Personal Firewalls and Virus scanners are pretty much essential now that home computers can be connected to the really big network.
Of course the writing was already on the wall. In The days of Windows 3.1 a TCP/IP stack was initially a 3rd part add-on. Then MS released one and killed trumpet, et-al.
So I missed a capital. Very good. I don't know WHY it is possible to make Vivisimo include Google by tweaking the search URL (despite it not being listed on the options of the advanced search) - the fact is you can! I don't go the the web page to search, I use Firefox's search plugin textbox with a homemade.src file.
Fair enuff. Things have moved on a bit since I last looked (I've mainly used RH9 + gnome). My point was that you install an OS once (usually) - it doesn't matter how long it takes, because the time you spend installing is a fraction of the time you spend using it for everyday tasks (websurfing, CD burning, email, etc.).
The learning curve of linux is still steeper than windows (mainly due to the spit'n'polish research microsoft can afford to do)
The review includes a mouseclick-for-click comparison of installing XP vs Mandrake. Big deal - you may spend an hour or two installing chipset/graphics/other drivers and rebooting under windows. The real test is how long common operations take to complete.
For example, how long does it take to share out a directory of MP3's on linux so another machine on your network can access it?
Under windows it's a few mouse clicks and about 1 minute's work. In Linux it's 'vi/etc/smb.conf' and read the samba HOWTO Sharing a printer on the LAN is a similar task
How about cutting a CD - most burners ship with some sort of burning software for Windows (e.g. Nero 5). Under Linux say hello to 'mkisofs', 'cdrecord' and another HOWTO. If you want to burn an audio CD of MP3's, you're in a world of pain.
How about setting up Internet connection sharing and firewalling. Once again, Linux requires a black-belt in 'vi' and a HOWTO on IP Masquerading. In XP it's a job for your mouse.
Until those kinds of tasks can be acomplished with a polished GUI, the average windows user will stick with windows.
It allows the companies who are willing to pay a chance to get some brand awareness with groups they wouldn't ordinarily conect with and it's not intrusive.
This has been done in films many times (Apple in Mission Impossible) - If it's done well it actually adds to the realisim of the film. It maintains the suspension of disbelief if the hero uses an Apple powerbook (which a lot of people have herad of) rather than a SupaDupaPuter 1000 (made up name). Of course nobodys going to want to sponsor the bad guy...
Sadly, I don't think we'll ever see this approach replace the advert breaks in TV shows
And I suspose if Linus was Neo, RMs was Morpheus and the red pill had a Tux logo and the blue pill was twice as big with a Windows logo, you'd think it was the funniest thing you'd ever seen...
I bought a GC purely because of the games that were available.
One good reason to buy a GameCube is because Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike is only available for the GC. It's got all the Rogue Squadron II missions as two player co-op missions, and a whole load of new stuff. Just look!
Who cares if unmoderated chat rooms get taken off line - it's hardly a loss of personal freedom - it's not a right, its a service that has been provided free of charge by a profit making company.
MSN chat has existed for less than 10 years. Talking with others in public or private has been around since lauguage developed.
The internet is not a replacement for a social life, however it can be an extenstion.
If you can tear yourself away from the internet, Why don't you enjoy your freedom to go down the pub tonight and have some unmoderated chat with a real person.
In fact I just got in (09:50 BST) and after reading my mail, I went straight to SlashDot. I'm supposed to be in at 9:00, but pretty much everyone gets in when they feel like. Then again, I don't leave work until almost 7, so I still put the hours in, and beat the traffic into and out of work.
The tips are all pretty obvious (to me at least), and the article is written in the style of 'the GM is god - don't ask me questions when i'm talking!', which is OK for serious board gamers who must do everything 'by the book' and take things serious, but at the end of the day it's just a game...
A few of us at work (all aged ~30) meet up and play board & card games fairly regularly, we seem to get at least one new game every month, and only replay the good ones.
We've experienced the 'steep learning curve' that some games have, where the owner sudenly remembers something we should have done way back at the start, but the solution is to comprimise. If the sudden inclusion of a rule allows somebody to win, we ignore it (for this game) and carry on play. We're playing for fun, not for prizes.
