Its obvious the guy doesn't want his dollar back, what he, I, and alot of other people would like is for you to say you were wrong and to apologize. You should not have linked to that pdf file, it was irresponsible.
As for the link you're talking about, I did mive it to the bottom of the story and added explanation.
Moving that link to bottom wasn't good enough. It should have been removed completely. In fact, it never should have been linked to in the first place.
It's a cruel, uncaring net. Click carefully out there.
Come on Jamie, this is a cop out. We expect more from the people running slashdot. We expect you to know more about the net and we expect you to "get it". Linking directly to that download and then telling people that they should have clicked more carefully is like leaving a loaded 44 Magnum in the gun circle and not expecting anyone to use it. It farcical.
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Thanks for taking the link out of the story but there's still a direct link to the download in the Related Links box. Could you remove that one too please.
---------- AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
Um..oops. Sorry. The info on King's website yesterday made it sound like there were only going to be three parts. Now, from what I read on the FAQ, it looks like their may be more. Although I seriously doubt he's going to get 75% pay-through, especially with slashdot linking directly to the download.
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That's really great Jamie. Provide a direct link to the download for the ultimate self-fullfilling prophecy. If it ever had a chance to work before, this will surely kill it.
I've never read a Stephen King book but I paid the dollar for part 1 and downloaded it primarily because I believed in the idea. Please take that link down quickly.
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I think the mp3 player integration is a fantastic idea. What I would love to see even more is an entire scenario inspired by an album. Have you heard the Kittie cd? That just screams DOOM.
---------- AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
I have a powermac that dual boots MacOS and Linux. I've been spending alot of time in Linux lately and I had probably not used the MacOS for a month or two. I rebooted a few minutes ago and brought up MacOS. I loaded up Slashdot and found this story. As I read the article, I couldn't help but think about how much nicer everything looked and worked on the Mac as compared to IceWM in linux(I have a slow computer so I use a light WM). Then I submitted a comment to this story, then my computer froze. I'm back in Linux now and now I realize that stability is more important to me than UI. I don't care what your UI is like, if your OS crashes regularly, its a pile of crap. Fix that, and then come talk to me about UI.
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For an Insight which gets 70 mpg, you'll pay about $5000 dollars for 233,333 miles. ((233,333/70)*1.5)
For the Neon which gets 35 mpb, you'll pay about $10,000. ((233,333/35)*1.5)
Correct? If so, then that's only a $5000 difference. In that case, you'd need twice as many miles, 466,666, to break even. Most cars are going to have trouble making it that far. If we can expect the car to last 100,000 miles, then we would not want to pay more than $2,142.86 more for the 70 mpg car over the 35 mpg car at $1.50 per gallon.
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For another thing, many job functions don't require an office suite at all. Don't assume everyone needs one, and don't just reflexively give one out, even if it's free of license fees like StarOffice. If someone just sends simple faxes and email, that's all they should be able to do. If someone simply accesses an AS/400 or mainframe and works with e-mail, they need access to nothing more than a web browser for e-mail (or perhaps Netscape Communicator with its IMAP mail support), and a tn5250 emulator.
As a user, this kind of thinking bothers me. Its really difficult to gauge the intellectual capacity and self-motivation of a person. Sure, some people can't make use of additional software, either because their not smart enough or because they just don't have the desire to. But a bright, self-motivated employee will expand to his potential if his environment gives him enough room. Sure, a person may have been hired to do one job in one particular way, but that person may be capable of doing far greater things. If you cripple that person by restricting his resources, then he may never live up to his potential. That hurts both him and his employer. I say that unless giving everyone a particular tool (software or otherwise) is an undue burden, then go ahead and let them have it and maybe they'll do something usefull with it. If you then find that the costs of providing that particular tool outweigh the benefits, then you can be more selective regarding that tool. In the long run, I think thats the better approach.
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First off, you don't want any data locally. That's right. I don't care who has the workstation, the only thing sitting on the local disk should be the OS. All user files, and major applications should be sitting on a remote filesystem. Otherwise, you end up with a completely intractible backup and upgrade problem. Trust me on this.
