Vielen Dank(*) for your solidarity, Niklas. On a second thought, maybe it's a retaliation for our announced withdraw of troops from Iraq... Does anyone know if this list is Bush-clan owned?
(*) I see a ".de" in your address, so I assume you are German; sorry if I'm wrong.
Oh yes, XFCE is not a desktop. So what? I have migrated from KDE to XFCE. KDE is fine, but it has lots of functionalities I never use; the presence of icons on the desktop disturbs me (and KDE keeps creating them at every restart when I remove them), and all I need is a good menu system with some buttons for the apps I use most often (Opera, xterm, XMMS, xterm, kmail, xterm, the Gimp, xterm, SciTE and xterm). The printer? Less than one minute to configure my remote Samba printer. And everything runs faster now, because I more free memory! XFCE has been a gift from Heaven for my poor 64MB-laptop.
So, although I respect your choice of KDE/Gnome, and I may enjoy some friendly waste of time with you discussing about the definition of the term "Desktop", give my XFCE if you want me happy.
Oh, by the way: I am sorry to let you down in this particular issue, but I am NOT calling you a troll. Please find someone else for that;-)
Well, yes, they work. Only that, depending on which programs you load, maybe the performance will degrade somewhat. Anyway, you still have improvement comparing to the full-fledged Gnome.
...sounds like you are following the alarming trend rising in the U.S. lately: "If your opinion is not the correct one, don't make it public".
Did you ask Mr. Raymond if he was actually trying to make a point? Maybe he is just angry, tired of all this SCO crap, and fed up with all the buzz. He is also a human being, did you know?
But, even if you are right and he is trying to make a point, are you denying the others their sacred right to free speech? Think about it, man...
Yes, how ironic... shouldn't be for these Americans who saved our big fat European asses from the big red bear, the only thing we would be able to express freely would be our [hypothetical] hatred for Americans...
On the other hand, do not miss the point: if the U.S. "saved poor tiny Europe from the big bad guy", the reason was not solidarity, humanitarian aid or being the Heros of Freedom(tm). The reason was only to protect themselves from an enemy too big to fight if Europe had been part of the Soviet block.
Okay, now that you ask... my feelings about Americans are: they are good people, I have been there (working in temporal assignments from my company in Europe, not as a tourist), I have made friends there, and I believe in Americans' good faith... but they are missing the point in an alarming manner: DMCA, RIAA, the growing monopoly in information handling (M$), the patent frenzy, the Irak war... this began in Vietnam, and it has been becoming worse since then. Be careful, friends! You are being dragged to the Dark Side! 227(?) years ago you proved yourselves capable of a revolution! Where is your spirit?
Well, I moved from a downtown appartment to a countryhouse a couple of years ago, and I began to feel the urge to start doing things like this: beer homebrewing, fruits and vegetables preserving, bread baking, furniture repairing/building, even some basic masonry. Then one day I was sitting by the fireplace (wood cut by myself), smoking a pipe (my own mix of tobacco), and meditating about my life, and this question came to my mind: Why?
After giving some thought to the issue, I think that the answer is quite simple: for the same reason why I go to FreshMeat to get the source code of the programs I use. I could download the binaries, but I don't; I prefer to go through the pain of./configuring, making and make-installing, to say the least. In other words: I want to control the process of creation as much as possible. The same spirit of OpenSource which animates most geeks is present in each and every aspect of their lives, not only in computing.
Self-made-making and Open Source are all about the same: to keep control of our own lives.
My company created an on-line grocery shop, three years ago. We got the contract from an association of grocery merchants here in Vilanova, near Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). Nihil novum sub sole...
Yeah, you are right! I have a perl CGI script that dynamically generates usage bar-graphics from the Apache log files without using any image. I am currently addressing small quirks, but I will post-and-open-source it when it is in an acceptable shape.
You are talking about forced sex, but what about if she wants to do it? Condoms ARE important. I don't know where are you from, but we Europeans accept as a fact that teenagers who spend more that two hours a day out of parents' supervision might be involved in voluntary sexual interchange.
