Re:34 sec to render slashdot?
on
Linux: Browser Wars
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I wouldn't trust this particular article very much. They don't even mention the versions of the browsers tested. They say there's no direct way (w/o resorting to the "Settings" menu) in Konqueror to disable javascript and images, but sure enough, in my Konqueror (2.2) they're right in front of me (Tools -> HTML options). I dunno, I guess the article is a bit of a troll. And what better place for a troll than the Slashdot front page?:-)
From the article: Konqueror: Clean, simple and boring. Perfectly functional, with the bare minimum of fuss. The spinning KDE logo in the corner looks very nice, but of course adds nothing to your browsing experience.
Konqueror, boring? Gimme a break. It's completely themable and it doesn't even need its own themes like Mozilla, you can use general KDE themes. And it works wonderfully as a file manager (and network browser and PDF and manpage viewer), with smooth icon previews of HTML, ps, pdf, images and text files. You can split the view in however many sub-windows you want, you can even have a shell prompt as a subwindow. It has a full screen mode. Right now, I'm browsing with KDE and Konqueror in "Aqua" theme and it looks, well, let's just say you have to buy an Apple if you want something to look cooler than that.
And what's up with testing on a ridiculously outdated machine? P166, no MMX, 32 MB RAM? You've gotta be kidding me. If I wanted a browser that worked fast on this configuration, I'd have stuck with Netscape 3.0...
The big problem with Stallman is that he believes that users should have power over programmers
I don't know if that's what Stallman believes. In my understanding all Stallman is trying to say is that there's no such thing as "intellectual property". When I write software, it's "my property" only as long as I keep it to myself. The moment I start distributing it, I have no moral right to dictate what the ones who use it should or should not do with it. I.e., it's THEIR software now, not mine. Which makes sense, since software, unlike physical property, it's infinitely reproductible. No matter how many people I give my software to, I still have it.
To claim that the one who wrote the software has some sort of "property rights" to it, naturally implies some sort of enforcement, since otherwise there's nothing to stop users from doing whatever they want with it. This mentality brought us the 2500 year copyright limit, the DMCA, the UCITA, the BSA-MPAA-RIAA scare tactics and it's going to still bring us countless other "joys". It's how human nature works. You can't just give someone "limited" control, without them immediately pushing for more.
So Stallman says do away with copyright altogether, because it's unnatural, unhealthy and it only begets trouble. And I can't agree more...
Well, not everyone had problems, you know. Personally, I've never had a single problem with my DSL provider (Directv DSL, formerly Telocity). Setting it up took exactly how long they said it would take, everything worked right out of the box with my Linux set-up, line speeds are as advertised and I've only had to call customer support once in 4 months (and that's because I was too tired to realize that power cycling the modem would solve the problem). Besides, they give me DHCP, a fixed IP address, they explicitly allow me to run servers as long as I keep it non-commercial. And they never blamed Verizon for anything.
I know other people have had problems, but there are some of us who are very happy with our current DSL setup and I think that's worth mentioning. Back when I was shopping around for a broadband connection, I almost didn't consider DSL because all I've read on the net about it was horror stories. The only thing that made me reconsider was that there was only one alternative: cable, and I don't care for cable very much (shared bandwidth + dubious provider practices, like closing port 80 for everyone when they feel like it).
I know. I wasn't implying that you can't do those things in Windows, I was only trying to list some of the methods available to Linux users. If I wanted to point out an advantage of Linux over Windows is this respect, it would definitely be that I haven't yet encountered a Linux program that tries to sneak piggyback software behind my back, or even clutter my desktop with links to itself, even though I do play with a lot of software on my Linux desktop machine. IMO, that's an incontestable advantage of Linux: not being enough of a market for advertising, advertisers leave it alone. Of course, windows users can avoid spamware too by being careful when installing programs and de-cheking all those nasty options, but it's nicer not to have to go checkbox-hunting altogether...
Being a linux user, you don't have to vew ads NOW. There are a myriad ways, from junkbusters to/etc/hosts manipulation to block ads in Linux. I don't use any of them, since I don't find banner ads that intrusive, but I may have to if everyone starts following the lead of Cnet with those huge, distractive ads in the middle of the story. But for now, I only disable Javascript popups, which annoy the hell out of me.
