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User: theantix

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  1. Re:Linux anyone? on Desktop Search Engines Compared · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To tell you the truth, I'm very glad that these sorts of companies don't yet write software for Linux. A free software solution like Beagle comes without spyware, doesn't send your information to their corporate masters, and doesn't shove ads down your throat or charge you money.

    Someday I'm sure that these crapware vendors will be producing their garbage for Linux, and dumb Linux users will be plagued with much the same sort of problems that windows users suffer today. It's almost a golden age now, knowing that the vast majority of Linux software is truly free libre software instead of the ugliness that freeware software will bring.

  2. A stable Debian for the desktop? on Debian 3.0r4 Released · · Score: 1
  3. I care on Exeem "Successor" to Suprnova Announced · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I cared before, and now I know I don't need to care any more. So to me, this news story was useful, even though like you I no longer care.

  4. Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser? on Microsoft Not Worried about FireFox · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They need a dominant browser to exist only on their own platforms to encourage platform lock-in. Why else do you think they developed it in the first place, why else do you think the various gov't agencies try to stop the bundling? Platform lock-in is anticompetitive but very profitable for Microsoft, and make no mistake they will defend IE marketshare to the death if it comes to that.

  5. Re:A good set of standards. on What's Wrong with Unix? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    (1) Linux is not user friendly.

    How friendly is formatting your disk every few months when the latest windows virus clobbers your system? I know many windows users who have this problem constantly, I don't see how anyone can find that user experience friendly.

    If you use a sane distribution, adding and removing applications is far easier than in Windows. In the distribution I use, Ubuntu Linux, I have thousands of applications available to install from a convenient interface, no need to download .EXEs and turning my PC into a spam zombie. Configuration was done automatically, not requiring me to download and install drivers that bloat the system tray into incoherence.

    The only excuse you have for saying Windows is easier is if you buy hardware that is designed to only work with Windows. Well fuck, if you buy Phillips screws it's your own damn fault you are stuck with Phillips screwdrivers, hard to blame Robertson screwdrivers for not being easy to use.

    (2) Duplication is Bad

    There are many examples of duplication of effort, you listed one of the prominent ones. But you neglect to consider that rational people can have different preferences. I prefer a slick desktop that is simple and Just Works, and I am very happy with my Gnome desktop. Others prefer a powerfully configurable and animated system that is great for the latest eye candy, and they are very pleased with the KDE desktops. Others sacrfice some of the features of those projects and go with XFCE or other cut-down DEs that suit their preferences.

    Get it? It's not bad that people have different ideas on how to get things done. The major desktops all share a system tray standard, work together on freedesktop.org, and are soon scheduled to share the underlying media platform. Indeed, because of the rivalry Gnome is pushing to add new features, and KDE is pushing to make their interfaces more friendly and consistant... and both projects will benefit as a result.

    (3) Linux standards don't exist

    Yeah, it would be great if there was a group that set such standards. It could be called the Base of Linux Standards, or the Linux Standards Base, or something like that. Anyhow, I'm sure they'd work out a name, but on behalf of Linux users everywhere I thank you for your brilliant and fact-checked suggestion.

  6. Re:Question about Tor on EFF Promotes Freenet-like System Tor · · Score: 1

    Why? Seriously...what makes it obvious to you that despite the fact you don't want to peddle kiddy porn, that clearly the majority of people do?

    I don't think a majority of people want to peddle kiddie porn, I think only a very tiny minority of people do. I do think that the tiny minority of people who are pedophiles would be natural users of this service, because they are eager to escape detection by law enforcement authorities.

    Has villifying the imaginary 'other' become so habitual for you that you can't possibly imagine that anyone other than you would want their personal freedom?

    How lonely a person are you?


    Oh, and fuck you too, asswipe. I have said repeatedly that I would love to be able to help out people trying to pass banned ideas, but I'm not willing to assist child abusers in the process. If you want to help them out, that's your fucking business but my donations do _not_ go to projects that will be used to hurt children.

  7. Fuck you on EFF Promotes Freenet-like System Tor · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    You have systematically misrepresented everything I have said. Asshole.

