He needs to buy a special PCI card to enable the ability to have two harddrives
how to make sense of this cryptic assertion? several possibilities:
1) the new drive is SCSI, and iGawyn's friend is trying to install it in a G3 tower that only has IDE support. hmmm. guess he really shouldn't be surprised at having to buy a "special PCI card" then. oh, those horrible, un-upgradeable Apples.
2) the new drive is IDE, but the ribbon cables included with the system only have one plug apiece. hmmmm. guess that's good news for the local Micro Center, who managed to sell a PCI IDE card instead of a ribbon cable, and bad news for iGawyn's friend.
3) the new drive is SCSI, and the G3 tower has a PCI SCSI card already, but it's already packed full of its maximum complement of devices. i don't think this is likely.
4) iGawyn's friend is just an idiot. not because he doesn't know much about upgrading his computer, but because he doesn't know how to check the Web or call Apple to find out what he doesn't know. personally, i'm leaning towards this one as the best explanation.
exactly what model of Mac does your friend have, iGawyn? hmmmmm? fucking troll.
Younger people are more likely to have existing social cliques from college/university/highschool.
absolutely. add to this the fact that the people who came out of college and got IT jobs in the past 5 years or so probably had a bunch of college buddies who ALSO came out of college and got IT jobs, and you end up with IT people who maintain a network of friends through cell phones, email, irc etc., despite the fact that those friends live and work in different places.
i hang out with a group of four other IT guys. we all went to the same school and graduated within the span of two years, and we all work as system administrators or developers in the Boston area. we're all on irc during the work day, and we meet face to face once a week to have brunch on Saturday mornings.
oddly enough, i'm better friends with some of these guys now than when we were in school together.
-steve
Re:this is neither healthy nor a sign of life
on
Loki Goes Postal
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· Score: 1
i'd pay $10-$15 for a solid linux port of AAoW. i might even go as high as $30 for bundled Starflight/Starflight II (with, of course, reproductions of the galactic maps and the code wheel).
plus, it seems to me that Loki should be able to crank out titles like these in next to no time. these games must be much less complex than modern titles, and i can't imagine the publishers would charge exorbitant prices for the right to port.
Games need to constantly be innovative and use new technology, and that needs more 3d power.
no they don't. games need to be fun to play, engaging, challenging, well-written, and able to run on hardware that the average user owns.
consider that Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force game. it featured "innovative" extensions of the Q3 engine that required more 3d power.
was it a better game than, say, Thief, or Oni, or even hoary old Aliens vs. Predator? no! it was a truly moronic room-by-room shoot-the-enemies game, with a thin veneer of star trek sprayed over the outside. possibly the only redeeming feature of the entire game was the fact that for some inexplicable reason, you had the option of playing the entire thing in German, with subtitles.
more 3d does not a better game make. more 3d wealthier hardware manufacturers makes. the widespread failure of gamers to realize this fact, and then to force game designers to change their priorities, is in no small part responsible for the general suckage of the current PC gaming scene.
-vecna_99
Re:i have no problem with your bizarre taste in ga
on
Loki Goes Postal
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· Score: 1
ok, i see where our fundamental difference is.
i don't think that linux games should be designed with the aim of recruiting john q. windowsgamer to install linux on his machine instead of windows. even if there were good linux ports of all his favorite games, there are other non-gaming-related issues (which you mention, such as the butt-arse-ugly desktop defaults) that would militate against his making the switch.
i think linux gaming should be oriented towards people who are already running linux. thus, Loki should be trying to supply us with games that are actually GOOD (as opposed to games that are simply played by many thousands of people).
and while i'm aware that my taste in games is not exactly mainstream (the game i'm currently most looking forward to is the Harpoon 3 cd that's being fedexed to me as we speak), i think that there are a large number of fringe gaming markets that a) it would be much easier for Loki to penetrate (compared to the mainstream gaming market) and b) that have games that are languishing unappreciated, that could do with some more exposure.
as for linux games competing with windows games, as long as you have to pay twice to own the windows version and the linux version of a game, there's competition.
-vecna_99
Re:this is neither healthy nor a sign of life
on
Loki Goes Postal
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· Score: 5, Insightful
i couldn't disagree more. i don't want diablo ii ported to linux because i've already played it on my mac, and discovered that it more or less sucks. same with TA. haven't played planescape torment, so i can't comment on that.
it's pure folly for the linux game market to try to compete head-to-head with the PC game market; there's no reason why your average gamer would buy the same big mainstream game for linux when he can buy it for windows.
here are the priorities that loki should adopt:
1) port games that are mod-friendly and have a thriving mod community! we already have Q3 and UT. how about Bungie's Myth or Myth II? what about Half-Life?
loki should have a decent shot at getting companies to license ports of these games, mostly because they're all older games and are no longer a major revenue source for the owners.
