Having read through most of the comments to your post and thought about it a bit, I have to say you./ folks do it right: The sight always has something of interest to read and interesting/insightful/funny comments which make me think/ponder/laugh.
The one thing you've done right which would be _so_ very tempting to change is the level of inclusiveness. For example, I've whined in the past about./ being more interesting when it was Linux-centric but now think I was wrong: It's very enlightening to see what the MS Windows users in living in the land of de nile have to say about things.
In summation, I keep coming back day after day because it's an interesting place where tech people come to yak on tech topics of the day. I don't care so much about minor grammatical or spelling errors as long as I can determine what the user is trying to communicate and they have something to say. I was an English major and the grammar/spelling Nazis need this clue: It's the content of what is being said that is important, so please keep your petty pedantry to yourselves or send a private email to the poster.
Many thanks for the years of worthwhile reading and interesting discussions.
It's also possible that the massive black holes in the center of these galaxies are culpable and that the stringing together of galaxies has nothing to do with any kind of dark matter stuffs, but a hole-to-hole effect, kinda like the soup cans with a string but on a different scale (analogies and similies can be fun!)
A lot of mysteries are going to vanish once we get a handle on what is really happening with these black holes: The event horizon is where our current theories seem to, well, run into a black hole.
Get yourself a network-attached webcam (I use a D-link), use wget to go to the camera and get the current jpeg, store it in a directory, use ImageMagick's display program to show the pics.
This is fast, easy to automate with tcl or bash script, and would probably work just fine on a i486 box.
You want a pre-packaged GUI program? Sheesh dude, if you don't see what you like out there in userland, make it yourself and present it as a gift to the world.
"....Are the security problems in Windows so bad that Microsoft should dump it...."
No, the security problems in Windows are so bad that everyone else should dump Windows: Microsoft will never let go until there are no more buyers. Which is mostly what Vista is about. Seems the Yugo buyers have figured out they bought a Yugo, so Microsoft is changing the paint color and advertising it as a Porshe, yet again.
The old addage: There's a sucker born every minute.
PR skills must be listed as part of this guy's job description.
He's using an old PR trick: If the message you were "staying on" becomes fouled, spin the subject to something positive related to the same subject. Microsoft folks are stretching and spinning so far and so hard this past year they seem to be living in a different universe. But that is just tactical.
The strategy behind such behavior is "The Big Lie." Repeat the same lie in front of people over time and you'll soon have a few who believe it, and if you target the right people in the first place -- PHBs in this case -- you'll have believers with budgetary control. The problem with this is the simple law of "Truth Physics:" Truth is lighter than lies and will always raise to the top of the pile, so to keep truth buried one must constantly pile on lies -- or truth will out. The practioner of the "Big Lie" can never, ever stop spewing BS or the game is lost.
That Microsoft is straining so hard and spewing so much BS these days suggests they know they're in trouble; that the BS being spewed is less and less connected with reality suggests they are starting to panic.
Rhetorical question: How long does a house of cards take to fall?
Didn't your mommy teach you not to make fun of the little retarded kid down the block? The same lesson applies here: The author of this "Ask Slashdot" post probably lives in a cave and only comes out to do his research via the MSN web search tool at the local Starbucks.
Be nice to the unfortunate ones even when their efforts are truely pathetic.
What a great idea! I'll take off that Macintosh OS X stuff and put on Microsoft Windows XP. While I'm at it, I think I'll take the engine out of the Yugo and put it in the Porche: That way I can have the best of both worlds!
What will they think of next? Gotta love the march of progress.
That Microsoft has security like a cheese grater has bouyancy is a very well known fact, but the interesting point underlying the well known fact is _why_ Microsoft has such lousy security.
I suggest it's their attitude towards security. For example, last Thursday Microsoft released a patch for the.wmf file format security hole, a real gapping maw of a hole. The following Monday, YESTERDAY, _two_ (2) more.wmf flaws are reported and posted with exploits.
This is the way Microsoft does security: They wait for users to get hammered and scream, _then_ they might fix it, but just that one thing, anything else related is ignored until the cycle starts again with users getting hammered and screaming about it.
After the past two years of Microsoft "security," the only people who still run that junk are the ones locked in by their PHBs and the clueless pubic who buy PCs based on what they see on TV. Oh yes, and the willfully locked-in Microsoft fanbois who are out in droves today defending their sinking ship against the crush of reality.
Microsoft fans are much like the "Intelligent Design" people: They believe and insist their belief is the same thing as knowledge. This gives them the excuse to ignore reality with it's rather unpleasant (to them) consequences.
