Have you actually used the KDE file dialogs? No, it's not simplistic. But it is simple. There is a difference.
Let me bring one up here and describe it for you:
Browser style buttons and path at the top Quick directory icons on the left (optional) List view of the current directory in center Preview on the right (optional) Filter, filename, OK and Cancel buttons on the bottom
It's very usable, well thought out, and elegant. Any simpler and it wouldn't be usable. As it is now, you can use it solely with the mouse or solely with the keyboard.
Are you afraid of those options? Get used to it, because that's the real world. Go buy a new car and the first thing the salesman is going to ask you is what options you want. And I don't see people getting themselves all in a lather because Burger King says "have it your way."
We will have to agree to disagree, because I think you're mistaken as well.
The "infrastructure" I was talking about was rails, phone lines, fiber, etc. When AT&T owned all the long distance lines, it was prohibitively expensive for another long distance telco to emerge.
But file formats are different. The prohibitive expense of laying new rails from coast-to-coast doesn't exist in file formats. You're thinking of a different problem, and that's the problem of lock-in.
Two years ago my company had a SOlaris network, Netscape email and calendar server, and StarOffice/Framemaker documents. Now we're IIS, Exchange, MSOffice. What happened? Did Microsoft come in and put a gun to the CEO's head and make us switch? Of course not! My company *chose* to become a MS only shop. In fact, we never got a visit by any Microsoft salesmen. We *went* to Microsoft! The excuse was that our customers use MSOffice. But we handled that before with a single NT server and Citrix. The real reason was that we got a new head of IT who didn't like UNIX(1)
Modern business has *chosen* MSOffice formats. It wasn't forced upon them. If Microsoft disappeared off the face of the planet tomorrow, businesses would still use MSOffice. This is a problem, to be sure, but it is a problem that can be solved through the marketplace. But like any solution where we are the ones who have to get off our butts, it's not going to be quick or easy.
(1) Don't belittle or denigrate people who use Windows. You're just going to enforce the elitist UNIX stereotype in their mind. That only helps Bill Gates.
is there a place for proprietary (read 'closed') applications on said open/free platforms and frameworks?
Despite what the true believers tell you, Free Software is still "free beer". The problem you will face with open source systems is not that the users will reject proprietary software on principle, but rather that they will reject it on cost.
So you need to put out a high quality product that people will want to pay for.
Did the DoJ "roll over"? Did Bush order a lenient judgement? Is Microsoft really government-proof? The truth is, the answers don't matter one whit. No amount of finger pointing is going to help anyone.
Let me repeat that. No amount of finger pointing is going to help anyone. Shocking but true. Bitching doesn't solve problems. So what do we do now that it's clear that the government isn't going to come to our "rescue" and slay the Evil Microsoft?
First, we need to throw away all our myths about being powerless. Microsoft is a natural market monopoly. They don't have any laws preventing competition with them (like the USPO does). Nor do they own the infrastructure (like the telco monopolies). As big as they are, they are still at the whim of the marketplace.
So use the market against them. Sell off any Microsoft stock you own. Don't buy any Microsoft products. Don't buy systems that have a Microsoft "tax". That's step one. It might not be easy, but it can be done. Stop buying your systems at BestBuy or CompUSA, and start buying them at the small mom-and-pop shops who will build you a custom system. Or build them yourself. Or buy a Mac. Then when you do, write to Dell, HP, Gateway, etc., and tell them why you didn't choose them.
Next step is to support the non-Windows operating systems, even the proprietary ones. You don't have to run them all, but you can certainly stop denigrating them. Stop bitching at the price of Macs and Sparcs. Even if they're too expensive for you personally, you don't want to discourage the people for whom they aren't too expensive.
Funny thing is, despite the Microsoft monopoly, there are others out there. Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, OSX, etc. Since this is Slashdot, odds are you probably use one of these already. Let your friends know you don't use Windows. Help your friends use another OS. Contribute to the Open Source project of your choice, even if it's writing docs or testing alpha and beta releases.