2) port GOOD games that fail in the PC market due to insufficient promotion. it must be very frustrating for the owner of a game see the game sell poorly because everybody's buying this year's Tribes 2 instead. these games will be good opportunities for Loki to take advantage of.
(Postal, incidentally, falls into this category. for such a simple game, it's loads of fun. i played the demo for more hours than i've played two or three other games combined.)
as long as the linux gaming experience is just a clone of the PC gaming experience, it'll never flourish. while it's important to have good linux ports of popular network-only games, so linux gamers can attend LAN parties, the world of linux gaming should be a new lease on life for high-quality games that weren't pushed hard enough by their publishers.
congratulations, Quarters. you have demonstrated your proficiency at constructing a straw man argument.
your list (Text boxes, Combo boxes, Drop Down menus, etc.) doesn't describe "a few basic tennants[sic] of a GUI". that describes a few basic elements of a WINDOWS-LIKE (or technically, Macintosh-like) GUI.
as long as you begin with the assumption (that makes an ass out of you and mption) that all GUIs must be Windows-like, that's all you're going to end up with. you called for some other GUI concepts. how about these:
1. The "flying" GUI. The user looks down onto a filesystem, with whichever files are at the same level in the foreground, and subdirectories appearing as paths leading away towards the horizon. to select a file, move the mouse right and left until the desired file is under the cursor, then click. to descend subdirectories, move the mouse side to side until the desired subdirectory branch is under the cursor, then move the mouse forward. to ascend, pull the mouse backwards. functionality elements (i.e. applications, scripts, other executables) appear as icons along the top of the screen. in order to run a particular app, click on the icon (whereupon your mouse pointer changes to reflect that you have a certain app "loaded") and then click on blank space. to open a particular file with an app, click on the app, then click on the file. filesystem operations (file move/copy/delete, directory delete/create) are handled by functionality elements. so are system operations (shutdown, sleep).
2. the "spindle and bucket" GUI. the filesystem is represented by a spindle-like structure in the center of the screen, on which a number of disk-like structures are spinning. each disk represents a directory on the filesystem (deep filesystem hierarchies do not represent well in this GUI). the user spins each disk left or right at varying speeds by dragging the mouse. clicking on files temporarily pops them off the disk and into a holding area. dragging them off the holding area and onto another spindle moves them; dragging them off the holding area and into empty space returns them to their original position. functionality elements are represented by "buckets" placed around the periphery of the screen. to open/execute a file using a particular interactivity unit, drag the file from the holding area (or straight from the spindle) into the bucket. system functions are performed by a little animated mandrill who runs across the screen, screams, and waves his arse at you if you give him a commmand he doesn't like. also he shits in a random bucket.
ok, those are two ideas i made up in the space of ten minutes. yes, i know they probably suck. i'd actually like to try using the flying GUI, especially on a fast system (i'd use a wireframe theme, on a black background, but that's just me).
and i haven't had any training in GUI design, nor even thought too hard about the issue. i'm sure someone else can come up with something much better.
-vecna_99
p.s. if anyone cares, i think the Aqua interface rules, but if i'm on anything other than a Mac, i'm dyed-in-the-wool Blackbox all the way. it's the only X Windows wm that doesn't get all up in my face all the time.
Now Mac users will never be able to have Mozilla fit in with the rest of their computer. Some Mac users will probably go with IE just for this reason.
and some mac users will probably go with OmniWeb [www.omnigroup.com], and some mac users will probably go with Opera [www.opera.com], or other web browsers.
Mozilla isn't the only alternative to IE, thank god.
So please forgive us for wanting to use our platform of choice, probably with a very attracting UI. Apple has managed to create a UI that draws mimics like a pot of honey would flies. They should be very, very flattered. For all I know, they very well may be - they just have chosen to limit Aqua's availability to only those running their operating system.
some kinds of "flattery" Apple can do without.
i suspect that the reason Apple keeps cracking down on Aqua-esque themes is that most of them look butt-ass ugly.
erm... this is nowhere near Aqua. as far as i can tell, it's just window borders and widgets. and worse still, poorly-done widgets! where are the proper drop shadows on the widgets? where's the transparency in the menu bars of inactive windows? where are the truly transparent (not janky Enlightenment transparency, but real transparency) xterms? where's the transparent Dock, with scaling, and the genie effect for minimizing/maximizing windows?
here's another feeble attempt. The drop shadows on the widgets are a little closer to reality, but the window title bars are completely wrong. the scroll bar arrows are not right, and the window box is too squared-off. the widget in the upper right corner of the window is the wrong shape, the wrong color, and doesn't provide the proper functionality. but those problems are relatively trivial; more importantly, where's the Aqua toolbar? where's the status bar? where's the Dock, with Docklings that update in real time?
look. the point is not that these themes are imcomplete emulations of the Aqua user environment. the point is that the "wow" factor that hits you when you first encounter Aqua is a result of ALL the components working together, not just a few dribs and drabs. there's no one thing that makes Aqua cool; it's the ensemble.
this is why Apple doesn't want people releasing incomplete clones and calling them "Aqua". if my first encounter with "Aqua" was seeing one of the abovementioned themes running on a friend's linux box (and being told "hey, here's a theme that looks like Apple's new GUI"), i'd be underwhelmed, especially after all the hype. neither of those screenshots would be anywhere near enough to make me want to go out and buy OS X.
now, on the other hand, something like this [apple.com]...
