Oh my god.. tabs, RSS feeds, built-in search box and "easy-to-use" interface! it's Firefox! Did MS just realised that because of open-source, they can just recompile something really nice, give it a nice name (hmmm.. IE7?) and boost it as the next Microsoft innovation?
Looks like someone has analog nostalgia at Philips... why go backwards? While lots of companies are working on streaming video content through GPRS/3G/whatever, a TV tuner which will have problems with reception (like, in the underground?) and combined with a tiny screen... I wouldnt personally buy one of these
I bet they will need support... and therefore, they will buy OO (oops, StarOffice) from Sun rather than instructing their employees to download it from the net. Therefore, they will just exchange one company for the other.
Good for Sun, good for OpenOffice... bad for Paris Hilton =)
I can see it coming =)
Seriously, I dont think that accessibility is the biggest obstacle, or the primary target. Inconsistancies in the GUI make it difficult for people to get used to Linux, even if they have no sight or hearing handicaps.
Looks like a slow day for Slashot if this type of stories get posted =)
According to the police, Thomas, who worked in the callcentre for six months before quitting the job in December 2004, had the secret pincodes of the customers' e-mail IDs, which were used to transfer money. In January, he roped in his friends and transferred money from four accounts of the bank's New York-based customers into their own accounts, opened under fictitious names.
The story doesn't even have enough info to classify it as social engineering. People used confidential information to transfet funds. Ok, they used the Internet to do the transfer. Ok, they got PINs from customer emails. What's in there to learn? Where are the "news for nerds" here?
Looks like the famous cartoon has indeed made it to Google! Have a look at the map... the world is the US (nicely plotted, roads and cities) and... Canada (full desert). No way to cross the ocean or even get a glimpse of South America existing =)
Here we go... the logical conclusion that nothing else matters! I mean, I didn't expect a map or, God forbid, even cities names, but CONTINENTS would be fun to have at least. Hey, America, we ARE on the map!
... then spend alot of time trying to figure out what is written on the CD...
Seriously, the contrast is so low that i don't really see a point of doing that. And then, this story (referring to Yamaha) was a lready posted here.
One more reason not to trash your old good tape player =) Hook up a mic, and voila, will work around and DRM scheme, present and future.
On the serious side thou, it it a shame to see companies pumping in millions to design just another copy-protection thingie that will be destroyed tomorrow by a 14-year old. Are Britney Spears songs REALLY so precious?
Give it another 2-3 years, and email will be dead anyways. Replaced by instant messaging-like services where you'll only get messages from the people you know. Best strategy to avoid spam anyways. So these battles are hardly of any relevance. And then, look at Yahoo, MSN and other major webmail providers... they have by now built their devoted "clientelle". How many people would move just because of mail space? Any of these places is an "integrated environment" where you get search, contacts, calendars, IMs etc... so the whole concept of "webmail wars" it totally overrated.
I wonder if the author has, by any chance, had the possibility to play around with PaintShopPro lately. To call it a "light-duty" is one of the biggest over-simplifications I have ever seen. Just have a look at its features, it almost beats Gimp and is as close to Photoshop as one can get (treating, of course, PhotoShop CS as a reference point!)
It's a feature, not a bug! Rebooting 1)cleans up memory 2) makes you do something useful 3) makes you aquanted with the hardware 4) teaches you elementary computer skills
FireFox is a fantastic product, no doubts about that. But I would really doubt that logs from one site can be used as an argument for an overall trend. The Microsoft website probably has 95-98% of all the hits generated by IE. RedHat, SuSE and Slashdot would have a bigger share of Konqueror, FireFox and Netscape users.... even Lynx =)
There is no point to generalise the results of one log... plus keep in mind that more and more browsers nowadays can "lie" about their identity... just say that FireFox is worth a try, and don't push it any further!
If such a thing as politics.slashdot.org should exist, we got to have an alternative one. There fore I propose to vote, push and beg for sex.slashdot.org That's the part EVERYONE here will read and be proud to comment upon. Except for girls on Slashdot, but this can be easily be dismissed as nonexistent.
