> Of course a firewall will offer some protection but shouldn't be relied on
What kind of crack are you smoking, and where can I get some? A firewall will offer complete protection, and should be relied on to protect you from exactly this kind of situation (and more!). I'm sure your point is that using a firewall is no excuse to not apply security patches and while I agree, this anti-firewall propaganda has to stop!;-)
Assuming the poster was requesting a single, unified API for multimedia development, he has two APIs from which to choose, and either choice should satisfy his request. He doesn't need to use a 'number of differing libraries'.
No one cares that porn on the web is virtually unavoidable thanks to advertisements and pop-ups. But on a P2P network where you actually have to seek out pornongraphic materials...? Puh-leeze.
Understanding the mentality of the open-source communities might be of some help. Eric Raymond's essay titled "Homesteading the Noosphere" talks a bit about the hacker cultures surrounding Linux and other open-source projects. I'd also suggest reading his essay titled "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". Both essays are mostly Eric's own observations, experiences, and opinions relating to open-source communities, and the CATB in particular has some insightful reflections on software engineering in general.
You make several interesting points, the foremost showing how lazy my stab at GNOME really was.;-) Had I not posted here it would be months or years before I looked at it again, and from what I'm reading there are solutions to most of my problems.
> despite possibly being slower than GNOME
KDE seems to take longer to start up (hopefully this will be addressed for the next release - I hear Qt's next major release has taken steps towards increasing start-up performance). Beyond that, KDE seemed much faster and more responsive than GNOME (see my earlier comments on Konqueror and Mozilla).
I'm pretty happy with my taskbar and task list setup.
> 3) Give yourself 10 virtual desktops. > 4) You can drag/drop windows across virtual desktops [...] > 5) Check your Metacity bindings for moving between desktops, [...]
I used all of these features on Window Maker for several years (in fact I used Window Maker + GNOME throughout 1999/2000). I still use other desktops for applications like GIMP and Boa Constructor that use an SDI interface, but otherwise I haven't found much need for more than one desktop.
> 6) Ask yourself whether you really need to see CPU and Mem/Swap usage. If you really believe you > do, add the applets to your top edge panel, but I suggest leaving them off. Will really miss them?
I could do without memory usage, but I like to keep an eye on CPU usage. I would surely miss it.
> 7) Add the dictionary applet if you think you need it frequently enough
Boy, do I need the dictionary applet.
> 8) Add your "quicklaunch" icons (or a drawer of icons).
Would work, but I still want another panel.;-)
> 9) Add the audio controls, if this is something useful to you.
Yep, I need them.
> 10) Do you really need to have always visible
In fact, I usually have only four channels visible. The screenshot is a freshly configured desktop and I haven't yet removed the excess channels.
> You would just use multple edge panels on the same edge.
The panels always seem to overlap when I put them on the same edge. Am I doing something wrong?
> Regarding the wealth of config options [...] gconf.
I didn't know about this, I'll definitely check out gconf.
I actually like KDE's control panel. Options could be organized better, but on the whole I like having your options laid out in front of you. When I start KDE for the first time, I know exactly where to go and what to change to get my desktop looking the way I like it. Its not the UI that's important here, its presentation of information. I would be just as happy if instead of a control panel KDE provided a hierarchically arranged, well-documented configuration file. The presentation of topically organized functionality can appear in any form, so long as it appears.;-)
> Regarding Konqueror[...]
Sure, but coloring the picture here is my desire to step away from dependence on KDE and towards ideological purity.:-)
The panel was most annoying. Can I make my GNOME panel look like this?
In general, GNOME's UI is just barren compared to KDE's. When you view the properties of KDE components, there are generally lots of configurables. In my experience with GNOME, I found the opposite to be true. Walk through KDE's control center, and then through GNOME's. I hope you'll see what I mean.
Another issue was how badly Konqueror kicks the crap out of Mozilla when it comes to speed and responsiveness. I'm not knocking one or the other, I like them both and I realize Mozilla's design as a cross-platform application framework contributes to this. But Mozilla has tangible performance problems, and GNOME integrates Mozilla. This is a problem for me.
> When was the last time you used it?
I used it about a week ago and went back to KDE after a few hours. I was pretty disappointed because, as I said, I really want to like GNOME.
