And I'm telling you, after using linux more than two years now and a few differnt distros. I cannot speak for all of them but I do know - from experience - if you are running windows and you try to install a windows app it has LESS chance of success the first time than if you are running ubuntu and try to install an app supported by them.
Should microsoft have to support every app? No, it's a different model and they CANNOT support every app. But ubuntu or mandriva exist for this very purpose, to provide a desktop platform AND a compelling list of appplications for that desktop. If you need to install software that exists outside that scope you have several choices: learn to DIY (impossible with most windows software), do without, or pay someone else a modest sum to do it for you. If you have the same needs in windows you have the choice of paying one of the DEVELOPERS whatever they demand to help you or you can do without.
The best contemporary distributions are able to install a vast number of apps and do it without incident. In the specific example the other fellow was arguing about - vlc - if one is using ubuntu one need follow the simple directions to enable the extra repositories, then go to a command window and type
apt-get install vlc
If that's too scary then do a "search" in synaptic for vlc, click it to select it, and click apply. Where do you see the problem in this?
Can you tell me what "emulation" settings you used when you installed it? Nothing I tried worked and the official word from the developer (before they closed the support site) was it won't work at all.
If Ubuntu wanted a distro useful to all, they would have a minimum version of all common Linux libs, including the KDE classes.
Bzzzzt. This is what apparently cannot "percolate" through that skull of yours!
Linux is about freedom of choice
Do you get that yet? Read it a hundred times if you have to. If Ubuntu included all the crap that goes along with kde then I never would have leapt at the chance to switch to it, because i don't WANT all that crap on my system. Apparently you didn't hear that the first time I said it so I repeat it again: if I wanted kde AND gnome and all that other crap I could have just stayed with Mandrake (even though I think it kinda sucks) or I could have gone with about a skillion other distributions. The lack of certain packages in the distribution is not a weakness or a fault, it is a feature not provided by most others. Yet if it doesn't meet someone's needs they have the freedom and the choice to go somewhere else or to modify what they have. Try that with windows.. or even OS X.
Try installing a.NET app on windows without installing all the crap that goes with it. It's the same fucking difference but you don't seem able to see it.
APIs should move with the platform.
WTF does this even mean? If I want to install garage Band on my PC should windows just magicaly migrate over all the crap from OS X? Who should I blame for the fact it doesn't? Apple? Microsoft? Linus Torvalds?
I know what I'm doing, and yet it was a PAIN in the ass trying to find every dependency that VLC required.
Bully for you. I knbow what I'm doing too and yet the only "solution" I could get out of even the people who MADE "Alice" was that it flat out would not work on anything except windows98 using the proper nvidia drivers.
Pain and anguish can happen on all systems. But on the Linux Desktop it is treated as the norm.
This is really ignorant. I have been using ubuntu more than six months now, I have experienced no pain nor anguish past the initial installation - which is still much easier and faster than installing windows, even (or especially) XP.
I am a power user and I do a LOT of stuff you simply cannot do with windows. Well, maybe if you install windows and then all the linux shell utilities and wget and nessus and visual studio and...
Dozens of sites, one for each RPM. Not to mention that some of them where binary, some were source, and some I found in one form and had to use the other either because the package manager rejected it, or the source wouldn't compile. That's just stupid.
and did you document all this? Did you produce a package of the RPMs? Even a tar file? Apparently you have solved the riddle of running videolan on your distro of choice, so where can one download the RPM?
If you're not going to be part of the solution no one is going to care when you complain. And using tired and provably misleading inflammatory hype like "Linux isn't a viable desktop platform" when trying to make your case sure isn't going to win you any sympathy.
Why should the user be restricted to only software officially supported by a Linux distro?
DUH! because distributions are all different. They provide different things for different people. I use ubuntu because I love the way it looks and feels but I cannot just install kwrite (an app I like very much more than the gnome text editor) or even the very popular k3b because I do not want to install all the extra kde crap that goes with it. Is this the fault of the folks who make k3b or the folks who support ubuntu?
On what version of windows did you install videolan? XP? 2000? Does it work in windows 98? I have downloaded SCADS of software that claims to work on 'Windows" but didn't work at all on my particular version. I bought American McGee's Alice on closeout about a year and a half ago and still have never played it because I have NEVER been able to get it installed on a single machine! I have tried 2k, xp, and ME. I don't have a serial number for 98 and I'm not about to try it, too much work just to play a game. I have tried it on WINE and it didn't work there either, though. Anyway I forget... what were you saying about how easy it is to install windows software?
Different distributions need support. If videolan doesn't have the time to do this for you and you refuse to learn to DIY, then look around. My bet is you will find someone who has done the hard work for you and put together a step by step.. which is more than I ever found for the closed source, corporate produced "Alice."
