Hardly anyone using Linux today has ever heard of Mnemonic...
I think that's sad. Partly of course because Mnemonic has a derivative of my C code in it, and partly because I believe in the availability of choice (I guess this link should say enough about just that).
I don't think everyone should push behind one browser, at least not all of the time. Push to get it released, yes, but not push to make it become a "standard" of it's own. Netscape used to be the "standard" browser, now it's IE4/5. The web designers/authors follow that "standard" and create content looking its best in that browser. How it looks in other browsers they often do not care much about.
And I think that's sad. Sad because people seem to like it that way, and they end up using the browser the creators use. Secondly because it leaves me with less options. I recently had a harddrive crash, and my old P75 isn't too keen on running X. Mail & news is done with emacs, so I had no trouble with that, but when I wanted to check out some web sites for my daily doze of news: forget it! There's no good structural markup so Lynx is badly choking.
I surely hope that Opera releases the text browser they mentioned before, so that Lynx gets good competition. From the screenshot it looked like a really nice browser, and a useful one for when I only have console access to my system.
As others have mentioned already, why not have a browser that simply does one job, and does it well. For me that's a good idea. Others might want other things, and that's what we have helper applications, plug-ins and the like for. They can add to the already existing platform and create the browser of their choice (add c00l skinz and great sound effects for extended pleasure).
I'm all for choice. Mozilla might become my preferred browser when it's out due to its support for standards, and the fact that it so far looks to be a fast browser. Or I might choose Opera 4 (for Windows) since 3.6 is a fast and standards compliant browser, so therefore v4 should become another fast and standards compliant browser. Maybe I'll end up on a Mac with iCab... who knows... but I want the options.
it's a very sad article to read. one could read into it that AOL bought Netscape only to dismantle it and keep the few things that they needed (the browser, Netcenter and a couple of other things).
combining this article with nomo zilla and nscp/aol by jwz the view of AOL one gets is all but pretty.
Sad to see that what was in many ways such a great company pushing the boundaries, staying on the forefront of the web & Internet revolution, has broken into pieces.
I don't think this is simply a case about somebody suing AOL. I admit not having read the NYTimes article, since I didn't want to register to enter their site. I have read several comments here though, and in my opinon a lot of people here lack respect for people with disabilities. Comments like "this medium wasn't built for them", "it's a graphical medium", etc, etc are more or less plain b*llsh**.
For starters, there's Lynx. That browser have been with us for a looooooong time. It also gives a good representation of what a web site looks to a person with a braille-enabled browser, or a browser that uses speech synthesis. You also get a quick indication of how your site will "look" when a search engine's robot comes by. If site authors used Lynx more they'd probably figure out what all this fuzz is about.
There's also several resources available regarding accessibility on the web. The HTML 4.0 spec has quite a lot of information regarding how to make your site accessible for everyone, not only those with a graphical browser. With CSS level 2 you have "aural style sheets" which enables you to suggest presentational information for users with speech-synthesis. Add to that the Web Accessibility Intiative and Jacob Nielsen's Accessible Design for users with disabilities.
Usability for other people than those with graphical browsers has been around for years (that Nielsen-article is old). But when you look at people's attitude there's no wonder why sites look like they do. Nobody gives a damn anyway... I think that's scary.
But, even though this has been a case for quite a while it doesn't mean I believe that the blind can sue AOL. As others have mentioned, if AOL hasn't gone out saying it's accessible to the blind they, in my opinion, don't have a case. They can ask AOL to create a site they can use, but they shouldn't be able to force AOL to do so. With the amount of publicity this gets AOL might feel it's good PR to create a site usable for the blind, maybe simply because they don't want to lose the case. In my opinion it's only the government and other official sites that should be required to be accessible to everyone.
The 'net is in my opinion well suited for being accessible for the blind. Provided they have the right aids mail, news, and to a certain extent, the web, is quite easy to use (since most of it is text). We shouldn't simply lock them out saying "this is a graphical medium, it wasn't ment for you" or anything like that.
The argument MS used when they decided it was time to drop all their web-related projects was that they're not a "media company". So instead they focus on software. But isn't it enough for them that these boxes run MS Windows (as the Dreamcast does)?
