There is an article today on the pradva (in reply to the parent funny post) explaining that according to the russian intelligence the mysterious meteorite was actually an american spy satellite destroyed in orbit, and that the illness cases seen in Peru were caused by the plutonium from the main power generator falling out.
French cinema and music trading associations together with rock stars such as Johnny Hallyday have spoken out against the law, arguing it would kill their work.
For information, Johnny Hallyday is the famous french singer who sued his former publisher Vivendi-Universal. He tried to get the court to give him the ownership of his own songs back, believing foolishly that work-for-hire clauses do not affect famous artists.
For a bit I thought that he saw the light when he cursed VU for its greed. Then I read in the news that he just signed with Warner for millions. He is bringing an empty catalog and will be required to pay royalties to VU everytime he sings his own songs in tour !
I did write to 3 MEP from my region (Aquitaine, France).
Gerard Onesta (Green) : I got a reply the next day. Strongly against SW patents. Made a very informed reply saying how the Green care about Software Freedom. the fight against abusive IP right extensions is on their agenda.
No reply from Alain Lamassoure (UMP, moderate right wing). No reply from Gilles Savary (PS, moderate left wing).
I was pretty happy at first to see the large rejection margin, but after thinking about it, I fear the margin is too large, and that the rumor that the pro-sw-patent side prefered to kill the directive rather than to see it amended is founded.
I want an explicit european position in a directive to prevent sw patents to become reality forever.
As long as we do not have such a law the pro-sw-patent lobby will try to introduce the concept again and again.
Men stay in office for a limited time. Corporations are immortal.
As the group of the 14 countries known as Friends of Development remind us in their IIM/1/4 proposal, WIPO takes its mandate from the United Nation.
Most of WIPO's income (86% in 2002) comes through taxation in the member States (point 26).
To quote verbatim the start of point 27:
In fact, WIPO's existence is not dependent on rightholders, and rightholders do not "fund" WIPO. WIPO as an international intergovernmental organization is answerable to its Member States and its existence depends on its Members only.
If you got some time, go read up about the Friends of Developement, a group of 14 countries trying to reform WIPO from the inside to bring back to consideration the interests of people.
Their initial proposal is the document WO/GA/31/11 from august 2004, which was developed in april 2005 with the IIM/1/4 document.
What I like with these countries is that they do not flame, they just remind the corrupt organization from the inside with their original purpose, like "promote the progress of science and useful arts". Which feeds the trolls just as well, as seen with the reactions during the IIM meeting
From the depth of Terrible Karma, a famous example seen in Artificial Intelligence course this semester that sometimes Automatic Proving can discover or re-discover a simpler, more elegant proof than what is usually teached.
Take an isoscele triangle ABC
Hypothetis : AB = AC Goal : prove that Angle(ABC) = Angle(ACB)
Classical Proof:
introduce H the altitude under the vertex A AB = AC, AH = AH, and angle(AHB) = angle(AHC) hence the ABH and the ACH triangle are the same (being french i'm unsure of how to say "superposition") hence angle(ABC) = angle(ACB)
Automatic Demonstration:
AC = AB, AB = AC and BC = CB hence the ABC and ACB triangles are the same. hence angle(ABC) = angle(ACB)
Which is really simple, elegant and unheard of way to prove that those two angles have the same value.
To be honest this proof was actually first found 20 centuries ago by Pacus, but forgotten till AI re-discovered it.
So, yes, sometimes computer can bring different ideas on how to prove things.
The wikipedia page about Biodiesel cites a 1998 study by DOE and USDA that says 3.2 tons made from 1 ton of oil.
There is a nice comparaison of different energcy sources on
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html
It looks like corn oil does not have negative energy yeld. Even if for Diester in France many say it has, i was unable to find any fact confirming the rumor.
