Uhm, excuse me, but I think it's very obvious that a lot of development on the Mozilla project has been misdirected.
The problems mentioned in that article aren't only limited to the NS6 project, afterall. Mozilla has been in development for several years now, and it's kind of ridiculous that the thing doesn't even display the most basic HTML 4.0 pages with high accurracy.
Mozilla needs people to work on what really matters, and watching progress from M13, I STILL haven't had any better performance - either in speed, stability, or in page rendering. Which is why I don't use it.:P
Mozilla has and has had all the resources it needed to be an excellent web browser. It had a good start, it has lots of coders backing it... it generally had a great deal of potential.
The downfall was in the lack of leadership and everyone's determination to do whatever the hell they wanted. Everyone started working on shit.
WHY do we need themability? Especially since the damn thing is GTK based? STUPID. WHY do we need an excessively consumer oriented interface? Web pages do that well enough themselves.
Mozilla has me utterly disappointed. It's the poster child for how badly open source projects can fail, and everyone should use it as an example of what NOT to do when starting their own large scale projects.
Stay on task. Realize your goals. Make it look pretty after it works.
What gives? The US should also be making moves like this to ensure broadband to the masses. It will inevitably be vital to not only the advancement of, but the maintenance of our society.
It's not as if we don't have the funds for such an endeavor. A friend of mind crunched the numbers and figured that the cost of one aircraft carrier could put a computer on ever classroom desk of every school of every town, city, and state in this country (and we're in the processes of building a new one right now, right?).
Wiring the country for government subsidized broadband would be a lot cheaper than the aforementioned task. Grr...
Maybe I'm just bitter because my house sits in the middle of a DSLAM-lacking bubble.
I know Cyan has limited resources, but why did they hand off Myst 3 to another studio? First off, Myst 3 is unnecessary in the story line, I think. It attempts to continue the story by bringing up something we thought about briefly when we completed Myst. Nothing really worth while - it's not original. Ghen did the same thing to Riven. Plus, after reading the trilogy, I think it's a brilliant story that should be left as it is. This is just a poor attempt to milk the series for more money.
Second, I am very unconvinced by the screen shots I saw on www.myst3.com. It's HOW many years after Riven, and the quality has declined? Everything looks fake and plasticky, even though the poly count is a lot higher.
*sigh* I'm disappointed. To me, the last game in the series was Riven (and the last book was The Book of D'ni). Let it rest, Cyan!
This is pretty much the point I wanted to make, but I am craming for a test.
If you'll notice my tagline, it's Japanese for "no matter where, all people are connected". It's a saying from Serial Experiments: Lain, an Anime that deals with the questions (and answers) you just posed in that post. (I won't spoil it for people who have yet to see the series, so I am not going to go into detail.)
The Net has the potential flexability to be whatever want it to be. It's a medium of pure expression and individual preference (it's just being used as a cashcow at the moment).
What will the Net become when we can interact with it on a more personal basis? Direct neural links? Nanotechnology being used in a human brain to transfer signals? What is it going to be like when we can consciously enter this ethereal thing we call "Cyberspace"?
Although I partially agree; the Net is certainly a thing that can really increase someone's knowledge and understanding, and potentially lead to enlightenment...
But it's currently chuck full of commercial nonsense and porn pop-up ads, so I don't think we'll be seeing any of that happening soon.
I think Margaret Wertheim has been reading a bit too many Gibson novels.:-)
The Crusoe, I am convinced, is a great processor. Big companies are just incredibly wary of it because it comes from a tiny little company that is iconified by the hero of the open source movement. Given that the higher-ups are less than optomistic about the little guys, regardless how good their products are, this really shouldn't come as much as a surprise.
Also, considering the current quality of IBM ThinkPads, a part of me is happy to hear this news. IBM turning out sub quality laptops will cause a negative impact on the general acceptance of the Crusoe.
