I'm not trolling, but isn't a spam filter enough? I, too, was burdened by spam. I'd get 100 per day, and was growing very frustrated. Last week I installed Spamassassin and the problem is gone. I still get a couple per day, but it's no longer a big deal. Am I a "best case scenario" for spam filters? Why wouldn't Taco just run spamassassin and be done with it?
>Again, there's nothing stopping anybody from releasing these drivers indipendantly of Linus' releases.
>Sure there is: the hooks just aren't in the kernel. And that's the point: the kernel is not designed as >a set of software components that people can assemble into a system, it's a monolithic piece of >software that often needs to be patched in order to support some new piece of hardware or functionality.
I disagree with this. Think PCMCIA, USB, DXR3, BTTV. To update these kernel modules, one simply downloads the tgz, unzips, make, make install. That's it. Even binary-only drivers can be distributed. I use NVidia's drivers (Yes, I'm tainted)
In the NVidia case it's just an RPM. What "hooks" does the kernel lack?
What modules cannot be updated as easily as I have described? Heck, pretty soon VM will be a module.
OK, I read it. Nice piece of fiction. Here's another URL:
http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/05feb03ti.ht ml
It's a direct response to your link. According to the UN, FAS, and Human Rights Watch the author of your link is dead wrong. Both of us can can google all night and swap links, but what it boils down to is credibility. I'll side with the UN, FAS, and HRW on this one...
Re:Not a troll: How many civilians died last time?
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 4, Informative
>Most anti-war people I hear talk about all the >civilian casualties resulting from this war, but >I'm somehow not sure I should take their word for >it. Does anyone here know the read civilian death >toll from the last Iraqi war?
I don't know the answer to your question, and for that I apologize, but I will offer this: In 1988 President Saddam Hussein ordered the destruction of the Iraqi city of the Halabja. Chemical weapons were used to contaminate the city. It was over in 2 hours. 5000 civilians were killed in that attack.
The bleeding hearts on this blog are making me ill. Hussein did in 2 hours what the US/coalition avoided in an entire war. And this was just one chemical attack. If the war lasted an entire year it is unlikely that as many civilians would be killed as those ordered to death by Hussein. I don't care what reasons Bush has for killing Hussein, but I have my own and so I wish the American president well.
Go here: http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/2000/09/iraq-0 00918.h tm
>1) If Microsoft did something like this, everyone >would be screaming and calling the Justice Dept. >It isn't right for someone else to do the same >thing.
Yes, and if Redhat did this people would be screaming also. However, this is just a guy with a lot of money. He can do whatever he wants with it. This isn't a company that's looking to corner the small college market.
>2) Taking all MS products off the campus would be >a dis-service to the students. Do some of us like >non-MS products? Sure. But when those students >graduate and go to work, are they going to see a >lot of MS in the workplace? You bet. To hide them >from MS products for 4 years would be harming >their education.
He didn't say anything about "taking all MS products off the campus". He is saying that he doesn't want HIS DONATED MONEY to be used on Microsoft products. Once again, his money; his rules. More power to him. If the college wants to support a feloneous entity, they can do it with their own money.
>I love Wednesdays! It's getting closer to Friday, >Monday is but a memory, and the lamest slashdot >articles are in!
>If you want to have a client side solution, I'm >sorry bud, but you are going to have to install >*something*.
Yes, Wednesdays. That's when the ignorant shoot off their mouths and piss us professional developers off. First, a word about project scope. If the client says "Don't install anything on my computers", then guess what dude. You don't install anything.
Next, you do not have to install anything to achieve the goal. Using DHTML and Javascript I created an app that allows my client to enlarge, shrink, rotate, and crop an image without ever going back to the server once the image was displayed. That's what was required. I could have done more if it matched scope. Oh, and it works in IE, Mozilla and Konqueror.
Take a good look at what your have at your disposal. There's a couple of rich languages there, and many parameters that you can tweak to make things look like their using a client side app.
You're comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended). If Microsoft made the laptop we would all expect to receive a Microsoft OS upon purchase. An "OS tax" would be a given. The situation is true of Apple. Apple brands the laptop as their own, thus it's acceptable to bundle it with their OS. The question is regarding the hardware that has no tie to the OS. Should I have to give a little of the overall cost of the hardware to Microsoft even though I'm not doing business with them? If so, that would be a tax. If there were a plethora of PPC laptop vendors out there, and none of them would sell a laptop without MacOS, then you would have a point. As it is, however, your example is flawed.
