people who don't understand the difference between binary and decimal have no place in IT
What a bunch of arrogant nonsense. For 'normal' people, 1kB is 1000bytes. Heck, even for me (and I am sorry to say that I do have a place in IT), when I see a file size of 10000000 bytes, I say it is 10MB, and not 9.5. In fact I am wondering if anyone is doing that. The Kibi didn't introduce confusion, the mis-use of SI units did. We are now merely trying to fix it.
The problem I see with OOo is that it is marketed and used as "hey, there is a free (as in beer) MS Office clone!" rather than "Hey, this is better than MS Office" but the problem is the second statement isn't true. Firefox won out over IE not by "hey, we have a clone of IE" but by being -better- than IE.
According to a january 2010 article [linuxjournal.com] in LinuxJournal, OpenOffice is better on the word processing application, tied on the spreadsheet and worse on the presentation app. All in all, when comparing the two, the difference get smaller and smaller, and the overall conclusion now, is that there is a tie.
For the record, we use OOo internally in our company (~20 employees).
It does for smaller crimes. But, you give me a good answer to my question. For you, Microsoft will never be redeemed for their crimes, or at least not in our lifetime.
I hear you saying that you think MS is a reformed thief.
In that case, you heard wrong. I merely ask questions. It seems like Microsoft cannot do anything right, whatever they do. The fact remains that they did a lot of questionable things, have been convicted and created bad products. But, if they do make something useful or of good quality, it gets judged based on those previous products and actions. I think people should judge products on their merit or quality. Of course you would be suspicious if it came from a producer that has created only bad products before. But if you dismiss the product beforehand, the company will never have any chance to become better.
What happened to judging products on their merits? Has Microsoft really damaged you so much that whatever they do meets so much resistance that the sheer *thought* of using a product would make you cringe? And on a related note, what should Microsoft do to regain your respect?
On a social analogy, is a thief always a thief, even when he shows remorse and changed his ways?
I think it is simply not needed. Why would you put effort in encrypting a public website, or your e-mails to your grandmother to feed your cat while you're away.
Risk = damage x probability. Probability (sniffing email/web traffic) is extremely low on most data, as is damage. I think logins should be encrypted, but not (public) data.
We have used drbd 0.7 for some mission critical server, but it gave more headaches than a warm (or even cold) standby. The main problem is keeping you nodes synchronised for the disks that are NOT in the drbd (e.g./,/etc,/usr, etc). We put our software on drbd disk and the database on another. However, when adding services, it is easy to 'forget' to add the startup script in/etc/ha.d and the first failover results in not all services being started. Which leads to a support call.
I understand that we should perhaps change the setup to include a 'correct' way to provides updates, but just putting a raid-1 in a server, with database replication somewhere else just seems to be less of a hassle.
No he doesn't. As the linked post says, he doesn't browse the web for PERSONAL REASONS. That's a completely different thing than advocating against using software that is patent bait.
Should the entire open source community follow a guy that does not use the web for personal reasons? Should we take him seriously still?
Well, I live in one or the "drug tourist ridden" border towns. And there is a coffee shop just around the corner of my house. I have no problems at all with that. No nuisance.
I think people choose themselves to become criminals. If you have a few plants, that are legal, you know that having more will make you a criminal. You know when you are selling cannabis on a larger scale is illegal (if only because you are not paying taxes).
I do agree with you though on the European, or at least national scale, of really legalising the drug. There was a cannabis-summit not so long ago with all the mayors of the border towns. They all agreed the current system is far from ideal. Too bad we have a conservative-christian government right now that doesn't want to touch the subject.
BTW: do not judge a people based on the actions of a madman.
The golden ratio isn't really all that useful for writing paper.
Except that, when you have an long-side-leading A4 printer, it can also print A3, because the long side of A4 is the same as the short side of A3. It makes the printer a little more versatile.
Euhm, there are more languages in the world than English, many of them also use dates; I say "veertien maart tweeduizend negen". Which makes 14/03/2009. Besides, this way, the smallest (day) comes first, then the bigger (month), then the biggest (year). There is a reason that ISO dates are yyyy-mm-dd (big-to-small), so they sort correctly.
is find out how to program that. I'm a programmer and I know the problems that are involved in (massive) parallel programming. For a lot of problems, it is either impossible or very hard. See also my essay 'Why does software suck' (dutch) (babelfish translation).
Okay, I take that back. Not complete desktop environments, but I still have to install two complete near-identical library sets (gnome lib vs kde lib), or even more if I decide to use some xfce programs.
