This post doesn't deserve a response, but I'm going to give it one anyway.
I realized after a few months that Slashdot is a fucking cult shithole.
If you read your outrageous post, you'll realize that if one were to look down at this entire situation from a 3rd party unbiased eye, your post would seem like one made by a "fucking cult shithead." If you don't like slashdot, leave. I'm really posting this because I was scrolling down the posts and saw ascii art and it ended up being that goatse.cx thing upon closer examination. If you don't like it here, leave OR if you must smear your crap all over, please don't put ascii art in your posts (rest assure your post will get modded down below any normal threshold).
Now, with regards to your complaint about not getting some story up, tough. Get a life--if you complain on one hand that Slashdot is a "fucking cult shithole" and then complain that some story didn't get posted then you have no leverage to make an argument with. So, not only do you have no decent argument, but you have gay p0rn ramblings and ascii art.
On second thought, why am I bothering replying to this nonsense? Oh yeah the ascii art caught my eye, and it turned out to be a picture of a dude prying his asshole open.
And I don't know much about this but when a black screen goes suddenly white (or from dark to light in general) on CRT monitors, the picture widens significantly. This makes it hard to do set the screen size.
I've had the exact same problem, but when I got a laptop, the problem you're describing diminished greatly (although having such a small screen created new problems). Perhaps getting flat-panel LCD monitors would be worth the much higher costs (especially if you go beyond 17").
A large monitor taken down to lower resolutions also sometimes helps. Also, telling browsers, ides, irc clients, etc, to override system colors (mostly for backgrounds) and replacing white darker, vanilla "off-white" colors might help alot (and won't cost money:)
When I first entered the Linux community, I began with RedHat (in retrospect, Mandrake would have been better, but oh well). People bash RedHat for mixing KDE and GNOME. First of all, the two standards should be mixed by a distribution (after all, GNOME and KDE stay seperate entities outside of the RH installation) for a variety of reasons which I will not discuss here (basically new users know what checking their email is, but think Evolution is, well, evolution, and Konqueror sounds like the title to a Conan novel). People fail to realize how much RH has contributed to both projects.
RH has GPLed every speck of code it has ever written (if someone more knowledgeable can verify this for me, please do). They remain steadfast in their commitment to our community. AND they encrourage new users to join with their desktop that makes sense (to someone who has never heard of "Linux" and is installing RH, who cannot comprehend a "war" between two groups that are making what would appear to them to be the same thing for free, the new desktop makes a lot of sense).
Some argue that this "watered down" distro will make the community full of know-nothings and therefore "Linux" will no longer meet their needs. Once GPL'ed, always GPL'ed -- no one can take free software away from you. Ever. Debian and others will remain strong forever, because you hackers will never switch back, will you?
I copied/pasted some HTML I found on a website once into the HTML of the page I was working on. (as opposed to pasting it into the WYSIWYG interface...) Unfortunately, it wasn't smart enough to realize that I just wanted the plain-text translation of it, so it pasted the HTML that made the code look all pretty in the page, not the HTML itself I wanted to bring over. I had to paste it into Notepad, then re-copy it. It's 'usability' seriously got in my way. Unfortunately, that happens all too often because I wasnt using FrontPage the way MS assumed I would.
Copy-n-pasting HTML into your website...tsk tsk tsk.:)
Frankly, I think you placing the anti-gun lobby in the same group as National ID cards and digital censorship is a subtle ploy to sway people's opinions. It's no better than an anti-firearms supporter placing guns in the same catagory as nuclear or chemical weapons.
I just let my own opinions bleed into my post...it can't really be helped, but I do understand that gun control is an issue that society free of these infringement problems would still have. Besides, it was late and I was tired.
here's a possible solution (having nothing to do with the parent poster's idea)
with each/. article, its always obvious what the trolls will say. If there's a wide spectrum of ideas (maybe liberal v conservative, for example), you can expect the trolls to be at either end. What if each article poster posted, along with the content, the two obvious comments people will make automatiaclly before thinking critically. If someone posts an opinion that essentially matches one of the obvious responses, and they're caught..perhaps their karma can immediately go down so much that no one will ever read their posts (due to threshold)...obviously no one would empower an average moderator to ruin someone's/. life, but if there were multiple concurrent opinions, it could work. just a thought.....
