Hell no! I've administered to IIS and Apache servers for years, and all that IIS's GUI ever does is get in the way.
I have to agree. IIS's admin GUI is a complex, jumbled mess full of tabs, sub-screens, 'advanced' buttons, etc.
Apache's not exactly point and click, but the documentation is clear, the config file is easy to read, and I can move sites from server to server with ease. I can also set up all sorts of cool stuff like URL rewriting.
It would be nice if some of the distros included a GNOME or KDE GUI for Apache, though.
This may be more of a question for everyone else than for Sam (but Sam can feel free to answer also:)
I'm not a big gamer, but I would play some if it weren't such a bitch to get the proper libraries working under Linux. Last time I tried was about 6 months ago... After following some really complicated directions and compiling umpteen obscure drivers I finally got SDL and hardware-accelerated OpenGL working. I had to disable it and revert to my previous versions, though, because it locked up my system a lot during games and made X pretty unstable.
Anyway, my question is this: is multimedia support for Linux getting any easier to install? Is it possible that someday I will be able to install a distribution and have it automagically configure hardware 3D support, install SDL, etc.? Or is Linux multimedia still too much in the toddler stages?
I'm just a lowly PHP coder. I don't understand all this low-level mumbo jumbo. I just want to fire up a game every now and then and blow shit up. Is there hope for me?
Re:It's not like they haven't announced the patch
on
Code Red III
·
· Score: 1
Hehe. That reminds me of something that I just saw in the bank drive-thru.
There are these little video screens on each of the whooshy-tube things you pull up to. They normally cycle through a whole bunch of ads for the bank's latest products and services. This time, however, there was a Powerpoint error message on the screen. Something or other about 'Powerpoint has encountered an error it cannot fix. Please close the application and restart.'
Well, I found it amusing.
Why aren't there more demos for Linux?
on
The Assembly In Review
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It seems to me that demo crews would be more interested in writing for Linux than they are. It just seems like the two cultures would mesh well, but apparently they haven't very much.
Why are most of the demos these days for Windows? Is it a cultural thing, or a technical thing? Are there multimedia limitations under Linux that are not addressed by SDL, etc?
Sigh. I used to run a BBS dedicated to Amiga demos. The stuff back then was some amazing shit. I've still never seen anything on a PC that impressed me as much. It would be cool if a free OS someday became the demo platform of choice.
Ah, I don't think they would want any icon designed by me. I'm dangerous with a graphics editor.
I did suggest that it would be cool to have a picture of an 'A' getting larger or smaller (as denoted by arrows, e.g. a->A), although there might be internationalization issues with that. I've heard that not everyone uses the Latin alphabet.
Re:Magnifying glasses say it all...
on
KDE 2.2 Tagged
·
· Score: 1
And here's a KDE weakness. Right smack next to the 'font enlarge/shrink' icons is another magnifying glass, but this one is for searching in the webpage! Anyone who thinks for 2 minutes about this realizes it's a bad idea to have very similar icons with completely different functions next to each other, but somehow these sort of glitches appear in KDE.
Hey! I submitted that as a bug report about 5 months ago. Maybe it'll be fixed in 2.2. I'm still on like 2.1.something as well.
Little UI design issues like that fascinate me. I'm not sure why.
Yes, there's easy, and then there's advanced. I think both types of users can and should be catered to.
The key is to have a smooth learning curve, so that someone can sit down and be immediately productive, and then gradually work their way up to the advanced level. The learning curve for, say MacOS, is pretty linear. The learning curve for Linux is not.
The software that exists in Windows comes with something called a Warranty and even phone tech support. That's comforting to users, and it's something that just can't be done with the vast majority of Free, Open source software. Joe Bloe can't call up fictional developer Yzeb Petronix who takes credit for writing some chat program to find out why it crashes his box,
Well, the problem is that commercial tech support is absolutely worthless. I did IT for 10 years on dozens of platforms and the support we got from commercial vendors was complete shit. Hold times over an hour were normal sometimes even with a support contract. Callbacks often came days later. Even when you did manage to talk to a human, it usually turned out to be someone without any sort of clue. If it was a problem with their product, they wouldn't admit it or fix it.
