Re:Why the emphasis on a polished desktop?
on
Ximian's Back
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· Score: 1
Can you tell me exactly what is wrong with X ?
Much has been made of the supposedly poor font handling of X. That is now pretty much a thing of the past, certainly under a decently-built recent distribution of Gnome and probably KDE. Font rendering is now (IMHO) vastly better than any I've seen on the recent WinXP boxes at my university, to the extent that I now find it quite hard to read text on the latter machines. Just goes to show how quickly we get spoiled...
That's more or less true, though some have apparently had trouble getting rid of that top panel. One thing that struck me, though, was in the first screenshot: a "My Computer" icon. WTF???!!!
Re:Looks deadly
on
Ximian's Back
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Let's just hope that it's low on resources, as well
It's not particularly low on resources compared to blackbox or whatever, but Gnome 2.2 still stacks up well compared to 1.4. I don't have exact figures to hand re. memory footprints, but it is definitely more responsive.
Can't say much about Ximian's implementation, though; since I abandoned RH and mdk distros some time ago and went back to Slackware, I've been using all these goodies in the excellent Dropline distribution of Gnome for a long time now.
What a great post. Actually, it brings to mind a teacher of mine (a very eminent violinist) who many years ago told me he didn't care about anybody copying his recordings. He saw them as "ephemeral children if the imagination" in one sense, but in other ways they have a profound effect on the way a musician develops.
Trouble is, if you buy a DVD or perhaps even a CD, sooner or later it's going to end up as a coaster either through nornal wear and tear or as a result of faulty manufacture and degradation. Common sense and decency dictates that you should be able to secure the content in case of this contingency, but the RIAA et al are neither sensible nor decent.
It seems to me that we've all heard a lot of noise from SCO, but I have yet to hear what they are claiming ownership to. Until they actually say what patents have been infringed and how, their claims are just hot air. If their claims have any validity, then why keep the details secret?
Surely if your break-in attempts went down, then that says more (to me) about whether your servers are worth breaking into. If you had mentioned successful attempts, that's another thing altogether, but I would think that unlikely. And I am not a Debian or Gentoo fan (I prefer Slackware).
Damn, I just re-read your post and realised I'm feeding a troll... Oh well: tough.
The plural in Latin of "virus" would be "viri". The gratuitous addition of "i"s is redundant, inefficient and just plain wrong. Since we mostly profess to speak English, there is nothing wrong with "viruses".
Does this mean only 600,000 XP users trust Windows Update?
Probably only 600,000 users actually bother to use the updates. I know any number of people who just use the software that came on their Win98 CDROM, it never even occurs to them to update their software. Like all the academics at my university using Netscape 4.7x with MacOS 9.1.
Here in Australia, I don't know of any ISP who offers uncapped traffic except at very much premium monthly rates. Mine only offers it between midnight and 6.00 am - otherwise I have to pay extra if I want >600 Mb, and that is a relatively generous allowance for this market.
Is there anybody who still runs a fingerd these days? I still have a.nofinger entry in my ~/ directory for historical reasons, but that is pretty much an artifact now.
Ideally you only install the operating system once
OK, but none of us live in an ideal world. The closest we can get is a world where we get everything installed and running, and then think "hey! I should have put this/that/theother on its own partition!".
It's by tearing down and re-building what we've done that we learn how Linux (or any OS, for that matter) works.
Funny, but it doesn't seem so long ago that I was using a 300 baud modem (about the same size as a cash register) and thought that was really cool.
Seriously, though: who is going to bother downloading muzack on to their cell phones? It's not like they have good enough sound reproduction to make it worthwhile.
Come on, guy. In your pockets at this moment you probably have three or four different devices (watch, PDA, phone, GPS, MP3 player, radio, camera, whatever)
Actually, this is what I have in my pockets at the moment:
2 tissues
wallet phone (Ericsson T65) ballpoint pen keys.
I really don't see why I have to carry around heaps of crap just to look cool.
those who make mead according to winemaking procedures (sufliting, acidifying, and generally chemical-ing), are doing their meads a grave disservice
Although I'm usually a proponent of the "don't fuck around with it" school, I've found that just leaving a mead to it's own devices produces something I can't drink. I don't have a sweet tooth, and the flavours I've had from a fermentation that has just stopped in its tracks leave me cold. I've done quite a lot of research on historical techniques for making mead, and there is some evidence that our forebears practiced techniques such as acidification.
You say it's its own beast: what do you have in mind? (I'm not trolling, this is serious stuff:-))
The idea of distilling mead came from a Macedonian neighbour, an apiarist, who once supplied me with 25 litres of quite unusual honey from a hive that didn't work out. The mead wasn't that great, but my neighbour, who does a fantastic slivovitz when the plums are on distilled the stuff, and it was just stunning. Oops, sorry, double entendre not intended:-)
Frankly, I don't really see the point. I use a phone to make phone calls. (Duh!) OK, I do use SMS a bit, too.
But let's face it, prodding at that kind of keypad with an index finger is not a convenient user interface. I use WAP quite rarely since it it's usually much more convenient to wait a little while until I have a moment to sit down at a proper computer.
Great - now my BSD box can catch up with my Slackware machines. Yippee! Dropline has done such a great job of packaging up Gnome on Slack that I've missed it on BSD. And yes, I know I could always build it myself, but I don't have the time to get it right.
The vote is printed on paper as a backup which every voter can verify
All that verifies is what you punched in. It does nothing to verify that there has been no skullduggery prior to announcement of the result. The counting of votes is supposed to be a public process.
There's a lot to be said for low-tech solutions to basic problems. Most "democratic" countries have aspects of their voting system which may arguably be described as baroque. But a simple paper trail of ballot-forms with marks in the appropriate boxes is still by far the best way to foster the people's trust in the system.