Here's where Valenti fucks up. He should have killed the consumer's ability to record when it was in its infancy. He certainly tried, but failed, and people became accustomed to being able to make and share recordings (share as in "bring a movie to a friend's house," not Napster).
By your model (the accepted college textbook model) he could have merely introduced the inability to copy with the next generation of TV sets, with better picture/features/everything...gotten people to accept it as a tradeoff, made it the de facto standard, and completed the oppression painle
ssly? It seems both very plausible and probable that method could have worked. This process has made me think on was in which this is being done now. Implantable microchips are being offered, and we are beginning to see some cool features that those who wish to spend some greenbacks would be willing to get (easy identification, never worrying about getting lost, more security), and the tradeoffs as well (the tradeoffs I consider obvious). National ID cards are the same way. Rosie O'Donell's quest to take away guns are the same. They all seem to have such well-thought out rational arguments.
In the good old days, we could go to stores and buy our own television sets or computers and have them be *ours* to do with as our please. I guess technically these machines with palladium technology (computers) or if this legislation succeeds DRM-enforced televisions will be our property, but only under a loose definition.
Before, you did as you pleased with your computer/tv. Soon, you will do whatever they *allow* you to do. Therefore, that absolute bastard Jack Valenti's quote is a carefully crafted sentence that craftily covers up the entire transfer of power from the user to the Government and Corporations. I'm not a murderer now, and I wouldn't be a murderer if the government implanted a powerful (albeit theoretical) chip in my brain which rendered me unable to actually kill someone. My point? My brain is my property. My television set is my property. My copmuter is my property. If we continue to allow legislation that creeps its way into our property and controls us under the visage of crime prevention, the trend might continue into our house and eventually into our bodies.
People, I am not crazy (ok not more than the next guy:), and I am not trolling. Andy Rooney recently said that he "wouldn't mind having something planted permanently in [him] arm that would identify [him]" to airport security as not being a threat (he was writing about his frustration with post-9/11 airport delays).
Slowly but surely, the precedents are being set to make these intrusions plausible. Palladium, microchips, corporate managed tv sets, etc. would have never flown ten years ago. We are getting conditioned to automatically think "if you're not acting up, then it won't be a problem" and to therefore not hold these things under intense scrutiny.
We all know the idea of a world where everyone is forced to behave, and freedom isn't guaranteed--it's merely whatever the government/Jack Valenti have allowed us to do (which paradoxically isn't freedom). Sounds like a silly sci-fi novel or something? Or like an Orwellian/Huxley estranged view of the future? How would a society get to that point? You may find it a huge jump between a small law or minimal DRM control to this kind of end. Nobody criticizes this kind of law because of what it's doing now, but because of the precedent it sets. These precedents eventually provide the background and foundation for incredibly extreme and freedom-shattering legislation. People, we are gradually getting screwed. Screwed screwed screwed.
gfx cards come and go
on
VisionTek Folds
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
In the past few years, graphics cards have been more that just an expample mirroring the ridiculous attempt to increase fervor for buying new pcs by tacking on new "features"...they have been even worse perpetrators. First it was the 8MB cards, then 16MB, then 32. Sometime in there AGP got thrown in (I know AGP is better for graphics/acceleration than PCI; the point is that for most AGP was a new buzzword that new gfx cards must have). Then the chips on these cards came in, and cards competed on the GCP (Graphics Processing Unit) and it's capabilites. Now I hear things like "All-in-one", "XTasy", and "Expandable RAM up to 512 MB."
All of these features serve a purpose, mind you. But if there's one thing the mindless pumping of new products to people that have decent ones already does, its precicely this. Create a 70's gas-like war where companies outbit eachother to sell the cheapest yet greatest. This is bad for the consumer, because he can generally get duped into purchasing that's either junk or way more than they need (or both).
This also has a negative impact on the companies. Take the pricewatch model (which I use myself:). Companies get thier business from being at "the top of the list," meaning their stuff is the cheapest. This becomes the only way the get business. They may even grow according to this model somewhat. At some point, they realize they are not really turning any kind of profit, and all their business would go away if they raised their prices. This self-destructive cycle is exemplified by pricewatch, but again, the same thing happened for this company.