I would rather not pay money for that sort of shoddy quality and support. I've been burned too many times by closed-source software vendors. I know I'm not alone.
Incidentally, Yzeb Petronix is real, and living in my basement where he is working on kernel drivers for biometric scanners.
I would happily shell out dough for content, just not at the price points that old school content providers have the gall to expect.
I *will not* pay $4.95, $2.95 or $1.95 US to download a single music track in some obnoxious format. I *will* happily pay $0.25 US each to download hundreds of my favorite songs from years past in MP3 format. I'd happily sign up for a service that allows me to download 75 songs for $20.00 US. I'd probably spend $100/year on such a service just for the convenience, assuming it had a good search interface and reliable downloads.
I will also not pay $1.95 to access a story from a newspaper's archives, nor am I interested in a subscription to that newspaper's archives. I'd pay $0.04 US for an article. Since there's no way to microcharge me that much, just serve me a targeted banner ad instead.
I'm buying a new mobo, athlon cpu, and memory in the next day or two. Should I get PC133 memory or DDR? It seems that DDR is much more expensive - is it significantly faster? I'm mainly using the workstation for PHP/HTML/SQL development, web surfing, and general office stuff.
Also, my friend recommended that I get an ASUS mobo. Was he right that this brand offers good price/performance?
As is probably obvious, I don't know jack about hardware. Any pointers about the above stuff would be greatly appreciated.
I liked Solaris, even though it was really long and gave me the creeps.
--
Re:If you don't like the news, make some of your o
on
Legitimacy Of ICANN?
·
· Score: 2
OK.
I propose (as if this will surprise anyone) that the Internet doesn't need a central governing body, ICANN or otherwise. Anyone should be able to start their own TLD (even with the same name) and any network should be able to choose which TLD's root servers they recognize.
Most corporations seem to have figured out that so long as they have the appropriate politicians in their pockets [...]
Indeed. It's a sad state of affairs when a company's success hinges not on providing a better product or service, but on whether the company is effective at influencing lawmakers and regulators to tilt the playing field in their favor. Realistically though, many companies would be foolish to not have a lobbying presence, given the power that politicians and regulators have to make or break entire industries.
My opinion is that all this makes a strong case for reducing the power that politicians have over the economy. If they don't have the ability to hand out favors that give one industry an advantage over another, there won't be companies and industry groups lining up at the feeding trough.
This reminds me of a very interesting and amusing documentary I found here. From the web page:
"Spin by Brian Springer is a one-hour documentary which details the events of 1992 through the satellite backhauls. Backhauls provide unpackaged and uncensored news feeds which viewers do not see in the final edition. One interesting aspect of Spin is that it provided a glimpse into the actual Presidential election during the year of 1992, and
a context in which to consider the election of 2000."
I installed StarOffice (I guess it's OpenOffice now) and found that it's able to open most anything my MS-using colleagues send my way.
Also note that Bynari now ships an Outlook/Exchange compatible mail client that makes fitting into an MS network a lot easier. I think it may be closed source, though, not sure.
I would not go near there with a 10-foot pole. There is really no way you can pull that off without generating a lot of ill will for your company from at least one of the parties involved. I also don't see how that will convince them to switch to your company immediately, no matter how right you are.
Let them reap the consequences of choosing a lame dev shop, and perhaps next time they will choose you instead, having learned their lesson. Think long term!
Slashdot Mirror
Hell no! I've administered to IIS and Apache servers for years, and all that IIS's GUI ever does is get in the way.
I have to agree. IIS's admin GUI is a complex, jumbled mess full of tabs, sub-screens, 'advanced' buttons, etc.
Apache's not exactly point and click, but the documentation is clear, the config file is easy to read, and I can move sites from server to server with ease. I can also set up all sorts of cool stuff like URL rewriting.
