A game programmer friend of mine gave me a preview of Natural Selection and I am blown away by the amount of flexability that can be added to the half life engine. Charlie added a particle system for some smoke and dripping water effects. He made it more strategy-oriented by letting one player enter a control room where he can oversee operations and give resources and orders to the other players....
After about two weeks of transition to the Kinesis Classic, the pain in my forearms was gone. I really love it.
When programming, your hand motion is very much reduced because the arrow buttons are not off to the right side, they are distributed 'below' the cvbnm,. line on the keyboard, and on the thumbs. The result is that you can really cruise between navigating and typing.
My only complaint is that the escape key and the F keys are membrane-squishy things instead of real keys. My escape key is starting to break down, and I have to make sure I pressed it every time. Another few months and I'll buy a replacement. Kinesis.
I am really happy with my HP Omnibook 500. I have two hard drives, one with Win2k and one with Debian (sid) and it is really easy to swap the hard drives (I don't even keep them screwed in place.
The omnibook500 is 3.5 lbs and one inch thick. the 12.1 inch screen is perfect for me. The USB is great, and powers some high-current USB devices from the laptop battery for 2 hours. I get 3.5 hours normally.
Debian works like a charm, recognizing every feature that I have cared to try. Best of all, you can find them starting at $1000 for a 500MHz model, up to 2400 for a 750MHz model. I recently bought a second one for $1600 w/ 700MHz and a base with CDROM. This does make the debian install much easier. (Previously I had to take the hard drive out and with a special cable, put the tiny IDE drive in my tower computer to start the install, and then slap it in the omnibook at that point in the Debian install where you reboot and continue the installation)
The only drawback is it uses a Mobility M1 Rage from ATI which doesn't have any 3D X support. (It doesn't even do OpenGL very well in the first place) I still prefer it to the latest and greatest Geforce 2go and related laptops from Toshiba. The quality and style of the HP Omnibook 500 is just right for me.
um... has anyone noticed the 'aqua' look to the slashdot logo at the top of the page? I _love_ it!
I have a mac in front of me on my desk that I would love to install OS X on... but am _sure_ that it will be a huge brain-drain and take much too much time. Can anyone out there give me a reason to take the time?
(I am currently using a laptop with swappable hard drives booting Debian Sid on one, and Win2k on the other) Who needs OS X???
I'm a devolper working on www.neuroinformatica.com. (online microscope, with analysis and discussion of biological material)
Our customers are looking to teach, research and diagnose all sorts of stuff. We will link with some genomics information, but at the moment there is plenty of anatomy and structure to provide a context for the rest of the information.
In my mind, the goal is to simulate, and therefore understand the processes at an electrochemical level, and by putting everything into the context of a model based on real (digitized) tissue create a serious base of knowledge.
I use java more than perl. I want to be able to maintain the code over the years! I know just enough perl to know that two programmers will seldom agree on a strategy for implementing something. I want my java neuroinformatics project to be timeless.
Even when I paid my money to get the non-nag-ware version of Real, it still did all of this rediculous marketing garbage! I uninstalled it
and am not looking back.
I like my software to be unobtrusive and dependable. Real just really wants to get in my face.
After falling in love with 24 bit quality at a friend's studio, I spent $550 for a usb-based A/D called USBPre This is powered %100 from my notebook's USB, and delivers 48V Phantom power to the microphones. It's nice and small, and I can fit everything but my mic stand in my laptop's breifcase.
After buying the USB Pre and playing around with mulitracking for a couple of months, I decided to get some really nice microphones. I ended up choosing a pair of Sure KSM32 side-address condensers. I've used the system with great results at four live concerts (a-capella, and orchestra w/ chorus) and absolutely love the results.
Since the USBPre has a level meter (seven-segment LED style) and Level knobs, I only have the notebook open long enough to start WaveLab and press the record button. I close the laptop and fuhgetaboudit until after the performance. I think having a lunchbox style luggable would just be useless and distracting.
For software, I tried Cool Edit, but it doesn't record directly to a file. It records to temporary space, and then you have to save the file... momentarialy taking up twice the amount of diskspace as should be necessary! Now I am using Steinburg WaveLab and haven't had too much trouble.
For a notebook I'm using a Hewlet Packard Omnibook 500 (500MHz & 5200RPM hard drive) Even though this is below spec for the USBPre, it works great. The notebook is less than 4 lbs, and the USBPre is 1-2 lbs... and the XLR cables are 5lbs... etc... My whole set of gear is lighter than the mic stand.