The world needs companies that sell high quality products with good support, that work right out of the box, and are well maintained. Oh wait, there already is such a company.
So, is GNU/Linx usage asymptotically headed towards, say 'all users' (first plot), or 'half a billion users' (second plot)?"
Obviously it can't consume every desktop. The rate of change will slow as interest and demand decreases, and will speed up as interest amd demand increases. But the rate of change can't stay constant--the demand for GNU/Linux will eventually stop increasing (as more and more people decide to switch over). It will find equilibrium, and maybe that equilibrium will change over time. One thing is for certain: a graph that represents a complicated economic system that is basically a straight line is probably not a good model or indicator of future performance.
That brings me to my next point. This is a somewhat lame post. The 'questions' answer is obvious, the graphs show no surprises and can be found elsewhere, and there has got to be better news.
I'm going to get modded down for this, but I'll go ahead and say it anyways:
In the past, kernel development has quickly caught on to newer, more powerful processors and features...MTRR (I know what MTRR is thank you very much...), 3D Now instructions, etc. Why the need for official support? And AMD is also going along with this Palladium thing? If you ask me, there's a lot of companies grandiloquently talking up promised "corporate partnerships" that I don't see happening. I mean come on, folks, all AMD has to do is release some rudamentary specs and the kernel team can get right on it.
I'm wary of "features" that require support from the entire OS and not the kernel...
OpenSSH is designed for remote logins--in essence, a bug that allows uncontrolled access is relevant to the software's purpose. Unauthorized access into an OS vis-a-vis an audio program shows an inherent problem with XP. My argument is not that MS sucks look how shitty the bug is, it's that one small component can be used to dominate an entire system.
Think before YOU post--you clearly demonstrate the common mindset of finding someone with an exposed problem and attacking it like a shark in order for a much needed ego-boost.
On a side note, I've had a similar problem--I installed OpenOffice for my mother as sort of a trial for open source software and it was going well until like a week later...She didn't reboot, and as we all know that in Windows, memory leaks accumulate and the shit hits the fan and OpenOffice crashed and she lost data--she likes to keep apps open when she is not using it. She then forced me to uninstall it so she could go back to M$.
The truth here is that problems with Microsoft software are treated differently than problems with open source software...M$ glitches are somewhat more official--M$ products will crash because computers crash--that's just something they do. A modern day computer user that just wants to use Quicken, Office, and e-mail has come to expect problems--they save often.
When open source alternatives crash, or anything else for that matter, even if it's Windows' fault, it reaffirms their natural inclination to mistrust free (beer) software. They don't know much about computers, but they believe that you can't get something for nothing, and that pervasive idea prevents the proliferation of decent alternatives--so yes, I agree...normal everyday users are in essence forced into the windows option.
Why on earth would there be a bug in Media player that allows uncontrolled access to the system. What we have here folks is a very good example of what a horribly designed OS Windows is...
Especially XP! M$ says "Windows XP makes everything run together smoothly and makes things easier." It actually makes this sort of thing more plausible. Can anyone imagine a bug in XMMS that can make GNU/Linux unusable? Hah...
Anyone else sick of the word 'security'
on
Cyber-Attacks?
·
· Score: 1
Is the American public so gullible as to believe that because there's a hostile terrorist organization out there crazy enough to commit absolutely horrible atrocities, they could use the Internet to somehow hack into important national systems that have security so good, they could document it and still be impervious, and that that would then necessitate a security system interacting with their computers, checking for security problems (I'm attempting to decypher the cryptic corporate words of Microsoft--if anyone could explain what they really I'd appreciate it), and of course along the way checking for Digital Rights or Intellectual Property violations?
If they are, I can say as an American, that I think we need a more informed population! But, thankfully, if this new Palladium security system really did work and make open source/free software unusable, if ZDNet (the most corporate biased website next to MSN IMO) is running articles about GNU/Linux now, certainly news of Palladiums anti-competitive, sly, and downright malignant intentions would surface, right? And as soon as the masses get sick of Microsoft being their annoying buddy and stop wanting them to make the Internet easier/more robust or giving them 'peace of mind' (WTF is that anyway?), Palladium is screwed.