We need to move very swiftly from a climate of ignorance to one in which people understand that illegal uploading is fundamentally no different from shoplifting."
in a day where **AAs sue everyone for 1000s times the damage they would do if you just had shoplifted that CD... you wish you were stealing your CDs physicaly in a shop rather than share virtually and be caught.
wouldn't be fair to have penalties more in line with the real damage done if copyright infrigement is indeed fundamentally no different from shoplifting? it goes both ways...
I'm astounded nobody mentioned it yet, but in Europe the market share of Diesel engines tops 50% - even 65% in France where I live. IIRC "sports car" brands like BMW or Alfa Romeo sell over 80% Diesel in France... It is the bare truth that European automakers just cannot sell a car without a Diesel engine.
The reason is not that it's because diesel engines have a better mpg or that fuel is much more heavily taxed in Europe than in the US, but because they have a better mpg AND are actually as good as gasoline engines as far as performance is concerned... if not better.
A few years ago a BMW 330d won the Sebring 12-hour race, beating the usual crowd of GTR monsters (Mc Laren F1 GTR, Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR, Porsche GT1...). This historic victory was the proof that Diesel engines could compete on an equal footing with gasoline engines.
Since then such technology has made its way to your local (European) car dealer. For instance the latest V10 Tdi from VW/Audi hits a nice 313hp. As for the Diesel BMW 4.0L V8 (eg 540d), it makes the gasoline 4.4L V8 (eg 540i)feel like a Yugo engine. It even beats the M engine (from the M5 and Z8) in many aspects. Yes, a Diesel engine (and smaller at that!) beating one of the very best gasoline engines around! On a smaller, closer to the European mainstream scale, VW's 1.9L 150hp Golf GTI Tdi owns the 1.8L 150HP gasoline Golf GTI Turbo in every regard.
If you think Diesel = slow, try out VW/Audi's, BMW's, Mercedes-Benz' 130hp 4-cylinders, 180hp V6's or 240hp V8's. They beat the hell out of their gasoline counterparts (and you all know how poor BMW gasoline engines are, don't you?:)).
This isn't only true of the best Diesel engines from the best automakers. Even the usual 110HP, 1.9L 4-cyl. from regular European or Japanese car makers are very close to, or beat they gasoline counterparts.
The demand for Diesel engines is so tremendous that, once VW/Audi released their first high-performance Tdi engine 10 years ago or so, every other automaker had to join the weapon race (even the Big 3's local subsidiaries). In under 10 year, horsepower skyrocketted from 75hp to 115hp for the average "compact" cars (ie 4.1m long. 25% of the European car market), 90hp to 150hp for the average sedans (4.8m long), while toxic-gases emissions dropped below gasoline standards (and even under SULEV requirements for a few models).
Meanwhile, the core asset of Diesel engines, namely mpg, remains untouched. This could of course be further improved by letting Diesel-hybrid cars go mainstream, but at least Diesel technology as it currenty is, is a major improvement over what is done nowadays in the US, at no development cost.
Now there's a huge drawback to those brand-new Diesel engines: they need clean, high-performance Diesel fuel. The European divisions of the "Seven Sisters" has as much work to do to get those shiny engines to work, as the automakers themselves.
Since it's been decided gas-oil is only for trucks in the US, high-quality (read: expensive to refine) gas-oil isn't required, so the US divisions of fuel retailers can keep selling junk-grade gas-oil... (At least the infrastructure is there already (unlike hydrogen))
Hence sorry guys, very high mileage per gallon WITH high performance isn't for you yet. While VW does sell a few Diesel-powered cars, they depend on the availability of high-performance gas-oil to keep running reliably.
On a side note, I remember reading somewhere that bio-diesel is actually worse than Euro-grade gas-oil: indeed, for every gallon you're saving (replacing gas-oil with ethanol), you need several gallons of junk-grade gas-oil to actually get the ethanol "harvested" (does farm machinery strike you as especially eco-friendy?), refined etc... not to mention greater air pollution. Hence, eco-diesel pretty much sounds like "fish farms are the answer to overfishing" to me...
My little brother Laurent will be 19 on 19th January...