Why all this hype? The invention is 20 years old!
on
Self-Heating Can
·
· Score: 1
I was buying these cans at the convenience store when I was a teen, to use them in my weekend treks. Soups, beans... great warm meals without making fire or carrying the cumbersome butane burner. What is all this hype? It's like the root-beer invention, invented in Europe and then forgotten and re-rescued by Americans? Is it like America, discovered by Erik the Red and then forgotten and re-discovered by Columbus? Nihil novum sub sole...
Telefónica, the Spanish almost-monopolistic telecom company, began to do this some months ago, and the only problems that arose were that THEY DID NOT WARN THE USERS BEFORE. The "end" users, the ones with modem connection and two-emails-a-day, had no problem. The e-mail-junkies (like me) and the heavily-Internet-dependant companies (like the one I work for) simply set up their own Linux SMTP servers in their old, already-replaced, no-longer-usable-for-desktop 486 (or, if they use Linux in their desktops, as it is my case at home, just set up an SMTP server which I fire up only when I need it, to save RAM).
Bottom line: NO PROBLEMO.
Well, I guess we are just repeating the same question posed almost one century ago: Is the Movies a Fine Art?
History repeats itself; just keep fighting, and sooner or later all the old dinosaurs will die and the new dinosaurs will acknowledge that Art does not depend on media.
Did you read the whole thing, man? It is not about getting their jobs back - it's about getting the money the company owes them!
BTW: Here, good job skills DO guarantee a job.
Well, I'm European and I had never heard about a meal called SPAM before. When I went to the U.S. I saw the cans on a supermarket shelf, and I thought: "Hey, this stuff has the same name as junk mail!" I tried it just out of curiosity... and they won a new customer.
A side effect of this story was that now I understand what the "Spam" icon in/. is.
From my very personal experience: yes, IBM is spending fat bucks with Linux, more than people out there can see. Does this mean we will see Informix for Linux supported by IBM? Maybe... but personally, I think that IBM will kill Informix, tear the pieces apart, and use them to improve their own database product: DB2. Opinions about it, please?
About Micro$oft SQL Server: Does anybody use it? Here in my country it is not very known. Don't misunderstand me: it IS known and used, but it is not the market leader (not even the second).
Re:A moment of silence... a forbidden language.
on
The Challenger
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· Score: 1
Another historical catastrophe? Well, let's see...
for example, imagine that speaking English is forbidden in the United States of America. If you speak English on the street, you get fined. If you write or publish anything in English, or even if you speak publicly in English, you are imprisoned, no matter what you say. SF? Orwell? No, ladies and gentlemen. In 1938 the Catalan language, which happens to be my native language, was FORBIDDEN by the Fascist government that seized the control of Spain in 1936. Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, a territory located northeast of Spain (capital city Barcelona; remember the '92 Games?), with its own language, culture and traditions, even our own measuring system until we adopted Metric. The Fascists had our language forbidden during 37 years, until 1975. Imagine this period of time: it lasted longer than most of the lifespans of us slashdotters (including mine, I'm 35). From this tragedy, one generation later, our culture and language is still recovering from these dark years.
Remember, Slashdotters: to destroy takes a very short time, to rebuild takes much longer!
I see your point. But I'd like to address some facts that I consider wrong:
1) CERN is an European project and, although phisically not located in the Spanish border, there were Spanish scientists working there (and most probably they are still there, but this is not what concerns us now).
2) Maybe many other languages are being
"destroyed" by the "English-Internet" dominance. Spanish and other languages may or may not have a problem here, but the Spanish scholars are the only ones (or at least the first ones) that have begun to take some action. Let's hope that their actions will be an example to other languages.
3) Asking everyone to make everything accesible to everyone else is not arrogancy: it's fairness and justice. Nobody says that *each* page on the Web has to be available in *each* language in the world. Total availabilty for everyone is a goal, set along the distance, to which all of us, as advocates of all the Internet represents (freedom of expression and exchange of information), should tend. In mathematical terms, think of the "limit" concept, some value that a function never reaches but tends to and keeps always approaching. Oh, and by the way, the creation of separate networks you propose is neither new nor a good idea in itself: there IS a Spanish network, but it is integrated in The Internet, so you maybe did not notice just because you did not need it. But Spanish speakers know where to go to find what they want.
