> 1) Standard control panel through EVERY distro & desktop environment. Gnome and KDE need to learn how to play nice. Obviously, this will involve some work at lower levels by others. We need everyone to create some STANDARDS here.
You could maybe lend a hand. The source is available, you know. First problem to tackle : write configuration software that will parse *any* configuration file thrown at it. That's not so trivial. Some configuration files have very hairy syntax (*cough* Sendmail *cough*). Next, make sure your software doesn't do a big mess while writing changes, this will irk power users (I did make a clean, commented/etc/fstab, and the stupid Mandrake configuration tool wrote back a mangled thing without comments or indentation. This is not acceptable). I wish you good luck. This ain't a piece of cake, to say the least.
Still, there are efforts in this area. One example would be the GNOME System Tools. Although I won't settle for something less than stellar, this kind of software could satisfy you. As for your demand that everything should be the same from distro to distro, I just can't understand why that would be. The very point of having more than one distro is, we get to choose which one is best suited to our working methods. And, generally, we end up settling on one preferred distro and we don't move anymore (instead, we go trolling on Web forums saying it is the best distro;-)) For my part, I chose Debian. But I guess it wouldn't please you. That's why you'll be so happy when you'll be able to get Mandrake or SuSE (or Fedora, or Gentoo, or even Slackware, whatever).
> 2) An installer. n00b's don't know what the hell a freakin' tar.gz file is and once they do figure it out, they don't know to where they should extract it. If Linux had a standardized software installer (complete with a dedicated file extension that could be "picked up" from a browser click)
An installer... you mean, like apt-get ? You know, that tool you just tell 'install foobar', and it downloads and installs the program foobar ? Or would you like some graphical thingie like Synaptic, where you just click on the program, then on Install ? Don't tell me you're still building from source without some specific reason on a 2004 distro ? That's SO nineties;-) Also, I gather you want the files to have specific extensions. I'm not sure why (MIME types are way better metadata to identify files), but be advised the.rpm and.deb extensions are just that. Ain't life cool ?
> 3) Rules for software companies. Right now, there's no problems with this as there are with Windows because Linux hasn't become mainstream. What am I talking about? Software installs run amok. I hate to see Windows programs putting shortcuts *everywhere*
Then, you'll just LOVE Linux : you see, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard specifies very clearly where files go on a Linux distribution : binaries (executables) in/usr/bin, libraries in/usr/lib, data files in/usr/share/{programname}, and so on. The menus also have been unified between KDE and GNOME. Not to mention that package management makes it a lot easier to know what your package has really installed, and you'll be sure to find your configuration and documents in your home directory. No more nightmares finding them in C:\Program Files\Foobar\Obscure\Path\Name\You\Would\Never\Hav e\Thought\Of. Linux makes managing your software a breeze:-)
That's it. I hope I've been helpful, and I wish you good luck in your quest for a better Linux. But remember : diversity and freedom to experiment with your own solutions is what appeals so much to Linux users. A more rigid f
I'm not sure what's so revolutionary with this program (the two links in the press release end up in a 404, so I can't check if it has something new), but an AOL dialer for Linux already exists. In fact, they've even been threatened by (and lost their old domain name to) AOL. As far as I know, their software still works today. Wouldn't this be another publicity stunt by Mr. Robertson and Lin(dows|d-ws|spire) ?
> switch to 'light' mode in your user preferences... you wont get bothered by colorschemes at all;)
This is not an ideal solution. The REAL solution is to better engineer/. to use modern technologies, like CSS layout and styling. This will allow anyone to provide his own stylesheet to display the site exactly the way they want it. Those who really want a ``lite mode'' will have the option to remove stylesheets altogether. Another tech site where I dwell already uses that method, and I appreciate it (although they unfortunately do not offer alternative stylesheets by default).
In fact, such a move has already been advocated. I don't know how Slashcode works (maybe the business logic is too much intertwined with the presentation layer, this is a common error I've seen in countless CMSes), but I really think that sites preaching standards and interoperability all day long should put their money where their words are and be standards-compliant, interoperable, and accessible. I very much hope the next Slashdot iteration will go in that direction. In the meanwhile, you can always use some filtering proxy to mangle Slashdot's code and avoid the colour scheme (hint : you just need to put a filter like s|(a href="http://)[^\.]*\.(slashdot.org)|$1$2|g in the filters file and call it for.*slashdot.org)
> I can quite live with a game that boots from CD and only works when booted from the original CD [...] This would also give the game producers a lot more control over the environment they are running in
I think you're forgetting something : to boot from the CD, the CD must contain an operating system. AFAIK, Microsoft does not provide the trimmed-down versions of its products that would be necessary for such an application. Also, even if a special version was made available to game developers, it would still have a cost, and you would be saying `` why the hell did they provide their own version of Windows while I already have a perfectly good one ? Don't they think games are already expensive enough ? ''.
There's of course Linux, but technical problems are legion : lack of drivers, absence of the tools mainly used by game developers (DirectX, for instance), can't write to your NTFS partition to save your current game, and so on. That's a lot of hurdles to overcome. Also remember people routinely tweak their settings to squeeze the last bits of performance in their games. If the game comes with outdated or not optimally configured video drivers, those guys will be enraged. If their super-duper, brand new audio card isn't supported by the drivers on the game CD, they'll make a riot. A PC is just not an Atari or Amiga. This solution really causes more problems than it solves.
That being said, I would like to ask a question since I'm not sure about all this (I rarely play games since my Atari ST days, and I don't even use Windows) : their infamous copy-protection driver doesn't appear magically on your system, right ? Hence, before you install the game, you're perfectly able to put the CD in the drive, do a dd if=/dev/cdrom of=image.iso (or whatever that is you use to do that on Microsoft systems), and you've got a copy of the game. Also, the use of a pseudo-device driver can be thwarted (albeit with a bit more work) by running the software under a virtual machine (VMWare, QEmu, and so on) with a debugger. I thus fail to see how this system is reducing piracy. Could someone enlighten me ?
It could have been better exploited had they mentioned more software, to get the message that they sell a complete solution in a single package. That's a compelling argument for most people I encounter : I tell them everything they need is probably already installed, and if not, they have it at their fingertips in an unified interface (for best results, use EasyURPMI to setup the contrib source). Voilà ! No more hunt-the-missing-software on the Net ! Save your precious time with Linux:-)
> Totem?
Yes, Totem. Although I feel it isn't such a good software. Personally, I use different players for music and videos, because they've different needs that are best solved by specific applications (for instance, I use jukeboxes like JuK and RhytmBox to sort my music).
> Good idea really.
I agree. Another interesting thing is the partnership with Carrefour. They're a big supermarket chain (a bit like Wal-Mart in the US), and certainly a good way
to sell more products. What's disappointing, though, is they won't sell it directly in their supermarkets but only through their web site. Oh well, at least it's mentioned on their front page...
> If I cite the 2003 edition of an encyclopedia, someone reading my paper can go look up the relevant article. If I cite something on Wikipedia, and someone changes the article the day after I read it, a reader looking up the cited article might find it says something completely different than what I said it says.
