If you mid-click in the maximize button the window is maximized vertically but it keeps the original horizontal size. Conversely, if you right-click in the maximize button the window is maximized horizontally and keeps the vertical size.
Huh, never occurred to me to click the maximize button with the middle or right mouse button. You learn something new every day... thanks for that!
Want to fine-tune the window size? Press the ALT key and the right mouse button simultaneously, the cursor will grab the *nearest* window border, no need to hit the *exact* pixels of the border.
This feature is immensely useful; I always feel slightly crippled on a desktop where it isn't supported.
Because of Neutron decay we've only 10^49 years anyway.
I sense a fascinating new doomsday scenario, but unfortunately my particle physics are lacking. I can neither understand the diagram you linked to, nor mentally translate the Wikipedia article into anything suitably threatening.
I would be much obliged if you could explain (in a layman's terms) why we should all be afraid of neutron decay (never mind the 10^49 years, it sounds horrible already).
I just realized I'd wasted my vote (see below) and was going to try to change it. The second time I loaded the list, the entries came in a different order. As obvious as that might be to me and other people here, you don't see it very often on the net.
Anyway. How did I waste my vote? I had voted for "Create real-world issue reporting system". Entirely my fault, I thought they wanted to create a bug tracker / issue tracker for real world issues. Nice idea, but it was all in my head, I hadn't read the details:-/
Ah well, wouldn't have worked the way I'd dreamed it, anyway.
I find it odd that as open minded as that is, the great lengths the country has gone to hide it's own history.
The purpose of these laws has nothing to do with hiding our country's history. If that were the goal, you wouldn't see WW2 memorials on every second public square, our children wouldn't spend years in history classes learning about the Third Reich, and you wouldn't get all those very regular documentations on public television stations. Most people are very well educated about this period, and they are constantly reminded of it, because every three weeks is the nth anniversary of some horrible event. And it takes about 15 minutes of talking to a foreign tourist, or to an American in a chat room, until the first remark about Nazis (Godwin's Law doesn't work so well over here).
No, the laws were created/demanded by the allied forces during the occupation period, and they were kept because (reasonable) people are so ashamed of their country's past that they will accept a small limitation in their freedom of speech to prevent anything like this from happening again. The laws are also kept out of respect for the victims. Many, many people had to leave the country at that time, and by exterminating or exiling Jewish academics, scientists, and artists, the German and Austrian populations suffered a severe "brain drain". It was very hard to get these people to return, and to convince them that it was now a safe place for them again. People wearing swastika armbands or flying Nazi flags would have ruined these efforts at reconciliation.
I'm from Austria, and while I'm a firm supporter of the freedom of speech (which *is* a guaranteed right here), I'll accept this restriction as necessary, at least as long as there are still death camp survivors living among us. I expect (or hope) that one day the laws won't be needed anymore, but in no way do I feel repressed by their continued existence.
Every nation out there has their own skeletons in their closets, and I've accepted that I will have to live with them, and explain them to outsiders time and time again, even though my father wasn't even born when they were put there.
CJ
PS: As for the situation in Germany, this ban on video game artwork is ridiculous. The rules are much stricter in Germany, and some of my friends there simply buy their uncensored games and movies in Austria. Unfortunately, the nanny-state trend is getting stronger over here, too.
This whole thing should be very embarrassing for Microsoft... but apparently it isn't. Microsoft is co-sponsoring a conference about SVG, which is being held in Google's Mountain View complex, of all places. That in itself is disturbing enough, but to think that the one company that's prevented SVG from gaining traction on the web is now pretending to be interested in SVG (as opposed to promoting their Silverlight tool as the only *real* solution) is, excuse me, fucked up.
If they really want to help the advancement of SVG, they should finally release a browser which implements it natively. Apparently every other browser vendor can do it. For IE, at the moment, we have to rely on a fragile JavaScript/Flash workaround provided by Google.
