I'm not much up on GUIs in unix... I luuuurve my command line:) Recently though I've been playing around with KDE and find it tasty. My question is probably evil enough for me to be declared anathema and outcast, but here ya go anyway:)
Is there a way of binding the 'K' menu to the windows key on my icky windows keyboard? Since I've got one anyway, I might as well use it......
I. When Andover bought/., Rob announced that this would provide/. with the funds to expand and improve. He explicitly stated (and has re-iterated several times) that he and Hemos remain in total editorial control.
II. Copy-editing would certainly be an improvement. Despite the inclusion of the word 'editor' in the title, the remit of a copy-editor is (or should be) to carefully check through an article and correct spelling and grammar errors, and also in some cases to check facts (for example, if someone was to declare that 20% of all microfleems are subradiante, a copy-editor could be tasked with verifying this from an authoritative source - in this case, Dilbert)
I heard the interview on the radio as I was driving home. Actually, the spokesman said that the Catholic Church (or at least the chaps in red, white and puce) didn't disagree with the idea, but suggested that the act of confessing online wouldn't be as good as the real thing. (IIRC, he said '...not as good as the kosher thing...', which I found particularly amusing).
Oh well. I suppose the paycheck will come in useful for FINALLY paying off the car loan:/
Well, my resolutions for this year are: 1: To finally get round to finding Mr Right. Or even Mr Acceptable. I've been promising myself to get me a boyfriend for the past 3 years, but work has always got in the way. NO MORE!
2: To start my new job (woohoo) on Jan 4th without a hangover.
3: To sell my house and move somewhere nicer.
4: To finally get control of my finances. (haha)
5: To get into shape and stop eating junk food.
6: To stick to at least half of the aforsesaid resolutions.
Right, now I think I'll go and find a book to read.
Two quick questions if you wouldn't mind answering (genuinely curious):
1: What sort of installation did you do for RH6.1? Server/Workstation/Custom?
2: What were the error messages?
I ask because I've had no problems with RH6 (well, a few, but they were of my own making - one of the joys of being able to tinker, I suppose:) and I was wondering what might possibly have been broken in 6.1
It appears to be a case of life imitating Dilbert.
Come to think of it, I work with a Wally. Well, I do until Jan 4th, when I escape and go to work for a nicer company which is paying me, in part, to play with new technology. I'm in heaven.
Couldn't you argue that this is what, for the sake of argument, C is? Damn that was a poor sentence.
I mean: You can get an ANSI C compiler for free, for just about any platform you care to name, and even some platforms you prefer not to name (lest the Great Beast rise up and devour you).
To the vast majority of the world, an ANSI C compiler is useless. You can install it wherever you want. If you want to/do something specific/ with your ANSI C compiler, however, you need to employ a programmer (ie someone with knowledge), and that's when you start spending.
Hmm.. I sort of took that comment the opposite way. It seems to me that what the poster is saying is that, while there may only be 120,000 users actively using Linux on a daily basis (yeah I know there are probably hundreds of thousands more), there are far more Linux boxes tucked in out-of-the-way offices and engine-rooms, performing menial, thankless, but nonetheless vital jobs, without which various bits of the internet would grind to a halt (I'm thinking DNS, Sendmail, DHCP, etc).
Something is nagging at my memory. I recall reading about an experiment such as this, which demonstrated the danger inherent in believing the evidence of your eyes. I/think/ it went something like this: If you shine the light through the slits in a certain way, you get 4 bars of light - two from each slit. If however, you record the passage of the photons, they seem just to produce a random splodge, not four distinct bars.
As I said, this is a tenuous memory and I could have it completely wrong. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please could they post a better explanation?
Richard, who is going to get another cup of coffee, despite the current furore over the nasty stuff.
Thanks. I had a breakfast meeting this morning, and your succinct clarification of my feeble attempts at unravelling this conundrum has provided me with a deeper insight into the minds of my great leaders.
Thanks for the paradox. It kept me occupied for a while.
I'm not a physicist or a mathematician, but I *THINK* that it would be impossible for your head, once inserted up your ass, ever to reach the end of the trail.
The reason being: once your head interfaces with your ass, you make a circuit. For convenience, let's assume that the circuit is a perfect circle. That means that the space on the inside of the circle is also circular, and has a measurable diameter. Now, the further up your ass your head goes, the smaller the circle, therefore the smaller thespace inside the circle, therefore the smaller the diameter of that space. I *THINK* that at the point where the top of your head gets to your lips (my, WHAT an image), the diameter of the space inside the circle is reduced to zero. One cannot create a circle with a negative diameter[1], so I believe that the process of insertion must stop at this point.