Not so ! Why ? Well, because Wikipedia uses computers and their near-unlimited storage and processing power *intelligently*. Want to see that in action ? A poster in this discussion linked to the Wikipedia page about nuclear warfare. Should you want to cite a stable version of it, you would go to the corresponding history page, and select the version you want after looking at the changes between versions. For instance, to link to the "nuclear warfare" page, as it stood on 2004-07-25, you would use this URL. Problem solved:-)
> Languages don't barf at syntax errors, browsers do
Correct. I posted too much in a hurry (which also probably explains the huge number of typos I made. Sorry).
> IE will be very, very lenient with XHTML syntax errors [...]. Why? [...] because they don't want to have to deal with support calls like "this page renders in other browsers and IE is broken for not rendering it"
But other browsers (like Mozilla) already choke on a malformed application/xhtml+xml page. Hence, I think this point is moot. Also remember : the only ones who will be biten by this feature will be the ones writing HTML by hand (rare, and intelligent enough to RTFM) or those using antiquated authoring tools (a way for MS to sell them FrontPage.NET 2019, with added XHTML compliance:-)
> The real problem is that {HT,X}ML wasn't designed for usability, so people make mistakes and take any shortcut they can
I disagree. You could also argue that C, or even LaTeX weren't designed for usability (and you would have a point;-) But the difference is, a syntaxically incorrect file in those language won't be accepted by the parser. Thus, you see a lot less broken C/LaTeX code floating out on the 'Net. The real mistake was to allow for syntax errors to be accepted instead of creating usable authoring tools in the first place.
> the way to fix that is to fix the f*cking {HT,X}ML syntax to be more user friendly: i.e., scrap the effort and start over and create a new, entirely different markup language for the web.
We often feel that a system is broken when it doesn't adapt to our way of thinking. For instance, I find HTML too verbose, and the table syntax is horrendous. I also find the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard to be quite hairy, my keyboard mapping is totally stupid, and I could go on and on. Since I touched a computer, I felt compelled to reinvent the wheel many times. But reinventing the wheel would mean people would lose all the know-how they've aquired over time, there would be painful transitions, and so on. It would just be rejected (think about the Dvorak keyboard. It's probably better, but it requires an adaptation period, hence its failure. Or think about Linux on the desktop). Backward compatibility (even if limited) is just necessary to get people to move over to the new standard. Trust me.
> authors will have to live with lousy syntax and browsers will continue to accept the errors users make
Are you sure ? XHTML provides for simpler syntax (by relegating the presentational code to CSS). And some browsers already do not accept errors for pages sent as XML documents. I'm not saying the Web will be totally valid overnight, but as the legacy code gets phased out, the situation can only improve, IMHO.
Pardon me, but I feel you're not being didactic enough in your answer (even though I totally agree with you), and since this issue is a pet peeve of mine, and I really want the message to be heard, I'll take the liberty on expanding on your arguments. I hope you'll forgive my rudeness:-)
So, why do we need a strict language that will barf at the first syntax error ? Well, it's simple : the current situation is a huge mess. No, wait, it's a *HUGE* mess. Currently, anyone can cobble up some shoddy webpages with some lame software (hint : it starts with "Front" and ends with "page") and slap them up on his Web space. Few will test their pages with more than one browser (namely, Internet Exploder), and even less will think of the implications of their design outside browser-land. What about search engines ? Speech synthesizers ? Intelligent agents who would like to quickly get a summary of the site to syndicate it ? All these systems have to be geared towards correcting user and software-generated mistakes to provide useful results. This demands more sophisticated engineering, render the software more complex, and is an incredible waste of resources. It also ensures that no two User Agents (be them browsers or something else) will have the same idea of a given HTML document. Thus, it renders the job of Web programmers (like yours truly) more difficult, and sometimes just insane (think Netscape 4.x). Another waste of resource, induced by the necessity to circumvent problems in UAs, themselves induced by their necessity to circumvent mistakes in the original code. It's a vicious circle that cannot be stopped, but for a shift to a more sound model. That's exactly what the W3C is promoting.
Also, I would like to debunk one persistent myth, viz. the idea that laymen would no longer be able to write Web pages when everybody will have switched to send data with a application/xhtml+xml MIME type. Let's be serious one moment : Joe Sixpack doesn't type HTML. Period. Good ol' Joe uses a WYSIWYG authoring tool (like the aforementioned abysmal failure from Seattle). I'm totally confident that these authoring tool will be updated to include support for XHTML, and even for semantic markup. So, Joe will be all of a sudden writing valid pages, without even noticing it. As for the people who write HTML in Vi, I assume they're knowledgeable enough to go read the documentation (I was, and I sure am not the sharpest knife in the drawer[*]), so there's still no problem.
That's it. I hope you'll see there are indeed reasons to move over to a more rational way of creating Web documents, and I encourage you to try out XHTML, CSS styling, and to validate your pages. Have fun !
[*] No, I'm totally unrelated to Ken Brown or AdTI:-)
> That one sounded so goofy, that it actually sounded plausible
... and it sounded plausible because (*drums*) it was true ! No, I can't fathom how the hell people would be so stupid, either. In fact, it's truly frightening to think the same guys who can't understand that a SS card with "SPECIMEN" written all over it is not genuine have the right to vote for the leaders of their country...
> be patient! The mortality rate, literacy rate, and GNP don't just skyrocket because Saddam steps down. Think long-term...you know, mutual funds?
You're right. But there are other, short-term indicators for this kind of numbers. For hospitals, you can ask how many patients they handled every year before the war (or even better, before the sanctions. After all, if the sanctions were administered rationally, they shouldn't have crippled the hospitals, right ?) and how much they've handled in the last year. Also, how many were healed successfully ?
How many students enrolled this year ? Was attendance as high than before (I hear that lots of people keep their children at home for fear they could be harmed on their way to school) ? Also, the exams attendance and results would be interesting.
Even businesses' efficiency can be checked : how many exports and imports did take place ? What were the incomes or losses of the most prominent firms ? How many businesses were created, and conversely, how many declared bankruptcy in the last year ? Of course, there are a lot of external factors, but there should be signs of an amelioration. If so, they would be more meaningful than numbers about schools and hospitals that do not take into account the real value they provide back to the community. It's never positive to just be a naysayer, but a dose of healthy skepticism is never a bad idea, either:-)
> there's been a couple of reporters who mentioned they can get some kind of dsl service there at like 256k
Yes, Uruklink has 256kbps ADSL available to some parts of Baghdad, the Iraqi LUG guys mentioned it on/. (AFAIK, the rest of the city and all the country is still on dialup, except perhaps in the Kurdish-controlled zone). But how many people can afford the service ? The fact that cybercafes are described as ``packed'' is reminiscent of Africa, where residential Internet access is still unusual.
Besides, as you put it, they get between 4 and sixteen hours of electricity per day. That's already problematic for people, but even more for businesses (if your refrigerator stops working for twenty hours, you have just lost your groceries. If the local shop has the same problem, they've lost a lot of money, and to avoid losing more, they'll have to buy generators and gasoline. Talk about rebuilding the economy).
> the main roads and highways are mostly ok too, some potholes, but i've seen worse in ohio and pennsylvania
Well, I'm not sure what the point of the comparison is. AFAICT, the main highways were OK even before the war (maybe even a little better, I'm told Main Battle Tanks aren't exactly kind to the roads they run on).
> we (the iraqis and us) have been able to reopen like 1200 schools, the hospitals, and even the colleges.
