Actually, Mandrake is one the only (or maybe the only?) open source company that offers benefits to their developers and testers outside of a free product. About a year and a half ago when the company was in severe financial trouble and needed to raise cash, they started a special program where developers and testers could buy stock in the company at a discounted rate.
If you ever get involved with the cooker community and interface with the developers and corporate types at Mandrake, you'll understand that they really apprieciate the help of the community and really understand the vital role we play in getting their product to market.
I have to say the attitude they possess is the reason I've stuck with Mandrake as my distro of choice through thick times and thin (i.e. the initial release of 9.2).
Confirmed. Slackware has actually been relatively 2.6-ready since about the 8.0 days. I was running earlyish releases of 2.5 on it without major changes. I'm now running test11 on Slack 9.1 and expect an easy upgrade to 2.6 final.:-) -- Dave
Think about it... they LIVED in an RPG. They had all the things glamorized by RPGs; swords, armor, mysticism, combat, stories of epic battles and quests, etc.
Actually... come to think about it... sounds kinda fun! Who's got the time machine? *g*
Maybe now someone can write a ALF episode... I've only been waiting since I was 7 for it to come. I mean it's about time, the poor guy has been reduced to shilling for 10-10-220.:)
Wow... I really need to start sleeping more... please note the following corrections to the above: wonderful is spelled wonderful, not wonderfule, the cd in my ul should be cd $package_directory, the and between corrupt and RPM should be an an, and the cause after some day should be causes.
Five errors even after a preview... the slashcode team needs to add an "edit post" function for people like me.;-)
If you're using a distribution with a reasonable package manager (read: anything except Slackware)
Hey! I take offense to that! My laptop runs Slack and I have a wonderfule package system. It's kinda like gentoo. You just type the following commands in the following order:
wget $place_to_get_package_from
tar zxvf (or maybe jxvf) $package_name
cd
less README
less INSTALL
./configure $with_build_flags
make
su
make install
exit
exit
How much easier do you want them to make it? (tounge planted firmly in cheek):-)
On the other hand, I've never had slack corrupt and RPM database and render the system unusable... nor have I ever had errant installs leave behind piles of crap in some system "registry" that some day cause my system to b0rk. Plus any programs I install (plus the kernel, glibc, and gcc) are all configured and optimized for my specific machine. I don't know if it's the lack of extraneous crap compiled in or if it's the -march=, -O3, and other flags I throw in but the extra control in the build process seems to add a good deal of speed to the machine.
Slack is the distro I run to when I get sick and tired of Mandrake's pretty menus and wizards not doing what I want them to. One day I'll probably become so curmudgeonly and jaded that it'll be all I use.
If they trusted us, they'd just print up CDs as usual and assume we wouldn't steal them.
This is a bit callous. The fact of the matter is that Lots of People(tm) pirate music and the music industry wants to stop it. This is the first sign that they are listening to consumers and their advocates. Instead of relying on just DRM (lest we forget CSS?) they recognise that its use is limited and they are offering consumers more bang for their buck.
Look at DVDs. I'm speaking only for myself but I would be far less interested in downloading a DiVX rip of a movie than a MP3 of a song. The fact of the matter is that more is lost in the translation of the DVD; I don't get surround sound and I don't get extras or outtakes.
I'm glad Sony is taking this tact; it's far nicer than dragging 12 year olds into court.
I wonder when the game will be placed (i.e. before Revolutions or after)
From the FAQ: The Matrix Online timeline takes place after The Matrix Revolutions, the third Matrix movie, currently scheduled to release in November 2003.
You know it's getting really bad when the story submitters don't even bother to RTFA... *sigh*.
I've been doing this for years with my hosts file on both Windows and Linux. Granted, it blocks entire domains and not just the images but when would I REALLY want to go to gator.com or doubleclick.net, anyway? It also does a nice job of stopping malicious cookies and doesn't block my access to sites that support the second amendment and doesn't require product activation.
Don't know which hosts you should be blocking? Are you as lazy as I am? Download a windows installer or just use Mozilla or Firebird to right click on an image and select "Block images from ".
