Do you know how high are the fines for red lights in California? Blocking traffic is nothing compared to this.
Re:your first sentence is technically flawed
on
Ubuntu on a Dime
·
· Score: 1
fmwm2
Typo, should be fvwm2.
Re:your first sentence is technically flawed
on
Ubuntu on a Dime
·
· Score: 1
Until the last 3 years (5 to be generous), Unix UIs all stank.
I had a nice fmwm2-based desktop in 1994 -- icons, panel with launchers and embedded windows (applets didn't exist then except for, I think, Window Maker or its predecessors), multiple (12) desktops/viewports.
There's no reason to think IBM would have done better in the mid-80s, especially given that current Unix UIs have Apple and Microsoft to thank for establishing expectations in the first place.
If anything Microsoft did, it was establishing idiotic expectations in users, such as launcher icons on the desktop background, drag and drop instead of selection, click to focus, lack of predefined function for the middle mouse button, single desktop/viewport, and other UI atrocities that became so embedded in users' minds, they spilled over to other environments.
MacOS is pretty much a thing in itself as far as UI behavior is concerned -- while some visual elements migrated elsewhere, no one ever replicated MacOS menu bar behavior, or its lack of fully-maximized windows.
Re:your first sentence is technically flawed
on
Ubuntu on a Dime
·
· Score: 1
Not till the 286 AFAICR, the MMU in the 8086 was worthless. Real Unix needed at least a 386.
8086 didn't have a worthless MMU -- it had no MMU. 80286 had rudimentary MMU, 80386 had first widely supported MMU in x86 series.
However you don't really need MMU to run a Unix-like system, you just won't get some benefits of Unix without it. I have uClinux running on an embedded system right in front of me, and it's definitely a Unix-like system.
As for home users - hell, no! You needed to be a real nerd to do anything with any Unix until at least 2007.
Someone never seen people using DOS in 80's. Unix -- even a kind of Unix you can squeeze into 1M with no MMU -- would be a far superior environment.
Disclaimer: I speak as one who has ran Unix (on PDP11) as a home system in the 1980's, and the *BSDs on the desktop from about 1995.
Big freaking deal -- I ran RT11 (56K and no MMU -- that was a "cheap desktop" configuration) and RSX11M on PDP-11 at that time -- and it was a pretty popular configuration back then.
Cats poking out of trash bins will be famous lolcat pictures, complete with captions. Doom music will play if the cat is attacked. Jumping into windows will start more mini-games, and original games will be accompanied with captions "DO WANT"/"DO NOT WANT" and appropriate cat-facial expressions. Mice in cheese can be followed with a portal gun, in full 3D. Cat can collect powerups that convert him into Longcat or Speedycat. Longcat jumped into a window may (with some low probability) find himself in Catnarok, fighting against Tacgnol. A new row of windows will lead to the basement, complete with basement-dwellers. Chris-chan will be seen performing his random... activities, the goal will be to steal his medallion. Stealing his crayons will convert all graphics into his drawing style for a minute -- and all points gained within that time will double. Chasing female cats will be more challenging due to half of the screen dedicated to friendzone. Score will be kept in lulz. Anonymous may randomly rescue the cat in various hopeless situations.
No, seriously, how can anyone say that adding lolcats to Alley Cat won't be a massive improvement?
I don't need to know everything that it supports (why would I care?). I only need to know how well it supports my hardware.
Googling doesn't help much, because, frankly, it's quite a mess - you find a lot of old, outdated data (sometimes "outdated" by a month or two, e.g. by a fresh kernel, X, or other major package release), and this can go both ways - something that was fully supported fine before now has problems.
Name one.
Most often this happens with graphics
That's simple. Anything that requires fglrx is as good as unsupported. Everything that uses Nvidia driver may at some point fall into "legacy" support and require an old version -- and that version often has to be installed from Nvidia packages even if distribution supposedly supports it. Everything else always remains supported.
, but there have been other regressions as well.
Name one.
Well, it's better than arguing against using Linux unconvincingly (i.e. not backed by any facts, as in "lunix sucks"), don't you think?
I am good at bullshit detection but not its comparative analysis, so you are asking a wrong person.
For what's it worth, never in my time had I argued against using Linux in general. I may argue at times that Linux is not the best solution for a particular scenario - and same for any other software or hardware offering (with the sole exception of PHP; there is no good scenario that would warrant the use of that abomination).
For all practical purposes, all popular scripting languages and their web-backend implementations are abominations, so PHP is not exactly prominent among them.