> Anyone want to bet how much jail time they'll get?
Probably none at all. This seems like one of those special "extra-constitutional" areas where someone just disappears and winds up in Git-Mo (Guantanamo Bay). Perhaps "volunteering" their time being chased through the jungle with sensors attached so that 'American Army II' will be even more realistic.:-)
You think that NataliePortman.mil is funny, wait till you see 270 pounds of 5'8" nerd huffing and puffing his way through the jungles of Cuba with the Marines in hot pursuit.:-) That would be great.
> I have several thousand reasons why I think Linux > is a decade or two from becoming a desktop OS.
As a satisfied Linux user (desktop and server) I have to say that I'm extremely happy that Linux is not a "desktop OS". If you make an OS that any idiot can use, then that's exactly what will happen. The community would lose it's "brotherhood" appeal in the face of software that "just works". If you want to run MPlayer on Redhat then you have to earn it, dammit. If you can't get it to work then you A) Don't want it bad enough to actually read the INSTALL, or B) Feel that your time is too valuable to "waste" in such a manner (which is bullshit, I *know* what you're going to use MPlayer f0r) or C) Just aren't smart enough to figure stuff out. That's fine. Windows was created for the millions of people that fit into the above categories.
PS, If this post pissed you off, you're probably a "C".
Para-Docs offers a turn-key solution for file management. In addition to traditional file serving, the appliance offers document management with workflow, trigger-fired messaging, and a ton of other features. The appliance is linux-based and uses postgres for it's database. It rocks, and is available at several price points.
Let me know if you need any additional information.
>IMHO stuff like this shouldn't be in hardware but >rather in its own topic.
I agree. Oh, and I don't use a mouse, so mice should have their own topic! I don't use fancy-schmancy graphics cards either, so let's topic those off also. I have no SCSI anything, so SCSI needs it's own topic.
What Taco needs to do is actually LOOK at my PC, and make everything that ISN'T there it's own topic. After all, it's so damn difficult to scroll down a little further, and I just cannot resist the urge to read and post to stories the do not interest me in the least...
Re: Skip to the last page for the most interesting
on
AMD's 64-bit Plot
·
· Score: 1
> I know because these recent actions,
> I will NEVER buy Intel ever again!
>But I still implore all you Slashdot hippies: >do not assume that all non-free software is >evil, and do not make BitKeeper the bad guy >just because they want to make money.
That's ignorant. Calling me a Slashdot hippie because I don't ant my fucking CVS tool dictating what software I'm allowed to write? I don't mind paying for software, and as long as the license doesn't go beyond illegal distribution I adhere to the license, but for a tool to tell me what projects I'm allowed to code for is rediculous. Fine, dude, sign yourself up and slap on the shackels. Let BitMover dictate your coding. Make sure your walking in a perfectly straight line or you're in for it. Eyes forward, mister...
I'd rather be a hippie than a brainwashed corporate pod.
Matthew
Re:Mosfet.org updated about why this is bad
on
KDE Gets The Hat
·
· Score: 1
OK, first of all, you're an idiot. I read your website every once in a while when I'm in the mood for a kneejerk "the world is out to get me" rant. The fact that I read it in Konqueror is relevant to the fact that I like KDE and KDE apps. That said, I think what Redhat is doing is correct. It's not Show Friends it's Show Business. With one sweeping redesign that halve their support costs. Now, let's delve into the insanity a bit:
>RedHat, who never has supported KDE and has had only one guy >packaging the whole thing in his spare time, (compared to dozens of >people working on Gnome), now apparently has changed some of the most >important default KDE applications to Gnome ones when using the KDE >desktop.
Wah. They chose Gnome because your camp had license issues. Your license issues have been resolved, but the choice had been made. They would be stupid to choose KDE at this point. They've put a lot of time and money into Gnome. Gnome is obviously the desktop that they push, why hire an army of packagers for an "also ran" desktop?
>When you select to use "KDE" as your default desktop you no longer >get the KDE web browser, the KDE email program, etc...