The guys at USBPre have offered to share documentation and knowledge to let me write a 24 bit Linux Audio driver, but it seems they don't have any typed documentation, and aren't willing to type it up just for me. So I'm starting with the linux UA100 (a roland 16 bit audio & midi USB device) driver, and trying to implement a Linux driver. My dream is to use the USBPre on Linux (Got debian running on a second swappable hard drive on the Omnibook 500) using
Audacity for software.
-Jim
Education and nation building
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 1
Two things that must happen:
Separate Church and State all over the world using gentle education. The reason that militant
exteremeists get violent is that they want all people in their Islamic theocracy to act Islamic. They don't beleive that anyone else is welcome. There is a simple association between teritory and religion that must be broken before there is room for understanding and tolerance of other beleifs.
The other thing that we can do about terrorism is to admit that we are vunerable. Terrorists see George Bush arguing for missile defense systems, and arrogantly thinking that we can defend against catastrophic attacks by building up our arms. The terrorists take this as a challenge. The terrorists know that they can get through any missile defense with a box cutter. The more we build our walls (draw lines in the sand if you will), the more tempting it is for our enemies to cross those lines, and show us our mistaken attitude.
I fully support the investigation of the individuals involved, and the punsihment of any that we can prove had a hand in the attack. At the same time I don't beleive anything will be accomplished in the way of future quality of life until simple tolerance and humanity that we take for granted in (most of) the free world is truly universal.
Thanks Slashdot! Without Slashdot, I wouldn't be seing all sides of the story.
I found my last house on Picket Fence Preview It is a for sale by owner oriented listing, and they are specific to Vermont, New Hampshire and parts of New York. I had a great experience buying... and will definately use them when it comes time to sell my house.
Like National Public Radio, Open source software is supported by those who benefit from it directly, and it manages to avoid political and commercial interests. At the same time, many other non-contributors can benefit from it.
My officemate just got a DELL Dimension 8100, and it is just about _silent_! It is much quieter than my powerpc & cooling case that I bought for the purpose at home.
I love my Visual Slickedit. It is'nt wysiwyg but it has some great features. When you type a < it pops up a list of all the start tags... whichever one you highlight, it gives you a description of the tag, and how it is used. You either choose what you like, or continue typing. It supports this pop-up documentation for PHP, Javascript, HTML tags, Cascading Style sheets, Python....
...pretty much every language I use for web development.
You get the best of both worlds... You don't have to remember the tags, or have to continuously look things up, and at the same time you know exactly what you are doing.
You can use the Beautify tool to make sure everything is properly nested... It indents nested tags just like indented blocks of code in C... so you can instantly tell when you have a <Atag> <Btag> </Atag> </Btag> situation.
It will automatically bring up the page you are editing in the browser of your choice too. It is completely cross-platform. I go back and forth between Windows and Linux without thinking twice.
I use the same tool to write my Java Servlets, and with a quick Ctrl-M (and a little help from the Ant tool from the Apache-Jakarta project) and my (complex) project is created, and deployed to my test environment. Any errors that are reported show up an an 'Output' window, where I can double click on the file name to jump to the source. Whenever library source is available, you can have Visual Slickedit 'tag' the files. I can move my cursor to any Java function or class and hit Ctrl-. to jump to the source (which includes the comprehensive documentation with java)
You can open a file on an FTP site as if it was local, and when you do File, Save it does the PUT. I use this constantly to make quick updates to web pages that were originally created with Front Page.
It integrates beautifully with CVS and MS Visual Source safe... even better integration than in Visual Studio in my opinion.
When it comes to Javascript debugging... you _really_ have to try all sorts of different browsers on different platforms (Damn that Mac OS9.0) Still, with the Browser integration, it is effortless... I gleefully pay the $100 / year or so to keep up with the latest releases.
When I was looking for a way to compute algorithms of arbitrary bases... when the scripting language I had only did natural Log... I fonud this:
http://forum.swarthmore.edu/dr.math/
I see the whole web as one big math reference... a search on Google can answer most mathematics questions.
The ergonomics of a microscope are a lot like the ergonomics for a computer... Get comfy, and move around so that there is some variety in the movements you make and the muscles that are used. Unfortunately, most microscopes require that you sit at a bench with your knees against some cupboard doors, and look down into oculars, which can tense the muscles in your neck.
I work for MicroBrightField Inc. Where we integrate a computer system with microscopes for (mostly) neuroscientists around the world. The most elaborate setup has the ability to
Use a motorized stage to move around the slide. The slide goes on a platform with stepper motors that move along an X and Y axis.
