Did anyone else catch the part of the interview where this was mentioned:
...Vancouver, where MGM is filming a movie about an open-source hero battling a Pacific Northwest software monopoly
???
I can just see it now;
It's a deadly game of cat-and-mouse between a suave European programmer/secret agent and a dweeby billionare who's half-man, half-machine and bent on world domination at any cost. Linus Torvalds is... The Torvinator!!!
I think they should cast Tom Hanks as Linus and Quentin Tarantino as Bill Gates. But that's just me.
Nothing against Lojban, but I'm side with the school of thought that says computers should be changed to better interact with humans, and not vice versa. Human language was established thousands of years ago, and electronic computing is circa 50 years old; it'll cause significantly less social upheaval to improve computer language recognition than it will to train the world to speak Lojban.
Plus, I kinda *like* the fact that language is not logical. A reflection of the beings who speak it, I guess...
I recently purchased a Nikon Coolpix 800, and it is an amazing little device. It's specs are: 2.11 Megapixel, 2X optical zoom (software zoom is completely useless, IMO, you can do the same thing in Gimp/Photoshop, and it'll look less pixely,) 1.8 inch LCD, and a threaded lens adapter so you can use telephoto/fisheye lens or filters with it. And it's from Nikon, a camera company with a good reputation.
The image quality is awesome, its about as good as you're going to get for any camera under $1500, I would say. The color tone is comparable to the Kodak cameras, which are the best out there.
The LCD screen is incredibly sharp and bright, even in daylight. It is the best LCD screen I have seen on a digital camera.
It has an automatic mode for point-and-shoot types, and a manual mode with several bells and whistles for people a little more interested in photography. With an up to 8 sec. exposue time, this camera is great for low light conditions (assuming you have a tripod.) It has a really cool feature that will take a bunch off pictures in quick succession and pick the least blurry one to be saved to disk. I use this more than I thought I would.
The camera itself is pretty small and light. It fits confortably in my hands. It looks pretty cool, for what that's worth.
Here's its only drawbacks: The camera only comes with a 8Mb memory card: plan on buying a bigger one if you are going to use this camera much. No USB support (serial is too slow if you're transfering say 32Mb worth of images to your HD.) Some people complain that the flash is too weak. I think the flash is fine for a small camera, but there's no adapter for a larger external flash so be forewarned.
I picked mine up at under $500. It's cheap compared to other digital cameras with the same features. Even the guys at the local camera store said it was a good model! Plus it works great with gphoto (better, in fact than it worked with the windows software that shipped with it!)
If these WinDSL "modems" catch on, it'll be a very bad development for use UNIX/Mac/whatever users. I assume you'd still be able to go out and buy your own hardware-based DSL modem, but I think some providers have policies against this practice. Plus it'll be an extra cost, 'cause currently the provider will usually loan you a modem for free... Any word on whether cable modems are moving in this direction, too?
Ray, we (in windows-land) *already have* platform "balkanization"; do you know how many different versions of Windows I run into at work???
Windows 95 (all the various versions...) Windows 95b (all the various versions...) Windows 98 (all the various versions...) Windows 98 SE (all the various versions...) Windows NT 3.51 Windows NT 4.0 (and all the differnet SPs add fuel to the fire...) Windows 2000
....not to mention the occassional Win3.1 box I come across. So DON'T be BITCHING about "balkanization", cause it'll make you sound like you don't know whatchu talkin about, and I don't wanna have to use my clustick on ya.
1) Not new users trying to learn to edit config files by hand. With the current system, they have to learn the format and nuances of each config file. In an XML-based system, not only would they need to learn the DTD for each config file, but they'd need to learn XML before they could do anything at all. Don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather edit a plain old text file than muck around with XML.
2) Not new users interested in using a system administration tool. We already have several that work just fine w/o XML.
3) Not exisiting users. They've already learned how to do it, why should they have to re-learn a new method that is of rather dubious benefit???
I think XML is great and all for document storage, but let's be cautious about shoehorning it into other areas.
