The X11R6.8.2 release is intended to be a stable bug fix release ("Maintenance update") for the X11R6.8.0 and X11R6.8.1 X11 releases of the Xorg Foundation, containing bug fixes, security updates and a small set of new features, which include the following:
* ATI R100 video driver
* ATI "radeon" video driver
* ATI Rage128 video driver
* CYGWIN infrastructure update
* DMX Library updates
* Intel i810 video driver
* libXpm security update (CAN-2004-0914)
* Mesa (OpenGL) update to release 6.2
* Fixes to the pseudocolor emulation layer (currently only used by the Neomagic driver.)
* "nv" (Nvidia) video driver
* Postscript print driver
* Xprint infrastructure update
Please refer to the X11R6.8.2 Release Notes at http://www.x.org/ for further details. The full list of changes between the initial X11R6.8.0 and this release can be found in the Changelog.
How did N. Korea get nuclear technology? From us. So, when they nuke LA, remember to thank Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright. They're the ones that signed that stupid treaty.
Last time I checked, stupid people didn't get Ivy League degrees, so yes, Bush is smart.
And I wasn't calling Dean dumb, I was cracking a joke about how the leftist media fawns all over themselves about how brilliant the democratic candidates are.
For example, the NY Times asking "Is Al Gore Too Smart For America?"... when Al Gore flunked out of divinity school, when Al Gore looked at marble busts of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, and asked "Hey who are these guys?".
And look at the media coverage of how "brilliant" John Kerry was. So smart, he was, considering both sides of every issue, carefully considering each (while he waits for the results of his focus group).
It's a recurring pattern - Republicans are called "dumb" or "evil", Democrats are praised. And - it's directly proportional to how bad the Rebulican kicks his opponents ass in an election - the worse the electoral beating, the "dumber" the is.
Nixon: Evil
Ford: Dumb (OK They got this one right)
Reagan: "Amicable Dunce", Senile (won in 2 landslides)
Bush 41: Dumb
Newt Gingrich: Evil ('94 House Revolution)
Dubya: dumb
Compared to what the NY Times said about:
Carter: smart!
Mondale: smart!
Dukakis: smart!
Clinton: smart! (I agree. My problem with Clinton was he was ethically challenged. And Liberal.)
Gore: smart!
Kerry: smart!
In 2008, when he makes another run, the media left will be falling all over themselves saying how smart Dean is.
Damn, now that I've had to explain it, the joke just isn't as funny.
As a Visual Studio developer it's a nightmare to properly align your controls.
No it isn't - just select the controls, click on Format... Align... and away you go. Or, if you prefer, you can also just edit the.rc file and make sure the controls line up that way.
It's been that easy to align controls since VC 1.0, so I'm starting to doubt you've ever written anything more advanced than a "Hello World" app in VC. Either that, or you should really invest some time in learning how to use your tools properly.
You can even place guidelines in your UI (which don't get shown) to help align your controls.
You can do that in Visual Studio as well.
Visual Basic works the same way, as does C#. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I have to give the devils their due - as an IDE, Visual Studio is pretty nice.
Well, I just cleaned up a dialog with 25 pairs of radio buttons - in panels, with the title of the feature to enable or disable. Radio buttons were... you guessed it, Enable and Disable.
Now there's 25 checkboxes, and there was great rejoicing.
Dump Microsoft Office in favor of OpenOffice.org.
Dump IE in favor of Firefox. Time = Money, and time spent cleaning up 0wned Windows boxes is expensive.
You might also consider dumping IIS for Apache if possible.
And yes, you should shut down all your PC's, as it will save money. It adds up.
Proper GUI design, at it's core, is really a matter of widget selection and placement. When displaying things to the user, keep things left to right, and top to bottom (reverse for Arabic and Hebrew - in other words, KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE).
Use the proper control for the task, and don't clutter your windows. Example: Don't use 2 radio buttons when one checkbox would suffice, don't use more than 5 radio buttons when a combobox would work better.
Also - for God's sake - LINE UP YOUR CONTROLS. If you're a Windows Developer, whether it's VB/C/C++/C#, it's just a matter of laziness to not align your controls. If you're using Java - use a layout manager or a number of layout managers. If you're using GLADE or QtDesigner, take the extra 3 seconds to line up your controls.
Also, tab order should be logical. Focus should go left to right, top to bottom (Arabic and Hebrew - see above). You should also support keystroke shortcut keys that make sense, in fact, if you can make them user definable - do it. Not everyone uses a Qwerty keyboard, and not everyone uses the US character map. Don't make the user move his or her hands unless necessary. Also, right click (or Ctrl-Click) context menus are great - use them.
