Geeez! The little, almost insignificant media company, The New York Times, is slashdotted. I sure glad that huge company Slashdot can handle peak loads well. One day even the NYT will be able to afford a server like Slashdot's.
Great! Read my earlier post about this. Note that Mozilla and Opera operate the same, if Opera works as you say.
I haven't been able to figure out how to get Opera to open multiple windows, and therefore assumed it didn't. Could you explain how?
Note that the mail client in Mozilla is able to compose HTML. It's good, clean HTML, without the junk inserted by MS Word or MS Frontpage. The Opera mail client does not support HMTL composition.
As I write this, I have Opera open with 29 tabs (research on web hosting providers), and 6 windows of Mozilla with a total of 17 tabs (research in other areas). Both browsers are excellent.
I didn't know about dragging and dropping tabs in Opera, because I didn't know about the possibility of more than one window.
What is the reason that Linus does not want to make the change? Probably the
fundamental reason is that he is trying not to over-commit his brainpower.
Linus has already agreed to the change in principle. The logic for the change
is unassailable. This is not a technical problem.
It seems to be a social problem. Consider this: To do the job right, there
must be a flag day. But flag days require a huge peak of mental effort from
Linus. He knows, from past experience, that they are painful and disruptive of
his inner balance. So, he is trying to maintain balance. Only this. Who is the
villain here? No one, absolutely no one.
If this theory is correct, putting social pressure on Linus may get him to
agree. However, pressure may increase the overall stress in his life. Every
project needs a coordinator who can think calmly and thoroughly. Increasing
the stress takes him in the opposite direction. So, the end result would be
that Linux as a whole would suffer.
Usually social problems require social solutions. A solution would be to find
a method of organization that removes some of the demand for Linus to think.
If someone works at 80% of his thinking capacity, he or she can accept a
temporary peak effort. But at 98% of capacity an increase in demand can be
health threatening, even if a change would make things easier later.
We all know that Linus has been doing all of his adult life. He hasn't had the
enormous amount of time it takes to explore his inner reality. On some level
he experiences extra demands on his brainpower as overload; he is just not an
expert at communicating that; instead he gives technical reasons. He seems not
be an expert in thinking about the solutions for overload. He seems not to be
an expert in organization.
The solution is not to go to Linus with demands. Demands increase the need for
him to think. Instead, go to him with solutions. Go to him not with solutions
that are good for Linux, but solutions that are good for Linus. Linus is
already overloaded; you cannot expect him to find those solutions himself.
There are larger efforts than Linux, for example, a large corporation like IBM
or a national government. How do they cope with the huge amount of mental
effort necessary? Through greater organization. If someone else besides Linus
can finish the thinking about this, it is possible that the solution can be
adopted.
Linus has been an excellent leader in a world that often suffers from lack of
good leadership. How can things be arranged so that Linux has the benefit of
his ability, but the work does not overload him? That's the tough question
that will require considerable thinking. If the thinking is not done, the
answers are very unlikely to be found.
Another thought. You have come to Slashdot, which is known for its excellent
technical discussions (and for its comments by people who only want to trash
discussions). This may not be the best forum to discuss a social problem.
When I read your message, I happened to have 6 instances of Mozilla with a total of 17 tabs running under Windows XP. (Don't hassle me about this; I have to support my customers, and I am wrestling with the bugs and insufficiencies in XP.)
I added a bookmark in one of the instances and then started a 7th instance of Mozilla. The bookmark was still there, and the history was there too. So maybe the bug you have found is specific to your situation in some way.
I've been following the sociology of Linux to some degree.
Linus Torvalds is a brilliant human being, but he doesn't know everything, and
no one does. Everyone seems happy with his technical knowledge. However, he
doesn't seem as capable of thinking creatively about the sociological issues,
such as "How do we make the next transition." It seems to me that there is
some need for organization or re-organization of the Linux effort. But what
should that be?
