you know, maybe you're right. Maybe the majority of readers aren't sold on Linux. I just know that when I was a Slashdot reader (and not yet a poster) I had a soft spot for Linux in my technological heart (even though I wasn't using Linux).
quite possibly; I dunno. I just kinda assumed... you know, Windows users would be turned away by the rampant evangelism that sometimes even leaks its way into the articles...
One point of disagreement: I don't think it's fair to compare Daniel Robbins and Gentoo against Microsoft. Robbins started Gentoo Technologies (Inc) as a labour of love; the other is solely a commercial enterprise. A more accurate comparison would be Microsoft and... ummmmm... Red Hat, who apparently has quite a bit of dough to play with (although I've never seen one of their banners on OSDN). That, in my opinion, is a better comparison of Linux and Microsoft's economic standing when you're trying to choose what platform to develop for.
my gosh, MSDN makes me cry. It's just so nice to use. I wish we had more sites as well-organised as this for the free community. What I wouldn't do to see the Mozilla Foundation (or the W3C or whoever) create a comprehensive XHTML/DOM/ECMAScript reference like the (embraced and extended) version you find on MSDN. Man, there's something to be said for centralisation... yummy yummy software fascism...
Hey, maybe I'll make one.... mind you, the reason I want one is because I don't really know XHTML to its full extent myself... 9_9
you know, that's exactly what most OSS-friendly companies are motivated by. They call it "leveraging the value of open-source by encouraging peer review and community-driven quality control" or some such marketing speak. I think it's one of the best reasons to release source code. I can't speak for MS as to whether they "can't be bothered" to fix software bugs, or if they just think this is a more efficient way of hunting down bugs.
As for Windows and IIS et cetera remaining closed, yeah, that does kinda suck. I, for one, could probably be persuaded away from Linux and back to the Dark Side if it were free (beer and speech)... ^_^
I think it's bizarre myself. They're kinda throwing away their advertising money by buying spots on OSDN. Let's see, we've got four different groups here:
Open source enthusiasts and developers, who are very dedicated to Linux or FreeBSD or what-have-you
Linux zealots who are fanatically dedicated to Linux
Platform-agnostic IT folks who use Linux, Windows, Mac OS, or maybe even DOS depending on what works best for them
Tech-heads who come here for information and opinion on the world of science and technology
I think that (correct me if I'm wrong) the vast majority of Slashdot readers and posters fall into the first two categories. And they're already baptised members of the open-source community, so they're not giving up the faith. The rest, who fall into the last two categories, certainly have an open mind towards Linux and are usually pretty sceptical of advertising in general.
I can bet it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience for some people! Eat it once, and they become ill-disposed to continue their 'lifetime' ^_^
In all seriousness, I hear that some people really love fugu -- probably mostly Japanese and those with a more 'educated' palate (which I'm delighted to say I have no grasp of). For those of us with a palate IQ of 90 or lower, I read one article that said it didn't taste much different from wet cardboard.
Korean Broadcasting Service has been doing this for at least a couple years. They seem to be about ten years ahead of us on everything -- almost all computers have a TFT screen hooked up to them, everyone has cell phones, etc., etc., etc. And they have one of the most attractive phonetic alphabets around ^_^
Dude, I love your sig. I was debating whether to comment or mod you up, and then I realised -- you're proud of your bad karma and I wouldn't want to take that pride away from you.
One burning question though: how on earth have you managed to get a -1 karma modifier anyway?!?
Two things I miss sorely in Photoshop that I hope gets added into the GIMP when they migrate to GEGL later on in their 2.x release cycle (they were initially supposed to do it with 2.0):
Adjustment layers. In the GIMP I use layers full of black, white, or gray; and change the blending modes and sorta use those as fake adjustment layers. But it isn't really the same.