If you are actually using machines designed as workstations (thin clients), I agree. But if you are using PCs, then isn't this a huge waste of the processor power, hard drive capacity, etc.. of a desktop. I'm a user not an administrator, so of course my main concern is that is that I have the apps I need to get my work done. This means that I don't want to wait on a slow network while I'm using an app. I also don't want to sit and stare at a useless pile of parts if the network is down (this has happended quite a bit where I work).
I realize that having apps installed on 2500 hardrives might be a nightmare, but you shouldn't lose sight of why you have those apps in the first place. Those apps are there to support the needs of the end user, not to make the admin's job easier. After all, that's why you get paid the big bucks right?:)
Is there a way to remotely manage apps on the hard drives, if not maybe there should be. How about remote power on. I mean as long as those PCs are turned on, you should have remote access to their hard drives and you shouldn't have to go around and turn on every one manually. Actually, I think this would be a great idea anyway. I'd love for my computer to be on and ready to go when I walk in at 8:10, er I mean 8:00. But then again, if your network never goes down, and those apps will run from the server as fast as they would run from a desktop, then sure, I agree, buy thin clients and put everything on the server. But if you work were I do, that's the last thing you want.
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You should really wait awhile before you complain about bad moderation. There will be some bad moderation along with the good. Hopefully the good moderation will outweigh the bad. Your post wasn't offtopic, but it didn't have much substance either. Did you post with a +1 bonus for high karma? If so, then you deserved to be moderated down to 1. That was not a comment worthy of a 2. I did not moderate you by the way. Now this post, this post is offtopic:)
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The real problem I see with this is the group of people who use Frontpage to design their websites. They wouldn't know html if it bit them on the ass. They use java for links which means the page takes ten times longer to load. They design web pages but they really don't know what they're doing.
These are the people who will use these new features. They're the ones who design web pages that suck and that doesn't look like its going to change any time soon. This is going to be a problem for a very long time.
P.S.: I'm a user of IE 5.0, this story just convinced me to switch to Netscape when it finally comes out. Whenever the hell that will be.
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I'm not sure exactly what the law says, but I think you can make it, you just can't sell it. Moonshine sucks anyway. Why drink moonshine when you can have real bourbon. My favorite is George Dickel. Knob Creek and Maker's Mark are good too.
Whiskey and bourbon are really the same thing by the way. But you can only call it bourbon if it was made in Kentucky.
I can't beleive you like radio DJs. They have got to be the most worthless people on the face of the earth. They seem to think that I'm listening to the radio to hear them. I'm listening to the radio to hear music, not some babbling moron. I can understand commercials, they bring the station money, but why do DJs talk so much instead of playing more music? Between traffic reports and those irritating morning shows, I can't even listen to the radio in the morning, I have to pop in a cd.
If this sattelite radio includes DJs and commercials or is nothing more than re-broadcast analog stations, their going to have to pay me $9.95 a month to listen to it.
Granted, this article is labeled an opinion, but this is another example of someone who pretends to be taking an objective view of the open source philosophy and pointing out its achilles heel, but in reality, has a chip on their shoulder about the issue.
His first mistake is taking the harshest zealotry and attributing it to the entire open source world. He seems to think that the open source movement wants all software to be open source (OS) and free and that there is no room in the OS philosophy for proprietary software. I think that the more moderate advocates will agree that there is a place for both OS software and proprietary software.
Aside from that, I think he makes some very good points. Software should take the users needs into account and user interface should be a major concern. UI is one of the things (maybe the only thing) that the macs do right(I use a mac, but with MkLinux). I think he is wrong to say that since the decisions about proprietary software are controlled by the market that they are more in tune with what the user wants. If that were true, Windows and Macintosh systems wouldn't crash every time an application went down. We also would not have the horrendous planned obolesence upgrade cycle we've got. Proprietary software is made to make money, which doesn't necessarily mean that the consumer is getting what he wants.
Did I read that right? RedHat left the show early? That's incredibly irresponsible of them. RedHat shouldn't waste an opportunity to provide a professional image for Linux and to educate people about what it can do. Even if there weren't many people there, even if they had hardware trouble, they should have stayed and made every effort to help not only Linux but their own business. That goes for any other vendor out there as well.
Same mistake here as always. MySQL is a relational database. "Transactions" does not define what "relational" is -- go read E. F. Codd's papers if you don't know why.
