Re:Most needed feature for newbies......
on
PHP 4.3.0 Released
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· Score: 5, Informative
I can't believe you're saying this.
The PHP docs are brilliant.
You just type in the function name, and there are enough examples to get you running until you actually start understanding the language.
I learnt PHP purely from www.uk.php.net, and I have always found the Java and Perl docs to have too much stuff in them.
The PHP docs are like this:
mysql_connect ([hostname],[username],[password])
Returns true if successful.
What more do you need to know? What goes into a function, what comes out.
I'm genuinely not trolling here, I'm just surprised that anyone could moan about the PHP docs.
Linux doesn't need rabid people. Be an advocate, not a zealot. There's no need to slate the alternatives - Linux is better, and can stand up based on its merits, and the evidence. Given the right information, a bootable CD, half a chance, and a helpful person in case things go awry, most people will give Linux a try.
Simply be enthusiastic about Linux. Show people it. When you discover some "cool shit" that you can do, show people. Don't bash Microsoft. People already curse Windows, but they carry on because they don't think Linux is ready. Someone I knew didn't know that all their hardware would work straight off a RH8 install. "But with Windows, I need loads of additional drivers" he said.
Don't laugh when their machine bluescreens - try and help them work out why. Use Linux on your desktop, even if it's slightly more hassle. Make sure that when you've installed a lovely theme, or window manager, you enthuse about it, and get people to see it.
Make sure people know you can play music under Linux. Another common misconception is that it does't have sound support.95% of users simply check email, browse the web, and play games.
Most people that use Windows know it's annoying, and shit, but they don't think there is an alternative.
Just don't bleat on about how crap it is - instead, enthuse about how good Linux is. Show them that you can open PPT files in Open Office fine. Show them that you can connect to Windows terminal servers using RDesktop. Show them a diskless workstation in action.
Motto? Enthuse about Linux. Other people get curious, and try it out.
P.S If I don't get some good mod points for this heartfelt outpouring, I'll feel very hard done by!
Lie-nucks is definately the American-ised way of saying it. In Britain, the correct way to say it is with a "flat" i, as in lihnuks. Which incidentally is closed to the way Linus says it Obviously, he has a Swedish accent, so he says it with the longer ee sound, but converting that into UK English, it would go from leenuks, to lihnuks. Lienuks is due to the Americans changing the word - there are some examples of this in other words, but I can't remember them.
Current bandwidth utilization 72.69 Mbit/s @ 20:50 UK time. I'll check back in a bit and see how it is doing:)
Also, ftp.pk.kernel.org only seems to be good for the RedHat 8.0 isos. Maybe I'm confused. I'll go and lie down.
Don't forget kernel.org
on
New Red Hat Beta
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· Score: 3, Informative
Kernel.org mirrors Debian and Redhat. Or didn't you know? Plus they've moved from 100 to 250Mb/sec
The NTFS thing is such a large thing to miss out - maybe they do it for licencing reasons, but if it's just out of bloody mindedness, well, they are shooting themselves in the foot.
Lots more people are asking me (The 'Linux guy' ) to help them install Linux so they can try it out. And I curse Redhat for not including NTFS support. Sure, you can build your own kernel - but these are people that have never used Linux before. I know, I can do it myself, and build RPMs for them, but I roll my own as I use 3rd party patches.
And with a dual-boot machine, you have to remove the necessity for them to reboot back into Windows, for once they do that, they remember how simple everything is (to them) and it's hard to drag them back to Linux land.
The menu systems do suck, I must admit.
Preferences, Server settings, System tools, System settings, and Control Panel. Anyone care to guess where a gui change password tool would be?
All you need is:
Prefs, System tools, games, media, office.
And RedHat! For gods sake put a link to the konsole on the "Quick launch" thing. Start, System tools, Terminal is not at all useful.
Has any one else noticed that when you do a man in KDE in RH 8, you get little boxes instead of dashes?
And people, if you haven't used RedHat recently, don't slag it off. RPM isn't that bad either.