I help people install and configure Linux if they ask me (and advise on the distro to pick),
First and foremost, if someone does not know what Linux distribution to install on a desktop or server, the only valid answer is Ubuntu. Not that other distributions are any worse, but those who need them wouldn't have to ask.
Second, having a desktop box where you occasionally install and reinstall Linux does not make your advice any more useful than searching Google or looking at Ubuntu forums.
I advise people to install OO.org if they need an office suite but can't afford MSO, and so on.
Sure, you do.
I'm also somewhat puzzled by what in my original post in this particular thread you have construed as "arguing against Linux"?
Because it has all hallmarks of Microsoft supporter claiming to be a Linux user.
If anything, the only comparison point I had mentioned was in favor of Linux (namely, availability of good Common Lisp implementations).
What is not true.
The rest is, frankly, just your overzealous imagination, which may have been triggered by me mentioning that I use Windows as main OS.
Anyone who actually used Linux as his primary OS in the last 15 years has no good reason to use Windows, except for running AutoCAD or playing some games. This is however irrelevant, as you have brought up Windows for no other reason but to smear Linux without actually making any meaningful, and therefore refutable claim.
The reason is that I, as a consumer (both as user and as developer), want to be informed regarding where "Linux on the desktop" actually is with respect to other offerings - so that I can make reasoned buying decisions etc. Among other things, this includes testing hardware support, and that is not something you can properly test in a VM.
No. You don't need to have Linux on your desktop, leave alone multiple distributions of it, to know which hardware is supported -- you need a MASSIVE HARDWARE TESTING LAB to determine that, so if you want to know, you are better off just googling for it.
You need Ubuntu installation to convincingly argue against using Linux on a desktop, like what you are trying to do (and failing) now.
The use of ">" as a quote marker in email and Usenet news is at least 30 years old. Displaying lines quoted with ">" in a color that differs from the rest of the message is at least 20 years old.
4chan and its "> Implying..." greentext has nothing on those traditions.
I am talking about pro-government propaganda, not actual decisions or intentions. "We will nuke all our enemies!!!" is a rallying cry used before every act of aggression, regardless of its scale.
This declaration has very little effect on actual policy -- in fact, USSR one-upped it decades ago be declaring that it won't use nuclear weapons first in any conflict, however it didn't have much of effect, either.
True importance of this is in its effect on American propaganda directed toward Americans -- government basically tells its propaganda workers in the media to stop claiming that US is willing to establish its control over the rest of the world through the threat of nuclear war. Remember Republicans screaming about nuking Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea(!), etc. in 2001-2002, despite the fact that no one in Bush administration was considering such an action? Now this madness has to stop, and xenophobic propaganda should take more sane forms than "We will nuke all those sandniggers into the stone age!!! Middle East will be a parking lot!".
It's quite possible that it's used for this particular scheme.
The problem is, proving that such a scheme is being used, is difficult, time-consuming and likely requires plenty of co-operation between multiple countries' law enforcement. On the other hand, evidence that sales are fraudulent -- be it to unsuspecting Amazon customers or partners in money laundering schemes -- is already there, available for everyone to see.
Same applies to, say, shady "send-us-gold-and-we'll pay you" companies -- it's very likely that jewelry thieves use them to evade police, and it's possible that some of them are created just for this purpose. However it would be easier to bust them if massive disparity with market price and underhanded "negotiation" tactics were already clearly illegal for companies that trade in something as easy to abuse as precious metals.
Which is why we don't let children enter into contracts. When you grow up, you are supposed to recognize this sort of manipulation and learn how to resist it.
Children are vulnerable to pretty much anything imaginable, this is why they never are allowed to make any decisions with any kind of lasting effect.
However this is completely unrelated to the fact that all humans, including you and me, are vulnerable to various kinds of manipulation. When such manipulation can be recognized and prevented, it's just as reasonable to prevent it, as it is reasonable to keep a Windows computer behind a firewall. Any other decision would be irresponsible.
Yes, it is. Not perfect immunity. But that's what learning from one's mistakes is all about.
Thousands of years of history demonstrate that humans are easy to manipulate. Only recently it became clear, why and how.
Who gets to be in charge of that mechanism? And how do we know that they won't use it for their own nefarious purposes? Maybe I want to be in charge (insert maniacal laugh here)!
Whoever it would be, it's unlikely that it will be a secret society hell-bent on zombification of themselves along with the rest of mankind. Usually just selecting people who are competent in relevant areas of psychology and psychiatry, and telling them that they can have ANYTHING they want as long as they do their work, is sufficient to keep away incompetence and corruption. And the cost would be still pretty low compared to what sick people in power cost us now.
