I'm unsure why, because I have a hell of a time reading the black-background web pages out there like Segfault or Planetquake to name a couple, but for some reason the old 80x25 black and white has always been easy on my eyes.
The reason for this is the serifed fonts these pages use: the serifs are very useful for guiding the eye between letters in long lines of text when the text is dark and the background is light. In inverse colour, they actually make it hard to make out the shape of the letters, so a sans-serifed font is advisable.
Since I realised it was possible, I also use it as my monospaced font in my browser: makes reading code much easier.
It's a nice, simple, sans-serif monospaced font, with all the useful symbols. Comes with X11R6: is there a TrueType version? I'd love to use it in Windows at university.
So, what you're saying is, IE has the best browser PNG support...
Actually, that prize goes to Acorn's imaginatively titled "Browse", with *full* tranparency support and seemingly full PNG support in general. Unfortunately, since Acorn died and went to heaven Browse is the property of Pace, who haven't seen fit to release it. Besides, it's only available on RISC OS, so would be useless to most people.
Browse, and possibly ANT's Fresco - I'm not sure, I haven't checked recently - are the only two browsers who support PNG correctly. Netscape renders inline PNGs to some extent, but doesn't display the images on their own for some bizarre reason.
debian has update-rc.d, which makes life SO much better (i think redhat also has an initscript symlink manager, though)
It does. It's called chkconfig, and it's better than update-rc.d. With update-rc.d you add the priorities for start up and shutdown on the command line.
Well, you can if you want. If you're being sensible you can just do:
Will this work with dual-head cards like the Matrox G400? * DRI/DRM - 3D
Direct Rendering Interface, right? Woohoo! No more running Q3A as root!:-) * XAA and DGA completly rewritten
What advantage does this give us? * New modular server.. everything is dynamic load
Again, why? What will we need loaded dynamically? * Integration of new X sample implementation code
What's this? Will there [ever] be support for font anti-aliasing or hinting? Is it even possible with backward compatibility? I really miss the anti-aliased fonts from Acorn's RISC OS machines, they made low resolutions usable and high resolutions a joy. (Note: don't equate this with Windows' "Font Smoothing" - basically a gaussian blur - because Acorn's system included hints and skeletons in the font file format in order to add information to the display, not take it away.)
RMS is not out to stop companies making a buck on their software. Their licence is not there to stop people forking their software, then selling it. The GPL is not defined as it is because they want to stop these things.
The GPL is about freedom. The whole point of it is that, once a piece of software is GPLd, that source will forever be available. We want our software to be freely available to all. If you use the GPL, you are stating that you will not allow someone to close off your source and distribute their derivation.
If all we cared about was whether commercial forks were possible or not, why not just stick "you may not sell this software for a profit" lines in your source? It's about more than that: GNU wants software to be free. Remember the concept of copyleft?
How many times is this debate going to come up on Slashdot? A summary of the two main licences:
1) GPL - use this licence if you want your software to remain Free as long as you decide to keep it that way. You do not have to license subsequent versions with the GPL; you may relicense at any time. However, no-one else may relicense your software, or distribute binaries without source.
This means that, in simple terms, your source code and any derivations will be available to anyone who has access to the binary.
2) BSD - use this licence if you want to get a protocol, standard or ethos popular. For example, if you want people to use your software as widely as possible, and the source is not as important as the idea behind it, this may be applicable to you.
The GLX homepage was just updated this Tuesday. There's now a GLX Quickstart MiniHOWTO, a link to some RPMs (I'll try using alien on them to see if they work with Debian) and a better FAQ.
Plus there's a glx-users list for stupid people like me to ask questions on how to use GLX, as opposed to pissing off John Carmack by asking on glx-dev.
I should have known this would be the case before I posted to slashdot:-)
I recently got a Matrox G400 to replace my old G200, since Matrox released full specifications, and the GLX project appeared to be going quite well. I was hoping that Quake2 would be more playable and I'd get >3fps in Q3Arena when it's released.
Instantly I was impressed with the 2D performance (everything just feels faster), but I can't get the GLX stuff to even compile, never mind run. It complained of a missing api1.c file, even though I think I'm sitting with current CVS updates from both Mesa and GLX.
