Well, it would collect all your personal information (addresses, credit cards, etc.) in one place so that you could then use that one location to buy or rent things all over the net. So, instead of the current situation, where you have to enter personal information repeatedly at different sites, making it more difficult to track you, one site will know everything about you and your personal preferences. If that one site is hacked (and MS does get hacked) then everything about you is known to the hackers. The current decentralized model of data storage can be a PITA, but at least it obscures and (to a certain extent) protects your personal data.
Umm.... no. Say I have this bug, X. If bug X triggers a BSOD when I'm surfing the Web, it is a level 4 or 5. If bug X triggers a BSOD when I'm trying to dock a space tourist, it's a level one. So, whether or not you have the intervening BSOD, you still have the problem the original poster described- the severity of bugs is completely situationally dependent. Of course, if your program is designed for an extremely specific task, then this type of listing is fine. But for any general purpose application (and more importantly, for any general purpose OS) this type of categorization is next to useless unless the categorization of the bug is closely tied to usage scenarios.
~luge
Blatant preference for RH? May I ask where you see this blatant preference? 'Cause I don't really see it, and I'm a Debian user, so I'm pretty sensitive to it...
~luge
Bah. XMMS sucks ass. Now, xmms from cvs isn't so bad- it handles long playlists ( >3K songs ) without crashing, doesn't die on older oggs, etc. But since they haven't done a release since November if you get the "standard" xmms you are getting some pretty inferior stuff.
~luge
Monkeytalk is basically live IRC support. So, when you go to a Help menu in XG, one of your options is to go to "Help Chat", which lets you chat with other users, and hopefully get your answers there.
~luge
0.9 is pretty bad, but the latest nightlies ROCK. Seriously... go give them a try. Much, much more stable than anything that has come before. I'm using evo as my full time mailer now and (especially in the last week or so) am very, very happy with it.
So when sourceforge and/. close due to lack of revenue what exactly are you planning on doing? That'll simplify your regexes a little bit, eh? Or will you be first in line to offer to pay for it? I'm not holding my breath.
This isn't like TV, where watching or not watching a show or the ads doesn't impact the revenue stream of CBS, NBC, etc. Blocking/.'s ads directly impacts their ability to stay afloat and provide you with stuff that is worth reading (and in sourceforge's case, worth programming with or on.) I guess I know I'm not going to change your mind, but maybe it'll stop others from following the same path. Shame that/. has such a technically savvy userbase... if this is what people are going to do with their knowledge, it's going to cost/. in the long-run. Maybe they do need to start posting more Windows stories.
~luge
Two points:
1) What Moz wants more than anything else is to spread the renderer (and hopefully the plug-in model) as far and wide as possible. They don't care all that much about the chrome and all. If that spreads, great... but I get the impression that spreading the renderer is just as important if not more so. Hence, embedded apps (which includes not only "net appliances" but also QT, GTK, and (gasp) AOL) are a prime concern and they spend a lot of time making sure that embedded support is done correctly.
2) I get the impression that QT is not actually "supported" in any meaningful sense. In other words, like the OS X and OS/2 ports, Moz puts it in CVS and provides ftp space and supports it in that way. But they don't actually support it in any meaningful way- i.e., programmer man-hours. In this sense, the QT and other OS ports are proof that Open Source has worked for Netscape- it has allowed others to come in and contribute, reducing cost and maximizing impact for Netscape.
~luge
Re:Good question in "talkbacks"
on
QT Mozilla Port
·
· Score: 5
The basic answer is that the 5% of the code that is not cross-platform is a lot of the most performance sensitive code in the product (graphics rendering, networking, file access, etc.) Mozilla/Netscape have poured tons and tons of man-hours into optimizing that code on Windows. Those hours (since they are in non-XP code) do very, very little for the other platforms. In contrast, they've put very little time or money into optimization on Linux and other platforms. Obviously, they've optimized the XP code as much as possible, but that only goes so far- the lowest level stuff is where a lot of optimization work has to go on, and that just hasn't happened on Linux yet. IMHO, optimizing that stuff is where old-school Linux gurus could be of the most help- learning the guts of Moz isn't easy, but that type of stuff is "just" X calls and things like that, where folks not very familiar with Moz but intimately connected to X and other common sub-systems might be able to make a quick and important contribution. Until there is both marketshare and serious competition in Unix, Netscape/Moz isn't going to do it for us.