We gave Microsoft their monopoly. That's right, "we" did it. Despite their shady business tactics, it was ultimately we the consumer who chose to purchase Windows. Now it's time for us to take that monopoly away from them.
Would it have made any difference if Gore had been "selected"? Remember, even though the Clinton administration had Microsoft "over the barrel", it was during that same administration that Microsoft became a monopoly.
From your link: "According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Microsoft has contributed $1.1 million dollars in soft money to both major political parties this cycle -- $529,000 to the Democrats, and $607,000 to Republicans."
The Republicans got more, but not much more, than the Democrats.
Smaller == less standard - increased use of nonstandard integrated components
Hardware manufacturers have traditionally supported Windows only. If you're running Linux or *BSD you've run into this problem at least once. Free software operating systems are in a continous "catch-up" mode to hardware. Last month's distro isn't going to have drivers for this week's new piece of hardware.
The smaller you make the systems, the worse this becomes. My current system has integrated audio and ethernet, neither of which works with Linux or FreeBSD. Fortunately this was a full sized ATX sytem. If it has been a mini ITX system with room for only one PCI expansion slot, I would have been up the proverbial creek.
I'm thinking about building a tiny system to use as a small quiet home server. Doing my compatibility research, I've found that the smaller the mobo the harder it is for the non-Windows user to use.
I've been looking at some these really small cases, but one thing a lot of them require are half-height expansion cards. Where does one get these. I've looked all over and I've only seen one.
The mini-ITX boards have some really funky hardware, so the ability to put in your own audio, video or NIC, seems like a requirement if one's not using WIndows.
Shuttles are different. I'm talking about cases like the Antec Minuet.
Ah! That's the reason for all those two panel intros in the Sunday colors.
Re:No one took your time in the first place.
on
Take Back Your Time!
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· Score: 1
Employee: What time?
When I was hired I told them that the weekends belonged to me. If they had an emergency and needed me to come in, I would do it, but that I would make it up with a future day off in exchange. They accepted that gladly.
If accept a job with the attitude that you have no choice, then you'll end up with no choice. Change your attitude. It might make it harder to find jobs, but the ones you do find will be worthwhile. Ultimately you life belongs to you.
I still work for them. The political battle is essentially over, and the forces from Redmond have won, a there are a few holdouts like me continuing the underground resistance.
Siemens Windows strategy is strange. It's a result of wishful thinking, marketspeak, and reality, all colliding a lightspeed. They've declared the number one ultrasound platform in the market (Sequoia) to be obsolete, while their shiny new WinNT based system (Antares) has abysmal sales. They can't admit that Antares is a failure, but neither can they ignore that the Sequoia is paying everyone's wages.
So the Sequoia hardware is being redesigned to address the obsolescence issues, while keeping the same software base. This should extend the Sequoia lifespan another five to ten years. In the meantime, the "next generation" ultrasound they're designing is WinXP from front to back. Ick.
Using bash as the default scripting shell *IS* a newer Linux trend. Bash has been around on other systems for ages, but no one had been silly enough to link/usr/bin/bash to/bin/sh until this one Linux party where they passed around some bad Tequila. (Thank goodness P.V. wasn't at the shindig!)
Of course, the fact that bash will gladly accept its extensions when running in POSIX mode only worsens the issue. If you're going to write a bash script, at least have the courtesy to designate it with "#!/usr/bin/bash".
All in all, bash is a better shell, especially for scripting.
Any bourne-like shell is better for scripting. Way back when, sh and descendents were for scripting, while csh and descendents were for users. Without bash, that would still be true. But bash gave us all the goodness of ksh and tcsh in one package.
I still program in plain vanilla bourne shell (because it's the Right Thing(tm) to do), but my user shell is bash instead of tcsh.
Re:Is this book really neccessary??
on
Software Exorcism
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· Score: 1
That stuff's for real too.