I'm really not ranting about Microsoft just for the fun of it; I'm usually pragmatic, bordering on stoic. But I (like many others here) have spent weeks and months trying to work around Microsoft products' shortcomings, and this kind of hypocrisy is making me angry.
You probably already know this, but since it wasn't mentioned in the review: YSlow was also written by Steve Souders (the author of Even Faster Web Sites).
Take a look at the Bespin editor. It's a relatively new Mozilla Labs project, a browser-based editor with a cooperative multiplayer mode, sort of. The video on the front page demonstrates how several people can edit the same file at the same time. Bespin uses the canvas HTML element extensively, so you'll need a decent browser to use it.
There's no official release yet, but the 0.1 version looks quite promising.
> know very well what's at stake, and take the words "never again" very seriously.
However seriously they may think they take said words, Germany still worries me, because they still fundamentally do not believe in freedom and protection of political speech. It is, for example, illegal in Germany to publicly express certain political ideas (e.g., pro-Nazi ideas). That's the very sort of thing that got them into trouble [...]
I hear this argument a lot, so let me explain. This specific limitation of free speech in Germany (and Austria) is a direct consequence of the "never again" principle. These laws were made out of respect for the survivors of the Holocaust, and were formulated with the express approval of the allied forces. Maybe in 40 years this limitation can be lifted, but as long as there are still people who remember this time first-hand, it will remain. There are similar restrictions in every country, including the US (you're not allowed to put up a sign saying that blacks aren't wanted here, for example). All in all, speech is just as free (and just as limited) in Germany as in the US, only the boundaries vary. In Germany, pro-Nazi talk is forbidden, in the US, obscene speech is restricted.
Yeah, I'm a little worried about the latest developments in Germany, too: net censorship, proposed bans on "violent" games, these were all discussed here. But people are certainly making a noise about these issues (including posting about them on Slashdot), and nobody's calling the GeStaPo on them.
This happens all over the world. When it happens in the USA, however, people stand up and make noise.
People make noise over this sort of thing in other places, too. Just because our noise doesn't often make it into the US mainstream media (the Iran elections being a prominent exception), it doesn't mean people in other countries won't stand up for their rights.
There is one difference. The US never had a fascist government, and I guess that's one indication that democracy and freedom of speech were really more important to its people than in other places. The citizens of countries with a recent (20th century) totalitarian background - like Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, and all of the former east block countries - know very well what's at stake, and take the words "never again" very seriously. If you doubt that, and think that only Americans will stand up against the actions of their government, come visit Europe some day, and talk to the locals.
[sorry for replying out of context, but I'd like this to be as visible as possible]
Austria's chancellor Werner Faymann has just overruled the science minister's decision:
AUSTRIA WILL NOT LEAVE CERN.
It took us a while to impress on our government how much damage pulling out of CERN would do to the scientific research in Austria, as well as the country's international reputation. The petition (German version) has gathered over 30k supporters in just a few days, which (I hope) has had some effect.
I asked in what scenario it would be a superior option
I'm with you on that - in the last 7 years, I've used PostgreSQL exclusively for projects that were under my control. I'm subscribed on the mailing lists, I know about all the misconceptions regarding performance, and I know that MySQL is nowhere near as reliable and professional as PG.
But since you asked: I'm still running MySQL on most of the servers, and the reason for that (the only reason) is third party support. When you're installing a web-based CMS, or bulletin board, or bug tracker, or gallery, or whatever, chances are it will work better with MySQL. The people who write these things are often more familiar with MySQL, and Postgres support (if available) is sketchy at best. Try Drupal with PG, for example. The core modules work fine, sure, but as soon as you start installing some of the more exotic modules you'll run into trouble.
I've given up trying to force these applications to play nice with Postgres. They can use MySQL if they have to, and I'll stick to a real database for data that matters.
Then it would do a complete scan of your internal network, possibly detecting your router, and its ports. (All possible with JavaScript. Been there, seen it.)
