What do you want ot bet that MS has hundreds of GeoCities pages with the words "click here to download Netscape" and a link to the Microsoft homepage:)
-- I know that SGI had a similar thing for IRIX as seen in Jurassic Park, but there is AFAIK nothing like this for Linux. --
What you saw in Jurassic Park was a little demo that SGI put together called "File System Navigator" that basically displayed your UNIX filesystem in 3D using OpenGL. You could see the directories, files, sizes of files/dirs, etc.
It was never part of the O/S or 4Dwm, and it wasn't really useful apart from the "cute" factor.
-- However it would seem that they're trying to pass responsibility for the whole thing on the little guy who authored the theme. --
That's becuase all themes.org (and so indirectly VA) does is post the theme. AFAICT, it was not authored by a themes.org staff member, so really using the apple logo in the theme is the responsability of the author.
And it is not a "look and feel" case here - they were actually using the Apple logo in the theme. There are other Apple "feel like" themes that don't use the actual logo.
However, it is still odd that Apple feels the need to do this.
-- To claim Webmonkey (or Hotwired) have been unaffected by their own ownership dramas is outrageous--
Riight. So Webmonkey has been affected but Slashot won't right? Becuase Rob and Jeff are super-human right? Gotcha.
-- In contrast, Slashdot has continued to operate as it always has - the material posted hasn't changed --
It has only been owned by VA for a few days - how can you claim that! If anything, the posting of this story *with the attached commentary by Roblimo* makes it clear that things have changed!
-- and I do believe that roblimo et al would leave if the site's editorial independence truly were in jeopardy. --
IIRC, Rob and Jeff have contracts that force them to work for a couple of years. I doubt you'd be seeing them go anywhere.
We have to accept that Slashdot will now be somewhat influenced by it's ownership. It's not like it was "back in the day" - but what is? Things will be different, things will move on. Don't be silly and claim otherwise.
-- I think, since I have no reason to think otherwise, that VA is going to leave Slashdot alone. --
This story was posted here wasn't it. VA free publicity?
The examples you state are broad media influences. How about some more specific examples?
E.g. - Do you expect Microsoft to get bad press from Microsoft Interactive Developer - a rag they own? Do you expect VA to get bad press from/. - a web site they own?
-- The world of free software is poorer because of what? Because money is involved? --
No, poorer becuase the impartiality is gone. You or Rob or anyone else can say what they want - it isn't impropriety that counts - it is the *appearance* of impropriety.
Quite frankly, I can guarantee you that there won't be articles bashing VA here on/. - not that they deserve it, ut that isn't the point.
Also becuase Andover's stock has benn on a one-way downhill slope since it opened. It was only a matter of time before it slipped below the opening amount.
Now VA has all of these properties and the people at Andover (incl/.) are rich again.
I guess we can look forward to lots of anti-VA stories being posted now. Riiiight.
Instead he based the world of Izmer and Sumdall, where the movie takes place, from one of TSR's older, obscurer campaign worlds, Mystara.
It may be older, but I don't neccissarily buy obscurer. I have dozens of suppliments that describe that world, including Alphatia, in a box at home somewhere. I guess I should dig them out:)
I sure hope they do a good job on the movie - hopefully it will bring back some good memories.
This is a good point. If I write a Perl program to go and fetch a single file off a website (e.g. http://slashdot.org/slashdot.xml), do I have to check the robots.txt file first or risk prosecution?
The robots.txt file is meant to prevent a crawler from going through certain directories and files, and not to prevent access to a single file.
As a web developer who does this kind of stuff, I can tell you that 99% of places only use cookies for that reason - keeping state.
Quite frankly, this is the only way to keep state after you close you browser. Rob is right - if you like personalization, etc. then you better like cookies.
more your ~/.netscape/cookies file and see what is in there. Mine is over 20K and all it is is user id serial numbers.
The other thing to note with cookies is that many places use temporary cookies - stored in RAM only and never stored on your hard drive. They terminate when your close your browser.
Taking a working Java app from an NT server to a different enviroment took several weeks.
Several weeks of what? Powersurfing? Migrating code from one platform to another in Java may have a few issues, but it is trivial compared to migrating many other languages. Even Perl has cross-platform issues.
Second of all, nobody from Sun is telling you to switch from RMI to JINI. JINI has absolutely nothing to do with the J2EE spec, where RMI over IIOP is used for remote procedure calls.