P.S. Would the original poster of this article please post the domain of the company he works for? I need to make sure it's in my block list. Thanks. -- Dave
Here, here. While I'm definitely not a professional Earth scientist (i.e. in the broad field containing biology, geology, and their bretherin), I spent enough time studying geology to learn a few things from (mostly) non-biased, non-fanatical people who rely on more than FUD to make their assessments and I agree whole-heartedly with your interpretation of these results.
The fact of the matter is that the Earth does make rapid dramatic shifts in climate. For example, the magnetic poles could swap on us with very little warning. (In fact, I think we're overdue for such an event right now... it'll probably happen within the next few thousand years if I remember correctly.) Anyway, we should be figuring out how much we're changing the climate and taking/appropriate/ action.
If we're not hurting the environment that much and drastically reducing emissions is going to severely impact technological progress, slow or halt the development of third world countries, put millions of people out of work, and/or take money away from other more worthwhile environmental initiatives, it probably isn't going to be worth it. We should instead be focusing on technology to supplant current harmful technologies*.
The problem is that most of this kind of legislation is pushed by one of two kinds of extremeists; the doomsday environmentalists and the motown oil executives. Both of these groups feed off of pure FUD. Those that have a clue are rarely involved in the process (unless they've been paid off by one of the above groups).
Besides... even if we do pollute the Earth so badly that it becomes uninhabitable, geologic processes are extremely effective at cleaning such messes up. The earth would probably become habitable again in a couple tens of thousands of years and a race of super-intelligent cockroaches could succeed us as overlord of the planet.;-)
* - Again, this really needs to be thought through. Now that we're to the point where we have the ability to analyse the impact our technologies have on the environment, we really need to use that ability. For example, I recently read an article about how hydrogen fuel cells could dramatically increase the size of the hole in the ozone layer due to the amount of free oxygen they'll contribute to the atmosphere.
Because outside University is the real world. If someone goes to the trouble and expense of providing a service for you, they usually expect something in return.
Granted, University life doesn't always equate to "real life" but in the case of paying for services, University students pay for them. If you don't believe me, I have a $15,000+ (USD) tuition bill for this semester and a huge pile of student loans I can show you.
University students DO pay for their access even though the charges for it might not be as explicit as those on the average users ISP bill.
I rue the day when viruses attack these carts, telling everyone to go buy Brand X.
I, on the other hand, eagerly anticipate the day when viruses attack these carts, plastering the goatse dude on the screen while blaring "HEY EVERYBODY! I'M LOOKING AT GAY PORN!" out of the speakers. Can you imagine the reaction?
An even better one would be doing this to only one cart in every market...;-)
Warning: This is slightly offtopic but applicable to internet taxation nonetheless.
One of the biggest complaints about sales tax is that (in brick and mortar outlets) you never know exactly how much you're going to pay for something. For example, I run over to Walmart and I want to buy a can of Spaghetti O's. The label reads $0.79/can. If I have $5.00 in my pocket, I can buy 6 cans... or can I?
If I'm in an area with a different sales tax as the one I'm familiar with (in Louisiana sales tax varies from parish to parish where parish is the rough equivalent of a county), I may miscalculate the tax and I might not have enough at checkout.
I REALLY wish the government would pass a law that all taxes must be included in the labeled sale price. The seller should take into account the appropriate sales tax when deciding how much to sell an item for and the state should just take a percentage out of the seller's gross sales. It would take an unneccessary burden of the consumer.
If they did this and got rid of the penny, think of how much easier shopping would be. Keeping track of $0.50 for this, $0.35 for that, $20.50 for something else would be a lot easier than $0.39 for this, $1.99 for that, $19.99 for something else plus tax.
They should do the same thing for the internet if they levy an interstate sales tax on items bought on the internet. Granted, it's a lot easier to hit "cancel" on a web checkout form than to put things back at a grocery but it would set a nice precident.
P.S. -- VERY OT, has anyone else been getting lots of Server 500 errors when browsing Slashdot over the past week? I used to never get any and now I'm getting them in roughly one out every five page views... weird.
