Reading Katz is like passing a really bad auto accident. You know you're going to be horrified if you look, but you look anyway.
I think that says it all.
Re:You gotta understand how publishing works
on
Review: Showtime
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Their purpose is to make you, the reader, THINK
I can agree with that, to a point. However, the argument doesn't apply to Katz articles.
The problem with Katz, is that his writing is middle-school quality. Actually, I've written better quality work during my years in middle-school than Katz has produced during his entire tenure with Slashdot.
Katz was quiet until around the point of Columbine. That's when he write his Hellmouth series, which was the first (and last) thought-provoking Katz article. Since then, he figures "Hey, I'm going to ride the coattails of the Columbine articles, and work the same edge on everything that I write." Hence, he looks for deep, meaningful issues in movies like Showtime and Tomb Raider.
It doesn't work.
Plus, people who read Katz's writing are constantly tripping over sophomoric writing, bad grammar, and worse spelling. There is no excuse for a (supposed) professional writer to consistantly make glaring mistakes in his or her writing the way Katz does in his articles. Simple mistakes that would be caught by a goddamned spell checker go uncorrected, and submitted to Slashdot's front page.
And now Slashdot is asking for money? For what? The same badly-written slop, just without the ads?
Sorry. Sure, editorials are supposed to make you THINK, but that kind of thing usually has to appeal to your level of intelligence.
So why am I reading this article? I wanted to see Showtime. However, I don't rely on Katz to determine the movie's worth, because he's a damaged scale. I quickly skim through his writing to get a grip on the movie's base, then I read the comments to see how my peers (other Slashdot readers) liked it.
If I relied on Katz to tell me what movies to see, I'd be staying home a lot.
Three gamers toss their computers on to their dining room table with a hub in the middle. They want to play [Insert Blizzard Game Here], but they want to play multiplayer. This is called a LAN party. (Miniature, but still valid.)
Tell me why these three gamers have to rely on Battle.net just to play their game? The whole idea of having a LAN party (that is, bringing your computer to the party) is because LANs are generally faster than accessing via the internet. Of course, it's also for social reasons, but they're irrelevant to this discussion.
Without bnetd, these players are forced to play their game through Blizzard's Battle.Net server, with all the downfalls that come with playing over the internet.
If they have to do that, they might as well have just stayed home.
And while you keep mentioning that Battle.net is "free of charge", you obviously don't "get it". It's not free. You help offset the cost of that server when you bought your game.
If you don't want to use Battle.net for your network games, that should be your choice, and not Blizzard's.
Well, I consider "The Best" to be whatever does the job, and does it well.
IE is the fastest browser out there. Speed plays a huge part in any computing experience, and if you're slow, you're overlooked. Unfortunately, IE is fast because it's a tidy little COM object that's intertwined so closely with Windows. (IE on Mac or Solaris isn't nearly as fast as IE for Windows, and that's why.)
So yes, Security is a big factor (bigger for someone like me who works in the security field), but IE security isn't as horrible as say, Outlook security. I know that's not saying much, as Outlook is a mail client and IE is a web browser, but IE does the job and does it well.
I can't say I've used IE6, though. I liked 5.01 just fine.
Just think what would happen if IE came out for Linux. Mozilla/Netscape would be killed. (Maybe that's what Microsoft is waiting for?)
I switched to Linux as my primary OS a few months ago, and I haven't looked back. I find I don't miss Windows a bit, and I'm happy with my Slackware/AfterStep setup.
I use Mozilla as my primary browser (Nightly builds), and I find that it has gotten much better than it used to be. Bug reports hit Bugzilla, and are usually updated and/or assigned the same day. Their system is really great.
Sure, the browser has a few annoying things. Text boxes STILL don't behave properly, opening a new window in any shape or form (Ctrl+N, or a javascript function) takes *forever*, and other little things. Overall though, Mozilla is a pretty decent browser. Gecko is a great rendering engine, and tabbed browsing is just totally fucking fantastic.
Once the speed issues are addressed and the behaivior kinks are worked out, that's when 1.0 should hit.
Unfortunately, I find that I do miss the incredible speed of IE 5x. Say what you will about IE security, but it's still the best browser out there. Fortunately, I can happily make that trade-off as a Linux desktop user.
How does Jon Katz POSSIBLY consider himself to be a capable reviewer?
And your own reviews are as welcome as mine.
Sorry, but that's not saying much.
He is catching guff about money from his wife (Denise Archibald), and the couple has a cute and loving kid Mike (Daniel Smith) who collapses during a baseball game.
