Windows
Organize start menu by category: programs->media->{apps}, programs->network->{apps}, programs->office->{apps}. Remove icons you will never use.
Add apps use use frequently to quicklaunch or on the main start menu (above programs). Use small icons.
Linux
Like windows, but hotkey ctrl-j to its own menu, then have hotkeys on that menu to frequently used apps. For example, ctrl-j k will go to rxvt. ctrl-j l will go to galeon. If the app isn't on a desktop, launch it. (FVWM2 can do this, from what I know, Sawfish should be able to as well.)
I could easily imagine a productive environment based around GNU screen and a terminal-based editor, mail client, news client, and IM client. Throw in something like w3m, and other for images, its good.
Strike that. In most cases, multi-tasking can be very counterproductive. Shell escapes and $EDITOR_OF_CHOICE is good enough.
Having the sending system spend cycles solving a problem (hash-cash and similar, presumably what Bill Gates is talking about in the article) does just fine will all of those.
The problem with hash-cash is that there is a fine line between being too computationally intensive (and killing high-volume smtp servers and mailing lists) and not being intensive enough (and thus the work around is spamming through 100 servers in stead of just 1)
Now, before you release it to the world, why don't you consider these points:
Not all mass-mailings are spam. Will your solution break high-volume mailing lists?
Not all computer generated mails are spam. Will your solution break order status updates from web businesses? What happens if the business does not use the same domain for emailing? support@customers.example.com instead of store.example.com?
Speaking of which, will your solution break messages sent from computers without an external email server? What happens if the cronjob on
gateway.example.com wants to send bob@example.com an email?
Spamming is worldwide. Will your solution include a spammer in, say, South Africa?
A spammer can use more then one machine in order to send email. Does your solution still work if the spammer is controlling 10 machines? 100 machines? 1000 machines?
Inversely, will your solution bog down my cellphone's anemic processor when I check my mail?
Or will it cause my ISP to purchase faster hardware and pass the price on to me?
Finally, if I forge the address someone_i_hate@example.com on all my spam, will your solution bury their server in spam or not?
(c) 2004 by Jesse Meyer ( dasunt [a] hotmail [.] guess ).
Permission to redistribute is freely granted as long as this disclaimer is included.
PS: Feel free to suggest other points, I'll add them to the list.
There is at least once channel on a irc network that I'm aware of which will redirect you to the channel #please_register if you are not registered with nickserv.
Isn't that the job of lecturers/professors? They're supposed to know the material and recognise when something is copied.
Perhaps its due to larger class sizes, more work, etc, but I've had some classes where it would be easy to cheat [not that I ever did] and other classes where cheating would be more apparent.
For example, lets say I have a class on French History, and a class on English History.
The English history class only gives vague subjects for papers, has no quizzes, tests, etc.
The French class has specific subjects for each paper, and includes a weekly quiz, in class tests, in class essay assignments, etc.
Since I'm only handing in papers for the English class, its rather easy to dupe the teacher.
However, in the French class, if I plagarize all the papers, its going to show up as a deviation from my in-class norm, and I'll probably get a private qizzing by the teacher about my previous papers if there is anything suspicious.
Back to the subject on hand, I'm siding with the student -- I am not a criminal, and I don't like being treated as one. Ne'ermind that this technological solution is just a bandaid for poor teaching methods.
If errata are issued against the OpenBSD's Base Operating System, it is source only - you must recompile. There is no automatic update agent.
As a debian-user-trying-out-OpenBSD, I found this quite odd.
OpenBSD is supposed to be about security. Yet, to keep a system up to date, the official way is to have a ports try, sync it with cvs, and rebuild it. To update the base operating system, you need the source and to apply the patches manually (as far as I can tell from the FAQ).
All of a sudden, your lean & mean OpenBSD machine needs all the tools to compile an OS.
Shouldn't an OS that strives for security have tools to make upgrades as easy as possible? Don't get me wrong -- in most cases, OpenBSD does great for security -- but for updates, Debian has them beat hands down.
Perhaps I'm not a member of the OpenBSD's project target group, but I would really prefer commands that would make pre-compiled updated packages quick and easy to find and install.
Yes, a Summit will work! Already through the power of talking-about-things we have eliminated AIDS, poverty and global polution! Now we must turn this formidable weapon to bear on copyright theft!
