This is a hostile reference, it's true, but does not contradict that at least the world's largest timber company (which has a good incentive to plant trees) does in fact plant them.
As to the chip-on-shoulder complaint that Weyerhaueser "does not expand upon how many of those 40 million seedlings make it to maturity or how many of those tree farms are replacing our disappearing old-growth forests," eh, no comment at this time:) Few primitivists expand much upon the effects of slash and burn agriculture, either:) (Not that these are some sort of binary choice, just that the world is complex, and most of life is a series of interesting tradeoffs.)
I used to rail on spammers with the reluctantly held position that passing laws was the only way to hit them where it hurts, give them some jail time, etc.
I'd still like to see some spammers go to jail, it's true, but I am getting happier and happier with filters -- and I'd much rather see the spam phenomenon answered that way. (OK, ok, I give, I give... UNCLE!)
I set my mom up with Mac OS X, and the famous junk mail filtering system within it really is great. I've been adding filters to PINE; they're not Bayesian or otherwise learning-type filters, but they cut down on the junk quite a bit. (Hey, I should add some screenshots to make that a better HOWTO...) Mozilla mail is getting junk-mail filters, too. And SpamAssassin users all seem to swear by it. Even hotmail is doing a better job of it these days.
The increasing usefulness of filters (at various levels) is I think a good reason to be less hasty to call for legal remedies; I am starting to regret my former attitude about it. Yes, there should be laws that protect people from force or fraud, but they should be as limited as possible, should err in favor of free speech (not that most spam much deserves that label). Despite hating spam, I don't want email to have to pass an official censor board and be "approved as legitimate." My *own* censor board (filters), fine:) Just not one set up on my behalf without my consent.
This leaves people who are even further left than I am on the bell curve of computer savvy a little bit in the cold (because it takes some cleverness and free time to counter the clever malice of the spampigs), but on the other hand it gives good incentive to ISPs and other intermediaries (including makers of 3rd party software, mail clients) to make their products better and thus more popular. Popularity is important even when money is not the prime mover, as with Mozilla / Kmail, or Evolution.*
Cheers,
timothy
*Sure, Ximian is a company, and they would like money, but the fact is that you can use Evolution for free.
timothy
an idle thought re: licensing
on
PINE Releases 4.50
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Since the biggest objection I can see to PINE is the licensing (and since it's already installed on the system which receives my email, it's not something which bothers me, even, and I stress *even* if it otherwise would), I wonder why UWashington does not give in and dual-license it.
Even a one-time release of a particular code snapshot under the GPL or BSD or [insert license] (with no intention of coordinating any further development of that branch) would / should satisfy most of the complainers:)
This is just an off-the-cuff thought, but... why not?
You're right. Thanks. I should take up drinking coffee, I guess.
timothy
spam filters in PINE: how to add them :)
on
PINE Releases 4.50
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· Score: 5, Informative
I've been using PINE for a long time; this does not make me a power user of PINE so much as someone who has eventually had a very few useful bits of information blasted at me enough to have left a small groove in my brain like a flatworm. (Right animal I'm thinking of?) Here's one thing that I hope you find useful: how to use PINE's filters.
Many people, in fact, don't realize that PINE has a very nice filter system. Yes, there *is* a fine manual for pine, but not that many pithy HOWTOs. Or maybe there are -- google searches eventually brought this information to light for me, and I'm just paraphrasing it here for your convenience:)
So. Let's say you use pine, and want to stop, interrogate and file away from your sensitive eyeballs all email that contains the giveaway snippet "this email cannot be considered spam". Here's a step-by-step guide -- it's only this long to provide assurance; once you start the process, you can probably ignore my steps and simply follow the on-screen prompts.
1) fire up pine if it's not already running.
2) Hit "M" if you're not at the Main screen. My PINE session is setup to take me straight to my inbox, but yours may already bring you right to your main screen, but at any rate hitting M can't hurt:)
3) (OK, this is really three steps in one) Hit "S" for Setup; Hit "R" for Rules; Hit "F" for Filter, because that's the type of Rule you want to add.
6) The screen you're now looking at is a bit intimidating, but it's really like a gruff pal who is actually friendly once you're past his exterior. Highlighted already is a line that says "No Value Set: using "Filter Rule": at this point, hit return and give your filter an appropriate name. I usually say something like "[keyword description] [(reason)]" -- in this case, I'd make it "this email cannot be considered spam (spam)." From here on out, use your arrow keys or tab around to fill in the relevant information.
7) Let's do this example section by section. In the top section, the one headed by the line "CURRENT FOLDER CONDITIONS BEGIN HERE," you most likely will not have to do anything; the default is probably to make the filter affect your inbox, which is what I (and I'm guessing most people) usually want.
8) Next section, "FILTERED MESSAGE CONDITIONS BEGIN HERE," that is, looks more complicated than it is. You can ignore the fields you don't care about by just leaving them blank. If you were trying to block all messages from "stalker99@aol.com," you would put that address in the field labeled "From pattern." In our present example, go down to the field "AllText pattern," hit return to give yourself an input field, and type in (or paste in) "this email cannot be considered spam". In fact, "cannot be considered spam" by itself might be even smarter. I avoid punctuation in my spam filters; you want matches, and shorter phrases give more matches.
9) Almost done:) Scroll down, ignoring a few sections, to the section "ACTIONS BEGIN HERE" and the subsection "Filter action =" Go down to the line "Folder List = " and hit return (again, this is the way you get a text entry field). Type in the name of a folder to which you would like the dreck blasted; "spam" is what I call mine. If the folder does not yet exist, PINE will prompt you and ask if you want to create it; this is a useful catch in case you accidentally try to filter it to "span" instead.
