The toggle has some sort of timer built in. Flicking it once gets you to the next song. Holding it down scrolls through continuously (looping back to the beginning), starting slowing, and then accelerating the longer it is held down. The same control is used while a song is playing to fast forward or rewind.
It's really NOT that different from what you are talking about.
No...I think you misunderstood me. The iPod isn't the only mp3player with a wheel. The kanguru mp3 players have something similar that is like a wheel, only it's spring loaded so that it returns to its original position.
If you want to either skip ahead or go to the next song, you just pull it to the right. If you want to go back or go to the previous song, you just pull it to the left. And you can lock it so that it doesn't inadvertently skip on you.
Er...wrong... (about the wheel, that is:-). The rest of your point is taken.)
http://www.kanguru.com/micromp3pro.htmlKanguru Solutions has one. Actually several. You can scroll through the song list (and actually see the names and length of the tunes). And you can replace the batteries. My only issue with them is that the largest size storage you can get is 1 GB.
High Quality MP3 & WMA Playback
Up To 1GB of internal storage
High Speed USB2.0 Transfer Rate
Skip Proof Playback
Built in Digital Voice Recorder
Back-lit LCD with ID3 Tag display
5 Mode Equalizer
(Rock/Pop/Jazz/Classic/Normal)
17 Hour Battery Life
Just over three inches long
Withstands up to 1000Gs of shock
Driverless on most Operating Systems
Also, there is no proprietary encoding of what you put on it, unlike the iRiver stuff. You plug it into your Linux, Windows, or MacIntosh box and it just works like a USB harddrive.
Based on the many DRM and Trusted Computing posts, I suspect that Free software will not become illegal. Rather, those of us who can tinker under the hood and write our own software will become obsolete like the mechanics who used to rebuild cars in their own garages.
While the do-it-yourself mechanic can still rebuild an engine, they need an industry built $10,000 diagnostic tool to do it. Likewise, once DRM sets in, we will need to buy expensive licenses in order to work on the new stuff.
I, for one, feel that this sort of mandatory licensing is like enclosure in the past. We are headed towards a no-individual-ownership society where corporations own everything and we lease the rights to use such things from them. There's something inherently wrong with this from an ethical viewpoint, IMHO.
Free software is not for everyone, granted. But for those of us who use and love it, it means the world.
It's one thing to have experience in secure computing; it's quite another to share that with someone else.
After securing my brother-in-law's household by setting up a specific administrator account for software installs, removing IE links where-ever I could find them and replacing them with Firefox, installing SP2, installing AdAware, installing a decent firewall and several other things, they are now constantly calling because such and such doesn't work properly.
The call is usually one of the following:
1) Such and such program that worked before you did the SP2 upgrade doesn't work anymore. Could you come over and figure out a way to fix it? I need to run it.
2) I can't use such and such website because it needs IE. (And no, the UserAgentSwitcher extension isn't working in this case). Please give me access to IE so I can circumvent all the security you've installed.
3) I really want to install known spyware/adware containing program, but I can't unless I get into the administrative account.
4) Why can't I just run as administrator? Aren't you a bit paranoid for putting all this security on our computer? Now I have to actually switch users in order to install stuff and the extra two or three clicks is really annoying.
Just for fun, I've given them an extra computer running KDE 3.3.0 on top of Linux with all the latest scanning, printing, image processing, instant messenging, browsing, cd-burning, dvd-watching software...but they won't use it because:
1) It looks different. They're deeply uncomfortable with that fact.
2) They try to download and install Windows programs, and of course, it doesn't work. This despite being given a compatibility list and where to get compiled binaries. (and an invitation for me to install things if they're really uncomfortable with nice GUI installer)
3) They want to buy software at Best Buy and install it on the computer and it won't run. Again, they tend to ignore the compatibility list.
4) Did I mention that it looks different than Windows?
The point is that you can educate users, but most simply don't want to be educated. They have gotten comfortable in their current paradigm (usually some mixture of the "freedom" of Windows 95/98 with the performance and "security" of windows XP) and don't want to change/learn anything different. Not only that, but remember that when it comes to family and friends, you can't set a policy like you can in a company. Telling the wife - NO - you cannot run that program that you love and have been using for ages because it is insecure is, in general a bad move.
