I'm a big fan of Firefox. Only bit I don't like is upgrading the software where "installing over the top of an older version may cause unpredictable problems."
Soon as that is fixed I'll recommend it to my mother.
Did you happen to notice that Firefox isn't finished yet? Developing any software, let alone a web browser, takes time. Anybody posting here should know that. If you're using any software for production purposes that hasn't seen a 1.0 release yet, you're an infidel.
Until Firefox hits 1.0, there's still the full-featured and highly stable Mozilla suite.
It actually boots into sysinstall. Far as I can tell, the only difference from the install CD is that it doesn't contain any packages but does include a live filesystem that you can use to repair a broken system.
This is better then any alternative java or javascript crap I have seen.
Except that the user can't adjust the speed, stop on a particular frame, step backwards or forwards, choose to display only certain frames, or really do much of anything else except sit back and watch it go. Besides, every browser I touch image has animations disabled to cut down on all the obnoxious blinking epilepsy-inducing ads.
I would love to get one of these. However, I've been shopping around forever and all I can ever can find are the Cherry keyboards with the integrated barcode/smartcard/retina scanners. Where the heck is a guy to buy one in the U.S.?
Are there other keyboards out there similar to Cherry's? That I can actually buy?
As a young(er) Master's student in Computer Science back in 1996,
It's obvious, then, that you have no idea how much college costs the average student now. Just since 2001 we've seen the largest tuition hikes ever. What's left after tuition is usually gone after the parking fees, registration fees, technology fees (?!) and everything else they nickel-and-dime you for.
Textbooks were the last refuge for the poor student. The thrifty student could usually buy them used or barter for them and then sell them at the end of the semester for a good return. That is no more. Textbook prices are hideously high. I spent nearly $200 on books for one online class in my first semester at a school that is very nearly an adult-ed community college.
Buying used books and reselling them is getting more and more rare thanks to the actions of the textbook industry. Try finding a book that doesn't have a bundled CD and product key or some other scheme to make the book far less valuable if resold. Try finding a class that doesn't require the $current_year edition of the course textbook.
Sorry, but there's just no way that 12th Edition of "Algebra I Fundamentals Explorer With New Operator Precedence Tables" cost the book company anywhere near what they're charging. Books cost quite a bit of money to make I'm sure, but there's no way they have to charge students over $100 in order to make a nice profit. And just how much have the basics of Algebra I changed over the last 12 years to warrant a new edition each year? I won't even go into all of the sleazeball tactics the publishers pull on faculty and boards to get their books into the classes.
Somebody's getting fat and it ain't the students. If I had the time and means to go down to mexico and photocopy books, I would if only to help create a little balance.
Oh sure, the Ohio Linuxfest gets a Slashdot mention, but not Penguicon, the single best Open Source/Sci Fi convention that the midwest has seen these past two years?
CmdrTaco was even a GOH for the first one and a Nifty Guest for the second. C'mon, Slashdot, you can do better.
Encrypted images in the flash, with the key in the CPU's ROM so it can't be read out.
Actually, it would be a lot harder to break with public key encryption. All they need to do is encrypt each picture taken with the public key before it gets stored in the flash memory. You can download the pictures off the camera all you want, but you won't be able to view a single pixel without the developer's private key. They don't even need to make it hard to get the picture out in that case. Hell, they could even put a USB plug right on the side of the thing so they don't have to disassemble it for processing. They could give the cameras away for free and let people keep them as long as they want. To get the pictures out, they could take them to the developer for prints. For digital copies, upload them to the web and have them processed in seconds online for something like $0.05 a shot.
Whoops, I just stumbled across a really nifty business model and posted it in public. Oh well, consider it a gift. Just drop me a postcard when you get rich. The biggest downfall would be the encryption chip, as that alone would probably take up the bulk of the cost of the camera.
Within the decade the spinning hard disk may go the way of the floppy and CRT.
