OK, so I was talking about the "Bourne again shell", which is what I assume people are talking about when they say "I'm using Bourne shell as my login shell". I couldn't imagine using sh as my login shell (except it's now symlinked to bash in RedHat), that's too painful.
Nevertheless, my point is that the MS command line does NOT have the features that I mentioned that ARE in bash, tcsh, ksh, zsh, etc. Hence, it's NOT the same old command line. If you choose to use sh (not bash), go ahead. But bash exists. So does tcsh. The choice in Windows command-lines is cmd.exe; whereas in Unix you're not stuck using sh, unless you inflict that upon yourself.
It doesn't make sense comparing the original sh to whatever cmd.exe XP ships with, compare cmd.exe to zsh or tcsh and then tell me it's the same functionality.
I can't think of anything I can do with a Bourne shell (admittedly a limited example) that I can't do with M$.
Which crack monkeys modded this up to +4?
cmd.exe doesn't hold a candle to a Unix shell: you cannot tab-complete (without an undocumented registry hack), there's no job control (fg/bg), aliases, stdout/stderr differentiation and redirection, start-up config file (~/.bashrc), and no history without doskey (unless that's been fixed recently), just to name a few. Get real.
I wonder how much you've used the M$ CLI.
I wonder how much you've used bash. So far you only seem to bash it (pun intended).
I give you this (stolen from a post on slashdot in some other thread. Adding this to ~/.phoenix/default/profile-name/chrome/userContent.css, or the equivalent in ~/.mozilla will block Flash and any questions about installing it:
/* * turn off requests to install Flash */ object,embed{display: none; !important}
Heck - every time I upgrade to a newer version it's a couple of cents out of MS's pockets for the bandwith - what other browser gives you that satisfaction?
That's the trouble with people these days. You think you're helping, but you're not. What you're saying to all the webmasters out there who are viewing their logs is that "WE USE IE!! WE USE IE!!" which makes everyone want to code for IE when it's accounting for more than X% of traffic, for some given X.
Moral: use what you like because you want to support it, not what you DON'T like because it'll "cost a few pennies of bandwidth" to the producer. After all, we all download Linux/*BSD/etc ISOs -- that's a hell of a bigger cost than JUST a browser upgrade!
The more logs start showing that Mozilla/Phoenix/Opera/etc are predominant browsers and no longer just IE, the more likely it is we'll get more standards-compliant websites!! Damn it. That's what I want to see.
Are you saying you would stay at your job out of loyalty, even if they were paying you $25,000 and another offered you $75,000?
The difference is that while you can barely live in some parts of the country on 25k, you can live just about anywhere on $45mil. And if that person doesn't want the job for $45mil, there are many people who'll take it. Some of them may even do the work better.
The point here is that management, which makes the critical business decisions should be THE ONE to take the paycuts -- after all, it was their business choice that got the company into the red in the first place. It's not fair to the ones actually DOING THE WORK to get paid less, they didn't have a say in the company direction anyhow.
Pre-installed Linux on PC
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Mandrake News
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· Score: 1
If you want to appeal to new users, you need to get them to see Linux. Pre-installed. None of that "download this ISO, burn it, and then reboot and..." nor "repartition, blah, blah, etc.". Computer. With Linux. Pre-installed. Be it Mandrake, or RedHat or what have you. But such that the user doesn't have to install it. So it's immediately there to be used. AND the whole system MUST be cheaper than a comparable WinXP system.
Why a big-name manufacturer doesn't go for it is obvious once they read the "thou shall distribute no OS other than that from MS" clause, but I should expect to start seeing pre-installed Linux distros on new computers, otherwise it's hard to get newbies to start using Linux.
Remember, most non-computer-literate users do NOT install their operating system. They do not upgrade their modem/network/graphics card nor do they apply regular patches to keep their software secure. How then do you expect them to take their working PC, repartition it and install a new and random OS? And there are so many! RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, they all seem different. And indeed, they have their differences.
I'm not advocating UnitedLinux. I'm advocating distributing Linux pre-installed on PCs and laptops. So a new user knows that stuff is compatible. And doesn't have to worry about hunting down drivers. Heck, I'd be willing to buy a laptop if I don't have to pay the WinXP tax on it.
I remove ads very simply: I tell Phoenix not to display any of them by right clicking and saying "Block all images from this server".
After two or three clicks, nothing more you will see. Sure, no more subject/category images either, but i don't care, there are no more bright-blue.NET ads.
The other day, I wrote a program that accidently got into a loop and started opening windows like mad. It made the X environment completely unusable and prevented me from using a keyboard/mouse.
