I don't know about overall, but I can say that I have bought more CD's in the recent past because I came across an MP3 from an artist I'd never heard of, or was given an MP3 by a friend that was by an artist I probably wouldn't have thought to check out otherwise.
Nobody wants to blow $18 on a CD that they think they might like. I sure as hell don't. And sure, the 10 second teasers that CDNow supplies (Sometimes) are okay, but not enough for me to make an educated decision on.
At the risk of repeating what's already been said, MP3's simply don't cut it all of the time. I have to have that physical media in my hand that I can carry around and have a case for.
Simplicity Limit user options, eliminate fat. Don't give users 10 ways to close a window, for example. I've always been annoyed by the fact that you can close a window that many ways. Another example: On a GNOME/Enlightenment desktop; there are too many ways to launch a GUI program.
I always feel ill when I hear the phrase "Limit user options", but then I have to remind myself we're not talking about long time Unix users, or people that are using Unix for its features and benefits. The target audience for the much ballyhood Linux Desktop is, for all intents and purposes, converts from MacOS and Windows. This is certainly an interesting challenge, and probably a good goal for the community. But I hope it doesn't become a primary goal. IMHO, there is more to life than catering to the end users. After all, it's been done, and done again. A more interesting challenge is interoperating with those systems. Samba and Wine for example. Projects that, rather than replace or extend user environments, work to make what environment you use less important.:)
And to quickly address the Gnome/Enlightenment dig.. Those two were never a good mix, and the story behind why RedHat brought them together is a long one that doesn't really belong here. The short story is making E the Gnome window manager was misguided, because a desktop environment needs a minimalistic window manager like KWin or Sawmill.
Uniformity Part of the reason why MS has dominated on the desktop, is how ubiquitous it's look and feel has been since windows 95. Linux needs to engender unity, in one way or another between competing desktops. Despite minor differences, opensource groups should work behind a common philosophy. Some groups just have to sacrifice for the common good.
I hardly think sacrifice is necessary. Both desktops have a lot of great ideas, and both desktops have their share of bad ideas. I don't think a convergance of desktops is necessary, simply the ability to use pieces of both transparently, or at least without much effort. Then let the user decide which is more intuitive to him or her.
Elegance This is alot less tangent. Why does a Mac desktop look that much more elegant than a Windows desktop? It has to do with aesthetics. I guess we need more artists involved on this one.
Interesting.. I certainly agree. Windows desktops are simply unsightly. Can't stand them. I actually get a headache after using Windows for too long (It's been suggested this is due to a poor refresh rate setting, but I'd rather believe it's Windows' fault:) ) Between Gnome and KDE, there is one difference that's becoming less and less distinct. Gnome simply strikes me as a more attractive environment. I can't explain why, it's just the way it seems to me. But that's what it's all about, what each individual thinks looks best.
It will be a dark day if Gnome or KDE ever comes out as the recognized leader. Both projects have put forth an enormous amount of effort into their desktops, applications, their component models, libraries, and so on. Declaring one the winner is simply a waste of effort.
The key is to introduce a compatibility between the two desktops that allows them to interoperate as close to seamlessly as possible. This means:
Document formats: KDE has an office suite, Gnome has an office suite. Am I the only person that realizes they have every reason to be compatible formats? The last thing I would ever want to see happen is one Linux user's choice of an office suite impact what another user's choice may be. Common documents (Text documents, Spreadsheets, maybe even presentations) that are at least transparently convertable back and forth eliminate one bad reason to choose a desktop.
Dekstop icons: This, I believe, has already been covered. The.desktop files that are used on by each desktop's file manager (And menu system, I believe..) should be identical. If they're not, you're asking application writers to maintain two seperate sets of desktop convinience files. This is just silly.
Drag & Drop: I've never been quite sure where I see this one fitting in. From my perspective, I don't really see the need to be able to DnD between two file managers, becaues I see little need for running two file managers simultaneously. I think it's sufficent that they're speaking the same language (Xdnd, or whatever is appropriate) for the sake of keeping coding apps simple. And, from the application coder's perspective, they can accept DnD's from either desktop using the same or similar API. Always a good thing.
