You know, you gotta give these guys credit, they give great quote. Their pronouncements are way more fun to listen too than ours. Come on, wouldn't you love to hear Rumsfield say, at a press conference, "We will crush and destroy these criminals like the odious cowards they are. Our glorious war machines will burn the godless heathens in their beds, and in their bunkers, and smite them where they stand. I shall personally remove Saddam's head with my sword and throw it to the mongrel dogs to eat."
Are you sure that this isn't the way Mr. Rumsfield sounds to the Iraqi's ?
In fact I think that the majority of people on this planet consider Mr. Rumsfield (and quite a few other members of the Bush administration) to be hilarious/insane arseholes or nazist warmongers. Needless to say that the announcements made by the current US goverment make people laugh although the wise just feel like crying. I think it's called the 'Joseph Goebbel Effect'; you see, when educated mature adults with even a minor understanding of world history are subjected to Goebbel-style announcements and press releases... well... let me put it this way : the very fact that in the year 2003 the teachings of J. Goebbel's are still applied to foreign policy, international relations and internal affairs of truly democratic states... like I said, you either feel like laughing or crying.
Anyway, I agree, the Bush administration is fighting a noble cause, the main aim of which is to free the poor Iraqi's from the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein. It's just that most people on this planet aren't used to CNN/FOX/SKY style of true and objective journalism(mainly commie bastards, so called intellectuals, anti-freedom/democracy pigs and various other low-lifes who envy the US for being the greatest nation in the history of the world and thus want to destroy it). I hope that one day, FOX will be in every house, of every state, of every continent of this world. Perhaps that should teach them to respect each and every word that comes out of an American official's mouth, regardless the meaning of them. Or perhaps the US should try some of Saddam's techniques to suppress such unethical anti-US propaganda... now if only we knew who taught Saddam everything he knows...
As a sidenote, please visit The Presidential Prayer Team and pray for our troops. The President said so, we should all pray... if you're not praying for US troops then you must be praying for the terrorists.
Seriously though, my Bible of Karma Whoring explicitly prohibits any actions that could result in the violation of my OT virginity, hence the next comment :
Opera ? I tried it, I found it to be slim and fast. Will I use it over my current Gecko-based browser ? I certainly will not. I will never use closed source software; not when there are fine FS/OSS alternatives around. But that's just me.
Would I recommend Opera to non-geeks ? Definately, it IS a very appealing browser. Especially for people with old hardware (eg PII, K6 etc., low memory). Although I do have to say that according to the new Mozilla roadmap, Mozilla is going to be much lighter. I don't particularly like Opera for it's extra features; I couldn't care less. I like Opera because it's light, that's all.
And I also like Opera Soft's attitude.
--"No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up." Lily Tomlin
I cannot understand/. folks obsession with the LOTR films. Having read the books many years ago, I was rather disappointed by the films. Too many special effects that distract the viewer. Too much detail on too few scenes. I was impressed by the overall effect but not happy. It was better than I thought it would be, but far worse than what I'd like it to be.
The bottomline is that I would prefer a low-budget LOTR trilogy. One that was closer to Tolkien, a different director perhaps, some changes on the script, totally different cinematography and less annoying panoramic views, different post production colouring on certain scenes etc. I understand that this is an umber-commercial flick that is directed for an US/western audience and therefore it never had a chance to start with... but still, I feel kinda bitter about the result.
Anyway, there have been something like 20 posts on/. about it (not counting other movie reports, eg Matrix, King Kong [lol] etc.). I find it rather annoying.
Just expressing an opinion, don't go 'all guns blazing'... perhaps I am not educated or tasteful enough to appreciate it but please... stop posting anymore LOTR stories on/..
MS' trend to introduce programming flaws into SP for it's OS range of products is well known and well documented. Remember the NT4 SP5 problems ? It's not a bad idea. 'Flaws' like that force users to upgrade their systems into the next SP. And then the next SP. Until the next major release of the Window OS is introduced to the market. Providing flaws into it's products Microsoft secures that their customers are always following it's lead, guidelines, marketing plans and so on. Hardly surprisingly. Just succesful corporate policy.
"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland." G. W. Bush, 2003...
No, wait. That was Adolf Hitler in 1933. Darn.