Gator? Heh. In this respect, you do have a valid point. If all the advertisers decide Unix users are too few to be worth the effort, and start designing ad technologies that only work in Windows/MacOS, maybe we will get ad-free web surfing by default. I already get it to some extent, i.e. I don't see Flash ads since I haven't bothered to install the plugin. Now if only some advertiser organization would do us a favor and declare Flash the standard for web ads...
The only thing I see as a possible remedy to this is for people to actually start using all those anonymous remailers that are floatin' around
Here's another one: just shut up and mind your own business. Find a security flaw in a competitor's software? Who cares, they're on their own. They're probably going to notice it themselves when crackers break in and wreak havoc. Find one in a business partner's software? Stop doing business with them offering no particular reason. In a public interest service? Stop being interested. And so on, you get the idea. Whadda hell, if they don't want you to be helpful, why would you want to help them? Just let them crash and burn, all of them, and only share information with people you know and trust. A hell of a lot better than going to jail for helping someone. That is, until the Good Samaritan law gets passed and you go to jail anyway, whether you help them or not.
Re:$1200 is everything but cheap
on
$1200 Cheap!
·
· Score: 1
MS is the type of company who as of right now probably knows within +/- 5% what the demand is, what the poor/average/rich person will pay for it, what the average 'early' adopter will pay for it, and what the average late adopter will pay for it.
I guess you're right. They are all that, and then some. Quote from the article: Loyal Xbox fans will have to dole out hundreds of dollars more than they expected to secure an Xbox. I mean, if they can manage to have "loyal fans" for something that doesn't exist, they will probably have no problem getting them to pay $1200 for something that isn't worth it...
$1200? For a lousy game console which isn't more than a shrinked and crippled PC anyway? And they expect to sell any? Bwahaha. I think they got too used to being a monopoly and can't think straight anymore. This is a market where Microsoft doesn't mean squat, no matter how much money they spend maketing. I mean, who will buy their ridiculously overpriced (and possibly buggy, they do have a tradition after all) hardware when relatively cheap and long-established PlayStation and Nintendo already own the market?
I dunno, maybe *someone* does have a reason to spend $1200 for a game console, when that money can buy a pretty decent computer. I certainly don't.
Dude, who needs THEM to change the way Slashdot looks? Whenever I get bored with the current look of Slashdot I do some hacking to Konq's stylesheets, and voila! a new and improved Slashskin.:-) But shh! don't tell them. They might sue me for "modifying their content without authorization" or something. Remember the fuss they made over Smart Tags?
Although I don't work in a cubicle, I do save quite some space using the online version of the Zoo (O'reilly Bookshelf Reference I think it's called). Speedy searches and no more clutter.
I thought the patch was already available when Code Red started spreading. Sorry, but whyle delaying the full disclosure can slow down the virus writers a little, it's not going to make lazy sysadmins apply patches to their servers any faster.
When I got DSL, I had 2 choices. One of them was Telocity, which I ended up with because:
DHCP + fixed IP
Linux friendly (including Linux installation guidelines for their kit in the manual)
Geek friendly - they explicitly allow you to run servers of any kind, as long as you're not doing anything "commercial"
Very reasonable downtime (it's only been down once in 4 months)
The one time I needed support, I spent less than a minute on hold, and it took them less than 5 minutes to solve my problem.
My OTHER choice was Verizon. Guess which one I chose.:-)
I don't know how successful Telocity has been. All I know is they got bought out by Directv and now they're known as Directv Internet. I haven't noticed any difference in service yet, but given that Directv is considerably bigger than the former Telocity, it's probably going to start getting worse after they complete the assimilation. Bottom line is, as far as I can see Telocity was a competitive company, offering way better service than any other DSL provider in the area, but the market didn't help them much. Maybe the market *was* the reason they decided to sell out. Maybe deregulation can only help the big sharks...
