When MS launched that verdana font, they were advertising it for visibility at 7pt on screen. I notice that it's pretty much all they use on their web pages. I have to admit I like it quite a bit.
Maybe lucidatyperwriter is the best X font for small sizes.
I remember when their site turned black. I thought it was cool at first, but quickly grew to dislike it.
Before it was black it was an excellent design--- two equal columns. News items on the right and links on the left.
When they went to that slashdot/freshmeat/... "portal" thingy I remember thinking "I hit those sites pretty often, good idea" and then never went back.
Anybody remember what it looked like before? I distinctly remember the walking red man logo, but can't remember the website too well. Anyway...
I feel sooooo relieved now that CVS E-0.16 has a pager. Before, E required the gnome panel to run the gnome pager and it was unbearable--- I went back to fvwm for a while. (It goes without saying that a pager is absolutely necessary.) The memory footprint of E-0.16 with a pager is smaller than that of the pager-applet alone (not counting the panel or anything!) GNOME-free and happy about all those extra cycles.
I have the feeling that I will be using E-16 for a long time--- it does everything I want now. Alt-TAB for focus switch on each desktop area (fvwm couldn't do that), transients get focus from parents (if you want) so you can alt-f in netscape, type and do not have to use the mouse to move the cursor, etc... Oh yeah, and you can make it look however you want.
Now my point---I wonder whether I will use E once it has a filemanager and DND and all the fixins to be CLI-free? I mean, I love E because it's trim and flexible. That could feasibly change soon. Maybe I'm the minority, but I don't want to use a filemanager and so I don't want one running. Yeah, I think the parser for the config-files might need some work and the config-dialogs are great, but a file-manager?
Anyway, best to you both. You may be happy to know that it's raining in Raleigh-Durham right now.
I remember reading somewhere (reference eludes me) that during the drafting of the bill of rights, one considered amendment was that federal taxation could not exceed 10% of income. It was shot down for fear that if such a rediculously high percentage were ever written, even as an extreme wartime upper bound, that some future administration might possibly tax at that maximum rate. How things have changed.
I was just thinking that I don't really care whether Mozilla is open source or not. For a good, fast browser with MathML support and real standards compliance, I'd shell out money.
But if it's not free of charge, no one will use it, so there won't be an audience for a standards compliant, MathML capable browser. Then, naturally, no one will write MathML documents because there won't be an audience for it and the world that relys on the web for real content will be set back another five years while advertisements and commerce expand.
My conclusion is that whether or not a browser project is open source or not, Netscape will have to be free to be widely used and it's standards compliance have an effect. And if it must be free, it might as well be open source, no?
oversize in file size, resource hogs and just plain slow
I know that Conrad did not explicitely mention gnome, but he was promoting KOffice as a recomendation near the end (for helping linux proliferate before w2k). I thought the forsight and clarity with which this article was written was excellent up to the very last paragraph. Ummm, office suites that go with desktop shells rot.
I am afraid that while MS may try to imitate linux in instances where Linux is better, it seems to me that linux imitates windows in situations that windows is better. I mean, of course, the desktop. People should be cautious: while Linux makes progress, but continues to fail, in desktop areas, it may come to pass that MS wins on both fronts.
Conrad is right. Open source is secondary to most. Linux is a better server out of the box than win98, but maybe not better than w2k. It goes without saying that w2k will exceed linux in the desktop. Just hope they don't include ghostscript, TeX, Perl, gnutar, and free C compilers with their Apache bundled W2k. Linux will lose all but the most diehard users then. The people that use Linux only because it is better will switch as soon as it's not better.
Did anyone see Bob's talk, if he gave one? I'm wondering if he made these predictions then, or just silently to himself and now in his infoworld article.
Did Bob really invent "ethernet" as the bottom of the article indicates?
Anyway, he may be right that W2k will kill Windows, but I can't see that any of his reasons could be correct. Does he really think that Word is a replacement for EMACS? (Does W2k even ship with Word?) If W2K is successful, it may be because it's good, it may be because of marketing or business pressures or whatever. But, who can take this guy seriously when he's just trying to get a rise out of advocates by being insulting.
He doesn't even make a point except to confuse a rich pedigree with useless antiquity.
I know Stephenson has made some pro-linux remarks lately and so is in high favor around here. But don't forget that Greg Bear is awesome too.
