A lot of the suggestions in the class of "look like you're too poor/crazy to rob" sound good, but probably aren't practical for day-to-day living (as distinct from, say, being a tourist, where you don't have anyone to answer to). But if you've got a job with any sort of dress code, looking like a homeless person is rather ridiculous. However, looking like a Uni student probably isn't (unless one is required to wear a Suit (ugh)). Of course it's easier to get away with smart casual dress if one is a woman.
Likewise, a compromise on the put-your-laptop-in-a-battered-backpack, would be to put your laptop in a smart, black, backpack. I have a special backpack designed for laptops, with a padded section to put the laptop into, but from the outside it doesn't scream "I have a laptop in me, mug me!". I originally got it because I was sick of the weight of lugging a laptop bag, and I found those wheely ones required me to have three hands whenever I was travelling, but I've found the side-effect of it looking like an ordinary backpack has made me more at ease when travelling overseas with my laptop. And if your work hassles you, saying that a backpack is "unprofessional", then start muttering about ergonomics, RSI and backaches and they should back off (grin). And it's amazing how much more "professional" something can look simply because it's black.
Likewise, ditch any bags or cases that say "I am a cell phone case" and so on. When I was holidaying in New Zealand recently, I carried my digital camera in my ConDiego ID bag, because it was just big enough to put the camera in, zipped up nicely, and didn't look anything like a camera case (it hung around my neck, which was also convenient). Having a coat with lots of pockets may be sufficient for small things like cell phones or PDAs.
Check out the nominees for best novel - 1953 was one hell of a year for SF.
You can say that again. I don't think I could choose between them, they're ALL classics. The first and best R. Daneel Olivaw novel; the book that made us count our books and start wondering how much we could remember of them if they were all taken away; speculation about the destiny of humanity; nifty aliens in an extreme but scientifically extrapolated environment, and then more extrapolation about what superhuman means...
Where I agree with Moore, is that Americans carry guns out of fear of people, where Canadians mostly use guns as tools against animals.
Interesting, because I'd say that about sums up the attitude of Australians too. Guns are for shooting at targets and at pesky ol' wabbits (or other animals). After the Port Arthur massacre (35 dead, 18 injured by one madman with a semi-automatic rifle) the Australian government outlawed semi-automatic weapons (with an amnesty period with gun buy-back by the government) -- a move which was quite reasonable from most Aussie's point of view, because why on earth does one need an automatic or semi-automatic weapon to kill defenceless animals with? Using guns in self-defence simply doesn't cross our minds. That's what the police are for. And if the police are not sufficient, then that's a sign, not that the Barbarians Are At The Gate, but that they've knocked the gate down and are here already.
Don't think I'm an anti-gun loon. I'm very proud of Australia's great record at target-shooting -- in the Olympics. (grin)
People should be allowed to own guns -- and use them to do things other than kill people with them. (Though I think hunting with a bow and arrow is probably more interestingly challenging than hunting with a rifle. (grin) Then again, we don't have any large predators here. But watch out for the venomous snakes and spiders...)
I find it fascinating that the statistics quoted by many in this discussion point out that the USA is simply more violent, with or without guns, than most Western democracies. This sounds like a fundamental social problem, or perhaps a fundamental socioeconomic or sociohistorical problem. Which means that banning guns is not going to solve the problem.
So why are USians more violent? Violence, fear and anger. Anger about what? Lots of things. I was appalled to find out how ridiculously low the minumum wage is in the US, how pathetic the US health system is, how inadequate the US welfare system is, how huge a gap there is between rich and poor -- and the silly attitude towards Unionism as an arm of Subversive Communism. Bah! From my point of view, unionism is something which aids social justice; it's one of the checks and balances which make for a better society. (All power can be abused, so therefore Unions shouldn't get too much power either -- but that doesn't mean that All Unions Are Bad).
With all the Wars on this and that -- On Drugs, On Terrorism... the US is at war against itself.
Y'know, what the US needs is another war.
A War Against Poverty. Y'think that would go down well with all the warmongers?
...The serious people typeset using (La)TeX anyway.:-)
(shudder)
But (La)TeX fonts are a nightmare to
install! Installing fonts in X is trivial
in comparison!
No, I don't mean downloading prepackaged fonts,
I mean using all the TrueType fonts that
I already have. In X, it's just a case of
adding the font files to a directory, possibly adding one
line to a file (if the directory isn't already
there) and then restarting X/font-server.
With TeX, one must needs convert them to Postscript, rename them all to these wierd
cryptic 8-character names, and generate all
these TeX font files and put them in about six
different directories, for each font.
Why on earth hasn't someone done something about
this before now? Or have they?
I found a couple of different programs which
claimed to make it all easy, but they didn't work.
Hmm I see debian users saying this all the time and I just dont' know where it comes from. I have used RH for 4 years and have had no major crashes to speak of when using their kernels. I have also used debian and have had no major crashes as well.
Anecdotal evidence, really.
Debian users who have switched from RedHat
to Debian do it for a reason.