This is going to be a recurring theme to this post, so get used to it: It's their distro. They can put what they want in their menus. If a user is having e-mail problems they want to be in a position to help. They can't have support people for each desktop. If Evolution is both the KDE Desktop e-mail program and the Gnome Desktop e-mail program, they just reduced by 50% the staff needed to support e-mail problems.
>When you select a KDE desktop you basically get the window manager, >the panel, and a bunch of Gnome apps.
I can't speak for everyone, but I define a "Desktop" as a window manager and a panel. An e-mail program does not a "Desktop" make. Apps are apps, only you and Microsoft seem to get that confused.
>They have even gone so far as to remove KDE from the "About" boxes of >the KDE apps you get to keep when using their fake KDE desktop.
And when someone has a problem with the software, are they going to call KDE? Nope. The apps, the desktop, the OS - all Redhat's responsibility. It's their distro, it's their problem. And it's quite the enormous problem. By removing KDE from the menus they are obsolving KDE of the responsibility to do what it cannot: Answer the phone when a Redhat user calls for support. Don't worry, KDE will be back in the menu by the next beta. Removing it makes sense, but Redhat will cave to the whiners.
>This of course is a huge blow to KDE.
The ambiguous "This" must be refering to your post, right?
>If users select to use the KDE desktop they should obviously get >access to KDE applications as the default, not Gnome ones. Doing >otherwise cripples the entire thing.
Oh yes, Obviously. Because you can't have a "Desktop" without KCalc, right? I don't know what "The entire thing" is, so I won't touch it.
>Not only does it make KDE less efficent because you have to have both >toolkits running but people will not see any of the advantages KDE >applications have.
Redhat is not here to trumpet the KDE project. And, hard as it may be for you, they're noy here to trumpet the Gnome project either. They're here to provide a unified Linux distribution of the highest quality possible, with the lowest support costs possible, and the highest cost possible. They use the tools that help them achieve these goals. That's what all of those dots are between "Start Business" and "Make Profit". They don't owe the KDE project anything.
>No more Konqueror:( And you can forget about cool stuff like Liquid >working properly because many of the KDE apps have been replaced.
ftp://rawhide.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/n ul l/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/kdeaddons-konqueror-3.0.3 -1.i386.rpm Looks to me like Konqueror is alive and well in the latest beta. And that part about Liquid is just unabashed horn tooting. Liquid is pretty, BTW.
>you can forget about simple things like color schemes working >properly everywhere.
OK, you haven't even used this beta version, have you? Have you even seen it, or is your rant completely IRC-based?
>with RH you pretty much can forget about using KDE - they've reduced >it to nothing on their platform.
And there we have it, folks! Yes, you "can forget about using KDE". You can forget about it, and get some fucking work done. That's the point, dude. The market that Redhat want's doesn't want to care about using KDE. They want to use their computers to do work. That's it. The people using these computers don't want to know what OS is on it, let alone what window manager or calculator program. I said it before, and I'll say it again: It's not Show Friends, it's Show Business.
>OFFTOPIC: Things I'm sick of: that f--king >Geico lizard, the Lincoln Navigator ad with the >jazz quartet (see Tour de France coverage on >OLN), ads for The Country Bears, and that >stupid buy-drugs-fund-terrorists shit (whic >was lame the first time they aired it).
You just proved, better than the rest of your reply, why "rating" commercials is tricky. It's not only the best commercials that stick with you, but also the worst. That fact that you remembered the above mentioned commercials means that the ad is successful. I guess they could still ask for user feedback on a scale of 1-10, and the 1's and 10's would both be winners. Unless you base your buying habits on how much you like/dislike a commercial, then 'annoying' and just as successful as 'funny', or 'clever'.
>Most users are not worried about those things >because they have nothing to hide.
This passes as "Insightful" on Slashdot. Geeze. You're one of those people that believe that it's "OK" for police to search your house without a warrant, or pull you over without cause, because you've got "nothing to hide". Not only that, but you're willing to extend that power to a corporation. Do you know what happens to people when they're given that kind of power? Power corrupts. That's a fact, not some silly speculation. You may not have anything to hide right now, but wait for the next EULA. Or the next. Pretty soon something will make the list that you care about, and by that time you're screwed because you've already granted access rights. You do not deserve the freedoms that you have, please leave the country at your earliest possible convenience.
