One of my professors is toying with the idea of working with SL for some lectures. The lectures are still in thr real world, but the assignments revolve around building stuff in SL. For example, one assignment might revolve around designing an automated "assembly line" that reacts to certain events Probably the biggest gripe he has with SL so far is that not everything is possible - he's currently trying to get a Petri network simulator going.
Having access to the SL source code would enable him to set up his own server at the university; that way we'd have much less (network-induced) lag. Also, we wouldn't have to worry about being interrupted by walking penises.
I know that pure Flash sites are nonsense, but it did fit the GP's wishes and I'd rather take a Flash site that runs in some browsers than a completely IE-specific site.
Of course the best way would be to add a browser detection script that serves the flashy DirectXtravaganza to IE browsers and a sane version to everyone else. Actually, the script could be a redirector with the IE redirect residing in a conditional comment.
It's still bullshit, but at least it's semi-compatible bullshit.
What can I say, it's a Unix with a really polished GUI. Not only does Apple deliver quality software (cue Finder critics... now), it also does so on top of the operating system (whose family) the geeks love. Hardly surprising that geeks like OS X.
Remembers me of my Software Project group (Software Project is a mandatory two-semester course emulating the development of real software, complete with customer demands like "has to work like Amazon"). Due to bad communication and the habit of doing all work right before the deadline we somehow managed to push out a Software Requirements Specification asking for the server to incorporate a RAID 5 array of three 10 GB SCSI HDDs. That way one year ago - good luck trying to find 10 GiB SCSI drives in good condition. Additionally, even though we developed a JSP app (yet another stupid customer demand) designed for real world use, the site barely got any traffic and all data consisted of BibTeX entries - one 512 MB IDE drive with an annual backup to a CD-R would have sufficed... By the way, our spec also made a DVD burner a mandatory requirement for the server, along with a dual Xeon @ 2x2.4 GHz and an upstream of 512 Mbps. Maybe in case someone needed that reference in realtime or something.
I laughed my ass off when I actually read that part. Now I'm imgaining this in the real world, with a clueless customer desperately trying to get three brand new 10 GB SCSI HDDs so he could serve his references...
Actually, Fx and Safari already make up for a large amount of the non-IE market. Add Opera and you have covered all major HTML renderers and OSes (Konqueror shares KHTML with Safari, Epiphany uses Gecko) - except for Win/IE, of course.
A word of advice: Use Flash. You get all kinds of fancy effects and, as an added bonus, are compatible to more people than with sites that rely on IE/DX-specifica to do stuff. Also, people expect that kind of effects from Flash, unlike HTML.
Well, theoretically you could write a web app with a XUL UI. Nobody in their right mind would do it, though. Sure, there are a low of web developers who are out of their mind, but I have never encountered web-based XUL in the wild (only seen a prrof-of-concept app once); even websites where the navigation (and only that) is made in Flash are much more common.
Hey, mission goals are way out, man. Nowadays you send a meeting request, touch base at the checkpoint and discuss the milestones and deliverables for the mission, then you get everyone on the same page regarding the proactive go-forward approach to leveraging the squad's synergies in order to own the challenge in a results-driven and success-oriented way. And when taking action, don't forget to keep each other up-to-date with the occasional memo.
Really, the only thing this lacks is Web 2.0 features like gradients, rounded corners, flashy JavaScript effects and a blog.
What, really? I can't believe it! Impossible! Microsoft not supporting Linux - impossible to fathom! The very fundament of reality is shaken! Microsoft, so well known for their deep commitment to the Linux platform, fail to support that which should be expected to be their first tier platform? That's simply, to quote a famous Sicilian, inconceivable!
Microsoft is playing Whack-a-Mole with the faces of their customers taped to the moles, laughing hysterically. And the audience is starting to notice.
This would be an excellent thing to notify your MEP about, especially before they take money from Microsoft. The European Parliament has been successfully lobbied by the people (eg. by the European anti-software patent lobby) and I'm sure that some MEPs would be quite interested in how Microsoft resorts to (legal) extortion in order to keep having the only common document format in town.