Themes: Compatibility here isn't terribly important. Eye candy is eye candy, it doesn't need to be universally applicable.
Window manager behavior: Both desktops will have newly redesigned window managers in their 2.0 reves (KWin and Sawmill), and both should behave relatively similar. The Window Manager Specification is in the works for this exact reason, to get window managers all making the same assumptions (Or rather, not making different assumptions) about how X and X applications will behave. As soon as a window manager or an application guesses at how the other will behave, things will go wrong.
I'm sure I'm leaving things out. Does anybody else see a need here, or am I just spouting nonsense?:)
When people ask what an 'approved' free software license is, I usually send them to the Debian Free Software Guidelines, because they fit my idea of a reasonable set of rules for what a license should say, and not say.
Why shouldn't PC's exist in the kitchen? I know my mother for the past ten years wanted to be able to order her groceries online, and store her recipies on the computer. Today, she does both. But to be useful, she has to print out the recipies and take them downstairs, a process she's wished to streamline for quite awhile. Who knows, maybe next year I'll get her a laptop for her kitchen for Christmas.
Here's an excerpt from my idea of a nicely wired geek house: Disclaimer: None of the following has any basis in fact.
Picture, if you will, a kitchen equipped with a slim laptop on the house's wireless lan. You feel like a change from your regular diet of ramen and Mt. Dew, so you head for your local online grocer (HomeGrocer in my area) and order up the makings for some seriously good pasta. It arrives the next day, you open your recipie database on the laptop in the kitchen, and begin preparing the meal. While you're waiting for the water to come to a boil, you decide to check your e-mail. (Yes, this is an extremely geeky thing to do, but isn't that sorta the point of a geek house?) This is simple, of course, because you have a laptop sitting next to the fridge which can get out to the Internet through your home lan's gateway (Which happens to have a DSL connection).
Food preparations are complete, so you alert your geek roommates throughout the house with a quick execution of the ever-useful wall program. Consoles on every computer on the home lan announce "Pasta ready in the kitchen", and dinner is served.
Perhaps a more modern twist on the above: You have a web pad, running a spiffy Crusoe processor, sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Its Bluetooth network adapter lets the pad access the home lan's Apache server, which has a recipie program written in PHP that stores the recipies (And URL's for all the ingredients that link to the online grocer) in a SQL database. Slick.
I'll begin by saying I don't have an opinion on the validity of this rumor, or the likelyhood, or any of that.
What I'm somewhat annoyed with is the tendancy of big applications of this sort to not use decent toolkits. WordPerfect 7, 8, Corel Office 2000, StarOffice, they all use toolkits that contribute a *lot* to how slow and bloated they are. MS would be no different. Hell, they'd probably go to the trouble of writing their own toolkit. After all, that's what Corel is effectively doing with their Office suite. Rather than port Corel Office to Unix platforms/toolkits, they're porting it to their own branch of Wine. The result that I saw in the first beta was an extremely unattractive program. But of course, this was just the first beta.
I'm currently running 50 foot cat5 all over my house, which I had always planned on replacing with the proper in-wall solution; faceplates, a patch panel, etc.
However, since I would hire the labor done (I have no love for pulling cable into walls), I'm now wondering if it would be cheaper (Or even close enough in cost to justify saving the trouble and having the extra freedom) to simply go with a wireless solution.
So what's the deal?:) How much should I expect to pay per node, and would the setup require a central broadcast point, or can each node serve as a repeater?
linux has no such guidelines made by anyone Nor should it. Interface guidelines don't belong at the OS level, they belong at the desktop level. See below.
GTK and QT come almost close but in fact nowhere near to guidelines of this sort. Nor should they. Interface guidelines don't belong at the toolkit level, that would suggest that a particular toolkit has no application outside the scope of said guidelines, which is a silly restriction.