    As Voltaire said, and I paraphrase here, "I may not like what you say, but I'll support unto my death your right to say it." Ideally, in a truly anonymous system, you DON'T KNOW what traffic is routing through your system. Just as your neighbor can't hear your conversations at the dinner table, you can't hear his.

    Do you not know the difference between ideas and kiddie porn? I am dedicated to supporting the free transmission of _ideas_, including the repugnant idea that you should be able to distribute kiddie porn. But I am not in favour of facilitating child abuse, and that seems to be a logical primary use for this Tor system as the people involved in that are increasingly desperate to avoid detection.

    Don't you get it? I am not interested in trying to control the flow of ideas, no matter how repugnant they are. That is spefically what I want to aid, and I would be willing to donate my bandwidth to support that. But a system to help pedophiles get more porn, I am not willing to donate to. It's not that complicated.

    Your comments are strange - you want people to share (supposedly) copyrighted movies without fear of punishment, but you don't expect them to pay for the bandwidth

    I think that people should be allowed to share movies via P2P, but *I* don't want to donate my money or bandwidth do *their* sharing.

    but why do YOU get to dictate what is and isn't right?

    I get to dictate nothing. I refuse to donate my bandwidth to support child pornography, but would be more than happy to donate bandwidth to support the dissemination of banned ideas. It's my fucking donation, so I can decide if I want to donate it or not. If this project doesn't suit what I am willing to support, I am not dictating to them... I'm simply not going to help them because they don't meet my terms.

  8. Re:Question about Tor on EFF Promotes Freenet-like System Tor · · Score: 1

    If you are really a civil libertarian, you won't care. If you still care, maybe you should look for another label for yourself :)

    Just because I care about civil liberties doesn't mean I have to personally assist people who are doing repugnant things. I can support the right for people to share movies without wanting to personally pay for the bandwidth to allow them to do this. I am however interested in donating a bit of bandwidth and an IP address for people transmitting banned ideas.

    Let's drop the vaugaries and use a specific example. I think Chinese people should be able to download porn, but their government restricts their access for whatever reason. While I support this right, I don't want to personally fund bringing porn to China. Donating bandwidth on my server is a real cost to me, and I would like to be able to help out Chinese dissidents (and others) trying to read and disseminate information that their government is trying to censor.

    Can you see how I find both forms of censorship negative, but I only want to donate to assist the spread of ideas and not pornography? More importatly, it's pretty certain that this will be used by pedophiles to trade kiddie porn, and I don't find that to be a civil liberties issue and instead find it to be a child abuse issue.

    From your answer, it seems like Tor does not fit my defintions of what I am willing to donate to. That's fine, I hope the project is a success, I just won't be part of it for my own reasons stated above.

  9. Question about Tor on EFF Promotes Freenet-like System Tor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As a civil libertarian I love the idea, and I would be happy to run a Tor server if I could restrict what filetypes I pass through. I'm not interesting in helping people pass kiddie porn or pirated movies through my server (which I assume would be a primary use of this), so I would want to restrict it to text and html mimetypes. I looked through the FAQ and documentation and didn't see any mention of this.

    Any developers here that can comment on if a feature similar to this is planned for a future release?

  10. Re:Actually... on Building Applications with the Linux Standard Base · · Score: 1

    Um, sorry, name the operating systems and distros that ship with a JVM?

  11. Re:Hooray for dumbing down? on GIMP 2.2 Released · · Score: 2, Informative

    Try using the dialogs? While it may not be exactly the same as these gtk2.6 dialogs, I've been using very similar dialogs in Gnome 2.6/2.8 every day for the better part of a year now, and I find them to be both easy and simple to use. I welcome their use for all GTK applications which will provide a consistant interface for nearly all the applications I use. Hopefully a future Firefox and OpenOffice will detect a running Gnome session and use these new dialogs also, giving users a completely consistant file and open save dialogs across all applications.

    How is it better? You can easily define locations to store files which can be easily accessed by any application, allowing for quick and simple navigation without having to navigate the filesystem. And with a simple ctrl-L, you have a text input box that allows for file and folder autocompletion. It is better because it is far simpler for new users, and still very powerful for experienced users.

