I never did get around to reading that before. Now I have, and I'm struck by the last line in the foreword you quote:
"As for me? I switched to the Mac. No more grep, no more piping, no more SED scripts."
I'm using a Mac right now, almost entirely because underneath all the shiny widgets, I can pull up a terminal window with the shell of my choice (zsh of course; but bash, csh, ksh, sh and tcsh are available straight out of the box) and still use sed, awk, pipes and all those other useful toys to get my work done easily.
Curiously, I came to unix comparatively late (early '90s), since until that time I had worked with a multitude of different systems ranging from "Big-Iron" CDC Cyber and Sperry/Univac mainframes right down to little Honeywell DPS6 and Prime systems.
I recognise that developers are always up against people who are resistant to change.
However, in this case some things are a definite improvement for the worse. A case in point that I found straight away is that it is now really hard for a logged-in user to keep track of replies to his comments. Clicking on the comment in in your summary page delivers you at the beginning of the thread, and you have to repeatedly click to get to your own comment and view replies.
The earlier design (Classic or not) led you instantly to replies to your posts. Seems to me that the new interface was implemented with minimal testing. Leaving an option to return to the "Classic" viewing mode can't be that costly, and it at least leaves the user with options.
Another very major failing is that there is still no recognition of basic HTML tags like subscript or superscript in posts. Given that this site is nominally directed at nerds, that is just not good enough. If Slashdot really wants to follow the path of form before content, there should at least be an explanation.
Alternatively, if you don't like the new interface, you could go into your/. preferences and change the interface to "Classic". After all, that dynamic content does nothing to improve the content.
I have no problem believing your claim about your MacBook overheating when gaming. I've never had such an extreme case, but the heaviest loading I give my machines is with big compiles, since gaming doesn't rock my boat. But I have noticed the machines getting a bit warm, so it's probably true to say the machines are designed more with form in mind than function.
I am interested in your claim regarding functionality of iPods. It's highly likely that my simplistic brain has failed to appreciate the offerings of other devices, but (IMHO) the iPod Classic user interface is hard to beat for sheer elegance and simplicity. I would be interested to hear an alternative viewpoint on this. But as far as cost is concerned, every time I've had occasion to be in the market for an mp3 player, the Apple products have happened to offer much more physical storage for the buck than any credibly functional alternative.
Back in the days when my karma showed up as a number, it was actually more interesting when it took a hit and dipped below the 50-point cap. Any mug can go through life without making enemies, but being able to contribute something that a minority of readers really hate makes it all a bit more fun.
Since then, my karma has shown up as "excellent" for so long, it actually took me a couple of months to realise that my blocking of ads from Slashdot had become redundant.
Visa or Mastercard debit cards have all the same safeguards as their credit cards. The only difference is that you are spending your own money rather than your bank's.
Most websites will not accept the normal type of debit card that you can only use through ATMs or EFTPOS.
This is true, and it wouldn't work for me. I've more or less considered myself to be primarily a Linux user since about '96 or so, but over the last 4 years I've spent a lot of my more productive time using hand-me-down Mac laptops, and I've come to actually like them, despite my discontent with Apple's arrogant and punitive business model.
So I guess I'm a fan of some of their hardware (laptops and iPods) without ever being in danger of becoming a fanboy.
Apart from the software that comes with the machines, I use FOSS almost exclusively. The only application I actually paid (a negligible amount) for is the tiny but (to me) useful Audiobook Builder, which I use probably twice a week. I know the function can be replicated via various GPL utilities, but the application is so convenient, I don't begrudge the small payment for someone's work.
...they are still a very lean company with not a lot of employees for the revenue they produce.
I guess that's fairly easy to say about a company that sub-contracts Chinese companies that employ thousands of workers on wages and conditions so poor that the companies need to create physical barriers to prevent their workers from committing suicide.
I know Jobs hasn't yet had the courtesy to shuffle off this mortal coil, but there has to be some more pithy epitaph than that. Something along the lines of:
What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is much to be said
For being dead.
That can only be done if you can guarantee people will standardise the way they store medications. I'm pretty sure most people just stash them in a bedside drawer or bathroom cabinet.