This is something the Linux community must adress eventually Again, this isn't an OS level thing. This is a desktop level thing, and it is being addressed. I don't know enough about KDE's efforts, but Gnome has established the Gnome User Interface Improvement Project to address desired improvements for the Gnome desktop.
except that in linux if you don't like those open dialog boxes you can change them; if you don't like part of the interface you can change it. Usually the people griping about the user interface are not interested in taking the time to change it themselves. That's why projects like the one mentioned above are important. People are given a central place to voice their desires for improvement, and thus contribute to the improvement of the desktop as a whole. This is the right way to do it.
Why should the latest, coolest thing and ease of use be mutually exclusive? All it takes is a good design plan to build something that is easy to use from the beginning.
If we want to take more of the Microsoft market share I'm not sure if this is really a priority.. I used to think that we as a community should be out to beat Microsoft like the media always says we are, but now that I look back over the last couple years.. I don't care what Microsoft does, or how big their market share is. The open source community has created something that has made a huge impact, and won't be silenced by an iron fisted corporation, no matter how large they may be.
I've still got X running at 640x480 User error. Fix your X configuration to support multiple resolutions, and press CtrlAlt+ or CtrlAlt- (Using the + and - on your keypad) Or if you demand a graphical one-click answer rather than a three-key binding, see apps such as the Gnome QuickRes Applet.
this video card and modem won't work Very few, if any, modern (I say modern as in 'made in the last 3 years') and common video cards break X.
The only modems that don't work in Linux are WinModems, which require a Windows driver to function as a modem (And actually, work is underway to fix that pathetic attempt at Windows-specific hardware)
sound is really complicated to set up I don't know about other distros, but RedHat enables pretty much every kernel sound module available in the default kernel. Any SoundBlaster-esque card should work out of the box, which covers pretty much everything packaged by a major vendor, unless it's a weird speakerphone/modem/soundcard monstrosity like I've seen in the HP Pavillions.
Sure, the situation isn't perfect. But think about what you're asking for. Much of the hardware support in Linux that we take for granted was made possible by hard efforts of volunteers who pounded away on devices to reverse-engineer their functionality. It's becoming easier now as companies are being more forthcoming about their hardware specs, but it's still work being done by volunteers. Don't gripe if they're not supporting everything fast enough for you.
I've used icewm off and on since the 0.8.x days, and have always had a fondness for it. Over the last four years, my wm has either been icewm, amiwm, or Enlightenment depending on my mood, and how stable E was at the time;)
Icewm has come a long way, and throughout the development cycle it's always been a fast, usable window manager. It's nicely configurable, and now that it has a couple configuration GUIs, it's that much easier. It's good to see the 1.0.0 mark, and I congradulate the people behind it for their years of effort.
Somebody mentioned there being too many 'almost done' window managers in the open source world, and to them I'd like to point out that this community's definition of 'beta version' is slightly different from that of commercial software:) Just because something gets a 1.0 version number doesn't mean it was never stable or suitable for end users before that point. (Case in point, Enlightenment)
Yes, there are a lot of window managers, and perhaps some of them didn't need to be made, but I don't see any harm in having that much more variety. It's not like your window manager choice is going to make your X apps unusable (And if it does, that window manager has Issues:) )
It almost seems like this whole LinuxOne thing embodies the atmosphere of hype and ridiculous Wall Street clamoring for anything related to Linux. Here we have a company that, as far as we can tell, has nothing whatsoever to offer, and seems to be IPO'ing for the sole benefit of adding flame to the fire.
I will probably be ill if this IPO takes off. At least VA actually has products, and RedHat makes a pretty good distro. But who has heard of anything from LinuxOne?
You know the really sad thing about that e-mail you recieved.. I'm not even slightly surprised.
I was musing that this sort of thing may actually start to happen a lot while I was reading over the vast threads of posts regarding the VA IPO frenzy. Specifically people were discussing motivation (Well, that was covered more in the ESR article comments), and how some people may begin to try contributing to attention-getting projects in the hopes of getting onto a contributor list. Now I'm curious to see if it really does happen. However, I do hope it takes more than a half-assed program on Freshmeat to get corporate attention.
The next step after that, the fabled 1.1 free-ness, is a license that is so open, it's the responsibility of the developer to make sure everybody is delivered a copy of the source code to his/her program, whether they ask for it or not. Free software, free software delivery!