I used to laugh at Dilbert. I used to think, "what a humorous and hyperbolic exaggeration of my work environment." Then we got bought out by S^Hi^He^Hm^He^Hn^Hs^H Anoncorp AG. Now Dilbert is no longer funny. In some ways, it's almost an optimistic Charlie Brown look at the corporate world, in comparison to the reality.
My mom on the other hand, still seems to believe that it's all personally directed at her
My mom's the same way. She never could say no to a telemarketer. Or to a door-to-door salesman. That didn't mean she always bought from them. She rarely did. But she would never hang up the phone or slam the door. It was too impolite for her to do that. When email came along, she stayed the same.
To her, all emails she receives must have been sent expressly to her. I tell her and I tell her to just delete them, but she won't. She feels she has to reply to them all. Aaaargh!
It happens all the time. There is a difference between intelligence and ignorance.
Spam is not limited to Nigerian scams, penile enchancements, and pr0n sites. They also include vacation packages, term life insurance, books, audio CDs, newsletters, digital cameras, and even anti-spam software. These are legitimate products, even if their method of advertisement is wholly unethical. Their purveyors are crooks, and the odds of you actually getting your money's worth when replying to spam is pretty damned close to zero. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not understand this, not because they are stupid, but because they are ignorant.
This is why certain aspects of business will always cause privacy problems such as this.
If you replace "business" with "corporation", I would agree with you. The government chartering of corportions removes all responsibility from the owners, transforming the stockholders into mere investors. The owners of corporations don't run the corporations. That's where the problem is. People are clamoring for government to solve the problem, but it's actually government that created the problem.
But unincorporated businesses don't have problems like this unless the owners are crooks. And you get crooks in government and non-profits. The focus of business is not to simply make money, but to make money in legal and ethical manners.
With or without laws, it would still be unethical to sell customer data to a third party. It would also be stupid. Your most important asset as a business is the good will of your customers, so you protect it at all costs. Selling out your customers' privacy might make you a bit of money in the short term, but you'll lose bigtime in the long run. When your business you built up from scratch is in effect your retirement account, you don't pauper your future self for a few extra sales this month.
Corporations are the opposite. The people running the company have no accountability to the actual owners. They can squander the company's future for short term stock price gains and get away with it, because they're not the ones who'll pay the price.
But it IS free as in beer! You just can't get the free beer direct from Redhat. Give it a couple of hours and there will multiple free beer distribution points for your downloading pleasure.
Our chief weapon is flatulence. Flatulance and mass... Our two weapons are flatulence and mass... and sensory bristles. Wait. Our three weapons are flatulence, mass and sencory bristles... and an almost complete lack of natural predators...
Out of boredom, one day I decided to try and break through our encryption. Turns out its a simple byte-shifting algorythm.
You should have explained that earlier. This makes a big difference. You're now faced with a dilemna. Make stink and risk your job, or keep your head low and don't make waves. The middle road of bringing the issue up in a job-safe manner is tricky. You know more about your company's internal politics than I do.
At my company I replaced the security on an embedded system. The old method used three different password schemes in three different spots, all of which were incredibly weak. I made the new scheme as strong as I could get it given the limitations of the system. Peer reviewed cyrptographic algorithms were used.
Those limitations I mentioned are big ones. But I never anticipated the biggest one. Making the customer service personnel's jobs convenient is more important than system security. So now I have been ordered to put a backdoor into the system so that the CSPs can have one password for every installed system. Might as well not have any security at all! But I did put my foot down and demanded that the company security officer sign off on the requirement. I don't touch the code until I get his signature.
You had me going until then, but this last one makes me say "no thanks." Just today in the lab I had to pull up the command shell in XP. Why the double standard?
Well, if he was using KDE under SuSE *and* FreeBSD, then his perception of speed differences was not due to KDE.
(and I suspect the difference probably isn't the kernels either, but related to the default packages and services the respective systems install by default)
Slashdot Mirror
Have you actually used the KDE file dialogs? No, it's not simplistic. But it is simple. There is a difference.
