Ah, but you see, Red Hat will give you support and ermmm... timely updates. Unlike any other distribution, where you just get the updates. I guess the main point is that for the kind of task you use a four processor machine for, a few thousand dollars isn't much to pay for peace of mind.
Does anyone have any experience with RedHat support? Is it worth the money?
From looking at screen shots of the powertoys switcher, it doesn't seem to help at all. It appears to only show a preview of one application at a time - that doesn't let you quickly work out how many times to press alt-tab, just what the app you're currently switching to looks like.
That's not whitelisting. Spamassassin does have per-user whitelisting, it's just that the file to control it is ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs on the mail server, so unless your share the home directories from the mail server over NFS, users can't add to the whitelist.
Alt-tab is fine if you have a few windows open at once, but it doesn't scale well. Try it with 20 or so windows and it starts to get annoying.
If you have multiple similar windows open (say a load of gimp documents, or gvim windows), you have to cycle through each one, read the title on the task list and remember to stop cycling on the right one (or use shift-alt-tab to go back, a strange combination).
Alt-tab works, but it's inefficient. I generally split my work over many desktops to avoid having to use it too much. The expose^Hity method seems a good alternative.
- Many console games aren't released for PC. Ever seen Zelda, Mario Kart, SSBM, or Viewtiful Joe on the PC? The list of excellent games that will never see the PC is huge. - Because consoles are much easier. Buy game, put disk in, play. No patching, no updating drivers. - Quality control is (mostly) better on console games. Look at the mess even big budget PC games like BF1942 are before the fifth patch or so. - Consoles are cheap. 80UKP for a gamecube for example - that's less than my PC's processor cost. Penny-Arcade had it right when they said if you're a gamer and you *don't* own a console, you're missing out. I game on a PC a lot, but I still use my gamecube.
So use the ID card to unify the system. Store all the data on it (or on a database, indexed by the card ID). Somebody gets a job, it goes on their ID card. Try to claim benefits with an ID card that registers holder as employed -> sirens go off. Try to employ somebody without changing their ID card data -> go to prison.
What other form of official ID is there at present? If someone needs to establish I am who I say I am, of course they need an official document of some sort to establish that. A passport or driving licence is a convenient form for that to take.
>if card-carrying is made full-time compulsory, then anyone
>who, say, demonstrates vocally during a visit by a foreign
>head of state, can be stopped, have their identity demanded
I said this already, but the problem here is not the ID card but abuse of police/state powers. If they could do this, they could just arrest you anyway, ID card or not.
Establish cards as non-compulsory, get the system working and iron out the flaws. Then, once most people have one and the infrastructure is proven, make it compulsory. It's like the minimum wage - establish a low initial one to get it through parliament quickly, then raise it once the precedent is established.
Why have so many systems of ID? I get letters from Inland Revenue asking for my NI number sometimes. So I'm forced to shuttle data between government related departments. Why not one card with NI, employment, benefits status, driving licence status etc all on it? One database, which all government departments can draw data from.
So, ID cards are bad because they might be used in a situation in which the police grossly violate your basic rights of peaceful assembly? The problem in your hypothetical situation is not the card.
There's never been a "fair use" provision beyond academic study and so on in British law, so this law changes nothing there. If anything, this law appears to be slightly less draconian than previous legislation, as this at least allows "temporary" copies such as those in search engine caches.
I don't see the problem with ID cards. You need to prove your identity for anything important anyway - from renting a video , taking money out of a bank account over the counter to claiming benefits. Why not standardise the system, as many other countries already have.
The UK has many 'freedom' problems, from the House of Lords to the ridiculous voting system that gives the government such a huge majority it can shove through whatever legislation it wants. I dont believe that ID cards, despite the paranoia people have about them, are one of those problems.
I run a small site on a 512down/256up ADSL line (150 pages/day, 2.5mb traffic average, peaking to about 6 times that on release days). I don't notice any slowdown in the connection at all, and I play bf1942 a lot. Of course you can't run a gallery site on an adsl line, but you if you're careful about the size of files you use, and use things like mod_gzip, it's perfectly feasible.
