Supanatural was the only one really worth watching. That thing with John Goodman and The Onion one were both the worst 5 minutes of TV I've suffered through.
It's even worse. They're all half hour pilots, sans commercials, so 21-22 minutes long each. You can blow through them all in about 2.5 hours, though I only made it a few minutes into a couple of them before I had to turn it off. Some of these things were beyond terrible. One or two gems, though.
My usual method of assessing these types of projects:
1. Determine how much money my time is worth. 2. Realize that a media streaming PC is worth it for the experience of building it, but it will not save you any money in the short or long term. 3. Buy a Roku.
I realize the OP already has a media server but there's clearly no simple answer to this. Plus as others mentioned, there are serveral ways to stream media from a server to the Roku. You can also get Twonky Beam and beam certain things from your iPad (youtube, vimeo, etc.)
Flash is not only a mess on Linux, if I'm not mistaken they've stopped updating it.
If you really want a project that will waste a lot of your time, look into get_flash_videos (https://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/) I've had decent luck with Hulu, though no netflix just yet. And by 'waste a lot of your time' I mean getting it to work in an automated (wife-friendly) way, auto-updating the Hulu plugin which Hulu breaks all the time, etc. The script/plugins themselves are rock-solid, but you'd be writing your own scheduling/favorites infrastructure.
For artistic use of 3D, Pina 3D was phenomenal. Too bad it's not in theaters any more, and it wasn't in wide release anyway. Can't say I was interested at all in the subject matter, but the filming techniques, angles, etc. were stunning. Truly a work of art.
So, these things are starting to happen. Let's hope they continue. I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of 3D but will agree that there's a lot of crummy 3D films out there. But we're starting to see more and more standouts. Just this year, Prometheus and Life of Pi were great examples of how 3D can serve the story and add depth not only to the images but to the story itself.
I think you're confusing 'tech' with 'idea'. The *idae* of 3D filming and projection has been around for 70 years, but the current generation of *tech* is not that old.
Prometheus and Hugo are two examples of recent 3D films which showcase this type of filmmaking. Scorsese and Scott already pretty much filmed like this so they didn't really have to change much.
I'm a fan of 3D but I do agree with almost everyone that has said negative things about it here. I personally don't get headaches, but again, I usually don't go to stuff like 'How to Train Your Dragon' and 'Fright Night 3D'. I see more classy stuff like The Hobbit and Jackass 3D.
Yes, if a plumber is asking their manager for that basic tool, he absolutely has to explain why he needs it. "I lost my old one." might be a valid answer to the question of why a plumber needs a new wrench.
Yeah, sure. Just send out a memo to all the developers that 'we are now using git, good luck.' Chances are even the developers don't really have a clue about version control, because they'd be using it, right? There's probably a lot of students in there that have not been exposed to version control, so please don't do anything as stupid as 'just install it' and think that they'll use it. What you'll be doing is creating a hatred for the idea of source control, and when these kids go out into the real world they'll be a few steps behind.
Better to do it right, involve the developers, build a tool that they want to use and that they can fall in love with. Better to educate than to repel.
By the way "those 2 systems are light years ahead anything proprietary V.C. tools have to offer nowadays" is patently absurd.
If you really care about how the tools function and what they can do for you, by all means download the OSS and commercial version control tools and set your developers loose in a test environment. Anyone making blanket statements like this is participating in dogma and nothing else.
Managers understand the word 'Desktop', and that's perhaps the extent of their technical knowledge.
Tell them that a version control tool is like a shared desktop that saves every version of a file ever put on it by any user and never empties the trash can.
If they can't grok the utility in that, then God help you.
As for cost, an open source tool is probably all you need even though a certain popular commercial product I've based my career on has free academic licensing (name withheld as to not be accused of shilling), so you'd just need to be sure to include the human cost (time) for setting it up, coming up with a workflow, training and any day-to-day maintenance the IT support team might have to charge back to the department. Even though the costs are not monetary, if I remember anything about school, they still need to charge and track every resource that goes into something.
Yeah. The article fails to elaborate on the true reason for this system: to raise or lower prices based on demand. I live in San Francisco and I love it. I drive a motorcycle so my parking is cheap. This system is not designed to help the consumer, it's to help the city government. Which is fine but I hate how they are presenting it as a boon to people looking for parking spaces.
