The company I work for never mentioned bringing our e-commerce site down. However, we (unfortunately) have it hosted at cihost, so we don't have much choice in the matter . . .
I'm going to assume that you are talking about the and tags, since you seem to be posting in HTML formatted mode.
I'm aware of these, but my point is that if you use the <BR> tag to break a line in the middle of a paragraph or <NOBR> to prevent a line break makes things go screwey in some cases. I've also tried replacing normal spaces with tags, but the end result is still not what I'd like. The other last resort I've used before is to use <PRE> in conjuntion with Style Sheets, but again, it's not the best answer.
The problem is that in most cases, we're not talking about blocks of poetry or stuff that will more or less look the same in any browser. I'm talking about paragraphs, where the man decides he wants the line to break at word X instead of word Y. Well, that's all well and good if it's gonna be viewed on Win boxes with IE, but what about somebody who checks it out on a Mac or a UNIX box? The differences in font rendering and sizes will make the line break in some unusual place . . . maybe 2/3 of the way through, maybe 1/3, depending on where you use the tags (this is with the exception of <PRE> of course).
And, as nice as CSS is, it doesn't solve the problem of different font rendering on different platforms. The point I'd like to get across is that creating documents / web sites with HTML will never be a precision process like creating a flyer in Pagemaker or Quark, at least any time in the near future.
Not to try to knock your answer-- it ought to be that easy. That's the logical way to solve it. But, I've had the same experience as the guy who you're responding to. It's not that easy. I tried to explain that it would look different in different browsers, tried to explain about CSS and all that jazz, and even finally tried your trick. I showed 'em the site I was working on using a 98 box on Netscape 4.6, a 95 box with IE 5.0, a Mac with IE 4.0, and Linux box (mine) with Netscape 4.7, and finally Linux running Mozilla M9 (I think) and it turned out that "Internet Explorer is right. The others are all wrong." This despite the fact that IE on the Mac looked different from IE on a Win box. And nevermind that Mozilla is the most CSS compliant browser around. After all, hey, Netscape (and by extension Mozilla) is dead. Gone. Bye-bye. Later.
Sheesh, it drives me up the wall.
"Make sure our site ranks high on search engines. Make sure you repeat keywords in the meta tags." (Like they know what a META tag does) . . . How do you explain to somebody that it ain't that easy, and that repeating keywords kills your ranking?
"I don't like where that line breaks!" Like I can really have a lot of control over that. Say some user who has increased his font size comes along. The text breaks in some odd place for him.
"Make sure you test those CGI scripts on Windows and Macintosh!" Like the browser really affects the way the CGI script operates.
And, of course, as the guy mentioned, there is always the "You need to move faster!" When I'm trying to kick the bugs outta a script. Then, if I get rushed into putting the script into action without adequate debugging, it's my fault because it wasn't right before it went live.
Where does this all end? I don't know. I think that some of the stuff you can create with Shockwave/Director/Whatever is cool. Quicktime movies and RealAudio are neat. We can do neat stuff with the web that wasn't possible four years ago. But, we're losing sight of the original purpose of the internet -- to allow information to be accesible to lotsa folks in a platform-independent way. It's easy to ignore part of the population (those who use Lynx, those who use Linux, or even those who don't want to install Shockwave on their computer) since they may not make up a large percentage of the population, but that doesn't make it right. I know we'll never go back to that completely, but I just wish people would TRY to understand that before they go deciding what, why, when, and how they want their website to look and act.
Sorry, I know a lot of that was off-topic, but I've been steaming over some of it for a while, and this thread provided an opportunity to vent a bit.
I think Palm is becoming too simple. Palm made a virtue out of necessity -- they are using at least three-year-old technology without any major changes (I tend to view the wireless connection as overpriced gimmick). Thus they HAVE to be simple -- they cannot manage intelligent complexity. That is OK as long as their target market is suits -- suits, after all, have never been known for the ability to deal with sophisticated devices. But for me Palm is like Microsoft's DOS -- very simple, but not necessarily up-to-date. I'd rather play with flashier toys and tinker with more complicated things.
