"Let me guess -- you *don't* have a 7 year old daughter, do you? I do, and in just two years, under the law proposed in my state, she would be required to get the vaccination in order to attend public school. Because of drug company lobbying. And because of drug company lobbying, she'll have less of a chance of getting cervical cancer, assuming that she has unprotected sex at some point in her lifetime. I'm a bit lost as to what your problem is here: are you concerned about the cost of the program, or the risk of the vaccination process, the fact that your daughter will have sex, or that you're simply being forced to do something, regardless of the advantages or disadvantages to your family?
The thing about drug companies is that they're a necessary evil: yes, they're in it for profit, but the products that they make a profit on save lives.
You're statement that "only those few types of HPV cause cervical cancer" is untrue. There are many. It would, however, be true to say that most hpv-linked cancers are casued by 4 different strains of HPV. I'm not the OP, but does it matter that much? 90% of 80% still implies that 72% of total cervical cancers will be prevented by this vaccine. Surely that can only be a good thing?
Before criticising him too much on this people should actually take a look at gconf - and despair!!! Yeah, gconf is an abomination, that's for sure. I can just see some developer back in the early days of GNOME saying, "Hey, guys! - Windows has got this really amazing thing called a registry... we should really think about implementing it!"
if Gnome is 95% perfect then KDE, Xfce, Blackbox, etc. will all be worse for them. Actually, XFCE 4.4 is worth a serious look - it's rapidly becoming a clone of GNOME that has more power-user features and a better file manager to boot...
Unlike you, the Gnome developers don't actually decide things based on their opinions alone, they apply widely used principles of UI design and they test their interfaces on "real people".
Gnome is doing a good job at what they're doing. If people like Linus and you want to help, learn something about UI design first. Then, you can either contribute suggestions for specific improvements justified based on accepted UI design criteria, or you can participate in user testing. Your and Linus's opinions, on the other hand, are pretty much worthless. So the opinions of everyone who hasn't done UI design are worthless?? See, the problem is that UI design guidelines were generally built to make a majority of basic users happy... but sticking to them alone won't make every user happy. All Linus was trying to do, as far as I can tell, was to add functionality to the system, and that's never going to do anybody any harm. If the newbies and everyday users don't want that functionality, well then... *news flash*... they don't have to use it! But for power-users, being able to move windows around more efficiently is important, and adding that ability in hurts no-one.
The part that's arguably my opinion is that the user that GNOME is evolving to best serve is a complete and utter idiot -- but on the other hand there are a lot of people out there who agree with me. But Linus' patches were only regarding Metacity, as far as I can see. If you really want the GNOME desktop environment crap, you can always use a different window manager and be a happy power user. Admittedly, Metacity should (a) have real power-user configuration options and (b) be able to be used as a stand-alone window manager (because it's actually a pretty efficient window manager)... but it's not really a problem with GNOME per se, is it? Admittedly, the thing that always annoyed me about GNOME was the inability to do simple things with the window-manager, like desktop-switching with the mouse.
Actually, I can't help wondering why GNOME doesn't set up a sf.net site for Metacity, breaking it away from the hideous development model of gnome.org. It would be nice to see it be independently developed as a full-blown window manager, one that could do all the nifty things us long-term *nix users expect.
(Personally I mostly use IceWM and ROX; but I have started playing around with XFCE and I actually quite like it (or at least, I find it usable on my new system to the extent that I haven't bothered to patch and compile IceWM, which is more than I can say about GNOME or KDE in the past!). Of the big three desktop environments, it certainly seems the most intuitive, usable and is also by far the smallest resource-wise...)
Well, if I slide photoshop's "background" window off to the side, I find it isn't so much a background as a container, and my open documents move with it. If I minimize it, all my open documents are minimized, along with all the toolbars, etc. If I click to bring it to the front, all of its associated windows come with it. This is much more useful than having to manage all those windows independently. This is the old MDI vs. non-MDI argument. Different strokes for different folks, but many users hate MDIs (as one window can be partially or fully obscured by the frame of its parent window, which means that your full desktop real estate isn't utilised), and it's certainly perfectly acceptable to write an app that *isn't* MDI.
