from the download page: "Don't use linux kernel 2.4.16 or earlier for reiserfs operations.... 2.4.16, 2.4.9, and 2.4.3 are especially bad..... 2.4.24 is the latest release at the time of writing...."
Over the past couple of years, lots of people have written about the subject of poor usablility in open source software. Lot's of people, some of them quite well known and well respected in the FOSS community keep saying it, but nobody seems to be listening.
The fact that people keep writing about poor usability would seem to indicate that nothing is changing. It would appear that FOSS pgrammers aren't taking it seriously and not making much effort to change things.
>>"Do you think companies get bought without the buying company looking at the product?"
Yes.
Several years ago, when DSL and Cable internet access were not yet available, a guy claimed he had created a device that would transfer data at very high speed over ordinary phone lines. Needless to say, people were interested.
He never let anyone examine the device closely and was extremely vague in his descriptions of how it worked. Engineers who listened to his description of how the device worked said he was spouting gibberish. And yet he was able to take in millions of dollars from investors based solely on demonstrations he gave.
As he took money from investors, there were **10 different occasions** where he was supposed to deliver a working prototype and failed to do so -- each time claiming that the device was destroyed after being struck by lightning.
Infinium has shown off some prototypes, but they are meaningless. Anybody can throw together some off-the-shelf parts and put them in a fancy looking case.
And if you look at these protoypes, it's obvious that they were put together by people who have no clue how computer's actually work. For example, in addition to a standard Ethernet connector, there's a coax connector labelled "Cable Modem" and an RJ45 connector labelled "DSL". WTF?
Infinium's *TRUE* business plan is to try for one these scenarios:
1. Attract investors.
Find suckers who will pump millions into the company. The Phantom console goes into production and a year later the company folds because it's a stupid unworkable idea. The company's top executives walk away with lots of money, having paid themsleves huge slaries during the company's short lifetime.
2. Get bought by someone else.
Create enough buzz and hype that some other company buys them. This is the more attractive option since Infinium's top executives get to walk away with a butt-load of cash without having to actually do anything.
"IPO: Sell $50M worth of shares and use that to finance the factory. It's fast and it leaves the company debt free."
Debt free? HAH!!
You are now forever in debt to Wall Street stockbrokers who will dictate how you run the company. And if you don't follow orders, your stock price will drop sharpley.
Exactly right. With a starting price of $95, they have nowhere to go but down. Insiders get rich while everyone else gets screwed. Whatever happend to "do no evil"?
10.5 hours? You've got to be kidding. What an incompatent moron. I've completely wiped my hard drive, re-installed Windows, re-installed all my applications and restored all my important data files from a backup CD in less than half that time.
The mini-series didn't suck anywhere near as much as I thought it would. It was actually pretty good. But then, considering how horrible the original series was, there was nowhere to go but up.
Technically, you are absolutely right. Jib Jab isn't parodying the song "This Land is Your Land", they're using the melody from that song to make political commentary that is unrelated to the original song.
However, this only serves to point out a serious flaw in the copyright laws. Litigious bastards with no sense of humor (ie. the family of Woody Guthry) can stop someone from having a little harmless fun.
Long ago, long before the World Wide Web existed, people were debating the pros and cons of a "good virus". Is there such a thing a s a good virsus? Is it a good idea to even try to write a good virus?
Ultimately the answer is no. People don't want programs running on their computers, multiplying and speading thru a network without their knowledge or consent, even if it supposedly doing something "good".
Every time Microsoft has released a new version of their operating system -- going all the way back to DOS in the 80's -- they have included a lot of new features.
And each time, all of the so called "experts" have predicted that third party developers would be driven out of business by these new features that are included in Windows at no extra charge. But that never happens. Because most of these new features suck and are inferior to third party products.
They could almost certainly have asserted their right years ago. Windows Update has been around for yonks.
This is one of the bigest changes that needs to be made to patent laws. Once a patent is granted, you should have a certain amount of time (2 - 3 years) to begin selling something that uses that patent, or else that patent becomes invalid.
Machine learning? Please no. Please do not ruin the best browser ever created. The programs I hate the most are the ones that try to be "smart". Other than the occasional Bayesian spam filter, I have never yet encountered a "smart" program that didn't make thinks HARDER and MORE ANNOYING.
Have we already forgotten Microsoft's Clippy?
"menus that learn which commands you use and which you don't and then adapt to (try to) serve you better".
Please no!! This is exactly the thing I hate. The key words here are *TRY TO* serve you better -- those "smart" menus almost always guess wrong!!
I don't want a program that tries to guess what I want to do next -- I know what I want to do and I want a program that stays out of my way and lets me do it.
Firefox totally rocks (except for the really really stupid name, but that's another issue) and it totally blows away evey other browser, despite the fact that it hasn't even reached v1.0 yet.
SunnComm rips off the record companies by selling them a copy protection scheme that doesn't actually work.
The record gets passed around on all the file sharing networks and usenet newsgroups.
This free advertising results in increased sales, driving the record to number 1.
The pointy-haired bosses at the record company believe that the increased sales prove that the copy protection scheme is working and issue congratulatory press release.
Nicholas Negroponte predicts "You're going to see within the next year an extraordinary movement on the Web of systems for micropayment...." He goes on to predict micropayment revenues in the Billions of dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
"Ruins in ASCII"
for stalkers.
2.4.16
2.4.24
2.4.30
2.4.90
That's how I learned to count. So let me get this straight:
2.4.3 is not another way of saying 2.4.30 ?
from the download page: .... 2.4.16, 2.4.9, and 2.4.3 are especially bad. .... 2.4.24 is the latest release at the time of writing ...."
"Don't use linux kernel 2.4.16 or earlier for reiserfs operations
2.4.24 is newer than 2.4.3 and 2.4.9 ??