Yeah, and even running a VPN can be stopped easily.
Simply block ISAKMP (udp/500) and protocols 50, and 51.
However you play, they can fuck you.
Anyone written a steganographic tunnelling tool? Now that would be good. All that they'd see would be a lot of HTTP requests. Which would contain hidden, encrypted data. Come on you Open Source coder Gurus. That's quite a neat little idea, now I do say so myself.
Re:In the US you are taxed for phone text messages
on
Taxing Text Messages?
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· Score: 2
What's neat about it is you are charged, and there is no guarentee of delivery.
Kind of like sending a letter in the post.
The best thing about AOL when you're a newbie is the fact it uses it's own TCP/IP stack.
The worst thing about AOL when you're no longer a newbie is that it uses it's own TCP/IP stack.
It used to, anyway. If my memory serves me right.
And girls in those days didn't say "I don't talk to people I don't know" when you IM'd them;)
Erm - you use Slashdot to get all your info about holes/bugs etc?
I simply use wget to mirror the updates dir from my local RedHat mirror each night, and log the results. I grep for "saved" in the log file, and if there's anything there apart from "index.html", the script runs RPM -K *.rpm to validate the checksums, and it emails me, and says that there is a new batch of RPMs to install.
I export the updates dir over NFS, and I can mount them on all the other boxes, and update those too.
What makes deb the greatest of the three? There's no real difference between debs and RPMS, imho.
Yeah, I don't see what's so great about DEBs either.
Have they got GPG signing on their packages yet? (And this isn't a troll - mod me down if you think I am, but not just cos you disagree.)
This is the opportunity for Linux to show that it is, indeed, useful for everyday users... or not.
Face it - this is going to be Linux's baptism by fire.
And that's what scares me. People are going to judge Linux by Lindows. I've never used it. I hope it's good and polished. But I'd feel rather more happy with the fate of Linux resting on say, RedHat.
Speak very, very kindly to the network guys at your place of work. No - very very kindly.
Generally they'll have more bandwidth that they need. And if they've got a Packeteer or a FlowFusion, they can let you have the remainder of the bandwidth that they aren't using. The way I see it, is that any bits on an E1 that aren't being used is money being wasted. Obviously, it goes without saying that spam, warez, and pr0n is a no-no.
But if they're cool, they may well let you sneak in a few boxes.
Who knows.
But even if we assume it is 1/4 of operating systems sold, imagine what the percentage would be if they included all the people that download an ISO, and install it on multiple machines...
I was glad to read when Mt Uthas on the BBC article said: "There is a general perception that Linux is nerdy and requires a high degree of skill but we have designed an easy-to-use interface,"
I think Linux is great anyway, but I'm glad that people are realising that most people in a business use 1-3 applications 95% of the time.
Make sure those are nice, easy to use, and look pretty much like the ones you've replaced, and you're laughing.
I thought Trustix was a strange choice though - why would someone choose it over the more widely accepted distros, such as RedHat, Debian, SuSE etc?
Still, good for them that they chose something different - even if they probably did it soley due to the fact that they are a charity, and money spent on Microsoft/Sun/any other commercial OS is money they can't spend elsewhere helping suicidal people.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe you're saying this.
The PHP docs are brilliant.
You just type in the function name, and there are enough examples to get you running until you actually start understanding the language.
I learnt PHP purely from www.uk.php.net, and I have always found the Java and Perl docs to have too much stuff in them.
The PHP docs are like this:
mysql_connect ([hostname],[username],[password]) Returns true if successful.
What more do you need to know? What goes into a function, what comes out.
I'm genuinely not trolling here, I'm just surprised that anyone could moan about the PHP docs.
You sir, are right.
Linux doesn't need rabid people. Be an advocate, not a zealot. There's no need to slate the alternatives - Linux is better, and can stand up based on its merits, and the evidence. Given the right information, a bootable CD, half a chance, and a helpful person in case things go awry, most people will give Linux a try.