Three years ago Palms were great. Now they look more and more older. Leaving aside the horrible user interface of WinCE, look at the latest Casio model (E-100/105) -- it is color, it plays stereo sound, its accessories include a digital camera, a hard drive (340Mb in your handheld -- how about it?) and a ton of other goodies.
I agree that the wireless capabilities of the VII are really an overpriced gimmick (not to mention that the coverage, even in some prominent urban areas, often leaves much to be desired). However, I don't feel that the Palm is/has becom(e/ing) too simple. I own a Palm, and I'm quite happy with it -- it does what I need it to do, in a pretty effecient manner. I don't need/want color (although I can recognize the benefits of color, I don't think they outweigh the corresponding loss of battery life), I have no desire for my Palm to play stereo sound (or sound of any sort, for that matter). I have no need for 340 mb of storage space, nor do I need it to do work with a digital camera. All of these things I can accomplish with my laptop in (IMHO) a more effecient manner than I could with any handheld device.
While I too like to play with flashy and complex gadgets, what really impresses me is how well it fits the task at hand. The Palm may not be as flashy as it was three years ago, but it is still as functional.
I'm not saying there isn't a market for devices like the Casio -- I'm sure there is. There are certainly people with way more spending money than me that would enjoy playing with something like that. Palm, however, has hit upon a combination of affordability, portability, and utility that has been successful. This, along with the deficiencies of CE, are what makes it successful. It sells, and not just to suits.
OTOH, sooner or later, somebody (probably not Palm) will develop a product that has a good balance of the aforementioned qualities, and is far more powerful and featureful. When this product shows up, I'll happily ditch my Palm for it.
I agree with you . . . Amazon may never know the difference. But, I think it is the principle of the matter that is important here, not the supposed effects.
Who knows what may come of it? How many important movements in history have happened because someone was willing to take a stand on principle (or just take a stand) even though the possibility of success seemed slim?
I think this time I have to say that I agree. I don't think that a boycott against Amazon should be organized because we don't like them . . . I do, and have used them in the past. I don't think that the boycott should be organized because they are suing because of the patent per se, but mostly because they are suing over a patent for something so ludicrous that it's funny.
"One Click Technology"? Give me a break. The Patent Office has let an idea that was basically good get so far out of control that it no longer serves its purpose. Somebody, anybody, needs to make some waves.
Also, this thing about the sewage and water treatment systems: I have been under the impression that the number of backup systems is downright funny for that sort of thing. Human labor did it at first, without computers, and they never removed the ability for human labor to do it still.
Yeah, I have this image of a bunch of treatment people running around the plant yelling "Oh my God! The computer thinks it's 1900! How will we EVER figure out how to treat this water on our own! All of our pipes are gonna stop working!"
Of course, the reason I'm not so worried about this is because I know the guy who runs the plant in my town personally (he lives a block away from me) and his folks know what they're doing. They kept our water clean and and all that both during Hurrican Fran (a bit over a week with no power) and Hurricane Floyd (a little less than a week with no power) and I figure no matter what happens (not that I expect anything to happen) they can keep things under control again.
Yup. It's interesting to me that 95% of the people who complain about Sig 11 are posting anonymously. Sheesh, if you're gonna complain put a name behind it.
What about Palms? I don't actually own one myself, so I don't know about how hard they are on the eyes for extended periods.
Palms are nice, and are cheap when compared to other handheld devices, and are amazingly useful, but they are limited to about 13 lines of text per screen, with an average of about 30 characters per line (that's my guess anyway . ..), so I don't think they are best suited for something like this.
The development guides that are available from 3com even note that they are meant to be used as an auxilary device to a PC for the most part. That being said, in a pinch, one would certainly work, though.
The original Cmdr. Taco posting at the head refers to this letter, which originally was at the link, but PG changed it. Who is at fault, PG or Taco?
I suppose that Hemos (who posted, not Taco) wouldn't be at fault if PG changed their site. However, it appear(ed/s) that the link simply points to the PG site itself, judging from the context and the construction of the link. If PG had the text of the letter present in their index.html file, and changed it after the story was posted, I missed out seeing it. If that's the case, I'm clearly in the wrong in my previous post.