What does GNOME do for you that can't be done on KDE? My experience has been much the opposite though - there is a great deal that KDE can do that GNOME can't insofar as UI is concerned. I'm not building up to contradict you, I'm curious because I want to like GNOME. In fact I really want to like GNOME. As a software engineer I'm attracted by the use of CORBA for IPC and language independence and I hear the architecture as a whole is an interesting, original design. As an idealist, I'm attracted by the use of Gtk+ (free) over Qt (less free).
But as a user, I ran away screaming. Speaking strictly in terms of UI, GNOME seems to be lagging behind KDE on the order of years. KDE is almost annoyingly flexible, but GNOME is frustratingly static. That's not to say GNOME will always be this way, but in its current state, I can't make the GNOME desktop behave in the ways I require.
GNOME doesn't seem to be there yet for folks who demand a good deal of functionality from their GUI. Perhaps its more attractive for those married to the console, I don't know. (Not that I don't like the console - I spend 90% of my day there.) I guess hacking my 'missing features' into GNOME would be time better spent than whining about them on Slashdot.;-)
I've read interviews where Oppenheim has been asked this directly, and he unabashedly side-steps the question everytime (I should say 'questions', as he does this constantly, much like Dubya in his recent press conference). Good luck getting an answer out of them.
I work for a company that works closely with mathematics reaserchers at the University of Pittsburgh. Everything we get from them is LaTeX, if that serves as any indication. Any research I've read that needs to express anything in mathematcal terms was written with LaTeX.
Also, Lyx is an editor and something of a front-end to LaTeX that automates much of what a common knowlege of LaTeX would accomplish (I suspect - I don't know LaTeX), and can call out to external DVI conversion tools that export to ps, pdf, html, text, etc. I use it to write just about everything at this point. The only problem so far has been converting to MS-Word for the business guys.
Am I blind, or is there absolutely zero indication in the article that these kids even knew the game Warriors of Freedom existed? And what about this conjecture that they were acting out scenes from GTA? Just because they had a sword? Christ, the kid liked anime, knew karate, but no, it was GTA.
And this lawyer, making his living by spreading such 'video games kill' propaganda, doesn't seem to notice the millions of people who are able to play video games without maming their classmates or co-workers...
And the common thread in this and other school killings is perhaps not that the perpetrators play video games, an activity partaken by the vast majority of children these days, but the social situation of the offenders? Hello? In America, if you don't fit in, those who do will never let you forget it. Ask anyone that doesn't fit in and went to a public school. The majority don't have this problem, and tend to not kill their classmates. A minority of students who do have this problem tend to kill their classmates. I'm not making excuses for these kids or their actions, only suggesting that if it looks, walks and talks like a horse, its probably a horse, though this lawyer guy would try to convince us otherwise.
But in this situation, I guess there's no money to be made by connecting the dots.
Perhaps your boss wants to go with the commercial solution because he wants you to spend your time doing your job, not writing tools to assist you in doing your job when there are viable solutions already available?
I'm not knocking your desire to write, host and manage your own software and services (I share your preference, believe me), but honestly, if it makes more sense to outsource, then outsource. You don't keep a project in-house for the sake of keeping it in-house. Why waste time re-implementing a solution that's already available when you have other things to work on? If its more reasonable to keep it in-house, then you should have no problem presenting a favourable argument to your boss. If you're having trouble rationalizing your desire, maybe your desire is irrational.;-)
Agreed, the author should keep up. I'm no fan of the Debian KDE team and have done my share of complaining when they held up 3.0 for months in the name of the gcc transition, but 3.1.2 was on its way to unstable before the KDE press release was even posted on Slashdot. I hope the author was talking about testing or stable, in which case I would urge him to re-evaluate his choice of stability over currency.
In addition, regularly updated CVS debs have been available since at least November thanks to Orth's good work. #debian-kde on Freenode will provide more information.
This isn't an all-inclusive list of reasons for people's DNS habits, but in my experience these factors seem to be among the most prominent.
1) DNS management is often delegated to the ISP. If that ISP develops such bad habits as ignoring customers' reverse DNS when making updates to forwards, they have a fleet of Internet users with no reverse DNS.
2) IT personnel often don't have DNS authority for their IP addresses because its not worth the hassle for ISPs to give their customers reverse authority for only a few IPs in a subnet. ISPs have varying degrees of friendliness for managing reverse DNS through customer support personnel or a website. For organizations that update DNS often, sometimes it isn't worth the hassle of dealing with the ISP at all.