Is it ever going to be released in binary form, working properly? Will it give decent Quaking performance? Or am I going to regret buying from Matrox when I could have got a TNT2 with full, working drivers, for less than I paid for my current card?
I've been working for Soma Records in Glasgow for a few months now implementing a custom CD Internet ordering system and we're due to go live in a month's time. We've also invested pretty heavily into this area.
So does this patent apply in the UK too? Has all our work and investment been totally wasted?
Dselect IS your friend, specially when running unstable. dpkg is a low level tool! To install something with dpkg you have to download it and then install it with dpkg. Dselect, searches for packages, gives their descriptions, sorts the dependecies downloads and installs everything, you NEVER have to download a deb by hand, ever.
I don't download debs by hand with apt-get, either. And I get the descriptions from the debian website, and apt-get handles the dependencies marvellously.
Learn how to use dselect. I know that some people will start ranting that apt-get is better. Apt-get is not a dselect replacement. apt-get was designed to be used with dselect or console-apt(still very alpha) as frontend. There are many things that apt-get and dpkg won't do easily for you.
like what?
Dselect was meant to make things easier.
Well it wholeheartedly failed on the user-friendliness front. It's one of the most annoying programs I've ever used.
I think my favorite quote is this: "Free Operating System Does Not Mean Low Total Cost of Ownership" Notice how they pointed out they were speaking about free as in beer; not free as in speech.
Reguardless, it is still true, and 99% of the users out there don't give a damn about getting the source code.
Actually, almost everyone I know who uses Linux as a server OS or primary workstation OS cares that the source code is available to all. They may not particularly want to read/usr/src/linux over their coffee break, but the fact that anyone can fix bugs and spot security problems is vital to the stability and security of the OS. And the power users know it, even if they can't code at all.
If I decided to email you about some investment opportunity, would you consider that spam too?
Content does not define what's spam.
According to you. Spam is unsolicited *advertising*, by my definition.
Where do you draw the line?
If it was sent to a list of people who did not solicit the mail, it is spam. No exceptions.
Geez, that's pretty tough. I just sent a mail to 10 people I know at university, and I didn't ask them first. And earlier today I sent a mail to a list (of 2) Slashdot posters, and I sure as hell didn't ask them first.
If I were to suck a list of Linux kernel developers and mail them all saying `here, have a free Quad PII Xeon box, to help with your development work', would that be spam? If I were to mail a list of MPs in the UK telling them that key escrow was stupid and shouldn't go ahead (perhaps put slightly more rationally, and with arguments), would that be spam? You really have to clean up your definition a little. IMVVHO.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason for this is the serifed fonts these pages use: the serifs are very useful for guiding the eye between letters in long lines of text when the text is dark and the background is light. In inverse colour, they actually make it hard to make out the shape of the letters, so a sans-serifed font is advisable.
The only font I'll use now in my Eterms (and in gvim) is lucida typewriter, specificially:
-*-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-*-*-*-120-75-75-*-*-* -*
or (for smaller resolutions/screens):
-*-lucidatypewriter-medium-r-*-*-*-100-75-75-*-*-* -*
Since I realised it was possible, I also use it as my monospaced font in my browser: makes reading code much easier.
It's a nice, simple, sans-serif monospaced font, with all the useful symbols. Comes with X11R6: is there a TrueType version? I'd love to use it in Windows at university.
So, what you're saying is, IE has the best browser PNG support...
Actually, that prize goes to Acorn's imaginatively titled "Browse", with *full* tranparency support and seemingly full PNG support in general. Unfortunately, since Acorn died and went to heaven Browse is the property of Pace, who haven't seen fit to release it. Besides, it's only available on RISC OS, so would be useless to most people.
Browse, and possibly ANT's Fresco - I'm not sure, I haven't checked recently - are the only two browsers who support PNG correctly. Netscape renders inline PNGs to some extent, but doesn't display the images on their own for some bizarre reason.
How's Mozilla's PNG support?