Filter layers. I've never actually used a version of Photoshop that has filter layers, but I remember once upon a time (back in the 4.x days, I b'lieve) thinking, "you know, I should be able to add a layer that filters what's underneath it." I've always been disappointed with the lack of ability to, for instance, apply a blur filter across a whole image, but have the blur radius change. That way, you could have a channel of some sort (or a filter layer) whose brightness levels determined the blur radius.
you know, GIMP has delivered on its claims. However, its claims are pretty modest: it aims to be an image editing program similar to Photoshop. I think the GIMP developers are aware that it is definitely not in the same league as Photoshop yet, but, speaking literally, it is 'similar' to Photoshop: it has layers, rubber stamps, histogram functions, filters, etc.
By the way, if you have modest needs, you can make plenty of money using GIMP. It's an integral part of my graphic design business. I design simple stuff primarily for the Web, and I don't need ICMs or CMYK or any of that jazz.
It's not that easy yet; they are making headway, but the GIMP is still straggling behind somewhat in this area. They have grand plans to move to GEGL (GEneric Graphics Library) http://www.gegl.org/ , which is a graphics processing library that will apparently (among other things) make it easier to use ICM profiles and work in CMYK.
I've heard that GIMP 2.0 has CMYK support, but I've also heard that it's not quite useful enough yet. ICM profiles have been in GIMP for a while though. As far as LAB colour and stuff... haven't seen anything like that yet.
All in good time... for my fairly modest stitching, retouching, and modifying needs, GIMP works great. I'm an RGB man.
a very interesting take on the Linux community! I suppose some would say it's fragmented, and curse the fragmentation; while others would say it's diverse, and laud the diversity. It's all in what you like, I suppose. I'm kind of in between. I hate the inconsistency, but I like being able to choose one distro over another. (Mine is Gentoo, by the way, although I don't imagine that matters.)
I've noticed a lot of 'true geeks' using Fedora (née Red Hat) lately... I guess they're the RH-loyal geeks, as well as those who like to live on the edge of the cliff.
hmmmmmmmmmm... I am one of those 'ignorant' people, and I got my Minolta E223 camera mounted no problem. (by the way, never buy an E223; it's not a great camera. Go for an Olympus.) It simply mounted as a USB bulk storage device.
Maybe, though, Olympus cameras are different -- I know my Olympus USB multi-flash-card reader doesn't play nice with Linux -- or Windows, for that matter. I wonder what they're using for controller chips.
I install Firefox right off the bat too. Here's my list:
1. Firefox
2. Thunderbird
3. AVG Anti-Virus
4. Mime handlers; e.g., Flash, QuickTime, Adobe Reader
5. Windows XP SP1, DirectX 9, and Windows Media Player 9
6. FilZip (or some other archiving program)
7. OpenOffice.org
8. HTML-Kit
9. GIMP
10. iTunes
And for Linux:
1. GNOME
2. Firefox
3. Evolution
4. gAIM
5. GIMP
6. gDesklets
7. XMMS
8. OpenOffice.org
9. Inkscape
10. giFT
It's very true that using the Bible to back scientific claims is pretty unscientific. For us Christians, the Bible is only a reliable source of spiritual truths, not scientific ones.
But! I seriously disagree with your use of the lake-draining story as some sort of argument to disprove the land getting all ripply after the flood. The flood model involves plate tectonics, which is obviously absent in the draining of a lake.
yep, those "homebrews" are pretty hurting... very very faint, because they generally use the existing light from your monitor, blow it up using a Fresnel lens, and project it on the wall. Not only does that cut down on the light so dramatically that you'll have to seal your windows and doorframes with black tape, but the Fresnel lens (because it's just a sheet of plastic) doesn't give you the best picture... you get thousands of concentric circles, just like on an old overhead projector.
Actually, I do read the MySQL docs. I wish Firebird's documentation was as easy to read as MySQL's. I still have no clue what sort of data types are available to me in Firebird. Are there enumerators? I don't know!!!
meant to say 'can't figure out how to pronounce MySQL', not 'spell MySQL'. Dangit. I previewed it twice, saw nothing wrong, submitted it, saw the error.