Motorized focus to move through the focal plane (Z axis). A stepper motor attaches to the fine focus on one side of the microscope, and a linear encoder measures the height of the stage.
See the material on the monitor of a Windows machine, and click markers, and trace regions. You can focus and move using a joystick, or using the mouse. The mouse wheel can do the focusing, and clicking near the edge of the image on the screen makes the stage move, and center the last point you clicked.
See the computer screen when you look in the microscope. (we have a mini LCD that attaches to the drawing tube of a microscope) This gives the best image quality of the material (no CCD to reduce resolution) and still lets you click on things you see.
Perform calculations on what you see in the microscope. This can be as simple as area, volume, or as complex as Sholl analysis of 'trees' of neuron processes.
Estimate the number of cells in an entire brain using 'Unbiased Stereology.' You can examine just 200 or so different carefully selected sampling sites, and count 2-3 cells at each site to estimate (+- %8) the number of cells in an entire brain.
Do a 3D navigable reconstruction (using OpenGL) of the tracing... putting a skin over contours that were drawn around specific regions and drawing neurons as trees of cylinders, walk through and examine any part of the space.
The entire set-up is a bit expensive, but it is very ergonomic to use... and enables some large scale studies which would not have been possible using manual methods.
A couple of our customers go all-out and project the microscope image onto a lightweight LCD screen, that you use a simple stylus to draw on.... (A Wacom tablet) You would not beleive how easy it can be... sit back, put your feet up, put the wacom tablet in your lap, and start doodling (carefully tracing) over the material you see... As you draw, and place markers, the motorized stage moves, and you navigate around the material on the slide...
If Matel can squash CPHack... Can Microsoft approach Linus with lots of cash & lawyers, and acquire the copyright?
Och! Probably not... but it is a mind-blowing day for the FSF supporters.
My real thought is that Matel should have simply thrown in the towel on CyberPatrol, and gone after the authors of CPHack for damages. The authors really did something wrong, and financially damaging, and irresponsable. The responsible thing would have been to tell Matel that they found a problem, and ask if Matel is interested in how they did it, so it could be fixed _before_ they released it.
Causing harm to another entity is seldom a good idea, even if the other entity did a bad job of protecting themselves. You can be arrested for stealing even if the person stolen from left their window open.
My favorite was the Oldsmobile commercial that was a complete spoof of the gap commercials. Trendy lip synching of Gary Numan's 'Cars'... only to have to run to avoid getting run over...
In the Burlington Area of Vermont... Some companies will offer thirty-five thousand to someone with a few years experience...fifty-five thousand US is a good job with about five years experience. The local medical database company IDX has several top-notch programmers at over eighty thousand...
Sometimes it just takes a little patience... As for Netscape disappearing when Java starts, I just found the solution for this one a couple of days ago... Going to netscape and searching on Java and Crash... it tells me:
There is a problem in one of the installation rpms that is causing many systems to not have a complete fontpath for X to use.
to add the required font: chkfontpath --add/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi
Now Java is working beautifully...
I personally wish that Linux had a mostly-unhackable license manager available. This would let my software development company consider releasing a Linux-based version of our software.
Let me know if I have simply overlooked something that is already available...
Once companies have great copy protection for expensive Apps, many commercial developers will hop on the train.
I personally use KDE, and like it... but I can't wait for a next-generation Knowledge-based UI!
Let's make a huge leap over the Desktop paradigm and take the world by storm!
I do agree that in most cases the transition to the Dvorak keyboard is difficult, and not worth the effort... especially once you have all those editor shortcuts burned in your brain... BUT
The Dvorak keyboard is much better. It has all the vowels under the left hand home keys, and all the most used consonants (DHTNS) under the right home keys. The idea is that you spend about twice the amount of time on the home keys. By _design_ it rocks.
I used to work at a "fufillment house" where people answer phones and enter data all day... we had a study "the bible" of the fufillment business, and it had a section which showed the scientific tests that showed %15 - %20 increase in productivity for people who type all day.
I made the switch in college, and saw my typing rate go from about 40wpm QWERTY to 65wpm Dvorak.
The second necessary skill after learning Dvorak is to go back to QWERTY when you have to. Once you can go back and forth... life is __good__
Slashdot Mirror
A game programmer friend of mine gave me a preview of Natural Selection and I am blown away by the amount of flexability that can be added to the half life engine. Charlie added a particle system for some smoke and dripping water effects. He made it more strategy-oriented by letting one player enter a control room where he can oversee operations and give resources and orders to the other players....