Linux is a world-wide phenomenon. It is one of the most beautiful things
happening in the world today, in my opinion. Arguably, governments should use
open source, free software, because proprietary software hides some government
activities from citizens, or puts an understanding of government operations
beyond citizen's financial reach. Possibly Linux will become the backbone that
runs all the world's governments.
It is reasonable to suppose that Linux has grown to the point where there is a
need for additional infrastructure to take some load off Linus' huge, but not
infinite, mental capacity? If so, how do we think about that? Who will think
about that? Who will finish the thinking, rather than just provide
disconnected ideas?
Linux is not about money, but maybe there are times when money would help. Is
it possible that a management fund would be useful? If so, I would be proud to
donate $100, or more.
Are there efforts that are not suitable for volunteers? Is it possible that a
few employees, under the direction of Linus, could help accomplish clerical
tasks?
I'm not qualified to know the answer, but maybe I am qualified to play a
miniscule role in asking some initial questions.
Opera is not nearly as good. Apparently, you can start only one instance of Opera. You can start several instances of Mozilla. Each instance can have several tabs. You can save all the tabs in an instance in one bookmark (group bookmarking). That is an extremely useful feature.
For example, suppose you are doing research on backup systems. You may load 10 or 20 tabs that show backup software reviews and manufacturer web pages. You can save them all and shut down your system. Ten days and many other research projects later, you can bring the backup research pages back by loading that bookmark.
You can save multiple Opera windows to a file, but the interface is quirky, and the system is not nearly as useful.
Here's how one person uses group bookmarks:
When you have several tabs open, go to Bookmarks|File Bookmark... and check the box that says "file as group". Name your bookmark, and each time you open that bookmark all the tabs you had open will reopen. You can even later add bookmarks to the group as if it were a folder. I love that to read my daily comics I don't have to select endless bookmarks or cycle through a list, I just click on the item labeled "Comix" and a dozen tabs open up.
One last note. Moderators may not reply to stories they moderate, so they
often only moderate stories in which they have little interest. Because of
that, moderators often don't follow the entire discussion threads closely.
Therefore, it is probably necessary to explain that this discussion of Bill
Gate's charity is VERY much on topic.
The true philanthropists are those who contributed to Mozilla, and those
who contribute to other open source projects.
Someone who annoys the whole world with buggy software, so that he can make
money, is not a true philanthropist. It matters little if he gives a small
part of that money to a worthy cause.
If Bill Gates wants to be charitable, why doesn't he fix the bugs in Windows
XP, and in Internet Explorer (17 and
counting)?
The bugs and deliberate shortcomings in Windows XP are causing me lots of
grief now, so I'm particularly aware of them. (I have to support my
customers.) I haven't been able to find anyone associated with Microsoft who
seems interested in fixing them.
Quite likely the bugs are not fixed because some secret agency of the U.S.
government like the CIA or the FBI or the NSA wants the bugs. That may be the
reason that the government is giving Microsoft such a sweet deal after the
company was found guilty of breaking federal
law.
The people who own computers are usually the leaders of any society. The huge
number of bugs and deliberate insufficiencies slow us in our work. Making a
good product would be the best charity for the whole world.
Giving free copies of Windows to people who would not otherwise buy them is
cheap charity. (It's just one CD, and their group is allowed to make copies.
The cost is in supervising the program.) Also, remember that they are expected
to pay normally for upgrades.
Maybe the free software is donated to groups whom the U.S. government wants to
watch. It's possible that the U.S. taxpayer supports what the Gates
Foundations are doing, not Bill Gates or his father or wife. That is
definitely the kind of sneaky behavior in which the U.S. government has
engaged in the past. For evidence of this see What should be the response to
violence?.
Anyhow, often rich people give money because they want to feel superior, and
like to tinker with other people's lives. Don't look only at how much money is
spent; look at the effect of the money. Many times a charitable project is,
effectively, merely a method of advancing a rich person's hidden agenda.
