Every single Web site I visit, the first time I'm there, there's two things I always do: Validate it, and check it against Netcraft to see what kind of servers it runs on. Every time. That's always been the first thing I do. I honestly don't like all that stupid evangelism crap, because the overzealous ones really get annoying, but there are reasons that I validate everything and encourage others to do the same:
I want to be able to access the site on any standards-compliant browser, and
The hell with it, it's just not Linux techie-like to ignore Web standards!
I remember the first time I heard about the validation service. My entire homepage, which was then a collection of static HTML pages, was a horrible mess. So what did I do? I went through every single page and re-wrote it until it was HTML 4.01 Strict. Then as soon as I heard about XHTML and realized how much better it was, you guessed – re-did the entire thing as XHTML 1.1.
Personally, there's two other things I like to pay attention to when designing a page: Make sure that all the layout is done in CSS, and use as little JavaScript as possible. My rule of thumb as far as Web sites go: If I can't see anything in Lynx, it's not worth my time. And yes, I am a Lynx addict.
These days I've got everything on my site managed with a homebrew content management system, Überpage. The first thing I did when designing it was make sure it used exclusively valid XHTML 1.1 and CSS code.
By the way, timing on this story's pretty convenient, because I just finished revising a page about designing good Web sites on my homepage, too... you'll have to forgive the stupid URL (html.html), most of the stuff on my site's been there for years, and because I've got so many links all over the place it would be suicide to change the URL's yet again...
One of the selling points of Flock (which, incidentally, I first heard of through Slashdot) is that it has built-in blogging within your Web browser, which lets you write everything while you're reading another site. No need to log in or anything, you just configure it for your site and it runs.
As for spell checking, etc. – one of my all-time favorite things about Konqueror is that it's got more features than just about any other browser I can think of due to the heavily integrated nature of KDE. For example, the spell-checking example – every <textarea> in Konqueror has spell checking automatically enabled. And I think you can even run KOffice embedded into Konqueror – there's probably some way or other – although I'm not entirely sure on that one because I'm not that obsessive.
Oh, and horribly off-topic, but the best thing about it? The built-in terminal emulator lets you run a Web browser, eg. Lynx, within itself – you have two Web browsers in one! Now that's what I call a useful program.
If I remember right there were a lot of cool GRiD laptops from around that time... I never actually saw the 80's since I was born in 1990 but I've got a GRiD 1720 – one of the last models they made after being bought out by Tandy, it's about the same age as me – truly amazing machine, still runs beautifully too. Probably a bit too new for your project but one of their older ones like the Compass would be worth looking into...?
Maybe Microsoft should buy out Nintendo – after all, they're both in it for world domination, and they both have such talented names going on. Wii-CE, anyone?
I'd much rather a good solid Slackware-style distribution (preferably my own, of course, but there are other good ones, too). From what I've seen, they tend to be a hell of a lot faster, easier to configure – imagine a world without those horrible RPM's! – and probably a bit more secure as well. So far I've got everyone in my family hooked on my distribution, which is saying quite a bit actually since most of them were fighting tooth and nail just to keep Internet Explorer for a while...
Either way, I'm pretty sure that with all the money those Microsoft guys have, they should be able to find a solution that works by now. Although by now, I honestly couldn't care less, because I'm a full-time Linux hacker and have more important things to worry about (like my own operating system;-)
I have my music collection organized sorta like this: Start with a single directory to store all music stuff in; I use ogg/ because most of my music is in Ogg Vorbis. Then, each new artist gets their own subdirectory, and from there I usually put in another for each individual album, and then any other miscellaneous songs I may have I'll just file under the artist directory. For example:
ogg/The Beatles/The White Album - CD 2/29 - Revolution 9.ogg would get to The Beatles' "Revolution 9" (note the fact that it's numbered 29, because even though I tend to have individual directories for each CD so I can make copies more easily – for my own personal use of course, like say having the same CD in both my alarm clock and my stereo system – I usually keep the track numbering consistent). And then
ogg/misc/starwars-imperial_march.mp3 is the Imperial March from Star Wars, which doesn't have an album to go with it. And yes, I just left it in MP3, too lazy to convert to Ogg yet.
