i know it sounds archaic, but i have watched no-skills mouse users and it's quite serious. they:
1) play "hunt the cursor" because of poor eyesight and lack of experience with visual on-screen clues
2) hold a mouse with two or less fingers
3) move the mouse around tepidly and definitely not straight such that the cursor movement bears little relation to on-screen movement
4) moving the mouse around in order to locate the cursor itself.
5) let go of the mouse and watch the mouse itself not the screen in order to press a button on it - result: mouse moves...
the use of a mouse is something that is taken for granted. try using your mouse with your OTHER hand for a few weeks to see what i mean (if you are not ambidextrous of course).
try also upping the cursor accelerator and click-speed to absolute max in order to simulate lack of coordination.
and then: don't you bloody dare write another application with many-leveled drop-down and drop-sideways menus ever again!
teehee. my previous machine was a sony vaio pcg 600 hek - roughly the same size, 1.5kg, and double the price (£2000)
my requirements for laptops are quite specific: small and light equals best, in my book, with price coming next on the priority list, and right at the bottom of the list comes processor speed.
my definition of "works fine" is that after a year of absolutely hammering the machine almost all day almost every day it's still useable, and in reasonable enough condition to make me not twitch _too_ badly at selling it on to some poor victim.
in 6-8 months i'll need a new machine: i'll look up the x-series see if it fits my requirements. thanks!
i have an acer TM c100. 256mb ram, 800mhz processor, 40gb hard drive, full size keyboard, 1024x768 tft screen and ONLY 1.4kg. for £850 + VAT last year.
hardware it has PXE boot (so you can get it started without needing to go through USB floppy or USB cd-rom) wireless and 10/100 hardwire, and firewire and usb-2, i810 ac97 sound, IR port, a tracker-pad (with all 6 buttons recognised by linux) and the full screen is ESD-touch-sensitive.
all other laptops you are bloody stupid to have bought, if you ask me: buy one of these and strap some bricks on the back if it makes you feel any better.
me? i would be better off if i stuck with a 2.4 kernel or a debian/stable system because there are binary drivers available for the Wacom touchscreen chipset.
the incompatibility between the drivers and X is due to the drivers (available on sf.net) being compiled for only 19200 and 38400 baud, but the wacom device's baud rate defaults to 115200.
so i had to patch and recompile the X driver to cope with 115200 baud. i only managed this once - and then upgraded and lost it!
the only other thing is that ACPI is not properly recognised (every single linux kernel presently available goes "invalid ACPI checksum, squawk!")
as a consequence of this, you must select which of the networking devices you wish to see on your PCI bus at boot time - the RTL 8139, or the extra Texas Instruments 3.3V PCMCIA slot with a built-in orinico-compatible 802.11b wireless device.
if you press the "flip" button, forget it - reboot time to get networking back.
what else... oh yes. after a year of virtually constant use, i've cracked the screen "side" catches (but they still work) the "middle" catch broke last week (but the one on the other side for locking the screen into tablet mode is still there) i've worn writing off of S, C and the left shift and ctrl, scored _lines_ in the left shift key with my nails, but other than that, it's still serviceable, and i love it.
oh. and the hard drive has about one head-crash per three months and wipes bits of my ext3 partitions out...
skype's voip application leads the way in simplicity for users: after registering at a central location to obtain a list of jump-points (100 random known IP addresses) you're pretty much on your own.
then, other people's computers are used to route incoming calls _back_ down your outgoing connection if you don't know how to configure your NAT or firewall.
i believe that it is a small step to creating a firewall-busting totally distributed VPN (that could then be firewalled itself on the VPN interface).
on top of THAT, you could run your own alternate DNS service - one that is distributed, moves about, is anonymous and untrackable (well, by businesses and lawyers, anyway).
fuckem. fuckemall. if people feel the need to steal, that's their problem. if they believe that what they are stealing is justifiably stealable, that's up to them to deal with.
remember the burning of the id cards in south africa and in germany?
1) install debian 2) install a thermal label printer (the dymo 310 is nice) 3) install pbm2wxl if using dym310 (use google to locate) 4) type "apt-get install barcode" 5) run echo thebarcodenumber | barcode | lpr -Pdym310 6) when the local law enforcement agencies come knocking on your door claiming that the GNU barcode program is illegal and subversive software, RUN LIKE HELL!
it looks like the EU, thanks in part to the FSF who actually listened to what i had to say, is actually going after microsoft at the level where it actually matters.
