Re:A feature to make many switch.
on
KDE 2.2.2
·
· Score: 2
The Crossover plugin is not part of KDE, but fixing the bugs in nspluginviewer that kept the Crossover plugin from working properly in earlier releases has everything to do with KDE.
Codeweavers donated some patches so that Crossover now works with Konqueror. A very nice thing. I love being able to watch the Quicktime movie teasers.
One more thing: I don't know if it's the Codeweavers patches or something else altogether, but the video segments on abcnews.com now work for me, too.
Package managers don't fully handle path issues.
They don't, for example, handle multiple versions of the same software very well.
You can, I suppose, do the kludge of attaching a version number to the end of every file name, but that's even more ugly than multiple directories and may even snag some code.
I knew that Harry Potter was a phenomenon. After all, the author was on Oprah.
Heck, the NY Times changed the criteria for its bestseller list because Harry was creaming the competition.
but...
Until a friend gave Goblet of Fire to my teenaged daughter, I didn't realize that Harry Potter was a PHENOMENON!
She now has 1-4 on her shelf with the Harry Potter bookends and assorted other Potterabilia.
She has made sure that even an uncool old muggle like Dad has a vague comprehension of the sorting hat.
And...
We are all excited about my mother coming up for a visit this week.
Why?
She'll babysit the little ones while Teenager and the two old fogies she lives with go to see the movie.
Guess it could be worse.
The littlest one likes TeleTubbies.
Glad to see that a lot of people here can appreciate the value of something like this.
I'd have thought that more people would "thumbs-up" something that:
1. Isn't imposed by the government
2. Doesn't restrict the original film
3. Could point the way to MORE freedom in films.
Face it, films are commercial enterprises. There is a lot of pressure to make money and DVD sales are a growing source of revenue.
Think of a movie like "From Hell," the Jack the Ripper flick.
That may be exactly the movie that it's makers wanted. Or, it may have been toned down so that more people could stand to see it.
Imagine a "less gore" configuration that would let those with strong stomachs view the original while those who get queasy would get just enough hints and quick cuts to understand what was done.
A voluntary technology ADDS freedom. It doesn't take freedom away.
As others have pointed out, Penny a page schemes are more expensive than they sound.
I wonder if the better solution is something like a blast from the past?
Years ago, before the internet, I joined compuserve. For my hourly fee, I had access to a number of different forums. I think AOL works something like this now (don't use it, can't be sure). In a way, ISP's work that way: for your access fee, you are hooked to all of the internet.
Perhaps "consortium providers" can strike deals with groups of interesting web sites, actting as middlemen (I know, I know. It's a dreaded word) providing access on a monthly fee basis.
By providing access to a variety of sites, users don't look at a cascading stack of fees from individual sites. They don't get charged if they go back to a site, they don't feel bad about a site whose quality goes up and down.
Paying to view web pages may not fly, but it certainly won't fly if it's not reasonably convenient, reasonably affordable to surfers and reasonably economic to the providers.
I'm having a great deal of trouble coming to grips with the reality that hundreds of people killed on the plane and on the ground by a mechanical problem, strange air or pilot error could be, in a strange way, good news.
How much things change.
Now comes the hard part: waiting for an answer.
Remember the frenzy after Pan-Am 800? We even had a former presidential press secretary proclaiming that it had been shot down by a missile.
Only a long and painstaking investigation revealed the problem with sparks in the central fuel tank on 747's.
Just as I hope that Congress doesn't go ballistic passing oppressive laws for our protection, I hope that the NTSB will act only as quickly as a proper investigation will allow.
Went with my wife, my 5 year old and my two year old.
Each of us loved it, each of us found plenty to laugh at.
What amazed me most was not the CG (though really good), the acting (though really good) or the writing (though really good).
No, what amazed me most was watching my squirelly little two year old sitting on the edge of her seat with wide-open eyes glued to the screen.
A personal favorite moment (that, fortunately, doesn't give anything away) was the scene showing the beginning of a scare shift at the MI factory. The "scarers" -- a very goofy looking group of monsters -- walk onto the floor in a group with the group, pausing for a second in a low-camera-angle kind of shot that makes you think of a million "here come the good guys" scenes. Almost guaranteed to make you grin.
Good movie.
Great fun.
If you don't have a kid, consider borrowing one.
Luxo, jr and Geri's Game?
Great shorts, especially Geri's Game.
Saw that when I took the kids to A Bug's Life.
Made the bugs bearable.
I may have to break down and shell out for the Crossover Plugin so that I can play these.
Or -- hmmm. Maybe I can steal the spouse's NT Thinkpad...
She doesn't really need it, right?
You certainl wouldn't want them heaving at their seatbelts, would you? That would be very bad news.
