I think it's better than their last attempt. They were in danger of becoming another useless site like http://www.netscape.com. At least with Red Hat they've now put the important things back on the front page (like Products, Updates and Errata, for instance).
I'm no expert on these things, but surely changing ISP shouldn't mean changing IP addresses? You had them registered in the name of the company you're working for, right? Similarly, with DNS, I'd expect a local nameserver that all the 200+ clients used, so you'd only have to make the change in one place. Am I missing something obvious here?
Apart from that, I sympathise with your position. Like many here, I've been there, and decided it wasn't worth it. Strictly 40 hours a week for me (but then, I'm a contractor now, so they have to pay me if I work overtime...)
Arse! Don't know how that space in the URL got there. I didn't even notice it in the preview. Ho hum... The link itself works OK, just not the one you get to see!
My only experience of SMS was when we were evaluating Amdahl's awful A+EDM. SMS was slightly better, but both were hampered by NT's design flaws. In the end, we went for SMS for NT, and stuck with rdist for Unix. I haven't been able to check out their web site, to find exactly what features the Linux client has, but I'm betting it's run either as root, or with setuid root privileges, and I'll pretty much guarantee it'll be closed source, and users won't be able to fix the security holes that I'm sure it'll introduce...
Anyone else notice how they claim XZX is a Spectrum emulator for Windows! Oh, and they give the wrong URL for it, too. The correct one has a tilde before the "kunze":
FWIW, I still remember my early computing days fondly. The Spectrum was fun, and the C64 was excellent (6502/6510 is still my favourite assembler), but it was the Beeb that really shone in my opinion (yes the C64 and Atari 8-bits had better graphics, but the built in assembler made it a joy to work with). Later on, the Amiga had a similar feel to it -- everything just felt right!
In a few years, will there really be much difference between a "game machine" and a "home" computer?
Technologically, no. You'll get a high powered console with various peripherals (keyboard, printer, storage, hi-res monitor etc.) to make it usable. And then you might as well call it a computer, because that's what it'll be.
However, the big difference will be social. Until the major players realise that restricting development is a bad plan, the traditional computer will always have a place. I bought an Amiga, not a SNES or a Megadrive, because I could program it. If I want to write something for a console, I have to pay the manufacturer a fortune (well out of reach of the average man on the street) for an approved devkit. Sure, I'm in the minority, and the general public won't care one way or the other, but even among Windows users, how many rely on shareware utilties? Those simply don't exist on consoles -- you're stuck with "manufacturer approved" software. Imagine if Micros~1 could dictate what software you were allowed to run on your PC. That's the position Sony, Nintendo and Sega are in now with consoles, and I don't see it changing any time soon...
Don't get me wrong, I've been using Red Hat for years, and think they're a great company. However, that doesn't necessarily make them a good investment. They can't make huge amounts of money from selling the OS, so they need to have other sources of income. IMHO, they've missed the boat a bit on the support side. People are going to get support from LinuxCare, Compaq or HP -- not Red Hat. So that leaves little other than their "portal" site to bring in revenue.
Sure the share price will rise in the short term amid the traditional hi-tech IPO frenzy, particularly with all the open source media attention. But I wouldn't be surpised to see it dropping down towards the issue price in the medium to long term. Good for those looking to make a quick buck, but I wouldn't view it as a long term investment...
It's always bothered me why there wasn't a lightweight JPEG producing engine like there is with GD for GIFs.
Encoding an image with JPEG involves a fairly complex mathematical process, which is relatively CPU intensive. It's not really possible to produce a "lightweight" JPEG compressor. Having said that, with the speed of modern CPUs, it doesn't need to be particularly lightweight, and such a library could now be feasibly produced. However, the sort of images that can be dynamically produced don't tend to lend themselves to JPEG anyway...
That's why Sun Enterprise equipment is almost mission-critical-environment ready -- and linux isn't.
You speak of the two as if they're mutually exclusive. I've had Linux running on a Sun Ultra Enterprise 4000 for some time now, and Dave Miller has had it running on a 14-CPU Ultra Enterprise system (provided by Sun, specifically for Linux development, AFAIK).
