I don't think the designers of windows had users like you in mind when they designed the UI. Long, descriptive directory names can be useless and crap from the command line, but for people browsing the filesystem with explorer it has a different meaning: Click the sentence 'Documents and Settings' (in nice, friendly,non threatening letters) to go to the directory containing... Documents and settings!
Many years ago, there was a commercial command line interpreter (or whatever it was) for dos/windows that gave you file name completion similar to what tcsh and bash have (I think it was called 4dos), I don't know if that is still available, but it might solve your source of irritation?
One of my favourite reasons for disliking gnome/enlightenment is the fact that colleagues often stop by and ask you why you are playing with a sega at work. A nintendo fan should not have to be forced to swallow an insult like that.
For example, when trying to deinstall a library that other apps depend on the system will stop ya in your tracks. Just trying to install over an older app puts both versions into the database.
Use pkg_delete -f
which allows you to force the removal of a package if you are sure you know what you are doing.
People/companies that can afford a server, almost certainly have a postscript printer. In fact that is the common reply I get to the question why I have to reboot to BeOS to use my plain and common HP Deskjet: "There is no demand for it, unix uses postscript."
Can you explain in laymans terms how to compile Mozilla without all the debug stuff in it? It is unusably slow in the form it is presently distributed in...
Your comparison breaks... you can resell your car, but you can not make identical copies of your mercedes and sell them as if they were real mercedeses
I think the market will make them set up a reliable distribution service. You would not expect them to drop the connection half way through the download any more than you would expect the record store to sell you a scratched CD.
Yes, libraries pay a licence for works they lend out. Plus they buy the books, and they don't distribute unauthorised copies. They don't have advertisement contracts. Napster is NOT a free, open source utility made for the common good by a couple of enthousiastic coders in their spare time. It's a commercial company, who use other people's work for getting multi million dollar advertisement contracys, without the owner's consent.
Is it really so unreasonable of the artists to object to someone distributing their work without their consent? It's not just a matter of money. Napster is just the internet age equivalent of a record bootlegger: they make money of someone elses work, without the artist's consent. The artist has no control over the quality, the format, the packaging, _and_ he doesn't get payed.
Before you label napster as a cyberspace patriot, only there to fight for your electronic freedom of speech, at least try to consider the other side as well. If you compare napster to radio, which should be a good comparison, don't forget that (legal) radio stations pay artists a certain amount of money for their work, and the artist (or more accurately the owner of the work... quite often the record company) at least has the option to decide which of his songs are ok for radio, and which he would rather chuck in the bin than let anyone else hear.
As I understand it, it was this situation that infuriated renowned control freak Lars Ulrich so much that he wanted to take legal action. Metallica were in the studio finishing an album, and were astonished to hear their unfinished, unreleased album on the radio. Someone had distributed a demo using napster, without asking metallica if it was ok with them.
That metallica are filthy rich, and haven't made a decent record in 10 years is completely irrelevant. If open software coders find that a commercial company which is considering an IPO takes their work, rips off the COPYRIGHT notice, and makes money distributing their proprietarised work, then how would slashdot readers respond?
And everyone knows that once you compromise a local account, getting root is trivial
This shouldn't have to be this way. At the very least, there is no reason to accept this situation. The OpenBSD crew pride themselves on the fact that no remote vulnerability, has been found in 3 years, and no local one in 2, I think. I am sure the BSD's would be mentioned more often on bugtraq too if hey had as many users looking for exploits as certain linux distributions do, but still... It's rarely (if ever) the kernel that leads to a root exploit, so you know who to blame.
Actually, the sysinstall is a nice, menu driven program. It's just not graphical, which means it will also work without X and Gnome. Packages can be installed via the ports (this will mean compiling, except in the case where the ports are only available in binary format, like netscape), or as binaries with pkg_add.
It would be a very good idea if you read some docs on XFree86 configuration... you can physically damage your monitor and your videocard if it's done wrong by the configuration program, as appears to have been the case with you. The autogenerated XF86Config file looks intimidating, but most of it you don't need at all. In the case of XF86-4.0 it's been made a bit easier too.