I'm slightly (negatively) surprised to see MS starting to do more hardware stuff. I've read criticism of it before, that they're slowly but surely trying to eat up the hardware market too. This project hasn't produced a product yet, but I clearly see where the criticism is coming from.
I dropped by StatMarket today, and looking at MSIE's market share now I frankly think MS going into the console market is a seriously bad idea. Geez, can't Bill keep his sticky fingers off of anything?
I can't really see why they're calling it a redesign, and paying Lauryn Hill for the webcast. Come on, it's only minor changes. Above the fold in my 800x450 Netscape window it still looked 99% like the "old" AltaVista.
I don't see why they call it a redesign when I have to scroll down to see what's happened. Besides, I never do scroll down, since I'm there to search, and nothing else. If that's what it takes to do a redesign most news-sites get redesigned every time the main headline changes.
Interesting side-discussion (maybe): I mean, a little bit of everything. My CD collection ranges from all of the above, through Johnny Cash, and back around to The Cure. How many c0derZ have similarly wide-ranging tastes (i.e. not just listening to one style of music)?
*raises hand*
Let me see... in one end is classical music like Bach, the soundtrack from "The Mission" et all. one other end is slightly country-like music. then there's rock/heavy metal stuff. and the mandatory 80's CDs like Bryan Adams & Bon Jovi ("Wanted dead or alive" rules!). add in a bit of jazz (the Yellowjackets are amazing, Pat Metheny too) and a whole bunch of Norwegian music, and that's about it. Guess I shouldn't mention my collection of Kenny G CDs. *grin*
right now Toto's "Mindfields" is my main CD (love the groove on "Mad about you"). it'll change in a few days though (want to buy the new Sting CD). too bad the speakers connected to my computer are faulty.:(
Gotta have variation for all moods. Find something that fits, let my mind fly away, and the code comes running out of my fingers.:)
Will Microsoft ever commit to following open standards for the web like HTML, XML and Cascading Style Sheets? Even Internet Explorer version 5 has severe bugs in its CSS level 1 support, and lacks several features in HTML 4.0. Not to mention the HTML output from products like FrontPage and Word. Has Microsoft any plans on making sure their products outputs documents that are easy to access regardless of platform or system?
As several have pointed out already, the show is in its third season on Swedish television (SVT). The other Nordic countries have picked up the idea, so the Scandinavian channel called TV3 is running the show in Norway, Sweden & Denmark. Each country has its own contestants, host and is not shown in the other countries. They all use one or more islands in the south China sea, as far as I know.
As far as I've been able to tell TV3 is using the same set of rules & ideas as SVT did the first year. Each program has one (or more) competitions, and the losing team has to vote on of their people out. He/she is sent home. Here in Norway there's two teams, each starting with 8 members (as far as I remember). It's mixed teams.
The Swedes (SVT) are slightly more original this time around though. They have 4 teams, 2 male and 2 female. These teams are again split by age, so there's one "youngster" team and one "oldie" team. So far they haven't put the teams together though, so I don't know what'll happen once they have so few members that they need to combine the teams. In the previous season the teams were put together once they were down to 8 or so total.
The show is quite similar to Road Rules, Real World, and other variations over the theme "Lets put some people together and film them 24/7 and see what happens". Robinson (or "Expedition Robinson" which it's also called) has a competitive nature though, something Road Rules & Real World didn't have (as far as I rememember, been a few years since I last saw them). In Robinson, there will be only one person left to pick up the first price.
Due to the competition there's room for a lot of tactics. There's tactics regarding who you send home and who you don't. I remember in the final stages of the first season on SVT that when there were 3 people left, the winner of the competition got to choose who would be sent home. That's of course easy, you send home the one you think is your toughest competitor. When there's still teams competing you need to send home those who won't make your team win, of course. The team who wins the competitions get various kind of prizes (I've seen food, don't remember anything else).
It's more or less a kind of soap opera. There's competition between people, people like each other, hate each other, argue, eat, sleep, et all... and the camera team follows them around all the time. The most exciting things probably end up being shown (we all remember the guy in Real World SF that got kicked out). The latest big story (/controversy) here in Norway regarding the show was that they showed some of the girls sunbathing with bare breasts, which the TV station had promised not to do. The girls that were shown half-naked are concerned about what will be shown in the later episodes though, since they used less & less clothes as time on the island progressed.