Unfortunately the price savings will not be passed onto the consumer, which is where they should be, but you can't expect that out of any capitalist corporation. grrr....
this struck me as a surprising about-face, given the nature of your previous few posts.
given that you're willing to admit this likelihood, why are you glad that the "rampant casual piracy" is being "cut down on"? i sincerely doubt that any significant amount of those price savings are being distributed among the developers working for commercial software companies (you know, the people who actually write the stuff). nor can you possibly think that those price savings will resurface as larger subsidies to hardware manufacturers, who will subsequently pass the savings along to the hardware buyer.
are you the CEO, or perhaps a board member, of a major commercial software house? if not, why are you unhappy about widespread piracy?
i doubt the feds are running the addresses through the big Crime Computer - what's more likely is that someone raised an eyebrow at a letter that bore a return address of:
Mr. J.Q. Public
123 Main Street
Grover's Corners, NH 45678
This list is completely devoid of heart and soul. There were some good picks, like Wing Commander, Starcraft, X-COM and Doom, but generally it appears they have no fucking clue what they're talking about.
having worked both in a high school computer lab and in a undergrad/grad computer lab in college, here's a few tips that may make your life easier:
Tip The First: Remember the fable of the oak and the reeds. Don't armor-plate your machines; rather, build infrastructure so that your machines can recover easily from damage.
What this means is building disk images on a central file server for each class of machine in your area of responsibility, and then setting up the appropriate software so that you (or even a minimally tech-savvy teacher or student) can completely rebuild the machine from the ground up, just by inserting a floppy disk and power-cycling the machine. For PCs, do this using Ghost; for Macs, do this using RevRdist.
Real-world example: In the university lab in which i worked, we had about 50/50 Macs and PCs(running NT Workstation). in a little paper envelope taped to the side of each machine was a floppy disk, labeled with the type of machine for which it was appropriate (i.e. Power Mac 7200, OptiPlex GXi). if a machine was not working properly, all the user had to do was insert the floppy and power-cycle; the machine would boot from the floppy, then rebuild itself, then prompt to eject the floppy (in the case of the PCs) and reboot. voila. since we assigned all our IPs via DHCP, and since DHCP records were mapped to MAC addresses, the new machine would be able to connect to the network without additional intervention. printers and default shares would also be set up, as they were all in the Ghost/RevRdist images.
so yeah. every so often some yahoo would trash a machine (most often by accident), but generally either the perpetrator, or the next person to come along, would be able to rebuild the machine in a matter of five-ten minutes or so. i had been working in this lab prior to the adoption of this system, and i assure you that the amount of time we help desk techs spent with lab machines dropped to at least a tenth of what it had previously been.
Tip The Second: make users keep their stuff off of local machines! with NT Workstation, this was easy; Domain Users could not write to the C drive, and thus were obliged to keep their files on network shares (which were quotaed, and backed up). on the Macs this was tougher; we still made the same network shares available, and we published in large letters the policy that any local files would be deleted when the machines were rebuilt (which happened once a week, whether they needed it or not), and made absolutely no exceptions to this policy.
Result of all this: individual lab machines were as close as possible to dumb terminals. we even configured the Macs so that they ran most of their apps off of network shares, which meant that they rebuilt real fast. users' files were kept under control (both in terms of quantity and in terms of content) because we could check on them by looking at the central servers. as an added bonus, replacing damaged hardware was easy as pie; if one of the two kiosk machines in the basement library lost a hard drive, for example, i could grab a spare machine from the main lab, cart it down there, use the ex-kiosk's rebuild disk on it, and thus give the students something to use while i was replacing the hard drive that had failed.
hopefully you'll be able to use some of these ideas to make your life easier. building this kind of resiliency into a school network (which, unlike a corporate network, is ideally suited for this sort of setup) is a much better way to solve the problem than relying on harsh disciplinary action.
-steve
p.s. in the relatively rare cases when we did encounter a malicious user (i.e. kid repeatedly pours soft drink into PC, or whatever), we certainly did make sure that the perpetrator ended up in the hands of the proper disciplinary authority. but if you call the cops/principal in for every minor computer-related glitch, not only will your user base resent you, but you'll gradually lose credibility with the authorities you are invoking.
