrar yonking it. That registrar was affiliated with realnames.com that sells domain names. I think it's register.com? but I'm not sure. If I was registering a domain that is very important to me, I would probably use NSI for this reason.
it's $15/year, interface could use some work.. overall, I'm a satisfied customer. The only problem is that you have to look up special code for your dns server before submitting it.. takes probably a minute of your time but still, they should fix that.
It's easy to make the site reasonably accessible to most browsers. Unfortunately, most webdesigners will not do anything like that because, however easy it is, it's still easier to focus on overall look and feel on latest v4,5 browsers.
Part of the problem is that web design field is very competitive with low entry barrier and at the same time it's really tough to make a good-looking site even if you focus on making it look good and forget about accessibility. Why? Because HTML was _not_ meant for tricks people are trying to pull off with it. That's why all visual design tools suck ass - they're trying to build a skyscraper with spherical bricks.
In a modern site, almost every HTML tag is abused and misused. In fact, if they're not, this immediately gives away that the designer is not a professional.
As a full-time web designer who is trying to keep his sites accessible and stylish at the same time, I can tell you this: clients don't give a shit about accessibility even when you explain them. They'd rather have you spend that extra day putting more eye candy in.
The problem is, most sites are used as an adverticement/brochure. People care about investors, business partners and so on who come to the site and get an "impression".
Therefore, the only thing that matters is that the site must look expensive, glamorous and high-tech.
Is there a way out? Not anytime soon. At the meantime, we'll do what we do: stick to nice usable websites that focus on information and service, like/. , freshmeat, gnu.org, google.com, so on. Once in a while I *have* to go to a site that is unreadable in lynx and I have to start netscape and it's a pain but that doesn't happen often.
1. Buy 10 cd-rw disks. Should cost you about 30 USD or so. If you're paranoid, buy all 10 different companies of disks - all good name brands. 2. Set up a schedule of backups, for instance: every sunday at 6am your crontab emails you to remind to make a backup. You pop #1 cd in and backup your homedir. Next week you take disk #2 and backup your homedir, asd so on. 3. If you're really paranoid you can md5sum iso of your homedir before burning, then retrieve iso from the disk and md5sum it and of course compare md5sums. This will help you to get rid of fast-decaying brands too.
Take a look at the alias I have that erases cdrw and makes backup: alias bkup='cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,0,0 -blank=fast; mkisofs -r -o ~/.etc/backup_img ~homedir/; cdrecord -fs=16m -v speed=2 dev=0,0,0 -data ~/.etc/backup_img; rm ~/.etc/backup_img'
My drive needs the disk reloaded before cleaning and it's a caddy drive so I can't do unattended backups. If you can do them, this whole procedure can be extremely easy when set up properly in crontab.
Of course there are a few problems: 1. fire, tsunami, earthquake, flood, volcano: backup essential data to remote server. I know there are such services. The idea is that even though they aren't rock-steady, the chance that both your hd and your backups die and their server dies at the same time is highly unlikely. 2. 650mb may not be enough. In that case, consider dvdrw when avail. and tape backups. Tape backups are a good idea anyway but I already had the cdrw drive around..
Slashdot Mirror
Now to dreamweaver: I don't find a lack of such program to be a handicap at all. When I was doing full-time web design on windows, I still used vim. The problem with GUI html editors is that you can't automate them like you can a good text editor. With vim you get immensely useful things like abbreviations, copy/pasting multiple times, so on. If I need to create 10 links, I create one, copy it, do 10p (paste 10 times) and change the URLs. I realize that for many people it's a matter of taste to prefer GUI tools, but again, lack of such programs shows that it's not a big deal for most. But if you really want it, start coding.
Some other time, I heard about Haskell and went to look at haskell.org. They also had a tutorial there but it wasn't nearly enough for me. The problem is either that they assume a person already knows FP, or that tutorial isn't as good as Python's or that the language itself is much harder to grasp (note that if it is, it would make sense to make the tutorial correspondingly easier).
Some russiad dood in '20s or '30s proposed something like that, but i believe it was supposed to be higher than 100km. A. Clarke wrote a book about it and called it 'The fountains of paradise'. Anybody knows how much the thing would cost? Since NASA isn't actively looking into this, it's probably too much or not technically possible yet.
If that *is* the case (and keep in mind that I know next to nothing about the industry), then this sort of thing should be illegal. Can some industry insider comment on this? The story seems to imply that but how true is it? Who are the guys who wrote it, are they generally respected or widely known as clueless bozos?
One of the main principles of our judicial system is that until you're innocent until proven guilty. In this case, If you say on your page "follow this link for some pirated mp3s" or "follow this link for some metallica songs", you're obviously incriminating yourself.