Thus they should be aware that current U.S. copyright law (since the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998) extended copyright from 50 to 70 years after the author's death, or extended it from 75 years after publication to 95 years, whichever was applicable. Evidently the content of the letter was copied from some 1992 writing, and needs correction.
Very well. This is the sort of information I was looking for. Given their mission, they should be on top of this sort of thing, even if they don't handle materials published after 1922.
And, in retrospect, given Marquez's birthdate and the like, I should have readily realized that his stuff wouldn't have been their. Quite a lapse in my thinking there . . .
I'm glad you've now heard of Project Gutenberg. Perhaps it will make you think of the differences between it and open source. You have heard of that, haven't you?
Really? I'm rather thrilled to see this here. Until now, I've never heard of 'em.
If Project Gutenberg had been started by Linus or RMS, would it send out hysterical letters every month asking for money to keep the project afloat?
I fail to see how this qualifies as sending out "hysterical letters every month asking for money to keep the project afloat." Rather, it seems to be a request for publicity. It doesn't seem to be all that hysterical at all.
Wondering what this has to do with Slashdot and Open Source and GPL.
I don't see that it has much to do with Open Source and the GPL, but it seems to have a bit to do with Slashdot. "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." Well, I'm a nerd. I like to read. This is news to me, and stuff like this sure matters to me. End of story here, at least.
Seems PG is a conservative outfit that resists change in technology,
Unfortunately, I fail to comprehend how translating texts printed on paper to an easily-reproducable format that can be easily obtained via the internet qualifies as resisting change in technology.
won't cooperate with other free ebook causes,
Proof? Links, quotes, or something, please. If this is true, I'd be interested in seing something to subsantiate this, as I'm not likely to take the word of an A.C. alone as gospel truth.
is intent on producing numbers of poorly proofread texts and admittedly of not top quality,
Try getting 30 of your closest friends and proofread several hundred thousand pages of material and see how well you fare in getting all the errors. Please cite something to prove that they are "intent on producing numbers of poorly proofread texts."
and doesn't accept criticism from outsiders.
Again, proof please!
BTW, the aforementioned letter from Hart is not on the page linked to, and it contains errors of fact about copyright.
I don't see any claims that the letter is on the page linked to. If if does contain errors of fact about copyright, please cite some.
Maybe I'm way off here. I've never heard of this project before today, and thus my knowledge is limited to what I've seen here and my brief perusal of their web site, which more or less only consisted of checking to see what they had by F. Scott Fitzgerald (only This Side of Paradise) and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (nothing). If what you say is true, I'm certain that I, as well as other readers of Slashdot, will benefit from having some primary source material to peruse demonstrating your claims. Right now, all we have to go on are your quite unsubstantiated allegations.
Pink Floyd, U2, Depeche Mode, Joe Satriani, B.B. King, Circle of Dust, Leaderdogs, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Bach, David Sanborn, Styx, Tom Petty, Foreigner, Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac, Jackson Browne, Crosby, Stills, & Nash . . .
A solution? I don't know if there really is one... perhaps make it so that a bug causes a computer explosion. Then, just the chips in our airplanes, companies would have to release quality software. Just a thought.
Of course, it doesn't help that almost every commercial license contains a clause that absolves the company that licenses the software of any sort of blame when something goes wrong with the software. In what other industry can the manufacturer say "Hey, if you use our product and it screws up and you lose money, you can't sue us!"
For cryin' out loud, when an auto manufacturer intentionally manufacturers a flawed product, and the customer finds out, then folks sue the snot outta 'em. This isn't to say that I believe that people SHOULD be able to sue the snot outta the person(s)/company that maintain(s) the code. However, there has to be some accountability somewhere.
Re: So are you sickened by Intel Outside logos?
on
Jesux, Hoax Confirmed
·
· Score: 1
It's not so much the changing of the logos that I dislike as the commercialization of Christianity that disturbs me. I know of some Christians (one lives in the dorm I'm in) who will only buy Christian shirts, etc., etc., etc.