AOL: waste of time.
Netscape: waste of time.
Media players: mostly a waste of time.
Browsers: mostly a waste of time.
Protocols and specifications: absolutely essential.
Stopping agreements forcing OEMs to only install windows: pretty essential.
US Dept of Justice: time wasters (esp. on not taking BEOS, protocols and specifications into account).
just when a research report has come out explaining that kids of today spend more time on the internet than in front of TV, these companies want to spend billions on brainwashing by phone.... do they know something we don't?? like maybe that they are buying up laws^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbyin congress to pass laws making the internet a broadcast-only medium?
people can now go out, armed with laptops sitting at well-known unsecured WiFi points, coordinating traffic blocking exercises at choke points in order to deliberately cause gridlock - AND they can verify within minutes whether they've done it correctly.
yes, an apology. no, most definitely not an invitation to join the project as a decision-maker: i recognise that decisions are made by andrew and jeremy and that there isn't a chance for anyone to advise them on strategic ideas or direction.
yes, the samba team to adopt an ASF-like charter with an additional clause that "strategic" coding decisions are given equal weight as "technical merit" coding decisions.
yes, the samba team to make strategic decisions to chop the project up into smaller more manageable sub-projects - or at the very least to put in place a means to "out-source" data received by one protocol to separate programs (just like in TNG) which can be controlled from the config file (which is where TNG differs: you _must_ run separate daemons/services rather than have one big smbd monolithic program).
yes, andrew to apologise for treating me like one of his 17-year-old students he lectures.
that's all:)
i've said these things before - it doesn't particularly bother me any more whether these things happen, except that i genuinely believe that the samba project will be a lot better off if they happen.
it was better to do it that way at the time because FreeDCE was not available, and even if it was, FreeDCE would have needed quite a lot of additional SKILLED work on it to make it possible to use (http://sf.net/projects/freedce).
and yet more work to make it production-ready.
so basically, SEVERAL learning curves had to be breached before anyone could start using (or developing) proper tools for the job.
people forget that samba is actually now about TWENTY FIVE separate protocols / APIs, about five of which are implemented in one program (nmbd), about TWENTY of which are implemented or used in smbd.
*lol*. kuso. yes, now you know why i stopped writing messages on this subject - because whenever i do, it's a torrent.
but each time i learn something new, and that can only be good.
today is a day to consider how not to hurt and how not to _be_ hurt, to think about ways in which ideas can be better communicated and presented, and a day to conclude that yes, a lot of people were helped by the information i was able to research.
the main problem was that if, as part of the discussions, andrew would come up with an alternative idea, then that was it - he was off.
one classic example was that after explaining the idea of implementing a proper registry (mainly for the future convenience of the Wine team) i was delighted when i came in one morning to hear that andrew wanted to implement one [a registry].
as the details came out, i was dismayed to find that he intended to make the lookup keys ascii based rather than unicode (thereby making it, for the purposes of the use to which this registry was to be put, impossible for samba to have non-UK/US-based workstations join the domain - so domain names with japanese or cyrillic characters would be right out).
i have to admit that at this time (2000), i was beginning to give up already.
i do realise that in the end i had to use other people to do the presenting of ideas.
you know what? this is going to sound like a cop-out but i _promise_ you it's not. i'm going to think about your question, and i'm going to think about ways in which i could have done better.
i'll take that as a compliment. if you genuinely didn't care, you wouldn't have bothered to post. thanks for bothering, because it tells me i still have work to do.
dear ttn,
of all the comments on this topic, yours is the one that i will cherish the most - because it is something new to me that i have not heard from anyone before.
you are right in two ways - that i have not learned to not hurt [as in be hurt] nor have i learned to not hurt [others].
i am reminded of orson scott card's "ender series" of books, in which bean endeavours to get across vital information and strategic advice without patronising the recipients.
i have adapted that technique when attempting to communicate information.
it had never occurred to me to apply the same (or another) technique to ensuring that people are _not_ hurt by what i say.
thank you.
yes. i cannot express how disappointed i am that in that regard i failed so badly.
still, on the up-side, the information _is_ available, and microsoft no longer has a stranglehold over people.
i didn't get killed. their attempts to hire me were pathetically under-offered. they haven't (and according to the outcome of the lexmark case) and CAN'T use the DMCA to threaten me - or anyone else.
