The wheel hasn't changed significantly over the years in terms of the base concepts behind it. Is this a good thing or a bad thing. I don't really know. Are we restricting ourselves by staying with antiquated concepts? or are we creating something great with a proven system.
Unix... used... for processing patents?!? No! That can't be! Patents are evil! Unix is good! Unix can't be evil!...Can it?
I have to hurry...
rm -rf/*....
OK I'm saved now...
But what OS should I use now? MacOS X is Unix... BeOS is kind of Unix... What else's left? Windows XP... No, it can't be... There has to be something else... Oh God, don't do this to me!!!
"Please point me to the part of the table standard (or even the CALS derivation that spawned it), that say you should not use tables for presentation or layout."
Tables should not be used purely as a means to layout document content as this may present problems when rendering to non-visual media. Additionally, when used with graphics, these tables may force users to scroll horizontally to view a table designed on a system with a larger display. To minimize these problems, authors should use style sheets to control layout rather than tables.
Tables should be used to mark up truly tabular information ("data tables"). Content developers should avoid using them to lay out pages ("layout tables").
in 4 years Slashdot has had the same exact look and layout.
And thank God for that. I like the Slashdot layout, and there is nothing wrong with it (in both appearance and 'usability'). The Slashdot layout has pretty much become a trademark. People expect it. They don't want it to change; just look at all the negative comments on the OSDN navbar.
Oh, and if you claim Slashdot always has the exact same look, you obviously don't read the BSD stories;) (although that's probably a big hack:)
If they are indeed paying him, they will probably stop doing so when they notice half of the Slashdot readers have him blocked out...
Re:Slashdot without Funny posts is like, boring...
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 2
BTW, if your currious what I think a portal is, stocks/news/weather/tv listing/cartoons. Maybe not in that order.
Stocks? I don't care about stocks:)
News? Slashdot already has news for nerds, stuff that matters. That's all the news I want to see on Slashdot. I mean, there's already so much boring news in RL...
Weather?/. has readers from all over the world, and the world is an awful big place:) And I already hear it on the radio and TV. And if I really want, I can just look outside (you know, outside? The non-MS windows?)
TV listings? There are an awful lot of channels out there, and I already have eurotv.com. (See above.)
Cartoons? I have a daily checklist of twenty cartoons. Some of them quite obscure (you know, readership measured in dozens...). If Slashdot could get them all on their site, do it! (Right now I'm using some perl scripty to put them all on one nice local page)
Seriously tough, portals failed big time. You know, dot com crash etc?
If everybody starts clicking 2 times a day, and just ignore the site they get to, I think ad revenue will plummet even faster:)
Re:Ads are not necessarily bad...
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 1
Figure out a way to target them a little better.
That's kind of the problem. For targetted advertising, you need personal information of the target. Lots of personal information. And what is 90% of the Slashdot crowd bitching about?
Actually, I would trust Slashdot more than any other company. And the UK some interesting law is coming in effect soon, which will improve the situation a lot (at least in the UK). (Yes, I know this doesn't apply to Slashdot. But it is a good development. And kind of on topic.)
Why would I so unique about Winamp that I would want to switch? Last time I used Windows, Winamp was a nice player that did it job without being annoying. (Quite an achievement for Windows software, BTW). But what does Winamp have that popular Linux players, such as XMMS and Freeamp lack?
My budget doesn't allow ultimate boxen... I'd be more interesting in seeing information on ultra-cheap (but still decent and reliable) systems. An older guide exists, but it hasn't been updated in a long time.
I know about SWAG. But most of SWAG are libraries and documentation. It has very few complete programs (an small utility of two, a couple of graphics demos).
SWAG is a great resource for developers. But you can't call it an open source culture, because an open source culture extends to the users. One of the most important ideas of open source is that you can fix a buggy program. That's an power users in the DOS/Windows world never had.
There is little open source software for windows, because authors of open source software do not want to support microsoft.
(I'm assuming you're speaking about GUI programs. The vast majority of command-line programs can easily be recompiled for Windows using DJGPP (for DOS) or Cygwin (for Win32). These environments exists of a POSIX emulation layer and most of the GNU development utilities (gcc, make, bash, etc.))
The fact is that most Unix programmer's don't know how to program for Windows. I mean, if you primarily develop for Unix, you're not going to spend (waste?) time learning something ugly as the MFC.