It's a beautiful thing.
-Jim
After about two weeks of transition to the Kinesis Classic, the pain in my forearms was gone. I really love it.
When programming, your hand motion is very much reduced because the arrow buttons are not off to the right side, they are distributed 'below' the cvbnm,. line on the keyboard, and on the thumbs. The result is that you can really cruise between navigating and typing.
My only complaint is that the escape key and the F keys are membrane-squishy things instead of real keys. My escape key is starting to break down, and I have to make sure I pressed it every time. Another few months and I'll buy a replacement. Kinesis.
I am really happy with my HP Omnibook 500. I have two hard drives, one with Win2k and one with Debian (sid) and it is really easy to swap the hard drives (I don't even keep them screwed in place.
The omnibook500 is 3.5 lbs and one inch thick. the 12.1 inch screen is perfect for me. The USB is great, and powers some high-current USB devices from the laptop battery for 2 hours. I get 3.5 hours normally.
Debian works like a charm, recognizing every feature that I have cared to try. Best of all, you can find them starting at $1000 for a 500MHz model, up to 2400 for a 750MHz model. I recently bought a second one for $1600 w/ 700MHz and a base with CDROM. This does make the debian install much easier. (Previously I had to take the hard drive out and with a special cable, put the tiny IDE drive in my tower computer to start the install, and then slap it in the omnibook at that point in the Debian install where you reboot and continue the installation)
The only drawback is it uses a Mobility M1 Rage from ATI which doesn't have any 3D X support. (It doesn't even do OpenGL very well in the first place) I still prefer it to the latest and greatest Geforce 2go and related laptops from Toshiba. The quality and style of the HP Omnibook 500 is just right for me.
-Jim
um... has anyone noticed the 'aqua' look to the slashdot logo at the top of the page? I _love_ it!
I have a mac in front of me on my desk that I would love to install OS X on... but am _sure_ that it will be a huge brain-drain and take much too much time. Can anyone out there give me a reason to take the time?
(I am currently using a laptop with swappable hard drives booting Debian Sid on one, and Win2k on the other) Who needs OS X???
-Jim
I'm a devolper working on www.neuroinformatica.com. (online microscope, with analysis and discussion of biological material)
Our customers are looking to teach, research and diagnose all sorts of stuff. We will link with some genomics information, but at the moment there is plenty of anatomy and structure to provide a context for the rest of the information.
In my mind, the goal is to simulate, and therefore understand the processes at an electrochemical level, and by putting everything into the context of a model based on real (digitized) tissue create a serious base of knowledge.
I use java more than perl. I want to be able to maintain the code over the years! I know just enough perl to know that two programmers will seldom agree on a strategy for implementing something. I want my java neuroinformatics project to be timeless.
This is a facinating time to be alive!
Even when I paid my money to get the non-nag-ware version of Real, it still did all of this rediculous marketing garbage! I uninstalled it
and am not looking back.
I like my software to be unobtrusive and dependable. Real just really wants to get in my face.
-Jim
After falling in love with 24 bit quality at a friend's studio, I spent $550 for a usb-based A/D called USBPre This is powered %100 from my notebook's USB, and delivers 48V Phantom power to the microphones. It's nice and small, and I can fit everything but my mic stand in my laptop's breifcase.
After buying the USB Pre and playing around with mulitracking for a couple of months, I decided to get some really nice microphones. I ended up choosing a pair of Sure KSM32 side-address condensers. I've used the system with great results at four live concerts (a-capella, and orchestra w/ chorus) and absolutely love the results.
Since the USBPre has a level meter (seven-segment LED style) and Level knobs, I only have the notebook open long enough to start WaveLab and press the record button. I close the laptop and fuhgetaboudit until after the performance. I think having a lunchbox style luggable would just be useless and distracting.
For software, I tried Cool Edit, but it doesn't record directly to a file. It records to temporary space, and then you have to save the file... momentarialy taking up twice the amount of diskspace as should be necessary! Now I am using Steinburg WaveLab and haven't had too much trouble.
For a notebook I'm using a Hewlet Packard Omnibook 500 (500MHz & 5200RPM hard drive) Even though this is below spec for the USBPre, it works great. The notebook is less than 4 lbs, and the USBPre is 1-2 lbs... and the XLR cables are 5lbs... etc... My whole set of gear is lighter than the mic stand.