I picked up a UMAX Astra 610S SCSI scanner last summer, it works just fine with Linux and sane.
Speed is what you'd expect from SCSI (nice and fast, esp. compared to parallel port models.) The scan quality is as good as other (windows-based) scanners I've seen.
Only bad thing I have to say about it is that dark photographs come out slightly murky; if you're scanning in bright stuff there's no problem. I don't know if this is a by-product of the scanner itself, the sane drivers, or my inexperience.;)
Don't bother with the cheapo SCSI card that comes with it: I couldn't even get it to work from windows 95. I bought an adaptec; Red Hat automagically detected and configured it.
Do you really think that Red Hat threw together this deal with Real in *one day*? Unlikely, this was probably in the works for some while.
Also, I don't know where you get off saying that Red Hat is a Microsoft "clone"; does Microsoft:
Release all software they write under the GPL
Make their software available for free download
Offer IPO stocks to dedicated Linux hackers
Etc...
I suggest its time to lose your "i'm so alt, i'm so hip" anti-Red Hat attitude; they have done more good for Linux than any other commericial entity. (And no, I'm not a shareholder or anything like that.)
P.S: That's why Rasterman left.
I couldn't be happier that Rasterman left. Now I won't have to put up with his WM as the default on my RH box. All he ever did when he was at Red Hat was add themes to GTK+; not really an essential component for World Domination.
Try cutying and pasting the URL into your browser; for some reason the link stopped working overnight...:( I tested it before I posted, honest! Stupid tripod.
Not to be negative, but those guys need to take some of those radio-braodcasting community college courses. These shows are like those really crappy "morning zoo" radio shows, only less polished...
We're not even at the peak of the solar flare season yet, if I've understood things correctly.
Normally astronomers won't know when the peak of the solar max actually occurs until after its over, when the sunspot numbers peak and begin to decline again.
I don't know where you're getting your information, but it's almost impossible to predict how severe the effects of this are going to be. Much of what you mention *could* happen, but it's definately not a certainty...
Your long, rambling post has me, frankly, baffled and confused. You seem to be worried that there could be negative consequenses to this project. Yet the only possible downside to this project that you mention would be if they ask money for it and/or the project fragments the (already crowded) Linux desktop software "market". Well, since Eazel's software will be basically extra components for GNOME, an exisitng desktop environment (or "object model" as you called them,) and they will be releasing under the GPL and making their money elsewhere, I think we can safely disregard most of your post.
Also, there's a particular train of thought which really irritated me. Allow me to refute it:
, but what happens when JoeRandomNewbie loads up his pretty desktop and it proceeds to segfault? What if XDM drops him to a standard login prompt like when Windows can't load all of its dll's?
How does a having a CLI available *hinder* an new user? Don't disable it, just hide it from them.
If you've got missing/corrupted system files under windows, and the GUI won't start up, you are just as screwed as if you were running Linux. And at least with Linux, you still have the possibility of getting something productive done... in text mode (lynx, pine, etc.) Hell, with a mac, if the GUI won't start up you are dead in the water. Your assertion that a CLI hinders new/untrained users is invalid: in all cases (windows, linux, mac) the non-techie user will simply end up calling tech support.
The CLI doesn't hurt anything if you don't use it, and it's indispensible to have as a backup.
I thought one of the selling points of Linuxconf over other admin utils was that linuxconf DOES allow you to also edit the config files by hand!? I jump from linuxconf to text files and back again all the time, with no negative side effects.
For all those who thought Corel might not be fully committed to the Linux platform, this should serve as proof otherwise. It would seem that Corel is betting the farm on this one, and it'll be interesting to see how it works out after the dust has settled.
I for one am rooting for them. Hopefully they will keep raising the bar in the ease-of-use dept., pushing Red Hat and the other distros to continue to improve their product, too.
Speaking of Red Hat, I wonder if this was a "pre-emptive" buyout. If I were Corel, I would have harbored concerns that Red Hat, flush with cash, might have picked up Inprise/Borland themselves sooner or later. Not sure how that would have hurt Corel, though; just a thought.
