If writing a graphics driver is indeed very complex, the chance of FOSS developers including bugs is quite realistic.
It's also not above FOSS developers to change functions in midstream for pedantic reasons and deprecate the original with loud error messages to the console or crashing applications with error messages.
Yes I know MS does this too; just not on such a regular basis.
For instance, I was gone for the last 2 weeks on business. I didn't have time to catch the shows on TV where I was. When I got back, there they were!
Not trying to throw stones here, but there's really nothing on television that I (personally) would find so important that I'd miss while out of town. For many years I didn't even own a television nor miss having one. Until my son started spending significant time in my home I had no need for it. The downside of having one now is that I can still hear Spongebob's voice in the back of my head while away from the television.
I guess the problem I see with any of these services is the cost of providing them with the cost of the hardware. There's just too many of us folks out there that would be unwilling to spend that much (or even anything) on the ability to *not* miss television entertainment. I might be willing to spend $15-30/month for a device that would locate and provide a small (but painful) electric shock to the producers and writers of some of these shows and commercials on my command. [Lookout Vonage and Subaru!] On a more realistic note these types of devices have the amazing capability to help content providers choose and create better material. They're just not doing it (or not doing it very well). The machines know when you changed channels and where you went, how long you stayed etc. So say for instance, I'm sitting at home watching an old re-run of M*A*S*H and they start one of their 10 minute Subaru advertising campaigns--I change channels to something else, to find a Vonage campaign and keep going until I finally settle on Survivor where I give up and turn the device off. If somebody were to monitor that kind of information on a large scale; we might not have or brains ground into mush on a continued basis.
Domain ID:D118697403-LROR Domain Name:CLEARWARE.ORG Created On:18-Mar-2006 15:55:54 UTC Last Updated On:29-Mar-2006 12:06:06 UTC Expiration Date:18-Mar-2007 15:55:54 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:Tucows Inc. (R11-LROR)
Given that the domain has only been registered a month (give or take a day) that's to be expected; but yes I agree. Move along, nothing to see.
What there is to see--is another "org" formed to support the obvious. Come on folks? 2/3rds of people don't completely read long, confusing and officious legal documents? Perish the thought. Somebody has a great perception for the obvious.
Agreed that the courts are going to make a guilty/not guilty decision and that's binding on governmental institutions; but in the end you can't rely on the courts to make up your own mind on a given case. If you honestly care enough about the case then do the research, look at the court documents and decide for yourself. It almost definitely (unless you find something really convincing) won't change anything for the person being tried, but at least you will know that you've *personally* made an informed decision.
Yes it's a lot of work, but if it matters to YOU then it's worth it. It doesn't to me; and to be honest I'd never even heard of this guy before today. Apparently his fame wasn't as widespread as people thought.
Have you ever considered the concept that just maybe the Chinese government doesn't really *care* if you (or anyone else is/are) a fan? Personally I don't. Admittedly I'm not a member of the Chinese government, and from my extremely cursory look at the situation; it doesn't seem like the Chinese government cares a lot about what anyone thinks.
... and e-mail with discussing vaguely defined subject as network security or information security may not be transmitted What does that mean? Was this story processed from Chinese using babelfish? Does anyone at/. edit or are they too busy writing stories justifying why they shouldn't bother editing?
It's not unlike much of the language butchery I see in comments. If that was a comment you would have been labelled a grammer/spelling nazi and sent to your room without supper. Welcome to Slashdot. Oh yeah, and mods? That wasn't flamebait. That's what we call honesty in the real world.
I wouldn't mind working for the NSA. I don't have that level of skills however. On the other hand, at least it would be a job. My family would be fed, my life comfortable and I wouldn't have to rely on my parents or their basement to sustain myself. Morals are nice when you have food in your stomach and a warm place to stay but in the end you've got to support yourself and if whoring yourself to a government agency is what it takes then a person does what they need to do.
I work for a small company. I *am* the IT staff as I'm sure many/. readers are. I don't necessarily care for my job although I like it well enough. I definitely don't agree with all the business decisions that I'm instructed to implement but I do it. Why? There is a 13 yr old son at home or school that needs food, clothing, a place to stay and all those other little things that a child needs growing up. If I could provide more of those "little things" or better "little things" and most importantly MORE TIME to spend with him enjoying those little things I'd be there with bells on.
