AvantSlash allows you to view Slashdot on your PDA and WAP phone. Granted with the WML, it cheats and renders an HTML version which Google converts to WML - but it works and very well too.
If Slashdot did move to this new HTML, it would mean that viewing the news on the PDA would be possible without having to resort to AvantSlash and the like to pre-process it.
What I find amazing is the way that nearly every single person on Slashdot has said this as pointless and rubbish...
... yet Slashdot people often jump to the defence of people who have installed Linux on their toaster or sucessfully ported the TCP/IP stack to the Sinclair ZX81.
For crying out loud, he's done it in Javascript because he can, not necessarily because it's a good thing and not necessarily because it's practical but because he thought it would be fun to try.
Which oddly enough is the very same reason being used for those mad projects we often hear about (say wiring up your iPod to the Microwave).
That will be true when Bill is willing to GPL his software. Until then, Bill is relegated to software that is free (as in do whatever you want with it), as opposed to Free (as in RMS).
For the majority of consumers, there is no difference between Free and free. As far as they are concerned, if they get it withouth paying for it, can copy it and give it to their mates without any legal problems then it's free.
Case in point, the Linux kernel may be "Free" - but given that i have no use for the code, don't understand it, can't modify it and have no desire to, that fact I have access to it is pretty much irrelevant.
What I care most about is the fact it doesn't cost me the same as Windows XP to get hold of.
If you look at the press coverage, companies are more attrached to Open Source first by the cost savings and better security and then second by the fact they have access to the code.
(Although you could argue very well that the better security is a side effect of open access to the code)
I've noticed that GoogleNews routinely carries headlines from/.
To be honest that was a surprise to me. It's well known that/. isn't particulary impartial and it's reporting is never particulary accurate.
Therefore I would have considered it odd for a news source, even if it is news in the strictest sense of the word.
If I was in charge of a news aggrigation site I probably would leave out/. for that, plus any other heavily biased sites in order to maintain a balanced amount of reporting.
microsoft has talked a lot recently about how their committed to innovation.
Personally I don't care whether or not a company has innovated in the "here's something totally new that you've never seen before" - if they can take something and make it better, then I (as a punter) will chose it.
To innovate doesn't have to have the pre-requsit of "start from scratch". It's perfectly possible to take something that isn't particulary new and then add new features and claim that to be innovative.
Other companies in all markets have been doing that for years. It's not something limited to Microsoft.
Best quote comes from the NIH vaccine center's nursing director: 'People freak out about Ebola.'
Well, given that...
Symptoms of the Ebola virus begin 4 to 16 days after the person is infected. Beginning symptoms are headaches, fevers, chills, muscle aches, and loss of appetite. When the disease progresses, patients experience diarrhea, rash, sore throat, vomiting,abdominal pain, and chest pain. The patients have limited kidney and liver functions, and have internal and external bleeding. The blood does not clot which can cause some serious problems. It cause the capillaries to bleed into surrounding tissue. The death of a patient occurs from 8-17 days after an infection.
Source
am I the only one that isn't surprised that people "freak out" about it?
[Bruce Perens writes: Well, when there are features lacking in an Open Source program like Evolution, you know what to do, don't you? I think that a solution to the ones you complain about could come from the community.]
Oh dear, please tell me Bruce didn't just spout that old chestnut of "if something isn't there in open source, you can go code it".
I'm a mediocre C programmer and there are plenty of people who aren't programmers - the fact that I (let alone them) can just dip in and start programming some wizzy new bit of functionality is absurd.
In reality it takes 3 months of 9-5 work to become fully up to speed with the way something works, it's nuiaces, issues, problems, general fudges and other "gotchas". You can't just sit down, fire up VIM and hack yourself up a new feature.
The truth of the matter is that if he want someone to add something he either
Makes a lot of noise in the right places and hopes someone decides to implement it
Pays someone to implement it
and even with point 1, if the programmer doesn't ask you for feedback, the chances of you getting exactly what you what is slim.
Yeah, this description sounds basically like bigger Magic Gate, that wonderful situation where you can pay more than normal to get DRM
Actually you pay more because it's Sony's propriatory format (they claim there are 55 licencees but i've never seen any of them with a product) used in nearly all Sony electrical equipment.
If you want to boost the storage, you have to buy their memory stick and so they can get away with charging you more than you would with an SD or Compact Flash card.
It's got nothing to do with the DRM. More to do with the fact that there is no competition in the Memory Stick space and hence no incentive to lower prices.
With yet another mistake, does anyone still trust closed-source electronic voting?
Sod that.
With yet another mistake, does anyone trust electronic voting full stop?
