The members are not supposed to be known much less harassed, bribed and otherwise courted.
A lot of stuff is happening that is "not supposed to."
If the British Standards Institution (BSI) registers a vote in favor, Office Open XML would pass one of two criteria to becoming a standard, but fail the other.
That's the peril about commenting on the outcome of events still in progress. Several other participating (P) nations have since then changed from either Abstain or No to Yes. If all else remains the same then moving UK from No to Yes puts the proposition over. Check it out yourself.
The Register is reporting a switch for the UK from "No" to "Yes". If it's true then they've put it over.
This is bad not only for this standard but for the ISO in general. Their process is no longer trustworthy. We're going to have to go back to the bad old days of every nation setting their own incompatible standards.
OS/2? Heh. Trust me, I used all those, I even was an OS/2 fanboy at one point, but looking back, I can see how Windows won on its own merits back then.
IBM was foolish enough to partner with Microsoft on the development of OS/2. In hindsight the outcome was predictable but I do not think a reasonable interpretation of the events is "Windows won on its own merits."
Said professor Pthogh, waving his tentacle at the viewtank, "is your only warning that within its orbit lies a planetary mass black hole. These are the greatest finds you can hope for in your quest for relics of alien intelligence. Eventually this invisible beast will de-orbit and devour its parent star, becoming indistinguishable from the billions of other sun-massed black holes in the universe. Until then it serves as a marker that an intelligent race grew up here, lived, learned, and died.
Within or near the stellar system that is home to one of these, relics of a civilization are always found. They litter the surface of airless moons; they orbit the star independently; probes are often found heading out of the system. We have found several thousand so far.
Those of you in Sacred Studies program will learn further of the terrible experiments that cause this phenomena. Speculation by the population in general on the subject is, er, discouraged."
"This one though is special though." Professor Pthogh looked again at the tank, his voice taking a more somber tone. "This one is ours."
And then there were a few providers who wouldn't pay. They set up a new network where this practice was prohibited, at the time called the Othernet. Since it was a new network they could use the open technologies of the Internet, but avoid the chains of legacy technology like IP v4.
This proved to be the revolution that transformed intellectual property. Because the Othernet required secure Onion Routing protocols and packets protected by public key encryption fast ASICs to make the requirement fast and reliable were developed. The logic from these ASICs became embedded in the logic for Othernet core routers. The features were found to be popular on Internet and intranet routers as well, and so became an industry standard feature no vendor could avoid.
On the Othernet it was impossible to determine who sent what to whom. Naturally this became a haven for the criminal element, the disaffected and the insane. Here also though was a channel for open discussion free from fear of oppression. The Othernet begat Radio Free Othernet and the numerous cells responsible for the October Rebellion culminating in the Halloween event referred to in your history books as "the day they hanged the lawyers."
The market for the classic Internet shrivelled as its proprietors folded one by one. Eventually the last desperate holdouts were absorbed into the Othernet. Although the official name for the network is still the Othernet for casual purposes it is now referred to as the Internet.
That's another great thing about linux. You can turn that stuff off either individually or totally. With linux it's all up to you.
All the way back to the command line with no GUI at all? That's
sudo telinit 3
Or you just can disable individual features with the menu. Unlike Aero, turning off the glitter doesn't slow down the machine at all. Have it your way, whatever that is. Are you totally pumped about Genuine Advantage? You can have that too!
With the death of Windows XP those new to the Linux environment may find Linux Genuine Advantage comforting and familiar. After they get acclimated they won't need such things any more. I wish someone would write an annoying service that pops up every few minutes to ask ambiguous "are you sure?" questions, an antivirus mock-up, a "security center" gui and mock GUI firewall application. New linux users are always looking for that stuff and fearful when they can't find it.
It's here. It was 1994. It helps to not drink too much beer before you decide to replace your OS.
Patience, friend. You'll get it. We're here to help. A great many people on Slashdot are here to help you through this difficult moment. Even though we're not the official support channel for your software we're eager to see you have a good experience with it.
Now, start with describing the platform you installed it on and we'll go from there. We'll need to know either the OEM make and model or at least the model of motherboard you're on. It would also help if you could be more specific about your German DSL provider. Who is it, and specifically which type of DSL? If it goes too long we can go to better forum for this.
