I haven't been able to write in cursive for about 10 years, except for my signature -- and that is nothing more than literally a horizontal line with a couple of waves in it.
PNG -> XSANE scanned documents, receipts, bills (JPEG makes scanned paper look blurry and dirty).
JPEG -> XSANE scanned album covers (looks better than PNG somehow).
I can't see a place for GIF. GIF is for 1995-era web icons (and 1986-era porn) -- remember that command line program you used to use to look at GIFs from the BBS!
Let me put it like this: my bro. in law is a GM at a industrial trucking company. He's got a masters in probability and statistics but isn't "in the business" per se. When he talks to me about "his weekly Oracle having problems," he's not thinking of a database -- he's thinking of the Oracle Apps reports that come out on his printer.
In enterprise, "Oracle" is like "Xerox" or "Kleenex" -- it's the apps, the engine is invisible. If Peoplesoft bought J.D. Edwards, they'd challenge Oracle on that level.
If Microsoft had any sense they'd sell the biz apps. The DB is irrelevant -- it's the schemas that people buy.
"Freedom" fries and "freedom" toast is kinda stupid sounding. But how about "free" fries and "free" toast -- it rolls off the tongue easier and isn't so in-your-face. If you like free software, you can dig on this too. That's what I'm calling them -- cheeseburgers and free fries!
The other meme I want to start is let's just call the next few years: 3, 4, 5. Since we can write the 00's but can't pronounce it sensibily, let's just knock off the whole 200x and call it 3. What year is it? It's Three! Next year, it's Four! Kind of like a new "A.D.", we don't need that old point of reference no more.
I've got to raise a point here that really bugs me when I hear people talk about "Evil Corporations" versus "The People" (or similarly how most of the world likes "the American people" but hates our "Government". I'm not questioning that governments or corporations can do shitty things, what I'm saying is that "corporations" and "governments" don't do shit, PEOPLE do shit, and I don't believe that some people are better or worse than other people. Everybody is a nice guy and an asshole. I am the American government. I am the Democratic party and the Republican party. I am the CEO of AOL. I am the Nation of Islam. I am an Indian worker at a cheap plant in Bangladesh. What I mean is, what motivates me isn't much different from what motivates anybody, and all that seperates anybody from anybody is what opportunities you've been exposed to, good and bad. A homeless guy could be the President were he exposed to the same opportunities, and your grandmother could knife a gangmember, if she had to.
In other words, find a better reason to bitch, that shit is tired and played. Everybody.
Well, since you're a soldier and I wasn't, I guess you're more qualified to speak on it. I wasn't trying to say it's sufficient or even necessary, I was just trying to say "it don't hurt". But maybe you're right -- Japanese kids play a lot of video games, and they don't have a kick-ass airforce.
Maybe one doesn't imply the other but both are visible effects of the same thing going on in our culture. It'll be interesting to see if we ever go to war with China if their technology skills can match ours (in wars).
The army very much thinks that playing video games makes good soldiers -- even way back in the 80s, playing Space Invaders and Asteroids trained a whole generation of F14 pilots how to use a joystick, AWACS & nuke sub operators how to read their screens -- but not the usual grunt with a rifle. But Quake does that now.
What I'm trying to say is, the military is very upfront about how video games and military are pretty damn similar.
I know there are as many opinions about this as there are people, but, for me, working from home is not even desirable for the reasons it's supposed to be good.
*When there was someone in the house and I worked from home, (a) I couldn't get anything done but more importantly (b) I didn't want to see her that damn much anyway.
*When there wasn't anybody in the house, my god how maddening to get up, go sit over there, do stuff, go over there, go to sleep, repeat. Like being in an institution.
This isn't the usual "it's no good because you can't get your work done" thing", this is the "it's no damn fun" thing. It's just my opinion, and I'm sure some people have completely different experiences, but I was WAY happier going over to *that* building to do shit just cause I at least get to see two different buildings! and I have a reason to shave and get out of the pajamas...
But an office is a drag too. My favorite was when I was an accounting consultant. We had about 35 clients. I'd be in one place in the morning, another in the afternoon, sometimes one place for a whole week, sometimes at home. The variety of environments and people was stimulating.