If, on the other hand, you say something vague like "this page has some nice mp3's on it", you're not incriminating yourself because it's possible the page didn't have illegal stuff on it when you link.
Linking to files is essentially the same - it's either clear that you knew it's illegal or it's not clear. If it's not clear, they don't have much of a case against you and they should focus on the site you linked to.
You might say, hey, what if everybody starts linking without saying outright it's illegal? That's possible but unlikely. When you link, you want people to come to your page and follow the links somewhere. If visitors aren't sure what lies behind these links, they'll just go elsewhere. Web is too large for nonesense like "follow this link for some nice stuff" and the like. There's always plenty of sites that say outright what they link to.
Banners not making enough revenue, VC drying up,
now junkbuster.. and so on and so forth.. there
will be major shakedown, majority if not all
commercial sites will die.. Nonsense.
Companies, as well as VCs, look 10-20 years in
the future. Internet is not going away and it's
not reasonable to suggest there won't be _huge_
money to be made on it. Sites are trying to get
as many users right now while at the same time
trying not to run out of money. Why are they
going so to running out? Because they know that
headstart advantage is a too good to give up.
If VC does dry up a bit (it may have already),
all they have to do is cut down expenses. Spend
less on ads, fire non-essential people, replace
NT systems with linux or BSD* boxes, and so on.
Some companies will make a few mistakes and file
bankruptcy but their share of users will be
immediately accomodated by luckier or better
dotcoms. Life goes on.
Now to junkbuster.. if this is seen as a real
problem at some point, ads will be put in a way
that is indistinguishable from regular images.
That's all there's to it, and probably won't be
necessary anyway.
Don't we also forget that expenses are going
down? Hardware's getting cheaper, software - too,
bandwidth - too; even workforce will get cheaper.
One thing won't change though.. there will be
people predicting impending armageddon after each
thunderstorm.
My stand on nono revolution is that we will end up having to be
somehow separated from outside environment for this to work.
Ok, I think that sounds too vague.. Let's look at the situation:
in 50 to 200 years it will be relatively easy to make tiny automata
that could, for instance, navigate itself inside one's body
and destroy lobe parts of brain, so to say, an internal lobotomy.
Almost anybody who wants to do this will be able to.
The only solution? Well, this may sound ridiculous but consider
that a middle of 18th century english gentleman would probably
consider ridiculous the notion of boob implants or video games. My
solution is basically for every compact group (a family, or a group
of families, a small community united by religious belief) to live
in a spacecraft that is protected by impenetrable shield of steel
(or what else do they use, iridium?).
Sure, you will say that's too extreme and simply having a
spaceship-like undergroud complex will be protection enough, but
I seriously doubt it, because in a spacecraft you can't "go out
for a quick stroll down the valley, cause grass and trees look
so inviting.."
Please do not take it as a joke - I'm quite serious.
I absolutely agree that python is perfect for studying programming - .1% users who participate in
it's easy and at the same time it'll scale down to C. It has been
said that it bridges the gap between RAD languages like perl and
serious languages like C.
One interesting project based on Python is 'computer programming for
everybody' (cp4e). Parent article links to document with details.
In short, the idea is to eliminate difference between a programmer
and a user. Right now there's probably
development and 99.9% users who don't and therefore have only indirect
influence on development. If the language was easy enough for let's say
60% of users to be able to go and make minor changes/tweaks, that would
be quite a revolutionary change. That's what cp4e is trying to accomplish,
in a nutshell.
Python highlights:
* Free, OpenSource
* Simpler and more elegant than Perl (subjectively)
* Mature - started in '89 - before Linux.
* Unix/Win/Mac/etc
* Some big organizations like NASA and Yahoo use it.
* Core philosophy is KISS (keep it simple stupid) vs Perl's 'There Is More Than One Way to Do It'.
I don't think it's fair that people listen to a cd after they buy it. It's like buying a car without a testdrive, buying dress without trying it on. Here's my proposal: everybody should be able to download any song he wants for free and then, if he likes it enough, he'll pay the artist directly. There are alot of dishonest people out there but that will be offset by the fact that artists won't have to share with label companies and the fact that people will simply listen to more music. Right now the situation is skewed in favor of big bands who get enough publicity to generate sales and get on MTV. Consumer and smaller bands are at a loss. Napster and Gnutella make it right. I don't like Metallica but I do like Pink Floyd and I bought all of their cds that I first listened to in mp3 format. If not for mp3s, chances are I'd never buy these cds. Think about Metallica fans who bought their cds after listening mp3s. Or perhaps you're not sure that alot of people would buy your cds after first trying them as
mp3s? Well, I guess this situation is also better for bands who make high quality music, as opposed to Spice girls and the like.
