Sure, those Sun optical mice were nice, with a metal mousepad.
They did have a problem, though, and that is that mouse movement with them wasn't really smooth (have worked on a SS/20 with optical mouse). I have read that you could overclock them to make movement smoother, but even then a normal PS/2 ball mouse moves smoother because the PS/2 port has much more throughput than the Sun serial ports. Not to mention that the design wasn't exactly ergonomical.
So all in all, I'm really happy that I have an original MS Intellimouse, and not a Sun Optical mouse.
First: if Linux doesn't exist, IBM can't have put illegal code into it, right?
And besides, if they claim Linux doesn't exist, then how can they run their own main webserver on it? Netcraft looks at certain details of the TCP/IP implementation, so:
It can't be their LKP, as that only performs system call translation.
The TCP/IP stack of Linux and SCO are different according to netcraft, so probably they aren't stolen from eachother.
That makes the only possibility that in public, they try to destroy Linux, while "behind" the scenes they trust it more than their own product. And in that light, it is quite weird that they sue one of the developers of it.
Here in the Netherlands it indeed seems to be a waste of time to compete against Microsoft - almost everyone uses MSN and sometimes even small businesses have an @hotmail.com address. In fact, people often write "mycoolnaam328@h..." when they write down their address.
What is the reason for this? Probably not the service, as you only get 2 MB of storage, your mail is lost after you come back from the summer vacation and Hotmail doesnt even have a spam filter. More likely it is because Microsoft is considered the Coolest Computer Company or something like that, making it impossible for any alternative like Linux, ICQ, AIM, GMail to succeed. So in that light, I would think GIM would be doomed already here.
Btw. Funny is the difference between our eastern neighbours, the Germans: there most people seem to have a web.de or gmx.net addres and use ICQ as their IM...
Well, I have stared quite some time at this message (Internet Explorer 4.0):
"Kon de pagina niet opvragen. De verbinding was opnieuw ingesteld."
(Could not request the page. The connection was configured again.)
Do you see the mistake already? Indeed, the automatic translation system at Microsoft did probably not know that "reset" means something else than "set again". If you didnt already because of the bugs, you really start to wonder whether Microsoft has any kind of QA. I did even more so when I discovered that the same translation error could still be found years later in Internet Explorer 5.0 and 5.5, and I even doubt whether it has been fixed today...
No, the question isn't whether it is supported by Linux, no, the question is whether Quake III can be linked to it and use it to enrich the game experience!
Anyways, Microsofts "innovation" is indeed different from the Gnome and KDE panel pagers, as they have clearly stated in their patent.
That does not mean, however, that there is no prior art, because KPager implements a pager that includes the backgrouns of all desktops and miniaturized screenshots of the windows on all the desktops. Created in 1998
The only difference that I see between KPager and Microsoft's "invention" is that, if you click a window in KPager the appropriate desktop is switched to, while at Microsoft the window you clicked on is moved to the active desktop.
To end with a good laugh, here a quote, and no, I made no quoting mistake:
[0008] In accordance with the present invention, a method and computer readable medium for presenting multiple virtual desktops on a display of a computer system for previewing by a user are provided. A preview button is displayed on a desktop. When the preview button is selected, multiple panes are displayed on the desktop in a tiled manner. Each pane contains a scaled virtual desktop having dimensions that are proportional but less than the dimensions of a corresponding virtual desktop. (...) The term "proportional <p> [0009] In accordance with other aspects of this invention, the display includes first and second areas. (...) Preferably, the preview button is located in the task bar.
"No, the reasonable thing to do would have been to develop different versions of the software for each country where it is sold, so that in Windows India Edition the Kashmir region is displayed as part of India, while in Windows Pakistan Edition the Kashmir region is displayed as part of Pakistan."
Then which one should they sell in Kashmir?
"kind of hard to develop a closed source commercial application an ship it under an open source license then isn't it?"
That's just plain nonsense. Those who make a closed-source application (to make big money), will also have the funds for the commercial QT version. Those who make open-source applications can use the free version of QT.
So who benefits from the LGPL with GTK+? The home programmer who wants to make a little money with his commercially uninteresting application that he should rather have put under an open-source license. And in case anyone still wonders: any open-source license is allowed, even the BSD license, which Kicker uses.