My comment starts with 'unless you have a decent distro'. I do not say there are none, nor do I say that Linux sucks, or any other OS sucks. I am also talking about what if the software you want is *not* inside a repository (proprietary software?) it is hard or impossible to install it. And using a CLI and having to run strange scripts, etc. is considered 'hard' in this case. I want to download a file (or buy a CD), and run an installer. After that, the program should be in my menu and I should be able to use it.
You want examples? Try installing vmware on Ubuntu. I have to download a file (good), then run it in a console (not good) and only just now have they fixed a bug to correctly compile kernel modules (very bad). Another example is the default installation of Eclipse, which uses the gcj. I have to extra install the java sun engine to be able to use it (with gcj it is too memory hungry, slow and overall crashy).
My point is only that flexibility is not always a good thing. And by the way, no Linux doesn't suck more or less than any other modern OS (noted that software sucks, generally). I have been arguing for a long time that there is no technical reason to prefer any one over the other.
My point is, that, in practice, installing or getting software outside of the distro's repository is usually very hard or completely impossible, let alone getting decent integration (I found out yesterday there are 3 (!) different ways for copy-paste on my Ubuntu system, and they all use their own clipboard!). Proprietary OSs usually specify APIs, guidelines, etc. When choosing the default, you can be sure that you app will run reliably on all OS installations, with install/uninstall ready and working, no zillion dependancies, etc.
Besides, the fact that the is nothing to choose (which with libraries and APIs/guidelines is a *good* thing), makes sure that you don't miss out on 50% of the installed user base. For example, I use Gnome, but because of lack of a Gnome torrent client in my repository, I use kTorrent (or Azureus, same problem applies here, but it crashed on me). Because of this so hailed 'flexibility' I now have to install two *complete* desktop environments, just because the program I want to use happens to use 'the other one'.
Note that I do not want to bash or praise Linux or any other OSs, I am just saying that flexibility has a price, in the same way inflexibility has. There is no silver bullit to computing.
Linux is so flexible because each project has a different agenda and a different set of design criteria it is trying to satisfy.
It also makes Linux (the OS, not the kernel) inconsistent, more buggy, slow and overall hard to use. Unless you have a decent distro what a big software repository, it is hard to install/uninstall software that integrates nicely into your OS (and in this case I count the windowmaganager/desktop to the OS). Every project owner has its own ideas concerning usability (or better make that unusability), stability, speed, features, etc. Even with that repository, not everything can be used: what if it isn't in? More than once have I stumbled on de-facto standard software for some application and found me either clicking in a pre-1988 pure Xlib interface, or typing on a CLI and getting obscure messages. Comparing this to proprietary OSs makes you wonder why the open source community still doesn't 'get' it (I mean, examples enough).
and deletion is almost instantaneous... (emphasis mine)
Do you hear yourself talk? You have a machine with 1.5Gb RAM, and deletion (which changes 1 byte in the best case, and a few in the worst) is ALMOST instantaneous. One word: insane.
As far as I'm concerned, all OSs nowadays are bloated, slow and buggy. If you consider just Linux' CLI, then yes, you can be fast and stable, but when the GUI crap comes out, it seems to get worse and worse over time. Not just Windows gets slower with faster computers, so does Gnome (cannot speak for KDE), even should-be trivial stuff like file management.
Just one thing: have you ever try to read the XML ODF generates in a text editor? I have. I actually tried to alter something; after a minor change, the document didn't open anymore.
XML is nice. I like it. But don't say 'it is human-readable, so it is guaranteed to be read forever' (nice example is the XMI format, it took me a few months to dissect and generate simple updates to it). Whether a document format is human readable or not is a non-issue. Open formats can easily be binary (see PNG, and ZIP for that matter) and closed formats can be 'human readable' (see several XML examples). It is all about whether or not the specification is open. A reference implementation also helps a lot (see the trouble SVG has). XML is successful, because it ia simple, open and there are a lot of good implementations. Mind you that it is a meta-language and I can use it to create something utterly unreadable.
Slashdot Mirror
people who don't understand the difference between binary and decimal have no place in IT
What a bunch of arrogant nonsense. For 'normal' people, 1kB is 1000bytes. Heck, even for me (and I am sorry to say that I do have a place in IT), when I see a file size of 10000000 bytes, I say it is 10MB, and not 9.5. In fact I am wondering if anyone is doing that. The Kibi didn't introduce confusion, the mis-use of SI units did. We are now merely trying to fix it.
so for G*ds sake
Is God profanity nowadays, that we have to mask it from the filters?