That is a good way to put it. This makes me wonder, what would a group of similar inviduals like us be able to accomplish? Would we fragment against each other or would we be able to accomplish far more than has recently been seen? Perhaps someday I shall have the chance to find out.
i would hazard a guess that it would be hit-and-miss - like all projects and all groups of people who choose to work together.
i would also hazard a guess that under the careful direction of a non-techie with extremely strong communication and negotiating skills that any project that fast-minded people work with/under/for, would be extremely successful.
i just want you to know that i have actually read - and accept - your comments and advice.
especially the bit about being disruptive: i ACCEPT that. i wanted things to move QUICKLY. to have full NT domain compatibility within a couple of years, not within a couple of decades.
also, i am reminded of a quote from terry pratchett's "Thief of Time" - let me see if i can find it for you... yes, here we go, page 32
and thus the future was decided.
they were not bad men. they had worked hard on behalf of the valley for hundreds of years. but it is possible, after a while, to develop certain dangerous habits of thought. one is that, while all important enterprises need careful organisation, it is that organisation that needs organising, rather than the enterprise. and another is that tranquility is always a good thing.
humans can only make decisions and can only make judgements based on what they know.
your comments about the samba team's effectiveness _would_ be completely accurate if the information and observations i have been made aware of were not true.
Slashdot Mirror
This is one _monster_ big deal for Free Software.
This is the code that allows big companies such as IBM, Fujitsu, Entegrity etc. to bid for £500m contracts.
We have FreeDCE already, which is the DCE 1.1 Reference implementation autoconf'd and updated...
i know it sounds archaic, but i have watched no-skills mouse users and it's quite serious. they:
1) play "hunt the cursor" because of poor eyesight and lack of experience with visual on-screen clues
2) hold a mouse with two or less fingers
3) move the mouse around tepidly and definitely not straight such that the cursor movement bears little relation to on-screen movement
4) moving the mouse around in order to locate the cursor itself.
5) let go of the mouse and watch the mouse itself not the screen in order to press a button on it - result: mouse moves...
the use of a mouse is something that is taken for granted. try using your mouse with your OTHER hand for a few weeks to see what i mean (if you are not ambidextrous of course).
try also upping the cursor accelerator and click-speed to absolute max in order to simulate lack of coordination.
and then: don't you bloody dare write another application with many-leveled drop-down and drop-sideways menus ever again!
anyone willing to create distributed virtual networks?
i'm fed up with this law-buying rubbish.
by creating a distributed virtual private network, running over the internet, we get to "escape".
get attacked? do it again. level 2.
and again.
and again.
just like in "the diamond age"...
teehee. my previous machine was a sony vaio pcg 600 hek - roughly the same size, 1.5kg, and double the price (£2000)
my requirements for laptops are quite specific: small and light equals best, in my book, with price coming next on the priority list, and right at the bottom of the list comes processor speed.
my definition of "works fine" is that after a year of absolutely hammering the machine almost all day almost every day it's still useable, and in reasonable enough condition to make me not twitch _too_ badly at selling it on to some poor victim.
in 6-8 months i'll need a new machine: i'll look up the x-series see if it fits my requirements. thanks!
l.
i have an acer TM c100. 256mb ram, 800mhz processor, 40gb hard drive, full size keyboard, 1024x768 tft screen and ONLY 1.4kg. for £850 + VAT last year.
hardware it has PXE boot (so you can get it started without needing to go through USB floppy or USB cd-rom) wireless and 10/100 hardwire, and firewire and usb-2, i810 ac97 sound, IR port, a tracker-pad (with all 6 buttons recognised by linux) and the full screen is ESD-touch-sensitive.
all other laptops you are bloody stupid to have bought, if you ask me: buy one of these and strap some bricks on the back if it makes you feel any better.
me? i would be better off if i stuck with a 2.4 kernel or a debian/stable system because there are binary drivers available for the Wacom touchscreen chipset.
the incompatibility between the drivers and X is due to the drivers (available on sf.net) being compiled for only 19200 and 38400 baud, but the wacom device's baud rate defaults to 115200.
so i had to patch and recompile the X driver to cope with 115200 baud. i only managed this once - and then upgraded and lost it!