In short, I've been where this guy has, and I'm totally sympathetic. Let's not take cheap shots and call the guy an idiot because he didn't go the next step and use a root kit.
Thank you. I've used Solaris for a number of years. And while it's not bad, these days, Linux is honestly a much more robust system in terms of software and hardware support. Additionally, (I have no figures to support this), but considering the previous cost of Solaris, I'd be willing to bet that there are many more Linux users. This doesn't necessarily make it better. I just interpret this as yet another premature prediction of Linux's demise.
Let me add, it's not hard to secure Linux especially since the Bastille scripts work with more and more distros and many distros I've encountered already have some hardening done (in addition to firewalls, etc...) right out of the box.
Much of the original poster's citation of benefits seem to be largely from his inexperience with Linux and acceptance of the usual corporate FUD.
I think you're making it too complicated. The folks at Qualysis, Motion Analysis Corporation and other groups have been using smart algorithms for years that are based soley on retroreflection and then on shape analysis of the returned 2D visual array.
That said, I don't think it would be too hard to create counter-measures. I suspect that their technology is NOT filter immune as they maintain, especially if you angle the filter to kill the retro-reflection part of the scheme.
Excellent analysis. However it seems the null-hypothesis is that there was no significant difference between the 2000 and 2004 votes. It may be that other factors are in play as well. Regardless, this is a start. This sort of analysis *needs* to continue so that there is no doubt in anyone's mind that it wasn't the voting machines at fault, but rather the 59 million Americans who voted for Bush.
Electronic voting, while a neat idea to speed up the vote counting process, seems to have run into a number of glitches (over 1100 nationwide) this November 2nd. In addition to seemingly random problems in Florida [1, 2], Ohio [1], and North Carolina [1], there are allegations of systematic fraud based on statistical comparison of exit polls to final results in precincts with audit trails and those without. It is also interesting that in Florida, the voting patterns do not match the voter registration patterns as they do nationwide. This has attracted the attention of numerous civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has filed at least two lawsuits since election day, and BlackboxVoting.org that has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain computer logs and documents from 3000 counties and districts across the US. Equally disturbing is the fact that CNN has (since Nov 2) changed its exit polling results to reflect the actual results. This has attracted the attention of Congressmen John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida who have jointly requested that the GAO immediately investigate the efficacy of e-voting machines.
In case you are thinking that this is just sour grapes from Democrats who lost the election, think again. BlackboxVoting.org has been investigating e-voting fraud for years. Likewise, the CEO of Diebold, one of the e-voting machine manufacturers has been quoted as saying "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." And if that's not conflict of interest enough for you, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (now resigned) is an owner of the largest e-voting machine company ES&S.
Other numerous problems have been found with the machines from nearly every company in the past [1, 2, 3]. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been investigating such machines on his own and has found a number of security issues. Swarthmore students stood up to Diebold in November of 2003 after discovering
Most independent stores I have gone to shop for music in are charing $16+ for a CD. If you're buying it for $12 and making $4+ a CD I seriously believe that you are gouging us. I don't feel bad for you.
While I'm not a big fan of shelling out $16 per CD, it is a fair price, if the store you bought it from paid $12 for it. The usual wholesale to retail markup in most industries is 100%. This is only a 30% markup.
Walmart upsets this rule by quantity. They make tiny margins on every product that they sell. But since they sell so many of them, they make a killing. And at the same time, this makes everyone else look like they're trying to gouge the consumer.
This reminds me of the Foundation trilogy by Asimov when a mathematician analyzed some politician's double speak using symbolic logic. When he finished, he announced that the politician, for all his words, had actually said nothing.
I actually think that's the point of marketing departments - to make people think you're saying something that you're not.
If it's not vaporware, does this mean that us Linux users will be able to benefit from the plethora of windows viruses too? Of course this is probably a stretch at best.
If you research the history of the Carlyle Group, Halliburton, Kellog-Brown-Root, and other companies, you see that they have been in business with the Saudis for decades. I think that this is a rather strong FINANCIAL link.
The linkage between the Carlyle Group (TCG) and United Defense is known. UDI and Halliburton have both made oodles of money in the last year (see the charts on the bottom of the NYSE links). And it seems that Bush I is an owner of TCG.