Plus, due to the nature of the software, without regular updates, it's worthless.
so... isn't that your revenue stream right there? charge for the updates! it's the drug-dealer business model!
are you worried that your competitors will steal your implementation and then... what? keep stealing each update from your customers as you release it, then rebrand the update and release it themselves a week later? develop their own updates for your software?
if (as i suspect is the case) your software requires periodic updates because it contains some real-world data which changes over time, then the collection and compilation of that data is the value-add that your company brings to its software. if the software is GPLed, then the only way people can compete is by providing better and faster updates than you.
i'm not looking forward to the day where i have to pay "audiophile" prices to get a standalone stereo receiver, because the only devices targeted at the consumer market are these Frankensteins.
think that's unlikely? seven years ago i was shopping for a stereo receiver at my local neighborhood Circuit City. i couldn't afford anything in the NAD/harman-kardon/Marantz range (and i honestly didn't need that level of quality anyway), but i did want decent wattage per channel, enough inputs for a wide range of devices, and enough speaker outs that i'd be able to deliver sound to two separate rooms.
i looked in the "home audio" section of the store, but i couldn't find anything that fit the bill. then i wandered over to the "home theater" section; the receivers there had everything i wanted, but also wanted me to pay $100+ more for the Dolby 5.1 processor, the three video inputs, and all the stupid home-theater-oriented crap.
despite the fact that at the time, i didn't own a TV and couldn't have been less interested in "home theater", the only way i could get what i wanted was to buy a Sony receiver that had been discontinued the previous year and was sitting on the scratch-and-dent shelf.
when i see this mindset being extended to the rest of media, it fills me with a nameless dread. how long will it be before i go to buy a VCR for home movie viewing and am faced with the choice between a craptastic, feature-starved POS and a decent, fully-functional model whose price has been jacked up an extra $100 because it's saddled with stupid TiVo functionality?
you bought a PS2? you bastard:) it's good to hear a positive review of the box - i've been putting aside cash for a while with an eye to eventually buying one.
many slashdot readers are also not libertarians, and don't buy your stupid crap. i respect your desire to own and operate firearms (because, let's face it, they're fun toys), but it galls me every time someone dresses up this fact in the rhetoric of "freedom and democracy".
People get killed for their Nikes because there exist animals who have no respect for human life. Those animals exist in large part because they were not given moral training.
i don't buy it.
i'd believe it if you were talking about, say, a starving person who lurks in an alley, sees a guy walking by eating a ham sandwich, and kills the guy to get his food. this is not the phenomenon that the poster was referring to.
thugs who kill you for your fashionable clothes are not naked, barefoot, and freezing. neither are they pro athletes who need high-performance footwear to enhance their game. they want your clothes because they are status symbols, not because of their utility. the only reason they have a need for new Nikes is because the need has been manufactured for them.
who manufactured this need? marketers and advertisers.
Which describes how to configure your Kerberos client to authenticate with a Win2k domain controller.
I sat back, opened a telnet session to the NetBSD box and successfully logged in to the box using my Win2k password.
This works, it works very well.
I'm planning to set my Sparcstation up to authenticate the same way, as well as my DECstation now running Ultrix.
Richard Stallman is wrong. The free kerberos can communicate with the Microsoft server.
as i understood it back when this was a big controversial topic, nobody was ever claiming that you couldn't do what you have done at home.
the issue i recall people complaining about was that it would be impossible/illegal (can't remember which) to write unix-based win2k domain controller software (which is supposed to happen with Samba 3.0, right?), because win2k clients expect their pdc to understand the contents of that funky reserved field in kerberos, thus forcing anyone who wants to run a win2k domain to do it using a domain controller running win2k.
i mean, think about it - what makes more sense from Microsoft's perspective? it doesn't do them much harm if an occasional unix box can authenticate on a win2k domain - what would really hurt them would be people being able to avoid licensing win2k server for use as their pdcs.
if you don't actually have any constructive advice to pass along, you could just shut the fuck up. do you know for a fact that no open source developers are working on solving this problem?
this is the real-life equivalent of the old joke: "Doctor, it hurts when I turn my head this way!" "Well, don't turn your head that way!"
on a positive note to the author of the original question: have you investigated Apple's WorldScript technology and their associated Hebrew Language Kit? as i don't know any Hebrew, i'm not sure to what extent that might meet your needs - i know that there are a fair number of MacOS apps written to take advantage of WorldScript.
more relevantly, when MacOS X ships in March, you will have a good chance of being able to use many of the open source apps you currently use on a Mac. consider AppleWorks 6 (or whatever the latest version is by then) as a replacement for the Microsoft Office suite. use PowerMail or Eudora as an Outlook replacement, etc. etc.
Slashdot Mirror
ok, there's something janky going on here.