I would guess that several summits/meetings were held before the WHO's plan to wipe out smallpox, which was a success (unless you want to count private stockpiles).
AIDS is a lot harder, but Polio is being wiped out as we speak, and should be gone as an infectious disease 'in the wild' in a few years. [Thanks, in part, to Bill Gates. Yep, that Bill Gates.]
While summits haven't eliminated global polution, they have attempted to remedy the problem. Unfortunately, with 200 sovereign nations (give or take a few), its nearly impossible to impose regulations globally, and pollution can be a global problem.
Re:Take a better look at Jabber
on
Enterprise IM?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm trying to figure this out myself.
The questioner doesn't have time to check out
Jabber (a ``homegrown'' solution in his words) but seems to be willing to use a commercial product with presumably little or no testing.
WTF?
Perhaps I've been reading too many issues of Cryptogram, but it seems that its a crapshoot when a company advocates 'security'. For every product like PGP security, there seems to be a horde of products that are on par with ROT13 or XOR encryption.
Guess what - you need to test and analyze that commercial solution as well. What sort of encryption does it use? Where does it store logs? Are the logs encrypted? What happens if there is no global server? What happens when the network is faulty?
**Grumble** **Grumble**
Look at Jabber, its a good protocol. It does support SSL-connections. Some of the clients support encrypted logs. Its cross platform. Its extendable. It supports local servers. What more do you need?
If your company is going to be depending on an IM system, you better know how it works, how it scales, and what to do when it goes wrong.
Er, don't you mean that General Kuribayashi committed `seppeku'. I thought that `hari kari' was the vulgar term for it, roughly meaning `belly cutting'.
Just in the interests of being culturally sensitive, y'know.
Speaking of which, why does `culturally sensitive' include the idea of not admitting to past fuckups? Most people would agree that the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere was a bad idea. Taking over the world is a bad thing. Same way that the US was wrong for hyping a series of events that lead up to the Spanish-American War.
Countries, communities, and people screw up. It happens. But if we don't remember our screwups, we create another problem.
In the current KISS situation, the strings that are matched between the DVD firmware and mplayer are (1) in the same order and (2) include a subtitle format that mplayer was using in 2001 while the KISS firmware seems to be from 2003.
While the former could be a coincidence, how does KISS explain the later? They suggest that code leaked from KISS into mplayer!
You are right. mplayer has no right to break into the house of KISS and examine their ``tv''. But mplayer does have the legal right to bring their case before a judge, show the evidence that suggests that KISS has their ``tv'' and the judge can order KISS to show the ``tv''.
I hope that mplayer can gather the legal resources to persue this case -- why not have a European GPL precident?
Re:Beavis..this is the coolest thing i have ever s
on
Your Own Mecha
·
· Score: 1
That's one of the lessons of Matrix Revolutions: There is no way -- even with $100 million -- to make mech warriors look less than stupid, because they are instrinsically stupid.
I thought the lesson of Matrix Revolutions is that none of the special effects guys nor the writers could imagine shielding the operators of military mecha...
Who says it has to be forced? But it should be an option. Not everyone has the luxury of multiple desktops (Win32 users for one, but probably many Linux users too), so an MDI option is important.
There are 'virtual desktop' 3rd party packages that work just fine (other then the tool bar is its dumb self usually).
If your window manager isn't capable of managing more then a few windows, find another window manager.
I've used GIMP many times on a 800x600 resolution without a problem, by just shading windows and using FVWM's task list (which will list full window name).
On a dual-head windows setup that I use, I keep throwing most of the windows on my second monitor, which frees up the space quite nicely.
Before advocating getting rid of X, ask yourself, what's so bad about it?
Is it because its ugly? That's the apps and the environment.
Is it because its slow? X runs just fine on low end hardware. Pentium era machines have no problem with it. Perhaps you are confusing X with the window manager/desktop environment.
Is it because its hard to configure? That's one implimentation of X. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Does network transparency scare you? Fine, don't use it. X will use unix sockets instead, which are pretty damn fast.
Are you scared by X's memory usage in `top' or similiar commands? Why not google to see what that number really includes before complaining about X.
On the one hand, you've got Media and Government colluding together to remove the rights of parents to educate and raise their children,
Yep. That's exactly the problem.
Just last night I watched the armed elite strike squad of Media and Government bust down my neighbor's door. The neighbor's child wanted to play Grand Theft Auto and the neighbor refused to buy it! Luckily, the Media and Government was there to force the neighboor to buy it.