Those who have had no trouble with RedHat
have had no reason to switch away from it.
Now me, I'm a recent Debian convert -- away
from RedHat; and for me the issue was indeed
stability. I'd been a reasonably happy RedHat user
until I started using 7.2; then I started
getting mysterious intermittent hangs
which I could not track down -- the whole
system completely froze up and I had to
hit the physical reset button (not even ye
olde Ctrl-Alt-Delete reboot would work).
And this kept on happening. Trying to track
down which package or combination of packages
was causing it proved fruitless.
So I finally gave up and plunged into Debian.
Debian isn't perfect, of course; no distro is. But there are many cool things about
Debian that I like. (I'm using Woody/Testing BTW) It isn't a distro for newbies, no (and that's a pity) but I like apt-get and that
so many of the things I used to have to download from all over the net with RedHat
are just part of the common Debian package pool. (But I'll stop raving about Debian now).
GenToo sounds quite interesting; a good
point about compiling your own resulting
in increased speed, but I think I'll stick
with Debian for now.
I have my domain, cowlark.com, registered through Gandi [gandi.net]. I'm in my second year with them and have had no problems whatsoever.
I also have my domain, katspace.com registered
through Gandi, and I would second the reccomendation. I haven't had any problems
with them (though of course you really know
the value of a service when you do have problems and the problems are solved promptly!)
As for features, since they don't charge extra
for email and HTTP redirection (you have the
choice between basic redirection, DNS hosting,
or having someone else do the DNS hosting) then
I find that more value for money than
places who charge separately for registration
and for redirection.
Of course that depends
on what you want to use the domain name for.
If you already own your own machine(s) with permanent IP address(es) and merely need DNS for it, then having free redirection is irrelevant. I personally find it very useful
because it gives me the freedom to change
ISPs and/or web-hosting without having to tell
everyone to change to using a new email address or URL. It brings having a domain name into the reach of more ordinary people.
I like it.
Another thing to consider is that the fact
that they are outside the USA.
Some may consider this an advantage, some not.
Let me add my vote to the LyX camp.
I too wanted to be able
to produce documents which I could have in
both print and PDF format. I too had considered
LaTeX and had been repulsed by the learning curve, and decided to stick with what I was
using a little longer (it so happened I'd been
using M$ Publisher and Adobe Acrobat, rather
than M$ Word, but the principle is the same.)
Then I disovered LyX.
LyX enables one to have all the power
of LaTeX without having to overcome a huge
learning curve. Even if you do know LaTeX,
it's still cool because it relieves you from
the tedious bits of LaTeX coding, but you
can still use LaTeX code where you really
really need to.
But I'm not going to pretend that it's
all roses. LyX also shares some of the
more annoying limitations of TeX/LaTeX.
(The most annoying being the complete non-ease
of using other-than-the-default fonts)
as well as its strengths.
On the other hand, if you're using it to
produce documentation, then you will run into
less problems than I did, because you
won't be trying to bend it into a shape
which it isn't oriented towards (me, I was
making a fiction fanzine, not a technical
manual).
If you want to find out more, here's
my LyX page where I lay out some of
the problems I ran into and how I overcame
them.
This all great for consumer-style software. You know the type I mean - desktops, word processing, etc. This is also great for server style products - web, media, OS's, etc. These are areas that geeks often tread and also areas where a clear need is seen.
But how about the software market for proprietary software? Each state has very specific requirements for municipal accounting software. Quickbooks or GNU Cash isn't going to cut it.
Agreed. That's only one example of a situation where proprietary software is the only solution makes sense, but such examples have this in common: the software fits a very specialized need, for which the actual number of clients is small. That can be software for scheduling airlines or controlling train signals or controlling industrial processes or whatever.
A business which needs specialized software has two choices -- get themselves an IT department who can write it, or pay a professional software company to write it for them.
So RMS can spout off about his precious GNU and his beloved GPL. He can rant about the immorality of closed software and non-free software, but lets be clear. The world runs on proprietary software.
I would refine this -- it isn't that the world runs on proprietary software, but
an awful lot of things do -- and the free software/open source model will never work with "narrow need" software.
Why? Because you can't leverage on a huge pool of users. The huge pool of user/developers is the thing which drives
Open Source to its excellence.
I'm all for open source, I love open source
(and in my spare time I write open source)
but it isn't appropriate for everything.
I figure that what I do (writing specialized closed-source software) is providing
a service to people who need it, and are willing to pay me for it -- and to call that
immoral is to call every single paid job immoral! Don't be ridiculous!
When there is not, and could not be an Open Source alternative -- I spit on the idea that closed-source software is immoral.
If you work for a commercial software company, who may not want to make their source open (because they have some proprietary algorithms or whatever - the reasons do not matter for my point), then you simply won't be able to use GPL'ed software. If you have a closed source app, or any software product that doesn't use the GPL, then you can't put GPL code into your app (without making your app GPL essentially). So, my point here is, you will have to beware of the licenses and how they impact your business and your code/application.