You'd think that 70 years of evolution would be enough. Then again, it only takes a quick look in a history book to understand that evolution does not apply to politicians... Ofcourse the same applies to us, the people who vote for them and support them. And the way we 'educate' our children. The future politicians and leaders.
Most 'serious' gamers have brand loyalty. Back in 80's I would play any Sierra adventure game I could lay my hands on. In the late 80's it was Lucasfilm (now Lucasarts). Right now I have respect for Bethesda. I trusted/trust these companies as they have proven themselves to me, over and over. When I bought/buy one of their games I know that there is a pretty good chance that I will like it.
Sure, 12 year olds dont care about brands. But 12 year olds tend to grow into adults and if they take their gaming 'seriously' they might feel loyal towards specific brands (until they fail her/him).
That said, I have to note that I am not as 'brand loyal' as I was a decade or so ago. Must be the money in the game industry. Turns everything to crap.
-- "An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland." Adolf Hitler 1933... o O (why does that sound familiar... why does that sound familiar...)
Why the hell did you mod her/him down to 'flaimbait' ? Surely you cannot compare the GUI's provided by Microsoft and Apple to the Linux WM's/desktops. It's just not the same. Sure, the FS/OS community may in time catch up, but right now it's lagging begind. And its for good reason : FS/OS WM/desktop programmers are just that : programmers. Not psychologists, not qualified GUI designers but just programmers (and pretty good at what they do, if I might add). Big corporations spend millions on psychology research etc. in order to create the best possible environment for _amateurs_. You and I may be happy may be utterly happy with the command line, or with recompiling KDE (with the appropriate CFLAGS etc) but most people ARE NOT (quite a few billion of them). They just don't care.
Why can't you understand it ? When my brother asked me to build a system for him, I build a Mandrake Linux box. That was a mistake. My brother hates computers, he only needs them for a few things : Word processing, movies, mp3's, internet surfing, gaming and using some local specialized financial software package. Linux just didn't do the trick for him. Win98/OpenOffice/BSplayer/Winamp/Mozilla worked perfectly on the other hand. Sure it crashes. Sure it's 'proprietary'. Sure it's not as efficient. But the bottomline is : does your everyday oblivious user really gives a fuck ? No. Plain and simple.
And NO, cut'n'paste doesn't always work great. (Try cut'n'pasting from some older apps like xfig to gedit or OpenOffice Word or whatever).
I've been a happy Linux user since late 1995. Sometime during 1996 I was able to ditch the Windows platform altogether. And, although I'm in the computer buisness for 20 years or so, these have been the happiest 8 years of my life (as far as computing is concerned). That's because I _love_ the commandline. I've used various WMs and desktops (olvwm, then AfterStep, currently Gnome). But I find my self ctrl-meta-F-ing as soon as the system boots up (unless I have to use Mozilla, or OpenOffice or do some gtk+ coding/testing). So the Linux platform is just PERFECT for me. I can not explain to you how happy I was when Linux first booted in my brand new P90. It almost brought tears to my eyes, honestly, having a full working system in my puny PC, that was just unbelievable. And I am certain that I will never have to go back to 'p' software ever again. But thats just me. Do you really expect your normal, everyday user to really care about stuff like that ? Are you mad ?
If only the FS/OS community finally realised that... What's wrong with us anyway ? Are we so blinded by the satisfaction derived from the use of a *nix platform that we forget that the vast majority of users simply doesn't care about things like that ? And if that's the case, does it affect the development of better desktops for the 'ignorant masses' ?
Then again I don't really care. I like by *nix box, I work more efficiently with it. I really don't care whether Linux ever makes it to the desktop market. I really don't care. For I don't care for the desktop in any way. I'm pretty happy with Linux as it is. If any effort is made to improve it I would like to see it directed in other areas and not the desktop. Is OS world domination so important for you people anyway ?
-- "An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland." Adolf Hitler 1933... o O (why does that sound familiar... why does that sound familiar...)
I've come across software like that in the Windows platform for years, yet I failed to understand how it would improve my everyday interaction with my PC. Of course some people like it and lets face it : it is quite impressive, even 'trendy'. So people will play with it for a few hours and then pretty much forget about it (I know I have). A minority may even continue to use such a system on a regular basis but not me (or anybody I know of for that matter...).