What about Windows programmers? Well, DOS/Windows doesn't have (and never had) an open source culture. Instead, most programmer's distribute their programs as shareware or freeware. But they would never let you see the code.
In fact, most Windows open source software comes from Unix people who are forces to work on Windows. Just look at the open source programs available on Windows: Apache. PuTTY, an ssh client. Vim has a Windows port (which is able to integrate in Visual Studio). Cygwin which I already have mentioned above.
KDE runs on Windows. It uses the Cygwin POSIX emulation layer (they claim they only had to change about 100 lines). Currently it requires an X server, but they are working on eliminating the dependency.
I also remember an older project, using a non-free POSIX toolkit. Can't remember the name, tough.
Anybody knows a good place to find Mozilla themes? The new x.themes.org isn't up yet, and the stuff on the old site, x.classic.themes.org , doesn't seem to work anymore.
The sad thing is the majority of the people (especially the people in charge) don't really know anything about computers. They think it's normal computers crash once in a while. They think it's normal script kiddies, err, hackers can bring down their networks. For them Microsoft eq good and everything else is inferior. After all, we all use Windows, don't we?
It isn't the scripting per se. It's the fact that the scripts are actually stored in the document files. In other words, they mix data and code.
On Unix, lots of applications have extremely powerfull scripting languages. Just think about the stuff you can do with Emacs (elisp) and the Gimp (which uses guile, a full Scheme interpreter). But the user has to explicitly install them. They aren't hidden away in some document.
These things first appeared in 1996 or so. Word.Concept or what was it called. Microsoft responded by disabling the AutoLoad macro (or whatever it's called). Now somebody found a new way to make Excel/etc. execute stuff when loading a file. Big deal.
I wonder why virus writes bother at all. They can just put a button labeled "Click here" on the page, and 95% of the lusers will click it. The only defense against that is just disabling all macro support. And everybody knows that isn't going to happen.
Some of this new stuff seems to be seriously blurring the difference between language and library.
Of course it's cool to write something like @costs, but why must be an operator? It seems to me it would work just as well as an ordinary procedure.
I'm wondering if they are thinking about constructs to define new syntax at runtime. In Scheme for example most of the syntactic forms are defined in the library using define-syntax .
Slashdot Mirror
The wheel hasn't changed significantly over the years in terms of the base concepts behind it. Is this a good thing or a bad thing. I don't really know. Are we restricting ourselves by staying with antiquated concepts? or are we creating something great with a proven system.
Unix... used... for processing patents?!? No! That can't be! Patents are evil! Unix is good! Unix can't be evil! ...Can it?
/* ....
I have to hurry...
rm -rf
OK I'm saved now...
But what OS should I use now? MacOS X is Unix... BeOS is kind of Unix... What else's left? Windows XP... No, it can't be... There has to be something else... Oh God, don't do this to me!!!
"the Netscape spell checker"
Note that the spell checker was licensed from Lernout & Hauspie, which went bankrupt a couple of days ago...
"Please point me to the part of the table standard (or even the CALS derivation that spawned it), that say you should not use tables for presentation or layout."
Here you go.
From the HTML 4.01 Specification, Section 11.1: Introduction to Tables:
From the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, Guideline 5. Create tables that transform gracefully.:
in 4 years Slashdot has had the same exact look and layout.
And thank God for that. I like the Slashdot layout, and there is nothing wrong with it (in both appearance and 'usability'). The Slashdot layout has pretty much become a trademark. People expect it. They don't want it to change; just look at all the negative comments on the OSDN navbar.
Oh, and if you claim Slashdot always has the exact same look, you obviously don't read the BSD stories ;) (although that's probably a big hack :)
If they are indeed paying him, they will probably stop doing so when they notice half of the Slashdot readers have him blocked out...
BTW, if your currious what I think a portal is, stocks/news/weather/tv listing/cartoons. Maybe not in that order.
Seriously tough, portals failed big time. You know, dot com crash etc?
If everybody starts clicking 2 times a day, and just ignore the site they get to, I think ad revenue will plummet even faster :)
Figure out a way to target them a little better.
That's kind of the problem. For targetted advertising, you need personal information of the target. Lots of personal information. And what is 90% of the Slashdot crowd bitching about?
