In keeping with the kinds of technicalities being invoked throughout this whole affair, I'd like to point out that the correct acronym for our nation's highest court is SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States), not USSC.
...you're introducing an irrelevant XFree issue into a Linux discussion...
...the non-Windows tribe can then claim that *nix can do on-the-fly resolution changes without having to restart the OS. [emphasis added]
As you pointed out, X isn't really a part of the OS, so *nix can change resolutions without restarting the OS. Someone else pointed out you can (depending on your config file) change resolutions without restarting X, too.
The complexity of sendmail configuration arises from the semantics of what the config does, not its syntax.
Mod this parent up!
This is why XML would be meaningless (as the subject-line indicates). Moving to XML increases the complexity of the file format (from an admin perspective), but does nothing to reduce the complexity of the file contents (i.e., semantics). sendmail.conf written in XML would be just as incomprehensible to someone unfamiliar with it as it would be in its current format.
Most config files already have a standard (#comment; keyword = value).
XML isn't standard unless everyone writes to the same DTD, which won't happen unless it can cover every conceivable scenario ("System requirements: linux-dtd-3.6.5").
It's nice when it's legible as [a text file] though.
I suggest that you read The Bell Curve to see just how strong the correlation is.
Since this discussion will be archived before I can do that, I'd just like to point out that I've heard a lot of people trash that book as hopelessly biased (hearsay, I know; I'll read and judge for myself at a later date).
As to Bill Gates,... he is extremely intelligent.
I agree. I was merely taking the "correlation" to its logical extreme (if someone is one million times as rich as the avg. person, they are one million times as intelligent as the avg. person).
In the end, my problem with asserting this correlation is that it suggests things which don't conform too well with my experiences:
The intelligent tend to live in a country amenable to large personal wealth (i.e., communists/socialists are dumb).
Smart people tend to either strive for personal wealth or do things which happen to result in wealth.
Smarter people tend to hoarde money, rather than give it away.
Of course, these are just my opinions. Take or leave them as you please.
If you think that the people who run Slashdot are 'idiots', I have two questions for you:... 2. Why are they millionaires?
So now there's a correlation between intelligence and personal wealth? I guess that makes me a fscking moron (and Bill Gates a demi-god). My parents will be so disappointed.:-(
That was my attitude, too, until a few months ago. Another Slashdotter pointed out to me, though, that Unicode isn't truly Free, so I imagine that would hamper efforts for a "100%-Unicode Linux distro".
Why use a free, superior, Microsoft browser when you can convince people to download a "sparkly" plugin like Flash[?]
You're missing the point. Web browsing isn't supposed to be a WYSIWYG experience. Most of the W3C's standards are written deliberately vague to allow proper rendering on (for example) text-only browsers (like Lynx), or browsers for the blind. I mentioned Flash merely to point out that you can't force the end-user to pick a particular browser, so true WYSIWYG is a pipe-dream.
BTW, the answers to your rhetorical question include:
...[N]ot one customer have given a damn....[M]ost other web developers... are faced with the exact same demands...
Agreed. Most of my work this year has been in Web development, so I can empathize. Sometimes, it's hard to convince managers there is a difference between content and display. I don't have any solutions; I'm just a little bitter that everyone thinks WYSIWYG is the best solution to every problem.
Nice to see that at least one person understands what the web is all about.
[Blushes.] Aw, shucks.
Actually, I was in such a rush to reply, I skimmed past the part where allanj describes using tables for visual formatting. I thought people stopped doing that long ago. (I occasionally use Lynx, just to keep things real.:-) )
Some of [the standards] are too vague on what the different elements should look like...
If you're talking about HTML (as opposed to CSS), that's deliberate! The Web was not designed to be WYSIWYG. HTML is for content markup, not visual markup. If you need absolute control over the look of a page (why?), use Flash or some other plug-in.
Well, I already mentioned my position was the result of turnover; I left the day the site went live, but that doesn't count (I'm a despicable contractor (but only for now; give me a sane job!)); and the project manager left in disgust a week after I did. Everyone on that project who didn't leave were the principal sources of my woe, so I feel they deserve each other.