But, frankly, that's the least of my concerns with Gimp. I find the fact that everything is organised into just two menus ("File" and "Xtras") inconvenient. A shallower, broader menu system makes it easier to find any individual item. Photoshop has 9 top level menus, each of which is substantially smaller than either of gimp's 2. Uh, have you ever opened an image with the Gimp? That's where the menus are, and there are 11 top level menus.
Moving layers can be tricky, because layer selections change automatically when you click with the move tool (this is an option in photoshop, but not on by default). This is also an option in Gimp, too - you can select the behaviour you want in the "Tool Options" dialogue, and then hold down the "shift" key to get the alternative behaviour at any time.
So they spliced a stop codon into the middle of the relevant gene to disable it, then delivered an enzyme all the way to cell nuclei (!) to delete what they spliced in. The next step then it seems is then to find or engineer a proper enzyme to patch a naturally occurring gene defect -- they've basically proven that runtime patching of the genome works. Nice. No. Run-of-the-mill. Cre-lox is a standard system in molecular biology (discovered back in the '80s, first used in mice in the early '90s, IIRC), and has been used countless times to perform gene knock-out experiments. The idea of using a knock-in approach to create a disfunctional gene and then lox out the stop codon to make it functional again might be a little unusual and elegant, but I doubt that it's novel.
Rather, the take-home message of the research was that autism could be reversed at all. To quote TFA:
"The reversal of neurological defects, reported in the remarkable article by Guy et al, is surprising because the cause of the symptoms occurred early in development and was expected to be permanent. Of particular note is the recovery of LTP, which is the best current physiological correlate of learning and memory. These findings are very encouraging for those searching for a treatment because they give hope that the symptoms could not only be halted from progressing, but the course of the disease itself may be able to be reversed," stated Fred Gage, Ph.D. of the Salk Institute of Biological Studies. [my italics] And so the whole point of the research is that it justifies looking at gene-therapy approaches for autism. You don't have to correct the actual gene, of course - provided the mutation isn't dominant-negative you can just throw in a new copy. (But that in itself is hard to do - the only "successful" experiments were the trials on SCID kids a few years ago... you remember, the ones that got halted when a couple of the subjects developed leukemia. If we had stable Human Artificial Chromosomes and a working method of delivery, things would be rosy. But we don't, and we won't for another 10-20 years at least if it's possible at all, which is by no means certain.)
Maybe the hardware configuration(s) you've played with have great driver support, great for you, lucky you, but don't make an assumption that that's true for everyone. Fair enough. I'm only familiar with Dell/HP systems at work, and laptops for friends/relatives. All of which use well tested hardware configurations.
Mind you, a dodgy driver isn't the fault of the OS per se, but the fault of the vendor. My linux laptop has an ATI shared memory card, and the X.org driver hasn't quite got the memory management worked out (although it's getting better, thankfully) - using a 3D accelerated application for more than a few minutes is guaranteed to lock up the system, to a point where only the wonderful MagicSysRq "reisub" sequence will let you reboot with some safety. Dodgy drivers will nuke any OS.
(incidentally, I notice that Ubuntu 6.10 kernels actually include MagicSysRq support! That makes them the first linux vendor that I know of to do so - it's rather nice to see... That's one thing that Windows really does lack!)
I think after hearing the same ridiculous problems over and over from people, and from 10 years of previous personal experience running windows, that it's fair to say that your computer just rebooting IS "just normal Windows" and I do not think it's lying at all. I use linux exclusively at home and most of the time at work. However, I do have to spend a fair amount of time playing with the Evil Empire's favourite OS, and I can tell you that what you're saying is rubbish. Windows, for better or worse, is really stable these days. Our systems are on 24/7 and need rebooting about as often as my linux boxes - i.e. next to never. When you consider what Win97 and MacOS9 were like, we really should be thankful that the two mainstream OSes have come so far in so short a time.