Hey. Names in parenthesis are supposed to be used for the actor's real name. Katz switches off, using them for both real manes and character names. Sheesh, talk about uneven.
The Archibald's sell of nearly everything they own to try and raise the money to pay the hospital and the greedy, uncaring surgeon (James Woods) and as Mike slips closer to dying, John snaps and takes over the hospital emergency room.
Now let us talk about run-on sentences and basic grammar. I think I recall learning the proper uses of the apostrophe in second grade. Plus, conjunctions (if that's too big a word, I'm referring to the 'ands') are supposed to connect words, thoughts, or phrases. They're not supposed to be substitutes for periods!
is any authority figure in America ever competent in a Hollywood movie?
You don't watch many movies. That point doesn't need to be driven any further.
You'll have to see the movie to find out. It's entertaining, and it's almost sure to be a big hit. But even a superstar can't mask a silly story.
Yes. "This is a great movie, but it sucks. Go see it! Then realize you weren't supposed to." Pick an opinion, for Christ's sake.
Oh, and can we see how many more times we can work the word "saintly" into this review?
Before I read the article, the post gave me the impression that this monolith was still down there, clawing at South Africa.
In reality, all they found were trace fossils of its footprints, because it walked the area 260 million years ago.
In any case, I keep envisioning a bad, B-movie horror flick starring this dude. "Giant Scorpions Attack!", with sequels taking place in different major US cities. I'd almost say I would want to see Samuel L. Jackson saying "hold on to yer butts!" in the movie every time he's about to unleash his genius plan to stop the mutant scorpions, but I doubt he'd do a B flick.
I wonder if getting stung by a 3 meter scorpion would provide time to be painful. Probably 20-30 seconds or so.
I seriously hope that the macaroni and cheese recipe really needs "tabasco sauce", rather than "tobacco sauce", because I can't even imagine... no. Not going to think about it.
Dear Lord. A Slashdot editor griping about Spelling.
When I use Mac OS X, I can *feel* that somewhere in Cupertino there's an English major who was losing sleep at nights trying to make the text in the dialog boxes as clear and understandable as possible. When was the last time you felt that way about the latest d/l off of sourceforge?
Well, I don't know if it's a feature of the Car or the Inverter (I suspect most cars are wired the same), but when the ignition is turned off, the inverter is off.
This way, the computer is only on when the ignition is. That, coupled with a Read-Only file system, no need to unmount to shut it off. Just kill the power.
No display, but it's got plenty of music. I got a cheap 300w Power Inverter for something like $50 from Wal Mart. Plugs into the cigarette lighter.
From there, I have a P166 in a tiny little case under the passenger seat plugged into the inverter. The computer has a network card and a Sound Blaster Awe64. Line Out from the sound card runs to a Ground Loop Isolator (to eliminate the interference buzz from the inverter, $14 at Radio Shack), and from there, connects to my car's factory radio via one of those CD-Player Cassette adapters.
The computer has no display, and is controlled via PS/2 keypad. Around 370 mp3-format songs are loaded on the Western Digital hard drive, which has proven remarkably hardy in all kinds of driving conditions. It also has a built-in NIC, so I can upload new songs.
Cost? About $200. (Computer was around $70, wires - $20, inverter - $50, keypad - $10, GLI - $15, Sound Blaster - $10, Cassette Adapter - $3.) Much cheaper than the above novelty, and much more flexible and expandable.
You know, even if the source code isn't released, Total Annihilation runs damn near perfectly under current WINE vintages.
I love this game, and I'm extremely glad I can run it in X. If you've never played it (and you run Linux), head to Electronics Boutique. You can find it on the shelf for about $4.99 last time I saw it. Then download, compile, and configure WINE, run TA setup, and voila! Runs fantastic.
Why do you need a new one when the existing ones work just fine?
The main point of your parent post was that you couldn't get a pre-compiled open-source word processor for Windows.
RTF is a well documented format. While Wordpad isn't open-source, it handles RTF just fine. What does anything have to do with a new file format? The article certainly doesn't.
And would I hope your grandmother can use Wordpad.
Plus, if you insist on having an open source word processor on Windows, Sun plans to release the source code to StarOffice soon.
I usually send my resume out as a nicely formatted HTML document. I sent it to a company yesterday, and received this as a reply: (Paraphrased)
"Sorry, We can't open your resume. Need a Word doc. Thanks!"
I thought that was pretty disgusting, but I need a job. I sent them an RTF made in AbiWord, which Word reads by default. They were able to open it only to tell me I don't meet their qualifications. Oh well.