They feed us some vision of people 'shopping' for cheaper parking spaces a bit further away, which will never happen. In this city, nobody will pass up a parking spot no matter how much it costs. So this is just a way for the City to squeeze more money out of you during certain times of day.
I still don't know how they can tout the smartphone apps but still have laws on the books making it illegal to use smartphones while you are driving. Are we to bring a 'spotter' with us everywhere we go?
Anyway, the novelty will wear off soon enough, I guess. Maybe one day this technology will be universally built into GPS units or something but for now I don't really see it catching on.
I agree to an extent, as I've been kicking ass with Dvorak for 10 years now, but from a programming perspective, I don't like it. Not that QWERTY is any better, but with Dvorak, the 'lesser used keys' are pushed out to the outskirts of the layout. Lesser used turns out to be your punctuation, which programmers have to use often. If you come over to the dark side with us, be prepared to work those pinkies!
Okay. My mistake, I guess. Before version 6 of opera, the tabs you see now were shaped like buttons.
My point is that Opera supported both 'a zillion windows on your desktop' AND 'a zillion windows inside one interface', both of them, since before you were old enough to push a mouse. Tabs, buttons, it's worked the same forever. Sue me for misstating the shape of the freakin' buttons.
I've been using, and paying for it, on Windows since version 4.x. I've been using it on Linux since the day the first technology preview came out. I think I've had a good amount of time to see it evolve, along with all the other browsers. For me, Opera has always been on the cutting edge.
Opera had tabbed windows five years ago. Opera (I think) invented mouse gestures. Opera was the first with a cookie manager and had settings for privacy issues before it was an issue.
Opera has had a popup blocker for longer than anyone.
If all these features sound familiar, because Mozilla/whatever has them, it's because those 'other' browsers are just now catching up.
There is a new feature in this version of Opera called 'FastForward/Rewind' that, astonishingly, works really well. I would expect Mozilla to pick this up in about a year.
If you don't like the look and feel out of the box, you can change just about anything regarding Opera. I like having my location bar on the bottom, so that's where I put it. I have my tabs down there, too. I can put my button bar at the bottom, but I prefer it on top. I don't like skins, so I turn them off. It's a browser how I want it.
Back in the day, Opera sold itself on size alone. When Internet Explorer and Netscape clocked in at 10 megs plus, Opera for Windows fit on a floppy (sans Java, of course.) It's not currently small enough to do that, but it is still much smaller than any other browser, and takes less resources. It is not a memory or drive space hog. It is small, fast and sleek.
For this alone, it's worth paying for. Mozilla/Netscape are still whores to M$ as far as I'm concerned, and even Phoenix/whatever is getting too big and klunky.
Innovation in the browser market costs money, and I'm more than happy to put a few bucks into Opera. The tradeoff on price is that I don't have to have my browser core dump a few times every day, and I don't have to beta test software for them. This software is consumer grade, not nerd grade, if you catch my drift. I love it, and you should love it to.
Maybe it's because I've been running it so long, but I've never had any real problem running plugins, especially Flash. When you rpm your opera, it tells you the Motif version you are missing. A slashdot user of average intelligence can search opera.com for download links to motif. Or follow the link posted previously. Plugger and all it's various codecs work flawlessly, as well as the Acrobat Reader plugin and RealPlayer. Perhaps the only thing I have trouble with is Microsoft specific languages (.asp) but if you're frequenting places that are dumb enough to expect everyone to have a M$ OS, maybe http://www.ilovewindows.com is a better web site for you to frequent.
I'm sure this post was written by one of those 15 year old grommets that walk across the street with a skateboard under their arm, with not a trace of duct tape on their shoes.
If you've never seen Tony Alva skate, if you can't find Del Mar on a map, you shouldn't even be in this conversation.
History is filled with people that were in the right place at the right time, but didn't grab the bull by the horns while they had the chance. Tony was smart enough to recognize his unique position, and make personal sacrifices and business decisions that allows him to be pushing 40 and riding a skateboard in a pool every day. And he's been doing it since he was your age. What's the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? Go to school? Go to your mundane job which you hate? What innovations are you coming up with that will put you into an important documentary in 25 years?