4) Currently most of the Internet users come from English-speaking countries, but this is changing. Europe is catching up very quickly. I would dare to say, more quickly than you might be noticing, because Europeans tend to exchange information among themselves more than with America (there is an exception: Spain also has a heavy flow of information with Latin America, for obvious cultural and language affinities). And, about applications... we do develop applications but, being open-minded, we have embraced the I18N so you can use the typical French application in English without even noticing that it was not written by English-speaking developers unless you click on the "About" option. And, on the other hand, don't forget about Babelfish! Yes, the translations are terrible sometimes, but they do transmit the information, which is its primary goal.
5) What is "dragonmagic.net" and how can it benefit me or help me in the language debate? Is this some ad you inserted? If you did it, I honestly think it's most inappropiate. If it was automatically inserted by your mail server, well, they need funding, so I think it's OK.
Oh, by the way, let me say what do I do for living: I translate and localize (say I18N here) software for IBM, so I'm heavily involved in this matter (-:
Have you ever been bothered by this small arrow/finger/X-letter/whatever that moves up and down your screen? Mistook it by a fly and tried to smash it? Well, complain no more, for here is the solution!
The Pointerless Mouse Technology (PMT) will allow you to enjoy the experience of a perfectly clear screen. The images and text you are working with will be presented to you with no interference. And, what's more, your spatial perception skills and visual measuring abilities will be spectacularly improved thanks to practice! Just move the mouse to the point where you think the cursor should be, and start typing/drawing/clicking. You will notice that the design of your text and web pages will improve significantly with a deliberately artistic disorder. Besides that, you will experience the thrill of navigating the Web without knowing where will your next click take you! Every click will be a surprise!
You can implement this technology with an adequately defective (or hacked) mouse driver or, if your graphical environment allows pointer customization, by using a 100% transparent bitmap as the mouse pointer. Don't forget to replace the clock pointer as well!
But remember: don't try to patent PMT: it has been described (and used) before!
The darkside guys at Sony are fighting a lost battle. The more Napster/gnutella/whatever sites they close, the more will appear; they simply cannot chase everything that runs on the Internet. The day all their benefits are consumed by their legal department, they will realize that the valid option should have been fire all that scum they have as legal-advisors (hey, the more Sony sues, the more money these advisors get!) and hire creative people who can invent new ways to do business on a really free market. But alas! They do not want to stop milking their cow! They know that, on the Internet, they cannot have the same control as in the CD market, and therefore they will not able to do things like overpricing, deciding what should we buy, etc. They are a big, slow and non-maneuverable dinosaur and they know it; they also know that they have no chance of competing against "alternative" companies (small and maneuver-capable) in a really balanced market. The fact that guys like Prince can start from zero and sell their own music without enslaving themselves to any megacorporation scares Sony to death.
BTW and as a statistical curio: how many/. readers have decided to start a personal boycott against Sony? I guess lots! (-:
Maybe not exactly to the point, but I will give my two cents about the issue: the source code in other languages (I'm thinking of Latin-derived languages, like Spanish, French, Italian and Catalan) would be LONGER. That means, it would take more bytes of HD space and more time to type it in from the keyboard. But it would be far less intrinsecly ambiguous, which means that some statements and clauses to avoid ambiguity probably would not exist.
I am a software translator and tester, mainly from English to Spanish and Catalan, and three of the main problems we have with the process are:
The user messages are shorter in English, which leads to truncation problems when displaying.
Most words have no gender or even number, which leads to grammatically incorrect messages to the user.
Some words are difficult to translate out of context ("open" can be translated into Spanish as "abierto", "abierta", "abiertos", "abiertas", "abrir" or "abre" depending on the context). Catalan and Italian (don't know about French) have the same quantity: six possible words each.
Fortunately Java, HTML and all this stuff solves the first one for us, but the other ones generate a fair amount of re-coding and re-testing.
