It's good to see an informed representative take the side of the Holy Church every once in a while in this sesspool of perdition that is Slashdot.
Now, if you can do me a favor, I realise you're probably NAMOI (Not A Member Of Inquisition), but since you're obviously knowledgeable about these things, can you venture a guess as to what kind of afterlife I can expect if my idea of heaven is a big hot tub, bubbles, five Playboy bunnies, chocolate cake, whiskey and a cocker spaniel?
PS: I'm intentionally witholding the gender of the cocker so people don't think I'm a sick bastard or something. If it's relevant I can message you privately.
This still won't convert them to Firefox. It will brand Netscape once more in their faces. Way to go AOL for keeping alive the only thing that can still stand out of the old browser: the name.
The Opera and Firefox goals are quite different. Firefox aims to be as simple and possible out of the box, while allowing virtually unlimited extensibility via 3rd party addons.
The very fact that a person can use extensions and themes to make Firefox act more like Opera (or IE, or CrazyBrowser, or Safari etc.) pretty much settles it for me.
If you're unhappy with something about Opera your options are very limited. If you're unhappy with a Firefox extension you can talk to the author, look for another similar one or ultimately modify or create one yourself.
Breasts are often the worst option to do anything with over a keyboard - the woman they're attached to tends to get pretty pissed you won't quit posting to/. long enough to play with them properly!
Reading stuff like this on/., I wish there was a "SciFi" rating...
Marketing do not give a flying **** about correctness or clarity; if there was any problem, *they* created it. Computer people knew what kilobyte meant.
I'm sure they took advantage of the blurry meanings for a while. But in the long run, you gotta admit the change makes sense, from a standardisation point of view. Every measuring unit uses kilo/mega/giga to mean powers of ten. Computer world was the odd one out, and it should rightly be labeled specifically.
I was also under the (wrong) impression that gigabit was the good old binary thing, and that gibi was something they made to express decimal alternatives. And in fact I find out it's quite contrary, thanks to the parent poster.:)
Having repented, I point you to the this reference which does a very nice job of summing everything up.
Re:Never write off Microsoft...
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Firefox isn't really much more than an annoyance, because it will never have the marketing muscle to compete with MSIE - the reason why MSIE destroyed Netscape's dominance wasn't its superiority, it was because MSIE was just there, an easy mouse click away on every new Windows 95 PC, whereas Navigator wasn't, and needed to be installed from scratch.
Ah, but things change(TM), that's one of the points the article made too. Firefox isn't Netscape and nowadays the issue is quite another: what's the use of having IE a mouseclick away if running it makes you feel like bending over to pick up the soap in a prison shower? Features and security, not easy availability, that's the current browser tune.
The fact that he seems to find NOTHING redeeming in Trek - not even the multiracial makeup of the crew - seems like sour grapes to me.
Wait a minute, that's not what I understood from TFA. He didn't say Star Trek TOS is utter crap. His point was that Trek was of mediocre quality because the characters weren't allowed to evolve, and that such kind of writing belongs in the childhood of SciFi. That seems like a valid point to me.
Why is that, until I read your post, I had never heard of any of these games?
How long have most of these games been around? Why aren't they getting talked about more?
I can only guess that you didn't really care about the subject of cool freeware Linux games, or the thought that they exist didn't occured to you. Anybody interested in Linux gaming would find out about at least a couple of them at some point.
Blackbox is not even listed as EWMH compliant yet, what is taking so long?
http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/wm-spec
I once tried to add it, since it's a wiki, right? It wouldn't let me. I then created an account and tried again. It said I still don't have enough rights. I emailed the webmaster. No response. I think that about answers your question.
The trouble is that at the moment the Linux desktop is moving too fast (with no effort put on old releases of libs or software) at the moment for major software vendors to put out anything but huge 3D apps that are basically their own desktop enviroment, sandboxed from the rest of the system.
Perhaps one of these days they'll get the idea of making Photoshop come with its own machine. Hell, they already have their own keyboard.