I'd really like to see a source on that. In any reasonably current browser, you can't even read the local IP address with JavaScript [you can, if you use applets, but that's something quite different]. I highly doubt you could do anything like you describe with JS alone, unless the user happens to be running ancient software without security updates. In that case, he gets what he deserves.
It must be really frustrating to be employed by Microsoft as a software developer, and be assigned to the project of building and releasing something that works but will never be used. Every time I see somebody using a piece of software that has my handwriting in it, I feel proud to have produced something useful (and validated for all the little fun side projects that aren't actually that useful). If somebody told me to spend months to dig into a (700 page?) specification and implement it, but to add just enough incompatibilities that nobody's ever going to actually work with it, I'd tell them to go to hell.
Had NoScript asked me if I wanted to whitelist adds on their site (in my AdBlock preferences) to support NoScript development, I would have happily clicked "Yes."
Exactly. The NoScript author has a point, and I understand he has to generate some revenue to fund his work, but going behind the users' backs is unacceptable.
As it is, I've left the NoScript whitelist intact in my AdBlock preferences, because I do want to support their development (NoScript leaves a comment in the AdBlock preferences indicating that this whitelist can be disabled easily).
I've immediately disabled the filter set, and prevented the NoScript site from being displayed. I will however re-enable it soon, because the next version of NoScript will ask for permission (even retroactively), and allow its modifications to ABP to be reset:
However I hope all this mess will be at least partially cleaned by NoScript 1.9.2.5, which adds the prompt that has been stupidly omitted in 1.9.2.4. It's 6.57 AM here, and I stayed up all night to speed this update scheduled for tomorrow evening before Wladimir's explosive post.
v 1.9.2.5 + One-time startup prompt to ask users if they wants to install/keep the AdBlock Plus "NoScript Development Support Filterset" deployed with NoScript 1.9.2.3 and above x Fixed filterset bug: it could be disabled but not removed. x Fixed "Attempt to fix JS links" not working for drop-down lists on Gecko < 1.9 (thanks therube for report) x Updated zh-CN translation x Updated el-GR translation
He SHOULD have done so in the first place, and I still feel he should apologize for his error in judgement, but at least he's doing something about the problem. NoScript is an invaluable extension (much more so than ABP, as long as I've got FlashBlock), and I'm grateful for his efforts. I hope next time he'll think twice before he tries a stunt like this.
I don't mind the civilization collapse, as long as I can hole up in some cellar and keep coding (or fapping, as some of the others have suggested). While my friends slowly mutate into post-apocalyptic high powered mercenaries, forming rivalling motorcycle gangs with clown masks and end time cults or whatever, they'll still need someone like me, a brainy half-crazed loner with goggles who can hack into the death ray satellite. But all my tools are in the form of bits and bytes, and I'll need to prepare. Better start stocking up on those Marboros.
At the risk of having my geek card revoked, I'll admit that I don't know zilch about solar flares and their impact on electronics. What concerns me the most is how my stored data will be affected. Hardware can be replaced, but data is volatile and (I presume) also susceptible to the sun's random bursts.
Will by HDDs keep their data? Is it important whether they're connected to the grid at the time of the flaare? Can solar flares harm optical media?
What good are backups on magnetic media (tape or disks or otherwise) if a single large flare could wipe them all out?
The spec is designed to fall back from one format to the next. So if I have an OGG video file, I can have an MP4 fallback. I'd need two video files on the server (not so different from today's FLV/MP4 situation on Youtube [...]
I've only noticed this a few days ago, when I downloaded and saved all of Kutiman's Thru-You mashups, before any of the participants decided that their rights had been infringed. I used a Firefox extension to download the videos, and some of them were saved as.mp4 files, others as.flv files. You seem to know what that's all about, could you please explain?
It's available just fine for me. Try using a proxy; YouTube sometimes use GeoIP data to determine whether a video should be available to you, at your location.
There's four places: There's the Hammock Hut, that's on third. There's Hammocks-R-Us, that's on third too. You got Put-Your-Butt-There - that's on third. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot... Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex; it's the hammock complex on third.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh, never occurred to me to click the maximize button with the middle or right mouse button. You learn something new every day... thanks for that!