One last thing... if your DSL isn't working how did you manage to post this?
Shelly "is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language."
That's a strong endorsement. Lord Byron had an interesting group of characters about him. Between them they make Generation X look like a bunch of prudes.
Since he died before Mickey Mouse was born, you can find all of his works here at project Gutenberg.
Oh - support Project Gutenberg. When works in the public domain are forgotten we all lose something precious.
The only real answer was pointed out by Robert Malthus in 1800. The population growth was exceeding the earth's capacity to support it. Our culture had overwhelmed the capacity of our petri dish. We lacked the will to solve the problem then and we lack it now.
Often the best solution to a social ill is to do nothing. Most things work themselves out in time. Ultimately it's true for this problem too.
In this case humans lack the ability to make the Earth uninhabitable. We can only mess it up enough that the climate changes so that habitable zones move a bit toward the poles. The poles will be habitable for thousands of years after the last carbon based fuel is extracted and burned. The oceans will rise 50' or so if not in my lifetime then in my daughter's or in the lifetime of her kids. Eventually it will work itself out and the world's population will stabilize somewhere around 250 million. Of course between now and then there will be some unpleasantness. People who refuse to move inland at a rate of 1 meter per week or to move north at a rate of 1 meter per year will probably die. Oh, and there will probably be some food shortages if the population grows as expected faster than the land in norther climes becomes arable. People will have to eat lower on the food chain. There will be war.
If we attempt to alter the climate with our technology we will only aggravate the situation. Current proposals for altering the planetary albedo also involve turning the oceans acidic, which would be very bad.
Guys, really you need to work on this. You need a consultant. This crap is totally transparent.
Why use the free office package when your friendly neigborhood geek will install a hacked copy of Office from some random website? Really? Do you need to push the platform that hard? I don't think so. It makes you look weak.
So. I can be had for money, it just takes a lot of it. I'll teach you how to do this properly. Think about it.;-)
And Linux has certainly had issues with looking pretty, which is understandable as talented designers aren't as generous as programmers,
When you post stuff like this people are just going to point out the youtube.com video WINDOWS VISTA AERO VS LINUX UBUNTU BERYL. 3 million people have seen it. Why haven't you? It's from February of last year. Compiz has improved some since.
Here's Compiz running on an eee PC. Isn't that sweet? I hate lugging around 15 pounds of kit and the eee will be my next PC purchase. It weighs two pounds. Did you hear they're only 300 bucks (No, not the software. The whole thing!)?
They'll put up with a bit of slowdown for an OS that feels powerful, looks pretty and has lots of neat little toys.
I hear Vista comes with a few docklets or widgets or whatever they're calling them now. Ubuntu comes with this small collection of neat little toys. I didn't count them. I think there's thousands of them in there. People might find one or two interesting things in there.
Now what were you saying again? Oh, yeah,
talented designers aren't as generous as programmers,
Now you're projecting. In design are you? Apparently others are more giving. Perhaps that's because what they get back is "Progress" and that's good value.
31 June 2008, 8:00 AM EST: Nasdaq and NYSE both crash as the big three PC vendors and their suppliers discover nobody's willing to buy a PC any more.
Midmorning Bill and Steve get a call from Ben Bernanke.
Afternoon DHS executes warrants on One Microsoft Way. Attorney general reopens antitrust investigation. Steve gets a call from the IRS regarding the structure of financing for one of his sports teams.
Evening: XP gets a reprieve! We're all friends again.
For most of us the brilliant flash of insight that allows us to fully integrate a problem is an epiphany - that rare and fleeting moment where our brilliance truly shines. It's neither frequent nor persistent enough to build a plan on which we must rely.
For you it's more like the rising and setting of the sun.
That said, yeah, that's what I meant by "grok it". If I had spelled it out that way though someone could justly accuse me of the hubris of believing that I'm you.
The usual approach is to optimize the 90-95% case, then bail on the remainder, but this will almost always be beaten by code which manages to turn everything into the "normal" case, with no if/else handling, no testing, no branching.