He needs to buy a special PCI card to enable the ability to have two harddrives
how to make sense of this cryptic assertion? several possibilities:
1) the new drive is SCSI, and iGawyn's friend is trying to install it in a G3 tower that only has IDE support. hmmm. guess he really shouldn't be surprised at having to buy a "special PCI card" then. oh, those horrible, un-upgradeable Apples.
2) the new drive is IDE, but the ribbon cables included with the system only have one plug apiece. hmmmm. guess that's good news for the local Micro Center, who managed to sell a PCI IDE card instead of a ribbon cable, and bad news for iGawyn's friend.
3) the new drive is SCSI, and the G3 tower has a PCI SCSI card already, but it's already packed full of its maximum complement of devices. i don't think this is likely.
4) iGawyn's friend is just an idiot. not because he doesn't know much about upgrading his computer, but because he doesn't know how to check the Web or call Apple to find out what he doesn't know. personally, i'm leaning towards this one as the best explanation.
exactly what model of Mac does your friend have, iGawyn? hmmmmm? fucking troll.
-steve
http://www.apple.com/ipod/
absolutely. add to this the fact that the people who came out of college and got IT jobs in the past 5 years or so probably had a bunch of college buddies who ALSO came out of college and got IT jobs, and you end up with IT people who maintain a network of friends through cell phones, email, irc etc., despite the fact that those friends live and work in different places.
i hang out with a group of four other IT guys. we all went to the same school and graduated within the span of two years, and we all work as system administrators or developers in the Boston area. we're all on irc during the work day, and we meet face to face once a week to have brunch on Saturday mornings.
oddly enough, i'm better friends with some of these guys now than when we were in school together.
-steve
i'd pay $10-$15 for a solid linux port of AAoW. i might even go as high as $30 for bundled Starflight/Starflight II (with, of course, reproductions of the galactic maps and the code wheel).
plus, it seems to me that Loki should be able to crank out titles like these in next to no time. these games must be much less complex than modern titles, and i can't imagine the publishers would charge exorbitant prices for the right to port.
-vecna_99
Games need to constantly be innovative and use new technology, and that needs more 3d power.
no they don't. games need to be fun to play, engaging, challenging, well-written, and able to run on hardware that the average user owns.
consider that Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force game. it featured "innovative" extensions of the Q3 engine that required more 3d power.
was it a better game than, say, Thief, or Oni, or even hoary old Aliens vs. Predator? no! it was a truly moronic room-by-room shoot-the-enemies game, with a thin veneer of star trek sprayed over the outside. possibly the only redeeming feature of the entire game was the fact that for some inexplicable reason, you had the option of playing the entire thing in German, with subtitles.
more 3d does not a better game make. more 3d wealthier hardware manufacturers makes. the widespread failure of gamers to realize this fact, and then to force game designers to change their priorities, is in no small part responsible for the general suckage of the current PC gaming scene.
-vecna_99
ok, i see where our fundamental difference is.
i don't think that linux games should be designed with the aim of recruiting john q. windowsgamer to install linux on his machine instead of windows. even if there were good linux ports of all his favorite games, there are other non-gaming-related issues (which you mention, such as the butt-arse-ugly desktop defaults) that would militate against his making the switch.
i think linux gaming should be oriented towards people who are already running linux. thus, Loki should be trying to supply us with games that are actually GOOD (as opposed to games that are simply played by many thousands of people).
and while i'm aware that my taste in games is not exactly mainstream (the game i'm currently most looking forward to is the Harpoon 3 cd that's being fedexed to me as we speak), i think that there are a large number of fringe gaming markets that a) it would be much easier for Loki to penetrate (compared to the mainstream gaming market) and b) that have games that are languishing unappreciated, that could do with some more exposure.
as for linux games competing with windows games, as long as you have to pay twice to own the windows version and the linux version of a game, there's competition.
-vecna_99
i couldn't disagree more. i don't want diablo ii ported to linux because i've already played it on my mac, and discovered that it more or less sucks. same with TA. haven't played planescape torment, so i can't comment on that.
it's pure folly for the linux game market to try to compete head-to-head with the PC game market; there's no reason why your average gamer would buy the same big mainstream game for linux when he can buy it for windows.
here are the priorities that loki should adopt:
1) port games that are mod-friendly and have a thriving mod community! we already have Q3 and UT. how about Bungie's Myth or Myth II? what about Half-Life?
loki should have a decent shot at getting companies to license ports of these games, mostly because they're all older games and are no longer a major revenue source for the owners.
2) port GOOD games that fail in the PC market due to insufficient promotion. it must be very frustrating for the owner of a game see the game sell poorly because everybody's buying this year's Tribes 2 instead. these games will be good opportunities for Loki to take advantage of.
(Postal, incidentally, falls into this category. for such a simple game, it's loads of fun. i played the demo for more hours than i've played two or three other games combined.)
as long as the linux gaming experience is just a clone of the PC gaming experience, it'll never flourish. while it's important to have good linux ports of popular network-only games, so linux gamers can attend LAN parties, the world of linux gaming should be a new lease on life for high-quality games that weren't pushed hard enough by their publishers.