Ordinary users are already pissed at mandatory activation/unnecessary copy protection/everyone's-a pirate-mentality in * XP products.
Slashdot Mirror
This post doesn't deserve a response, but I'm going to give it one anyway.
I realized after a few months that Slashdot is a fucking cult shithole.
If you read your outrageous post, you'll realize that if one were to look down at this entire situation from a 3rd party unbiased eye, your post would seem like one made by a "fucking cult shithead." If you don't like slashdot, leave. I'm really posting this because I was scrolling down the posts and saw ascii art and it ended up being that goatse.cx thing upon closer examination. If you don't like it here, leave OR if you must smear your crap all over, please don't put ascii art in your posts (rest assure your post will get modded down below any normal threshold).
Now, with regards to your complaint about not getting some story up, tough. Get a life--if you complain on one hand that Slashdot is a "fucking cult shithole" and then complain that some story didn't get posted then you have no leverage to make an argument with. So, not only do you have no decent argument, but you have gay p0rn ramblings and ascii art.
On second thought, why am I bothering replying to this nonsense? Oh yeah the ascii art caught my eye, and it turned out to be a picture of a dude prying his asshole open.
I don't think LinuxDevices can be beat for anything relating to embedded Linux development. Great to learn on too!
You hit the nail on the head my friend.
And I don't know much about this but when a black screen goes suddenly white (or from dark to light in general) on CRT monitors, the picture widens significantly. This makes it hard to do set the screen size.
I've had the exact same problem, but when I got a laptop, the problem you're describing diminished greatly (although having such a small screen created new problems). Perhaps getting flat-panel LCD monitors would be worth the much higher costs (especially if you go beyond 17"). A large monitor taken down to lower resolutions also sometimes helps. Also, telling browsers, ides, irc clients, etc, to override system colors (mostly for backgrounds) and replacing white darker, vanilla "off-white" colors might help alot (and won't cost money :)
RH has GPLed every speck of code it has ever written (if someone more knowledgeable can verify this for me, please do). They remain steadfast in their commitment to our community. AND they encrourage new users to join with their desktop that makes sense (to someone who has never heard of "Linux" and is installing RH, who cannot comprehend a "war" between two groups that are making what would appear to them to be the same thing for free, the new desktop makes a lot of sense).
Some argue that this "watered down" distro will make the community full of know-nothings and therefore "Linux" will no longer meet their needs. Once GPL'ed, always GPL'ed -- no one can take free software away from you. Ever. Debian and others will remain strong forever, because you hackers will never switch back, will you?
I copied/pasted some HTML I found on a website once into the HTML of the page I was working on. (as opposed to pasting it into the WYSIWYG interface...) Unfortunately, it wasn't smart enough to realize that I just wanted the plain-text translation of it, so it pasted the HTML that made the code look all pretty in the page, not the HTML itself I wanted to bring over. I had to paste it into Notepad, then re-copy it. It's 'usability' seriously got in my way. Unfortunately, that happens all too often because I wasnt using FrontPage the way MS assumed I would.
Copy-n-pasting HTML into your website...tsk tsk tsk. :)
Frankly, I think you placing the anti-gun lobby in the same group as National ID cards and digital censorship is a subtle ploy to sway people's opinions. It's no better than an anti-firearms supporter placing guns in the same catagory as nuclear or chemical weapons.
I just let my own opinions bleed into my post...it can't really be helped, but I do understand that gun control is an issue that society free of these infringement problems would still have. Besides, it was late and I was tired.
here's a possible solution (having nothing to do with the parent poster's idea) with each /. article, its always obvious what the trolls will say. If there's a wide spectrum of ideas (maybe liberal v conservative, for example), you can expect the trolls to be at either end. What if each article poster posted, along with the content, the two obvious comments people will make automatiaclly before thinking critically. If someone posts an opinion that essentially matches one of the obvious responses, and they're caught..perhaps their karma can immediately go down so much that no one will ever read their posts (due to threshold)...obviously no one would empower an average moderator to ruin someone's /. life, but if there were multiple concurrent opinions, it could work. just a thought.....