>Would you just assume that the ability to burn >a CD and then read it proves that everything is >fine? Has anyone looked into the >error rates of hot-rodded drives vs. those >drives sold to operate at the higher speeds? >Has anyone examined the long-term data >retention of CDs burned at 48X in what was a >32X burner?
Geeze dude, who do you think you are, Ralph Nader? It's just a flippin' CDRW, not a seat belt mod or DIY nuclear reactor. Take a pill. If things don't work out just get another. What do you think is going to happen here? Is a disk going spin up so fast that the inertia rips it from the drive, decapitating the user?
32x Lite-On CD-RW is $52.00 on Pricewatch. Not a biggie. Besides, it sounds pretty cool.
-Let's be honest, Linux is fun, but it's not a one-size-fits-all -toolkit. There are some things (flame on!) that windows simply does -better (games), though they are largely due to their dominance in -the marketplace. Given a cheaper, better functioning product, -people WILL switch.
I agree with everything you've said, except that Windows does games better. I don't mean to split hairs, but Windows really can't do games any better. They may have more video drivers, and a larger repertoire, but it's unlikely that it can run those games better. Consider the stock linux kernel. Not enough? Add preemption. Still not enough? Add low latency. STILL? Pop in the O(1) scheduler. etc. etc. Consider, also, Linux's modest memory requirements. More memory for the game, more game data can be stored in memory.
Perhaps you were just referring to the presence of more games.
> Why not let the people already interested in > Linux break the chain. It's not like there > aren't any.
That was impossible until the contract expired. The contract guarenteed the use of Microsoft products. Even if you were interested in breaking the chain, it was forbidden.
>...with software that most of its workers use > at home seems like a large expense.
I agree with this, but someone has got to break the chain. When you think "government" you usually associate that with office buildings and bureaucracy. However, government means schools as well. The reason people use Windows at home is because they use Windows at work, because they used Windows in college, because they used Windows in high school. If the government went with Linux in grade school/high schools then more colleges would be Linux-based. More colleges means more businesses (that's what the grads know). The chain can finally be used to Linux's (and everyone's) advantage.
I'm firmly in the UDP camp. About 4 years ago we replaced our timeclocks at work (manufacturing facility) with hardened, wall-mounted PCs. I wrote a GTK app that started at boot up that takes the users card swipe, grabs their name from the database (for display only), and sends the clock number via UDP to the timeclock server.
During my initial proposal I mentioned to the PHBs that I would use the UDP protocol. One of my colleagues, wanting to sound important, said that UDP can be lossy. He went on to explain packet loss to the befuddled crowd. Well, the PHBs latched onto the term "packet loss". Packet loss this, packet loss that. They had no freakin' clue what it was, but it sounds pretty cool.
Anyway, I had to set up a test in which I had all of the timeclocks start a program at the same time. This program went into a tight loop of sending UDP packets (clock numbers) across the network to the server. Each one sent 1000 clock numbers, and every single one made it across. Obviously our 100mb network and proper use of subnets helped, but we haven't experienced any packet loss in the four years that these things have been running. So there.:-)
>Seriously, nothing personal, thats what the > site is about, but your comments after most > story submissions tend to represent the worst > elitist, one sided opinions of the community
You've obviously never browsed below score threshold 2. Taco's editorial comments are very sane, grammatically superior, and thoroughly spell-checked compared to the LESS THAN 2 norm. Oh, and Taco has never pointed us at goatse.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha ha, you had me until this:
>> I was just about to purchase OpenServer!
You just had to take the joke out of the realm of possibility, didn't you?
Matthew
> As a non american i feel threatened.
> Am i to be 'liberated' next?
Hey, watch it buddy. Them's liberation words...
Matthew
I'm not trolling, but isn't a spam filter enough? I, too, was burdened by spam. I'd get 100 per day, and was growing very frustrated. Last week I installed Spamassassin and the problem is gone. I still get a couple per day, but it's no longer a big deal. Am I a "best case scenario" for spam filters? Why wouldn't Taco just run spamassassin and be done with it?
What am I missing?
>Again, there's nothing stopping anybody from releasing these drivers indipendantly of Linus' releases.
>Sure there is: the hooks just aren't in the kernel. And that's the point: the kernel is not designed as
>a set of software components that people can assemble into a system, it's a monolithic piece of
>software that often needs to be patched in order to support some new piece of hardware or functionality.