~luge
LOL. I love and use Debian, but... Debian's strategy to avoid.0 release problems is to not have releases. The next.0 release of Debian, at the very, very, very earliest, will be in 2003. That's pathetic.
The 27% may be a little on the high side (it's been discussed elsewhere in the thread.) At the same time, the Church of England has a vested interest in deflating its numbers. Nothing like a sense of panic to motivate the godly to drag their children back in.
Having now read the rest of his posts, I'll lean towards ignorant.
Whoa. I totally retract that statement. If you still don't think he's a troll after reading this please post here and we can discuss. I suppose I leave open the possibility that he is just ignorant... but the level of ignorance there is staggering.
~luge
Or it could be used to blackmail you if you are in an affair. Or it could be used only to track and identify minorities. Or it could be used to specifically track members of opposition parties. Or to pinpoint targets for crimes. (Since I understand that private companies run the cameras, how easy would it be for a crime ring to infiltrate someone into the system? Probably pretty good, I'm guessing.)
I understand and sympathize with the point of view of CCV advocates- additional eyes in public places can be very useful and I can see how they'd increase the sense of security (my school has them all over our parking lots.) But the naive faith the original poster places in the system is unsettling.
~luge
I take it back. I said elsewhere you were possibly ignorant or naive; but clearly you are just a troll. No one could be so ignorant of their own history to not know of indentured servitude or slavery on their own soil. Slavery was not abolished in England until 1833 Link. You get a 30 year lead there- which, on the grand scale of history, isn't much. And there was a great deal of fuss about it... sure, no civil war, but only because the numbers were smaller and the economy less dependent on them.
White women in Britain couldn't vote until 1918 and for 10 years after that only women who owned property or were married to men of property were allowed to vote. Universal female suffrage happened here in 1920. Either we are two years worse or eight years better- take your pick.
And, of course, you have to know whose idea property based suffrage was. It's not like British settlers arrived from enlightened England, bumped into classist Native Americans, and said "gee, how silly it was of us to give suffrage to everyone back in the old country. Here, only those with property will vote." Like many of our other good and bad ideas, the Brits had it first, and had had it for a lot longer than we did. As late as 1884, if you worked on a farm, you couldn't vote in the UK. True general suffrage was not granted until 1928. Legally speaking, the US wins by 59 years here (though obviously blacks were practically barred for another 100 years.)
As far as the reasons for revolt... sure, taxes were a huge reason. But if the British Government had actually given the Colonies seats in Parliament instead of opening fire on protesters, maybe we might have stuck around. Maybe India might have done the same if you hadn't tortured and arrested people who wanted the right to make their own salt. And let's not get into South Africa.
Look, America has a pretty dreadful history. But it is clear that you are just trolling when you are so willfully ignorant of your own history. Go back in your hole.
~luge
I wasn't trying to claim that London cops == all British cops, or that all British cops are racist pigs. Certainly, there is a huge cultural gap between the American and British systems of policing- one definitely tends to encourage brutality and racism, the other (apparently) tends to encourage more positive values.
At the same time, this perception of British cops as completely and 100% fair and honest (while probably more true than in, say, LA or NYC) is clearly not completely accurate. If tapes can't be made of me, then they can never be abused. If they are made, all it takes is one bad cop to abuse the system- and I think it is a safe bet that there is more than one bad cop in Britain. The naive faith that the original posters displays is... well, naive. It may reflect a perfectly valid cultural difference between the US and the UK- it's just a cultural difference grounded in some bad assumptions, IMNSHO. It's a cultural difference that really isn't that big a deal when cops don't have anything more powerful than bobby sticks, but when you give them the potential to track every person in a city... suddenly, those "outliers" in the police force- the ones who aren't quite so friendly and upstanding- should suddenly become much more scary.
~luge
I'm not substantially disagreeing that there are cultural differences. As you point out, there are substantial cultural differences between the US and the UK. I could only dream that the US could be as sensible as the UK in re: gun control.* If the existence of cultural differences was the only claim the poster had made, I wouldn't have called him a troll, since (as you've pointed out, much more eloquently than he did) there are substantial differences in attitude towards government here and in the UK.
