Oh for god sakes people. Kwin provides pluggable back ends for rendering engines for compositing. Currently we support xrender and OpenGL 1.1, soon we will support the next version of OpenGL. Big deal. You can turn compositing on or off, or choose which engine is best for your platform. We will not remove the old engines or force everyone to use compositing. So stop your trolling.
You mistake his point entirely, he isn't bragging he has bluetooth, he's bewailing that Macbooks only have 2 USB ports and having a dongle wastes one of them. Your Dell I bet has 4 so it's not such an issue.
Yet another right-wing anti-UN media beat-up that has suckered the sleeping Slashdot editors in. The OIS have had this same motion passed every year for the last 10 years and it hasn't made a blind bit of difference because ITS A RECOMMENDATION and everyone ignores it!!! Nothing out of this talk-shop is ever binding, and never will be. Get a life and worry about something real.
That took all of 3 minutes research to find out. Some editor, I think his personal bias is showing...
Mozilla makes a fortune from Firefox thanks to their Google deal, so Firefox is self-funding where-as Thunderbird has no potential revenue stream so is just seen as a drain on resources. That's what happens when your corporatise an open source project, the money clouds your vision and detracts from your goals. The tin-foil hat brigade out there might even suggest that Thunderbird, as a competitor to Google, threatens Mozilla's main revenue stream and so may well be paying the price for Googles ongoing support...
I read the article, and it makes no mention of how they measured these numbers, or who these "Market Share by Net Applications" people are. I've never heard of them, so it all seems very fuddish to me, especially with the several digits of precision on their percentages. Plucked out of their arses would be my guess, or measured from a self-selecting sample group and then extralopted to some imaginary global norm.
How much of taht Vista % comes from OEM default installs where the buyer had no option?
How does this square with other figures showing higher figures for net surfers using Linux? And has anyone figure for the number of Linux users who set their user agent to IE/Win.
Huh? No compiling needed mate, these days its easier than Windows. In Windows Granny would have to hunt the net to find the software she wants, check she has any other required software first, and all of the right version, manually install everything in the right order, reboot, and hope it all works. In a modern Linux, she just fires up the software installer, searches for what she wants, ticks a box and clicks install, and she's done. Hell, the latest version of openSuse even has a 1-click online installer that launches and installs everything from a single link on a website.
As for crappy GUI designs, that applies to most pieces of windows software too...
I've backpacked around the world a couple of times now, once for 18 months, once for 9 months, mostly through Africa, Middle East, South America, and Europe. Don't take the laptop unless you intend to make a living on the side from travel writing, otherwise its just a dead-weight that will cramp your style and cut you off from other people.
My first trip was pre-ubiquitous internet, my tech total was a shortwave radio, film slr, and a paper travel diary. Lightweight, low stress, and forced me to talk to people:-)
My second trip I took my Palm III (AAA powered) with a fold-up keyboard to type up my diary, but to also use for games and organising things. However that felt a bit dorky to use, I was constantly buying batteries, and nobody would let me install the palm sync software needed to download my diary to my blog.
Instead I found that internet cafes were everywhere and cheap as, especially in the so-called 3rd world (even Easter Island had one!) Perversely, the USA was the country with the worst public net access and facilities, there's an inverse law in there somewhere. They are all you really need now as they are offer full services (CD/DVD burning, MS Office, Skype headphones, etc), especially on the backpacker trail.
My one suggestion is that you take an off-load option for when your digital camera gets full. My sister recently used her iPod for this, but it got corrupted and she lost a bunch of photos so be careful of this one (note you should have FAT32 formatted iPod to allow you to then off-load from the iPod at a net cafe). You'll need to get the special adaptor for this, and leave enough space for photos or be prepared to delete songs as you go.
On my last short trip I used a 4GB USB key to off-load from my 10Mp digital slr, but for my next big trip I plan to take my 60GB 2.5" hard drive in a USB case loaded with various Portabe Apps http://portableapps.com/ (especially the virus scanner!), any files I think I'll need, and all my MP3's so I can vary what's loaded on my small cheap MP3 player. It's light, small, and easy to hide. Even then, I'll still be burning photos to DVD and posting home on a regular basis just in case.