the only other thing is that ACPI is not properly recognised (every single linux kernel presently available goes "invalid ACPI checksum, squawk!")
as a consequence of this, you must select which of the networking devices you wish to see on your PCI bus at boot time - the RTL 8139, or the extra Texas Instruments 3.3V PCMCIA slot with a built-in orinico-compatible 802.11b wireless device.
if you press the "flip" button, forget it - reboot time to get networking back.
what else... oh yes. after a year of virtually constant use, i've cracked the screen "side" catches (but they still work) the "middle" catch broke last week (but the one on the other side for locking the screen into tablet mode is still there) i've worn writing off of S, C and the left shift and ctrl, scored _lines_ in the left shift key with my nails, but other than that, it's still serviceable, and i love it.
oh. and the hard drive has about one head-crash per three months and wipes bits of my ext3 partitions out...
skype's voip application leads the way in simplicity for users: after registering at a central location to obtain a list of jump-points (100 random known IP addresses) you're pretty much on your own.
then, other people's computers are used to route incoming calls _back_ down your outgoing connection if you don't know how to configure your NAT or firewall.
i believe that it is a small step to creating a firewall-busting totally distributed VPN (that could then be firewalled itself on the VPN interface).
on top of THAT, you could run your own alternate DNS service - one that is distributed, moves about, is anonymous and untrackable (well, by businesses and lawyers, anyway).
fuckem. fuckemall. if people feel the need to steal, that's their problem. if they believe that what they are stealing is justifiably stealable, that's up to them to deal with.
remember the burning of the id cards in south africa and in germany?
1) install debian
2) install a thermal label printer (the dymo 310 is nice)
3) install pbm2wxl if using dym310 (use google to locate)
4) type "apt-get install barcode"
5) run echo thebarcodenumber | barcode | lpr -Pdym310
6) when the local law enforcement agencies come knocking on your door claiming that the GNU barcode program is illegal and subversive software, RUN LIKE HELL!
it looks like the EU, thanks in part to the FSF who actually listened to what i had to say, is actually going after microsoft at the level where it actually matters.
AOL: waste of time.
Netscape: waste of time.
Media players: mostly a waste of time.
Browsers: mostly a waste of time.
Protocols and specifications: absolutely essential.
Stopping agreements forcing OEMs to only install windows: pretty essential.
US Dept of Justice: time wasters (esp. on not taking BEOS, protocols and specifications into account).
just when a research report has come out explaining that kids of today spend more time on the internet than in front of TV, these companies want to spend billions on brainwashing by phone. ... do they know something we don't?? like maybe that they are buying up laws^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbyin congress to pass laws making the internet a broadcast-only medium?
ha, cooool!
people can now go out, armed with laptops sitting at well-known unsecured WiFi points, coordinating traffic blocking exercises at choke points in order to deliberately cause gridlock - AND they can verify within minutes whether they've done it correctly.
coool!
:) MOST LETTERS YOU READ IN YOUR LIFETIME WILL BE LOWER_CASE>
unfortunately i can't post all caps because slashdot thinks it's yelling!!!
what am i still looking for, after four years?
:)
yes, an apology. no, most definitely not an invitation to join the project as a decision-maker: i recognise that decisions are made by andrew and jeremy and that there isn't a chance for anyone to advise them on strategic ideas or direction.
yes, the samba team to adopt an ASF-like charter with an additional clause that "strategic" coding decisions are given equal weight as "technical merit" coding decisions.
yes, the samba team to make strategic decisions to chop the project up into smaller more manageable sub-projects - or at the very least to put in place a means to "out-source" data received by one protocol to separate programs (just like in TNG) which can be controlled from the config file (which is where TNG differs: you _must_ run separate daemons/services rather than have one big smbd monolithic program).
yes, andrew to apologise for treating me like one of his 17-year-old students he lectures.
that's all
i've said these things before - it doesn't particularly bother me any more whether these things happen, except that i genuinely believe that the samba project will be a lot better off if they happen.
so you see the coding technique i use, and the reasons why i used it, and you see the results.
funny - i don't believe i ever actually saw andrew's response - up until now, two nearly three years on.
what ever happened to release early, release often?