However, having made the original claim, the poster then proceeded to pass off a number of lies and unfounded truths as facts, and base the cultural differences on these "facts." My post corrected his facts, and said that, in light of those corrections, either he didn't have a particular honest view of his own national institutions or he was trolling by deliberately indicting the US.
To put it another way: He is probably quite correct that most Brits trust their government. That point is quite valid. But his stated reasons for that trust are both demonstrably false and deliberately inflammatory. That makes him either ignorant or a troll, which is all I claimed in my post. Having now read the rest of his posts, I'll lean towards ignorant. But that's just my own judgement, and the way he framed his "facts" certainly leaves that open to interpretation.
*In re: racial strife, I'm not a British minority, so I can't really say, but I've read a number of writings that suggest that the only reason race relations in the UK are perceived as better than race relations here are because the UK has a substantially smaller minority population (2.8% v. ~30% in the US, according to the CIA World Factbook). The claim is that racism is just as bad, but since so few minorities are present, overt forms of racism like police brutality are much fewer and far between. How true this is, I have no clue, but it does seem plausible.
Wow. What a giant flaming asshole. (forgive the language.) But I'll bite.
point 1: did I ever claim the US was better? No. It isn't. It's obvious that our nation has deep and terrible flaws. Cinci's current problems and past massive race riots in LA and Miami (just to name the worst in my lifetime) are clear evidence of that, as is our last election. That has little or no bearing on whether or not England is in good or bad shape. Sure, they aren't as bad off as we are- but they aren't in the kind of shape the original troll likes to think either.
point 2: LOL. "resident" is the right word. In case you missed it in your quick perusal of my web page, I'm a Cuban-American from Miami who happens to live in Durham while I'm getting my education. That said, I'll point out that I've voted against Jesse Helms once and wish I could do it again. I'll also note that the state of North Carolina removed references to the Confederacy from it's flag- in 1907. It isn't the greatest place in the world, no. But (again) that's irrelevant to how good or bad the British government is. (BTW- I haven't touched a gun since 7th grade.)
point 3: I have no clue what you are talking about. I have a few better things to do with my life than search for links, so yeah, some of those links are not the best. But they prove my point, I think, and additional research would support me.
point 4: What does any of that have to do with anything? I'm also a history buff and political science major, if that makes you feel any better.
point 5: Just in the past month, I've been past the Mason-Dixon twice and I'll be doing it again this weekend. Sorry; only been to Europe once. Liked it; I'll be back in January.
point 6: LOL. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder. It's easy to think the cops are fair and effective when you aren't black or some other minority. And it doesn't matter that they don't carry guns- you can ask Rodney King and Abner Louima about that, if you want American examples.
Look- America is no paradise, and yes, there are substantial differences in culture between the two countries. At the same time, the UK is not some kind of happy socialist paradise. They have racial strife and government corruption too, and to claim otherwise is just crap. Remember- every society has assholes: some are cops, some are politicians, and some just post to slashdot. To paraphrase... Go look in the mirror... the asshole, sir, is YOU.
The fair, brotherly cops and respectable politicians are the source of enough institutional racism that the UN is getting involved. Your government has investigated the cops and found them guilty of pervasive racial bias. Heck, your own officers don't even believe that their fellow cops are fair or brotherly.
BTW, the rate of church attendance is more like 44% in the US and 27% in the UK. The University of Michigan has one of the most respected social sciences/statistics departments in the world, so please don't come back here claiming otherwise.
In conclusion- either you are a damn good troll or you are pretty deluded about the society you live in. Hope it is the latter... it is never too late to learn.
I'm sure the FSF has been asked this question before. Drop them a note and ask... certainly, it would help further their goal of getting GPL software assigned to the FSF, so they might be happy to do it. On the other hand, they may not want the associated accounting headaches, so...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it would collect all your personal information (addresses, credit cards, etc.) in one place so that you could then use that one location to buy or rent things all over the net. So, instead of the current situation, where you have to enter personal information repeatedly at different sites, making it more difficult to track you, one site will know everything about you and your personal preferences. If that one site is hacked (and MS does get hacked) then everything about you is known to the hackers. The current decentralized model of data storage can be a PITA, but at least it obscures and (to a certain extent) protects your personal data.