That is the pain I've gone through (and every user goes through) every time they try to install something outside of what the distribution provides.
And this is why you are comparing apples to oranges. If the folks at ubuntu or mandrake or wherever would take the time to package it then it wouldn't be this mess it is.
You want a fair comparison? OK let's pick any given package for windows of equivalent complexity - say, the gimp - and intall IT without any binaries. Whoops! We don't even have a compileryet to even make it to step one!
Fine, so let's try it this way: I'll send you the gimp in executable form but without the installer! And you can try hacking it in, putting the DLLs all where they belong and creating the program group folders and REGISTERING those DLLs so it all plays together with the shell as it's supposed to.
You know how I install VLC on Windows? 1)Run Installer. 2)Run Program. You know how I run it on my Mac? 1)Download and Run program.
So try this: download that VLC installer, unzip it manually, and install all that crap yourself. Without someone from the relevant distribution (mandriva, ubuntu, WINDOWS, whatever) doing this that is exactly what you would have.
Issues exist that are blocking Linux from being a viable desktop platform.
It took me about a month to get used to using linux after several years of sucking on the windows teat. Now every time one of my friends asks me for help I just chuckle about how easy it would be to fix their problem if only they had a decent command line or a decent set of tools installed by default.
But I hear Microsoft is planning a whole new shell language on the next release, so maybe there's hope - maybe given just a few more years, Microsoft will produce a viable desktop platform.
Re:Tom's Hardware is slipping.
on
DivX 6.0 is Out
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· Score: 3, Funny
I was immensly disappointed with the Tom's Hardware article. It was incredibly shallow and vague, a significant change for them.
If I had mod points I'd give you a +1 for sarcastic wit.
1. The packaging system is user-unfriendly. 2. The locations of programs are user-unfriendly. 3. The folder layout of Linux systems is user-unfriendly. 4. The lack of a standard base of installed libraries is application (and thus user) unfriendly.
What? These are "user" issues?
In windows there are a dozen different installers and they do not all behave or interact well. Installing windows 2000 OOTB on a system and then trying to get their own visual studio installed on it once involved me spending HOURS online looking for answers to problems that were all caused by that idiotic installer and the "upgrades" they had made to it. Even installing the latest service pack at the time didn't fix it, and yet microsoft couldn't be bothered to include this stupid udate program on the CD itself or even to just install THAT package if it was needed.
I have never had the problems installing any linux software that I have had trying to install much windows software. From a user perspective it's a matter of choosing what you want to install and clicking a button, and most distributions do a great job of integrating some form of management software into their desktop.
Locations of programs is NOT A USER ISSUE. install the program, uninstall the program. Most users I know are hard pressed to even navigate the concept of "folders" outside the BDI prodivided by the various "My blah" shortcuts provided on their desktop.
Lack of standard libraries? See my comments about the development tools in windows. Meanwhile most desktop distros give you a full office suite, browser, newsreader, and generally all the other little crap most users have come to expect, and you get that without paying extra for it or having to buy it all bundled.
Where I live the humidity is often around 100% although it gets "only" into the nineties most Summer days. Swamp coolers are awesome, but they won't work here.
But what DOES work is... taadaah! An amazing electrical appliance commonly known as an AIR CONDITIONER. In my case it is a GoldStar unit purchased for $98 at Wal-Mart two years ago. It still works fine albeit a bit noisier than when new and it actually costs LESS to keep this thing running in my bedroom 24/7 than it cost last month to run that Intel 3.2GHz tower with the two big fat SATA hard drives and the GB of RAM.
Imagine that... go to the store, buy a box for a hundred bucks and get a cool room! If this kid would have put off that last big fat hard drive upgrade maybe he wouldn't have to worry about mopping up 25 gallons of icewater due to someone bumping over his "room cooler."
The women of Guam have denounced an article in the international women's fashion magazine, Marie Claire, which stated that Guam women may not marry as virgins and that a man travels the island "deflowering" future brides. The article appeared in the December issue of the magazine and was under the caption title: "Jobs your boyfriend wants".
Lt. Gov. Madeleine Bordallo described the article as disgusting. "It was written in ignorance and I think we have to do something about it," she said.
The Colonised Chamoru Coalition called on Guamanian organizations nationwide to join in protest and boycott the magazine. It has also asked business houses to cease carrying the magazine in their shelves.
Coalition members are seeking legal assistance to determine what action can be taken against Marie Claire.