This is a minor loss after a huge win. After all, Sony seems to like the Crusoe, and I think that among those buying laptops, the sleek, clean, very well engineered Vaio is better than the big, bulky, slapped-together ThinkPad. Sony is a better name to associate with Transmeta's kick-ass processor. As for IBM, well, no matter how much cool stuff they're involved with, doesn't make good laptops (anymore), so good riddence (unless they improve).:-)
Of course the rich should pay more. If they are wealthy, then they should support our economy more than the average Joe. They got wealthy as a result of our society, and therefore, owe something back to it.
That way, more money can be allocated to lesser income groups such that they can have a better chance at higher success to. Personally, I would enjoy reduced taxes - I am in school right now and I'd be nice to funnel all of my money into getting my loans paid off afterwards, rather than filling part of the role of someone who's currently lavishing in success.
Now, if I ever become successful to the point where money is no longer a serious issue, I'd be more than happy to do my share. I'd owe it to the society.
There's piles of information to mill through. There's been a lot said. The debates rage.
But who should we be voting for? I don't have the time right now to really dig through the material and read pages after pages of policy and view points. I have class work to do - I need bottom lines. As a geek, there's certain rights that I'd like to see preserved. Al Gore and the Democrats want to see them removed (DMCA). On the flip side, George Bush is anti-abortion and I believe that women have a right to choose. Economists at my school have told me that Nader's financial plans are a joke. The fourth guy just doesn't matter. *chuckle*
One might argue that my lack of time to do proper research means that I shouldn't influence the election - but I feel it's my duty as an American citizen to vote (people shed blood so that I could have this privaledge). But, I don't like any of the candidates.
What is the general opinion of the/. community on who is the least evil - or are there any alternatives to casting a direct vote that still enables me to fulfill my duty? (Someone from the UK had mentioned sploiling the vote - something similar for the US?)
I used to really like Slackware, until one evening I decided to bite the bullet and try out Debian (everyone had been hassling me for a while because I was a Slack zealot). What prompted this was replacing SuSE 7.0 on my SPARC box. I wanted to use Slack originally, but the rest is history. Now I love Debian and won't use anything else. It's just kind of ironic because I really could have used this and remained true to my original brand about one month ago.:)
The interesting thing is, who is really going to use Slack on Sun boxen? Now, don't get me wrong, Slack is one of the better distros for hacks, but I don't find it particularly good for server applications - which is the role of most Sun machines.
My company used to use Slack on one of its development servers and a web server. Unfortunately, we were having some strange problems with general weirdness that went away when our sys. admin installed Rh6.2. Go figure.
I've never liked wireless devices on the account of battery wearouts. Yes, it doesn't happen that quickly, but it's a hassle if you're in the middle of typing something, then suddenly, you're pouding the board, wondering why there's no chars appearing.
Then you pop out the cells and stick them in your charger. Hopefully you've got more on hand.
That is just plain annoying... plus I like to use the LED's on my board as indicators for certain things...
What's the solution? I think a cool idea would be to actually use the energy from the keystrokes themselves to charge a cell. Think about it... how much total force is made with each keypress? What if you could some how use the impact to generate a small charge? You know those sold-state speakers used in handheld devices (they consist of a copper and zinc plate - I think:). If you strike them with a hammer, watch your multimeter read out as much as 12VC with decent current. If they were perfected to produce even a fraction of that... after two thousand keystrokes, you'd have saved up a considerable amount of energy.
Probably not at all viable, but just a cool idea. It'd be akin I think to pushing the lever on an old sewing machine... but it'd be neat. Human powered keyboards.:-)
...for more Microsoft anti-Linux propaganda. Did anyone watch that insanely stupid Flash animation involving the white and black hat hackers (where one was a net. administrator and the other a script kiddie)?
Just to drop a little FUD in there, they mentioned that the "honeypot" system was running RedHat which had "outdated DNS software with a known security bug". (They didn't mentioned a version... therefore, all RedHat has this bug that let a script kiddie in, and since RedHat *is* Linux... Linux therefore sucks - you should use Windows).
Riiight. We see a nice little case here of pure media cluelessness, that is not only designed to play on the fears of your typical citizen, but also to pair up anything that is open and free with "evil hacking".