Firstly, I do believe the original question was about using Open Source Software,
rather than using its code.
Secondly -- something which Microsoft's FUD seems intent on obscuring -- the incorporation
of GPLed code into your own product is your own choice, and a choice you wouldn't
have with proprietry code.
The choice is, borrow GPL code, write your own, or... or nothing. Or consider it
this way: maybe M$ would let you have their code if you paid $$$$$$$$. OSS code under
the GPL lets you have the code without a monetary cost -- but there is still a cost; a different kind of cost. Keeping the source open is the coin you pay for incorporating GPLed code into your own code.
What about the other types of "enterprise apps," the manufacturing and resource planning software? The kind of software that, for example, Ford or GM might use to coordinate the sourcing and timing of components from Mexico/Thailand/Detroit? Vendors like SAP (and also Oracle 11i) include these components, designed by programmers, manufacturing shop floor professionals, and "industry expertise." It would be great if someone could prove me wrong, but I doubt Open Source is a viable option in these situations.
Agreed. I don't think Open Source is the best
thing for such specialized, highly specific
situations -- yes, you could open source the software, but there wouldn't be much point.
I work for a small software company that, among other things, provides aircraft scheduling software for an airline. How many of you out there know how airline scheduling works? I can guarantee you, you don't. I
know a heck of a lot more about airline scheduling now than I did when I first started working on that project. And our best
support guy isn't a computer geek at all, he's
an airline guy who used to work for that client. He's great partly because he knows
how to talk to the client in their own language (but that's by the by).
Specialist problems require specialist solutions, and for that, it makes sense to pay a good software house to write the solution for you. You get the features you want, because you're paying for them. You get the bugs fixed because there are resources put aside to be dedicated to your problem.
In such a situation, closed source makes sense, because all the parties who know something about the problem -- the client who
knows the arena, and the programmers who
know the software, they can all sit down in
one room and figure out what they need; it doesn't help to have more heads for such
a problem that isn't general.
Yes, there are downsides. People problems always exists, personality clashes and people who don't know what they want or communications problems -- but that's life,
unless you live on a desert island.
Ah, that explains why I'm on the Counter -- my first distro back in '95 was Slackware, and now that you remind me, I remember that email which was automatically plonked into root's email every time you did a new install...
But RedHat doesn't do this at all. A pity, it seems like a pretty nifty idea to me.
This could mean that earlier figures were more accurate, as more people were using Slackware back then? (Seeing as there were a lot less distros to choose from then than there are now)
Linux Counter User #9316 (yes, I'm so ancient I'm in the 4-digit range!) (-8
His phone rings. I watch him pick it up and say, "I'm sorry, Mr. Moreland passed away yesterday."
Then he says, "No, Mrs. Moreland is in custody as the prime suspect."
LOL! I wonder if I would have the chutzpah
to do that...
What I have done is, as soon as they
ask for "Mrs...." when they hear my female
voice, I say "Sorry, wrong number!" I can
do that because I'm single, not married, so
I know that somebody asking for "Mrs" has
got to be somebody who doesn't know me, and
has no legitimate business with me - i.e. a
telemarketer. After all, they do have the
wrong number, because they're asking for
someone who doesn't live there!
I don't know if Australia has Do Not Call laws; how could I find out, anyone know?
Agreed. I've tried E and Sawfish with GNOME, and I find I simply miss the FvwmPager too much. It has features (like the way you can drag windows around) that I haven't found in any other virtual desktop. Why would I want to have to fiddle around with menus that have clunky items for "Move this window one desk to the left" when I can drag the window to exactly the desktop I want, or even "drag" it out of the Pager onto my current desktop?
It took a little fiddling, but I use Fvwm2 and GNOME together; best of both worlds, because I do actually like the GNOME panel and the like.
And the degree of customization that you can
do to the look of Fvwm2 is enough for my simple needs -- I don't need to re-do my theme
to make everything look like icicles (yes, I found an E theme that did that!); I'm happy
enough to change the colours and the buttons
and the menus and perhaps a transparent XPM
pic or gradients to make it look pretty.
And I don't have to learn Lisp in order to do it, either!
*I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.*
In the San Francisco earthquake many countries offered help, including Pakistan!
Today, here in Sweden, reports say Sweden wants to send a team of rescuers. It isn't very much, some 80 people I think, but what can our small country do at this early point? The US is still deciding whether to accept or not. This morning it was reported that many countries are offering to help, including Cuba of all countries! AFAIK help is being offered from all around the globe.
[snip]
But it is happening, even if you don't get to read about it in your paper.
Exactly. I know Australia has already offered
firefighters to help with rescues, and other
people have already mentioned how Australia
helped with California bushfires back then.
Unfortunately, the US media never seem to report these kind of things. If it isn't
totally about the US, it doesn't get reported.
There's also numerous comments about how the US "saved everybody" in WWII. Yeah, well,
Australia jumped in and helped England a lot
earlier than the US did, even though the Germans weren't threatening Australia (when
did Japan come into the picture? It wasn't there at the beginning -- yet Australia was
helping already, long before the US did.)