But anyway... (I've been writing a few paragraphs now) The show is slightly interesting if you're into shows like that. I'm slightly disappointed by the Norwegian version of the series, but probably since it's such a copy of the previous Swedish season. The current Swedish show with males against females and oldies against youngsters is more interesting though. Mostly because the battle of the sexes have been going on for a while.:)
It'll be interesting to see what kind of show CBS gets out of it. Hope I have CBS over here (or they stream it on the 'net) when it's done.
One last comment: What happens if there is a tie in the vote? Re-vote? A votes for B, B votes for C and C votes for A.
The program is in its third season on Swedish television, and in its first here in Norway. When there's a tie they'll probably put the names of all who ties in a coconut and then pull one out (they do so here). The one who's drawn will go home.
That is, the hacker does not need to be in the same place (or even country) as the system they are trying to hack/crack/infiltrate, so if they are to be prosecuted for any damage done, whos laws are followed? The country in which the damage was done, they country the hacker is in, or should new provisions in international laws be made?
I bet the politicians and beaurocrats can spend years trying to figure it out. But maybe they won't. Earlier this year a Norwegian got sentenced after a watch-scam using Internet watch-trading sites. His buyers where in the US and Hong Kong as far as I remember. He got caught here in Norway, and the trial and everything took place here. Therefore, maybe local laws will precide?
I'm not saying that using local laws & trials is the best way to do it, that's not for me to decide. Just thought an example would be nice.
Look at the coding curve. It's logarithmic, and approaching a constant of about 17,000. That means that the additional participants just aren't producing proportionate changes in the open source project.
I agree. also, when you look at the number of subscribers to the two different mailing lists, you sett that "fetchmail-friends" has a somewhat constant number of subscribers, while "fetchmail-announce" is the one which increases. That supports your theory that they're spectators. What they wish to do is to receive news when something happens, not actively participate in the project.
Maybe the number of people who feel they're capable of contributing is constant, even as the user base grows? Those who feel they have the skill join early and develop the project, while the others simply watch?
Corel seems to have turned around, meaning they'll change their beta-license. This is a good thing. I don't think there's any reason to beat them up untill we all have seen the new beta-license.
Instead, I feel it will be interesting to see how Corel handles this from now on. Have they learn anything from this? Will they try to use some kind of customized license for Corel Linux? What about applications for Corel Linux, what license will they have (GPL perhaps)?
I hope that the community doesn't refuse Corel at the frist conceiveable moment, but instead give them a proper chance. It would be surprising if they continue to use licenses far away from the GPL, going against the community. Then it would be right to beat them up, but not right now. Lets see the first betas of Corel Linux and how it performs. If it's good, there might be lots of people buying it, meaning lots of people will use Linux. That has never been a bad thing.
I get a javascript error when I bring up google. They have a few (though perhaps minor) bugs to iron out.
No problems in either of the 6 browsers I tested with. They might've fixed it since you posted. In my opinion they'd probably create no errors if they waited 'till the whole document was done before focusing the text field, but then you'd have to wait for the image before you got focus (or click/tab to it yourself).
But seriously, folks... I was reading O'Reilly's new tome on Perl Algorithms and I was struck by a point mentioned in this article; no-one cares about efficiency any more. Just let your PIII do the work.
I'm never too much concerned about efficiency when I'm writing Perl-scripts for my linux-server at home, it'll never make much of a difference. And in some cases, what you do is so tiny and simple that doing it more efficiently will remove say 1ms from the execution time. Firing up the interpreter and loading any libraries et all take more time than actually running the script. But I'm digressing.
I too find it slightly surprising to hear this. Maybe I'm just one of the strangers, those who strive for perfection, meaning that if I believe I can find a more efficient way to do task A I'll probably research into it. Hopefully it'll help me later, maybe I'll write stuff that runs on web-servers with high loads, and suddenly every cycle saved counts...
We've all heard (and probably given) rants on how VB et al will be the death of the program, but it's good to have Knuth around to remind us that programming can still be an art form.
I hope to soon have the time and money to buy his books and start reading them. They sound like a worthwhile read for even a not-really-a-programmer guy like me. Am looking forward to the experience.
* I do not remember how I first came in contact with/. * I do not remember any anectdotes * I do not have any friends here
Am I wortheless, because of that?