Slashdot Mirror
you know, maybe you're right. Maybe the majority of readers aren't sold on Linux. I just know that when I was a Slashdot reader (and not yet a poster) I had a soft spot for Linux in my technological heart (even though I wasn't using Linux).
quite possibly; I dunno. I just kinda assumed... you know, Windows users would be turned away by the rampant evangelism that sometimes even leaks its way into the articles...
One point of disagreement: I don't think it's fair to compare Daniel Robbins and Gentoo against Microsoft. Robbins started Gentoo Technologies (Inc) as a labour of love; the other is solely a commercial enterprise. A more accurate comparison would be Microsoft and... ummmmm... Red Hat, who apparently has quite a bit of dough to play with (although I've never seen one of their banners on OSDN). That, in my opinion, is a better comparison of Linux and Microsoft's economic standing when you're trying to choose what platform to develop for.
my gosh, MSDN makes me cry. It's just so nice to use. I wish we had more sites as well-organised as this for the free community. What I wouldn't do to see the Mozilla Foundation (or the W3C or whoever) create a comprehensive XHTML/DOM/ECMAScript reference like the (embraced and extended) version you find on MSDN. Man, there's something to be said for centralisation... yummy yummy software fascism...
Hey, maybe I'll make one.... mind you, the reason I want one is because I don't really know XHTML to its full extent myself... 9_9
you know, that's exactly what most OSS-friendly companies are motivated by. They call it "leveraging the value of open-source by encouraging peer review and community-driven quality control" or some such marketing speak. I think it's one of the best reasons to release source code. I can't speak for MS as to whether they "can't be bothered" to fix software bugs, or if they just think this is a more efficient way of hunting down bugs.
As for Windows and IIS et cetera remaining closed, yeah, that does kinda suck. I, for one, could probably be persuaded away from Linux and back to the Dark Side if it were free (beer and speech)... ^_^
I think it's bizarre myself. They're kinda throwing away their advertising money by buying spots on OSDN. Let's see, we've got four different groups here:
I think that (correct me if I'm wrong) the vast majority of Slashdot readers and posters fall into the first two categories. And they're already baptised members of the open-source community, so they're not giving up the faith. The rest, who fall into the last two categories, certainly have an open mind towards Linux and are usually pretty sceptical of advertising in general.
I can bet it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience for some people! Eat it once, and they become ill-disposed to continue their 'lifetime' ^_^
In all seriousness, I hear that some people really love fugu -- probably mostly Japanese and those with a more 'educated' palate (which I'm delighted to say I have no grasp of). For those of us with a palate IQ of 90 or lower, I read one article that said it didn't taste much different from wet cardboard.
Yum!!! I know I'm gonna risk my life for that...
I think so. It doesn't look odd to me.
Korean Broadcasting Service has been doing this for at least a couple years. They seem to be about ten years ahead of us on everything -- almost all computers have a TFT screen hooked up to them, everyone has cell phones, etc., etc., etc. And they have one of the most attractive phonetic alphabets around ^_^
Dude, I love your sig. I was debating whether to comment or mod you up, and then I realised -- you're proud of your bad karma and I wouldn't want to take that pride away from you.
One burning question though: how on earth have you managed to get a -1 karma modifier anyway?!?
Two things I miss sorely in Photoshop that I hope gets added into the GIMP when they migrate to GEGL later on in their 2.x release cycle (they were initially supposed to do it with 2.0):
you know, GIMP has delivered on its claims. However, its claims are pretty modest: it aims to be an image editing program similar to Photoshop. I think the GIMP developers are aware that it is definitely not in the same league as Photoshop yet, but, speaking literally, it is 'similar' to Photoshop: it has layers, rubber stamps, histogram functions, filters, etc.
By the way, if you have modest needs, you can make plenty of money using GIMP. It's an integral part of my graphic design business. I design simple stuff primarily for the Web, and I don't need ICMs or CMYK or any of that jazz.