Oh, and, by the way, you will have to do some minor assumptions: -Downtime is not important. -Security holes are not important. -Reliability is not important. I have experienced the environment you describe (with NT, not 2K). My impressions about it: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Now I have an e-commerce site running on Aix, DB2 and Java stuff, and I don't even remember that the thingy is here.
Slashdot Mirror
Vielen Dank(*) for your solidarity, Niklas. On a second thought, maybe it's a retaliation for our announced withdraw of troops from Iraq... Does anyone know if this list is Bush-clan owned?
(*) I see a ".de" in your address, so I assume you are German; sorry if I'm wrong.
If I may extend your list...
:-$
6) The nuclear hand grenade. Its blast radius is greater than any distance you can throw it to. Lots of fun!
7) The tanning ray. Just remember to use it to its "Maximum" setting if you target enemies.
8) I also have very fond memories of that module in the food vats... what was the name... ah... sorry, I forgot
Oh yes, XFCE is not a desktop. So what?
;-)
I have migrated from KDE to XFCE. KDE is fine, but it has lots of functionalities I never use; the presence of icons on the desktop disturbs me (and KDE keeps creating them at every restart when I remove them), and all I need is a good menu system with some buttons for the apps I use most often (Opera, xterm, XMMS, xterm, kmail, xterm, the Gimp, xterm, SciTE and xterm). The printer? Less than one minute to configure my remote Samba printer. And everything runs faster now, because
I more free memory! XFCE has been a gift from Heaven for my poor 64MB-laptop.
So, although I respect your choice of KDE/Gnome, and I may enjoy some friendly waste of time with you discussing about the definition of the term "Desktop", give my XFCE if you want me happy.
Oh, by the way: I am sorry to let you down in this particular issue, but I am NOT calling you a troll. Please find someone else for that
Well, yes, they work. Only that, depending on which programs you load, maybe the performance will degrade somewhat. Anyway, you still have improvement comparing to the full-fledged Gnome.
Did you ask Mr. Raymond if he was actually trying to make a point? Maybe he is just angry, tired of all this SCO crap, and fed up with all the buzz. He is also a human being, did you know?
But, even if you are right and he is trying to make a point, are you denying the others their sacred right to free speech? Think about it, man...
Greetings from Europe, the Land of Freedom.
Yes, how ironic... shouldn't be for these Americans who saved our big fat European asses from the big red bear, the only thing we would be able to express freely would be our [hypothetical] hatred for Americans...
On the other hand, do not miss the point: if the U.S. "saved poor tiny Europe from the big bad guy", the reason was not solidarity, humanitarian aid or being the Heros of Freedom(tm). The reason was only to protect themselves from an enemy too big to fight if Europe had been part of the Soviet block.
Okay, now that you ask... my feelings about Americans are: they are good people, I have been there (working in temporal assignments from my company in Europe, not as a tourist), I have made friends there, and I believe in Americans' good faith... but they are missing the point in an alarming manner: DMCA, RIAA, the growing monopoly in information handling (M$), the patent frenzy, the Irak war... this began in Vietnam, and it has been becoming worse since then. Be careful, friends! You are being dragged to the Dark Side! 227(?) years ago you proved yourselves capable of a revolution! Where is your spirit?
After giving some thought to the issue, I think that the answer is quite simple: for the same reason why I go to FreshMeat to get the source code of the programs I use. I could download the binaries, but I don't; I prefer to go through the pain of ./configuring, making and make-installing, to say the least. In other words: I want to control the process of creation as much as possible. The same spirit of OpenSource which animates most geeks is present in each and every aspect of their lives, not only in computing.
Self-made-making and Open Source are all about the same: to keep control of our own lives.
Actually they are... That's why they have chosen to be lawyers and not college professors :-(
How come Palestinians didn't discover this yet? They are in dire need of cheap weapons!
Oh well, probably there is no hairspray in a place where all women wear their hair covered.
My company created an on-line grocery shop, three years ago. We got the contract from an association of grocery merchants here in Vilanova, near Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain). Nihil novum sub sole...