I don't think so. You can add me to the group, I can't answer those questions either. But, in my opinion, Slashdot isn't your average "find a friend" community, mostly because the discussions are related to a subject that's not of your own choice. It's still Slashdot. We're here to find out (more or less) insteresting stuff to read and discuss. Not your average ICQ-chatter.
I expect to see a huge rise of friends in the Slashdot community when Rob adds Slashdot-chat and Slashdot-Instant-Messaging.:)
Don't show the actual karma rating on the user pages; the sign of the number should be sufficient. That way, you could see whether your karma is good or bad, but not the magnitude. This isn't a race, after all.
I agree, to some extent. I think it would be a cool idea to have the karma shown as titles though, on a scale from negative to positive. Much like the titles in the karma/fame system in Ultima Online.
I see the usefulness of only showing whether the karma is positive or negative, then it won't be a race for points/titles at all. On the other hand, I'd expect the Slashdot readers to be fairly creative, so the titles that we could come up with would be good. That way the titles would reflect Slashdot and its attitude (in a positive way).
Then you make the titles span a certain number of karma points, without letting people know. So you're effectively hiding the karma points from the user, while still giving the user some sort of "reward" by making him/her able to get a "better" title. Hopefully the race for points will then be toned down.
It sounds like a cool gadget to have. I'm slightly cautious to those modules though. The story said it installs & deinstalls automagically, but how quick is it, and what happens to any data I might have created? I would expect some modules are for doing various tasks, i.e. the HP-calculator mentioned (even though that was only a fun idea), and some storage facility would be needed. On one hand the answer might be "transfer it to your PC and store it there" while on the other hand I think I'd actually like to be able to store data on the device.
AAA-batteries sounds like a good idea, what's the availability of battery packs with extended life (Ni-Mh anyone?) on these things? (No, I haven't got a Palm so I'm not into this market) Since AAA-batteries are so small I expect the life of a set of batteries to not be very large, so some kind of add-on would be nice (in addition to the module-battery-addon the story mentions).
If it comes with a browser & emacs I'm ready to buy one.:)
Just remember this is third party development, this is not Netscape Communicator 5.0 or anything.
It's not Netscape Comm 5.0 now, but how do I know it won't be that in the future unless I speak my mind? Others have mentioned emacs and its modularity, that's something I believe in.
I probably have no chance of guessing what Mozilla will be in the final release. Hopefully it'll be a browser core that's small & fast, and then have a whole bunch of stuff you can add. If it's large and bulky I'll still have to download it for development use, but I'll probably hate it for being the size it is. That's why I compare Mozilla, IE and Opera (and Netscape too). Bloatware sucks, browsers doubly so.
I have to agree with the comments stating that Mozilla seems to become larger and larger, adding support for protocols that shouldn't be in a web browser. when I heard that IE5 came with radio-controls I started to wonder what on earth people were thinking. is it really necessary to include everything imaginable in a web browser?
I'm starting to wonder whether the future "war" between browsers on the Linux platform will be between Opera and Mozilla. that is, provided Mozilla becomes a bloated gargantuan download. then people will maybe have the same options they have on Win32 now. you can pay for Opera to get a browser that fits on a floppy, has tiny footprint, renders fast, but has no mail or news support to speak of. or you can choose the Swiss Army Knife of browsers, Mozilla, which gives you all you ever did (and did not) want.
since I've hated the size of IE5 since it came out, regardless of its quality, and will pay for software I find worthy of payment, my choice is clear. even though earlier milestones of Mozilla gave hope for the future.
This is interesting -- it sounds like MetaModeration, in practice, will only give negative feedback. MetaModerators exist to keep evil moderators in line; thus mm's will likely spend their time searching for badly-moderated posts. I'd be surprised if any moderators end up with positive moderation karma. (And BTW, Rob does mean that there will be a seperate "moderation" karma, right? If MetaModeration affects regular karma, I think a lot of people will opt out of moderation.)
isn't the quick & easy solution to this to give people karma when they moderate? that way, if you moderate 5 comments correctly you get, say 5 karma points. if a meta-moderator doesn't agree with your moderation he/she moderates it, and 2 points are subtracted, giving you a 3 point total gain. that way, if you do things right you'll only gain karma from the moderation, while if you don't there'll be less karma for you.
as far as I could read there's only one big karma bowl, not two.
the difference between the meta-moderation and the regular one is that this one has a specific amount of point set off to mark those comments that were moderated incorrectly. it would also be possible to increase the regular amount of moderation points, but that would be a pseudo-meta-moderation in my opinion, since you're no longer specifically going for the incorrectly moderated comments.