No, I have the right to do whatever the hell I want and the webmasters have the right to kick me the hell out. But/. is something of "the voice of the community" like it or not. Maybe they don't want to be that voice anymore, and they have that right. But this community grew to what it is by respecting that people have the right to be heard even when they are assholes. if that mission has changed it's certainly their right, but it's also our right to speak against that change and hold them true to what it was.
The people who run slashdot have a responsibility to the people who make it what it is. If they turn away from that responsibility everyone loses. We lose the community we have built, and the people who run slashot lose money. Which is more important? It doesn't matter.
They certainly have the ability to do whatever - but that doesn't equate with right. Just look at the skeletal remains of wired since that great takeover and the restaraunt people "did whatever the hell they wanted."
Warty was the god of distributions at the time. I (and most I think) was awed by how robust and simple it was. So when warty finally went gold I was anxious to try it out. I am now back to using warty at least a few more months. I hope the next release will be better, but given all these changes being made I don't have a lot of faith in that happening.
I wish there had been a "warty point five" release where they kept the old (and reasonably well performing) X system and the old fam (which, ironically, had finally been fixed to pretty robust operation just weeks before warty came out using the newfangled and terribly misbehaving gam) and updated nautilus and firefox and gaim and gimp.
Ubuntu was the best and may still be for "non geeks" but warty has enough problems that any non geek who experiences any of the very common problems it has is likely to be overhwlemed by it before they even get past the initial login screen.
Why is my screen stuck at 640x480? Why is there no sound? Why is the sound out of sync in all my videos? Why can't I unmount my encrypted hard drive space? Why can't I rename files in nautilus?
These are the sort of very simple problems few had with warty and everyone seems to have with hoary and the "solutions" are often difficult or impossible to find and the descriptions of the repairs pretty geeky when found. I truly wish the devs the best, but I hope these changes aren't all too ambitious to meet the next release date.
Exuse me, but if someone *interferes* with my ability to talk (like the spamers/flooders were with/.), then I have a right (natural reaction) to find away around that.
Surf at +1 and STFU - simple.
Your (fallacious) right to not be offended or annoyed does not trump another's right to expression - even if they are being an asshole.
What I am investigating, is the theory that bill-gate$-the-turd-junior is behind these attacks.
What about people in places where Slashdot is blocked?
Use a CGI proxy in the URL. Simple.
And how do you know Tor was used to post those ASCII swastikas?
When I first read this I had no idea what the hell you were even talking about and still wouldn't if someone in another reply to me hadn't told me about this "abuse" of tor. So my question to YOU would be "I didn't - but you did and it's obviously pressing on your mind... so... why do you ask?"
Comment spam is still speech. Even ascii shit and viagra ads. That's what the moderation system is for. If/. is blocking IPs then I'd agree they're not living up to their end of their geekly agreement.
I don't understand why you would need tor to hit here. Just put slashdot on the "exception list" in your proxy config and it works great. The ads still get killed (if you are using privoxy) but the content is fast and complete.
You might also trying setting up your tor config file. You do not HAVE to use the "trusted gateways" for the final drop, that is only how it is configured OOTB. Add "exit" to the untrusted gateway nodes permissions - heck you can even remove "exit" from the "trusted nodes" permissions. Now you're not connecting via those "known tor nodes."
BTW it ain't just slashdot. Lots of sites still use IP information instead of session variables and it will drive you nuts trying to post to one of them or even stay connected without having to log in again every two minutes. Simple solution is to just add those sites to the "don't proxy these sites" list. May not be the solution you want if it's a "controversial" site that could lead to leagal attention, but if you're really worried about that sort of thing you're a fool for using tor for it anyway.
This isn't even an insightful question. "That much encryption?" What the hell does that mean? If the encryption is easily cracked it's not worth doing, you might as well just be doing your banking over something like ROT13 encoded connections, huh?
I've been wondering why the hell the network has been getting slower and slower and slower over the last weeks. I guess now I know.
Why is an anonymous network needed? Well for one thing it's not anonymous regarding the type of uses the critics like to trot out i.e kiddie porn and cracking, since a good many of the connection nodes originate in the US or Germany, two of the most monitored countries in the world. Your connection can go through a hundred drops after that it won't matter at all if you make that first hit straight to MIT or some.de domain and you're doing anything to interest the FBI.
What it IS useful for (that is before it became so terribly overloaded every click ends up taking thirty seconds or more to respond) is surfing without worrying about your local "community standards" enforced ISP looking over your shoulder or the bazillions of admonkies being able to snoop. Tor is commonly packaged with privoxy, the two together make moving about the net a lot nicer (even slashdot).
It sounds laughable on casual inspection but a chimney doesn't really get that hot past the first few feet. A chimney isn't made to vent fire, after all, but only smoke. And chimneys were not just made of wood but wood and mud.