-vecna_99
congratulations, Quarters. you have demonstrated your proficiency at constructing a straw man argument.
your list (Text boxes, Combo boxes, Drop Down menus, etc.) doesn't describe "a few basic tennants[sic] of a GUI". that describes a few basic elements of a WINDOWS-LIKE (or technically, Macintosh-like) GUI.
as long as you begin with the assumption (that makes an ass out of you and mption) that all GUIs must be Windows-like, that's all you're going to end up with. you called for some other GUI concepts. how about these:
1. The "flying" GUI. The user looks down onto a filesystem, with whichever files are at the same level in the foreground, and subdirectories appearing as paths leading away towards the horizon. to select a file, move the mouse right and left until the desired file is under the cursor, then click. to descend subdirectories, move the mouse side to side until the desired subdirectory branch is under the cursor, then move the mouse forward. to ascend, pull the mouse backwards. functionality elements (i.e. applications, scripts, other executables) appear as icons along the top of the screen. in order to run a particular app, click on the icon (whereupon your mouse pointer changes to reflect that you have a certain app "loaded") and then click on blank space. to open a particular file with an app, click on the app, then click on the file. filesystem operations (file move/copy/delete, directory delete/create) are handled by functionality elements. so are system operations (shutdown, sleep).
2. the "spindle and bucket" GUI. the filesystem is represented by a spindle-like structure in the center of the screen, on which a number of disk-like structures are spinning. each disk represents a directory on the filesystem (deep filesystem hierarchies do not represent well in this GUI). the user spins each disk left or right at varying speeds by dragging the mouse. clicking on files temporarily pops them off the disk and into a holding area. dragging them off the holding area and onto another spindle moves them; dragging them off the holding area and into empty space returns them to their original position. functionality elements are represented by "buckets" placed around the periphery of the screen. to open/execute a file using a particular interactivity unit, drag the file from the holding area (or straight from the spindle) into the bucket. system functions are performed by a little animated mandrill who runs across the screen, screams, and waves his arse at you if you give him a commmand he doesn't like. also he shits in a random bucket.
ok, those are two ideas i made up in the space of ten minutes. yes, i know they probably suck. i'd actually like to try using the flying GUI, especially on a fast system (i'd use a wireframe theme, on a black background, but that's just me).
and i haven't had any training in GUI design, nor even thought too hard about the issue. i'm sure someone else can come up with something much better.
-vecna_99
p.s. if anyone cares, i think the Aqua interface rules, but if i'm on anything other than a Mac, i'm dyed-in-the-wool Blackbox all the way. it's the only X Windows wm that doesn't get all up in my face all the time.
Now Mac users will never be able to have Mozilla fit in with the rest of their computer. Some Mac users will probably go with IE just for this reason.
and some mac users will probably go with OmniWeb [www.omnigroup.com], and some mac users will probably go with Opera [www.opera.com], or other web browsers.
Mozilla isn't the only alternative to IE, thank god.
-steve
i think you've just posted several reasons for not using Windows-native widgets. what's the problem there?
So please forgive us for wanting to use our platform of choice, probably with a very attracting UI. Apple has managed to create a UI that draws mimics like a pot of honey would flies. They should be very, very flattered. For all I know, they very well may be - they just have chosen to limit Aqua's availability to only those running their operating system.
...
some kinds of "flattery" Apple can do without.
i suspect that the reason Apple keeps cracking down on Aqua-esque themes is that most of them look butt-ass ugly.
Exhibit A [themes.org]
erm... this is nowhere near Aqua. as far as i can tell, it's just window borders and widgets. and worse still, poorly-done widgets! where are the proper drop shadows on the widgets? where's the transparency in the menu bars of inactive windows? where are the truly transparent (not janky Enlightenment transparency, but real transparency) xterms? where's the transparent Dock, with scaling, and the genie effect for minimizing/maximizing windows?
Exhibit B [themes.org]
here's another feeble attempt. The drop shadows on the widgets are a little closer to reality, but the window title bars are completely wrong. the scroll bar arrows are not right, and the window box is too squared-off. the widget in the upper right corner of the window is the wrong shape, the wrong color, and doesn't provide the proper functionality. but those problems are relatively trivial; more importantly, where's the Aqua toolbar? where's the status bar? where's the Dock, with Docklings that update in real time?
look. the point is not that these themes are imcomplete emulations of the Aqua user environment. the point is that the "wow" factor that hits you when you first encounter Aqua is a result of ALL the components working together, not just a few dribs and drabs. there's no one thing that makes Aqua cool; it's the ensemble.