And we have Slackware for those who want to have some help starting up and then do the rest themselves. (Nicer Gentoo).
I found it to be the other way around, but that's probably a way of which kind of help you prefer.
I'd put it like this:
Professional Linux - RHEL, CentOS, SLES, Debian stable
Testbed platforms for professional Linux - Fedora, SUSE, Debian unstable
Easy Linux - Ubuntu, Mandriva (SUSE is not included because YaST tends to complicate things at some point)
Linux for technies - Gentoo, Slackware
Linux for small boxes - Damn Small and the like
Try-before-you-install Linux - Knoppix, Ubuntu and other Live-CDs
Emergency Linux - most Live-CDs
Specialist Linux that fills a small niche well enough that other distros can't replace it - countless small distros
Some of these distros do pretty unique things - for example Gentoo is great for people who know exactly what they want since they can easily compile out program functionality they don't need. That'spretty unique and many people don't need it, but for those who do Gentoo is much superior to the alternatives. The same goes for Debian (for systems where stability is paramount), Ubuntu (for Linux newbies), Damn Small (for embedded systems where 200 MiB of base packages are unacceptable) etc.
because what could Firefox/Opera possibly mean for non-English speaker?
As for Germany (ignoring those who actually learned English in school well enough to parse the names directly):
"Opera" - English for "Oper". Fat women singing in Italian.
"Firefox" - Something about a fox pertaining to fire. Both "fox" and "fire" are common (and close to their German counterparts "Fuchs" and "Feuer") enough to be understood by most Germans.
"Internet Explorer" - A bit more tricky. "Internet" is used as a leanword in Germany so no translation is necessary. "Explorer" is a pretty uncommonly heard word; I'd say that there are as many people with no idea what it means as there are ones who understand the name. But they all know it's something about the internet.
"Safari" - The exact same word is used in German to describe the exact same thing. The common association is going through Africa, probably with a rifle.
"Konqueror" - Unintelligible. Unless the person in question understands a bit of English and loves Mortal Kombat they're not likely to get it. (KDE users get it anyway.)
"Epiphany" - Similar to its German counterpart "Epiphanie" but unlikely to be understood as few people know the German word to begin with.
"OmniWeb" - A generic brand name. Observant persons might notice that it claims to do everything with the WWW.
"Flock" - Perhaps a wooden stake ("Pflock")? Something that locks something beginning with the letter F?
"Lynx" - That's a kind of cat, isn't it? (The Lynx is a breed of cat similar to real lynxes, who go under the name of "Luchs" in Germany. And no, nobody is going to think of the Atari console.)
In the end IE doesn't fare much better than its competitors. It has the benefit of having "Internet" in its name, but then again, almost no programs have names reflecting their usage (for example Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and, in non-anglophone countries, Paint). If people tried to understand what a program does by reading its description they wouldn't come very far. That's why it's a damn good idea that many Linuxes put descriptions of the programs' roles next to their names in the app menu, like "Firefox (Web browser)".
Not able to watch his movies? Sheesh! Watching movies will be the least of his concerns.
Yesterday my girlfriend IMed me (we have what passes as a long distance relationship in Germany) and complained - due to her hard drive breaking she was using a spare, which came with Vista. The UI aggravated her so much that she considered having me nuke it and install Linux. That came from someone who can't even tell whether she has SDRAM or DDR SDRAM in her computer (or even how much of it she has)...
Dream on, the Vista GUI team is dreaming with you.;)
On the other hand, those snooby Europeans moved past viewing themselves as superior (at least most of them).
Getting hijacked by an insane Austrian, starting a war with the rest of the world and killing nine million people in death camps before being defeated, divided up between the winners and then reinstated because they didn't trust each other anymore kinda has that effect on you. Okay, so the Germans don't account for all Europeans... (Well, at one point they pretty much did, but that was before the whole losing-the-war thing.)