The problem I see with OOo is that it is marketed and used as "hey, there is a free (as in beer) MS Office clone!" rather than "Hey, this is better than MS Office" but the problem is the second statement isn't true. Firefox won out over IE not by "hey, we have a clone of IE" but by being -better- than IE.
According to a january 2010 article [linuxjournal.com] in LinuxJournal, OpenOffice is better on the word processing application, tied on the spreadsheet and worse on the presentation app. All in all, when comparing the two, the difference get smaller and smaller, and the overall conclusion now, is that there is a tie.
For the record, we use OOo internally in our company (~20 employees).
But life doesn't work that way.
It does for smaller crimes. But, you give me a good answer to my question. For you, Microsoft will never be redeemed for their crimes, or at least not in our lifetime.
I hear you saying that you think MS is a reformed thief.
In that case, you heard wrong. I merely ask questions. It seems like Microsoft cannot do anything right, whatever they do. The fact remains that they did a lot of questionable things, have been convicted and created bad products. But, if they do make something useful or of good quality, it gets judged based on those previous products and actions. I think people should judge products on their merit or quality. Of course you would be suspicious if it came from a producer that has created only bad products before. But if you dismiss the product beforehand, the company will never have any chance to become better.
the thought of using bing makes me cringe
What happened to judging products on their merits? Has Microsoft really damaged you so much that whatever they do meets so much resistance that the sheer *thought* of using a product would make you cringe? And on a related note, what should Microsoft do to regain your respect?
On a social analogy, is a thief always a thief, even when he shows remorse and changed his ways?
I think it is simply not needed. Why would you put effort in encrypting a public website, or your e-mails to your grandmother to feed your cat while you're away.
Risk = damage x probability. Probability (sniffing email/web traffic) is extremely low on most data, as is damage. I think logins should be encrypted, but not (public) data.
we got a legislator (dutch) that wants a label on champagne bottles, because the popping cork may cause eye damage.
We have used drbd 0.7 for some mission critical server, but it gave more headaches than a warm (or even cold) standby. The main problem is keeping you nodes synchronised for the disks that are NOT in the drbd (e.g. /, /etc, /usr, etc). We put our software on drbd disk and the database on another. However, when adding services, it is easy to 'forget' to add the startup script in /etc/ha.d and the first failover results in not all services being started. Which leads to a support call.
I understand that we should perhaps change the setup to include a 'correct' way to provides updates, but just putting a raid-1 in a server, with database replication somewhere else just seems to be less of a hassle.
Stallman also says no to web browsing.
No he doesn't. As the linked post says, he doesn't browse the web for PERSONAL REASONS. That's a completely different thing than advocating against using software that is patent bait.
Should the entire open source community follow a guy that does not use the web for personal reasons? Should we take him seriously still?
Well, I live in one or the "drug tourist ridden" border towns. And there is a coffee shop just around the corner of my house. I have no problems at all with that. No nuisance.
I think people choose themselves to become criminals. If you have a few plants, that are legal, you know that having more will make you a criminal. You know when you are selling cannabis on a larger scale is illegal (if only because you are not paying taxes).
I do agree with you though on the European, or at least national scale, of really legalising the drug. There was a cannabis-summit not so long ago with all the mayors of the border towns. They all agreed the current system is far from ideal. Too bad we have a conservative-christian government right now that doesn't want to touch the subject.
BTW: do not judge a people based on the actions of a madman.
The golden ratio isn't really all that useful for writing paper.
Except that, when you have an long-side-leading A4 printer, it can also print A3, because the long side of A4 is the same as the short side of A3. It makes the printer a little more versatile.
Euhm, there are more languages in the world than English, many of them also use dates; I say "veertien maart tweeduizend negen". Which makes 14/03/2009. Besides, this way, the smallest (day) comes first, then the bigger (month), then the biggest (year). There is a reason that ISO dates are yyyy-mm-dd (big-to-small), so they sort correctly.
The funny thing is that the spokesman is called 'Krikke', which really resembles the Dutch verb 'krikken', which is slang for having sex.
I wrote my first CGI programs in C, using the cgi-c library. In fact, it is still online for download!
I know, this is not the same, but that's what I thought when I read the headline.
is find out how to program that. I'm a programmer and I know the problems that are involved in (massive) parallel programming. For a lot of problems, it is either impossible or very hard. See also my essay 'Why does software suck' (dutch) (babelfish translation).
Wasn't SVG (with Javascript) supposed to be the Flash killer? We use it a lot in SCADA systems, and it works great.
Just ported our system to Firefox' native SVG as Adobe's plugin reached its end-of-life.