Fine, fine. Well done (I'll forget some of these schools have been given a shoddy job by unscrupulous contractors, and their principals were indignant at the time). Now, these feats have been hailed for a long time as a big progress. But the question is : has there really been an *improvement* w.r.t. the previous situation ? I.e. Were those schools and universities closed previously, or were they closed because of the war ?
Besides, you don't quantify progress with the number of schools or hospitals or businesses that happen to be open. You quantify progress by judging their real value. I.e., what is the literacy rate ? What is the mortality rate ? What is the GNP per capita ? What are the trends in all these areas ?
The same reasoning can be applied to the security situation : we regularly hear about the 90,000 policemen that are back on the job. That's not a good indicator. What needs to be known is, how many robberies, murders, kidnappings, etc. have happened in the last period. And that doesn't looks good. Iraqi newspapers complain regularly about the number of wealthy people (or their children) that are kidnapped. Even the police grudgingly admit it's bad. And this has nothing to do with the insurgency or islamic nutcases. The police is just inefficient. And I'll trade law and order for potholes on the freeway anytime !
> Entrepreneurs are opening up shops again, and they should get their IQ domain back....
Yes, we at least agree on that one. And I would add, they should get it back, and not outsource it to some foreign company. Let the new government create a non-profit like the InterNIC, lease two links, get an ASN from the RIPE and some DNS servers and at least, the money that comes from domain names will go back to the Iraqis, this time...
> Seriously, if you write your makefiles and your
> code in a responsibly portable manner, there's
> absolutely no reason for autoconf or automake.
Well, that's right except sometimes you can't avoid some #ifdef quirkyness (because a function has to be invoked with different parameters in some foreign C library you target, or because Windows uses '\' instead of '/' as a directory delimiter, etc.). In these cases, the simplest way to go is to write a Makefile.Linux, a Makefile.FreeBSD, a Makefile.Win32, and so on, and instruct the user to cp Makefile.{your_arch} Makefile && make. Which works, of course, except it's more work (and more chances you'll make a mistake in one of the Makefiles) for you and a little annoyance for the user. Build configuration systems are supposed to do the tedious work for you, and if they _really_ did, that would be great. The real problem is, instead of easing the build process, they (at least the evil Autoconf) frequently add a layer of complexity and misleading errors...
I was about to mention SCons, too, but other people already did (it always pay to check other comments just before posting, especially on/.:-)
To sum it up : there is no shortage of alternatives to the incredibly hairy Autoconf/Automake nightmare. The problem is, people are still using them for the very same reason they use CVS instead of Arch/Subversion, or Sendmail instead of Postfix/Exim : because they're considered ``standard'' tools, and people feel more comfortable with software they know to be used by plenty of other people (millions of programmers can't all be wrong. Can they ?). I really hope they'll stop making this kind of mistakes soon, so I won't need to curse them everytime I have to debug some Autoconf breakage...
> The FSF asks you to give GNU a share of the credit, it is not a demand
But... I see credits to them. Everyday. Look:
$ ls --version ls (coreutils) 5.2.1 Ecrit par Richard Stallman et David MacKenzie.
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
That's not like people don't know where the software come from...
> GNU is an operating system
Fine. Please show me the operating system hidden in the GNU tools. I looked and saw this:
A C library (GNU libc)
A C compiler (GNU Compiler Collection)
A collection of utilities (GNU Coreutils)
Programming tools (GNU Bison, GNU Autoconf, GNU Debugger)
And more, but nothing running processes and exporting an API to access hardware. The only thing I think could qualify is GNU Emacs (I'm absolutely certain you could get that thing to run a computer by typing M-x generate-microkernel-run-it-then-make-a-coffee) but I'm not in a position to test that claim, having ejected it from my machine...
> Now you can run GNU without the Linux kernal; there are variants of GNU running with a NetBSD kernal and the official GNU running with the HURD kernal replacement
Very well, let's have them call GNU what is rightly GNU (i.e. the HURD) and Linux what is Linux. BTW, every person I've heard talking about the ``official'' GNU referred to it as the HURD. Maybe I'm not the only one thinking a kernel is the cornerstone of an operating system:-)
> Calling things what they are is more technically accurate and it's reasonable to call works by the names their creators gave them.
Exactly. Let's see : an operating system is distinguished from another primarily by its kernel, so it's more technically accurate to call it that way. And the creator of Linux gave it the name ``Linux'', so it's reasonable to call it so. I wholeheartedly agree;-)
There are other reasons to stop prepending things to the OS name, by the way...
My take on this : Stallman (who recently did a speech in my area, and didn't forget to tell us that ``GNU is the operating system and Linux is its kernel'' amongst other questionable things, like Open Source is not about freedom. He must have overlooked the Open Source Definition...) has seen the Linux OS gain lots of attention, and he's disgruntled people talk less about the GNU project. Still, he's wrong in thinking this causes problems for GNU or the FSF : quite to the contrary, the number of people that have started writing (or even hearing about) free software because of Linux has greatly helped the GNU project approach the goal of having a computing environment made only of free software. He should be grateful of this. Instead, he's obsessed with safeguarding a message he thinks is ``suppressed'' and churns out non-free licenses (like the GFDL) for this purpose (I'd be insterested in seeing only one occurrence of a distributor removing philosophical texts from the GNU documentations. I don't think this ever happened). That's sad, and not very positive, IMHO.
> Step 3: The crack a bunch of piracy rings. This is totally in line with the spirit and proper use of copyright. If some company were doing something similar with GPL software, we'd go after them and we would win.
While I perfectly know these people are infringing the law, and I do not approve of their actions, I would like to point out a flaw in your analogy : a company integrating GPL'd source in proprietary software generally does it for profit, while these groups don't charge for their releases (the press release is a bit misleading : Class & Co. aren't the people who put pirated DVD into markets in China like it could be inferred from the ``syndicate'' moniker, they distribute cracks and pirated software on the Net).
This may seem irrelevant, but I do think this is morally less reprehensible. In fact, some countries have for a long time agreed with that view, e.g. until a few years ago (2001, I think) Italian law allowed not-for-profit copying. I think some lawmaker back in time had the same reasoning as Richard Stallman when he says it ``isn't wrong to help your neighbour''. The law was later changed under pressure from the usual suspects (the Business Software Alliance, et al, primarily) but nonetheless it shows that considering such acts as reprehensible isn't so uncontroversial...
> When you get the chance, how bout keepin an eye open for Osama?
But it's precisely about that. I mean, now Al-Qaida will have to spend lots of money buying legal copies of Splinter Cell to train its terrorist operatives. That's less money to buy explosives for their next attacks. See the logic ? How clever. All hail John Ashcroft !
>But like the AC poster, I'd like more info about their troubles, if you could find a URL...
Hmmmm... can't find much (most of what we heard was on their internal news server and on IRC at the time), but there are still some messages from GANDI employees on Usenet lying around. This thread talks about a personnel strike, and this one mentions them sorting it out in court (that's all in French, a ruling in October is mentioned by a poster, but I can't seem to find it). Since I didn't hear about it since then, I suppose they've settled their matters by now.