The black market for guns wasn't particularly strong in the 1780s and logistics were a lot harder. I was saying that it makes less sense today than it did back then.
Exactly! Coming from a Windows/Linux background I used to use a Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse before replacing it with the Mighty Mouse, which hase a lower profile and thus is more comfortable to use.
Regarding what the sibling said about Wacom tablets: The idea is good, however all Wacoms for less than ~150 bucks are not supported well on newer Macs.
What's next? If I tell you to turn off the sound, will you up the volume to maximum and play a recording of "SHUTTING SOUND OFF NOW!" in a really whiny voice?
No, they'll take the MIB from Apple's "security" ad, have him pop up on the screen and say loudly: "You are turning off the sound. Cancel or allow?"
Of course Apple will already have a similar feature in Leopard, just with Steve Jobs trying to sell you an iPhone.
Plus there are already ways to obfuscate the content - using the RTMP protocol to transfer videos will already get you a free pass from almost any FLV downloader, and more besides. So what's to gain?
Buzzword compliance. DRM is becoming a buzzword and some PHB might decide to use it because otherwise the company's (probably third-party contributed) media won't be safe from the evil internet pirates.
It's all about tradeoffs. The Second Amendment was created not so that J. Random Redneck can take potshots at people trespassing on his front lawn. It was created so that, should the people decide that the government has become unbearable, they have all they need to start an armed insurgency. The tradeoff is that they also have all they need to randomly shoot people.
Yes, the Second Amendment is a bit dated in the age of combat drones, DU bullets and stealth bombers, but the idea behind it is not bad... even if the side effects are quite unpleasant.
Slashdot Mirror
They'll do that right after the Linux team replaces Torvalds' kernel with NT.
One of my professors is toying with the idea of working with SL for some lectures. The lectures are still in thr real world, but the assignments revolve around building stuff in SL. For example, one assignment might revolve around designing an automated "assembly line" that reacts to certain events Probably the biggest gripe he has with SL so far is that not everything is possible - he's currently trying to get a Petri network simulator going.
Having access to the SL source code would enable him to set up his own server at the university; that way we'd have much less (network-induced) lag. Also, we wouldn't have to worry about being interrupted by walking penises.
We already had that with UO, RO etc... just without the network part.
I know that pure Flash sites are nonsense, but it did fit the GP's wishes and I'd rather take a Flash site that runs in some browsers than a completely IE-specific site.
Of course the best way would be to add a browser detection script that serves the flashy DirectXtravaganza to IE browsers and a sane version to everyone else. Actually, the script could be a redirector with the IE redirect residing in a conditional comment.
It's still bullshit, but at least it's semi-compatible bullshit.
What can I say, it's a Unix with a really polished GUI. Not only does Apple deliver quality software (cue Finder critics... now), it also does so on top of the operating system (whose family) the geeks love. Hardly surprising that geeks like OS X.
Remembers me of my Software Project group (Software Project is a mandatory two-semester course emulating the development of real software, complete with customer demands like "has to work like Amazon"). Due to bad communication and the habit of doing all work right before the deadline we somehow managed to push out a Software Requirements Specification asking for the server to incorporate a RAID 5 array of three 10 GB SCSI HDDs. That way one year ago - good luck trying to find 10 GiB SCSI drives in good condition. Additionally, even though we developed a JSP app (yet another stupid customer demand) designed for real world use, the site barely got any traffic and all data consisted of BibTeX entries - one 512 MB IDE drive with an annual backup to a CD-R would have sufficed... By the way, our spec also made a DVD burner a mandatory requirement for the server, along with a dual Xeon @ 2x2.4 GHz and an upstream of 512 Mbps. Maybe in case someone needed that reference in realtime or something.
I laughed my ass off when I actually read that part. Now I'm imgaining this in the real world, with a clueless customer desperately trying to get three brand new 10 GB SCSI HDDs so he could serve his references...