And, of course, all this without tab-completion. That will be only in the DeLuxe version.
Okay, I take that back. Not complete desktop environments, but I still have to install two complete near-identical library sets (gnome lib vs kde lib), or even more if I decide to use some xfce programs.
My comment starts with 'unless you have a decent distro'. I do not say there are none, nor do I say that Linux sucks, or any other OS sucks. I am also talking about what if the software you want is *not* inside a repository (proprietary software?) it is hard or impossible to install it. And using a CLI and having to run strange scripts, etc. is considered 'hard' in this case. I want to download a file (or buy a CD), and run an installer. After that, the program should be in my menu and I should be able to use it.
You want examples? Try installing vmware on Ubuntu. I have to download a file (good), then run it in a console (not good) and only just now have they fixed a bug to correctly compile kernel modules (very bad). Another example is the default installation of Eclipse, which uses the gcj. I have to extra install the java sun engine to be able to use it (with gcj it is too memory hungry, slow and overall crashy).
My point is only that flexibility is not always a good thing. And by the way, no Linux doesn't suck more or less than any other modern OS (noted that software sucks, generally). I have been arguing for a long time that there is no technical reason to prefer any one over the other.
My point is, that, in practice, installing or getting software outside of the distro's repository is usually very hard or completely impossible, let alone getting decent integration (I found out yesterday there are 3 (!) different ways for copy-paste on my Ubuntu system, and they all use their own clipboard!). Proprietary OSs usually specify APIs, guidelines, etc. When choosing the default, you can be sure that you app will run reliably on all OS installations, with install/uninstall ready and working, no zillion dependancies, etc.
Besides, the fact that the is nothing to choose (which with libraries and APIs/guidelines is a *good* thing), makes sure that you don't miss out on 50% of the installed user base. For example, I use Gnome, but because of lack of a Gnome torrent client in my repository, I use kTorrent (or Azureus, same problem applies here, but it crashed on me). Because of this so hailed 'flexibility' I now have to install two *complete* desktop environments, just because the program I want to use happens to use 'the other one'.
Note that I do not want to bash or praise Linux or any other OSs, I am just saying that flexibility has a price, in the same way inflexibility has. There is no silver bullit to computing.
Linux is so flexible because each project has a different agenda and a different set of design criteria it is trying to satisfy.
It also makes Linux (the OS, not the kernel) inconsistent, more buggy, slow and overall hard to use. Unless you have a decent distro what a big software repository, it is hard to install/uninstall software that integrates nicely into your OS (and in this case I count the windowmaganager/desktop to the OS). Every project owner has its own ideas concerning usability (or better make that unusability), stability, speed, features, etc. Even with that repository, not everything can be used: what if it isn't in? More than once have I stumbled on de-facto standard software for some application and found me either clicking in a pre-1988 pure Xlib interface, or typing on a CLI and getting obscure messages. Comparing this to proprietary OSs makes you wonder why the open source community still doesn't 'get' it (I mean, examples enough).
and deletion is almost instantaneous... (emphasis mine)
Do you hear yourself talk? You have a machine with 1.5Gb RAM, and deletion (which changes 1 byte in the best case, and a few in the worst) is ALMOST instantaneous. One word: insane.
As far as I'm concerned, all OSs nowadays are bloated, slow and buggy. If you consider just Linux' CLI, then yes, you can be fast and stable, but when the GUI crap comes out, it seems to get worse and worse over time. Not just Windows gets slower with faster computers, so does Gnome (cannot speak for KDE), even should-be trivial stuff like file management.
Sorry for this shameful and illegible link, but read why does software suck.
Just one thing: have you ever try to read the XML ODF generates in a text editor? I have. I actually tried to alter something; after a minor change, the document didn't open anymore.
XML is nice. I like it. But don't say 'it is human-readable, so it is guaranteed to be read forever' (nice example is the XMI format, it took me a few months to dissect and generate simple updates to it). Whether a document format is human readable or not is a non-issue. Open formats can easily be binary (see PNG, and ZIP for that matter) and closed formats can be 'human readable' (see several XML examples). It is all about whether or not the specification is open. A reference implementation also helps a lot (see the trouble SVG has). XML is successful, because it ia simple, open and there are a lot of good implementations. Mind you that it is a meta-language and I can use it to create something utterly unreadable.
How is using a different file format helping me to read older formats? This comment is not insighful, it compares apples to oranges.
Maybe you could say that it is a reason to use OpenOffice, which by default still opens the older formats. Or a reason not to upgrade to Office 2003.