From the article:
In the end, of course, our subscription plan has worked because a small but significant portion of our users feel that Salon is worth supporting with their cash.
Alas, this happens when you get older: you start paying for support, news and, alas, women.:)
Why should any country be able to dictate matters of Internet-based disputes? Oh yeah, it's because the US government has an idea that they own the Internet.
It's not only the Internet. Have you read news lately - let's say in the past 6 months? It seems like everything on this planet comes under US jurisdiction these days...
And as long as this happens, the big guys (the acronyms and the corporations) will be able to drag the small guys in lawsuits they can't afford... or just threat that they'll do that.
Good. That's in the Whatsnew.txt. But did you ever try it? And did you try to open the same document in powerpoint?
It doesn't work the other way around, either: staroffice just leaves out what it doesn't understand...
As for the rest: it's not easy to say "I ain't buying it" when it's about the company's business. If our biggest client - which is probably 1000 times bigger than us - sends us word documents and expects the same back, what happens when staroffice meses up almost everything except simple text? We buy m$.
Ok, *some* interoperability is better than none.
But the fact remains, *nothing* will ever be 100% compatible with m$ office.
Like linux - which took a different approach, not just mimicking windows (although some say so), something different is needed in the "office" arena. Maybe some new, open, standards... it's hard to say.
From the article:
and apparently fail to explain that yes, you can make PowerPoint-style presentations in Linux,
The keyword here is "style". PowerPoint-style. My boss wants to create.ppt documents to send to his boss, the clients, and to intoxicate us. PowerPoint-style just doesn't cut it.
you can view Web Pages that use Flash animation and other "glitz" features,
Ha! You're joking, right? All those sites "enhanced" for "best experience" with IE... maybe if you have Mozilla, Konqueror, Galleon, Opera and Netscape 6.2 and you them one-by-one, on each website!
and that you can manage all your files though simple "point, click, drag and drop" visual interfaces.
Well, no details about this in the article. Personally, I dislike the "graphical, point, click, drag and drop" interfaces - call me old-fashioned... I would use mc, but nothing more.
So... I use linux both at work and at home for 99% of the time; but it's not ready for my mom (or the other way around... hmmm...:)
Why they don't specify opening of various file formats (like MS Office documents) for cross-platform compatibility.
Even if they would want to do that, do you think it's simple to link to some formats that have evolved like "kludge upon patch upon workaround upon compatibility hack upon..." for the last 10 years at least?
Even M$ Word screws up from time to time and saves documents that can't be loaded afterwards...
Also the entire model is different; you don't have all the supporting functions for ole to work under linux, not to speak of CrashIfNotSavedFor10Minutes() (as someone else pointed out:)
What I'm trying to say is that even knowing the exact file format you won't be able to write an application that opens/renders correctly 99.99% of the office documents, because of the horribly complex dependancy to a lot of "operating system" functions/calls/features.
but I do wonder how they assigned the date "of at least 6000 years ago" to this
Dear BBC reporter, when I saw this pictures I immediately thought about you.
I am in a harry, I promise you will love them and they show something 6000 years old!
In this case, the RIAA did something clearly evil (threatening Felten), but they then rectified it.
I don't agree. You cannot rectify something like this; it's like a thief (acting on info that he'll get caught) gives back the stolen goods and then walks because, see, he rectified his wrongdoing.
Bullying around is punishable, at least by a sarcastic comment by the judge - which doesn't help really, true, but tells them to cool it off.
From the article: Recent Internet worms such as Code Red and Nimda prove that massive, automated hacking exploits have no need of search engines to find vulnerable computers.
Internet worms? "Microsoft worms", rather. But of course Cnet can't say that in an article, although it can be demonstrated that the Internet is not required for those worms to propagate (i.e. a local network with tcp/ip is enough). Ok, arguably.:)
If you just have a look at the KLM/NWA timetable (windows only, unfortunately) http://www.klm.com/timetable and look at the animated morning traffic you'll know why private-owned carplanes won't take off.
I mean, that's only one airline, imagine the full picture at rush hour. It's even worse in Europe.
Probably OS-dependent. Remember: virii for one platform (i.e., Win) will probably not work for others.
"Probably"? The article doesn't even hint that there may be anything else than windows around. It's just another Microsoft virus... the only scary thing is that the antiviruses may be rigged to let it thru.