Face the reality of the situation with Microsoft products: They want your money first and foremost, anything and everything else is, at best, second thought. This includes security, quality -- everything else.
That's your reality, deal with it in a constructive way by getting off the Microsoft Gerbel Wheel from Hell (tm): It's the only way to be sure.
Yeah, have to agree with that. Laptop is nice at home or library, but otherwise not so good. This thing could be a very good tool. Be really nice if it could be, er, hacked to have a few PDM features as well. I live and breathe with lists and notes, so it would be nice to have both in one unit.
I do like to read contemporary works as well, (Strange and Norrell recently and Dowd's Bushworld) but I heavily favor the classics. I would not turn my nose up at proprietary formats and limited ownership times for most contemporary works since I rarely want to keep them after reading them. Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is a recent exception to that general rule (have them in hard back, looking forward to reading them again soon.)
PDFs and the ability to load one's own ASCII files would be most useful and thus a tempting electronic morsel for consumption by my eager wallet.
We're used to having a big, fat juicy target to poke fun at and this just doesn't cut it. Oracle is not nearly as much fun as Microsoft, mostly because the Oracle folks are more professional and actually get and deserve some respect from humans on this planet.
As concerns this worm: A default password entry and then run a script? The Microsoft.wmf design flaw attack doesn't even require a password to get things going, so I guess Microsoft wins this round on points for "ease of use" and "elegant design." WMF could be the one true Microsoft innovation we've all been waiting for and then everyone trashes them for it. Ingrates.
So give us some real meat to chew on, not this veggie bean curd stuff, ugh.
Okay, I tried smoking a kipper but it just wouldn't light. Is there a howto for this?
I was thinking that inhaling a burning fish sounds pretty odd, but then inhaling burning plant is rather odd too when one thinks about it. So I started thinking about other things one could smoke but decided to stick with plants after the flashing image of myself with a burning gerbil between my lips. And spare me the Tom jokes, please.
Angband is not on the list? The author must be from the Windows dimension, the one I refer to as Dimentia.
Seriously though, Angband is great,a modernized descendant of the old Unix "Rogue." If you think you are a tough, hardcore gamer, Angband will humble you thoroughly in short order.
There's an old joke that goes, "I've got a bridge for sale. Great deal on dis bridge!"
Point being that Microsoft has always promised very high and delivered extremely low. You're more fortunate than most since you know about and use alternatives. In userland, most of them are just recently realizing that they been sold "da bridge."
Sure wish I had bought that Apple stock a few years ago, doh!
"....I am amazed at how often scientists are proven wrong....finding facts that turn out to be just plain wrong"
Please do a yourself (and us) a favor and do a quick google for "Scientific Method" and educate yourself.
Scientists expect to be wrong, it's part of the process: Posit a theory, prove it wrong, rework the theory, prove it a wrong again, rinse, repeat until you get to where you can't prove it wrong -- at that point you have a tentative "fact." Until then it's all just theory waiting for the next proof. Don't confuse theory with fact if you want to be accurate, assuming of course you care about accuracy.
Speaking of confusion: Those clowns with a god to grind who insist upon confusing different definitions of the word "theory" so they can have something to attack are using a classic straw man argument; intellectual dishonesty at its very worst. Don't make the same mistake by confusing a current theory with a known fact; they are not the same things and they serve different purposes with the end result of the whole ordeal being some approximation of "truth."
That you have modern transportation, communications, health care and an average lifespan over the age of thirty suggests the scientific method works. As a comparison, consider the twelve hundred years of darkness from 300 A.D. to 1500 A.D. when god logic ruled the Western world.
Look at changing the read/write/execute bits for the home directory's permissions. If this is confusing for you, google for a help me or a howto on the permissions system. It's not a hard thing but there are some tricks and traps so having good documentation with examples is usually helpful.
Back up the home directories with the mirdir program regularly or just tarball the directories, preferably put the backups to a different hard drive or different PC/system: This is more important than anything else you can do if the info in the home directories is more important than the system itself.
I admire your friends' attitude about his kids and their PC; they will learn much very fast and enjoy doing it. I would suggest someone examine the box regularly for net traffic and make sure there is a good firewall setup: A rooted *NIX box with broadband net access is a very nasty loose cannon.
Cheers.
The Operative Concept is Choice
on
Why KDE Rules
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Having a choice of various different interfaces to computers systems is a blessing, not a curse. Need to build a netsurfer box for Grandma, wife, or kids then use Gnome or KDE. Put together a server, no GUI needed. On my workstation, WindowMaker on the main box, shell access only on the other but X displays on the main box. Others do different tricks with different tools.