It would be nice if some of the distros included a GNOME or KDE GUI for Apache, though.
Somehow I can't see 1024 chickens all agreeing to go in the same direction at the same time.
This may be more of a question for everyone else than for Sam (but Sam can feel free to answer also :)
I'm not a big gamer, but I would play some if it weren't such a bitch to get the proper libraries working under Linux. Last time I tried was about 6 months ago... After following some really complicated directions and compiling umpteen obscure drivers I finally got SDL and hardware-accelerated OpenGL working. I had to disable it and revert to my previous versions, though, because it locked up my system a lot during games and made X pretty unstable.
Anyway, my question is this: is multimedia support for Linux getting any easier to install? Is it possible that someday I will be able to install a distribution and have it automagically configure hardware 3D support, install SDL, etc.? Or is Linux multimedia still too much in the toddler stages?
I'm just a lowly PHP coder. I don't understand all this low-level mumbo jumbo. I just want to fire up a game every now and then and blow shit up. Is there hope for me?
Hehe. That reminds me of something that I just saw in the bank drive-thru.
There are these little video screens on each of the whooshy-tube things you pull up to. They normally cycle through a whole bunch of ads for the bank's latest products and services. This time, however, there was a Powerpoint error message on the screen. Something or other about 'Powerpoint has encountered an error it cannot fix. Please close the application and restart.'
Well, I found it amusing.
It seems to me that demo crews would be more interested in writing for Linux than they are. It just seems like the two cultures would mesh well, but apparently they haven't very much.
Why are most of the demos these days for Windows? Is it a cultural thing, or a technical thing? Are there multimedia limitations under Linux that are not addressed by SDL, etc?
Sigh. I used to run a BBS dedicated to Amiga demos. The stuff back then was some amazing shit. I've still never seen anything on a PC that impressed me as much. It would be cool if a free OS someday became the demo platform of choice.
There's no alcohol and few girls.
Oh, I see why...
Um, somehow I can't see coding blitter routines in assembly while getting drunk as being very... um, practical.
Can you submit an icon, instead of a bugreport? :)
Ah, I don't think they would want any icon designed by me. I'm dangerous with a graphics editor.
I did suggest that it would be cool to have a picture of an 'A' getting larger or smaller (as denoted by arrows, e.g. a->A), although there might be internationalization issues with that. I've heard that not everyone uses the Latin alphabet.
And here's a KDE weakness. Right smack next to the 'font enlarge/shrink' icons is another magnifying glass, but this one is for searching in the webpage! Anyone who thinks for 2 minutes about this realizes it's a bad idea to have very similar icons with completely different functions next to each other, but somehow these sort of glitches appear in KDE.
Hey! I submitted that as a bug report about 5 months ago. Maybe it'll be fixed in 2.2. I'm still on like 2.1.something as well.
Little UI design issues like that fascinate me. I'm not sure why.
Yes, there's easy, and then there's advanced. I think both types of users can and should be catered to.
The key is to have a smooth learning curve, so that someone can sit down and be immediately productive, and then gradually work their way up to the advanced level. The learning curve for, say MacOS, is pretty linear. The learning curve for Linux is not.
--
It would be fun to do a controlled study to watch average users scratching their heads over the thing and asking to be excused early.
:)
You mean like the GNOME Usability Study Report?
--
The software that exists in Windows comes with something called a Warranty and even phone tech support. That's comforting to users, and it's something that just can't be done with the vast majority of Free, Open source software. Joe Bloe can't call up fictional developer Yzeb Petronix who takes credit for writing some chat program to find out why it crashes his box,
Well, the problem is that commercial tech support is absolutely worthless. I did IT for 10 years on dozens of platforms and the support we got from commercial vendors was complete shit. Hold times over an hour were normal sometimes even with a support contract. Callbacks often came days later. Even when you did manage to talk to a human, it usually turned out to be someone without any sort of clue. If it was a problem with their product, they wouldn't admit it or fix it.
