The name was chosen for its humorous URL, "http://slashdot.org" (or "http-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org").
: O
No way!? Damn. I never heard the history of the name, but I always assumed/. was intended to mean vaguely "the root directory" based on the UNIX filesystem. (ie. "cd/." I had kind of had a fanciful more philosophical meaning in my head like that. You know, a kind of "where it all starts", "top of the pile", thing. I guess I read too much into it.:(
I dont think these will help your space solution. They all seem to still require about the same size flat smooth surface as a mini-keyboard to operate. The only advantage is less to carry (ie. good for PDA's). Not to mention, if you're a fan of an ergo keyboard, boy will YOU be in for a suprise when you're banging away on a non-forgiving hard-wood or formica surface. You'll be Remo Williams in no time!
Of course the only people buying and using Segways in that test would be beta-testers, people with a few grand to drop on a toy, etc. Chances are, these are also fairly responsible people.
Now wait till WangCo makes a $150 knock off with turbo, wheel spikes, flashing LEDs and a subwoofer, and a bunch of drunk teenagers get them. No accidents?
That's one thing I always think when open source / linux advocates bash Microsoft. I think "you know, given the same amount of power, I feel pretty confident damn near anyone would start to use it to their advantage.", doesnt matter if its Microsoft, Adobe, RedHat, Lindows, you name it. As you grow, you gain momentum. To sustain the growth, and fullfill the desire to gain power and authority, humans simply DO things like this. They write the standards, they hold more of their cards closer to their chest, they become proprietary, they heavy hand others. It's just the way it works.
I just can't help but think about the poor individuals in the other 98% of the industries in the world that are bound to the laws of physics when it comes to earning a profit.
I am sorry, I have no sympathy for the labels, or even the artists really (sorry) when it comes to losing their CD profits.
Let's not forget, not so very long ago, there really wasn't a way to record music. So, music, like every other form of "service" us humans provide, was a 1:1 ratio. If a show charged a fee to see, you paid it. If you wanted to see it again, you paid again. Much like 2 donkeys for 2 dollars, 4 donkeys for 4. Music was an artform, experienced first hand.
Then one day, technology advanced and shook things up. For a brief period a loophole was opened for a very small segment of individuals. It was discovered that an "artist" could "perform" only once, yet make virtually limitless, 100% accurate copies of their performance and sell them to everyone on the planet for pennies of production costs. Amazing! Sure, doctors, architects, automobile makers, any just about anyone else on the face of the earth that builds something or does something for money will never be able to (barring huge advancements in quantum replicators) do this. But who cares! Musicians could!
[this part is my opinion, disregard if you disagree] Music turned ugly. It went from meaningful art created one off, by the artists themselves, straight to celebrity fame, gaudy fortune, ass and tit shaking, commercial trash. Are there exceptions to this rule? For the love of God, YES! But, come on... Britney Spears?
Anyway. For a few decades music became a massively profitable industry. Handed to the labels by techological advancements. But now. The very same technology that gave musicians and their "masters" an unfair advantage has advanced once again and taken that cash cow away.
And I can't help but say... boo... fucking... hoo.
Welcome back to the rest of the world, where hard working people turn one kind of material into another, or provide a service for money, and are limited by the constraints of how much time is in a day, and how much the original materials cost. It may have been fun while it lasted, but I am not going to cry that you're losing it.
You know what else is a "potential lost sale"? Weather. Economy. Terrorism. Trends. Fads. Accidents. The list goes on. Are all of those things illegal? A "potential lost sale" is a meaningless term. If we have the ability to legislate against "potential lost sales", then God and his pesky Tornado's had better watch out. Or maybe when a new music trend comes along, and wipes out Breakdancing, all the Breakdancers can sue the Grungers because of "lost sales". Had those damn new trends not come along, the poor, defensless Disco artists could still be making money. Sue!
At least while the "give away the printer, sell the ink" scam holds.