Third, 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 *are* backwards compatible. Sure, some classes/methods are depricated, and Swing is replacing AWT, but that is what we call *improvements*. I have code that I wrote back when Java was in beta, and it still runs just fine.
Interestingly, I got this from the same http://www.htsoft.com/easter site.
If you are stuck behind a NT 4.0 box at work, you can also try changing the screen saver to 3D Text and then set the text to be displayed to "not evil" (all small caps, no quotes) and you get to see the names of the NT developers. I just tried this on my NT Workstation 4.0/SP6 and it worked.
AFAIK, this is pretty much what Apple used to do. I remember back when I had an Mac II CX (a while ago)on my desk, you could hold down a certain key combo when your machine booted and you would get a picture of the entire development team.
I would have to say it depends on where your interests lie.
I used Mobile Robots when building a robot for a competition in a 4th year engineering project. It was a two-person team, so I developed a lot of respect for how hard robots are to build.
I also own a Lego Mindstorms kit.
I would have to say that Mindstorms provides a much more solid base to build on. You can spend a lot less time getting electronics to work and a lot more fun doing the (IMHO) fun part - programming the behaviour, etc.
Of course, if your interests are more in the electronics (putting the board together, building your own sensors, etc.) then you might want to go the do-your-own route outlined in Mobile Robots.
Oracle has "teamed up" with other operating system vendors to do this in the past. For example, SGI has a partnership(s) with Oracle ( example ) to promote Oracle on IRIX.
All this allows Oracle to sell more licenses, which is what they want.
The win for Linux users is that Oracle seems (remember - this is a press release) to be pushing for more enterprise features in Linux.
Well, the freshmeat appindex record for the asp2php translator I mentioned is here. However, in my experience it doesn't work too well with complex ASP pages - you still have to go in and fix up a bit my hand.
However, people with large websites probably aren't just wed to ASP. Usually you have to access backend components, and that usually means DCOM, SQLServer, etc.
I'm not sure that this pricing change will affect many large customers. Our best best is to get in with the small businesses and work up. That's how Microsoft did it!
This has already been done at least once, to my knowledge: iASP.
There is also a tool to convert your ASP to PHP.
Your you can ditch your "you got your code in my HTML" model entirely, which most people figure out eventually.
In my experience, most people don't buy NT to use ASP. They use ASP becuase they have NT already installed and ASP is the easiest option on that platform.
I see we have the GPL/RMS lovers with moderator access today too...
the point is, there is substantial reason to believe that GPL/BSD "free software" licenses make code more likely to survive and thrive in the long run.
Really? What "substantial reason" is there? That just sounds like IMHO BS to me.
Qt's restrictive license, while technically "Open Source", has very much hampered its growth, and led to the rise of serious competition in the form of GTK (which is safely GPL'd).
I would hardly say that Qt's license has hampered it's growth. Maybe before the license was revised, but the fact is that most of the major distro's have adopted KDE.
KDE is also a superior product, which will help it win out in the end. Objections of GPL licensing wanks won't stop it, despite what you might hope for.
The point is that there are going to be lots of licenses (GPL, LGPL, Mozilla, BSD, Apple, Qt, etc. etc.). Learning to get along with others is much more productive that wishing that everything is GPLed or making wacko predictions about GPLed code outliving code released under other licenses.
I can already see the "GPL is the only true license" and "QT sucks" comments coming out of the woodwork.
The fact is that people who write software have the right to determine what license to distribute it under. So, no matter how much you wish everything was GPLed, it is not going to happen.
This is why we have people in the community working with people making S/W trying to make sure that licenses work with the OSD, and I think there have been a lot of successes or at least big improvements (QT, Apple, etc.)
Even with their efforts, there are still going to be compromises like this required. It may not be the best solution, but get used to it!
Slashdot Mirror
This is just crying out for a poll!
My Favourite Calculus Girl is:
- Alexis
- Cassie
- Elena
etc...
:)
What do you want ot bet that MS has hundreds of GeoCities pages with the words "click here to download Netscape" and a link to the Microsoft homepage :)
-- I know that SGI had a similar thing for IRIX as seen in Jurassic Park, but there is AFAIK nothing like this for Linux. --
What you saw in Jurassic Park was a little demo that SGI put together called "File System Navigator" that basically displayed your UNIX filesystem in 3D using OpenGL. You could see the directories, files, sizes of files/dirs, etc.