Who wrote it shouldn't be *that* much of an influence on whether or not you use it. I certainly don't pick my window manager based on how many awards the authors have won.
We're in this business because we seek quality and open source code, aren't we?
I think in some cases, it is easier on both web site maintainer and search engine for the content to be periodically generated rather than dynamically generated upon every request.
Continuing the Slashdot example, for awhile during one of Slashdot's bandwidth crunch times, Rob was running CacheDot, a static version of Slashdot that was updated periodically.
Sites that I run contain content such as product database representation, and these pages are regenerated whenever somebody adds/deletes/edits information in that database. This may become impractical (Generating a complete product catalog) for larger sites, but then it's just an issue of generating a particular category, or even locking it down to a specific set of files related to the product being changed. (In a sense, Makefiles for web sites) It's not terribly difficult to accomplish this generation work, and the result is cacheable product information, which I consider a Good Thing.
It's interesting that the CERT advisory was dated yesterday.. I saw a notice a couple weeks ago here, unless this is another RSAREF2 issue. If it is the same, I'm curious what the delay was for, does CERT do its own research/checking on matters before releasing advisories, or did it simply take awhile for word to spread?
Don't wait for them to call. Think of how many people they're dealing with.:)
I agree, DB did a fantastic job handling this flood of activity. Every time I called them (With the exception of a call at 11 PST, but that's understandable) I got through instantly, they were helpful, quick, and pleasant to deal with. Very impressive, and my congradulations.
Fuck you, Mandrake is an extremely busy man, and makes every effort to reply to mail that people send him.
He and Raster are doing exactly what they want. They have a vision of what they think a cool desktop is, and VA is supporting their creativity. If you have a better idea, feel free to run it by them. They're always interested in ideas and feature requests. But calling the desktop shell plans monolithic is just indicitive of how poorly informed you are, a slam better reserved for something like StarOffice.
I wouldn't hail Corel the conquering retail distro just yet. They are very new to this market, and their first display of a Linux distro is not very encouraging. But that's what happens when you try to release a product in time for a big convention (Gnome 1.0 anybody?)
I've used both desktops off and on for the past couple years and I've seen both good and bad features about both desktops. I have no plans to embrace one desktop over the other, so my question will focus on the two interacting.
I don't frequent mailing lists of either camp, but I've heard bits over time such as perhaps a common desktop-entry format. That's nice, but I'm far more interested in, essentially, cooperation whenever possible and practical. This is, IMHO, in keeping with the Linux spirit by allowing more choices. From an end user standpoint, the DnD should be compatible, desktops' respective productivity suites/applications should always be able import/export each other's format, web bookmarks ought to be accessible from both sides, and so on. So my question would be, what sort of plans and/or discussions are going on to facilitate compatibility, rather than forcing users to use either one desktop or the other?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about overall, but I can say that I have bought more CD's in the recent past because I came across an MP3 from an artist I'd never heard of, or was given an MP3 by a friend that was by an artist I probably wouldn't have thought to check out otherwise.
Nobody wants to blow $18 on a CD that they think they might like. I sure as hell don't. And sure, the 10 second teasers that CDNow supplies (Sometimes) are okay, but not enough for me to make an educated decision on.
At the risk of repeating what's already been said, MP3's simply don't cut it all of the time. I have to have that physical media in my hand that I can carry around and have a case for.
I always feel ill when I hear the phrase "Limit user options", but then I have to remind myself we're not talking about long time Unix users, or people that are using Unix for its features and benefits. The target audience for the much ballyhood Linux Desktop is, for all intents and purposes, converts from MacOS and Windows. This is certainly an interesting challenge, and probably a good goal for the community. But I hope it doesn't become a primary goal. IMHO, there is more to life than catering to the end users. After all, it's been done, and done again. A more interesting challenge is interoperating with those systems. Samba and Wine for example. Projects that, rather than replace or extend user environments, work to make what environment you use less important.