The cumulative impact of all this is just too depressing for me to stand anymore. Where does it stop? When will the media be unbiased? When will politicians stop being stupid? When will the public get a clue? The Internet and all related technologies and culture are humankind's last bastion of TRUE free speech. It is HERE that we will find meaning. It is HERE that technology will advance most rapidly.
But, never before has the entire world been on the brink of such ground shaking change. (What? You mean we don't need money to get quality products anymore? You mean we don't have to pay for news? We can say anything we want and not be stigmatized for our opinions? There's more...?) Therefore, the idiots in large groups will do everything to hold the world where it is, by making those things which will change the world for the better "illegal".
*sigh* I wish I had time to do something about it. I wish I had time to read the draft indepth and formulate an education opinion on its points. But at the same time, I am caught up in the duties of my day to day life - distracted by things that must be done (school, work, etc). The bad part is, most people reading this are in similar positions. Meanwhile, things are flying right by in the real world that will drastically impact our lives. Yet, so little can be done about it.
Is Goldstein (and his lawyer) really the only individuals at the pinnicle of this fight against the MPAA? It sounds like he's loading up quite a debt on his shoulders and so far, the situation is looking grim.
Yet he refuses to give up.
Aside from owing 8 million dollars and change for court costs on the side of the MPAA, what else is going to happen to him? I some how doubt that the couch change of a community of hackers is going to do much good - and the EFF certainly doesn't have that kind of money.
I don't know... his situation seems pretty shitty to me - these massive risks, the uphill battle. Should those who feel threatened by the MPAA find a different strategy to beat the nasty licensing (and other various attrocities) that the MPAA are looking to impose?
Being at work or using corporate equipment to do - whatever... is like being a guest behind enemy lines. Regardless of the company tells you, you're always under suspect and someone will always be watching you. As the poster mentioned, the only way to really be safe is to encrypt anything you have to say that the company might not like. Then again, can they ask you to decrypt whatever it is you send when they find the message?
I've been using KDE 2.0 since the 1.93 release and I am convinced that it will definitely give major headway into the desktop market.
KDE's features are so powerful, slick, and incredibly accessable. I've configured it such for some users that they couldn't tell the difference between KDE2 and the Windows UI (other than the fact that it's look *so* much better!) - which is important because it gives such a seamless transition between Windows and Linux.
KDE's internal model is also great. Unlike those *other* desktop environments, it's written in a language that supports objects directly - rather than using something hacked together. (Sorry for the jab - I love KDE!:-) I foresee it as being incredibly extensible and incredibly powerful for rapid application development (which is really good for commercial applications to take hold on the platform).
If you're using GNOME or haven't switched over from 1.1.2 yet, I *highly* recommend doing so. KDE2 is definitely worth it and a HUGE milestone for Linux on the desktop.
I've been using KDE 2.0 since the 1.93 release and I am convinced that it will definitely give major headway into the desktop market.
KDE's features are so powerful, slick, and incredibly accessable. I've configured it such for some users that they couldn't tell the difference between KDE2 and the Windows UI (other than the fact that it's look *so* much better!) - which is important because it gives such a seamless transition between Windows and Linux.
KDE's internal model is also great. Unlike those *other* desktop environments, it's written in a language that supports objects directly - rather than using something hacked together. (Sorry for the jab - I love KDE!:-) I foresee it as being incredibly extensible and incredibly powerful for rapid application development (which is really good for commercial applications to take hold on the platform).
If you're using GNOME or haven't switched over yet, I *highly* recommend doing so. KDE2 is definitely worth it and a HUGE milestone for Linux on the desktop.
You're kidding, right? (How did this get moderated up?)
Explain GNOME. Explain KDE. Explain the rest of the UI's currently in development. These are desktop environments that a LOT of open source development is going into SPECIFICALLY to compete with Windows in the desktop arena.
Yes, Linux is competing with NT & 9x.
Linux on the server side doesn't need easy to use interfaces like the aforementioned environments. Linux on the desktop does. Windows 9x is currently dominant on the desktop.
Consider the facts:
The Linux kernel is increasing support for desktop user space applications. USB, Firewire, DRI (for 3d/fx thus far), etc.