Or something. I need more coffee.
Richard
[1] One can, of course, have a circle with an infinite radius, although the diameter is still about 100 yards or so. Discworld afficionados know about this.
This is a good point.. although I have a TV in the house I only ever use it for watching the local evening news (20 mins) when I get home from work, the occasional doccumentary - I have a passion for WWII and Mediaeval history - (maybe 1 hour) and a film every now and then (2 hours). So my TV consumption seldom exceeds more than 3.5 hours a week (unless there are some really GOOD films on:)
On the other hand, I spend about 3 hours every weeknight on the net (and that doesn't include the time at work) and usually much more at the weekend, particularly in the colder and wetter months when there's not much to do outside.
I will readily admit that I am something of an internet addict (but I can handle it *twitch*), but my addiction stems from two sources: one, a sysadmin by day, I am first and foremost a student, and the net contains vast information resources (and a lot of crap, but then again so does the local library) that can keep me happy for hours. Two, while I would agree that there is no substitute for real human-human interactive friendship, I feel my life would be poorer without the many friends and correspondents I have made throughout the world through the various internet media.
I think, on balance, that I would rather have a net addiction than spend 4 hours every night staring at a television (especially with the programming these days. When I was a lad.... *mutter*)
Your mileage may, of course, vary. Please excuse the poor grammar and fractured clauses. It's Monday. I hate my job. I'm eating toast.
The only date that could be represented on a computer as 9999 or 99999 was 9th April 1999, which was the 99th day of 1999. (99th day of 99 or 99th day of 999, depending how the date code works.) I'm not aware that there were any problems anywhere in the world regarding this date, although I would be interested to read about some, should anyone have any links.
Consequently my company was slightly bothered about 9999 (with good reason, it was used, and was fixed way back in 98), but isn't worried very much about 09/09/99.
We aren't that bothered about the millennium, really, either, but then again, we've been working on the problem since 1996. One thing that did concern us, though, was the supposedly compliant release of a major control application, while quite happily turning from 31/12/1999 to 01/01/2000, also went from 31/12/2000 to 02/01/2002. THAT was scary:)
Another problem which might be a concern for some people, is 29/02/2000, which is a valid date. Depending on how accurate the date code is in some applications, this date coud conceivably not be recognised.
A little anecdote for your amusement. I am not sure of its validity, but it's funny nonetheless:
A processor of peas decided to test their completely automated pea processing plant for Y2K compliance. They cranked the date on the system up to 31 Decembet 1999 and watched it roll over. They let it carry on for a week, just to make sure. No problems. Then they rolled the date back. Immediately, the waste peas (unprocessed peas that are over X hours old) increased to 100% of the total peas input into the system. It took a week to work out what the problem was.
They eventually found a kludgy bit of code in the 'goods-in' system which said 'If the today_date in the processing application is greater than the today_date in the goods-in application, increase the today_date in the goods-in application.' There was no corersponding code that dealt with a date discrepancy the other way round, so when the processing application was set back to 1999, the goods-in application remained in 2000.
Consequently, when the goods-in application did its calculations to work out how old the peas were (by comparing the today_date in the goods-in application with the barcoded date on the truck) it got confused about dates and routed the entire load to the waste bin.
Apparently it cost the company in question several hundred thousand pounds in waste goods, lost revenue and remediation.
Not in the UK, actually. It's a little bit hard to do, but it IS possible to find out who voted for whom.
Each ballot paper has a number, and the number of that ballot paper is written against the name of the voter when s/he comes to vote. This is a way in which abuse of the voting system is prevented, but it IS possible for someone to find out that I voted Natural Law Party in the last election:)
I used to have a newspaper article about this sort of thing - a collection of warnings compiled from various sources. Some of the more amusing ones that I can remember are:
(On a a packet of nuts) Warning: This product contains nuts. (On a microwave meal) Warning: This product may be hot after microwaving. (On the underside of a cake box) Warning: Do not turn this product upside down.