This feature is immensely useful; I always feel slightly crippled on a desktop where it isn't supported.
CJ
Because of Neutron decay we've only 10^49 years anyway.
I sense a fascinating new doomsday scenario, but unfortunately my particle physics are lacking. I can neither understand the diagram you linked to, nor mentally translate the Wikipedia article into anything suitably threatening.
I would be much obliged if you could explain (in a layman's terms) why we should all be afraid of neutron decay (never mind the 10^49 years, it sounds horrible already).
CJ
I just realized I'd wasted my vote (see below) and was going to try to change it. The second time I loaded the list, the entries came in a different order. As obvious as that might be to me and other people here, you don't see it very often on the net.
Anyway. How did I waste my vote? I had voted for "Create real-world issue reporting system". Entirely my fault, I thought they wanted to create a bug tracker / issue tracker for real world issues. Nice idea, but it was all in my head, I hadn't read the details :-/
Ah well, wouldn't have worked the way I'd dreamed it, anyway.
CJ
I find it odd that as open minded as that is, the great lengths the country has gone to hide it's own history.
The purpose of these laws has nothing to do with hiding our country's history. If that were the goal, you wouldn't see WW2 memorials on every second public square, our children wouldn't spend years in history classes learning about the Third Reich, and you wouldn't get all those very regular documentations on public television stations. Most people are very well educated about this period, and they are constantly reminded of it, because every three weeks is the nth anniversary of some horrible event. And it takes about 15 minutes of talking to a foreign tourist, or to an American in a chat room, until the first remark about Nazis (Godwin's Law doesn't work so well over here).
No, the laws were created/demanded by the allied forces during the occupation period, and they were kept because (reasonable) people are so ashamed of their country's past that they will accept a small limitation in their freedom of speech to prevent anything like this from happening again. The laws are also kept out of respect for the victims. Many, many people had to leave the country at that time, and by exterminating or exiling Jewish academics, scientists, and artists, the German and Austrian populations suffered a severe "brain drain". It was very hard to get these people to return, and to convince them that it was now a safe place for them again. People wearing swastika armbands or flying Nazi flags would have ruined these efforts at reconciliation.
I'm from Austria, and while I'm a firm supporter of the freedom of speech (which *is* a guaranteed right here), I'll accept this restriction as necessary, at least as long as there are still death camp survivors living among us. I expect (or hope) that one day the laws won't be needed anymore, but in no way do I feel repressed by their continued existence.
Every nation out there has their own skeletons in their closets, and I've accepted that I will have to live with them, and explain them to outsiders time and time again, even though my father wasn't even born when they were put there.
CJ
PS: As for the situation in Germany, this ban on video game artwork is ridiculous. The rules are much stricter in Germany, and some of my friends there simply buy their uncensored games and movies in Austria. Unfortunately, the nanny-state trend is getting stronger over here, too.
This whole thing should be very embarrassing for Microsoft... but apparently it isn't. Microsoft is co-sponsoring a conference about SVG, which is being held in Google's Mountain View complex, of all places. That in itself is disturbing enough, but to think that the one company that's prevented SVG from gaining traction on the web is now pretending to be interested in SVG (as opposed to promoting their Silverlight tool as the only *real* solution) is, excuse me, fucked up.
If they really want to help the advancement of SVG, they should finally release a browser which implements it natively. Apparently every other browser vendor can do it. For IE, at the moment, we have to rely on a fragile JavaScript/Flash workaround provided by Google.
I'm really not ranting about Microsoft just for the fun of it; I'm usually pragmatic, bordering on stoic. But I (like many others here) have spent weeks and months trying to work around Microsoft products' shortcomings, and this kind of hypocrisy is making me angry.
CJ
1 + 1 = 2.
Your mother.
2 + 2 = 5
Your big brother.