(I think that Open Source might be better, but to the majority of voters, electronic voting is the same thing irrespective of how visible the code is - and quite frankly, even with peer review on open coude this sort of bug might still happen)
Ripping a CD to any desired format for use in a personal mp3 player, or on the computer or for any other purpose is clearly covered under fair use. There's no reason someone who purchases a CD should be additionally limited by some hackneyed copyright scheme.
Covered in the US. Not everywhere.
The major point i'm trying to make here is that the labels wouldn't be interested in DRM if people were ripping the songs to MP3 for personal use only.
But as soon as someone starts distributing this content to all and sundry, then they will look at protecting their revenue model with DRM. Because of this, we all have to jump through hoops to use the content as we wish, because of the actions of a few.
The thing is that it only takes one person to buy a CD, encode it to MP3, and share it with the world. Why should the rest of us have to be penalized and inconvenienced for one person?
In my halls of residence at Uni, we used to have a pool table. The cash box on it was broken and that meant that if you wiggled it slightly you could get at a 10p coin that had been put in.
You could take that coin, put it in the slot and get a free game. Which we did. A lot.
Then someone came along and, using the same trick, took all the money. Cleaned it out.
The Uni came along, noticed all the money had gone and fixed it. No more free games.
The point? The actions of the few directly affected everyone else. This is something we unfortunately have to live with both in computing (with product activation, DRM and the like) and in our general lives (laws, regulations and the like).
If CD's drop below that special price point for their main customers, they will be as 'free' as the stuff one can download
I used to own a ZX Spectrum. Games cost 2 pounds, yet piracy was rampant. True, we didn't have the internet back then - but swapping copied tapes was the norm.
The fact is, that people don't place a value on their personal time. If it took them 6 hours to get an album, they still consider that they've saved money.
Be it Microsoft vs Open Source or CD's vs Kazaa, you can't beat free.
If they trusted us, they'd just print up CDs as usual and assume we wouldn't steal them.
Trust has to be earned.
Judging by the vast amount of MP3's available on Kazaa, I see no reason why they shouldn't trust people who have shown time and time again that they'll happily make copyrighted material available to everyone for free.
Anyone who takes the claims of a twelve word advertisement as gospel is a retarded idiot who shouldn't be allowed to buy anything more expensive than a pack of bubble gum. If this is the situation in England, then I truly feel sorry for the few intelligent people who are trapped there and have to be protected by this type of "truth in advertising" laws.
By your reasoning therefore, every single company could claim what they want and then, when queried about it, go "hey, we didn't think people would take this as the gospel".
The advertising rules in England are simple. Don't lie. Apple lied. Therefore they were told not to show the advert.
If you really think that our advertising is worse than the US, then you really haven't watched UK television. Less intruisive, less obnoxious, less in-your-face, more trueful and less of it.
Okay, you want to run your own tests, fine, but do it for the iPod as well. I don't dispute that the Dell has a much longer battery life, but your reporting is extremely biased here.
He pointed out that if battery life is important to you, then the iPod is not the best tool for the job.
Yet even with that, the gauntlet comes down from your "expert" opinion - "Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that". Some experts say journalists are supposed to have some objectivity and quest for truth, but I'm not buying that.
He pointed out that if jogging is important to you, then the iPod is not the best tool for the job.
Even if he isn't an "expert" he's right in both cases. You can show me technical detail after technical detail about how running with an iPod won't bugger up the battery but, guess what?, I'll still be running the London Marathon next year with a cheapo flash based job that is not only smaller, but lighter and doesn't cost much to replace if it rains.
I too think the iPod is cool, but I'm not so blinded by it not to realise that for certain things it does have shortcomings.
It's not perfect... and it and others will probably never be.
No. If you'd read the top part, rather than skipping straight down to the points, you would have seen that he's merely pointing out that the iPod is not flawless.
In other words, if you have a specific requirement then it might be better served with one of the alternatives... and he's right.
... such as the ones about excessive weight for jogging (what kind of wimp can't carry 6 extra ounces?)
I run Marathons and 6 extra ounces means a lot.
Plus i still don't like the idea of shaking a HD whilst I'm running.
No thanks. I'll stick with a flash based MP3 player. They're smaller, lighter, you can shake them as violently as you want without breaking them and if you get hit by a flash thunder storm which soaks you, then you don't have to pay big bucks to get your MP3 player replaced.
Because it looks good. Seriously. Most of the people I know has bought one because it looks good and it feels good. It's got nothing to do with the "Apple" name - at the most they know they make computers, at the least they know they make MP3 players.