They don't love DRM, they love the services. Which come as a bundle with DRM because service providers feel (wrongly, IMHO) that it's the only thing that will protect their virtual merchendise. But I dare say some people, like you do, enjoy the moment and forget to look into the future and see what all-around DRM would mean.
At this point, DRM is still flawed in many respects. The core fault is considering a virtual piece of data (a song, a movie) a physical object.
DRM that doesn't get in the way of fair use is acceptable.
Are you kidding me? DRM is all about restricting fair use.
All they would have to do is completely support CSS 2.1. Maybe even do CSS3 support with all the extension for accessability for webpages.[...]
IMHO, Microsoft has already weighed the relative benefits of becoming more popular by supporting CSS 2 or 3 against giving the same CSS 2 or 3 a heavy blow by still not supporting them in 2005. Can you guess what the outcome has been? As Microsoft representatives declared recently, no updated CSS support. Taa-daa.
It makes sense, really. Explorer is still the hugely dominant browser, with arguably overall usage of 90%. There's no need to make it more popular, it already is hugely popular. There's still time, a year or two at the minimum, before Microsoft needs to really start worrying about Explorer losing market share. What's Firefox gaining, 5% a year? Bah, that's peanuts. In the meantime, they can screw standards big time by outright refusing to support them. Taa-daa.
I administer a corporate website which deals with business management consultance and software, SAP, ARIS and the likes. It gets a fair amount of traffic monthly. The IE percentage is at 90% and has been the absolute leader for the past 3 or 4 years. Granted, Firefox is now at about 7% and rising slowly, but I wouldn't say it has displaced Explorer, it rather took over the figures from Netscape and Mozilla. How's that for the other side of the story? Methinks it's too early to shout "Firefox is taking over the world!"
Google created Google Groups. Google only acquired the archives themselves, ie the data. They developed the storage/search/retrieval/interface-for-the-above system which acts on that data.
And let's not forget the new beta Google Groups, which implement communities and are effectively a direct competitor for Yahoo! Groups. It's very nice, I've tried it already. Plus it allows for one time login using your Gmail account. Watch out Yahoo.
Two words for you: driver support. Do you know how much effort is involved in getting just that relatively minor part of an OS right?
Then implement GoogleOS over the Linux kernel (or BSD kernel, or whatever). Let the kernel folks worry about drivers and the kernel itself. Let Google pick it up from init and take care of the rest. Perhaps work with the kernel people on adding kernel hooks that will allow to boost the userspace capabilities towards whatever Google wants to obtain.
The thing is that patents don't suck[...] Any other system would simply make inventors bear the cost of research and then a producer could swoop in for the profit.
I've heard this argument before, but it doesn't sit well with me. How can someone come and just "swoop in for the profit"? What do you think software development is? It's not like taking someone else's photo collection and just using it.
Even if I got access (legally!) to the complete source code for any successful commercial software product out there, I couldn't just cash in on it. I'd still have some investing of my own to do. I'd have to pay programmers to make a viable product out of it, I'd have to handle distribution and support. Even so, it would be just a clone. If I wanted to get the edge on it I'd have to invest some creativity and implement some additional features at the very least. Not to mention preventing the product from becoming obsolete, which could mean anything from adding new features periodically to catching up with other technologies (either hardware or software).
Add copyright to the equation and enforce it, and it means I cannot use the code verbatim anymore, even if I know all the great ideas and have the previous code layed out for me. I have to get programmers to reimplement it.
So "cashing in" on somebody's else's work is not so easy as it seems, not in software world. Copyright IMO is the best compromise between allowing freedom of inovation and protection of rights. Patents take this to a whole new level of complication, with emphasis not on "protect the original author" but on "award someone a monopoly on (often) arbitrary basis".
Regardless, I was actually curious to see what kind of burning solution they bring to Linux. So far most (if not all) graphical burners are just frontends for cdrdao, cdrtools or dvd+rw-tools.
Rumour has it they used GnomeToaster for the interface. If NeroLinux is just another frontend, then it will be quickly dismissed by serious Linux users, who already have several established alternatives to choose from.