I don't think RedHat's 'fancy-looking-ness' should be mistaken for ease of use. The user friendliness of FreeBSD is the reason why I use it at home. The config tool sysinstall actually works, the BSD package manager actually works, all unlike the bits RedHat added to linux. It also annoyed me no end, what a mess RedHat makes of the directory tree, with separate library directories, binary directories etc for every package, which requires you to keep long lists of environment variables set (QTDIR=.., KDEDIR=.. etc). BSD just keeps the libraries in the libraries dir, binaries in the binaries dir, packages not part of the OS go under/usr/local.. etc. All package information goes under/var/db/pkg, so files don't get lost, and the uninstall tool actually works. My guess is it works well, because FreeBSD is being developed and maintained as an entire OS. Linux is a kernel, and the usability really depends on what a certain distro company wanted to add.
The one thing were Linux is easier on the user, is make xconfig, whereas BSD requires you to edit a textfile, but I don't think Redhat had a lot to do with that tool, or did they? I know I should really try a different Linux distribution, to give it a fair chance, but since I haven't needed it yet, I haven't gotten around to it yet. One thing is for sure: it won't be RedHat.
Reiserfs looks promising, I'll probably use linux for that fileserver I'm setting up.
Re:Do it yourself decafination for teas
on
Caffeine Vault
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, you're right.. technically, there is no such thing as liquid CO2
There are two kinds of people in the world: chemists and normal ones;-)
Re:Caffeine morphine Jolt Cola--what's the diff? :
on
Caffeine Vault
·
· Score: 5
The LD50 should not be regarded as a border, below which you live and suffer no ill effects and above which you die.
The LD50 is based on the dose that kills 50% of a group of test animals, usually rats, rabbits or mice through it's direct effects. This dose is multiplied by a certain factor (depending on the weight, and probably species of the test animal), to give a _probable_ LD50 for humans.
At a far lower dose, only 1% may die, or at an even lower dose no test animal may die, but some develop permanent damage to their organs. At a far higher dose, 99.999% may die, but some could survive.
Re:Do it yourself decafination for teas
on
Caffeine Vault
·
· Score: 2
Sorry, but the soluability of caffeine in water is very poor, especially compared to the other substances that provide scent and flavour. Decaf is made by extracting the caffeine with a non polar (mixes with oil, not water) solvent. I think they used to use petrol for that, but switched to liquified CO2
My humblest apologies for not spelling the ENGLISH term for the Great Wall of China right:P
completely off topic here, but:
It was built to impress potential invaders- and smugglers, not to keep them out. Ofcourse, logistically it was impossible to stop an invading force from going over it (it's not that high, few hours work to kill the guards on one or two towers, pile up some dirst against the wall and go right over it with your army) or around it (it's no one unbroken wall around china, rather a series of walls with gaps inbetween). And by the way, it didn't stop the invaders. They weren't impressed, and went straight over/around it.
Well you are right, tau neutrinos have no practical use. Putting men on the moon or sending probes to mars had no practical use. The Pyramids had no practical use, and neither had the chinese wall.
These achievements serve a different purpose. The cost seems very high, but it's only relatively small compared to what we spend on other things that have no practical use, like hollywood movies, beer, and the starwars project part 1 and 2. Although military spending does have a practical use, the amount the military gets to spend on things they want but don't really need dwarfs the cost of building that hand full of particle accellerators the world has.
So yes, from an engineering point of view, using empirical data is as valuable and often more practical than refining the theory to understand every aspect of a project at the design stage, but finding the theory that unifies all the forces in nature, and finally gives us a full understanding of how the universe works, is a project like going to the moon or building pyramids. It's one of the ways we give meaning to life.
Now if you had some of Archimedes' writings around the house, would you erase them so you could resuse the paper?! Priorities sure change, I guess.
Let's step into that monk's sandals for a bit: "Aaah, what a fine day for copying some of the Lord's Holy Prayers. Now where did I put my parchment... Hmm.. what's this then? *Yawn* Some ancient old heathen babbling about bodies in water? How would _that_ ever bring a man closer to God? What a waste of parchment. Hey, brother John, come and have a look at this! Would you believe how _boooooring_ people were 1500 years ago? " Brother John replies: "Well, brother Paul, the heathens must have had too much spare time, with all those slaves doing all their work. Just wash the parchment, and use it for something Good. It's not as if it's the last copy of an important work."
