Seriously, when was the last time you saw a "Public domain graphics" channel or "0-Day Open Source Trading". If I do a channel list to find interesting channels, I really don't want to have my list filled up with warez crap channels.
So use openprojects.net...always fun techie people to chew the fat with.
I suppose there is one reasonable assumption -- most of the DDoSes that go on are likely warez-channel related, so perhaps it'll reduce warfare on DALnet...
Evidently, a number of people peeved by all those warez channels pushing their cybersex channels thirty spots down in their channel list are getting upset, and have finally taken action.
Is DALnet going to form DALnet, Inc, start running ads, and do an IPO next?
Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that they can find *any* SVG (particularly if it's antialiased) icons that render faster than PNG icons. It seems like vector rendering would take far more overhead.
GNOME's been doing SVG icons for a long time -- this is an evolutionary improvement. This is another area in which it took quite a while for KDE to catch up, not GNOME.
I wonder if KDE is using libsrvg to render the icons, as opposed to some Qt stuff. If so, both environments will immediately benefit.
You know, I'm not saying that you don't have a point, but I think that some of these oft-used arguments are a bit silly.
1) Quality
I'm dubious. You may not *like* best-sellers, but dismissing all of them as low-quality is, frankly, ludicrous. Yes, much of the music industry is influenced by pure marketing. However, quality of music is the dominant factor -- if people do not like your music, they will not buy it.
2) Choice and variety
You deliberately avoided buying mainstream music to *increase* your choices available?
3) Value for money
Can't argue with that.
4) Contempt for an industry that would be as at home selling hamburgers - a soulless marketing machine that didn't have a clue what real music was, treated it as a commodity and treated its customers and artists with equal levels of contempt while continuing down a path towards providing less of items 1-3. I wasn't alone with my feelings and options arose - we took them. I'm not going back - I'm much happier where I am now.
Oh, that's silly. *Every* big industry is like that. I don't see people up in arms about their silverware, cordless phone, book publishers, etc, etc, etc.
What happens when a user mistypes a URL and the VeriSign system merrily sends them a verisign IP, but they are using "ssh", or an IMAP mail client, or any other service that the verisign server is unlikely to be running?
Yes, techies get screwed over here. However, the vast masses know of no program but the web browser (and, for the time being, the email client). And where the masses are, there is also the money, and hence VeriSign.
The mass additions of TLDs, the hacking up of DNS to fix short-term problems...the Internet's changed a lot, and the new target audience is the web-only, Windows-using, Internet Explorerite. Other uses of the Internet are secondary at best, and need not be catered to.
Fortunately, as long as the backbone ISPs don't screw around too much, we can still use alternate DNS roots (like OpenDNS) that hopefully make better decisions.
Seems like any time a company gets big, it gets mean, evil, and totally unable to make the best technical decision.
I hope and pray that Red Hat never ends up there. So far, so good...
I have noticed a number of issues that can make web applications developed in.NET incompatible with Netscape and Mozilla...can you suggest any workarounds?
Sure. Force everyone to use IE. Microsoft products are generally fairly intercompatible -- they just interoperate little or not at all with other products, particularly if it's inconvenient. If you're going to go partly MS (.NET), it's very painful to not go entirely MS.
The other alternative, of course, is to entirely ditch MS, but that's a much more controversial sort of decision, and could cost the decision-maker his job. Much safer and more reasonable to just throw a little extra company money at Microsoft and keep things working together.
Nothing says "Security" better to me than "Former Microsoft Security Chief".
Look, do you want extensive experience or not? I trust this guy to have run into more security problems than just about anyone else out there.
I wonder if he leaned more toward engineering (and the godawful CryptoAPI) or policy (and the signing procedures that let Nimda get out)?
On a more realistic note, in terms of practical security benefit, the recent spending of taxpayer dollars on a set of minimum Windows security standards (the "Gold Standard") is probably one of the most cost-effective things that could have been done for nationwide security. Even if it grates those Linux/Mac OS/etc people among us the wrong way... It beats blowing more money on facial recognition at Super Bowls.