But the NeroLinux presentation mentions all kinds of goodies, including "NeroAPI 6.6" interfacing with 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. A new player in the Linux burning arena, coupled with an actual full port of Nero to Linux, would be a wonderful thing IMO. Serious competition is always good.
Either way, this is good news for the Linux user base. One less application for the newbies to worry about when pondering switching to Linux. Nevermind if it comes with a native burning solution or not; just knowing that "Nero has a Linux version" will encourage people to switch. I personally heard many say Nero was the last app holding them back. This is one of the highest profile apps for Windows, and now it has established a Linux presence. This is great news.
all versions of firefox also consume 150+ megs of resident memory
Sigh. Shall we get into that issue again? Here's the explanation, for the umpteenth time: it's irrelevant how much memory you see allocated for Firefox in your Task Manager. Firefox uses as much FREE memory as it can grab, because RAM is faster than pulling stuff from disk. What the hell good is having free RAM? You should never have free RAM, IMO, all available RAM should be used by smart applications that will use it to access data faster. Firefox is such an application. As long as it allows other newly starting applications to get their fair share of the RAM and doesn't hog it all for itself or makes it unavailable by leeking, it's all GOOD NEWS that Firefox uses lots of RAM. It damn well should.
That's not such a bad idea: run the EULA through regexp's or SpamAssassin-like detection to quickly see if there's stuff you should worry about. If only someone put together a sensible detection list that would report stuff like "LAME_EXCUSE_FOR_SPYWARE Score +2".
Plus, it depends on how well they go about presenting the page you arrive at. Take a look at whatsmyip.com (notice that this one lacks an "i" ie. not "what is my IP" but "what's my IP"). Prettly slick page, context sensitive and all. I bet this one gets more clicks on those links all over the place than that single hosting ad that runs on whatismyip.com.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't suppose we could feed it Darl McBride?
For a moment I thought you nominated some kind of Mac burger. Which would be too cruel to be funny.
But "the McBride menu" sounds ok though.
It's impossible to have a society without money.
You probably mean "impractical". I wouldn't call anything impossible. See The Dispossessed.
It's good to see an informed representative take the side of the Holy Church every once in a while in this sesspool of perdition that is Slashdot.
Now, if you can do me a favor, I realise you're probably NAMOI (Not A Member Of Inquisition), but since you're obviously knowledgeable about these things, can you venture a guess as to what kind of afterlife I can expect if my idea of heaven is a big hot tub, bubbles, five Playboy bunnies, chocolate cake, whiskey and a cocker spaniel?
PS: I'm intentionally witholding the gender of the cocker so people don't think I'm a sick bastard or something. If it's relevant I can message you privately.
This still won't convert them to Firefox. It will brand Netscape once more in their faces. Way to go AOL for keeping alive the only thing that can still stand out of the old browser: the name.
The Opera and Firefox goals are quite different. Firefox aims to be as simple and possible out of the box, while allowing virtually unlimited extensibility via 3rd party addons.
The very fact that a person can use extensions and themes to make Firefox act more like Opera (or IE, or CrazyBrowser, or Safari etc.) pretty much settles it for me.
If you're unhappy with something about Opera your options are very limited. If you're unhappy with a Firefox extension you can talk to the author, look for another similar one or ultimately modify or create one yourself.
Breasts are often the worst option to do anything with over a keyboard - the woman they're attached to tends to get pretty pissed you won't quit posting to /. long enough to play with them properly!
Reading stuff like this on /., I wish there was a "SciFi" rating...
Marketing do not give a flying **** about correctness or clarity; if there was any problem, *they* created it. Computer people knew what kilobyte meant.
I'm sure they took advantage of the blurry meanings for a while. But in the long run, you gotta admit the change makes sense, from a standardisation point of view. Every measuring unit uses kilo/mega/giga to mean powers of ten. Computer world was the odd one out, and it should rightly be labeled specifically.
I was also under the (wrong) impression that gigabit was the good old binary thing, and that gibi was something they made to express decimal alternatives. And in fact I find out it's quite contrary, thanks to the parent poster. :)
Having repented, I point you to the this reference which does a very nice job of summing everything up.