Anyway, from a customer point of view, their internal problems aren't really important (unless they have an impact on service quality, but I rarely hear of problems with them). As for their TOS, they are very good and straightforward, so yes, I would also say to keep your domains with them. As for me, I moved them, but mainly because (1) they don't do some ``exotic'' TLDs I happen to use which forced me to use several registrars, and (2) I've found another registrar who does and happens to be located in my area, which facilitates communication (like in, if I've a problem, I just go to their offices/phone them with just local charges). If you haven't such requirements, just keep them : in the registrar business, you know what you're leaving but you often don't know what you're getting into (and the ICANN doesn't seem to give a damn about what registrars do)...
> At least I have a reasonable expectation with Go Daddy that they will not suspend my domain without a good reason.
Let me check : between a registrar that disables a domain because supposed abuse has been reported and they didn't bother to check with the domain owner (!) and a registrar who will not act unless it is compelled to do so by a court of law, which one will you choose ?
> Bad things happened, that's not a reason to erase inanimate, historical, objects from history.
Is that some reference to the infamous Yahoo! story ? And if so, what has this got to do with GANDI ? Can you cite an example where GANDI disabled a customer's domain ? Anyway, yes, if you run a Nazi site, it is better to put it elsewhere, just in case someone would give a damn. But that's an exception (note that I totally share your opinion on the aforementioned laws, though, and the sooner they'll be gone, the better. I would just like to point out that these are not as much oppressive as you seem to think, and most importantly, I don't know of any GANDI customer being biten by those laws).
Let me be clear : I'm not a total fan of GANDI. They started out as an `` ethical '' registrar (arguing against the high prices demanded for something so mundane as a record in a database and in some domain name servers) and then last year their employees had to drag the managers to court because they were screwing them and generally mismanaging the company egregiously. But arguments like `` your free speech is in danger '' are just not warranted, IMHO. And my AntiEuropeanSentiment Detector[tm] just went off (I knew I made a good purchase when I bought this add-on to my Troll-O-Meter[tm]:-)
> I would also like to note that I have personal experience with some proboards.com users abusing the send message to all members capability.
That's all well and good, but victims should complain first to the site manager, then, if it doesn't work, to the upstream hoster or IP transit provider. I think it's not a Good Thing when registrars lock domains away from you (although I suppose they did reserve this possibility in their TOS. Thus today's word of advice is : always, ALWAYS, check the contracts you've with your suppliers. Then double-check them. And if you've a doubt about some obscure point, have them clarify it in writing. Otherwise, you'll *get* screwed).
> Yep I know my evil "isp" hijacked the internet and put a transparent firewall but I CANT switch "isp" there is only one "real" adsl provider in spain Telefonica
OK. What I'm going to explain isn't truly Netiquette-compliant, but anyway, here we go : assuming your friendly ISP has setup its transparent proxy only to save bandwidth and not to censor you, you should still have access to high ports, lets say... 3128, 8080, etc. See what I mean ? Find a list of open proxies, pick one at random, and proxy your requests from there. Just remember to avoid Chinese proxies, it would be stupid to go to this length to avoid the ban just to discover that today/. is blocked by the Great Firewall Of China;-)
Of course it would be better to find some friendly admin at a non-http-redirected site who would give you access to his proxy server, but then not everybody has this kind of friends. Another alternative : win at the lottery, order a leased line. I don't think they will redirect traffic on it (yes, I'm aware of the problem with the lottery part of the scheme:-)
Oh, and don't forget to pester your Government to deregulate Internet access. Here, we're beginning to see good offers since the idiots at Wanadoo (France Telecom's incompetent subsidiary) aren't alone on the DSLAMs anymore. You should do the same in Spain...
I don't know about the domain problem. To be frank, I didn't do extensive tests (and I'm totally lost in the Mozilla codebase. Yes, shame on me, I'm a truly lousy coder). And yes, you're right, I'd forgotten that little icon. In fact, I think I'd dismissed the window the first time it appeared (like all those `` by submitting this form, you will be sending data on the Evil Internet. Honest. Do you really want to do that ? '' windows) and I rapidly overlooked the icon. Note that I cited this issue mostly for the record : my popup/banner ads/stupid js code problems are handled by Privoxy. These times, whatever browser I happen to use, I wouldn't dare using it without a filtering proxy to shield it. Still, this icon could be another reason to convince my friends to switch to a free browser. Thus, thanks to everyone for reminding me of that feature;-)
> how exactly could it do better than blocking *all* popup ads I don't want to see?
Hmmmmm... Let me check... What about blocking the popup ads I don't want to see AND not blocking the useful pop-ups I need on some websites ? Konqueror does just that with its `` intelligent '' (grrrr... why is/. stripping my angle quotes ? The lameness filter doesn't like good typography ?) javascript mode, where it selectively allows popups based on the event that triggered them : an onClick() would be A-OK while an onLoad() would be a big no-no. Mozilla doesn't seem to care and still forces me to (1) wonder why the Hell my clicks don't seem to do anything, (2) look at the $@!# URI, (3) go into the preferences screen and (4) unblock the site. Plain stupid.
OK, Moz has some good things (a very good rendering, to start with), but I still find it slow (compared to Konqi), and sometimes just stupid (I'm still wondering what use has XUL besides giving me a browser where some widgets look like my other apps and others do not, and slowing down the software), or broken (why can't I choose which mailer to launch on a mailto: link ?). I'll stop here the rant, but I frankly don't think the quest for the ideal browser stops at Mozilla's FTP site.
Oh, and BTW, if you want to compare pop-up blockers, here's a site that could be of interest...
> Now, as for the Euro symbol, you're going to have even more (none-)fun, because you aren't going to find a suitable ISO eight-bit encoding that includes it. The 8859's just aren't going to do it for you.
Sorry, but I have to disagree here : the ISO-8859-15 (latin0) has the EuroSign at offset 0xA4 (IIRC this position was occupied in ISO-8859-1 by a rather unused character, I think it was the 1/2 but I'm too lazy to check). Most if not all West European Linux users already have switched to ISO-8859-15. Windows users, of course, have their own charset (Windows-1252), but they are largely compatible, from what I saw Windows just stuffs a bunch of characters in the range 0x80-0xA0, but the rest is unchanged, including the Euro position.
Now, don't get me wrong : I wholeheartedly agree that Unicode is The Right Solution[tm]. Still, Unicode support is at the moment a bit hesitant (I tried it : after generating the right locales, loading the correct fonts, and so on, I saw several applications broken by the change. I suspect some libraries still aren't ready). Thus, until the OS vendors (and the hardware ones : I would love if my BIOS was intelligent enough to know I've not an US keyboard) have cleaned up the mess and made their systems easy to migrate, the much-despised ISO charsets are the only semi-valid solution. Better not to ditch them too fast...
> And that's too bad. The Euro key is just shift-opt-2... I correspond regularly in German and even the umlaut is easily accomplished with the logical way that extra characters are handled on the Mac. It is dead simple.
I don't know about Macs but my Linux has a very intuitive way to generate special characters. Want Euro ? Type Compose (a special key, usually the Windows Menu key), then E + = (the Euro sign is basically an E crossed by an '=' sign). Everything is like that : A with grave accent ? Easy : A + `. u with umlaut ? u + ". Cent symbol ? c +/. Copyright ? c + o, of course. And so on. If you've some idea of the character's shape, you'll probably be able to find the good combination immediately. Now, *that's* intuitive;-)
Slashdot Mirror
> 1) Standard control panel through EVERY distro & desktop environment. Gnome and KDE need to learn how to play nice. Obviously, this will involve some work at lower levels by others. We need everyone to create some STANDARDS here.