I've told it to a friend that I found it very funny : The Transmeta processor coming out on a 19th January, when my brother'll be 19. This is also the last 19th January of the century of the 19xx years so everything is well tought:-)
If saying "f0bic, your seksi voice helped me through the night heh" was just a reference to him? like all the "free kevin" we saw...
I'm not sure that spl0it member f0bic and flipz have known directly each others since flipz first possession is dated of 99.03.25 (tuxedo.jpl) and f0bic was arrested in june; the next exploit of flipz is dated of 99.06.24, after f0bic's arrestation, and he does not tell anything about him...
to my mind it was just a "political" reference to 18 year old f0bic, now in jail maybe...
I've performed a small search on altavista and I found that f0bic is a male. He was arrested on 12th june. See and search for 'f0bic' on your page...
So if flipz is not gay he must be a female:-)
If also found, while searching for f0bic that a website (that is not listed on attrition) has been 'edited' for so many time that it was referenced by Altavista:-)
The problem is not a website problem. It's because the dropdown menu widget is un-comfortable to use as there is more than one screen tall of entries...
The problem occurs when you have hundreds of countries in a dropdown list, because un-professional web designers donnot test often under linux.
I've already seen black dropdown menus with black text on it... because on Win platforms the dropdown widget has always a white background, so nobody knows that the background color of these "modifiable lists" is the container's background color; that implies that sometimes it's unreadable...
I think too that the possibility to type the first letter to scroll the list is pretty neat too...
I hate MOTIF dropdown widget, but do the QT and GTK ones behave???
I've spent a long time in this site, and I (re)discovered lots of funny annoyances in Windows mainly and in the mac world too..
But something that really sucks (and that's not mentionned in the website) is dropdown menus under X, especially with lots of entries.
As an example, point your favorite Linux browser (you don't have much choice, netscape) and go to a commercial website. You want to pay/register/subscribe something and you have to choose your country in the countrylist : instead of typing "FR" and I'm ok, I have to go in the list to look for "France". Better, I cannot type "F" to scroll to the "F" section.
Have a look at the RATP site here and try to get the map for the "Gare du Nord" neighborhood... pretty funny isn'it???
Worse, if you noticed it, the dropdown menus are wasting lots of space on the right side of the screen, and finaly you are stucked because you have to click on "More..." and the new choices you get are overlapping the old ones, so if you try to get a choice above the "More..." choice, you're stuck.
This really sucks, but nobody cares : everyone is browses the web with Win/MSIE, after all...
This morning I was very surprised to discover in my local newspaper, the Parisien (I live near Creil, 50 km north of Paris), that "L'instituteur qui fait plier Microsoft" (the teacher that wins over M$) was on the headlines...
I did not understand WHY would government take M$ to courts; last year, DSK (Dominique Strauss Kahn), our financial secretary, was on a photo with Bill Gates and his partners : Michel Bon, of France Telecom etc... We use to say that France is late concerning new technologies... I thought at these times that we were REALLY late: Bill was the #1 ennemy in the States, with the DOJ case, and we were hosting him...
Now it seems that we are opening our eyes, and that (our greatly monopolistic!!!) France Telecom is going the Linux way, just take a look at their latest search engine, voila (there is a Linux logo on the bottom of the page)... The consumers have just began to think of the forced selling of Windows with your PC... and so the Microsoft case is going to courts.
BUT, there are some things that you american geeks have not understood in the article (was it altavista's fault?)
1/ the french teacher who got its win98 refunded was not refunded by M$ : he just was lucky enough to buy a PC at the supermarket, and the representative was so dumm that the Win licence was refunded at a price of 649F (just the price of the upgrade in the shops). Microsoft has never refunded anyone in France, and I bet that the supermarket lost 649F this day...
2/ France Telecom went partialy public (we say 'privatized':) ) 4 years ago, not in the beggining 90s... It is very little time so they are still monopolistic : do you know that we pay for local calls, that we will only get DSL in november with severe limitations... cause of the monopole??? FT has competitors but we will never get flat local rates before the FT monopoly stops...