Here's some advice form someone who's just finished building a new internet banking security system for the bank I work for:
DONT USE WINDOWS
Simple really.
Seriously, for someone who wasn't weaned on Windows, using a modern Linux desktop is a very viable proposition. The only trojan attack vectors we've seen are from Windows boxes. A recent survey stated that 50% of all trojanned machines run Windows XP SP2, so there's no safety there. Most are simple key-loggers which are bad enough, but there's a new wave of targetted banking site trojans designed to crack various protection schemes.
Install Linux, Mandriva is a good newbies distro. Get broadband with a hardware router/firwall. Put big icons on the panel for e-mail, browser and OpenOffice. Put a signle Bookmark for teh Banking site on the browser toolbar. Lock down the KDE desktop using Kiosk. Install Spamassasin to cut down on the phishing e-mails. Sign them up with a bank that supports Firefox (there's plenty, we do) and has a form of 2nd Factor Authentication. A smaller bank will be less of a target, but they need to be big enough to have proper security in place.
Most importantly, patiently explain to them WHY they must only ever use the bookmark to access thier banking, never reply to e-mails or follow links on other sites. Don't assume they won't understand the background, just issuing blanket orders to not do something is guaranteed to confuse and be forgotten/ignored. Explain it to them in simple, non-technical language and use analogies to things tehy do understand. If they understand the why, they will be better prepared when they do see an attack vector you haven't explicitally told them about.
Erm, there are 32 bit versions of Linux you know, and there is a simple way to run 32 bit browser plugins in a 64 bit browser, and Flash 9 for Linux is now in public beta, so your point is?
So, you're comparing the most expensive, fully featured, fully supported commercial versions of dual-licensed FOSS products with the cheapest, least featured, least supported versions of Windows products, and wonder why there's such a difference.
This has a familiar ring to it... you been reading Get The Facts recently???
Hmm, lets do the math one more time shall we. Dunno what a good C++ devs salary is these days, but let's assume you pay your devs $30k a year. Lets assume that Qt makes your developer 10% more productive over MSVS. Gee, looks to me like the $3k price tag makes it an even call. If you're a start-up, then it costs you even less and that looks a better dewal. Now, factor in how much money you intend to make from your product, and the fact that its a tax write-off, and that $3k looks pretty insignificant in the greater scheme of things.
Here's the bottom line folks: if you plan to make money off a business and you can't afford to pay $3k a head to buy your staff the best tools for the job, then you seriously need to look at your business plan.
Does Sarbanes Oxley apply to your firm? If so, then they are not compliant and are knowingly in breach of the law, a crime which carries jail time for the executives involved. It scares the bejeebus out of our CEO, all we have to do is whisper that dreaded TLA and money gets thrown at the problem.
Try a CMS like Drupal (http://www.drupal.org/), gives you users (including security and roles and allowed actions), photo galleries, video upload, articles, tagging, mailing lists, google maps integration, etc, etc...
I've set one up for my brother to post photo's and videos and news and stuff for his new-born twins, works well, and keeps everyone happy as no-one gets missed from sending out stuff.
Forget all those expensive commercial riser solutions ($30 for a lump of plastic without a fan???), all I did was get two wedge-shaped rubber door-stops and stuck them under the back corners of my laptop which solved most of my airflow problems. Cost all of $2. If you need more height, use a phone book first:-) Hmmmm, perhaps I should patent the idea...
"But most of the NZ press is like that - you get used to it."
Agreed, the newspapers are very pro-M$ (especially a buisness rag like NBR who are somewhere to the right of Gengis Khan), NZ PC World has long since dropped their regular Linux column, and the imported Aussie mags are either vociferously anti-Linux or just pretend it doesn't exist (except when they need to fill up their cover DVD's, in which case they'll slap on some hard-to-use distro). And M$ had nothing to do with it I'm sure...
"In the corporate backrooms, Linux is the preferred environment."
Shhh, don't tell anyone, but there's more of it out there than anyone cares to admit to for fear of their M$ preferential pricing deals. Even the big banks...
John.
P.S. Slashdot editors need a remedial reading class, me thinks...
"For instance, I have a programming supervisor that stresses correctness in programming first, amount of time needed second, features third, but I also have upper management stressing features and amount of time needed first and correctness of programming a distant second."