I think that we all should be allowed to gripe about things like this on Slashdot because we're humans, and humans like to communicate.
It's not that easy yet; they are making headway, but the GIMP is still straggling behind somewhat in this area. They have grand plans to move to GEGL (GEneric Graphics Library) http://www.gegl.org/ , which is a graphics processing library that will apparently (among other things) make it easier to use ICM profiles and work in CMYK.
I've heard that GIMP 2.0 has CMYK support, but I've also heard that it's not quite useful enough yet. ICM profiles have been in GIMP for a while though. As far as LAB colour and stuff... haven't seen anything like that yet.
All in good time... for my fairly modest stitching, retouching, and modifying needs, GIMP works great. I'm an RGB man.
"Post Humously" = "posthumously" = "after death". he (she?) didn't spell 'humorously' wrong; it was a pun.
a very interesting take on the Linux community! I suppose some would say it's fragmented, and curse the fragmentation; while others would say it's diverse, and laud the diversity. It's all in what you like, I suppose. I'm kind of in between. I hate the inconsistency, but I like being able to choose one distro over another. (Mine is Gentoo, by the way, although I don't imagine that matters.)
I've noticed a lot of 'true geeks' using Fedora (née Red Hat) lately... I guess they're the RH-loyal geeks, as well as those who like to live on the edge of the cliff.
hmmmmmmmmmm... I am one of those 'ignorant' people, and I got my Minolta E223 camera mounted no problem. (by the way, never buy an E223; it's not a great camera. Go for an Olympus.) It simply mounted as a USB bulk storage device.
Maybe, though, Olympus cameras are different -- I know my Olympus USB multi-flash-card reader doesn't play nice with Linux -- or Windows, for that matter. I wonder what they're using for controller chips.
oooo, very informative. Gaim, not gAIM. Thanks!
What an ugly list. I shoulda previewed first. Here it is, this time formatted.
I install Firefox right off the bat too. Here's my list:
And for Linux:
I install Firefox right off the bat too. Here's my list: 1. Firefox 2. Thunderbird 3. AVG Anti-Virus 4. Mime handlers; e.g., Flash, QuickTime, Adobe Reader 5. Windows XP SP1, DirectX 9, and Windows Media Player 9 6. FilZip (or some other archiving program) 7. OpenOffice.org 8. HTML-Kit 9. GIMP 10. iTunes And for Linux: 1. GNOME 2. Firefox 3. Evolution 4. gAIM 5. GIMP 6. gDesklets 7. XMMS 8. OpenOffice.org 9. Inkscape 10. giFT
It's very true that using the Bible to back scientific claims is pretty unscientific. For us Christians, the Bible is only a reliable source of spiritual truths, not scientific ones.
But! I seriously disagree with your use of the lake-draining story as some sort of argument to disprove the land getting all ripply after the flood. The flood model involves plate tectonics, which is obviously absent in the draining of a lake.
just a calendar app, à la Evolution, Outlook, or iCalendar. You can find it at http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/
beautiful, man. If only I had mod points. I haven't laughed that hard all day.
yep, those "homebrews" are pretty hurting... very very faint, because they generally use the existing light from your monitor, blow it up using a Fresnel lens, and project it on the wall. Not only does that cut down on the light so dramatically that you'll have to seal your windows and doorframes with black tape, but the Fresnel lens (because it's just a sheet of plastic) doesn't give you the best picture... you get thousands of concentric circles, just like on an old overhead projector.
Docs. Feh. Who reads those? ^_^
Actually, I do read the MySQL docs. I wish Firebird's documentation was as easy to read as MySQL's. I still have no clue what sort of data types are available to me in Firebird. Are there enumerators? I don't know!!!
meant to say 'can't figure out how to pronounce MySQL', not 'spell MySQL'. Dangit. I previewed it twice, saw nothing wrong, submitted it, saw the error.