Actually, I would trust Slashdot more than any other company. And the UK some interesting law is coming in effect soon, which will improve the situation a lot (at least in the UK). (Yes, I know this doesn't apply to Slashdot. But it is a good development. And kind of on topic.)
Now if /. would only get rid of Jon Katz, I'd be really happy.
Three steps:
Easy, isn't it?
If they put that kind of crap on their site, they've got problems indeed...
Oh wait, they have. Now I'm suprised I never heard of a Polaroid digital camera.
I'm kind of suprised they don't have a digital camera division. Most other traditional manufacturers have.
Why would I so unique about Winamp that I would want to switch? Last time I used Windows, Winamp was a nice player that did it job without being annoying. (Quite an achievement for Windows software, BTW). But what does Winamp have that popular Linux players, such as XMMS and Freeamp lack?
My budget doesn't allow ultimate boxen... I'd be more interesting in seeing information on ultra-cheap (but still decent and reliable) systems. An older guide exists, but it hasn't been updated in a long time.
Remember that Apple is a hardware company. They want to sell computers. MacOS X is a cool OS, but it's only reason of existence is to sell more Macs.
I know about SWAG. But most of SWAG are libraries and documentation. It has very few complete programs (an small utility of two, a couple of graphics demos).
SWAG is a great resource for developers. But you can't call it an open source culture, because an open source culture extends to the users. One of the most important ideas of open source is that you can fix a buggy program. That's an power users in the DOS/Windows world never had.
BTW, the C equivalent of SWAG is Snippets.
(I'm assuming you're speaking about GUI programs. The vast majority of command-line programs can easily be recompiled for Windows using DJGPP (for DOS) or Cygwin (for Win32). These environments exists of a POSIX emulation layer and most of the GNU development utilities (gcc, make, bash, etc.))
The fact is that most Unix programmer's don't know how to program for Windows. I mean, if you primarily develop for Unix, you're not going to spend (waste?) time learning something ugly as the MFC.
What about Windows programmers? Well, DOS/Windows doesn't have (and never had) an open source culture. Instead, most programmer's distribute their programs as shareware or freeware. But they would never let you see the code.
In fact, most Windows open source software comes from Unix people who are forces to work on Windows. Just look at the open source programs available on Windows: Apache. PuTTY, an ssh client. Vim has a Windows port (which is able to integrate in Visual Studio). Cygwin which I already have mentioned above.
> ...is convincing the new *NIX admin to not hit ctrl-alt-delete.
/etc/inittab:
In
# What to do when CTRL-ALT-DEL is pressed.
ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/bin/echo "Hey, this ain't Windows!"
:)
KDE runs on Windows. It uses the Cygwin POSIX emulation layer (they claim they only had to change about 100 lines). Currently it requires an X server, but they are working on eliminating the dependency.
I also remember an older project, using a non-free POSIX toolkit. Can't remember the name, tough.
Anybody knows a good place to find Mozilla themes? The new x.themes.org isn't up yet, and the stuff on the old site, x.classic.themes.org , doesn't seem to work anymore.
The sad thing is the majority of the people (especially the people in charge) don't really know anything about computers. They think it's normal computers crash once in a while. They think it's normal script kiddies, err, hackers can bring down their networks. For them Microsoft eq good and everything else is inferior. After all, we all use Windows, don't we?
It isn't the scripting per se. It's the fact that the scripts are actually stored in the document files. In other words, they mix data and code.
On Unix, lots of applications have extremely powerfull scripting languages. Just think about the stuff you can do with Emacs (elisp) and the Gimp (which uses guile, a full Scheme interpreter). But the user has to explicitly install them. They aren't hidden away in some document.
These things first appeared in 1996 or so. Word.Concept or what was it called. Microsoft responded by disabling the AutoLoad macro (or whatever it's called). Now somebody found a new way to make Excel/etc. execute stuff when loading a file. Big deal.
I wonder why virus writes bother at all. They can just put a button labeled "Click here" on the page, and 95% of the lusers will click it. The only defense against that is just disabling all macro support. And everybody knows that isn't going to happen.
Some of this new stuff seems to be seriously blurring the difference between language and library.
Of course it's cool to write something like @costs, but why must be an operator? It seems to me it would work just as well as an ordinary procedure.
I'm wondering if they are thinking about constructs to define new syntax at runtime. In Scheme for example most of the syntactic forms are defined in the library using define-syntax .