Most of the time I just rip everything on the command line with cdparanoia, then ogg-encode it with a shell script I wrote for that specific purpose. Why? I don't know, but it tends to be much faster than most of the GUI front-ends I know of. I'm weird like that, I guess:-)
As for playing the songs, I usually either use ogg123 from the command line, or else import the ogg/ directory into JuK so that I can play it from there. Really depends on how powerful a system I'm working with, I've got a few and a couple can't run aRTS so JuK doesn't work.
And if you're wondering, I typically use gnupod to convert everything from Ogg to MP3 so I can play it on my iPod nano. Right now just about everything fits, although then again I will admit I don't have that big a collection.
If it's so obvious, why can't they just make it a built-in part of the operating system anyway? I'm sure that there's got to be some sort of secure way of doing so. I know that if I were Microsoft, I'd want to provide all the "obvious fixes" as part of the default install, no stupid tweaking involved.
Let's see... been programming ever since I got my first copy of HTML for Dummies when I was eight, and now I'm fifteen, and what have I written? To name just a few:
PyWord, a text editor coded in Python
(Used to be my most popular, I even had a guy in the Bereau of Labor and Statistics e-mail me once to say he liked it enough that he wanted to use it in his own program!)
pyprime, a program to find prime numbers
I actually came up with the entire algorithm for it during theatre class in eighth grade. I've also ported it to my TI-83
Überpage, a PHP-based Web site engine
Among other features, it uses a MySQL backend, generates completely valid XHTML 1.1, and if you're wondering, yes, I even designed the CSS theme myself
These days, though, I tend to spend most of my time developing Ultima Linux, which has become – I may as well brag – a very popular distribution. Most of that stuff isn't so much writing programs as compiling them, although I frequently do have to make some major changes to shell scripts, etc., which I've also become somewhat good at.
I've also become fairly decent at writing sed scripts, the occassional bit of JavaScript, and now I'm gradually trying to teach myself C. (Although with all the other stuff, and not to mention my actual life, I never have the time...) And then I also tend to like playing with CSS designs – I've got a Slashdot design I did, as well as a CSS Zen Garden entry and my hand-coded WordPress theme, which I'm rather proud of.
I used to waste endless hours with QBASIC, and then later Visual Basic. I've never really forgiven myself for it until now, but I no longer remember a single line of it so I guess I've repented enough:-)
These days there seems to be a lot of remake projects for abandonware games as well – one of my favorites is Ultimate Stunts, which is developing a GPL'd, OpenGL-based, 3-D version of the classic DOS "Stunts" game. Obviously not all the remakes are good ones – and it would take forever to remake every single abandonware game – but I'd have to say this one's coming along really nicely, and they've actually managed to create a good-looking game that has real gameplay, and not just graphics (well, a lot of it's still in development but from what I've seen it's rather faithful to the original) – something that most game developers today still don't understand!
Getting back to the topic, though, I'd have to say that some of the remake projects really are worth checking out – not all, but there are a few that are totally worth it. That way, not only will you have to worry about abandonware and licensing issues, but you also don't have to worry about backwards compatibility issues and limited resolution and all that other stuff you deal with when playing 80's games.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to re-build my 486 so I can finally beat all those old shareware DOS games I've collected over the years – long live actually challenging puzzles!!
If you can find an MP3 (or Ogg Vorbis, or FLAC, or WAV, or...) copy of "Deep Note," try playing it backwards and/or at various different speeds. If it's played at around 14x the original speed it actually sounds sorta neat. And backwards it sounds like a nuclear reactor going down.
(Uh... not that I'd know what a nuclear reactor would sound like... yeah, uh, you can get back to dealing with Iran now...)
Das computermachine ist nicht für gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen, undpoppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht für gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubberkecken sichtseern keepen das cotten-pickten hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.
Hey, I'm the only one who logs into the machine anyway:-)
“Provided your code isn't written in assembly, do you really _have_ to do anything else than to recompile it? Of course, you might want to make changes to make better use of the 64 bits, but to just make it run, wouldn't this be enough?”
Ideally, that would be the case, but in the real world, not really. A couple weeks ago I got an AMD64 box, and since then I've been working on porting my Linux distribution over. Not exactly the hardest thing I've done, but nowhere near the easiest, either. You have to re-build all the low-level system stuff first, then re-configure all the individual apps and libraries – not all of which will compile nicely on AMD64. And a good number of the things that do work require extensive patching, which often means Googling around for stuff you may need.
And then, of course, there's the whole issue of custom build systems – I only recently found out that there's no 64-bit version of OpenOffice.org, because their build system (if I'm not mistaken on this) creates its own build tools that it then uses to compile the office suite, and it doesn't yet have support for 64-bit code.