You could maybe lend a hand. The source is available, you know. First problem to tackle : write configuration software that will parse *any* configuration file thrown at it. That's not so trivial. Some configuration files have very hairy syntax (*cough* Sendmail *cough*). Next, make sure your software doesn't do a big mess while writing changes, this will irk power users (I did make a clean, commented /etc/fstab, and the stupid Mandrake configuration tool wrote back a mangled thing without comments or indentation. This is not acceptable). I wish you good luck. This ain't a piece of cake, to say the least.
Still, there are efforts in this area. One example would be the GNOME System Tools. Although I won't settle for something less than stellar, this kind of software could satisfy you. As for your demand that everything should be the same from distro to distro, I just can't understand why that would be. The very point of having more than one distro is, we get to choose which one is best suited to our working methods. And, generally, we end up settling on one preferred distro and we don't move anymore (instead, we go trolling on Web forums saying it is the best distro ;-)) For my part, I chose Debian. But I guess it wouldn't please you. That's why you'll be so happy when you'll be able to get Mandrake or SuSE (or Fedora, or Gentoo, or even Slackware, whatever).
> 2) An installer. n00b's don't know what the hell a freakin' tar.gz file is and once they do figure it out, they don't know to where they should extract it. If Linux had a standardized software installer (complete with a dedicated file extension that could be "picked up" from a browser click)
An installer... you mean, like apt-get ? You know, that tool you just tell 'install foobar', and it downloads and installs the program foobar ? Or would you like some graphical thingie like Synaptic, where you just click on the program, then on Install ? Don't tell me you're still building from source without some specific reason on a 2004 distro ? That's SO nineties ;-) Also, I gather you want the files to have specific extensions. I'm not sure why (MIME types are way better metadata to identify files), but be advised the .rpm and .deb extensions are just that. Ain't life cool ?
> 3) Rules for software companies. Right now, there's no problems with this as there are with Windows because Linux hasn't become mainstream. What am I talking about? Software installs run amok. I hate to see Windows programs putting shortcuts *everywhere*
Then, you'll just LOVE Linux : you see, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard specifies very clearly where files go on a Linux distribution : binaries (executables) in /usr/bin, libraries in /usr/lib, data files in /usr/share/{programname}, and so on. The menus also have been unified between KDE and GNOME. Not to mention that package management makes it a lot easier to know what your package has really installed, and you'll be sure to find your configuration and documents in your home directory. No more nightmares finding them in C:\Program Files\Foobar\Obscure\Path\Name\You\Would\Never\Hav e\Thought\Of. Linux makes managing your software a breeze :-)
That's it. I hope I've been helpful, and I wish you good luck in your quest for a better Linux. But remember : diversity and freedom to experiment with your own solutions is what appeals so much to Linux users. A more rigid f
I'm not sure what's so revolutionary with this program (the two links in the press release end up in a 404, so I can't check if it has something new), but an AOL dialer for Linux already exists. In fact, they've even been threatened by (and lost their old domain name to) AOL. As far as I know, their software still works today. Wouldn't this be another publicity stunt by Mr. Robertson and Lin(dows|d-ws|spire) ?
> switch to 'light' mode in your user preferences... you wont get bothered by colorschemes at all ;)
This is not an ideal solution. The REAL solution is to better engineer /. to use modern technologies, like CSS layout and styling. This will allow anyone to provide his own stylesheet to display the site exactly the way they want it. Those who really want a ``lite mode'' will have the option to remove stylesheets altogether. Another tech site where I dwell already uses that method, and I appreciate it (although they unfortunately do not offer alternative stylesheets by default).
In fact, such a move has already been advocated. I don't know how Slashcode works (maybe the business logic is too much intertwined with the presentation layer, this is a common error I've seen in countless CMSes), but I really think that sites preaching standards and interoperability all day long should put their money where their words are and be standards-compliant, interoperable, and accessible. I very much hope the next Slashdot iteration will go in that direction. In the meanwhile, you can always use some filtering proxy to mangle Slashdot's code and avoid the colour scheme (hint : you just need to put a filter like s|(a href="http://)[^\.]*\.(slashdot.org)|$1$2|g in the filters file and call it for .*slashdot.org)
> I can quite live with a game that boots from CD and only works when booted from the original CD [...] This would also give the game producers a lot more control over the environment they are running in
I think you're forgetting something : to boot from the CD, the CD must contain an operating system. AFAIK, Microsoft does not provide the trimmed-down versions of its products that would be necessary for such an application. Also, even if a special version was made available to game developers, it would still have a cost, and you would be saying `` why the hell did they provide their own version of Windows while I already have a perfectly good one ? Don't they think games are already expensive enough ? ''.
There's of course Linux, but technical problems are legion : lack of drivers, absence of the tools mainly used by game developers (DirectX, for instance), can't write to your NTFS partition to save your current game, and so on. That's a lot of hurdles to overcome. Also remember people routinely tweak their settings to squeeze the last bits of performance in their games. If the game comes with outdated or not optimally configured video drivers, those guys will be enraged. If their super-duper, brand new audio card isn't supported by the drivers on the game CD, they'll make a riot. A PC is just not an Atari or Amiga. This solution really causes more problems than it solves.
That being said, I would like to ask a question since I'm not sure about all this (I rarely play games since my Atari ST days, and I don't even use Windows) : their infamous copy-protection driver doesn't appear magically on your system, right ? Hence, before you install the game, you're perfectly able to put the CD in the drive, do a dd if=/dev/cdrom of=image.iso (or whatever that is you use to do that on Microsoft systems), and you've got a copy of the game. Also, the use of a pseudo-device driver can be thwarted (albeit with a bit more work) by running the software under a virtual machine (VMWare, QEmu, and so on) with a debugger. I thus fail to see how this system is reducing piracy. Could someone enlighten me ?
> I love this quote
It could have been better exploited had they mentioned more software, to get the message that they sell a complete solution in a single package. That's a compelling argument for most people I encounter : I tell them everything they need is probably already installed, and if not, they have it at their fingertips in an unified interface (for best results, use EasyURPMI to setup the contrib source). Voilà ! No more hunt-the-missing-software on the Net ! Save your precious time with Linux :-)
> Totem?
Yes, Totem. Although I feel it isn't such a good software. Personally, I use different players for music and videos, because they've different needs that are best solved by specific applications (for instance, I use jukeboxes like JuK and RhytmBox to sort my music).
> Good idea really.
I agree. Another interesting thing is the partnership with Carrefour. They're a big supermarket chain (a bit like Wal-Mart in the US), and certainly a good way to sell more products. What's disappointing, though, is they won't sell it directly in their supermarkets but only through their web site. Oh well, at least it's mentioned on their front page...
> If I cite the 2003 edition of an encyclopedia, someone reading my paper can go look up the relevant article. If I cite something on Wikipedia, and someone changes the article the day after I read it, a reader looking up the cited article might find it says something completely different than what I said it says.
Not so ! Why ? Well, because Wikipedia uses computers and their near-unlimited storage and processing power *intelligently*. Want to see that in action ? A poster in this discussion linked to the Wikipedia page about nuclear warfare. Should you want to cite a stable version of it, you would go to the corresponding history page, and select the version you want after looking at the changes between versions. For instance, to link to the "nuclear warfare" page, as it stood on 2004-07-25, you would use this URL. Problem solved :-)
> Languages don't barf at syntax errors, browsers do
Correct. I posted too much in a hurry (which also probably explains the huge number of typos I made. Sorry).