Maybe Bear should have named Slant, "Slant Dot." I remember hearing about the book before it came out on NPR. He named it for the "slash" on the computer keyboard and even that many years ago, I smiled in my driver's seat, wondering if Greg Bear knows about "Slashdot."
wrong. It was $2500. Now it's sold out.
on
The Onion on AIBO
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· Score: 1
The $500 is for the performance pack to teach it new tricks. The original was $2500 but is now sold out.
Why the hell we still see the ads for AIBO in the blockstackers banner on the top of slashdot, I have no idea.
So far, I've liked Red Hat for their stronger ethical stance on free software. Recently, they have been the best distribution from a free software/open source point of view, other than Debian. As such, I opposed SuSE and similar, which wrote their own proprietary software, put in other people's proprietary packages, and had no free software stance.
Well, it seems to me that RedHat was the first company to put proprietary software in their linux distribution when they included BRU backup and MetroX-server in RedHat (was it 3.3?) I think they were then trying to distinguish themselves as better than the other distributions. And at the time it seemed like including pieces unavailable to most distributions was a good way to do it. Only later did they decide that distinguishing themselves as better meant the opposite. No proprietary software became a kind of rally call for them with their open-sourced install program and adminstration tools. The short version of the KDE stink was "not open-source enough" and that seemed very funny to me since RH had already demonstrated a willingness to distribute non-free merchandise---indeed attempted to make their mark by it. At least KDE could/can be redistributed, unlike MetroX.
I guess my point is that we've already seen business-mindedness driving decisions at RH. So, who knows what to expect--- but the laserbeam vision of a very small group of developers you can certainly not expect.
I know that E is very quick. But when it's used in conjunction with GNOME it is not snappy. And unless you use v16 (or 13!) out of CVS, you need gnome to get a pager. I was just adding a small point to Raster's comment on the growing rift between E and GNOME. I say "good."
Thank you for the explination. I will look into the way my browser handles character sets. I have been really puzzled by the appearance of these "question marks" and I wouldn't have guessed the reason.
In an exchange I had the other day it occured to me:
Everyone says E is slow. And then everyone else says E is fast, provided you use a sensible theme. But the truth is: E is very, very slow when it's tied to gnome. And it's tied by the dick to be sure until such a time as it has its very own pager (soon to come, soon to come.)
It's funny. I always heard raster say that his job at RHLABS wasn't Enlightenment. But you know, RedHat seemed keen enough on it to ship it and install it by default in RH6. I'm not sure I get it, really. It seemed like he left in sour spirits, which is too bad. But frankly, I like E and don't like gnome. So, good for me.
I agree with you. Extra regulation is not a good idea.
If I want to write a piece of software, I don't want it combed over by an oversight committee. I don't want to be forced to provide any warranties--- especially if I don't charge for it and I realease it GNU style. This is not a hypothetical example-- I'm speaking quite personally and probably for all the people who write things like "ls" and "bunzip" and "freeciv" and so on and so on. This seems like a major problem. The article points to two types of software companies
Those that give the customer what he's payed for
And those that don't
Of course, there are more kinds of software than two. And more than just two plus GNU. I know the editorialist seems focused on games, but his recomendations are certainly far more sweeping--- that's the danger with regulation. Special regulation would probably sway me away from releasing software and whether my programs are good or bad, keeping them to myself because of artificial rules is definitely bad.
Moreover, not only do I think regulation is bad, I don't think it's necessary. While the author explains himself quite clearly, I think he could simplify his entire editorial by posing his complaints with the EULs. Other than those, I can't see why natural free market pressures wouldn't releive some of the perceived difficulties. Write poor game--->get bad review--->have low sales--->lose money.
\begin{OFFTOPIC} Why are there question marks instead of apostrophes? I've seen that before. The editors must not see that on their screens, why not? If you look at the HTML, there's no funny markup there, just " ? " instead of " ' ". So strange. \end{OFFTOPIC}
The demographics of linux users is largely males from 18-35. This same niche buys the most computer games. Indeed, the businesses using linux in the closet as a server won't be buying games, but that really isn't the largest demographic (it's a growing one, of course.)
I talked with some guys from Loki at the linux expo and fired by the success of their Civ CTP port, they have begun work on MythII and Railroad Tycoon for linux. Look, if the code is written it can be ported to linux, especially if it uses openGL or something besides DriectX (like Half-Life.) It's not going to be a huge ante to "...BET ON LINUX." Even if it works out, it won't be as expensive as creating and marketing a single flop game. (And remember how games were all for dos, then for windows? That's recent history, don't forget. Platforms change.)