Fine if you have an unheated house at the North Pole, but for (say) me, living in a climate where temperatures are typically well over 30 deg. C for 6 months of the year, it's a different story.
for not thinking of using screws that require a screwdriver nearly nobody has.
Good luck with that. I used to be a blacksmith, and I still have all my tools. If someone can produce an intact example of one of these delightful screws, I'll bet I can produce a screwdriver for it.
Hell, it might even be worth my while selling them. It might be fun to watch their lawyers try to serve me a court order while trying not to get their kneecaps bashed in with a 10-pound hammer.
I'm curious to hear what your definition of porn is.
That's actually an interesting question.
So much porn is, well, artificial and not really very arousing [for me]. However, "erotica" in its various forms (without necessarily being particularly explicit) can be quite beautiful, without being sleazy.
So many really good authors have published works through Playboy (D.M. Thomas, Thomas Pyncheon to name just two), I'm inclined to encourage this, despite the fact that I have never actually looked at the magazine. (For the record, I have nothing against looking at pictures of naked ladies...)
Does the public census data give that level of detail?
That's sort of my point. The census bods collect all sorts of information about residents, but they aren't supposed to make it accessible to commercial concerns.
But if only 1/20 of the profiles are from people who actually registered with the site...
Sure, populating such a database from scraped data from facebook etc is tacky and unethical. But my attention is drawn to a mention in the submission of census data.
Last time I looked, the Australian Bureau of Statistics didn't release data collected about identifiable individuals. Have they suddenly changed that policy, and if so, why?
enjoy the rose colored glasses while they last. seriously, the myth that love exists is far better than the reality.
Well, I guess that depends on your perspective. My rose coloured glasses got stomped on decades ago, and I never did find a pair of those Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses.
But I have been married for some 25 years, and the young lust has matured into a more sedate companionship, but that doesn't mean it's not love.
But getting back to the point, my wife might be kind of amused if I suddenly started getting offers from gay men, since there was a time when we were first dating (and I was a lot skinnier than I am now), when I quite frequently got my bum pinched by gay men.
Don't count on it. The statistic is very much dependent on location: in my street (inner city Perth, WA), my own household and those of a handful of older residents are very much in a hetero minority. It doesn't bother me in the slightest, since the gay/lesbian crowd tend to be perfectly considerate and congenenial.
Re:Making it just as heavy as Gnome and KDE now?
on
Xfce 4.8 Released
·
· Score: 2
I'm still hanging on my KDE 3.5.10, but who knows? I might consider Xfce instead of GNOME in the long run.
There's nothing that says you have to run one or the other if you want a fully-featured desktop environment. You can cherry-pick the features you want. For instance, I run compiz-fusion wirh Emerald, use various panels according to how I feel about them, but use Nautilus to draw my desktop. Easy enough on Arch Linux, and probably at least as easy on some of the more popular distros.
it's already clear Linux users are almost exclusively spec their boxes with nVidia cards just because nVidia drivers suck less than the stuff from the competition.
So what's wrong with that?
I've been using nVidia GPUs on my Linux boxes since about 1997 because they are (or at least were) simply the best. I have bitter memories of battling to get a recalcitrant SiS GPU to work on Linux in 1995-6, and giving up in disgust. The nVidia cards have always worked out of the box, and I have never yet had to replace one except when upgraded motherboards no longer have the requisite holes.
The fact that nVidia has continued to provide drivers for the Linux kernel, in the face of all those other manufacturers who assume that everyone runs Windows counts for a lot to me. It doesn't really matter that their drivers are proprietary. It's more important that nVidia have not chosen to desert a minority userbase.
Slashdot Mirror
"Do you experience this much joy when a US Apache helicopter crashes before it has the opportunity to kill Iraqi civilians?"
Sure. Why not? Just because you might think God is on your side, that doesn't mean anyone else agrees.
OT: Why oh why does the new version of Slashdot have to break a simple thing like the HTML italic tag?
However, if the story is at all true, it leads to the usual conclusion:
If you (the bomber's handler) want something done properly, you just have to do it yourself.
"Unix was prosaic; Multics remained exotic."