> IE will be very, very lenient with XHTML syntax errors [...]. Why? [...] because they don't want to have to deal with support calls like "this page renders in other browsers and IE is broken for not rendering it"
But other browsers (like Mozilla) already choke on a malformed application/xhtml+xml page. Hence, I think this point is moot. Also remember : the only ones who will be biten by this feature will be the ones writing HTML by hand (rare, and intelligent enough to RTFM) or those using antiquated authoring tools (a way for MS to sell them FrontPage.NET 2019, with added XHTML compliance :-)
> The real problem is that {HT,X}ML wasn't designed for usability, so people make mistakes and take any shortcut they can
I disagree. You could also argue that C, or even LaTeX weren't designed for usability (and you would have a point ;-) But the difference is, a syntaxically incorrect file in those language won't be accepted by the parser. Thus, you see a lot less broken C/LaTeX code floating out on the 'Net. The real mistake was to allow for syntax errors to be accepted instead of creating usable authoring tools in the first place.
> the way to fix that is to fix the f*cking {HT,X}ML syntax to be more user friendly: i.e., scrap the effort and start over and create a new, entirely different markup language for the web.
We often feel that a system is broken when it doesn't adapt to our way of thinking. For instance, I find HTML too verbose, and the table syntax is horrendous. I also find the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard to be quite hairy, my keyboard mapping is totally stupid, and I could go on and on. Since I touched a computer, I felt compelled to reinvent the wheel many times. But reinventing the wheel would mean people would lose all the know-how they've aquired over time, there would be painful transitions, and so on. It would just be rejected (think about the Dvorak keyboard. It's probably better, but it requires an adaptation period, hence its failure. Or think about Linux on the desktop). Backward compatibility (even if limited) is just necessary to get people to move over to the new standard. Trust me.
> authors will have to live with lousy syntax and browsers will continue to accept the errors users make
Are you sure ? XHTML provides for simpler syntax (by relegating the presentational code to CSS). And some browsers already do not accept errors for pages sent as XML documents. I'm not saying the Web will be totally valid overnight, but as the legacy code gets phased out, the situation can only improve, IMHO.
Pardon me, but I feel you're not being didactic enough in your answer (even though I totally agree with you), and since this issue is a pet peeve of mine, and I really want the message to be heard, I'll take the liberty on expanding on your arguments. I hope you'll forgive my rudeness :-)
So, why do we need a strict language that will barf at the first syntax error ? Well, it's simple : the current situation is a huge mess. No, wait, it's a *HUGE* mess. Currently, anyone can cobble up some shoddy webpages with some lame software (hint : it starts with "Front" and ends with "page") and slap them up on his Web space. Few will test their pages with more than one browser (namely, Internet Exploder), and even less will think of the implications of their design outside browser-land. What about search engines ? Speech synthesizers ? Intelligent agents who would like to quickly get a summary of the site to syndicate it ? All these systems have to be geared towards correcting user and software-generated mistakes to provide useful results. This demands more sophisticated engineering, render the software more complex, and is an incredible waste of resources. It also ensures that no two User Agents (be them browsers or something else) will have the same idea of a given HTML document. Thus, it renders the job of Web programmers (like yours truly) more difficult, and sometimes just insane (think Netscape 4.x). Another waste of resource, induced by the necessity to circumvent problems in UAs, themselves induced by their necessity to circumvent mistakes in the original code. It's a vicious circle that cannot be stopped, but for a shift to a more sound model. That's exactly what the W3C is promoting.
Also, I would like to debunk one persistent myth, viz. the idea that laymen would no longer be able to write Web pages when everybody will have switched to send data with a application/xhtml+xml MIME type. Let's be serious one moment : Joe Sixpack doesn't type HTML. Period. Good ol' Joe uses a WYSIWYG authoring tool (like the aforementioned abysmal failure from Seattle). I'm totally confident that these authoring tool will be updated to include support for XHTML, and even for semantic markup. So, Joe will be all of a sudden writing valid pages, without even noticing it. As for the people who write HTML in Vi, I assume they're knowledgeable enough to go read the documentation (I was, and I sure am not the sharpest knife in the drawer[*]), so there's still no problem.
That's it. I hope you'll see there are indeed reasons to move over to a more rational way of creating Web documents, and I encourage you to try out XHTML, CSS styling, and to validate your pages. Have fun !
[*] No, I'm totally unrelated to Ken Brown or AdTI :-)
> That one sounded so goofy, that it actually sounded plausible
... and it sounded plausible because (*drums*) it was true ! No, I can't fathom how the hell people would be so stupid, either. In fact, it's truly frightening to think the same guys who can't understand that a SS card with "SPECIMEN" written all over it is not genuine have the right to vote for the leaders of their country...
> be patient! The mortality rate, literacy rate, and GNP don't just skyrocket because Saddam steps down. Think long-term...you know, mutual funds?
You're right. But there are other, short-term indicators for this kind of numbers. For hospitals, you can ask how many patients they handled every year before the war (or even better, before the sanctions. After all, if the sanctions were administered rationally, they shouldn't have crippled the hospitals, right ?) and how much they've handled in the last year. Also, how many were healed successfully ?
How many students enrolled this year ? Was attendance as high than before (I hear that lots of people keep their children at home for fear they could be harmed on their way to school) ? Also, the exams attendance and results would be interesting.
Even businesses' efficiency can be checked : how many exports and imports did take place ? What were the incomes or losses of the most prominent firms ? How many businesses were created, and conversely, how many declared bankruptcy in the last year ? Of course, there are a lot of external factors, but there should be signs of an amelioration. If so, they would be more meaningful than numbers about schools and hospitals that do not take into account the real value they provide back to the community. It's never positive to just be a naysayer, but a dose of healthy skepticism is never a bad idea, either :-)
> there's been a couple of reporters who mentioned they can get some kind of dsl service there at like 256k
Yes, Uruklink has 256kbps ADSL available to some parts of Baghdad, the Iraqi LUG guys mentioned it on /. (AFAIK, the rest of the city and all the country is still on dialup, except perhaps in the Kurdish-controlled zone). But how many people can afford the service ? The fact that cybercafes are described as ``packed'' is reminiscent of Africa, where residential Internet access is still unusual.
Besides, as you put it, they get between 4 and sixteen hours of electricity per day. That's already problematic for people, but even more for businesses (if your refrigerator stops working for twenty hours, you have just lost your groceries. If the local shop has the same problem, they've lost a lot of money, and to avoid losing more, they'll have to buy generators and gasoline. Talk about rebuilding the economy).
> the main roads and highways are mostly ok too, some potholes, but i've seen worse in ohio and pennsylvania
Well, I'm not sure what the point of the comparison is. AFAICT, the main highways were OK even before the war (maybe even a little better, I'm told Main Battle Tanks aren't exactly kind to the roads they run on).
> we (the iraqis and us) have been able to reopen like 1200 schools, the hospitals, and even the colleges.
Fine, fine. Well done (I'll forget some of these schools have been given a shoddy job by unscrupulous contractors, and their principals were indignant at the time). Now, these feats have been hailed for a long time as a big progress. But the question is : has there really been an *improvement* w.r.t. the previous situation ? I.e. Were those schools and universities closed previously, or were they closed because of the war ?