People have talked here about the noble,
heroic US soldiers who have died fighting
for the freedom their country.
Australians soldiers have constantly died
fighting for the freedom of other people's countries.
Yet when Australia was peackeeping in East Timor, the US turned their backs on us, saying it was a "local problem".
(Yes, we saw that very much as a betrayal)
But we, along with so many others, have
pledged our support, once again, to help our friends and allies, putting ourselves at risk on foriegn shores, because we believe in freedom.
Please stop thinking of yourselves as the only good guys!
This attack wasn't an attack on
"freedom and democracy" or on "civilization". If that was the case, they would have crashed a plane into Big Ben (or some other British landmark) as well. Or into the Eiffel Tower (etc) (I doubt they would have crashed into the Sydney Opera House, we aren't important enough to be a target).
This was an attack on the USA, and the USA only. But we are still pitching in, because we help our friends, and it was a horrible terrible thing for them, whoever they are, to do.
No, that's self-defense. The presentation of one's cause through the terrorizing of others is terrorism.
To put it another way, if the people are unable to fight back, what is to prevent the government from controlling the news at $WEAPON_OF_THE_DAY-point, and extracting abject obedience from the people at $WEAPON_OF_THE_DAY-point?
I stand corrected. Civil war, then. Just as insane.
But I agree, this is getting off topic.
Agreed. The irony is, that those in the high state of anger aren't asking for an eye for an eye. They are asking for more. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" was actually revolutionary concept when it was introduced by Hamurapi (I can't remember whether he was Babylonian or Persian...) -- before then it was a life for an eye, the life of your family for the death of my brother -- just the kind of escalating violence which those "in a high state of anger" are demanding.
Veangence, not justice.
But of course, those who think only with their weapons can't think of anything better.
Beating up Muslims won't bring back the dead.
And it won't make you feel any better either.
<sarcasm>
Yes, yes, giving in to the savage
will really make the world a better place!
</sarcasm>
from the sig of greenrd
++ Guns don't protect people; people protect people. Also, thermonuclear bombs don't kill people - people do. ++
You contradict your own point, when you say
When that asshole shot up the train on Long Island a few years ago, he was able to reload TWICE before the people on the train realized that he wasn't going to spare anyone if he could help it, and jumped him.
Why do I say that? Because it isn't having
a weapon which would help in such a crisis, it's knowing what to do.
If you must, call for mandatory anti-terrorist training -- not more guns.
I consider the attitude of the US gun lobby
to be insane. There ain't no scalping Redskins no more (just peaceful ones locked up in Reservations). That war was won long ago, but that was the reason for the oft vaunted "right to bear arms".
(sorry, getting off the point)
One of the scary things about this is, apart
from the sabre-rattling of the shortsighted George W., is the long-term effect this could have on US society -- a mindset of fear and rage and "let's get them before they get us" could be just as devastating as the eroding of freedoms in the name of the "war against terrorism".
david duncan scott says: On the other hand, Peter Tattam is the only one of the three to have operated a successful software company, and he did so by producing a product which coexisted with Windows.
Indeed. Another thing to consider is that, since Trumpet is based in Australia, it may be somewhat harder for Micro$oft to sue them out of existance. Also PetrOS isn't their
only product, so it isn't like they're betting
the family farm on one thing.
I really hope this project succeeds.
A M$ Windows clone would be wonderful!
Yes, there is WINE, but until WINE is something that one can get running "out of the box", it isn't going to be a real alternative for the average user.
I have hope in these guys -- I used Trumpet Winsock back in the days when there wasn't a winsock bundled with the OS, and I had no trouble with it at all. So I figure these guys know what they're doing. They have experience.
I certainly would like to check it out when they get their GUI running. End of this month, didn't they say?
Those who do not learn from history...
on
HP Buys Compaq
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
...are doomed to repeat it.
In a stunning move, stunning because of the lack of a sense of history, HP simply repeats the same blunder it made when it purchased Apollo to temporarily become the "Number One Seller of Workstations". Only this is on a larger scale.
Absolutely. I used to work for HP back in 1989 when they made said aquisition. Within the hallowed halls, there was much rejoicing.
Everyone was told, hey, now HP will make better workstations using Apollo technology!
Didn't happen. Instead, all the Apollo techs left in disgust, and Apollos were killed dead.
(I'm not entirely sure of the order in which that happened, though!) (-8
Prediction: Massive layoffs at Compaq, destruction of Compaq computers, little assimilation of technology, little merging of the workforce.
They may actually delude themselves that they will make use of Compaq resources, but company mergers never work. One company always swallows the other, corporate politics and survival-of-the-fittest reign.
From what some people have been saying,
HP's corporate culture is still better than Compaq's, so that's one hopeful thing -- if HP is the winner in the silent battle.
Unfortunately, when one's job is on the line, nobody is going to be objective in evaluating whether Project A or Project B is the better one -- even if Project B is obviously miles better than Project A, if some middle manager loses power if things go with Project B, they are going to push Project A for all its worth(less). Human nature.