  12. Re:Hooray for dumbing down? on GIMP 2.2 Released · · Score: 1

    OMG OMG OMG. The new Lunix isn't exactly the same as Windows!!!! I cannot fathom a way of working in an application that isn't exactly like Windows. I am frightened by change and cannot cope with these incredibly difficult to use dialogs. OMG this sux0rs.

    People like you will always oppose change and progress. And when you get used to the current dialogs, when they change again you will bitch about how much you love the current dialogs and hate the new ones. Blah blah blah. The fact is, it's changed, it's better, get used to it or use something else.

  13. Ha! You have it so backwards on Interceptor Missile Fails Test Launch · · Score: 1

    You think this is supposed to addresss a threat? So backwards. "Hare" brained dictators are trying prevent a US invasion of their own country by being able to promise wide-scale retaliation. The USA's missle defense program (if they ever get it to work) is a way to allow them to bypass this potential problem and let them invade other countries at will.

    Why else do you think they invaded Iraq instead of North Korea? Or more directly, why do these countries have such a strong urge to develop nukular weapons? Once the US military can be assured of NK's impotence, nukular-bearing countries will be just as fucked as Iraq is now.

  14. Re:Open source OS's need some 'killer feature' on Open Source on Windows - Boon or Bane for Linux? · · Score: 1

    Um, dude, that's the freaking point of this article. Some of the KDE devs want KDE to be available for free OSes only, making it a killer app that is only available on Linux/BSD/etc. But due to the nature of the GPL they cannot control the people who port their "killer apps" to windows.

  15. Re:What a horrible idea on ReactOS Runs On The XBox · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sadly, I find your work is in fact, quite trivial. You are seeking to re-implement an operating system that is already out of date and will continue to age as Microsoft powers through the upgrade treadmill. I'm sure your work is indeed very difficult, and that the developers are very talented -- but that doesn't change the fact that your work is perhaps the very essence of trivial. **You are building something that has already been built.** To me it seems like you are doing the equivilent of building a new version of the leaning tower of Pisa that isn't leaning -- probably a lot of effort, but not really that important compared to building something new and purposeful.

    However, you get the gist of my message wrong when you tell me to deal with it because it's here. I really don't care about ReactOS, so I really don't have to "deal with it". It boggles the mind that you talented people are spending your free time on this instead of something productive and useful, but I can say that about an incredibly wide variety of people. And hell, you're way above the people in the alley shooting up -- nowhere near the bottom of the crazy pile. You are free to do whatever you want, and I am free to be baffled as to why you'd want to.

    As to the technical argument, I don't think you quite understand me. Wine allows people to run Windows applications on Linux, which I can see the value of. But ReactOS allows people to run a broken and inferior clone of an old version of Windows. Since I don't know what you find broken about it (your FAQ doesn't specificy) I don't know what components are the biggest concern to you. My suggestion is that if you have the skills required to re-implement the entire complex api/kernel system, you probably also have the ability to drop in replacements for windows components you find broken.

    One of the BeOS clones is doing exactly this, and their target is to re-implement them one by one until they get the whole system reinvented. This would allow your team to fix the problems you have with Windows NT/2K while not having a completely broken and useless OS. I'm not saying this would be easy, just that it would actually make sense compared with the path this project seems to be taking. But hey, I can't and won't even try telling you what to do with your free time.

  16. What a horrible idea on ReactOS Runs On The XBox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why would people spend their free time on a project to re-implement Windows? Their answer from their FAQ:

    "Reliability, subsystems, filesystem drivers, services and the registry
    are all good concepts which are implemented well in the NT kernel.
    Not everything is perfect, but without access to the source code, we can't fix it, so we're choose to clone it."

    WTF? I can understand WINE, if you have a legacy binary application that is windows-only. But poorly re-implementing windows? They will probably *never* get full compatibility with windows, so it will always be an inferior solution -- some "fix". I'm tempted to think these ReactOS people are clinically insane.