I studied in ZDU (ziff-davis online university) and the biggest problem imho was that they used forums as a replacement for classroom. I think a much better replacement would be something similar to IRC. What do you think? Logs would make a good study guide for people who come by later.
>I'm sure everyone will agree that a real book is far easier to read than a monitor.
Not for me. I've read about a hundred full books (from gutenberg) online and it's just as easy for me as reading paper books and maybe even a little easier (don't have to look all around the place for it). The =ONLY= problem with online books for me is that you can't take it to subway, but that should be taken care of eventually with e-books and all that.
I see this popping up all the time: good ol paper book much nicer and easier to read than something on the 'net. Now, I'm not going to claim that it ain't so for other people, but for me there really is no difference. I've read perhaps a hundred or so full format (300papges +) books on the 'net and sometimes I read paper books and it feels exactly the same to me. I guess I just soak up the content and the form isn't that important for me. Maybe you people have bad refresh rate set on your monitor or just a bad monitor or something? Also, NS or IE aren't really meant for reading books. I use lynx where I remember the page and can jump to it easily (ie you can hit 273p[enter] and jump to page 273). As far as this article goes, I think this guy is very mistaken. If he can give people the choice, why not? Saying that it's isolating and stuff is pure bull - let's say I have 2 or 3 hours left at sunday evening, and I have work tomorrow, would I go to library and spend perhaps 1-1.5 hour getting there, picking the ./ or something as time-wasting :>. The point is, he obviously "don't get it". Simple as that.
book, getting back home and reading it the time I have left? The truth is, I simply won't do it, and most people won't either. Momentous accessibility of Gutenberg project goes a loooong way. You have a free hour, you go there and read something. If it wasn't there, you'd probably go and watch teevee or read
Alot of stuff /may/ lead to a worse result than microsoft desktop monopoly. Cisco control of routers, ebay's control of online auctions, amazons control of online bookselling, martian invasion, Stalin returning from grave.. I suggest as a home assignment project that every /. reader write a feature on one such threat that may turn out as bad as Microsoft's monopoly. Yawn.
Blahs > This is a neat IE4 tag that I think should be included in Mozilla as well. I know that most people find it annoying (and so do I) but newbies seem to really like it because it makes pages 'come alive' and makes for some exciting interactive experience.. Let's include it in next W3C standard and make Mozilla support it? What do YOU think?
<ElectroShockTesticles>Blah</ElectroShockTestic
This is a neat IE4 tag that I think should be included in Mozilla as well. I know that most people find it annoying (and so do I) but newbies seem to really like it because it makes pages 'come alive' and makes for some exciting interactive experience.. Let's include it in next W3C standard and make Mozilla support it? What do YOU think?
Blah
This is a neat IE4 tag that I think should be included in Mozilla as well. I know that most people find it annoying (and so do I) but newbies seem to really like it because it makes pages 'come alive' and makes for some exciting interactive experience.. Let's include it in next W3C standard and make Mozilla support it? What do YOU think?
Please, whenever you state something as profound. always provide your sources for this information. Because if you don't, most people will simply assume that you have *NONE*, which makes you look like a religious nut.
Note: you can post the sources in the reply to original post or to this post. I'm gonna check back later. Thanks.
Will the future demigod AIs run Linux or NT? I think that will be the decisive factor as to make them benevolent or evil.
Doh.
Indeed, is there point in telling newbies to go get the latest buggy GNOME or KDE while Linux is much stronger in CLI department? Some will say that newbies won't fall for this.. I say, how do you know if you never tried?
Unfortunately there is no effort to make CLI easier to use, even though much can
be done in this direction. Imagine user typing mail at the command line and an
intelligent mail client checking that it's run the first time on this machine by
that user and asking if the user would like to see a tutorial. Tutorial shows h
ow basic things are done, ie sending, deleting, saving messages, and how to get
help on more advanced features. Note that tutorial is much easier to make in com
and line (and you can make it really small, new screen coming up every 4 seconds
will only have a few changed lines.. so you can have something like a script th
at says "sleep 4 seconds then erase line 4-8, 16 and write in them: "
this sort of tutorial will be really easy to write. Now imagine how much harder
would it be to do something like this in GUI. That's why it's almost never done
in GUI - the only exception I can think of was a 3d studio max tutorial I've se
en. Not to mention that you can make the CLI tutorial interactive easily.) Indeed, is there point in telling newbies to go get the latest buggy GNOME or KDE while Linux is much stronger in CLI department? Some will say that newbies won't fall for this.. I say, how do you know if you never tried?