It's your box, your systems: Decide how the machines will be used and who will be using them, then pick the appropriate tools. Be glad -- and be thankful -- for the variety as it is a very good thing.
And for those who insist that "Linux" have only one standard interface, just remember "Linux" isn't a monolithic structure but a collection of tools from which you build what you want or need. If you are with a company worrying about providing support, build a distro and tell your customers that's what you support directly, everything else Linux-wise is base info support only and the customer is expected to know what to do for their distribution. Or tell them you only support such-and-such distributions directly, everything else is basic info only. There are many different ways to skin this particular dog.
Arguments over "which one rulz" are stupidly pointless unless it's a feature-by-feature comparison. The reference article would have done better to have done just that; a comparison of KDE vs. Gnome as concerns their features and tools. Are KDE and Gnome meant to address the same user groups? I'm not so sure and a good comparison of the two might have proven useful in deciding betwix the two. I am sure that having a choice between the two gives people flexibility via options.
About preferences. Some people prefer blondes, some like brunettes and I've heard rumors of some folks even liking red-haired types. Then there is the whole eye color thing, and then body shapes and breast sizes, etc. Oy, it quickly becomes complicated, but it's such a fine form of torture. Indeed, beautiful women are like fine art: If you have to own every piece that strikes your fancy, you are either very rich or very frustrated. But _having_a_choice_ amongst so many different makes and models ensures continued shopping bliss by keeping it interesting.
Start with GUIs, end with fine women; time to call Dr. Strangethoughts.
Slashdot Mirror
Having read through most of the comments to your post and thought about it a bit, I have to say you ./ folks do it right: The sight always has something of interest to read and interesting/insightful/funny comments which make me think/ponder/laugh.
./ being more interesting when it was Linux-centric but now think I was wrong: It's very enlightening to see what the MS Windows users in living in the land of de nile have to say about things.
The one thing you've done right which would be _so_ very tempting to change is the level of inclusiveness. For example, I've whined in the past about
In summation, I keep coming back day after day because it's an interesting place where tech people come to yak on tech topics of the day. I don't care so much about minor grammatical or spelling errors as long as I can determine what the user is trying to communicate and they have something to say. I was an English major and the grammar/spelling Nazis need this clue: It's the content of what is being said that is important, so please keep your petty pedantry to yourselves or send a private email to the poster.
Many thanks for the years of worthwhile reading and interesting discussions.
It's also possible that the massive black holes in the center of these galaxies are culpable and that the stringing together of galaxies has nothing to do with any kind of dark matter stuffs, but a hole-to-hole effect, kinda like the soup cans with a string but on a different scale (analogies and similies can be fun!)
A lot of mysteries are going to vanish once we get a handle on what is really happening with these black holes: The event horizon is where our current theories seem to, well, run into a black hole.
Ciao.
Get yourself a network-attached webcam (I use a D-link), use wget to go to the camera and get the current jpeg, store it in a directory, use ImageMagick's display program to show the pics.
This is fast, easy to automate with tcl or bash script, and would probably work just fine on a i486 box.
You want a pre-packaged GUI program? Sheesh dude, if you don't see what you like out there in userland, make it yourself and present it as a gift to the world.
Programmin' ain't, like, rocket science, ya know?
Cheers.
"....Are the security problems in Windows so bad that Microsoft should dump it...."
No, the security problems in Windows are so bad that everyone else should dump Windows: Microsoft will never let go until there are no more buyers. Which is mostly what Vista is about. Seems the Yugo buyers have figured out they bought a Yugo, so Microsoft is changing the paint color and advertising it as a Porshe, yet again.
The old addage: There's a sucker born every minute.
" ...or are they full of shit as usual ?"
Yes.
"Any Windows geeks want to make a name for themselves?"
A "Windows geek," by definition, already has a name: Fool.
Cheers.
PR skills must be listed as part of this guy's job description.
He's using an old PR trick: If the message you were "staying on" becomes fouled, spin the subject to something positive related to the same subject. Microsoft folks are stretching and spinning so far and so hard this past year they seem to be living in a different universe. But that is just tactical.
The strategy behind such behavior is "The Big Lie." Repeat the same lie in front of people over time and you'll soon have a few who believe it, and if you target the right people in the first place -- PHBs in this case -- you'll have believers with budgetary control. The problem with this is the simple law of "Truth Physics:" Truth is lighter than lies and will always raise to the top of the pile, so to keep truth buried one must constantly pile on lies -- or truth will out. The practioner of the "Big Lie" can never, ever stop spewing BS or the game is lost.