I remember a line out of 'Priest' (good film, sexy Linus Roach and sexier Robert Carlisle:), where the young priest in the course of his sermon said (with irony), '...of course, they're not OUR sins anymore. They're SOCIETY'S sins...'. It does seem that people in general seem to be going along this route - 'It's not my fault - I didn't know about xyz,' or 'Well don't blame me, abc didn't say that it would ghi,' or even 'Well, it's not my fault you don't like it when I do that.'
An example: I took my dog to the vet's yesterday (sick little doggy:( but getting better:) and was sitting in the waiting room with him on my lap, snoozing. Small child comes up and starts clapping his hands together (deliberately) about 18 inches from his snout (the dog's not the childs). Doggy is, naturally, unimpressed, and makes a very ominous growling sound in the back of his throat. Next thing I know, the little brat's mother is telling me that my dog is dangerous and it shouldn't be in public. Hello? This is a VETERINARY SURGERY? This is where you take dogs when they are ill and understandably not in their best humour? This is NOT the place where small, uncontrolled children run around frightening said sick dogs, right?
Ok, I'm ranting a little bit now:) but the point is, at least as far as the mother was concerned (the vet told off the mother AND the child), the fact that my dog growled at her child was MY fault, not the fault of her child, even though the brat's abuse of my dog happened in front of her eyes.
I'm glad I got that off my chest, I think I'll go and lie down, now.
I think that public perception is the issue here. We know that OSS products are better, and we know that Linux outperforms Microsoft operating systems on an ever-increasing number of fronts.
But regardless of what Microsoft thinks, I rather suspect that the only reason they are shouting about it from the rooftops is because of the current trials. If all was quiet on the monopolies front, I don't believe that Microsoft would be quite so quick to provide free advertising for its competitors. Quite the reverse.
Slashdot Mirror
Just something I've been meaning to ask for ages.
:) Recently though I've been playing around with KDE and find it tasty. My question is probably evil enough for me to be declared anathema and outcast, but here ya go anyway :)
I'm not much up on GUIs in unix... I luuuurve my command line
Is there a way of binding the 'K' menu to the windows key on my icky windows keyboard? Since I've got one anyway, I might as well use it......
/me puts on his flameproof underwear
I. When Andover bought /., Rob announced that this would provide /. with the funds to expand and improve. He explicitly stated (and has re-iterated several times) that he and Hemos remain in total editorial control.
II. Copy-editing would certainly be an improvement. Despite the inclusion of the word 'editor' in the title, the remit of a copy-editor is (or should be) to carefully check through an article and correct spelling and grammar errors, and also in some cases to check facts (for example, if someone was to declare that 20% of all microfleems are subradiante, a copy-editor could be tasked with verifying this from an authoritative source - in this case, Dilbert)
Rich.
I heard the interview on the radio as I was driving home. Actually, the spokesman said that the Catholic Church (or at least the chaps in red, white and puce) didn't disagree with the idea, but suggested that the act of confessing online wouldn't be as good as the real thing. (IIRC, he said '...not as good as the kosher thing...', which I found particularly amusing).
Rich
Oh well. I suppose the paycheck will come in useful for FINALLY paying off the car loan :/
Well, my resolutions for this year are:
1: To finally get round to finding Mr Right. Or even Mr Acceptable. I've been promising myself to get me a boyfriend for the past 3 years, but work has always got in the way. NO MORE!
2: To start my new job (woohoo) on Jan 4th without a hangover.
3: To sell my house and move somewhere nicer.
4: To finally get control of my finances. (haha)
5: To get into shape and stop eating junk food.
6: To stick to at least half of the aforsesaid resolutions.
Right, now I think I'll go and find a book to read.
Happy New Year all
Rich
Two quick questions if you wouldn't mind answering (genuinely curious):
:) and I was wondering what might possibly have been broken in 6.1
1: What sort of installation did you do for RH6.1? Server/Workstation/Custom?
2: What were the error messages?
I ask because I've had no problems with RH6 (well, a few, but they were of my own making - one of the joys of being able to tinker, I suppose
Cheers
Rich
Doesn't work with Mozilla M12, either.
It appears to be a case of life imitating Dilbert.
Come to think of it, I work with a Wally. Well, I do until Jan 4th, when I escape and go to work for a nicer company which is paying me, in part, to play with new technology. I'm in heaven.
I agree. 'Itanium' is currently at the top of my list. #1 slot used to be given to anything prefixed by 'e', but 'Itanium' just sounds so... silly.