The neighbor was fined for having less then 2 modern gaming consoles in the house, and for only having one TV (which was located in the living where the parent could supervise it!). Before the forces of Government and Media left, I heard one of them threaten to take the child away if he wasn't allowed to play Grand Theft Auto for at least 4 hours a day.
I am told that other countries are losing manufacturing jobs as well[1]. China has lost more factory jobs then it has gained lately.
China's loss isn't to other countries, but to itself. As automation becomes cheap and more common, the efficiency of the works increase, and thus less workers are needed for the same output.
The part of FVWM that I enjoy is window arrangement and hotkeying.
For example, in my config, control-j brings up a custom menu. On that menu, applications and commands are hotkeyed to a single letter.
When I hit control-j k, focused is switched to my rxvt window. The mouse is automagically moved to the center of the titlebar in the window.
However, if an rxvt terminal doesn't exist, then control-j k launches rxvt and switches my focus.
But wait! There's more! With FvwmForms, I have a few hotkeys that will launch a form if the app isn't already running. For example, control-j w will launch a form with the listing of all my MAME roms, where I can select whatever rom I want to play, and it will automatically launch xMAME with the rom. Other applications might launch to a specific page of a specific desktop. Or when I hit the hotkey combo, the app might launch without switching my focus (good for slow-launching applications).
Ne'ermind other nifty features of FVWM such as FVWM buttons, which will turn any app into a dockapp. Or being able to launch an application to a specific 'layer' of the display. Or being able to build menus on the fly.
Sure, some window managers come close[1], but I'm happy with FVWM. Lean, fast, and capable.
[1] I'm told sawfish is pretty customizable, but haven't used it myself.
I started a project in late November that ran later then I expected. I was going to upgrade the beginning of December but I didn't want the hassles of an upgrade while I was still trying to reduce my 'to-do' list. (I needed some new hardware before upgrading to linux, which I finally purchased in mid-November.)
Slashdot Mirror
Windows
Organize start menu by category: programs->media->{apps}, programs->network->{apps}, programs->office->{apps}. Remove icons you will never use. Add apps use use frequently to quicklaunch or on the main start menu (above programs). Use small icons.
Linux
Like windows, but hotkey ctrl-j to its own menu, then have hotkeys on that menu to frequently used apps. For example, ctrl-j k will go to rxvt. ctrl-j l will go to galeon. If the app isn't on a desktop, launch it. (FVWM2 can do this, from what I know, Sawfish should be able to as well.)
Desktop icons are evil, avoid them.
Does RMS use GNU Screen or not?
I could easily imagine a productive environment based around GNU screen and a terminal-based editor, mail client, news client, and IM client. Throw in something like w3m, and other for images, its good.
Strike that. In most cases, multi-tasking can be very counterproductive. Shell escapes and $EDITOR_OF_CHOICE is good enough.
Having the sending system spend cycles solving a problem (hash-cash and similar, presumably what Bill Gates is talking about in the article) does just fine will all of those.
The problem with hash-cash is that there is a fine line between being too computationally intensive (and killing high-volume smtp servers and mailing lists) and not being intensive enough (and thus the work around is spamming through 100 servers in stead of just 1)
Just my $.02
SPAM-Solution FAQ v.01
Congratulations, you have an EMAIL SPAM Solution.
Now, before you release it to the world, why don't you consider these points:
(c) 2004 by Jesse Meyer ( dasunt [a] hotmail [.] guess ).
Permission to redistribute is freely granted as long as this disclaimer is included.
PS: Feel free to suggest other points, I'll add them to the list.
Sex is one of the more useful small windows apps.
Oh, and there seems to be an encrypted version out as now (safesex).
There is at least once channel on a irc network that I'm aware of which will redirect you to the channel #please_register if you are not registered with nickserv.
Isn't that the job of lecturers/professors? They're supposed to know the material and recognise when something is copied.
Perhaps its due to larger class sizes, more work, etc, but I've had some classes where it would be easy to cheat [not that I ever did] and other classes where cheating would be more apparent.
For example, lets say I have a class on French History, and a class on English History.
The English history class only gives vague subjects for papers, has no quizzes, tests, etc.
The French class has specific subjects for each paper, and includes a weekly quiz, in class tests, in class essay assignments, etc.
Since I'm only handing in papers for the English class, its rather easy to dupe the teacher.