Bad news for me, then, because almost every single machine I touch still has a floppy disk drive and I'm currently sitting in front of a wall of 11 CRT monitors at work.
May as well just convert this place into a museum and charge $3 admission, eh?
Yes, I will admin that I missed that point. My argument draws from a previous experience of my own where I wanted to distribute a Cygwin binary for a C program that I wrote and put under the BSD license. The BSD license does not conform to Red Hat's definition of "Open Source" and buying a commercial license for my tiny (but useful!) program would have been impractical.
What's not true about it? I said that if you link against the cygwin dll and then distribute the result, the only license you can put your work under is GPL. The two clauses that you pasted support that, but also add the phrase "complies with the Open Source definition" which just looks like a summery of the GPL to me.
I got bit on Cygwin when I wanted to distribute a Cygwin-linked binary under the BSD license, which does NOT comply with the "Open Source" definition as stated by the GPL, Red Hat, and Bruce Perens. (Despite the fact that it is technically the most free software license there is, short of public domain.)
IIRC, he said shell scripts yes, but also vaguely alluded to other kinds of development as well. Even if they *are* just doing shell scripts for now, once they're using Cygwin on a more permanent basis, they won't be able to move to C or C++ programs.
If you can get past the horrible, horrible installation, Cygwin is a pretty nifty piece of kit.
However, in a commercial environment there is one tremendous downfall to using Cygwin. The Cygwin.dll library that does all of the translation from Unix to Windows system calls is under the GPL. NOT the LGPL. This means that if you write an application and build it against the Cygwin libraries and plan to distribute it, the only license you can legally put your software under is the GPL. This is the only case of the "virulent" nature of the GPL that we've witnessed firsthand and I must say it is a particularly nasty one.
Without a doubt, the most handy web-based app I've run across is the MindTerm Java SSH client. Exceedingly handy for logging into my machines when I'm on the road and only have access to someone else's computer. It's commercial, but good old Duke has a copy up on their web pages for all to use.
How about a show that just explores life on earth in the 'utopian' society ST created? What's life like for everyone else on the ground?
So, sorta like DS9? Except that it wasn't utopian, and it was a space station, so rather than yet another series where idealistic clean-shaven Starfleet officers go galavanting about the universe looking for hopeless situations to escape from at the last minute, the hopeless situations tend to come to them instead.
I'm a Trek fan and all, but I stopped watching Enterprise (as in, haven't seen a single minute since) the very moment they had the strapping young crew member and sexy vulcan rub "decontanimation gel" all over each other's naked bodies in a small, private, dimly-lit room.
If I were in charge at Paramount, my first rule for Enterprise would have been no 24th century technology, no 24th century species. You get warp drive, you get vulcans, you get human colonies, you get strange planets with strange animals, you get Starfleet pissing off everyone in the galaxy and maybe MAYBE you can get the Klingons in one or two season finales. And no time travel, ever. EVER. I can think of hundreds of interesting scenarios that could fit within those bounds. Look at Firefly. They didn't have half of that stuff.
Berman took the easy way out and really pissed off the Trek fanbase. I was almost wondering why it took this long for them to think of a way to get Kirk back in. I'd bet any amount of money that before the series gets canned, (wouldn't be too soon, from my point of view) they will probably end up involving a large portion of one of the TNG, DS9, or Voyager crews. Ditto for the Borg, if they haven't done so already.
You wouldn't see the magazine ads unless you were a subscriber or bought the magazine.
Sure you would. I don't subscribe to a single magazine, but tend to browse through at least 2-3 per week at the library, friends' houses, work, the dentist's office, etc.
If I could easily block ads out of those too, I would, because I'm not interested in what they have to sell (I've already got too much want and too little budget) and would rather spend my time reading content than trying to figure out what's an ad and what's not.
I'm not against advertising, I'm against the sheer uncontrolled volume of advertising that's infiltrated our media, our lives, and our culture. In a hundred years, historians are going to think that we were nothing but a bunch of hucksters unless things don't change very much between now and then.
