Howabout because... the number of people who live in or do business with DC compared to the number of people who read Slashdot is so small that it's not worth putting up a story about it being largely shut down for one whole day?
It's just not relevant. It was rejected, and rightly so!!! -- - Sean
After doing that twice and losing it all twice (through "learning experiences"... I learned not to accidentally unplug the computer without first unmounting my drives), I decided multiple partitions was the best way to go.
I got PartitionMagic, so I can resize my partitions on the fly, as needed, and haven't had a single problem... -- - Sean
My understanding is that a large part of the difference is that Mozilla is going for Java support (easily 1/2 a browser's capabilities) whereas Konqueror is not.
Also, in a more generic sense of the same issue, K is "farming out" a lot of its capabilities to bits of KDE that already do it (image rendering, for example), while Moz has to do everything "in-house," as it can make no assumptions about the system it is running on -- it may be on a barebones X with Gtk, for all the developers know. -- - Sean
Hate to break it to you, bud, but these particular functions happen to be open and well-documented.
I've used them myself on a couple of occasions to embed rudimentary browsing ability into some of my Windows Apps.
It's called the Microsoft Internet Transfer Control, it exists as both standard (DLL) and ActiveX (OCX) libraries and is well supported and documented.
Sorry, but you stuck out on that one. Learn what you're speaking about next time! -- - Sean
Re:Which proves faster than light travel is possib
on
Happy Birthday, HAL!
·
· Score: 1
> According to Stephen Hawking, faster than light travel implies time travel is possible, but since we haven't seen visitors from the future then faster than light travel must not be possible.
No, you just missed the obvious. We destroy ourselves before we ever create the technology necessary to time-travel.
I'm just rambling, as usual. Don't mind me. -- - Sean
Oh, absolutely. It was German war efforts (WWII) that produced the rocket, and American war propaganda (Cold War) that caused it to be sent to the moon.
So really, what we need is another couple of wars to get us to land people on Mars!
(Assuming, of course, that we don't destroy ourselves in the process). -- - Sean
Howabout those people who would pay for it anyway, because they're smart enough to realize that free speech != free beer, and good code is worth paying for, whether its source is available of not? -- - Sean
> The content consists of the semantic meaning of the text. If that meaning is confused and obscured by grammar and spelling errors, it's harder to see what the content is.
Right. And the difference between "hobbiest" and "hobbyist" is not something that obscures the meaning of the sentence.
I mean, get real. The meaning of what he was saying came through loud and clear. If you didn't get that, then you have bigger problems than worrying about his spelling.
As the poster said... when it actually obscures the poster's meaning... then you have license to complain. Otherwise, just get over it.
Arg. I swear, there are too many people around here who behave like code parsers... insisting that every little detail be perfect. Big news, guys: YOU ARE NOT A CODE PARSER. YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING.
A parser, unless it's expremely intelligent, can't understand the code when it's spelt incorrectly. A human can. So use your natural, God-given talents, read what is being said, not the details of grammar or spelling, and stop wasting everybody's time with your complaints! -- - Sean
Interesting... I've also noticed problems with the Dilbert page. It doesn't crash on me (thankfully), but it does slow down like a b*tch, and wreak havok with all the other windows I have open (I generally use about 5-10 at any given time).
So it's interesting to note that this seems to be a generic problem, and not just me. What version do you use, BTW? I'm 3.60... -- - Sean
Oh, man... does that ever take me back! I remember accessing the site (it must've been just about the only porn site on the net then -- how things have changed!) with the w3c's browser... I seem to recall it (the browser) simply being called "www."
But it was text-only, so to get to the good stuff, I had to instruct it to download the actual images to the AIX (college) shell account I was doing all this through.
Then, after I was finished browsing, I could zmodem all the images back to my home computer (which took for ever and ever and ever and ever...) and finally view them through a third-party image viewer (Paintbrush didn't do JPegs). I can't for the life of me remember what it was called, although I still remember zooming in and in and in, and the nipple just getting grainier and grainier and blockier and blockier...
Hmm, my first brush with Unix, I believe.
Ahh... nostalgia. Thanks for the memories! -- - Sean
> 1) Inconsistency. Is the file system bassed in a "my computer", or in a: c: etc drives? depends what you ask. Why does "my computer" look ike a normal directory but you can't add things to it?