Simple, do as your immediate supervisor tells you to do. It's his job to worry about what the upper management says, to worry about the deadlines, to worry about budgets, to protect you from upper management interference and stupidity.
You should only worry about what upper management is saying if your supervisor is unfair, incompetant, or you want to steal his job.
Yeah, I let a couple of mine slip into expired status, then into Redeemtion status, now eNom want $160 per domain to get them back. I suspect someone put in a bid somewhere for the domains. They haven't started squatting yet, but you just know they won't release them back into the public pool when there's money to be made.
I let them expire as I don't really need them anymore, plus eNom's prices are a rip-off at $30 p/a, or $30 to transfer out. All my other domains are with another provider for $15 p/a, who just so happen to be an eNom reseller, so you just know it doesn't cost eNom that much.
Archaeologists, Paleoentologists, Museum Curators, Art Historians: anybody working with valuable but fragile artifacts that many people want to study but are afraid to handle. Scan them in, 'paint' them with a texture, then post them in a virtual museum.
Artists could be interested in exactly the same application.
OK, people, reality check here. In all fairness to the luddites up in Canberra (for whom I did not vote), the law only requires ISP's and hosts to report child porn to the police when it is brought to their attention by a 3rd party.
They are NOT required to go looking for it.
They are NOT required to pre-screen content before allowing posting/hosting.
They are NOT required to take preventative measures.
They are NOT required to implement filtering or blocks.
Get the message?
All the law says is that they are NOT allowed to turn a blind eye when someone complains about child porn hosted on or transmitted through their facilities. Then all they have to do is forward the complaint on to the police for action.
This is no worse than doctors being required to report signs of child abuse in their patients.
Slashdot Mirror
No, then you just carry on using OpenGL 1.1 or xrender
Oh for god sakes people. Kwin provides pluggable back ends for rendering engines for compositing. Currently we support xrender and OpenGL 1.1, soon we will support the next version of OpenGL. Big deal. You can turn compositing on or off, or choose which engine is best for your platform. We will not remove the old engines or force everyone to use compositing. So stop your trolling.
You mistake his point entirely, he isn't bragging he has bluetooth, he's bewailing that Macbooks only have 2 USB ports and having a dongle wastes one of them. Your Dell I bet has 4 so it's not such an issue.
Yet another right-wing anti-UN media beat-up that has suckered the sleeping Slashdot editors in. The OIS have had this same motion passed every year for the last 10 years and it hasn't made a blind bit of difference because ITS A RECOMMENDATION and everyone ignores it!!! Nothing out of this talk-shop is ever binding, and never will be. Get a life and worry about something real.
That took all of 3 minutes research to find out. Some editor, I think his personal bias is showing...
The original version of SimCity was recently Open Sourced, more info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropolis_(software) and download. at
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/
Windows will be officially supported from 4.1 onwards, which is due for release in 2-3 months.
Mozilla makes a fortune from Firefox thanks to their Google deal, so Firefox is self-funding where-as Thunderbird has no potential revenue stream so is just seen as a drain on resources. That's what happens when your corporatise an open source project, the money clouds your vision and detracts from your goals. The tin-foil hat brigade out there might even suggest that Thunderbird, as a competitor to Google, threatens Mozilla's main revenue stream and so may well be paying the price for Googles ongoing support...
I read the article, and it makes no mention of how they measured these numbers, or who these "Market Share by Net Applications" people are. I've never heard of them, so it all seems very fuddish to me, especially with the several digits of precision on their percentages. Plucked out of their arses would be my guess, or measured from a self-selecting sample group and then extralopted to some imaginary global norm.
How much of taht Vista % comes from OEM default installs where the buyer had no option?
How does this square with other figures showing higher figures for net surfers using Linux? And has anyone figure for the number of Linux users who set their user agent to IE/Win.
Huh? No compiling needed mate, these days its easier than Windows. In Windows Granny would have to hunt the net to find the software she wants, check she has any other required software first, and all of the right version, manually install everything in the right order, reboot, and hope it all works. In a modern Linux, she just fires up the software installer, searches for what she wants, ticks a box and clicks install, and she's done. Hell, the latest version of openSuse even has a 1-click online installer that launches and installs everything from a single link on a website.