What does make Windows unstable is all the crap people stick on in the form of spyware/viruses/generic-cool-hack-that-fscks-up-th e-system. Instead of telling them it's normal windows behaviour, why not next time educate them about basic system security. Tell them to use firefox, to stop downloading dodgy pr0n apps and to think about what they're doing. Suggest that they remove the superuser privileges on their normal accounts, and especially on their kids' accounts. Suggest the names of a decent spyware removal program and antivirus program. And they'll be fine.
Seriously, leave linux for those of us who care about open source and enjoy coding. Very few people want to reformat their hard drive and then discover that all their expensive apps no longer work!
Also, I find for something like yahoo, it's faster in firefox just to type in yahoo and hit enter in the address bar and have it do the google i'm feeling lucky result than to type out http://www.yahoo.com/ Yeah, OK... but did you see the list of top google searches over the last 48 hours?? Coming in today at #165 is "www.yahoo.com". I'm serious. Mind you, #199 - "britany spears upskirt" - does suggest that we're not dealing with highly intelligent life-forms here.
(and is anyone else as disturbed as I am that the first mention of any literary work is "lolita" at #111?? Well, at least the sickos out there are getting to read some decent literature, I guess...)
...feel pretty fscking real to you too.... this is the internet, you can say fucking. This is Slashdot, where we also get computer references. Yep, if/. had a fashion store, it'd be called FCSK - French Connection Saskatchewan...
Fine in principal, not so fine if the non-compliant SMTP sender belongs to a client of yours sending a $important_financial_email. No kidding - just look at the $important_financial_email from a non-compliant SMTP sender I got in my inbox this morning:
Dear Partner,
My name is Sgt James Clayton. I need your help in keeping the money that we moved from Ba'qubah in Iraq safe. We moved this money some months ago to a Security Company in Italy. You know the funds are legal and it is oil money. we want to move the funds from Italy now to a secure place or location. Can you provide that? The total amount is US$25 Million dollars in cash. This money is in cash and we want to move it to you as soon as possible. Mostly $100 dollar bill notes.Total of US$25 Million dollars. So your share for helping me is US$12.5 Million dollars.Will you help? The whole process is simple and straightforward. I am still in iraq and i will be discharged soon but no one knows when this War will be over. I dont want to take any chances of loosing the funds. That is why we must act now.We are sharing everything 50/50. This is a legitimate transaction. If you are interested, i willprovide you further details and instructions. Please keep this confidential. We can't affo
rd more political problems. Can i trust you and will you help? Waiting for your urgent and positive response. Please send your full contact details so that i can reply you back asap. If you have any questions please feel free to ask, I look forward to hearing from you.
There is nothing inherently evil about JavaScript, get a hold of yourself. Well, there's nothing inherently evil about Flash, either. Especially if it means girls can view their fashion websites on my laptop...:)
Anything to keep the ladies happy, wouldn't you say?
(as an aside to this, some of those fashion sites are just amazing - when you see what they can do with flash, you understand why they ditched HTML...)
Claim ignorance? Most Linux users ARE truly ignorant when it comes to Windows. *sigh*... if only! After eleven years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.
Yup, and if we're going to mention 2 text-mode browsers, I feel obliged to name-drop my favourite - w3m. Particularly fun when run in an Xterm or similar... w3m, lynx, links? They're just toys. You want real text-mode compatibility, you telnet to port 80 of the server...
This is only a problem for people who are violating one of the primary security policies in the first place, and that's putting your contact list in Gmail in the first place. While Google may claim to not be evil now, there's no guarantee at any time in the future, all the information they collect from you and on you won't be given or sold to other entities or otherwise exploited for nefarious purposes. Whilst this is true, it's just the same as giving one's details to banks, credit card companies, phone companies, etc, etc... they all have access to private and confidential information. I'm not sure that there's any more reason to suspect that they're any better or worse than Google - and judging from all the credit card snail-mail spam (from rival companies) that I've got since reluctantly obtaining a credit card, there's very good evidence to suggest that they wilfully share this info.