Do you think that, in some other area of his life, Bill Gates is a nice guy? I
don't think it ever works that way. I'm sympathetic to the troubles he has had
in his life, but not accepting of his abuse.
Maybe Bill Gates will have an attack of kindness and decide to spend one of Microsoft's 40 billion on fixing all the bugs in Windows XP..... Nah, probably won't happen.
People, and societies, are slow to defend themselves from abusiveness. Now it finally looks like there will be some effective defense.
I'm very happy with the letter to the OMB. It seems that it will help everyone begin thinking reasonably.
People are saying good things about Open Office. Version 1.0 was just released. Remember that the history of the source code is that it has already been through 4 or 5 major releases.
The lack of a good Office Suite has been a barrier to moving away from Micro$oft Turd ^H^H^H^H^H^H Word.
Governments have a duty not to use proprietary file formats. Governments have a duty not to allow themselves to be locked into an abusive company's money-making schemes.
"... while simultaneous wondering about the ability of a switched psu to properly drive a tube amplification stage cleanly."
This shows ignorance of electronics. (No problem, everyone is ignorant of something.) If "psu" means "power supply unit", there is no problem. Switched power supplies output constant DC that is indistinguishable from the DC from transformer-rectifier-capacitor supplies, if both are regulated equally well.
The old style supplies sometimes had huge capacitors that would provide energy for peaks in the output of power amplifiers. Switched power supplies could use huge capacitors for the same purpose, but in practice it is easier just to design the supply so it can provide all the power needed for the peaks.
Use a two-phase query system. The main network generates a request for CC #s, and that request is passed on to the CC number storing machine, using a serial cable with the two receive lines cut. The CC number machine answers the query and writes encrypted results to a re-writeable CD. Twice a day someone puts the CD in a computer connected to the main network and runs a program that checks that the results are reasonable. If they are, that computer puts the results in a shared directory. Then someone runs the program that uses the CC #s.
Maybe this is not the best system that can be designed, but something can be designed so that there is no networking connection between the CC number storing computer and the CC number using computer.
If someone breaks in to the main system, they get a maximum of only the CCs being processed that day.
An important feature of any security system is also to make the system difficult to hack from inside.
"Thank god the industry shut them down... now that piracy has been
stopped they can all sleep much better."
Remember what happened when Carnegie endowed thousands of libraries across the
United States? Well, people could then get their books free! And the obvious
thing happened: The book publishing industry never sold another book, except
to libraries.
Not!
Then there was that second socially destructive technological advance, TV.
Once people could get their entertainment at home, and without paying extra,
the movie industry almost completely disappeared, except for sales to TV
broadcasters.
Not!
Well, the movie industry was already dead, of course, but another
technological advance, the VCR, killed it again. When people found that they
could record perfectly good movies on video tape, they stopped paying for
movies! It was completely logical and understandable that this would happen.
Not!
The fact is, no one completely understands the issues surrounding intellectual
property. We can't write a good law if we don't understand. Someone must sit
down and do the thinking, and the thinking hasn't been finished.
The music industry is so abusive that I tend to stay away from music. I find
that, when I have access to free music (tapes and CDs from the library), I
become interested in a particular type of music and buy more, not less. Maybe
there are a lot of people like me, because, during the height of Napster, the
U.S. music industry had its best year.
Slashdot Mirror
Geeez! The little, almost insignificant media company, The New York Times, is slashdotted. I sure glad that huge company Slashdot can handle peak loads well. One day even the NYT will be able to afford a server like Slashdot's.
More and more, the ignorant people are taking control of the internet.
Great! Read my earlier post about this. Note that Mozilla and Opera operate the same, if Opera works as you say.
I haven't been able to figure out how to get Opera to open multiple windows, and therefore assumed it didn't. Could you explain how?
Note that the mail client in Mozilla is able to compose HTML. It's good, clean HTML, without the junk inserted by MS Word or MS Frontpage. The Opera mail client does not support HMTL composition.