I disagree with this. Think PCMCIA, USB, DXR3, BTTV. To update these kernel modules, one simply downloads the tgz, unzips, make, make install. That's it. Even binary-only drivers can be distributed. I use NVidia's drivers (Yes, I'm tainted)
In the NVidia case it's just an RPM. What "hooks" does the kernel lack?
What modules cannot be updated as easily as I have described? Heck, pretty soon VM will be a module.
Matthew
>God will have mercy on your soul for participating
...and...
...and...
>in a blitzkrieg of misplaced nationalism the likes
>of which the world has not seen since Hitler.
Ah, Godwin's Law:
"if you mention Hitler or Nazis in a post, you've
automatically ended whatever discussion you were
taking part in"
>You won't believe a CIA analyst that was
>responsible for the region before it became a
>popular thing to talk about
The guys in my article aren't exactly "average Joes":
PETER GALBRAITH
former United States ambassador to Croatia
KENNETH ROTH
Executive Director
Human Rights Watch
MORTEZA RAMANDI
Press Attaché, Mission of Iran
to the United Nations
>This is a lot bigger than Iraq. Iran is next.
>Iraq is a convenient launchpad for the next blitz
Alarmist speculation. Besides, we wouldn't need a "launch pad" in Iraq. We have 5 carriers in the region.
>I'll pray for you don't worry.
Um, OK.
>Humans have never had trouble finding in their
>hearts the reasons to make murder palatable when
>it serves their needs.
I agree. But when faced with committing one murder to prevent thousands, I guess we just have to agree to disagree...
OK, I read it. Nice piece of fiction. Here's another URL:
http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/05feb03ti.h
It's a direct response to your link. According to the UN, FAS, and Human Rights Watch the author of your link is dead wrong. Both of us can can google all night and swap links, but what it boils down to is credibility. I'll side with the UN, FAS, and HRW on this one...
>Most anti-war people I hear talk about all the
0 00918.h tm
>civilian casualties resulting from this war, but
>I'm somehow not sure I should take their word for
>it. Does anyone here know the read civilian death
>toll from the last Iraqi war?
I don't know the answer to your question, and for that I apologize, but I will offer this: In 1988 President Saddam Hussein ordered the destruction of the Iraqi city of the Halabja. Chemical weapons were used to contaminate the city. It was over in 2 hours. 5000 civilians were killed in that attack.
The bleeding hearts on this blog are making me ill. Hussein did in 2 hours what the US/coalition avoided in an entire war. And this was just one chemical attack. If the war lasted an entire year it is unlikely that as many civilians would be killed as those ordered to death by Hussein. I don't care what reasons Bush has for killing Hussein, but I have my own and so I wish the American president well.
Go here:
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/2000/09/iraq-
Read it. All of it.
Your points are irrelevant:
>1) If Microsoft did something like this, everyone
>would be screaming and calling the Justice Dept.
>It isn't right for someone else to do the same
>thing.
Yes, and if Redhat did this people would be screaming also. However, this is just a guy with a lot of money. He can do whatever he wants with it. This isn't a company that's looking to corner the small college market.
>2) Taking all MS products off the campus would be
>a dis-service to the students. Do some of us like
>non-MS products? Sure. But when those students
>graduate and go to work, are they going to see a
>lot of MS in the workplace? You bet. To hide them
>from MS products for 4 years would be harming
>their education.
He didn't say anything about "taking all MS products off the campus". He is saying that he doesn't want HIS DONATED MONEY to be used on Microsoft products. Once again, his money; his rules. More power to him. If the college wants to support a feloneous entity, they can do it with their own money.
Matthew
>I love Wednesdays! It's getting closer to Friday,
>Monday is but a memory, and the lamest slashdot
>articles are in!
>If you want to have a client side solution, I'm
>sorry bud, but you are going to have to install
>*something*.
Yes, Wednesdays. That's when the ignorant shoot off their mouths and piss us professional developers off. First, a word about project scope. If the client says "Don't install anything on my computers", then guess what dude. You don't install anything.
Next, you do not have to install anything to achieve the goal. Using DHTML and Javascript I created an app that allows my client to enlarge, shrink, rotate, and crop an image without ever going back to the server once the image was displayed. That's what was required. I could have done more if it matched scope. Oh, and it works in IE, Mozilla and Konqueror.