Gonzo and Natas invented the street plant. Great. Mucho talented skaters, but history will forget them before long. Rodney Mullen was forgotten before he was even remembered, but every skater out there owes him a debt of gratitude for inventing everything they do.
Aside from his skating, Tony raised the bar for quality skateboard design in the 80's, as well as quality craftsmanship. I never had a Sims, Vision or Santa Cruz deck last me more than a month, but I could ride my Freddie Smith (punk size) for a whole summer and be none the worse for wear. Never heard of Fred Smith? You're a poseur. Get out.
Know where you've been before you open your ignorant mouth.
There has been talk lately of moving the Ottawa Senators out of Canada to the more 'economically friendly' USA. What a travesty.
Is Corel involved in the negotiations with the Canadian government to obtain tax breaks and bring Canadian hockey teams back to profitability? What would happen to the Corel Centre if the Senators decided to fly?
Nobody's asking you to pay for your web browser if you don't want to. So don't. Stick with Mozilla, which messes up your posts.
I'm not sure where your logic regarding quality of product comes from. Open source doesn't equal quality software. There is plenty of crummy software across the board. Plenty of good, too. If done right, either method works fine.
I think the question of quality is in the motivation. Most early open source software was rock solid because the people that wrote it, wrote it for themselves and their friends. Their reputations, some of which are now legendary, depended on it. They weren't selling anything but themselves.
In the case of Mozilla, do you think they went open source for the better good? Think about this for a second. Netscape was originally a commercial product. Why did it go open source? Because it was getting trounced in the marketplace. It was in joepardy of disappearing off the face of the earth, and the only way to make it live on was to give away the source code. I cringe when I see companies now releasing their nearly defunct products to the open source community, and having people laud them as pioneers. If they were pioneers, they would have done it long ago from the goodness in their hearts, not because their vision ultimately failed.
If you're trying to convince me that open source Mozilla is better than closed source Opera, you're just plain nuts. You've obviously never run Opera in any form, and its hard to believe you'd have the audacity to argue a point you know nil about in such an informed environment.
>>How many people do you know running Alpha >> Linux? > >Alot more than you think. And alot more every >day.With your logic, we'd all run only x86. I >thought part of the Linux movement is choice?
The point of Opera was to give a majority of people a choice other than Netscape or Microsoft. You were probably smart enough to know the limitations when you CHOSE to run Alpha Linux. It's not Opera's fault that there's 10 of you out there and they don't have the time to please you. Give me a break.
>>Don't they have Netscape >No! Oh, if you want to go thru the pain, you can >pull the Tru64 binaries over, but I think most would >prefer a truly native Alpha Linux browser.
So why should Opera be any different in trying to please a deviant group of hacks? Mozilla *is* open source, has a zillion programmers working on it 7/24, and they still can't get a decent Alpha version out? What gives? Why is Opera better equipped to fulfill your request? Have you read any of their web page?
I'm sick of this whole 'gimme gimme' attitude of so-called open source advocates. You're nothing but a bunch of primadonna wannabes. The crux of the open source movement is that if you want something, you make it yourself. True OSS'ers don't sit around crying 'Where is the source?' They bring the source with them to the table and give it to others to enjoy.
If you want a true, Alpha browser, put your money and your talent where your mouth is. Make it yourself and give it to the other guy on Slashdot that's asking for it.
I have been a registered Opera user (win32) for nearly two years now. I just wanted to tell everyone that is BEGGING for something that's 'just a browser, nothing more, nothing less' that Opera should fit the bill, if their Linux port as as good as their current line-up. The interface is great, yet versatile. It has a good set of features that help you *browse*, not read mail, not read newsgroups, and not author web pages. It's got a very small footprint, memory and size wise. And the folks at Opera are very humble and seem to invite the competition. I can't recall ever seeing a netscape link on any Microsoft site, but Opera practically begs you to download IE and Netscape before you try out Opera.
If you currently run a supported platform, do yourself a favor and download it now. If you told me two years ago that I'd pay 30 or 35 bucks for a web browser, I'd have called you a buffoon. Now look at me. I guess *I'm* the buffoon.