"run an antiquated version of SPARC solaris, and NOTHING is compatible with SPARC solaris! Not even spyware!"
You know that your C compiler might well be infected to compile some spyware and backdoors into itself and applications it compiles?
Re:Spyware is just another form of a virus
on
Analysis of Spyware
·
· Score: 1
"if a program installs surreptitiously, disguises itself, and takes steps to prevent it's removal - than it is a virus."
This was my experience with removing some kind of toolbar (believe it was that of smiley central):
Are you sure to remove MyIEToolbar? [yes][[_no_]]
MyIEToolbar contains NO SPYWARE! Are you still sure you want to uninstall? [yes][[no]]
Why do you want to uninstall MyIEToolbar? [_] didn't like it anymore [_] have a concurrent product [x] has spyware [[ok]]
You selected "has spyware" MyIEToolbar CONTAINS NO SPYWARE! (blinks) DON'T BE AFRAID! IT REALLY CONTAINS NO SPYWARE! Are you SURE to unsinstall (typo intended) even though it contains NO SPYWARE!?
Sure, you can do this with GConf-Editor, from what I heard one of the greatest inventions of GNOME usability. I don't have access to a GNOME system right now, so sorry, I don't know what exact option it is.
It is indeed great, but it also has a big usability problem, you need to enter a command. That's simply the wrong way, to be really user-friendly, it should offer a list of applications to choose from. By the way, the same problem is in the new mimetype editor. GNOME seriously needs an application list like the one KDE offers when associating applications.
You can be fully HIG-compliant, non-bloated and whatsoever, but I think it are these things that make the difference between being only seemingly or really user-friendly.
Is there a net adapter for it? I hope so, as I can imagine the following already:
You come home from a six week vacation. You open the door of your house, and it is 50 degrees celcius inside. You look at this remote control thingy, and surprise surprise all its settings are wrong. And you discover that with that it has recorded certain movies at night. Time to call the customer support:
"Hello, I have a problem, my RM-NX7000 has done all kinds of strange things while I was on vacation!"
"How long was your vacation?"
"Six weeks."
"When was the last time you recharged the batteries?"
"I don't know, before the vacation, or well, the thing works now, so I guess she who took care about the cats has recharged the thing some days ago."
"Well, that explains it, probably your NVRAM battery has run down too, and then certain setting bits can flip, meaning that the device starts acting weird. If you send it to us, we can put in a new battery. It just costs $100 plus shipping & handling."
"1 : Red Herring. People who receive this treatment are generally whining or complaining. That's a way to shrug them off, because developers have no time to waste with such people. People who want to help post on bugzilla, explain to the author, tell him about the problem, without feeling compelled to say that the product "sucks"."
Why don't you have the right to whine and move to another, similar product?
Besides that, why would I want to help when the developers don't want to fix anything? Take FreeBSD as an example: my IDE controller does not work when I enable DMA, despite being listed as supported. So what did I do: I filed a bug. The reaction was: known problem, simply disable UltraDMA and use PIO4. Well, that's not exactly what I would expect from a device being listed as supported since FreeBSD 4.4. So what did I do, I posted a message to freebsd-hardware. No reaction. So what did I do, I whined on OSNews.com. Reaction: file a bug, talk to the maintainer. So what did I do: I filed a bug. No reaction. So what did I do: I mailed the developer and maintainer of the ATA driver. No reaction.
I have a problem with my soundcard on FreeBSD too. Now do you think the above has motivated me to help fixing the problem? I bet you know the answer, indeed, I come to Slashdot to whine:-)
"2 : Never in the explanation did he explain why Open Source doesn't allow you to go under the hood. YOU CAN. That's a fact. If you don't, that's no fault of Open Source (or Free Software)"
The first reason is that most open-source software is developed in C, which is not much more readable than Chinese to me. A Pascal program, on the other hand, is much clearer, so that I can actually understand it.
The second reason is that it takes quite some time to analyze how a program works. Or do you really believe you are able to fix a bug or implement a feature in OpenOffice?
"3 : classic misunderstandig. We're talking about freedom here, not gratis. Stupid really, as all he says is then offtopic."
So, you develop application X. You need to eat, so you sell each copy for 100. As you believe in freedom, you make your application GPL and give the sources with it. Now I like your application, and decide to buy it. And then it occurs to me that I could very well copy it in my spare time, sell it for 10 per copy, not giving anything to you. The result will be clear: everybody buys by me, and you get nothing even though you invested enormous amounts of time in developing the program.