3) People are lazy and stupid, and reverse DNS doesn't typically affect our daily lives. Most yahoos barely understand DNS beyond pointing and clicking in the Microsoft DNS Server Console (which, ironically, will automatically update PTRs when you make changes to forwards if you so desire). These would be the same schmucks who list CNAMEs as mail exchangers.
The moral of the story is: The number of legitimate email providers with invalid reverse DNS far outnumbers the number of spammers. This is ample reason to NOT refuse to accept mail that has inconsistent forward and reverse mappings.
Consider your business customers; are they going to care about fighting spam when they can't receive email from contacts at other companies? Are they going to want to hear, 'Well tell the person that's trying to email you to fix their server'? I think not.
It would be much different if you weren't an ISP, but I don't feel that the annoyance presented by spam is sufficient reason to effectively tell your customers that they can no longer receive email from a fair percentage of Internet hosts because there's a small chance that they might be spammers. There are effective ways to fight spam that don't inhibit the users' ability to receive legitimate email.
Slashdot Mirror
> Of course a firewall will offer some protection but shouldn't be relied on
;-)
What kind of crack are you smoking, and where can I get some? A firewall will offer complete protection, and should be relied on to protect you from exactly this kind of situation (and more!). I'm sure your point is that using a firewall is no excuse to not apply security patches and while I agree, this anti-firewall propaganda has to stop!
-Nick
Flame-bait? Geez, I just asked a simple, genuine question. Good job, moderators. :-(
-Nick
Has the start-up time been reduced for this release? When last I tried (a few weeks ago), it was rediculously slow.
Here's hoping,
-Nick
Assuming the poster was requesting a single, unified API for multimedia development, he has two APIs from which to choose, and either choice should satisfy his request. He doesn't need to use a 'number of differing libraries'.
It won't kill you. Just spend your time doing something constructive.
I will upgrade the second this new version is available.
-Nick
No one cares that porn on the web is virtually unavoidable thanks to advertisements and pop-ups. But on a P2P network where you actually have to seek out pornongraphic materials...? Puh-leeze.
-Nick
Understanding the mentality of the open-source communities might be of some help. Eric Raymond's essay titled "Homesteading the Noosphere" talks a bit about the hacker cultures surrounding Linux and other open-source projects. I'd also suggest reading his essay titled "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". Both essays are mostly Eric's own observations, experiences, and opinions relating to open-source communities, and the CATB in particular has some insightful reflections on software engineering in general.
-Nick
You make several interesting points, the foremost showing how lazy my stab at GNOME really was. ;-) Had I not posted here it would be months or years before I looked at it again, and from what I'm reading there are solutions to most of my problems.
> despite possibly being slower than GNOME
KDE seems to take longer to start up (hopefully this will be addressed for the next release - I hear Qt's next major release has taken steps towards increasing start-up performance). Beyond that, KDE seemed much faster and more responsive than GNOME (see my earlier comments on Konqueror and Mozilla).
-Nick
> 1) [...]
;-)
> 2) [...]
I'm pretty happy with my taskbar and task list setup.
> 3) Give yourself 10 virtual desktops.
> 4) You can drag/drop windows across virtual desktops [...]
> 5) Check your Metacity bindings for moving between desktops, [...]
I used all of these features on Window Maker for several years (in fact I used Window Maker + GNOME throughout 1999/2000). I still use other desktops for applications like GIMP and Boa Constructor that use an SDI interface, but otherwise I haven't found much need for more than one desktop.
> 6) Ask yourself whether you really need to see CPU and Mem/Swap usage. If you really believe you
> do, add the applets to your top edge panel, but I suggest leaving them off. Will really miss them?
I could do without memory usage, but I like to keep an eye on CPU usage. I would surely miss it.
> 7) Add the dictionary applet if you think you need it frequently enough
Boy, do I need the dictionary applet.
> 8) Add your "quicklaunch" icons (or a drawer of icons).
Would work, but I still want another panel.
> 9) Add the audio controls, if this is something useful to you.
Yep, I need them.
> 10) Do you really need to have always visible
In fact, I usually have only four channels visible. The screenshot is a freshly configured desktop and I haven't yet removed the excess channels.
Thanks for the tips,
-Nick
> You would just use multple edge panels on the same edge.
;-)
:-)
The panels always seem to overlap when I put them on the same edge. Am I doing something wrong?
> Regarding the wealth of config options [...] gconf.