It seems that the writers of this article like lots before likes the idea that Linux is not multiprocessor-enabled, lacks power ("heavy-duty tasks that Windows 2000 is designed to perform"), that it is "notoriously complex and hard to use" and so on... I've already heard that music...
This article does not seem to like Java either ("[Java] prevents users from saving files to a computer's hard drive", what is true for an applet, but not for an application) As it is a partial and not really a well documented article, it sounds like FUD for me.
How is it possible to compare Linux and Java? I remember that some years ago when Java went out, the media said that it was the end of Windows, but I never thought it was, really, because Java is a programming language and not really an OS. Linux (kernel + apps), like Windows is an OS
I like how the author compares Linux to Java : Linux is like Java because it is SLOW (in the Mindcraft test vs Windows NT) and Java is SLOW (yes, but it is a drawback of the virtual machin feature). So Java=Linux and Linux will end up as Java...
It was 6 months that my best friend, Hamid, was died, and since this time I wanted to make a website to honour his memory.
My website started, hosted by the firm I used to work, and was designed by them. But, as I did not work any longer for Babel, I had to find a new home for hamidsfriends.com.
I went in Bordeaux, where my family lives, and I discovered Linuxbox at the cybercafe, because on Freshmeat I had found a nice software whose homepage was hosted there.
I could not imagine that you can have a shell account, php and mysql for $10 per month. So I immediatly signed up, and payed 1 year by advance; Chris got my domain name for me, and payed for me; Later I sent him money via the postal office because I's difficult to send cash to the States.
He, and rudog were very kind, and I've talked with them lots of time. When I finished my day, I found them online, and we talk lots.
Now, I miss them : I'm homeless again. I was very happy to have a place on the net where I was able to put my website.
The last time I talked chris, he has lots of signups, but not many paying clients. And it was terrible.
Later, I've convinced a friend of mine to signup 2 : 2 frenchmen on Linuxbox:)
And today, the linuxbox adventure is finished.
I'm very sad for them; I cannot say lots, but I'm still convinced that there is a place for affordable webhosting, with real features.
Go, Chris. Don't give me my money back, you'll need it.
I'm dreaming of a new linuxbox. Professional webhosting for everyone, doesn't it taste like the linux spirit?
Frankly, I was already chocked to know that firms often look at our email (there is technicaly no problem about this), but usually firms just look if their employees are not wasting too much time emailing (like I do)... They don't send their logs & mailboxes to the police...
To be closer to the computer world (and to return to Bill Gates), aren't we on Free OSes to avoid a monopoly on information protocols, to avoid that somefirm (M$?) can get information about us and about our lives, our hobbies and our privacy ? If the protocol are closes, we don't know what kind of bomb is inside...
In France, where I live (excuse my poor english!), the Army has decided to go further into Linux because they fear that their secret could fly away if they rely too much on NT... I don't know where they are into their Linuxisation, but I regret they have taken so much time to realize how close computing endanger their secrets...
For France Telecom (our national Telco), who was very pro-microsoft, they are going deeper into Unixisation... Strange, isn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
There is an article today on the pradva (in reply to the parent funny post) explaining that according to the russian intelligence the mysterious meteorite was actually an american spy satellite destroyed in orbit, and that the illness cases seen in Peru were caused by the plutonium from the main power generator falling out.
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/feedback/20-09-2007/97410-american_spy_satellite-0
French cinema and music trading associations together with rock stars such as Johnny Hallyday have spoken out against the law, arguing it would kill their work. For information, Johnny Hallyday is the famous french singer who sued his former publisher Vivendi-Universal. He tried to get the court to give him the ownership of his own songs back, believing foolishly that work-for-hire clauses do not affect famous artists. For a bit I thought that he saw the light when he cursed VU for its greed. Then I read in the news that he just signed with Warner for millions. He is bringing an empty catalog and will be required to pay royalties to VU everytime he sings his own songs in tour !