10) Hit "E" to "Exit Setup." When PINE asks "Commit changes ("Yes" replaces settings, "No" abandons changes)? " hit Y for Yes. You now have a filter in place!:) If it corresponds to a piece of spam currently in your inbox, you should see a message like "moving one filtered message to "spam.""
11) Return to you inbox; "M" for Main and "I" for inbox should do it. If your filter was well applied, you should be down one spam:)
Note: you can set up filters on ingoing mail for your friends as well as the jerks of the world; you can filter all mail from your old buddies to a folder "pals," and mail from coworkers to "job_mail," etc, by using the "From pattern" field rather than the AllText pattern, for instance.
Then, to read your sorted email, look in the folders you have created, because the incoming messages will be sorted into them. i.e., if you create a "friends" folder, you must open that folder to see the mail which has been sorted into it.
This is a very incomplete look at PINE's filters, but I hope it is useful to you. If you explore the options available on the filter creation page, for instance, you can see that you can also sent junk mail straight to the toilet by deleting it unread; this has resulted in some false positives for me, so I try not to do this any more.
I have burned several Knoppix CDs for friends from my hard drive to my rather pokey internal CD-RW drive. However, since that's also a primary drive for me, I did not want to overtax it, and I now I will me making many more, so...
I bought a CD burner on sale from Target (for those outside the Target area, har har, see www.target.com -- large American retail chain, for the last few years has been working on its image as a modern general store up the totem pole from Wal-Mart). Then, burner unopened, I decided to trade it in when I saw they had a *duplicator* for $250. It's only one-source-to-one-target (not a fancy thing with internal drive or 16 target trays), but can copy a full CD in about 5 minutes. (Perhaps they do in some areas, but I've never seen CompUSA or such stores to carry duplicators -- I find it a strange but nice decision on target's part to stock them.)
The drive is the 2nd generation (they were clearing out the 1st gen recently, I wish I had bought one of those instead), and though it has the currently popular "crystal black" look, I wish the top were not swoopy, so I could rest other things on it, which is perhaps the designers' point, but hey.
e3works.com -- if you want to see it. bad site, though.
Now: does anyone know how to make this drive work with Linux? I have tried two other external USB drives with Linux, and they have Just Worked with recent distros, Debian / Red hat / Mandrake. This one does not -- for instance, running cdrecord -scanbus does not find the drive. Yes, I have it switched to the "USB drive" mode rather than the Duplication mode. Anyone have tips?:)
I see this one (the tiny l'espion camera), but see no supplier in the U.S. (anyone know of one?), which appears inexpensive and very light (40 grams!).
There's also the SiPix StyleCam Blink, which is about $40, and slightly larger but takes higher-res pictures, too.
What other tiny ones would be suitable for tossing on a kite (whether or not the two I've named would be), and what would be the best way to trigger them?
timothy
Re:CMYK, and GIMP UI vs. drop-down menus
on
Film Gimp
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· Score: 1
netsharc wrote: "Seeing as Film Gimp would produce output for optical devices, I can't see why they would worry about CMYK, which is more for paper media."
Well, the reason I mentioned it at all was this quote in the linked article:
"Lately we've been leading some discussion about supporting CMYK. That's a feature that's been requested of Gimp for years. CMYK is of interest to printers and still photographers. Although CMYK is not of interest for motion picture retouching, the 16-bit design of Film Gimp makes it suitable for high quality still work, too. Film Gimp supports both 16-bit integer and 16-bit floating point formats."
That statement is pretty ambiguous, but I hope it means they really will be either supporting it or making it easier for someone else to integrate CMYK support. I don't need it at the moment, but it's something I'd like to show to my friends in advertising who currently have a real need for it (sending color seps to printers, etc).
timothy
CMYK, and GIMP UI vs. drop-down menus
on
Film Gimp
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm really glad to see that Film Gimp work (which seemed dead or at least very sleepy for a while) is actually continuing. Thanks, Robin Rowe!
As I understand it (can anyone improve my understanding?) a lot of the work done for Film Gimp will likely end up rolled back into Gimp. This sounds great. I hope though that the "right click" menus are not completely replaced; I rather like the way they work. I understand that a lot of people don't like them, though... I just hope that any new menu approaches are offered as options rather than The New Way.
CMYK is the constant complaint I hear wrt to Gimp vs Photoshop, even from people who aren't sure what CMYK is or why they should want one for the kitchen. So I do hope that film gimp work results in CMYK support.
So after "that awful interface" (not my opinion, but hey) and CMYK support, what's the *next*-biggest complaint people have about the GIMP?:)
timothy
non-secret, selfish reason for composting :)
on
My Compost Bin And I
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· Score: 2, Informative
The best reason for recycling: Laziness.
The family compost heap at the family's northern holdings consists of two "wraparound" things -- rubbery, tough material with lots of holes in the sides which is basically collapsable, but stays up once there is a bit of material stretching the sides apart on the bottom. (Think of a botttomless, topless, pliant tube, with holes all over it.It exists as a shapeholder only when there is stuff inside of it.)
Once in a while (ideally -- in practice we rarely do this, or feel the need to), you pull up the tube, relocate it, and pitch (as in pitchfork) in the pile of compost. you have left over, thus mixing it up, ensuring the different layers all get to know each other, etc.
How is it Lazy? Simple -- the more that goes into the kitchen compost pot (in our case, actually old orange juice cartons fully opened so they have a large mouth... in smarter houses, this is often a wide ceramic vessel with a lid), the less refuse Younger Son must carry to the garbage collection spot down the road.
In the 8 or 9 years this system has been in place, I think we've emptied the resulting stuff only once -- super nice soil. Perhaps twice, but the point is the same. The point is, it is for our purposes a nearly bottomless sink for all the organic detritus we can toss in -- banana peels, dead plants, egg shells, mussel shells (ideally sundried and crushed), bread scraps, dead tea leaves, corn husks, onion peels, etc etc. Never noticed a bad odor, and have never seen rats or racoons near it. A few bugs, esp. when fruit items are left un-mixed-in, but that's OK. Acceptable tradeoff.