And yet the only losers in this drama are people trying to pirate content who rely on a broken security model (sharing minimums), but want all the goodies for themselves.
I have a hard time feeling sympathy.
Come to think of it, those people (aside from the pirating content bit) are a lot like the RIAA/MPAA.
P2P architectures are a pretty solid delivery system. Using them for software distribution (as a backend to apt or yum, say), would massively decrease load on main servers.
Freenet is a perfect example of a general content-distribution system that takes advantage of the more efficient P2P architecture, though its insistence upon privacy brings it far down in performance.
While I think SVG is a great idea for some things (any sort of vector graphics where attached metadata might be useful -- UML diagrams and the like), I'm much more dubious about its worth in the animation field. It's not particularly compact, the existing players are not particularly efficient (and there is no complete open-source SVG implementation, despite it being an open format), and while there's a lot of noise about it, there's little support for it.
The W3C's endorsing something most definitely does not mean that something is a particularly good idea from a technical standpoint...
Having a Microsoft OS installed, I see no problem with installing flash because it works like it should and isn't intrusive, unlike Real One Player.
Though I do not have a Microsoft OS installed, I *do* have Flash installed -- though not Shockwave, which was never ported to Linux -- and have watched StrongBad's emails in the past.
Also, Realplayer isn't all that intrusive if you use it only via the library interface through mplayer, a convenient option available on *Linux*.:-)
Get a bit of perspective. You complain about gas prices? How about the *far* greater number of lives that were lost there and in involved situations?
You're taking part in a totally irrational outburst. The guy didn't say that the astronauts that died didn't matter -- just that he was sad about the shuttle. You're *trying* to find a fight to pick, trying to transfer your frustration. Cool down.
According to CNN's timeline, the astronauts were aware of a problem shortly before breakup. There was at least seven minutes during which sensors were not properly responding.
However, it's not like you'd ditch the shuttle (even if seven minutes was enough time) based on just a few sensors not properly responding. As a matter of fact, according to the timeline, the crew was just acknowledging the first alert that was given them when they lost contact. So there almost certainly wasn't anything anyone could have done, even if immediate action was taken.
No longer will you have multiple versions of your favourite libraries cluttering up your drive - with InstallShield's new "glibc-free" features, you can say "No Way!" to extra crap.
Nah, InstallShield's "elimination of dependencies" is achived precisely by having duplicate copies of libraries lying around on your drive.
"Oh sure," you say, "that sounds great JW Troll, but the thing is - I kinda like typing commands into my CLI. Plus it makes me look 1337 in front of my script kiddie friends!" Well, worry no longer - InstallShield comes with command-line options too!
But not nearly as many -- you need a *lot* to look properly elite.
Do you Think it's about time for your programs to stop crashing your X-Windows server?
And instead leave the GUI in a borked-up state from a Direct3d program dying or simply Explorer dying.
Edge-flipping and viewports are both in GNOME 2. Annoyingly enough, the GNOME people took a page from the KDE people and decided that no one would *ever* want one big desktop, so their default now sucks. It's quite easy to get things back, though.
I use sawfish. Add the following to ~/.sawfishrc:;; set up viewports (setq customize-command-classes '(default viewport)) (setq viewport-dimensions '(3 . 4))
(or whatever size you want -- I like 3 across, 4 high.
For edge flipping, be sure you've turned it on in the sawfish config dialog.
Finally, a bunch of the kickass features in GNOME 2 are off by default to accomodate less-than-technically-ept Windows users. You probably want them on too.
This will give you emacs style keys back again. Once more, ctrl-a will go to the beginning of the line, ctrl-k will kill, etc. It will also let you rebind menu items by simply hovering the mouse pointer over the item so that it's selected and then hitting the desired key combination.
And I agree about the Evolution/Desktop thing...how did this ever get on Slashdot?
