Xscreensaver was running when they came in to install my cable modem. The guy moved the mouse and was apparently struck dumb by the sight of a maximized xterm. The kid he was training knew what it was and told him to just sign off on it.:)
With that said, the kernel source is getting gigantic, and it would be nice if they released source bundles geared towards those who might be compiling in more desktop-oriented features and those who might be compiling for a server.
What if you just downloaded the config scripts, and thereby obtained a list of source files to be automatically downloaded and compiled?
'Course, a server hosting the kernel would have to handle a zillion hits a second. But maybe that's preferable to than serving up terabytes of stuff that doesn't need to be sent.
I was going to point this out but you beat me to it.
Every military-owned computer I've ever seen has a "Sensitive Unclassified" sticker on it. Lots of the tech manuals I used to use are "Sensitive Unclassified". Meaning the stuff in them is no huge secret, maybe even in use commercially somewhere, or maybe you could read about the theories behind it in some engineering textbook. All "Sensitive Unclassified" means is that we're not gonna advertise how we use it 'cause it might give somebody some ideas.
What's with the Linux 3-button mouse drivers, anyway? You always have to roll the wheel to get it to detect the mouse. Even then it takes a few seconds -- mine always lurches to the top-right corner of the screen before it starts working right. Got the same thing when I installed RH7 and MDK8.
I thought after all the problems they had with 8.2, they'd clean up their act. Their excuse on the Cooker mailing list for the quality of 8.2 final was "publisher deadlines". Maybe they need to get another publisher who understands that if it ain't ready, it ain't ready?
I haven't participated in Cooker development since the 8.2 betas. I got fed up with trying to contribute because they had no bug tracking system. All communication between developers and testers was on the Cooker mailing list, and it was sloppy and clumsy at best. Fixes were frequently overlooked and contributors got upset because they thought they were being ignored. During beta 2 I pointed out that the curl-config script was missing from the libcurl-devel RPM; during the RC I mentioned it again, and still it went to press without it. So I had to build my own libcurl to build an app against it. I had all kinds of problems just installing 8.2 final on my system; KPresenter always segfaulted on my laptop and wouldn't even start on my desktop; the Xenophilia RPM was entirely missing from the distro because they "forgot" to commit it; and countless other problems. So I went back to 8.1.
Lots of people on the Cooker list were calling for Bugzilla, but the developers insisted that the mailing list works just fine. Can anyone tell us if they've come to their senses? If not, the heck with 'em.
Of course, a change this massive would cause the mental collapse of thousands of officials still unfamiliar with technology and unwilling to learn.
It's not so much a failure of the users to learn the technology. The military mind doesn't grasp how technology can fundamentally change how people work. They use their computers as if they were typewriters.
Case in point: When I was in the Marines, we used a system called NALCOMIS (a.k.a. NALCOMATOSE) to track maintenance on aircraft. The server ran on some kind of UNIX and the clients ran on PCs. It essentially duplicated, box for box, the paper forms it replaced. But with NALCOMIS, you also had to remember a bunch of arbitrary numeric command codes to do anything with the program. To put something "in work" was N259. To document your hours was N260 or N261, I forget. So basically it didn't add anything to the old way of doing it except another layer complexity.
Theoretically it was easier to get reports from the database, but that was a joke for a couple reasons. First of all, there was absolutely NO internal consistency checking of inputs. I could have a piece of gear in work from 1300 to 1600 and then tell it that I worked on it for ten hours. And second, all they did with the reports was print them out and then make us verify them BY HAND. That's right, two lists of data in a computer, and they print them out and diff them by hand. Every morning.
And they wonder why technically adept people are leaving the military in droves.
Maybe since 1976, but there's more to the story. The 1924 Model-T cost $290; that's only $2901.86 in 2001 dollars. What's up with that?
Sure, cars are more complex now. But like you said, manufacturing processes are much more efficient. Almost completely automated, in fact. I wonder how the adjusted cost of raw materials for a Model-T compares to the cost of materials for, say, a Focus wagon.
/me thinks somebody's laughing all the way to the bank...