Yeah, it seems stupid to make a chimney out of wood - but if it is maintained it's not as stupid a notion as it sounds. Wood is easy to locate, move and stack and it was abundant in the area.
Wow, gee... sorta like this quote from the article:
A simple example -- when Rolston needed to clear disk space on his laptop, he used Spotlight to find all the bulky QuickTime movie files scattered across many different folders. Then he created a Smart Folder for them so he'd always be able to quickly see which little-used files he could delete.
Any of this is new...how? Because Apple put it in a spiffy panel?
locate.mov
Want to see them all in a "folder?" Iterate on the search results and create symlinks anywhere you want'em.
I really don't get all this talk about "getting rid of folders." the folders will still be there, all that's changing is the user interface. But a single user interface is NEVER optimal for all tasks. So what does any of this matter to sophisticated users? Nothing, nada, zip.
What genius! and here's an even better idea: post them in public and then go to an online forum that gets, like, a bazillion hits a day and TELL EVERYONE you did it! That way when the MIB show up to ask you about those quesitonable images they heard about or your activities online the other night when MSN went dark, they won't have to bother with breaking out the demerol and the rubber hose to "coax" those PGP passphrases out of you...
Why does it show me a map of the SF bay area when looking for an apartment in Austin? My friend in Austin always says its a lot like San Francisco but I didn't think he meant it that much.
I do that stuff all the time. I stopped using windows altogether about two years ago, every day I still find myself using the GUI less and less. Sure some things are irreplaceable, but for most stuff -- I want to download an image gallery? I can waste five minutes setting up a download in d4x or I can type something like
for ALL in `seq -w firstvar lastvar`;do wget http://somesite/gallery/DSC$ALL.jpg;done...and I'm essentially done. Takes less time to type that than opening the damn download program, and the "interface" is just as usable (at least it is to me).
And yes, I DO use my system for video editing and photography work. I still long for Gimp to have the keyboard-ability of the SGI/Wavefront system I learned to use more than a decade ago.
If they should not have to be root and not even have to type in some form of confirmation that yes, I want to add this PROGRAM to my computer, what?
This is how windows has worked for ages and it's the most common way to own a system - it's so incredibly easy to install something, just click and bang and we own u.
It's not hard to type a password when installing an app. It tells the user they are doing something to alter the fucntionality of their machine and it tells the machine this is what the user wants to do.
I don't know why you would pay twenty bucks for a 1.4" LCD when you can get an LCD and the rest of the camera for about twice that.
My "carry along" camera is a cheap 3Megapixel SiPix I paid $100 for almost a year ago and that wasn't exactly a bargain bin price even then. It accepts up to 256MB flash chip which is good for several minutes of 320x240 AVI video. Now you can get equivalent cameras for fifty bucks or so. And yes, it will fit in a pocket.
It takes good pictures only when you coax it, but I have taken a few with it I would not hesitate to put my name on and publish. It has terrible ghosting in bright sunlight, but I cannot believe these cheap gadgets are going to be any better. And I can "rip" the flash cartridges to my laptop all day for nothing but the price of electricity.
The only real "value" here I think is making a DVD for you from the video. Lots of people still have no clue how to do such things.
As the Intel logo lowered on the stage screen, Jobs said, "We are going to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors, and we are going to do it for you now, and for our customers next year. Why? Because we want to be making the best computer for our customers looking forward."
I think he meant to say "we are going to do it to you now, and to our customers in the next year.
All those people saying Palladium didn't matter because there would always be Apple?
Ahem...
Better enjoy your freedom of expression now while it lasts, the corporations are coming quickly.
You can't give GDI or Quartz three 16 bit numbers for a point on the display,
You don't need to. You're still not getting it;
When you give three 8 bit numbers to the display those values DO NOT just go straight to the DACs. they are handled by the display adapter however the driver tells it. It doesn't matter what system you are using - X11, windows, whatever - the display layer itself almost certainly (and definitely in X11 for any I have seen) has settings for black level, brightness, gamma correction and so forth.
This means those 8 bit integers you send to the display driver are getting processed into intermediate values and then truncated AGAIN to 8 bits, effectively leaving that "24 bit color" at some indeterminate value that is NOT "24 bits" at all, but perhaps 18...22 bits.
Using ten bit DACs in the adapter (and employing them via the driver) allows one to make use of the full gamut of color info being sent to the display by the application WHILE allowing one to apply color correction ot the monitor; using 8 bit DACs cannot do this.
Slashdot Mirror
And I'm telling you, after using linux more than two years now and a few differnt distros. I cannot speak for all of them but I do know - from experience - if you are running windows and you try to install a windows app it has LESS chance of success the first time than if you are running ubuntu and try to install an app supported by them.