Am I the only person left who thinks it is unethical to use a person's site and block their ads?
Um, yeah, pretty much.
It's kind of like when the cool coffee house with all the great local bands closes down because nobody bought any coffee. Everybody bitches how much it sucks, but never connects that they were taking up a chair for four hours without buying a drink.
We can sit around and make analogies all day. For example, I liken web ads to newspaper or magazine ads. I see them, but almost completely ignore every last one. The major difference is that magazine ads are sometimes worth glancing over for their humor. I can't think of a single web ad that has ever induced any emotion other than annoyance.
The bottom line, however: If you can't live with the possibility that someone might want to read your content without wanting to read the ads as well, the web just isn't the medium for you.
The bottomer line: I will continue to prevent *my* computer from displaying things that I don't wish to see so long as I have to means to do so.
Turns out, my insomnia was being caused by a very serious medical problem. A medical problem that I didn't know about, and would have likely killed me (eventually) had it not been discovered.
Ah yes, I believe I know which ailment you speak of, for it afflicted me also. It is *really* hard to put that GameBoy down at night after having cleared over 200 lines in Tetris.
Of course, I got off fairly lucky, not having to go to the doctor about it.
I remember reading once that game systems released in the US have controllers that are 30% larger than the Japanese counterparts. I don't know how how much truth there was to that, but as nearly every game system in the world originates in Japan, I could see how a prototype handheld might have the buttons crammed closer together and then separated a bit to make it easier to play for US gamers.
Slashdot Mirror
Burla Eletrônica ("Electronic Scam")
"A máquina que faz seu voto sumir" ("The machine that makes your vote disappear")
The book contains am objective and yet scathing analysis
Say again how a book with a title (and subtitle) like that is objective?
I'm a big fan of Firefox. Only bit I don't like is upgrading the software where "installing over the top of an older version may cause unpredictable problems."
Soon as that is fixed I'll recommend it to my mother.
Did you happen to notice that Firefox isn't finished yet? Developing any software, let alone a web browser, takes time. Anybody posting here should know that. If you're using any software for production purposes that hasn't seen a 1.0 release yet, you're an infidel.
Until Firefox hits 1.0, there's still the full-featured and highly stable Mozilla suite.
In other words, they missed the swinging rope and finally fell into the tarpit.
If you didn't have one already, you'd be forced by Law to buy a TV license with your new iMac whether you wanted to use it as a TV or not.
We don't have TV licenses over here, you insensitive clod.
Bring on the tuners.
Yet you post as AC. Humorous.
I concur.
It actually boots into sysinstall. Far as I can tell, the only difference from the install CD is that it doesn't contain any packages but does include a live filesystem that you can use to repair a broken system.
This is better then any alternative java or javascript crap I have seen.
Except that the user can't adjust the speed, stop on a particular frame, step backwards or forwards, choose to display only certain frames, or really do much of anything else except sit back and watch it go. Besides, every browser I touch image has animations disabled to cut down on all the obnoxious blinking epilepsy-inducing ads.
I would love to get one of these. However, I've been shopping around forever and all I can ever can find are the Cherry keyboards with the integrated barcode/smartcard/retina scanners. Where the heck is a guy to buy one in the U.S.?
Are there other keyboards out there similar to Cherry's? That I can actually buy?
As a young(er) Master's student in Computer Science back in 1996,
It's obvious, then, that you have no idea how much college costs the average student now. Just since 2001 we've seen the largest tuition hikes ever. What's left after tuition is usually gone after the parking fees, registration fees, technology fees (?!) and everything else they nickel-and-dime you for.
Textbooks were the last refuge for the poor student. The thrifty student could usually buy them used or barter for them and then sell them at the end of the semester for a good return. That is no more. Textbook prices are hideously high. I spent nearly $200 on books for one online class in my first semester at a school that is very nearly an adult-ed community college.