OK, so I've read the LOTR books four times and the Simarillion and I don't know that. It must be over ten years since I read The Hobbit, though - is he described in that?
Is he really a Hobbit? I thought he was just something "like" a hobbit. Merry does his bit with the "thingy", and Pippin does his minor bit with that guy in Minas Tirith (what's the betting that gets cut almost entirely?). This is getting confusing. Can't we just have some Slashdot rule where we can assume everyone's read the books?
Exactly. The scouring makes the point that, in the end, it's a book about hobbits. There may be great kings and heroes, but it's two hobbits that save Middle Earth and it's hobbits that (*Spoilers deleted*). The story starts and ends with the hobbits. Their new strength is shown by the defeat of Saruman. It's a book about the little people.
Yes, that's why I posted the output of free. It's the total amount of memory used *minus* the amount linux is using for cache/buffers etc. So it's the amount of memory used by actual programs in memory.
Yes, wmaker uses 4mb or whatever. The point is, the choice of window manager on a machine makes little difference on all but the most low end machine. Mozilla uses 24mb, gvim uses 8mb per instance. 13mb isn't much.
I have WindowMaker installed, I don't have FVWM installed. They're pretty similar in terms of memory usage from the days when I used them - as Windowmaker only uses a couple of meg, the difference can't be that great.
In what way is KDE bloated? Memory use maybe? OK, using 'free' with a bare KDE and then WindowMaker session open gives:
KDE:58.9Mb used
WindowMaker:45.6Mb used
Wow, a 13mb difference. Not exactly a vast amount given the increased power of the KDE desktop (try it out if you don't believe me).
Processor usage maybe? Switch the eyecandy off and it'll use just as much as a 'leaner' windowmanager.
Hard disk space maybe? With all the screensavers, artwork, icon sets, PIM, graphics, admin and multimedia apps installed (which are mostly optional and include most software you would ever need) my/usr/kde is 250Mb. Large, but not overly so unless you have a computer with a 2Gb hard drive.
I used to be a "bare-bones" freak too, until I realised how silly I was being and how much easier to use my computer was with KDE installed.
The larger a menu is, the harder it is to find something on it. Humans can tell where something is without any effort in a menu with five items or so (hence the five lines for notes on written music). Once you get much above that, it becomes much harder to use - you have to stop and think about where on the menu you need to click in order to perform a command.
Cascading menus aren't ideal, but they provide a way to divide up functionality so that it can be quickly scanned visually by a human.
Not necessarily. Paper and pencil votes are often inaccurate anyway. Bugs like this one should have been caught very early on in the development process with a simple "assert(total_num_votes<=total_num_voters)".
An electronic voting system has the potential to be far more accurate than paper-and-pencil, and much easier to perform. The problem here is bad implementation, rather than a flawed concept.
Unfortunately, given the apparent complete cluelessness about technology of people in government (both in the US and other places, the UK especially), I doubt we'll ever see a decent, open-source, reliable electronic voting system, so maybe pencil-and-paper is best for now.
I would hope that any company that supplied software for something like counting votes would have to provide evidence of a complete testing procedure that would catch problems like this.
I mean, automated testing of a voting system can't be hard. Build yourself a little network of voting machines in the office, write a bunch of scripts that enter a certain pattern of votes and ensure the correct results come out the other end. Make sure your scripts perform a wide range of possible voting patterns, and do all the 'odd' things your users might do (try to vote twice, mash the keypad with their palm etc).
Or am I being terribly naive about the way the software industry does things?
Ctrl-Alt-Esc, click on the application that's hung. Generally works for me, IIRC. Not that I've had an application (outside of beta-builds) that's crashed on me in a while.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course porting will be easy. I mean, how much difference can an order of magnitude performance difference and a change in endianess make?
Ah, but you see, Red Hat will give you support and ermmm... timely updates. Unlike any other distribution, where you just get the updates. I guess the main point is that for the kind of task you use a four processor machine for, a few thousand dollars isn't much to pay for peace of mind.