Do you like downloading (or buying, if you want to be legal) *one* giant package? (As opposed to apt-get install [name of what you want] and letting the dependencies just flow down the pipe).
Perhaps you Don't have all weekend to compile?
And you want to use the binary packages that almost all Linux distros provide?
Are Hardware requirements for the latest KDE/GNOME just a little stiff??
Try comparing the latest KDE/GNOME to the latest Windows -- XP.
Oh, by the way, what IS Ximian, really? Isn't it just a mod of Gnome?
Ximian is a company that does a couple of projects -- Mono, Evolution. They also put out a "distribution" of GNOME, much like RH and Mandrake put out distributions of Linux. If you like Ximian's desktop more than the one that comes with, say, Red Hat, you can use it instead.
This may seem a little odd to some people, but GNOME is a somewhat larger, looser, more distributed collection of projects than KDE or GNUStep, and it's actually quite convenient if you want to use GNOME.
Please, someone, let KDE 4.0 and Gnome 3.0 be the same.
I doubt it'll happen. Too many differences in what the two projects are trying to accomplish. KDE people are trying to essentially produce a clone of what MS has done, and directly compete with them for Windows users. Smaller, programs more tied to each other, less independence for individual projects. GNOME people are trying to take an umbrella of projects and "condense" them into a desktop environment. Larger, more modular, programs more independent and simply packaged together. Rather like a Linux distro, come to think of it.
Yeah, I was pretty much thinking the same thing. That story submission is one of the most impressive ways I've ever seen for someone to look like a complete idiot in front of hundreds of thousands of members of the tech community.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, when was the last time you saw a "Public domain graphics" channel or "0-Day Open Source Trading". If I do a channel list to find interesting channels, I really don't want to have my list filled up with warez crap channels.
So use openprojects.net...always fun techie people to chew the fat with.
I suppose there is one reasonable assumption -- most of the DDoSes that go on are likely warez-channel related, so perhaps it'll reduce warfare on DALnet...
Evidently, a number of people peeved by all those warez channels pushing their cybersex channels thirty spots down in their channel list are getting upset, and have finally taken action.
Is DALnet going to form DALnet, Inc, start running ads, and do an IPO next?
Do these numbers include returned, defective units?
At the very least, the PS2 number ("shipments") sounds like not.
You mean the one that some GNOME 1 distros used, where clicking on a folder cleared the filename, a la Navigator?
GNOME 2's already eliminated that.
Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that they can find *any* SVG (particularly if it's antialiased) icons that render faster than PNG icons. It seems like vector rendering would take far more overhead.
GNOME's been doing SVG icons for a long time -- this is an evolutionary improvement. This is another area in which it took quite a while for KDE to catch up, not GNOME.
I wonder if KDE is using libsrvg to render the icons, as opposed to some Qt stuff. If so, both environments will immediately benefit.
You know, I'm not saying that you don't have a point, but I think that some of these oft-used arguments are a bit silly.
1) Quality
I'm dubious. You may not *like* best-sellers, but dismissing all of them as low-quality is, frankly, ludicrous. Yes, much of the music industry is influenced by pure marketing. However, quality of music is the dominant factor -- if people do not like your music, they will not buy it.
2) Choice and variety
You deliberately avoided buying mainstream music to *increase* your choices available?
3) Value for money
Can't argue with that.
4) Contempt for an industry that would be as at home selling hamburgers - a soulless marketing machine that didn't have a clue what real music was, treated it as a commodity and treated its customers and artists with equal levels of contempt while continuing down a path towards providing less of items 1-3. I wasn't alone with my feelings and options arose - we took them. I'm not going back - I'm much happier where I am now.
Oh, that's silly. *Every* big industry is like that. I don't see people up in arms about their silverware, cordless phone, book publishers, etc, etc, etc.