That pretty much sums it up. You build a few essential tools, linked statically so they can run on their own. Then you chroot into where the tools are and build glibc. Then you build everything again inside chroot, dynamically linked against your shiny new glibc. Set up init scripts and a kernel and you can boot the thing.
For mass produced, K-Mart style, get 'em in and out type photography, digital as a medium kills film.
Word. Digital has already all but killed Polaroid. They sell the cameras at a loss and the film costs over $1 a shot. But certain kinds of Polaroid film will still be around (for a while) because pros still use it for testing lighting setups.
I can see consumer 35mm film going the same way. The format will linger a long time because people like it and have large investments in it, but it will eventually get scarce and expensive.
(I am an amateur 35mm photographer and I pay my rent selling photographic equipment.)
Re:Recycle Bins - don't you just hate them?
on
Undelete In Linux
·
· Score: 1
If we want joe-user to use linux, we need silly stuff like this.
And if we want silly stuff like this in Linux, we need to standardize the API so it works consistently despite the wonderful flexibility of the system.
Standardization isn't always in the spirit of Open Source, but there is a time and place for everything. I am convinced that if we ever want Linux to go truly mainstream, there needs to be a "Standard Linux" maintained by a single coherent organization. The rest of the Linux world can continue in chaos because that's where most of the innovation comes from, but somebody needs to pull out the best of everything, strip out the vestigial crap, and standardize what's left. (Pet peeves of mine: WTF is/opt for? And why isn't there a nice clean ~/etc instead of a bunch of dot-directories cluttering up my $HOME?)
As much as some people want to believe that this coherence is going to be spontaneously born of chaos, I say it's going to take some big, evil company to get the job done. Somebody with lots of money is going to have to dedicate a bunch of programmers to audit every line of code that goes into a distro and write all those "killer apps" that Linux is supposedly missing.
Now would be a good time for IBM or Sun or somebody to step up to the plate...
Not implies, means. They use this excuse all the time to conduct unlawful search and seizure.
I don't know about you, but I expect some privacy, and that's not the least bit unreasonable.
Someone PLEASE explain this. Show me the math.
on
Going Up?
·
· Score: 1
If a mass is hoisted into orbit on a cable, doesn't it still need to be accelerated horizontally?
Likewise, if the mass is hoisted by wheels running against the cable, won't the cable will be pulled down just as much as the mass is pulled up? How much mass can they hoist before the cable falls?
And finally... ba da bum...
Everyone knows that if you are spinning and you extend mass away from yourself, your rate of spin slows. If the above two assumptions are false, then doesn't this one have to apply? How much mass can they hoist before the earth's rotation is measurably slowed? (I know, the earth is frickin' huge... I'm talking really tiny measurable changes here.)
BULLSHIT. Consumers hardly have any choice anymore. Honesty doesn't pay, and the minute you find someone honest to deal with they get bought out by the big guys.
I stopped paying my phone bill two months ago, and BellSouth isn't seeing a penny of it, ever. How's that for a choice?
It's not the regulations that are to blame. There's absolutely no reason why a mass-produced device like an airbag, which is essentially a 12-gauge blank wired to a model rocket igniter and sewn into a nylon bag, should cost $1000.
Airbag technology has been around for years. The R&D's paid for. And don't try to say it's to pay for new R&D like this fuel cell thing. Where are the fruits? Automotive technology hasn't changed significantly for decades. When I'm driving a fuel cell car, I'll buy that argument.
I see ads everywhere and don't pay any attention to them. If they're original I might remember the ads themselves, but seldom what they're for, unless it's something I already knew I wanted. Mostly I just choose to ignore them. I don't even own a television, I don't allow popups in my browser, my eyes skip over banner ads as if they weren't there.
The conceptual "advertising space" is saturated; making ads more intrusive isn't going to improve the situation for the advertisers.
Unfortunately, due to their toothless fraud protection policies, it looks like they're just gonna have to suck it up and take the loss.
Yeah, what's up with that? They've made it extremely difficult to even report fraud in the first place, and they don't do anything about it when you do. They probably don't want to kick off too many high-dollar ripoff artists 'cause it'll hurt their numbers, their stock value.