Thanks for the reminder. I had fallen into a bad habit.
Certain aspects of this troll may be illegal in some jurisdictions. I don't know for sure - I'm not in law enforcement. It may not actually be a virus, but only a file that contains a signature. I'm not going to fire up a VM and infect it just to find out. Using Yahoo for URL obfuscation is interesting, though.
I also did not say that he is the actor here -- only that he's the DNS administrator for the server involved, and that novices shouldn't toy with such levels of uncertainty unless they accept the risks.
Sam Hocevar is a valuable member of the community. My initial concern was that this was some compromised server that should be fixed and then some curiosity about what was going on. If it happened that Sam got his amusement trolling the internet, well, I guess I could get over the inconvenience of blocking his site. Note that I'm not saying that this is the case -- just that if it were, then I'm no longer interested in the issue. I would think that someone with this level of skill would cover his tracks better if he cared to. Professional trolling can be an unpleasant but instructive laboratory in the field of social dynamics. I'm not interested enough in the field to engage in it myself, but as long as they keep it legal I don't have a problem with it.
Cmdr Taco does a good job of structuring Slashdot so these folks can be modded down quickly and disappear unless you're looking for them. In fact, we probably shouldn't be discussing the trolls at all. They thrive on the attention. That's all I've got to say about this.
I'm agreeing with you. 30k lines is 500 pages. That's roughly 8' high by 50' wide. Definitely doable.
Not about the scaring though -- just about it being useful. Anxiety isn't something I'd want to deliberately introduce to a working programmer. Most of the ones I've known had enough performance anxiety issues of their own without adding any.
Hanging the code makes some errors more visible. Not all errors are bugs. Some are structural. Structural fixes sometimes repair "pernicious" bugs.
It looks like the moderation trolls are tiring of you, twitter. A few more interesting and insightful comments should get you back into a better posting class.
First, take ownership. This is your project. Identify your resources, name the gates you must get through to succeed. If you have help make sure they understand their changes must hit the corner cases or it's junk, then give them ownership of their piece explicitly. Create a safe environment for testing changes, with forward and backward versioning.
Define success. So many projects skip this essential step. If you cannot identify the destination you cannot tell when you've won.
Skip the 50,000 foot view and proceed directly to "what does this do and how can it be done better"? Believe it or not flowcharts and Venn diagrams are not obsolete. Create tree views of function calls. Identify processes that should be libraried. Create policies like "maximum function call depth", "Maximum process share", etc.
If you're the lead, look at issues like memory allocation and process management. Do your profiler due diligence.
If you're the lone ranger on this just absorb the whole thing and integrate it. Force feed your brain huge quantities of what-ifs until it gives you the right answer in self defense - and then have somebody else check the result.
30 days development and 60 days testing. Remember to give a nice presentation at the end and sell it!
XP requirements: 300 MHz recommended, 233 required. 128MB recommended, 64MB required. 1.5 GB HD space.
Vista requirements:1 GHz recommended, 800MHz required. 1GB recommended, 512 required. 15GB HD space.
Now, let's forget for a moment that Vista doesn't actually work with the recommended specs. After all, XP was a dog at the recommended minimum. A real spec for Vista is apparently 2GHz, 2GB, 15 GB.
So for 10x the spec what do you get besides a fancy new desktop theme? Anything? Besides a horde of devices that don't work with the new os, I mean.
If you're interested, the links on the left at that page give some interesting depth of background. He has a long and interesting history.
Be careful with this stuff. The above link goes to his server and they can be changed at any time. They appear to be harmless at the time I'm writing this though. Some of the content is NSFW.
It's possible his server's been owned, but if somebody did that, they did a remarkably convincing job of integrating the bad into the good.
I'm torn here. Responsible geek reaches his dotage at the ripe old age of 30? Trolls have decided to reach over into illegal activity? Some combination of the above? I regret I lack the time and tools to look into it further.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of stuff is happening that is "not supposed to."
That's the peril about commenting on the outcome of events still in progress. Several other participating (P) nations have since then changed from either Abstain or No to Yes. If all else remains the same then moving UK from No to Yes puts the proposition over. Check it out yourself.