Well, it turns out the government doesn't have the source code
When I read that, I was stunned at the sheer stupidity of that. They're laying themselves open to all sorts of charges for breach of process.
One good thing (since I'm an Australian citizen) I didn't know before, however is that the electoral commission in ACT has provided the source to their voting system. Quite unusually enlightened for Australia. Here in Western Australia, e-voting hasn't been implemented, so I never thought to look...
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Much has been made of the supposedly poor font handling of X. That is now pretty much a thing of the past, certainly under a decently-built recent distribution of Gnome and probably KDE. Font rendering is now (IMHO) vastly better than any I've seen on the recent WinXP boxes at my university, to the extent that I now find it quite hard to read text on the latter machines. Just goes to show how quickly we get spoiled...
That's more or less true, though some have apparently had trouble getting rid of that top panel. One thing that struck me, though, was in the first screenshot: a "My Computer" icon. WTF???!!!
It's not particularly low on resources compared to blackbox or whatever, but Gnome 2.2 still stacks up well compared to 1.4. I don't have exact figures to hand re. memory footprints, but it is definitely more responsive.
Can't say much about Ximian's implementation, though; since I abandoned RH and mdk distros some time ago and went back to Slackware, I've been using all these goodies in the excellent Dropline distribution of Gnome for a long time now.
What a great post. Actually, it brings to mind a teacher of mine (a very eminent violinist) who many years ago told me he didn't care about anybody copying his recordings. He saw them as "ephemeral children if the imagination" in one sense, but in other ways they have a profound effect on the way a musician develops.
Trouble is, if you buy a DVD or perhaps even a CD, sooner or later it's going to end up as a coaster either through nornal wear and tear or as a result of faulty manufacture and degradation. Common sense and decency dictates that you should be able to secure the content in case of this contingency, but the RIAA et al are neither sensible nor decent.
What's a pantywaist? It sounds fun :-)
It seems to me that we've all heard a lot of noise from SCO, but I have yet to hear what they are claiming ownership to. Until they actually say what patents have been infringed and how, their claims are just hot air. If their claims have any validity, then why keep the details secret?
Damn, I just re-read your post and realised I'm feeding a troll... Oh well: tough.
Uhhh... wouldn't that just conduct heat to the region in question?
The plural in Latin of "virus" would be "viri". The gratuitous addition of "i"s is redundant, inefficient and just plain wrong. Since we mostly profess to speak English, there is nothing wrong with "viruses".
Does this mean only 600,000 XP users trust Windows Update?
Probably only 600,000 users actually bother to use the updates. I know any number of people who just use the software that came on their Win98 CDROM, it never even occurs to them to update their software. Like all the academics at my university using Netscape 4.7x with MacOS 9.1.
Here in Australia, I don't know of any ISP who offers uncapped traffic except at very much premium monthly rates. Mine only offers it between midnight and 6.00 am - otherwise I have to pay extra if I want >600 Mb, and that is a relatively generous allowance for this market.
I know, I tried to explain to my wife that a megahertz is 1,048,576 times as painful as a stubbed toe the other day, but she didn't buy it...
I guess it will if they never get started.
Excellent post :-)
Is there anybody who still runs a fingerd these days? I still have a .nofinger entry in my ~/ directory for historical reasons, but that is pretty much an artifact now.
OK, but none of us live in an ideal world. The closest we can get is a world where we get everything installed and running, and then think "hey! I should have put this/that/theother on its own partition!".
It's by tearing down and re-building what we've done that we learn how Linux (or any OS, for that matter) works.
Seriously, though: who is going to bother downloading muzack on to their cell phones? It's not like they have good enough sound reproduction to make it worthwhile.
Actually, this is what I have in my pockets at the moment:
wallet
phone (Ericsson T65)
ballpoint pen
keys.
I really don't see why I have to carry around heaps of crap just to look cool.
Although I'm usually a proponent of the "don't fuck around with it" school, I've found that just leaving a mead to it's own devices produces something I can't drink. I don't have a sweet tooth, and the flavours I've had from a fermentation that has just stopped in its tracks leave me cold. I've done quite a lot of research on historical techniques for making mead, and there is some evidence that our forebears practiced techniques such as acidification.
You say it's its own beast: what do you have in mind? (I'm not trolling, this is serious stuff :-))
The idea of distilling mead came from a Macedonian neighbour, an apiarist, who once supplied me with 25 litres of quite unusual honey from a hive that didn't work out. The mead wasn't that great, but my neighbour, who does a fantastic slivovitz when the plums are on distilled the stuff, and it was just stunning. Oops, sorry, double entendre not intended :-)
But let's face it, prodding at that kind of keypad with an index finger is not a convenient user interface. I use WAP quite rarely since it it's usually much more convenient to wait a little while until I have a moment to sit down at a proper computer.
Great - now my BSD box can catch up with my Slackware machines. Yippee! Dropline has done such a great job of packaging up Gnome on Slack that I've missed it on BSD. And yes, I know I could always build it myself, but I don't have the time to get it right.
All that verifies is what you punched in. It does nothing to verify that there has been no skullduggery prior to announcement of the result. The counting of votes is supposed to be a public process.
There's a lot to be said for low-tech solutions to basic problems. Most "democratic" countries have aspects of their voting system which may arguably be described as baroque. But a simple paper trail of ballot-forms with marks in the appropriate boxes is still by far the best way to foster the people's trust in the system.
When I read that, I was stunned at the sheer stupidity of that. They're laying themselves open to all sorts of charges for breach of process.
One good thing (since I'm an Australian citizen) I didn't know before, however is that the electoral commission in ACT has provided the source to their voting system. Quite unusually enlightened for Australia. Here in Western Australia, e-voting hasn't been implemented, so I never thought to look...