I did write to 3 MEP from my region (Aquitaine, France).
Gerard Onesta (Green) : I got a reply the next day. Strongly against SW patents. Made a very informed reply saying how the Green care about Software Freedom. the fight against abusive IP right extensions is on their agenda.
No reply from Alain Lamassoure (UMP, moderate right wing).
No reply from Gilles Savary (PS, moderate left wing).
I was pretty happy at first to see the large rejection margin, but after thinking about it, I fear the margin is too large, and that the rumor that the pro-sw-patent side prefered to kill the directive rather than to see it amended is founded.
I want an explicit european position in a directive to prevent sw patents to become reality forever.
As long as we do not have such a law the pro-sw-patent lobby will try to introduce the concept again and again.
Men stay in office for a limited time. Corporations are immortal.
Most of WIPO's income (86% in 2002) comes through taxation in the member States (point 26).
To quote verbatim the start of point 27
If you got some time, go read up about the Friends of Developement, a group of 14 countries trying to reform WIPO from the inside to bring back to consideration the interests of people.
Their initial proposal is the document WO/GA/31/11 from august 2004, which was developed in april 2005 with the IIM/1/4 document.
What I like with these countries is that they do not flame, they just remind the corrupt organization from the inside with their original purpose, like "promote the progress of science and useful arts". Which feeds the trolls just as well, as seen with the reactions during the IIM meeting
Julien
Some links (beware of extra spaces in the URL!)
WO/GA/31/11 : http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/document/govbody
IIM/1/4 : http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/mdocs/en/iim_1/ii
minutes of IIM : http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/twninfo202.htm
From the depth of Terrible Karma, a famous example seen in Artificial Intelligence course this semester that sometimes Automatic Proving can discover or re-discover a simpler, more elegant proof than what is usually teached.
:
:
Take an isoscele triangle ABC
Hypothetis : AB = AC
Goal : prove that Angle(ABC) = Angle(ACB)
Classical Proof
introduce H the altitude under the vertex A
AB = AC, AH = AH, and angle(AHB) = angle(AHC)
hence the ABH and the ACH triangle are the same (being french i'm unsure of how to say "superposition")
hence angle(ABC) = angle(ACB)
Automatic Demonstration
AC = AB, AB = AC and BC = CB
hence the ABC and ACB triangles are the same.
hence angle(ABC) = angle(ACB)
Which is really simple, elegant and unheard of way to prove that those two angles have the same value.
To be honest this proof was actually first found 20 centuries ago by Pacus, but forgotten till AI re-discovered it.
So, yes, sometimes computer can bring different ideas on how to prove things.
Julien
I looked up about the biological cost of Diester (this is how we call Biodiesel here in France)
l e/ ecobila6.htm
most french sources say you can make 2.9 tons of diester from 1 ton of oil.
http://www.inaro.de/France/F_MATERE/energie/hui
The wikipedia page about Biodiesel cites a 1998 study by DOE and USDA that says 3.2 tons made from 1 ton of oil.
There is a nice comparaison of different energcy sources on
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html
It looks like corn oil does not have negative energy yeld. Even if for Diester in France many say it has, i was unable to find any fact confirming the rumor.
in a day where **AAs sue everyone for 1000s times the damage they would do if you just had shoplifted that CD... you wish you were stealing your CDs physicaly in a shop rather than share virtually and be caught.
wouldn't be fair to have penalties more in line with the real damage done if copyright infrigement is indeed fundamentally no different from shoplifting? it goes both ways...
I'm astounded nobody mentioned it yet, but in Europe the market share of Diesel engines tops 50% - even 65% in France where I live.
:)).
IIRC "sports car" brands like BMW or Alfa Romeo sell over 80% Diesel in France...
It is the bare truth that European automakers just cannot sell a car without a Diesel engine.