Unfortunately there is no effort to make CLI easier to use, even though much can be done in this direction. Imagine user typing mail at the command line and an intelligent mail client checking that it's run the first time on this machine by that user and asking if the user would like to see a tutorial. Tutorial shows how basic things are done, ie sending, deleting, saving messages, and how to get help on more advanced features. Note that tutorial is much easier to make in com
and line (and you can make it really small, new screen coming up every 4 seconds will only have a few changed lines.. so you can have something like a script that says "sleep 4 seconds then erase line 4-8, 16 and write in them: "
There are 2 programs whose functionality cannot be fully transferred to CLI - netscape and gimp. So, instead of having buggy GNOME or KDE we can have a simple w
indowmanager with 3 buttons: netscape, gimp and xterm.
CLI advantages: easy to develop, faster, smaller, there's tons of stable functional CLI programs already that has been years in development.
CLI disadvantage: not as pretty (unless you use a transparent aterm with cool root background).
What is this obsession over GUIs? I can see a newbie being lured in by purty looks but why are serious people developing apps like gnotepad, etc? Dreaming of world domination? Can anybody explain this to me?
PS after I finished writing that and tried to post it, lynx crashed. I had to scroll up in aterm to copy/paste the stuff I've written to a text file and then go to
check out his bio at useit.com. What bothers me about this is that although not many people think about making their web sites useable, it's still pretty much common sense and shouldn't be patentable.
Imagine that you go and type in your domain name to register in some small registrar's website. Some guy is sitting there and looking at the domains as they're being submitted. When he sees something good, he hits a key and that domain is registered by the registrar and you're told it's unavailable. I had this uncomforing thought when I read /. story on nsi messing up with a domain transfer and some other registrar yonking it. That registrar was affiliated with realnames.com that sells domain names. I think it's register.com? but I'm not sure. If I was registering a domain that is very important to me, I would probably use NSI for this reason.
it's $15/year, interface could use some work.. overall, I'm a satisfied customer. The only problem is that you have to look up special code for your dns server before submitting it.. takes probably a minute of your time but still, they should fix that.
It's easy to make the site reasonably accessible to most browsers. Unfortunately, most webdesigners will not do anything like that because, however easy it is, it's still easier to focus on overall look and feel on latest v4,5 browsers.
/. , freshmeat, gnu.org, google.com, so on. Once in a while I *have* to go to a site that is unreadable in lynx and I have to start netscape and it's a pain but that doesn't happen often.
Part of the problem is that web design field is very competitive with low entry barrier and at the same time it's really tough to make a good-looking site even if you focus on making it look good and forget about accessibility. Why? Because HTML was _not_ meant for tricks people are trying to pull off with it. That's why all visual design tools suck ass - they're trying to build a skyscraper with spherical bricks.
In a modern site, almost every HTML tag is abused and misused. In fact, if they're not, this immediately gives away that the designer is not a professional.
As a full-time web designer who is trying to keep his sites accessible and stylish at the same time, I can tell you this: clients don't give a shit about accessibility even when you explain them. They'd rather have you spend that extra day putting more eye candy in.
The problem is, most sites are used as an adverticement/brochure. People care about investors, business partners and so on who come to the site and get an "impression".
Therefore, the only thing that matters is that the site must look expensive, glamorous and high-tech.
Is there a way out? Not anytime soon. At the meantime, we'll do what we do: stick to nice usable websites that focus on information and service, like
This is all.
1. Buy 10 cd-rw disks. Should cost you about 30 USD or so. If you're paranoid, buy all 10 different companies of disks - all good name brands.
2. Set up a schedule of backups, for instance: every sunday at 6am your crontab emails you to remind to make a backup. You pop #1 cd in and backup your homedir. Next week you take disk #2 and backup your homedir, asd so on.
3. If you're really paranoid you can md5sum iso of your homedir before burning, then retrieve iso from the disk and md5sum it and of course compare md5sums. This will help you to get rid of fast-decaying brands too.
Take a look at the alias I have that erases cdrw and makes backup:
alias bkup='cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=0,0,0 -blank=fast; mkisofs -r -o ~/.etc/backup_img ~homedir/; cdrecord -fs=16m -v speed=2 dev=0,0,0 -data ~/.etc/backup_img; rm ~/.etc/backup_img'
My drive needs the disk reloaded before cleaning and it's a caddy drive so I can't do unattended backups. If you can do them, this whole procedure can be extremely easy when set up properly in crontab.
Of course there are a few problems:
1. fire, tsunami, earthquake, flood, volcano: backup essential data to remote server. I know there are such services. The idea is that even though they aren't rock-steady, the chance that both your hd and your backups die and their server dies at the same time is highly unlikely.
2. 650mb may not be enough. In that case, consider dvdrw when avail. and tape backups. Tape backups are a good idea anyway but I already had the cdrw drive around..
This should be enough for almost anybody.