If we were active gardeners instead of merely occasionaly putterers, we could probably both turn and empty this pile more frequently and get nice soil out of it more often, but... we're not.
So there you have it:)
timothy
Re:OCR Software -- Clara, perhaps?
on
Just One Page a Day
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· Score: 5, Informative
Though the web page was last updated in July, I find several happy references (and some less happy) to "Clara," a GPL'd OCR program.
Here's the web page: http://www.claraocr.org/index.html
My family is mostly Mac now -- my mom and sister have them, and I have one in part so I can follow their explanations when troubleshooting by phone.
And overall, now that I've made the switch (from 9 to X) more-or-less permanently wrt time spent on my iBook, I've stopped caring. The system is nice, and with Chimera and Mozilla (giving me browsing and IRC), I no longer feel any great need to boot into 9 for the speed.
Yes, it is slowish -- my old 366MHz ThinkPad 600 with 128MB RAM is *snappier* running Windowmaker or even KDE than my 500MHz iBook (with 384MB) running OS 10.2, but I find the speed differenceis not terribly annoying. And 10.2 is noticeably faster than 10.1, and esp. faster than 10.0.1
The Apple keyboard I could do without, but that's not really the OS's fault.
I prefer (for various reasons) any of several Linux desktops for day-to-day use, but the iBook, even this slow one, makes a nice station for editing home movies, 802.11 access, etc. (I wish other companies would license that airport space inside the machine... it's nice to have it in there full time, no card-edge to worry about snapping off...)
shepd wrote:
"Maybe he got that (mistaken) idea [that story placement can be purchased as an advertisement] from this?
Ad: PriceCompare
Hmmm. Well, the answer is still No:)
The related links thing (labeled "Ad") has nothing to do with the acceptance of a given submission; the links in it are generated automatically, whether the story is about Lego, the moon, privacy in the Ukraine, etc etc. In approving a submission, I cannot choose anything about what links that service finds, or turn it off. The truth is, I've basically ignored it until you mentioned it in this comment.
Now, though, I've poked that link for a few stories, and notice that the "related" items it finds are very hit-or-miss, to put it lightly.
The conspiracy theories are much more interesting than the pedestrian truth though -- I should make a bribe list, like a wedding registry:)
siskbc wrote: "As pointed out a few months ago,./ is now taking for-pay "stories." I wouldn't mind this, except for the fact that they don't mark them as such. I mean, even crappy magazines with no journalistic integrity at all (ok, maxim) at least states what's advertising and not. I think./ seriously compromises its integrity by trying to camouflage them."
siskbc: Not sure where you get this idea, but it's not true.
I posted this story because I thought it was a neat piece of technology. I'd never heard of it before I read / approved the submission, and am unlikely to see one in person in the near future. Kickbacks? Paid stories? Ha! Slashdot stories are posted by real people, not X-files conspirators (or even bribed weasels... I'd be happy to have one of these to review, in fact, or even to keep, but no manufacturer yet has figured out how to bribe me:))
I know it costs more (esp. looking at purchases vs. existing, "free" floppy drives), but CD writers are no longer expensive, and make a much more durable medium for temporary storage. External USB CD-RWs can be had for $75, less if you look around...
With just a couple of these in a classsroom (annoying as it would be to have to hook them up much), you could have something nicer than floppies.... floppies = annoyance and data loss.
If you should try this, I suggest putting a small USB extension on end of the cable towards the computer, and plugging into each machine only the end of the extension, to reduce wear and tear.
I can't guarantee that this is the problem you're having, but the problem I got stuck on when first trying kppp was that I didn't explore enough of the tabs in the setup utility. Specifically (and please don't be mad if you have, it's just a thought), have you gone through the several choices for modem location, trying to dial after selecting each one? Like a lost object, always in the last place you look...
Since I've misplaced the power cord for my ThinkPad, this is being typed instead on my iBook, or I'd look at the kppp configuration better and try to remember the other hangups I had with it, but now it's been a while since I've had to configure kppp other than changing the phone number:)
kppp is really a nice dialer once you have it going.
... is the sheer number of packages included on a *single* CD ROM. It's incredible. (Plus, they tend to be quite recent versions, and with some programs, like the excellent and promising Scribus, that's important because progress is rapid.)
Also, if you want to show someone the sheer variety of free and Free browsers available with Linux, Scribus has konqueror, mozilla, dillo, not to mention text-based ones as well.
It's an amazing distro -- demoware that really works. Anecdote: I have used Knoppix, from the CD, as my only OS for several days when using a borrowed laptop on which I could not politely do an OS swap. Except a slight slowness with the CD up-and-down-spinning, it was hard to tell I wasn't just using a recent Debian system installed normally.
It's perhaps more an aesthetic issue than anything else (after all, it's his, and if Linus decides to call the next Big Release 3.0 or 2.83986 or "Peggy" or anything else, I can't stop him), but I'm happy that so far he seems to be holding out, calling the next one 2.6 however equivocally.
It goes with the idea of "underpromise and overdeliver" which seems like a smart one to stick to, in software particularly. A series of pleasant, quietly presented surprises is much better than the sour taste of Not Quite What Was Promised. Outside of a minority (those who in particular care about Free software, and in particular the almighty GNU/Linux operating system in some form or another) within a minority (those people who give > a tinker's cuss about computers / computing at all), no one will care about the version number -- but since context matters, so do those people, however few.
I've been impressed with OpenOffice (esp. given some of the vitriolic criticism I've heard, I guess none of it applies to what I use it for), and I wonder if you have used that, can compare with the recent Corel suite. I've seen a few screenshots, but the last time I actually *used* WP was when they had a Linux version, which I thought was a neat concept but I never really got into WP, found it rather clunky.