Despite Opera's reputation as "the standards compliant browser", it implements far less of current W3C standards than Netscape or in particular IE. Specifically, CSS-positioning (part of CSS2) appears to be completely non-existant.
instead of having partial & buggy support for the current W3C standards they have good support for an earlier version of HTML, and CSS level 1. what do you prefer, Netscape & Microsoft's sucky support for both CSS level 1 & 2 combined with partial support for HTML? I'd rather have Opera over that any day, so I actually know what I can and cannot do (see Opera's Developer's Corner for details).
I did send in a short snippet when they released some news about some of the ports, and also when the BeOS-beta was released, but it never made the headlines I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think everyone should push behind one browser, at least not all of the time. Push to get it released, yes, but not push to make it become a "standard" of it's own. Netscape used to be the "standard" browser, now it's IE4/5. The web designers/authors follow that "standard" and create content looking its best in that browser. How it looks in other browsers they often do not care much about.
And I think that's sad. Sad because people seem to like it that way, and they end up using the browser the creators use. Secondly because it leaves me with less options. I recently had a harddrive crash, and my old P75 isn't too keen on running X. Mail & news is done with emacs, so I had no trouble with that, but when I wanted to check out some web sites for my daily doze of news: forget it! There's no good structural markup so Lynx is badly choking.
I surely hope that Opera releases the text browser they mentioned before, so that Lynx gets good competition. From the screenshot it looked like a really nice browser, and a useful one for when I only have console access to my system.
As others have mentioned already, why not have a browser that simply does one job, and does it well. For me that's a good idea. Others might want other things, and that's what we have helper applications, plug-ins and the like for. They can add to the already existing platform and create the browser of their choice (add c00l skinz and great sound effects for extended pleasure).
I'm all for choice. Mozilla might become my preferred browser when it's out due to its support for standards, and the fact that it so far looks to be a fast browser. Or I might choose Opera 4 (for Windows) since 3.6 is a fast and standards compliant browser, so therefore v4 should become another fast and standards compliant browser. Maybe I'll end up on a Mac with iCab... who knows... but I want the options.
combining this article with nomo zilla and nscp/aol by jwz the view of AOL one gets is all but pretty.
Sad to see that what was in many ways such a great company pushing the boundaries, staying on the forefront of the web & Internet revolution, has broken into pieces.
RIP?
For starters, there's Lynx. That browser have been with us for a looooooong time. It also gives a good representation of what a web site looks to a person with a braille-enabled browser, or a browser that uses speech synthesis. You also get a quick indication of how your site will "look" when a search engine's robot comes by. If site authors used Lynx more they'd probably figure out what all this fuzz is about.
There's also several resources available regarding accessibility on the web. The HTML 4.0 spec has quite a lot of information regarding how to make your site accessible for everyone, not only those with a graphical browser. With CSS level 2 you have "aural style sheets" which enables you to suggest presentational information for users with speech-synthesis. Add to that the Web Accessibility Intiative and Jacob Nielsen's Accessible Design for users with disabilities.
Usability for other people than those with graphical browsers has been around for years (that Nielsen-article is old). But when you look at people's attitude there's no wonder why sites look like they do. Nobody gives a damn anyway... I think that's scary.
But, even though this has been a case for quite a while it doesn't mean I believe that the blind can sue AOL. As others have mentioned, if AOL hasn't gone out saying it's accessible to the blind they, in my opinion, don't have a case. They can ask AOL to create a site they can use, but they shouldn't be able to force AOL to do so. With the amount of publicity this gets AOL might feel it's good PR to create a site usable for the blind, maybe simply because they don't want to lose the case. In my opinion it's only the government and other official sites that should be required to be accessible to everyone.
The 'net is in my opinion well suited for being accessible for the blind. Provided they have the right aids mail, news, and to a certain extent, the web, is quite easy to use (since most of it is text). We shouldn't simply lock them out saying "this is a graphical medium, it wasn't ment for you" or anything like that.