5400 RPM drives -- avoid both the heat *and* vibration problems.
What happens when a user mistypes a URL and the VeriSign system merrily sends them a verisign IP, but they are using "ssh", or an IMAP mail client, or any other service that the verisign server is unlikely to be running?
Yes, techies get screwed over here. However, the vast masses know of no program but the web browser (and, for the time being, the email client). And where the masses are, there is also the money, and hence VeriSign.
The mass additions of TLDs, the hacking up of DNS to fix short-term problems...the Internet's changed a lot, and the new target audience is the web-only, Windows-using, Internet Explorerite. Other uses of the Internet are secondary at best, and need not be catered to.
Fortunately, as long as the backbone ISPs don't screw around too much, we can still use alternate DNS roots (like OpenDNS) that hopefully make better decisions.
Seems like any time a company gets big, it gets mean, evil, and totally unable to make the best technical decision.
I hope and pray that Red Hat never ends up there. So far, so good...
I have noticed a number of issues that can make web applications developed in .NET incompatible with Netscape and Mozilla...can you suggest any workarounds?
Sure. Force everyone to use IE. Microsoft products are generally fairly intercompatible -- they just interoperate little or not at all with other products, particularly if it's inconvenient. If you're going to go partly MS (.NET), it's very painful to not go entirely MS.
The other alternative, of course, is to entirely ditch MS, but that's a much more controversial sort of decision, and could cost the decision-maker his job. Much safer and more reasonable to just throw a little extra company money at Microsoft and keep things working together.
[end sarcasm]
Nothing says "Security" better to me than "Former Microsoft Security Chief".
Look, do you want extensive experience or not? I trust this guy to have run into more security problems than just about anyone else out there.
I wonder if he leaned more toward engineering (and the godawful CryptoAPI) or policy (and the signing procedures that let Nimda get out)?
On a more realistic note, in terms of practical security benefit, the recent spending of taxpayer dollars on a set of minimum Windows security standards (the "Gold Standard") is probably one of the most cost-effective things that could have been done for nationwide security. Even if it grates those Linux/Mac OS/etc people among us the wrong way... It beats blowing more money on facial recognition at Super Bowls.
And yet the only losers in this drama are people trying to pirate content who rely on a broken security model (sharing minimums), but want all the goodies for themselves.
I have a hard time feeling sympathy.
Come to think of it, those people (aside from the pirating content bit) are a lot like the RIAA/MPAA.
Ask slashdot is on the edge of leaving the geek community and going into the nerd-egocentric one.
The social dynamics of the pocket protector are weird indeed.
P2P architectures are a pretty solid delivery system. Using them for software distribution (as a backend to apt or yum, say), would massively decrease load on main servers.
Freenet is a perfect example of a general content-distribution system that takes advantage of the more efficient P2P architecture, though its insistence upon privacy brings it far down in performance.
While I think SVG is a great idea for some things (any sort of vector graphics where attached metadata might be useful -- UML diagrams and the like), I'm much more dubious about its worth in the animation field. It's not particularly compact, the existing players are not particularly efficient (and there is no complete open-source SVG implementation, despite it being an open format), and while there's a lot of noise about it, there's little support for it.
The W3C's endorsing something most definitely does not mean that something is a particularly good idea from a technical standpoint...
Having a Microsoft OS installed, I see no problem with installing flash because it works like it should and isn't intrusive, unlike Real One Player.
:-)
Though I do not have a Microsoft OS installed, I *do* have Flash installed -- though not Shockwave, which was never ported to Linux -- and have watched StrongBad's emails in the past.
Also, Realplayer isn't all that intrusive if you use it only via the library interface through mplayer, a convenient option available on *Linux*.
Get a bit of perspective. You complain about gas prices? How about the *far* greater number of lives that were lost there and in involved situations?
You're taking part in a totally irrational outburst. The guy didn't say that the astronauts that died didn't matter -- just that he was sad about the shuttle. You're *trying* to find a fight to pick, trying to transfer your frustration. Cool down.