And since a lot of other people are probably asking "Why not OpenOffice?!" I wonder if you've used both and can answer that:)
Cheers,
timothy
timeshifting plus plasma (rant re: TV)
on
PC that acts like a TV
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I have (well, have had) two big prejudices against television, both of which the past few years have worn away at.
1) Time-stealing. I hate the idea that a television show should dominate one's schedule, replacing other activities at all costs, and for this reason held my own one-man TV boycott for a long time, trying to avoid it. (Worse, when someone's whole life is written around the television schedule, day by day and timeslot by timeslot.) Besides the general obnoxious time-slavery, there's the other problem that most of what's on TV is awful anyhow:) Besides bad programs, there are the just-as-bad advertisements. I don't mind seeing some ads, but until I'm in the pickup truck buying mode (one in the family is really enough), I *don't want to see Silverado ads!* I don't need to see tampon ads, ads for Preparation H, ads for vaguely hinted-at medicines about which I am implored to ask my doctor -- ARRRGHH!
TiVo and other PVRs do a lot of answer this argument. (And tapes suck, as in my #2;)) If I can watch The Simpsons (hey, no accounting for taste) at the time of my own choosing, and pause as desired, and decide which of the comercials I feel like experiencing, then OK.
2) Bulk. A TV is an annoying thing to carry around, at least for my particular part of the Venn diagram. If you can afford a GIGANTIC screen, perhaps you can also afford to be carried around in a sedan chair by beautiful servants, and have your television moved in (and moved at will later, if you want) by a set of insaller guys, like the characters in the video for the Dire Straights song "Money for Nothing." I can afford a smaller screen than that, and have ended up buying a couple televisions in the course of my life, and inevitably moving them around. I sold my last one (a small but pleasant Sony) and do not regret the transaction at all -- since then, the only TV I've *owned* is a tiny (handheld) LCD one.
Besides the moving-around part, TV bulk is also a problem in that conventional (CRT) TVs take up a lot of space in a room, and often end up being made a sort of shrine, which bugs me. TV is one possible input in a home (or office or wherever) but I always cringe to see rooms / houses which seem to be devoted to it as a household god. Better to have none than to have one which determines the placement of every other piece od furniture.
I had a VCR once, too, and though it was OK, *but* -- I rarely used it, even more rarely programmed it to record anything, and it broke on probably day 366 with a year's warranty. Oh well. Have never bought another, and am happy not to have one. Tapes are like weights on one's ankles. They break, they get lost, they get recorded and then not labeled...
[I have had the *use* of some other TVs since I sold mine 3 years ago, but none are permanantly attached.]
So: TiVo (and this thingamajiggie from HP, and Replay TV, etc.) kill my biggest complaints (time restrictions, inapprpopriate and annoying advertisements), and the advent of LCD screens with TV tuners (including computers with tuner cards attached to LCDs) and plasma TVs are doing a good job of killing the others.
In fact, I saw recent-model plasma TV (a 42" Panasonic) for the first time a few weeks ago. [I had seen some others at trade shows, but they were basically *monitors* rather than TVs, and I did not inspect them as closely; a few years ago I saw some at Frys in Palo Alto, and they were OK but nowhere near as impressive.] Amazing colors, bright, sharp picture -- much better, frankly, than I had expected.
One nice thing about them is that though they need *careful* handling, it looks not outrageous for one person to lift up to the 42" size at least. (Someone correct me if that's wrong -- this is conjecture on my part.).
Just as important, once installed, they can be put out of sight, or at least reduced to "inconspicuous" when not being used. Not true of a 42" conventional television. With a plasma screen, I can see hanging a velvet curtain (or more likely a protective louvre) in front of the screen *unless* actively watching it.
(Even if the MS-centric way of doing things is bound to be annoying, I am glad that people are starting to accept computer-things as being a legitimate adjunct to their television-things.)
Soon, a large hard drive filled with arguably good content, connected to a reasonably large flat display (whether Plasma, or LED, or OLED, or whatever) will be a fairly normal thing. I will not weep for the death of "regular" television:)
However, Apple claims on their website that the iPod *is* upgradeable (http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html -- says "Upgradable firmware enables support for future audio formats") and the Xiph folks seem to think that the iPod is a possibility, because they ask people to politely bug Apple for it. (http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/hardware.html). I don't know what the real limitations of the iPod are, though.. I think it has two 75MHz ARM chips in there, which should be plenty.
I'd rather an ogg-friendly player to play burned CR-R(W)s though, instead... 1) because I'm leery of tiny hard drives, and 2) because when I'm not actually in transit, I'd like to be able to pop the disk from a portable player into a local computer, and (eventually) into a real stereo system's player, when a "real stereo" systems CD/DVD device will also play oggs. Considering how many DVD players play MP3s, this does not seem too outlandish to me...
Actually, I should have been more specific: it looks better in *capabilities* than my old Tonka truck, which got lost in some move probably 20 years ago... Tonka stuff looks good, is built correctly, but has no camera, programmability.
Interesting note: Tonka toys are hard to destruct, as you see aware:) However, my elder brother created some sort of goo -- by mixing things from the completely unsafe under-the-kitchen-counter chemical lab -- which managed to *wrinkle* part of the surface on my Tonka. I was mad, but I was also impressed, and even more so in retrospect. What chemicals under the sink would wrinkle that %$#@ tough metal?!
Wasn't Randy's laptop described instead as having a simple pinhole-type camera? (Sorry, book on loan at the moment;)) The Picturebooks are definitely not that... I remember thinking that this was a potentially much better idea than putting a regular (glass-lens) camera into a laptop lid like Sony did, though of course that has its own advantages.
Slashdot Mirror
"Corporations are not known to plant trees when they chop them down!"