I would rather not pay money for that sort of shoddy quality and support. I've been burned too many times by closed-source software vendors. I know I'm not alone.
Incidentally, Yzeb Petronix is real, and living in my basement where he is working on kernel drivers for biometric scanners.
--
efax.com
--
I would happily shell out dough for content, just not at the price points that old school content providers have the gall to expect.
I *will not* pay $4.95, $2.95 or $1.95 US to download a single music track in some obnoxious format. I *will* happily pay $0.25 US each to download hundreds of my favorite songs from years past in MP3 format. I'd happily sign up for a service that allows me to download 75 songs for $20.00 US. I'd probably spend $100/year on such a service just for the convenience, assuming it had a good search interface and reliable downloads.
I will also not pay $1.95 to access a story from a newspaper's archives, nor am I interested in a subscription to that newspaper's archives. I'd pay $0.04 US for an article. Since there's no way to microcharge me that much, just serve me a targeted banner ad instead.
--
It would be interesting to see how many MB of space those "This is GPL" disclaimers take up.
On the plus side, you'd probably get a great compression ratio from that...
--
How exactly is a union different from a struct? I've always used structs.
--
I'm buying a new mobo, athlon cpu, and memory in the next day or two. Should I get PC133 memory or DDR? It seems that DDR is much more expensive - is it significantly faster? I'm mainly using the workstation for PHP/HTML/SQL development, web surfing, and general office stuff.
Also, my friend recommended that I get an ASUS mobo. Was he right that this brand offers good price/performance?
As is probably obvious, I don't know jack about hardware. Any pointers about the above stuff would be greatly appreciated.
--
I liked Solaris, even though it was really long and gave me the creeps.
--
OK.
I propose (as if this will surprise anyone) that the Internet doesn't need a central governing body, ICANN or otherwise. Anyone should be able to start their own TLD (even with the same name) and any network should be able to choose which TLD's root servers they recognize.
--
Most corporations seem to have figured out that so long as they have the appropriate politicians in their pockets [...]
Indeed. It's a sad state of affairs when a company's success hinges not on providing a better product or service, but on whether the company is effective at influencing lawmakers and regulators to tilt the playing field in their favor. Realistically though, many companies would be foolish to not have a lobbying presence, given the power that politicians and regulators have to make or break entire industries.
My opinion is that all this makes a strong case for reducing the power that politicians have over the economy. If they don't have the ability to hand out favors that give one industry an advantage over another, there won't be companies and industry groups lining up at the feeding trough.
--
This reminds me of a very interesting and amusing documentary I found here. From the web page:
"Spin by Brian Springer is a one-hour documentary which details the events of 1992 through the satellite backhauls. Backhauls provide unpackaged and uncensored news feeds which viewers do not see in the final edition. One interesting aspect of Spin is that it provided a glimpse into the actual Presidential election during the year of 1992, and
a context in which to consider the election of 2000."
--
Errr... wouldn't it just make sense for them to both tap the original cable, because tapping the tap wouldn't give them any more information!
That would be way too straightforward, and would not use up enough tax dollars.
--
I installed StarOffice (I guess it's OpenOffice now) and found that it's able to open most anything my MS-using colleagues send my way.
Also note that Bynari now ships an Outlook/Exchange compatible mail client that makes fitting into an MS network a lot easier. I think it may be closed source, though, not sure.
--
Actually, the story's URL contains the string "articles/20010514/microsoft_ackno" which suggests that the article is from today, 2001-05-14.
I couldn't find a link to it on the main story index though.
--
Starbucks is worse than tasteless slop. It's foul and/or putrid.
--
I would not go near there with a 10-foot pole. There is really no way you can pull that off without generating a lot of ill will for your company from at least one of the parties involved. I also don't see how that will convince them to switch to your company immediately, no matter how right you are.
Let them reap the consequences of choosing a lame dev shop, and perhaps next time they will choose you instead, having learned their lesson. Think long term!
--