Re:Linux IS hard to use.
on
Ark Linux
·
· Score: 2
When will developers finally realize sharing libraries is really retarded? EVERYTHING should be self standing. Yea, maybe 10 years ago conserving disk space mattered, but c'mon. Now, drives are $1 a gig and doubling like mad. Quit it with the shared DLL's and shared libraries, and shared anything. Fuck installers too. Just put it on a CD like this
/OpenOffice (executable) /data/-everything it needs-
Then there's no making sure someone has the right version of anything installed.
Don't give me some excuse. Most Mac software I've seen is like this. If there's some technical reason you can't do that, FIX IT. This is OpenSource right? You have no-one to blame but yourself, just fix it so you can just put the app in a folder on any machine no matter what.
I can't figure out why a dominatrix company like Microsoft would want "subscribers" anyway. I mean, think about it. The current model of selling Office for $600, then upgrading it every year or so works great. Thoes that can afford, pay, those that dont, keep using the old office for awhile, then get the new version with their next PC, or finally break down and buy it.
With subscriptions, you're forcing your customer base to re-evaluate their licensing on a monthly or yearly basis. Each time you ask someone to re-evaluate something, you're risking getting a new answer, like, "fuck paying $50 a month for Office, Ill just try out this OpenOffice Ive heard so much about.". I can just see IT departments going "Well, we need to save the company some money this year. All of our Windows and Office licenses are up in Octoboer. We HAVE to do something, let's just switch to Linux/OOO."
If.NET was really a bet-the-business proposition, they might as well call the product what it is.
Which is exactly what they're doing..NET Server was a misnomer, as it is strictly WindowsNT/2K code with the latest IIS and.NET Framework installed.
A real.NET Windows will appear when the entire OS runs as managed code along with the rest of.NET. This next server OS is exactly what they've renamed it to, Windows 2003 Server.
I write C#.NET stuff almost every day. All.NET is is a framework. A collection of programming objects that let you build apps by fitting them together, and writing the glue, rather than re-inventing the wheel everytime. If you know what the Java classes are, or MFC,.NET is very similar..NET objects can be accessed by writing command line apps, windows GUI apps, and ASP web-apps. It makes it very nice to be able to know the same language for all 3, at least to me. I liked Perl for CGI, but couldnt use it to make a GUI app very easily. VB was queer, but worked for GUI apps, but not very strong for complicated apps..NET framework includes a bunch of objects for dealing with everything from I/O to Databases to XML and Webservices.
You think more space, bigger rides, with more breakdowns, don't cost more money? Or how about longer rides, taking longer, creating longer lines, and more people leaving the park with memories of 2 hour waits, instead of 30 minute waits.
I'd guess it's an attempt to find the shortest possible thrill that still leaves people feeling they had a good time, while taking as little space as possible, and moving people through it as quickly as possible.
I had two Dell Pentium Pro 180's, and I swear to this day they were the best CPU made. The first machine died on me a couple years ago, the other one just died a month ago. But man, I put on Windows2000 on it, and I swear a Pro 180, feels about like a P3-400 at least. You would never know the speed of the processor by the responsiveness of the machine. I loved those CPUs.
I'm sick of these cheap shots at anything Microsoft, or anything "not" OpenSource I should say.
Yes, my RedHat box has a flashing ! every few days too. Programmers are human last time I checked, and humans come in all varying abilities and disciplines. Not all OpenSource projects are written by l33t ub3r cod3rs, and every closed source shop (like Microsoft) is not a bunch of community college flunkies.
I'll gaurantee you any decent sized company has a whole bunch of programmers just like the average slashdotter (or ARE the average slashdotter), that live to code, love what they do, create elegant routines and would seriously not appreciate anyone saying everything they do is weak, trojan-infested, closed-source satan code, just because they work for a business model that keeps proprietary development private.
YEAH! Virtual Desktops are definately a reason to drop your whole OS, applications, years of experience and familiarity. Praise Jesus for Virtual Desktops. Prepare for a mass exodus from Windows soon because of them. (I don't know how many times I've heard Virtual Desktops used as an argument for Linux, it's just pathetic)
Now try naming some other areas where KDE actually improves upon windows. Would one of them be the very poorly organized "K Menu" (Start Menu knockoff), that has shit like
K -> System
K -> System -> System
K -> System -> Admin
K -> Utilities
K -> Control Center -> System
K -> Preferences -> System
Pop quiz... where do you change your screen resolution in KDE?
