After 25 years, Mr. William Gates III has finally found out what that funny thing he never understood on his Altair was for. It took some work to convince Balmer, but the promise that the @ symbol in the prompt will be animated and provide the user with a constant stream of "you seem to want to run a command, may I assist?" hints in addition to morphing into a dancing monkey whenever there are too many CPU cycles not being wasted on something else finally did the trick.
I just wonder if they will also create a.NOT ^H^H^H NET implementation of vi, or if they'd rather copy emacs. Maybe just to piss off RMS. (they got away with stealing 90% of what windos is today, surely they could care less about RMS taking them to court).
As someone wiser than me already noticed: This century, it ain't about xianity vs. islam or any that media bullshit. It's about fundamentalism vs. people-with-brains. There really isn't much difference between xian right or conservatives of the bush streak, or islamist terrorists. They're all bludgoning their world-view into other peoples heads with whatever tools are available, and moral is something that applies only to other people.
No idea where you live, but in my country, the self defense paragraph explicitly includes stopping attacks on other people as well as yourself.
What does that tell me? It says that when that law was written (about a hundred years ago in this case), people made little difference between saving yourself and saving someone else. At least in a legal/moral sense.
How large has the CD industry become over the past few years? I'd guess it's already larger than the music industry. Just take a look at your local electronics store - I know several that have more shelf space devoted to CD readers, writers, blanks and other equipment than to music CDs.
So in essence, this is just one industry association trying to do as much damage on another industry as they can. Because they know that sooner or later, it'll all come down to "what is better for the economy" or "who has the larger bottom line".
I'm a visual being - what does it look like? Some screenshots with a bit of explanation would be nice. If I had a mac, I'd download and look for myself, but since I don't...
You don't have to fake the retina. You just have to fool the scanner. As I wrote: At least one of the commercially available retina scanners can be fooled by a picture of the retina in question. Good news for you: The bad guys don't have to plug out your eye anymore.
Everquest is a game centered on rewarding you for how much time you put into it.
Then play something else. I'm running a (free as in beer) online game called BattleMaster that is explicitly built to allow you the full game even if you can only log on twice a day for 5-10 min each.
Aside from the obvious ("don't play it then, vote with your money"), the problem is more general, it seems.
People have become used to live with all kinds of shit. Windows constantly crashing? They just take it like the weather. "Improved" service at the gas station? Oh, no use complaining anyway. My rights taken away by a fascist government? Nothing I can do, so why care?
I'm told by old folks that there was a time when there were no young punks being cool on the train. If they'd start harassing someone (especially a women), a bunch of local dock workers would stand up and put them where they belong. That was maybe 30 years ago. Last year, a bunch of students in my city made an experiment. They staged all kinds of harassment, from mild to bad up to a knife fight during various hours at a train station (with knowledge of authorities, yada yada). If I remember correctly, the record was that nobody did anything, and one women used one of the many available emergency phones to call for help.
So what's that got to do with Everquest? It's that most of us rant here at/., but 99% of us are lazy cowards and wouldn't lift a finger to change things, much less save someone they don't even know from harrassment (except if it's a cool chick).
Disclaimer: I'm more of a coward than I like to, but I've done the occasional stepping up, and I've written to my representative a couple times. I also keep a list of shops where I don't buy anymore. It ain't that much, but it ain't that hard either.
Independents (no matter whether it's music, films or games) are those who aren't afraid of risk. Therefore, lots of innovation will happen there.
As I see it (disclaimer: I am the project leader of an indy game), the games industry may well be where the music industry is already: Small unknowns creating new ideas that the big publishers than dumb down for the mainstream and rehash for a couple of years until they've found the next trend.
Now, you may be thrilled to learn that the store doesn't care for 5 cent about whether or not your street or last name is bogus. It still gets a perfectly working customer profile on you.
During the Chaos Computer Camp in Berlin, 1999 (I think), we came up with a better idea to thwart these systems: Swap cards. It's simple, it's fun, and it will mess up their profiling.