Please mod this one up (it appears to only be 4).
Here's where Valenti fucks up. He should have killed the consumer's ability to record when it was in its infancy. He certainly tried, but failed, and people became accustomed to being able to make and share recordings (share as in "bring a movie to a friend's house," not Napster).
By your model (the accepted college textbook model) he could have merely introduced the inability to copy with the next generation of TV sets, with better picture/features/everything...gotten people to accept it as a tradeoff, made it the de facto standard, and completed the oppression painle ssly? It seems both very plausible and probable that method could have worked. This process has made me think on was in which this is being done now. Implantable microchips are being offered, and we are beginning to see some cool features that those who wish to spend some greenbacks would be willing to get (easy identification, never worrying about getting lost, more security), and the tradeoffs as well (the tradeoffs I consider obvious). National ID cards are the same way. Rosie O'Donell's quest to take away guns are the same. They all seem to have such well-thought out rational arguments.
Before, you did as you pleased with your computer/tv. Soon, you will do whatever they *allow* you to do. Therefore, that absolute bastard Jack Valenti's quote is a carefully crafted sentence that craftily covers up the entire transfer of power from the user to the Government and Corporations. I'm not a murderer now, and I wouldn't be a murderer if the government implanted a powerful (albeit theoretical) chip in my brain which rendered me unable to actually kill someone. My point? My brain is my property. My television set is my property. My copmuter is my property. If we continue to allow legislation that creeps its way into our property and controls us under the visage of crime prevention, the trend might continue into our house and eventually into our bodies.
People, I am not crazy (ok not more than the next guy :), and I am not trolling. Andy Rooney recently said that he "wouldn't mind having something planted permanently in [him] arm that would identify [him]" to airport security as not being a threat (he was writing about his frustration with post-9/11 airport delays).
Slowly but surely, the precedents are being set to make these intrusions plausible. Palladium, microchips, corporate managed tv sets, etc. would have never flown ten years ago. We are getting conditioned to automatically think "if you're not acting up, then it won't be a problem" and to therefore not hold these things under intense scrutiny.
We all know the idea of a world where everyone is forced to behave, and freedom isn't guaranteed--it's merely whatever the government/Jack Valenti have allowed us to do (which paradoxically isn't freedom). Sounds like a silly sci-fi novel or something? Or like an Orwellian/Huxley estranged view of the future? How would a society get to that point? You may find it a huge jump between a small law or minimal DRM control to this kind of end. Nobody criticizes this kind of law because of what it's doing now, but because of the precedent it sets. These precedents eventually provide the background and foundation for incredibly extreme and freedom-shattering legislation. People, we are gradually getting screwed. Screwed screwed screwed.
In the past few years, graphics cards have been more that just an expample mirroring the ridiculous attempt to increase fervor for buying new pcs by tacking on new "features"...they have been even worse perpetrators. First it was the 8MB cards, then 16MB, then 32. Sometime in there AGP got thrown in (I know AGP is better for graphics/acceleration than PCI; the point is that for most AGP was a new buzzword that new gfx cards must have). Then the chips on these cards came in, and cards competed on the GCP (Graphics Processing Unit) and it's capabilites. Now I hear things like "All-in-one", "XTasy", and "Expandable RAM up to 512 MB."
All of these features serve a purpose, mind you. But if there's one thing the mindless pumping of new products to people that have decent ones already does, its precicely this. Create a 70's gas-like war where companies outbit eachother to sell the cheapest yet greatest. This is bad for the consumer, because he can generally get duped into purchasing that's either junk or way more than they need (or both).
This also has a negative impact on the companies. Take the pricewatch model (which I use myself :). Companies get thier business from being at "the top of the list," meaning their stuff is the cheapest. This becomes the only way the get business. They may even grow according to this model somewhat. At some point, they realize they are not really turning any kind of profit, and all their business would go away if they raised their prices. This self-destructive cycle is exemplified by pricewatch, but again, the same thing happened for this company.