I didn't know about this, I'll definitely check out gconf.
I actually like KDE's control panel. Options could be organized better, but on the whole I like having your options laid out in front of you. When I start KDE for the first time, I know exactly where to go and what to change to get my desktop looking the way I like it. Its not the UI that's important here, its presentation of information. I would be just as happy if instead of a control panel KDE provided a hierarchically arranged, well-documented configuration file. The presentation of topically organized functionality can appear in any form, so long as it appears.
> Regarding Konqueror[...]
Sure, but coloring the picture here is my desire to step away from dependence on KDE and towards ideological purity.
Thanks for the help,
-Nick
> What did you have trouble adjusting?
The panel was most annoying. Can I make my GNOME panel look like this?
In general, GNOME's UI is just barren compared to KDE's. When you view the properties of KDE components, there are generally lots of configurables. In my experience with GNOME, I found the opposite to be true. Walk through KDE's control center, and then through GNOME's. I hope you'll see what I mean.
Another issue was how badly Konqueror kicks the crap out of Mozilla when it comes to speed and responsiveness. I'm not knocking one or the other, I like them both and I realize Mozilla's design as a cross-platform application framework contributes to this. But Mozilla has tangible performance problems, and GNOME integrates Mozilla. This is a problem for me.
> When was the last time you used it?
I used it about a week ago and went back to KDE after a few hours. I was pretty disappointed because, as I said, I really want to like GNOME.
-Nick
What does GNOME do for you that can't be done on KDE? My experience has been much the opposite though - there is a great deal that KDE can do that GNOME can't insofar as UI is concerned. I'm not building up to contradict you, I'm curious because I want to like GNOME. In fact I really want to like GNOME. As a software engineer I'm attracted by the use of CORBA for IPC and language independence and I hear the architecture as a whole is an interesting, original design. As an idealist, I'm attracted by the use of Gtk+ (free) over Qt (less free).
;-)
But as a user, I ran away screaming. Speaking strictly in terms of UI, GNOME seems to be lagging behind KDE on the order of years. KDE is almost annoyingly flexible, but GNOME is frustratingly static. That's not to say GNOME will always be this way, but in its current state, I can't make the GNOME desktop behave in the ways I require.
GNOME doesn't seem to be there yet for folks who demand a good deal of functionality from their GUI. Perhaps its more attractive for those married to the console, I don't know. (Not that I don't like the console - I spend 90% of my day there.) I guess hacking my 'missing features' into GNOME would be time better spent than whining about them on Slashdot.
-Nick
Oh yeah, I'm sure the power companies connect all of their safety systems to the Internet. :-)
-Nick
I've read interviews where Oppenheim has been asked this directly, and he unabashedly side-steps the question everytime (I should say 'questions', as he does this constantly, much like Dubya in his recent press conference). Good luck getting an answer out of them.
-Nick
I work for a company that works closely with mathematics reaserchers at the University of Pittsburgh. Everything we get from them is LaTeX, if that serves as any indication. Any research I've read that needs to express anything in mathematcal terms was written with LaTeX.
Also, Lyx is an editor and something of a front-end to LaTeX that automates much of what a common knowlege of LaTeX would accomplish (I suspect - I don't know LaTeX), and can call out to external DVI conversion tools that export to ps, pdf, html, text, etc. I use it to write just about everything at this point. The only problem so far has been converting to MS-Word for the business guys.
-Nick
Am I blind, or is there absolutely zero indication in the article that these kids even knew the game Warriors of Freedom existed? And what about this conjecture that they were acting out scenes from GTA? Just because they had a sword? Christ, the kid liked anime, knew karate, but no, it was GTA.
And this lawyer, making his living by spreading such 'video games kill' propaganda, doesn't seem to notice the millions of people who are able to play video games without maming their classmates or co-workers...
And the common thread in this and other school killings is perhaps not that the perpetrators play video games, an activity partaken by the vast majority of children these days, but the social situation of the offenders? Hello? In America, if you don't fit in, those who do will never let you forget it. Ask anyone that doesn't fit in and went to a public school. The majority don't have this problem, and tend to not kill their classmates. A minority of students who do have this problem tend to kill their classmates. I'm not making excuses for these kids or their actions, only suggesting that if it looks, walks and talks like a horse, its probably a horse, though this lawyer guy would try to convince us otherwise.
But in this situation, I guess there's no money to be made by connecting the dots.