The most important thing is backward compatibility... As with DOS, 16 bit windows, x86 architecture, the sheer number of IPv4 users prevents any radical change. As long as it is not certain that the all machines hooked up to the internet speak IPv6, a switch will certainly not be made. The best solution would be a 'great switching day' (like with the switching from the many different european currencies to the euro on jan. 1 2002). However, due to the architecture of the internet (no one controls it) I don't see that happen.
Cut & paste remains something better left to the professionals:)
Most sanely written win32 applications would probably only have needed a recompile on the Alpha-NT box, to build a native alpha NT version. How many 3rd party developers used that to port their apps?
No, I've tried it, and as I mentioned, x86 binaries ran slower than on comparable x86 systems, and stability suffered (native apps did ok, x86 apps tended to crash, makes the regular PC user feel right at home). I also had a full visual studio suite running. Most sanely written win32 applications would probably only have needed a recompile on the Alpha-NT box, to
Emulated x86 on a different platform was just never viable, and MS knew it, because the price performance ratio of the x86 PC can not be matched. It might have worked if the Alpha-XL series had been able to run PC software several times faster than a PC, but this wasn't the case. So people who chose for the Alpha weren't interested in x86 application software, and they were far better off running Digital Unix or linux.
How can a new processor be successful when the OS on 95% of the world's computers only talks x86 ??
I almost agree with this, but I'm convinced it's the applications than matter, not the OS. The popularity of the PC architecture has accellerated the development of this architecture so much, that experimental new architectures could never compete in terms of price/performance ratio.
To replace what everybody's using, just being a bit faster is not enough. It has to be a lot faster, cheaper, more reliable, you name it.
Slashdot Mirror
Any proper response to this post would contain phrases like 'get a life' and such, so I won't give you a proper response, because flaming sucks
I don't think the designers of windows had users like you in mind when they designed the UI. Long, descriptive directory names can be useless and crap from the command line, but for people browsing the filesystem with explorer it has a different meaning: Click the sentence 'Documents and Settings' (in nice, friendly,non threatening letters) to go to the directory containing... Documents and settings!
Many years ago, there was a commercial command line interpreter (or whatever it was) for dos/windows that gave you file name completion similar to what tcsh and bash have (I think it was called 4dos), I don't know if that is still available, but it might solve your source of irritation?
One of my favourite reasons for disliking gnome/enlightenment is the fact that colleagues often stop by and ask you why you are playing with a sega at work. A nintendo fan should not have to be forced to swallow an insult like that.
For example, when trying to deinstall a library that other apps depend on the system will stop ya in your tracks. Just trying to install over an older app puts both versions into the database.
Use pkg_delete -f
which allows you to force the removal of a package if you are sure you know what you are doing.
People/companies that can afford a server, almost certainly have a postscript printer. In fact that is the common reply I get to the question why I have to reboot to BeOS to use my plain and common HP Deskjet: "There is no demand for it, unix uses postscript."
Can you explain in laymans terms how to compile Mozilla without all the debug stuff in it? It is unusably slow in the form it is presently distributed in...
Your comparison breaks... you can resell your car, but you can not make identical copies of your mercedes and sell them as if they were real mercedeses
I think the market will make them set up a reliable distribution service. You would not expect them to drop the connection half way through the download any more than you would expect the record store to sell you a scratched CD.
Yes, libraries pay a licence for works they lend out. Plus they buy the books, and they don't distribute unauthorised copies. They don't have advertisement contracts.
Napster is NOT a free, open source utility made for the common good by a couple of enthousiastic coders in their spare time. It's a commercial company, who use other people's work for getting multi million dollar advertisement contracys, without the owner's consent.
Is it really so unreasonable of the artists to object to someone distributing their work without their consent? It's not just a matter of money. Napster is just the internet age equivalent of a record bootlegger: they make money of someone elses work, without the artist's consent. The artist has no control over the quality, the format, the packaging, _and_ he doesn't get payed.