In fact... [opens new browser; types "secret" URL; enters test ID and password; sees they haven't been changed]...it looks to me like the only thing that has changed since I left a month ago is the logo, and one addition to the FAQ.
I just finished working on the worst project of my career. I was brought in to replace the lead developer, who had quit w/o notice (I now understand why); I never had an adequate work environment (it's embarrassing to have to ask someone to print docs for you every day); and office politics resulted in half of my design decisions being overturned with little or no justification (my favorite: "No, we should put all of the source code in one directory, because cd-ing all over the place is too confusing."). But all that I could forgive, if it weren't for the process.
Every other Friday was a "freeze-date", where QA took whatever code we had, and did a test build for the users to pound on. However, every code change (new features, bug-fixes, updating database entries) had to be documented on seven paper documents (electronic was insufficient), requiring signatures from four-to-six managers, depending on severity (emergency fixes only required four docs and three sigs). The QA group was completely enamoured of itself, and somehow had acquired the authority to reject code that wasn't documented exactly as they specified, or documented, but the signatures weren't procured by the freeze date. Toward the end, someone in QA started rejecting code because it didn't meet requirements that didn't exist, but he felt really should. There was also the problem of the QA process changing without warning, but I've complained enough.
...PLUS a whole collection of REAAAALLY high quality songs from BMG's collection [].
Want to lay odds that those high quality songs are in a secure format that limits the number of times you can swap them? MP3s are not what I would deem "high-quality".
Napster controls what goes through their servers,...
If you paid any attention to the issue during the past several months, you'd know that MP3s do not go through their servers. Their servers merely store a list of songs on subscribers' PCs.
I presume that there is a record of who voted for this supremely FSCKed up law to begin with?
I read here on/. that it was a voice-vote (i.e., not written down).
Can anybody give me a pointer?
Nah. I read it on slashdot. It must be true. And don't ask me to prove I read it here, because I just hit the "Preview" button and read this post, so I must've read it here. My browser told me so.:-)
This makes me physically ill. Every day I hear [expletive deleted] like this, and find myself with fewer hopes to cling to for a rational outcome. It looks like Napster is my last chance to live in a sane world.
OTOH, "[t]yranny and oppression are a small price to pay to live in the land of the free."
Effective access control? Hee hee hee... well now, that in itself is open to debate isn't it?
No, it isn't. RTFA:
17 U.S.C., 1201. (a)(3)(B) A technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
As I posted in a previous article, whereas most/.ers take "effectively" to mean "in an effective way", the law is written so that it means "for all practical purposes" (thank you, dictionary.com). This means that if someone uses even the simplest of access controls, like base-64 + XOR, it "effectively controls access", even if that access control becomes widely known.
After reading a number of posts, it becomes clear that/. posters are all referencing several contradictory stories. The fluid nature of the Web and the short attention span of the average consumer are conspiring to allow just what you've described.
If Windows is such a piece of crap, why does the slashdot community wants to (illegally) get its source code ?
WINE. if i can play half-life under linux... then I'll be happy.
Wouldn't it be more prudent to try to get the source to Half-Life instead?
<ramble>
I've become fed-up with Microsoft, and over my SO's protests, I spent this past weekend retooling my Linux install so that it's the OS I use for all my day-to-day work, leaving Windows solely for games. I can sympathize with the desire to run all one's games from Linux, but I'd much rather that the games were Free than that WINE (or WinE, if you prefer) becomes unfree by accepting illegally-contributed code.
OTOH, if Free software isn't your motivation for using Linux, petition for ports of your favorite games, and then buy them. I intend to show my support for the porting efforts of companies like Loki by buying the same game again if/when it's ported to Linux. Wasted money? I don't think so. I consider it well worth my money to send the message that their efforts aren't in vain.
Slashdot Mirror
In keeping with the kinds of technicalities being invoked throughout this whole affair, I'd like to point out that the correct acronym for our nation's highest court is SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States), not USSC.