Yeah, you are right! I have a perl CGI script that dynamically generates usage bar-graphics from the Apache log files without using any image. I am currently addressing small quirks, but I will post-and-open-source it when it is in an acceptable shape.
You are talking about forced sex, but what about if she wants to do it? Condoms ARE important. I don't know where are you from, but we Europeans accept as a fact that teenagers who spend more that two hours a day out of parents' supervision might be involved in voluntary sexual interchange.
I was buying these cans at the convenience store when I was a teen, to use them in my weekend treks. Soups, beans... great warm meals without making fire or carrying the cumbersome butane burner. What is all this hype? It's like the root-beer invention, invented in Europe and then forgotten and re-rescued by Americans? Is it like America, discovered by Erik the Red and then forgotten and re-discovered by Columbus? Nihil novum sub sole...
Hum... maybe next release will allow you to use words according to security clearance:
Ultraviolet: Bill G., your Friend.
Violet: Steve B.
Indigo: M$ senior management.
Blue: M$ middle management.
Green: All M$ staff.
Yellow:ASP developers, Internet Insecurity Server webmasters etc.
Orange: Windows-savvy kids, etc
Red: Mr. Joe User.
Infrared: The Linux scum, slashdotters, etc.
Telefónica, the Spanish almost-monopolistic telecom company, began to do this some months ago, and the only problems that arose were that THEY DID NOT WARN THE USERS BEFORE. The "end" users, the ones with modem connection and two-emails-a-day, had no problem. The e-mail-junkies (like me) and the heavily-Internet-dependant companies (like the one I work for) simply set up their own Linux SMTP servers in their old, already-replaced, no-longer-usable-for-desktop 486 (or, if they use Linux in their desktops, as it is my case at home, just set up an SMTP server which I fire up only when I need it, to save RAM).
Bottom line: NO PROBLEMO.
Well, I guess we are just repeating the same question posed almost one century ago: Is the Movies a Fine Art? History repeats itself; just keep fighting, and sooner or later all the old dinosaurs will die and the new dinosaurs will acknowledge that Art does not depend on media.
Did you read the whole thing, man? It is not about getting their jobs back - it's about getting the money the company owes them! BTW: Here, good job skills DO guarantee a job.
Well, I'm European and I had never heard about a meal called SPAM before. When I went to the U.S. I saw the cans on a supermarket shelf, and I thought: "Hey, this stuff has the same name as junk mail!" I tried it just out of curiosity... and they won a new customer. A side effect of this story was that now I understand what the "Spam" icon in /. is.
From my very personal experience: yes, IBM is spending fat bucks with Linux, more than people out there can see. Does this mean we will see Informix for Linux supported by IBM? Maybe... but personally, I think that IBM will kill Informix, tear the pieces apart, and use them to improve their own database product: DB2. Opinions about it, please? About Micro$oft SQL Server: Does anybody use it? Here in my country it is not very known. Don't misunderstand me: it IS known and used, but it is not the market leader (not even the second).
Another historical catastrophe? Well, let's see...
for example, imagine that speaking English is forbidden in the United States of America. If you speak English on the street, you get fined. If you write or publish anything in English, or even if you speak publicly in English, you are imprisoned, no matter what you say. SF? Orwell? No, ladies and gentlemen. In 1938 the Catalan language, which happens to be my native language, was FORBIDDEN by the Fascist government that seized the control of Spain in 1936. Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, a territory located northeast of Spain (capital city Barcelona; remember the '92 Games?), with its own language, culture and traditions, even our own measuring system until we adopted Metric. The Fascists had our language forbidden during 37 years, until 1975. Imagine this period of time: it lasted longer than most of the lifespans of us slashdotters (including mine, I'm 35). From this tragedy, one generation later, our culture and language is still recovering from these dark years.
Remember, Slashdotters: to destroy takes a very short time, to rebuild takes much longer!
1) CERN is an European project and, although phisically not located in the Spanish border, there were Spanish scientists working there (and most probably they are still there, but this is not what concerns us now).