K -> Preferences -> Look and Feel
K -> Preferences -> Personalization
K -> Preferences -> System
K -> Control Center (which is another redundant dupe of all the previous links)
... what? what's that? You "cant" change screen resolution with any of the 40 redundant tools? I have to reboot, hold Ctrl+Alt+F1, login as root, type XConfigurator, answer a bunch of questions, etc, etc.... WOW, that's just dripping with innovation! But hey, we have Virtual Desktops!
OSX innovated the UI to some extent. KDE is anything BUT innovation.
I don't understand why everyone says "Windows 2000 was great, but Windows XP sucks". There is almost no difference. If you don't like the candyland interface, you can turn it off. And it's no worse than OSX's candyland interface. Aside from that XP is just Windows2000 with a few rather nice features, such as ClearType, RemoteDesktop, and SystemRestore which has saved the asses of a couple of my clients more than once. There just isn't some kind of major difference. Turn off those features, and turn on the Classic skin and you have Windows2000. Yay.
By the way, as both a Mac OSX owner, and a Dell owner, uh I agree with the original poster and would take the Dell anyday. Not that Apple/OSX sucks by any means, but Dell's service (I own many of everything from notebook, to workstation, to a PowerEdge) just kills. 24/7, rarely the hold is more than 1 minute, if at all, especially on the PowerEdge line. Their website still maintains all technical docs and manuals for a Pentium Pro 180 I bought like 6-7 years ago. Anyway, yes, Im pissing into the wind here too so Ill stop.
No, Im not. It's a subtle difference. Again, if you owned a suburban and you bought 10 gallons of gas, you're taxed (base tax rate x number of expected miles from gas). Which is different for each vehicle. It actually seems odd that a suburban would pay less taxes per gallon of gas, but the idea is, theyre using tax money for wear and tear on the road. And though the suburban weighs more thus doing somewhat more damage (this could be factored in as well), the Suburban will only be damaging 10 miles of road for each gallon of gas purchases. Whereas a hybrid electric car may get 100 mpg, so they get billed (base tax rate x 100) for each gallon of gas. It's just spreading the taxes evenly over amount of "road" used, rather than amount of "gas" used. It's all silly, it would never happen anyway, but I was just throwing out an idea that seemed to product privacy a little more and have people pay for the road theyre using.
Rather than install a GPS in every car, install a card swiper at every pump. When you're issued license plates / registration, you're issued a card. The card would contain your account number and your cars "average fuel/mileage" ratio. A Chevy Suburban would get a "15", a Honda Insight a "50" or whatever. Each time you get gas, you have to swipe your card. If you get 10 gallons of gas in your Suburban, a "150" is posted to your account. (ie. you just bought 150 miles). If you get 10 gallons of gas in your Insight, you would be posted a "500". At the end of the month (or at tax time) you are billed X cents for every mile you bought on your account.
Big Brother would know how many miles you drove, but not where you went, when you went, and where you are right now.
This idea doesn't account for how out of state visitors fill up. Then again, the current plan doesnt account for them either.
Their first GUI was a reaction to Macintosh. MFC was driven by the success of competitive object oriented GUI libraries. The 3D look was a reaction to Motif. GUI builders were a reaction to third party tools and NeXT.
Yea, really. Copying sucks. Damn those dickhole car makers like Porcshe and Ferrari. They're just copying Ford. And screw that guy who came up with e-mail, what a total rip off of postal mail. And those leeches over at NASA trying to copy all the ideas of science fiction writers. God. What a bunch of losers.
You will find desktop environments that allow for seemless use of multiple desktops...
What is WITH that? Why does EVERY Linux distro Ive seen always have the multiple desktop shit turned on. That is so totally a geek thing. Half the people I know using Windows are barely managing minimize/restore/maximize, I just dont see my mom keeping track of 4 different desktops. That shit has always bothered me. Make it available, fine. But a pre-installed, pre-turned on, huge portion of the taskbar, in an OS that wants to garner normal PC users? Anyway...
server class networking...