Now imagine that happening multiplied by
thousands, for the thousands of employees who are going to be laid off by this merger.
Don't expect sensible decisions.
In case you're wondering how I left HP... our section was "downsized" because Head Office wanted to get out of Applications Software... But it was a nice place to work while I was there, and they tested things to death. Quality control, you betcha.
So, despite all my doom and gloom, I don't think HP will die. Just don't expect anything wonderful out of this merger.
Yes, indeed, remembering such numbers would be a pain; like having to type in IP addresses instead of domain names. The difficulty is, they are allowing themselves to be limited by the limitations of existing technology - to wit, telephones only have digits on them.
And can you imagine the privacy issues with such numbers? Telephone SPAM, here we come!
Dr. Sp0ng wrote:
Dude, PDF is Postscript. Try opening a PDF in ghostview. It works fine.
'Scuse me, PDF is not Postscript. Try opening a PDF in a text editor.
A few keywords saying that it's PDF, and awhacking great collection of binary data.
Just because ghostview can read PDF as well as Poscript doesn't mean that PDF
is Postscript.
Like the original poster of this thread, I'm also curious as to what would be a good replacement for PDF, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Likewise, a compromise on the put-your-laptop-in-a-battered-backpack, would be to put your laptop in a smart, black, backpack. I have a special backpack designed for laptops, with a padded section to put the laptop into, but from the outside it doesn't scream "I have a laptop in me, mug me!". I originally got it because I was sick of the weight of lugging a laptop bag, and I found those wheely ones required me to have three hands whenever I was travelling, but I've found the side-effect of it looking like an ordinary backpack has made me more at ease when travelling overseas with my laptop. And if your work hassles you, saying that a backpack is "unprofessional", then start muttering about ergonomics, RSI and backaches and they should back off (grin). And it's amazing how much more "professional" something can look simply because it's black.
Likewise, ditch any bags or cases that say "I am a cell phone case" and so on. When I was holidaying in New Zealand recently, I carried my digital camera in my ConDiego ID bag, because it was just big enough to put the camera in, zipped up nicely, and didn't look anything like a camera case (it hung around my neck, which was also convenient). Having a coat with lots of pockets may be sufficient for small things like cell phones or PDAs.
You can say that again. I don't think I could choose between them, they're ALL classics. The first and best R. Daneel Olivaw novel; the book that made us count our books and start wondering how much we could remember of them if they were all taken away; speculation about the destiny of humanity; nifty aliens in an extreme but scientifically extrapolated environment, and then more extrapolation about what superhuman means...
Interesting, because I'd say that about sums up the attitude of Australians too. Guns are for shooting at targets and at pesky ol' wabbits (or other animals). After the Port Arthur massacre (35 dead, 18 injured by one madman with a semi-automatic rifle) the Australian government outlawed semi-automatic weapons (with an amnesty period with gun buy-back by the government) -- a move which was quite reasonable from most Aussie's point of view, because why on earth does one need an automatic or semi-automatic weapon to kill defenceless animals with? Using guns in self-defence simply doesn't cross our minds. That's what the police are for. And if the police are not sufficient, then that's a sign, not that the Barbarians Are At The Gate, but that they've knocked the gate down and are here already.
Don't think I'm an anti-gun loon. I'm very proud of Australia's great record at target-shooting -- in the Olympics. (grin) People should be allowed to own guns -- and use them to do things other than kill people with them. (Though I think hunting with a bow and arrow is probably more interestingly challenging than hunting with a rifle. (grin) Then again, we don't have any large predators here. But watch out for the venomous snakes and spiders...)
I find it fascinating that the statistics quoted by many in this discussion point out that the USA is simply more violent, with or without guns, than most Western democracies. This sounds like a fundamental social problem, or perhaps a fundamental socioeconomic or sociohistorical problem. Which means that banning guns is not going to solve the problem.
So why are USians more violent? Violence, fear and anger. Anger about what? Lots of things. I was appalled to find out how ridiculously low the minumum wage is in the US, how pathetic the US health system is, how inadequate the US welfare system is, how huge a gap there is between rich and poor -- and the silly attitude towards Unionism as an arm of Subversive Communism. Bah! From my point of view, unionism is something which aids social justice; it's one of the checks and balances which make for a better society. (All power can be abused, so therefore Unions shouldn't get too much power either -- but that doesn't mean that All Unions Are Bad).
With all the Wars on this and that -- On Drugs, On Terrorism... the US is at war against itself.
Y'know, what the US needs is another war. A War Against Poverty. Y'think that would go down well with all the warmongers?
(shudder) But (La)TeX fonts are a nightmare to install! Installing fonts in X is trivial in comparison! No, I don't mean downloading prepackaged fonts, I mean using all the TrueType fonts that I already have. In X, it's just a case of adding the font files to a directory, possibly adding one line to a file (if the directory isn't already there) and then restarting X/font-server. With TeX, one must needs convert them to Postscript, rename them all to these wierd cryptic 8-character names, and generate all these TeX font files and put them in about six different directories, for each font.
