You would not need to poll any possible server that might send something to you. A small "token" message is sent... maybe somewhat like SMTP, but it would have a maximum size of maybe 200 bytes. Then the recipient knows exactly where to pull the whole message from -- IF it passes the blacklist check.
The sender stores the mail until retrieved, and there should be a good realtime blacklist system. When a spammer attempts to send a payload, it is blacklisted before the vast majority of the victims get it.
Seems like a sound concept to me, the only major disadvantage being the change involved. But communication is changing anyway. A lot of people already realize that SMTP isn't totally reliable. A lot of people are using IM or MySpace instead of regular email.
I live abroad too, and have used both Skype and Ekiga on Linux.
Actually Ekiga with the diamondcard.us service is cheaper -- 1.7 cents a minute to the States vs. 2.3 cents with Skype. So you certainly have a choice.
Having said that, I still usually use Skype. I've had some sporadic trouble with Ekiga, and my GF uses Skype, and isn't really computer literate so I don't want to talk her through setting up a SIP client...
> In my world view a ten year old box should still be able to run a modern word processor and web browser at a minimum. And that's what I've got at home... an old dual PII with 768 Megs of RAM
Uuuuuuh, that's not a 10 year old box. I remember 9 and a half years ago when I got a Cyrix Pentium-class CPU with 64MB RAM and thought it was killer!
P2s may have been out 10 years ago, but quite expensive, and I didn't know anyone who had more RAM than I did at the time.
I think nearly everyone here is missing the point.
At my organization's recent annual meeting, we had several sites on two different continents. PowerPoint (I know, yuck) presentations were shared between locations with GoToMeeting. The presenter moved to the next slide, and all the remote sites updated automatically, in almost real time.
Can *that* be done with Linux?
(The Java JXTA mentioned above is the only response so far that may be an answer.)
>> Are you not doing something similar, with the idea that God does not exist?
> No. You are attempting a God of the Gaps argument, wherein a (purported) inability of science to explain one thing or another is taken as evidence of your default position (God must exist to explain it).
The question was whether you and the other poster who bothered to register start with the assumption that God doesn't exist, then interpret the evidence accordingly.
If I'm not mistaken, you are so sure that God must not exist that you a-priori assume that anything I say must necessarily either be wrong or irrelevant. Right? If that's the case, how would you ever find out about God if he *did* exist?
And I think you're wrong to simply throw out all these design cases as irrelevant.
>> Factors must include being in a galaxy and location in the galaxy where there is not too much radiation, but sufficient (and not too much) metals.
> That includes probably half the stars in the galaxy.
That's flat-out wrong. The star must be the right size -- stars much bigger or smaller than our Sun could not be suitable. Too small and the planet would have to be too close to the star, making it tidally locked. Too big and the star burns too quickly and becomes a red giant faster, not allowing sufficient time. Its location must be well outside of the galactic nucleus -- far too much radiation, supernovae, etc. Evern spiral arms are probably problematic for that reason. The sun is at the perfect spot between spiral arms.
Another issue is that a planet sustaining advanced life must be guarded by Jupiter-like planets to prevent a direct hit by too many asteroids & such. Yeah, we've been hit, but some were pretty catastrophic (at the time; actually they greatly benefited life). If there were too many or one that was a little too hard, bye-bye life. If Jupiter were much bigger or closer than it is, it would affect the orbit of Earth, making it too irregular.
Most of the factors I mentioned were explained in detail in the book Rare Earth, by an atheist and an agnostic. This is no creationist-speak.:)
I'm not sure where you got the idea that the universe is infinite.
> I also note that even if we were the only life in the universe, that still doesn't constitute the least shred of evidence of the existence of any kind of supernatural being.
Design characteristics do, though. Even if you can show how these things could conceivably happen without a God, that doesn't mean it makes any sense to think that they *would*.
> You are starting with the idea of god in your head, and already assuming this you are pulling "evidence" to prove it.
Are you not doing something similar, with the idea that God does not exist?
Do the origins of life possible solutions you refer to take into account the homochiriality problem, or the oxygen-ultraviolet paradox (the fact that oxygen disrupts processes that must have happened, but that oxygen is necessary to stop deadly ultraviolet radiation)?