Agreed. Total crap.
> How come you can see the treeview in one way of accessing the filesystem, but not another?
So that it can adapt to the user's preference. I like a normal window without the treeview (aka "My Computer") one of my best friends prefers the treeview on the side (aka "Windows Explorer"). IT's adaptable. This is a good thing, not a bad one.
> Is the file system capable of long names, or only 8.3 ones? Too many different ways of doing the same thing, each with differing side effects and capabilities.
Again, I agree: this is crap.
> 2) Spurious crap. Internet explorer as a window viewer. Half the dir window taken up by a pane full of non-useful info.
Again, agreed.
> The MSDOS underpinnings.
This has nothing to do with the GUI. This is the underlying Operating System. Don't get them confused. You were complaining about the GUI, not the OS. If you don't like the OS, fine, but that's a totally separate argument. You're not helping yourself here.
> A start bar, desktop icons, a MSOffice toolbar, all to launch apps in different ways.
...And this is bad how? I, for one, happen to like having different ways of doing things. And I often use many of these different methods combined. Preserve this! This is one of the things that should be brought to unix (well, actually, it's already here, but anyways.) This is a good thing! Don't lock me into one and only one way of doing something. Make it redundant, by all means!
> 3) Un-protected access to stuff you absolutely do not wish to touch (unless you are very fond of the color blue).
Again, this is the underlying OS you're talking about, not the GUI. If you run a unix GUI while you're logged in as root, you get exactly the same problem.
> Complicated and hard ways of altering things you frequently want to alter.
True, but I find it's not a big deal. Most things are easy enough to get at. And if you want minimal complication, you can drag them to the desktop or whatever, to minimize clicks. For the most part.
> 4) The fact that it's designed to fulfil the interests of M$ over your own, where they conflict.
Examples?
> 5) minor design faux-pas like putting the quit command in the file menu, or putting scroll bar arrowheads at each end.
This is really personal preference. You don't have much cause to complain here. Possibly you could complain about lack of tweakability in this regard, but that's about it. Any GUI has to go one way or another, and whichever way they go, someone isn't going to like it. When it comes to personal preference issues, you can never please everyone. And don't quote those "usability studies" at me. It's still personal preference. Not everyone prefers the layouts that are "proven" to be more usable.
> 6) no security worth spit
Again, this is an OS issue, not a GUI issue.
Ok, so you have some legitimate complaints, but a lot of the thigs you are complaining about seem to me to be more related to the OS than to the GUI. The GUI is an interface, not a security system.
And any gui is going to have some things that "suck," especially when it comes to matters of personal preference. The argument here was that on the whole it's better than a lot (most, even) of the others out there.
And despite what you tried to claim, I, for one, still believe it to be just that. -- - Sean
Exactly. They're on the other side of the International Date Line. In fact, if you pay attention to the times shown, they're about the same time zone as most parts of North America, like Chicago, like Dallas, and so on. Nothing special there!
Kiribati is, by all accounts I've read, in the farthest East (ie: the "first") time zone. -- - Sean
Oh, they aren't. Well... I don't know about supposed to know how, but I know it's not easy. You missed my point. I wasn't necessarily saying that this would be easy for a newbie to do... I was simply responding to the man's comment, about him not knowing how to do it.
Of course, armed with the knowledge that ln is the command to do it, then it should be fairly commonsense to know that "man ln" allows you to find out more about it. man should be in every newbie's vocabulary.
But I digress.
On the whole, actually, I agree with you. It isn't easy for someone to find out what command to use to do something. I've posted a number of posts to this effect before (a while back, though, so they're no longer in the archives). It isn't easy for a newbie to find this information out. And I think it should be made easier.
Once you have the command, "man <command>" will (or should) tell you all you need to know (rather technical, perhaps, but the stuff is there).
But how do you determine that command in the first place? There are so many!
Personally, when I was just starting out (and still, even!), I used a combination of info and HOWTO's as a starting point. But they are a bit obtuse. info is a good effort, but not complete enough, methinks.
So I don't know. Some are trying to solve it through the use of GUI's -- which is a whole different story -- and others are just saying "live with what you got."
