> And this, kiddies, is why traditional media is best. You can't go back and change yesterday's newspapers.
Um, this is incorrect.
writethroughs are common in print media also. Stories in papers DO change as time goes on. it's just that in a printed paper, you only see one edition. But most daily newspapers print multiple editions, and what is published in the first edition (sent to outlying areas or to the airport to be frieghted to other cities) can be much different than what's published in the fourht or fifth edition that ends up in the newsstands downtown at 10AM.
Sorry, but this ain't new to online media. Just because you finally noticed doesn't make it new...
> Eliminate mailto - makes sense. You > should have an http based "send me a > message system" - force a live person to > type stuff in instead of letting a program pick > out addresses
and if your site breaks, how does someone send you e-mail to tell you all your CGIs are failing?
> trafficmagnet.net, who tells me that I'm not > listed on a few search engines and that I > can pay them to have my site listed. I need > to send her a nasty reply saying
don't bother. It'll just generate more spam from them.
>In all of this, RMS has been a constant - he promotes Free Software.
He promotes HIS VIEW of free software. No other version need apply. That's the problem with RMS's position, and why he's increasingly being marginalized: there are two positions: his and the heathen's. And he knows better how your software should be licensed than you do.
He seems completely unable to deal with the reality that different people (and different software projects) have different needs. His view is that if the peg is square, you simply need to hit it into the round hole with a bigger hammer.
> Anyone notice that we are expected more and more to conform to popular viewpoints? Usually, disagreement is permissable, but now, if you disagree, you're called a terrorist
except here on Slashdot, where if you don't comform to the appropriate viewpoints, you're modded down as a troll.
Slashdot is just as narrow in its way as many of the groups you're complaining about, you know...
that's because slashdot is part of real life. Although reading what people say here, sometimes I wonder....
We are already less free than we were a week ago. Not because of the anti-privacy factions, but because some bastards blew up buildings and killed 5,000 people.
Because of that, we are going to have to accept that we can't hide behind our oceans and pretend nothing can touch us. That will force us to make some changes.
But the privacy advocates are over-reacting just as much as anyone here. If anyone actually listened to Dick Cheney on Meet the Press this morning, you heard him say that we were going to have to find ways to better protect ourselves, but without turning ourselves into a police state -- because that's what the terrorists want.
Are there some yahoos using this to push their agendas? Sure. Will they succeed? I doubt it. Just because someone calls for changes doesn't mean they'll happen.
Pankc and knee-jerk reactions do the privacy advocates more harm than good. Vigilance and reasoned discussion are good (but seem outlawed here on slashdot many days.. grin). This chicken-little approach to every time everyone says something doesn't.
But let's be real -- there are going to have to be some changes. What they are, nobody knows. But there are going to have to be some tradeoffs between the right to privacy and the need to be protected from terrorists. If privacy advocates take a hard "no compromise" stand, they will lose and hurt their cause. They need to work with the government to find reasonable compromises. There are no absolutes here. If you treat it as if there are, you'll be excluded from the dialog and debate -- and should be.
Don't over-react to the reactionaries on the OTHER side, or be that kind of reactionary on your side. This will be hashed out through dialog and debate be reasonable people -- so it's important to be reasonable to be heard.
Already happening -- Department of Defense announced 25,000 seats were being moved off Microsoft products. Ford Europe announced 23,000 seats. those are just two of the largest microsoft accounts that have announced they're evaluating alternatives (most likely, Linux/Staroffice).
And it's happening elsewhere, in smaller chunks, but it's happening.
I suggest that the slashdot folks improve the site. At the very minimum, they need to add: a splash page we have to click through before getting to the main page ("welcome to slashdot!)
frames
15K of javascript to make sure the cursor gets to the correct text entry field, since we're incapable of finding it otherwise.
A new Slashdot logo, which will be animated and rendered in Flash. Must be at least 250K in size.
Every time you visit slashdot, it'll send you a 100K sound file of CmdrTaco saying "howdy! welcome to slashdot!"
A new privacy statement which points out they plan to sell everything you say, in 2 point type. Hidden behind a java applet. In swahili. And opt-out.
Yup. We really need to bring slashdot in line with current th current web standards. can't just have something that sits there and works....
> Think vertical. I have cabinets, shelves and racks almost to the ceiling.
Be careful here -- you can get in trouble with facilities and/or the fire marshall. We've been told to keep at least 1' open, because otherwise you block the sprinklers, the fire marshall yells at facilities, and they come and tell us to tear it down.