An interesting point, though. Adding to the complexity is the need to support people equally for deceleration as for acceleration.
Otherwise decleration is just acceleration in the other direction.
As to a fit person only tolerating.1 to.2g, many people experience more than that every day in their cars. The best modern sports cars can pull a full 1G on a curve.
Some posters seem to be under the impression that a SCRAMjet/RAMjet powered "plane" would need to spend an hour accelerating to speed in order to keep people from passing out or heaving guts, etc.
It's not nearly that bad.
People can generally withstand sustained G forces in the neighborhood of 8 Gs if properly supported. That works out to about 200 miles per hour per second. 5G to ignite the scramjet is about 3800 mph sea level, close enough to use 4000 mph back-of-the-envelope to get 20 seconds to scramjet ignition, maybe 40 seconds to Mach 10.
A two minute climb should be very endurable.
The limiting factor is more likely to be power-to-weight ratios than G-forces.
I sincerely hope that programmers never become professionals in the sense of doctors and lawyers.
As a former lawyer who had to go through law school and pass the bar, I would like to mention one word to any developer who might actually like the idea: malpractice.
No professional certification, no standards and practices, no malpractice.
I'm astonished at the poor error-handling in most software these days.
The biggest problem is not whether your language has exceptions (good error-handling has been done for years without them) or whether programmers are lazy. It's a matter of making it a priority. In fact, laziness caused a lot of us old-timers to take a major interest in error-handling.
Picture the days before internet access, running mainframe systems, probably with overnight batch cycles.
Good error handling might mean that you don't get a phone call at 3:00 am.
If that phone call comes, good error messages might mean that you can diagnose the problem over the phone and walk the operator through recovery.
In either case, you don't have to drive down to the data center.
If Alan is trying to make a point, that's something I understand.
If he's actually concerned that what he's doing would put him in jeopardy because of the DMCA, is he releasing a version of the patch that doesn't contain the fixes?
After all, the code is what would break the law, not a description of what the code does.
When I read this, I couldn't help but think of all the inevitable comments that come up about bloat/speed in KDE/GNOME/Mozilla/StarOffice/Whichever piece of software hits your hot button.
Someone always belittles the complainers and points out how cheap memory/processors/HD is these days.
Something like this reminds us of how fortunate we are and how spoiled we have become.
It's also a pointed example of why monopolies whose software must run on the biggest and newest hardware cannot be left to own the entire computing field.
Way to go guys. If I wore a hat, it would be off to you.
Your point on repercussions is absolutely right. It doesn't look like there is any serious disincentive to pull this kind of sleazy crap.
A couple of small points:
US courts do not opereate on a loser pays basis. A number of federal statutes do have loser pays provisions, but loser pays is not the rule, and certainly is not the rule in state courts.
Loser pays tends to be a good deal for big guys like Nestle and a bad deal for little guys who can't afford hefty legal fees. For one thing, the little guys aren't likely to get the same quality (or price) of counsel. This would tend to strongly discourage the little guy from suing to protect his rights. Can you imagine the Maggio fellow having to face paying for Nestle's high-priced legal studs if he lost? He might have decided to forego the domain, even though he has every right to it.
Having said that, we must also recognize an offsetting effect. I can imagine a scenario where decent attorneys agreeing to represent someone with a very good case based on the probability of collecting from the loser.
The best answer to things like these are the availability of serious malicious prosecution penalties against those who bring the actions AND their attorneys.
My in-laws in northern Mass. regularly go into New Hampshire to buy appliances and other large items in order to avoid the Massachusutts sales tax.
It happens everywhere a state is bordered by one with lower sales taxes, gas taxes, liquor taxes, what have you. E-commerce is just a new variation on that theme.
E-commerce would be a serious concern if it could truly take the place of brick and mortar, but it can't and it won't. It's a little dent. It's more of the same.
Slashdot Mirror
The Crossover plugin is not part of KDE, but fixing the bugs in nspluginviewer that kept the Crossover plugin from working properly in earlier releases has everything to do with KDE.
Codeweavers donated some patches so that Crossover now works with Konqueror. A very nice thing. I love being able to watch the Quicktime movie teasers.
One more thing: I don't know if it's the Codeweavers patches or something else altogether, but the video segments on abcnews.com now work for me, too.
Looking very good here. Very good indeed.
Package managers don't fully handle path issues.
They don't, for example, handle multiple versions of the same software very well.
You can, I suppose, do the kludge of attaching a version number to the end of every file name, but that's even more ugly than multiple directories and may even snag some code.
I knew that Harry Potter was a phenomenon. After all, the author was on Oprah.
Heck, the NY Times changed the criteria for its bestseller list because Harry was creaming the competition.
but...