Of course, by placing all your email in the hands of a company, you're undoubtedly taking a huge risk. But - perhaps unfortunately - it doesn't stop me doing it! I guess you have to hope that the huge amounts of bad will and loss of custom a company would get from using or distributing such information is incentive enough to leave well alone...
As to the annoying people in the gate area who do not leave their bags unattended, I haven't figured out a way to get them left behind short of the rapture. If you know a way, post it here. Thanks! This might be what you're looking for...
KDE is about 100X that which GTK is. Learn to make themes for it;) You've just inadvertently summed up the whole problem with QT in that sentence, where you used KDE as a synonym for QT.
The whole problem with QT is that its themes are intricately linked to KDE. I use QT for one application (lyx) and to get it looking remotely decent I had to install all the KDE libs, just so I could install a QT theme!!! That's just crazy - building a theme for a toolkit should never require all the crap of a desktop environment.
Are you joking? What would be the point of saving a *disk cache* to disk?
So that you can then load it back into memory! Saving the cache as one contiguous block obviously speeds up the reading of this data enormously, and most of this data will need to be read soon after resume in any case. If you don't believe that it's useful, try using swsusp2 with and without caches - if you don't store the disk caches then almost every application is incredibly sluggish while it seeks out the information that was previously cached.
When I resume my laptop under swsusp2, every program is just as snappy as when I left it. I'd like to see Windows do the same...
You might get the 10 seconds off your reboot when it comes back up, but you're probably looking at several minutes of extra paging time once you get back to using your apps.
Hmmmm... I wonder why Windows doesn't save the disk caches like swsusp2 under linux?
Well, since its a good practice to use unique passwords, and users get forgetful, then they use the web browser tool to store their passwords, then they forget their passwords, and when they use another computer or update their existing one, their tool does not work, and if it does work, then the browser gives away your passwords.
But that's merely bad user practise - it doesn't mean that the password concept is invalid.
Personally, I use my PDA to store all passwords under a master password, but most OSes provide the same function. Even firefox, I believe, has the option to use a master password if you want - presumably you won't get caught by this trap then unless you're very stupid (I'm assuming that it's a sensible implementation which asks for the master password each time)
Passwords are great because they can work locally or remotely. As far as I know, there isn't a physical key created yet that you can enter into a remote login form...
I looked at that sentence a few times and even looked some things up in "A Writer's Reference", Third Edition, by Diana Hacker. I don't see what the problem is with his grammar or spelling.
That was the point! The parent was merely pointing out the irony in using correct spelling and grammar to attack the use of correct spelling and grammar...
Incidentally, AFAICT, grammar isn't at issue here - it's only the spelling/abbreviation of words and phrases. I guess the problem is that language is defined by popular use - and at present there are these young whipper-snappers who feel completely happy reading "c u l8er m8", and relatively old farts like myself who have to translate something like that back to English in my head... In other words, modern spelling is now a dichotomy, divided down the generation line. (Curiously, the advantage of using text-speak (relative speed) has disappeared with T9 - but these little squirts still seem to think it's cool or something to write illegible rubbish... probably simply because it does distinguish them from their elders:)
Actually, there's another issue here: the use of language that your target audience understands. I'll happily use abbreviations of phrases when posting on/. or emailing/texting my friends, but I certainly wouldn't use them when writing an academic article, since a lot of the intended audience wouldn't understand. That same principle should apply when writing school exam papers - after all, if the marker has to translate your writing in order to comprehend it, that isn't going to improve your grade!
I say, get the little bastards spelling properly. But then, it's only New Zealand - and I can never understand what Kiwis are saying at the best of times...:)
Since I've switched, the only difference I've noticed is the spell checking in forms, and that it's significantly faster...
Personally, I couldn't even get the spellcheck option to work under Ubuntu Breezy; I also hated the shiny new script-kiddie theme and the fact that half of my extensions didn't have updates to make them compatible with 2.0 (including my spellchecker of choice, aspellfox) - I'm back to 1.5 and very happy with it.