GO FOR SEX.SLASHDOT.ORG!
I have been a sysadmin in a school myself for 3 years... hating MsWindows and all the big "problems" that come with it... dreaming of turning the school into a real playground with Linux etc... So I tried my best to solve this problem too...
There are no GUI frontends to any linux-based DB system, no matter what they tell you. MySQL has the most attempts to build one, but all of them in the alpha development stage. MySQLCC is the best (from my point of view) but still too many mistakes to make it useful for someone who is just a "user".
There are no alternatives. Sorry to say that, use Access on Mac, and you'll have a nice GUI with anything you would expect from a nice modern database.
Let me visualise this... you need the chips but you don't need them to be on a motherboard... how would a computer look? A plastic bag full of chips? you dig in, take the processor out and throw in a new one to upgrade? groovy
Indeed a nice, informative article. Just a handful of comments, if I may:
* the way PDAs are evolving, they are the most likely platform for ebooks evolution. Sure enough, no one wants to carry a full-scale laptop just to read in the underground. But what the author suggests, like an IPOD-like device for books is an overdoze as well. Why would I want to carry my PDA, an IPOD, AND a special device to read text, when there is a device that can allow me to do all of that?
* the biggest mistake made so far by numerous companies trying to promote ebooks is the fact that they are trying to blindly emulate a book. Why have a hard cover, unfoldable double screens and similar nonsense, if not only for nostalgic reasons? Where is *innovation* in that?
* standarts. The ONLY existing standart right now is.TXT, despite all efforts. From RocketBook to XML-based FictionBook,.PDF attempts to be a book and of course Microsoft, the possible customer is confused, and that doesn't add to the ebooks popularity. Therefore, it is amazing how many books still sirculate around in.DOC format
* DRM issues. Sure, authors want to be paid. My guess is that the OSS movement applied to old good arts will not work, as artists don't want to create in their spare time =) But none of the existing DRM schemes offers enough flexibility to please both customers and publishers. Time to innovate!
Just my 2 swedish cents
nonsense... I run a pretty secure net here (secondary school, HUGE threat from any teenager who just happen to think he is a XaxooR)... we got everything so locked down that we didnt have a single major incident for the last year =)
And still, yes, portable USB devices are a threat... can't telnet from the school due to policies? just bring Putty on a memory stick... et voila!
Therefore, it is not so much about network security, but what you allow people to do on the network... with the saaumption that any memory stick can contain software you DONT WANT inside your net.
First and foremost, I am totally in favour of review, comparisons or anything that gives an insight into the different distros, compares them of just plain discusses them.
With this said, does any half-page with a couple of screenshots deserves to be called a "review" and being widely advertized on Slashdot? Dont's think so. The author took the time to install FC" (great!), had a couple of problems (dont we all), did not even test anything else than Gnome and made this into an article? Now give me a break!
Mentionning NVidia drivers was nice... a couple of allegetly missing programs - great! And... that is all? I teach 7,8 and 9 grade students... any of them could write something like that, and to be fair, they wouldnt get more than "good" for this. For an article in LinuxMagasine.. this is a disgrace. "This time he explains how to tame the GNOME and Fedora 2 problems he noted the first time around and get them both in working shape.." (from Slashdot)... where are the explanations?
Ask ten "Joe SixPacks" to install FC2 and run it for half-a-day.. you will get a noce combination of non professional users opinions... summarise the discussion going on on FC2 newsgroups.. you will get a long list of problems, complains and solutions.. but, for God's sake, don't just post a page of non-interesting, plain stupid "experiences" and call this a review!
"
DRM... MacroVision... special players & MAYBE one day special TVs... totally useless as long as the ultimate goal is to watch the movie... with unprotected human eyes
just take a digital camera, point it at the TV screen... et voila! Sure, won't be DVD quality, but, in home conditions, the quality will beat telesync =)
A really nice idea. Not very suitable for people who want their web surfing to be unnoticed (want information, goto web, want to chat - talk to your wife, for god's sake!). But for crazyfied teenagers desperately looking for someone to talk to, get attention and scorepoints (think Lunastorm, Funplanet etc) it's just another toy to replace IM. And all that instead of just goin out and playing football with REAL girls.