Ok, so it's the Register. They broke the story, so I linked them. Try
If you prefer other sources.
The Register is reporting a switch for the UK from "No" to "Yes". If it's true then they've put it over.
This is bad not only for this standard but for the ISO in general. Their process is no longer trustworthy. We're going to have to go back to the bad old days of every nation setting their own incompatible standards.
IBM was foolish enough to partner with Microsoft on the development of OS/2. In hindsight the outcome was predictable but I do not think a reasonable interpretation of the events is "Windows won on its own merits."
Said professor Pthogh, waving his tentacle at the viewtank, "is your only warning that within its orbit lies a planetary mass black hole. These are the greatest finds you can hope for in your quest for relics of alien intelligence. Eventually this invisible beast will de-orbit and devour its parent star, becoming indistinguishable from the billions of other sun-massed black holes in the universe. Until then it serves as a marker that an intelligent race grew up here, lived, learned, and died.
Within or near the stellar system that is home to one of these, relics of a civilization are always found. They litter the surface of airless moons; they orbit the star independently; probes are often found heading out of the system. We have found several thousand so far.
Those of you in Sacred Studies program will learn further of the terrible experiments that cause this phenomena. Speculation by the population in general on the subject is, er, discouraged."
"This one though is special though." Professor Pthogh looked again at the tank, his voice taking a more somber tone. "This one is ours."
And then there were a few providers who wouldn't pay. They set up a new network where this practice was prohibited, at the time called the Othernet. Since it was a new network they could use the open technologies of the Internet, but avoid the chains of legacy technology like IP v4.
This proved to be the revolution that transformed intellectual property. Because the Othernet required secure Onion Routing protocols and packets protected by public key encryption fast ASICs to make the requirement fast and reliable were developed. The logic from these ASICs became embedded in the logic for Othernet core routers. The features were found to be popular on Internet and intranet routers as well, and so became an industry standard feature no vendor could avoid.
On the Othernet it was impossible to determine who sent what to whom. Naturally this became a haven for the criminal element, the disaffected and the insane. Here also though was a channel for open discussion free from fear of oppression. The Othernet begat Radio Free Othernet and the numerous cells responsible for the October Rebellion culminating in the Halloween event referred to in your history books as "the day they hanged the lawyers."
The market for the classic Internet shrivelled as its proprietors folded one by one. Eventually the last desperate holdouts were absorbed into the Othernet. Although the official name for the network is still the Othernet for casual purposes it is now referred to as the Internet.
email is like Doritos.
The spam filter can eat all it wants. They'll make more.
That's another great thing about linux. You can turn that stuff off either individually or totally. With linux it's all up to you.
All the way back to the command line with no GUI at all? That's
Or you just can disable individual features with the menu. Unlike Aero, turning off the glitter doesn't slow down the machine at all. Have it your way, whatever that is. Are you totally pumped about Genuine Advantage? You can have that too!
With the death of Windows XP those new to the Linux environment may find Linux Genuine Advantage comforting and familiar. After they get acclimated they won't need such things any more. I wish someone would write an annoying service that pops up every few minutes to ask ambiguous "are you sure?" questions, an antivirus mock-up, a "security center" gui and mock GUI firewall application. New linux users are always looking for that stuff and fearful when they can't find it.
When the rabble on Fark have figured this out.
It's here. It was 1994. It helps to not drink too much beer before you decide to replace your OS.
Patience, friend. You'll get it. We're here to help. A great many people on Slashdot are here to help you through this difficult moment. Even though we're not the official support channel for your software we're eager to see you have a good experience with it.
Now, start with describing the platform you installed it on and we'll go from there. We'll need to know either the OEM make and model or at least the model of motherboard you're on. It would also help if you could be more specific about your German DSL provider. Who is it, and specifically which type of DSL? If it goes too long we can go to better forum for this.
One last thing... if your DSL isn't working how did you manage to post this?
Nobody is going to read this but me and you. You can't have your pet mods mark it down because they'll just reveal themselves in the logs.
Proprietary is not progress. That's my new meme. Don't you hate it? Sucks to be you.