Buying used books and reselling them is getting more and more rare thanks to the actions of the textbook industry. Try finding a book that doesn't have a bundled CD and product key or some other scheme to make the book far less valuable if resold. Try finding a class that doesn't require the $current_year edition of the course textbook.
Sorry, but there's just no way that 12th Edition of "Algebra I Fundamentals Explorer With New Operator Precedence Tables" cost the book company anywhere near what they're charging. Books cost quite a bit of money to make I'm sure, but there's no way they have to charge students over $100 in order to make a nice profit. And just how much have the basics of Algebra I changed over the last 12 years to warrant a new edition each year? I won't even go into all of the sleazeball tactics the publishers pull on faculty and boards to get their books into the classes.
Somebody's getting fat and it ain't the students. If I had the time and means to go down to mexico and photocopy books, I would if only to help create a little balance.
Tim, would you please stop by my office tomorrow morning? We need to talk.
The Boss
(And bring some donuts this time, lackey.)
Oh sure, the Ohio Linuxfest gets a Slashdot mention, but not Penguicon, the single best Open Source/Sci Fi convention that the midwest has seen these past two years?
CmdrTaco was even a GOH for the first one and a Nifty Guest for the second. C'mon, Slashdot, you can do better.
Encrypted images in the flash, with the key in the CPU's ROM so it can't be read out.
Actually, it would be a lot harder to break with public key encryption. All they need to do is encrypt each picture taken with the public key before it gets stored in the flash memory. You can download the pictures off the camera all you want, but you won't be able to view a single pixel without the developer's private key. They don't even need to make it hard to get the picture out in that case. Hell, they could even put a USB plug right on the side of the thing so they don't have to disassemble it for processing. They could give the cameras away for free and let people keep them as long as they want. To get the pictures out, they could take them to the developer for prints. For digital copies, upload them to the web and have them processed in seconds online for something like $0.05 a shot.
Whoops, I just stumbled across a really nifty business model and posted it in public. Oh well, consider it a gift. Just drop me a postcard when you get rich. The biggest downfall would be the encryption chip, as that alone would probably take up the bulk of the cost of the camera.
Within the decade the spinning hard disk may go the way of the floppy and CRT.
Bad news for me, then, because almost every single machine I touch still has a floppy disk drive and I'm currently sitting in front of a wall of 11 CRT monitors at work.
May as well just convert this place into a museum and charge $3 admission, eh?
Well, why do you think it's just being released now?
Yes, I will admin that I missed that point. My argument draws from a previous experience of my own where I wanted to distribute a Cygwin binary for a C program that I wrote and put under the BSD license. The BSD license does not conform to Red Hat's definition of "Open Source" and buying a commercial license for my tiny (but useful!) program would have been impractical.
What's not true about it? I said that if you link against the cygwin dll and then distribute the result, the only license you can put your work under is GPL. The two clauses that you pasted support that, but also add the phrase "complies with the Open Source definition" which just looks like a summery of the GPL to me.
I got bit on Cygwin when I wanted to distribute a Cygwin-linked binary under the BSD license, which does NOT comply with the "Open Source" definition as stated by the GPL, Red Hat, and Bruce Perens. (Despite the fact that it is technically the most free software license there is, short of public domain.)
IIRC, he said shell scripts yes, but also vaguely alluded to other kinds of development as well. Even if they *are* just doing shell scripts for now, once they're using Cygwin on a more permanent basis, they won't be able to move to C or C++ programs.
If you can get past the horrible, horrible installation, Cygwin is a pretty nifty piece of kit.
However, in a commercial environment there is one tremendous downfall to using Cygwin. The Cygwin.dll library that does all of the translation from Unix to Windows system calls is under the GPL. NOT the LGPL. This means that if you write an application and build it against the Cygwin libraries and plan to distribute it, the only license you can legally put your software under is the GPL. This is the only case of the "virulent" nature of the GPL that we've witnessed firsthand and I must say it is a particularly nasty one.