I echo the above sentiment that the best thing to do is to try it, and find out if you like it. It will take some time. I have been typing on a Dvorak board for five years or so, and I love it. I'm still as s-l-o-w as I was on a Qwerty. I never learned to type on a Querty, and really, the Dvorak keyboard feels so natural to me, as far as layout, that I didn't have to 'learn' how to touch type. It just came naturally. I haven't clocked myself, but I'd guess I tripled my productivity. It's hard to quantify the pain and suffering aspect, as I don't have any RSI, but read some material on the layout; it makes sense that you won't get it as bad/as soon because of the way the home row is arranged.
I am a very strong advocate of the Dvorak layout, but as I alluded to before, it's not for everyone. If you're an IT type and have to mess with 50 different keyboards a day, it's probably not worth the time. I rarely have to type on other keyboards than my own, so I benefitted greatly at work and at home from switching.
And finally, you need to know where to get one. The one I have I got here:
http://www.dvorty.com
I love it. It's hard-wired, and has a Dvorak - Qwerty toggle key so you can switch on the fly any time you want. It's completely hardware driven and works on ANY computer you can plug it into. It's great for multi-user households. I bought mine for 70 bucks two years ago, and now I see that they're only 50 bucks. Well worth the investment.
If you're still not sure, pop the keys off your keyboard, rearrange them and find an xmodmap file to remap your keys. Try it out for about a month. I was admittedly pretty lame at typing before I started with Dvorak, but it took me about two weeks of medium use to get up to the same speed, and another week or two to blow my old speed away.
Try http://www.dvorty.com I've had mine for two years and I love it. It has both QWERTY and Dvorak on the keys, and a toggle key to switch the hardware on the fly. All the keys end up the right height, too. -mattyj
Slashdot Mirror
Supanatural was the only one really worth watching. That thing with John Goodman and The Onion one were both the worst 5 minutes of TV I've suffered through.
It's even worse. They're all half hour pilots, sans commercials, so 21-22 minutes long each. You can blow through them all in about 2.5 hours, though I only made it a few minutes into a couple of them before I had to turn it off. Some of these things were beyond terrible. One or two gems, though.
This.
My usual method of assessing these types of projects:
1. Determine how much money my time is worth.
2. Realize that a media streaming PC is worth it for the experience of building it, but it will not save you any money in the short or long term.
3. Buy a Roku.
I realize the OP already has a media server but there's clearly no simple answer to this. Plus as others mentioned, there are serveral ways to stream media from a server to the Roku. You can also get Twonky Beam and beam certain things from your iPad (youtube, vimeo, etc.)
Flash is not only a mess on Linux, if I'm not mistaken they've stopped updating it.
If you really want a project that will waste a lot of your time, look into get_flash_videos (https://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/) I've had decent luck with Hulu, though no netflix just yet. And by 'waste a lot of your time' I mean getting it to work in an automated (wife-friendly) way, auto-updating the Hulu plugin which Hulu breaks all the time, etc. The script/plugins themselves are rock-solid, but you'd be writing your own scheduling/favorites infrastructure.
For artistic use of 3D, Pina 3D was phenomenal. Too bad it's not in theaters any more, and it wasn't in wide release anyway. Can't say I was interested at all in the subject matter, but the filming techniques, angles, etc. were stunning. Truly a work of art.
So, these things are starting to happen. Let's hope they continue. I've mentioned before that I'm a fan of 3D but will agree that there's a lot of crummy 3D films out there. But we're starting to see more and more standouts. Just this year, Prometheus and Life of Pi were great examples of how 3D can serve the story and add depth not only to the images but to the story itself.
I think you're confusing 'tech' with 'idea'. The *idae* of 3D filming and projection has been around for 70 years, but the current generation of *tech* is not that old.
You know:
wax cylinder->vinyl album->8-track->cassette->CD->digital
something->something->something->something->Avatar
There are few new *ideas* in film, but plenty of new tech to improve on past generations.
Prometheus and Hugo are two examples of recent 3D films which showcase this type of filmmaking. Scorsese and Scott already pretty much filmed like this so they didn't really have to change much.
I'm a fan of 3D but I do agree with almost everyone that has said negative things about it here. I personally don't get headaches, but again, I usually don't go to stuff like 'How to Train Your Dragon' and 'Fright Night 3D'. I see more classy stuff like The Hobbit and Jackass 3D.
Um, no ...?