Yet, for all its 'useless-ness', pointing device based gestures and similar technologies can be of importance for a particular sect of the 'computer users' population : People with disabilities. (check Google on that, and btw here are a couple of quick links http://knowltonian.net/NJIT/webaccessibility.html, http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/pendragon/publication s/programming-overview.html).
I know that my post is on the verge of being moderated 'offtopic' or even 'flamebait' but the truth is that the FS/OSS community has not come up with any serious technologies to aid/help people with disabilities in their effort for satisfactory interaction with their computer. On the other hand, commercial entities/corporations (yes, like Microsoft but also Adobe, Sun etc.; in fact most of the big corps have dedicated research (or marketing;) departments) are spending millions on that area. Sure, they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart, they aim for profit. But they do offer a few solutions.
And yes, I am aware of the accessability options provided by modern FS/OSS desktops. But do you think they are enough when compared to commercial solutions ?
It is true that people with disabilities is a very small minority in the FS/OSS world (any statistics anyone ?) so it would not seem wise to 'waste' resources on the development of such software (mouse gestures, visual gesture recognition, voice recognition etc.)... I wonder how many people would agree with that...
Why did I post this ? A few years ago I had an accident which resulted into several broken fingers. Ever tried to use a keyboard while most of your fingers are broken or cracked ? I tell you, it's a bitch. A friend of mine helped me by installing a Gestures kind of software and a trackball in my brand new Win95 (no 'booo' please) box. It didn't solve everything but it did seem to make my interaction easier. My 'torment' only lasted a month or so but since then I often wondered... what if, just if, something happened and I would not be able to use my fingers anymore ? The Gestures-type-of-application (I just can't remember its name !) proved quite useful at that point. Not an adequate replacement of ones fingers but quite usefull nevertheless. Therefore, everytime I see similar software I feel a little more 'secure' and optimistic; it's silly I know... Thats all.
Slashdot Mirror
*drum rolls*
:
:
... you've read it first on slashdot ...
My contribution to humanity
Alofron's Rewrite of Goodwin's Law of Usenet
"As the length of a discussion thread grows, the probability approaches one (1) that one participant will introduce the term 'Anti-Semite'"
A custom is about to evolve that the first party to utter 'Anti-Semite' will lose the discussion, and the thread will terminate.
Remember folks
You know, you gotta give these guys credit, they give great quote. Their pronouncements are way more fun to listen too than ours. Come on, wouldn't you love to hear Rumsfield say, at a press conference, "We will crush and destroy these criminals like the odious cowards they are. Our glorious war machines will burn the godless heathens in their beds, and in their bunkers, and smite them where they stand. I shall personally remove Saddam's head with my sword and throw it to the mongrel dogs to eat."
... well ... let me put it this way : the very fact that in the year 2003 the teachings of J. Goebbel's are still applied to foreign policy, international relations and internal affairs of truly democratic states ... like I said, you either feel like laughing or crying.
... now if only we knew who taught Saddam everything he knows ...
... if you're not praying for US troops then you must be praying for the terrorists.
Are you sure that this isn't the way Mr. Rumsfield sounds to the Iraqi's ?
In fact I think that the majority of people on this planet consider Mr. Rumsfield (and quite a few other members of the Bush administration) to be hilarious/insane arseholes or nazist warmongers. Needless to say that the announcements made by the current US goverment make people laugh although the wise just feel like crying. I think it's called the 'Joseph Goebbel Effect'; you see, when educated mature adults with even a minor understanding of world history are subjected to Goebbel-style announcements and press releases
Anyway, I agree, the Bush administration is fighting a noble cause, the main aim of which is to free the poor Iraqi's from the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein. It's just that most people on this planet aren't used to CNN/FOX/SKY style of true and objective journalism(mainly commie bastards, so called intellectuals, anti-freedom/democracy pigs and various other low-lifes who envy the US for being the greatest nation in the history of the world and thus want to destroy it). I hope that one day, FOX will be in every house, of every state, of every continent of this world. Perhaps that should teach them to respect each and every word that comes out of an American official's mouth, regardless the meaning of them. Or perhaps the US should try some of Saddam's techniques to suppress such unethical anti-US propaganda
As a sidenote, please visit The Presidential Prayer Team and pray for our troops. The President said so, we should all pray
Seriously though, my Bible of Karma Whoring explicitly prohibits any actions that could result in the violation of my OT virginity, hence the next comment :
Opera ? I tried it, I found it to be slim and fast. Will I use it over my current Gecko-based browser ? I certainly will not. I will never use closed source software; not when there are fine FS/OSS alternatives around. But that's just me.