Oops. I forgot to add the emphasis I allude to. I meant for the last quoted mention of "OS" to be bolded, but forgot. Sorry.
Sorry to nitpick, but it's really bugging me.
As you pointed out, X isn't really a part of the OS, so *nix can change resolutions without restarting the OS. Someone else pointed out you can (depending on your config file) change resolutions without restarting X, too.
The complexity of sendmail configuration arises from the semantics of what the config does, not its syntax.
Mod this parent up!
This is why XML would be meaningless (as the subject-line indicates). Moving to XML increases the complexity of the file format (from an admin perspective), but does nothing to reduce the complexity of the file contents (i.e., semantics). sendmail.conf written in XML would be just as incomprehensible to someone unfamiliar with it as it would be in its current format.
With XML, the format is standard,...
This argument doesn't hold for two reasons:
It's nice when it's legible as [a text file] though.
This argues against XML, not for it.
Why does this idea have the same ring in my ear that the USPS internet tax does?
I can't tell from context, but I hope you realize that the USPS Internet Tax is a hoax.&l t;/p>
Actually, a lot of people would like to know who the President of the USA is...
William Jefferson Clinton
I suggest that you read The Bell Curve to see just how strong the correlation is.
Since this discussion will be archived before I can do that, I'd just like to point out that I've heard a lot of people trash that book as hopelessly biased (hearsay, I know; I'll read and judge for myself at a later date).
As to Bill Gates,... he is extremely intelligent.
I agree. I was merely taking the "correlation" to its logical extreme (if someone is one million times as rich as the avg. person, they are one million times as intelligent as the avg. person).
In the end, my problem with asserting this correlation is that it suggests things which don't conform too well with my experiences:
Of course, these are just my opinions. Take or leave them as you please.
If you think that the people who run Slashdot are 'idiots', I have two questions for you: ... 2. Why are they millionaires?
So now there's a correlation between intelligence and personal wealth? I guess that makes me a fscking moron (and Bill Gates a demi-god). My parents will be so disappointed. :-(
That was my attitude, too, until a few months ago. Another Slashdotter pointed out to me, though, that Unicode isn't truly Free, so I imagine that would hamper efforts for a "100%-Unicode Linux distro".
Any field in which you can take classes in ethics is a field which has no ethics.
That explains so much of what I witnessed in my "Social & Ethical Implications of Computing" class. :-)
Why use a free, superior, Microsoft browser when you can convince people to download a "sparkly" plugin like Flash[?]
You're missing the point. Web browsing isn't supposed to be a WYSIWYG experience. Most of the W3C's standards are written deliberately vague to allow proper rendering on (for example) text-only browsers (like Lynx), or browsers for the blind. I mentioned Flash merely to point out that you can't force the end-user to pick a particular browser, so true WYSIWYG is a pipe-dream.
BTW, the answers to your rhetorical question include:
For the record, I use IE for 90% of my Web browsing.
You've misunderstood me...
I apologize (and am thankful) for that.
Agreed. Most of my work this year has been in Web development, so I can empathize. Sometimes, it's hard to convince managers there is a difference between content and display. I don't have any solutions; I'm just a little bitter that everyone thinks WYSIWYG is the best solution to every problem.
Nice to see that at least one person understands what the web is all about.
[Blushes.] Aw, shucks.
Actually, I was in such a rush to reply, I skimmed past the part where allanj describes using tables for visual formatting. I thought people stopped doing that long ago. (I occasionally use Lynx, just to keep things real. :-) )
Some of [the standards] are too vague on what the different elements should look like...
If you're talking about HTML (as opposed to CSS), that's deliberate! The Web was not designed to be WYSIWYG. HTML is for content markup, not visual markup. If you need absolute control over the look of a page (why?), use Flash or some other plug-in.
My God! What was the turnover like at that place?
Well, I already mentioned my position was the result of turnover; I left the day the site went live, but that doesn't count (I'm a despicable contractor (but only for now; give me a sane job!)); and the project manager left in disgust a week after I did. Everyone on that project who didn't leave were the principal sources of my woe, so I feel they deserve each other.