I fail to understand what is it that they are guilty of. They just wrote and hosted a file sharing service. Like, you know, millions of FTP sites out there, and newsgroups and whatnot. How are they guilty if people using their service decide to use it for some illegal purpose? Is Smith & Wesson guilty because I decided to kill someone using a weapon manufactured by them?
"Soribada is probably affecting our business, but there is no concrete evidence," said Cho Jin-bae, who handles online marketing at the Seoul office of the EMI record label.
You bet your ass there's no concrete evidence. But I bet those poor bastards will end up paying fines (if not going directly to jail) anyway. I mean, surely a determined and *ahem* well-greased justice system won't be deterred by a measly detail like, you know, absolute lack of concrete evidence... Sad.
Heh. And the quest for 100% buzzword compliance only gets worse. Not directly related to Apache, but still funny: a guy I know got turned down at a job interview last week because, and I quote, "he didn't have enough.NET experience". Go figure.
Er, who cares what *you* think about this? The company I work for used to be a windows shop, until they went through a BSA audit. Then I went to management and proposed the switch to linux (which they knew about because of the great job it did as a server). Guess what, after paying through the nose in wasted time and resources for the BSA shit, Linux started looking pretty good to them. Now we're a Linux shop, running RedHat/KDE/StarOffice and users are being re-trained for the new environment. Apparently, the BSA audit was very efficient in convincing management that it's worth re-training your employees in exchange for not hearing about Microsoft ever again. And the users? Who cares. They're being paid to do their jobs, training is prvided to them, so they'd better learn to do it the way the company wants them to, since this particular way has been deemed the most efficient. They can have all the eye-candy disguised as ease of use they want on their home computers.
So to asnwer your point, yes, I've been there, I converted Windows shops to Linux, I keep hearing from my friends that their companies use Linux more and more and yes, I do think that this kind of articles are useful and inspirational. to those of us who actually go out and convince management guys that Linux is a better choice. For those like you on the other hand, who can only bitch and moan about how Linux is not ever going to makie it in what your head tells you from inside your ass it's the "real world", they're probably useless. You'll never get it anyway.
Who says there's no solution? Here's one for you: all corporations should be assigned a single TLD, let's say.evilcorp, the way.gov is assigned for the government. Do you see the US govt suing the owner of whitehouse.com for trademark infringement? No, you don't. Same thing should be good enough for corps. Give them their own playground, and tell them to back the hell off from anything else. Let them fight among themselves over trademarks in their own namespace, and let me and you register pepsi.info and madonalds.whatever to our heart's content; they have enough marketing $$$ to establish "TLD-awareness" among consumer masses so people won't confuse their corporate website with my "evilcorp sucks" page.
Does this come from programming too much? No, but if the feeling is familiar to you, maybe you should lay off programming for a while.
Too complicated. And PHP is for wussies anyway.:-) Who needs logfiles? Real men write mod_perl apps embedded in the web server and intercept default.ida queries even before they can make it to the logfile. That way you can keep a separate customized log just for Code Red:-), and then you're free to do fancy reports w/o hogging the server.
Damn! Just when I realized (thanks bero!) that there will be no 2.2 beta packages for Redhat and went ahead and installed the CVS snapshots from Roswell (and a long train of dependencies along with them), now they had to release the final. Aargh...
Erm, considering that the current story is about a new Redhat beta distro, I'd say I *was* bitching about Redhat. And yes, I know what KDE's package policy is.
Damn. Still no KDE 2.2 beta, just a CVS snapshot (although the snapshot is more recent than the beta). Does anyone else find it a little odd that there are no Redhat packages of KDE 2.2 beta, after ONE MONTH from launch?
Re:It's all about perception of invincibility
on
Breaking Windows
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Half the arms buildup during the 1980s stemmed from a misconception about Russia's actual military capability. Frankly, they did a great job of marketing their image towards us.
I sincerely hope Microsoft's "marketing" strategies are a little less extreme than those of Soviet Russia. What Russia was doing was not marketing, but pure propaganda and draconian information control. A lot of people died, many more were constantly brainwashed and basically everyone was subject to censorship in order for the USSR to maintain their precious image. Even the very few ones who somehow managed to escape and take refuge in Western Europe didn't really escape the long hand of Kremlin...