this is why Apple doesn't want people releasing incomplete clones and calling them "Aqua". if my first encounter with "Aqua" was seeing one of the abovementioned themes running on a friend's linux box (and being told "hey, here's a theme that looks like Apple's new GUI"), i'd be underwhelmed, especially after all the hype. neither of those screenshots would be anywhere near enough to make me want to go out and buy OS X.
now, on the other hand, something like this [apple.com]
-steve
Unfortunately the price savings will not be passed onto the consumer, which is where they should be, but you can't expect that out of any capitalist corporation. grrr....
this struck me as a surprising about-face, given the nature of your previous few posts.
given that you're willing to admit this likelihood, why are you glad that the "rampant casual piracy" is being "cut down on"? i sincerely doubt that any significant amount of those price savings are being distributed among the developers working for commercial software companies (you know, the people who actually write the stuff). nor can you possibly think that those price savings will resurface as larger subsidies to hardware manufacturers, who will subsequently pass the savings along to the hardware buyer.
are you the CEO, or perhaps a board member, of a major commercial software house? if not, why are you unhappy about widespread piracy?
i'm not trying to bait you, i'm honestly curious.
-vecna_99
i doubt the feds are running the addresses through the big Crime Computer - what's more likely is that someone raised an eyebrow at a letter that bore a return address of:
Mr. J.Q. Public
123 Main Street
Grover's Corners, NH 45678
or some such.
-steve
well duh. it's fucking Gamespy.
having worked both in a high school computer lab and in a undergrad/grad computer lab in college, here's a few tips that may make your life easier:
Tip The First: Remember the fable of the oak and the reeds. Don't armor-plate your machines; rather, build infrastructure so that your machines can recover easily from damage.
What this means is building disk images on a central file server for each class of machine in your area of responsibility, and then setting up the appropriate software so that you (or even a minimally tech-savvy teacher or student) can completely rebuild the machine from the ground up, just by inserting a floppy disk and power-cycling the machine. For PCs, do this using Ghost; for Macs, do this using RevRdist.
Real-world example: In the university lab in which i worked, we had about 50/50 Macs and PCs(running NT Workstation). in a little paper envelope taped to the side of each machine was a floppy disk, labeled with the type of machine for which it was appropriate (i.e. Power Mac 7200, OptiPlex GXi). if a machine was not working properly, all the user had to do was insert the floppy and power-cycle; the machine would boot from the floppy, then rebuild itself, then prompt to eject the floppy (in the case of the PCs) and reboot. voila. since we assigned all our IPs via DHCP, and since DHCP records were mapped to MAC addresses, the new machine would be able to connect to the network without additional intervention. printers and default shares would also be set up, as they were all in the Ghost/RevRdist images.
so yeah. every so often some yahoo would trash a machine (most often by accident), but generally either the perpetrator, or the next person to come along, would be able to rebuild the machine in a matter of five-ten minutes or so. i had been working in this lab prior to the adoption of this system, and i assure you that the amount of time we help desk techs spent with lab machines dropped to at least a tenth of what it had previously been.
Tip The Second: make users keep their stuff off of local machines! with NT Workstation, this was easy; Domain Users could not write to the C drive, and thus were obliged to keep their files on network shares (which were quotaed, and backed up). on the Macs this was tougher; we still made the same network shares available, and we published in large letters the policy that any local files would be deleted when the machines were rebuilt (which happened once a week, whether they needed it or not), and made absolutely no exceptions to this policy.
Result of all this: individual lab machines were as close as possible to dumb terminals. we even configured the Macs so that they ran most of their apps off of network shares, which meant that they rebuilt real fast. users' files were kept under control (both in terms of quantity and in terms of content) because we could check on them by looking at the central servers. as an added bonus, replacing damaged hardware was easy as pie; if one of the two kiosk machines in the basement library lost a hard drive, for example, i could grab a spare machine from the main lab, cart it down there, use the ex-kiosk's rebuild disk on it, and thus give the students something to use while i was replacing the hard drive that had failed.
hopefully you'll be able to use some of these ideas to make your life easier. building this kind of resiliency into a school network (which, unlike a corporate network, is ideally suited for this sort of setup) is a much better way to solve the problem than relying on harsh disciplinary action.
-steve
p.s. in the relatively rare cases when we did encounter a malicious user (i.e. kid repeatedly pours soft drink into PC, or whatever), we certainly did make sure that the perpetrator ended up in the hands of the proper disciplinary authority. but if you call the cops/principal in for every minor computer-related glitch, not only will your user base resent you, but you'll gradually lose credibility with the authorities you are invoking.
Plus, due to the nature of the software, without regular updates, it's worthless.
so... isn't that your revenue stream right there? charge for the updates! it's the drug-dealer business model!
are you worried that your competitors will steal your implementation and then... what? keep stealing each update from your customers as you release it, then rebrand the update and release it themselves a week later? develop their own updates for your software?
if (as i suspect is the case) your software requires periodic updates because it contains some real-world data which changes over time, then the collection and compilation of that data is the value-add that your company brings to its software. if the software is GPLed, then the only way people can compete is by providing better and faster updates than you.