Until a friend gave Goblet of Fire to my teenaged daughter, I didn't realize that Harry Potter was a PHENOMENON!
She now has 1-4 on her shelf with the Harry Potter bookends and assorted other Potterabilia.
She has made sure that even an uncool old muggle like Dad has a vague comprehension of the sorting hat.
And...
We are all excited about my mother coming up for a visit this week.
Why?
She'll babysit the little ones while Teenager and the two old fogies she lives with go to see the movie.
Guess it could be worse.
The littlest one likes TeleTubbies.
Wait a minute...
Nobody's that old!!
;0)
I thought /. was the home of hip young folks who use GNOME.
What's with beating the KDE server into the ground? You whippersnappers don't use it anyway.
Would it be that terrible to let us backwards old fogies enjoy one of the few pleasures we have left, oohing and ahing over KDE?
Thank you very much.
Glad to see that a lot of people here can appreciate the value of something like this.
I'd have thought that more people would "thumbs-up" something that:
1. Isn't imposed by the government
2. Doesn't restrict the original film
3. Could point the way to MORE freedom in films.
Face it, films are commercial enterprises. There is a lot of pressure to make money and DVD sales are a growing source of revenue.
Think of a movie like "From Hell," the Jack the Ripper flick.
That may be exactly the movie that it's makers wanted. Or, it may have been toned down so that more people could stand to see it.
Imagine a "less gore" configuration that would let those with strong stomachs view the original while those who get queasy would get just enough hints and quick cuts to understand what was done.
A voluntary technology ADDS freedom. It doesn't take freedom away.
As others have pointed out, Penny a page schemes are more expensive than they sound.
I wonder if the better solution is something like a blast from the past?
Years ago, before the internet, I joined compuserve. For my hourly fee, I had access to a number of different forums. I think AOL works something like this now (don't use it, can't be sure). In a way, ISP's work that way: for your access fee, you are hooked to all of the internet.
Perhaps "consortium providers" can strike deals with groups of interesting web sites, actting as middlemen (I know, I know. It's a dreaded word) providing access on a monthly fee basis.
By providing access to a variety of sites, users don't look at a cascading stack of fees from individual sites. They don't get charged if they go back to a site, they don't feel bad about a site whose quality goes up and down.
Paying to view web pages may not fly, but it certainly won't fly if it's not reasonably convenient, reasonably affordable to surfers and reasonably economic to the providers.
Thank you for the correction.
I'm having a great deal of trouble coming to grips with the reality that hundreds of people killed on the plane and on the ground by a mechanical problem, strange air or pilot error could be, in a strange way, good news.
How much things change.
Now comes the hard part: waiting for an answer.
Remember the frenzy after Pan-Am 800? We even had a former presidential press secretary proclaiming that it had been shot down by a missile.
Only a long and painstaking investigation revealed the problem with sparks in the central fuel tank on 747's.
Just as I hope that Congress doesn't go ballistic passing oppressive laws for our protection, I hope that the NTSB will act only as quickly as a proper investigation will allow.
The stakes are so high now.
Microsoft has had a significant hand in creating a common PC platform, and their biggest "contribution" came first.
That contribution? Convincing IBM to license PC-DOS on a non-exclusive basis. That left Microsoft free to sell MS-DOS to clone makers.
With the same OS available, only the BIOS needed cloning in order to produce IBM compatible machines.
No noble intentions, but a very powerful coup.
If there is a candidate for Linux in mission critical roles, it would be SAP's linux version of R/3.
I remember Siemens being the initial rollout for R/3 on Linux.
I don't recall of the databases were on Linux.
Anybody out there familiar with this?
I gave Monster, Inc the acid test:
Went with my wife, my 5 year old and my two year old.
Each of us loved it, each of us found plenty to laugh at.
What amazed me most was not the CG (though really good), the acting (though really good) or the writing (though really good).
No, what amazed me most was watching my squirelly little two year old sitting on the edge of her seat with wide-open eyes glued to the screen.
A personal favorite moment (that, fortunately, doesn't give anything away) was the scene showing the beginning of a scare shift at the MI factory. The "scarers" -- a very goofy looking group of monsters -- walk onto the floor in a group with the group, pausing for a second in a low-camera-angle kind of shot that makes you think of a million "here come the good guys" scenes. Almost guaranteed to make you grin.
Good movie.
Great fun.
If you don't have a kid, consider borrowing one.
Luxo, jr and Geri's Game?
Great shorts, especially Geri's Game.
Saw that when I took the kids to A Bug's Life.
Made the bugs bearable.
I may have to break down and shell out for the Crossover Plugin so that I can play these.
Or -- hmmm. Maybe I can steal the spouse's NT Thinkpad...
She doesn't really need it, right?
I know it's a cliche, but it sure is nice to see it applied to something other than the return of bell-bottoms, hip-huggers or platform shoes.