-Nick
Why should they pay for what is already free? Go to google and search with...
...and see what you come up with.
duplicate story posts on the rise site:slashdot.org
-Nick
arete:~$ uname -a /usr/sbin/xfs_* /usr/sbin/xfs_admin /usr/sbin/xfs_bmap /usr/sbin/xfs_check /usr/sbin/xfs_db /usr/sbin/xfs_freeze /usr/sbin/xfs_growfs /usr/sbin/xfs_info /usr/sbin/xfs_io /usr/sbin/xfs_logprint /usr/sbin/xfs_mkfile /usr/sbin/xfs_ncheck /usr/sbin/xfs_rtcp
Linux arete 2.4.21-ck1-ws #1 Mon Jun 16 18:13:48 EDT 2003 i686 GNU/Linux
arete:~$ ls -l
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1857 Jun 6 03:33
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1883 Jun 6 03:33
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1835 Jun 6 03:33
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 391944 Jun 6 03:34
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4180 Jun 6 03:34
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 236088 Jun 6 03:34
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1662 Jun 6 03:33
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 27144 Jun 6 03:34
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 272392 Jun 6 03:34
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6768 Jun 6 03:34
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1811 Jun 6 03:33
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9244 Jun 6 03:34
> And where do those RPMs come from? Doesn't RedHat produce them?
Some come from Red Hat, many more don't.
> This reminds me of the congressman who wanted to...
This would be an accurate analogy if Red Hat were the only producer of RPMs.
-Nick
Perhaps your boss wants to go with the commercial solution because he wants you to spend your time doing your job, not writing tools to assist you in doing your job when there are viable solutions already available?
;-)
I'm not knocking your desire to write, host and manage your own software and services (I share your preference, believe me), but honestly, if it makes more sense to outsource, then outsource. You don't keep a project in-house for the sake of keeping it in-house. Why waste time re-implementing a solution that's already available when you have other things to work on? If its more reasonable to keep it in-house, then you should have no problem presenting a favourable argument to your boss. If you're having trouble rationalizing your desire, maybe your desire is irrational.
-Nick
> when they held up 3.0
Make that 3.1...
Agreed, the author should keep up. I'm no fan of the Debian KDE team and have done my share of complaining when they held up 3.0 for months in the name of the gcc transition, but 3.1.2 was on its way to unstable before the KDE press release was even posted on Slashdot. I hope the author was talking about testing or stable, in which case I would urge him to re-evaluate his choice of stability over currency.
In addition, regularly updated CVS debs have been available since at least November thanks to Orth's good work. #debian-kde on Freenode will provide more information.
-Nick
This isn't an all-inclusive list of reasons for people's DNS habits, but in my experience these factors seem to be among the most prominent.
1) DNS management is often delegated to the ISP. If that ISP develops such bad habits as ignoring customers' reverse DNS when making updates to forwards, they have a fleet of Internet users with no reverse DNS.
2) IT personnel often don't have DNS authority for their IP addresses because its not worth the hassle for ISPs to give their customers reverse authority for only a few IPs in a subnet. ISPs have varying degrees of friendliness for managing reverse DNS through customer support personnel or a website. For organizations that update DNS often, sometimes it isn't worth the hassle of dealing with the ISP at all.
3) People are lazy and stupid, and reverse DNS doesn't typically affect our daily lives. Most yahoos barely understand DNS beyond pointing and clicking in the Microsoft DNS Server Console (which, ironically, will automatically update PTRs when you make changes to forwards if you so desire). These would be the same schmucks who list CNAMEs as mail exchangers.
The moral of the story is: The number of legitimate email providers with invalid reverse DNS far outnumbers the number of spammers. This is ample reason to NOT refuse to accept mail that has inconsistent forward and reverse mappings.
Consider your business customers; are they going to care about fighting spam when they can't receive email from contacts at other companies? Are they going to want to hear, 'Well tell the person that's trying to email you to fix their server'? I think not.
It would be much different if you weren't an ISP, but I don't feel that the annoyance presented by spam is sufficient reason to effectively tell your customers that they can no longer receive email from a fair percentage of Internet hosts because there's a small chance that they might be spammers. There are effective ways to fight spam that don't inhibit the users' ability to receive legitimate email.
-Nick
> And, to top it off, PA is now getting hit with a slashdotting
Slashdot has linked to PA from the front page for years now. I'm sure they're used to it.
-Nick