You should've read some of the guides on how to develop GUI on X. One of the tricks is to use either a second copy of X running on a different display (I mean:1, not another physical monitor), or use Xnest to run a "virtual" X display, and display things there. When your app grabs the mouse/keyboard, and doesn't return, it's easier to kill it. Been there, done that.:)
...but for certain X tasks, from the point of view of a workstation end user, Linux is significantly more fragile than Windows.
Your tone seems to imply that if you'd written an infinite loop that popped up windows in Win**, you wouldn't be up the creek. I wouldn't bet the farm on that, but it'd be interesting to know how Windows would handle that.
Here's what I did: stop using and advocating MS products, given their inhibitive prices, marketing and business tactics, and the inevitability of rent-only software that you can never pay off and finally own which is worse than leasing a car.
I'd rather be using open software and open formats anyday; no lock-in required and I know I have a whole lotta money left in my pocket to pay for other things.
The problem with this reasoning is the assumption that a company (even the likes of Microsoft) will fix bugs and make changes to respond to customer demand. This is not really true. In fact, security updates are not (always) timely, and the response to some problems is "buy the next version" where the next version may have a changed API that you now have to support if you migrate.
Further, you cannot as easily get a change in some application you use, even if it's reasonable as you do in open-source -- if you really want it, put out a contract on collab.net or related site, if someone picks it up, you have a guaranteed implementation, even if no one else cares for it. If that doesn't work, hire a contractor yourself. You have no such option with ANY proprietary software.
I will give a specific example: I know for a fact that a certain company's high-performance commercial compiler is buggy. The next version is supposed to fix the problems, but isn't yet available. Someone who has access to it (under NDA) says "this works with version X but you can't have it, 'cuz I'm under NDA". Meanwhile, you need it NOW, because there are deadlines. But you can't. And you can't get it officially even under NDA because the company won't give it to you. What do you do? You're screwed. Why do you need this specific compiler? Think high-performance programs with compiler-specific annotations.
This is not a guarantee that open-source would never have this problem, but there you have full disclosure, and as soon as it's available, it's available. To all. The above is really pissing me off, because that is a real problem, and only the company's fault for (a) releasing a buggy compiler, and (b) disallowing access to the good one to a select group for a while during which those stuck using the previous one who discover bugs in certain areas are up the creek.
The burden of having to basically start an in-house software engineering group to maintain and modify an abandoned open-source program is pretty unreasonable for most companies.
Oh? And what are you going to do when the company you rely on for your closed proprietary software goes out of business, and the software sits in limbo with NO support, NO company picking up support and development, and meanwhile you're dependent on it, but can't fix it and NO ONE can answer your tech questions? Who are you going to cry to? The shareholders?
What options do you have? None. Go buy another package.
And if you have questions about raising your Microsoft Puppy, there's an 800 number you can call.
Yeah, where you'll get to wait on hold for 25 hours only to be told that your problem is unique and no one's ever heard of it, and they'll charge you an arm and a leg per incident. Yours, not your puppy's.
Script? You don't need no steenkin' script!...
on
Sony DRU-500A Review
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· Score: 1
From the blurb:
I probably should write a script or something before I start filming. Or not.
Nah, just play it by the ear, just like with editing news article submissions.
Think of it as if your teddy bear came to life. Fully realistic fur, walks like a bear and all, all the physics of the world are in order... except it's a live, talking bear. Possibly cartoony-looking to be funny to the kids.
Entertaining for the kids? Certainly. Good CG and entertaining for the rest of us? Possibly. So what's wrong again?
Slashdot Mirror
But I am guessing you want it on by default from RedHat :)
OK, so I was talking about the "Bourne again shell", which is what I assume people are talking about when they say "I'm using Bourne shell as my login shell". I couldn't imagine using sh as my login shell (except it's now symlinked to bash in RedHat), that's too painful.
Nevertheless, my point is that the MS command line does NOT have the features that I mentioned that ARE in bash, tcsh, ksh, zsh, etc. Hence, it's NOT the same old command line. If you choose to use sh (not bash), go ahead. But bash exists. So does tcsh. The choice in Windows command-lines is cmd.exe; whereas in Unix you're not stuck using sh, unless you inflict that upon yourself.
It doesn't make sense comparing the original sh to whatever cmd.exe XP ships with, compare cmd.exe to zsh or tcsh and then tell me it's the same functionality.
Which crack monkeys modded this up to +4?
cmd.exe doesn't hold a candle to a Unix shell: you cannot tab-complete (without an undocumented registry hack), there's no job control (fg/bg), aliases, stdout/stderr differentiation and redirection, start-up config file (~/.bashrc), and no history without doskey (unless that's been fixed recently), just to name a few. Get real.
I wonder how much you've used bash. So far you only seem to bash it (pun intended).
What's up with slashdot adding random spaces?