Um. Im not sure what that means exactly. If youre referring to hardware, I think they make gigabit cards for pretty much every OS. If youre referring to the TCP/IP stack, isnt windows's the same as BSD since Win2k?
and front line applications that do a pretty fine job rivaling their rather expensive counterparts.
Here's the challenge part. Show me front line Linux applications that rival (or even come close to matching)...
Quickbooks
Macromedia Director
Quark Xpress
Painter
Dragon Dictate
Chief Architect
Hallmark Greeting Card Maker
Streets and Trips
Encarta
AfterFX
Learn to Speak Spanish
And the list goes on. Maybe someone could offer a couple "possible" matches on the Linux side for one or two of these. But even that's doubtful. Im not trying to be fecetious (too lazy to look up the proper spelling), I'm trying to make a point. Linux is void of the vast majority of apps people really buy. Go look at the store shelves at Best Buy, and point me to Linux equivalents of most of them. Sure, Open Office is awsome, I use it. MySQL is arguably decent. So you have an office app and a database. Well hooorayyyy!!! What about the shit people REALLY buy all the time?
Re:Nice to see the correct name
on
1.5 TB DVD by 2010
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Fact Check:
http://www.dvdforum.org/tech-dvdprimer.htm
What does DVD mean? The keyword is "versatile." Digital Versatile discs provide superb video, audio and data storage and access -- all on one disc.
If they're really smart they'll make it so only one person can be associated with a gun, so that in homes where both the husband and wife want a gun, they'll now have to buy HIS and HERS guns rather than just keeping one under the bed. What a good way to double, rather than reduce, the number of weapons.
And how often does that happen? (Excluding action movies.) - and if it does happen, is the number of times it does going to be more than the number of times the technology works against him by failing to fire at the right moment and getting shot to death in the process?
Slashdot Mirror
: O
No way!? Damn. I never heard the history of the name, but I always assumed /. was intended to mean vaguely "the root directory" based on the UNIX filesystem. (ie. "cd /." I had kind of had a fanciful more philosophical meaning in my head like that. You know, a kind of "where it all starts", "top of the pile", thing. I guess I read too much into it. :(
I dont think these will help your space solution. They all seem to still require about the same size flat smooth surface as a mini-keyboard to operate. The only advantage is less to carry (ie. good for PDA's). Not to mention, if you're a fan of an ergo keyboard, boy will YOU be in for a suprise when you're banging away on a non-forgiving hard-wood or formica surface. You'll be Remo Williams in no time!
Now wait till WangCo makes a $150 knock off with turbo, wheel spikes, flashing LEDs and a subwoofer, and a bunch of drunk teenagers get them. No accidents?
Has no one seen Lord of the Rings?
I am sorry, I have no sympathy for the labels, or even the artists really (sorry) when it comes to losing their CD profits.
Let's not forget, not so very long ago, there really wasn't a way to record music. So, music, like every other form of "service" us humans provide, was a 1:1 ratio. If a show charged a fee to see, you paid it. If you wanted to see it again, you paid again. Much like 2 donkeys for 2 dollars, 4 donkeys for 4. Music was an artform, experienced first hand.
Then one day, technology advanced and shook things up. For a brief period a loophole was opened for a very small segment of individuals. It was discovered that an "artist" could "perform" only once, yet make virtually limitless, 100% accurate copies of their performance and sell them to everyone on the planet for pennies of production costs. Amazing! Sure, doctors, architects, automobile makers, any just about anyone else on the face of the earth that builds something or does something for money will never be able to (barring huge advancements in quantum replicators) do this. But who cares! Musicians could!
[this part is my opinion, disregard if you disagree] Music turned ugly. It went from meaningful art created one off, by the artists themselves, straight to celebrity fame, gaudy fortune, ass and tit shaking, commercial trash. Are there exceptions to this rule? For the love of God, YES! But, come on... Britney Spears?
Anyway. For a few decades music became a massively profitable industry. Handed to the labels by techological advancements. But now. The very same technology that gave musicians and their "masters" an unfair advantage has advanced once again and taken that cash cow away.