:)
:) Few primitivists expand much upon the effects of slash and burn agriculture, either :) (Not that these are some sort of binary choice, just that the world is complex, and most of life is a series of interesting tradeoffs.)
Well, some of them are
This is a hostile reference, it's true, but does not contradict that at least the world's largest timber company (which has a good incentive to plant trees) does in fact plant them.
As to the chip-on-shoulder complaint that Weyerhaueser "does not expand upon how many of those 40 million seedlings make it to maturity or how many of those tree farms are replacing our disappearing old-growth forests," eh, no comment at this time
timothy
I used to rail on spammers with the reluctantly held position that passing laws was the only way to hit them where it hurts, give them some jail time, etc.
... UNCLE!)
...) Mozilla mail is getting junk-mail filters, too. And SpamAssassin users all seem to swear by it. Even hotmail is doing a better job of it these days.
:) Just not one set up on my behalf without my consent.
I'd still like to see some spammers go to jail, it's true, but I am getting happier and happier with filters -- and I'd much rather see the spam phenomenon answered that way. (OK, ok, I give, I give
I set my mom up with Mac OS X, and the famous junk mail filtering system within it really is great. I've been adding filters to PINE; they're not Bayesian or otherwise learning-type filters, but they cut down on the junk quite a bit. (Hey, I should add some screenshots to make that a better HOWTO
The increasing usefulness of filters (at various levels) is I think a good reason to be less hasty to call for legal remedies; I am starting to regret my former attitude about it. Yes, there should be laws that protect people from force or fraud, but they should be as limited as possible, should err in favor of free speech (not that most spam much deserves that label). Despite hating spam, I don't want email to have to pass an official censor board and be "approved as legitimate." My *own* censor board (filters), fine
This leaves people who are even further left than I am on the bell curve of computer savvy a little bit in the cold (because it takes some cleverness and free time to counter the clever malice of the spampigs), but on the other hand it gives good incentive to ISPs and other intermediaries (including makers of 3rd party software, mail clients) to make their products better and thus more popular. Popularity is important even when money is not the prime mover, as with Mozilla / Kmail, or Evolution.*
Cheers,
timothy
*Sure, Ximian is a company, and they would like money, but the fact is that you can use Evolution for free.
timothy
Since the biggest objection I can see to PINE is the licensing (and since it's already installed on the system which receives my email, it's not something which bothers me, even, and I stress *even* if it otherwise would), I wonder why UWashington does not give in and dual-license it.
:)
... why not?
Even a one-time release of a particular code snapshot under the GPL or BSD or [insert license] (with no intention of coordinating any further development of that branch) would / should satisfy most of the complainers
This is just an off-the-cuff thought, but
You're right. Thanks. I should take up drinking coffee, I guess.
timothy
I've been using PINE for a long time; this does not make me a power user of PINE so much as someone who has eventually had a very few useful bits of information blasted at me enough to have left a small groove in my brain like a flatworm. (Right animal I'm thinking of?) Here's one thing that I hope you find useful: how to use PINE's filters.
:)
:)
:) Scroll down, ignoring a few sections, to the section "ACTIONS BEGIN HERE" and the subsection "Filter action =" Go down to the line "Folder List = " and hit return (again, this is the way you get a text entry field). Type in the name of a folder to which you would like the dreck blasted; "spam" is what I call mine. If the folder does not yet exist, PINE will prompt you and ask if you want to create it; this is a useful catch in case you accidentally try to filter it to "span" instead.
:) If it corresponds to a piece of spam currently in your inbox, you should see a message like "moving one filtered message to "spam.""
:)
Many people, in fact, don't realize that PINE has a very nice filter system. Yes, there *is* a fine manual for pine, but not that many pithy HOWTOs. Or maybe there are -- google searches eventually brought this information to light for me, and I'm just paraphrasing it here for your convenience
So. Let's say you use pine, and want to stop, interrogate and file away from your sensitive eyeballs all email that contains the giveaway snippet "this email cannot be considered spam". Here's a step-by-step guide -- it's only this long to provide assurance; once you start the process, you can probably ignore my steps and simply follow the on-screen prompts.
1) fire up pine if it's not already running.
2) Hit "M" if you're not at the Main screen. My PINE session is setup to take me straight to my inbox, but yours may already bring you right to your main screen, but at any rate hitting M can't hurt
3) (OK, this is really three steps in one) Hit "S" for Setup; Hit "R" for Rules; Hit "F" for Filter, because that's the type of Rule you want to add.
6) The screen you're now looking at is a bit intimidating, but it's really like a gruff pal who is actually friendly once you're past his exterior. Highlighted already is a line that says "No Value Set: using "Filter Rule": at this point, hit return and give your filter an appropriate name. I usually say something like "[keyword description] [(reason)]" -- in this case, I'd make it "this email cannot be considered spam (spam)." From here on out, use your arrow keys or tab around to fill in the relevant information.
7) Let's do this example section by section.
In the top section, the one headed by the line "CURRENT FOLDER CONDITIONS BEGIN HERE," you most likely will not have to do anything; the default is probably to make the filter affect your inbox, which is what I (and I'm guessing most people) usually want.
8) Next section, "FILTERED MESSAGE CONDITIONS BEGIN HERE," that is, looks more complicated than it is. You can ignore the fields you don't care about by just leaving them blank. If you were trying to block all messages from "stalker99@aol.com," you would put that address in the field labeled "From pattern." In our present example, go down to the field "AllText pattern," hit return to give yourself an input field, and type in (or paste in) "this email cannot be considered spam". In fact, "cannot be considered spam" by itself might be even smarter. I avoid punctuation in my spam filters; you want matches, and shorter phrases give more matches.
9) Almost done
10) Hit "E" to "Exit Setup." When PINE asks "Commit changes ("Yes" replaces settings, "No" abandons changes)? " hit Y for Yes. You now have a filter in place!