Before you label napster as a cyberspace patriot, only there to fight for your electronic freedom of speech, at least try to consider the other side as well. If you compare napster to radio, which should be a good comparison, don't forget that (legal) radio stations pay artists a certain amount of money for their work, and the artist (or more accurately the owner of the work... quite often the record company) at least has the option to decide which of his songs are ok for radio, and which he would rather chuck in the bin than let anyone else hear.
As I understand it, it was this situation that infuriated renowned control freak Lars Ulrich so much that he wanted to take legal action. Metallica were in the studio finishing an album, and were astonished to hear their unfinished, unreleased album on the radio. Someone had distributed a demo using napster, without asking metallica if it was ok with them.
That metallica are filthy rich, and haven't made a decent record in 10 years is completely irrelevant. If open software coders find that a commercial company which is considering an IPO takes their work, rips off the COPYRIGHT notice, and makes money distributing their proprietarised work, then how would slashdot readers respond?
And everyone knows that once you compromise a local account, getting root is trivial
This shouldn't have to be this way. At the very least, there is no reason to accept this situation. The OpenBSD crew pride themselves on the fact that no remote vulnerability, has been found in 3 years, and no local one in 2, I think. I am sure the BSD's would be mentioned more often on bugtraq too if hey had as many users looking for exploits as certain linux distributions do, but still... It's rarely (if ever) the kernel that leads to a root exploit, so you know who to blame.
Actually, the sysinstall is a nice, menu driven program. It's just not graphical, which means it will also work without X and Gnome. Packages can be installed via the ports (this will mean compiling, except in the case where the ports are only available in binary format, like netscape), or as binaries with pkg_add.
It would be a very good idea if you read some docs on XFree86 configuration... you can physically damage your monitor and your videocard if it's done wrong by the configuration program, as appears to have been the case with you. The autogenerated XF86Config file looks intimidating, but most of it you don't need at all. In the case of XF86-4.0 it's been made a bit easier too.
I agree, and in addition to that, the Solaris x86 CDs perform exceptionally well as beer-mats.
I don't think RedHat's 'fancy-looking-ness' should be mistaken for ease of use. The user friendliness of FreeBSD is the reason why I use it at home. The config tool sysinstall actually works, the BSD package manager actually works, all unlike the bits RedHat added to linux. /usr/local.. etc. All package information goes under /var/db/pkg, so files don't get lost, and the uninstall tool actually works. My guess is it works well, because FreeBSD is being developed and maintained as an entire OS. Linux is a kernel, and the usability really depends on what a certain distro company wanted to add.
It also annoyed me no end, what a mess RedHat makes of the directory tree, with separate library directories, binary directories etc for every package, which requires you to keep long lists of environment variables set (QTDIR=.., KDEDIR=.. etc).
BSD just keeps the libraries in the libraries dir, binaries in the binaries dir, packages not part of the OS go under
The one thing were Linux is easier on the user, is make xconfig, whereas BSD requires you to edit a textfile, but I don't think Redhat had a lot to do with that tool, or did they? I know I should really try a different Linux distribution, to give it a fair chance, but since I haven't needed it yet, I haven't gotten around to it yet. One thing is for sure: it won't be RedHat.
Reiserfs looks promising, I'll probably use linux for that fileserver I'm setting up.
Yeah, you're right.. technically, there is no such thing as liquid CO2
;-)
There are two kinds of people in the world: chemists and normal ones
The LD50 should not be regarded as a border, below which you live and suffer no ill effects and above which you die.
The LD50 is based on the dose that kills 50% of a group of test animals, usually rats, rabbits or mice through it's direct effects. This dose is multiplied by a certain factor (depending on the weight, and probably species of the test animal), to give a _probable_ LD50 for humans.
At a far lower dose, only 1% may die, or at an even lower dose no test animal may die, but some develop permanent damage to their organs. At a far higher dose, 99.999% may die, but some could survive.