That Microsoft is straining so hard and spewing so much BS these days suggests they know they're in trouble; that the BS being spewed is less and less connected with reality suggests they are starting to panic.
Rhetorical question: How long does a house of cards take to fall?
Happy Friday the 13th.
Didn't your mommy teach you not to make fun of the little retarded kid down the block? The same lesson applies here: The author of this "Ask Slashdot" post probably lives in a cave and only comes out to do his research via the MSN web search tool at the local Starbucks.
Be nice to the unfortunate ones even when their efforts are truely pathetic.
Happy Friday the 13th.
What a great idea! I'll take off that Macintosh OS X stuff and put on Microsoft Windows XP. While I'm at it, I think I'll take the engine out of the Yugo and put it in the Porche: That way I can have the best of both worlds!
What will they think of next? Gotta love the march of progress.
Oy.
Microsoft security.
.wmf file format security hole, a real gapping maw of a hole. The following Monday, YESTERDAY, _two_ (2) more .wmf flaws are reported and posted with exploits.
That Microsoft has security like a cheese grater has bouyancy is a very well known fact, but the interesting point underlying the well known fact is _why_ Microsoft has such lousy security.
I suggest it's their attitude towards security. For example, last Thursday Microsoft released a patch for the
This is the way Microsoft does security: They wait for users to get hammered and scream, _then_ they might fix it, but just that one thing, anything else related is ignored until the cycle starts again with users getting hammered and screaming about it.
After the past two years of Microsoft "security," the only people who still run that junk are the ones locked in by their PHBs and the clueless pubic who buy PCs based on what they see on TV. Oh yes, and the willfully locked-in Microsoft fanbois who are out in droves today defending their sinking ship against the crush of reality.
Microsoft fans are much like the "Intelligent Design" people: They believe and insist their belief is the same thing as knowledge. This gives them the excuse to ignore reality with it's rather unpleasant (to them) consequences.
Face the reality of the situation with Microsoft products: They want your money first and foremost, anything and everything else is, at best, second thought. This includes security, quality -- everything else.
That's your reality, deal with it in a constructive way by getting off the Microsoft Gerbel Wheel from Hell (tm): It's the only way to be sure.
Cheers.
Yeah, have to agree with that. Laptop is nice at home or library, but otherwise not so good. This thing could be a very good tool. Be really nice if it could be, er, hacked to have a few PDM features as well. I live and breathe with lists and notes, so it would be nice to have both in one unit.
Sorry to reply to my own post, but the Sony site:
e s.html
http://products.sel.sony.com/pa/PRS/reader_featur
Has much more info on the unit. Plays MP3s, does do other document formats including html, ASCII, shows pics, etc.
Oh dear, I'll probably have to turn apostate and get one of these. Or maybe wait until someone besides Sony makes something comparable.
It has to be able to display these to be of interest to me:
http://www.gutenberg.org/
I do like to read contemporary works as well, (Strange and Norrell recently and Dowd's Bushworld) but I heavily favor the classics. I would not turn my nose up at proprietary formats and limited ownership times for most contemporary works since I rarely want to keep them after reading them. Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is a recent exception to that general rule (have them in hard back, looking forward to reading them again soon.)
PDFs and the ability to load one's own ASCII files would be most useful and thus a tempting electronic morsel for consumption by my eager wallet.
Very nice battery life on this unit, regardless.
Hey, I resemble that remark.
Note to Editors:
.wmf design flaw attack doesn't even require a password to get things going, so I guess Microsoft wins this round on points for "ease of use" and "elegant design." WMF could be the one true Microsoft innovation we've all been waiting for and then everyone trashes them for it. Ingrates.
We're used to having a big, fat juicy target to poke fun at and this just doesn't cut it. Oracle is not nearly as much fun as Microsoft, mostly because the Oracle folks are more professional and actually get and deserve some respect from humans on this planet.
As concerns this worm: A default password entry and then run a script? The Microsoft
So give us some real meat to chew on, not this veggie bean curd stuff, ugh.
Cheers.
Woah, you're right. Confused by that one, oops. So much for trying to be witty at 2 a.m. *blush* Nighty night.
Whoa, interesting math. You program for Microsoft?
Go re-figure.
...to do what they do best. Which is why I use a different OS and suggest others do so as well.
What does Microsoft do best? Why, get the money out of the pockets of suckers, of course.
Suckers.
Cheers!
Well, I played it this year as usual and so I suppose, umm, yes!
I have a high quality jones for this Rogue-type game.
"Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back..."