Besides, the upgrade wasn't much of an upgrade at all - no underlying changes in the rendering engine, just a cosmetic downgrade and a spellchecker that I've yet to see actually work. There's only one reason why this release got branded 2.0, and that was so it could match the new release of IE.
It does if you set middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false in about:config...
The behaviour, of course, is not intuitive to linux users - yes, middle-click does paste text, but as many have pointed out in the numerous bug reports filed under this issue, no application under Linux supports pasting into a tab or button. What's really amusing is that if you look at those bug reports, you'll find countless attempts by linux users to rectify this behaviour as it's frustrating and confusing - only to be told by Windows users (such as Asa Dotzler) that pasting URLs is what linux users want!
Slashdot Mirror
The thing about drug companies is that they're a necessary evil: yes, they're in it for profit, but the products that they make a profit on save lives.
Gnome is doing a good job at what they're doing. If people like Linus and you want to help, learn something about UI design first. Then, you can either contribute suggestions for specific improvements justified based on accepted UI design criteria, or you can participate in user testing. Your and Linus's opinions, on the other hand, are pretty much worthless. So the opinions of everyone who hasn't done UI design are worthless?? See, the problem is that UI design guidelines were generally built to make a majority of basic users happy
Actually, I can't help wondering why GNOME doesn't set up a sf.net site for Metacity, breaking it away from the hideous development model of gnome.org. It would be nice to see it be independently developed as a full-blown window manager, one that could do all the nifty things us long-term *nix users expect.
(Personally I mostly use IceWM and ROX; but I have started playing around with XFCE and I actually quite like it (or at least, I find it usable on my new system to the extent that I haven't bothered to patch and compile IceWM, which is more than I can say about GNOME or KDE in the past!). Of the big three desktop environments, it certainly seems the most intuitive, usable and is also by far the smallest resource-wise
Rather, the take-home message of the research was that autism could be reversed at all. To quote TFA: "The reversal of neurological defects, reported in the remarkable article by Guy et al, is surprising because the cause of the symptoms occurred early in development and was expected to be permanent. Of particular note is the recovery of LTP, which is the best current physiological correlate of learning and memory. These findings are very encouraging for those searching for a treatment because they give hope that the symptoms could not only be halted from progressing, but the course of the disease itself may be able to be reversed," stated Fred Gage, Ph.D. of the Salk Institute of Biological Studies. [my italics] And so the whole point of the research is that it justifies looking at gene-therapy approaches for autism. You don't have to correct the actual gene, of course - provided the mutation isn't dominant-negative you can just throw in a new copy. (But that in itself is hard to do - the only "successful" experiments were the trials on SCID kids a few years ago
Mind you, a dodgy driver isn't the fault of the OS per se, but the fault of the vendor. My linux laptop has an ATI shared memory card, and the X.org driver hasn't quite got the memory management worked out (although it's getting better, thankfully) - using a 3D accelerated application for more than a few minutes is guaranteed to lock up the system, to a point where only the wonderful MagicSysRq "reisub" sequence will let you reboot with some safety. Dodgy drivers will nuke any OS.
(incidentally, I notice that Ubuntu 6.10 kernels actually include MagicSysRq support! That makes them the first linux vendor that I know of to do so - it's rather nice to see
What does make Windows unstable is all the crap people stick on in the form of spyware/viruses/generic-cool-hack-that-fscks-up-t
Seriously, leave linux for those of us who care about open source and enjoy coding. Very few people want to reformat their hard drive and then discover that all their expensive apps no longer work!