And if that's not enough, check out Senator Bob Graham of Florida's book, Intelligence Matters, which is discussed here:
It seems that the Bush-Bin Laden connection goes beyond simply what Michael Moore understates. Graham, an obsessive compulsive about detail who documents his life on a daily basis, alleges that the Bush administration stopped an investigation of two Saudis who funded the 9/11 hijackers and then had them flew out of the country. What's more, Graham alleges that this fact was among the 27 pages blacked out of the congressional inquiry report on 9/11.
Whether or not you like Moore or his spin, there are a lot of questions that he asks in F911 that need to be answered before Bush gets into office again. Just my two cents.
Also, I have just finished reading: Clash of the Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity by Tariq Ali. As John Bradey points out in his review, [http://eserver.org/bs/reviews/2002-8-25-12.56PM.h tml] the book is mistitled as it is really just a history of Islam and Islamic states and how in the post World War I era, the US, Britain, France and Russia have consistently meddled in the islamic world for their own self interest, sometimes working for democracy but often working against it when it seems the democracy will not support Western interests. Quite a good read!
I am now reading the more down to Earth but no less compelling book: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast, an American BBC reporter. Having finished chapter 1 which describes the 2000 election, I can say that what is presented is truly chilling. Palast presents how Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris succeeded in disenfranchising nearly 90,000 Florida voters by creative databasing, ignoring the mandates of the Florida Supreme Court and by voting machine tampering in predominantly black counties. The writing style is at times sensationalist - Palast would be at home on Geraldo Rivera's show. But when Palast includes his writings, in full, from Salon.com, the Nation, or Mother Jones, he shines. He also includes extensive documentation (although not AS extensive as I would like). Further chapters have titles like:
* The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Bushes and the Billionaires Who Love Them
* California Reamin': Deregulation and the Power Pirates
* Sell the Lexus, Burn the Olive Tree: Globalization and its Discontents
* Inside Corporate America
* Pat Robertson, General Pinochet, Pepsi-Cola and the Anti-Christ
* Small Towns, Small Minds
I heartily recommend both books, if you have time to read them. Between the two of them, you will begin to get a very clear picture of the workings of the present administration in Washington. Palast puts it succinctly: There is no right wing conspiracy; it's just opportunism.
I too! I was a longtime windows user who used PaintShop Pro from version 3.0 onwards. I found PhotoShop awkward the few times I used it to try to get anything useful done. On the other hand, since I migrated to Linux and have been using the GIMP, I've found it much more intuitive than either PaintShop or PhotoShop. I love the right click to do everything idea. So I guess what I'm saying is to each his own.
That said, I had a thought. Just as Abiword resembles MSWord, and IceWM can be configured to look like WindowsXP, why not create "skins" for the GIMP (or for PhotoShop for that matter!) that would allow you to use the program as you liked. Those with GIMP predilictions who are stuck in PhotoShop could adjust the skin and make it behave like the GIMP while those PhotoShop users stuck in Linux shops could skin the GIMP to work like PhotoShop. I understand that there is some difference in the features, but hey, if people can clone the Mac Aqua interface for WindowsXP, skins should be easy - relatively speaking, of course.
Of course, it's probably just easier to pick the program and platform you like and stick with it.:-)
Sadly, yes...While I have had ne'er a problem on the nearly 30 computers I've set up in the last few months (all vintages and makes), I have not been able to get sound working with a laptop containing an Intel ICH4 sound card (which is supposed to use i810_audio under OSS or snd-intel8x0 under ALSA). I use VectorLinux 4.0, a Slackware derivative. When I use Morphix Live, I get sound, but many other things then stop working.
To be honest, I don't see this story as a troll. True, everybody and their uncle writes drivers for Windows and not for Linux. True, that some people couldn't care less for supporting sound on less than optimal hardware...etc...But the fact of the matter is that on one of the most popular motherboard/soundcard combinations there is, sound is iffy. If you don't believe me, look at the C code for i810_audio.c. A developer put in the comment "This driver is cursed." Add that to the fact that this is one of the most asked about drivers in the ALSA-Sound news-groups and the one with (IMHO) the most unresolved issues.
Stock replies to the poor folks that can't get it to work are usually 1) Unmute the card, 2) Download the commercial OSS drivers, or use a "real" sound card. Excellent documentation for these sound cards is really hard to come by. (Don't worry - if I can fix my issues, I WILL document.)