Good day, Mr. Smith. And hey, haven't you forgotten those candy bars you always buy?
Any serious book or article on biometric access mentions that biometrics is a good part of a security system, but should never be the only part.
All biometrics available today, and all imagined for the near future have already been broken. In fact, all systems on the market today are exactly as easily broken as you see in the movies, if not easier (some iris-scan systems have been fooled by photographs. I mean, come on!).
What biometrics is good for is simplifying access controls. For example, you could use your fingerprint instead of your credit card at the ATM machine (but you would still have to input your PIN). But you wouldn't have to carry a dozen plastic cards with you anymore, and be afraid of losing them.
By combining something you are (biometrics) or something you have (credit card) with something you know, you get good security. Never rely on a single point of failure.
Why don't we just have a weekly "screwed by M$ this week" special, like the slashback? Would help condense a lot of stories, ranting and general anti-M$ flaming into a few places.
Even the windos zealots I know have turned off the XP look and prefer the old one.
Why don't these guys spend their time on making Linux better, instead of worse? Their FAQ has the question of "why are you doing this", but it doesn't explain why they didn't choose are more worthwhile goal.
More importantly, the guy who wrote the FAQ missed the point, by roughly a mile, in the next question. Yes, people want to switch from Windos to Linux, and yes the entire M$ world is designed to make this as painful as possible (so they don't do it). But, the answer isn't to make Linux a copy of windos. Once Linux is exactly like windos, you haven't given people incentive to switch, you've removed it. Why should I switch to something that's exactly like the thing I already have?
People are not as dumb as some techies believe them to be, that's an old BOFH syndrome. I installed Linux desktop systems for both my mom and my sister. Neither of them had any computer experience to speak of. It was painless. In fact, I'm convinced that it would have been more trouble with windos. Just think of all the "it crashed, what do I do?" calls that I saved myself. And the interface (window maker) was perfectly acceptable to both of them. In fact, explaining the dock is an order of magnitude simpler than explaining the start/kde/foot menu. ("no, _this_ program is in there, because... and those games are sorted by company name... no, _that_ program is in some other sub-submenu...")
Enough of a rant. It's so sad to see so much manpower wasted into copying something that simply isn't worth copying.
For example: When I was working with the Gnome interface guideline team, I was arguing at length against using a clone of the "Start" button/menu - the only argument for it was "it's like windos". Nevertheless, both Gnome and KDE have this single feature that was slammed even by M$'s _own_ interface designers.
Take NeXT or Apple in contrast: Innovation that windos is still trying to copy 10+ years later.
It's not that Linux doesn't have it. It's that there are too many people that think "it's like windos" is a good thing. Newflash: It's not. In fact, total newbies (your mom) will, given a fair comparison, almost always prefer a NeXT or Apple interface. I know my mom did. In fact, her opinion about the windos interface wasn't exactly positive.
"It's like windos" is _not_ a good thing. I'm using Linux because it's _better_ than windos, because it is _not_ "like" that sorry excuse for an operating system. If you want windos, go and use windos and stop dumbing down the better alternatives.
already happened. Lucky Green (cypherpunk and part of the team that broke the GSM encryption) has a patent pending on using M$s DRM scheme for certain purposes that M$ publicly said they could not be used for.
I've been moving all of my CVS development over to Subversion over the past few months, including a couple development servers at my company.
Since Subversion is now in Debian unstable, it's really easy to install. Compiling from source is a bit of a hassle due to all the dependencies, especially on the apache2 libs.
So far, I've not had a bad experience. No data loss or anything. And I'm very, very happy that I can finally get rid of pserver.
Subversion impressed our company developers by its speed (subjectively, considerably faster than CVS for comparable operations) and its user-friendlyness. It's the details, stuff like automatic detection of binary files, that makes life for the dev people easier.
For the admin, the fact that it runs via apache2 makes your life much easier, especially when it comes to firewalling and access control (user and passwords, etc.) - in a corporate network, you could easily plug it right unto your LDAP server for authentication, for example.