Why on earth hasn't someone done something about this before now? Or have they? I found a couple of different programs which claimed to make it all easy, but they didn't work.
True, but the operative word is "reasonable".
Hmm I see debian users saying this all the time and I just dont' know where it comes from. I have used RH for 4 years and have had no major crashes to speak of when using their kernels. I have also used debian and have had no major crashes as well.
Anecdotal evidence, really. Debian users who have switched from RedHat to Debian do it for a reason. Those who have had no trouble with RedHat have had no reason to switch away from it.
Now me, I'm a recent Debian convert -- away from RedHat; and for me the issue was indeed stability. I'd been a reasonably happy RedHat user until I started using 7.2; then I started getting mysterious intermittent hangs which I could not track down -- the whole system completely froze up and I had to hit the physical reset button (not even ye olde Ctrl-Alt-Delete reboot would work). And this kept on happening. Trying to track down which package or combination of packages was causing it proved fruitless. So I finally gave up and plunged into Debian.
Debian isn't perfect, of course; no distro is. But there are many cool things about Debian that I like. (I'm using Woody/Testing BTW) It isn't a distro for newbies, no (and that's a pity) but I like apt-get and that so many of the things I used to have to download from all over the net with RedHat are just part of the common Debian package pool. (But I'll stop raving about Debian now).
GenToo sounds quite interesting; a good point about compiling your own resulting in increased speed, but I think I'll stick with Debian for now.
I have my domain, cowlark.com, registered through Gandi [gandi.net]. I'm in my second year with them and have had no problems whatsoever.
I also have my domain, katspace.com registered through Gandi, and I would second the reccomendation. I haven't had any problems with them (though of course you really know the value of a service when you do have problems and the problems are solved promptly!) As for features, since they don't charge extra for email and HTTP redirection (you have the choice between basic redirection, DNS hosting, or having someone else do the DNS hosting) then I find that more value for money than places who charge separately for registration and for redirection.
Of course that depends on what you want to use the domain name for. If you already own your own machine(s) with permanent IP address(es) and merely need DNS for it, then having free redirection is irrelevant. I personally find it very useful because it gives me the freedom to change ISPs and/or web-hosting without having to tell everyone to change to using a new email address or URL. It brings having a domain name into the reach of more ordinary people. I like it.
Another thing to consider is that the fact that they are outside the USA. Some may consider this an advantage, some not.
KerrAvonsen
Let me add my vote to the LyX camp. I too wanted to be able to produce documents which I could have in both print and PDF format. I too had considered LaTeX and had been repulsed by the learning curve, and decided to stick with what I was using a little longer (it so happened I'd been using M$ Publisher and Adobe Acrobat, rather than M$ Word, but the principle is the same.)
Then I disovered LyX.
LyX enables one to have all the power of LaTeX without having to overcome a huge learning curve. Even if you do know LaTeX, it's still cool because it relieves you from the tedious bits of LaTeX coding, but you can still use LaTeX code where you really really need to.
But I'm not going to pretend that it's all roses. LyX also shares some of the more annoying limitations of TeX/LaTeX. (The most annoying being the complete non-ease of using other-than-the-default fonts) as well as its strengths.
On the other hand, if you're using it to produce documentation, then you will run into less problems than I did, because you won't be trying to bend it into a shape which it isn't oriented towards (me, I was making a fiction fanzine, not a technical manual).
If you want to find out more, here's my LyX page where I lay out some of the problems I ran into and how I overcame them.
But how about the software market for proprietary software? Each state has very specific requirements for municipal accounting software. Quickbooks or GNU Cash isn't going to cut it.
Agreed. That's only one example of a situation where proprietary software is the only solution makes sense, but such examples have this in common: the software fits a very specialized need, for which the actual number of clients is small. That can be software for scheduling airlines or controlling train signals or controlling industrial processes or whatever. A business which needs specialized software has two choices -- get themselves an IT department who can write it, or pay a professional software company to write it for them.
So RMS can spout off about his precious GNU and his beloved GPL. He can rant about the immorality of closed software and non-free software, but lets be clear. The world runs on proprietary software.
I would refine this -- it isn't that the world runs on proprietary software, but an awful lot of things do -- and the free software/open source model will never work with "narrow need" software. Why? Because you can't leverage on a huge pool of users. The huge pool of user/developers is the thing which drives Open Source to its excellence. I'm all for open source, I love open source (and in my spare time I write open source) but it isn't appropriate for everything.
I figure that what I do (writing specialized closed-source software) is providing a service to people who need it, and are willing to pay me for it -- and to call that immoral is to call every single paid job immoral! Don't be ridiculous!
When there is not, and could not be an Open Source alternative -- I spit on the idea that closed-source software is immoral.