2) Maybe many other languages are being "destroyed" by the "English-Internet" dominance. Spanish and other languages may or may not have a problem here, but the Spanish scholars are the only ones (or at least the first ones) that have begun to take some action. Let's hope that their actions will be an example to other languages.
3) Asking everyone to make everything accesible to everyone else is not arrogancy: it's fairness and justice. Nobody says that *each* page on the Web has to be available in *each* language in the world. Total availabilty for everyone is a goal, set along the distance, to which all of us, as advocates of all the Internet represents (freedom of expression and exchange of information), should tend. In mathematical terms, think of the "limit" concept, some value that a function never reaches but tends to and keeps always approaching. Oh, and by the way, the creation of separate networks you propose is neither new nor a good idea in itself: there IS a Spanish network, but it is integrated in The Internet, so you maybe did not notice just because you did not need it. But Spanish speakers know where to go to find what they want.
4) Currently most of the Internet users come from English-speaking countries, but this is changing. Europe is catching up very quickly. I would dare to say, more quickly than you might be noticing, because Europeans tend to exchange information among themselves more than with America (there is an exception: Spain also has a heavy flow of information with Latin America, for obvious cultural and language affinities). And, about applications... we do develop applications but, being open-minded, we have embraced the I18N so you can use the typical French application in English without even noticing that it was not written by English-speaking developers unless you click on the "About" option. And, on the other hand, don't forget about Babelfish! Yes, the translations are terrible sometimes, but they do transmit the information, which is its primary goal.
5) What is "dragonmagic.net" and how can it benefit me or help me in the language debate? Is this some ad you inserted? If you did it, I honestly think it's most inappropiate. If it was automatically inserted by your mail server, well, they need funding, so I think it's OK.
Oh, by the way, let me say what do I do for living: I translate and localize (say I18N here) software for IBM, so I'm heavily involved in this matter (-:
The Pointerless Mouse Technology (PMT) will allow you to enjoy the experience of a perfectly clear screen. The images and text you are working with will be presented to you with no interference. And, what's more, your spatial perception skills and visual measuring abilities will be spectacularly improved thanks to practice! Just move the mouse to the point where you think the cursor should be, and start typing/drawing/clicking. You will notice that the design of your text and web pages will improve significantly with a deliberately artistic disorder. Besides that, you will experience the thrill of navigating the Web without knowing where will your next click take you! Every click will be a surprise!
You can implement this technology with an adequately defective (or hacked) mouse driver or, if your graphical environment allows pointer customization, by using a 100% transparent bitmap as the mouse pointer. Don't forget to replace the clock pointer as well!
But remember: don't try to patent PMT: it has been described (and used) before!
But alas! They do not want to stop milking their cow! They know that, on the Internet, they cannot have the same control as in the CD market, and therefore they will not able to do things like overpricing, deciding what should we buy, etc. They are a big, slow and non-maneuverable dinosaur and they know it; they also know that they have no chance of competing against "alternative" companies (small and maneuver-capable) in a really balanced market.
The fact that guys like Prince can start from zero and sell their own music without enslaving themselves to any megacorporation scares Sony to death.
BTW and as a statistical curio: how many /. readers have decided to start a personal boycott against Sony? I guess lots! (-:
I am a software translator and tester, mainly from English to Spanish and Catalan, and three of the main problems we have with the process are:
- The user messages are shorter in English, which leads to truncation problems when displaying.
- Most words have no gender or even number, which leads to grammatically incorrect messages to the user.
- Some words are difficult to translate out of context ("open" can be translated into Spanish as "abierto", "abierta", "abiertos", "abiertas", "abrir" or "abre" depending on the context). Catalan and Italian (don't know about French) have the same quantity: six possible words each.
Fortunately Java, HTML and all this stuff solves the first one for us, but the other ones generate a fair amount of re-coding and re-testing.Oh, and, by the way, you will have to do some minor assumptions: -Downtime is not important. -Security holes are not important. -Reliability is not important. I have experienced the environment you describe (with NT, not 2K). My impressions about it: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Now I have an e-commerce site running on Aix, DB2 and Java stuff, and I don't even remember that the thingy is here.