11) Return to you inbox; "M" for Main and "I" for inbox should do it. If your filter was well applied, you should be down one spam
Note: you can set up filters on ingoing mail for your friends as well as the jerks of the world; you can filter all mail from your old buddies to a folder "pals," and mail from coworkers to "job_mail," etc, by using the "From pattern" field rather than the AllText pattern, for instance.
Then, to read your sorted email, look in the folders you have created, because the incoming messages will be sorted into them. i.e., if you create a "friends" folder, you must open that folder to see the mail which has been sorted into it.
This is a very incomplete look at PINE's filters, but I hope it is useful to you. If you explore the options available on the filter creation page, for instance, you can see that you can also sent junk mail straight to the toilet by deleting it unread; this has resulted in some false positives for me, so I try not to do this any more.
Cheers,
timothy
(and I'm not mad about it)
...
:)
I have burned several Knoppix CDs for friends from my hard drive to my rather pokey internal CD-RW drive. However, since that's also a primary drive for me, I did not want to overtax it, and I now I will me making many more, so
I bought a CD burner on sale from Target (for those outside the Target area, har har, see www.target.com -- large American retail chain, for the last few years has been working on its image as a modern general store up the totem pole from Wal-Mart). Then, burner unopened, I decided to trade it in when I saw they had a *duplicator* for $250. It's only one-source-to-one-target (not a fancy thing with internal drive or 16 target trays), but can copy a full CD in about 5 minutes. (Perhaps they do in some areas, but I've never seen CompUSA or such stores to carry duplicators -- I find it a strange but nice decision on target's part to stock them.)
The drive is the 2nd generation (they were clearing out the 1st gen recently, I wish I had bought one of those instead), and though it has the currently popular "crystal black" look, I wish the top were not swoopy, so I could rest other things on it, which is perhaps the designers' point, but hey.
e3works.com -- if you want to see it. bad site, though.
Now: does anyone know how to make this drive work with Linux? I have tried two other external USB drives with Linux, and they have Just Worked with recent distros, Debian / Red hat / Mandrake. This one does not -- for instance, running cdrecord -scanbus does not find the drive. Yes, I have it switched to the "USB drive" mode rather than the Duplication mode. Anyone have tips?
timothy
I see this one (the tiny l'espion camera), but see no supplier in the U.S. (anyone know of one?), which appears inexpensive and very light (40 grams!).
There's also the SiPix StyleCam Blink, which is about $40, and slightly larger but takes higher-res pictures, too.
What other tiny ones would be suitable for tossing on a kite (whether or not the two I've named would be), and what would be the best way to trigger them?
timothy
netsharc wrote: "Seeing as Film Gimp would produce output for optical devices, I can't see why they would worry about CMYK, which is more for paper media."
Well, the reason I mentioned it at all was this quote in the linked article:
"Lately we've been leading some discussion about supporting CMYK. That's a feature that's been requested of Gimp for years. CMYK is of interest to printers and still photographers. Although CMYK is not of interest for motion picture retouching, the 16-bit design of Film Gimp makes it suitable for high quality still work, too. Film Gimp supports both 16-bit integer and 16-bit floating point formats."
That statement is pretty ambiguous, but I hope it means they really will be either supporting it or making it easier for someone else to integrate CMYK support. I don't need it at the moment, but it's something I'd like to show to my friends in advertising who currently have a real need for it (sending color seps to printers, etc).
timothy
I'm really glad to see that Film Gimp work (which seemed dead or at least very sleepy for a while) is actually continuing. Thanks, Robin Rowe!
... I just hope that any new menu approaches are offered as options rather than The New Way.
:)
As I understand it (can anyone improve my understanding?) a lot of the work done for Film Gimp will likely end up rolled back into Gimp. This sounds great. I hope though that the "right click" menus are not completely replaced; I rather like the way they work. I understand that a lot of people don't like them, though
CMYK is the constant complaint I hear wrt to Gimp vs Photoshop, even from people who aren't sure what CMYK is or why they should want one for the kitchen. So I do hope that film gimp work results in CMYK support.
So after "that awful interface" (not my opinion, but hey) and CMYK support, what's the *next*-biggest complaint people have about the GIMP?
timothy
The best reason for recycling: Laziness.
... in smarter houses, this is often a wide ceramic vessel with a lid), the less refuse Younger Son must carry to the garbage collection spot down the road.
... we're not.
:)
The family compost heap at the family's northern holdings consists of two "wraparound" things -- rubbery, tough material with lots of holes in the sides which is basically collapsable, but stays up once there is a bit of material stretching the sides apart on the bottom. (Think of a botttomless, topless, pliant tube, with holes all over it.It exists as a shapeholder only when there is stuff inside of it.)
Once in a while (ideally -- in practice we rarely do this, or feel the need to), you pull up the tube, relocate it, and pitch (as in pitchfork) in the pile of compost. you have left over, thus mixing it up, ensuring the different layers all get to know each other, etc.
How is it Lazy? Simple -- the more that goes into the kitchen compost pot (in our case, actually old orange juice cartons fully opened so they have a large mouth
In the 8 or 9 years this system has been in place, I think we've emptied the resulting stuff only once -- super nice soil. Perhaps twice, but the point is the same. The point is, it is for our purposes a nearly bottomless sink for all the organic detritus we can toss in -- banana peels, dead plants, egg shells, mussel shells (ideally sundried and crushed), bread scraps, dead tea leaves, corn husks, onion peels, etc etc. Never noticed a bad odor, and have never seen rats or racoons near it. A few bugs, esp. when fruit items are left un-mixed-in, but that's OK. Acceptable tradeoff.
If we were active gardeners instead of merely occasionaly putterers, we could probably both turn and empty this pile more frequently and get nice soil out of it more often, but
So there you have it
timothy
Though the web page was last updated in July, I find several happy references (and some less happy) to "Clara," a GPL'd OCR program.