All said about "not mixing with users", "not mixing work and family/free time" works (plus the jokes:), which apply) if you are in an english-speaking country, probably not far from where you already have friends (high-school, college etc) or even relatives.
But consider for a moment how things change if you're working as an expat...
You basically arrive in a country with having no knowledge of the local language (very bad for socializing - and I don't consider paying for sex to be in this category), you know almost no people (maybe the ones that hired you - that's at most 2), you usually have problems to find your way, for chrissake.
Your only chance is to make friends/buddy with your co-workers, at least to get the idea of what's going on. Unfortunately, in my case, I've never been in one place for more than two years, so I had to start this again and again from the very beginning.
On the bright side, working outside the us is fun-fun-fun anyway, if you're not a gun freak who feels naked without the "piece". You can actually work 40h weeks and get paid as a network/database administrator, for example.
And the ladies are nicer, in general... and you can go to Holland and have a... oops... never mind.:) Legally there, anyway.
[...] establishing port 80 as the common gateway through which this type of traffic flows reduces that opportunity for this type of mistake.
I think you missed completely the very reason of existence for the firewall.
If you stuff everything thru port 80, you can as well stop using a firewall, cause it will be just sitting there adding one hop to the packets' route.
I'd rather have that burdon be on myself than the firewall admins.
Well, I'd not.:) Historically speaking, the bugs are created by developers, not system/firewall administrators; if you hire somebody with 2-3 years' experience in firewall administration I'm sure they'll do *much* better in their field than someone with the same experience in programming (due also to the nature of the work, obviously).
Basically they try to create a market for the GPRS and 3G wich will be at least hard, because they have to make the users change their habits.
For almost 100 years the telephone was primarily a means of oral communication; only within the last 10 years there's been a sensible change to this trend, maybe significant, but definitely not a change of focus.
What happened is that at the height of the dot.com bubble, a lot of (cell)phone and other co.s in Europe paid enormous price tags for 3G licenses.
After the bubble burst, they found themselves in huge debts, with deadlines to meet and networks to build (as 3G needs it's own infrastructure).
Enter GPRS, which was supposed to be just a transition phase to 3G, but due to the circumstances was seen as the corporate ass saviour, being cheaper to deploy than the 3G; the net result seems to be that instead of beeing an intermediate step, it's a goal itself, which is less likely to work due to the global economic slowdown, and has good chances of killing 3G also in the process.
It's hard to predict how this will evolve, but as it seems, their winning business plan for now is "10s of bilions to pay for the G3 licenses, no network and no market".
I've got a Dell Inspiron 8000 with a 15" screen. It's UltraXGA... 1600x1200.
I belive you have "Large Fonts" enabled - at least they are enabled by default in the preinstalled win2k.
Using these 120dpi fonts makes you see small icons and large text, which I personally dislike. And IMO the 96...100 dpi fonts at 1600x1200 on a 15.1" makes it next-to-impossible to use.
Bottom line: 1600x1200 may be nice to have on a 21" monitor - I stick to 1280x1025 on a 15" display (Inspiron 5000e)
Every dance song comprises a number of different tracks, such as drum patterns, bass lines, keyboard hooks and vocals. To create a song, the HPDJ chooses tracks from a large library and then modifies and overlays them, based on the vibe coming from the dance floor
Are those traks randomly generated? Probably not - it would result in too much trash, which gets us to the next question: if they get those tracks from copyrighted sources, who owns the resuling music? Are they even allow to extract things from other songs?
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
:)
In the end, of course, our subscription plan has worked because a small but significant portion of our users feel that Salon is worth supporting with their cash.
Alas, this happens when you get older: you start paying for support, news and, alas, women.
does anyone really knows a place where you can buy/use any kind of electronic paper?
:)
It's not available until they figure out exactly what will happen if you try to wipe your arse with a sheet of e-paper.
Why should any country be able to dictate matters of Internet-based disputes? Oh yeah, it's because the US government has an idea that they own the Internet.
It's not only the Internet. Have you read news lately - let's say in the past 6 months? It seems like everything on this planet comes under US jurisdiction these days...
And as long as this happens, the big guys (the acronyms and the corporations) will be able to drag the small guys in lawsuits they can't afford... or just threat that they'll do that.
You can save as .ppt documents in StarOffice.