Too bad, though, that it's a windows-oly technology. Think about how linux interest wouyld increase if smth like that was ONLY available for Linux? Yep, huge. But it looks like days when technology was developed on unix/linux and THEN ported to Windows (web, irc, ftp etc.) is over... too bad.
As a person who switched to FC1 two months ago (from Suse9), and then to FC2 immediately after it was released, I carefully read the whole thread... and here is what I think:
* Both sides are very eager to produce arguments such as "Gnome is useless" or "my system does not boot at all". That is on one side, the other one simple states "it's the best system I used" or "you are an idiot yourself". To sum up, there are as many people who are satisfied with FC2 as there are people who don't like it. Sounds like a normal distribution to me
* yes, there seems to be an issue with dual-booting and another cryptic error with "not enough memeory" during the install process. But it seems to affect machines in such an unpredictable manner (I personally installed FC2 on 4 machines, 2 of them dual-boot)... and I never encountered any of these issues. So, before raising havoc about it, the problem should be investigated, and not just fed to the hungry Slashdot crowd as the "news of the day".
* Fedora Core2 has a specific aim... install it and start working. As a private opinion, it accomplishes this aim beautifully. Just install it, and 40 minutes later you can start typing & printing. IT HAS NEVER BEEN DESIGNED FOR PEOPLE WHO PRAY TO VI OR BELIEVE IN A COMMAND SHELL TO BE THE WORLD'S BEST GUI. It's a rather specific distro. Think about it.
* As mentionned by somebody, it's a.0 distro... so say "thanks" to all the people who have been working hard to roll it out and help them to correct bugs. THAT would be a helpful activity
Slashdot Mirror
Oh my god.. tabs, RSS feeds, built-in search box and "easy-to-use" interface! it's Firefox! Did MS just realised that because of open-source, they can just recompile something really nice, give it a nice name (hmmm.. IE7?) and boost it as the next Microsoft innovation?
Looks like someone has analog nostalgia at Philips... why go backwards? While lots of companies are working on streaming video content through GPRS/3G/whatever, a TV tuner which will have problems with reception (like, in the underground?) and combined with a tiny screen... I wouldnt personally buy one of these
I bet they will need support... and therefore, they will buy OO (oops, StarOffice) from Sun rather than instructing their employees to download it from the net. Therefore, they will just exchange one company for the other.
Good for Sun, good for OpenOffice... bad for Paris Hilton =)
I can see it coming =) Seriously, I dont think that accessibility is the biggest obstacle, or the primary target. Inconsistancies in the GUI make it difficult for people to get used to Linux, even if they have no sight or hearing handicaps.
Will there be a Linux/FreeBSD version?
Who cares id the ice cap is melting there... any buildings or roads they have built in 5 years?
Looks like a slow day for Slashot if this type of stories get posted =)
According to the police, Thomas, who worked in the callcentre for six months before quitting the job in December 2004, had the secret pincodes of the customers' e-mail IDs, which were used to transfer money. In January, he roped in his friends and transferred money from four accounts of the bank's New York-based customers into their own accounts, opened under fictitious names.The story doesn't even have enough info to classify it as social engineering. People used confidential information to transfet funds. Ok, they used the Internet to do the transfer. Ok, they got PINs from customer emails. What's in there to learn? Where are the "news for nerds" here?
Looks like the famous cartoon has indeed made it to Google! Have a look at the map... the world is the US (nicely plotted, roads and cities) and ... Canada (full desert). No way to cross the ocean or even get a glimpse of South America existing =)
Here we go... the logical conclusion that nothing else matters! I mean, I didn't expect a map or, God forbid, even cities names, but CONTINENTS would be fun to have at least. Hey, America, we ARE on the map!
... then spend alot of time trying to figure out what is written on the CD...