In case you were unaware, there are several great graphical UI builders avail. on Linux. My fav is Glade, a powerful and easy to use UI builder for GTK+ and GNOME apps. I can crank out interfaces like mad with it (Example: my pet project).
I am told that KDE's KDevelop is very sophisticated and user friendly as well. There are commericial offerings, too...
And while I agree that these IDEs are essential in luring new productivity apps to the Linux platform, I don't really see them attracting new game titles. Almost all games (strategy, role-playing, FPS) these days seem to have a "home-grown" UI and don't rely on a standard widget set. Productivity app writers will benefit from these IDEs, but I don't think game programmers will (very much.)
I don't like the way everyone is so convinced linux is secure. No OS I know of can account for a newbie being stupid (ie. blindly running files he/she just downloaded off the 'net) Well, your point seems to be that linux is not safe from virii. Now I haven't heard anyone say "Linux is immune from virii," but the fact remains that they are far less common than in Windows-land. And if/when they ever do become common, it will be easier to limit the amount of damage they can do, esp. compared to win9x systems. I don't think any informed readers will disagree with me here. Even though they may not be able to damage anything other then they users files the infected program will probably be able to read the users address database and send itself to say the first 50 names in the address book (ring any bells:-). I'm fairly sure I could write said virus myself but I don't want to go to prison! If the virus also "merged" itself with other executable files in the users home dir then that opens another way to get itself spread. To do that requires knowledge of the file format (like it says in the article) but that is known for Windoze aswell so that stumbling block is irrelevant. This is where education is important. Newbies (and others) need to be reminded to run the program under the strictest possible environment (something like user 'nobody' and disallow network access etc.) especially nowadays as GNU/Linux has attracted virus writers attention. Your comments about possible angles of attack for Linux virii are kinda misleading. The email virus you referred to only affected Outlook/Outlook Express users IIRC. AFAIK they are not available for Linux at this moment.;) And as far as infected executables go: I don't know many people who put executables in their home directory. Even if they do, the worst that could happen is a loss of their user account files. On Windows, the worst that could happen is a loss of the entire system. You tell me which you'd rather deal with!
Linuxconf has gotten a lot better over the past 6 months, and I find it adequate for 90% of my configuration needs. You can add users, edit mounted disks, modify the network setup, config Apache and Samba, and even edit the default init level (one of the problems mentioned in the post.) It seems to play fairly nice with existing text config files, and the web interface is a really neat idea. Now when it comes to configuring hardware, I think Red Hat's simply the best, with Kudzu and Xconfigurator. Kudzu runs at bootup and, if new hardware is detected, will install and auto-configure the needed drivers. Xconfigurator, the well-known X config tool, is adequate, but this is one area that could use a make-over. I anticipate better tools after the release of XFree86 4.0. I've never had a problem getting supported hardware to work with RH 6.1. Didn't even need to edit any text files!
Don't blame open source for browser stagnancy
on
Free Be
·
· Score: 1
If anyone, Microsoft, not open source software, is to blame for your "dearth of innovation" in browser technology (Opera and Mozilla might beg to differ here.
And Open Source didn't ruin profitablilty in the x86 OS market across the board, just for some players. Microsoft still seems to be chugging along. BeOS just never seemed to catch on with consumers, probably because its other alt-OS competitors under cut it on price. Welcome to the free market, baby.
I'm glad to hear that Slashdot is covering this story. Michigan public radio had a good piece on it about a week ago. It pointed out that the library has already taken faithful measures, such as using filter software, montoring all public net terminals and keep them out of the children's section. Makes you wonder where some of these people are getting their information. On another note, I'm rather dismayed to read slashdot ulfailrly pinning the american republican party as responsible for this. This petition is isn't the child of the michigan republican party, its a grassroot campaign by local conservative christians. Don't blame republicans for the efforts of a small misguided group. It's not like the democratic party is a bastion of net-savvyness, either *cough* Al Gore, Clipper chip, inventor of the Internet *cough*.