Although I know some (many) disagree (strongly) with me, I personally like info, and think it should be expanded, brought up-to-date, and made more user-friendly.
I also like the comment made about having an optional "walk-thru" greet the user just after they first install. Something along the lines of the Windows '95 Tour. Not identical, obviously, but the same general idea.
This would be a way to familiarize the user with such commands as "man," "info," as well as the basics of file manipulation and so on, and an intro to the HOWTO's and Mini-HOWTO's. Of course, a bunch of useful URL's for more info would also be good.
I like this idea so much, in fact, that I'm of half a mind to get down and write something like that myself. -- - Sean
Of course, the documentation is horrible. It took me hours to figure it out the first time. I knew it could be done, but didn't know how (my previous version was a 3.x Red Hat, which does things entirely differently).
But after stumbling around their website for a while, I eventually figured it out. -- - Sean
I don't even bother making a boot disk (I know, I should, but I'm lazy, besides, you'll see why I don't).
I just use the install disks that came with it (a shrinkwrapped RHat 6.1). Boot off those, then at the LILO prompt, type "rescue root=/dev/hda5". (your root may vary:-)
At that, login as root, type "lilo && shutdown -r now" and you're set!
I've done it a couple of times now. The first time it was a bitch to figure out what to do, but since then have had no problems whatsoever. -- - Sean
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno... maybe I'm missing something here, but I was able to get through to their FTP site on the first try.
Granted the links they provided on their website were wrong, but still...
ftp://140.174.127.95/, no?
--
- Sean
Howabout because.... it's OFFTOPIC???
Howabout because... nobody CARES???
Howabout because... it's NOT news for nerds???
Howabout because... the number of people who live in or do business with DC compared to the number of people who read Slashdot is so small that it's not worth putting up a story about it being largely shut down for one whole day?
It's just not relevant. It was rejected, and rightly so!!!
--
- Sean
Here ya go.
1 1&rtmo=VMM83qJK&atmo=YYk7k37p&pg=/et/00/ 1/25/nmoon25.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=0020682315192
--
- Sean
A better plan...
/dev/fd0?
howsabout a $10 used (but working)
I dunno... I know I just find my floppy essential.
--
- Sean
After doing that twice and losing it all twice (through "learning experiences"... I learned not to accidentally unplug the computer without first unmounting my drives), I decided multiple partitions was the best way to go.
I got PartitionMagic, so I can resize my partitions on the fly, as needed, and haven't had a single problem...
--
- Sean
> As for Enlightenment, I'm not sure. It's not part of Gnome proper.
No, and by all acounts, it will be soon dropped in favour of Sawmill pretty soon, anyway.
--
- Sean
Ummm, try "Technology Preview." Translation: Pre-alpha.
And that's really what it is. It's not here yet, by a loooong shot.
--
- Sean
My understanding is that a large part of the difference is that Mozilla is going for Java support (easily 1/2 a browser's capabilities) whereas Konqueror is not.
Also, in a more generic sense of the same issue, K is "farming out" a lot of its capabilities to bits of KDE that already do it (image rendering, for example), while Moz has to do everything "in-house," as it can make no assumptions about the system it is running on -- it may be on a barebones X with Gtk, for all the developers know.
--
- Sean
Ummmm... NEXT!
Hate to break it to you, bud, but these particular functions happen to be open and well-documented.
I've used them myself on a couple of occasions to embed rudimentary browsing ability into some of my Windows Apps.
It's called the Microsoft Internet Transfer Control, it exists as both standard (DLL) and ActiveX (OCX) libraries and is well supported and documented.
Sorry, but you stuck out on that one. Learn what you're speaking about next time!
--
- Sean
...at happypenguin.org.
--
- Sean
> According to Stephen Hawking, faster than light travel implies time travel is possible, but since we haven't seen visitors from the future then faster than light travel must not be possible.
No, you just missed the obvious. We destroy ourselves before we ever create the technology necessary to time-travel.
I'm just rambling, as usual. Don't mind me.
--
- Sean
Oh, absolutely. It was German war efforts (WWII) that produced the rocket, and American war propaganda (Cold War) that caused it to be sent to the moon.
So really, what we need is another couple of wars to get us to land people on Mars!