Simply be enthusiastic about Linux. Show people it. When you discover some "cool shit" that you can do, show people. Don't bash Microsoft. People already curse Windows, but they carry on because they don't think Linux is ready. Someone I knew didn't know that all their hardware would work straight off a RH8 install. "But with Windows, I need loads of additional drivers" he said.
Don't laugh when their machine bluescreens - try and help them work out why. Use Linux on your desktop, even if it's slightly more hassle. Make sure that when you've installed a lovely theme, or window manager, you enthuse about it, and get people to see it.
Make sure people know you can play music under Linux. Another common misconception is that it does't have sound support.95% of users simply check email, browse the web, and play games.
Most people that use Windows know it's annoying, and shit, but they don't think there is an alternative.
Just don't bleat on about how crap it is - instead, enthuse about how good Linux is. Show them that you can open PPT files in Open Office fine. Show them that you can connect to Windows terminal servers using RDesktop. Show them a diskless workstation in action.
Motto? Enthuse about Linux. Other people get curious, and try it out.
P.S If I don't get some good mod points for this heartfelt outpouring, I'll feel very hard done by!
Find out what the typical consumer of your age, income and education does and do it.
Isn't that also called hiding, or giving in?
All we have to do is hope that all the government departments carry on like they currently do, not talking to each other or sharing information :)
Lie-nucks is definately the American-ised way of saying it. In Britain, the correct way to say it is with a "flat" i, as in lihnuks.
Which incidentally is closed to the way Linus says it
Obviously, he has a Swedish accent, so he says it with the longer ee sound, but converting that into UK English, it would go from leenuks, to lihnuks. Lienuks is due to the Americans changing the word - there are some examples of this in other words, but I can't remember them.
Current bandwidth utilization 105.17 Mbit/s @ 21:14 UK time. I control the internet! People ph33r me :) I'm so lame. I mean l33t.
I can't even read the list.
All I get is a huge grey block in the middle of a black screen.
I have already said I worship in the Church of Linux.
This is going to make those "it's not a religious" arguments a lot harder!
Current bandwidth utilization 72.69 Mbit/s @ 20:50 UK time. I'll check back in a bit and see how it is doing :)
Also, ftp.pk.kernel.org only seems to be good for the RedHat 8.0 isos. Maybe I'm confused. I'll go and lie down.
Kernel.org mirrors Debian and Redhat. Or didn't you know? Plus they've moved from 100 to 250Mb/sec
a /phoebe/
.pk and .ph are fast for me in the UK, believe it or not.
Grab em while they're hot.
http://mirrors.kernel.org/redhat/redhat/linux/bet
Don't forget to use your local mirror from kernel.org if the main one gets slow. I find
This is not whoring. It's showing people an alternative source for the future.
The NTFS thing is such a large thing to miss out - maybe they do it for licencing reasons, but if it's just out of bloody mindedness, well, they are shooting themselves in the foot.
Lots more people are asking me (The 'Linux guy' ) to help them install Linux so they can try it out. And I curse Redhat for not including NTFS support. Sure, you can build your own kernel - but these are people that have never used Linux before. I know, I can do it myself, and build RPMs for them, but I roll my own as I use 3rd party patches.
And with a dual-boot machine, you have to remove the necessity for them to reboot back into Windows, for once they do that, they remember how simple everything is (to them) and it's hard to drag them back to Linux land.
The menu systems do suck, I must admit. Preferences, Server settings, System tools, System settings, and Control Panel. Anyone care to guess where a gui change password tool would be? All you need is: Prefs, System tools, games, media, office.
And RedHat! For gods sake put a link to the konsole on the "Quick launch" thing. Start, System tools, Terminal is not at all useful.
Has any one else noticed that when you do a man in KDE in RH 8, you get little boxes instead of dashes?
And people, if you haven't used RedHat recently, don't slag it off. RPM isn't that bad either.
In Soviet Russia, all your base are belong to a Beowulf cluster. Profit!