However, in the French class, if I plagarize all the papers, its going to show up as a deviation from my in-class norm, and I'll probably get a private qizzing by the teacher about my previous papers if there is anything suspicious.
Back to the subject on hand, I'm siding with the student -- I am not a criminal, and I don't like being treated as one. Ne'ermind that this technological solution is just a bandaid for poor teaching methods.
If errata are issued against the OpenBSD's Base Operating System, it is source only - you must recompile. There is no automatic update agent.
As a debian-user-trying-out-OpenBSD, I found this quite odd.
OpenBSD is supposed to be about security. Yet, to keep a system up to date, the official way is to have a ports try, sync it with cvs, and rebuild it. To update the base operating system, you need the source and to apply the patches manually (as far as I can tell from the FAQ). All of a sudden, your lean & mean OpenBSD machine needs all the tools to compile an OS.
Shouldn't an OS that strives for security have tools to make upgrades as easy as possible? Don't get me wrong -- in most cases, OpenBSD does great for security -- but for updates, Debian has them beat hands down.
Perhaps I'm not a member of the OpenBSD's project target group, but I would really prefer commands that would make pre-compiled updated packages quick and easy to find and install.
Yes, a Summit will work! Already through the power of talking-about-things we have eliminated AIDS, poverty and global polution! Now we must turn this formidable weapon to bear on copyright theft!
I would guess that several summits/meetings were held before the WHO's plan to wipe out smallpox, which was a success (unless you want to count private stockpiles).
AIDS is a lot harder, but Polio is being wiped out as we speak, and should be gone as an infectious disease 'in the wild' in a few years. [Thanks, in part, to Bill Gates. Yep, that Bill Gates.]
While summits haven't eliminated global polution, they have attempted to remedy the problem. Unfortunately, with 200 sovereign nations (give or take a few), its nearly impossible to impose regulations globally, and pollution can be a global problem.
I'm trying to figure this out myself.
The questioner doesn't have time to check out Jabber (a ``homegrown'' solution in his words) but seems to be willing to use a commercial product with presumably little or no testing.
WTF?
Perhaps I've been reading too many issues of Cryptogram, but it seems that its a crapshoot when a company advocates 'security'. For every product like PGP security, there seems to be a horde of products that are on par with ROT13 or XOR encryption.
Guess what - you need to test and analyze that commercial solution as well. What sort of encryption does it use? Where does it store logs? Are the logs encrypted? What happens if there is no global server? What happens when the network is faulty?
**Grumble** **Grumble**
Look at Jabber, its a good protocol. It does support SSL-connections. Some of the clients support encrypted logs. Its cross platform. Its extendable. It supports local servers. What more do you need?
If your company is going to be depending on an IM system, you better know how it works, how it scales, and what to do when it goes wrong.
According to Christian Theology and Mythology, Lucifer (Son of Morning) was God's right hand man, basically the most capable and intelligent angel.
Then he rebelled and took a 1/3rd of the angels with him.
Er, don't you mean that General Kuribayashi committed `seppeku'. I thought that `hari kari' was the vulgar term for it, roughly meaning `belly cutting'.
Just in the interests of being culturally sensitive, y'know.
Speaking of which, why does `culturally sensitive' include the idea of not admitting to past fuckups? Most people would agree that the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere was a bad idea. Taking over the world is a bad thing. Same way that the US was wrong for hyping a series of events that lead up to the Spanish-American War.
Countries, communities, and people screw up. It happens. But if we don't remember our screwups, we create another problem.
I would be very surprized if NetBSD would fail to install...
NetBSD: Clean, portable code.
In the current KISS situation, the strings that are matched between the DVD firmware and mplayer are (1) in the same order and (2) include a subtitle format that mplayer was using in 2001 while the KISS firmware seems to be from 2003.
While the former could be a coincidence, how does KISS explain the later? They suggest that code leaked from KISS into mplayer!
You are right. mplayer has no right to break into the house of KISS and examine their ``tv''. But mplayer does have the legal right to bring their case before a judge, show the evidence that suggests that KISS has their ``tv'' and the judge can order KISS to show the ``tv''.
I hope that mplayer can gather the legal resources to persue this case -- why not have a European GPL precident?
That's one of the lessons of Matrix Revolutions: There is no way -- even with $100 million -- to make mech warriors look less than stupid, because they are instrinsically stupid.