I didn't get a chance to chime in on this in the Munich story, but my money's on Microsoft in that one too. MS doesn't like to lose. And just try to measure the egg-on-face value of that!
The culture of fuck-over-at-all-costs comes from the top down, from Gates down. It's pervasive.
Don't be too quick to assume the moral highground. Linux devs are just as capable of cheating and failing as any other person. Bear in mind, SCO is *not* saying everything that has ever been added to Linux is a ripoff (although the press is definitely allowing that impression to be taken). They are claiming they shared IP with IBM's AIX team on the Itanium, and the "chinese wall" between IBM's AIX and Linux team's leaked. That's certainly at least in the realm of possibility.
So, both sides are potentially wrong. SCO, MS, the rise in SCO's stock, and the press are all using this to indict OSS in general, as if everything in the kernel is lifted. The failure of the MS-Apple lookalike lawsuit is a precedent showing copying look and feel is A-OK. And the "SCO is Evil" crowd is naively believing it's impossible that the Linux Itanium code submitted by IBM is 100% free of code "inspired by" IBM's AIX team -- that is easily discountable by seeing the code, but it is certainly possible!
At the company meeting last year, Balmer (memory is fuzzy) he's 47, and plans to return in 10 or 15 years (can't remember which) - I think 10. No Monkeyboy -- but he did play a song from his favorite Broadway play, some 70's wierd shit sounded like Hair or Jesus Christ Superstar. Instead of Monkeyboy or the usual miltary analogies, they played a bunch of videos where people talked about how they failed and what they learned from it -- it was a reaction to Enron/Worldcom "ethics"...
Important thing is Balmer is ten years and out. MS people are getting old -- I think average age is 35 now. Every great story has an ending...
The fact that most viruses are so simple should scare the hell out of you. All virii to date just rely on the hosts ignorance -- the virus writer knows something the host doesn't. Plus, even the worst attacks are just annoyances. You haven't seen a really evil virus.
Like, what if the next virus directs all the modems to dial 911 at the same time, and coordinates that with a real world terrorist attack?
I use the analogy that current virus writers are like Palestinians strapping bombs to themselves and blowing themselves up -- any fool can do it, you just have to sneak past. You haven't seen the Al Quaeda of viruses yet.
Hiring a cracker as a security expert is like starting a long-term relationship with someone who's cheating on their current partner: they've already demonstrated their willingness to cheat!
If you believe all systems are crackable, how about this theory:
The problem of breeding humans who do not wish to commit havoc is of equal difficulty to the problem of creating uncrackable systems. (I.E., both are nearly impossible.)
Therefore, it is equally useful to spend one's time trying to convince people to "just not be an asshole" as it is securing systems. This cuts both ways -- privacy and security. I once made this statement in defense of things like Hailstorm -- the fact that the government/organizations have all my personal data does not in and of itself harm me, only the intentions of those that hold that data.
For example, your employer typically knows your Checking account routing #s, SS#s, heath data, but doesn't abuse the knowledge, because they have a self-serving interest not to. Why not imagine that situation everywhere -- everybody knows everything, nobody abuses knowledge. This position is no more bullshit than trying to secure everything, both are nearly impossible!!!
I didn't object to eyecandy, just pointless eyecandy, such as having the title bar have arcs in it or a clock in the corner that says "half past four".
OpenGL-accelerated eyecandy built on a flux-style less-is-more philosophy is okay, I'm not a luddite.
But really you all are right, I am being inconsistent: Flux doesn't have desktop icons or tray apps (the slit is pointless) and I prefer that to KDE or Gnome experience, but all other environments suck without a "task bar" ala Win95, and I knew people would bitch if that wasn't there, so I threw y'all a bone. But I really don't need it. And really, the longhorn 3d ui is going to go well-beyond a "channel-changer" metaphor, it might not suck.
*Fluxbox not KDE or Metacity. Eyecandy in the WM is pointless. Desktop wheeling, tabbed windows useful! *Konq is the file manager. The rest of KDE is useless. *GTK is the widget library. The rest of Gnome is useless. *GTK AA-text and font-prefs work without launching gnome-control-center when not running Gnome. *MozFirebird is the browser, with proper native GTK widgets. (XULGlade Theme?) *OpenOffice document engine & rendering engine with Gnumeric or Abiword interface. *QT becomes a theming engine ontop of GTK. *Abandon all dockapps, panels, kickers: replace it with Karamba + OpenGL to compete with Longhorn & OSX. *PDF viewer: rendering engine of Acrobat, UI functionality of KGhostview, using GTK widgets.