Therefore, the only way you can make money from open-source software is by selling services, like support etc.
"4 : I've never heard this one. Clearly, nobody sane would state that. Perhaps he forgot the word "often" in the sentence."
Don't you know the contradiction between the open-source movement (closed-source is a suboptimal solution) and the free-software movement to which GNU/FSF belongs (closed-source software is a problem)? And even if you indeed didn't, both movements think that ideally all software should be open-source.
[5 intentionally omitted]
"6 : Even if people choose for you, more choice is always better (think monopoly). Even more stupid. Having more choice doesn't prevent you from having a choice pre selected for you. The other way around does not work."
I can already see how happy you are when your Linux distro at home only comes with bash, vi, gcc and Gnome, and you get a new job, and every computer there only has tcsh, nano, freepascal and KDE installed: not very happy.
It's completely simple (it does nothing) and completely consistent (the keyboard LED's will flash, always, at the same frequency, on every PC you use these commands on).
Framerate (Re:Dumb terminals? Cluster computing?)
on
Ethernet at 10 Gbps
·
· Score: 1
Your 1.44 gbps is way overkill. LCD panels are the future, they are 60 Hz. But your eyes don't need those 60 hz for a smooth experience, 30 Hz is enough - AFAIK a cinema movie is only 25 pictures/second. That would mean 600 MBit were enough. And you don't even need that bandwidth: when you do desktop work, most of the screen remains the same for most of the time, and when you are watching a movie you don't need such a high resolution nor 24-bit color. Now lets say that you want to watch TV and want to scroll 5 pages per second, then you would need: 1280x800x24x5 = 123 MBit 833x625x16x25 = 208 MBit So a gigabit ethernet link should be enough to watch different channels on two TV's, to record two programmes on your harddisk and do two remote desktop sessions at the same time. Isn't that enough for most home users?
Okay, I had already posted, but there is something else I just thought about: Live streaming video/audio.
With both it and RSS (and Slashdot and the pages it links to), some kind of data is released by a server and because of the nature of the medium (being live) all clients want to get this data as soon as it becomes available. The result: DDoS.
Now I bet that not all of these thousands of people have a direct LAN connection to the server in question. Now isn't it stupid to send thousands of identical data packages, through the same connection, at the same time? The only thing it is, is a waste of money and resources.
Therefore, as I see it, there are two things that could really solve this problem:
Don't use a poll-based system, but a system in which a client registers with a server, and from then on the server initiates the transfers.
Have a possibility for one IP packet to reach a possibly huge amount of hosts.
For RSS, this can actually be implemented quite easily. You only need to cache the RSS feeds in HTTP proxies, and then you need a system with which the server can notify the clients that a new feed is available. And oh, clients would need to actually use these proxies for a change.
I leave open the task of designing a similar system for Web TV, I don't know enough about those protocols.
Slashdot Mirror
They did have a problem, though, and that is that mouse movement with them wasn't really smooth (have worked on a SS/20 with optical mouse). I have read that you could overclock them to make movement smoother, but even then a normal PS/2 ball mouse moves smoother because the PS/2 port has much more throughput than the Sun serial ports. Not to mention that the design wasn't exactly ergonomical.
So all in all, I'm really happy that I have an original MS Intellimouse, and not a Sun Optical mouse.
It is also annoying when someone posts something like this:
. jp g"
"My Linux distro renders fonts very beautifully! Look here for a screenshot:
http://coolfreesi.te/screenshotwithcompression9
And besides, if they claim Linux doesn't exist, then how can they run their own main webserver on it? Netcraft looks at certain details of the TCP/IP implementation, so:
It can't be their LKP, as that only performs system call translation.
The TCP/IP stack of Linux and SCO are different according to netcraft, so probably they aren't stolen from eachother.
That makes the only possibility that in public, they try to destroy Linux, while "behind" the scenes they trust it more than their own product. And in that light, it is quite weird that they sue one of the developers of it.
What is the reason for this? Probably not the service, as you only get 2 MB of storage, your mail is lost after you come back from the summer vacation and Hotmail doesnt even have a spam filter. More likely it is because Microsoft is considered the Coolest Computer Company or something like that, making it impossible for any alternative like Linux, ICQ, AIM, GMail to succeed. So in that light, I would think GIM would be doomed already here.