Here's the web page: http://www.claraocr.org/index.html
timothy
My family is mostly Mac now -- my mom and sister have them, and I have one in part so I can follow their explanations when troubleshooting by phone.
... it's nice to have it in there full time, no card-edge to worry about snapping off ...)
And overall, now that I've made the switch (from 9 to X) more-or-less permanently wrt time spent on my iBook, I've stopped caring. The system is nice, and with Chimera and Mozilla (giving me browsing and IRC), I no longer feel any great need to boot into 9 for the speed.
Yes, it is slowish -- my old 366MHz ThinkPad 600 with 128MB RAM is *snappier* running Windowmaker or even KDE than my 500MHz iBook (with 384MB) running OS 10.2, but I find the speed differenceis not terribly annoying. And 10.2 is noticeably faster than 10.1, and esp. faster than 10.0.1
The Apple keyboard I could do without, but that's not really the OS's fault.
I prefer (for various reasons) any of several Linux desktops for day-to-day use, but the iBook, even this slow one, makes a nice station for editing home movies, 802.11 access, etc. (I wish other companies would license that airport space inside the machine
timothy
"Maybe he got that (mistaken) idea [that story placement can be purchased as an advertisement] from this?
Hmmm. Well, the answer is still No :)
The related links thing (labeled "Ad") has nothing to do with the acceptance of a given submission; the links in it are generated automatically, whether the story is about Lego, the moon, privacy in the Ukraine, etc etc. In approving a submission, I cannot choose anything about what links that service finds, or turn it off. The truth is, I've basically ignored it until you mentioned it in this comment.
Now, though, I've poked that link for a few stories, and notice that the "related" items it finds are very hit-or-miss, to put it lightly.
The conspiracy theories are much more interesting than the pedestrian truth though -- I should make a bribe list, like a wedding registry :)
- 300 pounds of titanium
- personal (habitable) island
- really, that's enough. really.
Cheers,timothy
p.s. End of thread, at least for me :)
siskbc wrote: "As pointed out a few months ago, ./ is now taking for-pay "stories." I wouldn't mind this, except for the fact that they don't mark them as such. I mean, even crappy magazines with no journalistic integrity at all (ok, maxim) at least states what's advertising and not. I think ./ seriously compromises its integrity by trying to camouflage them."
... I'd be happy to have one of these to review, in fact, or even to keep, but no manufacturer yet has figured out how to bribe me :))
siskbc: Not sure where you get this idea, but it's not true.
I posted this story because I thought it was a neat piece of technology. I'd never heard of it before I read / approved the submission, and am unlikely to see one in person in the near future. Kickbacks? Paid stories? Ha! Slashdot stories are posted by real people, not X-files conspirators (or even bribed weasels
Thanks,
timothy
I know it costs more (esp. looking at purchases vs. existing, "free" floppy drives), but CD writers are no longer expensive, and make a much more durable medium for temporary storage. External USB CD-RWs can be had for $75, less if you look around ...
.... floppies = annoyance and data loss.
With just a couple of these in a classsroom (annoying as it would be to have to hook them up much), you could have something nicer than floppies
If you should try this, I suggest putting a small USB extension on end of the cable towards the computer, and plugging into each machine only the end of the extension, to reduce wear and tear.
timothy
I can't guarantee that this is the problem you're having, but the problem I got stuck on when first trying kppp was that I didn't explore enough of the tabs in the setup utility. Specifically (and please don't be mad if you have, it's just a thought), have you gone through the several choices for modem location, trying to dial after selecting each one? Like a lost object, always in the last place you look ...
:)
Since I've misplaced the power cord for my ThinkPad, this is being typed instead on my iBook, or I'd look at the kppp configuration better and try to remember the other hangups I had with it, but now it's been a while since I've had to configure kppp other than changing the phone number
kppp is really a nice dialer once you have it going.
Tim
2nd instance of "Scribus" in above post should of course be "Knoppix." Scribus is not emacs.
... is the sheer number of packages included on a *single* CD ROM. It's incredible. (Plus, they tend to be quite recent versions, and with some programs, like the excellent and promising Scribus, that's important because progress is rapid.)
Also, if you want to show someone the sheer variety of free and Free browsers available with Linux, Scribus has konqueror, mozilla, dillo, not to mention text-based ones as well.
It's an amazing distro -- demoware that really works. Anecdote: I have used Knoppix, from the CD, as my only OS for several days when using a borrowed laptop on which I could not politely do an OS swap. Except a slight slowness with the CD up-and-down-spinning, it was hard to tell I wasn't just using a recent Debian system installed normally.
timothy
It's perhaps more an aesthetic issue than anything else (after all, it's his, and if Linus decides to call the next Big Release 3.0 or 2.83986 or "Peggy" or anything else, I can't stop him), but I'm happy that so far he seems to be holding out, calling the next one 2.6 however equivocally.
It goes with the idea of "underpromise and overdeliver" which seems like a smart one to stick to, in software particularly. A series of pleasant, quietly presented surprises is much better than the sour taste of Not Quite What Was Promised. Outside of a minority (those who in particular care about Free software, and in particular the almighty GNU/Linux operating system in some form or another) within a minority (those people who give > a tinker's cuss about computers / computing at all), no one will care about the version number -- but since context matters, so do those people, however few.
timothy
I've been impressed with OpenOffice (esp. given some of the vitriolic criticism I've heard, I guess none of it applies to what I use it for), and I wonder if you have used that, can compare with the recent Corel suite. I've seen a few screenshots, but the last time I actually *used* WP was when they had a Linux version, which I thought was a neat concept but I never really got into WP, found it rather clunky.
:)
And since a lot of other people are probably asking "Why not OpenOffice?!" I wonder if you've used both and can answer that
Cheers,
timothy
I have (well, have had) two big prejudices against television, both of which the past few years have worn away at.