Two things are holding Subversion back right now, IMHO:
a) lack of a wincvs/tkcvs equivalent. Rapidsvn is making progress, but it's still very much alpha.
b) a couple things still missing, like understanding symlinks.
Re:The actual ranking...
on
DSL Rising
·
· Score: 2
germany's market _is_ growing very fast. I work for a german ISP that offers DSL, and we can't handle the customer signups as fast as they come in.
The only reasonable answer to what Bioware is doing is, IMHO, this:
a) don't buy the game until the Linux port is there b) do buy the game when it is unless c) they take so long that it doesn't matter anymore (e.g. shortly before the release of NWN2, which would mean you don't have anyone to play with)
You've just advised people to engage in a behavior which can justify their termination. Did you know that?
Depends. I've always hosted my site at my place of work (the fact that I've always been sysadmin or security dude helped). It's never been a secret, and it's always been with management approval. Like the parent, I can recommend this. It gives you more control over what you have and can do and it's usually free. As a matter of fact, I've made it part of my job interview once. When they look at paying you a couple thousand bucks a month, then the $10 or so in real costs for your machine is nothing to them.
t's just incredibly more popular, and not just because it comes with Windows, as IE is the leader on the Mac as well.
What did you try to prove? IE comes preinstalled on all new Macs. of course it's because it comes with the machine, 99% of people are more lazy than ignorant.
funny on the surface, but missing the point that good jokes carry a grain of truth.
the term actually come from building security, except that it means the exact opposite, a construction piece intended to stop (or at least hamper) the spread of fires.
"We believe we have certain rights as a corporation to use this information,"
Obviously, he also believes that the customers do not have any rights, especially not the right to privacy and the right to not be buggered by sales droids twice a day.
I believe I should have a right to shoot any corporate drone who trespasses on my property, my rights or my safety. Oh wait, I'm not sure if I can carry enough bullets.
Slashdot Mirror
After 25 years, Mr. William Gates III has finally found out what that funny thing he never understood on his Altair was for. It took some work to convince Balmer, but the promise that the @ symbol in the prompt will be animated and provide the user with a constant stream of "you seem to want to run a command, may I assist?" hints in addition to morphing into a dancing monkey whenever there are too many CPU cycles not being wasted on something else finally did the trick.
.NOT ^H^H^H NET implementation of vi, or if they'd rather copy emacs. Maybe just to piss off RMS. (they got away with stealing 90% of what windos is today, surely they could care less about RMS taking them to court).
I just wonder if they will also create a
As someone wiser than me already noticed: This century, it ain't about xianity vs. islam or any that media bullshit. It's about fundamentalism vs. people-with-brains. There really isn't much difference between xian right or conservatives of the bush streak, or islamist terrorists. They're all bludgoning their world-view into other peoples heads with whatever tools are available, and moral is something that applies only to other people.
No idea where you live, but in my country, the self defense paragraph explicitly includes stopping attacks on other people as well as yourself.
What does that tell me? It says that when that law was written (about a hundred years ago in this case), people made little difference between saving yourself and saving someone else. At least in a legal/moral sense.
cryptorights
How large has the CD industry become over the past few years? I'd guess it's already larger than the music industry. Just take a look at your local electronics store - I know several that have more shelf space devoted to CD readers, writers, blanks and other equipment than to music CDs.
So in essence, this is just one industry association trying to do as much damage on another industry as they can. Because they know that sooner or later, it'll all come down to "what is better for the economy" or "who has the larger bottom line".
I'm a visual being - what does it look like? Some screenshots with a bit of explanation would be nice. If I had a mac, I'd download and look for myself, but since I don't...
You don't have to fake the retina. You just have to fool the scanner. As I wrote: At least one of the commercially available retina scanners can be fooled by a picture of the retina in question. Good news for you: The bad guys don't have to plug out your eye anymore.
Everquest is a game centered on rewarding you for how much time you put into it.
Then play something else. I'm running a (free as in beer) online game called BattleMaster that is explicitly built to allow you the full game even if you can only log on twice a day for 5-10 min each.