All the RPC code is hand-written
that is my fault: i started that technique.
it was better to do it that way at the time because FreeDCE was not available, and even if it was, FreeDCE would have needed quite a lot of additional SKILLED work on it to make it possible to use (http://sf.net/projects/freedce).
and yet more work to make it production-ready.
so basically, SEVERAL learning curves had to be breached before anyone could start using (or developing) proper tools for the job.
people forget that samba is actually now about TWENTY FIVE separate protocols / APIs, about five of which are implemented in one program (nmbd), about TWENTY of which are implemented or used in smbd.
rpcclient and smbclient i compiled up under cygwin back in 1998: they worked fine!
warning, warning, that presentation is about two hours long!!!
*lol*. kuso. yes, now you know why i stopped writing messages on this subject - because whenever i do, it's a torrent.
but each time i learn something new, and that can only be good.
today is a day to consider how not to hurt and how not to _be_ hurt, to think about ways in which ideas can be better communicated and presented, and a day to conclude that yes, a lot of people were helped by the information i was able to research.
not very well, but it was an uphill battle.
the main problem was that if, as part of the discussions, andrew would come up with an alternative idea, then that was it - he was off.
one classic example was that after explaining the idea of implementing a proper registry (mainly for the future convenience of the Wine team) i was delighted when i came in one morning to hear that andrew wanted to implement one [a registry].
as the details came out, i was dismayed to find that he intended to make the lookup keys ascii based rather than unicode (thereby making it, for the purposes of the use to which this registry was to be put, impossible for samba to have non-UK/US-based workstations join the domain - so domain names with japanese or cyrillic characters would be right out).
i have to admit that at this time (2000), i was beginning to give up already.
i do realise that in the end i had to use other people to do the presenting of ideas.
you know what? this is going to sound like a cop-out but i _promise_ you it's not. i'm going to think about your question, and i'm going to think about ways in which i could have done better.
i'll take that as a compliment. if you genuinely didn't care, you wouldn't have bothered to post. thanks for bothering, because it tells me i still have work to do.
dear ttn, of all the comments on this topic, yours is the one that i will cherish the most - because it is something new to me that i have not heard from anyone before. you are right in two ways - that i have not learned to not hurt [as in be hurt] nor have i learned to not hurt [others]. i am reminded of orson scott card's "ender series" of books, in which bean endeavours to get across vital information and strategic advice without patronising the recipients. i have adapted that technique when attempting to communicate information. it had never occurred to me to apply the same (or another) technique to ensuring that people are _not_ hurt by what i say. thank you.
yes. i cannot express how disappointed i am that in that regard i failed so badly.
still, on the up-side, the information _is_ available, and microsoft no longer has a stranglehold over people.
i didn't get killed. their attempts to hire me were pathetically under-offered. they haven't (and according to the outcome of the lexmark case) and CAN'T use the DMCA to threaten me - or anyone else.
so that's all good.
i would hazard a guess that it would be hit-and-miss - like all projects and all groups of people who choose to work together.
i would also hazard a guess that under the careful direction of a non-techie with extremely strong communication and negotiating skills that any project that fast-minded people work with/under/for, would be extremely successful.
especially the bit about being disruptive: i ACCEPT that. i wanted things to move QUICKLY. to have full NT domain compatibility within a couple of years, not within a couple of decades.
also, i am reminded of a quote from terry pratchett's "Thief of Time" - let me see if i can find it for you... yes, here we go, page 32
and thus the future was decided. they were not bad men. they had worked hard on behalf of the valley for hundreds of years. but it is possible, after a while, to develop certain dangerous habits of thought. one is that, while all important enterprises need careful organisation, it is that organisation that needs organising, rather than the enterprise. and another is that tranquility is always a good thing.
humans can only make decisions and can only make judgements based on what they know.
your comments about the samba team's effectiveness _would_ be completely accurate if the information and observations i have been made aware of were not true.
jeremy, can i suggest that you read _all_ of the comments that i have made here?
a basic summary of those comments is that i accept responsibility for my failings.
can you do the same?
also - there is nothing wrong with my memory. i remember every painful word, every hurtful comment - mine, yours and andrew's.
samba tng is still going: i don't actively work on it but elrond does.
samba tng was, and still is, capable of acting as a PDC for thousands - yes, thousands - of users.
samba tng is the only PDC that doesn't fall over when a few hundred students all simultaneously log in at once.
i stopped working on samba tng because it was too distressing.
and you know just as well as i do that better ideas are useless when there is a monopoly power already in place.