A lot of the time it's just easier or else just a better idea to stick with 32-bit applications. For example, in my distribution, I've actually made the Firefox build system compile it twice, once for 64-bit and once for regular 32-bit. That way it can support Flash and other plug-ins. The only downside is that you also need a ton of messy compatibility libraries, which you often have to build on a "real" 32-bit machine or else cross-compile, which is messy and often problematic...
“Seriously - is this worth Bruce wasting his time on?”
I don't think so. You'd think that those obnoxious evangelists would be a bit more mature and all, but quite honestly I'd have to say this strikes me as among the stupidest things I've ever seen. I mean, come on – the entire site itself is basically saying "we aren't doing anything useful, but if we're lucky it will change a few statistics and maybe even magically convince people open source is better". I could have sworn these guys were responsible adults, but I guess not...
Not to personally attack anyone or anything, but I just don't like those open-source and free software evangelists. It's one thing to tell people about an alternative system such as Linux – I'm a distro maintainer myself, I do it all the time – but it's another thing to waste your entire life waging some pointless holy war or something. I think this really is the reason no one's really paid attention – they think everyone's some self-appointed holier-than-thou evangelist.
But getting back to the point – if you really want to show that Linux is better, how about setting up a real Web site, and not just some parking service? What about showing people just how easy it is to switch over? Please, if you want to show off Linux, set up a real Web site, not just some parking thing that no one looks at anyway!
By the way, this may just be my personal opinion, but I'd have to say that OpenSourceParking.com has to be one of the ugliest sites I've ever seen – if I were choosing open-source software based exclusively on domain parking site appearance, I'd avoid it at all costs. I've seen better MySpace's!
Yeah... I tend to just keep everything I can in my own room, because that way I know where all my stuff is and it doesn't have to get in anyone else's way, but that's just me I guess. And most of the parts in my room aren't "lying around," they're mostly inside the machines! I think the only things I have that aren't in use are a couple of video cards, and that's only because I only have so many monitors and don't really have much use for a second screen on any of my systems anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember the first time I heard about the validation service. My entire homepage, which was then a collection of static HTML pages, was a horrible mess. So what did I do? I went through every single page and re-wrote it until it was HTML 4.01 Strict. Then as soon as I heard about XHTML and realized how much better it was, you guessed – re-did the entire thing as XHTML 1.1.
Personally, there's two other things I like to pay attention to when designing a page: Make sure that all the layout is done in CSS, and use as little JavaScript as possible. My rule of thumb as far as Web sites go: If I can't see anything in Lynx, it's not worth my time. And yes, I am a Lynx addict.
These days I've got everything on my site managed with a homebrew content management system, Überpage. The first thing I did when designing it was make sure it used exclusively valid XHTML 1.1 and CSS code.
By the way, timing on this story's pretty convenient, because I just finished revising a page about designing good Web sites on my homepage, too... you'll have to forgive the stupid URL (html.html), most of the stuff on my site's been there for years, and because I've got so many links all over the place it would be suicide to change the URL's yet again...
Right when I think I've gotten that song out of my head, too!
One of the selling points of Flock (which, incidentally, I first heard of through Slashdot) is that it has built-in blogging within your Web browser, which lets you write everything while you're reading another site. No need to log in or anything, you just configure it for your site and it runs.
As for spell checking, etc. – one of my all-time favorite things about Konqueror is that it's got more features than just about any other browser I can think of due to the heavily integrated nature of KDE. For example, the spell-checking example – every <textarea> in Konqueror has spell checking automatically enabled. And I think you can even run KOffice embedded into Konqueror – there's probably some way or other – although I'm not entirely sure on that one because I'm not that obsessive.
Oh, and horribly off-topic, but the best thing about it? The built-in terminal emulator lets you run a Web browser, eg. Lynx, within itself – you have two Web browsers in one! Now that's what I call a useful program.
If I remember right there were a lot of cool GRiD laptops from around that time... I never actually saw the 80's since I was born in 1990 but I've got a GRiD 1720 – one of the last models they made after being bought out by Tandy, it's about the same age as me – truly amazing machine, still runs beautifully too. Probably a bit too new for your project but one of their older ones like the Compass would be worth looking into...?
Maybe Microsoft should buy out Nintendo – after all, they're both in it for world domination, and they both have such talented names going on. Wii-CE, anyone?