[...] XFree4 has so many new features to debug:
* SilkenMouse
What's that?
* Multihead __&__ Xinerama
Will this work with dual-head cards like the Matrox G400?
* DRI/DRM - 3D
Direct Rendering Interface, right? Woohoo! No more running Q3A as root!
* XAA and DGA completly rewritten
What advantage does this give us?
* New modular server.. everything is dynamic load
Again, why? What will we need loaded dynamically?
* Integration of new X sample implementation code
What's this?
Will there [ever] be support for font anti-aliasing or hinting? Is it even possible with backward compatibility? I really miss the anti-aliased fonts from Acorn's RISC OS machines, they made low resolutions usable and high resolutions a joy. (Note: don't equate this with Windows' "Font Smoothing" - basically a gaussian blur - because Acorn's system included hints and skeletons in the font file format in order to add information to the display, not take it away.)
RMS is not out to stop companies making a buck on their software. Their licence is not there to stop people forking their software, then selling it. The GPL is not defined as it is because they want to stop these things.
The GPL is about freedom. The whole point of it is that, once a piece of software is GPLd, that source will forever be available. We want our software to be freely available to all. If you use the GPL, you are stating that you will not allow someone to close off your source and distribute their derivation.
If all we cared about was whether commercial forks were possible or not, why not just stick "you may not sell this software for a profit" lines in your source? It's about more than that: GNU wants software to be free. Remember the concept of copyleft?
How many times is this debate going to come up on Slashdot? A summary of the two main licences:
1) GPL - use this licence if you want your software to remain Free as long as you decide to keep it that way. You do not have to license subsequent versions with the GPL; you may relicense at any time. However, no-one else may relicense your software, or distribute binaries without source.
This means that, in simple terms, your source code and any derivations will be available to anyone who has access to the binary.
2) BSD - use this licence if you want to get a protocol, standard or ethos popular. For example, if you want people to use your software as widely as possible, and the source is not as important as the idea behind it, this may be applicable to you.
If this is wrong, please correct me.
Plus there's a glx-users list for stupid people like me to ask questions on how to use GLX, as opposed to pissing off John Carmack by asking on glx-dev.
I should have known this would be the case before I posted to slashdot :-)
Instantly I was impressed with the 2D performance (everything just feels faster), but I can't get the GLX stuff to even compile, never mind run. It complained of a missing api1.c file, even though I think I'm sitting with current CVS updates from both Mesa and GLX.
Is it ever going to be released in binary form, working properly? Will it give decent Quaking performance? Or am I going to regret buying from Matrox when I could have got a TNT2 with full, working drivers, for less than I paid for my current card?
So does this patent apply in the UK too? Has all our work and investment been totally wasted?
I don't download debs by hand with apt-get, either. And I get the descriptions from the debian website, and apt-get handles the dependencies marvellously.
like what?
Well it wholeheartedly failed on the user-friendliness front. It's one of the most annoying programs I've ever used.
why?
Actually, almost everyone I know who uses Linux as a server OS or primary workstation OS cares that the source code is available to all. They may not particularly want to read /usr/src/linux over their coffee break, but the fact that anyone can fix bugs and spot security problems is vital to the stability and security of the OS. And the power users know it, even if they can't code at all.
If I decided to email you about some investment opportunity, would you consider that spam too?
Content does not define what's spam.
According to you. Spam is unsolicited *advertising*, by my definition.
Where do you draw the line?
If it was sent to a list of people who did not solicit the mail, it is spam. No exceptions.
Geez, that's pretty tough. I just sent a mail to 10 people I know at university, and I didn't ask them first. And earlier today I sent a mail to a list (of 2) Slashdot posters, and I sure as hell didn't ask them first.
If I were to suck a list of Linux kernel developers and mail them all saying `here, have a free Quad PII Xeon box, to help with your development work', would that be spam? If I were to mail a list of MPs in the UK telling them that key escrow was stupid and shouldn't go ahead (perhaps put slightly more rationally, and with arguments), would that be spam? You really have to clean up your definition a little. IMVVHO.
People abuse the word spam.
They do indeed.
And they misdefine it, too.