Hey, now that I think about it, this *does* sound like something Microsoft would do.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't trust this particular article very much. They don't even mention the versions of the browsers tested. They say there's no direct way (w/o resorting to the "Settings" menu) in Konqueror to disable javascript and images, but sure enough, in my Konqueror (2.2) they're right in front of me (Tools -> HTML options). I dunno, I guess the article is a bit of a troll. And what better place for a troll than the Slashdot front page? :-)
From the article: Konqueror: Clean, simple and boring. Perfectly functional, with the bare minimum of fuss. The spinning KDE logo in the corner looks very nice, but of course adds nothing to your browsing experience.
Konqueror, boring? Gimme a break. It's completely themable and it doesn't even need its own themes like Mozilla, you can use general KDE themes. And it works wonderfully as a file manager (and network browser and PDF and manpage viewer), with smooth icon previews of HTML, ps, pdf, images and text files. You can split the view in however many sub-windows you want, you can even have a shell prompt as a subwindow. It has a full screen mode. Right now, I'm browsing with KDE and Konqueror in "Aqua" theme and it looks, well, let's just say you have to buy an Apple if you want something to look cooler than that.
And what's up with testing on a ridiculously outdated machine? P166, no MMX, 32 MB RAM? You've gotta be kidding me. If I wanted a browser that worked fast on this configuration, I'd have stuck with Netscape 3.0...
Stallman has already answered this point himself (look under the 24th paragraph or so, or search for "personal information".
The big problem with Stallman is that he believes that users should have power over programmers
I don't know if that's what Stallman believes. In my understanding all Stallman is trying to say is that there's no such thing as "intellectual property". When I write software, it's "my property" only as long as I keep it to myself. The moment I start distributing it, I have no moral right to dictate what the ones who use it should or should not do with it. I.e., it's THEIR software now, not mine. Which makes sense, since software, unlike physical property, it's infinitely reproductible. No matter how many people I give my software to, I still have it.
To claim that the one who wrote the software has some sort of "property rights" to it, naturally implies some sort of enforcement, since otherwise there's nothing to stop users from doing whatever they want with it. This mentality brought us the 2500 year copyright limit, the DMCA, the UCITA, the BSA-MPAA-RIAA scare tactics and it's going to still bring us countless other "joys". It's how human nature works. You can't just give someone "limited" control, without them immediately pushing for more.
So Stallman says do away with copyright altogether, because it's unnatural, unhealthy and it only begets trouble. And I can't agree more...
Well, not everyone had problems, you know. Personally, I've never had a single problem with my DSL provider (Directv DSL, formerly Telocity). Setting it up took exactly how long they said it would take, everything worked right out of the box with my Linux set-up, line speeds are as advertised and I've only had to call customer support once in 4 months (and that's because I was too tired to realize that power cycling the modem would solve the problem). Besides, they give me DHCP, a fixed IP address, they explicitly allow me to run servers as long as I keep it non-commercial. And they never blamed Verizon for anything.
I know other people have had problems, but there are some of us who are very happy with our current DSL setup and I think that's worth mentioning. Back when I was shopping around for a broadband connection, I almost didn't consider DSL because all I've read on the net about it was horror stories. The only thing that made me reconsider was that there was only one alternative: cable, and I don't care for cable very much (shared bandwidth + dubious provider practices, like closing port 80 for everyone when they feel like it).
I know. I wasn't implying that you can't do those things in Windows, I was only trying to list some of the methods available to Linux users. If I wanted to point out an advantage of Linux over Windows is this respect, it would definitely be that I haven't yet encountered a Linux program that tries to sneak piggyback software behind my back, or even clutter my desktop with links to itself, even though I do play with a lot of software on my Linux desktop machine. IMO, that's an incontestable advantage of Linux: not being enough of a market for advertising, advertisers leave it alone. Of course, windows users can avoid spamware too by being careful when installing programs and de-cheking all those nasty options, but it's nicer not to have to go checkbox-hunting altogether...