As I write this, I have Opera open with 29 tabs (research on web hosting providers), and 6 windows of Mozilla with a total of 17 tabs (research in other areas). Both browsers are excellent.
I didn't know about dragging and dropping tabs in Opera, because I didn't know about the possibility of more than one window.
What is the reason that Linus does not want to make the change? Probably the fundamental reason is that he is trying not to over-commit his brainpower.
Linus has already agreed to the change in principle. The logic for the change is unassailable. This is not a technical problem.
It seems to be a social problem. Consider this: To do the job right, there must be a flag day. But flag days require a huge peak of mental effort from Linus. He knows, from past experience, that they are painful and disruptive of his inner balance. So, he is trying to maintain balance. Only this. Who is the villain here? No one, absolutely no one.
If this theory is correct, putting social pressure on Linus may get him to agree. However, pressure may increase the overall stress in his life. Every project needs a coordinator who can think calmly and thoroughly. Increasing the stress takes him in the opposite direction. So, the end result would be that Linux as a whole would suffer.
Usually social problems require social solutions. A solution would be to find a method of organization that removes some of the demand for Linus to think.
If someone works at 80% of his thinking capacity, he or she can accept a temporary peak effort. But at 98% of capacity an increase in demand can be health threatening, even if a change would make things easier later.
We all know that Linus has been doing all of his adult life. He hasn't had the enormous amount of time it takes to explore his inner reality. On some level he experiences extra demands on his brainpower as overload; he is just not an expert at communicating that; instead he gives technical reasons. He seems not be an expert in thinking about the solutions for overload. He seems not to be an expert in organization.
The solution is not to go to Linus with demands. Demands increase the need for him to think. Instead, go to him with solutions. Go to him not with solutions that are good for Linux, but solutions that are good for Linus. Linus is already overloaded; you cannot expect him to find those solutions himself.
There are larger efforts than Linux, for example, a large corporation like IBM or a national government. How do they cope with the huge amount of mental effort necessary? Through greater organization. If someone else besides Linus can finish the thinking about this, it is possible that the solution can be adopted.
Linus has been an excellent leader in a world that often suffers from lack of good leadership. How can things be arranged so that Linux has the benefit of his ability, but the work does not overload him? That's the tough question that will require considerable thinking. If the thinking is not done, the answers are very unlikely to be found.
My earlier post began about where this one ends: How do we think about the next step? (#3656926).
Another thought. You have come to Slashdot, which is known for its excellent technical discussions (and for its comments by people who only want to trash discussions). This may not be the best forum to discuss a social problem.
You are right! There are 6 Mozilla icons in the taskbar, but only 1 Mozilla.exe in the processes list.
But that's slicker than I thought! Less memory usage that way. I think Mozilla is a lot better than most people have yet come to realize.
I wasn't being defensive about Windows XP. I was saving a lot of people the bother of posting their complaints. *grin*
When I read your message, I happened to have 6 instances of Mozilla with a total of 17 tabs running under Windows XP. (Don't hassle me about this; I have to support my customers, and I am wrestling with the bugs and insufficiencies in XP.)
I added a bookmark in one of the instances and then started a 7th instance of Mozilla. The bookmark was still there, and the history was there too. So maybe the bug you have found is specific to your situation in some way.
I've been following the sociology of Linux to some degree.
Linus Torvalds is a brilliant human being, but he doesn't know everything, and no one does. Everyone seems happy with his technical knowledge. However, he doesn't seem as capable of thinking creatively about the sociological issues, such as "How do we make the next transition." It seems to me that there is some need for organization or re-organization of the Linux effort. But what should that be?
Linux is a world-wide phenomenon. It is one of the most beautiful things happening in the world today, in my opinion. Arguably, governments should use open source, free software, because proprietary software hides some government activities from citizens, or puts an understanding of government operations beyond citizen's financial reach. Possibly Linux will become the backbone that runs all the world's governments.