There's nothing (that I can see) that is inherently wrong with buying a shirt at the mall. In the same sense, I don't see anything inherently wrong with buying (or using) Red Hat, Debian, Caldera, etc. that would neccesitate a "Christian" Linux distribution. Nor can I grasp why someone would be offended by "kill" or "daemon" in reference to an operating system.
I suppose I'll never be able to understand everybody though. But, for some odd reason, I usually try.
Anti-Christian? Get real? OK, I will. I'm not anti-Christian. In fact, I am a Christian, and I don't mind saying so. Specifically, I'm Southern Baptist and I'm currently studying at a seminary in Wake Forest. There's no "anti-Christian" here.
I don't think it's a "trend", as the excessively-"spiritual" folks lacking in humour have been with us for years; chances are they'll never go away either.
Yes, but we can always hope, can't we?
Seriously, the reason I call it a trend is that it seems that I see more and more of this crap every year. I figure sooner or later the it will reach excess (if it hasn't already) and the whole thing will start to wane.
IMHO it just cheapens the whole Christian religion in general.
The way to deal with it all, I think, is to see the funny side of it if you can, or ignore it if you can't.
Yeah, I suppose it's pretty amusing that people who are willing to go out of their way to collect an entire wardrobe of "Christian" t-shirts seem to think that they are making some amazing theological statement.
What kind of crack are you smoking? After hundreds and hundreds of Win3.x/95/98 installs, quite a few NT 4.0 and Win1.x/2.x installs (yes, I've installed both of 'em on several occasions, and a number of Red Hat, Debian, and MacOS installs, I would rate NT as probably the most *difficult* install.
MacOS has to be the easiest, mostly because I just told it what model I had and it installed (yes, I understand that this is possible because of the control that Apple has over the hardware). Windows 9x isn't bad at all, if the hardware is pretty standard, and the same goes for Red Hat or Debian. The main difference is that the 9x install has pretty graphics and makes all sorts of wild promises (Whatever you do will be easier/faster/more fun? I don't think so.).
On the other hand, you are correct that NT should be compared to Linux. It is a much better (gasp) example of what MS can do than Win9x, and fully expect 2000 to make some improvements over its predecessor (Heresy! Again!).
No, I don't understand a nuclear reactor.
on
CNN Installs Linux
·
· Score: 1
But, on the other hand, I don't try to operate one, nor do I attempt install a new reactor core and then write about the difficulties I encountered and the ensuing evactuation of all citizens within a large vicinity of the disaster that I created either.
To be fair, Windows 98 is certainly easier to install than Linux. For the most part (from what I understand, that is) Win 2000 is a vast improvement over the quite painful NT 4.0 install. Microsoft is improving its products.
It's one thing to make things easy so that a novice user can easily complete useful functions. It's another thing entirely to fool the end user into thinking that he/she is qualified to do something they have no business doing.
Actually, not it's not. I appreciate the changes that MS made to the installation procedure. After installing it the 250+ times that I have, I know.
Rather than demonstrating that Windows was as difficult to install as Linux, I rather meant to demonstrate the sheer absurdity of someone who can't find their video card trying to install an operating system without as much as asking for advice.
I'll happily admit that Windows is easier to install than any version of Linux I've played with as of yet (I haven't tried the new version of Caldera).
In reality, the post a bit lower down concerning the person trying to pilot an early Ford automobile while running over various and sundry items close by is closer to what I was attempting to achieve.
Re:Can You Install Windows 98? I think I can!
on
CNN Installs Linux
·
· Score: 1
Apparently the concept of satire is quite over your head.
Although the writer should be commended for wanting to try out Linux in the first place, a person who doesn't know what a video card looks like has no business installing an operating system.
I know a good bit about automobiles, and I do minor repairs on my car from time to time, but I'm not going to go out and try to install a new transmission or rebuild the old one and expect it to go smoothly. In fact, if I wanted to learn how to do such a thing I would FIND SOMEONE WHO KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING and get them to help me with the process. Why? Because I wouldn't know a synchro from any other part in the darn thing!