Should microsoft have to support every app? No, it's a different model and they CANNOT support every app. But ubuntu or mandriva exist for this very purpose, to provide a desktop platform AND a compelling list of appplications for that desktop. If you need to install software that exists outside that scope you have several choices: learn to DIY (impossible with most windows software), do without, or pay someone else a modest sum to do it for you. If you have the same needs in windows you have the choice of paying one of the DEVELOPERS whatever they demand to help you or you can do without.
The best contemporary distributions are able to install a vast number of apps and do it without incident. In the specific example the other fellow was arguing about - vlc - if one is using ubuntu one need follow the simple directions to enable the extra repositories, then go to a command window and type
apt-get install vlc
If that's too scary then do a "search" in synaptic for vlc, click it to select it, and click apply. Where do you see the problem in this?
Can you tell me what "emulation" settings you used when you installed it? Nothing I tried worked and the official word from the developer (before they closed the support site) was it won't work at all.
If Ubuntu wanted a distro useful to all, they would have a minimum version of all common Linux libs, including the KDE classes.
.NET app on windows without installing all the crap that goes with it. It's the same fucking difference but you don't seem able to see it.
Bzzzzt. This is what apparently cannot "percolate" through that skull of yours!
Linux is about freedom of choice
Do you get that yet? Read it a hundred times if you have to. If Ubuntu included all the crap that goes along with kde then I never would have leapt at the chance to switch to it, because i don't WANT all that crap on my system. Apparently you didn't hear that the first time I said it so I repeat it again: if I wanted kde AND gnome and all that other crap I could have just stayed with Mandrake (even though I think it kinda sucks) or I could have gone with about a skillion other distributions. The lack of certain packages in the distribution is not a weakness or a fault, it is a feature not provided by most others. Yet if it doesn't meet someone's needs they have the freedom and the choice to go somewhere else or to modify what they have. Try that with windows.. or even OS X.
Try installing a
APIs should move with the platform.
WTF does this even mean? If I want to install garage Band on my PC should windows just magicaly migrate over all the crap from OS X? Who should I blame for the fact it doesn't? Apple? Microsoft? Linus Torvalds?
I know what I'm doing, and yet it was a PAIN in the ass trying to find every dependency that VLC required.
Bully for you. I knbow what I'm doing too and yet the only "solution" I could get out of even the people who MADE "Alice" was that it flat out would not work on anything except windows98 using the proper nvidia drivers.
Pain and anguish can happen on all systems. But on the Linux Desktop it is treated as the norm.
This is really ignorant. I have been using ubuntu more than six months now, I have experienced no pain nor anguish past the initial installation - which is still much easier and faster than installing windows, even (or especially) XP.
I am a power user and I do a LOT of stuff you simply cannot do with windows. Well, maybe if you install windows and then all the linux shell utilities and wget and nessus and visual studio and...
Dozens of sites, one for each RPM. Not to mention that some of them where binary, some were source, and some I found in one form and had to use the other either because the package manager rejected it, or the source wouldn't compile. That's just stupid.
and did you document all this? Did you produce a package of the RPMs? Even a tar file? Apparently you have solved the riddle of running videolan on your distro of choice, so where can one download the RPM?
If you're not going to be part of the solution no one is going to care when you complain. And using tired and provably misleading inflammatory hype like "Linux isn't a viable desktop platform" when trying to make your case sure isn't going to win you any sympathy.
Why should the user be restricted to only software officially supported by a Linux distro?
DUH! because distributions are all different. They provide different things for different people. I use ubuntu because I love the way it looks and feels but I cannot just install kwrite (an app I like very much more than the gnome text editor) or even the very popular k3b because I do not want to install all the extra kde crap that goes with it. Is this the fault of the folks who make k3b or the folks who support ubuntu?
On what version of windows did you install videolan? XP? 2000? Does it work in windows 98? I have downloaded SCADS of software that claims to work on 'Windows" but didn't work at all on my particular version. I bought American McGee's Alice on closeout about a year and a half ago and still have never played it because I have NEVER been able to get it installed on a single machine! I have tried 2k, xp, and ME. I don't have a serial number for 98 and I'm not about to try it, too much work just to play a game. I have tried it on WINE and it didn't work there either, though. Anyway I forget... what were you saying about how easy it is to install windows software?
Different distributions need support. If videolan doesn't have the time to do this for you and you refuse to learn to DIY, then look around. My bet is you will find someone who has done the hard work for you and put together a step by step.. which is more than I ever found for the closed source, corporate produced "Alice."