That said, Linux sound works fine on all of my production boxes and with no tweaking at all. And while their wares aren't perfect, I've got to give praise to the OSS and ALSA folks. They've done lots with little to go on.
Yeah...what he said. The scale of fraud is massive, the deception of the public incredible, and those of us who try to point it out are labeled looneys.
My chief concern with this database linkage is that while they say "if you're not doing anything wrong, why worry", it helps to set the standard that the government needs to check everything we do to ensure that it's not wrong. I'm not saying this particularly well.
I don't use loyalty cards for many of the already noted reasons. However, I've noticed that the ACME in the area doesn't seem to need them anymore. Instead, they are reading information from my debit card and cross-referencing it with my buying habits to produce coupons that correspond to what I buy. As a vegetarian and whole foods fan, this is notable since I don't tend to buy many brand name products.
I suspect the use of RFID (in the minds of the managers, at least) is to aid in inventorying and to decrease theft by employees. It doesn't really get them more info than they already get when people purchase things with a credit or debit card.
Like many here, I am more concerned with the privacy implications if someone can drive by your house and tell what you own because of the RFID tags. To spin this a bit further, what keeps some Joe from making a scanner and using it to tell who's got what to burgle? If they are to be used in stores, I want to be able to disable them when I leave.
Just my two cents...
Re:If they want to be innovative and supportive...
on
Sun Wants to Make Linux 3D
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have RealPlayer 8 for Linux and this showed the video just fine.
In fact, I was impressed because when I clicked on the link it opened RP and fed it the correct URL. I didn't have to go searching through the source javascript to find how to construct it like I have to on so many different sites. This made me think: "Wow, these people are constructing Linux-friendly web pages!" Most designers embed RM clips inside the page which is fine if you are running IE.
On the other hand, I do see what you're saying about putting things in non-proprietary format. I just think that they also may be shooting for the windows crowd as well. My suspicion is that they hope the eye-candy is cool enough that people will want to switch from MS. Only time will tell.
The problem is that if you want users to only be able to select a single package type, say *.tgz, you have to spin your own dialog. The current filtering is virtually non-existant. If you do try to use it, it can hide directories that don't have the correct extension.
From the release notice:
"The new GtkFileChooser widgets provide a radically simplified and improved way for users to select files. Application writers now are provided with such capabilities such as customizable filters and previews. The filesystem access is encapsulated as a dynamically loaded module; as an example of what this allows, libgnomeui now provides a gnome-vfs backend for GtkFileChooser so that it has the same view of remote filesystems as applications such Nautilus."
This is cool stuff as it will certainly improve the perception and use of GTK.
I have programmed in C, Fortran, Quickbasic, IDL, PV-Wave, Perl, LabVIEW, Bash, and JavaScript. Of them, Javascript was the easiest to learn (IMHO). There are now so many programming and scripting languages out there, who cares what you use as long as it gets it's job done. I do respect people who can program in C as easily as falling out of bed.
Now, as for file access, you can use Mozilla based browsers to access the file system using JSLib if you need to (So long as the web app is local). Likewise, you can use Mozilla to execute local commands on either Windows or Linux.
I'll grant that Javascript doesn't execute as quickly as optimized C++, but unless what you're doing is mission critical or requires real time handling of data, this is largely a non-issue (again IMHO).
HTML applications or HTAs as they are called, have been growing in popularity because they are easy to put together and don't require re-inventing the wheel. The development time is trivial compared to most programming languages and they take advantage of the browser's widget set and layout commands.
CUPS has an HTML front end for configuration that I tend to consider an HTML application. I've also written a number of them myself when there was nothing that would fit the bill just so, including a grade book (I'm a teacher) and a database.
Except I use mozilla based browsers only and rely heavily on LiveConnect for file system access through JavaScript. Using the java.security file, one can even keep the security settings on such programs fairly high. The only real drawback is execution time. Since they are scripting progs, don't even think about using them for anything that requires real-time communication.
I wouldn't think of programming such an app with IE even when I do run windows.
Slashdot Mirror
It's really NOT that different from what you are talking about.
If you want to either skip ahead or go to the next song, you just pull it to the right. If you want to go back or go to the previous song, you just pull it to the left. And you can lock it so that it doesn't inadvertently skip on you.