Aside from the obvious ("don't play it then, vote with your money"), the problem is more general, it seems.
/., but 99% of us are lazy cowards and wouldn't lift a finger to change things, much less save someone they don't even know from harrassment (except if it's a cool chick).
People have become used to live with all kinds of shit. Windows constantly crashing? They just take it like the weather. "Improved" service at the gas station? Oh, no use complaining anyway. My rights taken away by a fascist government? Nothing I can do, so why care?
I'm told by old folks that there was a time when there were no young punks being cool on the train. If they'd start harassing someone (especially a women), a bunch of local dock workers would stand up and put them where they belong.
That was maybe 30 years ago. Last year, a bunch of students in my city made an experiment. They staged all kinds of harassment, from mild to bad up to a knife fight during various hours at a train station (with knowledge of authorities, yada yada). If I remember correctly, the record was that nobody did anything, and one women used one of the many available emergency phones to call for help.
So what's that got to do with Everquest? It's that most of us rant here at
Disclaimer: I'm more of a coward than I like to, but I've done the occasional stepping up, and I've written to my representative a couple times. I also keep a list of shops where I don't buy anymore.
It ain't that much, but it ain't that hard either.
Independents (no matter whether it's music, films or games) are those who aren't afraid of risk. Therefore, lots of innovation will happen there.
As I see it (disclaimer: I am the project leader of an indy game), the games industry may well be where the music industry is already: Small unknowns creating new ideas that the big publishers than dumb down for the mainstream and rehash for a couple of years until they've found the next trend.
Please to meet you, Mr. Smith.
Now, you may be thrilled to learn that the store doesn't care for 5 cent about whether or not your street or last name is bogus. It still gets a perfectly working customer profile on you.
During the Chaos Computer Camp in Berlin, 1999 (I think), we came up with a better idea to thwart these systems: Swap cards. It's simple, it's fun, and it will mess up their profiling.
Good day, Mr. Smith. And hey, haven't you forgotten those candy bars you always buy?
All biometrics available today, and all imagined for the near future have already been broken. In fact, all systems on the market today are exactly as easily broken as you see in the movies, if not easier (some iris-scan systems have been fooled by photographs. I mean, come on!).
What biometrics is good for is simplifying access controls. For example, you could use your fingerprint instead of your credit card at the ATM machine (but you would still have to input your PIN). But you wouldn't have to carry a dozen plastic cards with you anymore, and be afraid of losing them.
By combining something you are (biometrics) or something you have (credit card) with something you know, you get good security. Never rely on a single point of failure.
film at 11
Why don't we just have a weekly "screwed by M$ this week" special, like the slashback? Would help condense a lot of stories, ranting and general anti-M$ flaming into a few places.
Even the windos zealots I know have turned off the XP look and prefer the old one.
Why don't these guys spend their time on making Linux better, instead of worse? Their FAQ has the question of "why are you doing this", but it doesn't explain why they didn't choose are more worthwhile goal.
More importantly, the guy who wrote the FAQ missed the point, by roughly a mile, in the next question. Yes, people want to switch from Windos to Linux, and yes the entire M$ world is designed to make this as painful as possible (so they don't do it).
But, the answer isn't to make Linux a copy of windos. Once Linux is exactly like windos, you haven't given people incentive to switch, you've removed it. Why should I switch to something that's exactly like the thing I already have?
People are not as dumb as some techies believe them to be, that's an old BOFH syndrome. I installed Linux desktop systems for both my mom and my sister. Neither of them had any computer experience to speak of. It was painless. In fact, I'm convinced that it would have been more trouble with windos. Just think of all the "it crashed, what do I do?" calls that I saved myself.
And the interface (window maker) was perfectly acceptable to both of them. In fact, explaining the dock is an order of magnitude simpler than explaining the start/kde/foot menu. ("no, _this_ program is in there, because... and those games are sorted by company name... no, _that_ program is in some other sub-submenu...")
Enough of a rant. It's so sad to see so much manpower wasted into copying something that simply isn't worth copying.