And if you live in an earthquake-capable part of the country, be careful about building too high or putting things like monitors on things. Back before the 1989 loma prieta earthquake, we had a number of people do that. We also had to dig many of them out of their cubes after the quake, when everything fell in on them. No serious injuries, fortunately.
Vertical is good -- but too vertical can be a probelm...
I was wondering how someone would sneak in the standard/. microsoft bash...
Anyone else notice that when an article on something related to (even remotely) Microsoft, or some other favorite whipping boy,/. gets 900 messages screaming "Bill gates sucks!" but in an article like this, which actually can be productive and useful, you get ten messages...
I'm sure there's a significant insight into the/. audience in there somewhere. I have my opinion, but it'd just get rated down as flamebait, so I'll keep quiet.
I'm a little surprised we haven't seen java viruss start to propogate -- since they can be transmitted the same way as windows-specific ones, but could be programmed to be more platform independent.
> Why can't these virus writers do something cool?
Please, god, no. You have the virtual equivalent of a group of people who think it's fun to kick in your back door, trash your house and defecate on your kitchen table -- and you want them to paint the liviing room while they're there now?
What's scary is how many people don't even notice the smell or the draft... sigh.
I use mod_layout on my sites, and I love it. It fills a need I've been looking for for a while.
All of my sites are a combination of static and dynamic pages -- with the dynamic pages being generated by multiple sets of programs, and many of the static pages also generated programmatically.
Creating a site interface for something like that is a bear -- and changing it is worse. To install updated graphics or redo the look of the site, you had to patch multiple sets of programs, or hack the programs to read the header/footer and attach them on the fly (which meant hassles every time the program had to be updated instead...). The static pages: good luck.
And, of course, the designers who own the interface want it changed at 4PM on a Friday with four hours notice.
Now, it's two files, one for the header, one for the footer. It needs changing? change them and restart Apache. My maintenance headaches have been cut by a huge amount, and updates are now trivial, so we're more willing to fix things or improve stuff when we find better solutions. bEfore, it was a major hassle -- so it tended to wait, even fi we didn't like something.
And it basically just works. And the people who create content don't have to worry about the interface, the admins don't have to worry about re-skinning stuff when the templates change, and you don't have to worry about whether or not all of the changes have been made in all of the places at the right time. It all happens magically inside Apache.
Truly wonderful. If you're doing something straightforward and fairly simple, it's probably not a big deal (but even then, I think having the interface completely separate from the content is a really Good Thing, since it makes it impossible for one to screw up the other, or for an author to botch things...); build a complex system that involves multiple packages from multiple programming groups in multiple languages, and content from half a dozen groups and four different programs, and suddenly, this is a great thing to have...
I'm now starting to look at re-doing the corporate intranet using it, because of that separation between interface and content, and the hassles that happen when authors have to worry about interface issues, even with good tools and templates.
Mostly, though, it's simple -- and it just works. And it really cuts my maintenance hassle. How can this be bad?
> > What is the point of attacking an IRC network with a DOS attack anyway?
> To get ops. Timestamping makes this more difficult, it does not make this impossible.
And there's also the "if I don't get what I want, I'll take your toys and go home" attitude. They don't care who else they screw in the process, they'll blow it up because they aren't allowed to, and feel like it.
A true lamer mentality, but it's all over the net. Just ask the slashdot trolls...
>>> You didn't ask your employer's permission to use your employer's computer for non-work-related activities.
>> Nor did you, I suspect, when you posted to Slashdot last week
> First Law of Slashdot: Every extreme example must be countered by an equally-extreme counterexample.
> *sigh* Of course not. Clearly every employer who doesn't have their heads shoved up their own arse
And not all of us HAVE to ask our employers. Some of us post to Slashdot from home. More importantly -- some employers have intelligent usage policies, as long as you don't abuse them.
Is the DA out of line? Yes. But -- why do people seem to think it's okay to do whatever they want, and are surprised when someone makes them follow rules? Or they get in trouble for ignoring them?
Slashdot Mirror
> How many countries do you suppose have or will honor an extradition treaty with a country whose [...]
All it takes is one.
> And this, kiddies, is why traditional media is best. You can't go back and change yesterday's newspapers.
Um, this is incorrect.
writethroughs are common in print media also. Stories in papers DO change as time goes on. it's just that in a printed paper, you only see one edition. But most daily newspapers print multiple editions, and what is published in the first edition (sent to outlying areas or to the airport to be frieghted to other cities) can be much different than what's published in the fourht or fifth edition that ends up in the newsstands downtown at 10AM.
Sorry, but this ain't new to online media. Just because you finally noticed doesn't make it new...