(and is anyone else as disturbed as I am that the first mention of any literary work is "lolita" at #111?? Well, at least the sickos out there are getting to read some decent literature, I guess
...feel pretty fscking real to you too.Dear Partner,
My name is Sgt James Clayton. I need your help in keeping the money that we moved from Ba'qubah in Iraq safe. We moved this money some months ago to a Security Company in Italy. You know the funds are legal and it is oil money. we want to move the funds from Italy now to a secure place or location. Can you provide that? The total amount is US$25 Million dollars in cash. This money is in cash and we want to move it to you as soon as possible. Mostly $100 dollar bill notes.Total of US$25 Million dollars. So your share for helping me is US$12.5 Million dollars.Will you help? The whole process is simple and straightforward. I am still in iraq and i will be discharged soon but no one knows when this War will be over. I dont want to take any chances of loosing the funds. That is why we must act now.We are sharing everything 50/50. This is a legitimate transaction. If you are interested, i willprovide you further details and instructions. Please keep this confidential. We can't affo
rd more political problems. Can i trust you and will you help? Waiting for your urgent and positive response. Please send your full contact details so that i can reply you back asap. If you have any questions please feel free to ask, I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours Truly,
Sgt James Clayton.
Anything to keep the ladies happy, wouldn't you say?
(as an aside to this, some of those fashion sites are just amazing - when you see what they can do with flash, you understand why they ditched HTML
Of course, by placing all your email in the hands of a company, you're undoubtedly taking a huge risk. But - perhaps unfortunately - it doesn't stop me doing it! I guess you have to hope that the huge amounts of bad will and loss of custom a company would get from using or distributing such information is incentive enough to leave well alone
The whole problem with QT is that its themes are intricately linked to KDE. I use QT for one application (lyx) and to get it looking remotely decent I had to install all the KDE libs, just so I could install a QT theme!!! That's just crazy - building a theme for a toolkit should never require all the crap of a desktop environment.
So that you can then load it back into memory! Saving the cache as one contiguous block obviously speeds up the reading of this data enormously, and most of this data will need to be read soon after resume in any case. If you don't believe that it's useful, try using swsusp2 with and without caches - if you don't store the disk caches then almost every application is incredibly sluggish while it seeks out the information that was previously cached.
When I resume my laptop under swsusp2, every program is just as snappy as when I left it. I'd like to see Windows do the same
Hmmmm
But that's merely bad user practise - it doesn't mean that the password concept is invalid.
Personally, I use my PDA to store all passwords under a master password, but most OSes provide the same function. Even firefox, I believe, has the option to use a master password if you want - presumably you won't get caught by this trap then unless you're very stupid (I'm assuming that it's a sensible implementation which asks for the master password each time)
Passwords are great because they can work locally or remotely. As far as I know, there isn't a physical key created yet that you can enter into a remote login form
That was the point! The parent was merely pointing out the irony in using correct spelling and grammar to attack the use of correct spelling and grammar
Incidentally, AFAICT, grammar isn't at issue here - it's only the spelling/abbreviation of words and phrases. I guess the problem is that language is defined by popular use - and at present there are these young whipper-snappers who feel completely happy reading "c u l8er m8", and relatively old farts like myself who have to translate something like that back to English in my head
Actually, there's another issue here: the use of language that your target audience understands. I'll happily use abbreviations of phrases when posting on
I say, get the little bastards spelling properly. But then, it's only New Zealand - and I can never understand what Kiwis are saying at the best of times
Personally, I couldn't even get the spellcheck option to work under Ubuntu Breezy; I also hated the shiny new script-kiddie theme and the fact that half of my extensions didn't have updates to make them compatible with 2.0 (including my spellchecker of choice, aspellfox) - I'm back to 1.5 and very happy with it.
Besides, the upgrade wasn't much of an upgrade at all - no underlying changes in the rendering engine, just a cosmetic downgrade and a spellchecker that I've yet to see actually work. There's only one reason why this release got branded 2.0, and that was so it could match the new release of IE.
It does if you set middlemouse.contentLoadURL to false in about:config
The behaviour, of course, is not intuitive to linux users - yes, middle-click does paste text, but as many have pointed out in the numerous bug reports filed under this issue, no application under Linux supports pasting into a tab or button. What's really amusing is that if you look at those bug reports, you'll find countless attempts by linux users to rectify this behaviour as it's frustrating and confusing - only to be told by Windows users (such as Asa Dotzler) that pasting URLs is what linux users want!
Read and enjoy: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1711