Documentaries still tell stories. You're insinuating that real life isn't a story and you couldn't be further from the truth.
3D can be a storytelling device in a documentary. I'm not sure what world you're from where this isn't true.
Have you worked in the real world? Or in any environment with a manager?
Business schools are not currently producing a steady stream of 'sincere' managers.
Yes, if a plumber is asking their manager for that basic tool, he absolutely has to explain why he needs it. "I lost my old one." might be a valid answer to the question of why a plumber needs a new wrench.
Yeah, sure. Just send out a memo to all the developers that 'we are now using git, good luck.' Chances are even the developers don't really have a clue about version control, because they'd be using it, right? There's probably a lot of students in there that have not been exposed to version control, so please don't do anything as stupid as 'just install it' and think that they'll use it. What you'll be doing is creating a hatred for the idea of source control, and when these kids go out into the real world they'll be a few steps behind.
Better to do it right, involve the developers, build a tool that they want to use and that they can fall in love with. Better to educate than to repel.
By the way "those 2 systems are light years ahead anything proprietary V.C. tools have to offer nowadays" is patently absurd.
If you really care about how the tools function and what they can do for you, by all means download the OSS and commercial version control tools and set your developers loose in a test environment. Anyone making blanket statements like this is participating in dogma and nothing else.
Managers understand the word 'Desktop', and that's perhaps the extent of their technical knowledge.
Tell them that a version control tool is like a shared desktop that saves every version of a file ever put on it by any user and never empties the trash can.
If they can't grok the utility in that, then God help you.
As for cost, an open source tool is probably all you need even though a certain popular commercial product I've based my career on has free academic licensing (name withheld as to not be accused of shilling), so you'd just need to be sure to include the human cost (time) for setting it up, coming up with a workflow, training and any day-to-day maintenance the IT support team might have to charge back to the department. Even though the costs are not monetary, if I remember anything about school, they still need to charge and track every resource that goes into something.
Unfortunately they do, and places that don't know any better still use it and still pay for support on it.
SourceSafe is the only source control tool I've ever seen that actively loses information for you.
So does this mean I can now use punctuation marks in my password? Seriously, you can't do this for online banking at Chase.
Yeah. The article fails to elaborate on the true reason for this system: to raise or lower prices based on demand. I live in San Francisco and I love it. I drive a motorcycle so my parking is cheap. This system is not designed to help the consumer, it's to help the city government. Which is fine but I hate how they are presenting it as a boon to people looking for parking spaces.
They feed us some vision of people 'shopping' for cheaper parking spaces a bit further away, which will never happen. In this city, nobody will pass up a parking spot no matter how much it costs. So this is just a way for the City to squeeze more money out of you during certain times of day.
I still don't know how they can tout the smartphone apps but still have laws on the books making it illegal to use smartphones while you are driving. Are we to bring a 'spotter' with us everywhere we go?
Anyway, the novelty will wear off soon enough, I guess. Maybe one day this technology will be universally built into GPS units or something but for now I don't really see it catching on.
I think this is just a clever ploy for Davis to lure voters away from Georgie during the recall election we're going to suffer through in a few weeks.
I agree to an extent, as I've been kicking ass with Dvorak for 10 years now, but from a programming perspective, I don't like it. Not that QWERTY is any better, but with Dvorak, the 'lesser used keys' are pushed out to the outskirts of the layout. Lesser used turns out to be your punctuation, which programmers have to use often. If you come over to the dark side with us, be prepared to work those pinkies!
Okay. My mistake, I guess. Before version 6 of opera, the tabs you see now were shaped like buttons.
My point is that Opera supported both 'a zillion windows on your desktop' AND 'a zillion windows inside one interface', both of them, since before you were old enough to push a mouse. Tabs, buttons, it's worked the same forever. Sue me for misstating the shape of the freakin' buttons.
-mattyj
I've been using, and paying for it, on Windows since version 4.x. I've been using it on Linux since the day the first technology preview came out. I think I've had a good amount of time to see it evolve, along with all the other browsers. For me, Opera has always been on the cutting edge.
Opera had tabbed windows five years ago. Opera (I think) invented mouse gestures. Opera was the first with a cookie manager and had settings for privacy issues before it was an issue.
Opera has had a popup blocker for longer than anyone.