Good. That's in the Whatsnew.txt. But did you ever try it? And did you try to open the same document in powerpoint?
It doesn't work the other way around, either: staroffice just leaves out what it doesn't understand...
As for the rest: it's not easy to say "I ain't buying it" when it's about the company's business. If our biggest client - which is probably 1000 times bigger than us - sends us word documents and expects the same back, what happens when staroffice meses up almost everything except simple text? We buy m$.
As sad, as simple.
Ok, *some* interoperability is better than none.
But the fact remains, *nothing* will ever be 100% compatible with m$ office.
Like linux - which took a different approach, not just mimicking windows (although some say so), something different is needed in the "office" arena. Maybe some new, open, standards... it's hard to say.
From the article:
.ppt documents to send to his boss, the clients, and to intoxicate us. PowerPoint-style just doesn't cut it.
:)
and apparently fail to explain that yes, you can make PowerPoint-style presentations in Linux,
The keyword here is "style". PowerPoint-style. My boss wants to create
you can view Web Pages that use Flash animation and other "glitz" features,
Ha! You're joking, right? All those sites "enhanced" for "best experience" with IE... maybe if you have Mozilla, Konqueror, Galleon, Opera and Netscape 6.2 and you them one-by-one, on each website!
and that you can manage all your files though simple "point, click, drag and drop" visual interfaces.
Well, no details about this in the article. Personally, I dislike the "graphical, point, click, drag and drop" interfaces - call me old-fashioned... I would use mc, but nothing more.
So... I use linux both at work and at home for 99% of the time; but it's not ready for my mom (or the other way around... hmmm...
Why they don't specify opening of various file formats (like MS Office documents) for cross-platform compatibility.
:)
Even if they would want to do that, do you think it's simple to link to some formats that have evolved like "kludge upon patch upon workaround upon compatibility hack upon..." for the last 10 years at least?
Even M$ Word screws up from time to time and saves documents that can't be loaded afterwards...
Also the entire model is different; you don't have all the supporting functions for ole to work under linux, not to speak of CrashIfNotSavedFor10Minutes() (as someone else pointed out
What I'm trying to say is that even knowing the exact file format you won't be able to write an application that opens/renders correctly 99.99% of the office documents, because of the horribly complex dependancy to a lot of "operating system" functions/calls/features.
Yes there really is a 20MHz z80.
Wow. Imagine the Sinclair Spectrum running at 20MHz... (slap) no, all the games were heavily relying on timings, so they wouldn't work at all.
Nice though for Zeus or BASICA...
but I do wonder how they assigned the date "of at least 6000 years ago" to this
Dear BBC reporter, when I saw this pictures I immediately thought about you.
I am in a harry, I promise you will love them and they show something 6000 years old!
{Eager DoubleClick}
Choose a bare-bones http server, with no bells and whistles. Both IIS and Apache are out. Maybe thttpd?
publicfile is a good choice for both http and ftp.
In this case, the RIAA did something clearly evil (threatening Felten), but they then rectified it.
I don't agree. You cannot rectify something like this; it's like a thief (acting on info that he'll get caught) gives back the stolen goods and then walks because, see, he rectified his wrongdoing.
Bullying around is punishable, at least by a sarcastic comment by the judge - which doesn't help really, true, but tells them to cool it off.
I applied for a VISA today just for this service. They are well worth the money.
:)
Well done, sir. I thought even to get a job today, for they are sure are worth the money!
From the article: Recent Internet worms such as Code Red and Nimda prove that massive, automated hacking exploits have no need of search engines to find vulnerable computers.
:)
Internet worms? "Microsoft worms", rather. But of course Cnet can't say that in an article, although it can be demonstrated that the Internet is not required for those worms to propagate (i.e. a local network with tcp/ip is enough). Ok, arguably.
I agree.
If you just have a look at the KLM/NWA timetable (windows only, unfortunately) http://www.klm.com/timetable and look at the animated morning traffic you'll know why private-owned carplanes won't take off.
I mean, that's only one airline, imagine the full picture at rush hour. It's even worse in Europe.
Probably OS-dependent. Remember: virii for one platform (i.e., Win) will probably not work for others.
"Probably"? The article doesn't even hint that there may be anything else than windows around. It's just another Microsoft virus... the only scary thing is that the antiviruses may be rigged to let it thru.