Windows isn't a bad gaming platform with DirectX, but eventually people are going to realize that it's silly to support a seperate OS just for games. I have windows95, but I have no plans to upgrade it just to play games. When games begin to require 98 or NT or 2000, I will not be able to play them. I do all my work on Linux and Solaris and it's insane to buy a gaming OS for $200. I'd rather spend $150 on a console system.
I voted for more linux games because I want more linux games. Got civ CTP and want more. Yeah, I wouldn't have known about the poll save for slashdot, but my vote was honest. I don't think people will vote for linux games if they won't buy them---really, who would just push the button because the word "linux" appears?
I agree that on the surface, the snide KDE and GNOME remark was thrown in as troll bait, but I'm not so sure. This person probably has had bad luck with those programs, slowly downloaded over a 14,4 modem and is probably sick to death of hearing about them / reading about them and wants to report it straight away so no one says
"Before you switch to NT, give GNODE a try"
We should just remind that going back to fvwm or twm is still an option on a glibc, 2.2 distribution.
Re:Who wants a Windows disktop on a Linux machine?
on
The Desktop Wars
·
· Score: 1
Every once in a while, I try out KDE or GNOME to see what all the fuss is about. About ten minutes later, it's gone. Those things are for absolute beginners.
Look, neither of these things, G or K, are for you. They're part of the "world domination" perversion to attract people who are and should be using windows to use Linux instead.
It's about time someone did something about this problem. I can't stand those sites that insist on using non-standard HTML.
So if you can't stand it, someone should do something? Bad idea, brother. It sounds like you want legislation that forces web page designers to actually have to learn HTML! The article is about one organization, (a big one, I know) who has long standing policies concerning discrimination against the handicapped, and their new policy to write better web pages.
You are already doing your part, and if you head an organization, you can encourage everyone there to do a good job writing their web pages. But, my point is that it's no better of an idea to force people to write good web pages than it is to force people to put elevators in their own house, or for all publishers to publish large-print books and audio books for every one of their products. Yeah, the government may decide on this course of action, but there's no way everyone should be forced into it--- even if it is a particularly sore spot for you.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a page of links. As far as that goes, it looks fine in lynx. Loads fast, no frames but no real new info either. No complaints from me.
When MS launched that verdana font, they were advertising it for visibility at 7pt on screen. I notice that it's pretty much all they use on their web pages. I have to admit I like it quite a bit.
Maybe lucidatyperwriter is the best X font for small sizes.
I remember when their site turned black. I thought it was cool at first, but quickly grew to dislike it.
Before it was black it was an excellent design--- two equal columns. News items on the right and links on the left.
When they went to that slashdot/freshmeat/... "portal" thingy I remember thinking "I hit those sites pretty often, good idea" and then never went back.
Anybody remember what it looked like before? I distinctly remember the walking red man logo, but can't remember the website too well. Anyway...
Aha. Good to know. Right-- of course I won't have to use it. I just got nervous at the end of the interview when Raster said
Anyway, even if I don't use a filemanager, I think emacs as a widget in E could be neat---I always have emacs running :)
I feel sooooo relieved now that CVS E-0.16 has a pager. Before, E required the gnome panel to run the gnome pager and it was unbearable--- I went back to fvwm for a while. (It goes without saying that a pager is absolutely necessary.) The memory footprint of E-0.16 with a pager is smaller than that of the pager-applet alone (not counting the panel or anything!) GNOME-free and happy about all those extra cycles.
I have the feeling that I will be using E-16 for a long time--- it does everything I want now. Alt-TAB for focus switch on each desktop area (fvwm couldn't do that), transients get focus from parents (if you want) so you can alt-f in netscape, type and do not have to use the mouse to move the cursor, etc... Oh yeah, and you can make it look however you want.
Now my point---I wonder whether I will use E once it has a filemanager and DND and all the fixins to be CLI-free? I mean, I love E because it's trim and flexible. That could feasibly change soon. Maybe I'm the minority, but I don't want to use a filemanager and so I don't want one running. Yeah, I think the parser for the config-files might need some work and the config-dialogs are great, but a file-manager?
Anyway, best to you both. You may be happy to know that it's raining in Raleigh-Durham right now.