Umm.... no. Say I have this bug, X. If bug X triggers a BSOD when I'm surfing the Web, it is a level 4 or 5. If bug X triggers a BSOD when I'm trying to dock a space tourist, it's a level one. So, whether or not you have the intervening BSOD, you still have the problem the original poster described- the severity of bugs is completely situationally dependent. Of course, if your program is designed for an extremely specific task, then this type of listing is fine. But for any general purpose application (and more importantly, for any general purpose OS) this type of categorization is next to useless unless the categorization of the bug is closely tied to usage scenarios.
~luge
You still haven't answered the question...
~luge
Blatant preference for RH? May I ask where you see this blatant preference? 'Cause I don't really see it, and I'm a Debian user, so I'm pretty sensitive to it...
~luge
Bah. XMMS sucks ass. Now, xmms from cvs isn't so bad- it handles long playlists ( >3K songs ) without crashing, doesn't die on older oggs, etc. But since they haven't done a release since November if you get the "standard" xmms you are getting some pretty inferior stuff.
~luge
Monkeytalk is basically live IRC support. So, when you go to a Help menu in XG, one of your options is to go to "Help Chat", which lets you chat with other users, and hopefully get your answers there.
~luge
It's been in really bad shape all day... lwn.net had announcements up this morning. /. is only adding to their pain, I think.
~luge
0.9 is pretty bad, but the latest nightlies ROCK. Seriously... go give them a try. Much, much more stable than anything that has come before. I'm using evo as my full time mailer now and (especially in the last week or so) am very, very happy with it.
So when sourceforge and /. close due to lack of revenue what exactly are you planning on doing? That'll simplify your regexes a little bit, eh? Or will you be first in line to offer to pay for it? I'm not holding my breath.
/.'s ads directly impacts their ability to stay afloat and provide you with stuff that is worth reading (and in sourceforge's case, worth programming with or on.) I guess I know I'm not going to change your mind, but maybe it'll stop others from following the same path. Shame that /. has such a technically savvy userbase... if this is what people are going to do with their knowledge, it's going to cost /. in the long-run. Maybe they do need to start posting more Windows stories.
This isn't like TV, where watching or not watching a show or the ads doesn't impact the revenue stream of CBS, NBC, etc. Blocking
~luge
Because they haven't optimized much (if at all) on Unix. Click on my username to find a more detailed post by me on the subject.
Two points:
1) What Moz wants more than anything else is to spread the renderer (and hopefully the plug-in model) as far and wide as possible. They don't care all that much about the chrome and all. If that spreads, great... but I get the impression that spreading the renderer is just as important if not more so. Hence, embedded apps (which includes not only "net appliances" but also QT, GTK, and (gasp) AOL) are a prime concern and they spend a lot of time making sure that embedded support is done correctly.
2) I get the impression that QT is not actually "supported" in any meaningful sense. In other words, like the OS X and OS/2 ports, Moz puts it in CVS and provides ftp space and supports it in that way. But they don't actually support it in any meaningful way- i.e., programmer man-hours. In this sense, the QT and other OS ports are proof that Open Source has worked for Netscape- it has allowed others to come in and contribute, reducing cost and maximizing impact for Netscape.
~luge
The basic answer is that the 5% of the code that is not cross-platform is a lot of the most performance sensitive code in the product (graphics rendering, networking, file access, etc.) Mozilla/Netscape have poured tons and tons of man-hours into optimizing that code on Windows. Those hours (since they are in non-XP code) do very, very little for the other platforms. In contrast, they've put very little time or money into optimization on Linux and other platforms. Obviously, they've optimized the XP code as much as possible, but that only goes so far- the lowest level stuff is where a lot of optimization work has to go on, and that just hasn't happened on Linux yet. IMHO, optimizing that stuff is where old-school Linux gurus could be of the most help- learning the guts of Moz isn't easy, but that type of stuff is "just" X calls and things like that, where folks not very familiar with Moz but intimately connected to X and other common sub-systems might be able to make a quick and important contribution. Until there is both marketshare and serious competition in Unix, Netscape/Moz isn't going to do it for us.
~luge
LOL. I love and use Debian, but... Debian's strategy to avoid .0 release problems is to not have releases. The next .0 release of Debian, at the very, very, very earliest, will be in 2003. That's pathetic.
The 27% may be a little on the high side (it's been discussed elsewhere in the thread.) At the same time, the Church of England has a vested interest in deflating its numbers. Nothing like a sense of panic to motivate the godly to drag their children back in.
May I ask what agenda you think I'm trying to push?
~luge
Having now read the rest of his posts, I'll lean towards ignorant.
Whoa. I totally retract that statement. If you still don't think he's a troll after reading this please post here and we can discuss. I suppose I leave open the possibility that he is just ignorant... but the level of ignorance there is staggering.
~luge
Or it could be used to blackmail you if you are in an affair. Or it could be used only to track and identify minorities. Or it could be used to specifically track members of opposition parties. Or to pinpoint targets for crimes. (Since I understand that private companies run the cameras, how easy would it be for a crime ring to infiltrate someone into the system? Probably pretty good, I'm guessing.)
I understand and sympathize with the point of view of CCV advocates- additional eyes in public places can be very useful and I can see how they'd increase the sense of security (my school has them all over our parking lots.) But the naive faith the original poster places in the system is unsettling.
~luge
I take it back. I said elsewhere you were possibly ignorant or naive; but clearly you are just a troll. No one could be so ignorant of their own history to not know of indentured servitude or slavery on their own soil. Slavery was not abolished in England until 1833 Link. You get a 30 year lead there- which, on the grand scale of history, isn't much. And there was a great deal of fuss about it... sure, no civil war, but only because the numbers were smaller and the economy less dependent on them.
White women in Britain couldn't vote until 1918 and for 10 years after that only women who owned property or were married to men of property were allowed to vote. Universal female suffrage happened here in 1920. Either we are two years worse or eight years better- take your pick.
And, of course, you have to know whose idea property based suffrage was. It's not like British settlers arrived from enlightened England, bumped into classist Native Americans, and said "gee, how silly it was of us to give suffrage to everyone back in the old country. Here, only those with property will vote." Like many of our other good and bad ideas, the Brits had it first, and had had it for a lot longer than we did. As late as 1884, if you worked on a farm, you couldn't vote in the UK. True general suffrage was not granted until 1928. Legally speaking, the US wins by 59 years here (though obviously blacks were practically barred for another 100 years.)
As far as the reasons for revolt... sure, taxes were a huge reason. But if the British Government had actually given the Colonies seats in Parliament instead of opening fire on protesters, maybe we might have stuck around. Maybe India might have done the same if you hadn't tortured and arrested people who wanted the right to make their own salt. And let's not get into South Africa.
Look, America has a pretty dreadful history. But it is clear that you are just trolling when you are so willfully ignorant of your own history. Go back in your hole.
~luge
I wasn't trying to claim that London cops == all British cops, or that all British cops are racist pigs. Certainly, there is a huge cultural gap between the American and British systems of policing- one definitely tends to encourage brutality and racism, the other (apparently) tends to encourage more positive values.
At the same time, this perception of British cops as completely and 100% fair and honest (while probably more true than in, say, LA or NYC) is clearly not completely accurate. If tapes can't be made of me, then they can never be abused. If they are made, all it takes is one bad cop to abuse the system- and I think it is a safe bet that there is more than one bad cop in Britain. The naive faith that the original posters displays is... well, naive. It may reflect a perfectly valid cultural difference between the US and the UK- it's just a cultural difference grounded in some bad assumptions, IMNSHO. It's a cultural difference that really isn't that big a deal when cops don't have anything more powerful than bobby sticks, but when you give them the potential to track every person in a city... suddenly, those "outliers" in the police force- the ones who aren't quite so friendly and upstanding- should suddenly become much more scary.
~luge
Fine. It might be lower... but from 27% to 2%? C'mon.
I'm not substantially disagreeing that there are cultural differences. As you point out, there are substantial cultural differences between the US and the UK. I could only dream that the US could be as sensible as the UK in re: gun control.* If the existence of cultural differences was the only claim the poster had made, I wouldn't have called him a troll, since (as you've pointed out, much more eloquently than he did) there are substantial differences in attitude towards government here and in the UK.
However, having made the original claim, the poster then proceeded to pass off a number of lies and unfounded truths as facts, and base the cultural differences on these "facts." My post corrected his facts, and said that, in light of those corrections, either he didn't have a particular honest view of his own national institutions or he was trolling by deliberately indicting the US.
To put it another way: He is probably quite correct that most Brits trust their government. That point is quite valid. But his stated reasons for that trust are both demonstrably false and deliberately inflammatory. That makes him either ignorant or a troll, which is all I claimed in my post. Having now read the rest of his posts, I'll lean towards ignorant. But that's just my own judgement, and the way he framed his "facts" certainly leaves that open to interpretation.
*In re: racial strife, I'm not a British minority, so I can't really say, but I've read a number of writings that suggest that the only reason race relations in the UK are perceived as better than race relations here are because the UK has a substantially smaller minority population (2.8% v. ~30% in the US, according to the CIA World Factbook). The claim is that racism is just as bad, but since so few minorities are present, overt forms of racism like police brutality are much fewer and far between. How true this is, I have no clue, but it does seem plausible.
Wow. What a giant flaming asshole. (forgive the language.) But I'll bite.
point 1: did I ever claim the US was better? No. It isn't. It's obvious that our nation has deep and terrible flaws. Cinci's current problems and past massive race riots in LA and Miami (just to name the worst in my lifetime) are clear evidence of that, as is our last election. That has little or no bearing on whether or not England is in good or bad shape. Sure, they aren't as bad off as we are- but they aren't in the kind of shape the original troll likes to think either.
point 2: LOL. "resident" is the right word. In case you missed it in your quick perusal of my web page, I'm a Cuban-American from Miami who happens to live in Durham while I'm getting my education. That said, I'll point out that I've voted against Jesse Helms once and wish I could do it again. I'll also note that the state of North Carolina removed references to the Confederacy from it's flag- in 1907. It isn't the greatest place in the world, no. But (again) that's irrelevant to how good or bad the British government is. (BTW- I haven't touched a gun since 7th grade.)
point 3: I have no clue what you are talking about. I have a few better things to do with my life than search for links, so yeah, some of those links are not the best. But they prove my point, I think, and additional research would support me.
point 4: What does any of that have to do with anything? I'm also a history buff and political science major, if that makes you feel any better.
point 5: Just in the past month, I've been past the Mason-Dixon twice and I'll be doing it again this weekend. Sorry; only been to Europe once. Liked it; I'll be back in January.
point 6: LOL. Fairness is in the eye of the beholder. It's easy to think the cops are fair and effective when you aren't black or some other minority. And it doesn't matter that they don't carry guns- you can ask Rodney King and Abner Louima about that, if you want American examples.
Look- America is no paradise, and yes, there are substantial differences in culture between the two countries. At the same time, the UK is not some kind of happy socialist paradise. They have racial strife and government corruption too, and to claim otherwise is just crap. Remember- every society has assholes: some are cops, some are politicians, and some just post to slashdot. To paraphrase... Go look in the mirror... the asshole, sir, is YOU.
Of course. But if you are going to twist them to prove whatever you want to, at least start with the right ones.
The fair, brotherly cops and respectable politicians are the source of enough institutional racism that the UN is getting involved. Your government has investigated the cops and found them guilty of pervasive racial bias. Heck, your own officers don't even believe that their fellow cops are fair or brotherly.
BTW, the rate of church attendance is more like 44% in the US and 27% in the UK. The University of Michigan has one of the most respected social sciences/statistics departments in the world, so please don't come back here claiming otherwise.
And as far as New Labour and the "Third Way" being responsive to the people... well, it's about as believable as hearing the same thing from Clinton. It is true that the British government isn't bought and sold as brazenly as ours is, but it is just as responsive as any other government when dollars (or pounds, as the case may be) are at issue. When those businesses want to start invading your privacy more brazenly, you can be sure that MI5 will be there to help out.
In conclusion- either you are a damn good troll or you are pretty deluded about the society you live in. Hope it is the latter... it is never too late to learn.
~luge
I'm sure the FSF has been asked this question before. Drop them a note and ask... certainly, it would help further their goal of getting GPL software assigned to the FSF, so they might be happy to do it. On the other hand, they may not want the associated accounting headaches, so...