According to CNN's timeline, the astronauts were aware of a problem shortly before breakup. There was at least seven minutes during which sensors were not properly responding.
However, it's not like you'd ditch the shuttle (even if seven minutes was enough time) based on just a few sensors not properly responding. As a matter of fact, according to the timeline, the crew was just acknowledging the first alert that was given them when they lost contact. So there almost certainly wasn't anything anyone could have done, even if immediate action was taken.
No longer will you have multiple versions of your favourite libraries cluttering up your drive - with InstallShield's new "glibc-free" features, you can say "No Way!" to extra crap.
Nah, InstallShield's "elimination of dependencies" is achived precisely by having duplicate copies of libraries lying around on your drive.
"Oh sure," you say, "that sounds great JW Troll, but the thing is - I kinda like typing commands into my CLI. Plus it makes me look 1337 in front of my script kiddie friends!"
Well, worry no longer - InstallShield comes with command-line options too!
But not nearly as many -- you need a *lot* to look properly elite.
Do you Think it's about time for your programs to stop crashing your X-Windows server?
And instead leave the GUI in a borked-up state from a Direct3d program dying or simply Explorer dying.
The thing runs like a wounded Yak, and it's not nearly as pretty as Ximian.
A wounded Yak, or a wounded Gnu?
Edge-flipping and viewports are both in GNOME 2. Annoyingly enough, the GNOME people took a page from the KDE people and decided that no one would *ever* want one big desktop, so their default now sucks. It's quite easy to get things back, though.
;; set up viewports
I use sawfish. Add the following to ~/.sawfishrc:
(setq customize-command-classes '(default viewport))
(setq viewport-dimensions '(3 . 4))
(or whatever size you want -- I like 3 across, 4 high.
For edge flipping, be sure you've turned it on in the sawfish config dialog.
Finally, a bunch of the kickass features in GNOME 2 are off by default to accomodate less-than-technically-ept Windows users. You probably want them on too.
Add the following to ~/.gtkrc-2.0:
gtk-can-change-accels = 1
gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"
This will give you emacs style keys back again. Once more, ctrl-a will go to the beginning of the line, ctrl-k will kill, etc. It will also let you rebind menu items by simply hovering the mouse pointer over the item so that it's selected and then hitting the desired key combination.
And I agree about the Evolution/Desktop thing...how did this ever get on Slashdot?
Are you Sick of dependencies?
Do you like downloading (or buying, if you want to be legal) *one* giant package? (As opposed to apt-get install [name of what you want] and letting the dependencies just flow down the pipe).
Perhaps you Don't have all weekend to compile?
And you want to use the binary packages that almost all Linux distros provide?
Are Hardware requirements for the latest KDE/GNOME just a little stiff??
Try comparing the latest KDE/GNOME to the latest Windows -- XP.
Oh, by the way, what IS Ximian, really? Isn't it just a mod of Gnome?
Ximian is a company that does a couple of projects -- Mono, Evolution. They also put out a "distribution" of GNOME, much like RH and Mandrake put out distributions of Linux. If you like Ximian's desktop more than the one that comes with, say, Red Hat, you can use it instead.
This may seem a little odd to some people, but GNOME is a somewhat larger, looser, more distributed collection of projects than KDE or GNUStep, and it's actually quite convenient if you want to use GNOME.
Please, someone, let KDE 4.0 and Gnome 3.0 be the same.
I doubt it'll happen. Too many differences in what the two projects are trying to accomplish. KDE people are trying to essentially produce a clone of what MS has done, and directly compete with them for Windows users. Smaller, programs more tied to each other, less independence for individual projects. GNOME people are trying to take an umbrella of projects and "condense" them into a desktop environment. Larger, more modular, programs more independent and simply packaged together. Rather like a Linux distro, come to think of it.
Yeah, I was pretty much thinking the same thing. That story submission is one of the most impressive ways I've ever seen for someone to look like a complete idiot in front of hundreds of thousands of members of the tech community.