The reason is not that it's because diesel engines have a better mpg or that fuel is much more heavily taxed in Europe than in the US, but because they have a better mpg AND are actually as good as gasoline engines as far as performance is concerned... if not better.
A few years ago a BMW 330d won the Sebring 12-hour race, beating the usual crowd of GTR monsters (Mc Laren F1 GTR, Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR, Porsche GT1...). This historic victory was the proof that Diesel engines could compete on an equal footing with gasoline engines.
Since then such technology has made its way to your local (European) car dealer.
For instance the latest V10 Tdi from VW/Audi hits a nice 313hp. As for the Diesel BMW 4.0L V8 (eg 540d), it makes the gasoline 4.4L V8 (eg 540i)feel like a Yugo engine. It even beats the M engine (from the M5 and Z8) in many aspects.
Yes, a Diesel engine (and smaller at that!) beating one of the very best gasoline engines around!
On a smaller, closer to the European mainstream scale, VW's 1.9L 150hp Golf GTI Tdi owns the 1.8L 150HP gasoline Golf GTI Turbo in every regard.
If you think Diesel = slow, try out VW/Audi's, BMW's, Mercedes-Benz' 130hp 4-cylinders, 180hp V6's or 240hp V8's. They beat the hell out of their gasoline counterparts (and you all know how poor BMW gasoline engines are, don't you?
This isn't only true of the best Diesel engines from the best automakers. Even the usual 110HP, 1.9L 4-cyl. from regular European or Japanese car makers are very close to, or beat they gasoline counterparts.
The demand for Diesel engines is so tremendous that, once VW/Audi released their first high-performance Tdi engine 10 years ago or so, every other automaker had to join the weapon race (even the Big 3's local subsidiaries).
In under 10 year, horsepower skyrocketted from 75hp to 115hp for the average "compact" cars (ie 4.1m long. 25% of the European car market), 90hp to 150hp for the average sedans (4.8m long), while toxic-gases emissions dropped below gasoline standards (and even under SULEV requirements for a few models).
Meanwhile, the core asset of Diesel engines, namely mpg, remains untouched. This could of course be further improved by letting Diesel-hybrid cars go mainstream, but at least Diesel technology as it currenty is, is a major improvement over what is done nowadays in the US, at no development cost.
Now there's a huge drawback to those brand-new Diesel engines: they need clean, high-performance Diesel fuel. The European divisions of the "Seven Sisters" has as much work to do to get those shiny engines to work, as the automakers themselves.
Since it's been decided gas-oil is only for trucks in the US, high-quality (read: expensive to refine) gas-oil isn't required, so the US divisions of fuel retailers can keep selling junk-grade gas-oil...
(At least the infrastructure is there already (unlike hydrogen))
Hence sorry guys, very high mileage per gallon WITH high performance isn't for you yet.
While VW does sell a few Diesel-powered cars, they depend on the availability of high-performance gas-oil to keep running reliably.
On a side note, I remember reading somewhere that bio-diesel is actually worse than Euro-grade gas-oil: indeed, for every gallon you're saving (replacing gas-oil with ethanol), you need several gallons of junk-grade gas-oil to actually get the ethanol "harvested" (does farm machinery strike you as especially eco-friendy?), refined etc... not to mention greater air pollution.
Hence, eco-diesel pretty much sounds like "fish farms are the answer to overfishing" to me...
~0.80 Linux trying to boot under Amiga PCTask v4.0 :)
My little brother Laurent will be 19 on 19th January...
:-)
I've told it to a friend that I found it very funny :
The Transmeta processor coming out on a 19th January, when my brother'll be 19. This is also the last 19th January of the century of the 19xx years so everything is well tought
Did you noticed that TM's website is mapped onto 3 different IPs...
/. effect :-)
Name: www.transmeta.com
Addresses: 209.10.41.232, 209.10.41.233, 209.10.41.231,
I think they were anticipating the
I understand them, they have been making us holding our breathes for years...
Who said that abusive pricing schemes were signs of monopoly?