I remember reading somewhere (reference eludes me) that during the drafting of the bill of rights, one considered amendment was that federal taxation could not exceed 10% of income. It was shot down for fear that if such a rediculously high percentage were ever written, even as an extreme wartime upper bound, that some future administration might possibly tax at that maximum rate. How things have changed.
I don't like those types of discount cards, either. But jeez, that second clerk didn't know you didn't want the card.
Keep the bile down, amigo.
I was just thinking that I don't really care whether Mozilla is open source or not. For a good, fast browser with MathML support and real standards compliance, I'd shell out money.
But if it's not free of charge, no one will use it, so there won't be an audience for a standards compliant, MathML capable browser. Then, naturally, no one will write MathML documents because there won't be an audience for it and the world that relys on the web for real content will be set back another five years while advertisements and commerce expand.
My conclusion is that whether or not a browser project is open source or not, Netscape will have to be free to be widely used and it's standards compliance have an effect. And if it must be free, it might as well be open source, no?
I know that Conrad did not explicitely mention gnome, but he was promoting KOffice as a recomendation near the end (for helping linux proliferate before w2k). I thought the forsight and clarity with which this article was written was excellent up to the very last paragraph. Ummm, office suites that go with desktop shells rot.
I am afraid that while MS may try to imitate linux in instances where Linux is better, it seems to me that linux imitates windows in situations that windows is better. I mean, of course, the desktop. People should be cautious: while Linux makes progress, but continues to fail, in desktop areas, it may come to pass that MS wins on both fronts.
Conrad is right. Open source is secondary to most. Linux is a better server out of the box than win98, but maybe not better than w2k. It goes without saying that w2k will exceed linux in the desktop. Just hope they don't include ghostscript, TeX, Perl, gnutar, and free C compilers with their Apache bundled W2k. Linux will lose all but the most diehard users then. The people that use Linux only because it is better will switch as soon as it's not better.
Did anyone see Bob's talk, if he gave one? I'm wondering if he made these predictions then, or just silently to himself and now in his infoworld article.
Did Bob really invent "ethernet" as the bottom of the article indicates?
Anyway, he may be right that W2k will kill Windows, but I can't see that any of his reasons could be correct. Does he really think that Word is a replacement for EMACS? (Does W2k even ship with Word?) If W2K is successful, it may be because it's good, it may be because of marketing or business pressures or whatever. But, who can take this guy seriously when he's just trying to get a rise out of advocates by being insulting.
He doesn't even make a point except to confuse a rich pedigree with useless antiquity.
I know Stephenson has made some pro-linux remarks lately and so is in high favor around here. But don't forget that Greg Bear is awesome too.
Maybe Bear should have named Slant, "Slant Dot." I remember hearing about the book before it came out on NPR. He named it for the "slash" on the computer keyboard and even that many years ago, I smiled in my driver's seat, wondering if Greg Bear knows about "Slashdot."
The $500 is for the performance pack to teach it new tricks. The original was $2500 but is now sold out.
Why the hell we still see the ads for AIBO in the blockstackers banner on the top of slashdot, I have no idea.
Well, it seems to me that RedHat was the first company to put proprietary software in their linux distribution when they included BRU backup and MetroX-server in RedHat (was it 3.3?) I think they were then trying to distinguish themselves as better than the other distributions. And at the time it seemed like including pieces unavailable to most distributions was a good way to do it. Only later did they decide that distinguishing themselves as better meant the opposite. No proprietary software became a kind of rally call for them with their open-sourced install program and adminstration tools. The short version of the KDE stink was "not open-source enough" and that seemed very funny to me since RH had already demonstrated a willingness to distribute non-free merchandise---indeed attempted to make their mark by it. At least KDE could/can be redistributed, unlike MetroX.
I guess my point is that we've already seen business-mindedness driving decisions at RH. So, who knows what to expect--- but the laserbeam vision of a very small group of developers you can certainly not expect.
I know that E is very quick. But when it's used in conjunction with GNOME it is not snappy. And unless you use v16 (or 13!) out of CVS, you need gnome to get a pager. I was just adding a small point to Raster's comment on the growing rift between E and GNOME. I say "good."
Thank you for the explination. I will look into the way my browser handles character sets. I have been really puzzled by the appearance of these "question marks" and I wouldn't have guessed the reason.
Everyone says E is slow. And then everyone else says E is fast, provided you use a sensible theme. But the truth is: E is very, very slow when it's tied to gnome. And it's tied by the dick to be sure until such a time as it has its very own pager (soon to come, soon to come.)