It is reasonable to suppose that Linux has grown to the point where there is a need for additional infrastructure to take some load off Linus' huge, but not infinite, mental capacity? If so, how do we think about that? Who will think about that? Who will finish the thinking, rather than just provide disconnected ideas?
Linux is not about money, but maybe there are times when money would help. Is it possible that a management fund would be useful? If so, I would be proud to donate $100, or more.
Are there efforts that are not suitable for volunteers? Is it possible that a few employees, under the direction of Linus, could help accomplish clerical tasks?
I'm not qualified to know the answer, but maybe I am qualified to play a miniscule role in asking some initial questions.
Opera is not nearly as good. Apparently, you can start only one instance of Opera. You can start several instances of Mozilla. Each instance can have several tabs. You can save all the tabs in an instance in one bookmark (group bookmarking). That is an extremely useful feature.
For example, suppose you are doing research on backup systems. You may load 10 or 20 tabs that show backup software reviews and manufacturer web pages. You can save them all and shut down your system. Ten days and many other research projects later, you can bring the backup research pages back by loading that bookmark.
You can save multiple Opera windows to a file, but the interface is quirky, and the system is not nearly as useful.
Here's how one person uses group bookmarks:
When you have several tabs open, go to Bookmarks|File Bookmark... and check the box that says "file as group". Name your bookmark, and each time you open that bookmark all the tabs you had open will reopen. You can even later add bookmarks to the group as if it were a folder. I love that to read my daily comics I don't have to select endless bookmarks or cycle through a list, I just click on the item labeled "Comix" and a dozen tabs open up.
Definitely DOA. That was an amazing First Post. Not only was it on topic, but it finished the discussion nicely.
I don't agree that it could be successful. It's tape! Gaaack!
I agree that there is a need for more definition. I'm sure the other DivX people, the DivX
One last note. Moderators may not reply to stories they moderate, so they often only moderate stories in which they have little interest. Because of that, moderators often don't follow the entire discussion threads closely.
Therefore, it is probably necessary to explain that this discussion of Bill Gate's charity is VERY much on topic.
The true philanthropists are those who contributed to Mozilla, and those who contribute to other open source projects.
Someone who annoys the whole world with buggy software, so that he can make money, is not a true philanthropist. It matters little if he gives a small part of that money to a worthy cause.
If Bill Gates wants to be charitable, why doesn't he fix the bugs in Windows XP, and in Internet Explorer (17 and counting)?
The bugs and deliberate shortcomings in Windows XP are causing me lots of grief now, so I'm particularly aware of them. (I have to support my customers.) I haven't been able to find anyone associated with Microsoft who seems interested in fixing them.
Quite likely the bugs are not fixed because some secret agency of the U.S. government like the CIA or the FBI or the NSA wants the bugs. That may be the reason that the government is giving Microsoft such a sweet deal after the company was found guilty of breaking federal law.
The people who own computers are usually the leaders of any society. The huge number of bugs and deliberate insufficiencies slow us in our work. Making a good product would be the best charity for the whole world.
Giving free copies of Windows to people who would not otherwise buy them is cheap charity. (It's just one CD, and their group is allowed to make copies. The cost is in supervising the program.) Also, remember that they are expected to pay normally for upgrades.
Maybe the free software is donated to groups whom the U.S. government wants to watch. It's possible that the U.S. taxpayer supports what the Gates Foundations are doing, not Bill Gates or his father or wife. That is definitely the kind of sneaky behavior in which the U.S. government has engaged in the past. For evidence of this see What should be the response to violence? .
Anyhow, often rich people give money because they want to feel superior, and like to tinker with other people's lives. Don't look only at how much money is spent; look at the effect of the money. Many times a charitable project is, effectively, merely a method of advancing a rich person's hidden agenda.
Do you think that, in some other area of his life, Bill Gates is a nice guy? I don't think it ever works that way. I'm sympathetic to the troubles he has had in his life, but not accepting of his abuse.