I think they're ripe for a class-action lawsuit...
If the manufacturer of your surge protector or UPS promises to replace equipment that is damaged by a power spike, better check the fine print. If your equipment isn't a branded model with a price in the manufacturer's blue book, you're up shit creek.
Slashdot Mirror
Xscreensaver was running when they came in to install my cable modem. The guy moved the mouse and was apparently struck dumb by the sight of a maximized xterm. The kid he was training knew what it was and told him to just sign off on it. :)
What if you just downloaded the config scripts, and thereby obtained a list of source files to be automatically downloaded and compiled?
'Course, a server hosting the kernel would have to handle a zillion hits a second. But maybe that's preferable to than serving up terabytes of stuff that doesn't need to be sent.
Works like a champ. And all you gotta do to get an account is join the Navy!
I was going to point this out but you beat me to it. Every military-owned computer I've ever seen has a "Sensitive Unclassified" sticker on it. Lots of the tech manuals I used to use are "Sensitive Unclassified". Meaning the stuff in them is no huge secret, maybe even in use commercially somewhere, or maybe you could read about the theories behind it in some engineering textbook. All "Sensitive Unclassified" means is that we're not gonna advertise how we use it 'cause it might give somebody some ideas.
What's with the Linux 3-button mouse drivers, anyway? You always have to roll the wheel to get it to detect the mouse. Even then it takes a few seconds -- mine always lurches to the top-right corner of the screen before it starts working right. Got the same thing when I installed RH7 and MDK8.
I thought after all the problems they had with 8.2, they'd clean up their act. Their excuse on the Cooker mailing list for the quality of 8.2 final was "publisher deadlines". Maybe they need to get another publisher who understands that if it ain't ready, it ain't ready?
I haven't participated in Cooker development since the 8.2 betas. I got fed up with trying to contribute because they had no bug tracking system. All communication between developers and testers was on the Cooker mailing list, and it was sloppy and clumsy at best. Fixes were frequently overlooked and contributors got upset because they thought they were being ignored. During beta 2 I pointed out that the curl-config script was missing from the libcurl-devel RPM; during the RC I mentioned it again, and still it went to press without it. So I had to build my own libcurl to build an app against it. I had all kinds of problems just installing 8.2 final on my system; KPresenter always segfaulted on my laptop and wouldn't even start on my desktop; the Xenophilia RPM was entirely missing from the distro because they "forgot" to commit it; and countless other problems. So I went back to 8.1.
Lots of people on the Cooker list were calling for Bugzilla, but the developers insisted that the mailing list works just fine. Can anyone tell us if they've come to their senses? If not, the heck with 'em.
It's not so much a failure of the users to learn the technology. The military mind doesn't grasp how technology can fundamentally change how people work. They use their computers as if they were typewriters.
Case in point: When I was in the Marines, we used a system called NALCOMIS (a.k.a. NALCOMATOSE) to track maintenance on aircraft. The server ran on some kind of UNIX and the clients ran on PCs. It essentially duplicated, box for box, the paper forms it replaced. But with NALCOMIS, you also had to remember a bunch of arbitrary numeric command codes to do anything with the program. To put something "in work" was N259. To document your hours was N260 or N261, I forget. So basically it didn't add anything to the old way of doing it except another layer complexity.
Theoretically it was easier to get reports from the database, but that was a joke for a couple reasons. First of all, there was absolutely NO internal consistency checking of inputs. I could have a piece of gear in work from 1300 to 1600 and then tell it that I worked on it for ten hours. And second, all they did with the reports was print them out and then make us verify them BY HAND. That's right, two lists of data in a computer, and they print them out and diff them by hand. Every morning.
And they wonder why technically adept people are leaving the military in droves.
Props to the A.C. for being the first person I've seen use the word poring correctly on Slashdot.
So tell me, Anonymous Troll, have you actually tried any of these games with the latest WineX?
The day DAoC works is the day my Windows partition gets fragged. And there will be much rejoicing.