And to quickly address the Gnome/Enlightenment dig.. Those two were never a good mix, and the story behind why RedHat brought them together is a long one that doesn't really belong here. The short story is making E the Gnome window manager was misguided, because a desktop environment needs a minimalistic window manager like KWin or Sawmill.
I hardly think sacrifice is necessary. Both desktops have a lot of great ideas, and both desktops have their share of bad ideas. I don't think a convergance of desktops is necessary, simply the ability to use pieces of both transparently, or at least without much effort. Then let the user decide which is more intuitive to him or her.
Interesting.. I certainly agree. Windows desktops are simply unsightly. Can't stand them. I actually get a headache after using Windows for too long (It's been suggested this is due to a poor refresh rate setting, but I'd rather believe it's Windows' fault
The key is to introduce a compatibility between the two desktops that allows them to interoperate as close to seamlessly as possible. This means:
I'm sure I'm leaving things out. Does anybody else see a need here, or am I just spouting nonsense?
When people ask what an 'approved' free software license is, I usually send them to the Debian Free Software Guidelines, because they fit my idea of a reasonable set of rules for what a license should say, and not say.
Why shouldn't PC's exist in the kitchen? I know my mother for the past ten years wanted to be able to order her groceries online, and store her recipies on the computer. Today, she does both. But to be useful, she has to print out the recipies and take them downstairs, a process she's wished to streamline for quite awhile. Who knows, maybe next year I'll get her a laptop for her kitchen for Christmas.
Here's an excerpt from my idea of a nicely wired geek house: Disclaimer: None of the following has any basis in fact.
Picture, if you will, a kitchen equipped with a slim laptop on the house's wireless lan. You feel like a change from your regular diet of ramen and Mt. Dew, so you head for your local online grocer (HomeGrocer in my area) and order up the makings for some seriously good pasta. It arrives the next day, you open your recipie database on the laptop in the kitchen, and begin preparing the meal. While you're waiting for the water to come to a boil, you decide to check your e-mail. (Yes, this is an extremely geeky thing to do, but isn't that sorta the point of a geek house?) This is simple, of course, because you have a laptop sitting next to the fridge which can get out to the Internet through your home lan's gateway (Which happens to have a DSL connection).
Food preparations are complete, so you alert your geek roommates throughout the house with a quick execution of the ever-useful wall program. Consoles on every computer on the home lan announce "Pasta ready in the kitchen", and dinner is served.
Perhaps a more modern twist on the above: You have a web pad, running a spiffy Crusoe processor, sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Its Bluetooth network adapter lets the pad access the home lan's Apache server, which has a recipie program written in PHP that stores the recipies (And URL's for all the ingredients that link to the online grocer) in a SQL database. Slick.
I'll begin by saying I don't have an opinion on the validity of this rumor, or the likelyhood, or any of that.
What I'm somewhat annoyed with is the tendancy of big applications of this sort to not use decent toolkits. WordPerfect 7, 8, Corel Office 2000, StarOffice, they all use toolkits that contribute a *lot* to how slow and bloated they are. MS would be no different. Hell, they'd probably go to the trouble of writing their own toolkit. After all, that's what Corel is effectively doing with their Office suite. Rather than port Corel Office to Unix platforms/toolkits, they're porting it to their own branch of Wine. The result that I saw in the first beta was an extremely unattractive program. But of course, this was just the first beta.
Is there a current site to refer to for those wishing to fight this in other states, or is it too late in some states?
I've looked at www.badsoftware.com, and from what I can tell the site resembles a long dead battlefield...
That's what I'm looking into wireless for. I want to be able to bring laptops out onto my back deck and enjoy a good Internet-accessible barbecue.
I'm currently running 50 foot cat5 all over my house, which I had always planned on replacing with the proper in-wall solution; faceplates, a patch panel, etc.
:) How much should I expect to pay per node, and would the setup require a central broadcast point, or can each node serve as a repeater?
However, since I would hire the labor done (I have no love for pulling cable into walls), I'm now wondering if it would be cheaper (Or even close enough in cost to justify saving the trouble and having the extra freedom) to simply go with a wireless solution.