That is the pain I've gone through (and every user goes through) every time they try to install something outside of what the distribution provides.
And this is why you are comparing apples to oranges. If the folks at ubuntu or mandrake or wherever would take the time to package it then it wouldn't be this mess it is.
You want a fair comparison? OK let's pick any given package for windows of equivalent complexity - say, the gimp - and intall IT without any binaries. Whoops! We don't even have a compileryet to even make it to step one!
Fine, so let's try it this way: I'll send you the gimp in executable form but without the installer! And you can try hacking it in, putting the DLLs all where they belong and creating the program group folders and REGISTERING those DLLs so it all plays together with the shell as it's supposed to.
You know how I install VLC on Windows? 1)Run Installer. 2)Run Program. You know how I run it on my Mac? 1)Download and Run program.
So try this: download that VLC installer, unzip it manually, and install all that crap yourself. Without someone from the relevant distribution (mandriva, ubuntu, WINDOWS, whatever) doing this that is exactly what you would have.
Issues exist that are blocking Linux from being a viable desktop platform.
It took me about a month to get used to using linux after several years of sucking on the windows teat. Now every time one of my friends asks me for help I just chuckle about how easy it would be to fix their problem if only they had a decent command line or a decent set of tools installed by default.
But I hear Microsoft is planning a whole new shell language on the next release, so maybe there's hope - maybe given just a few more years, Microsoft will produce a viable desktop platform.
I was immensly disappointed with the Tom's Hardware article. It was incredibly shallow and vague, a significant change for them.
If I had mod points I'd give you a +1 for sarcastic wit.
1. The packaging system is user-unfriendly.
2. The locations of programs are user-unfriendly.
3. The folder layout of Linux systems is user-unfriendly.
4. The lack of a standard base of installed libraries is application (and thus user) unfriendly.
What? These are "user" issues?
In windows there are a dozen different installers and they do not all behave or interact well. Installing windows 2000 OOTB on a system and then trying to get their own visual studio installed on it once involved me spending HOURS online looking for answers to problems that were all caused by that idiotic installer and the "upgrades" they had made to it. Even installing the latest service pack at the time didn't fix it, and yet microsoft couldn't be bothered to include this stupid udate program on the CD itself or even to just install THAT package if it was needed.
I have never had the problems installing any linux software that I have had trying to install much windows software. From a user perspective it's a matter of choosing what you want to install and clicking a button, and most distributions do a great job of integrating some form of management software into their desktop.
Locations of programs is NOT A USER ISSUE. install the program, uninstall the program. Most users I know are hard pressed to even navigate the concept of "folders" outside the BDI prodivided by the various "My blah" shortcuts provided on their desktop.
Lack of standard libraries? See my comments about the development tools in windows. Meanwhile most desktop distros give you a full office suite, browser, newsreader, and generally all the other little crap most users have come to expect, and you get that without paying extra for it or having to buy it all bundled.
Where I live the humidity is often around 100% although it gets "only" into the nineties most Summer days. Swamp coolers are awesome, but they won't work here.
But what DOES work is... taadaah! An amazing electrical appliance commonly known as an AIR CONDITIONER. In my case it is a GoldStar unit purchased for $98 at Wal-Mart two years ago. It still works fine albeit a bit noisier than when new and it actually costs LESS to keep this thing running in my bedroom 24/7 than it cost last month to run that Intel 3.2GHz tower with the two big fat SATA hard drives and the GB of RAM.
Imagine that... go to the store, buy a box for a hundred bucks and get a cool room! If this kid would have put off that last big fat hard drive upgrade maybe he wouldn't have to worry about mopping up 25 gallons of icewater due to someone bumping over his "room cooler."
Marie Claire Insults Guam
The women of Guam have denounced an article in the international women's fashion magazine, Marie Claire, which stated that Guam women may not marry as virgins and that a man travels the island "deflowering" future brides. The article appeared in the December issue of the magazine and was under the caption title: "Jobs your boyfriend wants".
Lt. Gov. Madeleine Bordallo described the article as disgusting. "It was written in ignorance and I think we have to do something about it," she said.
The Colonised Chamoru Coalition called on Guamanian organizations nationwide to join in protest and boycott the magazine. It has also asked business houses to cease carrying the magazine in their shelves.
Coalition members are seeking legal assistance to determine what action can be taken against Marie Claire.
So you "save time" by printing barcodes, writing database code, labeling, photographing and cataloging all the useless crap most of us throw away?
No, I have the right to do whatever the hell I want and the webmasters have the right to kick me the hell out. But /. is something of "the voice of the community" like it or not. Maybe they don't want to be that voice anymore, and they have that right. But this community grew to what it is by respecting that people have the right to be heard even when they are assholes. if that mission has changed it's certainly their right, but it's also our right to speak against that change and hold them true to what it was.