Firefox isn't really much more than an annoyance, because it will never have the marketing muscle to compete with MSIE - the reason why MSIE destroyed Netscape's dominance wasn't its superiority, it was because MSIE was just there, an easy mouse click away on every new Windows 95 PC, whereas Navigator wasn't, and needed to be installed from scratch.
Ah, but things change(TM), that's one of the points the article made too. Firefox isn't Netscape and nowadays the issue is quite another: what's the use of having IE a mouseclick away if running it makes you feel like bending over to pick up the soap in a prison shower? Features and security, not easy availability, that's the current browser tune.
The fact that he seems to find NOTHING redeeming in Trek - not even the multiracial makeup of the crew - seems like sour grapes to me.
Wait a minute, that's not what I understood from TFA. He didn't say Star Trek TOS is utter crap. His point was that Trek was of mediocre quality because the characters weren't allowed to evolve, and that such kind of writing belongs in the childhood of SciFi. That seems like a valid point to me.
I have a question...
Why is that, until I read your post, I had never heard of any of these games?
How long have most of these games been around? Why aren't they getting talked about more?
I can only guess that you didn't really care about the subject of cool freeware Linux games, or the thought that they exist didn't occured to you. Anybody interested in Linux gaming would find out about at least a couple of them at some point.
Blackbox is not even listed as EWMH compliant yet, what is taking so long?
http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/wm-spec
I once tried to add it, since it's a wiki, right? It wouldn't let me. I then created an account and tried again. It said I still don't have enough rights. I emailed the webmaster. No response. I think that about answers your question.
No Xinerama support in BlackBox yet? Ug...
Blackbox has had Xinerama support ever since 0.65, perhaps even before.
http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/BlackboxFeatureThe trouble is that at the moment the Linux desktop is moving too fast (with no effort put on old releases of libs or software) at the moment for major software vendors to put out anything but huge 3D apps that are basically their own desktop enviroment, sandboxed from the rest of the system.
Perhaps one of these days they'll get the idea of making Photoshop come with its own machine. Hell, they already have their own keyboard.But the owners love it!
They don't love DRM, they love the services. Which come as a bundle with DRM because service providers feel (wrongly, IMHO) that it's the only thing that will protect their virtual merchendise. But I dare say some people, like you do, enjoy the moment and forget to look into the future and see what all-around DRM would mean.
At this point, DRM is still flawed in many respects. The core fault is considering a virtual piece of data (a song, a movie) a physical object.
DRM that doesn't get in the way of fair use is acceptable.
Are you kidding me? DRM is all about restricting fair use.All they would have to do is completely support CSS 2.1. Maybe even do CSS3 support with all the extension for accessability for webpages.[...]
IMHO, Microsoft has already weighed the relative benefits of becoming more popular by supporting CSS 2 or 3 against giving the same CSS 2 or 3 a heavy blow by still not supporting them in 2005. Can you guess what the outcome has been? As Microsoft representatives declared recently, no updated CSS support. Taa-daa.
It makes sense, really. Explorer is still the hugely dominant browser, with arguably overall usage of 90%. There's no need to make it more popular, it already is hugely popular. There's still time, a year or two at the minimum, before Microsoft needs to really start worrying about Explorer losing market share. What's Firefox gaining, 5% a year? Bah, that's peanuts. In the meantime, they can screw standards big time by outright refusing to support them. Taa-daa.
I administer a corporate website which deals with business management consultance and software, SAP, ARIS and the likes. It gets a fair amount of traffic monthly. The IE percentage is at 90% and has been the absolute leader for the past 3 or 4 years. Granted, Firefox is now at about 7% and rising slowly, but I wouldn't say it has displaced Explorer, it rather took over the figures from Netscape and Mozilla. How's that for the other side of the story? Methinks it's too early to shout "Firefox is taking over the world!"
Google created Google Groups. Google only acquired the archives themselves, ie the data. They developed the storage/search/retrieval/interface-for-the-above system which acts on that data.