Some people don't understand that not everyone uses Word - not everyone uses WINDOWS for that matter. People, businesses in general, need to realize this, and stop demanding that their applicants send them information in.DOC format.
It's bad when people prefer, and actually request a bloated, nonstandard piece of shit like a Word Document instead of a much more standardized HTML document.
Stuff might even work, especially since MS will still be testing against Win98, which is similar to Win95.
See, now that's a bunch of shit.
Yes, I absolutely agree that companies do phase out older software from being supported. But Microsoft goes one step further. See, you never even get the chance to see if newer software *might* work, because Microsoft makes it so it doesn't.
How? Try downloading a new version of Windows Media Player and installing it under Windows 95. Ain't gonna happen. The installer checks the version number of the Windows OS you're running. If it's less than what they want, you get a dialog box that says "Eh, go to hell. You're not installing this."
This isn't a matter of support, it's a matter of planned obsolesence and forced upgrades. Sure, the new software probably will work under 95... but Microsoft doesn't want you to run 95. They want you to SPEND SPEND SPEND and get those upgrades.
They don't want you to be content with what you have. The truth of the matter is:
Windows 95 + Internet Explorer Integration + USB == Windows 98
It's that simple. I've never been able to run something under Windows 98 that wouldn't run under Windows 95. If Microsoft isn't killing 98 until 2003, they have no reason to kill 95 until the same time.
But that's not how Microsoft does things. Microsoft says "They run 95? Fuck 'em", forcing retailers to cover up the 95 on "Designed for Windows 95/98" text.
it's about twice as slow as Win2K/XP on the same hardware.
That really depends on what you're running.
I'll probably never hear the end of it if I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway: The most popular window managers for the XWS are also the most bloated.
Have you ever used Nautilus? It is a very pretty interface, but it is slow as all hell on a machine of reasonable specs. (PIII 500 / 256MB) Now take Gnome and Nautilus, plop it on to a system, and yeah... it's not going to perform as well as it should. Granted, the XWS isn't the best performing GUI out there, but the 4.x rewrites are solving a lot of those problems.
I've used Gnome/Nautilus as an example above, because I know less about the newer KDE releases with regard to frendliness, performance, and bloat. If someone would be kind enough to fill me in on how KDE is in these respects, I'd appreciate it.
Anyway. Gnome is a pretty hefty download, and tries to shove all of the crap they think you'll need into the package.
If you set your users up with something like AfterStep (which, by the way, can fit on a floppy), ditch the desktop pager, show them how to use Wharf and the Winlist, and install the apps they will need. Configure Wharf to make it easy to get the apps, then smack everything onto a kickstart server or something. Then whenever a new box enters the office, just kickstart the image on to the box and there you go. No configuring, and it would make administration much easier. (You could probably also hack in some cronjobs on the server and the workstations to automatically keep all packages up to date, but that's beyond the scope of this comment.)
This way, they have a fast, clean window environment, the apps they need, and the benefits of Linux.
Is this in the slackware-current, or slackware-7.2 directory?
Looks like slackware-current to me.
Wake up, do some REAL reporting (like, ask someone on our team), and stop trying to get "fp!".
...should be about a month for the actual release.
- Pat
(I wish I could find the reply to michael's ascertation of it being a beta, aptly named "THIS_IS_NOT_A_BETA_EITHER.TXT, but that seems to have been lost in the sands of time.)
It's not uncommon for "official" releases to be after the initial release. It's like when a large department store has a "GRAND OPENING". In many cases, the GRAND OPENING is about a week after the store actually opens. Or if the store opens during the week, the GRAND OPENING will be on that weekend.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember back in 69 when a few government agencies and universities put together a small little network called "ARPANet?"
It started off with something like four nodes. Look where it is today.
It's like someone once said:
Reading Katz is like passing a really bad auto accident. You know you're going to be horrified if you look, but you look anyway.
I think that says it all.
Their purpose is to make you, the reader, THINK
I can agree with that, to a point. However, the argument doesn't apply to Katz articles.
The problem with Katz, is that his writing is middle-school quality. Actually, I've written better quality work during my years in middle-school than Katz has produced during his entire tenure with Slashdot.
Katz was quiet until around the point of Columbine. That's when he write his Hellmouth series, which was the first (and last) thought-provoking Katz article. Since then, he figures "Hey, I'm going to ride the coattails of the Columbine articles, and work the same edge on everything that I write." Hence, he looks for deep, meaningful issues in movies like Showtime and Tomb Raider.