The people who run slashdot have a responsibility to the people who make it what it is. If they turn away from that responsibility everyone loses. We lose the community we have built, and the people who run slashot lose money. Which is more important? It doesn't matter.
They certainly have the ability to do whatever - but that doesn't equate with right. Just look at the skeletal remains of wired since that great takeover and the restaraunt people "did whatever the hell they wanted."
Warty was the god of distributions at the time. I (and most I think) was awed by how robust and simple it was. So when warty finally went gold I was anxious to try it out. I am now back to using warty at least a few more months. I hope the next release will be better, but given all these changes being made I don't have a lot of faith in that happening.
I wish there had been a "warty point five" release where they kept the old (and reasonably well performing) X system and the old fam (which, ironically, had finally been fixed to pretty robust operation just weeks before warty came out using the newfangled and terribly misbehaving gam) and updated nautilus and firefox and gaim and gimp.
Ubuntu was the best and may still be for "non geeks" but warty has enough problems that any non geek who experiences any of the very common problems it has is likely to be overhwlemed by it before they even get past the initial login screen.
Why is my screen stuck at 640x480?
Why is there no sound?
Why is the sound out of sync in all my videos?
Why can't I unmount my encrypted hard drive space?
Why can't I rename files in nautilus?
These are the sort of very simple problems few had with warty and everyone seems to have with hoary and the "solutions" are often difficult or impossible to find and the descriptions of the repairs pretty geeky when found. I truly wish the devs the best, but I hope these changes aren't all too ambitious to meet the next release date.
Exuse me, but if someone *interferes* with my ability to talk (like the spamers/flooders were with /.), then I have a right (natural reaction) to find away around that.
Surf at +1 and STFU - simple.
Your (fallacious) right to not be offended or annoyed does not trump another's right to expression - even if they are being an asshole.
What I am investigating, is the theory that bill-gate$-the-turd-junior is behind these attacks.
Oh yeah, you're not a nut at all...
What about people in places where Slashdot is blocked?
/. is blocking IPs then I'd agree they're not living up to their end of their geekly agreement.
Use a CGI proxy in the URL. Simple.
And how do you know Tor was used to post those ASCII swastikas?
When I first read this I had no idea what the hell you were even talking about and still wouldn't if someone in another reply to me hadn't told me about this "abuse" of tor. So my question to YOU would be "I didn't - but you did and it's obviously pressing on your mind... so... why do you ask?"
Comment spam is still speech. Even ascii shit and viagra ads. That's what the moderation system is for. If
I don't understand why you would need tor to hit here. Just put slashdot on the "exception list" in your proxy config and it works great. The ads still get killed (if you are using privoxy) but the content is fast and complete.
You might also trying setting up your tor config file. You do not HAVE to use the "trusted gateways" for the final drop, that is only how it is configured OOTB. Add "exit" to the untrusted gateway nodes permissions - heck you can even remove "exit" from the "trusted nodes" permissions. Now you're not connecting via those "known tor nodes."
BTW it ain't just slashdot. Lots of sites still use IP information instead of session variables and it will drive you nuts trying to post to one of them or even stay connected without having to log in again every two minutes. Simple solution is to just add those sites to the "don't proxy these sites" list. May not be the solution you want if it's a "controversial" site that could lead to leagal attention, but if you're really worried about that sort of thing you're a fool for using tor for it anyway.
This isn't even an insightful question. "That much encryption?" What the hell does that mean? If the encryption is easily cracked it's not worth doing, you might as well just be doing your banking over something like ROT13 encoded connections, huh?
.de domain and you're doing anything to interest the FBI.
I've been wondering why the hell the network has been getting slower and slower and slower over the last weeks. I guess now I know.
Why is an anonymous network needed? Well for one thing it's not anonymous regarding the type of uses the critics like to trot out i.e kiddie porn and cracking, since a good many of the connection nodes originate in the US or Germany, two of the most monitored countries in the world. Your connection can go through a hundred drops after that it won't matter at all if you make that first hit straight to MIT or some
What it IS useful for (that is before it became so terribly overloaded every click ends up taking thirty seconds or more to respond) is surfing without worrying about your local "community standards" enforced ISP looking over your shoulder or the bazillions of admonkies being able to snoop. Tor is commonly packaged with privoxy, the two together make moving about the net a lot nicer (even slashdot).
It sounds laughable on casual inspection but a chimney doesn't really get that hot past the first few feet. A chimney isn't made to vent fire, after all, but only smoke. And chimneys were not just made of wood but wood and mud.