I'd much rather a good solid Slackware-style distribution (preferably my own, of course, but there are other good ones, too). From what I've seen, they tend to be a hell of a lot faster, easier to configure – imagine a world without those horrible RPM's! – and probably a bit more secure as well. So far I've got everyone in my family hooked on my distribution, which is saying quite a bit actually since most of them were fighting tooth and nail just to keep Internet Explorer for a while...
Either way, I'm pretty sure that with all the money those Microsoft guys have, they should be able to find a solution that works by now. Although by now, I honestly couldn't care less, because I'm a full-time Linux hacker and have more important things to worry about (like my own operating system ;-)
I have my music collection organized sorta like this: Start with a single directory to store all music stuff in; I use ogg/ because most of my music is in Ogg Vorbis. Then, each new artist gets their own subdirectory, and from there I usually put in another for each individual album, and then any other miscellaneous songs I may have I'll just file under the artist directory. For example:
:-)
:-)
ogg/The Beatles/The White Album - CD 2/29 - Revolution 9.ogg
would get to The Beatles' "Revolution 9" (note the fact that it's numbered 29, because even though I tend to have individual directories for each CD so I can make copies more easily – for my own personal use of course, like say having the same CD in both my alarm clock and my stereo system – I usually keep the track numbering consistent). And then
ogg/misc/starwars-imperial_march.mp3
is the Imperial March from Star Wars, which doesn't have an album to go with it. And yes, I just left it in MP3, too lazy to convert to Ogg yet.
Most of the time I just rip everything on the command line with cdparanoia, then ogg-encode it with a shell script I wrote for that specific purpose. Why? I don't know, but it tends to be much faster than most of the GUI front-ends I know of. I'm weird like that, I guess
As for playing the songs, I usually either use ogg123 from the command line, or else import the ogg/ directory into JuK so that I can play it from there. Really depends on how powerful a system I'm working with, I've got a few and a couple can't run aRTS so JuK doesn't work.
And if you're wondering, I typically use gnupod to convert everything from Ogg to MP3 so I can play it on my iPod nano. Right now just about everything fits, although then again I will admit I don't have that big a collection.
Oh, and yes, I'm a Linux hacker
If it's so obvious, why can't they just make it a built-in part of the operating system anyway? I'm sure that there's got to be some sort of secure way of doing so. I know that if I were Microsoft, I'd want to provide all the "obvious fixes" as part of the default install, no stupid tweaking involved.
Let's see... been programming ever since I got my first copy of HTML for Dummies when I was eight, and now I'm fifteen, and what have I written? To name just a few:
PyWord, a text editor coded in Python
(Used to be my most popular, I even had a guy in the Bereau of Labor and Statistics e-mail me once to say he liked it enough that he wanted to use it in his own program!)
pyprime, a program to find prime numbers
I actually came up with the entire algorithm for it during theatre class in eighth grade. I've also ported it to my TI-83
Überpage, a PHP-based Web site engine
Among other features, it uses a MySQL backend, generates completely valid XHTML 1.1, and if you're wondering, yes, I even designed the CSS theme myself
These days, though, I tend to spend most of my time developing Ultima Linux, which has become – I may as well brag – a very popular distribution. Most of that stuff isn't so much writing programs as compiling them, although I frequently do have to make some major changes to shell scripts, etc., which I've also become somewhat good at.
I've also become fairly decent at writing sed scripts, the occassional bit of JavaScript, and now I'm gradually trying to teach myself C. (Although with all the other stuff, and not to mention my actual life, I never have the time...) And then I also tend to like playing with CSS designs – I've got a Slashdot design I did, as well as a CSS Zen Garden entry and my hand-coded WordPress theme, which I'm rather proud of.
I used to waste endless hours with QBASIC, and then later Visual Basic. I've never really forgiven myself for it until now, but I no longer remember a single line of it so I guess I've repented enough :-)
Need I say more?
I'd just like to know what kind of stuff they're smoking over there... because I'm really going to need some before I can buy that thing!
I was really looking forward to it, too – stupid Japanese with their stupid-sounding names...
Something looks fake to me...
You damn metal guys ALWAYS get modded higher for that stuff!
You know, I thought about that... but it just makes too much sense for a bunch of half-insane hackers like us!
Mmmm, nuclear reactor....