Some of the comments in this story are interesting from a building standards POV.
From what I gather, a lot of US houses are made of wood and you have crawl spaces inbetween interior walls.
Over here in the UK modern houses are generally double skin brick exterior walls with a damp proof course injected in to 1 or 2 ft above ground level. The depth of footings the walls sit on generally goes down to clay or rock. the 'ground floor' sits well above the dirt.
Interior walls are usually single brick (no crawl space madness) and plastered - wires and pipes are buired underneath the plaster. Some walls are dry lined - thats a wood frame with plaster board, and then skimmed with finish plaster.
Yes this a pain if you want to wire your house for CAT5 - chopping the plaster off your wall to run the wires in a channel and then plastering up really messes your decorating.
The roofing is slate tiles over felt over wood spars. Windows are double glazed PVC units (for security, noise reduction and energy efficiency). Most houses have a gas fired boiler for hot water which feeds central heating radiators and the hot water tap. Our electrictity is at 240v 50Hz and we have an earthing system for safety.
It depends what you want to do - If you don't need the -5v and -12v lines (mainly for serial??) it's fairly straightforward. A friend of mine built a switch mode supply to run an MP3 player from in his van.
It works fine, he gets a steady +12v and +5v out of it running or parked up , and this is enough to power a P90 motherboard on a plastic tray under the passenger seat, with a sound card standing in the ISA slot, the HD suspended by elastic bands in a box and a 4 line 40 char dot matrix display up where the rear view mirror should be, diplaying all the usual MP3 data. Control is by a custom keypad he also built.
The worst bit is it's all done in PASCAL on top of DOS6.2. yuk.
whoops. I meant.xsession - I had to uncomment 'DTlogin*xdmMode: True' in/usr/dt/config/Xconfig, otherwise ~/.xsession gets ignored. ~/.xinitrc gets ignored anyway - dtlogin just restarts (on Solaris9)
No, *YOU* are entirely incorrect - it ships in PKG format, so you'd have to be root to install it corectly. Even if you did extract all the files and copy them into ~/bin and ~/lib I think you'd probably run into some static dependency (it's built to install in/usr/gnome). He's using a SunRay, so the only other problem to work around is how to actually start it. Solaris is set to ignore.xinitrc by default (somewere down/usr/dt - i'm not at work right now). Why not just ask the sysadmin to install it. It's just another option on the login screen then.
It's more concept art that evolves over time than a screeensaver, but unfortunatly it seems like everyone running it seems to create their own creation, rather than contribute to another. (there is a selection list of other users - you can hook into someone elses creation and contribute)
It uses a client-server though, and might not be what some people want for security/paranoia reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
Personal Firewalls and Virus scanners are pretty much essential now that home computers can be connected to the really big network.
Of course the writing was already on the wall. In The days of Windows 3.1 a TCP/IP stack was initially a 3rd part add-on. Then MS released one and killed trumpet, et-al.
I use this.Just replace 'search+term' with whatever you want to find.
So I missed a capital. Very good. I don't know WHY it is possible to make Vivisimo include Google by tweaking the search URL (despite it not being listed on the options of the advanced search) - the fact is you can! I don't go the the web page to search, I use Firefox's search plugin textbox with a homemade .src file.
I quite like Vivisimo (after I figured out how to make it include Google in it's query by adding 'google' to the 'sources=' part of the query URL).
dogpile is also quite good, when you've got it set to display results by relevance rather than by engine.
Remember, Amazon isn't the only online bookstore, ebay isn't the only online auction site and google isn't the only search engine...
Fair enuff. Things have moved on a bit since I last looked (I've mainly used RH9 + gnome).
My point was that you install an OS once (usually) - it doesn't matter how long it takes, because the time you spend installing is a fraction of the time you spend using it for everyday tasks (websurfing, CD burning, email, etc.).
The learning curve of linux is still steeper than windows (mainly due to the spit'n'polish research microsoft can afford to do)
The review includes a mouseclick-for-click comparison of installing XP vs Mandrake. Big deal - you may spend an hour or two installing chipset/graphics/other drivers and rebooting under windows. The real test is how long common operations take to complete.