I'm not saying that MySQL isn't relational, I'm not even saying it doesn't have transactions (according to some of the other posts I've read, it does). I'm also not saying that transactions make a RDBMS. There are many things that make up a RDBMS from a user standpoint. The ACID test is probably what most people look at when deciding whether an application is a RDBMS (there are many other things too of course.). What I said was that MySQL is not a RDBMS. I think that anyone who knows anything about a RDBMS will agree with that statement.
I'm not bashing MySQL, I think its a great application. I also suspect that some of the features people like most about MySQL exist because it is not a RDBMS. Trying to turn MySQL into a RDBMS might compromise the very features that its users find so attractive. It fills an important niche in the field of web applications. My point was mainly that if someone needs a true RDBMS, they shouldn't be using MySQL in the first place.
..someone please stick transactions in it? I mean, its not even really a database without transactions... not to mention doesn't follow the SQL standard since COMMIT and ROLLBACK are not optional operations.
Why are you asking for transactions or any other RDBMS feature in MySQL? MySQL is good at being a fast, easy to use database-like application. If you want a true RDBMS, just use PostgreSQL. Both MySQL and Postgres have their strengths and weaknesses, and each targets a slightly different user in my opinion. If you want a true RDBMS, then use a RDBMS, don't ask MySQL to be something its not.
files in that format? I've read a few comments from people who are defending Microsoft. These seem to come in two flavors:
1..DOC is documented, this question is lame FUD. Quit bashing Microsoft.
Well, if its so well documented, then why can't I open a Word document in WordPerfect? And please don't tell me its because the Word document can contain embedded things like Excel and Access parts. I'm just talking about a regular word processing document with text and a little formatting. Our MIS guys tell me it does work but they apparently received this information from the WordPerfect 8 packaging rather than from experimentation because it doesn't work on my computer and they have been unable to show me where it works on their's.
2. Why are you picking on poor Microsoft? Do you really think they would purposely obfuscate their own code and make it difficult not only on the rest of the world, but themselves as well? Do you really think they're purposely trying to make it difficult for other companies to use the.DOC format?
Um, well yes, that's exactly what I think. What planet have you people been living on for the last 20 years. Of course Microsoft wants to make it difficult for other wordprocessors to use its format. They pretty much have a monopoly on in the Office arena and they want to keep it. If you could go out and buy WordPerfect for $100 less than Word and still be able to use the.DOC format perfectly, how would that help Microsoft? They have done things like this in the past and they will continue to do them as long as they can.
On a more positive note, I'll say that I do think that Microsoft Office is a good product. I mean it works and it does alot of cool stuff(even though that makes it bloated). The problem is in the way which Microsoft has used the power that Office has given them, not in the product itself. And I'm not just bashing Microsoft. I fully believe that if Sun or Corel were in their place they'd be doing the same thing. The bottom line is that consumers are suffering because of proprietary formats. This is one of the big reasons why computers have not made us more productive (or at least as productive as we could be). I can't count the number of hours I've spent simply trying to convert documents from one format to another.
Would someone please enlighten me as to why Microsoft is worried about piracy. It seems to me that most computers are sold as packaged products (ie: not bought as parts and assembled). Thus they come with Windows pre-installed. The primary need for a windows cd then, would be to reinstall the operating system after some catastrophe or a new hard drive etc..
Sure, there's some piracy that goes on, I've witnessed people installing windows on used 486's and such, but how is this a big revenue loss for Microsoft. It seems to me that the people who have the most need for a Windows cd are the one's who legitimately paid for it in the first place and just want to re-install it on the same computer or possibly on a second computer they've bought which for some reason does not have windows already.
Microsoft seems to be shooting themselves in the foot here. As if they're not already in danger from the growing use of linux,BSD, etc.., now they are giving people even more reason to stop using their software altogether. They should be trying to give their users more freedom not less. Personaly though, I'm glad their doing this. I don't use windows except for at work and I hope this will convince more people to switch to one of the free nixes.
Are there any good links to sites that describe how to detect the true identity of the spammer?
All I know to do is to look at the bottom "Received From:" header. If its a site, I type it into my web browser and see if they've got an abuse@ address. If its an IP, I traceroute it and then do the same. How reliable is this? Can the "Received From:" header also be faked?
Does anyone from the US remember the killings of four students at Kent State in Ohio? Only the military had guns in that situation and yet people were still killed. Banning guns from the civilians won't stop the killing, you'll just get a different group of people killed.