Okay, I tried smoking a kipper but it just wouldn't light. Is there a howto for this?
I was thinking that inhaling a burning fish sounds pretty odd, but then inhaling burning plant is rather odd too when one thinks about it. So I started thinking about other things one could smoke but decided to stick with plants after the flashing image of myself with a burning gerbil between my lips. And spare me the Tom jokes, please.
Happy New Year from Boise, Idaho
Angband is not on the list? The author must be from the Windows dimension, the one I refer to as Dimentia.
Seriously though, Angband is great,a modernized descendant of the old Unix "Rogue." If you think you are a tough, hardcore gamer, Angband will humble you thoroughly in short order.
There's an old joke that goes, "I've got a bridge for sale. Great deal on dis bridge!"
Point being that Microsoft has always promised very high and delivered extremely low. You're more fortunate than most since you know about and use alternatives. In userland, most of them are just recently realizing that they been sold "da bridge."
Sure wish I had bought that Apple stock a few years ago, doh!
"....I am amazed at how often scientists are proven wrong....finding facts that turn out to be just plain
wrong"
Please do a yourself (and us) a favor and do a quick google for "Scientific Method" and educate yourself.
Scientists expect to be wrong, it's part of the process: Posit a theory, prove it wrong, rework the
theory, prove it a wrong again, rinse, repeat until you get to where you can't prove it wrong -- at that
point you have a tentative "fact." Until then it's all just theory waiting for the next proof. Don't
confuse theory with fact if you want to be accurate, assuming of course you care about accuracy.
Speaking of confusion: Those clowns with a god to grind who insist upon confusing different definitions of the word "theory" so they can have something to attack are using a classic straw man argument; intellectual dishonesty at its very worst. Don't make the same mistake by confusing a current theory with a known fact; they are not the same things and they serve different purposes with the end result of the whole ordeal being some approximation of "truth."
That you have modern transportation, communications, health care and an average lifespan over the age of thirty suggests the scientific method works. As a comparison, consider the twelve hundred years of darkness from 300 A.D. to 1500 A.D. when god logic ruled the Western world.
Caio.
Look at changing the read/write/execute bits for the home directory's permissions. If this is confusing for you, google for a help me or a howto on the permissions system. It's not a hard thing but there are some tricks and traps so having good documentation with examples is usually helpful.
Back up the home directories with the mirdir program regularly or just tarball the directories, preferably put the backups to a different hard drive or different PC/system: This is more important than anything else you can do if the info in the home directories is more important than the system itself.
I admire your friends' attitude about his kids and their PC; they will learn much very fast and enjoy doing it. I would suggest someone examine the box regularly for net traffic and make sure there is a good firewall setup: A rooted *NIX box with broadband net access is a very nasty loose cannon.
Cheers.
Having a choice of various different interfaces to computers systems is a blessing, not a curse. Need to build a netsurfer box for Grandma, wife, or kids then use Gnome or KDE. Put together a server, no GUI needed. On my workstation, WindowMaker on the main box, shell access only on the other but X displays on the main box. Others do different tricks with different tools.
It's your box, your systems: Decide how the machines will be used and who will be using them, then pick the appropriate tools. Be glad -- and be thankful -- for the variety as it is a very good thing.
And for those who insist that "Linux" have only one standard interface, just remember "Linux" isn't a monolithic structure but a collection of tools from which you build what you want or need. If you are with a company worrying about providing support, build a distro and tell your customers that's what you support directly, everything else Linux-wise is base info support only and the customer is expected to know what to do for their distribution. Or tell them you only support such-and-such distributions directly, everything else is basic info only. There are many different ways to skin this particular dog.
Arguments over "which one rulz" are stupidly pointless unless it's a feature-by-feature comparison. The reference article would have done better to have done just that; a comparison of KDE vs. Gnome as concerns their features and tools. Are KDE and Gnome meant to address the same user groups? I'm not so sure and a good comparison of the two might have proven useful in deciding betwix the two. I am sure that having a choice between the two gives people flexibility via options.
About preferences. Some people prefer blondes, some like brunettes and I've heard rumors of some folks even liking red-haired types. Then there is the whole eye color thing, and then body shapes and breast sizes, etc. Oy, it quickly becomes complicated, but it's such a fine form of torture. Indeed, beautiful women are like fine art: If you have to own every piece that strikes your fancy, you are either very rich or very frustrated. But _having_a_choice_ amongst so many different makes and models ensures continued shopping bliss by keeping it interesting.
Start with GUIs, end with fine women; time to call Dr. Strangethoughts.
Happy New Year!