Let me bring one up here and describe it for you:
Browser style buttons and path at the top
Quick directory icons on the left (optional)
List view of the current directory in center
Preview on the right (optional)
Filter, filename, OK and Cancel buttons on the bottom
It's very usable, well thought out, and elegant. Any simpler and it wouldn't be usable. As it is now, you can use it solely with the mouse or solely with the keyboard.
Are you afraid of those options? Get used to it, because that's the real world. Go buy a new car and the first thing the salesman is going to ask you is what options you want. And I don't see people getting themselves all in a lather because Burger King says "have it your way."
We will have to agree to disagree, because I think you're mistaken as well.
The "infrastructure" I was talking about was rails, phone lines, fiber, etc. When AT&T owned all the long distance lines, it was prohibitively expensive for another long distance telco to emerge.
But file formats are different. The prohibitive expense of laying new rails from coast-to-coast doesn't exist in file formats. You're thinking of a different problem, and that's the problem of lock-in.
Two years ago my company had a SOlaris network, Netscape email and calendar server, and StarOffice/Framemaker documents. Now we're IIS, Exchange, MSOffice. What happened? Did Microsoft come in and put a gun to the CEO's head and make us switch? Of course not! My company *chose* to become a MS only shop. In fact, we never got a visit by any Microsoft salesmen. We *went* to Microsoft! The excuse was that our customers use MSOffice. But we handled that before with a single NT server and Citrix. The real reason was that we got a new head of IT who didn't like UNIX(1)
Modern business has *chosen* MSOffice formats. It wasn't forced upon them. If Microsoft disappeared off the face of the planet tomorrow, businesses would still use MSOffice. This is a problem, to be sure, but it is a problem that can be solved through the marketplace. But like any solution where we are the ones who have to get off our butts, it's not going to be quick or easy.
(1) Don't belittle or denigrate people who use Windows. You're just going to enforce the elitist UNIX stereotype in their mind. That only helps Bill Gates.
is there a place for proprietary (read 'closed') applications on said open/free platforms and frameworks?
Despite what the true believers tell you, Free Software is still "free beer". The problem you will face with open source systems is not that the users will reject proprietary software on principle, but rather that they will reject it on cost.
So you need to put out a high quality product that people will want to pay for.
M$ was in fact found guilty of being an illegal monopoly in a court of law.
Actually, they were found guilty of abusing their monopoly status, a very different thing.
Did the DoJ "roll over"? Did Bush order a lenient judgement? Is Microsoft really government-proof? The truth is, the answers don't matter one whit. No amount of finger pointing is going to help anyone.
Let me repeat that. No amount of finger pointing is going to help anyone. Shocking but true. Bitching doesn't solve problems. So what do we do now that it's clear that the government isn't going to come to our "rescue" and slay the Evil Microsoft?
First, we need to throw away all our myths about being powerless. Microsoft is a natural market monopoly. They don't have any laws preventing competition with them (like the USPO does). Nor do they own the infrastructure (like the telco monopolies). As big as they are, they are still at the whim of the marketplace.
So use the market against them. Sell off any Microsoft stock you own. Don't buy any Microsoft products. Don't buy systems that have a Microsoft "tax". That's step one. It might not be easy, but it can be done. Stop buying your systems at BestBuy or CompUSA, and start buying them at the small mom-and-pop shops who will build you a custom system. Or build them yourself. Or buy a Mac. Then when you do, write to Dell, HP, Gateway, etc., and tell them why you didn't choose them.
Next step is to support the non-Windows operating systems, even the proprietary ones. You don't have to run them all, but you can certainly stop denigrating them. Stop bitching at the price of Macs and Sparcs. Even if they're too expensive for you personally, you don't want to discourage the people for whom they aren't too expensive.
Funny thing is, despite the Microsoft monopoly, there are others out there. Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, OSX, etc. Since this is Slashdot, odds are you probably use one of these already. Let your friends know you don't use Windows. Help your friends use another OS. Contribute to the Open Source project of your choice, even if it's writing docs or testing alpha and beta releases.