> Eliminate mailto - makes sense. You
> should have an http based "send me a
> message system" - force a live person to
> type stuff in instead of letting a program pick
> out addresses
and if your site breaks, how does someone send you e-mail to tell you all your CGIs are failing?
> trafficmagnet.net, who tells me that I'm not
> listed on a few search engines and that I
> can pay them to have my site listed. I need
> to send her a nasty reply saying
don't bother. It'll just generate more spam from them.
I just took and blackholed those domains...
> any movie I would want to see less, given the trailer
Zardoz?
>In all of this, RMS has been a constant - he promotes Free Software.
He promotes HIS VIEW of free software. No other version need apply. That's the problem with RMS's position, and why he's increasingly being marginalized: there are two positions: his and the heathen's. And he knows better how your software should be licensed than you do.
He seems completely unable to deal with the reality that different people (and different software projects) have different needs. His view is that if the peg is square, you simply need to hit it into the round hole with a bigger hammer.
> I know at least one person who has specifically not gotten a mac laptop because of it's lack of mouse buttons.
and, like most people, have never actually spent time using a system enough to make a judgement on it.
believe it or not, using the mac with a one button mouse isn't bad -- because it's designed for one button. Are more buttons better? maybe.
But so many folks are so sure of the answer they never give themselves a chance to be proven wrong.....
the results are different. The attitude is the same. Which was my point.
> Anyone notice that we are expected more and more to conform to popular viewpoints? Usually, disagreement is permissable, but now, if you disagree, you're called a terrorist
except here on Slashdot, where if you don't comform to the appropriate viewpoints, you're modded down as a troll.
Slashdot is just as narrow in its way as many of the groups you're complaining about, you know...
that's because slashdot is part of real life. Although reading what people say here, sometimes I wonder....
> The men who bled at Lexington and starved at Valley Forge didn't make "tradeoffs,"
Oh, yes they did.
Have you ever studied history, or do you grab random quotes and instances out of context if they match your idea of how life ought to be?
We are already less free than we were a week ago. Not because of the anti-privacy factions, but because some bastards blew up buildings and killed 5,000 people.
Because of that, we are going to have to accept that we can't hide behind our oceans and pretend nothing can touch us. That will force us to make some changes.
But the privacy advocates are over-reacting just as much as anyone here. If anyone actually listened to Dick Cheney on Meet the Press this morning, you heard him say that we were going to have to find ways to better protect ourselves, but without turning ourselves into a police state -- because that's what the terrorists want.
Are there some yahoos using this to push their agendas? Sure. Will they succeed? I doubt it. Just because someone calls for changes doesn't mean they'll happen.
Pankc and knee-jerk reactions do the privacy advocates more harm than good. Vigilance and reasoned discussion are good (but seem outlawed here on slashdot many days.. grin). This chicken-little approach to every time everyone says something doesn't.
But let's be real -- there are going to have to be some changes. What they are, nobody knows. But there are going to have to be some tradeoffs between the right to privacy and the need to be protected from terrorists. If privacy advocates take a hard "no compromise" stand, they will lose and hurt their cause. They need to work with the government to find reasonable compromises. There are no absolutes here. If you treat it as if there are, you'll be excluded from the dialog and debate -- and should be.
Don't over-react to the reactionaries on the OTHER side, or be that kind of reactionary on your side. This will be hashed out through dialog and debate be reasonable people -- so it's important to be reasonable to be heard.
> I find it highly ironic that, yet again, everyone instantly jumps to the conclusion that it was Arabs who are behind these tragedies.
It sure wasn't the Navajo....
(modded -1, ironic flamebait)
> no, its childish and immature - to retaliate, to lash out wildly is
easy to say until someone you know is involved.
Already happening -- Department of Defense announced 25,000 seats were being moved off Microsoft products. Ford Europe announced 23,000 seats. those are just two of the largest microsoft accounts that have announced they're evaluating alternatives (most likely, Linux/Staroffice).
And it's happening elsewhere, in smaller chunks, but it's happening.
You're right. they need to update slashdot.
I suggest that the slashdot folks improve the site. At the very minimum, they need to add: a splash page we have to click through before getting to the main page ("welcome to slashdot!)
frames
15K of javascript to make sure the cursor gets to the correct text entry field, since we're incapable of finding it otherwise.
A new Slashdot logo, which will be animated and rendered in Flash. Must be at least 250K in size.
Every time you visit slashdot, it'll send you a 100K sound file of CmdrTaco saying "howdy! welcome to slashdot!"
A new privacy statement which points out they plan to sell everything you say, in 2 point type. Hidden behind a java applet. In swahili. And opt-out.