The reason other manufacturers of HD based players don't get it is because they think they can compete and win on price and features. Which is true, they can do pretty well - but in their desire to push the price down lower than an iPod they end up using cheaper materials which means that what they end up with:
Looks cheap and nasty
Feels cheap and nasty
When a HD based MP3 player hits the market which looks and feels good (and i'm sorry to say it but this is butt ugly and this looks only marginally better but still feels cheap and nasty) then they'll be onto a winner. Even if it has the same or less features.
For many people, if you're going to pony up several hunded quid for a HD based MP3 player - it better not look like something made by Fischer Price.
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, Toshiba might come up with the goods (and also Panasonic, but I can't find the product I was thinking of)...
Of course god forbid a slashbot would actually CHECK something before blabing on about it.
You missed the point of my post. The original poster said "Internet Explorer doesn't diddle the network settings of Mozilla or Netscape when it installs so that they will no longer be able to communicate with the www" to which you wrongly replied with "Um, yes it does".
IE doesn't "diddle the network settings". It changes some file associations after prompting. It does not disable the other browsers, it does not prevent the other browsers from working and most importantly, it does not require the other browser manufacturers to issue statements advising users to uninstall their application and then re-install it if they want to use it again.
You are however right about the fact that it's difficult to sync a palm over multiple computers though. But there is no need for one manufacturer to make their application disable another one in such a way that only an uninstall and re-install will fix it.
My company won that auction and we purchased the check for $7000 which was then immediately donated to the Sisters of the Road Cafe in Portland, Oregon. We've still got the check, a check for $500.
Proof that not all people who post as Anonymous Coward talk bollocks can be found here courtsey of CNet.
The winning bid was $7,100 by John Corrigan, founder of SwiftView.
Question: Assume for a minute that it slipped through and was released in the next versions of all major distributions.
Given that I don't understand the code in the slightest (well I understand the assignment and user id 0, but not what __WCLONE or __WALL does or relates to) how would a standard user have been able to get him/herself root?
Um, yes it does.
Go install IE. It will change the windows settings to make IE the default.
Only if you click the button maked "Yes" to a message along the lines of "This browser is not the default web browser. Would you like it to be?".
When you install mozilla it does the same thing. Same as netscape.
No they don't. Mozilla, Netscape and even IE don't prevent you from using any other browser, they just change the file associations for URL's and HTML pages so that they point to themselves. They don't prevent you from using any of the other browsers.
Slashdot really needs a -1 'Not based on facts'
Amen to that. Your post would be the first to get it.
Oh, and blame yourself for not reading the dialog box. Asking OS mfg's to protect you from your own stupidity only fosters more stupidity.
Before you blame him for not reading the dialog box, you should have read his comment closer.
He said that the "meaning was unclear". That doesn't imply he didn't read it, it implied that he read the box and didn't understand what it was trying to tell him. After all, "reorganise your collection" is hardy descriptive.
I've never seen the dialog box, but how about this as an alternative:
Would you live to reorganise your music collection?
Warning: This will change the directory structure and location of your music files. For more information, click on the "help" button.
Far better, far informative and trivially easy to implement.
So therefore, the fault can be seen two ways - Apple didn't provide clear enough information on the dialog box (including a very clear warning about what "reorganise" meant) and Moofie didn't stop and, based on the lack of information, go find out what this dialog box really meant.
So yes, it was party his fault, but it's also partly Apples. So cut him some slack and don't be a dick (tough love right?).
That kind of attitude only serves to encourage developers to produce cryptic and uninformative dialog boxes forcing users to continually refer to user manuals. Which is not they way we should be heading.
Okay, I have a low opinion of Slashdotters that insist that software release announcements should stay on Freshmeat. I want to *know* when the next Linux kernel release and the next minor release of GNOME is, and it's big, discussable news.
They should create a "releases" section and put all this sort of stuff in there.
Then, for people like me, who don't care about the release of BSD 4.12343.137pre4 can hide the category and be done with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Try AvantSlash for PDA browsing of Slashdot.
(shameless self plug)
AvantSlash allows you to view Slashdot on your PDA and WAP phone. Granted with the WML, it cheats and renders an HTML version which Google converts to WML - but it works and very well too.
If Slashdot did move to this new HTML, it would mean that viewing the news on the PDA would be possible without having to resort to AvantSlash and the like to pre-process it.
For crying out loud, he's done it in Javascript because he can, not necessarily because it's a good thing and not necessarily because it's practical but because he thought it would be fun to try.
Which oddly enough is the very same reason being used for those mad projects we often hear about (say wiring up your iPod to the Microwave).