It doesn't work.
Plus, people who read Katz's writing are constantly tripping over sophomoric writing, bad grammar, and worse spelling. There is no excuse for a (supposed) professional writer to consistantly make glaring mistakes in his or her writing the way Katz does in his articles. Simple mistakes that would be caught by a goddamned spell checker go uncorrected, and submitted to Slashdot's front page.
And now Slashdot is asking for money? For what? The same badly-written slop, just without the ads?
Sorry. Sure, editorials are supposed to make you THINK, but that kind of thing usually has to appeal to your level of intelligence.
So why am I reading this article? I wanted to see Showtime. However, I don't rely on Katz to determine the movie's worth, because he's a damaged scale. I quickly skim through his writing to get a grip on the movie's base, then I read the comments to see how my peers (other Slashdot readers) liked it.
If I relied on Katz to tell me what movies to see, I'd be staying home a lot.
The first thing that came to my mind was the Toshiba Libretto.
That was a badass little computer.
Three gamers toss their computers on to their dining room table with a hub in the middle. They want to play [Insert Blizzard Game Here], but they want to play multiplayer. This is called a LAN party. (Miniature, but still valid.)
Tell me why these three gamers have to rely on Battle.net just to play their game? The whole idea of having a LAN party (that is, bringing your computer to the party) is because LANs are generally faster than accessing via the internet. Of course, it's also for social reasons, but they're irrelevant to this discussion.
Without bnetd, these players are forced to play their game through Blizzard's Battle.Net server, with all the downfalls that come with playing over the internet.
If they have to do that, they might as well have just stayed home.
And while you keep mentioning that Battle.net is "free of charge", you obviously don't "get it". It's not free. You help offset the cost of that server when you bought your game.
If you don't want to use Battle.net for your network games, that should be your choice, and not Blizzard's.
Well, I consider "The Best" to be whatever does the job, and does it well.
IE is the fastest browser out there. Speed plays a huge part in any computing experience, and if you're slow, you're overlooked. Unfortunately, IE is fast because it's a tidy little COM object that's intertwined so closely with Windows. (IE on Mac or Solaris isn't nearly as fast as IE for Windows, and that's why.)
So yes, Security is a big factor (bigger for someone like me who works in the security field), but IE security isn't as horrible as say, Outlook security. I know that's not saying much, as Outlook is a mail client and IE is a web browser, but IE does the job and does it well.
I can't say I've used IE6, though. I liked 5.01 just fine.
Just think what would happen if IE came out for Linux. Mozilla/Netscape would be killed. (Maybe that's what Microsoft is waiting for?)
I switched to Linux as my primary OS a few months ago, and I haven't looked back. I find I don't miss Windows a bit, and I'm happy with my Slackware/AfterStep setup.
I use Mozilla as my primary browser (Nightly builds), and I find that it has gotten much better than it used to be. Bug reports hit Bugzilla, and are usually updated and/or assigned the same day. Their system is really great.
Sure, the browser has a few annoying things. Text boxes STILL don't behave properly, opening a new window in any shape or form (Ctrl+N, or a javascript function) takes *forever*, and other little things. Overall though, Mozilla is a pretty decent browser. Gecko is a great rendering engine, and tabbed browsing is just totally fucking fantastic.
Once the speed issues are addressed and the behaivior kinks are worked out, that's when 1.0 should hit.
Unfortunately, I find that I do miss the incredible speed of IE 5x. Say what you will about IE security, but it's still the best browser out there. Fortunately, I can happily make that trade-off as a Linux desktop user.
How?
How does Jon Katz POSSIBLY consider himself to be a capable reviewer?
And your own reviews are as welcome as mine.
Sorry, but that's not saying much.
He is catching guff about money from his wife (Denise Archibald), and the couple has a cute and loving kid Mike (Daniel Smith) who collapses during a baseball game.
Hey. Names in parenthesis are supposed to be used for the actor's real name. Katz switches off, using them for both real manes and character names. Sheesh, talk about uneven.
The Archibald's sell of nearly everything they own to try and raise the money to pay the hospital and the greedy, uncaring surgeon (James Woods) and as Mike slips closer to dying, John snaps and takes over the hospital emergency room.
Now let us talk about run-on sentences and basic grammar. I think I recall learning the proper uses of the apostrophe in second grade. Plus, conjunctions (if that's too big a word, I'm referring to the 'ands') are supposed to connect words, thoughts, or phrases. They're not supposed to be substitutes for periods!
is any authority figure in America ever competent in a Hollywood movie?