Would I recommend Opera to non-geeks ? Definately, it IS a very appealing browser. Especially for people with old hardware (eg PII, K6 etc., low memory). Although I do have to say that according to the new Mozilla roadmap, Mozilla is going to be much lighter. I don't particularly like Opera for it's extra features; I couldn't care less. I like Opera because it's light, that's all. And I also like Opera Soft's attitude.
--"No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up." Lily Tomlin
I cannot understand /. folks obsession with the LOTR films. Having read the books many years ago, I was rather disappointed by the films. Too many special effects that distract the viewer. Too much detail on too few scenes. I was impressed by the overall effect but not happy. It was better than I thought it would be, but far worse than what I'd like it to be.
... but still, I feel kinda bitter about the result.
/. about it (not counting other movie reports, eg Matrix, King Kong [lol] etc.). I find it rather annoying.
... perhaps I am not educated or tasteful enough to appreciate it but please ... stop posting anymore LOTR stories on /..
The bottomline is that I would prefer a low-budget LOTR trilogy. One that was closer to Tolkien, a different director perhaps, some changes on the script, totally different cinematography and less annoying panoramic views, different post production colouring on certain scenes etc. I understand that this is an umber-commercial flick that is directed for an US/western audience and therefore it never had a chance to start with
Anyway, there have been something like 20 posts on
Just expressing an opinion, don't go 'all guns blazing'
MS' trend to introduce programming flaws into SP for it's OS range of products is well known and well documented. Remember the NT4 SP5 problems ?
It's not a bad idea. 'Flaws' like that force users to upgrade their systems into the next SP. And then the next SP. Until the next major release of the Window OS is introduced to the market.
Providing flaws into it's products Microsoft secures that their customers are always following it's lead, guidelines, marketing plans and so on.
Hardly surprisingly. Just succesful corporate policy.
"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland." G. W. Bush, 2003 ...
...
No, wait.
That was Adolf Hitler in 1933.
Darn.
You'd think that 70 years of evolution would be enough.
Then again, it only takes a quick look in a history book to understand that evolution does not apply to politicians
Ofcourse the same applies to us, the people who vote for them and support them. And the way we 'educate' our children. The future politicians and leaders.
Will it ever end ?
*sighs*
Most 'serious' gamers have brand loyalty. Back in 80's I would play any Sierra adventure game I could lay my hands on. In the late 80's it was Lucasfilm (now Lucasarts). Right now I have respect for Bethesda. I trusted/trust these companies as they have proven themselves to me, over and over. When I bought/buy one of their games I know that there is a pretty good chance that I will like it.
... o O (why does that sound familiar ... why does that sound familiar ...)
Sure, 12 year olds dont care about brands. But 12 year olds tend to grow into adults and if they take their gaming 'seriously' they might feel loyal towards specific brands (until they fail her/him).
That said, I have to note that I am not as 'brand loyal' as I was a decade or so ago. Must be the money in the game industry. Turns everything to crap.
-- "An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland." Adolf Hitler 1933
Why the hell did you mod her/him down to 'flaimbait' ? Surely you cannot compare the GUI's provided by Microsoft and Apple to the Linux WM's/desktops. It's just not the same. Sure, the FS/OS community may in time catch up, but right now it's lagging begind.
... What's wrong with us anyway ? Are we so blinded by the satisfaction derived from the use of a *nix platform that we forget that the vast majority of users simply doesn't care about things like that ? And if that's the case, does it affect the development of better desktops for the 'ignorant masses' ?
... o O (why does that sound familiar ... why does that sound familiar ...)
And its for good reason : FS/OS WM/desktop programmers are just that : programmers. Not psychologists, not qualified GUI designers but just programmers (and pretty good at what they do, if I might add). Big corporations spend millions on psychology research etc. in order to create the best possible environment for _amateurs_. You and I may be happy may be utterly happy with the command line, or with recompiling KDE (with the appropriate CFLAGS etc) but most people ARE NOT (quite a few billion of them). They just don't care.