Sure, cars are more complex now. But like you said, manufacturing processes are much more efficient. Almost completely automated, in fact. I wonder how the adjusted cost of raw materials for a Model-T compares to the cost of materials for, say, a Focus wagon.
/me thinks somebody's laughing all the way to the bank...
That pretty much sums it up. You build a few essential tools, linked statically so they can run on their own. Then you chroot into
where the tools are and build glibc. Then you build everything again inside chroot, dynamically linked against your shiny new glibc. Set up init scripts and a kernel and you can boot the thing.
I always wondered if it's possible to receive signals from a universal remote using a IRDA device. Then you could control your whole system.
Does XMMS have a control API like WinAmp? You know, where games things can control it?
Word. Digital has already all but killed Polaroid. They sell the cameras at a loss and the film costs over $1 a shot. But certain kinds of Polaroid film will still be around (for a while) because pros still use it for testing lighting setups.
I can see consumer 35mm film going the same way. The format will linger a long time because people like it and have large investments in it, but it will eventually get scarce and expensive.
(I am an amateur 35mm photographer and I pay my rent selling photographic equipment.)
And if we want silly stuff like this in Linux, we need to standardize the API so it works consistently despite the wonderful flexibility of the system.
Standardization isn't always in the spirit of Open Source, but there is a time and place for everything. I am convinced that if we ever want Linux to go truly mainstream, there needs to be a "Standard Linux" maintained by a single coherent organization. The rest of the Linux world can continue in chaos because that's where most of the innovation comes from, but somebody needs to pull out the best of everything, strip out the vestigial crap, and standardize what's left. (Pet peeves of mine: WTF is /opt for? And why isn't there a nice clean ~/etc instead of a bunch of dot-directories cluttering up my $HOME?)
As much as some people want to believe that this coherence is going to be spontaneously born of chaos, I say it's going to take some big, evil company to get the job done. Somebody with lots of money is going to have to dedicate a bunch of programmers to audit every line of code that goes into a distro and write all those "killer apps" that Linux is supposedly missing.
Now would be a good time for IBM or Sun or somebody to step up to the plate...
2.6
3.0
42
CBN/Linux
Of course this means they'll be illegal to import.
I don't know about you, but I expect some privacy, and that's not the least bit unreasonable.
Likewise, if the mass is hoisted by wheels running against the cable, won't the cable will be pulled down just as much as the mass is pulled up? How much mass can they hoist before the cable falls?
And finally... ba da bum...
Everyone knows that if you are spinning and you extend mass away from yourself, your rate of spin slows. If the above two assumptions are false, then doesn't this one have to apply? How much mass can they hoist before the earth's rotation is measurably slowed? (I know, the earth is frickin' huge... I'm talking really tiny measurable changes here.)
Victory WAPs
BULLSHIT. Consumers hardly have any choice anymore. Honesty doesn't pay, and the minute you find someone honest to deal with they get bought out by the big guys.
I stopped paying my phone bill two months ago, and BellSouth isn't seeing a penny of it, ever. How's that for a choice?
Airbag technology has been around for years. The R&D's paid for. And don't try to say it's to pay for new R&D like this fuel cell thing. Where are the fruits? Automotive technology hasn't changed significantly for decades. When I'm driving a fuel cell car, I'll buy that argument.
Ain't nothin' but corporate greed.
The conceptual "advertising space" is saturated; making ads more intrusive isn't going to improve the situation for the advertisers.
On my side of the tracks, the issue is the ridiculous pricetag. I can barely afford to keep my twelve-year-old car running, and it's paid for!
The 1924 Model-T touring car cost $290. That's $2901.86 in 2001 dollars. What the hell happened?
Yeah, what's up with that? They've made it extremely difficult to even report fraud in the first place, and they don't do anything about it when you do. They probably don't want to kick off too many high-dollar ripoff artists 'cause it'll hurt their numbers, their stock value.
I think they're ripe for a class-action lawsuit...
If the manufacturer of your surge protector or UPS promises to replace equipment that is damaged by a power spike, better check the fine print. If your equipment isn't a branded model with a price in the manufacturer's blue book, you're up shit creek.