Can you imagine if I wrote an article about doing something like that for CNN? I would be laughed off the face of the earth.
It frustrates me when people write articles like this. But, on the other hand, maybe the writer will take the time to learn the OS and will actually like it. Maybe some knowledge about computers will be the result of the experience.
Can You Install Windows 98? I think I can!
on
CNN Installs Linux
·
· Score: 4
Today I decided to take the plunge. I'm going to try to install Windows 98. I don't know my video card from my mouse pad, and I have a hard time doing that "point and click" thing, but I'll do it anyway.
1. I boot to "DOS" and I get this ugly prompt. What to do? I got get breakfast.
2. After breakfast, I come back and call my friend, a MSCE. He tells me to change to the CD-ROM drive. It won't let me. He says I need something called a "driver." But, I don't know what that is. So, he comes over and makes it work.
3. Now I've run this "setup.exe" file and it's doing some weird stuff. It's asking me for some number I don't know. I call Microsoft and sit on hold for 2 hours before I find out where it is--on the "Certificate of Authenticity." What's that?
4. OK, the darn thing froze up while installing. Time to reboot. It takes me only 2 minutes to do what took hours before.
5. I'm all installed up, but it didn't detect my sound card and I can't get my screen to display more than 16 colors! My MSCE friend says it's because I need to get a "video driver" because I've got an "AGP" graphics card, whatever that is. He says to get it off the internet, but I can't get Windows to dial out on my modem. It won't see it.
6. Now it says I've performed an illegal operation! What did I do?
I don't know what I've done and I can't get it to work, but now I feel like a real live major geek! I'm cool!
Slashdot Mirror
The company I work for never mentioned bringing our e-commerce site down. However, we (unfortunately) have it hosted at cihost, so we don't have much choice in the matter . . .
and
I'm aware of these, but my point is that if you use the <BR> tag to break a line in the middle of a paragraph or <NOBR> to prevent a line break makes things go screwey in some cases. I've also tried replacing normal spaces with tags, but the end result is still not what I'd like. The other last resort I've used before is to use <PRE> in conjuntion with Style Sheets, but again, it's not the best answer.
The problem is that in most cases, we're not talking about blocks of poetry or stuff that will more or less look the same in any browser. I'm talking about paragraphs, where the man decides he wants the line to break at word X instead of word Y. Well, that's all well and good if it's gonna be viewed on Win boxes with IE, but what about somebody who checks it out on a Mac or a UNIX box? The differences in font rendering and sizes will make the line break in some unusual place . . . maybe 2/3 of the way through, maybe 1/3, depending on where you use the tags (this is with the exception of <PRE> of course).
And, as nice as CSS is, it doesn't solve the problem of different font rendering on different platforms. The point I'd like to get across is that creating documents / web sites with HTML will never be a precision process like creating a flyer in Pagemaker or Quark, at least any time in the near future.
Sheesh, it drives me up the wall.
"Make sure our site ranks high on search engines. Make sure you repeat keywords in the meta tags." (Like they know what a META tag does) . . . How do you explain to somebody that it ain't that easy, and that repeating keywords kills your ranking?
"I don't like where that line breaks!" Like I can really have a lot of control over that. Say some user who has increased his font size comes along. The text breaks in some odd place for him.
"Make sure you test those CGI scripts on Windows and Macintosh!" Like the browser really affects the way the CGI script operates.
And, of course, as the guy mentioned, there is always the "You need to move faster!" When I'm trying to kick the bugs outta a script. Then, if I get rushed into putting the script into action without adequate debugging, it's my fault because it wasn't right before it went live.
Where does this all end? I don't know. I think that some of the stuff you can create with Shockwave/Director/Whatever is cool. Quicktime movies and RealAudio are neat. We can do neat stuff with the web that wasn't possible four years ago. But, we're losing sight of the original purpose of the internet -- to allow information to be accesible to lotsa folks in a platform-independent way. It's easy to ignore part of the population (those who use Lynx, those who use Linux, or even those who don't want to install Shockwave on their computer) since they may not make up a large percentage of the population, but that doesn't make it right. I know we'll never go back to that completely, but I just wish people would TRY to understand that before they go deciding what, why, when, and how they want their website to look and act.