You don't watch many movies. That point doesn't need to be driven any further.
You'll have to see the movie to find out. It's entertaining, and it's almost sure to be a big hit. But even a superstar can't mask a silly story.
Yes. "This is a great movie, but it sucks. Go see it! Then realize you weren't supposed to." Pick an opinion, for Christ's sake.
Oh, and can we see how many more times we can work the word "saintly" into this review?
That's a pretty misleading headline.
Before I read the article, the post gave me the impression that this monolith was still down there, clawing at South Africa.
In reality, all they found were trace fossils of its footprints, because it walked the area 260 million years ago.
In any case, I keep envisioning a bad, B-movie horror flick starring this dude. "Giant Scorpions Attack!", with sequels taking place in different major US cities. I'd almost say I would want to see Samuel L. Jackson saying "hold on to yer butts!" in the movie every time he's about to unleash his genius plan to stop the mutant scorpions, but I doubt he'd do a B flick.
I wonder if getting stung by a 3 meter scorpion would provide time to be painful. Probably 20-30 seconds or so.
Not quite a weblog, but similar:
Gabe's Proposal
I seriously hope that the macaroni and cheese recipe really needs "tabasco sauce", rather than "tobacco sauce", because I can't even imagine... no. Not going to think about it.
Dear Lord. A Slashdot editor griping about Spelling.
Did I get off on the wrong planet?
When I use Mac OS X, I can *feel* that somewhere in Cupertino there's an English major who was losing sleep at nights trying to make the text in the dialog boxes as clear and understandable as possible. When was the last time you felt that way about the latest d/l off of sourceforge?
...or Slashdot for that matter.
Well, I don't know if it's a feature of the Car or the Inverter (I suspect most cars are wired the same), but when the ignition is turned off, the inverter is off.
This way, the computer is only on when the ignition is. That, coupled with a Read-Only file system, no need to unmount to shut it off. Just kill the power.
I have a computer in my car.
No display, but it's got plenty of music. I got a cheap 300w Power Inverter for something like $50 from Wal Mart. Plugs into the cigarette lighter.
From there, I have a P166 in a tiny little case under the passenger seat plugged into the inverter. The computer has a network card and a Sound Blaster Awe64. Line Out from the sound card runs to a Ground Loop Isolator (to eliminate the interference buzz from the inverter, $14 at Radio Shack), and from there, connects to my car's factory radio via one of those CD-Player Cassette adapters.
The computer has no display, and is controlled via PS/2 keypad. Around 370 mp3-format songs are loaded on the Western Digital hard drive, which has proven remarkably hardy in all kinds of driving conditions. It also has a built-in NIC, so I can upload new songs.
Cost? About $200. (Computer was around $70, wires - $20, inverter - $50, keypad - $10, GLI - $15, Sound Blaster - $10, Cassette Adapter - $3.) Much cheaper than the above novelty, and much more flexible and expandable.
You know, even if the source code isn't released, Total Annihilation runs damn near perfectly under current WINE vintages.
I love this game, and I'm extremely glad I can run it in X. If you've never played it (and you run Linux), head to Electronics Boutique. You can find it on the shelf for about $4.99 last time I saw it. Then download, compile, and configure WINE, run TA setup, and voila! Runs fantastic.
Why do you need a new one when the existing ones work just fine?
The main point of your parent post was that you couldn't get a pre-compiled open-source word processor for Windows.
RTF is a well documented format. While Wordpad isn't open-source, it handles RTF just fine. What does anything have to do with a new file format? The article certainly doesn't.
And would I hope your grandmother can use Wordpad.
Plus, if you insist on having an open source word processor on Windows, Sun plans to release the source code to StarOffice soon.
Ever heard of Wordpad?
Yeah, it's a 179k program that comes with Windows, and has absolutely no problem reading and writing RTF formats.
Email should always be formatted in a text format such as plain text or HTML.
p t; font-family:
DEAR GOD NO. Plain text is okay, but HTML-formatted E-mail should be illegal.
Consider:
<p class=MsoNormal><span class=EmailStyle15><font size=2
color=black
face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0
Arial'><![if
!supportEmptyParas]> <![endif]>& lt;o:p></o:p></span></font>&l t;/span></p>
All of that formatting, and what do you get? A single blank space. That's from an actual e-mail message, by the way.
For the sanity of others, just use Plain Text in E-mail.
I wish it were that easy.
.DOC format.