So what's the deal?
linux has no such guidelines made by anyone
Nor should it. Interface guidelines don't belong at the OS level, they belong at the desktop level. See below.
GTK and QT come almost close but in fact nowhere near to guidelines of this sort.
Nor should they. Interface guidelines don't belong at the toolkit level, that would suggest that a particular toolkit has no application outside the scope of said guidelines, which is a silly restriction.
This is something the Linux community must adress eventually
Again, this isn't an OS level thing. This is a desktop level thing, and it is being addressed. I don't know enough about KDE's efforts, but Gnome has established the Gnome User Interface Improvement Project to address desired improvements for the Gnome desktop.
except that in linux if you don't like those open dialog boxes you can change them; if you don't like part of the interface you can change it.
Usually the people griping about the user interface are not interested in taking the time to change it themselves. That's why projects like the one mentioned above are important. People are given a central place to voice their desires for improvement, and thus contribute to the improvement of the desktop as a whole. This is the right way to do it.
Here's the section specific to Windows 95:
An in-depth review
In-depth: Uncommon file dialogs
Artifical Intelligence?
So, is it a floppy or a CD?
Just assume it knows what you want
'Problem' where none has occured
Single tabs are not OK
Improperly grouped tabs
There's a lot more good stuff on the site, but this is the excerpt from the Product Index for Win95. There's one for NT too, if it interests you.
Why should the latest, coolest thing and ease of use be mutually exclusive? All it takes is a good design plan to build something that is easy to use from the beginning.
If we want to take more of the Microsoft market share
I'm not sure if this is really a priority.. I used to think that we as a community should be out to beat Microsoft like the media always says we are, but now that I look back over the last couple years.. I don't care what Microsoft does, or how big their market share is. The open source community has created something that has made a huge impact, and won't be silenced by an iron fisted corporation, no matter how large they may be.
I've still got X running at 640x480
User error. Fix your X configuration to support multiple resolutions, and press CtrlAlt+ or CtrlAlt- (Using the + and - on your keypad) Or if you demand a graphical one-click answer rather than a three-key binding, see apps such as the Gnome QuickRes Applet.
this video card and modem won't work
Very few, if any, modern (I say modern as in 'made in the last 3 years') and common video cards break X.
The only modems that don't work in Linux are WinModems, which require a Windows driver to function as a modem (And actually, work is underway to fix that pathetic attempt at Windows-specific hardware)
sound is really complicated to set up
I don't know about other distros, but RedHat enables pretty much every kernel sound module available in the default kernel. Any SoundBlaster-esque card should work out of the box, which covers pretty much everything packaged by a major vendor, unless it's a weird speakerphone/modem/soundcard monstrosity like I've seen in the HP Pavillions.
Sure, the situation isn't perfect. But think about what you're asking for. Much of the hardware support in Linux that we take for granted was made possible by hard efforts of volunteers who pounded away on devices to reverse-engineer their functionality. It's becoming easier now as companies are being more forthcoming about their hardware specs, but it's still work being done by volunteers. Don't gripe if they're not supporting everything fast enough for you.
I've used icewm off and on since the 0.8.x days, and have always had a fondness for it. Over the last four years, my wm has either been icewm, amiwm, or Enlightenment depending on my mood, and how stable E was at the time ;)
:) Just because something gets a 1.0 version number doesn't mean it was never stable or suitable for end users before that point. (Case in point, Enlightenment)
:) )
Icewm has come a long way, and throughout the development cycle it's always been a fast, usable window manager. It's nicely configurable, and now that it has a couple configuration GUIs, it's that much easier. It's good to see the 1.0.0 mark, and I congradulate the people behind it for their years of effort.
Somebody mentioned there being too many 'almost done' window managers in the open source world, and to them I'd like to point out that this community's definition of 'beta version' is slightly different from that of commercial software
Yes, there are a lot of window managers, and perhaps some of them didn't need to be made, but I don't see any harm in having that much more variety. It's not like your window manager choice is going to make your X apps unusable (And if it does, that window manager has Issues
It's not difficult to change the pixmap that the menu uses.