/.) that Intel wanted to trademark '586' but couldn't, and thus 'Pentium' was born.
I seem to recall reading somewhere (probably
I think that it would have been Hexium and Heptium to follow, but I've never got the straight of that particular school of thought.
You know what scares me?
I'm finding it easier and easier to read 1337-5p33k. I need a long holiday somewhere where there aren't any computers.
*shudder*
Couldn't you argue that this is what, for the sake of argument, C is? Damn that was a poor sentence.
/do something specific/ with your ANSI C compiler, however, you need to employ a programmer (ie someone with knowledge), and that's when you start spending.
I mean: You can get an ANSI C compiler for free, for just about any platform you care to name, and even some platforms you prefer not to name (lest the Great Beast rise up and devour you).
To the vast majority of the world, an ANSI C compiler is useless. You can install it wherever you want. If you want to
Just a musing. I need to drink some more coffee.
Hmm.. I sort of took that comment the opposite way. It seems to me that what the poster is saying is that, while there may only be 120,000 users actively using Linux on a daily basis (yeah I know there are probably hundreds of thousands more), there are far more Linux boxes tucked in out-of-the-way offices and engine-rooms, performing menial, thankless, but nonetheless vital jobs, without which various bits of the internet would grind to a halt (I'm thinking DNS, Sendmail, DHCP, etc).
Just my opinion. YMMV.
Umm, thanks. I'm still terminally confused though. :)
I guess I'll stick to databases. They don't make my brain hurt when I think about them. Well, not often.
Re 3 above.
/think/ it went something like this: If you shine the light through the slits in a certain way, you get 4 bars of light - two from each slit. If however, you record the passage of the photons, they seem just to produce a random splodge, not four distinct bars.
Something is nagging at my memory. I recall reading about an experiment such as this, which demonstrated the danger inherent in believing the evidence of your eyes. I
As I said, this is a tenuous memory and I could have it completely wrong. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, please could they post a better explanation?
Richard, who is going to get another cup of coffee, despite the current furore over the nasty stuff.
Thanks. I had a breakfast meeting this morning, and your succinct clarification of my feeble attempts at unravelling this conundrum has provided me with a deeper insight into the minds of my great leaders.
Thanks for the paradox. It kept me occupied for a while.
I'm not a physicist or a mathematician, but I *THINK* that it would be impossible for your head, once inserted up your ass, ever to reach the end of the trail.
The reason being: once your head interfaces with your ass, you make a circuit. For convenience, let's assume that the circuit is a perfect circle. That means that the space on the inside of the circle is also circular, and has a measurable diameter. Now, the further up your ass your head goes, the smaller the circle, therefore the smaller thespace inside the circle, therefore the smaller the diameter of that space. I *THINK* that at the point where the top of your head gets to your lips (my, WHAT an image), the diameter of the space inside the circle is reduced to zero. One cannot create a circle with a negative diameter[1], so I believe that the process of insertion must stop at this point.
Or something. I need more coffee.
Richard
[1] One can, of course, have a circle with an infinite radius, although the diameter is still about 100 yards or so. Discworld afficionados know about this.
This is a good point.. although I have a TV in the house I only ever use it for watching the local evening news (20 mins) when I get home from work, the occasional doccumentary - I have a passion for WWII and Mediaeval history - (maybe 1 hour) and a film every now and then (2 hours). So my TV consumption seldom exceeds more than 3.5 hours a week (unless there are some really GOOD films on :)
On the other hand, I spend about 3 hours every weeknight on the net (and that doesn't include the time at work) and usually much more at the weekend, particularly in the colder and wetter months when there's not much to do outside.
I will readily admit that I am something of an internet addict (but I can handle it *twitch*), but my addiction stems from two sources: one, a sysadmin by day, I am first and foremost a student, and the net contains vast information resources (and a lot of crap, but then again so does the local library) that can keep me happy for hours. Two, while I would agree that there is no substitute for real human-human interactive friendship, I feel my life would be poorer without the many friends and correspondents I have made throughout the world through the various internet media.
I think, on balance, that I would rather have a net addiction than spend 4 hours every night staring at a television (especially with the programming these days. When I was a lad.... *mutter*)
Your mileage may, of course, vary. Please excuse the poor grammar and fractured clauses. It's Monday. I hate my job. I'm eating toast.
Richard
Ooooo, let the holy wars commence =)
9th September 1999 is represented as 090999.