Genius if forever.
Fashion can make a day seem forever.
Hmmm. Deceleration.
.1 to .2g, many people experience more than that every day in their cars. The best modern sports cars can pull a full 1G on a curve.
You certainl wouldn't want them heaving at their seatbelts, would you? That would be very bad news.
An interesting point, though. Adding to the complexity is the need to support people equally for deceleration as for acceleration.
Otherwise decleration is just acceleration in the other direction.
As to a fit person only tolerating
Some posters seem to be under the impression that a SCRAMjet/RAMjet powered "plane" would need to spend an hour accelerating to speed in order to keep people from passing out or heaving guts, etc.
It's not nearly that bad.
People can generally withstand sustained G forces in the neighborhood of 8 Gs if properly supported. That works out to about 200 miles per hour per second. 5G to ignite the scramjet is about 3800 mph sea level, close enough to use 4000 mph back-of-the-envelope to get 20 seconds to scramjet ignition, maybe 40 seconds to Mach 10.
A two minute climb should be very endurable.
The limiting factor is more likely to be power-to-weight ratios than G-forces.
I sincerely hope that programmers never become professionals in the sense of doctors and lawyers.
As a former lawyer who had to go through law school and pass the bar, I would like to mention one word to any developer who might actually like the idea: malpractice.
No professional certification, no standards and practices, no malpractice.
I'm astonished at the poor error-handling in most software these days.
The biggest problem is not whether your language has exceptions (good error-handling has been done for years without them) or whether programmers are lazy. It's a matter of making it a priority. In fact, laziness caused a lot of us old-timers to take a major interest in error-handling.
Picture the days before internet access, running mainframe systems, probably with overnight batch cycles.
Good error handling might mean that you don't get a phone call at 3:00 am.
If that phone call comes, good error messages might mean that you can diagnose the problem over the phone and walk the operator through recovery.
In either case, you don't have to drive down to the data center.
Sleep. Now there's a motivator.
Once the high-gain antenna is up and running, expect to hear that Mars has joined the coalition against terrorism.
No word on bases. Yet.
Here's hoping that you the new ads and/or subscriptions so that they don't fundamentally alter the nature of the site.
Y'all are smart folks. I hope you find a way.
There's a certain honor, I suppose, in falling on your swords.
But only when it's meaningful.
There's also honor in finding ways to survive.
Not only that, it feeds the kids.
Well, that makes a certain amount of sense, although it has nothing to do with DMCA.
Still, once the fix is available, isn't it usual to let people know what kind of exposure they have if they don't apply the patch?
If Alan is trying to make a point, that's something I understand.
If he's actually concerned that what he's doing would put him in jeopardy because of the DMCA, is he releasing a version of the patch that doesn't contain the fixes?
After all, the code is what would break the law, not a description of what the code does.
When I read this, I couldn't help but think of all the inevitable comments that come up about bloat/speed in KDE/GNOME/Mozilla/StarOffice/Whichever piece of software hits your hot button.
Someone always belittles the complainers and points out how cheap memory/processors/HD is these days.
Something like this reminds us of how fortunate we are and how spoiled we have become.
It's also a pointed example of why monopolies whose software must run on the biggest and newest hardware cannot be left to own the entire computing field.
Way to go guys. If I wore a hat, it would be off to you.
Your point on repercussions is absolutely right. It doesn't look like there is any serious disincentive to pull this kind of sleazy crap.
A couple of small points:
US courts do not opereate on a loser pays basis. A number of federal statutes do have loser pays provisions, but loser pays is not the rule, and certainly is not the rule in state courts.
Loser pays tends to be a good deal for big guys like Nestle and a bad deal for little guys who can't afford hefty legal fees. For one thing, the little guys aren't likely to get the same quality (or price) of counsel. This would tend to strongly discourage the little guy from suing to protect his rights. Can you imagine the Maggio fellow having to face paying for Nestle's high-priced legal studs if he lost? He might have decided to forego the domain, even though he has every right to it.
Having said that, we must also recognize an offsetting effect. I can imagine a scenario where decent attorneys agreeing to represent someone with a very good case based on the probability of collecting from the loser.
The best answer to things like these are the availability of serious malicious prosecution penalties against those who bring the actions AND their attorneys.
This is nothing new, except for the technology.
My in-laws in northern Mass. regularly go into New Hampshire to buy appliances and other large items in order to avoid the Massachusutts sales tax.
It happens everywhere a state is bordered by one with lower sales taxes, gas taxes, liquor taxes, what have you. E-commerce is just a new variation on that theme.
E-commerce would be a serious concern if it could truly take the place of brick and mortar, but it can't and it won't. It's a little dent. It's more of the same.