It almost seems like this whole LinuxOne thing embodies the atmosphere of hype and ridiculous Wall Street clamoring for anything related to Linux. Here we have a company that, as far as we can tell, has nothing whatsoever to offer, and seems to be IPO'ing for the sole benefit of adding flame to the fire.
I will probably be ill if this IPO takes off. At least VA actually has products, and RedHat makes a pretty good distro. But who has heard of anything from LinuxOne?
You know the really sad thing about that e-mail you recieved.. I'm not even slightly surprised.
I was musing that this sort of thing may actually start to happen a lot while I was reading over the vast threads of posts regarding the VA IPO frenzy. Specifically people were discussing motivation (Well, that was covered more in the ESR article comments), and how some people may begin to try contributing to attention-getting projects in the hopes of getting onto a contributor list. Now I'm curious to see if it really does happen. However, I do hope it takes more than a half-assed program on Freshmeat to get corporate attention.
The next step after that, the fabled 1.1 free-ness, is a license that is so open, it's the responsibility of the developer to make sure everybody is delivered a copy of the source code to his/her program, whether they ask for it or not. Free software, free software delivery!
Who wrote it shouldn't be *that* much of an influence on whether or not you use it. I certainly don't pick my window manager based on how many awards the authors have won.
We're in this business because we seek quality and open source code, aren't we?
I think in some cases, it is easier on both web site maintainer and search engine for the content to be periodically generated rather than dynamically generated upon every request.
Continuing the Slashdot example, for awhile during one of Slashdot's bandwidth crunch times, Rob was running CacheDot, a static version of Slashdot that was updated periodically.
Sites that I run contain content such as product database representation, and these pages are regenerated whenever somebody adds/deletes/edits information in that database. This may become impractical (Generating a complete product catalog) for larger sites, but then it's just an issue of generating a particular category, or even locking it down to a specific set of files related to the product being changed. (In a sense, Makefiles for web sites) It's not terribly difficult to accomplish this generation work, and the result is cacheable product information, which I consider a Good Thing.
It's interesting that the CERT advisory was dated yesterday.. I saw a notice a couple weeks ago here, unless this is another RSAREF2 issue. If it is the same, I'm curious what the delay was for, does CERT do its own research/checking on matters before releasing advisories, or did it simply take awhile for word to spread?
Don't wait for them to call. Think of how many people they're dealing with. :)
I agree, DB did a fantastic job handling this flood of activity. Every time I called them (With the exception of a call at 11 PST, but that's understandable) I got through instantly, they were helpful, quick, and pleasant to deal with. Very impressive, and my congradulations.
Fuck you, Mandrake is an extremely busy man, and makes every effort to reply to mail that people send him.
He and Raster are doing exactly what they want. They have a vision of what they think a cool desktop is, and VA is supporting their creativity. If you have a better idea, feel free to run it by them. They're always interested in ideas and feature requests. But calling the desktop shell plans monolithic is just indicitive of how poorly informed you are, a slam better reserved for something like StarOffice.
I wouldn't hail Corel the conquering retail distro just yet. They are very new to this market, and their first display of a Linux distro is not very encouraging. But that's what happens when you try to release a product in time for a big convention (Gnome 1.0 anybody?)
I've used both desktops off and on for the past couple years and I've seen both good and bad features about both desktops. I have no plans to embrace one desktop over the other, so my question will focus on the two interacting.
I don't frequent mailing lists of either camp, but I've heard bits over time such as perhaps a common desktop-entry format. That's nice, but I'm far more interested in, essentially, cooperation whenever possible and practical. This is, IMHO, in keeping with the Linux spirit by allowing more choices. From an end user standpoint, the DnD should be compatible, desktops' respective productivity suites/applications should always be able import/export each other's format, web bookmarks ought to be accessible from both sides, and so on. So my question would be, what sort of plans and/or discussions are going on to facilitate compatibility, rather than forcing users to use either one desktop or the other?
There are exactly two Linux viruses known to exist, as far as I know. They are Bliss, found in February of 97, and Staog, found in the fall of 96.
Neither are serious threats, of course. Both can be located by looking for a hex string.