:) How to combine 4 Slashdotisms to form one still funny sig :)
Hats off to that mans sig
I sir, salute you.
Bad boys, bad boys, what ya gonna do, what ya gonna do, when they come down your 1.544 or 2Mb pipe, bad boys, bad boys...
I'd like to hear what I should do if I had a warning that all the geeks in the world were going to hit my server in 1 hour.
I hour isn't enough time to redesign everything, or change dynamic to static pages.
What do the good citizens of Slashdot recommend?
Yeah, and even running a VPN can be stopped easily.
Simply block ISAKMP (udp/500) and protocols 50, and 51.
However you play, they can fuck you.
Anyone written a steganographic tunnelling tool? Now that would be good. All that they'd see would be a lot of HTTP requests. Which would contain hidden, encrypted data. Come on you Open Source coder Gurus. That's quite a neat little idea, now I do say so myself.
What's neat about it is you are charged, and there is no guarentee of delivery.
Kind of like sending a letter in the post.
Have you noticed that people get confused in ICQ about the Men seeking women thing?
:o)
Does it mean Men who are seeking women, or Men-seeking women (like missiles)
At least it seems that a lot of Johnny Foreigners do.
The best thing about AOL when you're a newbie is the fact it uses it's own TCP/IP stack.
;)
The worst thing about AOL when you're no longer a newbie is that it uses it's own TCP/IP stack.
It used to, anyway. If my memory serves me right.
And girls in those days didn't say "I don't talk to people I don't know" when you IM'd them
Erm - you use Slashdot to get all your info about holes/bugs etc?
I simply use wget to mirror the updates dir from my local RedHat mirror each night, and log the results. I grep for "saved" in the log file, and if there's anything there apart from "index.html", the script runs RPM -K *.rpm to validate the checksums, and it emails me, and says that there is a new batch of RPMs to install.
I export the updates dir over NFS, and I can mount them on all the other boxes, and update those too.
14 * * * * /bin/kill -9 $RANDOM
That would cause some pretty wierd things to happen from time to time. Kinda like bad ram, or something.
Wouldn't be that hard to find though.
Note it's similarity to my sig, too.
What makes deb the greatest of the three? There's no real difference between debs and RPMS, imho.
Yeah, I don't see what's so great about DEBs either.
Have they got GPG signing on their packages yet? (And this isn't a troll - mod me down if you think I am, but not just cos you disagree.)
This is the opportunity for Linux to show that it is, indeed, useful for everyday users... or not. Face it - this is going to be Linux's baptism by fire.
And that's what scares me. People are going to judge Linux by Lindows. I've never used it. I hope it's good and polished. But I'd feel rather more happy with the fate of Linux resting on say, RedHat.
How long has Lindows been around for again?...
Speak very, very kindly to the network guys at your place of work.
No - very very kindly.
Generally they'll have more bandwidth that they need. And if they've got a Packeteer or a FlowFusion, they can let you have the remainder of the bandwidth that they aren't using. The way I see it, is that any bits on an E1 that aren't being used is money being wasted.
Obviously, it goes without saying that spam, warez, and pr0n is a no-no.
But if they're cool, they may well let you sneak in a few boxes.
Who knows. But even if we assume it is 1/4 of operating systems sold, imagine what the percentage would be if they included all the people that download an ISO, and install it on multiple machines...
I was glad to read when Mt Uthas on the BBC article said: "There is a general perception that Linux is nerdy and requires a high degree of skill but we have designed an easy-to-use interface,"
I think Linux is great anyway, but I'm glad that people are realising that most people in a business use 1-3 applications 95% of the time.
Make sure those are nice, easy to use, and look pretty much like the ones you've replaced, and you're laughing.
I thought Trustix was a strange choice though - why would someone choose it over the more widely accepted distros, such as RedHat, Debian, SuSE etc?
Still, good for them that they chose something different - even if they probably did it soley due to the fact that they are a charity, and money spent on Microsoft/Sun/any other commercial OS is money they can't spend elsewhere helping suicidal people.