Being a linux user, you don't have to vew ads NOW. There are a myriad ways, from junkbusters to /etc/hosts manipulation to block ads in Linux. I don't use any of them, since I don't find banner ads that intrusive, but I may have to if everyone starts following the lead of Cnet with those huge, distractive ads in the middle of the story. But for now, I only disable Javascript popups, which annoy the hell out of me.
Gator? Heh. In this respect, you do have a valid point. If all the advertisers decide Unix users are too few to be worth the effort, and start designing ad technologies that only work in Windows/MacOS, maybe we will get ad-free web surfing by default. I already get it to some extent, i.e. I don't see Flash ads since I haven't bothered to install the plugin. Now if only some advertiser organization would do us a favor and declare Flash the standard for web ads...
The only thing I see as a possible remedy to this is for people to actually start using all those anonymous remailers that are floatin' around
Here's another one: just shut up and mind your own business. Find a security flaw in a competitor's software? Who cares, they're on their own. They're probably going to notice it themselves when crackers break in and wreak havoc. Find one in a business partner's software? Stop doing business with them offering no particular reason. In a public interest service? Stop being interested. And so on, you get the idea. Whadda hell, if they don't want you to be helpful, why would you want to help them? Just let them crash and burn, all of them, and only share information with people you know and trust. A hell of a lot better than going to jail for helping someone. That is, until the Good Samaritan law gets passed and you go to jail anyway, whether you help them or not.
MS is the type of company who as of right now probably knows within +/- 5% what the demand is, what the poor/average/rich person will pay for it, what the average 'early' adopter will pay for it, and what the average late adopter will pay for it.
I guess you're right. They are all that, and then some. Quote from the article: Loyal Xbox fans will have to dole out hundreds of dollars more than they expected to secure an Xbox. I mean, if they can manage to have "loyal fans" for something that doesn't exist, they will probably have no problem getting them to pay $1200 for something that isn't worth it...
$1200? For a lousy game console which isn't more than a shrinked and crippled PC anyway? And they expect to sell any? Bwahaha. I think they got too used to being a monopoly and can't think straight anymore. This is a market where Microsoft doesn't mean squat, no matter how much money they spend maketing. I mean, who will buy their ridiculously overpriced (and possibly buggy, they do have a tradition after all) hardware when relatively cheap and long-established PlayStation and Nintendo already own the market?
I dunno, maybe *someone* does have a reason to spend $1200 for a game console, when that money can buy a pretty decent computer. I certainly don't.
Dude, who needs THEM to change the way Slashdot looks? Whenever I get bored with the current look of Slashdot I do some hacking to Konq's stylesheets, and voila! a new and improved Slashskin. :-) But shh! don't tell them. They might sue me for "modifying their content without authorization" or something. Remember the fuss they made over Smart Tags?
Although I don't work in a cubicle, I do save quite some space using the online version of the Zoo (O'reilly Bookshelf Reference I think it's called). Speedy searches and no more clutter.
I thought the patch was already available when Code Red started spreading. Sorry, but whyle delaying the full disclosure can slow down the virus writers a little, it's not going to make lazy sysadmins apply patches to their servers any faster.
- DHCP + fixed IP
- Linux friendly (including Linux installation guidelines for their kit in the manual)
- Geek friendly - they explicitly allow you to run servers of any kind, as long as you're not doing anything "commercial"
- Very reasonable downtime (it's only been down once in 4 months)
- The one time I needed support, I spent less than a minute on hold, and it took them less than 5 minutes to solve my problem.
My OTHER choice was Verizon. Guess which one I chose.I don't know how successful Telocity has been. All I know is they got bought out by Directv and now they're known as Directv Internet. I haven't noticed any difference in service yet, but given that Directv is considerably bigger than the former Telocity, it's probably going to start getting worse after they complete the assimilation. Bottom line is, as far as I can see Telocity was a competitive company, offering way better service than any other DSL provider in the area, but the market didn't help them much. Maybe the market *was* the reason they decided to sell out. Maybe deregulation can only help the big sharks...
I fail to understand what is it that they are guilty of. They just wrote and hosted a file sharing service. Like, you know, millions of FTP sites out there, and newsgroups and whatnot. How are they guilty if people using their service decide to use it for some illegal purpose? Is Smith & Wesson guilty because I decided to kill someone using a weapon manufactured by them?