Btw. Funny is the difference between our eastern neighbours, the Germans: there most people seem to have a web.de or gmx.net addres and use ICQ as their IM...
"Kon de pagina niet opvragen. De verbinding was opnieuw ingesteld."
(Could not request the page. The connection was configured again.)
Do you see the mistake already? Indeed, the automatic translation system at Microsoft did probably not know that "reset" means something else than "set again". If you didnt already because of the bugs, you really start to wonder whether Microsoft has any kind of QA. I did even more so when I discovered that the same translation error could still be found years later in Internet Explorer 5.0 and 5.5, and I even doubt whether it has been fixed today...
No, the question isn't whether it is supported by Linux, no, the question is whether Quake III can be linked to it and use it to enrich the game experience!
Wait, you use Putty? Then there are always the utilities like ps2txt and pdfps.
Anyways, Microsofts "innovation" is indeed different from the Gnome and KDE panel pagers, as they have clearly stated in their patent.
That does not mean, however, that there is no prior art, because KPager implements a pager that includes the backgrouns of all desktops and miniaturized screenshots of the windows on all the desktops. Created in 1998
The only difference that I see between KPager and Microsoft's "invention" is that, if you click a window in KPager the appropriate desktop is switched to, while at Microsoft the window you clicked on is moved to the active desktop.
To end with a good laugh, here a quote, and no, I made no quoting mistake:
You only want 1 GB of storage? Then why not try GMX ? It offers 1 GB of storage for free, and in contrast to GMail, it is available today.
Isn't mainland China in fact Taiwanese territory occupied by some communist rebels?
"No, the reasonable thing to do would have been to develop different versions of the software for each country where it is sold, so that in Windows India Edition the Kashmir region is displayed as part of India, while in Windows Pakistan Edition the Kashmir region is displayed as part of Pakistan." Then which one should they sell in Kashmir?
That's just plain nonsense. Those who make a closed-source application (to make big money), will also have the funds for the commercial QT version. Those who make open-source applications can use the free version of QT.
So who benefits from the LGPL with GTK+? The home programmer who wants to make a little money with his commercially uninteresting application that he should rather have put under an open-source license. And in case anyone still wonders: any open-source license is allowed, even the BSD license, which Kicker uses.
You know that your C compiler might well be infected to compile some spyware and backdoors into itself and applications it compiles?
Intuitively, I'd say the following, rather easy, procedure could be used:
Get a 386
Put rawread on a 3.5" diskette
Create a disk image of that 5.25" floppy
Transfer it to your new PC using the 3.5" drive
Therefore, I think other formats are much more challenging. For example:
How about the 800kib 3.5" floppies that the early Macintosh computers used? (has indeed been answered, there is PC hardware for them)
How about the 8" floppies?
And what to do with those 3" floppies, if you don't have a CPC ready?
Error 503
This slashn^Ddot comment is temporarily unavailable.
Sure, you can do this with GConf-Editor, from what I heard one of the greatest inventions of GNOME usability. I don't have access to a GNOME system right now, so sorry, I don't know what exact option it is.
You can be fully HIG-compliant, non-bloated and whatsoever, but I think it are these things that make the difference between being only seemingly or really user-friendly.
"Hello, I have a problem, my RM-NX7000 has done all kinds of strange things while I was on vacation!"
"How long was your vacation?"
"Six weeks."
"When was the last time you recharged the batteries?"
"I don't know, before the vacation, or well, the thing works now, so I guess she who took care about the cats has recharged the thing some days ago.""Well, that explains it, probably your NVRAM battery has run down too, and then certain setting bits can flip, meaning that the device starts acting weird. If you send it to us, we can put in a new battery. It just costs $100 plus shipping & handling."
Why don't you have the right to whine and move to another, similar product?
Besides that, why would I want to help when the developers don't want to fix anything? Take FreeBSD as an example: my IDE controller does not work when I enable DMA, despite being listed as supported. So what did I do: I filed a bug. The reaction was: known problem, simply disable UltraDMA and use PIO4. Well, that's not exactly what I would expect from a device being listed as supported since FreeBSD 4.4. So what did I do, I posted a message to freebsd-hardware. No reaction. So what did I do, I whined on OSNews.com. Reaction: file a bug, talk to the maintainer. So what did I do: I filed a bug. No reaction. So what did I do: I mailed the developer and maintainer of the ATA driver. No reaction.