In fact... [opens new browser; types "secret" URL; enters test ID and password; sees they haven't been changed] ...it looks to me like the only thing that has changed since I left a month ago is the logo, and one addition to the FAQ.
I just finished working on the worst project of my career. I was brought in to replace the lead developer, who had quit w/o notice (I now understand why); I never had an adequate work environment (it's embarrassing to have to ask someone to print docs for you every day); and office politics resulted in half of my design decisions being overturned with little or no justification (my favorite: "No, we should put all of the source code in one directory, because cd-ing all over the place is too confusing."). But all that I could forgive, if it weren't for the process.
Every other Friday was a "freeze-date", where QA took whatever code we had, and did a test build for the users to pound on. However, every code change (new features, bug-fixes, updating database entries) had to be documented on seven paper documents (electronic was insufficient), requiring signatures from four-to-six managers, depending on severity (emergency fixes only required four docs and three sigs). The QA group was completely enamoured of itself, and somehow had acquired the authority to reject code that wasn't documented exactly as they specified, or documented, but the signatures weren't procured by the freeze date. Toward the end, someone in QA started rejecting code because it didn't meet requirements that didn't exist, but he felt really should. There was also the problem of the QA process changing without warning, but I've complained enough.
Want to lay odds that those high quality songs are in a secure format that limits the number of times you can swap them? MP3s are not what I would deem "high-quality".
Napster controls what goes through their servers,...
If you paid any attention to the issue during the past several months, you'd know that MP3s do not go through their servers. Their servers merely store a list of songs on subscribers' PCs.
I presume that there is a record of who voted for this supremely FSCKed up law to begin with?
I read here on /. that it was a voice-vote (i.e., not written down).
Can anybody give me a pointer?
Nah. I read it on slashdot. It must be true. And don't ask me to prove I read it here, because I just hit the "Preview" button and read this post, so I must've read it here. My browser told me so. :-)
Aw, man! And I wanted to "scan" the text for a relevent passage. (Note: said CueCat doesn't exist; it's just an excuse for a pun)
This almost makes me want to cry.
This makes me physically ill. Every day I hear [expletive deleted] like this, and find myself with fewer hopes to cling to for a rational outcome. It looks like Napster is my last chance to live in a sane world.
OTOH, "[t]yranny and oppression are a small price to pay to live in the land of the free."
Effective access control? Hee hee hee... well now, that in itself is open to debate isn't it?
No, it isn't. RTFA:
As I posted in a previous article, whereas most /.ers take "effectively" to mean "in an effective way", the law is written so that it means "for all practical purposes" (thank you, dictionary.com). This means that if someone uses even the simplest of access controls, like base-64 + XOR, it "effectively controls access", even if that access control becomes widely known.
<paranoid>
After reading a number of posts, it becomes clear that /. posters are all referencing several contradictory stories. The fluid nature of the Web and the short attention span of the average consumer are conspiring to allow just what you've described.
</paranoid><rational>
Man, that's funny!
</rational></joke>
If Windows is such a piece of crap, why does the slashdot community wants to (illegally) get its source code ?
WINE. if i can play half-life under linux... then I'll be happy.
Wouldn't it be more prudent to try to get the source to Half-Life instead?
<ramble>I've become fed-up with Microsoft, and over my SO's protests, I spent this past weekend retooling my Linux install so that it's the OS I use for all my day-to-day work, leaving Windows solely for games. I can sympathize with the desire to run all one's games from Linux, but I'd much rather that the games were Free than that WINE (or WinE, if you prefer) becomes unfree by accepting illegally-contributed code.
OTOH, if Free software isn't your motivation for using Linux, petition for ports of your favorite games, and then buy them. I intend to show my support for the porting efforts of companies like Loki by buying the same game again if/when it's ported to Linux. Wasted money? I don't think so. I consider it well worth my money to send the message that their efforts aren't in vain.
</ramble>