"Soribada is probably affecting our business, but there is no concrete evidence," said Cho Jin-bae, who handles online marketing at the Seoul office of the EMI record label.
You bet your ass there's no concrete evidence. But I bet those poor bastards will end up paying fines (if not going directly to jail) anyway. I mean, surely a determined and *ahem* well-greased justice system won't be deterred by a measly detail like, you know, absolute lack of concrete evidence... Sad.
Heh. And the quest for 100% buzzword compliance only gets worse. Not directly related to Apache, but still funny: a guy I know got turned down at a job interview last week because, and I quote, "he didn't have enough .NET experience". Go figure.
Hah! And some people think that slashdotters don't read the stories before they post. Boy, are they wrong or what?
Er, who cares what *you* think about this? The company I work for used to be a windows shop, until they went through a BSA audit. Then I went to management and proposed the switch to linux (which they knew about because of the great job it did as a server). Guess what, after paying through the nose in wasted time and resources for the BSA shit, Linux started looking pretty good to them. Now we're a Linux shop, running RedHat/KDE/StarOffice and users are being re-trained for the new environment. Apparently, the BSA audit was very efficient in convincing management that it's worth re-training your employees in exchange for not hearing about Microsoft ever again. And the users? Who cares. They're being paid to do their jobs, training is prvided to them, so they'd better learn to do it the way the company wants them to, since this particular way has been deemed the most efficient. They can have all the eye-candy disguised as ease of use they want on their home computers.
So to asnwer your point, yes, I've been there, I converted Windows shops to Linux, I keep hearing from my friends that their companies use Linux more and more and yes, I do think that this kind of articles are useful and inspirational. to those of us who actually go out and convince management guys that Linux is a better choice. For those like you on the other hand, who can only bitch and moan about how Linux is not ever going to makie it in what your head tells you from inside your ass it's the "real world", they're probably useless. You'll never get it anyway.
Who says there's no solution? Here's one for you: all corporations should be assigned a single TLD, let's say .evilcorp, the way .gov is assigned for the government. Do you see the US govt suing the owner of whitehouse.com for trademark infringement? No, you don't. Same thing should be good enough for corps. Give them their own playground, and tell them to back the hell off from anything else. Let them fight among themselves over trademarks in their own namespace, and let me and you register pepsi.info and madonalds.whatever to our heart's content; they have enough marketing $$$ to establish "TLD-awareness" among consumer masses so people won't confuse their corporate website with my "evilcorp sucks" page.
Does this come from programming too much? No, but if the feeling is familiar to you, maybe you should lay off programming for a while.
Too complicated. And PHP is for wussies anyway. :-) Who needs logfiles? Real men write mod_perl apps embedded in the web server and intercept default.ida queries even before they can make it to the logfile. That way you can keep a separate customized log just for Code Red :-), and then you're free to do fancy reports w/o hogging the server.
Damn! Just when I realized (thanks bero!) that there will be no 2.2 beta packages for Redhat and went ahead and installed the CVS snapshots from Roswell (and a long train of dependencies along with them), now they had to release the final. Aargh...
Erm, considering that the current story is about a new Redhat beta distro, I'd say I *was* bitching about Redhat. And yes, I know what KDE's package policy is.
Damn. Still no KDE 2.2 beta, just a CVS snapshot (although the snapshot is more recent than the beta). Does anyone else find it a little odd that there are no Redhat packages of KDE 2.2 beta, after ONE MONTH from launch?
Half the arms buildup during the 1980s stemmed from a misconception about Russia's actual military capability. Frankly, they did a great job of marketing their image towards us.
:-)
I sincerely hope Microsoft's "marketing" strategies are a little less extreme than those of Soviet Russia. What Russia was doing was not marketing, but pure propaganda and draconian information control. A lot of people died, many more were constantly brainwashed and basically everyone was subject to censorship in order for the USSR to maintain their precious image. Even the very few ones who somehow managed to escape and take refuge in Western Europe didn't really escape the long hand of Kremlin... Hey, now that I think about it, this *does* sound like something Microsoft would do.