It does not matter what anyone did or did not notice. One single question should be asked -- "Would a sane and reasonable person who understood the nature of this product, buy it at the given price?" If the answer is no, it's a fraud. Everything else should be completely irrelevant.
P.S. This is the first step to a completely economic style of warfare. When humans no longer fight and it's just the U.S. robots vs. the Chinese robots, then will war become completely pointless and entirely about economics. I think science fiction predicted another one.
No.
Everyone will quickly discover that when both sides have easily replaceable robots and limited amount of resources, defending against enemy robots is less efficient than spending same resources to attack enemy's homeland and civilian population, destroying them faster than enemy destroys you.
We will be lucky if amount of expected destruction (and politicians' understanding of it) will be sufficient for MAD-like situation when even best outcome after the first strike is so much worse than the current situation, no one would want to start such a war. Something tells me that either it won't be true, or politicians won't believe that it's true.
This happens every time someone wants to continue "competing" by cutting corners.
When no one forces standards, companies "compete" by neglecting some areas, so in their race to the bottom they eventually reach the point when no one can provide any kind of safety. The whole structure of pricing, available services, training, etc. makes it unaffordable to do anything that improves the neglected area, so everyone trembles in fear that either the whole thing will crash down, or someone will out-neglect him and force the company out of the market.
Then government produces some regulation, and sends scary jackbooted thugs to enforce it. Rationally behaving companies would welcome those thugs no matter how scary and rude they are. They can't hurt you more than they hurt your competitors -- not unless you suck so much, you have to cut corners more than your competitors do just to maintain price parity with them. They WILL hurt your worst enemies -- competitors who drive cost down by increasing risks. Companies' management should be happy that now they and their competitors have to spend some minimal amount of money and effort on compliance, and compete on something productive.
That is, if management recognizes that excessive risk is a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Literally.
And it's a good thing.
Do you know how high are the fines for red lights in California? Blocking traffic is nothing compared to this.
fmwm2
Typo, should be fvwm2.
Until the last 3 years (5 to be generous), Unix UIs all stank.
I had a nice fmwm2-based desktop in 1994 -- icons, panel with launchers and embedded windows (applets didn't exist then except for, I think, Window Maker or its predecessors), multiple (12) desktops/viewports.
There's no reason to think IBM would have done better in the mid-80s, especially given that current Unix UIs have Apple and Microsoft to thank for establishing expectations in the first place.
If anything Microsoft did, it was establishing idiotic expectations in users, such as launcher icons on the desktop background, drag and drop instead of selection, click to focus, lack of predefined function for the middle mouse button, single desktop/viewport, and other UI atrocities that became so embedded in users' minds, they spilled over to other environments.
MacOS is pretty much a thing in itself as far as UI behavior is concerned -- while some visual elements migrated elsewhere, no one ever replicated MacOS menu bar behavior, or its lack of fully-maximized windows.
Not till the 286 AFAICR, the MMU in the 8086 was worthless. Real Unix needed at least a 386.
8086 didn't have a worthless MMU -- it had no MMU. 80286 had rudimentary MMU, 80386 had first widely supported MMU in x86 series.
However you don't really need MMU to run a Unix-like system, you just won't get some benefits of Unix without it. I have uClinux running on an embedded system right in front of me, and it's definitely a Unix-like system.
As for home users - hell, no! You needed to be a real nerd to do anything with any Unix until at least 2007.
Someone never seen people using DOS in 80's. Unix -- even a kind of Unix you can squeeze into 1M with no MMU -- would be a far superior environment.
Disclaimer: I speak as one who has ran Unix (on PDP11) as a home system in the 1980's, and the *BSDs on the desktop from about 1995.
Big freaking deal -- I ran RT11 (56K and no MMU -- that was a "cheap desktop" configuration) and RSX11M on PDP-11 at that time -- and it was a pretty popular configuration back then.
WHAT?????!!!
Alley LOLcat would be a GREAT game!
Cats poking out of trash bins will be famous lolcat pictures, complete with captions. ... activities, the goal will be to steal his medallion. Stealing his crayons will convert all graphics into his drawing style for a minute -- and all points gained within that time will double.
Doom music will play if the cat is attacked.
Jumping into windows will start more mini-games, and original games will be accompanied with captions "DO WANT"/"DO NOT WANT" and appropriate cat-facial expressions.
Mice in cheese can be followed with a portal gun, in full 3D.