Each fighter would get equipped with a small, 500 megahertz computer running Windows 2000...
"Although it has been much improved over earlier prototypes, the system was deemed 'unreliable' and unlikely to survive the rigors of combat," National Defense says.
The thought of Windows even being considered for such a mission critical application (i.e. keeping our boys alive) scares the bejeezus out of me... kinda brings a new meaning to "blue screen of death".
Sadly, that list appears to be extremely out of date. I tried ~10-15 of those sites (including all.com/.net/.org/.edu mirrors) and the most recently updated mirror was several months out of date.:-(
All I want to do is *look* at the contrib tree for Firebird! Is that really too much to ask??:-)
I don't know if anyone here is old enough to remember (I certainly am not) but the television industry engaged in this practice pretty much since its inception up until the 60's. The radio industry engaged in it for many years before that.
Your parents can tell you about phrases such as "the Ed Sullivan show, brought to you by..." and "the comedy hour", or the omnipresent product-based game shows. I don't know if Let's Make a Deal was the first, but it certainly popularized it.
What about The Price is Right? That show is perhaps the last relic of product placement based television. There's so little content in that show that it's laughable but there's dozens upon dozens of product placements. That show's been around longer than I've been alive. This practice is certainly nothing new.
To be honest, I'd much rather have advertisement embedded in the programs I'm watching as opposed to sitting through 15 minutes of commercials during a 30 minute TV program or 20 minutes of ads before a movie. It's much less intrusive.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Mandrake is one the only (or maybe the only?) open source company that offers benefits to their developers and testers outside of a free product. About a year and a half ago when the company was in severe financial trouble and needed to raise cash, they started a special program where developers and testers could buy stock in the company at a discounted rate.
If you ever get involved with the cooker community and interface with the developers and corporate types at Mandrake, you'll understand that they really apprieciate the help of the community and really understand the vital role we play in getting their product to market.
I have to say the attitude they possess is the reason I've stuck with Mandrake as my distro of choice through thick times and thin (i.e. the initial release of 9.2).
So you say Spirit's running Lotus Notes? There's the problem right there. ;-)
Let's find out... I just submitted it again verbatim. :-P
Confirmed. Slackware has actually been relatively 2.6-ready since about the 8.0 days. I was running earlyish releases of 2.5 on it without major changes. I'm now running test11 on Slack 9.1 and expect an easy upgrade to 2.6 final. :-) -- Dave
How do you know Linus did not release this before or after seeing LOTR:RotK? Or even during...
Because Andrew Morton, not Linus, would have been the one to release 2.6.0. That's how. :-P
Oh come on... Romans did NOT play RPGs.
Think about it... they LIVED in an RPG. They had all the things glamorized by RPGs; swords, armor, mysticism, combat, stories of epic battles and quests, etc.
Actually... come to think about it... sounds kinda fun! Who's got the time machine? *g*
Maybe now someone can write a ALF episode... I've only been waiting since I was 7 for it to come. I mean it's about time, the poor guy has been reduced to shilling for 10-10-220. :)
I personally think that research like this should only be allowed on the moon colony... oh... wait... nevermind.
Wow... I really need to start sleeping more... please note the following corrections to the above: wonderful is spelled wonderful, not wonderfule, the cd in my ul should be cd $package_directory, the and between corrupt and RPM should be an an, and the cause after some day should be causes.
Five errors even after a preview... the slashcode team needs to add an "edit post" function for people like me. ;-)
If you're using a distribution with a reasonable package manager (read: anything except Slackware)
Hey! I take offense to that! My laptop runs Slack and I have a wonderfule package system. It's kinda like gentoo. You just type the following commands in the following order:
How much easier do you want them to make it? (tounge planted firmly in cheek) :-)
On the other hand, I've never had slack corrupt and RPM database and render the system unusable... nor have I ever had errant installs leave behind piles of crap in some system "registry" that some day cause my system to b0rk. Plus any programs I install (plus the kernel, glibc, and gcc) are all configured and optimized for my specific machine. I don't know if it's the lack of extraneous crap compiled in or if it's the -march=, -O3, and other flags I throw in but the extra control in the build process seems to add a good deal of speed to the machine.