Seriously, the contrast is so low that i don't really see a point of doing that. And then, this story (referring to Yamaha) was a lready posted here.
One more reason not to trash your old good tape player =) Hook up a mic, and voila, will work around and DRM scheme, present and future. On the serious side thou, it it a shame to see companies pumping in millions to design just another copy-protection thingie that will be destroyed tomorrow by a 14-year old. Are Britney Spears songs REALLY so precious?
Give it another 2-3 years, and email will be dead anyways. Replaced by instant messaging-like services where you'll only get messages from the people you know. Best strategy to avoid spam anyways. So these battles are hardly of any relevance. And then, look at Yahoo, MSN and other major webmail providers... they have by now built their devoted "clientelle". How many people would move just because of mail space? Any of these places is an "integrated environment" where you get search, contacts, calendars, IMs etc... so the whole concept of "webmail wars" it totally overrated.
I wonder if the author has, by any chance, had the possibility to play around with PaintShopPro lately. To call it a "light-duty" is one of the biggest over-simplifications I have ever seen. Just have a look at its features, it almost beats Gimp and is as close to Photoshop as one can get (treating, of course, PhotoShop CS as a reference point!)
It's a feature, not a bug! Rebooting 1)cleans up memory 2) makes you do something useful 3) makes you aquanted with the hardware 4) teaches you elementary computer skills
FireFox is a fantastic product, no doubts about that. But I would really doubt that logs from one site can be used as an argument for an overall trend. The Microsoft website probably has 95-98% of all the hits generated by IE. RedHat, SuSE and Slashdot would have a bigger share of Konqueror, FireFox and Netscape users.... even Lynx =)
There is no point to generalise the results of one log... plus keep in mind that more and more browsers nowadays can "lie" about their identity... just say that FireFox is worth a try, and don't push it any further!
If such a thing as politics.slashdot.org should exist, we got to have an alternative one. There fore I propose to vote, push and beg for sex.slashdot.org That's the part EVERYONE here will read and be proud to comment upon. Except for girls on Slashdot, but this can be easily be dismissed as nonexistent. GO FOR SEX.SLASHDOT.ORG!
I have been a sysadmin in a school myself for 3 years... hating MsWindows and all the big "problems" that come with it... dreaming of turning the school into a real playground with Linux etc... So I tried my best to solve this problem too...
There are no GUI frontends to any linux-based DB system, no matter what they tell you. MySQL has the most attempts to build one, but all of them in the alpha development stage. MySQLCC is the best (from my point of view) but still too many mistakes to make it useful for someone who is just a "user".
There are no alternatives. Sorry to say that, use Access on Mac, and you'll have a nice GUI with anything you would expect from a nice modern database.
I can hear the words... "welcome to the Black Mesa research facility"
Let me visualise this... you need the chips but you don't need them to be on a motherboard... how would a computer look? A plastic bag full of chips? you dig in, take the processor out and throw in a new one to upgrade? groovy
Indeed a nice, informative article. Just a handful of comments, if I may: .TXT, despite all efforts. From RocketBook to XML-based FictionBook, .PDF attempts to be a book and of course Microsoft, the possible customer is confused, and that doesn't add to the ebooks popularity. Therefore, it is amazing how many books still sirculate around in .DOC format
* the way PDAs are evolving, they are the most likely platform for ebooks evolution. Sure enough, no one wants to carry a full-scale laptop just to read in the underground. But what the author suggests, like an IPOD-like device for books is an overdoze as well. Why would I want to carry my PDA, an IPOD, AND a special device to read text, when there is a device that can allow me to do all of that?
* the biggest mistake made so far by numerous companies trying to promote ebooks is the fact that they are trying to blindly emulate a book. Why have a hard cover, unfoldable double screens and similar nonsense, if not only for nostalgic reasons? Where is *innovation* in that?
* standarts. The ONLY existing standart right now is
* DRM issues. Sure, authors want to be paid. My guess is that the OSS movement applied to old good arts will not work, as artists don't want to create in their spare time =) But none of the existing DRM schemes offers enough flexibility to please both customers and publishers. Time to innovate!