Firstly, I do believe the original question was about using Open Source Software, rather than using its code. Secondly -- something which Microsoft's FUD seems intent on obscuring -- the incorporation of GPLed code into your own product is your own choice, and a choice you wouldn't have with proprietry code. The choice is, borrow GPL code, write your own, or... or nothing. Or consider it this way: maybe M$ would let you have their code if you paid $$$$$$$$. OSS code under the GPL lets you have the code without a monetary cost -- but there is still a cost; a different kind of cost. Keeping the source open is the coin you pay for incorporating GPLed code into your own code.
You pays your money, you takes your choice.
Patenting silence? Hmmm.
Didn't Cage write a piece which consisted of four minutes of silence?
Agreed. I don't think Open Source is the best thing for such specialized, highly specific situations -- yes, you could open source the software, but there wouldn't be much point. I work for a small software company that, among other things, provides aircraft scheduling software for an airline. How many of you out there know how airline scheduling works? I can guarantee you, you don't. I know a heck of a lot more about airline scheduling now than I did when I first started working on that project. And our best support guy isn't a computer geek at all, he's an airline guy who used to work for that client. He's great partly because he knows how to talk to the client in their own language (but that's by the by).
Specialist problems require specialist solutions, and for that, it makes sense to pay a good software house to write the solution for you. You get the features you want, because you're paying for them. You get the bugs fixed because there are resources put aside to be dedicated to your problem.
In such a situation, closed source makes sense, because all the parties who know something about the problem -- the client who knows the arena, and the programmers who know the software, they can all sit down in one room and figure out what they need; it doesn't help to have more heads for such a problem that isn't general.
Yes, there are downsides. People problems always exists, personality clashes and people who don't know what they want or communications problems -- but that's life, unless you live on a desert island.
Ah, that explains why I'm on the Counter -- my first distro back in '95 was Slackware, and now that you remind me, I remember that email which was automatically plonked into root's email every time you did a new install...
But RedHat doesn't do this at all. A pity, it seems like a pretty nifty idea to me.
This could mean that earlier figures were more accurate, as more people were using Slackware back then? (Seeing as there were a lot less distros to choose from then than there are now)
Linux Counter User #9316 (yes, I'm so ancient I'm in the 4-digit range!) (-8
Then he says, "No, Mrs. Moreland is in custody as the prime suspect."
LOL! I wonder if I would have the chutzpah to do that...
What I have done is, as soon as they ask for "Mrs...." when they hear my female voice, I say "Sorry, wrong number!" I can do that because I'm single, not married, so I know that somebody asking for "Mrs" has got to be somebody who doesn't know me, and has no legitimate business with me - i.e. a telemarketer. After all, they do have the wrong number, because they're asking for someone who doesn't live there!
I don't know if Australia has Do Not Call laws; how could I find out, anyone know?
Agreed. I've tried E and Sawfish with GNOME, and I find I simply miss the FvwmPager too much. It has features (like the way you can drag windows around) that I haven't found in any other virtual desktop. Why would I want to have to fiddle around with menus that have clunky items for "Move this window one desk to the left" when I can drag the window to exactly the desktop I want, or even "drag" it out of the Pager onto my current desktop?
It took a little fiddling, but I use Fvwm2 and GNOME together; best of both worlds, because I do actually like the GNOME panel and the like.
And the degree of customization that you can do to the look of Fvwm2 is enough for my simple needs -- I don't need to re-do my theme to make everything look like icicles (yes, I found an E theme that did that!); I'm happy enough to change the colours and the buttons and the menus and perhaps a transparent XPM pic or gradients to make it look pretty.
And I don't have to learn Lisp in order to do it, either!
Am I wrong, or wasn't it the US who put the Taliban into power in the first place?
*I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.*
In the San Francisco earthquake many countries offered help, including Pakistan! Today, here in Sweden, reports say Sweden wants to send a team of rescuers. It isn't very much, some 80 people I think, but what can our small country do at this early point? The US is still deciding whether to accept or not. This morning it was reported that many countries are offering to help, including Cuba of all countries! AFAIK help is being offered from all around the globe.
[snip]
But it is happening, even if you don't get to read about it in your paper.
Exactly. I know Australia has already offered firefighters to help with rescues, and other people have already mentioned how Australia helped with California bushfires back then.
Unfortunately, the US media never seem to report these kind of things. If it isn't totally about the US, it doesn't get reported.
There's also numerous comments about how the US "saved everybody" in WWII. Yeah, well, Australia jumped in and helped England a lot earlier than the US did, even though the Germans weren't threatening Australia (when did Japan come into the picture? It wasn't there at the beginning -- yet Australia was helping already, long before the US did.)
People have talked here about the noble, heroic US soldiers who have died fighting for the freedom their country. Australians soldiers have constantly died fighting for the freedom of other people's countries. Yet when Australia was peackeeping in East Timor, the US turned their backs on us, saying it was a "local problem". (Yes, we saw that very much as a betrayal)
But we, along with so many others, have pledged our support, once again, to help our friends and allies, putting ourselves at risk on foriegn shores, because we believe in freedom.