Sorry, but the soluability of caffeine in water is very poor, especially compared to the other substances that provide scent and flavour. Decaf is made by extracting the caffeine with a non polar (mixes with oil, not water) solvent. I think they used to use petrol for that, but switched to liquified CO2
My humblest apologies for not spelling the ENGLISH term for the Great Wall of China right:P
completely off topic here, but:
It was built to impress potential invaders- and smugglers, not to keep them out. Ofcourse, logistically it was impossible to stop an invading force from going over it (it's not that high, few hours work to kill the guards on one or two towers, pile up some dirst against the wall and go right over it with your army) or around it (it's no one unbroken wall around china, rather a series of walls with gaps inbetween). And by the way, it didn't stop the invaders. They weren't impressed, and went straight over/around it.
Well you are right, tau neutrinos have no practical use. Putting men on the moon or sending probes to mars had no practical use. The Pyramids had no practical use, and neither had the chinese wall.
These achievements serve a different purpose. The cost seems very high, but it's only relatively small compared to what we spend on other things that have no practical use, like hollywood movies, beer, and the starwars project part 1 and 2. Although military spending does have a practical use, the amount the military gets to spend on things they want but don't really need dwarfs the cost of building that hand full of particle accellerators the world has.
So yes, from an engineering point of view, using empirical data is as valuable and often more practical than refining the theory to understand every aspect of a project at the design stage, but finding the theory that unifies all the forces in nature, and finally gives us a full understanding of how the universe works, is a project like going to the moon or building pyramids. It's one of the ways we give meaning to life.
"ij" is just pronounced as the English 'i'
:)
No need for struggling with seemingly unpronouncable 'widjng' or 'didjkstr' sequences
hmm.. the kernel on my linux box is 1.2 Mb. The kernel on my BSD box is 2.2 Mb. I think you are looking at a gzipped kernel, if it's less that 700k.
Now if you had some of Archimedes' writings around the house, would you erase them so you could resuse the paper?! Priorities sure change, I guess.
Let's step into that monk's sandals for a bit:
"Aaah, what a fine day for copying some of the Lord's Holy Prayers. Now where did I put my parchment... Hmm.. what's this then? *Yawn* Some ancient old heathen babbling about bodies in water? How would _that_ ever bring a man closer to God? What a waste of parchment. Hey, brother John, come and have a look at this! Would you believe how _boooooring_ people were 1500 years ago? " Brother John replies: "Well, brother Paul, the heathens must have had too much spare time, with all those slaves doing all their work. Just wash the parchment, and use it for something Good. It's not as if it's the last copy of an important work."
The most important thing is backward compatibility... As with DOS, 16 bit windows, x86 architecture, the sheer number of IPv4 users prevents any radical change. As long as it is not certain that the all machines hooked up to the internet speak IPv6, a switch will certainly not be made.
The best solution would be a 'great switching day' (like with the switching from the many different european currencies to the euro on jan. 1 2002). However, due to the architecture of the internet (no one controls it) I don't see that happen.
Cut & paste remains something better left to the professionals :)
Most sanely written win32 applications would probably only have needed a recompile on the Alpha-NT box, to build a native alpha NT version. How many 3rd party developers used that to port their apps?
No, I've tried it, and as I mentioned, x86 binaries ran slower than on comparable x86 systems, and stability suffered (native apps did ok, x86 apps tended to crash, makes the regular PC user feel right at home).
I also had a full visual studio suite running. Most sanely written win32 applications would probably only have needed a recompile on the Alpha-NT box, to
Emulated x86 on a different platform was just never viable, and MS knew it, because the price performance ratio of the x86 PC can not be matched. It might have worked if the Alpha-XL series had been able to run PC software several times faster than a PC, but this wasn't the case.
So people who chose for the Alpha weren't interested in x86 application software, and they were far better off running Digital Unix or linux.
How can a new processor be successful when the OS on 95% of the world's computers only talks x86 ??
I almost agree with this, but I'm convinced it's the applications than matter, not the OS. The popularity of the PC architecture has accellerated the development of this architecture so much, that experimental new architectures could never compete in terms of price/performance ratio.
To replace what everybody's using, just being a bit faster is not enough. It has to be a lot faster, cheaper, more reliable, you name it.