Remember:
He who would trade liberty for safety deserves neither.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the link you're talking about, I did mive it to the bottom of the story and added explanation.
Moving that link to bottom wasn't good enough. It should have been removed completely. In fact, it never should have been linked to in the first place.
It's a cruel, uncaring net. Click carefully out there.
Come on Jamie, this is a cop out. We expect more from the people running slashdot. We expect you to know more about the net and we expect you to "get it". Linking directly to that download and then telling people that they should have clicked more carefully is like leaving a loaded 44 Magnum in the gun circle and not expecting anyone to use it. It farcical.
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
Read the article moron. Its only 3 chapters. I doubt that three dollars is going to break anyone.
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
I've never read a Stephen King book but I paid the dollar for part 1 and downloaded it primarily because I believed in the idea. Please take that link down quickly.
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
Actually, we all want Ferarris, but most of us are forced to drive Toyotas :)
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
For the Neon which gets 35 mpb, you'll pay about $10,000. ((233,333/35)*1.5)
Correct? If so, then that's only a $5000 difference. In that case, you'd need twice as many miles, 466,666, to break even. Most cars are going to have trouble making it that far. If we can expect the car to last 100,000 miles, then we would not want to pay more than $2,142.86 more for the 70 mpg car over the 35 mpg car at $1.50 per gallon.
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
As a user, this kind of thinking bothers me. Its really difficult to gauge the intellectual capacity and self-motivation of a person. Sure, some people can't make use of additional software, either because their not smart enough or because they just don't have the desire to. But a bright, self-motivated employee will expand to his potential if his environment gives him enough room. Sure, a person may have been hired to do one job in one particular way, but that person may be capable of doing far greater things. If you cripple that person by restricting his resources, then he may never live up to his potential. That hurts both him and his employer. I say that unless giving everyone a particular tool (software or otherwise) is an undue burden, then go ahead and let them have it and maybe they'll do something usefull with it. If you then find that the costs of providing that particular tool outweigh the benefits, then you can be more selective regarding that tool. In the long run, I think thats the better approach.
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
If you are actually using machines designed as workstations (thin clients), I agree. But if you are using PCs, then isn't this a huge waste of the processor power, hard drive capacity, etc.. of a desktop. I'm a user not an administrator, so of course my main concern is that is that I have the apps I need to get my work done. This means that I don't want to wait on a slow network while I'm using an app. I also don't want to sit and stare at a useless pile of parts if the network is down (this has happended quite a bit where I work).
I realize that having apps installed on 2500 hardrives might be a nightmare, but you shouldn't lose sight of why you have those apps in the first place. Those apps are there to support the needs of the end user, not to make the admin's job easier. After all, that's why you get paid the big bucks right? :)
Is there a way to remotely manage apps on the hard drives, if not maybe there should be. How about remote power on. I mean as long as those PCs are turned on, you should have remote access to their hard drives and you shouldn't have to go around and turn on every one manually. Actually, I think this would be a great idea anyway. I'd love for my computer to be on and ready to go when I walk in at 8:10, er I mean 8:00. But then again, if your network never goes down, and those apps will run from the server as fast as they would run from a desktop, then sure, I agree, buy thin clients and put everything on the server. But if you work were I do, that's the last thing you want.
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
These are the people who will use these new features. They're the ones who design web pages that suck and that doesn't look like its going to change any time soon. This is going to be a problem for a very long time.
P.S.: I'm a user of IE 5.0, this story just convinced me to switch to Netscape when it finally comes out. Whenever the hell that will be.
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AbiWord: The BEST opensource word processor
Whiskey and bourbon are really the same thing by the way. But you can only call it bourbon if it was made in Kentucky.
--------------------------------
Taxes of course, the same difference between moonshine and legal liquor.
--------------------------------
If this sattelite radio includes DJs and commercials or is nothing more than re-broadcast analog stations, their going to have to pay me $9.95 a month to listen to it.
--------------------------------
His first mistake is taking the harshest zealotry and attributing it to the entire open source world. He seems to think that the open source movement wants all software to be open source (OS) and free and that there is no room in the OS philosophy for proprietary software. I think that the more moderate advocates will agree that there is a place for both OS software and proprietary software.