Just my 2 swedish cents
nonsense... I run a pretty secure net here (secondary school, HUGE threat from any teenager who just happen to think he is a XaxooR)... we got everything so locked down that we didnt have a single major incident for the last year =) And still, yes, portable USB devices are a threat... can't telnet from the school due to policies? just bring Putty on a memory stick... et voila! Therefore, it is not so much about network security, but what you allow people to do on the network... with the saaumption that any memory stick can contain software you DONT WANT inside your net.
First and foremost, I am totally in favour of review, comparisons or anything that gives an insight into the different distros, compares them of just plain discusses them. With this said, does any half-page with a couple of screenshots deserves to be called a "review" and being widely advertized on Slashdot? Dont's think so. The author took the time to install FC" (great!), had a couple of problems (dont we all), did not even test anything else than Gnome and made this into an article? Now give me a break! Mentionning NVidia drivers was nice... a couple of allegetly missing programs - great! And ... that is all? I teach 7,8 and 9 grade students... any of them could write something like that, and to be fair, they wouldnt get more than "good" for this. For an article in LinuxMagasine.. this is a disgrace. "This time he explains how to tame the GNOME and Fedora 2 problems he noted the first time around and get them both in working shape.." (from Slashdot)... where are the explanations?
Ask ten "Joe SixPacks" to install FC2 and run it for half-a-day.. you will get a noce combination of non professional users opinions... summarise the discussion going on on FC2 newsgroups.. you will get a long list of problems, complains and solutions.. but, for God's sake, don't just post a page of non-interesting, plain stupid "experiences" and call this a review!
"
DRM... MacroVision... special players & MAYBE one day special TVs... totally useless as long as the ultimate goal is to watch the movie... with unprotected human eyes
just take a digital camera, point it at the TV screen... et voila! Sure, won't be DVD quality, but, in home conditions, the quality will beat telesync =)
A really nice idea. Not very suitable for people who want their web surfing to be unnoticed (want information, goto web, want to chat - talk to your wife, for god's sake!). But for crazyfied teenagers desperately looking for someone to talk to, get attention and scorepoints (think Lunastorm, Funplanet etc) it's just another toy to replace IM. And all that instead of just goin out and playing football with REAL girls.
Too bad, though, that it's a windows-oly technology. Think about how linux interest wouyld increase if smth like that was ONLY available for Linux? Yep, huge. But it looks like days when technology was developed on unix/linux and THEN ported to Windows (web, irc, ftp etc.) is over... too bad.
As a person who switched to FC1 two months ago (from Suse9), and then to FC2 immediately after it was released, I carefully read the whole thread... and here is what I think: .0 distro... so say "thanks" to all the people who have been working hard to roll it out and help them to correct bugs. THAT would be a helpful activity
* Both sides are very eager to produce arguments such as "Gnome is useless" or "my system does not boot at all". That is on one side, the other one simple states "it's the best system I used" or "you are an idiot yourself". To sum up, there are as many people who are satisfied with FC2 as there are people who don't like it. Sounds like a normal distribution to me
* yes, there seems to be an issue with dual-booting and another cryptic error with "not enough memeory" during the install process. But it seems to affect machines in such an unpredictable manner (I personally installed FC2 on 4 machines, 2 of them dual-boot)... and I never encountered any of these issues. So, before raising havoc about it, the problem should be investigated, and not just fed to the hungry Slashdot crowd as the "news of the day".
* Fedora Core2 has a specific aim... install it and start working. As a private opinion, it accomplishes this aim beautifully. Just install it, and 40 minutes later you can start typing & printing. IT HAS NEVER BEEN DESIGNED FOR PEOPLE WHO PRAY TO VI OR BELIEVE IN A COMMAND SHELL TO BE THE WORLD'S BEST GUI. It's a rather specific distro. Think about it.
* As mentionned by somebody, it's a
I want all my "pictures" private folder to be this size!