The guys at USBPre have offered to share documentation and knowledge to let me write a 24 bit Linux Audio driver, but it seems they don't have any typed documentation, and aren't willing to type it up just for me. So I'm starting with the linux UA100 (a roland 16 bit audio & midi USB device) driver, and trying to implement a Linux driver. My dream is to use the USBPre on Linux (Got debian running on a second swappable hard drive on the Omnibook 500) using Audacity for software.
-Jim
Two things that must happen:
Separate Church and State all over the world using gentle education. The reason that militant
exteremeists get violent is that they want all people in their Islamic theocracy to act Islamic. They don't beleive that anyone else is welcome. There is a simple association between teritory and religion that must be broken before there is room for understanding and tolerance of other beleifs.
The other thing that we can do about terrorism is to admit that we are vunerable. Terrorists see George Bush arguing for missile defense systems, and arrogantly thinking that we can defend against catastrophic attacks by building up our arms. The terrorists take this as a challenge. The terrorists know that they can get through any missile defense with a box cutter. The more we build our walls (draw lines in the sand if you will), the more tempting it is for our enemies to cross those lines, and show us our mistaken attitude.
I fully support the investigation of the individuals involved, and the punsihment of any that we can prove had a hand in the attack. At the same time I don't beleive anything will be accomplished in the way of future quality of life until simple tolerance and humanity that we take for granted in (most of) the free world is truly universal.
Thanks Slashdot! Without Slashdot, I wouldn't be seing all sides of the story.
-Jim
I found my last house on Picket Fence Preview It is a for sale by owner oriented listing, and they are specific to Vermont, New Hampshire and parts of New York. I had a great experience buying... and will definately use them when it comes time to sell my house.
Like National Public Radio, Open source software is supported by those who benefit from it directly, and it manages to avoid political and commercial interests. At the same time, many other non-contributors can benefit from it.
How could such an obvious parallel get missed?
I really enjoyed the interview.
My officemate just got a DELL Dimension 8100, and it is just about _silent_! It is much quieter than my powerpc & cooling case that I bought for the purpose at home.
I love my Visual Slickedit. It is'nt wysiwyg but it has some great features. When you type a < it pops up a list of all the start tags... whichever one you highlight, it gives you a description of the tag, and how it is used. You either choose what you like, or continue typing. It supports this pop-up documentation for PHP, Javascript, HTML tags, Cascading Style sheets, Python....
...pretty much every language I use for web development.
You get the best of both worlds... You don't have to remember the tags, or have to continuously look things up, and at the same time you know exactly what you are doing.
You can use the Beautify tool to make sure everything is properly nested... It indents nested tags just like indented blocks of code in C... so you can instantly tell when you have a <Atag> <Btag> </Atag> </Btag> situation.
It will automatically bring up the page you are editing in the browser of your choice too. It is completely cross-platform. I go back and forth between Windows and Linux without thinking twice.
I use the same tool to write my Java Servlets, and with a quick Ctrl-M (and a little help from the Ant tool from the Apache-Jakarta project) and my (complex) project is created, and deployed to my test environment. Any errors that are reported show up an an 'Output' window, where I can double click on the file name to jump to the source. Whenever library source is available, you can have Visual Slickedit 'tag' the files. I can move my cursor to any Java function or class and hit Ctrl-. to jump to the source (which includes the comprehensive documentation with java)
You can open a file on an FTP site as if it was local, and when you do File, Save it does the PUT. I use this constantly to make quick updates to web pages that were originally created with Front Page.
It integrates beautifully with CVS and MS Visual Source safe... even better integration than in Visual Studio in my opinion.
When it comes to Javascript debugging... you _really_ have to try all sorts of different browsers on different platforms (Damn that Mac OS9.0) Still, with the Browser integration, it is effortless... I gleefully pay the $100 / year or so to keep up with the latest releases.
Don't bother with the eval... just pay up.
When I was looking for a way to compute algorithms of arbitrary bases... when the scripting language I had only did natural Log... I fonud this: http://forum.swarthmore.edu/dr.math/
I see the whole web as one big math reference... a search on Google can answer most mathematics questions.
-Jim
So how come some stars show lens flare, and
other stars are perfectly clear????
Is the lens flare caused by the Hubble optics, or
is it something in the path between the star and
us???
Thanks in advance!
-Jim
Unfortunately, most microscopes require that you sit at a bench with your knees against some cupboard doors, and look down into oculars, which can tense the muscles in your neck.
I work for MicroBrightField Inc. Where we integrate a computer system with microscopes for (mostly) neuroscientists around the world. The most elaborate setup has the ability to
- Use a motorized stage to move around the slide. The slide goes on a platform with stepper motors that move along an X and Y axis.