Besides, you don't quantify progress with the number of schools or hospitals or businesses that happen to be open. You quantify progress by judging their real value. I.e., what is the literacy rate ? What is the mortality rate ? What is the GNP per capita ? What are the trends in all these areas ?
The same reasoning can be applied to the security situation : we regularly hear about the 90,000 policemen that are back on the job. That's not a good indicator. What needs to be known is, how many robberies, murders, kidnappings, etc. have happened in the last period. And that doesn't looks good. Iraqi newspapers complain regularly about the number of wealthy people (or their children) that are kidnapped. Even the police grudgingly admit it's bad. And this has nothing to do with the insurgency or islamic nutcases. The police is just inefficient. And I'll trade law and order for potholes on the freeway anytime !
> Entrepreneurs are opening up shops again, and they should get their IQ domain back....
Yes, we at least agree on that one. And I would add, they should get it back, and not outsource it to some foreign company. Let the new government create a non-profit like the InterNIC, lease two links, get an ASN from the RIPE and some DNS servers and at least, the money that comes from domain names will go back to the Iraqis, this time...
> Seriously, if you write your makefiles and your
> code in a responsibly portable manner, there's
> absolutely no reason for autoconf or automake.
Well, that's right except sometimes you can't avoid some #ifdef quirkyness (because a function has to be invoked with different parameters in some foreign C library you target, or because Windows uses '\' instead of '/' as a directory delimiter, etc.). In these cases, the simplest way to go is to write a Makefile.Linux, a Makefile.FreeBSD, a Makefile.Win32, and so on, and instruct the user to cp Makefile.{your_arch} Makefile && make. Which works, of course, except it's more work (and more chances you'll make a mistake in one of the Makefiles) for you and a little annoyance for the user. Build configuration systems are supposed to do the tedious work for you, and if they _really_ did, that would be great. The real problem is, instead of easing the build process, they (at least the evil Autoconf) frequently add a layer of complexity and misleading errors...
You can find it at pmk.sourceforge.net
Or else, you can have a look at A-A-P, by nobody else than Bram Moolenaar, the author of the One True Editor, a.k.a. ViM :-)
There is also Package-framework, by Tom Lord, the author of the infamous Arch SCM.
I was about to mention SCons, too, but other people already did (it always pay to check other comments just before posting, especially on /. :-)
To sum it up : there is no shortage of alternatives to the incredibly hairy Autoconf/Automake nightmare. The problem is, people are still using them for the very same reason they use CVS instead of Arch/Subversion, or Sendmail instead of Postfix/Exim : because they're considered ``standard'' tools, and people feel more comfortable with software they know to be used by plenty of other people (millions of programmers can't all be wrong. Can they ?). I really hope they'll stop making this kind of mistakes soon, so I won't need to curse them everytime I have to debug some Autoconf breakage...
> The FSF asks you to give GNU a share of the credit, it is not a demand
But... I see credits to them. Everyday. Look :
That's not like people don't know where the software come from...
> GNU is an operating system
Fine. Please show me the operating system hidden in the GNU tools. I looked and saw this :
And more, but nothing running processes and exporting an API to access hardware. The only thing I think could qualify is GNU Emacs (I'm absolutely certain you could get that thing to run a computer by typing M-x generate-microkernel-run-it-then-make-a-coffee) but I'm not in a position to test that claim, having ejected it from my machine...
> Now you can run GNU without the Linux kernal; there are variants of GNU running with a NetBSD kernal and the official GNU running with the HURD kernal replacement
Very well, let's have them call GNU what is rightly GNU (i.e. the HURD) and Linux what is Linux. BTW, every person I've heard talking about the ``official'' GNU referred to it as the HURD. Maybe I'm not the only one thinking a kernel is the cornerstone of an operating system :-)
> Calling things what they are is more technically accurate and it's reasonable to call works by the names their creators gave them.
Exactly. Let's see : an operating system is distinguished from another primarily by its kernel, so it's more technically accurate to call it that way. And the creator of Linux gave it the name ``Linux'', so it's reasonable to call it so. I wholeheartedly agree ;-)
There are other reasons to stop prepending things to the OS name, by the way...
My take on this : Stallman (who recently did a speech in my area, and didn't forget to tell us that ``GNU is the operating system and Linux is its kernel'' amongst other questionable things, like Open Source is not about freedom. He must have overlooked the Open Source Definition...) has seen the Linux OS gain lots of attention, and he's disgruntled people talk less about the GNU project. Still, he's wrong in thinking this causes problems for GNU or the FSF : quite to the contrary, the number of people that have started writing (or even hearing about) free software because of Linux has greatly helped the GNU project approach the goal of having a computing environment made only of free software. He should be grateful of this. Instead, he's obsessed with safeguarding a message he thinks is ``suppressed'' and churns out non-free licenses (like the GFDL) for this purpose (I'd be insterested in seeing only one occurrence of a distributor removing philosophical texts from the GNU documentations. I don't think this ever happened). That's sad, and not very positive, IMHO.
> Step 3: The crack a bunch of piracy rings. This is totally in line with the spirit and proper use of copyright. If some company were doing something similar with GPL software, we'd go after them and we would win.
While I perfectly know these people are infringing the law, and I do not approve of their actions, I would like to point out a flaw in your analogy : a company integrating GPL'd source in proprietary software generally does it for profit, while these groups don't charge for their releases (the press release is a bit misleading : Class & Co. aren't the people who put pirated DVD into markets in China like it could be inferred from the ``syndicate'' moniker, they distribute cracks and pirated software on the Net).
This may seem irrelevant, but I do think this is morally less reprehensible. In fact, some countries have for a long time agreed with that view, e.g. until a few years ago (2001, I think) Italian law allowed not-for-profit copying. I think some lawmaker back in time had the same reasoning as Richard Stallman when he says it ``isn't wrong to help your neighbour''. The law was later changed under pressure from the usual suspects (the Business Software Alliance, et al, primarily) but nonetheless it shows that considering such acts as reprehensible isn't so uncontroversial...
> When you get the chance, how bout keepin an eye open for Osama?
But it's precisely about that. I mean, now Al-Qaida will have to spend lots of money buying legal copies of Splinter Cell to train its terrorist operatives. That's less money to buy explosives for their next attacks. See the logic ? How clever. All hail John Ashcroft !
>But like the AC poster, I'd like more info about their troubles, if you could find a URL...
Hmmmm... can't find much (most of what we heard was on their internal news server and on IRC at the time), but there are still some messages from GANDI employees on Usenet lying around. This thread talks about a personnel strike, and this one mentions them sorting it out in court (that's all in French, a ruling in October is mentioned by a poster, but I can't seem to find it). Since I didn't hear about it since then, I suppose they've settled their matters by now.
Anyway, from a customer point of view, their internal problems aren't really important (unless they have an impact on service quality, but I rarely hear of problems with them). As for their TOS, they are very good and straightforward, so yes, I would also say to keep your domains with them. As for me, I moved them, but mainly because (1) they don't do some ``exotic'' TLDs I happen to use which forced me to use several registrars, and (2) I've found another registrar who does and happens to be located in my area, which facilitates communication (like in, if I've a problem, I just go to their offices/phone them with just local charges). If you haven't such requirements, just keep them : in the registrar business, you know what you're leaving but you often don't know what you're getting into (and the ICANN doesn't seem to give a damn about what registrars do)...