(Assuming, of course, that we don't destroy ourselves in the process).
--
- Sean
Howabout those people who would pay for it anyway, because they're smart enough to realize that free speech != free beer, and good code is worth paying for, whether its source is available of not?
--
- Sean
> The content consists of the semantic meaning of the text. If that meaning is confused and obscured by grammar and spelling errors, it's harder to see what the content is.
Right. And the difference between "hobbiest" and "hobbyist" is not something that obscures the meaning of the sentence.
I mean, get real. The meaning of what he was saying came through loud and clear. If you didn't get that, then you have bigger problems than worrying about his spelling.
As the poster said... when it actually obscures the poster's meaning... then you have license to complain. Otherwise, just get over it.
Arg. I swear, there are too many people around here who behave like code parsers... insisting that every little detail be perfect. Big news, guys: YOU ARE NOT A CODE PARSER. YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING.
A parser, unless it's expremely intelligent, can't understand the code when it's spelt incorrectly. A human can. So use your natural, God-given talents, read what is being said, not the details of grammar or spelling, and stop wasting everybody's time with your complaints!
--
- Sean
> 10 go to 20 20 go to 10
...otherwise known as "while (1);"
:-)
--
- Sean
Interesting... I've also noticed problems with the Dilbert page. It doesn't crash on me (thankfully), but it does slow down like a b*tch, and wreak havok with all the other windows I have open (I generally use about 5-10 at any given time).
So it's interesting to note that this seems to be a generic problem, and not just me. What version do you use, BTW? I'm 3.60...
--
- Sean
First:
And then:
I'd say that's pretty conclusive...
--
- Sean
Oh, man... does that ever take me back! I remember accessing the site (it must've been just about the only porn site on the net then -- how things have changed!) with the w3c's browser... I seem to recall it (the browser) simply being called "www."
But it was text-only, so to get to the good stuff, I had to instruct it to download the actual images to the AIX (college) shell account I was doing all this through.
Then, after I was finished browsing, I could zmodem all the images back to my home computer (which took for ever and ever and ever and ever...) and finally view them through a third-party image viewer (Paintbrush didn't do JPegs). I can't for the life of me remember what it was called, although I still remember zooming in and in and in, and the nipple just getting grainier and grainier and blockier and blockier...
Hmm, my first brush with Unix, I believe.
Ahh... nostalgia. Thanks for the memories!
--
- Sean
> 1) Inconsistency. Is the file system bassed in a "my computer", or in a: c: etc drives? depends what you ask. Why does "my computer" look ike a normal directory but you can't add things to it?
...And this is bad how? I, for one, happen to like having different ways of doing things. And I often use many of these different methods combined. Preserve this! This is one of the things that should be brought to unix (well, actually, it's already here, but anyways.) This is a good thing! Don't lock me into one and only one way of doing something. Make it redundant, by all means!
Agreed. Total crap.
> How come you can see the treeview in one way of accessing the filesystem, but not another?
So that it can adapt to the user's preference. I like a normal window without the treeview (aka "My Computer") one of my best friends prefers the treeview on the side (aka "Windows Explorer"). IT's adaptable. This is a good thing, not a bad one.
> Is the file system capable of long names, or only 8.3 ones? Too many different ways of doing the same thing, each with differing side effects and capabilities.
Again, I agree: this is crap.
> 2) Spurious crap. Internet explorer as a window viewer. Half the dir window taken up by a pane full of non-useful info.
Again, agreed.
> The MSDOS underpinnings.
This has nothing to do with the GUI. This is the underlying Operating System. Don't get them confused. You were complaining about the GUI, not the OS. If you don't like the OS, fine, but that's a totally separate argument. You're not helping yourself here.
> A start bar, desktop icons, a MSOffice toolbar, all to launch apps in different ways.
> 3) Un-protected access to stuff you absolutely do not wish to touch (unless you are very fond of the color blue).
Again, this is the underlying OS you're talking about, not the GUI. If you run a unix GUI while you're logged in as root, you get exactly the same problem.
> Complicated and hard ways of altering things you frequently want to alter.
True, but I find it's not a big deal. Most things are easy enough to get at. And if you want minimal complication, you can drag them to the desktop or whatever, to minimize clicks. For the most part.