It was never part of the O/S or 4Dwm, and it wasn't really useful apart from the "cute" factor.
-- However it would seem that they're trying to pass responsibility for the whole thing on the little guy who authored the theme. --
That's becuase all themes.org (and so indirectly VA) does is post the theme. AFAICT, it was not authored by a themes.org staff member, so really using the apple logo in the theme is the responsability of the author.
And it is not a "look and feel" case here - they were actually using the Apple logo in the theme. There are other Apple "feel like" themes that don't use the actual logo.
However, it is still odd that Apple feels the need to do this.
My sister, going to Acadia University in NS, Canada, had a PC as part of their tuition too.
:)
It was unpopular with some students tho, since tutition was considerably higher with the PC in there.
There is a difference between "part of tution" and "free".
-- To claim Webmonkey (or Hotwired) have been unaffected by their own ownership dramas is outrageous--
Riight. So Webmonkey has been affected but Slashot won't right? Becuase Rob and Jeff are super-human right? Gotcha.
-- In contrast, Slashdot has continued to operate as it always has - the material posted hasn't changed --
It has only been owned by VA for a few days - how can you claim that! If anything, the posting of this story *with the attached commentary by Roblimo* makes it clear that things have changed!
-- and I do believe that roblimo et al would leave if the site's editorial independence truly were in jeopardy. --
IIRC, Rob and Jeff have contracts that force them to work for a couple of years. I doubt you'd be seeing them go anywhere.
We have to accept that Slashdot will now be somewhat influenced by it's ownership. It's not like it was "back in the day" - but what is? Things will be different, things will move on. Don't be silly and claim otherwise.
-- I think, since I have no reason to think otherwise, that VA is going to leave Slashdot alone. --
/. - a web site they own?
This story was posted here wasn't it. VA free publicity?
The examples you state are broad media influences. How about some more specific examples?
E.g. - Do you expect Microsoft to get bad press from Microsoft Interactive Developer - a rag they own? Do you expect VA to get bad press from
Get real.
-- The world of free software is poorer because of what? Because money is involved? --
/. - not that they deserve it, ut that isn't the point.
No, poorer becuase the impartiality is gone. You or Rob or anyone else can say what they want - it isn't impropriety that counts - it is the *appearance* of impropriety.
Quite frankly, I can guarantee you that there won't be articles bashing VA here on
Also becuase Andover's stock has benn on a one-way downhill slope since it opened. It was only a matter of time before it slipped below the opening amount.
/.) are rich again.
Now VA has all of these properties and the people at Andover (incl
I guess we can look forward to lots of anti-VA stories being posted now. Riiiight.
Becuase ThinkGeek is owned by Andover.net - that's why.
Who said that Andover buying Slashdot never changed anything.
(Score -1: Picking Nits)
:)
Instead he based the world of Izmer and Sumdall, where the movie takes place, from one of TSR's older, obscurer campaign worlds, Mystara.
It may be older, but I don't neccissarily buy obscurer. I have dozens of suppliments that describe that world, including Alphatia, in a box at home somewhere. I guess I should dig them out
I sure hope they do a good job on the movie - hopefully it will bring back some good memories.
...would we see Gill Gates and Mike Shaver changing jobs *both* being reported on the front page.
:)
I think that's great
Since we are talking about Ars anyways, they have a good review of the mouse on their site that should answer your questions:
http://arstechnica.com/r eviews/4q99/msmouse/msmouse-1.html
Some interesting info on the relationship between Entrust and Thawte, and how this affects Entrust:
http://www.entrust.com/investor/12_21_ 99.htm
This is a good point. If I write a Perl program to go and fetch a single file off a website (e.g. http://slashdot.org/slashdot.xml), do I have to check the robots.txt file first or risk prosecution?
The robots.txt file is meant to prevent a crawler from going through certain directories and files, and not to prevent access to a single file.
Wrong.
/. articles? Especially when you are wrong?
The article discusses post-SP6/SP6a hotfixes that were released recently. SP6 itself was released in November 1999.
Don't you have something better to do than bitch about the relevancy of
As a web developer who does this kind of stuff, I can tell you that 99% of places only use cookies for that reason - keeping state.
Quite frankly, this is the only way to keep state after you close you browser. Rob is right - if you like personalization, etc. then you better like cookies.
more your ~/.netscape/cookies file and see what is in there. Mine is over 20K and all it is is user id serial numbers.