I'm assuming that by referring to MS as M$; you're making a cutesy (if somewhat outdated) reference to a publicly offered corporation executing it's responsibility to generate the largest profit it's capable of. (mind you--that's by law)
While I don't agree with the idea that Naked PC's are a threat to anything except Microsoft's bottom line; I don't think there's anything under the hood, or behind the scenes. MS wants to sell their product; they'd really like their vendors to sell their product too! Imagine that. So, somebody identified 5% of sales that could possibly be targetted--he talked about it. God forbid!
Anyhow, back to my original statement. using M$ is cute and probably makes you feel smart; but it really isn't cute, and well--I'm not going to question the other part because it's not nice.
Social engineering anyone?
on
Why Phishing Works
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It works because it plays on the concept that seeing is believing; and most people will trust their eyes over their minds any day of the week.
Awesome post and great advice for those that have no clue. I think it's amazing that these men and women run off to war, fight for whatever it is our government tells them to fight for; in the name of democracy and freedom--then here at home we have asshat whine-ass drooling masturbators calling them names and questioning their moral standing.
Maybe the asshats should be out there trying to do the job--if they could get their hands out of their pants that is.
Probably the right cynical attitude. Recently one of my neighbors fell on temporarily hard times. Since he has a handful of kids --it's amazing the amount of homework they get requires some form of internet access-- I got him set up to use my AP for a short time. Granted, my AP is secured and I had to set it up for him; but the sharing concept is still there. Within a few hours I noticed my connection wasn't nearly as responsive as it normally is. Not just "Hrm, this is a bit laggy" but "wha? google timing out?" I found out that he almost immediately was on torrents downloading movies.
Personally I just laid it out and told him that if it happened again, we'd go back to his connection being dark, and his kids constantly knocking on my door asking to check their email and do homework.
So yeah.. people *will* abuse something if it's free. It has no value to them because they're not required to put up some form of consideration. Even friends will do that as in my case. Then again, maybe friends are more inclined to abuse something like that.
I missed the part referencing mindless mud people. Of course it's still early. However, there is a certain point to be made.
Responsible people don't bring children into the world that they are ill prepared to raise or otherwise support. I think that's pretty much a given. To accept charity to feed you and keep you alive, then hopping into the proverbial sack to make children that also need to be supported by that charity is unacceptable.
Look at the animal "kingdom." You don't see lions trekking half way across the planet carrying a carcass to feed the down and out lion that was born or otherwise decided to continue living in an area where there is no lion food. This may seem crass and unfeeling, but natural selection has worked wonderfully for many years. It's one of the reasons we have strong lions that know where lion food is, it's also a reason why we have lion food that generally can run very fast. Only recently (human history type recent) was there this concept of charity and moral obligation to keep somebody else alive in an area that is inhospitable to survival. Is it the lions job to bring food to the down and out lion, or is it the down and out lions job to make his way to where lion food is present?
Why should they be forced to provide equal distribution? If Real and Apple want to distribute their products with Windows, strike up a deal with MS. If MS doesn't want to; I believe that until a distributor actually makes consideration (money) the media, documentation and packaging are still owned by Microsoft themselves. They shouldn't be obligated to provide distribution to a competitor any more than I should be obligated to give another network engineer a ride to my customer site.
Re:Will I be able to configure the screensaver?
on
A Look at GNOME 2.14
·
· Score: 1
I don't think it's a matter of changing because of something trivial, but a matter of changing because of developer attitude. Sure it's free, but it still needs to be compelling to people. If something like this [attitude] turns you off about the environment; nothing is going to fix it for you.
I know I don't like somebody telling me how to think, or making decisions that affect me (even trivially) without at least considering my opinion. Sure that's done all the time in the real world, but in the rare instances where I really have the option to stay or go; I generally go when that happens.
I don't know why any thread on Gnome, KDE or $DESKTOPENVIRONMENTOFCHOICE has to wind up with everybody bickering interminably about OS X.