If all these features sound familiar, because Mozilla/whatever has them, it's because those 'other' browsers are just now catching up.
There is a new feature in this version of Opera called 'FastForward/Rewind' that, astonishingly, works really well. I would expect Mozilla to pick this up in about a year.
If you don't like the look and feel out of the box, you can change just about anything regarding Opera. I like having my location bar on the bottom, so that's where I put it. I have my tabs down there, too. I can put my button bar at the bottom, but I prefer it on top. I don't like skins, so I turn them off. It's a browser how I want it.
Back in the day, Opera sold itself on size alone. When Internet Explorer and Netscape clocked in at 10 megs plus, Opera for Windows fit on a floppy (sans Java, of course.) It's not currently small enough to do that, but it is still much smaller than any other browser, and takes less resources. It is not a memory or drive space hog. It is small, fast and sleek.
For this alone, it's worth paying for. Mozilla/Netscape are still whores to M$ as far as I'm concerned, and even Phoenix/whatever is getting too big and klunky.
Innovation in the browser market costs money, and I'm more than happy to put a few bucks into Opera. The tradeoff on price is that I don't have to have my browser core dump a few times every day, and I don't have to beta test software for them. This software is consumer grade, not nerd grade, if you catch my drift. I love it, and you should love it to.
Maybe it's because I've been running it so long, but I've never had any real problem running plugins, especially Flash. When you rpm your opera, it tells you the Motif version you are missing. A slashdot user of average intelligence can search opera.com for download links to motif. Or follow the link posted previously. Plugger and all it's various codecs work flawlessly, as well as the Acrobat Reader plugin and RealPlayer. Perhaps the only thing I have trouble with is Microsoft specific languages (.asp) but if you're frequenting places that are dumb enough to expect everyone to have a M$ OS, maybe http://www.ilovewindows.com is a better web site for you to frequent.
-mattyj
I'm sure this post was written by one of those 15 year old grommets that walk across the street with a skateboard under their arm, with not a trace of duct tape on their shoes.
If you've never seen Tony Alva skate, if you can't find Del Mar on a map, you shouldn't even be in this conversation.
History is filled with people that were in the right place at the right time, but didn't grab the bull by the horns while they had the chance. Tony was smart enough to recognize his unique position, and make personal sacrifices and business decisions that allows him to be pushing 40 and riding a skateboard in a pool every day. And he's been doing it since he was your age. What's the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? Go to school? Go to your mundane job which you hate? What innovations are you coming up with that will put you into an important documentary in 25 years?
Gonzo and Natas invented the street plant. Great. Mucho talented skaters, but history will forget them before long. Rodney Mullen was forgotten before he was even remembered, but every skater out there owes him a debt of gratitude for inventing everything they do.
Aside from his skating, Tony raised the bar for quality skateboard design in the 80's, as well as quality craftsmanship. I never had a Sims, Vision or Santa Cruz deck last me more than a month, but I could ride my Freddie Smith (punk size) for a whole summer and be none the worse for wear. Never heard of Fred Smith? You're a poseur. Get out.
Know where you've been before you open your ignorant mouth.
There has been talk lately of moving the Ottawa Senators out of Canada to the more 'economically friendly' USA. What a travesty.
Is Corel involved in the negotiations with the Canadian government to obtain tax breaks and bring Canadian hockey teams back to profitability? What would happen to the Corel Centre if the Senators decided to fly?
-Mattyj
Nobody's asking you to pay for your web browser if you don't want to. So don't. Stick with Mozilla, which messes up your posts.
I'm not sure where your logic regarding quality of product comes from. Open source doesn't equal quality software. There is plenty of crummy software across the board. Plenty of good, too. If done right, either method works fine.
I think the question of quality is in the motivation. Most early open source software was rock solid because the people that wrote it, wrote it for themselves and their friends. Their reputations, some of which are now legendary, depended on it. They weren't selling anything but themselves.
In the case of Mozilla, do you think they went open source for the better good? Think about this for a second. Netscape was originally a commercial product. Why did it go open source? Because it was getting trounced in the marketplace. It was in joepardy of disappearing off the face of the earth, and the only way to make it live on was to give away the source code. I cringe when I see companies now releasing their nearly defunct products to the open source community, and having people laud them as pioneers. If they were pioneers, they would have done it long ago from the goodness in their hearts, not because their vision ultimately failed.