Sorry, I know a lot of that was off-topic, but I've been steaming over some of it for a while, and this thread provided an opportunity to vent a bit.
Three years ago Palms were great. Now they look more and more older. Leaving aside the horrible user interface of WinCE, look at the latest Casio model (E-100/105) -- it is color, it plays stereo sound, its accessories include a digital camera, a hard drive (340Mb in your handheld -- how about it?) and a ton of other goodies.
I agree that the wireless capabilities of the VII are really an overpriced gimmick (not to mention that the coverage, even in some prominent urban areas, often leaves much to be desired). However, I don't feel that the Palm is/has becom(e/ing) too simple. I own a Palm, and I'm quite happy with it -- it does what I need it to do, in a pretty effecient manner. I don't need/want color (although I can recognize the benefits of color, I don't think they outweigh the corresponding loss of battery life), I have no desire for my Palm to play stereo sound (or sound of any sort, for that matter). I have no need for 340 mb of storage space, nor do I need it to do work with a digital camera. All of these things I can accomplish with my laptop in (IMHO) a more effecient manner than I could with any handheld device.
While I too like to play with flashy and complex gadgets, what really impresses me is how well it fits the task at hand. The Palm may not be as flashy as it was three years ago, but it is still as functional.
I'm not saying there isn't a market for devices like the Casio -- I'm sure there is. There are certainly people with way more spending money than me that would enjoy playing with something like that. Palm, however, has hit upon a combination of affordability, portability, and utility that has been successful. This, along with the deficiencies of CE, are what makes it successful. It sells, and not just to suits.
OTOH, sooner or later, somebody (probably not Palm) will develop a product that has a good balance of the aforementioned qualities, and is far more powerful and featureful. When this product shows up, I'll happily ditch my Palm for it.
I noted that the article "Did not apply to my situation."
Who knows what may come of it? How many important movements in history have happened because someone was willing to take a stand on principle (or just take a stand) even though the possibility of success seemed slim?
"One Click Technology"? Give me a break. The Patent Office has let an idea that was basically good get so far out of control that it no longer serves its purpose. Somebody, anybody, needs to make some waves.
Yeah, I have this image of a bunch of treatment people running around the plant yelling "Oh my God! The computer thinks it's 1900! How will we EVER figure out how to treat this water on our own! All of our pipes are gonna stop working!"
Of course, the reason I'm not so worried about this is because I know the guy who runs the plant in my town personally (he lives a block away from me) and his folks know what they're doing. They kept our water clean and and all that both during Hurrican Fran (a bit over a week with no power) and Hurricane Floyd (a little less than a week with no power) and I figure no matter what happens (not that I expect anything to happen) they can keep things under control again.
Yup. It's interesting to me that 95% of the people who complain about Sig 11 are posting anonymously. Sheesh, if you're gonna complain put a name behind it.
Palms are nice, and are cheap when compared to other handheld devices, and are amazingly useful, but they are limited to about 13 lines of text per screen, with an average of about 30 characters per line (that's my guess anyway . . .), so I don't think they are best suited for something like this.
The development guides that are available from 3com even note that they are meant to be used as an auxilary device to a PC for the most part. That being said, in a pinch, one would certainly work, though.
I suppose that Hemos (who posted, not Taco) wouldn't be at fault if PG changed their site. However, it appear(ed/s) that the link simply points to the PG site itself, judging from the context and the construction of the link. If PG had the text of the letter present in their index.html file, and changed it after the story was posted, I missed out seeing it. If that's the case, I'm clearly in the wrong in my previous post.
Thus they should be aware that current U.S. copyright law (since the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998) extended copyright from 50 to 70 years after the author's death, or extended it from 75 years after publication to 95 years, whichever was applicable. Evidently the content of the letter was copied from some 1992 writing, and needs correction.