As for crappy GUI designs, that applies to most pieces of windows software too...
I've backpacked around the world a couple of times now, once for 18 months, once for 9 months, mostly through Africa, Middle East, South America, and Europe. Don't take the laptop unless you intend to make a living on the side from travel writing, otherwise its just a dead-weight that will cramp your style and cut you off from other people.
:-)
My first trip was pre-ubiquitous internet, my tech total was a shortwave radio, film slr, and a paper travel diary. Lightweight, low stress, and forced me to talk to people
My second trip I took my Palm III (AAA powered) with a fold-up keyboard to type up my diary, but to also use for games and organising things. However that felt a bit dorky to use, I was constantly buying batteries, and nobody would let me install the palm sync software needed to download my diary to my blog.
Instead I found that internet cafes were everywhere and cheap as, especially in the so-called 3rd world (even Easter Island had one!) Perversely, the USA was the country with the worst public net access and facilities, there's an inverse law in there somewhere. They are all you really need now as they are offer full services (CD/DVD burning, MS Office, Skype headphones, etc), especially on the backpacker trail.
My one suggestion is that you take an off-load option for when your digital camera gets full. My sister recently used her iPod for this, but it got corrupted and she lost a bunch of photos so be careful of this one (note you should have FAT32 formatted iPod to allow you to then off-load from the iPod at a net cafe). You'll need to get the special adaptor for this, and leave enough space for photos or be prepared to delete songs as you go.
On my last short trip I used a 4GB USB key to off-load from my 10Mp digital slr, but for my next big trip I plan to take my 60GB 2.5" hard drive in a USB case loaded with various Portabe Apps http://portableapps.com/ (especially the virus scanner!), any files I think I'll need, and all my MP3's so I can vary what's loaded on my small cheap MP3 player. It's light, small, and easy to hide. Even then, I'll still be burning photos to DVD and posting home on a regular basis just in case.
John.
Here's some advice form someone who's just finished building a new internet banking security system for the bank I work for:
DONT USE WINDOWS
Simple really.
Seriously, for someone who wasn't weaned on Windows, using a modern Linux desktop is a very viable proposition. The only trojan attack vectors we've seen are from Windows boxes. A recent survey stated that 50% of all trojanned machines run Windows XP SP2, so there's no safety there. Most are simple key-loggers which are bad enough, but there's a new wave of targetted banking site trojans designed to crack various protection schemes.
Install Linux, Mandriva is a good newbies distro. Get broadband with a hardware router/firwall. Put big icons on the panel for e-mail, browser and OpenOffice. Put a signle Bookmark for teh Banking site on the browser toolbar. Lock down the KDE desktop using Kiosk. Install Spamassasin to cut down on the phishing e-mails. Sign them up with a bank that supports Firefox (there's plenty, we do) and has a form of 2nd Factor Authentication. A smaller bank will be less of a target, but they need to be big enough to have proper security in place.
Most importantly, patiently explain to them WHY they must only ever use the bookmark to access thier banking, never reply to e-mails or follow links on other sites. Don't assume they won't understand the background, just issuing blanket orders to not do something is guaranteed to confuse and be forgotten/ignored. Explain it to them in simple, non-technical language and use analogies to things tehy do understand. If they understand the why, they will be better prepared when they do see an attack vector you haven't explicitally told them about.
John.
P.S. And yes, I've done this for my parents...
Erm, there are 32 bit versions of Linux you know, and there is a simple way to run 32 bit browser plugins in a 64 bit browser, and Flash 9 for Linux is now in public beta, so your point is?
John.
So, you're comparing the most expensive, fully featured, fully supported commercial versions of dual-licensed FOSS products with the cheapest, least featured, least supported versions of Windows products, and wonder why there's such a difference.
This has a familiar ring to it... you been reading Get The Facts recently???
John.
Hmm, lets do the math one more time shall we. Dunno what a good C++ devs salary is these days, but let's assume you pay your devs $30k a year. Lets assume that Qt makes your developer 10% more productive over MSVS. Gee, looks to me like the $3k price tag makes it an even call. If you're a start-up, then it costs you even less and that looks a better dewal. Now, factor in how much money you intend to make from your product, and the fact that its a tax write-off, and that $3k looks pretty insignificant in the greater scheme of things.