Yeah, I liked travelling to the US better when all I had to do was check the correct boxes on the amusing green form:
[x] I am not a terrorist
[x] I am not planning a child abduction in the US
I hope the new version includes the revolutionary face gestures feature...
CJ
Someone did an analysis? Would you humor us with a reference?
CJ
You probably already know this, but since it wasn't mentioned in the review: YSlow was also written by Steve Souders (the author of Even Faster Web Sites).
Take a look at the Bespin editor. It's a relatively new Mozilla Labs project, a browser-based editor with a cooperative multiplayer mode, sort of. The video on the front page demonstrates how several people can edit the same file at the same time. Bespin uses the canvas HTML element extensively, so you'll need a decent browser to use it.
There's no official release yet, but the 0.1 version looks quite promising.
CJ
> know very well what's at stake, and take the words "never again" very seriously.
However seriously they may think they take said words, Germany still worries me, because they still fundamentally do not believe in freedom and protection of political speech. It is, for example, illegal in Germany to publicly express certain political ideas (e.g., pro-Nazi ideas). That's the very sort of thing that got them into trouble [...]
I hear this argument a lot, so let me explain. This specific limitation of free speech in Germany (and Austria) is a direct consequence of the "never again" principle. These laws were made out of respect for the survivors of the Holocaust, and were formulated with the express approval of the allied forces. Maybe in 40 years this limitation can be lifted, but as long as there are still people who remember this time first-hand, it will remain. There are similar restrictions in every country, including the US (you're not allowed to put up a sign saying that blacks aren't wanted here, for example). All in all, speech is just as free (and just as limited) in Germany as in the US, only the boundaries vary. In Germany, pro-Nazi talk is forbidden, in the US, obscene speech is restricted.
Yeah, I'm a little worried about the latest developments in Germany, too: net censorship, proposed bans on "violent" games, these were all discussed here. But people are certainly making a noise about these issues (including posting about them on Slashdot), and nobody's calling the GeStaPo on them.
CJ
This happens all over the world. When it happens in the USA, however, people stand up and make noise.
People make noise over this sort of thing in other places, too. Just because our noise doesn't often make it into the US mainstream media (the Iran elections being a prominent exception), it doesn't mean people in other countries won't stand up for their rights.
There is one difference. The US never had a fascist government, and I guess that's one indication that democracy and freedom of speech were really more important to its people than in other places. The citizens of countries with a recent (20th century) totalitarian background - like Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, and all of the former east block countries - know very well what's at stake, and take the words "never again" very seriously. If you doubt that, and think that only Americans will stand up against the actions of their government, come visit Europe some day, and talk to the locals.
CJ
[sorry for replying out of context, but I'd like this to be as visible as possible]
Austria's chancellor Werner Faymann has just overruled the science minister's decision:
AUSTRIA WILL NOT LEAVE CERN.
It took us a while to impress on our government how much damage pulling out of CERN would do to the scientific research in Austria, as well as the country's international reputation. The petition (German version) has gathered over 30k supporters in just a few days, which (I hope) has had some effect.
Finally, here's a link to the online version of the "Standard" newspaper with the announcement:
http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=1242316123780
I'll try to translate in a follow-up.
CJ
William Golding wrote a fictional account of the Neanderthals' extinction at the hands of Homo sapiens:
The Inheritors.
Scary, but beautifully written.
CJ
I asked in what scenario it would be a superior option
I'm with you on that - in the last 7 years, I've used PostgreSQL exclusively for projects that were under my control. I'm subscribed on the mailing lists, I know about all the misconceptions regarding performance, and I know that MySQL is nowhere near as reliable and professional as PG.
But since you asked: I'm still running MySQL on most of the servers, and the reason for that (the only reason) is third party support. When you're installing a web-based CMS, or bulletin board, or bug tracker, or gallery, or whatever, chances are it will work better with MySQL. The people who write these things are often more familiar with MySQL, and Postgres support (if available) is sketchy at best. Try Drupal with PG, for example. The core modules work fine, sure, but as soon as you start installing some of the more exotic modules you'll run into trouble.