Does this clarify things?
http://www.kanguru.com/micromp3pro.htmlKanguru Solutions has one. Actually several. You can scroll through the song list (and actually see the names and length of the tunes). And you can replace the batteries. My only issue with them is that the largest size storage you can get is 1 GB.
- High Quality MP3 & WMA Playback
- Up To 1GB of internal storage
- High Speed USB2.0 Transfer Rate
- Skip Proof Playback
- Built in Digital Voice Recorder
- Back-lit LCD with ID3 Tag display
- 5 Mode Equalizer
- (Rock/Pop/Jazz/Classic/Normal)
- 17 Hour Battery Life
- Just over three inches long
- Withstands up to 1000Gs of shock
- Driverless on most Operating Systems
Also, there is no proprietary encoding of what you put on it, unlike the iRiver stuff. You plug it into your Linux, Windows, or MacIntosh box and it just works like a USB harddrive.(fstab entry: /dev/sda1 /mnt/usb vfat defaults,noauto,user 0 0)
Only *.mp3 and *.wma files are played when you unplug it. The others remain there for your temporary storage needs.
While the do-it-yourself mechanic can still rebuild an engine, they need an industry built $10,000 diagnostic tool to do it. Likewise, once DRM sets in, we will need to buy expensive licenses in order to work on the new stuff.
I, for one, feel that this sort of mandatory licensing is like enclosure in the past. We are headed towards a no-individual-ownership society where corporations own everything and we lease the rights to use such things from them. There's something inherently wrong with this from an ethical viewpoint, IMHO.
Free software is not for everyone, granted. But for those of us who use and love it, it means the world.
After securing my brother-in-law's household by setting up a specific administrator account for software installs, removing IE links where-ever I could find them and replacing them with Firefox, installing SP2, installing AdAware, installing a decent firewall and several other things, they are now constantly calling because such and such doesn't work properly.
The call is usually one of the following:
1) Such and such program that worked before you did the SP2 upgrade doesn't work anymore. Could you come over and figure out a way to fix it? I need to run it.
2) I can't use such and such website because it needs IE. (And no, the UserAgentSwitcher extension isn't working in this case). Please give me access to IE so I can circumvent all the security you've installed.
3) I really want to install known spyware/adware containing program, but I can't unless I get into the administrative account.
4) Why can't I just run as administrator? Aren't you a bit paranoid for putting all this security on our computer? Now I have to actually switch users in order to install stuff and the extra two or three clicks is really annoying.
Just for fun, I've given them an extra computer running KDE 3.3.0 on top of Linux with all the latest scanning, printing, image processing, instant messenging, browsing, cd-burning, dvd-watching software...but they won't use it because:
1) It looks different. They're deeply uncomfortable with that fact.
2) They try to download and install Windows programs, and of course, it doesn't work. This despite being given a compatibility list and where to get compiled binaries. (and an invitation for me to install things if they're really uncomfortable with nice GUI installer)
3) They want to buy software at Best Buy and install it on the computer and it won't run. Again, they tend to ignore the compatibility list.
4) Did I mention that it looks different than Windows?
The point is that you can educate users, but most simply don't want to be educated. They have gotten comfortable in their current paradigm (usually some mixture of the "freedom" of Windows 95/98 with the performance and "security" of windows XP) and don't want to change/learn anything different. Not only that, but remember that when it comes to family and friends, you can't set a policy like you can in a company. Telling the wife - NO - you cannot run that program that you love and have been using for ages because it is insecure is, in general a bad move.
In short, I've been where this guy has, and I'm totally sympathetic. Let's not take cheap shots and call the guy an idiot because he didn't go the next step and use a root kit.
Let me add, it's not hard to secure Linux especially since the Bastille scripts work with more and more distros and many distros I've encountered already have some hardening done (in addition to firewalls, etc...) right out of the box.
Much of the original poster's citation of benefits seem to be largely from his inexperience with Linux and acceptance of the usual corporate FUD.
That said, I don't think it would be too hard to create counter-measures. I suspect that their technology is NOT filter immune as they maintain, especially if you angle the filter to kill the retro-reflection part of the scheme.