Yup. We really need to bring slashdot in line with current th current web standards. can't just have something that sits there and works....
(clap clap clap clap clap)
well done -- looks good so far.
> Think vertical. I have cabinets, shelves and racks almost to the ceiling.
Be careful here -- you can get in trouble with facilities and/or the fire marshall. We've been told to keep at least 1' open, because otherwise you block the sprinklers, the fire marshall yells at facilities, and they come and tell us to tear it down.
And if you live in an earthquake-capable part of the country, be careful about building too high or putting things like monitors on things. Back before the 1989 loma prieta earthquake, we had a number of people do that. We also had to dig many of them out of their cubes after the quake, when everything fell in on them. No serious injuries, fortunately.
Vertical is good -- but too vertical can be a probelm...
I just checked my server, which saw very little code red activity. 33 attacks today, way beyond anything I saw before.
I was wondering how someone would sneak in the standard /. microsoft bash...
/. gets 900 messages screaming "Bill gates sucks!" but in an article like this, which actually can be productive and useful, you get ten messages...
/. audience in there somewhere. I have my opinion, but it'd just get rated down as flamebait, so I'll keep quiet.
Anyone else notice that when an article on something related to (even remotely) Microsoft, or some other favorite whipping boy,
I'm sure there's a significant insight into the
I'm a little surprised we haven't seen java viruss start to propogate -- since they can be transmitted the same way as windows-specific ones, but could be programmed to be more platform independent.
> Why can't these virus writers do something cool?
Please, god, no. You have the virtual equivalent of a group of people who think it's fun to kick in your back door, trash your house and defecate on your kitchen table -- and you want them to paint the liviing room while they're there now?
What's scary is how many people don't even notice the smell or the draft... sigh.
I use mod_layout on my sites, and I love it. It fills a need I've been looking for for a while.
All of my sites are a combination of static and dynamic pages -- with the dynamic pages being generated by multiple sets of programs, and many of the static pages also generated programmatically.
Creating a site interface for something like that is a bear -- and changing it is worse. To install updated graphics or redo the look of the site, you had to patch multiple sets of programs, or hack the programs to read the header/footer and attach them on the fly (which meant hassles every time the program had to be updated instead...). The static pages: good luck.
And, of course, the designers who own the interface want it changed at 4PM on a Friday with four hours notice.
Now, it's two files, one for the header, one for the footer. It needs changing? change them and restart Apache. My maintenance headaches have been cut by a huge amount, and updates are now trivial, so we're more willing to fix things or improve stuff when we find better solutions. bEfore, it was a major hassle -- so it tended to wait, even fi we didn't like something.
And it basically just works. And the people who create content don't have to worry about the interface, the admins don't have to worry about re-skinning stuff when the templates change, and you don't have to worry about whether or not all of the changes have been made in all of the places at the right time. It all happens magically inside Apache.
Truly wonderful. If you're doing something straightforward and fairly simple, it's probably not a big deal (but even then, I think having the interface completely separate from the content is a really Good Thing, since it makes it impossible for one to screw up the other, or for an author to botch things...); build a complex system that involves multiple packages from multiple programming groups in multiple languages, and content from half a dozen groups and four different programs, and suddenly, this is a great thing to have...
I'm now starting to look at re-doing the corporate intranet using it, because of that separation between interface and content, and the hassles that happen when authors have to worry about interface issues, even with good tools and templates.
Mostly, though, it's simple -- and it just works. And it really cuts my maintenance hassle. How can this be bad?
> Please, Slashdot posters, before you post, at least get the facts right!
why bother? it's easier just to mod down anyone who points it out as a troll....
> > What is the point of attacking an IRC network with a DOS attack anyway?
> To get ops. Timestamping makes this more difficult, it does not make this impossible.
And there's also the "if I don't get what I want, I'll take your toys and go home" attitude. They don't care who else they screw in the process, they'll blow it up because they aren't allowed to, and feel like it.
A true lamer mentality, but it's all over the net. Just ask the slashdot trolls...
>>> You didn't ask your employer's permission to use your employer's computer for non-work-related activities.
>> Nor did you, I suspect, when you posted to Slashdot last week
> First Law of Slashdot: Every extreme example must be countered by an equally-extreme counterexample.
> *sigh* Of course not. Clearly every employer who doesn't have their heads shoved up their own arse
And not all of us HAVE to ask our employers. Some of us post to Slashdot from home. More importantly -- some employers have intelligent usage policies, as long as you don't abuse them.
Is the DA out of line? Yes. But -- why do people seem to think it's okay to do whatever they want, and are surprised when someone makes them follow rules? Or they get in trouble for ignoring them?