We gave Microsoft their monopoly. That's right, "we" did it. Despite their shady business tactics, it was ultimately we the consumer who chose to purchase Windows. Now it's time for us to take that monopoly away from them.
Would it have made any difference if Gore had been "selected"? Remember, even though the Clinton administration had Microsoft "over the barrel", it was during that same administration that Microsoft became a monopoly.
From your link: "According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Microsoft has contributed $1.1 million dollars in soft money to both major political parties this cycle -- $529,000 to the Democrats, and $607,000 to Republicans."
The Republicans got more, but not much more, than the Democrats.
Smaller == less standard - increased use of nonstandard integrated components
Hardware manufacturers have traditionally supported Windows only. If you're running Linux or *BSD you've run into this problem at least once. Free software operating systems are in a continous "catch-up" mode to hardware. Last month's distro isn't going to have drivers for this week's new piece of hardware.
The smaller you make the systems, the worse this becomes. My current system has integrated audio and ethernet, neither of which works with Linux or FreeBSD. Fortunately this was a full sized ATX sytem. If it has been a mini ITX system with room for only one PCI expansion slot, I would have been up the proverbial creek.
I'm thinking about building a tiny system to use as a small quiet home server. Doing my compatibility research, I've found that the smaller the mobo the harder it is for the non-Windows user to use.
I've been looking at some these really small cases, but one thing a lot of them require are half-height expansion cards. Where does one get these. I've looked all over and I've only seen one.
The mini-ITX boards have some really funky hardware, so the ability to put in your own audio, video or NIC, seems like a requirement if one's not using WIndows.
Shuttles are different. I'm talking about cases like the Antec Minuet.
Ah! That's the reason for all those two panel intros in the Sunday colors.
Employee: What time?
When I was hired I told them that the weekends belonged to me. If they had an emergency and needed me to come in, I would do it, but that I would make it up with a future day off in exchange. They accepted that gladly.
If accept a job with the attitude that you have no choice, then you'll end up with no choice. Change your attitude. It might make it harder to find jobs, but the ones you do find will be worthwhile. Ultimately you life belongs to you.
Don't sleep with Lumberg...
I still work for them. The political battle is essentially over, and the forces from Redmond have won, a there are a few holdouts like me continuing the underground resistance.
Siemens Windows strategy is strange. It's a result of wishful thinking, marketspeak, and reality, all colliding a lightspeed. They've declared the number one ultrasound platform in the market (Sequoia) to be obsolete, while their shiny new WinNT based system (Antares) has abysmal sales. They can't admit that Antares is a failure, but neither can they ignore that the Sequoia is paying everyone's wages.
So the Sequoia hardware is being redesigned to address the obsolescence issues, while keeping the same software base. This should extend the Sequoia lifespan another five to ten years. In the meantime, the "next generation" ultrasound they're designing is WinXP from front to back. Ick.
Using bash as the default scripting shell *IS* a newer Linux trend. Bash has been around on other systems for ages, but no one had been silly enough to link /usr/bin/bash to /bin/sh until this one Linux party where they passed around some bad Tequila. (Thank goodness P.V. wasn't at the shindig!)
Of course, the fact that bash will gladly accept its extensions when running in POSIX mode only worsens the issue. If you're going to write a bash script, at least have the courtesy to designate it with "#!/usr/bin/bash".
/bin/sh is usually just a link to bash on Linux systems
Boo hiss! Evil! Bad, bad, very bad, not good.
All in all, bash is a better shell, especially for scripting.
Any bourne-like shell is better for scripting. Way back when, sh and descendents were for scripting, while csh and descendents were for users. Without bash, that would still be true. But bash gave us all the goodness of ksh and tcsh in one package.
I still program in plain vanilla bourne shell (because it's the Right Thing(tm) to do), but my user shell is bash instead of tcsh.
That stuff's for real too.
I used to laugh at Dilbert. I used to think, "what a humorous and hyperbolic exaggeration of my work environment." Then we got bought out by S^Hi^He^Hm^He^Hn^Hs^H Anoncorp AG. Now Dilbert is no longer funny. In some ways, it's almost an optimistic Charlie Brown look at the corporate world, in comparison to the reality.