Maybe Bill Gates will have an attack of kindness and decide to spend one of Microsoft's 40 billion on fixing all the bugs in Windows XP. .... Nah, probably won't happen.
Yes, but those Moz people have plenty of money. You can't expect poor old Microsoft to keep up.
Microsoft abusiveness has so affected my life that I will be very happy when I can be Microsoft free.
In a well-designed system, this should not be true. Switching power supplies switch at 100,000 Hz typically, or above.
It is important that the high-power system be isolated from the low-level signals.
People, and societies, are slow to defend themselves from abusiveness. Now it finally looks like there will be some effective defense.
I'm very happy with the letter to the OMB. It seems that it will help everyone begin thinking reasonably.
People are saying good things about Open Office. Version 1.0 was just released. Remember that the history of the source code is that it has already been through 4 or 5 major releases.
The lack of a good Office Suite has been a barrier to moving away from Micro$oft Turd ^H^H^H^H^H^H Word.
Governments have a duty not to use proprietary file formats. Governments have a duty not to allow themselves to be locked into an abusive company's money-making schemes.
The true story of "the sky is falling". Not only is the sky falling, everything else is, also.
It all seems like a big joke to me.
It goes with 100 to 1 data compression and electronic super cooling.
There are people who like science, but don't particularly want to know anything about it.
"... while simultaneous wondering about the ability of a switched psu to properly drive a tube amplification stage cleanly."
This shows ignorance of electronics. (No problem, everyone is ignorant of something.) If "psu" means "power supply unit", there is no problem. Switched power supplies output constant DC that is indistinguishable from the DC from transformer-rectifier-capacitor supplies, if both are regulated equally well.
The old style supplies sometimes had huge capacitors that would provide energy for peaks in the output of power amplifiers. Switched power supplies could use huge capacitors for the same purpose, but in practice it is easier just to design the supply so it can provide all the power needed for the peaks.
A problem with using a diskette for both transfers is that it would delay transferring the CC data off the main computer.
Excellent solution.
I agree. Mod the parent up.
Use a two-phase query system. The main network generates a request for CC #s, and that request is passed on to the CC number storing machine, using a serial cable with the two receive lines cut. The CC number machine answers the query and writes encrypted results to a re-writeable CD. Twice a day someone puts the CD in a computer connected to the main network and runs a program that checks that the results are reasonable. If they are, that computer puts the results in a shared directory. Then someone runs the program that uses the CC #s.
Maybe this is not the best system that can be designed, but something can be designed so that there is no networking connection between the CC number storing computer and the CC number using computer.
If someone breaks in to the main system, they get a maximum of only the CCs being processed that day.
An important feature of any security system is also to make the system difficult to hack from inside.
"Thank god the industry shut them down... now that piracy has been stopped they can all sleep much better."
Remember what happened when Carnegie endowed thousands of libraries across the United States? Well, people could then get their books free! And the obvious thing happened: The book publishing industry never sold another book, except to libraries.
Not!
Then there was that second socially destructive technological advance, TV. Once people could get their entertainment at home, and without paying extra, the movie industry almost completely disappeared, except for sales to TV broadcasters.
Not!
Well, the movie industry was already dead, of course, but another technological advance, the VCR, killed it again. When people found that they could record perfectly good movies on video tape, they stopped paying for movies! It was completely logical and understandable that this would happen.
Not!
The fact is, no one completely understands the issues surrounding intellectual property. We can't write a good law if we don't understand. Someone must sit down and do the thinking, and the thinking hasn't been finished.
The music industry is so abusive that I tend to stay away from music. I find that, when I have access to free music (tapes and CDs from the library), I become interested in a particular type of music and buy more, not less. Maybe there are a lot of people like me, because, during the height of Napster, the U.S. music industry had its best year.
The article says "Asprin", but the word is "aspirin".
Exactly! Every democratic government has a duty to use open file formats.