I've given up trying to force these applications to play nice with Postgres. They can use MySQL if they have to, and I'll stick to a real database for data that matters.
CJ
Then it would do a complete scan of your internal network, possibly detecting your router, and its ports. (All possible with JavaScript. Been there, seen it.)
I'd really like to see a source on that. In any reasonably current browser, you can't even read the local IP address with JavaScript [you can, if you use applets, but that's something quite different]. I highly doubt you could do anything like you describe with JS alone, unless the user happens to be running ancient software without security updates. In that case, he gets what he deserves.
CJ
It must be really frustrating to be employed by Microsoft as a software developer, and be assigned to the project of building and releasing something that works but will never be used. Every time I see somebody using a piece of software that has my handwriting in it, I feel proud to have produced something useful (and validated for all the little fun side projects that aren't actually that useful). If somebody told me to spend months to dig into a (700 page?) specification and implement it, but to add just enough incompatibilities that nobody's ever going to actually work with it, I'd tell them to go to hell.
CJ
Had NoScript asked me if I wanted to whitelist adds on their site (in my AdBlock preferences) to support NoScript development, I would have happily clicked "Yes."
Exactly. The NoScript author has a point, and I understand he has to generate some revenue to fund his work, but going behind the users' backs is unacceptable.
As it is, I've left the NoScript whitelist intact in my AdBlock preferences, because I do want to support their development (NoScript leaves a comment in the AdBlock preferences indicating that this whitelist can be disabled easily).
I've immediately disabled the filter set, and prevented the NoScript site from being displayed. I will however re-enable it soon, because the next version of NoScript will ask for permission (even retroactively), and allow its modifications to ABP to be reset:
He SHOULD have done so in the first place, and I still feel he should apologize for his error in judgement, but at least he's doing something about the problem. NoScript is an invaluable extension (much more so than ABP, as long as I've got FlashBlock), and I'm grateful for his efforts. I hope next time he'll think twice before he tries a stunt like this.
CJ
I don't mind the civilization collapse, as long as I can hole up in some cellar and keep coding (or fapping, as some of the others have suggested). While my friends slowly mutate into post-apocalyptic high powered mercenaries, forming rivalling motorcycle gangs with clown masks and end time cults or whatever, they'll still need someone like me, a brainy half-crazed loner with goggles who can hack into the death ray satellite. But all my tools are in the form of bits and bytes, and I'll need to prepare. Better start stocking up on those Marboros.
At the risk of having my geek card revoked, I'll admit that I don't know zilch about solar flares and their impact on electronics. What concerns me the most is how my stored data will be affected. Hardware can be replaced, but data is volatile and (I presume) also susceptible to the sun's random bursts.
Will by HDDs keep their data? Is it important whether they're connected to the grid at the time of the flaare? Can solar flares harm optical media?
What good are backups on magnetic media (tape or disks or otherwise) if a single large flare could wipe them all out?
Please tell me I'm worrying about nothing...
CJ
It's time for some Jazz Jackrabbit
I believe they settled on calling it Jaunty Jackrabbit.
The spec is designed to fall back from one format to the next. So if I have an OGG video file, I can have an MP4 fallback. I'd need two video files on the server (not so different from today's FLV/MP4 situation on Youtube [...]
I've only noticed this a few days ago, when I downloaded and saved all of Kutiman's Thru-You mashups, before any of the participants decided that their rights had been infringed. I used a Firefox extension to download the videos, and some of them were saved as .mp4 files, others as .flv files. You seem to know what that's all about, could you please explain?
We're sorry, this video is no longer available.
It's available just fine for me. Try using a proxy; YouTube sometimes use GeoIP data to determine whether a video should be available to you, at your location.
CJ
Two words: business hammocks.
There's four places:
There's the Hammock Hut, that's on third.
There's Hammocks-R-Us, that's on third too.
You got Put-Your-Butt-There - that's on third.
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot...
Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex; it's the hammock complex on third.
Oh, the hammock district.
That's right.