For the majority of consumers, there is no difference between Free and free. As far as they are concerned, if they get it withouth paying for it, can copy it and give it to their mates without any legal problems then it's free.
Case in point, the Linux kernel may be "Free" - but given that i have no use for the code, don't understand it, can't modify it and have no desire to, that fact I have access to it is pretty much irrelevant.
What I care most about is the fact it doesn't cost me the same as Windows XP to get hold of.
If you look at the press coverage, companies are more attrached to Open Source first by the cost savings and better security and then second by the fact they have access to the code.
(Although you could argue very well that the better security is a side effect of open access to the code)
To be honest that was a surprise to me. It's well known that /. isn't particulary impartial and it's reporting is never particulary accurate.
Therefore I would have considered it odd for a news source, even if it is news in the strictest sense of the word.
If I was in charge of a news aggrigation site I probably would leave out /. for that, plus any other heavily biased sites in order to maintain a balanced amount of reporting.
Personally I don't care whether or not a company has innovated in the "here's something totally new that you've never seen before" - if they can take something and make it better, then I (as a punter) will chose it.
To innovate doesn't have to have the pre-requsit of "start from scratch". It's perfectly possible to take something that isn't particulary new and then add new features and claim that to be innovative.
Other companies in all markets have been doing that for years. It's not something limited to Microsoft.
Well, given that ...
am I the only one that isn't surprised that people "freak out" about it?Oh dear, please tell me Bruce didn't just spout that old chestnut of "if something isn't there in open source, you can go code it".
I'm a mediocre C programmer and there are plenty of people who aren't programmers - the fact that I (let alone them) can just dip in and start programming some wizzy new bit of functionality is absurd.
In reality it takes 3 months of 9-5 work to become fully up to speed with the way something works, it's nuiaces, issues, problems, general fudges and other "gotchas". You can't just sit down, fire up VIM and hack yourself up a new feature.
The truth of the matter is that if he want someone to add something he either
- Makes a lot of noise in the right places and hopes someone decides to implement it
- Pays someone to implement it
and even with point 1, if the programmer doesn't ask you for feedback, the chances of you getting exactly what you what is slim.Actually you pay more because it's Sony's propriatory format (they claim there are 55 licencees but i've never seen any of them with a product) used in nearly all Sony electrical equipment.
If you want to boost the storage, you have to buy their memory stick and so they can get away with charging you more than you would with an SD or Compact Flash card.
It's got nothing to do with the DRM. More to do with the fact that there is no competition in the Memory Stick space and hence no incentive to lower prices.
Sod that.
With yet another mistake, does anyone trust electronic voting full stop?
(I think that Open Source might be better, but to the majority of voters, electronic voting is the same thing irrespective of how visible the code is - and quite frankly, even with peer review on open coude this sort of bug might still happen)
Covered in the US. Not everywhere.
The major point i'm trying to make here is that the labels wouldn't be interested in DRM if people were ripping the songs to MP3 for personal use only.
But as soon as someone starts distributing this content to all and sundry, then they will look at protecting their revenue model with DRM. Because of this, we all have to jump through hoops to use the content as we wish, because of the actions of a few.
Check out my other comment.
In my halls of residence at Uni, we used to have a pool table. The cash box on it was broken and that meant that if you wiggled it slightly you could get at a 10p coin that had been put in.
You could take that coin, put it in the slot and get a free game. Which we did. A lot.
Then someone came along and, using the same trick, took all the money. Cleaned it out.
The Uni came along, noticed all the money had gone and fixed it. No more free games.
The point? The actions of the few directly affected everyone else. This is something we unfortunately have to live with both in computing (with product activation, DRM and the like) and in our general lives (laws, regulations and the like).
It is a sad fact of life.
I used to own a ZX Spectrum. Games cost 2 pounds, yet piracy was rampant. True, we didn't have the internet back then - but swapping copied tapes was the norm.
The fact is, that people don't place a value on their personal time. If it took them 6 hours to get an album, they still consider that they've saved money.
Be it Microsoft vs Open Source or CD's vs Kazaa, you can't beat free.
Trust has to be earned.
Judging by the vast amount of MP3's available on Kazaa, I see no reason why they shouldn't trust people who have shown time and time again that they'll happily make copyrighted material available to everyone for free.
By your reasoning therefore, every single company could claim what they want and then, when queried about it, go "hey, we didn't think people would take this as the gospel".
The advertising rules in England are simple. Don't lie. Apple lied. Therefore they were told not to show the advert.
If you really think that our advertising is worse than the US, then you really haven't watched UK television. Less intruisive, less obnoxious, less in-your-face, more trueful and less of it.