Unfortunately, the masses don't agree.
For example: When I was working with the Gnome interface guideline team, I was arguing at length against using a clone of the "Start" button/menu - the only argument for it was "it's like windos". Nevertheless, both Gnome and KDE have this single feature that was slammed even by M$'s _own_ interface designers.
Take NeXT or Apple in contrast: Innovation that windos is still trying to copy 10+ years later.
It's not that Linux doesn't have it. It's that there are too many people that think "it's like windos" is a good thing.
Newflash: It's not. In fact, total newbies (your mom) will, given a fair comparison, almost always prefer a NeXT or Apple interface. I know my mom did. In fact, her opinion about the windos interface wasn't exactly positive.
"It's like windos" is _not_ a good thing. I'm using Linux because it's _better_ than windos, because it is _not_ "like" that sorry excuse for an operating system. If you want windos, go and use windos and stop dumbing down the better alternatives.
already happened. Lucky Green (cypherpunk and part of the team that broke the GSM encryption) has a patent pending on using M$s DRM scheme for certain purposes that M$ publicly said they could not be used for.
Uh, people are still bothered by pop-up ads? Time to upgrade your browser to Mozilla. I haven't seen a popup in months.
If it's a problem that can be solved at your end, with minimal hassle, then what's the story?
I've been moving all of my CVS development over to Subversion over the past few months, including a couple development servers at my company.
Since Subversion is now in Debian unstable, it's really easy to install. Compiling from source is a bit of a hassle due to all the dependencies, especially on the apache2 libs.
So far, I've not had a bad experience. No data loss or anything. And I'm very, very happy that I can finally get rid of pserver.
Subversion impressed our company developers by its speed (subjectively, considerably faster than CVS for comparable operations) and its user-friendlyness. It's the details, stuff like automatic detection of binary files, that makes life for the dev people easier.
For the admin, the fact that it runs via apache2 makes your life much easier, especially when it comes to firewalling and access control (user and passwords, etc.) - in a corporate network, you could easily plug it right unto your LDAP server for authentication, for example.
Two things are holding Subversion back right now, IMHO:
a) lack of a wincvs/tkcvs equivalent. Rapidsvn is making progress, but it's still very much alpha.
b) a couple things still missing, like understanding symlinks.
germany's market _is_ growing very fast. I work for a german ISP that offers DSL, and we can't handle the customer signups as fast as they come in.
The only reasonable answer to what Bioware is doing is, IMHO, this:
a) don't buy the game until the Linux port is there
b) do buy the game when it is
unless
c) they take so long that it doesn't matter anymore (e.g. shortly before the release of NWN2, which would mean you don't have anyone to play with)
You've just advised people to engage in a behavior which can justify their termination. Did you know that?
Depends. I've always hosted my site at my place of work (the fact that I've always been sysadmin or security dude helped). It's never been a secret, and it's always been with management approval.
Like the parent, I can recommend this. It gives you more control over what you have and can do and it's usually free. As a matter of fact, I've made it part of my job interview once. When they look at paying you a couple thousand bucks a month, then the $10 or so in real costs for your machine is nothing to them.
A typical car carries up to 4 persons.
Wrong. A typical car can carry up to 4 persons. In real life, the typical car carries around 1.2 persons.
t's just incredibly more popular, and not just because it comes with Windows, as IE is the leader on the Mac as well.
What did you try to prove? IE comes preinstalled on all new Macs. of course it's because it comes with the machine, 99% of people are more lazy than ignorant.
funny on the surface, but missing the point that good jokes carry a grain of truth.
the term actually come from building security, except that it means the exact opposite, a construction piece intended to stop (or at least hamper) the spread of fires.
"We believe we have certain rights as a corporation to use this information,"
Obviously, he also believes that the customers do not have any rights, especially not the right to privacy and the right to not be buggered by sales droids twice a day.
I believe I should have a right to shoot any corporate drone who trespasses on my property, my rights or my safety. Oh wait, I'm not sure if I can carry enough bullets.