Slashdot Mirror
...Vancouver, where MGM is filming a movie about an open-source hero battling a Pacific Northwest software monopoly
???
I can just see it now;
It's a deadly game of cat-and-mouse between a suave European programmer/secret agent and a dweeby billionare who's half-man, half-machine and bent on world domination at any cost. Linus Torvalds is... The Torvinator!!!
I think they should cast Tom Hanks as Linus and Quentin Tarantino as Bill Gates. But that's just me.
Nothing against Lojban, but I'm side with the school of thought that says computers should be changed to better interact with humans, and not vice versa. Human language was established thousands of years ago, and electronic computing is circa 50 years old; it'll cause significantly less social upheaval to improve computer language recognition than it will to train the world to speak Lojban.
Plus, I kinda *like* the fact that language is not logical. A reflection of the beings who speak it, I guess...
Click below for proof:
"asteroid"
Satellite of Love (of MST3K fame)
I recently purchased a Nikon Coolpix 800, and it is an amazing little device. It's specs are: 2.11 Megapixel, 2X optical zoom (software zoom is completely useless, IMO, you can do the same thing in Gimp/Photoshop, and it'll look less pixely,) 1.8 inch LCD, and a threaded lens adapter so you can use telephoto/fisheye lens or filters with it. And it's from Nikon, a camera company with a good reputation.
The image quality is awesome, its about as good as you're going to get for any camera under $1500, I would say. The color tone is comparable to the Kodak cameras, which are the best out there.
The LCD screen is incredibly sharp and bright, even in daylight. It is the best LCD screen I have seen on a digital camera.
It has an automatic mode for point-and-shoot types, and a manual mode with several bells and whistles for people a little more interested in photography. With an up to 8 sec. exposue time, this camera is great for low light conditions (assuming you have a tripod.) It has a really cool feature that will take a bunch off pictures in quick succession and pick the least blurry one to be saved to disk. I use this more than I thought I would.
The camera itself is pretty small and light. It fits confortably in my hands. It looks pretty cool, for what that's worth.
Here's its only drawbacks: The camera only comes with a 8Mb memory card: plan on buying a bigger one if you are going to use this camera much. No USB support (serial is too slow if you're transfering say 32Mb worth of images to your HD.) Some people complain that the flash is too weak. I think the flash is fine for a small camera, but there's no adapter for a larger external flash so be forewarned.
I picked mine up at under $500. It's cheap compared to other digital cameras with the same features. Even the guys at the local camera store said it was a good model! Plus it works great with gphoto (better, in fact than it worked with the windows software that shipped with it!)
If these WinDSL "modems" catch on, it'll be a very bad development for use UNIX/Mac/whatever users. I assume you'd still be able to go out and buy your own hardware-based DSL modem, but I think some providers have policies against this practice. Plus it'll be an extra cost, 'cause currently the provider will usually loan you a modem for free... Any word on whether cable modems are moving in this direction, too?
Ray, we (in windows-land) *already have* platform "balkanization"; do you know how many different versions of Windows I run into at work???
Windows 95 (all the various versions...)
Windows 95b (all the various versions...)
Windows 98 (all the various versions...)
Windows 98 SE (all the various versions...)
Windows NT 3.51
Windows NT 4.0 (and all the differnet SPs add fuel to the fire...)
Windows 2000
....not to mention the occassional Win3.1 box I come across. So DON'T be BITCHING about "balkanization", cause it'll make you sound like you don't know whatchu talkin about, and I don't wanna have to use my clustick on ya.
-Phil
Other Failed SuSE Mascot Names
*Dorko
*Nerdo
*David Hasslehoff (already taken)
*Phil, the Pants Lizard
*Monica
Who would this really help??
1) Not new users trying to learn to edit config files by hand. With the current system, they have to learn the format and nuances of each config file. In an XML-based system, not only would they need to learn the DTD for each config file, but they'd need to learn XML before they could do anything at all. Don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather edit a plain old text file than muck around with XML.
2) Not new users interested in using a system administration tool. We already have several that work just fine w/o XML.