Very well. This is the sort of information I was looking for. Given their mission, they should be on top of this sort of thing, even if they don't handle materials published after 1922.
And, in retrospect, given Marquez's birthdate and the like, I should have readily realized that his stuff wouldn't have been their. Quite a lapse in my thinking there . . .
I'm glad you've now heard of Project Gutenberg. Perhaps it will make you think of the differences between it and open source. You have heard of that, haven't you?
Open what?
Really? I'm rather thrilled to see this here. Until now, I've never heard of 'em.
If Project Gutenberg had been started by Linus or RMS, would it send out hysterical letters every month asking for money to keep the project afloat?
I fail to see how this qualifies as sending out "hysterical letters every month asking for money to keep the project afloat." Rather, it seems to be a request for publicity. It doesn't seem to be all that hysterical at all.
Wondering what this has to do with Slashdot and Open Source and GPL.
I don't see that it has much to do with Open Source and the GPL, but it seems to have a bit to do with Slashdot. "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." Well, I'm a nerd. I like to read. This is news to me, and stuff like this sure matters to me. End of story here, at least.
Seems PG is a conservative outfit that resists change in technology,
Unfortunately, I fail to comprehend how translating texts printed on paper to an easily-reproducable format that can be easily obtained via the internet qualifies as resisting change in technology.
won't cooperate with other free ebook causes,
Proof? Links, quotes, or something, please. If this is true, I'd be interested in seing something to subsantiate this, as I'm not likely to take the word of an A.C. alone as gospel truth.
is intent on producing numbers of poorly proofread texts and admittedly of not top quality,
Try getting 30 of your closest friends and proofread several hundred thousand pages of material and see how well you fare in getting all the errors. Please cite something to prove that they are "intent on producing numbers of poorly proofread texts."
and doesn't accept criticism from outsiders.
Again, proof please!
BTW, the aforementioned letter from Hart is not on the page linked to, and it contains errors of fact about copyright.
I don't see any claims that the letter is on the page linked to. If if does contain errors of fact about copyright, please cite some.
Maybe I'm way off here. I've never heard of this project before today, and thus my knowledge is limited to what I've seen here and my brief perusal of their web site, which more or less only consisted of checking to see what they had by F. Scott Fitzgerald (only This Side of Paradise) and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (nothing). If what you say is true, I'm certain that I, as well as other readers of Slashdot, will benefit from having some primary source material to peruse demonstrating your claims. Right now, all we have to go on are your quite unsubstantiated allegations.
It all depends on what kind of mood I'm in.
- A solution? I don't know if there really is one... perhaps make it so that a bug causes a computer explosion. Then, just the chips in our airplanes, companies would have to release quality software. Just a thought.
Of course, it doesn't help that almost every commercial license contains a clause that absolves the company that licenses the software of any sort of blame when something goes wrong with the software. In what other industry can the manufacturer say "Hey, if you use our product and it screws up and you lose money, you can't sue us!"For cryin' out loud, when an auto manufacturer intentionally manufacturers a flawed product, and the customer finds out, then folks sue the snot outta 'em. This isn't to say that I believe that people SHOULD be able to sue the snot outta the person(s)/company that maintain(s) the code. However, there has to be some accountability somewhere.
There's nothing (that I can see) that is inherently wrong with buying a shirt at the mall. In the same sense, I don't see anything inherently wrong with buying (or using) Red Hat, Debian, Caldera, etc. that would neccesitate a "Christian" Linux distribution. Nor can I grasp why someone would be offended by "kill" or "daemon" in reference to an operating system.
I suppose I'll never be able to understand everybody though. But, for some odd reason, I usually try.
I see that you read the Door. You're a good man!
Anti-Christian? Get real? OK, I will. I'm not anti-Christian. In fact, I am a Christian, and I don't mind saying so. Specifically, I'm Southern Baptist and I'm currently studying at a seminary in Wake Forest. There's no "anti-Christian" here.
Yes, but we can always hope, can't we?