Take a good look at what your have at your disposal. There's a couple of rich languages there, and many parameters that you can tweak to make things look like their using a client side app.
VBscript? Hehe, cute.
Matthew
You're comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended). If Microsoft made the laptop we would all expect to receive a Microsoft OS upon purchase. An "OS tax" would be a given. The situation is true of Apple. Apple brands the laptop as their own, thus it's acceptable to bundle it with their OS. The question is regarding the hardware that has no tie to the OS. Should I have to give a little of the overall cost of the hardware to Microsoft even though I'm not doing business with them? If so, that would be a tax. If there were a plethora of PPC laptop vendors out there, and none of them would sell a laptop without MacOS, then you would have a point. As it is, however, your example is flawed.
> Anyone want to bet how much jail time they'll get?
:-)
:-) That would be great.
Probably none at all. This seems like one of those special "extra-constitutional" areas where someone just disappears and winds up in Git-Mo (Guantanamo Bay). Perhaps "volunteering" their time being chased through the jungle with sensors attached so that 'American Army II' will be even more realistic.
You think that NataliePortman.mil is funny, wait till you see 270 pounds of 5'8" nerd huffing and puffing his way through the jungles of Cuba with the Marines in hot pursuit.
Matthew
> I have several thousand reasons why I think Linux
> is a decade or two from becoming a desktop OS.
As a satisfied Linux user (desktop and server) I have to say that I'm extremely happy that Linux is not a "desktop OS". If you make an OS that any idiot can use, then that's exactly what will happen. The community would lose it's "brotherhood" appeal in the face of software that "just works". If you want to run MPlayer on Redhat then you have to earn it, dammit. If you can't get it to work then you A) Don't want it bad enough to actually read the INSTALL, or B) Feel that your time is too valuable to "waste" in such a manner (which is bullshit, I *know* what you're going to use MPlayer f0r) or C) Just aren't smart enough to figure stuff out. That's fine. Windows was created for the millions of people that fit into the above categories.
PS, If this post pissed you off, you're probably a "C".
Matthew
Para-Docs offers a turn-key solution for file management. In addition to traditional file serving, the appliance offers document management with workflow, trigger-fired messaging, and a ton of other features. The appliance is linux-based and uses postgres for it's database. It rocks, and is available at several price points.
Let me know if you need any additional information.
Matthew
matthew@mattshouse.removethis.com
>IMHO stuff like this shouldn't be in hardware but >rather in its own topic.
I agree. Oh, and I don't use a mouse, so mice should have their own topic! I don't use fancy-schmancy graphics cards either, so let's topic those off also. I have no SCSI anything, so SCSI needs it's own topic.
What Taco needs to do is actually LOOK at my PC, and make everything that ISN'T there it's own topic. After all, it's so damn difficult to scroll down a little further, and I just cannot resist the urge to read and post to stories the do not interest me in the least...
> I know because these recent actions,
> I will NEVER buy Intel ever again!
AMD's Sanders testifies on Microsoft's behalf as 'favor' to Gates
I will NEVER buy AMD again. Who's the bigger fool, the fool, or the fool who follows him?
Matthew
>But I still implore all you Slashdot hippies: >do not assume that all non-free software is >evil, and do not make BitKeeper the bad guy >just because they want to make money.
That's ignorant. Calling me a Slashdot hippie because I don't ant my fucking CVS tool dictating what software I'm allowed to write? I don't mind paying for software, and as long as the license doesn't go beyond illegal distribution I adhere to the license, but for a tool to tell me what projects I'm allowed to code for is rediculous. Fine, dude, sign yourself up and slap on the shackels. Let BitMover dictate your coding. Make sure your walking in a perfectly straight line or you're in for it. Eyes forward, mister...
I'd rather be a hippie than a brainwashed corporate pod.
Matthew
OK, first of all, you're an idiot. I read your website every once in a while when I'm in the mood for a kneejerk "the world is out to get me" rant. The fact that I read it in Konqueror is relevant to the fact that I like KDE and KDE apps. That said, I think what Redhat is doing is correct. It's not Show Friends it's Show Business. With one sweeping redesign that halve their support costs. Now, let's delve into the insanity a bit:
:( And you can forget about cool stuff like Liquid
n ul l/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/kdeaddons-konqueror-3.0.3 -1.i386.rpm
>RedHat, who never has supported KDE and has had only one guy
>packaging the whole thing in his spare time, (compared to dozens of
>people working on Gnome), now apparently has changed some of the most
>important default KDE applications to Gnome ones when using the KDE
>desktop.