The other thing to note with cookies is that many places use temporary cookies - stored in RAM only and never stored on your hard drive. They terminate when your close your browser.
Taking a working Java app from an NT server to a different enviroment took several weeks.
Several weeks of what? Powersurfing? Migrating code from one platform to another in Java may have a few issues, but it is trivial compared to migrating many other languages. Even Perl has cross-platform issues.
Second of all, nobody from Sun is telling you to switch from RMI to JINI. JINI has absolutely nothing to do with the J2EE spec, where RMI over IIOP is used for remote procedure calls.
Third, 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 *are* backwards compatible. Sure, some classes/methods are depricated, and Swing is replacing AWT, but that is what we call *improvements*. I have code that I wrote back when Java was in beta, and it still runs just fine.
Interestingly, I got this from the same http://www.htsoft.com/easter site.
If you are stuck behind a NT 4.0 box at work, you can also try changing the screen saver to 3D Text and then set the text to be displayed to "not evil" (all small caps, no quotes) and you get to see the names of the NT developers. I just tried this on my NT Workstation 4.0/SP6 and it worked.
AFAIK, this is pretty much what Apple used to do. I remember back when I had an Mac II CX (a while ago)on my desk, you could hold down a certain key combo when your machine booted and you would get a picture of the entire development team.
I would have to say it depends on where your interests lie.
I used Mobile Robots when building a robot for a competition in a 4th year engineering project. It was a two-person team, so I developed a lot of respect for how hard robots are to build.
I also own a Lego Mindstorms kit.
I would have to say that Mindstorms provides a much more solid base to build on. You can spend a lot less time getting electronics to work and a lot more fun doing the (IMHO) fun part - programming the behaviour, etc.
Of course, if your interests are more in the electronics (putting the board together, building your own sensors, etc.) then you might want to go the do-your-own route outlined in Mobile Robots.
Oracle has "teamed up" with other operating system vendors to do this in the past. For example, SGI has a partnership(s) with Oracle ( example ) to promote Oracle on IRIX.
All this allows Oracle to sell more licenses, which is what they want.
The win for Linux users is that Oracle seems (remember - this is a press release) to be pushing for more enterprise features in Linux.
Well, the freshmeat appindex record for the asp2php translator I mentioned is here. However, in my experience it doesn't work too well with complex ASP pages - you still have to go in and fix up a bit my hand.
However, people with large websites probably aren't just wed to ASP. Usually you have to access backend components, and that usually means DCOM, SQLServer, etc.
I'm not sure that this pricing change will affect many large customers. Our best best is to get in with the small businesses and work up. That's how Microsoft did it!
This has already been done at least once, to my knowledge: iASP.
There is also a tool to convert your ASP to PHP.
Your you can ditch your "you got your code in my HTML" model entirely, which most people figure out eventually.
In my experience, most people don't buy NT to use ASP. They use ASP becuase they have NT already installed and ASP is the easiest option on that platform.
I see we have the GPL/RMS lovers with moderator access today too...
the point is, there is substantial reason to believe that GPL/BSD "free software" licenses make code more likely to survive and thrive in the long run.
Really? What "substantial reason" is there? That just sounds like IMHO BS to me.
Qt's restrictive license, while technically "Open Source", has very much hampered its growth, and led to the rise of serious competition in the form of GTK (which is safely GPL'd).
I would hardly say that Qt's license has hampered it's growth. Maybe before the license was revised, but the fact is that most of the major distro's have adopted KDE.
KDE is also a superior product, which will help it win out in the end. Objections of GPL licensing wanks won't stop it, despite what you might hope for.
The point is that there are going to be lots of licenses (GPL, LGPL, Mozilla, BSD, Apple, Qt, etc. etc.). Learning to get along with others is much more productive that wishing that everything is GPLed or making wacko predictions about GPLed code outliving code released under other licenses.
I can already see the "GPL is the only true license" and "QT sucks" comments coming out of the woodwork.
The fact is that people who write software have the right to determine what license to distribute it under. So, no matter how much you wish everything was GPLed, it is not going to happen.
This is why we have people in the community working with people making S/W trying to make sure that licenses work with the OSD, and I think there have been a lot of successes or at least big improvements (QT, Apple, etc.)
Even with their efforts, there are still going to be compromises like this required. It may not be the best solution, but get used to it!