He pointed out that if battery life is important to you, then the iPod is not the best tool for the job.
Yet even with that, the gauntlet comes down from your "expert" opinion - "Some experts say that it's impossible to damage the drive in this way, but I'm not buying that". Some experts say journalists are supposed to have some objectivity and quest for truth, but I'm not buying that.
He pointed out that if jogging is important to you, then the iPod is not the best tool for the job.
Even if he isn't an "expert" he's right in both cases. You can show me technical detail after technical detail about how running with an iPod won't bugger up the battery but, guess what?, I'll still be running the London Marathon next year with a cheapo flash based job that is not only smaller, but lighter and doesn't cost much to replace if it rains.
I too think the iPod is cool, but I'm not so blinded by it not to realise that for certain things it does have shortcomings.
It's not perfect ... and it and others will probably never be.
No. If you'd read the top part, rather than skipping straight down to the points, you would have seen that he's merely pointing out that the iPod is not flawless.
In other words, if you have a specific requirement then it might be better served with one of the alternatives ... and he's right.
I run Marathons and 6 extra ounces means a lot.
Plus i still don't like the idea of shaking a HD whilst I'm running.
No thanks. I'll stick with a flash based MP3 player. They're smaller, lighter, you can shake them as violently as you want without breaking them and if you get hit by a flash thunder storm which soaks you, then you don't have to pay big bucks to get your MP3 player replaced.
The reason other manufacturers of HD based players don't get it is because they think they can compete and win on price and features. Which is true, they can do pretty well - but in their desire to push the price down lower than an iPod they end up using cheaper materials which means that what they end up with:
- Looks cheap and nasty
- Feels cheap and nasty
When a HD based MP3 player hits the market which looks and feels good (and i'm sorry to say it but this is butt ugly and this looks only marginally better but still feels cheap and nasty) then they'll be onto a winner. Even if it has the same or less features.For many people, if you're going to pony up several hunded quid for a HD based MP3 player - it better not look like something made by Fischer Price.
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, Toshiba might come up with the goods (and also Panasonic, but I can't find the product I was thinking of) ...
You missed the point of my post. The original poster said "Internet Explorer doesn't diddle the network settings of Mozilla or Netscape when it installs so that they will no longer be able to communicate with the www" to which you wrongly replied with "Um, yes it does".
IE doesn't "diddle the network settings". It changes some file associations after prompting. It does not disable the other browsers, it does not prevent the other browsers from working and most importantly, it does not require the other browser manufacturers to issue statements advising users to uninstall their application and then re-install it if they want to use it again.
You are however right about the fact that it's difficult to sync a palm over multiple computers though. But there is no need for one manufacturer to make their application disable another one in such a way that only an uninstall and re-install will fix it.
Proof that not all people who post as Anonymous Coward talk bollocks can be found here courtsey of CNet.
The winning bid was $7,100 by John Corrigan, founder of SwiftView.
Given that I don't understand the code in the slightest (well I understand the assignment and user id 0, but not what __WCLONE or __WALL does or relates to) how would a standard user have been able to get him/herself root?
Go install IE. It will change the windows settings to make IE the default.
Only if you click the button maked "Yes" to a message along the lines of "This browser is not the default web browser. Would you like it to be?".
When you install mozilla it does the same thing. Same as netscape.
No they don't. Mozilla, Netscape and even IE don't prevent you from using any other browser, they just change the file associations for URL's and HTML pages so that they point to themselves. They don't prevent you from using any of the other browsers.
Slashdot really needs a -1 'Not based on facts'
Amen to that. Your post would be the first to get it.
Before you blame him for not reading the dialog box, you should have read his comment closer.
He said that the "meaning was unclear". That doesn't imply he didn't read it, it implied that he read the box and didn't understand what it was trying to tell him. After all, "reorganise your collection" is hardy descriptive.
I've never seen the dialog box, but how about this as an alternative:
Far better, far informative and trivially easy to implement.So therefore, the fault can be seen two ways - Apple didn't provide clear enough information on the dialog box (including a very clear warning about what "reorganise" meant) and Moofie didn't stop and, based on the lack of information, go find out what this dialog box really meant.
So yes, it was party his fault, but it's also partly Apples. So cut him some slack and don't be a dick (tough love right?).
That kind of attitude only serves to encourage developers to produce cryptic and uninformative dialog boxes forcing users to continually refer to user manuals. Which is not they way we should be heading.
They should create a "releases" section and put all this sort of stuff in there.
Then, for people like me, who don't care about the release of BSD 4.12343.137pre4 can hide the category and be done with it.