3) Not exisiting users. They've already learned how to do it, why should they have to re-learn a new method that is of rather dubious benefit???
I think XML is great and all for document storage, but let's be cautious about shoehorning it into other areas.
Speed is what you'd expect from SCSI (nice and fast, esp. compared to parallel port models.) The scan quality is as good as other (windows-based) scanners I've seen.
Only bad thing I have to say about it is that dark photographs come out slightly murky; if you're scanning in bright stuff there's no problem. I don't know if this is a by-product of the scanner itself, the sane drivers, or my inexperience.
Don't bother with the cheapo SCSI card that comes with it: I couldn't even get it to work from windows 95. I bought an adaptec; Red Hat automagically detected and configured it.
Can't beat it on price; I got it for around $80.
Also, I don't know where you get off saying that Red Hat is a Microsoft "clone"; does Microsoft:
I suggest its time to lose your "i'm so alt, i'm so hip" anti-Red Hat attitude; they have done more good for Linux than any other commericial entity. (And no, I'm not a shareholder or anything like that.)
P.S: That's why Rasterman left.
I couldn't be happier that Rasterman left. Now I won't have to put up with his WM as the default on my RH box. All he ever did when he was at Red Hat was add themes to GTK+; not really an essential component for World Domination.
Try cutying and pasting the URL into your browser; for some reason the link stopped working overnight... :( I tested it before I posted, honest! Stupid tripod.
Your Milage May Vary.... be sure to grab a copy of gdk-pixbuf, too! Enjoy!
Not to be negative, but those guys need to take some of those radio-braodcasting community college courses. These shows are like those really crappy "morning zoo" radio shows, only less polished...
correctly.
Normally astronomers won't know when the peak of the solar max actually occurs until after its over, when the sunspot numbers peak and begin to decline again.
I don't know where you're getting your information, but it's almost impossible to predict how severe the effects of this are going to be. Much of what you mention *could* happen, but it's definately not a certainty...
Also, there's a particular train of thought which really irritated me. Allow me to refute it:
, but what happens when JoeRandomNewbie loads up his pretty desktop and it proceeds to segfault? What if XDM drops him to a standard login prompt like when Windows can't load all of its dll's?
How does a having a CLI available *hinder* an new user? Don't disable it, just hide it from them.
If you've got missing/corrupted system files under windows, and the GUI won't start up, you are just as screwed as if you were running Linux. And at least with Linux, you still have the possibility of getting something productive done... in text mode (lynx, pine, etc.) Hell, with a mac, if the GUI won't start up you are dead in the water. Your assertion that a CLI hinders new/untrained users is invalid: in all cases (windows, linux, mac) the non-techie user will simply end up calling tech support.
The CLI doesn't hurt anything if you don't use it, and it's indispensible to have as a backup.
I thought one of the selling points of Linuxconf over other admin utils was that linuxconf DOES allow you to also edit the config files by hand!? I jump from linuxconf to text files and back again all the time, with no negative side effects.
I for one am rooting for them. Hopefully they will keep raising the bar in the ease-of-use dept., pushing Red Hat and the other distros to continue to improve their product, too.
Speaking of Red Hat, I wonder if this was a "pre-emptive" buyout. If I were Corel, I would have harbored concerns that Red Hat, flush with cash, might have picked up Inprise/Borland themselves sooner or later. Not sure how that would have hurt Corel, though; just a thought.
I am told that KDE's KDevelop is very sophisticated and user friendly as well. There are commericial offerings, too...
And while I agree that these IDEs are essential in luring new productivity apps to the Linux platform, I don't really see them attracting new game titles. Almost all games (strategy, role-playing, FPS) these days seem to have a "home-grown" UI and don't rely on a standard widget set. Productivity app writers will benefit from these IDEs, but I don't think game programmers will (very much.)