Only up to a point: Many Unnecessarily Large Tables In Core Simultaneously.
I never did get around to reading that before. Now I have, and I'm struck by the last line in the foreword you quote:
"As for me? I switched to the Mac. No more grep, no more piping, no more SED scripts."
I'm using a Mac right now, almost entirely because underneath all the shiny widgets, I can pull up a terminal window with the shell of my choice (zsh of course; but bash, csh, ksh, sh and tcsh are available straight out of the box) and still use sed, awk, pipes and all those other useful toys to get my work done easily.
Curiously, I came to unix comparatively late (early '90s), since until that time I had worked with a multitude of different systems ranging from "Big-Iron" CDC Cyber and Sperry/Univac mainframes right down to little Honeywell DPS6 and Prime systems.
I recognise that developers are always up against people who are resistant to change.
However, in this case some things are a definite improvement for the worse. A case in point that I found straight away is that it is now really hard for a logged-in user to keep track of replies to his comments. Clicking on the comment in in your summary page delivers you at the beginning of the thread, and you have to repeatedly click to get to your own comment and view replies.
The earlier design (Classic or not) led you instantly to replies to your posts. Seems to me that the new interface was implemented with minimal testing. Leaving an option to return to the "Classic" viewing mode can't be that costly, and it at least leaves the user with options.
Another very major failing is that there is still no recognition of basic HTML tags like subscript or superscript in posts. Given that this site is nominally directed at nerds, that is just not good enough. If Slashdot really wants to follow the path of form before content, there should at least be an explanation.
Alternatively, if you don't like the new interface, you could go into your /. preferences and change the interface to "Classic". After all, that dynamic content does nothing to improve the content.
I have no problem believing your claim about your MacBook overheating when gaming. I've never had such an extreme case, but the heaviest loading I give my machines is with big compiles, since gaming doesn't rock my boat. But I have noticed the machines getting a bit warm, so it's probably true to say the machines are designed more with form in mind than function.
I am interested in your claim regarding functionality of iPods. It's highly likely that my simplistic brain has failed to appreciate the offerings of other devices, but (IMHO) the iPod Classic user interface is hard to beat for sheer elegance and simplicity. I would be interested to hear an alternative viewpoint on this. But as far as cost is concerned, every time I've had occasion to be in the market for an mp3 player, the Apple products have happened to offer much more physical storage for the buck than any credibly functional alternative.
Back in the days when my karma showed up as a number, it was actually more interesting when it took a hit and dipped below the 50-point cap. Any mug can go through life without making enemies, but being able to contribute something that a minority of readers really hate makes it all a bit more fun.
Since then, my karma has shown up as "excellent" for so long, it actually took me a couple of months to realise that my blocking of ads from Slashdot had become redundant.
And that is why you never use a debit card.
Visa or Mastercard debit cards have all the same safeguards as their credit cards. The only difference is that you are spending your own money rather than your bank's.
Most websites will not accept the normal type of debit card that you can only use through ATMs or EFTPOS.
It's a nice way to ensure you get locked in.
This is true, and it wouldn't work for me. I've more or less considered myself to be primarily a Linux user since about '96 or so, but over the last 4 years I've spent a lot of my more productive time using hand-me-down Mac laptops, and I've come to actually like them, despite my discontent with Apple's arrogant and punitive business model.
So I guess I'm a fan of some of their hardware (laptops and iPods) without ever being in danger of becoming a fanboy.
Apart from the software that comes with the machines, I use FOSS almost exclusively. The only application I actually paid (a negligible amount) for is the tiny but (to me) useful Audiobook Builder, which I use probably twice a week. I know the function can be replicated via various GPL utilities, but the application is so convenient, I don't begrudge the small payment for someone's work.
...they are still a very lean company with not a lot of employees for the revenue they produce.
I guess that's fairly easy to say about a company that sub-contracts Chinese companies that employ thousands of workers on wages and conditions so poor that the companies need to create physical barriers to prevent their workers from committing suicide.
I know Jobs hasn't yet had the courtesy to shuffle off this mortal coil, but there has to be some more pithy epitaph than that. Something along the lines of:
What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is much to be said
For being dead.