- Motorized focus to move through the focal plane (Z axis). A stepper motor attaches to the fine focus on one side of the microscope, and a linear encoder measures the height of the stage.
- See the material on the monitor of a Windows machine, and click markers, and trace regions. You can focus and move using a joystick, or using the mouse. The mouse wheel can do the focusing, and clicking near the edge of the image on the screen makes the stage move, and center the last point you clicked.
- See the computer screen when you look in the microscope. (we have a mini LCD that attaches to the drawing tube of a microscope) This gives the best image quality of the material (no CCD to reduce resolution) and still lets you click on things you see.
- Perform calculations on what you see in the microscope. This can be as simple as area, volume, or as complex as Sholl analysis of 'trees' of neuron processes.
- Estimate the number of cells in an entire brain using 'Unbiased Stereology.' You can examine just 200 or so different carefully selected sampling sites, and count 2-3 cells at each site to estimate (+- %8) the number of cells in an entire brain.
- Do a 3D navigable reconstruction (using OpenGL) of the tracing... putting a skin over contours that were drawn around specific regions and drawing neurons as trees of cylinders, walk through and examine any part of the space.
The entire set-up is a bit expensive, but it is very ergonomic to use... and enables some large scale studies which would not have been possible using manual methods.A couple of our customers go all-out and project the microscope image onto a lightweight LCD screen, that you use a simple stylus to draw on.... (A Wacom tablet) You would not beleive how easy it can be... sit back, put your feet up, put the wacom tablet in your lap, and start doodling (carefully tracing) over the material you see... As you draw, and place markers, the motorized stage moves, and you navigate around the material on the slide...
Check out MicroBrightField Inc.
I was hired to do the 3D solids modeling using OpenGL... which has been a really fun job.
-Jim (jim@oublic.org)
If Matel can squash CPHack... Can Microsoft approach Linus with lots of cash & lawyers, and acquire the copyright?
Och! Probably not... but it is a mind-blowing day for the FSF supporters.
My real thought is that Matel should have simply thrown in the towel on CyberPatrol, and gone after the authors of CPHack for damages. The authors really did something wrong, and financially damaging, and irresponsable. The responsible thing would have been to tell Matel that they found a problem, and ask if Matel is interested in how they did it, so it could be fixed _before_ they released it.
Causing harm to another entity is seldom a good idea, even if the other entity did a bad job of protecting themselves. You can be arrested for stealing even if the person stolen from left their window open.
-Jim
My favorite was the Oldsmobile commercial that was a complete spoof of the gap commercials. Trendy lip synching of Gary Numan's 'Cars'... only to have to run to avoid getting run over...
Doesn't get much better.
In the Burlington Area of Vermont... Some companies will offer thirty-five thousand to someone with a few years experience...fifty-five thousand US is a good job with about five years experience. The local medical database company IDX has several top-notch programmers at over eighty thousand...
Sometimes it just takes a little patience...
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi
As for Netscape disappearing when Java starts,
I just found the solution for this one a couple
of days ago... Going to netscape and searching
on Java and Crash... it tells me:
There is a problem in one of the installation rpms that is causing many systems to not have a complete fontpath for X to use.
to add the required font:
chkfontpath --add
Now Java is working beautifully...
I personally wish that Linux had a mostly-unhackable license manager available. This would let my software development company consider releasing a Linux-based version of our software.
Let me know if I have simply overlooked something that is already available...
Once companies have great copy protection for expensive Apps, many commercial developers will hop on the train.
I personally use KDE, and like it... but I can't
wait for a next-generation Knowledge-based UI!
Let's make a huge leap over the Desktop paradigm and take the world by storm!
I do agree that in most cases the transition to the Dvorak keyboard is difficult, and not worth the effort... especially once you have all those editor shortcuts burned in your brain... BUT
The Dvorak keyboard is much better. It has all the vowels under the left hand home keys, and all the most used consonants (DHTNS) under the right
home keys. The idea is that you spend about twice the amount of time on the home keys. By _design_ it rocks.
I used to work at a "fufillment house" where people answer phones and enter data all day... we had a study "the bible" of the fufillment business, and it had a section which showed the scientific tests that showed %15 - %20 increase in productivity for people who type all day.
I made the switch in college, and saw my typing rate go from about 40wpm QWERTY to 65wpm Dvorak.
The second necessary skill after learning Dvorak is to go back to QWERTY when you have to. Once you can go back and forth... life is __good__