My mom on the other hand, still seems to believe that it's all personally directed at her
My mom's the same way. She never could say no to a telemarketer. Or to a door-to-door salesman. That didn't mean she always bought from them. She rarely did. But she would never hang up the phone or slam the door. It was too impolite for her to do that. When email came along, she stayed the same.
To her, all emails she receives must have been sent expressly to her. I tell her and I tell her to just delete them, but she won't. She feels she has to reply to them all. Aaaargh!
It happens all the time. There is a difference between intelligence and ignorance.
Spam is not limited to Nigerian scams, penile enchancements, and pr0n sites. They also include vacation packages, term life insurance, books, audio CDs, newsletters, digital cameras, and even anti-spam software. These are legitimate products, even if their method of advertisement is wholly unethical. Their purveyors are crooks, and the odds of you actually getting your money's worth when replying to spam is pretty damned close to zero. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not understand this, not because they are stupid, but because they are ignorant.
This is why certain aspects of business will always cause privacy problems such as this.
If you replace "business" with "corporation", I would agree with you. The government chartering of corportions removes all responsibility from the owners, transforming the stockholders into mere investors. The owners of corporations don't run the corporations. That's where the problem is. People are clamoring for government to solve the problem, but it's actually government that created the problem.
But unincorporated businesses don't have problems like this unless the owners are crooks. And you get crooks in government and non-profits. The focus of business is not to simply make money, but to make money in legal and ethical manners.
With or without laws, it would still be unethical to sell customer data to a third party. It would also be stupid. Your most important asset as a business is the good will of your customers, so you protect it at all costs. Selling out your customers' privacy might make you a bit of money in the short term, but you'll lose bigtime in the long run. When your business you built up from scratch is in effect your retirement account, you don't pauper your future self for a few extra sales this month.
Corporations are the opposite. The people running the company have no accountability to the actual owners. They can squander the company's future for short term stock price gains and get away with it, because they're not the ones who'll pay the price.
Am I the only one who read the headline as "NASA Engineers Question IIS Safety," and said to himself, "Duh!"
You think it's excellent. I think it's disgusting that Java wants 1,200 to 32,000 threads...
But it IS free as in beer! You just can't get the free beer direct from Redhat. Give it a couple of hours and there will multiple free beer distribution points for your downloading pleasure.
nobody ever suspects the manatee
Our chief weapon is flatulence. Flatulance and mass... Our two weapons are flatulence and mass... and sensory bristles. Wait. Our three weapons are flatulence, mass and sencory bristles... and an almost complete lack of natural predators...
Sorry, I'll come in again...
Out of boredom, one day I decided to try and break through our encryption. Turns out its a simple byte-shifting algorythm.
You should have explained that earlier. This makes a big difference. You're now faced with a dilemna. Make stink and risk your job, or keep your head low and don't make waves. The middle road of bringing the issue up in a job-safe manner is tricky. You know more about your company's internal politics than I do.
At my company I replaced the security on an embedded system. The old method used three different password schemes in three different spots, all of which were incredibly weak. I made the new scheme as strong as I could get it given the limitations of the system. Peer reviewed cyrptographic algorithms were used.
Those limitations I mentioned are big ones. But I never anticipated the biggest one. Making the customer service personnel's jobs convenient is more important than system security. So now I have been ordered to put a backdoor into the system so that the CSPs can have one password for every installed system. Might as well not have any security at all! But I did put my foot down and demanded that the company security officer sign off on the requirement. I don't touch the code until I get his signature.
Has the command line stripped out with EVERYTHING
You had me going until then, but this last one makes me say "no thanks." Just today in the lab I had to pull up the command shell in XP. Why the double standard?
Well, if he was using KDE under SuSE *and* FreeBSD, then his perception of speed differences was not due to KDE.
(and I suspect the difference probably isn't the kernels either, but related to the default packages and services the respective systems install by default)