That can only be done if you can guarantee people will standardise the way they store medications. I'm pretty sure most people just stash them in a bedside drawer or bathroom cabinet.
Fine if you have an unheated house at the North Pole, but for (say) me, living in a climate where temperatures are typically well over 30 deg. C for 6 months of the year, it's a different story.
[yes, apologies for replying to my own posts]
...but apparently I don't need to make one:
$12.95 from iFixit. They're obviously ahead of me.
for not thinking of using screws that require a screwdriver nearly nobody has.
Good luck with that. I used to be a blacksmith, and I still have all my tools. If someone can produce an intact example of one of these delightful screws, I'll bet I can produce a screwdriver for it.
Hell, it might even be worth my while selling them. It might be fun to watch their lawyers try to serve me a court order while trying not to get their kneecaps bashed in with a 10-pound hammer.
I'm curious to hear what your definition of porn is.
That's actually an interesting question.
So much porn is, well, artificial and not really very arousing [for me]. However, "erotica" in its various forms (without necessarily being particularly explicit) can be quite beautiful, without being sleazy.
Indeed.
So many really good authors have published works through Playboy (D.M. Thomas, Thomas Pyncheon to name just two), I'm inclined to encourage this, despite the fact that I have never actually looked at the magazine. (For the record, I have nothing against looking at pictures of naked ladies...)
Always deprecated, and always a prize shithead. I hope he enjoys his self-imposed exile as much as the rest of us will.
Does the public census data give that level of detail?
That's sort of my point. The census bods collect all sorts of information about residents, but they aren't supposed to make it accessible to commercial concerns.
OK troll, I'll bite. Name one, single Slashdot thread that has remained entirely on topic for for more than three posts.
It's part of the dynamics of an open forum, so live with it. Otherwise, just scroll down.
But if only 1/20 of the profiles are from people who actually registered with the site...
Sure, populating such a database from scraped data from facebook etc is tacky and unethical. But my attention is drawn to a mention in the submission of census data.
Last time I looked, the Australian Bureau of Statistics didn't release data collected about identifiable individuals. Have they suddenly changed that policy, and if so, why?
enjoy the rose colored glasses while they last. seriously, the myth that love exists is far better than the reality.
Well, I guess that depends on your perspective. My rose coloured glasses got stomped on decades ago, and I never did find a pair of those Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses.
But I have been married for some 25 years, and the young lust has matured into a more sedate companionship, but that doesn't mean it's not love.
But getting back to the point, my wife might be kind of amused if I suddenly started getting offers from gay men, since there was a time when we were first dating (and I was a lot skinnier than I am now), when I quite frequently got my bum pinched by gay men.
I think your figure is too high...
Don't count on it. The statistic is very much dependent on location: in my street (inner city Perth, WA), my own household and those of a handful of older residents are very much in a hetero minority. It doesn't bother me in the slightest, since the gay/lesbian crowd tend to be perfectly considerate and congenenial.
I'm still hanging on my KDE 3.5.10, but who knows? I might consider Xfce instead of GNOME in the long run.
There's nothing that says you have to run one or the other if you want a fully-featured desktop environment. You can cherry-pick the features you want. For instance, I run compiz-fusion wirh Emerald, use various panels according to how I feel about them, but use Nautilus to draw my desktop. Easy enough on Arch Linux, and probably at least as easy on some of the more popular distros.
it's already clear Linux users are almost exclusively spec their boxes with nVidia cards just because nVidia drivers suck less than the stuff from the competition.
So what's wrong with that?
I've been using nVidia GPUs on my Linux boxes since about 1997 because they are (or at least were) simply the best. I have bitter memories of battling to get a recalcitrant SiS GPU to work on Linux in 1995-6, and giving up in disgust. The nVidia cards have always worked out of the box, and I have never yet had to replace one except when upgraded motherboards no longer have the requisite holes.
The fact that nVidia has continued to provide drivers for the Linux kernel, in the face of all those other manufacturers who assume that everyone runs Windows counts for a lot to me. It doesn't really matter that their drivers are proprietary. It's more important that nVidia have not chosen to desert a minority userbase.