And I can't help but say... boo... fucking... hoo.
Welcome back to the rest of the world, where hard working people turn one kind of material into another, or provide a service for money, and are limited by the constraints of how much time is in a day, and how much the original materials cost. It may have been fun while it lasted, but I am not going to cry that you're losing it.
You know what else is a "potential lost sale"? Weather. Economy. Terrorism. Trends. Fads. Accidents. The list goes on. Are all of those things illegal? A "potential lost sale" is a meaningless term. If we have the ability to legislate against "potential lost sales", then God and his pesky Tornado's had better watch out. Or maybe when a new music trend comes along, and wipes out Breakdancing, all the Breakdancers can sue the Grungers because of "lost sales". Had those damn new trends not come along, the poor, defensless Disco artists could still be making money. Sue!
At least while the "give away the printer, sell the ink" scam holds.
Then there's no making sure someone has the right version of anything installed.
Don't give me some excuse. Most Mac software I've seen is like this. If there's some technical reason you can't do that, FIX IT. This is OpenSource right? You have no-one to blame but yourself, just fix it so you can just put the app in a folder on any machine no matter what.
With subscriptions, you're forcing your customer base to re-evaluate their licensing on a monthly or yearly basis. Each time you ask someone to re-evaluate something, you're risking getting a new answer, like, "fuck paying $50 a month for Office, Ill just try out this OpenOffice Ive heard so much about.". I can just see IT departments going "Well, we need to save the company some money this year. All of our Windows and Office licenses are up in Octoboer. We HAVE to do something, let's just switch to Linux/OOO."
Which is exactly what they're doing. .NET Server was a misnomer, as it is strictly WindowsNT/2K code with the latest IIS and .NET Framework installed.
A real .NET Windows will appear when the entire OS runs as managed code along with the rest of .NET. This next server OS is exactly what they've renamed it to, Windows 2003 Server.
I write C#.NET stuff almost every day. All .NET is is a framework. A collection of programming objects that let you build apps by fitting them together, and writing the glue, rather than re-inventing the wheel everytime. If you know what the Java classes are, or MFC, .NET is very similar. .NET objects can be accessed by writing command line apps, windows GUI apps, and ASP web-apps. It makes it very nice to be able to know the same language for all 3, at least to me. I liked Perl for CGI, but couldnt use it to make a GUI app very easily. VB was queer, but worked for GUI apps, but not very strong for complicated apps. .NET framework includes a bunch of objects for dealing with everything from I/O to Databases to XML and Webservices.
I'd guess it's an attempt to find the shortest possible thrill that still leaves people feeling they had a good time, while taking as little space as possible, and moving people through it as quickly as possible.
I had two Dell Pentium Pro 180's, and I swear to this day they were the best CPU made. The first machine died on me a couple years ago, the other one just died a month ago. But man, I put on Windows2000 on it, and I swear a Pro 180, feels about like a P3-400 at least. You would never know the speed of the processor by the responsiveness of the machine. I loved those CPUs.
Yes, my RedHat box has a flashing ! every few days too. Programmers are human last time I checked, and humans come in all varying abilities and disciplines. Not all OpenSource projects are written by l33t ub3r cod3rs, and every closed source shop (like Microsoft) is not a bunch of community college flunkies.
I'll gaurantee you any decent sized company has a whole bunch of programmers just like the average slashdotter (or ARE the average slashdotter), that live to code, love what they do, create elegant routines and would seriously not appreciate anyone saying everything they do is weak, trojan-infested, closed-source satan code, just because they work for a business model that keeps proprietary development private.
Lay off our programmer bretheren.
Now try naming some other areas where KDE actually improves upon windows. Would one of them be the very poorly organized "K Menu" (Start Menu knockoff), that has shit like
- K -> System
- K -> System -> System
- K -> System -> Admin
- K -> Utilities
- K -> Control Center -> System
- K -> Preferences -> System
Pop quiz... where do you change your screen resolution in KDE?OSX innovated the UI to some extent. KDE is anything BUT innovation.