The culture has changed. Medieval Catholics' ultimate "cuss words" were blasphemous, and "fuck" was a slightly-vulgar-yet-acceptable verb.
Indeed. In fact, a search of medieval parish records in the UK will reveal what would today be considered obscene surnames, but then were, as you say, slightly vulgar yet acceptable. Examples include Fuckalot and Widecunte. No, I'm not kidding. Still, it's probably a little disconcerting if that's the only thing others in your village can think of to describe you...
actually, you can check out exactly what is going on out of CVS as we're working on it. I figure with that sort of ability you don't have to have as many full-head-on releases.
That's one way of looking at it. However, remember that a large percentage of people access the net from work rather than home. My last 3 companies have all blocked CVS at the firewall level, and I (like many others) don't have enough bandwidth at home to get the entire E tree via CVS -- remember also that free local calls are rare outside the US. With regular releases, I can download them at work and burn them onto a CD to take home. That isn't possible at the moment with CVS.
They don't charge a subscription fee but make their money by taking a cut from the per-minute local call charges.
Actually, Freeserve has two sources of revenue -- taking a cut from call charges, and the technical support line (at premium call rates). Naturally, the support line revenue will remain unaffected. Energis (who own Freeserve) supply the calls, which is why Freeserve is able to take a cut. Energis are likely to be one of BT's competitors in the ADSL arena, so Freeserve can get a cut of call costs/line charges just as they do now, and are unlikely to be affected at all.
The problem will be for those free ISPs that aren't owned by a telco...
I will not use Word because it *insists* on correcting my "mistakes," and tries to anticipate what I want to do. If I put the letter 'c' in parentheses, it automatically converts it into a copyright symbol.
I find myself in the odd position of defending Micros~1. Autocorrect does belong in a text editor / word processor. It's a useful feature (to the point where I use it in vi, for example). However, they screwed up in two major ways with Word:
Choosing such a dumb set of autoreplacements. Fine, change "teh" to "the", but don't do copyright symbols, smileys, etc., and don't auotcapitalize words at the start of a sentence!
Enabling it by default. This sort of thing should be enabled if, and only if, the user specifically requests it. Otherwise it results in unexpected behaviour.
Fortunately, you can at least disable all the automatic corrections in Word (and in fact, this is one of the first things I do on the few occasions I'm forced to use it). There's enough things genuinely wrong with Word (no ligatures, hopeless maths layout, poor underlining, etc.) that we don't need to pick on one of the few things they nearly got right!
If they would use a KDE fe alongside the GTK fe, the user/developer base would double.
Depends what you mean by a KDE FE. If you mean rewrite the FE in Qt, then I'd tell you to stop wasting your time. On the other hand, keeping it Gtk, and supplying KDE hints (as I believe Star Office, which is written in Motif, does) would be a big win...
Are these Darwin Awards for real? It looks to me like someone's registered the darwinawards.com domain in the hopes of making some money out of it. The Darwin Awards have traditionally been at http://www.officialdarwinawards.com, although that's looking like it hasn't been updated in a while. Who knows. Ho hum...
I suspect that PHP/Apache/Linux would blow the doors off of VB/ASP/IIS/NT
Actually, PHP's performance isn't that great at the moment for high loads. However, it *is* good enough, and the flexibility it gives is sufficient that I for one use it on my sites. Either way, Zend should send PHP performance through the roof in the near future. They have some simple ASP v Zend benchmarks on the site, too...
For once there is a technology that they cannot patent.
No, the technique itself can't be patented. However, bizarre though it sounds (at least, it does to me), individual DNA sequences can be (and routinely are) patented.
The winner gets $15K worth of new computers, and their old PC donated to the Computer Museum of America.
I can't help thinking this is a bit of a double edged sword. Just think about it for a minute. You have a machine that's been running for over 20 years. It's not doing anything that's going to need to scale -- if it was, it would have done so long ago. It's not unreliable, or it would have been replaced by now. No, what we have here is a machine that's perfectly suited to the task in hand.