That's the trouble with people these days. You think you're helping, but you're not. What you're saying to all the webmasters out there who are viewing their logs is that "WE USE IE!! WE USE IE!!" which makes everyone want to code for IE when it's accounting for more than X% of traffic, for some given X.
Moral: use what you like because you want to support it, not what you DON'T like because it'll "cost a few pennies of bandwidth" to the producer. After all, we all download Linux/*BSD/etc ISOs -- that's a hell of a bigger cost than JUST a browser upgrade!
The more logs start showing that Mozilla/Phoenix/Opera/etc are predominant browsers and no longer just IE, the more likely it is we'll get more standards-compliant websites!! Damn it. That's what I want to see.
Of course not. Why should they? It is AOL that suffered, naturally. Besides, their bottom line needs a little help.
The difference is that while you can barely live in some parts of the country on 25k, you can live just about anywhere on $45mil. And if that person doesn't want the job for $45mil, there are many people who'll take it. Some of them may even do the work better.
The point here is that management, which makes the critical business decisions should be THE ONE to take the paycuts -- after all, it was their business choice that got the company into the red in the first place. It's not fair to the ones actually DOING THE WORK to get paid less, they didn't have a say in the company direction anyhow.
If you want to appeal to new users, you need to get them to see Linux. Pre-installed. None of that "download this ISO, burn it, and then reboot and ..." nor "repartition, blah, blah, etc.". Computer. With Linux. Pre-installed. Be it Mandrake, or RedHat or what have you. But such that the user doesn't have to install it. So it's immediately there to be used. AND the whole system MUST be cheaper than a comparable WinXP system.
Why a big-name manufacturer doesn't go for it is obvious once they read the "thou shall distribute no OS other than that from MS" clause, but I should expect to start seeing pre-installed Linux distros on new computers, otherwise it's hard to get newbies to start using Linux.
Remember, most non-computer-literate users do NOT install their operating system. They do not upgrade their modem/network/graphics card nor do they apply regular patches to keep their software secure. How then do you expect them to take their working PC, repartition it and install a new and random OS? And there are so many! RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, they all seem different. And indeed, they have their differences.
I'm not advocating UnitedLinux. I'm advocating distributing Linux pre-installed on PCs and laptops. So a new user knows that stuff is compatible. And doesn't have to worry about hunting down drivers. Heck, I'd be willing to buy a laptop if I don't have to pay the WinXP tax on it.
Thanks for posting this, it makes the day brighter despite the deadlines.
.. after all, it has Al Gore's approval.
After two or three clicks, nothing more you will see. Sure, no more subject/category images either, but i don't care, there are no more bright-blue .NET ads.
And that's worth it.Can someone please explain to me what the 'IN SOVIET RUSSIA' jokes are all about? Which slashdot story did I miss?
Your tone seems to imply that if you'd written an infinite loop that popped up windows in Win**, you wouldn't be up the creek. I wouldn't bet the farm on that, but it'd be interesting to know how Windows would handle that.
They added the ability to post "comments" under the article. I can see a great exodus from Slashdot to discuss the story there.
I'd rather be using open software and open formats anyday; no lock-in required and I know I have a whole lotta money left in my pocket to pay for other things.
Further, you cannot as easily get a change in some application you use, even if it's reasonable as you do in open-source -- if you really want it, put out a contract on collab.net or related site, if someone picks it up, you have a guaranteed implementation, even if no one else cares for it. If that doesn't work, hire a contractor yourself. You have no such option with ANY proprietary software.
I will give a specific example: I know for a fact that a certain company's high-performance commercial compiler is buggy. The next version is supposed to fix the problems, but isn't yet available. Someone who has access to it (under NDA) says "this works with version X but you can't have it, 'cuz I'm under NDA". Meanwhile, you need it NOW, because there are deadlines. But you can't. And you can't get it officially even under NDA because the company won't give it to you. What do you do? You're screwed. Why do you need this specific compiler? Think high-performance programs with compiler-specific annotations.
This is not a guarantee that open-source would never have this problem, but there you have full disclosure, and as soon as it's available, it's available. To all. The above is really pissing me off, because that is a real problem, and only the company's fault for (a) releasing a buggy compiler, and (b) disallowing access to the good one to a select group for a while during which those stuck using the previous one who discover bugs in certain areas are up the creek.
What options do you have? None. Go buy another package.
Well put. :)
Yeah, where you'll get to wait on hold for 25 hours only to be told that your problem is unique and no one's ever heard of it, and they'll charge you an arm and a leg per incident. Yours, not your puppy's.
Nah, just play it by the ear, just like with editing news article submissions.
This is not called capitalism. It's called corruption.
Entertaining for the kids? Certainly. Good CG and entertaining for the rest of us? Possibly. So what's wrong again?