The world needs companies that sell high quality products with good support, that work right out of the box, and are well maintained. Oh wait, there already is such a company.
So, is GNU/Linx usage asymptotically headed towards, say 'all users' (first plot), or 'half a billion users' (second plot)?"
Obviously it can't consume every desktop. The rate of change will slow as interest and demand decreases, and will speed up as interest amd demand increases. But the rate of change can't stay constant--the demand for GNU/Linux will eventually stop increasing (as more and more people decide to switch over). It will find equilibrium, and maybe that equilibrium will change over time. One thing is for certain: a graph that represents a complicated economic system that is basically a straight line is probably not a good model or indicator of future performance.
That brings me to my next point. This is a somewhat lame post. The 'questions' answer is obvious, the graphs show no surprises and can be found elsewhere, and there has got to be better news.
I'm going to get modded down for this, but I'll go ahead and say it anyways:
In the past, kernel development has quickly caught on to newer, more powerful processors and features...MTRR (I know what MTRR is thank you very much...), 3D Now instructions, etc. Why the need for official support? And AMD is also going along with this Palladium thing? If you ask me, there's a lot of companies grandiloquently talking up promised "corporate partnerships" that I don't see happening. I mean come on, folks, all AMD has to do is release some rudamentary specs and the kernel team can get right on it.
I'm wary of "features" that require support from the entire OS and not the kernel...
OpenSSH is designed for remote logins--in essence, a bug that allows uncontrolled access is relevant to the software's purpose. Unauthorized access into an OS vis-a-vis an audio program shows an inherent problem with XP. My argument is not that MS sucks look how shitty the bug is, it's that one small component can be used to dominate an entire system. Think before YOU post--you clearly demonstrate the common mindset of finding someone with an exposed problem and attacking it like a shark in order for a much needed ego-boost.
On a side note, I've had a similar problem--I installed OpenOffice for my mother as sort of a trial for open source software and it was going well until like a week later...She didn't reboot, and as we all know that in Windows, memory leaks accumulate and the shit hits the fan and OpenOffice crashed and she lost data--she likes to keep apps open when she is not using it. She then forced me to uninstall it so she could go back to M$.
The truth here is that problems with Microsoft software are treated differently than problems with open source software...M$ glitches are somewhat more official--M$ products will crash because computers crash--that's just something they do. A modern day computer user that just wants to use Quicken, Office, and e-mail has come to expect problems--they save often.
When open source alternatives crash, or anything else for that matter, even if it's Windows' fault, it reaffirms their natural inclination to mistrust free (beer) software. They don't know much about computers, but they believe that you can't get something for nothing, and that pervasive idea prevents the proliferation of decent alternatives--so yes, I agree...normal everyday users are in essence forced into the windows option.
Why on earth would there be a bug in Media player that allows uncontrolled access to the system. What we have here folks is a very good example of what a horribly designed OS Windows is...
Especially XP! M$ says "Windows XP makes everything run together smoothly and makes things easier." It actually makes this sort of thing more plausible. Can anyone imagine a bug in XMMS that can make GNU/Linux unusable? Hah...
Is the American public so gullible as to believe that because there's a hostile terrorist organization out there crazy enough to commit absolutely horrible atrocities, they could use the Internet to somehow hack into important national systems that have security so good, they could document it and still be impervious, and that that would then necessitate a security system interacting with their computers, checking for security problems (I'm attempting to decypher the cryptic corporate words of Microsoft--if anyone could explain what they really I'd appreciate it), and of course along the way checking for Digital Rights or Intellectual Property violations?
If they are, I can say as an American, that I think we need a more informed population! But, thankfully, if this new Palladium security system really did work and make open source/free software unusable, if ZDNet (the most corporate biased website next to MSN IMO) is running articles about GNU/Linux now, certainly news of Palladiums anti-competitive, sly, and downright malignant intentions would surface, right? And as soon as the masses get sick of Microsoft being their annoying buddy and stop wanting them to make the Internet easier/more robust or giving them 'peace of mind' (WTF is that anyway?), Palladium is screwed.
Ordinary users are already pissed at mandatory activation/unnecessary copy protection/everyone's-a pirate-mentality in * XP products.