That's all I can think of for now. I hope you can see it in your mind now.
I learned about glade by trying DIASCE2, a Visual IDE for Glade. Before Glade I couldn't grok automake, pkg-config, much less GTK; by writing a simple Hello Glade World I grokked it all, wrote my own build scripts, and started writing Gnome apps.
Glade was only a stepping stone for me to using the raw GTK api. I find GTK in C to be quite elegant. The only real wart I found is that Popped-up menus are reparented in a fake GtkWindow, where as top levels aren't. Baring that, raw GTK in C is good enough for me.
"The world is fundamentally functional and relational." -- Quote from a grayheaded Silicon Valley dude, there's wisdom.
It's simple: Young mathemetician's aren't getting laid -- so they work like hell on on their maths. Since male sex drive peaks at 18, the less sex drive you have, the less driven you are to find another way to spend the time.
Or maybe they got married and their wife nags at them to death and ruins their concentration.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't been able to write in cursive for about 10 years, except for my signature -- and that is nothing more than literally a horizontal line with a couple of waves in it.
I use:
PNG -> XSANE scanned documents, receipts, bills (JPEG makes scanned paper look blurry and dirty).
JPEG -> XSANE scanned album covers (looks better than PNG somehow).
I can't see a place for GIF. GIF is for 1995-era web icons (and 1986-era porn) -- remember that command line program you used to use to look at GIFs from the BBS!
Let me put it like this: my bro. in law is a GM at a industrial trucking company. He's got a masters in probability and statistics but isn't "in the business" per se. When he talks to me about "his weekly Oracle having problems," he's not thinking of a database -- he's thinking of the Oracle Apps reports that come out on his printer.
In enterprise, "Oracle" is like "Xerox" or "Kleenex" -- it's the apps, the engine is invisible. If Peoplesoft bought J.D. Edwards, they'd challenge Oracle on that level.
If Microsoft had any sense they'd sell the biz apps. The DB is irrelevant -- it's the schemas that people buy.
Here's some more memes I'd like to start:
"Freedom" fries and "freedom" toast is kinda stupid sounding. But how about "free" fries and "free" toast -- it rolls off the tongue easier and isn't so in-your-face. If you like free software, you can dig on this too. That's what I'm calling them -- cheeseburgers and free fries!
The other meme I want to start is let's just call the next few years: 3, 4, 5. Since we can write the 00's but can't pronounce it sensibily, let's just knock off the whole 200x and call it 3. What year is it? It's Three! Next year, it's Four! Kind of like a new "A.D.", we don't need that old point of reference no more.
Three: the year of Free Fries and Free Toast!
Wonder who will be president in Twelve?
-Living in his own world, Saint S.
I've got to raise a point here that really bugs me when I hear people talk about "Evil Corporations" versus "The People" (or similarly how most of the world likes "the American people" but hates our "Government". I'm not questioning that governments or corporations can do shitty things, what I'm saying is that "corporations" and "governments" don't do shit, PEOPLE do shit, and I don't believe that some people are better or worse than other people. Everybody is a nice guy and an asshole. I am the American government. I am the Democratic party and the Republican party. I am the CEO of AOL. I am the Nation of Islam. I am an Indian worker at a cheap plant in Bangladesh. What I mean is, what motivates me isn't much different from what motivates anybody, and all that seperates anybody from anybody is what opportunities you've been exposed to, good and bad. A homeless guy could be the President were he exposed to the same opportunities, and your grandmother could knife a gangmember, if she had to.
In other words, find a better reason to bitch, that shit is tired and played. Everybody.
Well, since you're a soldier and I wasn't, I guess you're more qualified to speak on it. I wasn't trying to say it's sufficient or even necessary, I was just trying to say "it don't hurt". But maybe you're right -- Japanese kids play a lot of video games, and they don't have a kick-ass airforce.