> 4) The fact that it's designed to fulfil the interests of M$ over your own, where they conflict.
Examples?
> 5) minor design faux-pas like putting the quit command in the file menu, or putting scroll bar arrowheads at each end.
This is really personal preference. You don't have much cause to complain here. Possibly you could complain about lack of tweakability in this regard, but that's about it. Any GUI has to go one way or another, and whichever way they go, someone isn't going to like it. When it comes to personal preference issues, you can never please everyone. And don't quote those "usability studies" at me. It's still personal preference. Not everyone prefers the layouts that are "proven" to be more usable.
> 6) no security worth spit
Again, this is an OS issue, not a GUI issue.
Ok, so you have some legitimate complaints, but a lot of the thigs you are complaining about seem to me to be more related to the OS than to the GUI. The GUI is an interface, not a security system.
And any gui is going to have some things that "suck," especially when it comes to matters of personal preference. The argument here was that on the whole it's better than a lot (most, even) of the others out there.
And despite what you tried to claim, I, for one, still believe it to be just that.
--
- Sean
Exactly. They're on the other side of the International Date Line. In fact, if you pay attention to the times shown, they're about the same time zone as most parts of North America, like Chicago, like Dallas, and so on. Nothing special there!
Kiribati is, by all accounts I've read, in the farthest East (ie: the "first") time zone.
--
- Sean
Oh, they aren't. Well... I don't know about supposed to know how, but I know it's not easy. You missed my point. I wasn't necessarily saying that this would be easy for a newbie to do... I was simply responding to the man's comment, about him not knowing how to do it.
Of course, armed with the knowledge that ln is the command to do it, then it should be fairly commonsense to know that "man ln" allows you to find out more about it. man should be in every newbie's vocabulary.
But I digress.
On the whole, actually, I agree with you. It isn't easy for someone to find out what command to use to do something. I've posted a number of posts to this effect before (a while back, though, so they're no longer in the archives). It isn't easy for a newbie to find this information out. And I think it should be made easier.
Once you have the command, "man <command>" will (or should) tell you all you need to know (rather technical, perhaps, but the stuff is there).
But how do you determine that command in the first place? There are so many!
Personally, when I was just starting out (and still, even!), I used a combination of info and HOWTO's as a starting point. But they are a bit obtuse. info is a good effort, but not complete enough, methinks.
So I don't know. Some are trying to solve it through the use of GUI's -- which is a whole different story -- and others are just saying "live with what you got."
Although I know some (many) disagree (strongly) with me, I personally like info, and think it should be expanded, brought up-to-date, and made more user-friendly.
I also like the comment made about having an optional "walk-thru" greet the user just after they first install. Something along the lines of the Windows '95 Tour. Not identical, obviously, but the same general idea.
This would be a way to familiarize the user with such commands as "man," "info," as well as the basics of file manipulation and so on, and an intro to the HOWTO's and Mini-HOWTO's. Of course, a bunch of useful URL's for more info would also be good.
I like this idea so much, in fact, that I'm of half a mind to get down and write something like that myself.
--
- Sean
Yup... works for me.
Of course, the documentation is horrible. It took me hours to figure it out the first time. I knew it could be done, but didn't know how (my previous version was a 3.x Red Hat, which does things entirely differently).
But after stumbling around their website for a while, I eventually figured it out.
--
- Sean
> Create symbolic links (I don't know how that's done yet).
:-)
I'm sure between the time I read this and the time this finally gets posted, there will be a half-dozen other posts explaining how to do this, but.
ln -sf <source> <target>
It's as simple as that. If you want more, RTFM
But seriously, in this case the WFM? is easy to answer:
man ln
--
- Sean
Oh... don't forget to take the install disk out when you reboot :-)
--
- Sean
I don't even bother making a boot disk (I know, I should, but I'm lazy, besides, you'll see why I don't).
:-)
I just use the install disks that came with it (a shrinkwrapped RHat 6.1). Boot off those, then at the LILO prompt, type "rescue root=/dev/hda5". (your root may vary
At that, login as root, type "lilo && shutdown -r now" and you're set!
I've done it a couple of times now. The first time it was a bitch to figure out what to do, but since then have had no problems whatsoever.
--
- Sean