I have a problem with my soundcard on FreeBSD too. Now do you think the above has motivated me to help fixing the problem? I bet you know the answer, indeed, I come to Slashdot to whine :-)
"2 : Never in the explanation did he explain why Open Source doesn't allow you to go under the hood. YOU CAN. That's a fact. If you don't, that's no fault of Open Source (or Free Software)"
The first reason is that most open-source software is developed in C, which is not much more readable than Chinese to me. A Pascal program, on the other hand, is much clearer, so that I can actually understand it.
The second reason is that it takes quite some time to analyze how a program works. Or do you really believe you are able to fix a bug or implement a feature in OpenOffice?
"3 : classic misunderstandig. We're talking about freedom here, not gratis. Stupid really, as all he says is then offtopic."
So, you develop application X. You need to eat, so you sell each copy for 100. As you believe in freedom, you make your application GPL and give the sources with it. Now I like your application, and decide to buy it. And then it occurs to me that I could very well copy it in my spare time, sell it for 10 per copy, not giving anything to you. The result will be clear: everybody buys by me, and you get nothing even though you invested enormous amounts of time in developing the program.
Therefore, the only way you can make money from open-source software is by selling services, like support etc.
"4 : I've never heard this one. Clearly, nobody sane would state that. Perhaps he forgot the word "often" in the sentence."
Don't you know the contradiction between the open-source movement (closed-source is a suboptimal solution) and the free-software movement to which GNU/FSF belongs (closed-source software is a problem)? And even if you indeed didn't, both movements think that ideally all software should be open-source.
[5 intentionally omitted]
"6 : Even if people choose for you, more choice is always better (think monopoly). Even more stupid. Having more choice doesn't prevent you from having a choice pre selected for you. The other way around does not work."
I can already see how happy you are when your Linux distro at home only comes with bash, vi, gcc and Gnome, and you get a new job, and every computer there only has tcsh, nano, freepascal and KDE installed: not very happy.
"GNOME is about simplicity and clean-ness(...)"
"This is what Gnome gives me now - Simplicity and concistency."
Well, I know the ultimate solution to those who want the ultimate simplicity and consistency. Enter the following commands:
It's completely simple (it does nothing) and completely consistent (the keyboard LED's will flash, always, at the same frequency, on every PC you use these commands on).Your 1.44 gbps is way overkill. LCD panels are the future, they are 60 Hz. But your eyes don't need those 60 hz for a smooth experience, 30 Hz is enough - AFAIK a cinema movie is only 25 pictures/second. That would mean 600 MBit were enough.
And you don't even need that bandwidth: when you do desktop work, most of the screen remains the same for most of the time, and when you are watching a movie you don't need such a high resolution nor 24-bit color. Now lets say that you want to watch TV and want to scroll 5 pages per second, then you would need:
1280x800x24x5 = 123 MBit
833x625x16x25 = 208 MBit
So a gigabit ethernet link should be enough to watch different channels on two TV's, to record two programmes on your harddisk and do two remote desktop sessions at the same time. Isn't that enough for most home users?
Aaah, yes, you are annoying! I mean, I must laugh so hard that it hurts!
* Yes I know, Linux is only the kernel, please educate me how this makes sense... or is there some other init than /sbin/init?
With both it and RSS (and Slashdot and the pages it links to), some kind of data is released by a server and because of the nature of the medium (being live) all clients want to get this data as soon as it becomes available. The result: DDoS.
Now I bet that not all of these thousands of people have a direct LAN connection to the server in question. Now isn't it stupid to send thousands of identical data packages, through the same connection, at the same time? The only thing it is, is a waste of money and resources.
Therefore, as I see it, there are two things that could really solve this problem:
Don't use a poll-based system, but a system in which a client registers with a server, and from then on the server initiates the transfers.
Have a possibility for one IP packet to reach a possibly huge amount of hosts.
For RSS, this can actually be implemented quite easily. You only need to cache the RSS feeds in HTTP proxies, and then you need a system with which the server can notify the clients that a new feed is available. And oh, clients would need to actually use these proxies for a change.
I leave open the task of designing a similar system for Web TV, I don't know enough about those protocols.