If you're trying to convince me that open source Mozilla is better than closed source Opera, you're just plain nuts. You've obviously never run Opera in any form, and its hard to believe you'd have the audacity to argue a point you know nil about in such an informed environment.
-Mattyj
>>How many people do you know running Alpha
>> Linux?
>
>Alot more than you think. And alot more every
>day.With your logic, we'd all run only x86. I
>thought part of the Linux movement is choice?
The point of Opera was to give a majority of people a choice other than Netscape or Microsoft. You were probably smart enough to know the limitations when you CHOSE to run Alpha Linux. It's not Opera's fault that there's 10 of you out there and they don't have the time to please you. Give me a break.
>>Don't they have Netscape
>No! Oh, if you want to go thru the pain, you can
>pull the Tru64 binaries over, but I think most would
>prefer a truly native Alpha Linux browser.
So why should Opera be any different in trying to please a deviant group of hacks? Mozilla *is* open source, has a zillion programmers working on it 7/24, and they still can't get a decent Alpha version out? What gives? Why is Opera better equipped to fulfill your request? Have you read any of their web page?
I'm sick of this whole 'gimme gimme' attitude of so-called open source advocates. You're nothing but a bunch of primadonna wannabes. The crux of the open source movement is that if you want something, you make it yourself. True OSS'ers don't sit around crying 'Where is the source?' They bring the source with them to the table and give it to others to enjoy.
If you want a true, Alpha browser, put your money and your talent where your mouth is. Make it yourself and give it to the other guy on Slashdot that's asking for it.
-Mattyj
I have been a registered Opera user (win32) for nearly two years now. I just wanted to tell everyone that is BEGGING for something that's 'just a browser, nothing more, nothing less' that Opera should fit the bill, if their Linux port as as good as their current line-up. The interface is great, yet versatile. It has a good set of features that help you *browse*, not read mail, not read newsgroups, and not author web pages. It's got a very small footprint, memory and size wise. And the folks at Opera are very humble and seem to invite the competition. I can't recall ever seeing a netscape link on any Microsoft site, but Opera practically begs you to download IE and Netscape before you try out Opera.
If you currently run a supported platform, do yourself a favor and download it now. If you told me two years ago that I'd pay 30 or 35 bucks for a web browser, I'd have called you a buffoon. Now look at me. I guess *I'm* the buffoon.
http://www.operasoftware.com
-Mattyj
I echo the above sentiment that the best thing to do is to try it, and find out if you like it. It will take some time. I have been typing on a Dvorak board for five years or so, and I love it. I'm still as s-l-o-w as I was on a Qwerty. I never learned to type on a Querty, and really, the Dvorak keyboard feels so natural to me, as far as layout, that I didn't have to 'learn' how to touch type. It just came naturally. I haven't clocked myself, but I'd guess I tripled my productivity. It's hard to quantify the pain and suffering aspect, as I don't have any RSI, but read some material on the layout; it makes sense that you won't get it as bad/as soon because of the way the home row is arranged.
I am a very strong advocate of the Dvorak layout, but as I alluded to before, it's not for everyone. If you're an IT type and have to mess with 50 different keyboards a day, it's probably not worth the time. I rarely have to type on other keyboards than my own, so I benefitted greatly at work and at home from switching.
And finally, you need to know where to get one. The one I have I got here:
http://www.dvorty.com
I love it. It's hard-wired, and has a Dvorak - Qwerty toggle key so you can switch on the fly any time you want. It's completely hardware driven and works on ANY computer you can plug it into. It's great for multi-user households. I bought mine for 70 bucks two years ago, and now I see that they're only 50 bucks. Well worth the investment.
If you're still not sure, pop the keys off your keyboard, rearrange them and find an xmodmap file to remap your keys. Try it out for about a month. I was admittedly pretty lame at typing before I started with Dvorak, but it took me about two weeks of medium use to get up to the same speed, and another week or two to blow my old speed away.
-mattyj@cts.com
Try http://www.dvorty.com I've had mine for two years and I love it. It has both QWERTY and Dvorak on the keys, and a toggle key to switch the hardware on the fly. All the keys end up the right height, too. -mattyj