Aber ich habe lieber das deutsches Blinkenlights :-)
These days there seems to be a lot of remake projects for abandonware games as well – one of my favorites is Ultimate Stunts, which is developing a GPL'd, OpenGL-based, 3-D version of the classic DOS "Stunts" game. Obviously not all the remakes are good ones – and it would take forever to remake every single abandonware game – but I'd have to say this one's coming along really nicely, and they've actually managed to create a good-looking game that has real gameplay, and not just graphics (well, a lot of it's still in development but from what I've seen it's rather faithful to the original) – something that most game developers today still don't understand!
Getting back to the topic, though, I'd have to say that some of the remake projects really are worth checking out – not all, but there are a few that are totally worth it. That way, not only will you have to worry about abandonware and licensing issues, but you also don't have to worry about backwards compatibility issues and limited resolution and all that other stuff you deal with when playing 80's games.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to re-build my 486 so I can finally beat all those old shareware DOS games I've collected over the years – long live actually challenging puzzles!!
If you can find an MP3 (or Ogg Vorbis, or FLAC, or WAV, or...) copy of "Deep Note," try playing it backwards and/or at various different speeds. If it's played at around 14x the original speed it actually sounds sorta neat. And backwards it sounds like a nuclear reactor going down.
(Uh... not that I'd know what a nuclear reactor would sound like... yeah, uh, you can get back to dealing with Iran now...)
Das computermachine ist nicht für gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen, undpoppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht für gewerken bei das dumpkopfen. Das rubberkecken sichtseern keepen das cotten-pickten hans in das pockets muss; relaxen und watchen das blinkenlichten.
:-)
Hey, I'm the only one who logs into the machine anyway
Ideally, that would be the case, but in the real world, not really. A couple weeks ago I got an AMD64 box, and since then I've been working on porting my Linux distribution over. Not exactly the hardest thing I've done, but nowhere near the easiest, either. You have to re-build all the low-level system stuff first, then re-configure all the individual apps and libraries – not all of which will compile nicely on AMD64. And a good number of the things that do work require extensive patching, which often means Googling around for stuff you may need.
And then, of course, there's the whole issue of custom build systems – I only recently found out that there's no 64-bit version of OpenOffice.org, because their build system (if I'm not mistaken on this) creates its own build tools that it then uses to compile the office suite, and it doesn't yet have support for 64-bit code.
A lot of the time it's just easier or else just a better idea to stick with 32-bit applications. For example, in my distribution, I've actually made the Firefox build system compile it twice, once for 64-bit and once for regular 32-bit. That way it can support Flash and other plug-ins. The only downside is that you also need a ton of messy compatibility libraries, which you often have to build on a "real" 32-bit machine or else cross-compile, which is messy and often problematic...
I don't think so. You'd think that those obnoxious evangelists would be a bit more mature and all, but quite honestly I'd have to say this strikes me as among the stupidest things I've ever seen. I mean, come on – the entire site itself is basically saying "we aren't doing anything useful, but if we're lucky it will change a few statistics and maybe even magically convince people open source is better". I could have sworn these guys were responsible adults, but I guess not...
Not to personally attack anyone or anything, but I just don't like those open-source and free software evangelists. It's one thing to tell people about an alternative system such as Linux – I'm a distro maintainer myself, I do it all the time – but it's another thing to waste your entire life waging some pointless holy war or something. I think this really is the reason no one's really paid attention – they think everyone's some self-appointed holier-than-thou evangelist.
But getting back to the point – if you really want to show that Linux is better, how about setting up a real Web site, and not just some parking service? What about showing people just how easy it is to switch over? Please, if you want to show off Linux, set up a real Web site, not just some parking thing that no one looks at anyway!
By the way, this may just be my personal opinion, but I'd have to say that OpenSourceParking.com has to be one of the ugliest sites I've ever seen – if I were choosing open-source software based exclusively on domain parking site appearance, I'd avoid it at all costs. I've seen better MySpace's!
And the new GNU/Roadrage operating system, and – wait, never mind...
'cause it's on the second page! And no one reads all the way to the second page!
Uh... well, maybe I missed something in the original article...
Yeah... I tend to just keep everything I can in my own room, because that way I know where all my stuff is and it doesn't have to get in anyone else's way, but that's just me I guess. And most of the parts in my room aren't "lying around," they're mostly inside the machines! I think the only things I have that aren't in use are a couple of video cards, and that's only because I only have so many monitors and don't really have much use for a second screen on any of my systems anyway.