Maybe one doesn't imply the other but both are visible effects of the same thing going on in our culture. It'll be interesting to see if we ever go to war with China if their technology skills can match ours (in wars).
The army very much thinks that playing video games makes good soldiers -- even way back in the 80s, playing Space Invaders and Asteroids trained a whole generation of F14 pilots how to use a joystick, AWACS & nuke sub operators how to read their screens -- but not the usual grunt with a rifle. But Quake does that now.
What I'm trying to say is, the military is very upfront about how video games and military are pretty damn similar.
Could somebody translate this from bullshitese to english? I just saw COTS and GOTS policies, nothing specific to OSS.
$20/month/customer, all media free
"Deluxe Features" = $35/month
MS has been jonesing for a subscription model for three years.
It's all a big conspiracy by AOL and Microsoft to WASTE the GPL and WASTE all music pirates in one fell swoop.
I know there are as many opinions about this as there are people, but, for me, working from home is not even desirable for the reasons it's supposed to be good.
*When there was someone in the house and I worked from home, (a) I couldn't get anything done but more importantly (b) I didn't want to see her that damn much anyway.
*When there wasn't anybody in the house, my god how maddening to get up, go sit over there, do stuff, go over there, go to sleep, repeat. Like being in an institution.
This isn't the usual "it's no good because you can't get your work done" thing", this is the "it's no damn fun" thing. It's just my opinion, and I'm sure some people have completely different experiences, but I was WAY happier going over to *that* building to do shit just cause I at least get to see two different buildings! and I have a reason to shave and get out of the pajamas...
But an office is a drag too. My favorite was when I was an accounting consultant. We had about 35 clients. I'd be in one place in the morning, another in the afternoon, sometimes one place for a whole week, sometimes at home. The variety of environments and people was stimulating.
I didn't get a chance to chime in on this in the Munich story, but my money's on Microsoft in that one too. MS doesn't like to lose. And just try to measure the egg-on-face value of that!
The culture of fuck-over-at-all-costs comes from the top down, from Gates down. It's pervasive.
Just go to CharlieRose.com, and click on whatever book he's hyping. People will instantly think you're smart.
I got tired of apt-get blowing up my unstable Debian, so I wrote this to make it transactional:
/data/apt /dev/null > $sub/Packages
sub=dists/latest/binary-i386
dt=`date +"%y%m%d_%H%M%S"`
cd
dpkg-scanpackages latest
grep -Ex "Filename: latest/.+" $sub/Packages | sed "s/Filename: latest\/\(.*\)/\1/" > old/L$dt
pushd $sub
rm Packages.gz
gzip Packages
popd
mv latest $dt
mkdir latest
for x in `cat old/L$dt`; do mv $dt/$x latest; done
if [[ `ls $dt | wc -l` -eq 0 ]]; then rm -r $dt; fi
If it blows up, I can easily roll back, and keep a history of all the intermedate versions.
I love finding inconsitencies in the world.
Metric-lovers quip about decimal then measure time in sexagesimal following the Babylonians.
And Europeans laughing at fat Americans but smoke like chimneys.
[ducks]
Don't be too quick to assume the moral highground. Linux devs are just as capable of cheating and failing as any other person. Bear in mind, SCO is *not* saying everything that has ever been added to Linux is a ripoff (although the press is definitely allowing that impression to be taken). They are claiming they shared IP with IBM's AIX team on the Itanium, and the "chinese wall" between IBM's AIX and Linux team's leaked. That's certainly at least in the realm of possibility.
So, both sides are potentially wrong. SCO, MS, the rise in SCO's stock, and the press are all using this to indict OSS in general, as if everything in the kernel is lifted. The failure of the MS-Apple lookalike lawsuit is a precedent showing copying look and feel is A-OK. And the "SCO is Evil" crowd is naively believing it's impossible that the Linux Itanium code submitted by IBM is 100% free of code "inspired by" IBM's AIX team -- that is easily discountable by seeing the code, but it is certainly possible!
At the company meeting last year, Balmer (memory is fuzzy) he's 47, and plans to return in 10 or 15 years (can't remember which) - I think 10. No Monkeyboy -- but he did play a song from his favorite Broadway play, some 70's wierd shit sounded like Hair or Jesus Christ Superstar. Instead of Monkeyboy or the usual miltary analogies, they played a bunch of videos where people talked about how they failed and what they learned from it -- it was a reaction to Enron/Worldcom "ethics"...