Yeah, it seems stupid to make a chimney out of wood - but if it is maintained it's not as stupid a notion as it sounds. Wood is easy to locate, move and stack and it was abundant in the area.
Wow, gee... sorta like this quote from the article:
.mov
A simple example -- when Rolston needed to clear disk space on his laptop, he used Spotlight to find all the bulky QuickTime movie files scattered across many different folders. Then he created a Smart Folder for them so he'd always be able to quickly see which little-used files he could delete.
Any of this is new...how? Because Apple put it in a spiffy panel?
locate
Want to see them all in a "folder?" Iterate on the search results and create symlinks anywhere you want'em.
I really don't get all this talk about "getting rid of folders." the folders will still be there, all that's changing is the user interface. But a single user interface is NEVER optimal for all tasks. So what does any of this matter to sophisticated users? Nothing, nada, zip.
What genius! and here's an even better idea: post them in public and then go to an online forum that gets, like, a bazillion hits a day and TELL EVERYONE you did it! That way when the MIB show up to ask you about those quesitonable images they heard about or your activities online the other night when MSN went dark, they won't have to bother with breaking out the demerol and the rubber hose to "coax" those PGP passphrases out of you...
Why does it show me a map of the SF bay area when looking for an apartment in Austin? My friend in Austin always says its a lot like San Francisco but I didn't think he meant it that much.
display -dither -despeckle -gamma 1.8 -sharpen 2 0.5 thisSecretImage.jpg
...and I'm essentially done. Takes less time to type that than opening the damn download program, and the "interface" is just as usable (at least it is to me).
I do that stuff all the time. I stopped using windows altogether about two years ago, every day I still find myself using the GUI less and less. Sure some things are irreplaceable, but for most stuff -- I want to download an image gallery? I can waste five minutes setting up a download in d4x or I can type something like
for ALL in `seq -w firstvar lastvar`;do wget http://somesite/gallery/DSC$ALL.jpg;done
And yes, I DO use my system for video editing and photography work. I still long for Gimp to have the keyboard-ability of the SGI/Wavefront system I learned to use more than a decade ago.
If they should not have to be root and not even have to type in some form of confirmation that yes, I want to add this PROGRAM to my computer, what?
This is how windows has worked for ages and it's the most common way to own a system - it's so incredibly easy to install something, just click and bang and we own u.
It's not hard to type a password when installing an app. It tells the user they are doing something to alter the fucntionality of their machine and it tells the machine this is what the user wants to do.
I don't know why you would pay twenty bucks for a 1.4" LCD when you can get an LCD and the rest of the camera for about twice that.
My "carry along" camera is a cheap 3Megapixel SiPix I paid $100 for almost a year ago and that wasn't exactly a bargain bin price even then. It accepts up to 256MB flash chip which is good for several minutes of 320x240 AVI video. Now you can get equivalent cameras for fifty bucks or so. And yes, it will fit in a pocket.
It takes good pictures only when you coax it, but I have taken a few with it I would not hesitate to put my name on and publish. It has terrible ghosting in bright sunlight, but I cannot believe these cheap gadgets are going to be any better. And I can "rip" the flash cartridges to my laptop all day for nothing but the price of electricity.
The only real "value" here I think is making a DVD for you from the video. Lots of people still have no clue how to do such things.
As the Intel logo lowered on the stage screen, Jobs said, "We are going to make the transition from PowerPC to Intel processors, and we are going to do it for you now, and for our customers next year. Why? Because we want to be making the best computer for our customers looking forward."
I think he meant to say "we are going to do it to you now, and to our customers in the next year.
All those people saying Palladium didn't matter because there would always be Apple?
Ahem...
Better enjoy your freedom of expression now while it lasts, the corporations are coming quickly.
You can't give GDI or Quartz three 16 bit numbers for a point on the display,
You don't need to. You're still not getting it;
When you give three 8 bit numbers to the display those values DO NOT just go straight to the DACs. they are handled by the display adapter however the driver tells it. It doesn't matter what system you are using - X11, windows, whatever - the display layer itself almost certainly (and definitely in X11 for any I have seen) has settings for black level, brightness, gamma correction and so forth.
This means those 8 bit integers you send to the display driver are getting processed into intermediate values and then truncated AGAIN to 8 bits, effectively leaving that "24 bit color" at some indeterminate value that is NOT "24 bits" at all, but perhaps 18...22 bits.
Using ten bit DACs in the adapter (and employing them via the driver) allows one to make use of the full gamut of color info being sent to the display by the application WHILE allowing one to apply color correction ot the monitor; using 8 bit DACs cannot do this.