/etc/smb.conf' and read the samba HOWTO
For example, how long does it take to share out a directory of MP3's on linux so another machine on your network can access it?
Under windows it's a few mouse clicks and about 1 minute's work.
In Linux it's 'vi
Sharing a printer on the LAN is a similar task
How about cutting a CD - most burners ship with some sort of burning software for Windows (e.g. Nero 5). Under Linux say hello to 'mkisofs', 'cdrecord' and another HOWTO. If you want to burn an audio CD of MP3's, you're in a world of pain.
How about setting up Internet connection sharing and firewalling. Once again, Linux requires a black-belt in 'vi' and a HOWTO on IP Masquerading. In XP it's a job for your mouse.
Until those kinds of tasks can be acomplished with a polished GUI, the average windows user will stick with windows.
I find these books useful:
Lessons learned in software testing - A good introduction
Software Testing - A whole load of thing you'd never think off
Software test automation:Effective use of test execution tools - A bible for implememting automated testing
How to break software - crashing apps by forcing error conditions
How to break software security - similar to above, but with security in mind
It allows the companies who are willing to pay a chance to get some brand awareness with groups they wouldn't ordinarily conect with and it's not intrusive.
This has been done in films many times (Apple in Mission Impossible) - If it's done well it actually adds to the realisim of the film. It maintains the suspension of disbelief if the hero uses an Apple powerbook (which a lot of people have herad of) rather than a SupaDupaPuter 1000 (made up name). Of course nobodys going to want to sponsor the bad guy...
Sadly, I don't think we'll ever see this approach replace the advert breaks in TV shows
So you've not heard of the Mono c# compiler then ?
That's the one written by Ximian, which runs on Linux and Windows (and probably a lot more platforms in the future).
Bzzt. Incorrect!
The ZX-80 suffered from that, but the ZX-81 could display and execute.
It also had a fast mode, so you could ignore the display and use the whole 3.5MHz for your app.
As described here
According to the Hall of fame link (see near the bottom), NetHack was inducted in June 2000.
So this isn't exactly recent news...
And I suspose if Linus was Neo, RMs was Morpheus and the red pill had a Tux logo and the blue pill was twice as big with a Windows logo, you'd think it was the funniest thing you'd ever seen...
I bought a GC purely because of the games that were available.
One good reason to buy a GameCube is because Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike is only available for the GC. It's got all the Rogue Squadron II missions as two player co-op missions, and a whole load of new stuff. Just look!
Other must-haves (in my case 'have-gots') are:
Ikaruga an old skool 2D shooter
The Sims works well on the console platform, and has a 'mission' mode.
Nightfire be James Bond! (at least until Everything or Nothing comes out)
It's taken a while, but I think this winter the GC has more outstanding games (either out or coming out) than the XBOX or PS2
Why use DOS ? Haven't you heard of the Windows Script Host ?
There's an example on mapping a drive here.
Pubs usually get shutdown *after* illegal activities have been taking place on the premises (drug dealing, late drinking, serving minors, etc.)
The MSN chatrooms are being taken offline for similar reasons...
Who cares if unmoderated chat rooms get taken off line - it's hardly a loss of personal freedom - it's not a right, its a service that has been provided free of charge by a profit making company.
MSN chat has existed for less than 10 years. Talking with others in public or
private has been around since lauguage developed.
The internet is not a replacement for a social life, however it can be an extenstion.
If you can tear yourself away from the internet, Why don't you enjoy your freedom to go down the pub tonight and have some unmoderated chat with a real person.
In fact I just got in (09:50 BST) and after reading my mail, I went straight to SlashDot.
I'm supposed to be in at 9:00, but pretty much everyone gets in when they feel like. Then again, I don't leave work until almost 7, so I still put the hours in, and beat the traffic into and out of work.
The tips are all pretty obvious (to me at least), and the article is written in the style of 'the GM is god - don't ask me questions when i'm talking!', which is OK for serious board gamers who must do everything 'by the book' and take things serious, but at the end of the day it's just a game...