Important thing is Balmer is ten years and out. MS people are getting old -- I think average age is 35 now. Every great story has an ending...
The fact that most viruses are so simple should scare the hell out of you. All virii to date just rely on the hosts ignorance -- the virus writer knows something the host doesn't. Plus, even the worst attacks are just annoyances. You haven't seen a really evil virus.
Like, what if the next virus directs all the modems to dial 911 at the same time, and coordinates that with a real world terrorist attack?
I use the analogy that current virus writers are like Palestinians strapping bombs to themselves and blowing themselves up -- any fool can do it, you just have to sneak past. You haven't seen the Al Quaeda of viruses yet.
The answer is: terrorists.
Hiring a cracker as a security expert is like starting a long-term relationship with someone who's cheating on their current partner: they've already demonstrated their willingness to cheat!
If you believe all systems are crackable, how about this theory:
The problem of breeding humans who do not wish to commit havoc is of equal difficulty to the problem of creating uncrackable systems. (I.E., both are nearly impossible.)
Therefore, it is equally useful to spend one's time trying to convince people to "just not be an asshole" as it is securing systems. This cuts both ways -- privacy and security. I once made this statement in defense of things like Hailstorm -- the fact that the government/organizations have all my personal data does not in and of itself harm me, only the intentions of those that hold that data.
For example, your employer typically knows your Checking account routing #s, SS#s, heath data, but doesn't abuse the knowledge, because they have a self-serving interest not to. Why not imagine that situation everywhere -- everybody knows everything, nobody abuses knowledge. This position is no more bullshit than trying to secure everything, both are nearly impossible!!!
[grin]
I didn't object to eyecandy, just pointless eyecandy, such as having the title bar have arcs in it or a clock in the corner that says "half past four". OpenGL-accelerated eyecandy built on a flux-style less-is-more philosophy is okay, I'm not a luddite. But really you all are right, I am being inconsistent: Flux doesn't have desktop icons or tray apps (the slit is pointless) and I prefer that to KDE or Gnome experience, but all other environments suck without a "task bar" ala Win95, and I knew people would bitch if that wasn't there, so I threw y'all a bone. But I really don't need it. And really, the longhorn 3d ui is going to go well-beyond a "channel-changer" metaphor, it might not suck.
*Fluxbox not KDE or Metacity. Eyecandy in the WM is pointless. Desktop wheeling, tabbed windows useful!
*Konq is the file manager. The rest of KDE is useless.
*GTK is the widget library. The rest of Gnome is useless.
*GTK AA-text and font-prefs work without launching gnome-control-center when not running Gnome.
*MozFirebird is the browser, with proper native GTK widgets. (XULGlade Theme?)
*OpenOffice document engine & rendering engine with Gnumeric or Abiword interface.
*QT becomes a theming engine ontop of GTK.
*Abandon all dockapps, panels, kickers: replace it with Karamba + OpenGL to compete with Longhorn & OSX.
*PDF viewer: rendering engine of Acrobat, UI functionality of KGhostview, using GTK widgets.
That's all I can think of for now. I hope you can see it in your mind now.
Microsoft probably wants to grep the source code and diff it to Linux, to see what if any's been lifted. Inquiring minds want to know.
I learned about glade by trying DIASCE2, a Visual IDE for Glade. Before Glade I couldn't grok automake, pkg-config, much less GTK; by writing a simple Hello Glade World I grokked it all, wrote my own build scripts, and started writing Gnome apps.
Glade was only a stepping stone for me to using the raw GTK api. I find GTK in C to be quite elegant. The only real wart I found is that Popped-up menus are reparented in a fake GtkWindow, where as top levels aren't. Baring that, raw GTK in C is good enough for me.
"The world is fundamentally functional and relational." -- Quote from a grayheaded Silicon Valley dude, there's wisdom.
It's simple: Young mathemetician's aren't getting laid -- so they work like hell on on their maths. Since male sex drive peaks at 18, the less sex drive you have, the less driven you are to find another way to spend the time.
Or maybe they got married and their wife nags at them to death and ruins their concentration.