:-)
I'm sure people will appreciate it greatly as the end of the DOJ case is coming...
Go on Microsoft and we may love y2k
[perville@anoat perville]$ nslookup
Default Server: nirvana.nic.fr
Address: 192.134.4.10
> uncertainty.microsoft.com
Server: nirvana.nic.fr
Address: 192.134.4.10
*** nirvana.nic.fr can't find uncertainty.microsoft.com: Non-existent host/domain
>
I wonder where the MSNBC guys have heard about this machine...
I'll correct myself...
If saying "f0bic, your seksi voice helped me through the night heh" was just a reference to him? like all the "free kevin" we saw...
I'm not sure that spl0it member f0bic and flipz have known directly each others since flipz first possession is dated of 99.03.25 (tuxedo.jpl) and f0bic was arrested in june; the next exploit of flipz is dated of 99.06.24, after f0bic's arrestation, and he does not tell anything about him...
to my mind it was just a "political" reference to 18 year old f0bic, now in jail maybe...
I've performed a small search on altavista and I found that f0bic is a male. He was arrested on 12th june. See and search for 'f0bic' on your page...
:-)
:-)
So if flipz is not gay he must be a female
If also found, while searching for f0bic that a website (that is not listed on attrition) has been 'edited' for so many time that it was referenced by Altavista
If you are looking for mission critical data, why not give a chance to MySQL?
As I've seen it was designed to handle lots of data (see http://www.mysql.org/what-is-mysql.html)
As my experience is concerned MySQL is very robust and fully threaded too...
The problem is not a website problem. It's because the dropdown menu widget is un-comfortable to use as there is more than one screen tall of entries...
The problem occurs when you have hundreds of countries in a dropdown list, because un-professional web designers donnot test often under linux.
I've already seen black dropdown menus with black text on it... because on Win platforms the dropdown widget has always a white background, so nobody knows that the background color of these "modifiable lists" is the container's background color; that implies that sometimes it's unreadable...
I think too that the possibility to type the first letter to scroll the list is pretty neat too...
I hate MOTIF dropdown widget, but do the QT and GTK ones behave???
I've spent a long time in this site, and I (re)discovered lots of funny annoyances in Windows mainly and in the mac world too..
But something that really sucks (and that's not mentionned in the website) is dropdown menus under X, especially with lots of entries.
As an example, point your favorite Linux browser (you don't have much choice, netscape) and go to a commercial website. You want to pay/register/subscribe something and you have to choose your country in the countrylist : instead of typing "FR" and I'm ok, I have to go in the list to look for "France". Better, I cannot type "F" to scroll to the "F" section.
Have a look at the RATP site here and try to get the map for the "Gare du Nord" neighborhood... pretty funny isn'it???
Worse, if you noticed it, the dropdown menus are wasting lots of space on the right side of the screen, and finaly you are stucked because you have to click on "More..." and the new choices you get are overlapping the old ones, so if you try to get a choice above the "More..." choice, you're stuck.
This really sucks, but nobody cares : everyone is browses the web with Win/MSIE, after all...
From a french point of vue...
:) ) 4 years ago, not in the beggining 90s... It is very little time so they are still monopolistic : do you know that we pay for local calls, that we will only get DSL in november with severe limitations... cause of the monopole??? FT has competitors but we will never get flat local rates before the FT monopoly stops...
This morning I was very surprised to discover in my local newspaper, the Parisien (I live near Creil, 50 km north of Paris), that "L'instituteur qui fait plier Microsoft" (the teacher that wins over M$) was on the headlines...
I did not understand WHY would government take M$ to courts; last year, DSK (Dominique Strauss Kahn), our financial secretary, was on a photo with Bill Gates and his partners : Michel Bon, of France Telecom etc...
We use to say that France is late concerning new technologies... I thought at these times that we were REALLY late: Bill was the #1 ennemy in the States, with the DOJ case, and we were hosting him...