> At least I have a reasonable expectation with Go Daddy that they will not suspend my domain without a good reason.
Let me check : between a registrar that disables a domain because supposed abuse has been reported and they didn't bother to check with the domain owner (!) and a registrar who will not act unless it is compelled to do so by a court of law, which one will you choose ?
> Bad things happened, that's not a reason to erase inanimate, historical, objects from history.
Is that some reference to the infamous Yahoo! story ? And if so, what has this got to do with GANDI ? Can you cite an example where GANDI disabled a customer's domain ? Anyway, yes, if you run a Nazi site, it is better to put it elsewhere, just in case someone would give a damn. But that's an exception (note that I totally share your opinion on the aforementioned laws, though, and the sooner they'll be gone, the better. I would just like to point out that these are not as much oppressive as you seem to think, and most importantly, I don't know of any GANDI customer being biten by those laws).
Let me be clear : I'm not a total fan of GANDI. They started out as an `` ethical '' registrar (arguing against the high prices demanded for something so mundane as a record in a database and in some domain name servers) and then last year their employees had to drag the managers to court because they were screwing them and generally mismanaging the company egregiously. But arguments like `` your free speech is in danger '' are just not warranted, IMHO. And my AntiEuropeanSentiment Detector[tm] just went off (I knew I made a good purchase when I bought this add-on to my Troll-O-Meter[tm] :-)
> I would also like to note that I have personal experience with some proboards.com users abusing the send message to all members capability.
That's all well and good, but victims should complain first to the site manager, then, if it doesn't work, to the upstream hoster or IP transit provider. I think it's not a Good Thing when registrars lock domains away from you (although I suppose they did reserve this possibility in their TOS. Thus today's word of advice is : always, ALWAYS, check the contracts you've with your suppliers. Then double-check them. And if you've a doubt about some obscure point, have them clarify it in writing. Otherwise, you'll *get* screwed).
Y0uR s1gN4tUR3 h4S aN eRR0r : y()u sUr3ly w4Nt t0 sA`/ "@|\| Ub3r 3l33t", no7 "Ub5r".
G33z, th0s3 y0uNG b0yZ r3alLy dO|\|'7 |<n0W ho\^/ t0 sP3LL...
> Yep I know my evil "isp" hijacked the internet and put a transparent firewall but I CANT switch "isp" there is only one "real" adsl provider in spain Telefonica
/. is blocked by the Great Firewall Of China ;-)
:-)
OK. What I'm going to explain isn't truly Netiquette-compliant, but anyway, here we go : assuming your friendly ISP has setup its transparent proxy only to save bandwidth and not to censor you, you should still have access to high ports, lets say... 3128, 8080, etc. See what I mean ? Find a list of open proxies, pick one at random, and proxy your requests from there. Just remember to avoid Chinese proxies, it would be stupid to go to this length to avoid the ban just to discover that today
Of course it would be better to find some friendly admin at a non-http-redirected site who would give you access to his proxy server, but then not everybody has this kind of friends. Another alternative : win at the lottery, order a leased line. I don't think they will redirect traffic on it (yes, I'm aware of the problem with the lottery part of the scheme
Oh, and don't forget to pester your Government to deregulate Internet access. Here, we're beginning to see good offers since the idiots at Wanadoo (France Telecom's incompetent subsidiary) aren't alone on the DSLAMs anymore. You should do the same in Spain...
I don't know about the domain problem. To be frank, I didn't do extensive tests (and I'm totally lost in the Mozilla codebase. Yes, shame on me, I'm a truly lousy coder). And yes, you're right, I'd forgotten that little icon. In fact, I think I'd dismissed the window the first time it appeared (like all those `` by submitting this form, you will be sending data on the Evil Internet. Honest. Do you really want to do that ? '' windows) and I rapidly overlooked the icon. Note that I cited this issue mostly for the record : my popup/banner ads/stupid js code problems are handled by Privoxy. These times, whatever browser I happen to use, I wouldn't dare using it without a filtering proxy to shield it. Still, this icon could be another reason to convince my friends to switch to a free browser. Thus, thanks to everyone for reminding me of that feature ;-)
> how exactly could it do better than blocking *all* popup ads I don't want to see?
/. stripping my angle quotes ? The lameness filter doesn't like good typography ?) javascript mode, where it selectively allows popups based on the event that triggered them : an onClick() would be A-OK while an onLoad() would be a big no-no. Mozilla doesn't seem to care and still forces me to (1) wonder why the Hell my clicks don't seem to do anything, (2) look at the $@!# URI, (3) go into the preferences screen and (4) unblock the site. Plain stupid.
Hmmmmm... Let me check... What about blocking the popup ads I don't want to see AND not blocking the useful pop-ups I need on some websites ? Konqueror does just that with its `` intelligent '' (grrrr... why is
OK, Moz has some good things (a very good rendering, to start with), but I still find it slow (compared to Konqi), and sometimes just stupid (I'm still wondering what use has XUL besides giving me a browser where some widgets look like my other apps and others do not, and slowing down the software), or broken (why can't I choose which mailer to launch on a mailto: link ?). I'll stop here the rant, but I frankly don't think the quest for the ideal browser stops at Mozilla's FTP site.
Oh, and BTW, if you want to compare pop-up blockers, here's a site that could be of interest...
> Now, as for the Euro symbol, you're going to have even more (none-)fun, because you aren't going to find a suitable ISO eight-bit encoding that includes it. The 8859's just aren't going to do it for you.
Sorry, but I have to disagree here : the ISO-8859-15 (latin0) has the EuroSign at offset 0xA4 (IIRC this position was occupied in ISO-8859-1 by a rather unused character, I think it was the 1/2 but I'm too lazy to check). Most if not all West European Linux users already have switched to ISO-8859-15. Windows users, of course, have their own charset (Windows-1252), but they are largely compatible, from what I saw Windows just stuffs a bunch of characters in the range 0x80-0xA0, but the rest is unchanged, including the Euro position.
Now, don't get me wrong : I wholeheartedly agree that Unicode is The Right Solution[tm]. Still, Unicode support is at the moment a bit hesitant (I tried it : after generating the right locales, loading the correct fonts, and so on, I saw several applications broken by the change. I suspect some libraries still aren't ready). Thus, until the OS vendors (and the hardware ones : I would love if my BIOS was intelligent enough to know I've not an US keyboard) have cleaned up the mess and made their systems easy to migrate, the much-despised ISO charsets are the only semi-valid solution. Better not to ditch them too fast...
> And that's too bad. The Euro key is just shift-opt-2... I correspond regularly in German and even the umlaut is easily accomplished with the logical way that extra characters are handled on the Mac. It is dead simple.
/. Copyright ? c + o, of course. And so on. If you've some idea of the character's shape, you'll probably be able to find the good combination immediately. Now, *that's* intuitive ;-)
I don't know about Macs but my Linux has a very intuitive way to generate special characters. Want Euro ? Type Compose (a special key, usually the Windows Menu key), then E + = (the Euro sign is basically an E crossed by an '=' sign). Everything is like that : A with grave accent ? Easy : A + `. u with umlaut ? u + ". Cent symbol ? c +