And let's not forget the new beta Google Groups , which implement communities and are effectively a direct competitor for Yahoo! Groups. It's very nice, I've tried it already. Plus it allows for one time login using your Gmail account. Watch out Yahoo.
Two words for you: driver support. Do you know how much effort is involved in getting just that relatively minor part of an OS right?
Then implement GoogleOS over the Linux kernel (or BSD kernel, or whatever). Let the kernel folks worry about drivers and the kernel itself. Let Google pick it up from init and take care of the rest. Perhaps work with the kernel people on adding kernel hooks that will allow to boost the userspace capabilities towards whatever Google wants to obtain.
Not if they're manboobs.
The thing is that patents don't suck[...] Any other system would simply make inventors bear the cost of research and then a producer could swoop in for the profit.
I've heard this argument before, but it doesn't sit well with me. How can someone come and just "swoop in for the profit"? What do you think software development is? It's not like taking someone else's photo collection and just using it.
Even if I got access (legally!) to the complete source code for any successful commercial software product out there, I couldn't just cash in on it. I'd still have some investing of my own to do. I'd have to pay programmers to make a viable product out of it, I'd have to handle distribution and support. Even so, it would be just a clone. If I wanted to get the edge on it I'd have to invest some creativity and implement some additional features at the very least. Not to mention preventing the product from becoming obsolete, which could mean anything from adding new features periodically to catching up with other technologies (either hardware or software).
Add copyright to the equation and enforce it, and it means I cannot use the code verbatim anymore, even if I know all the great ideas and have the previous code layed out for me. I have to get programmers to reimplement it.
So "cashing in" on somebody's else's work is not so easy as it seems, not in software world. Copyright IMO is the best compromise between allowing freedom of inovation and protection of rights. Patents take this to a whole new level of complication, with emphasis not on "protect the original author" but on "award someone a monopoly on (often) arbitrary basis".
Regardless, I was actually curious to see what kind of burning solution they bring to Linux. So far most (if not all) graphical burners are just frontends for cdrdao, cdrtools or dvd+rw-tools.
Rumour has it they used GnomeToaster for the interface. If NeroLinux is just another frontend, then it will be quickly dismissed by serious Linux users, who already have several established alternatives to choose from.
But the NeroLinux presentation mentions all kinds of goodies, including "NeroAPI 6.6" interfacing with 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. A new player in the Linux burning arena, coupled with an actual full port of Nero to Linux, would be a wonderful thing IMO. Serious competition is always good.
Either way, this is good news for the Linux user base. One less application for the newbies to worry about when pondering switching to Linux. Nevermind if it comes with a native burning solution or not; just knowing that "Nero has a Linux version" will encourage people to switch. I personally heard many say Nero was the last app holding them back. This is one of the highest profile apps for Windows, and now it has established a Linux presence. This is great news.
all versions of firefox also consume 150+ megs of resident memory
Sigh. Shall we get into that issue again? Here's the explanation, for the umpteenth time: it's irrelevant how much memory you see allocated for Firefox in your Task Manager. Firefox uses as much FREE memory as it can grab, because RAM is faster than pulling stuff from disk. What the hell good is having free RAM? You should never have free RAM, IMO, all available RAM should be used by smart applications that will use it to access data faster. Firefox is such an application. As long as it allows other newly starting applications to get their fair share of the RAM and doesn't hog it all for itself or makes it unavailable by leeking, it's all GOOD NEWS that Firefox uses lots of RAM. It damn well should.
That's not such a bad idea: run the EULA through regexp's or SpamAssassin-like detection to quickly see if there's stuff you should worry about. If only someone put together a sensible detection list that would report stuff like "LAME_EXCUSE_FOR_SPYWARE Score +2".
Plus, it depends on how well they go about presenting the page you arrive at. Take a look at whatsmyip.com (notice that this one lacks an "i" ie. not "what is my IP" but "what's my IP"). Prettly slick page, context sensitive and all. I bet this one gets more clicks on those links all over the place than that single hosting ad that runs on whatismyip.com.