I'm going to disprove your feeble point now. Are you ready? Ok, here we go:
Enough? Go away.
Shelly "is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language."
That's a strong endorsement. Lord Byron had an interesting group of characters about him. Between them they make Generation X look like a bunch of prudes.
Since he died before Mickey Mouse was born, you can find all of his works here at project Gutenberg.
Oh - support Project Gutenberg. When works in the public domain are forgotten we all lose something precious.
The only real answer was pointed out by Robert Malthus in 1800. The population growth was exceeding the earth's capacity to support it. Our culture had overwhelmed the capacity of our petri dish. We lacked the will to solve the problem then and we lack it now.
Often the best solution to a social ill is to do nothing. Most things work themselves out in time. Ultimately it's true for this problem too.
In this case humans lack the ability to make the Earth uninhabitable. We can only mess it up enough that the climate changes so that habitable zones move a bit toward the poles. The poles will be habitable for thousands of years after the last carbon based fuel is extracted and burned. The oceans will rise 50' or so if not in my lifetime then in my daughter's or in the lifetime of her kids. Eventually it will work itself out and the world's population will stabilize somewhere around 250 million. Of course between now and then there will be some unpleasantness. People who refuse to move inland at a rate of 1 meter per week or to move north at a rate of 1 meter per year will probably die. Oh, and there will probably be some food shortages if the population grows as expected faster than the land in norther climes becomes arable. People will have to eat lower on the food chain. There will be war.
If we attempt to alter the climate with our technology we will only aggravate the situation. Current proposals for altering the planetary albedo also involve turning the oceans acidic, which would be very bad.
Guys, really you need to work on this. You need a consultant. This crap is totally transparent.
Why use the free office package when your friendly neigborhood geek will install a hacked copy of Office from some random website? Really? Do you need to push the platform that hard? I don't think so. It makes you look weak.
So. I can be had for money, it just takes a lot of it. I'll teach you how to do this properly. Think about it. ;-)
When you post stuff like this people are just going to point out the youtube.com video WINDOWS VISTA AERO VS LINUX UBUNTU BERYL. 3 million people have seen it. Why haven't you? It's from February of last year. Compiz has improved some since.
Here is Compiz running on a seven year old 800 MHz PIII with 128 MB of RAM. It runs better than Vista did on the last dual core notebook with 1GB I tried it on, and it looks better too.
Here's Compiz running on an eee PC. Isn't that sweet? I hate lugging around 15 pounds of kit and the eee will be my next PC purchase. It weighs two pounds. Did you hear they're only 300 bucks (No, not the software. The whole thing!)?
I hear Vista comes with a few docklets or widgets or whatever they're calling them now. Ubuntu comes with this small collection of neat little toys. I didn't count them. I think there's thousands of them in there. People might find one or two interesting things in there.
Now what were you saying again? Oh, yeah,
Now you're projecting. In design are you? Apparently others are more giving. Perhaps that's because what they get back is "Progress" and that's good value.
31 June 2008, 8:00 AM EST: Nasdaq and NYSE both crash as the big three PC vendors and their suppliers discover nobody's willing to buy a PC any more.
Midmorning Bill and Steve get a call from Ben Bernanke.
Afternoon DHS executes warrants on One Microsoft Way. Attorney general reopens antitrust investigation. Steve gets a call from the IRS regarding the structure of financing for one of his sports teams.
Evening: XP gets a reprieve! We're all friends again.
You're Terje Mathisen.
For most of us the brilliant flash of insight that allows us to fully integrate a problem is an epiphany - that rare and fleeting moment where our brilliance truly shines. It's neither frequent nor persistent enough to build a plan on which we must rely.
For you it's more like the rising and setting of the sun.
That said, yeah, that's what I meant by "grok it". If I had spelled it out that way though someone could justly accuse me of the hubris of believing that I'm you.
Thanks for the reminder. I had fallen into a bad habit.
I missed your thread.
Certain aspects of this troll may be illegal in some jurisdictions. I don't know for sure - I'm not in law enforcement. It may not actually be a virus, but only a file that contains a signature. I'm not going to fire up a VM and infect it just to find out. Using Yahoo for URL obfuscation is interesting, though.