Does anyone have any experience with RedHat support? Is it worth the money?
From looking at screen shots of the powertoys switcher, it doesn't seem to help at all. It appears to only show a preview of one application at a time - that doesn't let you quickly work out how many times to press alt-tab, just what the app you're currently switching to looks like.
That's not whitelisting. Spamassassin does have per-user whitelisting, it's just that the file to control it is ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs on the mail server, so unless your share the home directories from the mail server over NFS, users can't add to the whitelist.
Well, they always say that the best way to get something implemented in open-source is to submit a half-baked patch that doesn't really work properly.
Some expert hacker looks at the patch, the poor implentation causes him physical pain, and he is forced to re-implement it himself.
Alt-tab is fine if you have a few windows open at once, but it doesn't scale well. Try it with 20 or so windows and it starts to get annoying.
If you have multiple similar windows open (say a load of gimp documents, or gvim windows), you have to cycle through each one, read the title on the task list and remember to stop cycling on the right one (or use shift-alt-tab to go back, a strange combination).
Alt-tab works, but it's inefficient. I generally split my work over many desktops to avoid having to use it too much. The expose^Hity method seems a good alternative.
>How 'bout "primary/secondary".
They already use Primary/secondary - as in Primary master, secondary master, primary slave.... Does no one on Slashdot use computers any more?
Because:
- Many console games aren't released for PC. Ever seen Zelda, Mario Kart, SSBM, or Viewtiful Joe on the PC? The list of excellent games that will never see the PC is huge.
- Because consoles are much easier. Buy game, put disk in, play. No patching, no updating drivers.
- Quality control is (mostly) better on console games. Look at the mess even big budget PC games like BF1942 are before the fifth patch or so.
- Consoles are cheap. 80UKP for a gamecube for example - that's less than my PC's processor cost.
Penny-Arcade had it right when they said if you're a gamer and you *don't* own a console, you're missing out. I game on a PC a lot, but I still use my gamecube.
So use the ID card to unify the system. Store all the data on it (or on a database, indexed by the card ID). Somebody gets a job, it goes on their ID card. Try to claim benefits with an ID card that registers holder as employed -> sirens go off. Try to employ somebody without changing their ID card data -> go to prison.
What other form of official ID is there at present? If someone needs to establish I am who I say I am, of course they need an official document of some sort to establish that. A passport or driving licence is a convenient form for that to take.
>if card-carrying is made full-time compulsory, then anyone
>who, say, demonstrates vocally during a visit by a foreign
>head of state, can be stopped, have their identity demanded
I said this already, but the problem here is not the ID card but abuse of police/state powers. If they could do this, they could just arrest you anyway, ID card or not.
Establish cards as non-compulsory, get the system working and iron out the flaws. Then, once most people have one and the infrastructure is proven, make it compulsory. It's like the minimum wage - establish a low initial one to get it through parliament quickly, then raise it once the precedent is established.
Why have so many systems of ID? I get letters from Inland Revenue asking for my NI number sometimes. So I'm forced to shuttle data between government related departments. Why not one card with NI, employment, benefits status, driving licence status etc all on it? One database, which all government departments can draw data from.
So, ID cards are bad because they might be used in a situation in which the police grossly violate your basic rights of peaceful assembly? The problem in your hypothetical situation is not the card.
There's never been a "fair use" provision beyond academic study and so on in British law, so this law changes nothing there. If anything, this law appears to be slightly less draconian than previous legislation, as this at least allows "temporary" copies such as those in search engine caches.
Mad but true.
I don't see the problem with ID cards. You need to prove your identity for anything important anyway - from renting a video , taking money out of a bank account over the counter to claiming benefits. Why not standardise the system, as many other countries already have.
The UK has many 'freedom' problems, from the House of Lords to the ridiculous voting system that gives the government such a huge majority it can shove through whatever legislation it wants. I dont believe that ID cards, despite the paranoia people have about them, are one of those problems.