Slack is the distro I run to when I get sick and tired of Mandrake's pretty menus and wizards not doing what I want them to. One day I'll probably become so curmudgeonly and jaded that it'll be all I use.
If they trusted us, they'd just print up CDs as usual and assume we wouldn't steal them.
This is a bit callous. The fact of the matter is that Lots of People(tm) pirate music and the music industry wants to stop it. This is the first sign that they are listening to consumers and their advocates. Instead of relying on just DRM (lest we forget CSS?) they recognise that its use is limited and they are offering consumers more bang for their buck.
Look at DVDs. I'm speaking only for myself but I would be far less interested in downloading a DiVX rip of a movie than a MP3 of a song. The fact of the matter is that more is lost in the translation of the DVD; I don't get surround sound and I don't get extras or outtakes.
I'm glad Sony is taking this tact; it's far nicer than dragging 12 year olds into court.
I wonder if they will try to implement "Bullet Time"...
From the FAQ at thematrixonline.com: Yes, BULLET TIME(tm), slow motion interactive gameplay, is an essential part of the Matrix Online experience.
You know they make FAQs for a reason... but don't feel too bad, the original poster didn't bother to read it either.
I wonder when the game will be placed (i.e. before Revolutions or after)
From the FAQ: The Matrix Online timeline takes place after The Matrix Revolutions, the third Matrix movie, currently scheduled to release in November 2003.
You know it's getting really bad when the story submitters don't even bother to RTFA... *sigh*.
So before you complain about your tech job, check out the list. Things could always be worse.
I am the pre-med student who ate, drank, and breathed the blood, urine and vomit of yellow-fever victims, you insensitive clod!
Oh... wait... wrong section. :-)
I've been doing this for years with my hosts file on both Windows and Linux. Granted, it blocks entire domains and not just the images but when would I REALLY want to go to gator.com or doubleclick.net, anyway? It also does a nice job of stopping malicious cookies and doesn't block my access to sites that support the second amendment and doesn't require product activation.
Don't know which hosts you should be blocking? Are you as lazy as I am? Download a windows installer or just use Mozilla or Firebird to right click on an image and select "Block images from ".
P.S. Would the original poster of this article please post the domain of the company he works for? I need to make sure it's in my block list. Thanks. -- Dave
Here, here. While I'm definitely not a professional Earth scientist (i.e. in the broad field containing biology, geology, and their bretherin), I spent enough time studying geology to learn a few things from (mostly) non-biased, non-fanatical people who rely on more than FUD to make their assessments and I agree whole-heartedly with your interpretation of these results.
The fact of the matter is that the Earth does make rapid dramatic shifts in climate. For example, the magnetic poles could swap on us with very little warning. (In fact, I think we're overdue for such an event right now... it'll probably happen within the next few thousand years if I remember correctly.) Anyway, we should be figuring out how much we're changing the climate and taking /appropriate/ action.
If we're not hurting the environment that much and drastically reducing emissions is going to severely impact technological progress, slow or halt the development of third world countries, put millions of people out of work, and/or take money away from other more worthwhile environmental initiatives, it probably isn't going to be worth it. We should instead be focusing on technology to supplant current harmful technologies*.
The problem is that most of this kind of legislation is pushed by one of two kinds of extremeists; the doomsday environmentalists and the motown oil executives. Both of these groups feed off of pure FUD. Those that have a clue are rarely involved in the process (unless they've been paid off by one of the above groups).
Besides... even if we do pollute the Earth so badly that it becomes uninhabitable, geologic processes are extremely effective at cleaning such messes up. The earth would probably become habitable again in a couple tens of thousands of years and a race of super-intelligent cockroaches could succeed us as overlord of the planet. ;-)
* - Again, this really needs to be thought through. Now that we're to the point where we have the ability to analyse the impact our technologies have on the environment, we really need to use that ability. For example, I recently read an article about how hydrogen fuel cells could dramatically increase the size of the hole in the ozone layer due to the amount of free oxygen they'll contribute to the atmosphere.