Finally, some people prefer SDI style apps (OpenOffice.org, IE), others prefer dockable MDI style apps (Visual Studio), and some prefer a collection of floating windows (GIMP). Internally, it's all the same, just each window has a different parent - provide the option to your user. Organize your code properly to handle this from the beginning..
Also - don't pick a color scheme - let the system color it. Same for fonts - that red and green text might look pretty nifty, but to a colorblind person there's no discernable difference. In fact - don't use specific colors at all to convey status. Here in the States, Red means Stop, but this is not true in all cultures. Plus... some people are colorblind. Changing an indicator from green to red is meaningless to them.
This really should be common sense, but I can't tell you how much GUI stupidity I've fixed in my career. Most of it can be attributed to 2 things: laziness, and the GUI done as an afterthought. This is a problem, because while your code may kick all kinds of ass under the hood, if your GUI looks like it was done during amateur hour at the YMCA, the user will think the rest of your app is just as bad.
Also, don't be afraid to consult a graphic designer about your user interface, especially when it comes to icon selection. They excel at conveying that kind of information. Chances are, you have at least one in your marketing department.
Why do you claim Windows has a lower Total Cost of Ownership, yet you do not add the costs (not incurred by Linux / FOSS) of a Virus Scanner, Microsoft Office on the desktop or IIS / SQL Server on the server, plus the damage that is done by such worms as the Blaster and Slammer worms?
Especially when the costs of upgrading is recurring.
After helping my family with eleventy-billion viruses, trojans, spyware, and malware - I gave up. It was too time consuming.
So now, whenever a family member asks me for help with their PC, I just respond "I don't do Windows".
I've almost convinced my brother to switch to Linux... the in-laws are proving harder, but I dod get them to dump IE in favor of Firefox. (After trying to get them to dump IE in favor of anything for 2+ years....)
No, I'm going to have to support the grandparent on this one:.NET is junk. The CLR is horrifically slow, and the control set is woefully incomplete. To do anything in.NET you have to use P/Invoke waaaay too often, and once you do that, you're no longer writing managed code, which is supposedly the whole point of the CLR.
Plus, with the CLR, you don't get any language, you get a subset of the language. (no Multiple Inheritance, templates..) and while I don't use multiple inheritance, I most certainly do use templates.
I am troubled. And offended. Deeply troubled and offended. This is very troubling, and quite offensive. I'm outraged. Deeply outraged. Outraged, troubled, and offended. Very much so. This is very troubling, quite offensive, and entirely outrageous.
Wow - who knew former Senator Tom Daschle posted to slashdot?
Modern mobile phones have proper HTTP (not WAP) browsers and sites formatted for PDA fit on their little screens quite well.
Interestingly enough, this is how Opera makes most of it's money. While their PC browser is excellent, (IMHO), it's the ability to render sites on small screen's that's making the company money.
Because everyone is just going to list their favorite distro.
Might as well have said "What's the best Cola?" (Pepsi, Coke, RC, Sam's Choice, Big K, Remarkable, etc.) or "What's the best text editor?" (vi, vim, emacs, joe, pico, edit, Kate, etc.)
It's all subjective, and there's really not enough data for anyone to make an informed decision. Do you need support? You might look at Red Hat Enterprise or a derivative of it. Want bleeding edge? Gentoo or Fedora Core. Want stability? Debian or Slackware. Want it to be easy? Mandrake. Want it to be snappy on old hardware? Vector. What about feature "x"? Then look at Yoper, Vidalinux, Ubuntu, Feather, DSL, Knoppix, Lycoris, Connectiva, SAM, etc...
The best advice I can give you is head on over to Distrowatch.com, download a bunch of distros - in fact, get the top ten as listed over there, maybe evne the top 20, and check them out. Install them on a box - what do you like about this certain distro? What are it's strengths? It's weaknesses? And how does it all fit with what you need it to do?
Otherwise, you're just going to get people's personal favorites.
Certainly. And if you look at my comment history, where I argued against people who thought "If you buy an XBox, MS loses money" - where I told them if they wanted to hurt MS then they just shouldn't buy one period - well, you'll see I was right.
Most console hardware is only a loss leader at launch - eventually, they will get cheaper to produce, as the price of components goes down. Look at the cost of processors - you can get a Pentium 3 800 Mhz at Fry's for what, $20, if even that now? Look at Hard Drive prices - can you even find an 8 GB Hard drive on a shelf? Even if you could, what would you pay for it?
And you have to figure that MS is buying bulk, and is getting an even cheaper price. So, yes, I would image right now XBox hardware sales are giving MS profit.
And as far as Halo 2 goes... even if it comes out for the PC, I won't be buying it. Nor will I buy Age of Empires 3. (No, I will not pirate them either - I'm just not interested in owning or playing any Microsoft product.)