I thought the lesson of Matrix Revolutions is that none of the special effects guys nor the writers could imagine shielding the operators of military mecha...
Not sure about the other distributions, but Debian seems to have more window managers then you can shake a stick at.
Who says it has to be forced? But it should be an option. Not everyone has the luxury of multiple desktops (Win32 users for one, but probably many Linux users too), so an MDI option is important.
There are 'virtual desktop' 3rd party packages that work just fine (other then the tool bar is its dumb self usually).
If your window manager isn't capable of managing more then a few windows, find another window manager.
I've used GIMP many times on a 800x600 resolution without a problem, by just shading windows and using FVWM's task list (which will list full window name).
On a dual-head windows setup that I use, I keep throwing most of the windows on my second monitor, which frees up the space quite nicely.
Of course, YMMV.
Before advocating getting rid of X, ask yourself, what's so bad about it?
Is it because its ugly? That's the apps and the environment.
Is it because its slow? X runs just fine on low end hardware. Pentium era machines have no problem with it. Perhaps you are confusing X with the window manager/desktop environment.
Is it because its hard to configure? That's one implimentation of X. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Does network transparency scare you? Fine, don't use it. X will use unix sockets instead, which are pretty damn fast.
Are you scared by X's memory usage in `top' or similiar commands? Why not google to see what that number really includes before complaining about X.
** A happy X user. **
Share what only is legal - MP3's where the artist doesn't mind sharing, project gutenburg books, etc.
Hey, I can dream...
On the one hand, you've got Media and Government colluding together to remove the rights of parents to educate and raise their children,
Yep. That's exactly the problem.
Just last night I watched the armed elite strike squad of Media and Government bust down my neighbor's door. The neighbor's child wanted to play Grand Theft Auto and the neighbor refused to buy it! Luckily, the Media and Government was there to force the neighboor to buy it.
The neighbor was fined for having less then 2 modern gaming consoles in the house, and for only having one TV (which was located in the living where the parent could supervise it!). Before the forces of Government and Media left, I heard one of them threaten to take the child away if he wasn't allowed to play Grand Theft Auto for at least 4 hours a day.
Thank God for the forces of Government and Media!
I am told that other countries are losing manufacturing jobs as well[1]. China has lost more factory jobs then it has gained lately.
China's loss isn't to other countries, but to itself. As automation becomes cheap and more common, the efficiency of the works increase, and thus less workers are needed for the same output.
[1] At least, according to NPR.
Nah, its more like this:
The grue lost its pet through a trap door on dlvl 2.
Quickly decending to find it, the grue finally spotted the kitten after many battles on dlvl 7.
After killing the mumak that was between it and the kitten, the grue only had a few hps left. But it was finally reunited with the kitten.
The kitten, having gone feral, attacked and killed the grue.
(Except that grues aren't in vanilla nethack)
And how long does KDE take to launch on a 5 year old computer?
*Sigh* Moron.
Ne'ermind that KDE can't do all the stuff "old" FVWM can.
The part of FVWM that I enjoy is window arrangement and hotkeying.
For example, in my config, control-j brings up a custom menu. On that menu, applications and commands are hotkeyed to a single letter.
When I hit control-j k, focused is switched to my rxvt window. The mouse is automagically moved to the center of the titlebar in the window.
However, if an rxvt terminal doesn't exist, then control-j k launches rxvt and switches my focus.
But wait! There's more! With FvwmForms, I have a few hotkeys that will launch a form if the app isn't already running. For example, control-j w will launch a form with the listing of all my MAME roms, where I can select whatever rom I want to play, and it will automatically launch xMAME with the rom. Other applications might launch to a specific page of a specific desktop. Or when I hit the hotkey combo, the app might launch without switching my focus (good for slow-launching applications).
Ne'ermind other nifty features of FVWM such as FVWM buttons, which will turn any app into a dockapp. Or being able to launch an application to a specific 'layer' of the display. Or being able to build menus on the fly.
Sure, some window managers come close[1], but I'm happy with FVWM. Lean, fast, and capable.
[1] I'm told sawfish is pretty customizable, but haven't used it myself.
I started a project in late November that ran later then I expected. I was going to upgrade the beginning of December but I didn't want the hassles of an upgrade while I was still trying to reduce my 'to-do' list. (I needed some new hardware before upgrading to linux, which I finally purchased in mid-November.)