One of the main focii of the XFree86 project is to deliver better 3D accelleration. This is for the desktop, not servers.
Projects like GNOME, KDE, and other desktop environments are burning up community efforts like wildfire. These are for the desktop.
Office suites are being released like mad. Why do you need office productivity server on the server? You don't. This is for the desktop.
I could continue this tirade, but I'm irritated at the apathy in thinking like that. To say that Linux doesn't compete with Windows 9x is absurd. We need to feel as competetive as possible against Windows on server AND desktop - because I promise you, Microsoft feels the same about Linux (do you remember the post the other day? - M$ are directly attacking Linux in their ads!)
You mentioned that most users don't consider between Windows and Linux when choosing a desktop. This is the whole problem! Users NEED to have a strong pull towards Linux, otherwise, users in mass will not move away from Microsoft... and M$ will continue their monopoly.
Repeat after me: Linux is competing with Windows 98.
Slashdot Mirror
The problems mentioned in that article aren't only limited to the NS6 project, afterall. Mozilla has been in development for several years now, and it's kind of ridiculous that the thing doesn't even display the most basic HTML 4.0 pages with high accurracy.
Mozilla needs people to work on what really matters, and watching progress from M13, I STILL haven't had any better performance - either in speed, stability, or in page rendering. Which is why I don't use it. :P
The downfall was in the lack of leadership and everyone's determination to do whatever the hell they wanted. Everyone started working on shit.
WHY do we need themability? Especially since the damn thing is GTK based? STUPID. WHY do we need an excessively consumer oriented interface? Web pages do that well enough themselves.
Mozilla has me utterly disappointed. It's the poster child for how badly open source projects can fail, and everyone should use it as an example of what NOT to do when starting their own large scale projects.
Stay on task. Realize your goals. Make it look pretty after it works.
This is what MS did with IE.
It's not as if we don't have the funds for such an endeavor. A friend of mind crunched the numbers and figured that the cost of one aircraft carrier could put a computer on ever classroom desk of every school of every town, city, and state in this country (and we're in the processes of building a new one right now, right?).
Wiring the country for government subsidized broadband would be a lot cheaper than the aforementioned task. Grr...
Maybe I'm just bitter because my house sits in the middle of a DSLAM-lacking bubble.
Go get realMYST since the main download sites are busy. Enjoy!
Second, I am very unconvinced by the screen shots I saw on www.myst3.com. It's HOW many years after Riven, and the quality has declined? Everything looks fake and plasticky, even though the poly count is a lot higher.
*sigh* I'm disappointed. To me, the last game in the series was Riven (and the last book was The Book of D'ni). Let it rest, Cyan!
If you'll notice my tagline, it's Japanese for "no matter where, all people are connected". It's a saying from Serial Experiments: Lain, an Anime that deals with the questions (and answers) you just posed in that post. (I won't spoil it for people who have yet to see the series, so I am not going to go into detail.)
The Net has the potential flexability to be whatever want it to be. It's a medium of pure expression and individual preference (it's just being used as a cashcow at the moment).
What will the Net become when we can interact with it on a more personal basis? Direct neural links? Nanotechnology being used in a human brain to transfer signals? What is it going to be like when we can consciously enter this ethereal thing we call "Cyberspace"?
(heheh)
But it's currently chuck full of commercial nonsense and porn pop-up ads, so I don't think we'll be seeing any of that happening soon.
I think Margaret Wertheim has been reading a bit too many Gibson novels. :-)
Also, considering the current quality of IBM ThinkPads, a part of me is happy to hear this news. IBM turning out sub quality laptops will cause a negative impact on the general acceptance of the Crusoe.
This is a minor loss after a huge win. After all, Sony seems to like the Crusoe, and I think that among those buying laptops, the sleek, clean, very well engineered Vaio is better than the big, bulky, slapped-together ThinkPad. Sony is a better name to associate with Transmeta's kick-ass processor. As for IBM, well, no matter how much cool stuff they're involved with, doesn't make good laptops (anymore), so good riddence (unless they improve). :-)
That way, more money can be allocated to lesser income groups such that they can have a better chance at higher success to. Personally, I would enjoy reduced taxes - I am in school right now and I'd be nice to funnel all of my money into getting my loans paid off afterwards, rather than filling part of the role of someone who's currently lavishing in success.