>> There are numerous factors that need to be met before a planet can be suitable for advanced life. When their likelihoods are multiplied together, it can be shown that the chance of any given planet being able to support advanced life is much, much, much smaller than the inverse of the maximum total number of planets in the universe.
> We simply do not know enough about life and its possible forms to conclude this.
I think we know more than you think. If you want a book reference, Rare Earth by Ward and Brownlee (certainly no theists) is a good one. We know that life must be carbon based, and must require liquid water. No other elements/molocules have the necessary properties.
Assume the total number of planets is 10^30 (and that's probably generous by a few orders of magnitude). If you can come up with a list of factors that a planet must have to sustain advanced life, and multiply their probabilities, and come up with, say, 50 orders of magnitude, then the chance of any planet in the universe being able to harbor advanced life is 10^-20.
I have seen such an attempt at a list that puts the factors out to about the 300th magnitude. Rather than linking to it, I'll encourage the reader to do some thought exercizes himself.
Factors must include being in a galaxy and location in the galaxy where there is not too much radiation, but sufficient (and not too much) metals. The planet must be made of the right materials and be at a position around its star that can support liquid water for billions of years (and because of increasing luminosity, other factors need to come into play to keep the balance). The planet's axis tilt and rotation rate are important. Plate tectonics are likely essential, as is the level of volcanism. Even our Moon, formed in a highly unique way, is probably important. The ratio of land to water probably makes a big difference in climate patterns; a difference could well be disastrous to advanced life.
This is just a start. My humble opinion is that if we get a group of scientists together to analyze the chance of these things as rationally as possible, we could get to 50 orders of magnitude fairly easily.
> Basically almost all of your statements come down to "we don't know how to do this / I don't believe it could have happened by itself so there must be a god who did it." That's not evidence.
I think that rejecting it all based on that is also a bit simplistic. We have numerous factors in our universe and our earth and life that *do* actively suggest design. It makes sense to look at all the evidence with an open mind and go wherever the evidence leads.
I agree that we don't know everything, and would also argue that we need to keep looking for solutions for how things could happen naturally. But the sum total of the evidence that already exists is plenty clear in my opinion.
> Now instead of postulating that a universe popped out of nothing you have to postulate that a being capable of creating that universe popped out of nothing.
You're restricting God to time here. If God created the universe via the Big Bang, and if time itself began then, as science seems to suggest, then God exists completely outside of time and is capable of creating space and time dimensions at will. With this type of God, there simply is no point in the past when He could have "popped into existence." He simply is!
> That being said, there is no reason to believe in the existence of dieties of any sort.
I'd take exception to that. Here are a few things to keep in mind...
* The Big Bang -- including the fact that time began at the same instant as all the matter and energy in the universe, and the fact that the laws of physics and the physical constants were set at that time (or about 10^-40 seconds after) to values within extremely narrow ranges that would permit the possibility of any life at any time or place in the universe
* Biochemical design -- there are literal motors inside cells! They have all the parts of man-made motors. Yet humans have not even come close to replicating these naturally created motors in efficiency, and cannot even come close to producing this kind of motor at a micrometer level. Paley's watchmaker argument, anyone?
* Encoded information -- cells contain coded information using "letters" and "words" telling it how to do things. Only certain combinations of "letters" form valid "words". Furthermore, this information is "translated" to another form of code as it is carried from the nucleus to the part of the cell that carries out the work. Information always comes from intelligence, and this translation effect really adds to the argument.
* Naturalistic impossibility of the origins of life. Life appeared too shortly after the Late Heavy Bombardment, too quickly, and in a too complex state for naturalism. The earth went from an abiotic state to fully functioning life in only 10 to 50 million years, in the hostile environments of early earth, in the complete absence of prebiotic soup.
* There are numerous factors that need to be met before a planet can be suitable for advanced life. When their likelihoods are multiplied together, it can be shown that the chance of any given planet being able to support advanced life is much, much, much smaller than the inverse of the maximum total number of planets in the universe.
* On earth, the climate could have easily gone to runaway freezing or runaway greenhouse. It was only prevented by a careful control of how much water vapor and other gasses were in the atmosphere and which life forms existed on earth while the sun's luminosity continued to increase.
Sure, we could debate some of these. But the sum total of all this evidence, and MUCH more, leaves me no doubt that a personal God who wants us to be here exists.
I didn't have that extension installed, and I got bit by the bug more than "a few times" -- if I had it open long enough, it would *always* happen. As long as I can remember, definitely all 1.0.x and 1.5.x versions, maybe pre-1.0 also.
Are you using the Linux version? I also run FF on my Mac PowerBook and have never noticed the bug, and my session was approaching a month. But I don't use it nearly as much as I use my desktop Linux machine (it's suspended most of the time).
Am hoping my luck continues with 2.0. I'm definitely thrilled with it so far!
I have had two long-standing really annoying bugs in FF 1.x that I think were solved in 2.0b1.
On Linux, when you have the browser open and use it extensively for several days on end without closing it, eventually it wacks out: When you click a link it will open it in a new window, but not a "normal" browser window -- the tab where it should be is still in the main window, and the new window doesn't have any FF controls, but is otherwise functional. The tab in the main window doesn't respond, but you can still access other tabs. When you close the new window, Firefox immediately crashes.
I've been running 2.0b1 for a couple weeks, and have not had that bug. It has *never* crashed. However, my electricity did go out a couple times, so I'm not 100% sure I had the browser open long enough to trigger the bug, but I *think* I did.
Also on one forum I use, there's a little animated happy-jumpy smiley. After a couple days of being open, FF1 stopped animating it. (I know, boo hoo.) So far, FF2 has not done that.
So, I'm pretty happy about FF2, even in the beta1 stage. I can honestly say that for me it has been significantly *more* stable than prior "stable" versions.
Powernotebooks actually sells decent laptops without 'Doze. I haven't ordered from them yet, but if I were looking for a non-Mac laptop, I certainly would. Their recent rating on resellerratings.com is a perfect 10. Good selections, and you can probably find something with GMA950 graphics and Intel wireless so you may not need closed source drivers for anything.
However, I'm getting a Mac. I've concluded that OS X is simply a "better UNIX than Linux" on laptops. Suspend/resume and Wifi just work, and work well. No tinkering and hoping it will work.
I'm still very much a Linux guy and won't change my desktop. And I hope that the next laptop I buy after this Mac will be Linux based, and run everythig just as well as the Mac. But for now I'm convinced that MacBook[Pro] is the way to go for *NIX geeks.
Yeah, some might consider this a possible life site. But how can we know the planets are indeed distributed as they are in our Solar System, with a rocky planet with the right elements located in zone around the star that can support liquid water for billions of years?
Also, three Neptune sized planets probably would not protect such a terrestrial world against frequent life-exterminating collisions as our Jupiter and Saturn (and to a lesser extent Uranus and Neptune) have done. Neptune is no where near Jupiter's size, and Jupiter has almost certainly saved us from death.
> I think they can and should take the desktop linux market seriously and release high-quality, closed drivers, even if it affects the OSS purity of the linux operating system.
Absolutely not!!! We need Free drivers for numerous reasons. LWN writes a good summary of the reasons here and here.
S3 and others, please understand this! We might put up with closed source drivers under some circumstances, but you cannot really call this "Linux support" and we will be underwhelmed by your offerings.
But whichever one of you makes a halfway decent (not necessarily top of the line) card with open specs and Free drivers, even if it costs more than the competition, SHOW ME WHERE TO SEND MY CREDIT CARD INFO!!!!!
Certainly, general IT folks will have competition overseas; I don't think there's any way around that. However, there should always be decent jobs in the States.
However, I think it would be good to find another field that interests you and study that as well. Then you may be able to integrate your knowledge of computers with that other discipline.
Me, although I have a CS degree, I'm thinking of studying economics for that very reason. I'm very interested in financial markets and and product pricing and other issues that could go with economics.
What do YOU enjoy -- Geology? Forrestry? Management? Cartography? Whatever it is, it probably integrates with computer science somehow, and if you are good at both, you may have a good shot at getting a decent career that will excite you.
I assume this is good news for GCJ and/or Classpath, given Red Hat's committment to free software. Surely they will now devote many resources to making JBoss work reliably on Free Java, then we all win!
Simple: God (as commonly understood) is a transcendant being who actively created the universe, and is fully capable of doing anything with it.
The King of the Potato People, if he existed.... well, unless you argue that he was Creator (and therefore, by definition, be God), what power would he have to heal?
For the record, I *have* seen a friend rapidly heal from attention deficit disorder not long after prayer and laying on of hands. For what it's worth... yeah I know, just anecdotal...
> I just don't see how people can get away from e-Directory and ZENworks
Our Novell version is like 5.1 I think. Seriously ancient stuff, and none of us that remain here know much about it. So we're not exactly addicted to Novell's newer whiz-bang features.
Haven't used Amanda yet but can say from much experience that ArcserveIT BrightStore has been an absolute nightmare for us. Spent hours on the phone with them, only to come up with most of the answers myself. Once was on the phone for about 3 hours due to a problem with their licensing server, and never did get it totally resolved. I will never forgive them for that.
Am trying to convince my boss to give Amanda a try, but I don't think that will be possible until we ditch Novell for Samba (hopefully in a couple months).
> Open office stuff may work fine for casual emailers and memo writers
You're right with most of your post, but OOo is good for a whole lot more than that and you know it. Even if "bean counters" need Office (and indeed they might at this point), most business desktop users should be able to use OOo. Sharing docs with the bean counters wouldn't be an issue.
> So when will adapter add-ins be available for Open Office from PeopleSoft, Hyperion, JDEdwards, Oracle financial apps,.... ?
If they see a demand for an OOo version, they'll write it.
One could also consider starting an Open Source project to do something similar, but I'm not sure there would be a lot of motivation. It's not exactly an itch to scratch for the average geek. And that would likely be one of the last things an enterprise would trust to open source (rightly or wrongly, probably the latter). It could be a good learning project for someone who is studying both finance and programming, though.
Hrmph. 5 1/2 hours ago, it was telling me 1 day, 8 hours left. Now it's saying 1 day, 23 hours! My cable modem speed is 47KBytes down/16K up (I'm in Ecuador, and sucky as it looks, this is a huge improvement; until a month ago it was 15K up and down!). On this transfer I'm averaging about 18 down, 13 up. I've *never* seen it over 30K down.
Sure hope it speeds up, or I won't even have it for work on Wednesday, which is what I was hoping for...
Looks like I should have used wget, but I'll stick with BT this time for experiment sake.
I started getting the i386 DVD around 16:00GMT with my 47KBytes/sec cable modem (in Ecuador). For the first few minutes I was only getting about 2KB/sec down, then it went up to about 22KB. When I checked on it around 18:30GMT, it was still wavering between 19 and 27KB. At that rate, it will take more than another day.:( Hopefully as more seeds come online, it will go up to the 47KB max, so I'll have it by tomorrow afternoon.:)
First time I've used BT for anything so big, so we'll see how it goes.
That's what the file/etc/portage/package.keywords is for. Here's an excerpt from mine:
www-client/mozilla-firefox ~x86 dev-libs/nss ~x86
I wanted the ~x86 version of firefox because it was taking too #@%! long for 1.5 to be stable. So I put it in there with the ~x86 keyword. I also had to add nss ~x86 because firefox testing depends on nss testing. If you need to add another ~x86 package for a dependency, it will tell you about it when you try to emerge something.
You should never, never, NEVER use --upgradeonly. That can very well break your system at some point, because if there is an important downgrade, it will prevent portage from downgrading you.
But once you get the stuff you want to run ~x86 in package.keywords, you can do 'emerge -uDa world' and it will do the Right Thing, without you having to worry about it!
Slashdot Mirror
Are you sure you understand IM2000?
... maybe somewhat like SMTP, but it would have a maximum size of maybe 200 bytes. Then the recipient knows exactly where to pull the whole message from -- IF it passes the blacklist check.
You would not need to poll any possible server that might send something to you. A small "token" message is sent
The sender stores the mail until retrieved, and there should be a good realtime blacklist system. When a spammer attempts to send a payload, it is blacklisted before the vast majority of the victims get it.
Seems like a sound concept to me, the only major disadvantage being the change involved. But communication is changing anyway. A lot of people already realize that SMTP isn't totally reliable. A lot of people are using IM or MySpace instead of regular email.
Actually, the ipv4 to v6 change would be a freeking *EXCELLENT* time to dump SMTP for something better, like Bernstein's Internet Mail 2000.
The spam problem is probably solveable, but not with SMTP.
I live abroad too, and have used both Skype and Ekiga on Linux.
...
Actually Ekiga with the diamondcard.us service is cheaper -- 1.7 cents a minute to the States vs. 2.3 cents with Skype. So you certainly have a choice.
Having said that, I still usually use Skype. I've had some sporadic trouble with Ekiga, and my GF uses Skype, and isn't really computer literate so I don't want to talk her through setting up a SIP client
> In my world view a ten year old box should still be able to run a modern word processor and web browser at a minimum. And that's what I've got at home... an old dual PII with 768 Megs of RAM
Uuuuuuh, that's not a 10 year old box. I remember 9 and a half years ago when I got a Cyrix Pentium-class CPU with 64MB RAM and thought it was killer!
P2s may have been out 10 years ago, but quite expensive, and I didn't know anyone who had more RAM than I did at the time.
I think nearly everyone here is missing the point.
At my organization's recent annual meeting, we had several sites on two different continents. PowerPoint (I know, yuck) presentations were shared between locations with GoToMeeting. The presenter moved to the next slide, and all the remote sites updated automatically, in almost real time.
Can *that* be done with Linux?
(The Java JXTA mentioned above is the only response so far that may be an answer.)
AC (why don't you create an account?),
:)
I think you may be missing the point.
>> Are you not doing something similar, with the idea that God does not exist?
> No. You are attempting a God of the Gaps argument, wherein a (purported) inability of science to explain one thing or another is taken as evidence of your default position (God must exist to explain it).
The question was whether you and the other poster who bothered to register start with the assumption that God doesn't exist, then interpret the evidence accordingly.
If I'm not mistaken, you are so sure that God must not exist that you a-priori assume that anything I say must necessarily either be wrong or irrelevant. Right? If that's the case, how would you ever find out about God if he *did* exist?
And I think you're wrong to simply throw out all these design cases as irrelevant.
>> Factors must include being in a galaxy and location in the galaxy where there is not too much radiation, but sufficient (and not too much) metals.
> That includes probably half the stars in the galaxy.
That's flat-out wrong. The star must be the right size -- stars much bigger or smaller than our Sun could not be suitable. Too small and the planet would have to be too close to the star, making it tidally locked. Too big and the star burns too quickly and becomes a red giant faster, not allowing sufficient time. Its location must be well outside of the galactic nucleus -- far too much radiation, supernovae, etc. Evern spiral arms are probably problematic for that reason. The sun is at the perfect spot between spiral arms.
Another issue is that a planet sustaining advanced life must be guarded by Jupiter-like planets to prevent a direct hit by too many asteroids & such. Yeah, we've been hit, but some were pretty catastrophic (at the time; actually they greatly benefited life). If there were too many or one that was a little too hard, bye-bye life. If Jupiter were much bigger or closer than it is, it would affect the orbit of Earth, making it too irregular.
Most of the factors I mentioned were explained in detail in the book Rare Earth, by an atheist and an agnostic. This is no creationist-speak.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that the universe is infinite.
> I also note that even if we were the only life in the universe, that still doesn't constitute the least shred of evidence of the existence of any kind of supernatural being.
Design characteristics do, though. Even if you can show how these things could conceivably happen without a God, that doesn't mean it makes any sense to think that they *would*.
> You are starting with the idea of god in your head, and already assuming this you are pulling "evidence" to prove it.
Are you not doing something similar, with the idea that God does not exist?
Do the origins of life possible solutions you refer to take into account the homochiriality problem, or the oxygen-ultraviolet paradox (the fact that oxygen disrupts processes that must have happened, but that oxygen is necessary to stop deadly ultraviolet radiation)?
>> There are numerous factors that need to be met before a planet can be suitable for advanced life. When their likelihoods are multiplied together, it can be shown that the chance of any given planet being able to support advanced life is much, much, much smaller than the inverse of the maximum total number of planets in the universe.
> We simply do not know enough about life and its possible forms to conclude this.
I think we know more than you think. If you want a book reference, Rare Earth by Ward and Brownlee (certainly no theists) is a good one. We know that life must be carbon based, and must require liquid water. No other elements/molocules have the necessary properties.
Assume the total number of planets is 10^30 (and that's probably generous by a few orders of magnitude). If you can come up with a list of factors that a planet must have to sustain advanced life, and multiply their probabilities, and come up with, say, 50 orders of magnitude, then the chance of any planet in the universe being able to harbor advanced life is 10^-20.
I have seen such an attempt at a list that puts the factors out to about the 300th magnitude. Rather than linking to it, I'll encourage the reader to do some thought exercizes himself.
Factors must include being in a galaxy and location in the galaxy where there is not too much radiation, but sufficient (and not too much) metals. The planet must be made of the right materials and be at a position around its star that can support liquid water for billions of years (and because of increasing luminosity, other factors need to come into play to keep the balance). The planet's axis tilt and rotation rate are important. Plate tectonics are likely essential, as is the level of volcanism. Even our Moon, formed in a highly unique way, is probably important. The ratio of land to water probably makes a big difference in climate patterns; a difference could well be disastrous to advanced life.
This is just a start. My humble opinion is that if we get a group of scientists together to analyze the chance of these things as rationally as possible, we could get to 50 orders of magnitude fairly easily.
> Basically almost all of your statements come down to "we don't know how to do this / I don't believe it could have happened by itself so there must be a god who did it." That's not evidence.
I think that rejecting it all based on that is also a bit simplistic. We have numerous factors in our universe and our earth and life that *do* actively suggest design. It makes sense to look at all the evidence with an open mind and go wherever the evidence leads.
I agree that we don't know everything, and would also argue that we need to keep looking for solutions for how things could happen naturally. But the sum total of the evidence that already exists is plenty clear in my opinion.
> Now instead of postulating that a universe popped out of nothing you have to postulate that a being capable of creating that universe popped out of nothing.
You're restricting God to time here. If God created the universe via the Big Bang, and if time itself began then, as science seems to suggest, then God exists completely outside of time and is capable of creating space and time dimensions at will. With this type of God, there simply is no point in the past when He could have "popped into existence." He simply is!
> That being said, there is no reason to believe in the existence of dieties of any sort.
...
I'd take exception to that. Here are a few things to keep in mind
* The Big Bang -- including the fact that time began at the same instant as all the matter and energy in the universe, and the fact that the laws of physics and the physical constants were set at that time (or about 10^-40 seconds after) to values within extremely narrow ranges that would permit the possibility of any life at any time or place in the universe
* Biochemical design -- there are literal motors inside cells! They have all the parts of man-made motors. Yet humans have not even come close to replicating these naturally created motors in efficiency, and cannot even come close to producing this kind of motor at a micrometer level. Paley's watchmaker argument, anyone?
* Encoded information -- cells contain coded information using "letters" and "words" telling it how to do things. Only certain combinations of "letters" form valid "words". Furthermore, this information is "translated" to another form of code as it is carried from the nucleus to the part of the cell that carries out the work. Information always comes from intelligence, and this translation effect really adds to the argument.
* Naturalistic impossibility of the origins of life. Life appeared too shortly after the Late Heavy Bombardment, too quickly, and in a too complex state for naturalism. The earth went from an abiotic state to fully functioning life in only 10 to 50 million years, in the hostile environments of early earth, in the complete absence of prebiotic soup.
* There are numerous factors that need to be met before a planet can be suitable for advanced life. When their likelihoods are multiplied together, it can be shown that the chance of any given planet being able to support advanced life is much, much, much smaller than the inverse of the maximum total number of planets in the universe.
* On earth, the climate could have easily gone to runaway freezing or runaway greenhouse. It was only prevented by a careful control of how much water vapor and other gasses were in the atmosphere and which life forms existed on earth while the sun's luminosity continued to increase.
Sure, we could debate some of these. But the sum total of all this evidence, and MUCH more, leaves me no doubt that a personal God who wants us to be here exists.
I didn't have that extension installed, and I got bit by the bug more than "a few times" -- if I had it open long enough, it would *always* happen. As long as I can remember, definitely all 1.0.x and 1.5.x versions, maybe pre-1.0 also.
Are you using the Linux version? I also run FF on my Mac PowerBook and have never noticed the bug, and my session was approaching a month. But I don't use it nearly as much as I use my desktop Linux machine (it's suspended most of the time).
Am hoping my luck continues with 2.0. I'm definitely thrilled with it so far!
You're kidding.
I have had two long-standing really annoying bugs in FF 1.x that I think were solved in 2.0b1.
On Linux, when you have the browser open and use it extensively for several days on end without closing it, eventually it wacks out: When you click a link it will open it in a new window, but not a "normal" browser window -- the tab where it should be is still in the main window, and the new window doesn't have any FF controls, but is otherwise functional. The tab in the main window doesn't respond, but you can still access other tabs. When you close the new window, Firefox immediately crashes.
I've been running 2.0b1 for a couple weeks, and have not had that bug. It has *never* crashed. However, my electricity did go out a couple times, so I'm not 100% sure I had the browser open long enough to trigger the bug, but I *think* I did.
Also on one forum I use, there's a little animated happy-jumpy smiley. After a couple days of being open, FF1 stopped animating it. (I know, boo hoo.) So far, FF2 has not done that.
So, I'm pretty happy about FF2, even in the beta1 stage. I can honestly say that for me it has been significantly *more* stable than prior "stable" versions.
CRAP -- this would mean no more Skype for Linux and OS X??? As someone living overseas, I depend on that to make calls back home.
And no, I will NOT install Windows.
Powernotebooks actually sells decent laptops without 'Doze. I haven't ordered from them yet, but if I were looking for a non-Mac laptop, I certainly would. Their recent rating on resellerratings.com is a perfect 10. Good selections, and you can probably find something with GMA950 graphics and Intel wireless so you may not need closed source drivers for anything.
However, I'm getting a Mac. I've concluded that OS X is simply a "better UNIX than Linux" on laptops. Suspend/resume and Wifi just work, and work well. No tinkering and hoping it will work.
I'm still very much a Linux guy and won't change my desktop. And I hope that the next laptop I buy after this Mac will be Linux based, and run everythig just as well as the Mac. But for now I'm convinced that MacBook[Pro] is the way to go for *NIX geeks.
Yeah, some might consider this a possible life site. But how can we know the planets are indeed distributed as they are in our Solar System, with a rocky planet with the right elements located in zone around the star that can support liquid water for billions of years?
Also, three Neptune sized planets probably would not protect such a terrestrial world against frequent life-exterminating collisions as our Jupiter and Saturn (and to a lesser extent Uranus and Neptune) have done. Neptune is no where near Jupiter's size, and Jupiter has almost certainly saved us from death.
> I think they can and should take the desktop linux market seriously and release high-quality, closed drivers, even if it affects the OSS purity of the linux operating system.
Absolutely not!!! We need Free drivers for numerous reasons. LWN writes a good summary of the reasons here and here.
S3 and others, please understand this! We might put up with closed source drivers under some circumstances, but you cannot really call this "Linux support" and we will be underwhelmed by your offerings.
But whichever one of you makes a halfway decent (not necessarily top of the line) card with open specs and Free drivers, even if it costs more than the competition, SHOW ME WHERE TO SEND MY CREDIT CARD INFO!!!!!
Certainly, general IT folks will have competition overseas; I don't think there's any way around that. However, there should always be decent jobs in the States.
However, I think it would be good to find another field that interests you and study that as well. Then you may be able to integrate your knowledge of computers with that other discipline.
Me, although I have a CS degree, I'm thinking of studying economics for that very reason. I'm very interested in financial markets and and product pricing and other issues that could go with economics.
What do YOU enjoy -- Geology? Forrestry? Management? Cartography? Whatever it is, it probably integrates with computer science somehow, and if you are good at both, you may have a good shot at getting a decent career that will excite you.
I assume this is good news for GCJ and/or Classpath, given Red Hat's committment to free software. Surely they will now devote many resources to making JBoss work reliably on Free Java, then we all win!
Hi, want to drop me a quick email (bottom of my page)? Wouldn't mind talking a bit more, but way OT here!
Simple: God (as commonly understood) is a transcendant being who actively created the universe, and is fully capable of doing anything with it.
.... well, unless you argue that he was Creator (and therefore, by definition, be God), what power would he have to heal?
... yeah I know, just anecdotal ...
The King of the Potato People, if he existed
For the record, I *have* seen a friend rapidly heal from attention deficit disorder not long after prayer and laying on of hands. For what it's worth
Might have to take a look at that, thanks.
> I just don't see how people can get away from e-Directory and ZENworks
Our Novell version is like 5.1 I think. Seriously ancient stuff, and none of us that remain here know much about it. So we're not exactly addicted to Novell's newer whiz-bang features.
Haven't used Amanda yet but can say from much experience that ArcserveIT BrightStore has been an absolute nightmare for us. Spent hours on the phone with them, only to come up with most of the answers myself. Once was on the phone for about 3 hours due to a problem with their licensing server, and never did get it totally resolved. I will never forgive them for that.
Am trying to convince my boss to give Amanda a try, but I don't think that will be possible until we ditch Novell for Samba (hopefully in a couple months).
> Open office stuff may work fine for casual emailers and memo writers
.... ?
You're right with most of your post, but OOo is good for a whole lot more than that and you know it. Even if "bean counters" need Office (and indeed they might at this point), most business desktop users should be able to use OOo. Sharing docs with the bean counters wouldn't be an issue.
> So when will adapter add-ins be available for Open Office from PeopleSoft, Hyperion, JDEdwards, Oracle financial apps,
If they see a demand for an OOo version, they'll write it.
One could also consider starting an Open Source project to do something similar, but I'm not sure there would be a lot of motivation. It's not exactly an itch to scratch for the average geek. And that would likely be one of the last things an enterprise would trust to open source (rightly or wrongly, probably the latter). It could be a good learning project for someone who is studying both finance and programming, though.
Hrmph. 5 1/2 hours ago, it was telling me 1 day, 8 hours left. Now it's saying 1 day, 23 hours! My cable modem speed is 47KBytes down/16K up (I'm in Ecuador, and sucky as it looks, this is a huge improvement; until a month ago it was 15K up and down!). On this transfer I'm averaging about 18 down, 13 up. I've *never* seen it over 30K down.
...
Sure hope it speeds up, or I won't even have it for work on Wednesday, which is what I was hoping for
Looks like I should have used wget, but I'll stick with BT this time for experiment sake.
I started getting the i386 DVD around 16:00GMT with my 47KBytes/sec cable modem (in Ecuador). For the first few minutes I was only getting about 2KB/sec down, then it went up to about 22KB. When I checked on it around 18:30GMT, it was still wavering between 19 and 27KB. At that rate, it will take more than another day. :( Hopefully as more seeds come online, it will go up to the 47KB max, so I'll have it by tomorrow afternoon. :)
First time I've used BT for anything so big, so we'll see how it goes.
That's what the file /etc/portage/package.keywords is for. Here's an excerpt from mine:
www-client/mozilla-firefox ~x86
dev-libs/nss ~x86
I wanted the ~x86 version of firefox because it was taking too #@%! long for 1.5 to be stable. So I put it in there with the ~x86 keyword. I also had to add nss ~x86 because firefox testing depends on nss testing. If you need to add another ~x86 package for a dependency, it will tell you about it when you try to emerge something.
You should never, never, NEVER use --upgradeonly. That can very well break your system at some point, because if there is an important downgrade, it will prevent portage from downgrading you.
But once you get the stuff you want to run ~x86 in package.keywords, you can do 'emerge -uDa world' and it will do the Right Thing, without you having to worry about it!
Gentoo *is* quite cool in this way!