For the same reason it has to degenerate to name calling, talk of DRM, GPL vs LGPL, the evil of RIAA/MPAA etc, and ultimately emacs vs vi. This is slashdot, and that's what the immature evangelists have to do to get their kicks and mental masturbation. Just ignore them, and come sit at the adult table with the rest of us. Hell I'm surprised nobody's post a nude picture of Stallman with the caption "Give it to me free... or else."
Wow I might have managed to insult damn near everyone with this post! I'm on a karma destroying mission from God.
Free software has proven that it doesn't need to appease mouth-breathing imbeciles. We finally get a chance to do software right, not software the way that will sell.
Not to be complete sarcastic, but at least a little bit. Is that proof offered by the market share of Free software? Some of it rocks the planet. Postfix? amavis-new? Samba? even the linux kernel itself. The list goes on; including GIMP. These are fantastic applications and platforms; they fill their niche very well. Postfix, amavis-new? That's some power there man! I love it; but it sure was a bear to get set up properly. Hell I'm still not sure my implementation is set up properly but it works. Bigtime learning curve there. That puts off a lot of folks that might not be as bullheaded as I. Samba works really well, but the smbmount CLI has a lot of options for the uninitiated to think about. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Surprise I use them all; but like I said before. Somebody not as bullheaded as I might not spend the time dealing with that "Wha? it's not working!" situation. Hell, if it weren't for yet another fantastic application; Webmin, I'd have given up on CUPS a long time ago.
So, as someone who just had to bite, prove yourself: what feature is gimp missing that photoshop has? Complaining that it's hard to get is fine, as long as you realize that is a minor thing (we all bitch about gimp's interface). But to say that it's a dealbreaker, that's just dumb
First of all, I was speaking largely as a devils advocate. I use both Linux and Windows. When I'm using windows, I use Photoshop, when I'm using Linux, I use GIMP. While I admit I tend to get more frustrated trying to do things with GIMP; that's mostly because I spend more time in Photoshop. I'm definitely to be considered a novice at both however; so I'm probably not the best candidate for an actual evaluation of what it's missing. Several other people have brought up some very good issues however.
Software the way it "should be written" needs to be functional, intuitive, easy to use and easy to learn. That doesn't mean it has to be crippled and non-technical; but the technical parts can certainly be exposed in intuitive places, with no-kidding workable defaults and possibly an "Advanced" button that delves into the levels that most novice users aren't going to want to mess with. Software can (and should) be powerful without being daunting. We're talking Photoshop or GIMP here; not scientific processing that requires a doctorate in genetic engineering.
I wonder if that's what it takes, cloning photoshop down to the last pixel, just so you retards would give it a little respect. Of course, ravenous flesh-eating lawyers would descend upon the gimp developers...
Attitudes like that don't help either. Being called a "retard" by somebody that is trying to induce me to use a product isn't the best possible method. Then again, that's typical of geekdom. If somebody doesn't know exactly what you know, exactly the way you learned it and absolutely agree with every thought process you have; they are obviously inferior and therefore must be eliminated.
nope.. not much at all. Design your site visually. Make it look the way you uhhhh designed it. Hit the code to make sure things aren't obviously going to blow up the common browsers and "ship it." It's the way things work in the world of profit and loss. Academia has the luxury of being able to ponder the exact position of a BODY tag, it's indentation, the theory and what the original author might have been emotionally thinking at the time of its placement. That doesn't mean the rest of the world works that way.
As far as why there's no really decent GUI web design packages for linux? You hit the nail on the head right there. Linux is largely populated by the types that can't live without seeing the HTML and heaven forbids actually doing something that doesn't require a CLI and knowing the 17 nuances of command parameters to handle the task at hand.
The GUI isn't there because the people who WOULD write the GUI balk at the idea, and the people that would USE the GUI generally aren't the people able to write the code.
It's not so much the motivation as the economics of the "downpayment." If it takes a long time to relearn something you already know and are comfortable with; that's wasting a lot of time (money) and needs to be factored into the original "cost" of the decision.
Microsoft is aware that the 'Kama Sutra/Blackworm/MyWife' worm will hit on Friday, overwriting office documents,
Realizing this is./ I fully expect to be laughed at here, but why do these submitters feel a need to place half-truths in their writeups to make MS look worse than it already does? This particular worm affects MANY files by extension, not just office documents. Writeups such as this only attract the anti-ms zealots and lull the uninformed into thinking they're just fine as long as they don't use Office. Even the link referred to in the article stated that it affected many files *including* office documents. Not exclusively office documents.