Cat can collect powerups that convert him into Longcat or Speedycat. Longcat jumped into a window may (with some low probability) find himself in Catnarok, fighting against Tacgnol.
A new row of windows will lead to the basement, complete with basement-dwellers. Chris-chan will be seen performing his random
Chasing female cats will be more challenging due to half of the screen dedicated to friendzone.
Score will be kept in lulz.
Anonymous may randomly rescue the cat in various hopeless situations.
No, seriously, how can anyone say that adding lolcats to Alley Cat won't be a massive improvement?
I beg to differ. You don't have to be a sociopath to participate in mass murder -- you can be also deluded, stupid or desperate.
I don't need to know everything that it supports (why would I care?). I only need to know how well it supports my hardware.
Googling doesn't help much, because, frankly, it's quite a mess - you find a lot of old, outdated data (sometimes "outdated" by a month or two, e.g. by a fresh kernel, X, or other major package release), and this can go both ways - something that was fully supported fine before now has problems.
Name one.
Most often this happens with graphics
That's simple. Anything that requires fglrx is as good as unsupported. Everything that uses Nvidia driver may at some point fall into "legacy" support and require an old version -- and that version often has to be installed from Nvidia packages even if distribution supposedly supports it. Everything else always remains supported.
, but there have been other regressions as well.
Name one.
Well, it's better than arguing against using Linux unconvincingly (i.e. not backed by any facts, as in "lunix sucks"), don't you think?
I am good at bullshit detection but not its comparative analysis, so you are asking a wrong person.
For what's it worth, never in my time had I argued against using Linux in general. I may argue at times that Linux is not the best solution for a particular scenario - and same for any other software or hardware offering (with the sole exception of PHP; there is no good scenario that would warrant the use of that abomination).
For all practical purposes, all popular scripting languages and their web-backend implementations are abominations, so PHP is not exactly prominent among them.
I help people install and configure Linux if they ask me (and advise on the distro to pick),
First and foremost, if someone does not know what Linux distribution to install on a desktop or server, the only valid answer is Ubuntu. Not that other distributions are any worse, but those who need them wouldn't have to ask.
Second, having a desktop box where you occasionally install and reinstall Linux does not make your advice any more useful than searching Google or looking at Ubuntu forums.
I advise people to install OO.org if they need an office suite but can't afford MSO, and so on.
Sure, you do.
I'm also somewhat puzzled by what in my original post in this particular thread you have construed as "arguing against Linux"?
Because it has all hallmarks of Microsoft supporter claiming to be a Linux user.
If anything, the only comparison point I had mentioned was in favor of Linux (namely, availability of good Common Lisp implementations).
What is not true.
The rest is, frankly, just your overzealous imagination, which may have been triggered by me mentioning that I use Windows as main OS.
Anyone who actually used Linux as his primary OS in the last 15 years has no good reason to use Windows, except for running AutoCAD or playing some games. This is however irrelevant, as you have brought up Windows for no other reason but to smear Linux without actually making any meaningful, and therefore refutable claim.
The reason is that I, as a consumer (both as user and as developer), want to be informed regarding where "Linux on the desktop" actually is with respect to other offerings - so that I can make reasoned buying decisions etc. Among other things, this includes testing hardware support, and that is not something you can properly test in a VM.
No. You don't need to have Linux on your desktop, leave alone multiple distributions of it, to know which hardware is supported -- you need a MASSIVE HARDWARE TESTING LAB to determine that, so if you want to know, you are better off just googling for it.
You need Ubuntu installation to convincingly argue against using Linux on a desktop, like what you are trying to do (and failing) now.
It does, however for 30 years it was a massive violation of netiquette to place anything other than a verbatim quote after ">".
Then this stupid "Fixed for you" appeared, and after that, "Implying..."
No. (now GTFO).
The use of ">" as a quote marker in email and Usenet news is at least 30 years old.
Displaying lines quoted with ">" in a color that differs from the rest of the message is at least 20 years old.
4chan and its "> Implying..." greentext has nothing on those traditions.
Trollium would be a GREAT name for an element.
The only place in Europe that still acts like this after WWII is former Yugoslavia+Albania.
And only when Americans are helping.
Everyone else grew up.
I am talking about pro-government propaganda, not actual decisions or intentions. "We will nuke all our enemies!!!" is a rallying cry used before every act of aggression, regardless of its scale.
What better way to rid the world of fools? Or at least, rid the fools of their money.
If only those two were identical...
...and THIS is average American's understanding of international conflict -- an equivalent of schoolyard brawl.