Wah. They chose Gnome because your camp had license issues. Your license issues have been resolved, but the choice had been made. They would be stupid to choose KDE at this point. They've put a lot of time and money into Gnome. Gnome is obviously the desktop that they push, why hire an army of packagers for an "also ran" desktop?
>When you select to use "KDE" as your default desktop you no longer
>get the KDE web browser, the KDE email program, etc...
This is going to be a recurring theme to this post, so get used to it: It's their distro. They can put what they want in their menus. If a user is having e-mail problems they want to be in a position to help. They can't have support people for each desktop. If Evolution is both the KDE Desktop e-mail program and the Gnome Desktop e-mail program, they just reduced by 50% the staff needed to support e-mail problems.
>When you select a KDE desktop you basically get the window manager,
>the panel, and a bunch of Gnome apps.
I can't speak for everyone, but I define a "Desktop" as a window manager and a panel. An e-mail program does not a "Desktop" make. Apps are apps, only you and Microsoft seem to get that confused.
>They have even gone so far as to remove KDE from the "About" boxes of
>the KDE apps you get to keep when using their fake KDE desktop.
And when someone has a problem with the software, are they going to call KDE? Nope. The apps, the desktop, the OS - all Redhat's responsibility. It's their distro, it's their problem. And it's quite the enormous problem. By removing KDE from the menus they are obsolving KDE of the responsibility to do what it cannot: Answer the phone when a Redhat user calls for support. Don't worry, KDE will be back in the menu by the next beta. Removing it makes sense, but Redhat will cave to the whiners.
>This of course is a huge blow to KDE.
The ambiguous "This" must be refering to your post, right?
>If users select to use the KDE desktop they should obviously get
>access to KDE applications as the default, not Gnome ones. Doing
>otherwise cripples the entire thing.
Oh yes, Obviously. Because you can't have a "Desktop" without KCalc, right? I don't know what "The entire thing" is, so I won't touch it.
>Not only does it make KDE less efficent because you have to have both
>toolkits running but people will not see any of the advantages KDE
>applications have.
Redhat is not here to trumpet the KDE project. And, hard as it may be for you, they're noy here to trumpet the Gnome project either. They're here to provide a unified Linux distribution of the highest quality possible, with the lowest support costs possible, and the highest cost possible. They use the tools that help them achieve these goals. That's what all of those dots are between "Start Business" and "Make Profit". They don't owe the KDE project anything.
>No more Konqueror
>working properly because many of the KDE apps have been replaced.
ftp://rawhide.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/beta/
Looks to me like Konqueror is alive and well in the latest beta. And that part about Liquid is just unabashed horn tooting. Liquid is pretty, BTW.
>you can forget about simple things like color schemes working
>properly everywhere.
OK, you haven't even used this beta version, have you? Have you even seen it, or is your rant completely IRC-based?
>with RH you pretty much can forget about using KDE - they've reduced
>it to nothing on their platform.
And there we have it, folks! Yes, you "can forget about using KDE". You can forget about it, and get some fucking work done. That's the point, dude. The market that Redhat want's doesn't want to care about using KDE. They want to use their computers to do work. That's it. The people using these computers don't want to know what OS is on it, let alone what window manager or calculator program. I said it before, and I'll say it again: It's not Show Friends, it's Show Business.
Matthew
>OFFTOPIC: Things I'm sick of: that f--king
>Geico lizard, the Lincoln Navigator ad with the
>jazz quartet (see Tour de France coverage on
>OLN), ads for The Country Bears, and that
>stupid buy-drugs-fund-terrorists shit (whic
>was lame the first time they aired it).
You just proved, better than the rest of your reply, why "rating" commercials is tricky. It's not only the best commercials that stick with you, but also the worst. That fact that you remembered the above mentioned commercials means that the ad is successful. I guess they could still ask for user feedback on a scale of 1-10, and the 1's and 10's would both be winners. Unless you base your buying habits on how much you like/dislike a commercial, then 'annoying' and just as successful as 'funny', or 'clever'.