I also did not say that he is the actor here -- only that he's the DNS administrator for the server involved, and that novices shouldn't toy with such levels of uncertainty unless they accept the risks.
Sam Hocevar is a valuable member of the community. My initial concern was that this was some compromised server that should be fixed and then some curiosity about what was going on. If it happened that Sam got his amusement trolling the internet, well, I guess I could get over the inconvenience of blocking his site. Note that I'm not saying that this is the case -- just that if it were, then I'm no longer interested in the issue. I would think that someone with this level of skill would cover his tracks better if he cared to. Professional trolling can be an unpleasant but instructive laboratory in the field of social dynamics. I'm not interested enough in the field to engage in it myself, but as long as they keep it legal I don't have a problem with it.
Cmdr Taco does a good job of structuring Slashdot so these folks can be modded down quickly and disappear unless you're looking for them. In fact, we probably shouldn't be discussing the trolls at all. They thrive on the attention. That's all I've got to say about this.
I'm agreeing with you. 30k lines is 500 pages. That's roughly 8' high by 50' wide. Definitely doable.
Not about the scaring though -- just about it being useful. Anxiety isn't something I'd want to deliberately introduce to a working programmer. Most of the ones I've known had enough performance anxiety issues of their own without adding any.
Hanging the code makes some errors more visible. Not all errors are bugs. Some are structural. Structural fixes sometimes repair "pernicious" bugs.
But the screen resolution of fanfold paper hanging on the wall cannot be beaten by the best modern monitors.
Sometimes just printing the stuff out, papering the floor with it and literally crawling over it yields answers that otherwise escape.
If the line width won't fit on the paper at a reasonable pitch, there's a clue right there.
It looks like the moderation trolls are tiring of you, twitter. A few more interesting and insightful comments should get you back into a better posting class.
Congratulations.
It's only 30k lines of code. This is no problem.
First, take ownership. This is your project. Identify your resources, name the gates you must get through to succeed. If you have help make sure they understand their changes must hit the corner cases or it's junk, then give them ownership of their piece explicitly. Create a safe environment for testing changes, with forward and backward versioning.
Define success. So many projects skip this essential step. If you cannot identify the destination you cannot tell when you've won.
Skip the 50,000 foot view and proceed directly to "what does this do and how can it be done better"? Believe it or not flowcharts and Venn diagrams are not obsolete. Create tree views of function calls. Identify processes that should be libraried. Create policies like "maximum function call depth", "Maximum process share", etc.
If you're the lead, look at issues like memory allocation and process management. Do your profiler due diligence.
If you're the lone ranger on this just absorb the whole thing and integrate it. Force feed your brain huge quantities of what-ifs until it gives you the right answer in self defense - and then have somebody else check the result.
30 days development and 60 days testing. Remember to give a nice presentation at the end and sell it!
Good luck.
XP requirements: 300 MHz recommended, 233 required. 128MB recommended, 64MB required. 1.5 GB HD space.
Vista requirements:1 GHz recommended, 800MHz required. 1GB recommended, 512 required. 15GB HD space.
Now, let's forget for a moment that Vista doesn't actually work with the recommended specs. After all, XP was a dog at the recommended minimum. A real spec for Vista is apparently 2GHz, 2GB, 15 GB.
So for 10x the spec what do you get besides a fancy new desktop theme? Anything? Besides a horde of devices that don't work with the new os, I mean.
Apparently Sam is a debian developer of some major projects.
If you're interested, the links on the left at that page give some interesting depth of background. He has a long and interesting history.
Be careful with this stuff. The above link goes to his server and they can be changed at any time. They appear to be harmless at the time I'm writing this though. Some of the content is NSFW.
He's apparently a big deal in IT.
It's possible his server's been owned, but if somebody did that, they did a remarkably convincing job of integrating the bad into the good.
I'm torn here. Responsible geek reaches his dotage at the ripe old age of 30? Trolls have decided to reach over into illegal activity? Some combination of the above? I regret I lack the time and tools to look into it further.
We'll just have to be more careful.
I've written this up here. Classic GNAA troll turns virus link spammer. Avoid.