*pop!* That was my karma. It was good karma but it's gone now. I've offended the fanboys.
Slashdot Mirror
If writing a graphics driver is indeed very complex, the chance of FOSS developers including bugs is quite realistic.
It's also not above FOSS developers to change functions in midstream for pedantic reasons and deprecate the original with loud error messages to the console or crashing applications with error messages.
Yes I know MS does this too; just not on such a regular basis.
For instance, I was gone for the last 2 weeks on business. I didn't have time to catch the shows on TV where I was. When I got back, there they were!
Not trying to throw stones here, but there's really nothing on television that I (personally) would find so important that I'd miss while out of town. For many years I didn't even own a television nor miss having one. Until my son started spending significant time in my home I had no need for it. The downside of having one now is that I can still hear Spongebob's voice in the back of my head while away from the television.
I guess the problem I see with any of these services is the cost of providing them with the cost of the hardware. There's just too many of us folks out there that would be unwilling to spend that much (or even anything) on the ability to *not* miss television entertainment. I might be willing to spend $15-30/month for a device that would locate and provide a small (but painful) electric shock to the producers and writers of some of these shows and commercials on my command. [Lookout Vonage and Subaru!] On a more realistic note these types of devices have the amazing capability to help content providers choose and create better material. They're just not doing it (or not doing it very well). The machines know when you changed channels and where you went, how long you stayed etc. So say for instance, I'm sitting at home watching an old re-run of M*A*S*H and they start one of their 10 minute Subaru advertising campaigns--I change channels to something else, to find a Vonage campaign and keep going until I finally settle on Survivor where I give up and turn the device off. If somebody were to monitor that kind of information on a large scale; we might not have or brains ground into mush on a continued basis.
Given that the domain has only been registered a month (give or take a day) that's to be expected; but yes I agree. Move along, nothing to see.
What there is to see--is another "org" formed to support the obvious. Come on folks? 2/3rds of people don't completely read long, confusing and officious legal documents? Perish the thought. Somebody has a great perception for the obvious.
Agreed that the courts are going to make a guilty/not guilty decision and that's binding on governmental institutions; but in the end you can't rely on the courts to make up your own mind on a given case. If you honestly care enough about the case then do the research, look at the court documents and decide for yourself. It almost definitely (unless you find something really convincing) won't change anything for the person being tried, but at least you will know that you've *personally* made an informed decision.
Yes it's a lot of work, but if it matters to YOU then it's worth it. It doesn't to me; and to be honest I'd never even heard of this guy before today. Apparently his fame wasn't as widespread as people thought.
Have you ever considered the concept that just maybe the Chinese government doesn't really *care* if you (or anyone else is/are) a fan? Personally I don't. Admittedly I'm not a member of the Chinese government, and from my extremely cursory look at the situation; it doesn't seem like the Chinese government cares a lot about what anyone thinks.
It's not unlike much of the language butchery I see in comments. If that was a comment you would have been labelled a grammer/spelling nazi and sent to your room without supper. Welcome to Slashdot. Oh yeah, and mods? That wasn't flamebait. That's what we call honesty in the real world.
I wouldn't mind working for the NSA. I don't have that level of skills however. On the other hand, at least it would be a job. My family would be fed, my life comfortable and I wouldn't have to rely on my parents or their basement to sustain myself. Morals are nice when you have food in your stomach and a warm place to stay but in the end you've got to support yourself and if whoring yourself to a government agency is what it takes then a person does what they need to do.
/. readers are. I don't necessarily care for my job although I like it well enough. I definitely don't agree with all the business decisions that I'm instructed to implement but I do it. Why? There is a 13 yr old son at home or school that needs food, clothing, a place to stay and all those other little things that a child needs growing up. If I could provide more of those "little things" or better "little things" and most importantly MORE TIME to spend with him enjoying those little things I'd be there with bells on.