Besides - Burnout 3 is also a helluva lot of fun on my PS2.
Slashdot Mirror
The X11R6.8.2 release is intended to be a stable bug fix release ("Maintenance update") for the X11R6.8.0 and X11R6.8.1 X11 releases of the Xorg Foundation, containing bug fixes, security updates and a small set of new features, which include the following:
* ATI R100 video driver
* ATI "radeon" video driver
* ATI Rage128 video driver
* CYGWIN infrastructure update
* DMX Library updates
* Intel i810 video driver
* libXpm security update (CAN-2004-0914)
* Mesa (OpenGL) update to release 6.2
* Fixes to the pseudocolor emulation layer (currently only used by the Neomagic driver.)
* "nv" (Nvidia) video driver
* Postscript print driver
* Xprint infrastructure update
Please refer to the X11R6.8.2 Release Notes at http://www.x.org/ for further details. The full list of changes between the initial X11R6.8.0 and this release can be found in the Changelog.
Either that was pre-emptive, or you're going to have to admit it was to get Monica Lewinsky off the front page.
If they strike, it will be because they percieve a "legitimate" reason.
Or possibly just because Kim Jong Il is insane.
How did N. Korea get nuclear technology? From us.
So, when they nuke LA, remember to thank Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright. They're the ones that signed that stupid treaty.
And I wasn't calling Dean dumb, I was cracking a joke about how the leftist media fawns all over themselves about how brilliant the democratic candidates are.
For example, the NY Times asking "Is Al Gore Too Smart For America?"... when Al Gore flunked out of divinity school, when Al Gore looked at marble busts of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, and asked "Hey who are these guys?".
And look at the media coverage of how "brilliant" John Kerry was. So smart, he was, considering both sides of every issue, carefully considering each (while he waits for the results of his focus group).
It's a recurring pattern - Republicans are called "dumb" or "evil", Democrats are praised. And - it's directly proportional to how bad the Rebulican kicks his opponents ass in an election - the worse the electoral beating, the "dumber" the is.
Nixon: Evil
Ford: Dumb (OK They got this one right)
Reagan: "Amicable Dunce", Senile (won in 2 landslides)
Bush 41: Dumb
Newt Gingrich: Evil ('94 House Revolution)
Dubya: dumb
Compared to what the NY Times said about: Carter: smart!
Mondale: smart!
Dukakis: smart!
Clinton: smart! (I agree. My problem with Clinton was he was ethically challenged. And Liberal.)
Gore: smart!
Kerry: smart!
In 2008, when he makes another run, the media left will be falling all over themselves saying how smart Dean is.
Damn, now that I've had to explain it, the joke just isn't as funny.
No it isn't - just select the controls, click on Format... Align... and away you go. Or, if you prefer, you can also just edit the .rc file and make sure the controls line up that way.
It's been that easy to align controls since VC 1.0, so I'm starting to doubt you've ever written anything more advanced than a "Hello World" app in VC. Either that, or you should really invest some time in learning how to use your tools properly.
You can even place guidelines in your UI (which don't get shown) to help align your controls.
You can do that in Visual Studio as well. Visual Basic works the same way, as does C#. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I have to give the devils their due - as an IDE, Visual Studio is pretty nice.
yyyeeeeeeaaaaaarrrrgh!!!
Now there's 25 checkboxes, and there was great rejoicing.
int retval = ::MessageBox (NULL, "Hello, this is a messageBox", "Caption", MB_YESNO | MB_ICONSTOP);
Use the free Word Document Viewer from Microsoft.com, that's what.
Polyurethane case and a big ass ice cube will work.
Send payment via check to....
You might also consider dumping IIS for Apache if possible.
And yes, you should shut down all your PC's, as it will save money. It adds up.
Use the proper control for the task, and don't clutter your windows. Example: Don't use 2 radio buttons when one checkbox would suffice, don't use more than 5 radio buttons when a combobox would work better.
Also - for God's sake - LINE UP YOUR CONTROLS. If you're a Windows Developer, whether it's VB/C/C++/C#, it's just a matter of laziness to not align your controls. If you're using Java - use a layout manager or a number of layout managers. If you're using GLADE or QtDesigner, take the extra 3 seconds to line up your controls.
Also, tab order should be logical. Focus should go left to right, top to bottom (Arabic and Hebrew - see above). You should also support keystroke shortcut keys that make sense, in fact, if you can make them user definable - do it. Not everyone uses a Qwerty keyboard, and not everyone uses the US character map. Don't make the user move his or her hands unless necessary. Also, right click (or Ctrl-Click) context menus are great - use them.