It's funny. I always heard raster say that his job at RHLABS wasn't Enlightenment. But you know, RedHat seemed keen enough on it to ship it and install it by default in RH6. I'm not sure I get it, really. It seemed like he left in sour spirits, which is too bad. But frankly, I like E and don't like gnome. So, good for me.
I agree with you. Extra regulation is not a good idea.
If I want to write a piece of software, I don't want it combed over by an oversight committee. I don't want to be forced to provide any warranties--- especially if I don't charge for it and I realease it GNU style. This is not a hypothetical example-- I'm speaking quite personally and probably for all the people who write things like "ls" and "bunzip" and "freeciv" and so on and so on. This seems like a major problem. The article points to two types of software companies
- Those that give the customer what he's payed for
- And those that don't
Of course, there are more kinds of software than two. And more than just two plus GNU. I know the editorialist seems focused on games, but his recomendations are certainly far more sweeping--- that's the danger with regulation. Special regulation would probably sway me away from releasing software and whether my programs are good or bad, keeping them to myself because of artificial rules is definitely bad.Moreover, not only do I think regulation is bad, I don't think it's necessary. While the author explains himself quite clearly, I think he could simplify his entire editorial by posing his complaints with the EULs. Other than those, I can't see why natural free market pressures wouldn't releive some of the perceived difficulties. Write poor game--->get bad review--->have low sales--->lose money.
\begin{OFFTOPIC}
Why are there question marks instead of apostrophes? I've seen that before. The editors must not see that on their screens, why not? If you look at the HTML, there's no funny markup there, just " ? " instead of " ' ". So strange.
\end{OFFTOPIC}
Funny you should ask. There's an interpreter available:
LAGII 0.1.5
The demographics of linux users is largely males from 18-35. This same niche buys the most computer games. Indeed, the businesses using linux in the closet as a server won't be buying games, but that really isn't the largest demographic (it's a growing one, of course.)
I talked with some guys from Loki at the linux expo and fired by the success of their Civ CTP port, they have begun work on MythII and Railroad Tycoon for linux. Look, if the code is written it can be ported to linux, especially if it uses openGL or something besides DriectX (like Half-Life.) It's not going to be a huge ante to "...BET ON LINUX." Even if it works out, it won't be as expensive as creating and marketing a single flop game. (And remember how games were all for dos, then for windows? That's recent history, don't forget. Platforms change.)
Windows isn't a bad gaming platform with DirectX, but eventually people are going to realize that it's silly to support a seperate OS just for games. I have windows95, but I have no plans to upgrade it just to play games. When games begin to require 98 or NT or 2000, I will not be able to play them. I do all my work on Linux and Solaris and it's insane to buy a gaming OS for $200. I'd rather spend $150 on a console system.
I voted for more linux games because I want more linux games. Got civ CTP and want more. Yeah, I wouldn't have known about the poll save for slashdot, but my vote was honest. I don't think people will vote for linux games if they won't buy them---really, who would just push the button because the word "linux" appears?
I agree that on the surface, the snide KDE and GNOME remark was thrown in as troll bait, but I'm not so sure. This person probably has had bad luck with those programs, slowly downloaded over a 14,4 modem and is probably sick to death of hearing about them / reading about them and wants to report it straight away so no one says
We should just remind that going back to fvwm or twm is still an option on a glibc, 2.2 distribution.
Every once in a while, I try out KDE or GNOME to see what all the fuss is about. About ten minutes later, it's gone. Those things are for absolute beginners.
Look, neither of these things, G or K, are for you. They're part of the "world domination" perversion to attract people who are and should be using windows to use Linux instead.
w3c validation and weblint don't favor this page at all. I'm sure a DOCTYPE declaration could eliminate a bunch, but, still...
So if you can't stand it, someone should do something? Bad idea, brother. It sounds like you want legislation that forces web page designers to actually have to learn HTML! The article is about one organization, (a big one, I know) who has long standing policies concerning discrimination against the handicapped, and their new policy to write better web pages.
You are already doing your part, and if you head an organization, you can encourage everyone there to do a good job writing their web pages. But, my point is that it's no better of an idea to force people to write good web pages than it is to force people to put elevators in their own house, or for all publishers to publish large-print books and audio books for every one of their products. Yeah, the government may decide on this course of action, but there's no way everyone should be forced into it--- even if it is a particularly sore spot for you.