In comes Dell and replaces your trusty, fully working machine, with a shiny new PC running Windows bloatware, and takes away your old working one. The PC crashes every couple of weeks, and will be useless in a couple of years, and need replacing anyway.
Sure, you could replace Windows with Linux / FreeBSD / whatever, but the MTBF on modern PC components means the machine will probably break long before it manages another 20 years.
My advice: stick with your existing machine. It does all that you want already, so why change it?
Coincidentally, I tried out IE5 for Solaris/Sparc this morning. Boy does it suck. It's horrendously slow and bloated. Though both of those apply to Netscape, too, they're worse in IE5. If the Linux version is similar, I, for one, won't be using it for anything other than verifying that my web pages look OK in both browsers.
If the interviews are in RealPlayer format, then for my money, the coverage can't be described as "excellent".
It's a closed, proprietary format and I can't use it. What's that you say? Get of your high horse, and just use the binary version that Real have kindly made available? Well, perhaps I would if they supported Linux on my Sparc or OpenStep on my NeXT...
Proprietary formats are not ideal, but you can live with them on standalone systems. However, when will people learn that on the Internet, they just plain don't work?
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's better than their last attempt. They were in danger of becoming another useless site like http://www.netscape.com. At least with Red Hat they've now put the important things back on the front page (like Products, Updates and Errata, for instance).
Apart from that, I sympathise with your position. Like many here, I've been there, and decided it wasn't worth it. Strictly 40 hours a week for me (but then, I'm a contractor now, so they have to pay me if I work overtime...)
Arse! Don't know how that space in the URL got there. I didn't even notice it in the preview. Ho hum... The link itself works OK, just not the one you get to see!
My only experience of SMS was when we were evaluating Amdahl's awful A+EDM. SMS was slightly better, but both were hampered by NT's design flaws. In the end, we went for SMS for NT, and stuck with rdist for Unix. I haven't been able to check out their web site, to find exactly what features the Linux client has, but I'm betting it's run either as root, or with setuid root privileges, and I'll pretty much guarantee it'll be closed source, and users won't be able to fix the security holes that I'm sure it'll introduce...
FWIW, I still remember my early computing days fondly. The Spectrum was fun, and the C64 was excellent (6502/6510 is still my favourite assembler), but it was the Beeb that really shone in my opinion (yes the C64 and Atari 8-bits had better graphics, but the built in assembler made it a joy to work with). Later on, the Amiga had a similar feel to it -- everything just felt right!
Technologically, no. You'll get a high powered console with various peripherals (keyboard, printer, storage, hi-res monitor etc.) to make it usable. And then you might as well call it a computer, because that's what it'll be.
However, the big difference will be social. Until the major players realise that restricting development is a bad plan, the traditional computer will always have a place. I bought an Amiga, not a SNES or a Megadrive, because I could program it. If I want to write something for a console, I have to pay the manufacturer a fortune (well out of reach of the average man on the street) for an approved devkit. Sure, I'm in the minority, and the general public won't care one way or the other, but even among Windows users, how many rely on shareware utilties? Those simply don't exist on consoles -- you're stuck with "manufacturer approved" software. Imagine if Micros~1 could dictate what software you were allowed to run on your PC. That's the position Sony, Nintendo and Sega are in now with consoles, and I don't see it changing any time soon...
Sure the share price will rise in the short term amid the traditional hi-tech IPO frenzy, particularly with all the open source media attention. But I wouldn't be surpised to see it dropping down towards the issue price in the medium to long term. Good for those looking to make a quick buck, but I wouldn't view it as a long term investment...
The correct URL is5 4&time=19990716050110.
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/finger.pl?id=2
Encoding an image with JPEG involves a fairly complex mathematical process, which is relatively CPU intensive. It's not really possible to produce a "lightweight" JPEG compressor. Having said that, with the speed of modern CPUs, it doesn't need to be particularly lightweight, and such a library could now be feasibly produced. However, the sort of images that can be dynamically produced don't tend to lend themselves to JPEG anyway...
You speak of the two as if they're mutually exclusive. I've had Linux running on a Sun Ultra Enterprise 4000 for some time now, and Dave Miller has had it running on a 14-CPU Ultra Enterprise system (provided by Sun, specifically for Linux development, AFAIK).