Now, if I ever become successful to the point where money is no longer a serious issue, I'd be more than happy to do my share. I'd owe it to the society.
But who should we be voting for? I don't have the time right now to really dig through the material and read pages after pages of policy and view points. I have class work to do - I need bottom lines. As a geek, there's certain rights that I'd like to see preserved. Al Gore and the Democrats want to see them removed (DMCA). On the flip side, George Bush is anti-abortion and I believe that women have a right to choose. Economists at my school have told me that Nader's financial plans are a joke. The fourth guy just doesn't matter. *chuckle*
One might argue that my lack of time to do proper research means that I shouldn't influence the election - but I feel it's my duty as an American citizen to vote (people shed blood so that I could have this privaledge). But, I don't like any of the candidates.
What is the general opinion of the /. community on who is the least evil - or are there any alternatives to casting a direct vote that still enables me to fulfill my duty? (Someone from the UK had mentioned sploiling the vote - something similar for the US?)
The interesting thing is, who is really going to use Slack on Sun boxen? Now, don't get me wrong, Slack is one of the better distros for hacks, but I don't find it particularly good for server applications - which is the role of most Sun machines.
My company used to use Slack on one of its development servers and a web server. Unfortunately, we were having some strange problems with general weirdness that went away when our sys. admin installed Rh6.2. Go figure.
Why, why, why would someone pay 1600$ for a PSX2 that costs 200$ the manufacture and sells for 300$? That's absolutely retarded.
Damn rich smucks.
I am a karma whore. I say so in my profile. :-)
Then you pop out the cells and stick them in your charger. Hopefully you've got more on hand.
That is just plain annoying... plus I like to use the LED's on my board as indicators for certain things...
What's the solution? I think a cool idea would be to actually use the energy from the keystrokes themselves to charge a cell. Think about it... how much total force is made with each keypress? What if you could some how use the impact to generate a small charge? You know those sold-state speakers used in handheld devices (they consist of a copper and zinc plate - I think :). If you strike them with a hammer, watch your multimeter read out as much as 12VC with decent current. If they were perfected to produce even a fraction of that ... after two thousand keystrokes, you'd have saved up a considerable amount of energy.
Probably not at all viable, but just a cool idea. It'd be akin I think to pushing the lever on an old sewing machine... but it'd be neat. Human powered keyboards. :-)
Just to drop a little FUD in there, they mentioned that the "honeypot" system was running RedHat which had "outdated DNS software with a known security bug". (They didn't mentioned a version... therefore, all RedHat has this bug that let a script kiddie in, and since RedHat *is* Linux... Linux therefore sucks - you should use Windows).
Riiight. We see a nice little case here of pure media cluelessness, that is not only designed to play on the fears of your typical citizen, but also to pair up anything that is open and free with "evil hacking".
The cumulative impact of all this is just too depressing for me to stand anymore. Where does it stop? When will the media be unbiased? When will politicians stop being stupid? When will the public get a clue? The Internet and all related technologies and culture are humankind's last bastion of TRUE free speech. It is HERE that we will find meaning. It is HERE that technology will advance most rapidly.
But, never before has the entire world been on the brink of such ground shaking change. (What? You mean we don't need money to get quality products anymore? You mean we don't have to pay for news? We can say anything we want and not be stigmatized for our opinions? There's more...?) Therefore, the idiots in large groups will do everything to hold the world where it is, by making those things which will change the world for the better "illegal".
*sigh* I wish I had time to do something about it. I wish I had time to read the draft indepth and formulate an education opinion on its points. But at the same time, I am caught up in the duties of my day to day life - distracted by things that must be done (school, work, etc). The bad part is, most people reading this are in similar positions. Meanwhile, things are flying right by in the real world that will drastically impact our lives. Yet, so little can be done about it.
*shakes head*
Yet he refuses to give up.
Aside from owing 8 million dollars and change for court costs on the side of the MPAA, what else is going to happen to him? I some how doubt that the couch change of a community of hackers is going to do much good - and the EFF certainly doesn't have that kind of money.