I don't like the way everyone is so convinced linux is secure. No OS I know of can account for a newbie being stupid (ie. blindly running files he/she just downloaded off the 'net) ;) And as far as infected executables go: I don't know many people who put executables in their home directory. Even if they do, the worst that could happen is a loss of their user account files. On Windows, the worst that could happen is a loss of the entire system. You tell me which you'd rather deal with!
Well, your point seems to be that linux is not safe from virii. Now I haven't heard anyone say "Linux is immune from virii," but the fact remains that they are far less common than in Windows-land. And if/when they ever do become common, it will be easier to limit the amount of damage they can do, esp. compared to win9x systems. I don't think any informed readers will disagree with me here.
Even though they may not be able to damage anything other then they users files the infected program will probably be able to read the users address database and send itself to say the first 50 names in the address book (ring any bells:-). I'm fairly sure I could write said virus myself but I don't want to go to prison! If the virus also "merged" itself with other executable files in the users home dir then that opens another way to get itself spread. To do that requires knowledge of the file format (like it says in the article) but that is known for Windoze aswell so that stumbling block is irrelevant. This is where education is important. Newbies (and others) need to be reminded to run the program under the strictest possible environment (something like user 'nobody' and disallow network access etc.) especially nowadays as GNU/Linux has attracted virus writers attention.
Your comments about possible angles of attack for Linux virii are kinda misleading. The email virus you referred to only affected Outlook/Outlook Express users IIRC. AFAIK they are not available for Linux at this moment.
Linuxconf has gotten a lot better over the past 6 months, and I find it adequate for 90% of my configuration needs. You can add users, edit mounted disks, modify the network setup, config Apache and Samba, and even edit the default init level (one of the problems mentioned in the post.) It seems to play fairly nice with existing text config files, and the web interface is a really neat idea.
Now when it comes to configuring hardware, I think Red Hat's simply the best, with Kudzu and Xconfigurator. Kudzu runs at bootup and, if new hardware is detected, will install and auto-configure the needed drivers. Xconfigurator, the well-known X config tool, is adequate, but this is one area that could use a make-over. I anticipate better tools after the release of XFree86 4.0.
I've never had a problem getting supported hardware to work with RH 6.1. Didn't even need to edit any text files!
If anyone, Microsoft, not open source software, is to blame for your "dearth of innovation" in browser technology (Opera and Mozilla might beg to differ here.
And Open Source didn't ruin profitablilty in the x86 OS market across the board, just for some players. Microsoft still seems to be chugging along. BeOS just never seemed to catch on with consumers, probably because its other alt-OS competitors under cut it on price. Welcome to the free market, baby.
I'm glad to hear that Slashdot is covering this story. Michigan public radio had a good piece on it about a week ago. It pointed out that the library has already taken faithful measures, such as using filter software, montoring all public net terminals and keep them out of the children's section. Makes you wonder where some of these people are getting their information.
On another note, I'm rather dismayed to read slashdot ulfailrly pinning the american republican party as responsible for this. This petition is isn't the child of the michigan republican party, its a grassroot campaign by local conservative christians. Don't blame republicans for the efforts of a small misguided group. It's not like the democratic party is a bastion of net-savvyness, either *cough* Al Gore, Clipper chip, inventor of the Internet *cough*.
Look at what I get when I click the link to fill out the beta-tester application...
0 3&mode=thread
:P Color me unimpressed.
Error Occurred While Processing Request
Error Diagnostic Information
ODBC Error Code = 37000 (Syntax error or access violation)
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]User 3 not allowed in database 'betarep' - only the owner of this database
can access it.
SQL = "exec GetElements 1"
Data Source = "betarep"
Date/Time: 11/13/99 00:11:44
Browser: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (X11; I; Linux 2.2.12-20 i686)
Remote Address: 207.75.178.101
HTTP Referer: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/11/12/19352
Template: e:\dox\cfscripts\betarep\applicationform.cfm
Query String: bp_entity_id=2
...kind of disappointing from a company supposedly committed to Linux.
Wabi worked very well with the windows 3.1 apps I've used. Email me if you want to get a hold of a copy, it can be hard to find now...
for a pun about buying real-estate on "Uranus."
Any takers?