I run a small site on a 512down/256up ADSL line (150 pages/day, 2.5mb traffic average, peaking to about 6 times that on release days). I don't notice any slowdown in the connection at all, and I play bf1942 a lot. Of course you can't run a gallery site on an adsl line, but you if you're careful about the size of files you use, and use things like mod_gzip, it's perfectly feasible.
OK, so I've read the LOTR books four times and the Simarillion and I don't know that. It must be over ten years since I read The Hobbit, though - is he described in that?
Is he really a Hobbit? I thought he was just something "like" a hobbit.
Merry does his bit with the "thingy", and Pippin does his minor bit with that guy in Minas Tirith (what's the betting that gets cut almost entirely?).
This is getting confusing. Can't we just have some Slashdot rule where we can assume everyone's read the books?
Exactly. The scouring makes the point that, in the end, it's a book about hobbits. There may be great kings and heroes, but it's two hobbits that save Middle Earth and it's hobbits that (*Spoilers deleted*). The story starts and ends with the hobbits. Their new strength is shown by the defeat of Saruman. It's a book about the little people.
Yes, that's why I posted the output of free. It's the total amount of memory used *minus* the amount linux is using for cache/buffers etc. So it's the amount of memory used by actual programs in memory.
Yes, wmaker uses 4mb or whatever. The point is, the choice of window manager on a machine makes little difference on all but the most low end machine. Mozilla uses 24mb, gvim uses 8mb per instance. 13mb isn't much.
I have WindowMaker installed, I don't have FVWM installed. They're pretty similar in terms of memory usage from the days when I used them - as Windowmaker only uses a couple of meg, the difference can't be that great.
In what way is KDE bloated? Memory use maybe? OK, using 'free' with a bare KDE and then WindowMaker session open gives:
/usr/kde is 250Mb. Large, but not overly so unless you have a computer with a 2Gb hard drive.
KDE:58.9Mb used
WindowMaker:45.6Mb used
Wow, a 13mb difference. Not exactly a vast amount given the increased power of the KDE desktop (try it out if you don't believe me).
Processor usage maybe? Switch the eyecandy off and it'll use just as much as a 'leaner' windowmanager.
Hard disk space maybe? With all the screensavers, artwork, icon sets, PIM, graphics, admin and multimedia apps installed (which are mostly optional and include most software you would ever need) my
I used to be a "bare-bones" freak too, until I realised how silly I was being and how much easier to use my computer was with KDE installed.
The larger a menu is, the harder it is to find something on it. Humans can tell where something is without any effort in a menu with five items or so (hence the five lines for notes on written music). Once you get much above that, it becomes much harder to use - you have to stop and think about where on the menu you need to click in order to perform a command.
Cascading menus aren't ideal, but they provide a way to divide up functionality so that it can be quickly scanned visually by a human.
Not necessarily. Paper and pencil votes are often inaccurate anyway. Bugs like this one should have been caught very early on in the development process with a simple "assert(total_num_votes<=total_num_voters)".
An electronic voting system has the potential to be far more accurate than paper-and-pencil, and much easier to perform. The problem here is bad implementation, rather than a flawed concept.
Unfortunately, given the apparent complete cluelessness about technology of people in government (both in the US and other places, the UK especially), I doubt we'll ever see a decent, open-source, reliable electronic voting system, so maybe pencil-and-paper is best for now.
I would hope that any company that supplied software for something like counting votes would have to provide evidence of a complete testing procedure that would catch problems like this.
I mean, automated testing of a voting system can't be hard. Build yourself a little network of voting machines in the office, write a bunch of scripts that enter a certain pattern of votes and ensure the correct results come out the other end. Make sure your scripts perform a wide range of possible voting patterns, and do all the 'odd' things your users might do (try to vote twice, mash the keypad with their palm etc).
Or am I being terribly naive about the way the software industry does things?
>For the vast majority of users "preemptive" multitasking was perfectly fine ....
Yes it is, but MacOS 9 didn't have preemptive multitasking. It had cooperative multitasking, which is why one program could crash the whole OS.
Ctrl-Alt-Esc, click on the application that's hung. Generally works for me, IIRC. Not that I've had an application (outside of beta-builds) that's crashed on me in a while.