Why can't you understand it ? When my brother asked me to build a system for him, I build a Mandrake Linux box. That was a mistake. My brother hates computers, he only needs them for a few things : Word processing, movies, mp3's, internet surfing, gaming and using some local specialized financial software package. Linux just didn't do the trick for him. Win98/OpenOffice/BSplayer/Winamp/Mozilla worked perfectly on the other hand. Sure it crashes. Sure it's 'proprietary'. Sure it's not as efficient. But the bottomline is : does your everyday oblivious user really gives a fuck ? No. Plain and simple.
And NO, cut'n'paste doesn't always work great. (Try cut'n'pasting from some older apps like xfig to gedit or OpenOffice Word or whatever).
I've been a happy Linux user since late 1995. Sometime during 1996 I was able to ditch the Windows platform altogether. And, although I'm in the computer buisness for 20 years or so, these have been the happiest 8 years of my life (as far as computing is concerned). That's because I _love_ the commandline. I've used various WMs and desktops (olvwm, then AfterStep, currently Gnome). But I find my self ctrl-meta-F-ing as soon as the system boots up (unless I have to use Mozilla, or OpenOffice or do some gtk+ coding/testing). So the Linux platform is just PERFECT for me. I can not explain to you how happy I was when Linux first booted in my brand new P90. It almost brought tears to my eyes, honestly, having a full working system in my puny PC, that was just unbelievable. And I am certain that I will never have to go back to 'p' software ever again. But thats just me. Do you really expect your normal, everyday user to really care about stuff like that ? Are you mad ?
If only the FS/OS community finally realised that
Then again I don't really care. I like by *nix box, I work more efficiently with it. I really don't care whether Linux ever makes it to the desktop market. I really don't care. For I don't care for the desktop in any way. I'm pretty happy with Linux as it is. If any effort is made to improve it I would like to see it directed in other areas and not the desktop. Is OS world domination so important for you people anyway ?
-- "An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland." Adolf Hitler 1933
I've come across software like that in the Windows platform for years, yet I failed to understand how it would improve my everyday interaction with my PC. Of course some people like it and lets face it : it is quite impressive, even 'trendy'. So people will play with it for a few hours and then pretty much forget about it (I know I have). A minority may even continue to use such a system on a regular basis but not me (or anybody I know of for that matter ...).
, http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/pendragon/publication s/programming-overview.html).
;) departments) are spending millions on that area. Sure, they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart, they aim for profit. But they do offer a few solutions.
... I wonder how many people would agree with that ...
... what if, just if, something happened and I would not be able to use my fingers anymore ? The Gestures-type-of-application (I just can't remember its name !) proved quite useful at that point. Not an adequate replacement of ones fingers but quite usefull nevertheless. Therefore, everytime I see similar software I feel a little more 'secure' and optimistic; it's silly I know ... Thats all.
Yet, for all its 'useless-ness', pointing device based gestures and similar technologies can be of importance for a particular sect of the 'computer users' population : People with disabilities. (check Google on that, and btw here are a couple of quick links http://knowltonian.net/NJIT/webaccessibility.html
I know that my post is on the verge of being moderated 'offtopic' or even 'flamebait' but the truth is that the FS/OSS community has not come up with any serious technologies to aid/help people with disabilities in their effort for satisfactory interaction with their computer. On the other hand, commercial entities/corporations (yes, like Microsoft but also Adobe, Sun etc.; in fact most of the big corps have dedicated research (or marketing
And yes, I am aware of the accessability options provided by modern FS/OSS desktops. But do you think they are enough when compared to commercial solutions ?
It is true that people with disabilities is a very small minority in the FS/OSS world (any statistics anyone ?) so it would not seem wise to 'waste' resources on the development of such software (mouse gestures, visual gesture recognition, voice recognition etc.)
Why did I post this ?
A few years ago I had an accident which resulted into several broken fingers. Ever tried to use a keyboard while most of your fingers are broken or cracked ? I tell you, it's a bitch.
A friend of mine helped me by installing a Gestures kind of software and a trackball in my brand new Win95 (no 'booo' please) box. It didn't solve everything but it did seem to make my interaction easier. My 'torment' only lasted a month or so but since then I often wondered