I work for a small company. I *am* the IT staff as I'm sure many
Re: missing the GNU in the title
I was thinking much the same thing as I scrolled down and saw you mention MS looking like mafia--I snickered to myself at the moment
Then I saw this post and laughed outloud. Which is worse? MS or RMS
I'm assuming that by referring to MS as M$; you're making a cutesy (if somewhat outdated) reference to a publicly offered corporation executing it's responsibility to generate the largest profit it's capable of. (mind you--that's by law)
While I don't agree with the idea that Naked PC's are a threat to anything except Microsoft's bottom line; I don't think there's anything under the hood, or behind the scenes. MS wants to sell their product; they'd really like their vendors to sell their product too! Imagine that. So, somebody identified 5% of sales that could possibly be targetted--he talked about it. God forbid!
Anyhow, back to my original statement. using M$ is cute and probably makes you feel smart; but it really isn't cute, and well--I'm not going to question the other part because it's not nice.
It works because it plays on the concept that seeing is believing; and most people will trust their eyes over their minds any day of the week.
I would then teach my cat to poop on your car seat. *grin*
The entertainment factor of such activities are endless. If you have a reasonably trainable cat that is. Do such cats exist?
Awesome post and great advice for those that have no clue. I think it's amazing that these men and women run off to war, fight for whatever it is our government tells them to fight for; in the name of democracy and freedom--then here at home we have asshat whine-ass drooling masturbators calling them names and questioning their moral standing.
Maybe the asshats should be out there trying to do the job--if they could get their hands out of their pants that is.
Probably the right cynical attitude. Recently one of my neighbors fell on temporarily hard times. Since he has a handful of kids --it's amazing the amount of homework they get requires some form of internet access-- I got him set up to use my AP for a short time. Granted, my AP is secured and I had to set it up for him; but the sharing concept is still there. Within a few hours I noticed my connection wasn't nearly as responsive as it normally is. Not just "Hrm, this is a bit laggy" but "wha? google timing out?" I found out that he almost immediately was on torrents downloading movies.
Personally I just laid it out and told him that if it happened again, we'd go back to his connection being dark, and his kids constantly knocking on my door asking to check their email and do homework.
So yeah.. people *will* abuse something if it's free. It has no value to them because they're not required to put up some form of consideration. Even friends will do that as in my case. Then again, maybe friends are more inclined to abuse something like that.
So somebody steals my car and uses it in a bankrobery. Am I now a criminal all of a sudden?
If you leave the keys in it, running and a sign on the windshield "Take me for a spin!" er.. well.. YES! or at least you should be.
sorry -- netcraft hasn't confirmed it yet.
I missed the part referencing mindless mud people. Of course it's still early. However, there is a certain point to be made.
Responsible people don't bring children into the world that they are ill prepared to raise or otherwise support. I think that's pretty much a given. To accept charity to feed you and keep you alive, then hopping into the proverbial sack to make children that also need to be supported by that charity is unacceptable.
Look at the animal "kingdom." You don't see lions trekking half way across the planet carrying a carcass to feed the down and out lion that was born or otherwise decided to continue living in an area where there is no lion food. This may seem crass and unfeeling, but natural selection has worked wonderfully for many years. It's one of the reasons we have strong lions that know where lion food is, it's also a reason why we have lion food that generally can run very fast. Only recently (human history type recent) was there this concept of charity and moral obligation to keep somebody else alive in an area that is inhospitable to survival. Is it the lions job to bring food to the down and out lion, or is it the down and out lions job to make his way to where lion food is present?
Why should they be forced to provide equal distribution? If Real and Apple want to distribute their products with Windows, strike up a deal with MS. If MS doesn't want to; I believe that until a distributor actually makes consideration (money) the media, documentation and packaging are still owned by Microsoft themselves. They shouldn't be obligated to provide distribution to a competitor any more than I should be obligated to give another network engineer a ride to my customer site.
I don't think it's a matter of changing because of something trivial, but a matter of changing because of developer attitude. Sure it's free, but it still needs to be compelling to people. If something like this [attitude] turns you off about the environment; nothing is going to fix it for you.
I know I don't like somebody telling me how to think, or making decisions that affect me (even trivially) without at least considering my opinion. Sure that's done all the time in the real world, but in the rare instances where I really have the option to stay or go; I generally go when that happens.
you sir are my new hero. for today.