Here's the bottom line folks: if you plan to make money off a business and you can't afford to pay $3k a head to buy your staff the best tools for the job, then you seriously need to look at your business plan.
John.
Man, that's some ignorant FUD you got going there, you really don't have a clue about copyright law or dual licensing do you???
Care to back up your claims about what TT and RMS say with some references??? No??? That's because they've never said such things...
John.
Does Sarbanes Oxley apply to your firm? If so, then they are not compliant and are knowingly in breach of the law, a crime which carries jail time for the executives involved. It scares the bejeebus out of our CEO, all we have to do is whisper that dreaded TLA and money gets thrown at the problem.
John.
Try a CMS like Drupal (http://www.drupal.org/), gives you users (including security and roles and allowed actions), photo galleries, video upload, articles, tagging, mailing lists, google maps integration, etc, etc...
I've set one up for my brother to post photo's and videos and news and stuff for his new-born twins, works well, and keeps everyone happy as no-one gets missed from sending out stuff.
John.
"I managed to fix my WinXP at work, but not my KDE at home"
:-)
Have you logged a bug report?
John.
Forget all those expensive commercial riser solutions ($30 for a lump of plastic without a fan???), all I did was get two wedge-shaped rubber door-stops and stuck them under the back corners of my laptop which solved most of my airflow problems. Cost all of $2. If you need more height, use a phone book first :-) Hmmmm, perhaps I should patent the idea...
John.
"But most of the NZ press is like that - you get used to it."
Agreed, the newspapers are very pro-M$ (especially a buisness rag like NBR who are somewhere to the right of Gengis Khan), NZ PC World has long since dropped their regular Linux column, and the imported Aussie mags are either vociferously anti-Linux or just pretend it doesn't exist (except when they need to fill up their cover DVD's, in which case they'll slap on some hard-to-use distro). And M$ had nothing to do with it I'm sure...
"In the corporate backrooms, Linux is the preferred environment."
Shhh, don't tell anyone, but there's more of it out there than anyone cares to admit to for fear of their M$ preferential pricing deals. Even the big banks...
John.
P.S. Slashdot editors need a remedial reading class, me thinks...
"For instance, I have a programming supervisor that stresses correctness in programming first, amount of time needed second, features third, but I also have upper management stressing features and amount of time needed first and correctness of programming a distant second."
Simple, do as your immediate supervisor tells you to do. It's his job to worry about what the upper management says, to worry about the deadlines, to worry about budgets, to protect you from upper management interference and stupidity.
You should only worry about what upper management is saying if your supervisor is unfair, incompetant, or you want to steal his job.
John.
Yeah, I let a couple of mine slip into expired status, then into Redeemtion status, now eNom want $160 per domain to get them back. I suspect someone put in a bid somewhere for the domains. They haven't started squatting yet, but you just know they won't release them back into the public pool when there's money to be made.
I let them expire as I don't really need them anymore, plus eNom's prices are a rip-off at $30 p/a, or $30 to transfer out. All my other domains are with another provider for $15 p/a, who just so happen to be an eNom reseller, so you just know it doesn't cost eNom that much.
John.
On KDE KAlarm is a exactly what you are looking for...
Archaeologists, Paleoentologists, Museum Curators, Art Historians: anybody working with valuable but fragile artifacts that many people want to study but are afraid to handle. Scan them in, 'paint' them with a texture, then post them in a virtual museum.
Artists could be interested in exactly the same application.
John.
OK, people, reality check here. In all fairness to the luddites up in Canberra (for whom I did not vote), the law only requires ISP's and hosts to report child porn to the police when it is brought to their attention by a 3rd party.
They are NOT required to go looking for it.
They are NOT required to pre-screen content before allowing posting/hosting.
They are NOT required to take preventative measures.
They are NOT required to implement filtering or blocks.
Get the message?
All the law says is that they are NOT allowed to turn a blind eye when someone complains about child porn hosted on or transmitted through their facilities. Then all they have to do is forward the complaint on to the police for action.
This is no worse than doctors being required to report signs of child abuse in their patients.
John.