Um. So then why am I reading Slashdot off my 24.1" Sun LCD running 1920x1200 off a DVI Raedon?
By the way, as both a Mac OSX owner, and a Dell owner, uh I agree with the original poster and would take the Dell anyday. Not that Apple/OSX sucks by any means, but Dell's service (I own many of everything from notebook, to workstation, to a PowerEdge) just kills. 24/7, rarely the hold is more than 1 minute, if at all, especially on the PowerEdge line. Their website still maintains all technical docs and manuals for a Pentium Pro 180 I bought like 6-7 years ago. Anyway, yes, Im pissing into the wind here too so Ill stop.
No, Im not. It's a subtle difference. Again, if you owned a suburban and you bought 10 gallons of gas, you're taxed (base tax rate x number of expected miles from gas). Which is different for each vehicle. It actually seems odd that a suburban would pay less taxes per gallon of gas, but the idea is, theyre using tax money for wear and tear on the road. And though the suburban weighs more thus doing somewhat more damage (this could be factored in as well), the Suburban will only be damaging 10 miles of road for each gallon of gas purchases. Whereas a hybrid electric car may get 100 mpg, so they get billed (base tax rate x 100) for each gallon of gas. It's just spreading the taxes evenly over amount of "road" used, rather than amount of "gas" used. It's all silly, it would never happen anyway, but I was just throwing out an idea that seemed to product privacy a little more and have people pay for the road theyre using.
Big Brother would know how many miles you drove, but not where you went, when you went, and where you are right now.
This idea doesn't account for how out of state visitors fill up. Then again, the current plan doesnt account for them either.
Yea, really. Copying sucks. Damn those dickhole car makers like Porcshe and Ferrari. They're just copying Ford. And screw that guy who came up with e-mail, what a total rip off of postal mail. And those leeches over at NASA trying to copy all the ideas of science fiction writers. God. What a bunch of losers.
You will find desktop environments that allow for seemless use of multiple desktops...
What is WITH that? Why does EVERY Linux distro Ive seen always have the multiple desktop shit turned on. That is so totally a geek thing. Half the people I know using Windows are barely managing minimize/restore/maximize, I just dont see my mom keeping track of 4 different desktops. That shit has always bothered me. Make it available, fine. But a pre-installed, pre-turned on, huge portion of the taskbar, in an OS that wants to garner normal PC users? Anyway...
server class networking...
Um. Im not sure what that means exactly. If youre referring to hardware, I think they make gigabit cards for pretty much every OS. If youre referring to the TCP/IP stack, isnt windows's the same as BSD since Win2k?
and front line applications that do a pretty fine job rivaling their rather expensive counterparts.
Here's the challenge part. Show me front line Linux applications that rival (or even come close to matching)...
- Quickbooks
- Macromedia Director
- Quark Xpress
- Painter
- Dragon Dictate
- Chief Architect
- Hallmark Greeting Card Maker
- Streets and Trips
- Encarta
- AfterFX
- Learn to Speak Spanish
And the list goes on. Maybe someone could offer a couple "possible" matches on the Linux side for one or two of these. But even that's doubtful. Im not trying to be fecetious (too lazy to look up the proper spelling), I'm trying to make a point. Linux is void of the vast majority of apps people really buy. Go look at the store shelves at Best Buy, and point me to Linux equivalents of most of them. Sure, Open Office is awsome, I use it. MySQL is arguably decent. So you have an office app and a database. Well hooorayyyy!!! What about the shit people REALLY buy all the time?http://www.dvdforum.org/tech-dvdprimer.htm
What does DVD mean?
The keyword is "versatile." Digital Versatile discs provide superb video, audio and data storage and access -- all on one disc.
If they're really smart they'll make it so only one person can be associated with a gun, so that in homes where both the husband and wife want a gun, they'll now have to buy HIS and HERS guns rather than just keeping one under the bed. What a good way to double, rather than reduce, the number of weapons.
And how often does that happen? (Excluding action movies.) - and if it does happen, is the number of times it does going to be more than the number of times the technology works against him by failing to fire at the right moment and getting shot to death in the process?