Electronic voting, while a neat idea to speed up the vote counting process, seems to have run into a number of glitches (over 1100 nationwide) this November 2nd. In addition to seemingly random problems in Florida [1, 2], Ohio [1], and North Carolina [1], there are allegations of systematic fraud based on statistical comparison of exit polls to final results in precincts with audit trails and those without. It is also interesting that in Florida, the voting patterns do not match the voter registration patterns as they do nationwide. This has attracted the attention of numerous civil rights groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation that has filed at least two lawsuits since election day, and BlackboxVoting.org that has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain computer logs and documents from 3000 counties and districts across the US. Equally disturbing is the fact that CNN has (since Nov 2) changed its exit polling results to reflect the actual results. This has attracted the attention of Congressmen John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Robert Wexler of Florida who have jointly requested that the GAO immediately investigate the efficacy of e-voting machines.
In case you are thinking that this is just sour grapes from Democrats who lost the election, think again. BlackboxVoting.org has been investigating e-voting fraud for years. Likewise, the CEO of Diebold, one of the e-voting machine manufacturers has been quoted as saying "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." And if that's not conflict of interest enough for you, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel (now resigned) is an owner of the largest e-voting machine company ES&S.
Other numerous problems have been found with the machines from nearly every company in the past [1, 2, 3]. Avi Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, has been investigating such machines on his own and has found a number of security issues. Swarthmore students stood up to Diebold in November of 2003 after discovering
Walmart upsets this rule by quantity. They make tiny margins on every product that they sell. But since they sell so many of them, they make a killing. And at the same time, this makes everyone else look like they're trying to gouge the consumer.
This reminds me of the Foundation trilogy by Asimov when a mathematician analyzed some politician's double speak using symbolic logic. When he finished, he announced that the politician, for all his words, had actually said nothing.
I actually think that's the point of marketing departments - to make people think you're saying something that you're not.
Things that make you go hmmmmm....
http://www.nyse.com/cgi-bin/ny_charts?sym=HAL
http://www.americanpolitics.com/20020709Page.html
http://www.nyse.com/cgi-bin/ny_charts?sym=UDI
The linkage between the Carlyle Group (TCG) and United Defense is known. UDI and Halliburton have both made oodles of money in the last year (see the charts on the bottom of the NYSE links). And it seems that Bush I is an owner of TCG.
And if that's not enough, check out Senator Bob Graham of Florida's book, Intelligence Matters, which is discussed here:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9584265.htm
It seems that the Bush-Bin Laden connection goes beyond simply what Michael Moore understates. Graham, an obsessive compulsive about detail who documents his life on a daily basis, alleges that the Bush administration stopped an investigation of two Saudis who funded the 9/11 hijackers and then had them flew out of the country. What's more, Graham alleges that this fact was among the 27 pages blacked out of the congressional inquiry report on 9/11.
Whether or not you like Moore or his spin, there are a lot of questions that he asks in F911 that need to be answered before Bush gets into office again. Just my two cents.
Also, I have just finished reading: Clash of the Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity by Tariq Ali. As John Bradey points out in his review, [http://eserver.org/bs/reviews/2002-8-25-12.56PM.h tml] the book is mistitled as it is really just a history of Islam and Islamic states and how in the post World War I era, the US, Britain, France and Russia have consistently meddled in the islamic world for their own self interest, sometimes working for democracy but often working against it when it seems the democracy will not support Western interests. Quite a good read!
I am now reading the more down to Earth but no less compelling book: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast, an American BBC reporter. Having finished chapter 1 which describes the 2000 election, I can say that what is presented is truly chilling. Palast presents how Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris succeeded in disenfranchising nearly 90,000 Florida voters by creative databasing, ignoring the mandates of the Florida Supreme Court and by voting machine tampering in predominantly black counties. The writing style is at times sensationalist - Palast would be at home on Geraldo Rivera's show. But when Palast includes his writings, in full, from Salon.com, the Nation, or Mother Jones, he shines. He also includes extensive documentation (although not AS extensive as I would like). Further chapters have titles like:
* The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Bushes and the Billionaires Who Love Them
* California Reamin': Deregulation and the Power Pirates
* Sell the Lexus, Burn the Olive Tree: Globalization and its Discontents
* Inside Corporate America
* Pat Robertson, General Pinochet, Pepsi-Cola and the Anti-Christ
* Small Towns, Small Minds
I heartily recommend both books, if you have time to read them. Between the two of them, you will begin to get a very clear picture of the workings of the present administration in Washington. Palast puts it succinctly: There is no right wing conspiracy; it's just opportunism.