All said about "not mixing with users", "not mixing work and family/free time" works (plus the jokes :), which apply) if you are in an english-speaking country, probably not far from where you already have friends (high-school, college etc) or even relatives.
:) Legally there, anyway.
But consider for a moment how things change if you're working as an expat...
You basically arrive in a country with having no knowledge of the local language (very bad for socializing - and I don't consider paying for sex to be in this category), you know almost no people (maybe the ones that hired you - that's at most 2), you usually have problems to find your way, for chrissake.
Your only chance is to make friends/buddy with your co-workers, at least to get the idea of what's going on. Unfortunately, in my case, I've never been in one place for more than two years, so I had to start this again and again from the very beginning.
On the bright side, working outside the us is fun-fun-fun anyway, if you're not a gun freak who feels naked without the "piece". You can actually work 40h weeks and get paid as a network/database administrator, for example.
And the ladies are nicer, in general... and you can go to Holland and have a... oops... never mind.
Good examples of 2D simple interfaces are things like Google. Why would 3D make Google better ?
:)
It is 3D. How do you call it when you hide your pr0n search behind a slashdot window? Background. That's 3d.
As someone who didn't come first (33rd, actually)[...]
:)
I wonder how CML2 would've scored in this competition.
[...] establishing port 80 as the common gateway through which this type of traffic flows reduces that opportunity for this type of mistake.
:) Historically speaking, the bugs are created by developers, not system/firewall administrators; if you hire somebody with 2-3 years' experience in firewall administration I'm sure they'll do *much* better in their field than someone with the same experience in programming (due also to the nature of the work, obviously).
:)
I think you missed completely the very reason of existence for the firewall.
If you stuff everything thru port 80, you can as well stop using a firewall, cause it will be just sitting there adding one hop to the packets' route.
I'd rather have that burdon be on myself than the firewall admins.
Well, I'd not.
(I may be biased... I'm a sysadmin myself
Warning: doing this might reduce your eBay resale value.
:)
Only if you conisder selling yourself.
Come to think of, I thought slavery was abolished looong time ago. Hmmm...
Anyway, the issue is less thorny than you are making it out to be.
:)
/.
Seems obvious now.
But it wasn't pointless - at least some info made it's way thru the noise barrage on
[...] and the friendly tips from Kandalf.
:)
"Friendly tips", eh?
Beware... the PaperClip also started like this...
You're right.
Basically they try to create a market for the GPRS and 3G wich will be at least hard, because they have to make the users change their habits.
For almost 100 years the telephone was primarily a means of oral communication; only within the last 10 years there's been a sensible change to this trend, maybe significant, but definitely not a change of focus.
What happened is that at the height of the dot.com bubble, a lot of (cell)phone and other co.s in Europe paid enormous price tags for 3G licenses.
After the bubble burst, they found themselves in huge debts, with deadlines to meet and networks to build (as 3G needs it's own infrastructure).
Enter GPRS, which was supposed to be just a transition phase to 3G, but due to the circumstances was seen as the corporate ass saviour, being cheaper to deploy than the 3G; the net result seems to be that instead of beeing an intermediate step, it's a goal itself, which is less likely to work due to the global economic slowdown, and has good chances of killing 3G also in the process.
It's hard to predict how this will evolve, but as it seems, their winning business plan for now is "10s of bilions to pay for the G3 licenses, no network and no market".
I've got a Dell Inspiron 8000 with a 15" screen. It's UltraXGA ... 1600x1200.
I belive you have "Large Fonts" enabled - at least they are enabled by default in the preinstalled win2k.
Using these 120dpi fonts makes you see small icons and large text, which I personally dislike. And IMO the 96...100 dpi fonts at 1600x1200 on a 15.1" makes it next-to-impossible to use.
Bottom line: 1600x1200 may be nice to have on a 21" monitor - I stick to 1280x1025 on a 15" display (Inspiron 5000e)
Every dance song comprises a number of different tracks, such as drum patterns, bass lines, keyboard hooks and vocals. To create a song, the HPDJ chooses tracks from a large library and then modifies and overlays them, based on the vibe coming from the dance floor
Are those traks randomly generated? Probably not - it would result in too much trash, which gets us to the next question: if they get those tracks from copyrighted sources, who owns the resuling music? Are they even allow to extract things from other songs?