For more info:
read the FAQ.
Without a doubt, the most handy web-based app I've run across is the MindTerm Java SSH client. Exceedingly handy for logging into my machines when I'm on the road and only have access to someone else's computer. It's commercial, but good old Duke has a copy up on their web pages for all to use.
How about a show that just explores life on earth in the 'utopian' society ST created? What's life like for everyone else on the ground?
So, sorta like DS9? Except that it wasn't utopian, and it was a space station, so rather than yet another series where idealistic clean-shaven Starfleet officers go galavanting about the universe looking for hopeless situations to escape from at the last minute, the hopeless situations tend to come to them instead.
I'm a Trek fan and all, but I stopped watching Enterprise (as in, haven't seen a single minute since) the very moment they had the strapping young crew member and sexy vulcan rub "decontanimation gel" all over each other's naked bodies in a small, private, dimly-lit room.
If I were in charge at Paramount, my first rule for Enterprise would have been no 24th century technology, no 24th century species. You get warp drive, you get vulcans, you get human colonies, you get strange planets with strange animals, you get Starfleet pissing off everyone in the galaxy and maybe MAYBE you can get the Klingons in one or two season finales. And no time travel, ever. EVER. I can think of hundreds of interesting scenarios that could fit within those bounds. Look at Firefly. They didn't have half of that stuff.
Berman took the easy way out and really pissed off the Trek fanbase. I was almost wondering why it took this long for them to think of a way to get Kirk back in. I'd bet any amount of money that before the series gets canned, (wouldn't be too soon, from my point of view) they will probably end up involving a large portion of one of the TNG, DS9, or Voyager crews. Ditto for the Borg, if they haven't done so already.
You wouldn't see the magazine ads unless you were a subscriber or bought the magazine.
Sure you would. I don't subscribe to a single magazine, but tend to browse through at least 2-3 per week at the library, friends' houses, work, the dentist's office, etc.
If I could easily block ads out of those too, I would, because I'm not interested in what they have to sell (I've already got too much want and too little budget) and would rather spend my time reading content than trying to figure out what's an ad and what's not.
I'm not against advertising, I'm against the sheer uncontrolled volume of advertising that's infiltrated our media, our lives, and our culture. In a hundred years, historians are going to think that we were nothing but a bunch of hucksters unless things don't change very much between now and then.
Am I the only person left who thinks it is unethical to use a person's site and block their ads?
Um, yeah, pretty much.
It's kind of like when the cool coffee house with all the great local bands closes down because nobody bought any coffee. Everybody bitches how much it sucks, but never connects that they were taking up a chair for four hours without buying a drink.
We can sit around and make analogies all day. For example, I liken web ads to newspaper or magazine ads. I see them, but almost completely ignore every last one. The major difference is that magazine ads are sometimes worth glancing over for their humor. I can't think of a single web ad that has ever induced any emotion other than annoyance.
The bottom line, however: If you can't live with the possibility that someone might want to read your content without wanting to read the ads as well, the web just isn't the medium for you.
The bottomer line: I will continue to prevent *my* computer from displaying things that I don't wish to see so long as I have to means to do so.
Turns out, my insomnia was being caused by a very serious medical problem. A medical problem that I didn't know about, and would have likely killed me (eventually) had it not been discovered.
Ah yes, I believe I know which ailment you speak of, for it afflicted me also. It is *really* hard to put that GameBoy down at night after having cleared over 200 lines in Tetris.
Of course, I got off fairly lucky, not having to go to the doctor about it.
I remember reading once that game systems released in the US have controllers that are 30% larger than the Japanese counterparts. I don't know how how much truth there was to that, but as nearly every game system in the world originates in Japan, I could see how a prototype handheld might have the buttons crammed closer together and then separated a bit to make it easier to play for US gamers.