    If a ReactOS dev is listening here, explain this to me: why don't you just create drop-in replacement .dlls for mswindows in cases where you think it's broken? This is something you'd have to write in the first place if you're going to reimplement the whole goddamn system, and seems a lot more productive. Alternatively, why not work productively to improve Linux or a BSD variant so it has the supposed "advantages" that you find in mswindows?

  17. I saw this when it came through Vancouver BC on One-Man Star Wars Trilogy Returns to Chicago · · Score: 3, Informative

    It was perhaps the most incredible live show I have ever seen... my friends and I didn't stop laughing our guts out for the hour and a half (or so) it took him to go through the original trilogy. It's not just the imitations that he does well, he also goes through the motions and to see him hopping and jumping and crashing to the floor... it's quite an experience. Seriously, if this is coming to your home town you should check it out.

  18. Biased survey on Math Skills Survey Shows U.S. Lags Behind · · Score: 1

    Those biased anti-Americans didn't take into account intellient design, which explains the poor science scores. And they probably also didn't test for understanding of Bush's special math skills to explain his budget policy and social security plan. And I bet the TV guide wasn't on the reading list the students were tested on.

    If you *design* the tests to achieve anti-American results, why be surprised when sure enough Americans do poorly? Forget the liberaly biased OECD, I for one am waiting for a less biased organization like FOX News to give us a fair and balanced result that shows us who's really number one. God bless America!

  19. Hang on just one second now on Getting an IT Job in Europe as an American · · Score: 3, Funny

    Are you suggesting that transit infrastructure in North America is lacking? I mean, Seattle has a two stop monorail that serves a city of more than three million people. Are you daring to suggest that is somehow inadequate?

  20. Re:Why the need for a WiFi finder? on WiFi Seeker, Finder, Detector Roundup · · Score: 1

    Let me guess: you think a WEP "secured" AP is a lot better, right? If you use wireless to send anything that requires extreme security, you need to have your head examined. And if you send credit card numbers in cleartext, doing so over wireless is the least of your problems as the recipient site is already likely scamming you.

  21. Why the need for a WiFi finder? on WiFi Seeker, Finder, Detector Roundup · · Score: 4, Funny

    Most areas these days are covered by the gratis "linksys" network, so just set your essid and join the ranks of people who use "linksys" as our ISP. My apartment had access to two strong "linksys" signals, left completely unsecured by generous donors, and the same network is available at my girlfriend's place a 2.5 hour drive away. These WiFi finders seem pretty useless to me.

  22. Re:Difference much? on Ubuntu Beware: Installing Debian with Anaconda · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're right, the two projects have seemingly a lot in common with either other. So long as they both contribute bugfixes and upgrades back to Debian proper, does it really matter that the userbase is fragmented? If someone using Progeny Debian Gnome files a bug report that gets fixed back to Debian, which is also fixed in Ubuntu -- does it really matter to me that they weren't using Ubuntu?

    The fact is, these new Debian/Gnome distros (UserLinux too) are all working together. Any extra engineering and quality assurance that these distributions all provide should be appreciated by all the parties involved.

  23. Another Slashdot typo! on Colin Powell Resigns · · Score: 2, Funny

    When well those darn editors ever get it right? It's Fox "News".

  24. Re:So, it has KDE? on Novell Linux Desktop Released · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yes, it has KDE. Take a look at the application list that NDL supports. How many of them are QT based and how many of them are GTK based? I'll let you do the math for yourself, and come to your own conclusions.

    My conclusion: this is a Gnome-centric distribution. Yes, you can run KDE on this distro, but it makes as much sense as running KDE on Red Hat or Gnome on SuSE.

  25. Re:Is this the work of Bush? on Google Censors Abu Ghraib Images [updated] · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Guess what? When a private company feels like it has to deny access to information that is inconvenient to the government, the difference is minimal. The fact is that these images used to be among the top returned by google and yet now they mysteriously do not exist anymore. We also know that Google willingly censors the net for China, apparently they are all too willing to do it on behalf of Bush's new "I have political capital an intend to spend it" America.