Aside from that, I think he makes some very good points. Software should take the users needs into account and user interface should be a major concern. UI is one of the things (maybe the only thing) that the macs do right(I use a mac, but with MkLinux). I think he is wrong to say that since the decisions about proprietary software are controlled by the market that they are more in tune with what the user wants. If that were true, Windows and Macintosh systems wouldn't crash every time an application went down. We also would not have the horrendous planned obolesence upgrade cycle we've got. Proprietary software is made to make money, which doesn't necessarily mean that the consumer is getting what he wants.
I'm not saying that MySQL isn't relational, I'm not even saying it doesn't have transactions (according to some of the other posts I've read, it does). I'm also not saying that transactions make a RDBMS. There are many things that make up a RDBMS from a user standpoint. The ACID test is probably what most people look at when deciding whether an application is a RDBMS (there are many other things too of course.). What I said was that MySQL is not a RDBMS. I think that anyone who knows anything about a RDBMS will agree with that statement.
I'm not bashing MySQL, I think its a great application. I also suspect that some of the features people like most about MySQL exist because it is not a RDBMS. Trying to turn MySQL into a RDBMS might compromise the very features that its users find so attractive. It fills an important niche in the field of web applications. My point was mainly that if someone needs a true RDBMS, they shouldn't be using MySQL in the first place.
Why are you asking for transactions or any other RDBMS feature in MySQL? MySQL is good at being a fast, easy to use database-like application. If you want a true RDBMS, just use PostgreSQL. Both MySQL and Postgres have their strengths and weaknesses, and each targets a slightly different user in my opinion. If you want a true RDBMS, then use a RDBMS, don't ask MySQL to be something its not.
1. .DOC is documented, this question is lame FUD. Quit bashing Microsoft.
Well, if its so well documented, then why can't I open a Word document in WordPerfect? And please don't tell me its because the Word document can contain embedded things like Excel and Access parts. I'm just talking about a regular word processing document with text and a little formatting. Our MIS guys tell me it does work but they apparently received this information from the WordPerfect 8 packaging rather than from experimentation because it doesn't work on my computer and they have been unable to show me where it works on their's.
2. Why are you picking on poor Microsoft? Do you really think they would purposely obfuscate their own code and make it difficult not only on the rest of the world, but themselves as well? Do you really think they're purposely trying to make it difficult for other companies to use the .DOC format?
Um, well yes, that's exactly what I think. What planet have you people been living on for the last 20 years. Of course Microsoft wants to make it difficult for other wordprocessors to use its format. They pretty much have a monopoly on in the Office arena and they want to keep it. If you could go out and buy WordPerfect for $100 less than Word and still be able to use the .DOC format perfectly, how would that help Microsoft? They have done things like this in the past and they will continue to do them as long as they can.
On a more positive note, I'll say that I do think that Microsoft Office is a good product. I mean it works and it does alot of cool stuff(even though that makes it bloated). The problem is in the way which Microsoft has used the power that Office has given them, not in the product itself. And I'm not just bashing Microsoft. I fully believe that if Sun or Corel were in their place they'd be doing the same thing. The bottom line is that consumers are suffering because of proprietary formats. This is one of the big reasons why computers have not made us more productive (or at least as productive as we could be). I can't count the number of hours I've spent simply trying to convert documents from one format to another.
Sure, there's some piracy that goes on, I've witnessed people installing windows on used 486's and such, but how is this a big revenue loss for Microsoft. It seems to me that the people who have the most need for a Windows cd are the one's who legitimately paid for it in the first place and just want to re-install it on the same computer or possibly on a second computer they've bought which for some reason does not have windows already.
Microsoft seems to be shooting themselves in the foot here. As if they're not already in danger from the growing use of linux,BSD, etc.., now they are giving people even more reason to stop using their software altogether. They should be trying to give their users more freedom not less. Personaly though, I'm glad their doing this. I don't use windows except for at work and I hope this will convince more people to switch to one of the free nixes.
I usually say coke if I'm talking about soft drinks in general. If I'm talking about a specific product, I'll use the name of that product.
All I know to do is to look at the bottom "Received From:" header. If its a site, I type it into my web browser and see if they've got an abuse@ address. If its an IP, I traceroute it and then do the same. How reliable is this? Can the "Received From:" header also be faked?
Remember: