To be honest, I've used the Sarge (current Stable) net install image exactly twice. The first was mostly out of curiosity and then I bumped the install to Sid and built up the partition as I wanted to try Xorg. The second was just a week ago when I built up a partition on a laptop that I wanted to use as a network monitor. It was perfect as I wanted to control the packages I installed.
The graphical installer would probably be fine as it should give the administrator confidence that Xorg will be correctly configured. The current Debconf system works, but it wasn't until Xorg was running after issuing startx that I was sure.
Otherwise, the last time I saw the installer was three or four years ago. The last two laptop upgrades I used rsync to transfer everything over, tweaked the X config file, ran alsaconfig and away I went.
Sadly, despite your letter writing, you still fired up IE and gave them business. Unless there is ZERO suitable competition to purchase from, then a better approach would be to have written and let them know that their named competition did receive your business due to their unrestrictive Web site.
Pushing for Free Software and open formats/protocols is not easy and it does require some sacrifice of convenience. Some people only understand the bottom line.
I belong to a web board that has a number of European members. Sometimes the topic of web browsers comes up and a couple of them have stated time and again they are sticking with IE. Exactly why, I am not sure, but it's interesting to speculate on the reasons, for me at least.
Is there a cultural attitude at work here? Are Europeans more easy going and North Americans more willing to try new things? Perhaps since we Americans tend to cheer for the "underdog" we are more apt to give an up and comer a try. Maybe because Bill Gates isn't generally revered, we on this side of the pond have an easier time giving his competition a go.
Maybe NA IP addresses are more apt to be attacked thus IE is a more evident security hole here than in Europe. Maybe it's just a lucky coincidence.
Based on conversations I've had with some that work in our corporate headquarters, the Software Business Alliance (SBA) apparently has them convinced that FF, OOo, and friends are "licensed for personal use only" and these people believe the company will be billed a significant sum for such "improperly licensed software".
Perhaps the SBA is carrying on its excellent work in your company as well.
Compared to our currently very poor ability to save electronic documents for more than a few years, a human life expectancy is an incredible leap forward. When we accomplish that, then we can work on "forever".
Sorry, but I won't be encouraging MS to do anything except dry up and blow away. They lost me as a customer years ago and quite frankly they have no one but themselves to blame for doing so. MS has lived by vendor lock-in so they may certainly die by vendor lock-in since the market is finally starting to show signs of moving away from them.
To beg and grovel at the feet of the Convicted Monopolist is not becoming of this community.
I think that if one has a Jeffersonian view of individual liberty, then F/OS Software is a natural choice. Politically, I bend toward a strict Constructionist and have championed Free Software for nearly a decade.
I don't think the use of F/OS Software is a liberal or conservative issue. Rather, it has to do with being educated on the tools available and the ramifications of their long-term use.
Perhaps eight years is ancient in the Internet age, but I have data that goes back longer than that I still occasionally dredge up. Thankfully, it's not locked into a proprietary format that I can't read. Do notice that Web browsers render an open language and are backward compatible and oftentimes, I have personal Web pages that are older than eight years. Although the mark-up has been updated, the content is remarkably unchanged. If the same lock-in had been applied to the Web as to office software, do you think the WWW would be one tenth as useful as it is now?
This is exactly the attitude IT needs to move away from. An understanding needs to occur that since computers are now permanent office tools, the data that is created and stored by them must be accessable years, if not decades into the future without worry of its accessability. People are generally sick and tired of the forced upgrade treadmill.
ODF has apparently been designed with long range accessability in mind. I believe that the new metric for data accessability should be one average human lifespan--any electronic data created at one's birth should be accessable during that person's entire predicted lifespan. This obviously precludes vendor lockin of file formats for the purposes of revenue enhancement.
There is no technical reason that MS could not incorporate seamless document importing capabilities from older versions of Office. It chose not to. Why?
Apparently, MS has begun searching for and applying pressure to the correct pressure points. Ordinarily, I wouldn't suspect lawmakers examining a major move like ODF, but in this case, I'm afraid it's not out of valid concern for the consituents, but because of heavy duty palm greasing by One Convicted Monopolist (TM).
C'mon MA lawmakers, fess up. Whose interests are you really looking out for, besides your own?
goveg.com? That's an unbiased source. What exactly are you goig to do with the millions of acres of grassland, that for various reasons cannot produce anything else, that cattle, sheep, goats, bison, etc. very efficiently covert into a form of protien we humans can consume?
Obviously, you're in no way involved in production agriculture, while I am. Perhaps if you left the concrete jungle for a while and spent some time on a real working farm you might understand the truth of the matter. Those of us involved in agriculture have a vested interest in the health and welfare of the animals, but you would rather promote your fantasy than get out and verify for yourself the truth of the matter.
Even in "factory farming" (as you put it, since I don't know what that means), the animals are left to be themselves rather than forced to be some imitation of a human child. Trust me, there is far more animal abuse by people who keep animals as pets than on the average farm. I don't keep a dog where I live because I have more respect for the animals than to coup them up in a kennel for my own ego.
I need to quit feeding the troll as I need to get going so we can wean some calves today.
Dairy cows, with Holsteins being amongst the common, produce far more milk than their calves can consume on a daily basis. So, it is not improper to make use of their milk. The animals are being fed while milked. Once they are milked they are released back into the lot where they have plenty of room to move around plus access to more feed.
As if it isn't obvious enough, there is no "torture" going on here. I'm sure the system is designed to avoid any undo stress on the animal. Milk production falls in direct proportion to any stress or mistreatment the cow may encounter. Thus, it is in the herdsman's best interest to avoid stressing the animals. It might surprise you to learn that dairy cows are among the most coddled of food production animals.
If you would bother to learn the facts, you would see that this system will indeed improve the cow's comfort. Some cows need to be milked in a shorter interval than others and this system will assist the dairyman in getting them milked on time. This leads to healthier more comfortable animals which is a far cry from the "torture" you wrongly imagine. That Linux and other Free Software is useful for this technology is cause for celebration, not derision.
Slight correction. Air pressure is not involved but rather vacuum. Okay, negative air pressure compared to normal atmospheric pressure.
As for milking frequency, a increase in production has been noted by milking 3 times per day. Enough so that a lot of dairies consider it worth the extra labor expense. We never went beyond twice a day, but my uncle and cousins milked 3X until they got out of it.
The instant analysis of the milk would prove invaluable for herd health. I was never that good at identifying problems as I was more interested in getting the milking shift over with. I guess that's partly why we're not milking out at the farm any more--too much work and not enough interest by me or my siblings to carry on. Oh well, I'm much more happy with our cow-calf beef operation.
Doesn't matter. The appendeges are in different places.
Beyond the bull getting a nice nut wash, I don't foresee too much of any interest occuring assuming the bull ever gets into the stall.
Besides, had you read TFA, you'd know that the animal is identified before being allowed into the stall--it's not a free for all. I guess that having grown up on a dairy farm I can understand how the system operates.
On second thought, the likelyhood that a bull will even be in the herd where this technology is employed is just about nil. Dairy cows are carefully matched to various genetics these days in an effort to improve the herd over time so artificial insemination is the order of the day. The bulls are too valuable as well to allow them with a herd where there is a risk of injury. Plus AI allows many more cows to be impregnated than via natural means.
So when everyone sees the digital nirvana that you have (The question they're asking is: "Why would I need a perfect TV picture in a new format at 4-10x the price, I honestly don't know -- doesn't my TV work and do its job just fine right now?"), the broadcasters will be right there doing it.
The FCC push is the only reason the industry is moving toward digital. Otherwise, it wouldn't be cost-effective in even the broadest sense of the term.
I have a perfectly usable Zenith 25" color TV I bought in 1993. "Too old", you say? Nonsense! Connected to my DirecTV receiver that is circa '96 I have a wonderful picture. I've wandered through the displays in the electronics stores and have not seen one of the "new" digital sets that I would trade my present setup for. Since I only watch DirecTV not having a 16:9 capable set doesn't bother me.
I think there will be a lot of upset folks when their favorite local station's analog transmitter goes dark. I think it would be hilarious if within a month after the shutdown date the FCC is forced by Congress (itself under intense public pressure) to allow broadcasters to turn the analogs back on.
I'm probably a heretic in here for saying this, but HDTV is really a government boondoggle of a solution looking for a non-existant problem. Despite all the advertising over the past five years or so for HD sets, the public response has been tepid at best. As long as my set does the job I'm not going to toss it.
One of the original homes for geeks is the National Weather Service. There's gagetry galore and tons of science. I'm glad the folks at the NWS are taking advantage of newer web technologies.
In fact, the NWS is one of the few government functions I feel is worthy of my tax dollars. This function is too much of a public good to be left in the hands of for profit companies.
If it wasn't for EOL and end of support I wonder if anyone would switch at all...
The company I work at still has a sizable installed base of NT 4.0 and probably won't be completely rid of it until sometime in '06. XP is being rolled out with new hardware, of course. Other than the lack of USB support I don't see a technical reason to change, but we must feed the beast.
I've heard from some of the LAN support people that the transition has some rather bumpy spots.
I use Debian with IceWM and after installing a package through apt or aptitude, if it's a GUI and sometimes character based, it will show immediately in the system menu. That's the Programs selection in the IceWM menu. No restarting IceWM required. Debian does the same thing for KDE. This has been the case for at least the past few years so I would say that, at least in Debian's case, it's pogressed well beyond MS Windows circa '93.
So, maybe you're just using an immature distribution or your facts aren't quite what you thought they were.
I built a Sid partition on this laptop to try out Xorg. Quite well done! Easiest X install this side of KNOPPIX. Also the Sarge installer was top notch as well. The only problem I've seen is that the kde package depends on an older library provided by MESA and that conflicts with a newer one installed with xorg.
So, to install kde I must uninstall xorg, or thereabouts. At least that's the impression I'm getting from Aptitude. Ah well, I'll give it some time to sort out.
I doubt that cable or wired DSL will ever go away entirely. An aggressive local WISP will provide service beyond the areas cable won't go and wired DSL can't reach. We are fortunate to have one such WISP in this area and even though I am in range of wired DSL and cable, I signed up on the WISP last week. One thing I like is that the WISP is local so my money stays in the community not out of state to some conglomerate. Another thing is that this company is now providing wireless DSL to several rural communities that otherwise would only have dial-up. Yes, I'm confident that they'll stay around as they are an independent Telco.
Incidentally, I ordered my landline out today. So long SBC, I'm glad to be rid of ya!
The company I work for has started using the Orthogon Gemini radios in the last year and are testing their new Spectra radios that are touted to run something like 300 Mbps. The Gemini radios do point-to-point only in the 5.8 GHz band and act as an Ethernet bridge.
Nice to see someone else familiar with these devices.
Slashdot Mirror
To be honest, I've used the Sarge (current Stable) net install image exactly twice. The first was mostly out of curiosity and then I bumped the install to Sid and built up the partition as I wanted to try Xorg. The second was just a week ago when I built up a partition on a laptop that I wanted to use as a network monitor. It was perfect as I wanted to control the packages I installed.
The graphical installer would probably be fine as it should give the administrator confidence that Xorg will be correctly configured. The current Debconf system works, but it wasn't until Xorg was running after issuing startx that I was sure.
Otherwise, the last time I saw the installer was three or four years ago. The last two laptop upgrades I used rsync to transfer everything over, tweaked the X config file, ran alsaconfig and away I went.
Sadly, despite your letter writing, you still fired up IE and gave them business. Unless there is ZERO suitable competition to purchase from, then a better approach would be to have written and let them know that their named competition did receive your business due to their unrestrictive Web site.
Pushing for Free Software and open formats/protocols is not easy and it does require some sacrifice of convenience. Some people only understand the bottom line.
Yeah, I guess so.
Hey! I'm allowed one gross error on Slashdot in every eight years, right?
This is anecdotable "evidence" at its worst:
I belong to a web board that has a number of European members. Sometimes the topic of web browsers comes up and a couple of them have stated time and again they are sticking with IE. Exactly why, I am not sure, but it's interesting to speculate on the reasons, for me at least.
Is there a cultural attitude at work here? Are Europeans more easy going and North Americans more willing to try new things? Perhaps since we Americans tend to cheer for the "underdog" we are more apt to give an up and comer a try. Maybe because Bill Gates isn't generally revered, we on this side of the pond have an easier time giving his competition a go.
Maybe NA IP addresses are more apt to be attacked thus IE is a more evident security hole here than in Europe. Maybe it's just a lucky coincidence.
Based on conversations I've had with some that work in our corporate headquarters, the Software Business Alliance (SBA) apparently has them convinced that FF, OOo, and friends are "licensed for personal use only" and these people believe the company will be billed a significant sum for such "improperly licensed software".
Perhaps the SBA is carrying on its excellent work in your company as well.
Okay, so I left out the word minimum. ;^)
Compared to our currently very poor ability to save electronic documents for more than a few years, a human life expectancy is an incredible leap forward. When we accomplish that, then we can work on "forever".
Sorry, but I won't be encouraging MS to do anything except dry up and blow away. They lost me as a customer years ago and quite frankly they have no one but themselves to blame for doing so. MS has lived by vendor lock-in so they may certainly die by vendor lock-in since the market is finally starting to show signs of moving away from them.
To beg and grovel at the feet of the Convicted Monopolist is not becoming of this community.
I think that if one has a Jeffersonian view of individual liberty, then F/OS Software is a natural choice. Politically, I bend toward a strict Constructionist and have championed Free Software for nearly a decade.
I don't think the use of F/OS Software is a liberal or conservative issue. Rather, it has to do with being educated on the tools available and the ramifications of their long-term use.
Perhaps eight years is ancient in the Internet age, but I have data that goes back longer than that I still occasionally dredge up. Thankfully, it's not locked into a proprietary format that I can't read. Do notice that Web browsers render an open language and are backward compatible and oftentimes, I have personal Web pages that are older than eight years. Although the mark-up has been updated, the content is remarkably unchanged. If the same lock-in had been applied to the Web as to office software, do you think the WWW would be one tenth as useful as it is now?
This is exactly the attitude IT needs to move away from. An understanding needs to occur that since computers are now permanent office tools, the data that is created and stored by them must be accessable years, if not decades into the future without worry of its accessability. People are generally sick and tired of the forced upgrade treadmill.
ODF has apparently been designed with long range accessability in mind. I believe that the new metric for data accessability should be one average human lifespan--any electronic data created at one's birth should be accessable during that person's entire predicted lifespan. This obviously precludes vendor lockin of file formats for the purposes of revenue enhancement.
There is no technical reason that MS could not incorporate seamless document importing capabilities from older versions of Office. It chose not to. Why?
Apparently, MS has begun searching for and applying pressure to the correct pressure points. Ordinarily, I wouldn't suspect lawmakers examining a major move like ODF, but in this case, I'm afraid it's not out of valid concern for the consituents, but because of heavy duty palm greasing by One Convicted Monopolist (TM).
C'mon MA lawmakers, fess up. Whose interests are you really looking out for, besides your own?
goveg.com? That's an unbiased source. What exactly are you goig to do with the millions of acres of grassland, that for various reasons cannot produce anything else, that cattle, sheep, goats, bison, etc. very efficiently covert into a form of protien we humans can consume?
Obviously, you're in no way involved in production agriculture, while I am. Perhaps if you left the concrete jungle for a while and spent some time on a real working farm you might understand the truth of the matter. Those of us involved in agriculture have a vested interest in the health and welfare of the animals, but you would rather promote your fantasy than get out and verify for yourself the truth of the matter.
Even in "factory farming" (as you put it, since I don't know what that means), the animals are left to be themselves rather than forced to be some imitation of a human child. Trust me, there is far more animal abuse by people who keep animals as pets than on the average farm. I don't keep a dog where I live because I have more respect for the animals than to coup them up in a kennel for my own ego.
I need to quit feeding the troll as I need to get going so we can wean some calves today.
I pitched my mod points by replying in this thread. Someone mod parent Funny!
Really, I shouldn't feed the troll, but...sigh...
What, exactly, is barbaric here?
Dairy cows, with Holsteins being amongst the common, produce far more milk than their calves can consume on a daily basis. So, it is not improper to make use of their milk. The animals are being fed while milked. Once they are milked they are released back into the lot where they have plenty of room to move around plus access to more feed.
As if it isn't obvious enough, there is no "torture" going on here. I'm sure the system is designed to avoid any undo stress on the animal. Milk production falls in direct proportion to any stress or mistreatment the cow may encounter. Thus, it is in the herdsman's best interest to avoid stressing the animals. It might surprise you to learn that dairy cows are among the most coddled of food production animals.
If you would bother to learn the facts, you would see that this system will indeed improve the cow's comfort. Some cows need to be milked in a shorter interval than others and this system will assist the dairyman in getting them milked on time. This leads to healthier more comfortable animals which is a far cry from the "torture" you wrongly imagine. That Linux and other Free Software is useful for this technology is cause for celebration, not derision.
Slight correction. Air pressure is not involved but rather vacuum. Okay, negative air pressure compared to normal atmospheric pressure.
As for milking frequency, a increase in production has been noted by milking 3 times per day. Enough so that a lot of dairies consider it worth the extra labor expense. We never went beyond twice a day, but my uncle and cousins milked 3X until they got out of it.
The instant analysis of the milk would prove invaluable for herd health. I was never that good at identifying problems as I was more interested in getting the milking shift over with. I guess that's partly why we're not milking out at the farm any more--too much work and not enough interest by me or my siblings to carry on. Oh well, I'm much more happy with our cow-calf beef operation.
Doesn't matter. The appendeges are in different places.
Beyond the bull getting a nice nut wash, I don't foresee too much of any interest occuring assuming the bull ever gets into the stall.
Besides, had you read TFA, you'd know that the animal is identified before being allowed into the stall--it's not a free for all. I guess that having grown up on a dairy farm I can understand how the system operates.
On second thought, the likelyhood that a bull will even be in the herd where this technology is employed is just about nil. Dairy cows are carefully matched to various genetics these days in an effort to improve the herd over time so artificial insemination is the order of the day. The bulls are too valuable as well to allow them with a herd where there is a risk of injury. Plus AI allows many more cows to be impregnated than via natural means.
I have a perfectly usable Zenith 25" color TV I bought in 1993. "Too old", you say? Nonsense! Connected to my DirecTV receiver that is circa '96 I have a wonderful picture. I've wandered through the displays in the electronics stores and have not seen one of the "new" digital sets that I would trade my present setup for. Since I only watch DirecTV not having a 16:9 capable set doesn't bother me.
I think there will be a lot of upset folks when their favorite local station's analog transmitter goes dark. I think it would be hilarious if within a month after the shutdown date the FCC is forced by Congress (itself under intense public pressure) to allow broadcasters to turn the analogs back on.
I'm probably a heretic in here for saying this, but HDTV is really a government boondoggle of a solution looking for a non-existant problem. Despite all the advertising over the past five years or so for HD sets, the public response has been tepid at best. As long as my set does the job I'm not going to toss it.
Ummmm, how then do you explain Rush Limbaugh being such a fanatical Mac user?
One of the original homes for geeks is the National Weather Service. There's gagetry galore and tons of science. I'm glad the folks at the NWS are taking advantage of newer web technologies.
In fact, the NWS is one of the few government functions I feel is worthy of my tax dollars. This function is too much of a public good to be left in the hands of for profit companies.
Yeah, kind of like a signature virus...
The company I work at still has a sizable installed base of NT 4.0 and probably won't be completely rid of it until sometime in '06. XP is being rolled out with new hardware, of course. Other than the lack of USB support I don't see a technical reason to change, but we must feed the beast.
I've heard from some of the LAN support people that the transition has some rather bumpy spots.
You're new here, right?
I like your attitude. Keep it up.
Okay, I'll feed the troll.
I use Debian with IceWM and after installing a package through apt or aptitude, if it's a GUI and sometimes character based, it will show immediately in the system menu. That's the Programs selection in the IceWM menu. No restarting IceWM required. Debian does the same thing for KDE. This has been the case for at least the past few years so I would say that, at least in Debian's case, it's pogressed well beyond MS Windows circa '93.
So, maybe you're just using an immature distribution or your facts aren't quite what you thought they were.
I built a Sid partition on this laptop to try out Xorg. Quite well done! Easiest X install this side of KNOPPIX. Also the Sarge installer was top notch as well. The only problem I've seen is that the kde package depends on an older library provided by MESA and that conflicts with a newer one installed with xorg.
So, to install kde I must uninstall xorg, or thereabouts. At least that's the impression I'm getting from Aptitude. Ah well, I'll give it some time to sort out.
I doubt that cable or wired DSL will ever go away entirely. An aggressive local WISP will provide service beyond the areas cable won't go and wired DSL can't reach. We are fortunate to have one such WISP in this area and even though I am in range of wired DSL and cable, I signed up on the WISP last week. One thing I like is that the WISP is local so my money stays in the community not out of state to some conglomerate. Another thing is that this company is now providing wireless DSL to several rural communities that otherwise would only have dial-up. Yes, I'm confident that they'll stay around as they are an independent Telco.
Incidentally, I ordered my landline out today. So long SBC, I'm glad to be rid of ya!
The company I work for has started using the Orthogon Gemini radios in the last year and are testing their new Spectra radios that are touted to run something like 300 Mbps. The Gemini radios do point-to-point only in the 5.8 GHz band and act as an Ethernet bridge.
Nice to see someone else familiar with these devices.