I don't know... his situation seems pretty shitty to me - these massive risks, the uphill battle. Should those who feel threatened by the MPAA find a different strategy to beat the nasty licensing (and other various attrocities) that the MPAA are looking to impose?
Being at work or using corporate equipment to do - whatever... is like being a guest behind enemy lines. Regardless of the company tells you, you're always under suspect and someone will always be watching you. As the poster mentioned, the only way to really be safe is to encrypt anything you have to say that the company might not like. Then again, can they ask you to decrypt whatever it is you send when they find the message?
KDE's features are so powerful, slick, and incredibly accessable. I've configured it such for some users that they couldn't tell the difference between KDE2 and the Windows UI (other than the fact that it's look *so* much better!) - which is important because it gives such a seamless transition between Windows and Linux.
KDE's internal model is also great. Unlike those *other* desktop environments, it's written in a language that supports objects directly - rather than using something hacked together. (Sorry for the jab - I love KDE! :-) I foresee it as being incredibly extensible and incredibly powerful for rapid application development (which is really good for commercial applications to take hold on the platform).
If you're using GNOME or haven't switched over from 1.1.2 yet, I *highly* recommend doing so. KDE2 is definitely worth it and a HUGE milestone for Linux on the desktop.
Props and thanks to the KDE2 teams! :-)
Whoops, clicked the wrong story. *cringe*
KDE's features are so powerful, slick, and incredibly accessable. I've configured it such for some users that they couldn't tell the difference between KDE2 and the Windows UI (other than the fact that it's look *so* much better!) - which is important because it gives such a seamless transition between Windows and Linux.
KDE's internal model is also great. Unlike those *other* desktop environments, it's written in a language that supports objects directly - rather than using something hacked together. (Sorry for the jab - I love KDE! :-) I foresee it as being incredibly extensible and incredibly powerful for rapid application development (which is really good for commercial applications to take hold on the platform).
If you're using GNOME or haven't switched over yet, I *highly* recommend doing so. KDE2 is definitely worth it and a HUGE milestone for Linux on the desktop.
Props and thanks to the KDE2 teams! :-)
Explain GNOME. Explain KDE. Explain the rest of the UI's currently in development. These are desktop environments that a LOT of open source development is going into SPECIFICALLY to compete with Windows in the desktop arena.
Yes, Linux is competing with NT & 9x.
Linux on the server side doesn't need easy to use interfaces like the aforementioned environments. Linux on the desktop does. Windows 9x is currently dominant on the desktop.
Consider the facts:
The Linux kernel is increasing support for desktop user space applications. USB, Firewire, DRI (for 3d/fx thus far), etc.
One of the main focii of the XFree86 project is to deliver better 3D accelleration. This is for the desktop, not servers.
Projects like GNOME, KDE, and other desktop environments are burning up community efforts like wildfire. These are for the desktop.
Office suites are being released like mad. Why do you need office productivity server on the server? You don't. This is for the desktop.
I could continue this tirade, but I'm irritated at the apathy in thinking like that. To say that Linux doesn't compete with Windows 9x is absurd. We need to feel as competetive as possible against Windows on server AND desktop - because I promise you, Microsoft feels the same about Linux (do you remember the post the other day? - M$ are directly attacking Linux in their ads!)
You mentioned that most users don't consider between Windows and Linux when choosing a desktop. This is the whole problem! Users NEED to have a strong pull towards Linux, otherwise, users in mass will not move away from Microsoft... and M$ will continue their monopoly.
Repeat after me: Linux is competing with Windows 98.
What if they infest our ocean's waters?! What if they breed a new race of SUPER FUNGI that CONSUME HUGE METAL HULLED SHIPS IN HOURS?!
I'm scared. *whimper*
monkies.c:1: parse error before `{'
monkies.c:2: confused by earlier errors, bailing out
Pssst...you're missing a close paren.
Come on... Was this REALLY worthy of a /. news post? Yes, it's geeky... Yes, it's news for nerds, but is this "Stuff that matters?"