This is why everyone treats you like a bunch of retards with bombs.
This declaration has very little effect on actual policy -- in fact, USSR one-upped it decades ago be declaring that it won't use nuclear weapons first in any conflict, however it didn't have much of effect, either.
True importance of this is in its effect on American propaganda directed toward Americans -- government basically tells its propaganda workers in the media to stop claiming that US is willing to establish its control over the rest of the world through the threat of nuclear war. Remember Republicans screaming about nuking Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea(!), etc. in 2001-2002, despite the fact that no one in Bush administration was considering such an action? Now this madness has to stop, and xenophobic propaganda should take more sane forms than "We will nuke all those sandniggers into the stone age!!! Middle East will be a parking lot!".
What, I have to admit, is some serious progress.
I am not a Libertarian.
Apparently the origin of that whole thing.
It's quite possible that it's used for this particular scheme.
The problem is, proving that such a scheme is being used, is difficult, time-consuming and likely requires plenty of co-operation between multiple countries' law enforcement. On the other hand, evidence that sales are fraudulent -- be it to unsuspecting Amazon customers or partners in money laundering schemes -- is already there, available for everyone to see.
Same applies to, say, shady "send-us-gold-and-we'll pay you" companies -- it's very likely that jewelry thieves use them to evade police, and it's possible that some of them are created just for this purpose. However it would be easier to bust them if massive disparity with market price and underhanded "negotiation" tactics were already clearly illegal for companies that trade in something as easy to abuse as precious metals.
Which is why we don't let children enter into contracts. When you grow up, you are supposed to recognize this sort of manipulation and learn how to resist it.
Children are vulnerable to pretty much anything imaginable, this is why they never are allowed to make any decisions with any kind of lasting effect.
However this is completely unrelated to the fact that all humans, including you and me, are vulnerable to various kinds of manipulation. When such manipulation can be recognized and prevented, it's just as reasonable to prevent it, as it is reasonable to keep a Windows computer behind a firewall. Any other decision would be irresponsible.
Yes, it is. Not perfect immunity. But that's what learning from one's mistakes is all about.
Thousands of years of history demonstrate that humans are easy to manipulate. Only recently it became clear, why and how.
Who gets to be in charge of that mechanism? And how do we know that they won't use it for their own nefarious purposes? Maybe I want to be in charge (insert maniacal laugh here)!
Whoever it would be, it's unlikely that it will be a secret society hell-bent on zombification of themselves along with the rest of mankind. Usually just selecting people who are competent in relevant areas of psychology and psychiatry, and telling them that they can have ANYTHING they want as long as they do their work, is sufficient to keep away incompetence and corruption. And the cost would be still pretty low compared to what sick people in power cost us now.
It does not matter what anyone did or did not notice. One single question should be asked -- "Would a sane and reasonable person who understood the nature of this product, buy it at the given price?" If the answer is no, it's a fraud. Everything else should be completely irrelevant.
P.S. This is the first step to a completely economic style of warfare. When humans no longer fight and it's just the U.S. robots vs. the Chinese robots, then will war become completely pointless and entirely about economics. I think science fiction predicted another one.
No.
Everyone will quickly discover that when both sides have easily replaceable robots and limited amount of resources, defending against enemy robots is less efficient than spending same resources to attack enemy's homeland and civilian population, destroying them faster than enemy destroys you.
We will be lucky if amount of expected destruction (and politicians' understanding of it) will be sufficient for MAD-like situation when even best outcome after the first strike is so much worse than the current situation, no one would want to start such a war. Something tells me that either it won't be true, or politicians won't believe that it's true.
This happens every time someone wants to continue "competing" by cutting corners.
When no one forces standards, companies "compete" by neglecting some areas, so in their race to the bottom they eventually reach the point when no one can provide any kind of safety. The whole structure of pricing, available services, training, etc. makes it unaffordable to do anything that improves the neglected area, so everyone trembles in fear that either the whole thing will crash down, or someone will out-neglect him and force the company out of the market.
Then government produces some regulation, and sends scary jackbooted thugs to enforce it. Rationally behaving companies would welcome those thugs no matter how scary and rude they are. They can't hurt you more than they hurt your competitors -- not unless you suck so much, you have to cut corners more than your competitors do just to maintain price parity with them. They WILL hurt your worst enemies -- competitors who drive cost down by increasing risks. Companies' management should be happy that now they and their competitors have to spend some minimal amount of money and effort on compliance, and compete on something productive.
That is, if management recognizes that excessive risk is a problem.