I'm slightly (negatively) surprised to see MS starting to do more hardware stuff. I've read criticism of it before, that they're slowly but surely trying to eat up the hardware market too. This project hasn't produced a product yet, but I clearly see where the criticism is coming from.
I dropped by StatMarket today, and looking at MSIE's market share now I frankly think MS going into the console market is a seriously bad idea. Geez, can't Bill keep his sticky fingers off of anything?
I don't see why they call it a redesign when I have to scroll down to see what's happened. Besides, I never do scroll down, since I'm there to search, and nothing else. If that's what it takes to do a redesign most news-sites get redesigned every time the main headline changes.
Let me see... in one end is classical music like Bach, the soundtrack from "The Mission" et all. one other end is slightly country-like music. then there's rock/heavy metal stuff. and the mandatory 80's CDs like Bryan Adams & Bon Jovi ("Wanted dead or alive" rules!). add in a bit of jazz (the Yellowjackets are amazing, Pat Metheny too) and a whole bunch of Norwegian music, and that's about it. Guess I shouldn't mention my collection of Kenny G CDs. *grin*
right now Toto's "Mindfields" is my main CD (love the groove on "Mad about you"). it'll change in a few days though (want to buy the new Sting CD). too bad the speakers connected to my computer are faulty. :(
Gotta have variation for all moods. Find something that fits, let my mind fly away, and the code comes running out of my fingers. :)
You could get Windows 2000 AND Office 2000 on the SAME drive! only 'till the first service pack comes around.
Will Microsoft ever commit to following open standards for the web like HTML, XML and Cascading Style Sheets? Even Internet Explorer version 5 has severe bugs in its CSS level 1 support, and lacks several features in HTML 4.0. Not to mention the HTML output from products like FrontPage and Word. Has Microsoft any plans on making sure their products outputs documents that are easy to access regardless of platform or system?
As far as I've been able to tell TV3 is using the same set of rules & ideas as SVT did the first year. Each program has one (or more) competitions, and the losing team has to vote on of their people out. He/she is sent home. Here in Norway there's two teams, each starting with 8 members (as far as I remember). It's mixed teams.
The Swedes (SVT) are slightly more original this time around though. They have 4 teams, 2 male and 2 female. These teams are again split by age, so there's one "youngster" team and one "oldie" team. So far they haven't put the teams together though, so I don't know what'll happen once they have so few members that they need to combine the teams. In the previous season the teams were put together once they were down to 8 or so total.
The show is quite similar to Road Rules, Real World, and other variations over the theme "Lets put some people together and film them 24/7 and see what happens". Robinson (or "Expedition Robinson" which it's also called) has a competitive nature though, something Road Rules & Real World didn't have (as far as I rememember, been a few years since I last saw them). In Robinson, there will be only one person left to pick up the first price.
Due to the competition there's room for a lot of tactics. There's tactics regarding who you send home and who you don't. I remember in the final stages of the first season on SVT that when there were 3 people left, the winner of the competition got to choose who would be sent home. That's of course easy, you send home the one you think is your toughest competitor. When there's still teams competing you need to send home those who won't make your team win, of course. The team who wins the competitions get various kind of prizes (I've seen food, don't remember anything else).
It's more or less a kind of soap opera. There's competition between people, people like each other, hate each other, argue, eat, sleep, et all... and the camera team follows them around all the time. The most exciting things probably end up being shown (we all remember the guy in Real World SF that got kicked out). The latest big story (/controversy) here in Norway regarding the show was that they showed some of the girls sunbathing with bare breasts, which the TV station had promised not to do. The girls that were shown half-naked are concerned about what will be shown in the later episodes though, since they used less & less clothes as time on the island progressed.
But anyway... (I've been writing a few paragraphs now) The show is slightly interesting if you're into shows like that. I'm slightly disappointed by the Norwegian version of the series, but probably since it's such a copy of the previous Swedish season. The current Swedish show with males against females and oldies against youngsters is more interesting though. Mostly because the battle of the sexes have been going on for a while. :)
It'll be interesting to see what kind of show CBS gets out of it. Hope I have CBS over here (or they stream it on the 'net) when it's done.