>Most users are not worried about those things >because they have nothing to hide.
This passes as "Insightful" on Slashdot. Geeze. You're one of those people that believe that it's "OK" for police to search your house without a warrant, or pull you over without cause, because you've got "nothing to hide".
Not only that, but you're willing to extend that power to a corporation. Do you know what happens to people when they're given that kind of power? Power corrupts. That's a fact, not some silly speculation. You may not have anything to hide right now, but wait for the next EULA. Or the next. Pretty soon something will make the list that you care about, and by that time you're screwed because you've already granted access rights.
You do not deserve the freedoms that you have, please leave the country at your earliest possible convenience.
Matthew
>Would you just assume that the ability to burn
>a CD and then read it proves that everything is
>fine? Has anyone looked into the
>error rates of hot-rodded drives vs. those
>drives sold to operate at the higher speeds?
>Has anyone examined the long-term data
>retention of CDs burned at 48X in what was a
>32X burner?
Geeze dude, who do you think you are, Ralph Nader? It's just a flippin' CDRW, not a seat belt mod or DIY nuclear reactor. Take a pill. If things don't work out just get another. What do you think is going to happen here? Is a disk going spin up so fast that the inertia rips it from the drive, decapitating the user?
32x Lite-On CD-RW is $52.00 on Pricewatch. Not a biggie. Besides, it sounds pretty cool.
Matthew
-Let's be honest, Linux is fun, but it's not a one-size-fits-all
-toolkit. There are some things (flame on!) that windows simply does
-better (games), though they are largely due to their dominance in
-the marketplace. Given a cheaper, better functioning product, -people WILL switch.
I agree with everything you've said, except that Windows does games better. I don't mean to split hairs, but Windows really can't do games any better. They may have more video drivers, and a larger repertoire, but it's unlikely that it can run those games better. Consider the stock linux kernel. Not enough? Add preemption. Still not enough? Add low latency. STILL? Pop in the O(1) scheduler. etc. etc. Consider, also, Linux's modest memory requirements. More memory for the game, more game data can be stored in memory.
Perhaps you were just referring to the presence of more games.
Matthew
> Why not let the people already interested in
> Linux break the chain. It's not like there
> aren't any.
That was impossible until the contract expired. The contract guarenteed the use of Microsoft products. Even if you were interested in breaking the chain, it was forbidden.
Matthew
> ...with software that most of its workers use
> at home seems like a large expense.
I agree with this, but someone has got to break the chain. When you think "government" you usually associate that with office buildings and bureaucracy. However, government means schools as well. The reason people use Windows at home is because they use Windows at work, because they used Windows in college, because they used Windows in high school. If the government went with Linux in grade school/high schools then more colleges would be Linux-based. More colleges means more businesses (that's what the grads know). The chain can finally be used to Linux's (and everyone's) advantage.
Matthew
I'm firmly in the UDP camp. About 4 years ago we replaced our timeclocks at work (manufacturing facility) with hardened, wall-mounted PCs. I wrote a GTK app that started at boot up that takes the users card swipe, grabs their name from the database (for display only), and sends the clock number via UDP to the timeclock server.
:-)
During my initial proposal I mentioned to the PHBs that I would use the UDP protocol. One of my colleagues, wanting to sound important, said that UDP can be lossy. He went on to explain packet loss to the befuddled crowd. Well, the PHBs latched onto the term "packet loss". Packet loss this, packet loss that. They had no freakin' clue what it was, but it sounds pretty cool.
Anyway, I had to set up a test in which I had all of the timeclocks start a program at the same time. This program went into a tight loop of sending UDP packets (clock numbers) across the network to the server. Each one sent 1000 clock numbers, and every single one made it across. Obviously our 100mb network and proper use of subnets helped, but we haven't experienced any packet loss in the four years that these things have been running. So there.
Matthew
>Seriously, nothing personal, thats what the
> site is about, but your comments after most
> story submissions tend to represent the worst
> elitist, one sided opinions of the community
You've obviously never browsed below score threshold 2. Taco's editorial comments are very sane, grammatically superior, and thoroughly spell-checked compared to the LESS THAN 2 norm. Oh, and Taco has never pointed us at goatse.
Matthew