Actually, Fx and Safari already make up for a large amount of the non-IE market. Add Opera and you have covered all major HTML renderers and OSes (Konqueror shares KHTML with Safari, Epiphany uses Gecko) - except for Win/IE, of course.
A word of advice: Use Flash. You get all kinds of fancy effects and, as an added bonus, are compatible to more people than with sites that rely on IE/DX-specifica to do stuff. Also, people expect that kind of effects from Flash, unlike HTML.
Well, theoretically you could write a web app with a XUL UI. Nobody in their right mind would do it, though. Sure, there are a low of web developers who are out of their mind, but I have never encountered web-based XUL in the wild (only seen a prrof-of-concept app once); even websites where the navigation (and only that) is made in Flash are much more common.
Pssh. The advantages of Vista are obvious!
WINDOWS NEEDS YOUR PERMISSION
If you started this action, continue
> Getting shot with an AK-47
> Iraqi insurgent
[Allow] [Cancel]
Hey, mission goals are way out, man. Nowadays you send a meeting request, touch base at the checkpoint and discuss the milestones and deliverables for the mission, then you get everyone on the same page regarding the proactive go-forward approach to leveraging the squad's synergies in order to own the challenge in a results-driven and success-oriented way. And when taking action, don't forget to keep each other up-to-date with the occasional memo.
Really, the only thing this lacks is Web 2.0 features like gradients, rounded corners, flashy JavaScript effects and a blog.
Real life isnt the same as a video game?
That might also explain why rocket jumping hasn't really caught on in the Army.
What, really? I can't believe it! Impossible! Microsoft not supporting Linux - impossible to fathom! The very fundament of reality is shaken! Microsoft, so well known for their deep commitment to the Linux platform, fail to support that which should be expected to be their first tier platform? That's simply, to quote a famous Sicilian, inconceivable!
Microsoft is playing Whack-a-Mole with the faces of their customers taped to the moles, laughing hysterically. And the audience is starting to notice.
This would be an excellent thing to notify your MEP about, especially before they take money from Microsoft. The European Parliament has been successfully lobbied by the people (eg. by the European anti-software patent lobby) and I'm sure that some MEPs would be quite interested in how Microsoft resorts to (legal) extortion in order to keep having the only common document format in town.
And we have Slackware for those who want to have some help starting up and then do the rest themselves. (Nicer Gentoo).
I found it to be the other way around, but that's probably a way of which kind of help you prefer.
I'd put it like this:
Professional Linux - RHEL, CentOS, SLES, Debian stable
Testbed platforms for professional Linux - Fedora, SUSE, Debian unstable
Easy Linux - Ubuntu, Mandriva (SUSE is not included because YaST tends to complicate things at some point)
Linux for technies - Gentoo, Slackware
Linux for small boxes - Damn Small and the like
Try-before-you-install Linux - Knoppix, Ubuntu and other Live-CDs
Emergency Linux - most Live-CDs
Specialist Linux that fills a small niche well enough that other distros can't replace it - countless small distros
Some of these distros do pretty unique things - for example Gentoo is great for people who know exactly what they want since they can easily compile out program functionality they don't need. That'spretty unique and many people don't need it, but for those who do Gentoo is much superior to the alternatives. The same goes for Debian (for systems where stability is paramount), Ubuntu (for Linux newbies), Damn Small (for embedded systems where 200 MiB of base packages are unacceptable) etc.
Hmm, might be related to that phenomenon where you notice a glaring error in your post before clicking Submit, but too late to keep from clicking.
because what could Firefox/Opera possibly mean for non-English speaker?
As for Germany (ignoring those who actually learned English in school well enough to parse the names directly):
"Opera" - English for "Oper". Fat women singing in Italian.
"Firefox" - Something about a fox pertaining to fire. Both "fox" and "fire" are common (and close to their German counterparts "Fuchs" and "Feuer") enough to be understood by most Germans.