For the same reason it has to degenerate to name calling, talk of DRM, GPL vs LGPL, the evil of RIAA/MPAA etc, and ultimately emacs vs vi. This is slashdot, and that's what the immature evangelists have to do to get their kicks and mental masturbation. Just ignore them, and come sit at the adult table with the rest of us. Hell I'm surprised nobody's post a nude picture of Stallman with the caption "Give it to me free... or else."
Wow I might have managed to insult damn near everyone with this post! I'm on a karma destroying mission from God.
Free software has proven that it doesn't need to appease mouth-breathing imbeciles. We finally get a chance to do software right, not software the way that will sell.
Not to be complete sarcastic, but at least a little bit. Is that proof offered by the market share of Free software? Some of it rocks the planet. Postfix? amavis-new? Samba? even the linux kernel itself. The list goes on; including GIMP. These are fantastic applications and platforms; they fill their niche very well. Postfix, amavis-new? That's some power there man! I love it; but it sure was a bear to get set up properly. Hell I'm still not sure my implementation is set up properly but it works. Bigtime learning curve there. That puts off a lot of folks that might not be as bullheaded as I. Samba works really well, but the smbmount CLI has a lot of options for the uninitiated to think about. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Surprise I use them all; but like I said before. Somebody not as bullheaded as I might not spend the time dealing with that "Wha? it's not working!" situation. Hell, if it weren't for yet another fantastic application; Webmin, I'd have given up on CUPS a long time ago.
So, as someone who just had to bite, prove yourself: what feature is gimp missing that photoshop has? Complaining that it's hard to get is fine, as long as you realize that is a minor thing (we all bitch about gimp's interface). But to say that it's a dealbreaker, that's just dumb
First of all, I was speaking largely as a devils advocate. I use both Linux and Windows. When I'm using windows, I use Photoshop, when I'm using Linux, I use GIMP. While I admit I tend to get more frustrated trying to do things with GIMP; that's mostly because I spend more time in Photoshop. I'm definitely to be considered a novice at both however; so I'm probably not the best candidate for an actual evaluation of what it's missing. Several other people have brought up some very good issues however.
Software the way it "should be written" needs to be functional, intuitive, easy to use and easy to learn. That doesn't mean it has to be crippled and non-technical; but the technical parts can certainly be exposed in intuitive places, with no-kidding workable defaults and possibly an "Advanced" button that delves into the levels that most novice users aren't going to want to mess with. Software can (and should) be powerful without being daunting. We're talking Photoshop or GIMP here; not scientific processing that requires a doctorate in genetic engineering.
I wonder if that's what it takes, cloning photoshop down to the last pixel, just so you retards would give it a little respect. Of course, ravenous flesh-eating lawyers would descend upon the gimp developers...
Attitudes like that don't help either. Being called a "retard" by somebody that is trying to induce me to use a product isn't the best possible method. Then again, that's typical of geekdom. If somebody doesn't know exactly what you know, exactly the way you learned it and absolutely agree with every thought process you have; they are obviously inferior and therefore must be eliminated.
Good job!
nope.. not much at all. Design your site visually. Make it look the way you uhhhh designed it. Hit the code to make sure things aren't obviously going to blow up the common browsers and "ship it." It's the way things work in the world of profit and loss. Academia has the luxury of being able to ponder the exact position of a BODY tag, it's indentation, the theory and what the original author might have been emotionally thinking at the time of its placement. That doesn't mean the rest of the world works that way.
As far as why there's no really decent GUI web design packages for linux? You hit the nail on the head right there. Linux is largely populated by the types that can't live without seeing the HTML and heaven forbids actually doing something that doesn't require a CLI and knowing the 17 nuances of command parameters to handle the task at hand.
The GUI isn't there because the people who WOULD write the GUI balk at the idea, and the people that would USE the GUI generally aren't the people able to write the code.
It's not so much the motivation as the economics of the "downpayment." If it takes a long time to relearn something you already know and are comfortable with; that's wasting a lot of time (money) and needs to be factored into the original "cost" of the decision.
Realizing this is
*pop!* That was my karma. It was good karma but it's gone now. I've offended the fanboys.