:)
The only date that could be represented on a computer as 9999 or 99999 was 9th April 1999, which was the 99th day of 1999. (99th day of 99 or 99th day of 999, depending how the date code works.) I'm not aware that there were any problems anywhere in the world regarding this date, although I would be interested to read about some, should anyone have any links.
Consequently my company was slightly bothered about 9999 (with good reason, it was used, and was fixed way back in 98), but isn't worried very much about 09/09/99.
We aren't that bothered about the millennium, really, either, but then again, we've been working on the problem since 1996. One thing that did concern us, though, was the supposedly compliant release of a major control application, while quite happily turning from 31/12/1999 to 01/01/2000, also went from 31/12/2000 to 02/01/2002. THAT was scary
Another problem which might be a concern for some people, is 29/02/2000, which is a valid date. Depending on how accurate the date code is in some applications, this date coud conceivably not be recognised.
A little anecdote for your amusement. I am not sure of its validity, but it's funny nonetheless:
A processor of peas decided to test their completely automated pea processing plant for Y2K compliance. They cranked the date on the system up to 31 Decembet 1999 and watched it roll over. They let it carry on for a week, just to make sure. No problems. Then they rolled the date back. Immediately, the waste peas (unprocessed peas that are over X hours old) increased to 100% of the total peas input into the system. It took a week to work out what the problem was.
They eventually found a kludgy bit of code in the 'goods-in' system which said 'If the today_date in the processing application is greater than the today_date in the goods-in application, increase the today_date in the goods-in application.' There was no corersponding code that dealt with a date discrepancy the other way round, so when the processing application was set back to 1999, the goods-in application remained in 2000.
Consequently, when the goods-in application did its calculations to work out how old the peas were (by comparing the today_date in the goods-in application with the barcoded date on the truck) it got confused about dates and routed the entire load to the waste bin.
Apparently it cost the company in question several hundred thousand pounds in waste goods, lost revenue and remediation.
>"Unix turned my hair into radioactive glowing snakes", as long as you're obviously joking.
So, presumably, there is a situation where the statement "Unix turned my hair into radioactive glowing snakes" could be taken as deadly serious? =)
/me ducks, and the radioactive glowing snakes on his head put on their asbestos hats.
Not in the UK, actually. It's a little bit hard to do, but it IS possible to find out who voted for whom.
:)
Each ballot paper has a number, and the number of that ballot paper is written against the name of the voter when s/he comes to vote. This is a way in which abuse of the voting system is prevented, but it IS possible for someone to find out that I voted Natural Law Party in the last election
I didn't! I didn't!
Richard
(On a a packet of nuts) Warning: This product contains nuts.
(On a microwave meal) Warning: This product may be hot after microwaving.
(On the underside of a cake box) Warning: Do not turn this product upside down.
I remember a line out of 'Priest' (good film, sexy Linus Roach and sexier Robert Carlisle
An example: I took my dog to the vet's yesterday (sick little doggy :( but getting better :) and was sitting in the waiting room with him on my lap, snoozing. Small child comes up and starts clapping his hands together (deliberately) about 18 inches from his snout (the dog's not the childs). Doggy is, naturally, unimpressed, and makes a very ominous growling sound in the back of his throat. Next thing I know, the little brat's mother is telling me that my dog is dangerous and it shouldn't be in public. Hello? This is a VETERINARY SURGERY? This is where you take dogs when they are ill and understandably not in their best humour? This is NOT the place where small, uncontrolled children run around frightening said sick dogs, right?
Ok, I'm ranting a little bit now
I'm glad I got that off my chest, I think I'll go and lie down, now.
Richard
rats... I was just looking for my latin grammar to write a comment like that one =)
roflmao
I tried for ages to sell my grandmother. Couldn't get anyone to buy her, even when I slashed the price by half and offered free cinema tickets.
My grandad was a bit put out with me, though.
Aaargh! A double heresy! Not only 'lego' pluralised with an 's', but also an abused apostrophe!
/me runs away, dodging flames.
I think that public perception is the issue here. We know that OSS products are better, and we know that Linux outperforms Microsoft operating systems on an ever-increasing number of fronts.
But regardless of what Microsoft thinks, I rather suspect that the only reason they are shouting about it from the rooftops is because of the current trials. If all was quiet on the monopolies front, I don't believe that Microsoft would be quite so quick to provide free advertising for its competitors. Quite the reverse.