Finally, some people prefer SDI style apps (OpenOffice.org, IE), others prefer dockable MDI style apps (Visual Studio), and some prefer a collection of floating windows (GIMP). Internally, it's all the same, just each window has a different parent - provide the option to your user. Organize your code properly to handle this from the beginning..
Also - don't pick a color scheme - let the system color it. Same for fonts - that red and green text might look pretty nifty, but to a colorblind person there's no discernable difference. In fact - don't use specific colors at all to convey status. Here in the States, Red means Stop, but this is not true in all cultures. Plus... some people are colorblind. Changing an indicator from green to red is meaningless to them.
This really should be common sense, but I can't tell you how much GUI stupidity I've fixed in my career. Most of it can be attributed to 2 things: laziness, and the GUI done as an afterthought. This is a problem, because while your code may kick all kinds of ass under the hood, if your GUI looks like it was done during amateur hour at the YMCA, the user will think the rest of your app is just as bad.
Also, don't be afraid to consult a graphic designer about your user interface, especially when it comes to icon selection. They excel at conveying that kind of information. Chances are, you have at least one in your marketing department.
Especially when the costs of upgrading is recurring.
Don't worry - I'll handle it. I just got bit by a spider that survived the reheating of a sausage biscuit in the microwave.
Read the whole page.
(Hint: No ScrollWindow(). Using OnPaint to redraw the entire client area, flickers. Discusses P/Invoke).
Game. Set. Match.
Where are the freaks, the failed Dolly clones?
What about the freaks, the failed Human clones? Would they be destroyed? Is life so worthless that we can discard it so easily?
Cloning humans is an insanely *bad* idea, I think. And yeah, God's not going to be happy about it.
So now, whenever a family member asks me for help with their PC, I just respond "I don't do Windows".
I've almost convinced my brother to switch to Linux... the in-laws are proving harder, but I dod get them to dump IE in favor of Firefox. (After trying to get them to dump IE in favor of anything for 2+ years....)
No, I'm going to have to support the grandparent on this one: .NET is junk. The CLR is horrifically slow, and the control set is woefully incomplete. To do anything in .NET you have to use P/Invoke waaaay too often, and once you do that, you're no longer writing managed code, which is supposedly the whole point of the CLR.
Plus, with the CLR, you don't get any language, you get a subset of the language. (no Multiple Inheritance, templates..) and while I don't use multiple inheritance, I most certainly do use templates.
Wow - who knew former Senator Tom Daschle posted to slashdot?
Interestingly enough, this is how Opera makes most of it's money. While their PC browser is excellent, (IMHO), it's the ability to render sites on small screen's that's making the company money.
Nah -it'll say "Eat Bachelor Chow".
Might as well have said "What's the best Cola?" (Pepsi, Coke, RC, Sam's Choice, Big K, Remarkable, etc.) or "What's the best text editor?" (vi, vim, emacs, joe, pico, edit, Kate, etc.)
It's all subjective, and there's really not enough data for anyone to make an informed decision. Do you need support? You might look at Red Hat Enterprise or a derivative of it. Want bleeding edge? Gentoo or Fedora Core. Want stability? Debian or Slackware. Want it to be easy? Mandrake. Want it to be snappy on old hardware? Vector. What about feature "x"? Then look at Yoper, Vidalinux, Ubuntu, Feather, DSL, Knoppix, Lycoris, Connectiva, SAM, etc...
The best advice I can give you is head on over to Distrowatch.com, download a bunch of distros - in fact, get the top ten as listed over there, maybe evne the top 20, and check them out. Install them on a box - what do you like about this certain distro? What are it's strengths? It's weaknesses? And how does it all fit with what you need it to do?
Otherwise, you're just going to get people's personal favorites.
Proper punctuation in the string is left as an excerise to the reader. Besides, it's a frickin joke.
I signed up for hotmail LONG before MS bought it. Besides, they aren't making any money off of me.
Most console hardware is only a loss leader at launch - eventually, they will get cheaper to produce, as the price of components goes down. Look at the cost of processors - you can get a Pentium 3 800 Mhz at Fry's for what, $20, if even that now? Look at Hard Drive prices - can you even find an 8 GB Hard drive on a shelf? Even if you could, what would you pay for it?
And you have to figure that MS is buying bulk, and is getting an even cheaper price. So, yes, I would image right now XBox hardware sales are giving MS profit.
And as far as Halo 2 goes... even if it comes out for the PC, I won't be buying it. Nor will I buy Age of Empires 3. (No, I will not pirate them either - I'm just not interested in owning or playing any Microsoft product.)
Besides - Burnout 3 is also a helluva lot of fun on my PS2.