Please stop thinking of yourselves as the only good guys! This attack wasn't an attack on "freedom and democracy" or on "civilization". If that was the case, they would have crashed a plane into Big Ben (or some other British landmark) as well. Or into the Eiffel Tower (etc) (I doubt they would have crashed into the Sydney Opera House, we aren't important enough to be a target). This was an attack on the USA, and the USA only. But we are still pitching in, because we help our friends, and it was a horrible terrible thing for them, whoever they are, to do.
(Feeling very uncharacteristically patriotic.)
To put it another way, if the people are unable to fight back, what is to prevent the government from controlling the news at $WEAPON_OF_THE_DAY-point, and extracting abject obedience from the people at $WEAPON_OF_THE_DAY-point?
I stand corrected.
Civil war, then. Just as insane.
But I agree, this is getting off topic.
Hmmmm.
The right to bear arms against the government?
<irony>Isn't that terrorism?</irony>
Veangence, not justice.
But of course, those who think only with their weapons can't think of anything better. Beating up Muslims won't bring back the dead. And it won't make you feel any better either. <sarcasm> Yes, yes, giving in to the savage will really make the world a better place! </sarcasm>
++ Guns don't protect people; people protect people. Also, thermonuclear bombs don't kill people - people do. ++
You contradict your own point, when you say When that asshole shot up the train on Long Island a few years ago, he was able to reload TWICE before the people on the train realized that he wasn't going to spare anyone if he could help it, and jumped him. Why do I say that? Because it isn't having a weapon which would help in such a crisis, it's knowing what to do. If you must, call for mandatory anti-terrorist training -- not more guns. I consider the attitude of the US gun lobby to be insane. There ain't no scalping Redskins no more (just peaceful ones locked up in Reservations). That war was won long ago, but that was the reason for the oft vaunted "right to bear arms". (sorry, getting off the point)
One of the scary things about this is, apart from the sabre-rattling of the shortsighted George W., is the long-term effect this could have on US society -- a mindset of fear and rage and "let's get them before they get us" could be just as devastating as the eroding of freedoms in the name of the "war against terrorism".
david duncan scott says:
On the other hand, Peter Tattam is the only one of the three to have operated a successful software company, and he did so by producing a product which coexisted with Windows.
Indeed. Another thing to consider is that, since Trumpet is based in Australia, it may be somewhat harder for Micro$oft to sue them out of existance. Also PetrOS isn't their only product, so it isn't like they're betting the family farm on one thing.
I really hope this project succeeds. A M$ Windows clone would be wonderful! Yes, there is WINE, but until WINE is something that one can get running "out of the box", it isn't going to be a real alternative for the average user.
I have hope in these guys -- I used Trumpet Winsock back in the days when there wasn't a winsock bundled with the OS, and I had no trouble with it at all. So I figure these guys know what they're doing. They have experience.
I certainly would like to check it out when they get their GUI running. End of this month, didn't they say?
In a stunning move, stunning because of the lack of a sense of history, HP simply repeats the same blunder it made when it purchased Apollo to temporarily become the "Number One Seller of Workstations". Only this is on a larger scale.
Absolutely. I used to work for HP back in 1989 when they made said aquisition. Within the hallowed halls, there was much rejoicing. Everyone was told, hey, now HP will make better workstations using Apollo technology! Didn't happen. Instead, all the Apollo techs left in disgust, and Apollos were killed dead. (I'm not entirely sure of the order in which that happened, though!) (-8
Prediction: Massive layoffs at Compaq, destruction of Compaq computers, little assimilation of technology, little merging of the workforce. They may actually delude themselves that they will make use of Compaq resources, but company mergers never work. One company always swallows the other, corporate politics and survival-of-the-fittest reign.
From what some people have been saying, HP's corporate culture is still better than Compaq's, so that's one hopeful thing -- if HP is the winner in the silent battle.
Unfortunately, when one's job is on the line, nobody is going to be objective in evaluating whether Project A or Project B is the better one -- even if Project B is obviously miles better than Project A, if some middle manager loses power if things go with Project B, they are going to push Project A for all its worth(less). Human nature.
Now imagine that happening multiplied by thousands, for the thousands of employees who are going to be laid off by this merger. Don't expect sensible decisions.
In case you're wondering how I left HP... our section was "downsized" because Head Office wanted to get out of Applications Software... But it was a nice place to work while I was there, and they tested things to death. Quality control, you betcha.
So, despite all my doom and gloom, I don't think HP will die. Just don't expect anything wonderful out of this merger.
Yes, indeed, remembering such numbers would be a pain; like having to type in IP addresses instead of domain names. The difficulty is, they are allowing themselves to be limited by the limitations of existing technology - to wit, telephones only have digits on them.
And can you imagine the privacy issues with such numbers? Telephone SPAM, here we come!
(shudder)
'Scuse me, PDF is not Postscript. Try opening a PDF in a text editor. A few keywords saying that it's PDF, and awhacking great collection of binary data. Just because ghostview can read PDF as well as Poscript doesn't mean that PDF is Postscript.
Like the original poster of this thread, I'm also curious as to what would be a good replacement for PDF, though.