A few of us at work (all aged ~30) meet up and play board & card games fairly regularly, we seem to get at least one new game every month, and only replay the good ones.
We've experienced the 'steep learning curve' that some games have, where the owner sudenly remembers something we should have done way back at the start, but the solution is to comprimise.
If the sudden inclusion of a rule allows somebody to win, we ignore it (for this game) and carry on play. We're playing for fun, not for prizes.
Cassini was launched 15th Oct 1997, and will insert into orbit around Saturn 1st July 2004.
The spacecraft is in good health and is undergoing routine checkouts of the systems and is downlinking pictues of Saturn.
Not exactly front page news....
Some of the comments in this story are interesting from a building standards POV.
From what I gather, a lot of US houses are made of wood and you have crawl spaces inbetween interior walls.
Over here in the UK modern houses are generally double skin brick exterior walls with a damp proof course injected in to 1 or 2 ft above ground level. The depth of footings the walls sit on generally goes down to clay or rock. the 'ground floor' sits well above the dirt.
Interior walls are usually single brick (no crawl space madness) and plastered - wires and pipes are buired underneath the plaster. Some walls are dry lined - thats a wood frame with plaster board, and then skimmed with finish plaster.
Yes this a pain if you want to wire your house for CAT5 - chopping the plaster off your wall to run the wires in a channel and then plastering up really messes your decorating.
The roofing is slate tiles over felt over wood spars. Windows are double glazed PVC units (for security, noise reduction and energy efficiency). Most houses have a gas fired boiler for hot water which feeds central heating radiators and the hot water tap. Our electrictity is at 240v 50Hz and we have an earthing system for safety.
It depends what you want to do - If you don't need the -5v and -12v lines (mainly for serial??) it's fairly straightforward. A friend of mine built a switch mode supply to run an MP3 player from in his van.
It works fine, he gets a steady +12v and +5v out of it running or parked up , and this is enough to power a P90 motherboard on a plastic tray under the passenger seat, with a sound card standing in the ISA slot, the HD suspended by elastic bands in a box and a 4 line 40 char dot matrix display up where the rear view mirror should be, diplaying all the usual MP3 data. Control is by a custom keypad he also built.
The worst bit is it's all done in PASCAL on top of DOS6.2. yuk.
whoops. I meant .xsession - I had to uncomment 'DTlogin*xdmMode: True' in /usr/dt/config/Xconfig, otherwise ~/.xsession gets ignored. ~/.xinitrc gets ignored anyway - dtlogin just restarts (on Solaris9)
No, *YOU* are entirely incorrect - it ships in PKG format, so you'd have to be root to install it corectly. Even if you did extract all the files and copy them into ~/bin and ~/lib I think you'd probably run into some static dependency (it's built to install in /usr/gnome). He's using a SunRay, so the only other problem to work around is how to actually start it. Solaris is set to ignore .xinitrc by default (somewere down /usr/dt - i'm not at work right now). Why not just ask the sysadmin to install it. It's just another option on the login screen then.
WSH ships as part of Win98 and above. Of course, you wouldn't know that being a Linux only user...
thumbit.vbs:
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
WshShell.run "c:\progra~1\paints~1\psp.exe", 1
WScript.Sleep 100
WshShell.AppActivate "Paint Shop Pro"
WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}"
Set MyPics = fso.GetFolder("c:\tmp")
For each Image in MyPics.Files
WScript.Sleep 100
WshShell.SendKeys "^o" & Image & "{ENTER}" 'open file
WScript.Sleep 1000
WshShell.SendKeys "+s" 'open resize dialog
WScript.Sleep 100
WshShell.SendKeys "100 {ENTER}" 'maintain aspect is set so only enter width
WScript.Sleep 100
WshShell.SendKeys "^s" 'save file
WScript.Sleep 1000
Next
(as linked to in the story)
It's more concept art that evolves over time than a screeensaver, but unfortunatly it seems like everyone running it seems to create their own creation, rather than contribute to another. (there is a selection list of other users - you can hook into someone elses creation and contribute)
It uses a client-server though, and might not be what some people want for security/paranoia reasons.