Now it seems that we are opening our eyes, and that (our greatly monopolistic!!!) France Telecom is going the Linux way, just take a look at their latest search engine, voila (there is a Linux logo on the bottom of the page)...
The consumers have just began to think of the forced selling of Windows with your PC... and so the Microsoft case is going to courts.
BUT, there are some things that you american geeks have not understood in the article (was it altavista's fault?)
1/ the french teacher who got its win98 refunded was not refunded by M$ : he just was lucky enough to buy a PC at the supermarket, and the representative was so dumm that the Win licence was refunded at a price of 649F (just the price of the upgrade in the shops).
Microsoft has never refunded anyone in France, and I bet that the supermarket lost 649F this day...
2/ France Telecom went partialy public (we say 'privatized'
I hate monopolies....
It seems that the writers of this article like lots before likes the idea that Linux is not multiprocessor-enabled, lacks power ("heavy-duty tasks that Windows 2000 is designed to perform"), that it is "notoriously complex and hard to use" and so on... I've already heard that music...
This article does not seem to like Java either
("[Java] prevents users from saving files to a computer's hard drive", what is true for an applet, but not for an application)
As it is a partial and not really a well documented article, it sounds like FUD for me.
How is it possible to compare Linux and Java? I remember that some years ago when Java went out, the media said that it was the end of Windows, but I never thought it was, really, because Java is a programming language and not really an OS. Linux (kernel + apps), like Windows is an OS
I like how the author compares Linux to Java : Linux is like Java because it is SLOW (in the Mindcraft test vs Windows NT) and Java is SLOW (yes, but it is a drawback of the virtual machin feature). So Java=Linux and Linux will end up as Java...
Lol
I've discovered Linuxbox in may 1999.
:)
It was 6 months that my best friend, Hamid, was died, and since this time I wanted to make a website to honour his memory.
My website started, hosted by the firm I used to work, and was designed by them. But, as I did not work any longer for Babel, I had to find a new home for hamidsfriends.com.
I went in Bordeaux, where my family lives, and I discovered Linuxbox at the cybercafe, because on Freshmeat I had found a nice software whose homepage was hosted there.
I could not imagine that you can have a shell account, php and mysql for $10 per month. So I immediatly signed up, and payed 1 year by advance; Chris got my domain name for me, and payed for me; Later I sent him money via the postal office because I's difficult to send cash to the States.
He, and rudog were very kind, and I've talked with them lots of time. When I finished my day, I found them online, and we talk lots.
Now, I miss them : I'm homeless again.
I was very happy to have a place on the net where I was able to put my website.
The last time I talked chris, he has lots of signups, but not many paying clients. And it was terrible.
Later, I've convinced a friend of mine to signup 2 : 2 frenchmen on Linuxbox
And today, the linuxbox adventure is finished.
I'm very sad for them; I cannot say lots, but I'm still convinced that there is a place for affordable webhosting, with real features.
Go, Chris. Don't give me my money back, you'll need it.
I'm dreaming of a new linuxbox.
Professional webhosting for everyone, doesn't it taste like the linux spirit?
Frankly, I was already chocked to know that firms often look at our email (there is technicaly no problem about this), but usually firms just look if their employees are not wasting too much time emailing (like I do)...
They don't send their logs & mailboxes to the police...
To be closer to the computer world (and to return to Bill Gates), aren't we on Free OSes to avoid a monopoly on information protocols, to avoid that somefirm (M$?) can get information about us and about our lives, our hobbies and our privacy ? If the protocol are closes, we don't know what kind of bomb is inside...
In France, where I live (excuse my poor english!), the Army has decided to go further into Linux because they fear that their secret could fly away if they rely too much on NT...
I don't know where they are into their Linuxisation, but I regret they have taken so much time to realize how close computing endanger their secrets...
For France Telecom (our national Telco), who was very pro-microsoft, they are going deeper into Unixisation... Strange, isn't it?
I naively thought that only Bill Gates can endanger our confidentiality :)