That's horrible. I assumed it was someone doing a pisstake of the Evening Standard site, but it seems genuine...
Indeed. In fact, a search of medieval parish records in the UK will reveal what would today be considered obscene surnames, but then were, as you say, slightly vulgar yet acceptable. Examples include Fuckalot and Widecunte. No, I'm not kidding. Still, it's probably a little disconcerting if that's the only thing others in your village can think of to describe you...
That's one way of looking at it. However, remember that a large percentage of people access the net from work rather than home. My last 3 companies have all blocked CVS at the firewall level, and I (like many others) don't have enough bandwidth at home to get the entire E tree via CVS -- remember also that free local calls are rare outside the US. With regular releases, I can download them at work and burn them onto a CD to take home. That isn't possible at the moment with CVS.
Actually, Freeserve has two sources of revenue -- taking a cut from call charges, and the technical support line (at premium call rates). Naturally, the support line revenue will remain unaffected. Energis (who own Freeserve) supply the calls, which is why Freeserve is able to take a cut. Energis are likely to be one of BT's competitors in the ADSL arena, so Freeserve can get a cut of call costs/line charges just as they do now, and are unlikely to be affected at all.
The problem will be for those free ISPs that aren't owned by a telco...
I find myself in the odd position of defending Micros~1. Autocorrect does belong in a text editor / word processor. It's a useful feature (to the point where I use it in vi, for example). However, they screwed up in two major ways with Word:
Fortunately, you can at least disable all the automatic corrections in Word (and in fact, this is one of the first things I do on the few occasions I'm forced to use it). There's enough things genuinely wrong with Word (no ligatures, hopeless maths layout, poor underlining, etc.) that we don't need to pick on one of the few things they nearly got right!
Depends what you mean by a KDE FE. If you mean rewrite the FE in Qt, then I'd tell you to stop wasting your time. On the other hand, keeping it Gtk, and supplying KDE hints (as I believe Star Office, which is written in Motif, does) would be a big win...
Are these Darwin Awards for real? It looks to me like someone's registered the darwinawards.com domain in the hopes of making some money out of it. The Darwin Awards have traditionally been at http://www.officialdarwinawards.com, although that's looking like it hasn't been updated in a while. Who knows. Ho hum...
Actually, PHP's performance isn't that great at the moment for high loads. However, it *is* good enough, and the flexibility it gives is sufficient that I for one use it on my sites. Either way, Zend should send PHP performance through the roof in the near future. They have some simple ASP v Zend benchmarks on the site, too...
Wow! Liquid gas sounds really funky. I gotta get me some of that... :-)
No, the technique itself can't be patented. However, bizarre though it sounds (at least, it does to me), individual DNA sequences can be (and routinely are) patented.
You're forgetting, of course, the venerable PPro, which can also do 4-way SMP.
I can't help thinking this is a bit of a double edged sword. Just think about it for a minute. You have a machine that's been running for over 20 years. It's not doing anything that's going to need to scale -- if it was, it would have done so long ago. It's not unreliable, or it would have been replaced by now. No, what we have here is a machine that's perfectly suited to the task in hand.
In comes Dell and replaces your trusty, fully working machine, with a shiny new PC running Windows bloatware, and takes away your old working one. The PC crashes every couple of weeks, and will be useless in a couple of years, and need replacing anyway.
Sure, you could replace Windows with Linux / FreeBSD / whatever, but the MTBF on modern PC components means the machine will probably break long before it manages another 20 years.
My advice: stick with your existing machine. It does all that you want already, so why change it?
Roll on Mozilla...
Which is of no use whatsoever to those of us on non-Intel platforms. Has someone got this in a sensible format somewhere?
It's a closed, proprietary format and I can't use it. What's that you say? Get of your high horse, and just use the binary version that Real have kindly made available? Well, perhaps I would if they supported Linux on my Sparc or OpenStep on my NeXT...
Proprietary formats are not ideal, but you can live with them on standalone systems. However, when will people learn that on the Internet, they just plain don't work?