That said, I had a thought. Just as Abiword resembles MSWord, and IceWM can be configured to look like WindowsXP, why not create "skins" for the GIMP (or for PhotoShop for that matter!) that would allow you to use the program as you liked. Those with GIMP predilictions who are stuck in PhotoShop could adjust the skin and make it behave like the GIMP while those PhotoShop users stuck in Linux shops could skin the GIMP to work like PhotoShop. I understand that there is some difference in the features, but hey, if people can clone the Mac Aqua interface for WindowsXP, skins should be easy - relatively speaking, of course.
Of course, it's probably just easier to pick the program and platform you like and stick with it. :-)
To be honest, I don't see this story as a troll. True, everybody and their uncle writes drivers for Windows and not for Linux. True, that some people couldn't care less for supporting sound on less than optimal hardware...etc...But the fact of the matter is that on one of the most popular motherboard/soundcard combinations there is, sound is iffy. If you don't believe me, look at the C code for i810_audio.c. A developer put in the comment "This driver is cursed." Add that to the fact that this is one of the most asked about drivers in the ALSA-Sound news-groups and the one with (IMHO) the most unresolved issues.
Stock replies to the poor folks that can't get it to work are usually 1) Unmute the card, 2) Download the commercial OSS drivers, or use a "real" sound card. Excellent documentation for these sound cards is really hard to come by. (Don't worry - if I can fix my issues, I WILL document.)
That said, Linux sound works fine on all of my production boxes and with no tweaking at all. And while their wares aren't perfect, I've got to give praise to the OSS and ALSA folks. They've done lots with little to go on.
My chief concern with this database linkage is that while they say "if you're not doing anything wrong, why worry", it helps to set the standard that the government needs to check everything we do to ensure that it's not wrong. I'm not saying this particularly well.
This would permanantly end the name dispute. Of course if "something" is taken as a wildcard by lawyers, this opens up a whole new can of worms.
I suspect the use of RFID (in the minds of the managers, at least) is to aid in inventorying and to decrease theft by employees. It doesn't really get them more info than they already get when people purchase things with a credit or debit card.
Like many here, I am more concerned with the privacy implications if someone can drive by your house and tell what you own because of the RFID tags. To spin this a bit further, what keeps some Joe from making a scanner and using it to tell who's got what to burgle? If they are to be used in stores, I want to be able to disable them when I leave.
Just my two cents...
In fact, I was impressed because when I clicked on the link it opened RP and fed it the correct URL. I didn't have to go searching through the source javascript to find how to construct it like I have to on so many different sites. This made me think: "Wow, these people are constructing Linux-friendly web pages!" Most designers embed RM clips inside the page which is fine if you are running IE.
On the other hand, I do see what you're saying about putting things in non-proprietary format. I just think that they also may be shooting for the windows crowd as well. My suspicion is that they hope the eye-candy is cool enough that people will want to switch from MS. Only time will tell.
From the release notice: "The new GtkFileChooser widgets provide a radically simplified and improved way for users to select files. Application writers now are provided with such capabilities such as customizable filters and previews. The filesystem access is encapsulated as a dynamically loaded module; as an example of what this allows, libgnomeui now provides a gnome-vfs backend for GtkFileChooser so that it has the same view of remote filesystems as applications such Nautilus."
This is cool stuff as it will certainly improve the perception and use of GTK.
Now, as for file access, you can use Mozilla based browsers to access the file system using JSLib if you need to (So long as the web app is local). Likewise, you can use Mozilla to execute local commands on either Windows or Linux.
I'll grant that Javascript doesn't execute as quickly as optimized C++, but unless what you're doing is mission critical or requires real time handling of data, this is largely a non-issue (again IMHO).
CUPS has an HTML front end for configuration that I tend to consider an HTML application. I've also written a number of them myself when there was nothing that would fit the bill just so, including a grade book (I'm a teacher) and a database.
Except I use mozilla based browsers only and rely heavily on LiveConnect for file system access through JavaScript. Using the java.security file, one can even keep the security settings on such programs fairly high. The only real drawback is execution time. Since they are scripting progs, don't even think about using them for anything that requires real-time communication.
I wouldn't think of programming such an app with IE even when I do run windows.