I usually send my resume out as a nicely formatted HTML document. I sent it to a company yesterday, and received this as a reply: (Paraphrased)
"Sorry, We can't open your resume. Need a Word doc. Thanks!"
I thought that was pretty disgusting, but I need a job. I sent them an RTF made in AbiWord, which Word reads by default. They were able to open it only to tell me I don't meet their qualifications. Oh well.
Some people don't understand that not everyone uses Word - not everyone uses WINDOWS for that matter. People, businesses in general, need to realize this, and stop demanding that their applicants send them information in
It's bad when people prefer, and actually request a bloated, nonstandard piece of shit like a Word Document instead of a much more standardized HTML document.
End of Story
Actually, the first panel pretty much says it all.
Quit your crying and go download a warez version of 98SE.
That... That is so insightful.
Thankfully, I have perfectly legitimate licenses for Windows 95, 95B, NT4 Server/Workstation, 98SE, and 2000.
The thing is, I *choose* to run Windows 95.
Stuff might even work, especially since MS will still be testing against Win98, which is similar to Win95.
See, now that's a bunch of shit.
Yes, I absolutely agree that companies do phase out older software from being supported. But Microsoft goes one step further. See, you never even get the chance to see if newer software *might* work, because Microsoft makes it so it doesn't.
How? Try downloading a new version of Windows Media Player and installing it under Windows 95. Ain't gonna happen. The installer checks the version number of the Windows OS you're running. If it's less than what they want, you get a dialog box that says "Eh, go to hell. You're not installing this."
This isn't a matter of support, it's a matter of planned obsolesence and forced upgrades. Sure, the new software probably will work under 95... but Microsoft doesn't want you to run 95. They want you to SPEND SPEND SPEND and get those upgrades.
They don't want you to be content with what you have. The truth of the matter is:
Windows 95 + Internet Explorer Integration + USB == Windows 98
It's that simple. I've never been able to run something under Windows 98 that wouldn't run under Windows 95. If Microsoft isn't killing 98 until 2003, they have no reason to kill 95 until the same time.
But that's not how Microsoft does things. Microsoft says "They run 95? Fuck 'em", forcing retailers to cover up the 95 on "Designed for Windows 95/98" text.
Even when it will work just fine under 95.
it's about twice as slow as Win2K/XP on the same hardware.
That really depends on what you're running.
I'll probably never hear the end of it if I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway: The most popular window managers for the XWS are also the most bloated.
Have you ever used Nautilus? It is a very pretty interface, but it is slow as all hell on a machine of reasonable specs. (PIII 500 / 256MB) Now take Gnome and Nautilus, plop it on to a system, and yeah... it's not going to perform as well as it should. Granted, the XWS isn't the best performing GUI out there, but the 4.x rewrites are solving a lot of those problems.
I've used Gnome/Nautilus as an example above, because I know less about the newer KDE releases with regard to frendliness, performance, and bloat. If someone would be kind enough to fill me in on how KDE is in these respects, I'd appreciate it.
Anyway. Gnome is a pretty hefty download, and tries to shove all of the crap they think you'll need into the package.
If you set your users up with something like AfterStep (which, by the way, can fit on a floppy), ditch the desktop pager, show them how to use Wharf and the Winlist, and install the apps they will need. Configure Wharf to make it easy to get the apps, then smack everything onto a kickstart server or something. Then whenever a new box enters the office, just kickstart the image on to the box and there you go. No configuring, and it would make administration much easier. (You could probably also hack in some cronjobs on the server and the workstations to automatically keep all packages up to date, but that's beyond the scope of this comment.)
This way, they have a fast, clean window environment, the apps they need, and the benefits of Linux.
Here's the text from that file:
Slackware 7.2 is NOT released.
Is this in the slackware-current, or slackware-7.2 directory?
Looks like slackware-current to me.
Wake up, do some REAL reporting (like, ask someone on our team), and stop trying to get "fp!".
...should be about a month for the actual release.
- Pat
(I wish I could find the reply to michael's ascertation of it being a beta, aptly named "THIS_IS_NOT_A_BETA_EITHER.TXT, but that seems to have been lost in the sands of time.)
And although OpenBSD 3.0 has an "official" release date of December 1 for whatever reason, it seems to be available by FTP or CD already.
Probably because they want to avoid a fiasco like the last tremendous release mess that michael caused.
It's not uncommon for "official" releases to be after the initial release. It's like when a large department store has a "GRAND OPENING". In many cases, the GRAND OPENING is about a week after the store actually opens. Or if the store opens during the week, the GRAND OPENING will be on that weekend.