:) Besides bad programs, there are the just-as-bad advertisements. I don't mind seeing some ads, but until I'm in the pickup truck buying mode (one in the family is really enough), I *don't want to see Silverado ads!* I don't need to see tampon ads, ads for Preparation H, ads for vaguely hinted-at medicines about which I am implored to ask my doctor -- ARRRGHH!
;)) If I can watch The Simpsons (hey, no accounting for taste) at the time of my own choosing, and pause as desired, and decide which of the comercials I feel like experiencing, then OK.
...
:)
1) Time-stealing. I hate the idea that a television show should dominate one's schedule, replacing other activities at all costs, and for this reason held my own one-man TV boycott for a long time, trying to avoid it. (Worse, when someone's whole life is written around the television schedule, day by day and timeslot by timeslot.) Besides the general obnoxious time-slavery, there's the other problem that most of what's on TV is awful anyhow
TiVo and other PVRs do a lot of answer this argument. (And tapes suck, as in my #2
2) Bulk. A TV is an annoying thing to carry around, at least for my particular part of the Venn diagram. If you can afford a GIGANTIC screen, perhaps you can also afford to be carried around in a sedan chair by beautiful servants, and have your television moved in (and moved at will later, if you want) by a set of insaller guys, like the characters in the video for the Dire Straights song "Money for Nothing." I can afford a smaller screen than that, and have ended up buying a couple televisions in the course of my life, and inevitably moving them around. I sold my last one (a small but pleasant Sony) and do not regret the transaction at all -- since then, the only TV I've *owned* is a tiny (handheld) LCD one.
Besides the moving-around part, TV bulk is also a problem in that conventional (CRT) TVs take up a lot of space in a room, and often end up being made a sort of shrine, which bugs me. TV is one possible input in a home (or office or wherever) but I always cringe to see rooms / houses which seem to be devoted to it as a household god. Better to have none than to have one which determines the placement of every other piece od furniture.
I had a VCR once, too, and though it was OK, *but* -- I rarely used it, even more rarely programmed it to record anything, and it broke on probably day 366 with a year's warranty. Oh well. Have never bought another, and am happy not to have one. Tapes are like weights on one's ankles. They break, they get lost, they get recorded and then not labeled
[I have had the *use* of some other TVs since I sold mine 3 years ago, but none are permanantly attached.]
So: TiVo (and this thingamajiggie from HP, and Replay TV, etc.) kill my biggest complaints (time restrictions, inapprpopriate and annoying advertisements), and the advent of LCD screens with TV tuners (including computers with tuner cards attached to LCDs) and plasma TVs are doing a good job of killing the others.
In fact, I saw recent-model plasma TV (a 42" Panasonic) for the first time a few weeks ago. [I had seen some others at trade shows, but they were basically *monitors* rather than TVs, and I did not inspect them as closely; a few years ago I saw some at Frys in Palo Alto, and they were OK but nowhere near as impressive.] Amazing colors, bright, sharp picture -- much better, frankly, than I had expected.
One nice thing about them is that though they need *careful* handling, it looks not outrageous for one person to lift up to the 42" size at least. (Someone correct me if that's wrong -- this is conjecture on my part.).
Just as important, once installed, they can be put out of sight, or at least reduced to "inconspicuous" when not being used. Not true of a 42" conventional television. With a plasma screen, I can see hanging a velvet curtain (or more likely a protective louvre) in front of the screen *unless* actively watching it.
(Even if the MS-centric way of doing things is bound to be annoying, I am glad that people are starting to accept computer-things as being a legitimate adjunct to their television-things.)
Soon, a large hard drive filled with arguably good content, connected to a reasonably large flat display (whether Plasma, or LED, or OLED, or whatever) will be a fairly normal thing. I will not weep for the death of "regular" television
timothy
However, Apple claims on their website that the iPod *is* upgradeable (http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html -- says "Upgradable firmware enables support for future audio formats") and the Xiph folks seem to think that the iPod is a possibility, because they ask people to politely bug Apple for it. (http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/hardware.html). I don't know what the real limitations of the iPod are, though .. I think it has two 75MHz ARM chips in there, which should be plenty.
... 1) because I'm leery of tiny hard drives, and 2) because when I'm not actually in transit, I'd like to be able to pop the disk from a portable player into a local computer, and (eventually) into a real stereo system's player, when a "real stereo" systems CD/DVD device will also play oggs. Considering how many DVD players play MP3s, this does not seem too outlandish to me ...
I'd rather an ogg-friendly player to play burned CR-R(W)s though, instead
timothy
a) More people will use Ogg Vorbis, and like it, on their personal computers
b) A true standalone hardware player will be introduced, followed by another. Perhaps an iPod upgrade, even.
c) Just as many people as do right now will be able to name 2 audio codecs besides MP3 and Ogg Vorbis -- the same people as can right now, in fact.
timothy
Actually, I should have been more specific: it looks better in *capabilities* than my old Tonka truck, which got lost in some move probably 20 years ago ... Tonka stuff looks good, is built correctly, but has no camera, programmability.
:) However, my elder brother created some sort of goo -- by mixing things from the completely unsafe under-the-kitchen-counter chemical lab -- which managed to *wrinkle* part of the surface on my Tonka. I was mad, but I was also impressed, and even more so in retrospect. What chemicals under the sink would wrinkle that %$#@ tough metal?!
Interesting note: Tonka toys are hard to destruct, as you see aware
timothy
Wasn't Randy's laptop described instead as having a simple pinhole-type camera? (Sorry, book on loan at the moment ;)) The Picturebooks are definitely not that ... I remember thinking that this was a potentially much better idea than putting a regular (glass-lens) camera into a laptop lid like Sony did, though of course that has its own advantages.
timothy