Because outside University is the real world. If someone goes to the trouble and expense of providing a service for you, they usually expect something in return.
Granted, University life doesn't always equate to "real life" but in the case of paying for services, University students pay for them. If you don't believe me, I have a $15,000+ (USD) tuition bill for this semester and a huge pile of student loans I can show you.
University students DO pay for their access even though the charges for it might not be as explicit as those on the average users ISP bill.
I rue the day when viruses attack these carts, telling everyone to go buy Brand X.
I, on the other hand, eagerly anticipate the day when viruses attack these carts, plastering the goatse dude on the screen while blaring "HEY EVERYBODY! I'M LOOKING AT GAY PORN!" out of the speakers. Can you imagine the reaction?
An even better one would be doing this to only one cart in every market... ;-)
Warning: This is slightly offtopic but applicable to internet taxation nonetheless.
One of the biggest complaints about sales tax is that (in brick and mortar outlets) you never know exactly how much you're going to pay for something. For example, I run over to Walmart and I want to buy a can of Spaghetti O's. The label reads $0.79/can. If I have $5.00 in my pocket, I can buy 6 cans... or can I?
If I'm in an area with a different sales tax as the one I'm familiar with (in Louisiana sales tax varies from parish to parish where parish is the rough equivalent of a county), I may miscalculate the tax and I might not have enough at checkout.
I REALLY wish the government would pass a law that all taxes must be included in the labeled sale price. The seller should take into account the appropriate sales tax when deciding how much to sell an item for and the state should just take a percentage out of the seller's gross sales. It would take an unneccessary burden of the consumer.
If they did this and got rid of the penny, think of how much easier shopping would be. Keeping track of $0.50 for this, $0.35 for that, $20.50 for something else would be a lot easier than $0.39 for this, $1.99 for that, $19.99 for something else plus tax.
They should do the same thing for the internet if they levy an interstate sales tax on items bought on the internet. Granted, it's a lot easier to hit "cancel" on a web checkout form than to put things back at a grocery but it would set a nice precident.
P.S. -- VERY OT, has anyone else been getting lots of Server 500 errors when browsing Slashdot over the past week? I used to never get any and now I'm getting them in roughly one out every five page views... weird.
Each fighter would get equipped with a small, 500 megahertz computer running Windows 2000...
"Although it has been much improved over earlier prototypes, the system was deemed 'unreliable' and unlikely to survive the rigors of combat," National Defense says.
The thought of Windows even being considered for such a mission critical application (i.e. keeping our boys alive) scares the bejeezus out of me... kinda brings a new meaning to "blue screen of death".
What this means for XFree86
Some will say nothing. Some will say good riddance. Some will say this is the beginning of the end. Who knows? Who cares? Let /. figure it out.
So uhhhhh... who wants to tackle this one? ;-)
Linkage for (as of now) un-Slashdotted Firebird 0.7 Installers...
http://seb.mozdev.org/firebird/
Sadly, that list appears to be extremely out of date. I tried ~10-15 of those sites (including all .com/.net/.org/.edu mirrors) and the most recently updated mirror was several months out of date. :-(
All I want to do is *look* at the contrib tree for Firebird! Is that really too much to ask?? :-)
Look no further, Compaq has the answer.
I don't know if anyone here is old enough to remember (I certainly am not) but the television industry engaged in this practice pretty much since its inception up until the 60's. The radio industry engaged in it for many years before that.
Your parents can tell you about phrases such as "the Ed Sullivan show, brought to you by..." and "the comedy hour", or the omnipresent product-based game shows. I don't know if Let's Make a Deal was the first, but it certainly popularized it.
What about The Price is Right? That show is perhaps the last relic of product placement based television. There's so little content in that show that it's laughable but there's dozens upon dozens of product placements. That show's been around longer than I've been alive. This practice is certainly nothing new.
To be honest, I'd much rather have advertisement embedded in the programs I'm watching as opposed to sitting through 15 minutes of commercials during a 30 minute TV program or 20 minutes of ads before a movie. It's much less intrusive.