Over the past couple of years, lots of people have written about the subject of poor usablility in open source software. Lot's of people, some of them quite well known and well respected in the FOSS community keep saying it, but nobody seems to be listening.
The fact that people keep writing about poor usability would seem to indicate that nothing is changing. It would appear that FOSS pgrammers aren't taking it seriously and not making much effort to change things.
Why not?
>>"Do you think companies get bought without the buying company looking at the product?"
Yes.
Several years ago, when DSL and Cable internet access were not yet available, a guy claimed he had created a device that would transfer data at very high speed over ordinary phone lines. Needless to say, people were interested.
He never let anyone examine the device closely and was extremely vague in his descriptions of how it worked. Engineers who listened to his description of how the device worked said he was spouting gibberish. And yet he was able to take in millions of dollars from investors based solely on demonstrations he gave.
As he took money from investors, there were **10 different occasions** where he was supposed to deliver a working prototype and failed to do so -- each time claiming that the device was destroyed after being struck by lightning.
Google for "Madison Priest"
Infinium has shown off some prototypes, but they are meaningless. Anybody can throw together some off-the-shelf parts and put them in a fancy looking case.
And if you look at these protoypes, it's obvious that they were put together by people who have no clue how computer's actually work. For example, in addition to a standard Ethernet connector, there's a coax connector labelled "Cable Modem" and an RJ45 connector labelled "DSL". WTF?
Infinium's *TRUE* business plan is to try for one these scenarios:
1. Attract investors.
Find suckers who will pump millions into the company. The Phantom console goes into production and a year later the company folds because it's a stupid unworkable idea. The company's top executives walk away with lots of money, having paid themsleves huge slaries during the company's short lifetime.
2. Get bought by someone else.
Create enough buzz and hype that some other company buys them. This is the more attractive option since Infinium's top executives get to walk away with a butt-load of cash without having to actually do anything.
"IPO: Sell $50M worth of shares and use that to finance the factory. It's fast and it leaves the company debt free."
Debt free? HAH!!
You are now forever in debt to Wall Street stockbrokers who will dictate how you run the company. And if you don't follow orders, your stock price will drop sharpley.
"What exactly is the point?"
To make a few Google insiders rich. There is no other point to an IPO.
Exactly right. With a starting price of $95, they have nowhere to go but down. Insiders get rich while everyone else gets screwed. Whatever happend to "do no evil"?
10.5 hours? You've got to be kidding. What an incompatent moron.
I've completely wiped my hard drive, re-installed Windows, re-installed all my applications and restored all my important data files from a backup CD in less than half that time.
In Mozilla it takes me to www.http.com which appears to be a site set up for the sole purpose of displaying advertising to people who mis-type a URL.
But I don't understand the point of "The Browser Wars".
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Microsoft is finally making some long over due improvements.
But........
If everyone stops using IE and moves to Mozilla/Opera/whatever, Microsoft's loss in revenue is exactly zero.
If everyone abandons other browsers and uses IE exclusively, Microsoft's increase in revenue is exactly zero.
So what's the point of all this?
"Some Google patents, important ones, are running out in roughly 2010."
Huh??
Google was awarded patents in 1990??
They've been advertising this for months.
The mini-series didn't suck anywhere near as much as I thought it would. It was actually pretty good. But then, considering how horrible the original series was, there was nowhere to go but up.
$20 million divided by 40,000 = $500 per user. That's a deal?
Technically, you are absolutely right. Jib Jab isn't parodying the song "This Land is Your Land", they're using the melody from that song to make political commentary that is unrelated to the original song.
However, this only serves to point out a serious flaw in the copyright laws. Litigious bastards with no sense of humor (ie. the family of Woody Guthry) can stop someone from having a little harmless fun.
1989 called. They want their topic back.
Long ago, long before the World Wide Web existed, people were debating the pros and cons of a "good virus". Is there such a thing a s a good virsus? Is it a good idea to even try to write a good virus?
Ultimately the answer is no. People don't want programs running on their computers, multiplying and speading thru a network without their knowledge or consent, even if it supposedly doing something "good".
Every time Microsoft has released a new version of their operating system -- going all the way back to DOS in the 80's -- they have included a lot of new features.
And each time, all of the so called "experts" have predicted that third party developers would be driven out of business by these new features that are included in Windows at no extra charge. But that never happens. Because most of these new features suck and are inferior to third party products.
Remember Y2K? Did anyone notice that the world didn't come crashing down on Jan. 1, 2000?
It seems that all those old mainframes running programs from the 60's weren't in such bad shape after all.
This is an over-simplification of course -- people did have to do some work to make sure there weren't any "Y2K" problems.
Have we already forgotten Microsoft's Clippy?
Please no!! This is exactly the thing I hate. The key words here are *TRY TO* serve you better -- those "smart" menus almost always guess wrong!!
I don't want a program that tries to guess what I want to do next -- I know what I want to do and I want a program that stays out of my way and lets me do it.
Firefox totally rocks (except for the really really stupid name, but that's another issue) and it totally blows away evey other browser, despite the fact that it hasn't even reached v1.0 yet.
Please don't screw it up.
SunnComm rips off the record companies by selling them a copy protection scheme that doesn't actually work.
The record gets passed around on all the file sharing networks and usenet newsgroups.
This free advertising results in increased sales, driving the record to number 1.
The pointy-haired bosses at the record company believe that the increased sales prove that the copy protection scheme is working and issue congratulatory press release.
who knows nothing.
... ." He goes on
From 1998:
Nicholas Negroponte predicts "You're going to see within the next year an
extraordinary movement on the Web of systems for micropayment
to predict micropayment revenues in the Billions of dollars.
I welcome our new Saturnian overlords.
In Soviet Russia, Phoebe observes you.