-vecna_99
this sounds like a bona fide nightmare.
i'm not looking forward to the day where i have to pay "audiophile" prices to get a standalone stereo receiver, because the only devices targeted at the consumer market are these Frankensteins.
think that's unlikely? seven years ago i was shopping for a stereo receiver at my local neighborhood Circuit City. i couldn't afford anything in the NAD/harman-kardon/Marantz range (and i honestly didn't need that level of quality anyway), but i did want decent wattage per channel, enough inputs for a wide range of devices, and enough speaker outs that i'd be able to deliver sound to two separate rooms.
i looked in the "home audio" section of the store, but i couldn't find anything that fit the bill. then i wandered over to the "home theater" section; the receivers there had everything i wanted, but also wanted me to pay $100+ more for the Dolby 5.1 processor, the three video inputs, and all the stupid home-theater-oriented crap.
despite the fact that at the time, i didn't own a TV and couldn't have been less interested in "home theater", the only way i could get what i wanted was to buy a Sony receiver that had been discontinued the previous year and was sitting on the scratch-and-dent shelf.
when i see this mindset being extended to the rest of media, it fills me with a nameless dread. how long will it be before i go to buy a VCR for home movie viewing and am faced with the choice between a craptastic, feature-starved POS and a decent, fully-functional model whose price has been jacked up an extra $100 because it's saddled with stupid TiVo functionality?
-vecna_99
erm. i think you miss the point.
they're trying to get RID of the banner ads, not simply shield themselves from them.
-steve
you bought a PS2? you bastard :) it's good to hear a positive review of the box - i've been putting aside cash for a while with an eye to eventually buying one.
-steve
wow. is this meant to be serious?
some of us fantasize about the Internet without Excite, Yahoo!, or Amazon.com, y'know.
-vecna_99
many slashdot readers are also not libertarians, and don't buy your stupid crap. i respect your desire to own and operate firearms (because, let's face it, they're fun toys), but it galls me every time someone dresses up this fact in the rhetoric of "freedom and democracy".
-steve
People get killed for their Nikes because there exist animals who have no respect for human life. Those animals exist in large part because they were not given moral training.
i don't buy it.
i'd believe it if you were talking about, say, a starving person who lurks in an alley, sees a guy walking by eating a ham sandwich, and kills the guy to get his food. this is not the phenomenon that the poster was referring to.
thugs who kill you for your fashionable clothes are not naked, barefoot, and freezing. neither are they pro athletes who need high-performance footwear to enhance their game. they want your clothes because they are status symbols, not because of their utility. the only reason they have a need for new Nikes is because the need has been manufactured for them.
who manufactured this need? marketers and advertisers.
-steve
Which describes how to configure your Kerberos client to authenticate with a Win2k domain controller.
I sat back, opened a telnet session to the NetBSD box and successfully logged in to the box using my Win2k password.
This works, it works very well.
I'm planning to set my Sparcstation up to authenticate the same way, as well as my DECstation now running Ultrix.
Richard Stallman is wrong. The free kerberos can communicate with the Microsoft server.
as i understood it back when this was a big controversial topic, nobody was ever claiming that you couldn't do what you have done at home.
the issue i recall people complaining about was that it would be impossible/illegal (can't remember which) to write unix-based win2k domain controller software (which is supposed to happen with Samba 3.0, right?), because win2k clients expect their pdc to understand the contents of that funky reserved field in kerberos, thus forcing anyone who wants to run a win2k domain to do it using a domain controller running win2k.
i mean, think about it - what makes more sense from Microsoft's perspective? it doesn't do them much harm if an occasional unix box can authenticate on a win2k domain - what would really hurt them would be people being able to avoid licensing win2k server for use as their pdcs.
-steve
OmniWeb for MacOS X has this functionality as well, plus the added bonus of not needing to be run on an Amiga!
damn, you're helpful.
if you don't actually have any constructive advice to pass along, you could just shut the fuck up. do you know for a fact that no open source developers are working on solving this problem?
this is the real-life equivalent of the old joke: "Doctor, it hurts when I turn my head this way!" "Well, don't turn your head that way!"
on a positive note to the author of the original question: have you investigated Apple's WorldScript technology and their associated Hebrew Language Kit? as i don't know any Hebrew, i'm not sure to what extent that might meet your needs - i know that there are a fair number of MacOS apps written to take advantage of WorldScript.
more relevantly, when MacOS X ships in March, you will have a good chance of being able to use many of the open source apps you currently use on a Mac. consider AppleWorks 6 (or whatever the latest version is by then) as a replacement for the Microsoft Office suite. use PowerMail or Eudora as an Outlook replacement, etc. etc.
-steve