"Internet Explorer" - A bit more tricky. "Internet" is used as a leanword in Germany so no translation is necessary. "Explorer" is a pretty uncommonly heard word; I'd say that there are as many people with no idea what it means as there are ones who understand the name. But they all know it's something about the internet.
"Safari" - The exact same word is used in German to describe the exact same thing. The common association is going through Africa, probably with a rifle.
"Konqueror" - Unintelligible. Unless the person in question understands a bit of English and loves Mortal Kombat they're not likely to get it. (KDE users get it anyway.)
"Epiphany" - Similar to its German counterpart "Epiphanie" but unlikely to be understood as few people know the German word to begin with.
"OmniWeb" - A generic brand name. Observant persons might notice that it claims to do everything with the WWW.
"Flock" - Perhaps a wooden stake ("Pflock")? Something that locks something beginning with the letter F?
"Lynx" - That's a kind of cat, isn't it? (The Lynx is a breed of cat similar to real lynxes, who go under the name of "Luchs" in Germany. And no, nobody is going to think of the Atari console.)
In the end IE doesn't fare much better than its competitors. It has the benefit of having "Internet" in its name, but then again, almost no programs have names reflecting their usage (for example Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and, in non-anglophone countries, Paint). If people tried to understand what a program does by reading its description they wouldn't come very far. That's why it's a damn good idea that many Linuxes put descriptions of the programs' roles next to their names in the app menu, like "Firefox (Web browser)".
Don't worry, there's got to be a second Debian user in Germany.
Not able to watch his movies? Sheesh! Watching movies will be the least of his concerns.
;)
Yesterday my girlfriend IMed me (we have what passes as a long distance relationship in Germany) and complained - due to her hard drive breaking she was using a spare, which came with Vista. The UI aggravated her so much that she considered having me nuke it and install Linux. That came from someone who can't even tell whether she has SDRAM or DDR SDRAM in her computer (or even how much of it she has)...
Dream on, the Vista GUI team is dreaming with you.
On the other hand, those snooby Europeans moved past viewing themselves as superior (at least most of them).
Getting hijacked by an insane Austrian, starting a war with the rest of the world and killing nine million people in death camps before being defeated, divided up between the winners and then reinstated because they didn't trust each other anymore kinda has that effect on you. Okay, so the Germans don't account for all Europeans... (Well, at one point they pretty much did, but that was before the whole losing-the-war thing.)
The black market for guns wasn't particularly strong in the 1780s and logistics were a lot harder. I was saying that it makes less sense today than it did back then.
Exactly! Coming from a Windows/Linux background I used to use a Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse before replacing it with the Mighty Mouse, which hase a lower profile and thus is more comfortable to use.
Regarding what the sibling said about Wacom tablets: The idea is good, however all Wacoms for less than ~150 bucks are not supported well on newer Macs.
What's next? If I tell you to turn off the sound, will you up the volume to maximum and play a recording of "SHUTTING SOUND OFF NOW!" in a really whiny voice?
No, they'll take the MIB from Apple's "security" ad, have him pop up on the screen and say loudly: "You are turning off the sound. Cancel or allow?"
Of course Apple will already have a similar feature in Leopard, just with Steve Jobs trying to sell you an iPhone.
Linux will probably play an RMS rant.
Plus there are already ways to obfuscate the content - using the RTMP protocol to transfer videos will already get you a free pass from almost any FLV downloader, and more besides. So what's to gain?
Buzzword compliance. DRM is becoming a buzzword and some PHB might decide to use it because otherwise the company's (probably third-party contributed) media won't be safe from the evil internet pirates.
It's all about tradeoffs. The Second Amendment was created not so that J. Random Redneck can take potshots at people trespassing on his front lawn. It was created so that, should the people decide that the government has become unbearable, they have all they need to start an armed insurgency. The tradeoff is that they also have all they need to randomly shoot people.
Yes, the Second Amendment is a bit dated in the age of combat drones, DU bullets and stealth bombers, but the idea behind it is not bad... even if the side effects are quite unpleasant.