I'm not saying that using local laws & trials is the best way to do it, that's not for me to decide. Just thought an example would be nice.
Maybe the number of people who feel they're capable of contributing is constant, even as the user base grows? Those who feel they have the skill join early and develop the project, while the others simply watch?
Instead, I feel it will be interesting to see how Corel handles this from now on. Have they learn anything from this? Will they try to use some kind of customized license for Corel Linux? What about applications for Corel Linux, what license will they have (GPL perhaps)?
I hope that the community doesn't refuse Corel at the frist conceiveable moment, but instead give them a proper chance. It would be surprising if they continue to use licenses far away from the GPL, going against the community. Then it would be right to beat them up, but not right now. Lets see the first betas of Corel Linux and how it performs. If it's good, there might be lots of people buying it, meaning lots of people will use Linux. That has never been a bad thing.
Has some stuff about andover.net buying Slashdot and how much it cost, how the IPO works, etc. Thought it might be interesting to some here.
I too find it slightly surprising to hear this. Maybe I'm just one of the strangers, those who strive for perfection, meaning that if I believe I can find a more efficient way to do task A I'll probably research into it. Hopefully it'll help me later, maybe I'll write stuff that runs on web-servers with high loads, and suddenly every cycle saved counts...
I hope to soon have the time and money to buy his books and start reading them. They sound like a worthwhile read for even a not-really-a-programmer guy like me. Am looking forward to the experience.I expect to see a huge rise of friends in the Slashdot community when Rob adds Slashdot-chat and Slashdot-Instant-Messaging. :)
I see the usefulness of only showing whether the karma is positive or negative, then it won't be a race for points/titles at all. On the other hand, I'd expect the Slashdot readers to be fairly creative, so the titles that we could come up with would be good. That way the titles would reflect Slashdot and its attitude (in a positive way).
Then you make the titles span a certain number of karma points, without letting people know. So you're effectively hiding the karma points from the user, while still giving the user some sort of "reward" by making him/her able to get a "better" title. Hopefully the race for points will then be toned down.
I wish for my starting title to be "Admirable" :)
AAA-batteries sounds like a good idea, what's the availability of battery packs with extended life (Ni-Mh anyone?) on these things? (No, I haven't got a Palm so I'm not into this market) Since AAA-batteries are so small I expect the life of a set of batteries to not be very large, so some kind of add-on would be nice (in addition to the module-battery-addon the story mentions).
If it comes with a browser & emacs I'm ready to buy one. :)
I probably have no chance of guessing what Mozilla will be in the final release. Hopefully it'll be a browser core that's small & fast, and then have a whole bunch of stuff you can add. If it's large and bulky I'll still have to download it for development use, but I'll probably hate it for being the size it is. That's why I compare Mozilla, IE and Opera (and Netscape too). Bloatware sucks, browsers doubly so.
I'm starting to wonder whether the future "war" between browsers on the Linux platform will be between Opera and Mozilla. that is, provided Mozilla becomes a bloated gargantuan download. then people will maybe have the same options they have on Win32 now. you can pay for Opera to get a browser that fits on a floppy, has tiny footprint, renders fast, but has no mail or news support to speak of. or you can choose the Swiss Army Knife of browsers, Mozilla, which gives you all you ever did (and did not) want.
since I've hated the size of IE5 since it came out, regardless of its quality, and will pay for software I find worthy of payment, my choice is clear. even though earlier milestones of Mozilla gave hope for the future.
isn't the quick & easy solution to this to give people karma when they moderate? that way, if you moderate 5 comments correctly you get, say 5 karma points. if a meta-moderator doesn't agree with your moderation he/she moderates it, and 2 points are subtracted, giving you a 3 point total gain. that way, if you do things right you'll only gain karma from the moderation, while if you don't there'll be less karma for you.
as far as I could read there's only one big karma bowl, not two.
the difference between the meta-moderation and the regular one is that this one has a specific amount of point set off to mark those comments that were moderated incorrectly. it would also be possible to increase the regular amount of moderation points, but that would be a pseudo-meta-moderation in my opinion, since you're no longer specifically going for the incorrectly moderated comments.
I did send in a short snippet when they released some news about some of the ports, and also when the BeOS-beta was released, but it never made the headlines I guess.