Seriously, the reason I call it a trend is that it seems that I see more and more of this crap every year. I figure sooner or later the it will reach excess (if it hasn't already) and the whole thing will start to wane.
IMHO it just cheapens the whole Christian religion in general.
The way to deal with it all, I think, is to see the funny side of it if you can, or ignore it if you can't.
Yeah, I suppose it's pretty amusing that people who are willing to go out of their way to collect an entire wardrobe of "Christian" t-shirts seem to think that they are making some amazing theological statement.
I'm personally sickened by the trend in Christianity of taking a perfectly good logo/product/etc. and "Christianizing" it. Several good examples:
- The Coca-Cola logo changed to "Jesus Christ" on t-shirts.
- "Testamints" -- nothing more than imitation Altoids.
- "Bible Beanies" -- I think you can figure out what this is an imitation of.
I can actually see somebody creating a "Christian" Linux distro. After all, even the author seems to think that there is a need for it.Sigh.
MacOS has to be the easiest, mostly because I just told it what model I had and it installed (yes, I understand that this is possible because of the control that Apple has over the hardware). Windows 9x isn't bad at all, if the hardware is pretty standard, and the same goes for Red Hat or Debian. The main difference is that the 9x install has pretty graphics and makes all sorts of wild promises (Whatever you do will be easier/faster/more fun? I don't think so.).
On the other hand, you are correct that NT should be compared to Linux. It is a much better (gasp) example of what MS can do than Win9x, and fully expect 2000 to make some improvements over its predecessor (Heresy! Again!).
To be fair, Windows 98 is certainly easier to install than Linux. For the most part (from what I understand, that is) Win 2000 is a vast improvement over the quite painful NT 4.0 install. Microsoft is improving its products.
It's one thing to make things easy so that a novice user can easily complete useful functions. It's another thing entirely to fool the end user into thinking that he/she is qualified to do something they have no business doing.
Rather than demonstrating that Windows was as difficult to install as Linux, I rather meant to demonstrate the sheer absurdity of someone who can't find their video card trying to install an operating system without as much as asking for advice.
I'll happily admit that Windows is easier to install than any version of Linux I've played with as of yet (I haven't tried the new version of Caldera).
In reality, the post a bit lower down concerning the person trying to pilot an early Ford automobile while running over various and sundry items close by is closer to what I was attempting to achieve.
Apparently the concept of satire is quite over your head.
I know a good bit about automobiles, and I do minor repairs on my car from time to time, but I'm not going to go out and try to install a new transmission or rebuild the old one and expect it to go smoothly. In fact, if I wanted to learn how to do such a thing I would FIND SOMEONE WHO KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING and get them to help me with the process. Why? Because I wouldn't know a synchro from any other part in the darn thing!
Can you imagine if I wrote an article about doing something like that for CNN? I would be laughed off the face of the earth.
It frustrates me when people write articles like this. But, on the other hand, maybe the writer will take the time to learn the OS and will actually like it. Maybe some knowledge about computers will be the result of the experience.
1. I boot to "DOS" and I get this ugly prompt. What to do? I got get breakfast.
2. After breakfast, I come back and call my friend, a MSCE. He tells me to change to the CD-ROM drive. It won't let me. He says I need something called a "driver." But, I don't know what that is. So, he comes over and makes it work.
3. Now I've run this "setup.exe" file and it's doing some weird stuff. It's asking me for some number I don't know. I call Microsoft and sit on hold for 2 hours before I find out where it is--on the "Certificate of Authenticity." What's that?
4. OK, the darn thing froze up while installing. Time to reboot. It takes me only 2 minutes to do what took hours before.
5. I'm all installed up, but it didn't detect my sound card and I can't get my screen to display more than 16 colors! My MSCE friend says it's because I need to get a "video driver" because I've got an "AGP" graphics card, whatever that is. He says to get it off the internet, but I can't get Windows to dial out on my modem. It won't see it.
6. Now it says I've performed an illegal operation! What did I do?
I don't know what I've done and I can't get it to work, but now I feel like a real live major geek! I'm cool!